Beastars
Short Synopsis: A wolf and a rabbit, both loners at a boarding school for animals, must navigate the social tensions between predators and prey.
Lenlo’s review:
So I gotta say, this was a much better opening episode than I was expecting. As a manga Beastars was very slow to start. So this upped pacing, 4 chapters in a single episode, was really unexpected. Part of me feels they did it just to get to that memorable first episode ending. But I think it helped get me more engaged quicker. Still, you know my thoughts on the story and where it goes. What I really wanna talk about is how Orange nailed the visuals. Seriously, Beastars is the best animated/styled series I have seen so far. The CGI models look great, blended with just enough traditional animation techniques that they fit in with the 2D also on screen. I also love the presentation style, such as the projector at the start (anime only) or the blue lines in darkness so we can still see, without crappy dark lighting. It’s just fabulous to look at. Also the music, my god the music. Violins, Jazz, whatever that OP that plays at the end of the episode is. Mmm, Beastars has style and I think I am going to enjoy watching it. Because if nothing else, I think Orange can take a story I wasn’t big on and make it interesting.
Potential: 90%
Mario’s review:
I have high expectations for Beastars, considered how Houseki no Kuni wowed me in every possible way. So far, this premiere manages to meet that. The worldbuilding is a highlight for me. While many has issues with its self-contained world, personally I dig this settings where anthropomorphic characters must control their own animal instinct. The concept itself is an interesting one and has plenty of room for develop into something unique. It helps that the main characters have strong personalities, especially the Rabbit girl. I credit her success on the voice performance that hints on both the anger and the tiredness of everyone else perceive her. Our main boy is more simple, but the last bit certainly raises a lot of ambiguity in his character. Orange really raises the bar here in terms of production as this first episode is brimming with many stunning shots, great background arts and and grandeur score. So far, I enjoy almost everything about Beastars: a unique self-contained world, interesting characters and visual audio that I can never get tired of. It has my highest approval.
Potential: 80%
Hoshiai no Sora
Short Synopsis: Two troubled teens look to their school’s soft tennis club to address the problems in their lives.
Mario’s review:
At long last, Kazuki Akane is back with an original project. Though at first it appears like you standard sports anime with all the club disband stuff, it quickly rises above the normal traps of the genre through the main characters and the chemistry between the cast. First, we have 2 main boys worth spending time for, each of them have their clear goals, their well-established personality, and most importantly there’s hints of dark familial tension between them and their families. I thought the moment the mother of one boy talk about how she’s scared of eating dinner together with him a bit excessive. Heck, the entire epilogue is excessive as well but they’re thematically consistent and further reveals more and more about our characters. Moreover, the cast so far has a relaxed chemistry with natural dialogues that really feel like they spend a great deal of time together. Then the chemistry between our two mains, and what the money can buy, is an interesting angle to develop. It also helps that the production is great so far with expressive animation and the soft art styles that reminds me a bit of Wandering Son. The last minutes of this episode suggests that this is more a character drama than a sport show and for me it’s all for the better.
Potential: 60%
Wooper’s review:
Hoshiai no Sora doesn’t have the immediate brilliance that I was hoping for, but it’s promising enough to keep my excitement afloat. Not only are the characters intriguing, but I got big Tsuritama vibes from their designs, and sure enough, it’s Yuuichi Takahashi behind the look of both shows. Add to this some strong animation during both athletic and dialogue scenes, and you have a winning recipe. My biggest gripe with this episode was the script, which committed two faults. The first was the overwritten nature of the first ten minutes, which took pains to introduce every tennis club member and feed us a unique fact about each one. The natural cadence of their speech wasn’t enough to distract from its mechanical authorship. My second problem was the brief exchange between Toma’s brother and mother near the end, which planted an enormous seed of doubt regarding Toma’s character. This scene was unnecessary – there are enough glimpses of his obsessive personality without it. By the time I’d watched the surprising final moments of the episode, though, I was hungry for the next one. Director Kazuki Akane sometimes misses the follow-through on his promising projects, but there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic for now.
