Anime – Page 18 – Wis[s]e Words

Food & Geisha — Maiko-San Chi No Makanai-San — Anime 2022 #012

Published on May 14, 2022Leave a comment

Kiyo and Sumire wanted to become maiko, apprentice geisha, and came to Kyoto from snouwbound Aomori in the north of Japan. Sumire succeeded, Kiyo ..didn’t. Instead she became the live-in cook of the Maiko house Sumire is attached to. To be honest, it suits her much better than attempting to become a maiko ever did.

Sumire in maiko outfit and makeup shares an ice lolly with Kiyo

Maiko-San Chi No Makanai-San then is a slice of moe series that focuses on Kiyo’s daily life at the maiko house she shares with Sumire. A look behind the scenes of Kyoto’s geisha industry, if you will. It’s based on a manga series by Koyama Aiko. Unusually it was released as a monthly rather than a weekly anime, with the first episode released in February 2021 and the last in January 2022. That slower tempo of release suits the series well, with each episode taking place in the same month it’s released. In this way the series offers an insight in the rhythms of a maiko’s life.

Squid mince: squid and vegetables mixed together, battered and deep fried, eaten with brown sauce or ketchup or soy sause

Each episode is divided into three short, bite sized parts with each part separated by a short segment that discusses the food showcased in the previous part. Because this is a heavily food based show, not to be watched if you’ve skipped lunch. The cooking scenes have the best animation in the show, with close ups of food sizzling in a frying pan or Kiyo kneeding dough. Quite often the food on display is also much more obscure than the onigiri or takoyaki you get in other shows, the squid mince shown in the first episode, obscure even in Japan outside of Aomori prefecture. The connecting segments bracketing each chapter therefore have the useful function of explaining these foods and their history. They’re also done in a much simpler style; more illustrated than animated.

Kiyo hugs Sumire against the background of the kitchen

When talking about the quality of animation, we tend to concentrate on character design and the fluidity something is animated. Where Maiko-San Chi No Makanai-San‘s strengths lie is in something different: the ways in which it depicts its setting. The character designs are a bit simplified from the manga, but the backgrounds they act against are drop dead gorgeous even when completely mundane. It of course helps that it’s set in Kyoto, gorgeous in its own right, but what really struck me where the interiors of the maiko house, especially the kitchen. It is exactly the sort of somewhat old fashioned working kitchen that you’d expect yet it looks almost lush the way it has been drawn.

One minor criticism on the subtitles. Because the translation refuses to use honorifics, the varying levels of respect and familiarity the maiko have with each other and Kiyo is not reflected in the subtitles. Kiyo for example consistently calls Sumire Su-chan, even after the latter’s debut as a maiko with a new maiko name, while the rest of the cast do address her with her new name. In a series on such a quintessential Japanese subject like geishas, you’d expect the subtitles to be a litte bit more daring rather than flattening everything to basic English.

Monsters and sore feet — Mushishi — Anime 2022 #011

Published on May 5, 2022Leave a comment

I was on a summer holiday in Austria with the family last year and the house we stayed in had a good enough internet connection I could watch anime from my Plex server in Amsterdam. So each day we went out to climb mountains and look for four leaf clovers and each evening I would spent a couple of hours watching stuff. One of the series I watched there was Mushishi and boy was its opening applicable to me:

Personal circumstances aside, Ally Kerr’s song is the perfect way to open this series with, as gentle and melancholic as Mushishi itself. Mushishi is on a manga by Urushibara Yuki. Set in a pre-modern, still closed off Japan that seems to consist of mostly mountains and forest with the occasional village in it, Mushishi follows Ginko on hsi travels through the country. Ginko is one of the few people able to see ‘Mushi’, primitive lifeforms that are neither plants, animals, fungi or bacteria, but which live almost unpercieved among us. Ginko can not only see them, but he attracts them, hence his travels. Too long in one place and it becomes infested with Mushi. And while most people cannot see them, that doesn’t mean Mushi cannot interact with them, for good or bad. When that happens, Ginko, as a Mushishi, is one of the few who can diagnose and cure those afflicted.

