Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu
Short Synopsis: A socially anxious girl must befriend all of her new classmates to win back the love of her former best friend.
Mario’s review:
UNBEARABLE PROTAGONIST, ACT II
Hitoribocchi is dull, Hitoribocchi is boring. Unlike Lenlo below I have a good relationship with the SoL genre, and even then I wouldn’t recommend this show. The main girl makes up the biggest issue for me as her social anxieties makes her act and behave like a 5-year-old kid. This one reminds me a bit of Slow Start last year with the same level of stupidity and dumb her down for the sake of making her cute. Her making friend feels way too easy, her anxiety plays mostly for laugh and I’m pretty sure I have seen all these familiar beats before. Look, if you’re a middle school girl, how about you act like one and not drawing plans to get rid of the society? This isn’t kawaii, this is just plain dumb.
Potential: THERE’S A CINNAMON ROLL WE ALL HAVE TO PROTECT
Lenlo’s review:
Hitoribocchi’s biggest problem, for me, is that it’s a Slice of Life. It’s simply not a genre I enjoy. By about 8 minutes in, I felt like I should be at the end, such is how it drags. That is most likely just my aversion to the genre though. As far as content, Hitoribocchi is basically a more wholesome version of Watamote. Both are school Slice of Lifes about an anti-social girl fitting in. The issue is though, just like Watamote, I was bored out of my mind. Maybe it’s the setting, maybe I just can’t enjoy a school-life centered drama anymore. I am not sure. Either way, from what I watched if you enjoy Slice of Life, you will enjoy Hitoribocchi, if only because your enjoyment will be inverse to my dislike of it. That’s typically how the trend on Slice of Life goes for me.
Potential: 10% if you’re me, 80% if you like Slice of Life.
Mix: Meisei Story
Short Synopsis: A pair of talented baseball-playing brothers rejoin their middle school team for another mediocre season.
Wooper’s review:
I mentioned it in our season preview, but Cross Game is my favorite anime, so it’s impossible for me to judge Mix (which is from the same author) without any bias creeping in. Just looking at the simple designs of these characters makes me want to smile, reminiscent as they are of Adachi’s other works. And it’s not just audiences that might be attached to other series of his – Mix itself makes its connection to Touch very clear, using an extended flashback at the start to link Meisei High’s past glory to its present mediocrity. Even Mix’s narrator is a character from Touch, and there’s a bit of fourth wall-breaking when the two main characters acknowledge her presence from within the story. This level of narration, the character introduction cards, and the VCR-mimicking scene transitions are all potential stumbling blocks for new viewers, I suspect. Mix is playing with its format a bit, rather than going for 100% naturalism as might benefit such a slow-moving anime. Despite these modern flourishes, though, Mix’s character work is old-fashioned in the best way, making the establishment of their personalities its number one priority. The male siblings at the heart of the story share an easy-going demeanor, but one is a tad rougher around the edges, which will likely be brought to the forefront when their coach’s favoritism starts hurting the team. There’s a bit of a mystery at play in their relationship, as well, which I won’t address for the sake of any newcomers. I’m quite eager to watch the next episode (if only to see the series’ glorious OP again), but I’ll bump my score down a bit to account for its uneventful first episode and odd scene transitions.
Potential: 70%
Lenlo’s review:
As Wooper correctly anticipates, there are a few issues for a new viewer who doesn’t know the original story to get over. Personally, I am not a huge fan of the extreme amount of narration. Yet at the same time it gives the series a very… old feeling, while still having the modern production. Take the character designs for instance, though it has a modern coat of paint, it’s all very late 80’s early 90’s, really making it stand out from other series. As Wooper said, Mix also goes out of its way to establish its characters clearly and early just like the oldies. I quite liked these two leads because of this, I think they will be able to play off of each other well. The whole sibling bond/rivalry going along with their differing personalities. I am also always one for a good sports anime, and the time period of the original story made a lot of good ones. Basically, I think Mix has a promising start and I look forward to seeing where it goes. As someone who has no idea about the original work, it pulled me in.
Potential: 60%
Kimetsu no Yaiba
Short Synopsis: A kid comes home to find out that the entire family has been killed and his little sister has turned into a Demon.
