I love the novelty a new season brings. It’s like Christmas :3
This season in particular, I’ve watched a whole series worth of pilots. Anime has lots to offer this season, after all.
So I didn’t want to feel too unproductive, so I wrote up my thoughts and will bless you with them. ♥
There's some visually ambitious stuff. Unfortunately most of those beauties are coupled with script writers I'm very cautious of because of their previous track record. But, oh well. Animu is for Teenagers, and I should look for a real hobby, am I right?
Kabaneri feels like a marriage between High School of the Dead and Attack on Titan - no wonder, it’s all Tetsuro Araki. But there’s also a bit of Princess Mononoke with a Steampunk Edge sprinkled in there. It’s apparently made with the intent of containing everything Araki wants in his Animu.* So it’s a passion piece, backed up by lots of resources and seemingly great artistic freedom**, which fills me with hope. So, with his vision not compromised by something like a source material, this might emerge as the strongest work of the trademark Tetsuo Araraki style, which is loud, over the top, often hilariously so - but never failing to be entertaining. Another factor that fills me with hope also stems from its original nature: If it’s successful, we are much less likely to see some haphazard way to prolong the story, butchering the script in the process. So I guess, there will be no „Reaction Shots, the Episode“. Also, we even might get an Ending. Which let me to decide, I’ll hop on. Even if the writer infamous for guilty crown and Wit studio kind of has a hard time allocating resources past the 3rd Episode, it'll be at least bombastic Trainwreck. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
*I couldn't find the source for this statement, but Nick Creamer stated he said it in an interview.**That's just a conjecture, but I guess all that Attack on Titan and Death Note moneys might have garnered some goodwill from his superiors.While lending lots of it's visual cues (cue my little banner I made), from Attack on Titan, the designs are nothing short of gorgeous. Especially the shading seems like something really hard to work with - I remember an interview with an animator from the Simpsons who said, that extensive shading makes the scene twice as hard to produce,
which might be the reason why Hosada doesn't bother with it - but still, those humans have been brought to life astonishingly well. We see lots of personality shown through body language. Kyo-ani seems to have left its mark in heightening the standards of TV animation.
And then there's the cinematic story telling. Really rad. Top-notch production right there.
The script seems to be generally ok, even if the B part had some moments that showed the tendency of valuing of fast spectacle over sensible story telling already a little. It's the Guilty Crown/Code Geass guy, after all. But all in all, events flow naturally enough, that my immersion never broke. Unfortunately there’s still some lazy world building and explanatory dialogue.
I hate it so much, when the characters explain something they wouldn't. Especially here it’s unnecessary, the visuals do a great job showing us, what’s happening.This series is so far an amalgamation of tired cliches, but it is lively in execution and thus very effective. Let's see, how this goes.
Flying Witch is something between
NieA_7 (superb atmosphere) and
Kiki’s Delivery Service (cute characters). This is my kind of healing anime, this show really nails it. For anybody who likes slice of life, look no further, this might become an instant classic. Ohhh... my dear Mushi-shi, finally I feel you again...
I haven’t watched any other installment of the franchise, but
Jojo Part 4 is also pretty darn awesome. Love how it looks, and it despite it's gaudiness, the clever art design never makes it look too garish. Characters are already a blast, and I'm really astonished by it's ability to create tension despite it's ridiculousness.
Joker Game seemed rather trite to me (mostly because of its visuals - I know, I’m being a judgy judy), so I stopped watching after 5 Minutes. If it turns out amazing, I’ll be going to pick it up again. I'm rather impressed, that the same guy who designed the 10/10 looking characters of Kiznaiver was responsible for this same-facey mess. I mean, you can see his style lurking, if you squint - but the I.G. egalitarian machinery worked hard to make it look like everything else they put out. It's not bad, it's just a little bit boring. But that's just my personal gripe.
KiznaiverLoldeep melodrama, packaged so beautifully I can not avert my gaze. Thanks to LOLOkada, the probability of this becoming a train wreck is indefinitely higher than Kabanari derailing. So if this ends up being all style and no substance, and Trigger keeps it's production as tight, it'll also be the most most beautiful trainwreck in existence. So, yay?
