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Review: Beyond the Boundary

February 15, 2019February 17, 2019Posted in reviewTagged anime, beyond the boundary, kyoto animation, kyoukai no kanata, review, romance, sentai filmworks5 Comments

Beyond the Boundary (known also as Kyoukai no Kanata) marks the fourth show since Kyoto Animation began treading its own path with Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions. Despite me having become a fan of KyoAni by the time this show came out, I wasn’t really as much of a fan to know what the studio was actually putting out.

So when I suddenly discovered the night of my birthday, October 2013, this brand new show being animated by Kyoto Animation, I watched the first 3 episodes that night. And then I stayed with the show all the way to the end. I remember enjoying it a lot, and that feeling of enjoyment stuck with me when Sentai Filmworks brought out the Premium Edition box for the show here in the US – which I went for.

Despite that, I never thought much or said much about this show since then, beyond simply saying “I liked it a lot”. Since I’ve recently been going through a lot of shows I enjoyed in my formative years as an anime fan, I figured I may as well return to this one as well.

(Edit: added a paragraph towards the end of the Plot and Characters section, wanted to make sure I hit all the show’s points clearly.)

An Introduction

While walking home one day, young Akihito Kanbara happens to look up and see a girl, standing on the edge of a school building, about to fall. A split second later, and he decides someone has to do something about this. And so up he runs onto the roof to try to talk her down.

This girl isn’t just some ordinary girl, though… which Akihito soon discovers, as her blood manifests into a sword and stabs him in the chest. Her name is Mirai Kuriyama, and she’s a Spirit World Warrior. But not just any; she’s the last of her clan, a clan with blood powers. Spirit World Warriors have one main goal: to exterminate “yomu”, magical monsters that cause havoc but can’t be seen by regular humans.

Akihito, our protagonist, is one such yomu… actually, a half-yomu to be precise. An extremely rare case indeed. But his yomu half grants him the power of immortality. So that blood-sword stab? It hurts, but it’s not gonna do much.

But Akihito is often seen as an outsider, a monster, a freak due to his yomu half. He’s really not a yomu, but he’s not really a human either. Mirai, on the other side, is seen as an outsider, a monster, a freak due to her unusual blood powers, which no other (alive) Spirit World Warriors possess.

And so with that single blow with fatal intentions, the two outsiders begin to forge a bond…

The Plot and Characters

It fascinated me, rewatching this show, going from “why did I even like this so much?” in the beginning to becoming enamored with it all over again towards the end.

I think I’ve talked about it before in my Nagi no Asukara review, but I’ve had times where I’ve finished a show feeling happy or satisfied, and those positive feelings will still be associated with the show as the years go on. It even lead up to the point where I got the premium edition Blu-Ray box for both of them. But when I came back to both of these shows, I wasn’t nearly as floored as I was the first time around.

Still both worth the premium box purchase though.

Beyond the Boundary sets up an interesting world, and even though today this setting is far from unique, it felt a bit newer back in 2013. (“Back in 2013″… I can’t believe I just said that.) Living secretly among us humans are these monstrous apparitions called “yomu” that feed off the despair of the people around them, and can only be seen by special people, here called Spirit World Warriors. A lot of these warriors are organized under various clans, such as the Nase clan, Inami clan, and Kuriyama clan, and these clans each exert control over all warriors in their respective area. At the same time, there exists a central Society of Spirit World Warriors which seems to operate all over Japan.

Here, through the eyes of Akihito, we see his unique experiences with one such clan, the Nase family. His closest friends are Mitsuki and Hiroomi Nase, the youngest of the Nases – and thus due to their age, they’re kept in the dark to all the inner workings of the family, even though they both so strongly want to prove themselves. Sitting as one of the heads of the clan is their older sister, Izumi, who, like the other clan leaders, shares very little with her siblings and is instead fine with being distant and cold. While the Nase siblings (and others) are all pretty definitively in the “secondary character” box, they do their role well as a supporting cast – although it would’ve benefitted the show greatly to have Izumi appear more often earlier on in the show.

Unfortunately, while something like Madoka Magica takes this idea of secret magical warriors and brings it to its logical conclusion, Beyond the Boundary is content with not going any further with its worldbuilding. Its casual approach to establishing how this world operates and showing the relationships between the secondary characters end up hampering it even when the biggest secrets and plot twists come to light in the final third of the show.

Spirit World Warriors can turn in the remains of yomu they defeat for profit, but what value these stones even have is left unanswered. The role of the Society of Spirit World Warriors is left a mystery, as is the actual relationship between the clans and this Society. Add onto this that the one character in the show said to represent said society, Miroku, may not actually represent them at all. Most egregiously, Miroku is never given a true motivation for his actions, even though the show builds him up as an antagonist from about episode 4.

Instead, the focus all comes down to the main pair: Akihito and Mirai. Pretty much everything that happens in this show, at some point, leads back to them. Akihito and Mirai are both oddballs, the weird special edge cases, that breaks the other characters’ conception of the world, so on some level, the attention they receive and the amount of conversation that centers on them does make sense. At the very least, Beyond the Boundary is clear on its intentions: these two are the ones we’re gonna talk about here, so if you’re not down for that, then get off the ride. But at the same time, the world here all centers around them, so we never get to see what the world is like outside these two; thus, the worldbuilding issues above.

To be fair to the show, though, they build up the relationship between the main pair surprisingly well. It’s not to say that how they wrote the romance between Akihito and Mirai is something that should be showcased as a prime example moving forward, but it’s a competent job that seeks to be different in a genre filled with clichés and repeated storylines. We get to see them explore a lot about each other (by actually physically confronting specters from each other’s pasts, a nice way to do show-don’t-tell), and they grow from a mutual dislike and “putting up” with each other, to a more compassionate friendship, and then to something deeper after that.

There’s another unusual sight, in which they’re able to build up this romance while also putting out your standard jokes about fetishes to the degree they have, and they still grow old just as quickly as they do in other shows. Akihito is all about glasses and “bespectacled beauties” (and, of course, Mirai wears glasses) while Hiroomi openly admits to a “sister complex”, to his younger sister Mitsuki’s chagrin. This show cannot go 10 minutes without mentioning one of these fetishes, and it gets tired fast. You early on get the feeling the fetishes were added in to check off that “personality quirk” box for these characters, but then they double down on it.

This high amount of focus on fetishes is most evident in episode 6, which – while being a fanservice-y filler episode – is arguably more popular than the rest of the show.

Beyond the romance, though, Beyond the Boundary is also a drama-focused show, with a bit more of a mysterious and darker atmosphere. There’s a lot of mystery and speculation – there’s always something going on, and always a secret not being told – although I’d argue this show has a bit of a problem with keeping everything a bit too close to its chest until episode 9. Episode 6 is a blatant open excuse to get the characters to dance around for a bit, but it’s also one of the rare times we get a break from all the action and deeper thinking and drama. This show’s plot never slows down otherwise.

At the end of the day, Beyond the Boundary is a fun watch, a good balance of drama and romance, all surrounding our main couple. It does keep all its mysterious stuff, well, a mystery, for quite a while – expecting you to just “roll with it” until then – but there’s still enough intrigue, action, and budding romance here to keep you watching. And then, it all pays off well in the final episodes.

The Atmosphere

As yet another show that was animated by Kyoto Animation, you probably know what my thoughts are about them by this point. They’re good at what they do.

Beyond the Boundary relies on darker colors than you see in most of the studio’s other works. A lot of purples, blacks, dark reds, a lot of night scenes… a loooot of night scenes. It’s a darker tone that matches the more serious dramatic feel the show is going for. The animation is really well done, as you’d expect with KyoAni, with the characters staying fluid throughout the entire show. In the years since they made Munto, they’ve improved a lot on action scenes, and it really shows here. The action is interesting to watch, fluid, and paced better. Throughout every scene – action, sad, or anything else – Kyoto Animation continues to shine when it comes to character expressions as well.

The overall designs of these characters are pretty good here too, which each one being distinct. As you’d expect, Mirai’s is the most memorable design in the show. But Ayaka and Ai, the yomu stone appraisers, are both stand out designs as well.

Yet another good thing on display here is the show’s background music, although it doesn’t stand out nearly as well as the visuals. There’s a lot of bells and symphony, to give that “magic” feel (as you’d hear in, say, Harry Potter) with choruses used to deliver the main melodies. It all stands out as unique and distinctive to this show, and also thoroughly cohesive thematically from start to finish, but doesn’t stand out enough to really be worth listening to on its own.

The opening theme, also named Kyokai no Kanata (sung by Minori Chihara), is pretty good, but probably not what I’d want to listen to a lot on my own. But it goes along with an opening animation which I actually really love because (minus the random sequence of clips in the second half of the opening) it shows Mirai coming into town for the first time – thus, kind of a prequel of the events of the show itself. It’s a small thing (it’s not like anything that exciting happens), but it’s a thing I like regardless.

The ending theme, Daisy by Stereo Dive Foundation, is absolutely amazing. I’ve put that song into my usual rotation of songs, I love it so much. The ending animation is flashy with colors and quick cuts and what-not; I like it a lot, even if it doesn’t have much substance to it.

Finally, we arrive to the voice acting. The English and Japanese voice acting are both at comparable quality here. Specifically, this quality is “oh, is that really how Mirai sounds like? That’s the voice they chose for him? Okay…” but by the end of the first episode, you’ve already gotten used to it. Mirai sounds squeaky on both sides (voiced by Risa Taneda in Japanese, and Krystal LaPorte in English), but after some reflection, I’m not sure if I’d have it any other way; it reflects Mirai’s inexperience and lack of assertiveness, but she begins to sound stronger and more sure of herself in both languages the further the show progresses. I’m impressed with how Sentai’s writers were able to translate over the various characters’ mannerisms and catch phrases (such as Mirai’s “Fuyukai desu” into “How unpleasant”). So my suggestion is, choose whatever side you want (sub or dub), and stick with it. You’ll do fine either way.

Final Remarks / TL;DR

Coming back to Beyond the Boundary, I found myself liking it almost as much as I did the first time around. What the story lacks in worldbuilding and handling its antagonists, it makes up for with its romance elements and good visual and audio production. It’s a darker, more dramatic story than Kyoto Animation had animated in a while, and I think they did pretty well. There’s only so much you can do in 12 episodes.

If you’re into drama or magical action-y stuff mixed with drama, I’d say give this show a try, and see how you feel after a few episodes. If you’re a romance fan, however, I’d give this a pretty solid recommendation. Those last few episodes will really make you fall for the main two.

Lastly, give me a few moments to talk about the home releases here in the US, as there’s two versions: the standard edition and limited edition. They’re both essentially the same in terms of content, except the limited edition comes with the Episode 0 OVA (along with some small physical goodies). If you find yourself liking Beyond the Boundary, I’d suggest going for the limited edition, if possible, for access to that OVA. It’s some extra fun times for fans of the series. If you’re on the fence about the show, you can find it online at Crunchyroll and Hi-Dive. (In fact, Hi-Dive also has the Episode 0 OVA on there too!) Both come with the Idol Trial mini-series too, which is… meh.

Rating: Great
Recommendation: Watch It
+++ romance between Mirai and Akihito, ending theme (Daisy), interesting world/story
— lack of worldbuilding/antagonist motivations, bit too much fetish jokes, voice acting takes a bit to adjust to

Review: Free! Eternal Summer

November 12, 2018November 12, 2018Posted in reviewTagged anime, free, funimation, iwatobi swim club, kyoto animation, reviewLeave a comment

(Editor’s note: I know this image is from the movie. But, hey, it features all the characters mentioned here, so… it works.)

With a smash hit (or should I say, “splash” hit) on their hands, everyone expected Kyoto Animation to continue with a second season of their show Free!, and indeed, this second season did come the following summer, 2014.

It was fun to jump back into this series, and I was curious to see where the show’s staff would be taking it next. Free! does have source material, the book called High Speed!, but that took place in the characters’ elementary school days, leaving the show’s writers with a lot of wiggle room to decide to do whatever they wanted.

And so, they moved forward to the next year in high school.

An Introduction

A new school year begins for all of our favorite swimming anime boys.

For Haru, Makoto, and Rin, this is now their final year of high school. If they want to make things count, now is the time to do it, as scouts from colleges all over Japan (and the world) are watching them. If you want to keep being a swimmer after high school, they’re the ones you’ll want to impress.

