Chris's Personal Wiki :: rtbloghttps://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/?atomDWiki2021-11-27T02:28:30ZRecently changed pages in Chris's Personal Wiki :: rtblog.tag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2021FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p>Yes, that really does say 'summer' up there. <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2021FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I've collected my reactions to the first
episode of the only show I actually started watching in the summer
season.</p>
<ul><li>The Case Study of Vanitas episode #1: That was stylish and reasonably
interesting, although as usual it doesn't really tell me very much
about what the rest of the show will be like. It hasn't left me solidly
hooked, but I'll be watching the next episode.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1420227817757872136">♯</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I watched three episodes of <em>Vanitas</em> before growing bored,
and I never watched anything else. Both <em>Magia Record</em> and
<em>That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime</em> had continuations in
the summer season, and at some point I hope to watch both (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1449419774992297993">eg</a>), but I
didn't feel enthused enough to watch <em>Slime</em> live and <em>Magia Record</em>
aired late and I forgot about it by the time it started.</p>
<p>(My experiences with the <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2021FirstEpisodes">Winter 2021</a> season of
<em>Slime</em> didn't leave me feeling thrilled about watching it week by week.)</p>
<p>Instead I spent summer 2021 <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1449419475564986377">reading random manga</a>, and may
mostly do that again for Fall 2021. I have feelings about the differences
between reading manga and watching anime and why one has been working
out better than the other right now, but I don't want to try to put them
in this entry.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Summer 2021 anime season2021-11-27T02:28:30Z2021-11-27T02:28:23Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2021FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2021FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them). This is delayed for various reasons.</p>
<ul><li>Mars Red episode #1: I'm pretty sure I didn't understand all of that
and I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it was definitely different
and interesting because of that. I don't know if it can sustain
everything it's trying to do and hold my interest, though.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1378206296789426176">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Thunderbolt Fantasy S3 episode #1: All of these good characters are
back, bantering back and forth. We got some plotting and a bit of a
fight too, but that part was really all just a warmup (but the demon
is totally up to things, she always is).
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1378895207475900416">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>SSSS.Dynazenon episode #1: Our protagonists clearly have plenty
going on but at the same time they didn't really do anything this
episode; they were at the mercy of fate (which may be the point,
but still). That left the big fight feeling disconnected and floating.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1379244109613965315">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Super Cub episode #1: That was quietly great, or at least very my
thing. The great scenery, the mood, the understated bits of (sad)
story, various little details, everything clicked for me. The night
ride was all beautiful and of course she fell asleep in her entryway.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1379988160227201024">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Blue Reflection Ray episode #1: That felt perfectly okay but also
underwhelming and rather slow. I got lost in the barrage of characters,
and I don't think it quite had the chops for its 'show don't tell'
attempts (or the command of atmosphere to pull off its pacing).
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1380743425767657474">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>I've Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years And Maxed Out My Level
episode #1: That was inoffensive and ordinary. I can believe this
could have charm and appeal (and I see some gestures that way), but
the first episode didn't particularly hook me.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1381396636438556672">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Joran The Princess Of Snow And Blood episode #1: That was reasonably
interesting, although it also had a pretty ordinary presentation and
a certain amount of cliches (and one spot felt like it was trying too
hard to be edgy and adult).
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1381428597685096449">♯</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I've had vague ambitions of watching some more shows that looked
potentially promising, but at this point it's clear that they're not
going to come to pass; as I write this, some shows are on their fifth
episode. My overall hit rate from first episode previews has also not
encouraged me to try more, as I'm already down to three of these seven.</p>
<p>(<em>Super Cub</em>, <em>SSSS.Dynazenon</em>, and <em>Thunderbolt Fantasy S3</em>, in my
order of enthusiasm.)</p>
<p>As is customary for me, reactions to later episodes are in a twitter
conversation chain from my first episode tweets, up to where I stopped
following a show.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Spring 2021 anime season2021-05-02T23:54:18Z2021-05-02T23:54:00Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2021FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2020FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them). This entry is delayed for various reasons so I'm throwing
in some bonus additional notes.</p>
<ul><li>Otherside Picnic episode #1: That was okay at what it did but as a
stand alone work I felt like it lacked some vital spark of engagement
amidst the frenzy of weirdness, action, and horror-ish mood. I'm not
unbiased though, since I've looked at the manga.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1347049867114409985">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Laid-Back Camp S2 episode #1: What can I say? Seeing young Rin
was great (especially the failures (and learning) and then the curry
cup), and then we got all the current day stuff. The magic is 100%
back (or, if you prefer, continuing).
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1348043244442169355">→</a><p>
(As you would expect, <em>Laid-Back Camp</em> has continued to be excellent.)<p>
</li>
<li>So I'm a Spider, So What? episode #1: I'm predisposed to like this
for various reasons, but it was still reasonably fun although limited
by all of the setup work it had to do. I hope it gets better in future
episodes once our spider gets to do more interesting and active things.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1348052845245984769">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Horimiya episode #1: This was fun and charming and nicely done.
None of these people are your usual potatoes and I can believe what's
happening with them. I don't know where the show is going to mine
drama from, though, and if I'm going to be happy watching that happen.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1348397993976868865">→</a><p>
(I only just got around to watching the second episode of this, so
I don't know if I'm really going to stick with it.)<p>
</li>
<li>Hortensia Saga episode #1 is unfortunately not interesting enough
for me to finish. It's a collection of cliches with one of the least
convincing 'girl cosplaying as a guy' cases I've seen. I can only
conclude that everyone on her side knows it.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1348406665239003148">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Kid from the Last Dungeon episode #1: That was decently funny,
although not very deep. One of the things that made it work is that some
but not all of the people around Lloyd knew how powerful he was, which
led to a certain amount of tension. But it's painting pretty broadly.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1349583126734004229">♯</a><p>
(I would up abandoning this <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1351371792917667840">part way through episode 3</a>.)<p>
</li>
<li>That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime episode #25: Partly
re-introduction to things and partly a slow-moving setup episode,
although they did put in some show-off fights at the end. It's still
fun but I kind of wish it was more engaging right now.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1350562164977885185">♯</a><p>
('I wish this was more engaging' is part of my reaction to a lot
of this season of <em>Slime</em> so far.)<p>
</li>
<li>Log Horizon S3 episode #1: My immediate reaction to this episode is
that I'm not a fan of either the focus on politics or the theme of
everything falling apart. Maybe there will be a triumphant ending to
the season but right now it doesn't feel like getting there will be fun.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1351363581468663815">→</a><p>
(Although I haven't dropped this officially, I haven't watched the
second episode. It may turn out to be <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Midway">another <em>Full Metal Panic</em></a>.)<p>
</li>
<li>Wonder Egg Priority episode #1: Oh wow, that was beautifully done.
Also periodically painful in a quiet way and sometimes brutal, mostly
in a 'the implied made real' kind of way. There were some very visceral
moments. (What concretely happened is basically beyond summary.)
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1353897705844707329">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Sk8 the Infinity episode #1: That was okay but not compelling,
especially in this busy season. I don't think the over the top nature
of some things clicked with me, but the characters and the core gimmick
of the episode were okay.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1353922885954502656">→</a><p>
(I didn't watch any more of this.)</li>
</ul>
<p>In continuing shows, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1350233029504094215">I'm still enjoying <em>Jujutsu Kaisen</em></a>.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Winter 2021 anime season2021-02-15T03:16:53Z2021-02-15T03:16:40Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2020Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2020Brief">As before</a>, it's time for my current views on how
this season has shaken out so far, following up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2020FirstEpisodes">my first episode
reactions</a>. At this point I've watched four
episodes of everything I'm following, which is long enough for shows
to establish themselves and usually for my views to stabilize. After
a drought that kind of started when <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2019Abandoned">I abandoned the fall 2019 season</a>, I'm apparently back to watching plenty of anime.</p>
<p>(I have some thoughts on that but I'm not sure they fit within the
margins of an entry I want to write.)</p>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>Warlords of Sigdrifa</em>: This is my surprise of the season, because
it's unreasonably good (well, for its genre);
the third episode was <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1317949368666914816">an especially good standout</a>, but it
has great touches all through (including in incidental background
details). As I put it on Twitter, the show might have good fights but
it's about people, and that's what gets me hooked.<p>
(With that said, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1320117330588930048">it's not an entirely serious show</a>.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Entertaining:</p>
<ul><li><em>Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear</em>: This is a fundamentally charming story that
I'm enjoying for that, and also for Yuna's faces and periodic nature
as a little gremlin. I have an advantage in that I've been exposed
to the story in manga form, where I also enjoyed it, so I'm happy to
see it animated even if this is not a top notch flawless adaptation.
Unfortunately the various flaws of this probably mean that people who
don't know the story (and aren't fond of isekai in general) won't like
the show at all.<p>
(Also, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1316502686213300224">the protagonist is a girl, which is unusual and refreshing</a>.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Akudama Drive</em>: On the one hand, the setting and most of the
characters here are ludicrous in a stylish cyberpunk way, with the
redeeming virtue that the show commits wholeheartedly to it (and has
the animation to make it look good). On the other hand, I have gotten
steadily more caught up in it every episode, as it reveals another
twist and turn, and it does have one normal character that we can root
for and care about as she gets caught up in everything. This has
definitely become engaging watching where I care about what happens
next.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Jujutsu Kaisen</em>: So far the show is well executed shonen action
with aspects of horror, which is basically what I was expecting from
its genre and pedigree. It's adopting an ongoing Shonen Jump series,
so I'm expecting lots of battles, little progress in any overall plot,
no real conclusion, and a decent chance that I'll get bored with it
before it ends. It has one solid female protagonist, but I'm also
not expecting the show to treat her well, because shonen action shows
(and manga) almost never do.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Assult Lily Bouquet</em>: This is another 'fighting girls' show, and as
usual I have slightly conflicted feelings. Overall I'm enjoying it
and I find a number of the characters appealing; it's pretty well
made and it knows how to do action and how to make action interesting
(which aren't quite the same thing). It's also got a surprising streak
of subtlety in its storytelling (both visual and in dialog). On the
other hand, it is playing to a certain degree of fanservice and is
somewhat over the top even for its genre.<p>
As an instance of its genre, it's pretty good, and I happen to like
its genre when it's done well. However I don't think it has much
appeal if you're not a fan of the genre and it certainly has some
peculiar aspects if looked at objectively.</li>
</ul>
<p>On the edge:</p>
<ul><li><em>Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle</em>: This is lightweight and only
has one core joke, but so far it's managed to remain both funny
and charming (sometimes through unexpected twists). It's been an
entertaining way to pass some time so far, although I wouldn't be
surprised if I grew tired of it eventually.<p>
(It helps that each episode is divided into several segments, so
the jokes move along fairly briskly.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon</em>: This is reasonably fun, has a
cast of female protagonists in an action series, and I like some
of the characters. On the other hand it has all of the stately
pacing and lack of a real spark that I expected from a follow up
to <em>Inuyasha</em>, although this is an anime only thing so we have
some hope of a conclusion. I'm casually enjoying it so far but
I rather expect I won't make it all the way through (especially
if it's more than one or maybe two cours).<p>
</li>
<li><em>By the Grace of the Gods</em>: This is a pretty wholesome isekai and
also quite bland and ordinary, in characters, situation, animation,
and directing. That makes it basically a time filler. I'm apparently
willing to keep watching for now but I'm probably going to wind up
dropping it.<p>
(If it was the typical power fantasy type thing I would already have
dropped it, but it's just charming enough to hang on for now.)</li>
</ul>
<p>I don't currently have any urge to watch more than this (or to watch
less), so I probably won't have any mid-season pickups. If I did,
<em>Adachi and Shimamura</em> is the leading candidate for a look. There are
other fantasy and isekai shows and I like the genre in general, but I
think I have enough of them as it is this season.</p>
<p>PS: My ongoing impressions of each episode of the shows I'm watching
are linked in a Twitter thread from my <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2020FirstEpisodes">first episode reactions for
each show</a>. Twitter works better for these
quick reactions than blog entries do, at least for me.</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Fall 2020 anime season so far2020-10-30T14:21:24Z2020-10-30T14:21:13Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2020FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2020FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them). Although I was pretty dormant in anime watching for the past
two seasons (or longer), this time around I seem to have woken up with
a new enthusiasm for watching things.</p>
<ul><li>Jujutsu Kaisen episode #1: That was a pretty good action show first
episode, although I probably cheated by reading the first three chapters
of the manga beforehand (that's what's free online). It definitely
leaves me intrigued and wanting more, which is its job.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1314026883621814272">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear episode #1: If I didn't already know and like
the story here, I'm pretty sure I would have bounced off this
episode. It's rather flatly made and kind of incoherent, since it's
starting part way into the story with no background.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1314046967870353408">→</a><p>
(<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1316502322160308225">The second episode was much better</a>.)<p>
</li>
<li>Assault Lily BOUQUET episode #1: That was a decently done instance
of its genre, with more interesting and better staged fights than
usual. I even chuckled a few times, and it's not made the protagonist
into a complete potato; she has some interesting bits.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1314457633538150401">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle episode #1: That was definitely
lightweight but also reasonably entertaining and funny. I can see this
wearing out the joke soon enough, but for now I'm interested enough
to watch another episode.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1314760550396686338">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>By the Grace of the Gods episode #1: That was decidedly ordinary,
by which I mean 'bland'. I'll likely watch some more, mostly because
it's there and I like the genre in general, but I suspect I'll drop
it before the end of the season.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1314788319943852034">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Akudama Drive episode #1: That was fun and crazy and stylish, and
I like our protagonist, but it's not flawless. Most of the characters
are deliberate cliches, this episode tells us nothing about what
the show is about, and the whole thing is over the top in a slightly
tired way.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1315479558934728706">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Yashahime episode #1: As someone who has only a glancing exposure
to Inuyasha, most of this episode was pretty empty and relatively
opaque. It was also pretty bland and only okay as an episode of action,
with a pretty empty monster of the week core.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1316564444948946945">♯</a><p>
(Much like Kuma Bear, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1316573667124555776">the second episode was much better</a>.)</li>
</ul>
<p>I was considering looking at <em>Wandering Witch</em>, but the commentary I've
seen on Twitter suggests that it's not my kind of thing. <em>Talentless
Nana</em> has some good reviews, but fortunately I've been spoiled on its
shock twist because the shock twist shifts it into a genre I'm not
interested in. It's possible I'll try out some other shows as junk food,
but that's about it for things that look actually attractive.</p>
<p>(<em>Adachi and Shimamura</em> is somewhat tempting because I very much enjoyed
<em>Bloom into You</em>, but I'm not sure if it would recapture <em>Bloom</em>'s
magic.)</p>
<p>And a surprise update:</p>
<ul><li>Warlords of Sigrdrifa episode #1: That was really good in general
but what completely sold me are all of the good characters and the
character interactions. This might have had good fights but it was
about people, and that makes all the difference in the end.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1317713078377656320">→</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Fall 2020 anime season2020-10-18T06:26:29Z2020-10-17T21:51:11Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2020FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2020FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them). Well, that's the standard wording, except this time around
I only watched one premier.</p>
<ul><li>Deca-Dence episode #1: That was a hell of a ride, and fun as hell to
boot. Our heroine is so expressive, I was not expecting how the
climactic weapon worked, the whole setting is fun, and we have several
mysteries set up on top of all the great stuff. I can't wait for more.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1282062576696909825">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Nothing else that's airing this season sounds appealing to me, although
some of them are getting good reviews. The <a href="https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2020/07/06/summer-2020-anime-preview/">Sakugablog season preview</a> does
a good job of praising <em>Japan Sinks 2020</em>, but a show revolving around a
disaster is not something I want to watch these days for various reasons.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Summer 2020 anime season2020-07-17T22:04:46Z2020-07-17T22:04:38Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2020Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2020Brief">As before</a>, it's time for my current views on how
this season has shaken out so far, following up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2020FirstEpisodes">my first episode
reactions</a>. This is rather more delayed than
usual, but I want to write down my impressions so far before these shows
end (and how they end changes my impressions of them).</p>
<p>Surprisingly tense but sometimes flawed:</p>
<ul><li><em>Gleipnir</em>: This is one part battle show and one part psychological
horror and tension; the two parts go together surprisingly well and
make it the most interesting show I'm watching this season. The show
has a very good command of atmosphere, which helps, but then it also
has various flaws (many of them revolving around fanservice), which
hurt a bit.</li>
</ul>
<p>Entertaining:</p>
<ul><li><em>Princess Connect! Re:Dive</em>: This is a fun goofy show where the
male protagonist being a potato is actually a feature. Karyl is
the clear star in our ensemble cast, with Pecorine as the second
best character, and I don't think it's an accident that Karyl is
the one person who is getting a real character arc. With that
said, <em>Re:Dive</em> is not where you should look if you want realistic
characters and a deep story. It is nicely put together, though,
with good direction, art, animation, and so on.</li>
</ul>
<p>Sadly on the edge:</p>
<ul><li><em>My Next Life as a Villainess</em>: I like the concept and there are
some good aspects to it, but by now the basic premise is starting
to get a little threadbare and <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1262567836343586816">how the show treats Catarina is
increasingly grating</a>. If
something different doesn't start happening soon, I may get bored
with this and drop it.</li>
</ul>
<p>I didn't continue <em>Kakushigoto</em> and I have tacitly suspended or dropped
<em>Listeners</em> because I still haven't gotten the energy together to
watch more of it. Things I've heard about <em>Listeners</em> writing have not
been encouraging in that regard, and I'm not sure its overall apparent
genre of 'teenagers being teenagers in a SF setup' is one that I'm very
interested in any more.</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Spring 2020 anime season so far2020-06-06T18:32:56Z2020-06-06T18:32:48Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2020Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p>It's rather past time for <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2019Retrospective">my traditional look back</a> at what I watched in the Winter 2020 anime
season (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2019Abandoned">after abandoning the fall 2019 season</a>),
to follow up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2020Brief">my earlier impressions</a>. As seems
to be typical these days, this wound up being a season where I didn't
watch very many shows.</p>
<p>Great:</p>
<ul><li><em>Magia Record</em>: This sustained its pace and impact pretty much
all through, although it didn't resolve anything; this is just
the first half of a split cour show that resumes at some point
(predictions of exactly when seem premature at the moment). It
was all sorts of good in its own right without trying to be a
re-telling of the story of <em>Madoka Magica</em>.<p>
</li>
<li><em>BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense</em>:
This stayed enjoyable in a fun, goofy way all through the show,
although some of the hijinks may have gotten repetitive after a
while. The show may be unrealistic, but it's definitely fun (and
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1232900821370777600">sometimes the game developers deserved what Maple did to their game</a>). In
fact, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1243029143551442944">I'll repeat my Twitter summary of the show</a>:<p>
<blockquote><p>BOFURI as a whole was a fun romp with some nice depths of
characterization, a solid grasp of its overall comedic tone, and
good handling of action. The cunning plans were good ones and there
were surprises (and yes, Sally is the ruthless planner behind the
throne).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
I probably wouldn't mind watching more <em>BOFURI</em>, but I
don't feel there's any need for more of the show and it
might get a little repetitive. The further adventures
of Maple, Sally, and so on are probably best left to
our imagination (or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofuri:_I_Don%27t_Want_to_Get_Hurt,_so_I%27ll_Max_Out_My_Defense.">the other media you can get it in</a>).<p>
(Of course, reading the Wikipedia entry just told me that there's a
second season coming, so someday I'll get to swallow these words.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>In/Spectre</em>: I would say that this show had too much of people talking
to each other, but that's not quite it; <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/InSpectreTalkingFlaw">its fatal flaw was that there
was no conflict in those conversations</a>. I got
too bored.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken</em>: This stayed suspended and thus became
dropped. I never got around to watching the fourth episode, but perhaps
someday.</li>
</ul>
<p>The Winter season was a pretty good one all told. Although I regret that
<em>Eizouken</em> didn't click with me (and <em>In/Spectre</em> wasn't better), the
two shows I did watch were both quite enjoyable in their own ways.</p>
</div>
Looking back at the Winter 2020 anime season2020-06-06T18:21:52Z2020-06-06T18:21:47Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2019Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p>This turns out to be so extensively delayed that I only just noticed
that I'd never written it. So, it's very past time for <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2019Retrospective">my traditional
look back</a> at what I watched in the Summer 2019
anime season, to follow up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2019Brief">my earlier impressions</a>.
Since it's almost a year since I saw these, my impressions are a bit
faded.</p>
<ul><li><em>Symphogear XV</em>: This was basically everything I could have reasonably
asked for in a <em>Symphogear</em> show, especially one that basically
wraps up the entire project (it may not stay wrapped up, in the way
of these things, but it's definitely over for now). <em>Symphogear</em>
unfortunately faced <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1177071107414941696">some structural story-telling issues in this
season</a>,
but it still did good work, was quite enjoyable, and <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1178158888778162181">did
some things to make the Symphogears not the sole saviors</a>.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Granbelm</em>: This was generally well made and well put together, it
had a bunch of characters that I liked, and for much of its run it
was quite good. Unfortunately, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1177430880379428864">it took its story in a direction
I'm no longer a fan of</a>, and so
I can't really judge the show fairly as a result of that. I think
the show took its story where it wanted to go and probably succeeded
on its own terms (or mostly succeeded, there were some awkward bits),
and it was a good spectacle. But the end result left me a bit let
down.</li>
</ul>
<p>I eventually dropped everything else that I was watching in Summer
2019. <em>Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files</em> and <em>Isekai Cheat Magician</em> both
failed to sustain my interest, <em>Fire Force</em> was too typically shonen
(and there was the horrifying Kyoto Animation tragedy), <em>Astra Lost in
Space</em> lost me for various reasons, and I stopped being able to put up
with the flaws in <em>Cop Craft</em>, especially in its writing surrounding
Tilarna.</p>
</div>
Looking back at the Summer 2019 anime season2020-06-06T18:04:58Z2020-06-06T18:04:51Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2020FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2020FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them).</p>
<ul><li>Listeners episode #1: That was interesting, atmospheric, nicely
directed, and had a good climax with some interesting action. The story
felt pretty standard and I'm not sure where the show will go next;
this was all setup and background.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1246269933824212994">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Kakushigoto episode #1: This is beautiful, well made, and reasonably
sharply written, but as usual its comedy doesn't work for me (and I'm
not sure I'm a fan of the fundamental joke at its heart). It's nice
and good, but not for me.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1246516392758779904">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>My Next Life as a Villainess #1: That was fun and funny, and Catarina
makes a solid lead. It's nicely put together, too (beyond being my
kind of thing). I'm very much looking forward to what happens next
and what sort of absurd situations Catarina gets herself into.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1246553325925007363">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Princess Connect! Re:Dive episode #1: This was reasonably fun and
periodically funny. It's a bit hard to engage with these people as
people, instead of cutouts, but potato-kun is definitely improved by
mostly not speaking or doing anything.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1248079223329349632">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Gleipnir episode #1: That was awkward, uncomfortable, and rather
adolescent (male) sexual gaze, all of which was entirely intended. It
was also pretty good; intriguing and well put together (although not
flawless), with a fine control of atmosphere and quiet hanging tension.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1248822742411104257">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Actually posting this entry has been delayed because I kept thinking I
would watch a few more first episodes, but so far that's not happening.
I will probably see some of <em>Brand New Animal</em> sometime but not right
away, and I've decided that <em>Sing "Yesterday" for Me</em> is probably not
my kind of thing in general and especially with the world and local mood
as it is right now.</p>
<p>PS: As has become my habit, I've threaded my reactions to subsequent
episodes for each series that I'm (still) watching on these first
episode tweets.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Spring 2020 anime season2020-04-26T21:08:42Z2020-04-26T21:08:32Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/InSpectreTalkingFlawcks<div class="wikitext"><p>Over on Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1235073531311882241">I said</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>I've realized that In/Spectre's fatal flaw is that these characters
are explaining things to each other, rather than arguing back and
forth, yelling past each other, or trying to pull fast ones. There's
no conflict or drama in their conversations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>In/Spectre</em> is by the same writer as <em>Blast of Tempest</em>, a
show which I quite enjoyed (see <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2013Retrospective">my Winter 2013 retrospective</a>). Both shows are full of talking and
clever dialog (it's one of the writer's signature traits), but
I'm not enjoying <em>In/Spectre</em> half as much as I did <em>Tempest</em>;
in fact I'm increasingly finding <em>In/Spectre</em> kind of boring.</p>
<p>What I realized is that the two shows have different types of
conversations. In <em>Tempest</em>, there was a conflict at the heart
of most conversations; people were arguing with each other,
trying to persuade each other or do deals, or at least trying
to hoodwink and fool each other or hide information. <em>In/Spectre</em>
is great when it's doing that sort of thing, when people are
arguing or bickering or sniping at each other, but its most
recent run of episodes has mostly involved people explaining
things to each other or coming up with plans. There's no
conflict, just talk.</p>
<p>(The few conversations that were not like this still have the
spark to them, both in dialog and how they're staged.)</p>
</div>
The flaw in <em>In/Spectre</em>'s conversations2020-03-07T20:16:32Z2020-03-07T20:16:10Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2020Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2019Brief">As before</a>, it's time for my relatively early views
of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2020FirstEpisodes">my first
episode reactions</a>. This entry has been delayed
partly because I'm lazy but largely for the traditional reason, which is
that I haven't wanted to admit something about one of the shows airing
this season.</p>
<p>Great:</p>
<ul><li><em>Magia Record</em>: This has completely blindsided me with how good it is
and how much I've been enjoying it. The entire show is very well
presented, with excellent staging, scenes, direction, and so on, the
characters and their interactions are appealing, and the overall story
interesting, with a solid balance of mystery and slow revelations.<p>
(The show's staging is very deliberately unnatural, but that fits
its mood and setup, and it's doing very good things with that staging.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense</em>: This
is my kind of thing so I'm biased, but even then I think it's solidly
entertaining and above all simply fun. The show has an infectious joy
of people playing this game and having fun at it, and it communicates
that well along with the inherent comedy of Maple and her friends
quietly breaking the game by doing things that the developers didn't
expect.<p>
</li>
<li><em>In/Spectre</em>: I like this style of show (it's from the same author
as <em>Blast of Tempest</em>) but sometimes it has a little more talking
with a little less compelling things than I'm entirely happy with.
People making clever plans is all well and good, but sometimes I
want a bit more. However, the show routinely does excellent character
interactions, with the core cast interacting with each other in
nice and often funny ways. Seeing Kotoko being taken down a peg is
never not amusing, and everyone has believable chemistry with each
other.</li>
</ul>
<p>Tacitly suspended:</p>
<ul><li><em>Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken</em> (#3): This is an excellently made
show about animation, with some appealing characters and all of that.
But it hasn't really clicked with me and watching it often makes me
feel that I'm sort of being lectured at (with a lot of love, but
still). Some of the little things the show does with the characters
don't appeal, either.<p>
Many people really love this and I'll probably watch episode four
(which is apparently very good). But episode five is apparently
all about giant robots and the various issues around the genre,
which sounds exactly like what I'm not interested in at several
levels.</li>
</ul>
<p>That <em>Eizouken</em> hasn't clicked with me makes me feel both sad and
guilty, because this is theoretically just the sort of thing that
I should really enjoy and watch as an anime fan. It's even made by
one of the best directors working in anime, someone whose previous
shows I've generally quite enjoyed or at least appreciated. But my
gut is just not interested and these days I listen to it.</p>
<p>(My gut actively looks forward to <em>Magia Record</em>, enjoys <em>BOFURI</em> a lot,
and is okay with <em>In/Spectre</em>.)</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Winter 2020 anime season so far2020-02-23T21:20:21Z2020-02-23T21:20:14Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2020FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2019FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my tweeted
reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them).</p>
<ul><li>BOFURI #1: I rather liked this, but I was biased towards it because
I've enjoyed what of the manga I've seen. I'm scoring it solidly
entertaining in a deliberately silly way; Maple is gleefully (but
unknowingly) breaking the world in her own fun way.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1215133858150088705">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Eizouken episode #1: That was a bunch of fun and a paean to animation,
and I like these kids. I definitely hope that this show is going to
go interesting places; I'll find out next episode.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1216595927076626432">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>In/Spectre episode #1: This is my kind of stuff in general so I'm
biased, but this was sharp, interesting, nicely done, and with all
sorts of lovely touches in dialog and action. And I like these two
(I can't call them 'kids', all things considered). They bicker well.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1216934364392697856">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Magia Record episode #1: That was a decidedly interesting start,
often told in an interesting way that I liked. Iroha is an intriguing
person with undercurrents, the whole show looks good (and had some
decent action), and I want to watch more.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1218797223800115200">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>This pretty much covers anything that I feel likely to watch. I've
heard good things about the story of <em>Infinite Dendrogram</em>, but from
all reports the implementation in animated form is not particularly
impressive. There's also <em>Heya Camp</em>, but two large parts of what I
loved about <em>Laid-Back Camp</em> were Rin and the actual camping and I
understand that neither of them are in these shorts, which doesn't make
me very enthused.</p>
<p>(There's also sort of <em>Dorohedoro</em>, but it's apparently so mired in what
is sometimes called the 'Netflix jail' that it wasn't even covered in
the ANN review of this season's first episodes.)</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Winter 2020 anime season2020-02-23T20:57:54Z2020-01-23T01:53:09Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2019Abandonedcks<div class="wikitext"><p>It's time (and past time) to officially note this. In the end,
after <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2019FirstEpisodes">my first episode reactions</a>, I wound
up effectively entirely abandoning the Fall season, eventually
watching no shows. I explicitly dropped everything except <em>Fairy
Gone</em>, and while I didn't officially drop it I haven't watched
more than the first two episodes. I may finish it (or watch more)
at some point, because <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1196641889220538369">I was reasonably enthused after episode 14</a>, but
somehow that never translated to spending 24 minutes to watch
episode 15.</p>
<p>This marks a low point in my anime watching; I haven't been this
inactive for a very long time. I think that Winter 2020 will be better
(there are certainly more promising shows in it), but I'll have to
see. I don't think I'm burned out, but I'm definitely distracted by
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1204640467448668160">various</a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1203796029847592966">things</a>.</p>
</div>
<div> (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2019Abandoned?showcomments#comments">2 comments</a>.) </div>I ended up abandoning the Fall 2019 anime season2020-01-03T20:48:26Z2020-01-03T20:48:20Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2019FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2019FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them). There aren't many this time around, and I haven't been
watching them very fast.</p>
<ul><li>Make My Abilities Average episode 1: This was one part ordinary
overpowered isekai and one part interesting in a meta way because of
where it starts the story. It has potential as popcorn entertainment
for me, so I'll watch it until I get bored.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1181429202878423040">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Assassin's Pride episode 1: This was rather melodramatic and over the
top, but at least it was conscious of it. Probably the tone fits the
material. But this was setup and we don't know much about what the
rest of the show will be like.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1184669848703586304">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Fairy Gone episode 13: I question re-starting this with an episode
full of relatively slow flashbacks, but at least we have a
bit more context now. And Suna turns out to have been about as
superstition-ridden as you'd expect in its situation (ie, a lot).
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1188662847934550016">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>At this point it doesn't seem likely that I'm going to watch any more
series this fall (as you can tell from how delayed this entry is; some
shows are airing their fourth episode). There are a number of quite good
series (as reported by people), but they're all in settings or genres
that almost never work for me, so I've not felt the energy to check them
out just in case lightning strikes this time around.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Fall 2019 anime season2019-10-29T01:34:38Z2019-10-29T01:34:33Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2019Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2019Brief">As before</a> it's time for my relatively early
views of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2019FirstEpisodes">my first episode reactions</a>. At this
point I've seen three episodes of everything I'm watching, so it
feels like things are starting to stabilize (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1154978198536564737">although maybe not</a>).</p>
<p>A great <em>Symphogear</em> experience:</p>
<ul><li><em>Symphogear XV</em>: This season builds on everything that's come before
(and is in many ways the second half of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Retrospective"><em>AXZ</em></a>), so it's not a good place to start, but
after three episodes it's a pretty great season of <em>Symphogear</em>.
Everyone is being themselves and we're getting sustained epic things,
melodramatic twists, ancient secrets, and so on.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>Granbelm</em>: I'm a minority that finds the giant robot fights to be <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1152422459347492864">not
so impressive</a>, but
fortunately the characters and their interactions more than make up for
that. This is really a character piece hiding inside what is nominally
an action show, and it's pretty good at that.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Astra Lost in Space</em>: The show is more or less written for kids and
it shows, but I've wound up sucked into its charms despite that. I like
watching it, even though bits of writing and other twists irritate me
from time to time.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files</em>: So far, this is basically a series
of fun romps that use the Fate/* world as a background setting.
People snark at each other, interesting things happen, a problem gets
solved, and it all wraps up neatly by the end of the episode. That
makes it an enjoyable watch for me, one that I'm willing to continue
for as long as the charm and novelty holds up.<p>
(I refuse to use the show's gigantic full official name.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Cannot evaluation fairly:</p>
<ul><li><em>Fire Force</em>: This had a very impressive first two episodes and then
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Animation_arson_attack">the horrifying Kyoto Animation tragedy happened</a>. While
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1154976754899009536">I can still watch the show</a>, I don't
know if I really want to and the KyoAnime tragedy has unquestionably
changed my reaction to it. I was much less taken with the third episode
and its flaws and irritations stood out much more. Some of those flaws
and irritations were present even in the first two episodes; did they
get worse in the third episode, or have I become more sensitive because
I'm now less enthused about something involving fire? I don't know.<p>
I will probably keep watching <em>Fire Force</em>, but it's now very much
on the edge in a way that it wasn't before and probably wouldn't have
been without the KyoAnime tragedy.</li>
</ul>
<p>Okay:</p>
<ul><li><em>Cop Craft</em>: I really liked the first episode, although even then its
limited animation was noticeable, but I'm afraid that the
wheels have started coming off by <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1154245071560151040">the third episode</a>. There is
the core of a compelling story and show in here, but it is not being
realized so far; things are too rushed and abbreviated, and the great
characters are not being given enough of a chance to interact with
each other naturally. That it cannot really animate what should be
exciting fight scenes is just the unsatisfying icing on the cake.<p>
However, there is still enough good stuff here that I'm willing
to keep watching, partly in the hopes that everything will improve
again. There are flashes of excellence in the show, even in the
third episode.</li>
</ul>
<p>Popcorn:</p>
<ul><li><em>Isekai Cheat Magician</em>: I have no excuses; this is a terribly bland
show that somehow makes what should be an exciting, enthusiastic
situation into a boring one. There have been far better shows with
the same fundamental premise. But so far apparently I want to watch
a popcorn isekai show with vastly overpowered protagonists.<p>
I expect to drop this sooner or later.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>To the abandoned Sacred Beasts</em>: The second episode opened with a
charming orphanage, and nothing good ever happens to those in a show
like this so I decided that I didn't want to watch any more.</li>
</ul>
<p>I've also dropped last season's <em>Demon Slayer</em>, which basically wore
out its charm. Zenitsu very strongly pushed me to drop it, but even
without his presence I probably would have given up. I'm just not very
interested in watching a long parade of shonen fights any more, and
that was what <em>Demon Slayer</em> has transitioned into.</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Summer 2019 anime season so far2019-07-27T21:30:45Z2019-07-27T19:53:00Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2019FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2019FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them).</p>
<ul><li>To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts episode 1: That was a whole lot of setup
and backstory, but it was okay overall and has some flashes of
interest. We're not getting anything stunning but it might be competent
and watchable, which is sadly rare.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1145902898410393605">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Astra Lost in Space episode #1: That wasn't bad for what it was, and
it had a decent amount of subtlety (not huge amounts, but). But it had
some irritating things, and it doesn't have enough characterization
to entirely cover for them.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1147009144408481792">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Fire Force episode 1: Wow. What a feat of visuals and direction, and
the story itself wasn't bad either. I'm pretty stunned with just how
good this was & how much I enjoyed it. It gets points for being subtle,
and many points for making me really want to see more.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1147354964286681089">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Granbelm episode 1: That was certainly trying, but it doesn't feel
like any of what it could manage lived up to what it aimed for. The
result was a bit underwhelming, although still okay. It really needs
better writing, though. Please.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1147370063332335616">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Symphogear XV episode 1: Symphogear is back in all its glory and it
is very Symphogear, in a good way. I can't have asked for more from
this first episode (okay, better songs, I know that I'm a heathen
here). We even got some good stuff with Miku. (They are so married.)
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1147628630304075776">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Cop Craft episode #1: Pretty much everything here was spot on
for me, especially the writing, and the show's doing all sorts of things
I like (including being subtle and having good characters). And then
that final scene.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1148416390254288902">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files episode 1: This was an okay
re-introduction to how Waver got here, but it probably doesn't say
anything about what the show is actually going to be like. I have
enough lingering affection to give it another episode so I can find out.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1150134236583792640">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Isekai Cheat Magician episode 1: This is a trifling confection of
nothing much, partly because it was all setup; we'll get to interesting
things next episode. But I'm okay with another run at a popcorn show
like this while my interest lasts.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1150165369568579589">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Dr Stone episode 1: That was essentially okay and it certainly has a
mood, but the mood is one that involves a lot of shouting and dumbass
energy, which is not really my thing in shows. And I'm sure there's
going to be fighting sooner or later.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1152066647772897282">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>There's a number of other shows that I've been on the edge of trying
out, but this season is already busy enough. If my gut thinks that a
show's premise, setup, and early reviews are too marginal, I should
probably listen to it.</p>
<p>(<em>O Maidens in Your Savage Season</em> is getting very good reviews, but it's
almost certainly not a show that's going to work for me. <em>Vinland Saga</em>,
while getting quite good reviews, but I think it falls into the same
category as <em>Golden Kamuy</em>, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SadLetdowns2018">which didn't work for me</a>.
I may try the manga instead.)</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Summer 2019 anime season2019-07-19T04:18:54Z2019-07-19T04:18:49Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2019Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p>It's time for <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2019Retrospective">my traditional look back</a> at
what I watched this past Spring season, to follow up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2019Brief">my earlier
impressions</a>. This was a decidedly small season for me,
since I only finished two shows.</p>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>Fairy Gone</em>: This cour of the show wasn't flawless but it was interesting
and generally well done, and it's certainly enough to get me to watch
the next cour (which will air in the Fall season, starting in October).
Marlya basically carried the show for me, and in general it was at
its best when she and her compatriots in Dorothea were on the screen
and doing things. As always, I enjoyed it partly because it was doing
something different from the run of the mill shows that we usually get.</li>
</ul>
<p>Decent except for Zenitsu:</p>
<ul><li><em>Demon Slayer</em>: The show is generally pretty good as a shonen action
show (although it sometimes stumbles) and I continue to like Nezuko
and her interactions with Tanjiro. Unfortunately it is less successful
elsewhere, such as in its non-fight writing, and in particular Zenitsu
is extremely terrible; he embodies a great deal of shonen character
cliches that I hate and find extremely grating. It also looks like
it's about to settle down into basically a series of 'monster of the
time interval' fights, now that the initial setup has been done.
Due to both of these factors (but primarily Zenitsu), I expect to drop
the show soon.<p>
(I read spoilers for Zenitsu's future developments and he does not
improve the things that irritate me. If anything, he gets worse.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped (unless I get very bored):</p>
<ul><li><em>Wise Man's Grandchild</em> (#9): It slowed down so that it was basically
leaning on reaction faces to keep my interest, and that wasn't enough.
I skimmed episode 10 very briefly, and apparently a lot of it was
trying to give the main villain a vaguely sympathetic background and,
well, I'll pass; <em>Wise Man's Grandchild</em> does not have writing that is
anywhere near good enough to succeed at that. Probably further episodes
pick up with some fighting, which would be popcorn entertainment if
I decided I wanted that and can't get it from new shows in the Summer
season.</li>
</ul>
<p>I did not continue <em>Sarazanmai</em>. Various reactions from people with
opinions that generally agree with mine make me feel that I made the
right decision, however much I feel like I should watch an Ikuhara show.</p>
<p>Although this was a slow season, I feel satisfied with what I watched.
I enjoyed <em>Fairy Gone</em> and <em>Demon Slayer</em> was entertaining and well done
for what it was.</p>
</div>
Looking back on the Spring 2019 anime season2019-07-01T20:34:15Z2019-07-01T20:34:11Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2019Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2019Brief">As before</a> it's well past time for my views on
how this season has shaken out so far, following up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2019FirstEpisodes">my first
episode reactions</a>. A good part of why I'm
only writing this basically half way through the season is that there
has been something that I didn't really want to admit about my watching
this season, and I kept hoping that I would get up the energy to change
it before I wrote this entry.</p>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>Fairy Gone</em>: This is the most interesting show I'm watching this
season, although perhaps not the best made one. Part of why I like
it quite a lot is that it's simply different from the usual run of
the mill stuff we get every season, and since it's decently put
together it automatically gets positive points from me. It also
gets positive points for a competent female protagonist.<p>
(The character names are amusingly terrible, but at least they're
trying.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Perfectly decent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Demon Slayer</em>: This is a quite well made and somewhat atypical
shonen action vehicle, with pretty much all of the things that you would
expect from the genre and only a few surprises. We had our training
episodes, we had our 'prove yourself in this killer test' episodes,
and so on, although we recently had what could be a major deviation
from schedule (but probably isn't, because this is an adaptation of an
ongoing Shonen Jump manga). I find it nice to watch but not compelling,
and Nezuko remains tragically underused.</li>
</ul>
<p>Popcorn entertainment:</p>
<ul><li><em>Wise Man's Grandchild</em>: This is mindless and not particularly great
entertainment. I am enjoying the hijinks so far because I am easily
amused and right now, I'm willing to spend some time watching this
(often over actual popcorn). There is no real tension in the show;
the only real question and most of the amusement is how deep a hole
Shin is going to dig for himself this time around, and what crazy
things are going to ensue. I do appreciate that all of the other
significant characters are getting to power up too; this is not
just the 'Shin is awesome and everyone else sits around' show.</li>
</ul>
<p>On hold:</p>
<ul><li><em>Sarazanmai</em> (#2): I have a somewhat rocky relationship with Ikuhara
shows; I stalled out on <em>Penguindrum</em> and ended up with <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2015Retrospective">divided
opinions on <em>Yurikuma Arashi</em></a> where it didn't
really connect with me. Watching <em>Sarazanmai</em> feels like something I
should do and portions of it are perfectly entertaining, but after two
episodes I haven't really connected with it and it has my <em>Penguindrum</em>
problem (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2011Retrospective">cf</a>) where at least some of the
people we are supposed to follow and like are actually currently kind
of terrible people, which is hard for me to get behind. Perhaps I will
like it more if I watch more, but so far I am many episodes behind and
that keeps not changing.</li>
</ul>
<p>In my current slow and relaxed level of anime watching, I'm thinking
of this as a decently good season. I have one show that is outright
interesting and two that are okay at different levels, and in theory
there is some good stuff that I'm just not watching (right now).</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Spring 2019 anime season so far2019-05-30T04:48:45Z2019-05-30T04:48:39Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2019Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p>It's time (and well past time) for <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2018Retrospective">my traditional look back</a> at what I watched this past Winter season, to
follow up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2019Brief">my earlier impressions</a>. I've been
lazy about doing this entry, partly because there is not a lot to talk
about.</p>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>Kemurikusa</em>: In the end, Tatsuki and his crew came through with a
worthy follow on to <em>Kemono Friends</em>. The show started slow and had
some early speed bumps, but it picked up as it went along and even
ended up giving us a decent bunch of explanations for things and fully
sold the love story that orbited through the show. This isn't flawless
but it was unquestionably good.</li>
</ul>
<p>Decently okay:</p>
<ul><li><em>The Magnificent Kotobuki</em>: The show remained perfectly entertaining
on an episode by episode basis and the last two episodes were really
something; they were compulsive and genuinely tense in a way that I
hadn't expected at all. But the show's problems also remained, which
is that it didn't really have a compelling long-term thread running
through, although it did develop a plot for the climax. We did get a
bunch of nice character moments, though, and maybe even a few things
that could be called character development.</li>
</ul>
<p>In shows that didn't start this season, I enjoyed <em>That Time I Got
Reincarnated as a Slime</em> all the way through; it retained all of its
good virtues as fine popcorn entertainment. However, it wound up ending
with quite weird pacing, where it rushed through portions of the final
storyline (dropping or significantly altering a number of plot elements
in the process), then abruptly slowed down to a very leisurely pace and
outright did a final recap episode. A show that both drops elements
of the original story to save time and then does a recap episode
is a rather odd thing, and I can't avoid some obvious speculations
(although these speculations are often wrong; 'production problems' is
an all-purpose idea that the fandom has and is usually not right).</p>
</div>
Looking back on the Winter 2019 anime season2019-05-22T21:43:54Z2019-05-22T21:43:43Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2019FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2019FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them).</p>
<ul><li>Fairy Gone episode 1: That was a solid introduction and first episode.
