Review: Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai! (パパのいうことを聞きなさい！)

Posted by ranpha on 23rd June 2012
Posted in: anime review. Tagged: . Leave a Comment

This is the black-haired main male protagonist.
This is the black-haired main male protagonist.

The penultimate entry of the relatively short ‘Anime of the Year 2012’ audition is now here, featuring another slice-of-life series, titled Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai! This anime differs from another slice-of-life title in the audition, Daily Lives of High School Boys in some key areas, which will be explained in more details below. Obviously, comparisons between them will also be inevitable.

Story:-
The main male protagonist, who is starting his first year at university, was suddenly saddled with 3 new daughters (all of them are below the age of consent) after his sister and her husband died in a plane crash. Living in a small one-room apartment, each of the members of the newly-formed family has to adjust themselves to new ways of life together.

The biggest difference between the two slice-of-life titles that is this anime and Daily Lives of High School Boys, is that the former focused far less on the comedy aspect and placed more emphasis on a storyline and also character developments. Yes, what I want to say is that this anime has a plot while Daily Lives of High School Boys doesn’t have one. As for the quality of this anime’s storyline, it (the storyline) is actually good overall. The storyline has two weaknesses though, the first one is the fairly predictable plot and the second one being the weak ending (the final two episodes) that probably has a plot hole too.

There are very little amount of comedy moments in this anime; most of them happens within the RORI club that the main protagonist is a member in. The quality of the comedy is also nowhere are good as the ones seen in Daily Lives of High School Boys. This anime has done one thing right though, and that would be avoiding any romantic relationships from evolving from the infatuation stage, especially for the two of the four major characters of this anime. With this, the probable love interest of the main male protagonist was then reduced to be part of the comedic setup of the RORI club. Keeping this anime strictly on the slice-of-life track with very little comedy and zero serious romance moments is an excellent editorial decision many other anime titles out there cannot do.

As mentioned before, this slice-of-life anime has plots in it, therefore character developments is also there. Character developments in this anime is uneven though, partly because of the low episode count (12) and the high number of major characters (4). Only two of the 4 major characters can be said to have major character developments, and they are the main male protagonist and his new eldest daughter. The main male protagonist is definitely the best characters in this anime, and the eldest daughter is actually one of the better tsundere characters you can find in the anime world. Far better than the one in OreImo, but still behind the one in B gata H kei.

The second daughter has far less character developments, and hers seems to only happen near the end of the series. Well, at least she is better than the youngest daughter of the household, who presents her role mostly as a plot device than as an actual anime character. Her plot device’s role in the storyline was executed very well though, and I have no complaints about that.

With a prevailing plot, this anime doesn’t have the 4-koma-style presentation seen in Daily Lives of High School Boys, opting instead for a more episodic type of storytelling  technique. Therefore the pacing in this anime is slower than the latter, which suits this anime’s need perfectly. The flow of the storyline is fine in the first half of the series or so, but it deteriorates somewhat in the second half. Obviously, this problem also contributes to the weak ending alongside the potential plot hole I’ve mentioned before, that I will discuss more below.

The two younger siblings out of the three daughters that the main male protagonist has inherited. I don't show the oldest one exactly for the same reason that the president of the RORI club has.
The two younger siblings out of the three daughters that the main male protagonist has inherited. I don't show the oldest one exactly for the same reason that the president of the RORI club has.

Character Design:-
Character designs in this anime isn’t that different than the ones in Daily Lives of High School Boys, with its shounen-style designs. Coincidentally, black hair is common, and the blonde second daughter is actually a blonde (minus all of the stereotypes associated with one of course). Unfortunately, I think the character designs in this anime is too bland for my liking though, unlike what you can see in Daily Lives of High School Boys.

Voice Acting:-
Overall, voice acting in this anime is decent, and that’s about it. This anime doesn’t have any outstanding voice acting gigs in it unlike Daily Lives of High School Boys, but then again this anime doesn’t have a single one of the bad jobs that can also be seen in the latter.

