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Iz 🌟
post Jan 30 2021, 06:08 AM
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Anime

theme: edgy, dystopic big city anime

Beastars (Season 1) (2019)



One sentence summation: imagine Disney's Zootopia but where there actually is a threat of the carnivore eating the nice little bunny rabbit.

I say Season 1 of Beastars as its second season began airing in 2021, just like further seasons of nearly everything else that I normally enjoy (and as such I haven't started any of them!), but before a few weeks ago this would have just been the only Beastars you could see. And its a lot more Netflix than most anime, for starters, actually being on Netflix and one of their biggest anime pushes of the last two years, but also because of its approach to making a show that is somewhat dark and edgy. It necessarily does not fit in with the core anime style, as there are no human heads in the series, but it uses so many of the aesthetics that it is undoubtedly anime - its Japanese writer helps too.



The underlying feeling going through the first season of Beastars is fear. Because while its comedic to an extent and Legoshi, the protagonist wolf, is not too far off in characterisation from your average Pixar lead in his bumbling but ultimately good-hearted nature, you are constantly presented with a great fear that he, or any of the other carnivore characters, from a belligerent tiger bully to the lion mafia, will suddenly give into their animal instincts and brutally dismember any of the herbivores. And it sells that really well. Much better than Zootopia ever did, though because of audience differentiation, they aren't exactly comparable.

It does this as it starts with the death of a character in the drama club at the school it's set, by an unknown assailant who you follow from first-person perspective. It's a co-ed (for carnivores and herbivores) and as such this makes everyone really suspicious of the carnivores. I really enjoyed particularly the performance of Louis, a red deer who is the Head Boy of the school and is very keen to make himself get ahead in a world where carnivores rule the roost, and the main (cursed) love story between Legoshi and the white rabbit Haru is always very tense to watch. Very eager to pick up the second season soon.


Psycho-Pass 2 (2014)




I decided to return to Psycho Pass after inducting the first season into my anime classics by giving it a fun little rewatch over the summer. I'd never watched past it prior. The second season is generally not regarded as being good as the Philip K Dick-swinging reference bonanza of the first. That had to do for a couple of reasons. One, the nature of the mysterious Sibyl system was revealed in the first season and while it's not a terrible idea that they had for it, it's not a majorly inspiring one and having to set a story where the audience knows the rules rather than is interested in finding them out always pales. The other reason is the first season was written by Gen Urobuchi, writer of modern anime classics Fate/Zero and Madoka Magica, who has an uncanny touch for creating interest and shock for his viewers where you would otherwise least expect it - there's a good reason three of his most notable works are highlights of early 10s anime.

He did not come back for the second season, and hasn't really returned to anime writing outside of some less critically acclaimed projects since, certainly not much at all since about 5 years ago. So the second season lacks his input. It's not as bad as I was led to believe. You return to the city where police officers can only enforce justice on people who are willing to commit a crime by using magic thought-sensing guns. The next logical step is to confuse the guns even more so than the villain of season 1 did, capture a gun and an officer, convince them to fight on your side to bring down the system and Akane, one of the best anime protagonists ever, has to figure out how her strong resistance to mental manipulation can get overcome this dangerous new adversary. Who, like all dystopic villains has good intentions.

Ultimately though this was just preparation for season 3 which came out last year and I will watch... soon... and while this is fun and has some decent new characters (particularly the rather bratty Mika, who joins the force as a replacement Inspector and starts throwing her weight around), it has nothing on the first season. Watch the first season.
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Iz 🌟
post Feb 2 2021, 11:34 AM
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Anime

Re:Zero - Starting Life In Another World (Season 2 Part 1) (2020)



Re:Zero, after being delayed due to the virus, went into the split cour strategy, with the second half of this season airing now, and I need to catch up with that!

It continues the adventures of Subaru, fresh from beating his last time loop at the end of season 1. It was supposed to happen that a reairing of season 1 in the first quarter of the year would follow directly into the second season in the second quarter, and I'd been following that, and the disruption harmed it a bit, taking a little while before I got back to it.

