Back to virina_fratino's Profile virina_fratino's Profile

I don't usually write reviews but I kind of want to highlight a perspective of this series that I haven't seen around a lot. So let me start by saying, I like Urusei Yatsura, as a manga it's a classic and I found it a very easy series to keep watching, it never felt like a chore and I can look back at many episodes with a smile. Also the team at David Production did an excellent job of animating it and putting it to the silver screen because I'm sure for many old time fans of the series this feels like an adaptation it ... deserved.

My problem is honestly that some of the comedy of the show did not necessarily age that well... Of course it's somewhat expected from a comedy manga that started publishing almost 50 years ago. Front and center is I think the concept of abuse. Specifically how certain characters are being treated which is played for laughs. This is especially painful in the second season, hence my review here. I guess some mild spoilers on certain plot lines: there's a plot line where the sister of Tobimaro is introduced who's lived an extremely sheltered upbringing without ever having seen a man in her life. Then in one episode, the first man she sees is Moroboshi immediately traumatizes her with his downright harassing attitude and Tobimaro's sister is utterly traumatized into seeing men. This isn't ENTIRELY Moroboshi's fault because her own mother is the one who put armour on her and raised her without her being allowed to see a single man. We then later have an episode where she tries to overcome this trauma without a lot of success. However, instead of coming to term with the fact that the sheltered upbringing was a mistake of her mother, her mother just tortures her into forcefully overcoming the trauma. I feel like it breaks a fundamental rule of comedy, namely: punch up, not down. And making fun of the abused, the traumatized and the anxious feels like a punch very far down. It just doesn't feel all that funny, and though I remember laughing at this kind of humour as a kid, I feel like as a society we kind of grew over this right?

Another example of this is poor poor Ryuunosuke, who's being deadnamed and misgendered by her own father her entire life (she's not even trans), and constantly forced to keep up with whatever her father wants her to do next time. To me it just looks like a textbook abusive household. She's being forced to kiss a boy with a somewhat similar upbringing to her, the boy by the way is unnaturally strong that he becomes almost a horror force that she cannot escape, whenever the show cuts to the Fujinami household it shows her and her father physically fighting. I don't know but it makes me feel uncomfortable. Thinking about it, what's funny about this broken household? While there's hundreds of thousands of these households currently existing. It's not bad to point out these problems but I don't think Urusei Yatsura really does that... It's just abuse for the sake of comedy, which again, feels like a punch down.

There's other examples of it, Moroboshi's constant flirting with unwilling women, Lum and Moroboshi constantly using violence towards each other, being introduced to Mendou's trauma that made him claustrophobic...

Having grown up in the 2000s, I've seen less politically correct shows, I watched Family Guy which in hinsight has some disgusting and inexcusable jokes towards certain groups of people who really do not deserve being ridiculed by that (I'm looking at you, Quagmire's dad). Should you feel bad about having laughed at that in 2010? I don't think so. But I think we can say in hinsight that it's a good thing that a lot of this humour didn't come along with us to the 2020s, aside from your average cringe conservative comedian or daily wire show. Humour changes throughout time and that's fine, it's not like shows have become less funny have they? If we look at the top comedy anime on MAL we find, aside from Gintama, Kaguya sama, Mob Psycho 100, Bocchi the Rock, Spy X Family, shows from the late 2010s at the oldest. We also find older shows like Samurai Champloo, Tatami Galaxy, Nichijou and Bakuman, apparently shows that have aged well. I just don't think Urusei Yatsura should be entirely on that list though. Again, I can't understate that I think it has a lot of very funny moments, a fun colourful world and sometimes very fun characters. But sometimes it's just painful to watch and it really shows its age when we compare it to humour from that era... And in the end... Who wants to see abuse being funny these days? Call me a triggered leftist baby or whatever you want, I guess I should be just happy for you that your skin is thick enough to be able to stand all the abuse that happens. Mine isn't and I can imagine others also not having that. If you can't handle that... Maybe your skin isn't as thick as you thought.

