Anime Wrap-Up #10

Anime Wrap-Up is a section of this blog, directed to anime I've consumed in any way during the previous month... I will address fun details, pinpoint some important notes, and give my overall feeling about those shows!

Let's get to it!

This time, we're dealing with these shows:

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Aru Machi Kado no Monogatari 
(Tales of the Street Corner)

I think this is my first time watching something like this. It finished airing in the year 1962, which means it's VERY old. 

The beginning scene is presented with letters written around scenes, rather than being told by a narrator. The music is finely composed and the animation is a mix of painted pictures and stop motion. Absolutely beautiful.

At one point, posters started dancing and it was such a fun sight, I actually danced to it. Not having any dialogue and going just with music was the best choice they could make. It worked incredibly well.

[Karma]

This isn't a movie. It's literally an animated art, and it should be looked at as such. Otherwise you might not appreciate the simple beauty and the messages presented.

Great work, great music and a great hidden story.

[This might be my favorite poster]

The stories on the posters told a complex message in span of a few seconds and when the Boots appeared and the posters began changing, it really made me stop dancing. The change was drastic. Happy days changed into war times with no explanation, just like that. The way Boots took down posters with women, kids and old people. How it teared down a poster with white doves - symbols of peace. How it changed men into war pilots, gave them weapons and grenades. 

All the unique posters were replaced by the same poster of a general, "marching" in their places on the wall...

Still, the lovers prevailed. The teddy bear was saved by a brave mouse, who sacrifices everything for it's new found friend. The war ruined the city... but in the end, new life awoke and that means hope. Hope, that it will get better.

[Her smile destroyed me. Two reasons - in the city destroyed by war,
she only cared about getting her teddy. The mouse that sacrificed itself to save the bear.]

10/10 what else is there to say? Maybe one thing - Tatsuo Taka is a freaking genius. And Osamu Tezuka as well.

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Gakkou no Yuurei

Watching this, after the previous anime was practically a crime. 😂

[Yeah, this is NEVER a good sign when it comes to horror.]

The first ghost story is called Forgotten Notebook. A janitor finds a girl studying late and hurries her home. She gets distracted by music, crossing the railroad while a train is approaching. When she realizes she forgot her notebook and turns around, the train hits her and she dies.

[To be honest, no one gets this distracted. These things are loud and hey are too bright.]

The crushed janitor apologizes to her parents, saying it was his fault for rushing her and gives them back her notebook. During mourning, he sees her ghost, and then later sees the ghost during his night-shift. Hiding in the bathroom, he makes it through the night, but when the sun comes out, the ghost catches up and asks him to give her her notebook back, resulting in the janitor having a heart attack. (I think).
A good story, good atmosphere. Logical explanation: Guilt! He felt so bad he simply imagined her hunting him, as his subconsciousness convinced him that the notebook was at fault for the girl's death.

Second story, Batting Ghost, told a story of a teacher who hung himself because he blamed himself for a mistake during baseball practice that put his student into a wheelchair. Very sad story, filled with emotions. As the said student goes to see the ghost of his teacher that is reliving his mistake and his death every night, he apologizes to him and makes sure to tell him how he really feels, freeing the ghost. 

Logical explanation? If four people really did saw all of that, then I have none. But it is a story of forgiveness, that much I can say.

[There was a xylophone type of sound when the tear fell. 😂 

Or rather Synthesiser...]

[She's kinda pretty. ...wait no, when I look again, she is actually scary.]

Number three, Cursed Summer Camp. In this story, girls' basketball team is on a camp and the captain shares that the school they're staying over used to be a hospital and she saw a ghost of a nurse once. The girls are scared, but when one of them needs to use the toilet at night, her friend agrees to go with her. In the middle of their trip, they do encounter the nurse ghost and many many others, running in circles and calling for help. But when their team finds them, it looks like life energy was drained from the girls...

[Thicc thighs queens. They don't make them like this nowadays.]