Ginko is a white haired man with green eyes, one eye hidden behind a lock of hair

Mushishi then is twentysix episodes of Ginko wandering across rural Japan getting involved with whoever is tangled up with Mushi this week, sometimes able to bring about a happy end, sometimes not. It’s clear throughout the series that the Mushi itself are not some kind of evil monster, just creatures living their own lives, with no real intelligence behind their actions other than instinct. Nor are most of their victims evil or bad; just unfortunate. At worst there’s the occasional person ignoring local superstitions and suffering the consequences. There’s little continuity in the series, it’s mostly a series of oneshot stories, but gradually a little bit does get revealed about Ginko and his past.

Mushishi represented with simple dotted lines and jellyfish like shapes floating across the screen as a child looks on

Ginko isn’t an action hero and the Mushishi themselves are not the sort of monsters that lend themselves to lavishly animated fight scenes. The pace is slow and scenes are drawn out, with lots of slow lazy pans of the scenery Ginko moves through. Lots of closeups of hands in motion as well, something I started to notice after the first few episodes. Conversation is slow too and the end result of all this is soporific. Not to be honest a series that you can easily binge. Two, maybe three episodes at a time is ideal. Very much a series to calm you down. If you liked Natsume’s Book of Friends, this is a series you’d enjoy as well.

My anime spring 2022 watch

Published on April 20, 2022Leave a comment

Just like last time, here’s the list of anime I’m watching this season based on having watched the first one or two episodes, in reverse order of which one I’d like to watch first. Sixteen series this time, as opposed to thirteen last season. Of course, I probably won’t finish all of these series, depending on mood.

Gaikotsu Kishi-sama, Tadaima Isekai e Odekake-chuu
Happy skeleton knight eating and drinking
This opens with a graphic, eroticised sexual assault that is revisited mid episode, be warned. The rest of the episode is a fun romp about a gamer waking up as his avatar in the VR game he was playing having been isakaied, only to realise his avatar was a skeleton. Whoops. The manga version of this was far less graphic or titillating and this could serve as a warning on how much more impact moving pictures have opposed to static images, but also that you shouldn’t make rape ‘sexy’. Knowing some of the early plot of the manga version I’m worried the anime will persist in doing this, so I’m a bit wary about this. It’s like taking a dump in a punch bowl: your glass may not have shit in it but just the idea is enough to put you off.

Yuusha, Yamemasu
Hero meets demon lord
After defeating the Demon Lord, the Hero is mistrusted by the people he saved, so he leaves the kingdom and applies for a job with …the Demon Lord’s army? I read the manga version of this and while it seemed to start off as a sort of comedy it became more serious relatively quickly, so if you’re judging this on the strength of the first episode it’s a bit misleading. The protagonist has a lot more back story than the premise seems to promise, which makes the setting a bit more than your average “isekai but for nobody having been reincarnated into this world” series. Doesn’t mean this is any good of course: I pop these sort of series like candy, pure braindead time wasters.

RPG Fudousan
The cast of RPG Fudousan
A typical RPG party (magician, priest, warrior and their mascot dragon demihuman) sells real estate in a fantasy world fifteen years after the demon lord was defeated. Harmless slice of moe fare that made me laugh occasionally. Not much to say about this because it doesn’t do that much. The world is the usual anime jumbled up fantasy world that can’t make its mind up to be medieval, Georgian or steampunk Victorian. The characters so far are stereotypes more than people and the jokes are, eh, not always bad. Also, for some reason one of the characters is the spitting image of Rise from Is This Order a Rabbit, so bonus points.

Mahou Tsukai Reimeiki
Blonde loli threatens dull black haired protagonist
With no memories from before he entered the Royal Academy nor the magic he needs to stay there, Saybil is in a bit of a pinch. If he gets expelled he will lose his memories of the academy too and be left with nothing. His only chance is to go on an expedition for the chair woman of the academy, together with a mixed lot of other students. But what can he do on a dangerous expedition in a world that has only begrudgingly accepted magic and that not everywhere, when he has none and can’t defend himself or others? This is actually a prequel to 2017’s Zero kara Hajimeru Mahou no Sho, which was a fun series mainly due to the chemistry between the protagonists. So far this is lacking in this series, our hero being the usual anime sad boi.

