04.17
Carole & Tuesday
I’ve been watching David Simon’s Treme recently, and while I liked it, it’s easy to agree with the consensus that it’s nowhere near as good as The Wire. Because where The Wire was a tense, calculating drama about the neverending War on Drugs, Treme was often too relaxed. There were crimes and life-threatening issues going on, but they were often placed on the backburner while Simon would prefer to focus on New Orleans music. That didn’t mean Treme should have been more focused on drugs and murder, but topics like that are just more engaging than long discussions about the dying jazz industry and post-Katrina life.
And I say all of that because Carole & Tuesday shares that lack of engagement Treme had. It’s well animated and the characters are likable enough, but that’s just it. The show’s only likable enough. Something I could put on air while spending time with other things, but not a series I could glue my eyes on. I had the same problem with Watanabe’s previous show Kids on the Slope. It was a fine anime, but I wasn’t invested enough to think it was anything more than an alright show. I know this paints me as some kind of simpleton who only wants Watanabe to work on violent fare and make another Cowboy Bebop again, and maybe that would interest me more than another anime about aspiring musicians, but I wish the show could get me as interested in the music industry as Watanabe clearly is here. It’s a good first episode, but I wish it could have been a great first episode. – BloodyMarquis
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
There always comes a time for anime fans when they watch the first episode of a show, and recognize patterns and cliches, so much so that they detract from whatever enjoyment you could get. Like how many Hollywood movies fit into the typical hero’s journey plot, seeing anime repeat actions and themes you saw from many previous shows can leave you dejected after a while. And maybe, that’s okay. Some shows aren’t meant for seasoned viewers. They’re meant for anime newcomers. Middle school kids who already watched plenty of Pokemon and they’re more than ready to leap into a Shonen Jump series, which Kimetsu No Yaiba is.
It’s very easy to be pessimistic towards shonen anime, almost unfairly so even. For every My Hero Academia and Attack on Titan that surprise readers and viewers right off the gate, there are always plenty of other shows that leave no first impression. This was one of those shows. Every twist and plot detail is already known minutes before they happen. Loving family who gets horribly murdered? Called it. Edgy swordsman with a hidden heart of gold? Called it. Main character has to join some secret organization in the hopes of curing his younger sibling? Called it. I wasn’t exactly expecting a puzzle piece story that wouldn’t hold my hand, but at least throw one sucker punch at me. Don’t just remind me of other anime I watched. I already saw Grave of the Fireflies/Fullmetal Alchemist/Seraph of the End/whatever else the creator cribbed to make these first chapters.
But like I said, I’m sure kids who want to watch a seasonal anime for the first time will get their kicks from this show. It has blood, action, drama, everything a twelve-year-old would get excited about when watching a Japanese cartoon. And maybe if you like these kinds of shows no matter your age, it will suit your fancy. – BloodyMarquis
Fairy Gone
I don’t know why people are trashing this premiere. I thought it was an ambitious start to a Pokemon season by razing Sinnoh to the ground and giving us a bloody fight between Gardevoir and Zoroark. Don’t know why the green Eevee was there, but Game Freak’s gotta sell toys one way or another, right?
But real talk, this show’s another one of those stories that pump the first episode with tons of worldbuilding, but none of it’s expressed in an artistic or unique way and instead shoveled down our throats while an occasional uninspired fight scene happens in the corner. A guided tour of exposition that hopes you’re too distracted to complain. And that’s a shame from the guy who directed Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Drifters. You would expect a tour de force that takes all this shit about fairies and supernatural mafia and make it look cool. But instead, I got bored and made Pokemon jokes a third way into the episode. – BloodyMarquis
Fruits Basket (2019)
The original Fruits Basket is one of the most beloved shows of the early-2000s anime boom. Despite never airing on a widely available televsion service in this country, it became such a big WOM hit on home video that the then-fledgling Funimation Entertaiment began to change direction from what had been nothing but Dragonball and into far more varied, nuanced, and professional product (it also helps to note that Fruits Basket benifited from what is widely considered Funi’s first “good dub”). To put it mildly, if it wasn’t for Fruits Basket, Funi probably would have died in the 2007 crash instead of becoming Big Anime. That’s one hell of a legacy.
Naturally of course, I’ve never actually watched it.
Obviously I have my reasons. When I was in high school (aka: when this show was coming out in the first place), I didn’t buy anime on dvd for reasons of accessibility (ah for the good ol days when you had to drive 90 miles to find a B&M that actually stocked this stuff at THIRTY FUCKING DOLLARS FOR THREE EPISODES); I had a 56k dialup modem (yeah I’m THAT old!); and oh yeah…never aired on something I got (WTF is ColoursTV?). Soooo yeah I have no nostalgia whatsoever for Furuba. The generation that does was starting their HS Anime Clubs when I was in college and too busy trying to not flunk out to care.
This brings us to the remake, here to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the original manga and apparently do a better job of adapting the manga. The reults…are harmless. Just harmless. This is still Fruits Basket, a watered down version of Ranma ½ with all the sex comedy stripped out and a million times more bishounen. If thats what you want then terrific. For someone like me well…. thank god its out of my system, not sure what I was missing 18 years ago. Now I can watch the inevitable remake of that one Clamp show with the robot girl! It’ll just be like the good ol days of me being bored waiting for Piro Gallagher to churn out another shitty chapter of Megato—oh god now I’ve nostalgia’d myself. Happy now? HAPPY?!?! – Lord Dalek
The Helpful Fox Senko-San
So this is the show Mother’s Basement threw a fit over.
