And here I thought I wasn't going to be following anything this season.
That was epic.
Rottcodd
joined 2 years ago
That opening was what initially sold me on the series. I just followed a link from somewhere - probably a MAL stack - and read the synopsis and thought it looked promising, so I tracked it down and clicked play on episode 1 to find out what it was all about, and was immediately hooked.
Kotaro was one of the many big surprises for me. Those loudly emotional characters generally grate on my nerves (in fact, I dropped How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend in large part because the MMC's constant shouting irritated me so much), so I was worried at first, but somehow it just works for him. And having Saki punch him early on helped, as did the fact that so much of what he yells is foolishness, and they all know it.
And somehow, in the middle of all the yelling and all the foolishness, he tells each one of them exactly what they need to hear when they need to hear it.
On that note too, one of my favorite parts of unexpected humor is when Sakura stops him on the stairs of the mall/shelter to sincerely thank him for all he's done for them, and she's talking about how important he's been - "And you never gave up! Well... except for that one time, but other than that..."
The last episode of The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity aired Thusday, and it was every bit as wonderful as I'd hoped it'd be. I'd already read it in the manga, so it wasn't a surprise, but it was still worth seeing. And the series as a whole is now at or near the top of my list for awkward, sincere romances.
Aside from that I watched two surprisingly great older series last week.
The first was Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku. It's not so much that I didn't expect it to be good as that I expected it to be disappointing compared to the manga, which is easily among my top five all-time favorites. And after seeing the character designs when the season was announced, I was sure that would be the case, since they didn't even manage to look right. The facial proportions are all wrong, and it throws everything off. And I expected the rest of the series to be equally inferior.
But I kept seeing positive mentions of the anime, so finally decided to give it a chance. And it was really very good, even though the character designs never stopped being distractingly wrong. The rest though - the rest of what I appreciate about the manga - they nailed. The backgrounds are lush and beautiful, the tightly focused action sequences - things like Komichi tying her hair back - are just as graceful as Hiro's originals, and the character interactions and growth and especially the emotional content are all spot-on - just as rich and satisfying as in the manga. It was still inferior to the manga all in all (it really couldn't help but be), but it was damned good anyway.
Then, on something of a whim, I watched both seasons of Zombieland Saga. Then I watched them both again.
I still can't quite get over just how awesome that series is. It came out during a period when I wasn't paying much attention to anime, so I vaguely knew it existed, but that was it And I really didn't expect a lot of it because I don't hear a lot about it. But it just swept me away.
The characters are uniformly terrific. Every one of them gets their moment in the spotlight and every one of them shines when they do. The humor is great, and so well-placed. Even in the middle of the darkest drama, they'll just suddenly drop in a perfectly timed laugh out loud moment. The overall plot is brilliant - hell, just the fact that it exists is brilliant, because that's something in itself that's only slowly revealed. Kotaro says he's forming an idol group to save Saga, and it seems at first that he means to "save" it from being a generally disregarded cultural backwater, but no - he means it literally. And as the plot keeps expanding through the series you find out that he's right - that Saga really is under threat (and not for the first time) and really does need to be saved.
And then there are the performances, which are easily among the most awesome of any music anime ever. Every one of them has a creative hook that makes it stand out, and the later ones in particular are just astonishing (and in fact I'd say that the show opening for Iron Frill - season 2 episode 4 - is the single greatest anime music performance I've seen - everything from Tae on the drums to Junko's amazing voice to Junko destroying the guitar and pointing across the arena at Ai with the splintered neck (and Kotaro's laugh out loud reaction) to the epic rendition of Mezame Returner, hearkening all the way back to their first guerilla parking lot show.
And their fans. Starting with the two metalhead guys ("Those guys are seriously awesome"), they just expand, as if the world is just divided into people who haven't seen Franchouchou yet, and fans. So by the time of their stadium show, every notable character from every episode is there. And if I was in their world, I would be too.
I can't wait for the movie.
Aaahh, yes.
I've read far enough ahead in the manga that I was pretty sure when the last episode ended where it did that this episode was going to be this scene, and it was, and it was just as wonderful as I'd hoped.
This was a great series.
Well, it looks like I can go back to just binging older anime exclusively, because there's nothing there that caught my attention. I'll undoibtedly watch Spy X Family some time but it's a known quantity and I've been following the manga since the start, so I'm in no hurry.
Last week, I finished a rewatch of Scrapped Princess and loved it just as much as the first time. It's just such a great series.
Then I happened on a bit of a surprise - Rokka no Yuusha. It's a simple and intriguing set-up - when the demons invade the land, the six heroes - the Braves of the Six Flowers - will assemble to fight them. And sure enough, the demons are on rhe move and the heroes assemble - but there are seven of them. So it plays out as an imposter mystery, and is actually quite engaging. The only real problem with it seemed to be that it's based on the first volume of a six-volume light novel series, so it has a somewhat open ending. But it was okay anyway - the ending was necessarily not entirely satisfying, but it worked. But then, in the last few minutes of the last episode, for who-the-hell-knows-what reason, it goes beyond that somewhat open but still sarisfying ending and tacks on some of the cringiest sequel bait I've ever seen anywhere. It was seriously so bad that at first I thought it was some sort of satire It didn't really affect the series overall, since it was just tacked on to the end but my god it was awful.
