Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 29 · 11:11pm Mar 22nd, 2022
Still plowing through lots of movies and short series lately. So I'm sorry, Augie, still barely inching toward Toradora! Featured items this week are an oldie but goodie series, Haibane Renmei, and a short movie, The Garden of Words, after the break.
Haibane Renmei just hit my sweet spot about so many things. That means I can't expect it to have quite the impact on anyone else, though I sure hope it does. I loved every minute of this.
This was recommended to me by a friend, and I read up on the premise, which interested me enough to add it to my watch list, but I kept skipping over it in favor of other shows. While the premise did catch my eye, Wikipedia only tagged it as fantasy, nothing else, which made me think it would be more or less slice of life. I do like that genre, but I have a ton of it on my list, so it had trouble floating to the top. I shouldn't have waited.
It starts with a cold open of a girl plummeting headfirst from the sky, well above the clouds. A crow is diving with her and trying to grab on to her dress, but of course it can't support her weight. The girl is naturally scared, but not freaking out, more resigned to her fate.
Next, it shifts to another girl walking through a dilapidated building and glancing in each room she passes. Then she does a double take and goes back one, which has a huge snot-ball-looking thing inside. She breaks into a huge grin and starts shouting for everyone to come see.
The girl who was falling hears this and wakes up, then emerges from the thing to see five teenage girls smiling at her, with numerous other little kids peering in from the hallway. And she notices: all of them have halos and short wings with light gray feathers.
Are they angels? Well... yes and no. The no part: They aren't meant to be, really. It's just an aesthetic that the author of the comic it's based on liked. The yes part: There is a little bit of religious imagery that pops up here and there through the series, but it's minor. They don't serve the function of angels, though.
So, seeing all this, the girl is naturally confused. She can't remember who she is or where she came from, just an impression of her falling dream. Relax, the others tell her. It was the same for them, it's perfectly normal, and they'll all help her through it. One approaches her with a freshly forged halo, which won't stay in place, but that's not unusual, and it will in a day or two. And the wings? They'll grow in overnight. It won't be pleasant, and it'll give her a nasty fever, but the motherly one of the group will sit up with her, and by morning, everything will be okay. She's a haibane (charcoal-colored feather) like the rest of them.
What to call her, though? They explain that they're each given a name based on the dream they had while in their cocoon. She gets "Rakka," because she was falling.
There's an absolute gigaNewton (I'm in a metric mood today) of world-building, and I'd love nothing more than to ramble on for pages explaining it all, but then that would take away the pleasure of discovering it for yourself, and I get the feeling I over-explain enough things around here. What I will say is that a fair amount of it is just left open-ended. There's a lot of detail in how things work in this world, but precious little of the why. Many people have asked the author about various aspects of it, and he always simply replies that it's up to interpretation. So no help there. Basically, the answer can be whatever you want it to be. Kind of like Serial Experiments Lain, which the author also worked on, but I found this one a lot more approachable. (He was also involved with another I enjoyed a lot, which is still waiting to be reviewed further down the alphabet, though he only worked on character design for both of those.)
A lot of the early series focuses on Rakka going around the area to learn how life works here, trying out different jobs, learning what her place in this world is. It's incredibly charming. Then some darker plot elements come in, and it adds a refreshing note to things. One aspect I see done too often in shows or stories is to present an idealized view of things. All the main characters are living saints, all the antagonists are assholes. Here, nobody really knows what the haibane are or their function in society. There's a council that governs them, located in a nearby temple, and the head honcho there has the best idea, but if he knows, he's very sparing with the details. But my point is that the haibane aren't perfect. The human townspeople see them as harbingers of good fortune, just by their presence, not because of anything they actively do. Yet the haibane are just as susceptible to petty squabbles and disobedience as anyone.
Rakka is at the center of an identity crisis, and that's where the show's real theme comes in: redemption. Which shouldn't be a surprise. What would she need redemption for, though? Again, there's a lot of speculation about that, which the author would never clarify. It's a well-written struggle for her that ends up branching to another character as well, who's having an even more severe identity crisis, one that becomes evident long before it develops into a plot point.
