#also I love your design for Yuuichi's mother

[skyhopedango]

anime I’ve been watching lately

...or not watching, as the case may be, because this list wasn’t too long to start with but it’s getting steadily shorter.

Fairy Gone: I think the main reason I’m still watching is that it’s sort of a bubblegum for my brain. It’s not what I’d consider “good” but it’s like... something non-offensive to look at for half an hour. In a better season I probably would have dropped it, but I suppose this will have to do as far as anime goes. At least I still really like the world design, and the characters are also nice to look at (except for the Cute Anime Girl Permablush /broken record, I know).

It still annoys me though that it could have been so much better - with better pacing, better focus, better character writing, more ambitious direction, more ambitious visuals... mostly the better character writing, though. It’s been how many episodes, and we still don’t have a grasp on our main character, and I don’t mean her backstory but like... what kind of person is she? What does she do off the job? How did she manage in life before we met her? People keep saying that her presence changed the Dorothea gang for the better, but... we never actually see why, what it is about her that has a good effect on others. Yes, we saw her being kind to whatshisface, but again, we never saw what made her care, what aspect of her character is that is at work here, other than her being a PAW main female character. (But at least she’s not bumbling, and there’s been no mention of her cooking so far, which are some of my biggest peeves on the Cute Anime Girl trope list.)

And this is a symptom of a problem - the show tries to present its story as this huge, epic historical fantasy, except it just feels flat because there's no emotional stakes, we don’t get invested in the characters enough to care about what happens to them. At least I don’t. Like, bald dude dies in this episode and his death is made out to be this huge thing complete with Marlya screaming his name to the sky and whatnot, and apparently it will push Marlya to run away because omg she brings misfortune to everyone except... who was this guy? Have we even seen him before? And have we seen Marlya struggle with supposedly being a harbringer of doom, like actually struggling with it in a way that affects her relationship with others, not just her randomly mentioning it and having flashbacks where people die due to issues which are, as far as I remember, all unrelated to her person. (Other than her mother I guess.)

And on that note, I looked it up and the screenwriter for the show is actually a light nover author - well, that explains a lot. As I mentioned previously, this show would work so much better as a novel. I’d probably enjoy it quite a bit if it was a novel, with descriptions and inner monologues and various points of view and whatnot. I wish there was a source novel for Fairy Gone that I could read instead of watching the show.

Mayonaka no occult koumuin: Still not much to say about this one, it does its job and does it well, entertaining me for half an hour. It’s nothing to write home about but it’s fun in its own way. I started reading the manga, and it’s pretty much in the same vein. It’s snack, not necessarily the healthy kind, but it won’t upset your stomach.

And on the chopping board...

Carole & Tuesday: Dropped. I’m sad because I expected a lot more from this show. Again, it’s not that it’s bad per se, but I just find it terribly uninspired and boring. Yes, the visuals are great, yes, the direction is competent, yes, the girls are cute, but... I need more than that, and this show has nothing I could latch onto. It’s meant to be “old-fashioned” I guess, but in a way that frankly, reads as “outdated” to me. And I wouldn’t mind it if the characters were interesting, but they’re not. We’re over halfway into the season and they still have nothing in the way of personality (because “kind-hearted, naive rich girl with a dream” and “down-to-earth street-smart orphan girl with a dream” are not personalities), and there’s basically nothing in their relationship, or their relationships with others, that feels organic and natural instead of just a checklist of tropes. At this point watching the show feels like a chore and well, I ain’t getting paid for it, so.

At least if the story was interesting, if the characters are not! But no, it’s not, it’s again a checklist of story points and tropes, executed in a perfectly competent manner, sure, but it’s so boring. It’s like Zankyou no Terror in that Watanabe takes a genre prevalent in Western pop culture but not in anime, and just adapts it into anime without adding anything of value or interest to it, aside of the visual delivery, I guess. (The worst is that I can totally see him kind of patting himself on the back.) And yes, I freely admit that my love for TO-Y has set the bar impossibly high when it comes to the “young rebel takes on the music industry” thing but even with that considered Carole & Tuesday falls short. Ooh they’re making Real Music and not AI-equals-manufactured-idol-pop crap! So amazing! ...eh.

