Wrapped in a sheet, sipping a hot cup of tea in a rainy day, that’s the feeling that this film conveys.
Kotonoha no Niwa is an invitation to a journey of appreciating small things. Jumping to the senses, the animation and the sounds blend together to immerse the viewer into the screen, producing not only a breath-taking work to contemplate, but also one that interact with our perceptions. The art is almost palpable; every sound is surgically put in a way to create life; and even the food looks like an element in itself, watering our mouths. The work is almost an interactive art.
The small things
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Oct 12, 2017 Recommended
Under the motif of swimming, Free! uses the overarching theme of friendship to touch the viewer. Sweeter than I thought, the anime captivates through small things and the big changes that they make in our lives.
The story starts with four ten year old boys. Haruka, the quiet child who becomes one with the water; Nagisa, the puppy-like, always excited friend; Makoto, the laid-back, seemingly more mature one; and Rin, a more explosive, outgoing boy with larger ambitions. Besides being connected by their practice of swimming, they also have girly-sounding names, which created an inside joke about them being brought together by this fact. ... Fast-forwards to after their first big tournament, Rin leaves the group to go to Australia in order to train so he can become a professional, Olympic swimmer. Nagisa also goes to another school, which disbands the group. Free! is also a complete anime under its own right. It’s about swimming, but more than that, it’s about the friendship of the swimmers. Their stories, backstories and backgrounds are all matters to character development, a strong point of the show. The characters evolve not only regarding their current situations, but also regarding their past selves, from which fear and other strong perceptions are brought up to them, one by one, so they can be faced. Talking about characters, each one has a different personality, which means that they will react differently to the situations that they all are brought to. This adds thickness to the story and to their development because the viewer can think “he isn’t acting like himself” or “that’s exactly what he would do.” I felt compelled to tell that because this is one of the reasons that make Free! so captivating. Captivating. The word means ‘to attract and hold interest’, which is exactly what Free! does. The anime creates its own world and makes the viewer feel part of it. Not “world” as in something complex as high fantasy, “world” as in a different scenario with its own atmosphere that makes one submerge in it. It’s a great thing, honestly, because it shows cohesion and coherence in the writing and the execution – after all, good writing can have bad adaptations –, which already is a ‘win’ by itself. The ability to make someone feel immersed in a work of fiction is an indicator of something done right – in this case, the developed and peculiar personality of the characters with their intertwined backgrounds makes it. Story-wise, things are a bit simpler. They have a big goal in mind: revive the Iwatobi Swimming Club and win a competition to bring in money. But, for that they need at least four members – they start out with three: Haruka, Nagisa and Makoto, as Rin is in another school, one that is strongly focused on swimming – ; the fourth member, Rei, is a great addition to the group because he has a unique background, being a former member of the track team, which, regarding the strong point of the anime, character development, shows a great connection with his personality and forms of swimming – as every other character, sure, but he has to develop. After getting the fourth member in, they have to compete so they can maintain the club alive. Of course, as nothing is life is so simple, and as everything depends on money, the oxygen of the market, they have to train more so they can seize a good prize. Again, things aren’t simple and “train” is a loaded word, specially in anime. That can mean “a different regimen to suit different situations” or “absolute hell to bring out the stronger, berserker-like self of the athlete”. Since Free! isn’t a battle shounen, you’ll get the first kind of training. Sort of. This is all I can spoiler about the story. Actually, it isn’t all that of a spoiler at all: the story is very simple, it’s basically what I said. The complexity lies on the interactions between the characters, as every other slice-of-life. It’s a big story made of much smaller ones. So, what happens? What happens is that in every different actions that the Iwatobi Swimming Club takes, something that adds to the story will happen. An encounter with someone from the past, the return of memories , the correlation between the two, a promise, a bet and growth. I won’t extend that, otherwise I’d be telling