After getting over his own angst in the first season, Rin has reconciled with his old friends (Haru, Makoto, and Nagisa) and even made a few new friends in Rei and Ai. By sheer luck, he’s also found himself captain of Samezuka’s swim team, and he even has a nice plan set up with a college back in Australia. Indeed, life’s looking good for him.

On the Iwatobi side, though, there’s some troubles. Makoto doesn’t exactly know what he wants to do post-high school, although he has some ideas… but Haru? He doesn’t have any clue at all. Haru just wants to “swim free”, like he always has… but that’s not a job. Haru has one year of high school left to spend with his friends and to also figure out what he wants to do with life, and time is quickly ticking away…

That’s not all though. To add to Rin’s perfect life, he’s even reconnected with an even older elementary school friend: a muscular chum named Sousuke who is Rin’s equal (or more) in every way when it comes to swimming. Rin gets to spend his last year of high school surrounded by all his friends and with everything in order, but… something seems off about Sousuke…

The Plot and Characters

When it came to this new season of the show, people were probably just looking for “Free!, but more”. The show’s writers could’ve given us just that – a retread of the first season – and we’d probably be satisfied (although perhaps a bit underwhelmed), but instead, they went much further.

The issue of figuring out what you want to do after high school is something a lot of teenagers deal with every year. Although there’s been some shows that dedicate themselves to this issue, most of them simply lightly brush the subject or simply play it off as a joke or character trait. Here in Free! Eternal Summer, we dive right into this issue and with more time and gravity than other anime tend to.

And Haru is the perfect character to tackle this with. The first season saw him set in his ways of only swimming freestyle, doing only what he needs to do to keep his precious swim club running and enjoy it with his friends… but ultimately, he’s of a one-track mind and is relatively immature. At some point, he’s due for a rude awakening that he’s going to need to adjust to the world around him, and this is a nice setup for that. He’s conflicted, he’s unsure, and this really isn’t an issue he wants to even think about. Why can’t life be as simple as it has been? Even with his friends around him to help him out, they more become a source of stress rather than one of relief. This entire journey is executed extremely well, leading up to an amazing pre-climax episode 12. It is here that Haru is finally able to come to a decision; I’ll say that it left me a bit confused and maybe a bit underwhelmed, but it’s not mishandled either.

Beyond this more serious conflict, however, this 2nd season is still the same sports anime at its core.

Makoto, Haru, Nagisa, and Rei are still best friends and members of Iwatobi’s swim club. They take their friendship seriously and take their swimming twice as seriously. Their big goal this time: the Nationals competition. With all the introductions and getting-to-know-each-other moments all taken care of, we’re given the opportunities to do more deep dives into each of these characters. Nagisa, Rei, and Makoto each get a focus episode, and it’s honestly great. These characters are more fleshed out, and their interactions and lighter moments are as great as they’ve ever been. There’s still a lot of fun with this group.

On the other side, though, Rin and the Samezuka group as a whole got fleshed out as well. While I’ve had a lot of praise for Haru’s conflict and the Iwatobi side as a whole so far, there is one part that has bothered me consistently this entire season. (And, as much of a surprise it may be, it’s not Ai.)

Ai, this time around, isn’t quite as intolerable. A big part of the reason why is because Rin is past his angsty teenage phase and is actually a lot more mature now. He’s rekindled his friendship with the Iwatobi group, and while he still acts as their fierce competitor, it’s in good fun now and not really a toxic situation. This still isn’t done out-of-character for Rin either, where we’ll still see moments of him being angry and emotional, but we no longer need Ai to be the metaphorical punching bag for him now, and thus Ai can blossom into his own as a character.

As his own character though, Ai still isn’t particularly great, if I’m honest. He puts Rin up on a pedestal still, and his personality is basically “I’m going to grow up to be just like you, Rin” – which, to be fair, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it just feels a bit too innocent for my tastes, especially given that this is pretty much his only personality trait.

But no, my bigger problem is with the new character introduced this time, Sousuke. Sousuke is Rin’s elementary school friend before he met Haru and Makoto; Sousuke wasn’t so much as even mentioned before his sudden appearance this season, but yet he comes in and starts to act as an artifical divider between Rin and Haru. This seemed strange to me, and felt unnecessary and also highly unwarranted (Sousuke, you haven’t seen Rin in years, you don’t really have any right or reason to be protective of him). I feel the writers primarily wanted to write Sousuke as this season’s new big rival/antagonist, but they kind of back off it after the first few episodes.

(And to be fair, as far as new previously-unmentioned-childhood-friend characters appearing goes, Sousuke’s sudden appearance honestly isn’t too bad… Just wait until next season…)

Instead, Sousuke turns into another source of drama for this season, with his own (admittedly somewhat important) conflict. However, he blows his issue into something much larger by attempting to simply cover it up and not talk about it, when talking about it would’ve been the best idea all along. All in all, Sousuke’s problems and how they were written into this show seemed a bit half-baked and not done to the best of its ability. It comes off to me as “well, we have to do something with him now that he’s here”, but to be fair, a large majority of the show’s time is focused on Haru so they didn’t give Sousuke’s conflict the time it needed. It kind of stinks because it would’ve been a really good thing to focus on, just as much as the deciding-what-to-do-after-school issue, but it was shortchanged and then blown up into this coverup-attempt issue instead.

Another character is added on to the Samezuka side as well: Momotaro Mikoshiba. I didn’t really have a natural way to bring up his older brother Seijuro in the first season, but the connection between the two isn’t super important. Momo is primarily a comic relief character, and is generally a joy to have on screen. Sometimes he can be a bit much though.

Well, at the end of the day, what does this second season provide us? Well, more fun antics and a heck of a lot of swimming, that’s unchanged from the first time, but there’s also a much heavier heaping of drama and conflicts than the first season ever had. It’s honestly a good pivot for the second season to have, and despite my issues with Sousuke, it’s all handled pretty darn well. It can be hard as a sequel to tread the line between “sticking with what’s familiar” and “trying something different/new”, but I think this second season was pretty effective.

The Atmosphere

Much like the second season’s writing takes the first season and adds more stuff on top to good effect, the visuals do as well.

KyoAni, like any other studio or person, is always working on refining its work and improving – It’s easier to compare and tell since Kyoto Animation uses essentially the same style between most of its shows for at least a decade now – and you can definitely see some improvements between the first and second seasons. The improvements aren’t like earth-shattering or anything like that; the differences are more subtle, but still makes for a nicer looking experience.

Shading and lighting is handled a bit better, the characters have a bit more contrast and presence now, and the background work is handled a lot better this time around as well. The level of detail is even higher this time around, and it pays off with an absolutely great-looking anime. Episode 12 stands out as a very special mention, but I think episode 12 is just a very memorable episode overall.

While I described the first season as “playing it safe”, (and I can’t necessarily disagree with that assessment here either) I think that given the higher level of detail and simply this becoming the visual style to expect with this anime, it’s not really a complaint worth lobbing here. It would be cool to see the visuals push the envelope a bit more this second time around, but seeing the writing has already done that (for this show’s standards), that’s honestly enough for me. This season, since there’s a lot more serious moments and such, we’re treated to the darker color palettes a lot more often that the first season.

The music continues to be as awesome as it was in the first season. There are some great vocal rap tracks that play, such as the one when Sousuke confronts Haru for the first (and honestly only) time, but I feel they play them a little too short. I wish I got more of a chance to enjoy the great tracks, but I guess I can’t complain about any staying past its welcome, now can I? Either way, I would love to enjoy this soundtrack on its own… just haven’t gotten around to doing so.

Oldcodex comes back for the opening song, this time called “Dried Up Youthful Flame” (that’s a bit of a mouthful). The opening song is nice, but I still find “Rage On” (the first season’s opening theme) more enjoyable. The opening animation is a bit more fluid than the first season’s, and is also rather good and especially fitting for a 2nd season. The ending “Future Fish” is really enjoyable (again sung by the main 5’s voice actors), primarily because of the animated sequences that go along with the ending song. The characters dress up as various professions (such as Rin as a police officer and Nagisa as an astronaut) and are shown in various situations interacting with each other. It’s a lot of fun, and the song itself is pretty good too!

Just like the first season, the final episode has this ballad-sounding song used for the ending. Unlike the first season, though, I enjoyed this one a decent amount too. Alongside it was a slideshow of what the characters did after the ending, showing Makoto in college and the Iwatobi Swim Club getting new members. It makes for a nice final wrap-up of the season (and series, prior to the later movies and 3rd season coming along). At the very end is a small post-credits scene that calls back to that old commercial from 2013, which I found fascinating. Did KyoAni know how much attention it got in the West, or did they call back to it for some other reason? Either way, all this together left the season with a good and satisfying ending.

The voice acting continues to be great as well. The choice for Sousuke was really good, Yoshimasa Hosoya does a great job. I honestly haven’t heard the English dub for the 2nd season at all (since I no longer have access to Funimation’s dub library (thanks Sony)), but given how all over the place the voices were last time, I’m not expecting much better this time either. I recommend watching the series with subs.

Final Remarks / TL;DR

Sequels always play the line between “sticking to what’s familiar” and “doing something new/unexpected” – going too far one way or the other can be underwhelming or alienating. Luckily, Free! Eternal Summer succeeds in combining both well by keeping the same formula but adding some extra elements of drama in a realistic and expected fashion. While there are some hiccups along the way, this second season proves to be just as great a time as the first.

When it comes to recommendations of a 2nd season of a show, it’s pretty obvious: if you’ve seen the first season, you’ll like the second. If you didn’t like the first season, you won’t like the second. Even though this second season adds a bit more drama and tension, it’s nowhere near enough to capture those who passed on this show the first time around.

Rating: Great
Recommendation: Watch It
+++ continues with the first season’s strengths, deeper dives into each character (especially Haru), visuals get an upgrade
— Sousuke’s addition seemed not planned out, Ai is better but still a one-trick pony, ending of main conflict left a bit to be desired

Review: Munto 2 – Beyond the Walls of Time

July 29, 2018July 29, 2018Posted in reviewTagged anime, central park media, kyoto animation, munto, review2 Comments

Combined together, the first Munto film and this one, Munto 2: Beyond the Walls of Time, total just under 2 hours. It’s amusing to me to write two separate reviews for this, when I also make reviews for series with 12+ episodes, which have a combined total of 5 hours or more.

Munto 2, as you’d expect, is pretty much the second episode of this two-episode shindig going on here. It relies very heavily upon the first film. Again, this is all as you’d expect.

Will this second Munto film have the same downfalls as the first one? Or will it be able to rise above and save the franchise?

(Also, I should mention: after these two films, there is an actual 1-cour TV series that recounts the story of Munto, although it goes by a much longer name and has Yumemi as the true protagonist. These reviews obviously don’t touch on that series, but I figured I’d mention it here in case I get questions/comments later.)

An Introduction

Over a year has passed since the day everyone saw the floating islands above. They only appeared for a few minutes, and no one understood where they came from or what they are… except for one person, Yumemi.

Since that day, Yumemi hasn’t seen or heard from Munto, or anything from the Heavens above. Those floating islands are still up there, still out of reach… But all of a sudden, random memories begin appearing in Yumemi’s mind. But these memories aren’t her own… It’s the memories of Munto! Why? Why is she receiving them? Is something happening? Should she be worried?

As it turns out, something is happening. In the floating islands above, Akuto has returned to the Heavens, but war still continues. Some kingdoms and rulers are wary about how long this sudden resurgence in Akuto power will last, and have decided to strike while the iron is hot: take over the other kingdoms and lands while they still can! Munto and his Magical Kingdom once again find themselves as the defenders. But on top of that, the assailants are curious about where and how Munto even brought the Akuto energy back from, and how to acquire this source for themselves…

The Plot and Characters

Munto 2 delivered in nearly all of the ways the first one lacked.

The story flows a lot better this time around, and there’s a lot more polish here too. On both sides, it feels like there’s an actual story to tell, rather than just being some random one-day-in-the-life setup that the first Munto film had (which, to be fair, you don’t really realize it has until you watch this one). The first film had a buildup, climax, all that stuff, but it felt more arbitrary and the two sides lacked any connection at all. Here, there’s actual progression.

On the Earth side, Yumemi becomes the sole main focus; she’s had a shot of self-confidence since her first run-in with Munto, but it doesn’t matter much now that the guy that gave her that shot has totally disappeared again… until he appears again. We follow her as she tries to reach out to Munto again, and we also see how Ichiko and others around her react to her actions.

