Archive for the English Anime Category


Battle Athletes Victory ReSTART!, Guest Review by Eric P.

July 14th, 2021

Happy Guest Review Wednesday! Today we welcome back one of our long-time friends and Guest Reviewers, Eric P., who is taking a look at the newest in the Battle Athletes franchise, Battle Athletes Victory ReSTART!, streaming now on Funimation. Please welcome Eric once again. The stage is yours, my friend!

Set in 5100, 100 years after Akari Kanzaki’s victory at the Cosmo Beauty competition, humanity has extended beyond Earth and even further into space, and a new generation of athletes gather to compete in the Divine Grand Games to be crowned Cosmo Beauty once again. Since winning said crown is not just a mere title but grants them Queen-level authority, each athlete has their own goal in making the universe or at least their home worlds a better place. From Venus is Shelley Wong, a physically disabled athlete with prosthetic limbs who wants to especially prove her capabilities. From Pluto is Paglia Raspighi, an aspiring genius doctor who wants to advance her home world’s medical technology. From Mars is Lydia Gurtland, whose father’s company is a supplier of weaponry that instigated a civil war on the moon. There is Yana Christopher, a Lunarian refugee from said civil war, and who gets suspected of plotting terrorist activities within the competition (drawing some rather on-the-nose parallels to Middle East conflicts). And there is also Kanata Akehoshi from Earth, an unassuming potato farm girl (who could easily be besties with Sasha from Attack on Titan) that enters the competition as a promise from the distant past to another athlete. Said athlete is a quiet, mysterious girl named Eva Gallenstein who does not even remember Kanata, but plays the role of a puppet for an evil behind-the-scenes organization called the Solar System Control Committee.

As one watches Battle Athletes Victory ReSTART!, it does not feel so quickly certain whether or not it is a direct follow-up to Battle Athletes Victory, or if it just takes inspiration from the original. Aside from the names of past Cosmo Beauty champions, the events of the original anime (such as the Nerilian invasion) are not alluded to in this new story. Almost all the new characters share the same last names as the original characters, which would imply that they are descendants (as well as imply what may have transpired with everyone in the 100-year gap), but it could just as easily be fan service for viewers who have seen the original. Kanata bears such an easy resemblance to Akari but still does not share the same last name. It really is not until the very end of the series that we finally get affirmed clarity that ReSTART! is indeed an in-universe sequel to Victory, with surprise cameos from both a certain person and song I will not directly spoil here.

My personal fan service was seeing what appeared to be Ichino Yanagida, only it turned out to be Tamami Yanagida who just bears an uncanny resemblance, both facially and in attitude. She works in coaching the athletes at University Satellite, something I imagine Ichino would have likely ended up doing if ReSTART! had taken place a mere decade after Victory. Two other characters that are interesting in a specific way are Shelley Wong, descendant of Chinese athlete Ling-Pha, and male police detective Jeff Natdhipytadd, descendant of African athlete Tanya. Ling-Pha and Tanya were both criticized as ignorant caricatures of their respective nations/continents. Granted I could be over-speculating, I could not shake the vibe that Shelley and Jeff were created as a kind of apology to make up for those past insensitivities. Where Ling-Pha was a conniver whose friendship was shaky at best, Shelley is both driven and loyal to a fault. Where Tanya was hyper-animalistic, Jeff’s only “eccentricity” is that he declares himself to be a warrior for justice with a gung-ho attitude—which is actually fine, since he is competent at his job and plays a key role in trying to protect the athletes and the games from outside evil activities he is investigating.