It had a certain amount of exposition, but it didn't explain everything,
it had a bunch of action and progression, and it did some nice
work. I'll watch the next episode.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1115106286448840706">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Apparently I was not in the mood for One-Punch Man S2's first
episode's story this night. I will probably take another run at it
another time, since I skimmed the rest of the episode to see where it
was going.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1115832262740910080">♯</a><p>
Spoiler: I did not try to watch the episode again, partly because
in reading <a href="https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/preview-guide/2019/spring/one-punch-man-season-2/.145529">the ANN preview reports for it</a>
I discovered that there had been major staff changes (and a decided
drop in the amount of interesting animation, which matches my vague
feelings from what I did see of the episode).<p>
</li>
<li>Wise Man's Grandchild episode 1: This was perfectly okay, but it
is no Slime or Knight's & Magic and this episode was all setup. I'll
watch another episode to see if it gets more interesting once it's
actually doing something.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1116179354982199297">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Demon Slayer episode 1: That was a strong, well done start that makes me
want to watch more even though I can pretty much predict it's going to
get mired down in the usual slow-paced way sooner or later. For now,
it's exciting and appealing, and that's enough.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1119700996823953408">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Sarazanmai episode 1: That simultaneously made perfect sense and
very little sense, which is probably more than I expected. I have no
other coherent short term reactions except that I'm definitely going
to watch the next episode.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1119822595040468993">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>[...] In theory I could watch Fruits Basket, but in practice I saw the
first version years ago and I don't remember loving it so much that I
want to basically watch it again (although it was a decently nice show).
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1117628214384443393">♯</a></li>
</ul>
<p>By this point it seems unlikely that I'll watch any other first episodes.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_&_Tuesday"><em>Carole & Tuesday</em></a>
has been getting some good reports, but it doesn't seem like my kind
of show and my results with Shinichirō Watanabe's past shows have been
decidedly mixed, with me bouncing off <em>Kids on the Slope</em> and <em>Terror
in Resonance</em>.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Spring 2019 anime season2019-04-27T01:40:37Z2019-04-27T01:40:28Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2018Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p>It's well past time for my <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Retrospective">traditional look back</a> at what I watched in this past Fall season,
to follow up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2018Brief">my early impressions</a> and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2018Midway">my midway
views</a>. This past fall season was unusual because I
passed on <em>Bloom Into You</em> during the season and then became <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Retrospective">very
taken with it</a> when I watched it all just after
the end of the year. Since I watched it so close to the season (and
before I started the Winter 2019 season), I'm declaring it a Fall 2018
show for the purpose of this retrospective (and my eventual 'best N in
2018' entry).</p>
<p>(This entry has been delayed mostly because of laziness.)</p>
<p>Somewhere between excellent and amazing:</p>
<ul><li><em>SSSS.Gridman</em>: The show started out being decently good and only got
better from there, climaxing as an excellent if not amazing
show. <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SSSSGridmanEndingTweets">I had things to say in the aftermath of the last episode</a>. Although <em>Gridman</em> starts out looking like
a giant robot/kaiju show, it almost immediately becomes really an
increasingly good character drama (interspersed with kaiju fights,
which become necessary for the character drama). And as a character
drama, it's excellent and affecting all through. The presentation
is top-notch, with great directing and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SSSSGridmanSoundscape">very interesting sound
design</a>.<p>
<em>SSSS.Gridman</em> is not flawless, but despite its flaws it's quite a
lot my thing.</li>
</ul>
<p>Excellent but effectively unfinished:</p>
<ul><li><em>Bloom Into You</em>: This is a great show, beautiful, dramatic, full of
small touches, and many other things that drew me into it. It's that
rare thing, a high school romance that wholeheartedly works for me;
it's almost become my new gold standard for that (taking over from
<em>Toradora</em>). It only has one unfortunate flaw, which is that the
story is in no way finished and the show has to just stop abruptly.
<em>Bloom</em> is adopting an ongoing manga and apparently there is just no
good pause point so far; the show picks an okay one, one that shows
off character growth and so on, but it is forced to leave all of its
big plot threads just dangling. I finished the show very much wanting
a a second season (or perhaps to read the manga).<p>
That <em>Bloom Into You</em> has to stop so abruptly means that it really
isn't a standalone work in the way that <em>SSSS.Gridman</em> is. In my opinion
<em>Bloom</em> is better and less flawed than <em>Gridman</em>, but <em>Gridman</em> tells
a whole story and <em>Bloom</em> does not, and it turns out that I care about
that too.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good fun entertainment:</p>
<ul><li><em>That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime</em>: Above all, <em>Slime</em> is a
cheerful, good-hearted show that is out to make us smile. If you want
conflict and challenged characters and so on, this is not for you;
it's all about Rimuru solving a succession of problems and running
over a succession of obstacles as they build a home and make friends
with people and various great character interactions go on. The show
fundamentally likes pretty much everyone, and almost every enemy
gets a chance at redemption. In an ocean of grim shows where terrible
things happen to people and certain sorts of characters are walking
cliches that are used only as the butt of jokes, <em>Slime</em> is a breath
of fresh air.<p>
<em>Slime</em> is not flawless, and in a certain way it's boring. But I
always enjoyed it and it reliably brought a smile to my face when
I watched a new episode.</li>
</ul>
<p>Not as good as the first season:</p>
<ul><li><em>Thunderbolt Fantasy S2</em>: This was a good wuxia puppet show with
various sorts of interesting things going on (<a href="https://twitter.com/vestenet/status/1078476775947161601">and one stinger in the
ending</a>),
but I'm not entirely taken with some of the
things that Urobuchi wrote into the story (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1077320268081778689">cf</a>) and it can't
(and doesn't) measure up to the first season. The original <em>Thunderbolt
Fantasy</em> was amazing; this is merely a good adventure show with fun
dialog and some amusing things going on.<p>
Looking back at the story structure in retrospect, I can't say that
I'm entirely surprised by this; it would be very hard to duplicate
the things that made the first season so special. We're unlikely to
get that sort of revelations and twists and character developments
again, because we've already had them once.</li>
</ul>
<p>I feel satisfied with this season as a whole. Two shows were basically
amazing (counting <em>Bloom</em> and ignoring the non-ending), one was solidly
pleasant, and one was at least reasonably entertaining.</p>
</div>
Looking back on the Fall 2018 anime season2019-03-19T13:22:44Z2019-03-09T22:49:39Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2019Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2018Brief">As before</a> it's time (and well past time) for my
views of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2019FirstEpisodes">my
first episode reactions</a>. The short version
is that it is not a good season for me so far (for <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1097344532616753153">various reasons</a>) and as a
result of that I am a week or two behind on the two shows from this
season that I'm still watching.</p>
<p>Decently okay:</p>
<ul><li><em>The Magnificent Kotobuki</em>: This is a perfectly entertaining show on
an episode by episode basis; every episode is generally funny and well
crafted, with various subtle touches. However I have realized that one
of my problems with the show overall is that there is nothing there to
pull me from one episode to the next other than the pure entertainment
value. After the four episodes I've watched so far, there is no real
ongoing plot or continuing developments, just episodic shenanigans.<p>
If I want to feel entertained, watching <em>Kotobuki</em> is a decent option.
But it turns out that I have a lot of ways of entertaining myself and
<em>Kotobuki</em> has often not been the most compelling one.</li>
</ul>
<p>Uncertain:</p>
<ul><li><em>Kemurikusa</em>: On the one hand, there is some good stuff here (it's quite
atmospheric, for example). On the other hand, after four
episodes I continue to find the show to be slow moving
overall and Wakaba remains irritating as the genki idiot (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1088305890762067968">cf</a>), and some
apparent subplots involving him annoy me by their very existence.</li>
</ul>
<p>I have dropped everything else from <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2019FirstEpisodes">my first episode reactions</a>
for an assortment of reasons, including <em>Boogiepop and Others</em> (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1089661090777235457">cf</a>), which
makes me a bit sad. I have decided not to write those reasons up because
they'll just consist of me being grumpy.</p>
<p>(I have been watching people watch <em>Endro!</em> on Twitter and it seems
like a pretty entertaining show on the whole, even if it didn't work
for me.)</p>
<p>I continue to fully enjoy <em>That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime</em> as
fine popcorn entertainment. The goings-on of Rimuru and friends never
fail to bring a smile to my face and it's the only show I'm current on
this season.</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Winter 2019 anime season so far2019-03-10T19:08:44Z2019-02-18T22:51:06Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/links/ColorSpacescks<div class="wikitext"><p>Bartosz Ciechanowski's <a href="https://ciechanow.ski/color-spaces/">Color Spaces</a> (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19177901">via</a>) is a nice exploration
of the issues involved with computer RGB colour spaces. I found it
especially interesting and clear because it has some interactive
illustrations of various concepts involved.</p>
<p>(In theory I knew all of this, but in practice it's nice to have a
clear refresher every so often.)</p>
</div>
Link: Color Spaces2019-02-18T21:52:01Z2019-02-18T21:51:56Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2019FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2018FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them).</p>
<ul><li>Boogiepop and Others episode 1: That was okay, I guess; it certainly
wasn't actively bad, but I don't feel terribly inspired by what I
saw. Stuff happened. Some things made sense; other things might be
deliberately obtuse. There's a lot of mystery and little reason to care.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081780522781757441">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Kemurikusa episode 1: That was a pretty decent start with a bunch of
solid stuff, but I would be much less worried about where it's going
if it had not added a boy. It's also pretty much all setup and lacks
the propulsive push forward that really compelling shows have here.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1083214839550480384">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Girly Air Force episode 1: That was generally decently fun and I
especially liked the research boss; he's an enjoyable character. It's
no Sky Girls, but I like the genre in general and I'm willing to watch
more to see what happens next.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1083520315106492421">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Dororo episode 1: That was perfectly well done and it definitely
believed in 'show don't tell', although maybe it went a bit overboard on
it; I would have been a bit lost if I hadn't known the premise. But it
may not be distinct enough to keep me; it feels pretty generic action.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1083584226526724096">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka episode 1: This could have been
interesting, but it has middle of the road aesthetics and mostly came
off as kind of ridiculous and over the top (not in a good way). There
were some decent bits but on the whole it felt entirely too lazily
calculated.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1083928136646123520">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Endro! episode 1: That was reasonably decent and reasonably funny,
as people have said, but unsurprisingly it wasn't funny enough to keep
me watching the next episode. (Anime comedy almost never works for me,
so I expected this result.)
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1084584094728667138">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>The Magnificent Kotobuki episode 1: Now that's how you do a first
episode that nails me to my seat. Not just fun and thrilling along
with subtle storytelling that showed instead of told, but also decent
introductions to a bunch of fun characters.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1084617131961040897">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I won't be looking at <em>Kemono Friends 2</em>, not after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemono_Friends#Controversyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemono_Friends#Controversy">what Kadokawa did</a>
to the scrappy little team that <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/KemonoFriendsMagic">completely unexpectedly turned
dross into gold</a>. Anyway, <a href="https://twitter.com/erasuterism/status/1084942403725938690">early reports</a> are <a href="https://twitter.com/SANchipinchi/status/1084973549155172352">not
positive</a>,
which doesn't surprise me at all under the circumstances (I'm sort of
surprised that Kadokawa found anyone who was willing to work on <em>KF2</em> for
them). The creative team behind <em>Kemono Friends</em> (the original and only
real version) is doing <em>Kemurikusa</em> this season, so watch that instead.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Winter 2019 anime season2019-01-15T01:37:18Z2019-01-15T01:37:09Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/OverlordNoMorecks<div class="wikitext"><p>I skipped <em>Overlord</em> <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2015Brief">when it first aired</a>, but
then <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Retrospective">back in the summer season</a> I started
watching it for no particularly strong reason; as I said at the time,
it's ridiculous and overpowered in a way that amuses me. At that point
I'd watched up through episode 7 and stopped. At the end of the year,
in the between-season doldrums, I finished off the rest of <em>Overlord</em>'s
first season (after being annoyed because it had moved from Crunchyroll
to Funimation in their great split, and Funimation is <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1078879183445606400">a pit of annoyance</a>).</p>
<p>While I pretty much enjoyed the first season of <em>Overlord</em> as a whole in
much the same way as I enjoyed the first seven episodes, I will not be
watching any more of it. The short version of why not is that <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1079524297578811392">starting
with episode 8</a>,
Momonga is revealed to be an extremely unpleasant person; he is basically
a cruel and casually murderous sociopath. Although none of the incidents
involved are significant bits of the story (and they don't happen
very often), all of them happen without the story so much as raising
an eyebrow. For me, this irreversibly taints the show as a whole,
because it is actually following a villain and getting me to cheer for
him in his goofy, overpowered antics and so on.</p>
<p>It's to <em>Overlord</em>'s credit in a way that it's possible to watch the
rest of the show, enjoy the spectacle, and to root for Momonga in it.
It's very easy to forget that a few episodes ago, Momonga had some
perfectly decent people murdered because they were making his life
inconvenient, and I'm relatively confident that in the future, the
incidents of murdering and cruel killings and so on will be few and far
between. In a way that's why I don't want to watch any more of <em>Overlord</em>;
I don't want the feeling of the show persuading me to cheer on someone
I know is actually a nasty person.</p>
<p>(And the revelation of Momonga's nature has <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1079588379728199680">destroyed my interest
in him as a character</a>.)</p>
</div>
I liked <em>Overlord</em>'s first season but I'm not watching any more2019-01-13T23:48:32Z2019-01-13T23:48:24Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/BloomIntoYouTweetscks<div class="wikitext"><p>Right at the start of 2019, I decided to try out <em>Bloom Into You</em>
(which <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2018Brief">I had initially passed on</a>) and wound up quite
enjoying it. In the spirit of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BloggingOnTwitter">not doing all of my blogging on Twitter</a>, I'm copying my tweets about <em>Bloom</em> to here.</p>
<p>Overall, <em>Bloom Into You</em> is the best high school romance show I've seen
since <em>Toradora</em>. Romance shows almost never work for me (which is one
reason I didn't even try out <em>Bloom</em> at the start of the Fall season),
but <em>Bloom</em> completely pulled me in. The one caveat I have is that the
show is not a complete story, because it's based on an ongoing manga (and
one that doesn't have a good stopping point where the story conveniently
pivots from one thing to another).</p>
<blockquote><p>Bloom Into You episode 1: That was solidly fun and I quite like Yuu's
voice. I don't know if the show will be my thing over the long term,
but it's more than earned a second episode and I'm quite looking
forward to it.</p>
<p>(I should have tried this out last season, when it aired.)
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1080351951467044866">♯</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yuu's internal voice and out loud dialog were a treasure all through
<em>Bloom</em>. Yuu's not a conventional protagonist so she has an edge and a
different angle to her thoughts and words, and the actual spoken voice
her seiyuu used is a great fit for Yuu the character. The show fit in
Yuu's internal thoughts and narration quite well and they're an important
part of the story as a whole.</p>
<blockquote><p>Bloom Into You episode 2: This continues to be a good show, partly
on the strength of Yuu's voice but the other people are good too.
My experience is changed and probably improved by knowing a certain
amount of spoilers, which illuminate various little moments and
exchanges.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1080598031811129344">♯</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are a number of things about various characters which the show
drops hints about before it actually tells you. Because I had seen other
people watching it on Twitter, I had already heard about a number of
those things, so I could pick up, understand, and enjoy the hints in
early episodes.</p>
<blockquote><p>Bloom Into You episode 3: And Nanami has her first moment of genuine
emotional honesty (more or less), all because Yuu is actually pretty
smart and aware of things. This show is actually selling all of this,
which I definitely appreciate; too many romance shows work only by
fiat.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1080608567630147584">→</a></p>
<p>One of my little regrets about watching Bloom Into You (even without
spoilers) is that I'm pretty sure that Yuu is eventually going to end
up with feelings of love, and while I want her to be happy (& she's
sad now), I do enjoy the puzzled, aromantic observer Yuu we have so
far.</p>
<p>I would be totally down for a version of Bloom Into You where Yuu
simply enjoys Nanami's company more and more without romance coming
into it on Yuu's side, and perhaps with Nanami moving to appreciate
the companionship as well without feeling she has to be 'in love'.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of my peculiarities in my spate of tweeting is that I deliberately
started out using Nanami Touko's last name to refer to her and later
switched to her first name. I did this because in early episodes I
didn't feel the show was putting us close enough to her to really think
of her on a first name basis. Koito Yuu was always Yuu because the show
puts us close to her (in fact in her head) from the very start.</p>
<blockquote><p>Bloom Into You episode 4: I can't help but see Maki as a male more
or less mirror image of Yuu, less self-conscious about how he's
'supposed' to be experiencing love. Also, things are moving and little
moments of revelation are adding up (to things I already know from
spoilers).
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1080632635259568128">♯</a></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Bloom Into You episode 5: Flustered Namami and more or less innocently
whatever you want to call it Yuu is a powerful combo. Nanami has
seemed so in control for so long that this is an interestingly
different view. (Poor Nanami.)
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1080669916510998528">→</a></p>
<p>Bloom Into You episode 6: This is not a healthy relationship on either
side, but then that is sometimes the messy nature of life. Perhaps in
time it can grow into something more than two people sort of using
each other, even if they're currently sort of happy with what they
have.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1080682351674474496">→</a></p>
<p>Bloom Into You is very good at being very good, and it is beautiful.
These people, all of them can say so much without really saying much,
and the direction and presentation of the anime is quietly so very
good.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Bloom Into You</em> has a mastery of character gesture, tone of voice,
expression, how and when characters look at each other, and so on that
communicates a whole host of things that lesser shows would have to
handle in dialog or in far more obvious character interactions.</p>
<blockquote><p>Bloom Into You episode 7 is beautiful (and sort of sad, on multiple
levels), although I suspect I may be reading things into it about
silent societal pressures and prejudices that aren't entirely
intended. Such a powerful set of moments, though. Poor Sayaka.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1080956572774346753">→</a></p>
<p>Given what Bloom Into You is about and what it's already shown us, the
comfortable definite moment with the two adults is not unexpected, but
it was still great. I admit the initial shot of their legs made me
wonder if the show was going to be coy, but no, that was a fake-out.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1080957786513649666">→</a></p>
<p>Bloom Into You episode 8: This delicate balance is already falling
apart, whether any of you know it or not, and all three of you
are each falling and lying to yourselves in your own ways.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081052131107364864">→</a></p>
<p>Bloom Into You episode 9's first half has such an important
conversation. Maki is good for something (very) important after all,
not just stirring the shit for his own amusement.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081307130815283202">→</a></p>
<p>Bloom Into You episode 9: This show remains absurdly good at
illustrating all of the tangled emotions and drives of these people
without actually having to spell anything out. Poor Touko, who did not
get to feel wanted the way she wanted to be.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081311077563092996">→</a></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Bloom Into You episode 10: Everything was going so well and then that
epilogue AAAAA. On the everything going so well front, those dorks
need to give in and see each other in person more. It makes them both
so happy just to talk to each other.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081394723112321025">→</a></p>
<p>Bloom Into You episode 11: The tensions are stacking up and the
illusions are crumbling (and in some cases, revealed as pre-crumbled,
it's just that certain parties didn't reveal their knowledge). As
great as always.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081431420965408768">→</a></p>
<p>Bloom Into You episode 12: And the tensions boil over and the crows
come home to roost at last. Yuu gets the answers she implicitly
wanted, and they don't please her. Also, I think Touko is balancing
herself on a knife-edge even though she doesn't realize it.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081439576370176001">→</a></p>
<p>Bloom Into You episode 13: The aquarium overshadowed almost everything
else in the episode except the heart-stopping moment at the train
station. I have to root for Yuu being selfish for once and getting
what she wants.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081449075210362881">→</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now we get into some of my overall views and quibbles.</p>
<blockquote><p>I completely enjoyed watching Bloom Into You as a show, but
unfortunately episode 13 doesn't end anything so much as it just
stops, and I don't know how that makes me feel about it overall. There
are a lot of big things left hanging over the story at this point.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081450181973946368">→</a></p>
<p>Also, I'll give Bloom Into You points for Yuu still arguably not being
'in love' with Touko, although she clearly likes her company and
all of that. Perhaps the story is quietly crafting a message in the
combination and contrast of Touko and Yuu here.</p>
<p>Touko is unambiguously 'traditional romance love' in love with Yuu,
and shows it in tons of ways. Yuu is not ostensibly feeling this way,
but she clearly equally has genuine affection and caring for Touko. I
can imagine the show asking 'is this not love too, just different?'
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081461097117437952">→</a></p>
<p>Quite possibly this interpretation of what Bloom Into You is doing is
me thinking too hard.</p>
<p>(But I do so dislike the 'character X is in-love in love and just
doesn't realize it' trope that shows up so often. I'd like it to be
that Bloom Into You is different.)
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1081461473891794944">→</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I don't know how I'd have felt watching <em>Bloom Into You</em> week by week
during the Fall 2018 season, especially not knowing various spoilers.
I'm absolutely sure that my experience was changed by marathoning the
show, especially with some spoilers in hand. I suspect that I enjoyed the
show more because I was marathoning it and could take it at whatever pace
I wanted (which turned out to be a fast pace; I ran through the entire
show over the course of a few days and found the last few episodes so
compelling that I stayed up very late to watch them).</p>
<p>(Part of the pace was that <em>Bloom</em> wasn't competing with anything else
in my anime watching or life at the time, because I was off for my work's
winter break and there was nothing else airing. This lack of any activity
was part of why I wound up trying <em>Bloom</em> out in the first place; I was
plain bored and all sorts of people had said lots of praise about it
during the fall season.)</p>
</div>
My tweets from watching <em>Bloom Into You</em>2019-01-13T00:11:54Z2019-01-13T00:11:44Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/LaidBackCampAppreciationcks<div class="wikitext"><p>Looking back, I think that I fell for <em>Laid-Back Camp</em> right from the
real start of the show, after the first episode's OP. The whole sequence
of Shima Rin biking along (on a compact bike, loaded down with gear)
through the autumn surroundings, then setting up camp and settling in,
all amidst quiet beauty and just in general quiet was compelling for
all sorts of reasons. I like seeing people set up things like this, and
the show loved camping (complete with its little educational interludes)
and the surroundings, and the whole thing was quiet and unhurried, but
beyond all of that it just worked for me. Then the whole thing wakes up
and makes me smile when Nadeshiko walks into the scene; it's a different
feel entirely, but no less enjoyable.</p>
<p>I don't have a nice pat answer for why <em>Laid-Back Camp</em> is a show
that I enjoy so much. Instead it is a show much like <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlyingWitchAnalysisLimits"><em>Flying Witch</em></a>, where I simply like it without being able
to completely articulate why. However, I can put my finger on some of
what I find so appealing, because out of all of the characters and all
of the activities in <em>Laid-Back Camp</em>, what I'm most drawn to are Shima
Rin's outings, especially her solo ones. Like Shima Rin, I think of
myself as a bookish loner, and I have enough experience of the outdoors
to appreciate and enjoy her camping adventures (even if I have no desire
to emulate them, especially in cold autumn weather). And the show is more
than willing to let the surroundings speak for themselves on Rin's trips,
lovingly dwelling on the outdoors and making the situation seem inviting
despite the temperatures.</p>
<p>But Shima Rin is not precisely a loner. Even if she doesn't camp
with other people very often, she's connected to them through her
cellphone (as covered very well in <a href="https://musingsandpretensions.wordpress.com/2018/12/14/__trashed-2/">@SpiritusNoxSA's great article</a>)
and through direct friendships and interactions. In many ways the
heart of the show is this slow growing interaction, especially between
Rin and Nadeshiko, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/LaidBackCampNadeshiko">who is herself a solid and appealing character</a>.</p>
<p>The obvious heart of <em>Laid-Back Camp</em> is the simply gorgeous sequence
in episode 5 where Rin and Nadeshiko text photos of their respective
beautiful night-time views back and forth, comfortably separate and
together at once. But for me, the bit I will remember most strongly
is the epilogue at the end of episode 12, where Nadeshiko goes solo
camping, exchanges texts with Rin (who is also solo camping), and
then Rin reveals that she's at the same campsite. To me, it says
so much about both Rin and Nadeshiko, and about how both of them
they have both changed and not changed over the show (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/979511139943026688">and also</a>).</p>
<p>I may not know why I like <em>Laid-Back Camp</em>, but I do know that it
lives in my heart, like a warm campfire at night. So here's to you,
little show, with all your warmth and funny moments and <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/974507961312669697">great</a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/974508663741194240">characterization</a> and goofyness
and quiet and beauty and contentment.</p>
<p><img style="max-width: 100%" src="https://cks.mef.org/anime/ssnaps/yurucamp-12-run.jpg" width="1920" height="auto" alt="Nadeshiko runs over to Rin" title="One of the best parts of this scene is how it shows off Rin's dry sense of humour"></p>
<p>(<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cs_wheBIvs">The OST</a> is pretty great,
too. <em>Laid-Back Camp</em>'s background music is an important part of its mood,
and its mood is a big part of why it works so well.)</p>
<p>PS: It's not completely clear if Rin's and Nadeshiko's bikes are folding
bikes or merely ones with small wheels and frames, as we never see them
folded. But there's very little reason to make a non-folding compact bike,
so I rather suspect that they are folding bikes.</p>
<p>PPS: Yes, that bikes feature in <em>Laid-Back Camp</em> is indeed one thing
that initially attracted me to it. Sometimes I'm a sucker for bikes,
although not for bike racing.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
An appreciation for <em>Laid-Back Camp</em> and Shima Rin2018-12-25T21:59:35Z2018-12-25T21:59:12Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/BlackMagicM66Rewatchcks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Magic_(manga)"><em>Black Magic M-66</em></a>
is a fun little 1987 action OVA of an early 1980s short story
manga by Masamune Shirow. Among other things, it is <a href="https://twitter.com/thaliarchus/status/951944695877423105">one of the few
anime adaptations that is directed or co-directed by the manga author</a>; Shirow is
credited as co-director and for storyboards. The story itself is pretty
straightforward, and is usually summarized as 'the efforts of a female
journalist to save someone from an out of control military android'. As
an early Shirow work and a short story, it's pretty much free of the
ornamentation and twitches that show up in his later and longer works
(you will not find much philosophical rambling here, for instance). With
its limited run time and limited story scope, it's pretty much all
action and setup for action, although it covers a surprising number of
additional bits and pieces in the process.</p>
<p>Animation and production wise <em>Black Magic M-66</em> is quite 1980s (with
elements that feel distinctly old fashioned), but in a different way than
<em>Crusher Joe</em> (which I watched <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/OldAnimeDifferentLook">last year</a>);
it's more <em>Bubblegum Crisis</em> than early 1980s. Part of this is that
it's infused with Shirow's general design sense, which even then seems
to have been pretty cyberpunk (in the military flavour). There are a
certain amount of what are now amusing 1980s anachronisms, like the
reporter's giant video camera and tape reels, and some of the outfits,
and a cameo of a video telephone terminal (once a 'sure to come in the
future' thing). But despite its 1980s origin, the whole thing stands
up perfectly well today; it looks different, but not bad.</p>
<p><em>Black Magic M-66</em> may be straightforward, but it's also fun. The story
(such as it is) is solid, the characters (such as they are) are amusing
and good, there's periodic amusing bits, and both the action and the
tension are well done. This is a race against time and against an
opponent, and it works even when you have a reasonable guess of what's
generally going to happen next. The M-66 is an implacable, persistent, and
even clever opponent, but not an infallible one, and it has weaknesses.
Also, the entire story is driven by a core mistake, where the M-66 was
transported with test target data loaded that aimed it at a real person,
and sadly this core mistake is all too realistic; over and over again
us programmers use real data in testing and have it blow up in our face.</p>
<p>I first saw <em>Black Magic M-66</em> a long time ago, and I rewatched it now for
a tangle of reasons. Certainly part of it was that it was there and not
very long (it's about 45 minutes), but also part of it was in reaction to
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FullMetalPanicNoRewatch">not rewatching <em>Full Metal Panic!</em></a>. To some
extent I wanted to rewatch something old that I had fond memories of and
actively re-confirm those memories, so I could have more confidence in
my past taste and my fond memories of past anime. <em>Black Magic M-66</em>
fits the bill nicely, and I think I liked it as much this time around
as I did originally.</p>
<p>There's a number of things I noticed this time around that I either
didn't spot or didn't remember from the first time. There's a military
unit involved in the story and <em>Black Magic M-66</em> is a lot less down
on them than I would have expected; it's actually pretty sympathetic
and also gives them some moments of humanity. The military and the
reporter are effectively partners in saving the M-66's target, although
each of them might object to that description. It's a little bit hokey
that the military didn't use better weapons against the M-66, but the
story does provide a couple of justifications and you can read between
the lines to it being important to the powers that be to recover the
M-66 in reasonably intact condition, never mind what it does to the
people who have to achieve that.</p>
<p>(In fact, looking objectively at the story you could argue that the
reporter's heroism is potentially unnecessary and the military would
have done fine on its own, despite what she believes. I'm not quite sure
this is true, because there are a couple of times where the reporter is
there before the military is and saves the M-66's target, but it's at
least close. This is an interesting angle for a story that is ostensibly
about the reporter's heroism to take, although her heroism is genuine
(and gets her respect from the military).)</p>
<p>I suspect that my current reactions to parts of the story are touched by
this post 9/11 world we live in. Tall buildings more or less collapsing
have a bit more bite than they probably did in 1987, as does a military
unit running around ordering people in secrecy, shutting down news,
and so on (although I suspect that this always read differently in Japan
than in the West).</p>
<p>(There is also that <em>Black Magic M-66</em> has 'flying cars' in the form of
more or less planes that fly around at low level inside the city and
have parking areas and so on. And yes, we have one getting shot down
and crashing. This is very 1980s SF for anime from what I remember and
shows up all over, but it reads quite differently today. In the 1980s
it was futuristic and imaginable. Today, not so much.)</p>
<p>In my personal rating of Shirow animated works, <em>Black Magic M-66</em>
probably ranks highest of all anime that is directly based on a Shirow
story instead of simply drawing from it. The <em>Ghost in the Shell: Stand
Alone Complex</em> TV series is significantly better and deeper, but it draws
from Shirow's <em>GitS</em> manga instead of trying to animate it. The <em>GitS</em>
movie, well, I have complicated feelings about that one and <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/413770920378249216">don't rate
it very highly</a>.</p>
<p>This sort of elaborates on <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1076719977753915392">some tweets of mine</a>, because I
feel like it.</p>
<p>PS: There are any number of things I find neat about <em>Black Magic
M-66</em> that I'm not mentioning here, because this is already long
enough. There are all sorts of little details about it that I
enjoy.</p>
<p>PPS: This time around I discovered that the M actually stands for
something; specifically, it's 'Mario'. Really. It's even in the title
card. I really don't have anything I can say here, except that I'm
going to try to forget it again.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
Rewatching <em>Black Magic M-66</em>2018-12-24T19:15:47Z2018-12-24T19:15:42Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/SSSSGridmanEndingTweetscks<div class="wikitext"><p>In the spirit of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BloggingOnTwitter">not doing my blogging only on Twitter</a>, I'm copying what I said about <em>SSSS.Gridman</em>'s
ending and it as a whole to here. The actual tweets start <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1076616663884275712">here</a>, and
there are interesting discussions with people who replied to me
that I'm not copying here.</p>
<p>There are some spoilers here, but that's how it goes. Some expansion
on bits of the tweets that involves spoilers is hidden behind <abbr title="spoiler hiding the lazy way">HTML
abbreviations</abbr>.</p>
<blockquote><p>SSSS.Gridman episode 12: Oh wow. Certain portions of that were kind
of as expected, parts were pleasant surprises of <abbr title="Anti knew right away that the kaiju was Akane">the Gridman 'no
beating around the bush' variety</abbr>, and then the extended ending was really something else
(something great). The final coda, too. <abbr title="Anti's new right eye is human blue">Good work, Anti</abbr>.</p>
<p>In the end SSSS.Gridman made the extremely smart choice of basically
not explaining a lot of things, which I am perfectly fine with. It
nailed the emotional and practical landing, and in retrospect it was
carefully never framed as having mysteries.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To expand on this, <em>SSSS.Gridman</em> had things that it didn't explain,
but it never presented those things to us as mysteries. No one ever
asked 'why X' or 'how did Y come to be' or 'where did Z come from',
and since those questions were never asked and were never part of
the plot, it was easy to not answer them without letting people down
(or at least I didn't feel let down). If a show is going to have
things it doesn't answer, carefully keeping them in the background is
in my opinion the best approach. Call this the anti <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov's_gun">Checkov's gun</a> principle; if you don't
want to have to shoot the gun, don't put it on the mantelpiece.</p>
<blockquote><p>I still think the SSSS.Gridman OP and ED are probably saying some
interesting things, but I'm not sure about it and the final episode
didn't provide clarity. But they probably are strongly talking about
the show's overall theme.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Before the last episode, I increasingly came to think that
<em>SSSS.Gridman</em>'s OP and ED were pretty meaningful; they not just had
things to say about the show itself, but also gave us hints about what
was really going on and had happened before the show started. In light
of everything in the last episode, I no longer think that this is
literally true.
For more on the ED specifically, see <a href="https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2018/12/22/closing-thoughts-on-rikka-and-akanes-relationship-in-ssss-gridman/">Emily's great article on
it</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Also, I know just enough about the surrounding context of the overall
Gridman series of shows to know that the very ending of the show is
perfectly fitting and a great callback. (I actually wondered earlier
if the show would go that way and yep.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As covered in <a href="https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2018/11/20/ssss-gridman-production-notes-5-7/">Sakugablog's notes on episodes 5-7</a>,
among other places, <em>SSSS.Gridman</em> contains a fair number of fairly
important links to the original live action <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridman_the_Hyper_Agent"><em>Gridman the Hyper Agent</em></a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Oh. I suddenly realized the obvious reason and meaning for why Anti
stayed behind in the end of SSSS.Gridman, given what Anti is. Well
done, show. And I bet he's going to hang out with Rikka to a certain
extent, which ... really makes sense and casts another light on him &
Rikka.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1076637865826832384">The expansion of this</a>, which
involves a more detailed spoiler:</p>
<blockquote><p>It's strongly implied that Anti is effectively a piece of Akane's
heart. Akane had to leave her dream world, but at the same time she
loved it and sort of wanted to stay in it with the people there. So,
with Anti staying, a piece of her heart is staying in the dream.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Back to my thread:</p>
<blockquote><p>In fact, looking back a whole lot of Anti's interactions with Rikka
are now really quite interesting if you look at them from the right
angle. Poor Akane, in a way.</p>
<p>Another SSSS.Gridman thought: Alexis Kerib could be a metaphor or it
could be real, and in fact it could be a mixture of both at once.
Certainly as a metaphor, Alexis is eternal, as it said. And you cannot
just beat it up; the real fix is something else entirely.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a metaphor, Alexis Kerib is clearly the whole cocktail of depression,
self-hatred, isolation, and so on, a cocktail that is eternal and
cannot be directly defeated, only banished from the current sufferer.
<em>SSSS.Gridman</em> did amazing work in showing us how much Akane hated
herself and suffered from this cocktail all on her own.</p>
<blockquote><p>In light of the very end of SSSS.Gridman, I think we have to rule
out certain interpretations of the OP and ED. They now seem at least
unlikely to be portraying Akane's real pre-series life, although they
can be metaphors touching on it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Also, the show gave us <a href="https://twitter.com/LossThief/status/1076623408996253697">the meaning of SSSS</a>, and it
was well done. <abbr title="Special Signature to Save a Soul">SSSS</abbr> indeed.</p>
<p>Also, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1076618270545985538">another important thing to note about the ending</a>, from a
Twitter conversation thread:</p>
<blockquote><p>I choose to believe that the ending shot implies that there is, since
Rikka's present is there in Akane's room as she wakes up. (Perhaps
that present is in fact the trigger, lingering in Akane's subconscious
all this time.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You can read this many ways, but if nothing else the show wants us to
know that the transit pass case Rikka bought as a present for Akane and
finally gave her lingered into Akane's new life. It is very explicit
about showing it as the first thing visible in the final scene of the
show.</p>
<p>(And, in light of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SSSSGridmanSoundscape"><em>SSSS.Gridman</em>'s unusual soundscape</a>, it strikes me as potential interesting that
this final scene does have a background music track. Of course this
might just be for practical reasons, in that there's no particularly
appropriate basic environmental noises to use and dead silence would
feel wrong.)</p>
<p>Update: <a href="https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2018/12/23/ssss-gridman-production-notes-12-and-final-impressions/">Sakugablog's episode 12 coverage</a>
has a nice rundown on what we can reasonably piece together about the
narrative from clues and allusions in the show, and also the things we
have no idea about (of which there are any number).</p>
</div>
My tweets in the aftermath of <em>SSSS.Gridman</em>'s last episode2018-12-24T22:08:02Z2018-12-24T02:18:15Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/SSSSGridmanSoundscapecks<div class="wikitext"><p>It's no secret that most anime is generously slathered with background
music. Unless characters are talking, and sometimes even if they are,
there's almost always BGM running in the background, a constant soundtrack
for what's going on in the show. It's even a cliche than when the BGM
cuts out, something serious is going on. Sometimes this BGM is used to
communicate mood or comedy or the like, but often it is simply there.</p>
<p><em>SSSS.Gridman</em> is an exception. From the start, one of the quietly unusual
things about the show has been how little it uses background music. Rather
than BGM, its passing moments and full scenes are filled with incidental
environmental sounds; things like little noises of things thumping and
squeaking, people's footsteps, the warning bells of railway crossings,
the flapping and cawing of passing birds, doors opening and closing,
rain falling, thumping machinery in the distance, the natural noise of
busses humming along, and insects. Even when the show fills a silent
time with background noise, it's not music; it's with, say, a quiet drone.</p>
<p>(There are times when music crops up in <em>Gridman</em> as <a href="http://filmsound.org/terminology/diegetic.htm">diegetic sound</a>, which is to say that
it exists in the world and the characters hear it too.)</p>
<p><em>SSSS.Gridman</em> does have background music, but it's rarely used. When the
music starts up, things are about to happen, usually the kaiju fights or
other climactic events touching on them. And generally the moment the
fight is over, the music cuts out too. If there is music and it's not
a fight, something important is happening and the show wants us to know.</p>
<p>(And <em>Gridman</em> generally considers fights over, at least for BGM, once
the decisive blow has been struck. There is an explosion afterward, but
the BGM does not continue through it in the way it might in another show.)</p>
<p>I'm sure that this is a deliberate decision on the part of the
production. If nothing else, designing and putting together this
soundscape has to be a lot more work than commissioning some BGM tracks
and mixing them in underneath the vocals and any important <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)">foley
sounds</a>. But I don't
know enough to guess why the show handled its sound this way. Perhaps
it's for the same reason that the show had its animators draw a lot of
what would normally have been background art, which is apparently to
make the show's world feel more alive and real; see <a href="https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2018/10/16/ssss-gridman-production-notes-1-2/">the Sakugablog
discussion of this in their coverage of the first two episodes</a>.</p>
<p>(Without knowing enough about anime production to be sure, I suspect that
the prevalence of BGM in anime in general is because it is the simplest
and cheapest way to fill in what would otherwise be completely dead
silence (or voices talking in otherwise dead silence). Live action works
can at least do scratch recordings during filming to have a basic 'bed'
of background noise, but anime doesn't have that unless you deliberately
go collect field recordings. Dead silence is somewhat unnatural in real
life, which is probably partly why it's used for emphasis in anime.)</p>
<p>Looking back, one of the surprising things about this is how
little I consciously noticed and notice both sides of BGM usage. For
<em>SSSS.Gridman</em>, I didn't realize just how little BGM was used and how soon
it cuts out. For other shows, I didn't realize how pervasive BGM usage was
until I was spot-checking things as part of writing this and discovered,
for instance, that it seems to be not unusual to continue BGM underneath
even people talking, which is something I wouldn't have expected to need
or use BGM. On the other hand, how pervasive BGM is seems to vary from
show to show; I encountered others that had significant sections with
only ambient noises and no BGM, although none that went anywhere as far
as <em>SSSS.Gridman</em>.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
<em>SSSS.Gridman</em>'s unusual soundscape2018-12-23T22:59:48Z2018-12-23T22:59:48Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/RevueStarlightEpisode7cks<div class="wikitext"><p>I may have a muted and mostly intellectual reaction to <em>Revue Starlight</em>
as a whole (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Retrospective">per my summer comments</a>), but
there is one character that the show completely sold me on and got me
emotionally invested in, and that was Daiba Nana. And whatever else I
may feel about the show, episode 7, her focus episode, was an excellent
and amazing thing. For me, it was unquestionably the highlight of the
entire show.</p>
<p>At one level it's not surprising that I like episode 7, because one of
my things is episodes that reveal a totally new perspective on events
and force you to completely re-evaluate everything you've seen so
far. I'm predisposed to love them unreasonably wherever they crop up,
whether it's in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/KyoukaiNoKanata10">an otherwise ordinary show</a> or in
generally excellent works such as <em>Madoka Magica</em>.</p>
<p>(In general I'm all for unusual narrative tricks, from this through
non-linear storytelling to all sorts of things. Just do them well.)</p>
<p>Beyond what it revealed, "Daiba Nana" (really, that's the episode's
title) was really well put together and presented, like much of <em>Revue
Starlight</em> overall. Given something to emotionally connect with, all of
the show's technical work paid off for me, as everything built up over
the course of the episode to really pack a punch. The show's understated
presentation with drip after drip of unwelcome, unpleasant change sold me
on Daiba Nana's mindset and on why she felt the way she did and reacted
as she did. Her ultimate choice was not a surprise but an inevitability,
and in the process it ripped off her mask to reveal the person underneath.</p>
<p>(In retrospect, the episode also sold me on why she was the winner of
the Revue. Out of all of the competitors, she was the one who had a
concrete goal that she understood, not an abstract desire or vague
target. It's fitting that Hikari was the one to defeat Nana, because
Hikari too had a very concrete goal that she was aiming for.)</p>
<p>In the end, Daiba Nana got what she wanted but not what she needed, and
on top of that what she wanted was slowly turning to ashes in her mouth.
