Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 45 · 10:49pm Jan 3rd, 2023
Yay, Christmas vacation time means more anime watching! Though I used that time to get into more multi-season things, so not a lot more finished. Still, some of the fall season shows ended, and I have two of those as this week's featured items: Akiba Maid War and Bocchi the Rock, plus a few other good to not-so-good ones (also mostly recent), after the break.
Akiba Maid War sounded like it'd be a dumb low-stakes comedy full of fan service. If it went over the top enough, maybe it'd be worth seeing, but my schedule was full as it was, so I gave it a pass. totallynotabrony had a similar impression but decided to give it a shot, and it ended up surprising him. I took his recommendation, and it surprised me, too.
Teenage girl Nagomi dreams of working at a maid cafe in the Akihabara area of Tokyo (Akiba for short), where (and this is not so far from the truth) there are so many of them that you can't go a single block without passing multiple ones. Here, that's envisioned as causing such intense rivalry between them that it's resulted in mafia-style conflicts, complete with assassinations and all-out raids. Lots of people die.
Nagomi knew nothing about that side of the business and was not at all prepared for it. She just wanted to work at a cute job and arranged ahead of time for a spot at one whose gimmick was having pig ears on the headbands and a pig snout on the center of the bow. Not long after her, another lady joins up, Ranko, who seems cold and emotionless. She's 35, and she's met with more than a little surprise at wanting to get into the business at that age (well, she'd been in prison for a while), and she's mostly regarded with a "hey, I admire your pluck" attitude. She'd seem to make for a poor maid, at least the customer service part, but she's good at the seamy underbelly of the business. Of the rest of the crew at the Oinky-Doink Cafe (the two main factions are a cabal of space-themed cafes and another of animal-themed ones), I'll only mention that the one who looks like she'd be a stereotypical brainless blonde is anything but. Hell, I also really appreciated that the short, wide-flared skirts everyone wears were so filled with frills (say that five times fast) that the eye candy was virtually nonexistent.
Part of the schtick at each cafe is working in appropriate puns for anything, and I have to say, I doubt they translate exactly. Like take an English word that could be used for that. A maid wanting to know if a customer would like to take a "pigture" together, say. What are the odds you can make the same pun in Japanese? Maybe you can. I don't know. But it would seem like it'd rarely work as a direct translation. All that is to say that assuming that's true, I was impressed with the effort it must have taken to do the subtitles and basically invent new jokes so you can still do all that.
So what's the plot about? Ostensibly that this cafe consistently refuses to play by the rules, but it's just as often negligent as willful. The story takes short digressions in so many directions as it explores all the possible genre options. I mean, the premise alone could be intense gangster stuff or over the top humor, and they're both present. But then once or twice it smacks you over the head with a genuinely heartfelt moment.
Sometimes I'll level a criticism of "it doesn't know what it wants to be" at a show because it aimlessly wanders through the genre landscape, seemingly without a purpose to it, but this one very deliberately tries to be everything, and hell if it doesn't succeed at it. I'll keep the genre tags at the end to the primary ones, but a lot more than that get at least some screen time. Even the ending was mixed, with a simultaneously tragic and uplifting reveal that carried a nice theme of being true to who you are as well as validating Nagomi's original enthusiasm. Music was pretty good, more on the over-the-top side, and the art was great.
Also, major points for having a good baseball episode. Add it to the list of animes that visit that topic.
Rating: very good.
Akiba Maid Sensou, 12 episodes, relevant genres: drama, dark comedy.
Bocchi the Rock has as its main character Hitori, who is an extreme introvert. While watching an interview of a pop group she likes, she sees one of the members say he used to be like that, but joining a rock band turned his life around. Knowing her dad used to play guitar, Hitori begs to borrow his old instrument and proceeds to spend all of her free time during junior high school practicing, on the theory that someone will magically know she's good and ask her to join a band.
It doesn't happen, but all that time practicing does genuinely make her good, and she doesn't feel shy about posting videos of her doing covers of popular songs. She's gained quite a following, though lacks the social awareness to know it's a big following, and nobody knows she's the one doing it.
