Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 40 · 11:30pm Aug 23rd, 2022
Hey, I've already got enough material to do another blog! I actually have more than enough feature material, but was lacking enough of the rest, until I decided to give up on two other series ever continuing (one fortunately so and one not). Featured items this week are a family-friendly movie, Okko's Inn, and another movie, Ride Your Wave. Those and five other things after the break.
Okko's Inn is another on the list I've mentioned several times already of recommendations I took for family-friendly movies. It was done both as a series and a movie. Oddly enough, the movie came out right in the middle of the series, and it covers a fair amount of what happens in the series, which made me wonder if it would have ended up spoiling anything from the second half. It actually does, a little. This was fairly similar in premise to a series I reviewed earlier and liked a lot, Hanasaku Iroha.
I saw the movie first, then the series. I'll go ahead and say that I would recommend the movie higher, though I don't know which follows the novels/manga better, since I haven't read them. Whichever one doesn't has taken some liberties with it, and my gut feeling is that the series is closer. Still, I prefer the movie.
I'll have to scatter what the differences are throughout as I talk about the premise. Twelve-year-old main character Oriko, Okko for short, is initially shown enjoying a shrine ritual with her parents, but on her way home, she survives a car accident uninjured, even though both her parents die in it. She goes to live with her grandmother, who owns a hot springs inn, but her ordeal has left her able to see ghosts and spirits. She initially meets a young boy ghost at the inn, but she'll encounter several others. The series doesn't show that introductory material; it begins with Okko showing up at the inn. In fact, the series barely mentions her parents at all. The plot description of the novels says that she lost her memory of the accident; I don't think this is the case in the movie, but if so, it's unclear. She never says so, at any rate.
I might even expect the novels deal with her past in more detail than the manga, but that's just my speculation. It's billed as a more slice of life thing, and the series definitely is. It's still a fun and cute one, but what really sets the movie apart from it in my mind is that it does directly tackle the death of her parents and how that affects her. And it does that in a way that's sensitive without being maudlin, and in a kid-friendly manner to boot, yet one that's still engaging to adults. That's what I most appreciated about the movie.
The series feels more like an anthology of different guests who require some innovative thought on Okko's part to satisfy, leading to her development into someone worthy of taking over the inn someday. She ends up making a lasting connection with several of the guests, and given more limited space, the movie only shows a small number of these, kept only to those that did foster a long-term friendship with her, or sometimes combining several of the series' guests' quirks into one encounter for the movie. The series sometimes got repetitive in a couple of the guests causing really similar problems, while the movie is more streamlined and manages to strike an overall plot better.
Take for example one guest, a fortune teller named Glory. She appears in both, and little was changed from the series to the movie. She actually appears in the second half of the series, so the movie spoils her involvement. What they do together is even almost the same between the two, yet even in its limited space, the movie works in a return appearance for Glory, yet more to the point, something happens during their time together in the movie that's a quite powerful picture of Okko dealing with missing her parents, after the movie had also seemed to that point that it might just be banal about the subject. The final guest is the only other one who plays to this theme, and again, it's a very powerful moment, one that's completely absent from the series.
Also take the character Matsuki, another young girl poised to inherit the ritzy inn nearby, and a classmate of Okko's once she moves there. She's somewhat interesting in the series, mostly in how she seems like a snob at first but grows to have a mutual respect with Okko. She also dresses in a very frilly fashion. That's all true in the movie as well, and while it's possible this was only done in the dub, they add so much more to her character. She speaks in an odd, halting cadence that still works for her, and she's constantly quoting famous literary works. In less space, they did so much more with her.
So I'd say if you want only slice of life and nothing more, then the series might be more to your taste. Otherwise, the movie tells a better story, one that treats the subject matter deftly, in a way a child viewer could easily follow, yet still sensitively and without being over the top. They're by the same studio, but the art is a little different, and I liked the movie's better. Music is average to maybe a little better.
Wakaokami wa Shougakusei! ("The Young Innkeeper is a Grade Schooler!")
Rating: very good (movie).
Relevant genres: slice of life, drama.
Rating: good (series).
24 half-length episodes, relevant genres: slice of life.
Ride Your Wave is by director Masaaki Yuasa, and I've had mixed opinions about the things of his I've seen. Never bad, but they varied between decent and good, with a couple I rated very highly, namely Space Dandy (though he only directed one episode) and Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
This movie is one of his better projects, imo. It does hew toward his signature simpler animation style. The art itself is probably closest to Eizouken, but the saturated color reminds me more of Lu Over the Wall or Night is Short, Walk on Girl. Music is better than average, though it's mostly one song that gets repeated over and over, for thematic reasons.
