Last week it was a certain mangaka’s birthday. Okayado is best known for being the creator of Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou, a series that has a surprising level of popularity outside of Japan compared to inside. At least to the point where foreigners on Twitter were expressing their birthday messages before anyone in Japan.

So let’s talk about Monmusu for a bit here. The anime adaptation aired earlier this year and was pretty much a faithful adaptation of the source material. Yes, that even included the chapters where Miia sheds her skin and Papi lays an egg. So what is it about a series that revolves around monster girls falling in love with a main character whose actual name is only said once that draws people to it.

The first thing that sticks into my mind is that it is based on a hopeful outlook on humanity. Suddenly the world is filled with non-humans that are trying to integrate into society where they lived a secret existence before, and for the most part everything is fine. MC-kun has to punch a guy in the face for mocking Miia and that cameraman was a terrible human, but otherwise it’s a pretty seamless transition for society.

However, when one takes a slightly deeper look at the premise of the series, it really is about a special group of people trying to gain legal recognition. For as much as there are rules in the Japan of Monmusu regarding contact between humans and monsters. MC-kun, though, is going to be allowed to marry one of them as a trial balloon for full integration.

Actually, it’s probably not about that at all. It might just be a series that is about attractive girls being put in perverted situations that are only enhanced by the fact that more things are possible if the girls aren’t completely human. I mean, that would be the easy thing to say about Monmusu. Yet, I can’t really buy into that.

Each episode’s ending card featured information on the types of races that are in the Monmusu universe. Most of those featured do not make an appearance in the show at all, but it does show that there was a great amount of research put into adapting monsters of legend and popular culture into the context of a harem series set in modern Japan. Miia may be a lamia, but here are the other types of snake monster girls that exist and what makes them different. That’s the sort of information that is made available.

I think most of all and probably what I should have started with is that it’s simply a fun and light-hearted series. Miia, Rachnera, Mero, Suu, Papi, Centorea, Lala and the rest of the monsters might be nothing more than fanservice characters for some, but the world they inhabit has very little in the way of evil. It’s really just daily life with interesting girls.

Originally a Youtube sketch comedy short series, Peeping Life made its first full-length TV series appearance this past season. Using CG rendered characters and characters from various Tatsunoko Pro series of the past, along with some originals, this series was something different from pretty much anything else this year. If anything, it at least had the best opening animation of the year.

There are a couple of segments from Peeping Life I want to talk about here. The first is Good Buy Shopping, in which a TV salesman tries to pitch useless overpriced items and is always hindered by a guest who goes against his ability to sell merchandise. The best one is the first version of the segment.

In this one the title character from Triton of the Sea (notable for being Tomino’s directorial debut back in 1972), is depicted throughout the show as being an out-of-shape shell of his former self who likes to sumo.  The salesman of the series, Sorinouchi Go, is trying to pitch a copy machine to the audience. It’s ludicrously over-priced and Triton lets him know that. Then Triton tries to sumo the copy machine then Go himself. Finally, he just asks the question of why any household would need a copy machine before attempting to forcibly photocopy the host’s face, because why not? It’s a lot funnier than my description of it to be honest.

The other segment I wanted to talk about took up 3/4s of the 7th episode called Quiz Renaissance. This is really going back to the show’s roots as it is essentially a Youtube quiz show hosted by real life Youtube personality (I kind of hate that this is a thing) MEGWIN. He has Black Jack, Sapphire and Yatterman #2 as his guests, for a show that is essentially them drawing what he says they have to. They are all really terrible and it plays out with the host getting increasingly agitated at how bad they are, even throwing paper at the contestants because they are so bad.

It’s rather cliche at this point to watch an anime after reading the manga and come out disappointed with the former. Last year it was Trinity Seven which I was slightly hyped up for and the adaptation was so bad that I sort of gave up on the manga too. This year’s play on that theme is Jitsu wa Watashi wa… a manga about a bunch of supernatural idiots that are in a romantic harem comedy.

I’d argue that Jitsu wa isn’t actually that bad of a series. It has its good moments (everyone cooking bad food for Akane as she is directing an asteroid towards Earth) and its bad (the character designs are far too generic) to work. Overall it’s a 7 out of 10 for me. Not something that I would recommend, though unlike Trinity Seven I am continuing to read the excellent, if crude looking, manga.

I say that because there is another manga adaptation I’m looking forward to early next year in Dagashi Kashi. At least it appears that Feel, the studio making the adaptation, have paid respect to the character designs of the source. It will still be hard to not get nervous about these adaptations since it feels like I’ve been burned a few times. I don’t really want the solution to simply be to be completely ignorant of source material.

It’s been a rough year for manga adaptations that I had read before the anime aired. Only the lowly Komori-san wa Kotowarenai which I felt was mediocre was an improvement over the manga. I hope it does get better in the new year.

Like Peeping Life that would air late in the year, Tesagure! Bukatsumono had a third season that was the first to be broadcast to a larger audience. The show itself is part of a trend of series that are really little more than voice actresses engaging in normal conversation only they do so in character. What makes shows like this work is the ability to allow the audience in to their inside jokes and references and use them at a later time. Also, referring to another voice actresses in the context that they are voice actresses works well too.

So Tesagure! Bukatsumono, though technically this is a spinoff with another group of characters from Sharamu (which is really completely irrelevant other than adding more characters), is a series set at a high school about a club that spends its time talking about creating or changing other clubs. The characters drawn for a particular segment will talk about a topic, then in this show’s twist they have to ad lib.

Sometimes this heads into completely unexpected directions. The youngest character of the original group, Koharu, developed a trend for coming up with answers that always involve ikemen. There’s also a little conversation this season that involves the character Tomomi and how she is not around very often, which is a thinly veiled reference to her voice actress Uesaka Sumire being too busy doing other work.

