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Anime I've been watching
You ever do that thing where you start a post but don't finish it, but when you go to finish it it's out of date so you end up rewriting half of it without finishing it, ad infinitum? I've had one of those sitting in my drafts for what feels like a month now, so I'm just cutting it up and posting pieces of it before this results in my never posting anything ever again, which has happened to me in other places.
I caught an episode of Mashiro no Oto and was intrigued, so I went and picked up the whole series. It's a story about a depressed kid who's grandfather dies. The grandfather was a shamisen master and the MC, Setsu, of course picked it up from him and is some sort of shamisen prodigy. He's also however completely removed from the shamisen world and doesn't know anything about performing or competitions or whatever, so no one knows about him either. The story is kind of about him being able to "find his sound" and his frustration with asserting himself vs living up to the reputation of his grandfather and the pressure of his parents, who are absolute pieces of abusive shit.
I ended up enjoying the show a lot, but with some asterisks. Each episode has a lot of great shamisen music in it, and lets the music breathe so that you can really enjoy it. That part is a major plus. Setsu can easily be read as depressed and is something of a woobie. It feels like no one except his brother really understands him and there doesn't seem to be any space for him to really grieve his grandpa, who looms so large over everyone in the story. I like my depressed, aimless, frustrated characters with poor social skills so I found myself rooting for him to find his feet.
The side characters are alright but feel a little cliche. It seems the anime tones down the manga's vaguely homophobic bits with one of them, who is straight up called an Onee. He's my fave hands down in the anime but has other characters give him the usual "ha ha are you a woman or a man we just don't know" sort of BS in the manga. As an ensemble they end up feeling a like a little stereotypical club group, and the writing sometimes feels like it's going through the usual paces with them. Also the massive love polygon between them all (which is probably why I like Rai so much, he's automatically excluded from that BS) that starts to rear its head is uninteresting.
During the school competition part of the plot I started to lose some interest. First, not every damn story needs to revolve around a school competition, and Setsu was more interesting when he had 0 interest in that sort of thing and was chilling on the edge of homelessness. Second, I'm eternally skeptical of stories that suggest people who barely ever touched an instrument before can pick it up and not just compete but place well in competitions within a few months. It always feels insulting when that happens, like people don't respect just how much work it takes to be good at playing an instrument. Mashiro no Oto doesn't go full blown magic talent plot and does try to show that the club is really practicing every spare moment, but it still rubbed me the wrong way a little.
I feel like this is an anime that had an entertaining setup, but I don't really understand where it's going. Is Setsu just going to start getting super into shamisen competitions or something? Is anyone going to just give him a damn hug? Is it going to devolve into love confessions? The final episode ends on an unsatisfying note, and I don't know if this show is good enough to get a second season. I tried to figure out what was going to happen by looking through the manga, but I ended up losing interest there too, particularly when it seemed like the plot was getting overwhelmed with romance entanglements. Without the music it seems I just don't care enough.
With the music, however, it's great, because it does have great music, and I don't know how many anime I've watched that have a full blown traditional vocal performance in the middle of an episode. I'm going to say 0 outside of this one. I unironically like this sort of music(It's similar to the sort of music I grew up with) so that was a big plus to me.
Here's the one scene with vocals:
The song is called Tusgaru Ohara Bushi or 津軽小原節 if you want to look it up without the anime narration on top of it.
I've also been keeping up with each new episode of Kimetsu no Yaiba / Demon Slayers when it comes out. This one I'm 1000% into. The fights are so fucking good, and every episode is like injecting raw shonen energy into my veins. The only problem is that I haven't watched a show as it was being released in FOREVER, and this show in particular is really fucking with its viewers by putting out cliffhanger episode after cliffhanger episode. The wait is causing me mental anguish, but unlike Mashiro no Oto I absolutely don't want to spoil myself with the manga on this one because I don't want to dilute the hype.The last season was tops for animation. Just awesome combat scenes all around. The pleasure quarter arc just finished and I don't know if they're going to pick up with a new arc right off the bat. If not I'll need to find something else to watch. Maybe give Kill La Kill another shot.
