Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 50 · 10:57pm Apr 11th, 2023
Unlike volume 25, I don't have anything special going on for this nice round number. I'll talk a little about some new shows that just started, but to keep it above the fold, I'll go ahead and say the features this time are Death Parade, from nearly ten years ago, and Wonder Egg Priority, from just a couple of years ago. Those plus four other reviews (most of which are in a continuity, as I alluded to last time) after the break.
So, each season I try to keep the new things I'm watching to three or four, but there were too many that caught my eye this time. I've got six new ones I've already started, one or two more I want to see that haven't started yet, plus new seasons of several ones I've been keeping up with. It's getting a teeny bit frustrating that when I check each day, there are enough updates of those to use up all my TV time for the day, and I'm making very little progress toward any completed things I was in the middle of.
And that's not even counting that there were several other shows from the fall or winter that I didn't watch as they came out but did want to see later. It also didn't help that a larger than usual number of ones I did watch from the winter season are getting additional seasons later, so they aren't ones I can include in a review blog yet.
Of the new things this spring season...
Dr. Stone has a new season. I saw the first two on Toonami, so for now, I'll wait and see if they get it, but if not, I do want to see it anyway.
The Ancient Magus' Bride concluded an OVA not long ago, and season 2 started. I didn't stumble onto the first season until it was two years old, and they'd dubbed it by then. Now that I'm used to associating certain voices with the characters, I'd rather continue with the dub, but now that I look, it took them two years to make a dub of S1. Not gonna wait that long. If it gets halfway through and still no sign of a dub, I'll start on the sub.
Demon Slayer S3 started, but same deal. They're usually not far behind on the dub, so I'll probably wait for it unless it drags out too long.
BIRDIE WING: Golf Girls' Story S2 started, and it's one of those that just seamlessly goes as if there was never a season break.
Skip and Loafer. New show, one ep so far. This is really cute. One of the better high school slice of life ones I've seen, assuming it keeps the quality up. I like the subversion that the country bumpkin is the smart one. New uptight girl meets very laid-back guy.
Insomniacs after School. New show, one ep so far. And I pretty much have the same to say about it. Really enjoyable high school slice of life, but they've done a great job characterizing the girl protagonist. She's a joy. Guy plagued by insomnia finds a kindred spirit in his class, so they decide to do stuff together late at night while they're wide awake.
My Clueless First Friend. New show, two eps. And... another school slice of life (elementary this time)? Great characterization here, too. Girl picked on for looking spooky meets new boy in class, and he's so naive he believes everyone that she's a real shinigami, but he thinks that's cool, so she's got a friend now. His other buddy is a great scene-stealing background character.
A Galaxy Next Door. New show, one ep so far. This is the only one that's disappointed me. Maybe it'll get better, but now that I've started, I'll finish it. There's a whole lot of nothing, and the twist doesn't make much sense. Girl leaves home after a funeral for some reason, then goes to work for a manga artist, but she's probably an alien, and it's already veered into the "you just did something that my people would consider a marriage proposal" plot point.
Hell's Paradise. New show, two eps so far. Ninja wants to leave the profession, but like the mafia, nobody leaves, so he's marked for execution, but nobody can kill him even though he wants to die. So they bring in a special executioner who has her own emotional issues, and she's got other plans for him.
Heavenly Delusion. New show, one ep. Some kids in a highly advanced and orderly society start to wonder what's outside the walls, and they're told it's Hell out there. Some kids outside the wall scrounge through a postapocalyptic cityscape looking for Heaven. They're destined to meet.
The Reason Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion. New show, one ep. Neat isekai idea. A girl is murdered, and undoubtedly the plot will eventually turn to solving it, but she wakes up in the world of a novel she's read, where she recognizes herself as a secondary character who gets murdered, so she cuts to the chase and starts making deals to head that off. The pilot was a good hook.
Magical Destroyers. New show. Taking a wait and see on this one. If it keeps rating well, I'll watch it after the season. Many different types of otaku brutally fight for their right to paaaarty.
