Amaama to Inazuma

 

Kouhei is a single dad struggling to take care of his daughter, Tsumugi. He has a very busy schedule as a teacher and it's hard for him to keep up with all the necessary domestic tasks. He's particularly bad at cooking, but one surprising invitation from one of his students, Kotori Iida, to bring his daughter to have dinner at her mom's restaurant, takes them into a cooking journey, from burger to okonomiyaki.

Each episode is a self-contained story that surrounds around Tsumugi wanting to eat something, then Kouhei and Kotori rushing to prepare it using a nice restaurant kitchen and appliances. We get to see Kouhei trying his very best to be a good parent and following his successes and shortcomings is really interesting and engaging most times. He's really an endearing guy and you can't hope but cheer for everything to go his way. Kotori is also a lovely person that is always ready to try her best to bring joy into Kouhei's and Tsumugi's day.

By episode 4 or 5 however, it feels like we got to see everything those character have to offer. Their emotional range is spent, as well as their personalities. Part of the problem is how formulaic each episode is. Very few have something that stands out. Tsumugi wants to eat something, Kouhei and Kotori do their best to prepare it. Tsumugi throws a tantrum, Kouhei and Kotori manages to calm her down, she apologizes and feels happy again. Rinse repeat.

Amaama to Inazuma fails to make use of their side-characters to alleviate the loop. You have Kouhei's friend, Yagi, who seems to be a very interesting guy to follow around for a bit but for some reason he's barely used and so we never get to know him. He has a restaurant and he shows up a few times. That's it. It could be so much more than that. The same problem happens with Shinobu, Kotori's fiery friend. She has a large family and little brothers so she's really good with kids... or so that one 15 seconds scene suppose to convince us that that is the case. Like Yagi, she barely comes up to the story that really needs a shift in focus from time to time.

This is a very sweet parenting and cooking anime that should either be an OVA 4 episodes long or make better use of its characters. There are good moments in there but it's recycled too many times just to reach the 12 episodes mark. If only the plots would let Tsumugi in the school for a little bit longer and focus on something else for a little while, this would have more balance and be a lot more entertaining.

Natsume Yuujinchou

 

Everyone has their favorite yokai show. For a lot of people is InuYasha, a bunch of other people like Mushishi and there's also a fair number of xxxHolic fans. I myself am very fond of Gegege no Kitarou. Right now though, Natsume Yuujinchou is definitely my favorite yokai show and I think it's going to stay that way for a long time.

Long story short, Takashi Natsume can see yokais. He's the grandson of Reiko Natsume, a very powerful human who bound several yokais to her command by having their names written in a book. Takashi inherits this book and that causes a lot of problems for him. You see, a book that grants you commanding powers over a legion of demons and spirits is something a lot of yokais covet. One of these, to Takashi's luck, is Madara, a powerful creature that likes to walk around shaped as a fat and adorable cat. He calls himself Nyanko-sensei and end up serving as a much needed bodyguard for Takashi.

That's the setup. You sure have watched the story about a boy who can see spirits. Takashi Natsume is a different type of kid, however, which gives the show a very special atmosphere. Instead of using the book for going into some awesome run-of-the-mill adventure, he decides instead to liberate the bound creatures by giving back their names. Takashi Natsume is also the most compassive and kind mc to ever grace a supernatural drama show. I would even say he's a bodhisattva. Not only toward humans but toward the yokais themselves, many of which are hostile, some irredeemably so. There's a very tricky power struggle going on here, where Natsume's compassion can only be upheld by the power of Madara a lot of times.

It's very amusing to watch those Yokai scratching their heads in amazement by how nice and wholesome Natsume is. To the point that many of them end up liking him for it. He's such a kind, loving person that even those who are at first hostile or indifferent toward him are caught off-guard and can't help but end up respecting the guy, no matter how silly he may be. That's a major aspect of this show. Demons that end up aspiring to be something better by watching acts of compassion. It's Buddha enlightening hungry ghosts all over the place. Except Natsume is just trying to be a nice guy, he barely knows what he's doing half the time.

Of course, all the creatures in this show are equally interesting to follow around. A lot of them seem a little lost, like something about them has been dismantled and they lost their footing in the world. Characters like that have a great potential to be part of endearing, heartfelt tales, which is what this show is all about.

Sankarea

 

Sankarea starts really promising. The Furuya family have an uneventful, happy life. They live in a house adjacent to the Shinto temple where the head of the family, Don, serves as the priest. Everything is well and fine until the family cat, Babu, is hit by a truck and dies. Chihiro, the teenager of the family and protagonist of this tale, can't accept losing his pet cat and so tries to bring it back to life by following an ancient, mysterious manual that contains a recipe for a ressurection potion.

