I had hopes that the shows that my OASG colleagues picked for me would turn out to be okay, and…well…I haven’t dropped them yet, so I suppose that that’s a good sign.
Some of us saw how strange it was that characters in The Magnificent Kotobuki were all animated differently; while the main protagonists were animated in 3D and CGI, nearly all the secondary and background characters were in 2D. Am I missing something here, and with this second episode, did Kotobuki look better? Depends if you prefer 2D all the time, or 3D all the time.
This week’s episode tells a story of transporting some controversial and outspoken politician from A to B, and it appears, so far, that at least in this week’s episode, we get the chance to finally get to know the 6 main characters that are in this Kotobuki Flying Corps. A lot of the focus is on Kylie, the pancake girl, who is quite the irritant. Then there is Reona, the leader of the group, who seriously takes no crap from nobody, especially Kylie (who annoys her to no end) and the youngest of the group, Chika, who appears to have some kind of rivalry with the pancake girl. And then there are the others (Emma, Kate and Zara), who appear to be a bit cliched – Kate, for instance, seems to love spouting out random facts and statistics, as if she did that since a child.
Oh yeah, and you may be asking yourself the one question: why was every character name in this week’s episode of The Magnificent Kotobuki capitalized? Well HIDIVE have you covered there, when a Twitter casual I know brought the question up to them:
But speaking of flying girls, there’s another show featuring them on my watch list, but what else can Girly Air Force advertise? Little else, to be fair.
This week’s episode was the filler episode of all filler episodes. Here, we are effectively introduced to the main girl Gripen (named after a Swedish fighter jet), and I’m not totally sure what she is. Is she a robot/android? Is she just some enhanced human? The show has made clear that Gripen can only remain awake for a short amount of time, and can walk on water (??). Well at least our resident dull kid Kei has been given a job at the air base, where he can look at planes and hangars and runways and airmen in uniform all day, just like you’d see in any other JDSF commercial. A lot of other people would lose hope in this show by now. So why am I still here, enduring this? Because I still have some hope left, perhaps? I don’t know. Maybe it’ll suddenly pick up next week, maybe it won’t.
Oh, and I made a spelling mistake last week; apparently, our antagonists in Girly Air Force are the Xi, not the Xai. And yet we still don’t know if they’re supersoldiers or aliens or machines…once again, another example of how this show has offered us so little so far. The TV news in the show have labelled them as instigators of a Chinese civil war, and it seems Japan have only got involved because they’ve been accepting Chinese refugees like the other main girl in the show, Minghua…who by the way, remains as dull as dish water here. Nothing about her jumps out, and so I’m kind of glad that each episode (so far) has felt like time has just skipped past.
So, is Domestic Girlfriend just as trash as Girly Air Force? Well, even after only 2 episodes, the whole thing is being played out like some awkward J-drama or soap opera (which is how it intends to be, I guess?). Last week’s attempted kiss has been almost written off, claiming that Hina just let her guard down because she drinks too much, but the relationship that the three of them have (even in this short amount of time that has passed) is curious, as it often feels like Natsuo is being cast aside…or like there’s some long-standing awkwardness between Hina and Rui…and Natsuo is being blamed for it.
The relationship that Hina and Rui has interested me. This is something that Rui mentions later on to Natsuo, that while Hina has always been the popular type, Rui has been left almost incapable of making friends…something that Natsuo tries to ‘rectify’ at school. I may have joked last week that Rui may have been one of those type of people who ranted about their lives on Livejournal and listened to weird bands, and while she could well be that type of person, I can’t help but shake the feeling that this show is painting her as some kind of troublemaker…or antagonist even. And it doesn’t help that Natsuo is being made out to be some clueless idiot who has been dragged into this awkward position of having his teacher and a random girl he had sex with one night as his new step-sisters.
Although I’d still choose Rui, because Hina is downright annoying. Even the boyfriend drama of hers that fills up the end of this week’s show doesn’t let me have that much sympathy for her.
So far, people think that Domestic Girlfriend will be some heavily drawn-out drama that will try to be mature about the topics it raises, but end up looking like some cheesy soap opera of a show instead. I think that, after seeing one flying girl show end up looking like a JDSF commercial and another flying girl show with contrasting and mismatched 2D and 3D animation, watching this may end up being some kind of relief.
This, and watching Kemono Friends as well…
I will carry on loving the charm of this show, and now that the show’s sequel has come out and gained some traction, I guess we can all say that season 2 should never have been made.
Episode 2 sees Serval and Kaban progress further on in Japari Park. Kaban needs to know what kind of animal/Friend she is, and so begins a trip to the Japari Park Library, which is 3 areas away. Meeting Jaguar, Otter, and many other Friends along the way, Serval and Kaban find a tour bus in pieces, and so decide to put it back together…not knowing they need a battery for it to run.
Kemono Friends gets equal amounts of praise and flak for its poor quality. I called the show a ‘post-modern icon’ show, and I think that’s a fair opinion of it. There’s likely not going to be another show quite like this, and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. Roll on the next episode, as I will carry on enjoying this wonderful madness.
I hope your anime season is going well, so what are the shows you’ve invested yourself in? Do you think I should have more faith in these shows? Feel free to hit that like button and air your opinions in the comments below…