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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Well, whoops, I guess I’ve not posted for a while, so let’s just ramble for a bit.

If you’ve been into London recently, it’s probably hard to miss the fact that the British Museum are running a Manga exhibit through to the back-end of August, largely because of the large posters of Asirpa from Golden Kamuy that are plastered all over the public transport network there. It’s a wee bit of an excursion from my neck of the woods, but I ended up popping along for a look yesterday.
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Is this, perhaps, the most 2017 of statements?

This years Gundam Unicorn update is… I’ve still not watched more Gundam Unicorn. Although I somehow thought buying the second half of ZZ, which just turned up today, was a good idea? Whoops.

Let’s just put this lack of Unicorn-related momentum down to it being a good harvest this year. It feels like there’s been a constant stream of at least one thing a week I was particularly excited about watching every week for the last year, and at some points I was watching something new pretty much every evening. It’s been a good year for TV anime.

From a theatrical anime point of view, it feels a bit odd to call a year with not one, but two, new Yuasa efforts comparatively weak, but that probably more to do with how ludicrously stacked parts of last year ended up being, with things like A Silent Voice, From This Corner of the World, Kizumonogatari I&II and, I suppose, Your Name. Then again, it’s been a nice year to be in the UK in that regard, because we ended up getting at least something in cinemas here almost even month, and it’s entirely possible that any perceived weakness was more a result of not binging the years best content over a weekend, given the way this years SLA line-up panned out.

Also, that I’ve not been able to see the new Nanoha movie yet. Or No Game No Life. Or Heavens Feel. Guess there’s still some good stuff left to see after all.

Anyway, usual format from here on out. Spoilers ahoy, and don’t necessarily take anything I write about below this point as being that glowing an endorsement. I tend not to write about my actual favourite stuff of the year, since that’s hard, so, this is just the first few things I could actually formula any words on.

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I made my now seemingly annual trip to Otakon last week – I think it’s my fifth at this point, which isn’t the insane 20 or so of some folks I know, but I do have an entire ocean separating me from it. Still, time flies, and all that. In fact, time flies so much that I complete forgot to finish that post about AX last month. Whoops.
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Turns out I’m in LA for AnimeExpo this weekend. You know, idols and all that, not that I’m particularly well prepared for it. I guess I’m mostly just going to wing it in all my efforts this weekend.

Anyway, Omo has more useful notes than I’m likely to make, so go read those.
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