We’re finally rounding the corner to home plate for the Spring 2019 anime season here at S1E1. Aside from some sequels to series I’m not far enough into to post an educated reaction (sorry, fans of Ace of Diamond, Bakumatsu Crisis, Strike Witches, and Isekai Quartet) and some Netflix-only series (I’m weeping for my lack of Carole and Tuesday right now), these are all we have. Normally with such short episodes I’ll watch at least a couple of episodes to get an impression of the series, rather than just one. Be aware that there may be more spoiler potential in these examples.
Joshi Kausei
Three cute girls: the beautiful, but hapless Momoko; the cool, collected Shibumi; and the innocent Mayumi interact with one another using no dialogue. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: TBA (@ 3.5 minutes apiece)
Source: Manga
Summary: Momoko, Shibumi, and Mayumi are three high school girls whose days are fairly ordinary. It’s in these everyday situations that the three friends experience humorous mishaps and realize the closeness of their relationship with one-another.
Impressions: Something that I think animation can do really well is portray a story visually without using dialog. I’d encourage anyone reading to seek out some of the animated shorts that have been nominated for the Academy Award – many of them are made in non-English-speaking countries, yet manage to tell universally-understood stories without having the characters speak a word. I was mildly interested in this series from that standpoint – it’s marketed as a comedy without dialog, so I thought it might be worthwhile.
The series itself is very middling in quality, with some issues that directly take away from its potential for universal appeal. I watched the first four episodes, two of which involve mildly-sexual gags seen from the viewpoint of a male salaryman. In the first, it appears as if Momoko has a slap-mark on her upper thigh – this is because she tried to slap away a mosquito. In the other, the salaryman drops a piece of gum between Momoko’s legs while they’re both commuting by train, leading to some tough decisions. Ultimately both situations are more innocent than they appear, but they both have a leering visual quality to them that makes them really uncomfortable.
The second and fourth episodes are a bit more tolerable and focus more on the interactions between the three girls. I think my favorite of the episodes I watched was the fourth, in which the girls eat at a family restaurant and fold their napkins into animal shapes. It reminded me a lot of the kind of mild silliness I indulged in when I was that age; being silly in public without consequences is a kind of luxury reserved for people who walk the fine line between childhood and adulthood, and it’s fun to remember that sometimes.
I’m disappointed that the series didn’t skew more toward the spirit of it’s second and forth episodes, but it’s clear from watching it that it’s aimed at a fairly restricted audience. While I think animation has the potential to portray the universal nature of human experiences, unfortunately it’s also often used for the purpose of voyeuristic entertainment.
Pros: A couple of the episode do a good job of capturing the feel of teenage silliness.
Cons: The construction of some episodes and the focus of the camera demonstrate that this series is intended for a very limited audience.
Grade: D+
Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki
After growing up in Tokyo, high school student Kaito Jin moves to Nagoya where he meets Monaka Yatogame, a fellow student who puts her Nagoya dialect on full display. With her cat-like appearance and unvarnished Nagoya dialect, Yatogame won’t open up to him at all. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12 (@3.5 minutes apiece)
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: Jin’s first days in Nagoya are an exercise in disillusionment. No one that he meets fits his preconceived notions of Nagoya citizens; being from Tokyo, he feels as though Nagoya is just a smaller version of home. That is, until he meets Monaka Yatogame, who fits all the stereotypes and then some. Since she was raised by her grandmother, she’s got a thick accent and a deep love for her home city and prefecture.
Impressions: Each episode of this series starts with a disclaimer – it may seem as though the characters and situations might be making fun of people from Nagoya, but it’s not meant to be mean-spirited. I’m reminded of the many times I’ve witnessed people respond to the offenses they’ve committed by replying “well I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” Intent means very little when the end result is the destruction of a person’s mood, property, or self-image. But that’s an essay for another time and place.
I don’t know much about Nagoya and I’m not sure I’d want to use this series as a road map. The first couple of episodes are rapid-fire gags about the place, its people, and their habits, and while there might be some truth to these broad strokes, as an outside I feel uncomfortable taking them as gospel or laughing at the characters’ regionally-based peculiarities. I make a lot of jokes at my own expense related to where I live and my heritage. I like to joke about how my Scandinavian body can’t handle spicy food, or how when I speak sometimes my inner “Minnesotan” reveals itself (think the accents in the film Fargo). But those are jokes I choose to make within my own group of friends, not something I’d necessarily want an entire nation’s worth of people to start making fun of me over. As good-natured as these jabs are intended to be, I wonder if some of the people targeted might be a little exhausted over the jabs.
