Clearly Labelled

Posted on 9 September 2023 by MaximumWeeaboo

You get what you pay for with a show called The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses
by Bob Johnson

If you’re sold on the title, then yes, this show will deliver! For the rest of you, starting with the folks far to the other side of the fence, let me remind you of the tried and true fandom advice of “don’t harsh the squee” – a good reminder for any fevered debate, let alone during this hot, hot Summer 2023.

Meganewasu is about a girl… and a guy. For shonen anime, these are not your traditional stars of the show. They’re not motormouths leaping through memetic scenes with finger Vs in the air. There’s no lightning-fast combat, merchable props, or magic cats. It’s just two people with fee~fee~s and a lot of shyness and introspection.

If this was any other show, this would be the B plot. When they interrupt the samurai space battles just to cut to two randos dithering about their hormones-to-spoken-words ratio, I’m the first to shout “SAY IT! SAY IT!” at the screen. But in this case, there’s nothing to derail. You are not going to get palace intrigue in the teachers’ offices at this school. There’s no army of genki girl mecha pilots. This show is hearts and sugar and fluff all the way down.

This is one of those “healing” shows I’ve heard so much about, isn’t it? A weekly meditation on the beauty and melancholy of having a crush, seeing the other maybe-or-maybe-not crushing back, while also already knowing better than to pollute the local social network with ill-considered pickup lines. And it feels real, like Fujichika-sensei is a lady who can speak with a sliver of experience, perhaps?

Though even I have been impatient with the show’s glacial pace, I resisted the urge to watch at double speed, which gives the background art plenty of time to shine. Some of it, like the school entryway CG, is a little overused, but it definitely pops. The way the sunbeams catch the dust in the classroom is not something you usually see outside of full-budget movies or the odd KyoAni production. So it does feel a tad off to see the relative disinterest in animating the background characters.

A school always has students, but might not have pupils.

Is this a feast for 100% of anime fans? Certainly not. But what if you’re tired of only getting a slice of romance with your generic shonen show and want the awkward gawpers stuttering at each other to be the whole meal? Well then, this is your ride. It stretches out those moé shojo-ai tropes wide, long, and soothingly around all of those highs and lows felt while aching another millimeter toward a confession.

Maybe Look It Up:
The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses (Meganewasu) anime
Based on the manga by Koume Fujichika
Produced by GoHands, Licenced by Crunchyroll
Streaming (press time): Crunchyroll

Simping for SkyMiles

Posted on 9 September 2023 by MaximumWeeaboo

The points don’t matter, unless you’re expelled, from Classroom of the Elite
by Bob Johnson

Not everyone’s a high flier. Take Kiyotaka Ayanokoji, for example. He just wants to sail through doing the bare minimum. The only problem is that his dad sent him to this particular boarding school to earn elite medallion status, and the ridiculous games this academy makes its aspirants play would make the most cutthroat Atlanta boardroom blush.

It’s a show, there’s a trial. It’s a show trial.

The students are issued ~~Delta Airlines crew uniforms~~ red blazers, assigned to a lettered “class” team, given a set number of starter points, and then are hounded through a series of crises designed to inspire their permanent tragic desperation and dependency on playing the game. The players are never entirely told the rules, which are constantly in flux anyway, and they really don’t matter until the end of each challenge event, when the scores are totalled, and we find out who has won and who is expelled.

But Kiyotaka has a secret, and a plan. His secret is that he really doesn’t care, and nobody can ever make him. But as long as he’s here, and he has to play the games, he’s going to make sure that nobody sees how well he can play. Hence his carefully cultivated relationship with Suzune Horikita, a too-cool-for-you prep who only cares about her own grades and standing, until Kiyotaka ropes her into helping out the whole class. With Ayanokoji pulling the strings, Horikita begins to win.

But this doesn’t just inspire the team to rally around her, it draws the attention of the school administration and rival classes, who each have their own reasons to keep Class D’s face eating dirt at the bottom of the totem pole. It plays out time and again, with Ayanokoji thwarting each new scheme in turn, coming closer and closer to showing his true skillset.

