Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 39 · 11:54pm Aug 9th, 2022
Only one featured item this time, a very good movie, Your Name, and a larger than usual number of other things, after the break.
And I've finally hit it! This week will close out all the rest of the items on my completed list, except some I'm holding back on reviewing for reasons (usually wanting to group it with sequels I haven't seen yet). I'll keep going with these, but only as I accumulate enough things to review, so just less frequently.
Your Name is by the same director as another film I rated as very good, 5 Centimeters per Second, and one I rated as good, Children Who Chase Lost Voices, so all stuff I liked, though a mixed bag as to how much. I'd heard a criticism of the studio that they keep writing the same plot, so you only need to see one of their movies. The character development arcs are different to me, and even if they weren't, they're still good, and who wouldn't want to watch a good movie?
Mitsuha is a high school girl living in a fairly remote fictional town. Her family life is a bit broken for reasons that get revealed later, but suffice it to say she lives with her grandmother and little sister. The grandmother is a sort of spiritual leader. I don't remember them actually giving her a title, but she seems to run activities related to the local shrines, and she gets Mitsuha and her sister to participate in those. And of course being a public spectacle like that is anathema to the high school social scene, even if later in life we can look back on such experiences as cool. Mitsuha just dreams of the city life and hopes she could be reincarnated as a popular boy in Tokyo some day.
Taki is a high school boy in Tokyo who has a penchant for drawing and longs to be an architect. He's constantly busy with his friends and job, and he has a crush on his supervisor at the Italian restaurant where he works (as do all the junior waiters).
They witness a falling star, as they both call it, but it's actually a fragment of a comet that approaches Earth every 1200 years. At that point, the two start switching bodies every night when they fall asleep. So every other day, Mitsuha spends the day as a high school boy in Tokyo and Taki spends the day as a high school girl in the little town of Itomori. At first, they just assume it's a really vivid dream until the first time they spend the alternating day back in their own bodies and have to endure lots of questions about what the hell was up with them yesterday. Within a few days, they've worked out that they can leave each other notes for catching up on what they did while switched, and established ground rules for what's fair game to do as the other.
For the most part, they're just trying to get through it and alleviate their confusion as to why it's happening in the first place, but they also end up doing each other little favors. Some are definitely on purpose, and some more happy accidents.
Then one day it abruptly stops happening anymore, and the story stays with Taki. He has a nagging sense that there was some kind of special relationship he shared, but he can't remember who or what. The last trace of it is a vivid mental image of the town, and he's capable of drawing it in detail, so he goes looking for it, but he doesn't have anything as convenient as a reverse image web search.
What happened to her? Why can't he remember? Will finding this place jog his memory?
It's a nice little mystery that unfolds, and I don't want to spoil it. There are definitely parts of the movie that are heartbreaking, and at the risk of spoiling the ending just a little bit, it verged on being very frustrating. But even saying that, it's still fairly open-ended, so that may not really spoil anything...
The character work is great here, and I especially liked Mitsuha's little sister. She's kind of the straight man to a lot of the comic moments, and she plays the role well. Both Mitsuha's and Taki's circles of friends are also really upstanding people who are inspiring to see how much they're willing to help. And therein lies my only sticking point with the movie: they're sometimes too willing to help, going to great lengths to do pretty outlandish things given only vague reasons or hard-to-believe explanations of why. Though I suppose it's not at all rare for anime to portray strong friendships as answering the call no matter what like that.
Art was great, and the music was rather good too, though I kind of wonder if the dub I watched had different music than the original, as it's not often you get the songs in English.
Rating: very good.
Movie, relevant genres: drama, romance, fantasy.
Ranking of Kings (Ousama Ranking, 23 episodes)—a kingdom headed by a giant named Bosse is thrown into turmoil upon his death, due to various factors including political intrigue and his eldest heir Bojji being unable to hear or speak, leading everyone to think him incompetent. The titular ranking actually has very little to do with the plot, just that all the kings get sorted by some vague authority, and the top one gets access to some mystical treasure. Bojji ends up gong on a pretty typical hero's journey, though it's still nicely fleshed out with interesting characters. The animation is done in a throwback style, and the music is pretty good. If it does one thing well, that's keeping up the intrigue by having it almost always be opaque what any given character's loyalties and motivations are. It's a pretty big cast, too, so there's a lot of that to go around. There are twists and turns to the plot, but that's the gist of it, and it ends up being a sweet story overall (though one that's pretty brutal at times) about redemption and overcoming disabilities. Rating: good, relevant genres: action, adventure, fantasy, drama.
