Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 64 · 11:48pm February 6th
Still pleasantly surprised by most of the winter shows I opted to watch (but I'm gonna die waiting on the dub of The Dangers in My Heart). But hey, there are plenty of good shows from past seasons! To wit, features are both from 2018, a random comedy series, Asobi Asobase, and a drama movie whose title sounds nothing like that's what it will be, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. Plus several more pretty good things and a few more YT shorts, after the break.
Asobi Asobase starts out looking like it'll be a cute low-stakes school slice of life. The description doesn't do much to dispel that notion. Two girls who are already friends end up annoying a third, but they band together to form an extracurricular club devoted to idle pastimes, like games.
It quickly gets out of hand. This is random comedy at about its most random, and that can be very hit or miss for me, but the humor consistently landed. It's got more adult humor in it than your average random school comedy, if you prefer something lighter. But it's one of the funniest ones I've watched.
It'll hit on a number of the things you expect of such a show: the teacher who's obsessed with getting married, the politics of the student council, the girls feeling inadequate around the busty one of the group. But it mines those things for good humor and goes a lot of unexpected places. Like... I can't believe this is a sentence I'd ever have a reason to type, but "How do you run away from poo?" said in all seriousness culminated one of the better segments.
It reminds me of Arakawa Under the Bridge in how off-the-wall it is. Episodes are usually four shorts, but sometimes three. The two specials are a single short each, and the OVA had two. Referential at times, meta at times. It's structured much like an anthology series, and those can be very inconsistent in quality, but there were no outright duds, and even the weakest shorts were still funny.
Art is quite good, but also goes into hyper-realistic, grotesque, or live-action modes as needed to suit what's happening. Music was cute enough, with an opener that further sets up the expectation it'll just be a cute show, but the closer is a metal tune. Only the OVA gives the translation of the lyrics, but they make it even better.
Really, try out the first couple and see if it grabs you. It's quite an experience. It's based on a manga, but I have serious doubts this kind of humor would work as well in manga form.
Rating: very good.
Workshop of Fun, 12 episodes + 2 specials + 1 OVA, relevant genres: random comedy.
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is a title I'd seen on numerous occasions but passed over because it sounded like it'd be a wacky, gory zombie comedy or some such. It is none of those things.
It's also really up front about what's going to happen in it, so there's only one plot element that can be spoiled (which I won't, of course). It opens at a girl's funeral, then shows a friend of hers who didn't attend because he couldn't bring himself to leave the house. Then it backtracks for a quick scene to show her trying to help him do his job at the library, but mostly she's being annoying and not observing library etiquette. Opening credits.
Now we hit the meat of the story. He (whose name you don't find out until the end) is at the hospital for a routine follow-up visit and notices a book on the floor. He pages through it to see who might have lost it and finds it's a diary someone with a terminal pancreatic disease has been keeping. Then the girl, Sakura, comes up to him to claim it.
Maybe I'm just a sucker for this kind of story, but I've had good luck with these types of plots with someone living on limited time and knowing it. I found Plastic Memories to be a very effective use of it, and one other I won't name since it's kept as a reveal in that one. WorldEnd has something similar as well.
Sakura has been keeping this a secret from her friends, and this guy is a stoic loner in her class that nobody talks to, so she's confident he'll keep it to himself if asked to. But she rather likes having the outlet of someone other than family that she can confide in and who understands the context of what she thinks about things. Thus starts a close friendship, which of course will lead to rumors among their classmates. Sakura's best friend Kyoko in particular is none too happy about her hanging around with the class outcast.
As much as he wants to help Sakura live to the fullest, he finds that she's changing him as well, discovering that he shouldn't shut people out. It's actually nice for her at first that he's so stony, because she's so used to family getting emotional about it, but she eventually brings him out of his shell. It takes a while to pay off, but in retrospect, there's another unnamed classmate who'd been making gestures of friendship all along, and that's a really nice motif to have click into place.
Of course, by the end, we get to Sakura's death and its aftermath. And that's really the one thing that's up in the air. Various characters may understand what he did. Some may feel cheated that they didn't know and blame him. There is an effective twist in store, not the kind that throws everything into a new context, but still one that keeps the plot from going the way it seemed like it inevitably must.
I have one complaint and one moot complaint, the latter being that the final line seemed like an odd directionless note to end on, but that does get wrapped up nicely by a post-credits scene, so don't miss that. But to the former... I'll have to tap dance around this. There's an event partway through where Sakura tells off some thugs and the guy is impressed with her bravery, though she feels like she has nothing to lose. I expected that to become a thematic repetition, and there was a perfect spot to do so that the story didn't take. Though I do understand there's a valid point to be made in not doing so. It just seemed like it would have been a good character-building moment than having it be more random.
