#Wakabayashi Ren

[ydotome]

Thanks for the food. Thank you. - Astro Note - Episode 1

[anime-captured]

[ecargmura]

Astro Note Episode 9 Review - Moving On From Love

I was thinking of doing two episodes in one review, but I don’t have the time so here’s Episode 9 review of Astro Note. Episode 10 review might be out in the weekend. 

There are two plot points converging in this episode. The first is the conclusion of the Takumi and Aoi unrequited love and the second is Ren and his dad’s argument about parent visitation day. Surprisingly, these two plot lines actually tie into each other as they both talk about love in a way.

For the Takumi and Aoi part, people in-universe always seem to say that Takumi’s a jerk or a scumbag for playing around a girl’s feelings, but I don’t really get why people in the story perceive him to be bad when he’s anything but. Sure, he’s a little clumsy when it comes to love and feelings, but he’s actually a really decent guy. He never wandered about when it came to his love for Mira and doesn’t give Aoi a flicker of hope that they could be together. He flat out rejects Aoi but does it in the nicest way possible. I also like how he feels bad about not realizing who Aoi was at first and I liked that he owns up to it by taking her out for a picnic and then realizing that she was Onigiri-chan from back when they were working at the hotel together. Aoi actually takes the rejection like a champ as she’s happy that Takumi finally remembers her, but knows that her love will never come true. It’s finally time for her to move on.

For the Wakabayashis, their issue revolves around Ren not telling Tomihiro about the parent visitation day as he flubbed previous ones. Despite Ren’s insistence on not wanting him to come, Tomihiro still insists on coming because of one simple reason: he loves Ren. It turns out that Ren isn’t his biological son, but his mother was his lover who died. He decided to take care of Ren since it was better than him going to the orphanage. Even if they aren’t related by blood, Tomihiro considers Ren to be his son and that he wants to be present in his life. I do like that despite Tomihiro being a deadbeat dad, he does everything he can to make Ren happy from holding back on the beer and even getting day jobs so that Ren doesn’t always see him as jobless. Even Aoi tells Ren that he’s fortunate to have Tomihiro as a father.

The ending was pretty shocking. Why is Shoin in Room 8? We all know Octo is Naosuke, but him not being an actual dog is a secret only a few know. Ren thinks he’s a cat, however. While Aoi found comfort in Naosuke, she doesn’t like him because she’s afraid of dogs, which shocks him even more. I just hope that Aoi doesn’t get herself involved in another love triangle because the love triangle with Shoin, Mira and Takumi have yet to be resolved. I wonder what’s going to happen…

[senjo]

[2700lagostas]

Astro Note - Episode 12

[animemakeblog]

“Astro Note” The First Promo

The Astro Note television anime's official website unveiled the first promotional video, the opening theme. The first showing of the original anime is slated for April 2024.

[brucebocchi]

Spring 2024 anime, Pt. 2: Mixed bags and the gems

hey! i also post this on my ko-fi! this is very much a labor of love, so if you liked what i wrote consider throwing a few bucks my way! also you can find part 1 right here! thanks!

Yes, hello, I'm still here. Between work and AI: The Somnium Files -nirvanA Initiative-, I was struggling to find the time to get this out, but here we are! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go actually watch some anime again.

As always, the OP for each show is linked in the title. Watch them! There were some damn good ones this season.

Let's-a go:

Mixed Bags

Astro Note

I’m going to kick off this section by first stating that on the whole, I’m much higher on the anime in this section this season than I was last time: Nothing that I watched this season disappointed me nearly as much as Metallic Rouge or The Witch and the Beast, nor bored me to tears like The Unwanted Undead Adventurer. This truly is a collection of mixed bags; anime that I found enjoyable or interesting but still left me wanting in one way or another. “Good But Could Have Been Great” is too unwieldy anyway.

Astro Note was eye-catching from the jump: This is very clearly an homage to Rumiko Takahashi’s beloved romcom Maison Ikkoku, with character designs by Carole & Tuesday’s Eisaku Kubonouchi. The colors are soft and bright, everyone looks unique and has a wide variety of hilarious facial expressions, and the OP is a fun time right out of the gate. You come for the lovely visuals and Takahashi homage, and you stay for, uh, not much else.

Takumi, a down-on-his-luck young chef, answers a job posting at a boarding house that promises its residents breakfast every day. It turns out that Mira, the odd but beautiful new landlady, is a dogshit cook and tried to attract a new one with a plagiarized job posting. Takumi doesn’t really care because she’s, like, really pretty, so he takes the job and moves in. He’s soon beset by a cast of wacky characters that includes an enigmatic unemployed salaryman and his precocious son, an indie idol who looks like a hard-drinking Futaba Sakura in her downtime, a nosy neighbor, and a rich, handsome romantic rival. We’re already approaching Maison Ikkoku territory. 

Shortly after moving in, Takumi believes he overhears Mira saying that she’s a widow, which would firmly plant Astro Note’s flag right in Ikkoku’s turf, but it turns out that Mira is in fact an alien from the planet Wid, meaning she is of the Wido race (this is as good of a localization as you can ask for; in the original Japanese he heard “miboujin,” not knowing that she’s from the planet Mibou). So we’ve got some Urusei Yasura sprinkled in for good measure. Her adorable poodle, voiced by Junichi Suwabe (Sukuna himself!) is from the same planet and helping her find a MacGuffin, hidden by the previous owner, that would help her take over as queen. There’s also some blossoming romance!

The alien stuff made for an interesting wrinkle, and it went a long way toward characterizing Mira as an endearingly odd but curious woman, but it often played out in wacky hijinks caused by alien spies, which felt like a designated make-the-plot-happen button more often than not. It paid off splendidly in the last couple of episodes, and I loved how all of the flashbacks of Mira’s mother looked like grainy Showa-era space operas, but getting there took a lot of “oh no, chase that Thing!” sequences. I found myself tuning out on those until they finally became plot relevant.

The central romance was fine, if a little underbaked, but what kept me watching Astro Note was the smaller moments with the ensemble characters. There were moments with both Wakabayashi the salaryman and his son Ren that slapped the apathy right off my face, and a side plot with Takumi and a person from his past was incredibly sweet. I did also love the massive turn the plot took in the last couple episodes, to the point where I found myself almost wishing that the show up to that point was different.

And that’s Astro Note in a nutshell: A lot of good pieces mixed with some filler, weird pacing, and an overall uneven experience in a nice-looking package. A fun little distraction but nothing entirely memorable. If I can give this show one major positive, it’s that watching it finally convinced me to read Maison Ikkoku, and for that I will forever be grateful. Read Maison Ikkoku.

Go! Go! Loser Ranger

I keep running notes for everything I’m watching as the season rolls on, and sometimes I’ll indulge in other reviewers’ early takes and jot down some insights that might spark from hearing outside perspectives. During Gigguk’s opening remarks on Go! Go! Loser Ranger in his early Spring season roundup, I made a note that the easiest way to summarize this show for a western audience is “basically The Boys but with the Power Rangers instead of The Seven.” And then he said pretty much the exact same thing five seconds later. I just want the record to show that.

Indeed, this is a sentai series with some spice. 13 years ago, the invading forces of evil were soundly defeated by the Dragon Keepers, a real-life sentai squad. In the present day, the Dragon Keepers now sit atop a massive organization protecting earth, and also dominating the entertainment industry: Every week, they hold an exhibition match against the remaining rank-and-file footsoldiers, skull-faced shapeshifters known as Dusters. In order to keep their lives, the Dusters were forced to give up their freedom and serve as the farcical Putty Patrol for what is ultimately a pro wrestling show. Sick of being a jobber and effectively a slave, one of the Dusters, known simply as Fighter D, decides the best way to destroy the Dragon Keepers and free his brethren is to do so from within: He’ll morph into a human shape, join their Rangers program as a cadet, and personally slay each of the five Keepers.

