#every time i rewatch diu this is always in the back of my mind

[star-crossed-joes]

As my friend put it "daddy issues Josuke and issue daddy Jotaro"

[mononohke-archive]

Anime Roundup Pt.2 - Fall 2016 [Spoilers]

More rambling~

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable [8/10]

Another season of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has come and gone, and it’s been quite a wild ride. Personally, I think it was about on par with the first season of JJBA. I liked it better than Stardust Crusaders because I liked the main characters better and the plot was not as much of a repetitive “monster of the week” affair, but unfortunately, it seems like they didn’t put as much effort into the animation and production values. This 39 episode season was also a full 11 episodes shorter than the two 25 episode seasons of SDC, despite the manga being slightly longer. It definitely felt a little rushed, and I’ve had my manga reader friends inform me that some of their favorite parts were cut out.

But there were a lot of things I really loved about DiU as well. Josuke quickly became my favorite Jojo after Joseph, and I like Jotaro more in this part than I ever did in SDC. The villain, Kira, is also one of my favorite characters period and so is Rohan Kishibe, played brilliantly by Takahiro Sakurai as usual. Many of the stands are hilarious and creative in this part too. I also loved the whole Scooby Doo-esque mystery of a serial killer in the town and the slice of life elements. The scale was brought down from “evil villains try to take over the world” to one serial killer who “just wants to live a normal life”... and kill women and take their hands to satisfy his compulsions, of course. It was a really refreshing change from the typical formula.

The only thing or character that I didn’t like is Koichi - partially because he gets more attention than Josuke, kind of like Polnareff in SDC (except much less likable) and partially because his voice actor, Yuki Kaji, is fucking annoying as him. Unfortunately, on top of that, he’s the character who spends most of his screen time yelling exactly what’s happening, like Polnareff and Speedwagon before him, except his voice is literally ear-splittingly irritating.

I sincerely hope that in the next part, they don’t take shortcuts like they did with this part. JJBA is one of my favorites, so I will still be waiting for it eagerly.

Touken Ranbu: Hanamaru [5/10]

I wasn’t expecting much from this anime and it still disappointed me lol. Touken Ranbu is basically a moe anime (but with a diversity in character designs that moeblobs wish they had), except the characters are male. Some of it was sort of mildly entertaining and cute, but for the most part, it was pretty boring.

... Maybe I’m just peeved because they didn’t focus that much on characters I personally find attractive, like Kogitsunemaru. You know the only reason I watched this show in the first place was because I’ve seen a ridiculous amount of yaoi for it on pixiv? The porn was nice, but I would never play the game itself, so I figured the anime would give me a little more insight into the characters and their relationships. The anime did, but it still failed at entertaining me.

So, yeah, this anime perfectly average and forgettable. Only watch if you’re super dedicated to the game.

Poco’s Udon World [9/10]

The biggest surprise of this season for me was this show. Yes, this show is my AotS (by about .2 points) over that other anime which got super popular and had a ton of praise. Well, we all go against the grain sometimes and this is my turn. Poco’s Udon World is an underrated masterpiece in my opinion. This show came off the heels of the much more popular Sweetness and Lightning, which came out the previous season. Both shows have a similar premise - a young man in his early 30s with black haired (voiced by Yuuichi Nakamura) becomes a single father due to sudden circumstances and has to take care of an adorable toddler-aged child. There are some key differences, of course, but they are still similar enough to be comparable.

Personally I think Poco’s Udon World is far superior (for reasons I will discuss), and it saddens me that it hasn’t got half the popularity of S&L. (Probably because there isn’t a cute waifu character as one of the mains, heh.) So what makes PUW so good to me? Well, besides all the cute and the incredibly heartwarming/touching nature of the show, it’s also just very well-written. The characters and their development, as well as a plethora of themes I don’t see being portrayed very often in anime or when they are brought up, are handled in ways that make me uncomfortable.

Here is just a short list of themes PUW manages to masterfully cover in a 12-episode, single cour season:

career vs family

career and family separately

fatherhood

grief and nostalgia

growing up

love

And those are just the main themes? There are other things that are covered on a more subtle level. See, I explained in my review of S&L that it was lacking an exploration of its themes and was constrained by its repetitive slice of life format. Most of the supporting characters were not very fleshed out either. PUW fixes all or most of these problems.

