Anime – Page 67 – Wis[s]e Words

Day 4: He’s a working girl

Published on December 17, 2016Leave a comment

Shounen Maid

Airing in the same season as the series about the guy who adopts a wild boy from the forests of Canada and brings him over to Japan to groom him as his lover, you may be forgiven to think that Shonen Maid, about an elementary school boy who after his mother’s death gets taken in by his uncle to be his live-in housemaid, is more of the same. I certainly thought so and if not for a chance comment would never have bothered watching it. And then I would’ve missed a surprisingly thoughtful show about grief, family and memories among the light hearted comedy.

building a new family

So yeah, because anime Japan doesn’t have social services, Chihiro is taken in by his uncle Madoka after his mother dies, much to his surprise as she had never told him he had any relatives. Madoka is a fashion designer and a bit of an airhead, but luckily has his private secretary Keiichiro is there to keep him out of trouble. Chihiro learning to live with his uncle and his uncle with him is the engine of the series. Whereas Madoka is somewhat lazy, flighty and not very responsible (he keeps bringing stray cats home despite being deadly allergic to them), Chihiro is way too serious and responsible for his age and really into cleaning. And, loath as he is to accept charity from a family he didn’t know about until, well, the day his uncle came to pick him up, the solution his uncle comes up with is actually rather clever: let him clean his pigsty of a house in return for being taken care of.

Shounen Maid: Mother and sister

Together Chihiro and Madoka have to build a new family together and what binds them are the memories of Chiyo Komiya: Chihiro’s mother, Madoka’s sister. That’s the red thread that runs through all the light comedic mishaps. It gives Shounen Maid a light melancholic undertone whenever either of them is reminded of her. Apart from sharing memories & grief, Chiyo is also important in that she drives the overall plot (such as it is), first of course by dying, but also by having Chihiro slowly learn about and understand the reasons behind her estrangement from her family. The exact details, other than that she married and got a child with a man her father didn’t approve of, are never made clear, we just get a general impression. Her father interestingly is never shown in the series, just Chiyo’s mother/Chihiro’s grandmother who clearly feels regret, though again it’s never explicitly stated as such.

Of course most of Shounen Maid is still a fairly standard slice of life comedy, decent but not something that sticks in the memory if not for that infusion of melancholy. Because of that, it was one of my favourite series of Spring 2016, one I’d watch first on the day it came out.

This was day four of the Twelve Days of Anime Next: Aggressive Retsuko.

Day 3: Galko-chan and Rainbow Days

Published on December 16, 2016Leave a comment

Galko-Chan is a gyaru

I’m not nor have ever been a Japanese high school girl, so I can’t judge how true to life Oshiete! Galko-Chan really is, but at the very least it feels much more real than most other “cute girls doing cute things” series. Few other series have period pain as a plot point after all, or care enough about big boobs outside the standard jokes to talk about how hard it is to buy bras that fit. Even fewer feature a gyaru protagonist like Galko-chan and don’t portray her as a slut or a bitch. In fact, Galko is at heart a rather kind and motherly girl, always helping out her classmates. Her greatest sin is arguably staying up too late to finish an anime series and therefore coming to class late. Which gets the rest of the class thinking she’s been out all night sleeping around, a misunderstanding that crops up several times. Note however that the series itself never implies Galko is like this and always explains why she’s e.g. wearing a men’s shirt (having broad shoulders means those are more comfortable).

Galko-Chan: period pain as plot point

Each episode is only eight minutes long but packs a lot in these minutes. It’s all pretty standard slice of life stuff, mainly Galko and her friends Otako (the nerdy one), and Ojou (rich girl) hanging around the class room talking to each other. More often than not it’s Otako bringing up some bodily topic, as she seems obsessed with Galko’s figure. Not to mention that she likes to tease her, knowing how sensitive she can be about her body. She’s obnoxious to Galko in a way only close friends can be, but it’s much more natural than in other anime. Less groping, more embarassing somebody with the supposed size of her nipples, as well as more bonding over having to deal with period pain and whether to use pads or tampons.