Music:-
This anime has done quite well too in this department. The OST is actually good, and so are the ED theme. Only the OP theme is way below average of my standards.

Animation/Direction:-
In this aspect, this anime is more comparable to the other entry of the audition, Another, instead of Daily Lives of High School Boys. This can be seen by this anime’s tendencies  to use pre-painted backgrounds a lot, and I wonder whether this Princess Lover-inspired trend will become more common in future titles. Animation quality is decent, a little bit behind what you can see in Another. Choreography doesn’t apply in this slice-of-life title, but just like Another again, CGI and 2D animation has seamless integration. A minor complaint about the animation is that people in the background were animated very slowly, as if they are zombies (see the screenshot below).

My complaint about the director is about the potential plot hole in ending arc (the voice actress’ action in the final episode). I say ‘potential’, because that particular scene could also goes nowhere. But if that certain scene really amount to nothing, then it is bad form for the director to compose the musical choir scene that way because it can confuse the viewers. But if that scene has hidden meaning behind it, then it is a failure for the director to not explain what really has happened after the musical choir event. If this anime has a second season, then the director can get away from this, but the ending doesn’t seem to be written to accommodate a second season.

Conclusion:-
8 out of 10. This anime isn’t good enough to challenge Another in this audition for the ‘Anime of the Year 2012’ title. The audition will end in the next post with Nisemonogatari, the only sequel in the audition lineup. Nisemonogatari has to be better than its prequel though to even think of winning the audition.

People in the background scenes in this anime has zombie-like movements. Maybe the president of the RORI club is the same one as a certain gun freak in a certain anime series...
People in the background scenes in this anime has zombie-like movements. Maybe the president of the RORI club is the same one as a certain gun freak in a certain anime series…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-yf

Review: Another (アナザー)

Posted by ranpha on 10th June 2012
Posted in: Anime of the Year 2012 title holder, anime review. Tagged: . Leave a Comment

The two main protagonists. One of them will end up as a murderer at the end of the anime. Want to know who? Watch this excellent horror anime title.
The two main protagonists. One of them will end up as a murderer at the end of the anime. Want to know who? Watch this excellent horror anime title.

The second entry reviewed in the current ‘Anime of the Year 2012’ audition is titled Another, an anime that belongs to the poorly represented ‘supernatural-minus-superpowers’ horror genre. As far as I remember, the only other anime title I reviewed here before that is similar to this anime is Gakkou no Kaidan, and that anime is more popular for its stupendously ‘awesome’ English dub than its ‘creepy’ storyline. The Higurashi series is probably another similar title to this one, but it has too many superpowers elements in it to be considered as one. This anime is definitely better than the first entry of the audition, but is it good enough to win the audition at the end? That question will be answered eventually in the future.

Befitting the genre this anime falls into, the hospitals in this anime also practised skipping death numbers for their floors' numbering scheme. I've seen this in real life, but didn't really expect to see it in my anime.
Befitting the genre this anime falls into, the hospitals in this anime also practiced skipping death numbers for their floors' numbering scheme. I've seen this in real life, but didn't really expect to see it in my anime.

Story:-
Sometime in the 90s, the main male protagonist moved from Tokyo to the rural Yomiyama because of his father’s job. But before he arrived at his new school, he has to be warded at the local hospital instead for lung collapse. At the hospital, he met the main female protagonist, and this chance encounter inadvertently caused a perennial deadly curse to start happening at the school he has not attended yet.

Generally, there are no major weakness in the storyline of this story-driven anime title. While the quality isn’t exactly on par with many of the excellent non-anime horror titles from Japan, it is still quite decent. What set this anime’s storyline apart from many of those Japanese horror movies is that I didn’t get scared at all when watching this anime, but as the final episode’s end credit rolls and I jogged up my memory, I finally exclaimed, ‘Damn!’ as the story finally gets to me. There are no plotholes, and everything seems to be logically finished up at the final episode.

