Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 24 · 10:11pm Jan 4th, 2022
To keep it above the cut, I hereby declare this week's featured items to be 5 Centimeters Per Second and Nagi-Asu: A Lull in the Sea.
It occurred to me that I could go ahead and write up things I'm currently watching as I finish them so I don't forget things about them, and then just paste them in as I eventually get to them. As my father in law says, it's hard work being stupid. Those and several others, after the break.
5 Centimeters Per Second came highly recommended, but I can't remember exactly where I'd heard of it. I think as "you might like" kinds of automated recommendations based on other things I'd liked. It won lots of awards, so I went into it expecting a lot.
I have mixed feelings about what I got. The movie is split into three parts, with the first and second being about the length of a standard episode. The third part is only half as long as either of those, and that includes a fairly lengthy ending credits, though it is the kind where the visuals during the credits do add a little more to the story, so I still count that as part of it.
It's going to be really hard to discuss this with minimal spoilers.
In Part I, we meet middle-schoolers Takaki and Akari, who both transferred in partway through the year, and thus find comfort in each other as fellow outsiders. They become very good friends and quickly go to a first-name basis (most of you will know this, but for those who don't, Japanese society places great importance on protocol, and you're supposed to call people by family name until you've become quite familiar, which takes a while). We get a brief snapshot of that before seeing Takaki boarding a train, and as he rides to his destination, how the school year went gets filled in through additional flashbacks, which show the two of them palling around and being bullied as more or less slice-of-life scenes. They eventually lead to the detail that near the end of the year, Akari's family decided to move pretty far north once school finished. And there's the context for Takaki's train trip: he hasn't seen her in about a year, though they've kept in touch via letters, and his own family is about to move pretty far south, so he's taking what he thinks will be his last opportunity to see her. But the weather is bad, delaying his trains and eating into what time they'll have. I was surprised when it came out (minor spoiler) that he was willing to spend many hours traveling only to turn back around and head home the same evening. At least that was his plan.
I'll stop there, and I'll say that the atmosphere was wonderfully done, it had me invested in the characters, and I was anticipating calling the whole thing a great movie. It's slow-paced, but I never felt like it was wasting my time, which... well, that hits my sweet spot. I love it when a movie can take its time while not boring me. That was one of the things that appealed to me most about one I rated as excellent in one of my first review blogs, A Silent Voice.
Part II skips to when Takaki has already moved to his new home. In stark contrast to him being ostracized as the newcomer in Part I, this one has him instantly being seen as the cool and mysterious guy in his new high school. Classmate Kanae is immediately taken with him and uses every opportunity to hang out with him, even staying long after her extracurricular activities are complete to conveniently coincide with his archery practice concluding, so that they can ride home together. He does become very close to her, to the point his friends refer to her as his girlfriend, but he doesn't see her that way at all, much to her chagrin. She keeps seeing him send messages on his phone, so she assumes he must already have someone special.
A quick backtrack: the title refers to an observation Akari makes in Part I about how fast cherry blossom petals fall, as watching them is a significant event to them. Part II reprises thematic velocities, as there are two more mentioned, but then Part III doesn't continue it.
Part III skips ahead again to where Takaki is an adult and working in the city (I would assume Tokyo, but I don't remember if they say), and I can't really talk about what he's doing there, as it would necessarily say what the outcomes of both prior parts are. All I will say is that of the multiple character arcs of Takaki, Akari, and Kanae, you do get closure on two of them, one of whom also completes what the "moral" of the movie is, though as Paul Asaran likes to phrase it, the "need to know" crowd will probably find it unsatisfying. And I'm a "need to know" person. In this case it's only partly that one of the characters' fates remains unknown; it felt to me like the overall point the movie was making ended up being done in a weak manner, showing only a tenuous understanding by the affected character and zero exploration of how that will change things from now on.
So to me, it was a great setup with a disappointing conclusion, though I could certainly see why people would consider it a great movie. I still rate it highly based on the strength of Part I's story alone and the likable characters throughout. Art and music were both good. I'm mildly curious to read the sequel (only done in novel form).
Rating: very good.
Movie, relevant genres: drama, romance, slice of life, coming of age.
Nagi-Asu: A Lull in the Sea is one I only recently added to my watch list, so when a discussion came up about writer Mari Okada, I didn't match up that I'd seen this title in her filmography. But I did notice just before I started watching, and I've consistently liked her work, so I was excited for this one. Particularly, I've enjoyed her high school romance shows, which this is, so more points in my favor! Though with a caveat: this one does list her as sole writer, while many others I enjoyed had her as writer of specific episodes, which I saw only by episode number, not title, so I had no immediate association with which parts of those stories she wrote.