Fighter D is quickly found out, though. One of the recruiters, the lovely but mercurial Yumeko, isn’t nearly as dumb as he thought, but she fortunately has the same aim and quickly puts him to work trying to steal the Keepers’ insanely powerful weapons, the Divine Artifacts. He’s also found by the Dragon Keepers and manages to escape, though badly wounded. He’s found in a cave by Yumeko’s hanger-on, the upstart Ranger cadet Hibiki, whose family was badly fragmented by an unknown monster. While he still believes in the Keepers and shares their ostensible goal of protecting humanity, he believes that there needs to be major changes and agrees to let D impersonate him to infiltrate the Rangers. He’s soon embroiled in a prolonged examination trial against higher-ranked Rangers that soon turns into a fight to the death, made only more deadly by the inclusion of a female Duster and the same monster that killed Hibiki’s parents and paralyzed his sister.

Yes, that’s a lot, and everything up until that last sentence was just in the first four episodes. I’ve said repeatedly that I’m willing to be patient with introductory seasons for action-oriented shonen series, because those do usually take a minute to start cooking, but the first season of Loser Ranger is bizarrely paced. The first four episodes were an intriguing introduction, but they might have served better as a movie to kick off the season, because the overwhelming majority of the remaining eight episodes were pretty much just a bunch of people fighting in a fucking parking garage. I was under the impression that the first season was going to be 24 or so episodes, for some reason, so I was willing to be patient with it.

Maybe I should've been patient enough to wait until the second season, because I found myself getting whiplash between fascination and utter boredom. I still don’t know if I even like this show. There are so many moving parts, and many of them are fascinating, but to get bombarded with them so early and so often, only to then keep most of them in the background in favor of way too many new characters fighting in, again, a goddamned parking garage, frustrates me in increasing measure the more I write about it. I really wanted to like this show more than I did.

The production values are seemingly all over the place too. The OP is another Tatsuya Kitani banger, the voice cast is deep and talented (especially for the English dub, holy hell), the puppet outros are a hoot, and the animation is mostly fine. I’m rarely one to complain about CGI in anime (the ED for this show is entirely 3DCG and it fucks), but a lot of it in Loser Ranger, especially as an obvious means of cheaping out on having to hand-draw and -animate the Dragon Keepers’ slightly-elaborate costumes, is baffling. You could make a generous case for it representing them as larger-than-life personalities, but in execution it’s just kind of uncanny. The show looks and sounds fine overall, but little things like that just take me out of it.

I’m going to withhold judgment until the second season, but for now I can’t say I’m too impressed by the debut. Maybe just watch the first four episodes and put a pin in it until season 2 drops.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night

I’m beginning to worry that Metallic Rouge’s catastrophic narrative failure may have permanently made me nervous about any original anime to follow. It’s an unfair comparison to make, especially considering it aired at the same time as the bombastically audacious Bang Brave Bang Bravern, which I consider one of the best of the year so far and even one of the better anime to air so far this decade. At the same time, though, the millisecond I start to suspect that an original anime is losing its footing, as soon as the one synapse fires that tells me that this show may not be able to stick the landing, I start to get cynical. The good news is that Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night isn’t even in the same time zone as Rouge’s disappointment. The bad news is that it still never fully lived up to what it could have been.

Right from the jump, this felt like Doga Kobo flexing in between seasons of Oshi no Ko with yet another gorgeous showbiz anime. The debut episode is one of the best I’ve seen in some time; an immaculately animated and brilliantly storyboarded mission statement showcasing the self-doubting illustrator Mahiru and the disgraced ex-idol Kano meeting and finding new inspiration in one another’s work (if you’ve been reading Beat & Motion, this may sound familiar, except they’re both high school girls). It was a masterclass in depicting powerful self-expression and the spark of a truly fateful encounter. What followed was also pretty good, but...

Mahiru and Kano band together (pun intended) to form the multimedia collective JELEE, also enlisting social-outcast musical prodigy (and Kano stan) Mei, and NEET VTuber Kiui along the way. We see a lot of the nitty-gritty of trying to get a new act off the ground, as well as the reality that any new artist or creator nowadays is, ultimately, at the mercy of the internet. It was a treat to watch these four all come together, as was seeing the emotional bonds they forge with one another while also navigating their own personal issues, but it frequently came at the expense of an actual plot. That sort of thing is fine, I do love me some good slice-of-life, but I feel like the show planned on something a bit grander. While we’re focused on so many of these really lovely moments of character growth and interpersonal drama, everything about JELEE’s ascent, y’know, the main plot, just kind of happens, and before you know it everything turns out okay and the season’s over. It really felt like the writers had a big plan but ended up just laying down the tracks while the train was already in motion.

As mentioned, I’m not nearly as down on the anime in the “Mixed Bags” section this season as I was three months ago, but just thinking about how the plot sagged around the middle and rushed towards its ending leaves me frustrated. Unlike JELEE itself, Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night feels like less than the sum of its parts. This show feels like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle; what you can make out of the image is gorgeous, yet not only was it never completed, but someone clearly put a few of the pieces together wrong as well. There are plenty of themes in the story and character writing that could have blossomed into something amazing, like impostor syndrome, finding community and identity through fandom, young sapphic love, gender identity, and so many more, and it may have been possible to resolve at least a couple of these in 12 episodes, but Jellyfish seemed either incapable of or uninterested in actually getting there beyond a few vague overtures.

I know I sound harsh here and I didn’t mean for this review to be mostly complaints; I did very much like this show, but I wanted so badly to love it. And it probably isn’t entirely fair of me to grade this show based on what it could have been instead of what it is, but so much was plainly left on the table that I’m not really left with another choice. I still recommend it much more strongly than anything else I've put in the Mixed Bags section so far this year, but be forewarned that you may be let down. This is a pretty goddamn good anime that could’ve been pretty goddamn incredible, but it just couldn’t get there.

Mysterious Disappearances

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I know what I’m about. If a new series rotates around a protagonist who looks like that, I’ll at least give it an episode or two.

Sumireko is a former child-prodigy novelist, now in her late 20s working at a bookstore with the sharp-tongued Ren, as she continues to fail at getting published again. On the eve of her 28th birthday, Sumireko accidentally takes home a book that was droplifted in the store, and shortly after reading it aloud she finds herself reverted into the body of a child. Suddenly struck by inspiration once again, she disappears from work for the next week, furiously typing away at her next novel. Ren manages to find her and tells her that she’s under a curse: The book is an otherworldly object known as a Curiosity, and its power can be deadly to those who use it. Though Sumireko is desperate to hang on to her newly-regained youth, Ren manages to smooth-talk her into changing back and handing over the book. Now aware of an extradimensional threat to daily life, Sumireko teams up with Ren and his little sister Oto to track down and neutralize more Curiosities before they cause widespread havoc.

This series is alright, if questionable in a lot of areas. I recognize that I’m not entirely the target audience; while I love a good supernatural mystery, each of these Curiosities is rooted in East Asian mythology and contemporary urban legends, very few of which I was familiar with going in. To those on that side of the world (or to Westerners with that specific special interest), I’m sure it hits different, but I got lost on a couple of occasions. Mysterious Disappearances also runs into the same pacing issues that I found with The Witch and the Beast last season, where the plot structure is effectively episodic, but each mystery can last a few episodes at a time, so if you’re not particularly invested in the subject at hand, you’re SOL for another week or two.

