Episode Summary: Akari Amano is really into dolls, so when she catches wind of a mysterious girl who, according to legend, lives in the forest and never ages, she assumes this person must be some sort of living doll. The truth is even more amazing – the girl’s name is Sophie Twilight, and she’s actually a vampire. Sophie lives alone in her large house, and Akari takes it upon herself to keep Sophie from feeling lonely. The thing is, Sophie enjoys her loner night-owl existence, and Akari’s budding obsession is starting to get in the way.
When Akari leaves for a time, however, the difference is noticeable to Sophie. Though she appreciates the quiet, she realizes that Akari’s presence brought a fun atmosphere to her home. Without the constant chatter and questioning of her vampire lifestyle, Sophie feels as though something is missing. Akari is way ahead of the game, having decided to pack up her things (including several of her dolls) and move into Sophie’s home. Though the logistics might need some hammering-out, this could turn out to be a fun adventure for both girls.
Kakeru, a former elite runner at high school, is chased for stealing food. He is saved by a Kansei University student Haiji, who is also a runner. Haiji persuades Kakeru to live in the old apartment “Chikuseisou” where he plans to team up with fellow residents to enter Hakone Ekiden Marathon, one of the most prominent university races in Japan. Kakeru soon finds out that all of the residents except for Haiji and himself are complete novices. – MAL
Episode Summary: Kakeru Kurehara has fallen on hard times since losing his apartment down-payment to the whims of the mahjong table. He’s been reduced to stealing bread from the local convenience store. Luckily he’s a practiced runner with speed enough to get away with this misdeed. He can’t outrun all of his problems, though; he’s eventually chased down by an energetic man on a bike. Haiji Kiyose is on the prowl for one last person to fill the vacant room in the boarding house he shares with several other young men, and he invites Kakeru to take the final slot.
Haiji has ulterior motives, as Kakeru soon learns. Boarding House Chikuseiso is filled with all kinds of young men, from geeky, to studious, to those with certain vices. Haiji invites them to celebrate the addition of their tenth resident with a trip out of town – namely, to Hakone. It’s his dream to participate in the Hakone Ekiden, a famous annual relay race. With their landlord (a former runner) as their coach he feels that this is their best (and his only) shot. But Kakeru isn’t even sure he wants to stay, let alone tackle this monumental task, especially when the other residents seem hesitant at best.
Tanisu’s parents are mad scientists who live outside of normal society. They locked up their own children up on an isolated island and did experiments on them in secret, turning Tanisu’s older brother and three older sisters into strange creatures. One day, their parents were arrested, and the siblings were moved to another island by the welfare office. The trouble is that none of the siblings except Tanisu know how to interact in modern day society… – Crunchyroll
Episode Summary: Tanisu’s older siblings are all the result of their mad scientist parents’ experimentation. They have special forms and abilities that distinguish them from normal humans, but they know very little about how to interact with society. Tanisu’s distinguishing factor is that he’s smart and kind, and he wants for his family to be able to live among others. As the only sibling without mutant abilities, he takes it upon himself to reintegrate them all while their parents are serving time for turning them all into scientific guinea pigs.
When the ingredients for their dinner are ruined, Tanisu suggests that they all go out to eat; a big deal when most of the family is unfamiliar with common social etiquette and can’t always agree on what to have for dinner in the first place. As they sit down to dim-sum, their various alterations are on full display. Transformation, photosynthesis, predatory tendencies… these things don’t mesh well with the polite restaurant atmosphere. The other patrons begin to chatter and make remarks and Tanisu becomes more and more upset with his family. It’s only after he has an outburst that his siblings realize how important being out in public is to Tanisu, and they work to use chopsticks, clean up their table manners, and keep their abilities in check. Integrating into society might be an uphill battle, but they are beginning to take the first steps.
Impressions: This series technically debuted in the Spring (outside the US) and it’s getting pretty close to the Autumn anime debut season, so I split the difference and decided to lump it in with the Summer anime. While I think many anime fans have some complaints about anime not being simulcast in a timely manner, personally I appreciate the fact that Crunchyroll (and other services) will continue to add to their catalog as they can. And really, do you actually have time to watch 30-60 series week-by-week as they’re broadcast? Speaking for myself, that answer is “no.”
I’ve written before about the rising popularity of international anime co-productions; I can say with complete authority that I know very little about the ins-and-outs, reasons, and mechanisms of these productions, but the fact that they’re becoming more prevalent likely speaks to several different factors in animation production. While I highly doubt there’s any shortage of Japanese manga or light novels to adapt into animated form, there are definitely some overused storytelling trends among them and I suppose production committees start to see diminished returns by the time they hit isekai series number 127. I’ve actually noticed this phenomenon in another of my hobbies – lolita fashion.
Aisley has a predatory side.
As the fashion became popular in the West over the span of many years, Japanese brand dress releases were always the most coveted. They were expensive, often difficult-to-get, and featured quality materials and construction. I always felt that there was an element of copycat-ism to Japanese releases, though. If one brand released a certain print motif (chocolate, for example), variations on that became a trend for a while. Cutlery prints were popular, there have always been a lot of floral prints, and “old school” styles (solid colors with contrasting details and lace) continue to feature in brand releases to this day. There are always sailor-themed lolita dresses released in the summer time. It’s not that these prints were or are bad, but they do start to blend together after a while. The last several years, though, have shown a rise in the variety and availability of lolita fashion from worldwide indie brands, and brands from places like China, Hong-Kong, and Korea. They’ve taken the shape and general aesthetic of lolita fashion from Japan and incorporated many new and fresh ideas, from prints that feature unusual items or themes (jellyfish, bread, and I even own a Chinese dress that incorporated Egyptian iconography) to sub-styles that mimic traditional Chinese clothing. This isn’t to disparage the Japanese brands – they continue to do good work and their output was and is foundational to the fashion. But sometimes a fresh perspective is required to inject some vitality into an art form that has gotten a bit stuck in its ways.
