And it all came to an end. 10 years ago today, on March 16, 2001, the grand finale, and the longest episode of FLCL, FLCLimax (originally Furi Kura) was released on DVD. It brought forth the 3rd amazing episode in a row and also provided a worthy finish to this great series, one that left me speechless and sad that it was over. But it didn’t leave me wanting more. Rather, it made me happy that the work was so complete, so well constructed from start to finish.

This is the last post in a series of posts I’ve made celebrating the 10th anniversary of the release of each of the episodes of FLCL. As for all the posts before this, I did not rewatch the episode before writing this and instead chose to write based on my memories. The last time I watched the series was in the summer of 2009. You can read the previous posts here: (1 & 2: Fooly Cooly and Firestarter) (3: Marquis de Carabas) (4: Full Swing) (5: Brittle Bullet).

I don’t know if it came to me upon first viewing or later on, but what stayed with me was how well this final and the 1st episode bookended the series (indeed, there was a symmetry to the whole 6 episode series in some aspect). The most obvious thing the 2 episodes had in common was the manga dinner scene, which was an exact copy of the one in the 1st episode, at least at the start. There was also the title of the episode, Furi Kura, just 1 letter away from Furi Kuri, the title of the 1st episode. The use of The Pillows’s One Life right before the halfway cut as Naota bemoaned the boring life in this town while crying into Haruko’s bosom was similar to the series’s cold open leading to the title shot, in which he was being held by Mamimi. Right down to the overhead view of the iron-shaped Medical Mechanica factory. On a higher level, the episode started off with a slow, melancholy, almost dejected mood before Haruko entered and brought life to the setting, much like the 1st episode. And there was the epilogue as well, showing Ninamori taking Naota’s, a much more appropriate girl for him than Mamimi in the 1st episode.

These couple frames in which Naota became doe eyed somehow felt so significant.

Of course, to get to the epilogue this episode provided the climax proper. The yellow saturated finale, starting with The Pillows’s Last Dinosaur, followed by I Think I Can when Naota took Atomsk’s power remains one of my favorite scenes in anime. It lacked the raw emotional magic of the episode 4 climax or the high octane action of the episode 5 climax, but it was a worthy finish to this chain of 3 incredible episode climaxes. Seeing Haruko really upset for the 1st time was a bit jarring, and it would be some time later that I realized its significance in the series as a whole.

And it delivered the single most powerful moment in the series, when Naota, having beaten Haruko handily, dove at her and… said, “I like you” before stealing a kiss from her (the fansub I had translated the “suki” as “I’m in love with you,” which sounded even more powerful to me, though I’d learn later it wasn’t the best translation). There was something amazing about this simple moment, when our hero finally got the guts to say what he said and do what he did. It was an ultimate moment of catharsis, when all the emotional tension and pressure that had been building up throughout the series was released, with a simple, “I like you” and a kiss. The first one he initiated, one he had wanted so badly from the start.

This image was my wallpaper for a long time after I watched this.

In typical FLCL fashion, it was followed by a literal explosion, but all that was just the aftermath, the falling action before the denouement. I remember being heavily moved by the ending. Some of it was the sadness from watching the series end. Some of it was that it was a bittersweet ending, in which both Haruko and Mamimi left Naota. But more than anything, the ending was one of hope, showing Naota go on with his life, moving on to middle school, with a girl who genuinely liked him, not one who just wanted to use him. Mamimi’s story ended with hope as well, as she moved on from her stuck crush on Tasuku and left the town that had been nothing but abusive to her, to discover her own path (she likely learned a lesson about the futility of revenge as well, seeing what her “Ta-kun” this time ended up doing).

Certainly, life would not be easy for any of our protagonists. But life isn’t supposed to be. It’s about moving forward with what you have, making the best of it. This was how the most mature characters in this series – Haruko and, as this episode revealed during his conversation with Naota’s teacher Miyaji, Naota’s father – approached their lives. By the end, Naota and Mamimi had learned it as well.

Mamimi Samejima. She knew how to make smoking look cool.

Of course, this being FLCL, it was technically and artistically excellent throughout. One scene that stood out to me was Mamimi’s first meeting with the Terminal Core under the bridge, when she nonchalantly took a giant step towards it and shuffled over next to it discreetly before calmly turning to it and blowing smoke on it. There’s also a shot of her that has stayed with me, when she was enacting revenge on the scooter that had splashed her earlier in the episode, her dead eyes calmly watching the robot devour the scooter, her face only illuminated by the cigarette in her mouth.

Another memorable scene was the aforementioned hug between Naota and Haruko. When Haruko went from playfully poking fun at Naota to seriously asking him if he wanted to run away with her, when Naota’s usual barrier dropped down, his eyes swelled, and he cried into her bosom. The slow pan up to Haruko’s bored eyes as the sensor on her wrist started to clang once again, and The Pillows’s One Life fading in. It was a perfectly directed scene.

"Good bye, Naota-kun." A beautiful transition into the epilogue, Mamimi finally letting go and calling Naota by his real name.

I don’t know if or how watching the entire last half of the series in a row affected my initial reaction to it. As I’ve written before, I consider the final 3 episodes of FLCL to be a set, each a great episode in its own right with a powerful, exciting climax set to a rocking energetic song by The Pillows. The reason that they’re a set is that they worked together to form the final half of this series. Episode 4 saw Naota triumph over his fears of swinging the bat, episode 5 saw his downfall as he learned that he wasn’t “all that,” that the women around him were just using him. And episode 6 saw him triumph again, but differently. As amazing as he had been once he turned against Haruko, he wasn’t filled with joy or excitement afterward. He looked calm, almost serene, as Haruko sarcastically blamed him for losing Atomsk and said good bye.

It was as if he had finally learned that important fact, perhaps the most important fact about being an adult: there is nothing amazing or special about it. The path to adulthood isn’t one with leaps and bounds, it’s one defined by its gradual progression, of growing accustomed to new things little by little.

Naota wasn’t there yet, but he learned what it meant to grow up. And that was all I needed to see.

And as one story ends, another begins. However, it is not FLCL's role to tell that story. This is how it should end.

So this is a bit of a cheat, as it’s about something from 2000, not 2010. It’s about something exactly 10 years ago, in fact, as today, December 21, 2010, is still the 10th anniversary of Gainax’s release of the 5th episode of FLCL, Brittle Bullet. This is part of a series of posts I’m making on looking back at FLCL 10 years later. Like all my other posts, I opted not to rewatch the episode for the post and to write based only on memory instead. You can read the other posts here: (1 & 2: Fooly Cooly and Firestarter) (3: Marquis de Carabas) (4: Full Swing).

I see this as a bit of an odd episode. It was right in the middle of the tour de force that was the entire 2nd half of FLCL, yet it didn’t have the same magic of episode 4 or the significance of being the true climax of episode 6. Still, this episode was a major part of the reason that the last half of FLCL was as amazing as it had been, and it provided some of the best action sequences in the show while also pushing the plot along.

What got me about the episode at first was the action. It was full of it, from the opening BB gunfight between Naota and his father, to Amarao’s encounter with Haruko at the barber shop, to the climactic scene in which Haruko, dressed up as Gainax’s old Daicon girl, battled it out against the gigantic gunslinging hand robot.

I remember fondly the John Woo style scene at the barbershop, in which Haruko decimated Amarao’s troops with ease (speaking of John Woo, I loved the reference to him at the beginning of the episode, when the Nandaba family was watching some action movie on TV in which doves suddenly start swarming everyone, eventually escaping from the TV and entering their living room). One shot that stayed with me was when she was shown dodging bullets, not by avoiding them per se, but rather by changing the shape of her body to have holes where the bullets would hit. Or what about the scene just before, when Haruko cleanly sliced in half Amarao’s bullets using nothing but a pair of shaving razors? Talk about fucking badass.

This single take sequence is one of my favorites in any anime.

