What Are You Watching?

[Dr. Insomniac]

I like to at least keep a few tabs on what the biggest anime are each season, even if most of the time I'm like "This is what all the weebs are watching this month? Really?" Most of it's because I don't want to completely be one of those fuddy-duddies who think anime stopped being good after a specific year, even if that feeling does surface a lot, and I've seen enough of those old usenet posts where boomers go "Anime sucks now!" and their main example is a 90s show that's beloved now to know it's better to be open-minded. And occasionally there's a Frieren or a Chainsaw Man where the big show of the season is actually good.

That said, I did what I said regarding Solo Leveling, and it still sucked. Honestly sucked even more the second time around because I was stuck wondering why they kept treating this life-or-death mission like it was a video game even before they get all their superpowers, and even after one of them dies from blunt trauma. It reminded me of watching Akame Ga Kill, and how half the characters there kept talking about experience points even though they're living in a pseudo-middle age world where games don't exist. Like yeah, this shit looks like an RPG to the viewer, but why do the characters treat it like an RPG even when their literal lives are at stake?

Then for other shows, Chained Soldier had awful animation and turned into something out of Reboot whenever the MC turned into a Digimon and had to fight the CGI Hollows, Gushing Over Magical Girls was just softcore hentai, Ishura had cool fight scenes but felt like something Adult Swim would have aired in the 00s (derogatory), Mashle Season 2 had a cool opening, Metallic Rouge felt like something Adult Swim would have aired in the 00s (complimentary), and I liked Dungeon Meshi's first episode well enough.

[Dr. Insomniac]

With all the seasonal premieres finished, I watched a movie called Maboroshi directed and written by Mari Okada. In what felt like a few seconds, I went from thinking this would be another Shinkai clone to horrible insanity that I'm shocked hasn't become infamous yet. For a film with zero sex or fanservice, this managed to be one of the most sexually disgusting anime I've seen in a while.

Spoiler

Why did this movie have a love triangle where the main character had to choose between some girl and his mentally challenged daughter from another timeline who he conceives with said some girl?

[close]

[Mustang]

Spoiler

Why did this movie have a love triangle where the main character had to choose between some girl and his mentally challenged daughter from another timeline who he conceives with said some girl?

[close]

Wait, woah, WTF!!!!

This right here is why I'm not rushing to get back into anime lol. I love the samurai side of things, and the culture of Japan in general just seems so fascinating to me, but there are some things I'm also finding out that got me looking at Japan, like "wtf is wrong with folk over there".

And then on top of that, it's also why I've also stayed in my 1 lane of shonen action back then and afraid of trying other genres.

That being said, I have been slowly getting back into anime. Chipping away at an episode here and there with Demon Slayer and Bleach Thousand Year Blood War. I still have the Demon Slayer movie train to get to. Technically, I got a list of shows lined up on Hulu, but I might switch over to Crunchyroll since I want to watch Jujutsu Kaisen.

[Dr. Insomniac]

In all fairness, I wouldn't say Maboroshi is indicative of what recent anime movies are like even though it's very much in the model of Shinkai movies like Your Name, Weathering With You, those tawdry high-school romances where a magic threat that's clearly an allegory for climate change or some other disaster affecting the world shows up. At least in the sense that Your Name never went as insane as that spoiler.

Though Weathering With You did have an ending where I thought "...what the fuck?" for days after watching it.

[RacattackForce]

In another place, in another time: "BTW, Rac, please post something about Maboroshi so it doesn't sound like I made it up."

Okay, I'll do that. Watched Maboroshi with him, and I can confirm that it's an... interesting film? Nah, screw it. I can see where some will be down for Mari Okada fully unleashed to do her precious melodrama, and I'm usually down for some melodrama, but for me, it's just an empty and unsatisfying film. The movie has an intentionally lethargic pace in the first half to hammer home the monotony of these ever repeating days, but I don't feel like the pace ever truly quickens after the halfway point, where the characters decide that they're sick of it and want things to change. You'd think the pace would quicken with that, but it doesn't, making for an experience that feels much slower than it should.

And as pretty as the film is, I can't really vibe with any of the characters: the romantic leads, the feral child, the supporting cast, etc. They don't feel real to me, and that's important part of making a weird concept work: you need understandable characters to help ground it. With how long the frozen time thing has been implied to have been going on in-universe, the fact that the main two characters are the only ones with any interest to break out of the status quo is baffling. Sure, there are other characters who tire of it all and have more... extreme responses, but there's no middle ground, which only contributes to the setting feeling more and more bland and lifeless since so many people are just going through the motions and have little long-term reaction to things. And even with the main characters, I don't really get why any of these kids are in love to begin with, which makes the love triangle fall flat -- a pretty bad thing for your romantic drama, even before you hit that twist.