One night, while working the recipe with his mortar and pestle he spots a girl outside the building screaming down a well about the several nasty things her dad does to her. This turns out to be Rea Sanka, the richest girl in the land. They somehow find common ground for a friendship and Rea starts helping Chihiro with the ressurection potion. 

Rea's dad, Danichiro, is not at all pleased with her precious daughter running around with the local rabble and a thing leads to the other that leads to a chase that leads to Rea being mortally wounded and falling from a cliff. All is well, however when, as it turns out, Chihiro's ressurection potion actually works and she comes back to life. 

And that's when everything goes downhill, or rather, it goes nowhere for the rest of the show. All we get from this point on is testifying how dull Chihiro is as a character, how dull Rea is when all she can can think about is pleasing Chihiro and I keep wondering why this plot doesn't move when there are so many hooks and it could go anywhere it wanted. The impression I got is that the story is actually following the wrong characters. Chihiro and Rea are just too uninteresting.

This show would be so much better if we could follow Chihiro's younger sister, Mero. In fact we do for episode 9 and it's possibly the very best episode on the show. Another way more interesting character would be Jogoro, Chihiro and Mero's grandfather. A crazy little man who appears to have dementia but the short glimpses of sanity seem to hint he's possibly the character here with the most interesting background to explore (which, by checking the manga, turns out to be the case).

There was no good reason to have the plot stagnant for half the episodes of this show when there's so much to draw from the manga. It starts off really well but I guess it asked way too much of my patience for me to really like it. Better picking up the manga for this one.

Net-juu no Susume

 

Moriko has finally reached the limit with her job and decides to become a NEET. She comes back to a mostly empty home with a very clean carpet and a bobble head cat. She remembers playing some MMO games and enjoying it very much. You can be alone and still chat and have fun with other people. It's the perfect solution for the socially inept Moriko and after a quick search she starts playing Fruits de Mer, a high fantasy world with a medieval setting, because nobody ever gets tired of those, ever. She soon finds a partner, a healer nicknamed Lily and her party.

From that point on, an amazing sequence of coincidences have the players of Moriko's party finding each other in real life, including the player behind Lily, Sakurai, a very nice and extremely wholesome individual who falls in love with Moriko but can't bring himself to tell anyone about it. This is not, however, a case of romance that has to overcome a series or silly misunderstandings, though the premise might look perfect for that sort of thing.

This is where the beauty of this show happens. You're actually watching a reincarnation romance for modern audiences. You know the story, a love so strong that the two people involved keep falling in love through consecutive lives until they can finally be together. It's the whole Red Thread of Fate thing mixed in with Hindu rebirth mythology stories. Here however, instead of having actual rebirths, Moriko and Sakurai keep finding each other through several online MMO characters but for some reason or another the romance never happens. That's the real twist of Net-juu no Susume for me and what makes it interesting. 

Of course the characters are solid too, and I think there could easily be another season where we get to explore the lives of the other members of this MMO party. Unfortunately this series was cut short due to the author's illness, though I could not find anything about it outside Wikipedia. She never mentions any illness on her twitter account, so I don't know, but that besides the scope of this short review.

Tokyo Ghoul

 

Tokyo Ghoul is an invitation to the manga. A lot of anime is pretty much that, but Tokyo Ghoul is even more so. Every character here has a lot of backstory going on and we can see the people behind the show trying their hardest to cram everything in 12 little episodes. There are many interesting characters all around going through their own hardships and doubts. Even at the very end we're still getting introduced to a bunch of characters, situations and whole institutions we didn't even know existed 10 minutes to the end of the show. It is an expansive universe and the anime does a good job at giving you a brief tour to this world and the people living in it.

Tokyo Ghoul is like a dark fantasy slasher where no character is disposable. If I had to describe this show in a single sentence that would be it. Everyone has a good reason to be here, even if some of the characters a little tropey, it's always engaging. Each episode points to something that we would like to know more about. What training investigators get that they become as powerful as ghouls? What is the procedure to make a kuinke? Mado-san's family, Rize's business in the 11th ward? And so many other things. The response to all of those are the same: It's time for you to pick up the manga.

The anime will just give you the basics. It's the struggle of coexistence. Like with the X-Men, but here mutants are ghouls and have to eat people in order to survive. Some ghouls enjoy the predator life and live it to the fullest, while others believe in a peaceful coexistence. How they do that? By eating people who suicide, of course. It's a delicacy. All ghouls have to deal with the hunger and the human police force specialized on hunting ghouls. The setting is one messy Tokyo, which is perfect for this stories to develop. 

I mentioned there are no disposable characters and I mean it. It's sad to see some of these people's demise because there's always so much going on for them. We get to know their families, friends, what they believe and where they stand in this crazy, crazy ghoul world. Even when they're quite obviously evil, they have a good reason to have ended up that way. There's nothing without cause in Tokyo Ghoul, that much the anime managed to make clear. So what's next? Time to pick up the manga.