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Jul 20, 2024
I’ll admit I’ve largely been indifferent with Makoto Shinkai works with the man’s habit of continuing to rehash the same storytelling premise with his films involving long-distance relationships, many of which involving some sort of paranormal element. It looked like his latest film, Suzume, was an attempt to break out of this habit with the titular character meeting a young man named Souta Munakata trying to prevent a supernatural powered “worm” from entering our world via doorways that open up a parallel world. Suzume and Souta team up to combat this threat, while more about these supernatural elements are explored and Suzume coming to learn
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of her own connections to them.
Before I get into too critical, I guess let’s get the usual out of the way with a Shinkai film in praising Suzume’s visuals. Makoto Shinkai’s films typically offer up beautiful and highly-detailed scenic shots and well-animated movement and sequences that play out. Suzume’s no different in that department with exploring both the normal and parallel worlds that Suzume and Souta find themselves traveling between to deal with the “worm” threat and having its moments of fluid and nicely animated sequences as the two go about their ordeals.
As far as the storytelling and themes for the film go, I must admit their execution leaves much to be desired. In essence, it felt like the film was attempting to try to do too much within the limited time of its two hour run. The first hour largely focuses on Suzume and Souta’s travels to different Japanese locales to locate the different doors that the “worm” is attempting to get into our world from. A few of them have Suzume become acquainted with one of the residents in each locale that she befriends. While this narrative could have worked within a TV anime that would have more time to explore a larger story, Suzume lacks this time as we get little time to connect with these new characters to make Suzume’s bonds with them come off genuine. Not to mention there’s little breathing room with Suzume quickly thrust into her present circumstances right within the film’s first several minutes.
By the second hour, the film attempts to have emotional drama with its story exploring Suzume’s connections to the parallel world and trying to implement a coming of age moral with it. Unfortunately, this story element felt largely shoehorned into the film by this point with the lack of focus on it in the film’s first hour. The same issues also come into play with the film’s sloppy addition of its romance angle and one character’s inconsistent motives in their interactions with our lead characters.
With Suzume’s rather significant flaws with its storytelling focus and having a vision too grand for a two hour film, I’d say it is easily the weakest quality Shinkai film I’ve seen to date. Even with my gripes on Shinkai’s typical storytelling approach with his films, the past ones at least took their time to focus on and explore their characters and story to at least have you give somewhat of a hoot about their developments. But in Suzume’s case, it felt too unfocused and tried doing too much with what it wanted to dabble into.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jul 16, 2024
Train to the End of the World is a surreal/ sci-fi adventure-comedy where new technology called the 7G Network accidentally warps reality throughout Japan. High school student Shizuru Chikura and several of her classmates decide to take an abandoned train to Ikebukuro to find their missing friend, Youka Nakatomi, who had activated the network. During their journey, Shizuru and her companions visit different locales that are affected by the 7G Network in various bizarre ways.
A major area that I praise this series for and found the most entertainment out of is the creativity put into the various locales and characters affected by the 7G Network.
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Train to the End of the World relishes in its absurdity with many of the bizarre ways the Japanese populace and locales are affected by the 7G Network’s reality warping and relishes in the absurdity of the various ways how folks are affected. I won’t bother getting into examples to risk spoiling the experience of seeing this series. But I will admit that this creativity and embracing of the absurd was quite amusing and enjoyable.
But outside of this, I’ll admit I have some gripes with this series. The storytelling and characters are largely kept pretty simple and straightforward in their developments thanks to more focus being put on showing off the various effects of the 7G Network’s reality warping. Shizuru and her friends largely fulfill character types typical of high school anime and largely don’t have much to show as far as personality and developments go. The series also could have been longer to both explore more of the different locales affected by the 7G Network to show off more of this title’s absurd humor and create more world building, as well as offering opportunities to flesh out and develop Shizuru and her friends.
In short, Train to the End of the World largely gets by with embracing its absurdity with the different effects of the 7G Network’s reality warping that made up much of my enjoyment for the series. But at the same time, I do wish it had more time to flesh out its world and characters, as the effects of the 7G Network largely made up the title’s focus. But still, I don’t regret the time I got out of seeing this series.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 23, 2024
A Whisker Away is one of the recent anime films to come out focused on a troubled teen learning a lesson on life through some paranormal circumstances. In this case, middle schooler Miyo Sasaki is dealing with a troubled family life between her father remarrying following a divorce and her biological mother neglecting her. In addition, she has an obsessive romantic interest in her classmate, Kento Hinode. Wanting to get close to Hinode, Miyo obtains a magical mask from a mysterious mask seller that allows her to turn into a cat in order to spend time with him. However, this acquisition comes with consequences as
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Miyo find herself slowly turning into a cat due to not wanting to confront the stresses of her human life.
The film’s attempt at expressing its moral comes with its issues involving its storytelling and characters. Miyo’s character is a bit of a double-edged sword where while it’s understandable that she doesn’t know how to properly express her emotions through her rough family life, it makes her interest in Hinode rather uneasy to see in action due to her actions bordering on being stalker-like with Miyo being in the habit of invading his personal space without his permission, not knowing when to take no for an answer when he turns her down, and using her cat transformations as a means to visit him and gain his trust unknowingly. The other angle to the film, Miyo’s family problems, largely plays second fiddle to focusing on Miyo and Hinode’s relationship developments as Miyo is more focused on her crush and not too concerned with her family issues despite this getting some focus during the middle of the film. Hinode’s character is largely pretty one-note and he largely seems to show little romantic interest in Miyo throughout much of the film. But how A Whisker Away chooses to resolve the relationship comes off as too convenient and unconvincing between Miyo’s troubling behavior getting rewarded and Hinode largely having little interest in a relationship before this point.
Far as the paranormal angle to the film goes, it looked like A Whisker Away was taking cues from Studio Ghibli’s The Cat Returns with elements to its story and will admit this has its moments of decent storytelling. The use of masks for humans to turn into cats and vice versa is a solid story element that offers its moments of solid exploration of the character motives for wanting to use the power of said masks, this nicely shown with Kinako, the pet cat of Miyo’s stepmother. The Mask Seller is also a solid villain for the film with his manipulation of the characters tempting them to use his masks for his personal gain and showing his true character by later in the film. Only major gripe I have with this element was that the land of the cats used in the film’s final story arc largely felt like a backdrop between the lack of exploration of the locale and the storytelling it could have offered up going into more detail on other characters who faced a similar predicament that Miyo’s currently undergoing that they since regret.
Overall, A Whisker Away has a good number of issues with its storytelling and characters that hurt it as a coming-of-age film that mainly involve the direction of Miyo’s character developments and the unconvincing romance the film attempts to sell between her and Hinode. The paranormal elements of the film have their moments to shine, though the final story arc in the land of the cats wastes what storytelling potential this could have offered as the setting largely served as a backdrop for concluding the film. In short, this is one of the more underwhelming and flawed coming-of-age films I’ve seen out of this familiar trend of anime films.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jun 7, 2024
Adapted from an otome dating sim game, Amnesia involves the Heroine (literally her name as a self-insert character) suffering from amnesia as she interacts with several men whom she has varying relationships with and can interact with a fairy named Orion, only she can see. Attempting to piece together her lost memories, the Heroine finds herself whisked into some supernatural circumstances.
This adaptation has enough problems owing to its dating sim roots and largely seeming like it has more focus on advertising the game instead of making an effort to do its own take on its source material. It looked like Amnesia chose to use its
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supernatural angle to explore the different story paths in the game to explore the Heroine’s interactions with the different male characters she interacts with in each route. The problem with doing this is that due to its messy narrative, the series has little time to explore and allow you to connect with most of the male characters that the Heroine interacts with and make them seem more like window dressing to pad out the anime’s runtime. This also has the added problem of not doing enough to explore the supernatural angle of the series for the majority of its run and leaving viewers largely in the dark about what is going on. The final story arc has a bit more meat to it with revealing the cause surrounding the Heroine’s predicament, thought even this is still messily handled with the series explaining things in an infodump in the title’s final episode since the final arc was more focused with the Heroine’s struggle against an antagonist.