...Anyway, there are some fun shows this season. I recommend Delicious in Dungeon, an adaptation of a pretty solid manga that's being headed up by Studio Trigger. So much fantasy in anime these days is some flavor of isekai, so it's nice to have stuff like Delicious (and Frieren: Beyond Journey's End) that just plays in the fantasy toolbox as is.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I don't know why, but I ended up spending most of my free time this week watching random episodes of Flame of Recca. And I'm conflicted on my opinions. Yeah, it's heavily derivative of Yu Yu Hakusho to the degree that even minor YYH characters like Dr. Ichigaki and the Gamemaster kid had counterparts (it oddly was and wasn't a surprise to find out this show and YYH had the same studio, director, composer, and at least 1 scriptwriter), the soundtrack sounds awfully like music from old porn, it features one of those severely clunky dubs where the adaptive writer neglects to translate any of the Japanese terminology while none of the actors are capable of either correctly or consistently pronouncing Japanese words or names, and I can't forget to mention the very abrupt ending since it caught up with the manga and I guess Pierrot didn't want to do filler arcs. But I still found myself curious when watching it, partly because of how familiar it felt even though I only watched a couple episodes beforehand, and mostly out of wondering what if a different set of cards was dealt, and this got real promotion and effort put into its US localization while YYH's ended up as an afterthought. Because I've been thinking about that too for a while, all the 90s anime that, while on the surface would seem like safe bets for mass appeal here, didn't benefit from the late 90s anime boom and ended up as obscurities or small cult classics at best here while other shows like Kenshin or Outlaw Star get to be in the canon of beloved anime classics.

And yeah, I did skim through the manga to see what happened next.

[Avaitor]

I have the first 2 volumes of the manga, ready to read at some point by Spark's recommendation, but I've heard the anime is particularly derivative of YYH, yeah.

[Dr. Insomniac]

It'd be fine if it was on the same level as whenever anyone accuses JJK or Black Clover of ripping off Naruto, who ignore how many of the similarities are surface-level at best and mostly an indication of how much shonen borrows from each other. But from what I saw, entire plots, relationships, and character arcs were taken, with just a little bit of mix and match to keep it from being a ripoff like giving the character with Elder Toguro's personality Kurama's plant powers. Or making around 8 Juri and Koto clones for their version of the Dark Tournament. At least the later parts only covered in the manga diverge?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I never actually watched the anime but read the manga well over a decade ago after Spark of Spirit (man, that brings me back) mentioned really liking it. As I recall, it had definite similarities to YYH, especially with the tournament arc, but most were superficial or just standard battle shounen tropes of the 90's. In fact the further the series went the more it just became it's own thing as I recall.

The anime was produced by Studio Pierrot around a similar time-frame to YYH and from my understaning veers quite heavily from the manga pretty early on, but it was worked on by a bunch of staff who also worked on YYH so the similarities don't surprise me that much.

It wasn't uncommon for there to be a lot of overlap between staff and assets between multiple projects in those days. They actually even recycled music and sound effects between shows as well. This video explains in excellent detail how Ninku recycled a lot from YYH which in turn had some aspects recycled later in Naruto: https://youtu.be/LuO6Sn24HUE?si=aqJk7kBSb3B8XcWQ

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, looking at Noriyuki Abe's filmography shows after YYH, he and the rest of YYH's creative team did Ninku after YYH ended, then Recca, then GTO and so on.

And I noticed when looking through YouTube that while Recca's mostly gone in the American public consciousness even among hardcore weebs, it still seems fondly remembered in the Philippines. I kept finding videos of Filipino YouTubers doing covers of the opening, and videos of the fight scenes had plenty of comments in Tagalog. Which reemphasizes the "What if this show got an actual marketing push here in the US?" factor I've got in my thoughts. Similar to how I thought it was weird Funi never tried to buy the HxH 1999 show back when it was semi-recent since YYH did pretty well for them, and instead we ended up with a halfhearted release from Viz with an unfinished dub years after the fact. Or the usual AU scenarios like "What if Toei sold the One Piece rights to someone besides 4Kids back in the early 2000s?" or "What if Saint Seiya found an outlet here earlier than years after shows that copied it like Ronin Warriors had already aired on Toonami?"

[Dr. Insomniac]

Oh hey, new shows this season.