Every episode brings something new to the table and there is no set episode format. I also absolutely love that every character outside of Poco and Souta feels like they could be a real person, instead of being a plot device or 2-dimensional character. They all have lives outside of their interactions with the main characters, so that even when they don't get much screen time, they feel fleshed out. All of them represent a different sort of family or different sort of lifestyle or different sort of mindset, which you can easily compare to Souta's situation because they all serve as foils to him. A lot of supporting characters even get their own character development like Nakaji and Rin (Souta' sister).

And... okay, I want to analyze this show in-depth one day, but I need to rewatch it (maybe several times) before I do. Trust me, it’s cute and all, but it’s much more than that too. You might be surprised at how high it is on my Top 10 Anime of 2016 list.

Kiss Him, Not Me [7/10]

After watching two absolutely terrible otome/harem anime that really pissed me off (Uta no Prince Sama and Kamigami no Asobi), I went back on my decision to never watch an otome because this one was about a fujoshi and written by a yaoi mangaka. Somehow... it paid off. I came out of this pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this show.

Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty that annoyed me (the fatshaming, how Serinuma’s voice changes, the shoujo cliches, etc), but overall I enjoyed it more than I disliked it. Although I was only rooting for two of the love interests, Mutsumi-senpai (who is mild mannered, friendly, genuine, liked her when she was fat) and Nishina (the gay option™, also a fujoshi and otaku who has a lot in common with Serinuma, also liked her even when she was fat), I didn’t really mind or hate the others either. All of them still treated her more respectfully than LIs in the other otome I watched.

The ending was brilliant too, and if they make a second season, I would still watch it for the characters and humor.

Yuri!!! on Ice [9/10]

How do I even begin to tackle Yuri!!! on Ice? This is the AoTS for sure (in general, not to me personally) and is by far the runaway smash hit in terms of both popularity and ratings. This anime is a game changer, to put it lightly. It did something no other popular anime has done before, and the praise is honestly well deserved. But, hey, remember that it’s still not perfect. In fact, up until the very last episode, I was debating on whether it deserved an 8 or a 9 on MAL. I settled on a 9 (a low nine by my standards) only because I cried a whole lot the last episode and realized that the overall impact of the show is bigger than my minor gripes. What are those minor gripes?

#1) Off-model/inconsistent animation. I will give a slight break to the animators because I know that animating ice skating is very complex and intricate, especially if you consider just how much ice skating there is in almost every episode. There are about a dozen ice skaters, each with two different 2-minute routines. Yes, many of them are reused multiple times, but regardless it’s still a lot of work. Unfortunately, YoI missed the chance to be stunning all the way through and join the other always-praised animation greats like Cowboy Bebop and much more recently, Mob Psycho 100. Only the first episode truly impressed me with how perfect and fluid the animation was, and I was dearly hoping that they would keep up that level of quality all the way through. Sadly they don’t, but we should all thank the writing of this show for being so damn good and making up for it. Besides, aside from a few, rather obvious off-model shots, it didn’t ever get too bad, not like Cheer Danshi!! from the Summer season.

#2) Slightly rushed pacing. Yeah, some of the events of this anime just go by too fast, especially the beginning few episodes where months pass between Victor arriving in Japan and Yuuri beginning his journey to the Grand Prix Final. It’s not really made clear to the viewers how much time has passed, and even I didn’t realize until I read a tumblr post on it. Originally, I wanted a whole other cour so that I could see the ice skaters interact more outside of work, but I think that would be too much as well. One more episode (a full 13 episode cour) would’ve been perfect, imo. Thankfully, we are getting another season, so there will definitely be more time to develop the other side characters and resolve some of the remaining threads! But seriously, I hope they do slow down a little bit in season 2.

Other than that...? Gripes so minor that they’re not even worth mentioning. The amount of good that YoI has done is overwhelming my comparison. I’ll just go through them like a list again because why not?

