Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Welcome all to a very late post about Sonny Boy! I haven’t been very good at my job recently, this internet one not my real job, and for that I apologize. We have a lot to talk about this week though so enough about me, lets jump into it!

Right off the bat I want to talk about my feelings about Sonny Boy as a whole. I went into this show with high hopes. It looked visually interesting and Natsume has worked on some pretty great stuff in the past. But 9 episodes in I can comfortably say that Sonny Boy isn’t for me. Visually I still love it! Sonny Boy is doing things no other anime has in a good while, leading to some very memorable scenes. But this visual diversity has led to the show becoming narratively obtuse. Like there’s no structure, no set idea, behind what is happening. This leads to the visuals and the story feeling at odds with each other to the point of, often, incomprehensibility. And 9 episodes in, it feels like Sonny Boy doesn’t care enough to fix that.

Continue reading “Sonny Boy – 8/9 [Laughing Dog/This Salmon Chazuke Is Missing Its Salmon Nya]” →

Welcome everyone to the big event, the big twist, the turning point for Sonny Boy! Did it work? Was the episode good, does it all make sense now? Lets find out!

Lets open this post by immediately giving you a tl;dr for my thoughts on the episode. And the verdict is… I think it was good, as far as turning point episodes go. Everything about Sonny Boy this week was unexpected and took the series in a new, interesting direction. It both answered a lot of questions while asking many more and was an all around dense episode. My only issue with it is that Sonny Boy, once again, was needlessly abstract about it. Visual ideas, creative scenery, etc, it’s like someone decided how they wanted the episode to look and fit the content to it rather than fitting the looks to the content. In that way a good portion of the episode kind of just feels like art-house fuckery. Abstract images devoid, or at least porous to, meaning. And I can’t ignore that despite liking the actual story.

Continue reading “Sonny Boy – 6 [The Long Goodbye]” →

Hello everyone and welcome to a very late post for Sonny Boy episode 5! Sorry about that. Between my new 40k models coming in and this episode just being freaking weird I didn’t have much motivation to write. However that’s no excuse! You people come here to read posts about currently airing shows and come hell or high water you will get them! So without further ado, lets jump in.

Right off the bat I have to explain the reason for this being so late: What the fuck is this show? I’m… not totally sure on how I’m supposed to parse this. The themes are all very straight forward, we identified them before. Sonny Boy is all about growing up and transitioning out of highschool and into the wider world. About figuring out who you are, what you stand for and finding your place in society rather than letting others dictate it for you. I think this is all pretty clear, yeah? But the manner in which Sonny Boy presents it is so abstract as to almost be intelligible. I can’t tell if this is just Natsume being himself, as both ACCA and Boogiepop had their own eccentricities, or they simply aren’t that confident in what they are doing. Only time will tell I suppose.

Continue reading “Sonny Boy – 5 [Leaping Classrooms]” →

Welcome all to episode 4 of Sonny Boy! Apologies for the delayed post, Otakon was this weekend and ended up going so its been busy the last few days. As for Sonny Boy, this is a weird episode, arguably a bad one, but one that interested me nonetheless. So without further ado lets dive in!

To start I thought this episode was pretty visually boring. Large portions of the episode consisted of nothing but wide shots as the characters talked about baseball. No pans, no interesting angles, not even motion to draw or keep the eye. Just wide character shots. And while I liked the lineless mini-versions of the characters, an almost painterly style, that didn’t make the scenes any more engaging. Now a friend of mine made the argument that these shots were to sell the “realism”. That it put us in the shoes of the characters as Cap wouldn’t shut the hell up about baseball. But all that tells me is that they made the scenes boring on purpose, which is even worse. Whatever the case, whatever the reasoning, I didn’t find this episode of Sonny Boy to be that visually engaging outside of the opening swimming scene. With that, lets talk narrative!

Continue reading “Sonny Boy – 4 [The Great Monkey Baseball]” →

Welcome to another week of Sonny Boy! This is a pretty trippy episode all things considered, but one I still enjoyed. So without further ado lets jump in!

On the visual side Sonny Boy is still weird. I continue to like it! The flat coloring and low line count is very appealing and I think it works with the surreal presentation. Stuff like the background falling and splitting like a curtain was great! Yet some stuff, like Rajidani’s toys that he creates with his power, still feel out of place. The white outline around them combined with their incredibly cartoony nature doesn’t mesh well with the students. One could argue that this is on purpose! That these toys were made from a different world, a different set of rules, from the students and thus shouldn’t fit with them. I’m not opposed to that argument and I’ll wait and see how Sonny Boy continues to use them as sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. For now though consider me wary of their continued inclusion.

Continue reading “Sonny Boy – 3 [The Cat Who Wore Sandals]” →

Welcome everyone to another season of anime! This is a pretty slow one all things considered but through some clever word play, see “asking nicely”, I was able to get what I think is the most promising show of the season: Sonny Boy! So without further ado lets dive in!

Starting off lets talk about how Sonny Boy, with one of the more unique styles, looks . Character wise all the designs have low line counts and each section of their body is flatly colored. There’s no complex shading or patterned clothing, these are very simple and straightforward designs. In that way Sonny Boy reminds me a lot of Masaki Yuasa’s work and the freedom it grants him in their animation. Sonny Boy hasn’t yet done much with said freedom, a nice water splash on Nozomi, some nice character work across the episode and on Mizuho, but that’s it. Instead Sonny Boy has focused on evocative imagery and heavily stylized effects work. The blue fire, shifting sand or water around Asakaze’s landing for examples of that. And I have to say… I like it. I like the style and the unique scenery it brings and I hope for more.

Continue reading “Sonny Boy – 2 [Aliens]” →