Anime

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.

What if you made a thoughtful, subtle, mature anime about somebody moving back into the family business after having spent a decade fruitlessly chasing his dream, make it about what it means to be family, about love and relationships and starting again, full of well thought out supporting characters but have it star this muppet:

Nagomu left his family’s Japanese sconfectionery shop in Kyoto to try his luck as a rock musician in Tokyo. Ten years on with success still eluding him, his fellow band members finally quit. Just as he’s feeling low he gets a care package of sweets from his mother, but included in it is a letter saying his father has been hospitalised. When he tells his girlfriend that he wants to go back home, she leaves him. Rushing home he finds out his father is already back at work and they really don’t need him. Instead they’ve ‘adopted’ Itsuka, an elementary school girl whose father abandoned her. Nevertheless, his mother believes that Nagomu could be a father figure for her and his ex-girlfriend still has feelings for him and has moved to Kyoto too.

Every other character in this series is realistic, subtle, somebody who you can believe could actually exist. But they’re all constantly undermined by somebody who thinks it’s a good gimmick to dress up as giant chestnuts to promote his band and kept doing so for ten years. Nagomu is the type of protagonist who is dumb and useless at doing anything, the type who cries when he has to sell one of his parents’ sweets because he hates to see them go. The type of protagonist who has heart but little else going for him, with a measurelessly irritating voice as well. Yet this dude managed to keep himself not only alive for a decade living alone in Tokyo, but also managed to keep his band going and score a girlfriend who honestly is way above his league?

It makes Deaimon a mixed bag. On the one hand this is a rare example of a series that looks at what it’s like to be an adult and realise you’re never going to make your dreams come true and finding peace with it. An anime that looks at becoming family and what it takes to be in your early thirties and having to remake your life. But it’s constantly undermined by the very anime! protagonist being an insufferable idiot. If you can stand that this is a great series.

It’s a Christmas miracle: an anime fantasy series with a town that isn’t a perfect circle!

S-Rank Monster no “Behemoth” dakedo, Neko to Machigawarete Elf Musume no Pet toshite Kurashitemasu (I’m an S-Rank “Behemoth” Monster, but I’m Living as a Pet of an Elf Girl, I’m a Behemoth, an S-Ranked Monster, but Mistaken for a Cat, I Live as an Elf Girl’s Pet) aka Beheneko is about a knight who reincarnated as a monster and for more information, reread that title above. Yes, this is very much another generic pseudo-isekai series, but it is one that seems that had a little bit more care put into it than normal. The mere fact that the city actually looks like a proper town is one example of this. Animation, design and setting are all a cut above the rest, even if the plot is still fairly standard.

All this really needed was for the cat and its elf girl master to be reasonably cute and it succeeded with both. This first episode was pretty much the usual one introductionary one, basically setting up the title (and indeed name dropping it at the very end). A nameless knight gets reincarnated as the S-class monster Behemoth, but he looks like a little kitten, has fun killing other monsters in the dungeon until he runs into a dragon and nearly gets killed. At which point the elf girl finds him, takes him home and nurtures him back to health. Visiting the adventurers guild she is accosted by a rapey co-worker, the cat saves her and they fight a duel which she and the cat wins. The one sour note in the whole episode was the guild master being an obnoxious gay stereotype.

On the whole though this very much looks like a nice, light show to watch week by week.