Oshi no Ko. New show, hasn't started yet, but is scheduled to tomorrow. Another odd isekai idea, where a murdered doctor gets reborn as the baby he just delivered, the mother being a pop idol who also falls victim to murder. As the doctor/baby gets older, he tries to solve both murders.
Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts. New show, doesn't start for a couple weeks yet. Human girl chosen as a sacrifice to maintain peace with the beasts actually gets along with them quite well, leading the beast king to decide maybe humans aren't so bad after all.
That's like sitting through the previews at a movie, huh? And now our feature presentation...
Death Parade is one of those series that started with a short film as a proof of concept for part of a demo program sponsored by a studio, and it was an entrant that got picked up. It ends up not mattering when you see the short film (same length as an episode) called Death Billiards. I saw it first, but there'd be no spoilers either way.
Toward the end there are a couple of two-parters, but the film and most episodes have two people show up in a bar shortly after they died, except they don't know they're dead. Most times, they're in one particular bar, but one other is shown a couple of times, and there are implied to be many. The two people had to have died pretty much simultaneously, but while their deaths don't have to be connected, they usually are.
The two guests will be compelled to play some sort of game, and the bartender strongly implies that their lives are at stake. It's all a scheme to let the truth come out so the bartender can judge whether to send them to heaven or hell. Or so they say—the true outcomes are sending them back through the reincarnation cycle or on to oblivion. Over the course of each game, the players begin to recall the circumstances of their deaths.
It's an obvious setup for there to be some sort of ironic twist revealed each time, and that is indeed what happens. It's interesting enough, and there are many shows that would skate on that concept alone. This isn't just any show. It adds a new wrinkle at just the right time to keep it fresh.
There are some behind-the-scenes moments of the bartenders and other workers who facilitate this process, and it comes out that the person in charge of this group of bartenders (well, they're more formally known as Arbiters) has an experiment she's letting play out about how all this operates. She was an interesting character. Even more so is the bar where most of the show takes place. The Arbiter there is more introspective than they're supposed to be, and he's also the only one who has an assistant. For how little she does early on, it would seem to be an extraneous position, but she's given a compelling character arc. She's revealed to have several very unusual characteristics, and it never really gets fully explained as to why she would, but it's still well executed.
My only real complaint is that the guests who comprise the only case shown at another bar have a fairly vague and unsatisfying resolution. I think I understood what it meant, but it seems an unreasonable outcome, especially for the girl.
The art was very good, and I loved the character designs across the board, particularly the head Arbiter Nona, the protagonist Arbiter Decim, and his assistant, who doesn't remember her name. Music was mostly unobtrusive, but the opening song is quite good, if at somewhat of a tonal disconnect with the show in general. It really stuck with me, and I found myself hanging on every episode. And one other thing about the art. No doubt you've watched many shows where a character is supposed to be doing some fluid motion like dancing, and it just looks awfully jerky and inelegant. In a late episode, one of the characters does a figure skating routine, and it was impressively animated. Not only smooth, but it looked very realistic, not exaggerated at all.
Rating: excellent.
12 episodes + 1 short film, relevant genres: drama, psychological thriller.
Wonder Egg Priority doesn't come to a conclusion, and I'd been keeping it in reserve in case they added a second season, but I'm satisfied that I've seen enough language from the producers that it won't, so I'll go ahead and cover it. I think it deserves to be featured, with reservations.
Ai is a junior high student who's kind of a loner, which would subject her to teasing, but her eyes being different colors just gives everyone else yet another thing to pick on her about. She used to have one friend, Koito, a girl who'd transferred in, but they had a bit of a strange relationship, and one day she sees Koito plummet past the window of the classroom and splatter herself on the ground. She was in a bad place already, but now she can't bring herself to go to school at all, and she won't answer the door when the teacher comes by to ask after her, plus she has emotional issues about the teacher as well. Basically, she's a wreck.
Then a strange voice leads her to a vending machine in an abandoned mall, where she can buy one of those plastic eggs with a prize inside. Upon opening it, the next time she falls asleep will transport her to a parallel world where she has to help someone who'd committed suicide confront her demons, quite literally. Strangely, this first one knows all about how this works and instructs her through it, while all subsequent ones are clueless. One tick against consistency there. Injuries don't faze her while there, but upon waking up again, she will have whatever damage she suffered, which can be hard to explain. She's told that if she saves enough of these souls, she can earn Koito's back and have her resurrected.
