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(http://i.imgur.com/hs6pK.gif)
I optimistically estimate myself as one of among perhaps seven people in the world who were looking forward to this anime series. It's based on a novel series by a guy named Romeo Tanaka, who mainly works on visual novels- those who enjoy them might have read Kana ~Imouto~, Cross Channel, or Yume Miru Kusuri, all of which he had a hand in. He's considered one of the best (if not the best) writer in that industry, and when he decided to try his hand at a novel series the results were... unique, to say the least.
Though I have it on good authority the original novels are excellent, I was a bit worried about how the anime would turn out- Seiji Kishi's most recent directorial efforts have been spotty and the other staff members have unimpressive work histories. The first episode shows promise, though. Reactions to it seem evenly divided between "Boring," "WTF did I just watch?" and "This actually has some pretty clever dark humor and social commentary."
Ain't much to discuss yet - other than headless chickens and suicidal bread - but this show is one to give a try if you haven't yet or weren't intending to. Plot summaries invariably fail to make it sound interesting, but if the GIF above doesn't pique your curiosity at all, you might be a robot. The promo video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwP3A9ARW4E) is pretty special too.
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Saw ep 1 last night, enjoyed it.
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Ahahahaha yes, have to agree with 7hs that the original novels were good stuff; though I haven't actually gotten around to seeing the first episode yet.
I should do that though!
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Ah, very cool, a recommendation! I was actually planning on hitting my backlist this season because everything looked like it was full of suck and fail. The plot doesn't really jump out at me, but hell, at this point I'll give it a chance - the only series I'll be following once Mouretsu Pirates is over is Hyouka.
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this sounds positively hilarious in a dark way, and I like dark humor.
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I wasn't too impressed at first since it seemed like it'll go in a "oh god humanity is raping the planet so it must die out!!!1" direction, but the suicidal bread scene convinced me to keep watching it for now.
If it doesn't go into preachy overdrive I'll probably stick with it, if only because this season has pretty much nothing else that seems interesting.
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"oh god humanity is raping the planet so it must die out!!!1"
Yeah, I don't think that's what it was going for - more like "humanity lost the ability and the will to survive." The girls didn't want to kill the chickens even when they all wanted to eat them. The men didn't want to kill the chickens because they thought their time was better spent hunting, even though there's nothing to be hunted. And nobody wants to eat the plentiful fairy food (they aren't wrong to be suspicious of it, but they may very well not have a choice.)
Some things about the situation weren't explained thoroughly - is farming still possible? Is this food shortage a truly dire thing or a matter of "oh dear, we'll all have to become vegetarians?" - but I think it's intended as an observation of the direction our current society is leading. If you were to go out and ask ten people off the street to kill a chicken, how many of them would do it without hesitation?
I'm really going to have to sit down with the books soon and see if my Japanese has become good enough to get anything out of them, odds are the setting is fleshed out a little better there.
...Well, it is only episode 1, too.
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I noticed the stuff 7hs just mentioned, along with other little things like the grandfather cleaning the gun that he's probably never used (that they didn't just kill the chickens with), the receptionist insisting FairyCo has nothing to do with fairies despite him knowing absolutely nothing about the company, how they call the fairies the "current-humans" as if they've totally given up on being the current humans, etc.
I really like the art style and the music. Mai Nakahara is darn lovable as the main character (Watashi??), as well.
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This show definitely has me interested. The first episode didn't explain a lot, but it intrigued me enough to want to keep watching.
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I tapped out after one episode, not really for me. He also never impressed me with his VN work :<
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Episode 2, superior to episode 1. Nakahara is perfect in this role.
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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave mariiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
This OP is the best thing ever by the way.
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Yeah, the reference to A Better Tomorrow was priceless. Love the exploration this show is doing with where our food comes from, how its made, and how it affects us. Lovely stuff.
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I am now watching for more
translator glasses and living hair antics.
only that.
this show is really bizarre for my taste.
