The Eccentric Family 2

I really enjoyed the first season of The Eccentric Family. It was whimsical and magical in a very low-key way, even when the stakes became very high for Yasaburo and the rest of his tanuki buddies/family. Of course it always helps when the art is pretty as well, I liked the semi-flat, far less moe than most PA Works shows, style and there are still so many scenes that I can crisply remember thanks to both this artwork and their tone.

I was excited for the second season of the show, I wasn’t quite sure what else needed telling in the story but I was up for it! And now that the second season has ended I’m left asking myself, What was the point of that season?

The second season was not bad but it did not have the clear character developement and drive of the first season. I’ve seen folks mention that the source material for The Eccentric Family is a book series and while it’s set to be a trilogy the final book isn’t out yet (all I’ve heard about it is that it contains The Great Tengu War WHICH I AM SO DOWN FOR). That would explain some things, in my opinion the middle installment in a trilogy is the trickiest story to tell satisfactorily since it lacks the natural draw and tidiness that comes with either a beginning or an ending. 

And it certainly feels like we’re in the middle of Benten’s story. I was a bit frustrated that this season didn’t do even more with her since she is the most fascinating character in the series. It’s not that I don’t love our tanuki main cast but we already know them well; from their histories, hopes, to why their conflicts play out as they do. But Benten, born human Satomi Suzuki and spirited away and then trained by Akadama into becoming a tengu, is a real mystery all around (fun tidbit, it looks like Professor Yodogawa’s assistant is her brother!). Equally mysterious is another character with a name that’s not a name, Nidame (literally, The Second) who appears to be Benten’s inverse; a tengu (whom at this point I’m presuming born to Akadama) but who vocally eschews his tengu status, despite constantly doing things no human could. This is a thematic conflict ripe for development, even though I fear it might make the story messier as a whole (if, as Yasaburo says, there are tanuki, humans, and tengu, is it possible for someone to switch classes? And what about those oni in the demon world? Etc etc) 


The Eccentric Family 2 advanced some of the plots surrounding the Shinogami Family but it did not change anything about the larger tanuki society, or the even larger Kyoto society, really at all. And that’s where this season fell flat for me. The Eccentric Family is clearly a story with ideas of mixing in themes and conflicts between both personal and larger levels and yet it didn’t deliver this time. I can only hope that this second season was one of house-keeping, merely tidying up, for a grander, more foolish, finale.  

Anime Review: Flying Witch

Flying Witch

Anime Review: Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Phantasmagoria: The Last Song

I don't believe it, I somehow managed to hold out all the way until the spring season batch of shows without running out of things to blog! I'm pretty thrilled by this turn of events, although I didn't watch many spring shows so I'm going to actually run out of things to blog pretty soon. 

Hmm, well for the moment, as per-usual my first review of the season is my favorite show/the one that really needs as many views as it can get (places like Funimation have said that the views that count towards determining if a show is going to get a physical release or not are all of the views while the show was airing+one week, although I've missed that window). I talked about the first half of Concrete Revolutio earlier in the year so I suppose this is my last shot to convince folks that yes, this is yet another superhero anime worth watching.

Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Phantasmagoria: The Last Song

Anime Review: Noragami Aragoto

It's a little awkward that I'm just now starting on the fall shows this late into January so let's get started my favorite [one and done] fall show from this past year and one of my favorites of the entire year as well.

Noragami Aragoto

Anime Review: Gatchman Crowds Insight

I, like everyone else, was surprised when I heard that were was going to be a sequel to the 2013 incarnation of Gatchaman since it seemed like the series had tied itself up quite nicely. However, after having seen this sequel it's a must see, that story wasn't complete before which I suppose makes this the best sequel ever in a sense.

But first things first, if you have seen Crowds but not the director's cut of episode 12 you need to see that. Given the half recap episode in the tv run they had to re-edit episode 12 on the DVDs (Japan only, Sentai could not get the license in the US) which includes how Hajime finally defeated Berg Katze and a few other key details. Next, make sure to watch episode 0 on Crunchyroll before going onto episode 1 since it has new stuff as well. And then you're all set for what may be the most decisive anime of 2015!

Gatchaman Crowds Insight

Movie Review: Mai Mai Miracle

No post yesterday because I had a headache that could split mountains and quite predictably those make my writing rather incoherent, even for a shorter post like this one. But I think a day's delay for this review is fine since once again almost no one else has talked about it! I'm not sure how the JICC scored a viewing copy of the movie before the Kickstarter DVDs had released (in fact I'm not sure if they're out yet, given that the KS updates are backers only and the last update was in late July) but this wouldn't be the first time they have showed a movie that doesn't have a physical media release in the US.

Mai Mai Miracle

Movie Review: Giovanni's Island

When the JICC announced the date for this film I was a little surprised, I've never heard anyone else talk about the movie aside from Enzo at Lost in Anime. When I asked if I should go he told me yes, absolutely, that more people should see the film so I took advtange of the showing!

Giovanni's Island

Anime Review: Durarara!! x2 SHOU

This was a bit of an odd show to be air. As I think I talked about in my Yuri Kuma Arashi review, studio Brains Base is hardly worth mentioning these days and Durarara!! was their best selling show ever, I think Natsume and the Book of Friends was a close second but DRRR!! sold like gangbusters and everyone expected a sequel to be announced in a year or so. Come five years later and a lot of the core creative staff has moved onto an entirely different studio to produce this show and it makes me wonder what was going on behind the scenes for that to happen. We'll likely never know (short of getting someone important drunk which is always a possibility!) and even odder is a recent episode of the podcast ANNCast with "Aniplex Guy" who says that the US support for the show helped get this second part made. There have been cases before where an American company has helped fund a sequel (like with Big O) and Aniplex of America is special since it's a branch of the Japanese production company but this would be almost the first time simple support for a show has helped make it possible. Plus, I had always heard that DRRR!! DIDN'T do as well as they expected, they even switched over to their more premium releases afterwards so that change in marketing always seemed to support the rumor. So I guess you can say that the story surrounding the show is more confusing than the show itself, although given that this show tends to explain itself fairly well after a point maybe that's the least surprising point.

Durarara!! x2 SHOU

Anime Review: Shirobako

When I first saw the summary for this story I thought "But if I've already seen Animation Runner Kuromi do I really need to see this?" and now having seen the showI would actually recommend seeing that 2 OVA series first! The two shows are actually fairly different but Shirobako drops you into the animation production assuming that you already know a lot of the basics and ARK gives you a great rundown of those missing parts or you can also check out this handy glossary for the show.

Shirobako

Movie Review: Thermae Romae

As a heads up, since I am so busy catching up with all the anime I've fallen behind on there will NOT be a review next week. Since March kicks off my month of nothing but digital manga and webcomic reviews this means that there won't be any anime reviews until April (which should be when 99% of my shows end which means that it'll get a little crazy around here).

I seem to run into "help I have no more shows to review and no time!" around this time every year actually, usually I pull a short or two out fill the space and that's exactly what I did with the Thermae Romae anime last year (it's since been licensed by Discotek although I'm unsure if it's streaming). I enjoyed it more than I expected so when the JICC announced they were having a showing of the live action movie I couldn't resist. It was a comedy to start with and with how over-acted Japanese live action comedies tend to be I couldn't wait to see how it turned out.

Thermae Romae

Movie Review: Wolf Children

Again, sorry for no full anime review on Monday, I've been swamped again and having terrible luck finding some things I really want to review free, legally online without going through a hassle like I don't know, verifying whoever the heck is my cable provider these days.

So I'm a bit late getting around to this movie but when it did come out I saw reviews from reviewers I liked and realized that if most of them were negative about this movie that I was unlikely to love it either, possibly not even like it. But I'm hardly going to turn down seeing a movie for free so why not, I was sure it wasn't going to be absolutely terrible!

Wolf Children

Book Review: Dragon Sword and Wind Child

Last February I ordered a microphone from Amazon, got a package direct from Amazon, thinking that I didn't remember that it was an Amazon fulfillment, and opened it up to find a kindle instead. I then remembered that my birthday was in about a week and that this was probably a gift from my mother considering I had mentioned off-handedly that I was thinking of getting on in the next year and confirmed when I started getting email notifications about books from my wishlist being added to my account. Obviously this book was one of them, I forget where in the manga blogosphere I first heard of it but it was an out of print title that had recently popped up in ebook form and it sounded like it had potential so why not?

Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Noriko Ogiwara

Movie Review: The Tale of Princess Kaguya

I was under the impression that this movie had a one-night only showing in DC and was unhappy that I wouldn't have a chance to see it, until I checked back a week later and discovered it was a one week showing so I still had time! (and right after I bought this ticket I realized another location had opened up for the next week with a possibly even cheaper ticket price, curses) The movie won't be playing long in the rest of the country either so I bumped this up my reviewing queue a bit and let's get to it!

The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Anime Review: Terror in Resonance

Sorry for the delay here, I seem to write two kinds of reviews: quick ones where I can get one done in half an hour and then monstrous ones that take two hours to do a rough draft and usually I need to sleep on it to edit, guess which one this ended up being? So with that, no introduction this time around and let's just get down to Watanabe's latest series that's not Space Dandy, streaming on Funimations's website and hulu.

Terror in Resonance (Zankyou no Terror)

Anime Review: Mekaku City Actors

A couple of years ago I first heard of the Kagero Project and went looking for information on it, I wasn't even sure what exactly it was, and was horribly confused when I tried skimming tvtropes and wikipedia articles on it. The basic set-up is that an editor, Jin, used the vocaloid program to make a series of songs, which were later put to videos, that sort of told a story and then were later adapted into a light novel series, a manga, and then eventually this anime, think of it as the story becoming more accessible each time it was adapted. So I tried out a few videos and liked some but was just plain confused by others and decided to wait it out until the adaptation to see if the story worked any better here, especially since in an odd twist Jin himself was doing the writing for the series (I can't find a staff listing that credits him with a particular role so I'm assuming he helped with the series composition or scenario instead of writing the actual scripts). So, while this is certainly the easiest version of the story for people to get into and finish, is it the "best" one?

Mekaku City Actors

Book Review: IQ84

Sometimes, usually no more than once or twice a year, I'll read or watch something and choose not to review it since I feel like there's just no way I can talk about it. That's how I felt after I read my first Murakami book, A Wild Sheep Chase, and yet despite that I was interested in IQ84. Not necessarily because of the story but rather at how widely praised it seemed to be, I was just curious what exactly had grabbed seemingly so many people. So when one of my groups of friends, which happens to have a book club in it, decided that this was going to be their next book I hunted down a copy at a local library and got to reading a book so large I felt like it counted as an actual self-defense weapon when I had to walk home late at night by myself.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Anime Review: Mushi-shi

This has been on my to-watch list for years, since early college at least but since legal streaming was in it's infant stages back in 2009 by the time it was online (subbed) legally there was a whole slew of new, more colorful and exciting shows also to watch so it fell by the wayside for me. When news that there was going to be a new OVA came out I remembered I hadn't seen it yet and, since a lot of people were speculating this would lead to a second season (even though the first one came out 8 years earlier, that's a hell of a gap) I started working out my schedule to see it and yep, a new season was announced and I had only two-ish months to finish this first. I would have gotten this review up back in February actually but in February I fell into a bit of a slump and needed something a bit more distracting, more escapist to watch so here I am now, a bit belatedly, telling you to watch a show whose sequel has already started.

Mushi-shi

In this world there are things that everyone can see and other things which are only seen by a few. Those are the mushi and they intertwine and interfere with the lives of people around them regardless of who they are. And so there are the mushi-shi, people who try to solve the problems they cause and Ginko is one man whose entire life revolves around this.

Mushi-shi is not the easiest anime to talk about for all I enjoyed it, that's often how the best slice of life stories are. It's simple but not quite sweet, rough without being uncaring in a way that mimics life. This isn't the kind of supernatural stories that are popular on television, where there has been a great wrong and something is getting revenge, more often than not these stories start with an accident, although a few get worse from there. Very few of the stories are interconnected which makes it even harder to talk about the story since there aren't any great character arcs or overarching plots to discuss, although that does make the nods in the OVA to all of the first season's stories even sweeter. No, Mushi-shi hangs together in a strange way where it's connected more through themes and general tone than anything else and, since it's hard to express the whys and hows it works let me state up front that it absolutely works here. 

The show is all about its' atmosphere yet calling it atmospheric would probably give people the wrong impression. It's not dark, moody, gothic or any of those things yet it's art, music, and the stories themselves combine together to create something that goes beyond just tone and that feeling it makes defines the show itself. The show really isn't about Ginko, the titular mushi-shi, especially since while he appears in every episode sometimes he's just a very minor character, helping out another person whose already solved most of their problems already. Sometimes he is the main character and his background isn't a secret to the viewer for very long and yet the mixture of his sometimes calm demeanor and other times complete bafflement isn't the main draw of the show. It's the stories themselves that will either bring the viewers in or drive them out, it's a show you'll either love to pieces or be bored to tears by.