Now that I've seen 4 or 5 of her romances (and keeping that caveat in mind, that she may only be responsible for certain parts of many of those stories and I wouldn't know which ones), I have to say she keeps writing the same romance. She writes them well, so I continue to enjoy watching them, but it's getting to the point that I can anticipate how they'll go, and I'm usually right. It's only fair to put a second level of caveat on that, though: that may be symptomatic of anime in general and not the specific ones she's written for. But beyond just writing them well and creating likable characters, she's good at putting in an additional wrinkle to enrich the same-y romance, or at least distract from its same-y-ness.
To illustrate: Anohana, two girls love the same guy, but neither one will act on it because they're friends and want the other to be happy. Toradora! two girls love the same guy, but neither one will act on it because they're friends and want the other to be happy, though they add in the twist that it takes a while for one of the girls to realize she loves him, whereas the other girl assumed they both did all along. O Maidens, two girls love the same guy, but neither one will act on it because they're friends and want the other to be happy, though there are a couple other love triangles as well. In this one, two girls love the same guy, but neither one will act on it because they're friends and want the other to be happy, but the web eventually gets much more complex.
Nagi-Asu is pretty rich in lore, meaning I'm going to ramble a bit. There are 13 or 14 places around Japan where there's an underwater town just off the coast (the number 13 is mentioned, but I don't remember whether that was including or in addition to the one where the story takes place). And I don't mean underwater as in access by submarine and sealed off with airlocks. The people living there are humans adapted to living underwater. The town looks like a surface one, except for the fish swimming around it. They play it both ways: You can swim instead of walk, making the vertical direction less of an issue than it is on the surface, but there's still a need to have bridges? And they can seemingly run underwater and sidestep the issue of drag force, and do so faster than they can swim. Minor quibbles, but they did bug me.
These humans have an extra membrane on their skin called ena that lets them breathe underwater, and it can draw oxygen from the air as well, allowing them to go on the surface, provided it doesn't dry out. It can also retain water for that purpose, meaning it dries out their clothes very quickly as they emerge from the water, and it can sustain them for a few hours to most of a day, depending on the weather, before they need to get back in the water. That can mean going back into the sea or using hydration facilities that are set up to accommodate them.
This town has a companion town on land, and the two have a symbiotic relationship. It was a clever touch how the towns' names were kind of mirror images of each other. The surface town used to make offerings to the sea god, but over the centuries it became more symbolic than practical, then died out completely, leading to some bad blood between them, though that's mostly kept in check.
We start with a quartet of middle school students, seemingly the only grade-school-aged kids in the underwater town. That's not enough to sustain the school, so it's shut down, and they now have to attend school on the surface, where they're initially hit by lots of prejudice from their classmates, except, notably, the teacher and one boy. There's plot arc one: them gaining acceptance.
Plot arc two: the romance. And this does get a bit complex. Our stalwart quartet consists of two boys, Hikari and Kaname, and two girls, Manaka and Chisaki. For my money, this comes dangerously close to a harem anime. Both girls like Hikari, and they won't be the only ones. But Kaname likes Chisaki, and absolutely none of this stays secret for long. It got eye rolls from me on several occasions that when someone confided a crush to a friend, the object of their affection would inevitably be in a position to overhear it. It happened with so much regularity that it strained credulity. I just had to roll with it. Sea people who fall in love with surface dwellers and want to stay with them are effectively exiled, so when Hikari's older sister Akari finds herself in just such a situation... well, that set up some of the best drama in the show, for several reasons.
One, the guy she's in love with was previously married to another sea dweller and friend of Akari's. Two, they had a daughter, Miuna, who's actively trying to sabotage the relationship—even though she used to like Akari, she now sees Akari as trying to replace her mother. And Miuna's best friend Sayu is game for helping. They're 5 years younger than Hikari & Co. And three... well, I'll save that one, as it plays into plot arc three, which is:
There's an actual microcosm of the sea god living in the undersea town, and he warns them of an upcoming ecological disaster. (As a side note, Hikari and Akari's father is the priest of the shrine, and their mother died years ago.) The way it plays out is inconsistent. He warns that while it is definitely coming, when it'll start and how long it'll last could vary by a lot. But he asks the sea people to do something to ride it out, which may or may not work or even happen, but (minor spoilers) that gets resolved while whatever it is is still worsening, so what was the point?