As far as Yuri goes, where Victory was not just overt with it but was even driven by it, ReSTART! comparably just dips its toes. In Episode 5, Kanata gives Shelley a motivational speech about taking pride in our imperfections (in light of Shelley’s physical disability), saying that perfect people can stay still while everyone else who is not perfect are able to keep running. It makes enough of an impact that Shelley responds with “I might be falling for you.” Despite the complications between Yana and Lydia due to their conflicting backgrounds, the two still form an unlikely friendship and even express their mutual affections. In the last episode,Shelley comments on Lydia appearing angry about seeing (a sleepy) Kanata clinging onto Yana, to which a blushing Lydia insists “Yana and I are just…” but does not get to finish her sentence. And in the closing shots we see Shelley cozying up with a girl back home, who may or may not be her girlfriend. What little we get adds to a bare amount compared to the first time around, but with just 12 episodes to work with, the story’s thematic focus seems to be more on friendship and determination anyways.

When all is said and done, Battle Athletes Victory ReSTART! has turned out to be the kind of follow-up that was made to exist but ultimately does not feel necessary to the original, or even all that remarkable for newbie viewers. At the same time it is still there, harmless, adding nothing to the first series but not taking anything away either. It has an intentional old-school feel to it which often happens with reboots/sequels/homages of older titles. The humor is not as over-the-top this time around, although Yana for whatever reason has a literal boxing kangaroo companion in contrast to Kris Christopher’s cow. This companion series to the original classic can still be a pleasant treat that just manages to have its own charm if given the chance, even if just for a one-time viewing.

Ratings:

Art—6.5 (Neither high or low quality, just serviceable, although some galaxy locations/ships get neat little 3D updates)

Story—6 (At 12 episodes, it does not even try reaching the epic heights of the original, but instead settles for something concise and simple that does the job, even if it is still a little uneven—while it deals with themes of politics interfering with sports, it never really goes deep below the simple, superficial plot)

Characters—7 (The characters and their dynamics/motivations are what really help make the story worthwhile, including Eva’s actual goal, and Kanata as a heroine could be seen as an improvement over Akari in some ways)

Service—3 (Most of it happens in the first episode, with convenient body shots of the athletes and an especially non-subtle one of Paglia being introduced on-camera boobs-first. It is like as if it was all dumped there for the purpose of getting them out of the way so viewers can focus on the story and the characters’ journeys for the remaining episodes)

Yuri—2 (Again, there is not much to go on beyond the little indications that would seem obvious enough, albeit mostly to old-school fans)

Overall—6.5 (Just on account of it not being quite as worthwhile as the original, even if I am speaking from nostalgic bias, it gets scored just a notch less)

Erica here: Thank you so much, Eric!  It’s always a pleasure to have you do a review for us and I really appreciated hearing your thoughts on this series, which I’m watching right now.  I look forward to discussing it with you when I’m done. ^_^





Sailor Moon Eternal on Netflix

June 6th, 2021

2021 has been an “interesting” year in every meaning of the word, In the middle of so much wonderful and awful news, Netflix announced a Global (excluding Japan) release for Sailor Moon Eternal, Parts 1 & 2. The movie had been delayed in Japan, due to the pandemic, then pushed out in between two lockdown state of emergencies this past spring. Given that this, of all the arcs, is least likely to appeal to any adults not already fans of the series and being the one most likely to need a very young audience, it’s kind of obvious that it was being set up for failure as a theatrical release. Making it two movies didn’t help, as it forced people in Japan to make time *twice* to sit with other people in a small room for an hour in a pandemic. Frankly, the whole thing was so poorly handled, its a wonder we actually got the thing at all.

But we did, in the end, get the thing. And you know what? I think it was pretty darn good! Certainly better than I expected.

Sailor Moon Eternal, Part 1 is a re-introduction of the Inner Senshi without rehashing much of the history from the first three seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal. In rapid succession we meet Usagi, her daughter from the future, Chibi-Usa, and her boyfriend and eventual eternal consort, Mamoru. If you don’t understand their super weird dynamic when you begin the story, it is going to be super weird. This sentence was written for my mother who says she’s going to try to watch it. I’m just saying, that if you walked into this part cold, it would be befuddling.