The plot starts with a couple of firemen in a training exercise, one of them somewhat experienced and one pretty new. From the top of the structure they use for training, they can see a girl surfing out in the ocean. The older one, Minato, recognizes her—he remarks that she's come back. Initially, the girl, Hinako, meets the younger firefighter, Wasabi, when she asks him for directions to the apartment building she's just moved to, but when that building catches fire due to illegal fireworks being set off at a nearby vacant lot, Minato is the one who rescues her. They soon strike up a relationship.
For a while, the movie goes through their developing romance, which includes introducing Hinako to Minato's prickly younger sister, Yoko. It's a sweet story, and while Minato brings a lot to the table (stable job, good cooking, levelheaded), Hinako feels a bit inadequate, though she's happy to share her one expertise, surfing, with him. Eventually, he gets pretty good at it.
And none of you are naive enough to think the movie will simply leave it at that. I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and of course it does. The rest is about moving on from the death of a loved one, and that kicks in right where the romance plot was in danger of becoming boring. All the main characters have an investment in how the rest will heal after this, and while there is some supernatural stuff that ends up being a deus ex machina, it's mostly about people trying to help those they care about get past self-destructive behavior. Not exactly a unique take on the process, but still well done.
In the end, maybe things do get wrapped up in too neat of a bow, but that's not unusual for this director/studio, and there is one unresolved loose end, as tales of loss often do.
Rating: very good.
Kimi to, Nami ni Noretara, movie, relevant genres: romance, drama, supernatural.
And the rest, one of which I almost rated highly enough to feature.
Dimension W: W Gate Online (W no Tobira Online, 5 episodes)—I reviewed a series called Dimension W way back in volume 8 (and rated it very good). This is a companion piece to it, of sorts, and they're only 3-4 minutes long each. An android named Rose hosts a place online where other androids go to ask advice or seek a therapist, and main character Mira from the main show comes in to ask a question each time. They're either fairly simple scientific questions or psychological ones about her situation, but the answers are never that informative. And it directly refers to characters and events from the show, yet the ending always includes a disclaimer saying it's not related to the anime or manga, so I guess it's a fan project? Art is CGI chibi style, and average at that. There is no music. Rating: meh, relevant genres: slice of life.
Flip Flappers (13 episodes)—I really debated whether to rate this good or very good. It was borderline for me, and I'm still not sure. It starts with a fairly cold open, where a young girl named Cocona is on her way to school and sees another girl zipping by the train on a flying surfboard. The flying girl, Papika, soon tracks Cocona down and tells her they would make great partners. Partners for what? Well, together they can open a gateway to an alternate dimension called Pure Illusion. While there, they encounter strange landscapes and beings, some of them quite dangerous, with the point of locating and recovering a small powerful stone called an Amorphous. Papika reveals she works with a small enterprise that's trying to amass all the Amorphous, but there's a rival organization also trying to do so. The first half is really trippy. It's not unlike many other such shows that use dimension-hopping to accumulate some kind of resource, but the draw was in the weird locales, the almost random aspect to the plot, and the somewhat throwback art style. It's a much newer show than it looks, but it has a more modern saturated coloring. The characters were great in this, but it's some of the most extreme fan service I've seen, to the point that it felt like it was deliberately veering into parody. It does seem to make some visual and stylistic references to other things as well, like Dragonball Z, and a pretty esoteric one: Cocona's creepy-looking pet rabbit is named Uexküll after a real person. Through the wacky randomness, there was a legitimately creepy horror episode and a very sensitive treatment of Alzheimer's disease. I was impressed they managed to make that abrupt gear-shifting work, but by the second half, it's gone to a more standard drama about forgotten pasts, which is where it dipped back into the realm of "good" for me. The implication is that Pure Illusion is a world of dreams, and that it's possible to find portals into the dreams of a specific person. That's only dealt with once, and I wish they'd done more with it, because it led to some of the show's best tension: when they get back to the real world, Papika and Cocona realize the changes they made to one of these "black holes," as they call them, had a significant effect on one of their classmates. A good effect, by luck, but the gravity that they have that much power gave them lots of pause. They also have the ability to transform into magical girls on these missions, and while the transformations are the source of some of the worst fan service, I also really liked the ballerina pose Cocona struck, as well as the way each girl has one well-defined boot and another that just seems to fade into her leg like airbrushing. Music was rather good: I found the opening theme to be a great song, and the closing song was also quite good, along with the visual being great, plugging them into a fairy tale world and having some repetitive actions, kind of like the closing visuals to one of the seasons of Food Wars! There are definitely some yuri themes as well, and while I think it's a little understated (it's easy to read as either romantic or platonic), I have seen several critics weigh in that it's a good representation of LGBTQ+ characters. Rating: good, relevant genres: drama, sci-fi, adventure, action, random, yuri.