In a single episode, <em>Revue Starlight</em> transformed her from a cheerful
cipher to a quietly, desperately lonely girl who broke our hearts and
so very much needed a hug.</p>
<p>(If you want to read more about episode 7, I recommend <a href="https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/shoujo-%E2%98%86-kageki-revue-starlight-and-the-mystery-of-daiba-nana-part-2-more-takarazuka-criticism/">Emily
Rand's writing</a>.)</p>
<p>As a side note, looking back, my experience of <em>Revue Starlight</em>
as a whole was definitely interesting even if it wasn't necessarily
engaging. I don't often have the experience of watching a show while
knowing that things are definitely flying over my head and there's an
entire layer of things going on that I'm barely grasping the edges of.
Here it was <em>Revue Starlight</em>'s entanglement with the Takarazuka Revue
(part of which is its multimedia nature, where the full <em>Revue Starlight</em>
experience extends well beyond the anime alone). In that respect I'm
reminded of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/JoshirakuInteresting">watching <em>Joshiraku</em></a>.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
<h3>Sidebar: Another little impressive thing from the episode</h3>
<p>One of the little things that episode seven showed us (at least as I
remember it) is how Daiba Nana's collection of mannerisms and habits seems
to have evolved over the course of her many loops. In the very beginning,
Nana wasn't really 'Banana', although she clearly liked bananas. It was
only through relentless repetition and refinement that Nana boiled herself
down to a cheerful supplier of a stream of banana themed foods and so
on, with all of the foods (and many of her mannerisms) carefully honed
through far more practice than any of her classmates had any idea about.
The authentic, imperfect, uncertain Daiba Nana was far in the past by
the time of the first six episodes of <em>Revue Starlight</em> that we saw;
we saw only a polished front, the person Daiba Nana had made herself
into for the sake of her goal and her classmates.</p>
<p>The seventh episode quietly showed us that the Daiba Nana we'd seen in
the first six episodes was a polished, rehearsed role, and it showed us
how that had come about, how Daiba Nana wound up playing a role instead
of being herself, because she had to in order to keep everything going.</p>
<p>(I suspect that all of this is in part something the show wants to say
more broadly, about the Takarazuka Revue and other things. But even just
as a character piece, it was beautiful and wholly convincing.)</p>
</div>
Daiba Nana gets her day in <em>Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight</em>2018-12-22T21:32:59Z2018-12-22T21:32:51Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/SadLetdowns2018cks<div class="wikitext"><p>Last year I wrote about <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SadLetdowns2017">some shows that didn't work out for me</a>, and this year I've decided to do it again for my own
reasons. As with last year, these are shows that I started with high
hopes, shows that by all rights should work for me, and then things
didn't work out. I'm almost always sad when this happens, because I want
to enjoy everything I watch and I want to have more things to watch that
I enjoy. As with last year, this is not to condemn these shows, it is
to create a little memorial to them and to what could have been. That
these shows didn't work out for me can say as much about me as it does
about the shows.</p>
<p>(To a certain extent, these shows teach me something about my own
tastes, which is part of why I want to write all of this up.)</p>
<p>In the order that they aired and that I walked away from them:</p>
<ul><li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Midway"><em>Katana Maidens - Toji no Miko</em></a>: It's been a
pretty long time since we had a show like this, but sadly the show
we got had pacing issues that I eventually got tired of. I really
do want to like action/adventure shows that revolve around women,
because they're relatively rare, but this one didn't work out
despite quite a lot of initial promise.
There was a time when I'd have kept on watching this despite the
pacing, but <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/OnWatchingLess">not this year</a>. There's a part of me
that still regrets not powering through to watch all of <em>Katana
Maidens</em>.<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Midway"><em>Violet Evergarden</em></a>: This is a beautiful and
well crafted show, one that by all rights I should have been more
fond of than I actually was. I have theories about why I wound up
failing to really be pulled in emotionally, but they're at best
hand-waving over the fundamental reality that this is yet another
KyoAni show that didn't work for me.<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Brief"><em>Lupin III Part V</em></a>: Lupin is a classic series
and has been doing its general action and adventure thing for a long
time, with a well honed stable of characters and a bunch of movies that
I've generally enjoyed and so on. It definitely feels like I should
enjoy Lupin TV series, and it also feels almost like an obligation
as an anime fan to do so. But I keep bouncing off the actual TV
series, with the notable exception of <em>The Woman Called Mine Fujiko</em>.
Apparently I don't love these classical characters quite enough to
follow them around for six or twelve hours or so at a time, even if
that time is spread out over one or two cours.<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Midway"><em>Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory</em></a>: As I put
it, the magic leaked out for me somewhere over the past decade (or more)
since the last time there was any <em>Full Metal Panic!</em>. The good news
is that <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FullMetalPanicNoRewatch">the old <em>FMP</em> lives on in my heart</a>,
no matter what.<p>
(It's odd, but this hurts less than <em>Little Witch Academia</em> did last
year. I think it's because I already have the pleasant memories of
the original <em>Full Metal Panic!</em> series.)<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Midway"><em>My Hero Academia</em></a>: <em>MHA</em> is pretty good shonen
action and all of that, and I stopped watching it just before a
climactic arc or two that were apparently very good. My feelings on
dropping it is that this says something about the pacing issues endemic
in a long-running shonen series and also something about how long I'm
willing to watch one series these days. I look back on the days when
I could watch a hundred episodes or more of something and wonder how
I did it.<p>
(Possible the answer is 'less other things to eat up my time with'.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Then there's some shows that I'm more mildly let down and sad about,
where it doesn't hurt as much that I and the show didn't work out.</p>
<ul><li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Brief"><em>GeGeGe no Kitaro</em></a>: There's a lot of nice things
about <em>Kitaro</em>, and it would be a perfectly wholesome show to follow
on a regular basis (with some great characters). I just don't have
any real interest in following a kids show, because some of the things
inherent in its nature leave me too unenthused.<p>
Sadly this is a bad omen for me ever really enjoying any of the Precure
iterations, because they're fundamentally kids shows too.<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Midway"><em>Golden Kamuy</em></a>: This is an acclaimed action and
adventure manga with some great characters and a well realized anime
version (bears excepted), but I wound up not really caring about what
was going on.<p>
Looking back over everything that worked for me and didn't work
for me this year, I suspect that this is a sign that I'm losing my
interest in straight action stories. Over and over again this year,
I've passed or dropped shows where the primary appeal was action
and intricate cunning plots going on. It's not just <em>Golden Kamuy</em>,
it's also things like <em>A.I.C.O.</em>, <em>Angolmois</em>, <em>Sirius the Jaeger</em>,
<em>Legend of the Galactic Heroes</em>, and <em>Persona 5 The Animation</em> (and
<em>Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory</em> to some extent).<p>
(On the other hand I definitely enjoyed <em>B - The Beginning</em>, for all
that it was very firmly planted in this genre. It wasn't anywhere
near high art, but <em>B</em> knew full well how to be both entertaining and
compulsively watchable.)<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Midway"><em>Darling in the FranXX</em></a>: I said <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Brief">way back when</a> that I didn't have high expectations for <em>DarliFra</em>,
which is why I'm not more let down when I decided that it wasn't
interesting enough to continue watching. When you don't expect much
to start with, there's not much letdown when it doesn't work out.</li>
</ul>
<p>(I don't list <em>Hinamatsuri</em> here simply because comedies failing for
me is the routine state of life.)</p>
<p>Writing this up has helped me clarify and put into words some things that
I was already feeling in my gut. For instance, it seems pretty likely
that <em>Vinland Saga</em> is not going to be something that I enthusiastically
watch in 2019, since it falls straight into the general genre area of
<em>Golden Kamuy</em> and other similar things.</p>
<p>As with last year, I'm deliberately excluding shows that I finished, even
though I have things I could say there (and I may do so in another entry).
This is for shows that didn't work out to such an extent that I stopped
watching them.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
Some shows that didn't work out for me in 20182018-12-21T23:09:32Z2018-12-21T23:09:23Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/SSSSGridmanExploitsUscks<div class="wikitext"><p>(There's a bit of a spoiler for <em>SSSS.Gridman</em> here.)</p>
<p>One of my ongoing interests is things around <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/AnimeBokeh">the anicamera</a>,
the imaginary camera that 'films' anime, and along with it the various
deliberate artistic distortions animation uses (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BubukiBurankiBrightCGFuture">including in CG</a>), such as smears and super-deformed things.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Trigger">Studio Trigger</a> is of
course no stranger to any of this, as anyone who's watched their shows
like <em>Space Patrol Luluco</em> or <em>Kill la Kill</em> knows, and so it is not
surprising that various aspects of both of these show up regularly in
<em>SSSS.Gridman</em>.</p>
<p>So, for example, there's this beautiful shot from episode 10:</p>
<p><img style="max-width: 100%" src="https://cks.mef.org/anime/ssnaps/gridman/gridman-ep10.jpg" width="1920" height="auto" alt="Rikka looks out into the sunset" title="People in anime never seem to have problems looking into the sun"></p>
<p>This isn't just beautiful, it's also full of deliberate anicamera
artifacts, including <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/AnimeLensFlare">lens flare</a>, veiling haze, and
the wide angle lens effect of putting curves on horizontal and vertical
straight lines.</p>
<p>But the case I really want to talk about is from <em>SSSS.Gridman</em>'s sixth
episode, where Yuta meets a little kid who wants to talk to him (and yes,
this is kind of dim, as they're in an alleyway; the kid is on the right):</p>
<p><img style="max-width: 100%" src="https://cks.mef.org/anime/ssnaps/gridman/gridman-ep06-kid.jpg" width="1920" height="auto" alt="Yuta meets a little kid" title="She's not very big, is she"></p>
<p>She really wants to get Yuta's attention and Trigger winds up giving
us this classical looming, super-deformed shot:</p>
<p><img style="max-width: 100%" src="https://cks.mef.org/anime/ssnaps/gridman/gridman-ep06-loom.jpg" width="1920" height="auto" alt="An unnamed character looms over Yuta to get his attention" title="LOOOOM"></p>
<p><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ha ha, no. That's not super-deformed. She's a kaiju.</p>
<p><img style="max-width: 100%" src="https://cks.mef.org/anime/ssnaps/gridman/gridman-ep06-cutest-kaiju.jpg" width="1920" height="auto" alt="An unnamed character looms over Yuta from the side" title="The cutest kaiju"></p>
<p>To be fair, she told us that she was, and there was some advance
visual warning as the scene unfolded (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/anime/ssnaps/gridman/gridman-ep06-shadows.jpg">eg the shadow here</a>). Trigger didn't
spring this on us by complete surprise, however funny and startling that
might have been; instead they built up the atmosphere for an unsettling
moment. But it was still a pretty startling moment for me, and probably
for a lot of viewers. Everything in our anime viewing pushed us towards
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/TimeAndChangedInterpretation">a reading</a> of that first looming shot as
being exaggerated and super-deformed, not literal. And then <em>SSSS.Gridman</em>
cut away to confront us with the unsettling reality.</p>
<p>That's why in the title of this entry I used 'exploited' instead of
'used'. Trigger did not actually use superdeformation here; instead they
deliberately exploited our expectations of it in order to give us a
startling moment.</p>
<p>(There is probably a bit of implicit wide angle distortion going on
in the looming shot, for impact, but in a comedy SD moment it would
be exaggerating the SD looming.)</p>
<p>PS: The revealing side shot is unrealistic in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/AnicameraUnreality">a normal cinematographic
way</a>, because the characters are nominally in a pretty
narrow alleyway. In real life there's no way you could back the camera up
enough to get that sort of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/AnicameraPerspectives"><em>normal perspective</em></a>
shot from the side without running into the side of the alleyway, so you'd
have to do this on a soundstage. Which is of course routine in films.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
A moment where <em>SSSS.Gridman</em> exploits distorted camera perspective and superdeformation2018-12-21T00:23:08Z2018-12-21T00:23:01Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/OnWatchingLesscks<div class="wikitext"><p>Looking back on this year in anime for me, one thing that definitely
stands out is that I've watched a lot less shows than I usually do. It
hasn't been because I'm out of time, or because I have some limit on
how many shows I want to watch. Instead it's because I've become a lot
more willing to listen to my gut, to mostly not watch things unless
I'm actually enjoying them, and to drop shows that I've stopped being
interested in even if they're quite late in their run (and I thus have
a lot invested in watching them, in a way).</p>
<p>(It would be snappy to say that I'm watching less but enjoying it more,
but that's not true. The shows that I'm enjoying are not magically better
than they ever have been, it's just that I'm not watching much else.)</p>
<p>Looking back, things here have probably been building for some time (cf
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2014Brief">my Winter 2014 grump</a>), but this year is evidently
when my feelings quietly boiled over and I started cutting back pretty
drastically. I dropped or didn't even start a lot of perfectly decent or
okay shows this year that I probably would have watched in past years,
and I've mostly not checked out shows that are outside of the areas that
usually work well for me, even if they're getting a lot of praise (this
season, for example, there's <em>Bloom Into You</em> among others).</p>
<p>When I started watching less, I think that I wondered if I'd feel idle and
bored and wind up just coming back to fill up my time with anime again,
especially since in the past I've used various shows basically to fill
the time over a cup of coffee or the like (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2016Midway">cf</a>, and
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2016Retrospective">also</a>). It hasn't worked out that way, for
all that there's a part of me that wants to feel the urge to watch more.
Although I sometimes think 'a year ago I'd have been watching anime at
this point in my week', I've not wound up short of other diversions to
fill up my time with (if nothing else, there's always <a href="https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/">my technical
blog</a>).</p>
<p>This all feels like a vaguely unsettling big change of some sort. I've
been watching anime for a fairly long time, and usually a fairly decent
amount of it, much more than I currently am now. When you suddenly get
less active in a fandom you were previously pretty active in, well, it's
natural for certain thoughts to spring up in your mind. Is this a sign
that I'm about to quietly slide mostly out of anime fandom entirely, as
I've slid out of other things in the past? I don't think it is, but then
I probably didn't think that about the other fandoms either, not at the
start.</p>
<p>(On the other hand, my past dropping out of fandoms has generally been
pretty abrupt, even if I didn't do it deliberately. This is not that
kind of 'doing it one day, stopped almost entirely the next' that those
have often been.)</p>
<p>However, this also doesn't feel like something that's going to
reverse itself. I don't look around and feel that there's spare
time I could watch more shows in if I wanted to (perhaps old
classics, or <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1075193970509180928">things I have fond memories of, like <em>Stellvia</em></a>); instead I
feel that I'm basically watching as much anime as I have both time and
interest for.</p>
<p>Who knows. Maybe I've just gotten a little too jaded and worn down about
anime, and it'll wear off in a while. There's certainly a part of me
that wants it to, that identifies as an anime fan who watches fairly
voraciously, that wants to go back to four or five shows a season the
way 'it should be'. Or maybe I've finally stopped feeling like I should
watch everything just because I started watching anime in an era when we
grabbed for whatever scraps we could get because they were so rare. Anime
today is a feast of simulcasts and available shows that we can pick or
choose from, and that's a great thing.</p>
<p>(These personal ramblings and reflections are part
of my contribution to the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
On watching a lot less anime this year2018-12-20T00:18:37Z2018-12-20T00:18:29Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/GunGaleOnlineBandOfSisterscks<div class="wikitext"><p>There's a lot of reasons that I like <em>Gun Gale Online</em>, starting with
it being great fun to watch, but certainly one of them is that it is a
very exceptional show in a couple of ways. To put it simply, <em>Gun Gale
Online</em> is an action show that's all about a bunch of women, and it's
almost completely free of fanservice (and romance). <em>Gun Gale Online</em>
is about a bunch of women gleefully having fun together shooting each
other up in a game, and sometimes shooting men who make the mistake of
getting in their way.</p>
<p>(There are some men, and a couple of them matter. But mostly not.)</p>
<p>But the show's not just about the action, not really. It's also about the
things that happen outside of the <em>Gun Gale Online</em> game, in the time when
Karen and others aren't playing. It's about how these women interact with
each other in their real life, how they connect, how the strands of their
friendship and fellowship entwine. <em>Gun Gale Online</em> is an action story
about GGO the game, but it is also a story about people. <em>GGO</em> would
not be half the show it is if it didn't make us believe in those women
and their connections. The show is not high art, but it makes everyone
come alive; everyone is pretty much a real person. And in the show, almost
everything that really matters, almost everything that has real character,
is interactions between women (on the battlefields of GGO or off it).</p>
<p>I don't really have words for how rare this is in anime. Shows with
all-female casts are almost entirely confined to a small slice of genres,
and when they do escape they must almost always come with fanservice,
romance, or at least the prominent and important presence of some men. On
top of that, in action shows with women, only infrequently do they get to
simply be <em>people</em>. In anime, male characters get to have plenty of shows
with bands of brothers (it's the default state of ensemble action shows);
women so very rarely get shows with bands of sisters. <em>Gun Gale Online</em>
is a very welcome exception, gleeful pink rabbit and all. Especially
our gleefully murderous pink rabbit, having a great deal of fun in a game
that she enjoys a lot with her friends.</p>
<p>(As a long-term anime watcher, it is very hard for me not to be cynical
about anime in some ways, whether or not what I am seeing is actual
reality, and I think I'll leave it at that.)</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
In appreciation of <em>Gun Gale Online</em>'s band of sisters2018-12-19T00:01:20Z2018-12-19T00:01:01Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/NetflixVsDiscoursecks<div class="wikitext"><p>I usually think of myself as someone who watches anime as a pretty
solitary activity. It's not really true, as I've understood for some
time (for instance, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ConformityTacitPressure">I know I face the tacit pressure of conformity</a>), but most of the time I can not really be
conscious of the social side of my watching; it's just sort of there,
as something that happens. This year, Netflix provided an interesting
reminder of that social side.</p>
<p>With a weekly show, there's always a current episode, the most recent
episode that aired and then became available here, and that's what
most people are watching and reacting to and talking about. While the
discussion is generally at its most intense the day the episode becomes
available, not everyone watches it or reacts to it right away. And
even if you watch it later in the week (as I often do for some shows),
there's still people to talk to about it or read current reactions to
it in various places. This whole environment enables a discourse that
is focused on that episode; it's the obvious thing about the show to
talk about, to react to, and to frame a discussion around.</p>
<p>Netflix shows did not work this way. Netflix released most or all
of the anime shows it funded this year in the same way that it
releases other TV series, which is to say all at once, with every
episode immediately available. In particular, it released <em>Devilman
Crybaby</em> that way, with all episodes available January 5th. Some
people burned through the entire show in the next day or two; some
people burned through it in a week; some people took <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/970481821912887296">much longer</a>. One of the
results was to distinctly attenuate the discussion about <em>Devilman
Crybaby</em>, because people who wanted to talk about it lacked the common
ground of a 'current episode'. If you were an early watcher, you might
avoid discussing things because of spoilers, or have only limited other
early watchers you could talk about things with. If you were a later
watcher, you might have to carefully not look at early discussion in
order to avoid spoilers and in any case your current episode might be
old news to a lot of people.</p>
<p>(And even if you didn't deliberately avoid spoilers, you had to go find
old discussions, or have them already bookmarked and saved; they weren't
on top of Anitwitter, feed readers, Animenano, and so on.)</p>
<p>I don't know if this lack of fan buzz hurt or even helped <em>Devilman
Crybaby</em>, either to get more viewers or to get people to think about the
show more independently than they might have in the discourse's usual echo
chamber. I do know that it made my own experience of <em>Devilman Crybaby</em>
feel distinctly different from watching weekly shows, and I likely didn't
discuss it half as much as I would have done if it was a normal show.</p>
<p>(Also, of course, the experience of burning through something as intense
as <em>Devilman Crybaby</em> over a short period of time is definitely different
than it would have been seeing it at a one episode a week pace. I don't
know if a forced weekly pace would have made <em>Devilman Crybaby</em> more or
less powerful, but it certainly would have made things feel different.)</p>
<p>I suspect that Netflix's mass episode drop also lead to less blog
entries and so on about <em>Devilman Crybaby</em> than there would otherwise
have been. Certainly I expect it led to less episode by episode
analysis, because there really wasn't much point unless you wanted
to do a close reading of the whole show or record your reactions and
thoughts on an episode by episode basis. But with that said, <a href="https://shinmechaguignol.com/tag/devilman/">Shin
Mecha Guignol did a very interesting series of articles on each episode</a>.</p>
<p>I also watched Netflix's <em>B - The Beginning</em> and some of <em>A.I.C.O. -
Incarnation</em>, each of which was made available all at once and each of
which didn't get too much discussion that I saw, but with both of them
I think there are what you could politely call other factors at work
as well. <em>Violet Evergarden</em> is an odd case, because it was available
week by week everywhere except in the US, where it was available all
at once at the end of its weekly run; as a result, I experienced it
week by week as a normal <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Retrospective">Winter 2018 show</a>.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
Netflix versus the discourse (on Anitwitter and elsewhere)2018-12-18T00:43:10Z2018-12-18T00:43:05Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/LaidBackCampNadeshikocks<div class="wikitext"><p>In the beginning of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laid-Back_Camp"><em>Laid-Back Camp</em></a>, Nadeshiko comes
across as mostly your typical progatonist for these sorts of shows;
an energetic but ditzy newbie, all full of both enthusiasm (to drag us
along) and ignorance (so we can have things explained to us). She had
her moments, but <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/949110151616790528">in the beginning I was worried that I'd get tired of
her</a>.</p>
<p>In the fourth episode, Nadeshiko and the other two members of the
Outclub head off to a campsite in what turns out to be a longer walk
than they expected. The other two turned up at the starting point with
reasonable modest amounts of stuff, but Nadeshiko had a significant load
and as they started walking, what I was expecting was the obvious cliche
that Nadeshiko had made a newbie mistake in her enthusiastic loading up.</p>
<p><em>Laid-Back Camp</em> didn't do that. Instead, Nadeshiko walked the other
two into the ground; as Chiaki and Aoi were slowing down, she was still
cheerfully going along, load and all. Nadeshiko hadn't made a mistake
at all. Instead, she was just that strong, untiring, and capable.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/957418639677935616">That was the moment that sold me on Nadeshiko as a great character</a>, not at all
the genki maniac airhead that I had expected and been afraid of.</p>
<p>Looking back, there had been flashes of that even before the fourth
episode. For instance, in the first episode Nadeshiko had biked all of
the fairly decent distance from her home to the campsite, and didn't
seem any the worse for it. But the fourth episode was where it became
clear to me, and that moment in the fourth episode is what clinched it.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
The moment when <em>Laid-Back Camp</em>'s Nadeshiko won me over2018-12-16T18:57:10Z2018-12-16T18:56:55Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/DevilmanCrybabycks<div class="wikitext"><p>So, yeah, I watched <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devilman_Crybaby"><em>Devilman Crybaby</em></a>. It was an experience.</p>
<p>Before I started watching, what I knew was that this a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaaki_Yuasa">Yuasa</a> adaptation of a famous early
70s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Nagai">Go Nagai</a> manga, funded by
Netflix and so without broadcast content restrictions. The first episode
pretty much delivered what I expected in that regard; <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/950230553831276546">as I said on
Twitter</a>, it was
very over the top in Go Nagai's usual way, and gleefully and faithfully
rendered by Yuasa (<a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/43243">eg</a>). I
also said something that I didn't intend as foreshadowing, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/950232589411012610">but</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>I didn't get emotionally pulled into Devilman Crybaby because many
parts were absurd, but that's probably the best way to consume Go
Nagai. To be actually in the show would be terrifyingly intense even
in this episode; distance helped a lot.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yuasa's <em>Devilman Crybaby</em> turned out to be <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/950950560710254595">very good at kicking you
in the feels</a>,
to put it in the modern idiom. It became <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/952449355419660288">nothing like it had started
out as</a>,
mutating from an over the top operatic exercise in excess to <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/952451568309362688">something
very powerful</a>
by the end. I went into <em>Devilman Crybaby</em> expect to get interestingly
executed pulp. I wound up getting far more, with real emotional impacts.</p>
<p>(In retrospect, the mood of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwpFpF9-MVk">the striking and compelling OP</a> was also foreshadowing.
That's not a pulp show's OP, in either animation or music.)</p>
<p>To talk of whether or not I liked <em>Devilman Crybaby</em> seems almost
beside the point. <em>Devilman Crybaby</em> is not here to be liked;
it's here to put you through the wringer, and what you make of that
experience is up to you. My own ride through <em>Devilman Crybaby</em> was
quite the rollercoaster, even though <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/952743911029604355">it didn't entirely pull me in</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/952705322463977473">also</a>).</p>
<p>After I'd finished the show, I read <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devilman">Wikipedia's article
on the manga</a>, which
covers the metaphor Go Nagai intended for the whole story. I
see where and why Go Nagai was going, but only intellectually
and I have to view it as very much a product of the early 1970s
and the Vietnam war. <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/952745382408278016">It's not something that resonates with me</a>, for all that
it feels like Go Nagai had to have been very passionate about it when
he created <em>Devilman</em>.</p>
<p>(Although I don't know if it's the case, it certainly feels like
<em>Devilman</em> has to be an angry work, with Go Nagai railing against one
aspect of the world and people. But this is all me reading things into
Go Nagai's central metaphor.)</p>
<p><em>Devilman Crybaby</em> is in some ways a messy
show, one that feels <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/965396854765735937">abbreviated in spots</a>; I suspect that
people who've read the <em>Devilman</em> manga will have a deeper appreciation of
the show than I do. I'll probably never rewatch it, and I certainly don't
love it; not only was it wrenching, but Yuasa's version stays faithful
to the manga's downer ending (which is apparently famous and iconic).
But I'm not going to forget it any time soon, and I have no regrets
about watching it. It is, very definitely, a powerful work. And a very
Yuasa one.</p>
<p>(This is part of <a href="https://twitter.com/appropriant">@appropriant</a>'s <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
<em>Devilman Crybaby</em>2018-12-15T21:27:31Z2018-12-15T21:27:20Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2018Midwaycks<div class="wikitext"><p>I know, in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2018Brief">my fall brief impressions</a> I said that I
probably wouldn't do a 'midway' post. I changed my mind because there
are a couple of things I want to note before the shows end and my views
change again.</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>SSSS.Gridman</em>: This show is amazing, and it's also reached the point
where the giant robots and kaiju fights are essential drivers
for the compelling character drama. It also continues to
sneak in straight faced jokes and absurd situations that
are both funny and <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1071655068292780032">illustrative of the strange setting</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime</em>: I caught up on this and
I'm enjoying it as straight entertainment, which is pretty much what
I was hoping for. This is not deep drama, but among other things it's
a fundamentally pleasant show. It could easily have been about war
and fighting, but instead it is ultimately about building up a
community.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Thunderbolt Fantasy S2</em>: I'll now say the thing that I didn't
really say in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2018Brief">my brief impressions</a>, which this is
not as good as the first season. It's picked up lately, but it still
lacks a vital, compelling spark that the first season had. Still, I
was very pleasantly surprised by one character in <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1072723612522741760">the latest
episode</a>.<p>
(Part of my dissatisfaction with this season is that the Mistress
of Cruelty was a punching bag from the start. There were shades of
Gen Urobuchi's treatment of her in the first season as well, but it
had other characters to make up for it.)</li>
</ul>
<p><em>SSSS Gridman</em> is amazing and the other two are perfectly enjoyable,
so I'm currently considering this a perfectly good season. That I got
back on the wagon of watching and enjoying <em>Slime</em> is nice, even if
<em>Thunderbolt Fantasy S2</em> is a little bit of a letdown. Still, I can hope
for a strong finish to the show; it definitely still has potential and
room for twists.</p>
</div>
Briefly checking in on the Fall 2018 anime season 'midway' through2018-12-19T06:36:36Z2018-12-14T21:36:45Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/FullMetalPanicNoRewatchcks<div class="wikitext"><p>Back in the days, I watched all of <em>Full Metal Panic!</em> and I remember
enjoying it pretty well (although the original <em>FMP</em> more than
<em>Fumoffu</em>); I still stand by what I said in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Memorable2002">my memorable anime from
2002</a>, including there being good reasons that people
have always wanted more of it. Then this spring when everyone finally
got their wish for more, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Midway">I completely bounced off of the new season</a>. For whatever reason, <em>FMP! Invisible Victory</em>
didn't click with me.</p>
<p>That hurt, and in the aftermath of that hurt, I thought about going back
to rewatch the original <em>Full Metal Panic!</em> for the first time since I'd
originally seen it. Part of me wanted to enjoy its magic again to make
up for <em>Invisible Victory</em> not working for me, and part of me wondered
if my fond but vague memories of the original would hold up in the light
of a rewatch or if they'd been selectively gilded by the passage of time.</p>
<p>(I'm sure there are shows that wouldn't be as good as I remember them
if I saw them again, where today they'd be far less novel and new and
I'd be more attuned to their flaws and limitations.)</p>
<p>After toying with the idea a bit, I didn't. I decided that I was better
off leaving my fond memories be, as they were. If my fond memories are
gilded, I don't need to shatter them by a rewatch. If my fond memories
are true to what I'd feel today, the honest answer is that <em>Full Metal
Panic!</em> is still not something I think of as a compelling classic,
and realistically the first season was a 24-episode 2002 production,
so if nothing else I'm sure that parts of it were slow. My wish for a
rewatch is more a product of nostalgia and my disappointment at <em>Invisible
Victory</em> not working for me than of any fundamental interest in seeing
<em>Full Metal Panic!</em> again.</p>
<p>It is, I think, a good thing to be able to leave things in the past.
I definitely enjoyed <em>Full Metal Panic!</em> back when I saw it, and that
is sufficient in itself. I don't need to revisit and critically reassess
it or in fact anything, to re-judge it by my standards today. Nor is my
enjoyment of <em>Full Metal Panic!</em> in the past injured by my feelings about
<em>Invisible Victory</em> now. Nothing is wrong with enjoying one then and not
the other now; it is just that things change. The Sousuke, Chidori, Tessa,
Mao, and the others that live in my heart are still there, as fondly
remembered as always. I had fun with them back in the days and nothing
now changes that unless I let it.</p>
<p>I don't think this is quite nostalgia, I don't yearn for the past
when I enjoyed <em>Full Metal Panic!</em>; I just appreciate that I did,
and find it sufficient without further questioning of it.</p>
<p>(There are some things where I might want to take a critical look at
what I uncritically swallowed back in the days, but I don't think <em>Full
Metal Panic!</em> is a show like that.)</p>
<p>(This is part of <a href="https://twitter.com/appropriant">@appropriant</a>'s <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/">12 Days of Anime 2018</a>.)</p>
</div>
Letting my memories be: on not rewatching <em>Full Metal Panic!</em>2018-12-14T21:05:37Z2018-12-14T21:05:22Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2017cks<div class="wikitext"><p>Yes, I know. It's practically the end of 2018, and here I am writing
about my 2017 'best N'. This is a rather delayed entry, and unlike <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2016">last
year's best N</a> it's not because I have conflicted feelings;
I just got lazy and let it slip and slip and slip. Not writing things is
easier than writing things, after all.</p>
<p>Because this is significantly delayed, I probably have a somewhat
different perspective on 2017's shows than I would have had in January
or February. The passage of time always changes my feelings about
shows; some of my immediate enthusiasms fade, while other shows rise in
my estimation. Of course this also makes an immediate end of the year
view suspect, because I will be writing it only weeks after the fall
season shows finished, with hot enthusiasms still running, but a full
nine months after the winter shows did, with cooled and more distant
reactions. But so it goes. Perhaps writing 2017's best-of so far from
the end of 2017 has given me a more even perspective on everything.</p>
<p>As usual for these retrospectives, this is what I consider to be to be
the best or most enjoyable things that I saw in calendar 2017 (regardless
of when they were made or released). As is now standard, my general rule
is that only shows that have actually ended count because you never know
what eye-rolling things a show may finish up with. Conveniently for me,
this still excludes <em>March comes in like a Lion</em>, which finished in 2018.
While <em>March</em> had a nominal season end in 2017, in terms of the show as
a whole it was just a pause.</p>
<p>(See also the <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Retrospective">winter</a>, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Retrospective">spring</a>, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Retrospective">summer</a>, and
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Retrospective">fall</a> retrospectives.)</p>
<p>More or less in order, but I'm not going to categorize exactly how
good I feel these are:</p>
<ul><li><em>Land of the Lustrous</em>: A stunning show in very many ways, both in the
presentation and in the story itself. Ultimately it was the story of
how Phos changed and was changing, and perhaps how all of the gems were
moving from their long stasis. See <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Retrospective">my fall retrospective</a> for more words and hand-waving about this very
memorable show.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid</em>: This was both a funny comedy and a
heart-touching show about (found) families. It never forgot to be
funny, but it also never forgot what the show was quietly really
about. As a show about families, it was also quietly about the
changes and accommodations you make when you form a family, which
is not a common message.<p>
(As an extension of that, it was also sort of about how you fit
yourself into friendships and a broader society around yourself.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Kemono Friends</em>: At one level this was not an amazing show, although
it was a very good one once you peeled back the superficial surface
story; it had a bunch of quietly great characters (some of them
painfully real), very solid world building, excellent use of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersAndIncluing">incluing</a>, and so on. At another level, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/KemonoFriendsMagic"><em>Kemono
Friends</em> was the magic of anime</a>. It transmuted
what should have by all means been dross into spun gold and in the
process showed everyone how unimportant many conventional aspects of
anime ultimately are in making a great show. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeq2M6_sJP8">Welcome to Japari Park</a>, now and forever.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Made in Abyss</em>: This was a generally excellent show (albeit with some
questionable aspects) with an absolutely stunning last third that
was terrifying, heart-wrenching, peculiarly beautiful, and ultimately
optimistic. In at least two episodes, <em>Made in Abyss</em> managed to achieve
the kind of genuine emotional power and impact that very few shows can
even approach. People who watched <em>Made in Abyss</em> will not be forgetting
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeSbmS06k1k">this piece of music</a>
any time soon.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Girls' Last Tour</em>: As a whole this was a quiet, beautiful, and
sometimes heartbreaking little gem, where our duo of blobby characters
in deliberately scratchy backgrounds delivered quiet meditations on
life. Perhaps I should love it more than I do, but as a whole it is a
little bit too much of a downer to live in my heart that way. As the
title says, this is the last tour through a ruined and desolate world,
however beautifully presented and however touching, and however many
things the show finds in the ruins.<p>
(Partly as a result of what <em>GLT</em> is fundamentally about, I can't
really imagine rewatching the show as a whole. Maybe little nice
moments and scenes, but nothing more.)</li>
</ul>
<p>On the edge, if I'm being honest:</p>
<ul><li><em>The Dragon Dentist</em>: This little two-episode OVA probably flew under
many people's radar, which is a mistake. <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/845843370186608641">It packed a lot into its
short run</a>,
including <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/833846501713526784">a bunch of fun stuff</a>, a quiet
optimism, and a genuine sense of heart. Oddly, one thing that elevates
it quite a bit in my regard is the opening of the second OVA, but
that's something that I can't explain without spoilers to people who
haven't seen the show.<p>
(This is on the edge because it doesn't quite stand out and stick in
my memory as the other shows do, but at the same time it's much more
than merely ordinarily good.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Old things I watched that impressed me:</p>
<ul><li><em>Iria: Zeiram the Animation</em>: This is a fun six-episode OVA from
the 1990s with a distinctly different feel from modern anime, including
in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/OldAnimeDifferentLook">its settings</a> and its character designs.
I wish we had more of its distinctly different SF feeling in modern
anime; modern SF anime designs and settings are generally pretty
predictable and thus somewhat boring. <em>Iria</em> is entertaining enough to
watch for that alone, and it's worth watching to see what we could
have if people wanted to do it.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Crusher Joe</em> is very 1980s. Both the movies and the OVAs are
entertaining in the 1980s action adventure way; they were worth watching
both for that and as pieces of animation history. There's a reason
that the movie is kind of a classic (and it's not just the first
animated appearance of the Dirty Pair, sorry, Lovely Angels).</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm kind of cheating by not trying to rank these two shows against the
current shows I watched this year, but both of them feel like such
different things from currently airing stuff that it feels impossible
to do a meaningful comparative ranking. Besides, it's my blog so I'm
allowed to cheat if I want to.</p>
<p>From here on in, we're in the category of shows that I consider good
but not necessarily memorable over the long term. There is no strong
ranking between the shows, although there is a subdivision this year.</p>
<p>Good things I want to like more than I actually do:</p>
<ul><li><em>Eccentric Family S2</em>: There were plenty of things to like about this
season but it hasn't stuck with me the way the first season did, and
at this distance it doesn't feel essential. This is pretty much what I
predicted in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Retrospective">my spring retrospective</a>, so I'm
not too surprised. I still wouldn't mind seeing more <em>Eccentric Family</em>,
though, as it was always enjoyable and I do like the characters,
the setting, and so on, so I'd be happy with seeing them gallivanting
around more.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Princess Principal</em>: This was a genuinely fun show with a lot of good
things all through it; it's definitely set a standard that many
shows like it now fail to live up to. But, as I said in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Retrospective">my summer
retrospective</a>, it was more of a prequel than
a story, and in the end this means that it lacks some degree of impact.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Senki Zesshou Symphogear AXZ</em>: This was a fine installment of the
<em>Symphogear</em> experience, with a number of nice touches. But it's not
really something that I could point to to sell people on <em>Symphogear</em>
(and not just because it's building on everything that came before),
which is kind of a pity. As a <em>Symphogear</em> season, at this distance from
it it's ordinary.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good shows that I no longer have strong feelings about:</p>
<ul><li><em>Alice & Zouroku</em>: On the one hand, this show was basically a
treasure; it's a show that focuses on children and makes it work.
On the other hand, while I have fond memories of it it's not sticky
in the way that some other shows are.<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldEnd"><em>WorldEnd</em></a>: This is a rare
show of its fundamental nature (by which I mean being a light novel)
that made everything completely work, including its ending. See <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Retrospective">my
spring retrospective</a> for more words.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Knight's & Magic</em>: This is the best popcorn show I watched all year,
because <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/KnightsMagicAndHonesty">it was so earnest and honest about what it was and what
it was doing</a>. It helps a lot that
I have a weakness for stories of this nature, what one could call
'<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/competence_porn">competence porn</a>',
and I don't mind giant robots.</li>
</ul>
<p>Finally, honorable mentions:</p>
<ul><li><em>your name</em>: This is a perfectly fine movie and it's very well made,
but I don't have strong feelings about it in the way that some people
do. I certainly don't think it's stunning except perhaps in a visual
sense, although it certainly has many nice touches and subtle details.<p>
(Part of my muted reactions to this are that I think I have a different
reaction to characters forgetting what made them the person they were
than most people do. See, for example, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/DTBGeminiUncertaintyII">my reaction to the ending of
<em>Darker Than Black</em>'s second season</a>.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Kizumonogatari</em>: The whole set of three movies was spectacular and
beautiful and periodically affecting and sometimes terrifying. But,
at the same time, it's Monogatari, which means that it has a bunch
of aspects that are very distinctive and not necessarily always to my
taste. I have divided opinions about Monogatari's quirks, for all that
I keep watching it, and as a practical matter those quirks lessen
<em>Kizumonogatari</em>'s impact on me.<p>
</li>
<li><em>ACCA - 13-Territory Inspection Department</em>: I really liked this back
at the time (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Retrospective">cf</a>) and it still stands out as
a show that is definitely about adults, but at this distance I've mostly
forgotten it. Looking back I think that one flaw of it is that while
mysteries get revealed, there is not really any character development
(for all that there is a lot of fine character interaction and it has
a great feel for atmosphere). Style is great, but apparently it can
only make a show stick so much for me; what really makes something
work is probably heart (all of which my top things of 2017 have in
full measure).</li>
</ul>
<p>(Although the last two episodes of <em>Long Riders!</em> aired in 2017, I
consider it really a 2016 show and anyway I already talked about it in
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2016">my Best N in 2016</a>. The last two episodes didn't let the
show down in any way.)</p>
<p>My notes say that I finished about 28 shows, OVAs, and movies in 2017,
which is about what I finished in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2016">2016</a> as well. As in
2016, I dropped any number of shows, including promising shows and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SadLetdowns2017">sad
letdowns</a>. Looking at my records suggest that I didn't
continue 22 things that I either sampled or actively tried to watch,
including one show where I got almost to the end before deciding not to
go on (that was <em>Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond</em>).</p>
<p>The highlights of 2017 rank pretty highly for me, at least at this
distance from them. At least the first five in my list will likely
stick with me for some time.</p>
</div>
The best N anime that I saw in 20172018-12-10T00:02:05Z2018-12-10T00:01:59Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2018Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Brief">As before</a> it's time (and well past time) for my no
longer early views of how this season has shaken out so far, following
up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2018FirstEpisodes">my first episode reactions</a>. This is
another slow season for me, but I'm happy with what I'm actively watching.</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>SSSS.Gridman</em>: This is the standout show of the season for me, but not
because of the kaiju fights; it's everything else that I really like,
especially the character drama. There are all sorts of quiet exceptional
things about <em>Gridman</em> that I'm not going to try to summarize here, and
anyway many of them are small contributors to its compelling whole.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>Thunderbolt Fantasy S2</em>: This has been slower than the first season and
so not as compelling, but it's still a solid show that is finally
starting to develop its tangled complexity, without about three or four
things going on at once.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good popcorn entertainment:</p>
<ul><li><em>That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime</em>: I like and fully enjoy this
when I get around to watching an episode, but I haven't found watching
episodes to be fully compelling and as a result I'm several episodes
behind. I have reasons for this, but the fact is that I'm not behind on
my other two shows.<p>
(One reason I don't find this as compelling is that I burned through the
manga, so I know what's coming.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Release the Spyce</em> (#2): As I put it <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1056754941182836736">on Twitter</a> when I got
around to watching the second episode, this is a perfectly serviceable
show. But at the moment I'm not really interested in a show that I find
merely serviceable.<p>
(I've also heard that <em>Spyce</em> got kind of messy later on.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>The Girl in Twilight</em> (#1): In the end I opted not to watch more than
the first episode, partly because I heard various things about further
episodes that didn't really sound like it was something that I wanted
to follow.</li>
</ul>
<p>I feel satisfied with my top two shows, and when I want some popcorn
entertainment I have <em>Slime</em> (as I'm calling it). This is way down on my
past watching level, but I don't care about that any more; I'm watching
what I want to, and not watching things just because I feel that I should.</p>
<p>PS: Given that we're basically in the middle of the season by now,
I don't expect to do a midway views entry this time around, although I
might change my mind if I decide to drop <em>Slime</em>.</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Fall 2018 anime season so far2018-11-11T22:46:53Z2018-11-11T22:46:45Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2018FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them).</p>
<ul><li>Thunderbolt Fantasy S2 episode 1: I can't figure out if Shang was
reasonably smart, rather stupid, or both at once. Also, this didn't
quite start with the bang that I was expecting; this was more setup
than anything else.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1046960413198508032">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime episode 1: I enjoyed this as
goofy, over the top fun in a genre I have a weakness for, but it's
definitely made better by having inhaled the manga first. (Among other
things, I liked spotting the changes from the manga.)
