Anime – Page 20 – Wis[s]e Words

Is Akebi-chan fetishistic? Is it bad if it is?

Published on January 12, 2022Leave a comment

Akebi-Chan No Sailor-Fuku is a simple story of a girl from what even the cast of Non Non Biyori would call the sticks, who has spent the entirety of primary school being the only pupil in her class, going to the middle school of her dreams. A school her mother also attended, where she will finally get to wear a sailor uniform. She always wanted to wear one because her favourite idol wore one as well. And then it turns out the school uniform changed to blazers years before. Whoops. Luckily the head of the school allows Akebi-chan to wear her sailor uniform anyway, seeing as how much she wanted to and how much work her mother put in it to create it. That’s basically the first episode, but that simple story isn’t what you watch this show for. No, it’s the sheer pleasure and joy with which Akebi-Chan No Sailor-Fuku shows off its protagonist’s physicality, the confidence with which hair, clothing and body movement are animated:

Much of the craft shown in this first episode is explained by the presence of Megumi Kouno, who e.g. animated some of the best sequences in the original IdolM@ster series. It all looks great, a standout in a season full of duller, by the numbers series, but there’s something slightly uncomfortable about it. As Alex Henderson noted in their review it all feels a bit fetishy?

I’m sure it’s not an aspect that everyone will notice, and it’s not an aspect that will detract from everyone’s experience with the show. And it’s a fraught topic to discuss, because it’s not “fan service” in the traditional use of the word, not explicitly sexual imagery or framing or placing the female characters in compromising positions. There’s a scene of Komichi and her little sister in the bath together that manages to be very frank and un-leery about their nudity, which I was impressed by until I started noticing other things that the storyboarding did focus on with an adoring intensity: an extra-shiny pair of lips here, an extra-crinkly piece of fabric against a girl’s body there.
Then Komichi walks in on a new classmate mid-pedicure, and this habit becomes hard to ignore. And it… complicates things, because I genuinely do want to praise this show for its use of visual storytelling and characterization. I want to nod and smile and say this show did a great job using the visual medium to provide a window into the emotional day-to-day life of a pretty authentic-feeling young teen girl. I want to be able to celebrate the intricate, intimate picture this premiere builds without wondering if all this detail was put there for as fetish fuel for someone.

There’s nothing of the usual fanservice in Akebi-Chan: no leering camera angles, no accidental groping, no overtly emphasises busts or butts, nothing that we’ve learned to recognise as fanservice. Akebi-chan’s clothing, including her sailor outfit is more practical and far less sexy than that of most anime school girls. When there is nudity, it’s non-sexual: Akebi taking a bath with her little sister, Akebi trying on her new uniform. And yet…

Is it because we’re trained by other anime that we see some of this as fetishised, as sexual, like the pedicure scene Alex mentions? Or is this fetishistic but in a way we’re not familiar with? And if so, is this bad? Having read through the manga after having seen this first episode and pondering Alex’s review, I can’t help but think that it is the mangaka’s fetish, their obsessions that makes the series what it is. There are entire chapters that are little more than an excuse to show off Akebi in movement, dancing or running or playing. The author seems obsessed with making sure the way her clothing and hair move are as pretty as possible. To choose a girl in middle school seems dodgy, but it never quite felt sexualised for me? It’s more like the artist just likes to draw pretty people, something that becomes very clear with Akebi’s father, who looks like the sort of fifties deep in the closet sports hunk.

For me, if this is indeed the result of the author’s fetishes, I can live with that. Reardless of the author’s intentions, it doesn’t come over as wank fodder. What attracts me in both the manga and the anime is the beauty of bodies in motion and the way it’s depicted for me stays on the right side of creepy. Your mileage may vary of course; I can well understand that for other people this is too fetishistic, too reminiscent perhaps of how some people look at you in real life.