In the case of Frankenstein Family, the typical Japanese anime format and style has been coupled with a setting that has a distinct Taiwanese flavor, thanks to its primarily Taiwanese (I think?) production staff. The character designs and animation style are all what one would expect from a Japanese anime; it’s in the small details, like the architecture, foods, and customs (such as when Tanisu taps his first two fingers on the table when his waiter is pouring the tea), that the series reveals its origins.
Content-wise, I think this first episode is an intriguing and somewhat uncomfortable (not in the bad way) blend of tones. Because the siblings are all socially-untested and display a wide array of different abilities and traits that distinguish them from typical humans, there are lots of opportunities to demonstrate just how atypical their situation is. I think my favorite character is Snow, the older brother who can transform himself into a dog. The results are as you would expect – he’s comically food-motivated, and he’s very much a lovable, clumsy ding-dong with a good heart. Spider-sis Aisley is constantly on the prowl for prey. Ashise is half-plant and would rather bask in the sun than eat human food. And nothing is a surprise to Suishi, who has psychic powers. This odd blend of characters provides many comedic moments throughout the episode, but there’s always an undercurrent of sadness and it crops up fairly often and unexpectedly.
The siblings have a long road ahead.
Honestly, the siblings’ situation is pretty horrific. Their mad scientist parents used them as experimental subjects, fiddling with their genetics to provide them with traits that make it incredibly difficult for them to get along in any sort of social context. They were kept isolated from others and then abandoned when the parents were (rightfully) sent to jail. Tanisu occupies an odd position in this mess, being the only child who wasn’t the target of his parent’s special brand of bad parenting, though it’s clear that he’s absolutely experiencing emotional after-effects of the experience. I think that’s one of the most effective parts of this episode; the sadness and horror creeps in unexpectedly, casting a pall over the characters’ everyday lives. I liken it to my experience of depression, which lurks in the background of my life until something seemingly innocuous (or, honestly, sometimes nothing at all) triggers it and it becomes a shadow that saps color from the world.
This is perhaps what’s special about the final scene, where the siblings walk together as the sun sets in a rainbow of colors. Life has been needlessly dark for them, and they had little to no choice in the matter (to some extent they don’t even seem to realize that what happened to them was wrong). But there’s some hope that, now that their situation has changed, perhaps there’s some new light to be found in the world. Many parts of the episode have a watercolor washed-out feel to them; most of these moments are asides or references to memories or past events. But this final scene in particular has a definite Makoto Shinkai influence, its magical-realism providing emphasis to what might be to come.
While the anime portion itself is actually pretty good, it comprises only one part of the episode’s run time. The rest is taken up by a couple of in-real-life voice actor segments that don’t really add much (I know there are some fans who enjoy that sort of thing, but they don’t really interest me). There’s also a really awkward part of the conversation during which one of the actresses insists multiple times that, if she could be anything she wanted, she would want to be a boy. I’m not sure if she’s genuinely indicating that she would want to change genders, or if it’s a sentiment that’s just kind of lost-in-translation, bu there’s a lot of time spent on it and I didn’t really know how I should react. I think the series would be better served by sticking to the in-anime segments and leaving the voice-actor stuff out, but I might be in the minority. I also didn’t watch another episode to see whether it carries through or not, so it might be a one-shot issue.
While this has all the hallmarks of a typical slice-of-life series with some fantasy elements sprinkled in for fun, it also has a certain freshness that I believe is due to its multi-cultural origins. These types of productions haven’t always been that successful, but I have noticed that they’re on the path to getting better and I think this series looks and feels fairly competent and distinct.
Pros: The show has a good visual style and uses color well. The blend of slice-of-life comedy and darker moments replicates the feeling of depression well.
Cons: The voice actor segments don’t add much to the episode.
In an antique shop in Kyoto’s Teramachi Sanjō shopping district, high school girl Aoi Mashiro unexpectedly runs into Kiyotaka Yagashira, the son of the shop’s owner, and ends up working part-time at the shop. Kiyotaka is called the “Holmes at Teramachi Sanjō,” and he and Aoi solve odd cases brought to them by various clients. – ANN
Episode 1 Summary: Aoi Mashiro is in need of an antique appraisal, and the antique shop she finds is staffed by one of the best in the business, though she doesn’t realize it initially. Kiyotaka Yagashira is known as a bit of a Sherlock Holmes (“Holmes” is a pun on the characters that make up his name) who has an intuitive knack for sniffing out counterfeit items, uncovering the histories of genuine ones, and knowing just what his clients are looking for. He deduces soon enough that the art scrolls Aoi is trying to sell don’t really belong to her, but that she seems like a good person and her situation must be desperate for her to be taking such extreme measures. Though he won’t buy the scrolls he does offer to appraise them, and they turn out to be quite valuable. One of them even has a history that causes Aoi to think twice about spending her money the way she intends. “Holmes” offers instead to give her a job so she can earn the money she needs, though by that point she may no longer feel it necessary to spend it.
Three classmates play simple hand games. One of the girls is good at games, but hates them as she always lost to her older sister and forced to do chores while growing up. Another girl is of American descent, but raised in Japan, and who only pretends to be bad at Japanese. Another girl usually observes their games, and loses to the other girls. – ANN
Episode 1 Summary: Kasumi hasn’t liked games since she was a little kid; they were just a tool of her older sister to trick her into doing chores. So when class goofballs Olivia (an “American” who was actually raised in Japan) and Hanako (just a generic girl who’s less-than-sharp) start trying to get Kasumi to join in their game time, she wants nothing to do with them. It’s only after Olivia is forced to trade English lessons for insight into Japanese pastimes from Kasumi that the three come up with the idea to start their own club. Within the walls of the “Pastimers Club,” the three unlikely friends spend their afternoons goofing around.
