Anime – Page 12 – Wis[s]e Words

Short Shorts — Anime 2022 #27-30

Published on November 21, 2022Leave a comment

Not every anime is created equal. If you keep up with seasonal anime, you’ll have noticed that almost every season has one or two very short anime series that only exist to promote whatever source material they’re based on. Yes, there are full length anime that do this at well, but at least there you can still some semblance of a story. How much can you do in two to three minutes on the other hand? Not enough to waste much time writing on them to be honest. The three examples here I coincidently finished watching back to back in June, hence grouping them together like this.

Yotogame-chan wonderign whether Nagoya is part of Kanto or Kansai

Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki Yonsatsume (#27) is the fourth season of Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki, about a Tokyo high school boy who moved to Nagoya, where he clashes with the titular Yatogame-chan, very proud of her hometown. Based on a manga, this is almost incomprehensible as its humour is deeply rooted in the peculiarities of the Nagoya region and its various rivalries with other cities. It also doesn’t help that it has build up a huge cast over the previous three seasons. I watched it more because I’d watched the previous series than out of any real interest.

Usagi-chan walking towards school against a photographic background of a typical Urawa neighbourhood

Urawa no Usagi-chan (#28) I watched because it was getting a sequel in the Summer 2022 anime season and then I never watched the sequel. I did watch the special (#29) though. Apparantly created to promote Urawa City in Saitama, Japan, it does so through the antics of a group of high school girls in the same club. Usagi-chan is a cheerful idiot, her friends similar sort of stereotypes. animation wise its mains strength are its gorgeous backgrounds. They clearly did their research.

Various game characters playing mahjong

Jantama Pong (#30) is not intended to promote a Japanese region or city, but is an ad for an mobile Mahjong game. this one takes the route of throwing wacky shit at the viewer until they capitulate. In the first episode for example they threw a truck at the mahjong temple so it got isekaied with all the characters in it. Another one ended with the world destroyed. Glad they went this route because I know nothing about mahjong except the few bits I learned from watching Saki.

(It’s late November and here I am blogging about series I finished in June. Bloody hell.)

Relatable!

Published on November 15, 2022Leave a comment

In episode six of Bocchi! The Rock Bocchi meets an older, hungover bassist who ends up helping her sell her ticket quota for the concert her band is going to give. Like Bocchi herself this woman seems a bundle of anxieties:

Kikuri being oppressed by all the world's problems, showing up in oppressive kanji in the background: pension problems! Rural depopulation The poverty gap! She looks stressed and with her hands on her head blocking her ears.

Unlike Bocchi, Kikuri doesn’t seems to suffer from social anxiety so much as a general anxiety about the state of the world as a whole. If her affliction seems to leave her less affected than Bocchi it’s because as an adult she has access to a remedy that Bocchi hasn’t: alcohol!

Kikuri drinking a sake juice box, her face looking happy and relaxed, while the problems behind her slowly dispappear in a pink, hazy cloud.

A very relatable solution indeed.

Starlight Promises — Yakusoku no Nanaya Matsuri — Anime 2022 #26

Published on October 30, 2022Leave a comment

When Shoma finally gets a reply to the messages he sent to his childhood friend Atshushi, who moved away three and a half years ago, Atshushi invites him to a festival deep in the mountains of inner Japan. Slightly miffed at him for being out of touch for so long, Shoma still agrees to come. But when he gets to the mountain the festival is supposed to be held, Atshushi isn’t there. Instead he manages to fall off the mountain and is rescued by Shiori, a girl his age who seems deeply involved with the seven day Tanabata festival Atshushi wanted to meet him at. What’s really going on?

Shiori as Orihime and Shoma as Hikoboshi

A childhood friend who never replies to your messages for years and suddenly, mysteriously gets back in contact with you after having moved away, huh? If you watched enough anime you know something is wrong here. More so when it turns out Shiori is also waiting for somebody she hasn’t seen for a long time who promised to be at this festival. Tanabata you may know is the day per year that the star crossed lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi may meet again, the rest of the year being separated by the Milky Way. As this day falls in summer, it’s a good excuse to hold a festival and you often see it referenced in romance anime. The festival here is stranger though: seven days long and it involves all the participants wearing a computer motion capture suit of some sort, that gives them skills that they need to set up everything needed for the festival. As for what the festival is for, Shiori tells Shoma that it is to provide a miracle at the end of the festival, the chance to meet the one person you would most like to see. To achieve this miracle, the festival will recreate the story of Orihime and Hikoboshi, with Shiori and Shoma in the main roles.

