Guaporense and Zotis Review Animation

176) Scum's Wish (2017)



One of the most sexually explicit animations I ever watched and also among the most intensely dramatic. It features a ton of almost explicit sex scenes and reminds me more of a typical Western adult live action R rated movie although this one features a ton of underage characters.

The art is fairly bland though, although I liked it's art more than A Place Further than the Universe.

177) Laid Back Camp (2018)



Like A Place Father than the Universe, Laid Back Camp is one of those series featuring teenager girl protagonists that are aimed at adult males and feature male interests. In this case, it's about camping: the characters are camping fanatics and they basically camp around during it. So this is a very relaxing experience where you get to relax by watching cute characters doing some very relaxing camping as well. It reminded me a bit of Hakumei and Mikochi but in this case it was a bit more "youthful" in it's atmosphere and style, so I found it more entertaining. I also began to develop a serious desire to cook all the delicious looking dishes that they cooked here.

178) Kado: the Right Answer (2017)



A very interesting science fiction narrative. It's first half was essentially about how humanity must grapple with diplomatic ramifications of meeting intelligent aliens. The second became a weaker narrative by being about how to deal with a narcissistic alien with almost omnipotent powers.

It's a good example of a trainwreck: it's plot was very, very strong in the beginning and it gradually begins to fall apart and appeal to recycled Japanese cliches by the end.

179) Kemono Friends (2017)



Now this title is something I had very conflicting impressions. In some ways it's a truly monumental achievement, in other ways, it's an awful trainwreck characterized by terrible art and poorly rendered CGI animation. Indeed, let's get the bad out first: the visual style and quality of the art is simply beyond bad, it looks worse than the original Toy Story movie which is from 1995, that is, 23 years ago!

Anyway, the thing about it though is that the clumsy way in which it's characters move actually lend Kemono Friends it's exotic charm. Also, it's world building is actually phenomenal fantasy/science fiction: it's about animals which have been genetically manipulated to look like human teenager girls.

Well, @Guaporense, you just covered four of my favourite shows last season. I will write something as well but basically and to sum it up you only missed After the rain from my top5. Laid back Camp is the best thing I watched in 2018 so far.

The one I haven't tried yet is Slow start. It has been very divisive from the beginning and it had some intriguing points (like the supposedly top tier animation) but... Well, I had a lot to watch already. I'll check.

So, better start with the winter season in alphabetical order, right?


First things first, Guap. If you want more original anime, check the current season's Hisone to Maso-tan. The first episode was absolutely fantastic and I think it's a strong contender for spring.

I agree that A place further than the universe was amazing. I don't buy your reasoning too much, though. Particularly because you are probably too focused on establishing the exploration of the Antarctica as a traditionally masculine activity, maybe to form a contrast that is rather uncalled for and is never actually brought in the series like that. In fact, the show in its very basis is built around the idea that the women in it are already empowered, with female characters taking the leading roles both in the story and in the crew and in general a prevalently feminine point of view.

I am not sure either if we should call this an anime catered to males. Certainly being an original script leaves room for discussion. But I think the viewpoint of the show and the focus on its characters is more intimate than observant, and it really does not seem at all that it is trying to sell them to a male audience in specific. Not at least under the codes or the appeal that is usually defined for them.

Speaking of the content and execution, what I liked the most about this, a series about four teenage girls who join an expedition to the Antarctica, is that it may not look like that but it's actually very grounded. Not only on the technical aspects and procedures that are necessary in order to get ready for this journey, which the show decides to treat in depth and taking its good share of episodes, but also because people in universe are aware of it. The girls know that this opportunity is rare and exceptional, they chase it and they make a lot of effort just to be there. People around them call them crazy, the expedition members are initially reluctant to take them, everything is tightly controled with clear rules and even then the scenario looks uncertain and adventurous. It's not just "let's insert cute girls in a crazy environment" but there is a huge narrative effort on the idea of having them there alone.

Where this show truly shines however is in the depiction of the cast and their interrelationships. Kimarin, Shirase, Hinata and Yuzuki are very good characters overall but only Shirase and Hinata come off as really memorable to me. However their interactions are what sells the series to me and the way it understands friendship with its banter, its emotional moments and above all the respect for personal space (something Laid-back Camp proved to understand as well, but we'll get there) is really beautiful and inspiring. The girls have a lot of genuinely funny and heartwarming moments together and their mutual understanding is a joy to watch.

Another thing that may sound surprising in an anime that seems so positive (and is, actually) is the amount of personal drama it holds. Each of the girls have their own backstory. They are brought in the context of their friendship and their journey, and even more important, they are narratively relevant, get focus and create emotional conflicts. Something that this series handles extremely well in this aspect is emotional climax. It knows really well how and when to apply the high notes of its drama, and it made me cry on an almost routine basis. Particularly the conclusions to episode 9 and 12 made me lost it so much I couldn't get them ouf of my head for a long while.

