Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 36 · 11:11pm Jun 28th, 2022
Almost got to the end of the alphabet this week, but then I went and watched a few things that I liked a lot, so not quite. Featured items this week are a movie from roughly a decade ago, Colorful, and a series from last year. I'll give the English title up top since people might not recognize it by the Japanese one: After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway. Those and six additional items, after the break.
Colorful (definitely not to be confused with the sketch comedy series Colorful! which I reviewed earlier) is based on a novel. It's a tad on the lengthy side, as compared to most anime movies, and it didn't have to be: it comes across as rather slow-paced, but in this case, that's not a bad thing. I never felt like it was wasting my time.
The opening scene is done as second-person, presenting "your" dialogue as text instead of speech. You're a soul being processed through the reincarnation system, though you don't know where you're supposed to be. As someone comes up to inform you, you're finished, because of something terrible you did. Except you have one chance: you can agree to take the place of someone who's just committed suicide and try living out their life for them for the next six months. If you do a good job of it, you'll earn your way back into good graces and wipe clean the slate of whatever transgression you'd perpetrated... and you can't remember anything about your life, including what that was. It's being presented to you as a choice. But it isn't one.
Pop over to third person, and Makoto wakes up in his hospital bed, surrounded by his family, after being pronounced dead. He's in his last year of junior high, and now he has to go about learning what his place in life is, plus lots of more mundane things, like which bedroom in the house is his and who his family members even are. Luckily, he's got the same person who informed him of all this, Purapura, along to assist, kind of like Dean Stockwell's character in Quantum Leap. Though Purapura isn't constantly there, only appearing occasionally as it suits him.
The side characters make this movie. The plot's nothing too surprising, and there is a twist, but one I'd halfway expected from the start. Makoto had been an odd duck in his class, but since he's new to this, he doesn't know how Makoto's supposed to behave, and his classmates react various ways to how he seems off.
Aside from just being strange and an underperforming student, he's a gifted artist. Does being in Makoto's body mean he inherits the artistic ability as well? They never directly address this, mostly sidestepping the issue by having him hang out at art club just to observe for a while, not actually participate.
He also quickly finds out that he apparently had a crush on a girl named Hiroka, who isn't an art club member but likes to linger there anyway and encourage the students. There's kind of a running theme of him discovering that people weren't what he thought they were. To a minor degree, that includes his brother and father, but Hiroka and his mother are the biggies. And one more: a painfully awkward girl named Shoko, who was my favorite character of the whole thing. There are plenty of animes that paint socially awkward people the same way, which is usually being over the top about it. Shoko is probably the most realistic I've seen. And another point in her favor is that they didn't pair social ineptitude with crippling shyness—she's actually pretty bold at times.
Back to Hiroka, and the one thing that significantly detracted from this for me. She's very shallow, and that alone wouldn't have been a problem. But (minor-ish spoilers) she's someone who sells herself for frivolous reasons, and the movie treats this as not a big deal. Even level-headed Shoko doesn't care much either way. Makoto thinks it's repulsive—when he catches her in the act and tries to "rescue" her from it, she laughs it off and even offers him a discount rate of roughly $200, but nothing ever gets resolved. It's just out there, and no point is made about it. I guess there's some vague point that she might realize the mistake of it sometime in the future. But in general, I'm a bit tired of animes depicting underage girls doing this as nothing to get bent out of shape about. She barely even tries to hide it, after all. I sure hope that doesn't reflect real Japanese attitudes about this type of situation, but even as An Anime Thing, it still rubs me the wrong way.
In the end, this person inhabiting Makoto's body has to realize what mistake he'd made in his own life, but the way Purapura presents it, it sounds like he's going to leave Makoto's body either way, and since Makoto's soul is already dead, then the body will presumably die again. And this time, just drop dead unexpectedly, I guess, since he won't have done anything to cause it. That's kind of hand-waved, though how things work out does make sense.
The art was unusually simplistic for the characters, but not in a bad way, and the backgrounds were beautiful. I suspect this is another case of using photos of real places and arting them up, based on how hyper-realistic everything looked. Music was pretty good, and by a composer I found at least average (and good in some cases) on several other things I've watched before.