You'll come away from this with so many questions, but the plot does come to a definite end, so it doesn't leave you hanging. The prevailing speculation is that this is some analog for an afterlife, yet there are some details that don't work for that, like the townspeople being able to grow old and die. But for the haibane themselves, it's a close and interesting parallel, in that nobody knows what happens when one of the haibane goes away. Everyone so fervently believes at least the basic nature of what happens, just that they've earned their way on to something better, though none have ever returned to confirm that, so it's on faith alone. The story is at once uplifting and melancholy, driven by pervasive atmosphere (something else I love when done well), which kind of put me in a mind of Girls' Last Tour, where as the viewer, you're more aware of the situation's inherent tragedy than the characters.
I just loved this, and the climax of it is so similar to one of my stories on this site, one I still feel a deep connection with, where the theme is that you can't start healing until you admit you need help. And that's the pot calling the kettle black, because I'd totally be right there in Reki's position. I can't recommend this highly enough, but again, with the caveat that it so resonated with me that I can't guarantee it will for everyone. Art was average for when it was made, and the music was pretty good. Nothing standout. But it has worldbuilding in spades (sorry, I don't know the metric equivalent of that), and the story is very touching. Oddly enough, I loved it for the world-building, even though that's not something I care for a lot of in fanfiction. I don't know why I like different things from different media, but there it is. I normally love sci-fi, but I've never liked sci-fi ponyfic, as another example. Oh well.
Rating: excellent.
Charcoal Feather Federation, 13 episodes, relevant genres: drama, fantasy.
The Garden of Words is another step on my journey through director Makoto Shinkai's work. This is short for a feature film (46 minutes), but based on his past success, it was shown in theaters.
High school student Takao has a strange interest in learning to make shoes by hand, and he'd love to make it a career. He's not that interested in school, but he realizes it's necessary, at least, so he's struck a deal with himself that he'll only skip class on days it rains. Even then, it just means walking the last bit to school instead of switching trains, then stopping at a shelter in the park to draw his concepts for shoe designs in a notebook. It usually only delays him enough to miss most of first period.
He's always enjoyed being alone, but one day, he unexpectedly finds a nicely dressed woman there, so they just keep to themselves, though he can't help admiring her shoes while she's not looking. Yeah, this movie is sure to be popular with foot fetishists, though that's not the intent.
From then on, she's there every time he shows, so of course they'd eventually get to talking. It comes out that she's also skipping, since she's not satisfied with her job and is seriously considering resigning. That'd at least place her as college-aged, probably more, but he can't gauge how old she is from her appearance. Once she learns of his hobby, she's surprised by it, but she indulges in letting him use her as a model for the drawings and basis for measurements.
This friendship carries on for a while until he encounters her somewhere else, and everything changes. I'm not going to spoil that, as several plot threads result from it, and it makes sense why she'd been taking refuge in the park.
I'll just say that I had two misgivings. The first is about Shinkai's work in general, which is that the endings are often indeterminate. However, he also likes to put epilogues after the credits, and that does bring it somewhat nearer to closure. The second is about anime in general, which is that potential relationships between people with large age differences aren't seen as problematic. I was tense through a lot of the back end of the movie that it'd get all squicky, but I was mostly happy with where it ended up.
Art was a little odd, in that it was often drawings done over photographs, but it's of a quality commensurate with Shinkai's other projects. He worked with a different composer than normal, but the music was also just as good as usual.
Rating: very good.
Movie, relevant genres: drama, romance.
To the not-Cannon Fodder!
