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x0401x · 2 years ago

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Hi there! I wanted to ask, what were your impressions/thoughts of Tsurune season 2 episode 1 so far? And the colors symbolism in the opening song with the ribbons? Just curious about your thoughts, thanks and have a great day!! :D

BRUH. I LOVED IT??? FUCK YEAH, THAT WAS AMAZING.

I really wonder how all those annoying Anons who filled my inbox with garbage back in 2019 are feeling right now, because just in this one episode, KyoAni has fixed literally every defect that I had pointed out in S1. The amount of improvement is just surreal.

First of all, the storytelling this season. The freaking storytelling. You can tell the difference between works that a studio actually places their bets on and the ones they don’t by the amount of effort that the animation team puts into the flow of each episode. S1 was an ungodly mix of slow pace that suddenly went too fast at punctual moments without any warning, bad humor, boring tone, missing information, inconsistencies and shit that the animators pulled out of their asses to cover up plot holes. This one, though? Smooth as a feather. Full of well-thought details. Scenes and events connecting properly with one another. Flashbacks very nicely timed. It was entirely an anime-original episode, 90% non-canon content, yet there’s canon info at every single second. I love the little things, such as the way that we’re led to think that the MVP of the sports event is going to be Rika and the show makes use of every possible hint that it’s going to be her, until the very last second, where it turns out that it’s Ryouhei. Awesome screenplay right there. This episode was meticulously planned and it shows.

The changes in visual. The upgrade in the artstyle is the most easily noticeable thing about the animation of this season, but the quality is a million times better too. The characters also have a lot more facial expression now. I once talked about Morimoto Chinatsu’s incredible talent for character design and the way that she goes as far as giving not just different hair and eyes, but also different eyelashes, eyebrows, ears, noses, mouths, chins, jawlines and even fucking wrists to every single character that she drew for the novel. And seeing S1 doing the opposite and giving every character a base face was just... no. So now that there’s been a turnaround and the characters externally show what they’re feeling and thinking, following their journey is a whole new experience. That moment when the team stares at Minato after he answers Masaki’s question is pure character study right there. And it’s probably the most blatant example of this season’s improvement, given that we never had this in the previous one. I also love how the expressions are not just there, they’re on-point. On par with what the novel tells us about them. My biggest peeve with S1 was that I’d look at these kids and a voice at the back of my head would go “who the fuck are you people”. Those weren’t the characters I knew. They didn’t look like them and didn’t act like them. But now I recognize them. These are the kids I read about. They finally feel like themselves.

The symbolism of the series. By God, so many treats in this episode in that regard. The yesterday-today-tomorrow blossom splashed with watercolor in the team’s theme colors. The intimist approach of the shots. The way that Minato and Shuu’s positions oppose each other on-screen. The lighting, the colors, the smear filter… literally everything is more vivid and lively. One of the things I recall commenting about S1 is that it didn’t feel like a KyoAni anime because KyoAni’s works are very immersion-based. You can feel yourself being inside that world, together with the characters. But I couldn’t feel that from Tsurune’s first season at all. With this one, I was able to dive head-first into it. It was absolutely magical. I also love that the leaves that fly out of the targets whenever the characters hit now don’t look so obviously like CGI.

Personality traits. They’re fucking everywhere. Like I said, this was entirely an anime-original episode, yet there’s canon info at every single second. Even better: information that clearly contradicts S1 but that matches the novel. Seiya being a smartass little shit full of wit instead of a Minato-obsessed yandere. Kaito being a team-driven hardworker instead of an obnoxious asshole who wants nothing but victory. Ryouhei actually acting upon his lack of experience in archery to catch up to everyone. Nanao being charismatic and having screen-time of his own instead of being pushed to the background while all his personality and lines are used on Seiya. Minato expressing his thoughts and feelings instead of just being an emotionless doormat who never really does anything. We learned more about the characters in just these 20 minutes than the entirety of the first season. It feels like KyoAni has finally taken a step back to look at the material they had in their hands and truly took in what the novel was about and what each character had going on for them. Even the girls’ team was fleshed out in this one, which was honestly a great surprise. I think we’ve gotten from this episode all the little things we didn’t get from S1, such as the way Noa and Yuuna are fangirls of Rika. The way Nanao shines better as support than as main even though he’s so conspicuous. The fact that Kaito is good at soccer and Seiya loves soccer tactics. The way Ryouhei, who doesn’t know much about archery, is used as the eyes of the viewers, and how unpretentiously the lessons he is taught are presented to us as something that we should also keep in mind (for example, that the target is the archer and the archer is the target, and when you’re at the stage of the draw, you’re aiming at your very own self). And the way that Minato is something in this season. We finally see the inner machinations of his mind here aside from his struggles with target panic.

