dorchadas | Anime Chicago Spring Sampler (Reply)

I spent much of this weekend talking about anime. I went to the Yorimoi discussion yesterday and on Saturday I went to the Anime Chicago spring Anime Sampler and saw a nice selection of upcoming shows. As has become my tradition, here's a brief blurb about each of them, ordered by how likely I am to watch them.

フルーツバスケット, "Fruits Basket": After her mother's unexpected death and her grandfather moving in with relatives due to his home being remodeled, Honda Tohru lives in a tent in the woods near her school. Unbeknownst to her, the woods are owned by the Sohma family, two members of which find her tent and later take care of her when she falls ill. They offer her a place in their house in exchange for cooking and cleaning and she accepts, but she quickly discovers their dark secret--they are cursed by the gods of the Chinese Zodiac to turn into animals when hugged by a member of the opposite sex! Hilarity ensues.

This is kind of cheating because I was already watching this before I went to the sampler. I loved the old 2001 Fruits Basket anime, and while I never read the manga, schoolpsychnerd read the whole thing and told me all about it. She really identified with Tohru's self-sacrificing nature and after we watched the anime she tracked down all of the manga (and I guess later got rid of it? I don't still have it, anyway). This adaption is supposed to be much closer to the manga than the last one, so I'm curious to see how it ends. I've heard that the author never liked the original anime and has been agitating for twenty years for a new one, and this is finally it!

Kyō > Yuki

川柳少女, "Satirical Poetry Girl," Eng: "Senryuu Shoujo": Nanako isn't good at speaking up, even in small groups, but she's very good at poetry. She's a member of the literature club due to her love of poetry, and local delinquent Eiji joins because he's so fond of her even though he's horrible at poetry.

This is based on a yonkoma manga, so it's mostly silliness and one-off gags, but I love the focus on poetry. I write haiku myself sometimes in Japanese, and it's hard. The 5-7-5 + seasonal reference format is really hard to stick to, and even the best one I ever wrote, the poem that got one of my Japanese friends to laugh out loud, was 5-8-5 because I miscounted. A whole show about a girl communicating in poetry really appeals to me.

On the other hand, I might just track down the manga.

キャロル&チューズデイ, "Carol and Tuesday": Rich girl Tuesday runs away from home to Alba City, a happening center of Mars colony pop culture, because she wants to be a professional musician like her hero Cyndi Lauper. Her luggage is stolen and, despondent, she walks aimlessly on the streets until she meets up with orphan girl Carol, who was recently fired from another job and is now busking on a bridge. They flee together from a cop to Carol's converted storeroom apartment, and after singing a duet together, determine to make their fortune as a real pop duo in a society that mostly listens to AI-generated music.

The animation and story were good, but it was the singing that drew me in. It was a good song, in English with native pronunciation, and if they can maintain that for a whole show about music, that'll be an achievement itself. And I like the idea of a world where most pop culture is AI generated for maximum popularity, perhaps with a human face ("marionette" in the show's parlance) to provide a focus for audience engagement, since that's almost certainly where we're headed now. Carol and Tuesday are providing artisanal, organic, handmade pop music, not like the schlock endlessly churned out by the AIs.

And this is another show like Cowboy Bebop, where it's obvious that the characters in the story aren't speaking Japanese, but the dialogue is in Japanese because it's anime. Mars has appropriate diversity!

ひとりぼっちの◯◯生活, "The *** Life of Being All Alone," Eng: "Hitori Bocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu": Hitori Bocchi is terrible at making friends, but she and her only friend went to separate schools and her friend won't talk to her until Bocchi becomes friends with everyone in her class. Cue short-cut schemes to avoid the whole task like trying to convince her class that it's been dissolved, to barfing during her self-introduction, to accepting her fate, and eventually trying to make friends.

This is another yonkoma manga, and Hitori Bocchi's name is derived from ひとりぼっち (hitoribocchi, "all alone"), and everyone else's name is similar--the first friend she makes is Sunao Nako, from 素直な子 (sunao-na ko, "Honest child")--so that's how the manga goes. She has such severe social anxiety she often passes out if she has to talk to people, but has to make friends with everyone. I used to feel like this was me, and though now I think it was more environmental than innate, I still have a hard time initiating conversations with people I don't know. I feel for Bocchi and I was immediately drawn to her story.

Again, though, it's yonkoma. I might just read the manga.

