(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ Animes

[mharr]

The words "in Japan" feel redundant there. Anime retreating to the past is a detail of a global epidemic.

[Upthorn]

Otherside Picnic
Kayin has referred to the essence of Yuri as a picture of a bench that two girls may have sat upon together in years past. By that metric, this anime is a picture of a bench that is the subject of an urban legend stating that sometimes, in the middle of the night, you can see the afterimage of two girls who once sat upon it.

That's right, Otherside Picnic is a yuri (implied) romance where the protagonists are two college-age girls who bond over their shared expeditions into the Otherside: a land of cosmic horror where all those paranormal urban legends originate.

Sorawo wound up in the Otherside while investigating urban legends, and Toriko is combing through the Otherside, hunting for her Senpai who disappeared inside it three months ago, and looks just like Sorawo, but with blue eyes and longer hair.

In the first episode, they go hunting-for Wiggle-waggles, giant wispy monsters that are said to drive you mad if you look directly at them. Sorawo discovers that the key to defeating them is... to look directly at them while attacking! She begins to go mad, and grows weird tendrils around her eyes. Toriko saves her by pulling the weird tendrils out, and in the aftermath they discover that Sorawo now has one blue eye with the power to see the true nature of all Otherside creatures, while Toriko now has a ghostly hand with the power to interact directly with the true nature of all Otherside creatures.

Sorawo's eye and Toriko's hand combine to allow them to deal with all the hazards they come across in their future slice-of-monster-life-of-the-week adventures, allowing Sorawo to gradually realize that she feels differently about Toriko than she does about other girls.

There's also a beach episode after a random portal back from Otherside left them stranded in Okinawa, so they got drunk and bought bikinis.

If you've ever wondered "What if Welcome to Nightvale were a Yuri anime?" Otherside Picnic might be for you.

I typically only take DBZ in Abridged form any more, but I got a chance to see the new Broly film and it made me feel 13 again. And no one gets groped!

A lot of the humor in DBZ Abridged makes me uncomfortable, too. There's a trade-off, I suppose, in that DBZA is shorter, but a higher percentage of it is that uncomfortable humor. But probably less time in absolute minutes.

I might take your advice about the DB Super Broly movie if I can find a good place to stream it, though!

[Mothra]

[Angry Beaver]

DBZA has problems of its own, e.g. gay jokes

A lot of the humor in DBZ Abridged makes me uncomfortable, too. There's a trade-off, I suppose, in that DBZA is shorter, but a higher percentage of it is that uncomfortable humor. But probably less time in absolute minutes.

I might take your advice about the DB Super Broly movie if I can find a good place to stream it, though!

My apologies. I didn't mean to imply that DBZA was in any way morally superior to the original, just that I haven't watched much of anything Dragonball proper since it aired on Toonami.

But really, if watching slabs of beef wail on each other so hard you're trying to explain rainbows to dogs sounds like your cup of tea, then give Broly a whirl. It has the dumbest reasons to collect the Dragonballs and simultaneously made me care about Broly and his friends.

[Upthorn]

Oddtaxi
Shortly after I first decided to subscribe to Crunchyroll, the Spring 2021 anime season began, and Esperath linked a list of anime that Crunchyroll was simulcasting that season. One caught my eye:

This town should look familiar, but suddenly, it's not...

I decided to check out what looked like a cute little slice of life with talking animals and a magic taxi. Instead...

Odokawa is a taxi driver. He has no life to speak of outside of driving his taxi. But recently, one of his fares went missing right after he gave her a ride. This situation draws him in to a world of yakuza and corrupt cops, as he tries to avoid both suspicion and retribution. Fortunately, he has an uncanny ability to recognize anyone he's ever met before, even if he can't see their face.

Oddtaxi is basically a Coen brothers movie, set in Tokyo, starring a middle-aged Walrus who drives a taxi, and is terrified of water.

Edit:
I guess I forgot to add any of my personal impressions. But if it wasn't clear, Oddtaxi is very good. If you have any inclination to watch it after reading the review, please do. It is actually kind of amazing.

This isn't going to be my opinion of all the anime I do in this mini-review series. (For instance, Otherside Picnic is nice and fun, but lacks any depth or real sense of stakes).