Lastly (and what I consider to be most important) is that the roles of each character and their relationships with one another seem to be in tune with the novel now. Well, okay, almost. Seiya is still being weird around Masaki, but I guess that’s because it’d be too sudden if Seiya started acting the way he acts in canon (y’know, like a normal fucking person). However, the difference is that the narrative is clearly pushing towards Masaki instead of Seiya now, as it should be. Kaito, Nanao and Ryouhei, who used to be just in the background most of the time in S1 are now set perfectly into their own functions and you can tell that they do exist for reasons other than just fill up the team positions. Nanao also seems to be his own person now instead of living through Kaito. Seiya is being shown looking after the whole club, as the competent club president that he is, instead of just Minato. Minato now has proper reactions to everything and doesn’t just completely ignore when Seiya is being a little shit. Masaki is now acting like a true mentor and already in the first episode we have him giving more advice to the boys than the entirety of the first season. But more than anything else, what caught my attention was Shuu. S1 did him really dirty by giving him scary jealous rival vibes and not expanding at all on his relationship with Minato. As I said before, they’re not your usual sports anime rival duo. They really respect and admire each other, are jealous of each other to some extent, but they’re friends first and foremost. They’re also opposites of one another in every way. We didn’t get any of this in S1, and now we’re getting literally all of it at once. What a fucking blessing.

Honestly, the only things I’m concerned about in this season are 1) Kaito and Seiya’s relationship. It’s probably too late to mend it now and make it the way it is in canon, and it also seems the animators are just not interested in doing that, which kinda hurts, but I guess we can’t have it all. And 2) Minato and Masaki’s relationship. I’m pretty sure that we��re not gonna get the same amount of content for them as there is in the novel, and in the off-chance that we do, it’s just not gonna have the same approach or the same quality. Minato and Masaki are mirrors of each other but the anime vehemently refuses to acknowledge this for some reason. They try to treat Masaki as a completely separate entity that has absolutely nothing in common with Minato despite all of the mystic, supernatural and fate-oriented themes that their connection is centered around and the fact that they’ve gone through very similar experiences and hardships in doing archery. But I’d rather believe that it’s a little too early to make a judgement and wait. Truth remains that the characters and their relationships in the anime will never be nearly as good as they are in the original work no matter how hard they try, so I’m just gonna take what I can get.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on this episode. It was one of the very rare instances where I completely approve of anime-original content in an adaptation.

#tsurune #tsurune kazemai koukou kyuudoubu #tsurune tsunagari no issha #kyoani #narumiya minato #takigawa masaki #takehaya seiya #fujiwara shuu #yamanouchi ryouhei #onogi kaito #kisaragi nanao #kyoto animation #seo rika #shiragiku noa #hanazawa yuuna

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x0401x · 2 years ago

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Hello, can you speak about episodes 7 and 8 of Tsurune S2, always enjoy reading your thoughts on the episodes, and thanks so much for sharing them!!

I've talked about episode 7 in a previous ask, so I'm gonna leave my impressions of episode 8 here. As a bonus, I'm also gonna talk about episodes 9 and 10, as an apology for taking so long to answer this ask. ;v;

I'm gonna start with the positive points, just like I did with episode 7, because there's so much goodness in this one. I love the first scenes so much. Sen and Man's morning practice with Shuu, Kazemai and the twins finding out that Ryouhei and Shuu are now friends, Daigo and Nanao bonding, the girls getting excited at Kirisaki's high school campus, Minato being a bow nerd... so wholesome.

But my favorite part has to be that moment where Kaito thinks the Kirisaki girls are about to approach Nanao and tries to block them out... except they go talk to Rika instead. That was so fucking funny. And so in-character too. Plus Seiya noticing the whole thing and giving Kaito a follow-up? Nice touch. He 100% would.

I love that we see more of the Kirisaki team in this episode. We barely get to see Hiroki and Daigo, so it was nice to have them interact in this one. I still think we have a major lack of them and the twins in this season, though, but given the direction that the anime is going, it can't be helped.