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I am now watching for more translator glasses and living hair antics.
only that.
I believe you may be disappointed; from what I understand, the anime is doing Haruhi-esque episodic rearranging of events in the novels. This is from the 4th novel, apparently.
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great, and I am one of those who hated Haruhi.
(although I read the disappearance of Nagato-Yuki-chan and like it)
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(http://i.imgur.com/fSjHi.jpg)
"Look, Kyon, they're talking about me again!"
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Episode 3:
(http://i.imgur.com/gVDkfl.png)
Yaoi Wars: Revenge Of The Y
This was pretty entertaining, I felt. Really loved Y's horror at discovering the concept of doujins. Plus the entire idea that this exact sort of thing would happen even if no money were changing hands.
It's being speculated, regarding the ending, that in order to escape the manzine, they will have to "act it out" to the end.
If that's the case, that should be pretty hilarious.
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I really like this series so far, especially the animation style. All the school moe series are getting boring, so this is a nice change of pace.
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I unexpectedly am enjoying this so far, despite as was mentioned above, summaries selling this short.
The Ave Maria sample cut short by the sound of the chickens hitting the floor sold me. :V
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(http://i.imgur.com/2pRgMl.png)
In one episode, Jinrui manages to explain what it took Bakuman two seasons to say.
There's a really nice Alice in Wonderland feel to this whole episode, but the protagonists never seem completely surprised by anything that happens. Even the possibility of dying doesn't make them react beyond "Welp, guess this is it." I think that helps add to the brand of comedy the show uses, fitting for a satire.
OP Bollywood version edit: Dozo. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMq-9uIipaY)
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(http://i.imgur.com/2pRgMl.png)
In one episode, Jinrui manages to explain what it took Bakuman two seasons to say.
There's a really nice Alice in Wonderland feel to this whole episode, but the protagonists never seem completely surprised by anything that happens. Even the possibility of dying doesn't make them react beyond "Welp, guess this is it." I think that helps add to the brand of comedy the show uses, fitting for a satire.
what's a 4th wall
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Misc stuff: Indians dancing to Jinrui OP (http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm18393920) (Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMq-9uIipaY))
Woops, that's what I get for not noticing threads on motk sooner! Well, at least I can provide a person attempting to dance to the said video. (http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm18416827)
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Heh, slowpoke.
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Deeper and deeper into the meta rabbit hole we went, and then popped back out topside without incident.
I wonder where this show will go next.
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OP Bollywood version edit: Dozo. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMq-9uIipaY)
This literally made the lab burst in laughter, myself included.
GDI!!!! Also, episode 4 made me lol hard for some reason. >_>
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Every week I have to exclaim that this OP is the best dancing OP ever.
God I love this show's humour. Criticizing all these aspects of manga artists, how readers are swayed too easily, how authors can feel about their audience, the common pitfalls of bad writing, etc. Episode 3 was pretty light but this one had me clapping at my screen. Fairies going "manga writers have no other marketable talents; if your book is canceled the only way left is death!", pffff.
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Fairies going "manga writers have no other marketable talents; if your book is canceled the only way left is death!", pffff.
"You have been condemned to take up the family business" just about killed me.
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Forgot to take my forum password on vacation with me. Thread subject updated at long last.
I feel I'm a bit too late to go into depth about the past few episodes, but the anime is definitely living up to my expectations.
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After just finishing Cross Channel today and loving Yume Miru Kusuri a few years ago, I checked out the first episode now, and dear god it's enjoyable. Absolutely absurd in the best way, I can definitely see how this was originally written by the same person as CC. And holy shit that bread-suicide :V
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Well.
One of my friends who's read the novels made the remark last week that "I wonder if the next two episodes of Jintai will make people realize that it's not a comedy." Episode 5 is already well on its way there.
I have absolutely no idea where this is going but I sure am interested.