This show also just plain doesn’t look very good. The animation is nothing impressive and there’s something off-putting about the overall look that I can’t quite put my finger on. It looks retro in ways that probably weren’t intentional, like a 20-year-old digipaint anime that was upscaled from 480p. The audio element is great, at least; the music, sound design, and cast are all fantastic (between her turn as Sumireko in this one and her supporting roles in Reincarnated as the 7th Prince and Kaiju No. 8, Fairouz Ai has put in great work this season), and that’s a good thing because this one isn’t a looker.

If you couldn’t already tell from how the main character looks, Mysterious Disappearances is undoubtedly horny as hell, but often distractingly so. I do have to praise Sumireko’s design to an extent; for a large-chested anime lady, she at least hews closer to how a tall woman with somewhat appropriately large breasts would actually be built and how her clothes would actually fit. She looks like a more realistically-proportioned Nami. There’s no shortage of anime characters with gigantic boobs, but few that make me actually go “oh, this woman definitely has back problems.” There are a lot of slow-tilting shots up female characters’ legs towards their chests to the point where I tuned the dialogue out because I couldn’t believe they just kept on doing it. I skimmed through the manga, and though there is far more semi-gratuitous nudity as compared to the anime, I still somehow found the latter much more distracting with its attempts at fanservice. I also don’t really care for how the “camera” looks at Oto and her middle school classmates either; I found myself just getting nervous whenever a scene focused on them.

For its problems, there’s at least a series of solid emotional cores here. Similar to Sumireko’s desire to regain her youthful creativity, the wielders-slash-victims of these Curiosities are largely vulnerable individuals who are trying to make the best of their lives in spite of past traumas like bullying, neglect, and disability. All serious issues, no doubt, and the story tries to handle them as well as possible, but once you see through the pattern of “awful thing is happening, we get to know the character, then we learn their tragic backstory and there’s a tearful resolution while we move closer to advancing the overall plot,” it can feel a little cloying in the long run. Not that those resolutions can’t be potent; I really liked the endings of the stories of the missing hairdresser and the rogue VTuber, but as a plot formula it can ring hollow.

Mysterious Disappearances is a fine if unspectacular series of supernatural mysteries with an okay overarching plot, and your mileage may vary depending on your existing knowledge of East Asian occult and superstition. It’s also not that fun to actually look at, even if you happen to be into tall redheads with huge racks. Uh, not that I would know.

The Gems

Girls Band Cry

When Bocchi the Rock! made its unexpectedly earth-shattering landfall a couple years ago, it was inundated with a deluge of comparisons to the previous landmark girls-in-a-band anime, K-On!. It felt a bit trite at the time, and feels even more so in retrospect; each show is its own thing and they both stand on their own merits. And now here’s my dumb ass, reviewing a new girls-in-a-band anime, desperately trying not to compare it to Bocchi.

It’s really not a fair comparison either way; the focus being on an all-girls rock band is really the only thing they have in common. Rather than Hitori “Bocchi” Gotoh, a perpetually-anxious recluse looking to join a band so she won’t have to get a real job after high school, we have Nina Iseri, who is… difficult. Nina has just moved to Tokyo after running away from home, but her train arrived too late for her to get her apartment key, and to make matters worse, her phone’s dead. While charging at a local coffee shop, she finds out that Momoka, the now-former frontwoman of her favorite band, is playing on a nearby street. After some ups and downs, they decide to form a band together, and butt heads more than a couple times.

Along the way, they recruit more members, each with their own issues: Subaru, the drummer, is struggling with the expectations placed on her by her grandmother to become an actress, Tomo, the keyboardist, is exacting and a little too opinionated to keep a steady role in a band, and Rupa, the bassist, is a soft-spoken foreigner who remains a cheerful enigma despite losing her parents. And Nina and Momoka are both flat-out stubborn in ways that do not mesh well with one another. There are a lot of yelling matches and many angry tears shed as the band Togenashi Togeari comes together: yes, the “Cry” in the title isn’t just for style points.

I will say that it’s refreshing that Girls Band Cry does not sugarcoat what an absolute pain in the ass Nina can be when she’s dug in: She ran away from home because she’s utterly convinced of her own righteousness, and it’s your damn problem if you think otherwise. She is avoidant and oppositional-defiant, and everyone else just has to deal with it. She may not pick her hills well, but by God will she die on them. Props for having a protagonist this openly messy and unpleasant. Plenty of musicians, or really anyone working in a group for that matter, can be abrasive and stubborn, and TogeToge’s growing pains are a necessary element of their development as a band. 

I know the bar isn’t very high for 3D computer-generated anime when it doesn’t come from Studio Orange, but this is easily one of the best-looking 3DCG anime I’ve ever seen. Between this and Trigun Stampede, I’m blown away at how expressive characters can be in CG, and how they react to what’s around them in real-time more consistently than you’d see in most 2D animation. Speaking of which, Girls Band Cry isn’t entirely in 3D; much of the OP as well as several flashbacks and background characters are hand-drawn, and they look so goddamn good that I’m almost left wondering what could’ve been. Not that I’m disappointed in the slightest; when the 3D animation hits, it REALLY hits in gorgeous synaesthetic waves that so perfectly depict an intersection of sound, light, and emotion. Hell, even the transition cards are huge eye catchers. Not everything looks brilliant all the time; the pets in particular are uncannily low-res and almost look like they got plucked out of KamiKatsu.

Of course, this is a band show, so the audio element has to be on point as well, and I’d say Girls Band Cry is up to snuff. The anime is part of a larger multimedia project, and the entire main cast consists of audition winners performing under mononyms, and they knock it out of the damn park; they’re pretty goddamn great for supposed newcomers. The music is a blast as well, not just in performance scenes but in the background as well. Togenashi Togeari already existed in the zeitgeist as a virtual band before this show went to air, so they already had a small discography out there before the show went to air and I’m looking forward to digging into it.

Infamously, this show isn’t particularly easy to watch. Not in the thematic sense, but literally: You cannot legally watch it in English anywhere in the West. Despite its popularity, Girls Band Cry was never picked up by any Anglosphere-based streaming platforms, for whatever reason, and the only official English subtitles out there are from an Indonesian streamer. So, much like the days of VHS trading and the early internet, we’re forced to rely on community translations. Far be it from me to encourage piracy (lol), but if you can find a good fansub, Girls Band Cry is very much worth your while. Pinkies up, motherfuckers.

Kaiju No. 8

I don’t watch Demon Slayer or My Hero Academia, so this was my designated Shonen Jump action show of the season, and it came with a ton of buzz: The way I see it, if I can pick up a volume of the manga at Target, the inevitable anime adaptation is gonna be a big deal. I’ve not read Kaiju No. 8 yet, but I’d say the anime lives up to a good amount of the hype.

Japan has had to handle a constant threat of kaiju for many decades now, and as a child the way-too-aptly-named Kafka Hibino made a promise to his best friend Mina that they would both grow up to lead the Japan Anti-Kaiju Defense Force in charge of eliminating the threat. A couple decades later, she’s a national hero as a captain in the Force, while Kafka is in the private sector at age 32, cleaning up the enormous corpses and viscera Mina and her division leave behind. He hasn’t given up on his dreams, by any stretch; Kafka has failed every single enlistment application he’s submitted since he came of age, but he just keeps on trying.

Kafka and his work kohai, the upstart JAKDF hopeful Reno, manage to survive a kaiju attack at the end of a shift with minor injuries, but when they’re in the hospital, a potato-sized flying kaiju shoves itself down Kafka’s throat, causing him to transform into a kaiju. Fortunately, he’s able to change back to his human form just in time to pass the first round of Defense Force exams, with Reno warning him not to let anyone in on his secret during practical exams.

