The winter 2019 anime season has come to a close, I’ve scaled back on my anime watching mostly to enjoy what I do watch more but also so I can keep up with what I do watch by the time the season draws to a close. This season I watched three anime from beginning to end. Three seems to be my limit for ongoing viewing at a time.
Virtual-san is Looking- Winter is the time of year to watch things which require zero brain power in Canada. The snow has been present for many months, much shoveling has been done, the sun hardly ever dares to grace us with its presence, and the ground is a perpetual sheet of ice outside so please excuse me when I say this was exactly what I needed. Virtual-san is Looking is the show you put on to riff with friends and that was precisely why I enjoyed it. That also seems to be the show’s entire purpose for existing it does not aim to be anything more than a series of animated Youtube skits strung together and that is perfectly fine.
Dimension High School- this frankly turned out to be the biggest chore to watch of the three anime I spent my time watching this season. I was expecting something more in line with what Virtual-san is Looking turned out to be but Dimension High School desperately wants you to fall in love with its world and characters but fails completely. This was a show that opened mocking its own motion capture CG animation it did not need to attempt a serious narrative to bring the whole project together. The finale episode was by far the most baffling part and serves no other purpose beyond book-ending the series. The second to last episode wraps up the plot itself. I did enjoy the show’s experimental mixture of live action and animation footage and the villains were genuinely funny but that does not compensate for the rest of the show. I can easily say this can be skipped over even by the most hardcore animation fans as it provides very little new or compelling that has not been done before and is less fun than it should be.
Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan- this was a mixed experience but one I would still recommend if only for the insights it provides into the animation process. The animated shorts themselves were fascinating viewing experiences as well. The only fault that made the viewing experience mixed was the interviews which dragged on far longer than I cared to watch them. Each episode includes an interview with the episode’s director and the lead voice actress which is longer than the shorts themselves. The talents attached to the projects made the interviews more interesting however as many were veterans who have been working in the anime industry for decades and seeing their insights into the project was fascinating at times. A few peeks into the animation production process which rounded out each episode also proved compelling on occasion. The most notable peaks into the animation processes include a segment in which rotoscoping animation development is show and an episode which used marionette dolls, live action footage, and pop art animation to animate the episode.
Altogether, winter 2019 was was an odd season for Japanese animation. There were drastic, abrupt changes made in the anime streaming scene which further confused matters. Many shows had severely delayed launches, so much so the pilots were added when future episodes had already launched in Japan. The anime simulcasting and streaming industry seems to be in a bumpy growing period presently. There is also discourse around Japanese animators burning out which also seems of concern to me. The following weeks will be the bumpy between season transition period they almost always are which I never look forward to. Try as people do to predict which shows end up where the torrent of announcements inevitably flows forth with indifference.
Comicedy 