Now in high school, she's finally decided her dream will never happen unless she takes action on her own... only to have someone ask her out of the blue to join a band. The show is all about her dealing with her shyness toward an audience, strangers in general, and even her own bandmates, who learn how to support her. There are clever running gags and changes of art style, but mostly this is going to speak to people with social anxiety issues, though it's also a realistic look at musicians starting out.
It sure hit rather close to home for me, thus I enjoyed it more than someone who doesn't care about such things. Especially in this community, I bet a lot of people will see themselves in the quirks Hitori has. Take for example the time she reports to work and can't bring herself to open the door for a variety of reasons. Not wanting to intrude on whatever social interactions that might be taking place inside and surely wouldn't involve her, possibly making herself the center of attention, just effecting any sort of change that threatens to derail whatever current circumstances have her in a comfortable rut. So she paces around, saying she'll give herself five minutes on the chance a coworker shows up during that time and she can slink in with them. I totally get it. Plus the dichotomous internal voices telling you you're good at what you do but still certain you'd be ridiculed for it. Or the "I want this dearly but am afraid to get it" kind of incongruousness that plagues humanity.
It's sweet, cute, and fun. Art is somewhat simplistic but still good. Music is pretty standard Jpop style, but a good example of it. If looking at these kinds of social issues doesn't interest you, then the show likely won't either, but if they do, particularly if you're subject to them yourself, it comes well recommended.
Rating: very good.
12 episodes, relevant genres: slice of life, comedy, music.
Yikes, this almost bankrupts my backlog of saved reviews. I do have 3 or 4 other shows I'm watching as they come out that should end in the next few weeks, so I hope to get a reload soon.
Batman: Hush (movie)—not too much to say about this one. Pretty standard fare, but as Batman fights his way through the usual array of villains, it starts to go by the numbers. It also has references to other things in the continuity that I didn't understand. It didn't hurt the plot any, but it does show that they expect you've seen the previous movies. I've only seen some of them. An unidentified villain shows up and somehow knows who Batman is, and so proceeds to take out anyone dear to Bruce Wayne. There's a nice red herring at one point as to the villain's identity, and there's a pretty good romance (plus good justification to why it doesn't work out). But overall, toward the bottom of the pile for Batman movies. Rating: decent, relevant genres: drama, mystery, action.
Do It Yourself!! (12 episodes)—cute iyashikei series about a high school DIY club. Main character Yua Serufu (whose name is really on the nose and is even called out for it in the show) grew up liking to do construction projects with her neighbor and friend Miku, but as teenagers, they go to different schools. This takes place somewhat in the future, and Serufu goes to a regular high school while Miku goes to the prestigious tech school next door. Serufu joins the DIY club, and eventually they entice several other girls to join, though two of them (at long last including Miku) are from the other school and so don't count toward the official membership. Mostly, it's just slice of life as they do various projects, though the second half is a longer arc about them wanting to build a treehouse. There are several running gags. One is that Serufu has three pets, one of them a pig named Meat who constantly gets nervous about all the pork they eat. That gets dropped as a source of humor about halfway through. Another is that Serufu is a total klutz, to the point she often sees the school nurse daily to get a bandage or have a scrape cleaned up. I do wish they'd played up the safety aspect more. The school nurse is also the faculty advisor, so she has firsthand knowledge of Serufu's injuries. Yet it's hardly ever addressed in any capacity. She's not admonished for her lack of safety equipment, it's unusual to see any of the girls using goggles, for instance, and the one prominent use was that they at least did use a harness while working up on ladders. I gather that DIY-type things are pretty rare in Japan and that stores like Lowe's are all but nonexistent, so maybe that's just not in the public consciousness to worry about? The club president's parents own such a store. It's interesting to see culture clash in stories like this: one of the girls is American, and the writers didn't always know how to handle her consistently, like she finds it odd that girls might bathe together, but then she's the one who suggests it when staying at someone's house. Another girl finds it necessary to meow at the end of nearly everything she says, which got annoying. Art was a simplified but charming style, and I loved the graphic for cutting away to commercial. Music was fairly good. Rating: good, relevant genres: slice of life, a little yuri.
