You may or may not have noticed that Otaku Theater hasn’t been up here on The OASG for a while. I’ve recently had to deal with some major real-life family issues, meaning that I’ve had to take a step back from writing. Because of this, I’ve been really behind on the shows I’m watching too, so as the Spring season is approaching its last month (and studios are preparing their Summer shows), I’ve decided to do some catchup posts covering what I missed. I remember saying in the last Otaku Theater post (way back in early May) that most of us anime followers watch the shows to escape from our real lives; now that all the stuff that has gone on has wrapped up, I’ll take that distraction any time.
To Your Eternity
I’ll kick the first catchup post off with To Your Eternity. Now in the past, I made a bit of a big thing about the overall tone and mood that the show set right from the get-go. There is no denying that it is a very emotionally-charged show that grabs us without mercy and demands our complete and full attention. These kind of shows are the kind that hook anime followers in and reinforce their opinion of anime being quote-unquote ‘the coolest medium ever’. But I’ve made the hard decision to walk away from watching To Your Eternity week-by-week, and here are a couple of reasons why.
Where I left off, Parona attempted a prison break with March, Fushi and Pioran. For the sake of those who haven’t been watching the show, I won’t spoil, but episode 5 was full-to-the-brim with emotion, and made Fushi ‘evolve’ even further. With this ‘evolution’ and the Spirit Bear Arc ending, Fushi is able to take more forms, even March’s. His story continues as he decides to travel with Pioran and encounters a Nokker, who has the power to remove forms from Fushi. Moving on to Pioran’s hometown, Takunaha, Fushi meets two boys, Gegu and Shin, who become extremely curious about him, especially after Pioran proclaims to the town that he is immortal.
I think it’s important for anime-only followers to remember that, for the good part, characters in the show will come and go, as this is Fushi’s journey, not theirs. The citizens of Ninannah will live on, and their lives have been changed dramatically because of Fushi. March could have gone on to be the Ninannah sacrifice, but Fushi was the one who stepped in to change her life. Parona didn’t need to have to go on a rescue mission, and Hayase could have continued her life as a Yanome soldier, as if nothing ever happened. Fushi is the central person in the show, and always will be; everyone else is just a side character. He will carry on to affect the lives of those in Takunaha, and many more lives in the future.
This hasn’t been like when season 2 of The Promised Neverland came out. I mean, I was fine in criticizing that; in fact, a lot of enjoyment in writing those posts came from what went wrong with it. We all saw how badly that show was going, and even how the studio no longer seemed to care either. It hasn’t been like this with To Your Eternity at all, though. I won’t ever deny that it is a great show, with an amazing story, great character design and a top notch score. So what on earth am I complaining about? I mean, I’ve run into a lot of mediocre and bad shows while being a part of The OASG, and To Your Eternity is not one of those at all. These recent events that I’ve had to go through in the last month or so have meant that I want to keep my mood up as high as I can, and I’m really concerned that the show will just end up bringing me down to a level (emotion-wise) that I don’t want to be in right now.
It really does pain me to drop the show like this, because I don’t like dropping shows. But I really do hope that all the people who are continuing with it have a lot of fun. I never read the original source, and so I don’t know what the outcome will end up being, but it’s beyond me now. I do intend to return to the show, and will likely take some time to watch it in my own pace. It hasn’t been that To Your Eternity hasn’t resonated me so much; instead it’s more like that, because of my current real-life circumstances, it’s the kind of show that’ll drain me even more than I already have been. I’ll make sure to discuss it in my 2021 review in December though, and in good detail too, so don’t worry.
Pretty Boy Detective Club
So now time to move onto one of the shows I have decided to see through until the end: Pretty Boy Detective Club. As I have said right from the very beginning, this has been a show that has been so up-and-down for me. The visuals and the aesthetic are things I won’t fault in this show at all, and while I deemed them unnecessary before, I can see now that an over-the-top story such as this needs over-the-top visuals; it would just look ridiculous otherwise. Even with the theatrics the boys put on, Mayumi remains center stage for me. Even with her new looks and her acceptance into the club, she still gets the impression that she is way in too much as she’d like it to be. I mean, she is not as rich and spoilt and privileged as these boys are. Her parents wanted her to live a normal school life, and not have some silly childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut. Manabu can sweet talk her all he wants, but the fact remains that, even halfway through, Mayumi still stands out…and not always for the best reasons.