Of course, if you want badassery, what about taking down a gunslinging hand robot while riding a bass guitar like a hoverboard and using a slingshot as the weapon? Haruko’s devil may care attitude as she performed beautiful acrobatics, flying around and shooting and running on the gunslinger’s gun was a joy to watch. As was her display of more of her unique bullet dodging abilities. There was a great humorous touch of realism as well, as the oversize shells from the robot’s guns fell right into the path of Amarao and Kitsurubami (those shells actually reminded me a lot of Gainax’s earlier masterpiece Neon Genesis Evangelion, in which the gigantic humanoid robots got proportionately sized tools and objects). And of course the climax was distinctly FLCL, featuring Canti pulling out a glowing guitar from his face as both Haruko and Amarao, watching in awe, yelling out in unison, “That’s Atomsk’s Gibson EB Zero, 1961 edition!” And just as the all of The Pillows’s Crazy Sunshine played in the background during the final action sequence of the previous episode, their Blues Drive Monster played through this one, providing upbeat, energetic accompaniment to the equally playful scene taking place.

One of the truly iconic shots from this show. Let it never be said that FLCL was subtle.

I haven’t even mentioned its beautiful use of guns for transitions. Gunshots were used to connect many scenes, from the opening BB gunfight to a flashback of them watching an action movie the night before, from Amarao and Haruko’s initial exchange at the barbershop to Mamimi shooting Naota with the BB Uzi, from Kitsurubami freaking out on Canti back to the completion of Amarao and Haruko’s exchange at the barbershop, and even Ninamori seeing the dumped and depressed Mamimi through the green squirt gun she won via the aforementioned popsicle.

I would be remiss not to mention the famous South Park parody scenes. They were stuff just out of left field and helped add to the crazy, surreal feeling that was so important to the FLCL experience. It didn’t occur to me until a later viewing, but the latter scene, in which Naota played the role of Kenny, unable to produce anything more than muffled sounds when talking to Mamimi, may have been a foreshadowing of how his ego was about to get killed in a couple of gruesome ways in the rest of the episode.

It's funny that now in 2010, 10 years later, Gainax once again parodied South Park with the beach episode of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. Were there any others in between?

But more significant than all the heart pounding  action was the intense character development taking place throughout the episode. One scene that I didn’t fully understand the first time around was the imagery of fellatio created by Ninamori sucking on her popsicle. Of course, it represented the overwhelming praise Naota was receiving from his friends in that scene. But what of when she bit the popsicle off? Did it show how Ninamori was one who had not been taken in by the hype and didn’t see him as some super hero? Or was it a foreshadowing of what would happen later in the episode, when Naota would be taken back down to Earth by learning that, in Mamimi’s eyes, he was still not equal to his brother?

That was the heart of this episode: Naota’s realization that even after everything he did throughout the show, to Mamimi, he was still nothing more than “Ta-kun,” the little brother to the one she really loved, a replaceable substitute. He was brimming with confidence as he forcibly dragged her to the cafe then tried to get a kiss, only to be rejected. But the breaking point was when they were on top of the gunslinger, Mamimi yelling out for help over and over again not to him but to his brother, “Tasuku-senpai,” even though he was right there next to her. His anger blew up then, and it was clear that he was trying to hide the immense pain he felt from Mamimi rejecting him so completely.

This was easily one of my favorite and most powerful moments in the show. It perfectly delivered the anger and confusion that the adolescent Naota must have felt at this rejection.

It was a pretty powerful moment. The episode ended with Naota getting rejected by another female, this time Haruko, who carelessly landed right on top of him to get next to the awakened Canti as she looked on with admiration. What this episode showed both to Naota and to the viewer was that despite everything, Naota was nothing more than a tool to these women whom he liked and thought cared for him. If the ending of Full Swing showed Naota hitting his zenith, the ending to Brittle Bullet showed him on his way to rock bottom.

At the beginning of the episode, Haruko was on top of Naota, wearing nothing but a towel, in bed. Here they are again, but in a very different way.

Looking back now, it’s hard to believe just how chock full of things this episode was. It started with the threads from the previous episode of Naota and his father competing over Haruko and Mamimi’s disappointment at seeing that Naota was one to swing the bat and ended with Naota being dumped by two women whom he thought liked him. In between, we got to learn a little more about Amarao’s past with Haruko – how he had been unceremoniously dumped by her when he was no longer a use to her – we got to see the effects of Atomsk’s manliness in Kitsurubami falling in love with Canti, and we were finally treated to the first glimpse of the “final boss” since the first episode, the red Canti without Naota within.

But more than anything, the nonstop wild action was what I took away from this episode on my first viewing. It was just plain fun, and it was a reminder that, for all the notoriety it gained with the ending to the Evangelion series, Gainax was an action oriented studio, and even if it wouldn’t do it in the most traditional of ways, it could still blow your socks off with its action. And even though, again, this episode didn’t have the power or significance of either of the episodes sandwiching it, it was a key component of what had made the last half of FLCL so special, and the Blues Drive Monster scene is one that easily stands toe to toe with any other action sequence in anime.

I leave you with another one of my all time favorite shots, so cool that Gainax decided to show it twice, from different angles!

Well, this one was a bit of a misstep. It wasn’t bad, it was amusing enough, but the style of humor was very different from the norm, resulting in something decidedly more run of the mill and boring than usual.

The first half turned out to be more about wacky vending machine food than anything else. Which was certainly quirky, but not all that funny. It was just cute girls doing cute things, without any hook, and that has already been done to death in the anime world. It’s not fun anymore. The faraway and silhouette shots, which Shaft usually uses to good effect, were actually kind of ugly and only served to remind us of how much money they must be saving. And I don’t know what to make of Harue’s surprise appearance at the end of the segment, other than that maybe they wanted to get their money’s worth from Ryoko Shiraishi, as she had to be in the 2nd half of the episode.

Seriously, this was this show's Chocolate Cornet Moment. I was impressed that Hotori knew what Esperanto was, though.

And no sooner than I start drawing comparisons to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya does Yet the Town Keeps Going bring out a concert-at-the-culture-festival episode. I appreciate that it didn’t go the Haruhi/K-On/Angel Beats route of having (what’s supposed to be) a normal, poppy rock song, but rather stuck with the old timey whimsical tune similar to the ED. The peculiar collection of instruments certainly fit well with the whole off-mainstream feel of the song.

But they could have milked this culture festival concert story a lot more. I don’t even mean stretching it out over more episodes or even to a full episode, though either would certainly work given that over a month passes through the course of the half episode. I mean using the story to show us more interesting interactions between the protagonists. They are what have made this show entertaining, after all. Instead, the sequence of events was surprisingly straightforward. Futaba wants to perform at the culture festival. She gets a time slot at the stage. She recruits Harue on drums (with some manipulation using table tennis), learns that Toshiko and Hotori play instruments, recruits them, then they perform. Not much else.

The pan-up of Futaba before this scene was great. If Shaft still did the still-pan-ups that they used to do so much of in the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei shows, I would've had a great stitched shot of her.

There were many chances for humor that were simply missed or glossed over. How about that whole month when the 4 had to learn the song and practice? When did they choose to go with the maids theme, and why? Who made Futaba’s stunning outfit? Then what about the days of the actual festival? How did they spend their time? What sorts of fun misadventures did our unique heroines run into? They’re not for us to find out.

I did like how the ED sequence ended up being genuine; just as Futaba had been revealed to play the bass a couple episodes back, Hotori does play the accordion – an instrument that fits her eccentric nature, taught to her by the head maid – Toshiko does play the violin, Harue does play the drums, and they all do perform together in maid outfits. But then again, this sort of gag had been done before, in Lucky Star, with the OP sequence. Except that Kyoto Animation is much better at animation than Shaft is. As cute as the concert was, the fact that the instruments didn’t exactly match up to the music was a huge distraction. That’s just one of those things that I’ve come to expect in this post-Haruhi anime world.

This should look familiar to anyone who's seen the ending to Lucky Star. I am unfortunately one of them.

So this week’s episode was lackluster, especially after the both hilarious and powerful episode it was following. In fact, it was the worst since the bland first episode. The show bounced back strong after that initial misstep and kept going to this point, so I’m hopeful that it will start hitting its marks again next week and continue on to the end.

The third parallel story arc, featuring the shy and quiet first year Sae Nakata as the heroine, finished up last week. True to form, the story was not compelling in the slightest, the characters were typical to a fault, and everything came together far too easily. But by twisting the storytelling formula just slightly, AIC turned the entire ship around and produced what is easily the best arc of the anime yet. In fact, the success I saw in this arc leaves me with hope that AIC is fully aware of how to handle Amagami SS, and it could end up being one of the best high school romance series in recent years. Do I sound crazy? Read on.

