Anime – Page 46 – Wis[s]e Words

Megalo Box — First Impressions

Published on April 7, 2018Leave a comment

It’s the future. It’s not nice. And ordinary boxing is no longer enough to placate the jaded masses. We need super boxing:

Megalo Box: Super Boxers

Yes, that’s the way my mind works, that the first association Megalo Box would trigger for me would be a long forgotten, not very good 1984 graphic novel. But the setup is so similar Ron Wilson should’ve gotten royalties for it. You got your cranked up boxing, your mildly dystopian future where cooperations rule the world, an underdog hero from the wrong side of the tracks who would be the best at megalo boxing if he could enter the ring legally instead having to fight in fixed, illegal fights. Even without that particular association this is far from an original story, but the difference lies in the execution. Because hot damn, is this done well.

Megalo Box: real weight to the fight

Just look at that. There’s a real heft and weight to those punches, a meatiness that shows that these jabs can do real damage if they land. Also look at the faces, not your normal featureless, smoothed out high school faces. They actually have real noses, not just a modest indication of where a nose would be on a real person. When they get hit or injured, you see the damage it does. That level of detail and grittiness carries over outside the ring as well. I have no problems with modern television anime, but this is what anime looked like when I first started watching it.

Megalo Box: Junk Dog

Junk Dog makes for an interesting protagonist, even though he’s very much a cliche: underdog fighter from the streets with ridiculous but unrecognised talent. For a start, when he’s asked why he’s not entering the Megalonia tournament that will be driving the plot of the series, he says that it’s “open for all citizens”. And since he doesn’t have a citizen ID, he therefore cannot enter. It’s new for anime to have an actual undocumented citizen as its hero and it’s equally rare for the protagonist to be a person of colour, as Junk Dog seems to be. The setting is left somewhat undefined but seem vaguely South-West America to me, with a lot of the secondary characters looking Mexican or Latinx. It’ll be interesting to see if the series does anything with this.

Lupin III Part V — First impressions

Published on April 4, 2018Leave a comment

In the first episode of the latest Lupin III series, Lupin travels to France, the land his grandfather came from, to hack into the dark web data centre of an underground drugs & weapons market called Marco Polo, rescue the hacker genius imprisoned there and steal all their bitcoin, so in revenge they turn him into a meme game and:

Lupin III: everybody is a cop now

In case you worried Lupin would be a bit anachronistic in the modern digital world. Like everybody else I came to Lupin through The Castle of Cagliostro, which on rewatch recently turned out to be half a proper Lupin adventure, awkwardly welded to half a Miyazaki Hayao movie. The original tv series came out in 1971, three years before I was born and this is the fifth instalment, the most recent one coming out in 2015, set in Italy. There have also been several more movies, an annual television special and multiple crossovers with Detective Conan. As this one is set in France, we get a Frenchified version of the classic Lupin III opening theme:

This first episode was rather tasty. Which may be expected from the first episode of a new Lupin series, showing off Lupin and pals for new audiences and old fans alike, culminating in a set piece caper and inevitable chase scene. But the quieter moments looked good too and there was a real sense of place to the episode. This felt like the real France (though romanticised) in more ways than just having an accordion playing during the opening. It helps that the backgrounds are utterly gorgeous too:

Lupin III: gorgeous backgrounds

I really like the direction the Lupin series have gone in by setting each series in another country. The previous series made full use from being set in Italy and I hope the same goes for this one. With this strong an opening episode my expectations are high. One things both series have also in common apart from their foreign setting is the introduction of a new female foil for Lupin. In Part IV it was Rebecca Rossellini, heiress and businesswoman who was love interest, partner in crime and friendly rival all at the same time. Here it’s this woman:

Lupin III: Ami

She’s Ami, the hacker Lupin set out to “steal” and her introduction is perhaps the best scene in the episode. We only get glimpses of her moving through the fog, until Lupin (in disguise) hugs her and claims to be her father, which she immedaiately sees through as she pulls her gun on him. Now, because this is Lupin, she does pull her gun out of her panties, not wearing anything other than that and a shirt and that particularly sequence is suspiciously well animated. One of those things you either like or put up with when watching Lupin. Personally I don’t mind this sort of fanservice here because it fits with Lupin’s brand of blokey escapist fantasy. And while an Ami or a Fujiko might be there as lust object, they at least always have agency.

Uma Musume — First Impressions

Published on April 3, 2018Leave a comment

How can you not like a series where a girl is running late for school and instead of the inevitable toast hanging out of her mouth as she runs it’s a carrot, because she’s a horse girl?

