Rottcodd

For a moment I thought grandma or some other person was embezzling money

Me too, though I gave grandma the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was some other relative. We've already seen that they're a pretty selfish lot.

Speaking of which, it’s really funny to me that she decided joining a band club was so out-of-bounds that it wasn’t even worth asking but dropping 2 grand on a new laptop was okay. I wonder if that says anything about how her mother viewed spending money.

Both how she viewed spending money and how she viewed doing something "frivolous" like playing music (or writing novels).

And it's notable too that Makio had already said that Asa could join whatever club she wanted, and Asa essentially just automatically assumed she didn't really mean it.

Makio's wounds from Minori are raw and plain to see, but I think Asa has very similar wounds that she's not even really aware of yet. Her memories of her mom are slowly shifting and clarifying.

Right - it just caught me a bit off guard because when Emiri was introduced then their fight was so heart-rendingly resolved, it made it look like the two of them were then going to remain inseparable, but now Emiri's hanging with the cool kids and Asa's not.

Particularly with this series, maybe that's just how it's going to play out because that's how life really works, but still, it caught me off guard.

Suzuki on the back of the bike was especially adorable.

And Tani, inexperienced and awkward as he is, handled Suzuki in a yukata exactly right, which is more than can be said for most male romcom protags.

Nice subtle drama in this one - Makio told Asa that it was fine for her to do whatever she wanted, and Asa simply didn't believe her. It wasn't even as if she consciously decided that Makio wasn't telling the truth - she just sort of automatically didn't believe that Makio really meant what she said, because "she's an adult." That's revealing.

Makio's and Asa's recollections of Minori started off notably different, and I expected that part of the central theme of this series was going to be them converging, but I wasn't sure which way it was going to go - which of the two was more accurate and which was less. So far, it seems to be shifting more toward Makio. Asa appears to have seen many of the same qualities in Minori that Makio did - just not in the same context or with the same clarity. I expect it's not going to shift entirely toward Makio though - that there are some things that she's seeing through her own bias, and it's just going to take more to get through to her.

Meanwhile, are Asa and Emiri growing apart? I can't imagine that, but at the moment, that's sort of how it looks...

Be True to Yourself! - honoring those that know what they are and never change

MF Ghost OP - TIMELESS POWER by MOTSU and Yuu Serizawa - You want more Eurobeat? Well, here is more Eurobeat.

Exactly.

And damned if it doesn't work.

The first time I heard it, I cynically thought, "Oh gee - Eurobeat with alternating rap and clean vocals - sure didn't see that coming."

Even as I felt this weird compulsion to grab a gear shift and stomp on an accelerator.

Last week in older anime:

First up was Bloody Escape: Jigoku no Tousou Geki, a movie sequel to Estab Life: Great Escape that I didn't even know existed until I happened on it while getting the link for Estab Life for last week's post. It was... okay. It's almost entirely separate from Estab Life, though it's the same setting and Equa and the crew show up a couple of times. It's a decent action movie with no particular flaws but no particular merits either.

Then, for some reason, I felt a sudden urge to rewatch Puni Puni Poemii, which is one of the strangest things out there.

It's two episodes, and a sort of spin-off from Excel Saga, and like it, it's crammed full of meta humor, pop culture references, over-the-top satire and incomprehensible nonsense. I suspect that the initial inspiration was Shinichi Watanabe's appreciation for the seiyuu Kobayashi Yumiko, because one of the things that stands out most about it is the extraordinary job she did. It's as if it was written as a showcase for her talent, because Poemii talks a mile a minute virtually nonstop through both episodes. Beyond that though, it's just very, very strange and silly.

Then I wanted something a bit more serious (granted that virtually everything in existence is more serious), and after some wandering ended up at Sukitte Ii na yo aka Say "I Love You", which is a shoujo "hot guy and awkward girl" romance that started out okay and went rapidly downhill until it became insultingly awful.

First off, it has a very specific and irritating flaw that I've seen a few times with anime and manga (most recently and frustratingly with Hope You're Happy Lemon). It goes to great effort to lay out this awful trauma the MC went through in the past and the profound impact it's had on her ever since, then when the current story starts, the trauma is basically entirely forgotten. There's no resolution, no lasting effects, no struggle to overcome it - just "poof" and it vanishes. She's still awkward and unsure around people, but it's just generic "socially awkward character" stuff - the specific and detailed and supposedly crippling trauma basically never made it out of the first episode. The only time it's even really noted is when she learns that her boyfriend's imouto has been betrayed by her supposed friends, and she has a brief flashback to her own experience, but then that's just context for her to tell the imouto that she used to believe that nobody can be trusted and friends will always betray you, but she doesn't any more. That's it? Years of living entirely subject to that trauma and then it's just "I used to think this, but I don't any more?"