What a difference 4 episodes can make! After Haruka’s arc to start the show, my outlook on this show couldn’t have been more negative. Yet Kaoru’s arc had left me even more in despair by providing a story that started with promise before it fizzled out at about the halfway point. To quote myself from the previous post: “I do intend to stick with this show all the way to the bloody end.” I was not optimistic, to say the least.

But Sae’s arc was a complete turnaround, a great chapter of this anime that had been notable only for its extraordinary failings. In fact, the execution in this arc leaves me hopeful about the direction of this show in general, something I never would have predicted just a month ago.

Haruka made some great appearances in this arc, including her response to, "What does it mean when a girl says she doesn't want to be your little sister?"

Let’s start with the story: there was nothing about these past 4 episodes that were any better than the previous 4 or the 4 before that. Junichi was as uncharismatic as ever, and a little creepy if anything in how he dominated Sae from the very beginning. I did like how the story started out in the summer, showing just how malleable the formula could be, even if the core elements – Junichi’s rejection from 2 years ago, his star-decorated closet, the finale on Christmas – have to remain the same.

And our heroine Sae was somehow even more boring than our hero, with a personality defined solely by the one characteristic: shy. Especially compared to the relatively powerful figures of Haruka and Kaoru of the first two arcs, Sae’s meek and unobtrusive personality was frustrating at times. Seriously, the girl spent 3 weeks training for an interview to get a job as a waitress because she couldn’t talk to people normally.

The plot point that Sae was a transfer student from a rich family was just dropped after the first episode.

Also, her squeaky, high pitched, so-soft-that-it’s-barely-there voice was hard to bear at times (alas, there is but one Mamiko Noto in this world). Her voice was about the same in her ED song, though the animation and art, sometimes reminiscent of Bakemonogatari’s Nadeko OP (Renai Circulation), made the sequence overall better than the first 2.

But none of the story’s glaring flaws ended up mattering in the slightest, thanks to the new approach to the storytelling taken by the show. Perhaps the simplest way of putting it is, the show “got it.” It came in on its own joke and successfully turned into a parody of itself. After Haruka’s awesomely miserable arc, I had decided to keep watching the show out of a macabre fascination, just to see how much it could fall. Perhaps the producers at AIC shared my macabre fascination and decided to make fun of the ridiculousness of the source material instead of simply accepting it and running with it.

The overuse of brushed shots like this aided the humorous storytelling greatly.

“What if Amagami SS turns out to be good?”

Partway into the second episode of the arc, that truly shocking thought occurred to me. It was one of those things that seemed so patently ridiculous that I felt I should be committed for merely entertaining the thought, but somehow, it all made sense, and it still does.

Bear with me, if you will, and listen to the musings of someone who is likely insanely optimistic in the most literal way possible. What would you do if you were a creative, ambitious director handed the responsibility of adapting Amagami into an anime (remember, Amagami SS is directed by Yoshimasa Hiraike, the same guy who directed last season’s excellent Working!!)? A work that is so horrendously derivative, whose characters are insultingly flat, whose attempt at romance is so filled with cliche and misogyny that, well, it makes normal anime look positively feminist by comparison? What would you do?

Wouldn’t you want to make a big “fuck you!” to the original work and its fans? Wouldn’t you want to use this opportunity, to use this adaptation as a platform to criticize the very source material you are adapting? Get a bit of attention by announcing that each of the six stories will get its own adaptation. Then use the first 2 to show everyone just how disastrous straight up adaptations of these typical wish fulfillment dating sim romance stories would be. Next, you turn the tables on the audience. You use the 3rd adaptation to show everyone that you’ve been in on the joke all along. The 4th through 6th? We’ll see.

No fetish kissing scene this arc, though we do find out that Junichi is into furries. And there was obviously that fish footjob scene at the bath in episode 10.

Anyway, as I wrote above, on its own merits, the story was bad. It was exactly what I’ve come to expect out of Amagami SS. There were times when I genuinely felt like cringing, when I really thought that there was no way that the show could bounce back from such a horrible turn of events (some scenes that pop to mind: ro sham bo game at the end of episode 9, speed changing in episode 10, public tentacoo wape in episode 11, gothic lolita + Engrish director in episode 12, I could go on). But each time, the narrator graciously guided us back up from whatever hole the show looked to be digging for itself.

Ah yes, the narrator. He was not just the most influential factor in turning this terrible romantic comedy into a satire, he was the one and only factor. From the very beginning of the first episode, when he made a small dig at Junichi (to which Junichi actually responded) he showed us that this arc wasn’t going to be like the others. He was there to provide balance to the ridiculous things that would go down, to laugh at them along with us, to affirm our disbelief and awe.

Another very nice, self-aware touch, from episode 9. Again, it told us that this arc wouldn't be like the others.

Yet he was not a cynic. His voice was always warm, and he spoke of the destined love story between our two protagonists without irony. He successfully portrayed the wise old man looking at kids experiencing the follies and adventures of youth, appreciating it for what it was, but also fully aware of how silly it was. He rooted for Junichi and Sae, but he wasn’t above making fun of them. In short, he was the proper companion with whom to watch this story unfold.

And again, he kept turning up at just the right times. He wasn’t overbearing or omnipresent like the narrator of Ookami-san and Seven Companions. He didn’t overstay his welcome. There were times when he would disappear for perhaps a bit too long, letting the tension build as the show started to go south. But that made the release during his return all the more satisfying. Prime example being the climax at episode 12, when Junichi and Sae were at the movie theater. The gothic lolita costume, combined with the movie director’s appearance and the tipping chair cliche threatened to put a cringe-inducing cap to the whole thing, but the narrator came back to describe in detail how the cuteness overload “killed” Junichi, putting a decidedly comedic spin on things.

The talking vending machines from episode 10 provided one of my favorite comedic moments.

And that really was all that was needed. Tragedy and comedy are two concepts separated by a hair’s breadth. Whereas first two arcs of Amagami SS were tragically bad – the first one was comedically so – Sae’s arc took that tragedy and spun it around to create a full-on self aware comedy. That is why it was successful.

Going forward, can AIC replicate this success with the second half of the show? There is the worry that this self deprecating approach to the storytelling may have been just a one-off thing, and we’ll go right back to the facepalm of Haruka’s and Kaoru’s arcs again. The cynic in me says to expect that. But the optimist in me says to hope for AIC to build on what they’ve done with Sae’s arc. Throw us a narrator who is more cynical, more ironic, more critical. Do that for the next arc, and then use the final 1/3 of the arcs to really throw the fans in for a loop by presenting complete deconstructions of the stories. In other words, instead of merely transferring the source material to a new medium, adapt it while also injecting its own criticisms of the original work. I know I’m hoping for too much. But it’s nice to want things. And the mere fact that I’m entertaining these thoughts is a testament to AIC’s cleverness and nimbleness when it comes to creating Amagami SS.

After the “ending” of the main plot provided in the previous episode, I was expecting one final side story to take advantage of this show’s premise. Turns out, I was hoping for too much, as another main plot thread returned before taking several steps back. It was a somehow fitting way to end this series, which kept raising expectations, only to spend the rest of the time crushing them.

As a stand alone episode, this one had its moments. I took a liking to Machiko Himura, the poor girl with a paper delivery route, right away. Instead of being frail like the character from the original story, she was energetic and someone who took initiative for changing her fortune. By marrying into money, obviously. She was great fun when she was attempting to seduce Ryoushi, being the only one oblivious to how crazy she was acting and how much attention she was was drawing. It’s easy to like a character who is so delightfully delusional.

Unfortunately, things turned too quickly from, “I’ll engineer a situation to make you fall in love” to “Marry me, because you’re rich.” And with that came back to focus the Ryouko/Ryoushi romance story, which was handled shockingly poorly. It was, in a word, typical. That is to say, it was so much like every other tsudere/spineless loser relationship out there that I was surprised, if that makes any sense.

"I don't dislike him." Really, Ryouko? After all this time, is that all you have to say?

