Animisery – A Blog About Living Miserably with Anime (Among Other Things)

Have I mentioned how thick summer’s seasonal anime lineup is? I’ve barely considered watching anything but what I’m enforced to by my podcast or just whatever randomly takes hold of my mind (like Gintama). I only have three shows to talk about but they’re all, honestly, pretty alright. The funniest thing that this blog post was that I originally typed it up as my mid-August update since I thought that I’d SURELY watch more anime then was besieged by other interests like games and outdoor adventures. I’m sure September will make up for it!

CALL OF THE NIGHT
SEASON ONE
⭐ ( 7 / 10 ) ⭐

I mentioned in a previous blog update that The Dangers in My Heart was subject to perpetual procrastination as far as my watching schedule goes because Hidive’s services just perpetually disappointed me. The Call of the Night was also a victim of the same practices which led me to watch one episode shortly after its premiere and to never watch another episode again for THREE YEARS. I recently picked it back up to be served a nice little treat of an anime that wasn’t spectacular but definitely hooked me by the finale. What begins as a somewhat mundane metro fantasy story about a vampire meeting an insomniac boy eventually evolves into a tale about the complications of emotional intimacy and interpersonal relationships. Nazuna, while slightly obnoxious, is a delight of a character who struggles with intertwining herself into romance but finds physical contact a breeze. To counteract her, male lead Kyo is often awkward and refutes physical touch while easily proclaims that he’ll fall in love with Nazuna so that he might become a vampire. It’s an interest dichotomy between different varieties of naive behaviors as both struggle to intertwine in a middle ground that will give them both what they mutually desire. The introduction of more vampires only served to pique my interest further as it is revealed that all vampires are seemingly out trying to make people fall in love with them with romantic ploys like being overly cute or that special brand of mature that goblins on the internet love. It doesn’t descend into a full on Twilight spectacle as vampire fights vampire over trivial concerns like Kristen Stewart but rather continues its trajectory to the finale when a possible villain enters the fray. This villain in particular is almost the most interesting cast member of all as her talents and capabilities are only teased before the show concludes and I was left to eagerly jump into the next season with no hesitation.

With all that said, Lidenfilms made an anime with solid atmosphere that (although I wouldn’t know that much about it from my own personal experience) captures the sovereign isolation of being out on a city after dark. The lights of the windows and environments around you grant the sole solace you have until you come across the life that lives in the night like vampires or middle school students with no parental guidance. It’s a lonely place with intrigue everywhere and I hope the next season follows through on that or at least grants me more screen time with Nazuna. I’m honestly apathetic about Kyo and found him to be the weakest link in the already frail chain that was my interest in Call of the Night at the start. He’s just a kid who bounces back from everything and just wants to stay out late since he has no better calling for his life. I can comprehend his reasoning but his attitude still reeks of the mindless decision making of a child which failed to endear me. I noticed he’s hardly in the OP for the second season so maybe he’ll take a back seat and I can chill with the Call of the Night in more comfort next time.

TAKOPI’S ORIGINAL SIN
⭐ ( 8 / 10 ) ⭐

I feel like that we, as anime fans, are just content to watch suffering children with little to no concern over the matter. Some of us watched kids no more than 15 or so get eaten alive by giant naked giants in Attack on Titan and just never recovered from that child suffering hunger. For the sake of the FBI agents who may peruse my blog, this is all a joke (god I hope for my sake) but you know what isn’t a joke? It’s Takopi’s Original Sin! There is nothing in this anime that could remotely be qualified as a joke! That’s not necessarily true as there are several attempts at humor but this show is as dire as deadly dishwater because not a single person in this anime contains a single breath of happiness in them and I mean that very seriously. This anime is basically doing what Madoka Magica did for the magical girl genre except for whatever genre Doraemon would be considered. Mascot helper anime is probably a genre. The premise of Takopi’s Original Sin is that the titular alien octopus creature Takopi who comes from a planet of other alien octopus creatures is out exploring the cosmos with the intent of spreading happiness (they’re literally from Happy Planet) and lands on Earth to find one of the most miserable Japanese people he can find. Her name is Shizuka and her father has abandoned her while her mom works nights leaving her dog Chappy as her only constant companion. She’s constantly being bullied by one of her classmates Marina who blames Shizuka for the dissolution in her parents marriage because of Shizuka’s mother so things just are not going swimmingly for Shizuka. Due in part that Shizuka makes a serious mistake in feeding him, Takopi decides to make Shizuka’s life better with his happy gadgets but he inadvertently just makes them worse. WAY WORSE.

