The Autumn season is drawing to a close. I have a pile of episodes of Non Non Biyori to catch up on, so I hope the story progresses sanely.
Coppelion is doing okay. It isn't as strong as it could have been, despite an interesting premise, I find myself watching but not so much caring about what happens to the characters. I rather figure it'll all end happily, next week perhaps?, and it will have been an good way to waste half an hour a week, but that's all.
This brings us to Kyōkai no Kanata (Beyond The Boundary). A KyoAni production featuring a moeblob called Mirai and some pleasingly insane hokum regarding spirit monsters and such. At its heart, it was a sort of love story, much in the style of Hyōka where it didn't take centre stage until it needed to.
The production was extremely patchy and never seemed quite sure whether to do gags (and KyoAni has this down to a fine art) or the heavier and more serious stuff. It was all worth watching - the "idol" episode was really funny, right down to the cheesy "training montage" inserted into the performance. Things got more serious towards the end, Mirai sacrificed herself to save Akihito, yet there is this lingering unease that turns into a menacing presence of a sort of parallel universe floating above the town. That's where Mirai ended up. And, wouldn't you know it, only Akihito can save her now. We can gloss over the cheesy (and even Akikun's clearly insane mother) as served up right afterwards is the mother of all meet-cutes and the credits roll.
Which leads us to an agonising wait for episode 12 where the two leads really bring out the action hero vibe, what with Mirai riding on the windshield of a motorbike, her blood sword (makes sense in context) held out. That is so many kinds of awesome. The others characters don't sit back either, it's a quarter hour of relentless epic. But, don't expect these characters to have earned their happy ending. It is a sweet finish, a logical finish, but likely to be one of the biggest downer endings in history. Still, it somehow needed to end this way. Now excuse me, as the credits roll I'm going to go and cry bucketfuls.
Wait. Hang on. WTF? How....?
I'm half glad that that bit at the very end happened as it now leaves open the possibility of a sequel. But I'm half extremely pissed off for what feels like a massive ass pull. Still, this is KyoAni. I guess the ending of Kyōkai no Kanata is not as big a WTF? as was animating the same thing eight times.
The winter season is now nearly upon us, so having a look at the listing, the following are likely to be my picks:
Chūnibyō Demo Koi sa Shitai! Ren - definite
D-Frag! - I'll give it a try.
Wake Up, Girls! - sounds like it could be interesting, I'll give it a go.
Mahō Sensō - might be worth looking at
The usual bases are also covered - robots/action (several), weirdo concepts (Space Dandy), yuri (Sakura Trick)...
I'm looking forward to the Mōretsu Pirates movie, towards the end of winter.
One last animation
Finally finished the fourth animation. This one has a soundtrack. Took all bloody day to score that - maybe I ought to look to other ways of creating MIDI music than crotchets and quavers sitting upon five bars? Certainly, the music in my head is somewhat richer than the final product. But, never mind. I don't plan to spend an eternity doing this...
Look for the video on Christmas Day.
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