In the heavens, the war continues, with Munto and Co. as the defenders once again. There’s a lot more thought about this whole setup this time too. Characters (including the bad guys from the first film) have names now, you have a sense of the political alliances/structure there, and they’ve also explained the barrier between the Heaven and Earth. All the context that was lacking from the first film, minus some wedged-in exposition dialogue, is here now. It’s no longer just Munto’s buds sitting around giving vague commentary, either; there’s battles, strategies, decisions happening now.

The characters in general have been fleshed out a lot too. Munto, the films’ titular character, actually has a personality and backstory now, despite him being delegated to the role of damsel-in-distress here (although that’s marginally better than his constant harassment of Yumemi in the first film). Ichiko, Gus/Gass (his name was retranslated for Munto 2), and Yumemi receive some development as well, and feel more and more like actual people.

All these things are really appreciated, and it frankly makes for a much better film than the first one. Things are a lot better when we actually have characters we can connect to, and a world we can buy into.

There were also some weird decisions made as well, though.

Firstly, the addition of a new character: a guy named Takashi. He’s said to be long-time friends of Ichiko and Yumemi, but this is the first time that he ever appears (incidentally, they wrote out that line in the English dub). Either way, his inclusion still seems weird, and frankly unnecessary. His biggest role in the story is being the plot device in two scenes, but that role could’ve just been delegated to background characters rather than writing in a full character and trying to shoehorn him into this circle of friends.

Secondly, Ichiko. She becomes a lot more protective of Yumemi this time around, but also tries to shut her down a lot, rather than being Yumemi’s beacon of support as she was previously. The film explains her change, and it makes sense at the surface level, I guess, but still… I honestly suspect they changed Ichiko so that there was a source of tension throughout the film. Without her… there really isn’t any on the Earth side. A lot of this film’s conflict relies upon Yumemi trying to reach out to Munto and understand what’s going on, with Ichiko trying to hold her back. If Ichiko continued to be supportive, it’d take a lot of that tension away. It felt weird and kind of sad to see Ichiko act this way towards Yumemi though.

Suzume, by the way, is relegated to more of a background role this time, and Kazuya is barely even mentioned.

The Heavens and Earth are still definitely treated as two separate entities, but there’s a tiny bit more connection now, and it’s a connection that makes sense. Munto 2 focuses on one side or the other for a long period before switching (with somewhat smooth transitions), so it felt more like we got to dive deeper into each side than we did the first time around. The two sides don’t constantly butt in to each other (sometimes quite literally) like they did in the first film.

Pacing is still great too, and in fact is even better than the first film. The extra 20 minutes over the first film allowed more quiet, refreshing moments between the big plot scenes.

The plot and writing certainly isn’t unoriginal, but it still felt like it was lacking that something to make it seem more meaningful. I think a lot of it may come down to the climax (and I’ll be vague, despite this film being 12 years old): beyond an emotional conversation, nothing much impactful happens. Visual effects occur, and that’s about it. No battle scene, the bad guys lose, bam, that’s it. The big scene that they were expecting to carry all this emotional weight, just doesn’t have any… and it’s due to one main reason: the relationship between Yumemi and Munto.

There really isn’t any chemistry between the two; the only interactions they had with each other in the first film is Munto appearing out of nowhere to bark at Yumemi until he disappears again. These two films say that he gave her the strength to believe in herself, and so that made her want to see him again, but that just wasn’t portrayed well in the first film at all. Since this relationship is what the second film depends upon for some conflict, and especially for the climax, unfortunately, this is where the second film falters.

It’s not even entirely the second film’s fault, either. It comes back down to the writing problems the first film had, and how poorly (and forcefully) that film executed its ideas. Munto 2 is such an improvement in so many ways, but since it depends upon you feeling a connection between Yumemi and Munto that the first film failed to create, its impact is considerably lacking.

However, at the end of the day, what really matters is whether I enjoyed my time with this film. And, honestly, I did.

Munto 2 improved in every single way that the first Munto didn’t, and I enjoyed that highly flawed film. There’s so much more to latch onto and soak in while you’re watching, with a more complete world and more interesting characters. It’s a shame that Munto 2’s biggest problem is a reliance on something the first film failed at, but it’s a fun time. I liked it, and, honestly, isn’t that good enough?

The Atmosphere

Just like the writing, the visuals got a very notable upgrade in this sequel too.

The art and animation looks dated by today’s standards, of course, but for 2006, you can start to see Kyoto Animation’s trademark high-quality work appearing. The backgrounds are a lot more detailed, you can see subtle changes in characters’ expressions and demeanors, and the visual effects continue to be good.

That’s not to say every shot and scene is great, high-quality stuff, but in comparison to Munto, this film very much feels like the studio has gotten a hold on their process, their style, and they’ve started to execute it well. Action scenes are still a weak point here, as a lot of them are simply one or two flashy effects and that’s it. You can sniff out some corner cutting and a few pain points, but you can easily look over those too.

Visually, it feels like KyoAni was definitely trying to be more ambitious. While a lot of the first film was generic small-city Japan scenes mixed with generic fantasy ones, there’s a decent bit more this time around. The climax takes place in a half-destroyed amusement park, for example. There’s more outfits for main characters and more background characters in motion. A lot of this ties into the improved worldbuilding too, but even the more-standard-looking small Japanese city locations feel more like an actual place, and the scenes and different countries up in the Heavens seem more fleshed out too.

Even if the climax ultimately didn’t give me much emotion, you could still definitely see the emotion in the characters’ expressions and movement. It’s a nice touch, and it’s something that’s now become standard for KyoAni.

Like the first film, music was used rather sparingly here – mostly only being brought out for the most dramatic scenes. Almost all of the pieces were piano-heavy; they do sound pretty decent, although it isn’t exactly a style I’d listen to much on my own. There was some melancholy and sad tones in there, which was fitting, and the pieces all blended into the film well in such a way that it wasn’t really even that noticeable when a music piece started or ended.

There is a main vocal ending theme this time around, but, frankly, it’s mostly forgettable.

The entire dub cast returns from the first film again, and a lot of my thoughts there apply here. Sean Schimmel somehow fits in a tad bit more as Munto now, but perhaps that’s just the Stockholm syndrome talking. Big shoutout to Kelly Ray as Ichiko this time around; her character got a lot more focus this time, and she hit it out of the park this time around. Ultimately, I’d still recommend the Japanese voices over the English dub, but the dub feels a bit more adequate this time around.

Final Remarks / TL;DR

Munto 2 is everything the first Munto should’ve been. It has two interesting worlds, characters with depth, and much improved visuals to back it all up. There’s all the polish and quality here that makes this a much more enjoyable film over the first one. Unfortunately, the main conflict still heavily relies upon the first film forging a connection it failed to create, and this ends up sucking out a lot of emotion in the climax.

If this film wasn’t so connected to the first one, I’d recommend it in a heartbeat for any fan of mid-2000s anime. Honestly, I may still recommend people skip over the first film and go straight to this anyway. The Central Park Media DVD includes a “Munto 1 Recap” special feature that you just need to watch beforehand and you’re set. With that said, I say to give Munto 2 a shot.

Rating: Good
Recommendation: Give It a Shot
+++ much needed polish, improved visuals, focus between two worlds shifts better
— relies upon first film, Ichiko’s personality change, Takashi

Review: Munto

July 20, 2018July 16, 2018Posted in reviewTagged anime, central park media, kyoto animation, munto, reviewLeave a comment

(Editor’s note: Do you know how hard it is to find a good usable image specifically from this 2003 film? It’s harder than I thought it’d be. So sorry if this one isn’t of the best quality.)

I’ve been a big fan of Kyoto Animation for years now. From my reviews of Nichijou, Chunibyo, and Dragon Maid, you’ve probably heard enough of me giving them praise. But one particular work stuck out to me.

Munto was a 2003 short film created and produced entirely within the doors of Kyoto Animation. This came years before they started publishing their own novels and anime, and even unlike those, this is a completely original film. Some say this was done to showcase the talents of the company (although a quick Google search couldn’t confirm this). Among all of the works KyoAni animated, even their lesser-known ones, this original anime is practically never discussed or mentioned.

It felt elusive, and so I was intent on seeking it out one day. … And ironically enough, my local library had a copy of the DVD release. I guess that wasn’t too hard to find after all!

An Introduction

Floating high above the clouds in the sky, are the magical islands of the Heavens.

There, human-like beings live, blessed with a magical power given to them by the gods: the power of Akuto. Akuto flows everywhere around us, and can be harnessed by these beings to bend and twist the fabric of reality. It’s a magic as powerful and fantastic as you can imagine… but, as the beings soon found it, it has its limits.

Akuto isn’t renewable, and every time they perform magic, a bit of Akuto is used up. Worried about the rapid, inexplicable depletion of their magical source, war broke out, and has continued for thousands of years. (Because, of course, using up more of your Akuto energy to fight this magical war is really going to make it last longer…) One faction of the magical lands decided the solution was destroy one of the magical kingdoms off the map so the remaining people can preserve the Akuto energy – the kingdom they chose was that of Lord Munto.

Munto, as you’d expect, isn’t going to just stand and take this, but he has a solution. Through divine sight, he found the solution to all their problems: a young Japanese schoolgirl, living on the Earth below, named Yumemi. Yumemi is the only Earth human who’s had the ability to even see the magical floating islands above, but little does she know of the power she truly holds.

And so Munto jumps from his island, down into the clouds and the land below, to a place where magical beings have never returned from…

The Plot and Characters

A lot of the introduction above discussed the issues of the magical world above, but Yumemi has an issue of her own:

One of her best friends – Suzume, the most childish one of the three – announced that she would be getting married to her delinquent boyfriend, Kazuya. And the marriage would be tomorrow.

As Yumemi and her other best friend, Ichiko, travel around the city to hunt down and confront Kazuya… and as the two of them simply process through this situation in general… this is where Munto appears. He appears suddenly, demands Yumemi hands him her powers, and gets upset when she doesn’t understand what’s going on. Frankly, I think anyone in her situation would be lost and confused, and even more so when Munto suddenly disappears moments later and Ichiko is left there wondering who the hell Yumemi was talking to.

Beyond this, there is absolutely no connection to the two worlds. On the one hand, there’s the magical Heavens in the middle of a war, and there’s the Earth, where Yumemi and Ichiko are dealing with what’s happening with Suzume.

Excepting for Munto coming down to harass Yumemi into submission, there is absolutely no other connection between the two worlds. Munto and Yumemi are the only characters from the two sides to interact, and literally no one else even sees Munto; on the magical side, only two other characters know of Yumemi’s existence, and that’s primarily only because they sit and commentate through everything the entire time. This strange dichotomy between the war of the Heavens and the domestic issues of Yumemi’s friends comes at odds sometimes; there’s one scene in particular where Yumemi and Ichiko are running around on-screen while a narrator exposition-dumps something about the magical world. It’s two distinct entities that just aren’t blended well together, primarily because they just have no connection to one another at all.

All in all, this film’s writing just seems to lack polish. The two sides lack any connection, Yumemi is (for no apparent reason) just “the chosen one”, Munto yells his demands at Yumemi rather than helping the poor girl understand what’s even going on (even though he realizes she doesn’t understand), the only character who has any depth whatsoever is Kazuya, and beyond his sudden appearances, all we see of Munto is him laying around on a rock. Finally, in the end, Yumemi just decides to help out Munto anyway, despite him giving her barely any explanation and she still believing him to be a hallucination.

Ultimately, I know that this is just a 50-minute film, and there’s only so much you can do in that time. But if they took this from a different angle – played around with this idea while sticking to the concept of “Munto must travel to Earth to have Yumemi save his world” – we could’ve gotten something interesting. Instead, we ended up with this mish-mash of two very different settings and two very different problems, with an insensitive (and mostly absent) titular character.

That’s not all to say I despise this film though. There’s enjoyment to be had here.

Although the two aren’t blended together at all, you get caught up in the drama surrounding Kazuya and Suzume on one hand and the plight of the magical people on the other. It may’ve been because Kazuya was the only character with development, but you begin to root for him and Suzume during the marriage scene. They may’ve relied upon the “chosen one” trope, but you do get some cool moments where Yumemi contemplates her role in life and the idea of responsibility.

