Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 59 · 11:41pm Oct 17th, 2023
More completed summer shows! In what may be an unpopular opinion, one of those is a feature this time, FLCL: Shoegaze, and I'll put FLCL: Grunge up with it just to keep them together, even though I didn't rate it highly. The other feature is a school romance series from 2017 called Tsuki ga Kirei. And more reviews of newly finished summer shows, after the break.
FLCL: Grunge (3 episodes)—another (late) summer series that just finished. Backtracking a bit, I found the first sequel, Progressive, to be a confusing mess that tried to recapture the original's wackiness but forgot to include more than a perfunctory plot. The second, Alternative, went the other way, with a solid character arc but wasn't very flashy. That made it suffer for people who wanted more of the original's style, but I think most of those people would have found it more engaging if it had been its own thing without setting up those expectations. I think it's unfairly maligned and a pretty good character piece. But then came Grunge. For one thing, it's a completely different animation style, a very obvious CGI that I found off-putting. It tried to find that formula of the original: wacky but with a surprisingly deep plot underneath. And I can see what they were going for, but it just didn't get there. There's a difference between wacky and random, and it didn't quite nail the wacky. It also just didn't have the space to develop the characters. Whereas FLCL gave Naota the spotlight but had a great arc for Ninamori as well, here we have three characters in half the space. There's a boy whose dad runs a sushi restaurant, a boy (of an alien race they introduced for the first time for some reason, who all look like Thing from Fantastic 4) who's kind of a yakuza wannabe, and a girl whose dad used to be a sword maker. Continuing the plot of Alternative, people are trying to get off Earth, and Haruko is still looking for the Pirate King for vague reasons, and it tells the story of a single day's events from each of the three main characters' perspectives. Only the girl really gets an arc, and they were so desperately trying to make her as sympathetic is Ninamori, but it just never got there. I liked her enough to give out the rating I did, but overall, there's not much here. Art was fairly ugly CGI, and music was just okay beyond them recycling most of the original's. Rating: decent, relevant genres: action, random, comedy, drama.
FLCL: Shoegaze, even more than Alternative, I expect will be unfairly panned, but I liked it quite a bit. First off, I never knew all the FLCL shows didn't come out in chronological order. I don't know how you're supposed to figure that out from what's in them. The only reason I know is because the wikipedia article lists what the studio says is the proper order: Alternative, Shoegaze, Grunge, FLCL, and Progressive. That does help sort out some of the continuity as to why certain things are happening and how various characters would or would not know certain pieces of information.
Shoegaze is the only one of the sequels where I'd call that nonlinear storytelling a success, in that a lot of stuff clicks into place that would be pointless to present this way otherwise. A few plot points are still left up in the air, but no more so than the original did, like Haruko's motivations and game plan. For that matter, this is the only one of the continuity that doesn't have her in it at all.
High school student Masaki can see ghost-like things, but nobody believes him. Classmate Harumi is just generally a badass anyway, but similar to Masaki, she feels like something is off with the world and she doesn't belong. They decide to break into a tower that was apparently a failed government experiment, now abandoned, to try tearing it down. She's on board because she's just anarchist anyway, but Masaki thinks there's a purpose to it, one he can't quite grasp.
Like all the series, there's a government guy hoping to steer things and reactivate the experiment due to motives he's not transparent about, and I was happy to see main character Kana from Alternative return here as an adult to get wrapped up in things as well, and her loyalties are just as unclear. Once it's revealed what the government guy wants, there is somewhat of a lack of context over whether it's a good or bad thing and what problems it might cause.
This came the closest to recapturing the original's wackiness overlaid on a compelling plot, and just when I thought they'd wimp out with a vague ending, it came to a nice close. It even seemed like all parties wanted the same outcome but differed on how to achieve it, so there were no outright villains. The one thing that's possibly unsatisfactory about the conclusion is that it may exist in somewhat of a vacuum, having little bearing on all the later chronology, though it does more than any of the other sequels to draw a coherent picture of its own and how it fits with the rest.
Art was very good, a little on the fan service side at times. Music wasn't amazing, but at least it was new instead of recycled and was still pretty good. Of the five items in the continuity, Progressive and Grunge are the only ones I'd call just okay, and fortunately, they're completely skippable. The rest are well worth watching, which should go without saying for the original. It's a classic.
Rating: very good.
3 episodes, relevant genres: action, random, comedy, drama, romance, coming of age.
Tsuki ga Kirei really resonated with me, but I get the feeling it won't for everyone. To a degree, people expect anime to be over the top and dramatized. That's more entertaining, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't like that too. But it's the quiet pieces that can really remind you of the more mundane that's the hallmark of real life and make a strong connection.