Actually on that point, I think my favorite parts of the 3rd season that aired this season were all related to the scheduling of the voice actresses. The penultimate episode opened with the fact that none of their schedules matched up and they had to record the group opening separately. That was also my favorite episode as it was really nothing more than messing around with the earlier episodes by re-doing them in different styles.

I’m still out on whether this is a trend that is worth continuing, but the existence of different content is better than it not existing.

The late-90s were an interesting time for anime. This wasn’t an era when everything that was airing and all that came before it were bad. This was near the end of a period in Japan that would be called The Lost Decade due to economic stagnation. The animation industry, which by its own standards doesn’t have a lot of money, had even less money flowing around than normal.

By the summer of 1999, the selection of anime currently airing was in a strange state. Generally there were three different types of shows; the types of child-friendly series that celebrated cultural traditions, a 2nd type that was the exact opposite in celebrating sex and debauchery (eroge adaptations were now a thing) and finally a third group that was really about adapting to what the world had become. The Legend of Black Heaven definitely fits in to the latter category.

The series itself has a bit of a strange premise. If I were to simplify it down as much as possible, it would be this: A tired salaryman is drafted into an intergalactic war so that he can relive his younger days of playing in a heavy metal band. So this is really a high-concept series, but that doesn’t mean that this can’t also be art.

The protagonist of The Legend of Black Heaven is Tanaka Oji. About 15 years before the start of the series, he was in a band called Black Heaven where he was the lead guitarist who went by the name Gabriel. In the present day, he has his wife Yoshiko and son Gen, and the mementos of his youth are slowly being dwindled away. Yoshiko throws away Oji’s last remaining guitar, a Gibson Flying V. He is at the start of the series, just a husk of a man who is just living according to set routines where nothing exciting happens.

Then, into his office steps a new co-worker Layla Yuki. She is something different to say the least. With the blonde hair, green eyes and red-framed eye glasses it would be hard not to stand out. She ultimately becomes something like Oji’s agent when she introduces him to the ridiculous premise of the series itself. Oji’s guitar skills are needed to fight a war in space between alien species since they help power the weapons Layla’s side uses.

Yes, you might be thinking that this series sounds dumb, but the space battles aren’t really relevant most of the time. Instead, this is really a series about balancing responsibilities. As an example, early on Oji is excited about his opportunities to relive his days of playing in Black Heaven so he wants to leave as often as possible. It’s really quite irresponsible how he ignores his wife and kid to do his own thing for a while. I think that characterization was the best aspect of the series personally.

There were times when it would focus on Yoshiko, who would traditionally have been played as sort of a villain trying to ruin Oji’s life as the doting wife, but that’s far from the case here. She is constantly trying to balance Oji’s transgressions to her and Gen with allowing him to express himself. This might be because she is worried that he’s having an affair with Layla, but thankfully she never crosses over into the archetypical disgruntled wife.

The second main theme of the series is about artistic expression. Since this is a late-90s anime with a focus on music, there is a lot of replaying the same loop of music over and over when Oji is playing. As the series progresses, that becomes less effective and he also wants to play new songs, which turns out not to work so well. Then he has to be inspired to play well, but the returns diminish on that as an enemy appears that can cancel out his music, then they need to get the old band back together and that works briefly until there’s a final battle.

Like so many things, this series loses its way in the final acts. When Oji needs to get Black Heaven back together it just seemed to work well until it actually worked well in the series. Basically, he got together with them one night over lots of liquor and they agreed to help Oji only for Oji to go around to each person and realize they had other commitments like he did (kids, jobs, etc.) so they were just like he was. Only, they all agree to help him in the end including Layla becoming a substitute keyboard player and they defeat the big bad guy.

So if you want a summation of the above:

Good Points: Realistically unreliable protagonist trying to relive his glory days, characters with real life commitments, the realization that Kawasumi Ayako sounds the exact same 16 years ago as she does now, NTR bullshit was not yet a thing so that is possibility is entirely averted

Bad Points: Everything works out when you are a pirate trying to relive your youth in a space battle, looks dated because this is an anime from 1999

So my thoughts overall on Black Heaven are this. I enjoyed it for the first 2/3rds of the series and would recommend it overall just for that. The final act was disappointing for just how cliche it turned out to be. I’m glad I watched it, but I don’t know if I would have the overwhelming desire to want to watch it again. I think I would still recommend it to anime fans even if they hate anything old.

Short Reviews of the Other Two Anime I Was Recommended

Wasurenagumo: It’s a visually amazing short funded by the Japanese government which ultimately turns out to be like Monster Musume without the fanservice.

Gdgd Fairies: A sort of fun series for those who like voice actresses just having random fun in the recording studio since there’s no plot.

Back in late-August/early-September (the International Date Line messes with things), I finally did the journey to Japan that a lot of people would like to do. I committed to do this a year from the day this post goes up after I got some encouragement from my mother who is no longer with us. Even several months later my feelings on the trip overall are mixed basically because of one fact, the longest conversation I had with any single individual while I was there lasted 45 seconds. (The 2nd longest was probably the guy at customs welcoming me into Japan at 25 seconds.)

So the typical agenda might be for the 2 week trip that I took to start in Tokyo then head to the west of the country to see other cities like Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, etc. then head back to Tokyo to spend a few days. I actually kind of did the same thing except I actually started in Okinawa. I found out fairly quickly that there is a good reason accommodations are so cheap at that time of year down there, the temperature that never went below 30ºC. My general discomfort in just a little under 3 days there probably means that I can rule out future summer trips to anywhere near the equator.

Okinawa is very different from the rest of the country. By far it is the poorest prefecture in Japan. Investment in public transportation infrastructure is a given on the main islands. In Okinawa, there’s a single train line that serves only a portion of the capital city of Naha. There are buses and ferries too, but they aren’t going to go long distances in a brief period of time. That meant I needed to rent a car and get used to driving a right-hand drive car on the left side of the road rather quickly.

