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BAD THINGS

The score reflects my disappointment with the fact that Tamako Market could have been an awesome Slice Of Life show, with already having a lovely setup of a narrative. It could have been much better with interesting characters and character quirks, and really funny or charming daily anecdotes. Great SOLs like the "Aria" series, "Non Non Biyori", or even "Is the Order A Rabbit?" do a great job in this. Sadly Tamako Market does not. To me, MOST of the episodes did not end in a satisfying note that good SOLs achieve.

Ugh the MC is so bland. Ugh the MC's admirer is so ... bland. Ugh Dera could have been so better without the constant babbling. Ugh The bride "plot" is so badly executed. A good chance is wasted. :-|


GOOD THINGS

So what really kept me going? Good animation, glimpses of Anko the sister, Midori and Kanna the friends, and Tamako's dad, the ... dad. Keiji Fujiwara shines wherever he appears.

Also, it made me interested about Mochi, and I fell in love with the sweet when I visited Japan.

Lastly, I have finished watching this anime a while back, but one thing that'll give me company for a long time in my playlist is the beautiful ED Neguse. :-)


VERDICT

So.. if you have a lot of time and just want to look at pretty imagery in a nice arcade setup with many shops without thinking much, go ahead. But if you are looking for a great satisfying SOL, this is definitely not it.

But watch or not, remember to listen to Neguse at least once.

CONTENTS 1
"Casual thoughts about Asobi Asobase aka AA"

1. This is no binge-watch material. Seriously. Too much of high-strung middle school girls. After 2-3 eps you may feel weary about Hanako's scream and will not enjoy the gags/ petty laughs/ jokes anymore. If you take your time and watch one episode at a time, this spicy pill can be lip-smacking.

2. I liked the way otaku, fujoshi, gyaru culture and transgenders are portrayed, in a brutal, in your face way. This show is more about ruthless laughter and finger-pointing rather than depicting anything with high-brow intelligence and caution. This went down fine with me, I ... am not sure if this will with everyone.

3. While I could not digest Nichijou's weird robot girl, talking cat and aristocrat classmate, I liked AA's butler, or buttler (wink wink -- no? ok), robot boyfriend, robot Olivia-san. I wonder why. Searching my subconscious...

4. If Kagura of Gintama ever attended a school, would she have made friends like these girls? Totally.


CONTENTS 2
"Untitled"
Ok, ok
"Section-wise"

VAs, ED: Perfect!

OP: You got us.

BG score: I wonder why "the X files" is not claiming copyright?

Art: Simplistic, but does the job. The Gintama and Minami-Ke -style closeups are too similar to ignore.

Animation: Not good enough, but it doesn't matter.

Characters: Quirky and fun to watch. I especially liked Kasumi, Maeda, Ruu!

Story: Huh? Why do you even..?

Enjoyment: Ha ha ha, hee hee hee sounds came out from my mouth, specially during episode 1-5, 8, 10

CONTENTS 3
"For people who have watched Azumanga Daioh and Ichigo Mashimaro"

Ichigo Mashimaro - AA does the same "looks foreigner but ain't foreigner, doesn't know English but is forced to teach English" elaborated skit. It is so well-known to IM fans that I was surprised that this was recycled so blatantly. This issue with Olivia was stretched until it was not funny or even mention-worthy to squeeze out a laugh.

Azumanga Daioh - Kurosawa-Sensei who was a charming but occasionally insecure one about marriage and life has a sister (whose design almost makes you go "kawaii-so!") here in AA. The pervy Kimura sensei has a even weirder brother here in AA. The lovechild of Tomo and Chiyo as the crazy energetic super meritorious but lacks humanlike common sense Hanako is here in AA, flying high with screwed up ideas about things in life and wearing a kawaii Devil attire.



In a nutshell, AA recycles a lot of elements from other animes, but that is not necessarily bad in this case. The manga and the anime production team succeed in delivering a funny show.

'The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.'
~Milan Kundera


Nostalgia, while is a strong tool to make a sequel successful with high ratings, is not enough if you are banking only… and only on it.

The act of watching the sequel of a beloved show itself brings on enough nostalgia. The older audiences feel happy inside, thinking of good old days when the original show used to air and how they enjoyed it and talked about it with their friends; or enjoyed the show alone while cuddling up with their house pet, ... and parents moved around doing daily chores, smiling secretly at their kids’ lit-up faces.

