Hi again, everyone. It’s time to announce our newest Anime Book Club selection. And the winner as of 12:35AM today is…
Kino’s Journey!
Unsurprisingly, this series got the most votes; two thirds of people who voted said they’d be interested in watching it, and that was far-and-away the most agreed-upon result. I think this will be a great watch, as well as a great starting point for some discussions.
Kino’s Journey: The Beautiful World is a new animated take on the Kino’s Journey novel, which had a previous anime adaptation back in 2003 with a couple of additional OVA episodes a couple of years after that. I’ve watched both series, though I purposely avoided a re-watch of the original version before watching this one since I saw a lot of other critics comparing them and I wanted to judge this version on its own merits. I really enjoyed this one a lot. Perhaps after we’re done tackling this series, I might go back and re-watch the original at that point. In any case, I encourage you to go into this viewing process with an open and hungry mind!
I would like to start by watching 2 episodes a week. If that timing doesn’t work out well, we can watch more or less at a time. Each Sunday I’ll put up a discussion post with episode summaries, some of my own thoughts, and some potential discussion questions. Discussion can happen in the post comments section. I’ll monitor each post on an ongoing basis and make sure that people’s comments are approved (if you’ve commented here before, you should be good-to-go, but I have a basic filter going where I have to moderate new commenters so I can catch bad language, spam, or trolling from unfamiliar sources).
Because I’m going to be out-of-town this weekend, let’s start things on Sunday the 17th:
Episodes 1-2; Discussion starts on Sunday, June 17th
Episodes 3-4; Discussion starts on Sunday, June 24th
Episodes 5-6; Discussion starts on Sunday, July 1st
BREAK – I will be attending and presenting at CONvergence July 5-8, but since this is halfway through the series I may put up a short post where people can talk about their feelings so far.
Episodes 7-8; Discussion starts on Sunday, July 15th
Episodes 9-10; Discussion starts on Sunday, July 22nd
Episodes 11-12; Discussion starts on Sunday, July 29th
Final thoughts, etc. – Sunday, August 5th
Kino’s Journey: The Beautiful World is available on Crunchyroll and Hulu. The dubbed version is available on Funimation if that is what you’d prefer (I’ll be watching the Japanese language version and my posts will be based on that).
Thanks again to everyone who voted, and happy watching!
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.
A certain point in time, in the continent of Telesis. The great war which divided the continent into North and South has ended after four years, and the people are welcoming a new generation. Violet Evergarden, a young girl formerly known as “the weapon”, has left the battlefield to start a new life at CH Postal Service. There, she is deeply moved by the work of “Auto Memories Dolls”, who carry people’s thoughts and convert them into words. Violet begins her journey as an Auto Memories Doll, and comes face to face with various people’s emotions and differing shapes of love. There are words Violet heard on the battlefield, which she cannot forget. These words were given to her by someone she holds dear, more than anyone else. She does not yet know their meaning but she searches to find it. – ANN
Review:This review contains minor plot spoilers for the TV Series.
I don’t like to get too hyped-up about upcoming anime because it’s so exhausting to be disappointed when the final production doesn’t live up to what was promised. I like to let anime happen on its own terms rather than measured against my often incorrect expectations. But I ask you, as one anime fan to another, what am I to do when Kyoto Animation releases a teaser trailer that’s such an incredible fever dream of flawless animation and the interplay of light and color? There was no possible way for me to ignore what I had seen and start with a completely blank slate once the series was finally posted to Netflix. Rather than try to fool myself into believing that it was possible for me to be impartial, I decided to embrace impartiality and read other reviews of the show, both episodic ones and those focused on the series as a whole. I prepared myself for possible disappointment by arming myself with information.
Was this the right tactic? I’m not entirely certain, but what I can say is that going into the experience expecting to be frustrated by certain aspects of the story left me feeling pleasantly surprised by how the series was not nearly as flawed as I had been led to believe. This sounds like faint praise, but I really did enjoy the show more than I had expected to and I’m left wondering why others were more disappointed.
The series is comprised of two concurrent story arcs – one about a country at war which has at this point reached an unsteady truce, and one about Violet Evergarden, the titular character, who comes from a place of darkness and must reacquaint herself with the subtlety and full range of human emotion. The former story is the weaker one of the two; it works well as a backdrop and helps to establish who Violet is and where she’s come from, but when it comes further into focus as part of the primary conflict it feels forced and uninteresting (one might even describe it as kind of “tryhard” if one wanted to be a little snarky). The latter is where the more meaningful and satisfying developments happen, and while Violet’s story occasionally gets a bit melodramatic, viewers like me who have a tendency to get emotionally-invested will likely eat this right up.
Violet’s scars from the war are both internal and, to the surprise of others, also external.
