high school Archives - Page 3 of 9

Yowamushi Pedal episodes 1-4 (dropped)

Happy New Year! Now the Christmas season is well and truly over, I can get back to posting about anime and manga. I didn’t try as many new series as I thought I would over the holiday season, but a few is better than none. First up, Yowamushi Pedal, a series I liked a lot after episode 1 then liked less and less with each subsequent episode until I dropped it after episode 4.

What I liked about the first episode is the slight twist on the staple “naive character doesn’t know he’s talented in a sport” trope many sports anime have. Sure Sakamichi is naive and doesn’t know he’s a cycling prodigy, but he’s wholly devoted to another interest (anime) and is determined to pursue it in high school. I wanted to find out how he would reconcile the two interests or whether he would end up dropping anime together because 3D friends and physical exercise are so much better.

I also rather liked the snobby rival character who was shown up so easily (sort of) by an oblivious Sakamachi. That interest stayed with me in episode 2 during the race, but then the technical terms started flowing. Cadence. The height of the seat blah blah. Rotations. Pedaling this, pedaling that. It was too much technicality too soon for me. Plus the gallery and their commentary were seriously annoying, especially the stalker manager girl with the huge eyes. Ick.

Then episodes 3 and 4 just lost me completely with the introduction of the Osakan character with the bad voice-acting. I can’t even remember his name now, but the whole episode was just so boring. Some guy threw a cigarette butt at a bike so they pedal and pedal and pedal and pedal (repeat for 15 minutes) and that’s supposed to be interesting? That’s when I realized a show about cycling just wasn’t for me. The better kind of sports show at least makes an effort to show you what’s so exciting about that sport in particular, but Yowamushi Pedal just takes it for granted that everybody likes cycling already. If you don’t, well, it’s got nothing to offer you.

So having realized I wouldn’t be able to sit through any of the other races/matches the show had to offer because cycling is just too boring, I decided to call it a day and quit while I was ahead. I still like sports anime (I think?) and Yowamushi Pedal probably isn’t bad if you like cycling or racing shows. It’s just too boring for me so I’m out.

Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 3 manga review

On on we go. Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 3 concludes the first match of Hirataka High School’s attempts to qualify for the Koshien summer tournament. They’ve been down by 3 runs since the first inning, and while Touma is pitching well, the Hirataka batters just can’t get a good hit off their opponent’s excellent defense. What’s more, the opponents are deliberately doing their best to burn through Touma’s stamina to make him easier to hit – and it’s working! Is Hirataka’s campaign doomed to fail right at the very outset?

While it would be awesome if that happened, you and I have both seen enough sports anime/read enough manga to know that something that anti-climatic would never happen. That’s why it’s a little irritating how writer Shinji Tonaka spends so much time pretending the other team actually has a chance. It would be one thing if he’d gone the usual route of having Hirataka face last year’s champions or some elite team, but the opponents are just some low-ranked team without much of a background. No purpose would be served by having them win, so of course they don’t.

What is achieved in this volume, then, is to show some bonding between the Touma brothers, to expose the flaws in Touma Ichiya’s pitching, namely his lack of stamina and his easy distractability, to show Yoshi’s intelligence and prove that he’s softening up a bit and, most importantly, to set up the inevitable showdown between Hirataka and their soon-to-be rivals, a showdown that Hirataka will inevitably lose.

Why am I still reading Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de? Mainly because there’s no reason for me to stop. It’s one of those things you continue out of inertia unless something better shows up or they mess up royally. Things won’t get interesting until Hirataka High is dropped from the tournament. A lot of mangaka lose focus once there’s no Koshien to keep things interesting (see: Ookiku Furikabutte) so I want to see how Shinji Tonaka handles the team’s future development. Of course I can’t guarantee I’ll read the manga long enough to find that out, but I’m still here for now.

Million Doll and Jitsu wa Watashi wa – Decent but still dropped

The last post featured anime I didn’t like enough to even finish an episode of. This post features two shows I fairly enjoyed the first episode of but didn’t see the need to watch the rest of. Once you watch enough anime, you’re able to get a general sense for what a show is going to like just from the introductory episode. Million Doll and Jitsu wa Watashi wa are both shows I would probably enjoy moderately if I’d continued, but they weren’t gripping enough to justify the time and effort so I’m saying goodbye to them on a positive note.

Million Doll – Each episode is short, which is always a good thing. The music is extremely forgettable, which is only natural for idol music. Although it’s a show about cute young girls, they did show some of the darker elements of idol life, including the fickle fandom and the poor amenities (playing to small crowds, having to walk home from the airport) as well as some of the rewards, mainly having people support and cheer you on.

Good for them, but they’d either have to make the music a lot better or the show a lot more realistic or at least introduce some direct competition before they could interest me enough to watch the whole show.

Jitsu wa Watashi wa – I don’t mind romances where you already know who’s going to end up with who from the start – if anything, that’s my preference. So I thought I would like Jitsu wa, but the main guy is just too awkward with too many weird expressions to enjoy. I know it’s his gimmick, but it’s uncomfortable to watch.

The show is also extremely slow because half the ‘action’ takes place in the mind of the main character. He spends too much time thinking and thinking about things before saying or doing anything, it’s annoying.

Since his relationship with the vampire girl is all but established in episode 1 and since I’ve seen enough of this kind of show to know how things are going to go (slowly growing closer, opposition from girl’s family, reporter girl trying to expose her secret, etc) and since the lengths he’ll have to go to to keep her secret will lead to all kinds of embarrassing situations, which I really hate, so I’m gonna bail out now. It was a cute show, but one episode was enough.