The journey in this Toyota Vitz was to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. It was a couple hours of driving out of Naha. While there is a toll road that shortens the journey by about half I would advise anyone against taking it because Okinawa Route 58 is without a doubt the most scenic drive I’ve ever done. There’s plenty of elevation changes as it winds along the coast with many small towns and villages (and the military bases in Kadena) and with it will come the realization sitting in traffic that over half of the other drivers are also in rental cars. It’s a tourism-based economy after all. The Aquarium was quite an experience with the largest tank I have ever seen. I did take the Expressway back and got to experience the varying atmospheric conditions that occur in the mountains, while traveling at high speeds

I also visited the Shuri Castle while I was in Okinawa. It’s one of those places that is hard to judge because it was built as an approximation to what was there before it was destroyed in the war. Signs were all over the place that indicated things to the effect of “this is how we think this worked.”

After a brief interruption for a fighter jet sortie, my flight back to the mainland was on as I was scrunched against the window by a pair of drunk Germans. The rest of the trip was pretty stereotypical otherwise.

Yes, this meant trips to Matsumoto, Kyoto, Osaka, the Hanshin Koshien Stadium, Hiroshima and various parts of Tokyo before I finally headed back home. I’d provide more details on this, but I’m afraid I’m probably boring you guys to death with the details of my trip.

(If you are seeing this post, then I am celebrating Leicester City winning the Premier League. That dumb superstition is why there haven’t been any posts lately. Sorry.)

In this edition of 30 Things, I discuss an aspect of my 27th favorite series, High School DxD. This is a well-known harem anime produced by TNK, a studio that have done very little other than harem anime. The first season aired in the Winter of 2012. This was followed up by the 2nd season High School DxD New in the Summer of 2013 and a 3rd season High School DxD BorN in the Spring of 2015.

The Trashy High School Harem Epic

High School DxD is fundamentally a story about the protagonist Hyoudou Issei’s journey from becoming a normal perverted high school student to ruling the world of devils and angels he finds himself plunged into on one fateful day. In addition, while begrudgingly earning the respect of those who come in contact with him all the while getting ever more perverted than he was at the start of the series.

The thing that really sets the series apart from others though is that despite Issei’s humble beginnings, he is but a part of the High School DxD universe. He is rescued at first by Rias Gremory and brought into this world as nothing but a pawn. Rias herself feels like a pawn within the Gremory clan since she became heir after her brother took on the title of Lucifer. She honestly wants to simply be Rias, so that is why she goes to school with humans and lives among them.

The first season was largely about this dynamic. A powerless Issei was trying to figure out how he could be more useful to Rias by developing abilities other than the ability to tear clothing off of other people. He does this while getting involved with the Church in rescuing Asia Argento and then in family matters as he saves Rias from her engagement with Riser Phenex.

You may notice by now that there is a lot of talk about Angels, Devils, Churches and other components of Christian and other Western mythology throughout the series. It’s a little more serious than just throwing out random things a la Evangelion, but it doesn’t treat it completely seriously. Xenovia joins the team after learning that God was dead, an event that took place off-screen and is hardly given any weight after a while.

The franchise is also very heavy in shounen tropes and parodies. Issei after finding out that he could one day have servants of his own vows to become the Harem King in much the same manner as One Piece’s Luffy vows to become Pirate King in that long-running series. The battles follow a fairly predictable pattern as well where Issei has to face defeat before discovering a power he never thought he had before to win the day after extensive training. These range from finding out new useful techniques that are relevant to a real battle, or discovering that he gets more power from touching Rias’s breasts. There is also the aspect to the series that has the characters traveling between Heaven, Hell and back to Earth to live with mankind.

Okay, I’m definitely giving the universe of too much credit for having a bunch of depth. What most people really like about High School DxD has nothing to do with the plot, or maybe it has to do with the ample plots of land on display. There’s enough in fanservice on offer to any niche within the main group of characters. Want the older motherly type, then Rias is your girl. Want the older girl with a perverted edge, then there’s Akeno. Want an innocent girl with determination to win Issei’s heart, then there’s Asia. Want a serious girl who wants to have strong children, Xenovia. Want to ship Issei with as a bottom, there’s Yuuto, and on top there’s Gasper. Want to have him with a modestly proportioned, but seriously strong girl, then there’s Koneko and finally for those who are cost conscious fanservice fans, there’s Rossweisse. Hell, this is all that is just in the initial group that Issei knows about. He’s got childhood friends and other girls interested in him just because of his strength and potential.

High School DxD is one of my favorites because it tells a story that is more epic than it deserves to tell while also giving me plenty of options on which characters to like. At this point it’s all of them. Every character is good.

From time to time, I like to use my blog to highlight some unconventional titles that I like watching. The back of your mind is now screaming “That’s all the time you fool!”, but for me it’s occasionally. In this case I want to talk about Super Lovers, a series that is halfway through its brief 10 episode run and why I am liking this show as opposed to my usual harem trash.

Super Lovers is an adaptation by Studio Deen from a manga by Abe Miyuki, who does some work in Emerald, which is a sort of BL/shoujo collective magazine in addition to working on her normal stuff for Kadokawa. So you get the kind of story that this is. The director is Ishihira Shinji, whose past credits include Fairy Tail, Log Horizon, Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpucho and some porn anime that he probably wishes wasn’t listed in his past credits. That’s about enough for the production stuff anyway.

The basic story of Super Lovers is centered on the relationship between Ren and Haru. They are first introduced in the Canadian wilderness where Haru’s mother lives, and while he is still a high school student at this point, Ren is really just a kid who is more comfortable living in the wilderness than with actual people. The problem is that Ren was adopted by his biological mother and Haru has to spend the summer getting him comfortable around other people.