Kafka is pathetically weak in his human form and is repeatedly shown up by the daughter of the Defense Force’s director general, the young hotshot Kikoru (Fairouz Ai once again), but he manages to save her life when a training exercise goes haywire and forces him to transform and share his secret with her. Reno and Kikoru get in, no problem, while Kafka manages to squeak in as a cadet. Of course, without exposing his little-big kaiju secret, Kafka can’t do much to help in terms of actual combat, but he does frequently act as an unofficial tactician in directing his squadmates on the battlefield and, in a very smart writing decision, applying his professional knowledge of kaiju anatomy to help them identify and target weaknesses. 

And from there we get a whole lot of early military training and bonding, and not just with Kafka, Reno, Kikoru, and their division’s vice-commander, the giggly Hoshina: There’s also, uh, Man-Bun! And Muscles! And Shark Teeth! And the Token Women! You know, those guys. Yeah, this is ostensibly an ensemble cast, as any good battle shonen should be, but I really didn’t get much from anyone outside the main few characters other than identifying features. I’m sure we’ll get more out of them in subsequent seasons but I have little to work off of right now.

The main three are great, though: Kafka definitely has shonen protag brain even at his age, but he’s still necessary representation for schlubby guys in their 30s who still have hopes and dreams (we exist and our stories matter), and for as serious and focused as Reno likes to think he is, he makes a great tsukkomi whenever Kafka starts acting up. Kikoru is already an icon as well; she’s basically Asuka Langley Sohryu for the zoomer generation. I feel a little weird about the fact that she’s literally half Kafka’s age and still acts kinda tsundere around him, but this is a shonen at the end of the day.

I have some small nagging issues with the story here and there, but nothing that outright ruins the show for me. Like plenty of others, I’m far more fascinated with the ins and outs of how Japanese society adapted to living with kaiju threats outside of just military preparation and response; Kafka’s initial job in kaiju cleanup was actually really neat and I’d have loved it just as much (and possibly more) if the series had just focused on that. I want some damn world building! I also am not crazy about the focus on the Defense Force’s powerscaling in the form of “Unleashed Combat Power,” but I also just plain don’t care about powerscaling to begin with. Wasn’t the entire point of power levels in Dragon Ball Z that it’s pointless to define someone’s fighting spirit by a number? Maybe they drop it later.

This show looks pretty darn good! Production IG clearly put its A-team on this one; the character animation is cartoonishly bouncy and expressive in ways we rarely see outside of Trigger productions, and the big-ass kaiju are all mercifully in outstanding 2D (though I wouldn’t complain about CG; the OP is entirely in 3D and looks exceptional). The silliness of the animation really came through in one of the funniest scenes in any anime I watched this season. Some of the textures can look a little distractingly muddy at times, but hey, these are big ugly monsters we’re looking at. Make those bastards ugly.

On a certain level, I can appreciate the effort put into this show to try to make it a crossover success; the manga is popular and kaiju films remain one of Japan’s greatest cultural exports. Streaming new episodes on the fetid corpse of Twitter was certainly a decision. I can also appreciate wanting to load up the soundtrack with popular Western artists; my problem is that they went with acts I actively avoid like YUNGBLUD (with writing by Imagine Dragons!) and OneRepublic. Suffice to say, I don’t care for the OP and ED on a musical level, but I know that I’m coming at this with a conscious bias. I’m sure they’re hits over in Japan, and for all I know there are music fans over there with the same tastes and disposition as me who think that some Japanese acts I learned about through anime like, say, Bump of Chicken or Queen Bee, are “coworker music” or whatever. I’ll live.

Kaiju No. 8, at the end of the day, is another battle shonen with guns and big monsters, but sometimes that’s all you need. I’ll be coming back for the next season.

Train to the End of the World

Spring 2024 was a banner season for girls anime. From the veteran director/writer duo that gave us cult hits like Squid Girl, Shirobako, and Prison School (and individual credits on a laundry list of classic and cult-favorite anime across the board) comes an original anime that’s not quite Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, nor Cute Girls Doing Amazing Things, but Cute Girls Being Fucking Weirdos in a Weird World.

7G technology has arrived in Japan and immediately wreaked unknowable chaos. Geography, flora, and fauna have all warped beyond recognition, and in the town of Agano, every human above a certain age has become a talking animal. Shizuru, a still-human high school girl, has been looking for her best friend Youka ever since they got in a fight two years ago and the latter ran off, just before the 7G cataclysm. She finds out that Youka has been spotted in Ikebukuro, and with the help of a babbling train conductor who managed to briefly turn lucid, learns to operate a two-car commuter train to get the hell out of dodge. Just before Shizuru leaves, train stocked with Agano’s famous goya melons, she’s joined by her classmates: The soft-spoken Nadeko, the temperamental bookworm Akira, and the rambunctious gyaru Reimi. Youka’s dog, Pochi, also joins for morale purposes. Along the way, they see just how warped Japan has become, with locals in the various towns ranging from mushroom people to zombies to Lilliputians to characters from their favorite anime, and more.

Try as I might, a summary does not do Train to the End of the World justice; this show is as offbeat as offbeat gets. It makes no bones about how flat-out weird it wants to get and actively revels in it. It’s not really interested in making the girls into a new generation of moe icons either; they are unabashed weirdos, in the ways that really only high school girls can be, and they handle the bizarre situations foisted upon them in similar fashion. They get into arguments about dumb shit, hurl insults at strangers, and occasionally just talk about poop. The writing in this series is fascinating, and it really shouldn’t come as a surprise coming from someone who also has script-writing credits for classics like Cowboy Bebop and Ranma ½ on her resume. The dialogue is punchy and comes at a breakneck pace in ways that you really only get in original anime like ODDTAXI.

Train to the End of the World is an incredible dichotomy unto itself because it clearly comes from a very literate way of thinking but has a blast being really goddamn stupid sometimes, in the best ways. It draws on a lot of inspirations of the epics of yore, gleefully cites the western literary canon, and ponders the future of the human race, and then has the girls negotiate their release from a Gulliver’s Travels situation by threatening to flood a park with urine. It is at once Homer and Homer Simpson. This show is funny in ways that are hard to articulate; comedy is so intrinsic to the show that it only has so many laugh-out-loud moments, but much more often I found myself shaking my head and remarking “this show is fucking hilarious.”

As a complete story, Train to the End of the World isn’t exactly generation-defining, but that’s perfectly fine. It’s an experience more than anything. It has really nice character moments and some heartwarming stuff in there, but I was mostly there for the weird shit. The ending was just okay, but I didn’t feel any poorer for having seen it; I’ll dive right into the cliche and say that it wasn’t about the destination but rather the journey. I had an absolute blast for the whole ride.

Now that I’ve made you read all of this, I’m going to go ahead and admit that I haven’t seen Squid Girl, Shirobako, or Prison School, but I kind of have to now, because I was bowled over by this show. This series revels in surrealism, so your mileage may vary, but it’s at the very least worth checking out. It may not have a lasting impact outside of some similar cult favoritism, but this was still my personal favorite new anime of the season.

Wind Breaker

A few weeks into the Spring season I felt like I was missing something. I gave Wind Breaker a shot and I realized about halfway into the first episode that what I was missing was just some dope-ass fisticuffs.

