Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 60 · 11:29pm Nov 14th, 2023
Back to having the good problem of really liking so much stuff I've seen lately that I'm overflowing with feature reviews and don't have enough else to fill out a blogpost. But I finally got 4! Features are a series from 2010, Angel Beats!, and another from just a couple of years ago, Wave, Listen to Me! Everything is exclamation points! Those and more after the break!
Angel Beats! reminds me a lot of Haibane Renmei, though I don't mean to say it's as good, what with it being one of my top few all-time favorites. But they have very similar setups.
It's also kind of misleading. The title could refer to music. The opening credits have a theme of one of the main characters playing piano. The first couple of episodes devote a significant amount of their plot to a rock band. I thought it was going to be a music-centric series. It was not. But it was still good.
High school student Otonashi wakes up to find himself lying on the ground on some sort of school campus after dark with nobody around. But soon enough, a girl comes by, asks if he's okay, then says she'll fill him in on the details later, but she's on a mission right now. She proceeds to pull out a sniper rifle and target a girl down on the athletic field. It's surprising how little this fazes him, but he goes down to the field to talk to her, with the sniper shouting after him that the girl is an angel and will kill him.
He asks if she's an angel, and she says no, and feeling like he's been had, he tells her to go ahead and kill him. So she does.
He wakes up again to the sniper girl, Yuri, telling him how things work here. They're all dead, and so can't die again, and sometimes a person will show up like Otonashi did, without any memory of how they got there. They're supposed to settle in and be good little students, except that when anyone does, they disappear. Thus Yuri started up a student rebellion to fight this system.
A lot of the school is just there for appearances; most of the people aren't real. That means there aren't any particular rules in place. Yuri can carry her gun around, for instance, and nobody's going to get upset about it or even notice, really. Only the angel girl tries to get people to obey the system, but she's also quiet and stoic, seemingly more an automaton. Yuri's hoping that by violently resisting her, she'll call on God to help her, and then Yuri can give God a piece of her mind for trapping everyone in this stagnant limbo.
Of course, there's more going on than they realize. Loyalties will shift, and some people will think maybe Angel has the right idea. One huge difference between this and Haibane Renmei is that a lot of the action here is played for comedy. And it's definitely over-the-top fun. As more of the "what's really going on" gets revealed, it turns more serious, and there is a pretty heartfelt plot thread about why this place works the way it does, Otonashi finally remembering how he got there, and everyone agreeing on what their goals are. It's an odd blend of serious and funny that not all shows can pull off, but it worked here.
Art's a recognizable standard for this studio (P.A. Works), but still good, and the music was rather good as well. Plot-wise, my only complaint is that it's left vague why Angel is singled out to have the powers she does. It comes to a nice conclusion, but there's also apparently an alternate epilogue that came with the DVD set that has a more melancholy ending, in a way. Based on the summary of it, it somewhat takes the other side of the choice the characters had to make at the end, and, well, I guess there's one more plot complaint: it was a very binary choice, where it didn't seem like it had to be. I don't see why they couldn't have accomplished both, though maybe the implication of the alternate one is that they eventually will.
Rating: very good.
13 episodes + 2 OVAs, relevant genres: comedy, drama, action, mystery, supernatural.
Wave, Listen to Me!, from 2020, is one of those rare series where I'd recommend the dub. Not that I'm a subtitle purist—far from it. I usually prefer dubs just so I can pay attention to the action and art rather than having to read... and so I don't have to wear my glasses to watch. (Or, tbh, to avoid the screechy voices the Japanese VAs like to give young girls if it seems like there'll be a lot of that.) It's rare anymore that a dub is actually bad, so in general it's just personal preference, but here, I think the dub is worth it, because I think it's important to get the cadence of it in sync with the actual words, timing being an important element of humor and all, not to mention the English VAs doing a bang-up job here.
Minare works at a small curry restaurant, and one night after work, she gets drunk at a bar and starts ranting to the guy next to her about her recent breakup. Little does she know he's a radio producer, and he thinks her tirade is gold, so he records it. It so happens that the radio station he works for is the one played at her restaurant, so when she hears herself the next day (and numerous customers recognize her, too), she rushes off to the station to give them a piece of her mind.
Yet when she gets there, the producer assures her they weren't making fun of her. He thought she had a great presence for radio, and he wants her to do a regular talk show.
I'll skip to the ending to say there's a weak conclusion (because the manga is still going, natch), if at least heartwarming. Then I'll skip back to the beginning to say the actual opening scene takes place in the middle of the show and is deliberately confusing without context so the first half of the run can fill you in on how things got that way.
There are numerous side characters, and most get a chance to shine, between the other people at the restaurant and the radio station staff. A couple felt underdeveloped, but I bet they get more spotlight in the manga. I particularly loved the station's assistant director, and Minare ends up living with her for a short time.