I caught an episode of Mashiro no Oto and was intrigued, so I went and picked up the whole series. It's a story about a depressed kid who's grandfather dies. The grandfather was a shamisen master and the MC, Setsu, of course picked it up from him and is some sort of shamisen prodigy. He's also however completely removed from the shamisen world and doesn't know anything about performing or competitions or whatever, so no one knows about him either. The story is kind of about him being able to "find his sound" and his frustration with asserting himself vs living up to the reputation of his grandfather and the pressure of his parents, who are absolute pieces of abusive shit.
I ended up enjoying the show a lot, but with some asterisks. Each episode has a lot of great shamisen music in it, and lets the music breathe so that you can really enjoy it. That part is a major plus. Setsu can easily be read as depressed and is something of a woobie. It feels like no one except his brother really understands him and there doesn't seem to be any space for him to really grieve his grandpa, who looms so large over everyone in the story. I like my depressed, aimless, frustrated characters with poor social skills so I found myself rooting for him to find his feet.
The side characters are alright but feel a little cliche. It seems the anime tones down the manga's vaguely homophobic bits with one of them, who is straight up called an Onee. He's my fave hands down in the anime but has other characters give him the usual "ha ha are you a woman or a man we just don't know" sort of BS in the manga. As an ensemble they end up feeling a like a little stereotypical club group, and the writing sometimes feels like it's going through the usual paces with them. Also the massive love polygon between them all (which is probably why I like Rai so much, he's automatically excluded from that BS) that starts to rear its head is uninteresting.
During the school competition part of the plot I started to lose some interest. First, not every damn story needs to revolve around a school competition, and Setsu was more interesting when he had 0 interest in that sort of thing and was chilling on the edge of homelessness. Second, I'm eternally skeptical of stories that suggest people who barely ever touched an instrument before can pick it up and not just compete but place well in competitions within a few months. It always feels insulting when that happens, like people don't respect just how much work it takes to be good at playing an instrument. Mashiro no Oto doesn't go full blown magic talent plot and does try to show that the club is really practicing every spare moment, but it still rubbed me the wrong way a little.
I feel like this is an anime that had an entertaining setup, but I don't really understand where it's going. Is Setsu just going to start getting super into shamisen competitions or something? Is anyone going to just give him a damn hug? Is it going to devolve into love confessions? The final episode ends on an unsatisfying note, and I don't know if this show is good enough to get a second season. I tried to figure out what was going to happen by looking through the manga, but I ended up losing interest there too, particularly when it seemed like the plot was getting overwhelmed with romance entanglements. Without the music it seems I just don't care enough.
With the music, however, it's great, because it does have great music, and I don't know how many anime I've watched that have a full blown traditional vocal performance in the middle of an episode. I'm going to say 0 outside of this one. I unironically like this sort of music(It's similar to the sort of music I grew up with) so that was a big plus to me.
Here's the one scene with vocals:
The song is called Tusgaru Ohara Bushi or 津軽小原節 if you want to look it up without the anime narration on top of it.
I've also been keeping up with each new episode of Kimetsu no Yaiba / Demon Slayers when it comes out. This one I'm 1000% into. The fights are so fucking good, and every episode is like injecting raw shonen energy into my veins. The only problem is that I haven't watched a show as it was being released in FOREVER, and this show in particular is really fucking with its viewers by putting out cliffhanger episode after cliffhanger episode. The wait is causing me mental anguish, but unlike Mashiro no Oto I absolutely don't want to spoil myself with the manga on this one because I don't want to dilute the hype.The last season was tops for animation. Just awesome combat scenes all around. The pleasure quarter arc just finished and I don't know if they're going to pick up with a new arc right off the bat. If not I'll need to find something else to watch. Maybe give Kill La Kill another shot.
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And yes I start and stop and have to rewrite entries on here all the time lol I've had my most recent one open for like two days lol
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