Haruka is a bit of a delinquent. His hair and eyes are heterochromic, and because he’s judged so harshly for his looks, he decided to lean into it and become the nogoodnik everyone thinks he is. He’s moved to a new town to join the local high school Furin, where he hears he’ll have to fight his way to the top, but as soon as he arrives in town he sees a young woman being harassed by a group of creeps. He takes them out on his own and in return receives a free lunch from the cafe she runs despite his protestations. After she teases him more than a little (his ass is NOT used to positive attention), the creeps return with more goons in tow, and Haruka is backed up by his new classmates. To his surprise, the locals shower the Furin boys with praise, and he then learns that Furin’s gang, Bofurin, exists solely to protect the town from outside threats. And Haruka thinks that is the coolest shit ever.

From there, Haruka gets to meet more of the Bofurin boys, and because of his standoffish personality, rebuffs their praises from the fight. Again, his ass is NOT used to positive attention. We get to learn the hierarchy of Bofurin, and it’s not exactly as Haruka expected: This is not a might-makes-right dogpile at all; it is a structured organization that protects its own and puts its community first. Soon enough, though, they happen upon one of their middle schoolers being hassled by a neighboring gang, and they organize a tournament on hostile ground to resolve their differences.

I am an absolute goddamn sucker for the “delinquent with a heart of gold” archetype, and Haruka is just a big ol’ tsundere from the opening minutes, so Wind Breaker hit like fucking catnip for me. For a show about gangs of delinquents, this could actually be a good example of positive masculinity if you look at it in a certain light. It’s very heavy-handed with the message that nobody can achieve greatness on their own and that surrounding yourself with the right people can change your life for the better. It’s not a rare theme in Japanese media by any means (it’s a central theme of the Persona series as well as another ultra-popular shonen series I’ve been reading in secret), but I really appreciate it being delivered through the lens of channeling brute strength and fighting prowess specifically to protect the vulnerable.  

At the end of the day, though, it’s really just about guys bein’ dudes.

The production values on this are phenomenal and I have to commend CloverWorks for turning in yet another banger. The cast is deep and plenty talented (there’s a lot of Jujutsu Kaisen in there, and it should surprise nobody that the goofy, silver-haired leader of Bofurin is voiced by Yuichi Nakamura). The animation, shot composition, fight choreography, and lighting effects are all absolutely gorgeous, and it’s clear that they see this as a potential franchise. At least, I would certainly hope so, because what we actually got from the first season left me a little hungry. The tournament arc was juicy, and it went a lot longer toward introducing the ensemble cast than the two other action shows I just talked about, but it lasted about an episode too long for a 13-episode season, and the ending came at an awkward time. I was left wanting, but what I want is a second season, so I guess it did its job.

The issues with pacing and the weirdly-timed ending meant that Wind Breaker was a bit of a fence case for me between this section and the last, but my memories of watching it are almost uniformly positive, so into The Gems it goes. This show rocks. Dudes rock.

[enfantsterriblestokyo]

「First Love 初恋」(Netflix) 2022年11月24日〜

Official Site

Official Trailer

Teaser Trailer

[Cast]

Hikari Mitsushima / Takeru Satoh

Rikako Yagi / Taisei Kido

Kaho

Minami / Akiyoshi Nakao

Towa Araki / Aoi Yamada

Itsuki Nagasawa / Jiei Wakabayashi

Makiko Watanabe / Takashi Okabe

Morio Agata

Ren Sudo

Kanji Furutachi

Daisuke Kuroda / Shingo Mizusawa

Osamu Mukai

Gaku Hamada

Kyoko Koizumi

[Staff]

Written & Directed by : Yuri Kanchiku

Cinematographers : Kazuma Shinde / Junichi Nakamura

Lighting : Jin Kobayashi

Sound Recordists : Masahito Yano / Yoshifumi Kureishi

Art Department Coordinator : Nori Fukuda

Production Designer : Yoko Sagae

Set Decorator : Tetsuya Nomura

Costume Designer : Babymix

Hair & Make-up Artists : Takeharu Kobayashi / Aina Hanada

Make-up Artist : Yuko Shimada

First Assistant Directors : Shinya Masuda / Kimiyoshi Adachi

Production Manager : Kota Suemitsu / Taisuke Oku

Post Production Supervisor : Tetsuo Ohya

VFX Supervisor : Koji Nozaki

Editorsr : Emi Onodera / Naoki Watanabe

Re-Recording Mixer : Hiroyuki Ishizaka

Sound Effects : Hiroki Matsuura

Music by : Taisei Iwasaki

Line Producer : Mikiya Sato

Executive Producer : Kaata Sakamoto

Producer :  Kasumi Yao

Production : C&I entertainment

Inspired by the songs “First Love” and “Hatsukoi” written by Hikaru Utada

[riverpancakes]

hhhh all oc pronouns ig

Nobuyuki Tokoyami- he/him

Tako Tokoyami- they/them

Arashi Kaminari- she/her

Daisuke Kaminari (Wakabayashi)- he/him

Hisana Yaoyorozu- she/her

Kaito Yaoyorozu- he/him

Daiki Aoyama- he/him

Akira Aoyama- she/her

Hiro Ashido- she/her

Kaede Ashido- he/him

Katsuro Iida- he/him

Masa Iida- she/her

Ryota Uraraka- he/him

Shinzuko Uraraka- she/her

Kenta Ojirou- he/him

Rin Ojirou- she/her

Azumi Kirishima- she/her

Akirhiro Kirishima- he/him

Kina Kirishima- she/her

Koto Aizawa- she/her

Reiji Tachibana- he/him

Hachiro Amano- he/him

Mr. Serizawa- he/him

Iwao Kamegai- he/him

Amberlynn Korematsu- she/her

Takashi Korematsu- he/him

Nakiichi Kirishima- he/him

Yua Kirishima- she/her

Takumi Bakugou- he/him

Mansa Bakugou- she/her

Takayuki Midoriya- he/him

Kayo Midoriya- she/her

Ichirou Midoriya- he/him

Aito Kaminari- he/him

Iku Kaminari- she/her

Hoshi Kaminari- he/him

Hideo Iida- he/she, he/him preferred

Meiko Iida- he/him

Baako Iida- he/him

Faraji Iida- he/him

Hanami Amajiki- she/her, wants to try neopronouns (snow/snowflake/snowflakes/snowflakeself, sy/sky/skyself)

Emi Amajiki- she/her

Ahmya Kuroiro- she/(rie/eer/eri/erie/eeriself)/(li/lich/lis/lichs/lichself)/(necro/necrom/necself)

Suiren Kuroiro- she/her

Yami Kuroiro- he/him

Miyako Kuroiro- she/her

Keiichi Tokoyami- he/him

Ren Tokoyami- she/her

Michi Sero- he/him

Etsuko Aoyama- she/her

Kasumi Tokage- she/her

Eimi Ojirou- they/she

Fuyuhime Amano- she/her

Kiku Chiba- she/her

Chihiro Hidaka- she/they

Momoka Hino- she/her

Hideoyoshi Inoue- he/him

Haruto Kurosawa- he/they

Hanzou Mizutani- he/him

Rekka Serizawa- he/him

Kohaku Takeuchi- they/he

Koshiro Tsuburaba- he/him

Shin'ichi Kaibara- he/him

Jirou Tsunoda- he/him

Masako Yusado- she/her

Aimi Nishiyama- she/her

Kei Konishi- she/her

Katsumi Matsumoto- he/him

Yukio Ishida- he/him

Aoi Neishin- he/him

Junichi Hoshino- he/him

Mariko Ayuma- they/it/she

Satoshi Mamoru- he/they

Ryo Yabun- he/him

Hope Korematsu- she/her

Dai Takenaka- he/him

Layla Arafa- she/her

Kin Akiyama- she/her

Isao Kanekou- he/him

Komiko Miyashita- she/her

Eiko Fujimoto- she/her

Katashi Koi- he/it

Aiko Saito- she/her

Chou Hirabayashi- she/her

Hiroaki Abe- he/him

Ayumi Haimawari- she/her

Satoru Chinen- he/him

Fynn Dimick- he/him

Diana Morias- she/her

Moriko Kato- she/it

Sophia Barrett- she/her

Damion Jay- he/him

Bonnie Webster- she/(tea/teaself)