This is mostly why this style of comedy almost never works for me. I find there to be a large difference between character-based humor that’s focused around the traits of people who only exist within the confines of one anime or another, and this type of comedy that uses characters to perpetuate sometimes mean-spirited views on things that exist in real-life. I realize that this makes me seem overly-sensitive, and honestly maybe I am. But I long ago tried to train myself away from laughing at others in this way, so I’m left looking like a curmudgeon.
Aside from the Nagoya-humor, there’s not much here that you couldn’t find in most other school comedies. One thing to note is that all the female character designs incorporate cat ears – that also has to do with how the Nagoya accent is perceived by outsiders (the characters sound like they’re saying “nyaa” a lot). Aside from that, this series’ episodes are short and don’t leave a lot of time for gags to settle, which is a weakness of this particular format. Overall I wouldn’t recommend this.
Pros: The series is bright and colorful, if nothing else.
Cons: The source of the humor seems mean-spirited.
Grade: D+
Nobunaga Teacher’s Young Bride
Nobunaga is a middle school teacher who constantly dreams of an adoring beautiful girl appearing in front of him. One day, Kichō, the 14-year-old wife of the real-life Sengoku (Warring States) period warlord Oda Nobunaga, does appear in front of him after having apparently traveled through time. She mistakes the present-day Nobunaga for the historical Oda Nobunaga, and tries to get him to get her pregnant. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: TBA (@7.5 minutes apiece)
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: Nobunaga is a teacher who’s so unlucky in love that he’s jealous when he hears that two of his students are dating. His parents constantly bother him about getting married, but that seems like a far-off dream. That is, until Nobunaga goes to clean out his parents’ shed and finds a young girl there waiting for him. Her name is Kichou, and she says that she’s destined to marry the great warlord Oda Nobunaga. But it seems that a few historical wires have been crossed, and now the present-day Nobunaga has to find something to do with this wayward 14-year-old bride.
Impressions: It’s been quite a while since I’ve been so relieved that an anime’s episodes are only seven minutes apiece. This is one of those series that literally starts to drain my life force the longer I try to tough it out and finish watching it. It takes a typical ecchi anime setup, where a cute girl continually tries to have sex with a guy who can’t handle himself around women, and turns up the volume by making her a very young-looking underage teenager with a historical duty to make babies. This is like my kryptonite.
The male protagonist is a total cad. He’s a teacher who actually envies his own students’ love-lives, and actively tries to glean information about them. He also gives off the impression that the only things stopping him from actually trying to have sex with them are the potential legal ramifications. He spends some amount of time explaining to Kichou the reasons why he can’t have intercourse with her. It’s not so much that he doesn’t want to, and in fact he states repeatedly that he’d love to indulge her in that manner. It’s more that he doesn’t feel he can because of the specific technical and legal reasons why he would be arrested for it. I’m suddenly reminded of the many people who’ve drive-by trolled me in the past by attempting to argue Japanese age-of-consent laws with me. It’s not that I don’t understand the technical letter of the law, it’s that I don’t condone sex with children.
By some chance I ended up watching these couple of episodes on VRV rather than Crunchyroll; the Crunchyroll website was having some sort of issue at the time, and I wanted to get this review done with as soon as possible. In a way it was lucky, because the non-premium version censors the nudity by applying a weird glowing filter to Kichou’s body so that the details aren’t as obvious. The premise and execution are squicky enough without the onslaught of additional and unwanted visual information.
This is a pretty obvious “skip.” I know there are fans of lolicon out there and I’m not out to start a fight, but I don’t understand it and this type of thing really grosses me out. The main character is a creeper stuck in the worlds of the eroge he plays, and his prospective bride is a child, no matter how much many people would argue that, in her time, becoming a wife at her age was common. Hard pass.
Pros: The VRV version is more heavily-censored (I believe this option is also available on Crunchyroll).
Cons: The main character wants to have sex with a child.
Grade: D-