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Yeah, ep 5 was definitely something. Between electricity wasted to celebrate electricity to "a city of hikikomoris" to the tremendous dependence humans have on fairies being underlined, I feel like we're being set up for something pretty heavy here. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
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Watashi is at her best when she's in mortal peril.
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That was the most touching story about
deep space probes
I expect to see in my lifetime.
Another great episode.
I was expecting the last part to be about completing their final mission by somehow introducing them to the fairies
, but that didn't happen. Not that it was disappointing, it's just rare that a line of dialogue like that gets written in without being followed up on. I suppose it would've ended up pretty much the same way, since they need the generator to operate, while the fairies need the generator gone to operate.
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That was the most touching story about deep space probes
I expect to see in my lifetime.
I know right. Their names being the names of the probes I really didn't see coming, that was pretty cool
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By the way, Crunchyroll's translator fucked up bad on a line of dialogue at 19:30.
Where the subtitles in episode 6 read "What if you were running a pH test?" the correct meaning is "What if it were a DNA computer?" The implication is that the computers on board Pioneer and Voyager were biological in nature and prone to loneliness and sentiment as a result.
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Yeah, but I easily see how he would have translated 塩基計算機 as pH calculator if he wasn't completely familiar with the term. Oh well.
I'm not really sure how to comment on this episode, though. The RPG stuff was entertaining and simply having Nobuyuki Hiyama being in the episode being hotblooded and yelling things like TAIDARU WEIBU was amazing.
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(http://i.imgur.com/wGA8Fl.png)
I wept bitterly for the deep space probes. Always did feel sorry for those two.
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THIS SHOW :* :getdown: :*
Why did it take me so long to watch it oh yeah because I am bad at following animes.
I had picked up on the Oyage = Voyager
thing almost immediately in Ep5 because lol Star Trek and V'ger
but leave it to Japan to put the cat ears on :V
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This is the only anime I'm watching this season. Can't wait for the next episode.
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I still feel entertained by this show even if future episodes have much less comedic elements.
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I evaluated "who let the dogs out" and something about going bananas as possible topic subtitles for this arc, but after careful consideration I believe a drug reference makes for the most appropriate reaction to episode 7.
I'm at a loss for other words at the moment.
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I'm at a loss for other words at the moment.
Have a banana.
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Have a banana.
It's the newest model. :V
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(http://i.imgur.com/iPE9Il.png)
Having just watched Primer last night, I really enjoyed this. I kept thinking, "Just stop eating the bananas!" before remembering the simple and effective memory loss she went through each time. The ever-brightening was a nice touch, too.
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That episode was a bit confusing for me because, for some reason, my dad's tablet kept randomly jumping back a few minutes. I couldn't tell if it was part of the episode or if I jumped back a few minutes.
However, this show never ceases to entertain. At the beginning of the episodes I'm a little bored but about 1/3 the way through I get hooked and then can't wait for the next episode.
Also, now I'm craving a banana, I just need a reliable banana connect. I miss P-girl, she was awesome. I hope she's happy out there in space.
Tengukami how do you always find the most awesome pictures to post in threads? The somen ones always make me laugh.
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I miss P-girl, she was awesome. I hope she's happy out there in space.
She isn't in space, they ran out of electricity and turned into the tablets.
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She isn't the space, they ran out of electricity and turned into the tablets.
Damn forgot about that part with Watashi getting the probes an energy source.
Drake, I love your posts, I probably know more about Touhou from you than any other source. Thanks for keeping us derps in line!
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Worst pun ever.
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Worst pun ever.
Two episode setup for a pun. God dammit. :(
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I dunno, I liked the pun.
And the commentary on how "individuality" is an illusion was nice, too.
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Yeah, I just felt like being pithy.
It was a decent episode - especially the part where the fairies sent Watashi back "a little too far."
Pretty repetitive though, and not just because of the gimmick, but because a lot of scenes were flat-out reused from the previous episode. I think the show would have done better to cram this arc into one episode and give the previous arc an extra one (it wasn't obvious, but there was a whole lot cut out from it.)