Kozuya Mochizuki- he/him

Salem Mochizuki- he/him

Rose Laurence de la Croix- it/its

Zephyrus Williams- they/he

Sora Hirano- she/her

Hisashi Miyake- he/him

Tamiko Miyake- he/him

Anastasia Williams- any/all pronouns

Daichi Kuroki- he/him

Haruki Kazame- he/they

Junpei Akabane- he/him

Adriana Gegeen- she/her

Misaki Go- she/her

Tsukumi Sakai- she/her

Talyor Korematsu- she/her

Chase Korematsu- he/him

Jaelynn Korematsu- (cor/corpse/corpself)/(go/gor/gors/goreself)/she

Asahi Korematsu- he/(ve/ver/vis)

Divya Korematsu- she/her

Tadashi Bakugou- he/him

Naoki Bakugou- they/x

Akina Bakugou- she/her

Mei Villin- he/him

Kae Midoriya- she/her

Ayano Tachibana- she/her

Emori Kaminari- he/it/(haz/hazel/zels/zels/hazelnutself)

Fukumi Aoyama- she/her

Chiyo Ogawa- she/they

Kameko Shibuya- she/her

Mitsuko Morishita- any/all pronouns

Sophie Kindermann- she/her

Yuki Shiratori- she/her

Akui Miyake- he/him

Hatsuko Hoshino- she/her

Haruto Watanabe- he/him

Sana Yamazuki- he/him

Haru Yabun-Mamoru- they/them

Junji Yabun-Mamoru- he/him

Akaya Yabun-Mamoru- he/him

Kira Yabun-Mamoru- she/her

Kizuki Maede (Yabun-Mamoru)- he/him

Natsume Yabun-Mamoru- he/him

Manami Takenaka- she/they

Rei Takenaka- she/her

Seth Arafa- he/him

Thanatos Kobayoshi- he/him

Ryosuke Ishida- he/him

Kyou Achikita- he/him

Erika Maede- she/her

Rui Bakugou- she/her

Kouta Maede- he/him

Amitsu Maede- she/her

Akiyu Takenaka- she/her

[multishipper-baby]

1 and 6 for the Fencer Oc you have 👀 I'm intrigued by them

Ah yes, I’m glad to hear the fencer idea is liked. 

1- I still haven’t been totally sold on any name, but I like the surname Wakabayashi (若林), and I’m considering either calling them Jun (淳, meaning pure) or Ren (恋, meaning love). In regards to other information, they’re nonbinary but closeted (I haven’t decided on the specific identity yet, but so far I like the idea of them being bigender). They’re 168 cm tall.

About whether their ultimate would be useful in a killing game... Yes, but not by that much. I mean, fencing experience would make killing with a sword easy. However, they would first need Junko to supply a sword, which might not happen. Not to mention that, given their talent, killing with a sword might be too suspicious. And they would need a plan to clean up their clothes, since stabbing cann be pretty gory. So yeah, it can be useful, but it’s by no means the perfect talent o have.

6- They’re pretty observant, sometimes to a pretty impressive degree. They’re the type to notice small details, like when someone’s faking a smile or something has been moved in their room. It’s actually one of the main reasons they’re so good a fencing in the first place: they can notice even the tiniest of errors or missteps their oponents make and exploit them.

Their last thoughts... I’d imagine they think about their twin sister, and how they’re glad at least she’s safe. They had the idea of entering Hope’s Peak Academy together, with her as the ultimate chemist. However, while she was good, the higher ups decided that she wasn’t good enough to consider her an ultimate, and she was left out. Of course, they were devastated to hear this at first, but with the whole killing game going on, they’re happy she didn’t end up being part of this.

(Obviously, with the whole Tragedy thing, it’s possible that she died. But I think they’d rather imagine that she miraculously survived or that Monokuma lied about the Tragedy than face that fact tbh).

[thatwasntverycoolmath]

so i have 8 MCs for each RO from Lemonade by @lemonade-if and i want to share them! separate posts for each of course cause that’ll be so much all at once

“…oh, that kid? he doesn’t talk, like at all. it’s almost creepy how quiet he is! though, he loses a lot of his creepiness when you actually watch him for more than five minutes. the kid can’t walk properly! he’s always falling into things and causing messes! he’s a hazard to be around!

“who?”

“i kinda feel bad for him. he’s always alone and never talks. he’s also so little! i don’t think he’s been eating enough, if anything! wha- i’m not being a mother hen!”

“the new kid? he’s like super smart! probably the smartest kid in the school! kisaragi-san has serious competition this year! um, maybe don’t tell her i said that?”

—————

Song: ?

Name: Akihiko Wakabayashi

Club: Track (Even though he hates it)

Height: 5’1

Stats: Genuine, Somewhat Stoic, Passive, Logical, Hardworking, Negative, Lawful, Shy

Romance: Ren Sugiyama

Personality: Akihiko is very shy. He despises the limelight and refuses to be within six feet of anyone he deems popular enough to bring attention to him. Unfortunately, he falls for Ren Sugiyama. He is very unlucky and clumsy, often causing problems for people around him with how often he trips and falls. He has rather low self esteem, which causes him to hide his face.

Appearance: Akihiko has very pale skin due to his disliking for anything outdoorsy. He has dark green hair that covers one of his green eyes, as well as a mole under the covered eye. Akihiko wears clunky glasses that covers his face almost as much as his face mask. He is rather small for his age, in both height and weight. Akihiko wears comfortable oversized clothing, however he makes sure that he blends into his surroundings, and if he stands out, will either a) leave the premises immediately or b) go home and change.

[ecargmura]

Astro Note Episode 8 Review - The Key Factor To This Mystery

When I said I was rooting for Aoi, that doesn’t mean doing her even more dirty than before! Why was she the butt of the shenanigans for this episode? All I want is for Aoi to get a good resolution.

The hunt for the key continues as Mira and Naosuke keep searching for it. Shoin does not join, surprisingly. Instead, Takumi helps out as he knows about their secret. Takumi does a lot in this episode from creating plans on how to lure out Hubbies to helping Naosuke’s identity remain a secret in front of Ren who wants to expose him. Most of all, he actually gets nice moments with Mira. They both go out to get all-you-can-pack veggies and then talk about Mira’s life on Planet Wid. He learns that Mira’s life was way too stuffy and perfect for her to know what was going on outside of her castle. The reason why Mira enjoys life on Earth far more than her home planet is because she feels free.

Another subplot revolves around Naosuke. While Naosuke looks like a dog, it turns out that he’s from a Widian species that lives for a very long time. His duty is to protect Mira until she dies. It’s a bittersweet role in a way. It also turns out that Shokichi takes Naosuke on walks because he wants attention from dog-loving girls. It’s funny how when girls ask for Naosuke’s name and age, Shokichi tells them his instead. Ren’s friend Haruto seems to like Naosuke a lot too. Ren spends the entire episode trying to expose Naosuke but fails.

The best part of the episode is the Hubbie squid chase scene. There’s a new fact about them in that they can possess people if consumed. Aoi is a victim of said possession as her personality does a complete 180 and starts getting super moody and angry. The Jojo punches were hilarious. The squid then gets taken out of Aoi via a kiss from Takumi. This is why I said they’re doing her dirty because she gets a kiss from her crush and she won’t even remember it. It’s also bound to create awkwardness between him and Mira now.