Super Cub (12 episodes)—the title refers to a ubiquitous model of light motorcycle (closer to a motor scooter) made by Honda, and when the one hundred millionth unit was sold, this series (and manga) wanted to commemorate it. Not surprisingly, a lot of this is a sales pitch for how great Super Cubs are. It's mostly slice of life, so there's not going to be much plot anyway. Main character Koguma lives alone, supported by a scholarship. She says she has no parents, and I think they're dead, versus her just phrasing it like that because she's on her own at school. She doesn't have any friends or interests, but she does get worn out riding her bike uphill to school, so when she sees someone riding a motorbike, she gets her heart set on one, then finds another classmate is an enthusiast, so they become friends. It's one of those iyashikei shows that's just supposed to be relaxing while showing people doing wholesome things. It is rather cute, and I like the characters. The art is pretty good, while obviously CGI at times, but I especially liked the pencil art during the closing credits. It was beautiful. Music was odd. Fine when it was original, but early on, it borrowed a lot of French classical piano pieces, which went away for a while, came back again halfway through, went away again, and turned up one last time at the end, with a little Vivaldi thrown in. I do have some nitpicks about it. For one, Koguma seemed kind of sweet and naive at first, but once she gets a friend... she does gain some confidence, but she comes across as surly, and it was off-putting. For another, she's always complaining about how she has no money and will barely scrape by with enough to eat for the month, yet she's constantly accessorizing her bike. To be fair, she gets good deals on a lot of it, especially the bike itself: while she sees new ones listed around $7000, she pays less than $100 for a used one because it has a sordid history (which turns out not to be true, but at least it got her a nice discount). Each new episode seems like a new commercial for Super Cubs and propaneSuper Cub accessories. They do try to introduce some plot for the last two episodes, and it was really a stretch. By that time, a third girl has joined them, but she doesn't have a Cub yet. She crashed her bike in the river during winter and calls the other two for help. The river's shallow enough that she's lying on the bottom and is not submerged. She doesn't mention any sort of breaks or sprains, but still doesn't have the wherewithal to climb out herself. So she doesn't call her parents. She calls Koguma. And she spends the night having a sleepover with the other two while recovering. Again, without calling her parents. They have no idea what happened to her until she shows up at home the next morning. So, cute overall, if you like the genre, but when they do try to have a little plot, it's overblown. Rating: good, relevant genres: slice of life, yuri (non-romance).
The Girl from the Other Side (Totsukuni no Shoujo, 3 episodes)—I think this had originally been released as one continuous movie, but the version I saw was broken into 3 episodes. It's also subtitled Siúil a Rún, which is a traditional Irish song, "Go, My Love." Before watching it, I'd read Wikipedia's summary of the premise to see if it would interest me, and I think what's there is actually the premise from the manga. It doesn't describe much of what happens in the movie at all, and I'm guessing this was just supposed to be a little bit of the story taken out of context. I did get the feeling that it was part of something bigger that I was missing. It's a cold open, with a demon-like creature finding a little girl sleeping in the forest, in an area where some human soldiers (swords-and-armor type) are stacking bodies from some kind of battle. The leader makes an oblique reference to creatures called Outsiders who can curse humans just by touching them, and they'll eventually turn into Outsiders themselves. This demon takes the girl back to a house he uses and tries to take care of her until he can return her to where she belongs, but as she stays with him, he decides he needs to find some place even safer. She's very cute, and it's endearing to watch her interactions with him, as she's not afraid of him. The demon goes to greater and greater lengths to ensure her safety, amid some hinting that it may be a doomed effort for humanity to resist the Outsiders and their curse. But that's all just left for you to ponder, presumably unless you're familiar with the manga and have all that context. For example, the reason why the girl was in the forest in the first place is never mentioned, but the manga apparently does go into that. So as a standalone thing, it's likely to be somewhat unsatisfying, but it'd probably make a good companion piece to reading the manga. It was a pretty unique animation style, and it was done beautifully, plus the music was good as well. Rating: good, relevant genres: fantasy, mystery.