I should make this short, and I'll throw in some spoilers at the end (I'll warn you for those). This is a strange anime to me. The story is about a boy named Sawamura Setsu who loses his grandpa who is a world-class Shamisen player. Sawamura himself is also an amazing Shamisen player but his grandpa claims that he does not have his own "sound". Thus he goes away from home to find his own sound.

Simple and good plot I'd say, there's plenty of potential for character development and stuff, just overall pretty good I'd say. And the first episode reflects exactly what I ... would want from an anime like that. It reminds you of Nana, if you're not familiar with that, go watch it. It starts off as this adult drama basically with Sawamura thrown into the adult world with only his Shamisen, we see abusive boyfriends, failed actresses needing to make tough choices and he's in the middle of it all.

Then suddenly, this completely changes. When you think of obscure Japanese instrument anime you could probably predict that some kind of school club is involved and that everyone is going for these prefectural/national competitions to win before the senpais leave or something, and there's this one amazing player or this player with a tragic backstory that the plot centres around. If you like that kind of anime, good for you, if you don't, you might think: Oh! This anime is different! Now here's that twist again: It's not!

In fact, the enitre anime completely changes in tone by the third episode. Suddenly we're at a high school club with a bunch of incompetent Shamisen players who all have their own reasons to play shamisen and need to learn to appreciate it etc. etc. etc. Even the opening song changes at this point. Instead of this intense shamisen rock song they change it to your average anime OP. AKA this anime has a problem in tone! Just like its main character who doesn't seem to be able to find his own tone.

SPOILERS

That kind of brings me to what happens in the final episode where Sawamura after having learned a lot from his friends but still having some anxiety in him about living up to his grandpa's great name plays his solo performance at the shamisen competition and switches styles halfway through the performance because he suddenly realises that he has his own sound. As you might know if you watched the show, he doesn't get a lot of points for that because he doesn't have a uniting "thread" throughout his performance. The jury does not judge kindly upon that and one of the characters explains that to Sawamura. I'm sure the irony of this does not go unnoticed by the sharp reader of this review, since it seems to reflect upon the entire anime. So what this anime taught me, I cannot grade this one very highly... There's just no uniting thread throughout this anime.

The music is good though if you're interested in that kind of thing.

Let me start off by saying, I usually have certain expectations by different genres, an action is supposed to hype me up in some ways and an adventure is supposed to sparkle my imagination...

That being said, when a series doesn't make true on those expectations, I'm certainly dissappointed, and an action adventure like this is therefore an utter dissappointment for me.

Gunjou no Magmell is a series about a new continent popping up in the pacific with all kinds of alien creatures which ushers in a new age of exploration. The problem is just that the creatures of Magmell are all Australia on steroids, everything can ... and will kill you. This hasn't stopped people from going there though because the continent will make you rich if you take only one thing back from it.

I think that's really cool, a dangerous and unexplored continent will certainly fill the abyss in my heart that made in abyss left 2 years ago. It's a shame that this series doesn't make up on it.

The story follows some guy who rescues people from the continent who are stuck there, he's the only one seemingly able to stand his own in Magmell because he has been trained by some mysterious predecessor of his in the art of creating things with thunder power or something. Now that's also cool I guess, there's the continent to explore, there's his back story to explore... But... It doesn't do that, and I think that's where this series fails.

As I said in the beginning, an adventure is supposed to sparkle my imagination, Made in Abyss did that with its mysterious and increasingly dangerous world, it leaves me asking questions about it. Hunter X Hunter did that the exact same way. This series just makes me tired.

I think that's due to a few factors, firstly, its episodic nature. Every episode someone else is being rescued by the main character, with that, the new character needs to be introduced, his/her family needs to be introduced etc. That's all time wasted which you could have spent on exploring the world or exploring the questions you have about the main character, instead it's a kind of monster of the week format.

Funny thing is though, the monster of the week is actually the human. This is more of an environmental series. It's about our impact on the world and the evilness of humans, not the idea of adventure. And... That's fine, I'm glad even, because we need environmental messages with climate change deniers being elected all around the planet... But could you at least make it more intriguing??

