[Anime] Anime Update

[jordangreywolf]

About 6 or so episodes into the new season, anime series we're watching (primarily at the mercy of what Gwendel queues up, minus whatever I veto for being too embarrassing to watch):

Hakumei to Mikochi (Hakumei & Mikochi)
(EDIT: I previously wrote "Michiko to Hatchin" -- OOPS! Totally wrong series!)
Fantasy, Slice of Life, Talking Animals, Girl Main Characters
A couple of tiny folk (elves? brownies? something of that nature?) live in a treehouse (that is, a house literally built into the base of a tree), among talking animals and magical things. It's done in an adorable chibi-esque style, with lots of beautiful scenes. It's slow, but charming. Adorable, even! I can definitely see why Gwendel likes it; I'd prefer some sort of ongoing storyline (conflict? mystery? challenge?) but the characters are interesting and likable enough to make it worth watching.


Yuru Camp (Laid-Back Camp)
Modern, Slice of Life, Hobby Interest, Girl Main Characters
Slice of life, slow-based, the primary characters are all girls -- maybe a trend here? This is another series where Gwendel often pauses to take screen shots. It has its moments of humor, the characters are likable, and I'm actually intrigued at the little details about an aspect of life in Japan. Anyway, it's just about a bunch of school girls who have in common that they enjoy camping at various Japanese parks. I'd love to visit these places with Gwendel. Also, it makes me wistful for long ago when I'd go camping with my folks, or when I'd go scout out the local parks (back in Iowa) in the off-season for potential sites for SwordTag (LARP) games.



Sora Yori mo Tooi Basho (A Place Further Than the Universe)
Modern, Slice of Life, Hobby Interest(?), Girl Main Characters
Yeah, definitely a trend here. Still, this is another high-quality production with lots of beautiful scenes, plus likable and interesting characters. Also, even though it's not a comedy, per se, sometimes it's hilarious. :)



Mitsuboshi Colors
Modern, Slice of Life, Comedy, Kids, Girl Main Characters
Three kids run around a small town and shopping district, "solving crimes" (wasting time). Among the various anime I've seen featuring kid characters, these are the closest to actually kid-like I've seen for quite some time. Some of the puns don't translate all that well from Japanese (the humor is very punny), but it's still amusing.



Hataraki Onii-san! (Working Buddies!)
Talking Animals, Micro-Series, Comedy, Cats
Each episode is only 4 minutes long! It's about two anthropomorphic cats in a world of anthropomorphic animals who keep working different jobs for a temp agency. Some of the jokes are a bit of the "fly by if you blink" variety, as this isn't the sort to relentlessly drive the joke home. (E.g., the civet at the convenience store -- and I'll say no more about that.) It's cute, it's cats, it's short, it's on CrunchyRoll. It's worth checking out, IMHO.


Neko Neko Nihonshi (Meow Meow Japanese History)
Comedy, Sort-of-Historical, Micro-Series, CATS
Slightly longer, at 9 minutes long each. Easily the worst animation of anything we're following, but still cute. Kind of stupid, though, but short and harmless. Probably NOT the best way to learn Japanese history.


Violet Evergarden
Drama, Alternate History/Retro Sci-Fi?, Girl Main Characters
This series is pretty. Lots of screenshots for Gwendel. But it feels like it's some sort of mid-20th-century pseudo-European alternate-history with a dash of retro-sci-fi (the main character has cybernetic arms), and random anachronisms. World-building-wise, darn, but this is SLOPPY. But it's PRETTY, and it has its moments of sentimentality, so I guess we're still watching. Still, what exactly IS Violet, anyway? A veteran soldier at the age of *14*?


Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-san (Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen)
Comedy, Hobby Interest, Girl Main Characters
Main girl character is obsessed with ramen. Second main girl character is obsessed with main girl character. Yay. I guess it has interesting little factoids about ramen restaurants. It's okay, I guess, but I'm not that thrilled with it.


Dagashi Kashi
Comedy, Hobby Interest, Fan Service-y
2nd season of the anime. Ostensibly about a kid running a family snack-food store. A bit pervy. Gwendel likes it for whatever reason (educational value about Japanese junk food?), so we watch it still.


Kokkoku
Drama, Supernatural Horror/Thriller
Based on a premise of being able to exist in a world where "time" has frozen (except for a number of the usual tropish exceptions, such as the fact that we can still see things, breathe, etc.). Pretty catchy opening sequence. It builds up an interesting "mythology," and at least tries to lampshade some of the obvious logical issues with the premise. It seems like it could be an interesting basis for a "Just Trust Me" style of supernatural mystery-horror game.