the parts of the story that makes this anime what it is, however, it is safe to say that these smaller things matter a lot because they are relatable to the real world (with some exceptions, of course). Moving to the art and sound, words can’t do justice about them. It’s Kyoto Animation, so top notch quality animation is expected. A little difference, however, is that they focus more on the characters’ designs than on the scenarios and, of course, a special attention to water. The cast has amazing detail on their hairs, well-defined muscles that make sense for a swimmer’s body (also when they’re swimming), sparkling, ‘watery’ eyes and preferred colours that somehow match their selves. Water, which is hard to animate, and sometimes it requires so much detail and concentration that it can be the breaking/turning point of animations, games or movies, in Free! has a special attention, as it does not look stiff or simply “blue parts of the screen”. “The water is alive”, as Haruka would say. Everything in Free! is colourful and represents how cheerful it is. It’s so colourful and cheerful it brings a summery vibe to everyone watching it. (In fact, the second season is called Free! Eternal Summer – makes every sense in this world.) Watching it in the winter makes it warmer; watching it in the summer makes the heat bearable. Win-win. To complete these summery waves, the soundtrack makes everything look like a party. From the opening to the ending, a matching music is playing, creating an atmosphere. A dubstep that fires up the scenario when the characters are competing or training hard, a chilling music, and maybe a piano, to make difficult conversations softer, a cheerful music representing their volition and even an ominous piece for the rare moments of almost terror. The opening “Rage On” helps to open the show, putting the viewer into an exciting mood, closed by the ending “Splash Free!”, which maintains the mood up, ready for the next episode (with the exception of the last episode? The ending “Ever Blue” serves as a closing, as if it were saying “end of act 1”). I’ll reserve this paragraph to go a little bit out off topic and address a certain subject: fanservice. It is said that Free! is a manservice anime because it’s about swimming. Ok. It’s understandable that someone may think this, after all, you only use a piece of clothing to swim. Right. What can we do about that? It’s reality. The thing is, a sports anime will be, fundamentally, an anime with athletes. So, claiming ‘fanservice’ because the anime does exactly what it does in real life points to bigger issues that aren’t the anime itself, but the subject that it touches – in this case, swimming with _men_. Manservice would be gratuitously showing muscles for amusement. In Free!, however, everything has a context; first, the overarching context of swimming, and second, the context of the friendship. Addressing the swimming first. To say that it’s fanservice simply because of swimming is to ignore all the details of this story, it’s also almost like saying that swimming itself is akin to fanservice. Again, it shows a problem with the subject (swimming), not with the aim/execution (fanservice). The show sometimes makes fanservice jokes about the swimmers’ bodies, talking about their muscles and their beauty appeal, but nothing that lasts more than five seconds and it doesn’t hurt the story at all, doesn’t sound forced and it cracks some laughs. Now, addressing the friendship. To make things simple, the anime doesn’t have macho guys that will beat you dead to death in a fight; it has a temperamental character, but nothing exaggerated. Free! has characters that talk instead of fight, that appreciate each other’s companies and congratulate each other. That is enough to label that as ‘manservice’ and even ‘boys-love’. There’s nothing wrong with boys-love anime, it’s just a genre. However, forcing this label on the anime is generally used as a way to make it appear less worthy, as if it were an insult. All that confusion stems simply from the fact that the anime has boys who are close friends and value their friendship. Guess what? The same happens in almost every anime between girls, specially in the Mahou Shoujo genre. The difference here: the protagonists are boys. To finish, Free! is an anime that knows it’s limitations, which is refreshing: there is no forced drama, tears or screaming – maybe something a bit cheesy, but it’s bearable and expected from anime. However, all its existing limitations are surpassed by the overwhelming quality of art, sound and execution. It’s an anime about the small things with their big impacts that fill up human lives.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 25, 2017
Shiguang Guiyu
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
This anime is an embodiment of tropes thrown together, mixed and poured without apologies. It’s a great example of what not to do.
Shiguang Guiyu (Prisoners of Time) is a dònghuà (Chinese animation) about a regular Hero’s Journey with a regular life that suddenly is chosen by the destiny to save a princess and the entire existence from the Armageddon, all while dodging all the onslaughts of the Big Bad with the most powerful device of all: plot armour. Sort of. That’s it. Kinda. The whole anime is kind of amateurish and the obvious tropes are so scratched in your face that you feel they trying hard. ... The story starts with a regular man that had visions about a girl in his sleep. He totally believe his visions, to the point of talking about it to his colleagues and treating the visions as normal, mundane things, even spouting them from time to time. (I’m surprised that, given the intensity of these visions, he didn’t ask for medical treatment. Could be overwork. Maybe he could get a medical leave and use it to carefully meditate on these visions whilst also having the time to play videogames. Win-win situation. But no, let’s continue working, talking about them dream hallucinations, flooding web searches, forums and the colleagues’ time.) All good, all ok, we can accept that. Maybe it’s just his personality. It’s only the beginning, after all. But things get worse. We have the privilege to see an alien race that can transform into humans and is searching for the Big Miraculous Device that civilizations desire. This alien race has the sort-of Big Bad (or warrior, or avenger, you know, the powerful being that is only one step lower the Overlord on the bad side) that kills people and things ruthlessly and can disguise itself by using human clothes, but, hang on, when it uses its powers, cue to unnecessary change in clothes to provocative, sensual, let’s-show-skin-just-because ones. So, this warrior/almost-overlord alien discovers that the Hero has this Miraculous Device that was given to him by an rapid encounter with the Loner Warrior from the Good Alien Race and Uses Cool Clothes and Has a Cool Alias. Of course, as every generic plotline, the Bad-side Warrior will come to the Hero to kill him. But how? Using the mighty powers of the alien race, of course! The warrior is totally overpowered and can warp the reality around it for over a thousand kilometres, yet, when the hero is about to get the blast of death, something happens. Miraculous, I say. Guess what? Well, you might say anything; it will fit, because the generic tropes will diverge to make sure the lack of originality stays. The hero is miraculously saved by the Miraculous Device? At the brink of death, the villain gives a chance to the hero to live because “I want to amuse myself before killing you”? The hero gets to see the utmost dread in the Universe, only to see nothing happening, again? All of the previous alternatives? Things don’t stop here, there’s also that loner that reveals itself to be experienced in dealing with the devil. To cut explanations, it’s a Wolverine type. Kinda. But useless. (That’ all, the paragraph is short. Really, no double-meanings.) Also, everything is an excuse to fight. The intergalactic alien race will stop disguising itself and then set terror on the scenario. Really? Couldn’t they be discrete? You know, just warp a part of their bodies instead of transforming totally. Or maybe use intelligence, tactics and strategies to defeat their enemies without giving them a chance to live. But without that it wouldn’t be possible to extend the animation unnecessarily. Since everything is about fighting, the special powers of the hero(es) will represent themselves as something that can be useful in a fight, like blades. Oh, and they only activate when the users about to die (this is literally said in the animation, I’ll give them credit for that meat-joke – if it was a joke! -- , at least it’s honest). To crown this mess, the girl in the visions of the hero is a princess from the Good Alien Race that’s about to get extinct and the Bad Alien Race is using time for sort of selfish reasons and control, but no further, meaningful backstory is given. Well, they give, but it just leaves everything at the same weight anyway, nothing changes. Well, this is enough information, although spoilery, it’s necessary for an important thing: play the game of prediction. With all these tropes mixed and smashed that way, it’s not hard to predict the end of the story and even the attempts at appearing “deep” (yeah). It’s hard to say anything positive about this work. The animation is too simple and amateur, like some American animations that imitate the tracing style of anime, the story is bleak and so predictable that it seems it was done in half an hour, the sound effects are generic ones that one can find anywhere and the voice acting is… ok, I think; I don’t understand the language enough to even judge it. Everything seems like a YouTube high-school animation project from 2008. I can forgive the sounds, animations and voice acting, because everyone starts slowly and cannot have the budget to do boom-boom-blast, original things, but this… I’m sorry to use this word… this is cringey to watch, too tryhard (redundancy?), the story makes you feel dumb, the whole dònghuà is like a challenge on who endures it the most. So, do not watch it. Skip it. You are better off watching cat videos.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Sep 23, 2017 Mixed Feelings
In a school where a bet could decide your future, Jabami Yumeko defies the current system by simply not worrying about the consequences. The thrill of the game is what matters. She’s a compulsive gambler, after all.