Oh, and that title. It's in reference to some ancient beliefs that you can gain equivalent healing from such a thing. It's adapted from a series of light novels, and apparently the author thought some of it worked well and some didn't, though left it vague like that.
It's gotten good ratings in general, though some specific critics didn't like it as much. Because this type of plot is maudlin by nature, it takes extra effort to make it earn its emotional investment, and there'll always be difference of opinion on whether a story does so. I thought this one landed on the good side, and it didn't go for heightened drama where it easily could have. Art is slightly simplistic but very smooth in motion. Music was pretty average.
Rating: very good.
Kimi no Suizou wo Tabetai, movie, relevant genres: drama, coming of age.
And to two recent-ish and two older items, much of it pretty good.
Blue Giant (movie)—from early last winter season, this is based on a manga that's had several sequels, one of which is still being published, so I assume the movie only covers the original run. Dai is a relatively new saxophonist who's fallen in love with jazz and moves to the big city to make his fortune as a musician. He bums off former acquaintance Shunji for somewhere to live, and while scoping out the local jazz clubs meets a talented young pianist and composer, Yukinori. The movie has a very high audience rating. To a degree, I wonder if that's because it's so up front with what it's about that mostly people predestined to like it are watching it. Which isn't a bad thing, to know your audience and play to it. So the good first: the music is wonderful. If you like jazz, this is worth watching just for the soundtrack. There are a few well-known tunes near the beginning, but the rest is all original material. The composer is a famous jazz musician in Japan, but this is the only soundtrack she's worked on to date. The rest was mixed for me, however. It stretched credulity a bit how quickly Dai became a really good musician (Yukinori had been playing for 14 years, for comparison), and they use Shunji as their drummer simply because he could bang on a can to keep a beat for Dai, yet within a year, you couldn't tell him from a professional. The instruments, too: Dai is shown receiving his as a gift when he first decided he wanted to learn to play, and his family isn't the kind to afford such things, so why are they buying him a professional-grade instrument right away? (And of course it's a Selmer—they're one of the sponsors. Not that I'm bitter... just that they're the ubiquitous high-end model. I prefer my Keilwerth...) Most of the conflict felt artificial to me as well. I bought into Yukinori's loss of confidence, and Shunji having none in the first place, but there really are no serious obstacles to their success. It reminds me of Carole & Tuesday in that it's framed from the beginning as "this is how they got their start," so it undercuts any tension about that (though that show managed to overcome it by switching what it was about halfway through). Of course some tragedy must strike, and it was very cliched. So too was the "every band breaks up" that felt shoehorned in toward the end and ambiguously followed up on. Art was pretty good with some unique shading quality, and while the CGI gets clunky in places, the visual effects they do during performances were cool. So, it's great to listen to if you're a jazz fan, but the plot is just average. Rating: good, relevant genres: drama, music.
Heaven's Memo Pad (Kami-sama no Memo-chou, 12 episodes)—from 2011. High school student Narumi is suddenly getting a lot of attention from his classmate Ayaka, who takes him to a ramen restaurant where she works and hangs out with a bunch of NEETs. There's one additional NEET who's part of the group but rarely leaves her apartment, and she runs what's essentially a private detective agency with all the others as her staff. Thus Narumi gets embedded in this group as well, forges relationships with gangsters, and solves mysteries. There's not an overall plot, or at least not a strong one. Mostly, it's arcs of two to three episodes where they investigate a case, but burning slowly behind it all is Narumi's relationship with Ayaka. It's no surprise to learn she has more than just a friendly interest in him, and therein lies both the show's biggest strength and biggest weakness. You just have to take as a given that she likes him. There's zero background as to why. But it does lead to the show's more heartfelt moments. The kids running after a different job every other episode, the gang involvement, and the seemingly normal dude brought into the middle of it all really had a similar feel to the gang thread of the first season of Durarara!! The art was even similar. Music was better than average, too. They really hit you with a curveball at the end of episode 10. (Speaking of curveballs, there's a pretty good baseball episode as well, and I don't recall knowing that, but it's likely how this originally got my attention.) It's a heck of a twist, to the point it took me a few minutes to conclude I'd seen it right and hadn't zoned out for a while and missed them telegraphing it ahead of time. That particular issue does get closure, and at the last possible minute as well. I'm glad it did, since I'm a fan of closure, but I was convinced they wouldn't, and so was at least prepared for an open ending, which still would have been done tastefully, if frustratingly. Some may feel closure was the wrong move here. Rating: good, and rather high in that range (if not for Ayaka's feelings for Narumi never being explored, I probably would have rated it very good), relevant genres: mystery, drama.