A mom meets the virtual representation of her dead son

It all sounds vaguely cultish, but it turns out this entire thing is run by an AI created to enable people to meet loved ones they lost, by providing a virtual representation of them using their life data. This turns out to be not entirely risk free, as the AI has become so good at this it can also create crude copies of people based on historical texts. And because the festival of course takes place at an abandoned castle filled with the ‘ghosts’ of the samurai that were betrayed there, these rise up as monsters Shoma and Shiori needs to defeat before the festival’s miracle can take place. But they succeed and the miracle does take place. A reunion with the dead at the festival for reunions, and wouldn’t it be lovely if it could happen in real life? Seeing your loved one for one last time, to be able to properly say goodbye to them? A miracle created with modern technology, but steeped in age old traditions.

Shiori and Shoma looking out at a night sky ablaze with stars

I’m always a sucker for this sort of story of grief and coming to terms with your losses and this was a very well told one. The animation, set and character design were great and it never felt manipulative. It remains a slightly strange production though, an original one hour anime movie released on Youtube in August 2018. Not tied to any larger project or franchise I could find, leaves me wondering what the purpose of this was. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter of course and I should be just glad this exists.

short form K-on — Irodorimidori — Anime 2022 #25

Published on October 29, 2022Leave a comment

Five high school girls come together to form a band to play at their cultural festival to gain the extra credit for performing well at it.

Somebody I followed on Twitter was live tweeting their reactions to this series and it got me interested enough to track it down. I’ve always liked that whole K-On! subgenre of high school rock band anime and I’d never heard of this one. Turned out it was a promotional series for Sega arcade rhythm game Chunithm, starring the main unit from the game. At eight episodes of only three minutes, the story is extremely simple. The first episode introduces the band, by the last they’re performing at the cultural festival. The characters are all archetypes you’ve seen before: the normal one with the bad grades, the tsundere, slightly bourgie blonde, the lazy one who likes to eat, the clumsy glasses wearer, the shy, unemotional first year. They get together, they write a song to perform, there are some jokes along the way, they perform and achieve their quest for extra credit, the end. There is some potential in there and I wouldn’t have minded a full sized series instead. Never licensed in the west it looks like, so if you want to see this you will need to hit the usual spots. Fansubbed which means that at least the names of everybody are in the right, Japanese order (surname first).

Are you fully devoted? — Episode of Roselia — Anime 2022 #24

Published on October 28, 2022Leave a comment

Roselia desu.

Yukina in close-up announcing Roselia

Rosalia is the second ‘real’ band from the Bang Dream project, after Popping Party. where as most of the Bang Dream only rarely do live events, with the members being voice actors first, musicians second, Rosalia’s members are both, regularly releasing new music and doing shows. The anime version of Bang Dream has been mostly focused on Popping Party, with the other bands in supporting roles. It’s therefore time Roselia got some attention. They were already featured heavily in the third season of the anime, but hadn’t had their own series yet until this two part movie, retelling the band’s story from the game. Like every other Bang Dream anime since the first season, this is done with CG animation. It takes a little bit getting used to if this is your first time encountering the style of CG anime Sanzigen employs for the franchise, but on the whole it works. Especially the music performances benefit from being done in CG rather than 2-D animation

The entire band on stage

It all starts with Yukina, an outstanding rock vocalist whose strive for perfection tends to alienate the members of the bands she sings for. Her obsession for being perfect is driven by her desire to ‘avenge’ her father, who saw his dreams of making it as a professional rock artist destroyed by the music industry. To do so, Yukina wans to enter and win Future World Fes, the festival that her father also played. It’s not until she meets Sayo, a guitarist as driven as her to be perfect, that she can make a start on fulfilling her dream. Yukina also has the support of her childhood friend Lisa, an outgoing fashion conscious girl who used to play bass with her. Worried that she’s not good enough to satisfy Yukina’s need, still picks up the bass again. Finally, there’s Ako, the second best drummer in the world (after her big sister), a happy gremlin who thinks both Yukina and Sayo are super cool and who convinces her best friend Rinko to play keyboards in the band. Together this mix of friends and relative strangers set out to create the perfect band. There are of course stumbles and missteps along the way, with most of the drama front loaded in the first part. The second part is Roselia triumphant, on its way to achieve its goals, but what comes after?

The climax of the performance

Roselia is probably my favourite band from the entire Bangf Dream franchise. Their music, style and outfits (created by Rinko) is extremely gothy, with a bit of a metal undercurrent, something you could see angsty teenagers really getting into. That goth seriousness also fits well with Yukina and Sayo’s extreme obsession with creating perfect music, while Lisa provides the moral support to the rest of the group, Rinko the style and Ako is there to keep everything cool. It’s still idol music of course and doesn’t quite escape that genre’s cliches sometimes, but all of their songs are fun to listen to and even more fun to play in the Bandori game. The other thing I like about Roselia is how much they’ve grown as friends and comrades over time, something that’s not quite captured here, but that’s a minor quibble. On the whole this was an excellent showcase of Roselia’s story and music, a good way of getting into Band Dream if you’re new to it.