Are we here? Are we all still alive?
Good, I was worried there for a moment.
I figured that since it's been well
over a year since my first completed, full article on this blog that
I would kick things back into gear with posts summarizing my thoughts
on each anime season in 2014. I'm hoping to get these blogs out
every few days, and they'll only get more and more packed as each
season goes on. Winter 2014 will be my shortest post as I am mostly
opening up discussion of shows that I completed or are on my list of
stuff to complete. With that out of the way, let's begin.
Winter 2014 was not the most-crowded of
anime seasons, and many of its shows actually fell under the radar
for me. Perhaps it was because this season happened when I was
getting used to a new job, and thus was trying to balance out
watching other stuff on my pile with being extremely exhausted after
every new day at that temp job. Regardless, though, there was plenty
to talk about, including two of the biggest hits of the year.
Before we get started, I should note
that these titles will be listed in order of when I completed each
show. Afterwards, I'll say a few things about shows I started but
have not yet finished, and I'll probably make a blog post with
updates on shows I'll follow up with at some point during 2015.
Kill la Kill
I'm going to get
this show out of the way real quick, as it was the only simulcast
continuing from the fall that I kept watching (as of writing this, I
am still only halfway through Log Horizon and Nagi no
Asukara; Samurai Flamenco and Golden Time remain at
four episodes completed, to be revisited at some point). If you were
anywhere on the internet since October 2013 and the topic of anime
has been brought up, chances are you've encountered Studio Trigger's
first full-length show, directed by Imaishi of Gurren Lagann
fame. There
is plenty to say about Kill la Kill
that has already been said by many extremely insightful media
critics.
Yeah,
I really enjoyed Kill la Kill.
It's a passionate show, and even with its problematic elements in
its earlier episodes and fanservice-y outfits that aren't for
everyone, it survives because its amped-up ludicrousness is genuine.
It takes itself seriously while still being light enough to have the
jokes it cracks be extremely funny. There's a lot more that I do
want to talk about with it, but that won't happen until I clear up my
thoughts on it after a second viewing.
...so,
who wants to join me for a Kill la Kill rewatch?
Space Dandy
The
biggest show of the season (and perhaps the year) is Shinichiro
Watanabe's animator playhouse, Space
Dandy.
Like another major Watanabe show, the show is an episodic series of
adventures in space, utilizing different directors, writers,
animation directors, and so on. Looking at the staff list for Space
Dandy
is like looking at a list of big names in the industry, as well as
up-and-coming folks who need more exposure. Space
Dandy
works due to the charm of its cast, who do remain consistent
throughout different sets of writers, in addition to both being a joy
to look at and having some really engaging, memorable, and funny
episodes.
While
the show pulls full steam ahead in its second half, there are
definitely plenty of great episodes to be found in the batch that
aired this winter. My
favourites from this half include episode 4 (“Sometimes You Can't
Live with Dying, Baby”; the zombie episode), episode 7 (“A Race
in Space is Dangerous, Baby”; the Redline-esque
racing episode), episode 9 (“Plants Are Living Things, Too, Baby”;
the Eunyoung Choi-directed affair dealing with a psychedelic planet
of plants), episode 10 (“There's Always Tomorrow, Baby”; the
episode where the crew gets trapped on Meow's home planet and stuck
in a time loop) and episode 13 (“Even Vacuum Cleaners Fall in
Love, Baby”; QT is adorable, okay?). All are very fantastic
episodes in their own right, and give a decent variety of animators
and writers to look at (though, looking at my list of favourites,
there's a lot of Kimiko Ueno-written stuff in there!). There's a
good amount of variety between every episode of Space
Dandy,
and I'm sure there's something for most people in this show.
Wake Up, Girls!
To
me, this was one of the more criminally underrated shows of the
winter season. When it first came out, there was general buzz for it
among the aniblogger community. As it went along, though, it seems
as though interest for it greatly waned.
Part
of this could be due to the fact that while it does show the seedier
side of the idol profession, it still ends up having the same story
of a rookie idol group trying to make it big while interspersing it
with intriguing drama about the opposite side. It's still stock in
that approach, but it's genuine and takes some interesting steps
along the way, namely due to the fact that it emphasizes why specific
people do what they love, even when
it kicks them down and they majorly doubt their abilities. Mayu and
Airi tend to be the characters focused on due to this, with their
personal struggles handled personally and engagingly. Wake
Up, Girls! succeeds
in getting the viewer to root for this up and coming idol group, even
if what happens to them is occasionally difficult to watch.