Where I left off, the Swindler, the Vanishing Man, and the Pretty Boys arc had just begun, with the club stumbling upon a case involving a bizarre casino run by teenagers. A creepy atypical Nisioisin antagonist has already been established here, Fudatsuki, who also happens to be president of the student council. This one arc, which only lasts two episodes, does a good job in establishing rivals and outsiders (not real antagonists, so to speak) for the rest of the show.
The next arc, The Pretty Boy In The Attic, starts almost immediately. The club are presented with a series of paintings, all of them with no characters on them. None of them are signed, and it’s as if they appeared out of thin air. For a very visual show like Pretty Boy Detective Club, this was an arc that fitted right in, even if it only lasts for two episodes, like its predecessor did. Once again, this is an arc that does a fine job in establishing rivals for the club, in particular Fudatsuki himself, who decides to approach Mayumi herself. As the most relatable person in the club (I mean, can you really picture any of these five boys in a school?), she becomes the most vulnerable, and in turn the easiest to be swayed. I mentioned that she still feels out-of-place, and so this is something outsiders can seize on very well.
Looking around at other reviews of this show showed me all sorts of opinions. While some were hugely positive, some others agreed with me in that there was something just not right that they couldn’t put their finger on. Some can even go as far as calling Nisioisin adaptations as epic theatrical shows for what is ultimately a very simple and minimal story. I mean, if we take a look back at the first arc, where the club goes out of their way to find a star Mayumi saw as a kid. Turned out it was just a secret government satellite, and that was it, and yet we got three episodes of what ultimately was a lot of pretty pictures and a lot of honeyed words. But then again, that’s what the fans come back for.
I fear that Pretty Boy Detective Club may end up being the one show that will make me not want to continue with any future SHAFT shows. It’s been the one studio that I have defended for so long, but I get the feeling now that the studio is losing their magic touch – the magic touch that brought masses of fans into their expansive Madoka Magica and Monogatari franchises, along with other stand alone shows. Seems like the Luminous Witches project has been put on hold, while the second season of Magia Record is on its way, and that’s not to mention the announcement of a 4th Madoka Magica movie – neither of which I will be watching.
SSSS.Dynazenon
I was whining a lot about those two shows and how I think that maybe I ought to have picked something else; well at least I’m glad I picked SSSS.Dynazenon, even if it doesn’t quite hold a candle to its predecessor. That’s not to say that it’s a worthy show to add in the Gridman Universe project that Trigger have set up, and may potentially expend on in the future, whether it be new shows or movies, or anything else.
When I left the show, we were left with the bombshell that Yume’s sister, Kano, might have taken her own life. How and why is something that Yume is determined to know, as each episode that goes by, we discover that the two of them drifted apart more and more. The only thing that keeps them together is the ankh puzzle that Kano had, and Yume now has. But in the midst of all this, another group appears out of thin air: two people calling themselves the Gridknight Alliance who have control of one powerful mech.
As Episode 7 arrives, however, we begin to notice one thing in the show more: how the events up until now have affected Yomogi, Yume, Koyomi and Chise, both inside and outside. I’ve already mentioned how Yume is more and more curious in how her sister died, but we get to see a backstory of Koyomi’s as well. Turns out that, as a middle school boy, he and another classmate find a bag of money in an abandoned house. Whether we takes it or not is something that hasn’t been revealed yet, but it’s still left us wondering how he ended up becoming an unemployable NEET since then.
There’s something else even more interesting, and potentially very significant to the end story. We find out that kaiju actually manifest and operate from human emotions. In episode 8, we get to see this first-hand. When the gang capture a tiny kaiju that colors everything it sees, Yomogi attempts to control it just as Gauma tried to, and to his own surprise, it works. This might tie in to why Juuga approached him earlier on in the show. Not just this though, Chise finds a small mysterious blob which seems to be getting bigger and bigger. It’s only later when we discover what it really means. It reinforces the idea that kaiju manifest and operate from human emotions; this mysterious blob forms into a flying kaiju Chise names Goldburn, and with full control of Goldburn, Chise is able to become a legitimate part of the group, after feeling like a fifth wheel for so long.
