Final Thoughts – Boarding School Juliet

Decent execution for a decent show.

Boarding School Juliet seems more like a High School AU of West Side Story than an adaptation of its namesake, but I’m always down for a well-executed romcom with a solid twist, and the idea that the two of them are leaders of rival houses that operate more like gangs is an appealing one that gets a lot of solid traction.

While I still consider the first episode the strongest, Boarding School Juliet had fairly consistent writing across the board with the cast acting reasonably and rationally, even if the details of the story don’t really match up at all – Inuzuka may be far, far more likeable than the original Romeo but his badassery is a pretty big change to the character and he’s got an older brother and a childhood friend attached to him, just for starters. Romeo and Juliet are a pretty decent shorthand for a pair of star-crossed lovers at this point but I’d really like to see this coding die out if it’s going to be used in name only.

That being said, it has the misfortune of being aired next to the best romance I saw all year – Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai – and in comparison it comes out looking very standard. The production was easily the best in the first episode and was just ‘good’ for the remainder of the show, and the side cast and main love interest are very well-worn tropes at this point that don’t have a lot of nuance to them, though I do like that tsundere Juliet defrosts over the course of the story and naturally progresses into being more openly loving towards Romio, given how often we see really static tsundere-type characters now. The story also gets to a pretty satisfying endpoint – it’s clear the plot isn’t over, but this does feel like a natural stopping point and I would walk away satisfied even without a second season.

All in all, not an amazing show but one that I would happily recommend to the Ouran set, at the very least. 7/10.

Final Thoughts – Goblin Slayer

Honestly, I haven’t watched or had an inclination to watch any more of this.

I stopped after six episodes as that’s my usual standard for writing an Update, and after one of you guys told me that it was, in fact, just going to be a wish fulfillment bloodfest where the title character never has to face consequences for being a murderous psychopath, I instantly lost all interest in it, because we already have lots of those. The side characters are mildly interesting but nothing I haven’t seen before, and I’ve yet to hear a single positive opinion on how the whole thing turned out, so…yeah, dropped after six episodes. It’s still not the worst thing I’ve ever seen but I don’t have the time or motivation to go back and finish it.

5/10, if only for its looks.

Final Thoughts – Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai

One of my favorites of the season, stopped just short of really being great.

Bunny Girl Senpai takes a very literal look at how it feels to be a teenager, as teenage problems begin to manifest themselves in the real world and break the laws of the universe.

I’m very, very impressed by the execution of this concept, because it falls into almost none of the traps I’d expect from a show that only really has one male character surrounded by lots of girls – not only is Sakuta’s relationship with his girlfriend established early enough to effectively kill a harem, but the rest of the female cast have absolutely no romantic feelings towards him, and they’re already connected to him or his friends somehow. The writing in this show is honestly masterful – every single important concept is set up at least a full episode before it becomes plot-critical, the characters remain consistent and there are no stupid romcom lewd misunderstandings. Everyone leans towards acting like sane, rational people and it makes it a million times easier to get invested in the drama, because all of it comes from a place of realness – it reminds me a lot of Tsukigakirei with a little more fantasy thrown in.

Oh, and of course there are the unavoidable comparisons to Oregairu and Bakemonogatari.

I’ve already praised it a lot in my previous write-ups, but I want to temper expectations, because there’s one thing Tsukigakirei had over Bunny Girl Senpai, and that’s a satisfying ending. While Bunny Girl’s isn’t bad enough to taint the entire experience and I didn’t foresee it the way I did After the Rain’s, it does come very abruptly after an emotional climax and cut the end of the last arc very short. It was a bit of a sour note on top of what otherwise would have easily been a Hall of Fame show, but as it is, I still enjoyed Bunny Girl Senpai enough to happily award it an 8/10.

Final Thoughts – Bloom Into You

Let’s face it; the problem lies with the source material.

I mentioned in my updated impressions post that my only real issue with Bloom Into You is that it doesn’t concern itself with Yuu’s consent; not only is Touko still pursuing her aggressively despite Yuu firmly giving her a no, but the show itself wants me to think that this is acceptable simply because Touko is damaged and with the understanding that the two of them will inevitably end up together anyway. I thought we’d gotten mostly past this, but as of episode 9 – three-quarters of the way into the series – Touko is still cornering Yuu and demanding a kiss, not listening to her protests.

I object to this on principle.

I don’t care how the story ends at this point; I can’t root for Touko at all anymore. Despite still being a well-animated production (though the bright aesthetic still hurts to look at, honestly) the story has completely lost me.

Dropped after 8.5 episodes. 4/10.

Final Thoughts – Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san

So good it makes me cry a little.

I often say that the work comedy genre works better in condensed form like this, and Honda-san proves me right more than any other example thus far. It doesn’t give much room for jokes to go on for too long, and it doesn’t wear out its welcome.

And what comes out on the other end is a perfectly distilled comedy with little extra fat and a lot of great jokes. While American bookstores certainly don’t operate in quite the same way (having each bookseller be in charge of a specific section is a pipe dream in the U.S. and is both encouraged by the company and discouraged by management), a lot of the humor is handled the same way, and it’s always nice to see a work-com focus on retail (most of them are restaurant-focused), as I feel like it conveys a pretty good sense of what it’s like to be behind the counter.

But the jokes being good isn’t that surprising – in a season that saw the long-awaited return of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Honda-san managed to be the biggest meme generator of the fall – I’d actually like to focus on the strengths of the production. Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san takes strong advantage of its minimalist art style by exaggerating visual emotions on the characters’ expressionless faces, but even without that, the voice work is strong enough that you can almost see the expressions anyway. The faces don’t change much, but based on the way Honda speaks, you could swear that skull is smiling, or exhausted, or scared. It’s incredibly impressive in a show created on such a small budget and demonstrates how much passion was put into it.