On top of that, the film’s pacing is good, for as much as they have to squish into 50 minutes. Excepting for a surprisingly fast beginning, things move at a pretty good pace; fast enough to get everything in there and keep people from being bored, but slow enough to allow people to digest what’s going on and to allow scenes to have the impact they deserve.

In the end, I wouldn’t consider this a film to avoid. But I’d also consider it one not worth your time to go out and see… unless you really want to see everything Kyoto Animation has ever done.

The Atmosphere

This film is indeed animated, and fully created, by Kyoto Animation.

For a 2003 work, the animation is pretty decent. For a studio that is commonly associated with high quality visuals, however, KyoAni’s work with Munto here seems more standard-fare for 2003 than above-average. There’s not much of an attention to detail here, the backgrounds look relatively plain (although it is all bright and colorful), and characters – especially background ones – just aren’t very animated. There are, of course, exceptions to each point I listed. There’s a magical being named Gus who is at the front lines of these magical wars, and there’s been a lot of detail applied to him – especially his weird arm markings – and he oozes character in his poses and movement. The next character that comes close, animation-wise, is Suzume. As well, the backgrounds used in the magical kingdom are also pretty detailed, as well as some background work down on Earth during in the climax of the film.

The rare times visual effects are used, they’re top notch for 2003. This includes Gus’s arm markings, floating screens used in the magical world, as well as some effects in the action scenes and the climax. The 3D models used at some points do stand out quite a bit (especially the moment Yumemi’s mom parked her car during the marriage scene), but they’re used sparingly enough to not really cause a problem.

The film’s few action scenes are handled not too well, although this was a weak point for KyoAni in this time period (in my humble opinion). The first fight scene features Gus against an entire army, and a lot of white-light visual effects were used rather than animating much fighting. There’s a fight that occurs between Munto and an assassin robot, but that’s done almost-entirely off-screen.

All in all, the animation and visuals certainly aren’t bad, but they’re average. And for KyoAni, especially given their reputation today, that’s saying something.

There’s not really much music used throughout this film either, honestly. I could count with my ten fingers the number of times a song is used during a scene, including the song used for the ending credits. The songs aren’t bad, but they’re definitely forgettable. The ending theme (which is also featured in the DVD menu and all of the DVD’s special features, and also the included trailers for the anime) utilizes what sounds like generic MIDI instruments (and it also gets a bit grating when used literally everywhere in the DVD).

Speaking of the DVD, this is a Central Park Media DVD. And you know what that means: an okay-to-bad CPM dub. And this dub… is pretty meh. Veronica Taylor does decently well as Yumemi, Dan Green and Micheal Sinterniklaas play Gus and Kazuya pretty well, respectively… but Kelly Ray’s interpretation of Ichiko was weird-sounding at points, and Sean Schemmel’s voice just didn’t really match up with Munto at all. Overall, I’d suggest watching the Japanese voices if you seek out this show.

Final Remarks / TL;DR

Munto is a film with two stories to tell, and not a good way to tell them together. In the end, we get this weird mish-mash of magical world battles and Earth-side romance quandries, with both only being bridged together with Munto, the titular character, jumping from one and trying to butt into the other. Polish and direction is what this short film lacks, and it isn’t made up by the visuals or sound work either.

If you’re interested in the complete history of Kyoto Animation and want to see every work by this company, that’d be the primary reason for watching this show, I feel. Beyond that, it’s a lesser-known, poorly executed, 50-minute, 2003 anime film that really doesn’t need your time. Don’t go out of your way to avoid it, but there’s better stuff out there.

Rating: Poor
Recommendation: Don’t Watch
+++ Kazuya and his storyline, Gus and his storyline, great visual effects
— storylines don’t connect together at all, everything Munto, action scenes not great

Review: Daily Lives of High School Boys

July 15, 2018February 9, 2019Posted in reviewTagged anime, daily lives of high school boys, nis america, review, sunrise3 Comments

My first experience with this show was during my freshman year of college. I had a friend for a short while whom I’d spend a lot of time with, and she was a huge anime fan (especially One Piece). One day, while going through her to-watch list, she picked this one out and we decided to just go through it as much as we could. We completed the entire series in 2 sittings, but honestly, most of those 2 nights were a blur. The show did stick with me, though, and eventually I decided to buy the premium edition Blu-Ray release.

After my recent rewatch of Nichijou, I decided to jump straight into rewatching this show afterwards. I didn’t remember much of this show, but I did remember it being similar to Nichijou, and I wasn’t ready to be done with sketch comedy anime yet.

(Edit – 29 August 2018: This review was updated to complete a paragraph I apparently never finished. How professional I am lol)

An Introduction

In a sleepy, average Japanese town, our main character Tadakuni runs out the front door of his house, toast in mouth, knowing he’ll be late for school. He soon runs into his two best friends, also running late: Yoshitake and Hidenori. … But rather than the traditional toast in mouth, Yoshitake is running with a plate of curry and Hidenori is slurping up a bowl of noodles.

And on top of that, a light beam comes out of the sky, destroys half the city, and the three boys find themselves face to face with a giant mecha. Luckily for them, a magical book appeared, transforming them into warriors and wizards, ready to fight. Yep, just another day in their normal lives.

… Wait, that’s that normal? Then, what does the average life of a high school boy look like? Well, I’m glad you asked, because this anime will gladly answer!

The Plot and Characters

It’s kind of hard not to compare this show to Nichijou, and it’s especially harder when you watch them back to back as I have.

On the surface, the premise of the two shows is similar: a sketch comedy series focused upon the surprisingly-interesting daily events of a group of high school friends (and others around them). What sets Daily Lives of High School Boys apart from Nichijou, though, is that while the latter tends to be absurd and go beyond what’s physically possible, this show more focuses on social issues and perceived societal norms. (This doesn’t necessarily mean this anime doesn’t ever have absurd moments, nor does Nichijou avoid social topics, however.)

Ultimately, Daily Lives feels like the “manly” version of Nichijou. It lacks the playfulness and purity present in Nichijou, and this is apparent out of the gate with the very first sketch featuring the main three boys trying on Tadakuni’s sister’s underwear. Masculinity (and quasi-punkishness) runs rampant throughout the series, both in the sense of “guys doing guy things” and acting tough, and also with guys struggling to conform to societal pressures of what a guy should be/do. Although that sounds deep and philosophical, the show rarely ends up going far that direction, though; this is a comedy, after all.

And the jokes here aren’t half bad… most of the time. Most sketches in Daily Lives last over a minute, so the funny ones have the time to build up to a great punchline, but the unfunny ones… they can cause me to lose interest in the show altogether. However, this most likely comes down to the show’s tone just not matching up to my sense of humor, though. I honestly have to say Daily Lives has some pretty dang good writing, even if every joke wasn’t to my taste.

What helps this anime stay intriguing is the constant influx of new situations we’ll find characters in. Jokes and sketches certainly get reused, but I’d say there’s only about one-to-two per episode. New characters get added, the same characters are presented new challenges, and are sometimes put into new settings. There’s a certain level of unpredictableness and new situations in Nichijou, but a lot of it would still result in an overdramatized (although still funny) reaction. Here, though, they’re truly unique and different situations, and you see new characters deal with new problems they’ve never encountered before, and it’s just fun to watch.

There is a wide cast here, and as I mentioned, new characters are added at the rate of about 3 per every 2 episodes. In the end, it does mean we end up with some characters (including supposed “main character” Tadakuni) not even appearing for some episodes. Each character has their own personality and traits, though, which allows the writers to approach various situations and topics from a variety of angles. (Although very few end up being very deep, which is both to be expected but yet disappointing). Some characters are one-trick ponies, and the various personalities more felt like checking off a list (which is admittedly extensive) rather than creating organic relationships.

The main trio of Tadakuni, Hidenori, and Yoshitake are basically just the straightman and two jesters. The show doesn’t stick to the “funnyman and straightman” schtick though, and it honestly has more comedic variety than Nichijou itself. Beyond the main three, there’s other boys, like the student council (including Motoharu, the intimidating-looking-but-kindhearted; Karasawa, the stone-willed one with the hat; and the council’s president, who is charisma incarnate) and characters from other high schools, such as Literature Girl – a girl who wants to see her own written stories acted out in real life, with strangers unwittingly playing the main role.

A number of episodes also end with a segment called High School Girls are Funky, which features three girls who, like Tadakuni, Yoshitake, and Hidenori, just hang out together and do stuff… although a lot of that “doing stuff” usually leads to harassing Karasawa (one of the few characters who appears in both this segment and the main show).

The entire show carries the same tone, even in the High School Girls sketches, despite the content of various sketches and mannerisms of characters being completely different. It never feels like you’re not watching a Daily Lives episode. The show’s pacing is also excellently done (and surprisingly consistent) up until near the end of the show. In the final episodes, it felt like they were starting to run out of steam and padded some of the sketches so the punch line didn’t arrive too early. It’s a difficult balance not having a joke run too short or too long, and the writers came so close to doing it perfectly for the entire series.

All in all, though, I can’t praise the writing enough. If you’re a fan of sketch comedy anime, including Nichijou, this is the next show you should watch.

… But don’t watch them back to back as I have. Watching them back to back made me hyperaware of the (even minute) differences between Nichijou and Daily Lives, and showed a few more cracks in Nichijou than I had even expressed in my review of the show (and, likewise, a few cracks in this show as well). No show is perfect, of course, but I feel that Daily Lives of High School Boys stands best when it’s not put directly beside another show.

The Atmosphere

The animation and art for this show is, surprisingly, average. Again, this may be the result of me jumping straight to this show from Nichijou, but characters don’t move as frequently (or fluidly) as I expected them to.

The background art has this strangely clean, almost-blocky look to it – due to the usage of perfectly straight lines everywhere, with no blemishes or imperfections anywhere unless it was intentional. It almost feels a bit surreal and manufactured, rather than a lived-in place, and didn’t seem to match up too well with the somewhat impure, punk-ish tone of this show. This problem is further exacerbated by the bright color scheme used throughout as well; the background colors look mostly washed out, though, and overall seems a bit too watercolor painting-y.

This is contrasted by the character designs which tend to feature darker, deeper colors, and (despite their simplistic look) display more expressiveness and individuality. The characters do sometimes have a problem of looking a little bit too similar, but the show constantly reminds us that it doesn’t matter for us to keep track of who is who (a sentiment I don’t necessarily agree with, especially given the ending sketch).

This is not all to say that Daily Lives is a bad-looking or poorly-produced show, no. This show is truly enjoyable, and there’s no “in spite of” at the end of that sentence. It just surprises me a bit to not see more invested into the visuals side of things, although I’ve certainly been very spoiled by the absolute fluidness and quality of Nichijou’s visuals.

Daily Lives’s soundtrack relies heavily upon electric guitar, unsurprisingly, but it all feels very same-y to me. I’m certainly no guitar aficionado (especially of the electric kind), but the music just kind of blends together and nothing really sticks out… excepting for the pieces that actually introduce other instruments, such as piano. All in all, the soundtrack is pretty decent, though, and it blends beautifully into the energy and tone of the show (as a good soundtrack should), but the lack of any individual track standing out keeps me from really wanting to listen to it on its own.

The opening theme is Shiny Tale, by Mix Speakers Inc., and it’s pretty good, if not a bit too action anime-esque (although I’d bet that’s probably the feeling they’re going for, as the opening animation also is quite action anime-esque).

However, the ending theme – O-hi-sama by Amesaki Annainin – frankly sounds a bit too quirky and cheery for this show. It’s a totally fine song in its own right (although, honestly, it kind of sounds like two people who found some cheap instruments online and decided to jam one day in a garage), but I’m always taken out of my suspension of disbelief once the song starts. Despite the show’s consistently good writing, O-hi-sama (and the accompanying ending animation) is the one exception to the consistent tone; it just feels strange and too different from everything else and it sticks out like a sore thumb. Funnily enough, O-hi-sama wasn’t originally intended to be the ending theme of Daily Lives. A different band’s song was planned to be used, but after some band members publicly insulted the show and one of the voice actors, their song was taken out and Sunrise improvised together a clip show for episode 1’s ending while this new animation was made to go with O-hi-sama.

Daily Lives shines spectacularly with its voice acting, though, and I have to give major praise to the voice actresses of the three girls in the High School Girls segments: Yuu Kobayashi, Chiwa Saitou, and Yukana. They do absolutely wonderfully in their roles and sell their characters 110%. Tomokazu Sugita does a great job as Hidenori as well.