There was plenty of blame to go around. There was Ryoushi, who just let Machiko drag him along, instead of declaring the truth, which is that he already had someone else. There was Ryouko, who just let that happen and, in the end, simply had, “I don’t dislike him” to say about Ryoushi. I thought we had pushed past this phase in the last episode, that Ryouko had come to terms with being the person for Ryoushi. But no, I guess J.C. Staff couldn’t resist spending a full episode showing Ryouko as tsuntsun – that’s what the fans seem to like, after all, character development be damned.

His girlish moaning was insufferable in this scene. I thought Mr. Cat had given you Courage last episode?

All I wanted was a simple atomic episode to provide some laughs before the door finally shut on this series. But if episode 11 failed to provide closure, this one took a door that was nearly closed and forced it back wide open. My guess? The producers want this franchise to go places and to keep the fans coming back, and you don’t do that by providing an ending when the show, you know, ends. Oh, what the heck, the cynic in me knows that’s exactly why this show ended the way it did.

Series End

So another show comes to a close. I think I’ve written enough this week and last to show my distaste for the way things ended. The ending is, of course, the most important part of a story, though its failings can be excused if the quality of the ride leading up to it was good enough. Ookami-san and Seven Companions is not an example of such a piece of work.

To be sure, the ride had some fun moments. That first episode that had originally filled me with such hope was excellent, primarily thanks to its unique adaptation of the Cinderella story. Along the way, the show shone brightest during such adaptations, and episodes 3, 8, and 9 – ones whose primary content were straight up adaptations of fairy tales were my favorites. Other highlights include the Hansel and Gretel appearances, Ringo’s Three Little Pigs movie, and the Puss in Boots character and his speech impediment.

Big fan of this repeating gag. The 128-size font sells it.

But in between these flashes of brilliance was content that I would best describe as lacking. Episode 5 introduced a couple of intriguing plot threads: the social engineering experiment formed by the Otogi and Onigashima high schools and Ryoushi’s dark past involving Onigashima’s own president, Shirou Hitsujikai. The former was dropped and not touched upon again, while the latter just fizzled out after a couple of episodes were devoted to building it up while still showing almost nothing of it. As for the romance story between the two main characters, I would have said that they made a cute couple had everything ended in episode 11, but episode 12 brought them back to being just another one of those tsudere-girl-can-never-be-honest couples.

In short, the storytelling was just messy. Which wouldn’t have been a problem had the main plot not supplanted the more entertaining fairy tale adaptation portions of the show.

That said, I did like the final scene of the show. Something about the fire in Ryoushi's eyes.

I would be remiss not to mention the narrator to some extent. In short, she became annoying after about episode 3. Not because her act got old or tired, but because her act changed. Instead of providing the incisive, sarcastic, and occasionally witty nudge-and-a-wink type of commentary from the first episodes, she got relegated to the namesake of her role: she simply narrated what was literally happening, often speaking over the characters in the process. She had no personality anymore, or what she had was forced into hiding.

Ookami-san and Seven Companions was a show with a unique premise, one that carried the promise of something more than the typical high school romantic comedy. And when it embraced this difference and ran with it, it was a great show that did deliver on that promise. Unfortunately, it too often seemed afraid to do so, falling back to using typical genre staples and letting the more interesting, ambitious bits fall by the wayside. I looked forward to a new episode each week, hoping, “This will be the episode which finally brings everything together. This will be when the show finally starts.” I’m still waiting.

Was anyone else reminded of Black Rock Shooter's Mato Kuroi in the opening scene?

The word of the week is anticlimactic. After last week, I was expecting the story to continue all the through to the end of the series, but it all came to an end in this episode. It even omitted the OP, as is common with final episodes. That’s not to say that this one provided closure. No, it seems that J.C. Staff is gunning for a 2nd season, and doing a poor job of it. Hopefully the final episode can provide some lulz before this mediocre series closes out.

By the end of the first half, it became clear that this story was likely to end by this episode. Everyone except Ryouko had been saved, through means that were not made clear. Liszt and Majo somehow magically found their targets, Alice and Otsu respectively, without any explanation. Tarou’s story was more interesting, with him resisting an army of bikini clad lasses to beat down the punks who brought him to Otohime. That and the cosplay obsessed captors of Otsu provided someone laughs.

Product placement? In my anime? Wait, that actually happens a lot. Even Saten had an iPhone in J.C. Staff's A Certain Scientific Railgun. An iPhone that took over her mind. Hey, subtle social commentary?

The second half was essentially episode 5 redux, following the same structure of Ryoushi and company storming the Onigashima High School, aiming for Shirou’s office. Even Momoko was there, along with her posse plus the three pigs from episode 8, speech impediments and all.

To be fair, the fighting animation was the best in the show yet, and it remained consistent throughout the episode, from Tarou’s fight with the punks to the battle in front of the school, all the way to the final boss. I was especially impressed by scenes featuring Neko-san, whose fights involved some classic, fast martial arts choreography.

But Ryoushi’s showdown against Shirou was the anticlimax of the episode. It was just Shirou beating on Ryoushi – beautifully animated, mind you, somewhat reminiscent of agent Smith’s beatdown of Neo in the subway in The Matrix – until Liszt and Ringo showed up and told him to stop. Okay, Ryoushi managed to get a punch in, a la episode 2 against the mid-boss. And the flashbacks – to moments ranging from a day ago to a minute ago – were just tacky. Maybe if Ryoushi had received training from Neko-san throughout the show, it would have worked. In the end, they just left, exactly like in episode 5.

This makes it something like Ryoushi 1, Shirou 143. But at least he made him bleed!

Where was the ending? Where was the conclusion? It was as if every story got its closure except for the main one. You know, the most important one, the one everyone is supposed to care about? Otohime and Usami made up. Tarou showed his monogamous love for Otohime. Even Neko-san redeemed himself for his inaction 3 years ago, a plot thread that was literally introduced halfway into this episode. Shirou? He’s still at large, in charge of Onigashima High School, able to strike at will. And Ryoushi is still as fearful as ever at being seen, which ruined a perfectly good moment between him and Ryouko at the end.

The one positive from this is that it leaves room for an episode about Majo, still my favorite of the cast (at least, looks-wise. Otohime is probably my favorite for her back story, something with which I empathize). But with the preview shot for and the title of the next episode – The Girl Who Didn’t Sell Matches But Was Still Poor – doesn’t make it seem like she’ll be the star. Then again, who knows; if nothing else, Ookami-san and Seven Companions has done a good job mixing various fairy tales together.

I really like the composition in this shot. Even these two got back together in the end.

I wrote last week that I felt more positive about this show than at any other point in the series. I had a feeling, given J.C. Staff’s track record, I might end up eating those words. But I had no idea it would be this bad. This was literally a swing from the zenith to the bottom in the course of one episode. I don’t know what the show could do at this point to salvage what’s left of itself – maybe have the narrator be the only voice for the entire episode? – so we might as well close the books on this one. Ookami-san and Seven Companions was a pedestrian show that showed flashes of brilliance when it emphasized its unique setting, but was far too comfortable with being plain old conventional.

This was the most serious episode yet, presenting us with what is clearly the beginning of the final arc. We got to see some of our heroes being put in real danger by being manipulated by Shirou, and we also got to see Ryoushi finally take some steps to strengthen himself, in order to prepare for the inevitable showdown for Ryouko that he still doesn’t realize will be coming. The episode even managed to stick in a couple fairy tale analogies, adding a fun new character, even as several of the old ones came back to play important roles. This was a strong episode, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this show will close out.

As foreshadowed by the image of Shirou’s girl from last week’s preview, we’re back to super serious mode now. Someone’s been spreading nasty rumors about the Otogi Bank, and to counter that, Alice and Liszt decide to run a 30% off promotion (the show itself acknowledges that the 30% is meaningless because the payment is through favors), which predictably increases demand, meaning that Ookami-san and her Seven Companions have to work overtime to fulfill the favors. It seems that this was all part of our main baddie Shirou’s master plan, as he seizes this opportunity to kidnap some of our heroes, including Otsu, Ryouko and Tarou (with Otohime a possibility), with a little help from his girl Reiko who successfully infiltrated the Ryouko household.

