First Impressions – Wis[s]e Words

Three cheers — Na Nare Hana Nare — First Impressions

Published on July 17, 2024Leave a comment

Na Nare Hana Nare opens with a great looking cheerleading performance that sets the tone for the rest of the show:

An original cheerleading anime done by P. A. Works of all people, with the director, Kakimoto Koudai and writer, Ayana Yuniko, having also worked on MyGo in the same roles. The series even opens in a similar way, with a big incident that happened some time ago, as shown above; the the opening credits roll and we’re in the present dealing with the fallout. In this care it was Kanata, a first year at a school famous for its cheerleading club, the girl launched into the air when the accident happened, who still seems to suffer some sort of trauma from it, even if she wasn’t directly involved. Na Nare Hana Nare is a lot cheerier handling this than MyGo was however.

Anna kisses Kanata on the cheek at her first meeting. Kanata is shook.

But about as gay.

That’s Anna from Brazil kissing Kanata because that’s what they do over there apparently, though usually not with complete strangers. They only met because both were following Obunai Suzuha, a student from what turns out to be a very sort of gokigenyou young ladies school — literally called Ojou Girls — who commutes by doing parkour. Anna is interested in her because she wants her to start in the videos she’s making together with her friend, Nodoka, who’s slightly less outgoing. What I like about Anna is she doesn’t talk in the usual highly accented Japanese foreigners get saddled with in anime, but does actually struggle sometimes to find the words she needs. Nodoka so far has been the least developed of the characters, mainly trying in vain to slow down Anna a bit.

Shion sitting in front of Megumi in her bed

Rounding out the cast are Megumi, a childhood friend of Kanata who did cheerleading with her in middle school but got an undefined illness in her last year that left her in need of physical rehabilitation and unable to attend high school. She’s also friends with Shion from the same school as Suzuha, who is a talented gymnast. So we got half a dozen girls, each with their own talents, who obviously are going to do some sort of cheerleading together, but not quite yet. I really like each of the characters and it will be interesting to see how the series develops. The animation is on point as expected from P. A. Works and the little details like Anna struggling with her vocabulary or Megumi having to come to grips with her slow rehabilitation make this extra special.

Cringe comedy at its finest — Make Heroine ga Oosugiru — First Impressions

Published on July 14, 2024Leave a comment

When you go to a family restaurant to read the latest romance novel you’re into, see a classmate get dumped in front of you and then see the most cringe of down bad scenes play out in front of you as she drinks his leftover cola to get that indirect kiss and worse — you make eye contact:

Make Heroine ga Oosugiru (Too Many Losing Heroines opens strong and even better, continues to be funny as Nukumizu Kazuhiko gets further involved with the girl he watched being dumped by her childhood friend for the transfer student he only knew since last May. Nukumizu may want to have nothing to do with her, but Yanami Anna thinks otherwise. Being neither a friend nor acquaintance she can vent to him without embarassment. Nukumizu has no choice but to put up with it, as she owns him money for the food he bought her after he caught her slurping her crush’s leavings. Which she intends to pay back by making lunches for him every day.

Anna being hugged by the pink haired Karen as her crush looks fondly on and she is struggling to get loose

Anna is trapped in a manga romcom, with her crush Sosuke and Karen his girlfriend see her as their dear (not deer) friend who they want to keep hanging out with as if nothing has changed. Hell for Anna of course and an indirect taste of hell for Nukumizu as he has to listen to her telling him about it. As a viewer though it was hilarious. Both the voice acting and character animation are on point and it’s such a relief to get some competent cinematography as well. This whole episode was an excellent balancing act between the humour in the absurd situation both find themselves in and the ongoing romcom they’re reacting to. As kViN put it on Twitter:

This is a series with two sides that work surprisingly well together: one that’s irreverent and toys with genre conventions, but another one that’s unashamedly in love with the concept of romcoms.

Make Heroine ga Oosugiru works because it’s not afraid or disdainful about being an anime romcom while making fun of its cliches. I actually like it better than the source manga, which wasn’t as funny to me. The only thing that bothered me here were the multiplying bowties on the girls’ uniforms. Even for anime school uniforms they make no sense.

Close but no Kill Me Baby — Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan — First Impressions

Published on July 10, 2024Leave a comment

To be honest, I sort of knew who the Shinsengumi were — late 19th century fascistoid thugs who for some reason are very popular BL fodder — and I assume the Tama river is the one in the background here, so this sort of mangled allusion in my subtitles doesn’t bother me. I’ve watched too much fansubbed anime and read too many scanlations to even notice this sort of thing anymore:

School girls apparently crossing the Tama river, smiles as pure as shinsengumi troopers

But it is indicative for the quality of the subtitles, when one of the first things you see is an unaltered reference not too many people outside of Japan will understand. It and similar references, as well as a fair few misspellings as well as typeset errors, with words running into each other e.g. showed that whoever had translated this, had done the bare minimum with results barely above machine translation quality. Subtitles which apparently were forced on Crunchyroll by the Japanese distribution company Remow, also involved with last season’s Ooi Tonbo! whose subtitles were not great either. All of which has overshadowed Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan‘s premiere quite a bit. And this for a series with a lot of hype behind it: “the new Lucky Star or Nichijou” it was supposed to be. Now completely hobbled by being too cheap to get proper translators involved.