Each episode has a bit of real-life drama interspersed with these missions, but she also meets three other girls with very interesting circumstances who form a loose-knit group. Various ones of them don't get along well. Each of them has been similarly affected by a suicide they want to undo. Seems like a good setup and direction, pointing to a nice resolution at the end.
Music was quite good, the art was wonderful, I loved the characters. Rating: excellent—
Oh, it's not over.
The demons get upgraded a bit, so the girls get animal companions to help out, which were kind of dumb, but I can roll with it. About the time the inexperienced production team had to wedge in a recap episode to buy time for the rest of the series (pushing the finale off to become the special episode), it starts to go downhill. That's episode 8, and I think 9 and 10 may still be worth watching. May. The overall arc had started going in a weird direction, but as to character arcs, the biggie is that there is a strange decision on what was really going on with Koito, but at least the other girls' arcs were going on strong.
Then a bunch of stuff about artificial intelligence and parallel universes that had been kept to a trickle floods in, and... man, it's just dumb. It makes little sense, invalidates a lot of what was happening, and I stayed to the end, hoping it would correct its course. It did not.
I do want to address some of the most common criticisms I see of it. One, that Koito's reveal was a cop-out. Kind of agree there, but only that it was uninteresting, plot-wise. I don't agree that it's implausible. Two, that the reveal of the bad guy's back story unfairly demonized her. I will agree that she was treated badly, but it's not completely unjustified. She truly is a monster, and I had zero sympathy for her, plus she was the one who instigated anything bad that happened to her, even if she may or may not have understood the ethics of it. That's independent of whether she made for a good plot element, though, and along those lines, I thought using her at all took away from the uniqueness of the plot and setting and made the show far less enjoyable, so I do agree on that front. There's a behavioral tic she has that one critic felt sexualized her, but I don't see it. And three, that the story trivialized suicide to a degree by coming up with glib explanations for plot reasons why only 14-year-old girls were affected, then the staff having to tap-dance around it a bit when asked. Yeah, I did find that uncomfortable.
So... rating: excellent, if you stop after episode 7 or maybe skip 8 and watch on some into 9 and 10, as long as you don't mind things being even more unresolved. I'd most recommend stopping after 7; 10 has one of the better treatments of gender identity issues, but imo isn't worth the veering overall plot direction that has begun by then and the pointlessly grotesque ending. Taken as a whole, rating: decent.
12 episodes + 1 special, relevant genres: drama, fantasy, psychological horror.
On to the other stuff, all good this time, and one that just ended a couple weeks ago.
Nodame Cantabile (23 episodes + 1 special)—as I understand it, the manga of this is considered a landmark one for classical music. Chiaki is basically a Gary Stu. He's an excellent pianist at a music school, and it turns out he's also an excellent violinist. He'd really rather get into conducting, though, and of course he's good at that too. But he can't get the international recognition needed to advance in any of those fields because he can't leave Japan. He's got a phobia of traveling by boat or airplane. That bit is more window dressing. Also at the school is a girl named Noda (her friends call her Nodame, and cantabile is a musical direction word meaning to perform something in a songlike style), who's a good pianist as well, but an odd duck about it. She's only middling at reading sheet music, but once she's heard a piece, she has the uncanny ability to play it back perfectly. The plot mostly revolves around each of them overcoming various hangups: him finding a way to do the conducting he wants and raising an orchestra at the school to indulge it, and her actually getting serious about her music to the point she's comfortable doing it competitively, though her varying skill level seems driven more by plot convenience than anything else. Oh yeah, and she's totally infatuated with Chiaki. So is half the student population. It's obvious they're being set up as a pair, and by the end, he does rather come to care for her, but it's not clear that it's a romantic interest. The series is so dominated by music that I wonder if anyone who's not somewhat of a classical aficionado would enjoy it. They're all real pieces that get performed, some even a little on the obscure side, and performances take up a lot of screen time. Sony sponsored it, so they had access to lots of stock recordings from Sony's label, though oddly enough, when they show actual CDs, they much more resemble a rival label, Deutsche Grammophon. Art looks older than it actually is, though it makes good use of CGI not only to render the instruments accurately but even being played accurately, at least as far as I could tell from the ones I know well enough. The conducting... was a mixed bag of accuracy. Rating: decent for most, but probably bumps up to good if you're a classical fan, relevant genres: drama, romance, comedy, music.
