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Mar 30, 2018
Japanese high school is such a fixture of anime, especially in the slice of life genre, that any series that takes place in literally any other setting basically gets bonus points for the novelty. I like to think I'm more discerning than that, but I'm probably not.
In Hakumei and Mikochi, you get exactly what you might expect if you take the usual slice of life formula but swap out the setting. While in most slice of life series, the setting-swap-out is just some different after-school club that only marginally changes things, here there are two substantial swap-outs. First, and most obvious from the synopsis, is
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that it takes place in a fantasy-heavy setting - tiny humans, talking animals, and a touch of the occult.
Second, and perhaps less expected, is that each little story is mature and adult. A typical story might be about Hakumei's struggles at her work, Mikochi's friends and acquaintances in the city, renovating their house, befriending a new cockroach neighbor, and helping a friend with their skeleton-commanding sorcerous research. There are a ton of interesting relationships between people that get explored, whether it's Hakumei's mentor and supervisor at work, or the shopkeeps in the city that all seem to know Mikochi.
Ultimately, it carries all of the serene relaxation of a nice slice of life, while still having a fresh setting, tone, and theme with characters that fit all of that perfectly.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 27, 2018
Every now and then, I watch a series whose greatness defies description, and A Place Further Than the Universe is one of those. It's the sort of show where the sort of review I'd want to write is one with flowery language talking about grand adventures and making big changes that define your life and so on.
In the end, all I can really say is that this show checks all the boxes, and does it in a way that I can't really even compare it to any other series out there. You have a well-done story about four girls each chasing after their own goal
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and finding it in the same place. You have a cast of fresh, unique characters who develop their relationships with each other as they come together to achieve their goals. You have incredible quality of animation and attention to detail - you need look no further than a certain chase scene early on for an excellent example of that. And you have a show that has a fantastic sense of both humor and drama while having the sense to know when to use which.
This is the slice of life show for people who don't like slices of life where nothing happens. This is the character-focused show for people who are tired of the typical character tropes and shallow character-building. This is the show for pseudointellectuals like myself who are into learning about things you'd never thought about before, like the difficulties involved in a mission to Antarctica. And this is the sort of story that will make you, like Kimari, want to get up and go do something. Anything. Even going to Antarctica.
I should also say that I am always dubious of reviews claiming 10/10. To shore up my credibility, this is the 7th of 236 anime series that I've seen to earn the honor.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Mar 27, 2018
I usually hate it when a character is invincible and has no chance of losing. But that's probably because those sorts of characters are always in shows like One Punch Man, where stakes are pretty high. When the main struggle of a story is a middle school boy trying to prank a middle school girl, yeah, having the middle school girl not only be impervious, but a perfect retaliator… It makes for a great, if at least somewhat predictable comedy.
The other thing you should know going in is that a substantial amount of the pranking and teasing isn't necessarily the innocent, imaginative school material of
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your Tonari no Seki-kun. A lot of it is very much a flirty sort of teasing that is meant to tease *you*, the viewing audience, with a will-they-won't-they sort of romance.
Takagi and Nishikata aren't great characters (though they are exactly what they need to be for the teasing subplots to work at all), the story isn't groundbreaking, the foreheads are a little distracting, and a trio of side characters steal about three minutes per episode being a very generic school-style comedy bit far away from the teasing gimmick - but overall it's just a fun comedy that actually sucked me into the will-they-won't-they, despite my usual disdain for that style of romance.
Basically, I liked it more than I should have.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 25, 2018
Slice of Life Cute Girls Doing Cute Things show all follow the same formula. You take some sort of hobby that's niche, but not too niche, and you have a bunch of cute girls going to school, eating food, and occasionally doing that hobby. When you see complaints about the CGDCT "genre", that's why - they're all the same show with slightly different characters and a slightly different premise, with no real substance beneath it.
Laid-Back Camp seems to fit that description on the surface, but this really is a shining gem in the genre. Why it escapes the bog of mediocre CGDCT can be boiled
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down to what are, in my opinion, its two main strengths.