And on that note - if your story hinges on the main characters creating music so good it touches everyone then that music should be pretty damn awesome. But the girls’ music in Carole & Tuesday is... well, it’s nowhere near “great”, never mind “pretty damn awesome”.

Fruits Basket 2019: Dropped as well. No rant or disappointment here, I knew exactly what I’d get going in to the show, and I got exactly that, but it’s not my thing. Again, before someone gets on my case, it’s not that the show is bad, it’s just not what I’m into. I was pretty much only watching it for Nakamura Yuuichi.

[stephanericherthanyou]

Ch11-20

Ch11: Back Leachbomb or Mom

i’ve been resisting posting all the chapter covers but i just--tatsuhime

[insert pleading emoji here] i adore them

Ch12: The Gate of the End

fraccion prototype?

this one also has a cool cover...i think about one of those satire wikis a lot, idr which one it was but the entry for kubo was like “big time fashion designer who didn’t make it as a manga artist (bleach & zombiepowder have been forgotten except in trivia about the fashion guy)” or something...i liked this about the furuba chapter covers too, everyone is in seriously cool fashion...anyway, peak visuals, gg

oh interesting - iirc in the anime it was rukia who said that yuuichi’s mom would be waiting for him (perhaps i am wrong?), but in the manga it’s ichigo and that changes things a *lot*

Ch13: Bad Standard

kon *and* urahara at once, wrow

Ch14: School Daze!!

i wonder if the refs here to contemporary (to the early 2000s) pop culture were that way originally or if it was just the translation...it’s likely keigo’s attempt to teach the bird to say he looks like celebs was, but is the “only bru//ce willis” line?

Ch15: Jumpin’ Jack Jolted

Ch16: Wasted but Wanted

I LOVE when two charas are fighting a common enemy and also each other and then the common enemy interrupts their fight and they are Not Having It

& related to this, i do wonder who knows and how much about urahara and his dealings. obviously he’s able to get goods from soul society, and shinigami know about him (iirc he found rukia after ch1 tho, so she didn’t already know about him). so how open is the secret? his non-shinigami customer base would be like...the vizards and maaaaaybe ryuuken, tho i always assumed (or maybe it’s shown/stated) that he sells regular old human stuff too

Ch17: 6/17

ahh...memories in the rain, everything but the rain, *george lucas voice* it’s like poetry it rhymes

Ch18: 6/17 Op.2 Can’t Smile Don’t Blame

i do like that kubo chose a concrete date for when masaki died.

also the interspersing of the family going to the grave with tatsuki explaining everything to orihime...

Ch19: 6/17 Op.3 Memories in the Rain

if it weren’t the middle of the day i’d be playing the “drink whenever there’s dramatic irony” game (this time wrt kon’s remark on rukia losing friends bc she’s too focused on her work)

it’s easy to lose sight of rukia just hanging out in the world of the living, sleeping in ichigo’s closet, etc, but she’s isolated from her friends, in deep trouble wrt the “gave up all my powers to a human by accident” thing, and there’s no one she feels she can really reach out to. :(

*slams down imaginary glass* HOOOOBOY mrs ishida made sure of that

i’ve never actually seen ‘this is us’ but i’ve read some of the vulture recaps and this chap actually reminded me of the latest (sorry paywalled) a bit? you have a mom who is a superwoman to her kids to some degree and they want to be the ones who protect her but don’t know how, and have built up an unrealistic image of her....tho, obviously, the kurosaki kids were still rly young at this point, not actual adults approaching middle age

anyway, dr kurosaki, good job on not sending your kid to therapy after having witnessed his mother’s death at the age of 9! (i mean yeah this would have been the 90s and there’s the whole ghost thing, but...at least recognize your kid’s carrying that guilt around with him and talk to him about it in the ensuing 6-7 years)

Ch20: 6/17 Op.4 Face Again

“I don’t have a method of stepping into the depths of your heart without it getting dirty. So I’ll wait.” nnn