#some scenes are somewhat emotional but eh. the pacing is also pretty weird too

[ihophashbrowns]

I just finished watching dear evan hansen..that was. One of the worst movies ive seen in a long time

[stray-tori]

TPN S02E09 - Initial Thoughts (anime-only)

[ Reaction video w/ captions/subs ] we collectively have a breakdown about the pen, please enjoy it pff-

.

... hmmm... yeah I... ain’t feeling it. I think my tpn feelings overall are carrying this more than anything pff. I didn’t hate it, it was just...... mediocre... like if this wasn’t tpn, I probably would have dropped it at this point.

BUT IT IS TPN SO LET’S GIVE SOME THOUGHTS.

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. Random thoughts I don’t want to re-arrange

when Emma was like “share your pain with us!!”, I liked how Norman turned to Ray like “Ray. help. tell her I’m right” kind of like Ray did in s1 pfff-

Norman cried the words he didn’t allow himself to say in s1 :( I’M EMOTIONAL. it might not be the icing on the cake execution wise but GOD MY HEART. And knowing he’s going to die to it’s just- (well not if the pen has something to say about it but more about that later)

where- wheres my trio hug :((( RAY HUG THE CHILD NOW

it’s interesting that while Emma got the entire emotional speech spotlight, only Ray got a reaction shot to “I won’t live long”?? equivalent.... exchange...?

I thought Norman had a seizure when he broke down in front of Emma and Ray and I kinda wish he had because while it’s good to have him say it outright (a win for communicationnn), imagine THE ANGST. “I want to live with yo- *coughs up fountains of blood*”.

So. yknow that hideout Cislo or Vincent referenced when talking to Emma and Ray. Yknow where Norman hid the children they stole from farms, making it look like demons did it? ... w-what about them? will we see them? Are they getting left behind? it would have worked for Norman’s plan, since all they had to do was stay put and wait for demons to be yeeted. But now... he’d have to take them all too. But... I doubt we’re gonna introduce a bunch of new designs and characters? Or are we? Who knows. I don’t. I have unreasonably amount of protecc feelings for those children I’ve never even seen haha- WHERE ARE THEY. I mean... the plan rn is to immediately use the gate right? or is the plan to eradicte the GF farm staff and higher ups? I guess if thats the plan it might work. Or I guess the plan is to save Phil for now???

the idea of Sonju just... slicing his arm and throwing it at demons in a loop sounds so funny to me please someone make that.

I liked that Mujika turned to the lambda kids after giving a cup to the demon children but then we didn’t see their reaction or anything and then it cuts to the temple??? that was weird. was there sth missing there? confusion.

I also like Isabella remarking "[a radio] was supposed to be there" regarding the shelter, because it further heavily implies they know of the shelters and just let them be. Which further confirms that they should have just reframed the shelter and had the kids escape from it quickly but oH WELL.

I really liked demon Emma apologizing and Norman's reaction to that. it was a sweet little moment and like, the realization of apologizing for something that she didn't do but is aware of and all that. Cycle of hatred and all that shiz hell ye. Ik the anime won't rly delve into that but I kind of relish in the angst potential of the village - sure it was undone but some were still eaten and died and transforming people back won't bring those back. So, that’s some hella terrifying implications for families; and I'm assuming Norman is aware of those so. guilt time! not that he wasn't aware it was bad but yeah- I teared up at that moment :<<

I feel like this season really does its best when it’s doing the whole two worlds/species angle. Mujika and Sonju, the village, demon and human Emma... all that stuff.

I wish we had gotten more time (god this is really the season’s downfall) thought to see Vylk talk to the GF kids more often. it’s implied he told them not to hang out there before but I would have liked to have him show up a few more times before that but yeah. Runtime very RIP.

I also feel like CW is bending over backwards to put cliffhangers at the end of episodes. that was already a problem in s1 when they had Phil come in when Don and Gilda were in Isabella's room. it was obvious it'd be a copout but they still did it. I'm just wondering why we had to have Vincent disagree with the group to this extend (and if the shock value might play a part in that). we have 2 more episodes, why are they introducing more plot threads? Just streamline it you dofuses. I just don't know what good can come of it unless it's like an ultra big brain move to help them?? (and then we're back with the forcing cliffhangers thing) - if it's actual conflict, this'll just make things more confusing and clustered, and we don't have time for that right now imo. But who knows maybe it plays into something I just don't understand yet and it'll work out somehow

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. Animation flow kinda dead.

I felt like this episode was kind of... awkwardly executed whenever something that was a slightly dynamic movement happened?

The whole bit while Emma is walking up to Norman could have been better, but it’s passable, except that a lot is spelled out for us.

But then she takes his hand really weirdly in a far away shot with bad inbetween timing?? what is that haha-

Or him collapsing is cut really weirdly. you barely really see it, you just kinda piece it together from Emma’s reaction and her catching him.