Anyway, this ends up wrenching several characters apart in time from each other, which creates a very interesting dynamic. Some characters who were in love are now different enough in age that it may not be practical to pursue a relationship anymore, plus the difference in life experience might mean they're just not compatible now. And some characters who were different enough in age before to where they never would have even considered romance (plus the younger one not being mature enough to elevate it above puppy love in the first place) are now the same age. And of course that all just leads to more hand-wringing over who should love whom. It was an interesting wrinkle to add.
This kind of thing always leaves me feeling bad for the characters, though. In this case, there are no firm conclusions, though it's strongly hinted at several couples forming. A few will end up being the odd ones out, though, and I do commiserate with them, as well as the others they may settle for and be seen as silver medals.
The art is great, and I love the aesthetic of it, with the kinds of shapes they use for the fonts and architecture, and the way everything looks kind of metallic with chipped paint. Music was wonderful in the aggregate, though after listening to the full soundtracks, there weren't any individual tracks I wanted to keep. It's like lots of tunes had a really great part to them but didn't sustain it for the whole track. A lot of it is heavy on piano or acoustic guitar.
Rating: very good.
Nagi no Asukara, 26 episodes, relevant genres: romance, drama, coming of age.
I spent a lot of time over Christmas break finishing off several things, so I'm not even going to have to advance any further in the alphabet this week.
Can I Make Your Ears Happy in 180 Seconds? (180 Byou de Kimi no Mimi wo Shiawase ni Dekiru ka?, 12 episodes)—the episodes are literally 3 minutes long, not including credits. It's based on ASMR, which I'll leave as an exercise to the reader to look up, but the short version is that it's a tingly feeling people can get in the neck or back of the scalp due to certain sensory inputs, not too much different from music you really like sending a chill down your back. What tends to work are touch stimuli, like gently cleaning out the ear, sound stimuli close to the ear, like whispering or fizzy drinks, or things that incorporate both, like blowing on the ear. Even the suggestion of such can produce the effect, like someone saying they're touching your ear, or watching it happen to someone else. It's recommended to use headphones while watching so the show can control which ear hears things and it really does sound close. (I find the wikipedia article on ASMR a bit amusing on what personality types seem more receptive to it.) Alas, it turns out I'm not so receptive to it, as maybe a quarter of the effects worked on me. The problem here is that they tried to make a bit of a plot out of it, which just ended up being dumb. There are seven characters who demonstrate the effects on a dummy head with microphones built into its ears, and they wear headphones so they can experience it too. Two of them turn out to be a mother/daughter pair, two try to strike up a friendship, two I think are twin sisters, but that just comes across as pointless and never goes anywhere. And it shouldn't be too surprising that a fair amount of this seems to have sexual overtones. I was just expecting this to be a demonstration, and as that, it's fine and can even be fun, depending on how much it works on you, but with the story they tried to add, it ends up being weird and a bit uncomfortable. Rating: decent, relevant genres: scientific, slice of life?
"Deji" Meets Girl (12 episodes)—these are also really short, about 2 minutes long. High school girl Maise helps work at her family's inn in Okinawa, and once a guest named Ichiro (Ichiro Suzuki, no less, making me wonder if it's a baseball reference) shows up, strange things start happening, like schools of fish swimming around the lobby or a giant tree growing through the building. Sometimes, it's as if only Maise and Ichiro can see these things happening, and sometimes everyone can, but they also dissipate like illusions after a short while. Maise learns that Ichiro is some sort of celebrity who's looking for a respite from his life, hopefully where he won't be recognized. So he rather likes the fact that Maise has no idea who he is. It seems like Ichiro is somehow responsible for the supernatural goings-on, and it's reminiscent of a few other things I've seen in that it culminates in Maise having to save him from his own psyche. The art style was a bit unique, and I liked it. I'm not sure why, but the outfit Maise wears when she's off the clock and in casual mode struck me as really cute, and the closing theme was fine enough. Given the short total run time, there's actually quite a bit packed in here. Rating: good, relevant genres: fantasy, slice of life, drama.
Ghost Stories (Gakko no Kaidan, 20 episodes)—I'm going to take the unprecedented step of reviewing this one twice, once for the version of it I haven't seen. You'll understand in a moment.