This plays out in a very shonen ai sort of way where it looks like Haru is tempting young Ren, but there are some gaps in the timeline that are filled in later. The first hook in the story is that after returning to Japan, Haru is injured in a car accident that kills his father and his wife. It also leaves him with no memories of what happened in Canada. The family situation is indeed complicated, but this first obstacle was necessary to build Haru’s character.

After a time skip of a few years, Haru is working as a host to earn money for the pair of twins that are his younger half brothers (Aki and Shima) to support their education. This establishes him as a responsible adult that is committed to helping others, but he doesn’t seem to focus on himself. It’s at this point that Ren appears in Japan to live with him in his small apartment for a while. Haru remembers the connection the 2 of them had back in Canada and after the twins find out about Ren’s existence Haru has a dream of simply finding a way for all of them to live together. After an incident with a yandere office lady who visited the host club to often, Ren has to head back to Canada for administrative reasons, but Haru follows him back across the Pacific a short time later.

That’s 2 arcs covered in the first 4 episodes, so in episode 5 Haru sends Ren off to high school for his first day. Their relationship has progressed beyond far beyond what would be socially acceptable for adopted brothers in the West, but we’re not here to practice cultural imperialism here. As far as I can tell they are close like a married couple, but their relationship is still platonic. Haru kisses Ren before school by the shoe lockers, which is seen by Ren’s classmate Kurosaki Juuzen, who has no fucking problem with that at all. Good. The rest of the episode uses him to get Haru to feel jealous that Ren talks to other guys, but wasn’t that the point of Haru first visiting Canada in the first place anyway.

So the good parts of this series for me are a few things. There’s a complicated relationship with multiple sets of parents. Haru’s biological parents couldn’t work things out, but they moved on with their lives anyway. Haru and the twin brothers have separate living arrangements in the middle section and they still get on with their lives and remain close. When all 4 brothers live together, they all manage to live together amicably. Life just goes on with this group and there’s not as much dwelling on tragedy as there could be. The 10 episode length might be the reason for that, but it’s a definite plus. It’s the same thing with Haru and Ren’s relationship for outsiders. After seeing how they are together, no one really cares beyond that.

On the downside, the part of the story with the office lady is comically bad. At least there was no blood and Haru handled it like a boss. They nailed the dead eyes yandere look for her though. There’s also the unanswered question of how the hell Haru’s mother managed to find a Japanese boy in Canada and easily adopt him. I hope it’s not simply because reasons.

I’m not going to go out and tell you that you should watch this. I’m obviously not the target audience for this as I’m playing the straight guy role who is neither Canadian nor Japanese. I would just say that there are a lot of shows that are out of traditional genres that are pretty good. I happen to find Super Lovers fits the bill for me at the halfway point. If you do end up watching this, but the relationship between Haru and Ren is uncomfortable for you, just stop watching then

It’s time for a new feature on this blog, and I have decided that I will go back periodically and revisit anime that I have dropped. I have no idea if there’s any interest in all of this, but I figure what the hell, I need to write something, correct? The inaugural entry for this feature is Shirobako.

How it was Selected

This idea started around a pair of Twitter polls to winnow the field down from 4. After Hibike! Euphonium and Kill La Kill were trounced in the opening poll, but no series managed over 50%, that meant a runoff. Ultimately Shirobako easily beat Girls und Panzer to make it to this post. After a few weeks of deciding on what would pair best with this watch I finally got around to watching this. Admittedly, the weird donut flavored beers would make an interesting story along with consuming maple bacon donuts while watching a couple episodes, but that’s not what this post is for after all.

Why Was It Dropped

Shirobako was initially dropped after 13 episodes in its 2 cour run right around the turn of the year in 2015. I think at the time I wasn’t particularly interested in where the story was going and thought it would go quietly. Instead it took off in this niche fandom where it can hardly be ignored in the parts of internet conversation I find myself involved in. Did it manage to live up to the hype on revisiting it 18 months later?

What I Thought

First of all, anyone hoping this would be a series about the struggles of making an anime would be disappointed. I think that’s what I was hoping for all along. Instead, it felt like a fairly standard plot checklist for a shonen or sports anime that lasted multiple seasons was grafted onto plots related to creating anime.

Let’s start by looking at the characters. The prospective voice actress Sakaki Shizuka is supposed to be the conduit for this. She has to work as a waitress and other odd jobs between auditions hoping for the big break while those who were new to the industry rocket to stardom. Toudou Misa has a stable job at the beginning but is intellectually stifled working in 3D animation for a proper industrial company. Yasuhara Ema was working as a key animator which is near the bottom of the totem pole financially so she needs to work in order to eat. These are the characters that are most easy to relate to in my opinion. The other 2 characters of the main quintet are Imai Midori and chief protagonist Miyamori Aoi. The former feels like an afterthought, while the latter has problems which I will come to later. Needless to say, they have their own struggles with work, but they don’t feel like an important part of them is dying inside if they fail.

The character development for each of these characters is easily diagrammed like below:

Aoi

• Part 1
  • Stresses Out
  • Part of successful effort to finish Exodus!
• Part 2
  • Stresses Out to the Point of Delusion
  • Learns How to Manage Underlings

Midori

• Part 1
  • Goes to school
  • Does little of consequence
• Part 2
  • Apprentices Under Writer at Musani
  • Still does little of consequence

Ema

• Part 1
  • Learns how to work properly while paying bills
  • Develops relationships with colleagues
• Part 2
  • Becomes willing to take on interesting projects
  • Clearly becomes model employee by training new key animators

Misa

• Part 1
  • Can make amazing CG Tires
  • That’s all she does at work, literally
• Part 2
  • Gets new job
  • Finds fulfillment from working on new anime

Shizuka

• Part 1
  • Doesn’t Get Any Parts
  • Friends Feel Sorry For Her
• Part 2
  • The Dream Is Nearly Dead When It Is So Close
  • Fluke Lucky Break

Basically when it comes to characters in this show Ema is the best girl. It might be pointed out that the minor characters might be where this show shines. In production assistant Yano Erika and key animator Segawa Misato I felt there were fully fleshed out characters that were comforting and able to transition between multiple roles. As for everyone else, it felt like they fell into one of two buckets. The first were characters that were clearly modeled after real life individuals in the anime industry. I’m not that much of an insider, so I’m not going to pass judgement on how well these characters portrayed the originals.

