Gunjou no Fanfare – 01
I went into Fanfare of Adolescence pretty open-minded, which is how you have to approach original sports anime. None of them has bowled me over yet though sometimes (like Ryman’s Club) they surprise you. I gotta say though, this was pretty bad. I thought about trying to find a more nuanced way of saying that but honestly, there’s not much more to it than that.
If you had “ex-idol leaves the business to join a prestigious jockey school” as one of your predicted series announcements for this season, take a bow. I’m not even sure prestigious jockey schools exist – frankly I see no evidence that enough of the public cares for that to be a thing, in Japan or the States. But that’s the hill this premise is choosing to die on. The core cast is pretty vanilla – you’ve got all the shounen-ai tropes covered, plus a token girl for variety. You also have Sakurai Takahiro as an instructor who randomly speaks English for no good reason. He can be superb but Sakurai also has the ability to be extremely annoying in the right (wrong) role. Unfortunately…
Basically, for me this premiere went from 15 minutes of boring to 7 minutes of laughably absurd. The horse whisperer kid randomly hopping in a runaway race horse, the staff being nowhere to be found as the kids try and corral the runaway horses, that ridiculous jump that likely would be have seen at least one of the students seriously injured or worse. It was all silly and not in a good way, with just enough Free-style nods and winks to remind you it was also crass and calculating. This is what original sports anime is all too often these days – poorly-made feed corn trying to cash in on a perceived slice of the commercial market. But there’s more of it to come this season – let’s hope this is the low point…
Love All Play – 01
On balance that was certainly the somewhat better show. But that’s a low bar. And did I mention that eponymous McSeiyuu Hanae Natsuki is a major character in Gunjou no Fanfare and the premiere stunk without him even showing up yet? Because he’s the lead in Love All Play, too. And honestly, he’s becoming a real problem. It’s not that he’s mind-numbingly awful – and that’s part of the problem. As an actor he’s the living embodiment of mediocrity. He’s inoffensively bland and generic in every role. Seriously, I defy anyone to differentiate one performance from another if they didn’t know the script, irrespective of tone or how different the characters are supposed to be.
Why is this a problem? Because he’s in every other fucking show, that’s why. And unlike Tsuda Kenjirou who’s also in every other show (and has at least some range, even if he’s always playing himself), with Hanae it’s almost always a lead. Anime as a medium is plagued by the production committee system trying to funnel everything into generic mediocrity, and that’s exactly why Hanae keeps getting cast. It’s bad for anime to overuse a small cadre of seiyuu to begin with – it’s worse when the actor in question isn’t even very good. He’s both symbolic of the larger problem and a contributing cause of it. The name is more important than the performance, and if the audience weren’t happily lapping this up it wouldn’t keep happening.
Was that a rant? Sure. Because honestly IMO it needs to be said. And because to be frank there’s not that much to say about Love All Play – we’ve seen this show many times in anime in recent years, you can just fill in the blank where the sport in question is concerned. The production values (OLM) are fine, and on balance the writing is crisper and less calculated than Gunjou no Fanfare. About the only thing that stuck out to me is how awful the MC’s parents were when he told them he got offered a sports scholarship to a prestigious badminton HS. The dad was a total dick because he got injured on a sports scholarship, and the mom sat by idly and internally belittled her son. The older sister was the only one who came off not looking terrible.
If you want to know more, you can read the synopsis – frankly, I think this is the sort of show you forget about pretty much as soon as the credits roll. I may watch another episode or two to see if it miraculously shows a spark of life, because unlike Gunjou at least it wasn’t an unpleasant experience watching it.
Otcho_Shogun
April 3, 2022 at 8:43 pmYeah…….. These two shows did absolutely nothing for me. Maybe in a season with few sports anime I could see myself giving one of them 1 or 2 more episodes, but this beeing the season with the highest number of sports anime I can recall in a long long time they really don’t stand a chance.
With Ao Ashi, the Golf girls one, Dance Dance danseur and others you have to stand out quickly or fade away for me.
What I did like was the first epsiode of the executioner and her way of life and i think that one has a lot of potential to be a realy good series. I know your feelings toward most LN adaptions are very bad and this has some tropes in the frist episode, but I think there are enough interesting and original concepts to overcome those.
If you find the time I would be interested to read your thoughts on it.
Guardian Enzo
April 3, 2022 at 9:19 pmI think for my own sanity I’m going to avoid Virgin Road. Even above and beyond the fact that it’s an isekai LN I was looking at the reactions to the first episode and everything I read just made me cringe. I’m pretty sure I’d hate it and my wading into that wouldn’t be good for anybody.
Collectr
April 3, 2022 at 8:58 pmThese first impressions digests are a public service. “I watch this dreck so you don’t have to.” With five minutes of reading, I’ve avoided wasting an hour of watching.
I’m beginning to think that the preview blog post here (and the comprehensive one in RC) might allow me to streamline the process even further. Show about idols? Binned. Show from playing card game/multimedia smartphone franchise/MMORPG? Binned. Perhaps other categories as well.
Guardian Enzo
April 3, 2022 at 9:20 pmJust a reminder to all – Ko-Fi button! 😛
colosson
April 3, 2022 at 9:15 pmYou nailed it with the comparison between Hanae and Tsuda. I started to watch “Thermae Romae Novae and even if Tsuda’s voice is simply distinctive on his own, he’s trying at least to perform a different character. In the end is what you describe with the Anime industry and the overall entertainment industry globally at large. I mean, how many versions of the same movie persona can Ryan Reynolds play (and I like the guy, but come on).
Guardian Enzo
April 3, 2022 at 9:25 pmYeah, I find there are a lot of crossover issues between the chase for generic mediocrity in anime and Hollywood. But that’s a subject for a longer post…
Tsuda to me is a lot like Jack Nicholson. He was very good at playing himself – every character he did was basically “Jack”, and every character Tsuda does is basically “Ken”. But he does tweak his delivery to suit the writing at least, and no disrespect to Hanae but if he has any interest in (or ability to) do that I see absolutely no evidence of it in his work. The only stage directions you need with him are “louder” and “softer” because those are the only two clubs in the bag.
Snowball
April 3, 2022 at 9:28 pmI’d like to chime in with your complaint about using the same VAs over and over again. Hanae Natsuki and Kaji Yuki are honestly unbearable, overused, and make me cringe and my ears bleed. Thanks for reviewing these shows, at least 40 minutes not wasted.
sonicsenryaku
April 4, 2022 at 6:25 amI’ll throw my hat into this voice actor discussion/rant about Hanae Natsuki and Tsuda Kenjiro and I’ll make sure to keep it as brief as I can. Bottom line: Between Hanae and Tsuda, Tsuda is by far the superior actor. I know that some people will judge the merit of a voice actor by how well they can disguise their voice, but I think that misses the point of what a voice actor is supposed to excel at, which is to act and convey meaningful emotions with their voice. Despite Tsuda’s voice being easily discernible amongst a cacophony screaming fangirls at a K-pop concert, the guy still tailors his performance to the traits of the character he is embodying, instead of just switching between two emotional ranges the way more mediocre voice actors tend to do. While Tsuda’s voice range is limited, he does bring nuances to his performances and displays acting range, which I find to be more important when voice acting than voice range. Obviously it’s always great to have the best of both worlds (Aoi Yuki for example has both voice AND acting range), but if you could only have one, it should be acting range. Takahiro Sakurai for example is another person with a distinct samey voice, but he’s carried most of his roles with the range in his acting; the ability to perform an emotion in response to a character’s trait instead of just conveying limited emotions/performances the same across all characters.