The most brazen example - there's a scene late in the series in which she and the hot boyfriend are going on an overnight trip on their own. They're literally at the train station, and she's dressed up and looking radiant, and he gets a call from someone telling him that her love rival is having some sort of emotional crisis and he actually abandons her and rushes off to rescue the rival. And then it's not even mentioned again! We're expected to believe not only that this girl who only recently had an all-consuming traumatic association with being betrayed was not only perfectly fine with her boyfriend blatantly betraying her by abandoning her at the train station to go rescue her rival, but that it's such an insignificant event that it's not even worth mentioning again? What the hell?

In the beginning, he claims that she interests him because she has such a strong sense of herself. By the end, she's constantly insecure and clingy and desperate for the few scraps of his attention he happens to toss in her direction - ironically enough, just about exactly the sort of pathetically needy empty shell that the hottest guy in class manipulates girls into becoming when he's cast as a villain instead of a supposed hero. And she's betrayed at virtually every turn - by the hot boyfriend, by the rival, even by the hot boyfriend's imouto - and she just lets it slide, as if she has no other option - as if she didn't just spend years specifically subject to the lasting trauma from being betrayed.

When it wasn't disappointing, it was revolting.

Then, desperately in need of a palette cleanser with good characters, I rewatched what there is so far of Journal with Witch. It's something I likely would've done anyway - I generally, when I'm as impressed by an anime as I am by this one, need to rewatch it to essentially check and make sure that my reaction is valid - that I didn't just get swept up and see it for something it actually wasn't.

And I'm pleased to say that it's every bit as good as I thought it was.

Seriously, if it keeps up this level of quality, this is going to be one of the all-time greats. It's incredibly well-written, but that's not even close to all - everything about it is top-quality. The OP and the ED are both terrific (and I didn't put together the first time through that the OP is the same song that Asa is singing in the kitchen in the first scene), as is the incidental music throughout. The characters are great, and not just Asa and Makio - the few we've met so far have all been impressive (Daigo especially). The art is great too - I especially love the recurring sort of surreal bits of symbolism, like the desert and the exotic marketplace with familiar people speaking a language she can't understand. (The scene where Asa is staring at the blank page in her journal and the lines slowly morph into waves of sand in her desert was particularly brilliant). It's just one of those incredibly rare anime with seemingly no faults.

Next up was one I just happened on relatively recently - Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara aka Irodoku - The World in Colors. It was almost great.

Technically, it was at least sufficient and often quite good, but the writing and the pacing just weren't quite what they should've and could've been. It was sort of odd, because it kept feeling like it was just about to be phenomenal, but then it just wouldn't quite make it. It's deeply allegorical, with lots of symbolism, but it's too rushed in too many places. It needed to take a bit more time and provide fuller context so that the symbolism would land effectively. And a lot of the situations came off feeling contrived, again because it was too rushed. Rather than slowly building a situation so that it made sense in-universe, it would just sort of plunk the characters down in whatever situation was necessary to tell the next bit of the story and sort of handwave the context. It was still good and I liked it all in all - all of the technical aspects of it were at least acceptable and often quite good, and the characters were well-developed and interesting - but it was sort of frustrating and disappointing, because I could feel how much better it could've been with a bit more attention and a bit more breathing room.

Then I finished off the week with Munou na Nana aka Talentless Nana, which was also almost great.

It's a sort of hackneyed 'kids with superpowers' scenario, but played in an unexpected and intriguing way. It had a few distractingly obvious flaws though. First, the smart guy who's closing in on the solution to the mystery was handwaved into still not quite getting it by correctly analyzing things right up to a point, then obviously in order to maintain the mystery longer, he'd spontaneously decide that maybe he was just kidding himself, or that it couldn't possibly be what it so obviously was, or whatever served to make him just drop it entirely. And second, Nana, who's supposedly an even more brilliant strategist and analyst, couldn't manage to work out the basic truth about her own situation, in spite of the fact that it was plainly obvious pretty much from the first episode, and in spite of the fact that her continued failure to figure it out led to extremely significant consequences. And that was a constant through most of the series - she was too smart to have allowed herself to get in that situation in the first place and he was too smart to have not figured out what was going on, but the series required the situation to continue, so it did anyway, unsatisfyingly. And like Irodoku, it was still okay, but it just could've been so much better.

Current season notes and impressions:

MF Ghost - the finish order wasn't quite what I expected - I thought Kanata would end in third with Sawatari in second - but it still broadly played out the way I expected. And we're apparently heading into a filler episode, though the idea of a filler episode in a series that takes so excruciatingly long to tell its story in the first place is sort of odd.

