I am pleased as punch to say that today we once again have a Guest Review by George R! If George is on a mission to convince me to reverse my lack of interest in Hanasaku Iroha (now streaming on Crunchyroll), then…well, you’ll see. (^_^) The floor is yours, George!

All stories are built around a difficulty for the protagonist, so Matsumae Ohana is well equipped to be one. Her mother is a single, irresponsible, freelance writer. Ohana comes home one evening to find their apartment filled with boxes. Her mother and her boyfriend are skipping town tonight to evade his creditors…and they’re not taking Ohana with them. Instead, she is going to her grandmother’s rural onsen ryokan (hot-springs inn) on the opposite side of the country. She knows nothing of the ryokan or her grandmother, as her mother and grandmother have not been on speaking terms for years. Ohana steps out to cool her head and tell her one real friend in Tokyo of this. Kouichi adds to her confusion by confessing his love, then running off before she can even reply. He doesn’t even come see her off at the train station. Thus, 8 minutes into the show, Ohana ends up by herself on the train from Tokyo to her new life and a chance to reinvent herself.

Ohana thinks the Ryokan wonderful, looking like it’s right out of a prewar movie. She even keeps her composure when Minko, her future roommate and coworker, greets her with the rough, “Die!” Grandmother is a strict old-school matron, telling Ohana she’ll be just another employee here; she disowned Ohana’s mother years ago. In spite of being put to menial cleaning tasks, on top of everything else, Ohana maintains her cheerful optimism. So begins Hanasaku Iroha.

One of the things that continues to draw me to Hanasaku Iroha is the setting and scenery porn. P.A. Works has done their homework well. The scenery matches the natural beauty out on the Noto peninsula, and the train is dead on for the Noto Railway there. Of course, they were able to take advantage of their headquarters being in Nanto, Toyama, just south of the peninsula. They’re also billing this as their 10th anniversary work, and it looks like they’ve taken extra care to make it a quality work befitting that anniversary. The setting is very nostalgic for me, as I spent a few days at a ryokan not very far from where Kissuisou likely is. I hope the producers are getting something from the local tourism organization, as this makes me want to go back there. Like Aoi Hana, this falls into the category of “anime that make me homesick.”

Onto the set of this lovely scenery walk a cast of characters I have come to like as well. The show revolves around Ohana. In some ways, she is the stereotypical Edokko [Tokyoite] come to the country; assertive, straightforward, cheerful, and easily moved to compassion. She’s not that good at reading people, and her mother taught her to rely only on herself, neither of which are that helpful in the high-context communal Japanese culture. Ohana has room to grow and learn, and to her credit, I believe that she recognizes both of these. I see her growth as being one of the major threads of this story. She is one of the blooming flowers of the title.

Grandmother will turn some people off with her behavior in the first episode, especially slapping Minko and Ohana. She runs the entire ryokan with a firm hand and an absolute customer focus. In many ways, she’s a product of her era, born during the war and likely raised in a traditional family. I believe that under her steely exterior, she has a loving heart, and I look forward to getting to know her better as Ohana does. Hopefully they will learn from each other. She offers a take on the strong, mature woman that well matches several such ladies I’ve known–and liked–in real life.

Minko is an interesting cypher, showing her standoffish nature with her first words to Ohana. Yet there is more to her than anger and cold beauty. She is a hard worker and takes Ohana’s words to heart, spending real effort to come up with an insult other than “die!” after Ohana explained why she shouldn’t use that one. She has a big crush on Touru, the assistant cook, even though he continuously berates her for every little mistake. Can Ohana’s earnest optimism break through the wall Minko’s built around herself? This wall may well be a byproduct of her crush on Touru and likely contributes to her troubles on that front. I’m looking forward to learning more what goes on behind her normally-cold eyes.

Tomoe and Nako, the head- and under- maids form an interesting contrast. Tomoe lives for gossip, perhaps valuing it over work, while Nako is almost terminally timid and shy. This combination ends up causing Ohana some problems initially, though that is not their intention. In spite of her shyness, Nako becomes Ohana’s first real friend at Kissuisou.

We finally meet Yuina, the last of our main cast, when she rescues Ohana from overly enthusiastic classmates on the first day of school. She goes to the same school as Ohana, Minko and Nako and is the spirited, carefree daughter of the rival ryokan, Fukuya. Rivalry goes beyond commercial, as there seems to be something between her and Touru.

Jiroumaru, the author staying at Kissuisou, provides more complications as well as the first Yuri in the series. How many series offer you lame slash fiction about the girls in it? In this case, it’s just a glimpse at an ero-novel featuring the girls together in the bath that Jiroumaru is writing to try to pay his bills. Some folks will find this a jarring turn-off, I just had to laugh at this way of showing his inadequacies. As Bruce McF said, the portrayal is quite droll, and the lameness is only “in universe,” as that is how the characters (especially Jiroumaru himself) see it. I think it well written (as I do the rest of the show). Jiroumaru’s personality is an interesting mix of arrogance and insecurity, and has plenty of room to grow, even though he’s an adult.

Four more guys fill out the cast at Kissuisou. Enishi is Ohana’s uncle, whom her mother bullied when they were young. We haven’t seen much more of him than when Ohana first ran into him. Touru is the assistant cook and Minko’s mentor. His main skills seem to be cooking and berating others. The head cook, Ren-san, looks tough and scary, but I have yet to see him act in that fashion. Denroku is the little old maintenance man, who’s worked at Kissuisou since it’s founding.

While the slash fiction was deliberately over-the-top, there are other scenes where I appreciated the director’s restraint. When Ohana is caught off balance–literally–by Kouichi’s confession, she does fall down the slide she’s standing on, but manages to catch herself and land on her feet, rather than collapsing into the expected heap of fanservice at the bottom. They also show a another bath scene in Episode 4, but this has a completely different feel than the Yuri ero-fantasy of the previous episode. Ohana and Minko’s conversation is set there, as such conversation can only take place with the lowered barriers in a shared bath. Of course, Fanboys will be happy to see girls bathing, regardless of reason.

While I normally don’t comment about translation, I found a couple spots in episode 3 jarring. In one, Grandmother comments about Ohana with a traditional saying, “Baka to hasami ha tsukai you”. Crunchyroll translates this, “Sticking goes not by strength but by guiding of the gully,” which seems too far off. It is literally, “Like using and idiot or scissors,” and implies that, just like dull scissors can be made to cut, so too can you get good work from a fool if you manage them well, or more succinctly, “Everything is handy when used right.” The second spot is Minko’s scribbling in her notebook to come up with a new insult. Here their “smelly and ugly” doesn’t map to Minko’s “HOnto ni BIkkuri suru hodo ni RONgai” as an expansion of hobiron  [Balut.] While the dish is smelly and ugly, her words mean “truly, to a surprising degree, irrelevant.” But let me add that sayings like Grandmother’s are tough to translate, as they carry such a large cultural meaning associated with them, and Minko’s backronym is as tough as translating other linguistic gymnastics (not to mention also pulling Vietnamese into the language mix).

In related news, P.A. Works is also producing a Hanasaku Iroha manga as a franchise extender. Volume 1 covers the events of the first three episodes. I much prefer the anime over the manga, rating the manga at only about a 7 overall, lower than the anime on all fronts. To me, it feels like a pale echo of a very good original.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Yuri – 2
Service – 3

Overall – 9

One always wonders whether a show will live up to the promise shown by its first episodes. So far, Hanasaku Iroha is living up to my expectations. I’m looking forward to more good character interaction and to seeing all of them them grow in this beautiful setting.

Erica here: Thanks again George for giving me a day off and providing me and all the readers here with something entertaining to read about something entertaining to watch. (^_^)

As I re-watch Uta-Kata, I am reminded that, no matter how mature we think we are, we really are no more than very large infants, driven by very basic needs. I realize this primarily because I have an ear infection and it is making me exceeding cranky. Which means that I approach the anime already predisposed to being unpleasant about it.

And there is plenty to be unpleasant about in Uta-Kata. So much so, that I will confine myself to only a very few negative comments about it.

