Day Three Hundred and Ten - Yamada's First Time (B Gata H Kei): Episode 1, "Love, Japanese Style"

If you were to ask me to watch an animated version of American Pie, I would probably decline. While the premise is cute, the thought of idiot teenagers getting their jones on via awkward gags doesn't really appeal. Additionally, Japanese sex comedies aren't exactly known for their presence of mind when it comes to tact (or being anything other than a thinly veiled smut-fest), as they're generally just loose storylines of horndog guys trying to get with whomever they can. I guess that's why I was surprised when I first checked out Yamada's First Time.

Not only does the series invert the trope of the sex-crazed male horndog, turning that role over to the overly sexed, but criminally naive, Yamada... but the show actually manages to highlight all of the silly, awkward things that teens go through when it comes to discovering their sexuality, while telling an oddly sweet romance at the same time... something that American Pie only does in the last ten minutes of the film.

Of course the main character is Yamada. She's the pinnacle of your typical fashionista model type, at least physically, but suffers from being extremely interested in sex with no actual experience to draw from. This makes her so self-conscious that she actively sabotages the efforts of any guy trying to fulfill her desire for nookie.

That's where the timid Kosuda comes in. After bumping into him at a bookstore and miraculously discovering that they're in the same class, Yamada decides that, since he's a scaredy-cat virgin, he's the perfect person with which to lose her own virginity to as he'd just be happy to be with her and wouldn't notice her own lack of experience. It doesn't help, of course, that she has no idea how to attract/seduce him, so her clumsy attempts more often than not wind up intimidating or scaring him and, at the very end of the episode, frightening even her as she wasn't quite prepared for the, uh, shall we say physical reactions she might have on him.

I decided to watch Yamada's First Time today to wash the taste of last night's Okami-san out of my mouth. While, on the surface, the two use many of the same tools in terms of character archetypes (there's a tsundere female lead with a cowardly male love interest, and several different female characters like the buxom glasses girl and precocious loli), where Okami is just a mishmash of tropes, Yamada's First Time is a surprisingly decent "Step-Up Love Story" that could almost be used in health classes to show what kids discovering their hormones should NOT do in the pursuit of their first relationships... and does so in a way relateable to both adults and teens.

And it's funny.

There, I said it... watching Yamada try and reach her goal of having 100 Sex Friends by the time she graduates high school (spoiler: she never gets past #1, by the way), but always be struck down by her own nerves or hubris, is pretty darn entertaining.

It's also a commendable series because, while it is a bit ecchi (I mean, c'mon, it deals with high schoolers trying to hook up), it's never about titillation. Unlike most ecchi titles, which are usually just generic stories with tits and ass meant to boost ratings (see my reviews of High School of the Dead), Yamada's First Time is an exercise in discussing, but never really showing. Any nudity is avoided by camera angles or sight gags and everything else sex related is pantomimed or symbolic.

It's not porn... it's... well... a health class filmreel for the modern era... that just happens to have a cute and funny storyline. To be honest, it's really rather amazing how the author of the manga that this series is based on has managed to present such a compelling argument for monogamy in the guise of a woman trying to become a sex-fiend.

I wouldn't recommend this anime for anyone who hasn't reached puberty, but it's pretty safe (and informative) for teens and funny for adults.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Nine - Okami-san and Her Seven Companions, "Trope, tropes, tropes."

It's a sad fact that the grand majority of anime out there aren't going to make any waves in terms of quality or storyline or style.

Like American television, there are plenty of shows that are made year after year purely to see if they'll stick. Sure, the market strategy for anime is year round and all about saturation, trying to find that magic title that will outsell all the rest, and not limited to regular fall and spring sweeps scheduling, but even as I type this I realize that this paradigm is changing thanks to Netflix.

Set in a stereotypical Japanese high school, with its typical assortment of quirky characters that follow established character tropes, Okami-san follows the antics of a school club of do-gooders who handle requests from the student body and fulfill them in unusual ways. It's cast is populated by every moe fetish under the sun, from the serious megane (glasses) girl to the buxom and ditsy maid to the precocious loli, every recurring character has its own archetype to inhabit simply for its own sake.

Okami-san, herself is your basic tomboy heroine who solves problems with her fists and has the typically Japanese complex over her lack of a chest. She is being love-love-stalked by the boy in class whom everyone's eyes pass over, which allows him to disappear into the background, a handy trait for a stalker. Confronting her with his feelings, stalker-boy only manages to piss Okami off and the majority of the first episode revolves around the club trying to get this stalker, Ryoshi, to get a backbone and show her his skills.

If you couldn't tell from my opening line, I'm not a fan of Okami-san. It's an exercise in stereotyping of generic, soulless character tropes whose only purpose seems to be to exemplify said tropes. The only saving grace of the series is the fourth-wall breaking narrator, whom the characters seem to be able to hear occasionally, who lampshades the grand majority of the weaknesses of the characters individually and the series overall.

The jokes are obscure enough that you'd need to be well versed in anime history and jargon, but the series is too vapid and superficial to be worth a true fan's time. I'd almost consider it a parody, thanks to its self-awareness, but the lack of quality in other departments, namely art and key animation, makes the title feel like its a filler series meant to be made quick and sloppy while the studio works on something else for another season. It's all very slapdash and weak.

There are definitely better titles to be had on Netflix, but the problem is we're just not getting a lot of good stuff on the Instant Stream. Maybe its because the animation studios made better deals with Crunchyroll or they just don't like the market, but I can list of dozens of titles from recent years that would do well on Netflix that just aren't coming. Sure, there are one or two decent ones, but the grand majority that I've seen lately are crap.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Thirty-two - Moon Phase: Episode 1, "A little creepy, but maaaaan... those are some gorgeous backgrounds!"