[That hand looks off...]

The two girls ran and screamed like crazy, which would be so me. But I am lucky enough to have an awesome bestie that is scared of ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NOTHING and checks locked doors, opens them during night and helps me turn the light on when I am scared. 😂

You all should find a best friend like mine. 💕

Overnight School Trip was a bit weird. Group of high schoolers got assigned a weird room for their overnight stay. One of them got left behind because she wasn't feeling well - she was dizzy, she felt something was off and during the night she got very hot. When she stepped towards the window, it appeared as if the waves changed into hands, and people called for her to join them - jump into the sea. Thankfully her friends saves her, and later found out it was common for dead bodies to wash up near the place where they were staying.

[I would say the quote is wrong, but it's not. Travelling is the biggest event in
a high school student's life. And college student as well.]

I know the legend about Hanako-san from anime of the same name. But I also know that the anime is not the same as the original story. This one was much scarier. The kids decide to summon Hanako-san just to see if the legend is real, and end up pissing Hanako off. One of them, Mina, gets possessed and begins choking Aigo, making her promise they will never summon Hanako again.

It was scary when you imagine they were just kids when this happened. But I liked that the girls didn't blame Mina and weren't mean when Hanako un-possessed her. Instead they worried if she was okay.

Aigo, by the way, is the true villain of this show. She is such a bully...

Last story is called Red Eyes and it's a story about a spirit of a warrior with red eyes. The legend simply states that you cannot look into his eyes. It begins with a girl being almost killed by him in a daydream, which she wakes up from because her classmate breaks a glass. Her friends and she end up cleaning the lab room, and while waiting for the boys, they decide to pull a prank. But while they are hiding, the warrior appears and one of the girls looks into his eyes by accident. Later that night, she sees him in the mirror, slips and falls down the stairs...

All of this is covered in one episode. The other 5 have not been translated yet, and given the circumstances, they might not get translated in the close future either. While I did find raws, I am hoping more episodes gets subs and the sequel too. 

While the episodes aren't exactly terrifying, they are heavily focused on good ghost stories and I enjoyed that aspect. It was a fine episode and I would definitely watch more.

For now, it's paused and my rating is:  6/10

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Zou no Senaka: Tabidatsu Hi (Walking My Life)

This had no business being this sad.

A story about family of elephants, spending their last days with the father of the family, that is soon going to pass out and the grieving of the family members after this passing. Some of the most depressing seven minutes of my life.

8/10

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Gyo (GYO: Tokyo Fish Attack)

I will only say this once - Junji Ito's adaptations are awful. They're a whole another kind of horror. While I did enjoy his Collectior or Tales of Macabre, Gyo is awful in art and animation. It's so difficult to watch it... and the voice acting is not worth much either.

And that's pretty sad, considering I loved the manga.

Be honest. How likely is it that in case of a derailed train only two people survive and those two people are the main characters. While the gore I like because I like my sci-fi horror with casualties, I find this chance stupid. (To be fair, more people survived but the first impression is first impression.)

Also, what the hell is this sexism. So a guy gets thrown across the street but the girl gets fondled and touched? By THE SAME octopus?

By the way. They survived a plane crash, derailed train, getting thrown around against cars and stuff and they are just standing up as if nothing even happened to them. What the heck is this logic??

THEY SHOULD BE DEAD!! Thid could not happen. He just drives without as much as a blurry vision and she insist that "it's only a scratch" after they repeatedly fell against hard surface. Yeah. Sure. It's not only sci-fi, this is fantasy too.

Kaori had some dumb moments herself. While watching a video of her fiancé's uncle, who said Tadashi multiple times, she still seemed surprised to see him on the screen. ???

To be honest, I envy Juji Ito for the wrong reasons when it comes to this. How do you come up with human monsters that shoot shit, smell like death and have pipes in their mouth and ass? That's what you call talent. 😂

I don't actually think this is how manga went, by the way. But maybe that's just my memory. While Gyo - manga was excellet, Gyo - movie was pretty shit.

