Fukigen na Mononokean Tsuzuki – 01

Pierrot’s amiable little Shinto series returns for another season some 2.5 years after the first one aired – which I must say is a bit of a surprise to me, since it seemed to be a classic one-and-done manga promoter anime.  Whatever the reason it’s nice to have Fukigen no Mononokean back – apart from Kaji Yuuki’s usual grating performance it’s quite a relaxing and whimsical way to kill 22 minutes.

I’m not expecting a whole lot to change in the second season because frankly this isn’t the sort of show were things typically do change very much.  Ashiya will still be childlike and clumsy, Abeno will still be tsundere towards him and Moja will still be the best part of the series.  The premiere has a comfortably familiar premise, with Hanae and Haruitsuki heading off into the Underworld to answer an SOS from the Legislator, who’s using a dubious injury as a pretext to enlist some help in doing his job so he doesn’t have to.  Hanae ends up being sent on an errand by himself (with Hairball) and naturally gets himself in trouble along the way.

I don’t see a lot of scenarios where I’d cover this one – I only blogged the premiere of the first season, though I did watch and mostly enjoy it to the end.  It just doesn’t seem very likely we’re going to get any real surprises here, for better or worse, and if this season is like the first it’s not going to give me a whole lot of grist for the writing mill.  I’ll be watching though, so if things take an unexpected turn for the better I reserve the right to change my mind.

Ueno-san wa Bukiyou – 01

I can honestly say that was the best anime episode about drinking pee I’ve seen in many a year.

There’s really not much reason why anyone should find Ueno-san wa Bukiyou to be particularly amusing – it’s a short (half-length), it’s crude, it’s loud, it’s modestly-budgeted.  But I have to say, I sort of liked it.  As juvenile as the comedy was it did kind of made me laugh.  The premise is pretty basic – a three-student middle school science club, where the titular president is a genius inventor who’s helplessly in love with a boy named Tanaka-kun.  He in turn is a parody of every dense-at-love schoolboy trope and the clear straight man of the group.  The third member is Yamashita-san, who seems to slot into the role of Ueno-san’s eccentric wingman.

Even at half-length the series (for one week at least) is split into two mini-skits.  The first involved Ueno inventing a machine which can purify any liquid into water and desperately trying to get Tanaka to drink her pee.  I took this is a spoof on the indirect kiss trope (that’s one hell of a kiss), and as gross as it was (I’m with Tanaka-kun on this one) I have to say, Ueno’s increasingly frantic attempts to get Tanaka to grasp what was really going on here did strike me as funny.  Especially when she got Yamashita-san involved and the two of them pretty much flat-out told Tanaka what this was really about and he still didn’t get it.

The second sketch involved a machine which projects some sort of dark matter shroud to make things invisible – including very private things, and Ueno puts it to the test by going commando and commanding Tanaka to look up her skirt.  Again, I saw this is a satire of an anime trope and as stupid as it was, I did laugh – especially when Tanaka asked her to explain what it was she was talking about, and then tried to get a look for himself.  The common denominator in both chapters was Ueno’s increasing frantic impatience with Tanaka’s density driving the humor and for me, it more or less worked.  Plus, we have Inoue Kazuhiko narrating, which certainly can’t be a bad thing.  There are no Peabody Awards in this series’ future, believe me, but as a lowbrow comedy I thought it was pretty effective.