A rare mid-year update? Wow…

Anyway, it’s Scotland Love Anime season once again, and it’s the last day of the Glasgow weekend. Generally speaking, I’m very enthusiastic about a lot of the movies that have screened this year, though I doubt you particularly need me to wax lyrically about The Colors Within given how many words have been spilt over it by far smarter people than me already.

That being said, I saw Trapezium yesterday. This has already been on a one-day release in the US already, so I’d imagine a lot of folks (or at least a lot of the folks interested in this kind of thing) have probably seen it already, but I did kind of want to spill a few words over it in a fashion that’s a little too spoiler-laden to take to Social Media.

I will say that, going into it, the two impressions I’d heard were (a) someone on Twitter saying that it’s one of the worst things they’ve ever seen, and (b) Gerald saying it was some variety of charming on a recent episode of Anime World Order. For my part – I really enjoyed it, but I can absolutely see where both viewpoints come from.

But just to establish the framework before spoiling most of the movie, I’ll stress that the presentation is absolutely that of an otaku-centric idol show – it lacks the superlative sense of slapstick of a Love Live, but it’s not a thousand miles at least masquerading as that kind of thing. The movies heroine is charming, funny, dangerously charismatic and is frequently a joy to watch.

She’s also kind of a sociopathic monster, which is the real crux of the movie. The movie strikes a really curious tone with this, as whilst it’s always pretty clear that some of the things she is doing are not exactly positive (and some of the later Japanese marketing for the movie really leans into this), it tends to shy away from actively criticising her for these things even as other people point out that she might be being a bit of an ass. Infact, ultimately, everything ends up working out for her.

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It is, once again, the token Christmas post. Not really much to be saying this year other than affirming I’m still alive, something which will probably not be too much of a shock (I hope) to anyone who follows me on Twitter or Bluesky or whatever.

Been reading a lot of LNs this last year, mostly. I’ve just finished mainlining the current translated run of the Apothecary Diaries, if you also want a recommend for what anime I think is good this season.

Anyway, have yourself a good one!

Another year, another instance of me thinking I should at least update at Christmas. Hope you are all doing well, and I hope none of you have accidentally sank as much time into Genshin as I have this last year, which is an amount of time I am absolutely not going to own up to here.
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Arguably cheating given that I’ve done Penguindrum TV before, but now having seen the first of the new Penguindrum movies (twice), I can confirm that it is still present, and as such can be lazy and just reuse the same screencap. Hurrah for efficiency in posting!

The first Penguindrum movie is an interesting kettle of fish in that it’s mostly a recap movie, though it has a number of new framing sequences that position it as a sequel to the TV show, as child versions of Shoma and Kanba review a book detailing the events of the TV show whilst attempting to figure out why they seem to have been forgotten by the world. Also, most importantly, there’s a new Penguin. Much of this new content feels pretty Takeuchi Nobuyuki to my admitted untrained eye, though the fact it’s half riffing on visuals from the episode of the TV show he handled in the first place, and half mashing together photorealistic and animated elements is probably what’s leading me to that feeling.

As a recap movie, it’s… fine? Better than most, even? Most of the really interesting stuff is likely to be falling into the second movie that I’ve not seen yet, given how this one ends, though it does basically conclude at exactly the halfway point of the show in terms of it’s recap content. As someone who hasn’t really revisited the show since it broadcast, I at least managed to follow the events well enough – it’s obviously a recap movie, but it takes something of a sensible approach to it by arranging it’s content by character rather than strictly adhering to previously established chronological continuity. That said, given that movie a fair bit over two hours long, you are only really dropping maybe 2/3rd of the content of the show, which whilst sounding like a lot, is positively luxurious by the standards of many of these things. You’re still losing some of the flavour of the show, but it’s a pretty reasonable way to relive the story whilst being hyper-focused on a lot of the elements that are particularly meaningful about it.
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Seasons Greetings, everybody!

It’s… sure been an entire year, huh? Believe me when I say that was entirely unintentional, but 2021 was sure a year. A year in which I mostly stayed at home and didn’t particularly want to sit typing a whole bunch of stuff whilst sat in front of the computer after having spent the entire day sat in front of the same desk for my day job, you know?

I had kind of been intending to write about Heybot, and I do have a backlog of Mikan Watch posts I could be making. I should really get to them soon.

Otherwise… I’m still watching about as much anime as I normally do, which admittedly tends to end up being not that much this time of year due to other things typically going on. The recent thing which generally sticks in my mind is the theatrical feature from earlier in the year, Pompo the Cineaphile, which you’ve probably missed in the cinema at this point if you are in the UK (though I gather has an upcoming US release). That movies a pretty good time.

Anyway, in the event that I completely forget to update again for the next year, I hope you have a Merry festive season, a good New Year, and that 2022 finds you all pretty good.

(Oh, Love Live Superstar was good, if you were really wondering what my opinions on recent Love Live cartoons were)