Along the way, we explore concepts in game theory and tour the DSM-5 in search of new mental illnesses, mainly borne by the ladies of the show as it expands its ecchi harem. Given the kind of show this is, it’s particularly unusual that the show’s first and most important relationship (Kiyotaka/Suzune) is hardly ever treated as a romantic pairing, though that may change next season, who knows?

I’m looking for love! — I’m looking for trade.

Spoiling the show further wouldn’t be fair to you; there’s a special sauce to CotE that I haven’t seen come together anywhere else. Some of the ground it covers was trodden in shows like Moriarty the Patriot, Monster, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans… or for western media fans, think of it as Suits meets Hunger Games meets Poirot mixed with a dash of Cyrano de Bergerac. Bottom line: this show is Code Geass done right. It’s worth a watch, if you want to attend head games high school.

Maybe Look it Up:
Classroom of the Elite (Youzitsu) anime (S1 and S2 reviewed)
Based on the manga by Sakagaki and Shogo Kinugasa
Produced by Lerche, Licenced by Crunchyroll
Streaming (press time): Crunchyroll

The Iron Man You Never Heard Of

Posted on 23 April 2023 by MaximumWeeaboo

A Fine Example of Weird Japanese Cyberpunk
by Bolt Vanderhuge

I am at something of a loss as to describe what Tetsuo: The Iron Man actually is, let alone what it’s about. It usually gets described as a cyberpunk film, but to be honest that’s kind of stretching it. It definitely has the gritty “low life” aspect, but not so much the “high tech” part. I think it would be more fair to call it a Cronenberg body horror film, mainly because that’s the only other experience I have with the kind of gory surrealist body horror that this film revels in. But this film doesn’t play by any rules –it’s underground, yo- so much so that it takes over seven minutes of its 67 minute length to even let you know the title of the movie you’re watching.

It reminds me a lot of the 1977 film Eraserhead by David Lynch in how it was shot in black and white (with the harsh lighting that often goes with that), mostly takes place in a tiny apartment, and is just generally weird and kind of hard to follow in terms of story and plot, at least the first time you watch it. This movie actually does have a pretty straightforward story of revenge against a Japanese salaryman and his girlfriend by someone who apparently likes metal as much as they like having sex while someone they just ran over watches them.

Actually this film is extremely horny the more I think about it.

Both the sexualization of vehicular homicide and the transformation body horror remind me a lot of films by David Cronenberg, though. The main difference is that most of Cronenberg’s films tend to be a bit more straightforward, even if they get a bit surrealist at times. Tetsuo: The Iron Man by contrast is mostly surrealist with some brief respites of seeming reality to let the audience catch its breath before the really weird shit starts to happen.

A lot of reviewers would probably just satisfy themselves with making fun of a movie like this, and things like the robo futa rape would just help fuel that, but I honestly can’t say that this is a bad movie, it’s just fuckin’ weird is all. It’s the kind of thing you might expect a film student to make just to see if they can, with a very unusual sense of humor, and, like I mentioned before, it’s also very horny. There is a lot of stop-motion photography used that just adds to the strange feel of this movie, and the score by Chu Ishikawa really adds to this as well, giving it that ‘80s cyberpunk feel in spite of lacking the high-tech futuristic aspect (as far as I can tell). It very much feels like an anime, but is somehow more surreal because it isn’t.

So while I would generally recommend this movie, there’s a bit of a caveat there. Do you like watching weird shit? If you do, you’d probably like this movie, too. If not, then you should probably avoid it. Since you aren’t going to find this in Netflix and video stores aren’t really a thing anymore, if you do want to watch it without having to buy it first, fortunately archive.org has a copy of it with English subtitles.

…Maybe Check It Out:

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989 film)
Written, Directed, Edited, and Produced by Shinya Tsukamoto
Distributed by Kaijyu Theatres, Licenced by Arrow Video

Redhead gets Boyfriend

Posted on 14 February 2023 by MaximumWeeaboo

Hardly headline news, but Romantic Killer isn’t either
by Bob Johnson

Anzu is a lady who doesn’t have any problems. Her folks take care of her, she loves her cat, she eats a fair bit of chocolate, and she plays dating sims, reasoning correctly that it’s cheaper than the real thing. Mendokusai!