I’m finding it very interesting how we get to follow the Kaiju Eugenicists as well. They are still portrayed as the antagonists in the show, and yet the show chooses to humanize them, just as Akane was in SSSS.Gridman despite being so omnipotent. They make it very clear that want to use Kaiju to remove humanity from the planet, and yet we get to see them at water parks, go bowling, eat out at restaurants, go to the cinema, and so on. Just as we have been able to see Sizumu interact with Yomogi and Yume both in and out of school, we’ve also seen Mujina make contact with Koyomi (albeit briefly). Episode 6 shows us that Mujina is kind of a listless person, and only played along with what the Kaiju Eugenicists are doing because she doesn’t really have much else going on. As time goes on, however, she finds her part in the group.
Who are these people? Where did they come from? And even with their malicious intents, why are they so keen on interacting with human social life? It’s all of these questions and more that has kept me hooked into SSSS.Dynazenon. Close followers of Trigger and the predecessor SSSS.Gridman will find far more things that make them more similar than I have been able to find. I know though that the ending of this show will be something that’ll catch us off-guard.
A Lull In The Sea
Don’t worry, I’m not ignoring my out-of-season coverage of A Lull In The Sea at all. I didn’t expect this to grow on me as much as it has. I was expecting the P.A Works Melodrama to be turned right up to 11, and while I did get that, I’ve just been totally entranced by the characters, the story and the world-building it offers. The first cour acted as an introduction to all the characters, the conflict between the sea people and surface people, and the love triangles everyone has. But it’s been in this second cour where the show has been at its best. The five-year time jump added so much to it, with some main characters getting older and some not, and the love triangles altering ever so slightly.
I stopped coverage at episode 17, where Kaname had awoken from his hibernation also in the same situation as Hikari. With another one awake, the town holds out hope that Shioshishio will wake up too, which leads Miuna to join Hikari and Kaname to go down there and take a look. Yeah, that’s right…Miuna has discovered she has ena too.
I found episode 18 fascinating in how the show presented the Shioshishio village. This was, of course, the very first time Miuna had seen it, but its barrenness gives us as the viewer a whole new look – almost as if we are ‘rediscovering’ it all over again. But if there’s one other thing I’ll say about this second cour is that it is going through its story at a much quicker pace than the first one.
The whole P.A Works-trademarked melodrama doesn’t disappear just like that of course, as we get to see the usually more centrist Kaname show some real passion and emotion, especially when he discovers that the professor wants to keep the incidents of those last couple of days secret until he submits his reports to the university. We know how smart he is, and so he understands this, but his frustration instead comes from how quickly Chisaki agrees. To him, she is still the 14-year-old Chisaki he confessed to, and her transition to an adult is something that continues to bother him. He is unable to accept the fact that Chisaki is a mature adult now, and has responsible adult things to think about.
The episodes I caught up with so far really show me that A Lull In The Sea wants to put a line between tradition (Shioshishio and the Sea God) and modern life (these children and their new lives on the surface). While in the first cour, we saw Uroko-sama to be this arrogant and lecherous being, this second cour paints him in a whole new light. The show also reveals a legend that the village of Shioshishio has, related to the Sea God and the Lady: because the Lady had a loved one on the surface, the Sea God let her go, but took something precious from her as a price. This all leads to the theory that because Manaka had created a life on the surface, the thing taken from her was her ena.
Out of all the out-of-season shows I’ve covered for Otaku Theater, A Lull In The Sea has been the one I have found the most intriguing and engaging by a long shot. In my first watch, my frustration was squarely on Hikari and how angry he would get, but now with so much more coming out (both character and story wise), it’s like I’m seeing this all in a whole new light. It’s also given me a very good reason to keep my Netflix subscription as well. I haven’t reached the final episodes yet, so I don’t know what will happen when Manaka will wake up, or even if Hikari and co. are able to find out the truth behind this mysterious Sea God legend.
You should know that my Summer shows have already been chosen, and while the usual trends of big franchise sequels and endless amounts of isekai shows remain, there have been some choice shows that I just know I’ll enjoy. In addition, I’ve decided not to do a poll for my out-of-season show, and have picked one to look back on already.
There will be a second ‘catch-up’ post coming soon, that will cover the final episodes of the shows I’m following (save To Your Eternity, which I will be putting on pause and will now be watching in my own time), and then we’ll be going back to normal, just as everything all was…fingers crossed. The sequel shows have, naturally, dominated anime coverage this season, but what have you made of this Spring season now that it is winding down? Are you looking forward to what the Summer season will bring? Feel free to hit that like button and air your opinions in the comments below!