5/10

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Haikyuu!!: Shousha to Haisha
(Haikyuu!! the Movie: The Winner and the Loser)

Continuting with rewatching Haikyuu, this month I got around to the second recap movie. This time, it was their match with Dateko, which I thoroughly enjoyed. There is nothing like screaming Go, go! Let's go! Let's go! Dateko! at a screen after what... 5 years?

    

[Regret. 😂]

[One of the most depressing lines in a sports anime..]

    

[Yes. From the right: Proud dad, even prouder mom, supportive boyfriend and weird uncle.
If you want to keep it in the family, supportive boyfriend might as well be hyper younger brother.]

I've never really stopped to think about other characters, but in the movie it finally hit me. Moniwa is wonderful and so is his relationship with Aone. Forgive my fangirling, when I say in this dynamic of setter-blocker ship, they have a unique relationship which I grew to adore. Aobe's awkwardness and Moniwa's approach are so funny to me. Well, Furudate did it again.

Also, it was their first match against Aoba Josai, meeting Oikawa and learning about each other. The atmosphere was great, the animation was fine, the voice actors had a lot of fun with it... it really was great!

And my beloved Yamaguchi had his five minutes of fame! And Suga my even more beloved had 15 of them! And it was tearing my heart apart!!

7/10

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Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu

I loved loved loved Uchi no Shishou wa Shippo ga Nai and it opened the world of rakugo to me. I looked for similar anime and this one seemed to be rather popular.

The first episode is a one hour special, and it introduces the rakugo master and his wannabe apprentice - slash - ex criminal. 

[Are you looking for a job or a sugar daddy?]

I did hope that in 1 hour 22 minutes runtime, we would at least get the whole rakugo stories. We did get one full story... and of course, the problem might be that the VAs are not rakugo performers. But still, I was let down. 

Konatsu is very important for me. In a world, where women can't become "great" or "popular" at rakugo, she shows her love for the art of his father. She swallows her pride and asks to be the old man's apprentice as well. I wish her look. She has my full support.

But things in life never work out the way we want - the old man offends her and she accuses him of killing his father. Which is sad, and I don't understand why we couldn't make the woman a performer! 

[This man is a dog xD]

Around 20 minute mark, the anime stopped being animated and instead changed into powerpoint presentation at times. Four months passes - and while Yotarou is starting to perform, Konatsu has yet to make up with the old man.

Weirdly, the old man sees the ghost of Konatsu's father. During Youtarou's perfromance (which I love btw, funny story) it seemed like Youtaro had the same energy as Konatsu's father, which brought him back, in a way.

During the old man's performance, Yotarou falls asleep and gets expelled for ruining and interrupting the story with his snoring. But if that was how the story ended, it wouldn't be much of a story. He takes him back, making him promise three things:

1. Remember the rakugo stories
2. Fill the hole in his heart
3. Don't die before him

After that, he tells Yotarou and Konatsu the story of him and Konatsu's father... and the first episode is over.

It honestly had no business being that long and could have been easily divided into two separate episodes.

So far, it's a good show but not a masterpiece.  I have only one problem with it: The old man does not want to teach Yotarou, yet he keeps him under his wings. Which is weird, but okay. I am betting the relationships and motives will be explained later.

After the first episode, the rest are only 24 minutes long, so it should go nicely after this. 

It was wrong of me to say that they are not performing the rakugo. They are. We are actually getting rakugo stories in the anime! 

Next two episodes focused on the relationship of Konatsu's father and Yotarou's master - his childhood friend. I told myself: ok, it's important and there is a lot to say.

But when fourth episode turned out to be about them too, and it didn't seem to be ending... I was a bit confused.

Why are we focusing on Kiku and Shin? Wasn't Yotarou supposed to be the main character? Or did the movie just do a sucky job at telling us what we'll this anime be about? 
If we just got a different storytelling, I could get on the board with what is happening much easier, but this gives me troubles. I wanted to see more of Youtaro and Konatsu, not Bon and Shin. But what can you do.

