After much nagging from Pearz, I've decided to blog about this anime. I was watching it anyway; my only gripe was that there was nothing for me to write about. After waiting until the third episode, I might have things to say now.
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| It was so hard to capture an acceptable shot of the title... |
Pearz compared this to Lucky Star, but that's kind of wrong. (Nichijou is more like Lucky Stars.) In a nutshell, this is slice-of-life comedy, the kind that shows random daily occurrences with plot as a side note. The other kind would be slapstick, with flashes between scenes relatively quickly (this is what Lucky Star and Nichijou both fall under). There is a story (like making friends), but we're generally treated to the everyday moments in the lives of the four main girls (with other girls thrown into the mix from time-to-time). After making it sound so mundane, it feels a little weird to say that this is definitely a genre I like.
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| This reminded me of Shounen Bat from Paranoia Agent, for some reason. |
There're four main characters: Run (blonde and kind of ditzy), Tooru (the bat girl up there), Yuuko (the "normal" one that gets pulled into schemes), and Nagi (the "normal" one that's conscientious enough to
not go along). They do fit into their archetypes pretty well. The first episode was mainly about one of the earlier days of the school year (or so I presume; why would you be picking your electives late in the year?), with Tooru as a first-year in high school and the remaining three as second-years.
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| Her long sleeves are totally endearing, but I don't have a favourite character yet. |
The first episode made me a little sad, considering there was a sense of being left out. I think that was the point, since the end showed Tooru telling Run she felt sad and being told that nothing had changed between them, even though they were in different classes/years. Genuinely speaking, though, this feeling of sadness followed me into ep03, although the plot points in that episode made me feel hopeful. (Despite Run saying nothing had changed, I really didn't believe her.)
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| Run decided to try to cut hard candy with a box (pencil) cutter. |
Just to interject with something kind of random: this may seem like a very obviously stupid decision, it's not always that obvious to the person doing it. I once tried to separate some burgers that had gotten frozen together with a knife. Some things happened and I sliced a big chunk of my index finger off. Some bandages and a few days later, it was as good as new (although I can still see where the "old skin" ends and the "new skin" begins). The point of this story was that one shouldn't say she's stupid; otherwise smart people make these horrendous decisions too. Oh, and that skin has an amazing regenerative property. Moving on~
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| Do girls usually get so embarrassed seeing other girls naked? Other anime have been lying. |
The second episode was equally "everyday", with the first segment focusing on Run forgetting to wear panties because she was tired in the morning. Quick question: do girls sleep without panties? At what point did the panties come off entirely that she forgot to put a new pair on? ...I guess if she was changing into a fresh pair... No more talk about panties.
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| This reminds me of Harvest Moon, where turning blue means extreme fatigue. |
As a whole, I liked this episode much more than the first one. It was a little more random than the first one too, with more segments than before, but I think it's because by this point, I was used to the characters and I assume I have an aversion to new things. More importantly, Tooru wasn't alone and sadface in this episode. It focused on some occurrences in class and then the characters dealing with the severe rain.
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| This scene itself was just funny. How do you just recently find out you attract rain?! |
More than ep03, this one had really amusing moments, like how Run decided to make raincoats out of garbage bags or how Tooru began tormenting Yuuko with pokes. We also saw a snippet of a man in love with Run's forehead; he got introduced in the very next episode as the new Health Education teacher. It's like School Rumble in this sense; we see characters up-and-about before they're actually introduced.
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| What is with this extreme playing? That's just uncomfortable. |
Ep03 focused somewhat on Tooru's loneliness, as I mentioned earlier. We got introduced to Yutaka (and, by-and-by, a Mipo-rin whose real name I don't know yet), who we actually did see in ep01. The nice thing about this episode was that I felt a lot better about Tooru; she'll be making friends! I'm pretty sure that'll be part of the plot snippets we see, how Tooru makes friends with people in her own class (because, face it, it's hard to be friends with
only people from other classes).
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| I would keep long hair if that meant hearts in the air whenever I moved my head... |
A surprisingly long post later, this is less random slapstick than Nichijou, with longer scenes, but also less direct plot than School Rumble (although Rho informs me that School Rumble was pretty random for the first 100 chapters, with a plot suddenly showing up; I only saw the anime). If I were to compare, I'd say I like this much more than Nichijou (for which the review will be up as soon as ep04 is released).
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| The legs, in general, in this show are so out of proportion... |
To end on a random note: ep03 was really hard to watch for a strange reason. This anime likes to utilize the "shine marks", like those white circles you can see on her knees in the above picture. Ep03 seemed to do it more predominantly than ever before, and it brought up repressed memories of a time I cut the top of my ring finger, around the first joint. The cut was pretty deep and I could see something whitish (not bone). I don't remember how I cut it or too much else about this incident (hence, "repressed"), other than the feeling of horror of seeing my finger in that state.
Okay, this episode just makes me sound prone to finger injuries. Dammit. No more personalizing my reviews.
~Aaro off