Let’s start with the end. Saya says that “Mirrors reflect the true reality” or some such nonsense. This is not true on the face of it – we all know that mirrors reflect the opposite of reality. And if Ichika had been paying attention in science class, she’d have known that too. (C.p. What You Need to Know to become a Magical Girl)

Among all the truly problematic things in this anime the other standout problematic thing is that it’s a complete waste of time. By which I mean that we know that at least two “tests” have failed to gain an answer from within the confines of the two stupid choices the tested offer. And a post-failed test discussion implies that other failures have occurred too. So, hey, if you keep conducting the same test with the same parameters and don’t get either of the results you expect, sense would lead you to maybe question the validity of the test. Unless the real reason for the test is simply to make a child’s life miserable to force them to grow the fuck up…how’s that for a profound analogy for adolescence?

There is Yuri in the second half of Uta-Kata. This is undeniable. In episode 9, Keiko and Sayaka become a couple sort of not-really unexpectedly.  Manatsu kisses Ichika in a not-friend kind of way at the end, and for the one or two BL fans out there, there’s some BL, which had been implied between Sei and Kai pretty much from the beginning.

Ratings:

Art – Sigh. I just can’t like it, because of the fanservice – 4
Characters – By the end, the only character I really liked was Michiru
Story – 4
Yuri – 5
Service – 9

Overall – 5

In conclusion my ear hurts, and Uta-Kata was not what it might have been had anyone cared.

Fans of Puella Magi Madoka Magica really ought to watch Uta-Kata. (Of course, being fans of Madoka, they will likely feel obliged to feel that Madoka is superior, but that’s a different issue. ^_^) For what Madoka is attemtping now, Uta-Kata did some years ago.

Uta-Kata is, like Madoka, a dark look at the the concept of magical girls. It begins with the words “Sorry, Ichika,” and the phrase “season of trials,” so if we’re paying even a little attention, we know that we’re not in for a happy ride. And, although our “magic sidekick” is human-shaped, Manatsu says, “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to sell me your soul or anything,” with the same wide–eyed smiling-without-smiling face Kyubei lies with.

Uta-Kata is the story of a girl, Ichika, dragged randomly into a series of tests in which she gains great power…but loses everything else she likes about herself in the process.

As I watched Disk 1, I pondered why, exactly, this anime left me feeling yucky more than anything else. I’ve come up with a few reasons:

1) The service is a major hurdle. It’s scuzzy. It’s gratuitous. It’s pointless and whole episodes are constructed to create situations to specifically highlight crotch, breast and ass shots. And the underwear. Good heavens, the unending obsession with underwear.

2) The second hurdle is the always awkward, occasionally ridiculous twists of the plots. In the second episode, a male acquaintance becomes physically violent for no real reason, the third episode is a pile of grim and creepy wrapped around “Ichika loses Dad’s watch.” The feeling of grim and creepy continues, but we are also forced to deal with…

3) “I know something you don’t know.” There are 5 main characters in this story and of them four know exactly what’s going on. Guess which one of the five is the only one who doesn’t? If you guessed Ichika, you’d be right.

4) Everyone has *issues* but nothing actually happens. The tagline used for the third episode, “And that’s how everything was resolved. But I was left with a bitter feeling,” is a good tagline for every episode.

5) There is no grand scheme. That is to say, there is a *scheme* but it is given very little context and there does not seem to be a greater plan. In Madoka, we learn why magical girls exist, and what their relationship to witches are. Here, Saya wanders around torturing young people “because.” We just have to accept that some perfectly nice young people will have to be tested…because they do.

6) I’ve saved the biggest hurdle for last. The service is a salacious glance at female characters – undressing them repeatedly for the titillation of the audience. More problematic than this (and let me express that it is quite problematic for me) is the salacious undressing of the girls’ subconscious for the audience’s titillation. This actually creeps me out more than the seriously creepy service. Why is watching Ichika suffering fun? Ick, ick and double ick.

All of this combines for a very unsatisfying first half to this anime. I know it will improve, but I can’t forget what I wrote about it the first time, “the first seven episodes just suck.” And so they do. But, if you can stick with it, as the grim/creepy ratchets up into full-blown dark and gothic, this series becomes something your can – and should – watch.

Ratings withheld until review of Disk 2

As I noted a few weeks ago, the anime Digimon Tamers is now available on Hulu.com. This has provided me a chance to revisit one of the most remarkable Saturday-morning cartoons I’ve ever watched.