[Mongrel]

Okay, that looks pretty cool.

[Friday]

Okay, it's probably been long enough that the "current meme anime hype factor" has died down enough to actually discuss the anime.

Please don't bully me, Nagatoro is a fun anime about a teen gal girl with a tan* who likes to bully her senpai.

The first two episodes are mean about it. If you have strong reactions to mean bully stuff, you will not like the first two episodes, so maybe don't watch the anime. But after the first two eps Nagatoro starts to get the feels and the anime becomes "Nagatoro is jealous whenever any other girl gives Senpai attention and her friends know this so constantly fuck with her/him" and it's great.

The bullying is mostly fluff at that point.

Overall, the anime has good and bad points. Like how sometimes Nagatoro is drawn with a fleshfang (no) and sometimes with normal fang (very yes) and I swear to god there was a frame where she was drawn with both at the same time.

I just enjoy watching tsundere girls get jealous and the author knows that and cranks both up to 11. It's weird that this show is marketed as a bully/M show because nope, it's really not about that past the first two eps.



*this part is extremely important

[Upthorn]

I'm not sure if Tsundere is quite the correct term for Nagatoro. I mean yes, she does the whole "deliberately turn him on and then call him a perv cause it worked" thing. But I've always known tsunderes as more faking apathy than faking nemesis status.

When I thought about this a while back, I decided the term I'd use for Nagatoro is sadodere inasmuch as while MC isn't a masochist as such, Nagatoro is definitely an emotional sadist.

[nosimpleway]

Please don't bully me, Nagatoro is a fun anime about a teen gal girl with a tan*

Without any further elucidation I'm not sure whether her skin is darkened by exposure to the sun or if she's one of those girls who uses -tan as an honorific instead of -chan because she thinks it's cuter that way or something

[Friday]

She's on the swim team.

[Niku]

aa okay yeah that's extremely important then

[Upthorn]

Well since Friday covered Nagatoro...

Girlfriend Girlfriend
Is an occasionally heartwarming romantic comedy about three certifiable morons independently inventing polyamory.

Naoya is an idiot with a sense of justice so strong that it feels dishonest to him if he ever has a thought and doesn't speak it out loud.
Saki is an athletic girl, and his childhood friend, who's finally decided to go out with him after him asking her once a month for 9 years.
Nagisa is an adorable klutz who isn't good at anything and took the last six months off school in order to prepare herself for asking Naoya out.

The first episode consists of Naoya receiving Nagisa's confession on the roof, deciding "I can't honestly say I don't want to date her, but I can't cheat on Saki, either!" and dragging Nagisa to meet Saki so they can ask her for permission to date at the same time.
Before they can do that, however, Saki is like "Who is this really cute girl? What, she has something to talk to me about? But how can we talk if we don't know each other?" and the three of them wind up basically going on a date where Saki develops a girl-crush on Nagisa.

The rest of the series consists of the trio encountering difficulties, and all working together to solve them, from how to keep their triad a secret from the rest of the school, to how to deal with the girls being jealous of each other, to how to shake off the hot-tub streamer who found out about them and took stealing Naoya's attention as a personal challenge, to how to actually advance their relationship(s) amidst all the craziness of their lives.

It alternates between painfully stupid, painfully awkward, hilariously bad, purposely hilarious, and genuinely moving.

I can't give it a strong recommendation. In fact, with all times Saki beats Naoya up for the dumb things he says, I can't really give it even a weak recommendation. But I would personally appreciate it if any of you took the time to sit through it and shared their thoughts. If not because it's actually good, then because it's an entertaining trash fire.

[Upthorn]

That reaction is completely understandable. Today, I'm doing an anime that Mothra mentioned a few months back, but I disagree with him about.

Mushoku Tensei is fundamentally a show about growing up.
Is a reincarnation-isekai about a hikikomori who gets hit by a truck. But it does a lot of things different from you might expect.
First of all, at least thus far (three episodes into season 2), Rudeus' name prior to being reincarnated has not been mentioned even once.
Secondly, where other series would skip straight ahead to teenage years or adulthood, Mushoku Tensei starts with Rudeus being born, and as of the end of Season 1, he is, if I recall correctly eleven.