The only strong plot thread is Minare getting over her ex and his attempts to reconnect with her. Other than that, it's just the producer getting her set up with her program, and general relationship drama, but Minare is such a delightful wise-ass that her constant running commentary, whether in real life or on the air, is a lot of fun, and the main reason I recommend the dub. I haven't seen this VA in much, but she does a great job here.
Art was rather good, with a couple of oddities to it. One I was neutral about, that there's a kind of faint blotchy texture overlaid on everything, and one that did look weird, that everyone had these strange kind of shadows in their eyes. Otherwise good, though. On the music front, nothing during the show caught my notice, but the opening and closing songs were good. If you're in the mood for a quick-paced sharp comedy, this is an easy one to recommend.
Rating: very good.
Nami yo Kiitekure, 12 episodes, relevant genres: comedy, slice of life.
To the rest, one of them very recent.
Gridman Universe (movie)—from earlier this year, this movie finishes off the series SSSS.Gridman and its sequel SSSS.Dynazenon. Whereas the original took place in a specific universe (and that's about all I can say for the frame story because spoilers), the sequel implied that similar things can happen in any universe and showed one particular example of it. It didn't even feel like that much of a sequel for most of it, because it was nearly an independent story, and it wasn't until late in the run they were tied together by having a couple of secondary characters from the original appear. Here, the entire main casts of both shows are reprised. As before, it's about mechas versus giant monsters with a backdrop of parallel universes motivating it all. I covered the two series in volume 34, and I didn't know they were planning any more or I would have held off, so look that up (or go through the alphabetical index linked at the bottom of this blog) to get more flavor for what happens in them. Like most continuations, this isn't a good entry point for the series, so better to see whether the original appeals to you, and you might want to watch on through all of it. What I will say is that this does a good job of closing off some of the arcs both series left suspended, but leaves some others vague. Mostly, I was happy with the closure, except one arc that was doomed never to get any. I do wish the antagonists from Dynazenon had been brought back in, as they would have had a good motivation to be the antagonists here, too, but they're not involved. For that matter, the antagonist we do get is a pretty generic hand-waved one. Dynazenon never had a need to, but I mentioned in my review of the original that it uniquely had the only use of a live-action segment that I felt was not only completely justified but also well-considered. Not surprising, then, that this movie gives another. I was pleased to see that. It's supposed to be an over-the-top battle show, but even so, some of the fights dragged on a bit long, exposing that there wasn't a lot of plot to work with. Art is very good, and music was pretty good, same as the series. Rating: good, relevant genres: sci-fi, action, drama.
Kase-san and Morning Glories (Asagao to Kase-san, 1 short movie + 1 music video)—the video, called Kimi no Hikari or Your Light, is just some scenes from the movie with no dialogue. The movie is based on a fairly long-running manga which has a sequel that's still being published. This is a tougher kind of romance to do, where we see the couple after they've already started dating. None of the meet-cute stuff, unless it's seen in flashback (and some of it is). Since that removes the main source of drama, it's usually about just seeing the couple act as a couple and maybe reacting to some external drama source, and that does feel kind of overblown here. This reminded me a lot of Sweet Blue Flowers, reviewed previously, and not just because of the flower reference in a yuri romance: a timid girl has somehow attracted the attention of the track team's star. They're both girls, but there's no gayngst to be had. From the athlete's (Kase's) point of view, it does get shown what attracted the other to her. But from the quiet girl's (Yamada's) point of view, you never get to see what makes her tick. Yamada is in the gardening club and loves growing plants. They mostly want to keep their relationship confidential, and the drama revolves around one or the other getting teary-eyed over some misunderstanding or perceived slight. It is cute, but it's just not that substantial. What did catch my eye is that as the shy one, Yamada is actually the more pragmatic of the two; Kase is much more prone to getting flustered and embarrassed, which goes against the usual trope of the athletic one being experienced. As it must, the drama leads toward what they'll do if post-graduation life leads them in opposite directions, and it can be fine to either resolve that or leave it open, but here, it gets a very pat ending that's also somehow vague, though the manga does follow through into college life. Yamada's friend Mikawa makes for a memorable side character. The romance side does stop just short of getting kind of adult in places, but as I understand it, the manga does go a bit further. Art is a plus, and the music is average. Rating: good, but lower in that range, relevant genres: romance, drama, yuri.
Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet (Chiisana Hoshi no Yume, 5 episodes), Planetarian: Snow Globe (1 episode), Planetarian: Storyteller of the Stars (Hoshi no Hito, movie)—based on a visual novel, The Reverie of a Little Planet, from 2016, takes place after some global war has led to a nuclear winter and the decimation of the human race. The main character, whose name isn't given, is scouting a ruined city for supplies and trying to evade robot sentinels that remain automated to fight off any invaders, not knowing it's pointless. He takes refuge in a large building and is surprised to find the power still on in part of it. And then an android comes out to greet him. He at first assumes he's under attack, but the android is simply a relic from bygone civilization. She's an employee of the department store that existed in that building and hosts the planetarium show that serves as an attraction. She's wondered why she hasn't had any customers for nearly thirty years and is overjoyed that her long wait is over, and for his part, he enjoys the respite of having a banal interaction with someone. Like many animes, you just have to ignore the economics of what would make that a profitable and viable use for a new cutting-edge technology. The protagonist is a little annoyed by her repetitiveness and... I'll call it stubbornness masquerading as dedication to her purpose (much like Data from TNG). He tries to help her get the projector up and running again so she can do her job, for all that nobody will be around to see it. It reminded me a little of Girls' Last Tour in that there's tragedy inherent in the premise that all or some of the characters are either unaware of or just don't acknowledge. Mostly, it's just the slice-of-life interactions between the guy and the robot, but things do eventually come to a head. Snow Globe is a prequel from before the war, and on its own, it could be a cute slice of life about the robot and her struggles to understand and adapt to her job. Taken with the series, the context of what world she'll eventually exist in just adds that dramatic irony to it, but for people who don't like that kind of tragedy, I could see it still being something nice to watch on its own. Storyteller of the Stars came out in 2021, as did Snow Globe. Storyteller repackages the series, but skips a few decades after its ending to add a framing device with scenes at the beginning, around the halfway mark, and at the end. The additional content gives a much firmer picture of what civilization is like in this world and tells the story of a traveler still trying to spread the knowledge and wonder of the stars between presenting the original as flashbacks. There's the kind of maddening open ending that almost shows a positive resolution, but then stops just short of seeing it through, leaving it up in the air whether that outcome actually happens. I don't think it cuts anything from the series, so I'd recommend watching the movie version.
Hm, this'll take a second paragraph, as the first has gotten quite long. There's a lot of religious overtones, but I don't think it's the kind most people would find off-putting. The man and the android do discuss some philosophical things about what happens if a robot ceases to function, and it wanders into a blend of several religions. By Storyteller of the Stars, it's very possible that actual religion has begun to do this, just because of the fading memories and traditions. A lot of it is close to Catholicism, which we know anime takes lots of liberties with, and there's a particular hymn tune that serves as a motif for a lot of the music in all three of these, but the village where it takes place prays to an off-camera goddess. Once the nature of that goddess is revealed, that ties in the open ending, but there were also a few light novels written, some with new material, and one in particular adds more context that in my mind muddies the waters of what that open ending could mean, based on the synopsis of it on the Wikipedia page, due to the book giving more background about who one of the new characters is. Art is standard for its time but good, and the music is pretty good. I was tempted to rate it a bit higher, but it's largely predictable and verges on maudlin at times. Rating: good, relevant genres: drama, slice of life, sci-fi.
Slow Loop (12 episodes)—from early 2022, this is an iyashikei about fishing. It does cover other types some, but mostly fly fishing (the title refers to casting technique). Until a recent conversation with Petrichord, I hadn't considered that people might gravitate toward shows in general that had an educational component. I'd figured this kind of show would only draw slice of life fans or people who already had an interest in fishing, but sure, if you're the kind of person who just likes learning new things, period, then I can see the appeal. He specifically mentioned liking that aspect of Food Wars! (but getting annoyed enough by the plot to override that), so... yeah. I've seen a few others like that. Let's Make a Mug Too is pretty educational about pottery, Insomniacs After School about photography, Asteroid in Love about astronomy and Earth science, and Laid-Back Camp about camping, natch, to name a few. So aside from fishing, what's this about? Mostly banal interactions of the main characters with their friends and family. It's pretty cute. I do feel like it went for an unnecessarily maudlin angle, though. The two mains are now stepsisters because their parents got married without telling them. Or so it seems at first, though some back story fills in later that the main-main character Hiyori at least caught wind of it, but it still catches both by surprise that suddenly everyone's moving in together. And of course the missing parent from each side both died in an appropriately tragic way (along with another sibling). Fortunately, they don't dwell on that, but it did seem like an odd choice, and unneeded at that, which leaves it as a fairly clumsy source of tension at times. Overall, though, it's mostly the cute and low-stakes interactions you'd expect of an iyashikei. In a wonderful reference, one episode takes place during a school festival, and in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, the band from Bocchi the Rock is performing. This anime preceded Bocchi, so their prescience surprised me, though the manga would have already been going. Art was rather good and reminded me a lot of the style from things like Nagi-Asu: A Lull in the Sea or Sword Art Online. Background music was surprisingly good for such a low-key show, and the opening/closing songs were fine enough. Rating: good, relevant genres: slice of life, drama.
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. 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
vol. 59 here
Wave, Listen to Me! was my top anime of 2020. Minare is one of the most compelling, dynamic, and force-of-personality protagonists I have ever seen. I also remember making a comment as I was watching about the weird eyeball lowlights.
I read a little of the Slow Loop manga, but it didn't stand out to me.
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I guess I'm a little surprised that iyashikei would do well as a manga, but they must be getting readers. Though otoh, when there's not much plot to keep up on, waiting longer between volumes than you might have to between episodes matters less, since you don't have to remember where the action left off.