I loved Nekomiya Saburo, the stand in for Puss in Boots, with his styling hat, vertical eye slits, cat-ear hair, and metal studded chaps. He fit his role quite well, helping to give Ryoushi that much needed backbone in order to catch Ryouko. I took a liking to him right away, and not just because he’s a narrator-proclaimed bishonen with cat ears. The way he kept ending his sentences with “nya,” only to correct himself was charming, and the way he reversed the stalker role on Ryoushi was priceless. I haven’t been able to find his voice actor, though he sounded a lot like Mamoru Miyano, the voice of Masaomi Kida from Durarara!!.

Mr. Neko shows off his cat-like agility.

Then there was Reiko, who I suppose was the wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’ll be honest here: I was naive enough to think that she might actually have been telling the truth. Of course, given what we saw of her back in episode 5, I knew that it was highly likely that she was working for Shirou. But given the type of person as which Shirou has been presented, I thought it made sense that he would be that abusive to her. Plus, those injuries on her looked real enough. Instead, it was all a part of a long con. Silly me.

She looks so innocent and helpless here!

With Shirou’s plan coming together and our heroes finding themselves in duress, the entire last half of the episode proved to be excellent. I loved the hectic storytelling as the show switched from member to member, letting us see how each fell into Shirou’s master plan. It felt very 24ish, especially with all the hostage situations and the distraction phone call to Ringo. I mean that in the best way possible, because 24 was an amazing show, at least for the the first two seasons (don’t remind me of the god awful series conclusion earlier this year). The build up in tension was palpable, and there was a distinct sense of urgency as the episode ended with a “to be continued.”

One thing I am suspicious of is Otohime’s whereabouts, though. She was never shown to be kidnapped, and Tarou went along with the thugs based solely on seeing her purse. I could easily see this being a switch, with Otohime, never having been captured, coming to help save the day along with Ryoushi, Liszt, and Majo. Speaking of whom, I doubt we’ll ever get an intro episode for our witch at this point. I don’t know what her deal is, but I feel like I could have easily traded Otsu’s back story for hers.

I maintain that she's the hottest out of all the main characters. But is she supposed to be just a generic witch, or one from a specific story? I guess this show won't reveal that.

As they say, shit’s getting real, and we’ve clearly entered the final story arc of the series. Things will play out predictably, with Ryoushi using the training from Neko-san to save the day and get the girl, who will then punch him in the face for making her feel embarrassed/feminine. Of course, the devil is in the details, and Shirou’s motivations and master plan are still shrouded in mystery. I’m looking forward to finding out.

I’m feeling very positive about Ookami-san now, more than at any other point in the series. Going in, I never thought that there would be a central plot or that one would get as much attention, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well the serious parts have been handled. Furthermore, instead of the fairy tale analogies being atomic as I had expected, they are tied to the main plot and characters, returning to play crucial roles, such as Usami and Shirayuki in this one. I wrote before that Ookami-san and Seven Companions failed to meet my expectations, but perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing. We’ll find out in just 2 weeks.

All this scene needed was a clock counting up to the next hour, with a "paching!" going off with each second.

I like the return to the episodic structure, where each episode has a clear and pretty much atomic story based on some fairy tale. This week’s episode was a very obvious Snow White parody, and though the story was too overdramatic, the twist of how Ringo entered the story and the good visuals and aurals more than made up for it.

By the aurals, I mean Yukari Fukui. I can’t get enough of her voice. She was Himeno Shirayuki, the stand in for Snow White. If the 7 little siblings didn’t tip you off – male quadruplets and female triplets apparently – that her name is shortened to “Hime” – Japanese for princess – by her siblings should have. Anyway, Shirayuki was portrayed as being little miss perfect, which works out, because Yukari Fukui has played perfect characters before.

Maybe I’m guilty of fetishizing actors’ voices too much. But with Fukui, I do it with no shame or reservation. The soft lisp that defines her voice is always a pleasure to hear, regardless of her actual acting skills (which I, not knowing Japanese, would be unqualified to write about, anyway). She alone made memorable for me the very minor side character Junko Miyaji from FLCL. I’ll admit that it was odd hearing her as a very young Shirayuki, because her voice, while innocent, still feels too feminine to belong to a young child.

The actual story – and the drama it tried to instill with Ringo’s back story – was ho hum. Everything went exactly as expected, down to the near downing sequence which showed the Mermaid Pool to be criminally understaffed when it comes to life guards. What I did like was how seamlessly Ringo was integrated into this story.

Snow White indeed. Even her clothes and hair are pretty much white.

For those who don’t know, Ringo’s full name – Akai Ringo – means “red apple” in Japanese, the same type that poisoned Snow White in her story. The red apple is not a conscious being, of course, and it’s Snow White’s evil stepmother who uses the apple. In this case, that was Ringo’s mother, using her to steal away Shirayuki’s life for Ringo. Sure, it was out of left field that she had a half sister (or rather, at least 4 half sisters and 4 half brothers), but I like the dynamic created by having Ringo unwittingly being the poisoned apple that stole Shirayuki’s life and the overwhelming guilt that that burdens her with. Again, the way things actually played out was very plain – Shirayuki, perfect to the end, forgave Ringo and told her she was happy with her life – but it was nevertheless a creative way of inserting Little Red Riding Hood into the Snow White story.

On the visuals side, I mean the fanservice, of course. This was a swimsuit episode, after all, and Shirayuki was the winner to that pageant in episode 3. There was plenty to oggle at here, including our crazy witch Majolica, who remains as much a mystery as ever. I was also a fan of Ryouko’s sports type swimsuit, which reflected her minimalist, efficient attitude as an athlete. The continued use of the “You fell on me, so I’ll punch you!” trope was uninspiring, though.

I think Majo was by far the hottest out of everyone in this episode. I hope she doesn't get gypped out of an intro episode, though it's starting to look likely.

But the real fanservice was in the seven “dwarves.” They were adorable. Not in the loli or trap kind of way, but just as little kids. No wonder Shirayuki was happy to be with them. I haven’t written much about the art and character design in this show, but that’s one aspect that I feel has been consistently solid throughout this show’s ups and downs. There is a sense of palpable softness in the characters thanks to the roundness with which all their angles are drawn (with the notable exception of Alice). It translates to some very cute children when they’re around.

Don't you just want to take them home and spoil them? Of course, a set of triplets and one of quadruplets would be hell in real life.

You might notice I haven’t mentioned the narrator at all. That’s because there was nothing notable about her yet again, except being almost absent for the last half. At least, that’s how it felt. With 3 episodes to go, she better do something epic lest she end up as the single greatest disappointment from the early episodes.

This was a solid, fun episode, and I tried my best to ignore the melodrama. This and the previous one were exactly the sorts of things I was hoping for when this show began (except, again, the disappointing narrator). But with time running out, I’m guessing it’s time for the real melodrama to come in. Though we’ve had more than a glimpse at Ryouko’s somber past, a lot remains to be revealed. The preview image for the next episode featured that girl we last saw hanging out with our main bad guy Shirou in episode 5, so hopefully the show is ready to dive in to the serious business and get it done.

Hey, it's what's-her-face from a third of the season back when it looked like things were starting to get serious.

Now this was the type of episode I was expecting from this show when it started. The Otogi bank helping out another poor soul with humorous consequences, bookended by a hilariously twisted version of the Three Little Pigs. That gag and the rest of the episode was chock full of self referential humor. The only disappointment was the narrator who, again, did little more than speak the obvious over everyone else’s lines.

The movie within the show of the Three Little Pigs was excellent. It was amusing to see the roles in the story being reversed because our heroine is the wolf, after all. The setting of the dirty and smelly high school was a bit disturbing at times, and that twister challenge had me creeped out instead of laughing. That the had me hoping that the entire episode would consist of that movie within the show, a la the 12 Dark Despair Girls episode from Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Alas, that was not to be.

However, it did produce this wonderful service shot.

The main portion of the episode was just a straight up telling of the Otogi bank helping someone out. Some rich kid named Chuutarou and his butler Hammel approach the bank, asking them to find him a fiance before his 12th birthday. They grow up so fast, don’t they? The episode was then a series of the girls from previous episodes appearing, then each being insulted by Hammel.