The rest of the cast felt like single individual ideas. Director Kinoshita Seiichi is a nervous wreck and can be seen as a reason for stress put on the rest of the cast since the ideas originate from him. The duo of Hiraoka Daisuke and Takanashi Tarou on the production desk are there to illustrate the different forms incompetence can take. The former’s experience straight out of school leading him to directly half-assing his way through life was a little ridiculous if you ask me. Tarou is just a way to make viewers sympathize about Aoi to be honest.

As far as the production of Shirobako is concerned, it’s something that series director Mizushima Tsutomu definitely poured himself into. I think he generally approaches anime as a form of entertainment first while allowing each show he puts his fingerprints on to be his own. Witch Craft Works and Prison School are among my favorites of his works in this regard, although it can be clearly seen in works like Another and The Legend of Koizumi. I think with this, he set out to make a work that was just a fun look at how anime is constructed by making an anime in an anime setting with anime characters and it becomes more like that the further in the series goes. It’s not really meant to be deconstructed, but enjoyed. There’s nothing wrong with this approach at all.

Admittedly, this makes one of the things I would have liked to have seen addressed sort of irrelevant. Aoi has a stuffed doll and a teddy bear, named Mimuji and Roro respectively, that come to life in many scenes. At times they are just there to serve as a way of explaining some industry terminology, but at other times they seem to be more of a delusion to Aoi as she talks to herself. I think there were many delusional moments throughout such as the quintet enjoying a meal on a nice night then seeing the characters in the anime they made in high school out the window and collectively acknowledging them. It’s moments like those that have me in a sort of internal conflict. Is it something that can be analyzed further at a character level or is it Mizushima just metaphorically saying “this is just an anime about anime”?

I guess what this comes down to is that I really wanted an entirely different show that what was delivered here. I think I wanted a series that at least brought the prospect of career failure into the equation, but that might have been far too hard to finance into anything more than a net anime let alone a 24 episode TV series. It would be pretty hard for people who have devoted their lives to making something to question the way things are done. The closest it got was the parody voice actress casting decisions which had political guy, music guy and physical appearance guy all fighting losing arguments over their choices. Actually what we got is a show that was designed to cater to a large audience with bits that would interest hardcore anime fans along with those who wouldn’t go out of their way to watch anything that was not acted by real people in front of a camera.

So in conclusion, while Shirobako did not particularly appeal to me because it wasn’t the series I expected, the fact is that it is the type of series that fans have been dying for. It’s an anime series that seeks mass appeal while not throwing away the aspects that make it representative of anime. Therefore, I’m glad that it was made and fans of the series should be too.

In this edition of 30 Things, I discuss an aspect of my 26th favorite anime, Akira. This film has been well known to Western fandom for over a quarter century now. I even remember seeing the ads that were something to the effect of “Violent Animation from Japan that is Definitely Not for Kids” with some other late 80s anime that was likely trash. Then seeing it at Blockbuster in VHS form along with the other kids cartoons. That last part might not have happened.

Akira was the theatrical adaptation of director Otomo Katsuhiro’s manga of the same name. Originally released in July 1988, the film has gone through several releases and re-releases over nearly 28 years. The film is set in the year 2019 in Neo-Tokyo, which was created after a psychic explosion caused World War III in 1988. Normalcy has returned to the point where Neo-Tokyo is preparing to host the 2020 Olympics (just like real life), except that underneath all of the promise of a rebuilt Tokyo remains a deeply broken society. Two friends, Kaneda and Tetsuo get involved in a government project related to the incident 31 years earlier, and it has tragic consequences for everyone in Neo-Tokyo.

The Most Unique Soundtrack in Anime

Akira had a massive budget for its day of about 1.1 billion yen, (which would be about $12 million at the time) which was at least enough to afford to have the characters’ mouths drawn to match pre-recorded dialogue. The music was performed by the music collective Geinoh Yamashirogumi, which was a different sort of music group than one really sees.

The short way of describing the collective is as a bunch of individuals who were interested in performing music, but whose lines of work had nothing to do with music. They performed different styles of folk music from around the world from areas such as Africa and Central Asia. The group took a different direction in 1986 by incorporating computer generated sound into their music, which got the attention of director Otomo.

What resulted is a soundtrack that is multilayered and incorporated elements of Indonesian jegog, prog rock, traditional Japanese music and synthesizers, which formed the distinctive sound of Akira.

Unfortunately as of the writing of this post, Victor Entertainment has this music caught in licensing hell, so this clip above is really all I could find. It’s fairly representative of the music in the film.

I also have another story related to this soundtrack. I was listening to a really old episode of the Radiolab podcast called “Earworms,” and in it one of the songs from the soundtrack got a mention as something that can get rid of any song stuck in your head.

“Tetsuo” definitely has that sort of thing going for it. There are just too many rhythms attached to this piece to focus on, and it makes it hard for the mind to keep a pattern in my opinion.

As for the rest of the film, I still think it looks amazing 28 years after release. A lot of that is actually a result of budget saving measures like the panning shots being of larger backgrounds instead of individual backgrounds. It’s also well worth watching as a study on a broken society. However, it’s always the music that manages to draw me back in.