However, whatever serious things might happen in the story, the end credits suddenly show us the main female character lounging around in her underwear being SEX-AY, with some generic J-pop music. It kind of breaks the mood, IMHO.


Itsudatte Bokura no Koi wa 10 cm Datta (Our Love is Always 10 cm Apart)
Sappy High-School Romance
Eh. It's okay, if you like that sort of thing.



Koi wa Ameagari no You ni
Sappy High-School Romance
A bit iffy, since she's a high-schooler, and he's a middle-aged guy, and also her employer. Eh. But Gwendel likes it.



Slow Start
High School something-or-other
Something-something, ordinary high school girl, something-something crazy high school antics. Yawn. Okay, I didn't VETO this, per se, so it's still on Gwendel's list. It's just so boring that I've requested that it be on the bottom of our anime queue, and we never get all the way through it on any given "anime night."


I was going to rant about the items we dropped from our list this season, but most of it is just too squicky to even talk about. There were REASONS not to continue watching. I exercised my "veto" a few times.

I wish we could get some decent fantasy, sci-fi, steampunk, something-or-other ADVENTURE or MYSTERY that I could get enthusiastic about, but there doesn't seem to be anything worth writing about this time around.

Comments

[rowyn]

The 4 minute cat shorts sound adorable. :) I see what you mean about your line up lacking in the sff/adventure department, but it's nice that you found several shows that are enjoyable anyway.

[jordangreywolf]

Yeah, it just seems like most of the time there's a strong fantasy/sci-fi/adventure element, there's ALSO one or more of:

* Unlikable-to-hateworthy protagonist. Most likely, he's either obnoxiously hyper, screaming a lot (youthful vigor!) or else he's bland, boring, awkward, and utterly lacking in personality -- with nothing in between.

* Fan service perv-o-rama. Little sisters seem to be trending lately.

* Sci-fi/fantasy/action used as an excuse for just plain lazy-stupid writing.

* All things happen in high school, or something suspiciously resembling it, even in the post-apocalypse. Okay, that's not a deal-breaker, but it's so cliche, and in some settings it starts to feel awkwardly forced.

But, thank goodness, we've got SOMETHING to watch. :) It should be more than enough to give us something to watch on "Anime Night" well through into the next season. (Some shows are just going to have to wait until we finish up the others. There are only so many hours in an evening, and I prefer not to stay up late squinting to read subtitles.)

[tuftears]

Yay animew!

I read the Dagashi Kashi and the ramen manga translations and they are cute but I couldn't see watching anime about them. :)

I dunno about watching super-short anime series though, I already peered at a super-short candy-making-giant-robot series and while the idea is amewsyng, the show itself was pretty formulaic. I guess I'll wait for you to mention some awesome new adventures!

I did watch Code Geass and Psycho-Pass recently and both were pretty dramatic.

[jordangreywolf]

"Psycho-Pass" was really something else, though I think it suffers a bit from going overboard on the dystopia angle. It's harsh enough that they're shooting people based on psycho profiles, and the system is so thoroughly exploitable. But do the guns really have to make people go KERSPLAT?! There's a certain point where the gore factor just becomes ludicrous, and I think detracts from the potential of the horror. THAT SAID, it's still one of the better dark sci-fi series I've seen for quite some time.

"Code Geass" ... eh, I just couldn't stomach it. I understand that it may have gone in interesting directions further on, but I just didn't care for it from the get-go with some smug protagonist who can just effortlessly compel people to shoot themselves in the head. Way to immediately make me sympathize for the antagonists, eh?

...

Re: Super-Short series, you've got to at least give "Working Buddies" a try for an episode. :) I just thought it was cute, and it's not exactly much of an investment. (It's on Crunchyroll.)

Kokkoku is probably the closest I can get to a serious supernatural series right now. The worst part of it, IMHO, would be the closing credits, and those are easily enough skipped over. I guess I won't be able to issue a final judgement, however, until I've seen the whole thing, and see how it ends.

[tuftears]

Code Geass did do one thing right-- they faced the protagonist with more actual problems that couldn't be solved by smug compulsion alone. It was interesting for me, because it was such an inversion of the typical hero-mecha anime. You could almost imagine the hero-version with shoddy writing covering up what the villain was actually doing.

[jordangreywolf]

Re: "Typical Hero-Mecha Anime":

Hmm. Hero-mecha anime actually seems to have been undergoing some changes of late. Well, I see two branches, really.