Shachiku-san wa Youjo Yuurei ni Iyasaretai
Adorable moe blob ghost
Working overtime because her asshole boss dropped a load of ‘issues’ on her lap expecting them to be fixed next day, Fushihara-san hears a chilling voice late at night in the office, telling her to ‘leave now’. More bothered with making the deadline than any ghosts, she ignores it until it gets on her nerves enough to look for the source. Which turns out to be an adorable ghost baby just concerned about her welfare. This first epside was somewhat slow and plodding but the ghost toddler is cute. Don’t think too hard about where she comes from…

Koi wa Sekai Seifuku no Ato de
holding hands super sentai style
The simple minded red leader of the Gelato Five super sentai squad falls in love with one of the evil organisation Gekko’s lieutenants, the Shinigami Princess. Of course they have to keep their love a secret, so their dates tend to happen in the middle of battle between their respective organisations as Gekko unleashes its monster of the week before being defeated. A simple gimmick, but decently executed and I like both of them, especially Red.

Kawaii Dake ja Nai Shikimori-san
shikimori-san is cool
A romance anime that actually starts with the main couple already together. Izumi is your typical boring protagonist, only distinguished by his incredible bad luck, while his girlfriend Shikimori is not just beautiful, cute but also very cool when she protects him from the consequences of his bad luck. As is often the case, it’s easy to see what he sees in her, not so much what she sees in him. Indeed, I found myself getting increasingly annoyed at him in the opening minutes for being such a boring doofus, but once Shikimori was on the scene things livened up. I do hope that his character gets fleshened out a bit more, that he’s going to be able to do more than be unlucky or admiring his cool girlfriend. Visually this is quite a nice looking anime, especially in the action scenes when Shikimori gets to strut her stuff. I do worry that Izumi will remain as passive as he was in the first episode.

Aharen-san wa Hakarenai
Aharen-san lacks a sense of distance
Raidou is big and imposing, has a scary face but no friends. Vowing to do better in high school he tries to befriend the small, very very soft spoken girl next to him. Aharen-san not only turns out to be soft spoken, she also has no sense of social distance. Hilarity ensues. Based on a gag manga, the initial setup is a bit meh and luckily the casts broadens out from the second episode. This made me laugh a couple of times but really is a series that you need to watch week to week or you’d get bored of it.

Kono Healer, Mendokusai
title card of Kono Healer, Mendokusai
Alvin the warrior is in a deadly fight with a Mostly Bear monster when the dark elf healer Carla asks him if he needs healing and why he answers yes, she wonders in that case, why he doesn’t immediately prostate himself before her if he needs it so badly? If you think that’s annoying, it’s only the start and Carla is the perfect mix of obnoxious and funny, with Alvin and the poor bear monster as the straight man (and woman). The plot basically exists just to provide standup fodder and this is all done manzai style, so if you’re allergic to that sort of comedy, skip this. Me, I found the humour and timing to be excellent in the first episode. It is all a bit slower than in your average American standup routine, but it worked for me but then I’m a Steward Lee fan.

Deaimon
Itsuka and Nagomu meet for the first time after she mistakes him for her father
On the same day as his band breaks up, thirtysomething Nagomu gets a letter from his mother that his father is in hospital, so he decides to return to his hometown only to find out it was just piles. Nevertheless he decides to stay and work at the family business, a traditional Japanese sweets shop. His father, still upset he left for Tokyo years ago is opposed and tells him he already has a heir: Itsuka, a ten year old girl abandoned by her parents and taken in by him. She immediately distrusts Nagomu for having abandoned his duty. His mother however asks him to be a father figure for her, as she thinks it’s only him she can be honest with as Itsuka is determined to keep earning the respect of Nagomu’s parents so as not to be left alone again. A fairly dark background for what’s mostly a fluffy light show about somebody trust into unexpected parentdom, but then a lot of these shows have something like that. If you liked shows like Amaama to Inazuma or Usagi Drop, you’ll probably like this one as well. Animation is good too, with special focus on the sweets making.