What this show does superbly is authenticity. Not that every scrap of logic in it hangs together perfectly, but it's more a few rough edges than a big hole in the middle. Getting back to that drama, though: still, my favorite school romance anime I've seen is Toradora! but this comes a close second. Where Toradora! is funny and outrageous and bombastic, this is so real.
Kotaro is in his final year of junior high, and while he's not a shy person in general, he's very shy about admiring Akane, a girl in his class. She seems to have much the same reaction to him, not that either one of them has the brain power to see that. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: junior high boys are stupid creatures. I was one. I lived through that stupidity. Some would say I never emerged from it...
Right away, the first episode hit me with such authenticity that it brought me back to those days in my own life. Kotaro and Akane's families happen to be eating at the same restaurant, and when they encounter each other at the drink dispenser, the kids have that "deer in the headlights" look, and as terribly uncool as parents are at that age, they notice and ask how the two know each other, and pass around introductions, gab for a while, and Dad mutters under his breath, "Hey, son, she's pretty cute!" Who hasn't been there? But you just don't see this kind of non-overblown stuff in anime that much unless it's the side dish.
They gradually get closer, and while they find they can text each other and speak naturally that way, in person they can't do any more than sit in an uncomfortable silence at first. I will say one point against it is that they never really show what attracted them to each other in the first place. It could just be a physical attraction, but I was hoping for some more depth. At least plenty of depth is given as their relationship develops.
Characterization is a strong area. She's a star on the school track team, and he aspires to be a novelist, while also participating in the kinds of ceremonies at a local shrine that require significant amounts of practice. And they even throw in some other stuff just to give him even more depth but that never becomes a plot point: he apparently likes boxing, since he uses his overhead light's pull cord as a punching bag, and he has a Muhammad Ali poster. That's just there for you to notice. Nobody ever mentions boxing, not even once. Back to his writing, though—he especially admires real-life Japanese author Osamu Dazai and quotes him frequently. The title, which would seem to literally mean "the moon is beautiful," is translated "as the moon, so beautiful," which I assume is closer to the context he mentions Dazai using it in. Though it's also used in daily life as a subtle way of confessing to someone you love them.
It wouldn't be a drama without some difficulty coming their way, so we do get one plot twist late in the run that's fairly cliched, plus the obligatory love triangles, but those were handled well, so I didn't mind, still with the show's sense of restraint.
About half of the episodes have a few shorts after the credits that are all comedic moments, which can get more over the top. I could see them as almost an alternate universe take on it, except that they do explore some plot elements further there, so I expect they are meant to be canon. They're mostly funny. A couple of those did rub me the wrong way, though. The topics they touch on are only hinted at enough in the main show that you could take it as someone kidding, but they're made more explicit in the shorts. This reminds me of O Maidens in Your Savage Season in that I found some aspects like this pretty distasteful.
Final-year junior high students in Japan should mostly be 15 years old. On the more lighthearted flavor of romance we get here, girls are all gasping and giggly about a first kiss, yet there's one girl who keeps talking about getting goaded into visiting love hotels with her boyfriend, and since her family is rich, he even gets her to pay. I wasn't comfortable with that in this age range. And one of Kotaro's friends is in love with their homeroom teacher, very outwardly so. The show lets it seem one-sided, but the shorts have the teacher pining for him as well, counting down the days until graduation so she can ethically act on it then.
Art is CGI and kind of an odd one at that. The backgrounds look fine, but the characters themselves look really flat, as if even within the rendering program, they're 2D objects. It wasn't too off-putting, though. Music was quite nice and understated. Then during the finale's closing credits, you even get to see the long-term disposition of the characters. The story could still have made a very valid point by leaving their fates indeterminate, but I was happy to get closure. It's been a long time since a show so vividly reminded me of that era, and I appreciated its realism. There's a special as well, but it's just a recap of the first half.
Rating: excellent (my objections to a couple of the shorts notwithstanding).
As the Moon, So Beautiful, 12 episodes + 1 special, relevant genres: drama, romance, coming of age.
I'll only put three more down here, since I already had a "decent" rating up top.
My Tiny Senpai (Uchi no Kaisha no Chiisai Senpai no Hanashi, 12 episodes)—another recently ended summer show, but I was a few episodes delayed since I watched the dub. Shinozaki is a recent hire, and the employee assigned to mentor him is a woman who's been there a couple years already. She's very small, very cute, and of course she has ginormous boobs. Cue romantic tension. Really, there's not much to distinguish this from any other run-of-the-mill romcom. If you like seeing people be dumb and oblivious as they dither on what to do about vague feelings for each other, you could do worse. It's cute enough, and the production values are there. What sells it are the side characters. Shinozaki's meddling sister is alright, but his childhood friend Hayakawa, who works at the same place, is a fun foil, and her hobby of (and embarrassment about) cosplaying was nice. The manager also decides to meddle, and his tactics are more amusing. Everyone that wants to see the two together has some ulterior motive, but his is more about it just seeming right, and his declaration of their ship as "canon" at one point got a laugh out of me. Like most romcoms based off an ongoing manga, you don't get much of a resolution. Art was very good, and music was average. Moderate amount of fan service. There's supposed to be a companion series called Mini that has 12 episodes, only 1 minute long each, but I couldn't find it in my usual spots. Rating: decent, relevant genres: romantic comedy.
