Tag: anime

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Spring Anime Season First Impressions – Round 1

The first few weeks of an anime season are always the most exciting to me. You get to see how the short little clips and promo art pieces of preview materials translate into actual, full-length episodes. So to share that joy, I’ve decided I’m going to pen short little thoughtpieces (or maybe not-so-short in some cases, who knows) on each show I’m checking out this season. I’ll be doing these at basically arbitrary points, whenever I have enough shows under my belt to make a post of decent length.

BRAND NEW ANIMAL

This is the one, if you’re curious. Technically, I’ve been following BNA for two weeks now. The first six episodes were unceremoniously dump-trucked onto Netflix some time back and Little Witch Academia standbys Asenshi.moe have been subbing them at a roughly weekly pace, so I’ve only seen two of those episodes thusfar, but what I’ve seen puts it at the top as far as promising shows for this season.

I’ve loved TRIGGER basically since the original LWA movie dropped so this will probably surprise nobody, but among their big ticket directors I’ve always felt that Yoh Yoshinari was among the most underrated. His style’s in full force here, but the story being told has much higher stakes than the relatively school life genre-indebted LWA. Michiru (our protagonist) has already questionably-legally immigrated to a city full of beastmen, had her wallet stolen on her first day there, and been inadvertently involved in busting up organized crime. God knows what else is in store for the poor tanuki.

The show’s gearing up to tackle some pretty big ideas, and it’s entirely possible that it’ll fumble the ball there, but the visual chops can’t be denied, and given some surprisingly subtle character design decisions (making our Big Badass Cop archetype a social worker instead, for instance) it might have a more nuanced approach than some might assume. This is some great stuff, folks. Keep your eye on Asenshi’s uploads.

First impression rating: 9/10

TAMAYOMI: The Baseball Girls

On a totally different note, we have this. Tamayomi is, at least so far, a nearly perfectly archetypal slice of school life-meets-sports anime. It’s almost comically orthodox for this particular genre intersection, but that shouldn’t be taken to mean that it’s bad, necessarily. In what I assume is a strength inherited from the manga it’s adapted from, the show has a warm inner glow that goes beyond mere cuteness (although there’s that, too). Add a little dollop of some pretty on-the-nose lesbian subtext–a pair of twins are fawning over protagonist Yomi’s pitcher hand before the ten minute mark–and you’ve got a perfectly good little anime.

I will say, the visual work is shaky at the best of times, and in some cuts the characters are downright badly-drawn, with inking errors like mismatched eyeshadow thickness and such, which does undercut some portion of its charm. My hope is that this is the result of either the current global unpleasantness, the fact that the first episode had to be done a month ahead of schedule for a preview screening, or both. Otherwise, while it’s certainly the least essential of the four shows here, it’s perfectly good and worth watching if you like this kind of thing.

First Impression Rating: 6/10

Kakushigoto

From the mind of Zetsubou-sensei creator Kouji Kumeta comes an oddball comedy about a dad who draws a dirty comedy manga and his quest to keep his beloved young daughter from ever learning that fact. This one took me slightly by surprise, as I wasn’t originally aware of Kumeta’s involvement and was expecting more of a heartstring-tugging father/daughter bonding type of story. What it actually is is great too, though, and as someone who mostly passed over Zetsubou-sensei in its popular heyday I was a bit surprised to find myself grokking the sense of humor here as quickly as I did. They don’t quite operate on the exact same wavelength, but this is one fans of stuff like Nichijou and Daily Lives of High School Boys should keep an eye on. Even if it’s not quite that frantic. This is definitely the best comedy of the season so far, with a gag late in the episode about how Starbucks orders sound like magic spells being my favorite.

If I do have a complaint it’s about the odd coding of Mario, the extremely campy owner of a fashion boutique the main character works near, but he’s not onscreen enough for it to be a major strike against the series yet.

First Impression Rating: 8/10

Tower of God

Roughly once a season, some huge shonen series drops that seemingly everyone and his grandmother watches. I’m only rarely interested in these shows (by and large, despite being a known fan of gaudy fight scenes and overdesigned characters, it isn’t my genre) and have a bad habit of thinking “oh this is the one” about once a year and then dropping it four episodes in. It’s too early to say if Tower of God will be the thing that breaks that trend, but it just might be. This one’s got an interesting IP history, too, being an adaptation of a South Korean web-manhua that’s been running since the beginning of the last decade. The original comic was among the first such properties to ever get an official English translation, and Crunchyroll of all folks are partly bankrolling the anime.