Most facial expressions are good though, which is arguably the more important part in this scene. I feel like a better execution just would have elevated it even more.

The only one I felt was really awkward in its entirety is Barbara’s scene with the children demons. I felt like that was in particular kind of stiff and the cut between the child and her was too sudden and felt jarring. TPN anime doesn’t really do that sort of stuff a lot, so imo it’s kind of “??” when they do it. With Norman it was too, but that at least had a good transition over to it (with bg and fg panning) and nice animation. Barbara’s just kind of switched. Tbh don’t switch it out, and as the child screams, switch over to her facial expression as her own voice fades into the scream? I think that would have done it too and also be low effort.

I think it’s moreso the flow of the shots than the actual shots though? it’s a bit too fast paced and sometimes missing inbetweens (like the wild demon eating sonju’s hand is literally just 2 frames) - it’s very weird. It’s jarring, but I can’t really explain why.

I’m sorry for the staff, I’m sure the production hasn’t been easy. maybe with the bluray release we’ll get some updated animations/inbetweens.

Some appreciation though:

as mentioned, most of the facial expressions, even if the body language was a bit stiff.

the cut from the trio talking to the eye-transition of the demon and the following breath animation looked nice. Also his arm regenerating!

Sonju smirking as he cuts his arm off, what a bastard

they didn’t have to show Vylk’s arm regenerating casually while they’re talking but they did.

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. the lambda crew

If only I cared about you guys. Hahhh it’s just... introducing characters so close to the end is just. A mess. A recipe for disaster.

Where has the anime’s “show off the younger kids” angle gone? I thought they were always pretty good at that. but they haven’t really contributed anything since the whole tidbit about the older children always eating less for them. And even then it was just Lani and Thoma.

Potentially, what segments we saw in the shelter will come back for the GF raid thematically but I’m just... EH?

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. the cure pen

at this point, just stick a syringe part at the end of the stick and just inject it and it’s gonna solve everything probably.

I just don’t understand why that needed to happen. Assuming they go to the human world, it’d be perfectly acceptable for me for medicine to be so advanced that it’d be able to like, lessen their symptoms and significantly improve their lifespan.

Don’t just... REMOVE their struggles. It’s okay to not be normal and cured. it’s okay for their lives to be impacted by it going forward. In fact, I’d much prefer that.

(added in later) OH wait they literally spell out why the cure being in the pen is meaningful - because it opens up a path where they can live through not having annihilated all the demons - it's essentially the moral "reward" for not killing them. Since they probably wouldn't have gotten it if they did that. I still think it wasn't needed and the blueprint on its own would suffice for another pen-convinience moment but I kind of get what they're going for, I just don't think it's worth it . In their case, going to the human world (while they don't know it) means having more medical expertise at their disposal which they can then use to survive. UNLESS they're actually not welcome over there and have to hide or something, in that case... that might be hard, true. I guess I'll come back to think about this once it's over. For now, it feels kind of unearned and it wouldn’t even have to be this way in my eyes which makes it somewhat worse.

But good, let’s say in-universe you need it NOW, then at least don’t put??? the medicine??? recipe??? INTO the hologram.

What if they just checked the GF blueprint and Norman goes “hey, Vincent... do you think this [database/archive room] could have some data on our experiments?” - Norman said he tried to develop a drug to help them but the supporters who had that data were purged. but... they had Smee to help them too. But SOMEHOW, a dude from 15 years ago just HAS the cure??? (at least let Norman develop it himself and have the data be just THE DATA and not the recipe).

It might still check out somewhat??

15+ years ago, James Ratri was assumingly still the gatekeeper since the switch to Peter seems somewhat recent considering his big "era of James has ended" speech.

I guess the implication is that just like Smee => Krone => Norman, a supporter all that time ago gave random person the pen when they escaped.

When Vylk found him, he also had just the data medium of the pen (not the entire pen), so maybe the farm thought they eliminated it and that’s why they didn’t change their methods to not work with those drugs anymore? It's still a bit curious that their experimentation hasn't changed at all in 15 years but maybe that's because they keep killing the smart people instead of making them scientists to research for them :D

Somewhere since those 15 years, Smee gave Krone the pen (probably a few years before she got to GF?), which means that at that point the gate the keyword "future" sent them to, was still in tact when Smee gave Krone the pen. Maybe WM wasn't discovered yet at that point?

then WM got discovered, James was chased. He made that phonecall update and was probably eventually killed, along with the human location (and likely bunkers since they knew a radio was supposed to be there, begs the question why they didn't remove it) being discovered (the one with the future keyword) and the gate there being destroyed.

The problem is just that it can make sense when you think about it for way too long and assume things in good-faith, but it still feels unearned.