Uma Musume: late for school

Yes, this is a series about horse girls, girls born with the soul of a race horse from another world, who are “born to run” and go to special schools were they learn about horse racing. And this is the protagonist, Special Week. She’s from Hokkaido, where she was raised by her mother but had no other horse girls to race with. Now she has made her way to the big city, to the country’s best horse girl school to become the best horse girl in Japan. From the two episodes of Uma Musume released so far, for all the strangeness of the core idea it’s a remarkable straightforward sports story. We got our inexperienced, naive newcomer with raw talent, her senpai she looks up to who turns out to be her roommate and part of the same time as well as remarkable nice and there’s the rival team with a different philosophy to overcome.

Uma Musume: Special Week has two mums

In the second episode it’s revealed that Special Week has two mums: her biological mother, who died giving birth to her and the mother who raised her as a horse girl. Her first mum made her second mum promise to raise her into the best horse girl in Japan, which is why Special Week is so driven. On the one hand having the series be so matter of fact of her having two mothers is great, but it’s somewhat undercut by having one of them die immediately. Seeing the training montage scene with the surviving mum trying her best to train her right was hilarious though.

Uma Musume: sexual assault: just say neigh

Less hilarious was Special Week being felt up at the racing track in the first episode. She’d gone to watch the races live for the first time, when somebody felt up her legs from behind. This was of course all intended to be a joke about how trainers examine actual horse legs, complete with the requisite kick by Special Week that sends him flying. It’s still obnoxious though, still sexual harassment as a joke. Fortunately it seems to have been a one-off. In general this is a nicely cheerful series that takes a dumb idea and makes it work.

Winter 2018 anime roundup

Published on April 2, 2018Leave a comment

Winter 2018: cosy as fuck.

Yuru Camp: Secret Society BLANKET spreads its influence further

The two best series this season for me were Sora yori mo Tooi Basho, which shouldn’t surprise anybody reading this, and his, Yuru Camp, which was the coziest of all the super cozy shows this season. It was great to have so many great shows that you could wrap around yourself like a comfy blanket during the bleakest months of the year, when Christmas is just a memory and spring is still so far away. These two shows especially were a great antidote against the winter blues, but there were others.

Mitsuboshi Colors: kill the police (with rocket launchers)

Mitsuboshi Colors was another highlight of the season, a show about three little girls protecting their home town, getting up to mischief and shouting poop a lot. Well, only one of them does to be honest. Coming out on Sundays as it did, this was always a good way to end the weekend. I find myself not laughing at most anime humour, but this series made me laugh out loud multiple times each episode. It’s not just that it has good jokes, it’s that the jokes flow naturally from who those girls are: the crybaby, somewhat anxious leader, the cheerful, energetic poop shouter and the always gaming brainy of the three, who’s actually bad at gaming. They get into those huge adventures based on complete misunderstandings that’s very much like how real kids that age think.

Kokkoku: the importance of family

Kokkoku is not cozy at all, but a supernatural horror thriller. It’s the best of all the edgy thriller series —Killing Bites, Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens, Garo— that ran this season, but what makes it special is the protagonist. Yukawa Juri is a graduate looking for a job at the start of the series, fed up with her hopeless family. Said family is an unicum in anime, being a multigeneral, working class family when most anime families are comfortably middle class at worst. Her father is unemployed and has given up looking for a job, her mother works as does her older sister, who is also a single mother, having gotten pregnant with no intention to marry the father. Her brother is a NEET while her living in with them grandfather is retired and the most sensible of the adult men. Which leaves her nephew, who is described as the last hope for the family. So when he’s kidnapped and they have only an hour to get the ransom money, granddad bust out the family secret: the ability to stop time. It’s mostly Juri and her granddad taking the initiative and Juri especially grows through the fight to save her nephew, in the process bonding closer with her family. It’s not perfect, because it has a shitty, fanservice ending theme that has nothing to do with the actual show and the first few episodes are filled with random thugs threatening to rape Juri if they catch her, but its good points outweighted the bad for me. And the opening is crazy good.

Koi wa Ameagari no You ni: Tachibana Akira

You may be forgiven for having skipped Koi wa Ameagari no You ni as it seemed to be about the one side love of this girl, Tachibana Akira for her fortyfive year old manager at the family restaurant she works for part time. Throughout the series there was this anxiety that this crush would morph into a genuine romance between the two, that it would become creepy propaganda for the idea that it’s perfectly normal for a fortyfive year old man to have a relationship with a teenager, not to mention he’s her boss too. Luckily though it never did; instead this was a story about two broken people finding some level of support in each other and getting their lives back on track. Akira herself had an achilles heel injury that stopped her from running track, getting to grips with her injury and the possibility of getting back to running, while her manager, Masami Kondou, used to be a writer in college and one of his friends is actually a succesful author, so he has to deal with his frustrations and regrets in not being able to do the same. Though the story is nominally about Akira, it’s actually Kondou whosee development is centered the most. A somebody who has been thirtytwo for a while now, I can appreciate this.