As for its content, it did an excellent job of expanding the world, somehow making main character Natsuki Subaru's situation (equipped with both a power that resurrects him whenever he dies but back in time at a preset 'savepoint' that he has no control over AND an unfortunate propensity to attract brutal and gruesome deaths) even worse than it was for a lot of season 1. One of his friends has had the memory of themselves wiped from everyone else in the setting, leaving her as an unnamed woman in a coma, and that's only a sideshow to the fact that a cult is after everyone he's come to care about, and the girl he's most interested in, Emilia, is required by a group who've temporarily taken them in, to undergo a Trial.

Part 1 of Season 2 really delves into the background of the setting, giving up a lot of answers that weren't tackled in season 1, like Subaru's background, the motivations of the Witches who brought him to the fantasy world and are now playing around with him, along with emphasising how much of a mountain he has to climb to bring everyone he cares about through the trials ahead, even though he has multiple tries to do it. Anime's #1 despair simulator is at it again. Particularly good is the enigmatic Echidna, the witch of Greed who makes several appearances throughout this half of the season to mess with Subaru.

I'll return to this theme of return by death and multiple tries to save people when I conclude this thread by a series I have far more of a personal connection to, but Re:Zero is still one of my top 10 favourite anime shows and I'm very much looking forward to continuing it in 2021.

Azumanga Daioh (2002)



Azumanga Daioh is important in anime history for one simple reason, it is pretty much the progenitor of modern "cute girl" comedy anime. Which is a subgenre of anime that is very popular, particularly among those who are into slice-of-life, chill anime. If your weeb friend isn't into the latest hyped action anime, they're more likely into this. I'm generally more of the latter, this sort of thing tends to generate more 'good character' moments and is great for making you feel better.

Azumanga Daioh itself is based off of a 4-panel manga, where the comic artist gets 4 panels to tell a joke - much like its 2011 wacky counterpart Nichijou that I watched in 2019. Azumanga's more traditional and refined than that. All it is is, through 26 episodes, the journey of a group of girls through high school. That's it, no special premise, no interest or club that binds them together, certainly no alien or weird intrusions that start up a plot. Not even any romance (with the exception of one girl having proto-lesbian thoughts about their attractive friend Sakaki).

The only thing that makes Azumanga stand out is that each girl tends to have a social oddity that stops them from being a normal person, and that the show itself has a great tendency to create anime concepts that proliferate to this day in the weeb community. For instance, it's estimated that this is literally where the word "waifu" first entered Japanese otaku culture to mean a character that you love enough to make your pretend 'wife', after a creepy teacher gag character says the phrase "mai waifu" when the girls find a picture of his actual wife, who is hot as per the rule of comedy and as such they don't believe him. So going through this show was like watching anime history, as jokes and concepts that seem commonplace now just showed up, played straight, still having aged VERY well.

Honestly, if anyone wants to know where they should start with comedy anime, I would have to recommend this one, it's a cute, family-friendly show that just oozes good vibes. I specifically followed a Twitter bot that at random intervals posts a random screencap from the anime and while I don't normally make a habit of following gag accounts, this one always brings a smile whenever they bring up some random thing from the show.

I love the character Osaka most especially out of all the girls, though they all have their good points. Osaka though, she's this instant classic of a comic character, a girl from Osaka (hence her nickname) who always speaks really slowly and has a thousand-yard stare such that you don't know whether she's really an airhead - and most of the things she says would indicate as such - or is permanently on a substance of some kind. Though the adorable Sakaki, an intimidating looking girl who dreams about petting cats all day or their incredibly irresponsible and lazy teacher Yukari-sensei are pretty great highlights too.
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Iz 🌟
post Feb 2 2021, 12:22 PM
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Anime

Aria: The Animation, The Natural, The Origination (2005-2008)





Speaking of chill, slice-of-life anime, I spent a lot of 2020 posting on Twitter about this anime in particular, because I identified it as an anime that I could regularly share spoiler-free (as a slice-of-life anime spoilers don't really matter), beautiful screenshots from and it was also one that a friend from an anime Discord I joined this year particularly recommended going and seeing. I don't normally do this on Twitter but for Aria, the last one of which was my 200th completed anime on MyAnimeList, I'm glad I made an exception as my journey of watching it is chronicled very neatly in the above three Twitter threads. I'd heard about it occasionally before this, as one of the cornerstones of the slice-of-life subgenre, but I wasn't quite prepared for how beautiful this could be.