Sugar Apple Fairy Tale (24 episodes)—series that started last year, and its second season just concluded. The manga hasn't finished, but I don't expect the show to continue. There's a lot of background worldbuilding to this. Humans inadvertently create fairies by gazing at something in nature and having deep thoughts (not by Jack Handey, though). Eventually, there were enough of them to form their own society, but they generally didn't get along with humans, which led to war, and the fairies lost. Now they're essentially a subjugated race. They did introduce a special kind of apple to the world, and it yields a sugar that is made into edible sculptures that are a luxury item. Because of this, artisans of that profession have a special affinity for fairies and tend to disapprove of the treatment they receive. Main character Anne Halford's mother was a master sugar artisan, and when she died, Anne wanted to follow her into the business, but making a name for herself means traveling to exhibitions through dangerous territory. She hates to legitimize the slave trade, but she buys a warrior fairy to protect her on the road with the promise she'll free him at their destination. He's antagonistic at first, but they grow to like and respect each other. Most of the arcs involve Anne being involved in a competition or taking on a commission, but there's always someone around willing to stab her in the back, and one of the more eye-rolling parts of the show is that many times it's the same person over and over, yet she constantly falls prey to him. And not through some naive sense that he's good at heart. It's almost like she fails to consider it a lot of the time. To me, those meandering arcs felt somewhat directionless, at least until the last one finally cements her as a legitimate master sugar artisan. Before that, they felt more or less as things to do just so there will be a plot. The final arc describes an uprising by the fairies, but I didn't find that too engaging, since it's pretty obvious how it will go, the bad guy seems like a strawman, and the resolution is anticlimactic and potentially ambiguous. So is the romance B-plot, leaving only her master status as a wrapped-up plot thread. At the beginning, it had some promise as a look at an oppressed people, and while it's still a cute and enjoyable show, it didn't lead much of anywhere. Art's a little bit different, and in some ways kind of simplistic, but I liked the aesthetic. Music was pretty good. Rating: good, relevant genres: drama, fantasy, romance.
The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses (Suki na Ko ga Megane wo Wasureta, 13 episodes)—just finished from the summer season. Junior high student Kaede sits next to a girl he's got a bit of a crush on, Mie, and she has really bad eyesight. She also constantly forgets to bring her glasses, and she doesn't like wearing contacts. So Mie is always getting Kaede to help her take notes, find her place in the textbook, and getting in his personal space so she can see him. Not that he minds. People who don't know her assume she's mean, since her nonstop squinting makes her look angry. But Kaede very much enjoys that she relies on him so much, and he secretly hopes she'll forget her glasses each day. More than most school romance shows, this has people being rather stupid. She catches on that he likes her, and she feels the same, but she's really haphazard about it. If you know the other person likes you, then what's the risk? But they draw it out, and the manga's still going anyway, so this was doomed to have a vague ending. Aside from the glasses gimmick, which can only get so much mileage, the premise described Mie as someone with an odd personality who spouts random stuff as it pops in her brain. Maybe the manga does this, but it's all but absent from the anime. She is odd in a couple of ways, but not quite the free spirit she was made out to be. It ends up being nothing that stands out in its genre. Art was obvious CGI, and the first episode's opening was really bad. Like strange camera angles and poor animation quality. Thankfully, it never got that bad again, but it's way down the list of CGI quality. Music was average. Rating: decent, relevant genres: slice of life, romantic comedy.
This week's random anime observation: There had to be half a dozen times in episodes I was watching over the weekend that a character used the phrase "that said" or "that being said," and I had intermittently noticed such before. Is there an equivalent phrase in Japanese that's commonly used? I wouldn't call it rare in English, but you don't see it much in conversational speech, which is of course where it almost exclusively would have to turn up in anime. That being said, now that I'm on the spot, I can't remember any specific times I've seen those turn up in subtitles, so maybe it's more in the province of the translators that it gets abused.
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. 49 here
vol. 50 here
vol. 51 here
vol. 52 here
vol. 53 here
vol. 54 here
vol. 55 here
vol. 56 here
vol. 57 here
vol. 58 here
I haven't seen any of the new FLCL, but was pleasantly surprised to learn that Nowacking was doing the dub.
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Yes, that was a nice callback to have some of the same VAs. Grunge even has a meta joke where they make fun of dubs. I was kind of surprised how old the first 2 sequels are. It doesn't feel like they were that long ago. Cartoon Network has said they won't do any more.