Some nitpicks:-

  1. The plot in the first four or five episodes is very predictable. This issue resolved itself though after that.
  2. The solution to stop the curse is surprisingly ordinary, considering that the class 3 students know exactly how the curse plays out before the solution was found in the tape revelation. All of those horrors must had made them forgot that any given problem can be solved if the source of the problem is dealt with. The solution, while is surprisingly intuitive, is very hard to pull off though. This issue could only be a positive for this anime if it has a second season.
  3. The way the culprit was outed can do a lot of work, and this issue is almost an anomaly considering how the rest of the storyline was presented. The writer tried too hard to conceal the culprit’s identity by blocking the 4th wall as vital scenes and dialogues was presented to the main male protagonist but not to the viewers. Then, flashbacks are used at the end of the series to finally reveal those information to the audience, not as clues to find out who the culprit is, but as evidence for the guilt of the culprit. This is the complete opposite of the ‘my-cousin-is-not-my-cousin’ revelation earlier in the series that was brilliantly presented. The writer should have attempted to hide the secret right in the open, betting that his or her cards will not be flipped over too early unlike what happened in Dragon Crisis! because after all, the culprit has quite a lot of airtime and yet isn’t detected before the culprit’s time is up.

As I mentioned above, this series is one of the very rare titles in the ‘supernatural-minus-superpowers’ horror genre in anime out there. This means that human characters in this anime will have to deal wit a supernatural being without any divine help at all. The closest thing this anime has to a superpower element is the Kara no Kyoukai-esque eye that the main female protagonist has, and this plot device turned out to be hugely instrumental at executing the solution to end the curse. It would have been better if the concealed information is used to track the identity of the culprit instead of using the eye to do so.

This anime got the presentation aspect just right, with its slow pacing fitting the subdued mood as people starts dropping like flies, and the pacing increased nicely at the ending arc as more people dies left and right. I want to say the same thing too about the flow of the storyline, but while the flow in the story preceding the ending arc is smooth, I cannot say the same thing about the flow of the ending arc itself. The ending arc has a couple of minor scene transition problems, probably caused by the faster pacing and also because of the parallel plots that is running simultaneously during the ending.

Character developments in this anime really take a backseat at the end of the bus in this hugely story-driven title. This is partly the fault of the effects of the curse itself, the huge amount of characters in this anime and also the overall storyline. All of the characters are there purely as a vehicle for the storytelling process, and this holds true especially for the main female protagonist. The final two or three episodes that make up the Battle Royale-esque ending is a total departure to the relatively languid nature of previous episodes, and this is a good thing as the curse was finally stopped by one of the main protagonists. But in keeping to the traditions of general Japanese horror genre, there certainly is room for a second season, with new characters for sure, because the curse will still be repeated in the new school season.

Quoted For Truth! This anime surely can relate to this quote.
Quoted For Truth! This anime surely can relate to this quote.

Character Design:-
Character designs in this horror anime is just ordinary in general. Normally, this will count as a negative aspect but not so for this anime because of the setting of the storyline that takes place in 90s’  Japan and also the storyline. This is yet another anime where brown is the new black, although the main female protagonist has black hair. I bet the blonde guy dyed his hair though.

Voice Acting:-
Just like the previous entry in the audition, this anime is also a dialogue-heavy anime. But when these two titles are compared in this aspect, Daily Lives of High School Boys edged ahead of this anime in terms of overall quality. I can safely say that ALL characters in this anime (and there are plenty of them) only has average voice acting performance. All of them are bland, and there is no one outstanding in the whole roster.

Music:-
This aspect is another element of this anime where it fails to outperform its rival in this audition. There is nothing at all that goes right for this anime musically. A horror anime like this one could have benefited from a great ambience soundtrack, but unfortunately it doesn’t get one. The less said about the awful ED theme and the meh OP theme, the better.

Animation/Direction:-
This aspect is definitely where this anime has done better compared to the first entry in the audition. The animation quality in this anime is good, even in fast-paced scenes. This anime also take a page from Princess Lover and used beautiful pre-painted background images (see the screenshot below). It would have been nicer if they are animated. 2D and CGI animations are integrated seamlessly too. Choreography doesn’t apply here in this anime, even if there are plenty of deaths. The director has done an almost flawless job for this anime, a surprise because most of his previous works consists of comedy skits. THIS ANIME HAS REALLY FEW COMEDY SCENES IN IT.

