So this season ends…finally. Yes I am aware that not every show is over yet, but despite this, I have made the decision to do my season review post now. Most of the shows I have been covering end early anyway, but I will begin with the only one that still has a couple of episodes more to go.
Hanebado! has been a…strange watch. From the opening theme, we are given the impression that this is to be a positive, feel-good show about a school badminton team, only for us to be put on a wild ride of mental health, family abandonment, and obsession. While watching these more recent episodes, I have been thinking of how Lidenfilms did the final episodes of one other show I covered here: Love & Lies.
In that show, it felt like they just skimmed through a rather important plot point: how Yukari (the male protagonist) received the text message that told him his future wife would be his childhood crush Misaki, only for the Ministry to tell him it is in fact another girl, Ririna, and thus feeding him these doubts of who he really likes and who he really wants to spend the rest of his life with. It turned out that it was all some bizarre prank by the heiress of the match-making company, who was just bitter that Misaki (an estranged friend) wasn’t being paired up with the person she wanted. But instead of tackling this over the course of an episode or two, it was only covered in a couple of scenes in one episode, leaving us with a very ambiguous and rather poor ending. Even though I won’t be covering the final episode in this column, I get the feeling that we’ll be given another kind of ambiguous ending to Hanebado! Will Ayano see the error of her ways and say goodbye to her mother in a more dignified way? Will Nagisa end up crippling herself with her bad knee? Well this week’s episode (episode 12) shows us that Ayano’s mom isn’t as oblivious as we all thought. She is, in fact, totally aware of what she has done, and that’s what makes this entire situation even worse.
As this match goes on though, there is something we see that is ultimately the one thing that is eating away at Ayano: she feels as if it’s just her against the entire world. Part of this is down to what has happened to her, and part of this is her own doing. But as this week’s episode ended, I couldn’t get the feeling that we could be treated to a cliched ending…or rather, a ending that is just too ambiguous, just like in Love & Lies. I end my coverage of the show this week, so I won’t know how the show ends. To be honest, I am no longer bothered, as I know it likely won’t be the ending I would be hoping for.
Hanebado! could have been a much better show, if the studio paid more attention to its animation (which reduced in quality as each episode went past), and hadn’t smothered us with this story arc (as the manga details so much more). Instead, as you watch, you find yourself getting incredibly annoyed by some of the characters and finding the show a trial to watch as opposed to entertainment.
Now onto the shows that are ending, beginning with Asobi Asobase. I actually chose this show at the last minute due to my original choice, Hi-Score Girl, ending up being acquired by Netflix. This has also been a bit of a bizarre watch, but in a far better way. Gag shows are rather hit-and-miss for me, and there have been a lot of gag shows that I have really really disliked. I couldn’t find anything to laugh at in Nichijou, and I found this year’s Pop Team Epic an awkward watch at times. While Nichijou relies on sheer randomness and Pop Team Epic is more anti-humor (ie. it doesn’t really care if you find its jokes not funny/stupid/offensive), the oddball humor we watch in Asobi Asobase is subdued, random and laugh-out-loud all at the same time.
The show’s final episode sees the three girls having to take care of a baby who suspiciously acts like some mafia boss. Later Hanako gets super envious then super mad about her bust size, discovering what her real measurements are when Kasumi measures her. Then Anime Fortnite is introduced, and is exactly how I pictured it.
I hate Battle Royale games, and cannot wait for the fad to die out. Right now, as Fortnite is the hot thing, it only makes sense for someone to massacre it, and it seems only right that it’s the people behind Asobi Asobase. Kasumi and Hanako are both led to believe that they have gotten into a cutesy game with cute animals and candy, only to be destroyed in seconds and receive messages all saying stuff along the lines of “gg, get rekt, n00bs, uninstall now“.
Viewers have been desperate for this show to get a second season, although I have since learned that as this first season adapted so much from the manga, there won’t be that much left to cover. This will be getting an OVA in December, so that will at least keep the fans happy, including this one. Just as Yuru Camp was the surprise pick that won me over in the Winter season, Asobi Asobase has been the surprise pick that won me over in this Summer season. There hasn’t been a single weak episode here, and I always ended up finding something to laugh at. I will really miss this show.
