Kono Yo no Hate de Koi o Utau Shoujo YU-NO – 03

I’m not at season check-in point yet, but my instinct says this is one that’s going to have a pretty high number of bubble series.  And YU-NO certainly looks like one of them right now.  It’s an odd show, which is actually one of my favorite things about it.  The protagonist is quite unusual and the narrative style is pretty atypical too.  But it hasn’t real connected with me yet above and beyond simply being unusual, and that’s only going to keep me tethered for so long.

This episode basically ignored the existence of Takuya’s parallel worlds device, and focused totally on the relationship between he and Arima-sensei and the preposterous plot by her weasel assistant.  That’s fine on a certain level – one of the things that’s interesting about YU-NO is Takuya’s ease around adult women (hell, his crush is Liz Taylor), and the fact that there are so many of them in the cast for him to interact with.  But it seemed very odd to have an episode built around paradigm-shifting technology and then have the protagonist preoccupied totally with mundane concerns.

Then again, this is a VN adaptation – and history tells us that those often impose some awkward narrative demands on the adaptors.  At two cours there’s a fair amount of time to work everything through but there was nevertheless a peculiar lack of imperative – even impetus – to this week’s ep.  It was full-length but somehow, it felt like someone had taken the middle 80% of an episode and lopped off the 10% at either end.  It worked better as individual scenes (the interplay between Takuya and Arima has a certain charm to it) than as a collective whole.  And indeed, that can often be the case with VN anime – we’ll see if the problem is surmountable going forward.

Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san – 02

The main question I’m facing with Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san is, can I cover it?  I think there’s a pretty good chance I’ll enjoy it enough to watch it, but this isn’t the sort of show that tends to lend itself to blogging.  I mean, how much can you really write about furry head-bobs and ear cleaning?

I will say this, though – I believe I was a bit off base in calling Sewayaki the polar opposite of the atrocity Nande Koko ni Sensei ga (on pace to be the biggest seller of the spring, according to pre-sale figures).  And I may have been too quick to dismiss this as an almost entirely innocent affair.  I still think the main focus here is on the “healing” side and the heart is in the right place, but this episode makes me believe Sewayaki knows exactly what it’s doing with all the tail and ear stuff, and the loli jokes.  And frankly I find the omakes to be quite creepy, given the context of who they’re aimed at and how they’re intended to be watched.

I actually kind of hope that’s right, because if so the weird dichotomy of this show’s two halves would give it a sort of weight that it wouldn’t otherwise have.  The essence of it does seem to be a really decent guy who’s being thoroughly worked to the nub at a virtual black company (still too common in Japan), and the kind kitsune who’s helping him out of genuine kindness (and a connection to his family, clearly).  But there’s also a distinct ecchi element here – last week it was the tail, this time the ears – and even if Senko-san is unaware of the subtext, Nakano-san most certainly is not.   When she climbed into bed with him, again, that almost bordered on creepy – and that’s the weird juxtaposition I’m talking about that might make this series a little more interesting than it would otherwise be.