However, a sitcom is defined by the hilarity that ensues from problems, and soon enough, Anzu’s problem is Riri, a flying fairy who shows up screeching nonsense about “Lie Back and Think of Japan” and an attitude toward consent that only a clickwrap corporate lawyer could love. Plus a magic wand to wave around! Suddenly, Anzu’s parents are inexplicably moving to America, chocolate and games have disappeared from the house, and Anzu’s treasured pet is nowhere to be found.

We are then introduced to a series of major and minor husbandos, each of whom offers Anzu an experience straight out of an Otome Game: the brooding hunk in need of healing, the childhood friend who grew up to be all big and muscly (or his trashy friend), the filthy rich brat who needs a tsundere to teach him real love (or his chauffeur, who knows what’s up).

I’M LATE!!! Rule 63 has a brand new look.

Most romance shows rely on a suspension of disbelief to the tune of, “Sure, I’ll believe that all of these coincidences could happen randomly in real life and not according to some screenwriter’s guide on putting a plot thickener just before the second act…” Well, the show prevents you from forming those thoughts; just as things are getting particularly good, Riri pops in to drop an “All According To Plan MUAHAHA”, and then everyone remembers that this is a setup, particularly Anzu.

It is a gameplay loop that lasts until they run out of the most obvious scenarios and theeeeeen, well that’s when you learn that Anzu is *not* the title character. For those who don’t necessarily like having a psychological thriller bolted onto your fluffy romance show, you could literally skip Episode 10, 11, and the first three minutes of Episode 12 and not really miss anything. But even leaving them in, I’m not left with the usual Gonzo Ending aftertaste that has ruined other shows forever. They had to put some denouement in there to set up the sequel, after all!

It is a pretty solid show by Netflix standards (i.e. ‘average’), but nothing to rush through before the password checks go in. I would recommend Romantic Killer for fans of visual novels, and it’s fine for any other bored anime fan looking for something a little fun and flirty.

Maybe look it up:

Romantic Killer 12 episode anime
Based on the manga by Wataru Momose
Produced by DOMERICA, Licenced by Netflix
Streaming (Press Time) : Netflix

How the Mighty Have Fallen

Posted on 9 September 2022 by MaximumWeeaboo

Since When does Production I.G adapt BL Mangas?
by Bolt Vanderhuge

I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t have bothered to watch Moriarty the ~~Communist~~ Patriot if not for my anime group voting for it. I had actually never heard of this before, so I went into it completely unbiased when I started. The fact that Production I.G had done it gave me some hope initially, because back in the ‘90s and early 2000s, they had actually made some pretty good stuff, even it was pretty obvious one or more people there had a huge anti-America boner. While the same attention to technical detail is still alive there, as someone obviously did their homework on Victorian-era Britain. But while the art skills are still there, the writing skill apparently is not.

At first I thought this series might just be some attempt to make the character of Moriarty more sympathetic (as the title calling him a patriot suggests), or at least an attempt to try some kind of a twist on the old Sherlock Holmes franchise by focusing on this character. Essentially, Moriarty shows all the same deductive skills that are stereotypically associated with Holmes, but the “twist” ends up being that the perpetrator of the crimes he solves are all rich aristocrats and the “service” he offers is to arrange for someone else to murder them.

While was not immediately apparent to my dense self, but after the opening monologue started in the second episode and the flashback featured therein, it became obvious that this series is really just socialist revenge fantasy, which frankly was quite horrifying for a freedom-lover like myself to watch.

*The English dub of this scene is … less discriminate.*

The strict class separation of Victorian England really lends itself well to socialist talking points, but the show really does go overboard on it. Part of me wonders if they are just using England as a proxy for Japan, given the taboo against criticizing the Imperial family, but that’s probably giving the writers too much credit given how cartoonishly evil all the aristocrats in this series are depicted. Except for Albert Moriarty, who proves his virtue by murdering his entire family after first talking them into adopting William and his brother Louis. Only after the senior Moriarty paid for Louis to get life-saving surgery, though.

The first part of the series was very formulaic, consisting entirely of some aristocrat doing something completely inhumanly evil, William showing how smart he is by figuring out who committed said wrongdoing and/or finding all the details he needs for him and his crew of fellow commies to murder said aristocrat without getting caught. These “perfect crimes” were to be part of some plan to somehow reform the British Empire, but it wasn’t really apparent how this would be accomplished since it really seemed to be all about the revenge aspect and just how smart William was. I would even have gone as far as to accuse him of being a Wesley Crusher level Gary Stu if not for the fact that he was basically just the pop culture stereotype of Sherlock Holmes but evil.

