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Feb 24, 2023
I have to give this one high marks because I definitely sat down to binge & finish it, putting other shows by the wayside to finish. It reminds me a little of a gender-swapped Big Windup! insofar as it focuses on an insecure but talented pitcher who just needs a solid catcher who believes in them! They put together a defunct baseball club at their High School that had been disbanded the year before for reasons of an unspecified scandal...there are two second years (Juniors) who want to resume playing but are rather tight lipped about what transpired the year before. So
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mostly the team is full of first year girls, many of whom were high ranked Middle School players. While Yomi Takeda (武田 詠深) is obviously the main character, the show takes time to give each girl their due, their moment in the spotlight, including their fellow student coach who is a brilliant data analyst and gives Shin Koshigaya an edge in the games they play.
The anime is clearly an advertisement for the manga series, concluding in only 12 episodes. But it's a fun ride with lovable characters. While I'm only a casual baseball fan, I do attend local Minor League games every season and I was fairly enthralled by the baseball action in each episode, even if most games were basically a highlights reel to economize run time. The elephant in the room is the girl's baseball uniforms include shorts, which is ludicrous and only done for fan service reasons, to show off the girls bare legs and their flexing leg muscles. It's laugh out loud ridiculous, but if you can get past this little indulgence, the story is a good one. Also, this series uses what looks to me like a hybrid of 2D hand drawn animation while resorting to 3D CGI for the baseball action scenes. It's a little jarring, but if you're used to Idol shows like AKB 0048 or Love Live it's nothing you haven't seen before. If this show had been subtitled only I probably would've given it a pass but since it had an English dub, it made it binge worthy...and I'm enough of a leg man perv to enjoy the cheesy fanservice. PLAY BALL!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 3, 2021
While I did enjoy the quirky series (Tamako Market), Tamako Love Story was actually very melancholy for most of its run time. While I'm impressed Mochizo was able to finally confess his feelings to Tamako, we spend most of the rest of the movie with Tamako reeling from the shock of it and trying to decide how best to respond....it's a little agonizing.
I also feel saddest for Midori, who clearly loves her friend Tamako romantically but just suffers in silence and even belatedly helps her ostensible rival, Mochizo.
The ending is so abrupt and on the nose I couldn't help laughing out loud. Tamako,
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upon being told a white lie by Midori that Mochizo is moving away early to Tokyo (he's just taking a day trip), rushes to the train station, and, exhausted and desperate finally reciprocates with her own confession, checking off the box for yes, this is a love story.
If you want a much more gratifying love story watch Horimiya or Lovely Complex. As a capper to the series, Tamako Love Story feels superfluous and unnecessary. There was potential here for a really GOOD movie but it just falls short somehow, failing to take risks that would elevate its quality to something truly exceptional. I got the impression that Kanna was picking up that Midori had feelings for Tamako, and was about to call her out on that but the movie stops short. The series is a lot bolder with the yuri subtext than this film is willing to be.
I'm not saying the film is unrealistic.....it is in fact psychologically painfully realistic....it's just not very entertaining viewing, watching Tamako dissociate, space out, and stay lost in her head for most of the movie.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 29, 2021
Just a dumb comedy spinoff. It made me chuckle a few times at its ridiculousness but I think this had to be much funnier to a Japanese audience that it is to us in the West. You can totally skip this OVA and not be missing much. It's pretty to look at and it can make you chuckle a little; you just have to accept it is what it is and move on. It's a side story that adds nothing to the main plot....it's repetitive and not all that funny. Sentai didn't even bother trying to dub this...just slapped on
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some subtitles and said "ok hoss, have at it."
Ilya and Kuro don't really put in an appearance until like the final 30 minutes or so. I watched it mainly to be a completionist for the Prisma side story. Can't wait to actually watch the final capper movie, Vow in the Snow. This OVA very much breaks the 4th wall by mentioning the final movie in passing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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May 11, 2021
So I'm current with the show as of this writing (Ep.5) and I'm also current with the manga which I have on Pre-Order.
Others have summarized this as "Dark Mode Takagi-san" and I'm inclined to agree with that characterization. It has the same basic elements but with the roles reversed. Takagi-san faces the dilemma that girls mature emotionally sooner than boys and her love interest Nishikata hasn't quite caught up to her yet and still views their relationship as antagonistic rivalry.
In Nagatoro, it's the titular character who is the slightly immature one that our poor beleaguered Senpai has to contend with.
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This anime deals with very subtle shades of emotion and desire and a lot of reviewers completely misread this show because their take is far too surface-level, superficial.