Lenlo’s review:
Well, I suppose we know where Ufotable’s fraudulent taxes went, because Yaiba looks great. A treat to watch. This is the only aspect of Yaiba that wowed me in this first episode though. While the world was interesting, the premise itself a classic shounen, we didn’t get much more than that. The protagonist is a bit of a wet blanket and there really aren’t any rules yet established. However if Yaiba can take this first episode and run with it? Expand on the world, and grow the lead? Then I think it can be a great shounen series. All the pieces are there after all. An end goal, a mysterious final boss/demon, a weak character growing strong and plenty of room for good fights. Yaiba just needs to take this framework and start filling it in, and I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Potential: 75%
Mario’s review:
I’ll be honest that prior to watching this episode I don’t have that high of an expectation towards Yaiba. Shonen Jump golden egg and ufotable aren’t something that attract me personally, but the premiere proves to be a worthwhile watch all around. If I have one small nitpick over the presentation, it’s the large amount of narration that nearly threaten to overwhelm the story. It does add a sense of novelty that other action shows usually lack, though. Right at the first episode, Yaiba successfully tells an engaging premise where Demon element fuses naturally to the world. Then it nails it on giving us 3 compelling characters, each stand out in their own ways and set up very well the journey ahead. The visual, in addition, is gorgeous. This episode doesn’t have much of bombastic action sequences, but based on how crips the characters move and how pretty everything looks, be it the background or the character designs, there’s a lot to like here. This could prove to be one of the highlights of this Spring season.
Potential: 70%
Kimetsu no Yaiba
So I decided to give this one a shot. Result: disappointed withing seconds, boredom within minutes, frustration towards the end.
Everyone’s eyes are devoid of expression. Dead inside. Take the mother. Is there a spec of love in her eyes towards her children? On mute I’d believe she was a zombie. Little did I know how not ready I was for the katana guy’s face… The ED shows more characters with – faces, and serious looks, and crazy psychotic expressions (rivaling those in B the Beginning). So much raw emotion, on display in its pure naturalistic form, wow. Finally we have this anime to save us from all those mushy series armed with subtlety and lukewarm expressions. Ufotable outdid themselves here.
Blur. Here we go again. Blur the image, shake the camera, add some motion blur, top off with heavy depth of field for the ultimate blur experience. That’s what they did once. Wow, they evoked 1st person view! Who needs games anymore? 90% of the bgr’s are blured. Who needs bgrs? I feel sorry for the people who drew them.
Writing. “Whenever happiness is destroyed, there is smell of blood.” If you do not get it, it’s fine, they make sure to say it twice. Of course with proper timing and then blood splattered everywhere on the snow so even colorblind people can understand the contrast between then and now. This is the new reality, get used to it!
MC. State of the art shounen-protagonist, voiceed by the shounen-protagonist God himself, man who revolutionized the genre with his role as Inaho (Aldoah Zero) and Kaneki (Tokyo Ghoul). If this doesnt make you raise an eye-brow, you clearly havent seen much. He is one of the few people on par with Kaji Yuki, if you know what I mean… Look (even I can enjoy good Attak on Titan episode and) I respect the voice actors and its not their fault, its the guys making them scream every line in utter anguish to promote their suck-viewer-emotionally-dry drama that hides the fact that their shows have nothing to offer.
5 Everything this show does (like many others before it) reassures you “This time, it’s gonna be different. Look at the effects! No-no-no, please, this time, it’s gonna be different…” Well, insert the famous Vaas Montenegro line…
It’s ridiculous and not worth much. It’s all post-processing and visceral drama guys. Don’t fall for it.
Oh shit, I haven’t seen Yaiba yet, but this is a legitimately hot take. Gonna watch it soon-ish and come back to this.
I didnt realize this is something popular. Its got 4.5/5 on animenewsnetwork and 8.3/10 on MAL. I’ve done it now haven’t I…
I feel like I need to make a statement now.
The thing that gets on my nerves: not every show gets the budget, but lots of them try something more than wow effect, and it does them no good.
Nowadays instead of being themselves, the shows compete. For attention. So they try this and that. It is a game everyone needs to play or they are out. But the viewer is in on it. It is selective and evolving. The bar is higher and the deformation more extreme. Fed by the corpses that didn’t make it, the viewers grow smarter and the creators more cunning, forced to use trends and formulae.
But it gets worse, everyone knows the tropes now. The only thing left to do is to actually be good. So the mainstream shows absorb the truly good qualities, except they crank it up to extreme, because they don’t get it, because if they did, they could just be themselves.
So we ended up with horrible shows that try to be artistic, try to be subtle, try to depict humane characters. But they are not. They are amalgamations, pretty shells. And its getting increasingly difficult to see whats what.
The problem is the good stuff is difficult to make and to consume. So they need to make it edible and thus:
– artistic merit becomes style over substance. Like GoHands’ green/blue filter. Or Shaft’s head-tilts and majority of their meaningless imagery.