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1047698252664135681">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>The Girl in Twilight episode 1: That was an interesting start but as
usual it's all setup and doesn't say anything about where the show's
going. Still, it's interesting enough to get me to watch the next
episode.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1048070854956015616">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Release the Spyce episode 1: That was a perfectly good and enjoyable
experience. It didn't set me on fire, partly because it was a bit too
goofy, but the end means they've clearly opted to go big with the show
and I can respect that. I'll certainly watch the next episode.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1048791153884258305">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>SSS.Gridman episode #1: Okay, I'm a sucker for shows that start out
this way (teasing some mysteries, offering some hints, having weird
stuff happen), and the characters are pretty solid too. I actively
enjoyed the quiet parts before the action; there was nice interplay
there.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1049072756359417856">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>(I made a typo here; <em>SSSS.Gridman</em> has four S's, not three.)</p>
<p>This is all of the first episodes that I feel like looking at at the
moment. Other things have gotten praise, but they're in genres that
almost never work for me or don't seem appealing on a broad level. And
as far as my enthusiasm for this season actually goes, well, I'll have
to quote <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1051272392100724741">a recent tweet</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>I'm backlogged on shows already, but that's because I'd apparently
rather play around with Grafana+Prometheus rather than watch anything
I have pending (which may say something about what I've got queued).
Sorry, Slime show, but I already read the manga. Maybe later.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(This doesn't include either <em>SSSS.Gridman</em> or <em>Thunderbolt Fantasy</em>,
both of which I'm enthusiastically watching so far.)</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Fall 2018 anime season2018-10-16T02:58:23Z2018-10-16T02:58:18Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Retrospective">Once again</a> it's time for my traditional
look back at what I watched in this past Summer season, to follow
up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Brief">my early impressions</a> and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Midway">my midway views</a>. As in the spring, this is a pretty easy wrap-up
since I only watched three shows all the way through this season.</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Planet With</em>: The show always wore its heart on its sleeve, and on
the whole I think it worked, but I was left feeling that it went a bit
too fast at the end. The show's breakneck pace was great when it was
moving briskly over the standard robot show beats that we've all seen
many times before and that carried no real emotional weight, but it felt
less successful when it was speeding over things that would have built
more emotional investment. But reactions here definitely differ (<a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2018/09/27/summer-2018-week-12-in-review/">cf</a>).<p>
(Unlike some shows, it doesn't feel like <em>Planet With</em> was forced to
condense itself because of limited run time. All of its choices about
speed seemed carefully designed and entirely deliberate, although they
were obviously strongly influenced by its episode count.)<p>
On the whole I think <em>Planet With</em> was a great show, always enjoyable
and exciting, with excellent characters and many little touches. It
left any number of things not said explicitly but implied sufficiently
much that we could get it if we paid attention, which is something I
always enjoy. It also deliberately made it clear that we were not
seeing everything important about the lives of these characters, just
a small slice; this was most explicit in the last two episodes, where
it made a point of alluding to various off-screen things.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight</em>: In the end the show's strong focus on
its message and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/RevueStarlightTheatrical">the theatrical parts of its presentation</a> left me with a lack of emotional investment
in the characters and the show as a whole. I like and admire the show,
I think it did some really impressive things on a technical level
(with its directing, layouts, and so on), I'm glad that it exists, I
enjoyed watching it, I believe that it's doing good work, but in the
end I don't think I care very much emotionally or that the show will
stick with me. My involvement in the show was mostly intellectual,
apart from Daiba Nana (who needed a hug and got one in the end, good
for <em>Revue Starlight</em>).<p>
<em>Revue Starlight</em> is very entangled in the Takarazuka Revue,
so it will perhaps land with more impact on people who
care about it and who are sufficiently familiar to clearly
see the messages <em>RS</em> has to send without the guidance of
something like <a href="https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/category/editorialsessays/shoujo-%e2%98%86-kageki-revue-starlight-editorials-essays/">Atelier Emily's essential writing on the show</a>.<p>
(See also <a href="http://www.someanithing.com/9815#starlight">this review</a>,
which hits a lot more points. Also, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1047336389640110080">my tweets in reaction to the last
episode</a>.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Popcorn educational entertainment:</p>
<ul><li><em>Cells at Work!</em>: This slowed down in the last portions in the sense
that they seemed to run a bit low on interesting educational things to
show us and wound up leaning more on the characters to carry episodes.
Since <em>Cells</em> doesn't really have characters that it's possible to
become strongly invested in, this didn't entirely work for me. But the
whole thing was still worth watching as popcorn entertainment.</li>
</ul>
<p>I feel satisfied with this season as a whole, partly because I no longer
feel compelled to fill up all of my spare time with anime.</p>
<p>(I also watched some of the first <em>Overlord</em> series and plan to get
back to see more at some point. It's ridiculous and overpowered in a
way that amuses me.)</p>
</div>
Looking back at the Summer 2018 anime season2019-03-09T22:18:49Z2018-10-07T21:04:38Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/RevueStarlightTheatricalcks<div class="wikitext"><p>On Twitter I've been periodically calling <em>Revue Starlight</em> 'theatrical'.
Perhaps surprisingly, I'm not talking about its swordfight segments,
where people duel each other on fantastical settings while also (perhaps)
singing about it; that's actually one of the least theatrical elements
of <em>Revue Starlight</em>, in the sense that I have in mind.</p>
<p>In most shows, even ones that are fantastical or aren't set in this
world, the events and actions we see are intended to be real within the
show's setting (or at least to the characters, since they may sometimes
be hallucinating or imagining things and we see the world through their
eyes). <em>Thunderbolt Fantasy</em> may be a highly stylized and arch fantasy,
but all of those crazy fights and exchanges of dialog are real within the
show; they are what actually happened. The same is true of <em>Mushishi</em>,
<em>Gun Gale Online</em>, and even pretty much for <em>Yurikuma Arashi</em>.</p>
<p>This is also true for the sword fighting segments of <em>Revue Starlight</em>,
as the second episode makes clear; we are told outright that they really
happened. But as we are also shown no later than the fourth episode, it's
not always the case for the rest of <em>Revue Starlight</em>. <strong>Some of what
we are seeing in the anime is not real even within the show itself</strong>. In
these segments we're seeing a shorthand, abstracted, excerpted version of
the actual 'real in the show' events, something that is intended to evoke
the real thing instead of being it. We are tacitly seeing a stage play
of what happened, with the sets and scene changes and so on visible,
instead of what happened. It is in this sense that I say that <em>Revue
Starlight</em> is <em>theatrical</em>. Just as a theatre performance may be done so
that we are aware that we are watching a theatre performance that depicts
'real' events, we are aware in <em>Revue Starlight</em> that we are watching
a performance that has been chopped and diced and reformed for us,
not the show's reality.</p>
<p>(Theatre performances can also be made with the intention of making
it feel real to the audience, of course, and many are.)</p>
<p>This decision fits in with <em>Revue Starlight</em>'s other decisions, of
course; the show is not shy about what it is doing or why. But for
me it adds an extra layer of distancing unreality between the show's
characters and me. I'm not entirely seeing people doing things, I'm
seeing a performance. It's a nice performance and I admire the artistry
of many segments of it, but.</p>
<p>(And for me <em>Revue Starlight</em> was most successful where it was not so
self-consciously a performance, when it was much more animating the
show's reality.)</p>
<p>PS: As <em>Yurikuma Arashi</em> shows, you don't have to be theatrical in this
way to have your show be mostly in service to metaphors and themes. To put
it one way, that things happen because ultimately they are a big metaphor
doesn't mean that things don't happen. The puppet strings show, of course,
but they generally do if metaphor is the most important thing to the work.</p>
<p>(This elaborates on <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1046870307301208066">some tweets of mine</a> and is
something that's been revolving around my head since I started calling
<em>Revue Starlight</em> 'theatrical' on Twitter.)</p>
</div>
The unusual theatricality of <em>Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight</em>2018-10-07T20:56:58Z2018-10-07T20:56:58Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Midwaycks<div class="wikitext"><p>I seem to have settled on a pattern of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018FirstEpisodes">first episode reactions</a>, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Brief">early impressions around the fourth episode
mark</a>, and these 'midway' views about two thirds of the
way through the season (so around episode eight). This point is far enough
into the season that most shows have settled into their course and I have
pretty solid opinions on them, which makes it a good time to take stock
(and sometimes to admit that I've dropped some of them, although not this
season).</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Planet With</em>: This has remained a great show, one that's moving at a
breakneck pace and with full awareness of what it's doing. The show's
full of little touches, fine moments, and excellent characters, and
I can't wait for each episode.<p>
One thing I like about <em>Planet With</em> is how quietly clever and
sophisticated it is without rubbing our noses into certain things.
Various of the characters and organizations in action in the show
are being questionable, but the show is not going to tell us that;
it's just going to have some characters say some things, and then
show us some stuff, and we can draw our own conclusions. In this
it favourably reminds me of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/UNGOPraise"><em>UN-GO</em></a>.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight</em>: I've come around to the view that
this is an explicitly theatrical show even in its normal side, which
makes me accept certain things that I would otherwise consider overdone.
It's a solid show in general, and episode 7 has made me even more
interested in rewatching the early episodes at some point (although
I have no idea if I'm ever going to get around to that, as I'm bad at
rewatching things).<p>
If you're watching <em>Revue Starlight</em>, I'd strongly encourage you to read
<a href="https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/">Atelier Emily</a>'s writing on
it (but beware of spoilers, you should be completely current on the show
before visiting, and <a href="https://twitter.com/AJtheFourth">@AJtheFourth</a>
often publishes new entries on Friday, the day the show comes out
in Japan).</li>
</ul>
<p>Popcorn educational entertainment:</p>
<ul><li><em>Cells at Work!</em>: This doesn't have any real characters that I can care
about (although it has characterization) and it only sort of has
action, but what's kept me watching is that it's both entertaining
and educational. I got scraped up a bit recently and having watched
<em>Cells at Work!</em> made it <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1029546623918067712">a different experience</a>.<p>
(With that said, I'm not sure it's going to stay interesting as it
goes on longer. There's already a feeling that it's reaching for
more obscure and less interesting topics.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Phantom in the Twilight</em> (#4): I ran out of interest basically
immediately after <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Brief">my early impressions</a>, when
the next episode seemed to be a 'supernatural creature of the week'
episode instead of moving the plot forward and I decided I wasn't
that enthused.</li>
</ul>
<p>This feels like a good season, even though I'm only watching three
shows, and I feel like I lived up to my resolution from <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Midway">last season's
midway views</a>. Two of the three shows I'm watching are
very good, and the third makes for surprisingly compelling educational
material with periodic funny bits.</p>
</div>
Checking in on the Summer 2018 anime season 'midway' through2018-09-02T03:30:14Z2018-09-02T03:30:04Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2018Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Brief">As before</a> it's time for my relatively early views
of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2018FirstEpisodes">my first
episode reactions</a>. At this point I'm three or
four episodes into everything I'm still watching, which is long enough
for the shows to have shown their cards.</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Planet With</em>: This is a great show and very much one of the kinds of
thing that I enjoy. All sorts of things are happening and the show's
definitely not making us wait around to get revelations. The characters
are pretty great, the events happening are weird and interesting, and
the plot twists are one part surprises and one part predictable but not
being drawn out. I can't wait for each new episode.</li>
</ul>
<p>Enjoyable but I'm not sure I understand it:</p>
<ul><li><em>Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight</em>: There's a lot going on in the show
and I'm pretty sure I don't understand it all, even though I find it
very interesting to watch. This is the kind of show that feels like
I'll get a bunch more out of it on a rewatch. Since the show is so
relatively cryptic to me at the moment I don't have much more to say
except that I'm enjoying watching, especially the wild spectacular
bits.<p>
(The portions of the character beats that I can follow are interesting
too.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Popcorn entertainment:</p>
<ul><li><em>Cells at Work!</em>: I think I'm following this because it's hitting the
right combination of entertaining and educational. Without the steady
supply of interesting information about how bodies work I probably
wouldn't care enough about what's going on; as it is, it's pretty
entertaining even if it's a bit predictable.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Phantom in the Twilight</em>: This is definitely popcorn entertainment
(for me) but so far it's kept having enough action and plot twists
to keep me watching. I'm not particularly close to any of the
characters, but it does have them and they're reasonably interesting.
I suspect that it may be about to get mired in more boring material
so I'll drop it, but we'll see.</li>
</ul>
<p>I decided that I wasn't interested enough in either <em>Angolmois</em> or
<em>Sirius the Jaeger</em> to give either of them a second episode. Their
first episodes were perfectly good action shows but they failed to
engage me very much beyond watching the spectacle, and apparently
just action spectacle is no longer enough to keep me around (which
feels like a change from the past).</p>
<p>Two solid shows and two additional shows for entertainment is down
on my past watching levels but it feels about right for me today,
and if I wind up dropping the bottom two I don't feel like I'll
regret it. Apparently I no longer feel the urge to fill up all of
my spare time with anime watching.</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Summer 2018 anime season so far2018-08-04T23:10:01Z2018-08-04T23:09:54Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Retrospective">Once again</a> it's time for my traditional
look back at what I watched in this past Spring season, to follow up
on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Brief">my early impressions</a> and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Midway">my 'midway' views</a>. Even if I was lazy about it, this is an easy
wrap-up because I only finished two shows, each excellent in their
own way.</p>
<ul><li><em>Sword Art Online Alternative - Gun Gale Online</em>: This had many good
aspects that I could rave about, but above all it was pure fun from
start to end (they even managed to make the 'episode 5.5' recap great,
although it helps to watch it after you've finished the show so you
get the undertones). The characters were great and worked well with
each other, everyone was enjoying themselves in the game, the twists
of the action were great, and the actual comedy was funny. It even
managed to pull off being serious every so often.<p>
<em>Gun Gale Online</em> is my new standard of excellence in popcorn fun
action shows.<p>
(With that said, the show probably was about exactly the right length
and I'm not sure you could make more that still was as good as this
was.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Hisone and Masotan</em>: I don't fully understand what happened at the
end there and I'm not sure how I feel about one aspect of the epilogue,
but the show as a whole was a great ride and quietly took a point of
view that I whole-heartedly agree with. It also had that rare thing, a
romance and a romantic pairing that I could actually believe in (partly
because the two people in question didn't start out that way at all).<p>
(This was deeper than <em>GGO</em> but not as purely and easily entertaining;
this spring, that put <em>GGO</em> on top as my most anticipated and eagerly
watched show.)</li>
</ul>
<p>I dropped all three of the shows that I expected I'd probably dropped in
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Midway">my 'midway' views</a>. There's nothing deeply wrong with any of them
(with the possible exception of <em>DarliFra</em>), I just stopped being
interested enough to watch more.</p>
<p>The two shows I finished were both great (in that I deeply enjoyed both of
them), and that's enough to make the Spring season a pretty good one. My
snap assessment is that it's better overall than <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Retrospective">the winter season</a>, or at the very least it had more shows that
I felt like throwing myself into watching every week when they came out.</p>
</div>
Looking back at the Spring 2018 anime season2018-07-26T01:38:44Z2018-07-26T01:38:39Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2018FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them). This is a sparse season for me.</p>
<ul><li>Cells at Work! episode 1: That was reasonably fun and amusing, but
the basic conceit feels like it's a one-episode show. I guess I'll
see if next episode can do anything particularly novel and interesting.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1015788583070961664">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Planet With episode 1: That was simultaneously quietly fun (and funny),
deliberately confusing, and definitely interesting. I'm intrigued and
I want to see more. A bunch of the show's look feels deliberately 90s
or early 00s in a way we don't see any more.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1015789556652822528">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>I tried watching Chio's School Road and its humor didn't work well
enough for me to keep me watching more than a few minutes. Part of
it is that I don't like laughing at ostensible (and sympathetic)
protagonists and it felt like it was heading that way.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1015804832991666177">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Phantom in the Twilight episode 1: That was a pretty energetic and
entertaining start. I like it. Our protagonist is not one of the ones
that have to be prodded into motion; she's right out there cheerfully
throwing herself into things.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1016524903204483072">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Angolmois episode 1: That was pretty nicely done, with little flab
or flailing and good directing and all that (I could have lived without
that filter). I'm just not yet sold on the story itself or engaged
with the characters themselves. Still, it was nice.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1017238581381877760">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Revue Starlight episode 1: That was a pretty interesting presentation
and the end of the episode was great, but I'm not sure I'm really
interested in the apparent story here. We'll see; I'm certainly watching
the next episode.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1018336050735976448">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Sirius the Jaeger episode 1: This is stylish (or trying to be) and
it had some good action, but there wasn't really anything else there
and it certainly didn't try to tell us much of anything about the
characters.<p>
(It feels kind of 80s in an odd way.)
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1020503441301491712">#</a></li>
</ul>
<p>This covers everything that I seem likely to be enough interested in
to watch the first episodes of. I've seen both <em>Hanabado</em> and <em>Harukana
Receive</em> get praise as reasonably nice sports shows, but sports shows are
almost always not my thing and neither seems strong enough to overcome
that. None of the other comedies are appealing, and while <em>Holmes of
Kyoto</em> seems okay, I think that niche is already filled this season with
<em>Phantom in the Twilight</em>.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Summer 2018 season2018-07-22T19:56:04Z2018-07-22T19:55:56Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Midwaycks<div class="wikitext"><p>Increasingly, these midway entries are where I'm put face to face with
what I'm actually watching and what I'm enjoying, and I have to admit to
it (either in public or to myself; the latter can be harder). If I was
still happy with everything in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Brief">my early impressions</a>,
this wouldn't amount to much, but as you might guess from me writing this,
I'm not. In fact this season has been especially bad.</p>
<p>So it's time for me to face up to some awkward things and admit them,
by talking about what I'm watching and not watching.</p>
<p>Fully enjoying:</p>
<ul><li><em>Sword Art Online Alternative - Gun Gale Online</em>: This has stayed a
great entertainment watch all through, with plenty of twists and turns
that have basically all been <em>fun</em>. LLENN is a great character, as is
basically everyone around her, and the result is something that I look
forward to each week.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Hisone and Masotan</em> is a solid mix of genuine fun and interesting,
sometimes touching developments. The overall plot has turned out to
be an interesting mixture of genuinely interesting things and pure
fun craziness, as have various additional characters who've been
slowly accumulating.</li>
</ul>
<p>Suspended and probably dropped if I'm being honest:</p>
<ul><li><em>My Hero Academia</em> (#46): The show is pretty much the same as it always
has been; I've just basically run out of enthusiasm for its shonen jive
(to borrow a term from <a href="https://karmaburn.com/">Evirus</a>).<p>
</li>
<li><em>Megalo Box</em> (#9): The episodes are fine by themselves but the characters
have been a bit too iconic to really engage me, and it is ultimately
a sports drama, which usually doesn't work for me. I'm pretty sure there's
a plot twist coming in the next episode that I'm not going to enjoy, so
I'm just sitting on things.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Darling in the FranXX</em> (#19): It's not that the show has done anything
worse than usual, it's just that I've been feeling less and less
enthused about its usual as episodes have piled up. <em>FranXX</em> has
had some good stuff, but it's also had a lot of things that don't
have the impact that the show's wanted. I agree with <a href="https://karmaburn.com/?p=8059">Evirus's view</a> on the whole, but I don't think I
appreciate what it's trying as much as he does.<p>
(I used to call <em>DarliFra</em> popcorn entertainment and it still is in
a way, it's just that <em>Gun Gale Online</em> does it so much better and
I don't really need to spend my time watching anime that I'm meh
on.)</li>
</ul>
<p>It's possible that I'll watch more of any of these three, but at the
moment, having actually written this down, it feels unlikely. I'm not
really on the edge about any of them; I just haven't been willing to admit
it. And there's a bit of me that whispers that I've already watched so
much of both <em>MHA</em> and <em>FranXX</em> so why not see them through.</p>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Golden Kamuy</em> (#5): As usual there's nothing wrong with the show, it's
just that I wasn't particularly enjoying it and I didn't care about
all of the plotting and machinations going on. I guess that I'm not
that into bloody adventure stories, even if Asirpa had good faces and
various characters had fun interactions in general.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory</em> (#3): Oh, this one hurts. But
somewhere in the decade or so since the last <em>FMP</em> and this one,
the magic all leaked out for me, and after a while I became willing
to admit it to myself. Plain and simply, I found I had no interest
in watching the fourth episode and I didn't feel like I was missing
anything by walking away.</li>
</ul>
<p>Given my final comments in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Brief">my early impressions</a>,
I apparently had the feeling that things were going to turn out this
way basically from the start. Now that I've managed to admit that I'm
only really watching two shows and I've probably dropped everything
else, I find that I'm fine with the situation. If I really wanted to
watch more anime, there are old shows I have waiting. In the mean time,
there's plenty of other things to do.</p>
<p>(My resolution for next season is to drop things faster if I'm not
genuinely enjoying them, no matter what I may feel. The sunk cost
fallacy is dangerous, especially when it comes to something like
<em>Darling in the FranXX</em>.)</p>
</div>
Checking in on the Spring 2018 anime season 'midway' through2018-06-16T02:14:04Z2018-06-16T02:14:00Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2018Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Brief">As before</a>, it's time for my relatively early views
of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2018FirstEpisodes">my first
episode reactions</a>. At this point I've seen
anywhere from three to five episodes of the shows I'm following (or two
for one special case), and that gap says a lot about how I seem to be
feeling this season. There are a couple of shows that I enthusiastically
follow, and then a big gap to a bunch of things that I'm watching
without much drive. As a result, this season I'm using a different
rating breakdown than before.</p>
<p>Eagerly watching immediately:</p>
<ul><li><em>Sword Art Online Alternative - Gun Gale Online</em>: If you'd told me
before the start of the season that a SAO show would be one of the
top shows I look forward to every week, I wouldn't have believed
you. But <em>GGO</em> is almost nothing like regular SAO (for example, it's
completely Kirito-free), and the result has been pretty sharp and
definitely enjoyable. We're not getting deep or complex storytelling,
but it's a fun ride and the show pulls off it straightforward story
well.<p>
(In other words this is pretty much a popcorn show, but it's a great
popcorn show so far.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Hisone and Masotan</em>: Unsurprisingly, the show didn't manage to stay
quite as manic and stunning as the first episode, but what we've got
since then is still quite good (although I wish the show would stomp
on <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/993000516367081472">one particular thing</a>). I'm not
sure we need an overall plot, since what I'm really here for is all
of the characters interacting with each other, but I suppose it gives
the show an excuse for that to happen.</li>
</ul>
<p>Backlogged on:</p>
<ul><li><em>Golden Kamuy</em>: This has all the ingredients to be a show that clicks
with me but it hasn't so far. It's fun to watch, though, and genuinely
tense and compelling on a moment to moment basis when it wants to be
(as well as periodically funny). I just can't bring myself to care
about all the maneuverings and goings on yet.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Megalo Box</em>: This has done various things that I really like and
it can be quite good on a moment to moment basis, but right now I'm
an episode or two behind so it clearly hasn't grabbed and compelled
me. I wish the artwork didn't look as blurred as it does.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory</em>: It's been so long since the
last <em>Full Metal Panic!</em> show that my feelings for these characters
have grown distant, and unfortunately the show did basically nothing to
rekindle them before throwing us into the press of various events. The
result is something that feels not so much unnecessary as if its time
has passed, and that makes me sort of sad. I feel that I should love
this, but I don't.<p>
</li>
<li><em>My Hero Academia</em>: I think I may be burning out on this long-running
shonen show. Everyone says that the latest episodes are really great,
and maybe they will be once I watch them, but at the moment (when I'm
not watching) my reaction is muted. I've seen a lot of these characters
already and I know that nothing big is going to happen, because that's
the nature of long-running shonen works.<p>
(Possibly I'm wrong about the 'nothing big', because <em>MHA</em> has had
character development for many characters, but still.)</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm also backlogged on <em>Darling in the FranXX</em>, which continues to be
very itself for both good and bad.</p>
<p>Suspended and pretty much dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Hinamatsuri</em> (#3): It's reasonably charming and funny but it's not
<em>Alice & Zoroku</em>, and in practice I haven't been able to summon enough
enthusiasm to watch more.<p>
</li>
<li><em>GeGeGe no Kitaro</em> (#2): Sadly, that it's a kids show is a bit too
apparent for me to get pulled into this. It's nice and I'm sure it's
quite watchable, but apparently 'quite watchable' is not what I'm
looking for this season.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Lupin III Part V</em> (#2): I think that <em>The Woman Called Mine Fujiko</em> has
basically spoiled me for most Lupin TV series. This was perfectly okay
but it didn't leave me with any burning desire to see the next episode.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These</em> (#2): I would have to
call this 'ponderous'. If you're already sold on the franchise and the
characters, I imagine that this is a good version of it, but I'm not
and I've read enough science fiction that does this sort of stuff
better (or at least in ways that keep me reading it).</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm really enjoying my two anticipated and watched as soon as I
can shows, and otherwise I'm hoping that something will re-ignite my
interest and enthusiasm about the other shows, even to the extent that I
stop putting off watching them. Perhaps my gut is speaking to me here,
but only watching two shows this season would be a really big change
(and I do want to see where <em>Darling in the FranXX</em> goes, even if it
winds up being a trainwreck).</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Spring 2018 anime season so far2018-05-08T03:00:57Z2018-05-08T03:00:17Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Retrospective">Once again</a> it's time (and past time) for my
traditional look back at what I watched in this past Winter season, to
follow up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Brief">my early impressions</a> and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Midway">my midway
views</a>. In general this has been a reasonably good
season, with some very nice high points.</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Laid-Back Camp</em>: This stayed the course all the way through and then
gave us a great epilogue at the end of the last episode, one that
showed how both our protagonists had developed. Rin was always the
heart of the show and I'm glad that the show respected her and her
independent ways, while still gently involving her in the Outclub's
activities.</li>
</ul>
<p>As it ever was:</p>
<ul><li><em>March comes in like a Lion</em>: As I pretty much expected, this didn't
come to any particularly definite conclusion but instead just sort of
found a good ending point in the last episode, one that emphasized how
time had passed and characters had changed.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good but could have been much more:</p>
<ul><li><em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em>: Despite showing flashes of more in the
ending couple of episodes, I can't get over my feelings that this
doesn't measure up to the manga and was in the end a merely ordinary
adaptation. As an ordinary adaptation it's not a bad thing, it's just
what I wanted more.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Violet Evergarden</em>: After writing up <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Midway">my midway views</a>, I decided
I was done. I don't regret my decision.</li>
</ul>
<p>In ongoing shows, <em>Darling in the FranXX</em> is ongoing and remains
essentially a popcorn show for me. It's a nice looking popcorn show with
good production values, but I'm not really expecting anything from it
any more. In Netflix shows, I have yet to finish <em>A.I.C.O. - Incarnation</em>
but I probably will at some point.</p>
<p>Finishing only three shows this season (and with a fourth one
continuing) feels like it's below par but probably isn't all that
far out of line with my general trends in anime watching, where I've
steadily become more selective and grumpy.</p>
<p>(Also, I actually finished five shows if I count <em>Devilman Crybaby</em> and
<em>B - The Beginning</em>, which I really ought to, since they took up their
own share of my anime watching time. When I put it that way this isn't
such an unusual season any more.)</p>
</div>
Looking back at the Winter 2018 anime season2018-05-08T02:38:50Z2018-05-08T02:38:45Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2018FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them).</p>
<ul><li>Lupin III Part V episode 1: It's Lupin. It's not bad. I wish I was more
enthusiastic, and I also wish that they hadn't explained one
particular trick Lupin pulled (the explanation was too crazy).
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/982114362843254784">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>SAO Alternative - Gun Gale Online #1: That was reasonably fun and left
me looking forward to finding out where the next episode will
go. However, this episode was all background setup, so I have no idea
where the show's going to be about in the long run.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/982752151414992897">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Persona 5 The Animation episode 1: This was quite stylish, kind of
okay as an action show, and relatively incomprehensible. It feels like
a show that's only aimed at people who've already played the game.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/982842528981573632">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Cutie Honey Universe episode 1: This seems pretty clearly made for
people who are fully familiar with the CH mythology. I'm not really,
so it was mostly a parade of bizarre & relatively inexplicable
things happening, one that left me with next to no interest in the
next episode.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/983200032907243520">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>GeGeGe no Kitaro episode 1: That was definitely fun, in a wholesome
old-fashioned style (I'd argue even including the surprise at the
end). I'm certainly going to watch more although I'm not sure it'll
hold my interest over the long run.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/983322382503960576">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These episode 1: I'm not sure
I like any of the people we've seen so far (or the battle as such),
but it sure had me on the edge of my seat anyway and I want to see
the next episode. (Also, I hate the show's full name.)
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/983927500664397824">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Golden Kamuy episode 1: Wow, that sure was a terrible couple of bears.
My eyes still hurt. Otherwise, it was okay but hard to get a grip on
for various reasons. Maybe I'll know what I feel about it in a couple
more episodes.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/983928654664257538">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory episode 1: I'm not sure what I
feel about this episode after so long, but it's got all of the Full
Metal Panic! things going for it. It's good to see these people again;
it brings back fond memories.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/985008760950321153">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Hisone to Masotan episode 1: Oh wow, that was an excellent first
episode. Beautiful, funny, touching, lovely, and really well done. I
have no words. I want to watch it again, and then see the next episode
right away. This is great stuff so far.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/985022628229472256">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Hinamatsuri episode 1: That was unexpectedly charming, in addition to
being reasonably funny every so often (which is more than many comedy
shows manage).
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/985675732025331719">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Megalo Box episode 1: That was an excellent first episode. The show
pretty much nails the feel of its genre; the only bits that feel off
are the shiny pretty bits. It may be a classic riff but it's a well
told one.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/986458004726927360">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>This pretty much covers all of the shows that seems
reasonably attractive to me, given my usual tastes. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wotakoi:_Love_is_Hard_for_Otaku"><em>Wotakoi</em></a> is getting
a fair degree of praise, but <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/OrdinaryLifeSettings">its setting</a> and
genre don't usually work for me (I dropped <em>Recovery of an MMO Junkie</em>
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Midway">back in the fall</a>, for example).</p>
<p>(I've decided that if I'm going to make time for any of the 'Gundam
Build' series of shows, I'd rather try watching the original <em>Gundam
Build Fighters</em> than start with <em>Gundam Build Divers</em>.)</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Spring 2018 season2018-07-08T02:40:41Z2018-04-20T00:54:00Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/CrunchyrollLinuxVideocks<div class="wikitext"><p>I use Linux and I I subscribe to <a href="http://www.crunchyroll.com/">Crunchyroll</a>, which gives me a set of interesting
problems since Crunchyroll's desktop video player is still Flash-based.
There probably aren't many other people that this applies to, but I'm
still going to write down some notes about whole area. Note that I'm
using X, not Wayland; things very likely will be different for Wayland
for various reasons.</p>
<p>First off, I use Chrome for this, not any other browser (including
Chromium). Google's official binary Chrome packages include a bundled
version of Adobe Flash that's more up to date and featureful than the
separate 'NPAPI' Linux version that Adobe somewhat reluctantly still
makes available as a separate download. This is especially relevant
because apparently one of the things not in the NPAPI version is GPU
acceleration (per <a href="https://www.pcworld.com/article/3116409/linux/adobe-revives-flash-for-firefox-on-linux-after-axing-it-four-years-ago.html">here</a>;
Chrome is using the 'PPAPI' version).</p>
<p>(You can apparently download the PPAPI version from Adobe and integrate
it into Chromium, but I don't know anything about this. I'm lazy, so I
just use Chrome and hold my nose.)</p>
<p>The Linux version of Flash has historically not had the best
support for efficient video playback, including hardware
acceleration. Based on investigation with <a href="https://github.com/clbr/radeontop">radeontop</a> and <a href="https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/intel-gpu-tools/">intel_gpu_top</a> on Fedora 27 on
two difference machines, the current version of Chrome's Flash appears
to not use hardware video acceleration for Crunchyroll's non-windowed
full screen mode. Full screen video seems to be entirely CPU-based,
and apparently single core only (so what matters is high single-core
performance). However, playback inside a Chrome window is hardware
accelerated, including their 'pop out' mode. Thus, if you want to be sure
you're getting hardware accelerated video playback (and you probably do)
and full screen, you want to use the 'pop out' mode and then maximize
the resulting browser window (probably with your window manager's feature
for this, not with F11).</p>
<p>(This probably won't be ideal if you have a 16:9 screen, because you'll
lose some space to window manager decorations and probably shrink the
video slightly. Luckily I have a 16:10 display so I'm not affected
by this. Sufficiently clever people using the right window manager
might be able to hack their window manager to skip decorations on these
windows.)</p>
<p>I've mostly tested with Crunchyroll's 720(p) streams. I'm not entirely
convinced that either of my Linux machines can really smoothly play
back its 1080 streams even with (some) hardware acceleration at work,
although it's hard to know for sure without some way of getting access
to stats on frame drops. I'm also not sure how much improvement there
really is in Crunchyroll's version of 1080 in general; I've at least
heard rumblings about bitrate limits and other things (especially once
an episode's been out for a few days), and also that a certain number
of shows are not really 1080 to start with and the biggest benefit you
might get is a slightly better upscale from 720.</p>
<p>As a disclaimer, your mileage may vary based on the specific GPUs
involved. I expect these results to apply to any reasonably modern AMD
and integrated Intel graphics, but I don't know about nVidia cards.
Hopefully they're at least as accelerated for video playback from Flash
in Chrome. Also, I'm not completely sure what's happening with Intel
graphics, because I seem to get the same sort of GPU usage reported
in straight playback and in fullscreen mode (unlike the AMD GPU, where
Crunchyroll's full screen mode shows no GPU activity in <a href="https://github.com/clbr/radeontop">radeontop</a>).</p>
<p>I assume that Crunchyroll will someday switch over to HTML5 video
playback (hopefully before browsers stop supporting Flash, unless
CR intends to entirely abandon desktop users). When that happens,
much of this will hopefully stop being an issue, since HTML5 is
hopefully much better integrated and much more likely to be hardware
accelerated. Certainly on my machine with integrated Intel graphics,
full screen HTML5 playback of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1iz4L-5zkQ">this pretty dynamic 720p YT video</a> is smooth in both Firefox
and Chrome.</p>
<p>(Conveniently, the Youtube HTML5 video player will give you data on
frame drops, as part of the 'stats for nerds'. I see no drops in my
playback runs.)</p>
<p>If you're playing videos in <a href="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/">gmplayer</a>
and quite possibly other standalone Linux video players,
you likely want to make sure you're using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU">VDPAU</a> on modern hardware
(see also <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hardware_video_acceleration">the Arch wiki page on hardware video acceleration</a>).
As I found out recently, if you ever explicitly told gmplayer to use some
video output driver (perhaps to override its defaults to pick a better
one on your system at the time), it remembers this and won't automatically
switch to the best video acceleration method that it can find. To fix
this you can either explicitly give it an appropriate <code>-vo</code> output
(eg '<code>-vo vdpau</code>') or manually delete the <code>vo_driver</code> line from
<code>~/.mplayer/gui.conf</code>, which resets gmplayer to using whatever it
decides is the best option.</p>
<p>(Using VDPAU may require additional Linux packages that aren't installed
by default, but hopefully not.)</p>
<p>PS: <a href="https://github.com/clbr/radeontop">radeontop</a> confirms that video playback in gmplayer with VDPAU
is hardware accelerated, probably more so than Flash in Chrome based on
the amount of GPU usage.</p>
<p>PPS: If you want to know system details for the two machines
I'm testing on, they're <a href="https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/WorkMachine2017">this machine with a Radeon RX 550</a> and
<a href="https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/HomeMachine2018">this machine with current-generation Intel UDH 630 integrated graphics</a>.
Both have very good CPUs, so their CPU should not be a limit unless
there's no hardware acceleration going on at all.</p>
<h3>Sidebar: Why it's hard to tell with integrated Intel graphics (and Wayland)</h3>
<p>These days, <a href="https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/XCoffeeLakeDriverQuestion">even basic X uses the GPU with integrated Intel
graphics</a>,
which complicates trying to tell if Flash is using special hardware
acceleration; even perfectly normal X things can light up the GPU.
This usually isn't the case on AMD GPUs. Also, for what it's worth,
Flash playback on the integrated Intel graphics system seems to use
more CPU than on the AMD GPU system.</p>
<p>(It's also possible that <a href="https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/intel-gpu-tools/">intel_gpu_top</a> only captures
some information about GPU usage. Strikingly, it reports no
GPU usage for HTML5 video playback in Firefox on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1iz4L-5zkQ">my test video</a>, although the playback is
drop-free and Firefox's CPU usage is not saturating a single core. Playing
the same video in Chrome with HTML5 reports some GPU usage.)</p>
<p>Similarly, Wayland intrinsically uses OpenGL and thus the GPU's hardware
acceleration for it. This may be at a different and lower level than
genuine hardware accelerated video playback, but one would have to pay
close attention (including to CPU usage) to be sure.</p>
<p>I guess the ultimate moral here is that Linux users won't know for sure
unless video playback problems become clear and obvious, or Crunchyroll
someday gives us access to stats on frame drops, bitrate reductions,
and so on so we can see if there are quiet problems in our setups. Sane
people probably use Windows (or Macs) and likely don't have to care about
this.</p>
</div>
Some notes on watching Crunchyroll shows on Linux (March 2018 edition)2018-03-31T07:17:20Z2018-03-31T07:17:15Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Midwaycks<div class="wikitext"><p>I know, calling this 'midway' is a bit rich, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Midway">even for me</a>. But I haven't seen the end of any of the shows
I'm watching, so I want to write down some things before I start
changing that, as an update on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Brief">my earlier impressions of this season</a>.</p>
<p>Smash hit of the season:</p>
<ul><li><em>Laid-Back Camp</em>: This has stayed ridiculously engaging all the way
through, with hardly a misstep. As I expected I'm much more interested
in Rin's solo camping sections, with their focus on the mechanics and
the beauty of the experience, than on the Outclub's 'gang of friends'
segments. But even the latter are a solid experience (in moderation),
and the whole show is my clear winner this season.</li>
</ul>
<p>Generally excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>March comes in like a Lion</em>: After stalling on this for quite a while,
I motivated myself into watching it and it's still as solid and as good
as always.</li>
</ul>
<p>Popcorn with flashes of something more:</p>
<ul><li><em>Darling in the FranXX</em>: It's not that the show is bad; it's just
that it's disappointing on multiple levels. But every
so often it pulls off a surprise or <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/972626185434918913">a very good episode</a>, and outside
of that it's good popcorn entertainment if you can hold your nose
about certain aspects.</li>
</ul>
<p>Surprisingly good, I think:</p>
<ul><li><em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em> changed my opinion of it with the last
episode, which is the first episode that I hadn't read the manga
version of first. It came across as a quite good episode, so I'm
swinging around to the idea that I've been somewhat too hard on
the show because it generally hasn't been living up to the manga.</li>
</ul>
<p>Either on the edge of being dropped or dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Violet Evergarden</em> (#10): The show is beautiful (and I'm not just
talking about the art), and when I watch an episode it mostly pulls me
in to the moment. But then the episode ends and I immediately wind up
pulling back from it. I don't think I feel intrinsically engaged with
any of the characters; the show is so well put together that it makes
me care anyway when I'm watching, but outside of that I feel distant
from it, with very little urge to watch it. Between episodes, watching
feels more like an obligation than anything else.<p>
I may finish up the show just because, but ultimately if you told me
that I couldn't watch any more than I already have, I wouldn't feel
at all annoyed.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Katana Maidens - Toji no Miko</em> (#9): I got tired of the show's generally
slow pacing and gave up on it after a while. I like the characters and
when things happened it was okay, but I couldn't take the stop/start
plot development any more. Even <a href="https://karmaburn.com/?p=7911">Evirus calls it 'okay'</a>.<p>
(I could say that I started picking nits in things, but when I start
doing that it's because I'm growing disenchanted with the show.)</li>
</ul>
<p>In Netflix mass dropped shows, I watched <em>B - The Beginning</em> and have
been working through <em>A.I.C.O. - Incarnation</em>, which somehow feels like
a show from a decade ago (it's not anywhere near as compulsive a watch
as <em>B</em> was).</p>
<p>In general this has been a quiet, laid-back season for me. There's
nothing I'm watching that really inspires passion, for all that
<em>Laid-Back Camp</em> is a great charmer.</p>
</div>
Checking in on the Winter 2018 anime season 'midway' through2018-03-23T03:14:41Z2018-03-23T03:14:24Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2018Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p>Every year, the onset of January with its freezing cold
gives me the urge to just hibernate until spring; my energy
and drive drops, and it's very easy to put things off if they
take some amount of initiative. This has hit me <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/962517198286868482">unusually hard</a> this year, which
is a large part of why I'm writing what is normally an 'early impressions'
entry so far into the season. But still, I'm writing it, so <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Brief">as usual</a> here's how my views of this season have shaken out so far,
following up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2018FirstEpisodes">my first episode reactions</a>.</p>
<p>Very enjoyable:</p>
<ul><li><em>Laid-Back Camp</em> (aka <em>Yuru Camp</em>): This is simply ridiculously
charming and comfortable for me, in much the same way that
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/LongRidersLovesBiking"><em>Long Riders</em></a> was. The show is <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/961816679985512449">very
good</a> at
making fall and winter camping attractive. To my surprise it's also
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/957418639677935616">completely sold me on the character I didn't expect to like</a>, and overall
it's wound up being one of the two most compelling shows of the season
for me.<p>
(Nick Creamer has convinced me that <a href="http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2018/02/12-1/two-kinds-of-camping-in-laid-back-camp">it's doing some clever
structural things too</a>,
so this is not the simple show it sort of appears as; it has a lot of
smarts and excellent execution behind the scenes.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Darling in the FranXX</em>: I don't have very high expectations for
this show, which means that <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/962475176939180032">sometimes it's surprised me</a>. I'm fairly
sure that the show is deliberately working on some big ideas but its
implementation so far is merely ordinary and sadly conventional. It
is pretty nice looking and well made, which makes it <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/957418063959330817">a good popcorn
show</a> for me.<p>
(It's the second most compelling show of the season for me.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>Katana Maidens - Toji no Miko</em>: The show has continued to execute
pretty well with any number of nice little touches but without doing
anything spectacular. I've seen <a href="https://twitter.com/SatoshiMiwa/status/954536227306315776">it compared to <em>Mai Hime</em></a> and
I sort of agree with that, although I don't think it's up to <em>Mai
Hime</em>'s quality. I'm enjoying it as a popcorn watch.</li>
</ul>
<p>Divided opinions:</p>
<ul><li><em>Violet Evergarden</em>: I have wound up feeling that this is good without
being compelling. I enjoy episodes when I watch them on a minute to
minute basis, but I don't feel much of a push to watch new episodes
when they become available (as a result, I'm currently behind). It
doesn't help that I find some aspects of the overall story to be
hard to believe in if I think about them too hard.<p>
It is very pretty, though, and also very well directed and made. Kyoto
Animation is pulling out the stops for this and it shows.<p>
(This is close to what I expected before the start of the season,
because the whole story premise we were given didn't sound like
my kind of thing. I'm pleasantly surprised that I've found <em>VE</em>
as interesting as I have; I expected to bounce off it almost
immediately, but instead I'm enjoying it on an episode to episode
basis.)</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm not considering <em>Devilman Crybaby</em> as part of this season for
the simple reason that I've already watched all of it, since the
entire show appeared at once at the start of January. About all
I want to try to say here is that watching it was a pretty wild
ride and not at all what I expected at the start.</p>
<p>In ongoing shows, <em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em> has trucked on much
as it was <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Retrospective">last season</a>, with a mixture of
competently done stuff, disappointingly ordinary things that should be
extraordinary, and some <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/960031774159097856">surprisingly great episodes that I've loved</a>. This is not
a truly spectacular adaptation, but it has its moments.</p>
<p>I'm theoretically watching <em>March comes in like a Lion</em> but in practice
I haven't gotten up enough mental fortitude to face the two remaining
episodes in the Hina bullying arc, which means that I haven't watched
any of its episodes since the start of January. I understand that things
pick up and it has a happy ending, but the whole thing is so heavy that
I keep putting it off (my latest excuse is 'I'll catch up while <em>March</em>
is off due to the Winter Olympics').</p>
<p>In practice all of this means I'm regularly watching four shows more
or less promptly and eventually watching a fifth. I hope to increase
that by one by catching up on <em>March</em> and letting it work its magic
on me, but that requires energy and gumption instead of hibernation,
and hibernation is really easy right now.</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Winter 2018 anime season so far2018-02-15T03:11:16Z2018-02-15T03:11:07Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2018FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them).</p>
<ul><li>Laid-Back Camp episode 1: That was laid back and charming, plus it
had bicycles. Unfortunately I may get tired of the genki maniac girl,
which is a pity since the show seems pretty well directed. #yurucamp
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/949110151616790528">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Devilman Crybaby episode 1: It's going somewhere and it's not the
personal turn-off I sort of expected from initial commentary. It is
very over the top, but I guess that's Go Nagai for you. The man doesn't
go small.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/950230553831276546">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Violet Evergarden episode 1 was interesting, intriguing, and very
pretty (of course). But it was all introduction and setup and as such
says very little about what the show will be like in the long run,
although it did persuade me to watch the next episode.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/951671747551617025">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Darling in the FranXX episode 1: That was a solid introductory episode,
even if it was a bit narration heavy. But as usual it doesn't say much
about what further episodes will be like; it's just doing a good job
of selling us the show's basic premise.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/952307625747800065">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Beatless episode 1: That was flavourlessly generic, with only an
occasional flash of anything particularly interesting. Nothing stands
out and I have no interest in more.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/952338374551097344">#</a><p>
</li>
<li>Maerchen Maedchen episode 1: This was popcorn but decently fun and
amusing popcorn. It's good enough to entice me into watching the next
episode, at least.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/952358600499920897">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Katana Maidens - Toji no Miko episode 1: That was a quite snappy and
interesting first episode, with surprisingly excellent fight scenes
and an intriguing setup and more showing than telling.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/954581784204861445">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I took a brief run at watching the widely acclaimed <em>A Place Further
Than the Universe</em> (aka the 'going to Antarctica' show) but didn't feel
like watching more than a few minutes of the start, so I've tentatively
concluded that it's not for me even though it's clearly very well made.
