Anime – Page 27 – Wis[s]e Words

Let’s be boring and review the decade #12DaysOfAnime (1)

Published on December 14, 2019Leave a comment

Yes, it’s time for the Twelve Days of Anime Christmas again. This’ll be the fourth year I’m taking part and as it is the last month of the last year of the twentytens, why not be boring and do a year by year anime review? Maybe see what’s the best series of each year, of the decade, the best movies perhaps, all ranked among genres? That sort of thing? Though of course best idol of the decade has already been decided on.

All of this will at least be interesting for me, as I’ve only regularly started watching anime again in 2013/14 and only started watching seasonal anime in Fall 2015. Almost half the decade of anime I’ve only known as backlog, therefore having little to no knowledge of the fan discourse about the shows that aired through it. Looking at my library, there are more than 1500 titles that aired that I found interesting enough to list on MAL. Of those 1500, I watched slightly more than 1000. That’s a lot of anime to go through and it doesn’t even mention movies.

So tomorrow let’s start by looking at those far flung days of 2010. If you want to look at what other people are doing, take a look at the announcement post for this year. If you want to sign up yourself, here’s the Google docs spreadsheet.

Much less oishi than it looks like

Published on December 4, 2019Leave a comment

Aiura: the horny slice of moe anime

Published on November 23, 2019Leave a comment

After a hi-energy opening Aiura proper opens with a few lovely landscape shots, but it’s the first look at one of the protagonists that set the mood for the rest of the show:

Aiura: this anime really loves thighs

Horny.

Broadcast in 2013, Aiura is a short length (5:30 minutes) anime series, based on a four panel gag manga, about three high school friends hanging out and having meaningless conversations with each other. Just another slice of moe series, but for its running time. Short as it is, it’s even shorter than its runtime suggests. It has a minute long opening, a minute and a half long ending, another ending halfway through the episode which eats up another twenty seconds or so. In all, there’s only two and a half minutes for the actual show. The quality of those two and a half minutes though… For what’s largely a throwaway anime, this is really well done. The backgrounds are brilliant, the character designs are cute and the animation is very well done.

Aiura: this anime really loves thighs. And butts.

Four panel gag mangas are somewhat difficult to translate to anime, lacking an ongoing plot as they do. When done on autopilot, you just get a series of setup/setup/punch line/reaction jokes where you can almost see the panel borders. You need something to punch it up to make it work in anime. What Aiura brings is horniness. The original manga is significantly less horny than the anime. There’s little room in a four panel, top to bottom, usually cramped gag strip like this for the sort of shot as shown above after all, even had the mangaka been interesting in doing so.

The horny lens through which the anime has adapted Aiura helps keep it interesting. This could all have been static shots of high school girls talking to each other. Instead, we get shots like this, with one of the girls taking off her wet sock, lovely animated. You can see the animator likes their thighs, but the camera doesn’t leer nor do you have any of the bankrupt boob jokes you’d usually see in slice of moe series. All those slightly horny shots keep you interested while the jokes are being told.

Talk to me in your own words!

Published on November 15, 2019Leave a comment

Apparantly Hayami Saori recorded this scene for Inou Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de in one take:

Taking place at it does in the seventh episode of a fairly typical otaku bait anime series, it’s a scathing takedown of the whole chuuni mindset it otherwise celebrates. Fandom as a whole runs the danger of thinking itself more special than ordinary people, to use jargon and obsession with mythologies to gatekeep and this rant was a nice takedown of how silly it all is.

1 in 3 ain’t bad — First Impressions

Published on October 12, 20192 Comments

We got three new anime police procedurals this season and one of them is even watchable. Hey, one out of three isn’t bad, though as Terry Pratchett would point out, that’s only 331/3 percent. Of the two not worth bothering with, Stand My Heroes: Piece of Truth is just another pretty boys game adaptation only this time they’re cops instead of cake bakers or whatever. It lost my interest about five minutes in, when we only had distinguishable only by hair colour talking heads and nothing interesting happening. The other, Keishichou Tokumubu Tokushu Kyouakuhan Taisakushitsu Dainanaka – Tokunana is some “fantasy races are still around in modern times” urban fantasy nonsense, with no impact whatsoever on the plot of the first episode. Instead we get a gung ho rookie cop getting involved with a bank robbery and taken hostage and again I lost interest about 2/3rds through the show. Too dull to continue.

Babylon: a pharmaceutical police raid

Which leaves the third series, Babylon which released not just one, but three episodes already and which managed to keep my attention throughout. It does share some of the flaws of the other two, in that the animation quality, character designs and backgrounds are servicable at best. It makes up for it with an actually interesting plot, characters I want to follow and a judicious use of music, especially towards the end of the first episode. What’s more, the second episode went for some neat visual trickery in how it told its story, making what was otherwise a lot of people talking to each other again a lot less boring. As any Shaft series can show you, even the most mundane conversations can be livened up by making the animation more interesting. So while most of the episode consisted of Zen interviewing a witness intercut with him talking with co-workers about the case, stylised flashbacks as well as shots like the above helped keep the viewer’s interest up.

Babylon: interesting stylistic shots

Babylon starts with public prosecutor Seizaki Zen leading a bust of a pharmaceutical company suspected of having bribed some universities to provide overinflated claims for its medicines. This mostly entails sitting around reading dreary company documents for the first part of the episode. As often in this sort of story, an accidental discovery by his assistant alerts him to a bigger case, a more political case, involving an upcoming election. Things escalate quickly from there as Zen and his assistant use old fashioned police work to get to the bottom of the case, which unfortunately leads to tragedy. You can’t say Bsbylon doesn’t move quickly: by the end of episode three the villains are revealed, the stakes are made clear and Zen is well in over his head. All in all, it’s eminently bingeable.