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Selkie doesn’t seem interesting enough, lets bring the Sonico ! Funny story, Sonico was actually my first real cosplay I wore back in 2014 with Vivi when I first debuted cosplay. It was her white/pink Nurse outfit and.... Wasn’t the best of choice for someone as shy as me ? Rip. But this summer I finally got her default Tiger Hoodie outfit from Element Cosplay and i’M super super happy ! ♥

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First Impression: Soni-Ani: Super Sonico the Animation

This is generally a SFW blog, and especially will continue to be one thanks to certain Tumblr policy changes, but this time a couple of the links are not (though still certainly not explicit), so be advised.

Without further ado, it's time again for Paul Is Weeaboo Trash!

Today's episode: Soni-Ani: Super Sonico the Animation (2014)

Episodes watched: 4

What happens when you take a trip to a ridiculously geeky store, encounter an aggressively-ganguro and barely-dressed figurine (that your wife immediately despises), and you think to yourself "what the hell is this?" You end up finding, and somewhat regretting, Super Sonico.

This is an odd show right off the bat just in terms of how it came to be. The main character originated as the mascot of a music festival of the same name, and she just seems to have taken off in popularity in Japan, spawning a series of media including video games, manga, and the anime that is today's topic.

Super Sonico (Yes, her name is すーぱーそに子. Family name "Suupaa", given name "Soniko".) is a bright but anxious college student who works a seemingly-impossible set of part-time jobs as a model, waitress, and guitarist for the band First Astronomical Velocity (apparently "escape velocity" is a better translation?). The first episode serves just as an introduction to the main characters with very little actual content or development. We see Sonico struggle to get up and go to class in the morning, prodded awake by her cats and repeatedly coming back to her apartment for things, we see her late but well-prepared for class, we see her go to work. The show threatens to get downright sleazy with the scene showing her modeling for a magazine, but backs off at the last second as we're "introduced" to Sonico's manager, Kitamura, who shows up unprompted in an oni mask straight out of Japanese theater to object to an unapproved costume change from a bikini to something presumably even skimpier that we never actually see. After the shoot, she goes to her second job waiting on customers at her grandmother's bar, which really doesn't seem to establish much of anything plot-wise, before we finally meet her band, which gathers at a rented studio to rehearse their new song, which bassist Suzu has evidently already recorded her own demo of.

That first episode amounts to an extended setup scene, and made me expect that maybe this would be another clumsy attempt at a cute slice-of-life show. However, the show does quickly gain self-contained structured plots. In episode 2 we get a better introduction to First Astronomical Velocity as they continue to rehearse for their upcoming concert. Just like she was at school, Sonico is anxious, enthusiastic, and serious about making good music. Suzu, the bassist, is overenthusiastic about the stage show side, seems to be in charge of costumes, and clearly either has a crush on Sonico or is a big fan of embarrassing her. Maybe both? Fuuri, the drummer, is shown at one point being the voice of reason trying to get Suzu to understand Sonico's feelings, but her personality is really mostly dominated by her being very quiet and eating a lot. The rest of the episode unfolds in a very sitcom kind of way: Sonico juggles too many responsibilities and skips a last-minute rehearsal before the band is performing to take another modeling gig. When she gets to the concert venue, however, the rest of the band is delayed and Sonico has to try to stall by performing solo in the costume she previously refused to wear before being saved by her bandmates at the last minute.

The third episode is dominated by another modeling gig, and with it more predictable excuses for fanservice, and although we're getting more screen time with characters who aren't Sonico, they still have very little in terms of personality, which is the show's biggest. We see more of Kitamura, for example, in part of episode 2 and most of 3, but mainly to continue to show that he is protective of Sonico and uncomfortable with the outfits magazines want her in. And that he never takes off that mask. The most interesting and noteworthy event in the episode, assuming you're not just here to leer at Sonico, is that it draws a little bit of a line for itself, as the biggest conflict is Kitamura drunkenly booking Sonico for a TV appearance without either of them knowing the full details, which ends up putting Sonico in a deeply uncomfortable situation that Kitamura interrupts, sword in hand.