There’s a glimpse of the Hubble’s boss, but only their hand. Why do I get this inkling of a feeling that it’s Shoin? Since it’s now established Hubbies have the power to possess, what if Shoin had been possessed by them the entire time? That is a possibility, right? What are your thoughts?

[dear-indies]

hey there, i sent this in a while back and i think it was just before your inbox purge; i was hoping you could direct me to that one directory of all the japanese fcs or help cast sapphire from sailor moon? thank you so much

Hey anon! There’s a masterpage by japanesefcs but an anon a while back said it was unavailable and at the time of posting this it’s still unavailable. According to one website Sapphire is seventeen and we don’t offer faceclaims for minors but since you’ve sent this more than once it means you’ve read our rules so I’m assuming he’s now older in canon? Somebody please tell me if he’s still a minor. Adachi Yuto has had blue hair but he’s recently appropriated black hairstyles and I don’t know anybody else near that age range who has had blue hair so here are some other suggestions:

Meguro Ren (1997) 

Wakabayashi Takuya (1997) 

Nakagawa Taishi (1998)

Kyle Takano (1998)

Iwakami Shunya (1998)

Tamamoto Fumito (1999) 

Yoshida Chihiro (1999) 

Shimizu Hiroya (1999) 

Furukawa Tsuyoshi (2000)

Usa Takuma (2000) 

Okuno Sou (2000)

Hidaka Mahiro (2001)

-C

[kentootv]

まれ (Mare)

DORAMA DETAILS

Title: まれ

Title (romaji): Mare

Broadcast Network: NHK

Genre: Drama

Episodes: 156

Release Date: March 30 - September 26, 2015

Runtime: Mon-Sat 8:00

TV Ratings: 19.4%

Theme song: Mare-zora

PLOT

Mare is an elementary school student. She lives with her family in the city, but, right before her father goes bankrupt, they run away and settle down at a fishing village in Noto.

The family rents a couple's home who run a salt pond. Mare's father starts a new business, but it also fails. Her mother supports the family by working at the salt pond.

8 years later, Mare, about to graduate from high school, decides to work for the Wajima local government. She wants to have a steady job, unlike her father. Her job is to support people who move to Noto.

CAST

Tsumura Family

Tsuchiya Tao as Mare

Matsumoto Ramu as young Mare

Watanabe Konomi as Mare (age 5)

Oizumi Yo as Tsumura Toru, Mare's father

Tokiwa Takako as Tsumura Aiko, Mare's mother

Hayama Shono as Tsumura Ittetsu, Mare's brother

Kimura Seiya as young Ittetsu

Kusabue Mitsuko as Robert Yukie, Mare's grandmother

Takahashi Rai as Tsumura Tetsushi

Okesaku Family

Tanaka Yuko as Okesaku Fumi

Tanaka Min as Okesaku Ganji

Teraoka Family

Kadowaki Mugi as Teraoka Minori, Mare's classmate

Mizuno Ayame (水野あやめ) as young Minori

Tsukaji Muga as Teraoka Makoto, Minori's father

Fuse Eri as Teraoka Kumi, Minori's mother

Kuramoto Family

Shimizu Fumika as Kuramoto Ichiko, Mare's classmate

Aikawa Aoi (愛川あおい) as young Ichiko

Sasai Eisuke as Kuramoto Koichi, Ichiko's father

Suzuki Sawa as Kuramoto Haru, Ichiko's mother

Nakagawa Shoko as Obara Maki, woman of mystery

Kontani Family

Yamazaki Kento as Keita Kontani, Hiroyuki's son and Mare's classmate and Mare's Husband

Yamazaki Yuuma (山崎祐馬) as young Keita

Itao Itsuji as Kontani Hiroyuki, Keita's father

Fujiyoshi Kumiko as Kontani Naomi, Keita's mother

Nakamura Atsuo as Kontani Yataro, Keita's grandfather

Koyama Harutomo (小山春朋) as Kontani Takumi

Yokoyama Mei (横山芽生) as Kontani Ayumi

Kado Family

Takahata Yuta (高畑裕太) as Kado Yoichiro, Mare's classmate

Guts Ishimatsu as Kado Shinichiro, Yoichiro's father

Oshima Kota (大嶋康太) as young Yoichiro

Others

Watanabe Taichi (渡辺大知) as Futaki Takashi, Mare's classmate

Tsuchiya Kaede (土屋楓) as young Takashi

Negishi Toshie as Wakabayashi Kimiko

Kajiwara Hikari (梶原ひかり) as Okano Ami

Iitoyo Marie as Sawa Saya (ep133-156)

People from Yokohama

Kohinata Fumiyo as Ikehata Daigo

Ryo as Ikehata Wako

Yagira Yuya as Ikehata Daisuke

Nakamura Yurika as Ikehata Minami

Suzuki Taku (鈴木拓) as Asai Kazuya

Shuko (柊子) as Yano Toko

Son Seijun (孫成順) as Chin Bunki

Fukuda Ayano as Ueda Yayoi

PRODUCTION STAFF

Director: Kazuki Watanabe (渡辺一貴), Masae Ichiki (一木正恵), Nishimura Takegoro (西村武五郎)

Screenwriter: Eriko Shinozaki

Executive Producer: Takahashi Ren (高橋練)

Producer: Hase Tomoki (長谷知記)

Music: Sawano Hiroyuki

Narrator: Toda Keiko

WEBSITE 

Official Pages: story | cast | blog announcement | video & images

source : AsianWiki + DramaWiki + Wikipedia

SPOILER

Yamazaki Kento played as a grandson and a guy who love wajima lacquer. He studies hard about it and could be said that lacquer is his whole life? But besides that, he has a first love and she is Mare (his classmate). Actually he is Mare's first love as well. He confessed to her but end up with no clear reply. He then get a grip of himself and keep move forward to his passion about lacquer. Both of them then decided to be a friend & support each other's dream. What happen to their dream? How about their heart? And how could they end up getting married? Find the full story by download or stream here:

[DOWNLOAD LINK]

RAW VIDEO: ALT1 | ALT2

SUBTITLES: ALT1 | ALT2

STREAM (with engsub)

*ALT = alternative

[ecargmura]

Astro Note Episode 1 Review - Romcom With Aliens

Everyone’s going “This is like Maison Ikkoku”, but I don’t know what that is. I looked it up and it’s one of Rumiko Takahashi’s works with a similar premise. Is it fun? Please let me know. Anyways, I’m always someone who has to watch something weird every season and this seems to be that ‘weird’ anime.

Why is it weird? The story starts off with a space chase as someone in a spaceship escapes from a bigger spaceship and lands in Japan. Then the story transitions to the “alien” already settling on Earth and is landlady of Astro Lodge where the main character Takumi Miyasaka is looking to work at. Unfortunately, the landlady, Mira Gotokuji, actually put in wrong information about the place. Astro Lodge was stated to be a restaurant in the job description, but it’s actually a share house that serves breakfast, but the landlady is looking for a chef because her cooking is catastrophic and her tenants want food because they were promised so. After Takumi shows off his cooking skills, Mira apologizes for the mess up, but he decides to move into Astro Lodge because he wants to cook and because he developed an instant crush on Mira the moment he laid eyes on her. What Takumi doesn’t know is that she’s actually an alien looking for a key and her protective poodle Naosuke is also an alien. All he knows is that she might be a widow and his chances to be with her might be harder than he’d expect.

