The story has come together oddly, and unfortunately unsatisfyingly, in this.
Early on, I wasn’t even sure if it was going to have a plot to speak of. It was pretty much a slice of Alina’s life and her trials and tribulations as a guild receptionist who, if all else failed, could one-shot a boss monster just to make the world easier for her to deal with.
Then it started pulling in little bits of a broader plot, with the secret dungeons and dark gods and man in black. Okay - great.
But somehow none of that has really been incorporated into the story. Instead, it’s felt like it’s still a slice of Alina’s life (expanded to include tsundere romance), and it just has some little bits and pieces of a broader story awkwardly stuffed into place here and there. Like nobody is actually focused on that part of it - that they’re just going along with slice of life and gag humor and tsundere romance, then they come to the part of the script that says “insert dark god here” or “trigger encounter with man in black here,” so they just do a scene that meets those requirements and bolt it into place. Then they hastily exposit, or just handwave, whatever gaps exist between the current bit of awkwardly inserted story and the previous bit.
I suspect the broader problem is just trying to stuff too much story into too few episodes, having to cut things to get it all to fit, and doing a relatively poor job of deciding what to cut.
It has accomplished one thing though - it’s reminded me of why I generally don’t watch currently-airing anime.
I’d never been quite clear on what Kaede made of the idea of childhood friendship blossoming into romance.
Now we know.
Kouhei sure has his work cut out for him…
Maybe I’m slow on the uptake but I just realized with this chapter that if this series continues long enough, there could be and should be another entire arc coming in which everything comes apart.
Just as Emi wasn’t really Remilia, Pina isn’t really the Star Maiden.
(Or whatever her name is. Is Pina her original in-universe name? We knew that she was inhabited by an isekaied human, but have we learned her real name, like Emi to Remilia? I don’t recall that distinction being made explicitly, but I don’t remember the details…)
And this distinction between demons and devils sets up a situation in which the demons, who have been accepted into human society because all indications are that they’re not malevolent, could turn malevolent.
And Remilia’s thirst for revenge could well lead her further toward evil than Emi would’ve gone.
All of which sets up the possibility that the demons will begin to transform into devils and pose the threat they were originally thought to be and Remilia will end up, just as in the original version of events, leading an evil force. And it will be up to the Star Maiden, who quite possibly has been present all this time in the back of Pina’s mind, just as Remilia was in the back of Emi’s mind, to be the hero who sets things right.
And just as the trauma of being cast out was enough to overwhelm Emi and allow the original Remilia to take over, the experience of being publicly exposed and humiliated could be enough to overwhelm Pina and allow the original Star Maiden to take over (and just in time).
Huh…
The thing, to me, that’s best about Isshiki is that she is, for Hachiman, a perfect combination of playful and serious. By one measure, she’s always completely honest with Hachiman, but her honesty is buried under a layer of playful banter and teasing, which actually makes it easier for Hachiman to deal with.
She’s much like Komachi in that respect, and it’s not a coincidence that Isshiki’s and Komachi’s eventual meeting is epic - they instantly recognize each other as kindred spirits.
I assume that what we’re seeing lately is literal filler. They have a background plot going with this mysterious villain who’s spreading rumors of secret quests and apparently trying to get people to confront dark gods, and my guess is that they already have the culmination of all of that planned out, and ended up with two or three episodes they had to fill with something first.
The latest episode does have a bit of character growth, at least as measured on a relative scale (with someone as tsundere as Alina, a little goes a long way). But it’s still mostly biding time.
So Season 2 of Oregairu wasn’t quite the slog I was afraid it was going to be, though not because the characters really improved at all. They were still pretty much all assholes of one sort or another - it’s just that the other characters didn’t get as much screen time, thanks to the VERY welcome addition of Isshiki to the cast. Just having to sit through less of Haruno would’ve been enough all by itself to greatly improve the season overall, but as a bonus, Isshiki actually turned out to be a great character (easily my favorite in the entire series), and a perfect foil/accomplice for Hachiman.
Then I went on to Season 3, which was… okay. It was initially difficult, in part because it was like Hachiman and Yukino and Yui cranked their already frustrating inability to communicate up to 11, but mostly because it put a lot of emphasis on Yukino and Haruno’s mother, who’s one of the most foul, loathsome, manipulative bitches it’s ever been my displeasure to encounter in any medium, and just seeing her on-screen ruined things for me. But once it got that c*** out of the way and Hachiman and Yukino finally started to open up, it was (finally) pleasant. Oddly enough though, the ending sort of suffered IMO by coming together too quickly and easily, particularly after all the time spent tediously building up to it. It was okay all in all, but mostly I was glad it was over.
