Kids on the Slope Episode 12 Review and Series Roundup

Kids on the Slope went out in true Watanabe fashion: With an ambiguous ending leaving it open for a whole bunch of possibilities for these characters and what the future holds for them. At the end of Cowboy Bebop, Spike’s own life is left in the air and Ed is god knows where. At the end of Samurai Champloo, Mugen, Jin, and Fuu head their separate ways after helping Fuu find the samurai who smells of sunflowers. And now, Kids on the Slope ends with Kaoru, Ritsuko, and Sentaro back together again after eight years apart. Yurika even makes an appearance, now six months pregnant with Jun’s child.

This show had a lot of ups and downs (more ups than downs in my opinion, but still not the show it’s touted as by everyone on the internet), but in the end, it did not disappoint. I’ll maintain that Space Brothers is the superior of the two, but Kids on the Slope does not fall far behind. It’s a touching coming of age tale about Kaoru and moving through life, love, and music.

If this show had one major downfall, it was that it was only 12 episodes. It would have served this show the justice it properly deserves to be 24 or 26 episodes so it doesn’t have the awkward time skips with the constrained episode count. But if the show had any strong suit, it was, of course, the music beautifully composed by Yoko Kanno. The soundtrack could easily outshine Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo’s ambient music.

I believe that this show could have easily been just as strong (and maybe more interesting) if it wove in flashbacks of the previous 11 ½ episodes and have a 12 episode series of everything that happens after they meet at the end of the episode—something like what Space Brothers is doing now. But alas, it skipped through time willy nilly and had a lot of downfalls because it just hit the plot points and skipped over some important stuff.

I haven’t read the manga of this, so I can’t compare, but this could very well be Shinichiro Watanabe’s weakest work yet. It’s most definitely the weakest I’ve seen, but I’ve only seen Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo.

Overall, I would suggest this to someone new to anime, but unfamiliar with slice-of-life anime. There are other shows that are on the list above it, but we’d certainly get there.

Viz Media and Neon Alley

On a day when it’s easily overshadowed by the 100+ degree heat and Valve’s release of Meet the Pyro, Viz Media just issued a press release about a new service called Neon Alley that’s going to be streamable on “a major game console.” The quick and dirty notes are that it’s going to stream live and not on demand, with English dubs, and premiere what looks to be several shows to US audiences for the first time through this service (rather than the more popular Cartoon Network, streaming, or home video release). The full press release can be read here: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-06-27/viz-to-launch-24-hour-anime-service-on-major-game-console

This is Viz’s, I believe, first huge move toward anime rather than their usual focus on manga. Their Shonen Jump Alpha was a huge step in the right direction for Viz and, although I personally had one poor experience with the service, I do intend to pick it up sometime in the future (maybe if they expand what’s in the magazine or I expand my own manga horizons). Funimation and Sentai Filmworks have previously tried a pay-to-play video service similar to the more popular Hulu, Netflix, and Crunchyroll and, in my opinion, they kind of flopped (that is if you compare it to Crunchyroll). Funimation’s Elite Video Subscription is a great idea, as is Sentai’s Anime Network, but they weren’t executed in any useful fashion. For this to truly, truly work, it has to combine with these services and provide a huge library of anime available on a 24-hour anime channel. It took the first step in the right direction by streaming it on a “major game console,” something that Crunchyroll, Hulu (though not Hulu Plus), Funimation, and the Anime Network has failed to do thus far. Just that one step is pretty big considering a good portion of people watch their streaming video on a console and not on a laptop or desktop. I, in fact, have not used Netflix on my computer since buying my PS3 because it’s just so much more convenient to watch it on A. a bigger screen and B. not my computer.

What this spells for the anime industry is another potentially huge, potentially bust service for us fans. As I and the press release said, it’ll premiere some dubs of anime AND this allows a new generation of fans to potentially just find anime by browsing the video services of their X-box or PS3 (I doubt the Wii is in contention here, people). From the outside, right now, this looks like a great service that’ll bring in a lot of current fans and could bring in some new fans (it’ll be nothing like Deadman Wonderland and Casshern Sins on adult swim, but short of also being on adult swim, you can’t reach out to a huge number of people immediately).

I hope, hope, hope that this service will be great. From the looks of it, it’ll provide a free portion with ads to support revenue (which is a good move). And $6.99/month is not a bad price for a 24-hour anime channel that has more availability than Funimation’s channel (which has almost no availability). But it needs to be advertised more than just ANN and Crunchyroll press releases (I have no idea how to go about this, but it needs advertisement). Viz is likely to launch a big in-house advertisement campaign by using Shonen Jump Alpha and their own website, which is a good enough start. We’ll see how it turns out in a few months, but I could see it being great. However, I can just as easily see it be a huge bust to Viz.

