September 30, 2022
Possibilities for the fall season.
Definite:
Urusei Yatsura - Because that was one of the first Anime I ever saw at the Philadelphia Animation Society in 1984. And some of my oldest friendships from back then are still going.
Spy x Family season 2. Because the first season was so awesome.
Peter Grill: Because you gotta balance all that goodness with a Trash Ecchi.
Possible:
Isekai Ojisan - Because folks have said it was good, but it was delayed.
Tensei Shitara Ken Deshita - Because Cat girls.
Yuusha Party wo Tsuihou Sareta Beast Tamer, Saikyoushu no Nekomimi Shoujo to Deau - Because Cat Girls.
Akiba Maid Sensou - Because Maid Girls. (Not always a sure fire thing, but the description suggests something more.)
Uchi no Shishou wa Shippo ga Nai - Because Tanuki Girl.
Uchi no Shishou wa Shippo ga Nai - Because Tanuki Girl.
Any better suggestions?
If you wanna see where I'm getting this, check the anime chart link on the side.
Posted by: Mauser at
08:04 PM
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September 18, 2022
Belle / Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime
Our Heroine, Suzu, has a tragic backstory. She grew up very close to her mother, who was really big on two things, swimming and music. And Suzu loved music and singing. But one day during a torrential rainstorm, half the village was down by the banks of the raging, swollen river. A little girl is alone and trapped on a rocky bar in the middle of the river, and is in danger of being swept away as the water rises. Suzu's mom dons a life jacket, and rescues the girl at the cost of her own life. Suzu has a sad from then on and doesn't sing any more. (The community reaction is stunning to me. Local scolds online talk about how selfish it was of Suzu's mom to leave her own child alone for someone unrelated. Heroism is apparently not respected. I mean, you hear about how "The nail who sticks up gets hammered" in Japanese society, but this formulation of it is unbelievable.)
It's a very pretty animation, but probably better seen on a 4K movie screen because there is too much actively moving small detail work to avoid massive video compression artifacts.
I'm trying to remember another anime I watched a number of years ago where a guy comes to the family homestead in rural Japan, and has a whole ton of computer equipment delivered so that he can take on some hacker in a virtual world - because Belle owes a lot to that show for the visual design of its virtual world. (Basically an infinite white space with cities and avatars floating around in it.) This VR world "U" is accessed through the improbable handwavium of a cellphone app and a pair of special earbuds that somehow link you to a biometrically generated avatar called an AS supposedly based on you, but customizable (which also limits you to only one account). Gotta wonder how mucked-up the biometrics are of some folks, given the avatars they appear with, but at least almost all of the main characters appear as human instead walking hands studded with eyeballs or something.
Our Heroine, Suzu, has a tragic backstory. She grew up very close to her mother, who was really big on two things, swimming and music. And Suzu loved music and singing. But one day during a torrential rainstorm, half the village was down by the banks of the raging, swollen river. A little girl is alone and trapped on a rocky bar in the middle of the river, and is in danger of being swept away as the water rises. Suzu's mom dons a life jacket, and rescues the girl at the cost of her own life. Suzu has a sad from then on and doesn't sing any more. (The community reaction is stunning to me. Local scolds online talk about how selfish it was of Suzu's mom to leave her own child alone for someone unrelated. Heroism is apparently not respected. I mean, you hear about how "The nail who sticks up gets hammered" in Japanese society, but this formulation of it is unbelievable.)
Suzu has one friend in school, Hiro, who is a really tech-savvy nerd. There are some minor plot points about high-school who likes who stuff that I won't go into. Hiro sends her an invite link to U. She sets up her character, and with a some reluctance, she logs in.
God damn those U programmers should work on their New User Experience. They just dump her into the middle of the space. No tutorials or anything!
So there are basically three plot threads.
1: Suzu/Belle's rise to fame. When she first arrived she was able to sing again, very pretty. A lot of folks found that annoying, but others were all "Who's that girl?" and she memetically rose to fame, partly thanks to social engineering and tech support from Hiro. Suzu is thankful for being able to sing again, but shys away from the attention, and desperately wants to keep her real identity secret, although when it's plot convenient for thread 3, everyone in the village knows its her and wants to help.
One funny sub-plot of this thread is Peggy Sue, the previous most famous VR singer celeb. By being bitchy about Belle, she begins to lose her fame. And at the end reveal, she lets slip that she too is just an ordinary schoolgirl.
2: The bad dragon. When one of Belle's concerts is crashed (literally) by a large dragon avatar, along with a large cadre of the U-niverse's self-appointed (?) protectors, whose ultimate weapon is revealing your true form (Officially sanctioned doxing?!). Belle goes on a Beauty and the Beast plotline to force herself on the guy, and is aided but a number of little AI bots that float around in the system.
3: Life reflects art.
It's a very pretty animation, but probably better seen on a 4K movie screen because there is too much actively moving small detail work to avoid massive video compression artifacts.
Posted by: Mauser at
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