Noblesse – 03

Apart from fans of the source material ripping it, it seems as if almost no one is talking about Noblesse.  I’m certainly not seeing much commentary in the usual places (including here).  I sort of get that, given that it’s not an especially attractive show visually and doesn’t appear to check many boxes as far as trendiness is concerned.  But I have to confess, I rather like it.

The appeal here is pretty straightforward for me – I like the characters, so I like the series.  There’s an unpretentious and quite genuine goofiness about Noblesse and the people who inhabit it that I find very refreshing.  The human teenagers, the immortals, the Union dudes – they’re all rather interesting and even distinctive.  Ironically given that they’re nominally the center of the story, it’s Rei and Frankenstein who’re the two least engaging cast members, but they’re fine – just a bit on the boring side.  And I’m not crazy about the particular voice Hirakawa Daisuke is using here.

The newbies from Union – Shark, Hammer, and the hacker Tao – got a more extended run this week, and they were quite entertaining in their own way.  The interplay between Tao and Manabu was fun, including the misunderstanding with Tashiro (which seems like it will be a running gag, which has some risk to it to be sure).  On balance I think I like the seikatsu stuff around the school and the house better than the actual main plot, but they mesh together pretty well because the overall tone of the series is pretty irreverent.  Is there enough here to blog?  Who knows, but at the very least I’m not ready to shut the door yet.

Ikebukuro West Gate Park – 03

I wouldn’t say this episode of IWGP was great or anything, but it was certainly the best of the three.  The absence of moralizing (mostly) alone would have ensured that was the case, but this was sort of amusing for its unabashed weirdness.  If that’s as good as this show gets it’s certainly not something I would follow, but at least we’re trending in the right direction.

The one thing I sort of wonder is whether or not this was an original episode.  I mean, Youtubers certainly weren’t a thing when the original TV series came out, much less the novels.  And the fact is that the vast majority of what these “content providers” post is just as stupid as what Ryuusei and the gorillas do.  But IWGP managed to show that without being preachy and judgmental about it, the way the first two episodes were.  Most of these dudes are, like Ryuusei, basically harmless – and no one is holding a gun to the head of their millions of subscribers and forcing them to watch.  I will say, though, that it’s pretty disturbing that this is now the #1 desired career choice among Japanese middle schoolers (as it is).