Anti-Idol industry Idol story: Selection Project — Anime 2022 #006

Published on January 9, 2022Leave a comment

I have to admit, the ending of the first episode of Selection Project had me completely fooled. It seemed to be pointless drama, a cheap way to inject some tension into what seemed a foregone conclusion. As we follow our protagonist Miyama Suzune through the regional finals of the 7th season of the Selection Project, she seems to have it in the bag. We get flashbacks to her as a little girl stuck in hospital, listening to the winner of the first Selection Project, wanting to be an idol as well but knowing it’s impossible. We get to see her say goodbye to her family to go to the regional finals, where she meets up with the other candidates. It’s clear by the focus on her that she’s the best of the four candidates and will win easily. But then when she sang her song, this happens:

Our protagonist falls down while singing

I always dislike the sports anime gimmick of having your protagonist lose because of a conveniently timed injury. What’s worse, in the very next episode it was resolved by having the actual winner drop out and Suzune taking her place as the runner up. I did not understand why this was needed, why this plot development was necessary. That’s because I was treating it as a standard idol competition show, rather than what it actually was: an anti-idol industry idol show. A show where everybody wins, everybody is friends and everybody is an idol:

All the Selection Project finalists singing

Hang on, that sounds familiar. That sounds a lot like the Hibiki arc in PriPara season 2. In PriPara every girl could be an idol if she wanted to, until super idol Hibiki challenged that by arguing that no, only those with real talents should be idols and the rest should be content just watching it. And that’s exactly the attitude of a idol talent show like the Selection Project: there can only be one winner. And just like PriPara did, so too does Selection Project prove this attitude wrong.

9-tie in action

You know how these shows are supposed to work. With every new challenge, every new stage some candidates are supposed to drop out. But here this never happens. Everybody wins, everybody survives. Even when in the final stage the nine girls are forced to vote themselves who needs to drop out, it doesn’t work. They all get disqualified because they all vote for themselves. And not even this is the end: the girls form their own, independent idol group called 9-tie (cutie) and hold street performances until they get big enough for the Selection Project production company to invite them back to hold the finals as a group rather than as rivals. Yes, of course this is all a very idealised view of the industry, but it works.

Legendary idol Amasawa Akari

What gives this series its hear and why I should’ve trusted that Suzune’s convenient fainting was more than just cheap drama, is the relationship between her and Amasawa Akari, the idol who won the very first Selection Project. Akari died in a car crash three years ago and had been Suzune’s inspiration. For one of the fellow contestants though she was more than that, she was her sister. And Suzune has to team up with her, becomes friends and discovers just how much of Akari is in her. Suzune’s medical condition, the reasons why she was in hospital and how it still impacts her now, all are important and that convenient fainting was just the first hint of that. All of it is tied up with Akari and her younger sister and the way how is in hindsight very obvious, but again it worked.

Rough start but worth it: Maidragon S — Anime 2022 #005

Published on January 6, 2022Leave a comment

This is what I watched Kobayashi-san Chi no Maidragon S for:

Kobayashi-san Chi no Maidragon S, sequel to 2017’s Kobayashi-san Chi no Maidragon, is an important series for Kyoto Animation: the first broadcast since the arson attack that killed 35 employees in 2019, including first season’s director Takemoto Yasuhiro. The studio can be proud that even after this horrfying event they could still maintain the high quality of animation that it became know for. Watching it with the knowledge that some of the people who had worked on this or would’ve worked on this had instead died in a senseless attack made for a somewhat bittersweet experience.

What made Kobayashi-san Chi no Maidragon S difficult for me as well were the first two episodes, which introduced new dragon Ilulu. At the end of the first episode Ilulu gave Kobayashi a magical penis, which was one of the more annoying storylines from the original manga and not much better here. Therefore I stopped watching this when it was being broadcast after the second episode and only binged it a few days ago.

