Somehow Mai has become my favorite secondary character. She just has a sort of calmly philosophical approach to things that I really appreciate.

I’m still withholding judgment on this one. It hasn’t fully grabbed me yet, but it’s still promising.

Senpai is a surprisingly and amusingly determined troll, and Yuu is such a perfect target for her (reminiscent of Raphael and Satania in Gabriel Dropout). The dynamic between senpai and Suzu is interesting too, since they each seem to fully understand the other, while Yuu understands pretty much nothing about either one of them.

Yuu getting bullied by kindergartners was especially amusing.

Looking foward to getting to know Rura next episode - she might be the missing piece that’ll make this four girl ensemble complete.

And if nothing else, I do quite like the ED. - BAD SURPRISE

Renge’s superpower is finding the good in people.

Okay - House of the Sun is already really good, and I’m only on chapter 3…

ETA - just worked out that this is Taiyou no Ie. I thought it was weird that it was not only this good but award-winning, but I couldn’t remember ever hearing of it.

I just never heard of it under that localized title.

I’m not familiar with House of the Sun, so I’ll have to check that out.

But yeah - the artstyle was what first drew me in, and her laugh was a lot of what sold me. That and those once-per-chapter glorious real smiles.

Description

Due to certain circumstances, Heike Waku transfers to a new high school. There, he meets a very cool classmate named Oura-san. With a famous model for a sister and a face that never smiles, she seems like a distant and untouchable presence… or so it seemed. But by chance, Waku happens to catch a glimpse of Oura-san’s dazzling smile. In that moment, his world changes completely! For that smile… I’ll do anything!! From Taamo, the creator of House of the Sun, comes a heart-pounding, grin-inducing high school romance!

Huh. You might well be onto something there.

It seemed watching it almost as if they weren’t even trying to do any comic timing - instead, most of the dialogue was at the same slow, trudging pace. And that especially stood out to me because it’s clearly conveyed in the manga that one of the characters is sort of manic and talks much faster than the other one. And yeah - overall it just felt slow to me.

And I’m fairly sure there was less dialogue overall - that the monologues from the manga were shortened. Which would also fit in with low budget and dumb corner-cutting.

You’re right about the volume vs. time thing.

I still have a bunch that I already knoware good on my TBW (Violet Evergarden, Mushishi, Ping Pong: The Animation and Oshi no Ko just off the top of my head) and I have no doubt that there are that many more that I don’t know about and just haven’t stumbled across yet.

Still though, it surprises me every time I wander into something like Vivy not knowing what to expect, and come away that impressed.

I’m glad to hear that. I’d love for it to succeed, and I already love the manga, so my opinion of the adaptation is sort of irrelevant anyway.

Darn… that was disappointing.

I love the manga — it’s easily in my all-time top 10, and probably even top 5. And this adaptation just didn’t do it justice at all.

It’s obviously low budget, but that could’ve been okay, since there’s no action to speak of. The weirdest and most disappointing thing is that the manga actually has better comedic timing, and that seems like it shouldn’t even be possible.

The manga has to essentially imply the timing by using beat panels and gimmicks with the panel layout and such, and it consistently nails it - that’s one of the rhings I love about it. But I expected that, even as good as it is in the manga, it couldn’t help but be even better in an anime, since they can actually control the time between lines and get it exactly right.

And somehow they mostly failed. I don’t even know how they managed it, but the timing was awful, so a lot of the jokes fell flat.

I’ll keep watching it, if for no other reason than that they haven’t done any of my favorites yet (Wada at the crane game, Yamamoto’s story about the boob squeeze, Wada’s doppelganger, the reason they both sit on the same side of the table, Wada’s monologue about fighting off wildlife…) But I’m not very hopeful.

Oh well…

Delving back into the past again, I watched Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song last week, and it was amazing - easily one of the best series I’ve ever seen.

In one way, it reminded me of Frieren - it’s a completely different setting and characters and pretty much everything, but like Frieren, it has no real weaknesses. Everything about it is high quality. It’s an engaging story that doesn’t pull any punches, the characters are well-developed and believable and all of the material aspects of it - art, sound, voices, music - are top-notch.

The thing that really grabbed my attention though is that basically every single episode had a jaw-dropping finale. Starting with the first episode, it just went along, unfolding the story and adding details and introducing new things and building the tension and then BAM! In the last minute or so, it pulled it all together into an amazing, shocking, unexpected twist. Then in the next episode, it did it again And again in the next, and again in the next, and so on.

And each episode started off so simply and straightforwardly that even after I figured out that that was what the series was doing, I’d still get lulled into complacency. And then BAM! - it’d do it to me again, and leave me shaking my head and muttering, “Holy shit… This series…”

And none of them were deus ex machinas or just there for shock value. They were all vital plot points and bits of background information and they all made sense in retrospect- they were just so cunningly revealed.

The ending was terrific too. Like the individual episodes, it was dramatic snd unexpected and surprising, but slso like the individual episodes, it fit.

I don’t know why I don’t hear more about this series, because it really was great, from start to finish.

I’m going to be keeping an eye on this one, but I’m going to be pleasantly surprised if it turns out really good.

So far it seems sort of derivative - kind of a cross between Hitoribocchi, Gabriel Dropout and YuruYuri, and it especially reminded me of Gabriel Dropout, since Yuu’s sort of a cross between Vigne and Satania.

If the characters are handled well and the writing can stand out a bit, it might be a good one. But it’s more likely it’s going to be sort of meh. Here’s hoping.

Of course she’s an adorably useless nurse too.

Oh, this is awesome.

It reminds me of Mitsuishi-san Is Being Weird This Year. There’s something about deadpan surrealism mixed in with bumbling teen romance that’s just *chef’s kiss.

ETA: just read the chapter with his parents - that explains a lot. 😄

Ah… I knew I recognized the art style, but I couldn’t place it. Then I got down to the comments and saw the mention of Kubo-san Won’t Let Me Be Invisible, and it all came rushing back.

This should be good.

Okay — that’s in the running for the cutest scene and the cutest couple ever in the history of manga.

Huh… this is actually pretty intriguing. There are a bunch of layered mysteries here.

And broadly snd not so seriously I love the underlying fact that the protagonist was stipulated from the start to be Japanese specifically, and the first thing she does after being isekaied is to organize a bunch of people to clean.

That was a wonderful chapter - this series just keeps getting better and better.

Bold move Kouhei - well done.

Years ago, I was working at an art gallery, and we had one customer who would come in every few weeks with the latest vaguely renaissance-looking oil painting he’d found at a yard sale and spend an hour or two tediously pointing out and explaining the artfully hidden brush strokes or initials or subject matter or shapes in the clouds or what-have-you that proved that it was actually a Rembrandt.

I had forgotten all about him until just now, when this essay very forcefully reminded me.

And on another note, it also managed to Streisand the Galverse. I didn’t even know there was such a thing until just now, but now I’m going to go track it down.