Aria is set in the far distant future, on a terraformed Mars that is now mostly a giant ocean and has been renamed Aqua. Set on Aqua is an incredibly faithful recreation of Venice, known as Neo-Venezia. The girls in the show never go off of Aqua, there's only a few references to space and a lot more references to accurately themed Venetian locations so in truth, all of the space backdrop, and occasional supernatural elements is to infuse a little bit of mystical (sometimes Japanese) lore into the setting of Venice.

In the setting, there are people associated with the traditional elemental beings of sylphs (air), gnomes (earth), salamanders (fire), and undines (water). The main characters in Aria are undines, working at Neo-Venezia's gondola tours and taking people who come from Earth (now called Manhome) to see the long-lost city of Venice in all of its glory.

All of that long preamble is to say this is mostly a show about six Undine young ladies who are the major prodigies of the three most prominent gondola tourism companies in the city, and also best of friends and training partners for the younger trio (Akari, Aika and Aqua) to train to become better at being a tour guide. Each company has a cat mascot (cats can understand humans in this setting and there's a mystical subplot involving the king of the cats Cait Sith); the company that main character Akari works for has the mascot Aria.

This is just the absolute good vibes show. It's very lowkey, so lowkey that you might even say that nothing much happens in the slightest, because generally an episode is Akari and one of her friends messing about on a gondola, President Aria makes some weird cute noises, they learn something about the history of Neo-Venezia (often very faithfully recreated with places like the Piazza of Santo Marco or the Rialto), and maybe has an emotional moment, but nothing much happens. That's the selling point, NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS. And that nothing happening is so good.

Okay, that is a lie, because there's a lot of great character development in watching Akari, Aika and Alice grow through their mistakes in the Animation, to the point where they're practicing really hard in the second season 'Natural', to the final season 'Origination' where their hard work comes to fruition. And Akari or someone else exploring the city is fun for seeing the idealised society it presents. Meanwhile, exploring how current queens of the water Alicia, Akira and Athena have gotten into their positions through regular backstories and occasional episodes dedicated to their troubles is great. As I'm the sort of person to love a dominant, in-charge unapologetically brash lady, Akira is my favourite of the six, but all have regularly incredible moments (Aika's character developments in particular are some of the best I've ever seen in a character show, going from a shouty if adorably precocious brat in the first season to a graceful but still funny woman by the end), along with a small number of regular side characters they interact with, including a regular cast of boys who have enjoyable platonic relationships with the girls - except for Aika and the short geeky gnome Al, which is blushing and embarrassment city all over, particularly in a memorable late episode where they get trapped together for a while.

Aria is not perhaps the most exciting show, but it does very great job of creating characters you'll love, get attached to and enjoy seeing it grow - and writing about it now I'm realising how much I missed having that sort of regular chillout time with them - fortunately I've been saving a little epilogue known as Avvenire for when I really want to go back to it.
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Iz 🌟
post Feb 2 2021, 01:43 PM
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Anime

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Part 3 (Stardust Crusaders), Part 4 (Diamond Is Unbreakable), Part 5 (Golden Wind) (2014-2018)



I never thought I'd catch up to finish Jojo's, and I can attribute one result of the pandemic to that I finished this long-running anime series in absolutely no time at all, all of the currently released parts after finishing Season 1 (which comprises Part 1 and 2) at the end of last year. See the thing is though, I didn't really like Season 1 all that much, those are adapted from the first parts of the manga which was released all the way back in the 80s, when author Araki hadn't really quite unleashed his true mad genius on the thing yet. All he'd really established is that this long-running series comprises the adventures of the Joestar family (most having names beginning with 'Jo..' and their encounters with bizarre creatures ranging from vampires to mummies to (in one case) Nazis. It wasn't bad, but it was a bit generic, and even some nice historical settings, a hook-dropping family feud, the mastering of a special energy power called Hamon and Indiana Jones-like antics didn't make it truly standout. There are some good bits in Season 1 and it's ideal viewing for the rest of the craziness, but the series advances time and generations to the 80s in Part 3, and it's all the better for it.

Part 3 was where he established one of the key concepts of the series that has carried forward, dumping Hamon for the power of Stands - special beings that stand beside their master and give them special powers. In the case of main character Jotaro and a number of others, this manifests in what are effectively 'punch ghosts', his Stand Star Platinum basically acts as his fists to get him out of trouble with mighty hammy 'ORAORAORA's. As the series continues, Araki experiments with the concepts, as Stands can be anything, to create what are effectively puzzle fights - every new scrape the main characters get into plays by completely different rules, and rather than just a simple theory of escalation, every episode is more along the lines of 'how will the main characters escape this new situation - will they without consequence?'.