Nodame Cantabile: Paris-hen (11 episodes + 1 OVA)—I didn't find the OVA from this season. This sequel follows Chiaki and Nodame after they've graduated in Japan and are studying overseas in Paris. We once again get a very inconsistent picture of how good Nodame is. A few side characters get shuffled in and out, and it's pretty much the same quality and plot as the original, so not really anything new to discuss here. On the technical side, a lot of it does ring true, working with a mediocre orchestra and the egos that get in the way, plus the horn player being berated for playing too loudly when it's incredibly hard to play one softly—that all shows attention to detail and being authentic. Sony was not listed as a sponsor anymore, which may explain the reduction in CGI (which was necessary for accurately modeling the performers) and more use of simple incidental music, though the concerts were still good. They even delved into a few more obscure pieces this time. Everyone's heard of Mozart and Bach and the like, but they chose a few even I've never heard of, and I was delighted at some of the pieces in the middle ground they used, that the general public wouldn't recognize but are still fairly well-known to classical fans, like Nielsen's 4th Symphony. An oddity to me, which I'll leave up to one of our people knowledgeable on Japan (probably totallynotabrony, as he usually pops by): Nodame doesn't use any of the various "I" pronouns, preferring to call herself by name. I don't think I've ever encountered that before. Would that be regarded the same as someone doing that in English? Art and music are the same quality as before, and it gets the same rating: decent, but may bump up to good for classical aficionados, relevant genres: drama, romance, comedy, music.
Nodame Cantabile Finale (11 episodes + 1 OVA + 1 special)—the appropriately named last series. Sony's back as a sponsor, and maybe they never left but it just wasn't as prominently displayed in the second series? While the first two felt more focused on Chiaki's career aspirations and Nodame's comical romantic pursuit of him, this one finally dealt more with who Nodame is and what she wants out of her music. This may be the strongest plot arc of the run, and it takes an interesting turn near the end, only to have a very weak conclusion, plus the OVA implies everything's just returned to the status quo. I really wish it had followed through, as the nature of Nodame's struggle was rather nuanced and multifaceted. While all three series did give some life to the side characters, this one does the most with them, and a couple even have pretty compelling stories. Rating: good, relevant genres: drama, romance, comedy, music.
Tomo-chan is a Girl! (Tomo-chan wa Onnonoko!, 13 episodes)—Tomo and Junichiro have been friends ever since they were quite little. Tomo is very much a tomboy—it took Junichiro several years to realize she was a girl. They both study karate and see each other as rivals. Well, by the time they're in high school, Tomo decides she has feelings for him, but try as she might, she can't get him to see her as anything but one of the guys. Enter her best friend Misuzu, who doesn't like Junichiro but is still willing to play matchmaker for Tomo's sake. Foreign transfer student Carol also joins as a co-conspirator. It's not a plot that will surprise, but the characters work well, and it's definitely sweet. Misuzu being manipulative was entertaining, though it got stretched at times, plus her self-hatred over it never quite made sense to me. Carol was impressive in that she's annoying and comes across as airheaded (though isn't) and still often was the catalyst that made so many scenes work. Even though I found her irritating, I still liked it when she turned up. Except for a clumsy romance arc for her. And as to romance... yes, the main plot point of whether Tomo would ever get together with Junichiro was fun. Pretty enjoyable among the high school romance genre. They did give Tomo a rather deep voice. I thought I'd seen that the same VA did her for the sub and dub, but now that I look, that's Carol. Art was good, and the fan service was kept to a minimum, though of course there was a beach episode. Music was average but at least on the cute side. Rating: good, relevant genres: romance, comedy, drama.