Maybe I would care more or this would feel a little more earned if we knew ANYTHING about that person? They seemed fairly young, so it’s probably not Minerva/James Ratri. The “hope” talk reminded me of the book in the shelter, but I’m not sure if that checks out either? The cookies were rotten but not completely. I know cookies hold out relatively long, but would they rly not be completely rotten after 15 years? I MEAN. Maybe not. Who knows. I tried to google it but didn’t find anything. 

But anyway. That tidbit is going into my “shelter kids OC project” I guess.

But even if the worldbuilding makes sense, I think the data set in itself makes little sense?? How did they find that pen part? Did a supporter give it to them? Why do they have the cure? Clearly their group of escapees wasn’t doing too hot (#help) and they seemed relatively young too so they probably couldn’t have worked in the farm.

Were the shelter escapees lambda escapees? but if that was the case, wouldn’t the WM group have secured the cure information more properly than in just one pen (maybe it was and those were just destroyed, to be fair) - it’s just WEIRD to put the cure for Lambda experiments on the same blueprint as the GF layout??? that makes so little sense.

Plus, why would you send them to GF, when it’s so secured and all that, and not just send them to the human support place our GF kids were sent with the “future” keyword, which had a gate. Maybe it didn’t exist 15 years ago (that the humans had control over it, that is), but even then it seems weird to me to imply to send them to GF instead of one of the other gates that existed. I mean. The “future” location’s gate wasn’t destroyed when Krone got the pen right?

I’m guessing maybe it was meant as help for escaping? But then again, why the cure? I guess if they met lambda experiments? I’m just confused.

Also: do we just accept that the layout of GUARDS and SECURITY MEASURES has not changed in 15 years???

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*sigh* welp. Still looking forward to seeing some stuff with Isabella hopefully. Time... is not on their side and it shows. Neither run-time wise nor production wise.

[curestardust]

if you want: slice-of-life / realistic portrayal of wlw relationships with no fanservice 

We obviously know why I’m here. If something contains wlw, expect me to appear there sooner or later.

Aoi Hana is a pretty special series. Among all the shoujo ai series whose main draw is the fanservice and the fetishization of girl on girl action, Aoi Hana contains none of that. It’s a quite realistic take on the “genre”.

The way I’d describe this anime would be to say that it’s about “Fumi’s first love”. Our main cast consists of Fumi, a very timid and gentle girl who moves back to her hometown where she meets Akira (Aa-chan) with whom she used to be friends with as kids. Despite the expected premise, Aoi Hana isn’t a love story between these two. Fumi meets a girl called Sugimoto on her first day in her new school. They eventually start dating. The series is basically about Fumi’s personal growth throughout this relationship with multiple characters and their interjecting love interests keeping things even more interesting. I’d also like to mention that while wlw relationships are the focal point of the anime, Fumi is the only lesbian in the bunch. Two other main characters are bisexuals and we aren’t really given anything to figure out Aa-chan’s.

With the complicated relationship “drama” you’d expect Aoi Hana to be pretty spicy but it’s a slice-of-life through and through. The story advances at a very slow pace and focuses quite a bit on side-characters’ relationships, friendships and just general school life.

The technical side perfectly mirrors the anime’s pacing and general atmoshpere. The OST contains a lot of piano and various musical instruments and the OP/ED are both slow and soothing. The animation is very smooth and the art direction is quite interesting with the backgrounds only being drawn as if they were just sketched. The character designs are simple but distinct.

However, there’s a reason I said that this is about “Fumi’s FIRST love” as this is just a small piece of the actual story. The manga was unfinished at the time of this production and thus they decided to leave the ending SOMEWHAT open-ended. Not in a bad way as most of the story threads have been wrapped up but they left room for a potential sequel which I’d love to see so bad!”

Sidenote: compared to my review my score may seem low and that is because I may have appreciated how the series was handled, I’m really not a sucker for SOL and the pacing was way too slow for me personally. [7/10] (x)

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

if you want: boobs and asses tbh / okay-ish beach volleyball matches

Harukana Recieve is a sports anime mixed with some slice-of-life. Which sport? Beach volleyball. And as I found out from watching this, that is apparently very different from normal volleyball.

The story starts out with Haruka, who moves in with her cousin Kanata. Now living near the ocean, Haruka obviously takes a trip down to check it out where she meets 2 girls playing beach volleyball. Later it turns out that Kanata has certain connections to the pair. This is the start of how Haruka gets her first taste of the sport which later leads to her pairing up with Kanata. A bit later we meet another pair, the Thomas twins, who get the other 2 to join the beach volleyball club at school.

Honestly, Harukana Recieve was quite boring to me. The slice-of-life between the matches felt really slow. They did give some character bulding moments to our characters, however this being a sports anime I think the same could’ve been achieved during or after some exciting matches. And while the anime tries to give some depth to our cast, for quite some time I could only think of them as the tropes they represent...cause of the fanservice.

