Oh, moving is fun. It’s so much fun. These past two weeks have made me realise how much I rely on the internet. It has seriously felt like a limb has been cut off. By relying only on free wi-fi in coffee shops and libraries, all I have been able to do is check my mail and social media. But now I have my internet back, I honestly feel like never returning to the real life ever again. I’ll remain introverted for the rest of my life…
…seriously though, being away has meant I’ve missed out on so much anime and have had to do a lot of catching-up. So, I figured I might as well skip to the end and do a season review now. How about we begin with the show that ended the soonest?
I would have thought that Uma Musume Pretty Derby would have ended with Special Week winning the Japan Cup and rubbing that win in the cocky French horse girl Broye’s face, but no. Its finale decided to get the horse girls from both Team Spica and Team Rigil to race in the Winter Dream Trophy. Since all of them had had their own major wins and successes in various races, I suppose it was only inevitable that the final episode would give us the chance to see which one out of all of them would be the best.
This show has been rather predictable, so you’d normally have a wild guess on who would win, but P.A Works have done a good job at not highlighting one stand-out horse girl in the episode, despite nearly all the focus being on either Special Week or Silence Suzuka.
As for the show, I haven’t really been too sure on how to interpret it. I know this is the kind of show that none of us should take too seriously, and so there’s my habit of reading into shows too much coming out again. I do enjoy the nods to real-life thoroughbred horses and real-life horse races that took place, and I also chuckle at how they don’t treat it seriously (carrot juice, big stomachs, etc.). Uma Musume will be memorable to some, but not all, and with Maquia coming out in the West imminently, it could well be a P.A Works show that’ll end up in the shadows.
Time to move onto Darling in the Franxx. I am aware that the show has not quite ended yet, however I have decided to stop writing about it here, since all of the other shows have ended, and I would otherwise be writing about only one show.
Its final episodes gave us the not-so-surprising plot twist that the orbiting APE were in fact the real antagonists: alien invaders calling themselves VIRM…who don’t have a physical body and instead possess other beings, like humans…and Klaxosaurs. The Klaxosaur Princess reveals to Hiro that she has lived for over 60 million years, and that VIRM destroyed her people, forcing her to hide underground. I never saw her as the real bad guy anyway, but due to how the plot has been written in these final episodes, I don’t think it even matters.
The true antagonists did not even leave a memorable mark on this show. VIRM may have been the real invaders, but we as the viewer have only seen the Klaxosaurs as the bad guys, and this extremely short time in explaining who the Klaxo sapiens were and what happened to them is very disappointing. A lot of questions have been left unanswered. Why did Ikuno’s hair turn grey? Why were the kids deemed unfit to pilot frozen? Why was Futoshi starving himself in that one episode? And why did we need to see so many letterboxes in the show?
This show has not left a great mark for Trigger, despite them being 50% responsible. It’s left fans bickering among one another over whether the writers forced their views on heterosexuality onto a relatively progressive audience. It’s left immature fans bringing the VA of Ichigo to tears after that one episode where she confesses to Hiro and breaks Goro’s heart. And it has ended with so many references to past anime shows, I lost count long ago. Darling in the Franxx has been unable to create its own identity, and so it has had to ‘borrow’ plotlines, metaphors and scenes from existing shows (mecha or otherwise) in some post-modern attempt to look cool and edgy.
For example, where have we seen before?
As the Klaxosaurs and VIRM take the fight to space, the kids and remaining adults are forced to live on what’s left on what is effectively a dying planet. With Hiro believing Zero Two’s mind is in Strelitzia fighting in space, he decides to go up there and rescue her…leaving Goro to say what all of us have been crying out for the last 6 months: Hiro is just one incredibly selfish guy, and has not really given a single thought about the other kids in Squad 13.
Sooo, Trigger is just being Trigger, and sending more kids to space in the final episodes of a show. Kill La Kill and Little Witch Academia have done the same, and so it’s no surprise that we won’t see space fighting here. But ultimately, I no longer care what happened to these kids…oh wait, I was hoping that Ikuno would get some kind of happier ending, and Ichigo is still my favourite (so the Zero Two stans can take their Ichigo hate and go back to 4chan).