Mob Psycho 100 III (12 epsodes)—I'd previously let this series float as one that didn't need its own review because everyone already knew about it, but I also didn't know it would continue as long as it has. Back in volume 1 I said the first season was rather good and the second even better. This one was mixed. It's a lot more of the same type of plot, so I won't go into it much, just to say that it was divided into two arcs. The first started out really strong and set a great tone for the season. It had my hopes up. But as that arc moved into being about a cult, it felt like it dragged out too long. Then the second arc dealt with some of Mob's personal life, and while I think that was a great thing to cover, it also dragged out too long. At least it came to a very satisfying conclusion. Uneven, and overall it probably averages out to my least favorite season of it. Rating: good, relevant genres: drama, comedy, supernatural.
Princess Arete (Arite Hime, movie)—another of the family-friendly movie recs. This had an unusual art style that I thought fit the mood well. It starts off like a classic fairy tale: Princess Arete is confined to a tower room by her father to keep her safe until he can marry her off, and he's arranged a bunch of quests for prospective suitors to go on and earn her hand in marriage. But she regularly sneaks out and walks inconspicuously among the people, since none of them know what she looks like. This abruptly shifts gears when a sorcerer convinces the king that he deserves her more than any of the questing knights, but he has an ulterior motive. The logic started to fall apart for me here, as I'm not sure what his game plan was, but he ends up holding her prisoner, which she accepts a little too readily, then he lets her go? Something about giving her a similar quest, but one she's doomed to never complete. Then she turns the tables on him, you find out the true nature of magic in this world, and there's a little denouement. Strange film. It's basically a very meandering fairy tale that changes what it's about several times, but it ends up in a good place, with a nice message about what the important things in life are. Music was pretty good, too, though with the general lack of direction, it was a bit difficult to stay engaged with it. Rating: decent, relevant genres: drama, fantasy, adventure.
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. 35 here
vol. 36 here
vol. 37 here
vol. 38 here
vol. 39 here
vol. 40 here
vol. 41 here
vol. 42 here
vol. 43 here
vol. 44 here
Sometimes I wonder if half the population of Japan is involved in the animation business.
You watched all the best shows of the Fall season I see. 👍
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I still have a few others in progress because they ran a little long or I started them after the dubs came out. So I still have more of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, Chainsaw Man, The Yakuza's Guide to Babysitting, Reincarnated as a Sword, and Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer. And that's not even counting the 5 or 6 other ones I wanted to watch but haven't even started yet. Thank goodness only 2-3 of the new winter shows caught my eye. I did already see the new season of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, but I'm not reviewing those individually, so I'll get the whole thing once it finishes in about 50 years. And I recently finished The Executioner and Her Way of Life, which I'm also waiting on because it sure seems like it'll get at least one more season.
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And the other half is in the manga business so the animators have something to adapt.
that first one sounds great, and the sort of show you absolutely need a recommendation to get into
Glad you liked Akiba too! And it hadn't occurred to me, but yes: that was a baseball episode that I genuinely enjoyed, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.
I watched Bocchi late, but I'm glad I did. Your comment on "I want this dearly but am afraid to get it" put things into context and hit home a little more than the show itself did. For example, I've been stalling for years about taking the step to try and get original fiction published.
Reincarnated as a Sword is okay. Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer was a good manga and I finished it, but not a great anime adaptation and I dropped it. I don't know if I'll hold my breath on another season of The Executioner and Her Way of Life. It likely did get enough viewership for that to happen, but even today some people are butthurt about it not being a conventional isekai.
I was one of the many people calling out Do It Yourself's startling lack of emphasis on safety. One of the things that took a while to sink in: the school nurse commenting on Serufu's perfect attendance - she isn't talking about Serufu coming to school every day, she's talking about Serufu getting hurt every day. It feels like child neglect.
I wouldn't say DIY is as popular in Japan as it is in the US, for lack of space to do it if nothing else, but there definitely are Lowe's-type places. Joyful Honda is the one I went to usually. There are larger number of secondhand stores like Hard Off for things that may need a little TLC.
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This surprises me a little, just because isekais are flooding the market right now, so I would think people would appreciate a different take on it. It seems like half the new animes for the last couple years are isekais. I just don't like the genre much, so I've only watched two of them in that time, Rising of the Shield Hero (because a friend asked me to, but I still haven't started S2) and Executioner, though based on your recommendation, I do have Uncle from Another World on my list to watch sometime.