Anime Chicago Spring Sampler

[dorchadas]

You might wonder how we managed to have a sampler when we're all stuck in germ jail, and the answer is that we did it on Discord. gmarchan shared his screen and we all watched and commented. It was lovely.

Ordered in my likelihood of watching any more of them:

• 波よ聞いてくれ, "Wave, Listen to Me!": Open with a woman reading late-night radio confessions to herself in the wilderness, being watched by a bear. But it's actually an advice radio show, and the bear is part of the mix? After a break up, out at a bar, she met a radio producer. Later, at her restaurant job, she hears a recording of herself complaining about men over the radio and realizes that the part of the night she can't remember was put on the radio. Storming in to complain, the manager puts her on live, and she learns that she has a natural gift for radio.
  
  This show was amazing. It has a lot of the kind of millennial angst that Sing 'Yesterday' to Me did, but with a lot of realism in the way the characters behave. For perhaps obvious reason, I could empathize with the woman who got screwed over by her ex, and while I wouldn't be as good at sudden radio action as she was...I kind of wish I were. She's a hot mess and I'm in.


• イエスタデイをうたって, "Sing Yesterday," Eng: "Sing 'Yesterday' for Me": Uozumi Rikuo works at a convenience store after graduating. He's just drifting through life, without any plans or goals, when he gets an alumni reunion mail. He doesn't attend, but an old crush of his from college brings him leftovers and they meet at a cafe and reminisce. Meanwhile, a university student keeps coming to the conbini to meet him, saying she used to know him. He has feelings for his old crush, but the university student has feelings for him. That leads him to realize that he needs to try something! So he confesses to his old crush...and it doesn't work out, so what will he do with his life now? And what about the university student?
  
  This has an extremely strong millennial mood. Of the four characters in the first episode, only one has a "real" job. The others have mostly given up on life, figuring that there's no point in trying if they're just going to fail, but Rikuo's confessions offers a bit of hope. It seems like it'll be about overcoming stagnation and depression, which sounds pretty good to me. I just wish that the university student was a guy with no romantic interest in Rikuo, but I'm still in.


• かくしごと, "Secrets," Eng: "Kakushigoto: My Dad's Secret Ambition": Hime is a high school student whose father draws ecchi manga full of dumb jokes called things like きんたましまし (Kinta Mashimashi, "Balls of Fury"). Gotō is caught between wanting to become famous so that his daughter can be proud of him and trying incredibly hard to prevent her from ever learning exactly what he does, and thus the plot unfolds.
  
  Also, there are puns. So many puns. For example, the show's title is "Kakushigoto," but her father's name is Kakushi Gotō, and "Kaku shigoto" (書く仕事) means "a drawing job." At one point they translate the word おしゃぴー oshapī as "Fancypeeps," which made me laugh incredibily hard--it's an abbreviation of おしゃれピープル oshare pīporu, "fancy people," so it makes perfect sense.
  
  I also laughed a lot at the joke that an editor's job is to prevent the mangaka from drawing what they want, because they'll get self-indulgent and draw some garbage that no one buys. Despite the silly premise, the actual progression is sincere and heartwarming, the jokes are funny--there's a whole scene where Hime and friends go into a "fancy" bookstore where there is no manga for sale and the drinks sound like spell names--and it seems cute and fun. I'm in.


• 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった, "I Reincarnated as a Villainess into an Otome Game with Only Doom Flags," Eng: "My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!": Catarina is a young rich woman, childhood friends with Geordo. One day, out walking with her friend, she falls on her head and remembers her previous life as a Japanese schoolgirl! A huge fan of otome games, she died at a young age and reincarnated into one of her games as the villain. Remembering that Catarina comes to a bad end in every single ending that she played through, she sets out trying to avoid her seemingly inevitable fate by fundamentally changing the plot. She starts studying magic and swordsmanship in case she has to fight in a duel or make money after being exiled, she's kind to the younger brother who turned against her in the game, and generally acts completely out of Catarina's character. But when one of her attempts to be close to her brother results in her being injured due to his magic running out of control, he is overwhelmed with guilt and avoids her, just like in the game. Can she really avoid destiny?
  
  There were a some really cute scenes here that took place in Catarina's mind, where various parts of her personality debate over what to do. And I really like the theme of avoiding one's inevitable fate, especially in a time where actual doom is actually hanging over us. And the voice actress has a really good range, demonstrated by the various "characters" in the mental debate scenes. I put this one on my to-watch list.


• アルテ, "Arte": In 16-century Florence, Italy, a young daughter of poor nobility loves drawing, but her mother disapproves. She tries to apprentice with a town artist, but none of them take her seriously because she's a woman. In the midst of disturbance, she's found by young and hot Leo(nardo DaVinci, probably), who agrees to take her on as an apprentice if she can complete a (so he thinks) impossible task of sanding down and preparing twenty paint boards by morning. But she puts her everything into it, to the point of damaging her hands to fulfill her dreams, and succeeds. Remembering his own childhood of being rejected by almost everyone, he takes her on.
  