I didn't watch the sub, but you can get a good enough idea of what happens in it by watching the dub. And I would recommend the dub. The two share a premise: their mother having died (sound familiar?), middle schooler Satsuki and her younger brother, elementary schooler Keiichiro, move with their father to the town their parents were originally from. The school they'll be attending is a new building adjacent to the old one, which is now abandoned and rumored to be haunted. Satsuki meets two boys in her class, Hajime and Leo (who is obsessed with the supernatural), and an older girl named Momoko, who all get embroiled in ghostly happenings there. They initially defeat a demon who then possesses Satsuki's cat and reluctantly helps them from then on. It's a very episodic thing, as they fight a different ghost each week, but it's revealed that Satsuki's mother did the same thing when she attended school there (of course in the older building) and left behind notes of how to defeat each one. Despite seeing overt evidence of ghosts and demons there, the adults keep sending kids to go over there for errands or whatever, because... well because reasons. It's not a show that holds together well, and it has a tiresome theme (and the only reason this version is tagged comedy) of Hajime and Leo constantly mocking Satsuki when she trips, falls, and exposes her panties, even deliberately causing it in some cases so they can photograph her. And then there are even non-comic moments when you get pointless panty shots of her, plus one of Momoko. Music... it's average at best, but, man, what's with that closing song? Keep in mind who and what the series is about, so why does it end with a song called "Sexy, Sexy" with the chorus "I miss you, I miss you, I need you, I need you, sexy, sexy"? Rating: meh, relevant genres: mystery, thriller, horror, drama, comedy.
Then there's the dub. It's the same plot, but this was nuts. I could see if it was an unofficial dub and people were just MST-ing the thing, which went viral. But no. This is the official dub, and the studio gave them carte blanche to do whatever. The result is crazy. They're constantly insulting each other, being rather adult, complaining about plot holes/animation errors, and making pop culture references that were so geared toward the time it was made that it doesn't age that well. No matter who you are, there's probably something here to offend you, and I'd say it's endless wackiness from start to finish, except it actually gets better the further in you go. If you like parody-type comedies, this is a worthwhile one to tackle. It had me laughing a lot, even through the inevitable things I thought they were being too mean about. Rating: good, relevant genres: dark comedy.
Let's Make a Mug Too (Yakunara Mug Cup mo, 12 episodes), Let's Make a Mug Too: Second Kiln (Yakunara Mug Cup mo: Niban Gama, 12 episodes)—this is mostly a pure slice of life series, and I hadn't encountered the term until recently, but it's in the iyashikei genre, which is a subset of slice of life that's supposed to produce relaxation by showing people doing peaceful and wholesome things. Main character Himeno's mom died a few years ago (this again?), and when her father's business in Tokyo failed, he moved to the city he and his wife were originally from, Tajimi, to set up a cafe with his mother-in-law. It's a sizeable town, but kind of isolated, and it's known as a center of fine ceramics with a distinctive local style. Himeno seems to know her neighbor Naoko already, and as soon as she gets to school, the pottery club snaps her up as a member. Naoko likes to hang out with the club, but never formally joins, leaving as the only members Himeno, another girl her age, an upperclassman, and the faculty advisor. Why do they want her so badly? Well, they know something she doesn't: her mother Himena was actually a pretty famous maker of ceramics. I don't know why that's the kind of thing that would have been kept from her or that just never came up, but the draw of her father's cafe is all of Himena's mugs on the wall that patrons can choose from to have their tea served in. Of course, this will all make Himeno feel overshadowed in taking up the hobby, and she tries to be as circumspect about it as she can, though she can't help feeling like she needs to live up to her mother's reputation, so when her own talent is slow to develop, she could easily lose heart. Mostly, this is just slice of life cuteness, and I did like all the characters, though there is a character arc of her trying to do her mother justice. And did this one really need a beach episode? I know that's An Anime Thing, but really? Art was very good and the music was fine, especially the really cute opening theme for Second Kiln. And like with "Deji" Meets Girl, I can't put my finger on why, as it's just a shirt and a pair of long striped shorts, but I thought Himeno's pajamas were really cute. Rating: good, relevant genres: slice of life, drama.
No Game No Life (12 episodes)—step-siblings... well, I'll return to that in a moment. Sora and Shiro are legendary online gamers who can't be beat, but in real life, they're completely socially inept shut-ins. So the god of a parallel world based on gaming kidnaps them to insert them into his world's politics. There are hints he actually wants them to accomplish something and hints it's just for his entertainment. This world is divided among 16 different races, and everything between them is governed by games. Diplomatic relations mostly amount to putting something at stake, agreeing to the rules (plus there are a set of 10 mandatory overarching rules), playing a game, and declaring a winner, which can resolve trade, military... any kind of matters, though they do resort to actual war at times. The human nation is considered the weakest, and the princess has just inherited the kingdom from her father, who had been seen as frittering away every resource they had, yet Sora suspects there was a method to his madness. And he takes on the responsibility of gaming the human kingdom's way to the top of the pile. Most of the plot revolves around game strategy in winning influence over the other races, and that's really where the show shines. The different kinds of games they play and the ways they manipulate things to their advantage were interesting to watch. On the other hand, the show is heavy on fan service, though at least they're up front about it, and the cringe-y relationship between Sora and Shiro is "justified" by their being only step-siblings. It's certainly not the first anime to do that, but it still gives me plenty of ick factor. Art was rather good, music fine. It doesn't come to any sort of conclusion, and they pretty obviously intended to continue it, but 6 1/2 years later, I'm not holding my breath. Rating: good (based on the strategy aspect alone, so kind of low in that range), relevant genres: games, strategy, fantasy, sci-fi.