You and I Are Polar Opposites - still very good because it's closely following the manga, which was very good. We got to meet Taira and Azuma, who are going to be central to the rest of the series, and briefly got to see Nishi, though didn't actually meet her (she was the other library assistant, with the books on conversation). She's easily my favorite character in the series, and she'll probably be yours too, whoever you are.

Scum of the Brave - this has been a pleasant surprise. I watched the first episode on a whim and liked it, and still like it now that we're up to the third. It's an interesting and sort of goofy setting and looks to be heading into an interesting and sort of goofy story, but mostly it's just that the characters are appealing and have good chemistry.

Trigun Stargaze - the fight scene was spectacular. It did a thing that anime only sometimes does to me - it made me appreciate the cinematography. Anime technically has a "camera" - a viewpoint from which the action is shown. Even the most graphically impressive anime generally tend to not do much with that though - they just stick with a simple, practical viewpoint, only switching as necessary to follow the action. That fight scene though really made use of film-style cinematography - pans and zooms and pivots and so on - and it was very impressive.

Ikoku Nikki - still amazing. I was especially impressed by Makio's ruminations on loneliness. Like her, I'm so introverted that I don't really know what loneliness even feels like, but I only very rarely even mention that to people, because it's too hard to explain. That was the first time that I saw someone else who feels the same way, and who put it into words. And I love that she not only sympathized with Asa in spite of not really understanding, but that Asa recognized that that was what she was doing. Broadly, the two of them have a lot of things to work through - both internally and between them - but they're both fundamentally honest, so if they don't give up, they'll succeed. And it's great watching it happen.

And an especially intriguing detail in this episode - there was one of those flashbacks of Asa's mom looking stern and disappointed and saying demeaning things, but it wasn't Makio who saw it, but Asa. That's probably progress - until now, Asa's only flashbacks to her mom showed her as a cartoonish "mom" caricature - this was the first time that she saw her in the same sort of detail as Makio does, and it was telling that she saw her just about identically, though apparently without the same emotional investment. Yet.

I only rarely even note OPs or EDs. I always watch them the first time through, and for a lot of series, that means the first two episodes, since they often don't formalize them until the second episode. But from there on out, more often than not, they just become a minute and a half that I skip.

So the first measure for me is if it's something that I actually keep watching all the way through. And this season, the only things that I habitually watch are both the OP and ED for Ikoku Nikki (the OP in particular is beautiful), the OP and ED for You and I Are Polar Opposites (honestly more for the graphics than the songs) and, for what it's worth, the OP and ED of Yuusha no Kuzu (the OP is pretty decent musically - reminiscent of Mr. Bungle - but mostly it's just that they fit the series especially well).

It's likely noteworthy that I'm not watching Frieren or Oshi no Ko at all - I'm going to binge them later instead. I did watch the OPs and EDs just for the sake of this thread, but without the context of the shows themselves, I feel like I can't really judge them. The rest - there's some other good stuff out there, but nothing so impressive that I don't generally skip it.

I'm extremely introverted, and realized somewhere along the way that while I got the concept of loneliness, I couldn't even quite imagine what it actually felt like.

I only very rarely try to explain that to people, and I've never before seen it explained, or even really mentioned, by anyone else. Until Makio.

And I love that Asa understood and appreciated that Makio didn't really understand her loneliness, but broadly sympathized anyway.

Part of what we have here is two extremely sensitive people who both live behind similarly strong but otherwise very different walls.

It amazes me how good this is.

This is the second season of the reboot. The first season came out a couple of years ago, and was called Trigun Stampede.

It got a falr amount of hate from some of the fans of the original, mostly because it deviated from the original by introducing Knives and telling the story of the seed ships and the twins and Rem and the crash very early, and by introducing Meryl, without Milly, and later Wolfwood, both also very early. So there's very little of the goofball Vash from the early episodes of the original, so there isn't that dramatic tonal shift later on. It's more serious from the start.

I liked it myself. Technically it's quite good - both the visials and the sound. As far as story goes, though it's somewhat different, it basically takes the place of the first half dozen or so episodes of the original, and ends with Lost July, which is episode 6 of the original.

This series is picking up immediately after Lost July and has introduced Milly and reintroduced Wolfwood (Meryl already got to know him last season but Milly just met him) and so far is following the original fairly closely, and has been good so far.

I remain convinced that most of the problem with American distribution of anime is that the people in charge of it all too often know nothing about anime and have no interest in it.

Current Season:

MF Ghost - still formulaic and still entertaining.