Issues with Amnesia also extend to its characters as the series doesn’t really do much to flesh the majority of them out nor even have the time to do so. The Heroine is one of the more frustrating lead characters I’ve seen in an anime as she is extremely naive to trust others easily despite many of them having obvious nefarious motives and largely being pretty worthless when it comes to handling her present dilemma. While I’ve mentioned the male characters the Heroine interacts with are largely pretty shallow due to the anime’s limited focus on many of them, a few of their routes push onto the abusive side in regards to their treatment of the Heroine and regrettably get handwaved by the series to be done out of some sort of romantic tripe to protect her. With how utterly worthless the Heroine is and not being proactive to assert herself in those sort of circumstances, this can make these moments seem pretty problematic if viewing this from a different angle.
There are some other issues I could highlight with Amnesia like the ridiculous choice of clothing for the characters, questionable voice acting quality, and shoddy looking visuals. But I think what I covered above is enough to show why this is easily among the worst anime titles I’ve seen. The anime just exists as a promotion for its source material without doing anything to make things more engaging and this obviously shows in the overall quality of the title’s production and storytelling. I wouldn’t waste any time trying to track this down.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Feb 22, 2024
An entry in the “real robot” genre of anime, Bullbuster focuses on the members of the vermin extermination company known as Namikome Industries. The pests in question are mutated creatures known as “giant beasts” and Namikome utilizes super powered robots to handle extermination of the beasts in order to allow the residents of Ryugan Island to return to their home. However with the small scale of Namikome’s operations, they also have to be careful with business expenses as far as management of ammunition and maintenance of their robots go.
I suppose I’ll just get the main thing with Bullbuster out of the way first in mentioning
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the title’s mecha elements. Bullbuster goes pretty hard with its “real robot” element with the titular mecha and a few other units used by Namikome Industries being designed to be more practical with their designs instead of the humanoid-like designs that many popular entries within the “real robot” genre like Gundam typically implement. Plus, the action scenes are nothing to write home about with the title’s more realistic implementation of weapons and technology employed by Namikome’s mecha to handle the beasts they are seeking to capture or eliminate instead of anything more flashy and elaborate. The mechas are CG-rendered, but the more practical designs help go well with Bullbuster’s more grounded approach to its storytelling. The only bad part of this element to the series is the rather rough looking rendering and animation of the various giant beasts that would look more at home with a 2000s TV anime with how ugly they look.
The other major element of Bullbuster that sticks out is the office politics in play with the series, harking back to past titles like Patlabor and Dai-Guard that offer this unique focus with a mecha series. In the case of Namikome, the series believably portrays the struggles of a small company with managing their budget and public reputation among the masses as they are financially struggling due to the use of their mecha being a financial strain as far as maintenance and repairs go. Each of the employees have their aspirations and stances with whatever element of Namikome’s operations they are part of, from Kataoka’s efforts to rein in expenses as the company accountant to Tajima trying to keep his employees under control as the company president. Elements of corporate culture also come into play as the origins of the giant beasts are gradually revealed to be linked to some shady corporate activity and exploring the lengths that the corporation in question will go through to mask their true motives and maintain their public reputation.
Characterization isn’t the largest focus of Bullbuster, but it does take some time to focus on the various characters involved with Namikome. Each of them undergo some degree of exploration and development involving their work with the company or how they are personally affected by the giant beast threat, this giving them a bit of dimension and also helping to add more to explore with the office politics explored within the series. The only character I was largely indifferent towards was Okino, whose typical young, idealistic character doesn’t get as much fleshing out compared to his co-workers. While seemingly introduced as the main character of focus at the start of Bullbuster, Okino’s character gradually loses focus as the series puts more focus on exploring his co-workers.
In short, I can see where Bullbuster may not be everyone’s cup of tea within the mecha genre as I’ve heard quite a bit about the indiffernce many had to its premise and the lack of elaborate action scenes involving mecha and mutant monsters. Those wanting something like Gundam or Evangelion with their elaborate action and high drama aren’t likely to enjoy this series. But if you are wanting something that goes hard on the “real robot” element of mecha anime mixed in with exploring office politics a la Patlabor or Dai-Guard, Bullbuster is a solid series that dabbles into those realms with the challenges faced by the members of Namikome and would recommend if you are looking for something different to dabble into within the mecha genre.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 31, 2024
Mushoku Tensei is one of the latest popular entries in the isekai genre focused on a middle-aged NEET getting killed in an accident and being reincarnated into a medieval-fantasy based world as a young boy named Rudeus Greyrat with a talent with magic. Wanting the opportunity to have a better life compared to his prior one, Rudeus sets out to improve himself as he better understands the new world he is part of and becomes acquainted with the world’s occupants.