Hyakkaou Private Academy is a place that only the children of the richest can go. It’s an institution with a very peculiar curriculum: it isn’t based on the regular school matters, neither on athletic prowess of the students. Rather, it is based on making the rich richer. So, what ability is revered when it comes to business? Reading your adversary. That’s the pillar of stock market bets. Then, what ... does Hyakkaou have that is so special it creates this competitive ambience of betting? They revolve around gambling. Blackjack, poker, roulette or even rock-paper-scissors, everything can be made profitable, everything can be made payable. Here, one starts drowning in debt before university – or swimming in money. In this academy, the winners and losers are very separated. If one loses a match, they got attached to the person who won, like a slave, having a chain collar with a plate written “loser” so everyone can see their condition. The Student Council isn’t better, in fact, it’s harsher on gambles, with more than the financial debt as a problem; they often put more consequences on the games, such as arranging marriages and forcing people to not live their lives as they want, everything according to their “Life Plan” designed to the students who lose by playing against them. But this oppressive system isn’t the only problem: many of the students -- and that includes the ones from the Council --, are what they call “corrupted”, or, in other words, a compulsive gambler. Some drown in debt by not thinking before playing, some are intelligent and get better, and some don’t care about money, life plans, or any other consequences at all -- including death --, and that is what makes Jabami Yumeko so special, because no one can manipulate her through games, making her a challenge to the current system – the only thing someone can trick her into is to feel the frisson of the games. To counterbalance her impulsiveness, hesitant Suzui Ryōta becomes “the voice of reason” (or sanity) in this place filled with craziness. But, of course, he’s never listened to. And that’s what makes him an important character because he finds himself needing to work around difficult situations in which sanity or wisdom don’t help. To finish the main pack of characters, Saotome Meari is the not compulsive, but greedy gambler. Greedy in a way that she feeds off this system, loving the power that it offers to the winners. Living like a queen, she is the blueprint student of her academy, until important events make her reconsider how she plays in this jungle of cheaters, enablers, kings and slaves. The anime revolves around this trio, either combining them to make unthinkable plays or simply to put both extremes of taking risks and being afraid to test. The trio starts relating, not aware of that, but drawing the attention of other students, from common ones to higher-ups – including the head of the Student Council, Kirari Momobami --, but not without reason: Jabami Yumeko is a new animal in this jungle, bringing new habits and spreading havoc by her compulsive yet mastermind plays. And something about the plays must be said. On the beginning of a game, Yumeko is like an unarmed kitten, knowing nothing, but by the end of the day, the kitten has manipulated everyone to bring it food. That’s how Jabami sucks all that is near to her, as a hurricane of madness, to the point of completely changing her complexion, from her normal, round, dreamy eyes to slanted, cold calculating globes, turning them into igneous rubies, and her face into a crooked inhuman grimace, sending the signal of the definite presence of her madness and her control of any game that she’s in. Besides her eyes, another mark of the visuals of the anime is distorted facial expressions. They generally appear on people who are humiliating others, either by game or socially. The distorted complexions give a unique touch to Kakegurui, pinching the viewer’s and defining the atmosphere of the Academy, its hostility carved in the faces of the students. Furthermore, the things are not so black and white – although one can define “to gamble or not to gamble” as a dilemma --: the motives for gamble are varied, they can range from people trying to save their families’ debts to lunatics rebelling against the world for no reason, and this variety is shown on the multitude of characters. Each personality, each resolve, each way of playing, everything becomes a web of interests. Not without a main tone, however. The cast always strives to the most common desires of the human nature: power, status and, of course, money, everything as the underlying cause, and, evidently, under the Hyakkaou Academy ruthless structure. Kakegurui is a work of psychological thriller that uses gambling as a stage to play its overarching theme: human corruption and mind games, not in the superficial, petty sense, but in the grim, wicked and limitless ways that only money and power can create the drive for. The viewer might appreciate the “last straw”, “twist” moments in the anime, when the tables can (and will) be turned at right (or wrong) moments, rapidly, a mismatched look or a misplaced arrogance and maybe wishful thinking, but always with a daunting psychological strategy. The key here is to use the characters as wells and bring viscerally everything from them, pouring them on the table, on the games, showing all wickedness and desires that can only be shown when despair occurs. After all, the thrill of the game is all that matters.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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