fireweed

Cross-posted from: !animationafter30@lemmy.world

Original post: https://lemmy.world/post/17367342

Title: Train to the End of the World (English); 終末トレインどこへいく？(Japanese)

Type: Anime

Year: 2024

Country: Japan

Genre: Surreal

Status: Completed

Platform: Crunchyroll (watch here)

Appropriate for 30+?: No, but I (mostly) enjoyed it anyway

My rating: 3.5/5 stars

(Rating scale: 5/5 = masterpiece, 4/5 = quite good, 3/5 = mostly good, 2/5 = bleh, 1/5 = I regret ever being exposed to this series, 0/5 = affront to humanity)

Train to the End of the World (TEW) is perhaps one of the worst "cute girls doing cute things" series I've ever watched, and yet it's probably the series I've enjoyed the most this year so far.

Much like Girls' Last Tour, this is an entry into the "cute girls doing cute things, but in a dystopian setting" sub-sub genre that in theory hinges upon the bizarre juxtaposition of two seemingly incongruent elements. However unlike Girls' Last Tour, (or the currently-airing Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction), TEW probably would have benefited greatly from having literally any other cast of main characters. I thought the girls were really cliche, annoying, and forgettable, with painfully uninspired dialogue, and were regrettably-yet-unsurprisingly subject to a level of sexualization that would probably make most older audiences uncomfortable (nothing extraordinary, just the anime standard treatment of high school girls). Honestly I zoned out during most of the scenes involving the girls chatting amongst themselves, and I doubt I missed much plot at a result.

Despite all this, the premise/setting/world building of TEW makes up for its flaws. Once the girls STFU, the show gets to show off its weird, fun, creepy side. This is a series that makes you go ah, this is what the animated medium is for: surreal nonsense that would require a buttload of fake-ass CGI to even attempt to portray in live action. I really like the tone of the series, which is generally upbeat but with an uneasy aftertaste that puts you on edge while never actually venturing into tragedy (as can happen with surreal/dystopian series, looking at you Kaiba). There's a good balance of exploration and action, with some decent comedy tossed in on occasion.

Maybe I'm biased because my first trip to Japan, I spent a few weeks living at a guest house in Oizumi-Gakuen along the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line featured in this anime, and I'm a complete sucker for series that utilize real places (and TEW has a whole train line of them). Regardless I absolutely loved the premise of riding a train through a vast, unknown land of magic and horror, stopping at each station to learn what became of various previously-sleepy commuter towns in bizarro-Tokyo, intensity growing the closer you get to the city-within-a-city of Ikebukuro. TEW is a bit like Kino's Journey, but with socio-political commentary replaced with the train scene in Spirited Away albeit with more menacing vibes.

In summary, TEW is weird and atmospheric and I am here for it, despite the obnoxious (and occasionally uncomfortably-portrayed) main cast of cliche anime high school girls. Perhaps the creators didn't quite nail what they set out to do, but I couldn't help but really appreciate the attempt.

As with all my reviews, the above is nothing more than my personal opinion. Have you read this series? What did you think? Post in the comments!

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Cross-posted from !animationafter30@lemmy.world

Original post: https://lemmy.world/post/14555726

Title: Heaven's Design Team (original: 天地創造デザイン部)

Type: Anime TV

Year: 2021

Country: Japan

Genre: Comedy/Educational

Status: Completed

Platform: Crunchyroll (watch here)

Appropriate for 30+?: Yes

My rating: 4/5 stars

(Rating scale: 5/5 = masterpiece, 4/5 = quite good, 3/5 = mostly good, 2/5 = bleh, 1/5 = I regret ever being exposed to this series, 0/5 = affront to humanity)

The greatest irony of Heaven's Design Team is that a series about creationism is actually one of the best science anime out there (not that there's a lot of competition). While some elements of the show would undoubtedly make many biologists squirm (for instance, the show's premise inevitably leads the series to portray evolution as intentional rather than incidental), however if you're willing to brush off certain scientific inaccuracies as a consequence of artistic liberty, this is a really fun, mildly-educational show.