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko (Yokohama Shopping Trip Log, 2 OVAs), Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko: Quiet Country Cafe (2 OVAs)—the manga ran for quite a while, but the anime adapts only a little of it. Main character Alpha is an android living in a time after there's been some apocalyptic or ecological disaster. The lower-lying areas of Japan are underwater now. Alpha's owner also ran a cafe, but he left her in charge while he went away to travel for some indefinite length of time. She doesn't ever seem to have any customers, but she is friends with the few other residents of the rural area. It's a little different art style than I've seen before, but it was beautifully done, and the music was pretty good, too, especially in the sequel. It's mostly slice of life, so there's not much plot to speak of. In the first series, episode 1 just has a delivery android bringing something her owner has sent her, and then Alpha deciding how she wants to use it. Episode 2 has her getting injured during a storm, then kind of contemplating the passage of time. In the sequel, the first episode has Alpha noticing that the cafe is showing its age during a typhoon, and she needs to make a decision about what she wants to do with it, and the second shows her wandering around a bit on a journey of self-discovery while also introducing a few other main characters from the manga, though in a way that doesn't seem to have a point. A few oddities you just have to take, like the interface ports for androids are in the mouth, so if they want to download something off a computer, they put the cord in their mouth, or if they want to transfer files between them, they pretty much have to kiss. I never did know quite what to make of the fact that Alpha often keeps a gun handy. The series makes very good use of lighting, and there's a musical interlude about 3/4 of the way through the first couple. There are various friends Alpha makes or old ones she encounters each time, and it's just a window into the relationships she has. Some of the androids are different production models, which gives them different abilities, and they can be quite human: they sleep and drink, some can eat, Alpha can cry. I loved some of the attention to detail in the animation, like when Alpha's friend Kokone (also an android) touches her hair once when Alpha's asleep, it doesn't wake her up, but her fingers do twitch. If you enjoy slice of life, this is a very charming example of it, though the manga has more space to develop the characters. I also get the impression that the manga tells more of a coherent story, where the anime gives you disconnected pieces of it, though the manga also does seem to be the type that gives you disconnected snapshots that are illustrative of the whole. Rating: good, relevant genres: slice of life, sci-fi (only insofar as androids exist).
YuYu Hakusho (112 episodes + 2 movies)—I haven't seen the movies. Yusuke is a teenage ne'er-do-well who for some reason risks his life to save a child from being hit by a car. Aw, he's actually a softy. When you see the phrase "risks his life," usually it's implied that he survived. But he didn't. However, as a reward for his selfless act, also taking into account his potential for being highly skilled and some things the big boss man knows about him that he doesn't know about himself, he's given a second chance, as long as he agrees to become a spirit detective to investigate and apprehend demonic activity. Through the course of his cases, a couple of the demons he's supposed to dispose of turn out to be like him, not so bad after all, and they join forces. He's got a human rival who joins him as well, and this guy, Kuwabara, is an absolute gem. I've made references to such a thing before, but he's the exemplar of a secondary character who steals the show. Each season has Yusuke and his allies participating in some kind of fighting tournament, either an explicit one or just that the narrative is structured like one. Since that dominates so much of the plot, how much you like that mechanic will determine how much you like the show. For me, I find that to be lazy storytelling, unless it's a show that by its premise alone will obviously involve that, like, say, Pokemon. I still liked this, even as I grew weary of the endless tournaments, because it does a good job developing the characters. It does have a fairly weak ending. If you like fighting shows, absolutely check it out, and even if not, at least give it a shot. Art was rather good for its time, music probably average. Rating: good, relevant genres: action, adventure, supernatural, mystery.
Zatch Bell! (150 episodes + 2 movies)—so this one gets a bit complicated. The original Japanese version was called Konjiki no Gasshu!! (Golden Gash!!) and ran for 150 episodes. For the English dub, they changed the name to Zatch Bell! and only made 104 episodes. I watched it on Cartoon Network, and they only had 77 episodes, so that's all I've seen, and I haven't seen the movies. For the truncated runs, I don't know whether they simply cut off the ending or cut out some episodes from the middle that were skippable. Looking at a summary of the full plot, I do get a sense that what Cartoon Network had covered it all, but maybe I'm not remembering right. It has been fifteen years, after all. Anyway, title character Zatch Bell is from a race who lives in a parallel plane, and every thousand years, the hundred most promising ones are sent to Earth to battle it out, with the prize being the throne for the next thousand years. To battle, they require a human companion who will take their spellbook and use it to direct them during fights, and as they gain experience, new spells will activate. Basically, it's a (mostly) human version of Pokemon, which gets another mention this week for some reason. Zatch gains a few friends from among his people, and they all have a goal of one of them winning the whole thing so that they can abolish this practice altogether, as they consider it barbaric. This is one that will obviously be structured like a tournament, so it didn't give me a disappointing surprise there. The manga it's based on comes to a definite conclusion, but none of the anime versions do, so it's a bit unsatisfying. Art and music were average at best. Rating: decent, relevant genres: action, strategy, drama.