Now that I am sure the whole anime will be only about them, I can focus better. At episode 5 I understood Bon (the old master) a little more - and I even got this feeling he had queer feelings for Shin (Konatsu's dad) because the way he looked at the woman showed no affection, but the way he looked at Bon showed "I will get back at you".
Bon's need for attention... or rather Bon finally getting attention on the stage was kind of sad to look at, but on the other hand - I guess you have to discover who you are, even if it's in a rather strange, uncommon way.

Episode 9 made their gayness very apparent. If it wasn't clear until now, there was no mistaking it after this.

Kiku broke up with his proustite-situationship and Shin got thrown out by his master for almost attacking him. The two "meet" and that is the story of how Konatsu was born.

Anway, Kiku is to be named the 8th generation, Shin and the prostitute leave Tokyo...

[Ew??]

Bon meets kid Konatsu and tries to get Shin back to rakugo, since he feels alone after their master has passed.

While meeting him, he shows us another way of saying I love you:

I can't live without your rakugo!

Cute adorable babies. Even the stories they told at their performance together were gay as heck! Well, they were not gay stories but they seemed like a way to tell the other 'thank you, I love you' without saying it out loud.

The real death, not told by Konatsu with added drama of blood and fire, was quite stupid. I hate it. God, it makes zero sense, the execution was bad and they could play with it more to make it more fun. Points down for that.
And when we switched back to present, we didn't even pick up where we left off - instead we went fast forward in time. What the heck.

[Tell me this man does not adore Shin?]

[It was so cute watching them perform together!]

    

Yotaro is a proper rakugo performer, Konatsu is pregnant but without a husband - she says she didn't want Sukeroku's (Shin's) blood to die out, and Yotaro tells her he will raise the kids as it's own.
And when that little bitch Yota asks to inherit Sukeroku's name... well.

All in all, this story can be explained with one simple saying:

What goes around, comes around.

Your past will haunt you forever, and it will come back to you in different people... just the same, all over again. 6/10 Catch me watching the second series... maybe.

[Update: It seems like I missed the first part of this series - the OVA. It might change the way the story flows, but for now, all I said stands.]

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Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren

(Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions - Heart Throb -)

This show is so hard for me to watch, because it's about a bunch of teenagers that are completely different to what I remember or saw when I was their age.

Despite that, I kind of enjoy the love aspect.

"We saw dolphins!" she says, "And we held hands..." he says. Very depressing and also very... interesting. I wish them both luck!

Though the poor Yuuta has moved on from chuunibyou, and wants a nice relationship with Rikka, he plays along with her because he loves her!

The way he tells her they don't have to be regular partners, and they can do things in their own way in their own pace... Boyfriend material and all of us girls can be jealous.

The story went on with the usual shenanigans - jealousy, girls being girls, love blooming, little jokes and fun moments, beach episodes.

Of course, there was a problem - Sophia being jealous, because of her unresolved feelings to Yuuta. 

It's a regular Kyoto Animation story, which, you know, KyotoAni can do no wrong!

I watched it in dubbing, but I enjoyed it - more than when I watched the previous season with subtitles.

The score moved by one point to - 

6/10

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Yami Shibai 10

(Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai 10)

The ending sounds like it's sang by drunk people. 😂

The good to bad episodes ratio for this season is 2:11. Bad season, boring season. The art styles were rather weak looking, the stories weren't even suspenseful and I saw better.

A big miss from me... It gets the usual rating of 6/10 though.

[This one was pretty disturbing..]

6/10

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Tokyo Godfathers

I love the characters, I love the story, I love the music & sound, I love everything about this. From the first minute I knew this will be good and I was not wrong.

My roommate asked me to watch this with her, so we put it on in Czech dabbing/language. This part of wrap-up will be about that version, not the original.

