#but it just reminded me of that time arakawa was asked why she drew her characters like how she does

[oifaaa]

My favourite type of compliment is when people tell me they like how I draw women with more realistic proportions especially right now bc ngl watching so much one piece at once has really been fucking with my brain

[curestardust]

if you want: something like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei or Monogatari just more lighthearted / quirky fucking characters and story / randomness galore

If I say the words “Studio Shaft, quirky and Hiroshi Kamiya’ what anime pops into your head?

For most it’d be the Monogatari franchise. For some it would be Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. And for a select few it’d be Arakawa.

Due to how much these 3 have in common, it’s almost impossible to not compare them, even subconsciously.

Our story begins with Ichinomiya Kou, the son of an incredibly successful bussiness man. He has been brought up all his life with the idea that he must not be indebted to others in any way, ever. Well, he runs into a problem when he is stuck on a bridge in his underwear as he is trying to climb a pillar to reach his pants. A mysterious girl fishing there watches on in silence after he turns her help down. Suddenly, the pillar breaks and he almost drowns in the river but gets saved by the mysterious girl. Kou suddenly finds his entire life being indebted to this girl and desperately tries to compensate her but she  only asks for one thing: for him to be his lover.

The Arakawa riverband is actually the home to a bunch of fucking weirdos as Kou later finds out. The girl who saved her, Nino, keeps saying the she is a Venusian. Then we have a guy in a Kappa suit pop up who is the “village chief” and keeps insisting that he most definitely is NOT a man in a kappa suit. He gives our main character a new name that he will use in his new home: Recruit.

We also have a buff former military man dressed in a nun suit who’s called Sister and a musician in a star mask called Hoshi and a few more.

So, this is where the comparison being a problem comes up. The weird characters, nonsensical story, the colour scheme, the quick cuts, reactions and overall presentation just makes you think of the other 2 works I listed above (if you’ve seen them, obviously). And that’s a problem cause Arakawa feels like a lesser product of those 2.

First the presentation. This whole anime being played out in the same location feels restricting. Even though we have random buildings, the majority of the time we’re outside where the dominating colours are blue (river and the sky) and green (grass). I found it all a bit boring after a while. The quick cuts and seperate shots were also lackluster. Especially in Monogatari, these work to compensate for the long dialouges, keeping the eyes occupied while listening to characters talk. Here, these seperate shots aren’t drawn that well and they often use muted, pastel or just 1-2 colours for them.

There isn’t a story here, like, at all. There’s some bigger overarching plot in the second half but it gets resolved pretty fast. Arakawa mostly has short stories that are based on the randomness of the characters and whatever they get up to. So then, what this show needs is great characters. Well…

The cast is silly. As weird as you would expect. However, randomness is only funny if we know why it’s random aka we need to be aware of what is considered “common sense” in the world to really understand how weird the actions of the characters are. Our “common sense meter” would’ve been Kou/Rec, however in just a few episodes he becomes part of the weird community and finds less and less stuff weird. He still can’t get over certain people and whatever they do but he reacts less to them. This is basically an inbetween of Nozomu-sensei and Koyomi. Koyomi is almost completely seperated from the events while Nozomu-sensei is basically the weirdest out of the bunch. Kou is part of the weird gang himself yet still feels distant from them, making it hard to relate to him but not making him as funny and quirky as the others around him. Still, seeing Kou’s life philosophy completely get flipped on its head is fun to watch. 

This review has really gotten away from me, I don’t even remember what point I wanted to make. So to wrap up: if you really want something in the vein of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Monogatari but would be fine with a more lighthearted approach, you can give Arakawa a try. If you haven’t seen either series but would like to see something non-conventional and quirky, I’d also recommend this. [7/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

if you want: cute girls being friends and spies / SPIES / about 3 plot twists / nice fight animation

While scouring the offering of the last Fall Season’s, my eyes immediately drew to this anime. Of course, I’d have watched it just for the fact that I saw a bunch of girls being badass but even more, the whole concept (and even the artstyle) reminded me of Princess Principal (x) which was one of the most surprisingly great anime I’ve seen so I was hoping for something similiar with Release the Spyce.

The plot isn’t anything special. Our introduction starts with Momo, who gets befriended by some girls at her new school. She is later told that these 5 girls are part of a secret spy organization, Tsukikage, who defend the city from the shadows. The Tsukikage are all young girls, as they use special spices that enchance their ability to fight and the effectiveness of the spice lessens, the older one gets. Tsukikage has been fighitng against an evil organization called Moryo for a long time.

As you can see, the story itself is pretty generic so the anime has to rely on other offerings to keep people’s attention.

First would be the characters, more or less. The cast has a varied set of personalities and chemistry between them. Due to the fact that 3 of the girls (including Momo) are apprentices to 3 of the older members, who are their mentors, we mostly see interactions with those 3 pairs. However, even with that I felt that there was some untapped potential with the girls and their unique relationships. Don’t get me wrong, everyone gets some background story and a decent amount of time establishing their characters but there still something missing. As I wreck my brain though, with everything that happens, the only thing that could’ve fixed this issue would’ve been more episodes. For its runtime of 12 episodes, the anime does as much as it can.

The second thing that can draw you in, is the missions and the animation of the fights. The shorter “mini missions” didn’t do much for me, but the ones that spanned across 1 or 2 whole episodes were really interesting to watch. The animation, while lacking in some departments, mostly shined in the fight scenes. Really, there isn’t much else to say about this one. If you want some engaging spy missions with nice animation, here you go!

Release the Spyce is very tame, everything considering, up until episode 10. That’s when shit goes DOWN and we get like 3 plot twists on top of each other and whew...I really liked it! I would’ve wished that the atmosphere we get at the very end would’ve been present at least here and there throughout the rest of the anime, but it does make it even more shocking. And I’ll stop here cause I won’t be spoiling.

RtS is a nice watch but it’s restricted by its short runtime. Nothing really can be done about that unfortunately. If you are interested based on what I’ve written above, give it a try! [7/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents