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3·3 days agoSomehow I get the impression that he dodged one bullet by jumping into the path of another.
Wait, what?
This seems like it might somehow be connected to the main plot, and… that’s pretty much it.
I imagine the author with a bunch of little slips of paper, each one of which refers to a plot point in an enormous sprawling story, and he sticks all of those little slips of paper to a wall, then throws a dart at it, and whichever one he hits, that’s the one he reveals this chapter.
Thanks for the heads up - fixed.
Ah - and yes, it was almost certainly taken down and put back up. When I posted, it was listed under the Romaji title, and I used the English one instead just because that’s what it’s been posted under all along. Now it’s back to the English title.
I’m pretty sure that Gouda’s muscles are number one. 😉
Beyond that though - yeah - I don’t know. She seems to be going in all directions at once.
Part of it is that there are neat little details slipped in along the way that provide context and add to the characters and the story. Like it’s not just that she happens to have twintails - there’s an actual cute story behind it.
The art is impressive too - especially the expressions.
I think there’s more to it than that though. I don’t understand how it works well enough to analyze it, but there’s something to the timing and the viewpoint shifts - like everything unfolds just right.
If I was an aspiring mangaka, I’d be studying this carefully, panel-by-panel. Because whatever they’re doing, it’s working.
How is this so good?
I mean - this was a chapter about a twin-tailed tsundere getting caught in the rain and getting rescued by her crush, who offers her a folding umbrella that they eventually end up sharing, much to her dismay (and secret pleaaure).
In another situation, I could actually pan a romcom just by sneeringly noting that that was the plot outline of the latest chapter - with just those details, a reader would get that my point was it was just another tedious, cheesy, tropish nothing.
But that’s not what this is, and reading it didn’t feel that way. I don’t get why it works, but it does. I was completely swept up in it from start to finish, and satisfied and impressed by it when it was over, and I can’t even quite pin down why. It’s just… really good. Somehow.
She was always self-absorbed, but it was sort of cute when that just meant she was naive and goofy and oblivious. But as she’s grown more sure of herself, her self-absorption has become less cute and more toxic.
I think I’m going to have to drop this.
With nearly every new chapter, I dislike Mitsumi more.
Poor Kouhei - he’s got it bad.
They’re a great couple, and she has one of the best blushes ever.
4·15 days agoSince Makeine ended and nothing caught my attention this season, I’m back to browsing and binging the past, and just finished up one of the best series I’ve watched in a long time - Heike Monogatari.
I just happened to come across it on a stack and thought it looked interesting, so I watched the first episode and was immediately hooked. It wasn’t until I saw the Science SARU logo in the closing credits that I realized it was Yuasa (though in retrospect, I probably should have from Biwa’s character design).
The art design is astonishing - a perfect fit for a Japanese historical epic - with backgrounds that look like tapestries and foreground details that look like woodblock prints. It’s easily one of the most visually satisfying anime I’ve ever seen.
The story and characters are sort of underdeveloped, as should be expected from trying to condense a sprawling historical epic into 11 anime episodes, but it doesn’t feel incomplete. It’s as if all of the missing content from the much larger and more detailed original epic are spread so evenly throughout the adaptation that everything that’s there fits neatly together and manages to tell the story anyway.
And the way it’s framed - having the narrator of an epic story of a clan brought down by their own arrogance and cruelty that was popularized by biwa singers be a biwa singer who started off with every reason to hate the Heike but who slowly came to love them in spite of their significant flaws - is brilliant. Biwa is perfectly placed to witness the story as it unfolds, and perfectly suited to recognize both their flaws and their virtues, and the inevitability of their fall.
I don’t know how popular it was with westerners when it was released, so I don’t know if I’m just stating the obvious, but my impression is that it’s one of those that’s not so much underrated as underappreciated - that it’s well regarded by those who have watched it, but that that’s fewer people than it deserves. Thus this post.
I think every single person on the planet should read Yotsuba&! It’s a world treasure.
It’s not my personal favorite though - that would be The Voynich Hotel. I just love everything about it - great characters, funny as hell, great stories and even a great ending.
Some honorable mentions:
It was… not good.
Everything about the story is potentially awkward - the MC is an awkward loner, the FMC is a literal robot, and their love is awkward on multiple levels - not only is it weird and unsettling in-universe, but they’re both just bad at it - not really equipped to express love.
But in the manga, there’s a charm that shines through, mostly because they’re both so earnest and determined. Even though it’s strange and awkward and even though they’re not very good at it, they’re going to make this work, and they do.
The anime somehow failed to capture that charm, so all that was left was the awkwardness.
Marked - sorry it took me so long to get back here.
And yes - no love triangle, which is good.
And in fact, it struck me with this chapter that a lot of what I appreciate about this is that their budding romance is a lot of the point, but it’s not an obsessive focus, either in the story or in-universe. It’s not this endless fretting and drama and rollercoastering of so many romances - instead, it’s just a thing that’s sort of naturally and quietly unfolding, and almost in the background. It’s just pleasant and sweet.
Fixed.
Thanks 😅
This is surprisingly impressive.
I didn’t expect a lot going into it - the characters and the situations are pretty tropish - but it’s all done very well, with very expressive art and enough little story and character details to make it stand out.
Definitely looking forward to more.
Good for her.
An is terrific.
I think the new boss is going to turn out to be a good character too. He seems just the sincere, fundamentally kind but no-nonsense type - just right to cut her a bit of slack or kick her butt a bit, depending on which she needs more of at the moment.
Hmmm…
It seems as if she’s actually being sincere for once, but at this point, I don’t know if that’s even possible - if it’s not the case that she’s lived in her lies and manipulations for so long that it’s literally impossible for her to do anything else.
You’re faulting a series for a problem that exists because of assholes.
Every medium has its instances that are provocatice or scatological or otherwise offensive.
The difference with anime is that there’s a group of assholes who base part of their identities on their purported superior taste as evidenced by the fact that they hate anime, and there’s enough of them that they’ve formed a fairly significant circlejerk. And they latch onto things like this to which to point as supposed examples of the medium as a whole, while self-servingly ignoring the other 99.9% of stuff out there.
So yes, in a sense, there is a problem with the fact that things like this exist, but the problem isn’t really simply that they exist, but that there’s a fairly significant group of assholes who can and will dogpile on that fact.
If you want to blame someone or something for the problem, don’t blame the series - blame the assholes.
Ahh… this brings back memories.
Relena Peacecraft was my very first anime crush.