We both loved it, she gave it a 10/10, I gave it 9/10. The only reason for the difference is the ending.

While my beloved friend says she is accustomed to these "bad" endings, after watching Spirited Away as her first anime (she rants about it to this day), I (on the other hand) got really upset about the ending.

I don't like open ends, I want to know what happened to all three of them and how they moved in life.

[Hana was defo my favorite. She told the poor woman she is eating for two, and later in the movie she was seen carrying a baby. The woman in blue clothes had a scare of her life!]

[If nothing, I will revisit it to make some screenshots...]

Spoilers ahead:

The story goes: Three people that ended on streets due to various circumstances live now as homeless people. During Christmas they find a girl abandoned in trash, call her "Kiyoko" (from "pure") and decide to find her a mother.

The three main characters are Hana - a trans woman that used to sing at a night bar, but got into an ugly argument which made her leave, Gin - who left his wife and baby girl because of his addictions, and Miyuki - a girl that ran away from home after she stabbed her own father after her cat "ran away". 

The three of them are saved by their little angel multiple time, facing their past, getting entangled into political conspiracy about a strip-bar owner, and end up having to save a crazy woman who lost her child from killing herself and Kiyoko.

In the end, they all find their homes - Hana is told by her "mamá" that she can come back to bar, Gin's daughter tells him to reach out, Miyuki's dad finds his girl and Kiyoko finds her real parents...

The ending leaves something to be desired. What was the end? Did they stay homeless? Did they get together with their former "families"? Do they stay friends? 

As much as I want to give this a 10/10, I need to, have to known the answers.

One day, I will rewatch this. Because I want to see it in original and compare the two.

It still is one of my favorites.

I loved the fact that they started opening up and warming to each other - Hana, Gin and Miyuki. All of them were like strangers at first, but ended up admitting that they care for each other, and all of that really gave me the warm feeling of Christmas.

Especially when it came to Hana's pronouns.

Last thing I want to say, this is the first work from Satoshi Kon that I watched (not counting Ani-Kuri), and I have to say I love it. Though he has the "same face syndrome" art-style, I love that he stays real, doesn't push fantastical or sci-fi into his works and opens our eyes with heavy socio-focused stories, that leave you silent for a moment, thinking about how beautiful world can be, even if you are "unhappy" in life.

9/10

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Inu-ou (Inu-Oh)

Very unique animation and art style, with story that sounds more than interesting. 

The music was absolutely captivating - it really was a good look in the old culture.

Inu-Oh reveals that with each new dance his body changes - which reminds me of Dororo a lot. I love this type of curses that shape you in a good way. Well, not shape you. The curses that reveal who you are.

Tomona changes his name and uses it more than his old name, which takes power from the spirit of his father who gets smaller and smaller when he reveals himself around Tomona. Another extra interesting aspect.

At around 36 minute mark, the performed song almost sounded like a Mongolian rock music and I was living for it. It was so funny and so good! 

The music was much heavier aspect than I thought and it felt like not watching a movie, but listening to a soundtrack. 

In the end though, the story was a miss for me.

5/10

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GOLDEN BOY: Sasurai no Obenkyou Yarou

This shi* definitely overdid it with the boob animation. The perversion is ruining the fun of it being a 90s movie - which really means it's ruining the whole show.

Again = how did I get to this anime, without knowing or realizing it was ecchi until it was too late???

Other than that, I guess it's pretty fun - nothing serious, not real story, just silly stuff and weirdo boy. Normal ecchi anime with that added quality only 90s anime have.

Our main character Kintaro is a knowledge-seeking boy with naturally high sex-drive, that falls for any woman that looks at him. But it's all forgiven, because he makes studying cool and he encourages us, viewers, to study more in our everyday lives as well! 😂

Why was he cleaning toilets and getting the water touch his face so often??

Big thumbs up for voice acting in both - original and dub.

[Gorgeous gorgeous women...]

[Not to kink shame... but Disgusting.]

