Summer 2012 – First Week Impressions (Part 1)

This post reviews Tari Tari, Yuru Yuri ♪♪, Chouyaku Hyakunin Isshu: Uta Koi, and Binbougami ga!.

Watching:

Tari Tari – It seems that everyone who has watched and commented on Tari Tari has made it an effort to include ‘LOL HANASAKU IROHA’ somewhere in their thoughts.  Honestly, besides the carbon-copy art style from P.A. Works, I found nothing else to be similar between these two slice-of-life anime.  Hell, Tari Tari reminds me more of Tsuritama or K-On! than Hanasaku Iroha.  I’m guessing the art style is what influenced or pressed people to think this way, but the characters, story, pacing, atmosphere, and yeah, everything else feels completely different.

So what was Tari Tari to me?  Well, not much so far.  The first episode of Tari Tari essentially served as just an introduction without really entering into the heart of the story.  More or less, all we got was just a set-up for how everything will begin once it begins.  Still, I came away impressed with it in terms of its presentation, art work, and style.  Each area was fundamentally sound in how I believe an anime should promote itself and the entire first episode was visually pleasing, if not rewarding in and of itself.  I found a particular liking to Miyamoto already given her genki and optimistic personality for someone who is basically a failure, so I’m glad to see she’s one of the main characters of this anime.  The rest of the cast was forgettable in the first episode, but that’s alright for a first episode with a minimal amount of characterization.  Perhaps the least intriguing or engrossing aspect of this anime will be the story, but that should change as the anime progresses.  If not, then no loss since the story already sounds boring to me and that isn’t a strong enough fault to drop the series.  Should the story turn out to be half-way decent or somehow respectable, then it’ll be a bonus to me.  Honestly, when it comes to slife anime, the story is about the lowest priority for me, so it doesn’t add or subtract much to the series for me.  As expected, this anime is something I’ll watch during this summer.

Yuru Yuri ♪♪ – Per the request of Akirascuro from Moe Fundamentalism, curious to see the reaction and thoughts of someone who watched the first episode of Yuru Yuri Season 2 without seeing any of Season 1, I put my marathon of the first season on a momentary hiatus and viewed the sequel before anything else.  I came away with a favorable impression of the anime, a delightful comedy regarding the exceedingly complex relationships between the surprisingly charming cast of characters.  Although I believe I understood less than half the jokes in this episode, the presentation and style of humor makes the enjoyment of the comedy fairly direct and effortless, making the punchlines obvious but still amusing without any prior knowledge.  Along with the comedy comes some rather strong yuri undertones, a logical deduction from the title.  These yuri elements really didn’t alter the series in any significant way, at least in my mind, besides being fodder for the jokes and explaining some of the meticulous character dynamics.  The overall lightheartedness of the series is a plus, too, giving the anime a relaxing and easygoing feel to it.  I can’t say much about the characters so far given that the suggested prerequisites were to watch the previous 12 episodes before this episode, but I don’t hate anyone so far and Akari is rather cute given her delusions of grandeur and how everyone ignores her at any given opportunity.  Anyway, I intend to go back and marathon the first series and then continue this sequel every week this summer.

Undecided:

Chouyaku Hyakunin Isshu: Uta Koi – Initially expecting to pass on this show, I decided to give it a go after receiving largely positive reviews from fans and bloggers alike.  My impressions after the first episode?  It’s actually a pretty decent anime.  The artistic rendition gives the anime an appealing aesthetic appearance to it, nothing groundbreaking but something that gives the anime a unique feel to it as it goes over its stories.  The presentation and storytelling are about what I expecting, a few poems each episode with a bit of history and drama behind them, probably the weakest and most debilitating aspect of the anime.  The characters are nothing special either but that is almost a given with what the anime is about.  Where the anime began to win me over was the fact that it included entertainment in its presentation rather than just being historically accurate and painfully tedious.  While the anime didn’t crack me up by any means, there were a few smiles and laughs genuinely won by this anime which surprised me.  However, I believe this anime will ultimately be won or lost depending on how each poem is portrayed and how the characters and the entertainment performs at each instance.  I’m waiting to see if the anime will improve or decline in the next few weeks before making a final decision on the anime.  For now, it actually looks good.

Binbougami ga! – While comedy is my favorite genre of anime, there are some subsets of comedy that I enjoy more than others.  Binbougami ga! belongs to class of comedies I have essentially dubbed ‘shounen comedies’ due to their characters, humor, presentation, and art style.  Shounen comedies are among my least favorite when it comes to comedies but that doesn’t really matter in the long run as they’re still a style of anime I enjoy, just not as much as other comedies.  As expected, this anime produced the most laughs and smiles out of any anime this season, so it certainly has done enough in that department.  The potential problems with this anime arise with every other aspect of the series which explains why I’m undecided on it.  While the characters have proven themselves effective in the comedy, I can’t say I like anyone yet and I probably never will in this anime.  The story, while humorous, never really captivated me either nor was I impressed when the anime tried to be serious in this episode.  Nevertheless, the story probably won’t matter as it will be episodic from here on out, but the overall theme of draining happiness and redistributing fortune doesn’t really mean anything to me.  The art style and animation are unbelievably shounen in appearance, something that’s okay, not really what I want to see in an anime, though.  While it does help with the cartoony aspects of the anime, it isn’t something I’d consider visually pleasing.  And while this tended to focus on the negatives of this first episode, I did enjoy the comedy more than I do with shounen comedies and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this be accepted into my summer list whereas other shounen comedies have floundered and failed.  Another episode should be able to confirm it to this watch list but in case it takes a nosedive, it’s waiting here in the undecided section for now.

Dropped:

Scanned through La storia della Arcana Famiglia just to confirm it isn’t for me and, well, yeah, it isn’t.  Also the same fate for Campione! which felt incredibly unoriginal before I ended up closing the video.  Neither of those should be surprises since I didn’t expect I’d watch them at all, but with only a few out thus far, figured it wouldn’t hurt to fire them up and see what I’m missing.  Turns out I’m not missing that much in these two anime.

And with this post finished, another batch of anime have already been released and are in the processed of being watched, evaluated, and judged.  Looking at the time frame of when they air in relation to each other, there should be about 2 other posts of this style before everything is decided and the weekly anime posts begin.  It should be fun to see how everything performs this season, especially since it doesn’t appear to be as light as I originally thought.