My favorite gags by far were the references to other anime. Otsuu’s opinion on perverted things (they’re bad) almost brought a tear in my eye. How could I have missed that the resident maid’s voice actor was Ayako Kawasumi, the voice of the best maid ever, Saber Mahoro? Then there was the quick cut to characters from Toradora and A Certain Scientific Railgun, both also J.C. Staff productions.

One of these is not like the other. One of these is actually from this show.

I loved how the characters were properly shown and named, and it was a shame that A. more shows weren’t referenced, and B. the references were so short. It would have been a lot of fun to have these characters criticized by Hammel and/or the narrator. Especially Kuroko, for obvious reasons.

Speaking of which, the narrator has been getting worse and worse lately. She was pretty much a non-factor in this episode, basically agreeing with Hammel and talking over others as she has been doing so much of recently. Gone are the energy and dry wit that had characterized her in the first few episodes. She just seems tired and bored, which makes me feel the same way. She needs to get snarky again.

The narrator needs to be more like Hammel was in this episode. His comment about sagging boobs was classic. And reminded me of High School of the Dead for some odd reason.

Like with the last few episodes, I couldn’t tell what story adaptation was being shown here. The title called Chuutarou a mouse, and he was visually designed to strongly resemble one, with the circles of his hair and the noticeably huge front teeth. But I just don’t know of a story involving a mouse searching for a mate. I could easily imagine that such a fairy tale might exist, though. Previously, I had used other blogs such as Tenka Seiha or Random Curiosity to fill in such gaps in my knowledge, but no luck this time.

Almost stepping on the toes of the American stereotype of Chinese with those teeth. What story does this mouse come from?

The kid’s story was just an excuse to show the female cast of the show – and to mess with them a bit. Which was just fine by me, even if I would have preferred a more straight up parody like the Cinderella story in the first episode. This proved to be a very entertaining and light hearted episode, and I hope the show continues in that direction. There are still 4 episodes left, more than enough time to cover the rest of Ryouko’s dark back story. Let’s have some fun while we’re at it.

This episode sees the main plot, introduced in episode 2 but ignored since, return in a big way. Like the previous episode, the humor fell flat most of the time, and the fairy tale adaptation wasn’t anything to write home about either. At the same time, it introduces a couple interesting plot points that make me pause and rethink what I was expecting out of this show.

So I had to read the post on Tenka Seiha to learn it, but this was loosely based on the Japanese story of Momotaro. Not being familiar with the story, I wasn’t able to appreciate it that much. But based on the Wikipedia article on the story, the show laid the analogy pretty thick this time as well, what with the 3 sidekicks named after the 3 animals, “Momoko” being the obvious feminine version of “Momotaro,” and the invasion of “Onigashima” High School, literally the name of the island Momotaro had invaded in the tale.

But Momoko was just a side character in this one, unlike the other fairy tale protagonists who actually were the protagonists of their respective episodes. She definitely got her moment in the sun, mind you, getting to try to seduce both Ryouko and Ryoushi, and having the bouncing of her bosoms accentuated with cartoony sound effects (a lot of people might roll their eyes at this gag, but I like its ironic humor). And her costume design is my favorite in this show so far. Certainly beats the hideous outfit Ringo designed for Ryouko in this episode.

I'm also a big fan of the asymmetrical thigh high sock design. Reminds me of Rita from Tales of Vesperia.

But moreso than Momoko, this episode was focused with the story of the main characters, specifically the past of Ryouko as well as the role of Otogi High School in the city. Ryouko’s story is still very vague and looks to be darker than what I would have expected from this show. Just based on the brief flashback clips, I’m guessing that it involves some sort of sexual abuse from Shirou. Of course, it would have to tie into why she became so dedicated to boxing and acquired that stoic, manly personality that Ryoushi admires so much. It’s a huge contrast in tone from the whimsical and carefree nature of the rest of the show as well as both the OP and ED sequences.

Just what happened between these 2? Something far darker than what I expected out of this show, I hope.

I’m also interested in the bigger picture regarding the roles played by Otogi High School, Onigashima High School, and Otogibana City. This is also darker than what I was expecting out of this show. Like Ryouko’s back story, nothing’s really clear yet, but according to what Liszt said to convince everyone to fight, it seems that the two schools are designed as some sort of grand social engineering experiment. Otogi school is designed to succeed, and Onigashima school is designed to fail in order to help achieve that.

It’s very reminiscent of the Misaka sisters story from A Certain Magical Index, another production by J.C. Staff that was adapted from a light novel series. And just like in that story, it all feels very cruel. The Onigashima students have to play the bad guys so that the good guys can beat them. It’s a self aware look at the roles good and bad guys are forced into in order to produce fairy tales. In A Certain Magical Index, the Misaka sisters were infants, innocent victims of a mad science experiment gone too far. The Onigashima students are gangsters and delinquents, not worthy of our sympathy, but I end up wondering, was this due to any fault of their own, or were they forced into this just so that they can play that role?

Unfortunately, her Christmas tree hair made me think of Amagami SS...

Again, these are thoughts I never expected would be prompted by this show. In fact, thus far, Ookami-san and Seven Companions has not at all met the expectations I had for it after watching the first episode. In that one, the Cinderella story was largely separated from that of the protagonists and stood on its own as a ridiculous adaptation. Since then, all the fairy tale adaptations have managed to weave in the main characters and have the relationship between Ryouko and Ryoushi develop in some way, whether it be as light as the sole vote that Ryouko got during the contest in episode 3 or as heavy as the Ryouko’s past coming back to haunt her in this one. In that sense, the storytelling has leapfrogged my expectation of this being a light, episodic title.

On the other hand, those light and amusing aspects have not been up to snuff. That Cinderella story was a hilarious, twisted take on the old fairy tale. The adaptations since then have varied from amusing, like the tortoise and the hare story of episode 3, to banal, like the hentai-inspired maid set up in episode 4, to being just straight up with no interesting twist, like Momo-chan and her 3 companions in this one. Even the narrator hasn’t been as good since the first episode, as she spends less time making catty remarks and more just explaining the obvious, speaking over someone else in the scene.

I still enjoy the running flat-chest joke. It's banal, but Satomi Arai's delivery is always on the mark.

That said, there’s something nice about having the unexpected. The show had successfully fooled me into thinking that I had a handle on it after a couple of episodes, but now I feel lost, unable to predict what will come. Who knows, maybe the show will return to being a wacky slapstick parody-oriented comedy next episode. Or maybe it will dig deeper into the plot points mentioned above, exploring the ability to tell a coherent central story while using fairy tale metaphors as vehicles. I don’t know which it’ll be, and I don’t know which I would prefer. Feels good man.

Note:

• In a post in Girl Cartoons, JarenL also notes the more serious themes introduced in this episode and explores the way gender roles are played around with in the show.

This was a fun little episode that went deeper into the past of a couple of the main characters, namely Otohime and Tarou. It’s told as a tortoise and the hare story, as Otohime and rival Mimi Usami – played fittingly by Rie Kugimiya – fought it out for Tarou’s heart. And though not emphasized as heavily, there was a touch of The Ugly Duckling in there as well.

I really liked this shot. They looked pretty cute, too.

Otohime’s story was pretty sweet, even if completely superficial. Plus, she wasn’t all that fat to begin with! Well, maybe by Japanese standards… But seeing Tarou be so nice to her in the past showed us why she’s so madly in love with him. And also that he isn’t such a bad guy, or at least not too superficial – as long as it’s a girl, it’s fine with him, no matter what the shape or size.

Of course, the heart of the episode was in watching Otohime and Mimi duke it out to win the contest. They laid the tortoise vs. hare metaphor pretty thick, especially with calling Mimi “Usa-chan,” an obvious pun on the Japanese word for rabbit, “usagi.” I was a bit surprised that the story ended up being so long term, starting all the way back from when they were all in elementary school. It was actually a much more direct metaphor than the Cinderella one in the first episode, with the beauty contest taking the place for the race, though it ended with a bit of a twist. As for the similarities to The Ugly Duckling, they didn’t play that up at all, but the metaphor is pretty obvious.

Yeah, not all that subtle about it...

