I've been neglecting this thread. So what have I watched in the last few weeks? (These notes are taken from another site where I made my comments in a timely manner - I hope they've remained coherent in the adaptation.)
Chu-2, or to give it's full English name:
Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions(As of this paragraph) I've watched 8/12 episodes of
Chu-2, and am enjoying it to an improbable extent. Around ep3 I started seeing Yuuta as Kyon (without the snark) to Rikka's Haruhi, and loving him for it. Rikka is, as intended I suppose, really irritating; but the beginnings of a romantic attachment between her and Yuuta is being very well handled, the slowness and uncertainty adding realism to what could just be something conventional.
(A later post:) So I finished
Chu-2. The main show, that is; I haven't watched the introductory
Lite episodes or the
Depth of Field bonus episodes yet - I may come back to then another time.
As I said before, I've been enjoying this a lot, and I continued to enjoy it up to the end. But I did find myself getting a bit confused in the last episode. The story seemed to be taking the line that youthful delusions should be left behind in order to move forward, and so that Rikka, in particular, could accept the death of her father and also open up to a relationship with Yuuta. But then Yuuta is persuaded that Rikka should be allowed to keep her delusions, and maybe to grow out of them naturally, rather than having them forced out of her. This seemed a curious reversal, and at first seemed more like a blatant hook to enable a second series to go over much of the same ground (we shall see, of course).
But after some thought I decided that there might also be a translation issue - which is why I gave the full title above. "Delusions", to my mind are things you believe which are false; restoring delusions which you have been persuaded of the falseness of just seems wrong. But then I thought, what if the intended meaning is "fantasy"? In that case, I could much more easily see an enhanced sense of fantasy as something which can well be accepted as part of a normal childhood - but this hadn't occurred to me immediately, as not only the title, but the subs throughout, used the stronger word "delusions". I'm not sure if the ending pushes it down from A- to B+, but I'll call it A- for now and see if that sticks.
Next up was
[C]: Control - The Money of Soul and Possibility.
(After the first episode I wrote:) The first episode nearly lost me at the beginning, because some character designs seemed unpleasant, and the action really arbitrary; but about halfway through it settled down into telling a real story which will at least get me back for another episode. Some of the animation seems very lazy, though.
(Later:) I came to the end of
[C]: Control - The Money of Soul and Possibility. What a crazy name that is! I can't even work out what it's really meant to signify; but no matter.
I watched the greater part subbed, but then the last few episodes dubbed (and now I'm going back over the earlier ones that way) now I have the disks. I comment on this for a couple of reasons. It confirms to me that I simply find it a lot easier to follow things when I don't have to divide my visual attention - when I was younger, this might not have been such a problem, but for me it's a real issue. I don't have any strong views on sub or dub in the abstract - it's just a matter of practicality for me, and the sound of the voices is not something that usually distracts me from the work as a whole. Indeed, I generally listen to opera in the original language. This also happens to be the first time I've found myself actually comparing the Japanese and English voice acting; and to my ears the English was as good, and in the crucial case of Kimimaro actually better as his character seemed to come more alive, though I guess that might be a change towards the end of the series in any case.
While I'm on mere technicalities, I can also say that my misgivings over the animation itself got left by the wayside. Not because it became perfect, but because any problems were insufficient to trouble me again, nor to distract from the scenes that were really good to watch. Of the major character designs, I found Kimimaro's somewhat less satisfactory than the others; strangely this seemed related to the fact that his eyes are more markedly "Asian" looking (in terms of Western conventions of depicting them) than is usual in anime - I hope this doesn't come over as offensive, because it's not meant to be.
Something else I discovered was that this show divides Internet critics more widely anything else I've checked out. This appears to relate to the way that critics are viewing it, and perhaps how they view anime in general. Some people can watch a show with open minds, and try to absorb what the writers are trying to put across, perhaps as a fable, a metaphor for life even. Others try to root what they are watching in their experience, or in their naturally incomplete knowledge of the world, and find it hard to understand if they don't match up. Everyone knows that mechas or fabulous monsters are imaginary, and so can deal with them; but suddenly here's a show full of economic terms and ideas which to most people feel familiar but not precisely understood. Some people can go with the flow and just "get it"; but others try to understand, but when they find that the show's economics are not the same as the real thing, they feel let down, and brand it a failure.
How about, I stop this waffling and actually say something about
[C], you may say. Fair enough. Well, I enjoyed it a lot. You don't need to understand more than simply the criticism of the reliance on debt as the basis for any economic system, and of the preference in institutions for short-term planning over long-term, to get the main idea of the show. Kimimaro's ponderings on these matters, and his discussions with Mikuni, and later Sato, are hardly Earth-shattering, but get the points over perfectly well. The fights (calling them deals doesn't obscure what they are) are well done, and the assets nicely varied. There are some oddities in how the assets are handled: if the asset represents the entre's future, how is it possible to have more than one (Mikuni has Q and Aurore), or for the ownership of one to be transferred (George is passed from the dying Sato to Kimimaro)? Doesn't quite make sense - but doesn't really matter much either. There are also loose ends - such as the transfer of George not being made any further use of. The show is also essentially devoid of romance; the interest in kissing that Msyu (Kimimaro's asset) develops could have been made the hook for just a little romantic fan-service, but in the end, when Kimimaro
does kiss her, we don't even see it, because both their bodies are at the top of the screen with the heads off the top!
So, was the end satisfying (another common criticism!)? Well actually, yes. It works just fine for me, at any rate. There are sufficient hooks left to enable another series to be made, but I think to do so would be a mistake; it could only really rehash the same ideas, which would become less compelling for that very reason.
So, a good show, and one I'll want to watch again sometime. A straight A from me, though you might want to make it an A- if the occasional flaws in the animation annoy you.