It does take a few episodes for Violet’s story to get moving, and as I commented to some friends after I’d watched the first three or so episodes I was concerned that the series felt overly-manipulative in its storytelling. Several of the early episodes feel like one-offs that serve to build the setting and put Violet where she needs to be, but don’t quite achieve the emotional highs they try to wring from the viewer using beautiful music and imagery. As a veteran of war remembered both for her youth and her emotionless brutality, Violet is clearly out of her element as an Auto Memory Doll. The Dolls are women who compose eloquent letters for paying clients by interpreting those clients’ feelings into written language. Violet, as an orphan who has seen (and committed) countless horrors as a child soldier, is more adept at reporting facts and taking people’s words at pure, functional face value. She may have emotions, but they’ve been so blunted by her tragic experiences that it creates a wall between her and others. Likewise, the first few episodes of the show where Violet stumbles through an ill-fitting civilian existence, feel like attempts at forced emotionality that are unsubtle and unnerving. I can’t say whether this was intentional or not, but looking back it’s interesting to me how much the structure and feel of the show mirrors Violet’s evolution.
As Violet becomes more accustomed to her work and begins to allow herself to feel and empathize with others, the show capitalizes on this to tell some of its most memorable stories. My two favorites were one in which Violet helped facilitate more genuine communication between a couple of soon-to-be-wed nobles (ignoring the squicky age difference between the two), and one in which she composed a large volume of letters from a mother to her daughter. Though both stories are still what I would qualify as one-offs, they also provided great snap-shots into Violet’s progression towards not only understanding others, but also understanding herself and the relationships that she values.
Violet returns to remember a painful moment.
I’m what I would call an empathetic viewer and I generally pay less attention to plot and continuity than many others, since I find little value in picking that stuff apart. I find more value in thinking about broad themes and considering how I was made to feel. This is the perfect example of a series that I think was made for that mode of viewing, since I recognize that there are some issues with the structure of the show and feel like it could have benefited from some reshuffling of priorities. As I mentioned earlier, possibly the weakest aspect of the show is its sub-plot revolving around the tenuous peace between its setting’s warring factions. Violet herself obtains a kind of personal emotional climax a few episodes from the end of the series, and much of the remainder of the show is devoted to a sort of shoehorned-in plot about a rebellion hell-bent on mucking up the signing of the peace treaty. The last two or three episodes of the series feature some great action pieces – an attempted bridge bombing, Violet parachuting into a war zone, a fist fight atop a moving train… all things that are cool to look at, but which feel as though they come from a completely different series (though they also provide a poignant resolution to the loss of Violet’s father figure that plagues her throughout the series, so it’s not all fluff). They’re ostensibly there to prove that Violet is no longer a cold-hearted killing machine (as she eschews using her strength and speed to actually murder anyone despite the fact that it would more easily resolve the situation), but we’ve already been shown so much evidence of her evolution that the reminder is unnecessary. The series as a whole easily made it into my good graces on its other merits and I could look at these last couple of episodes as mostly-extraneous, but I can see how many people would find this much more irritating.
The way in which Violet reaches a resolution in her troubled relationship with the Bougainvillea family is one of the high points of last few, weaker episodes.
As emotionally moving as many episodes are, they’re matched or exceeded by Kyoto Animation’s cinematic visuals and animation. If I’m being truthful, being able to watch characters move in front of gorgeous backgrounds is one of the bonuses of watching almost any Kyoto Animation series (and the main reason why I’ve pushed on through more episodes than I’d like of shows like Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maidand Amagi Brilliant Park) and this series is perhaps their most striking, detailed effort to date. It was the original commercial for the show that captured my attention, and while the series doesn’t quite sustain that exact look throughout, it still maintains a visual lushness that’s so far above and beyond what I’m used to as a TV anime viewer that I can’t rightly complain. I can only really fangirl in a basic way over how the show looks, but if you’re interested in some more educated commentary, check out Sakuga Blog’s series of production notes on the series.
I’m not a huge fan of Netflix’s delays when it comes to streaming anime series that I’m really anticipating, but I do appreciate the fact that I can watch an entire show (or cour, at least) in one or two sittings, so I suppose it’s kind of a wash in that sense. In this case, I got a chance to listen to lucky folks in other regions post their reactions, and despite the fact that my expectations were high they were also tempered and honed by what I was hearing. As someone with an (apparently) offbeat point of view on how stories are told it seems like I didn’t have much to worry about, as a lot of the complaints aren’t necessarily my complaints, and I truly enjoyed the show as a whole for its primary focus on feelings and human interactions and not as much on its weaker political plot. It’s gorgeous testament to KyoAni’s draftsmanship skills, as well as Netflix’s apparently pretty decent skills at picking anime series to partner with. It also gets a “5” on the Jessi Silver Cry Scale (TM) (I cried/held back tears at least 5 times while watching). If you’re someone who’s more into emotional through-lines in your entertainment, you might have a very good time with this series.
Pros: Visually beautiful. The feel of the story seems to mirror its protagonist’s development in many ways.
Cons: Political plot feels unnecessary. The real character climax arrives around episode 9 and parts of the last couple of episodes don’t fit in with those themes very well.
Kino’s Journey!