Welcome back for the 2nd edition of the feature where I revisit shows that I dropped and see if my opinion of them changed. This time I go back to a season of a show I actually blogged episodically at one point (does anyone even do that anymore?) and hit up the Hitagi End arc of Monogatari Second Season.

How it was Selected

Once again the results of a Twitter poll were used to determine this show. The 2nd round of voting came down to Monogatari and Boku Dake ga Inai Machi and it was kind of close. Okay, not really.

Why was it dropped?

I have to be honest with you on this one, the whole Shaft shtick was wearing thin on me after Shinobu Time arc. I think HanaKana doing the “EEEEEEEEEHHHH” thing in class was the last bit of joy I got out of the series to that point in the prior Nadeko Medusa arc, and having her turn into a god was a small let down that was the final straw. I stayed on for Shinobu’s story, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Would this be any better nearly 3 years later?

What Did I Think?

The Hitagi End arc consists of the last 6 episodes of the series. The plot centers around Hitagi trying to save Koyomi and her own lives by having Kaiki Deshuu deceive Nadeko. In the end Kaiki is able to succeed, but it comes at the potential cost of his own life.

My thought on the arc is that it was very enjoyable to watch until the very end when things just seemed to come out of nowhere. I think the fact that the arc started with Kaiki stating that things in this story were not entirely true. It just felt like that could be an in-character cop-out for anything ahead that didn’t make any sense.

I’ll start breaking this arc down by what I did like. The arc starts off with Kaiki flying out to Okinawa because he told Hitagi that he was there instead of the Fushimi Inari Shrine (I’ve been there!) in Kyoto. They meet at a restaurant at the terminal of Naha Airport (I’ve been there too!) wearing ridiculous disguises. The scene really worked because it conveyed a sense of Hitagi hating Kaiki as well as hating herself for needing his help, but she had no other options. This attitude was consistent as she made sure she did absolutely nothing for him that had nothing to do with the deal they arranged at the airport. I also liked the OP for this arc since it was very 1980s/early-90s in style, which I would embed here, but Sony Music hates you and they don’t want anyone to actually listen to their music.

Kaiki’s character on the other hand was very inconsistent. At times he seems to have a sense of morality; Hitagi offering to sell herself to pay him being what convinced him to take the offer, while on the other he completely burns Gaen Izuko by taking the 3 million yen offer to leave and staying anyway out of spite. He goes about his cons, but yet I’m still left clueless as to what the hell motivates Kaiki to do what he does.

As for the aspects of the arc I didn’t like there are a couple. First is the way surprises seem to come out of nowhere. Yes, I know that Kaiki defeating Nadeko was hinted at by the fact that he looked in her closet a few episodes earlier. Yes, I now that Kaiki being attacked at the end was hinted at once a few episodes earlier. However, both of those moments of foreshadowing were dismissed by Kaiki earlier. He doesn’t seem like a great con man if he could forget about the person following him around as that seems to be a risk being in the con industry.

Unfortunately I don’t have as much to say about this as I did for Shirobako. Maybe it just feels like another Shaft show by this point and doesn’t bring anything unique to the table anymore. After watching the rest of the arc, all I could think of was the fact that Kaiki had elevated himself to best girl status, and that I don’t have much of an interest at watching Hanamonogatari or Owarimonogatari  or Kizumonogatari.

There were never any guarantees that I would revise my opinion from participating in this particular feature. Better luck next time as they say.

Airing back in January was one of those fabled Isekai shows I talked about earlier in Konosuba. This was a very enjoyable series from start to finish with enjoyable characters like Megumin and Wiz who are completely ineffective at most things bar making things explode in the former’s case. However great those two are, this post is about something entirely different.

It’s really about how the characters are so quick to lose interest in what their situation is that they go on completely pointless tangents within an episode. Nothing sums this up better than the first episode.

The two main characters, former NEET Satou Kazuma and the goddess Aqua, were transported together to the new world on Kazuma’s desire to upset Aqua for making fun of how he died. The only way that she can get back to her old position of essentially pissing off dead people is to defeat the Devil King. So they go through joining a guild, getting their ranks and finding jobs so they can get equipment to fight. Then, let’s just say they forget what they were supposed to do.

They basically find jobs as builders for the town and spend their days together working and their nights drinking as much as possible before going to sleep in a stable. Only after several nights does Kazuma realize that things aren’t right.

This is the kind of character building that Konosuba does very well. It allows the characters to be idiots by their actions collectively which leads to a stupidity that is greater than the sum of their individual levels of stupid, and it’s why I’m looking forward to the second season.

I’m using the occasion of 12 Days to finally get to the 3rd edition of Revisiting Dropped Anime. This effort goes back to a show that aired back in a time when we wondered how much the world had changed because a new president had been elected, to now watching it in a world where we wondered if they world had really changed because a new president was elected. So let’s get to it, the entire 2nd half of Toradora!

How Was It Selected

It finished 2nd in the initial poll. I was more optimistic after the initial poll though.

Why Was It Dropped?

After 8 years, it was hard to tell why exactly I did drop it, so I had to go back and watch it all over again. The best I can tell is that I did not particularly appreciate how characters were willing to just not do anything at all unless they were forced to. No one is happy because they want everyone else to be happy. I guess I couldn’t put up with it anymore.

What Did I Think?

Unfortunately, the 2nd half of Toradora! is very much the same as the first half. Ryuuji, Taiga, Minori, Yuusaku all just only acting when it’s way too late just because far too tedious. Thankfully, Ami was there to basically lead people in the right direction since she basically ran out of fucks halfway through the series.