Rating: very good.
Movie, relevant genres: drama.
Hige wo Soru. Soshite Joshi Kosei o Hirou, or "After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway," is obviously one of those shows with a long, descriptive, humorous title. I tend not to like those. For one thing, most of them seem to be isekais, which I rarely care for. For another, and probably related to that, they're generally of a sort of humor I don't enjoy much. This is not a funny show. And it makes me wonder why they went for the tonal disconnect that using such a title causes.
Main character Yoshida finally got up the courage to ask his supervisor on a date. But she turns him down, leading to him getting drunk with a buddy. On his way home, he sees a young girl sitting under a streetlamp near his house, and he almost ignores her, but at heart, he's one of those guys sometimes described as "too nice" by people who just can't fathom the mindset that makes him want to help people with no ulterior motive. She'd run away from home and been trading... favors for a place to stay, but that's never lasted for more than a few nights at a time. She assumes she'll have to do that again in this case, but it doesn't bother her anymore, if it ever did.
Right away, that's not a setup for a story I'd want to watch, except that Yoshida as the uber-nice guy had me hoping. If the two ever developed a love interest, I'd have noped out... well, honestly, my OCD wouldn't have let me, as it's a short series, and it'd only take the investment of a couple evenings to finish it anyway. But I wouldn't have been happy.
I also initially had to tamp down my disbelief that this girl, Sayu, would think this kind of behavior was okay. There were only the barest of hints about what kind of background she came from, at least until late in the run, but even those little bits seemed to suggest this isn't the kind of person who would do that. Yet it eventually does make sense. I don't know that that's the best way to play it from a narrative sense, but it's better than not making sense, I guess.
Of course Yoshida quickly suggests Sayu figure out how to reintegrate with wherever she ran from, but he can tell she's carrying some pretty big emotional scars. Problem is: he's in a very tenuous legal position here. And going back to that point about people just not comprehending how he can do all this without having some shady agenda to it, Sayu is so used to dealing with that kind of person that she's just waiting for the other shoe to drop and repeatedly throwing herself at him. And thankfully, that doesn't last more than a couple of episodes, and why I could stomach this more easily than the similar situation in Colorful. I've seen enough shows that try to imply it isn't that wrong, and I just didn't want to watch them play that game. I'm very glad they didn't.
And so he allows her to stay, with some nebulous term in mind that eventually evaporates into "whenever she's ready to leave," in exchange for her handling the household chores. There will be other obvious consequences to her presence, though. She's only got her school uniform, it takes extra food to feed two, she needs a futon, etc. And of course his friends and coworkers are going to notice that something's up.
That's the aspect I liked most about the show. Sayu's kind of simultaneously naive and world-weary, but she has a positive effect on everyone around her, at least those who aren't trying to take advantage of her. I like a series with strong side characters, and this one delivers. Though with several coworkers also crushing on Yoshida, it swerves dangerously close to a harem anime. Still, they're good characters, and I particularly liked a friend Sayu makes named Asami.
And it doesn't hurt when a show strikes a personal chord. Not that it involves anything remotely close to this situation, but Sayu dealing with her family really smacked of some things wifey's been through.
Yoshida does come through as a bit of a Gary Stu, but I appreciated Sayu's redemption arc, in that it's the kind of uneven progress that makes the journey interesting. Just immediately coming around and having all her problems solved wouldn't make for much of a plot. It's the setbacks that give it momentum, and it's always relatable to see that a character learning to be strong also has some very stark moments of weakness.
Uplifting show, though some gritty stuff to get through along the way (and somewhat graphic in places). The art was very good, though the CGI on things like cars and background elements could get a bit clunky. The music was pretty good. The novel series it's based on is also billed as comedy, but I have trouble seeing that, unless it takes a substantially different tone. Yes, there are some comic moments in the anime, but not to the level of calling that a legit genre tag for it, imo.
Rating: very good.
13 episodes, relevant genres: drama, romance.
Onward! Most of this is also backfilling things I finished recently.