Both bad and good, we spend almost no time with the Amazon Trio. On the positive side, we don’t get endless rapey chest mirror scenes, but on the bad side, the gender queerness of Hawkseye and Fisheye ends up reinforcing negative tropes. Of all the characters in the entire series, Fisheye is my  #1 vote for why this series desperately needs a full rewrite to bring it up to date with  modern understanding of gender and sexuality. I want a Sailor Moon in which she gets a chance to tell Hawkseye and Tigerseye that she was Assigned Male at Human Transformation.

Thankfully, we also got a brief moment with each of the Senshi in a relatively pure form. Character tells us her dream, powers up, defeats baddie. I love when the spirits of their planet castle come to help them power up, so swoon on that for me. It’s basically the only part of this manga arc I really like.

Voice acting (I watched the sub, as I am wont to) was great, I want to shout out to Watanabe Naomi for absolutely doing a Zirconia that was actually creepy.

Sailor Moon Eternal, Part 2 is begins with the Outer Senshi and again, this was the strongest portion of the movie. It was outstanding to see Haruka, Michiru and Setsuna recognize their vows to be a family and raise Hotaru, their happy home life together, and this scene in particular:


If the whole thing had stopped here, that would have been fine. ^_^ Along with I’m in Love With the Villainess, Volume 3, this has definitely been the year of the Yuri family. ^_^ When I log into Patreon, the thing that is written in this space is something like, “Why are you creating today?” or “What have you worked on today?” or something like that… Well…this image right here is why I am still writing Okazu. THIS is why I am creating today, So that someone looks at this and says, “That there is my ideal world I want to create.”

I consider the Amazoness Quartet a whole wasted opportunity every time. They deserve better than just being sent back to sleep. Can someone give them a decent comic arc, please? Saturn stepping up as Chibi-Usa’s companion was nice, but the Asteroid Senshi still deserve their own story.

I very much liked seeing the Senshi in their Princess (i.e. dressed-up) forms and the final powerup scene was beautifully done.

Most importantly, I want to give props to the animators for killing the transformation sequences. I could watch just them and the attacks and be happy. And, finally Saturn has an official henshin, yay! For once, the extra time Toei got from the delays went to taking better care with the animation. Kon Chiaki’s direction was on point and the whole package is that, as a theatrical experience, Sailor Moon Eternal was not going to let us down, as earlier seasons of Crystal had.

I’ve been thinking about this specific issue a lot. There’s something to be said for making sure people assigned to the creation of a beloved series give a shit about that series. Viz was doing really well on that score, until this release, when they and Netflix allowed a man who has been credibly accused of sexual assault of an industry colleague to be involved with the production. Lynzee Loveridge has written poignant and heartfelt coverage of this and I have to say I really feel her.  Almost 30 years of upskirts and down shirts (Part 2 was especially obnoxious in this regard) and sex pests infesting every aspect of this series – for little girls – sends a clear message that we will never ever be free of the creeps as long as all those “nice” guys let them have power and influence.

Just as impactful for those of us who rely on translations and adaptations – localization companies who put any old translator or actor on a series that is, in the original language, a breakthrough of representation for a marginalized audience,  is going to come off looking like they intentionally insulted that audience. It’s not 1995 and it’s not okay to put a vocally anti-trans person in a role that is trans or trans-adjacent, for instance. It’s not acceptable to put someone who doesn’t *care* about language used by a queer writer to tell a queer story to translate that story. When you pick some guy to direct the world’s most famous series for little girls, he’d better LOVE that series to death, or get him the fuck off the project. Sailor Moon Crystal Season 1 looked like crap. There has yet to be an edition of the manga into English that I think is better than okay. It’s been more than a quarter of a century. This stuff is important.  It’s time for a power up.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 6
Characters – YMMV on every last one of them, but we voted 9
Service – Yes, sadly – 4
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

So, overall, the movies themselves are very well done, men who are sex pests suck and this series needs an overhaul. If I had the time, I would definitely be inclined to rewrite the whole thing. ^_^

No we sit back and wait for for news of the last season. Again.

 





High-Rise Invasion on Netflix, Guest Review by Christian LeBlanc

May 26th, 2021

Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu! Today’s review is a gift to me as much as to you. ^_^ I was thinking about watching this anime on Netflix when Christian said he had just watched it and needless to say, I was delighted to invite him to bring us all this review! Please welcome Chris back once again, and thank him for taking one for the team. ^_^ The floor is yours, Chris!

When I first read the description for High-Rise Invasion on Netflix (based on the manga Tenkuu Shinpan by Tsuina Miura and Takahiro Oba), I wrote it off as silly, violent edgelord fare, along the lines of what I thought those Purge movies must be like. Fortunately, I gave those movies a chance and found a suspenseful string of films that turn a critical eye on society, capitalism and marginalisation, with a cynical view of where America’s current darker impulses are leading it. Unfortunately, I also watched all 12 episodes of High-Rise Invasion.

Well, I say that, but I’m honestly of two minds about this show. The first time I watched it, I could practically hear the writers coming up with the plot: “Wouldn’t it be fuXXed if you got transported to this alternate realm where you have to go from high-rise to high-rise across rope bridges, and there’s brainwashed people in smiley-face masks trying to kill you by making it so you’ll throw yourself off the buildings, because that’s the only way down to the ground anyway, and if the masks get damaged then they have to kill themselves, and there’s all different ones so there’s like a butcher Mask, and a baseball player Mask, masked everything right, and there’s like a ton of blood whenever anyone dies, and it turns out this is all a way to create God, like how fuXXed would that be.” (dramatic pause while writer takes a long drag off a smoke to let these ideas sink in)

I mentioned to Erica that I watched it because I’d heard the main characters described as Yuri and wanted to find out for myself, and before I knew what happened I’d agreed to write a review for her. I hadn’t taken any notes the first time around, so I watched it all again and, while I’m not proud to admit this, I started to enjoy it.

To start with: is this a Yuri anime? Well, the high-school aged main character’s name is Yuri Honjo, so there’s that. Yuri quickly meets high-schooler Mayuko Nise, and unsuccessfully tries to stop her from stabbing an innocent man in the throat. After their little meet-cute, Mayuko becomes ride-or-die for Yuri, blushing and looking away whenever Yuri does something cool, gives her a compliment, hugs her, flashes her panties, bathes or changes in front of her, kisses her while she’s unconscious and struggling for her life, etc. You know, the same way we all secretly showed our feelings for that girl we liked back in high school; for her part, Yuri pretty much feels the same way about Mayuko.

Is this a Yuri romance? Definitely not. This is grindhouse action/suspense through and through, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be Yuri, of course, and whether it qualifies or not. depends on your own feelings. Mayuko blushes her heart out at Yuri constantly, but it never goes beyond hand-holding, even though they are intimately acquainted enough that Mayuko can recognize her crush by just a quick glimpse of her posterior (which actually happens more than once). Mayuko’s first love, however, is stabbing people in the throat. If there’s ever a second season we’ll see if she has to choose between her two devotions, but for now, we’ll see her face redden either from sweet emotion, or other peoples’ sweet, sweet neck blood. (And to be fair, this is a Shounen anime, which means that the straights don’t get any further than getting exaggeratedly flustered and denying any interest in each other.)

So what’s this all about again, anyway? Well, Yuri’s main goal is to find her brother, who’s also trapped here. Mayuko’s goal is to help Yuri find her brother (and, on a personal level, stab so many throats). Kuon Shinzaki has pink and blue hair, and an app on her phone that lets her use a giant building to shoot down other buildings; she wants to become God so she can bring peace to this realm. She also has a crush on Sniper Mask, an amnesiac, self-aware Mask whose goal is to recover his memories.

