“As long as Somali doesn’t disappear too for down the sinkhole of cute girl navel-gazing it looks like it has a chance to be pretty good and pretty distinctive.”
Damn your eyes, Enzo, damn your eyes…
Another season, another year – and so we begin this merry dance again. And it begins with a show that was solidly in my upper mid-range of expectations, Somali to Mori no Kamisama. While I didn’t (and don’t) really know anything about the source material, I knew the previews were good and I knew the premise sounded appealingly closer to high fantasy than anime in the 2010’s was wont to venture. So to say I went into this series with pretty high hopes is no misrepresentation.
It would be a lot easier if I liked Somali unreservedly. It features a director of a show I dearly love (Ikoku Meiro no Croisee), Yasuda Kenji, and comes from the always potentially interesting Satelight. It features an interesting staff headed by talented French artist Vincent Ngheim as Art Director. It does indeed look very pretty, as the previews suggested it would, and in both look and feel it has a distinct air of Ghibli about it. But you can’t force it – affection either comes or it doesn’t. And frankly, this premiere left me feeling mostly indifference.
One exception to that was the appallingly clumsy exposition scene in the cafe – that prompted outright irritation on a high level. I know that’s one of my buttons but seriously, that’s terrible storytelling. Getting past that (hopefully that sort of thing won’t need to be repeated) we have larger and more systemic problems. The protagonist, the human girl Somali, grated on my nerves from the first scene she appeared in and that never got any better. This was standard moeblob pap of the variety that’s become distressingly common in anime. As with the exposition it’s a shortcut, a cheat, reflecting either an unwillingness or inability on the part of the writing to do the heavy lifting of telling a real story about real characters.
OK, getting past that… I found the story itself and its execution – even the music – to be pretty generic. There was a very formulaic, predictable quality to all of it. Ngheim’s backgrounds were indeed lovely, and I quite enjoyed the designs of the faerie creatures the titular Somali and her forest spirit guardian met in the city (especially the very Cheshire-like cat). But my notepad was conspicuously empty as the episode came to a close – I just couldn’t find anything that seemed interesting enough to write down. Sometimes I don’t write much because I’m enraptured by what I’m seeing, but in this instance it was just because I wasn’t engaged enough to bother.
That’s about all there is, really. I didn’t hate the premiere, so I’ll give Somali to Mori no Kamisama another shot to prove my initial impressions wrong. As vanilla as the execution was the general premise of humans hunted to near-extinction by faerie creatures has some appeal from a world-building standpoint, and the visual side of the world-building is certainly attractive. I very much want this show to win me over, because it’s not like Yasuda or Satelight are all that prolific and it’s not like 2020 is looking like an especially loaded anime year. But you can’t force it – unfortunately.
sweejen
January 4, 2020 at 1:18 amI was looking forward to this one based on my son’s regard for the manga, but I came away annoyed in so many different ways. Aside from the voice acting for Somali, the background art bothered me the most–it looked like it was borrowed from the fantasy sequence backgrounds in Ghibli’s “Whisper of the Heart,” especially in the street scenes.
Dop
January 4, 2020 at 1:33 amOh good grief yes. I did like the setting and think this show has a world i’d like to find out more about. Sure the infodump was clumsy, but it got stuff out of the way quickly enough.
But the child. SO ANNOYING. I found myself thinking “Why has this child not been dead several times over yet?”
I’m hoping the show finds its feet in the next few episodes and tones down the kid.
Dauntingoverlord
January 4, 2020 at 4:51 amMuch agreed. The little girl writing is horrendous. I don’t understand her, she isn’t portrayed as what she is supposed to be, and her one character trait is “cute”. Her writing is opposed to her own background. I’ll also be giving it another episode, but damn. There were multiple ways to give out that info dumping and they chose the most boring path. This media res thing is also confusing, because surely it would’ve been better to actually show us how these two started their journey since it is supposed to be super out of the ordinary. Hopefully this episode was just a cute girl quota checkmark and we can get to the good stuff. I want this to be good.
Cloudedmind
January 4, 2020 at 6:53 amI’ll just say this, I’m biased. I read the manga and I love. It’s unfortunate, viewers are finding Somali annoying, because I find her a joy in the manga. I haven’t watched this episode myself yet, so I can’t comment on it in detail. So, it’ll be interesting to see if she comes off differently to me in the anime verses the manga, or it ends up just being a different strokes for different folks situation.
Simone
January 4, 2020 at 6:06 pmThe weird thing about the exposition is that they could have made that come off much more natural if Somali got involved – she’s a child, it’s reasonable she wouldn’t know the story, so that was an excuse for one of the patrons to tell it. Just “what happened to these humans, mister?” would have been enough.
Also, considering that the non-humans talk about keeping humans as pets and eating them, I get the feeling their “they hated us for no reason” excuse may be a bit biased, but this series doesn’t seem the sort to engage in complex politics. May just be an example of the “humans BAAAD! Learn from the ways of this peaceful, tolerant race that acts and speaks exactly like humans do despite looking differently” trope, which frankly makes me roll my eyes every time.
Collectr
January 7, 2020 at 11:19 amI’m surprised you didn’t mention Ono Daisuke’s work as the golem. He brings a gravitas to the role, with just the slightest undertone of exasperation at times. It suits the role perfectly.