It's really rewarding watching because Stands, while good at the start, get better and better as you go along, at first they have basic powers and are easy to defeat as Jotaro, his grandfather Joseph and some companions travel from Japan to Egypt in order to save his mother from dying to her own out-of-control Stand, perpetuated by long-time foe of the Joestar family Dio. The first part of Stardust Crusaders has a really fun Around The World in 80 Days feel to it as they work their way across Asia, meeting stands that for the most part take inspiration in names from the Tarot family of cards. It's fun, if a bit formulaic.

Once they get to Egypt there's another full season of Stardust Crusaders as they get closer to Dio's mansion, punctuated by menacing Egyptian-themed foes - all in all, Stardust Crusaders is an excellent heroes' journey that is basic for Jojo's, but sets the stage with its puzzle fights and Stand theming for even greater things in subsequent parts.

Part 4, Diamond Is Unbreakable. I enjoyed the most out of all of these parts, a comedic undertone one as the setting is small-town Japan, a pleasant place in Morioh, modelled after Araki's own hometown of Sendai in north-eastern Japan in the late 90s. Here the stands begin to be named after rock bands and songs, main character Josuke has Crazy Diamond, who can heal anyone around him (as well as being a serviceable punch ghost), a comedic side stand allowing for perfect cooking is called Pearl Jam, and the ultimate enemy of the part has a stand known as Killer Queen. Araki's a fan of classic rock. Part 4 is brilliant, it has a great nostalgic vibe to this sort of small-town living, the fights are tense, there's a lot of fun callbacks to earlier parts and some of what goes on is inventive and at times downright horrifying.

Part 5, Golden Wind, the final released part is basically Jojo's in Italy, where an offshoot of the Jojo family grows up in Naples surrounded by gangsters. Again, lots of great music references, this time the main character's Stand is called Golden Experience after the Prince album, and other main character Stands include Sex Pistols, a revolver with sentient bullets, Moody Blues, a Stand that can replay time and Aerosmith (naturally used by the most ladylike-looking of the men), a model remote-control airplane outfitted with real bullets. Also includes: a stand called Spice Girl.
Set only a few years after Part 4, it's full of mafia-like shenanigans, a promise from main character Giorno to become a mafia boss in order that he can control the debauchery going on in his hometown of Naples, and a tour right across Italy as agents of the current mafia hunt down his rogue group fulfilling a promise to an outgoing mafia boss. Mafia with anime shenanigans basically, and it is also very fun.

There are future parts of the manga that have yet to be adapted, Araki finished off part 6 in 2003 and has been working on parts 7 and 8 (at a slightly reduced rate) ever since. Time will tell if they ever get the adaptations they probably deserve - I'm really bad with reading manga so I can't confirm, but I expect it to happen in the next few years.

In order to fully get the setting right and feed into Araki's love of music, while the OPs are dramatic Japanese power-pop like normal (and their great), ending themes are actually pop music from the era that the story is set - so the first ending theme to Part 3 is The Bangles 'Walk Like An Egyptian', then it's followed by the wistful instrumental 'Last Train Home' by Pat Metheny Group, the ending to Part 4 is Savage Garden's 'I Want You', and the ending themes to part 5 are from Jodeci 'Freek N'You' (a 90s RnB track) and Enigma's wonderful 'Modern Crusaders'

Excellent, creative action anime, anyone who thinks that action shows can be boring should try this, lots of fabulously dressed characters, weird and unnatural situations and great music references. It's now well in one of my favourite overall anime series ever, pretty much entirely on these three parts.
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Iz 🌟
post Feb 3 2021, 08:33 AM
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Anime

Gintama (Ep. ~50-~150 - 2007-2009)





Gintama is a long-running series I am determined to finish one day, and I've written about it in I believe two previous years with the intent that one day I would. I bring it up again because I made a solid effort to make it into the main portion of the series - it's famous as a series that is beloved by nearly everyone who makes it in this far, but is inconsistent at the start because of how many episodes it takes setting up a large cast of incidental characters.