I like that we finally got the whole flashback where Minato learns about Eisuke's original shooting style and Eisuke learns about Minato being Saionji's apprentice. It's fascinating how much character study you can do in that one scene, especially the way Eisuke goes from flattered to straight-up hostile in a matter of seconds with a single piece of information. He's being nothing but sarcastic and petty when he says it's incredible that Minato was accepted as apprentice, but Minato (being Minato) doesn't take notice of it.

The joint practice was great and highlighted in very subtle ways why Manji should return to the team. Kaoru and Umetarou getting to have a role in that kind of warmed my heart. Also, the scene in the dorm. Just fantastic. The way we got to see everyone's rooms and the difference in size between the rooms of the first and second-years in comparison to the third-years'. Daigo's Noririn shrine. The crest of the dorm being purple irises. The nod to the novel during the takoyaki party time. Heart eyes. Nothing but heart eyes.

All in all, this episode was really damn good. The only things that had me raising a brow at certain moments were stuff that I have already discussed before, such as Eisuke for some reason insisting that his team should win without help from anyone, not even their school itself (except this time he had to reluctantly give in and take budget money for a training camp). Or Minato being a little too innocent and not realizing, even now that he's in high school, just how openly resentful Eisuke is towards him.

That last one bothers me in particular, as it implies that Minato has no negative feelings towards Eisuke simply because he doesn't notice how shitty Eisuke is to him. Not only is Eisuke's hostility mostly internal, Minato is also unrealistically oblivious of Eisuke's words and actions. The anime even makes a point to change his first interaction with Minato and make it so that Eisuke approaches Shuu instead.

In the novel, Minato knows very well that Eisuke has a deep-seated grudge against him and Shuu, and both of them have been directly and indirectly offended by it in every interaction they have with him, yet Minato chooses to be nice to Eisuke regardless. It takes Minato a while to get rid of his innitial resentment towards Eisuke, but he does, and he does it consciously. He acknowledges that Eisuke is mean as hell and doesn't make up any excuses to justify why he's liket that (because, let's be honest, this is what we'd get in any other sports series). Yet he still decides to be good, not because he's naïve, but because he has matured. That's the difference. Novel!Minato sees Eisuke for what he is and accepts it. He takes in the bad things Eisuke has said and done and forgives them. Rather, I'd say he makes them null. Not because Eisuke had a reason to be like that (nothing justifies it), but because Minato is quite literally above it all. It had irritated him at first, but after he went through a certain amount of enlightenment, it just stopped mattering. That's Zen and that's what his character is about.

The anime seems to think Minato is pure simply because he's clueless. To be fair, he's clueless about a lot of things, but he learns. And then he picks the right path, sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously. It all depends on what the situation calls for, and in this case, it was calling for a conscious choice.

Now for episode 9.

Another wholesome one, though not as much, as there was some friction going on. It's funny that the friction was one-sided on Eisuke's part, though.

Again, this episode doesn't have negative points aside from what I've already mentioned a lot before. I like that the anime also took some time to make Kazemai and Tsujimine bond a little. It was refreshing and cute. I think, if the author had more space within the page count of each volume, she might've included something like this in the story.

Speaking of bonding, gotta love that the show is finally giving us proper interaction between Seiya and Kaito, especially Seiya fucking around, but it's hilarious to me that it was done in the most non-gay manner possible. The scene where Seiya doesn't wear his spare glasses on purpose just to get Kaito to do things for him is the finest example of that. In canon, Seiya makes it very clear that he's pissed and wants Kaito to make up for breaking his glasses, and Kaito responds to his demands without question because he feels genuinely sorry and wants to be forgiven. After all, he broke Seiya's glasses by accident in the novel when Seiya tried to stop him from breaking Eisuke's whole face, so Seiya is twice as angry and Kaito is twice as guilty. And of course, the anime didn't show what happens after that. Nor did it show Seiya's implied jealousy of Nanao, his prank on Kaito during the night or him cleaning up Kaito's face the next day.

The anime is also insisting on Eisuke's don't-wanna-own-anyone-anything attitude without explaining why exactly he is like this. It's getting a little tiring to see that in every single episode and not be given a concrete reason for it. We got an explanation as to why he's so hellbent on winning against Shuu and Minato, all right, but why the insistence in not relying on anyone? The only thing I can think of is that anime seems to be trying to sell him as a tsundere. They keep trying so hard to make him cute and likable and don't see that it makes his character kind of confusing. He's so determined to win, yet he keeps nitpicking his methods only when it comes to relying on adults and on using money. Even money from the school and club budget, which he 100% has the right to use as a student. He wouldn't be owning anyone anything for that, since his family is literally paying for him to go to school in the first place. Make it make sense, KyoAni.