Zoids: Chaotic Century (67 episodes)—this was the first Zoids series made, but the second to air in English. It's one of those strong toy tie-ins, so your favorite Zoids mechs battle it out. I honestly don't remember much about this series at all, so it just stuck in my head as a generic military series. But based on it having so much in common with its sequel, I'll assume the same quality of it, so let's move on over to...
Zoids: New Century Zero (26 episodes)—mech combat is more a sport now, but main character Bit has possession of a unique mech. Most of them are production models that have more to do with how you trick them out, so you'll see multiple copies of almost every other mech in the show, but nobody knows the origin of Bit's. It has a mind of its own as well, and often prefers to fight hand to hand, as it were, rather than have weapons equipped. Bit joins on with one of the teams and helps them climb the rankings, but that draws the attention of the Bad Guy Team, who would like his mech for their own. Yeah, this is a lot like Pokemon again, to give it a third mention. It's fine for what it is, and there was enough mystery about this mech's origin to keep me interested. Music was average, but I liked the art, and particularly the character design of his teammate Leena (the team manager's daughter, no less) was cool. She had these kind of... bionic hair extensions, I guess? They levitate above her head and aren't attached. I couldn't tell if they were purely decorative, but it was amusing how they moved around according to her mood, though it's not much different than anime often treats female characters' hair, I suppose. Anyway, formulaic tournament and mysterious origins plot, but it was still fun enough. Rating: decent, relevant genres: action, adventure, strategy.
I do have a couple ideas for interstitial blogs, but mostly, see you next time I've gathered enough of these to talk about more!
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. 29 here
vol. 30 here
vol. 31 here
vol. 32 here
vol. 33 here
vol. 34 here
vol. 35 here
vol. 36 here
vol. 37 here
vol. 38 here
I never could get into Yuyu Hakusho. I know it's consistently rated as one of the top anime, but the characters just never clicked for me. Plus everyone always has their hands in their pockets and it just seems weird to me.
5678651
I just got tired of the constant tournament arcs. It reminded of Dragonball Z, which I can't stand.
God, I remember Zatch Bell. I can't remember if I ever watched it, but I feel like I might have seen an episode once.
5678671
I've never been able to stand Dragonball but I kinda think some of that is that it's so long that coming in at any point other than the start is too confusing. Whenever I catch episodes of it, it's just two people building up to a fight that'll happen in thirty episodes based on the events twenty episodes back. And everyone has that really over-the-top reaction to everything that's a hallmark of older anime.
5678675
It's been a really long time since I saw any Zatch Bell, but I remember feeling like it was like eating unflavored oatmeal. Not horrible, but not enjoyable. Just a bland experience that took time.
I still remember having the fortune to experience Your Name. (I never understood the period in the title) for the first time via an IMAX screening, and English subbed too. Made me glad I missed its initial run. And it was reasonably packed too! As the first work of the director and studio I saw, recycled plots and such bothered me less, even if I found some of the heavier focus on sci-fi/fantasy as the story progressed, and the twists therein, a little overcooked and not necessarily the best. No matter, it’s a surprise-involving character drama, and so drop-dead gorgeous that honestly, that would be all I need. I may never have felt the need to revisit it, but I totally understand why so many adore it to bits.
5678689
Memory may be hazy, but that tracks.
I've seen Your Name. I haven't seen 5 Centimeters per Second, but just read the description on Wikipedia a moment ago. Yeah, it definitely sounds like the studio wrote the same story and just changed the plot devices.
As for Super Cub, the manga says Koguma's parents "abandoned" her, however literal or metaphorical that might be. The thing about the show that struck me is Koguma's attitude could easily have turned the show into a vastly different genre. Along the way, it kind of became fun to imagine she was actually a psychopath.
The upside of being one big Honda ad was that the show had a huge budget, and it didn't disappoint for visuals.
More blatant was a show called Houkago no Pleiades. It was pretty much written and directed by Subaru.
I've probably seen some of YuYu Hakusho at some point or another, but strangely what I really remember about it was playing a borrowed video game. I think I got the basic idea of the plot from that.
5678787
The movie that I most often see accused of being the same thing as Your Name is Weathering with You, but I haven't seen that one yet.
Makes sense about Koguma's situation. I think that's kind of a strange, pointlessly dark thing to put in a motorcycle commercial, but it's not out of line for a drama show. That does sound funny about her being a secret psychopath. That would have been hilarious in the episode where she's glaring down the riverbank at Shii, if she was just plotting how to dispose of the body. I didn't realize they'd been funded by Honda, versus just getting permission to use their IP. Makes sense, though, and the visuals were nicely done.
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When I saw you'd commented, my first thought was that you were chiming in about the Siúil a Rún reference...