One problem I did have with the show's lack of connections was that sometimes it was hard to motivate myself to watch another episode, even if I really did enjoy the show. If had months and months to watch it that wouldn't have been a problem but since I was trying to not only watch it but talk about it before the new season aired I was a bit constrained and there were just some nights where I instead watched something with a lot of character drama or an over-arching story that grabbed me and made me want more of the story right this moment instead of wanting to see more sometime next week. And for that reason I can say that this show isn't for everyone, it isn't that the pacing is slow (especially since, if I'm remembering correctly, there's not a single two-parter in the entire season) but that it doesn't have quite that draw that nearly every other series out there has, even other "gentle" supernatural stories like Natsume and the Book of Friends which has a sizable cast of reoccurring characters just pulled me in a bit more. Considering how closely this ties into the tone of the story I imagine this was a deliberate, or at least expected, side-effect so I can't fault the story for poor construction here, it's just different.   



The art in Mushi-shi is very simple, to the point where I wondered if certain characters had shown up before since they looked so similar (funny enough the reoccurring characters have the most distinct appearances so I shouldn't have worried about that). The mushi look a bit more distinct but if you asked me to describe what ones from a certain episode looked like I wouldn't be able too. Just like the people, the mushi are all different but drawn in a very limited style so they all end up looking similar, quite honestly what stood out to me the most about the art were the backgrounds and the particularly lovely and haunting way the often present mountains were drawn, they reminded me quite a bit of sumi-e paintings. The opening and ending are even more limited in looks than the rest of the show, the opening is just a repeated motif of leaves rustling and each episode ends with the credits crawling over a black screen (with a different song each episode). And for those curious, yes the opening song is an English song and you can buy it on iTunes, although I must warn you that the second verse wasn't what I expected.

And for those who want to give the series a shot, the entire first season is streaming on hulu (subbed and dubbed) courtesy of Funimation. However Aniplex has picked up the just started second season (and presumably the OVA that came out earlier in 2014) and those episodes can be watched on crunchyroll instead.

      

Anime Review: Thermae Romae

Last week was a bit of a rough week for me and unfortunately I fell into a bad habit of mine which is to stress over things so much I get nothing done and leave myself no time to actually watch anything (which would be a stress reliever making this doubly a bad thing). I was already scrambling to try and pull together a show for this week so I had to dig into my "reserve list" of shows I know are even less than 10 episodes that I can watch quickly if I really need to. And lucky for me this show is also a noitaminA one which means I needed to watch it sooner or later anyway so in a way this all still worked out!

Thermae Romae

Manga Review: 20th Century Boys (volumes 15-18)

My new library has a few more volumes of 20th Century Boys which I was pretty thrilled to discover. True I'm still six volumes from the end but I think it'll be a lot easier for me to bug them and convince them to buy six volumes of manga for me to read instead of 10....

20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa

Winter 2014 Mid-Season Anime Round-UP

So I was thinking the other day that gee, while everyone obviously makes a fuss right when new anime series start, and a bit of one when they end, it's kind of hard to look at a season when it's half-way through and go "right, what did I miss?" Yes I follow quite a few anime blogs that post episode by episode thoughts and feelings, plus on twitter I see quite a few people talking about shows I don't follow, but you can't just jump into the post on episode 5 and get a feel from it if this something you really really need to start or not (plus, if you just try to read through a few posts chronologically you usually just end up horribly spoiled). So that's what I'm going to do here, I'm going to talk about all the shows I'm currently watching and hopefully convince a few more people to try them out, or not as the case may be since, while I am investing time each week into some of these shows, there are at least a couple I expect to have messy endings. And if there's anything I don't mention here feel free to chime in in the comments and convince me what to try out, there's a few I'm teetering on the edge of trying but just haven't been sure enough to dedicate the time to them. Oh and just to note I'm a week behind all the shows except Kill La Kill since even Funimation has free-viewer-delays now (they started it up DURING the new season with no prior notice, bah) so hopefully the last episode of these shows didn't do anything really weird that'll completely change my views.

Now, onto the shows and in the order they air each week, starting on Sunday!