[Iconic shot]

I won't lie, I have problems with it. I take anime too seriously sometimes, ignoring the comedy. In this case, I minded this:

We got a great episode on how women can be great, how smart they are and that they are professionals... only to be shut down my an amateur that never even touched a computer in the end.

Shame on you. It made me kinda upset.

[She is freaking gorgeous..]

All in all, extremely weird but kind of funny anime. Watch at your own risk.

6/10

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NITABOH: Tsugaru Shamisen Shiso Gaibun

One of the weirdest observation that I made in life is, that tall and big men (those that are built like a wall) are the nicest men out there. They are such sweethearts, they never do any harm. It's my favorite trope in fiction and my favorite encounters in person.

Anway, Nitaboh. Nitaboh tells a story about a young man who suddenly became blind as a child, and grew up with love for different instruments.

The story is touching, the art is well, the animation is nice... And the music is heavenly. I really loved the music and the songs they choose to put in this movie, they caressed my heart.

    

[Go, women.]

One of the things I enjoyed was the look into lives of those, who were there during "changes". Father not being used to "Edo" being Tokyo now, them not understanding the concept of newspapers... Amazing!

Nitaro's story is that gut-wrenching sadness of watching the life of a disabled person and knowing you cannot help and that there is nothing you can do to help. 

I have a hate-love relationship with stories like this. As much as I love learning and seeing how they got through life, it does make me cry every time.

Nitaro's argument with monks was not so bad, because "times changed" so I knew that was just a bump in the road. When his shamisen (broke? tore?) I felt a stone in my throat, it was awful.

And as always, the ending sucked ass and I kind of wish there was more. Still, a very touching story that is worth attention... but maybe find a live action movie or a book.

6/10

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Shiguang Dailiren

(Link Click)

People call this one of the most unique shows, and I don't agree. It looks great, the visuals are amazing and the animation is pretty great too. Music is fine - not great, not bad. 

The story is simple - two boys are in a business, going into other people's photos to help them out with various issues or dreams and desires. There is just one rule - don't change anything/don't alter the past and the future.

It works well, it's pretty interesting. 

    

What I found disappointing was in 3rd/4th episode, when Xiaoshi changed the past, they could play it off as showing us what will happen and how catastrophic the consequences might be. Instead, they played it off with "well it isn't that big of a deal, so it won't alter the future in any way" which - boooriiing.

But in the end, they were saving the shocker of changing the past for a "bigger" scene, which did not translate well to me, really. They should leave it and then do it in one big motion, when the suspension from "oh he's breaking the rule" was still on high.

    

All in all, it was okay. Not perfect, but not bad by any means. I will continue watching, but it's not worth making a fuss about.

I do guess that the last 3/4 episodes that were dealing with a serial killer were pretty interesting and filled with action - but it did not change my overall feeling about this show.

...And it had a wonderful message to all those that are struggling.

7/10

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Odekake Kozame

(Little Shark's Day Out)

I didn't think this would end so soon, that's why I paused it. But as it turns out, Little Shark has only 60 episodes. So I got caught up and even finished.

Each episode is only a few minutes long - giving us a short cute story that makes you feel relaxed and happy. 

Needles to say, I found it a waste of my time. Sure, it's sweet and cute - but that is it. There is no story, there is no amazing animation, no lesson to teach the kids.

You can totally give it an hour of your time, but you don't have to - you will not miss anything.

5/10

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╰─  · 𓆩🌻𓆪 ·  ──────────╯

March 2024 was difficult for me. Not only when it comes to watching/reading... but in personal life too.

I passed two very important and hard finals I was trying to get through for 3 years... Which means I passed all of my college exams and now need to finish my thesis.

The struggle for me is not over, despite summer approaching. Well, let's hope everything ends well.

As for my anime experience, it was very meh. The first few were fun, I... and then it was a lot of misses or half-decent shows that were close to being bad, but their message or quality saved them.

Let's hope June will be better!