If there's one thing about Japan, they're a little more... shall we say, liberal, about exploring their paraphillias than we are. One such fetish is the Gothic Lolita style where girls dress up like Victorian Dolls complete with frills, lace, and minimized secondary sexual characteristics (see: flat-chested).

It's safe to say that Moon Phase is very firmly rooted in its Goth Loli persuasions... along with several other archetypal otaku fantasies like the cute, chibi-vampire and imouto/onii-san (little sister/big brother) complex. It's wacky and a bit creepy, but sells... a lot.

Playing the role of the Goth Loli Vampire Queen is Hazuki, who has apparently been mystically imprisoned in a massive European castle for hundreds of years, yearning for an escape... which she seems to be going to find in the form of Kouhei, a Japanese ghost photographer who is visiting the castle on assignment from an occult magazine. He finds her irresistibly attractive and she...? Well, it's sort of hard to tell what Hazuki feels as she's supposed to be the mysterious outsider, an impossibly old soul trapped in a child's body.

The majority of the episode is just the initial setup to get the two of them in the same room together. Kouhei takes photos of the castle from a distance while Hazuki lounges about her gilded prison. There's a gratuitous bath scene (a standard for most anime) as well as plot hammers such as a sneaky exorcist and a magical golem guardian.

What is interesting about the title, despite its pervy, fan-service tendencies, is the massive amount of production value when it comes to the animation, particularly the setting and props. I mean, serious amounts of effort were put into these backgrounds, I am not kidding. They're just gorgeous.

It's such an odd combination of stereotyped ecchi and quality horror/fantasy art that I can't quite decide whether to despise or adore it... and, maybe, that's the point. That, in order to serve as contrast to the obvious perversions of the Goth Loli pairing, tremendous work was put into the sundries to raise the value of the series.

Granted, their character animations could be a bit better, but man... those backgrounds! Yum!

Either way, I feel both extremely uncomfortable and oddly transfixed by the opener... which is, I think, an apt feeling to have when it comes to vampire tales. So often, nowadays, we're given vamps that are nothing more than the Greek Gods reborn... sparkly, lustful Adonises who are nothing more than expressions of the desire for sexual domination, no longer the creatures of horror. While I cannot say that's the case here, as Hazuki is definitely a sex object of a different persuasion, the artifacts and creatures that they have surrounding her are much more suited to the horror of her monster mythology roots... at least, in the pilot episode. Much more Castlevania as opposed to Twilight.

I just wish that they weren't so pervy and blatant about Hazuki, herself.

One good thing about it, though, it's yet another anime title that features both the English and Japanese (with English subs) vocal tracks. Netflix has been getting pretty good about that lately and I'm always very happy to listen to a title in its original language than suffer what could possibly be a bad dub. It's just safer for me, in my opinion, to watch it subtitled.

I can't say that Moon Phase is appropriate for anyone younger than their teens and it definitely has some sketchy fetish action going on, but I also cannot say that I'm not intrigued. Just, remember, Caveat Emptor and don't say I didn't warn you.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Forty-three - Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, Episode 1, "Okay, hold on... did that woman just attach a chain to-OHMYGAWD!!"

I felt it was time to try another Netflix anime of a series that I'd never watched before. Initial impressions were somewhat promising, as the title card was suitably fan-service friendly, but it was yet another one without dual audio.

Well, they can't all have terrible dubs, so I gave it a try.

Really, the dub wasn't the problem, as it was actually somewhat decent... and neither was the plot or the art style all that troubling (well, I do have one or two needling issues there). It was the brutality gimmick that really bothered me.

See, Rin:DoM centers on a buxom private detective type who has the uncanny ability of resurrection. In the cold opener of the episode, we are treated to her very violent and certainly unhappy death as she's tagged several times by a shotgun and plummets quite a few stories from the rooftops to street level.

Granted, in the very next scene we're shown that she's perfectly fine the following morning, but still... it was hard to watch.

After the cold opener, the majority of the episode revolves around a man who feels his memory, his very life, isn't his own. Rin takes it upon herself to investigate and stumbles onto professional hitmen, secret cloning and organ harvesting operations, and a very disturbing sadist doctor-lady... oh, and zombies.

Weak storytelling and the horror gimmicks randomly popping up aside, what is truly disturbing are the lengths of brutal domination and torture that the author forces Rin to endure for the sake of... well, what? Gratuity is all I can come up with.

Literally the sadist doctor pierces every fleshy bit of Rin's body, going so far as to attach a long length of chain to what is implied to be her genitals... a chain that the evil doctor yanks just for the heck of it.

Ick.

Also, ugh.

It's those moments that are just completely unnecessary and over the top. Not that I'm a fan of censorship, I just can't call the anime quality when it resorts to this level of on-screen torture to fill some time.

Then, there's the zombie horde that just comes out of nowhere.

I mean, I could swallow the evil sadist doc-lady cloning people to harvest their organs... I could also live with the hand-wavey way she macguffined a "chemical memory transfer" so that the clones retain the original's personality... but random zombies?

What the hell?

The little trouble I had with the art is that a lot of the featured style swings way too liberally back and forth between flat and boring and overly extravagant. Like everything is dull and solid colored until you get to that one frame where Rin is putting on nylons and THEN there's deep texture.

Meh.

I'll probably stick around an episode or two more, despite the red flags, just to give the series a chance to redeem itself... but, anime really doesn't work that way. It's stories are generally already written and approved long before anything gets animated. I don't hold much hope for improvement, but we'll see.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~