I was honestly getting bored of this series once the initial shock of Production I.G having gone full commie on me had worn off, but just as I was starting to zone out, the series changed things up by introducing the famous detective and archenemy of Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes. It was at times actually somewhat interesting to see these two play off of each other, but it was also pretty apparent that the show was basically morphing into a yaoi fan-fic. It later became the ultimate crossover fic after introducing a few other characters from the classic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle series by doing some … interesting things with them. For example, Irene Adler went from being able to disguise herself as a man (somehow, in spite of being built like Danni Ashe), to being trans, and being able to beat the crap out of people, to actually being the first James Bond, and first agent of MI6, which was totally invented thanks to William Moriarty’s influence. Upon the reveal of her new name, I laughed my ass off. A character named Billy the Kid also turns up. Stuff like this was the only real entertainment I got out of this series. It’s literally the ultimate yaoi socialist self-insert cross-over fan-fiction.

*Literally the ultimate yaoi socialist self-insert cross-over fan-fiction.*

I guess another example of the hilarity of this show is that it seemed to be structured like the 1997 Berserk series in that it started in 1911 New York City (with a period-accurate skyline) and then flashed back to William Moriarty’s beginning in London, but it’s like the writers forgot to bookend the series, and rather than ending up back in 1911 New York City, it ended in Switzerland. This Rian Johnson level of subverting expectations may be accurate to the manga (I don’t know or care), but it is still pretty funny.

So should you watch this show? Well, that depends. Are you a communist BL fan who also likes Sherlock Holmes? If so, you’d probably like this show, and hijacking planes to get to Red Zone Cuba. Do you like watching absurd things and making fun of them? You will find plenty to make fun of in this series, but it only really picks up toward the end and you really have to wait for the laughs before that. If you don’t want to wade through propaganda to get to the stupidly fun second season, or were foolishly hoping this show might do an actual adaptation of a Conan Doyle mystery, I would recommend that you skip this one and maybe watch Sherlock Hound instead.

Maybe Check It Out:

Moriarty the Patriot
Directed by Kazuya Nomura
Based on the manga written by Ryōsuke Takeuchi and illustrated by Hikaru Miyoshi
Produced by Production I.G

Streaming (press time): Crunchyroll

Quiet Death, or Blaze of Glory?

Posted on 20 April 2022 by MaximumWeeaboo

Yasuke has it all, just not all together. Not unlike its title character.
by Bob Johnson

Here’s a show that came out exactly nine days too late last year: Yasuke. I do not know what chemical blend fuelled the production of this technicolor blur, but my friend has this desperate need to get some of it.

Since there’s very little I can say about Yasuke that hasn’t been said more rudely elsewhere, let’s just start with the positives: This is a beautifully animated show with a killer soundtrack. We’re talking tunes that make you forget how direly anime needs another Nujabes — Flying Lotus could very well rise to the call. Lakeith Stanfield nails the VA for the title role. And well, I can’t really remember the last time I managed to hear about anime on NPR – maybe the FuniCrunch merger made the business section – but they talked up some Yasuke for sure. So Netflix indeed put some weight behind this and marketed the shit out of it, this is not one of the obscure, back-burner titles.

But the plot? It is… hot garbage. It barely budges from the through line of the standard sword-and-damsel plot, plus or minus certain squiggly arrows doodled on the storyboard, all hastily drawn around boxes with fresh Xs drawn through them. This is so palpable I’m trying to spit out the taste of red Sharpie. There’s so much that seems to occur “in between” episodes, almost as if entire extra episodes were meant to have taken place in the meantime. I’d call it Gonzo Ending, but the whole show is this way.

Out of everyone available, I mostly blame Netflix: its famously immutable budgets were unlikely to have covered a full 10 or 12 episodes once the bills started rolling in from MAPPA to draw up LeSean Thomas’ vision. The rest of this show, however epic it was to be, found itself on the cutting room floor.

So, legitimate question: if you were in the same bind, would you decide to go with dull, cheap animation to tell your whole story – or would you turn every knob up to 11, break them off, and spam “robots versus katanas” until your cash ran out?