The premise of Heaven's Design Team is simple: God burned out when having to create Earth and everything that lives there, so He outsourced the work to a team of designers (the main cast). Most episodes revolve around the design team receiving a specific request from God for a new animal (like "an animal with bones as weapons" or "make more stripey animals") and then they walk through different possible ideas and why that would/would not work given physiological limits and environmental pressures. It becomes a bit of a puzzle show: can the viewer guess what real-world animal the design team is building up to? (Or for the more obscure animals: have you even heard of this species before?) Between the brainstorming and trial-and-error, there's a lot of failed designs along the way to a design that God deems "accepted," and IMO the most interesting part of the show is when they go into why certain designs failed and the tweaks necessary to get around it (for example: bigger eyes means better eyesight, but then the eyeballs take up so much room in the skull there's no room for the musculature necessary to move them, so the design team extends the animal's neck so it moves its head rather than its eyeballs).

The show has very little objectionable material in it (a PG-rating at worst), and the deluge of "fun facts about animals" is reminiscent of kid-oriented nature shows (like Wild Kratts), however I think Heaven's Design Team has plenty of entertainment value for adults too. I consider myself quite well-educated on animals for a layperson, but most of the facts and many of the animals I had never heard about before, so there were plenty of surprises and much trivia learned. There's also a good dose of (G-rated) adult-oriented humor, mostly of the office workplace variety. Mostly though I think older audiences will appreciate the series's solid execution: the animation is bold and colorful, the dialogue is decent, the pacing is snappy (exceptionally so for a comedy anime), and the humor is on the gag side but the jokes usually land. While the characters are extremely two-dimensional and undergo minimal character development, that actually works in the show's favor, as it gives each animal designer a "style" that influences the creatures they create (whether they're more likely to come out cute, creepy, delicious, etc). While some topics of humor are used multiple times (e.g. "Tsuchiya/Saturn is obsessed with making everything into a horse!") on each occasion the reused humor was always presented with a fresh spin and never wore out over the series's 13 episode run (sadly rehashing the same tired joke over and over is par for the course in comedy anime, so this is impressive). I think the series goes a little off the rails at times in the last few episodes and gets extra goofy (although bonus episode 13 brings the series back to its roots), but even the weaker segments of the series are still very watchable.

As always, this review is nothing more than my personal opinion. Anyone familiar with this work is encouraged to express their own in the comment section. Or submit your own review… it’s a free ~~country~~ fediverse.

I posted the following review to !animationafter30@lemmy.world, a community for fans of animation and comics who are at least 30 years old (the idea behind the community is to have a dedicated place in the fediverse for recommending and discussing works from the perspective of an older viewer/reader). Given the subject matter overlap it was suggested to me that I also post the review here.

Original thread: https://lemmy.world/post/14370969

Title: Spy x Family

Type: Anime TV

Year: 2022-2023 (Seasons 1 & 2)

Country: Japan

Genre: Comedy with some thriller/action

Status: Ongoing? (Movie forthcoming, and sequels likely)

Platform: Crunchyroll (watch here)

Appropriate for 30+?: Somewhat

My rating: 3/5 stars

(Rating scale: 5/5 = masterpiece, 4/5 = quite good, 3/5 = mostly good, 2/5 = bleh, 1/5 = I regret ever being exposed to this series, 0/5 = affront to humanity)

Watching Spy x Family can feel like rolling a roulette wheel: is this week's episode going to be a spy thriller? A gorey action sequence? A goofy comedy of misunderstanding? A slice-of-life? A heartwarming tale of family? All of the above smooshed together? At its core, the series is a sitcom: the premise rests heavily on the unique traits of each cast member, so the plot almost always revolves around how those characters interact with each other and resolve a variety of situations that get thrown their way, usually in an humorous manner (so yeah, situational-comedy).