Aside from that, the show tends to abandon plot points, theories and objectives almost as soon as they’re thought up. Yuri rebelliously declares to Mayuko early on “I’m not going to kill any humans. I refuse to follow this world’s rules.” A minute later and she’s enthusiastically doing her best to shoot down a helicopter with just her handgun, and she’s unloaded a full clip into an assailant ten minutes later (before he commits suicide by biting off his own tongue, naturally.)

Various exposition-dumps throughout the show explain the different types of masks and how their programming bestows powers/constraints on the wearers. There is a consistent, if convoluted, logic to the masks, but the rapidly-shifting goals and theories the main characters have obfuscate this logic, making it feel inconsistent initially. Still, trying to puzzle out these mysteries helps hold the viewers’ interest in between gory fights with the Masks (or Angels, as the antagonists refer to themselves…Angels to some, Masks to others, I guess).

Trigger warnings? This show has geysers of blood, flying eyeballs, severed fingers and limbs, decapitations, and crazy amounts of stabbing and shooting. The violence in the show doesn’t bother me all that much because it’s expected for the genre, and even gleeful in its execution. There’s a ton of violence, but very little of it feels truly horrific; it’s all in good fun.

On a sexual note, however, Yuri is forced to strip at sword-point for a rogue cop (ACAB) in the first episode, but she’s managed to set his corpse on fire before things go much further. Happily, I don’t remember any further sexual threats to anyone after this.

Is this show dumb? Oh, it is so dumb. Yuri’s brother tells her over the phone that she should immediately murder her new friend Mayuko, because “In this world, there are no such things as allies.” (This very same brother is shown leading his own litter of new pals minutes later.) Sniper Mask’s main personality trait is smoking and looking cool in his stylish suit, and is so good at shooting guns that he can shoot a knife on the ground forcing the bullet to ricochet 90 degrees towards a target hiding around a corner. Yuri happily hands a firearm to a small child because he’s excited and would really like to see it. Mayuko’s shirt gets ripped open in the second episode, and until she replaces it with a slightly darker shirt in episode 11, she’s just walking around with her chest and bra completely exposed. Yuri never fixes the revealing rip in her skirt; characters change their priorities far more often than they change their clothes. Yuri can shoot ballistics out of the sky. Someone says the name of the show out loud. Characters gain new abilities as soon as the plot requires them, and the entire raison d’être is to simply show Masks looking creepy and cool in a wide variety of cosplay and violence. No, seriously; when it looks like one character is about to die, he at least comforts himself with how cool he’s going to look.

“Tasteless” is probably the best way to describe a show with this much blood, this many panty shots, suggestively-posed corpses, and a villain who calms himself by plunging his face into a Mask’s fully-clothed chest (she’s wearing one of those anime suits where the fabric acts like it’s painted on, you see).

I’ve given you plenty of reasons not to watch this show, and yet, depending where you find your bliss, I’ve also given you plenty of reasons to watch this show. If you’re in the mood for senseless, bloody violence and you’d like to see some ladies being badass and causing most of it for once, and you can dim your brain just to the point where you can buy in and enjoy the spectacle, then you might enjoy the bright, stylized, creepy bloodshed and mystery contained in these 12 episodes.

 

Ratings

Art – 6 There’s a very ‘basic’ quality, but it’s also stylized, and there’s no denying the care that went into animating the many sprays of blood.

Story – 6 There’s enough of a plot that it might keep your brain entertained by trying to puzzle out what’s going on, at least.

Character – 7 Nobody’s too complex, but it can be a joy watching Yuri flip her internal ‘cold as hell badass’ switch when she goes into action, ambidextrously shooting with both hands.

Yuri – 3 There’s a cute scene near the end where, separately, Mayuko and Kuon are each helping Yuri and Sniper Mask dress for battle, both wearing the same blushy, besotted grins as they think the world of their champions. Some viewers may need Yuri goggles to find any representation, but I don’t think you’ll need a very strong prescription.