First and foremost, the majority of the focus is on the premise of camping. This is actually a show about cute girls *camping*, as opposed to your K-On!s of the world, which is about *cute girls* in a band. The idea of a slice of life actually focusing on the premise or the gimmick is not uncommon, of course. Encouragement of Climb is both a recent and similar example of one that did it well.
What pulls Laid-Back Camp ahead of Encouragement of Climb is its second strength - its cast. Usually the process of filling out a cast of Cute Girls is picking four or five of the main archetypes in the genre and make them all friends. While Nadeshiko could easily be classified as your Genki Girl, Rin is a very complex and unique character, which you could honestly just sum up as being a very realistic introvert - a little standoffish, but is easily able to make and maintain a couple close friendships, and is very passionate about the things she likes.
Beyond just Rin being a good character, the whole cast is less defined by their own personality quirks and more defined by their unique relationships with each other. You have a core cast of five, but they're not just some group of close friends - they all have different relationships with every other character in that cast. Old friends, new friends, clubmates, classmates who don't really interact much. By the time episode 11 rolls around, one of the five main characters very reasonably still doesn't even know everyone's full name.
But ultimately even all of that is just detail - the substance beneath the main draw. And the main draw is a nice, relaxing story with beautiful scenery. Even if you don't care about the attention to detail and nuances in the actual camping activity or the character building, you're still left with a wonderfully peaceful show to just help you full of charm and relaxation.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Mar 24, 2018
Based on the premise and quality of the art and animation, I really wanted to like this show. But even in just the prequel OVAs, there were some warning flags I really should have paid attention to, because they forecasted the subtext of the rest of the series pretty well.
In the fewest words possible, Ancient Magus' Bride is a quintessential girls' escapist fantasy. In a sense, it's a bit like Sword Art Online in that it knows its target audience very well, and feeds them exactly what they want to see. In the case of Ancient Magus' Bride, this generally revolves around "a unique power
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that makes you misunderstood and miserable", "a male benefactor who accepts and loves you for who you are", and "sacrificing your health, happiness, and well-being for the greater good makes people love and admire you".
I had a very difficult time just watching this show and accepting it for what it is, getting way too stuck on the tropes to enjoy the story it was trying to tell or the characters it was trying to develop. Whenever I was able to look past the patterns and just enjoy it for what it is, it was a perfectly okay time with hard-to-follow, magically-themed stories of some intensity, charming-if-cliche characters in Chise and Elias as they experience this weird quasi-marital relationship, and generally beautiful art.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jan 1, 2018
It was interesting to see a synopsis so superficially similar to Kino's Journey the same season that a Kino's Journey reboot was airing. I checked the first episode out of curiosity, fully expecting to drop it afterward with my curiosity satisfied. I was not expecting an experience that not only competes in Kino's mindspace, but in my opinion exceeds it.
I've had the hardest time trying to explain why I like this show so much. If I were writing an English paper about it, I'd be using the word "juxtaposition" a lot. The theme is deadly serious - survival in a post-apocalyptic world - but the
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tone is that of almost playful curiosity. The characters look goofy and blobular, but the scenery is breathtakingly gorgeous and detailed. The world is mostly familiar to us, the viewers, but it's dotted throughout with strange and mysterious things that give this city its own unique identity. Even the two main characters are basically opposites and play off each other really well. Then I'd vaguely mumble about how these juxtapositions reflect the inherent duality of life, even in the darkest of circumstances and so on.
Ultimately, this is a gut-feel show more than anything I can try to be objective about. Fortunately, the first episode is a perfect reflection of the tone and theme of the series throughout. Every story arc, you're going to see Chi and Yuu exploring or discovering some thing or idea that you're probably familiar with (darkness, war, power plants, fish, religion, etc.), and from that you can get an interesting new perspective on that familiar thing or idea. Every story arc also contributes to building this unusual post-apocalyptic world - usually either highlighting one of the quirks that sets it apart from our world, or hinting at the nature of the apocalypse.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 1, 2018
I'm not really sure what the fascination is with love polyhedrons and love chains - these small groups of platonic friends who are in a hopeless network of mostly-non-mutual attractions. You can see this in similar, recent series like A Lull in the Sea (Nagi no Asukara), Waiting in the Summer (Ano Natsu de Matteru), and Glasslip. Maybe it's just a simple way to pump some drama into an otherwise "boring" romantic storyline, or at least to give something better than the Will-They-Won't-They that two-character Romance stories tend to be.