If you’re looking to buy this show in physical form in the US, NIS America is the company that holds the license. NIS America tends to do good work when they bring over anime to the West and this is no exception. There is no dub here, but that’s alright. However, you should save yourself the trouble and not bother with the premium edition box; not only is weirdly long (which makes it awkward to fit onto an anime collection’s shelf), but the included art book has little more than a character list and an episode list. Granted, the entire book is written in the tone of a survival guide for high schoolers, which is amusing, but none of it is worth the extra time/money to try to find and acquire.

Final Remarks / TL;DR

Daily Lives of High School Boys is another example of a well-executed sketch comedy anime. The writing is awesome, even if not every joke lands the mark. The show’s presentation is marred by unnaturally-clean background art and an out-of-place ending theme, but there’s twice as many positives as there are negatives.

As I mentioned in the review proper, Daily Lives is seen as the “manly” version of Nichijou. Cuteness and cheerful purity gives way to punk vibes and discussion of social issues. Unless the cuteness is what keeps you attached to Nichijou, you’ll be sure to find some laughs in Daily Lives. This is another comedy anime that should be put onto your to-watch list.

Rating: Great
Recommendation: Watch It
+++ excellent writing throughout, character designs, High School Girls
— weirdly too-perfect background art, ending theme, not every joke lands

Additional Thoughts: The Success of Nichijou

July 8, 2018Posted in additional-thoughtsTagged anime, bandai, funimation, nichijou, thoughtsLeave a comment

This wasn’t planned to be a long post, but it’s turning into one… either way, I just wanted to share some additional history and trivia that you might not know about this show.

(Also, as a quick update, I did update my review for Nichijou to add and change some stuff, as I wasn’t happy with how it was. No changes in opinion or anything, but wanted to let you know.)

—

So despite how much people seem to be enjoying it in recent years, Nichijou actually didn’t see too much success right out of the gate, either in the US or Japan.

Japan

In 2011, the Nichijou anime was about to start airing. This anime project came after tremendous success with the producers’ two previous shows: Haruhi Suzumiya and Lucky Star. Haruhi Suzumiya blew up like nothing else, and people around the world clamored to get any tiny bit more Haruhi anything they could get their hands on. Lucky Star, although it rode a bit on the success of Haruhi Suzumiya, was a great hit in its own right and helped to define the genre of “slice-of-life anime”.

Naturally, they expected Nichijou to be another hit out of the park. A lot of time, money, and work was put into getting that 3rd major success: many character single CDs were made, advertisements were put all over, they opted for a full 26 episodes right off the bat, it was aired and streamed everywhere, limited edition DVD/Blu-ray boxes were lined up, merchandise (and video game) deals were made…

But it didn’t turn into the success they wanted it to be. Manga sales were actually pretty good, maybe some of the music CDs did well… but in general, people weren’t buying up the DVDs, other music CDs, and merchandise as well as they hoped.

This didn’t mean that Nichijou was a complete financial disaster, however. It still performed pretty alright. Other anime production committees would probably be pretty happy with the numbers Nichijou brought. … But it wasn’t on the level of Haruhi or Lucky Star. And with how much extra money they poured into this, expecting it to be on that level, it just didn’t return as much money as they put into it.

There’s a lot of speculation and theorizing on to why Nichijou didn’t play out as much as expected. It could’ve been that the content is more suited for a Western audience rather than a Japanese one. It could’ve been the fact that the show was split into 13 separate DVD boxes sold over a year which people didn’t want to get behind. It could’ve been the over-usage of the then-already-overused voice actor Minoru Shirashi in the bonus content on the DVDs. Either way, that’s what it was.

The manga division of Kadokawa, which published the Nichijou manga, certainly saw some success, and Kyoto Animation and Klockworx probably came out alright… but Kadokawa’s anime division, along with Lantis and Movic (who produced the music and merchandise, respectively) probably didn’t see the numbers they wanted.

Kyoto Animation would soon after move into producing its own shows, but it’d be wrong to say that Nichijou was what caused them to do so. They were planning the move into self-production for a while, starting with a book writing contest that first ran in 2009 that gave way to shows like Chunnibyou, Free!, Beyond the Boundary, and Violet Evergarden.

Japan – NHK-E version

The following year (2012), though, the TV station NHK re-aired Nichijou. They cut down the original 26 episodes, taking the best sketches from the show and reorganizing them to fit into 12 episodes. This ended up being referred to as the NHK-E version or Director’s Cut version of Nichijou.

Ultimatemegax translated a compiled listing of what made the cut in the NHK-E version.

(Side note: isn’t a “Director’s Cut” supposed to be like… longer than the original (theatrical) release? Have extra stuff? The 12 episode re-release is half as long as the original 26, but yet it’s sometimes referred to the Director’s Cut…)

The NHK-E version of Nichijou actually performed well enough that they ended up re-airing that version again later that year and also releasing that on DVD. So at least the Nichijou anime did have some success in the end… even if that meant cutting half of it out.

United States

However, now we turn our attention to the United States. Other overseas regions, like Europe and Australia, don’t necessarily apply here. (Madman Entertainment released Nichijou in Australia in 2013.)

In the early 2000s, Bandai (yes, that Bandai) had an anime distribution division in the US, and released DVDs just like Funimation or Sentai. Bandai were the ones to bring over Cowboy Bebop, Haruhi Suzumiya, Code Geass, and K-On! to the United States. For Haruhi’s 2nd season, they even did live events and promotions for it.

When 2011 came around, Bandai would acquire the license for Nichijou with plans to release it in 2012. However, it would end up not to be.

Around 2011 is when the American anime industry was hitting a problem: people just weren’t buying DVDs as much anymore. The Internet was becoming the next big thing, and piracy and torrenting sites allowed people to watch anime without paying a dime. On top of all of this, as well, was the larger economic recession happening in 2010/2011; people just didn’t have the extra money to spend on things like DVDs (and why would they, when they could just hit up their favorite site and watch a show with just a click of a mouse).

For Bandai America’s anime and manga division, this wasn’t an obstacle they could afford to overcome. The parent company back home in Japan wasn’t happy with how things were turning out, and when they decided to merge all their Japanese anime companies into one, they also decided to leave the American anime industry in steps.

The discs for Nichijou, Gosick, and Turn A Gundam were cancelled in January 2012, and all of the manga they were publishing were cut short. In August, they stopped selling all of their DVDs altogether, and by December 2012, they were totally out of the American anime industry.

Nichijou would still end up on Crunchyroll (under the translated name My Ordinary Life) as part of their premiere lineup for this new “legal anime streaming” thing they were trying out. But there was no company in the US to advertise and support the show, to make and put out DVDs and put it into catalogs and on retailer websites like Amazon. And so for the US, the show never raised above cult hit status, and in 2014 when Crunchyroll lost the license to Nichijou, there ceased to be a legal way to even watch the show in the US.

Things seemed to change around a little bit when Vertical Comics announced their acquisition of the Nichijou manga at AX 2015. It still wasn’t the anime, but there was at least some way for people to enjoy Nichijou. I excitedly purchased the first 3 volumes right away from them, and I still support them now (especially since they also have the Monogatari series books too).

Finally, at YoumaCon 2016, Funimation announced they got the license to Nichijou. February 2017, a month short of a full 6 years since the 1st episode aired, American anime fans could enjoy this comedy show with the Blu-Ray box in their own hands.

Unfortunately, Nichijou’s time in the limelight has passed, as there’s new shows to produce and promote, and new DVDs and Blu-Rays to make. But the show’s popularity, hopefully, will continue to grow and expand online, as more and more fans come across this awesome show.

Until next time,

Jayke

Review: Nichijou

July 6, 2018June 3, 2019Posted in reviewTagged anime, funimation, kyoto animation, my ordinary life, nichijou, review4 Comments

Nichijou header image, featuring the three main leads (Mai, Yukko, Mio)

Edit: I added and changed some things in this review after its initial posting. I wasn’t truly happy with how this review turned out, and so I made some adjustments. No changes in opinion or anything, but hopefully it reads a lot better than it did originally.

—

Years and years ago, I watched my first ever anime: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003). I fell in love with it immediately, and was excited to see more anime from there. The second one was the romance anime B Gata H Kei (truly a generic romance show, but I still love it). And anime number 3 I completed: Nichijou.

I can’t remember when or how I came across it, but I bet it was due to me finding a random GIF or video from it on Tumblr. It intrigued me enough to look out for it, and I was happy to find that it was available on Crunchyroll at the time, and so I sat down and gave it a go!

Now, years later, I’ve been revisiting a lot of the first shows I watched, and I was excited to jump back into Nichijou again.

An Introduction

In the city of Tokisadame in central Japan, a new school year begins. Three high school freshman become new friends, named Yukko, Mio, and Mai. Yukko is energetic and overdramatic, Mai is super quiet and super eccentric, and Mio is the straight woman (and closet manga artist).

Elsewhere in the city, there’s a young eight-year-old girl named Hakase (Japanese for professor), and beyond her youthful desires for fun and cuteness, she’s super smart and has created a robot teenager named Nano. Nano wants nothing more than to be a normal teenage girl, but that’s hard with a giant wind-up key sticking out of her back. Soon enough, they are joined by a new pet cat named Sakamoto, and he’s been given the ability of speech through yet another invention of Hakase’s.

Every day is a new (strange) adventure for each one of these people, and others not listed above. With the different personalities, senses of humor, and mental states, anything is possible. While all these things may look weird to us, for these characters, this is just another part of their ordinary life.

The Plot and Characters

Nichijou is truly a fascinating show.

At its core, Nichijou is a sketch comedy show, but its focus is on the day to day lives and activities of the people in the town of Tokisadame. There aren’t really any truly dramatic moments in the show (some heartwarming ones towards the end), but one of the things that makes it great is how it overdramatizes the otherwise inane snippets of life.

There are about 10 to 15 sketches per episode, but a number of them are the shorter couple-second-long ones, like characters trying to jump rope, and some recurring segments, such as Helvetica Standard (a random grab-bag of jokes), Things We Think Are Cool (which speaks for itself), and Like Love (heartwarming stories of kindness and love). These shorter segments tend to be more straight setup-punchline jokes, while the longer segments have longer or more complicated setups and tend to be more overdramatic. These sketches can range from Yukko trying to understand a new coffee shop’s menu, to one character trying to disprove the existence of supernatural beings, to Nano figuring out what to do with a cockroach she found, to the three main girls putting together a house of cards. The wide variety and the unpredictability are some of this show’s strengths.

A sketch featuring any combination of Mai, Yukko, and Mio make up about 55% of the total sketches, I’d say, with Nano and/or Hakase (sometimes appearing alongside the main three) being another 35%. The remaining 10% are random other characters around the town, such as the main three’s homeroom teacher, or an older tsundere girl with a crush on a “rich” farm boy named Sasahara, or a club president who created the Go+Soccer club to skirt around school regulations coming to learn that Go+Soccer is a real sport.

The side characters honestly are fascinating, but although I do wish we got to see more of them at times, the show made sure they got as much mileage as they could and didn’t go any further. None of these characters overstayed their welcome, and the only one that felt underutilized was Nakamura, the teacher dead-set on proving Nano is a robot. Some of them definitely only had one or two recurring gags, though, such as Nakanojou.

However, we spend a lot more time on the main characters. All in all, I’d say they’re pretty good, but I do feel they relied a bit too heavily on one or two key traits for each of them. Mio is pretty well-rounded (and feels like an actual person with real goals and desire for order, even in this world of chaos), but still gets left as the straightman most of the time. Yukko is the try-hard comedian, but she’s constantly portrayed as lazy, unreliable, and idiotic, sometimes to the point where these traits overshadowed who she is as a person. This, unfortunately, can lead to Yukko sometimes becoming stale as she keeps being cast under the same light over and over again. The only relief she gets from this is when she’s cast as the straightman instead, which frankly doesn’t make things much better for her character. Mai is, frankly, an enigma, and can sometimes be on a level of comedy never before encountered; her actions don’t make much sense in the grand scheme of things, but she’s a lot of fun… even if sometimes her actions are counterproductive. However, of the three of them, we know the least about Mai, and she frankly feels the least like an actual person, and more like some weird caricature of comedy.