Now, Rudeus begins his second life as a shit-for-brains pervert might-as-well still be 14-year old hikikomori. And he stays there, developmentally for an uncomfortable length of time.

In his previous life, he was traumatized at school when his classmates stripped him naked, tied him up in front of the whole school, and all took turns making fun of his tiny little limp dick. This left him so scarred that he got stuck as that helpless little teenage kid for the rest of his life, spending the next 20 years without even leaving his bedroom, until one day, he stomps the floor to get people to quiet down, unknowingly interrupting his (sister's) father-in-law's Shinto funeral ceremony. Bro-in-law goes berserk, takes a baseball bat to all his things, and throws him out of the house. Here is where he gets hit by a truck. Mothra describes it as a suicide, but it's actually the old "throws himself in front of a truck to shove two other people out of the way." Granted, the two other people were 16-year old girls, so it's debatable whether he was saving them on purpose, or just saw girls and jumped at them.

Anyway, 35-year old shit for brains self-centered virgin pervert is now newborn shit-for-brains self-centered virgin pervert. But he's being forced to actually interact with other people, now. Which means he gets to see the consequences of acting this way. He starts coming to terms with the harm this causes when his dad gets both his mom and the family maid pregnant on the same day. The initial plan to resolve this situation is to fire the maid. The plan is that the maid will stay long enough to help deliver the legitimate child, and then travel back to her hometown on foot. In the middle of winter. While due to bear a child herself.

Rudeus can't stand the situation, intervenes by talking about how excited he'll be to be getting two little sisters at the same time, and begins the slow path to realizing that being a shit-for-brains self-centered pervert is maybe not the coolest way for a guy to be.

The change is uncomfortably slow, and he, does damage himself, along the way, including sexually harassing his magic tutor, humiliating his best friend, and sexually assaulting his cousin (because he doesn't stop to think about how she's being coerced into the situation). These situations are mostly given the weight they are due. And the currently active subplot is about him encountering some slavers, and coming to terms with the fact that the large staff of attractive female servants he loved so much at his great-uncle's estate were probably sex-slaves that were kidnapped from their villages as small children.

This is all set in a well-developed fantasy world, with beautiful art, and stunningly gorgeous background art.

It is very frequently uncomfortable to watch, and if any of this makes you want to skip it, I can't blame you, and I won't argue. But I do feel like the uncomfortable parts are consciously uncomfortable, for a purpose, and it is a disservice to write them off as simply being the thoughtless fanservice and sexual humor that the '80s '90s and early '00s led us to expect from anime.

[Upthorn]

Sk8 the Infinity
Imagine that Initial D were a shonen anime about skateboarding, and had no Eurobeat.

It's colorful, and the gimmick is that the main protag is an accomplished snowboarder who's just learning to skate, and therefore has a delightful mixture of utter incompetence and jaw-dropping tricks.

No real depth, but the downhill skateboard races are fun to watch.

[Upthorn]

The Idaten Deities Know Only Peace
Is the most brilliantly animated, stylistically interesting new anime I've seen in years.

I mean, watch this opening animation sequence:


Seriously, this is up there with Mob Psycho 100 season 2 in terms of the best anime opening song and animation pairings of all time.

It's more or less a battle anime, with really fun battle sequences. The main characters are all a type of battle deity who spring into existence to save humanity from the demon menace. But the previous generation of Idaten all sacrificed themselves to seal demonkind completely away 800 years ago, leaving only Rin, the youngest among them, behind to guard the seal in case it were ever to fail.

Rin, the centuries-old-wizened master who still looks like a little girl, has taken it upon herself to train the new generation of Idaten for this eventuality, but her training routine is so brutal that only two Idaten have tried to stick it out. The one who doesn't get introduced until the fourth episode stuck it out until he graduated simply because he was too scared of what Rin would do to him if he disobeyed her. Meanwhile Hayate, who is literally Goku, has stuck it out for the 80 years of his life so far simply because he is Goku. He is just Goku. He is literally just Goku.

The other two are Ysley, the smart one, who is vaguely concerned about a possible reemergence of demonkind, but has decided to arm himself with knowledge instead of power, and Paula, the blue-haired, busty, bird-brained, bimbo, who kinda just hangs around communing with nature and watching when humans do interesting things.