Impressions: Here’s where I’d normally open with a paragraph about how comedy is so subjective that it’s difficult to rate, and anime comedies have the added difficulty of conveying humor through culturally-specific preferences and tropes. The reason that I tend to review comedies by qualifying them this way is because my personal comedic tastes are very peculiar and specific; this tends to manifest itself when I catch wind of “the funniest anime comedy of the season” and it doesn’t even make me crack a smile once I watch it. I’m also not a huge fan of material that’s mean-spirited, whether that’s from tension that occurs between various characters or between a creator and their characters (some creators just seem to want to make characters suffer, and I have issues with that). There are always exceptions, but this is how I tend to be.
Olivia, living a lie.
Occasionally an episode comes along that manages to toe a delicate line with several of my likes, dislikes, and preferences, while being more eye-catching and interesting than anticipated. Asobi Asobase wasn’t originally on my “anticipated anime” list, though I was admittedly curious about it because one of the more frequent comments I started to see other reviewers make about it was that the basic description of the premise didn’t really reflect the tone of the actual show. The impression that I got from the description and the key artwork was that of a fun, light-hearted series about three girls playing games. I expected something low-key and slice-of-life-ish, like so many other anime series about teens in clubs who don’t actually do much of anything beyond bonding with one-another. The actual anime is much funnier and has quite a bit more bite to it than your typical show about cute girls experiencing regular life.
Much of the humor is based on the fact that the characters don’t seem to care much for one-another, and are somehow thrust into the same situation just due to unfortunate chance (or their own poor decisions). Kasumi doesn’t have the patience or the interest to deal with Olivia’s and Hanako’s goofy antics or games, but she’s got terrible grades in English class and decides that Olivia, being “American” and all, is the person to give her pointers. Olivia’s actually grown up in Japan and despite her blonde, blue-eyed looks doesn’t really speak English at all, but because she made the poor decision to start off her first day in class pretending not to know much Japanese and speaking in a goofy accent, she’s got to uphold the lie. Now that Kasumi has bought into Olivia’s deception and also has something that she wants – insight into and the opportunity to play games – she’s stuck suffering for it. Hanako is just a ding-dong who’s along for the ride. Normally watching people suffer isn’t my jam, but when the suffering and hostility is so low-grade it’s almost a bit of a charm point, it turns the corner from being unfortunate to being genuinely worthy of a laugh.
Thumb wars are intense!
I’m a big fan of the facial feature manipulation that happens in this series, and find that it makes a good basis for most of the visual humor that resonated with me. There’s something very refreshing about an anime that lets its girl characters look ugly. Attractive character designs are almost a requirement for anime series nowadays, especially when it comes to the female characters. Shows can be made or broken on how well they deliver on that appeal. It’s disheartening. Much like Kakegurui a few seasons ago, this series sees its characters transform from cute and demure to twisted, sarcastic, and devilish as the mood requires. The effect in this series is more cartoon-y, but coupled with the snide inner monologues of the characters these transformations give the show a unique visual language that helps to supplement the rest of the gags.
I have mostly positive opinions about the series so far, but I think there are a couple of items worth mentioning which bothered me a bit and will likely come across as crass to others. First of all, there’s a greater-than-zero amount of boob-related humor. How the tone strikes you will really depend on how you interpret those jokes in particular; in one scene, one character slaps the other in the face so hard that the shock wave sends the loser’s chest into a ripple. There’s another scene where all three are discussing how a person could grow or acquire a larger chest. There seems to be some weird belief that teenage girls all want to talk about and to critique each-other’s chest sizes. I suppose it could have been true for some people back in high school but I’ve never really felt the need. It comes across as a weird preoccupation of anime and manga authors rather than something based in the truth of girls’ interactions. There’s also a joke sequence that implies that one of the male teachers is a creepy pervert, since he hangs around too long outside the closed door of the classroom (where the girls are dressed in swimsuits, playing in a kiddie pool… it makes sense in context!). I don’t know if this will be a running gag or a one-off in poor taste, but that’s the kind of joke I don’t find funny at all (and I wish the universe would finally forgive me from laughing at it in Azumanga Daioh).
I get the impression that this show is one where your mileage may vary based heavily on your tolerance for people acting both stupid and jerk-ish to one-another. Personally, I suspect I’ll continue to find it entertaining as long as the level of mean behavior doesn’t get out of hand and the show maintains its penchant for funny faces and unique animation. This episode is definitely atypical of other comedy series I’ve seen lately, and that alone is probably worth at least a watch.
Pros: The facial expressions on the characters are comedic on their own. The anime has a strong sense of visual style. It’s actually funny!
Cons: It tends to be a bit mean-spirited. There are the requisite annoying boob jokes and a male teacher implied to be a pervert.
Kōta Hasegawa is a high school boy who loves the yellow Pom Pom Purin dog. By mere coincidence, he ends up attending the same school as Yū Mizuno, a boy who likes the bunny My Melody. Yū tells Kōta that there’s nothing to be ashamed of for liking Sanrio’s cute characters. Together, Kōta, Yū, Shunsuke Yoshino, Ryō Nishimiya, and Seiichiro Minamoto learn to accept their love of the characters instead of feeling embarrassed. – ANN
Review:This review may contain spoilers for the series.