Love Live! Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Doukoukai
Lanzhu is a breath of fresh air
The first season felt like a series of introduction episodes and then it was over, as this was the one Love Live series in which the cast didn’t have to unite to save the school. Because of that it felt unstructured and I didn’t get much grasp on the various idols introduced. This season is off to a better start if only because of having a proper antagonist, the magnificent Lanzhu, a Chinese diva, who wants nothing to do with their feel good fans and idols are equal hippie thinking. That sort of conflict about what beimg an idol really means is always a good way to spice things up when a series is too sappy. The animation and music quality is as expected from a Love Live series: gorgeous.

Spy x Family
Spy meets Assassin
A top western spy needs to get closer to a leader of the East but the only time his target is out in public is at the annual open day of his kid’s school. So now the spy needs a family: a child to enroll the school (some girl from an orphanage who turns out to be a telepath) and a wife to complete the perfect nuclear family (a civil servant needing to pretend she’s married for her little brother’s sake and also she’s an assassin by night). Cue oodles of stylised spy comedy. This is incredibly fun. Loid the spy and Yor the assassins are both dumbasses in their own way, while Anya the telepath kid is much smarter but still only six. She plays along with the whole charade because a) it gets her out of the terrible orphanage she was in and b) spies and assassins are very exciting indeed. This is originally a Shonen Jump manga so the sexual politics are awful as expected, especially in the second episode with its ‘single women over 27 are suspicious’ plot.

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Ultra Romantic
Chika remains best girl
The love war between the student council president and his vice president continues, in which each loves the other but wants them to confess first to have the upper hand in their relationship. The third season already and moreso than the first two it seems to include the entire student council in its stories, not just Shirogane and Kaguya trying to one up each other. If you liked the first two series, you’ll like this one. Certainly made me laugh.

Genjitsu Machikado Mazoku 2-Choume
Shamiko and Momo Squaring off
The adorkable Shadow Mistress Yuko, better known as Shamiko is still trying to get the upper hand over magical girl Momo but it’s hard when Shamiko challenges her but she takes it as an invitation for a date. The second season of Genjitsu Machikado Mazoku/Demon Girl Next Door starts where the first left off and hasn’t lost any of its charm. Even if the start was a bit confusing, jumping in media res then having a flashback as to why Momo didn’t realise Shamiko was challenging her. Pretty soon the episode settled down in the familiar patterns of the first series, with Shamiko earnestly trying to be a proper demon girl but never quite succeeding, while Momo is her usual competent but lonely and easily depressed self. As with the first series, there were a lot of rapid fire gags and while not every one landed, they made me laugh more often than not.

Heroine Taru Mono! Kiraware Heroine to Naisho no Oshigoto
Our heroine unhappy to be sat between the two guydols
Hiyori Suzumi moved from the sticks to Tokyo to get into a school with a good track team because she loves the sport and wants to make the nationals. When her father gets in an accident and is unable to work as a fisherman for the foreseeable future, she decides to get a part time job to help pay for her costs of living. Meanwhile school is not quite what she expected: she makes some friends in her class and on the track team, but the two boys she sits inbetween are obnoxious assholes even though half the girls seem to fancy them just because they’re idols. She herself has never paid much attention to idols, but now she has to as she scored a job as their manager… Gods know there are lots of interchangeable guydoll with bland female viewpoint character shows, but this is different because Hiyori is anything but bland. It helps that the whole first episode was about following her and her dreams, which had nothing to do with idols or managing them. Similarly, the two idols too have a bit of a bite to them, aren’t your usual cookie cutter cuties. For all their professionalism in public there’s a sense that they’re not very good or happy at being the sort of idols they’re being made into. Visually too this is one of the better looking shows this season and not just with the song routines.