As odd as it may seem to say, this show’s incompleteness may make it uniquely suited as a “gateway anime” – something to get the new anime viewer hungry for more substantial shows. Anime may be more popular than ever, but there are still plenty of folks out there who don’t fully grasp the capabilities of the medium. One look at Yasuke will cure anyone of that.

Word is that more of this show is coming. I don’t think that, at this late stage, it would make any sense to try to fill it in, as tempting as it may be to complete “missing” episodes. My vote would be for a prequel, as Yasuke’s personal history remains shrouded in mystery.

I would mostly recommend Yasuke for people who are less familiar with anime and want something that can, in about three hours, introduce them to a wide range of anime tropes. And if you like watching anime for the background noise, this is a must-hear.

Maybe look it up:
Yasuke (6 episode anime)
Story by LeSean Thomas and Flying Lotus
Produced by MAPPA, Distributed by Netflix

Love and Friendship in the Hivemind Age

Posted on 14 February 2022 by MaximumWeeaboo

Kokoro Connect takes mistaken identity to a whole new level
by Bob Johnson

Today, we have 3D virtual reality experiences, even people who literally just walk around and livestream their eye-level headspace to the whole world. Most human beings have a great deal of capacity for empathy and reflection, and think easily of what they might do in another person’s place. Yet *literally* walking around in someone else’s shoes is still the stuff of science fiction, and alien body snatcher horror. Smash these ideas together with a high school slice-of-life anime, and suddenly, you have Kokoro Connect on your hands.

*Club advisor Goto in Exposition Dump mode.*

The setup is plainly stated: A jerkwad alien going by the name of Heartseed wants to play “New Rule” at a level never envisioned by Bill Maher, decreeing bizarre psychic swaps and brainleaks between these erstwhile BFFs, and presenting a monotone spiel that makes it clear that the level of regard for their lives is on par with a collegebound kid debating whether to keep or burn an ant farm. Every few episodes, Heartseed returns to shake the ant farm and observe if our characters manage to tunnel out again.

Seeing these concepts play out with random variations over 15 episodes is both wonderful and annoying. Annoying in that we get to see in detail how much certain people “literally can’t even” with whiffs of Shinji Ikari wafting off the steaming pile of certain episode scripts. But also wonderful to see these concepts woven into a semi-realistic tapestry of ordinary lives, which despite all this adversity, still manage to muddle through and find happiness.

Heartseed’s experiments mess only with members of Yamaboshi High School’s Cultural Studies Club, another one of those catchall do-nothing low-membership student clubs so common in anime. The energetic club president, Iori, is joined by just four others: the serious Taichi, the carefree Aoki, icy Inaba, and anxious Yui.

*You couldn’t ask for a more average-looking student club.*

When every day is Freaky Friday, the clubmates have to adapt to strange situations on the fly, occasionally with hilarious results. As they attempt to live their lives without tipping off others to their strange predicament, they’re helped along by the lackadaisical club advisor, Mr. Go, and Iori’s capable, well-organized class rep, Fujishima. Of course, nothing’s perfect, as Mr. Go slips into Jekyll-and-Hyde mode whenever Heartbleed wants to appear, and the romance-obsessed Fujishima often meddles in their already strained relationships.

*Class rep Fujishima says hunger (and love) is the best spice.*

The show’s 17 episodes are split into one 13 episode season and a 4 episode OVA. While it’s often easy to skip extra episodes, in this case the OVA really is essential to wrap things up, so if you decide to watch and don’t otherwise drop off from the show, go ahead and finish it all. In addition to the anime, otaku fond of a quiet sitdown can look at any of the 11 original Kokoro Connect light novels, also translated into English.

The show is alternately sweet and bittersweet, dramatic and comedic, dark and silly. Suffice it to say, it is a moody, non-stop feels train. It’s hard to suggest as a starter show to newbie anime viewers, but it is very much in the same lane as other complex works at the interface of sci-fi/fantasy and relationships, like Revolutionary Girl Utena, Orange, Haruhi Suzumiya, or Your Name.