When was the first time you felt ashamed for liking something? When I was in elementary school, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was huge. I loved the cartoon series and the video games more than almost anything else. I really wanted to own some of the toys, but as a fourth-grader without a steady source of income, it was up to me to try to get my parents to buy them for me. Looking back as an adult, I can logically say that there’s nothing wrong with a girl wanting to own action figures, but all the toy commercials had boys in them and even at my young age I was afraid of being judged or laughed-at for wanting to play with toys made for boys. The happy ending to my story was that my mother never once judged me or made fun of me for my preference, and I went on to build a large collection of action figures, Star Trek figures, and other miscellaneous fandom toys that eventually led to the overgrown collection of anime figurines I have today.
That, of course, was just my experience, but not everyone has the luxury of crossing society’s arbitrary gender boundaries with their likes and dislikes, especially boys and men who enjoy things typically aimed at girls and women (because believe it or not being a girl or woman is valued as lesser by our society, even by people who might not necessarily think so consciously). I know my husband has gotten some flak for his enjoyment of My Little Pony and preference for pinks and purples, and in an even broader sense, there are people who are harassed and harmed because their gender expression doesn’t fit into a certain narrow binary. Sanrio Boys isn’t a heavy hitter when it comes to discussing the latter; in fact, the series doesn’t really touch on gender itself very deeply. But it does spend a lot of time looking at the former – boys who express themselves through their enjoyment of characters and products typically aimed at women.
Kouta was picked on for his love of Pom Pom Purin.
Each of the five main characters in this series exemplifies the different ways that people experience liking things outside the mainstream. Kota, the everyman protagonist, was picked on by his peers as a child because he carried around a Pom Pom Purin stuffed animal. Yu loves My Melody without shame, but his younger sister finds his hobby disgusting. Ryou is the youngest sibling in a family of older sisters, and fears being pigeonholed into the role of an effeminate younger brother. There’s nothing particularly complicated about any of the guys’ circumstances, but the simple injustices of their situations are laid bare for the audience in a way that I find very relateable. I like to think that most viewers would tend to realize how hurtful bullying someone for their hobbies is (and I imagine there are a lot of anime fans out there who have gotten picked on for being into “weird cartoons”), but the straightforward, sometimes ham-handed way the series insists upon the fact that young men can and do like cutesy characters and merchandise is something some fans may not have thought much about, even considering their own circumstances.
Beyond its central message, the show is pretty light on narrative and hits a lot of trope-y beats that would be at home in any high-school-based anime series. There’s a strong emphasis on friendship and relationship-building between the boys, a sprinkling of dramatic interpersonal conflict, a whole boatload of earnestness (and some dramatic overwork-to-the-point-of-self-destruction) from our main-man Kota, and a school culture festival to tie the entire thing up with a sparkly bow at the end. It also spends some time paying attention to its assumed viewer base (young women, the same individuals who tend to be major consumers of Sanrio products) by not only featuring cute guys being cute together on a regular basis, but also getting those same characters into situations where they hang out together buying merchandise or take on princely personas for the sake of a school theater production. There’s certainly nothing wrong with this; as far as fanservice goes it’s easily some of the more innocuous I’ve seen lately. It does distract a bit from what I see as an atypically good toy commercial disguised as an average anime series.
It’s a fun day at Sanrio Puroland.
The commercialized bits of the series are admittedly pretty entertaining and mostly forgivable. The boys go shopping for Sanrio toys and merchandise on a regular basis (naturally) and those bits made me long for the days when there was still a Sanrio store at the Mall of America (I’m probably showing my age by saying that). They also make a big mid-series trip to Sanrio Puroland, the Sanrio theme park in Tokyo with costumed characters and themed areas and performances. There’s a particularly ridiculous montage in the episode where the boys wander through all the areas and big attractions, dressing up in costumes and interacting with their favorite characters. It’s pure fanservice in more ways than one, but it’s indulgent rather than trashy – I’ll give it a pass (and be jealous that I’m not in their place). Having seen many more shameless toy commercials disguised as anime in my time, the fact that this series blends the fluff with some fairly substantial character moments is pretty good by me.
Ultimately whether viewers are likely to glean anything from Sanrio Boys’ lessons in subverting gender essentialism will be based on how much they can also tolerate being advertised to and whether they enjoy cute-guy pandering. I happen to be a Sanrio fan who likes shows starring cute guys, but it’s obviously not everyone’s specific cup of tea. I’d argue, though, that those who go in with an open mind will likely come away with something worth more than the price of admission (and some stickers and key chains).
Pros: The show is strongly in favor of people enjoying what they enjoy, gender roles be damned. If you like Sanrio, that’s an added bonus.
Cons: The second half of the series is especially filled with common tropes that stray away from some of the positive messaging in the first half.
Rin enjoys camping by the lakeshore, Mt. Fuji in view. Nadeshiko rides her bike to see Mt. Fuji, too. As the two eat cup noodles together, they behold the beautiful scenery around them. – ANN
Review:This review may contain mild spoilers for the series.
If you’re like me, you’ve long since accepted the fact that “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things” is a perfectly legitimate anime genre. I’ve even seen it abbreviated “CGDCT,” so it’s time to acknowledge that this slice-of-life sub-set is now firmly its own thing and has been for years. As with other genres, it comes with its share of identifiable tropes; these series sometimes have a tendency towards Seinfeldian “nothing actually happens” stories, and many give off an impression of being frothy and insubstantial (if not downright insulting to the intelligence of the audience). This is probably true for a portion of them, but what I find appealing about these shows is the emphasis on friendship and relationship-building between girls, which is often in short supply elsewhere. This isn’t to say that the genre isn’t without its problems, voyeuristic focus on girls’ interactions for the benefit of straight male otaku being the big one, but I think the best of these series do a good job of making it so I can push these concerns to the side for a half hour and appreciate what’s there to enjoy.
Rin sets up her campsite along the lake.
