Subculture Anime Blog

OP: “Suppin Rock (スッピンロック)” by Mana Ogawa – Montage? Surely, this can’t be the real OP…at least, I hope it isn’t. The song itself comes off as pretty mediocre to me. It just doesn’t have much to it.

Summary:

A girl named Nomura Ayumi leaves her friends in order to get the phone that she had left behind in the classroom. Afterwards, she wonders why she is unable to be more straight forward with her feelings. In the end, however, she realizes that people cannot change so easily. Ayumi then recalls the details dealing with the school, Kamazino, a private academy that has several grades and communities. After awhile, Ayumi realizes that she is lost in the big school. When she sees a girl nearby, she is slightly relieved. This turns out to be Iizuka Tatsui, someone who she had seen in the same class as her before. Although happy that she may now have a way to find where she is looking for, Ayumi eventually realizes that Tatsui may not know her way around the school either. When Ayumi finally contronts her about this, Tatsui admits that she is lost. The girls are soon shocked to see a girl named Kageyama Torako jump out of a nearby window, seemingly spraining her ankle in the process. Ayumi almost calls for medical help, but after a girl named Saotome Suzume appears as well, they realize that there wasn’t anything wrong with Torako.

After the girls introduce themselves to each other, and confirming that they are all lost, they begin wandering around the school again. After passing several places, such as a food stand and an elementary level classroom, Tatsui brings up her belief that the group will not get anywhere because of their different main hands. Tatsui and Torako have a small quarrel, but Ayumi interrupts it by revealing that she actually has a GPS in her cellphone. When she sees that she was a help to those around her, Ayumi is overjoyed to have a change from her middle school days. The GPS soon loses its signal, but this gives the girls enough information to continue on. When the girls see that the location they are looking for is right by them, they quickly attempt to open the locked door in front. When this doesn’t work, Torako picks up a brick. Tatsui attempts to stop Torako from doing anything with it, but the brick crashes into the nearby window anyways. A teacher sees this, to the panic of the girls, but Torako quickly punches him in the stomach before convincing the other girls that it is okay. To the despair of the girls later, this man happens to be their very own teacher named Amagasa Kyouichirou. After class, Kyouichirou gives the girls a good scolding. Despite the bad atmosphere afterwards, Torako hopes to get along with the rest of the girls from now on.

ED: “Namida Namida Namida (涙 NAMIDA ナミダ)” by Aya Hirano – Stop trying to pretend you are a “riot girl” or something, Hirano. The animation for this ED is pretty standard stuff, going through stills as the credits roll.

Preview: Tennis and stuff.

Impression:

Hey, slice of life! I should be all over this, huh? Well, not exactly. I will say that I liked this episode quite a bit, but with ToraDora! on Wednesdays already, I’m not sure if I want to pick up another show for that day. Being in the middle of the week makes this hard for me to cover consistently, and I probably wouldn’t even be able to push it to Thursdays with so many good series airing on that day. I’m not throwing the option out completely though, so we’ll just have to see what happens.

The cast is probably one of the first things that is noticeable about this anime. Aya Hirano (Ayumi), Fumiko Orikasa (Torako), and Michiko Neya (Tatsui) are all fairly high profile actresses. I did think that all of the roles were pretty fitting, but again, I do have my problems with Aya Hirano. Not that she does a terrible job at all, but all the hype she gets is just ridiculous. She’s not that good, and this shy role definitely isn’t her best. The animation for the series was solid, with no terrible inconsistencies from what I could see, so no complaints about that. I loved the characters in this series, who all have very unique personalities in true slice of life fashion. Torako was one of the more noticable ones, with her “Zenshin aru nomi” phrase (which translates to something like, “As long as the body exists”), but my favorite would be between Ayumi or Tatsui.The whole atmosphere of the show reminds me of Sketchbook, which is a series that I consider to be one of my all time favorites, but this probably won’t have as big of an impact on me without the strong artistic themes that it had. Again, it’s up in the air whether I will cover this each week. After seeing the first episode though, this is definitely on my watch list.