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I do agree. Could have done with a little less "IN LAST WEEK'S HUMANITY IS DECLINING ..." and more current story.
Although holy crap "Ringo Kid" was hilarious. Procreate!
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Ever since episode 7 made its debut on Nico Channel, there's a popular joke concerning wheels, chariots and horses being thrown about on other videos on Nico.
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So based on her small offhand comment at the end, it's safe to assume that Ringo Kid is
the uncle guy?
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Yes, easily confirmed if you go back to ep 7 and pay attention to where the watch came from.
Also look up a movie called 'Somewhere in Time.'
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I literally facepalmed at the pun. Joshu-san has a good voice too. Too bad.
I really liked the throwback to the uncle. I want to map out a summary of the timeline tbh.
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Some of these chapters have pretty abrupt endings. It's a little unsatisfying, although I suppose it's in line with the fairy-tale vibe the series seems to be going for.
We're coming up on the home stretch now. Prepare for gloom.
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Yeah, the endings do seem to just drop in there. I really loved the story of this one, though.
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(Episode 9) Reference spotted (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/theres-no-fking-seat-for-you)
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(http://i.imgur.com/8ZmPWl.jpg)
Pretty crazy first day on the job.
I know some people think airing the episodes out of chronological order is contrived, but I kinda like it. I didn't read the light novels, so it's fun to piece together the chronological story in my mind, and the arcs stand alone well.
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I liked the part where you had to read the journal fast enough to keep up with the pages turning like it was somebody reading off dialogue in a game.
I wonder if they'll continue this after one season. There's a lot more material to follow, but they could just as well just end it wherever due to how they're tossing out episodes. I'd like to say I doubt they'll leave earlier plot points untouched so I'm hoping for an episode with animate-hair-kun, but who knows?
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Well, that lived up to my expectations and more.
Though I was not expecting the gloom to be the protagonist's own fault, at least in part.
As someone else said on IRC, "I'm not really sure who to be sympathetic for in this episode."
Mainly because I don't know whether I can believe what Watashi was saying about Curly's motives - she strikes me as the less sincere person among them. Anime isn't usually clever enough to have the protagonist lie to the viewers' faces
, but this is Romeo, not anime.
If you consider that Watashi and Y somehow ended up being friends, or something close to it - her school years must have been quite something.
Looking forward to the conclusion.
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By the final 30 seconds, I came up with idea that
Watashi is going to end up so traumatized by Curly's clingy scariness that it will become the catalyst for a friendship with Y
. That "tea party" is also, I'm guessing, not at all what it appears to be, given this episode's title.
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Watashi's outfit changes in the middle of a scene during episode 10.
[attach=1]
Did I completely miss some sort of plot point (I am bad at these things so it's possible) or was it just an animation oops?
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Probably an animation oops or a difference in detail level due to focus distance.
I'm enjoying Watashi's background episodes more than the earlier/'present' ones.
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That's a pretty big oops. It was probably deliberate, either to "mean" something, or they swapped in some previously-rendered scene as a time saver. Her outfit is the same before and after those few seconds, though.
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It's over :ohdear: :(
I curious as to what parts from the novels didn't make it to the animation.
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And here we are at the finale.
While the first half of the episode was excellent, the Jintai anime couldn't resist one last serenade to its love of wacky pacing - the events of the episode after that felt abrupt and almost disconnected from the earlier parts of the arc. After Watashi and Y had seen what the other members of the Wild Rose Society were up to, why would they have ever become cordial with them again? The answer is simple, really- time heals all wounds, and it was due to compressing years into minutes that the anime failed to make it believable.
I've resisted the urge previously, but I feel like reading a little more into this episode, since it resonated with me personally. The moral of the shocking reveal as it was stated by Y seemed to be that "people who seem too normal always have a hidden side to them." I'd like to think that Watashi, based on her ability to reconcile with the Wild Rose Society later, thought that through more carefully and realized this hidden side comes of bottling one's own feelings up and letting them brew for years, without finding any way to express them.