Service – 8 Panty shots, bras, stripping, bathing, changing, anatomical impossibilities, and skinny-dipping into dream-states (my number refers to quantity, not quality). Conspicuously absent is a ton of boob-jiggle; I suspect the budget for that animation all went towards depicting the copious blood-letting instead.

 

Overall – 7 And I’m recommending this to nobody.

Erica here: /standing ovation/ Absolutely splendid review! You may have convinced me to watch it…after all, grindhouse violence, cute blushes and throat stabbing…it reminds me of my youth. /nostalgic sigh/  LOL

One point of order, The manga is released on Shueisha’s Manga Box app, and I’m inclined to think it’s Seinen, with that amount of blood.

Spectacular review, Chris!

 




Mamoru Oshii’s Vlad Love, Guest Review by Megan

April 14th, 2021

Welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu! I’m ecstatic to be welcoming back Guest Reviewer Megan who is once again here to talk to us about Mamoru Oshii’s “girl-meets-girl” anime. Please give her your best Okazu welcome. Take it away Megan!

Vlad Love, director Oshii Mamoru’s return to TV anime 40 years after Urusei, is now streaming in full on Crunchyroll. How did this bizarre passion project work out in the end? 

In the first review for episode 1, vampire girl Mai met blood-donation maniac girl Mitsugu, and we were also introduced to voluptuous school nurse Chihiro. In the next few episodes we’re introduced to Mai’s powers and an eclectic cast of characters interested in Mai, from cosplay club captain Kaoru who wants to dress Mai up, to killjoy student council president Jinko. The cast ends up forming a blood donation club and the rest of the series is episodic scenarios like a school play or a short film by Cinema club captain Maki. 

Vlad Love hits its stride when it combines this bunch of personalities with a suitably absurd scenario, and happily the show swings more often than it misses. The show may have been marketed as a slapstick comedy, but there’s other sorts of comedy beyond just that on offer here, from acerbic wit to non-sequitur Oshii references to obscure old films and much else besides. Some of my favourite moments were when the show toned down the zaniness more than I expected, like episode 7 which seemed relatively low-key by Vlad Love’s standards – until it was all recontextualised when you see the payoff – or in truth lack much of – in the short film itself. Episode 8, a joke that could have felt played out before it even got off the ground, is carried by Park Romi’s performance and Mizuno Uta’s wonderful classic shoujo-style art. 

Another highlight is episode 6’s Castlevania parody, which as a longtime gaming nerd and ‘vania fan already seemed designed for me, but still got a lot of things right up to the questionable mechanic of hearts powering sub-weapons. Oshii and co. evidently did some research, and while there isn’t exactly particularly deep cuts of vampire lore here, I couldn’t help but smile at moments like the reveal of Mitsugu’s dad’s identity. 

The show doesn’t win every time though. The first half of episode 4, for example, gets oddly uncomfortable as Mitsugu is kidnapped by an all-male ‘torture club’. Other sections, like most of episode 9, failed to land for me because, while I might have been sure a section was referencing some old Japanese or Western media or folklore or such, I didn’t actually know what the reference was to. This also isn’t a show interested in much in the way of character development – the supporting cast is essentially one-dimensional and the characters don’t change much over the course of the show. This isn’t as deep a flaw as it might otherwise be since the show is expressly a comedy, but some more development for the mains would have been welcome. 

Another instance of a lack of development is the show’s Yuri. As we saw in the first review, ep 1 was focused on establishing Mitsugu and Mai’s relationship, and ep 2 builds on this a bit further with a moonlight “night flight of love” for the girls. The next few episodes mainly focus on the other club members vying for Mai’s attention, and by this point we might share Mitsugu’s frustration that everyone else is monopolising Mai. There’s finally a bit of development in the next episode, 6, as Mitsugu and Mai share a quiet moment complete with piano and a sparkly background. Mitsugu tries to confess, but Jinko intervenes before she can actually get the word Suki out. There’s some moments here and there in the remaining episodes, like Mitsugu comparing the two of them to a married couple, but no real payoff in the finale, which was disappointing. Indeed, the show overall just sort of stops after Mai’s backstory is finally revealed rather than coming to much of a conclusion. 

