Anime

The problem with almost every isekai story is that the first episode wants to bore you with all the unnecessary details of how their protag-kun managed to be reborn/transported/trucked into his new world. Around 40 Otoko no Isekai Tsuuhan understands that all you need to do is turn up the Strauss, do a almost dialogueless montage and let your audience figure it out for yourself:

The rest of A middle Aged Shopper in Another World is less impressive, reverting to the main isaki anime first episode, with the protagonist establishing himself in his new world. What sets him apart from other isekai series is that his cheat power is being able to use his favourite web shop in this new world, rather than being able to summon dragons or whatever. Which means that after he reaches civilisation, we follow him getting started as a merchant. In the process, because he gave her candy and drew her portrait, he also got to shag the cute maid from his local inn, which is the other thing that sets him apart from the usual sexless isekai protagonists.

This is the sort of series I like to watch weekly: nothing special but entertaining enough. The animation and designs are good enough not to be annoyed by it and this will make for a decent palate cleanser between more demanding series.

What’s the matter Mutsumi? Are you in despair about the state of Bang Dream: Ave Mujica‘ subtitles too?

I was honestly, no lie, so frustrated by the subtitles on the first episode that it has taken me until the second episode came out today to be interested in writing about it. I loved Bang Dream: MyGo, as you may have noticed and was looking forward to the sequel, but the way Crunchyroll once again handled the translation and subtitles almost destroyed any pleasure I had watching the first episode.

It is bad enough that the episode starts with a musical performance from Ave Mujica, completely untranslated so it looks impressive but I had no clue what they were singing. This is something that drives me up the wall with Crunchyroll, that they cannot be bothered to pay for the licensing rights to subtitle songs; the same has happened with the last couple of IdolM@ster shows too. I’ve given up hope for any streamers to put up the money to subtitle their shows’ openings and endings, but at least for a music/idol show, do translate the insert songs? They’re kind of important!

But things get worse. Because this first episode retells the story of how Crychic broke up from Sakiko’s point of view. What we saw in MyGo was her receiving a mysterious text, after which she disappeared from the band’s rehearsal sessions for weeks only to say she was quitting the band once she finally came back. Now here, finally, we get to see what triggered Sakiko — had Crunchyroll actually bothered to translate and subtitle them! Even if it wasn’t quite necessary to get the gist of it, it still vexes me that Crunchyroll just couldn’t be bothered. And currently there are no fansubs available either. At least episode two was less reliant on text messages to move the plot along, irritating me less.

Not that there was time to be irritated by Crunchyroll’s incompetence when the second episode was just non-stop blows hammering down on poor old Mutsumi. In MyGo she was the least defined member of Crychic, basically reduced to being a go-between for Soyo to contact Sakiko. Even then I felt sorry for her and the way she was treated by both: Soyo blaming her for the band breaking up, Sakiko for forcing her to be in her new project while seemingly taking her for granted. But I didn’t know how much I really felt sorry for her until these first two episodes of Ave Mujica. Episode one showed her role in the breakup and why she said what she said all the way in MyGo‘s first episode, while episode two has her dealing with the fallout from the previous episode. Spoiler: it doesn’t go well.

Mutsumi is the anti-Tomori. Both have difficulty communicating with others and are clearly on the spectrum in some way, both have to mask their true selfs to a certain extent, but where in Tomori’s case this draws people to her — Saki, Soyom, Taki, Anon, Raana — with Mutsuki it repulses them. Tomori has been hurt by people not understanding her, has internalised the idea that this is always her own fault, but she also has the resilience to keep trying to reach out while staying true to herself. When it’s important Tomori has been able to make herself hear and has been rewarded for it.

The same cannot be said for Mutsumi. Like Tomori she withdraws in her obsessions, guitar playing, growing cucumbers, but when she tries to use them to reach out to people, like Tomori with her bandaids did to Anon, she fails, as when she brings her cucumbers to MyGo to congratulate them in MyGo episode 12. Several times in Ave Mujica episode two she tries to talk, but she never succeeds, even as she gets cornered to the point of a breakdown. Nobody understands her or even tries to, not even her own band mates. They all impose their own vision of her on her and Mutsumi just does not have the strength to object to it. She has always been passive when we’ve seen her before, seemingly eager for somebody like Sakiko to tell her what she should do. But she has never been important enough for anybody to help her discover what it is she herself wants. Not like Tomori has had Taki and Anon and even Raana and Soyo.

Being Mutsumi is suffering.

Get you a senpai who is this obsessed with you joining her school club:

As a young child Hana watched a recitation contest on television and became fascinated by it to the point that in middle school she held regular reading sessions for the younger children of her small island. By chance the club president of the broadcasting club of her new high school catches one of those readings and decides she has to have her for the club. But Hana isn’t sure whether she can, even if she wants to…

This was a nice surprise. I went into this completely blind and got not just a nice, sweet first episode about a girl who’s afraid to let herself attempt the things she wants to do, but also a bit of cute flirting by her senpai. Mizuki is a lot more touchy feely than normal for an anime character and feels extremely lesbian coded? Short haired, strawberry blonde, wears ear piercings and when we first saw her she was in a pants and blouse combination. I’m not getting my hopes up that this will amount to anything, but it would be great if it did. In the meantime this seems like a nice, meaty school club story and I like that it’s not all girls in the club either.

The character design is on point and the animation is strong, especially the character animation. Mostly it quietly shunts along until we get to the climax, where it lets loose, showcasing Hana’s dramatic recital of her favourite poem with equally dramatic animation. This so far is my favourite premiere of the season.