If you've never dated someone who is/was a hyper-aggressive flirt then you probably literally don't know what you're looking at when it comes to this show. Nagatoro is exactly that....she comes on WAY too strong and is a hyper-aggressive flirt and yes she probably crosses the line over into bullying at times, especially in the beginning...but when she pushes him into the canal she FEELS BAD ABOUT IT. In the most recent episode he sets some boundaries and she (grudgingly) respects them. Nagatoro's dimwitted friends ARE bullies, but the contrast between them and her is stark, and she does NOT tolerate them messing with HER Senpai. She's very possessive of him.
That dream she has reveals her insecurity and fear of "losing" him. When he relents and lets her cut his hair she does an actual good job of it....it's the sweetest most loving scene yet! The manga and the anime show her in unguarded moments where we can gauge her real feelings. And when she's in hyper-aggressive "mean girl" mode she's 100% blushing the whole time--I love this about the anime. Nagatoro is HORNY and sexually frustrated/aroused...she coyly urges her Senpai to be bolder with her. The only way their relationship can progress is if Senpai reciprocates her advances.
Senpai notices that to other boys Nagatoro is much colder and cutting...only he gets zeroed out for her "special" attention. I know it's impossible for some viewers/readers to believe this but Nagatoro does genuinely love her Senpai...and they do genuinely care about each other. She has a bad habit of blurting out her real desires then covering it up quickly with a joke and a JK/LOL as a defense mechanism. It's a little gas-lighty and I wish she'd just be honest with herself (and him) about her feelings & urges...but again, she's the immature one here. If you're current with the manga and able to understand subtlety, it's clear Nagatoro's feelings are genuine. She's much more like Takagi-san than I realized at first. If they (Takagi & Nagatoro) were the same age at the same school they'd totally be best friends.
I've seen others regard Nagatoro as a "sadist"--she clearly isn't. Senpai slowly realizing he's being aggressively flirted with takes time. Some of the comedy is also when Nagatoro gets out over her own skis a little and winds up revealing her actual feelings and desires. Like she's genuinely despondent when she thinks her Senpai might've touched another girl's boobs instead of her own first...when he actually fulfills her secret wish she's completely shocked and because it's a comedy she does smack him around, but not before he gropes her for several seconds...she doesn't immediately swat his hand away because the truth is it IS what she wanted, deep down, she's just too embarrassed to acknowledge it, embarrassed by her own arousal. I guess i just feel a lot of empathy for them both because I've been in a relationship not unlike this...and it's a wild ride to have a passionate partner like that; It's a weirdly fun experience to be a guy engaged with a girl who is hyper-aggressive who won't take "no" for an answer, etc. I just really enjoy this RomCom. I'm devouring the manga and very very pleased with the anime adaptation so far.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 10, 2021
Beautifully subversive little show with a profoundly HUMANIST message. I'm big into High Fantasy and Maria the Witch does not disappoint despite being grounded ostensibly in medieval France during the 100 Years War. Maria is a good witch who despises war & bloodshed and meddles in human affairs with her magic to force peace upon the warring factions. This draws the ire of Heaven itself and the Church. As an atheist, I'm tickled by fiction that depicts the Church as unambiguously EVIL. They do NOT come off as remotely "good" in this story. Maria to her credit espouses explicitly
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humanistic views in contradistinction to the Church's received wisdom. She throws down the gauntlet and accuses Heaven of utter indifference to human suffering. There's a lot of moving parts to this story and it may seem curious to still stand by a humanistic credo in a world where God & His Angels present concrete proof of their existence...nevertheless the Problem of Evil still exists and rears its ugly head....and in the end the Archangel Michael is forced to concede that Maria kind of has a point. Also, it should come as no surprise that Maria shares the same name as the mother of Christ and that her human love interest is named Joseph...Mary & Joseph...yeah. Some people claim there's a tonal shift from Ep.11 onward but I disagree. The series has planted seeds all along the way that Maria and Joseph love each other. Their finally confessing to each other is hardly a tonal shift. Anyway, short but very enjoyable series with a subversive but beautiful message & affirmation. Love wins.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 1, 2021
So this review is for Dub fans who are curious about this show and tempted to wait for Season 1 to be dubbed before diving in. Due to production oddities, the simuldub of Season 2 was released before Season 1. You could watch Season 1 subbed, wait for them to dub Season 1 then binge, or read the manga covering the events of Season 1 then watch the Simuldub.