He thought it was going to be some sort of creepy lolicon shit.
Its not.
Its just fucking boring.
What a gyp. – Lord Dalek
Isekai Quartet
Hey guys! You remember Falcom Gakuen? That silly show where the Ys and Trails characters found themselves acting rediculous yet surprisingly in-character in high school? Well this is is that again. But instead of Adol and Dark Fact getting tossed in cells by Lloyd and Tio…we get characters from series I absolutely loath…plus Re:Zero for no apparent reason. Its only 12 minutes long and I could care less. Background noise. – Lord Dalek
Sarazanmai
Yeah, another Ikuhara show. You got your camp, your homosexuality, your posing, your repetitive yet stylistic animation, your budding teenage sexuality that isn’t quite what it seems, your challenges to gender norms, your reminder that Ikuhara really liked Rose of Versailles, your eventual incest, your mythological references that look really weird without context, your critiques of Japanese society that make no sense if you’re not Japanese, and your animal mascots. If this is your first Ikuhara anime, you won’t have a fucking clue what you’re watching, but once you watch his work, you see a pattern in his weirdness. You know what to expect, even if you’re still confused. He’s become predictably surreal. So while Sarazanmai is so different from other anime this season, it looks and feels the same as every other series made by Ikuhara. If you liked Penguindrum, you’ll like this show. And if you thought Yuri Bear Storm was stupid, then you’ll think this show is just as stupid.
Or at least that was my reaction. Sarazanmai was really fucking stupid, but I thought it was fun. Didn’t think it was the “challenging narrative that touches upon the capitalist Amazon hegemony” that other reviewers seem to think it is, but it was more interesting than watching yet another isekai. – BloodyMarquis
We Never Learn: Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai
Didn’t we just have Quintessential Quintuplets last season? And now we have it again? Fine.
You know the drill. Loser MC suddenly becomes a tutor to girls who are stupid. Like “round peg in square hole” stupid. But they’re geniuses in the fields they don’t want to be in. A prodigy in advanced calculus doesn’t know how to liberal arts. A wiz at literature can’t figure out math. They’ve found their special skill, but it’s not the one they want. What to do? And even worse, the MC has the hots for both of them! What a wacky series of events we got here, friends! Maybe he’ll meet a girl who knows quantum physics but doesn’t know how to tie her shoes. Or a girl who’s figured out how to solve climate change but is trying and failing to be a piano player instead. Maybe—oh, next episode is about a swimmer who’s bad at school. That’s boring. You lost me, show. – BloodyMarquis
Wise Man’s Grandchild
If one were to fill a room with monkeys, give them typewriters, and task them to produce an isekai light novel/anime, it would probably resemble Wise Man’s Grandchild. Wait…scratch that…it would LITERALLY resemble Wise Man’s Grandchild. This is basically light novel 101, the same shit we’ve now seen a million times before and are bound to see a million times again, because lets face it, there is no god anymore.
Whelp lets go down the list… Salaryman gets hit by a truck? CHECK! Salaryman gets reincarnated as a precocious orphan in magic land? CHECK! Reincarnated Salary kid is super magician? CHECK! Reincarnated Salary kid needs to got magic school to battle or some shit? DOUBLE CHECK AND MATE MOTHER FUCKAH! Congratulations Silver Link you have made every single show from 2013 AGAIN! All we need is another firey pink haired tsundare and the bases are clea—GRAND SLAM!
Wise Man’s Grandchild is ultimately typical forgettable lazy ass dreck. The kind of shit I fail to find myself being able to write more than five sentences about because who cares. This is anime now. Endless regurgitation. Par for the course in another spring of blah. – Lord Dalek
YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound Of This World
So apparently, the visual novel this is adapted from was one of the big entries in the medium that inspired tons of other visual novels. Something I guess is admirable in the mid 90s when it came out, but doesn’t show now several decades out of its creation. Maybe it should be uplifting that harem dating sims from all eras can be brought to anime no matter how old they are. Perhaps even that obscure eroge you found and masturbated to back in middle school can finds its way to an adaptation. But does it make for a good show? Of course not.
The thing about adapting decades-old manga or video games into anime is that you have to figure out how to make things fresh. Take the Jojo’s anime. In order to make the series stand out, especially when series it had influenced had anime decades earlier, David Production had to work hard to emphasize the style and tighten the pacing of the original manga. Transform panels into animation with vivid colors and an electrifying soundtrack. And thanks to their efforts, a whole new generation of Jojo fans rose from the ground. But if you don’t put in the effort to make an old work seem new, and expect praise just for showing up, you get YU-NO. Ecchi jokes you were sick of back in 2004 are presented here like they never went out of style. Narrative tricks you saw in other VN adaptations like Steins;Gate are executed here but clunkier and with no charismatic lead to carry it. And unlike Jojo, nothing about the execution has that new car smell. You could dull the quality a little, tell someone this was some old anime that aired back to back with Maburaho and Elfen Lied on the Anime Network over a decade ago, and they wouldn’t question you at all. Like an old stand-up comedian from the 80s resurfaces to tell the same old jokes and expects his new audience to laugh regardless of context, YU-NO never makes a claim for why it should exist in the here and now.
Funny, when the director/writer of the anime is treating this like it’s his passion project. – BloodyMarquis