thoughts on anime and manga @lmfsilva / @longafloat watches. Updates on Mondays with a classic and Thursdays with a more recent one, with images and music often in between, occasionally some videogame adaptations. Weekly posts about ongoing shows on Sundays.
Comedy yuri by TYO Animations (2015), Lay-duce, W-Toon Studio (2018)
Based on a manga by Namori
Season 3, OVA, ONA
Length: 12 episodes,
Aired: 2015 (fall), 2018
Rating: B
Plot: More adventures of the Amusement Club and the Student Council.
Thoughts: And we're back. Well, a month for you, for me it's a couple of days after I finished writing my thoughts on the first two seasons produced by Doga Kobo and scheduled the posts, and now I'm heading into the TYO adaptations, which all were released in 2015, and also the 2019 OVA .
I'm doing it chronologically, so let's start with Nachuyachumi! a 60 minute OVA that starts with a hot day at the Tea Room, Chinatsu spiling tea on herself, Yui thinking she wet herself then helping her change, at the moment Kyouko walks in and witnesses what she thought was some sort of perversion she wanted to take part in. After finding a tent, they decide go on a short adventure camping for their Shummer vacashions, starting on a trip on a Mirakurun train, then the student council joining them in and doing the mistake of trusting Sakurako with buying food preparation stuff, and then a test of courage at night in the woods which ends up with Kyouko and Ayano seeing a bloodied head, which you can guess what it was at this time. It's overall nothing spectacular, and feels more of a refresher of the characters and the kind of hijinks they get up up, bringing back some of the recurring bits, like Kyouko's animal pajamas, their sisters, or Nana never being too far away from exploding something. It would be probably something that felt a lot better after two and a half years since the last episode of the adaptation, but it's still something quite fun to spend an hour with (B). It got two extra TV length episodes, the first had the girls on the Amusement Club playing catch with water balloons until Kyouko had a better idea, Sakurako swearing she saw the ghosts of four girls stumbling in the night, Kyouko taking her camera to the club, and after taking some new photos they reminisce with photos of their camping trip, and in the second Sakurako (who for some reason leaves has a Christmas tree on her bedroom all year long) decides to do something for Ayano since she's always sharing her pudding (well, not willingly) and Himawari suggests inviting them to dinner, while Kyouko goes to Yui's to finish homework but they end up playing videogames with Akari and Chinatsu, while they try to tire her out to they can get a photo of her sleeping, since she did the same to all of them. Fundamental viewing? Probably not, but still fun (B). After these re-introductions to the characters we got to the main course, the third season of the show, where I feel it tried to be more "cute" and rely less on bits, or at least in repeating most of the recurring jokes from the first two seasons. It has, however, one of my favourite stories of the whole show, where Rise arrives and starts helping everyone in the cast one by one with something the previous character gave them before as thanks. It has no dialogue, only music like a silent film. They did remove Akarin's introductions, can't say I approve of that, but it's still a quite entertaining show (B).
Visually, for all three 2015 releases it feels they just looked at the original adaptation and said "don't change a thing", and if I don't know why Doga Kobo were not on board, although in 2015 they had their hands full with Himouto! Umaru-Chan (so they were too busy with the Umaruuuun to get back to Akariiiiin), TYO Animations did a good job on making the transition between studios feel seamless. There's maybe a moment here and there you might have felt Doga Kobo would put something a bit more, but nothing really worth mentioning, beyond a really weird scaling error where Sakurako seems to have a giant head (or Ayano a really small hand) and some occasional animation slip-ups.
Then, another four years down the line in celebration of the 10th year of serialization it got a crowd-sourced new 30 minute OVA, this time by Lay-duce. It starts with the Amusement Club playing cavemen, because they wanted to reminisce about the last 10 years but gone too far, then decide to hold a big party with food and games. And wigs. It's another fun episode to add to the series at a point I think everyone realised it was very much a fans only thing, around the same level as most the the 2015 releases (B), and leading to it to promote it, also got a collection of four web shorts, Mini Yuri, with the characters in their chibi forms from W-Toon Studio. First has Kyouko making a very wrong presentation of the characters, second has the amusement club becoming YuriTubers, third Kyouko decides to organize the Yurilympics, and finally a murder mystery. I'm all for making omake cuts with cute versions of the characters, but it's strange when the original version are already that cute. It's just a bit of fun (that even has the VAs of Kyouko and Yui cosplaying as the characters) so let's just leave it at that (-). From here, while the manga keeps going there's no new adaptations since, but there's still two movies left based on the spinoff about Sakurako and her sisters that I'm sure I'll get to in another time.