Potential: 70%
Kabukichou Sherlock
Short Synopsis: A trio of detectives compete to identify a Shinjuku-based serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
Wooper’s review:
Kabukichou Sherlock’s premiere is a colorful procession of eyebrow-raising scenes that holds together only by the grace of anime god. I was expecting a swing and a miss, based on the six month delay this series suffered back in spring, but this project proved me wrong. I think the secret sauce here is the show’s commitment pushing its illustrated medium as far as it can go. There are musical cutaways, exaggerated character reactions, amateur rakugo performances that seem to take place on another plane, and some of the most elegant use of on-screen text I’ve seen in anime. The jazzy soundtrack is mostly a success (there’s just one Hammond organ track near the start that didn’t work for me), and the character art is sharp and varied. There’s a new guy or girl on screen at least once every three minutes, and they’re all nuts. Remember how Baccano made its name by crossing the paths of a bunch of murderous gangsters? This incarnation of Sherlock does something similar, only its personalities are less violent and even more eccentric. The title character smells a cabaret hostess’ armpit to deduce how she’s paying off her nose job – that’s the level of strangeness the show operates on. If I have one criticism, it’s that the background art is occasionally flat, which is a problem that extends to both indoor and outdoor scenes. Apart from that, Kabukichou Sherlock is a rip-roaring good time.
Potential: 80%
Amun’s review:
I’m…not 100% sure what I just watched. One thing I do know – and like – is that we have a distinctly Japanese Sherlock. Most other adaptations of the famous detective duo have been the Western version culturally translated halfway – Kabukichou Sherlock takes it all the way (as to be expected from the name). The bearded lady shtick feels a bit anachronistic in 2019, but we’ll let that slide. Very bright colours, nice soundtrack, and a good supporting cast all bode well. Straight man Watson also looks on point (I’m curious how they’ll do his military connection). Kabukichou Sherlock might not fit the mould of shows I usually watch – but I’m along for the ride any way!
Potential: 90%
Mario’s review:
Just chime in to say that don’t listen to these toucans above because this show is a hot mess. Random rakugo and drag dance performances, half-baked case and plain Sherlock & Watson. Go watch isekai shows instead.
Potential: NOOO
Sherlock: *smells a cabaret hostess’ armpit to deduce how she’s paying off her nose job*
Mario: Sherlock is plain
To be fair, he said that *Sherlock & Watson* are plain, and I gotta agree that the two lack any chemistry so far. And even if Sherlock isn’t plain, Watson most definitely is. In the BBC and Ritchie adaptations he shows wit and maturity from the get-go, but here he’s just an empty sack of nothing. Ironically, Sherlock has the opposite problem for me, in that he’s way too over the top. Sherlock in the movies and series is socially awkward too, but in those iterations he has plenty of charisma to compensate for it. Here he’s just plain annoying.
The adaptation is also a bit too “anime” for my taste: a more equal mixture of Holmes conventions and anime tropes would have been more to my liking – that would have made it more unique among both detective series and Holmes adaptations (now it only shares some superficial traits of the latter). I already complained about the characters, but the central mystery was also very uninspired: poorly set-up for viewers, full of incredibly clichéd characters, and simply not interesting in any way.
So, yeah, I’m going to have to join Mario in the “No”-camp. 😉
I certainly agree that Kabukichou’s Watson is boring thus far. With regards to Sherlock’s extreme eccentricity, however, this is a loose adaptation – who’s to say he ought to possess the social graces of past incarnations? The show is geared to portray Shinjuku as a playground for nutters, and his weirdness fits that portrayal, in my view.
Take the word “Sherlock” out of the title, and tweak a couple character names so it bears no memory of Conan Doyle’s work. The show is hardly altered, yet the distinctive presentation and absurd cast of characters remain. Can you appreciate it from that perspective?
