Yuki’s Submarine

Anime thoughts and baseball slop

[yukisubmarino]

Idk about Koshien fans in Japan, but as an eastern-time-zone-US dweller, I really dig the new Koshien schedule.

Back when i lived on the west coast under the old schedule cadence, i could pretty reliably watch the first two games on any given night, and maybe the start of a third if i was feeling spicy. But when i moved to the eastern time zone, the three-hour time difference meant the best i could do was watch the first game, hope it was a quick one, and maybe start the second. Honestly, it kind of turned me away from the tournament over the last couple of years.

But moving the first game from 10 am JST to 8 am JST is a game-changer, meaning the first game starts when the east-coast MLB games start. And while the next two games are a wash for me, having the final one start at 6 pm JST means I can catch most of it after i wake up.

Plus, night Koshien! How cool is that??? THAT decision should’ve been made long ago, for both heat and aesthetic reasons.

[anasabdin]

間

[yukisubmarino]

Kimagure Orange Road has become somewhat of a comfort show for me over the past few years, standing on many streaming services as a heartfelt time capsule to 1980s Japan in a way that your typical YouTube citypop playlist could never capture. It's a silly, templated, often juvenile, and always fun ripoff of more beloved Rumiko Takahashi shows, but that doesn't mean it's not worth your attention. Good artists borrow, great artists steal, after all.

So after running through the show for a second (third?) time, I decided to finish off with the OVAs and the final movie, I Want To Return To That Day - basically everything that was already on the Cronch that I just hadn't gotten to, yet. I tend to like anime movies more than anime shows, but have a healthy skepticism for movies that follow their respective shows, especially movies that are essentially unvetted continuations of already completed stories. One of my favorite shows,Touch - which is faithfully referenced in this movie, funnily enough - has not one, but two pretty terrible spinoff movies that no one would ever consider canon. And since KOR was born of less-than-original ideas, anyway, one could expect I Want To Return To That Day to have a straight-to-video treatment.

But here's the funny thing: I Want To Return To That Day is not just a faithful continuation of KOR, but quite simply the best 70 or so minutes of KOR, period.

I Want To Return To That Day is KOR stripped down to its basic parts: Madoka, Hikaru, and Kyosuke engaged in a love triangle - no magic, no hijinks, no street fighting, just romantic drama. Except this movie asks the question, What if Kyosuke actually had to make a decision?

As it turns out, the answer is a bit more complicated than it seems. Thanks to Madoka's prodding, Kyosuke decides to break up with Hikaru and actually goes through with it. Except Hikaru doesn't accept this development, latching onto Kyosuke even after he and Madoka have made their love affair official.

A lesser movie might have taken this turn as an opportunity to highlight how clingy Hikaru has been throughout the entire series, but that's not what this movie does. Kyosuke is ridden with guilt, because he understands that his wishy-washiness has led to this complication, and he has to bear Hikaru's tears knowing there's nothing he can reasonably do to stop them. Madoka is also somewhat at fault, recognizing that she never admitted to her own jealousy of seeing Kyosuke and Hikaru as an item. And Hikaru's behavior is not beyond reproach - clinginess is most certainly not a virtue.

Basically, this is a love triangle where all three get hurt because they all share some blame in their situation. But I don't believe anyone deserves that much blame. These are high schoolers, after all, and high schoolers have to make these mistakes at some point in their lives. Sometimes two wonderful girls fall in love with an average boy, and there's no outcome that leaves everyone without at least a little bit of heartbreak.

The added production value of a movie-sized budget makes this an enhanced experience over your typical KOR episode, and with it comes some cinematic choices that almost make this good enough as a standalone movie. There are also some bangers in the dialogue, like when Hikaru tells Madoka, "If it's for him, I can do anything." What a line.

There's a review of this movie on MyAnimeList that connects I Want To Return To That Day with the bursting of Japan's 1980s bubble economy, essentially highlighting that the happy-go-luckiness of the original show got a conclusion that only a masochist would find uplifting. Kyosuke gets the girl, Hikari gets the part, and Madoka finds her path - but no one's happy about it. All the color of the show fades into grayscale by the end of the movie, because sometimes that's how the innocence of adolescence develops. Perhaps that's not the best representation of KOR, but it's the first time I finished anything related to the show and thought, "Wow, that was something."

And maybe it's because I've already advanced past my twenties, I know that these kids are ultimately going to be alright. That in 10 years' time, they will forget about how much this little romantic tryst meant to them as they face bigger challenges (yes, I've read the synopsis for the 1996 movie - no, I am not eager to watch it). But they can dance in the sweet memories whenever they want, even if their current world looks a little sadder by comparison. 9/10

[yukisubmarino]

Watching Kimagure again, reminded of the best thing i ever wrote on this site

[goldcanillust]

-Wait a minute..