Your etc. is part of that older generation audience, and is a huge admirer of CCS. And precisely that is the reason Clear Card-hen has disappointed me. Big time.


Regarding Story and Character, I am going to be in rant-mode now, please bear with me.


Story 3/10

Yes, of course I shall compare this to the original saga. The original saga was not simply about a girl who can do magic and plays around with cards. It had decently paced narrative with immense character development, surprisingly good exploration of love, gender identity, sacrifice, family and most importantly, efficient magical world-building without expanding it in an out-of-control manner, in only 70 episodes.

On the contrary, Clear Card-hen has a pace that certainly reminds you of all the bad fillers of shounen animes, the SOL way! Even after 16 episodes, the story reaches nowhere, taking quite a test of patience. When a season is only 22 episodes long, this is certainly not the ideal way to advance a narrative. The new narrative has such limited amount of new elements - only introducing new characters does not imply the story will immediately feel new. While there were SOL-ish elements in CCS, this sequel has stretched that into “I-will-read-a-WHOLE-story-to-kids-and-use-up-an-episode” level.

Why are the episodes consuming so much time by revisiting the same locations to catch similar cards? Was a new location so hard to design? No. The answer is, “remember, we had <done this and this> here? Now we are here, doing <placeholder for similar this and this>, so lovely memory… etc etc”.

In a dynamic medium like Anime, if one does not follow the audio-visual rule “show, don’t tell”, then it quickly becomes a boring tale. The lunchtime banter among friends or “remember that?” between Sakura and Kero / Tomoyo/ ANYONE added surprisingly little to the actual story.


Characters 5/10

This show does not give detailed attention to an important factor like character development, given the fact that it takes place some years later. What happened to the MC? Mind that, Sakura is fourteen now. But her behaviour still does not feel like older than that of CCS. Her “Oyeeeehhhhh”, the frequency of which is much more than her younger years (how??) and endlessly thanking and praising Akiho-chan, while are very cute for the first couple of times, quickly become repetitive aspects of her behaviour. Sakura can do better.

The only possible answer to this is that Madhouse is trying to grab the attention of the new younger audiences of Japan and around the world, for whom this sweetness of Sakura is new. But while nostalgia is the trump card, it is surprising to see Sakura herself not maturing with time. Even Anime-only Meilin has come a long way, she does not behave as she used to. Syaoran, while having frustratingly less dialogs except in the last three episodes, has grown up from that brat-y type of CCS.

As for the other characters, well, we come to know very little about the old characters and even less about the new characters, rather than seeing them saying endless thank you to each other and praising each other. Meanwhile, Syaoran boy keeps saying just “yeah” to everyone.

Romance of Syaoran and Sakura certainly took a backseat, which it shouldn’t have, after all those build-ups in CCS series and the movies. Interaction of Touya and Yue, while remained interesting, was SO short that I am sure many viewers were left feeling unfulfilled. A tease? Okay. But Touya’s secret power, which he will unleash whenever he feels right, serves no purpose in this season except being all words.

Akiho is a puppet and is painfully and repetitively so. Had the season been longer, we could have dived deeper into her and Kaito’s backstory, but the conscious decision of the director and animators to keep everything as the material for the next season is hardly the right way to keep the audience interested throughout.

Sound 8/10

The OP1 “CLEAR” and the ED2 are my favourites. Background sound is not as adorably cheesy as CCS, but not exceptional either.


Art/Animation 9/10

The art is beautiful and the animation feels refreshing. It’s 2018, and it’s Madhouse, so of course! This is a good update.

Enjoyment: 6/10

I was elated as the show started, and was quite forgiving in the beginning. It was great to see Sakura and others again! But then, I grew tired of waiting for the big reveals, new magic by new characters, new power of old characters and so on. Nope. It never really took off.

Overall: 6/10

To me, Clear Card-hen has clearly gone overboard with nostalgia and the SOL trend. Only the last two episodes are comparatively decent ones. The season leaves everything so open-ended that one is bound to feel cheated by the brains behind this show; ‘okay, so you simply want me to watch another season, you never had any intention to make it a concise, self-sufficient narrative’.


Will I watch the next seasons? Yes, I will. But this “hen” needs to step up the game. Else it is nothing more than an okay-kind nostalgia-fest than being the true successor of arguably the most interesting magical girl show.

I'll wait, Sakura and friends.