But in the past 800 years there's been absolutely no sign of demon activity, until today. Under the guidance of a mysterious scientist, the fascist dictatorship of Nazi GermanyThe Zoble Empire has just found a demon cryogenically preserved in the Arctic ice-cap, and is attempting to revive it. And when the Idaten intervene, they discover that the Zoble Empire has secretly been taken over by demon-human fusions, who have been hiding from them in plain sight, and slowly enacting a plan to fully revive the demon race.

This leads to a lot of really interesting and well-paced episodes as we watch both sides strategize, gather intelligence, exposit about world history, and prepare for the upcoming Idaten invasion of Zoble.

But, uh, did you notice my descriptions of the two female main characters? Yeah, so the thing about The Idaten Deities is that It is also, 100% chock full of anime was a mistake writing decisions. It's like someone looked at Dragon Ball, and wanted to make it more mature, but also thought that what "mature" means is violence, torture, and rape.

Which is why, the next part of this review is going to be in summary tags with unmarked spoilers and a big old
CONTENT WARNING: Rape, torture, sexualization of minors.

⇳ Click to Expand Summary

It turns out that that when hybrids reproduce, they only give birth to pure demons, which jeopardize their cover, so they need a constant stream of human children to fuse with the new demons.

To that end, they've turned their military power into an institutionalized rape machine. They are constantly at war with their neighboring nations, for their land, natural resources, and breeding stock. Before every battle, the demon commanders ask the troops who they want to rape, and get back a cacophony of each soldier's personal preferences (which is where we first see that sexualization of minors content warning come in). They get first dibs, as spoils of conquest, and then all the women of breeding age are rounded up and imprisoned in the breeding cages.

This is overseen by a genius information analyst named Miku, who looks like Hatsune Miku with purple hair and a bondage outfit. With Miku's help, the demons manage to hold back the Idaten onslaught long enough for three small groups of humanoid demons to escape.

Of these, the important group, for reasons of both plot and of god fucking dammit, seriously? is Miku, Umeyo, and Merku.

We've already covered Miku. She's a genius information analyst and strategist. Umeyo is the demon midwife, she can absorb demons/humans and carry them inside her, which is necessary for the hybridization process, and she just so happens to be holding two little boys who were awaiting fusion. Merku is just a female demon who happened to be nearby as escape became time-sensitive.

Her plan is: find a hikikomori, steal their residence and their identity, then as soon as the little boys are physically capable of the act she and Merku should start pumping out demons, and using Umeyo to fuse them with children they kidnap.

The story would have been fine if it just ended there as a "to be continued...?" horror movie ending. But it actually fucking time-skips a few years until they can start enacting this plan, manage to ambush Ysley and Paula when they come to check out the disappearing children, and start attempting to extract information by torturing them by extremely graphic vivisection (since it's basically impossible to physically kill an Idaten).

And then it just, stops. Not ending with the conclusion of a story arc, but galloping through an intermission, starting a new arc, and then stopping just as the action is rising again. There's been no announcement of a Season 2. And even if there were, it would have to be filler, because Season 1 jogged its way through the entire published manga, and past that through the entire original webmanga. The webmanga hasn't updated since 2016, and the physically published version is still about a year out from making it to that stopping point.

Which leads to my final this series is everything that has ever been wrong with anime complaint. Like those old OVA series where it was never clear if or when they would get a chance to make more, it just kinda does its thing for a while and then stops without any conclusion.

But at least it wasn't racist, (if only because there wasn't any attempt made at drawing any character with skin-tone or features outside of anime-default).

For my personal thoughts, I found this anime extremely enjoyable, and even though it starts with problematic content by the end of the first episode, I was already really sucked into the story. I think this is the first time since I started analyzing media for problematic content that I've been able to enjoy a work while being consciously aware of how problematic it is. I don't attribute this to any change in myself, though, so much as just how goddamn engrossing the strategizing and counter-strategizing is. Very much the same appeal as Code Geass, but without any of the ridiculous overcomplications or contrivances or bad chess metaphors.

While it was airing, it was personally extremely frustrating that I could not, in good conscience, ask anybody else to watch it, because it was very much the kind of anime that I want to talk with other people about. And then after the writing equivalent of a rhythmic gymnastics routine so captivating it distracts you from the fact that the performer is reciting Meine Kampf the whole time, it ends with the writing equivalent of a clumsy face-plant.