Trigun Stargaze - watched the first two episodes, since it was waiting on my rewatch of Stampede. It was genuinely great to see Milly, and to see the Ceylon tea gag (and the debut of Milly's gun) played out again, if a bit differently. Broadly, it seems that Stargaze is picking up pretty much exactly at episode 7 of the original - immediately after Lost July - though with the Stampede-introduced differences . Looking forward to it.

Yuusha no Kuzu aka Scum of the Brave - this was just something of a whim, but it's promising. The mains have great chemistry, so if it's relatively well written, it could actually be pretty good.

You and I Are Polar Opposites - This is such a good adaptation that I envy the people who haven't read the manga.

Ikoku Nikki - the highlight of the week, as it has been since week one. I still love absolutely everything about it.

Past Seasons:

First was finishing up my rewatch of Trigun Stampede, to get myself oriented for Stargaze. I was sort of relieved to find that I still like it. To me, it's neither better nor worse than the original - just different.

Granted that it is a bit unsettling that it reveals the deep, dark secrets early on, so there's virtually no goofball Vash before serious Vash appears, I don't really mind that all that much. That was a fascinating tonal shift the first time through the original, but on rewatches, it was more sort of weird, since goofball Vash seems out of place when you know the rest of the story.

Meryl in Stampede is interesting. In the original, she starts off bossy, then shifts to sort of tsundere, before finally (and admittedly very rewardingly) opening up, and just in time to remind Vash of Rem. In Stampede, she starts off naive and earnest and kindhearted, so there's no need to break through her defenses - she's already the positive influence she needs to be. And it's interesting to see her toughen up, which should make for a satisfying role in Stargaze. And her reputation as "Derringer Meryl" gets some very satisfying context.

I like seeing Zazie get a bigger role - they really need to be integral to much of the story, as the representative of basically the entire planet, and that seems to be the way it's going.

The best part of Stampede IMO though is Wolfwood, since he gets some much-needed background development. It's not entirely new, but it goes into more detail than it did in the original, and provides better context for his character.

All in all, and even now, the second time through, I liked it. It's just good in and of itself, and if the original didn't exist, that's all it would be. Since the original exists, it can't help but be compared (and be reflexively hated by some simply for existing), but again, I don't think it's notably either better or worse - just different.

I was a bit burnt out after that, so next, after bouncing around a bit, was a rewatch of Sounan Desu ka aka Are You Lost?, which is a short (12 12 minute episodes) oddity about four schoolgirls who wash up on a desert island.

It's an oujosama, a childish jock/genki girl, a meek and earnest meganekko and a quiet and awkward outsider, who just happens to have grown up with a father who was seriously into survival, and took her all over the world and taught her how to survive in the wild. So part of it is of course them trying to survive, but they don't face any great threats and the one girl is so ridiculously skilled that they do pretty well (with predictable problems caused by the ojousama and the genki girl), so it really works out to be more sort of odd slice of life than anything else. It's not great entertainment, but it's amusing and low key and doesn't require much attention, which was what I needed after Stampede. And a brief note - the series is actually remarkable in one respect - the final episode has a scene that as far as I know is entirely unique and that is... startling. There's no telling how any specific individual will react to it - there's a wide range of possible reactions - but it's guaranteed that you will remember it. And no - I'm not going to spoil it. I'm sure you can find a spoiler on any anime site, but if you're interested, you're better off letting yourself be surprised. Probably.

Next, following a sudden inspiration, I rewatched for the I-don't-know-how-manyth time the original Little Witch Academia OVA. I still maintain that that's one of the best, if not the best, "episode" of anime ever. There are just so many brilliant moments crammed into those 24 minutes (some of which you'll only notice on a rewatch).

Diana in the audience at Shiny Chariot's show, all of Akko's reactions, Chariot's gloriously awkward but showy wand moves, backflipping up onto her broom then riding it like a skateboard, Shiny Arc and the fireworks reflected in Akko's eyes, Ursula is the first person you see at the school, Akko's nose, Diana's "gokigenyou," the hat the witch in charge of flight training wears, the spot-on Wile E Coyote homage when Akko tries to fly, the Dragon Warrior music and sound effects in the background when Ursula is explaining their dungeon mission, Akko literally on fire with excitement, Lotte and the light fairy, the bully girls turned cowards, Akko hearing the commotion when the minotaur appears and running off screen one direction then immediately reappearing from an entirely different direction, Sucy and the minotaur, the quiet little interlude when the girls float down with their wand mini-broom brush things, the cowardly bully girls immediately turning back into bullies when the dragon appears so small and feeble, then immediately turning back into cowards when it grows, Ursula's bullhorn spell, Akko stopping Diana from taking off by grabbing the bristles on her broom, Diana's face when she stops her, Akko finding the Shiny Rod, the moment when Ursula recognizes it, Akko on the back of Lotte's broom - "I could have flown myself!" "Of course you could have - it just might've taken you all day.", Akko's wonderfully animated run/slide/run past the dragon to get the stone, the moment when she hears Chariot's voice, Shiny Arc again and the look on the dragon's face when it realizes what's happening, Diana rescuing Akko then going all tsundere when Akko calls her out for knowing what Shiny Arc is, Ursula's reveal.