The cast, arguably the most important part of any romance-centered story, is somewhat of a mixed
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bag. Of the five main characters, I could really only make the argument for two of them that they are complex and dynamic. Over half of the cast could have been demoted to supporting roles, and pretty much nothing would have been lost - and I, as an armchair storyteller, would also say you would've been left with a much more compelling story, albeit a very different one.
What was pretty refreshing about Just Because was the prominence of its main theme - people going through the craziness of graduating from a Japanese high school. I get burned a lot by anime with an interesting premise that basically backseat that premise (A Lull in the Sea, Waiting in the Summer, and Glasslip all did this to me). To have the theme not only be present but also the primary driving force for the entire cast is, to me, a sign of good storytelling.
What is not a sign of good storytelling is the frankly unbelievable volume of freak coincidences that move the story from one point to the next. While it's difficult to really call out a specific example, just go in with the knowledge that absolutely nothing that happens on screen is a secret to anyone in the cast - if they didn't just happen to be nearby when it goes down, they will accidentally and inevitably find out almost immediately all the same.
I do want to give a shoutout to Komiya Ena, one of the main characters. She's probably my favorite character of 2017, and she came pretty close to saving and carrying the show all by herself. She has a very charming earnestness and aggressiveness that I don't see often in this medium.
In short, it's an alright romance story that uses a romantic pairing format I'm getting tired of, but is actually smartly using its theme to progress the events. The story is driven by crazy coincidences and the crushes are driven by trivial things that happened in middle school. If you liked Waiting in the Summer, you'll probably like this. If you liked A Lull in the Sea, you probably won't.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 25, 2017
I was late to the party on the original series - I didn't really get into anime until 2011, so going back and watching a 2003 anime in glorious 360p was a bit jarring. Despite that, Kino's Journey still left a sizeable impressionable, despite my bias against its visuals. It was, to use a tired phrase, thought-provoking, and it was told from the perspective of perhaps one of the greatest neutral characters I've ever encountered in fiction.
As a reimagining of the 2003 series, how does 2017 Kino hold up? For sure it looks a lot prettier. They clearly put a lot of effort into the
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3D on Hermes, but it's hard for me to say how much of the 'prettier' is just the fact that I can now watch in 720p. 2017 Kino is also much brighter and more colorful, where 2003 Kino was a darker, more subdued style. I could argue that both are completely appropriate, and I won't pick sides as to which is better.
The quality of the storytelling remains mostly unchanged. If you've never seen 2003 Kino, you're in for a treat. Kino is a story-of-the-week deal where Kino visits various countries, each of which have some specific quirk about them (a country where murder is legal, a country where rules are created by outsiders who compete as gladiators, a country where virtue is quantified and earns you points). Over the course of 20 minutes, the country's quirk is dismantled, exploited, and taken to its logical extreme, and all of the various consequences and fallout are put out on the table.
Kino, as a neutral observer and learner, tends to just let everything happen, and it leaves it to you, the viewing audience, to ponder. Would I really want to live in a place where murder is legal? Would I be okay with the benefits of living in a country that was always on the move, even if I knew the damage that movement caused? It's hardly practical philosophy without going to extreme lengths to relate it to anything realistic, but it's brain candy, and that's always a nice treat.
If you haven't seen either, should you start with Kino 2003 or Kino 2017? 2003 has my favorite episode of the lot, and it does a better job of capturing Kino's darker side. 2017 is just a lot prettier to look at and has a little faster-paced and easier-to-understand stories. If you're watching both regardless, start with 2003. Otherwise, pick whichever sounds better, you can't go wrong.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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