I was good yesterday. Instead of watching the first two episodes of yet another boring isekai premiering this season, or the equally boring first episode of a mobile game adaptation, I rewatched the first three episodes of 1999’s To Heart.

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You don’t really get this sort of aspect to aspect mood setting scene anymore in anime, do you? Based on a Aquaplus romance simulator, To Heart is a nice little romcom centered on Hiroyuki, the guy at the end of the clip. Hiroyuki has a little bit more to him than the usual potato-Kun, even if his personality consists mostly of being helpful than any girl he meets (except for middle school friend Shiho) and wanting to sleep. But there isn’t that much romance in these first three episodes and they’re mostly told through other characters than him, mainly his childhood friend Akari, who very much has a crush on him, unlike Shiho, who sees him as her rival and a nuisance.

I first watched this years ago, in 2016 and thought it was good, but not that special. The only reason I started rewatching it was because various people I follow on Bluesky were talking about how good it was, independently from each other (for Bless it was his anime of the year, frex). Yes, I am easily influenced.

But I also did it because I wanted to get out of the habit of trying every bucket of slop that’s released in season and then continue to watch it out of habit. There is so much good good anime I still need to watch I’d really should start being more ruthless in culling the crap from my diet. Especially because there are a number of series on my backlog I really want to finish this year as I’m starting to feel guilty about them. In order:

1. Mazinger Z (1972), 54 out of 92 episodes to go:
   The super robot show that saved anime from being crushed by the Tokusatsu craze of the early seventies. A kids’ show, but one in which in the last couple of episodes I watched we see a bus full of innocent people being murdered by the bad guys, a plane blown up and crashed and similar violence. Started out episodic in a monster of the week format but starting to deviate slightly from the format in the last few episodes. Not really made to be binge watched which is the problem.
2. Kingyo Chuuihou! (1991), 28 out of 54 to go:
   A comedy series set in a school full of weirdos, done by the same staff who would go on to work on Sailor Moon directly afterwards. I started watching this a couple of years ago as part of a group watch but fell behind and stopped. The problem I have with it is that I like it when I’m watching an episode, but rarely find myself wanting to watch it. It is very funny but also something that I can only watch in small doses.
3. Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (1986), 42 out of 47 to go:
   The third series in the OG Gundam chronology, the problem I have is that it’s a) an incredible mood swing from the previous series and b) its protagonist is an even greater jackass than Kamille or Amuro ever were. I first started watching this in 2020 (!) and never got more than five episodes in, even restarting it last year didn’t work. Just never build up the momentum to get over my dislike of Judau.

There are many other series I started and need to finish, but those three are the most important ones. If I managed to finish any of them I’ll be happy.

I feel sorry for the unfortunate subtitler on this series:

Teruaki moved from Tokyo to Okinawa and has become besotted with his class mate Kyan, but there’s one problem. She speaks Uchinaaguchi, the indigenous language of Okinawa which almost entirely but not quite unlike standard Japanese. Luckily there’s his other classmate Hina who does understand her and translates for him. Which she doesn’t do out of the kindness of her heart but because she fancies him. Teruaki loves Kyan, Hina loves Teruaki and Kyan is just an adorable gremlin who seems to be rooting for her friend. An incomplete love triangle romcom that’s also about selling Okinawan culture to its audience.

But how do you represent one character speaking in basically another language on screen? Clearly thinking it was not enough to just have Kyan speak Uchinaaguchi, the Japanese production added subtitles for her as well. And at times these subtitles show both the original Uchinaaguchi as the Japanese translation, both of which the English translator also shows, the Uchinaaguchi done in romanji. Which means there are four different subtitles covering the screen. Not sure why the original subs couldn’t have been removed beforehand, but maybe they were hardsubbed into the master file? It makes watching this a lot more difficult than it could’ve been.

Apart from the subtitle issues this is a fairly unremarkable mix of romcom and tourist information; charming enough to continue watching though the gimmick started wearing thin already by the end of this first episode. The various explorations of Okinawan culture and behaviour also felt slightly patronising? Very much as made by outsiders to the island, enthusiastic and well intentioned perhaps, but not maybe that familiar with the culture to show more than the surface details of it. Having Teruaki, an outsider himself, as the main viewpoint character reinforces this. A series like this does probably need a character like this, as clueless as the audience presumably is about Okinawa, to have its culture explained to. Nevertheless currently the series treats Okinawan culture like a Slice of Moe show would treat a hobby like fly fishing and that grates.

You probably cannot expect a light and fluffy romcom like Okitsura to go into the colonial relationship between Japan and Okinawa, and the reasons why a young girl speaking Uchinaaguchi is extremely unlikely, but it does colour my perception of the show. Japan, not unlike the Netherlands, has a very rose tinted view of its own colonial past, to the point where it’s hard to recognise Okinawa (or Hokkaido for that matter) was once its own country. Even a ‘harmless’ comedy like this will be coloured by this. Personally, I can ignore this in favour of just enjoying the show, but I fully understand why somebody like Cy Catwell cannot:

It’s a shame that this is where I’m landing because I don’t think this is necessarily bad, but I think it’s uncomfortable. I think my lived experience in Japan and my lived experience as a second class citizen in my own home country have left me at odds with being able to igonre the potential for issues when it comes to colonizer student and colonized classmates. Maybe things will stay the course and the crush Teruaki has will fade into the background in lieu of more linguistics and exploration of his time in Okinawa. I have a sinking feeling it won’t, which is why I’ll be saying guburii sabira to my time with this show.