This was a great ride, and one I loved throughout. But it wasn't without its flaws. Particularly, I was quite negatively surprised by the last episode. It felt dull, it tried to appeal to emotions it hadn't properly built up, and as a conclusion it was nothing more or less than serviceable and okay. One of my issues with the structure of the series that precisely showed to backfire here is the excessive reliance on climax. It was a problem I was pointing out through the series because while the more mundane scenes were all great and worthy of being remembered, they eventually faded and my memory would prioritize the emotional outbursts. So a conclusion without a clear outburst trying to evoke the latent emotions generated by those mundane moments had to face the trouble that what it tried to evoke was forgettable due to its own structure. The finale had other problems, though; it tried to extract emotions from an attachment to the rest of the crew and the Antarctica but it turned out that this attachment didn't exist like that in the narration, because it had been too absorbed in the emotional issues and conflicts of the four girls and had hardly paid attention to its own environment and the external elements. So basically I found myself as a spectator disconnected from the discourse of this last episode, with the series telling me that I should feel this emotion but without a buildup that justified it.

I would nitpick at other issues (the use of music was irregular and at points quite problematic), but overall the show is really solid and it was a fantastic ride. However as an experience it feels fundamentally and structurally flawed, something that I enjoyed and absolutely loved throughout with ease, but in the end doesn't give as much of a sweet aftertaste. Which is why it's not my favorite of the season.

The story of Akira, a teenage girl employed in a cafeteria who falls in love with Kondou, the 45-year-old manager. Quite a premise and a lot of people understandably felt uncomfortable with its very premise and the hints at a relationship with such an age gap and featuring an adult middle aged man and a teen girl.

Soon enough, however, it started to give signs that it wasn't going to develop like that. To sum it up, Akira's feelings for Kondou are a crush; they are never returned and they are never asked to. I was surprised at first by how nonchalant the series was at describing her attraction, like it didn't know about the moral implications but just applied filters and a happy shoujo-esque atmosphere around her. And to further add to my surprise, it didn't take long for her to confess.

In a way, this series seemed to enjoy subverting expectations. Which sometimes was more of a negative than anything. Particularly when a potentially toxic or problematic scenario was introduced but was forgotten in the following episode; it seemed to like teasing but always playing it safe and turning back before there was an issue.

But what definitely solidified it as one of my favorite shows in its season happened more or less midway through. For a story that was sold under the premise of a forbidden love interest, and that had even contemplated the idea of a relationship, it was a nice turn when it showed its true colors and became apparent that love had never been its main theme. Rather, After the rain is a show about life and personal circumstances, about moving on from the past, and about the relationship between Akira and Kondou (a love interest for Akira, an intimate friend for Kondou) not as a goal but as a circumstance and a motivational boost to tackle their own personal issues.

This is where the series jumped from promising to amazing to me. I empathized with both main characters and their background; Akira's lack of motivation to follow her career as an athlete after a foot injury, and Kondou's middle age crisis and concerns regarding his lost enthusiasm for writing. After the rain turned out to be a show that talked about universal themes of youth, nostalgia and motivation through characters who were only defined at first by their romantic approach. It was a welcome change and it made everything more memorable.

The aesthetics of this show are also absolutely worth mentioning. Very elaborate, very flashy and oversaturated with lighting and filters, it is clear that it seeks for a visual identity of its own, and at least most of the time, nails it. It is very beautiful and aesthetic to the eye.

Speaking of flaws, I guess apart from the teasing issue I mentioned my biggest problem was its excessive and almost exclusive focus on the two main characters. Only later on in the series a couple other characters get a more individual and satisfying focus, but other than that the side characters felt way too often underused, like they could have added more interest to the whole.

Overall, it is still a series I'd hesitate more to recommend than for instance A place further than the universe, due to premise and potentially triggering sequences. But it was absolutely worth it, and I loved that it didn't take routes that seemed so obvious and carried a lot of red flags. Watch it at your own risk of course, but it turned much better and way more emotionally engaging than it first sounds.

I was just pointing out that this is a title about women performing a masculine activity (there is perhaps little that could be regarded as more masculine than going to antartica). I was not saying anything else.

It's manga was made simultaneously and was published in Monthly Comic Alive, a seinen publication that usually features cutesy female characters, it's similar to the Manga Time Kirara mangazines (where Laid Back Camp was published) and targets the same demographic. That demographic is young men.

Although I also learned that "seinen manga" means adult comic in Japanese and not necessarily aimed at males. The most popular seinen magazines are read by both genders.

I though the mediocre music was it's main issue. What's your favorite for that season? Mine is Violet Evergarden. Although I would place this one in second place.

After the Rain and Devilman Crybaby would be my other titles to put among favorites this season.

It's stuff like this that shows that Japan's animation has been developing into a full artistic medium. In the sense that it including now pretty much any genres of fiction that you can imagine. While a couple of decades ago anime was more restricted as a medium, being more focused on fantasy and science fiction stuff. Now the only thing that I see as a general problem for anime being a fully mature medium is the excessive focus on highschool aged characters instead of depicting a wider variety of demographic profiles.

