Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 63 · 12:30am January 17th
So far, I'm rather happy with this winter season's crop of shows. Hopefully they'll keep the quality up. Features this week are a movie from the end of this summer season, Alice and Therese's Illusory Factory, and a comedy series from almost a decade ago, Barakamon. Those and some recently finished fall shows, after the break.
Alice and Therese's Illusory Factory came out at the end of this past summer season. The titular characters aren't actually in the movie; apparently it comes from the writer, who upon hearing the name Aristotle as a child, thought it was two people, "to" being Japanese for "and." There's probably some insight making that connection to Aristotle adds to the movie, but it went over my head. The more common Japanese title is just the "illusory" part.
And to that writer—the pedigree on this had me expecting big things from the start. MAPPA as the production company, Mari Okada as writer (and for only the second time as director too), most of the animation staff who'd worked on Maquia. The composer had also done music for a few things I'd seen and thought had pretty good soundtracks. I will say that the trailer for it and the short description of the premise I read back then gave me nowhere near the right impression of what the movie would be about. But maybe that's on me. When it was first announced, a lot of places used "illusion" instead of "illusory" in the title, which added to my misinterpreting what the plot would be like, since that makes it sound more whimsical and fantastical.
Masamune is a high school kid, and while hanging out with his friends one evening, they hear a blast and look out the window to see the rural town's steel mill has exploded. Life soon becomes strange.
There's some sort of barrier preventing anyone from coming or going, and everyone obsessively tries to keep every day relatively routine. One guy even makes this out to be a religious issue (even though it's immediately clear he knows it isn't) so he can be Someone Important. Anytime the routine is upset too much, a dome over the town becomes visible, gets cracks in it, and smoke pours out of the mill (which has been somewhat restored to working order) to patch the cracks.
After that introduction, it spends a little while feeling more like a school slice of life as the boys get into mischief and the girls gossip about who has what crushes, but a girl named Atsumi, who's considered a bit of an odd duck, shows Masamune a secret she's been let in on: there's a nearly feral girl being held captive at the mill. Atsumi does have an ulterior motive, though: the girl's been made her responsibility, and she's tired of handling that alone.
Meeting her leads Masamune and his friends to unraveling the mystery of why the town is the way it is, why meeting the wild girl is only making it worse, and what they can do about it.
It was actually a pretty cool story and very original. It did remind me in some ways of a few things I'd seen (and reviewed) earlier. Closest is a movie called Fireworks. Like a lot of Okada's work, this can get fast-paced and a little hard to understand. By the end, the only piece I couldn't work out was whether the explosion was caused by the feral girl's presence, the other way around, or they were unrelated. That and whether the two places can continue to coexist.
Art didn't look very typical of MAPPA. It was good, but seemed to be a bit of a throwback style, yet done very smoothly. The music wasn't a standout, but still pretty good.
Rating: very good.
Arisu to Teresu no Maboroshi Kojo, or often just Maboroshi, movie, relevant genres: drama, mystery, supernatural, coming of age, romance.
Barakamon, from 2014, sounds like it's going to be a low-stakes drama from the premise. Handa is a young rising star in the calligraphy world, and son of a famous calligrapher, but the leadership of the trade organization calls his work old-fashioned and uninspired, which leads to a rift between them. In order to get his shit together and settle on his personal style, he goes to live in a rural island town for some peace and quiet to work.
While that premise is true, and it does weave into the plot pretty continuously, it's more of a background element than the feature. And what is the feature?
Well, this is a small enough place that they don't have a hotel. There's a municipal guest house, but as it's been unoccupied, the local kids have been using it as a hangout, and they all have spare keys, so there's no way Handa is going to get the peace and quiet he wants.
He first meets a little girl named Naru, who's being raised by her grandfather, and she's the busybody, high-energy type. Then there are the two middle school girls. And fold in the mismatch between the kind of small-town living, where everybody knows everybody's business, that Handa definitely won't be used to.
The result is that this is a charming random comedy, of a similar flavor to a lot of the school ones I've enjoyed (e.g. Wasteful Days of High School Girls, Azumanga Daioh, Nichijou), just that it's mostly not about schoolkids. It starts off a little slowly, and the townspeople come across as annoying at first. I initially didn't envision rating this as more than a low good, but it gets better as you get to know the characters and see that they genuinely do care about Handa. It's odd what jokes really meshed with me. Like one time when various people are going through the small local airport's metal detector, all setting it off, which makes the kids watching crack up. I don't know why that tickled me so much.
Yes, the story must eventually head back to resolving his conflict in Tokyo, but then there's a nice denouement. I found this reliably funny and endearing and looked forward to watching it. Art was average to a little better, and the music was pretty good.
Rating: very good.
12 episodes, relevant genres: slice of life, comedy.
There's an ONA called Mijikamon that came out simultaneously with it as a way of introducing new episodes. It's a chibi style. It wouldn't stand alone well, and it doesn't cover any new material, but it does have its moments of comedy.