When you start up Takopi’s Original Sin on Crunchyroll, you’ll be greeted with a content warning and for very good reason. See, Takopi is an absolute dreadful anime in the sense that dread is constantly lingering on the screen. Things only get worse with each passing episode and the content there within only spirals into more and more generally cynical and depressing territory with unrelenting abandon. Some may have the audacity to call this direction “artful” with a “story to tell” but I’ll just be honest with you: it’s edgy and let’s not redeem it with any other term than that. Takopi may have a message to tell but it’s a very generic one about finding your own family and good intentions going awry that I’ve seen ad nauseum. Takopi‘s provocative story, however dreaded it may be for me personally, is what grants it some form of salvation in that you’re never going to know exactly what avenue it will explore even if you don’t want to see it. It also doesn’t hurt that Takopi’s Original Sin is animated at almost feature film level quality with shots that absolutely blew me out of the water. This is an anime with absolutely some video behind it as it is never content with just “establishing shot – character shot – action shot – character shot” or any sort of combination. Takopi’s Original Sin is constantly exploring new directions to portray the scene in ways that excited me to see what depressing story beat would transpire just because I knew that Takopi would provide an interesting directorial direction. Coming from Enishiya, a studio that was a complete unknown to me, makes this even more of a shocker as well! I haven’t watched the Spice and Wolf remake that they’ve helped produced as I wanted to give the original a chance first but that being their only prior TV series work has me thinking that I might abandon trying the original if they can bring the same level of quality to another project. Another thing that leaves me in awe about Enishiya’s work on Takopi is just how much they were able to polish up a turd!

I read the original manga just to give myself some expectations for where the story would go and it was an easy two-ish hour read with only maybe 14 to 16 chapters. The art doesn’t serve my taste and the story telling never really transcended into being all that engaging. I was kind of bored by the end really. You can only see so many panels of kids in misery before you just skim and move on. I think that this shows how amazing of a feat it is for Enishiya to take Takopi and really morph it into what is being called an “anime of the year” contender. Takopi has already skyrocketed to the top 30 anime on MyAnimeList and that really astounds as someone who was only so invested in both the manga and its anime adaptation. Takopi has an emotionally resonating power (even if I’m not fully invested in it) that I think captivates after all the doom and gloom have washed away to reveal a small beating heart underneath it all. It’s a quick six episode in and out story so I would easily recommend it to anyone wanting to check out an anime with a brilliant direction that you can’t look away from. It’s not what I would consider the pinnacle but it’s definitely closer to the top than some other anime can ever hope to aspire to.