For those who aren't aware, it's a series set in 19th century Tokyo (called Edo) where aliens have invaded and control the government, setting up modern life trappings for the purpose of comedy, though for much of the episodes I watched, the sci-fi angle took a major backseat (compared to its first 50 episodes) in order to focus on its samurai angle (including fictionalised versions of the historic Shinsengumi, a secret police force that in history carried out the will of the military shogunate government of the 1860s; many of its most famous members are now Japanese cultural icons) and mostly regular Earth absurdities.

At the point I am at, I have some interesting feelings towards Gintama. It's not unconditional love, because the series, primarily a comedic one that gets ultra-serious when it heads towards long episodic arcs, often delivers a dud episode that relies particularly on a few certain comedic angles that get old (particularly straight man Shinpachi's habit of loudly calling out anything absurd), but when it gets serious, it really gets exciting, as all that set-up creates an intricate interwoven political situation between the characters as they get into anime fights in whatever absurd situation the author has dreamed up this week. To the point where deadbeat comedic lead Gintoki being at the centre of assassination plots, secret police mutinies, robot uprisings and prostitute infiltrations is just a normal part of the show. Also a normal part of the show is up to an entire episode devolving into some comedic side-trail like one arc where a full episode of the wider, very serious, arc was about four characters stuck inside of a bathroom, unable to leave because there's no toilet paper. Gintama just takes you on whatever journey it feels like doing, and that's enough to make it very nice comfort viewing. It plays a lot of story beats relatively straight for such a visionary show, but this I can forgive that considering how wild it gets. I bet I'll finish it by the end of this year, there's only... about 200 episodes to go. Eh, maybe.

The current arc I'm watching introduces a very great character by the name of Tsukuyo who I've seen love for since the early days, maybe she will finally tip the scales into making me an unapologetic Gintama fan. At the moment it's a solid 8/10 though.
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Iz 🌟
post Feb 3 2021, 09:05 AM
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Anime

Tonikaku Kawaii (2020)



Tonikaku Kawaii has a meaning of, well, essentially, 'very cute'. Its alternate title is "Fly Me To The Moon", which makes a little bit of sense as it's constantly hinted, but never outright stated, that female lead Tsukasa, is a personification of Princess Kaguya, a Japanese fairytale character who lives on the moon, came down to Earth as a baby, grew up among humans, and turned away suitors by challenging them with an impossible task until one succeeded; having done so, and getting married, she revealed she came from the moon and returned there. That hasn't happened in Tonikaku Kawaii as of the end of the first season, but so far, one thing has stayed the same and is this show's main selling point, it's an adorable depiction of married life.

Honestly, this came out of nowhere for me, I had it as a 'possibly cute' show on the Autumn 2020 lineup and I figured it would be at best, only okay and something I'd quickly forget after I finished it. In a season where I was hyped over the return of an old favourite, it became nearly as important for me to catch this new one every week very quickly. Its main strength is that if you like seeing a couple act stupidly in love with each other, and I'm all for that positivity when both members of the couple are very loveable dorks, then you will absolutely love this.

Named after a space agency and ever resentful at his parents for doing so, Nasa is a very hard and determined worker, until he is saved from being run over by a lorry in incredibly unusual circumstances by a beautiful and powerful girl who clearly used lots of her power in stopping the truck. He immediately asks her to marry him, she says yes and disappears for 2 years, until he's 18 presumably. Because at that point she turns up and wants to make it official. Basically what follows is a series of situations as both Nasa and Tsukasa struggle to believe that they can be loved by someone else so attractive/kind, and seeing both sides of that situation is very gratifying and insightful for a model of a good relationship - heavily idealised though it is. It's also somehow funny how prudish they are about lowering their boundaries around each other, normally this sort of pussyfooting would be something I'd criticise an anime for but here it just serves to add to the wholesome feeling, as well as the cheering when they finally go... well, as far as they go in the show. It might continue, there's certainly a lot open for a continuation, but in the meantime this is a very cute friendly romance show.

there's also a very bizarre nightcore-esque song used as the opening theme, which if nothing else adds a great bit of nostalgia-fied hype.
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Iz 🌟
post Feb 4 2021, 01:10 AM
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Anime

Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War (Season 2) (2020)