But I'm too lazy for any of that so I just dove in head first into Season 2 fresh like a maniac and let me tell you....
I love this show. And Ep.1 handles characterizations
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so well you get a pretty good grasp of who the characters are and what they're about fairly quickly such that I didn't feel like I was missing anything.
Kaguya and President Shirogane are...seemingly hilariously terrible people, which is why it's so funny to watch them sabotage themselves over and over.
Chika Fujiwara is their mutual friend who is completely clueless and a bit of a random chaos agent herself.
But the characters grow over time and reform themselves into actually somewhat decent people. Seemingly apathetic Yu has a backstory that left me in tears. The President handled his re-election campaign in a graceful and gentlemanly way and even invited his former opponent to join his cabinet. He showed empathy and understanding toward her and did not humiliate her. Kaguya herself struggles to admit her real feelings for Shirogane. Their rivalry (forcing the other to confess first) is utterly ridiculous but produces so much comedy gold.
While I am going back to read the manga now starting from vol.1, to the hesitant Dub fan I say just jump on in. I look forward to the eventual dub release of Season 1, but don't let that stop you from enjoying the hot new show RIGHT NOW.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Oct 31, 2020
Anime adaptation of an ongoing anime series...the most recent volumes are still in pre-order status as of this writing. The series is basically one long advertisement for the manga and viewers should not expect a 2nd season. It's a reasonably entertaining generic monster girl harem show. The main character is a milquetoast, bland audience self-insert character whose main flaw is he stinks at keeping secrets and people can read him like a book.
The tension in the show is he is forced by circumstances to keep the "special" (supernatural, etc) secrets of MULTIPLE girls at the school. And this Zero is a
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Hero because he's secretly adored by multiple girls...who each have their reasons. The girls's sincerity is honestly the most touching thing about the show. They feel DEEPLY for this guy and it's very tender and wholesome.
The main pair (Asahi & Youko) are lovable, clueless idiots...they do become good friends and have mutual feelings that extend beyond friendship....but he's lacking in courage and she's not honest with herself and her own feelings.
The show is a good mix of zany comedy and harem rom com and makes me look forward to reading more of the manga, so mission accomplished on that score. There's nothing outstanding about this show, it's fairly average, but it is entertaining and the emotions it evokes feel genuine. It will make you say "awwww!" more than once if you're a sensitive emotional person yourself.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 6, 2019
Recently watched after buying it on a lark from Rightstuf for super c heap. The cover art on the DVD insert is way WAY more ecchi than the show itself, which was a bit of a disappointment. The one thing that made this show worth watching were the characters and for me personally, the English voice cast from ADV Films. The 3 main heroines are voiced by Kelli Cousins, Hilary Haag & Monica Rial. The story is melodramatic to the point of silly, which is unintentionally funny. It's very much like a an American soap opera plot. The bones
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of a good story are here, and this series would make excellent fodder for a re-make. It just needs more music, more conflict, more sexiness, etc. The original here is pretty mediocre and bland but a thoughtful remake could be potentially great. The core story could've been told in a 6 episode OVA. A full 13 episodes just feels bloated and unnecessary for what we're given.
The artwork has a few moments that are really great (mostly the impromptu music video scenes serving as a plot montage to show passage of time or character growth) but mostly it's pretty bland, even by 1990s standards. Some of the characters' facial expressions fall into unnatural, creepy "uncanny valley" territory during some of the dance sequences. Also, I get that music licensing can be very expensive but WOW did the main R3 song get repetitive and boring...seeing the girls rehearse other songs or even try writing their own lyrics would've improved the story 100%; also it would've been better showing them doing all the other things performers typically do in Japan such as being interviewed on radio stations, or doing work on tv commercials, dealing with obsessive fans & paparazzi, etc...these aspects of idol careers are hand-waved away or dealt with for only a few seconds at a time. The best that can be said is this show was the forerunner of much better idol stories yet to come. I guess tween & young teen women are the intended audience for a show like this, not male Gen Xers like me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jul 15, 2019
Just back from the Dubbed screening of this new Sound! Euphonium movie; Before the feature itself starts, there's a quick sub-only 10 minute series recap that honestly I could've done without, the memory of Season 1&2 still fresh in my mind. It was also a little unsettling as I needed to be reassured by theater management this was indeed the dubbed screening that I paid for.
Anyway, it took a little getting used to hearing Erica Mendez's voice coming out of Kumiko Omae but her performance grew on me quickly. I was sad not hearing Cristina Valenzuela reprise Reina but Laura Post did an
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admirable job for this film.