The series' elevator pitch: because of circumstances, a super-spy undercover in enemy territory, a secret assassin, and a child psychic (and later a dog with precognition) form a fake family that slowly becomes real as they spend time with each other, while frantically keeping their secrets from each other. The series introduces various side characters, like the sis-con brother who covertly works for the secret police, who also have amusing traits that interact with the main cast in funny ways (that's the idea anyway). And sure, there are some funny scenes and moments that result from these interactions. But like most sitcoms, both character and plot development are horribly stifled by the fact that the entire series revolves around each character's set bio, and any change to that would disturb the series' delicate balance. This removes a lot of tension from any action scene or occasion where a character's identity might be found out, because we the audience know that any major plot development would spell the end of the series, thus encapsulating everything that happens in a thick layer of plot armor. It also results in repetitive situations (how many times can you joke about the sis-con brother's unhealthy obsession with his sister before it gets stale?) because there's only so much material to work with without changing the base dynamic, and as nothing can be taken seriously in a series with such a preposterous premise, the wacky-hijinks factor is quite high. It can feel like watching Saturday Night Live: some skits are haha-funny, some are heh-funny, and some are not funny at all (and feel like a drag to get through). There are some cute and hearwarming moments and I'd say that this was at least a turn-your-brain-off wholesome-comedy series, if it weren't for the sporadic fight scenes, which are sometimes "TV-Y7" levels of violent, and other times quite bloody.

One of the difficulties with being a long-time fan of anime is that the cliches really start to wear on you after a while. While Spy x Family has some novelty to it, it also has jokes (so many jokes) about how the mother character's cooking is terrible to the point of inducing severe illness. Throw in the complete lack of character development among the 2-dimensional cast, multiple boring "skits" (there's an episode where the entire plot is two characters look for a lost cat and surprise! hijinks ensue, 'nuff said), lackluster plots revolving around the spy/thriller/action sequences (while there is a TON of room for political drama and nuance given the setting, the series is way too frivolous to include any), stir it all together and you get a series that's just okay.

Despite all this I'm not surprised Spy x Family is a popular series; I'm sure I would have enjoyed it quite a bit had I watched it as a teenager, especially because anime has historically struggled with making comedy that's actually funny—part of this is the lost-in-translation factor, part of this is just the vast heaps of mediocrity out there—and Spy x Family is undeniably funnier-than-average when compared to other comedy anime. But it's not funny enough (or consistently funny enough) to be a pure comedy series, it falls horribly flat when judged by any other genre, and it overall has a feeling of immaturity of plot and premise. It's not a show that couldn't be enjoyed by adults, but I definitely felt like I was watching a show aimed at the teenage demographic. At least the parts I found cliche were boring rather than grating, which saved the series from getting a much lower rating.

As always, this review is nothing more than my personal opinion. Anyone familiar with this work is encouraged to express their own in the comment section. Or submit your own review… it’s a free ~~country~~ fediverse.

https://lemmy.world/c/animationafter30

A place for reviews, rants, recommendation requests, and memes for the older (30-year-old and up) crowd, because it can be difficult to keep the passion for animation and comics going after you've aged out of the medium's key demographic.

Whether you're curious whether Netflix's newest adult animation series is any good, are seeking recommendations for romance manhwa with middle-aged protagonists, have a "Millennial humor" webcomic to recommend, want to discuss the latest developments in your favorite "salaryman" manga, or simply want to wax poetic (or mournfully cringe) about how your favorite animated movie as a kid holds up decades later, this is the place for you!

No hate or gatekeeping of younger fans and newer series intended, however interests and tastes inevitably change over time and it's helpful to know whether that anonymous online user emphatically urging you to check out their favorite series is 14 or 40. (Or maybe you are one of those younger fans and are looking for an older adult's suggestions for animated films you can watch on family movie night that your parents won't immediately veto.)