The premise is pretty simple. It’s like a romcom and slice of life mixed with sci-fi in a way. Since it’s anime original, how the story will go is to be determined. Right now, I think I’m liking what I’m seeing so far. Other than Takumi, everyone in the share house seems to have their own secrets. Mira and Naosuke are aliens and Matsubara is an underground idol. Yamashita is stated to be a novelist, but nothing shows up when searching him. There must be a catch; Takumi predicts that he might be using a pen name, and I think so too, but I think that he might be writing erotic novels. Heck, I think Mr. Wakabayashi is the most suspicious of the bunch. He may not be an alien, but it’s weird how he’s unemployed but still wears a suit, pays his rent and affords an education to let his son Ren go to school. I guess the characters’ real identities will be revealed as the show keeps going.

To be honest, the animation is pretty average. It’s not great, but it’s not bad either. The funny faces are hilarious and the food porn looks great, but other than that, it’s pretty simplistic. The soundtracks not that memorable either. The opening and ending songs were great and the insert song of Maaya Uchida and Soma Saito singing during Mira and Takumi’s outing was nice; Terurun’s song was nice too. The songs without vocals aren’t that memorable, honestly.

The voice acting cast is actually the strongest in this anime. It’s an all-star cast with Soma Saito and Maaya Uchida as the leads. They fit the characters well and I love how Soma Saito screams so loudly during the scene where Naosuke bites his head. The supporting cast consists of Shinichiro Miki as Yamashita, Tomokazu Sugita as Mr. Wakabayashi, Rie Kugimiya as Ren Wakabayashi and Junichi Suwabe as Naosuke. Such a solid cast and they’re all amazing at comedy, so I’m not too worried about their performance because they will always do a solid job. I am not familiar with Ai Furihata, who voices Matsubara, but given that she voices a Love Live character, her singing skills are good. I quite like her singing voice a lot. The way her voice lowers during funny scenes was nice to hear too!

I’m liking what I’m seeing so far. I just hope that the story stays consistent. I’ll be tuning in next week to see what will happen to Takumi. What are your thoughts on this episode?

[ecargmura]

Astro Note Episode 12 Review + Final Thoughts - Happy Endings For All

The ending, while happy, was something I did not expect and that’s a good thing. I mean, I didn’t predict that this show would turn into a mech one and that the mecha robot would be participating in a final battle Astro Lodge and fish aliens. I like the unpredictability this show gives!

I didn’t expect that the reason the Hubby king was after Mira was so he could marry and have babies with her. He failed with Adara, so he was settling for Mira. The reason why he wanted to marry a Wido was because he wanted to have beautiful and talented children. That’s a very dumb reason, but I didn’t see that coming. I’m guessing Widos are objectified and glamorized like how Asians are objectified and glorified by Western countries. I also didn’t expect that Shoin’s house was a spaceship and that it cannot transform into a mech like Mira’s. He was promised marriage with Mira if he abided to the Hubby king’s order, but it was all a lie. Geez, all these people are trying to court Mira, but Takumi comes out the victor because she professes her love for him to the aliens.

I also didn’t predict that the Astro Lodge tenants would be chilling and eating food. They’re so free-spirited! Though, if I was in my house that turned into a spaceship and I wasn’t the one piloting it, I too would be chilling and waiting until the pilot finishes their task. Freaking out over alien attacks would only last a moment.

Mira decides to renounce her right to the throne and decide to stay on Earth and on Astro Lodge as its landlady. I honestly did not predict this. Usually, these types of stories have it to where someone from another planet would go back and leave Earth. Astro Note breaks all of those cliche tropes. She says that she doesn’t want to be tied down by duties she doesn’t want and rule a place she had no attachment towards. Honestly, go Mira for chasing after what she wants! I’m glad that she actually decides to stay!

Mira’s decision of not wanting to be tied down actually inspires the tenants. They all get happy endings, surprisingly! Ren decides to wear skirts to school and it seems that his friend Haruto and the girl with the frilly dress are okay with it! Tomihiro feels proud that Ren is becoming confident and it seems that he got a job of his own too! Aoi finally gets a job as a legal assistant to Tasuke’s lawyer, the lady who helped her out with Tasuke when she was homeless. She even grew to like dogs as she is seen petting her boss’s Cavalier Spaniel at the same bench Shokichi sat on. While the Naosuke and Aoi romance didn’t happen, I’m glad that it stayed a platonic relationship. He’s the reason why she became more assertive now. She even gave Naosuke a radio so he can remember her with it; she even submitted an entry so that Naosuke can listen to the song she requested on the radio. Aw, it’s like what he did for her in the previous episode. Teruko is finally seeing some success as an idol as she’s on the front cover of a magazine! I seriously thought Shokichi died, but it was a fake out. It turns out that he wants to go to space with Naosuke and visit Planet Wid so that he can write a book about it; he’s trying to finish writing a sci-fi novel that revolves around a man meeting a space alien girl—sort of like Adara and Mira’s situations. Takumi gets a job in a restaurant where he works lunch shift. I didn’t expect Shoin to end up being a tenant for good and returns to being Takumi’s apprentice. He is last seen working at a bakery where he’s a hit with the female customers. The only one who didn’t get a happy end was the Hubby king and he deserves a bad end for all the trouble he caused.  I actually like that everyone got happy endings and that there’s no need for a Season 2! Everything concluded satisfactorily. 

However, Naosuke is going to go back because he wants to. Mira revokes his duty of protecting her for life, so he decides that he’s going to protect the key. I guess that’s his version of a happy ending? At least Shokichi will come along with him, so he has a remnant of Earth with him.

This is probably one of the happiest endings I’ve seen in anime. While some things did get rushed, it was a nice blend of comedy, romcom and sci-fi.

Final Thoughts

I just decided to watch Astro Note because it looked like a weird anime and I figured out I was a weird anime enjoyer. Yes, it was weird, but it was surprisingly entertaining! I do like that the writing makes it in a way that some predictable things aren’t as predictable as I would assume like with the whole ordeal with Ren liking skirts or the whole finale.

It’s not a perfect anime, but I did enjoy the characters and gags a lot. However, if I were to be a critic, I’d say that not all characters got fleshed out in this 12-episode run. There’s a lot I don’t know about Shokichi. Heck, even Takumi doesn’t get fleshed out a lot. All we know about him was that he lost his job at a hotel due to bankruptcy and is working at Astro Lodge now. I’d like to learn a little bit more about him like where he’s from or his background before getting into cooking. Heck, I would’ve liked to learn a bit more about Shoin too! I feel like characterization got shoved to move the plot forward. It’s also a crime that we didn’t see what Planet Wid looks like. Despite that, the anime does do a great job showing that Astro Lodge is a share house full of kooky tenants; the supporting cast are all kooky and it’s presented well.

The voice cast was stacked, surprisingly. A lot of A-list actors and actresses are casted here! We have Soma Saito and Maaya Uchida as the leads and the supporting cast consists of names such as Shinichiro Miki, Junichi Suwabe, Tomokazu Sugita, Rie Kugimiya and more. This anime is perfect for anyone who’s a fan of any of these actors. The only voice actress I’m not familiar with is Ai Furihata, who voices Teruko, but that’s because I’m not into Love Live. She does do a good performance, though!

The soundtrack fits the whimsical atmosphere, but I did like the opening and ending songs a lot. The opening sound is sung by Ai Furihata and the ending song is sung by Soma Saito and Maaya Uchida. I really like it when anime voice actors participate in the opening or ending songs. It makes them feel rather involved, you know?

I think that this is a good anime to just kick back, relax and laugh at the craziness transpiring. It’s nothing too serious to think about. If you like animes like that, I suggest you try watching this!