No Game No Life: Zero (movie)—I was hoping this would be an instance where the studio realized they were never going to get the chance to finish the series, so they made a movie or OVA to bring it to a conclusion, but with a title like that, it sure seemed to scream prequel, and it was. It's a different beast than the series, more of a war story than a gaming one. It starts with a framing device of the gaming god playing chess against one of the non-human race's leaders and offering to tell her a story. And that story shows how the world came to be this way. In the past, the nations are in outright war and all in possession of mutually assured destruction. The humans are once again the lowest race on the totem pole, and one of the leaders encounters a malfunctioning member of the android race. She locked up while trying to figure out the abstract concept of the human heart, and her race's collective consciousness kicked her out because it considered her status as inconclusive and potentially dangerous. She immediately latches onto this guy, Riku, and in the only part of the movie that really rubbed me wrong, basically offers herself as a sex slave to him because reasons. He, thankfully, tells her that's not appropriate, but he does think she'll prove useful and incorporates her into his plans to change how the races interact, and it'll of course all lead up to the way it's all governed by games now. And even more of course, he does eventually develop feelings for her. An interesting origin story, though one I think wouldn't have a meaningful conclusion outside the context of the series. With that, it was a pretty nice story, plus the revelation that one additional character from the series was there to witness it. Art and music were of the same quality as the series. It did bug me that the android race uses German as their language, but the VAs only pronounced about half of it right. Rating: good, though toward the lower end of that, relevant genres: fantasy, sci-fi, drama, romance.
Seen any of these? Did I convince you to try any of them? I'd like to hear about it in the comments.
Last 10:
vol. 14 here
vol. 15 here
vol. 16 here
vol. 17 here
vol. 18 here
vol. 19 here
vol. 20 here
vol. 21 here
vol. 22 here
vol. 23 here
Other than Ghost Stories' amazing dub, Mug-Cup is the only one of these I've ever heard of, mostly because the music keeps showing up in my feed. :B
I really liked Deji Meets Girl though I would've liked if the ending didn't feel so abrupt. I really liked it though so even the ending didn't put me off too hard.
Ghost Stories is hilarious, I only ever watched the dub and it didn't stick with me past the...Beethoven episode? It got a bit freaky for me so I quit, but the rest of it was fun til then.
I considered the mug one but I'm so sick of the "trying to live up to dead parent" because it gives me such an emotional wrench. It otherwise looks right up my alley, I do adore Iyashikei anime ^^;
5624447
Mug Cup might be worth a look, because they never play up that aspect of it too much. Himeno never gets in too much of an emotional bind over it, more that she feels like whatever her first completed piece is that she wants to showcase needs to be good enough to have the name on it, but she does eventually overcome that feeling, and in an unexpected way, no less. There's a side character going through a similar arc, as the upperclassman member has a grandfather who's a renowned potter, and he's always been a bit distant toward her when the subject comes up, and obviously there'll be a disconnect between why he does it and why she thinks he does it. I mean... you can probably guess what the explanation is. Overall, it's a sweet series, and it's really only toward the end of each season that mommy issues come up at all, and even then they're not played for easy feels.
5624442
Deji and 180 Seconds both just finished within the last couple weeks, but I guess they weren't highly publicized. I'm kind of surprised you hadn't heard of 5 Centimeters, as it's by a director who's seen a lot of success. He wrote and directed one I reviewed a while ago (Children Who Chase Lost Voices) and two that I gather were well known in the last few years (Your Name, which I've seen but haven't reviewed yet and Weathering With You, which I haven't seen). No Game No Life came out back in 2014 and made the rounds because of how over the top its fan service was, so I'm a bit surprised you haven't heard of that either. If you like teenage romances at all, I'd definitely recommend Nagi no Asukara, as well as those other ones by the same writer I mentioned in its review. In fact, I think they might be best viewed in that order so that the escalating level of complexity keeps the sameness of the romantic circumstances from taking center stage. Though again with the caveat you probably wouldn't like O Maidens for reasons you talked about when I reviewed it.