I think a series could be environmental in some ways and still be an interesting adventure anime. This season even has another anime with an adventure/evil of humans focus: Dororo, which does execute its message well. This one though is just predictable and boring, almost every episode is like:
Generic character: "Help me Angler guy (he's nicknamed the angler or whatever), my _____ is stuck in magmel rescue him please. " ->They go to the continent after the main character is being kind of difficult about it. -> Turns out the character they need to rescue is poaching spooky but cute animals in Magmell. -> Character gets sense beaten into him/her and/or dies in some ironic way.

Now I don't want my action adventures to be predictable in that fashion, this series has just failed to intrigue me in every single way. And therefore failed as an adventure anime in my eyes.

For the rest, I guess I could go on about the sloppy writing, poor comedy, and its lack of success when it actually does try to intrigue you, it's poor action scenes, which it all has... But yeah... You get the point by now. Don't watch it if you like action adventure the way I enjoy it.

A complete disgrace to the Iyashikei genre

I'm a huge fan of healing anime, and it has been a while since we've had a good one on which the focus was actually healing, Yuru camp if I recall correctly, was the last one. So it has been a good year and on paper this anime has a lot going for it. It's relatable, especially for a Japanese audience where overworking seems to be the norm. Having something to come home to after a long work day however is something we can all relate to.

And that's basically the plot of this anime. A fox spirit named Senko ... is helping one of those overworked and depressed Japanese men back on his feet by simply having him relax. And I already said, on paper that can go in a miriad of interesting directions while still remaining one of those typical slow iyashikei plots.

Too bad the execution is just terrible, I'd rather describe this as a pervy fetish anime than a healing anime, and frankly it's something that's simply making me uncomfortable, which is exactly the opposite of what I want it to be. This anime is filled to the brim with weird fetish needs, the ever annoying tail "fluffing" they go in bath together, she steps on him as a massage, he finds her in weird suggestive poses, she's being dressed up in a maid costume by the pervy neighbour... This all while there's practically 0 character moments, not a moment in the now 7 episode run have I seen the 2 characters actually learn from each other or grown as a pair (whatever that could mean). This anime is completely built on its pervy moments, nothing happens in between and sometimes a joke is made about these moments.

The best one I recall can be found in episode 7 where the main character gets a massage from Senko, she simply steps on him with way too many foot shots and the main character returns the favour (he even massages her butt but she's SO sensative there). Then, the next day, the pervy neighbour comments on the fact that the main character is a lot happier and Senko makes the suggestive comment "that's because I stepped on him yesterday", the joke being that the pervy neighbour now gives Senko a strange look. The thing is, it's exactly what happened basically, it was just extremely vanilla hentai with all the suggestions that it's more or less a sex act here. Even the commentary during the massage scene was just filled with sexual innuendos. Her waist is so thin that my hands completely fit around hers, she's sensative around the base of the tail etc. This while the anime constantly reminds you: This isn't supposed to make you feel uncomfortable, she's 800 years old, how's this pervy???

Well anime, it is pervy, and if this is your way of relaxing your audience, I can see why sexual harassment is so high in Japan. As of the writing of this review, this anime has a solid 7,66 on MAL, directly below it is Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight, The Quintessential Quintuplets, and Amagi Brilliant Park. All flawed series, absolutely, but at least they have something going for them. This anime doesn't, it's just an uncomfortable mess. If you like that pervy stuff, good for you, if you like healing, don't watch this, there are better choices this season that aren't even advertised as healing anime.

3D kanojo is as tropy as it can get, almost every character you see on screen is simply a copy of one that's been done a thousand times. The story isn't even that original as well and also falls into a miriad of tropes. But that being said, it's kind of the strong point of this show. It doesn't pretend to be something more than a masterclass in tropes, it's cute, it's innocent and it doesn't really challenge anything. At the end of the show I found myself happily smiling and saying: "oh my god this show is so cliché!" but the smile here is ... the key point, it's a show that can make you smile and that alone is worth your time. Don't go in expecting to see something great, but something that's quite all right, and that should be worth something at least.