Land of the Lustrous (Hoseki no Kuni, 12 episodes)—in a far future Earth that has been battered by meteors, plant and animal life have somewhat recovered, but the only sentient life left is living minerals. It shouldn't surprise that this series has a lot in common with Steven Universe. Here, minerals are mostly unique, with only Amethyst as the one with multiple copies at present. New ones are born from a rock formation on the coast every few centuries. There are 28 of them, but I wasn't clear on whether that includes only the currently active ones or all the ones who've been destroyed, though I could believe the latter, since it's rare that even being destroyed means the end. They're structured like a school under a master monk. While the monk appears male and all the minerals appear female, they are intended to be genderless. They regularly get invaded by seemingly mindless creatures from the moon, who are effectively creepy. Supposedly, these Lunarians want the gems to serve as decorations, and while maybe that aspect is depicted in the manga, you just have to take the gems' word for it in the anime, as the Lunarians are all inscrutable. Gems are all expected to serve as warriors against the invasions, as well as being stewards of the Earth, with their prestige determined by their hardness on the Mohs scale. Main character Phosphophyllite (Phos for short) is the youngest of them at 300 years old, and they're also tied for the second-lowest hardness, so they're seen as pretty useless. The other two down there with Phos have special abilities to make up for that, leaving Phos as the odd one out. For the most part, the science behind this is very accurate, and I appreciated how the characteristics of different minerals get applied. Cinnabar (the lowest-hardness one) contains mercury, which serves as an effective poison against the enemies, for instance. There are explanations for how minerals can move (in one of the breaches of science, taking liberties with what an inclusion is), how to repair damage, why even bumping into Diamond can be dangerous for Phos... the world-building is interesting and rings true. And then Phos very strikingly encounters some of the stark truths of life, and it changes them vastly, both physically and mentally. The former, actually twice, both times giving them new abilities but taking others away, and then they suspect there's more about the Lunarians than everyone knows. And there it stops. The manga is still going, so I guess it's reasonable the anime wouldn't have come to a conclusion, but it's always frustrating to be left hanging like that. I haven't seen an inkling that there will be more, though the studio also noted how long it took to make, so maybe it'll just take longer? It's considered a landmark series in CGI, and I found it a tad off-putting, just in how stiff some of the movement was and how the gems always adopt this weird posture with their butts sticking out. But the visual effects of gem luster and translucency were very well done, and the art quality was good. Music was quirky but good. I'd have liked to rate this higher, as the character work and world-building were very enjoyable, but without a proper conclusion, it was somewhat unsatisfying. Rating: good, relevant genres: action, drama, fantasy.
Letters from the Departed (Shigofumi, 13 episodes + 7 OVAs)—Fumika is a postal worker of a special type. When someone dies, they get the opportunity to write one letter to anyone they want, and these workers will deliver it. Each one of them has a sentient staff to aid in their work. You only ever see one other worker, Chiaki, who's Fumika's supervisor and friend. I started watching this as a break from the mentally draining early episodes of ERASED, since the description made it sound like it'd be sweet and wistful. And at times it is, but a lot of the plot isn't, and it sure doesn't start out that way. The first two episodes are intense, having Fumika deliver a letter to a vaguely defined recipient, so she's not even sure who should get it, and her best guess ends up getting several people in serious trouble. Fumika's the stoic type, and occasionally that's played for comedy. There's a fair amount of dark irony involved, so this felt like Hell Girl at times. It's only somewhat of an anthology series, though—even when new characters are introduced to get involved with one of the letters, they'll have some connection to one or more of the characters who've been around a while, and by the end, there's a pretty intricate web of relationships. Even more so because after those first few episodes, the letters themselves become more of a B plot as the series delves into Fumika's complicated past and why she's not like the other postal workers. I liked it, though the totality of her back story is way too overblown for my taste. Not just because of the huge and extreme personalities, but the incredibly outlandish existence she must have had, only it was all she knew, so it didn't seem unusual to her at all. It's so over the top that it's hard to connect with, though I often do like that approach, that someone who grew up under strange circumstances wouldn't realize they were strange. Art was very good, and the music was fine. I liked it more for the characters and atmosphere than where the plot ended up going, but even then, it wasn't a bad plot. The OVAs are done in a picture drama format, where there are just a few still shots while a story is narrated. They're only 4-5 minutes long each, and they're all supposed to be cute or humorous. Nothing with much impact, but they were alright. Rating: good (series), decent (OVAs), relevant genres: drama, thriller, mystery.
Netsuzou Trap (Fabricated Trap, 12 episodes)—these are short, only 9 minutes each. When Yuma was very young, Hotaru showed up as the new student in class and was immediately set upon by bullies. Yuma defended her, and thus began a friendship that's still going on in high school. Though the tables seem to be reversed: Hotaru is the more outgoing one now. Despite being an oddball without many friends, she's still managed to date a number of the popular boys. And now that Yuma has a boyfriend, the four go out together. But suddenly Hotaru starts to be very forward about kissing Yuma to "prepare her for when she's ready to do that with her boyfriend." Yuma doesn't know how to take that, but the fact that she rather enjoys it, once she gets over her initial surprise, really confuses her, not to mention how flippant and dismissive Hotaru will be after the fact if Yuma tries to question her about it. And then upon discovering that Hotaru is into some unsavory situations, Yuma begins to wonder how well she knows Hotaru after all. There are a couple of slightly different angles here, but mostly, it's a pretty standard coming-out plot. It at least takes its time developing the relationship, which is more than I can say for a number of series. It does get a tad graphic at times. As much as it does give the background for founding a relationship, it's pretty vague about how one might continue—Hotaru is shown to have some unhealthy ideas about what love is, so even if she decides that's what they have, it doesn't mean she's in a good starting place, and that ended things on a sour note for me. Art quality is good. Music is fine, though there's really not much there beyond the opening and closing credits. Rating: decent, relevant genres: drama, romance, yuri.