  This one isn't really my thing, even though it seems well-made and fun. I don't know if I want a historical drama that will almost definitely turn into a romance by the end, because Leo being such a grouch means that she'll melt his heart through her sunny genkiness. It has a lot of ganbaru, but it's not my thing.


• BNA ビー・エヌ・エー, "B・N・A," Eng: "BNA: Brand New Animal": 獣人 (jūjin, "beast people") live amongst humanity and a lot of humans aren't fans (by which I mean, form murdering mobs). There's a special city called Anima City where beast people can free lives, and the main character flees there. Attacked by a mob, she is saved by other beast people along the way, and after they take a toll for saving her and transporting her to Anima City, they let her go on her way. At first it seems a paradise, but in the middle of a festival, a terrorist attack disrupts everything. A mysterious wolfman chases the terrorists and learns that humans are behind the attacks. Can peace really prevail?
  
  Get ready for racism, the metaphor! I'm guessing the answer is that peace cannot prevail because humans are terrible even though beast people just want to be left alone. The demonstration of the main tanuki girl's mysterious power and her declaration that she was once a (wo)man are interesting, and the art direction and soundtrack were great. A lot of other people in the club were really into this, and it does seem intriguing, but I wasn't really drawn to it. Also, it's on Netflix, which I don't have. Maybe once it leaves Netflix jail, I'll take a look.


• リスナーズ, "Listeners": The main character Echo is a garbage collector, meaning he roots through a landfill for valuable trash. One day he finds a girl who he recognizes as a "Player," one of the mecha pilots who pilot "Equipment" to fight the "Earless." She's totally amnesiac, so he explains the backstory to her and that he's building his own Equipment. She offers to pilot it, and when he says it's not that good, she leaves. But not forever, of course--Echo spends all night fixing Vox, and in the morning, the Earless have arrived! Though knocked into a hole, Echo's strong will to live inspires the girl. She pilots Vox, defeats the Earless, and the two of them team up, hop a train out of town, and start a life of adventure.
  
  Also, there are a ton of music references. The bar is called "Oasis" and there's a nearby "Dream Theater." The Equipment is called Vox.
  
  After we watched it, Tatsuhiro_Sato said:

  "You can't try to be cool, you just are."

  ...and that really sums it up. They're trying so hard to make something interesting and cool, but it's just...not. It's a bunch of references thrown together in the hopes that something sticks, and for me, nothing did. Not even the shots of Prince in the end credits.

文豪とアルケミスト "Author and Alchemist", Eng: "Bungo and Alchemist": A man named Melos in a Greek kind of kingdom is late to his sister's wedding because he got drunk, but it turns out that he tried to kill the local tyrant and was given one day's leniency to attend! He rushes back to prevent his friend, who was a hostage, from being killed...but a strangely-dressed man intervenes? And the tyrant and all his guards aren't people, they're actually 浸食者 (shinshokusha, "Corrupted," Eng: "Taints"), who enter literary works and destroy them. The strange man fights them in a huge battle and reveals to Melos that Melos is actually 太宰治 Dazai Osamu, author of the book 走れメロス / Run, Melos!, and the Corrupted are there to destroy the book. The Corrupted were trying to use Dazai's relationship with his mentor as a channel to achieve their ends, but he reconciled and...attained some kind of anime superpower and destroyed the Corrupted king with a scythe? And then the stranger revealed his real name: 芥川龍之介 Akutagawa Ryūnosuke.

This one was very odd. It started off playing the Ancient Greek setting perfectly, and then got stranger with no explanation. It seemed like there were two or three episodes of plot that we missed for most of it, and apparently it's based on a mobile game. Also, in English they called the Corrupted "Taints" which...is certainly a choice. Not for me.


I'm really glad it all worked out! And I've been looking for something to watch rather than just play Stellaris all day (which is a lot of what I've been doing lately), so I'm glad that I have some candidates now. It was a lovely way to spend my afternoon.

Comments

[omnipotent]

This post is making me want to get my own Crunchyroll account.

[0xtanuki]

Yesterday I watched:

* Extra Olympia Kyklos (オリンピア・キュクロス), which is a claymation comedy (still anime, technically?) about a young man in ancient Greece who doesn't want to be an athlete, he wants to be an artist, to the dismay of his elders. Through the magic of a lightning strike he awakens in 1964 Tokyo. That's literally it so far, the show was 15 minutes long.

I took a year off of anime, I come back and everything is an isekai now. It almost feels like the business of anime has just been ruined by a recommender system feedback loop. "Isekai was popular so we made more isekai, and now the most popular show is an isekai so we made more isekai shows and now isekai is the most popular category so if you want to be ranked highly you have to be an isekai also no matter how bad of a fit it is for your premise."

[dorchadas]

You're not wrong! And if it's not a real isekai, it's a full-immersion VR MMO "this is basically an isekai except it has a figleaf of realism."

You have seen Thermæ Romæ? It's not exactly the same, but it has the same "guy from the Classical period gets isekaied to Japan" premise, which I like because at least the isekaiing is different.

[0xtanuki]

Sometimes I feel like I haven't seen much of anything, but Thermæ Romæ sounds like a hilarious nationalist retcon'ing of history: "what if Japan was to credit for every advancement in ancient Rome?"