As for the show itself? Dirt-simple story (“girl leaves boy, boy goes on epic adventure to find girl”) meets lavish fantasy worldbuilding. There’s not a lot out there that’s like this, in spite of its simple building blocks, and it tickled a part of my brain that I don’t think has been buzzed since I watched MÄR on Toonami as a kid. Despite the stock protagonist archetype that male lead 25th Bam (yes, that is his name) falls into, the first episode was quite engaging, involving our hero having to figure out how to crack open a black orb in a giant water tank while being hounded by a sea monster. Also introduced here is Ha Yuri Jahad (seen up there in the header picture) who I took an immediate liking to. There’s just something charming about seeing the “rebellious princess” archetype played perfectly straight in 2020 and with a character with such a great design, too. I was also interested by the mysterious, rabbit-like Headon, who seems to be the titular Tower’s caretaker.

I don’t need to tell anyone to watch ToG–you’ll know pretty much right away if it’s your bag or not–but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. If every episode is this interesting this might be the first shonen series in some time that I actually finish.

First Impression Rating: 7/10

So that’s it for Round 1 of the Spring Anime Season impressions. Everything I’ve seen so far this season is at least solid, and I think all four of these shows have the potential to get even better. This is the most excited I’ve been going into a fresh season in some time, and we haven’t even gotten to some of the real heavy hitters yet (in particular, a certain beloved romcom from last year returns next Friday), so I’m thrilled. What about you? How’s your season looking so far?

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch Healin' Good Precure

Let’s Watch Healin’ Good Precure – Episode 9

Catching up was not as big an issue as I thought it’d be. However, this shorter length is probably going to be the norm from here on out rather than the exception. We’ll see what the future holds, though.

This is another simple character study episode. This time covering Hinata and her attempts to take her two friends to a photoshoot boutique at a mall (not something that really exists in the US but my understanding is that they’re not rare in Japan). Hinata continues her reign as the show’s at least-semi-intentional neurodivergence rep. The trip goes wrong a few times because of Hinata attempting to jump the gun on things–something very familiar to anyone with ADHD or the like. She even tries to take on this week’s Megapathogerm all on her own, which doesn’t work out for her. Though, we do get another great fight scene out of the whole ordeal.

Hinata’s a great character in general and probably my favorite of the three leads so far this season. Intentional-ness of the representation aside, she’s broadly relatable to anyone whose short attention span has ever gotten them in trouble, and as a woman who was a chronic C student in grade school, I feel it. I also really like whoever in the writer’s room is playing cupid between her and Nodoka, because they really poured it on this week.

Absolutely superb.

Puppy love or not being its own thing, this is a great episode and showcases some positive character development for Hinata, whose arc continues to be the one I’m most excited about. Behold our Shot of The Week, a Very Surprised Cure Sparkle.

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Posted on in anime, Let's Watch Healin' Good Precure

Let’s Watch Healin’ Good Precure – Episode 3

To be honest there’s not a ton about this week’s episode I want to cover. It’s a fairly typical early plot beat for the franchise, after all, but we shouldn’t undersell the importance of getting our second Precure. First thing’s first though, this might have one of the most unfortunate titles of any Precure episode I’m aware of.

There is just something very upsetting about the word “Gurgling” in this context.

That aside the first half of this episode is mostly Nodoka trying desperately to keep this whole “Pretty Cure” thing under wraps, because, as Rabbirin puts it.

So secret that it’s the best-selling magical girl franchise of all time.

Nodoka of course, kinda sucks at this, because if there’s ever been a Precure who’s a good liar, I’m not familiar with them. She offers this when Chiyu tries to confront her about being seen near the monster attack the prior day after school.

This continues. She eventually relents that she does own the small gaggle of small animals Chiyu saw her with but obviously it’s not until much later in the episode that she’s forced to divulge their actual nature. Instead, we get to see Chiyu hit Nodoka with a cop stare as our heroine cracks under the pressure.