Laid-Back Camp is one of the better examples of this sort of entertainment due to its emphasis on developing the friendship between two characters who are very different from one-another. The story begins as Rin arrives at her campsite alone, and raises her tent in view of the lovely autumn lakeside environment. Her solo camping serenity is interrupted by Nadeshiko, a bubbly girl Rin’s age who accidentally oversleeps on a nearby bench until after sunset. When Rin shows Nadeshiko some hospitality and compassion, Nadeshiko immediately becomes enamored with the camping life. Back at school, she joins an outdoors club and she and the other members start to enjoy group camping. Though Rin goes to their school as well, she prefers not to join the group; while she maintains a friendship with Nadeshiko and occasionally camps with her, she prefers to enjoy the outdoors alone, on her own terms.
Rin and Nadeshiko do a little duo-camping.
What I appreciate about this set up is that it eschews the expected story arc that would likely focus on Rin opening up, becoming friends with the other girls, and learning to favor group dynamics instead of honoring her inherent loner-ism – i.e. fundamentally changing herself to please others. Instead, the series seems much more focused on exploring the positive aspects of both Nadeshiko’s group-oriented style and Rin’s solo-camp adventures while vilifying neither of them or obligating them to alter their personalities for the sake of storytelling. Rin and Nadeshiko fall into a comfortable rhythm of texting one-another photos of their excursions while the series follows them (mostly) individually from place-to-place. This gives off the message that there isn’t just one “right way” to enjoy camping or, by extension, many of life’s other wonderful hobbies. Just like there isn’t just one way to enjoy watching anime (and no one is going to convince me to change my stubborn fandom ways).
I also got a more basic level of enjoyment from the fact that this anime is not just focused on the act of going out camping, but also on the cool equipment available to make camping more comfortable and, more importantly, all of the delicious foods one can prepare while “roughing it” outside. Many years ago, a friend of mine who had spent some time in Japan had me try to guess what the most popular food is for Japanese campers. In the US it tends to be easy things like hot-dogs, granola bars, beans, and other items you can heat up easily with minimal equipment (or eat cold). I was surprised to learn that in Japan curry is popular, with rice cooked in special cookers over the campfire. It seemed counter-intuitive to me, what with the messiness and need for special utensils, but there you go. Laid-Back Camp features curry and more, including meats, fried rice, stews, soups… one of the characters even busts out a camping-specific cook book at one point. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of food-related anime and manga, so this aspect of the show was a welcome surprise (though as far as iyashikei (“healing”) anime go, it’s something that seems to show up in one form or another fairly often, so maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised!). I’m not sure that I’d actually take any of these recipes on the road, but it is interesting to learn that, yes, cooking and eating fun, somewhat labor-intensive foods outside is something that people do.
Through Nadeshiko and the club’s camping adventures, we also get a look at the different types (and price points) of camping gear available, which is fun – watching other people shop for things fulfills a vicarious need in me, and I suspect others might feel the same. I also enjoyed watching the characters learn new skills and techniques through study and experience. Since much of the series takes place during the colder months, there are special considerations as far as sleeping bags, blankets, and ground coverings are concerned, so it was interesting to learn about those things while also getting a realistic look at how much those items cost. The girls all get part-time jobs to help support their hobby, which I thought was a nice touch.
Club members learn how to build a different type of fire.
What I think is the real success of this show, though, was that it was able to get me interested in something I was formerly averse to ever doing – camping. Call me soft, but I have never been a fan of the outdoors. I don’t like mosquitoes, heat/humidity, going days without bathing, smoky campfires… I’m a big wimp who spends most of my time connected to the internet and has an adversarial relationship with the sunlight. Strangely enough, though, watching Rin’s adventures in particular really taught me to recognize the appeal in spending some time disconnected from daily life, enjoying nature. It’s worth noting that camping alone as a woman is probably something more easily-done in Japan than the US; I’d feel fundamentally safer in a place with lower crime, especially if it were overnight in an unsecured sleeping situation. But if I ever make it over there, I might consider it as an option, assuming equipment rental is easy. And again, since the series takes place over the colder months, there are few heat concerns and no insects; it wasn’t until watching this series that I even thought about off-season camping as an option, so it’s encouraging to know that it’s something people can actually do.
Beyond that, this show is just a really pleasant, offbeat pseudo-travelogue that benefits from a naturally gorgeous setting (most of the camping takes place within view of Mount Fuji). The character relationships are healthy and low-pressure, the excursions are varied and soothing, and there’s even some light humor thrown in to keep things upbeat. I think it’s worth noting that viewers who are looking for something high-stakes and exciting are not likely to get past the first couple of episodes; by design this isn’t a high-energy piece with a lot going on. But set opposite something with a lot of action it might serve as a nice way to break up a more “serious” viewing experience. Or, if you’re like me, this is just the type of series that you might prefer when the rest of the world is stressful enough. And heck, if you’re driven to take a break from society for a bit, this might give you some basic skills to do so.
Pros: The show is exceedingly chill. There’s some fun focus on tools and eats. The relationship between the two main characters is positive and encouraging.
Cons: Some viewers may find the show fundamentally boring.