For the other three of the main cast – Nano, Hakase, and Sakamoto – they do feel like actual people, but still get stuck in their ruts. Nano and Hakase are both equal parts strange and fascinating; there’s a conflicting power structure as Nano acts as the mother figure, but yet 8-year-old Hakase is Nano’s creator and holds the keys. Hakase’s childish nature is portrayed pretty well in the show, even if it means her childishness sometimes leads to skits that all just feel the same as a result of her poorly-thought-through actions. The last addition, Sakamoto, is more like the outsider trying to wedge himself in as the top dog (err, cat) of this strange power dynamic, but is constantly being pulled down into the wackiness of the other two. Of the two main trios, this trio tends to be a bit less enjoyable to me, but I still get a lot of fun out of these three and it certainly doesn’t taint my experience with the show.

A lot of the sketches are pretty stand-alone affairs, and little context (beyond knowing who’s who and basic connections with each character) is needed to watch most any skit. There is an overarching story, told through the My Ordinary Life segments and some accompanying ones, but it’s pretty thin. All in all, this show is more about what’s happening in the moment.

Nichijou is commonly said to just throw out a bunch of humor styles and aim to please everyone, which I once believed to be true. However, to be honest, Nichijou’s bread and butter comes down to people dramatically overreacting to events, or people zigging when you expect them to zag (and then doubling-down on it). Nichijou tends to be downright absurd and over-the-top, and it revels in it. Things explode and litter the city in garbage, planets get destroyed, and there can be a lot of yelling. The absurdity is absolutely part of the fun of the show, and it’s present throughout. There are certainly the occasional sketch that’s truly different (such as My Ordinary Life Part 33 and Part 69, and the Helvetica Standard sketches), but if overdramatization and absurdness aren’t your cup of tea, the rare moments where they aren’t present won’t be enough for you to keep your interest in the show.

All in all, though, this show is a blast, and a lot of is pretty funny or at least highly entertaining. I had forgotten about a majority of this show in the many years between my first watchthrough and this recent one, and so it was almost like I discovered it all over again. Sometimes, I’ll admit, the overdramaticness and strangeness did sometimes start to drag on a bit, but Nichijou is generally written well enough to not let anything become too stale. At the end of the day, it was just great to be able to experience it all over again.

At the end, Nichijou left the same hole in my heart as the one I had when I first finished it years ago.

The Atmosphere

I’m going to try my best to not come across as a major Kyoto Animation fan that gives them too much credit, but we’ll see how that goes. While I’d say that not many studios would be able to execute Nichijou with such consistently high visual quality, I don’t want to say it’s a show only Kyoto Animation could’ve done.

For sure, though, the animation and visuals are certainly wonderful. Kyoto Animation’s photorealistic style was dialed back to only being used in transition scenes, but it allowed them to give 110% into fluidly giving life and style to the more-simply-drawn characters and backgrounds. It feels what would be the quality of your generic slice-of-life anime’s final episode is reached in Nichijou almost every single episode. The motion is just fluid, the colors are light and pastel, and they’ll play with colors and cinematography to help make scenes better as well.

That isn’t to say that every single scene is a truly arthouse masterpiece – there’s the quieter, simpler moments too – but I honestly can’t think of a single situation where Nichijou didn’t look at least “good”.

The character designs, in general, are pretty simple; you could probably assemble the looks of most of these characters while only using basic shapes, but the rounded corners, expressiveness, and eye design still made them pretty adorable and fun to watch. The design style fits into the colorful and light nature of the show, and surprisingly doesn’t feel out of place in the more intense, absurd moments either. That’s probably helped by the fact that characters don’t necessarily stay on-model, but this happens at carefully planned times to make sure the most impact is given to the script.

All in all, with the pastel colors and fun character designs, Nichijou has a fun, bright, positive look to it. It just looks inviting and playful, which matches perfectly with the writing’s tone.

While the visuals were fantastic though, the background music left a bit to be desired. I noticed a lot of the same tracks being repeated over and over; it’s to be expected in comedy/slice-of-life anime, sure, but it felt a bit much. A lot of the tracks rely upon wind instruments, such as the flute and trumpet, although a capella singing does make its appearances at times (and those times do help set the soundtrack apart). The tracks are pretty good, but a lot of them are reused so often, though, that it’s hard for me to really know what “feel” they’re going for… although I wouldn’t go as far as to say they fail at bringing anything to the table. I just wish there was a bit more variety.

The two opening themes were sung by Hyadain, and I do prefer the first one (Hyadain no Kakakata Kataomoi-C) a bit over the second, but they’re both energetic and upbeat and fun, and the opening animation matches that as well. When it comes to the ending themes, the song Zzz was used for the first 13 episodes, and then a unique song was used for the last 13. There were actually three renditions of Zzz: the original one, the a capella one, and the bossa nova one, and they switched between them throughout the 13 episodes. I rather like Zzz (although the a capella version wasn’t my favorite) and the ending animation was also cute. The last 13 episodes’ ending themes ranged in quality, but were generally pretty alright; the ending animation for them (they shared the same one) was a bit simplistic, though, but still not bad. It was kind of fun to try to identify everyone walking along in the animation, since some of the characters were super minor.

~~Funimation did not make a dub for the show when they brought it over to the US~~, which is kind of saddening, but with it coming out on Blu-Ray in the US 5 years after it aired, I’ll take whatever I can get. Either way, the Japanese voice actors did pretty well in their roles. I wouldn’t call the performances spotless (in regards to the female leads not sticking to their voices), but all in all, it’s pretty good. Major props to Yoshihisa Kawahara, voice actor for Kojiro Sasahara, who did a tremendous job.

(EDIT 6 June 2019: So Funimation did go back and announce a dub for Nichijou, and will be releasing a new Blu-Ray with the dub. Probably means I’m gonna have to sell off my sub-only copy of Nichijou, because man I want that dub. The few videos that Funimation have put out so far look really promising. Morgan Garrett seems to take on the role of Yuuko really well. We’ll have to see if the dub actors can consistently match the energy of the various scenes in these 26 episodes, but given what I’ve seen thus far, I don’t feel too worried about that.

I think the dub will be a good thing for Nichijou. It’ll open up this show to a broader group of more casual anime fans that would’ve otherwise skipped over a subs-only show. And if the dub as a whole is as good a quality as their videos seem to suggest, I think it’ll be a great way for people to get into and watch the show.)

Final Remarks / TL;DR

This is a sketch comedy anime that other sketch comedy anime should take notes from. Although a lot of its jokes relied upon just being overdramatic, Nichijou never failed to be a fun time and to bring a ton of variety and wackiness to the table. The writing was backed by an awesome presentation put on by Kyoto Animation, with truly quality animation from start to finish and wonderful opening and ending songs.

Nichijou was a cult hit for a long time, but it’s unavailability overseas (unless you were Australia) hampered its exposure in Western markets. Now that it’s out on Blu-Ray in the US, I’m excited to see what levels of popularity it can reach now. I highly recommend everyone give it a watch, you’ll know by the end of episode 1 if it’s for you.

Rating: Great
Recommendation: Watch It
+++ awesome comedy, animation is consistently good, ending song Zzz is awesome
— Hakase can sometimes be a bit much, soundtrack lacked variety, show’s treatment of Yukko

Review: Yuri!!! On Ice

June 29, 2018September 4, 2022Posted in reviewTagged anime, funimation, mappa, review, yuri on ice6 Comments

I did it, everyone! I finally watched the one show that everyone and anyone around me has been telling me to watch! I’ve done it! … Can I go back to bed now?

As a LGBT person myself, one may have expected me to have immediately begun eating this anime wholesale the moment I heard that it had a gay romance. Honestly, though, although such a thing intrigued me, I was more worried than anything. Japan isn’t exactly as open about LGBT issues as we are in the West, and anime has been rather troubling about its handling of LGBT people in the past. While I expected Yuri On Ice (I’m not gonna type those exclamation marks every time) to be a positive step in the right direction, I was only expecting it to be a step, and not something too monumental.

The show exactly met these expectations.

An Introduction

Yuri Katsuki has been doing figure skating for years, and at one point, was at one of the world’s largest competitions, competing against his childhood idol, Victor Nikiforov. However, sadly, Yuri came in dead last place and was talked down to by his idol – demoralized, he found himself unable to win any other competitions, and resigned himself to taking a break from the sport while he tried to figure out his life.

He returns to his hometown, meeting back up with his family and friends, including Yuko, the girl who encouraged him to start ice skating in the first place. At the local ice rink, he decides to show Yuko a surprise: he’s been practicing Victor’s competition-winning routine just to show it to her. However, as he was showing it to her, he was also showing it to a concealed camera… the video of him ended up becoming a viral hit online, even going so far to attract the attention of Victor himself.

The next day, Yuri finds himself face to face with his idol once again… with said idol standing buck naked before him. Proudly, Victor declared he’ll be taking a year off from figure skating himself to become Yuri’s coach and re-teach him the passion of figure skating… and the passion of having an unreserved ball of energy as his coach and mate.

The Plot and Characters

I wanted to go into Yuri on Ice really liking it. I really did. And I did definitely have a positive, fun experience out of this. It certainly was worth my time. … But it didn’t nearly come close to blowing me away as much as it was hyped up to do.

I think Yuri On Ice would’ve benefitted really well from being a 2-cour series, rather than just the 12 episodes we got. Especially in the latter half, I wish the scenes and pacing would just slow down. I wanted to feel the emotional impact of what was going on, I wanted to see these characters become fleshed out and have some actual depth, I wanted to just delve deeper into this world and into these people… but it just wasn’t there. This is an original anime series as well, so they could’ve done that too.

That being said, doubling the show’s length probably would’ve been a risky move, given the fact that it is an original anime, and that there is a notable focus on the relationship between Yuri and Victor. This show, I believe, has made more of an impact here in the West by having a canon gay relationship over being a figure skating anime. Let’s be honest, though, a lot of this relationship is rather subtextual. There’s the highly-debated kiss, but even when the show is yelling in your face about them being together, it doesn’t actually stick itself to it. It may push the needle a bit in the generally more-homophobic world of anime, and I certainly do applaud it for what it does (because it doesn’t do it badly), but it’s nowhere near the pinnacle of great LGBT representation.

I may be getting ahead of myself. But these first paragraphs are going to set the tone for the rest of my review.

My running complaint with pretty much all of the show’s characters is “they seem interesting, but I wish we got to learn more about them”. Not even the titular character himself, Yuri Katsuki, is immune to this; his life pre-episode 1 seems to be mostly forgotten excepting a few bits, leaving him to be seemingly only defined by professional figure skating and his relationship with Victor. Speaking of whom, on a positive note, Victor’s personality comes off really well, and he acts as a great foil for Yuri, adding spontaneity and confidence into the life of someone who needs these things. However, we also know nothing about his upbringing or really much anything else at all baring a few “character trait”-esque details.

However, my biggest complaint with Victor is more about the world around him rather than the man himself. I recognize that Victor is a very rash, shoot from the hip type of person, and I’m not questioning his decision to begin coaching Yuri… but I wish there was more of an emphasis on how this decision affected his colleagues and the figure skating world at large. He was at the top of the top, and so him making such a sudden move wouldn’t not have its consequences. There’s tidbits here and there, but generally, it feels like the whole world just got over it pretty immediately.

The Russian Yuri, Yuri P., Yurio… whatever, you know who I’m talking about. He’s pretty much set up as the usual rival character – the Bakugo to Deku, the Rin to Haru. He’s grumpy, he’s distant, he wants to be better than Yuri K., and although there’s certainly times he develops more, that’s still what he boils down to. He’s not a bad character, per say, but he doesn’t particularly stand out (although in the final episodes, a running gag with him and cats begins which does make him a bit more memorable).

For all the other side characters, from the fellow figure skaters to Yuri’s family and high school friends, that running complaint is strongest here. Each of them is given some time to gain our interest, and that’s about it. If a character’s lucky, they’ll become recurring comic relief for a few episodes. It’s sad, actually; some of them really do seem interesting and could create a great supporting cast, but Yuri on Ice’s 12-episode runtime prevents it from being able to effectively utilize them.

Pacing issues aside, though, the show’s story is definitely set up rather decently. It does feel like I’m following the career of a pro figure skater on his last shot at reaching the top, and I wanted to see Yuri do well. To be honest, most of the time (especially in the latter half) is only focused on competitions though; there’s rarely much time spent on practice or training throughout the entire series – the show doing a bit of a disservice to itself, as seeing Yuri struggle would’ve really made resulting moments of success all the more worthwhile. However, the story still does fine enough without them.

