Fall 2018

nDroae said:
Disappointing that the coordinator lady was too obsessed with looking As White As Possible to put on a swimsuit and get in the water, that could have made the episode considerably better.

Americans are loud, brash, rude and annoying, riiight? It's impressive that currently a whole half of the main six are annoying, while green, gray and purple have nothing to do beyond cute dialects. Maybe gray will be featured next week since the title starts with "boku."

I don't want to bring everything back to Yuru Camp but the first episode of... that show I mentioned is a how-to guide. Things change, they progress. Rin goes from completely ignoring nadeshiko to looking after her. We start off with Rin being disappointed that she can't see Mount Fuji and the episode peaks when the drama between Nadeshiko and Rin has happened and the clouds clear to reveal the most beautiful shot of Mount Fuji illuminated by the moon. The whole episode is set at the side of Lake Kawaguchi but we visit different locations by the lake. It's not all just set in three rooms.

It has quite peculiar production values. While they are not the best, it would be a mistake to call them low. Low production values are usually associated with poor planning/budget and lead to technical errors/schedule slips. This show is the inverse - it's like it is done by amateurs who have no experience but are otherwise competent and get most of the stuff right. It's most obvious with the voice acting - several VA’s literally has this as a first job ever and you can hear it. Is the voice acting bad? No, on the contrary - the result is technically competent, but with the added bonus of not sounding like every “anime girl voice” ever. Same goes for the screenplay/directing - it often goes in unexpected directions that make no sense, but are enjoyable nonetheless - because you haven’t seen those developments in a hundred of other shows before. Have you ever seen a beach episode where half the cast straight-up refuses to go to the beach? Have you ever seen a beach episode where some complete randos show up instead to take their place? Sora to Umi no Aida unexpectedly has an art-house/indie film appeal - it's refreshingly unique and non-formulaic, even if the reason for this is creators simply not knowing how to do formulaic.

nDroae said:
Yeah, every episode has had parts I liked but this was the first to offer a lot more good than bad. Looking forward to next week's mauve "Scottish" feature (Maiko) and eventual green (Makiko). Well... Crunchyroll subbing Maiko's accent as Scottish makes about as much sense as Billy Boyd's Glaswegian as Pippin in Lord of the Rings (where the characters weren't actually speaking English according to Tolkien), that is to say, I like it. It makes a welcome change from the usual Applejack American southern accent to which translators tend to default when faced with "unusual" regional dialects.

I would be impressed with myself if I could remember which was Makiko / Makoto / Maiko without looking at the character list. Well, I guess Makoto has the more "masculine" sounding name, not that western instinct means anything in a land where Tomoya is a boy's name and Tomoyo is a girl's name.

nDroae said:
It's cool that the owls' earplugs were high on one side and low on the other, like a real owl's ears.
BBC video: "How Does An Owl's Hearing Work? | Super Powered Owls"



But wait. The other girls have two human ears and two animal ears. So do the owls have only animal ears? If they had human ears as well, they didn't plug them. However, owl ears being much more sensitive, it may make sense that they'd prioritize their owl ears for protection.

What if they had human ears in those locations?

nDroae 8/11/18
I'd say PrinPrin made its intentions clear by the end of the first episode :) Whereas this probably has substantially different intent, so I wouldn't say they're on the same quality scale, it's a matter of what you want. Like, just a guess, if PrinPrin was Game of Thrones then this is Narnia.

nDroae said:


Typically new "license rescue" catalog additions come via companies like Discotek, which negotiated with Japan for physical release rights. That makes it more worthwhile for that company than it would be for CR to negotiate for streaming rights only, since catalog streaming doesn't pull in nearly as much traffic as you'd think (I once thought the same).

CR doesn't show view counts, but from the number of ratings on episodes, we can get a rough idea of how many people are watching. Here are the number of ratings on some of Funimation's most popular shows of all time, among those added here as catalog titles.

Cowboy Bebop:
Episode 1: 746, episode 2: 292, episode 3: 269

Steins;Gate:
754, 506, 421

Noragami:
605, 423, 388

Code Geass:
441, 271, 225

Psycho-Pass:
448, 285, 272

Compare those to the numbers on recent and current non-Funimation simulcasts:

Cells at Work:
2934, 2139, 1547

Asobi Asobase:
1666, 1159, 993

SAO Alicization:
2791, 1849, 1553

Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai:
2333, 2334, 2270 (impressive high retention rate on this one!)

NanaPirro said:
this series we really have in front of the problem of the abusive fishing
of course, the solution to sin on the moon is not for tomorrow

Anise_Punter said:
AP also didn't watch the ms beelzebub show because he has no time for that variety of bangs, if there's a proper name for them I don't know.

nDroae said:

Y'know, after almost a whole year of anime watched I would have thought you'd have things more figured out by now, but I guess not :D