Nokotan making her entrance into the classroom, her antlers too big for the door, destroying the wall

It all starts when Koshi Torako, former deliquent turned perfect student at a prestigous high school, finds a girl hanging by her antlers from the powerlines at the side of the road. She rescues her and hopes never to see her again but guess who turns up as a new transfer student? Shikanoko Noko — call her Nokotan — makes a devastating impression entering the classroom, but Torako is the only one who finds anything strange. That of course Nokotan sits next to her is bad enough, but she also sniffs out — literally — Torako’s deliquent past. What will this do for her carefully cultivated reputation?

Yes, poor old Koshi Torako — Koshitan as Nokotan immediately calls her — is stuck being the straight man in a zany comedy in which Shikanoko is the agent of chaos ruining her life. A tried and true concept for a comedy anime, but does it work? Not quite for me. It all feels a bit try hard and artificial. There were a few good jokes that landed in this first episode but nothing as funny as the choco cornet discussions that Lucky Star opened with.

No overdrive, just undercooked — Highspeed Etoile — First Impressions

Published on April 21, 2024Leave a comment

It’s a bold strategy to start off your first episode emulating the most boring bits about Formula One. Let’s see if it pays off.

Some racing cars trying to overtake each other

Spoilers: it didn’t.

It didn’t because the people involved with Highspeed Etoile seem neither to know nor care about how to make a race look interesting. This is no Initial D. There’s no sense of speed, no tactics or strategy at play here. There’s just the King and Queen, who, the commentators tell us, have been number one and two whole season with nobody else getting a look in, and they’re just faster and that’s it. The only real tactic on display during the two races in episode one and two is that the Queen has a team mate who cuts off anybody who tries to overtake him in third place, so that she can fight her battle with the King in peace. That does not for interesting racing make, having all the competition stuck behind you having to ride the Dick train.

Richard is keeping all the other cars in a single file behind him.

It’s not inherently a bad idea to introduce your cast and setting through a race: gets the adrenaline pumping, gives you some idea of who these people are through how they race, uses the commentators to inclue you on the strategies used and background of the race. Initial D did it all the time even with terrible nineties animation and CGI. But here it just feels like toy cars running on a toy track with no sense of personality for either the driver or the car. There’s no weight to it. I thought that maybe things would’ve improved with the second episode when I sat down to watch it this morning, as that finally introduced the actual protagonist, but most of the episode consisted of similar dull racing as the first. Worse, said protagonist turned out to be such a rookie that she didn’t realise she was lapped by the race leaders! I understand making her the underdog outsider, but this was just embarassing.

Yankee with a heart of gold — Wind Breaker — First Impressions

Published on April 7, 2024Leave a comment

No better protagonist for a yankee anime than a guy who has no problem beating up half a dozen thugs only to get blushy and tsundere when their victims thanks him:

It's not like I saved you or anything!

Yankees are what Japan calls a certain kind of teenage criminal: violent, engaged in petty crime, but usually with some code of honour guiding them, thought his of course is more usual in fiction than real life. Managa and anime have always had a soft spot for these people, so aggressively doing their own thing in a society that values conformity above almnost anything else. Sakura is the perfect protagonist for this sort of series. Slightly dumb, overtly focused on violence as a solution to all his problems. Not sadistic, just obsessed with proving he is the strongest as the only way he can get any respect. Having always been judged a criminal, up to no good because of the way he looks, he felt he had no choice but to fight to earn his place int he world.

A crowd of shadowy figures is looking at the camera calling the protagonist gross

All of which is revealed or implied in the very effective first minute and a half of the episode, where Sakura is walking a metaphorical tightrope as he recalls the disgust and anger of his class mates, teachers and family. No wonder he wanted to transfer to the worst school in Japan, a school with a reputation as yankee heaven, where he can fight as much as he pleases to become the strongest. Reality turns out to be slightly different however, because somebody already had gone through this story two years ago and they reformed the school to the point where the juvenile deliquents now guard the peace in the city. As the women he rescues tells him, this means that he will never reach the top, as he’s alone. But alone is what he has always been, so he doesn’t understand what she’s trying to say at all.

Sakura is carrying around enough psychological baggage to make for a satisfying protagonist and that other necessary element for a yankee series, the extreme but stylish violence is also tackled. The fights here operate on the kung fu movie principle, where mobs of adversaries politely wait their turn to be beaten one by one by the hero. There is however some element of realism in these fights: when a sneak attack gets Sakura cut on the ankle, the wound does debilitate him enough that he momentarily cannot defend himself.

I really liked this first episode; I always love a good yankee series and this looks to be an excellent one.