This is not very surprising; I'm almost entirely burned out on watching
high school teens in ordinary life.</p>
<p>(<em>Laid-Back Camp</em> is working for me so far because of the camping segments,
making it <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/LongRidersLovesBiking">like <em>Long Riders</em> and biking</a>.)</p>
<p>I may at some point look at <em>Hakumei and Mikochi</em>, but it doesn't seem
compelling based on current descriptions. Perhaps I will look at <em>Pop
Team Epic</em> briefly just to experience it a bit, but I can't imagine
watching even an entire episode much less the entire show.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Winter 2018 season2018-01-20T23:35:52Z2018-01-20T23:35:47Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Retrospective">Once again</a> it's time for my traditional look
back at what I watched in this past Fall season, to follow up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Brief">my
early impressions</a> and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Midway">my midway views</a>.
In general this has been a very good season for anime for me, with a
couple of amazing shows.</p>
<p>(None of these shows changed what they were from <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Midway">my midway report</a>, so I'll refer you there for fuller descriptions of
all of the shows rather than trying to paraphrase them here.)</p>
<p>Excellent to amazing:</p>
<ul><li><em>Land of the Lustrous</em>: The show was many things, but above all it
was stunning. It didn't have a conclusion or an ending or really a
climax, but as a story about how Phos changed it was a complete
success, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/944700608124211202">including the generally contemplative last episode</a>. I'll hope
for more some day, and if not there's the manga.<p>
(I'm glad that <em>Land of the Lustrous</em> didn't try to sail off on an
anime-original tangent to try to deliver an ending or a climax, because
I honestly can't see how it could have delivered on everything <em>LoL</em>
had built up.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Girls' Last Tour</em>: The show did not give us a conclusion but it did
give us basically the perfect ending. We got as many answers
as we needed and a confirmation of what we already knew
about what happens next; the girls will continue their
last tour, because there is nothing else. To <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/944814752924098560">quote myself</a>, the show
as a whole was a quiet, beautiful, and sometimes heartbreaking gem.<p>
(<em>Girls' Last Tour</em> is what <em>Kino's Journey (2017)</em> should have been
but it was also very much more.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Excellent but wrenching:</p>
<ul><li><em>March comes in like a Lion</em>: <em>March</em> has been very good lately but
also kind of oppressive, because it keeps coming back to Hina being
bullied. I'm honestly reaching the point where I'm not sure I want to
keep watching because it's just so painfully real and the emotional
doom and pressure is unrelenting. Rei wallowing in depression was a
lot easier to watch than Hina metaphorically getting kicked repeatedly,
and anyway we got to watch him emerge from that, grow, and learn life
lessons. No such thing seems to be on offer for Hina's situation,
which is extremely realistic but not exactly comfortable watching.<p>
(You can see how much of an impact the Hina story has had on my
impressions of <em>March</em> given that the episodes since <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Midway">my midway
views</a> have only lightly touched on it, yet I'm still spooked
at the idea of a full chapter (aka half episode) putting us back
in the middle of that oppressive environment.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Very enjoyable:</p>
<ul><li><em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em>: I continue to be unable to evaluate this
objectively. The anime hasn't surpassed the manga version in general,
but the manga version is extremely good (and the anime just doesn't
have the capabilities of, say, <em>Made in Abyss</em>'s production). I think
the anime is starting to show the spots where it can shine over the
manga, and also to do things a little bit differently.<p>
(On the not entirely great side, it also continues to periodically be
awfully anime in conventional ways I don't think the story needed.)</li>
</ul>
<p>A not good show that I still watched all of:</p>
<ul><li><em>Kino's Journey (2017)</em>: This certainly went out with a bang in its
last episode, which basically exemplified all of the overall failures
of the show. But even before then it was underwhelming in multiple
ways. Despite that, I finished watching the show and in a perverse
way I don't regret it, because thinking about all of its failures was
interesting and informative (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/945104436795465728">eg</a>).<p>
I'm willing to believe that the basic stories here can be done in
versions with genuine depth, feeling, and resonance (partly because
<em>Girls' Last Tour</em> did it), but this incarnation of the show was
almost never capable of delivering any of that.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond</em> (#10): This turned out to be a
late season drop. To condense <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SadLetdowns2017">a bunch more words</a>,
I discovered that I needed this show to have an overall story and it
didn't; it was just episodic meanderings around Hellsalem's Lot.
That it ended with a Leo-focused two episode story didn't change
this enough to make me want to watch the last two episodes.</li>
</ul>
<p>I watched the first episode of <em>Just Because!</em> but <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/937488758269775872">it didn't hook me</a> and I wound
up not watching any more. I think ultimately this was because all of
the people in it were regular high school kids, which basically made
them too ordinary for me even with very good execution. I can see why
people love it so much, though.</p>
<p>My top two shows of this season are something else entirely, and <em>March</em>
and <em>AMB</em> are quite good (in my biased opinion about the latter). As for
the rest, well, things happen. I'm starting to expect it; my tastes have
apparently shifted to watching fewer shows that I'm completely happy
with, and there generally just aren't that many of them in any given
season.</p>
<p>PS: Looking back, it's clear that my views of a season are now mostly
driven by the best shows that I watched, not the number of shows that I
found worth following. In past years I'd probably have considered this
season decidedly mixed, what with a number of promising shows ending up
being subpar.</p>
<h3>Sidebar: My reading of the manga for some of these shows</h3>
<p>I'm well ahead of the anime in <em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em> and I intend to
keep on going with that, partly because that's how I started and partly
because comparing and contrasting the two versions has been part of my
enjoyment of the anime version. If the anime goes as far into the manga
as I think it's hinted it will, it's going to be a wild ride; I look
forward to seeing how anime-only people react.</p>
<p>While <em>Girls' Last Tour</em> has an ongoing manga, I'm not sure I want
to read any more of the story, at least right now. To put it one way,
the ending we got allows me to maintain the illusion of a non-tragic
conclusion to things. The manga may be heading toward its own ending,
so once we know how it finishes I may re-evaluate this.</p>
<p>I believe that the <em>Land of the Lustrous</em> manga is currently about to
catch up to and pass the show (in the fourth translated volume that
came out last week). In theory I could read onward to follow the story;
in practice, I'm going to wait both to give it time and to see if the
show gets a second season. If the show does, I'm going to sit on reading
the manga until after the second season.</p>
<p>(I've picked up the first three <em>Land of the Lustrous</em> manga volumes,
although I haven't done more than look at small portions of them, and
I intend to continue doing so with future volumes. Even if I don't read
them right away, I'm going to do it sooner or later.)</p>
</div>
Looking back at the Fall 2017 anime season2018-01-03T02:49:55Z2018-01-03T02:49:48Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersEndingThoughtscks<div class="wikitext"><p>(There are spoilers here.)</p>
<p><em>Flip Flappers</em> was always a show where the ending was going to matter
a lot, and when the last episode aired I wound up <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/817092179478937600">somewhat uncertain</a> about how I
felt about it overall (and as a result, the show as a whole). This wound
up being a big reason for the delay in my <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2016">best N in 2016</a>
entry, among other effects. In the spirit of the season, it's time to
get some words down on this, starting with dry ones about the nature of
<em>Flip Flappers</em> ending and how it's unusual.</p>
<p>I've written about <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SatisfyingStoryEndings">how endings can be narratively or emotionally
satisfying</a> and also <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/EndingsBroadVsNarrow">how they can be broad or
narrow</a>. In those terms, <em>Flip Flappers</em>' ending
is clearly <em>narrow</em>, addressing relatively few of the outstanding issues
(especially narrative ones), and it is also what I'll call <em>oblique</em>.
By this I mean that the show only very rarely comes out to explicitly
tell us things, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersPIWorldSourcesII">confirm theories</a>,
or to say what emotional resolution characters have achieved. This
obliqueness partly comes from being narrow, but it's also clearly a
stylistic choice; all through its run <em>Flip Flappers</em> was very into
'show don't tell' and being subtle, letting us draw our own conclusions
from what it showed us (often in passing). Narrow endings are uncommon
and a fair number of people find them unsatisfying (especially people
who want <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SatisfyingStoryEndings">narratively satisfying endings</a>).</p>
<p>(That <em>Flip Flappers</em> had a narrow ending is not surprising,
because it was <em>narratively narrow</em> all through the show. While
a great many things were going on in the show's world, the show
itself generally followed only a few characters in essentially
a third person limited perspective, especially Cocona, and
<a href="https://flipflapping.wordpress.com/2017/01/12/of-boats-and-nyunyus-questions-and-answers-in-flip-flappers/">it mostly focused on what mattered to understanding Cocona</a>.)</p>
<p>As someone who cares more about emotionally satisfying endings, I'm
basically fine with the narrative side of things in <em>Flip Flappers</em>'
ending. Things like the story behind Asclepius and the Flip Flaps
organization were ultimately unimportant to the story of <em>Flip
Flappers</em>, which is Cocona's story (and sort of Papika's story too).
There's one dropped bit that's hard for me to let go of
because it influences how we see Papika and the people of Flip Flaps,
and that's the question of whether the girl we briefly see sprawled out
on the floor in Flip Flaps in the first episode is ultimately fine or if
she was actually dead or damaged.</p>
<p>However, the narrowness and the obliqueness of <em>Flip Flappers</em> also
limits the clear emotional answers that the show gives us in the ending.
Does Yayaka get her fervent wish to reconcile with Cocona, for example?
Well, almost certainly, since Cocona accepts her presence several
times and Uexküll is happy to be with her at the very end, but <em>Flip
Flappers</em> will not answer us explicitly. Many emotional developments
with secondary characters are left at least partially open to our
interpretation, for better or worse. This narrow obliqueness is a
significant part of what gives me somewhat tangled feelings about the
ending, because I'm not entirely sure what it's telling me, what I'm
missing, and what I may be (incorrectly) reading into things I'm being
shown.</p>
<p>(On the positive side, we are shown enough things and told about
enough things so that we can make guesses. And if we're optimistic
people, those will be optimistic guesses.)</p>
<p>But there are some things the ending gives us clear answers on,
and one of them is Cocona's choice. Cocona started <em>Flip Flappers</em>
as someone dutifully living an ordinary life and claiming to want it;
in the final episode, she's given an opportunity to truly have that
life and decisively rejects it, so much so that she spends her entire
time there trying to find her way out. In the end, Cocona chooses joy,
and specifically she chooses her joy of being with Papika. They rise
together, flying with butterflies, and burst into the real world with
exultant smiles and clasped hands. This ending is the heart of <em>Flip
Flappers</em>, and as the heart it is purely joyous and thus basically a
perfect emotional capstone.</p>
<p>In the most important way, the ending of <em>Flip Flappers</em> gave us
an answer and completes a story. The details matter, but they are
ultimately not essential and the show never implicitly promised us
many of them anyway. I have wound up feeling that the ending says
what it needs to say, it says just enough about some things to feel
satisfying without falling into the trap of over-explaining things, and
it says what it says very well (yes, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersEndingMimi">including the fight with Mimi</a>).</p>
<p>The show does not speak to me in the deep way that it does to <a href="http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2016/11/30/feature-queer-discovery-in-flip-flappers">some
people</a>,
and it will probably never be something that I consider an all
time masterwork (but ask me again in a few years and I may feel
differently). To a certain extent, this entry and my entire tangled
feelings about <em>Flip Flappers</em> is me coming to terms with that, that I
don't love this quirky beautiful and very anime show quite as much as
some people do and perhaps as much as I feel that I should.</p>
<p>(As a postscript, looking back on 2016 with the benefit of another six
months of distance, I fully agree with <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2016">my past self's selection of
<em>Flip Flappers</em> as my best show of 2016</a>.)</p>
</div>
Some words on <em>Flip Flappers</em> ending and what I feel about it (and the show)2017-12-31T22:42:36Z2017-12-31T22:42:22Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/KemonoFriendsMagiccks<div class="wikitext"><p>Sometimes, anime is magic. There are many forms of this magic, and we
saw a number of them this year, as we usually do; there were touching
stories, dramatic spectacles, quietly true to life works filled with
little details, emotionally wrenching scenes, shows that are over the
top in the best way, and quiet meditations on life delivered by blobby
characters in deliberately scratchy backgrounds. But one of the ways
that anime is periodically magic is that it can completely surprise us,
with a show coming from left field to be excellent.</p>
<p>(<a href="http://tenka.seiha.org/">Aroduc</a> used to mention <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushi-Uta">one example</a> in his season previews
as a cautionary note to not base too much on preview impressions.)</p>
<p>These surprises are one of the reasons that I keep watching anime. When
they happen, they're magical; what once looked like dross is transmuted
into unexpected gold. It's an unlooked for present that usually leaves
me stunned and awed and glad that I was there to see it. And there's
a joy in it beyond myself, because it means that the people who made
the show have achieved something beautiful in their work and I have to
imagine that that's a great feeling for them.</p>
<p><em>Kemono Friends</em> did not exactly start out promising, seeing as
it was a <abbr title="computer graphics">CG</abbr> anime made on a shoestring,
by a tiny team who'd done almost nothing, with the premise of a
basic kid's show, based on a mobile game about animal girls that
had failed before the show started. Early views were strikingly
down, for example <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2017/01/13/winter-2017-virtually-every-first-episode-retrospective/">Bobduh's capsule summary of the first episode</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><em>Kemono Friends</em> is a simplistic show for very young children starring
grotesque CG. We are still <em>multiple categories</em> from the bottom of
this list.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Like many other people, Bobduh would wind up <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/tag/kemono-friends/">changing his
mind on the show</a>.)</p>
<p>Then the show's <a href="http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2017/02/25-1/feature-why-it-works-kemono-friends-unstated-worldbuilding">astounding</a>
<a href="https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/kemono-friends/.114176">qualities</a>
began to show through, probably <a href="http://cloggie.org/wissewords2/2017/12/20/06-kemono-friends/">first in Japan</a> and
then later in the west as news and buzz spread. Despite everything
we did think initially (and for good reason), <a href="https://swabulous.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/12-days-of-anime-6-three-friends-for-the-price-of-one/">improbably and absurdly</a>
<em>Kemono Friends</em> was really good. More than good, it
was excellent. The janky CG <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/KemonoFriendsUnimportantCG">ultimately didn't matter</a> when set against its <a href="https://flipflapping.wordpress.com/2017/02/22/the-sincerity-of-kemono-friends/">honest sincerity</a>
and <a href="https://marinasauce.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/12-days-of-anime-day-6-kemono-friends-proves-me-wrong-again/">heart</a>
and the skill of its creators that <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/KemonoFriendsSpearpoint">let it pull off story beats that few
shows can manage</a> and deliver <a href="http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2017/04/01-1/feature-why-it-works-five-pitches-for-kemono-friends">thrilling drama</a>.
Yes, it was a kid's story, but it was the best sort of kid's story, one
of the ones that have <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Retrospective">significant depths</a>
and moments of great emotional impact for everyone. One of the kid's
stories that are magical.</p>
<p>(The best kid's stories understand that you cannot talk down to kids;
kids are just as sophisticated consumers of stories as adults are, they
just have different tastes. Good kid's stories are made with just as
much care and good writing as <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/YomigaeruSoraPraise">good adult stories</a>.)</p>
<p>This year, <em>Kemono Friends</em> embodied the magic of anime, the magic of
delivering a complete, unasked-for, unpredictable surprise of a beautiful,
thought provoking show that I'm glad that I was there to see and that
has left an enduring impression on me. To quote <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2017/03/29/winter-2017-week-12-in-review/">Bobduh</a>
again:</p>
<blockquote><p>I don’t know how <em>Kemono Friends</em> exists, but it feels to me like a
perfect example of why we watch anime at all. Sometimes the best stories
come in the most unlikely packages. Well done, <em>Kemono Friends</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So here's to you, <em>Kemono Friends</em>, and everything and every moment you
earned with your heart and hard work.</p>
<p><img style="max-width: 100%" src="https://cks.mef.org/anime/ssnaps/kfriends-12-title.jpg" width="1280" height="auto" alt="Kemono Friends episode 12's title" title="Kemono Friends fully earned its episode 12 title drop"></p>
<p>Merry Christmas everyone, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeq2M6_sJP8">welcome to Japari Park</a>.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
</div>
<em>Kemono Friends</em> and the magic of anime2017-12-25T19:15:28Z2017-12-25T19:15:20Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/DragonMaidCrucialKannacks<div class="wikitext"><p>(There are spoilers here, if you care.)</p>
<p>I'm not generally one for child characters. It's all too easy for a
show to make them either grating or too sugar-sweet (and sometimes both
at once), and if we're being honest most children are not infrequently
brats. So when <em>MaiDragon</em> (to use its common abbreviation) introduced
Kanna, I didn't initially think very much of her, especially since
she was presented as sort of a joke. By the end of the show, my view
had shifted and I now think that in many ways Kanna is the emotional
lynchpin of the show, the point and character around which the central
issues of the show revolve.</p>
<p>Kanna did not make Kobayashi and Tohru a couple, or even perhaps a family;
they would have gotten there in the end even without her presence. But
Kanna was the catalyst that crystallized the family into existence
earlier than it might otherwise have formed and then made it obvious to
us. Kanna was the force that pushed Kobayashi to make significant moves
to recognize that family; the move to a larger apartment, the move to
leave work earlier and to make time in her life for Tohru and Kanna
(as exemplified especially in episode 9, the school sports festival
episode). And in the final (TV) episode, it's my view that Kanna is
a major force that pushes Kobayashi to recognize how much she misses
Tohru. Without Kanna there to put burdens on Kobayashi that constantly
remind her of Tohru's absence, I think Kobayashi might have quietly
slid back into her pre-Tohru life; not because she really liked it,
but just because it was the path of least resistance.</p>
<p>All of this leads to the emotional resolution of the series,
where Kobayashi takes Kanna and Tohru to meet her parents. This
is the point where Kobayashi implicitly takes into her heart
that she's part of a family, even if it's <a href="https://twitter.com/Liuwdere/status/856744429562081280">an unusual one</a>. The family may
have formed quietly, but this is where it's officially acknowledged,
even if no one says it out loud, and Kanna is at the heart of it.</p>
<p><em>Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid</em> is one of two shows I watched this
year that are clearly in large part about family (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Retrospective"><em>Alice & Zoroku</em></a> is the other). It's about the accommodations you
make to be in a family, and the changes that happen to you and others.
More than its comedy, more than its amusing characters, more than its
fun animation, this is why it's very likely to stick in my mind, and
Kanna with it.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
</div>
The importance of Kanna in <em>Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid</em>2017-12-24T20:33:52Z2017-12-24T20:33:52Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/OldAnimeDifferentLookcks<div class="wikitext"><p>One of the things I did this year was watch some older anime;
the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusher_Joe"><em>Crusher Joe</em></a>
movie (and one OVA) from 1983, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iria:_Zeiram_the_Animation"><em>Iria: Zeiram the Animation</em></a> from 1994.
One of the things that struck me about both of these, especially <em>Iria</em>,
is how they looked and felt clearly different from modern anime. This is
more than a difference in the look of the art, the style of people's
outfits and hair, and the kind of settings; it was also something
distinctly different in how each work looked in a broader sense.</p>
<p>(<em>Crusher Joe</em> is very distinctly an 80s work; consider <a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/38973">this scene</a>, for example.)</p>
<p>Some of this is in the use of 'light gleam' effects that
aren't used as much (or in the same way) any more, such as the
bright beam blasts near the start of <a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/38963">this <em>Crusher Joe</em> scene</a>. My understanding is that
this classical effect in cell-based animation is done by leaving sections
of the cell either completely transparent or translucent (with coloured
film behind them) and then letting the backlight from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostrum_camera">rostrum camera</a> show through the cells.
This gives a vivid glow in a relatively simple to animate way (and it's
a glow that can spread outside the lit up area).</p>
<p><em>Crusher Joe</em> is a film and was clearly well-produced even at the
time. Perhaps as a result, its 'old anime' feel is mostly confined
to how things are drawn; there's an old fashioned feel to both the
foreground and the background rocks along the roadway in <a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/38988">this segment</a> or the hand-drawn digital
display in <a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/38995">this scene</a>
at about four seconds in. But even then there's something that
feels distinctly old about how the movie simply rotates the cell
of Alfin in her cockpit starting at four seconds in <a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/38997">this scene</a>. I can see how this would be
an easy effect to do in a cell-based world; you draw the cell a bit larger
and then just rotate the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostrum_camera">rostrum camera</a> when you film the frames.</p>
<p>A case with a deeper feel of difference is the opening for <em>Dirty Pair:
Project Eden</em> <a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/10030">here</a> (or
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE_CewGiHsI">on YouTube with sound</a>).
This is from 1986 and undeniably beautiful, but at the same time it
strikes me as something that you wouldn't see today and that looks
definitely old fashioned (it too has a bunch of 'light gleam' effects).
I suspect that a lot of the unusual feel is the use of silhouettes and
of echoed movement (for example at 51 seconds). But I don't know if this
was easier or harder in days of drawn and filmed cell animation.</p>
<p><em>Iria: Zeiram the Animation</em> is an OVA and thus probably
had less production resources that the <em>Crusher Joe</em> movie,
which I suspect makes it lean more heavily on things that were
easy to do in the cell animation days. Looking at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBZuBUw_F68">its opening</a>, I see things that stand out
to me at various points; there are repeated inset frames of animation (at
25 seconds), 'light gleam' streaks (at 29 seconds), rotating cells (33
seconds), distinctly overlaid foreground snow (at 1 minute), echoed frames
of animation (at 1:26), and then it just runs some earlier animation
backward starting at 1:29 or so. Beyond that, there's a lot of scenes
in the actual show that feel to me like they wouldn't be done today.</p>
<p>(For example, it feels like <em>Iria</em> uses a lot more held frames and panned
frames than is normal today.)</p>
<p>However, this is where I run into the limits of my ability to analyze
and explain animation this way. All of what I've talked about so far
is basically hand waving and theorizing. I know both <em>Crusher Joe</em> and
especially <em>Iria</em> feel distinctly different but I can't really tell you
why, with chapter and verse and technical details. All I can do is look
for some obvious things that feel unusual, when really it was a much more
pervasive thing that ran all through my watching of both works and it
didn't feel directly related to the different look of hand painted cell
animation. I'm pretty sure that many shots were composed and designed
differently than they would be today, but I can't tell you how (or why);
at best I can theorize about obvious things, like rotating cells or those
'light gleam' effects and how they give the frames an overall glow.</p>
<p>This frustrates me a bit. I'd like to be able to understand this myself
and be able to explain it, instead of waving my hands and doing what feels
like nit-picking. Instead, it's another limitation I've discovered on
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlyingWitchAnalysisLimits">my ability to analyze things</a>.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
<h3>Sidebar: The other way <em>Iria</em> looks different</h3>
<p>As an SF show, <em>Iria</em> takes place in a different world (a couple of
them, actually). It's clear that the show has worked hard to create a
coherent yet decidedly different cultural feel for its setting, where
the clothes, the buildings, the vehicles, and so on are all pretty
different from what we'd usually see yet also clearly go together. This
is a degree of work and imagination that doesn't seem to come up very
often in modern SF shows, which generally look far more normal and
conventional.</p>
</div>
Old anime looks different, but sadly I can't tell you exactly why2017-12-23T20:36:06Z2017-12-23T20:36:06Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersEndingMimicks<div class="wikitext"><p>(There are spoilers here.)</p>
<p>I have tangled feelings about both <em>Flip Flappers</em> as a whole and its
ending, feelings that I'm still sorting out. However, there are some
aspects of the ending that I'm completely behind, and one of them is the
show's perhaps odd decision to spend most of the first half of the last
episode on a <a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/29074">knock down</a>,
<a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/29076">drag out</a> fight with
Mimi when Cocona and Papika had already <a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/28776">neatly punched her monster out</a> at the end of the previous
episode. As spectacular as all of the fighting might have been, was it
really important or necessary?</p>
<p>My answer is that yes, it was, or at least it felt that it
belonged to me. To put it one way, it would be nice if you could
get your over-protective mom to go away just by you and your
girlfriend telling her to buzz off, but <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/818247496560443396">life is not that nice</a>. Getting your
overbearing mom to ease off generally requires a big screaming argument,
although this is usually delivered by words, not you and your girlfriend
beating down dark mom's monsters and eventually her more or less directly.
But this is <em>Flip Flappers</em>, so this particular psychological point
was delivered through some spectacular fireworks.</p>
<p>(In the end it wasn't just this fight, of course, and it never is.
Dark mom Mimi had to come around, not merely be beaten down. Beating
people up doesn't generally change their mind, and Mimi had to have
her mind changed in order to really resolve the situation. Multiple
things ultimately contributed to this change of heart, not just Cocona
and Papika, and I feel that even Dr Salt wasn't quite as completely
decorative as he looked. His presence mattered, even if he didn't
actually do anything except stand around.)</p>
<p>Mimi's possessive over-protection of Cocona was a pivotal development
(as was Cocona's willingness to accept it), and disposing of it casually
and briefly simply wouldn't have felt right. It and other unresolved
issues around Mimi needed to be resolved with enough effort to make the
result feel earned.</p>
<p>PS: One of the things <em>Flip Flappers</em> is about is external
representations of internal psychological struggles and issues. See,
for example, <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2017/12/18/flip-flappers-episode-7/">this discussion of the pivotal episode 7</a>.</p>
<p>PPS: Yes, they're girlfriends. How much more on point does transforming
under their own power into a matched set of armored wedding dresses have
to be? <em>Flip Flappers</em> may not always come out to say things out loud,
but it's not beyond hitting us over the head with them.</p>
</div>
Some words on Mimi in the last episode of <em>Flip Flappers</em>2017-12-23T03:50:26Z2017-12-23T03:50:26Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/MadeInAbyssEpisode9cks<div class="wikitext"><p>(There are some spoilers here.)</p>
<p>"The Great Fault", <em>Made in Abyss</em>'s ninth episode, is well known
as anime-original content. Despite the stereotype that usually
comes along with that, the episode is widely regarded as <a href="https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/made-in-abyss/episode-9/.120857">solid work</a>
that does <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2017/09/06/summer-2017-week-9-in-review/">important things with Riko's character</a>
and is simply enjoyable. You could quibble about the
ending, where Reg is the one to make <a href="https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/38281">the climactic finish</a> instead of Riko, but
perhaps this was intended to be part of the point of the episode, to
show that Riko could hand a fight to Reg when necessary and wouldn't
insist on doing it all herself.</p>
<p>(I'm making an excuse for the show here. It's not flawless.)</p>
<p>It is my opinion that episode 9 is much more than this and that it shows
that the show's creative staff fully understood what they were doing.
Episode 9 does one very important but inobvious practical thing, which
I'm putting in a sidebar at the end, but beyond that it carries a huge
metaphorical and mythological charge that is the silent marker and
foreshadowing of a phase change in <em>Made in Abyss</em>. This is because of
just what Riko and Reg face and defeat at the end of the episode. What
they face down and see off is not just any monster of the Abyss; it is
the initial monster that Riko and Reg faced, the crimson splitjaw from
the very start of their adventure together.</p>
<p>This crimson splitjaw is the gauntlet that has haunted and dogged Riko
and Reg from the first episode onward; it was unfinished business from
the past. In defeating it, they pass beyond the threshold of the past
and enter the unknown, moving on into a new world. The crimson splitjaw
was a lingering remnant of their old life that started in Orth, and now
they're beyond it.</p>
<p>(Yes, this is a very <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell">Campbellian</a> view of things.)</p>
<p>As people who have watched <em>Made in Abyss</em> know, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/MadeInAbyssAndPain">episode 10 will
go on to make this change very concrete</a>.</p>
<p>In short, episode 9 primes us for episode 10, not in an obvious way but
in a subtle, indirect one. I think it's deliberately designed to do so,
since the staff of the anime adoption specifically brought back <em>that</em>
crimson splitjaw, not just any monster and not even a generic crimson
splitjaw (if they didn't want to design another type of monster).
As a result, I like this episode <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/907771882425987072">quite a lot</a>.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
<h3>Sidebar: The important practical thing episode 9 covers</h3>
<p>Episode 9 contains Riko's first serious encounter with the Curse of
ascending in the deeps of the Abyss, and illustrates how hard and
wrenching it is even in the third layer. This serves as an important
lead in to the ascent she goes through in the fourth layer during episode
10, and means that the major impact of the Curse there doesn't come out
of more or less nowhere.</p>
<p>(Being told about the Curse in exposition with semi-cute pictures isn't
the same thing as having seen it in action the previous episode. The
latter primes us much more; it's more visceral and real, especially
with how Riko's hallucinations went.)</p>
</div>
<em>Made in Abyss</em> passes the threshold and enters the unknown2017-12-22T21:04:38Z2017-12-22T21:04:24Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/MangaToAnimeRearrangementscks<div class="wikitext"><p>This year I watched a number of shows where I've also read the manga
version (either before or after the show aired). One of the interesting
things I noticed about the anime versions is how they rearranged and
adjusted early elements of the manga, and how this changed the feel of
the story being told from one media to the other. To make this concrete,
I'm going to talk about three shows (and there will be some spoilers).</p>
<p>The most straightforward to talk about is <em>Land of the
Lustrous</em>. As part of an interview <a href="https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2017/10/31/land-of-the-lustrous-director-takahiko-kyougoku-interview/">available on Sakugablog</a>,
director Takahiko Kyougoku explicitly discussed how some manga elements
were restructured to give us more focus on the main character so we'd
know who it was:</p>
<blockquote><p>To go into more detail, we took steps like giving the main character
more close-up shots, or having them intentionally repeat important
lines. It may not seem like much, but when you watch it, you can tell
which character had the most presence and what their goals are. [...]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What doesn't get mentioned in this interview is that the anime also
completely omits a big infodump that happens within the first few pages of
the manga, when Kongo tells Phos to recite the history of the setting as
the gems have been taught it; this exposition includes both information
we only heard later in the show and some that we still haven't. This
leads to a restructuring of the conversation between Kongo and Phos
where Kongo gives Phos their job.</p>
<p>Next is <em>Made in Abyss</em>. As mentioned in <a href="http://animationweek.uk/made_in_abyss_interview/">this interview with the mangaka
and the director</a>,
the early portions of the show are revised from the manga for various
reasons (including that the mangaka explicitly asked for the first part
of the story to be 'brushed up'). As in <em>Land of the Lustrous</em>, the <em>MiA</em>
manga starts with an infodump about the nature of the Abyss. It then goes
in to a relatively long lead-in sequence before Riko and her classmates
head into the shallow end of the first layer of the Abyss as part of
their training, which is where the first episode of the anime starts.</p>
<p>In <em>Made in Abyss</em>, the change from the manga to the anime does more
than cut out some material and tighten the story up; to a certain extent
it changes our view of Riko's character. The manga opens with Riko
boasting and making wild theories up, then her classmates cutting her
down to size and being dismissive, and it goes on somewhat in this line.
In the anime, we pretty much start with the heroic and active Riko who
throws herself into the line of danger in order to save a classmate
from an unexpected menace. Manga Riko comes across as someone with
rather more significant feet of clay than the anime version, someone who
somewhat stumbles into things rather than throws herself bravely in.</p>
<p>(As a result of this shift from the manga to the anime, I'm glad I saw
the anime first before I peeked at the manga. Manga Riko is a somewhat
less attractive character than anime Riko, since some of her flaws are
more front and center and more emphasized.)</p>
<p>The rearrangements in both of these shows have been made primarily for
structural reasons; they've been done to show us who to focus on and
tighten up the story, partly because what works and is seen as necessary
in manga doesn't necessarily work in anime. Their effects on the story
itself are secondary or incidental, although I suspect that at least
<em>Made in Abyss</em> is conscious of them. This brings me to my final example,
<em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em>.</p>
<p>In <em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em>, unlike the first two works, the
rearrangement isn't in the form of chopping out early manga material;
instead it's the other way around. The manga version of <em>AMB</em> starts
with a very cold open, where the first panel is Chise on stage in
chains, being auctioned off as an implied slave. Only somewhat later
do we find out that Chise had more or less voluntarily put herself in
this situation instead of committing suicide. In the anime, the show
opens with Chise explicitly agreeing to all of this; it is immediately
front and center both that Chise is in an extremely nihilistic and bad
mental space and that this is voluntary on her part. The story effect
is to remove a certain amount of the initial shock from the manga and
tone things down and make them nicer in general. More is explicit and
explained, and as a result the whole affair comes across as more sad
and less shocking and horrifying, at least to me.</p>
<p>With that said, I suspect that part of the rearrangement was driven by
the structural mechanics of storytelling in manga versus anime. The
manga version of <em>Ancient Magus' Bride</em> gives us the background of
Chise's situation in a series of flashback panels that are intercut when
present-day dialog and events trigger Chise's traumatic memories. This
fluid intercutting between past and present is harder and less natural
to do in an anime, and also not as clear. <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/MangaVsAnimePacing">With manga's variable-speed
pacing</a>, readers can slow down to take in the
flashback panels; what's going on is clear to us even though the
panels themselves don't take up much room in the manga's first chapter
(probably about a page and a half in total, spread across several
separate flashbacks and specific incidents in Chise's past). I'm pretty
confident that a good direct translation into animated form would take
a lot more time, and so doing the whole background as a more or less
linear sequence at the start of the first episode takes up less time
and may well be clearer.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
</div>
Rearrangements from manga to anime and how they alter the feel of the show2017-12-21T23:56:11Z2017-12-21T23:56:04Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/MyHeroAcademiaBakugocks<div class="wikitext"><p>Let's start with the tweets:</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="https://twitter.com/MinovskyArticle/status/939192142060285952">@MinovskyArticle</a>:
Bakugo is extremely divisive on Twitter for a character who wins
every MHA popularity poll by a landslide.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/pontifus/status/939205290574180352">@pontifus</a>:
I think he's a good character and i also live for him getting dunked on</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/939206956841041920">@cks_anime</a>:
I hate to say it, but he's more interesting than Midoriya (although I
wouldn't want Bakugo as the lead/hero character).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Let's talk about Midoriya for a moment. Midoriya is a classical Shonen
Jump hero protagonist; he's earnest and good and quietly heroic,
a standard underdog with a heart. He has some internal qualms and
concerns, but he's not riven by any particular conflicts or angst the
way many other characters are. He's sort of an everyman. As a result,
he's not so much bland as straightforward. He makes a good lead character,
but he's not particularly fascinating by himself.</p>
<p>Bakugo is nothing like this, and he's such a contrast from what you'd
expect in a Shonen Jump character.</p>
<p>To start with, he's an unapologetic asshole, and <em>MHA</em> doesn't
give his character any cover for it; he has no tragic backstory, no
inner angst. He's just an asshole, which is a refreshing change from
the usual approach of attempting to 'humanize' such characters.
And Bakugo's not just any asshole; he's all <a href="https://twitter.com/MinovskyArticle/status/939193159464177664">surly teenage anger</a> and
prickly obnoxiousness.</p>
<p>(By contrast, Mineta is a noxious asshole and the worst character in
<em>MHA</em>. Were he to disappear from the story, it would only improve.)</p>
<p>Part of why Bakugo works as an asshole is that he's also ridiculous
at the same time, and the show knows this and periodically dunks
on him. His 'grenades included' hero costume is one example,
as is the whole exercise of <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/878762847693672450">coming up with his hero name</a>. Bakugo is
an angry teenager writ large and <em>My Hero Academia</em> understands that
angry teenagers can also be fundamentally silly. Since this is a
superhero show (and a Shonen Jump story), Bakugo gets dialed up to 11
here, hyper-exaggerated surly faces and all.</p>
<p>Some characters are empty assholes; they're obnoxious, but either
there's nothing behind it or all they have is power and they think that
power alone entitles them to what they want. Bakugo is not empty in this
way. Sure, he has great power and he feels that this matters, but he
doesn't coast on his power alone; he has smarts and skill and tactical
awareness to back it up, and beyond that Bakugo is willing to put
himself through pain when necessary. To put it one way, Bakugo doesn't
just talk the talk, he walks the walk as well, even when it hurts.</p>
<p>(This is part of why I don't think Bakugo is much of a bully, although
he has aspects of one, especially in the first season. I think of
bullies as fundamentally cowards; they dish it out but can't take it
back. Bakugo can take it back, it just pisses him off (more). Another
part of this is that in the second season Bakugo is willing to ignore
people trash-talking him.)</p>
<p>One aspect of that 'even when it hurts' is that Bakugo has integrity;
he wants to win honestly, to genuinely be on top. What he cares about is
being the best, not having an award; being awarded a first place finish
is meaningless unless it's a true, genuine achievement where he really
is the most powerful, the best fighter, or whatever. Winning by default,
winning because someone else lets you, all of that is empty, and Bakugo
makes it completely clear that he doesn't want an empty prize.</p>
<p>(I think that Bakugo hates not being the most powerful, but he doesn't
want to change that by making other people less powerful; if he's not
the most powerful, he wants to get more powerful. This is a very Shonen
Jump protagonist motivation, refracted through a prism of perpetually
angry asshole.)</p>
<p>Then, of course, there is the fact that Bakugo gets to do genuinely
cool things. Some <em>MHA</em> characters are ridiculous or have ridiculous
powers, and some of them have modest powers or only get to use them
in modest ways, but Bakugo has a big power and the show lets him use
it to do cool and clever things. The explosions help.</p>
<p>At the same time, the world doesn't go Bakugo's way; he only rarely gets
what he wants, and watching Bakugo get frustrated by this is part of the
fun. For all of his power, Bakugo is more of an underdog than Midoriya
is; as the protagonist, Midoriya gets genuine victories. The best Bakugo
can manage is to dunk on villains sometimes. And while Bakugo gets to
do cool stuff, the show does not generally present him as genuinely cool
the way it does with, say, Todoroki.</p>
<p>The final way that Bakugo is interesting is that he is
Midoriya's thematic mirror image and contrast. <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/750069820062896128">As I put it once</a>, Midoriya
is all morality and no power; Bakugo is all power and no morality.
Together they create a clear contrast around the central question of
what a hero is. Is it someone with power, or someone with morality?