With regard to the murder case in this first episode, I believe the show was playing with us. Everything leads to a copycat killer, who speeds out of a parking garage as Watson inadvertently batters the one man who figured it out (a purposeful message that the copycat was of no real importance). To me, this contributes to the show’s topsy-turvy nature. It’ll get down to its Jack the Ripper business eventually, but why should it point us in that direction right away? Right now it’s all about the madcap presentation, which in this show entails a healthy dose of misdirection along with the kitchen sink.
I’m content to be in the minority on this one, but I did want to offer a second defense of the series, since your criticism is more substantial than Mario’s potshot. 😛
I don’t think you’re in the minority per se: Kabukichou just seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it affair. Some people love it for its eccentric characters and distinctively Japanese take on Holmes stories, other people hate it for being so over the top and for straying too far from Holmes conventions. We just happen to be in opposite camps. Nothing wrong with that. 🙂
To quickly respond to some of your points, though: there isn’t anything wrong with a looser adaptation in itself. It’s just that I’m generally not a big fan of the mystery genre but happen to like both of the Holmes adaptations I mentioned precisely because I did enjoy their take on the characters, and was therefore hoping for something similar. Alas, this Sherlock and Watson are very different, and at least so far I’m not impressed.
As for the case, that’s a fair point: it was more about introducing the show and its distinctive style and characters than about being interesting in itself. But again, that style and those characters just didn’t really click for me, and the case was far too uninteresting – both as a mystery and as a narrative – to be able to compensate for that. I’m sure there’ll be more interesting cases later on, but the show had a chance to entice me with its storytelling here (instead of its cast and style), and in that respect if failed to impress.
Anyway: I can certainly see the attraction of this exuberant take on Holmes stories for some, and if it continues to garner great reviews I may pick it up again later, but so far it just didn’t click for me.
I can certainly see your point of view – you write well. We’ve got different expectations for the series, I think. Nothing wrong with that, indeed.
Is Kabukichou actually getting good reviews elsewhere? I don’t look at a lot of other anime blogs these days, so I was assuming amun and I were on an island here.
Not sure about other blogs (though angryanimebitches had a positive first impressions post too), but I checked the reddit threat when the episode came out, and there were quite a few reactions similar to yours and Amun’s there. So you’re definitely not the only ones who like the show for what it is.
Sherlock: *relays his solving of a copycat murder through a bizarre rakugo performance*
Mario: Sherlock is plain
Sherlock: *mixes canned peaches into his fried rice while Watson looks on in horror*
Mario: Sherlock is plain
One episode and we’ve already written off the poor doctor as “too plain”…it’s one episode! He’s supposed to be the straight man (in more ways than one)! Watson’s had a grand total of 10 minutes screen time!
I much prefer shows taking their time in character building than having a traumatic childhood story shoved down our throat and expect us to instantly build empathy (or the typical shounen route, do it immediately before the character dies/is defeated).
And I disagree on the chemistry – Watson is obviously going to replace some of the voices in Sherlock’s head (or stage). There’s hints already how they’re going to do that and pull Sherlock out of total self-introspection. In that regard, I think the duo’s relationship so far is absolutely in the spirit of any of the modern Sherlock adaptations (especially the BBC one).
I was just giving my first impression, same as you! Watson may obviously grow a lot more interesting over the course of the show, and your take on their growing dynamic makes sense, but his first impression was indeed very plain. And no, I wasn’t asking for a grand backstory in the first episode, just something (anything) to like about the man, similar to Watson’s wit and maturity in the other adaptations. But there just wasn’t anything there.
Oh no, I think you have every right with the criticisms and no one will disagree that we got a bland first bite of Watson. For me though, there’s enough potential and teasers here to keep it going – unlike SOMEONE (Mario) who can’t get past the bearded lady.
Sorry, Sherlock Hound and Tantei Opera Milky Way are forever my favorite Sherlock versions in anime. Not this sniffing armpit one
Thanks Mario, for taking all the heat off me and my 0%’s with this. 😀