So let’s take a trip down the salt mines:

• Episode 14: Ami tells Ryuuji to man up, Yuusaku cries because his love is moving away
• Episode 15: Yuusaku dies his hair because he can’t emote, runs away like a coward and doesn’t really learn his lesson
• Episode 16: Yuusaku mans up because he is forced to by the girl who turned him down, the student council president and Taiga fight in a terrible waste of a sakuga scene.
• Episodes 17-19: The Christmas season is bad and should be completely eliminated from existence.
• Episodes 20-21: Let’s try to force that Ryuuji/Minori ship that is never going to sail and oh yeah, we find out the feelings of the main pair are mutual.
• Episodes 22-24: Ryuuji enters the same “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life so fuck it” stage as every other character in this show before fucking off to the countryside to live with relatives and Taiga.
• Episode 25: Fuck this show.

Toradora! took me so many months to finish because I was just frustrated with it. I actually managed to get through 22 episodes pretty quickly because I had nothing else to do while I was on a business trip. Those last 3 episodes, oh boy, I was not wanting to do those unless I really had to. Episodes 23 and 24 were thanks to the ol’ Crunchyroll dice. While the last one came when I was very ill and figured that nothing could make me feel any worse. Actually it didn’t make me feel any worse. The left field decision made by one of the characters left me feeling nothing.

This isn’t to say Toradora! does nothing write. On a technical level, this is a very accomplished series. The character designs are distinctive while still being aesthetically positive. The voice actors and actresses put in really good performances that just can’t overcome the writing. I’d even go so far as to say that it was well directed too, and those key animators definitely earned their salaries over the course of the series. I’m not enough of an expert to point out which scenes were done by which person, I would just leave that to those who know better. Hell, even the first OP was worth watching each episode, I don’t know why they changed it.

All in all, I still have a hard time recommending this show to anyone. I think I was probably right to drop it to begin with and I wish I had sat and enjoyed Aria. Thanks people of Twitter for doing this to me instead.

My Wife is the Student Council President! (or Okusama ga Seitokaichou! for those who prefer those sorts of titles) is rarely anything but the most classy anime series this season. The adaptation of Nakata Yumi’s ecchi manga centered on a world where girls wearing ill fitting clothing only when they are in the protagonist’s face has proven to be one of this writer’s favorite things to see in recent months because it simply does it’s own thing. The 5th episode of the second season proved to be among the most classy things that aired this year in any format. I can only provide annotations to show you proof below.

Again, that seems like something nice to do.

Picking up from last year, Aeroblip and I have continued our quest to drink through every good ecchi and/or harem anime that has ever been made. Highlights from this year have included Highschool of the Dead, Prison School and of course Needless. This was just a random show I thought of, but I had to turn to one particular expert on the series to verify how much drinking would be involved.

Challenge accepted. I trust Avvesione’s judgement. I met the guy in Seattle for Sakuracon and he was cool, though we could never decide which school was the real UW.

Needless as an anime is definitely an experience. The ending is kind of anime-original bullshit, but what comes before it is definitely fun. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans have exiled people with powers; called Needless; into ghettos. This particular world is run by Simeon Pharmaceuticals. The story is primarily about a boy called Cruz Schild and the several Needless he runs into along his journey to take the fight to Simeon. The first two are Adam Blade and Eve Neuschwanstein (this is intentional) and they only get weirder from there.

As a drinking experience, there are definitely segments where there is lots and lots of drinking. Mainly when the trio of Setsuna, Mio and Kuchinashi are engaged in any sort of fighting.

The structure of the series relies heavily on these three as they are the primary opponents Cruz and the gang fight along the way. They pop in and out once the series goes all God-like with the powers though they are never too far out of sight. The series basically ends on a 15 episode battle arc, which is 60% of the series length, just to give you an idea of how oddly-paced Needless is.

That’s not to say there are no enjoyable parts to Needless when not intoxicated. Solva was definitely my favorite character as far as the transition from innocent girl to full blown sadist who was angry all the time. Just remember, it’s the same voice actress as Chihaya from Idolm@ster. Even Eve making up names for everyone except Adam Blade was enjoyable.

As for a recommendation, if you are planning on drinking to fanservice, you probably won’t remember half the series and you will probably be detoxing if you go stupid with the amount of alcohol. If you aren’t, it’s still fun, but after 19 episodes read the manga instead because the anime ending is dumb.

Last week, I spent a bunch of time basically lying in bed for entire days because strep throat and sinus infection. So to kill some time I would occasionally load up a streaming video app on my current gen console and watch some anime. Rewatching Witch Craft Works or heaven help me Outbreak Company were ways to kill time. I did however watch one of the shorts that aired this year because 42 minutes when one has all day to suffer. Being someone with as eccentric taste as I am (how else to describe someone who has dropped Eccentric Family and Super Lovers with 1 episode remaining?), that show happened to be *cough*_{The Highschool Life of a Fudanshi.} *cough*

The short series is about a regular high school student Sakaguchi Ryou, who happens to be a fudanshi. Basically he’s into BL fiction just like a fujoshi would be. The thing that I actually liked about this series is just how normal of a hobby that is to his classmates at school. I think it’s quite nice to imagine a world where that’s really the case. I think my favorite part of the series is when he becomes a friend of Nishihara Rumi. She’s a fujoshi and he needs her help to buy BL without horrifying other customers or the dreaded opinionated bookstore clerk.

This show isn’t too deep overall; most shorts other than Teekyuu are completely incapable of doing so, but it generally does what it says on the tin. This is a look at the daily life of a fudanshi and he is able to make friends with those who also know that about him. That is something that should be praised as a concept. Now all that we need is a show about fujoshi that makes them look like normal people in society too while everyone knows they are fujoshi. If that show already exists, please let me know.

Since this post will be coming on the last Sunday of one of the worst years I have never known, I think this final post of this year’s 12 Days series will look ahead to the year 2017 in anime. Believe it or not, there are actual shows I am looking forward to, if I ever have the time to get to watching them. Of course there are others that I think are probably not so good and most of them I have no opinion on. The shows below are just those I could find had announcements for production in 2017.