Sonto Harukana Receive. Like Asobi Asobase, this has also been a pleasure to watch. I actually had the feeling that it would be a show I’d love straight from watching the PVs. It was all harmless and fun sports, with additional family love, platonic love and suggested romantic love. We kind of anticipated that the final result would be an atypical anime happy one, and that’s precisely what we got, but considering I’ve been reviewing the mentally-exhausting Hanebado! and the oddball Asobi Asobase too (as well as the surreal Serial Experiments Lain), watching something that I can ‘switch off’ to has been very refreshing.
This final episode takes us away from the court for a good portion, dealing instead with the aftermath of the result, and what the winners ought to do when the Nationals tournament comes, where Kanata faces the chance of seeing Narumi again. This is all ammo for writers to write a second season, surely. Considering how well this show has been received by the community, it would be no surprise to see Haruka, Kanata, Claire, Emily, Akari and co. progress further in life. Saying that though, it can easily fall victim to second season syndrome, like so many shows have. This one season of Harukana Receive has been wonderful from start to finish, and shows us that a slice-of-life sports show doesn’t need to be fancy or complicated. Unlike Hanebado!, which has ended up polarizing a lot of us, we grow to love everyone in Harukana Receive, and we don’t care who wins or loses matches, because we know they will all kiss and make up in the end. This would most certainly get an honorable mention in my shows of the year list, at the very least.
I’m going to miss these dorks. And right until the very end, there was not a single male in the show. Wait, was Kanata’s pet turtle male?
I also end my run of Serial Experiments Lain…and now my brother-in-law finally gets his multi-region player back.
Episodes 12 and 13 could easily have filled a single episode, as it essentially wrapped up the idea that Lain was in fact a program to bridge the Wired and the real world. After discovering that all her bad memories were still intact, Arisu goes and pays her a visit, only to learn that Lain kept it that way because she knew Arisu was her only true friend, and didn’t want her harmed. Except the malevolent Eiri shows up offering to ‘debug’ her, leaving Lain to get rid of him for good.
Left traumatized by Eiri’s ‘death’, Lain decides to do a ‘factory reset’, leaving Arisu with no memories of Lain or any of the events that occurred; this also means that Chisa is still alive, Eiri is a salaryman again, and the Men in Black have simple jobs fixing electrical cables.
Serial Experiments Lain has been a trip to watch, and I’m glad I got this opportunity to watch it at last, on its 20th anniversary. But it’s a show that I won’t be watching again, and that’s not out of any bad reasons. You know there are those kind of books or shows or movies that you absolutely love and like, but find too surreal/strange/unsettling that watching it a second time might potentially ruin your initial excitement…well I think I got that here with Serial Experiments Lain. I know I got it when I read the book Dune, or watched Flowers of Evil, or the movie Gone Girl, or played the game Saya no Uta. In the case of Dune, it was just so detailed and complicated, but for the others…well…I enjoyed them all, but they made me feel uneasy at the same time. But it is also this ‘uneasiness’ that is a part of why I enjoyed it. Does that even make any sense? Well either way, Serial Experiments Lain is an amazing show. If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s okay…it’s not a crime to miss shows or not watch shows, unlike what some anime critics/reviewers/journalists may say. If you do decide to watch it for the first time, though, come in with an open mind.
To conclude, I’d like to briefly talk about the one show I picked that drove me insane and ended up dropping: Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight.
The show has gained a lot of fans, and as I been reading all their fan tweets over the last 12 weeks, I can now understand why people like it so much. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a show that I personally was just unable to enjoy, and was unable to find any tangible reason why. I ended up comparing it to one of my all-time favorite shows (Revolutionary Girl Utena), and also believed that it would be something similar to the underrated The Idolm@ster franchise; oh how wrong I was. I was struggling to like the characters (aside from the super-serious Junna…and maybe the sensible and quiet Mahiru), and could find little to enjoy in the idea of a secret and extravagant theater fight club. I’m sure we viewers all have shows that we are just unable to connect to and can’t really explain why. I actually have a few myself (Flip Flappers, Yuri on Ice, Arakawa Under The Bridge). Maybe there will be another time when I’ll decide to give this show another shot…just not right now.
As the Summer season ends and the Fall season begins, what stood out for you? Were there any shows that you think I ought to have checked out? Do you think my reasons for disliking Revue Starlight so much are justified? Feel free to hit that like button and air your opinions in the comments below. Check out next week to see what I’ll be watching for the Fall season.