Red Data Girl (12 episodes)—one thread I've been following recently is to look up composers for series where I really liked the music and watch other things they worked on that catch my interest. So that's what happened here. Composer Masumi Ito did the wonderful music for Noein, which I reviewed some time ago, plus a few others where I thought the music was good: She and Her Cat: Everything Flows, also previously reviewed, and Letters from the Departed, just above. And of those, this was my least favorite, music-wise. I still have a couple more by her on my watch list. As to what this series is actually about... high school girl Izumiko has always lived at the shrine where she was raised, and I usually find her character type compelling: someone who has lived so isolated from the outside world that they have little to no understanding of what normal life is like, so they expect most people's life experience to be similar to theirs. Then they're utterly surprised to find out how different they are. I enjoy that either way, whether the character is some prince who led an idyllic life or a pauper on the streets. Izumiko has been kept separate for a reason, though. She's especially susceptible to spiritual possession, and so she has monks keeping an eye on her to defend her from any unscrupulous characters who want to use that to their own ends. It's a calculated risk when she's allowed to attend a public school and then transfer to a private academy, but the fact that so many of the people she encounters have some kind of spiritual power makes it feel like that's prevalent in society, while it's implied the reality is that she just seems to attract those kinds of people to her. She's afraid of losing herself to a specific entity that she's destined to manifest, and it's also implied that'd be a bad thing if it comes to fruition, but it's very vague about what that bad thing is. It involves a lot of lore, and I wonder if more familiarity with Japanese culture would have kept this from feeling so vague to me. While I liked the basic plot elements and most of the main characters, I still felt like I barely had a grasp of the big picture, and it doesn't come to much of a conclusion. On the balance, I still liked it, and it was very effective at having cliffhangers bridge between episodes. Oh and the title... it gets explained in the opening credits. It refers to a historical report on the environment that listed endangered species in red, and of Izumiko's ability to host the spirit in question, humanity's ability to do so may be waning. In fact, she may well be the last one ever. Art was quite good. Rating: good, if you don't mind it being a bit confusing, relevant genres: fantasy, supernatural.
Slow Start (12 episodes)—the premise of this caught my eye a little bit, just because it made me wonder what they could do to make it compelling. Middle school student Hana was sick with the mumps while all the high school entrance exams were going on, so she missed them. I would think there would be a process in place to handle that situation, and they also make the point that you don't have to apply to the high school that's affiliated with your middle school, just if you want to attend a different one. So I don't understand why this was an issue. But miss it she did, which meant she couldn't apply again until the following year. Faced with the prospect of being a year behind everyone she knows, she goes to live with her cousin, a landlady, so she can attend a school where nobody knows her. She's rather embarrassed about it, but on her first day, she immediately makes friends with three classmates, and they hang out together all year long, plus she's friendly with many of the other students and another tenant in the same apartment building. And her secret? Nothing comes of it. Spoiler: she never tells them, though she wavers in feeling guilty about it, seeing as one friend in particular shared a secret with her. That leads me to believe the main point of the manga (which is still going on) is to draw that out as long as possible. There's a couple of odd crushes portrayed as well, and a fair amount of fan service, but mostly this was just fluff. I don't mind slice of life, but this was almost too empty for my tastes, though there are little problems to surmount here and there. Pretty average for the genre. The art was good, and of course on the cute side, and the music was pretty good. Rating: decent, relevant genres: slice of life, comedy, a little bit of yuri mixed in.
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. 19 here
vol. 20 here
vol. 21 here
vol. 22 here
vol. 23 here
vol. 24 here
vol. 25 here
vol. 26 here
vol. 27 here
vol. 28 here
It took me some time to get used to the Land of the Lustrous animation style, but once I did I really enjoyed that series too.
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I liked the aesthetic of it, beyond the couple things I mentioned that bothered me. But I thought the character design was good, particularly the way the Lunarians looked, and how real life details about the actual minerals crept into what the people's appearance and abilities were. I also rather liked Phos's turning point. It was very abrupt and intense, necessarily because they were so alone at the time, then how that came as a shock to everyone else later. Had it gotten an actual ending, it would have easily rated very good, maybe excellent, depending on how they played it.