Love Lab (13 episodes)—from 2013, this starts off with a bit of a fake-out. Riko is a tomboy attending an all-girls school (one small blink-and-you'll-miss-it piece of evidence in one of the last episodes suggests it might be a Catholic school), but the student body in general is infatuated with her. Maki is the best student, beautiful, and the student council president, yet she's secretly insecure and goofy. The student body in general is also infatuated with her. The fake-out is that the first time they see each other, it seems like there's an attraction, yet this wasn't labeled yuri. And it isn't, at least not in the romantic incarnation of the label. Maki has supplanted all the other council members and does the job herself. When it's suggested Riko run an errand to her, Maki immediately assumes the athletic tomboy must be experienced in matters of romance and seeks her advice. Riko is in fact not experienced in the least, but she can't admit that. Thus begins the process of roping the erstwhile council members back into their duties so Maki has more time to quiz Riko about relationships, and those other members want in on the discussions, too, except Sayori, who sees right through her. And that leads to the titular endeavor, which is more a background thing until the finale, where the council tries to answer anonymously submitted romance questions while not making it sound like that's what they're doing, since that would run them afoul of the faculty. This is yet another entry in the field of high school girl random comedy, and while it's not as overtly hilarious as the best examples, it's reliably amusing. Furthermore, once you've seen enough of these, they start to be pretty uniform (pun not intended) in the jokes they make; what scores this one points is that much of the humor was pretty original. Oddly enough, the manga was aimed at men. I wouldn't have expected that, given the subject matter, but I just may not have been paying attention to that demographic being targeted with other similar things. And now that I look it up, yes, this genre is generally marketed to teenage boys or young men. Huh. Art was average but in a cute style, and the music was average to a little better. Rating: good, and high in that range, relevant genres: slice of life, romantic comedy.
The Masterful Cat is Depressed Again Today (Dekiru Neko wa Kyou mo Yuutsu, 13 episodes)—show from this past summer season that I was on the fence about, but when totallynotabrony said it was pretty cute, I added it. First off, this gave me strong vibes of The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses (reviewed in vol. 59) from the same season for multiple reasons. The art style looked the same, and it had the same obvious CGI that used odd camera angles and perspective tricks, like fish-eye lens effects or odd choices of vanishing point, though this series pulled it off better, without some of the laughably error-ridden bits. Turns out they're from the same studio. Office worker Saku saves a stray kitten, who makes it his mission to repay her by becoming a masterful cat. I would think that'd mean doing cat things better than any other cats, but he does human things, doing all the chores for her. She's successful on the job, but at home she's pretty inept. And he grows as large as a human. She decides to keep this secret for... reasons, beyond a vague one about not wanting her workmates to learn how domestically challenged she is. This is pure slice of life, but even so, such shows often have something else to them, like cool world-building or iyashikeis that are semi-educational. This is mildly amusing, it is definitely cute, and the ending is sweet, but other than that, there's nothing to it, so it's really going to hinge on how enjoyable you find that kind of thing. The title's a misnomer, too, as the cat is a little exasperated at Saku's ineptitude, but there's no point where he's actually depressed. Art was good where the CGI is less obvious, and the music was average. Rating: decent, but skewed toward how much you like slice of life with nothing else to it, relevant genres: slice of life, comedy.
And to another recent trip through a few animated shorts on YouTube that caught my eye:
The Tale of a Sleek One (short film)—another ChungKang Animation School one. The setting is probably a couple of centuries ago. A guy and girl are on a date, but it's clear she has a secret, and it's revealed very quickly what: she has inherited baldness. So she struggles with whether to keep it from him and how to tell him if she decides to. Predictable but cute. The art and music are pretty good, if simplistic. Rating: good, relevant genres: romance, drama.
Alien Father (short film)—more ChungKang. This was sweet, but it had a little hitch in it for me. A slime-like creature crash lands on Earth and sees a guy killed in a traffic accident (I don't think as a result of the ship crashing). The guy has a small daughter, and the alien possesses the body so it can take over as the girl's father and try to avoid the tragedy for her. Yet at the point she's 10, she knows what he is. It's unclear whether she did all along, but there's never any grieving for the father shown. He struggles with how normal people are supposed to act, but through a couple of slice of life moments, it shows how the little girl's attitude toward him evolves. Pretty cute. Art and music are both pretty good. Rating: good, relevant genres: drama.
First Love Report (short film)—another ChungKang. This largely went over my head. It's initially a love story, but the girl seems to delight in controlling him, yet he doesn't mind. And it gets really surreal. This feels a lot like an art film, where it definitely creates a mood, but at the end, I'm not sure what happened. Art and music were good and imo did more to create the atmosphere than the plot and characters did. Rating: meh, relevant genres: romance, surreal.
Seen any of these? Did I convince you to try any of them? I'd like to hear about it in the comments.
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vol. 60 here
vol. 61 here
vol. 62 here
vol. 63 here