Kids on the Slope Episode 11 Review

Oh, there’s another episode of Kids on the Slope coming your way next week. Look forward to it! Anyway, getting right down the episode 11…

I thought this was going to wrap it all up nicely with a little bow and just let it be and I kind of would have hated it for that. I believe now, and will likely believe at the end of the series, that both Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo are above and beyond this show by a long stretch. I blame that on two things: 1. It’s adapted from a manga and has constraints that Watanabe didn’t have with Bebop or Champloo and 2. It’s much shorter than Bebop and Champloo. It isn’t given enough time when it definitely does have the time to slow itself down and fill up some of the gaps in time that it skips due to episode constraints.

I loved the move of Sentaro running away. I thought he had some bad motivations for it, but his father coming home means that he should at least get out of his house, which he tried. But Kaoru came along and everything seemed peachy and keen and I started to dislike the direction the series was taking because of it. Then Sentaro crashed into a car with his motorbike thing with Sachiko on the back (this is not seen when Sentaro is riding on it). I expected the obvious of Sentaro getting hurt and not being able to play in the festival. In a twist, Sachiko gets hurt and might not wake up. That storyline was quickly wrapped as she woke up and Sentaro ran away again. I like that he ran away again, as he got the proper reconciliation with his father. But I dislike that Sachiko immediately woke up and got better. Take your time Shinichiro Watanabe. You are Shinichiro Watanabe and you have that right.

I would have loved to see the battle between Beatles-boy and the impromptu jazz band, but alas. Other events take priority. I can’t say I completely like the direction the show took with this latest episode, but I can’t say I completely hate it either. It’s certainly not up to Shinichiro Watanabe’s usual very high standard, but it makes itself stand out among the rest (except Space Brothers) of the shows this season.

Kids on the Slope Episode 10 Review

I knew that Kids on the Slope jumped around in time a lot. It was pretty evident from the previous episodes, but they did that jump fairly well, or at least better than this most recent one. We jump from winter to summer after Kaoru has confessed his feelings yet again to Ritsuko, who had just given him a pair of hand-knitted gloves. This is the first time where I really felt like this show was suffering from having only 11 episodes. With even 13, it could have done so much more.

What kind of shocked me here was Sentaro’s decision at the end of the episode (What? He’s leaving. Spoilers.). I didn’t really feel like this fit his character given everything that’s happened up to this point. He’s waited for Kaoru to turn around and now Kaoru’s going to have to go get him because he’s running away from his scary drunken dad who hates him. And he’s leaving his siblings to the scary drunken dad who hates him. He’s got another friend in Kaoru now who would most certainly take huge backlash from his aunt and family he’s living with just to give Sentaro a place to stay and I’m positive Ritsuko and her family would also welcome Sentaro with open arms. Maybe they have something planned, like a reunion with Jun and Yurika in Tokyo, but he’s running with good reasons, but not enough good reasons to justify it.

What I did love though was Kaoru’s confession. But give that aftermath time! Don’t just jump to an entire season after it happened to the school festival for the convenience of the story unless you plan to revisit that (which they shouldn’t do since the show hasn’t relied on flashbacks at all except with Jun’s stuff, which is arguably the only time it’s going to work now). So a whole few months passed without Kaoru or Ritsuko talking about them liking each other? At all? A little unbelievable.

Overall, I like the direction this series is heading, but MAN, take your time with it. The manga is all done, I think they would have known that it was nearing that point if they asked the mangaka. So let Shinichiro Watanabe have his time with the show and have as many episodes as you want. Guilty Crown is thus far the longest Noitamina show and Kids on the Slope could most definitely benefit from the 22 episode count that Guilty Crown had (while Guilty Crown might have thrived with something in between). But I digress on that topic. Another time maybe.

Madoka Magica Volume 3 Review

Let me get this off my chest: I love Madoka Magica. I didn’t when I first watched it. I thought it was mediocre and didn’t deserve the praise it was getting at the time. I still don’t think it deserves the praise it got at the time, nor does it deserve the praise it’s getting now, but I’ll get into that. What I love about this series is that it was able to take such a generically happy-go-lucky genre into something darker. Magical girls are humans given magic in exchange for a wish, and that wish will eventually turn them to despair and turn the human into a witch. Usually, in magical girl shows, the magical girl just fights against an outside enemy that’s making witches or specters or wraiths or whatever. But in Madoka Magica, the magical girls are fighting against former magical girls. And you don’t know this for sure until near the very end because Kyubey is a little jerk who only tells you what you need to know.