I'm pretty certain that Bakugo's answer is that heroes are people with
power and if you don't have power you can't be a hero. <em>My Hero Academia</em>
would be a less interesting story without this contrast and challenge
that Bakugo implicitly provides.</p>
<p>That Bakugo is an interesting character doesn't make him an appealing
one, because he still is an unrelenting asshole that respects very
little (and certainly not you or me). That's part of why he would make a
terrible lead character. Assholes are tolerable only in relatively small
doses.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
<h3>Sidebar: First season Bakugo versus second season Bakugo</h3>
<p>I'll be honest: early in <em>My Hero Academia</em>, Bakugo is a lot more
obnoxious and a lot less interesting than he is later on. It's
not quite as simple as the first season versus the second
season, because Bakugo starts to show his coolness in the big
hero versus villain fight at the end of the first season (<a href="https://twitter.com/SpiritusNoxSA/status/937549660285210629">cf</a>),
but Bakugo mostly becomes interesting over the second series.</p>
<p>The early Bakugo is not an attractive character or person. Given how he
treated Midoriya, he was a knife edge away from being an unrecognized
villain, enough that you might reasonably wonder why he was admitted to
UA High School (or at least why the school doesn't have a way to exclude
people even if they score high on the admissions test).</p>
</div>
An appreciation for <em>My Hero Academia</em>'s Bakugo (especially in S2)2017-12-21T01:05:29Z2017-12-21T01:05:24Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/KemonoFriendsSpearpointcks<div class="wikitext"><p>Today I want to talk about the <a href="http://www.jowaltonbooks.com/23rd-february-2004-the-dyer-of-lorbanery-spearpoint-theory/">spear-point moment</a>
in <em>Kemono Friends</em>. There will necessarily be spoilers and what I
write may not convince you, because by nature spear-points rely on
the weight of story that's come before them for their power.</p>
<p>Spear-points are often active and loud, like last year's <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ThunderboltFantasySpearpoint">spear-point
in <em>Thunderbolt Fantasy</em></a>, but they don't
have to be. Sometimes a spear-point is a quieter moment that would
not otherwise work without the weight of the spear the story has put
behind it; everything has been built up to allow this moment to exist
and to convince.</p>
<p>For most of its run, <em>Kemono Friends</em> was all about
the cheerful adventures of Kaban and <a href="https://japari-library.com/wiki/Friends">the Friends</a> in Japari Park. Sure, there
was some danger from things like the Ceruleans and the environment,
but it was the danger of a kid's show; it was there to create tension
and have our characters solve problems, such as in <a href="https://japari-library.com/wiki/Episode_9_-_Snowy_Mountains_Area">episode 9</a>.
Then, at the end of episode 11, Kaban sacrifices herself to draw a
giant Cerulean away from the incapacitated Serval, ending up being
swallowed by it. This was quite something, as was <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/891886600858337281">the effects</a>
on <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2017/03/22/winter-2017-week-11-in-review/">people watching</a>.
Although this was an extremely powerful moment (and one fully earned
by the show's work to build up to it), it's not the big spear-point.
The spear-point is what happens the next episode, when Kaban basically
comes back from the dead.</p>
<p>Bringing people back from the dead is very hard to do well. To
truly sell it, the story must make it not merely excusable
but inevitable, the logical and emotional consequence at the
tip of the spear that was built piece by piece as the story
progressed. The logical steps of <em>Kemono Friends</em>' spear are
straightforward (I've put them in a sidebar), but what that
really means is that they're woven deep into the <a href="http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2017/02/25-1/feature-why-it-works-kemono-friends-unstated-worldbuilding">subtle worldbuilding</a>
of the entire setting; they're straightforward because they're
foundational. <em>Kemono Friends</em> didn't surprise us with anything that
went into Kaban's return because by the time we got there we already
knew the pieces; we'd been shown them before bit by bit as part of
previous events. As far as logic went at the spear-point of Kaban's
return, it was inevitable.</p>
<p>But logic by itself isn't enough; returning from the dead needs effort
and emotion too, to give significance and weight to such a momentous
thing. So the final episode of <em>Kemono Friends</em> opens with an epic,
climactic running fight against the giant Cerulean, one that sees all
of the Friends we've met over the course of the series show up to help
out with their own abilities (for good reasons that go back to that
subtle worldbuilding). On the surface it's an attempt to rescue Kaban
from the Cerulean and defeat it, but it also makes us feel that all of
these Friends working together so hard and caring so much about Kaban
deserve more than to be left with nothing. They and especially Serval
have <em>earned</em> having Kaban come back. And so it comes to pass, with not
a dry eye in the house.</p>
<p>(It also helps that we the audience wanted Kaban to come back, so that
<em>Kemono Friends</em> could finish as the cheerful and good-natured show that
it had been all the way through up until then. Kaban's return is firmly
centered in the show's genre.)</p>
<p>Kaban's return from the lost is not a big explosive moment; it's not epic
in the way <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ThunderboltFantasySpearpoint">Shang's fight was last year</a>,
or shocking in the way Kaban's sacrifice was. Instead, it's quietly,
intensely emotional. It's Serval embracing Kaban, crying as she repeats
what she said in the first episode, "I won't eat you!" It's a miracle
that is perfectly logical and completely earned, at the tip of a
meticulously crafted spear that stretches all the way back to the start
of the show.</p>
<p><em>Kemono Friends</em> makes it all look easy, when it's anything but.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
<h3>Sidebar: The logic chain in question</h3>
<p><a href="https://japari-library.com/wiki/Friends">Friends</a> are created from
ordinary animals (or pieces of animals), and when swallowed by a
Cerulean, they are stripped of their Friend nature and reduced back
to their original animal form. Kaban is a Friend, and when she was
swallowed by the Cerulean she was reduced to a glowing ball which
would condense to her original form. But Kaban is a human and the
original form of a human is still a human, so when the ball evaporated
to reveal her animal form, it was still Kaban.</p>
<p>I won't call Kaban's nature a mystery of <em>Kemono Friends</em>
because it was always pretty obvious what she was to the
viewers. But it was the central pivot around which all of the
series revolved, and if we had any doubt about what she was, this
ended them; Kaban is a human Friend (and we know <a href="https://japari-library.com/wiki/Kaban">her origins</a>). To quote <a href="https://japari-library.com/wiki/Northern_White-Faced_Owl/Anime">the Professor</a>, "They
[humans] truly are a mysterious species."</p>
</div>
One pivotal moment where <em>Kemono Friends</em> shows its quiet excellence2017-12-20T00:27:57Z2017-12-20T00:27:34Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/SadLetdowns2017cks<div class="wikitext"><p>Every year, there are a certain number of shows that I start with high
expectations and hopes, fully expecting to enjoy them, and then things
don't work out. I'm always sad when this happens; I want to enjoy shows,
especially shows that I'm looking forward to, but every year there are
times when this just doesn't happen, and not because the show turned
out to be a disaster in some way or is clearly a 'not for me' show.
These are the shows that by all rights should work for me, but for
various reasons the show and I never connected. Often it's hard for
me to drop these shows, because I feel like I <em>should</em> like them but
I just don't. Somehow the magic that should be there has leaked out.</p>
<p>(Shows that are actively bad or that are clearly not my kind of thing
are much easier to let go of, partly because it's a lot more clearcut.
It's still disappointing but it's a mild disappointment. It's also
easier to let go of shows that I had no particular expectations for in
the first place, ones that just had some initial promise but I wound up
deciding that I didn't like them enough.)</p>
<p>Today, for my own reasons, I want to look back at my collection of such
shows from this year (or at least the ones that stand out to me), not to
condemn them but to create a little memorial to them and to what could
have been. That these shows didn't work out for me can say as much about
me as it does about the shows.</p>
<p>In the order that they aired and I sadly walked away from them:</p>
<ul><li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Midway"><em>Blue Exorcist - Kyoto Saga</em></a>: I quite liked
the original <em>Blue Exorcist</em> <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2011">back in the day</a>, but this
version didn't catch fire with me. I don't feel as sad as I might,
because it's been so long and I never really expected another season
from <em>Blue Exorcist</em> (and we did get a decent movie); also, I didn't
entirely feel that this was really a continuation of the original
because it had to reset a number of things from the anime-original
ending of the first show. In a way you could say that this is a
different show than I thought I was getting, one that just happens to
sort of use the same setting and some of the same characters as the
<em>Blue Exorcist</em> that I watched. And who knows, maybe my tastes have
changed since 2011.<p>
I think the show was competently made and I've heard that it followed
the manga fairly well, so I suspect that manga readers are pleased by
this season.<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Midway"><em>Little Witch Academia</em></a>: Oh, this one hurts. I
lost interest after five episodes of this much heralded Trigger TV
series version of a couple of quite good OVAs. There were a number of
specific things, but in the end it basically turned out the way I'd
been afraid of since I heard it was being turned into a TV series,
which I'll summarize as 'the pacing and feel changed a lot'. The
first OVA had only so much time and it had to cram a great deal in;
as a result, everything moved at a rapid clip and there wasn't time to
look very deeply into anything, which made it a madcap ride. With far
more time to fill and the natural expectation that it would go into
much deeper detail on the characters, character growth, and so on,
the TV series could never have managed the same feel.<p>
(The second OVA was somewhat closer to the feel of the TV series,
since it was an additional story invented after the first OVA was
successful, but it was still far denser and more condensed than the
show.)<p>
I wound up labeling <em>LWA</em> as 'not for me' instead of dropped
because I think it not working for me is mostly about my tastes
in pacing, characters, and so on.<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Midway"><em>Rage of Bahamut - Virgin Soul</em></a>: The
original <em>Rage of Bahamut</em> was a flawed but generally very good
show that really got the cinematic Hollywood action-adventure
feel and important things like <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/544682775597428736">how to have awesome moments</a>. <em>Virgin
Soul</em> had a great premise, the same director, and more running time
(and hopefully plenty of production time), all of which gave me great
expectations for it. Perhaps what happened is something similar to
what happened with <em>Little Witch Academia</em>, where adding time (and
focusing more on characters) required slowing the pacing down and
coming up with more elaborate and complex plots.<p>
(With that said, the show has its own serious issues in how
it handles Charioce; for one discussion of this, see <a href="https://castintotheheart.wordpress.com/2017/12/15/2nd-day-maintaining-a-virgin-soul/">here</a>.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond</em>: This is a regrettable late
addition (not just this season, but late in the season at that).
It's actually been useful at showing me another thing about my
tastes, because there's absolutely nothing wrong about <em>BBB &
Beyond</em> as such; it's delivering exactly what's on the can, and
in quite good quality as far as animation, story, and so on is
concerned. It's just that <em>BBB & Beyond</em> is not going anywhere
in particular and it turns out that I want more than that, even
from my popcorn watching. But for people who like to see these
characters ramble around Hellsalem's Lot and find out bits about
their background and day to day life, well, I can see the appeal.
My understanding is that this season is very much like the manga
in that respect, so manga fans are probably quite fond of it (and
irritated that the first season apparently pruned back so much from
the sections of the manga that it covered).<p>
(The first season of <em>BBB</em> did have an ongoing story working its way
through the episodes, with Black and White and everything they were
tied in to. It also had the advantage that it was introducing us to
Hellsalem's Lot.)<p>
(A confession: there's a part of me that wants to keep on watching
<em>BBB & Beyond</em>, although I'm pretty convinced I'd just wind up
disgruntled if I did. After all, I'm only two episodes away from
the end of this season; surely I can just finish it out. But no.
That's a combination of the sunk cost fallacy and my completionist
nature.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Then there's some shows that I'm more mildly let down and sad about,
where it doesn't hurt as much that I and the show didn't work out.</p>
<ul><li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Retrospective"><em>Re:Creators</em></a>: I didn't have high expectations
for this at the start of the season, but the initial stuff was cool and
the high concept was interesting. It kept me interested for 14 episodes,
which is at least ten more than many shows manage, and there are any
number of nice bits and characters that still stick in my mind. Also,
the OP music remains excellent (I prefer the first OP's music to the
second, but they're both good).<p>
In retrospect, <em>Re:Creators</em> had a good line on 'cool'. Perhaps this
is partly because many of its characters were consciously supposed to
be fictional (plucked into 'reality') and so did not have to be given
feet of clay in order to feel more realistic; they could mostly run
on the rule of cool and nothing else. For example, Mamika is almost
too perfect in the show itself; in a work where she was intended to
be a real character, she'd probably have been made more tangled and
ambiguous and less appealing as a result. But I wave my hands here.<p>
(Sometimes this didn't work in the favour of the character and the
show. Yes, I'm still sore about Magane.)<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Retrospective"><em>Fate/Apocrypha</em></a>: I have a mixed
relationship with <em>Fate</em> as a whole and I did drop and
then un-drop this after the first episode, but I still keep
hoping for a <em>Fate</em> series that delivers all of the <a href="https://twitter.com/thaliarchus/status/936366747715850243">cool stuff</a> (including
but not limited to fight action) but without the other things that are
probably inevitable given that this is both <em>Fate</em> and a TV series
(with a TV series' production limits). Some aspects of <em>F/A</em> were
great, too, but for me they wound up as too little in too much of an
ocean of stuff I was too indifferent to.<p>
(Overall I feel I got what I wanted from the show, since I went in
with modest expectations and stopped watching when I felt I was about
done. But I still feel sad that it wasn't more. I'll probably always
feel this sadness every time I watch a <em>Fate</em> work and it doesn't
knock me out of the park.)<p>
</li>
<li><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Midway"><em>A Centaur's Life</em></a>: It feels like a miracle that
such a peculiar and far-out manga got animated in the first place, so
I'm only mildly sad that various aspects of the actual implementation
didn't work for me. Perhaps the interesting bits in the show will have
persuaded some people to check out the manga and gotten them hooked on
it.<p>
(The manga really is far more out there than you might expect just
from the premise. It gets really weird in places, especially as
it goes on.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Perhaps it's silly to go into new shows with expectations at all, since
any long-term anime watcher knows that anything can happen with a new
show (for bad or good), but it's also entirely human. People aren't
perfectly logical robots; we're always influenced by emotional factors
and our knowledge. Even if you deliberately shield yourself from hearing
anything about a new season, you know that some shows are successors
to shows that you liked (or adopt a manga you know something about),
and that builds up inevitable expectations.</p>
<p>PS: I'm deliberately not considering shows that I actually finished
even if I wasn't as taken with them as I expected and wanted to be.
This is for shows that didn't work out to such an extent that I stopped
watching them, not shows that merely disappointed me for various reasons
or that turned out to be less than I'd hoped for or expected.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
</div>
Some shows that didn't work out for me in 20172017-12-18T17:38:37Z2017-12-18T17:38:23Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/EndingsBroadVsNarrowcks<div class="wikitext"><p>I've written before about <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SatisfyingStoryEndings">the different ways that story endings can
be satisfying</a>, where they can deliver either
or both of <em>narrative</em> or <em>emotional</em> satisfaction; they can wrap up
the plot or resolve the emotional conflicts a character had, or both.
Today I want to talk about an additional dimension in story endings
that plays into how satisfying people find them.</p>
<p>Story endings can be what I'll call <em>broad</em> or <em>narrow</em>. A <em>broad</em> ending
is one that ties up as much as possible of the open issues in the story,
while a <em>narrow</em> ending ignores many of them and only addresses a few.
It's most common for this distinction to matter narratively, because the
plot side is where it's most common to have a lot of outstanding issues;
usually the emotional side of a story is already concentrated on only
a few characters, so the story doesn't need to cover very much to give
them emotionally satisfying resolutions. However, in some situations
you can still have an <em>emotionally narrow</em> ending, because you just
ignore issues with secondary characters or focus in on only a few
characters in an ensemble cast.</p>
<p>(For example, I feel that <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/EurekaSevenAOEnding"><em>Eureka Seven AO</em> had an emotionally narrow
ending</a>. There were character conflicts and themes
that were simply dropped on the floor in the ending, if they even existed,
since the ending focused purely on Ao.)</p>
<p>One way to get an <em>emotionally unsatisfying</em> ending is to have it
be emotionally narrow. The show may wrap up the central character's
conflicts and themes, but it ignores all of the rest; we the audience
then feel that these other characters have basically been dropped on
the floor, reduced to unimportant spear carries when the show had
previously implied that they were important.</p>
<p>You can obviously get a narratively unsatisfying ending by having it
be narratively narrow. However, a narratively narrow ending doesn't
have to be unsatisfying, at least to some of the audience, because not
infrequently there are plot questions that are fine to not answer . The
show has to stage its mysteries somewhat carefully in order to make
it clear that not getting answers is a possibility, which includes not
making the answer to them be important for understanding things.
But done well this can avoid <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/EndingsProblemThought">a common problem with mysteries</a>.</p>
<p>(In practice we already accept that many things about the setting of a
show will not be explained in any depth, even things that are reasonably
central to the show's premise. For one example, many science fiction
series involve a great deal of technology for things like faster than
light travel or flying cars that's simply never explained. <em>Ghost in the
Shell</em> doesn't explain the mechanics of cyborgs, ghosts, hacking things,
or the various weapons; it's enough for the story that we get a vague
idea of how they work and what their limitations are.)</p>
<p>Of course, what works may vary from person to person. For a personal
example, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ShinguReactions">in <em>Shingu</em> I'm fine with Muryou's mysteries not being
answered</a> but <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ShinguMuryou">other people aren't necessarily so
happy</a>.</p>
</div>
Story endings can be broad or narrow ones2017-12-17T23:15:49Z2017-12-17T23:15:38Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/MangaVsAnimePacingcks<div class="wikitext"><p>Back in the summer season, I found <em>A Centaur's Life</em> uninspiring and
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Midway">wound up dropping it</a>. As odd as it sounds, this
fascinates me, because back in the day I read some of the manga and
found it generally fascinating, beautiful, and engaging (including all
of the material that I watched in the show). And it's not as if the show
was badly produced or badly made; the presentation was simply relatively
bland, flat, and unimaginatively straightforward. <em>A Centaur's Life</em> is
not the first show where I've liked the manga but found a competently made
show uninteresting, and over time I've developed some theories about why.
One of them has to do with pacing in manga versus anime.</p>
<p>The obvious difference is that a manga's pacing is substantially under
your control, while the pacing of anime is fixed on rails. When you're
reading a manga, you can slow down to absorb and soak in a page or a
panel, or reread an exchange of dialog to clarify it. Or, if the manga
is slow and drawn out, you can speed up. If there's a long exchange
of dialog with no important changes in the panels, you can go at your
reading speed or skim the panels, and if there's little dialog you can
whip through the panels themselves to absorb what's happening.</p>
<p>(Some of the time, low-dialog panels are actively designed for you to
go through fast on the first read, to feel the rush of action or events.)</p>
<p>In anime you have none of this freedom. The show advances dialog and
events exactly as fast as it's chosen to animate them, no faster and
no slower. If there are fascinating things you're not naturally free to
linger over them, because the show drags you away; those things are only
there for so many frames and so many seconds. Crucially, if things are
slow and getting boring, you can't move along any faster; you're locked
to the pace of dialog and movement and change that the show has chosen,
waiting as the show ticks away seconds in animation or slow pans or
characters talking and talking.</p>
<p>(In some video environments you can freeze frame, frame by frame, skip
around, and maybe even play things at faster than normal speeds, but it's
not at all as natural as reading manga faster or slower and it's likely
to have other effects, such as distorting the sound.)</p>
<p>A broader difference is that I've come to believe that much manga is
naturally paced faster than anime is, where covering the same story
content simply takes longer in anime form. At least for me, I can go
through 16 or 32 pages of most manga in under half an hour; in animated
form, the same content often takes at least an episode and perhaps more.
There are exceptions, primarily for works that are heavy on action, but
<em>A Centaur's Life</em> is mostly not one of those. Instead, like many manga,
it's got a lot of talking in various settings, accompanied by situations
that can be illustrated in a panel or a page or two.</p>
<p>In anime, you have two or three issues that take up (extra) time. First,
people can only speak so fast, usually slower than you can read dialog
in a manga (although there are exceptions, as anyone who's ever had
to pause the video player to read all the subtitles knows). Second,
you have to animate things actually happening; you can't imply it with
action lines or panel to panel transitions the way that you can in
a manga (for a discussion of how action is implied in manga but must
be shown in anime, see <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/NausicaaMangaAnalysis">Kumi Kaoru's analysis of the <em>Nausicaa</em> manga</a>). On top of this, manga drawing can be very dense
with implications and many things packed into a single panel or page,
which works because readers can slow down to absorb them all; in anime
you must draw out all of this long enough to insure that a decent portion
of your audience will have seen and absorbed everything. Of course,
given that dialog takes more time, this need to draw visual things out
can be handy.</p>
<p>An interesting example of speed in manga versus anime
comes up in <em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em>. As covered
by Emily in <a href="https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2017/10/08/the-flower-language-of-the-ancient-magus-bride-episode-1/">The flower language of <em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em></a>,
the first episode features in part a number of views of the flowers around
Elias' home, as Chise arrives with Elias for the first time. All of this
feels perfectly natural and well paced in the anime. In manga, the same
events are covered in equally unrushed form in about two and a half pages,
with far less detail. On the one hand, this smaller manga space makes it
faster to go through (and two of the pages are are a double page splash
spread). On the other hand, this means that the manga can't imply or
show all of the flowers (and all of the meanings) that the anime can.
Sometimes drawing something out at anime pace and filling the time the
dialog requires can give you greater depth and interest.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
</div>
Pacing in manga versus anime2017-12-17T21:39:10Z2017-12-17T21:38:59Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/NausicaaMangaAnalysiscks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="http://2chan.us/wordpress/2009/11/04/kumi-kaoru-translation-nausicaa-1/">"At First, I Wanted to be a Manga-ka":
Analyzing the Nausicaa Manga by Kumi Kaoru part 1</a>
and <a href="https://ogiuemaniax.com/2010/03/05/manga-criticism-translation-at-first-i-wanted-to-be-a-manga-ka-analyzing-the-nausicaa-manga-by-kumi-kaoru-pt-2/">the continuation part 2</a>
is a translation of Kaoru Kumi's fascinating visual and technical
analysis of Hayao Miyazaki <em>Nausicaa</em> manga. Kaoru Kumi starts her
analysis this way:</p>
<blockquote><p>As soon as the serialization of <em>Nausicaa</em> began, manga lovers began
to praise it highly. It seems like the two things you heard the most
about it were “it’s quite cinematic” and “its style is dense and
hard to read.” [...]</p>
<p>Putting that aside, what exactly does “cinematic” mean, anyway?
[...]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She goes on to provide an explanation for what cinematic means in the
context of a manga (drawing evidence from how films connect shots to other
shots), give examples from other manga, and then analyze how <em>Nausicaa</em>
itself does this. The result is a fascinating breakdown of how the manga
works so well and genuinely feels cinematic, with a side discussion of
how the same things would have to be presented in anime form in order
to work well. In the process she mentions some fascinating details of
manga, such as how the production process for commercial manga (with
work split between the manga-ka themselves and assistants) influences
how panels have to be composed, and how a fast or slow publication pace
changes what sort of art can be in a manga.</p>
<p>This is just a taste and an inadequate summary. If this sort of thing
is at all to your interest, read the whole thing. If I'm any guide, be
prepared to set aside some time, because it completely absorbed me for
the duration.</p>
<p>(Via <a href="https://ogiuemaniax.com/2017/11/19/10-years-after-ogiue-maniax-10th-anniversary/">Ogiue Maniax's 10th anniversary post</a>,
itself <a href="http://ani-nouto.animeblogger.net/2017/11/19/ogiue-maniax-10th-anniversary/">via Author</a>.)</p>
</div>
Link: Kumi Kaoru's fascinating analysis of Miyazaki's <em>Nausicaa</em> manga2017-12-17T21:32:31Z2017-12-17T21:32:15Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/AncientMagusBrideSleighBeggycks<div class="wikitext"><p>In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancient_Magus'_Bride"><em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em></a>, the protagonist,
Chise Hatori, is a special kind of mage, and for a long time there's been
some confusion over what English language term should be used for what she
is. Specifically, there's been confusion and disagreement over whether she
is a 'sleigh beggy' (the official Seven Seas manga version) or a 'slay
vega'. Last year I wrote <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/AncientMagusBrideTermTranslation">an entry</a>
about this, after Crunchyroll translated the term as 'slay vega' in the
first episode of the OVA, partly because <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/801452313479184384">my personal preference</a> is for 'slay
vega'.</p>
<p>Since then, two things have happened. First, Crunchyroll is
airing <em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em> TV series, and in the TV
series Chise is a 'sleigh beggy'. More importantly, we now
have official confirmation from the mangaka:</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="https://twitter.com/drewtnguyen/status/902024694999662592">@drewtnguyen</a>:
@EzoYamazaki00 HELLO! QUESTION! First, thank you for the signature at
CRX! Second, how did you come up with the name スレイ・ベガ? Thanks!</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/EzoYamazaki00/status/902038350789357568">@EzoYamazaki00</a>:
Hello!Thank you for coming. It is words of the Isle of Man.The words
hint at a fairy or a fairy and a human child.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(<a href="https://twitter.com/hikaslap/status/903060869608644608">Via @hikaslap</a>.
It's relevant to know that a 'sleigh beggy' is a
relatively obscure type of faerie from the Isle of Man (see eg
<a href="http://www.darkages.com/community/phi/Cliona_Fae/isle.html">here</a>
or <a href="http://www.kelleyheckart.com/FaeryLore.html">here</a>,
and also the discussion <a href="https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/23149/what-is-a-slay-vega">here</a>).)</p>
<p>This pretty much settles any debate over the official English term
for what Chise is. Crunchyroll has changed its translation (although
its subtitles for the first OVA episode still use 'slay vega') and Kore
Yamazaki herself has given us an unambiguous answer. The Seven Seas manga
translation was faithful to the mangaka's intentions, wonky explanation
and all.</p>
<p>(I do wonder how the Crunchyroll 'slay vega' translation for the first
OVA episode came about (and if anyone got yelled at over it), but we'll
probably never hear that story.)</p>
<p>I still stand by <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/TermTranslationThoughts">my view</a> that it's an
unfortunate choice, but it probably doesn't matter very much, especially
for the TV series. Although 'sleigh beggy' does have a meaning, most
people are going to read it as a weird arbitrary combination of words,
just like they would have read 'slay vega'. Arguably it has less meaning
that 'slay vega', because people would probably read implications into
the 'slay' part of that.</p>
<p>(This is part of <a href="https://twitter.com/appropriant">@appropriant</a>'s <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
</div>
It officially is 'sleigh beggy' in <em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em>2017-12-16T20:24:11Z2017-12-16T20:23:54Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/KemonoFriendsUnimportantCGcks<div class="wikitext"><p><em>Kemono Friends</em> is made almost entirely in <abbr title="3D computer graphics">CG</abbr>, and they're famously pretty janky and
limited, with a stilted and awkward look (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/855260728185552897">even when it tried</a>).
The show was made with so few resources that <a href="https://twitter.com/canipashow/status/846846145196273664">it took them
until episode 7 to make the bus's wheels spin in the opening</a>. <em>Kemono
Friends</em> is also really good. Not 'good for its limited budget'; genuinely
good, to the extent that it's likely to make any number of people's
end of year lists (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Retrospective">mine included</a>). <em>Kemono
Friends</em> has a depth to it that anime rarely manages, and the show does
it without ever losing its lighthearted charm.</p>
<p>Would <em>Kemono Friends</em> have been better if it was made with adequate
resources using traditional 2D drawn animation instead of scrappy
shoestring CG? Probably; I'm willing to believe that all of the charm
could have been maintained with better art and animation. How about
a version of the show made in great 2D drawn animation but without the
excellent writing and direction that <em>Kemono Friends</em> had? There are some
people who would say that such a show would be better than the <em>Kemono
Friends</em> we got because it would look much better, but I'm not among
them. The greatness in <em>Kemono Friends</em> doesn't come from how it looks,
it comes from what's in the show, and if you take that away it doesn't
really matter how pretty what's left looks. A pedestrian but beautiful
show is still a pedestrian show. As we've seen more than once, not even
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Animation">KyoAni</a>'s many talents
can save a show from its own writing.</p>
<p>What <em>Kemono Friends</em> illustrates, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/LetterToMomoView">once again</a>, is
that whether a work is made in CG or with drawn animation is far less
important than what's in the work. While we've had illustrations of this
before, <em>Kemono Friends</em> is extremely handy because it has such a gulf
between its visual appearance and its quality of writing and execution.
You almost never get amazing things that were made on a shoestring and
show it.</p>
<p>This is what I mean by calling CG versus 2D animation ultimately
unimportant. The difference between the two is not nothing, but moving
from one to the other moves the overall quality and impact of a show far
less than other things do.</p>
<p>(Well, for most people. There are people who care a lot about <a href="https://blog.sakugabooru.com/glossary/sakuga/">sakuga</a>; for at least some of
these people, CG is pretty much a deal killer in the same way that a
mandatory English dub mostly removes my interest.)</p>
<p>As a corollary, that a particular show will be made in CG instead
of hand-drawn animation is well down the list of things to worry
about. You should be worrying much more about things like who
is making it, under what conditions, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ThunderboltFantasyEmbracingGenre">what they feel about it</a>, and what their goals are, because
all of those are far more likely to change whether the end result is
good or bad.</p>
<p>(This is part of the <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
</div>
<em>Kemono Friends</em> shows that CG versus drawn animation is ultimately unimportant2017-12-15T18:57:40Z2017-12-15T18:57:27Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/KnightsMagicAndHonestycks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_%26_Magic"><em>Knight's & Magic</em></a>
doesn't exactly have a promising premise and plot; in fact, it basically
sounds like a wince inducing piece of wish-fulfillment fanfiction. A
mecha otaku dies and is reincarnated as a kid genius in a world
with mecha where he can use his other-worldly ideas to make the best
mecha ever and be fawned over by all and sundry? Many people would
give such a show a wide berth. But despite this unpromising premise,
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Retrospective">the actual series was surprisingly good</a>,
with an infectiously earnest enthusiasm and a <a href="https://mageinabarrel.com/2017/07/22/knights-magic-and-the-value-of-transparency-in-wish-fulfillment/">a heart-on-sleeve appeal</a>.</p>
<p>Originally I was going to write about the power of this earnestness
and embracing your genre, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ThunderboltFantasyEmbracingGenre">as <em>Thunderbolt Fantasy</em> did last year</a>. But earnestness by itself doesn't make
a show good in the way that <em>Knight's & Magic</em> is; there are plenty of
quite earnest works that are actually kind of terrible, and <em>Knight's &
Magic</em> could very easily have gone off the rails itself, falling into
complete absurdity and losing much of its appeal. Instead, I've come
to feel that the crucial ingredient that made the show work is honesty.</p>
<p><em>Knight's & Magic</em> is a show that is honest with itself, and as part of
that it's honest about what it is; it's wish fulfillment and it never
pretends otherwise. <em>Knight's & Magic</em> takes things seriously (it's
not a satire or a farce), but it's not a serious, realistic work and
it doesn't try to be one. As part of this it quite deliberately dials
everything up to at least ten, not for comedy but because it's more
fun that way. While earnest fun is the heart of <em>Knight's & Magic</em>,
I don't think it would have been possible if the people behind it had
not understood and appreciated what it was, warts and all.</p>
<p>As part of dialing everything up to at least ten and going straight for
fun, <em>K&M</em> is completely transparent about how the plot is on Ernesti's
side. This is in a way another side of the show's honesty; the show
is always clear about its fundamental nature, including its ultimate
niceness (at least as far as the good guys are concerned, and this is a
show with very clear good guys).</p>
<p>Another part of this is a surprising honesty about giant robots, because
the final showdown is framed as the romanticism of giant robots versus the
practicality of other options. Ernesti explicitly admits this and declares
that he doesn't care; he's going to defeat Gojass's creation in order to
preserve the world for giant robots because that's what he loves. <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/912144885247090695">He
wins</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/912147270862241793">of course</a>, and it doesn't
feel out of place because the thumb of the plot has been on his side all
along and has never made any pretense about it. <em>Knight's & Magic</em> is
as honest about loving giant robots, with their contradictions and all,
as it is about the rest of its nature.</p>
<p>(You can read the ending of the show as partly a nod to this conflict
being a never-ending one.)</p>
<p>(This is part of <a href="https://twitter.com/appropriant">@appropriant</a>'s <a href="https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/">12 Days of Anime for 2017</a>.)</p>
<h3>Sidebar: Ignoring the long shadow of Gundam</h3>
<p>Like many giant robot shows, <em>Knight's & Magic</em> winds up wanting to
have its cake and eat it too. On the one hand, the most interesting
giant robot fights are generally against other giant robots, and in
situations where there is real tension. On the other hand this means
war, literally; people are fighting each other in those giant robots
and dying in those pretty explosions. The contradiction between war
as a cool thing with awesome giant robots and the brutal, bloody
consequences of war is deeply embedded in the genre <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/904540399255130112">since at least
Gundam</a>.</p>
<p><em>Knight's & Magic</em> basically ignores this. It's not that it pretends
that there aren't people dying in the pretty explosions (it's pretty
explicit that there are, actually). Instead, it pretends that this is no
different than when the characters were fighting giant monsters earlier
in the series. The opponents are different and more challenging and
the fights are cooler because they are giant robot versus giant robot
(or giant robot versus giant flying robo-dragon), but that's it.</p>
<p>(To be fair to <em>Knight's & Magic</em>, the show also ignored how there were
plenty of people dying 'heroically' against the giant monsters. It did
have one little plot section about how scary fighting is, but promptly
brushed it off.)</p>
<p>Within the show this pretense works, but that's by authorial fiat.
Outside of the show, well, there's at least a long history of doing
this and the audience is probably used to it. <em>Knight's & Magic</em>
is not a show you think deeply about, anyway. I twitch here because
I'm quietly scarred by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Suit_Gundam_0080:_War_in_the_Pocket">Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket</a>.</p>
</div>
<em>Knight's & Magic</em> and the power of honesty2017-12-14T15:57:14Z2017-12-14T15:56:35Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Midwaycks<div class="wikitext"><p>It's time once again for a much of the way through update on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Brief">my
earlier impressions of this season</a>. By now the shows
have all shown their cards and my views and expectations have been
solidified. In the process one show is turning itself into something
amazing.</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Land of the Lustrous</em>: This has just gotten more and more stunning
as it goes along. The show has steadily ratcheted up the tension and
the stakes, all the while with excellent execution in so many ways.
The latest episode (episode 9) is a stunning peak of atmosphere and
all of the crows coming home to roost at once, and nothing bad even
happened in it.<p>
(<em>LotL</em> was good from the start but the early episodes weren't as
excellent as the later ones have been. Not because they were bad, but
simply because the show had to patiently build up the background and the
overall situation before it could start all the rocks rolling downhill.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Girls' Last Tour</em>: This continues to be beautiful and touching,
among other things; it's been quietly and subtly exploring various
bits of philosophy amidst the ruins of humanity's time on Earth.
Each episode always pulls me in so well that I blink and it's over.<p>
(Recent episodes increasingly make it feel like the show as a whole
is going somewhere, in a way that's slowly increasing an unseen
tension. Parly this is because the show's increasingly making it
clear that this setting is basically the end of the road.)<p>
One thing worth mentioning is that <em>Girls' Last Tour</em> has really
amazingly good sound direction and design. The show's sound work is
an important part of the overall atmosphere and mood it achieves, and
the show make it sound effortless; the music and atmospheric sounds
simply work so well.<p>
</li>
<li><em>March comes in like a Lion</em>: <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/MarchKawamotoCats">The recent arc around Kawamoto Hina</a> has been generally stunning and wrenching in a
good way, and in the process has pulled <em>March</em> back from brink of
semi-boredom. Hina's story is so oppressive that I'm glad <em>March</em>
has moved the focus mostly off it for the past few episodes.</li>
</ul>
<p><em>Land of the Lustrous</em> is more my kind of thing than <em>Girls' Last Tour</em>
is, but otherwise I wouldn't want to rate them against each other. <em>Land
of the Lustrous</em> is more straightforward and so comes across as more
powerful to me; <em>Girls' Last Tour</em> is a lot more quiet and indirect,
and it seems very likely that we'll get less answers from it (partly
because answers aren't the point).</p>
<p>Very enjoyable to me:</p>
<ul><li><em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em>: This has continued to be a solid anime
of a manga that I love. I don't think it's stunning and there have
been some bits that were awfully anime in a conventional way, but the
whole thing remains very enjoyable to watch; I really like seeing these
stories animated and enjoying my foreknowledge of what's coming. To
its credit, the superdeformed comedy bits have gotten better and better
integrated over time.</li>
</ul>
<p>They're okay and I'm getting what I expected:</p>
<ul><li><em>Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond</em>: I've recently realized that this
is basically an anime version of an American superhero team comic book.
We have the same team of powerful people who have reasonably spectacular
episodic fights and adventures, and the same fact that there is no
overall plot or story movement. As an anime this is far more hard-edged
than an American superhero comic would be, but it's basically the same
experience.<p>
I'd probably be more enthused about <em>BBB & Beyond</em> if I cared about the
characters, but I don't. Not even Leo, not any more.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Kino's Journey (2017)</em>: I've realized that a major problem with the
show is that it's simply shallow. It wants to address big philosophical
issues, but its approach is bluntly obvious and feels like we're being
beaten over the head. This would be okay if the show was otherwise
beautiful or interesting, but it's not; it's generally flat otherwise.<p>
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/936834347725832192">I've said on Twitter</a> that <em>Girls'
Last Tour</em> is what <em>Kino's Journey</em> should be and I stand by that.
<em>GLT</em> is graceful and beautiful where <em>KJ</em> is straightforward and
plain.<p>
(I don't remember what I saw of the original <em>Kino's Journey</em> being
like this, so I should definitely go watch it at some point. Probably
not this season, though.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Neither of these shows are exactly good, but they're okay and at the
moment I'm willing to keep watching them at a popcorn show level. To be
honest, part of that is due to the name and history behind each of them.
If I hadn't seen the first season of <em>BBB</em>, I might not be watching this
one.</p>
<p>I'm <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/936715877642326016">getting tempted</a> to check out
<em>Just Because!</em>, so I may have something to say about it soon. I've
officially dropped <em>Recovery of an MMO Junkie</em> after pausing it <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Brief">early
on</a>; the romance story may be charming, but I'm apparently
not in the mood for that particular take on it.</p>
</div>
Checking in on the Fall 2017 anime season 'midway' through2017-12-03T23:48:35Z2017-12-03T23:48:28Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/MarchKawamotoCatscks<div class="wikitext"><p><em>March comes in like a Lion</em> has always tried to blend some comedy into
its serious overall tone. This has not always worked very well, because
it's mostly been broad, silly comedy that could easily feel out of place
amidst the rest of the show (and that was when the comedy even worked,
which I feel it often didn't). One of those somewhat jarring comedy
elements has been the Kawamoto family's cats, who've generally been
presented as goofy things that the show went as far as giving voices to,
so the cats could natter on about wanting some of the food on the table
and so on.</p>
<p>Then came the most recent run of episodes, starting with <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2017/11/06/march-comes-in-like-a-lion-episode-26/">episode 26</a>,
where Kawamoto Hina is in real emotional distress and the household is
roiled with emotions. Now suddenly the Kawamoto cats are <em>cats</em>, presented
with realistic looks, and we see them pressing up against their humans,
trying to reassure them, or hiding under the table from the tensions
around them. None of them speak, none of them are comedic or goofy. The
mood has shifted and the cats are one of our bellweathers of that shift.</p>
<p>I really like this and think it's quite clever. It's not obtrusive;
the cats and their behavior is a background thing in these scenes that
you wouldn't consciously notice unless you were looking for it. But both
that behavior and the shift from their previous behavior and presentation
quietly helps reinforce the whole mood. And I think it wouldn't work as
well as it does if the show had kept the Kawamoto cats as merely ordinary
cats before; it is the shift from broad and unreal comedy cats to silent
real ones that helps sell it so well.</p>
<p>(This elaborates on <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/932484656624267264">a tweet or two of mine</a>, because I
feel like it.)</p>
</div>
Comedy and seriousness with the Kawamoto cats in <em>March comes in like a Lion</em>2017-11-21T05:42:33Z2017-11-21T05:42:24Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/PrincessPrincipalEndingcks<div class="wikitext"><p>(There are some spoilers here.)</p>
<p>In <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Retrospective">my retrospective on the summer season</a>,
I said that <em>Princess Principal</em> wound up as more of a prequel than a
story and waved my hands a bit about why that was so. Today I want to
write more details about that. The first question to ask is if <em>Princess
Principal</em> has a conventional ending. Usefully I can answer that based
purely on story structure, without having to talk about the specifics
of what happened.</p>
<p>There are two ways to have <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SatisfyingStoryEndings">a conventional ending</a> to a story; you can resolve a significant
ongoing plot issue or you can move some <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ThunderboltFantasyCharacterArcs"><em>dramatic characters</em></a> significantly forward in their
character arcs (or you can do both). If you're ending an entire work
you wrap up the big things (for characters and/or the plot); if you're
just ending a season, you just wrap up a medium-scale plot or move
characters forward but not all the way to the end of their stories.
Looked at purely through this structural lens, <em>Princess Principal</em>
does neither. The show had no large scale plot as such (although it did
have an overall situation that created the fundamental story conflict),
and while the protagonists were all dramatic characters, none of them
resolved their character arcs or ostensibly made dramatic changes.</p>
<p>At the same time, things very clearly happened over the course of
<em>Princess Principal</em>; the protagonists all wound up in a significantly
different place than they started out. The show is not simply an
episodic collection of adventures where at most we find out character
backgrounds and then get a brief two-episode 'climax' at the end.