I'm Kodama Kawashiri: A Dangerous Lifehacker's Overindulgent Life (Atasha Kawashiri Kodama da yo~Denjarasu Raifu Hakka no Tadareta Seikatsu~, 24 episodes)—these are really short, only 2 1/2 minutes each, and that includes 1 1/2 minutes of skippable opening credits that are identical in all episodes. It's an autobiographical-type, self-derogatory show about the author's life as a manga artist. Though while the title would suggest she'll bestow life tips upon you, it's just pointless things about her failings and attempts to be productive. It was amusing at times, but, and this may just be me, it came across as a bit too self-promotional, and it's hard to describe why. I guess it's how if someone at work is constantly telling you the dumb stuff he did and admitting it was dumb, at least he's not trying to make himself out to be someone amazing, but he's still trying to focus the attention on himself. Plus it kept recycling the same jokes about food and sleep. When you can see the entire run in less than half an hour (by skipping those opening credits), it's not going to waste your time, but it was rarely more than mildly amusing to me. Art and music were both deliberately primitive. Rating: decent, relevant genres: comedy, slice of life.
Onyx Equinox (12 episodes)—I was interested to see what a show would do with heavy influences of Meso-American culture and mythology, but the result was underwhelming. It's funny sometimes to see how the "reception" part of a Wikipedia article will cherry-pick good reviews. I won't beat around the bush: this was bad. I don't know if that was the series creator's fault or how it got mangled in production. No doubt each will say it's the other's fault. It starts out with a young-ish boy named Izel whose sister gets killed as a blood sacrifice, which causes him to lose reverence for the gods. Noting this, and a coming calamity, a couple of the gods make a bet on whether he can be humanity's savior. So he goes on a quest to close all the gates to the underworld to stop all the destruction. The art was very good, the music average, but the only compelling character was a minor one, the queen of the dead. The rest are pretty universally sullen, whiny, and/or annoying. It starts out a bit on the adult side, what with gore and language, but then about halfway through, suddenly orgy episode. So don't let that take you by surprise. If you watch it, that is. Which you probably shouldn't. I've seen inklings that they're trying to drum up support for another season, and if it does continue, I hope I don't notice and thus feel compelled to keep up with it. Rating: meh, relevant genres: action, adventure, supernatural, dark.
Trese (6 episodes)—and speaking of cultures that don't get a lot of widespread exposure, this one's based on a comic that's rooted in Filipino folklore. Main character Alexandra Trese is someone with occult power who also helps out the police frequently. She has a few supernatural creatures who help her out, plus a few more who do so at their whim. It's definitely dark, both literally (the lighting is almost always subdued) and figuratively. It's not that different from something like X Files, where she investigates strange cases, but this time, it's not that she's searching for something she can't wrap her head around; Trese is well-versed in all these happenings and is just trying to stop a devil-like being from destroying the world. It did irk some people how that demon creature is portrayed, as it's not very accurate to how he appears in actual folklore. I did like the atmosphere to this, and the characters were interesting enough, but at only 6 episodes, it's going to have a hard time developing enough context to flesh out the premise and the character arcs. Trese herself got enough back story to have a good arc, but the rest felt like set pieces. Pretty good cop/supernatural series, but lacks a bit of meat to it. Art was great, music average. Rating: decent, relevant genres: mystery, horror, supernatural, action, dark.
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. 30 here
vol. 31 here
vol. 32 here
vol. 33 here
vol. 34 here
vol. 35 here
vol. 36 here
vol. 37 here
vol. 38 here
vol. 39 here
"Meh" was my reaction to Onyx Equinox as well. It didn't help that the main character was incredibly whinny.
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He sure was. There's an art to making an unlikable protagonist, but I doubt it was deliberate this time.
If you're looking for more shows, I can't recommend Pripara highly enough, as per this blog I put together.
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I think I've looked that one up before. As it is, though, my watch list currently has 180 things on it. :(
5681453
Ah, yeah, that's already very full.
5681453
Your watch list is even longer than mine, but I still feel I'd be remiss if I didn't suggest you check out Spy x Family, if you haven't already. I found it very charming.
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It's on the list. Will get to it sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.
I watched Trese shortly after it debuted. I had pretty much the same thoughts, that its Filipino roots make it unique, and while the production was competent enough, everything packed into the short miniseries left me hoping for just a little bit more.
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I wish I could have liked it more than I did, and it's not the first time I felt like I was missing out by not knowing the local lore something is based on. It's probably telling that it was wildly popular in the Philippines, but I don't know if that's more showing support for a home-grown thing or a sign of quality.