Despite its complexity, as its overall focus is squarely on relationships, I think Kokoro Connect is worth a watch at this time of year. Sure, you could watch dozens of other romance shows, the ones that dither about clothes and flowers and which member of the harem is best, but where’s the *edge*? Kokoro Connect will hit you right in the gut, and set you back up again. Not bad if that’s what you’re looking for.

Maybe look it up:
Kokoro Connect (13 episode anime + 4 episode OVA)
Based on the light novels by Anda Sadanatsu
Produced by Silver Link, Licenced by Sentai

Streaming (press time): Crunchyroll, HiDive

Binary Stars and other BS

Posted on 7 December 2021 by MaximumWeeaboo

Infinite Ryvius and Twin Spica both serve to bother space otaku
by Bob Johnson

I’m a huge space nerd. But I need to say something about space anime. So many of my favourite anime are set in space: Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, just to name a few. For obvious reasons, Space continues to be a common setting for SF anime. That also means that there’s plenty of disappointing space anime out there (cough Glass Fleet cough). Here, I give half a chance each to two space-themed shows on the wobbly soft end of the space-opera scale, Twin Spica and Infinite Ryvius.

Twin Spica

Twin Spica is an uncommon fusion of soap opera and supernatural mystery, all overdosed on space science trivia. It is also thoroughly Shojo and Slice of Life, and that means it is SLOOoooOOW. It’s about Asumi, a disaster-affected moéblob whose aspiration is to become a “rocket driver” for her dad and her ghost friend. And since this is future-Japan, sure enough, there’s a high school in Tokyo for that!

I think the real height of the show was episodes 4 and 6 (a two-parter split by E05, a filler episode). 4/6 showed the real essence of spaceflight, disguised as an entrance exam. The rest of the show — mostly boredom punctuated by frenzied moments of excitement — is also very on the nose for the flight experience in general.

While there are a fair number of active moments, even borderline awesomeness in this show, it’s important to note how wabi-sabi this all is. Asumi’s quest is not simply a trip to space camp, but a heart-wrenching tale of loss, loneliness, and quiet desperation.

Asumi-chan spills a bunch of CGI on the floor.

Though Twin Spica was crafted to be an edutainment show for younger kids, Japanese sensibilities intrude to prevent me from calling it kid-friendly everywhere. I don’t think a dubbed version was ever officially released in North America, but there is one of those Animax english dubs floating around. Thus, my occasional quest to find chibi-compatible shows continues to strike out. I may personally finish it, though.

Infinite Ryvius

Infinite Ryvius is boring! How do you make space boring? Mainly… have people fight for no reason! Shout and scream all the time and don’t actually do anything! Infinite Ryvius reminds me a bit of Stargate: Universe in this respect. Instead of sending professionals out there, just send a bunch of untrained cadets and chaos agents on your important space mission. That’ll work, right?

*Infiinte Ryvius* in a nutshell: it’s all there ready for you — but why am I not hungry anymore?

Essentially, generic anime protagonist and too many of his classmates are stuck on a sinking space station. Sinking into what? Good question! Not a gravity well or planetary atmosphere though, that would be too obvious. Infinite Ryvius aspires to be a tokusatsu disaster epic, but there is just so much trouble establishing the suspension of disbelief. I despise half of the cast from the get-go, I don’t care for the all-too-obvious mystery elements, but probably its worst offence is that it doesn’t even use real science — much like Space Battleship Yamato 2199’s space-submarine episode, they invented a new form of reality to allow their space station to sink into a space-ocean. I have no doubt there are new discoveries to be made in physics, but I strongly doubt there is any kind of dimensional rift within the solar system that makes this show even remotely plausible.

What’s good about this show? Uhm, well, It’s vaguely actiony and has a hip-hop soundtrack. The dub – tastefully cheesy – may be enough to put this show on a “so bad it’s good” groupwatch. But I just cannot get past the third episode on my own without falling asleep.