#1) Viktor and Yuuri’s relationship. A healthy canon gay interracial relationship in a non-yaoi anime. That is just shy of revolutionary in terms of LGBT representation in an anime. “We are born to make history”, indeed. Yes, some other anime have done it too like No.6 and Revolutionary Girl Utena. But was No.6, the other one where the main couple is M/M, popular like YoI is? Not particularly. Most of the viewership comes from yaoi fangirls or LGBT anime fans seeking an anime with a canon gay ship in it. What about Utena? Well, Utena didn’t have a happy ending, not for the canon lesbian character and not for the main F/F relationship of the show. Nothing is also explicitly stated like it is in YoI. Ofc, Utena by the very nature of the show, explicitly states very little but still. There’s also a goddamn kiss!

The best part of this is that Viktor and Yuuri is that, despite their happy ending, they don’t sacrifice depth or conflict between them and the drama doesn’t feel forced either. That balance is hard to achieve and it takes writing talent to pull it off. Every action and reaction feels natural and in-character. The writing featuring them is as good as any well-written romantic drama with a hetero couple! The other great thing is that even though Viktor and Yuuri’s relationship is incredibly important to the narrative and is the main relationship overall, romance is still not the primary genre. It equally shares genres with sports, comedy, and drama.

TL:DR; Their relationship is important. It sets a precedent that a gay couple can be the main couple of an anime and still be wildly successful. Now future manga and anime writers can take risks knowing that they won’t end up being financially compromised due the lgbtphobic culture of Japan.

2) Yuri on Ice perfectly balances its genres. This may not seem that important, but it kind of is and ties into the last point about how romance is not the main genre. If romance were the main genre, then this would be a yaoi/shounen-ai anime and it wouldn’t have gotten nearly as popular as it did. Yuuri’s evolution as an athlete and his desire to win the gold for the first time is just as important as his relationship with Viktor. Yurio, Viktor, and the other skaters’ relationships with each other and ice skating is also given a lot of attention. The love and dedication to ice skating in general is prominent and that passion has attracted the attention of countless professional ice skaters. (In fact, It’s like the anime singlehandedly brought attention to a niche sport that doesn’t get a whole lot of industry unlike American football and soccer/European football.)

There’s also a lot of comedy, which may be hit and miss for some people, but I found it pretty damn hilarious when it happens. Of all the sports anime I’ve seen, only a few others try others bringing in other genres. Most are pure sports because pure sports are usually the most successful (Haikyuu!! and Kuroko no Basket). So far for me, only YoI has successfully melded together all the genres it attempts.

3) Characters. It is said that sports anime highly depends on its characters to be good and set itself apart from other sports anime... and that’s pretty true. Most sports anime follow a rigid, predictable plot structure that doesn’t allow for much creativity on that front, so aside from technical aspects like the production values, the characters’ likability are the only things that it can rely on for originality. Of course, as I’ve already discussed, YoI blends genres and isn’t just pure sports so it has more freedom, but even it follows the same basic plot structure: main character is an underdog (they’re usually underdogs) who wants to win the finals.

So, what about the characters? Honestly, they’re fucking great. The problem with sports anime characters in most cases is that authors will fall back on tired stereotypes. Even the best of sports anime tends to have really obvious archetype characters you can recognize instantly. YoI doesn’t really have that. Yes, some of the characters do follow archetypes a litte, but even in the short amount of time they are given, they end up having miles more depth than the average sports anime character. It helps that we get to see them interacting with each other off the ice too. YoI is a character driven show much more than it is a plot-driven one. The plot is fairly simple, but the characters and their development are the most important part, particularly the main character, Yuuri Katsuki. He is relatable but also very believably talented and multifaceted. Viktor comes off as kind of a passive aggressive jerk at first, but he is one of the kindest and most caring characters in the show. Yurio comes off like an aggressive little brat (and he is still a little shit, I hope he gets more development in s2), but he’s genuinely a prodigy and he cares about Yuuri’s career. Listen, I could keep going and list another 5 characters that I like, but that’s not the point of this review.

That about covers the major things... I could go on, but then I might never shut up. To summarize, YoI is not perfect, but it is still so important for the gains in made for gay representation and besides that, it’s a rich, funny, heartwarming, and interesting portrayal of figure skating. I am sincerely looking forward to season 2 and hope that it’s just as good or even better than season 1.