School CQC: Delayed Review!
School happens sometimes. Unfortunately for us living the real world, it’s never nearly as interesting as it is in anime. Aliens? Drama? Saving the world? Nope, we get homework, homework, and more homework. It’s nice to escape that once in a while. It’s not like we have a weekly occurring event where we have to get through a predetermined amount of anime, and then provide some sort of writeup about it. That would be terrible.
Medaka Box
Medaka Kurokami is a girl forged of 99% pure awesome. She is charismatic, athletic, intelligent, adapts quickly to any task at hand, and was elected student council president by an astounding 98% of the vote in her freshman year. Her first act as president is to set up a suggestion box for the entire student body to bring her their problems, since she claims she can only be at ease when she’s helping someone. She manages to rope her childhood friend, Zenkichi Hitoyoshi, into the student council to help her in her quest to satisfy the needs of the student body, and continues to recruit Kikaijima Mogana from the swim team and Akune Kouki from the Judo club.
She is the entire student council. Has there ever been an student council with significant returning officers?
Enter Studio Gainax’s anime adaptation of the wildly-popular shounen action manga about superpowered high schoolers. Except this is the first arc, before things go entirely off the rails, so instead this one cour show is about the slice of life antics of the student council as they help the student body of Hakoniwa Academy. The source material is written by NisiOisiN, who you probably know as the man behind Bakemonogatari; unfortunately, whatever style he might have brought to the source manga seems a bit muted in the transition to the anime. At least in the early episodes, the characters play out as barely more than tepid imagings of character archetypes (Spectacular MC-chan, her snarky childhood friend, the creepy all-knowing loli, the ladykiller bishounen, etc.).
The visual work is pretty average fare. Static backgrounds and panning shots for most scenes, with larger, more spectacular setpieces interspersed from time to time to keep things visually appealing. And of course, this being Gainax, a certain pair gets a lot of well-animated screentime and accompanying sound effects. The music wasn’t anything spectacular either. Lest I damn them both with faint praise, I should qualify that neither the art nor the sound were bad; rather, they just didn’t make me say “wow” at any point.
Just who the hell . . . nah, too easy.
Maybe things get better after the genre flip. Medaka Box already got approved for a second season where the superpowered escapades start showing up, so stay tuned for this series’ second shot at glory.
Tsuritama
Yuki Sanada lives with his grandmother, and her career requires that they relocate frequently. Because of this, Yuki has had a hard time developing friendships and social skills; in fact, when he gets nervous or upset, this manifests as him donning a monstrous expression and metaphorically drowning in a torrent of water. He has a new chance at high school life, however, when his grandmother’s work takes the pair to the island town of Enoshima. He is soon forcibly befriended by the strange, self-proclaimed alien Haru, who also coerces local “fishing prince” Natsuki Usami into teaching Haru and Yuki how to fish. A mysterious Indian man in black, Yamada, watches the trio from afar while he reports to the mysterious organization “Duck.”
>> That feeling when presentation not ready yet
Although the ultimate setup revealed midway through the series is pretty cool (Yuki, Haru, Natsumi, and Yamada must fish up a mind-controlling alien who’s been chilling off the coast of Japan for hundreds of years), the execution leaves quite a bit to be desired. The alien in question is merely subconsciously building an army of hula-dancing meatbags, and alien-hunting organization Duck is silly but not quite over-the-top enough to escape a sidelong glare at their antics. However, taken as a story with a more subdued theme about the pains of making new friends in a strange new place, Tsuritama works really well. Unless you were incredibly lucky, at some point in your education you went to a new school where you had to stick your neck out a little to meet new people; the audience here gets to see Yuki grow from a self-conscious loner to a comfortable high schooler with a tight group of friends.
The art helps to sell this story as well. Enoshima is painted with bright pastel blues, greens, and yellows, and Yuki’s hair is a shockingly harsh red color; contrast this against Yuki’s old school which was full of dull browns and grays. The whole series is animated with a loose sort of quality, which (in addition to no doubt saving on animation budget) gives Tsuritama a feeling of surreality perfect for the supernatural tale it’s trying to tell. This lackadaisical style brings on some QUALITY moments, though, which ruin the feel into something more akin to “the artists just didn’t care.”
Yuki's old school is on the left, and his new school on Enoshima is on the right.
The music is exotic and relaxed, befitting the island town, and consists mostly of wind instruments and a ukulele that likes to pop in from time to time. Nothing special there, but it has the right feel for the setting, which is good.
Nyarlko-San
AKA “How High Is Your Anime Power Level?” Theoretically, there’s a plot here about how Mahiro has gotten tied up in the intergalactic antics of the aliens-not-aberrations that populate the Lovecraft mythos, steadily gathering a group of “friends” composed of Nyarlko (in love with Mahiro), Cthuga (in love with Nyarlko), and Hastur (in love with Mahiro). But really, you’re watching this show for the references.
Roll for SAN! … also wow no wonder Cthuga is blushing.
Alas, my power level isn’t nearly high enough to pick up on more than the occasional Lovecraft or Call of Cthulhu reference or generic “haha that was probably an animu” moments.
Other than the references and shout outs, though, Nyarlko is kinda generic. Generic appearance, generic sound, generic plot. All around, a good idea executed … acceptably.
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