Maybe look it up:
Twin Spica (Futatsu no Spica) 20 episode anime
based on the manga by Kou Yaginuma
Produced by Group TAC

Don’t look it up:
Infinite Ryvius 26 episode anime
Written by Yosuke Kuroda, Directed by Goro Taniguchi
Produced by Sunrise, Licenced by Sentai

Blander than Maruchan

Posted on 9 September 2021 by MaximumWeeaboo

Dear Naruto, “more” doesn’t mean “better”. Believe it!
by Bob Johnson

Sometimes you don’t want to eat anything special, just a big bowl of ramen. Maybe you pop in an extra pack because you have dozens laying around. Maybe one of those generic microwave pot stickers today, too. Maybe you bought a few too many and now you feel stuck eating the same thing every day. Welcome to Naruto, the endless soup and dumplings of anime. It’s not over (nor do I think it ever will be), but I can tell you my thoughts on the entire first series.

I don’t begrudge the folks who loved this show because it aired at just the right time in their lives. But I do see this for what it is, a middle-of-the-road long-running shonen. The gag comedy has been done before. The strategy and fighting has been done before. And it’s just so … generic and all-pervasive that it became its era’s definition of stereotypical anime, much like Pokémon or DBZ had been just a few years before. I might never have watched it without 2019’s avalanche of Yang Gang memes making me feel left out. Fortunately enough, Naruto seems to be at least a cut above its progenitors on the list of “I don’t really watch anime” anime.

When it comes to the show itself – well, there’s a big difference between wanting to be the strongest and actually being the strongest. For the entire series, the character of Naruto straddles the line between these two categories. Plainly irresponsible and inexperienced, his discipline level keeps him in the first bin. Yet if he had full control of his raw power, he could very well be in the second and achieve his dream of being village chief.

Even among ninja who walk on water and run-fly spread-armed through forest canopies as ~~an animation cost-saving measure~~ a basic chakra ability, Naruto is special. The power of the Nine Tailed Fox deep within him can grant him supercharged powers, which he uses almost as much for pranks as for training and fights.

Along for the ride is Sakura, his perpetual un-girlfriend who expresses herself primarily through skyward right hooks, and Sasuke, a too-cool-for-you ninja at the top of the class, who has little but contempt for Naruto’s silliness, or anyone else for that matter. They are assigned to a fighting team lead by Kakashi, a teacher and senior ninja.

Bound together in more of a rivalry than friendship, they take on jobs that need a surprising amount of strategy (and civil engineering!) until sinister agents upend the safety of their hometown, succinctly called “The Village Hidden In The Leaves”. Conveniently, this is exactly at the time of their final exams for ninja school. So naturally, as the protagonists in a kids’ anime show, they wipe the floor with the invaders and send them packing in a comedy gag?

You’d think so … except, no. This is when the kids get to grow up and deal with the real world. As much as it is about the title character’s antics, the show is also about an untold history, and from this point, as the tale unfolds we see the tapestry of prior generations unravel as Naruto learns their secrets.

Naruto aims to be Fire Lord. Problem, Prince Zuko?

But even as I admit that there’s more to this show than meets the Sharingan, I still have to take it down a peg. Older folks who remember the show fondly may find it’s not exactly small-tyke stuff when Naruto’s Sexy Jutsu or Jiraiya’s penchant for hotsprings pops up. All of that is baked into the modern streaming editions; the old TV edit isn’t particularly easy to find anymore.

And of course, this show is many things but it is not in a hurry. Naruto takes 40 episodes to “get good” – in that same amount of time, you could have watched 3 whole shows instead! The full run of 220 is positively languid, many of them just filling time. I’m not even complaining about the anime-original stuff versus the manga (a topic I’ll leave to the true believers), but how it pads things out with inner dialogue, fight windups, pointless gags, and recaps. Even today when you can click ahead and watch at accelerated speed, it can get annoying to deal with.

All this filler is starting to bug me. (No offense, Shino)

If you’ve already seen it, you know what’s up, and you know the parts that deserve a skip or a rewatch. But why would you ever watch this monstrosity if you hadn’t already? First, its cultural bigness can be considered a feature rather than a bug. Wearing a Naruto shirt can get you easy street cred far and wide, even on a hiking trail in the wilds of South Dakota. Fans of better anime need much better luck sporting their colours in the wild.

But perhaps more importantly, Naruto teaches life skills. This is a place where our heroes are always digging deep for that last bit of energy and doing their best to grow and improve. There’s immeasurable value in holding to that same stick-to-it-ive attitude in one’s own life.

Maybe Look It Up:
Naruto (2002) 220 episode series
based on the manga by Masashi Kishimoto
Produced by Pierrot, Licenced by Viz

Taisho Baseball Girls is SAFE!