I am also continually stunned by the acting in this. The English dub goes above and beyond the call of duty here. I daresay it is one of the best dubs ever produced; most definitely worthy of the consideration at the very least. Cassandra Lee is absolutely brilliant as the cute, yet creepy, Kyubey and conveys that perfectly in her voice. Christina Vee portrays Homura’s badass fighting side just as well as she portrays Homura’s shyer and less sure side. Christina Marie Cabanos is also able to portray Madoka as the unsure, yet often strangely cocky and confident, girl that she is. What she did that underwhelmed me in her portrayal of Azusa in K-ON! is clearly gone (that or Alex Von David knew exactly what to do to bring out her very best performance; though I doubt this since Tony Oliver is a great voice actor and voice director in his own right). Alex Von David brought together a nigh on perfect cast of English voice actors to do justice to this dub. I can say that Funimation produces some of the most consistently good dubs nowadays, but every so often, a dub out of LA will blast you in the face and remind you that they’ve produced some of the best dubs out there (they did do Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Samurai Champloo, and Hellsing after all).

What I didn’t so much enjoy was the ending. All the build-up was really, really good, but the ending just kind of let you down. They claim that the earthquake in 2011 in Japan didn’t affect the ending of Madoka Magica, but there will always be speculation. But the fact that Madoka literally became a god seemed like a cop out on the part of the writers. This show was about how hope turned into despair and how, after all your trying, you can only make it a little better. If Homura went back and it just faded to her trying to save the world again, it might have been a better option (I know that’s not the best option out there, but there’s got to be something better than what they did).

But several shows leave you wanting more out of the ending. This is no different. I wasn’t any more or less disappointed with the Lost ending or the Buffy ending (both of which were lackluster to me). So take that as you will. All in all, I definitely suggest this series to people new to anime and looking for something besides the standard starter shows like Bebop, Champloo, and Trigun. Stick with it through four episodes and you’ll probably grow to like it.

Kids on the Slope Episode 9 Review

It looks like Kids on the Slope is gearing itself up for a finale. Given that there are only two more episodes left, I would expect it to do so. Yurika has left with Jun to Tokyo. And Sentaro has been turned down by Ritsuko. Thus Sentaro is left in the cold with the two girls he liked through the series. Meanwhile, Ritsuko and Kaoru are moving forward.

What I found really interesting about this particular episode was how the music contrasted with the show. The background music ran with what was going on, but the music Sentaro and Jun played, dueling each other, was very much contrasting with the more tender and laid back feeling of this particular episode.

Besides that, and I haven’t talked about this much at all, but the animation in this series continues to amaze. Everything else looks pretty much the same in terms of quality, but both this and Folktales from Japan continue to stun me in terms of animation quality. The character designs are perhaps the best of the season and the subtle backgrounds alluding to a 1960s Japan makes this show great.

Overall, we see a pretty realistic depiction of awkward kids being…well, really awkward with each other. Ritsuko is finally figuring out her feelings, Sentaro is being Sentaro, and Kaoru, who acts the most mature among them, is being perhaps the least mature in his actions. And the backdrop of the politics of 1960s Japan with Jun is absolutely brilliant. No one thing stands out as making this show amazing (like with the colorful visuals in tsuritama or the pacing and quality of story in Space Brothers), but the little things add up to make this one of the standouts of the spring 2012 anime season.

Are Simulcasts Affecting English Home Video Releases?

It never occurred to me before, but, while I’m buying a lot more anime than I used to, in about a year or two, I’ll be buying less. Not because I’m watching less, but because I’m watching more. There are shows like Fractale, which I would have definitely bought if I had only seen the premise and not given the option of watching it now as a simulcast. After seeing the series, I would definitely pick it up for $20, but not the $40+ they’re asking for it now.

Then there are shows like Excel Saga and Black Butler, which I pick up on a whim because they look cool or I’ve heard high praise about them and they’re on sale. Those I’m sometimes disappointed by (in my collection, Excel Saga, Now and Then, Here and There, and Rin were all ok, but I wasn’t blown away by them and I’m not sure they were worth the price I paid). Most, I do end up sticking with and enjoying, but when I see them at Half-Price Books for under $20, I sometimes can’t resist (I’ve still got Macross Plus, Metropolis, and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence sitting on my computer waiting to be watched with more anime coming; yeep).

But those are all older titles. What about the newer titles? What about shows like Upotte!, Saki, Phi Brain, Knight in the Area, and Kimi to Boku? Those are all simulcasts that I’m enjoying to varying degrees (Upotte! is at the bottom), but I wouldn’t consider buying those unless they hit the Funimation S.A.V.E. line for $15 or something. And that’s at least three or four years down the road, maybe more.