Yuri on Ice doesn’t actually delve very deep into the sport, though, unfortunately. I definitely did learn from this show, of course, but it’d be comparable to day 1 of a Figure Skating 101 class. We learn a skating routine is made up of sections of step routines, jumps, and (seemingly) just faffing around, and we learn that quadruple spin jumps are harder than triple spin jumps… but that’s about it. I could’ve totally become engrossed in this entire sport, and while the show does give you more than nothing, it still feels like it fell short in this regard as well. What different kinds of jumps are there? What is a “good” step sequence? Why and how are routines put together this way? The show doesn’t even attempt to touch these questions.

All in all, Yuri On Ice feels like it’s trying to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to focus on the figure skating, the side characters, and the relationship between Yuri and Victor… but there just isn’t enough time here to do all of that. It becomes a show that’s good/decent at a number of things, but a master of none of them. I’m not the type of person to hate something because it’s popular, but I’m not about to blindly jump on the bandwagon either and give unwavering praise to a show that, ultimately, is only just okay.

The Atmosphere

Visually, Yuri on Ice is a fascinating series. Fascinating because of how absolutely wonderfully it can get some things right and do some things really well, but can also completely drop the ball in other areas – especially areas where you’d think it’d matter the most.

The character designs for this show took me a bit to get used to, but overall, I do like them. Without his glasses, though, Yuri K. is a bit harder to make distinguishable (Yuri P. and Victor, luckily, are quite distinguishable and unique looking in their own rights). These characters can be so expressive at times too, which I really enjoyed a lot. I like exaggerated expressions, and Yuri on Ice does wonderfully in that department. So much so that it feels like the people animating this show seemed more suited for a more slice-of-life or comedy show rather than a sports anime – which is important to mention because…

The biggest thing that disappointed me about this show’s visuals were the ice skating segments. It seems a bit surprising to me that this, which I would’ve guessed to be something extremely vital to this show, is something that they failed to animate and polish well. Free from any physical limitations, the camera is able to be anywhere on the ice rink to follow the characters around during their routines, and Yuri on Ice certainly takes advantage of that… but there are some problems.

Firstly, the background and the skating character don’t always sync up in movement. Sometimes a character will literally just move around the screen without actually moving (as in, animated to move), or the background won’t move at the same rate the character will, or just something else to that extent. Secondly, where there is a cut to another angle, sometimes the background behind the character just changes. It’ll look similar enough to not completely throw you, but it’s different enough to be noticeable: the positions/order of advertisements on the walls, the distance a character is from said walls, things like that. There was even a single instance of the background literally changing in the middle of a shot (in episode 6, around the 11:50 mark in Crunchyroll’s player)! Thirdly, sometimes the characters’ necks were just drawn super long – especially Yuri K’s. It looked weird, but I’ll concede this leans a bit more on the personal taste side.

Luckily, the animators mostly ironed out these problems in the latter half of the series (excepting the neck thing, that actually seemed to get worse in the latter half). All in all, though, I felt underwhelmed by the ice skating sections of the show. The movement felt shoddy for the reasons mentioned above, and it seemed hard to really get some emotional connection with these sections: the only thing that escalated these segments beyond just watching characters skate and wiggle their arms around was the commentary that gave context to what was going on. I’ll fully admit that I’m a total newbie when it comes to figure skating, so it’s possible that the segments were actually done with a lot of emotion interpreted in other ways, but I’m no newbie when it comes to animation, and especially to animation being able to impart an emotion to you when it really works to do so. I won’t go as far as to say they failed here, but, again, it felt very underwhelming.

The show’s backgrounds, excepting the movement issues mentioned above, are pretty dang well done. There are some very pretty sights to see here, especially in the segments where the characters explore the cities they’ve traveled to. I also particularly love the things like the TV announcer segments and the on-screen score displays and such that they did for this show. It felt like an actual professional sport performance, and did really well to immerse me into this world.

Yuri on Ice’s opening theme, History Maker, by Dean Fujioka, is a great-sounding song, and the opening animation to accompany it was equally as wonderful. I wish the show’s actual figure skating segments looked more like the opening animation. I have nothing but praise for the opening credits. The ending song and animation are also pretty dang good, although they pale in comparison to the opening in my mind.

Having mentioned Crunchyroll earlier in this section, it’s safe to assume that I watched this show there, with subtitles. I think Toshiyuki Toyonaga did a pretty well job as Yuri K., and likewise with Koki Uchiyama as Yuri P., but I have to give praise to Junichi Suwabe for his performance as Victor. I think he played the character really well. Also, special mentions to Mamoru Miyano as JJ Leroy, he did a great job with that, and Kensho Ono as Phichit Chulanont. I seeked out some bits of Funimation’s English dub, and I felt a tad disappointed. It may be that I’m more used to the Japanese voice actors and how they sound, but I felt like the voice actors for Yuri K. and Victor just… didn’t sound as great. However, I think Micah Solusod makes for a great Yuri P. I do enjoy how they gave Victor and Yuri P. Russian accents, though; it seemed corny and it amused me, even though it probably does sound a tad more realistic that way.

Final Remarks / TL;DR

When there is a show or video game or whatever with a lot of hype surrounding it, it’s more common than not that the object in question probably won’t live up to it. That is, unfortunately, the case here. Although Yuri on Ice has a strong fanbase and it’d received a lot of praise for some of the things it did, I walked away from this feeling like there was something missing. This show tried to pull itself in a lot of directions, and it wasn’t able to fully commit to any one of them. Compounded on top of that is its underwhelming figure skating sequences and I could start to build a case for riling against this show.

But I did have fun with it. I enjoyed myself watching this. Yuri on Ice won’t end up on any top 10 list of mine at all, but a show doesn’t have to win gold medals to still be worth the time I put into it. And ultimately, that’s all it was: worth the time I put in. Yuri on Ice is pretty decent, and really makes you feel connected to its characters and the journey they’re on. It also has some great opening and ending songs. Give it a fair shake and see if it’s up your alley.

Rating: Good
Recommendation: Give It a Shot
+++ really felt like I was part of this journey, great opening and ending theme songs, Victor
— wish we delved deeper with these characters – all of them, figure skating segments had bad motion, felt stretched in multiple directions and failed to deliver on all of them

My Look at the Spring 2018 Season

May 11, 2018January 29, 2023Posted in first-thoughtsTagged anime, review, season, spring 2018

(January 2023 update: I had to close comments on this post as it’s getting a weird amount of spam for some reason. Feel free to use this post to comment on the stuff here, if you want.)

(Note: I expected this to come out in mid-April, not mid-May, so… whoops! Better late than never though!)

It’s the middle of April, but as I look outside, there’s more snow than you can even believe. This is spring, isn’t it? Where’s the butterflies? The colorful flowers? The constant rain storms that make the ground all soggy and the sidewalks all slippery? I don’t know, but they aren’t here!

One thing to enjoy about spring though: the new anime season! For this season, I’ll only be looking at a handful of shows, for a few reasons:

There’s a lot of sequels this season. There’s a lot of sequels every season, but it feels like a lot this time. There’s not much point of me watching the sequel if I haven’t seen the season prior, so almost all of them, I’m not watching.
Beyond that, a number of the new (non-sequel) shows don’t seem all that interesting. I’ve picked out the ones that did catch my eye, and I also checked out some that other people have been talking about. Beyond that, though… everything else seems meh.
I don’t really trust Tokyo Ghoul Re to be any good. I really don’t.

Anyway, all of that out of the way, let’s get to reviewing:

Steins;Gate 0

Despite my talk about sequels above, this is one sequel where I’ve seen the show immediately prior to it. So, this ends up with the title of the only sequel I can/will touch here and now.

Steins;Gate 0 takes place in the winter after the events of the first anime. It’s on a separate timeline from the very last episode, where Rintaro decided to walk away from time travel rather than using it one last time (trying to be vague to avoid spoilers). As you’d expect, the sequel definitely demands that you have seen the first show, and it doesn’t give any time at all (beyond some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flashbacks) to refresh viewers on the show either. If it’s been a while since you’ve seen Steins;Gate, you’ll probably be a bit confused.

For me, this also isn’t helped by the fact that I’ve grown very accustomed to the English dub of the first series. The Japanese voices aren’t too bad (with the exception of Daru), I guess… but it doesn’t sound/feel the same.

Anyway… Three episodes in, I’m quite enjoying Steins;Gate 0. It has the same tone, art style, and character designs from the original anime. It proves to be an interesting premise about how this alternate-timeline Rintaro is dealing with the outcome of his decision to walk away. (Again, trying to be vague.) My biggest concern, though, is that the original Steins;Gate was a slower-paced, atmosphere-heavy, and character-heavy show… and this sequel seems more willing to move more quickly, and to push aside almost everyone to focus on Rintaro and a new cast member named Maho.

Part of it may be the fact that this is airing in Japan as a direct continuation from the original. I also wonder if they’re doing this as a 12/13 episode series, as having it be 24-to-26 would allow them to slow down a bit more, I’d think. Either way, only time will tell to see how it all turns out, and I am excited to see where this goes.

Megalobox

I went into this not knowing what to expect; the name sounded cool and it being an original anime helps too. I was curious about it and honestly, even after the first episode, I was hooked.

Megalobox takes place in some sort of post-apocalyptic Japan, but with this major 1970s punk vibe. Junk Dog, our main character, is an underground boxer with no legal ID; he and his mentor Nanbu stay out of debt by agreeing to throw matches and manipulate bets. Boxing here is done with special equipment called “Gear” strapped onto your arms and back (which helps add more power to their punches). After a run-in with the world champion Megalobox fighter, Yuri, and the businesswoman financing the worldwide Megalomania competition, JD decides he wants in. With a forged ID and the name “Joe”, he enters Megalomania and aims for the top.

This show is gritty, well-paced, dramatic, dark, and keeps you engaged from start to finish. Everything has this hand-drawn vibe to it, the lines don’t have that particular look of having been touched by computer animation (even though it probably has been). The music is also awesome. This show is actually a celebration for the 50th anniversary of the anime Ashita no Joe, but you don’t need to have seen that show to watch this one.

And, please, do watch this one. Whether you’re all about action or you like some drama, Megalobox has a lot here going for you. I’m loving this show, and I think you will too.

Persona 5 the Animation

My feelings about Persona 5 aren’t easily explained, but it’s best summed up as “I like some parts, and dislike others”. Unfortunately, the game’s story was one of those dislikes, but it won’t stop me from giving the anime a shot.

Visuals and aesthetics wise, the anime feels very much like the game, featuring screens, animations, and transitions that were present in it. Indeed, it feels like they cut them straight out of the game and lifted them into the anime. It’s impressive.

Unfortunately for the anime, it also feels like they cut the story beats straight out of the game and lifted them into the anime. Things move along at a bit too fast of a pace, things only ever seem surface-level, and they seem content with just mentioning the main points and moving on. It’s difficult to take a video game (where you yourself can control the pace) and implement it into a non-interactive medium, but Persona 5 the Animation feels like a clip show rather than an actual animated retelling of the story. I wish there was more expressiveness, or they at least let scenes stay their welcome. I will certainly commend them, though, for sticking extremely faithful to the story thus far.

Ultimately, the anime’s goal is to get more people interested in the game and playing it. Or, at least, that’s what I assume its goal is, because I, as a fan of Persona, feel underwhelmed by what we’ve gotten here. I probably won’t be continuing with this show.

Magical Girl Ore

I knew the basic idea of this show was about magical girls that transformed into muscular boys in their magical form. … What I did not know was how far they’d go to take the idea of magical girls and knock on its side.

Magical Girl Ore is the story about a young duo named Saki and Sakuyo who are trying to form an idol group but happen to just be terrible at it. Due to the power of love triangles, Saki and Sakuyo realize they can turn into “magical girls”… which are more like magical boys. They use their magical boy-girl forms to defeat demons and to protect each other and protect Sakuyo’s brother, Mohiro, who’s part of a much more successful male idol duo.