It's just terrific, from the first frame to the last.

Then I was ready for a satisfying challenge, so it was time for one of those series that's preceded by its reputation, and after a bit of thought, I went with 91 Days. And it was a great choice.

It's a period Mafia drama, and period dramas set overseas are generally sort of an odd thing to experience in anime, since the Japanese dialogue is sort of a pointless extra step in the middle of it all. Since I watch subs, they might as well be in the native language - in this case, either Italian or English - and that would fit better. But, though I don't know enough of it to really say, it did seem that there was something going on with the dialogue in this one - like it was maybe actually Japanese with an Italian accent? In any event, even though they were speaking Japanese, it sort of broadly sounded sufficiently Italian to me that it worked fine.

More than anything else, it was beautifully crafted. The art, music and sound were all exceptional (the beach scene was especially well done). And it was surprisingly well written - it covered a lot of familiar ground, but with intriguing and unexpected twists. It's brutal and tragic, so I wouldn't say I "enjoyed" it, but I was very, very impressed and satisfied.

After that, I just wanted to coast, and I ended up rewatching a sentimental favorite - Estab-Life: Great Escape.

Equa is a marvelous character, and the whole cast works well. It's very episodic through the first 9 episodes, and some of them are better than others (episode 8 is the standout - quite seriously one of the most beautiful and touching anime episodes I've ever seen), but then, surprisingly enough, it pulls everything together - all sorts of unexpected bits and pieces from the past episodes - for the last three, and it's really pretty impressive. And the reappearance of one of the characters (if you've seen it, you know who I mean) is truly epic. The ending tramples all over the limits of my suspension of disbelief, but I can forgive it that, just because it's enjoyable. And, as always, I was reminded of how much I like the OP.

Damn - this is so good.

Just one example - Makio tells Asa a supposed rule about life, then tells her it's not really a rule, then tells her not to put too much stock in what other people say. And all of those statements are more or less equally sincere, and equally true. And that's the way life really is, and this series gets it.

This is really something special.

Shaping up nicely.

It's looking like Stampede is serving as a prequel and a sort of substitute for the goofball section of the original, and now that we're past Lost July (which was episode 6 in the original), this series is going to tell much the same story, though with notable differences. It's clear from the OP that the Gung-ho Guns are going to play a significant role

And enter Wolfwood. I expect that, since Meryl already knows him, that's going to provide the context for Milly, as she did in the original, to be stubbornly generous to him and to see, and thus draw out, the good buried deep within him.

Looking forward to it.

Yep - stayed on formula and entertained me anyway.

I figured Kanata would catch up to the two leaders, then stall there, since just catching up from where he started is sufficient amazing driving by itself, and it's too soon in the story arc for him to win. And right on schedule, his tires are wearing out.

Neat that that gave him an excuse to pass on the inside on a corner by running his inside tires in a gutter - flashback to the five consecutive hairpins of Takumi's first race.

Joshiraku is about five rakugo-performing girls. The first episode opens with the end of a performance by one of them (to an audience of mostly empty seats), then the OP. Okay - at this point, I don't really know what to expect, other than likely low-key humor.

Then it moves to them in a dressing room in which most of the series takes place, kneeling around a table. The camera focuses on one of them, then after an awkwardly long silence, she says, "You should just read the manga instead."

I was sold right then and there.

Haida in the hedge made me laugh harder than it seems it should have.

Yeah - I can see both of those responses to it. It's an interesting world and relatively engaging characters, but it's also self-consciously edgy and relentlessly brutal. So it's one of those series that make a strong initial impact, but then sort of overstay their welcome.

You and I Are Polar Opposites

You just supported a theory I had about this.

I was sort of oddly both pleased and disappointed by this. The problem is that I followed the manga from start to finish and loved it, and the anime is absolutely faithful to the manga. That means that it didn't really add anything new for me (other than movement). But since I loved the manga, I had about decided that that was a good thing, because it meant that someone who hadn't read the manga would potentially love the anime just as much. And sure enough...

Based on those three, Silent Witch should work for you.