I wanted an antidote after that, so I deliberately looked for something roughly similar but far more pleasant, and ended up finally watching Zero no Tsukaima, which has been on my TBW pretty much as long as I’ve known Louise existed, which is pretty much ever since I first went online. I expected it to be amusing and enjoyable, but it surprised me by actually being sort of awesome in addition to that. I really enjoyed it, and even more than I’d hoped I would.
Then I bounced around a bit and finally, for I don’t know what reason, ended up with Queen’s Blade, which is one of the most thoroughly bizarre and ridiculous things I’ve seen. It manages to combine cringily brazen fanservice, battle royale, complex political intrigue, genuinely interesting characters, tragedy and gag humor into… something. It’s so exaggerated that it almost seems like it was meant to be a satire, but it stops just short of actually being one. It is definitely… something though.
And as far as current series go, Guild Receptionist is moving a bit too slowly lately, Zenshu is still flailing a bit, but I’m hoping it’s going to do that MAPPA thing where they somehow manage to tie everything together in the end anyway, and I’m still really enjoying Honey Lemon Soda, trite and tropish though it may be.
Same here - I read the first few chapters and just couldn’t get into it.
It’s not just that the MC is too creepy for me to tolerate - he’s so over-the-top creepy that he breaks my suspension of disbelief.
It’s hilarious that even the guildmaster is intimidated by Alina.
And nice to see Jade actually make a bit of progress. He still has a long way to go, but her heart did actually thaw just a bit, and that’s a first.
So first up for me this week was the rest of Punch Line, which I started last week. It was actually surprisingly good all in all. It started off really cheesy and contrived, and then wandered off into all sorts of seemingly disjointed weirdness, then actually pulled the entire mess together and tied all of up into a neatly complete and satisfying story. It wasn’t great by any means, but it was entertaining enough, and if nothing else impressive just for making some sense of the mess it was in the middle.
Then I (sort of coincidentally) went on to an entirely different one that also turned out to be better than I expected - Sounan desu ka? aka Are You Lost?
It’s a simple tale of four schoolgirls who are marooned on a desert island - an oujosama, a childish athlete, a meek meganekko and a loner who conveniently enough spent large parts of her childhood traveling around and learning how to survive in the wild with her father. The challenges they face are generally relatively minor and things work out relatively easily for them and it’s mostly focused on character interactions and gag humor. And like Punch Line, it’s not great by any means, but it was fine all in all.
Then came the highlight of the week, and one that’s been on my TBW for years - Dimension W. And it was excellent. It’s a fascinating and compelling story with a wide range of interesting characters, and it’s very stylish and visually and musically appealing, but more than anything else, the two leads - Kyo and Mira - have wonderful chemistry. And Kyo drives one of the coolest cars ever - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_2000GT. I just enjoyed everything about it, from start to finish.
Then came another that’s been on my TBW for years - Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai. I mostly enjoyed it but with one notable exception - as it went along, I found myself disliking Yozora more all the time, and by the OVA, I was ready to reach into the screen and just kick the living shit out of her myself. I don’t care what sort of history she has - she’s a foul, loathsome, cruel, vicious bully and she richly deserves every single awful and horrible thing that might ever happen to her in her sorry excuse for a miserable, fucked-up life.
Other than that though, it was okay all in all. 😁
Then, because I apparently hadn’t had enough of dislikable characters, I finally did something I’d been steeling myself to do for a couple of years and dove into the second season of Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru.
The first season has the unique distinction of being the only anime I’ve ever seen that didn’t have one single main character in it that I liked at all. It’s not until you get to Hachiman’s imouto that there’s finally a character who isn’t awful in one way or another.
But I guess, to their sort of credit, though they’re all awful, none of them are as utterly vile as Yozora (though Haruno is close), and that made them sort of tolerable at least. Mostly though I’m just trying to slog through this season because my understanding is that they finally start being actually decent human beings in the third season, and I want to see that.
Great episode - everybody got some character growth.
Lululee overcoming her self-doubt was the obvious original focus of this arc, but it was still nice to see.
Jade showed both determination and creativity, both of which he’s going to need if he’s going to keep up with Alina.
Lowe being unexpectedly badass was particularly great to see.
Ah but the highlight - I’ve been especially waiting for the moment when Alina would finally let her guard down, and it was every bit as awesome as I’d hoped it would be. And she even opened up a bit about Shroud. Of course, neither one lasted long before her tsun kicked back in, but still…
Mm… I guess that’ll do.
The series hinted at deeper, darker secrets, and romantic possibilities, none of which figured in the end. But that’s sort of okay, since it didn’t get the time to lay all the necessary groundwork for that, and just making it simple and light is likely a better choice than speedrunning the rest of the details just to get the ending in place.
I’ve definitely seen worse.
Is Kouhei making his move?
Hiro never ceases to amaze me.