I’ll be the first to say that this series isn’t setting out to break any new ground with the isekai genre, as it does have a
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fair share of the familiar cliches and character types you can expect out of it, including Rudeus being well aware of the cliches for it when he shares his internal thoughts on situations to the audience. But what I can appreciate from Mushoku Tensei is that it does actually take the time to set up world building and explore its characters instead of immediately jumping into adventures. The series introduces and fleshes out many of the various characters that Rudeus encounters with members of his new family, friends, and companions as the series explores the first 10 years of his life in the new world. Some characters are still a bit underdeveloped compared to others, but do appreciate how some of them contribute to Rudeus’ growth in varying ways within this series. The series also dabbles into some of the norms and customs found within this world like the celebration of birthdays in every fifth year of life, discrimination against different species, and polyamory seeming to be a norm. The third element I’ll touch on a little later in this review, as that has been known to be a somewhat divisive element among those who have seen the series. The only other gripe I have with this series is its lack of a proper ending, though the title’s second half and a second season of Mushoku Tensei help continue the story.
The heart of this series is the development of Rudeus’ character as he settles into life within his new world and tries to better himself. In a departure from many recent isekai titles, Rudeus doesn’t come off as a flawless character who can seemingly achieve everything flawlessly and easily win the hearts of anyone who meets with him. Having isolated himself from the outside world in his former life due to bullying, Rudeus does find himself unaccustomed to handling a number of situations within the medieval world he is in between both his lack of experience interacting with others and the different setting he is in. Plus while being a prodigy in magic and being mature for his age with knowledge, his inexperience with the medieval world and feeling like he has to do all the thinking for others does occasionally overwhelm him in heated situations. In addition with the series more focused on exploring its characters, the series is focused on the first ten years of our lead character’s new life as he befriends some of his world’s inhabitants and comes to learn valuable lessons as he interacts with them. This focus on fleshing out Rudeus gives his character a bit more dimension and allows the audience to build a connection with him because of the growth he undergoes.
As mentioned, the one area that has proven somewhat controversial with Mushoku Tensei is the setting’s rather frank view of sex. Nobles within the world of the series are known to have mistresses they have affairs with, can have multiple wives, and some of them, especially among Rudeus’ family, are shown to have their fetishes for women they want to have their way with. Plus, the society isn’t averse to having minors as young as 10 engage in sex, a fact that shocks Rudeus during a later story arc when he gets into this sort of predicament. On the one hand, this does believably depict how sex was approached by nobles during medieval times, women having little say in what men do to them due to their lower societal status, and children being recognized as adults once they turn 13. On the other hand, these story elements can come off rather unsettling when approaching the series with modern sensibilities and is likely not to be everyone’s cup of tea. While I largely didn’t mind this given the setting, my only gripes with this angle to the series was Rudeus’ occasional moments of perversion when he was having lewd thoughts of the female characters and attempting to peep on or molest them, that made him look more in line with the cliched anime pervert.
While not breaking any new ground, I’ll admit I did get a good amount of engagement to Mushoku Tensei thanks to the effort put into fleshing out and developing Rudeus and other characters within the world of the series, especially notable as many recent isekai titles I’ve seen are more in the habit of milking overdone cliches at the expense of giving themselves any kind of depth. The series does have some issues I can’t overlook with some of the typical cliches of the isekai genre rearing their ugly head and the medieval setting’s frank thoughts on sex. But despite my gripes, I’ll admit that this series had more meat to its storytelling than I was expecting and plan to dabble into its second half at some point.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 31, 2023
Aquatope on White Sand focuses on two teenage girls with their involvement working in an aquarium. The first, Fuka Miyazawa, is a former idol attempting to sort out what she wants to do with her life until she comes across the Gama Gama Aquarium. The second, Kukuru Misakino, is the assistant director of Gama Gama to support her grandfather in running the aquarium, which is struggling financially with attracting visitors. The two girls develop a bond as both work at Gama Gama and undergo their different developments with the tribulations each face.