Don’t get me wrong, LEGAL simulcasts are the best thing that’s happened to the anime industry, arguably. It’s introducing way more fans to anime than could ever be achieved by just home video sales. Rental stores don’t have them anymore and places like Best Buy and Target sell anime for near MSRP, so it’s just not worth it unless you go through Amazon or Right Stuf and bargain hunt (unless you’re a collector, like me. Then you’re tugged into buying Madoka Magica four episodes at a time for $80 per set).

So what legal streaming is really doing is pushing anime fans that just want to watch something once and then be done with it out of the home video market. Before, they might buy titles like Cowboy Bebop or Fullmetal Alchemist; but now, they can just check those shows out at Crunchyroll if they actually do want to watch them again. And Crunchyroll’s subs go back to 2009 simulcasts—three years ago now.

Older titles like Neon Genesis Evangelion, titles that Funimation or another home video anime licensor simulcasts, and classics that are being license saved are still going to see big home video releases and they’ll still see a big home video market because the target audience for those are now older and can afford to buy the box sets. But Crunchyroll, while doing something great for the industry, might be hurting it in the long run. We’ve yet to see the full implications of Crunchyroll’s impact on the anime market, and we won’t for another two or three years. It’s offering a lot more than Funimation or Viz or any other licensor can offer: $7/month, $20/3 months, or $60/year and you have crap tons of anime at your fingertips. For $60, you could also buy Oreimo when it first came out. That’s 17 episodes as opposed to the 240 episodes with Crunchyroll’s yearlong subscription, and that’s assuming you watch five simulcasts per season and each simulcast is 13 episodes.

The home video market is still where the money is going to be, with anime or otherwise. But it’s slowly dying out because a lot of the companies, American and Japanese, are unwilling to change the market into something that’ll work with the young people’s wallets. It costs about $35 for one movie nowadays, new. Sure, you get DVD, blu-ray, and digital copy, but the digital copy isn’t DRM-free (or at least has some restrictions on it), DVD is slowly losing to blu-ray, and blu-ray is now too expensive to be viable for the long run. People are just going to rent movies on blu-ray and forget about buying them altogether.

Anime doesn’t have that rental option. Funimation is fixing that by pricing its DVD/blu-ray combo packs just dollars over their former solely DVD releases, which is a smart marketing move. And anime is a collectors market, so they throw Collector’s Edition or Limited Edition on their sets, another smart marketing move. But what’s going to end up working in the future is releases like Oreimo’s, which was a Limited Edition release that have a finite number of DVDs being produced (this marketing strategy ensures no loss for Aniplex since they produced an amount of DVDs that would yield them a satisfy-able return for what they paid for the license and creation of that set). After those DVDs were out, no more Oreimo. Until a year or so later when fans demand, demand, demand more and they can make more money. I don’t see Funimation moving to releasing everything like this but, at the same time, I wouldn’t be surprised nor would I hate them for doing so. It’s a business after all.

Kids on the Slope Episode 8 Review

Yurika and Jun finally get significant screen time and we get a glimpse into the world of Jun while he was MIA from the series. But this episode really delves into their relationship and hurts everyone on an emotional level. First, Kaoru is trying his best to put Sentaro and Ritsuko together, only further opening his wounds from kissing Ritsuko. Next, Yurika and Jun have seemingly gotten together and when Sentaro finds out about this, he’s pretty torn up because Yurika was his angel ascended to him (or love equivalent thereof). Meanwhile, Ritsuko is kind of finding out that she loves Sentaro as a brother and Kaoru as a man with her childhood antics with Sentaro being just that, childhood antics.

And the Beatles guy takes a backseat for now. Thank god. The main points here are the love relationships, of course, and they’re hurting everyone, including the now together Jun and Yurika. Sentaro, Kaoru, and Ritsuko also appear to have gone back to normal after their jam session last episode, but they’re emotionally drifting apart (or maybe closer).

What we see here is what the jam session from the last episode has done to these characters and what Jun has become. He was a political activist, which turned out sour for him, and he’s trying to push everyone away because he feels guilty about the leader guy he was with and wonders what he’s doing with his life after dropping out of college.

Now we’re waiting for it to all culminate in the ultimate falling out of every relationship in the series. It’s setting up a lot of relationships that just can’t work considering some of the other ones that are going on right now. So we’ll see how everything turns out in the end with our characters, especially Kaoru, Ritsuko, and Sentaro and how their group dynamic will be affected by it all.