Rating: decent.
13 episodes, relevant genres: slice of life, comedy.
Then there is a prequel, Handa-kun, which covers Handa's time in high school before the original series. It completely revolves around the one joke that he's such a silent loner that everyone assumes he's a beloved but unapproachable awesome badass, whereas he takes everyone's trepidation toward him as meaning they all hate him. That can only get stretched so far, and the plot got same-y after a while, but what does save it some is them giving lots of screen time to a really large cast. Nearly every member of his class gets developed, plus some kids from other classes, plus some kids from other schools. It's a lot of the same kind of humor of stupid people doing random stupid things. While it's not quite as funny, the humor still lands reliably. It's just that there's not the background plot driving anything, so it feels more unfocused.
Rating: good.
12 episodes, relevant genres: slice of life, comedy.
Psycho-Pass: Providence (movie)—came out earlier this year as a 10th anniversary project. I won't bury the lede: this was thoroughly mediocre. There's a vague plot about a lady who'd made an economic study of the franchise's titular crime enforcement method and her getting assassinated by a terrorist organization for reasons that were stated but I never quite grasped, either because the movie itself was vague about it or just because I wasn't interested enough to follow it. It ends up making the same blunder as the poorly thought-out Psycho-Pass 2 in that the whole point of the original was showing that Akane couldn't be corrupted. And I don't mind spoiling this one. She essentially gets fed up with the system and its built-in backstabbing, which is a break from her attitude in every other entry of the franchise, and she realizes she can be like one of the villains who can't be judged by the system because her actions never cloud her hue. And that's completely against the way she's always been played. She makes a point of killing someone publicly in order to demonstrate the system doesn't work, and then she's carted off to prison for an indeterminate ending. A lot of the movie was boring, and the ending was just dumb. Not a very fitting denouement to what the original series set up (but then none of the rest of the sequel material was either, for all that Psycho-Pass 3 was actually pretty good). Art was a bit changed but still good, and the music was average. Rating: meh, relevant genres: mystery, thriller, action, sci-fi.
Stardust Telepath (Hoshikuzu Telepath, 12 episodes)—fall show that just ended. Junior high student Umika is very shy and wishes she could find a way to travel to another planet where she might relate to the beings there better. Then who should show up in class but new transfer student Yu claiming to be an alien. She becomes friends with Umika right away, but this also prompts Umika into befriending several other people as well. A lot of it is slice of life, and that part is one of those semi-educational iyashikeis, so you get an introduction to the basics of model rocketry, the idea being that Umiko can learn how to eventually build a real spaceship and help Yu return home. For her part, Yu may actually be an alien: she has little memory from before showing up to class, she lives alone in an improvised home, and she can read someone's emotions by touching foreheads with them. In the end, it's not just Umika—you get to see several characters drawn out of their shells. It's also very easy to read shipping into this if you want to, but there's nothing that outright says it is. Of course it doesn't come to a strong conclusion, since the manga is still going. Art is good, and the music was pretty good as well, though there's little beyond the opening and closing songs. Rating: decent, but higher in that range, particularly if you like the educational element, relevant genres: slice of life, yuri.
The Kingdoms of Ruin (Hametsu no Oukoku, 12 episodes)—another fall season show, and one that doesn't come to much of a conclusion, but I haven't seen any indication it'll continue. This looked really promising to start. There's a quick intro lore dump about how God created witches as a separate species from humans but who were to use their powers to aid humans wherever possible. Essentially, they're angels. Except humans don't need their magic anymore, since technology can accomplish the same things now. Then the action begins. A powerful witch named Chloe has taken a human boy, Adonis, as her apprentice and rigged up a way that he can use magic. The one human nation that has decided to rise up against witches attacks the pair, and it's pretty brutal, not only in what happens to them, but in how this nation turns against the rest of the world as well. It was a heck of a debut episode. But then you learn the witches had some sinister things going on as well, and Adonis just wants to take down the whole world at this point. I can't blame him—it's a dicey prospect to have no side you can root for because everyone's in the wrong, including Adonis himself. Really, it made it hard to care how things would turn out. The plot meanders a lot, there are ill-advised comedic moments, characters who seem like they'll be important but don't turn up again, and it ends on a minor boss fight with some powerful players still awaiting their time on stage. There's a witch named Doroka traveling with Adonis, and her change of attitude is the only arc that might be considered complete. The manga it's based on is still going. Art is very good, and the music is mostly strange. Rating: decent, relevant genres: action, adventure, dark, fantasy.