Wouldn't be a show with a Susumu Hirasawa soundtrack without a post with one of his tracks, in this case, Bandiria Ryokodan, the closer for the first episode of Detonator Orgun.
Mecha by AIC / Artmic
Original story by Hideki Kakinuma, directed by Masami Obari
Length: 3 episodes (around 50 min)
Released: 1991
Rating: D
Plot: Orgun is an all powerful alien robot who crashes down to Earth after defecting from the Evoluders, a powerful civilization who leaves a trail of destruction in their path after learning Earth is next. He has a strange bond with Tomoru, just a guy who's living lis life, experimenting with a device that records his dreams, growing more and more extreme.
Thoughts: Well, I'm sure I gave plenty of weird reasons why I've watched things, from "I saw a 90 second clip on YouTube" or "I wanted to write about the game" to "I remembered a bit from a tvshow clip in the 90s", but here's a new one: it's the only show I'm missing from this Manga Entertainment leaflet that came with my copy of MechCommander (all mecha anime, as you can imagine, and if you are curious about what I said about them, click here, keeping in mind some are kinda basic entries one day I might revisit). This is a roughly two and an half hour OVA split across 3 episodes that you can just search on YouTube and watch the dub, because nobody cares.
And oh boy, I can see why that is the case. I haven't gone back to Bubblegum Crisis, a show that shares some staff with this, because I found it to be a terminal case of style over substance (same reason I haven't given much thought about Gall Force so far), but I'll give it one thing, it had style. Orgun, meanwhile, made two big robots fighting inside a town and some ancient aliens adjacent shit look boring. This is a mostly generic alien invasion story with nothing much to it, and the big reveal the aliens are just humans from a past space mission that experienced time dilation in the millions of years, evolving into robotic lifeforms to allow them to survive in space is an interesting one, but while Gunbuster did something exploring that concept of time dilation, Orgun seems happy with just settling with it as why Orgun deserted to protect Earth and why are some humans have a link with the Evoluder, like him and Tomoru. When I've looked at Armitage III a few weeks ago I mentioned this era was rife with production companies investing in the booming OVA market, but very often with very little purpose other than trying to cash in, and Orgun feels a good example of something that had a couple of good ideas stretched to 150 minutes, but a decent enough budget to not make it a complete shitshow, yet feeling hollow.
Visually, I know I'm not watching from a good quality source so I'll excuse myself from commenting on the more technical details, but I can say it looks competently drawn and animated, some interesting design here and there, but at the same time everything looks boring and lifeless, and how someone must have just learned how to do underlighting because every two minutes it just decides to throw a cut that is trying to blind you. A good reason to watch it, however, is the Susumu Hirasawa soundtrack, a few years before working on the Berserk soundtrack and his partnership with Satoshi Kon. Not as iconic as something like Forces or The Girl in Byakkoya, but certainly good enough to turn some heads about his potential, always ready to bring some bombastic qualities with his mix of electronic and symphonic soundscapes.
While I always try to find something good in anything I end up putting here, I take more attention with these sort of shows because I know a lot of them are someone's favourite because it was the first anime they saw either on some late night TV animation block, got a VHS on clearance or a tape was circulating around and they must have something special, but let me tell you: this was hard. Other than the music, everything felt aggressively under-average and couldn't even provide some cheap thrills. Disappointing all around.
I already have locked on the shows I'll probably be doing over the Summer season, so in 2 or 3 weeks it's the season preview. I should get an header image for these posts, because guess what, it's too many again.
(last week)
What was on?
