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Apr 16, 2024
Let me tell you a little about our heroine, Mitsuha.
Her cheerful and polite demeanor belies both a vicious pragmatism and an iron will to protect herself and her friends. She's a pathological liar who routinely deceives everyone, including herself, with and without reason. She is able to hurt and kill people and animals without breaking a sweat, despite no indication that she ever did anything like that before being isekai'd. She gets all of her business advice, and indeed life advice, from her dead brother who now exists as a figment of her imagination. And she loves money.
Within the first few episodes, we see her
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advocate for laissez-faire tax policy, try to sell a nobleman on "building his brand," defraud that same nobleman to secure funding for her import business, happily auction her underwear for a quick buck, and negotiate the support of an American PMC who will launder the precious metals she earns in the isekai and supply her with guns.
Will this slightly unhinged acolyte of modern capitalism be able to survive and thrive in a feudal world? It's a premise that promises intrigue, bold action, and outrageous consequences when worlds collide. Just look at the OP where Mitsuha poses with a gun while money rains down from the sky. If that sounds like fun to you, then you'll understand why I was excited after the first few episodes.
The problem is... the show writes a check that it can't cash. Once our heroine starts her business in earnest, she doesn't do all that much with it. A large portion of the show is dedicated to fairly mundane and marginally profitable adventures that have little to do with the day-to-day running of Mitsuha's business, which ends up getting largely glossed over.
At some point, I feel like the writing staff lost sight of what they were trying to do. Mitsuha's characterization is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes she's portrayed as a mastermind opportunist driven almost mad by ambition, other times she just acts frustratingly passive or clueless. There are way too many exchanges that go something like, to paraphrase:
"Hey Mitsuha! Fresh fish, like the kind that you can cheaply import from Earth, is in high demand and people will pay huge money for it."
"Well it's too bad I run a general store and not a fish store, not much I can do about that."
"Hey Mitsuha, our society has scarce access to salt and all our food is bland because of it, want to become a filthy rich commodity trader?"
"Nah, take care of it yourself by processing sea water or something."
"Hey Mitsuha, can I buy that swimsuit magazine from you?"
"Ew, no, I don't want to do business with perverts."
(Remember, this is the same woman who previously auctioned her underwear.)
When our heroine isn't busy selling small quantities of dollar store merchandise to the one or two people who wander into her shop each day, she helps people with various issues and slays monsters in spectacular fashion. And that's cool. But what does it have to do with the commerce that the show is ostensibly about? By the end of it all, there's no clear sense that Mitsuha's business has grown or really accomplished much of anything, and we never see much of its inner workings. As much as I loved the fresh concept that this show brings to the isekai genre, I was disappointed that it lets that concept simmer in the background, while bringing more generic subplots to the foreground, all too often.
In summation: a great premise, some clever and entertainingly outrageous moments, a main character who is delightfully shrewd (except when she's not), and a whole lot of wasted potential.
Recommended if you're the kind of person who enjoys seeing a cool idea executed roughly and imagining how you would have executed it better.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 17, 2021
Shiawasette Naani is a short OVA of some historical interest. It is one of the earliest Kyoto Animation works, and the directorial debut of Ishihara Tatsuya, who went on to direct a huge chunk of the KyoAni corpus. It is also the first in a series of anime commissioned by, and based on the writings of, cult leader Ookawa Ryuuhou.
It is clear that the production values here are not high. The animation is somewhat stiff and choppy. I didn't like the sound design, which combines plenty of awkward silence with some weird, overly-loud effects. The extent to which the voiceovers don't match the characters' mouths
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is truly egregious.
As for the story, though, I don't dislike it. Unlike later works associated with Ryuuhou, Shiawasette Naani isn't overtly sectarian propaganda, but comes across as more of a general-purpose parable. I think its message is basically a good one: that remaining cheerful in spite of minor setbacks helps to make life more bearable for everyone around oneself. A simple, bite-sized moral that seems about right for a 15-minute OVA.
By far the most enjoyable part of this, for me, was simply the opportunity to see the humble roots of a director and a studio which I know and love. Recommended only to the amateur anime historians out there.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Feb 5, 2021
Skelter+Heaven is deeply flawed on every level.
Having read that, you might ask yourself: just how bad is it? Is it SO BAD? Is it, perchance, so bad that it's good?
No. Skelter+Heaven is something else entirely. Its flaws encompass every element of its execution, and it has no strong points to speak of. The pacing is awkward, the animation is sparse and ineffective, and the sound design is yawn-inducing. There's not much room for the story to develop, since it's crammed into an OVA which is simultaneously too short and too slow-paced to really delve into the subject matter. There's not enough context or interaction for
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us to even begin to appreciate the characters. When they do interact, it's so wooden and trope-laden that we can glean little of their true personalities and motivations.
Individually, none of these flaws are truly spectacular. There are other anime - better anime - where the pacing is equally as awkward, or the animation equally as lackluster, or the characters equally as unremarkable.
It's not the magnitude of its failures that sets Skelter+Heaven apart, but rather the fact that they all occur together with no real strengths to counterbalance them. Maybe clever jokes can make up for bad animation, but there aren't any. Exciting action might serve to mitigate an otherwise forgettable story, but there isn't any. Every aspect of this anime, from conception to presentation, just brings nothing to the table.
Why, then, does this abortive attempt at an OVA even fall short of the coveted status of "so bad that it's good"?
Let's take a moment to consider the concept of "so bad that it's good," and how it differs from mere badness. In order to be so bad that it's good, a work must be entertaining. Moreover, it must be entertaining, not just in spite of, but rather because of its flaws.
When I think of anime that are so bad that they're good, I think of titles that shatter bare minimum expectations in outrageous ways. I think of the jaw-droppingly janky animation of Twinkle Nora Rock Me, or the nonsensical and wildly offensive script of Mad Bull 34, or the sheer trashiness of Eromanga-sensei.
I argue that being "so bad that it's good" relies on shock. It relies on the incongruity between the viewer's reasonable expectation and the work's wild divergence from that expectation. The more spectacular the flaws, the more amusement they evoke.
But Skelter+Heaven's problems are sins of omission. It doesn't include anything outrageous, it just fails to include anything good. The result, I found, is the blandest anime I've ever seen as of this writing. Almost completely unentertaining, it offers neither conventional nor ironic value.
It felt less like watching a garbage fire, and more like watching paint dry.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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