鬼滅の刃, "Demon-Slaying Blade," Eng: "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba": Tanjirō is a charcoal-seller living in the woods with his family. He lives a peaceful life, making charcoal and traveling down the mountain to sell his charcoal in the town below. But everything changed when the ~~Fire Nation~~oni attacked. Tanjirō spends the night on the outskirts of town after a man warns him about traveling at night due to man-eating demons called oni, and when he arrives at his house, he finds his whole family slaughtered except his sister, and she is filled with a horrible bloodlust. A passing demon hunter arrives to kill her, but Tanjirō is sure that his sister is still in there somewhere and tries to defend her. When the sister shows signs of self-awareness, the demon hunter spares her. Tanjirō and his sister leave so that Tanjirō can search for a cure.

I don't know. The setup is pretty generic, another fighting anime with demons. And probably techniques, and a secret society, and I can't imagine I'll like this as much as I liked Claymore. The music is fantastic, though, and even if I never watch this I'll probably buy the soundtrack.

賢者の孫, "The Sage's Grandson," Eng: "Wise Man's Grandchild": Truck-kun strikes again, sending a Japanese salaryman to another world. He is reborn as Shin Wolford, a magical prodigy raised by his adoptive grandfather in the woods. He learns fighting and magic, fights demons, and eventually learns that his grandfather is a famous hero and his aunts and uncles are all heroes or royalty. One day he is sent to study in a magical academy in a neighboring town and has to adapt himself to living in society and dealing with his incredible power.

I'm not sure why this is an isekai at all, since it was totally irrelevant to the first episode. Shin has his memories, but it shows up precisely once, when he uses his knowledge of chemistry to magically produce a fuel-air explosion. Really, what I want is a series about the grandfather and his ex-wife, who used to be the dashing wizard and beautiful artificer who saved the kingdom from a demon decades ago. Now they have to raise this incredibly-talented but lacking-in-common-sense kid. Hijinks ensue! That would be really fun to watch, I think, but I'm less interested in the story of the kid.

フェアリーゴーン , "Fairy Gone": During the Great War, fairies were used as tools of war, imbued into people to allow them to summon powerful magical eidolons--"Fairy Soldiers." The Great War ended years ago, and without a war to fight, the fairy soldiers lost their purpose. Nine years later, Marlya Noel is working as a guard in an auction when a fairy soldier attacks, seeking to steal the page of the "Black Fairy Tome" when Marlya recognizes her as Veronica, the only other survivor of her village, destroyed in the war. During the chaos Marlya is implanted with a fairy, and later joins "Dorothea," an organization for displaced fairy soldiers. It was okay, I guess, but a lot depends on how the story develops. I might come back to this later and see if it ends up worth it. The first episode didn't tell me much.

さらざんまい, "Sarazanmai": Three middle school students--one idol obsessed, one delinquent, and one hanger-on--accidentally disturb a kappa statue in Tokyo and, after repeatedly referring to the kappa as a frog, have their shirikodama (尻小玉, "Butt bead") stolen and are transformed into kappa. As kappa, they are told they must fight "kappa-zombies" and steal their "desire," and begin by fighting a box kappa-zombie and stealing its shirikodama. They can only defeat it by working together to perform the "sarazanmai," but doing so means that one of their deepest, darkest secrets is revealed--in this case, that one of the students dresses up as the idol he's obsessed with and takes selfies.

There's always one series that's just off-the-wall bonkers bananas, and Sarazanmai is that series. Though apparently kappa stealing people's shirikodama is based on actual mythology, so it's more "ancient stories sound ludicrous to modern ears" that pure randomness. This could be a good show, where the nonsense comes together into a story about how it's a potential nightmare for other people to come to know your secrets but that's the only way to get close to people, but I don't know if I want to watch it even so.

消滅都市, "Vanished City," Eng: "Afterlost": A girl is standing in downtown Tokyo when something happens around her. It turns out she is Yuki, the only survivor of a mysterious incident that resulted in "Lost," an area of nothingness in Tokyo where nothing that enters ever leaves. A mysterious organization called "The Organization" is seeking her, and courier Takuya takes a mission to take her to Lost. But the Organization has more resources that he was expecting, including suborning one of his friends, not to mention the mysterious glowing spirits of those who vanished in Lost.

Apparently this is based on a Japanese mobile game series where the interactive portion involve driving around on a motor scooter, picking up powerups and avoiding obstacles. I'm not sure why they decided to make it into an anime, but it didn't grab me at all.

There was also an episode of One Punch Man Season Two, but I haven't seen Season One so I'm definitely not going to watch it. It did make me interested in Season One, maybe. I've heard a lot about how good it is.