As a long time fan of the book, I suppose it's only fair to split this review into 2 parts, one for the people who have read the book and one for the people who haven't.

For those who haven't read the book.
First of all, read it, it's good. It's a tough book though, it's a 1400 page monster that sometimes skips 8 years only to spend 70 pages in the exact same location and time. And of course, it's written in the 11th century in the extremely stuck up yet overly emotional Heian court. It's a completely different world with strange traditions and societal expectations. ... Something that a modern anime adaptation of only 11 episodes can hardly do justice.

And you'd be right to think that, but fortunately this book doesn't really try to completely adapt the story. If you really want to read it before watching it, it adapts about 25% of the original story, if you're at chapter 12 (of 54) you're caught up to the anime, in case you want to read the source material before going into the anime.

Back to the review, the Heian court was weird, it feels claustrophobic, the definition of love was certainly different from our modern view on it making it probably a bit uneasy to watch at times. But at the same time the anime feels dreamy... These things are qualities it shares with the book and although the book does it a lot better, I think you can certainly get a general idea of how the book feels. So certainly give it a try if you're interested in the book, interested in Heian culture (it does take some creative liberties with Heian culture though) and interested in more dreamy romance anime.


For those who have read the book:
I suppose you fellow fans of classical literature have read the Illiad? If so, I'd like to make some comparisons with the Illiad's adaptation in modern media (the film Troy) and Genji Monogatari Sennenki.

Troy is kind of hated amongst fans of the Illiad and with good reason. It hardly counts as an adaptation, they got some parts right, but sometimes they slaughter things the Illiad actually stands for. It's subject to heavy censorship (Patroklos being the nephew of Achilles? Are you kidding me?) it turns Agamemnon and Menelaos in these moustache twirling villains and Paris is not a prick in it... You know... That stuff. It does that for a reason, a bad reason of course, it wants to adapt 2700 year-old source material for a "modern audience", that might not be able to get what's going through the characters who are all kind of awful in the poem, but you also kind of understand them.

However, it does work as something else, a big easter egg for the fans of Homer's work. When watching through it, I just had my moments like: hey I remember that happening in the Illiad but 1000 times better! Ajax the greater also fights Hector! Stuff like that, so I can understand why someone might get some enjoyment out of Troy.

Is Genji Monogatari Sennenki as bad an adaptation of Genji as Troy is for the Illiad? No. I can actually see why some would describe it as a rather accurate adaptation. But I can also completely see that a long time fan of the book can hate the anime for not getting it right. The biggest victim of modern adaptation disease would probably the Genji's character. His character is there, don't worry, he's still the same childnapping pretty boy you spent 1000 pages with. I've always seen Genji as a bit of Buddhist antagonism you know, always aiming higher and ending up being miserable once he's reached those hights. I'd even say it's a main theme in the book. This specific trait of Genji cannot be found in the anime. instead his actions make sense in a different way, something I shouldn't go too deeply into or I might spoil some more unique traits of the anime. Furthermore, they take some huge creative liberties to tie some stuff together and they only adapt about 25% of the story.

Just like Troy, they do try to cencor some of the more outrageous things Genji does. I mean, of course it does, Genji is simply a creep in the Murasaki chapter.

What I still like about the anime though is the feel of it. The cover of my translation of the book describes it as a "claustrophobic shadowplay", I feel that too in the anime. It's framed dreamy and kind of fague. It feels like an impressionist painting at times. Perhaps that's due to the low budget of the anime, but it actually kind of fits the slow pace of the book.

I'm certain that a fan can get enjoyment out of it, but don't go in expecting a great adaptation. It's fine. It has easter eggs for those who read the book and you might enjoy that kind of stuff. Just like Troy is able to do with the Illiad. But rest assured, it's really not as bad as Troy!