If you consider all of the 'weird ones that were left unchecked' - the keeper of the insult diary and the delinquents likely stemmed from those girls being too 'nice' to voice their irritation in public, forcing them to do it in private. The hair collector... uh, that's harder to rationalize, but I suppose she was a repressed lesbian. And considering what Curly's gone through - being completely rejected as even a friend by the object of her desire, as well as bullied herself - it isn't too surprising that she went yandere.
Y has her own hidden side, of course, and even Watashi does - despite Y's claim to the contrary. Her facade is her antisocial nature, and she secretly wants to have friends, as we learned last episode. She may not have any bizarre hobbies, but she's being no less untrue to herself and it is no easier on her than it is on Y or Curly.
And those are just my thoughts on the first half of the episode. I'll spare you from further rumination upon the second half - in part because I'm not sure I fully understood it, and suspect it may have lost a lot in adaptation. It did manage to be a somewhat satisfying conclusion, somehow.
Overall, I was quite pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Jinrui anime. It was by no means perfect, but I feel like most of its problems stemmed from fundamental weaknesses of the medium or other factors outside of the staff's control (such as budget - they didn't have much, but I'm really glad they didn't skimp on the voice acting.) Essentially, it would be unreasonable to have expected it to be any better. If we want the full experience, we'll just have to man up, learn Japanese and read the novels. :V
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(http://i.imgur.com/8mja7l.jpg)
By the final 30 seconds, I came up with idea that Watashi is going to end up so traumatized by Curly's clingy scariness that it will become the catalyst for a friendship with Y
. That "tea party" is also, I'm guessing, not at all what it appears to be, given this episode's title.
I suppose that was to be expected, though, wasn't it?
For me, this is so far my AOTY. Lots of series have used social commentary and satire to get their points across. What makes Jinrui so special is it does this with the kind of cheerful, sunshine-and-rainbows cruelty you usually don't find outside of a Brothers Grimm story. As you'd expect from a society falling apart, the tragic and the absurd are greeted as inevitabilities that you just deal with. Humanity's attempts at making things better, despite their decline, almost always results in making things worse, too. Watashi is no exception - she accepts the absurdity around her at face value, but maintains a distance, despite her loneliness. She can be selfish, cruel and snooty, but somehow manages to resolve conflicts almost by accident (sometimes entirely by accident) and has no qualms with covering up her blunders along the way while receiving praise for a job well done. I like that about her.
A lot of people complained about the episodes being aired out of chronological order, but personally, I thought it worked very well. It's not a story that needs to be told chronologically, for the most part, and it's not like the timeline was too difficult to puzzle together.
Yeah, I do think the entire point of the first half of the episode was about repression and how those feelings manifest themselves. Although I do think there was an additional point made with Curly, when Y points out that leaving Curly as she is would only make her worse - implying that the "weird ones" can only be healed through giving them the kindness and attention that they crave. This, I thought, was a nice counterpoint to repression - people wouldn't have to bottle up their feelings if they knew they were accepted for who they are
.
Man I'm going to miss this series.
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A lot of people complained about the episodes being aired out of chronological order, but personally, I thought it worked very well. It's not a story that needs to be told chronologically, for the most part, and it's not like the timeline was too difficult to puzzle together.
From what I've seen, the complaints (at least the recent ones) are not specifically over the series being out of order but are questioning the order that was chosen. Some folks seem to have the opinion that "The Fairies' Time Management" was the emotional climax of the show and thought it should have been at the end. I personally found this arc more poignant, but either one could have worked as an ending - though it wouldn't have solved the fundamental awkwardness of Assistant not showing up at all for a significant chunk of episodes. To be fully appreciated, both arcs require that you know and love the main characters already... and that's why chronological order would not have worked*.