The comedy was strong for the most part. I especially enjoyed the cynicism of the main group deciding that sabotaging Mimi was the best way to win… and then finding out that Mimi had the exact same thought! And the reference to Zero’s Familiar – another J.C. Staff production – took me a few seconds to get, but it was a nice in-joke.

The narrator got her chance to shine in that scene as she bleeped out parts of the argument. I’ve heard animal noises used for that, but I’m not sure I’ve seen the narrator being used that way before. I also loved the constant references to how Ringo and Usami overlapped in their loli-ness, which got on Ringo’s nerves. Anyway, I’m repeating myself, but Satomi Arai continues to be a pleasure to listen to as the narrator.

He kinda reminds me of Teddy from Persona 4. That one starred Rie Kugimiya and Yui Horie as well!

I also liked how Liszt’s cross-dressing was handled. It was just there, and only Ryoushi seemed to make a big deal about it, just from the initial surprise.

It was a little surprising that they collectively got 1 vote, from Tarou, though I expected them not to rank. I liked seeing them be the losers like that. Really, after all that fighting, it was downright pathetic! How arrogant of them to assume that one of them would take the top prize!

One thing I didn’t like so much was Mimi’s character being so flat. No, not like that. She was just a mean narcissist, plain and simple. I guess those people aren’t actually uncommon, especially in high school, but they’re not very interesting to watch. I really felt no sympathy for her at the end.

Again, a nice shot.

So despite the narrator not taking control like in the last episode, this was a pretty fun one. I had written in the previous post that the show didn’t seem as entertaining when focusing on the main characters, but this one was a damned fun episode. Otohime and Tarou were pretty cute together. I’m looking forward to seeing the adaptations they’ll be doing in coming episodes, and how they’ll involve some of the 7 companions.

I wrote briefly about this show in my first impressions post, but I’ve decided to start posting on it in earnest. I was skeptical of its high school romantic comedy aspects, and indeed, both episodes so far have felt weakest when focusing on the 2 main protagonists. Fortunately, the show has been about much more than them, and it has excelled in other aspects, not the least of which is the wonderful narrator.

It's a little odd to see Little Red Riding Hood being best friends with the Wolf.

This one spent more time developing Ryouko and Ryoushi. Unfortunately, that was not such a good thing. For one, Ryoushi’s crippling fear of being seen isn’t all that interesting. It made for a couple okay gags, and I do admit that it plays nicely with his role as the sniper behind the scenes. But, come on, really? Perhaps the problem is that we’ve only seen Ryoushi as a collection of his character traits, not as a complete human being.

I can't be the only one who thinks Ryoushi is the spitting image of Koyomi Araragi.

Same can be said about Ryouko and her character type of being tough on the outside to cover up her scared inside. It’s been done to death in all mediums, but especially in anime. Come on, just because she looks like Taiga doesn’t mean that she has to be a tsundere like her too. Hearing her fearful thoughts when she was tied up at the end just pushed it over the top for me. It’s okay that she’s like a dozen other heroines out there, but I’d rather that fact not get forced into my face. It’s more fun to see her kicking ass.

The other characters were also pretty meh. Really, it’s only 2 episodes in, so we can’t expect to know too much about everyone, but so far they seem like nothing more than warm bodies to fill the cast. Fortunately, the one without the body, the narrator, has been excellent. In fact, she’s pretty much stolen the show.

Ookami-san loves cute animals, you see.

I wrote it before, but Satomi Arai’s peculiar voice just works so well for the dry sarcastic narrator she plays. And you can tell that she’s enjoying it. She was even more out there in this episode, giving us some really wacky voices at times. She was omnipresent, going over the top to tell us the obvious, but in a very ironic way. I loved it. I can’t help but picture Kuroko from the Raildex series when I hear her voice, but that’s a good thing.

As for the story in this episode, it seems to be the start of something bigger, what with the boss mentioning a bigger boss and the man in the shadows at the end. I hope it builds into a real violent gang war, because the action was pretty good at times. That 1st fight wasn’t particularly well animated, but the one at the climax was a lot of fun to watch. That said, it was not very well directed. Using the OP this early on in the show is just tacky. Give us some time to associate it with the show, to get a Pavlovian reaction out of it before using it in a dramatic scene.

And Ryoushi managing to beat the boss just doesn’t make sense. There’s something to be said for suspense of disbelief, but given that he was presented as being a wuss the whole time, I think it’s reasonable to expect that, given what we saw him do earlier, then Ryoushi stands no chance.

Biri Biri

I’m hoping for more fairy tale interpretations are in the coming episodes, because that’s where the show shone. This episode didn’t have such a one, as far as I could tell, and it was saved by the narrator and a well animated fight scene. I’m willing to give more time to let the main characters develop, but what I’ve seen out of Ryouko and Ryoushi haven’t been inspiring. Let’s hope that J.C. Staff realizes this and either fixes that or moves the focus away from it all together.

Notes

• I’ve noticed that in this show and others, people say “jiiiii~” when they stare at someone. Anyone know where that started? The 1st instance of that I know of is Stalker-tan from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.
• Shizuka Itou’s character in Amagami SS also seems to have a thing for dogs.
• Speaking of which, I’ll continue to blog Amagami SS, but only every 4 episodes, following each heroine’s arc. Given the pacing and style of that show, I feel that writing after each individual episode would be overkill.
• J.C. Staff has officially Anglicized the title as Okamisan and Seven Companions.
• The OP and ED were both shown for the first time this episode. I thought the OP song was just okay, very typical for this type of show. The OP animation reminded me a lot of that of A Certain Scientific Railgun, what with the jumping at the end. I enjoyed the ED a lot more, with its catchy chorus and childish mood set both by the lyrics and the animation.

Today is July 7, which means it’s Hitagi Senjougahara’s birthday and also Tanabata in Japan, both of which the Bakemonogatari.com official site is celebrating. Besides offering a happy birthday picture for Hitagi, Shaft offers us what each of the main characters wished for on their tanzakus this Tanabata. I thought it would be neat to share them with you all.

Koyomi Araragi

To be pitied.

To be pitied!? That’s not much of a wish now, is it? Why would you wish for that?

Hitagi Senjougahara

To get a wonderful boyfriend

Oh. Well, Koyomi certainly deserves our pity (as well as jealousy) for having a girlfriend like Hitagi.

Mayoi Hachikuji

To live for a long time

Oh, poor, poor Mayoi. Surely she deserves our pity. ;_;

Suruga Kanbaru

World peace. Also, something lewd

I would expect nothing less from my favorite spats wearing lesbian pervert.

Nadeko Sengoku

Koyomi-onii-ch... No, nothing

I’m sure Koyomi would be more than willing to oblige, especially if Hitagi’s wish comes true.

Tsubasa Hanekawa

To be friends with everyone forever

How sweet. Let’s just hope that she doesn’t kill all of them first.

Karen & Tsukihi Araragi, aka The Fire Sisters

Nisemonogatari* Anime

Girls after my own heart. That’s exactly what I would wish for!

*Nisemonogatari is the 2nd sequel to Bakemonogatari in the original light novel series. It features 2 stories, Karen Bee and Tsukihi Phoenix, presumably starring Koyomi’s younger sisters. Here’s to hoping that Shaft is working on making their wish come true!

All images came from Bakemonogatari.com front page. Credit for original Japanese to Korean translations go to Kyou of Sub by Kyou.

Note

• Here‘s a nice little Tanabata-themed MAD featuring Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari, the Bakemonogatari ending theme by supercell. (via mangajet.com)

Alright, the Summer 2010 anime season has started, and pretty much all the shows I’ve been keeping an eye on have had their 1st episodes air. I’ve already written on Amagami SS, which I found to be rather plain, but there are other shows I’ve been paying attention to that I’ve actually enjoyed a lot more.

I wonder if those pussy gloves will ever be explained or just be one of those in-jokes.