Healer Girl
The three Healer Girls
Next to western and eastern there’s a third branch of medicine: vocal medicine, healing through song. Fujii Kana is an apprentice healer girl who has been obsessed with vocal medicine ever her first encounter with a healer girl. She and her fellow apprentices work in the clinic run by their mentor, learning the trade, aiming to become a sort of idol doctor. Or magical girl, because this is pretty much an old school non-combat magical girl show. The idol elements are not so much in the show itself but rather the main characters are all part of an idol unit of the same name as the show. Which means there’s a lot of singing in this show and all of it is subtitled even, a wonder considering how lazy most streaming sites are about that sort of thing. Honestly, this is almost a musical and the third episode especially put a huge grin on my face.

Dress-Up Darling’s functional horniness

Published on March 29, 2022Leave a comment

I think this scene from Sono Bisque Doll Wa Koi Wo Suru/My Dress-Up Darling episode 11 is the first time Marin and Gojou both realise they are attracted to each other and realise the other is attracted to them too at the same time:

What I like about this scene is how it showcases Gojou and Marin’s dynamic perfectly. They’re in a love hotel to do a particular cosplay because Marin noticed the room was cheap and matched the setting of the manga she’s trying to cosplay the heroine from, only realising it was a love hotel when they were actually in front of it. After the initial surprise, neither of them was bothered by it because both of them were so focused on getting the pictures just right. Even when Gojou suggests Marin gets on top of him, it’s only to match the picture to the manga panel. No lewd thoughts enter either his or Marin’s head; she’s only concerned that she doesn’t hurt him by sitting on his lap. But notice the coyness in how the scene is directed. The little pauses, the staging, the camera angles. Its protagonists may not be aware of how erotic this all could be, the show itself certainly is. Yet for Marin and Gojou, it’s only when the moaning of the woman getting railed next door filter through that they become aware of each other as sexual beings. It’s only then that Gojou notices that an extremely attractive girl is straddling his crotch. It’s only when he puts his hands on her waist that Marin realises a not too bad looking boy is lying beneath her. Both of them freeze but seem to be building up to something to realise that sudden sexual tension when they’re cock blocked by the telephone ringing. While it’s not directly addressed afterwards, it is clear that both of them are now very aware of each other as romantic and sexual partners…

Marin gets flustered that she wuvs Gojou-kun

Marin of course had realised she “wuved” Gojou a long time ago, in episode six to be precise. It’s a very pure love, including rose petals surrounding Gojou when looked at through Marin’s eyes. She thinks he’s adorable, cute, likes the way he can talk so earnestly and honestly with his grandfather. She admires his cooking skills, not to mention his dress and costume making skills. From the very first time they talked she has been comfortable around him, talking to him as a friend. The same trust is seen when Gojou starts making her cosplay costumes. She has no problems with him measuring her, or of posing and undressing when needed. Even when she ran into him in the school’s home economics room she had no problem stripping right in front of him to put up her own failed attempt at a costume. Her love for Gojou fits with her love for the characters she cosplays. While many of them are very horny indeed, she thinks of them as cute and seems to be blind to their eroticism. She can even innocently admire the boob bag Gojou created for her first costume, in front of him. It’s only after she realises she loves him that she also starts thinking of him in any sexual way. Even then, this doesn’t change the way she treats him; she just gets self conscious a little bit around him, unless deep in cosplay geeking.

Gjou wakes up from a wet dream about Marin

Gojou doesn’t have that luxury. He is very aware from the very start of how attractive Marin is. To the point of waking up from a wet dream starring her in episode 3. Which is a thing that happens to fifteen year old boys, but not something you see a lot in anime. Having always been a loner because of his love for Hina dolls and his disinterest in normal things boys like, with no experience hanging out with girls, he also gets incredibly flustered having to deal with Marin, who basically has no boundaries when it comes to cosplay. Understandable, but very much an anime cliche at first. But unlike so many other anime romcom protagonists, Gojou gets over his awkwardness, gets more comfortable around Marin, especially when he gets absorbed in the technical challenges of her outfits. Which is also what you see in this scene: he’s never aware of the sexual undertones until he’s brought out of his concentration. But once that happened, he’s very aware of Marin, not just as an attractive girl but as somebody he loves, even if that isn’t spelled out for him like it was for her.

Marin takes of her shirt and her bra straps are visible

As said, while Marin and Gojou mostly are unaware of the sexual undertones in their relationship, the show as a whole clearly is. There’s a lot of fanservice in the show, most of it centered on Marin –it knows it audience– but also in a lesser manner on the other significant female characters, the sister duo with whom they have a cosplay team-up in episode six to ten. In a show that revolves around creating cosplay costumes, there’s a lot of room for Marin to undress or pose in skimpy costumes and the camera angles don’t always help either. This sort of fanservice can be incredibly annoying, but here it works. Because unlike say in a series like Aiura, which used horniness just as something to distinguish itself from other slice of moe series, here it’s used functionally. The fanservice is consistently used to heighten the thirstiness of scenes where it is relevant, to give an impression of what Gojou and to a lesser extend Marin would be feeling. It’s almost exclusive to scenes in which the two are alone and almost always we have Gojou or Marin become aware of it as well. Like in the scene from episode one from which this picture was taken, where Marin undresses to show Gojou her costume and he is flustered of it but she too is not quite calm about it. It’s the underlying horniness that makes him tearing into her because her costume is so badly made moments later so hilarious. The same goes for the love hotel scene: the underlying horniness builds up towards the climax of the scene when both realise what they are doing and what it looks like. It’s this that makes the fanservice in this show enjoyable to me, because it’s in service to the character development as well, not just eye candy. It fits a romcom about horny teenagers.

Raised by the undead — Saihate no Paladin — Anime 2022 #010

Published on March 26, 2022Leave a comment

Born in the city of the dead, Will is raised by three undead ‘monsters’: the mummy priestess Mary, the skeleton warrior Blood and the ghost wizard Augustus. The only human in a city filled with the undead, Will is raised with love and care by his three parents, who each in turn teach him the skills they had when they were still alive. As Will grows older, questions about who he is and where he came from naturally start to enter his thoughts, as do questions about Mary, Blood and Gus. It becomes clear that at some point when he’s old enough and skilled enough Will has to leave his home to find other humans…

Will as a baby held in the arms of Mary the mummy

What sets Saihate no Paladin is the slow and deliberate pace with which it unfolds its story. It takes will almost half the series to leave his parents and move beyond the City of the Undead into the wider world. Which means we get the opportunity to see him grow up and spent time with his family before he gets thrown into adventure. It also means we see him actually train and improve himself, unlike your typical isekai hero who gets their overpowered cheat skills in episode 1 and never has any difficulty using them. It’s in these first five episodes that we get to know Will and get to know why when he sets out from his home, he does so as a paladin of the goddess Gracefeel. Again, an interesting choice that sets him apart from almost every other modern fantasy anime hero. A series that actually takes religion seriously and a goddess as more than just a source of a convenient power up. The goddess Gracefeel herself used to be one of the major gods at the time when Mary, Blood and Gus were alive, but as Will discovers, is barely known in the outside world.

Said outside world turns out to be surprisingly empty at first. It takes Will many days of traveling to the north before he meets his first person, an elven archer called Menel. From him he learns that were he came from is considered the wilderness, with only the northern most parts of the continent having been resettled from across the seas. The world that Mary, Blood and Gus knew and told Will about was destroyed in the demon wars that turned them into undead and is only barely recovering from its wounds. It’s a dangerous place filled with monsters, a world that needs civilising. And Will, paladin of Gracefeel, might just the person to tame this wild frontier, bringing light to the darkness. A conservative, perhaps reactionary worldview, even for a fantasy series, but the way it is done makes it palatable. It helps that Will is clearly such a good boy.

Saihate no Paladin is one of those isekai series where you learn in the first episode that the protagonist was reincarnated in this world only for it never to matter afterwards. The same story could’ve been told without it. As a series, this is clearly only the first part of a longer story, ending as it does with Will having reached the outside world and taken on the task of promoting Gracefeel through his actions. In an anime landscape where there are three or four different fantasy series each season, Saihate no Paladin was a cut above the rest with regards to animation quality and character design. One of the few shows of Autumn 2021 I kept watching week by week.