This anime enjoys doing everything out of the ordinary. The “mascot” character looks like a yakuza boss, the leads themselves look like overly-muscular guys in cute magical girl outfits, the demons they fight are these muscular humanoids with cute faces, and they fight them by literally punching/beating them to death. It plays on even more tropes as well (such as the “running to school late with toast in your mouth”) and also manages to do this all with a bright color palette and more expressiveness than you’d ever expect. It’s a magical girl show that’s also a comedy and is just full of contradictions.

This show is weird. But probably in a good way. I’d recommend giving it a look, I plan on sticking with this myself.

Umamusume

I’ll be honest. I only looked at this series because it seemed the most-talked about new anime of this season. I came into it expecting myself to not like it. I know it’s not a great way to come into a show, but here we are. And the end result is… it’s surprisingly pretty okay.

Umamusume seems to be a cross between a slice of life anime and a sports anime, with a sprinkle of idol and fantasy animes for good measure. It’s the story of Special Week, a horse-girl whose mom got her enrolled in the most prestigious horse-racing academy in Japan, Tracen Academy. Upon arriving at the campus, she came across the most famous horse-girl in Japan, Silence Suzuka, winning yet another championship. Special Week became inspired and vowed to join the same horse-racing team as Silence Suzuka, so that she too can become among the best racing horse-girls in Japan!

To me, this show seems like a strange concept (although a lot of anime is just a strange concept taken to its extreme), but it seems to be delivering upon it fairly well. Special Week, although perhaps a bit too ditzy or naïve, seems interesting enough on her own, and I enjoy a number of her friends. That being said, I quite despise the character Trainer (seemingly the only male character in this show). They say first impressions are important, and my impressions of him were nothing good. I’m honestly over creepy/pervy male characters in anime.

All in all though, like I said, it’s a pretty okay show. I’d suggest finding someone else to tell you if Umamusume’s worth your time, but I won’t say it’s not. I expected it to be bad, and I came out pleasantly surprised, but not surprised enough to want to stick with it. But if it piques your interest, go for it!

Crossing Time

I’m adding onto my plate, once again, a short-length show. I get a real kick out of them, but short-length anime are really only the side dishes for the main course meal that is the full-length shows I’ve reviewed above.

Crossing Time operates on a simple premise: two people are stuck at a railroad crossing waiting for a train to pass, what happens next? Each episode features two different people having different conversations and different relationships (classmates, senpai/kouhei, teacher/student, etc.). The anime had a surprisingly emotion-filled first episode (and it saddened me that we probably won’t see those girls again), but I believe it to be a comedy show. The 3-minute length usually leads to a quick turnaround from setup to punchline, which is effective.

This show proves to be an interesting one, and I’ll be keeping it around on my watch list. It won’t be the funniest or most serious thing you see, but like I said, it’s a side dish, for those times the main course just isn’t enough to fill us up.

Wrap-Up

This season doesn’t stand out to me as one of the best, but there’s still certainly things to enjoy.

I think my biggest problem, personally, is I don’t have much time to devote to watching the current shows, since I have other projects and things to take up my time, in addition to working. Beyond this list, there may be a few other shows that I could push myself to try, but I’d say 3 shows is enough for me (along with 1 short-length one) right now.

What shows have you enjoyed thus far this season? Any thoughts you have so far? Let me know below! I honestly was a bit surprised by how underwhelmed I was by Persona 5 the Animation, I was expecting myself to stick with that one.

Anyway, until next time, talk to you later!

Review: Pop Team Epic

March 31, 2018July 29, 2018Posted in reviewTagged anime, bkub okawa, kamikaze douga, king records, pop team epic, poptepipic, review1 Comment

I wouldn’t call Pop Team Epic a truly unique show, but it is definitely one of an incredibly rare breed: a referential sketch comedy anime. While a decent amount of anime do at least make one reference to another show (whether it’s direct or not), few anime are actually built up around the idea of making a bunch of references in a variety of situations.

The Pop Team Epic manga had some fans here in the West before the anime began airing, but its popularity exploded after the first episode. There’s just something about those simply drawn, cute-looking characters walking around and flashing you a hyper-realistic middle finger.

An Introduction

This show centers around a guy named Daichi Taira. His family is leaving for a vacation (which Daichi decided to not go on), and his mom reminds him to take care of Sosogu while they’re gone. … Wait, who’s Sosogu?

As it turns out, Sosogu is part of an “epic” pop idol group called Drop Stars, but was also a childhood friend of Daichi’s! It’s been years since Daichi has seen Sosogu, and unfortunately he doesn’t remember her at all. But she’s moved into the Taira house and has begun going to the same school together, so the new housemates and classmates will have a lot of time to reconnect. … Well, maybe not a lot of time, the idol business is a constantly active one. But that’s not all!

The real twist is… none of that is true!

The Plot and Characters

Pop Team Epic is a sketch comedy show, which differentiates itself from its peers through the sheer variety of subjects it will parody or reference in its sketches.

From strange romance anime tropes (akin to Citrus which also ran in the same season), to The Shining, to Undertale, to the band Earth Wind and Fire, and to highlighting French stereotypes of foreign tourists… this anime touches on so many things, it may be easier to say that no topic is safe from the fingers of the creators behind the show and manga. The extensiveness and depth of these references generally aren’t too deep, ranging from an aspect of the media in question being totally recreated in the show’s format, to Pop Team Epics’s main characters simply being silent witnesses to the parody being written around them.

Despite the various references and parodies that the show makes though, there’s a decent amount of original jokes and skits as well, such as the “Eisai Haramasukoi dance” and “Hellshake Yano” being some of the more elaborate ones. Unfortunately, these original skits tend to be less funny and more “what the hell am I watching”.

In fact, to be fairly honest, the biggest things that got me to laugh were the moments when the show genuinely managed to catch me off-guard, such as putting in a reference I didn’t even think to expect. A large majority of the show more left me simultaneously amused and bemused. This is a sketch comedy show, but Pop Team Epic seems more primarily concerned in attempting to do something weird or unexpected rather than actually develop and execute jokes. Unfortunately, a lot of its weirdness becomes expected and the new norm for this show – the main characters never take the straight answer out of a situation – and once you realize this, a lot of this show’s magic is ruined for you.

Each episode features a large primary skit surrounded by multiple smaller skits and recurring segments. The large primary skit is the longest skit of each episode, and is usually the most narratively complex and visually involved one as well; generally, it’s a long, elaborate reference or parody to one specific thing, such as the above examples of The Shining or romance tropes. The smaller skits last anywhere between a handful of seconds and two minutes, and will be the abovementioned original skits, various smaller/less elaborate references, or are just sheer randomness. The recurring segments include Bob Epic Team (featuring more skits but poorly drawn), Japon Mignon (short skits about France, made by a French person, all done in French), and Pop Team Cooking (which parodies cooking shows).

The only recurring characters throughout the entire series are Pipimi and Popuko, the blue and yellow haired cute-looking girls. Every single skit features them, and for a lot of the smaller ones they’re the only two characters. When additional characters are required though, brand new ones will be created specifically to fill whatever role is needed. Although Pipimi and Popuko’s personalities are left pretty vague to fit whatever the current skit needs, they’re generally seen as surprisingly brash, violent, and impure, with a decent knowledge of anime subculture layered on top.

However, all of this happens within the first half of the episode. After it all finishes, the same half is repeated, but swaps out the female voice actors for Popuko and Pipimi with male ones. Depending upon the episode, they write in some differences in the script (and sometimes visuals) to make the two stand apart, but in general, you’re just watching the same exact episode twice in a row. The joke was a funny thing to do for the premiere episode, as it was unexpected and strange… but for them to go and repeat it for the rest of the series ends up with killing the race horse in episode 2 and proceeding to beat it every single episode from there afterward. The joke gets old really quickly and the differences between the two sections are usually so minimal, it doesn’t even feel worth watching the second half.

All in all, it’s still an enjoyable experience. I think Pop Team Epic’s referential nature and the strange direction its comedy goes in makes it a fun time for a lot of people, but I highly wonder how many will really want to sit through multiple watchthroughs of this. Pop Team Epic’s humor relies upon being able to catch you off guard will only work on your 1st (and maybe 2nd) watchthrough; after that point, you know what’s coming – the “run the same episode twice with different voice actors” shtick is something that’ll probably get old too.

The Atmosphere

Visually, Pop Team Epic doesn’t exactly push the envelope in any sort of way. In fact, if you just look at a randomized selection of still shots from the show, you may even say it’s not all that impressive at all.

But the show is extremely clean (art-wise), the colors are all bright, and the animation is smooth like butter. Popuko and Pipimi both look scientifically engineered to look as cute as possible, and for the most part, they succeed. This is, of course, intentionally offset by their surprisingly realistic (and veiny) hands, as well as the more standard (albeit low-standard) appearance most other characters in their primary skits have. All in all, it’s a style and juxtaposition that fits this show – it won’t win any awards, but it’s good enough to do the job for this comedy show.

Of course, there are also segments that are intentionally poorly-made, the above-mentioned Bob Epic Team segments. It honestly surprises me, but they just look uglier and uglier with every episode.

The show goes for a majority of the time without a soundtrack. Most skits are short enough to not even warrant creating background music, and most other skits just don’t have any to let the joke take the entire audial attention. When songs are introduced though, they’re either in the style of the media they’re referencing, or they’re synth/electronic sounding if there isn’t anything being referenced at the time. You don’t really notice the lack of a soundtrack.

The opening theme “Pop Team Epic” is infectiously good. I love the opening theme and the opening animation is also really good. It’s a high-intensity electronic opening theme, and I’m a big sucker for electronic. Unfortunately, listening to it around 20 times (twice per episode, most episodes) starts to make it sound a bit old after a while. The ending theme is “Poppy Pappy Days”, and the show actually uses multiple versions of it throughout the show. Generally, the only difference is who’s singing it; all in all, the song is pretty decent and relaxing, as expected for an ending theme. The animation is also nice.

For the voice acting, new voice actors are brought in to voice Popuko and Pipimi every episode (on both the male and female side). It does surprise me that, despite that fact, Popuko and Pipimi sound pretty nearly the same each episode – one would think that since they switch it up each episode, perhaps they’d have the voice actors leave a more unique mark in their playing of the role. Beyond the meta knowledge of “hey, this voice actor also played this character that they parodied here”, I don’t particularly see the point of bothering to do it. I guess I won’t complain though, it’s kind of an ambitious idea.

I haven’t experienced the English voice acting for this show, so I don’t particularly know what to expect in that regard.

I think the Western licensing for this show is fascinating, though – most shows have exclusivity contracts: when you license a show, you alone have the rights to air it/stream it/release it, whatever (it’s not quite that simple, but you get the idea). Thus, when Funimation licenses a show, it appears on Funimation’s website and services (and Crunchyroll), and not on Sentai’s Hi-Dive service. However, Pop Team Epic is unique in that there was no exclusivity clause: both Funimation and Sentai were able to get the license to stream the show, and the reaction to this online amused me. Time will tell to see who gets the honors of making that Blu-Ray box version of the show, though.

Lastly, speaking of English voice acting, I should probably mention the YouTuber “The Anime Man”, who through some lucky connections, was able to voice a few roles in Pop Team Epic, episode 9. Although not the first time a YouTuber has entered into the world of anime dubbing, The Anime Man’s case is particularly rare in that his voice acting was for the Japanese version. It’s a weird and funny opportunity, but a really cool one nonetheless. Many people, I’m sure, are jealous.

Final Remarks / TL;DR

Pop Team Epic, the referential comedy anime, relies upon its references and non-sequitur for its comedy. This will work out well enough for the first watchthrough, but it comes at the cost of subsequent watchthroughs being less enjoyable: you already know what the joke’s going to be. The recurring joke to run each episode twice, with female and then male voice actors, ultimately ends up being to the show’s detriment as well.

However, that isn’t to say the show isn’t even trying. The media you’ll find in the show reaches across generations and cultures, and the decisions in and of themselves to have various voice actors for the two leads every single episode, along with the implementation of segments like Bob Epic Team and Japon Mignon, all make for a show that is almost certainly a one-of-a-kind experience.

It’s reliance upon trying to do random unexpected things for laughs have certainly made the show divisive already, but I would suggest that you haven’t seen it, at least give it a shot. It’ll either be an extremely fun ride or an utter waste of time, but either way, you can at least say you’ve watched it.

Rating: Good
Recommendation: Give It a Shot
+++ the more out-there references and jokes, overall visual design, opening theme song
— relies too much on trying to be unexpected, running each episode twice, references generally aren’t deep