It’s a more understated form of character comedy than usual for this franchise but honestly it’s pretty damn funny.

Chiyu also takes Nodoka to her family’s inn, which has a fun little sequence where she shows off various things there to Nodoka, who proceeds to just say “fwow!” in various volumes and intensities to all of them. This kind of cute, low-key character building is part of what makes Precure’s charm work so well, so I like to point it out when I notice it.

Of course, trouble breaks out not long after, so let’s cut to the chase.

This week’s Megapathogerm is this thing, a corrupted water elemental that seems to be able to pollute the water that feeds the inn’s hot springs. Not a great development for Chiyu and her family.

For a while, Grace (who Chiyu just happens to catch transform from Nodoka) handles the thing well. But when she has to take a thrown tree to her back, she’s understandably injured. I really like how this bit plays out, because not only is Grace suddenly being semi-sidelined understandable (even for a magical girl, getting hit with a whole-ass tree has to hurt) instead of a naked plot convolution, but it means that Chiyu gets to approach her first transformation from a rare angle. It’s her that makes the first move, rather than the timid Pegitan.

You guys, she’s so cool, what the heck.

The show has been subtly building up Chiyu as a responsible, reliable, cool “older sister” type of character. That she actively seeks out and seizes the chance to become a Precure is rare enough for the franchise to be notable, even if she only has about an in-universe minute between learning about them and becoming one.

Of course, you all know what this means.

I have to say, I love Fontaine’s transformation. It’s not quite perfect in the technical sense (towards the start there’s a weird cut transition, is mostly why I say that), but stylistically it’s absolutely great. I love how she sends the water jet up and it transforms into a lab coat in the middle of the sequence. That’s some great stuff.

It doesn’t take Fontaine very long to defeat the Megapathogerm, of course. Still, I liked her introduction and I’m excited to see Chiyu’s character develop more. The somewhat stoic Cures tend to be among my favorite (last year’s Star Twinkle had Madoka / Cure Selene in the same vein), though given how much I love them all in general I suppose that’s a given.

I don’t have a ton else to say about this episode. Pegitan’s little mini-arc where Chiyu helps him get over his anxiety over not being as good at his job as Rabbirin is cute, though a little too short to be hugely impactful.

All that in mind, until next time!

Shot of the week: A very worried Pegitan realizing that Latte has wandered off.

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Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

765 Days Later: Late Night Idolm@ster Ramble

Finally, some actual original anime writing for my anime blog, eh? It’s nice to get into the swing of things of getting my ideas sorted without worrying too much about the formal aspect. So let’s cut to the chase.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been intermittently taking in turn-of-the-decade classic The Idolmaster in 2-4 episode chunks. I’m still only halfway through the series (I have episode 12, “Last Stop On A One-Way Road”, on pause as I write this, and will be finishing it before I write much of this post) but now felt like as good a time as any to jot down some thoughts on it.

For one thing, despite premiering only a year after Angel Beats! (a show that is on my mind solely because I recently watched it for the first time too), I’m struck by how sharply different they look. When I reviewed it in the waning days of last year, I was interested in how un-2010s AB! looked, and I remain convinced that, stylistically, it’s something of a capstone to the Haruhi Era. IM@S, by contrast, looks so 2010s that it seems like it could’ve come from almost any year of the decade. The main telltale sign that it’s an earlier, rather than later, period idol series is that the dance sequences are still hand-drawn, as opposed to defaulting to the CGI-aided approach that’d later become the norm. It does also occasionally suffer from spotty drawing quality, but, not everything can be perfect.

Idolmaster kind of gets sold by its diehards as “the one idol anime you have to see”, even if you don’t really like the genre (and speaking personally it’s kind of in the lower half for me, as far as anime genres that tend to have all- or mostly-female casts). I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I started it. I was confident it would at least be well-made, but that doesn’t of course guarantee that it’d vibe with me specifically. Especially since I’m not huge on the genre in general (though with Zombie Land Saga a few years ago and 22/7 this season I suppose that’s changing).

