Sunday, March 26, 2017

[Ended] Interviews with Monster Girls, No-Strings-Attached Goodness


Hey folks, I'm gonna cut the 'pros and cons' part of my end review posts, since more often than not, I talk about them in the 'my opinion' section in great detail anyway. Just a little something to speed up how fast I make these.

My Opinion: Hey, so, in case you didn't know: I hate fan service.
[RANT ON]
Or at least, that was what I believed until this shows final episode aired, and I found out that...
Really, I hate what fan service has become. These days, we hear 'fan service' and we just accept that it means titty shots, panty shots, lewd camera angles and jokes, and all that nonsense. That's bullshit. Why is it bullshit? Because there is more than one way to skin a cat. Or a dog for that matter, but back on point:
Lewd service isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Why? Because Sex Sells. Does that annoy me? Sure it does, but I'm an adult and I can deal with it. More importantly though, I've been trying to remember an older time in the industry, when I was younger, when it might have meant more. Before it even had a proper name that everyone used to refer to this kind of stereotypical construct in a show. I mean, think about what it actually means. Service, for the fans. Sounds straight forward right? So why is the result anything but? Why is it one of the top reasons why you'd be uneasy about sharing your favorite anime with friends? Peers? Your parents? Your GRAND-parents?
[Rant off]

Demi Interviews contains the perfect example of what Fan Service should be. An understanding of what the audience that would have watched all the way to end means. What they stayed to see, what they were here to see. What they like to see. What they want to see. Then it takes this trope, this 'accepted practice' of the industry, and it bends it to their will.
I have come to understand that the reason I hate fan service so much, is the insult it is to every show that uses it. That does it just because it's 'what you do if you're an anime'. It's debasing and insulting for characters that we've spent time getting attached to, learning about, and connecting with, to suddenly turn on a dime and do 'fan service' scenes, then turn on a dime again, and resume as if nothing had ever happened. How many times can you say that anything of importance ever happened, or changed, during a fan service scene or episode? Unless you're looking at a romance focused anime, not often.

Everything in Demi Interviews last episode, its fan service episode, is spot on. It knows why we are here, and it gives us what we want, even if we didn't fully understand how we wanted it, because we've gotten so used to 'the way things are done'. How can you tell? Because you don't need to keep it in a separate head-space from the rest of the show, it feels canon because it is canon. The characters and story play the same way they always do, only now they're in a pool. Tetsuo is still the best-damn-teacher-ever learning as he goes about Demi traits because he enjoys doing so and it helps his students, Hikari's still an energetic ditz, Satou is desperately trying to find the right balance of her ability in a relationship, Et Cetera.

It doesn't pan the camera for crotch and boob shots, it doesn't flip skirts, it doesn't pull anyone's swimsuit off through 'magical coincidences', no one gets slapped because of a FUCKING ACCIDENT. The only character whose swimsuit reveal they focus in on, is Satou's, which makes SENSE, because she's a succubus, and it means something that she even does it at all.
The show does its few lewd moments in ways that make sense for the show. Satake falling out of the tree is by far the most hilarious thing I've seen all week. A close second goes to everyone in the pools reaction when Tetsuo turns around without his shirt on. That these moments are highlights instead of nuisances to me, is an amazing mark of quality for the animation studio on this one. Do I even need to mention that of the only two lewd'ish moments in the entire episode, it's equally distributed to one male, one female? I honestly don't care about 'Fan Service Equality', because I hate(d) it so much, but there you have it, equality for the masses.

I would like to believe that the way they handle this episode is also indicative of the quality of the entirety of the show.

Impartial Opinion: This show is not for everyone. It contains no action, its drama is light-hearted, and it doesn't have over the top comedy. It doesn't even really have a plot to speak of.
What it does have, is touching feel-good moments. It has those in Olympic Gold Medal quality. It never gets too dark, it never gets too silly. Demi-Chan Interviews aims for balance, and it does a good job of achieving it. Everyone has their own tastes, their own ways of spending their precious free time. For some, this show will be boring. Maybe they have better ways of getting their 'feel-good moments'.
But if you like touching heart-felt stories and characters, without the long drawn-out dramatic build up that most shows seem to require to get you attached to their characters, this show will be perfect for you. It sets up a simple premise: Demi-humans exist, and they're no longer ostracized, but they haven't fully integrated yet either. Then it introduces its characters, and lets them tell their own story from there.
If you come to this show looking for something, what you're looking for should be to quietly smile, laugh, and brood on the simple joys and struggles of coming together with people that are different from everyone else, but still want to be together with everyone.

I give this show a glowing:

Great
Recommendation.