Oh, Haibane Renmei! I completely forgot about that show. Alas, I don't remember much beyond the big train scene near the end. Which is a shame, because I recall it being good.
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It's all so maddening too in wishing I knew what it all meant! I went so far as to see if I could track down a place that might have the manga online, but no joy there. It's a self-published comic (doujinshi) that only made it through the events of the second episode or so before it got picked up as an anime, leading the author to discontinue it. He did later write some other material, but it was just an anthology of short scenes that didn't carry the plot or explain anything further.
But yes, it's a beautiful redemption arc for two of them. I mentioned that I'd likely have the same conflict as Reki, but I was right there with Rakka too—I'd react badly to losing a friend so soon after arriving in a confusing and alien situation. And yes, the train scene was powerful, as I hadn't surmised that's what those elements meant. I always took the light in Reki's paintings as the moon.
It's a Funimation title, and their series often are free to watch on their site if they're old enough, so I suspect this would be, if you wanted to try it again. (Plus there's always the wink-wink site I often use...) Don't know if that'll change with their Crunchyroll merger, but I expect not, as CR seems even more lenient about free access to things that aren't recent.
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And also also, I took the unprecedented step of going to fanfiction.net to see if there were any potentially good explorations of this world there. I was heartened to see it had nearly 100 stories tagged, but then started scrolling through the list... and maybe 10 of them were more than 1000 words. And those sounded from their descriptions to be poorly written or oh so edgy, so I gave them all a pass. Oh well.
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Funimation, huh? I'll have to look into it, then. Thanks!
I finished up Toradora:
After tracking down that last, weirdly interstitial episode which Netflix for whatever reason doesn't have, and I quite enjoyed it. It inspired me to seek out other similar anime on the service, and I've since gone through Komi Can't Communicate--a little cringy but fun enough that I'll checking out the second season when it starts next month--Girls' Monthly Nozaki-kun--extremely silly even to someone like me who's not overly familiar with the shojo manga tropes it's sending up--and my absolute favorite so far, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai.
I mean, the title alone is worth its weight in carrots, but I enjoyed the show so much that, when Netflix once again proved not to have the complete run--there's apparently a movie that carries on the story after the initial 13 episodes--I went and ordered the Blu-ray from some outfit called Right Stuf Anime and began rewatching the series from the beginning so I'll be ready when the disk arrives. It's an almost perfect example of magical realism done right, and the deadpan banter between the characters made me grin all over the place.
Mike
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Komi is on my list of things to watch, but I'm going to wait until at least season 2 is complete, depending on if it looks like there will be even more.
I'm not sure what thread you're following with "similar anime," though, as you're covering a lot of genres there. What's the common factor you're looking for? I might be able to suggest some things, but if you're going to restrict it to Netflix, that narrows it down. I'd highly recommend Little Witch Academia, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and Hilda to start with, of things I know they carry, and if you like weird madness, Dorohedoro will scratch that itch.
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I've largely been going with:
Stuff Netflix suggests. I've watched the new She-Ra, actually--that and Craig McCracken's Kid Cosmic were the first shows I went to after subscribing so I could see the new Pony movie last year. I was very happy to find Hilda there, too, since I'm a big fan of the original kids' books. The show does a really good job of capturing and expanding the world Luke Pearson put together. I guess it's got another season, too, set in the aftermath of the movie.
I tried Little Witch Academia, but I quit a few minutes into the infodump/flashback at the beginning of the first episode. That's something that really sours me on any form of fiction, it turns out. I was a little surprised to learn that I was such a big fan of in medias res storytelling.
There's one non-Netflix anime show that I tracked down on Funimation after seeing its title because, I mean, with a name like Banished from the Hero's Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Country, how could I not watch it? It has some interesting things to say about free will vs. destiny, always a topic I'm happy to think about, and the characters are all pretty interesting.
Mike
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Wait, Hilda had a third season? I hadn't heard of that. As far as I knew, the movie capped off season 2 and no more had been made.
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Ah, and I will also happily recommend Way of the Househusband (Gokushufudo). It's short and funny.
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The third season:
Of Hilda is still on its way.
Mike
Kana best Haibane.
Just saying.
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Hm, interesting choice. I did like her, but then I liked all of them.
May Kana have a nice Flying Away Day.