[Upthorn]

Made in Abyss

Made in Abyss is difficult for me to talk about, partly because I'm not sure how to categorize it, and partly because my feelings toward it are extremely ambivalent.

Made in Abyss is simultaneously: a heartwarming adventure about an orphan girl and a robot boy who go off on a journey to learn about where they came, and an utterly horrifying story written by an author who only on rare occasion seems to realize that the story they're writing is utterly horrifying.

Made in Abyss is an anime that I probably never would have looked at if I hadn't happened upon some tweets by the series' English translator. Made in Abyss is an anime that I would have stopped watching, several times, if I didn't feel honor-bound to check it out when its translator liked and replied to some of my tweets about the nuance of Japanese translation.

It's also a story written by someone who is absolutely fascinated by, and wildly enthusiastic about, deep sea diving and cave exploration. I don't know this because I looked up anything about the author. I don't even know the author's name. But I watched at least three episodes of the show, so I know that one thing about the author with absolute certainty.

I still don't really know how to talk about this thing, so I'll start by describing the setting.

The Abyss
There is an extremely large, extremely deep cave in this world, known as the abyss. The abyss is full of hostile wildlife, whose physiology is so out of step with the kind of creatures you encounter in daily life that they are fascinating and horrifying just to look at, much like the wildlife that can be found in the deep sea in real life. Strewn about the abyss, with little rhyme or reason, are: corpses of explores, corpse-populated ruins, and artifacts of varying power. The power of the artifacts that can be found increases with the depth they are found at, but so, too, does the danger of the wildlife that can be found.

Furthermore, even if one has mastered the knowledge and skills necessary to contend with the wildlife, once one has reached a certain depth in the abyss, rising becomes physically harmful. Not just returning all the way to the surface, either, but simply ascending a short flight of stairs. In addition, there are added effects with each successive layer of depth:

1. Dizziness and nausea
2. Intense nausea, pain, and numbness of extremities,
3. Vertigo and hallucinations
4. Intense pain and bleeding from every orifice
5. Total sensory deprivation, confusion, unintentional self-harm
6. Loss of humanity or death
7. Certain death.

There is no known means to avoid the strain of ascending within the abyss.

The Orphanage
Because artifacts from the abyss are very valuable, a large city has formed around its opening on the surface to support abyss exploration and/or raiding operations. Due to the inherently extremely dangerous nature of abyss delving, there are a lot of orphans in this city, so there is a large orphanage which cares for children who have lost their parents to the abyss.

CONTENT WARNING: Child slavery, child abuse, child endangerment.
In order to fund itself, this orphanage requires all the children living in it to participate in artifact raiding, and turn over any artifacts they find to the orphanage for sale. An orphan who keeps an artifact for themselves is penalized by being strung up naked for a length of time depending on the artifact's value. Although orphan delving is restricted to the shallowest, safest part of the abyss, it is still incredibly dangerous, as the orphans are sent off to explore unsupervised, with only one orphan partner to rely on, and a whistle each to call for help in case they encounter a deadly situation. However, blowing a whistle attracts attention from humans and hostile creatures alike, and the children have no guarantee that rescue will reach them before any deadly creature might.

For their part, the orphans have only minor complaints about the situation: the artifacts are so cool, it sucks not being able to keep any of them, and punishments sure are a pain. But the fact that they get to work as cave delvers is awesome, actually! Cave delvers are the coolest, most badass people in the whole world! Every last child, orphan or otherwise, wants to grow up to be a legendary cave delver! Orphans are so lucky that they get training and delving equipment just handed to them!

************************

These two aspects of the setting are treated equally as immutable facts of the world. The orphanage employees who oversee delving operations, and mete out humiliation for breaking rules are treated with the same level of moral culpability as a woodchipper that's just removed someone's hand. I have some opinions about this. Now, I haven't read the manga, so I don't know if it does things differently, but the anime simply presents all these facts without lingering on them. They are background details that you aren't invited to think about. I get the very strong impression that viewers are intended to feel completely neutral about the systems at play in the orphanage.