Aharen is Indecipherable (Aharen-san wa Hakarenai, 12 episodes)—really cute high school romance series that just ended last week. Aharen is a small, doll-like girl who lacks any kind of social skills. She's not at all shy, but she doesn't know basic things like how loud to talk so people can hear her or how close she can get without violating someone's personal space. Classmate Raido is someone who looks mean, so people often avoid him, but he's actually quite kind. They sit next to each other and become good friends. Most of the series is slice of life, but it does turn toward romance by the end. And several enjoyable side characters get introduced: two other classmates, a long-time friend of Aharen's who's jealous of Raido, two kids they happen to meet in the park, Aharen's two siblings, two teachers (one of whom totally ships them). There's not a lot of plot to it, but it was nice to see how incredibly patient Raido is with Aharen, and how her character develops through the series. The art was good, and the music was mostly unobtrusive, but the opening song was very cute, with cool thematic use of whispering. Rating: good, relevant genres: slice of life, romance.
Le Portrait de Petit Cossette (3 OVAs)—I came to this through the composer, since I'd enjoyed her work on a few other series, and the premise sounded like a good gothic horror. And gothic horror it is, but it was on the strange side for me. College art student Eiri helps run an antique store, and among a collection of objects shipped there from abroad is a Venetian glass goblet and a painting of a young French girl. While gazing into the goblet, Eiri can see the girl, and he gets sucked into... I don't know what. An alternate reality? A dream world? He gets to speaking with her regularly and becomes obsessed with her. Back in reality, there are five women who have varying relationships with Eiri, and it could get tough to keep straight who was who, as most of them don't get much screen time, and it's vague why they have such a connection to him. Add to that the confusion of some story elements being told out of order and just the reality-bending stuff getting confusing anyway, and it's a little hard to keep everything clear. As to the horror aspect, I'm very much in the camp of preferring suspense to gore, and this is more on the gore side. Not that it's very explicit, just that it's very over the top, to the point I felt it undercut the effectiveness of the tone, but YMMV. I do think a subtler hand could have made a more powerful take on it. To me, it was only genuinely creepy at the beginning, then mostly just strange after that. The music was as good as anything I've liked by that composer, and the art was definitely a high point, very fluid, and (possibly deliberately) focusing more detail on the titular girl than anything else, and I did like that effect. She was animated beautifully, and that was one part of the direction that I would compliment. I'm still trying to decide whether the whole thing was cool or too artsy for its own good, but if you want to see some psychological horror with high production values and spend only 90 minutes or so at it, it's worth a look. Rating: good, but toward the lower end of that, relevant genres: psychological horror, thriller, dark, drama.
Patema Inverted (Sakasama no Patema, movie)—I got this recommendation from a list of family-friendly movies to watch that aren't Ghibli (as everyone knows to watch those already), and I'll be revisiting that list for a few more entries later on. Of the ten movies recommended, I added five to my watch list, one was already on it, and one I'd already seen. Main character Patema lives in a very enclosed world that's essentially underground. She goes exploring for supplies, and far further than is considered safe, when one day she finds herself falling down a shaft. At least she has a fairly gentle landing, but by good fortune, she got tangled up in a tree. Wait, fall down a shaft and find trees? Yep, she finds an inverted world down there, where she needs to cling to something on the ground, or else she'll fall into the sky. And the people who live there have an opposite sense of gravity to her and her people. She meets a boy named Eiji who's very curious and helps her get around, but that upsets the status quo, and the people in power down there can't abide that. They've been spreading propaganda about "inverted" people for years, and having a sweet non-threatening live example of one doesn't help their case. There's a big 1984 vibe to it. Then we delve into how everything got this way and Patema's struggle to get back to where she's from. There are a couple of neat twists to this and the characters work is very good, all except for a ridiculously over-the-top villain, but that's not unusual for a suitable-for-all-ages film. I had fun with this, and it'll definitely screw with your sense of direction. It can also get a little confusing. The art was high quality, and the music pretty good. There's a funny bit where Patema keeps interrupting it. I wavered on whether to rate this as good or very good, and I was tempted to bump it up, but it lacked a strong emotional impact for me, and there's a classmate of Eiji's that I wish they'd explored more. Still recommended though, and it seems to have done well with critics. Rating: good, relevant genres: sci-fi, drama.