Even if you were to accept that this final arc was an extended flashback and arranged the episodes according to their order within the novels, that would place it as the penultimate chapter, with the grand climax of the anime being... the manga chapter in episodes 3-4. Yeah.
* "The Fairies' Time Management" actually was the first time Assistant showed up in the novels, I believe, but I still think the anime made a smart decision placing it later in the series after we'd been getting to know him for several episodes.
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Started watching this with the uni anime club with 5 other shows over the past week.
...oh dear god this is glorious. :getdown:
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I was looking at the site to try to see when the last time someone had posted was and I found this thread. As a special bonus present I will post on sm.org for the first time in probably years!
I am a huge fan of Romeo and own all of the volumes of the Jintai novels (some of them multiple times) so I'll just stick my head in here and offer some commentary from the perspective of someone who read the novels long before the anime even aired.
* "The Fairies' Time Management" actually was the first time Assistant showed up in the novels, I believe, but I still think the anime made a smart decision placing it later in the series after we'd been getting to know him for several episodes.
Yes, he doesn't show up until v2c2 of the novels. I personally think it's a bit off-putting to see a mute character with no real explanation at the start of the anime like that, but to each his own, I suppose.
It's over :ohdear: :(
I curious as to what parts from the novels didn't make it to the animation.
Quite a bit. Of 11 chapters published at the time of the anime airing, 7 made it into the show. A week or so after the anime began airing, volume 7 was released, bringing us to 13 chapters total. In other words around half the series at this point. It should also be noted that the plot starts being introduced in the latter half of volume 7, so... hope for a second season, I guess? There's enough material left to do one once the series is finished assuming they do the out of order chapter thing again.
The only part of the anime cut significantly was the story with Voyager and Pioneer; in the novels, this takes up an entire volume all by itself, so it really should have gotten 3 or 4 episodes instead of the 2 it received. Every other chapter adapted was only half of a book.
Speaking as a die-hard fan of the books, I honestly was not really pleased with the anime. Nakahara's voice acting is wonderful and the comedic parts are portrayed pretty much as well as they're going to be, but I feel they really dropped the ball with v3c1 (episodes 5/6) and v5c1 (11/12), neither of which came close to having the emotional impact they do in the novels. Volume 3 is mostly a problem of trying to pack it all into 40 minutes or so; if they had taken more time with it and fleshed out the setting more I think it would have worked much better. Volume 5, on the other hand, can never be adapted to any medium that isn't text-driven. Romeo's beautiful writing expresses things on a deep, personal level that no anime will ever be able to. Really, the entirety of the anime really takes on quite a different atmosphere as a whole and I think the absence of Romeo's text is more or less at blame for this.
That said, nearly all of the (wonderful) dialogue is retained from the novels and the underlying ideas that went into Jintai are far more intelligent than any of the other tripe being pumped out in the anime industry nowadays, so I can understand why it found so much popularity despite my personal (fanboy) complaints about it. Even if it's an inferior experience to the novels, I'm pleased to see Romeo's brilliance being brought to a wider audience. It's just a shame that none of his writing has been translated properly, so I can't in good faith recommend any of it to someone who enjoyed Jintai but only speaks English. Them's the breaks, I suppose.
...Also, though it's not terribly important due to the nature of the series in general, the anime has quite lacking production values, something especially apparent in the last two episodes. I doubt the AURA movie will really end up much better, so I guess it's good that there's not much action in that either.
Anyway, Jintai is a really amazing series of books written by a genius so I'm glad to see it getting some recognition. I didn't like the anime as much in comparison, but the fact that I plan on buying all of the blu-rays should tell you that I don't exactly hate it either.
By the way, if anyone was curious, the chronological order of the episodes is: 10 7 8 5 6 1 2 9 11 12 3 4
And if you liked Jintai, you should check out the AURA movie (based on another LN by Romeo) when it comes out. Here's the subbed PV (http://commiesubs.com/aura-pv/), along with a brief summary by yours truly.