Slice of life Tuesday time again…

Tamayura Hitotose – 08

I think I’ve realized one reason I’m having a hard time bonding with Tamayura.  Shows where the characters smile too much annoy me – call it a pet peeve if you want, but it feels unnatural.  It bothered me in Eden of the East (well, it had lots of company in terms of things that bothered me) it bothers me in Last Exile: Fam and it’s noticeable here too.  At least with this series all the smiling is in synch with the ultra-syrupy tone, but it’s still too much.  There’s always something nice and contemplative in every episode, though, and this week my favorite moment was when Potte and Shimako were discussing the ticket with no destination as a metaphor for life’s journey never being settled, but always changing.  That’s a lovely thought, and it was reinforced by a visit to the café Casablanca owned by Hoboro’s old pal Misano.  The both of then are artists who have settled on the café life, leaving behind their original dream for the chance to watch their towns and their people full-time.  Stretch the leisurely contemplation of that over 22 minutes and you have a pretty typical episode of Tamayaura – nothing to quicken the pulse, but pleasant enough in a daydreamy sort of way.

Kimi to Boku – 08

OK, I admit KtB is growing on me.  There’s been an upward arc that started with the arrival of Irino Miyu’s Chizuru on the scene, and it’s pretty steadily continued.  The chemistry has improved with Chizuru’s presence, but the humor has also gotten generally much sharper.  There’s a weirdness and slight edge to it now that I like, and this week’s manga parody showed us a talent for self-mockery which is never a bad thing.  The premise was straightforward – Yuki’s asked to draw a manga by the Manga Club, which he’s been treating as a go-home club.  The first part deals with the core group’s efforts to do a relay manga with each boy taking a page, the second with the POV of first-year Matsushita Ryunosuke (Aoi Shouta – debut performance), the boy who asked Yuki to write the manga and a huge admirer of his sempai.  Starting with Yuki’s objection that he couldn’t write a manga because he didn’t have a  beret, things were quite funny and occasionally downright hilarious.  Each guy’s take on the manga project was revealing – Yuta’s hidden talents, Yuki’s slacker scribblings, Shun turning their hero epic into a shoujo romance, Chizuru’s self-adoration, and finally Kamane’s utter fail (at least he didn’t have to work on Chizuru’s suggestion of a “forbidden romance” between he and his mother).   The manga parodies are sharp and there’s some actual character insight too.  As for the second part, it was a light-hearted look at Matsushita’s bromantic crush on Yuki and his attempts to draw a manga with him as the hero (naturally, all of his attempts feature Shun as the heroine) with my favorite being the “Lone Wolf and Cub” sendup and the increasingly popular super sentai spoof.  This bit could have been mean-spirited or awkward, but I thought it was handled with a deft touch and its heart in the right place – this kind of hero worship of younger males for cool sempai is very much a part of the guy experience in high school – and that, after all, is what I was hoping this series would be about…