– subtlety is lost paradoxically in scenes praised for their attention to detail. Like forceful scene featuring no music or most of KyoAni’s hyperrealistic look-at-how-subtle-that-in-your-face-thing-that-just-occurred-is style that made me absolutely hate everything they produce.
– familiarity becomes necessity. Suddenly studios need a creed, their own style. So we have Ufotable this and KyoAni that, studios milking people’s misunderstanding how very diverse group of people take part in the production. We have everything attributed to single person phenomena (Mari Okada).
Everything becomes extreme, simple, black and white. But the lipstick is shiny and deep!
So in the end the truly good stuff dies off, because the mainstream crowd doesn’t really need it and at first glance it is indistinguishable anyway.
Shows like Kaiba are not inherently bad, but then what are they? They carry no legacy, they wiggle and fizzle in their own statements. Temporary fluff. They are pretty, but what else? This show reeks of that. Of something I remember well: Koutetsujou no Kabaneri. Yeah, that show with the train. What did it ever accomplish?
I think we expected 2 different things from Yaiba. I went into it expecting standard shounen pap, and thats mostly what I got and so I was satisfied. I never expected another Fate/Zero or something. As far as story goes, I don’t think you can judge a series on its story within 1 episode either. Its 2 cour, we have no idea where its going to go from here or what it plans to do. You can judge it for its standard Shounen start, and if you don’t like Shounen then that will be enough to turn you and rightfully so. I did it to Hitoribocchi.
That said, Ufotable makes good looking shows, not particularly well written/subtle ones (Unless Urobuchi is involved, but thats more him then them), so again its a matter of expectation.
I dont think shows need a legacy either, they don’t need to be tied down to the past. Let people try new things. If they want to make a spectacle anime, like Kabaneri, let them. Theres no reason those kind of anime can’t exist. Like, you ask what Kabaneri accomplished, well it made them enough money to warrant a movie. Clearly people liked it enough for it to break even. And if shut your brain off flashy shows are occasionally required to make the industry some money? Cool, I will sit back and enjoy them. Cause I am Shonen Trash and sometimes I just want to unwind. This basically sums up why I love My Hero Academia.
>nowadays
Come on, guy. If you think that anime hasn’t been in competition with itself for audiences’ attention for decades, then your goggles are on too tight. That goes for most other forms of art, as well.
Also, calling Shaft’s imagery “meaningless” or KyoAni’s direction forceful are personal opinions, not silver bullets in your imagined war on insubstantial anime. Boiling down complex productions to individuals or studio names is an age-old marketing practice, not a recent cancer.
As for the hype around Kimetsu no Yaiba and the positive reaction to its first episode, it’s an adaptation of a popular series from the world’s biggest manga publication. Don’t imagine that everybody else has been deceived, and only your eyes remain unclouded. Audience appreciation is subjective, being the sum of many individual tastes. If a lot of those tastes happen to converge at a Yaiba-shaped intersection, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Note: I also dislike Shaft’s headtilts and general style. You are not alone my friend!
Ok
@SuperWooper
Ok
@Lenlo
Well, I had no idea (and no expectations) what this is so I could not go into it more open minded. And I’d like to think I can enjoy anything (be it Eva, Naruto or 13 series of Pretty Cure).
But Kaiba seems to me more like Code Breaker (grrr) + God Eater. As is, I would take bad Boruto ep over this every time. Well, I’ll follow your posts to see if I was right at least.
So I watched Kimetsu no Yaiba. Though I don’t share every one of your criticisms, I do feel that the setup was entirely too obvious, the dialogue was boring despite being loud as hell, and the visuals couldn’t make up for either shortcoming. Still, it’s a supernatural revenge tale that a lot of people like, and that’s okay. Both of us can just skip it and use the time saved in a less mind-numbing way. :^)
Yeah.
You guys did Hitoribocchi dirty. Sure, the episode feels padded, but it’s well-produced and establishes a comforting mood within which to explore a difficult topic. Certainly not destined for greatness, but definitely on the path to competence.
Hey now, I made it clear that I dont like SoL as a genre inherently and that if you do, you will probably like it.
This. I’m surprised myself, particularly since I expected even sillier than Watamote. This is more like Love Lab, which is at arm’s length from Yuru Yuri.
Yaiba looks great and personally I needed a good action anime. Hope you guys cover this.
Long life to Adachi, nice stories, great character art since H2 (Touch looks a little dated IMHO).
This manga has been filmed into an anime. I now are chasing this anime. Last week the episode 5 has been aird. Expect the next episode 6.
Japanese Name: ひとりぼっちの○○生活 #05
Date and Time: 2019-05-05 21:30
TV Channel: アニメシアターX（AT-X)
TV Schedule: nihofun.com/Program/program_460604.html