And now I'm sort of knocking around, but I think I'm about ready to give Haibane Renmei the attention it deserves.
I wouldn't presume to say they're the "best," but some of my favorites:
Casshern Sins - post-post-apocalyptic world in which the robots who displaced humanity are themselves falling into ruin. Mostly ruins, twisted rock formations and drifts of rust, all done in shades of gray.and against which the few remaining bits of power, light and unblemished form stand in sharp contrast.
Heike Monogatari - a Japanese epic tale with backgrounds that look like tapestries and foregrounds that look like woodblock prints. If anime had been made in the 13th century, this is what it would've looked like.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou - deceptively simple 1998 hand-drawn anime with exquisite attention to detail.
Serial Experiments Lain - a primer on how to depict loneliness and alienation in an anime.
Non Non Biyori - lush green countryside has never been done better.
5 Centimeters per Second - Just a succession of absolutely stunning backgrounds, and this is, IMO, quite possibly the most beautiful anime background ever:
That was just as good as I'd hoped it'd be.
I've read far enough in the manga now that I know what's coming, and I was hoping this episode would end right about at this point, since there's one more episode left.
And it all came together nicely. That was a great series.
In retrospect, I'm not sure why I didn't see the end coming. All the hints were there - I just didn't put them together in the right order.
I can't wait to see what Yohei Kameyama can do with a bigger budget and more runtime.
On a whim, I watched the first episode of The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity last week, and it just sucked me in. I ended up binging the ten current episodes over two evenings and loved everything about it.
So then it was episode 11 of that and episode 11 of Milky Subway, both of which were excellent in their own ways.
Aside from that, I've been rewatching Scrapped Princess, and being reminded of what a great series it is.
That's undoubtedly true.
But by the same measure, there's also actually more great anime being put out now that there was in the past - again, just measured by sheer volume rather than percentage.
And while I wouldn't disagree with that, it goes even further contrary to the rose-tinted view of the past, and thus even further from my point.
I didn't mean to say or imply anything specific about the standards of one or another era of anime. My only point is that people need to be aware of the fact that they can't make summary judgments regarding relative quality by pointing to all of the recognized great anime of the past, because that's necessarily what's remembered. The basis for any such judgment is necessarily skewed by the fact that over time, the great ones are remembered and the awful ones are forgotten.
That's all.
Just to note....
There was just as much garbage anime in any given year in the past as there is now - it's just that current garbage anime is current and past garbage anime has been long since forgotten.
Ditto manga, music, movies books, television, whatever. The past generally looks better because it's only the best of it that's remembered.
Still not following anything this season, though May I Ask for One Final Thing? looks promising.
Watched two odd older series last week, each odd in their own way.
First was Girls Band Cry. Or more precisely, the first three episodes of it.
I almost dropped it part way through the first episode, just because the animation is so horrifically awful. And that's something I've never done before. Unlike many, I have no particular issue with CGI, and can at least tolerate pretty much any animation for a good story and/or good characters. But this is something else entirely - it's like Initial D race scenes levels of awful CGI, except made 25+ years later. I'm honestly not even sure how they managed it - I would've thought it would be impossible to make CGI that awful in 2024 - that they'd have had to invest extra time and labor into deliberately making it that bad.
But the thing is that I really liked the characters. So I gave it the "first three episodes" chance. But I just couldn't get past how awful the animation is (I still can't forgive them for what they did to that poor cat - it looked like something out of a Nintendo 64 game).
So then I wandered a bit, and ended up on something that's sort of been on my horizon for a while now - Majo no Tabitabi. And it was... odd.
From the description, it seems like it would be sort of somewhere between Flying Witch and Kiki's Delivery Service, with maybe a bit of Kino's Journey mixed in. And that's pretty much what it is. Part of the time.
But the thing is that it's very episodic, and the individual episodes range anywhere from all bright and shiny and cute to some of the most horrifically soul-crushing tragedy I've ever seen, and back again. It's beautifully animated and Elaina is adorable and the stories are generally well told, and there's a bit of a background plot that one can catch glimpses of here and there that looks interesting, but the mood whiplash is sort of exhausting.
Then, because I couldn't stop thinking about the characters, I went back to Girls Band Cry.
The animation was awful throughout (Rupa in particular is almost unwatchable - her sweater's the worst, but even her hair and her face look like they were done by a novice following a Blender tutorial). And the performances were surprisingly lackluster - even beyond putting the awful animation on full display, the songs are nothing special and even Nina's much-vaunted voice really isn't all that (though admittedly my opinion might be colored by the fact that I just watched Zombieland Saga a couple of weeks ago, and those are some of the best anime music performances ever).
But damn I love the characters. They're just so rich and so detailed and so realistically complex and emotional and stubborn and awkward and frustrating. And they almost made it worth the rest of it. Almost.
They deserved better.