Digimon follows the same formula that made Pokemon a hit – young people “collect” creatures, and participate in fights so the creatures can “evolve” to higher power levels. In Digimon Tamers, which was the third anime series of the franchise, there is a card/computer game version of “Digimon,” which is played by all of our principle characters. As a result of several plot complications, actual Digimon are transported from the “Digital World” to our world. The plot follows these Digimon and their human counterparts, their “Tamers.”

The Tamers are Takato, the Digimon anime franchise equivalent of a energetic young tenor in opera. Distinguished by his goggles, every-so-slight cluelessness and energy, he is the de facto leader of the group. Jian (called Henry in the English dub) is a Chinese-Japanese, whose father was part of the team that originally created the Digimon. The third member of the group is Ruki (called Rika in the dub,) known as the Digimon Queen for her card gaming skills.

Takato appears to have created his own Digimon by force of will and, like his Tamer, Guilmon is guileless, cheerful and energetic. Jian appears to have had his Digimon, Terriermon, for some time and they already have a history and some traumatic experiences behind them when the anime starts.

Ruki is typical of many girls in gaming – she works twice as hard as the boys, ekes out a little respect and about the same level of derision, and is, at 10 years old, already quite jaded and cynical. At first glance, there’s no way not to peg Ruki as a babydyke, from the leg holster and the broken-heart t-shirt she habitually wears, to her passive-aggressive relationship with her Digimon, Renamon.

Renamon is eight kinds of awesome as a fighter, she’s smart and, compared with the other Digimon, she’s mature. (To be fair, Terriermon is more mature than Guilomon, partially because of Jian and partially because he is older and more experienced than Guilomon.)  Ruki and Renamon’s relationship is as full of denial, recrimination, poor communication and tenderness as any real-life relationship. It’s almost embarrassingly realistic.

I first watched this series as it played out on American TV, during a Saturday morning cartoon block. Now, watching the original anime in Japanese with subtitles, I’m amazed how *little* was changed for the dub. I’m amazed – and impressed. Scenes, tone, dialogue are all exactly as I remember it.

I am not impressed by the subtitling on Hulu, however. It has exactly the same lack of quality control that plagues Crunchyroll’s subtitling. It really would be worth hiring an editor, purveyors of streaming subtitled anime. Instead of seamless translation, there’s typos, grammatical and syntactical errors, and an overall sense of middle-schoolers or non-native English-speakers having been put in charge of the project.

Nonetheless, I’m thrilled to be able to watch Digimon Tamers again, and watch Ruki slowly, reluctantly, come to realize what Renamon really means to her. If you missed it the first time around on TV, I hope you’ll give it a try this time. It’s a surprisingly excellent franchise cartoon.

Ratings:

Art – 7, with flashes of 9 and moments of 5, when the budget runs low
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Yuri – really depends on how you interpret Ruki and Renamon’s relationship. Let’s call it a 5
Service – 1

Overall – 9

It’s not a “Yuri anime” but is an excellent anime, with Yuri potential if you want to go there. If not, it’s a great cartoon.

Season 4 of UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie is comprised of 2 OVAs, both of which are, well, kind of sweet.

In the first OVA, through a stupid plot complication, Kazuto’s family bathhouse is the location for Valkyrie’s class reunion. This allows us to see a million new Princess character designs and then see them bathing. It also allows us a little Yuri in the form of classmate crushiness on Pharm, Hydra and Valkyrie.

The second OVA was positively…funny and nice? WTH? Through the next stupid plot complication Akina is named the priestess who will do a super important festival dance on behalf of the royal family of Valhalla. Akina, Kazuto and Valkyrie are required to make super-secret wishes as part of the festival and then Akina does the dance – beautifully. Had this been the only episode ever made of this series, one would have cause to not believe that the series was a Kaishaku creation at all.

I’m very vexed at the fourth season. For a series that existed entirely to pander to the Lowest Common Denominator to end with grace and beauty is just…wrong. It’s like giving the most obnoxious kid in the class an ice cream cone for just sitting down and shutting up. It’s. Just. So. Annoying.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 5
Characters – 7
Yuri – 4 for classmate crushiness
Service – a shockingly low 8

Overall – A very vexing 6

All I can say is, I hope it annoyed the heck out of Kaishaku too, since by the end it had no resemblance at all to their vision.