I looked at a few pages of the manga and was surprised to see that the characters don’t look like they came out of a hentai which means that making their boobs 3 times the size of what they were in the manga was a conscious choice. The creators most likely thought that the story couldn’t carry the anime and instead they filled the empty spots with a lot of eyecandy. Boob jiggles, close up shots of their asses and of course weirdly small swimsuits, everything a salivating virgin would want and more!

Shortly about beach volleyball from what the anime told me: a team consists of 2 people. A pair can only touch the ball 3 times while it’s in their court before needing to send it over the net. This part was initially what I thought made the matches quite boring to watch as it really doesn’t offer much variety. The tactics were the exact same for a long while. Recieve the ball, second person goes up to the net and passes up the ball to be hit over, first person jumps up and hits ball over. Repeat. However, I took a look at some actual real life beach volleyball matches and I realized the problem. The camera work. In real life, the passing of the ball is incredibly fast paced. You barely have time to think, the ball is just flying all over the place. In the anime however, they often pan on the ball while it’s in the air or even slow down the camera after a hit, making the matches feel much more sluggish than they actually would be. This is made worse by the fact that they barely use any wider shots, mostly just close ups from a lot of weird angles, making it hard to discern how big the court actually is and following the ball’s trajectory is almost impossible, as sometimes the ball looks like it got launched into the stratosphere and then we pan to literally a few meters from the person who hit it.

Obviously, the lack of tactics used in the matches could be attributed to the fact that Haruka is new and she is slowly progressing. Which is realistic, but doesn’t make it any less boring. 

The final 3 episodes more or less consist of one match, which is the most exciting part of the whole thing. It still has the problems I pointed out above but as the 2 pairs are both more or less experienced, the fooling around is finally over and replaced by some actual tactical playing. It helps that the match also carries much more emotional weight than the ones before.

Well this ended up being hella long...if you just wanna look at boobs and asses go ahead tbh. If you want the beach volleyball part just watch the last 3 episodes. If you’re not interestested in either, then... [5/10] (x)

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

if you want: beautiful presentation and nature scenes / some insight into diving /  iyashikei (healing slice-of-life anime) / peculiar charm

Amanchu! is a special case for me. I see it mentioned a lot that one of the most exciting points of the anime is that it’s made by the creator of Aria, which I’ve obviously heard of but haven’t seen yet. And while this would work great towards me not comparing it to a prior work of the mangaka, I still made a mistake by having preconceptions about what this anime would be like. 

My vague memory of the plot was that it was going to be about a diving club. Great! Basically another sports anime, which I’m fine with. However that wasn’t quite the case.

In the beginning, we’re introduced to Futaba (Teko) who moves into a new town, away from her dear friends. She is very shy and timid. Then at her new school she happens to meet a peculiar girl named Hikari (Pikari) who quickly befirends her and makes her join the diving club with her. The overarching plot of the anime is Teko’s change from a shy little girl into a much more mature young woman thtough Pikari, the diving club and the sport itself. 

That is, in the first half of the anime and then the last episode. However, there’s a pretty big chunk of Amanchu! where the diving barely gets mentioned in favour of some slice-of-life and character building episodes, some of which focus on the side characters; the other 2 members of the diving club, a twin sister and brother and the club manager who’s their teacher. Unfortunately, most of these episodes fell flat for me as they really aren’t...very interesting characters!

While my lack of enjoyment in most of Amanchu! could be chalked up to me being a bit sick of slice-of-life stuff thus making it hard to get invested in what was happening, there’s something else that can be a huge turn off for people which is the “comedy”. Whenever something that demands a reaction happens the characters’ heads turn into a circle and their faces kinda turn into an emoji (for examples look up ‘Amanchu faces’). All of them have a specific “emoji face”. This looks cute of course but the anime uses it SO OFTEN you sometimes feel like you see their normal faces less than their emoji faces. Characters also have certain “ticks” like Pikari constantly saying “upyo!”, Teko making this high pitched “eeeeeehhh??” and the twin sister kicking her brother in the back at basically every occasion. The “funny sibling abuse” trope I hate anyway but your opinion of these things I just listed could make or break the series. It could either annoy you to hell and back making it basically unbearable to watch or you can find it incredibly charming and entertaining. 

If you’re on of those many people who find it charming then Amanchu! will be a great iyashikei (healing anime) for you. The presentation is absolutely gorgeous with soft linework and a vivid but inintrusive colour palette. The background music consists of some very nice instrumental tracks. Of course, the anme shines especially during the diving and underwater moments while the slice-of-life episodes bring up some less serious but everyday questions. The enjoyment of small moments is a big part of Amanchu!.

This anime wasn’t really for me but I’m still giving it a quite weak 7 as I don’t think it deserves to be listed with some of my 6 rated anime that are objectively much worse. [7/10] (x)

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