Kaiju No. 8 - What was with the censorship? They blurred out blood in one scene, but then kept it in another. There was just so much inconsistent editing in this one.

Spice and Wolf Brotherhood - We're getting old.

Wind Breaker - Dumb title aside, the fight scenes are fun, shame the main character's angst gets grating after a while.

Mahouka - How patient is this show's fandom that they can wait for 3 seasons that take the course of a decade to come out? I don't get them, because this premiere was so boring and reminded me of why I dropped it ages ago.

An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride - Generic monster harem show. Less sleazy than the premise implies, and all the duller for it.

Go Go! Loser Ranger!/Ranger Reject - I hope they get Johnny Yong Bosch for the dub. For the obvious reason.

I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability - This show is for Boku no Pico fans.

Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again - Mamiko Noto's playing grandmas now. I remember when she was voicing teenage girls in Clannad and Hell Girl. More proof we're getting old.

Re:Monster - Meh.

Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included - Another housewife anime for the Mr. Kokoshkas of the world.

[Dr. Insomniac]

The new Digimon Adventure movie was finally released on home video, and like all the other recent Adventure movies, it's a mess. One with very confusing retcons while still catering to an audience that cares about references to Diaboromon Strikes Back. While I didn't like the 2020 movie, at least that one knew what it wanted to say even if I disagreed with the themes. This one felt so mangled in its message and execution. Like how the idea of people having a Digimon can be seen as morally dubious because it's not a relationship between equals, only to turn the other way and say it's fine because Digimon choose to be partners with certain humans but not all of them. It's very big on asking questions about kinship and consent while being too afraid to give anything even shaped like an answer for any of them.

And I know why, since giving real answers to questions like "Wouldn't a relationship between a little kid who's not emotionally mature enough to understand the world and a magic talking animal with violent powers be extremely unhealthy in the long run?" is something a Digimon movie can't really do in under 90 minutes without undermining its own franchise. Instead, you're left with lazy excuses to rationalize why it's fine while coming with equally lazy reasons to justify a big action scene at the end because this movie has zero action otherwise. This, Tri, and Kizuna are in a confused rut where they want to dissect some of the beats in Adventure and show it off to an aging audience too used to talks about courage and friendship and more interested in something cerebral, only to reach a dead end because they're too afraid to say anything new and not completely knowing if they can contradict the 02 epilogue or not.

Or knowing when to contradict each other. I don't really care about the lore continuity, or anything about Homeostasis/Demiurge/Yggdrasil/whatever, but the emotional continuity in these has been all over the place. In the Adventure series at least, I don't know when the Human:Digimon relationship is meant to be healthy or volatile, if Digimon are capable of human emotions or are no more than animals that just happen to talk, whether it's agency or destiny, or if having a Digimon is an emotional burden or a boon for Chosen Children/Digidestined entering their adult years. These movies really impede on each other in that front, and it's even more jarring because the last two had the same creative team. And you can't even argue it's subjective for each pairing because movies like Kizuna try to make a blanket statement on them all regardless of how different each coupling can be. The only real consistency is how much they fail to mine any character drama from this and fall back on infodumps and transformation sequences. Ken's supposedly a main character in this movie, and you'd think he'd have a lot to say about exploring the rougher sides of the Digimon/Partner relationship with his prior history, but that doesn't really happen.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I remember initially enjoying the early episodes of Tri (which I haven't gone back to in years, so not sure how I'd feel now), but falling off after the half-way point with the story going between either being too slow and contemplative to actually be interesting to being dense and needlessly convoluted.

Like you said, it felt like it wanted to cater to older fans by embracing the more mature themes of the classic seasons, but failed in trying to over-emphasize that.

What I have come to realize is that classic Digimon (from Adventure to Tamers) worked primarily because it was first and foremost a kids show made to be enjoyed by a young audience. That made the darker themes stand out while still fitting with the overall tone they were going for. By trying to focus almost exclusively on more "mature" themes in it's story-telling, Tri kind of loses the coming of age story magic that made those early seasons work. When things are on the light and whimsical side but with an increasing and foreboding nature becoming ever more present as things progress, which reflect more adult type dilemmas, it fittingly enough resembles a lot of what childhood is like.

To be fair, they are obviously older teenagers in Tri, so maybe the more increased melodrama is technically warranted, but the way it's executed feels disingenuous compared to the classic stuff. The lack of fun and humor just doesn't feel like Digimon to me either.