Also, I really like that the anime decided to give us more details on his relationship with Shigeru, but did they have to add that scene where Eisuke is rude as fuck to him? That one made me cringe big time. I don't know how it got translated in the subs or dub but I don't like that dialogue. Nope. Not cool.

Especially not cool when it's followed by, you guessed it, Masaki and Eisuke's exchange at the beach. It's a very different interaction from what we got in the novel and seems to have been framed in order to favor Eisuke and how amazing he is. In the novel, they have a talk during practice, prompted by Eisuke's willingness to do anything in order to get a hit. He's basically doing yumiate, which isn't the point of kyudo, so Masaki approaches him discreetly and lectures him in the nicest, most indirect way possible, AKA the Zen way. But in the anime, Zen is out the window. Masaki and Eisuke even boast about their school getting stronger and being the one that will crush the other's team, and I can understand Eisuke having that kind of beginner mindset because he's just a teenager, but Masaki? Hello??? Winning isn't the goal. Even having a goal isn't the goal. Kyudo isn't a sport. That's literally the first thing about it and KyoAni forgot. They got so caught up in trying to show off that they completely slipped up in this one. I'm crying blood. They 100% don't realize this was a fail.

Other than that, this scene is all about praising Eisuke, and his only flaw is that he doesn't take it to heart due to his trust issues. Like. At this point, it just feels like we're being force-fed the same information over and over again because Eisuke just keeps getting so much attention, way beyond what seems necessary, while Kirisaki is relegated to the sidelines with Shuu being the only exception (but even he isn't getting as much attention as in the books). It's a little bit too obvious by now that KyoAni is trying to invest in Eisuke as their trumpcard to attract a bigger audience for this season. They're doing with him the same thing they did with Seiya in S1, changing his whole character in a desperate attempt to make him endearing and seem desperate to make the fans like him (as well as Koushirou, by extension). They also have to fill up the extra time they get from trying to get rid of any actually gay content, so they're giving us excessive amounts of him, while simultaneously managing not to expose what truly matters.

I mean, I don't know who else noticed this, but after getting this far into the story and having so much Eisuke content shoved down our throats in every episode, we haven't been presented to a lot of basic things about him. For example, the fact he has photosensibility and that's why he wears a hoodie all the time. Or his claustrophobia. Or his mental and emotional instability. Those are all things that make him relatable, but they're not cute, so there doesn't seem to be much interest in showing that part of him. So yeah, it's not really about Eisuke, it's about how KyoAni can use him as a tool to get viewers hooked while simultaneously buying time.

This trend continues into episode 10, where we begin with a flashback of how Eisuke joined Tsujimine's kyudo club. Eisuke is portrayed as the guy who brought the members of the club together and is leading them single-handedly to the nationals like some messiah. The novel scene where he tries to cheat during practice half-assedly makes it to this episode, with Touma making the mistake instead of Eisuke (for no reason other than not knowing any better) and Eisuke deciding to cover it up instead of doing it himself. Once again, Eisuke is doing something wrong, it's watered down to make him look good even when it's not a good look.

At long last, Minato finally finds out that Eisuke basically sees him and Shuu as enemies on a personal level. Not because he realized it but because Koushirou decided to spill the beans. And yet it doesn't seem to affect him much. In the end, he manages to know and stay clueless at the same time, so there's no need for him to make an effort to process and accept Eisuke and his resentment.

On the topic of Koushirou, he's as out of character as can be, but I like his description of what goes on in his mind when he draws the bow. The Heike reference was great. An awesome nod to how old kyudo is and how much it permeates Japanese culture. Chuunibyou as fuck, but good.

And then there's Masaki and Eisuke's convo at the baths. Nice visual language where Eisuke is in the smaller bath in comparison to Masaki, which highlights that Masaki is more experient, more mature and more knowledgeable, therefore more skilled. The content of the conversation is also good. The only problem is that the anime is getting closer to a territory that I'm not sure it wants to go, which is to present Masaki as an excellent coach only when he's lecturing someone from a different team. When he's teaching Kazemai, he's portrayed a fine mentor, but his real worth only ever seems to be revealed when he's before either Kirisaki or Tsujimine. That's where he truly stands out. Easy to tell that it's because those moments are mostly shown through Minato's perspective in the books, with him either admiring Masaki or longing for him all the while, and KyoAni is having none of that gay shit. But by trying so hard to keep Minato and Masaki five feet apart like two bros sitting in a bathtub, they accidentally make Masaki a better teacher when he's helping out or making demonstrations to rival teams.