Witch Hat Atelier
(ep 9) While they practice outside, we know a bit more what the girls want to do in their future: We know Agott is fully focused on getting there, but not her reasons, to be a librarian in the Library of Tomes and she is indeed the from a line of celebrated witches who work there, Richeh only wants to do what she wants, probably the reason why she's under Qifrey, and Tetia always upbeat wants to help people and be thanked for it, also also design a cap with two points. I really hope he the reason she's on the weird memory-erasing guy school is because nobody else could keep up with someone who has no off switch. Speaking of the memory erasing guy, he's trying to reverse engineer the mysterious ink flask, but the DRM was too strong for him and he lost one of the better clues he had so far. Well, al least he got that out of Coco's hands, although not before she (accidentally) gifted Agott with rocket boots, which may have come in handy as she collapses with a fever, and Agott has to get to get Qifrey on the double, and after delivering her to the hospital, Tartah wants to make him a question he'll probably forget soon after. Another solid episode on a show that has been nothing but quite good. A
The Ramparts of Ice
(ep 9) It's a moment of growth for Koyuki who realises that as annoying as Minato can be, he's still a person who wants to be her friend, but she misjudged his approach as someone trying to probe into her past just to harm her, and while while they were meeting the schoolyard fauna, on the Youta and Miki camp, an attempt at a prank almost ended with Youta confessing. On their way to a curry dinner at a new mall after school, Koyuki also reflects on how she has been slowly making friends and how she can treat her miserable middle school experience as just some bad memories, not just some unchangeable part of her life. Of course, as this happens, Igarashi is also checking the new spot, and Minato learns forbidden knowledge for someone who's an overthinker who tries to understand people, but then Kotuki and Igarashi later cross paths and turns out he doesn't even know half the story. Absolutely incredible episode that is mostly Koyuki reflecting on the last months of her life ends up flipping the narrative on just what we assumed on the previous 8 episodes. There's something really great on how this story that deals a lot with things the characters half-learn about other people from third parties ends up pulling one of these that makes you feel in the same situation. S
Ascendance of a Bookworm
(ep 8) So, Rosemyne has found her first enemy in the mayor of Hasse who intended to sell the orphans, and from learns Ferdinand this world works in very fucked up ways, where disobeying a noble is a higher crime then selling orphans (also kinda rich for someone who tells literal kids "you don't work, you don't eat" to be shocked at that but hey), but they must let it slide for the time being to not upset the locals who rely on the mayor to survive the winters. Also because Ferdinand does not fuck around, and he's going to make sure that Rosemyne makes sure that he's gone. She's is very conflicted about this until she hears from her second dad Benno that it was Ferdinand's plan or Hasse being turned into a cautionary tale. Who's also learning with him is Lutz, who puts the situation in a way she can accept from a moral standpoint. A really solid episode about the inner working of politics in this world B
Mao
(ep 9) Should I be surprised that the character who's friends with Mao and named 貂子 ("little marten") was an ayakashi? You know what, in retrospect, probably not. Who's really surprised is Tanehiko, the guy who has been abducting women, and even more as it turns out his butler who has been diligently covering up his murders has got new orders and those are to get rid of the failson before he drags the family name on the mud. That butler is Kamon, another of Mao's old acquaintance, who also doesn't have answers to his many questions. Second story, Hyakka is leaving town, but notices some shikigami going into the opposite direction, so he rushes back to enlist Mao's help. Kinda wish Takehiko suffered a bit more, but that story was very much a quick way to just introduce Kamon and sow Tenko's secret. In general, a fun episode with some nice action moments. B
The Food Diary of Miss Maid
(ep 10) Suzume comes across the girl she met in the second episode who's all dressed up on her way to have her photos taken, and Suzume is interested in the candy bag she's carrying, so when she comes across one for sale, she had to buy it, then on a colder afternoon has some hot corn soup from a vending machine, then she sees how pretty the mountains are in the autmun and with the help of Anzu's equipment goes on a trip, then her grandfather buys her something Nana warns her about, a kotatsu, and within a she becomes unable to get out as foretold in the prophecy, and finally sees Sora eating a meat bun and decides immediately she wants one. I'm not going to say it's the "weakest" episode since this sort of show is almost always a B flatline, but I guess I didn't enjoy the stories as much, although Kotatsu potato Suzume makes up for it, I guess. B This weeks delicacies: chitoseame, corn soup in a can, mikan, steamed buns
Gals Can’t Be Kind to Otaku!?