Another
factor in what potentially drew people away from this show is the
animation, which as I'll wholly admit is atrocious.
There's plenty of art and animation errors to be found, and while
most of the dance scenes look interesting and are choreographed well,
there are serious errors in the daily life musings (particularly of
note is one texting scene where a thumb moves about a phone almost
inhumanly). I haven't been able to confirm if the blu-rays have
fixed this, but I sure hope they have.
Regardless,
Wake Up, Girls!
manages
to strike a balance between telling the story of charming underdogs
chasing their dreams and the corruption of the rival, big-name idol
group while still not being afraid to showcase the darker sides of
the idol industry. Not bad at all for something that was
definitively supposed to be product placement for the real-life idol
group.
Wizard Barristers
You would think that a show about wizard lawyers wouldn't be
terrible, huh? Just the statement of the premise alone is neat and
ludicrous. In fact, the first few episodes of Wizard Barristers
promise a fun procedural, something really lacking in terms of
analytical content but very high on entertainment. Its first few
episodes showed some stunning animation and fight choreography. In
fact, I watched the first episode multiple times during its season
while working out, because it made a very pretty wallpaper anime of
sorts.
What transpires as it continues, though, is a plodding identity
crisis of a show that's rife with animation error after animation
error.
Wizard
Barristers spends much of its
runtime in increasingly ludicrous court cases, the majority of which
are overcome by the Mary Sue lead, Cecil. She's young and full of
passion, having passed the bar exam at the age of seventeen, and of
course she's also a very special wizard.
Then
the last set of episodes happened. This show is infamous for having
a lot of rushed animation during these episodes, including scenes
that are unfinished and basically sent in as key frames. The plot
points introduced in these episodes obfuscate the unanswered
questions of the previous ones with the introduction of many plot
points that seemingly come out of nowhere.
Wizard
Barristers started off with
potential promise, but it ended up diving head-first into the shallow
end. After this and Galilei Donna,
can we please stop giving Yasuomi Umetsu work?
Noragami
The second of Bones' outings this past winter, you can tell that
Noragami was the less lavish of the two productions (the other
being Space Dandy). This one is definitely a more standard
shonen tale, telling the story of three characters at its core:
Hiyori, a regular middle school girl who gets saved from being hit by
a bus by Yato, causing her to become a half-phantom; Yato, a war god
who is trying to build his own shrine by taking on odd jobs for 5 yen
at a time; and Yukine, a spirit whom Yato has turned into his
Regalia, a weapon that he uses to destroy phantoms.
From this past summary, there's a lot of terminology and utilization
of Japanese folklore, but what Noragami does with all of this
is a lot more interesting than simply presenting fight after fight.
The circumstances surrounding Regalia and their relationship to who
they serve is the crux of the series, and Yukine in particular
illustrates a complex partnership with Yato, and its consequences
were very well-presented.
A lot of Noragami feels as though threads were left loose in
case it performed well enough to justify a second season, which it
does not appear to have done at this point. However, the pure charm
of the show and characters bouncing off each other were really nice,
and the setting and circumstances of that setting were all engaging
to watch. I would gladly want to see more Noragami animated,
perhaps with a bit more love (it's not a bad-looking show by any
means, but it's not at Bones' typical caliber), as I do find myself
missing these characters and setting as I think back on them fondly.
I guess I'll just have to start reading the manga.
Engaged to the Unidentified
Now, this is the last show from the winter that I really looked at.
I first attempted to watch it right after it premiered, making it no
more than halfway through the first episode before deciding it wasn't
for me and shutting it off. As I kept thinking back on the season,
though, I kept thinking about the show, feeling as though I didn't
give it a proper shot. I mean, it's a moe show based on a 4-koma, it
moves at a slow pace, and one of the recurring jokes is an older
sister obsessed with her younger sister to an unhealthy degree.
Definitely several checks in my “nope” column. This past month,
though, I just kinda said, “Fuck it, I'll check it out anyway.
I'll just make it through it.”
Turns out, this show is kind of okay!
It was a bit of a struggle to get through the first half of the show,
as it mostly ended up being set-up of character relationships among
each other, setting some small conditions between the main characters
(the main couple agreeing to not talk about their engagement in
public at school is actually a major plot point later in the show,
for instance).