Patema Inverted: Beginning of the Day (4 episodes)—these are short, only six minutes each, and they were released as a sneak preview of the movie. There's nothing new here, as it's identical to the movie's beginning. Rating: good, but there's really no point in watching it, relevant genres: sci-fi, drama.
Sunday Without God (Kami-sama no Inai Nichiyobi, 12 episodes + 1 OVA)—the novel series this is based on ran a little after the anime finished, and the manga had already finished, so it was odd to me that the series came to very few conclusions. Some sort of calamity over ten years prior resulted in people losing the ability to have children or die. Those who do die pretty much turn into zombies, but not the brain-eating kind. Only a special type of person called a Gravekeeper can lay them to rest so they stay dead, and they don't often wait to be asked: they feel a compulsion to do so. A few people who made a desperate, heartfelt wish at the moment the original calamity struck have gained a power that is related to their wish, sometimes ironically. Main character Ai is a young Gravekeeper, and she shouldn't exist, in several ways. She decides she wants to figure out how to fix the world, and her journey leads to her joining up with a varied crew of other interesting characters. The show is structured in mini arcs—there are three arcs of three episodes each, one two-episode arc, and one standalone, plus the OVA, which is actually three short episodes stitched together. While each of those arcs does get its own conclusion, there are loose threads to every one of them, and by the end, none of that is resolved. So don't go into this looking for any sort of proper ending. It was a bit frustrating. Take the second arc. Ai makes a very influential friend, but aside from a tangential character joining her party as a result, that has no bearing on what happens afterward and barely gets mentioned again. It ends up feeling like a bunch of independent stories with no overall purpose. I still liked the characters and the art (music was average, maybe a little better) enough to enjoy it on the whole, but it didn't wow me in any way. I also think AI's VA in the dub was miscast, as she always had an odd, halting cadence to her voice, though it matched the mouth movements, so maybe it's supposed to be that way? Except I recognize her voice, and it seems like that's normal for her. Rating: good, relevant genres: drama, mystery, supernatural.
Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku (Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii, 11 episodes + 3 OVAs)—main character Narumi is a closet otaku who is on the first day of a new job. She left her old one because her boyfriend found out how much of an otaku she was, particularly about yaoi, so she broke up with him over fears everyone would find out. But today, she recognizes one of her new coworkers, Nifuji, as a big video game otaku she knew as a kid. Thankfully, he has no interest in revealing her secret, but she also soon realizes that her new supervisor is a well-known cosplayer who likes to cross-dress as male characters. So they get to gushing over yaoi manga, and she admits her on again, off again boyfriend, a pal of Nifuji's, is also into manga and anime but won't own up to being an otaku. Of course they also discuss the two guys as a yaoi pairing. Narumi and Nifuji decide to start dating because they don't have any other prospects, but it's clear neither of them knows what dating actually entails. It's fun to see them all fan-boy/girl-ing over their interests, but the ease with which they formed couples does invalidate the title. Though the other couple does argue a lot, so I guess that can be hard? This is more slice of life than anything, and Nifuji's younger brother gets an arc, too, one that never gets a conclusion, though. That was kind of a disappointment. The art was very good, and the music was pretty good. The one thing I want to end on is that this has one of the most charming intros of any series I've ever seen. It starts off normal enough, but then shows them all in their cosplay outfits, and then doing this really cute coordinated... dance, I guess I'll call it? with their hands. It's been posted to YouTube, so do yourself a favor and look it up. Rating: good, relevant genres: slice of life, romance.
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. 26 here
vol. 27 here
vol. 28 here
vol. 29 here
vol. 30 here
vol. 31 here
vol. 32 here
vol. 33 here
vol. 34 here
vol. 35 here
I know that I saw Le Portrait de Petit Cossette, but I don't remember a whole lot about it beyond snippets from the ending and that it was really confusing. I'm a big on horror, so me not recalling much of it is probably a bad sign in general.
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Yeah, it tried to survive on atmosphere alone, and it wasn't very coherent. It barely worked as horror for me, so I don't figure it would for a connoisseur.