Now, I don’t want to be the kind of person who criticizes a show for not being a different show, but at this point, I was just wishing they’d made the show more about the band itself because the modeling parts just drag it down. It didn’t look like it was going to improve, and I wanted to give up, but based on the plot synopses for the other episodes, I gave it one more try in hopes it would get more interesting and less gratuitous. I was immediately rewarded by a much, much better episode 4, which consists mostly of an extended flashback telling the story of how Sonico met Toma, a middle school friend with whom she is no longer in touch, from whom she got her guitar and learned to play it. In a rare moment of actual thoughtful writing, it becomes quite believable that Sonico was extremely shy and, through maturity and practice and the acceptance of friends, became the clearly anxious but overall more confident person we saw in the previous episodes. It’s like we’re seeing the same underlying conscientiousness manifest in different ways. The resolution of the episode is sweet, and I was thinking “maybe that was an anomaly and the rest of this show is going to be good!” After all, it’s quite possible for a show to be fanservicey and also clever or touching. But then the preview of episode 5 started, and it looks like it’ll be another pretext for mindless creepy fanservice (and Kitamura saving the day), so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Maybe the show alternates bad and good (or, more charitably, model-centric and band-centric) episodes? Overall, I just don't think I care enough to continue the series. It's not so bad I’m going to be stuck complaining about it, but it is wildly variable and not good enough overall for me to sit through the “ugh, again?” to get to the “oh, that’s pretty cool”. I’d call the first and third episodes actively bad, the second okay, and the fourth one good. Sonico is by far the most interesting and fleshed-out character, and that’s just not enough to make me actually get into it. Oh, and the punchline of the whole thing is: Super Pochaco, who that preposterous figurine is of, is just a background character in this show, first appearing in episode 4 (someone on TVTropes claims she shows up in the background in episode 3, but I didn't see her at all). I wasn't watching the show for her, but I did hope to find out what the deal is with that figurine. Meh. This is not the kind of trash your trashy host wants to dig any further through.

I might buy the music, though.

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Revised W/A/S Scores: 6 / 7 / 5±2

Weeb: Plenty of things would be clearer or enhanced by general background knowledge of Japan, but some defy explanation to the moderately-informed weeb — someone with no prior knowledge of traditional depictions of oni will look at Sonico's manager's mask and go "lol wut?", and even after consulting the Almighty Wikipedia, I still have no idea why that particular mask (which apparently represents a obsessive or jealous aristocratic woman?) was chosen. Also, a lot of on-screen Japanese text is left untranslated, so I wonder if there are sight gags I'm constantly missing.

Ass: Very fanservicey, without ever quite making it to nudity, but also surprisingly upfront and kind of creepy about it, like the show is just a pretext for watching Sonico’s gravure photoshoots. Like, I was even expecting this show to be basically just pandering for its presumed otaku audience, but it’s not even particularly good pandering. Outside of the photoshoots, the show is still full of individual shots that draw attention to the female characters' bodies, especially Sonico's breasts and thigh-high socks.

Shit (writing): Continuing that general thought, the fanservice level just ends up dragging and distracting and I think it should count as a point against the writing quality. As mentioned above in the main review, the writing is wildly variable from episode to episode. What little characterization there has been for the supporting cast has at least made Fuuri and Suzu entertaining and likeable, and the show certainly doesn’t go as far as that egregious Blend-S problem of not knowing where its own scenes or episodes should end. Not being terrible, however, is not the same as being good.

Shit (other): This show really is pretty, and most of the music (which there's a lot of, since each episode has its own unique ending themes, all performed by First Astronomical Velocity) is enjoyable. Honestly, it's just making me more interested in buying the actual albums than getting more into Sonico's various visual media.

Content Warning: Although it's in the context of Sonico attempting to act, and the scene overall ends up funny, and sets up an enjoyable post-credits scene, episode 3 contains a scene of clearly non-consensual groping, and viewers might be too uncomfortable with that.

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Stray Observations:

- Huh. I was only dimly aware of "bullet screens", the practice of showing viewer comments scrolling across videos, as seen at the beginning of episode 2, and thought it was a very recent and distinctly Chinese phenomenon, but it apparently originated in Japan over a decade ago.

- It really shouldn't feel like such a distinct relief for a piece of otaku-centric media to finally sexualize someone who is unquestionably an adult, and who is choosing to be sexualized as part of a job she enjoys...

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