Posted on 20 April 2021 by MaximumWeeaboo

Mostly harmless but with an otaku bonus
by Bob Johnson

I first heard about Taisho Baseball Girls as I was working on my Sayonara, Zetsubo-Sensei review, and for whatever reason, it’s a show that continued to stick in the back of my mind. Finally, a wave of ‘not much better to do’ collided with an upcoming edition, and I figured this would be a pop fly. It was going to be awesome. I was going to crush someone’s soul with a +2 frying pan of rejection. And if someone dared to complain about me beating up a defenceless pile of moéblobs, I’d just say “We publish most Aprils! It’s Baseball Season! It was going to happen eventually!”

So imagine my shock to discover that I actually enjoyed watching this show.

Why hello Koume… Want to star in a seinen with me?

What?!

What is up with that Akiko leer? What is up with everything down to the baseball methods and stats being spot on? As it turns out, despite the name, despite the PG rating, Taisho Baseball Girls is not a glittery-saccharine, ‘let’s do our hair’ shojo. It’s a grit-and-determination, ‘let’s not tell mom and dad’ seinen.

Sure, there is yuri subtext just waiting to burst all over a fanfic writer’s keyboard. But if this was *just* about fanservice, why bother going to all the trouble of a historical piece? In 2009, the heyday of ‘X but with cute girls’ shows, you could just roll up a batch of waifus, coat them in pearl sugar, and bake them in the oven into some kind of The Sandlot ripoff (or nothing in particular) and just cash in. If that was the only goal, why even bother setting it in the 1920s?

Because this show needs ~Drama~! All-too-real drama about how “girls can’t play baseball.” Maybe you can still hear that false and mean-spirited taunt going around in more recent years, but a century ago, it was just about how Japanese society really would have reacted.

Japan’s Taisho era (1912-1926) is often remembered fondly as a time when Westernization was ongoing but hadn’t reached its endpoint, and national politics seriously flirted with actual democracy. Individuals in Japan were perhaps freer to choose their paths in the Taisho era than in the years immediately before or after, so it’s a great setting for historical fiction. (see also: Gosick)

Yet through the eyes of these aspiring young women, we can clearly see that within these rose-coloured lenses lays a paradox: though it was an age that was better for *some* people in *some* ways, it was not better for *all* – and the events of TBG clearly demonstrate how things were not always rosy. This was a time when a woman *picking her own husband* was a science fiction concept from the distant future year of 1947.

So, perhaps counterintuitively, if you’re going to have a show about cute girls doing cute things in this era, they’re probably all going to be rebels. That leads me to the heroine of this story, Akiko. Though technically second banana, Akiko is the driving force of the show from the start. She’s from a wealthy family, but was married off and lives essentially in a gilded cage. But she does still have some friends at school, and a defiant dream to stand up for herself and the role of women outside the home. But she’s rather isolated, so she turns to her BFF to help get a band together.

Koume, though nominally the protagonist, is not all that interesting. She’s a waitress at her parents’ restaurant, serving period-accurate fusion cuisine. The only things that she truly wants are a new set of clothes, and to not to disappoint her friends. Mainly we see her reacting with alarm or stubbornness to the events around her. Only rarely does she drive things forward personally.

The remaining characters add more fun and flavour, though apart from Noe’s quest for management-quality information on the Asaka baseball team, most of the antics aren’t necessarily plot-essential.

If you think that anything from the 2000s that moés up a clutch of anime girls is asinine, or that most forms of the training montage are mind-numbingly boring, then you’ve probably already zoned out. This is not a show for everyone, indeed, this is a show for some very specific kinds of weebs.

You’ll probably appreciate TBG if you like Japanese history, or if you’ve been known to join Hana Oshiroi in the art of keyboard-bending, and also if you enjoy the Great American Pastime. If you are a Sub purist, your fancy might also be tickled by the fact there’s no English dub at all!

Are you looking for a samurai tale with challenge letters and duels? A bittersweet tale about about how love is shortchanged by the institution of arranged marriage? A gag comedy slice of life? Something yurilicious? It’s all in the tin here – Taisho Baseball Girls provides a bit more than you’d guess at first glance.