As for the lengthy post I wrote way back when about Zero Two that is now the 3rd most-read post on OASG (or something like that), I’m not entirely sure how it attracted so much attention, and why I received a lot of backlash from it. Stans will be stans, I guess…
Next show. Hinamatsuri.
A lot of us are rather sad to see this show end. As for myself? Well as I have said numerous times here, this is just a show that I am guilty of not just having contrasting opinions of, but also of not really appreciating it as much as I ought to. I think I just need to rewatch this show to appreciate it more.
Now I hear rumors that Hinamatsuri will not be getting a season 2. This is logical for two reasons:
- Its portrayal of the Yakuza as ordinary people (as opposed to violent criminals), which is not really great for Japan, despite the show’s cult status now.
- Its home video sales actually aren’t doing that great in Japan, which says something alone about what tastes Japanese otaku have, and what studios need to do to please them all.
This also shows how different the tastes are between Japanese otaku and Western otaku. We appear to love our shounen and our shows with black comedy, while Japan loves the idols and the yuri. Just some conjecture there.
Hinamatsuri has made a lot of people chuckle with its laugh-out-loud comedy which doesn’t really pull any punches. But as I said, it has been a show that I have mysteriously been unable to warm to, which is a real shame, because when I first caught wind of this at the beginning of the season, I had the strong feeling that this would be something the fans would flock to when they got sick of My Hero Academia and Steins;Gate.
So…should Hinamatsuri be a show that I rewatch as a part of my classic/out-of-season slot for a future season? Maybe I’ll do a Twitter poll on that…
It hasn’t just been Hinamatsuri that I’ve been naughty on too; I have been rather naughty when it came to my classic/out-of-season show. I have enjoyed every single episode of Princess Principal, and am very pleased to hear that it’ll get a home video release here in the UK soon. I just haven’t really had the opportunity to catch up with it online.
I had initial reservations about the relationship between Ange and Charlotte, as the opening episodes didn’t really give that much in the way of conversation between them. They were contrasting characters in nearly every way, but it took their own episode to explain everything, and as the show ends, I can say that Princess Principal is one of the gayest shows I’ve seen in a long time.
It was the Ange/Charlotte episode that I left off in the last Otaku Theater post, and so I’ve had about 4 episodes to catch up with here. We had another Chise episode, which was effectively another filler, as her superior wants to know if Princess is a capable person (so Japan knows whether to side with the Kingdom or the Commonwealth). But we soon learn that the Kingdom and the Commonwealth are just as bad as each other, as it soon comes out that the Commonwealth want Princess dead. It is in fact these final 4 episodes that are the best in the show, as they all combine to tell one story: the Commonwealth’s plan to kill off the monarchy (Princess included) and take control of the rest of Albion by force. Ange still wants to elope with Charlotte to Casablanca like she promised, but Charlotte has none of it and decides to fight her corner.
I’m sure that, when the final episode was aired, that the fans were desperate for a second season, now that we know that the 5 of them are safe and sound in Casablanca. Well these upcoming movies that are due for release next year should keep them all happy. I think that, due to my moving home as well as some other things that I don’t really have an excuse for, I will need to give Princess Principal another go, as well as Hinamatsuri. I think when it’s finally released on home video here in the UK, I’ll buy a copy of it and save an entire night to watch the whole thing in one go. I’m still very glad that you guys picked this show, as it probably would have remained on that list of ‘shows-I-mean-to-watch-but-never-do’.
Next season will see me turn to some sports shows. Yes, that’s right: sports shows. Some of the ones that are appearing this summer have caught my interest. I think that now I’m settling into my new home, I’ll have no real excuse to be missing weeks of posts.
Did you laugh and cry for Special Week and Silence Suzuka? Were you getting frustrated with Darling in the Franxx? Should I rewatch Hinamatsuri? Am I a heretic for falling behind on Princess Principal? Feel free to air your opinions in the comments below…