That these changes happen and what they are is why I call <em>Princess
Principal</em> a prequel.</p>
<p>In the very first aired episode of <em>Princess Principal</em>, Dorothy and
Chise have what is in retrospect a crucial conversation after Dorothy
casually lies to some normal students:</p>
<blockquote><p>Chise: That was a bold move. <br>
Dorothy: It's best not to sneak around with these things. <br>
Chise: I see Ange isn't the only one with a knack for lying. <br>
Dorothy: Spies are all liars. You're lying to me now, Chise. <br>
Chise: As are you. <br>
Dorothy: So what do you say we try being honest with each other? <br>
Chise: The idea has its charm. But if we stopped lying, we wouldn't be
able to stay friends. <br>
Dorothy: Is that really friendship? <br>
Chise: Even parents and children lie to each other.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This deliberately sets up the usual genre atmosphere for spy stories where
all of the characters have their own interests, trust is purely temporary,
things aren't as they seem, and betrayal may lurk around the corner at
any time. All of the protagonists have their characteristic roles in this
atmosphere; Ange, Dorothy, and Chise are outright spies with their own
interests and secrets, Princess is the mystery, and Beatrice is the naif
outsider. In fact the entire first episode is there partly to establish
this overall atmosphere, since the episode's plot is a <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/884198180837097472">classical
spy story</a>
of deception, hidden motives, and betrayal.</p>
<p>Over the course of the rest of the series, all of that changes. As
all of the protagonists undergo character development, we see them
quietly transmute from a collection of spies thrown together into a
group of comrades. This reaches its climax in the ending of the show,
where over the course of the show's only real plot arc, one by one
all of the characters deliberately choose to turn their backs on their
previous associations and instead choose the people who've now become
their friends. By the ending epilogue, these people have stopped being a
group of spies thrown together and become a team that happens to work as
spies. It's to <em>Princess Principal</em>'s credit that all of these decisions
feel inevitable in the light of everything we've seen the characters
go through together. Of course Chise is going to come back. Of course
Dorothy is ultimately going to quietly choose the people who've become
her friends, and to let Ange know that.</p>
<p>In other words, <em>Princess Principal</em> is the origin story of a team,
the prequel that explains how they came to be before they go on to have
thrilling adventures together (if <em>Princess Principal</em> ever gets another
season). It's not a whole story in and of itself, because it doesn't
really go anywhere or resolve anything (either in plot or in character
development), but the characters themselves change in important ways;
they end as different people than they started and they've made real
decisions in the process.</p>
</div>
On <em>Princess Principal</em>'s ending2017-11-13T02:36:32Z2017-11-13T02:36:24Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2017Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p>I'm now anywhere from three to five episodes into everything I'm
watching, which is long enough for most shows to show their cards and
for my opinions to firm up. So, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Brief">as usual</a>, here's
how my views of this season have shaken out, to follow up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017FirstEpisodes">my first
episode reactions</a>.</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Girls' Last Tour</em>: This is beautiful and touching and funny; it makes
cartoony character art fit into its scratchy desolate setting art,
and has very good use of background music. I called this 'slice of
post-apocalyptic life' initially, and it is that but it's also much
more. It's also quietly sad and tragic, because this is life after life
has stopped and periodically Chito and Yuuri will have conversations
that remind you that their lives are startlingly desolate. I keep
hoping for a good ending for the two, but I don't think we're going
to get it.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Land of the Lustrous</em>: Above all, what makes <em>LoL</em> great is the
characters and their interactions, especially
Phos. There are plenty of excellent things in the rest
of the show; it's beautiful (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/924486585793613824">in an unconventional way</a>), the setting
is full of interesting and intriguing questions, the building they
live in is great, the show makes excellent use of CG and integrates it
wonderfully with conventional 2D animation, and so on. But none of them
would matter half as much without the compelling characters.<p>
(Following <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/EndingsProblemThought">my standard views</a>, I hope that
the show never tries to explain the mysteries of the setting. It's
based on an ongoing manga, so I suspect that this is a good bet.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Very enjoyable for me:</p>
<ul><li><em>The Ancient Magus' Bride</em>: I love the manga and this is very much my
kind of thing, so I can't possibly be unbiased here. With that said,
this is a good, solid anime version of the manga, but there's nothing so
far to elevate it over the manga or add much unique to the manga. It's
beautiful but not stunning, and if you've read the manga I don't think
this is essential to watch (although you'll probably enjoy seeing
<em>Ancient Magus' Bride</em> animated well, in a solid adaption). People who
haven't seen the manga are apparently enjoying this, too.<p>
In a side note, I continue to think that <em>AMB</em>'s periodic brief
digressions into superdeformed comedy are a mistake in animated
form. They work in the manga, but I think that's because manga
panels are more isolated from each other than moments in a TV
show are. In the animated version, the SD moments undercut the
mood and impact of the beautiful regular animation. The comedy
would be just as good without the characters going so SD.<p>
(The realities of TV anime production were always sort of tilted
against <em>AMB</em> being stunning in the way I wanted it to be. But then,
<em>Flying Witch</em> arguably managed it, although the manga was sparser
than <em>Ancient Magus' Bride</em>.)</li>
</ul>
<p>As good as always:</p>
<ul><li><em>March comes in like a Lion</em>: On the one hand, this is still the same
show it was before it paused. On the other hand, I'd like things to
be moving more than they are; the first few episodes this season have
mostly been fiddling around with small things.</li>
</ul>
<p>Okay:</p>
<ul><li><em>Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond</em>: This second season is a perfectly
acceptable and decent episodic action/comedy show. It's
competently directed, with decent production values, animation,
background art, and so on. But <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/924423614807576581">it's not anything more</a>, and the
first season definitely was more, for all that it was also <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2015Retrospective">flawed</a>; the first season had Leo learning about
his powers and an overall plot arc.<p>
I'm watching <em>BBB & Beyond</em> this season as my empty popcorn action show
watch, which it's reasonably decent at.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Kino's Journey</em>: At first I thought that this had some interesting
editorial things to say about Kino through
its choice of which stories to adopt (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/919065726320771072">and when</a>). Then I
discovered that the stories it was adopting had been chosen by an
audience vote. A popularity contest is not the way you get a good
adoption that has something of its own to say, or even one that
illuminates the characters to people who aren't already familiar with
the material.<p>
If I was a smart person, I might drop this and use the time to watch
the original <em>Kino's Journey</em> series, which didn't suffer from this
issue and apparently does have things to say.</li>
</ul>
<p>Probably being dropped after the next episode:</p>
<ul><li><em>Children of the Whales</em> (#4): I can't do better than <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/926299141432541185">my Twitter
summary</a>:<blockquote><p>I would have to describe Children of the Whales as some combination
between 'lethargic' and 'tiresome'. But it's very pretty so far.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
I'm watching the next episode only because I want to find out some
secrets about the setting and they're probably going to explain them
next episode. Otherwise, this has turned out to be an essentially
empty and flat show, one that is paced far too slowly for its own good
(some of the character dialog is also pretty painfully direct and
obvious).</li>
</ul>
<p>Paused and probably dropped as not for me:</p>
<ul><li><em>Recovery of an MMO Junkie</em> (#2): This is charming but I haven't found
it particularly compelling. Perhaps some parts of it also cut a little
bit too close to the bone for me.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Garo - Vanishing Line</em> (#3): This is a completely straightforward but
unexceptional show, and unfortunately what it's about isn't very
interesting to me; it's a monster of the week tokusatsu show
in animated form with a specific and not entirely attractive
atmosphere. The result is an okay action show and <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/926680370594148352">I like Sophie</a>, but <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/920883855384555520">it has
no spark</a> and
this season <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/925760713053876224">my slot for an empty action show is better filled by <em>BBB
& Beyond</em></a>.<p>
(Some people like Gina but <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/922310778027413504">I'm not entirely sold on her</a>.)</li>
</ul>
<p>I keep hearing good things about <em>Just Because!</em>, so I may look at
it at some point despite what I said in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2017FirstEpisodes">my first episode reactions</a>, partly because the season is slowing down for
me (I've basically dropped three shows at this point).</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Fall 2017 anime season so far2017-11-05T20:10:49Z2017-11-05T20:10:40Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Fall2017FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them).</p>
<ul><li>Kino's Journey episode 1: That was solid as an exercise in setting and
philosophy, with a reasonably appealing viewpoint character.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/916499227487948800">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Girls' Last Tour episode 1: That was a nice mood piece, full of great
little moments & willing to be quiet. Slice of post-apocalyptic life.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/916503778936999937">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Land of the Lustrous ep 1: That was a solid and interesting start,
even if I don't entirely like one of the character archetypes on display.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/916797976277905408">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>The Ancient Magus' Bride ep 1: A good solid adaptation of a
marvelous manga. It's not as exceptional as the original but it
does a good job.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/916814290576867328">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>BBB & Beyond episode 1: That was a perfectly okay adventure story
that said little beyond itself. Basically a reintroduction of everyone.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/916882869494124544">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Garo - Vanishing Line episode 1: This was decent popcorn action,
with some nice touches, some teeth-grinding bits, and not the best fights.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/916887149294903297">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Code Realize episode 1: An unexceptional implementation that doesn't
exceed its genre and thus is not for me.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/917229580641071104">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Children of the Whales ep 1: That was reasonably nice and reasonably
pretty, but it sure had a lot of exposition narration & infodumping.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/917950952161923072">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Recovery of an MMO Junkie episode 1: That was okay, but probably
not good enough to get me to watch what's going to be a romance show.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/918681823332454400">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>March comes in like a Lion episode 23: A solid restart, emphasizing
the positive growth in Rei's situation and probably setting things up.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/919327024208113664">♯</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I've decided to skip <em>Inuyashiki</em> for <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/918577532059910145">various reasons</a> (and
Crunchyroll has the manga if I feel interested in skimming
at some point). This season is probably too busy for me to
look into <em>Just Because!</em>, since I've mostly sworn off shows
set in high school, although <a href="https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/preview-guide/2017/fall/just-because/.122308">it's getting good reviews</a>.
Finally, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/915325263466070016"><em>Juni Taisen</em> is just not my kind of show</a>.</p>
<p>(High schools and especially high school romances are basically
played out for me at this point; I've seen so many that a show
has to be exceptional to keep my interest. <em>March comes in like
a Lion</em> is an exception (in the non-romance category); <em>Toradora</em>
was an exception in the romance category.)</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Fall 2017 season2017-10-14T22:31:03Z2017-10-14T22:30:54Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Retrospective">Once again</a> it's time for my traditional
look back at what I watched in this past Summer season, to follow
up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Brief">my early impressions</a> and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Midway">my midway views</a>. Overall I would call this a decent season with
one clear stand-out show that is far ahead of everything else I
watched.</p>
<p>Excellent with an amazing finish:</p>
<ul><li><em>Made in Abyss</em>: While the show wasn't flawless, it was always
beautiful and full of the strangeness of the Abyss
(and often tense), and it built up to a jaw-droppingly
stunning and emotional final episode. <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/913968509339815938">I have no words</a>.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeSbmS06k1k">The last track of Kevin Penkin's beautiful soundtrack</a> is going to stay with
me for a long time.<p>
(In both its last episode and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/MadeInAbyssAndPain">an earlier episode</a>,
<em>Made in Abyss</em> managed to achieve the kind of genuine emotional power
and impact that very few shows can even approach.)<p>
I would love to see a second season of <em>Made in Abyss</em> that was as
well-made as this one, but if we never get any more, the send-off
we got was everything I could have asked for. It is and feels like
a real turning point and transition point in the story, and that's
a good place to stop.</li>
</ul>
<p>Pretty good once the dust settled:</p>
<ul><li><em>Princess Principal</em>: The show's overall execution was very good,
but in the end I stand by <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/913222435889192960">my view that it's more of a prequel than
a story</a>,
and that somewhat lessens the impact. It's not as simple as there
not being enough story and plot; the very short version is that while
everyone is a <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ThunderboltFantasyCharacterArcs">dramatic character</a>
and they all had character development, none of them went through a
full character arc.<p>
(The character who comes closest to having no development is
Beatrice, but the show goes out of its way to show that she's
working to change herself.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Senki Zesshou Symphogear AXZ</em>: By now you're either on board for
the <em>Symphogear</em> experience or you're not. If you are, this was a fine
installment, full of all of the elements that make the show itself. <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/915040226908807168">I
liked</a> how the
show was spared the need to give things a big ending and wrapup due to
there already being a fifth season on the way. See also <a href="https://karmaburn.com/?p=7651">Evirus's
writeup</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>Enjoyable:</p>
<ul><li><em>My Hero Academia</em>: I enjoyed the show overall and I do generally
like hanging around with the characters; I'll probably miss them while
they're gone (there's yet another season coming, of course). I'm not
really happy about the cast being pulled into epic, world-spanning
plots and stories; I would rather see them living a high school life
and occasionally being on the periphery of greater events. But this
is a Shonen Jump title, so we get what we get.<p>
(I continue to be happy that <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/911822503739297792"><em>MHA</em> didn't try to give Bakugo any
sort of tragic backstory</a>.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Fine popcorn watching:</p>
<ul><li><em>Knight's & Magic</em>: It was very earnest and did what it set out to
do pretty well. It was also <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/912144274048929792">surprisingly forthright</a> about the
fundamental irrationality and unreality of giant robots, and in the
context of the show I don't object that romanticism won out because
the thumb of the plot was clearly on its side; the plot has been on
Ernesti's side all along.</li>
</ul>
<p>Survived to the end of the season by the skin of its teeth and then
dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Fate/Apocrypha</em>: I finished out the nominal season and turning
point (episode 12) and then stopped because <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/910943868128038915">there
was very little about the show that I was interested in</a>.
I think I may finally be done with the Fate ride as a whole; it
basically always ends the same way and I can read about the plot
twists and the spoilers on my own if I want to.</li>
</ul>
<p>By the end of the show, <em>Made in Abyss</em> single-handedly justified this
season (to the extent that seasons of anime need any justification).
I'm generally happy with everything else that I watched except
<em>Fate/Apocrypha</em>, and continuing to watch that past the first episode
is my own fault. I knew what <em>F/A</em> was from the start, but I let myself
be talked into continuing with it for the splashy animation; by now I
should know that that doesn't work for me.</p>
</div>
Looking back at the Summer 2017 anime season2017-10-12T03:15:15Z2017-10-12T03:15:06Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/MadeInAbyssAndPaincks<div class="wikitext"><p>So what happened is that I saw someone on Twitter wondering if they
should catch up on <em>Made in Abyss</em>, because they'd heard (and seen
from screenshots) that some brutal and unpleasant things happened
to the characters and were partly wondering if the show was being
gratuitous with them. This sparked <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/908884484057108480">a stream of thoughts on Twitter</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Made in Abyss's latest episodes are wrenching and powerful, but are
they necessary? And is this a question that matters?</p>
<p>I don't think MiA's events were gratuitous or overdone & things mostly
focused on the emotional impact. The body horror was probably needed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>'Body horror' is not quite the right description for 'people getting hurt
badly', but Twitter has length limits. The show definitely presented
the situation in a way that was intended to make it wrenching;
this was not pleasant, pretty, antiseptic stuff, it was visceral
and cringe-inducing and painful to watch. Within the context of the
episodes I don't think the show dwelt on things in a way that would
have made it torture porn or pain porn; the focus was very much on how
all of these horrible things affected the characters, especially Reg.
The horrible things got shown to give Reg's reactions context and weight,
and the show framed things claustrophobically to focus on this (<a href="https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/layers-of-storytelling-in-made-in-abyss/">cf</a>,
which has spoilers).</p>
<p>(See <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2017/09/13/summer-2017-week-10-in-review/">Nick Creamer's description in his week in summary post</a>
for more concrete stuff, but note that it has spoilers. He calls
episode 10 'viscerally excruciating' and I would have to agree with
that.)</p>
<blockquote><p>As for the overall necessity, we have to wait and see how the story
develops. I think there are early promising signs based on Nanachi.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That the events in the episode are non-gratuitous doesn't necessarily
mean that the episode itself (and those events) are actually necessary.
We won't know how necessary the events were overall until we see the
story and the show's themes develop more. However, I think there are
already clear promising signs, because the course of the story has
clearly shifted after the events of episode 10.</p>
<blockquote><p>Story elements don't necessarily have to have a point; they can be
there for emotional impact. But terror and pain are empty w/o a
meaning. <br>
Made in Abyss certainly delivered emotional impact. Whether it used
too much terror & pain for that is still open and also a personal
call.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the question of whether the question in <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/908884484057108480">my initial tweet</a> even matters.
If <em>Made in Abyss</em> episodes 10 and 11 evoke such a strong emotional
reaction from us, do they have to be 'necessary' in the larger scale
of the plot? After all, stories are in large part about the emotional
reactions they evoke and episode 10 certainly did that.</p>
<p>I don't have an answer but I do have an opinion, which is that some
ways of evoking emotional responses are cheaper, easier, and more
shallow than others. Kicking a puppy is a bad cliche for a good reason.
Tormenting characters just to get a reaction from the audience is lazy
and unappealing, and in the process it lessens the impact of the entire
work. I personally don't think that <em>Made in Abyss</em> has crossed this line,
but then <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/WhatWeAreUsedTo">I'm a jaded anime watcher</a>.</p>
<p>(And I will admit that there are caution signs in some things in <em>Made in
Abyss</em>, things that came up in passing that I'm not sure really needed to
be there. Some of these questionable bits have been there from early on in
the show.)</p>
</div>
<div> (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/MadeInAbyssAndPain?showcomments#comments">One comment</a>.) </div><em>Made in Abyss</em> and characters going through brutal things2017-09-16T04:29:46Z2017-09-16T04:29:37Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Midwaycks<div class="wikitext"><p>It's time once again for a much of the way through update on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Brief">my earlier
impressions of this season</a>. By this point both my
views and my expectations have solidified, although I'm still hoping for
a surprise or two.</p>
<p>Still excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Made in Abyss</em>: I recently characterized this as <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/904199856696299521">a quest without
active opposition (so far)</a>, where the
obstacle in the way of Riko and Reg is the Abyss itself, with its
creatures and its very nature. The show is doing extremely well at
portraying this and making things feel real, and it's been a very
enjoyable ride despite the fact that we keep being told that Riko
is never coming back from the journey she's making.<p>
With that said, I have no idea where the show is going and how
it's going to come to a satisfying ending point. But the ride is so
interesting that I don't care.</li>
</ul>
<p>Very good, surprisingly:</p>
<ul><li><em>Princess Principal</em>: The show has remained fully committed to its
core nature and as a result has delivered a whole series of episodes
with pretty solid impacts (and a few that were just fun), even if
they're nothing novel in terms of plots. I've been particularly taken
with the writing, which is often (although not always) willing to let
things be indirect and count on us to get it.<p>
This has turned out much better than I would have expected from the
premise.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>Senki Zesshou Symphogear AXZ</em>: It's more <em>Symphogear</em> and it's
being very itself by leaning into its over the top stuff and
building on bits and pieces of past seasons in a way that makes
its world feel real and lived-in. It's absurd, of course, but
<em>Symphogear</em> has always been an absurd show.<p>
</li>
<li><em>My Hero Academia</em>: The show continues to move along pretty well,
mostly avoiding the pacing pitfalls of the first season and the
tournament pitfalls of the first part of this season. <em>MHA</em> isn't
great but I do like watching it. It has charm.</li>
</ul>
<p>Popcorn watching:</p>
<ul><li><em>Knight's & Magic</em>: This remains more or less pure-hearted fun, although
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/904540399255130112">in the long shadow of Gundam</a> it's hard to
have the cheerful reaction to a war between two groups of humans that
I think the show wants me to have, especially when it kills plenty of
people on screen. For now I'm ignoring the cognitive dissonance and
enjoying it anyway.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Fate/Apocrypha</em>: This has mostly delivered on a stream of reasonably
spectacular fights with only a few diversions into annoying attempts
at philosophy and character development and so on (all of which <em>Fate</em>
is generally terrible at). Unfortunately, while I enjoy Astolfo and
Mordred goofing around, my actual investment in any of the characters
is almost nil so all of the action mostly feels empty and pointless.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>A Centaur's Life</em>: I wound up feeling that the only thing the show
had going for it was its gimmick, and with the show's bland and so-so
production, that wasn't enough to keep me watching. I have some
theories about why this material worked much better in manga form than
animated, but that's for another entry.<p>
</li>
<li><em>The Reflection</em>: After watching a number of episodes <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/899059884888657920">I realized</a> that I was
only interested in it as a peculiar and interesting artifact, not as
something to actually watch. I wasn't particularly invested in either
the characters or the plot and <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/899060270781300737">the writing could be painful</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>I've got enough shows that I want to watch that I've felt no particular
need to seek out more or dig into my backlog (the latter is kind of a
pity, since I have some good stuff I want to get to someday). More shows
and more good to excellent shows would be nice, but I'm okay with what I
have.</p>
</div>
Checking in on the Summer 2017 anime season 'midway' through2017-09-04T21:18:11Z2017-09-04T21:18:02Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2017Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p>I'm somewhere between three and five episodes into everything I'm
watching, which is long enough for most shows to show their cards and
for my opinions to firm up. So, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Brief">as usual</a>, here's
how my views of this season have shaken out, to follow up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2017FirstEpisodes">my first
episode reactions</a>.</p>
<p>Excellent but alarming:</p>
<ul><li><em>Made in Abyss</em>: This is clearly the best show I'm watching and
everything so far has been pretty much universally excellent, but it
has been building up an increasingly ominous atmosphere and there's
all sorts of rumblings that the manga version goes unpleasant places
(and if the anime does too, I'm probably going to drop the show).
It's also simply an impressive show, in art, animation, writing,
and directing.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>Princess Principal</em>: This is a limited taste, because the show
mixes completely serious material side by side with stuff
that it's impossible to take seriously. But the show is fully
committed to this (in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ThunderboltFantasyEmbracingGenre">the same way <em>Thunderbolt Fantasy</em> was</a>) and has made it work so far.
Not everything has been completely successful but it's solidly
entertaining anyway.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Senki Zesshou Symphogear AXZ</em>: After a bit of a quiet start where
the show did not, say, slice a chunk out of the middle of a mountain in
the first episode, <em>AXZ</em> has been steadily ramping up its stakes. It
is and remains very <em>Symphogear</em>, which means that it's both over the
top and sincere.</li>
</ul>
<p>Decent to okay:</p>
<ul><li><em>A Centaur's Life</em>: This is basically slice of life in a science
fiction setting. I read a bit of the manga several years ago and felt
that it was both charming overall and reasonably well done, with an
interesting mix of genres that could be nicely subtle. The animated
version is a little bit less impressive because it's periodically kind
of plain and flat in aesthetics and directing.<p>
Unlike some people, I think that the anime is overall reasonably well
done. It's not flashy or 'strong' in some senses, but I've enjoyed
elements like some nice character acting. On the other hand, I'm sort
of feeling that I'm not going to keep watching the show for its entire
run, so maybe I'm fooling myself about the overall production quality.</li>
</ul>
<p>Popcorn watching:</p>
<ul><li><em>Fate/Apocrypha</em>: I'm not watching this for the plot or the Fate lore;
seeing as this is a Fate show, both are likely to be stupid or
irritating, and in any case both are far too complicated and require
far too much background reading for me. Instead I'm watching this for
a certain amount of nice animation and a few characters who are amusing
and interesting, and so far it has delivered on enough of both to keep
me watching.<p>
(I was actually pleased by a certain plot twist in episode 4, because
I found the character involved to be kind of a wet blanket. Of course,
Fate shows usually leave me irritated at almost every character.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Knight's & Magic</em>: This is what I will call 'competency porn'; you have
a character who is very good at something and they do that
something a lot, ideally in interesting and amusing situations
and with some obstacles in the way. <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/886721208544309248">As I've said on Twitter</a>,
the show is so earnestly enthusiastic about things that it's
charming, despite the basic story-telling limitations. See
also <a href="https://mageinabarrel.com/2017/07/22/knights-magic-and-the-value-of-transparency-in-wish-fulfillment/">this interesting post on <em>K&M</em>'s heart-on-sleeve appeal</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/iblessall">@iblessall</a>.<p>
(<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/886722300229427202">I've realized </a>
that <em>K&M</em> quite reminds me of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Cook">Rick Cook</a>'s Wizardry series, especially
<em>Wizard's Bane</em>, the first book.)</li>
</ul>
<p>In ongoing shows, <em>My Hero Academia</em> continues to be enjoyable to watch,
although it has recently started to slip back into the excessive padding
habits of the first season. I have tacitly dropped <em>Re:Creators</em> as not
sufficiently compelling to make me care enough to watch another episode.</p>
<p>I recently saw the first episode of <em>The
Reflection</em> and had <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/891441527792205825">some reactions on Twitter</a>. I'm not sure
what I feel about the show but it's interesting enough that I'm going
to watch the second episode at some point. One way to put my longer
term reaction to <em>The Reflection</em> so far is that I'm not sure it really
feels like an anime show instead of a show about American superheroes
that inexplicably happens to be in Japanese. Not that there's anything
wrong with the latter, if it's well done.</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Summer 2017 anime season so far2017-08-03T02:33:27Z2017-08-03T02:33:14Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Retrospective">Once again</a> it's time for my traditional
look back at what I watched in this past Spring season, to follow
up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Brief">my early impressions</a> and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Midway">my midway views</a>. I could say that nothing really changed from the
midway, but that's actually not quite true; I think that two shows
actually picked themselves up at the end (<em>WorldEnd</em> and <em>Alice &
Zoroku</em>).</p>
<p>Pretty much excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Eccentric Family</em> second season: Okay, however painful it is for me
to admit this, I will; <em>Eccentric Family</em>'s second season is not
as compelling as the first season was. That doesn't make it bad;
the show was still great, beautiful, periodically both touching and
scary, and funny, and it's clearly the best show of the season for me.
But however intellectually interesting I found <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/EccentricFamily2GrowingUp">what I think is its
broad theme</a>, it's probably not going to
stick in my memory and my heart the way that the first season did.</li>
</ul>
<p>Very good:</p>
<ul><li><em>WorldEnd</em>: The show fully nailed its ending and in the process
become one of the rare shows that made me like what is basically
a tragedy. The characters were well drawn and great, the twists
stayed pretty interesting, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/879900425616490497">the show is solidly structured</a>,
and although I initially thought that the scope of the
plot was unnecessarily big, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/879899235637972992">I wound up changing my mind</a>.
See <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/879891737736556544">my Twitter reactions to the last episode</a>.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Alice & Zoroku</em>: This show is simply a treasure; it's a show
that focuses on children and makes it work (see <a href="https://mageinabarrel.com/2017/07/10/the-grand-insubstantial-importance-of-a-child-reflections-on-alice-and-zoroku/">@iblessall's
article for more here</a>).
Looking back, everything drove Sana's story even when it didn't
entirely seem to, and her character arc was a great one. Everything
I said in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Midway">my midway views</a> still applies.</li>
</ul>
<p><em>Alice & Zoroku</em> is probably objectively better than <em>WorldEnd</em>, but
<em>WorldEnd</em> is more my kind of show than <em>A&Z</em> is so it's got a slightly
higher position in my heart.</p>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>My Hero Academia</em>: The second season of <em>MHA</em> has handily eclipsed
the first one, not necessarily because the material is better but
more because the show has worked out how to make its relatively slow
pace work for it instead of against it. Since the basic material has
always been compelling, removing this road block has turned a show
that I liked despite itself into one that is genuinely interesting
(despite structural problems like a sports tournament, which is
fortunately over now and the show's moved on to more interesting
stuff).</li>
</ul>
<p>Still on the edge and maybe dropping off:</p>
<ul><li><em>Re:Creators</em>: Each episode usually is just good enough to get me
to watch the next one, but it pushes closer and closer to the edge
almost every time. It doesn't help that some recent events have made
me feel that <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ReCreatorsAltairCountermove">a room full of smart characters are missing one obvious
thing</a>, and that I'm even thinking about
plot holes means that the show isn't fully engaging me.</li>
</ul>
<p>I solidly enjoyed the first four shows here and found myself pretty
much satisfied with the season as a result. Would I have liked more
good things to watch? Sure, but unlike in some past seasons I didn't
feel sufficiently bored to go searching out other things for popcorn
watching and so on.</p>
</div>
Looking back at the Spring 2017 anime season2017-07-22T21:58:35Z2017-07-22T21:58:21Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/SatisfyingStoryEndingscks<div class="wikitext"><p>I've said before a number of times that what I find satisfying in the
endings of shows isn't necessarily what other people do. Today I want
to write a bit about that and about some different ways that endings
can be satisfying.</p>
<p>As humans, we have a natural desire for our stories to make sense. We
can tolerate a certain amount of not understanding things during the
story, but by the end we would really like to know what happened and why
it happened and so on; we would like to feel that there was cause and
effect, not just randomness. A satisfying ending is in part an ending
that makes the story make sense (and makes sense given the rest of the
story). However there are different ways that the ending can make things
make sense and be satisfying, or perhaps a better way of putting it is
that there are different things that an ending can make sense of.</p>
<p>A <em>narratively satisfying</em> ending is one that tells us what happened;
it resolves the important open plot issues from the story and answers
hanging questions, all in a way that makes sense. It gives us narrative
closure. In a traditional mystery story, a narratively satisfying ending
tells us who did it, how, and why; it is the master detective explaining
everything to the audience and the criminal being led off in handcuffs.
In an action show, it is the final confrontation with the villains
and the victory of the heroes. In a show with important previously
unexplained mysteries, a narratively satisfying ending explains them
well enough to pacify us (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/EndingsProblemThought">shows often have trouble here, though</a>).</p>
<p>(What is an important unexplained mystery varies from person to
person.)</p>
<p>An <em>emotionally satisfying</em> ending is one that answers the
emotional, character centered questions raised by the story,
giving us emotional closure. When you have <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ThunderboltFantasyCharacterArcs"><em>dramatic characters</em></a> in a story, an emotionally satisfying
ending resolves their character arcs and says that yes, they changed,
grew, dealt with their issues, found the answers they were looking for,
and so on. In stories with romances, an emotionally satisfying ending is
often one that answers the question of whether the ostensible couple is
going to get together.</p>
<p>It's entirely possible to have a story ending that's narratively
satisfying or emotionally satisfying without dealing with the other side
at all. An extreme example of this is the <em>Neon Genesis Evangelion</em>
TV series, where the last two episodes were at least an attempt at an
emotionally satisfying ending that said absolutely nothing narratively.
The resulting fan clamour allegedly led to <em>End of Evangelion</em>,
where Anno shoved a <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/CharacterDeathViews">grotesque</a> 'narratively
satisfying' ending down everyone's throat. We wanted to know what
happened? Anno would tell us, even though we weren't going to enjoy it
in the least.</p>
<p>It's relatively common for romance-focused shows to have an emotionally
satisfying ending that doesn't attempt narrative closure. Here the core
question of the show has always been 'will they get together', and the
ending says 'yes they will' without showing us the details of how that
plays out. This is the ending with the couple finally kissing for the
first time and we shift to the end credits. The first season of <em>Nodame
Cantabile</em> ended this way; the core emotional question of the show was
always if Chiaki would come to love Nodame, and the ending of the first
season said 'yes', even though it didn't cover the actual process of
them getting together as a couple.</p>
<p>For me, <em>Concrete Revolutio</em> is an example of a show with a narratively
but not emotionally satisfying ending. <em>CR</em>'s ending told us exactly
what happened and how, and in the process explained the big villain
and so on. But it didn't really feel like it resolved many of the
character issues, and instead <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ConcreteRevolutioOneFailedMoment">dropped some of them on the floor</a>. An older example is <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/EurekaSevenAOEnding">the ending of
<em>Eureka Seven AO</em></a>, and if I want to go to a really
extreme point there is <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/GilgameshBadView">the ending of <em>Gilgamesh</em></a>.</p>
<p>As an anime watcher, what I generally care about are emotionally
satisfying endings. The story has to more or less make narrative sense
by the end and I don't like gaping plot holes, but I don't demand to
know the narrative details of what happens next and how everything
resolves itself if the broad outlines are clear from the emotional
closure. For instance, I thought that the first season of <em>Nodame
Cantabile</em> was perfectly fine on its own and didn't really need any
sequels (and I eventually lost interest in said sequels). This is not a
universal position by any means; there are plenty of people who care a
lot more about narrative closure than I do (and they are not wrong; this
is a taste issue).</p>
<p>(Nor do I need all the mysteries to be addressed, even relatively
important ones, cf <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ShinguReactions"><em>Shingu</em> and some of its unaddressed ones</a>, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ShinguMuryou">and also</a>. What mysteries need
to be addressed and which don't is something I'm going to wave my
hands about for now.)</p>
</div>
Some different ways that story endings can be satisfying2017-07-18T03:56:17Z2017-07-18T03:56:03Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Summer2017FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them).</p>
<ul><li>Hina Logic ep #1: A perfectly competent but uninspiring episode in
the 'girls have adventures at school' genre. It lacks any great spark.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/881366377570983936">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Katsugeki Touken Ranbu episode 1: The action is decent but the
writing comes across as pedestrian and merely functional. It's kinda
empty.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/881367584641306627">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Knight's & Magic episode 1: This is goofy popcorn fun, even if it's not
deep or complex. Sometimes I like competency porn shows.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/881667459446603777">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Fate/Apocrypha episode 1: One incoherent battle plus a ton of
exposition, minus any interesting or attractive characters. Nope, pass.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/881696479504736256">→</a><p>
(Then <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/884173526353227776">I changed my mind</a>.)<p>
</li>
<li>Symphogear AXZ ep 1: Really it's the same as it ever was. The show's
wisely not tried to top the start of last season & just gone straight.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/882050262994747395">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Made in Abyss #1: On the one hand, this was a great starting episode;
it had fun, great characters, solid writing, great animation, etc.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/883891436244094977">→</a> <br>
On the other hand, I keep hearing that Made in Abyss's story goes really
grim & dark. I guess I'll keep watching until things get terrible.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/883891605756923904">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Princess Principal ep 1: Yes, this is a bit absurd. But it's also great;
it's an excellent genre piece with lots of smart & beautiful bits.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/884198180837097472">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>A Centaur's Life episode 1: This has a certain amount of charm, but
it's mostly being carried by the manga & its visuals are only decent.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/884978148110209025">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Guru Guru episode 1: Too manic and didn't particularly tickle my
funny bone. This isn't for me; I don't have the 8-bit RPG love necessary.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/885708166985531394">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>In the end I've <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/885714168141103104">decided to skip <em>Welcome to the Ballroom</em></a>,
especially after <a href="https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2017/07/11/welcome-to-the-ballroom-introduction-and-episode-1/">the sakugablog article on it</a>
carefully threw cold water over people who wanted it to be anything more
than 'a well-made high school sports show about an unusual sport'. High
school sports shows almost never work for me these days.</p>
<p>There are a few other shows that look potentially interesting if I was
really wanted more things to watch, like <em>Restaurant to Another World</em>
and maybe <em>Altair: A Record of Battles</em>, but so far I'm fine with only
watching this much. As usual I'm skipping all of the shorts, especially
since none of them sound particularly attractive.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Summer 2017 season2017-07-16T21:02:35Z2017-07-16T21:02:27Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/ReCreatorsAltairCountermovecks<div class="wikitext"><p>(There are spoilers here.)</p>
<p>For the last couple of episodes of <em>Re:Creators</em> I've
been griping about something on Twitter, first <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/878809313862721536">indirectly</a> and now
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/885709379575586816">explicitly</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>And the people in Re:Creators really need to stop allowing Altair to
have a platform to build a larger audience & more powers with.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the spirit of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BloggingOnTwitter">not doing all my blogging on Twitter</a>, I'm going to write more here, mostly in the form
of tweets with added commentary.</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="https://twitter.com/UgokiGyokuyou/status/885915964356698112">@UgokiGyokuyou</a>:
lol you want censorship? Take down all those fanvids/fanfictions and
prevent new ones to be uploaded?</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/885923993626259456">@cks_anime</a>:
Taking Altair stuff down would probably attract too much attention,
but they could make sure that Altair-related content is kept quiet. <br>
Eg have Altair stuff lower down on 'popular <X>' pages than it should
be, and don't let new fanvids/etc show up very high no matter what. <br>
The latter is especially important since we've been told that popular
new fanvids can give Altair new, expanded powers. That's v. dangerous.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Re:Creators</em> has essentially explicitly stated that Creations in
general and Altair in specific derive their power and their abilities
from having an audience see and accept things with the character in them
(manga, games, novels, anime, art, fan works, and so on). Since Altair
is a standalone creation, entirely based on fan-created materials,
she has no 'canon' to shape, define, and limit her the way that other
Creations do; instead, everything comes from fans watching fan-made
videos and art on the in-show equivalents of NicoNico and Pixiv and
making them popular. It's been explicitly stated that some of Altair's
dangerous powers come from secondary fan videos, ones made not by
Altair's initial creator but instead made as goofy bits and pieces by
other fans, then given power by enough people seeing and enjoying them.</p>
<p>It's probably too late to wipe Altair's existing videos and art
from the NicoNico and Pixiv equivalents; fans would probably notice,
there would be a controversy, and you'd cue <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">the Streisand effect</a>, which is exactly
what our protagonists don't want. A similar thing holds about actively
blocking new Altair-related content from appearing at all. However, you
can certainly do things to limit the damage. Visibility and popularity
rankings are generally opaque and reasonably subtle manipulations of
them are unlikely to be noticed and reacted to. So NicoNico and Pixiv
could be coerced to slowly and quietly lower the ranking and prominence
of existing Altair-related content, and especially to manipulate their
systems so that new content would not be seen by a large audience by,
for example, appearing at the top of 'hot new content' pages even if it
normally should.</p>
<p>(New content is especially dangerous because popular new content can
probably give Altair new and expanded powers, in the same way that
secondary fan videos has already given her some that weren't in her
original video source.)</p>
<p>This is not big or loud, and it's not fast, but the characters in
<em>Re:Creators</em> are already playing a relatively long game with a
six-month action plan. They might as well use the government power they
have access to and this time in an attempt not just to build themselves
up but to quietly undercut Altair's base of power, that being her
audience. Every bit helps and they have an uphill struggle.</p>
</div>
One obvious thing characters in <em>Re:Creators</em> should be doing but aren't2017-07-14T18:48:32Z2017-07-14T18:48:27Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/ConcreteRevolutioRaitoTragedycks<div class="wikitext"><p>(There are spoilers here, in as much as I can spoil a show that's been
over for a year.)</p>
<p>In the first season of <em>Concrete Revolutio</em>, one of the mysteries was
what happened to Raito Shiba to turn him from a police detective into
what he became instead (however you want to describe it). The first
episode in <em>Concrete Revolutio</em>'s second season finally answered this,
and in the process it made Raito Shiba the most tragic character in
<em>Concrete Revolutio</em> for me, because he is the tragic mirror to Jiro
Hitoyoshi.</p>
<p>Both Raito and Jiro begin the show driven by the desire to follow justice
and do right. This naturally raises the question of what is justice and
rightness (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ConcreteRevolutioAndHeroism">this question is at the core of Jiro's self-definition</a>), and the show spends a great deal of its
run showing us that things in the real world are more and more complicated
and more and more grey. There is simply not a clear, straightforward,
general answer to the question. Justice, law, and right can all conflict
with each other; attempts to use simple black and white answers can
lead to terrible results. The truth, says <em>Concrete Revolutio</em>, is that
concepts such as 'justice' are situational and even personal. You cannot
boil them down to rules.</p>
<p>Both Jiro and Raito struggle with this over the course of the series.
Both start out believing that this is simple and they can always see
the way forward; they both find out that they are wrong. As the series
progresses, Jiro becomes more and more willing to make situational
decisions for the sake of his own personal sense of justice and rightness,
and less and less willing to stick to rules and laws when they lead to
a result that he feels are wrong.</p>
<p>The same conflict breaks Raito. In episode 14, "The Superhumans of
November", he is fully faced with a messy conflict of justice where
there is no simple morally correct answer. Raito knows it and admits
it in his own thoughts. But rather than accept that the world is messy
and complicated and not amenable to the rigid rules that he wants,
Raito entirely rejects everything to do with the idea. He goes so far
as to murder a sentient being in order to lobotomize himself, willingly
locking himself into the shackles of a rigid black and white view of
the world even though he knows this view is flawed (he rejects that
knowledge, though).</p>
<p>This is what makes Raito the tragic mirror of Jiro (and a tragic character
in general). Both faced the same issues and challenges, but Raito broke
where Jiro made his way through. Raito shows both us and Jiro a path
that a different version of Jiro might have taken, and I think that Jiro
sees at least something of this and it's why he interacts with Raito as
he does.</p>
<p>(Having locked himself into a black and white view of the world,
having deliberately made himself completely convinced of the justice
and correctness of his actions, Raito of course winds up reaching the
morally horrifying decisions that he does in the third episode of the
first season. If you make decisions based on logic and rules, with no
regard for the reality of the world and the moral dimensions of what
you're proposing, of course you wind up with horrors that you have
perfect justifications for.)</p>
<p>(See also <a href="https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/concrete-revolutio-and-the-unsolvable-paradox-super-jaguar-and-detective-shiba/">Emily's entry on Raito and Super Jaguar</a>.)</p>
<p>(This is probably an obvious observation, but it's been on my mind
for some time and so I'm writing it down to get it out of my head.
Even a year later, <em>Concrete Revolutio</em> is still not a forgettable
show, even if <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2016">I feel it was a flawed one</a>.)</p>
</div>
<em>Concrete Revolutio</em>: Raito Shiba as Jiro Hitoyoshi's tragic mirror2017-07-04T02:41:05Z2017-07-04T02:40:58Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2016cks<div class="wikitext"><p>Normally I write my 'best N' yearly entries relatively soon after the end
of the year, although <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2014">2015's</a> slipped into February. This
time around things have been extensively delayed, and while part of that
is because I got lazy after I initially missed my usual window, part of
that is because I've felt genuinely conflicted and confused about my views
this time around. This delay matters to me because the more I delay, the
more my feelings can fade and the more perspective I can wind up with,
so I like to write these entries while my feelings are relatively hot
(I can always look back at them later).</p>
<p>As usual for these retrospectives, this is what I consider to be to be
the best or most enjoyable things that I saw in calendar 2016 (regardless
of when they were made or released, although this year most of what I
saw was actually from this year). As is now standard, my general rule
is that only shows that have actually ended count because you never
know what eye-rolling things a show may finish up with. This year, this
excludes <em>March comes in like a Lion</em>, which would otherwise rank highly
(<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Retrospective">cf</a>).</p>
<p>(See also the <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2016Retrospective">winter</a>, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2016Retrospective">spring</a>, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2016Retrospective">summer</a>, and
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2016Retrospective">fall</a> retrospectives.)</p>
<p>In order:</p>
<ul><li><em>Flip Flappers</em>: I will summarize it this way; I have come to think
that <em>Flip Flappers</em> is ultimately about joy. Underlying all of its
events is a celebration of coming to enjoy life, of going from a grey
existence to a colourful one. In many ways it's not a deep show that
tackles complex subjects with delicate characterization, but I don't
care. Celebrating joy is as worthwhile as deep drama, when done well,
and <em>Flip Flappers</em> did it well (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersAndIncluing">cf</a>,
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersYayakaBodyLanguage">and</a>). <em>Flip Flappers</em> is also
structured and written in ways that appeal to me; I'm always going
to have a soft spot for a smartly written show that plays with the
structure of the story, is confident enough to start things in media
res (and makes that work), and so on.<p>
One thing worth special mention is that <em>Flip Flappers</em>, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2013">like
<em>Kyousougiga</em> before it</a>, is a show that could only have
been done as anime. It would not work in any other media in anything
like its current form; it absolutely requires and takes advantage of
the particular strengths of anime. Even the contrast between realistic
animation and how animation typically looks is something the show
takes advantage of for story purposes in the last episode.<p>
(See also eg <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2017/01/11/flip-flappers-review/">Bobduh's review</a>
and <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2016/12/30/top-ten-anime-of-2016/">his top shows of 2016</a>.
There's also <a href="https://flipflapping.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/index-of-flip-flappers-reviews-and-articles/">an index of <em>Flip Flappers</em> reviews and articles</a>.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Thunderbolt Fantasy</em>: This is a show that delivered perfectly on what
it was aiming for, and as it happens I quite like its genre. It was
smartly written, well executed, and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ThunderboltFantasySpearpoint">completely nailed some moments</a>. I wrote more on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ThunderboltFantasyEmbracingGenre">the power of <em>TF</em>
fully embracing its genre</a> to
explain its appeal to me. If you want the capsule version, it is
that <em>Thunderbolt Fantasy</em> had terrific execution on a story and
in a genre that I quite like.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Flying Witch</em>: This is another quiet show about joy and pleasant
experiences. It is full of fun moments and run through with bits
of awe, where the world unfolds in beauty in front of us and the
characters, and it doesn't hurt that it is more or less in one of the
genres that I like (broadly 'fantasy mixed with ordinary life').
But ultimately <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlyingWitchAnalysisLimits"><em>Flying Witch</em> has also shown me the limits of
trying to analyze something</a>; beyond
everything else, I loved it. And that's good enough for me.</li>
</ul>
<p>Special mixed feelings award:</p>
<ul><li><em>Concrete Revolutio</em>: Oh how the great wound up falling. <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2015">At the
end of 2015</a> I expected <em>CR</em> to rate quite highly
when it finished, and I still stand by my very high views of its
first half. Unfortunately its second half was frustratingly mixed.