(a real translation, at least originally, there was a minor controversy because the Japanese line was something more along the lines of "Why are you keeping your distance so much?" and while I liked the idea that translators can input topical references without changing the meaning of the line, others... did not and it was retroactively changed)

My favourite anime of 2019 was Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War, season 1. It's only through a number of very strange circumstances that season 2 is not my favourite anime of 2020 as well, through an old favourite of mine getting an unexpected sequel. As far as shows airing fully in 2020 though, it has that locked down. If you count that. Because my love for my #1 is based on previous fan experience and a complete mystery about where it's going, but as far as skill at making an entire episode, no, the entire season entertain you, there is nothing that can beat Kaguya and how Season 2 rose incredibly to the challenge of holding the anime community together through its darkest hour of 2020.

Anime was not wholly unaffected by the coronavirus, though it certainly weathered it better than many other entertainment mediums, like those that require live-action shoots. But several shows did get cancelled or delayed in the spring of 2020, as production delays did seep through. Which is completely understandable, in fact, if anything, the industry has been too accommodating to its fans and not enough to its workers as the backlog has caught up and we're now going through an incredible winter season of airing shows. But Spring 2020 was supposed to be a big season, there was supposed to be Re:Zero, Oregairu and Kaguya as as a trio of very big shows that virtually everybody who'd been around in the anime community for a while was going to continue, simultaneously. In the event, Re:Zero and Oregairu got delayed to summer, numerous other smaller shows had to push back production, in some cases, once the show had already started airing, creating a horrible loss of momentum. The net result was that Summer 2020 was one of the sparsest seasons of anime for years, and as for Spring, it was pot luck as to whether a show you'd started would be able to continue through the entire season. In all of that, Kaguya-Sama was left standing as one of the few shows that managed, somehow, to deliver on time, most certainly the only show that a majority of people in the community were watching, looking even more beautiful than the stunning season 1. I remember that about the only time I'd see anime chat on my timelines was around the time a new Kaguya episode aired. By the time it had finished it had ranked one of the best shows on MyAnimeList, incredibly for a comedy and romance show, as most of the time, the absolute best ranks are left for the hype action shows.

What is up with Kaguya and why should it be your new favourite show? Uh, do you like the idea of two people who are clearly in love but don't want to admit it to each other? Because THAT'S certainly a theme I've come to like a lot. And with Shirogane and Kaguya, the two leads being both perfect human beings lording it over the student council, with agent of chaos Chika, butt monkey Ishigami, and new girl + conflict-generator Miko, there is a cast of incredibly watchable characters at this whole 'love is war' game. But more importantly than even the characters and the premise is the show (well, principally the author, Aka Akasaka)'s ability to create absolute incredible comedy out of this premise, turning everyday interactions into dramatic mindgames over how the characters want to appear to their peers. The first season did well with this approach, did very well. The second season improves it. You have board games, Kaguya alter egos, school elections, stargazing on the roof that falls into Shirogane nerding out over the moon - as above, get in there Kaguya and that doesn't even begin to cover some of the side-alleys and school politics that the route ends up going down. It also looks really, stunningly beautiful. Nearly every shot of Kaguya's face I was adding to an image library.



This is genuinely the highest quality comedy I've seen in years, perhaps ever. Season 2 served to confirm what I was fairly sure of in Season 1. By holding a thread that you want to see happen (i.e. Shirogane and Kaguya getting together) as its main story drive and taking full advantage of the fact that the characters are sheltered (but well brought up) adolescents, everything fell into place and I had this as a highlight of my week throughout the spring of 2020.
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post Feb 4 2021, 01:52 AM
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Anime


(the last planned post in this thread)
Higurashi: When They Cry - Gou (2020)


(my pinned tweet for the next little while)



An announcement I was completely unprepared for happened at the beginning of the year. Studio Passione, the studio that had just shocked the anime world by making their major debut Interspecies Reviewers of all things, had been contracted to create a mysterious NEW Higurashi project. What that could be, we weren't sure. Higurashi had had a complete anime adaptation back in the 00s, even if it was necessarily inferior to reading the visual novels (100+ hour story condensed into two seasons, mostly missing out on character motivations and fears/paranoia that often end up covering pages and pages in the novel), it was a good adaptation. So the original thought was a remake, as the main issue with the old shows that I had always had had been the low-quality animation, which, to be fair, can also be nostalgic in the right light. A remake that covered some of the missed out material, perhaps a launching pad for author Ryukishi07 to spearhead some good adaptations of Umineko, the next entry in the When They Cry series - the existing anime adaptation of which has been widely panned from all accounts.