Aquatope is essentially a slice-of-life series with some coming of age drama elements in
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exploring the developments faced by Kukuru and Fuka. Despite what I may cover from the plot summary above, the series devotes more focus on Kukuru’s developments as they are more central to the show’s story developments. Kukuru is shown to have a strong passion for learning about and preserving the aquatic life within the aquarium that she maintains. At the same time though, she is still a teenager dealing with her own growing pains as she is trying to prevent the aquarium’s closure due to the strong emotional connection she has to it, while ignorant of some of the realities involved with maintaining things for it such as generating business and the building infrastructure. Getting over this hump serves as the major crux of Kukuru’s development for the first half of Aquatope and making for the more heavier drama in the title’s story. There are points she does selfishly do things to try forcing things to go her way, but learns reality will not always allow things to be as such and she must learn to work with the circumstances of life as best she can, making her character story rather relatable.
While Fuka’s story focus has some relatability in regards of her struggle to sort out what kind of future she wants, her developments are a bit more straightforward as a result of Kukuru’s greater character focus. She is a pleasant character and the bond she develops with Kukuru is a touching and genuine one. But as she largely serves as more of a pillar of support for Kukuru as she better understands the situation with Gama Gama, she doesn’t get equal focus and development time. Plus with the handling of her character story for the first half of Aquatope, it felt like this was resolved and her return for the title’s second half seemed almost unnecessary at points since she seemed to mostly exist again to serve as emotional support for Kukuru.
I mention a second half of this and this one will require me to dabble into some spoilers. Essentially, Aquatope does a timeskip eight months after the events of its first half to explore Kukuru now in the working world working at a larger aquarium. As an adult, Kukuru’s main conflict comes from learning to compromise with her personal desires and others to maintain work at the aquarium as she becomes part of its marketing department due to her prior experience as Gama Gama’s assistant director. The series does a solid job dabbling into the challenges that come with marketing operations with getting the finer details and all parties involved all together to make major events and opportunities a success for the aquarium, challenges Kukuru has to learn to sort through.
As far as other supporting characters go in Aquatope, they are a bit of a mixed bag. While many of them are rather likable as far as their personalities go, they don’t have much to show in the way of dimension as they largely exist to support and assist Kukuru and Fuka with whatever challenges they are dealing with, with this applying to both halves of the series. Probably the only supporting character I took an interest to was Chiyu Haebaru, an aquarium attendant with serious aspirations on wanting to learn to work in her profession and is initially dismissive of Kukuru due to assuming she isn’t taking a career in the field seriously. But despite her seemingly hostile character, the series shows there is more to her character beneath the surface and helps add an interesting angle to the second half of the series with exploring work-life balance.
The other angle to the series I also have some gripes with is the supposed supernatural angle for it. There are instances that Kukuru, Fuka, and others who visit Gama Gama experience mysterious illusions involving either the aquatic life in the aquarium or flashbacks of their past, as well as some cameos from a trickster spirit known as a kijimuna. This angle to the series largely felt like a gimmick for me as it doesn’t add much to the story and clashes with the more believable, down-to-earth storytelling that Aquatope largely dabbles into with its characters.
In short, Aquatope is a solid series with its exploration of Kukuru’s character undergoing some trials of growing up while experiencing the passion of working in aquariums and exploring different angles of being in the working world within this sort of environment. This said, the series still has its fair share of hiccups that bring down its quality some involving some elements of Fuka’s role in the story, not doing much to explore more with the supporting cast, and the supernatural elements of the series contributing little to the story. Still with what else the series otherwise offers up, it’s still a relatable slice of life series exploring the challenges of looking for and being in a career one greatly desires.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 17, 2023
Lonely Castle in the Mirror is another anime film focused on a troubled teen overcoming her personal issues through some extraordinary means, in this case entering a parallel world in a castle through her bedroom mirror where she encounters six other teens having their own personal troubles. There are two main elements explored throughout this film's run: exploring the personal issues of each of the characters and the mystery surrounding the alternate world that the seven are able to enter.
For the first one, the seven teens share a common dilemma in that they have their personal traumas impacting their lives to varying degrees. The
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film addresses school bullying and parental abuse in exploring the problems faced by each of the seven teens throughout Lonely Castle's nearly two hour run. It makes a point to mention that while overcoming said traumas aren't easy, there are lifelines available to provide support for those affected. For example in the case of our main character Kokoro, there is a teacher at a special school for bullied kids who goes above and beyond to convince Kokoro that she is available to support her where needed. The other element to this is that the cohabitation that Kokoro and the teens have with one another in the castle provides an environment where they can be themselves and being around those with similar experiences allow them to be in a comfortable environment free from the personal problems impacting their lives. The support that the seven provide one another serves as a vital source of character development for each of them to overcome their personal issues throughout the film.