Ookami-san and the Seven Friends

A surprisingly entertaining first episode. I had passed it off as just another high school romantic comedy before this season started, but its amusing take on the Cinderella story both sets it apart from a regular romcom and leaves me wanting to see more of its “adaptations” of children’s stories. The protagonist and main love story is pretty typical, and that fight at the end reminded me too much of Shirou from Fate/stay Night – the obvious parallel with his protecting Saber from Berserker’s attack – but Ookami-san herself was very likable. Not many boxing girls in animu. And Satomi Arai as the narrator is great. Her distinct voice works well for the cynical and sarcastic narration that keeps breaking the 4th wall and is a pleasure to listen to overall (though there are others who don’t like her voice as much as I).

Way to be useless, Rei. Hopefully you'll make up for it in future episodes.

Highschool of the Dead

Zombies and fanservice! That was pretty much what I was expecting, and that was the 1st episode. Darker at some parts than I expected, but also kept a sense of humor. The two bffs who died about halfway into the episode was a great example of the show’s dark comedy.

Rei was very annoying, which is a shame, because her voice actor Marina Inoue is capable of so much more. I’m not expecting big things from the story, but if it can keep up the good action and the fittingly ridiculous comedy, this could be very good. Yukari Fukui is yet to be heard. That I’m very much looking forward to.

I've never seen School Rumble, but Shino reminds me a lot of one of the characters from that. I don't think I've ever seen someone so blatantly and unapologetically raunchy, though.

Seitokai Yakuindomo

Wow, this is dirty! Its style of dry humor isn’t unusual in anime, but I’ve never seen it taken so far. Almost everything out of Shino’s mouth is something related to sex in the raunchiest way possible. Like talking about the tightness of her lips. And it’s all at a breakneck pace, hitting us with jokes continually before we’re given a chance to recover. I like it, though not everyone seems to. I didn’t expect much out of this show, but the level of comedy in this first episode leaves me impressed. I’m definitely going to be watching more.

I do appreciate that Anime no Chikara is using fresh material. I had no idea what to expect from Maya, and I'm glad I didn't.

Occult Academy

It certainly doesn’t hurt that Maya is an Akiha lookalike. She was my favorite Tsukihime heroine, after all. After the disappointment of Sora no Woto and the mixed reactions that Senkou no Night Raid got, I wasn’t expecting much out of this 3rd Anime no Chikara project. Given the topic of the show, I was expecting something a bit dark and moody, but what I got instead was something that was pretty wacky and funny. A lot of physical/visual comedy was used to good effect, and I enjoyed seeing Maya’s various deformed reaction faces. Can’t say much about the story which I found to be a bit confusing, but I think it would be better if the show never got too serious. I’m not alone in being surprised and impressed by the silliness in this 1st episode.

Also, Kana Hanazawa playing the possessed girl was a blast to watch/listen to, especially after hearing her as Tenshi last season in Angel Beats!

Others

So I’ve been more or less impressed with the stuff I’ve seen so far. Perhaps my expectations were just too low going into this season – the only show out of these that I had been remotely looking forward to was Highschool of the Dead, and even then, I wasn’t expecting anything more than some mindless violence. But, 1 episode in, there are a bunch of shows that look promising this season.

• Nameless already made a post on the 1st episode of Mitsudomoe. I couldn’t make it past about 5-8 minutes. The art style just put me off. That first gag with the misinterpretation of “anything goes” was pretty funny, I’ll admit. And it has received some positive reactions from various other blogs. It’s just that I just feel dirty watching it.
• I also could only make it about 1/3 of the way into Shufuku no Campanella. The colors really were nice, but that was about it. Everything else was generic and way too sugary sweet.
• I haven’t gotten a chance to check out The Legend of the Legendary Heroes yet, but it’s on my list.

As I had guessed might happen after the last episode, this season finale was a stand-alone episode, unrelated to the main story that had concluded in episode 12. Still, it wasn’t pure comedy like I had predicted, and the last half was a heartwarming way to end the season and to tie together the most important threads of this show.

The parade to close out the night.

The episode starts off seeming like it will be focused on 3 of the “new” characters in the series (actually shown before, but never introduced), kind of like in the 1st season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, which introduced Mayo Mitama and Ai Kaga in the final episode. But it went back to the main characters halfway through, so we only got a couple brief gags out of the Last Samurai, Billy, and Jacqueline.

There’s not too much to say about that half. I can’t say I enjoyed the new characters too much. The real highlight was Nino’s hair, which, as I’ve written before, is easily the best hair on anyone, ever. There were some funny moments, and Mikuru Asahina Yuko Goto provided a fitting voice for Jacqueline, but the new characters didn’t get enough screen time. Perhaps that was the problem, because it took me a while to like some of the main characters as well, including the Chief, Star, and Maria.

I will never tire of seeing Nino's hair. Even if it makes her look like a Super Saiyajin.

The real “finale” was the 2nd half of the episode, which tied together some of the key themes of this show. There was, of course, the theme of lost childhood. Riku never got to be a child, and that made him all the more eager to make sure that that wouldn’t happen to Stella and the metal headed brothers. It affected me to see him work for 3 days straight to make sure that this happened. He was surely a changed man from the neurotic, self-focused person he had started the show as.

Children playing at dusk on an iron maiden. There is something so sentimental about that scene. Except for the iron maiden part.

Then there was community, with the members of under the bridge coming together to put together an amusement park for the kids. Even at great cost to their health, as in the case of the Chief, who had to wear an extra suit over his normal Kappa suit. The 3D theater gave me some good laughs, starting with the mere fact that there WAS a 3D theater. I also loved the in-joke of having Nino starring as the Princess Amidala lookalike – Nino’s voice actor Maaya Sakamoto had voiced Amidala in the Japanese dubs of the Star Wars prequels.

He was probably playing Roller Coaster Tycoon the whole time.

And finally, there was the romance. Sitting on a bench during sunset alone with your lover holding a balloon while she listens to you talking about your past – it doesn’t get much more romantic than that. I was disappointed that that was pretty much all we got between those 2 in this episode. As I wrote previously, I was hoping to learn more about the back story of Nino.

This is probably the most date-like thing they've ever done. And they've been on a date!

I did really love the final montage, narrated by both Nino and Riku. It was probably the best one of the show, and it brought everything back to the river, and how it was the connection that fit Nino and Riku together. With the little emphasis on romance in this episode, it did feel a bit out of place, even if it felt right for the finale.

And, of course, this is the season finale, not the series finale, as following this episode was the announcement that there would be a 2nd season of Arakawa Under the Bridge. So I’m hopeful that the story of Nino and Riku will continue to be told, and that, just like Riku’s dark and painful past was explored in this season, Nino’s own past will be told in the next.

This puzzle piece (the river) is, without a doubt, the piece for connecting me to you.

Season End

Well, the show may not be ending, but the season certainly is. As I wrote in my post after the 1st episode, I went into the show not knowing what to expect, merely being a fan of the cast, the studio, and the director. Reading that post again now, I’m a bit surprised how much that seemingly innocuous 1st episode had revealed about the rest of the show. I had been pretty much spot on about this being an “absurdist character comedy” with “the relationship that is sure to develop between Kou and Nino” being the main story point. I didn’t see coming the exploration of Riku’s father issues, or how important the overall sense of community would be in the show.

It was an enjoyable show overall. A lot of people seemed to greatly enjoy the comedy in this show, but I thought that it was pretty hit or miss. Angel Beats!! and Working! were both funnier this season. The show’s strength was in the more dramatic, character focused moments. Many of the scenes Nino and Riku shared were very heartwarming, and Riku’s past felt genuinely painful. And though the the ending of the main conflict was rather abrupt, it still managed to provide more scenes that affected me.

So yeah, despite the varied cast of wacky and entertaining characters, I was always more interested when Nino and Riku were the ones on screen. That’s why I feel that it was a shame that their relationship didn’t get to go forward as much as I had hoped. Combining some decent comedy with very good character development that fell just a little short of expectation, Arakawa Under the Bridge was a solid, good show, but I hesitate to call it great. My hope is that this 1st season was the START of something great, because when the show was firing on all cylinders, it really was something special.

Notes

• As usual, there are plenty of screenshots on Tenka Seiha and Random Curiosity that are worth a look.
• The ED single, Upside Down Bridge by Suneohair, was released on June 23. Here is a YouTube link to the full song.
• There was a shot of 4 mysterious people somewhere way underground. I’m guessing that they will be the antagonists of the 2nd season.

She looks like something out of a US comic book.