Galko-Chan has a good range of body types

Another thing that makes Galko-chan stand out is the range of body types on display. Galko herself is big breasted and curvey, but there’s also Nikuko, the even bigger breasted but somewhat fatter girl on the left most, who despite her shape is rather athletic and has the nickname “Sonic Meat” for her speed. Otako, with the towel, meanwhile is the flattest and smallest of the girls, but not that much shoter than e.g. Ojo, behind her or he class rep at the right most. Most of these girls only have bit parts of course, but it’s still good to see so many non-standard character designs in one show. Oshiete! Galko-Chan is available on Crunchyroll and will only cost you an hour and a half to watch through, so why not try it?

Nijiro Days is a love story

Another short anime that exceeded my expectations was Nijiro Days, which had twentyfour episodes of fifteen minutes each to tell its story. Another high school slice of life / romance story, what sets it apart is that it is a straight romance story for once told from the boy’s perspective without it being a harem comedy. It revolves around a group of four friends, one of whom is dumped on Christmas day, and gets offered a tissue by “Santa” when he’s sitting feeling sorry for himself. It leaves such an impression on him he recognises her when she turns up at his school after break and he spents the series trying to become her boyfriend. Spoiler: he succeeds, but not without struggle. What I like is that all the angst that your average shoujo romance heroine suffers is here heaped upon this poor soul, while his friends are much more accomplished even as they struggle with their own love lives. The short runtime of each episode keeps things snappy, while still leaving room to flesh out the various characters. It’s available on Funimation.

This was day three of the Twelve Days of Anime. Next: Shonen Maid.

Day 2: trolling with PSO2: the Animation

Published on December 15, 2016Leave a comment

Phantasy Star Online 2: the Animation is not a good anime, but it is an interesting one. Because, well, you’d expect an adaptation of a science fiction MMORPG to be actually set in the game’s universe, don’t you? And indeed episode one opens with a sci-fi action scene, but then the opening plays and when we come back, it’s to that most ambitious and rare of settings, a Japanese high school. All that action before the opening? Just part of the PSO2 game two kids played on the bus our protagonist took to get back to “Seiga Academy”: the first of many many awkward scenes in which background characters enthuse about PSO2.

The plot only kicks in halfway through the first episode, after we’ve followed protagonist-kun going through his first day back at school routine. Student council prez above explains it: the student council has to create reports on PSO2 and protagonist-kun is drafted to provide them, being apparantly the only person in the school to have never played it or even have heard about it. All so we can have a lot of scenes of “duh what’s an MMO” or “gee, you mean I should be careful about mixing online and offline identities?” as he sets out to explore the wonderful world of Phantasy Star Online. So instead of a rousing sci-fi adventure, you get your basic slice of life high school series mixed with exciting scenes of people playing that sci-fi adventure. What saves it is that all of this is done so earnestly, so awkwardly, that it becomes funny again.

Stuco prez has an ulterior motive by the way: for some reason she fancies protagonist-kun and devised this blatantly transparant ploy to get him by her side. Which goes as far as dressing up like a robot and playing PSO2 alongside him to help him out. Turns out she’s not so good at hiding her identity though. It’s blatantly obvious to the viewer who she is from the start, while protagonist-kun ruins her grand revelation scene late in the series by quoting her own lines back at her. Stuco prez is about the only who likes him though: the rest of the school is pointlessly hostile to him from the start. security guards question his right to even be there, the student council itself is seething with jealousy and barely hidden anger at his sudden elevation and random classmates call him a pervert.

About twothirds through the series the show seems to realise it has to do something with the PSO2 universe and we get a plot about Darkers invading the real world, which actually had been building up in the background since the first episode. This is actually the least interesting part of the show, because it’s bogstandard sci-fi nonsense you’ve seen in countless other animes already, it lacks the bizarre touches the show put on the slice of life parts and it actually happens too late in the show to hve much impact. The parallel plot of the student council wanting to organise the cultural festival’s afterparty is much more interesting.

So should you watch Phantasy Star Online 2: the Animation? Of course not. In the end it’s still just an extended commercial for an online videogame that you’re not allowed to play anyway if you’re outside East Asia and the awkward stylistic choices made do not make up for this, just make it more amusing than if it had been a straight adaptation. But at least the ending is cute.