With the focus on the alternate world, the teens are also tasked by a mysterious girl in a wolf mask called the Wolf Queen to find a hidden room that can grant their wish within a year. While exploring the personal problems of each of the characters, Lonely Castle also drops hints of the true nature of the mysterious castle and different elements of it as the seven are also trying to find clues regarding how they are able to come together, the location of a key needed for the hidden room, the identity of the Wolf Queen, and the location of the hidden room they are trying to seek out. The fact that the teens have a year to solve this mystery also provides this angle of the story a sense of urgency as they have that limited time to both solve the mystery and overcome their personal traumas. These layers of mystery help add more depth to the film's storytelling which, combined with the developments of its seven main characters, gives Lonely Castle tight enough pacing with its storytelling where I didn't feel as if it was padding things out or dabbling into too much for its two hour run.
If there is a weakness to Lonely Castle for me, it would have to be its predictability. There have been enough coming-of-age drama anime films in recent years that have come out with a similar focus on troubled teens overcoming their issues with some sort of extraordinary means and the storytelling beats for this focus are rather easy to pick up on. This also carries over into the mystery surrounding the castle as the plot twists it offers up are quite easy to sort out when you dabble into the bits of foreshadowing offered up throughout the film's run.
Still in spite of said predictability, Lonely Castle in the Mirror offers up a tight narrative in its main focuses on the personal issues affecting its characters and the mystery surrounding the castle that serves as their escape from the troubles they each face. Its exploration of how issues like bullying and parental abuse impact a teen's psyche is relatable and the film makes a point to show that there are adults who care about helping them instead of trying to "fix" them. It doesn't break any new ground as far as its storytelling goes, but I wouldn't say I regret the time I spent seeing this film.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Nov 27, 2023
Remake Our Life focuses on a struggling video game developer named Kyouya Hashiba finding himself whisked 10 years back into the past when he was enrolled as a college student. This event leads him to encounter and befriend three creative talents whom served as his inspiration in his efforts from the present to become a successful game developer.
Remake Our Life offers focus on both the challenges involved with creative projects like movies and video games, as well as the developments of Kyouya and his friends. While focus on creative developments isn’t new with an anime series, Remake Our Life still does a great job
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believably delving into the challenges involved with planning and development of creative works as Kyouya’s projects often have him in challenging situations that compromise the quality of a project. This leads him to have to plan out how to overcome the present crisis through any available means to meet deadlines and ensure a quality work is provided, demonstrating his project management skills. This rings true for creative projects in real life as challenging situations with the development of a creative work can lead plans to have to be changed or removed all together to meet any expected deadlines for the project development’s timeline, especially in regards to TV shows, movies, and video games.
The series also explores Kyouya and his friends in their developments as Remake Our Life takes the time to flesh them out and explore whatever issues they are dealing with in their personal lives. Outside of Kyouya using his time leap to attempt improving his future, his friends each have their varying issues to deal with for the creative careers they are aiming for. This shows Kyouya that in spite of how talented each of them are in their different creative outlets, they are still individuals with their own personal struggles they have to learn to overcome in their endeavors in spite of how much he idolizes them. The time travel gimmick also comes into play when the series later explores how each of Kyouya’s friends are impacted from his involvement in their lives while in college and how this affects Kyouya’s future aspirations. Unfortunately, the series does end inconclusively during a major point in its storyline due to the usual culprit of the title’s light novel source material still being ongoing during the time of its airing.
Besides the lack of a proper ending, I also took issue with the title’s occasional milking of fanservice with members of the female cast usually seen in states of undress. For a slice-of-life drama, it felt out of place to add this to the series and would take time away from the serious focus it provided on its characters and the various projects that Kyouya and his friends were involved in.