Retsuko is a 25-year old red panda who works in her dream company’s accounting department. But it turns out that she is forced to keep doing more and more impossible tasks by her superiors and co-workers. She doesn’t talk back to them, but she still has to let off steam, so she ends up going to karaoke by herself and singing death metal. – ANN
Copyright 2018 – Sanrio/Netflix
Streaming: Netflix
Source: Original
Episodes: 10 (15 minutes apiece)
Review: About two years ago I caught wind of Aggressive Retsuko, a new Sanrio property debuting in two minute chunks on YouTube. The concept really tickled me – a twenty-something OL who puts up with typical office politics during her day job, lets out her many frustrations in the evening by growling death metal into a microphone at her local Karaoke parlor. A bit of a one-note joke to be sure, but one that hit me the right way and provided some decent belly laughs. I never watched much of it because it wasn’t that easily available, but I definitely indulged in some of the merchandise when it started popping up in my local Hot Topic and other Asian pop-culture shops. When this sequel appeared it actually took my by surprise; I only caught wind of it after reading Jacob Chapman’s preview of the first couple of episodes the most recent Spring Preview Guide over at ANN, and initially questioned the choice to make the episodes longer than their original two minute format. I doubted that one gag, even a pretty good one, could sustain a longer episode, much less make it entertaining.
As they say, boy was I wrong. While Aggretsuko is still primarily what I would call a comedy, it’s also a fairly robust critique of some Japan-specific (but still widely-relatable) office issues, especially as they affect women in a workplace setting.
One of the series’s many successes is how Retsuko is presented as a character, because despite her cutesy, merch-ready appearance her situation feels so genuine. She’s a cute, earnest person who feels lucky to be working at one of her dream companies, but her accounting job is anything but satisfying and her situation is greatly complicated by the fact that she doesn’t interact well with some of her coworkers and doesn’t have the personality that helps her to play games and suck up to the right people. She tries to lay low and get through the day, but this only turns her into a dumping ground for others’ work and, unsurprisingly, she’s unwilling to tell anyone “no” and spoil the office harmony. While my work situation is leaps and bounds better than depicted in this series, I’m fully sympathetic to the idea that it’s just easier to become a “yes man” and take on more and more work than to speak up and potentially make someone else’s life more difficult. Maybe it’s due to my problems with social anxiety or my poor handle on how to maintain human relationships, but I can see how the idea of “harmony over all else” can be desirable while also ultimately harmful.
Mr. Ton is a literal chauvinist pig.
Retsuko is also exposed to some of the most blatantly awful chauvinism I’ve seen depicted in media in a long, long time. Every interaction with her boss, Mr. Ton, is a tension-filled exercise in suffering through off-color comments about women’s place in the office and what jobs they’re meant to perform. Each time Retsuko got caught in the cross-hairs I could feel myself welling up with frustration. I’ve luckily never been in her exact position or had a boss so profoundly terrible, but I have been made to feel like an outsider and I’ve heard my share of casual sexism, so subtle and insidious that it doesn’t register even with people who otherwise have a handle on those sorts of things. It’s exhausting and defeating, and even several days later I have to marvel at the ability of this series to capture that and bottle it for consumption. I’m reminded a bit of Hataraki Man, another workplace series that follows the trials of several women working for a magazine publisher and examines their specific hurdles and ways of coping with unjust and unequal treatment and expectations. In that case, the protagonist is hyper-competent and admired for her ability to “work like a man,” when the men around her don’t put in half the amount of work that she does. Both series are very telling about what we expect of men and women in the same setting, and those concerned with workplace equality will likely be similarly frustrated by both.
This is supposed to be a comedy anime, right?
Gori and Washimi help to mentor Retsuko.
If the series were nothing more than a string of upsetting circumstances for Retsuko to deal with via death metal therapy, it’s likely that it wouldn’t be upbeat enough to maintain its own sense of humor. What helps immensely is that the show allows Retsuko to get by with a little help from her friends, as well as with some personal mentorship from a couple of high-powered working women in her company who have seen it all and lived to tell the tale. Retsuko is by no means a loner and often gets support in one form or another from Fenneko, a snarky fennec fox who survives each workday through pure cynicism, and Haida, a hyena who’s an everyday normal guy nursing a crush on our heroine. There’s a good sense that these three have been in the trenches together for a while and the others do a decent, if flawed, job of talking Retsuko out of some situations. Fenneko in particular was a real source of entertainment for me just because of her deadpan delivery and ability to see right through the world’s fakery. She’s not a character who would work well as a protagonist, but in small doses she was hilarious. As Retsuko connects with Washimi and Gori, two women who she has only admired from afar prior to their meeting in a yoga class, she learns that there are opportunities to get things done even when the system seems rigged and unfair. There is a lot of depth in these interactions, especially when Washimi and Gori attempt to help Retsuko directly with her management or try to guide her towards making good life decisions, and I think they really elevate the show.
My one complaint, and it’s a relatively minor one, is that the series attempts to insert a sub-plot of sorts near the end and isn’t able to devote enough time to it for it to fully mature. In her desperation, Retsuko starts to believe that her only “out” from her job is to find a partner and get married so that she can live as a housewife. She ends up falling for a guy with zero personality whose only real distinguishing quality is his low-key lack of consideration for her. She grins and bears it for a while until she’s forced to face reality. The lesson, of course, is that we tend to tolerate so many things when we feel that our lives are hopeless, and in doing so give up our chance at happiness and dignity. I really loved that message, and only wish that the show had been a couple more episodes long to allow it to unfold more gradually. As a sentiment, it was absolutely right on the money and just another way in which the series surprised me.
In the couple of weeks that the series has been available I’ve seen the amount of fanwork for it blow up completely, so I doubt that my giving it a glowing review is somehow going to inform anyone who isn’t already aware and interested. But in case someone does randomly stumble across this anime blog (or, more likely, discover the show while adding dozens of things to their Netflix queue), I hope maybe my words or their own curiosity will give them the push that they need to give it a try. And then, maybe we can continue to try to dispel the myth that cutesy-looking cartoons are only for kids.
Pros: The protagonist is very sympathetic. Portrays Retsuko’s tough situations in a way that feels real and relatable. The character relationships and interactions add a lot of depth.
Cons: The late-game romantic subplot could have used a couple more episodes of exploration.