Some episodes were great (<a href="https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/concrete-revolutio-and-the-unsolvable-paradox-super-jaguar-and-detective-shiba/">episode 14 is a special standout for me</a>),
but others dragged even if (and when) they turned out to be
thematically important. And in the end the show <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ConcreteRevolutioOneFailedMoment">got sloppy</a> and left me with very mixed
feelings, and this was always a show where the ending was going
to be quite important for its overall impact. Still, the show
did some excellent work with the overall plot even in the second
half (I especially liked how the ultimate villain nicely made
sense in retrospect).<p>
In the end I have wound up feeling that <em>Concrete Revolutio</em>
ultimately bit off more than it could chew. It did very good
work some of the time and the first season remains impressive
but the overall result is not something that I can put into my
'best shows of the year' ranking, although there's part of me
that wishes I could love it as much as <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2016/12/30/top-ten-anime-of-2016/">some other people
do</a>.<p>
(This impression has only grown on me since the show ended,
as my ability to remember details about what happened in the
second season and when has faded. That fading is not a good
sign for a show's ultimate impact on me.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Things I consider good but not necessarily memorable over the long
term:</p>
<ul><li><em>Sound! Euphonium</em> second season: I want to love this more than
I do, but in the end nothing in it seems as important or as driving
as the first season did. I at least saw an interesting and powerful
overall theme in the first season (one that was executed very well),
and I just don't see that in the second season; to me it came across
more as filling in side stories. Still, the second season has its
own beautiful and touching moments, some spectacular character work,
and funny bits (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SoundEuphonium2Ep12Story">and a genuine surprise</a>).
See more words in <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2016Retrospective">my fall retrospective</a>.<p>
My view of the second season is unquestionably brought down by how
the show treats Reina's stupid crush on Taki-sensei in a relatively
favorable light.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Girls und Panzer der Film</em>: This is a great film that takes
everything that made <em>Girls und Panzer</em> such a good <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/GirlsUndPanzerSportsAnime">sports action</a> show and turned it up to movie quality
and movie length. I enjoyed it whole-heartedly.<p>
</li>
<li><em>BBK/BRNK</em>: The show was a well executed fun ride with more smarts
in its writing and characters than I would have expected. It had
moments of quiet beauty and affecting character turns and in
general it was straight up enjoyable. Yes, I'm waving my hands.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash</em>: This wasn't flawless but it was both
solidly consistent and good to excellent throughout. It had powerful
and affecting stories to tell and it told them well, and in the end
its flaws are sufficiently small for my memories to smooth them over
in a way that I can't for other shows.<p>
(Bobduh wrote a good summary of <em>Grimgar</em> in <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2016/12/30/top-ten-anime-of-2016/">his top shows of
2016</a>.)</li>
</ul>
<p>A short great show wrapped in a disappointing one:</p>
<ul><li><em>ERASED</em> aka <em>Boku Dake ga Inai Machi</em>: At its best the show was
beautiful and affecting, and it was at its best for quite a while.
But outside of those episodes, it often rapidly descended into an
unexciting, cliched thriller. In the end I cannot ignore the bad
bits and focus only on the good ones, no more than I could for
<em>Concrete Revolutio</em>, and so the overall show ranks no higher
than here.</li>
</ul>
<p>Honorable mentions:</p>
<ul><li><em>Akagami no Shirayukihime</em>: Taken as a whole (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2015">since I excluded
the first season from my 2015 views</a>), this was a solid
show that remained reasonably appealing through its run. I enjoyed
the first season more than the second season, but the second season
delivered <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ShirayukiHimeOneMoment">its own beautiful moments</a>.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Kiznaiver</em>: If I was going to write an unkind summary of the show,
I would say that the show got the mood right but the plot wrong.
For the most part the show was about the characters interacting with
each other, and that part was great; the bits that didn't entirely
work were mostly at the end, where the plot heaved itself to the
surface. But I enjoyed the whole thing enough to forgive the show
those not so great portions and I look back on it reasonably fondly.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Gakusen Toshi Asterisk</em>: I didn't like the second season as much
as I liked the first season, but the whole show remains a great example
of a very well done popcorn show. Very well done popcorn shows are
unfortunately rarer than they should be; all too often the middling
quality of their source material also leads to middling execution
or worse. <em>Asterisk</em> stands for the premise that you can make an
unambitious but excellent show from such material (and not just by
throwing fight animation firepower at it).<p>
</li>
<li><em>Long Riders</em>: It's not often that I run into a show that might as well
be aimed straight at one of my soft spots, but <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/LongRidersLovesBiking"><em>Long Riders</em>
is one</a> and I'll probably always remember
it affectionately for that. <em>LR</em> is the best bicycling-focused show
that I've watched and I'm not sure there ever will be a better one,
because I'm not really interested in bicycle racing (which is the
obvious thing to build a bicycling show around, cf <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/YowamushiPedalFails"><em>Yowamushi Pedal</em></a>).</li>
</ul>
<p>Special 'flawed but manic' award:</p>
<ul><li><em>Space Patrol Luluco</em>: There was definitely something here, but it was
hidden under a slather of Trigger callbacks and references and it
didn't really speak to me in any case. See <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2016Retrospective">my spring retrospective</a> for more.</li>
</ul>
<p>My notes say that I finished 29 shows, OVAs, and movies in 2016, which
is down significantly from <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2015">2015</a> but up slightly from
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2014">2014</a>. A fair number of them were not memorable or good
enough to make this year's list, although some hovered on the edge
(the closest is probably <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2016Retrospective"><em>Dimension W</em></a>).</p>
<p>(I also dropped a significant number of shows, some of them otherwise well
regarded like <em>Macross Delta</em> and <em>Kuromukuro</em>. <em>Twin Star Exorcists</em> was
also a pretty good show until it stumbled with a timeskip and lost me.)</p>
<p>I'm not sure how the highs of 2016 compare to previous years. Probably
nothing equals <em>Shirobako</em> from <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2015">2015</a>, but then that is
a very high bar. I'm likely to remember <em>Thunderbolt Fantasy</em> for quite
some time, but partly that's because of how exceptional it is in both
genre and style (I'm not going to forget the puppets any time soon,
and Shang's character speaks to me). Will <em>Flip Flappers</em> stick in my
memories as much as <em>Kyousougiga</em> has? Ask me in five years.</p>
</div>
The best N anime that I saw in 20162017-07-01T22:42:42Z2017-07-01T22:42:34Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/EccentricFamily2GrowingUpcks<div class="wikitext"><p>A lot of things happened in the first season of <em>Eccentric Family</em>,
but to the extent that it had an overarching theme and development,
I remember it as being about family and the Shimogamos coming to
(somewhat) deal with their father's death as they learned about what
happened in that crucial time. The result was often <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/372185710444290050">spectacular</a>. However, this
left plenty of room for exploring both the characters and the setting,
and simply having some really beautiful and affecting adventures.</p>
<p>(See, say, <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2013/10/06/uchouten-kazoku-and-the-meaning-of-life/">Bobduh's review of the show</a>,
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2013">my best N of 2013</a>, and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Summer2013Retrospective">my end of season retrospective</a>.)</p>
<p><em>Eccentric Family</em>'s second season is different. In particular, I have
come around to the idea that it is strongly focused on forcing all of the
Shimogamo brothers to grow up and to move beyond the comfortable stasis
that they had been in after their father's death (and for Yasaburo,
probably even before then). The first season did cause some character
development, but looking back I think that it mostly affirmed and revealed
character, not changed it (Yajiro being the exception). You can't say the
same of the second season; by the time it ends, Yajiro, Yaichiro, and
especially Yasaburo have made major changes to the paths of their lives.</p>
<p>The Shimogamo brothers are not the only people to grow up and change,
either. Almost the entirety of Benten's arc is about cracking her shell
of omniscient invulnerability, and the last episode reveals that the
Nidaime is also stuck on the past, unable to move on. All of the major
characters in the second season need to grow, and all of them get hard
shoves about it. No one gets out unchanged and unaffected.</p>
<p>(The one prominent character who refuses to grow and change pays a
heavy price for their inability to let go. Twice.)</p>
<p>Things with Yasaburo and Benten especially stand out to me. In a way it
would have been easy for the show to let Yasaburo continue through his
life with the crowd-pleasing ambiguity and indecision that he showed
in the first season and much of the second. The interplay between
Benten and Yasaburo is always enjoyable and great, and they have such a
complicated and deep relationship that things could have continued for
a long time. But the second season does not let the situation stand and
in the end Yasaburo is forced to get off the fence; it's clear that his
relationship with Benten will be quite different from now on.</p>
<p>(<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/879111792588402690">I mentioned this on Twitter</a> and I feel
like saying a bit more about it, even if this is not as coherent as I
had in mind when I started writing.)</p>
</div>
My view: <em>Eccentric Family</em>'s second season is about growing up2017-06-29T01:47:01Z2017-06-29T01:45:28Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Midwaycks<div class="wikitext"><p>It's time once again for a 'midway' update on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Brief">my earlier impressions
of this season</a>. This update has been delayed partly
because I've gotten lazy and partly because I've been a little bit
reluctant to actually admit something about what I'm watching (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Midway">this
happened last season too</a>).</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Eccentric Family</em> second season: This is perhaps not quite as
exciting as the first season was, but that's because we've seen
the first season so there are fewer surprises and revelations.
What we've gotten is still really great, with character developments
substituted for revelations.<p>
(I have some views about this. The short form version is that in the
first season, characters did not grow too much; instead they just got
revealed. In the second season, several characters are being forced
to move out of their stasis and actually change.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Very good:</p>
<ul><li><em>WorldEnd</em>: This has continued to be as solidly good as it started
out as. The characters are appealing, the twists are interesting and
surprising, and it's become one of the rare shows that manage to sell
me on the romance involved (<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/874820523187896321">and even the process of it happening</a>).<p>
</li>
<li><em>Alice & Zoroku</em>: After its initial burst of action in the first arc,
the show has focused its energy on the characters and the result has
been great. It's warm and charming and very effective at developing
Sana as a real, understandable person who comes across as being her
(young and confused) age.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>My Hero Academia</em>: There are inherent limits to what a shonen show
can and will do in a 'sports tournament' setting, and the whole thing
can get a bit repetitive with match after match. However, on the good
side, <em>MHA</em> has finally mastered the art of not making things feel
slow. I have no idea if it actually is slow compared to the manga, but
the important thing is that <em>MHA</em> is not dragging in the way it was in
the first season, where the padding was blatantly obvious. The result
is generally a pleasure to watch.</li>
</ul>
<p>Okay and sort of on the edge:</p>
<ul><li><em>Re:Creators</em>: The show was doing pretty well until it gave a lot
of focus to Magane (and <spoiler> happened). Magane stinks up the
joint when she's on screen, partly because <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/871522556934840321">she's not actually a real
character</a>;
she's a cackling plot convenience. <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/871219247682383872">I said some things on this on
Twitter</a>,
but the bit I didn't mention there is that all of the good fiction
characters in <em>Re:Creators</em> have clearly grown and changed due to
their time in the real world. Magane has not been affected at all.<p>
Despite my disgruntlement over Magane and some of the general
direction of the show, it has been just good enough overall lately to
keep me watching for the moment. However, it is at least close to the
edge and I won't be terribly surprised if it manages to push me away
before it finishes.</li>
</ul>
<p>Stalled and basically dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Rage of Bahamut - Virgin Soul</em> (as of episode 6): I feel sad about
more or less completely losing my enthusiasm for this (the original was
a pretty good show, after all), and haven't really wanted to officially
admit it. Nina is a pretty great character and Rita is always fun, but
the show completely failed to interest me in all of the other characters
and it insisted on spending plenty of screen time on them and on all
of their plot twists. I'm especially uninterested in Kaisar and his
angst (Rita had the right idea when she threw him into the canal);
he was a pretty much always a wet blanket whenever he appeared.<p>
(In the original, Kaisar was mostly the straight man to Favaro's
comedian, and in <em>Virgin Soul</em> Kaisar alone has worked about as well
as you'd expect a straight man all on his own to work.)</li>
</ul>
<p>As with last season (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Midway">cf</a>), I feel perfectly happy
with how few shows I'm watching. Four shows that I'm solidly enjoying
is fine, and I have no particular urge to watch more.</p>
<p>(Anyways, it's biking season so <a href="https://ridewithgps.com/users/593605">I have other things going on</a>.)</p>
</div>
Checking in on the Spring 2017 anime season 'midway' through2017-06-20T01:05:40Z2017-06-20T01:05:31Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Retrospectivecks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Fall2016Retrospective">Once again</a> it's time for my traditional
look back at what I watched in the past Winter season, to follow
up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Brief">my early impressions</a> and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Midway">my midway views</a>. This time around there is a surprise new appearance,
which is part of why I haven't written this retrospective before now.</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>ACCA - 13-Territory Inspection Department</em>: Some of the plot
twists in the last episode were awfully convenient even if they
had sort of been set up in advance and there were a few aspects of
the setting that made me raise my eyebrows, but ultimately neither of
those mattered. What made the show was both the characters and their
interactions and the sheer atmosphere of the show, and it nailed both.
<em>ACCA</em> was a show that was a lot about style and it had the style to
make everything work. And I have to admit that <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/846927779530715138">some of the twists
in the last episode were great</a>. <p>
(One surprise given what happened in <em>ACCA</em> is <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/844394739919179777">how little violence
it had</a>,
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/839322458708652033">even when it could have</a>.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>March comes in like a Lion</em>: This didn't conclude so much as more
or less resolve some ongoing character threads, which is perfectly fine
since we're getting more later. But even if we weren't, I feel that the
show picked a good point to pause; it carefully showed us how Rei had
made genuine progress in moving forwards out of his paralyzed stasis
(<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/843313732604383232">cf</a>).<p>
</li>
<li><em>Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid</em>: What started out as a comedy turned
into a show that was very explicitly and heartwarmingly <a href="https://twitter.com/Liuwdere/status/856744429562081280">about family</a>. Oh, sure,
there were still funny bits by and in the end, but family was the
heart of everything going on and the epilogue of the show made it
explicit. KyoAni did very good work here. In quiet little things,
I liked how the mood shifted over the course of the show; for example,
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/845354714216706048">Kobayashi stopped exploiting Tohru</a>, and
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/832459767930982400">the cast no longer staying late at work</a>.<p>
(Kanna was a vital part of making things work. Her presence didn't
create the family as such, but she made its existence obvious. And
she got a beautiful part of an episode where the point wasn't what
happened but what didn't.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Kemono Friends</em>: This is ultimately a kid's show, by which I mean
that its episodic stories were generally relatively straightforward;
there was friendship with new Friends (all of whom were nice people),
obstacles to overcome with interesting but straightforward solutions,
and so on. This doesn't mean that it was bad, though, or even merely
ordinary; works for kids and young adults are quite capable of having
significant depths once you start looking and being extremely good,
and <em>Kemono Friends</em> definitely qualified here.<p>
Over its run <em>Kemono Friends</em> slowly and carefully built up a coherent
world and overall plotline, built narrative momentum around everything
going on, and used all of this to create a very powerful climax with
genuine surprises, an epic title drop that really worked, and a happy
ending that felt completely justified, partly because it used elements
the show had been carefully feeding us all along. A lot of shows fumble
their endings in some ways, but <em>Kemono Friends</em> delivered <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/855977728448897024">one of the
best ones I've seen in a while </a>. The show had
both heart and smarts (and looking back, always had <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/856230359310184448">some interesting
things quietly in the background</a>).<p>
I don't know how <em>Kemono Friends</em> happened, especially <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/855993068012679169">from a staff
that doesn't seem to have done much before</a>, but I hope
we get something more from this group of people. They have proven they
can make excellent work even under challenging situations, so I'd love
to see what they can do with another chance (on <em>Kemono Friends</em> or
something else).<p>
(I'm someone who is not bothered by CGI if the rest of the show works,
so I came to accept <em>Kemono Friends</em>' CGI even when it was <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/855260728185552897">pretty
special</a>.)<p>
(See also <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/KemonoFriendsAndSpoilers">how watching <em>Kemono Friends</em> benefits from knowing some
general spoilers</a>.)</li>
</ul>
<p>This season wound up being pretty thin on things to watch (since I only
followed three shows during it; I started <em>Kemono Friends</em> basically
after the season finished). However, everything I watched was somewhere
between quite good and excellent (<em>Kemono Friends</em> is merely good a lot
of the time; it back-loads its excellence as things get really rolling
towards the end).</p>
<p>I do kind of regret that none of my secondary shows worked out for me
this season. In the past I probably would have kept on watching <em>Little
Witch Academia</em>, <em>Blue Exorcist - Kyoto Saga</em>, and maybe even <em>KonoSuba</em>
and <em>Akiba's Trip</em>. But these days apparently I'm getting less interested
in watching things I find merely ordinary or marginal, so out they all went
by <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Midway">midway</a>.</p>
</div>
Looking back at the Winter 2017 anime season2017-05-01T05:09:52Z2017-05-01T05:09:37Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2017Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p>We're somewhere between three and five episodes into everything I'm
watching, which is long enough for most shows to show their cards and
my opinions to firm up (and for me to drop some things). So, <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Brief">as usual</a>, here's how my views of this season have shaken out,
to follow up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017FirstEpisodes">my first episode reactions</a>.</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>Eccentric Family</em> second season: This doesn't have as explosive a
start as I remember the first season having, but then we know a lot
more of the background this time around. It's still great, with all
of the good stuff from the first season and more things being thrown
into the pot. I like that we're sort of seeing a different side of
Yasaboru this time around, and he's certainly getting to sparkle.</li>
</ul>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>WorldEnd</em> (aka <em>SukaSuka</em>): I refuse to use <a href="http://www.crunchyroll.com/worldend-what-do-you-do-at-the-end-of-the-world-are-you-busy-will-you-save-us">the show's</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%ABmatsu_Nani_Shitemasu_ka%3F_Isogashii_Desu_ka%3F_Sukutte_Moratte_Ii_Desu_ka%3F">gigantic full name</a>,
which is very light novel (which it is). To my surprise, I've wound
up feeling that the show is unreasonably good, much better than I
expected, and it's ended up as my current second favorite show of
the season. It has ordinary looks (in terms of character designs,
background, colours, and so on) and some straightforward <abbr title="Light Novel">LN</abbr> elements, but its characters and writing are surprisingly deep
and good and it's convincingly sold me on its actual drama. It's also
quite well directed and storyboarded, which really helps hold my
interest despite its generally ordinary looks.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Alice & Zoroku</em>: While the action isn't bad, it's the character
interactions that continue to make this show, especially anything
involving Zoroku. The show is sufficiently well written and directed
to have given what could have been an over the top villain an affecting
back-story that made her basically a tragic character (still a villain,
though).<p>
</li>
<li><em>Rage of Bahamut - Virgin Soul</em>: This is not as great as the start of
the original <em>Bahamut</em> was, but it's pretty good. It helps that Nina is
a solid, interesting character with a lot of appealing elements, plus
there's Rita. Unfortunately the show has not sold me on the actual plot
going on, partly because it feels a bit too crazy and so I've wound up
feeling detached from it.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Re:Creators</em>: This has an interesting concept but a concept is nothing
if a show can't execute it well. The good news is that <em>RC</em> has been
executing pretty well so far, not just with good action but also with
good characters and good character and story interaction. It's not
perfect, and in particular it has leaned a bit too much on exposition
in sections. Of the shows I'm watching, this is the one that I feel
is most balanced on an edge where it could easily tip over into merely
okay or tolerable.</li>
</ul>
<p>Same as it ever was:</p>
<ul><li><em>My Hero Academia</em>: This continues the original's frustrating mix of
excellent work and slow, padded pacing that robs that work of a lot
of its impact. I enjoy watching it but it's always frustrating to see
how it could be better if only it would stop with all of the delaying
tactics.<p>
In short, this is probably a great shonen show dragged down to being
okay by its pacing. I'll still miss it when the season is over, though,
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2016Retrospective">just as I did the first installment</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Grimoire of Zero</em>: The characters and their interactions were very
nice, but they couldn't make up for the bland, cookie cutter overall
story writing. The second episode was especially painful for me, as
it plodded through entirely predictable story elements without any
particular spark, so I dropped the show.</li>
</ul>
<p>Misses:</p>
<ul><li><em>Granblue Fantasy</em>: Far, far too generic, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/848328940636835840">as I tweeted</a>.
Unlike <em>Grimoire of Zero</em>, this didn't even have interesting characters
to make up for its painfully generic storyline.</li>
</ul>
<p>Not considered for fuzzy reasons:</p>
<ul><li><em>Atom The Beginning</em>: This might ordinarily be my kind of thing, but
<a href="http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/preview-guide/2017/spring/atom-the-beginning/.114908">the ANN preview guide</a>
failed to make it sound appealing enough to sample.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Eromanga Sensei</em>: Despite <a href="http://ani-nouto.animeblogger.net/2017/04/14/eromanga-sensei-begins/">Author's praise</a>,
I have various reasons for giving this a pass, including <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/OrdinaryLifeSettings">the setting</a>.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Seven Mortal Sins</em>: Not my kind of thing in general (I generally don't
wind up liking fanservice-heavy shows even if they throw in action
as well), and like last season's <em>Gabriel Dropout</em> it's probably more
entertaining to sometimes watch people watching it on Twitter rather
than actually watch it myself.<p>
</li>
<li><em>KADO: The Right Answer</em></li>
<li><em>Frame Arms Girl</em></li>
<li><em>Clockwork Planet</em></li>
<li><em>Twin Angels Break</em></li>
</ul>
<p>As seems to have become my pattern, I'm not watching any popcorn shows,
by which I mean merely okay or passable shows that I watch primarily to
pass the time while I have some coffee or whatever. There are such shows
airing this season (<em>Grimoire of Zero</em> probably qualifies, for example),
but I'm just not interested these days. If I'm not actively enjoying it,
I appear to drop it aggressively or not even consider it.</p>
<p>I continue to not look at <em>Sakura Quest</em>, as covered earlier <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Spring2017FirstEpisodes">here</a>. Some commentary suggests that the fourth
episode is a significant step down, so I feel justified in this so far.
There are some fairly acclaimed shows airing in this season that
are just not in my area of interest as far as plot and setting go,
such as <em>Tsuki ga Kirei</em> (see eg <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/tag/tsuki-ga-kirei/">Nick Creamer's writing on it</a>).</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Spring 2017 anime season so far2017-04-30T22:42:52Z2017-04-30T22:42:47Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Spring2017FirstEpisodescks<div class="wikitext"><p><a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017FirstEpisodes">As before</a> I'm collecting here all of my
tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I
saw them).</p>
<ul><li>My Hero Academia episode 14 is just the same as always; I like the
characters but the pacing is still really slow and hurting the show.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/848297644460060672">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Granblue Fantasy episode 1 is not interesting enough for me to
even finish the episode; I made it 15 minutes before quitting.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/848328940636835840">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Alice & Zouroku episode 1 was fun, interesting, and intriguing,
but the character interactions really made it. I especially like
Zoroku.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/848649223402815492">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Rage of Bahamut - Virgin Soul episode 1 was slower and not as
exciting as ep 1 of the original, but the ending portion made
up for it.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/850543417314684928">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Re:Creators ep 1 was interesting & well done, but so far it just
sets up the premise; it doesn't tell us what the show'll be like or
about.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/850904569118941184">♯</a><p>
</li>
<li>Eccentric Family S2 episode 1: The tanuki are back, Kyoto is
beautiful, and things are spooky & quietly tense. It's everything
I could want.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/851998803951529985">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>SukaSuka episode 1: Now that's how you start a slow-build show.
There's nothing new here but it's very well assembled & pretty
appealing.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/852346900313509888">→</a><p>
</li>
<li>Grimoire of Zero ep 1 was very light novel but also surprisingly
appealing and well done. The characters are cliches, but interesting
ones.
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/852356642444333057">→</a></li>
</ul>
<p>These are all the first episodes I've felt energized enough to watch so
far and I'm probably not interested in adding more so I'm going to call it
here, even with a few potentially interesting ones unwatched. <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/852358142230921216">Notably
missing</a> is
<em>Sakura Quest</em>, which is frequently praised but has <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/OrdinaryLifeSettings">a setting that
usually doesn't work for me</a>, and I'm not certain
the premise sounds like my thing either. Perhaps I will get around to
it later, but so far <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/855260728185552897">I've felt like watching <em>Kemono Friends</em> instead</a>.</p>
</div>
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Spring 2017 season2017-04-22T02:09:19Z2017-04-22T02:09:13Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/KemonoFriendsAndSpoilerscks<div class="wikitext"><p><em>Kemono Friends</em> was a series that didn't even make my radar for
<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Brief">the winter season</a>, but it's been steadily
picking up buzz and good press and <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/848388716737462276">I recently started watching
it</a>. This
experience very much benefits from knowing some general spoilers due to
what I'm going to call <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/SymphogearRerated">the <em>Symphogear</em> effect</a>.</p>
<p>Much like <em>Symphogear</em> but more so, the opening episodes of <em>Kemono
Friends</em> are not particularly attractive on their surface. The CGI is
frankly janky (although I can get used to it and I even find it kind of
charming now) and the general plot of each episode is not particularly
deep. While the show is laced through with mysteries and allusions,
it's all too easy for a show to drop lots of hints that amount to
absolutely nothing and <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/EndingsProblemThought">plenty of shows fumble their ending this way</a>. Which is where the general spoilers come
in, because they do the crucial work of letting me know that <em>Kemono
Friends</em> is not one of these.</p>
<p>For example, those mysteries and allusions are in fact <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersAndIncluing">our old friend
incluing</a> at work doing <a href="http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2017/02/25-1/feature-why-it-works-kemono-friends-unstated-worldbuilding">subtle worldbuilding</a>.
Those uneasy feelings I get when I watch the show and see things
in the background are entirely intentional, and paying attention
is thus actively rewarding; I'll pick up things and have fun
theorizing. And things like <a href="https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/kemono-friends/.114176">Nick Creamer's review of <em>Kemono Friends</em></a> lets
me know that the smart writing I think I'm seeing is not an illusion
and the show has a real and satisfactory payoff in the end.</p>
<p>All of this elevates the show well above its relatively modest surface
appeal. When watching <em>Kemono Friends</em> with this advance knowledge,
I can both enjoy the surface, which is decently entertaining in a
lightweight way, and amuse myself by thinking about all of the things in
the background. I'll also admit that seeing all the memes and artworks
of various characters on Twitter has helped to prime me for their actual
appearances in the show. If I'd tried to watch <em>Kemono Friends</em> cold
without this general background, I suspect that I'd have bounced off
the show entirely on the grounds that it was very little more than it
appeared to be and didn't have enough promise.</p>
<p>(The surface show of <em>Kemono Friends</em> is okay but it's not deep; it's
goofy friendship slice of life and learning experiences, mixed with
lectures on animals and ecologies and so on. I might have watched it for
that alone if I was sufficiently bored, which I actually might have been
last season.)</p>
</div>
Watching <em>Kemono Friends</em> benefits from knowing some general spoilers2017-04-07T00:00:18Z2017-04-07T00:00:13Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Midwaycks<div class="wikitext"><p>It's time for a slow-moving midway update on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Brief">my early impressions</a>. This update has been delayed in part because I didn't
want to admit something, and that was partly because of <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/ConformityTacitPressure">the tacit
pressure of conformity</a>.</p>
<p>Excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>ACCA - 13-Territory Inspection Department</em>: This has continually
been the most interesting show I've been watching this season. It
wasn't always clear where it was going (and it's still not), but it
had such a sense of style, atmosphere, and character that that didn't
matter. And while I wasn't really looking, in its quiet, atmospheric
way the show has covered a huge amount of plot territory, especially
in the past few episodes. I can't wait to see where it goes next.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid</em>: This is still a comedy but it's a
lot more than that too; at its heart it's about family. I don't
like all of it, but enough of every episode lands that it's great.
It has a real mastery of quiet moments, background things, and
little gestures.</li>
</ul>
<p>In ongoing shows, <em>March comes in like a Lion</em> has continued to be
quietly great. There are less fireworks now than there used to be, but
more development and progression. Shimada has been a great addition to
the cast.</p>
<p>Not for me:</p>
<ul><li><em>Little Witch Academia</em>: In the end, this is basically a kids show
(that's made by Trigger, and is airing at midnight because
<a href="https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2017/01/17/little-witch-academia-tv-episode-2/">apparently the TV anime model is fundamentally broken</a>).
There's nothing wrong with <em>LWA</em> being a kid's show, but kids shows
generally don't really appeal to me and <em>LWA</em> has not been the
exception.<p>
This is <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/811795500705910784">kind of what I was worried about before <em>LWA</em> started airing</a>, although
not exactly it. In the end it was less the cliched stuff and more the
general style that didn't work for me. I have a bunch of issues with
what happened in the episodes I watched, but in the end all of them
come from looking at a kids show with the eyes of an adult.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Blue Exorcist - Kyoto Saga</em>: In the end, <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/832454422663884800">the slow pacing killed
it for me</a>.
This has the leisurely execution of a show that knows it's adapting
a manga arc and is thus ultimately not particularly going anywhere.
I like the characters, but no.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2</em>: Episode 4 was all about
Darkness and I hate what the show does with Darkness, so <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/828798896730173440">I bounced
off it</a> and
then realized I wasn't particularly interested in the show as a whole.
The show had one core joke and mostly wore it out in the first season;
the things it did in the first three episodes of the second season
weren't enough to keep me (and some of them I disliked).</li>
</ul>
<p>I have continued to not watch <em>Saga of Tanya the Evil</em>, and what I've
heard about recent developments have convinced me that this is the right
decision (partly because <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/828056376802934784">I'm on Tanya's side in one small aspect of the
show</a>, although
everything else I've heard about her makes me think I'd dislike her).</p>
<p>In the past I've felt antsy when I was down to this few shows I was
watching. This season I have no such issues so far, and I think that
that's partly because the three remaining shows are all really good
ones. They each leave me happily contented when I watch an episode
and I eagerly anticipate the next one when it gets close.</p>
</div>
<div> (<a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Midway?showcomments#comments">2 comments</a>.) </div>Checking in on the Winter 2017 anime season 'midway' through2017-03-12T22:53:13Z2017-03-12T22:53:04Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersPIWorldSourcesIIcks<div class="wikitext"><p>(This won't make much sense if you haven't seen <em>Flip Flappers</em>, plus
it sort of has spoilers.)</p>
<p>To follow on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersPIWorldSources">my original entry on the sources of the Pure Illusion
worlds</a>, here are some additional notes that
are really too big to be added on as an update to the original entry.</p>
<ul><li>episode 3: As of episode 11, the episode 3 desert world is pretty
strongly attributed to Sayuri, per <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterFobian/status/814543078316863488">@PeterFobian</a> and
<a href="https://twitter.com/B0bduh/status/814546061108871168">@B0bduh</a>.
<a href="http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2017/01/07/feature-why-it-works-a-worlds-tour-of-flip-flappers-part-one">Nick Creamer's tour of the Pure Illusions worlds</a>
contains a longer explanation of the evidence (and some additional
details).<p>
</li>
<li>episode 5: I'm basically persuaded by Emily Rand's argument in
<a href="https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/yayakas-world-and-a-few-stray-thoughts-on-flip-flappers-pure-illusion/">Yayaka's world (and a few stray thoughts on <em>Flip Flappers</em>'
Pure Illusion)</a>
that episode 5's setting comes from Yayaka. And frankly it's just
neat for it to be that way, because (as Emily Rand notes) there are a
whole lot of thematic resonances and reflections between Yayaka and
the setting. It's the kind of thing that makes me slap my forehead
and go 'wow, it so totally makes sense'.<p>
(I'll also note that despite the horror movie overtones, the setting
of episode 5 is not intrinsically dangerous. There are no monsters,
no deprivation, no threats. If anything, the school is a refuge from
the dangerous outside.)<p>
</li>
<li>episode 9: I'm not persuaded by Emily Rand's argument (from the
<a href="https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/yayakas-world-and-a-few-stray-thoughts-on-flip-flappers-pure-illusion/">above-mentioned entry</a>)
that the world here is (mostly) the twins. I stand by <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/FlipFlappersPIWorldSourcesEp9">my views</a> that it primarily draws on Yayaka,
although I'm willing to believe that it's intended to reflect and draw
on the twins as well.
<a href="https://delusionalramblingblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/the-worlds-of-flip-flappers/">Another person</a>
also feels that the episode 9 world is likely the twins. But I still
feel that the visual resemblance to Yayaka's locker room scene at the
start of the episode is too on-point for Yayaka to not be deeply
involved.</li>
</ul>
<p>In a show as deliberately constructed as <em>Flip Flappers</em> is, I can't
help but read something into the last-minute revelation about the source
of the episode 3 world. What I personally see it as is a message from
the creators to us that we're not overlooking clues to where all the
worlds come from; for some of them, we don't necessarily have enough
information because the show has simply not shown it to us, just as the
show hadn't shown us the necessary information about episode 3's world
until the last moment in episode 11.</p>
<p>As a result, I don't think any of the remaining uncertainties can
be settled with evidence from within the show. If we find out for
(relatively) sure, it will be through future interviews with the creators,
BD booklet notes, and other external sources of information.</p>
<p>(Apparently the director wanted to add at least some additional things
to the BD releases of <em>Flip Flappers</em>, so it's possible that BD versions
of episodes will also reveal more things. But I haven't heard anything
about that so far.)</p>
</div>
Where I think each Pure Illusion world comes from in <em>Flip Flappers</em> (part 2)2018-12-09T08:15:33Z2017-02-18T05:09:17Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/LongRidersBikesAndGearcks<div class="wikitext"><p>Apparently the manga version of <em>Long Riders!</em> is much more
explicit about what real-world bikes all of the protagonists
rode than the anime was (as usual, the anime altered most
brand names). <a href="https://nikkomaple.net/longriders-volume-5-release-book-signing-report-125c09f41545">This report on the manga volume 5 release</a>
names everyone's bikes, and <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/cycling/comments/5svz69/product_placements_in_anime_o/">this Reddit comment</a>
has more specific model numbers (and see also <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/5ba6cn/spoilers_long_riders_episode_4_discussion/d9nehr9/">this Reddit comment on
Ami's road bike</a>).</p>
<p>The first surprise here is that <a href="http://www.makino-cf.com/">Makino</a>, the brand name of Saki's
bike, is a real Japanese bike maker and is used un-altered
in the anime. In fact, <a href="https://makinocf.wordpress.com/2016/12/24/mk01%E3%82%8D%E3%82%93%E3%81%90%E3%82%89%E3%81%84%E3%81%A0%E3%81%81%E3%81%99%EF%BC%81tv-ver-%EF%BC%88%E9%AB%98%E5%AE%AE%E7%B4%97%E5%B8%8Cedition%EF%BC%89/">Makino has put together a web page on Saki's bike</a>,
with full specifications if you can read Japanese, and seems to be quite
happy to be associated with the manga and the anime.</p>
<p>Ami, Aoi, and Hinako all ride unsurprising bikes. Ami and Aoi have
basically normal aluminum frame road bikes, with Aoi's being more
expensive (and having some carbon fiber parts); Hinako rides a more
expensive, higher end carbon fiber bike that's nominally more of a race
bike. The twin surprises to me are Yayoi and Saki. Yayoi is riding a
custom-built <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/41xx_steel">steel frame</a>
bike, which is well out of the ordinary for road bikes. Saki is
riding a carbon fiber road bike, which is perfectly normal as a
bike but is unusual for her because stereotypically the type of
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randonneuring">randonneuer</a>
who wants to go to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris%E2%80%93Brest%E2%80%93Paris">Paris-Brest-Paris</a> will
ride a steel framed touring bike (although apparently an increasing number
of people are doing PBP and similar long brevets on carbon fiber bikes).</p>
<p>(You can get into a lot of arguments about whether steel frame road bikes
are any heavier than aluminum road bikes, as actually kitted out in the
field. Let's just say that if Yayoi wants a relatively light steel frame
bike, she can get it. It won't be as light as Hinako's carbon fiber bike,
though.)</p>
<p>As <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/828497995788328960">I discovered</a>, the
bike headlights Ami, Hinako, and Yayoi are using (especially
in episode 11) appear to be the Cateye Volt 1200. This
is a relatively high end bike light, but <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/810644727582302209">we already knew</a> that Hinako
and Yayoi liked to buy good but expensive gear. And it will put out 150
lumens for 15 hours and has swappable batteries, making the seven hour
or so night ride in episode 11 reasonably sensible.</p>
<p>(It does raise the question of why Ami freaked out when her helmet light
went out, since she could switch her headlight up to a much brighter
mode. But, well, it's Ami.)</p>
<p>Ami, Aoi, Hinako, and Yayoi all use older style magnet based speed
sensors for their bike computers. Ami has hers on her front wheel,
which is the easy place to mount it; everyone else has theirs on their
rear wheel, which is where more advanced people put it for various
reasons. Saki has no sensor visible, which probably means that she
has a modern accelerometer-based wireless speed sensor. Hinako is
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/809981531410337792">definitely</a>
using a GPS-based Garmin unit; I suspect that Yayoi and Saki are using
a GPS based bike computer as well, and perhaps Aoi too.</p>
<p>(Theoretically GPS-based units don't need a speed sensor. But having
one makes their speed readings more accurate, and we already know that
Hinako and Yayoi buy good gear.)</p>
<p>One of the interesting questions is whether Ami is using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_pedal#Clipless_pedals">clipless
pedals</a>
or not. The anime never had any sequence of Ami trying to use these (and
it's certainly a learning experience that's good for a certain amount of
comedy), but her road bike's pedals are definitely dual-sided, where you
can use regular shoes or clip in with special shoes, and in later episodes
she's clearly using the clipless side and seems to be wearing special
biking shoes that you use with clipless pedals. I suspect that the anime
skipped this part of Ami's learning experiences in the interests of time,
<a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/830280883907207169">as it omitted other things from the manga</a>.</p>
<p>(Everyone else is definitely using clipless pedals and shoes.)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/5tbvmt/cycling_anime_long_riders_real_locations_in_japan/">This Reddit story</a>
links to several YouTube videos that match up various <em>Long Riders!</em>
locations with their real world counterparts. Unsurprisingly, a lot
of places in the anime are real places.</p>
<p>(I'm writing this entry down before everything <em>Long Riders!</em> related
falls out of my head over time.)</p>
</div>
Some trivia on the bikes and gear of <em>Long Riders!</em>2017-02-13T16:03:09Z2017-02-13T00:30:26Ztag:cspace2@cks.mef.org,2009-03-22:/rtblog/anime/Winter2017Briefcks<div class="wikitext"><p>We're three episodes into everything I'm watching, which is long enough
for shows to get at least a bit established and for my opinions to firm
up (and for me to drop some things). So here's how my views of this
season have shaken out, following up on <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/Winter2017FirstEpisodes">my first episode reactions</a>.</p>
<p>Good trending to excellent:</p>
<ul><li><em>ACCA - 13-Territory Inspection Department</em>: The show has managed to
nail being stylishly cool and intriguing. Things have been developing
slowly, but it's clear that this is deliberate; the show is building
a particular mood, one where it's increasingly obvious that a lot is
going on underneath the surface.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid</em>: This is the rare comedy that works for
me, and on top of that it's charming and heart-warming. The addition
of Kanna and the third episode as a whole made it more or less explicit
that the show is partly about family and being family, in its own quiet
way. Part of what makes the show work so well for me is that every so
often the dragons are terrifying (and once upon a while, so is Miss
Kobayashi).</li>
</ul>
<p>As for my one ongoing show, <em>March comes in like a Lion</em> continues to
be somewhere between good and excellent depending on the individual
episodes (and even the segments within episodes).</p>
<p>Good:</p>
<ul><li><em>Little Witch Academia</em>: This is basically just as charming as the
OVAs. It's not particularly deep or complicated, but it's telling
its story pretty well and it has very good (genre) characters.</li>
</ul>
<p>Okay:</p>
<ul><li><em>Blue Exorcist - Kyoto Saga</em>: This has the leisurely progress of an
adaptation that is going to faithfully follow a manga arc and then
stop. It's okay, but either the original was <a href="https://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/anime/BestNIn2011">not as good as I
remembered</a> or something has fallen off in this version.
There are flashes of the old magic every so often in the character
interactions, but I couldn't describe this as a quite good shonen
fighting series. It's okay and I have enough affection for the whole
thing to keep watching.</li>
</ul>
<p>Holding on for now:</p>
<ul><li><em>Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2</em>: KonoSuba is KonoSuba,
for better and for worse. People who've been watching know what to
expect and the second season is more or less delivering so far. Kazuma
grates on me more than he used to; I'm not sure whether he's just
getting more dialog this season or I'm more aware of his annoying
side.<p>
Darkness has been pleasantly absent for the last two episodes, but
I don't expect that to last or for her to be any better than before.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dropped:</p>
<ul><li><em>Chain Chronicle</em> (TV version): There's nothing wrong with this but
it's uninspired and has a little bit too much emphasis on what are
clearly game mechanics. It just failed to make me care enough to
watch more.<p>
(I've decided that I refuse to use the show's ridiculously long full
official name here, just because. You can see that <a href="http://www.crunchyroll.com/chain-chronicle-the-light-of-haecceitas-">on Crunchyroll</a>.)<p>
</li>
<li><em>Akiba's Trip The Animation</em>: I realized that I didn't care about
either the characters or what was going on in the show.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Interviews with Monster Girls</em>: Too much emphasis on student romantic
feelings about the male teacher, too little Hikari being Hikari. There
are the bones of an interesting show underneath the harem setup that
this apparently has decided to be. I'm not interested in harem shows
in general, and student/teacher romantic yearnings make me grind my
teeth almost every time.<p>
</li>
<li><em>Schoolgirl Strikers</em>: This isn't so much bland as flavourless.
As I put it <a href="https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/820118095943598080">on Twitter</a>:<blockquote><p>It's striking how inoffensive it manages to be. It feels like the
safest, most cautious take on this genre ever.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
'Fighting Girls' shows usually manage to have some sort of spark,
even if it's a bad idea carried through badly. <em>SS</em> has thoroughly
drowned any such things that came near the show, just in case.
See also <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2017/01/13/winter-2017-virtually-every-first-episode-retrospective/">Nick Creamer's one sentence summary</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>I have been enjoying watching people watching <em>Gabriel
DropOut</em> on Twitter more than I suspect I would enjoy watching
the actual show. The same is sort of true of <em>Saga of Tanya
the Evil</em>, but an increasing chorus of people like <a href="http://wrongeverytime.com/2017/01/29/why-it-works-saga-of-tanya-the-evils-snappy-cuts/">Nick Creamer</a>
may get me to give it a two episode audition at some point.</p>
<p>(Watching people watching shows on Twitter gets me a suitable diet
of jokes and reactions and funny faces and moments from the shows
and so on. It's not the same as the actual shows for good and bad,
but it's a lot more lightweight.)</p>
<p>I'm not going to say anything about how I feel about this season because
there's still a lot of ways that things could go wrong. <em>ACCA</em> is writing
a lot of narrative cheques that it may not be able to actually cash,
and <em>Dragon Maid</em> needs to stay fresh over its entire run. But I've
certainly got my fingers crossed (as I do most seasons, to be honest).</p>
</div>
Brief impressions of the Winter 2017 anime season so far2017-01-31T04:25:58Z2017-01-31T04:25:45Z