I'm losing my mind because, holy crap, what have we come to? Masaki is literally having a bonding moment with Eisuke out of all people before having any bonding moment with Minato this entire season aside from that one scene at Yata Shrine, if you can call that a bonding moment at all. KyoAni has managed to make them barely give a fuck about each other in the span of 10 episodes. Actually, screw that; it managed to give them nothing to care about regarding each other aside from club-related stuff, since KyoAni has rid the anime of anything these two could bond over to begin with. Masaki didn't get his scar saving Minato's life, Minato's hand injury was never a thing, their fight never happened and so neither did their make-up, we never get to see what Minato is thinking outside of the dojo, Masaki's background is never touched upon again aside from archery-related facts, Minato didn't get sick so no hospital scene, etc. The list is endless. They've been stripped bare of any reason to care about each other on a personal level, so they just... don't.

As a result, at least to me, it feels like they barely exist within the story. I feel like I've hardly seen them at all this whole time, even though they were always there. I've learned nothing about them even though we've been shown a lot of stuff about Minato, because almost none of it was his emotions or the inner machinations of his mind. It was mostly just facts. This is probably the most fatal mistake that Yamamura Takuya made in S1, and he's repeating it in S2: he seems to have no interest in Minato as a protagonist.

This anime almost feels like an experiment to prove that Minato and Masaki are so deeply connected to each other as characters that when you take Masaki out of the equation, Minato is almost empty. Nearly every bit of personal information regarding Minato is related to Masaki one way or another, and Minato is usually the readers' gateway to getting to know Masaki. So when KyoAni insists on keeping them away from each other, the result is that they lose a lot of their essence and the story is left with holes in it, which KyoAni tried to fill up with Seiya in the previous season, and now they're using Eisuke for it. In short, Minato is being pushed to the background in the story he was supposed to be leading as the main character while secondary characters are used as a disposable means to draw the audience in because the director apparently can't bring himself to give two shits about him.

And, like, some people will enjoy this season and some won't, but regardless of opinions, this approach is objectively a fail on KyoAni's part. Whether the anime is good or not on its own is up for debate, but as for whether it's a good adaptation or not, I think we can all agree by now that no, it isn't. Not even because it's not faithful to the original, but because it keeps committing these narrative suicides. The plot doesn't care much for its own protagonist and tries to seek depth by latching onto a specific character. Minato is basically becoming a secondary character in his own story.

I think episode 10 did a great job on showcasing that, even though it obviously wasn't the intention. Especially the latter half of it, from the moment Minato and Eisuke get stuck in the elevator. In the novel, this scene was about both of them, but mostly about Minato. In the anime, it's entirely about Eisuke. Minato is literally used as a vessel for more of Eisuke's backstory to be revealed. We don't get Eisuke hyperventilating and Minato helping him stay grounded because he's had the same experience after the car accident that took his mother's life. Instead, we get Eisuke receiving a call from his aunt about Shigeru being hospitalized for the nth time and Eisuke freaking out. We don't get Minato collapsing with a fever from the emotional batter and Masaki taking him to the hospital, which leads to a heart-to-heart and Minato getting the necessary strength to overcome the hurdle. Instead, we get Minato and Masaki taking Eisuke to see Shigeru, and the whole thing is about how Eisuke feels and how helpful they were to him. This ordeal was originally Minato-centric in the books, yet KyoAni does everything in its power to make it be about Eisuke instead, because the original content is too inexcusably gay for the screen.

Which brings us to the last scene of this episode before the credits roll: the car scene. The only thing it has in common with its novel counterpart is that it's a scene where Minato and Masaki are having a conversation in Masaki's car at night in the middle of nowhere. I do like that it added a reference to volume 1, because we completely missed Minato's inner monologue during the last match in S1. But that's about it. We didn't get anything else.

And then the credits roll, and we end this episode with Minato promising that Kazemai will defeat Tsujimine. Again, the whole point of kyudo goes way over KyoAni's head. So does the point of Minato as a character. Minato isn't my favorite character, but I almost feel bad for him. I wish someone in this production team would bother to make him the protagonist aside from when the tournaments are going on.

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