Keita Amano is a lonely young man who loves video games; Karen Tendō is the beautiful president of the video game club; Chiaki Hoshinomori constantly fights with Keita; and Tasuku Uehara puts on a facade of being satisfied with his life in the real world, but he in truth loves video games. – ANN
Episode 1 Summary: Keita Amano’s high school life is lacking in the things that make fun – he’s got no friends and he doesn’t belong to any clubs. He goes home everyday and spends his evenings playing video games. While perusing new titles in the game shop he’s approached by Karen Tendou, his schools’ most beautiful, smart, and popular student. She invites him to join the newly-reestablished game club she’s put together at their school, and she’s extremely passionate about it. All the current members are experts at the various types of games that they play, and they all seem to have much larger reasons for playing them than “they’re just fun to play.” Keita starts to feel like the odd one out, since he just likes to play video games for his own enjoyment. When Karen asks him to join the club officially, he declines in spite of multiple reasons why he knows the experience will be good for him. Though, to Karen, this feels like the ultimate rejection, it’s likely that this isn’t the last word in the matter.
Impressions: Most people have hobbies, and I think for many, their hobbies are a type of escapism. I don’t sit down and knit a scarf because I need another scarf to wear; I knit the scarf because I like the experience of choosing the right yarn, of feeling it running through my fingers with each stitch, and of watching the rhythmic loops upon loops of fiber expand into a finished project. I can knit while watching television or just enjoying the quiet somewhere, and it helps me relax. If I were to start an Etsy shop to sell my finished projects, suddenly a hobby that I enjoy would morph into an obligation, losing all of its power to take me out of my daily life. It’s the same reason why I don’t really do art commissions or write articles for money; when there’s a transaction involved, it just isn’t that fun anymore. When there’s a hard deadline, it’s much easier to stress about it.
Keita gets pummeled in a first person shooter game. Copyright 2017 (c) PINE JAM
I can understand Keita’s reluctance to join Karen’s video game club, in spite of all the potential positives. He likes to game in his room, alone; it’s a form of relaxation after spending all day at school feeling mediocre and isolated from his classmates. Why would he want to place himself among people who play video games for a broader purpose? It would only invite comparisons in which he comes out looking like an aimless doofus.
These are thoughts I never expected to have while watching yet another anime about some hapless high school kid with a crush on a girl who joins a club full of misfits on some grand time-wasting adventure in slice-of-life territory. There are a lot of pieces in this show that seem to defy expectations, and I find that kind of fascinating. In my defense, the promotional image for the series is misleading – it makes it seem as though the protagonist, through some form of dumb luck (or “protagonist syndrome”), gets thrust into a group of girls, creating the potential for a romantic entanglement while the obnoxious male sidekick cracks jokes and acts as wing man throughout. Just in this episode I think we were introduced to at least four total male characters and roughly an equivalent number of young women, taking the ratio pretty far out of harem territory (two of the characters are even already a couple). The assumed romantic relationship between Keita and Karen is already in a very different place; rather than dancing around an awkward attraction, things are already on the rocks and Keita’s denial of her club invitation is even framed as a romantic rejection. Whether this is a setup to turn things back around in twelve episodes is a mystery, but it definitely went against my own expectations.
Keita is too normal for this weird club. Copyright 2017 (c) PINE JAM
There are also several humorous interjections via the on-screen text throughout the episode. They’re kind of self-aware, from the POV of some omniscient narrator, and give some snappy perspective on future developments for the characters. It’s reminiscent of, say, Ouran High School Host Club, with its blinking pointer-finger indicator of the doomed vase in episode 1, or even some live-action films like Scott Pilgrim (which, coincidentally, also deals in video game culture for its aesthetics) that are self-aware and call blatant attention to it via blending of referential special effects. Stuff like this always runs the risk of making media feel too “know-it-all” about its own tropes through overuse, but it’s used sparingly enough here that it doesn’t wear out its welcome.
The episode does fall in line with some expectations, however, especially in regards to the character relationships between boys and girls. There’s still kind of a disappointing lack of sexual awareness that Keita displays towards Karen; there are a few shots of her legs and body from Keita’s point-of-view that follow with him blushing and being unable to get words out of his mouth properly. Attraction turns some of us into disasters, but I have yet to meet a teenage kid who is made into such a mess from seeing an attractive person that their eyes wander around their crush’s body like the cameras in these anime series seem to think they do. Shots like that are one of those tools of the trade that are used as a shortcut, but which could be eliminated with just a minor amount of finesse (and a big dose of respect towards women and their bodies – this is probably the bigger hurdle).
Aside from that, though, I found myself amused by some of the game parodies already featured in the first episode (will there be more? I hope so). Karen’s polite conversation with King Koopa as a result of her delirium from lack of sleep, was surprisingly funny for a show where I didn’t expect there to be a decent comedic element. Video games are part of our shared culture, and as a Gen-X/Millennial cusp baby, I’ve experienced most of the big, important moments as games have grown into their own as an art form. In part, this show (and likely the light novel on which it was based) seems to have some of that same perspective. Even if it never takes on any of that broader cultural analysis (which it definitely doesn’t have to), it’s still fun to see the things that I’m familiar with featured fondly in an entertaining way.
In any case, sometimes hobbies are just distractions, and that’s okay. But even if a beloved hobby never provides the potential for financial compensation and couldn’t necessarily morph into a day job, there could also be a happy medium (like, say, watching anime and having an opinion on it…). Keita might not have a broader purpose to his gaming, and competitiveness might not be something he wants to inject into his hobby. But perhaps there’s a happy medium somewhere, and I’m actually kind of surprised at how interested I am to see how the show handles this proposition.
Pros: The show seems somewhat self-aware about its own tropes, and can be pretty funny about it. The cast is large enough that, while there could be love triangles or whatever, it doesn’t feel like a harem.