I got some serious Megaku City Actors vibes from this (which also fell apart). And I feel like this could have become an instant classics, if they just had managed to get NisioIsin, since this set-up really is his metier. But I guess they know, considering Mari Okada works hard in aping him. Sadly, she isn't capable of infusing the craziness with meaning and is more interested in keeping the non-sensible melodrama up. But that's not the biggest problem, Mari doesn't seem to be interested in featuring real people in her stories. One good point is, that she writes teenagers, the way they like to see themselves... A stereotype of whatever they feel is en vogue and might numb their Weltschmerz.
Anyways, I like how Kiznaiver evokes feelings of awe through means of desperation, while also making me laugh due to its ridiculousness.
If you can handle the plunge into the deep rabbit hole that has become Anime Culture, I’d definitely recommend gawking at it for its sheer beautiful value of craziness.
Also, what a superb opening. Exactly my jam, and utterly beautiful.
Go watch it.
Bungo Stray Dogs is the trashy companion Anime to Aoi Bungaku. Oh, Yoji Enokido. Is there no brilliance of
FLCL left in your brain? No
Utena? I mean, yeah... It's a reunion of
Ouran, which I haven't seen, so I don't know, what to expect, but people seem to love that show. But those two are also responsible for
Sailor Stars - the arguably weakest entry in the original franchise.
So, anyways.
BSD is pretty
gay*,
pretty goofy**,
pretty gaudily pretty*** and has no
respect for suicide****. This seems to be up my alley.
*A script that contrives the pretty guys, to touch each other often and treat each other a tad too kindly.**Style of Comedy reminded me of those Hellsing moments when everything became loud irreverence dressed in goofy faces, which amuses me sufficiently.***The colors boast a jarring feeling of not quite coming together. The gaudiness of the narrative is reinforced due to the generally very earthy base coloring in contrast to the popping colors from every where else on the color wheel sprinkled in seemingly arbitrarily. It definitely has personality and charm, though. And overall I like it.****I mean, some people might mind that they make a joke of killing oneself every five minutes. Personally speaking, I have no problems with it. I like my humor crass and misanthropic in nature - like Drawn Together.I mean, considering, the masterpieces Yoji Enokido has written in the past, his slightly above average output is a tragedy.
Then again, this is the combo responsible for the weakest season of Sailor Moon, so whatevs.
The biggest problem might be the run-of-the mill writing, with lots of repetition of facts (MCs backstory comes up 3 times), and next to no natural feeling story telling. Kind of ironic, to have a badly written story featuring the greatest Japanese story tellers. Also ironic is, that this tired form of Anime story telling boasts lines from Dazei telling us that a good book is good, no matter how many times you’ve read it.
Oh yeah, it’s also gimmicky bordering on the pretentious - throwing in big literary figures for the sake of it. I mean, it’s a cool concept, but there’s no apparent reason, why it had to be those famous figures. So yes, the trashy accompanying piece of Aoi Bungaku. It's quite a shame, because I really like the character designs.
I've also watched some
second Episodes:
Sailor Moon Crystal reinforced my stance that it finally might its shit together, Toei has seen their errors of their ways and upped their game quite a bit - courtesy to directress Chiaki Kon, who was responsible for the one-off golden weirdness of Higurashi. Now it’s actually working, and if they keep this up, this season might finally deliver something enjoyable over all. Which is great, because this is the only season I truly care about.
Hero Academia 2 continued its Shonen tradition with a huge recount of what we’ve seen last week. I can really just applaud the inclusiveness for retarded people who forget what they watched a few days ago.
Sorry, for being facetious. Once the Episode started it was really amazingly fun, though. My favorite joke might have been that „Detroit Smash“ splattered sludge all over the city - fitting commentary to my perceived state of this city.
So yes, lots of visually compelling stuff, but the Anime industry seriously needs more capable writers. But we all know that. Let's see which shows entertain me enough to stay on board.
Oh yes, some awesome music. I already love the OPs of Hero Academia, Kiznaiver, Sailor Moon Crystal and the ED of Luluco. Maybe some others will grow on me.
Still, so many songs, I loved that many songs after just one listen. The wait for those will be excruciating.
I'm not sure, if anybody reads my write-ups, since barely anybody seems to comment on them. I really hoped for a little discussion of my stance on Erased. But it seems this series was destined to be forgotten as soon as it concluded. How meta, even its importance was a brushfire.
pwhodges wrote:Do you know the short manga version of it (by a different artist)? On the whole I prefer it, though that may simply be because I came to it first. But I agree the film is wonderful.
As I don't know about the forum software, I couldn't google it, so my hope was a mod would do that for me, then I'd click on edit and learn how it works.