This is essentially what I have noticed from other properties as well in the last several years. ATLA had a perfect mix of adventure, humor, and drama. Korra tried to be a darker show to show off the more mature side of the series but couldn't pull that off nearly well enough to be anywhere close to as interesting or entertaining as the original (I assume the same applies to the live action, but I haven't actually watched it). Harry Potter was a fun coming of age story with some appropriately dark themes becoming more poignant as the characters got older. But Fantastic Beasts tried to be an "adult" dark fantasy and aside from being poorly written, completely lost sight of what made the franchise appealing in the first place.

[Dr. Insomniac]

And it's not like there aren't unsuccessful attempts at taking kids' media and retooling it for an older audience. Vertigo comics that take place in the DC Universe, those 90s Doctor Who novels set between the Classic and New Series, Andor. And I've heard good things about Cyber Sleuth and Survive and their attempts at pushing the franchise into more complex territory, so it's not even impossible for Digimon to do it. I just don't know why the anime struggle to achieve that.

Another thing I notice is despite focusing on melodrama, and being aimed at the now thirtysomething audience that grew up with Adventure, these movies are very barren when it comes to anything like romance or sex. And this can easily be a detour to "sex in media" discourse in general and if it's becoming too puritan or not, even the Makoto Shinkai movies dominating the Japanese box office whenever they come out are so deprived of it even though they're all about young couples falling in love. I can't even remember if the Your Name or Weathering With You leads so much as kissed. But for the Digimon movies specifically, it's noticeable enough to make note of since the perils of growing up and forming and maintaining relationships as an adult are one of the few consistent themes across all the post-02 Adventure installments. Besides gags like Tai having a porn stash underneath his bed, there's almost nothing there, not even any attempts at writing in some chemistry between Matt and Sora in case the producers are having an "Okay, the epilogue's 100% canon instead of possibly broadly canon" day. And it's bizarre because that movie was otherwise very adamant that Tai learn to grow up and be an adult the traditional white-collar way and didn't humor any idea of freelancing or an unorthodox life. I don't even remember if Yolei and Ken talked to each other in this latest one even though 02 said they end up getting married eventually, yet it remembers Davis has to be a successful ramen guy in his future. I know romance can be hard to write, but even DBZ knew to give Vegeta and Bulma a little chemistry, some buildup, a lot of trial and error to make their pair-up convincing.

And you can't even say it's for content reasons because a kid gets his eye gouged out in this film. It all feels so sterile and partly a factor in why Kizuna fell flat for me in spite of that getting good reception compared to Tri. That one was so dismissive of bonds in general and came off saying "growing up absolutely means you have to drift away from longtime friends and put away childish things", which sounds so shortsighted in a franchise all about connecting to other beings in a digital world, and a franchise increasingly dependent on a cult fandom who won't put away childish things. The irony was so heavy when a Digimon Adventure movie all about learning to let go of the past and grow up was immediately followed up by an Adventure reboot on TV. Or in this case, release a theatrical sequel featuring the 02 kids that's disconnected from its predecessor. Apparently, all the Digidestined either made peace with the "becoming an adult means losing your partner Digimon" rule or quietly fixed it off-screen.

Alas, I assume we'll get Kizuna 3 a few years down the line because Bandai really misses the days when Digimon was one of the biggest anime across the globe, and they'd rather do another Hurricane Touchdown rehash instead of putting any effort in the newer subseries (the latest one, Digimon Liberator, doesn't even have a show and it's just a webcomic/novel mashup). And it sucks because I'd like to have a Digimon show or movie I like again. I tried Ghost Game when that came out, and while it's not as frustrating as the movies I've been rambling about for paragraphs, it's also not as interesting or ambitious.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Shit, forgot to ramble about this season's anime. Because I watched a bunch of the premieres a month ago and just forgot about them until now. Good reason why I stopped doing the blogs for them ages back, because the amount of genuinely memorable or striking shows has gone down compared to 15 years ago. And I know that sounds like a nostalgia goggles issue, but some of these new shows, man. Like the Russian girl series that gave me flashbacks to all the other "annoying girl harasses and teases the MC for the whole show until they eventually date" romcom anime we've gotten like Uzaki-chan, Nagatoro, Takagi-san, the list goes on, the high school show where a guy starts a 1-man anime club just so he has an excuse to jack off to hentai in school only to find two girls who just happen to share all of his personal fantasies, or the deer anime where the most interesting part was the behind-the-scenes drama like how much cost-cutting the producers did like trying to trick YouTubers into promoting the show for free, or dubbing the show with a Florida voice actors.

The only one I kinda liked was Too Many Losing Heroines, and that's more for the animation because it's another high school romcom light novel adaptation.