Entry tags:
Winter into Spring
So, the Winter anime season is ending and Spring is starting.
The only Winter show I ended up watching was Scum's Wish, and I'm glad I saw it. Its strength is its emotional rawness, which seemed very pointed at the beginning, but toward the end it got kind of vague, and in places unexpectedly simplistic? Or at least it seemed that way to me (as I noted when I mentioned it before, being some flavor of ace might mean that a certain amount of this goes over my head, because it is very much about the messiness of teen sexuality). I say simplistic but not formulaic. The ending was a bold move for a romance story but a satisfying move for this one, and another of those "simplistic" things would probably seem more "wow" to somebody else than it did to me. In general, I'd say I cried a lot in a good way but couldn't fully relate. So I'm glad I saw it, but I don't think it's something I'll really go back to? (Also I seem to have a track record of finding high school romances ok as I'm watching them but ultimately forgettable, just as a matter of personal taste.)
And for a more fun note (where "fun" roughly equals "schadenfreude"), after an entire season of enjoying the snarky reviews, I finally gave in and watched the first episode of Hand Shakers. OMG, it was even worse than the snarky reviews had prepared me for. The colors were at once psychedelic and washed out. The 2-d animation couldn't make a single movement look smooth. At any given moment most of the screen was taken up with cheap-looking CGI, and not only did the 2-d pop out from it, it frequently popped out from itself. The camera work was way overdone with unnecessary moves and effects. The music, when I noticed it, was either oddly absent or deserved the name of "muzak." And then there was the writing, which was awful from the micro level of conversations peppered with non-sequiturs all the way up to the macro level whereupon almost nothing that happened in the episode happened for any discernible reason. So yeah, ep 1 was good for a laugh, but I feel no need to continue.
But Spring is Here! Uchouten Kazoku and Natsume Yuujinchou have new seasons, and some of the other stuff looks interesting. Maybe I'll be a bit more ambitious this time (and you know, take on more than one current-run show), but I'll just be doing what I usually do, watching the preview guides at ANN and AniFem and seeing how it all looks. (Of course sometimes you can't tell from that --- I'm keenly aware that my beloved AkaYona didn't look like much in the preview guide --- but you do what you can.)
BTW, I'm still sitting on my stockpile of Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu and don't know when I'll get to it. For the next week or so I may focus on sampling the new season, then I'd scouted out some K-dramas I wanted to try, and on the anime front I thought it would be nice to watch something a bit lighter --- I mean seriously the last few anime I've watched have been Mawaru Penguindrum, Uchouten Kazoku S1, and Scum's Wish; it's time to lighten up a little. Maybe finally get to Snow White with the Red Hair...
The only Winter show I ended up watching was Scum's Wish, and I'm glad I saw it. Its strength is its emotional rawness, which seemed very pointed at the beginning, but toward the end it got kind of vague, and in places unexpectedly simplistic? Or at least it seemed that way to me (as I noted when I mentioned it before, being some flavor of ace might mean that a certain amount of this goes over my head, because it is very much about the messiness of teen sexuality). I say simplistic but not formulaic. The ending was a bold move for a romance story but a satisfying move for this one, and another of those "simplistic" things would probably seem more "wow" to somebody else than it did to me. In general, I'd say I cried a lot in a good way but couldn't fully relate. So I'm glad I saw it, but I don't think it's something I'll really go back to? (Also I seem to have a track record of finding high school romances ok as I'm watching them but ultimately forgettable, just as a matter of personal taste.)
And for a more fun note (where "fun" roughly equals "schadenfreude"), after an entire season of enjoying the snarky reviews, I finally gave in and watched the first episode of Hand Shakers. OMG, it was even worse than the snarky reviews had prepared me for. The colors were at once psychedelic and washed out. The 2-d animation couldn't make a single movement look smooth. At any given moment most of the screen was taken up with cheap-looking CGI, and not only did the 2-d pop out from it, it frequently popped out from itself. The camera work was way overdone with unnecessary moves and effects. The music, when I noticed it, was either oddly absent or deserved the name of "muzak." And then there was the writing, which was awful from the micro level of conversations peppered with non-sequiturs all the way up to the macro level whereupon almost nothing that happened in the episode happened for any discernible reason. So yeah, ep 1 was good for a laugh, but I feel no need to continue.
But Spring is Here! Uchouten Kazoku and Natsume Yuujinchou have new seasons, and some of the other stuff looks interesting. Maybe I'll be a bit more ambitious this time (and you know, take on more than one current-run show), but I'll just be doing what I usually do, watching the preview guides at ANN and AniFem and seeing how it all looks. (Of course sometimes you can't tell from that --- I'm keenly aware that my beloved AkaYona didn't look like much in the preview guide --- but you do what you can.)
BTW, I'm still sitting on my stockpile of Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu and don't know when I'll get to it. For the next week or so I may focus on sampling the new season, then I'd scouted out some K-dramas I wanted to try, and on the anime front I thought it would be nice to watch something a bit lighter --- I mean seriously the last few anime I've watched have been Mawaru Penguindrum, Uchouten Kazoku S1, and Scum's Wish; it's time to lighten up a little. Maybe finally get to Snow White with the Red Hair...