He just captured all of the awkwardness and charm and excitement of the beginning of this date through a series of studies of held hands, and it was awesome.
Yeah, and he’s gotten some tankoubon releases too. They’re definitely aware of him - it seems they just haven’t quite slotted him into the system yet.
It’s become a sort of game for me, to just skim through the latest chapter and see how many new details/mysteries/characters/twists they’ve introduced this time.
As far as I can tell, they still haven’t resolved anything. They don’t even seem to return to anything - they just introduce a new mystery and character(s), then next chapter… introduce another new mystery and character(s).
It’s sort of entertaining in a meta sense.
Spent most of my anime time last week on season IV of DanMachi, which was pretty good all in all. It suffered a bit from being adapted from a light novel series, in that it was more a handful of juxtaposed arcs than a single overarching story, but it was nice to see Ryu get a good deal of character development, and Bell is finally starting to feel like an actual hero. There’s very little of the old hesitant, self-doubting Bell left, and good riddance. And it was nice seeing the rest of the (extended) familia succeeding without him - Aisha in particular has turned out to be a great character in her own right, and Haruhime is showing signs of what I assume is eventually going to be extraordinary power.
The only thing that really irritated me about all of that was that they got into the whole situation in the first place because nobody believed Cassandra, even after she had just proven herself by predicting the moss monster basically exactly. And Daphne in particular really needs a swift kick in the ass, because her whole attitude toward Cassandra’s premonitions not only puts the party at risk, but deeply hurts a person she claims as a friend.
Between the two cours of DanMachi IV, I took a bit of a break for Ganbare Douki-chan, which was adorable. I remember when the original was releasing, but it slipped past me initially, so by the time I became aware of it, it was already in the hundreds of chapters (one or two page chapters generally, but still). So it just went on my TBR. But the adaptation did its job - it was a perfect quick and easy break, and it led me to finally read through the original series, which was well worth it.
After DanMachi, I dipped all the way back to one that’s been on my TBW basically from the start, but that I just hadn’t yet taken the time to watch - Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou And the first OVA pair - the 1998 ones - are IMO quite simply some of the finest anime ever produced.
It’s a thing I’ve really been keyed into since watching Eizouken. The details that went into these OVAs - the simple but exquisite animations of a weather vane turning in the wind or ripples breaking across a flat stretch of water or the dappled transition from light to shadow on entering a forest - are just breathtaking. And the little incidental sounds all along the way - the ticking of a cooling engine or the creak of a gate hinge or the quiet roar of a gas flame and the rattle of a percolator lid - are just as wonderful. The whole thing is very obviously a labor of love, and the art of anime at its finest.
The second pair, from 2002, are still quite good by any ordinary standards, but they pale in comparison to the 1998 ones.
And at the moment, I’ve gone back to the search for odd gems and currently watching one I’d somehow never even heard of before called Punch Line (which I assume is a pun in Japanese). It starts with a cheesy concept of a guy who manifests superpowers if he sees a girl’s panties, but then almost immediately leaps past that into a thoroughly bizarre genre mashup meta/deconstruction… thing, alternately goofy, surreal, stylish and inexplicable. At this point (about halfway through), it’s pulling in little bits and pieces of plot from all over the place, but is actually looking like it’s going to tie it all together into… something. And if nothing else, it looks great, in a sort of bold colored, cel-shaded style reminiscent of Redline or Kill la Kill or Idaten Deities.
I wonder if this will ever start making sense…
Yeah - I really liked this a lot all in all, and I’m not quite sure what to make of that.
It’ll be interesting to see how Zyugoya’s career goes. He’s in that sort of amateur ghetto - mostly posting ecchi/hentai to Pixiv and Fanbox - and he has a very rough and unusual style, but the few times now that he’s done complete series, they’ve actually been very good. The childhood friend one is still one of the best romances I’ve read in recent years, and this one was… oddly satisfying. He stretched it out into some really unusual territory, with the whole vampire hierarchy and political infighting thing - and then, as you note, tied it all neatly together. That’s an admirable feat, and I really enjoyed it.
He obviously has talent, but I would imagine the industry doesn’t quite know what to do with him.
Excited Alina was adorable.
Beyond that though, things were a bit too murky and possibly contrived. I got a bit of that sense that the writers were following an outline and just filling in blanks - “introduce villain here” or “reveal secret quest here.”
Aah… great use of tropes there.
The splash/sneeze/bath series was already well-played if terribly cliched, since we needed a scene in which Honami and Yui got to understand each other, and Honami being vulnerable is always adorable. And a little fanservice never hurts.
But then to introduce a secret boss who’s Honami’s ara ara onee-san, and who’s so terrifying that she reduces the otherwise preternaturally beautiful, strong and domineering Yui to a quivering wreck? That was a great touch.