Looking Forward To These

Konosuba 2 – Winter

Whoever liked the first season of Konosuba is probably going to be looking forward to seeing more Megumin, Aqua, Darkness and Kazuma being stupid idiots. Are they going to get any closer to actually beating the Demon Lord? Of course they aren’t. They are just going to run into more idiots and that’s why I like this series.

Scum’s Wish (Kuzu no Honkai) – Winter

I read a lot of the manga (legally, yes legally) and I thought this was a pretty interesting depiction of 2 people choosing to be together our of circumstance rather than feeling. The main couple Mugi and Hanabi have feelings for other people close to them, but they can’t have their way. The only issue I have is that this doesn’t feel like it should be a story set in high school.

Seiren – Winter

As far as I can tell this is a series set in the Amagami universe, but with a completely different set of characters at the same high school, but still an original story. I hope it has some of the same silliness that was present in Amagami while being able to stand on its own

Demi-chan wa Kataritai – Winter

This is another series I’ve read a bit of the manga that it’s adapted from. It’s another monster girl harem type series, but it’s more generally accepted by the rest of society. I will say this now but Succubus-sensei is best girl.

Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata ♭ – Spring

Will they ever get that game finished up? It’s also obvious which girl wins already, but give us some more Utaha-senpai please?

Renai Boukun – Spring

This is harem trash at one of its most trashy levels. Although this one has fights, immortals and a terribly unoriginal plot device that is quickly forgotten once all of the girls are introduced. So this might be better than expected.

Tsugumomo – Spring

Thanks Aeroblip for continuously urging me to read this. You can pretty much take the description of Renai Boukun directly above this and apply it here as well. The manga isn’t bad necessarily, but classy.

One Punch Man 2 – ?

I am a man with terrible taste that is part of the problem with anime these days.

Hajimete no Gal – ?

This was a pretty high concept manga, but still kind of charming. Who knows if this will actually ever get made.

Everything Else Worth Mentioning

Blue Exorcist Some Sort of Kyoto Arc – I watched all of Blue Exorcist, and I don’t think I was in the target demographic.

Masamune-kun’s Revenge – The main girl has terrible taste in men.

Chaos;Child – It can’t be as bad as Chaos;Head though this might accept the challenge.

Fuuka – This is a Seo Kouji manga, so the anime will probably be bad.

Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu Some Sort of Sukeroku Arc – This will probably be good, but I won’t be around to watch it.

Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon – This could be KyoAni’s best effort since Nichijou.

Minami Kamakura High School Girl’s Bicycle Club – Sports anime these days are pretty good.

Idol Jihen – I assume this is like the plot to Love Live only with nations instead of schools.

Attack on Titan 2 – There will be lots of strange shadows.

Danmachi 2 – It’s probably not okay to pick up girls in the dungeon, just sayin’.

Eromanga-sensei – Finally, something that makes Oreimo’s approach to family relationships look relatively reasonable.

DIVE!! – This is a sports anime so it is pretty good.

All in all, there is a bunch to look forward to. It’s a good time to be a fan of anime. It doesn’t quite have the mainstream acceptability that I wish it did have since guys who have anime avatars on Twitter harassing people is still a thing. This wraps up this particular series so to everyone out there reading, have a happy new year and a good 2017.

The series I started the most on a whim this season was Youjo Senki (or The Saga of Tanya the Evil for those who like clumsy official names). The chatter I was hearing about this show early on was that it was about a guy who became a fascist magician who upheld the ideals of the Nazis in an alternate universe. I was understandably a bit hesitant to subject myself to something that I would consider so socially abhorrent, but boredom and curiosity have a way of combining to make these things happen. 

I think Youjo Senki is a rather high-concept series and I can sum it up in this sentence: It’s a show about a contented salaryman who finds himself sent to another world as a little girl all while being subjected to the whims of the mysterious being that sent him there. The longer version of this is our unnamed salaryman sacks a fellow employee and is then pushed in front of a train by the same guy. However, moments before he dies someone he refers to as Being X demands he acknowledges the existence of God, but his imminent death isn’t enough to push him toward that, so he has to be pushed further. He’s reborn as Tanya Degurechaff, an orphan in something like early 20th century Europe, but with magic that is used in battles.

In the tradition of Yang Wen-li of Legend of the Galactic Heroes fame, all Tanya wants is to ease through this new life that they’ve been subjected to. That means joining the military as opposed to being in an orphanage, then trying to get the easiest combat roles, and trying to impress superiors to get further from the front lines. Unfortunately, every step seems to backfire. Tanya ends up in the front lines doing combat work killing lots of people, they can’t seem to escape to the back because of those heroic exploits, and Being X just keeps making things worse until Tanya willingly acknowledges him.

The question that kept popping into my head was “why is messing around with Tanya going to make them not rebel against him?” This is probably one of the most unique depictions of God or a God-like figure in fiction. I would say this is the depiction of a God who doesn’t care about normal people but does care about the result of a sporting event. A God that is so petty that even one person doubting his existence is enough to upset him is rare these days, though I will admit to lacking in the whole history of religions department.

From a philosophical standpoint, however, I do find this series to be a good examination of the old argument between determinism and free will. The former says that one set of actions is possible and nothing can change that, while the latter says all results are the sum of the choices made by individuals. The dynamic this show has set up is that no matter what decisions Tanya makes, they are going to lead to being forced to praying to Being X until they truly believe in his power.

This struggle does make the show fun to watch in my opinion. On the downside, though, one can’t help but think the other characters in this show exist merely as roadblocks to our protagonist. Viktoriya, as nice a girl as she is in helping out Tanya, is merely making their goal of a peaceful life harder. Anyway, I think I’m fully on board with seeing Tanya and this asshole version of God engage in theological battle.