On the technical side, Vlad Love doesn’t have the most impressive animation compared to some other Winter 2021 anime, but this doesn’t matter much since the art style and animation more or less always fits the comedy in the way it needs to. There’s some nice creative direction touches and of course Mizuno’s lovely art from time to time. The music is fitting too, with a mix of mysterious-sounding and intense tracks, and even some piano pieces for the sad backstories and a romantic moment or two. The vocal performances are also strong across the board – as mentioned, Park Romi steals the show here, but pretty much everyone sounds good, and I liked how several of the girls had quite mature-sounding voices. 

Overall, I had a good deal of fun in my time with Vlad Love. The show didn’t live up to its full potential, especially in how elements like the Yuri and character development ended up feeling rather undercooked, but it does deliver on a combo of retro-style anime comedy and… well, whatever random references Oshii wanted to put in there. As an anime fan for some years now it’s very rare to see an anime that feels quite as much of a passion project, designed without much care to current conventions or what a production committee would find marketable. For this reason as well as the show itself being a good time, despite the flaws I can recommend giving it a go if you don’t find the style of comedy a turnoff. 

Ratings:

Art – 8, not technically impressive but fits the comedy very well. 

Story/Characters – 7, episodic comedy so not much ‘plot’ to speak of, situations and characters are mostly fun, but a few setups that don’t work as well and cast remains quite one-dimensional

Service – 7, quite a bit (Chihiro’s character design is worth a few points alone) but mostly stays on the side of light-hearted rather than leery. 

Yuri – 4, it’s there but only in scattered moments beyond the first two episodes

Overall – 7 

As a bonus for reading to the end – here’s a mini-review of Vlad Love’s series guidebook! It’s quite a bulky volume (the Ikuhara anime guidebooks I own, for example, are usually under 200 pages), but the size is justified by its comprehensiveness – it has just about everything, from key visuals and character designs to key animation and storyboards, galleries of Mizuno’s art to staff interviews at the back. There’s not much particularly revelatory here, though I was amused to find the Chihiro shots covered up by “self censorship” were, in their original form, well… the book is a solid pickup for fans of the show or people interested in the animation process. 

You can find me here on Okazu’s comment section, and my twitter account @AnimeSocMegan. As always, thank you very much for reading and here’s ‘till next time! 

Erica here: Thank you again Megan! I can’t help but notice that the end of episode one was subtly changed in fact to lower the Yuri level, for the CR version. I don’t think he had the interest in going through with it, only to tease it a bit, like so many of the older directors used to.
In my opinion this series suffered from no clear idea at all, really. It was awfully like a story idea thought up over a few beers and then they got some money and had to do something. My feelings about the series are summarized in this movie clip. “He’s a genius.”
But I’ll give it this – I watched all of it. ^_^





Otherside Picnic Anime

February 14th, 2021

Miyazawa Iori has rather quickly entered the landscape of Yuri creators in recent years. With a lead story in the Yuri issue of SF Magazine in 2019, followed by the J-Novel licensing Side by Side Dreamers, and then the outstanding science fiction novel series, Otherside Picnic, Miyazawa has set a whole new sets of benchmarks for Yuri in a very short time.

The Otherside Picnic novel series has been fascinating. With an overt mix of Japanese netlore, science fiction, action and horror tropes and a big scoop of Yuri on top, I’ve enjoyed all of the novels so far. My reviews and others’ are all on Okazu in the Otherside Picnic category. Sorawo and Toriko are unusual as characters, compared with my usual fare. The post-apocalyptic unpredictability of the Otherside/UBL and its interactions with this world, give the series a Jorge Luis Borges-ish sensibility that I genuinely appreciate.