Conclusion:-
9 out of 10. A must watch if you like Japan-flavored horror movies like Ju-On and The Ring, although if you expect to be scared shitless, be prepared to be disappointed. This kind of anime is best watched in a single sitting, instead of being watched one episode per week. This is where my policy of watching complete season(s) of anime titles really paid off, because my scoring for this anime will definitely be lower if I were to watch this anime one episode per week. Two titles are left in the audition; Nisemonogatari and Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai! Which one will come next? You have to wait for the next review…

The static pre-painted background style seen in Princess Lover is also common in this anime.
The static pre-painted background style seen in Princess Lover is also common in this anime. The only moving parts in this scene is the birds. The clouds are static.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-y1

Review: Daily Lives of High School Boys (男子高校生の日常)

Posted by ranpha on 1st June 2012
Posted in: anime review, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: . 1 comment

The three main protagonists of this anime.
The three main protagonists of this anime.

Today’s post marks the start of the audition searching for this blog’s ‘Anime of the Year 2012’ inaugural winner. Actually, I want to only start this audition once the 2012 spring season ends, but because I cannot wait to watch Daily Lives of High School Boys for reasons that will be detailed below, I started the audition early. Because of this, there are only four titles in the audition, and they are Nisemonogatari, Papa no Iu Koto wo Kikinasai!, Another and of course, Daily Lives of High School Boys that will be reviewed today.

A beach episode. Obviously it is nowhere as good as the outstanding Highschool of the Dead OVA.
A beach episode. Obviously it is nowhere as good as the outstanding Highschool of the Dead OVA.

Story:-
The two main protagonists, alongside a secondary character sidekick, are 2nd year students in a normal all-boys high school somewhere in Japan. Permanently trapped in that class ala Urusei Yatsura, the three characters does their daily own stuff in and outside the school, between each other, between them and their own schoolmates, plus their own families and students from other schools too.

This plot-less comedy anime is suspiciously similar to another anime that involves plenty of high school boys, titled Sakigake!! Cromartie Koukou a.k.a Cromartie High School. Both of them are comedies and features male high school students, mostly in high school settings. Don’t even bother trying to find anything that resembles plot in here, this anime is one of those titles that that are purely driven by character strengths and the humor.

The comedy in this anime is great, just like what you can see in Cromartie Koukou. But if those two’s comedies quality are compared, I think Cromartie Koukou will still edge ahead of this anime in this regard. Just like Cromartie Koukou, this anime is also a dialogue-heavy anime, but this anime has the distinction of having far more action in it. Just so you know, Cromartie Koukou is set up at a delinquent-only all-boys high school, yet that anime has almost zero violence in it. In this anime, set up at a normal all-boys high school, punching people as a response of being at the wrong end of a joke is a very common event in this anime.

The ending of one of the best comedy arcs in this anime.
The ending of one of the best comedy arcs in this anime.

Another thing these this anime has in common with Cromartie Koukou is parodies and references to external sources, especially for Square Enix (where the source manga was published) and Sunrise (the studio that produced this anime) intellectual properties, amongst others. No DiGi Charat though in here, although Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica can be glimpsed. This anime is markedly different from Cromartie Koukou in one aspect though, and that would be the existence of a bunch of recurring FEMALE characters throughout the this series. Those characters from the opposite sex do enhance this anime in ways that Cromartie Koukou will never be able to experience. For example, characters in Cromartie Koukou can never talk about how to get girlfriends…

The three main protagonists and the best characters in this series, all of them MALE high school students, are central elements of this anime, after all they have the most airtime and are involved in almost all arcs in this anime. The central main protagonist (the one at the center in the top-most screenshot above) has his airtime cut severely in the final third of the anime, and that’s why I downgraded him to the sidekick status in the synopsis in the first paragraph above. Due to the nature of this anime, character developments in this anime is almost non-existent, with almost all of the characters in this anime is virtually the same between the start and the last episode. The three characters are also backed up by many good secondary characters, from the high school itself or from within the characters’ households. Even the aforementioned recurring female characters has done well, most of them anyway like the ‘High School Girls Are Funky’ characters and also the student council president from the all-girls high school.

This side show at the end of each episode is quite good too, gives the main series a run for its money.
This side show at the end of each episode is quite good too, it managed to give the main series a run for its money.

This anime has the Azumanga Daioh’s storytelling method, where each episodes contained small arcs that is several minutes long. Therefore the pacing is fast just like what you can see in Seitokai Yakuindomo that uses the 4-koma manga storytelling method in its anime version. This anime minimized the negative effects of using such a storytelling method by not only keeping arcs in the same themes together more often than Seitokai Yakuindomo is, arc pairing method is also used where one given arc will be followed by another arc that will use the context from the previous one. It also helps that the arcs in this anime is longer too than the ones in Seitokai Yakuindomo. Transitions between distinct arcs are largely seamless too but not perfect, considering the storytelling method this used.

The ending is open-ended, setting up nicely for a second season. The only drawback about the ending is that the arc is one of the weakest arcs in the whole series, mainly because the anime tried to step out of its comedy genre and having some melodramatic scenes in it. Somehow, the way the last episode being presented reminds me of Hayate no Gotoku. When was the last time I’ve seen a last episode that isn’t one?

Just one of the humor in this anime, that is not possible at all in the likes of Cromartie Koukou.
Just one of the humor in this anime, that is not possible at all in the likes of Cromartie Koukou.

Character Design:-
Definitely different from what you can see in Cromartie Koukou for sure. In Cromartie Koukou, 95% of the characters has that ‘wild’ looks that makes little kids cry, while only 5% of the characters in this anime has it. And to think that violence is more common in the latter. In general, character designs in this anime is is much typical for a shounen though. There is implicit acknowledgement that hair dyes are used by characters in this anime so I’ll overlook all of those blond and yellow-haired and purple-haired characters. Not bad but not outstanding either.

Voice Acting:-
The quality of voice acting in this anime is grossly uneven. Amongst the three main protagonists, one of them (the bespectacled guy) has done an excellent job, another one (the central protagonist turned sidekick) is mostly decent while the blonde guy is just barely above average. As for their schoolmates, their families and also the female characters, the quality also vary widely. The two student council presidents, the bearded guy from the main protagonists’ class and his older sister, and the bespectacled girl and the Archdemon from the ‘High School Girls Are Funky’ skits also has excellent voice acting gigs.

Want to know how those three characters ends up on the ground? Watch this seriesd then!
Want to know how those three characters ends up on the ground? Watch this series then!

Music:-
This anime has also done pretty well in this aspect. The OST is decent, but too sparse for my liking. If the dialogue-heavy Seitokai Yakuindomo can have a great soundtrack, I don’t really see this anime that has similar presentation cannot have it. The ED theme is below average, but the OP theme and the insert in 3rd episode are quite good.

Animation/Direction:-
This anime used the blurry animation technique here (just like in Sunrise’s Sacred Seven), usually in slow-paced scenes, the reverse of the application seen in Cardfight!! Vanguard. A point will be deducted from the final evaluation then. Apart from that, the animation quality is not exactly good, especially in laid-back slow-paced scenes. Compared to the recent two Sunrise titles reviewed here before, Sacred Seven and Tiger & Bunny, the inferiority of the animation quality here is really apparent. Despite the delicious amount of violence in this anime, choreography doesn’t really apply to this comedy title. The director has done a good job too, especially for minimizing the negative effects of this anime’s storytelling technique.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. This anime was suggested to me by some of my Left 4 Dead 2 game friends, and I will recommend it to anyone who likes comedy titles too. My friends sure has some strong attachments to the literature girl (that is crap) and the ‘High School Girls Are Funky’ skits though…

Quoted for Truth!
Quoted for Truth!

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