Cons: The show is still pessimistic about teenage male sexuality.
Kyō Nukui is a high school student who tends to skip school due to a trauma in his past. Kyō secretly creates songs using vocal song synthesis software as his hobby. Three girls who just entered fifth grade — the crybaby Jun “Jun-tan” Gotō, the strong-willed Nozomi “Zomi” Momijidani, and the somewhat sleepy Sora “Kū” Kaneshiro who takes life at her own pace — email Kyō. These three girls, who were raised together like sisters since childhood, want Kyō to help them break into music. – ANN
Episode 1 Summary: Kyo Nukui is a hikkikomori who, in the spare time he has being home-bound, creates electronic music and posts it online. One day he posts something in a completely different style, posts it under a different pseudonym, and wonders if anyone will know the difference. Later, he receives an incredibly formal email from someone who made the connection between his new work and his older, more well-known stuff, and this person wants to set up a meeting. Mustering all of the sociability he can, Kyo walks to the specified meeting place in a local park. He’s expecting to see someone older, based on the language in the messages, but the author is really an elementary school girl named Jun, who’s incredibly shy. She’s there with her two friends, Zomi and Ku, who were all raised at the same orphanage together. It’s their dream to put on a concert, and the girls certainly have the equipment to do so; the church basement has some great vintage guitars and the gear to go with it. It also turns out that they can sing and play the intruments pretty darned well – and they want Kyo to help them live out their dream of bringing people together through music.
Thoughts: I was driving to work recently, and was stuck in pretty heavy traffic. Someone a few cars in front of me stopped suddenly, causing a chain reaction where all subsequent vehicles, including myself, had to react in seconds. I braked hard, and hoped beyond all hope that the person behind me would notice in time to stop before ramming my tiny Mazda and turning it into scrap metal. Time seemed to slow down as I watched the (much larger) SUV pull up behind me way too quickly, as I pumped my brakes in hopes of signaling them somehow. Luckily, they were able to stop; I could hear the honking and engine noises once again and I was drawn out of my panic, and we were soon on our way down the entrance ramp towards the city.
Kyo is sad and isolated. Copyright 2017 (c) Barnum/Project No. 9
My story had a happy ending; oftentimes, however, you can see a car wreck about to happen, and there’s literally nothing you can do about it.
This episode starts of by fooling you into thinking that perhaps the underage girls in the promo images aren’t a huge part of the show. The opening scenes are focused on the main character’s anxiety and depression and the outlet that he has in making music. Anime doesn’t have a great track record in portraying mental illness, but these first few moments didn’t raise a lot of red flags to me in that regard, and I was willing to entertain the possibility that it could be better-than-mediocre somehow. With the introduction of the three fifth-graders, I was starting to see distant brake lights, as if something terrible had happened just over the next hill. I was concerned by their blushing cheeks, the weird shots of their too-shiny knees and ankles, and their infantile voice, not to mention their glistening, pouty lips. Maybe the colorists just wanted to go all-out and add in a bunch of details?
One of the last lines of the episode is Nozomi (the dark-haired girl), in exchange for Kyo helping the three orphans put on their concert, offering to let him touch her – just a little bit. I was actually just thinking to myself that it had been kind of a long time since I’d seen anything in anime that was truly vile and reprehensible; It seemed like, back when I was writing more consistently, that there were several anime series every single season that banked on pushing boundaries in regards to good taste. I actually blame the existence of those series for my current feelings about fanservice – I’m continually annoyed, but also find myself saying “well, at least it’s not as bad as [fill in the blank]” and I’ve ended up giving a pass to things that I may not have in a different time or place in my life. In any case, that’s one of the consequences of becoming hardened and complacent as a fan of a medium that can be highly problematic – suddenly you’re blindsided by someone’s bad idea that’s so completely out of line that you wonder how it could have gotten produced.
Yay, I feel horrible for having watched this! Copyright 2017 (c) Barnum/Project No. 9
This show is based on a light novel, that some people ostensibly read at some point. Some people read this novel and thought “hey, this concept seems entertaining. I bet a lot of people would like to see an anime adaptation about this high school guy that hangs out with little girls, and then they’ll surely laugh about their precocious sexuality.” I bet a production committee was gathered, and some music executive was slavering at the mouth, thinking about which voice actresses or idols on their roster would be a good fit to sing the band’s songs and portray the little elementary school girls that people would be inclined to have the hots for. An art designer, a character designer, several animators, and all sorts of staff were hired, and worked long, grueling hours for very little pay to bring to fruition an anime where a little girl implores a high school guy to feel her up.
There were probably dozens of people who had to sign off on something to get this made, and dozens more that poured their energies into its creation. If there’s one thing that Shirobako taught me it’s that really good, talented people sometimes make their money producing things that don’t have much artistic merit. Heck, the music scenes in the show are actually animated pretty well and might be fun to watch if the camera weren’t lingering on the girls’ legs, thighs, and mouths. I don’t want to dishonor the hard work that was put into the show by blaming the staff for the sins of the creators. And, to be honest, this isn’t nearly the most objectionable thing I’ve ever watched in my life. But I will say this – certain things just really rub me the wrong way, and making childlike characters into potential sex objects is one of them. Whether or not the episode’s final line was a misunderstood joke, something that will be explained away in episode 2, or something that will never come up again, it’s colored the experience for me in an irreparable way. I imagine that many of my readers might have the same experience. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do this, but I’ve dusted this old thing off for the occasion:
Now I can put this to rest and hopefully move on to something I’ll feel better about.
Pros: I wish I could think of something snarky to put here, but I’ve run dry.
Cons: Oh, I don’t know, it sexualizes little girls?
Streaming: Crunchyroll