This was day 2 of the Twelve Days of Anime. Next time: Oshiete Galko-chan & Nijiro Days.

Day 1: let’s start again (with 12 days of anime Christmas)

Published on December 14, 20161 Comment

Cute girls doing cute things in New Game

There’s too much anime being produced. I should know; I’m watching all of it. Or at least a good portion, having gotten in the habit of watching seasonal anime as it streamed last year and currently have some 139 series listed for this year as watched, watching or planning to. But even that is only a drop in the ocean. There are over twohundred entries listed on MAL for each of the seasons this year. There’s overlap between seasons of course, but it still means that at any given moment you can watch anywhere between fifty to seventy new series. Even filtering out the obvious crap can leave you with say a fortyone series to follow this season, as may or may not have happened to me.

Cute girls holding hands in Hibike Euphonium

For all that variety though online discussion of shows seems to focus on only a select few. Currently it’s Yuri on Ice with a bit of Flip Flappers and Hibike! Euphonium 2 thrown in; before that Re:Zero or Mob Psycho 100. Before that, Erased or My Hero Academia. You’d expect that with so much choice discussion would be more broad, but instead it’s dominated by the series that “everybody” watched. Which means that a lot of deserving series end up slipping through the nets, watched but not discussed, or perhaps not even watched much at all for various reasons.

A catcher is like your wife in Battery

Case in point: Battery, last season’s Noitamina series, that got picked up by Amazon for their video streaming service back when they still thought all Noitamina series were like Kabaneri. Surprise, instead they got an eleven episode baseball story about a prima donna pitcher not fitting in with his new middle school baseball team and the catcher who tries to get him to change. I watched it and found it okay, noted the gay subtext (hard to miss when the show drives the pitcher/catcher relationship hard), but completely missed that it could be seen as being about growing up gay in small town Japan, as this sadly deleted Reddit post argued. That’s the sort of thing I like to see more off, discussion about not so widely followed series, new point of views.

Cute girls saving schools in Love Live Sunshine

And what better time to do that then during the allegedly traditional twelve days of anime Christmas? So that’s what I’ll be attempting the next twelve days, shining the spotlight on some undeservedly neglected series that aired this year and telling you why you might like them. But first, I’ll showcase a series that’s arguably better off forgotten, a series that only existed to promote a Japanese only MMO but which strangely got licensed by Crunchyroll anyway: Phantasy Star Online 2: The Anime. Look forward to it tomorrow.

Why you should watch PreCure

Published on November 15, 2016Leave a comment

‘Nuff said.

Futari wa Pretty Cure is the first series in the PreCure franchise, which so far has had one 48 to 50 episode series coming out each year since 2004. Each series stands on its own (with the exception of the occasional sequel) but follows the same formula: two or more young teenage girls encounter cute (but usually annoying) mascot animals who give them special powers to fight evil. They use their powers to fight increasingly powerful monsters while encountering various more mundane troubles in their daily lives, but through the power of friendship and the occassional flying kick overcome them, to ultimately triumph over the Big Bad pulling the strings in the background. A typical magical girl/mahou shoujo franchise, one which is incredibly popular in Japan but almost unavailable in its original form outside of it (at least in English speaking countries). You may however have heard of Glitter Force, which adapted one of the series into something supposedly more palatable to American tastes.

True, the PreCure series are aimed at kids and are rather formulaic plotwise: Pretty Cure has to overcome some everyday challenge or adversity, the monster of the week shows up halfway through, they fight and defeat them, cut back to their ordinary lives and the resolution of the problem they faced; rinse, repeat. Personally I don’t mind this, as the execution of this formula is done decently, the characters are likeable and there’s enough “candy” in the form of well executed fight scenes to keep me interested. Not something perhaps to sit down to watch for, but more than good enough to have on while still being able to do something else. And, as you can see, when the animators are on point, they’re on point, like Tatsuo Yamada here in these excerpts.

The original Futari wa Pretty Cure series is available on Crunchyroll (but not in the Netherlands!) while Glitter Force can be found on Netflix. Videos via Sakugabooru.