(ep 8) Seo finds himself with alone with Ijichi in her brother's apartment, sending his brain into overdrive thinking something inappropriate might happen, and the sense of relief Akane joins them quickly gives way to feelings it might be even worse. And he's not wrong, but mostly because if Ijichi is better at hiding (in plain sight, like a pro), Akane has a terrible poker facer, and when Ijichi suggests they stay together for a slumber party to keep working on their school festival project, that girl just can't hide how much she wants that to happen. Ijichi's brother is perfectly fine, just has a few rules (that feel mostly "don't do anything I wouldn't do") and they stay up until the middle of the night, allowing Akane to confes why is she so adverse to being called an otaku. A really good episode that shows how comfortable the writing is to be constantly on the blurry lines between the characters. A
Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk
(ep 8) Akane loves music and is in a band. She's also at the age where she really needs to decide if that's something worth pursuing, at least with her current band that seems to be doing ok, but where she's a lot more committed to it than the other band members. After finishing rehearsals early, she meets with Yaeka, Botan and Zhang for drinks, and Zhang, the ever subtle wrecking ball, just drops the big question to Botan: are she and Ibuki dating? It's complicated, after all, she's at the age where she really needs to decide if that's something worth pursuing, and you see where I'm going with this. But she's right, is Botan actually serious about her fellings, or is she leading Ibuki to a place she'll just hurt her? very solid episode, great visuals, but Akane and Yaeka should be in more often, to be honest. I get that their relationship is pretty much set and probably not as fun to write for, but that would still be a fun to watch because their personalities are so different. A
Fist of the North Star
(ep 10) Kenshiro has decided on a new strategy to hunt Jackal, and that is put the pant-shitting terror on everyone around him to the point they see turning on him as the only way out alive. With no honour among thieves, he gets out of that jam, but the only solution is to set free something that really blows out of the water any theories one might have on how these guys are all so tall and jacked up in the wastelands. I kinda feel this was a fairly decent episode all around, but let down by one thing: 3D should allow you do to some incredible set pieces that wouldn't be possible with traditional 2D animation, and with a building sized guy it does feel like it should have felt a lot more massive than it actually was. Also, just because a guy is very much dead just, just stil has a pulse and is walking around, I wouldn't go out of my way to mock him if he could just crack my head on the counter like a walnut. D
Pardon the Intrusion, I’m Home!
(ep 8) Mao ended up overhearing a family secret, that her dad really isn't her dad, shattering the illusion she had of her family and sending her crying to Usada's home. Now, while trying to go home at the Christmas party he may have given the impression he's dating Rinko, so to keep the lie going with Mao and his parents, he asks Rinko to do a reverse fake relationship game, but Akito flips the table on him because Mao thinks she is the "other man" and feels wrong when her beloved sister is talking trash of basically himself. It's a better episode than the slog that it has been on the last few weeks, and it seems Mao's stepdad knows Akito, so we're finally going to learn what is he up to in a few days. C
Ichijouma Mankitsu Gurashi!
(ep 8) It's the school sports festival, and of course it's not something normal, it's at an actual sports stadium, and the prize is a Wagyu cow for each student. Also every competition is about money, leaving Meiko feeling left out, until Rie decides the competition ends with a dance contest worth 6 million points, which Meiko and Neo win. Second story (or third, if we count the pyjama party intro), Meiko's sister Miori comes home to watch women's wrestling, but her siblings are all sick, and not knowing what to do, call Meiko who's in the middle of important Tokyo culture research (siscon manga), to teach how to do her rice porridge. That call somehow turns into an impromptu wrestling match. Fun like always, they should have told Hana Hishikawa to "do funny noises" for Meiko from the start. B
The Urban Legend Files
(ch 32) What a nice chill chapter, with them reminiscing about a year of college passing by, Mokume eating half a pizza on her own, then Kugutsu sees them off at the train station and goes home, sees two strange persons on the road and nevermind, there's some weird shit happening to him again. He's abducted by parallel universe versions of the club and explain they had to take him there because something happened to their Mokume and she looks catatonic in a wheel chair. Is it a new arc? Is it going to get really weird again? We're going to see in a couple of weeks.
Axed Mangaka and Doujin Creator
(ch 9) It's time for Chirita's origin story, and she has the same kind of BL eyes Ota from Wasteful Days of Highscholl Girls which led her to the path of making a full book worth of doujin based on a struggling manga. It's easy to build up backstories for characters, the hard part is make it believable, and I feel this is how so many people started, with a single interaction on something they read.
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