GIRLS BAND CRY
⭐ (8 / 10 )⭐

I’ve a theory that what the sports anime did for yaoi shippers is what girls in a band anime has done for yuri shippers. I will not discuss this any further so make your own presumptions on what I meant but Girls Band Cry! It’s an anime! It’s an anime I had to watch as part of my podcast’s review raffle feature we do for those who support us monetarily. I was honestly pretty stoked for this one as I had been provided with so many positive perspectives on this show by YouTubers, blog reviews, so on and so forth so my expectations were that it would be an absolute delight. What I got was an absolutely flawed gem of a show that hugely succeeds almost as many times as it hugely flops. Our story is about a high school dropout Nina who moves to Kawasaki to complete her education after being bombarded with bullying and deciding she wants to start anew. She meets Momoka, a member of a band that Nina is obsessed with, and they become friends and eventually form a band alongside three other girls who are all of varying tolerable natures. For example, this anime reaffirms my other theory that drummers are always the worst characters in band anime and that the bassists are almost always the best barring select examples. As you may ascertain from the image above, this anime is animated entirely in 3D which does not, to the shock of the obsessive “anime must be 2D” animation purists out there, suck. I’ve seen some absolute stinkers of 3D anime out there like Deemo Memorial Keys but Girls Band Cry triumphs where others might have failed. GBD utilizes very expressive and fluid animation that lobs a solid attempt at making 3D anime more 2D than 3D. Facial expressions are often vivid and prone to rapid change like a 2D character might display, action sequences never suffer from choppy executions, and the sequences where the girls actually perform together are nigh perfection.

There are, however, many short comings that make GBC momentarily insufferable in spots. Nina, for one, can be one of the most obnoxious characters I’ve ever met with just how consistently prone to combativeness she is. The girl literally starts a yelling match in a restaurant in front of other patrons and takes other occasions to champion her ethics as being “absolutely right” no matter who she has to argue with. Now this is not uncommon in anime. We see other anime characters employ this all the time but what makes Nina so unbelievably difficult to watch at times is that the other party isn’t actually doing anything “wrong”. It’s almost as if Nina is trying out for lead role in the latest CW drama and this is her final audition with how prone she is to powerful mood swings. Granted, GBC would be considered a drama but the sheer lengths that Nina and her band mates go to fight with one another is cloyingly ridiculous. It seems like every other episode is about how the band is about to break up or fall apart only to spiral back into joyful celebration at the next opportunity. It quite frankly reminds me of an abusive relationship: one where these girls can’t escape from each another. The drama can be hugely rewarding and gratifying though such as when Nina returns home to see her parents or when Nina or Momoka and Nina confront Momoka’s form band mates and Nina confesses to Momoka on the drive home. There’s also moments of hilarious levity where the girls try to find a place to stay cool after Nina breaks AC after AC but then we’ll take a turn on HARD DRAMA AVENUE and then I was left cringing.

So what makes this a flawed gem as I referred to it earlier? It’s just honestly a masterpiece of emotion. As much as I had to grit my teeth to tolerate Nina’s outbursts she does capture the indignant rage of youth very sincerely. She feels as if society has betrayed her in so many ways and her anger boils up with such speed that it only makes sense. Nina and her band mates all have different aspirations and suffer different painful expectations of them that gives them drive and they flaunt it regularly. Characters of this age would act like this so I can’t count against it for the dramatics of it all. I can however find it obnoxious as a viewer and grow more and more disdainful of Nina as she inevitably whips out the “I’m right I’m right shut up shut up” card at a somewhat inopportune moment. Nina is one of the key features of why the show works (even if she learns guitar SUPER fast and her band gets signed to a label even faster) but also what makes it fail to live up to expectations. There’s no doubt that Girls Band Cry can’t work without her; it’s just annoying when she shows how it shouldn’t. Maybe I’m just getting older and more embittered and that makes her tiny flaws more distracting? That’s something you’ll have to determine yourself because, again, I do give Girls Band Cry a recommendation especially if you love the more dramatic band shows like Boys on the Slope and Given. It also doesn’t hurt that the show has Rupa, the bestest and most precious girl!

That’s another month wrapped up! There’s more seasonal anime to try to play catch up with so September will have a beefier update if you care to read it! As always, I appreciate you all for reading these massive walls of anime text and hope you’ll give me your opinions on what you watched this month as well. If you’re ever in need of an anime podcast then I have one just for you called the Anime Brothers Podcast where you can catch me (as long as you listen to episodes 201 and beyond) shout into the abyss about anime. We’d love to have you and I’d love to hear from you regardless. See you next time!