Otherside Picnic follows the adventures of college student Sorawo, as she find herself in an alternate reality that is embedded within locations in and around Japan. In this “Otherside,” Sorawo meets attractive Toriko, and finds herself traveling back and forth to the Otherside to gather artifacts for money, and help Toriko find a person who has gone missing on the Otherside…a person who clearly is more than just a friend.

It was with some trepidation that I saw the first key visuals of the Otherside Picnic anime. What was a darkish story about two young adults had already been given much-too moe illustrations in the books, and now it was the moe that was getting the focus, not the dark, not the deep, not the Russian science fiction, not the action, not the creative thinking around the creatures of the UBL. I won’t lie. I was deeply disappointed. Now that I have managed to watch the anime, which is streaming on Funimation.com, I’m still a little disappointed.

The first reactions I read of the anime seemed to focus on the translation, which chose “wiggle-waggle” for kune-kune. That didn’t bother me, as くねくね means wavy, or wriggling. I think the distaste there was the typical otakuish preference for the exotic other. I can see both sides and frankly glad they didn’t go with something like “The Wriggler”.  That is not the problem. ^_^; The problem is that they completely punted on animating the kune-kune, which are, based on the original description, very similar to the monsters of Side-by-Side Dreamers – a sort of familiarly shaped thing, but made of streamer-y parts. Something between those flappy advertising tube men, and the A-jin. The Otherside Picnic manga from Square Enix is way closer to my idea of what they ought to look like than the anime, which just…didn’t bother. The detailed burned-out buildings in the background look great. I wish they had given the same care to anything in the foreground.

Instead of a pleasantly befuddlingly creeping psychological horror, the anime is a comedy-action series, in which running and screaming takes up all the space the “what the ever-loving fuck reference is that?!?” of the novels. The pacing makes it impossible to appreciate the well-crafted horrible unrealness, before the screaming starts. For anyone who has come to the anime from the novels, it’s bound to be a little disappointing.  Even more importantly, if you are enjoying the anime, and decide to try out the novels, be prepared to be be actually creeped the fuck out. The anime makes everything so silly and cute, but the books do no such thing.

It’s not that this anime is unlikable. Actually, it’s very enjoyable, and the voice acting has been superb. As Sean Gaffney noted in conversation, Hanamori Yumiri as Sorawo is particular good, as her lack of affect when explaining her not-at-all-usual family life, actually increases the emotional impact. And if you’re not sure whether you might like this story, I’d definitely say give the animation a try….

…with “try” being the operative word. I know I have been banging on this for years, but Funimation is terrible at streaming. Streams cut out, commercials get stuck on loops, subtitles don’t work at all, or work wrong. I want so much for them to do this well, but they don’t. The first time I tried to watch the first episode, it took me 4 *days* to be able to get the whole thing watched and I ended up watching it with no subtitles at all, because the option never appeared. (Not a crisis, as I knew the story and can sort of understand, but that is not the point.) Funimation still gets a ‘D’ on streaming. I fear that a merger between Funimation and Crunchyroll will mean CR loses all of it’s decent streaming to Funimation’s vastly inferior system instead of the other way around.

Ratings:

Animation – 6 Unsatisfying. This COULD have been amazing and it’s just not
Story – 7 – Not as compelling as everything is crunched for time
Characters – 7 Sorawo comes off as more compelling, Toriko less, Kozakura feels even more like an afterthought
Service – 4 The key visual art was creeperish, and the moeification of the characters is itself a distracting bit of pointless service
Yuri – 5 Implicit and explicit in places and part of the overarching plot.

Overall – 7

So far at least, the anime feels like a children’s version of the novels. Goofy funhouse screaming rather than creeping psychological horror. Not bad in any way, just not good in the way the novels are good.