Neeext!

GATE and Hello Kiniro Mosaic dropped

It would be nice if I’d had something cheerier and more meaningful for my 300th post, but I’m so lazy these days it’s surprising enough that I actually posted anything. I’m still working my way through my massive ever-growing anime backlog. I’ve found some pretty good stuff lately, which I’ll talk about once I finish them. Since there’s still good stuff out there, that only makes me all the more merciless when I come across shows I don’t really like. Most recent victims:

Hello Kiniro Mosaic – I’ve already mentioned it before, I forget where, but since “cute girls doing cute stuff” series are a dime a dozen these days, a show has to really stand out to get my attention these days. Hello Kiniro Mosaic is so boring I dropped it about 10 minutes in. Every skit is slow and pointless, the ‘jokes’ aren’t funny at all, the schoolgirls obsessing over each other (and the teachers obsessing over them) is a little creepy and while the character designs are cute, they aren’t especially unique or memorable. There’s bound to be better stuff out there. Dropped.

GATE: Two strikes against this, first the realistic armor and weapons. I don’t like anything resembling realistic war in books, anime, manga, you name it. I can watch 100 episodes of space-fighting Gundam beam spam or magical sparks going flying through the air, but you ground it in reality and my interest fades faster than you can say “Self-Defence Force.”

The second strike was the protagonist. Honestly he’s just gross. 33, otaku, ugly as sin, nothing on his mind except games and anime. He’s just yucky. People talk about how it would be interesting to have more anime protagonists who aren’t wide-eyed teenagers, and to an extent I agree, but someone who hasn’t made anything of their life at 33 is just too disgusting to watch. Did I already mention he’s really ugly? He’s ugly. I don’t feel like rooting for him throughout whatever adventures he has beyond the gate, so I didn’t even make it to the end of episode 1. GATE is dropped, good riddance.

My Little Monster anime review (eps 1-5)

I’m not sure how exactly I came to start watching My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun). I think I may have downloaded an episode by accident when looking for Tonari no Seki-kun episodes, or maybe I got it back when it was first airing and forgot about it. Either way before I knew it I had the first episode on my laptop, so I proceeded to watch it a few days ago.

Story: Shizuku Mizutani only has one thing in mind: getting good grades. To accomplish this goal, she has little interest in anything else. However, after delivering lesson notes to her resident delinquent classmate Haru Yoshida, the latter is convinced that they are friends. Initially, Shizuku is intimidated by such a troublesome person, but she gradually notices that Haru is actually a kind person. When Haru confesses to Shizuku, an unlikely romance begins to blossom between them.

I liked: The blunt honesty of the main characters. Haru is a very silly guy, but he’s very open about his feelings for Shizuku. Shizuku is also a nice change from the usual cowardly, simpering, brainless shoujo main character. She actually has a spine and an agenda outside “Get guy X to like me”, at least at first. I also found it unusual but intriguing to have the main guy confess to the main girl so early in the show and then have her return his feelings just an episode or two later.

I didn’t like: Unfortunately we can’t have anything so refreshing in a shoujo series, so instead of building up the relationship from there, the two confessions somehow cancel each other out. Huh? Only in anime, eh? Thus instead of the different take on shoujo romance I was hoping for, we end up with the same old “He loves me, he loves me not, maybe he loves this other girl, maybe I don’t love him” merry-go-round that we’ve seen 20,000 times before. My Little Monster, I am disappoint.

What’s worse than that is the downfall of Haru’s character. He started out a little wild but basically a good guy… for all of 10 minutes in the first episode. Then he turns into the kind of guy who smacks Shizuku in the face and never apologizes and regularly seizes her by the collar but somehow he’s still her love interest anyway. “He hits me but it’s okay because he loves me?” Not only is it not okay, but he doesn’t even love you!

Every other episode she’s like “Haru’s such a kind person.” What kind of kind person would punch a girl and not even say he was sorry? Even your garden-variety domestic abuser can muster up a few crocodile tears of apology every time. Up to the end of episode 5 it still wasn’t clear what exactly Shizuku saw in Haru. It seems like she would have felt the same way about any other guy with a nice smile who confessed his love and kissed her within a few days of meeting her.

The other issue with Haru’s personality is probably less his fault and more my problem for being sick and tired of every single shoujo manga love interest having some kind of family issue and some kind of dark history and some kind of trauma somewhere. It’s like an edict was passed around 1995 stating that no sensible, decent, well-adjusted guy was allowed to be the main guy in shoujo manga ever again. They all have to be messed up somehow, no exceptions. Well 1995 was 20 years ago, can we go back to ordinary, likeable, relateable male characters now? Please?

That way Haru could have stayed the funny, naive, happy-go-lucky guy (with a violent streak) that he started out as instead of having to deal with all this drama with his dad and his brother and who knows what else in his family. I don’t want to watch all that, it’s boring. I’m sure Shizuku will later turn out to have issues of her own, equal opportunity and all that. She’s already lost the focus on grades that made her interesting and become the usual “Squee, he smiled at me *blush blush*” kind of heroine. *sigh*

Long story short, I don’t want to see anything more from this show. My Little Monster is just the same old shoujo tropes dolled up slightly differently but ultimately working out the same way. If you like shoujo manga, you’ll probably love it since it’s more of the same with a slight twist. If you’re not a fan of the old “going round in circles for 10 volumes rigamarole, avoid. For me it’s dropped after 5 episodes. On to the next show!