What genuinely surprised me, first and foremost, was how committed the show is to selling itself as an underdog story. 765 are not perfect queens who can do no wrong. There is no Beyonce and this is not Destiny’s Child. Both in the actual plot, and, to my surprise, the character writing especially, the series takes great pains to demonstrate that these are people. People who have their own hopes, dreams, and fears. And that “getting to the top”, glamorous as the idea might be, is both hard and sometimes kind of banal. One of the first episodes of this thing has our girls guest on a kind-of-demeaning local TV spot that is a cooking-themed gameshow hosted by a frog puppet. It’s not exactly glitzy.

I haven’t counted, but I’m reasonably certain that at least at the point of the show that I’m at, there are more scenes of our characters at practices and rehearsals than there are of them actually performing.

None of this is new ground for idol shows now, of course. I’m not sure how innovative the idea was in 2011, either. But it’s really the character writing aspect that makes all of this connect so well. Even the characters that at first seem like goofy one-note moe` archetypes eventually come into their own. Miki is the big example that comes to mind here. She’s introduced to us with no particular fanfare and for a while basically all we know about her is that she likes taking naps. If you’re the deep-reading type you might (correctly) intuit that she’s rather fickle, but not anything beyond that.

Episode 12 is mostly about Miki, after a misunderstanding where she mistakenly thought she’d be able to join sub-unit Ryuuguu Komachi, she skips out on practice for an upcoming concert and goes MIA. We learn more about Miki here than we have in the prior 11 episodes, and it’s a really strong example of how to do a lot of character-building in a very short time. We see what she does when she’s upset, things like spending time wandering around the city and ducking into and out of all sorts of shops.

Let she who has not stared longingly into a fish tank, wishing for the simple life of a betta, cast the first stone.

We see her reveling in attention she gets from what appears to be a group of model scouts, who she then briefly sings for.

Without explicitly spelling anything out, these sequences (which last maybe 15 minutes in total), convey that she’s a sort of “free spirit longing for an anchor” type. The show does cheat exactly once by explicitly giving us the cause of all this (parents who encourage her to do whatever she wants), but it’s still an impressively detailed character study to squeeze into a single half-hour episode. All the while, her fellow idols have to, in another case of the show being unexpectedly down to earth, seriously contemplate what might happen if she simply doesn’t return.

The Producer (who is himself surprisingly well-written given his role in the cast) does manage to convince her to come back, and the episode ends with a neat little bow of dialogue here:

Miki realizing what she really wants and acting on it is great, but it’d be meaningless without the buildup earlier in the episode. It’s quite a lot of heavy lifting done in just a short amount of time.

And all this is just for Miki, mind you. The show has slowly been building up similar stories with almost every other member of the cast.

I’ve found myself drawn to several different characters, honestly. Which is a great sign for something with this many. Some I expected to like–Takane’s weird sideways charisma and Chihaya’s stoicism, incredible singing voice (not to knock any of our other girls, but both in fiction and out, you do not really have to have an amazing voice to be a pop singer, you just have to know your instrument) and obvious, though so far largely unexplored, troubled past make them easy favorites. I also love Makoto despite her “cool girl who desperately wants to be seen as cute” card being a bit rote. Others, I was quite surprised by. I’ve really come to appreciate Haruka, who the OP seems to frame as the “main character” even if that’s kind of a silly concept with a cast this large. She has what is probably the simplest personality–she’s hardworking, kindhearted, and has always wanted to be an idol–but it’s just sold so well! Any time she’s upset or struggling I find it impossible not to root for her, I hope the show explores her character a bit more in its latter half.

There’s some other random details I really like too. On the obvious end, the fact that there’s so much music in each episode is just great. It’s not all entirely my thing (I like J-pop well enough but some of the songs in this series specifically lean a little too over on the twee side) but it does really make it feel at times like you’re watching some kind of narrative documentary about the group. On the more minor side, there’s lots of stuff big and small that goes in to making 765 feel like a bit of a ragtag operation, especially near the start of the show. Everything from long blocks of no gigs to the idols’ ages ranging pretty widely (the youngest two are 13, the oldest, 21). It’s not quite the indie idol anime I would love to watch some day–I find that particular subculture endlessly fascinating–but it feels earnest.

So yeah, that’s where I’m at with Idolmaster right now. I’m liking the show so far, I’m not sure if I’ll write about it again before I do my proper review, but either way, I hope you enjoyed this little ramble.

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