One would be the "real robot" branch: either the more serious installments in the Gundam franchise, or anime that appear to follow that route, treating the giant robots as more machine (it might as well be a starfighter) than super-power or character. Shows such as Aldnoah Zero (although that got a bit "magical" with the alien-tech mecha powers) and Iron-Blooded Orphans seem more inclined to delve into ambiguous grey areas where war is concerned (i.e., just because someone is your ally doesn't mean he's good; just because someone is your enemy doesn't mean he's evil) and set up some sort of political situation. I don't know that either one of those examples does it all very WELL, but at least they try. ;)

The other branch seems to be more in the "super robo" scheme of things: it's fairly common for some totally untrained, unqualified "perfectly ordinary high-school boy" to "fall into the cockpit" and proceeds to win the day simply by screaming at the top of his lungs at the appropriate dramatic moment and the power of his raw determination (or whatever) SOMEHOW provides justification for the robot to suddenly go "ching!" and proceed to obliterate the opposition. ("Gurren Lagann" wholeheartedly embraces this absurd trope; it might well be one of the better-written examples of it, but it just isn't my style, so I haven't gotten very far into the series.)

At this point, I'm not sure which one would be considered more "typical." I'd classify "Darling in the Franxx" as in the "super robo" side of things, since robots might as well be powered by some sort of magic. (I saw some parody art theorizing that with the mecha cockpit design, the machines ran on "the power of lust.")

"Knights & Magic" is a weird animal. The robots are obviously powered by "magic," but it's that weird sort of "any magic, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from technology" brand. That is, except that the overpowered, over-cheerful Marty Stu of a protagonist so routinely "bends the rules" to win every time that it might as well be a "super robo" anime.

Hmm. Really, it's hard to come up with a list of mecha anime that I ACTUALLY LIKED.

Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star) is probably the best ... but that's because even though it has mecha in it, it's not really about the mecha at all. It's about as character-focused as you could hope for -- and it's also very short (just a one-episode OVA).

Aldnoah Zero would be at the top of the list. I won't try to argue that it was all that great, but it held my attention at least.

RahXephon is ... an epic mess. But it's somehow a thought-provoking epic mess. I think my primary reason for watching this was because of the "Euphoria" AMV (YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwgVADWeNkw), which, IMHO, is probably a bit better than the actual series.

...

Wow. I'm having a really rough time trying to remember any other mecha anime series that I think of in a net positive light.

[tuftears]

*finds Hoshi no Koe and Aldnoah Zero on Crunchyroll* *adds to watch-list* :)

I was vaguely curious about Gurren Lagann since I heard it has beast-people in it.

I suspect the "inverse hero-mecha" anime to Code Geass would be more "super robo", there's a very clear sense that any "ace pilot" somehow makes their mecha worlds better than the rest even if they're in the exact same mecha class.

Oh hey, Voltron-- wait, isn't that more in the 'sentai' line?

[jordangreywolf]

Hmm. I admit, I occasionally watch the new Voltron on Netflix when I'm stuck in a hotel, there's "internet TV," and I want some background noise while I work on project reports and such. (I'm not too keen on how it leaps between semi-serious and WACKY-CRAZY comic relief; it feels like the animators are stuck in the 1990s in terms of their anime influences, IMHO.) However, despite those anime influences, that's still a western production, so I feel like I might be committing some sort of faux pas by including it in that category.

...

But, hmm. Tough call on Voltron. It does have the trappings of Sentai, but unlike Power Rangers, I THINK the focus is more on the big lion robots than it is on martial artists in color-coded spandex where the action is concerned. But on the scale of "Real Robo" to "Super Robo," it's really more on the "Super Robo" side of things, as it seems that the performance of those lion robots is somehow tied to the emotions / mental mindset of the pilot as opposed to how carefully the maintenance crew has been keeping everything up to spec. ;)

[tuftears]

Maybe you should run a giant robots RPG where your players are the five mecha pilots. :)

I haven't seen Voltron, I just vaguely recalls it has lion robots. Sounds like you weren't too enthused about it though!

[jordangreywolf]

Re: beast-people:
If you want beast-people, "Hakumei to Mikochi" is probably more interesting in that regard. (My favorite is the weasel foreman.)

Note: I mistakenly called this "Michiko to Hatchin" earlier. TOTALLY DIFFERENT SHOW. Ouch!

But, yes, Gurren Lagann has "beast-people" in it, though they just appear to be expendable monster-of-the-week sorts who pilot the "bad guy mecha," ranging from "cartoon ugly monster" types to looking pretty much indistinguishable from human.

[tuftears]

Just watched episode 3 of Aldnoah Zero, that's pretty nice! Very clever figuring out the enemy's weaknesses and exploiting them.

[jordangreywolf]

Yeah, I find that aspect of it far more entertaining than just "RAGH! I shall overcome you with my RIGHTEOUS YOUTHFUL RAGE!" like happens in so many giant robo series. ;)