The story of this film basically occurs in partially in parallel to the story told in the spinoff movie Liz and the Blue Bird. The drama of that film is happening somewhere in the background while the events unfold for this movie.
Mizore & Nozomi do appear on stage for the final concert piece and Mizore's oboe solo is even more impressive than the version she did in Liz and the Blue Bird, and Nozomi stepped up her flute game enough to accompany her on stage in the competition band. I'm a little sad these two didn't actually have any speaking lines for this movie as I found them very sympathetic characters in the series and in Liz and the Blue Bird. One note of passing interest, they do revert back to Mizore's original series character design rather than the much more detailed and stylized version used in Liz and the Blue Bird. I'm guessing this is due to restraints of the animation budget, forcing them to use the simpler TV character design for Mizore since she's only a supporting background character for this film.
My personal favorite among the dub cast were some of the new freshman...in particular Kanade Hisaishi voiced by Christine Marie Cabanos which made me so happy.
My only gripe about the dub would be some of the pronunciation choices....most glaring is calling their school "Kita Oooh Geee" when in Japanese it's clearly more like "Kih TAU gee". I think Liz and the Blue Bird's dub got it correctly so I don't understand the divergence for this dub.
Koh-SAK-uh (Engl.) vs. KOh-suhka (Jp.); I really question when the ADR director doesn't try to make the actor match the actual Japanese name or surname more closely. It's forgivable and only mildly annoying and some dubs are better than others in this respect.
This story could've definitely been stretched out into a complete 3rd season but I still found the movie entertaining. Definitely be sure to stay after the credits for a special stinger at the end. I definitely want to see more of Kumiko, Reina, et. al. as they become seniors and move into leadership positions.
The Kumiko x Reina moments in this movie are so precious and worth the price of admission. They're so clearly in love and this shines through every scene they share alone together.
Viewers should watch Sound! Euphonium Seasons 1 & 2, then Liz and the Blue Bird and then this movie. I haven't watched the other films so thus can't comment on them. I'm very happy this got an English dub and remain hopeful maybe someday via Kickstarter or whatever there may yet be an English dub for the entire series.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 1, 2019
The main reason I enjoyed watching this movie is for the visuals, seeing Soviet troops drawn and animated in Japanese anime style, and the Russian voice acting.
This is by no means a good movie. But it might be one of those so-bad-it's-good kind of films. You have to accept from the outset that this movie is completely absurd; it's a flight of fancy about an alternate WW2 where magic and occult mystical powers are real but kept secret.
It is well known that on the German side the high ranking SS were very obsessed with theosophy and occult matters and imagined themselves as the
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spiritual successors of the ancient Teutonic Knights. This actual quirk of history gets riffed on in this anime and made literal in the story.
The Russians for their part have their own quasi-mythic heroes of the ancient past, like Aleksandr Nevsky, who dealt the Livonian order of the Teutonic Knights a crushing defeat and has been invoked by Russian Tsars and Soviet officials and contemporary Russians as a national hero. Nevsky was a real historical figure, but his legacy takes on mythic proportions over time as a potent symbol of Russian patriotic resistance to foreign invasion, part of national mythology in the same way a figure like Abraham Lincoln for America or George Washington and the cherry tree have these larger than life mythic qualities attached to them.
These competing embellished myths, more than actual history itself, are the material from which the ridiculous story of this anime movie was spun. This movie shouldn't be taken seriously, and the use of live action documentary footage clashes tonally with the rest of the animated portions of the film...it tries to add an element of realism to an utterly absurd tale and falls completely flat. One wonders if this inclusion was at the behest of the Russian side of this production and the Japanese staff simply acquiesced to the desires of their Russian collaborators who wanted to tell a more serious story about their Great Patriotic War while the Studio 4C people just wanted to make an exciting (if patently ridiculous) movie. If this movie were re-edited and the live-action cut scenes cut out it might be salvageable as an engaging action film of fantasy history.
I don't know why Nadya has a Katana....she's a war orphan, former Young Pioneer, and has psychic powers. Maybe she had a grandfather who fought the Japanese in the 1905 war and this was a war trophy / family heirloom....best not to think too hard about it. She has it because "anime"; no deeper reason is really necessary.
This movie is worth a watch for just how WEIRD it is. It's a failed experiment, but a pretty glorious failure. If you accept up front how utterly absurd it is, it will help you actually enjoy this film. If you're hoping for a serious account of the Soviet experience during WW2 in anime form, you've come to the wrong movie.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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