Weekly Digest 5/4/16 – Sousei no Onmyouji, Bungou Stray Dogs

Sousei no Onmyouj - 05 -11 Sousei no Onmyouj - 05 -20Bungou - 05 -2Bungou - 05 -7

Sousei no Onmyouji – 05

I’m still enjoying Sousei no Onmyouji quite a bit, though whether or not there’s enough here to blog is another matter.  It does fall on a slow day, it’s true, but this is pretty standard-issue shounen so far, and doesn’t invite a whole lot of embellishment or analysis.  The appeal is that it happens to be quite good for standard-issue shounen.

This episode was apparently anime-original, which of course invited the Pavlovian wrath of manga readers everywhere.  Speaking for myself I didn’t see a noticeable drop in quality from the first four eps, so I’m fine with it.  The new player (there are actually two, but the identity of the second is still a mystery) is Ikaruga Shimon (the always reliable Ishikawa Kaito) who despite being only 16 is one of the legendary Twelve Guardians of Onmyoudo (named after Abe no Semei’s familiars).  He’s sent to Narukami ostensibly to investigate the strangely plentiful Kegare, but in truth it’s a ploy by the always-meddlesome Arima to make sure the Twin Stars stay motivated by throwing someone really powerful in their faces.

If I have a complaint about Sousei no Onmyouji, it’s that the episodic plots themselves are somewhat repetitive.  And we’ve already seen the events of this episode essentially play out a couple of times in the first four episodes.  If there’s anything that makes me most hesitant about blogging it that would be it, so we’ll have to see if the series starts to break some new ground in the next couple of episodes.

 

Bungou Stray Dogs – 05

I’m sad to say it, but I’m out on Bungou Stray Dogs.  It was Kamiya Hiroshi at his smarmiest as Edogawa Ranpo that might have sealed the deal, but the decision was based on a mountain of cumulative evidence that I just don’t like this show very much.  Barring a couple of modestly interesting violence orgies surrounding the Port Mafia, Bungou has grown more and more to resemble one of those bad otome game adaptations Brains Base specialized in after most of their creative talent fled to Studio Shuka.

This hurts, because Bungou Stray Dogs was one of my top picks going into the season and it always hurts to be so dead wrong about those.  But there’s no point in denying the obvious so it’s time to move on.

 

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15 comments

  1. s

    In regards to bungou stray dogs, as the kids say nowadays……”bye felicia”

  2. They do? I never heard that!

  3. s

    check it out on urban dictionary; it’s pretty much what you say to someone who you couldnt give two shits about. And because you dont even care to remember who they are, you use the random name “felicia” as a sort of misnomer for lack of better word

  4. You know that was the first thing I did.

  5. You might want to stick with Bungou Stray Dogs for a bit, I hear that the next episode is widely anticipated by manga readers.

  6. Keep me posted. 😉

  7. I say we spare Enzo, he’s obviously suffered enough (and I suffer twice as much because while it pains me to watch smeone try to resonate with something they can’t get into, I’m also very fond of this damn show like it’s an old friend who likes bad jokes but its heart is in the right place – I say this while I’m actually very much aware that they’re making fun of dead people, hmm, maybe you actually have to be a bit depressed and cynical to like BSD?) . Judging by the preview, the next episode’s part of the first LN so if you’re waiting for the next manga chapter to be adapted – I guess it’s episode 7? But yeah, that’s when the gears start moving towards the final conflict of the season (and I haven’t got the slightest idea how they’re going to handle the second cour, but I may be the only one who cares anyway).

  8. The original source is an LN? That might explain all the bad jokes.

  9. As far as I know the manga came first.

  10. The manga is the original source material, the light novels are about some stuff before Atsushi joined and I guess the anime adapts a case in the current timeline(?) to give a bit of context to some lines further on (since the manga’s ongoing and not exactly generous with characters’ backgrounds…).
    The jokes depend more on how they’re portrayed and honestly some of the worst are just courtesy of studio bones – I’m looking at episode 4 where they completely missed the title reference by adding their ‘worst case scenario’ lines… But then again I don’t think you’re supposed to take them at face value since the intended audience knows most of the literary references (I think?). Let me just quote something from No Longer Human: “I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.” So knowing this are we supposed to consider Dazai’s clown behavior funny? I’m definitely not the right person to answer this, but I do think there’s a lot of underlying irony here.

  11. I actually didn’t expect much from the show at first, the conceit of using authors’ names for your characters is one that stinks of appealing to the crowd and not letting your characters grow into their own. I feel bad for Edogawa Ranpo; this is the second time his works have been tainted by bad shows.

  12. First I am confused / Maybe I am misundersranding but I do fact check and dont get what you said..

    “Bungou has grown more and more to resemble one of those bad otome game adaptations Brains Base specialized in after most of their creative talent fled to Studio Shuka.”

    I dont understand how Brains Base is getting blamed for Bungo Stray Dogs when Bones is the Studio

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungo_Stray_Dogs

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bones_%28studio%29

    I dont see where Brains Base is doing otome game adaptations / In Fact Studio Shuka did Durarara!! ×2 The Second Arc (TV) : Animation Production and Durarara!! ×2 The Third Arc (TV) ( Which was terrible IMO ) and only have a few anime.So they are OK nothing that made your statement noteworthy that took most of the talent from Brains Base from what I can see.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain's_Base

    http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/company.php?id=12728

    Now for both Sousei no Onmyouji / Bungou Stray Dogs and a lot of other shows that were suppose to be so much better than winter fall what a big letdown I have lost a lot of faith in PV’s hype etc

    That being said there are a lot of good shows especially slice of life’s that are quite good.

  13. S

    Good call.

  14. good call on bungou stray dogs. i liked the fight scenes but that’s about it and i think i’m one of the very few who didn’t like ranpo at all.

  15. G

    A big issue with this show is that the characters being bland, and in the quest to adopt traits of the original authors (though loosely based), the characters are more like caricatures. I’m still watching because I’m interested to see the conflict with Port Mafia (and I’m cheap to win over when it comes to anime with fight scenes), but I hope they dial down the dialogue since it isn’t that funny. The detective refuting Ranpo’s abilities for like the 5th time also got on my nerves.

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