So…aside from one or two gags I didn’t find particularly entertaining, I have no complaints and no problems heavily recommending this one, particularly if you do enjoy books or work in a retail space.

9/10!

Final Thoughts – After the Rain

Yeah, yeah, I know, Winter 2018 show, but it was the most notable one I hadn’t covered yet.

From Wit Studio and the director of a lot of Doraemon projects (and also Mysterious Girlfriend X, apparently) comes the story of a high school girl whose track career was put dramatically on hold by a sudden injury that leaves her with a lot of free time and not a lot of friends, so she fills that void with a new part-time job…and a massive crush on her middle-aged manager. Ultimately it’s a lot more nuanced than that – there are many implications that her father isn’t in her life, the manager is divorced with a son he doesn’t see as often as he wants to, and our heroine Akira is not the loner she thinks she is, having very close friends that she essentially abandoned for this part-time job and an obsession with a man thirty years older than her – and it’s nice to see that the show does not intend to let Akira go unpunished for her behavior. This concept is ripe for exploitation and it gets very little, being that manager Kondo is rightfully confused about the entire situation and is now faced with the problem of letting this teenager off without completely destroying her fragile emotional state.

I wanted to like this so much more than I did, though, because it doesn’t quite commit by the end to a resolution. It leaves things very up in the air by only really resolving one plot thread. While we do get what is definitely meant to be an emotional climax, it feels too ambiguous to really hit home the way that it should, and the ramp-up to it is underwhelming, and if you’re going for straight drama the way After the Rain is, it’s really important to make your climax feel like one. This issue might be a problem with the source material – it seems like After the Rain is intended to be a complete adaptation, but with ten volumes of material and only thirteen episodes, it was inevitable that it felt rushed. (That being said, if it does diverge from the manga I don’t know yet, as only the first two volumes have been published in the U.S. thus far.)

As it is, though, it is still enjoyable drama, but it’s hampered from being great by its lack of a meaningful conclusion. The production work (and direction, for that matter) are both certainly up to the standards of Wit Studio, but the story feels unfinished – like they got about 90% of the way there and called it a day, so that a continuation is unlikely since all that’s left is the very end of the story and unlike, say, Working!, it doesn’t seem like we’ll get the last part.

7/10.

wrathofthegiraffe:

In the vast world of comics, I wonder if there have been heroes with a “Groundhog Day,” type power. By that I specifically mean a hero who, if they die, immediately finds themselves waking up at the beginning of that day again. If they don’t die, they just continue forward through time.

I’m just thinking of how crazy it would be to have that hero on your super hero team. Like, you go to headquarters in the morning, and it seems like everything’s normal. But then you go to fire off a one liner, and they say it at the same time as you. And suddenly you know. Something went wrong.

And then one day you come in, and your heart drops as you see that their every move looks rehearsed. They answer questions before asked. They are totally aware of everything that’s about to happen. Imagine how scary that would be, realizing you’re starting a day that you’re team mate has failed to survive maybe dozens of times.

This is a thing! There is such a character in Ken Akamatsu’s UQ Holder. Her power is basically creating save points.

Final Thoughts – Baki

I feel like I’m missing some context here.

I’m aware that this is the latest in a franchise, but this entire first episode is spent setting up a story that seems to have no interest in providing a jump-on point for new viewers, which is odd for a Netflix release. I’m gonna leave it unscored because I’m sure it would have been better if I’d seen the previous entries, though I will note that this premiere also spends nearly its entire runtime on ultra-violent prison escapes.

I don’t really have a problem with shows featuring gore for its own sake, but I do feel like the abundance of body horror on display combined with the unapproachability of the story makes this one a very, very strange choice for Netflix in a month where they’ve already made a massive misstep.

I don’t have a lot more to say on this one aside from not recommending it to anyone who hasn’t seen the previous entries.

Final Thoughts – Children of the Whales

This show is so confused, I don’t know where to begin.

I should stress that I’m not confused about the plot or anything, it’s mostly easy to follow, but Children of the Whales is a very beautiful show with a strong aesthetic and a lot of good ideas that seems to want to be too many things at the same time and throws far too many characters at the viewer without many of them getting a chance to make an impression.

It seems to be going for an epic story about a civilization on the brink, but it also doesn’t do a very good job of impressing that idea upon the audience. It’s honestly a difficult show to talk about because there isn’t any one bad thing to point towards, and the show itself isn’t awful, it’s just not very interesting beyond the visuals. Even something like Forest of Piano was able to get me more invested than this, and it’s frustrating because there are interesting things happening in the story that translate into dull, samey bores on the screen.

I think the problem is that Children of the Whales is just not a story that should have been adapted in the first place. Someday I’ll probably write a script about unadaptable media, but for now, I’m gonna tie off this rambling post and move on.

Final score: 5/10. Dropped after five episodes.

gorrem:

Masterpost of (almost) all the finished illustrations I made for the ending of Spyro 1! Although since Fumblr doesn’t allow more than 11 images. See the other 2 here:

http://gorrem.tumblr.com/post/181000157044/more-work-for-spyro-reignited-trilogy-end

We were given the opportunity to make an illustration of whatever we wanted with Spyro characters, so I thought it would be fun to do 12! The idea behind these is that Spyro is an Artisan dragon, and his surrogate dragondads are helping him find his ‘artistic voice.’ It reminded me of the teachers that made an influence on me, despite having to put up with my own crap (I wasn’t the best student!).These dragons illustrated here were designed between myself, Jeff Murchie and Nicholas Kole. 38 Studios reunion!
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Source: gorrem