You Were Experienced, I Was Not: Our Dating Story (Keiken Zumi no Kimi to, Keiken Zero na Ore ga. Otsukai Suru Hanashi, 12 episodes)—also sometimes called Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and the Inexperienced Me, just completed from the fall season. On its face, it's kind of a standard high school romance, but when you think about it, it's kind of sad even though it doesn't intend to be. Main character Ryuto is a nerdy guy with two friends, but he's the only one of the trio who's actually a good student. Fed up, his buddies conspire to goad him into a bet: if he gets the best score of the three on the next test, he has to do one thing they tell him to. Of course it works out that way, and wanting him to taste failure, they command him to ask out his crush. He doesn't actually have a crush, but he does think a particular one of the popular girls in his class, Runa, is rather cute, so close enough. He arranges to meet her after school and asks her out, expecting to get shot down. However, she accepts. It turns out she's not picky at all, and she'll go out with whoever asks, as long as she's not already dating someone, and she's single now. So she proceeds to take him to her house, and she starts to undress. Here's where the sad part (to me, at least) comes in. This is what she expects from a relationship, because that's all her past boyfriends wanted, and then they don't stay with her long anyway. She's just going through the motions. He decides he might regret it later, but he stops her and says they need to get to know each other first, and if she gets to the point that she genuinely wants to go that far of her own volition, fine, but he doesn't want her doing it as a duty. Points for Ryuto. However, how did she get this way in the first place? That's what I find sad. Haven't her parents tried to instill some sense of self-worth? Her best friend Nicole immediately regards Ryuto with suspicion once she finds out they're dating, and she holds his feet to the iron to make sure he's treating her right, so where was she when all the other boyfriends were using Runa? Not that they'd listen, but in that case why isn't she making sure her best friend knows better than to be used? Thankfully, the outcome is that she's finally in a supportive relationship, but there's a lot of fridge horror about how she's been treated and how those near to her let it happen. Then another girl gets brought in to cause tension, and it's like a bad soap opera plot at that point. On a surface level, it's a sweet story, but look any deeper, and it doesn't hold together that well. There are hints that Ryuto's friends may match up with Runa's friends, but that doesn't develop either. Art is very good, and there's a lot of fan service. The opening and closing songs were pretty catchy. Rating: decent, relevant genres: romance, comedy, drama, coming of age.
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. 53 here
vol. 54 here
vol. 55 here
vol. 56 here
vol. 57 here
vol. 58 here
vol. 59 here
vol. 60 here
vol. 61 here
vol. 62 here
I might have watched Stardust Telepath if I knew it was about model rockets.
I gave The Experienced You and the Inexperienced Me slightly more than one episode and largely drew the same conclusions you did.
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Hey, you still can watch it! But when I said the basics of model rocketry, I really do mean the basics. They're beginners, and one of their classmates has dabbled in it before, plus is just good at any sort of tinkering in general, but they don't fare well when pitted against people with much actual experience. Like... if you're already a hobbyist, this will be very simplistic. If you're not but the topic interests you, then it might scratch that itch.
So I just watched a movie that I didn't see on your index: Weathering with You. I thought it was pretty good, so I thought I'd throw it out there as a recommendation for whenever you get the opportunity/interest. To greatly simplify the summary and avoid spoilers, it's about a boy who runs away to Tokyo and meets a girl who can stop the rain with prayer. One part slice-of-life, one part romance, and one part fantasy.
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It's been on my list to watch for a long time now (I don't often have a large enough block of time to watch movies, so I get to them somewhat slowly). I've watched a number of other movies by the same director and liked them a lot. As I said in my review of one of them, he gets accused of making the same movie over and over, but for one thing, he's not writing the movies. He's adapting books. He may well keep picking books with similar plots, but that's not quite the same thing. And for another, even if he does that, a good movie is still a good movie. I don't mind watching several with very similar plots if I like them all. I might not want to watch them close together (another reason I'm spacing that one out a bit), but it doesn't affect my estimation of them.
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Only other show I've seen by him was Voices of a Distant Star, which I greatly enjoyed (also, had no idea it was the same guy until I looked him up just now). I'll have to take a look at his other works. I only found out about Weathering with You because it popped up in my HBO account as a recommendation after all the Miyazaki movies I've watched, and even then I only watched it on a sudden whim. Other option was to rewatch Porco Rosso for the first time in two decades, and I only didn't choose that because I didn't feel like reading subtitles that day.
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I've watched most of his stuff now. In addition to Voices of a Distant Star you mentioned, which I rated good in vol. 33, I watched these other short films by him:
The World be Enclosed, decent, vol. 32
Other Worlds, decent, vol. 30
She and Her Cat, good, vol. 26
She and Her Cat: Everything Flows (expanded version of it as 4 episodes), good, vol. 26
Egao (Smiles, done as part of an anthology series), decent, vol. 30
Someone's Gaze, good, vol. 28
Then the following movies:
The Place Promised in Our Early Days, good, vol. 32
5 Centimeters Per Second, very good, vol. 24
Children Who Chase Lost Voices, good, vol. 7
The Garden of Words, very good, vol. 29
Your Name, very good, vol. 39
Suzume Locking Up the Doors, excellent, vol. 57
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Definitely need to try out some of those movies then. Looks like that we're his best stuff lies.