Zatsu Tabi: That’s Journey – 03

It’s kind of a shame Zatsu Tabi has gone the way I feared it would, because there’s a lot of untapped potential here. I don’t blame the mangaka – it’s a tough living. Editors know what sells, and they push writers to deliver it. But if it could have resisted the urge to go full CGDCT it could have been special, because Ishizaka Kenta absolutely gets the essential nature of travel. But try telling that to an editor when you’ve never had a million-seller.

That said, this moeblobbing explosion wasn’t a total whiff for me, as the series finally went someplace I’ve been – Kagawa. Hell, I’ve even been to the udon place (in the company of friend of the site Jake Jung, a Kagawa resident), Yamadaya (along with everywhere else they went in Kagawa). It’s nice to learn something about new places too, but undeniably fun to see anime follow paths you’ve followed. Tiny Kagawa is of course the land of udon (and tanuki), and had its grand anime flowering in the adaptation of Udon no Kuni no Kiniro Kemari.

Chika definitely outed herself as a journey noob by failing to book a hotel room (and reserved seats on the Shinkansen for that matter) during Golden Week. Traveling at all during GW, really. But her comment about not wanting to wonder what might have happened if she’d tried something was Ishizaka’s moment of zen (he has at least one every episode). That mindset is one of the core principles I try and live by (it’s why I’m in Japan). It’s a wistful reminder of what Zatsu Tabi might have been, if it had held out for being the show it was in the first episode. But it was nice while it lasted.

Ballpark de Tsukamaete! (The Catcher in the Ballpark!) – 04

This one’s a strong candidate for the ballot for sure. I’m enjoying it, but its episodic nature leads to a fair number of peaks and valleys. I thought last week’s Sun-Shiro chapter was probably the series’ best so far, but this week’s trio left me a bit indifferent.

I do like the fact that in its humble way, Ballpark de Tsukamaete! is aiming to be a comprehensive look at an entire organization (similar to what Giant Killing does on a much, much grander scale). That includes the ballpark announcer of course. I hadn’t really thought about it but it does seem like in Japan it’s always a woman. Here she’s built a reputation for making teasing comments about one particular player, the left fielder Nokogiriyama-san (with a name like that he could only play in Chiba). I have no idea if that’s a thing here, but she’s run out of trivia to mock, and this pulls Ruriko into the booth for moral support (which is odd).

It’s pretty obvious why the announcer, Nagisa, would single out one player for that treatment, so add that to the prospect list. Meanwhile Ruriko has gotten some fan letters in the suggestion box but the employee who collected them put them through the wash, thus ruining the chance for “handwriting analysis” (ROFL). She goes into detective mode to determine who it was, and I was thinking maybe she was hoping it was Koutarou but there’s no sign of that. Thanks to the security dude having no professionalism she finds out it was her regulars (including Koutarou) writing one each (which seems unlikely, if we’re brutally honest).

Lastly there is a bit of bonding between those two. Koutarou introduces us to another bit of stat geekery, the Pythagorean record (yes, we obsess over it). In his case (as it usually is) it’s a means of coping with Chiba’s sucky actual won-loss record. Ruriko offers him a “thank you sale” for writing his letter – and what I want to know is, did she do that for everyone who wrote one, or just him?

Uchuujin MuuMuu (Me and the Alien MuMu) – 03

Back when I reviewed the premiere of this show I noted that Uchuujin MuuMuu had an ED and BGM “which have a good deal of wit to them and sound like something Kuricorder Quartet could have put out.” I feel rather silly in nothing that, in fact, Kuricorder Quartet is doing the music for this show (the ED is their arrangement of a huge hit from 1990 by Tama). That alone would be enough to make me favorably disposed towards it, but Me and the Alien MuMu has a fair amount of quirky charm anyway.

It’s a weird, one, this series. There’s something almost meditative in its approach to deconstructing modern exemplars of human technology. The characters are decidedly weird. And it has a message too, as was made clear in MuuMuu’s confrontation with Decimaru, “Akihiro’s” cat. Decimaru is a flat-out racist where humanity is concerned, and MuuMuu cites people like him as the reason why their planet was destroyed by warfare. Now of course they both think of humanity as slaves to Earth’s cats, but MuuMuu has already seen the complexities of the issue.

He also, interestingly, seems to be pretty smart by the standards of his planet’s survivors. He figures out the means to trap Decimaru in the automatic door of the cafeteria (after which, giving both Decimaru and us a less in why it worked). He figures out why his missile’s cloaking system is broken (thus putting Tokyo under threat of total annihilation) after watching Sakurako get a lesson in how to fix a broken plug. It’s all very weird, and, as I said, kind of meditative in a strange way.

There are lots of interesting little touches here, like the way MuuMuu goes into panic mode and wakes Sakurako up by kneading the bread dough (if you know you know), and the illegal dumping interlude). Also Sakurako getting a ¥70,861 electric bill thanks to the cloaking device, ROFLMAO. This series isn’t a masterpiece or anything, and it’s not even being streamed in English, but it is notable and distinctive. As such, it’s a part of the mix for the patron poll for sure.