Sunday, June 10, 2012

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.

No comments:

Post a Comment