Once that was settled though this was once again more Maidragon goodness. With the cast now fully established, most of the episodes focused on the interactions between the various dragons, Kobayshi and their other human friends. Ilulu for example got a part time job at a candy store where she worked with the 16 year old grandson of the store owner and their interactions were both funny and sweet. We also got more insight in the history between Tohru and Elma, who turned out to have been friends in the other world, as well as the reasons why Tohru turned up in Tokyo in the first place. Most of the best episodes revolve around Kanna though, who is still as adorable as she was in the first series.

Magical realist slice of moe: Fuujin Monogatari — Anime 2022 #004

Published on January 5, 2022Leave a comment

I’ve never seen any anime with the same art style as Fuujin Monogatari. I’ve also never seen an anime which nailed how cats look and move as perfectly as this series does. Most anime are content with just moeblobs and some poor voice actor doing a bad imitation of a meow, but not this show. Just look at them. Those are cats with character.

Our protagonist Nao was on the roof to take pictures of clouds when she saw that cat jumping off the roof and catching the wind, surprising her so much she falls off herself. It would be a short series had she not survived this and she was indeed saved by the teacher, Taiki-sensei, walking the school grounds who, like the cats, turns out to be a wind user. Nao isn’t the only one who knows this; there’s Ryouko, who has a habit of feeding the cat Nao found on the roof and who has learned a bit about using the wind from Taiki-sensei. Together with Nao’s friend Miki, the only other member of the Digital Camera Club and her boyfriend Jun, they start experimenting with wind manipulation.

Fuujin Monogatari is basically a Slice of Moe/Cute Girls Doing Cute Things show with no real overarching plot. The girls practise their wind powers and go on small adventures in and around the school using them. The wind magic itself is never explained, it just exist and some people can use it, most cannot. In one episode for example the girls meet a bunch of elementary school boys who also have these powers and use it to play kick the can. The closest show it reminded me of was Flying Witch, which also grounds its magic in the more mundane world surrounding it. Where it differs is that the wind magic of this series is far more random than is usual for anime. Normally there would be some shadowy magical organisation, or the magic is rooted in Japanese folklore and mythology, but here wind control just happens to be something some people and cats can do.

What makes Fuujin Monogatari from a good into an outstanding anime is ultimately its unique art style. This might have worked with a more generic art style, but not half as well. It’s not glossing up a somewhat dull premise with a lick of style; it’s the integration of the art style with the story and the world it takes place in, the way it works so well to depict wind that makes this great. Like the best Shaft anime, you cannot separate style from function.

When mobile phones were hot: Keitai Shoujo — Anime 2022 #003

Published on January 5, 2022Leave a comment

Instead of me explaining what Keitai Shoujo is about, you might just as well watch episode one somebody has helpfully put on Youtube instead:

From 2007, from before the iPhone, when flip phones ruled Japan, comes Keitai Shoujo, literally “mobile phone girls”, a five episode six minute OVA series that’s basically a series of harem romance vignettes, but with texting. Strip the full sized opening and ending from each episode and you’re left with 31/2 minutes of ‘plot’, each of which revolves around our protagonist duo witnessing a scene involving yet another girl each episode. Some of those work, like the first episode in which the girl in question is already friends with the both of them and the plot revolves around the romantic tensions between the three of them. Some don’t, as in the very next episode in which the more desparate of the two friends saves a gloomy girl from falling down the stairs, then hits on her and gets shot down. Some episodes don’t even involve them at all, other than as witnesses to whatever the girl is doing this time.

A girl in traditional Japanese archery clothes is stretching a bow, her long black hair in a pony tail

Of the five featured girls I liked this one the best. I just like that archetype of the perfectionist, overly serious senpai; the yamato nadeshiko type. Nothing much is done with any of the characters though so all you’re getting out of any of them is their stereotype and associations from other anime. The individual stories are all decent enough and it could’ve been a decent sort of harem romcom had this been a proper series, rather than a series of shorts obsessed with text messaging. There’s also an epilogue, which repeats episode two for some reason and then contrives an ending for the series as a whole involving the mascot character only seen in the opening and ending. All in all this is interesting rather than good.