Hakumei to Mikochi: so too a couple

Despite being disappointed in the series vehement denial that its two main characters are a couple, I really liked Hakumei to Mikochi. There was something very comforting in watching the small adventures of these little (nine centimetres) women every Friday afternoon after work had finished for the week. The world they live in is one of grumpy construction foreman weasels and moe beetles wanting to see what life in the big city is like, where there are steam trains but no electric lights, a sort of non-distinct past of just enough technology to be cozy. It’s the perfect series to relax with.

There are many more anime I’ve watched this season and liked, but these are my top five of the season, other than Sora yori mo Tooi Basho.

Time for a victory lap — Yorimoi ep 13

Published on March 28, 2018Leave a comment

It’s only fitting that Sora yori mo Tooi Basho would keep its most important event for the last episode:

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho: penguin love

That’s right, Shirase finally gets to spend quality time with penguins. Even if they stink. She deserves it, after all heavy emotional shit of episode twelve. In that respect the final episode is more of a victory lap than anything else. The series did what it set out to do and did it perfectly, everything what happens now is gravy. But of course as this is the final episode and the four have to go back to Japan, it’s also a bittersweet, melancholy farewell to Antarctica for them and for us.

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho: not so cute anymore

The episode starts with Kimari and Hinata on day duty, in a montage of routine jobs that show how well the four of them have been integrated into the expedition. As the woman complains above, they were so cute when they first came over and now look at them. They’ve grown up, though in Shirase’s case she’s grown up to be an absolute demon of a mahjong player.

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho: do we have to leave

During one of their last outings, Kimari gets a bit melancholy and asks why they have to leave now, why they couldn’t stay over for the winter. In a normal anime this would be the conflict driving this episode, especially since we had Yuzu, Hinata and Shirase all confronting their own personal demons and overcoming them, so it’s only fair for Kimari to get her turn. But with Yorimoi it isn’t necessary, because Kimari in many ways is the most stable of the four, having already achieved her goal of making the most of her youth by going on the expedition. So here it only takes a finger flick of Hinata to set her straight again.

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho: baseball

So instead we get a spot of baseball, without which seemingly no anime series is complete. And it’s the unstoppable pitcher Gin pitching to Shirase, daughter of Takako, the only person to have ever hit her throws. And of course Shirase manages as well. It’s a warming scene, another victory lap.

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho: symbolic haircut

And then we get another haircut, as in the previous episode, but now it’s Shirase who gets hers cut, not by Kimari thank you very much. It’s of course very much symbolic of letting go of the past and the passions that drove her. And of course it reminds Gin of Takako, who had the same brilliant, dazzling smile as Shirase now sports.

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho: crying at saying goodbye

Just in time for the official farewell party for our four high school girls and you’re not crying, they’re crying. But they’re happy tears and it’s a sentiment I very much share. The summer expedition was a success, as was the experiment to take the four on the trip, everybody has overcome their personal demons and even if they’d never meet up again they’ve forged a true friendship between the four of them. It’s a happy ending, their stories told, now they just need to get home.

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho: auroa

As they leave, Shirase hands Gin her mother’s laptop, having no need for it herself. It’s a gesture that shows how much they’ve grown towards each other. When they prepare for a final broadcast aboard the ship taking them out from Antarctica, Shirase is back to her nervous, stiff self. Until Kimari looks up and sees the last thing they wanted to see. The aurora. Meanwhile, over at the expedition base, Gin looks at Takako’s mail and sees one message left in her outbox, a message from three years ago, and she sends it on to Shirase. It was the last time in the series that I felt the tears coming up again. It should’ve been corny, too on the nose, but the series has earned it.

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho: auroa again

Finally, after everybody has gone their own way, Kimari has gotten home, been welcomed by her family and texts Megu-chan, her best friend, who tried to break up with her in episode five. It’s then that the series plays it final troll, as Megu-chan reveals that she’s not there, but actually in the Arctic! A fitting end for a great, emotional series that was as funny as it was cathartic. Unlike Yuru Camp, there’s no need for a second series, as it told the story it wanted to tell, but boy would I love to see those characters again. Ten/ten, best anime of the season, if not the year.

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho: treasure