Engaged to the
Unidentified is, through and
through, still a slice-of-life 4-koma show. The show is structured
very heavily around its punchlines, and its characters all have
several stock ones associated with them (some of which get
recontextualized post-reveal). Kobeni is the straight man who has a
few small character traits here and there, Benio is basically a
little-sister-lolicon (and is automatically the worst part of the
show), Mashiro is a little girl who attempts to act older than she
is, Hakuya is silent, straightforward, and never changes his
expression (or does, at least subtly). What's interesting about this show is that it doesn't feel like an animated anthology of comic strips like most shows of its ilk. Engaged
flows from each small joke without a sting that usually accompanies
the punchlines in these types of shows, adding to a much larger
punchline at the end of the overall joke. Its timing and use of
hilarious facial expressions is usually
right on, making me
occasionally even giggle at Benio's scenes. When
the jokes are actually funny, they do make me smile and laugh, but
usually never more than that.
What's
also nice about this show is how it looks; there's a lot of simple
cinematography and SD character designs, but there are even just
mundane moments of walking in the snow or cooking that look
fantastic. There's a lot of imagination in the opening, too, but I
do have to chastise it for having two prolonged, intentionally
ecchi-bait shots at the very beginning that paint a wrong impression
about the amount of fanservice content in the show (which never
crosses the line past jokes about Kobeni having large breasts). The
ending is also quite cute and charming, but that's a topic for
another day. It's a solid outing for Dogakobo.
...wow,
I had a lot more to say on Engaged to the Unidentified than
I thought I would. Probably because I just finished it yesterday,
but yeah. I still wouldn't wholly recommend it, as it takes its
sweet time, not really getting too interesting for me outside of a
few jokes until around episode five, and there are plenty of jokes
about little sister fetishes and breast size that I'm not crazy
about. The rest of the show can be rather cute and sweet, though,
especially when it occasionally takes time away from being
lighthearted comedy to being slightly more serious but still
heartwarming. Like the true
nature of its cast, Engaged to the Unidentified
is more than it would seem at first glance, but not much more than
that.
The rest:
Hoo
boy, this was the season of unfinished shows for me. If I recall
correctly, the major reason I didn't continue with most of this was
because of a few things, one of those being my new job and the other
being a two-week marathon of the 2005 anime adaptation of the
1970s shoujo manga Glass Mask
(which is still streaming up on Crunchyroll). I got through the
whole thing, and it was pretty amusing. I wouldn't say that you
would absolutely need to see it, but it's fun for fans of ludicrous
old shoujo (I equate it to a shonen battle manga, except replace the
fighting with acting. Seriously).
But
in any case, here's my pile of shame from this season:
- Hozuki no Reitetsu. I wish I finished this show. I really do. The first three episodes were all my type of dry humor, and it's pretty silly stuff. I think it's still in my queue, and I even wholeheartedly recommended it at the beginning of the season. I'll save it for a sick day, one where I need to laugh a lot.
- Witch Craft Works. People really seemed to like this! I can understand why, as it seems like a neat genderflipped scenario where the dude ends up becoming the damsel in distress instead of the lady, and there was very little objectification of her in the few episodes I saw. Something about the humor didn't click with me right off the bat, though, and I just added it to my queue. I'll sit through it eventually, probably saving that for another sick day, but we'll see.
- Nisekoi. Oh Shaft, you didn't need to animate this. No, really, Shinbou, you didn't need to direct this. Nisekoi is a never-ending Shonen Jump rom-com, and I saw its formula coming once I realized that both Chitoge and Onodera had keys. More keys would be introduced, none of them would work on Raku's pendant, etc.. It's bog standard stuff, and I grew bored of it.
- World Conquest Zvezda Plot. This show gets a lot of love from other sects of the blogging community, and I couldn't attach to it. It kinda tried way too hard for me in places, and the smoking episode was really heavy-handed. The costuming was also doofy (and gross, for Kate's costume). Also in the queue, but I don't think I'll finish it.
- Sakura Trick. I wanted to say some words on this in its own separate blog post, but this show is for straight guys who fetishize lesbians, not LGBT looking for good representation. It's a fetish show. Ugh.
- Silver Spoon season 2. I'll get to it, I swear. I liked the first season! I...actually think I watched the first season during this winter season. Well then.
And
with that, I think I've made peace with winter 2014. Next season
will be a lot more interesting, a
lot of stuff is worthy of discussion.
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