Despite some hiccups, I’ll admit that I was engaged with Remake Our Life thanks to its believable exploration of the developments of Kyouya and his friends, as well as the various challenges that each undergo with the different creative outlets they aspire to be in and the various projects they take on together. If you have interest in a series exploring the challenges involved with developing a creative work you aspire to work on, I’d recommend this as a solid series to dabble into.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Nov 22, 2023
The name Jun Maeda might ring a bell to fans of anime adaptations of visual novels from Key that were popular in the 2000s and early 2010s like Kanon, Air, and Clannad with his involvement in their writing. These titles were well known for having light comedy mixed in with heavy drama, romance, and fantasy elements that pushed things rather heavily with suspension of disbelief. Unfortunately, pushing out the same type of storytelling formula with all your works can lead to audiences tiring of someone’s creative works over time. Such is the case with Maeda’s most recent anime made, The Day I Became a God,
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focused on high school student Yota Narukami meeting a strange girl in nun attire named Hina who claims that the world will end in 30 days and promises to help Yota with his affairs in the time they have left.
Roughly the first eight episodes of The Day I Became a God focus on Hina aiding Yota and several of his friends in helping them out with their various problems. She shows a superhuman level of predictive abilities that help aid the characters with resolving whatever personal issues they are facing. This storytelling focus has its equal parts of the light comedy and emotional drama you can typically expect out of Maeda’s works. However, the biggest issue with this angle to the series is that much of this focus on Yota’s classmates feels irrelevant in the grand scheme of things as their developments feel a bit rushed, they largely remain the same characters once their dilemmas get resolved, and they get pushed back into the background once their story is over. All this feels largely done to show off how impressive Hina’s abilities are, pad out the TV anime’s runtime, and reminds me of the issues that the anime adaptation of Air had back in 2005 with its focus on Kano and Minagi’s story arcs.
The side story of the series involving a mysterious organization investigating someone related to Hina serves as the actual focus to the series, though even this is ripe with a number of issues. This angle to the series implements the fantasy elements of Became a God, but more into the sci-fi realm as said organization relies on the hacking abilities of a young man with superhuman calculative abilities to aid them in their goals, serves to eventually reveal the source of Hina’s superhuman predictive abilities, and lead into the more serious developments of its final four episodes. This unfortunately creates a rather misleading direction for the show’s story as a whole with the direction its drama goes and does a rather sloppy and unconvincing job of developing a romance direction that early episodes never hinted to or smoothly developed. It also dabbles into some complicated themes like government corruption and the ethics of technological advances and uses, yet Maeda never bothers to dabble further into these themes as he’s more fixated on the unconvincing romance he sloppily put together at this point of the series.
But perhaps the one element to the series that made me personally disgusted with the final few episodes of Became a God was its handling of medical treatment for the disabled. Limiting spoilers, one major character gets heavily disabled enough to the point where they get admitted to a medical facility for treatment of their disorder and require regular support from nursing staff to maintain their everyday functions. My issue isn’t so much with the nursing staff in question as the series believably depicts the delicate handling of treatment for the character in question, the nursing staff genuinely caring for the character’s well-being, and how anything outside the scope of regular care they are receiving can be a negative risk to their physical and mental condition. My issue with this angle to the series is that because of Maeda’s storytelling approach, he tries to manipulate the audience into thinking the “power of love” can overcome whatever issues this character is experiencing while ignorant of the various accommodations, amount of therapy time, and necessary needs that would have to be in place for the living environment of said character to be able to live comfortably outside of a medical facility. Having experienced developmental and physical disabilities personally growing up, I’m aware of the struggles both personally and within society that occur when going through the effort to go through therapy in improving both my physical condition and my ability to properly interact with others. The fact Maeda thinks he can just gloss over this harsh angle to reality to create his idealized romance personally ticked me off and made my viewing of Became a God’s final few episodes a struggle to get through.
In short, The Day I Became a God greatly exposes the issues with the storytelling approach from Jun Maeda with having a good deal of storytelling issues, pushing suspension of disbelief too heavily, a good chunk of its story from its first half largely feeling pointless and feeling like filler, misleading audiences with its haphazard change in story direction, the sloppy romance it tries pushing for, and glossing over some serious themes to focus more on said sloppy romance. While I would typically rate this as a weak series and just move on from there, Maeda’s handling of treatment for the disabled in pushing for his romance angle personally ticked me off enough as such where I’m actually rather disgusted with this series and this now ranks among my all-time worst anime as a result.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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