With the virus, its start got delayed a bit to autumn. But somehow what I thought would be a nice nostalgia trip turned into the anime discourse + experience trap of my life. Because what Ryukishi and Passione had kept secret in their devilishness was that while the first episode of Higurashi Gou (then still called Higurashi NEW) seemed like a remake, even using the old, glorious opening music by Eiko Shimamiya, the second episode upended everything. It started the episode by revealing a mystery of Higurashi that in the original story, you don't get to know until about halfway through the show. Then they revealed the title Gou, revealing that this was in fact a third season of Higurashi - through the nature of the show, repeating the same summer in 1983 trying to survive death approaching (from someone, different each time, that you'd otherwise trust - hey, it's the anime version of Among Us), it was able to fool people for a bit.

Some didn't like that. Most especially all the new people who'd been told that this new shiny version of Higurashi (and it is very shiny) was a safe place to start for new fans. Making a show over a decade after the last major entry in that franchise, I guess you kinda have to do it that way. The thing is, while this experience wasn't great for the new fans - though I've been very happy to see that more and more people seem to be going through the old shows because of this, and even a few new people who've stuck with Gou have appreciated this novel way to experience Higurashi - it has been a gold, unforgettable one for the old fans. The appeal of Higurashi is based on the many mysteries it layers within its plots, such that the viewer has to go through several loops to uncover them all and gets to enjoy the steady turn from theorycrafting in the first arcs to understanding how it all comes together in the last ones. That's the original experience, anyway. But once that is done, while it's still a great time, you can't really get that new experience of uncovering the mystery again... Unless, you can.

Gou basically introduces a new situation, all of its story loops are marked '-damashi' or 'Deceiving Arcs', they play out much like the original arcs, to a point, and then everything resolves in a drastically different manner, including breaking some cardinal rules of the situation that the original Higurashi had set. Shocking every old fan in the process, making something you love to death feel new again, I can't overstate just how good a feeling this is. Why it happens that way is actually still to be uncovered, it's still airing, but the point is that once again, the main characters must escape from the loops with everyone surviving, breaking free of the curse of the village of Hinamizawa and its hold on the main characters that comes to drag them back there even after they've escaped from it once (with most having no memory of previous loops). That has to be done with essentially every major character in the story aligned towards one goal, or somehow, something will go awry and people will die. It's either find that incredibly difficult road to happiness, or those cursed to immortality give up and accept continual brutal deaths in a neverending summer. The latest arcs are even covering completely new material as they seek to answer just what the hell is going on this time, something I can't wait to find out the full truth of.

As ever, the characters make it shine, particularly, among others, Keiichi, the best dull-main-character-looking-MC to be nothing of the sort, Rika, the adorably cute shrine maiden priestess, Shion and Mion, green-haired twin sisters and scions of the locally powerful Sonozaki family, Mion being one of my favourite fictional characters in any medium ever (short version: relentlessly cheery, incredible leader when the chips are down, treats every game like a life-and-death competition, incorruptibly pure (?), has great expectations foisted upon her for being the heir to her family) and my Twitter avatar until at least Gou finishes if not longer. She's been there since the middle of 2019 and I would feel really weird changing her at this point. Seeing them in action again, getting more insight on their already very detailed characters, finding out new things about a franchise I thought I knew everything about has been the ultimate fan experience. And while I'd never say Higurashi is the horror show that it has as its reputation (most of its infamous shock value scenes are few and far between and the point is actually more on mysteries), several of the scenes in Gou have really outdone themselves with how brutal and devastating they can be.

In a very rare occurrence, the opening theme AND the ending theme are my favourite of the year as well, I did not expect this, but both of them set up the characters through poignant slides and wistful J-rock so well that I was almost as hyped for just seeing them as I was seeing the next episode of the show, which has become a regular Friday morning/lunchtime ritual for me (as it airs Thursday night where I am) in order that I can catch up properly on one of the greatest and most unexpected anime experiences I've ever had. Best show of 2020.





thread fini. self-indulgence over. all glory to Higurashi
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Lo-Fi Version Time is now: 28th March 2024 - 11:34 AM