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dogsicle posted:by popular request of Strange Quark, feel free to share non-seasonal sports series thoughts here as well. with Summer being comparatively light on sports, i'll probably try a 1:1 reboot of the original Srice thread then. 👍 another win for the books lads 
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Apr 26, 2022 04:47
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 05:32 |
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I recently finished watching Ahiru no Sora, and it's... pretty mid. At the immediate surface level, the animation never really goes beyond perfunctory in the basketball games, with many scenes being obvious manga panel stills embellished with some sliding motions in the foreground. As is rather infamous, the animation team tries to ape Kuroko's Basketball in converying how fast the characters are moving, but without the polish of Kuroko's production it just looks comical. Game flow massively suffers as a result, so it's hard to get invested in games when it's often unclear what plays are happening. Storywise though, I have to give the show props for not being a cookie cutter underdog narrative. We start with the basketball team as a complete sham and front for a delinquents' hangout brought about by the school's mandatory club rules. So when the team does get dragged into trying to play a game, they suck. A lot. They never win any of their practice games. They lose their first match in the tournament prelims. In fact, in the show's 50-episode run, the team plays five games and wins exactly zero of them. The basketball games aren't really what's important in the show though. They're simply the medium for carrying the real meat of the show: the character arcs. You've got the usual spiel with the kids about finding a passion and working hard to achieve something even if you fail, but I find the advisor to be the most compelling character as the representation of the primary conflict of the series. Because of their reputation, the basketball team commands not an iota of respect from the school, neither from the faculty or the other students. The advisor comes in only because he is told to by the principal, and he immediately lays it out that he is not invested in the future of the team and would really have it be disbanded as soon as possible. He is convinced that people don't fundamentally change, but the team's earnest efforts to get better and make up for their mistakes slowly wins him over. They might cause trouble and get into fights, but they're ultimately just kids, and kids need to be nurtured and encouraged, not abandoned. It's a sweet sentiment, but it's a bit undermined by how much of this show is its very lame treatment of its female characters. We get a scene early on with one of the main characters trying to peep on the girls' locker room and then steal their underwear, and that pretty much sets the tone for the entire show. The most egregious instance is when they play a practice game against the girls' basketball team. When the coach brings it up, the boys scoff at the idea that any game with such a lopsided physical advantage could possibly be worth going through, and one of them cheekily suggests that maybe they'll be motivated if the girls all strip naked if they lose. This turns into the captain of the girls' team getting stuck as the sole victim of the losing condition, and absolutely none of the boys even try protesting this despite the show presenting some of them elsewhere as good-natured and nice people. I've never been a high school boy, so perhaps having uncontrollably horny urges is simply accurate to real life, but I'd rather not see it in my media. Ahiru no Sora is basically a melodrama in disguise, complete with a obviously dying mom for the protagonist, and to that effect it's pretty good. Worth a look if you can ignore the lackluster animation, somewhat slow pacing, and questionable characterization, but there's no doubt in my mind that the manga is the better format for the series.
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Apr 28, 2022 07:30
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We're four episodes into Fanfare of Adolescence and it's been very promising so far. I went into this show expecting nothing other than knowing that the director served as the episode director of three random episodes of IDOLiSH7, but it's got the vibe down pretty good. You've got the usual mix of stupid, wacky antics, but I especially like how the show has been weaving in the cast's anxieties and insecurities. Our main character is a recently retired idol, and unlike a certain other show (Aquatope), it's actually feels like a purposeful element. He gets recognized in public all the time and it clearly bothers him, and one of his jockey classmates had bought into the whole idol inspiration thing as a fan and now has to deal with the disillusionment of realizing his favorite idol wasn't actually enjoying what he did. An easy rec to idol drama fans if it can deliver on the character arcs it's set up. Dance Dance Danseur has been great too. I've always been partial to arcs about learning to get over oneself, and episode 3 went full in on it with our protagonist struggling to do the right thing as his ballet rival who he doesn't really like gets repeatedly bullied by his lovely friends. The fight against his deep seated issues is the most interesting part of the show so far, and I hope that the episode ending with him fully accepting he wants to do ballet and rejecting his friends doesn't mean the end of all of it.
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Apr 29, 2022 03:20
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Dance Dance Danseur might be the best show of the season. The slow friendship between the main two boys is a pleasure to watch grow, particularly since it started from mutual instinctive distrust and wasn't guided at any point by some forced proximity in the narrative. There's obviously still signs of miscommunication and unease (and it's a blessing the show doesn't explicitly spell these out to the audience), which makes the development feel organic and the eventual emotional growth is very satisfying when it starts to show. The ballet progress itself is simple but effective. The improvements are slow but they're tangible and believable, which is somehow a bit of a rarity in series about total beginners learning how to master something in my experience. The one misgiving I have is that there's four episodes left in the show, and it doesn't feel like the show will move fast enough to reach a natural stopping point. I've been enjoying the current leisurely pacing so it'd be a shame if it significantly speeds up to get to the ending.
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May 27, 2022 10:00
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The Black Stones posted:Does the main character get better about admitting he wants to dance because one thing that threw me off and I stopped watching was just how much he was complaining about “no I actually don’t want to do this!” multiple times an episode when he of course clearly does. It’s fine to have a main character put up resistance to something as it creates conflict but you can’t drag it out and have him just be an rear end about it. The main thrust of the story early on is about him getting over himself (drat a teenager not being honest with himself because of peer pressure?), and it happens iirc in ep 4
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May 28, 2022 01:57
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There's like at least ten original shows every season. There's not really any correlation between the state of the source material and the broadcast length. And the number of episodes would be known to the studio. It's based on agreements with the TV networks which give them a set number of weeks that's pretty much set in stone.
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Jun 2, 2022 07:34
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psyer posted:The animation is probably the weakest portion of the anime but sports anime in general never really had great animation. Kinda pointless to single sports out for this when it's true of the reality of TV anime. That being said, there's some obvious standouts in the first three seasons of Haikyuu and Kuroko's Basketball.
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Jun 14, 2022 10:28
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Jomo posted:First Reaction: Noice! Blu-rays being expensive is standard practice for Japan, yes. It's a set for the whole season, being episodes 1 to 13.
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Jun 22, 2022 03:31
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Bluray sales are publicly published on a weekly basis and pretty easy to find, and you can find a lot of series each season that sell less than 200 discs flat out.
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Jun 22, 2022 06:42
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 05:32 |
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Jomo posted:They got to make money somehow. The link also mentions a Switch game but gives no further details about it; hopefully it won't be ¥33,000. There's a reason the secondhand market is so big for media in Japan you know
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Jun 24, 2022 04:03
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