Showa Monogatari – 02

Erm… what is going on here? Wasn’t this thing supposed to air in Spring? I can understand previewing the first episode a few months in advance, but to air the second episode a week later… what are the producers trying to do here? Is there some announcement that I missed or something? In any case, if this does end up airing weekly then you can consider it as one of the shows I’m going to blog. If it has some really weird airing system, then… to be honest I have no idea. I still have no bloody clue how I’m going to cover Supernatural the Animation this season…

In any case, one thing that I DO know about this show is that it’s another product of Wao World, the people who were behind the movies Nitaboh, Furusato Japan and Symphony in August. This series misses their flagship director, but a lot of other people who worked on these movies are also working on this series. Especially interesting is going to be the upcoming movie, which is going to be directed by someone who went from a special effects expert to an executive producer to a director. That should be interesting (because yes, both the movie and the TV-series are made by different people).

Wao World, for those who don’t know about their previous works, pretty much is a company that tries to celebrate the Japanese cultural heritage. They’re the perfect antidote for the moe and bishies that have invaded anime nowadays and I’m really glad to see that they’re actually doing TV-series now. The big difference with their previous movies is that Showa Monogatari isn’t about performing: it instead tries to depict the daily lives of a typical family in the 1960s.

It’s got a pretty good balance between the uneventful parts and the drama that comes along with being a kid those days, like the tension with your parents. This episode also showed him getting into trouble for something as simple as secretly buying manga with his parents’ money (plus: ah, the sixties: the time in which children still could buy cigarettes unsupervised). This episode also touched upon the relative poverty that some families lived in, yet also makes sure to not portray it as one sided as you’d expect. On top of that, the past two episodes have devoted enough attention to a lot of other characters besides this kid: his parents and friends also received quite a bit of attention.

The weakest part of this show is probably its production values: the voice actors for the kids lack experience, and the animation is often quite jerky and off model. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a series like this, though and I like it a lot so far.
Rating: * (Good)