An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Month: January 2020

Ending and Beginning – Kagerou Daze Manga (Spoilers)

So, here we come to, for the time being, the last entry in KagePro I have available to review: The Kagerou Daze Manga. This is the most different of the versions, with more twists and turns and surprises even if you know all the other components.

You’d be forgiven for not expecting that, though, since it starts out with a standard opening: Shintaro’s keyboard is once again banished to the shadow realm by a soda, and going out to get a new one, his first time leaving his room in years, lands him in the middle of a hostage situation. That gets defused by Shintaro, his digital buddy/tormentor Ene, and some new folks with freaky powers his sister has made friends with. Then we follow Momo’s side of the story – having a bad day thanks to her unrecognized and uncontrolled superpower of drawing attention, meeting up with the Mekakushi Dan, and ending up on the other side of that hostage situation. The next day the gang goes to an amusement park, and we also get an extended flashback to the school days of Takane (who becomes Ene) and Haruka where they run an awesome shooting gallery video game for the school festival, meet Shintaro and Ayano (among others) and don’t quite get around to having a romance before tragedy strikes.

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Avant Garde or Weird for Weird’s Sake? – Mekakucity Actors Spoiler Review

Mekakucity Actors is the anime adaptation of the Kagerou Project (though it may be novelized and there may be other anime outings in the future.), a topic that I’ve been covering in the Wednesday “random” reviews including the songs (Part 1 | Part 2), the Novel series and, upcoming, the manga. I’ll likely refer to the other KagePro elements a good deal, but since this is a Monday Anime Spoiler Review, I’ll do my best to keep it largely self-contained.

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Seasonal Selection – In/Spectre Episode 2 (Late Update)

Apologies for the tardiness of this entry; real life ensued. All is well and future In/Spectre episodes should run closer to their air time.

Here we get the first real “Investigation” of the series, as it’s being presented here – What the Guardian Serpent Heard. By the end of this episode, I feel like you should know if you’re going to like In/Spectre, because while perhaps not as impressive or dramatic as the main plot, the time this episode is spent doing what In/Spectre mostly does for its Manga run: attempt to explain a mystery to the satisfaction of the characters in the scene through a mixture of deduction and hypothesis.

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Epic Scope, Daring Choices (Budding writers, don’t try this at home!) – Shakugan no Shana Final Spoiler Review

Last time, we looked at Shakugan no Shana Second and I talked a little about what it means to make a sequel. I contended that, with an episodic premise (like Shakugan no Shana kind of had, infinitely extendable through encountering and battling a stream of new Denizens) you could pretty much make an acceptable sequel by continuing to do the same thing you’d been doing so far. I also contended that it could be stronger if you went above and beyond, but at least in some cases it wouldn’t be strictly necessary. Shakugan no Shana Second fell flat (well, flatter) because it didn’t manage to do that much, largely scaling back and taking away from the ante compared to season one of Shakugan no Shana.

Shakugan no Shana Final doesn’t fall for that trap. Nor does Shana Final just content itself extruding more editions of the Shakugan no Shana material we already liked. Shana Final goes above and beyond, transforming the narrative and becoming its own thing that’s grand and new. And it kicks ass.

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Echoing Through the Haze: KagePro Songs Analysis (Part 2)

Here we are again! Last time we covered Kagerou Days, Yuukei Yesterday, Headphone Actor, Ayano’s Theory of Happiness, and Toumei Answer, roughly getting through the arcs of Takane/Ene and Shintaro and Ayano’s past. This time we’ll be following through with the Mekakushi-dan, Momo Kisaragi, and some big-time story in Lost Time Memory, Additional Memory, and Outer Science.

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How to Not Make a Sequel – Shakugan no Shana Second Spoiler Review

Sequels are simultaneously some of the easiest and hardest things to write. On one hand, it’s hard to live up to ‘the original’ in a lot of ways. People will look at the new sequel and automatically compare it to what came before, so there’s a higher than average bar set for the sequel. On the other hand, a lot of the legwork you’d normally have to do is already done, and if you’re continuing on with a story the first one was clearly good enough that you have a strong backbone to build off of. Sometimes you can even make an acceptable if not good sequel by just doing more of the same (particularly if you have an episodic premise that can be arbitrarily extended… much like Shana, in theory). It’s usually better to innovate and expand, but some properties can just get away with giving us more of what we liked to begin with.

Shakugan no Shana Second… does not do that. And it suffers for it as a sequel. It falls into that firsthand trap where, aside from its own merits, it just doesn’t hit the same high notes its predecessor did, and presents to us a degraded product, lesser in just about every way. How much lesser? Let’s take a look.

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Seasonal Selection – In/Spectre Episode 1

It’s a new season of anime, so it’s time to go through a new set of seasonal episodes! This time, I’m going to be watching along with In/Spectre (aka Kyokou Suiri). Now, this one… I’m not exactly going in sight unseen. I’m caught up with the manga (through volume 10, which is past anything we can expect to see out of this season), and I know the anime is going to be following that fairly closely since I got to see Episode 1 at last year’s Anime Expo rather than for the first time today.

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Echoing Through the Haze: KagePro Songs Analysis (Part 1)

This is where it all started: The songs that make up the core of the Kagerou Project. Therefore, this is where I’m going to start with more detailed analysis of KagePro’s elements.

Now, I’m not a music person. I appreciate a carefully-arranged series of select air pressure waves as much as the next guy, but I’m going to admit I don’t have the background and vocabulary to talk about these songs in more advanced musical terms. I’m more of a story person, including visual storytelling, and that’s the direction I’m going to approach KagePro from, viewing these entries less as “songs with PVs” and more as 3-5 minute short films. Some elements might be shared with the music, like pacing, and I can talk about how the sound design fits together, but I am going to be mostly going through the story the songs tell.

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