Lastly, a short update on one I'd reviewed before. I'll go back and edit the post it's in as well. When I reviewed Psycho-Pass and all its sequels, I rated the collection of three short films called Sinners of the System as very good, based on the second being an okay take on a tired premise but the third being rather good and pulling up the overall rating. Well, now I've seen the first one, and it was pretty dumb. The action was fine, but the plot was only passable, about a facility away from town flouting the criminal rehabilitation system to use people as slave labor and being willing to kill police to preserve their secret. It also made some ill-advised grabs for humor. With there now being only one of the three films I liked, I'll downgrade the collection to a rating of decent.
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. 40 here
vol. 41 here
vol. 42 here
vol. 43 here
vol. 44 here
vol. 45 here
vol. 46 here
vol. 47 here
vol. 48 here
vol. 49 here
Yeah, I'd heard Wonder Egg Priority's ending was botched almost as badly as The Promised Neverland's. Psycho-Pass as a franchise also died the second Gen Urobuchi left the writer's chair. He's been working on Thunderbolt Fantasy for a while now, and if you want something unique and incredible, I can't recommend it enough. It's taiwanese glove puppetry:
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Psycho-Pass 3 was good, but also nonessential. The person who recommended the original to me feels that even though skipping the lackluster Psycho-Pass 2 wouldn't harm your understanding of anything, he thinks the first series already tells the complete story as much as it needs to and didn't want to see more. I can't blame him.
Wonder Egg is the only one of these I've seen. I mostly agree with you; I loved the characters, even if they were a bit cliche, they were really charming within those idioms, and I liked the animation.
There was one bit that really bothered me prior to the end (which, again, pretty much agree with you) though, and that was the trans episode. I don't know if it was the translation/otherwise an artifact of moving from Japanese to English, or if it was well-intentioned but ill-thought-out, or if it was just regular ol' anti-trans, but I didn't at all care for the "if you don't have a penis, you're really a girl" thing that it ended up going with. Prior to that, though, I was really enjoying it, so I try to put it in a "didn't think through the implications" category in my head.
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The fact that it started out so good makes it all the more painful that it ended up so bad. I'll still be on my soapbox recommending the first 7 episodes to everyone.
"Otakus fight for their right to party" is how I'm going to describe Magical Destroyers from now on.
Let me tell you the tragedy of Wonder Egg Priority.
Superlative characters, animation, plot, and action. But at what cost? The animation producer was hospitalized twice during production. "It's wonderful to have something that is more important than your life," he said. He must have been truly passionate. The show was just too good, and therein was the downfall, there was simply no one capable of sustaining it. I remarked at the time that the first two thirds of WEP was anime-of-the-decade material...and it all fell apart after that. It still smarts over what could have been.
Sidenote, Wonder Egg Priority aired on Wednesdays. In my shorthand, I had it written down as "WE-We."
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Hey, did you miss the question I had for you? Down near the end of the review for Nodame Cantabile: Paris-hen, there was an oddity not about the show but more linguistic in nature.
I didn't know the health issues that had plagued the crew, but the wikipedia article about it did go into the production challenges that led to them being dangerously overworked. Shame. Though I've certainly also been in a position to neglect my health in order to pursue work or a hobby.
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It's not unheard of for some Japanese characters to refer to themselves in the third person. I don't know much about prevalence or proper usage, but I've seen it before. If I had to make a guess, usually with cutesy-type personalities.
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I was sure I'd read about this somewhere before, and after a little googling, I think this is what I'd first read on the topic, which includes a link toward the end to a more scholarly, less casual examination of third-person pronouns in Japanese.
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Hm, interesting. I'd certainly come across other fictional characters who do this (Trixie among them, obviously), but I can see the dilemma in whether to preserve that when translating. In English, it tends to make someone seem egotistical, and I didn't know if that was the case in Japanese. Apparently not, but I'm still wondering how common it is to do this in real life versus it just being one of those things that's common in anime/manga only and understood to be one of its conceits (like an old guy who likes to ogle teenage girls being treated as good-natured humor).