[Aside]
Incidentally, I'm only going to use the colored ranking systems where I feel it's relevant. Not every show needs to be slotted into some formula of ranking. Judging everything against everything else gets very complicated, very fast. As you fill out the list of things in a Bad versus Good system, even with my addition of a Mediocre, you begin to start second guessing yourself. Thoughts like, 'well, Show-X is bad, yeah, but it's not as bad as show Y in the Bad category, so maybe I should just make it Mediocre?'
So I'll only be using these color markers for shows that I really want to draw attention to. Specifically drawing attention. They aren't necessarily a marker of 'the-best-thing-EVAR', just things that for one reason or another I think you should pay more attention to than you otherwise would have, maybe easily overlooked shows, Et Cetera.
[Aside end]

Saturday, March 18, 2017

[New][January 2016] Kobayashi-san's Dragon Maid


Last Seen: Episode 10

Summary: As Kobayashi sets off for another day at work, she opens her apartment door only to be met by an unusually frightening sight: The head of a dragon, staring at her from across the balcony. The dragon immediately transforms into a cute and energetic young girl dressed in a maid outfit, and introduces herself. The stoic programmer had come across the dragon the previous night on a drunken-stupor excursion to the mountains, and since the mythical beast had nowhere else to go, Kobayashi had offered the creature a place to stay in her home, and now Tohru has arrived as promised. Kobayashi immediately refutes it as impossible, but as she watches Tohru leave, her guilt, and a glance at the clock, convince her to allow her to stay...and rush her to work with the speed of a Dragon!

First Impression: At first, it seemed a simple comedy. It quickly becomes so much more.

My Opinion: As it turns out, this is actually the work of the same author behind "I can't Understand What my Husband is Saying". (I have relevant in-site links for once! Neat!).
As a quick summary, that show was the first ever short-form anime I had ever actually completed, and I love it so much. I believe I found this factoid out around about episode 3 or 4 of Dragon Maid, but I had already hooked myself on this show by that point. It just made for a lovely bit of trivia by then.

I have enjoyed this show so much, that I've actually re-watched all of the available episodes while I was waiting for 10 to release. Let me make a long story short by saying that with the way that my memory works, I never re-watch shows without at least a measure of years since the last watch, and even then it's usually only to show it to someone else, or because I learned something and want to see it for myself.
[Aside]
For example, Steins;Gate. That's a show I re-watched when at the end I noticed all of the amazing foreshadowing it had spiced that first episode with. It was amazing.
[Aside end]
That I re-watched a show while it is still airing is a glowing mark of quality.

What's appealing about this show? For starters, let me polish off the tin that probably looks rusty and dusty to most common anime viewers:
This is not a Moe show. It is not a fan-service show. It has a strong comedic tone. Most importantly of all, it is a light-hearted emotional comedy with a beautifully mature setting and tone, all throughout it. The characters are charming, the world is meaningful, and the story is heart-warming, and it all has a plot hiding behind it. Does it have Moe elements? Fan-service events? Over the top comedic happenings? Absolutely, but they're not the burning pillar in center stage. As a matter of fact, they're not even annoying or obnoxious. They happen because it's cute, or because it's funny, and then the show moves on without shining a god-damned neon-spotlight all over it.

As a matter of fact, while I was trying to confirm that this released in January for this blogs tags, I came across an article written about this show, and it sums up my opinion perfectly. Credit to the writer, who I now Quote:
"It could have been so easy for Dragon Maid to treat Kobayashi and Tohru's relationship as a fanservice-laden romp with minimal plot and character progression. And yet with each new episode, we see Tohru's one-sided adoration of Kobayashi evolve into something that, while Kobayashi doesn't explicitly accept as romantic, is still incredibly reminiscent of a parenting dynamic over their new dragon daughter, Kanna.
Kobayashi herself acknowledges that she's become the husband to Tohru's wife, and it's when the two fall into these "ordinary" roles that the series begins to shine. The snippy back and forth between characters makes them feel not like fantastical creatures imposing on a computer programmer, but a family unit we can relate to and laugh alongside with. Kobayashi and Tohru acting like a married couple is treated so matter-of-factly because their relationship isn't the entire point of the show. Unlike other anime that either pin a romantic or sexual relationship as their central conflict or one-note gag, Dragon Maid treats this like every other mundane aspect that makes up its slice-of-life style. The show's strength comes from how it normalizes relationships and finds humor in their mundanity, especially considering that dragons are involved."

On another note, I liked the show so much I picked up its manga, and after humming and hawing for awhile over it, continued reading even when I had caught up to where the anime was. I have some news to report thanks to that: This show will end well. The manga is still in progress of being translated to english, so that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how the anime is pacing itself. They've shuffled a few events around, and appear to be drawing a lot of content from a spin-off manga about Kanna (that I haven't read at all yet), and it appears that they're doing this to a purpose. They're either going to end the show on a quiet happy note, leaving it as a completely feel-good thought provoking show, or they're going to build up a climax that will succinctly end the current story, while hinting at the much larger plot that is building beneath the surface, that they've so far been subtly avoiding in the anime.
The fact that a short-form anime like "I can't understand" got two seasons is extremely promising combined with the methods the animation studio is currently using.
I dunno, I just thought this seemed like something positive to report on, given how pessimistic I usually am about endings and sequels.

Short story: Watch this. Watch it so hard, you watch it twice.