I do not feel fucking neutral about the systems at play in the orphanage. In fact, I find them utterly horrific, and, indeed, find it utterly horrific that anybody might feel anything less than horror and rage when exposed to them. Did the author not notice what kind of world he was making? Did the anime director not? Who the fuck looked at this and thought "okay yup, that's a background detail that needs no comment or invitation to deeper thought?" God fucking dammit, what fucking monsters did this, and why am I watching their work? Oh right, that twitter translator says this is his favorite anime, he's proud as fuck of working on it, and he seems pretty decent and progressive. Maybe it gets better.

I decide to set aside my complaints about the writing/directing mistreating these setting details, and finish watching the first episode.

There is after all, a story that takes place within the setting, and that story may have value.

Okay, so, the story. Riko is an orphan, working on one of their normal artifact hunt excursions when she gets lost in thought, and her partner goes ahead without her. When she finds him, he's unconscious, on the verge of being swallowed whole by a flying monster. She blows her whistle to attract the monster's attention, only to realize that it moves faster than her, and she has no plan for shaking it off her tail. Fortunately, her whistle attracted the attention of one other thing. A robot looking boy who appears to be climbing up from deeper within the abyss, without suffering any ill effects. He fires a disintegrating blast at the creature, saving Riko, and collapses. She is excited to have found an artifact that is valuable beyond her wildest dreams, and conspires with her fellow orphans to bring him back to the orphanage in secret.

When he wakes back up, he has no memories, so she names him Reg, after a pet dog she used to have. Reg is curious about himself, and Riko has long idolized her mother, the expert delver known as Lyza the Annihilator, so the advent of Reg gives Riko the impetus to set off on a journey to find out what happened to her mother when she disappeared in the abyss. What follows is the heartwarming adventure of two children journeying into the deepest depths of the most nightmarishly dangerous place that anybody has ever imagined.

This anime should be a horror. It is impossible to put a story in this setting and have be any genre other than horror. However, the author seems blithely unaware of this, and has written a generic heartwarming childhood adventure story. It is filled with moments of sheer terror, and body horror. I kind of hate the fact that this anime exists, but I don't hate it. I don't understand why, but I seem compelled to watch it, and I actively enjoy the generic, cheesy, heartwarming adventure. What the fuck is going on here?

That said, I think this story would be a hell of a lot better if it acknowledged how horrifying every aspect of it is. Also, I promise I haven't given you any spoilers in this review. There's a lot of stuff that happens later on that I would like to talk about, to underscore how incredibly mystifying Made in Abyss actually is. But I don't want to spoil anybody without their consent, and I'd like to post this while it's still Halloween, at least in my time zone.

[mharr]

I don't know if we have a universal name for the 'hole into inexplicable horror dimension' trope but it prompted me to remember a huge rpg forum thread called Project: LONG STAIR.

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads ... irs.391379
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads ... ing.459204

[Niku]

I've tried to start reading Made in Abyss so many times and it just ends up being the world's best sleep aid

[Friday]

The reason why so many people create worlds where horrifying, terrible and nightmarish things are just seen as absolutely normal and not even remotely noteworthy should be pretty obvious.

And I don't mean the authors do it in a like, critical or satirical way. They just do it. They themselves don't even understand that their made-up worlds are incredibly nightmarish and subject children to deadly peril as just a matter of ho-hum don't even register this fact.

Harry Potter is a great example of this.

[Thad]

The reason why so many people create worlds where horrifying, terrible and nightmarish things are just seen as absolutely normal and not even remotely noteworthy should be pretty obvious.

And I don't mean the authors do it in a like, critical or satirical way. They just do it. They themselves don't even understand that their made-up worlds are incredibly nightmarish and subject children to deadly peril as just a matter of ho-hum don't even register this fact.

Harry Potter is a great example of this.

We were talking about Roald Dahl the other day (whose works, of course, HP owes rather a lot to), and while Dahl was a shitty person, he was one writer who got it. "Children are much smarter and more resourceful than we give them credit for, and grownups are fucking monsters" was a recurring motif in his work and probably the main reason that we're still talking about him 30 years after his death. I think he'd still be remembered even if not for that common thread in his children's fiction, because he was a talented and prolific writer, but I think that subversiveness, that respect for kids and disrespect for authority, was really the key element of his appeal as a children's author.