180) The Squid Girl 2 (2011)



I found this second season of the adaptation of comedy shounen manga substantially better than the first. One of the reasons was the more detailed and fluid animation quality as well as more consistent character designs. What I love about it, and this is a pretty personal choice given it's badly rated among western anime fans, is how light it's atmosphere is. I really found it highly entertaining and a pleasure to watch, as the cute squid girl experiences the small joys of daily human life.

181) Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san (2018)



I found this title to be kinda of a mixed bag. Although some elements were highly compelling I had some issues with the characters. The thing is that the main female character was a bit inhuman in the way she acted, as usually she showed no vulnerabilities and appeared to be an omniscient being who could read the mind of the male main character. Although that feature was built in to represent the fear of girls that a young Japanese male teenager feels to me it felt a bit tad too unrealistic for me to identify with the experiences depicted in here.

Besides that everything else was very well done and as a shounen slice of life this is certainly top tier in terms of quality. I liked specially the side kick girls who were very funny and relatable characters.

182) Mitsuboshi Colors (2018)



Perhaps the worst animation I watched for a while (after the disaster that was Moana, although that was an American children's movie so naturally it was not something that an intellectually sophisticated person would find entertaining). In this case I found it just dull. The characters were not very interesting and they acted in unnatural ways, although they were cute, plain cuteness cannot carry anything: even the hardcore moe blob experience in Slow Start can be good because behind the veil of cuteness there is substantial doses of humanism. Here I found it mainly dull, it didn't help that the animation quality was also very low.

183) After the Rain (2018)



A very impressive show. Like other Noitamina shows, it's a very unconventional and uncompromising in it's aesthetics. What I mean by that is that it's style is unlike what you typically see and reminds me more of manga from the 1990's rather than a contemporary Japanese animation.

The psychological side of it is also very strong. It's very well executed and relatable, as all characters feel like "real people" instead of archetypes. I also liked that it featured a middle aged man as a main character. Which is rare in animation.

Simultaneously, but not originally. The anime is still an original and therefore has no demographic attached.

Laid Back Camp, but I'll get there. First I'm going to talk a little about the next one in this alphabetical order list, not too much because it's been a while since I watched it:


Which I don't think I liked as much as you did but it was a great watch nonetheless. I love everything about Yuasa's visual expression bordering and often crossing the line of off-model. It is a joy to watch first and firemost because it feels so unrestrained and visceral, and this was a surprisingly great fit to many of the moments represented in this storyline, in particular in its first third, filled with graphic violence and sexual imagery; and the last one, a crazy bigger-than-life catharsis.

On the contrary, the middle third was meh. It seemed to me that Yuasa wasn't all that comfortable with the necessary toned down nature of these episodes, and it absolutely failed at developing a deep psychological exploration and attachment to the characters. The episode where Akira confronts his parents was embarrassing because it tried to appeal to a nonexistent tie with the audience. The script failed at making these moments significant.

In the end, the series to me had that kind of rollercoaster structure and I was perfectly satisfied with its beginning and conclusion while feeling rather unattached in the middle part. It was a great experience, but one that I felt shallow and reliant on catharsis and a sort of primary reaction. None of these is a negative, except during the instances the show tried to base its emotional discourse on character introspection.

@jal90 happy anniversary for like..yesterday.

Oh wow thank you! I didn't even realize it was my anniversary.

I was a bit too arse over t*t to make a thread. But I don't forget. Some kind mental elephant, I guess.

Everything made has a target audience. Since the manga adaptation of this TV show was published in a magazine aimed at young adult males I also assume the TV show is aimed at the same demographic.

Actually I had an epiphany and I concluded that A Place Further than the Universe is my top anime of 2018 so far. While I loved several titles from this year already, and Violet Evergarden was also very good, the fact is that my emotional connections with A Place Further than the Universe are more memorable even though visually Violet Evergarden was superior.

184) The Breadwinner (2017)



A very nice animated movie. In fact, it reminds me a bit of Persepolis, being also an European animation about serious subject and featuring the issues faced by Muslim women. In this case the main lesson to be taken of this film is that Afghanistan sucks and sucks hard. I found it a bit heavy handed at time specially when it dehumanized a lot of secondary characters painting then as uniformly evil beings (which reminded me of the Soviet WW2 propaganda film Come and See (1986)).

The art style and atmosphere were very good though. I liked the flowing "flash" animation style although the simplistic character designs were rather plain. So, despite the rather simplistic writing of the secondary character (which made it a bit heavy handed), it was a moderately powerful movie, something very rare in Western animation. Also it felt rather moralizing and ethnocentric (being a movie that essentially criticizes Afghan culture from an Anglo-Saxon perspective).

I rate it .

185) Last Exile (2003)



A good example of epic science fiction, a genre of fiction that was common in Japanese animation over a decade ago and now appears to be losing popularity. It's well executed and had a powerful although rushed ending. The characters are all pretty well developed and (unlike The Breadwinner) have their own motivations and fell like real humans.

Although the dated computer animation hurt the aerial battles a little bit as well I found it's middle parts meandering and it felt like the plot was dragging out. Because of it's flaws I don't rate it as highly as contemporary sci fi series like Ergo Proxy or Saikano but it is still quite excellent diesel punk sci-fi animation.