[yukisubmarino]

Love Unseen Beneath the Clear Night sky has two major strengths.

1. It’s a romance featuring college students, always preferable to the high-school variety.

2. It has good artwork a strong sense of place despite what appears to be a mid-tier budget, something akin to the Rascal Does Not Dream series.

That’s enough for me to continue watching, at least for now, because the show also falls short in some major respects. I don’t think the writing is very good, as jokes almost always fall flat and our boy’s internal monologue just isn’t very interesting. But more concerning is the chemistry between our romantic leads, or rather, the lack of chemistry. Our lovebirds just have no juice between them.

Which is too bad, because i think our boy’s (understandable but ultimately misguided!) concerns about dating a disabled person deserve exploration, as does our girl’s perspective on her own disability. And if that’s the reason our two leads are so boring in the first place, i can sorta understand the narrative decision to make this show as vanilla and accessible as possible.

But in that case, we’re gonna need to do some more exploring! This is college, after all — what else are they here to do??

[alariko1]

Hi

[yeyuannnnn]

暑假

[yukisubmarino]

Very pleased to report that after a well-deserved spring break, You and I Are Polar Opposites still has the juice in its second cour.

[fucca02]

[akino-kogomi]

[itukai]

[yukisubmarino]

One one hand, I’m happy the current season of Ace of Diamond has a new cour coming out in the fall, if only because i dont feel obligated to review the season until later.

But on the other hand — it’s just passing over the IRL summer high school baseball season? The very thing this show is about?

Odd timing 🤷‍♀️

[keyserelric]

Kamiina Botan, Yoeru Sugata wa Yuri no Hana anime eyecatch collection. Art by Taiki Konno

[yukisubmarino]

Botan Kamiina has the best mid-episode cards ever. Period.

[simzart]

Heat Wave. 🫠

[simzart]

[yukisubmarino]

gushing, pretentious Botan Kamiina review incoming

Admittedly, the market for artsy-fartsy, adult romance anime is getting more niche by the hour as the median age for anime consumption continues to trend downward (as Japan itself ages). But there seems to be at least a little bit of space for shows that scratch my particular itches, even if they show up only once a year, at best.

But when they do, they are worth the wait.

Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk, by design, should be examined from various viewpoints. It's a coming-of-age show where college students, faced with the realities of graduation, put off big decisions by doing homework, hiking trails, going shopping and drinking a whole lot of booze. It's an exercise in how one story can altered by the hands of several directors, whose fingerprints can be found in distinct episodes (with varying results, as fans will tell you about episode 3). It's a tender story about who you open your heart to and how that joyous discovery can still inflict pain on people you care about. It's also really, really good yuri.

And I'm not particularly a yuri fan, but even I can recognize that the yuri here is good. It's the type of yuri where homosexuality is the default despite male presence in the story (sort of like Given, if it were set in college and gender-flipped), meaning our characters don't have to deal with the heinous social forces that make them a marginalized people. Instead, they have to deal primarily with their feelings.

What a nightmare.

Most romance anime love to tell you exactly what their characters are feeling, because most romance anime are made for adolescents who need things spelled out for them. But Botan Kamiina is made for adults, and so like all the old Hollywood movies its characters bring up, it prefers to let emotions hang in silence.

At its most placid, it can feel like an iyashikei where our main characters drink sparkling wine and try on dresses at a Tokyo boutique. At its most heartbreaking, it can feel like psychological torment where those same characters climb a never-ending people-mover, enclosed in silence by glass walls with well-dressed mannequins hanging from the ceiling like victims of previous shopping trips. It's gay as shit, which means it's equal parts euphoric and horrific, even if the worst thing that happens to any of these characters is their crush turning them down for a drink.

Botan Kamiina may seem like a simple and relaxed show at the start, but it pulls two pretty incredible tricks as the story progresses.

1). It's the rare drinking show that does not glorify alcohol, instead showing how it consumes Ibuki and threatens her relationship with Botan.

2). It's a show called Botan Kamiina where the main character isn't actually Botan, but Ibuki, who experiences the most growth of any of our girls (a blossoming, you could say).

I like that a lot. I like it when studios get their hands on stories that aren't particularly special and turn them into something outstanding. That's especially true here, and doubly impressive when the visions of multiple creative directors still blend together in a unified understanding of the story's purpose.

Botan Kamiina is not for everyone (not for most people, really), but if it's for you, it's really for you. Best show of the season, best show of the year (so far). 9/10.

(more shows about college students, please!)

[iyashikei]