映画 ハイ☆スピード！-Free! Starting Days- / High Speed! Free! the Movie: Starting Days

Honestly, watching more Free! wasn't a priority for me. My impressions of the second season were some of the worst-written on this site. I know the show is shipping trash, but my review sunk way too far into that. 

But since then, more and more Free! has been released. I was always a little interested in this prequel movie and honestly, while it's not something I'm desperate to see, I do want to watch the rest of the show at some point. So I decided to take the plunge (ohoho) and sit through Starting Days. 

To ease myself into it and to remind myself who the characters are, I watched the season 2 OVA that I'd never seen. It was indeed pure shipping trash, but hey, that's generally what OVAs are. The boys go to Rin's school for their culture festival, tease the first-years who have to dress as maids (fuel for that crack ship I said was my favourite in my trash review), have a fight with water pistols and generally follow tried-and-tested formulae for cute boys/girls doing cute things. 

I'm quite pleased to report that Starting Days is a much better prospect. In fact, it's probably my favourite entry into the canon so far. It's based on an official light novel spin-off, and there's a higher writing quality on display here. While it's a bit awkward that these events - before the main series but after the childhood flashbacks that drive the main drama with Rin - are never mentioned in the original, broadly speaking they work, fitting into a void in the storyline pretty well. 

And frankly, even though I couldn't get through the whole movie in one sitting, I was much more invested in these characters as young teens than I was with them as high schoolers. I never liked the condescending blank slate that is Haru, nor the hulking, slightly creepy teddy bear known as Makoto. I liked Makoto as a kid in the flashbacks, his personality making much more sense for a somewhat insecure little kid, but the flashback versions of the others were pretty annoying. Nagisa in particular, while the high schooler I liked the most, was portrayed as a very annoying little kid. He's still very annoying here, but as he's a year younger than the others, he hasn't graduated from elementary school so only appears in a few cameos. 

The story here is a classic school sports story. Haru and Makoto start middle school and are reluctant to join the swimming club. Haru doesn't think any relay can match up to what they accomplished with Rin and Nagisa, while Makoto is diffident, seemingly not wanting to make a decision until Haru does. But eventually they are persuaded to try, and join a relay with two other kids - brash dunderhead Asashi and prickly emo kid Ikyua.

We get the standard formula for these movies - at first they are a mess, each having some personal issue that prevents them from giving their all and working well as a team. By the end - spoiler warning for extremely predictable ending - they pull it together, bond as a team and win the big race! Happy feelings all around. But the test of such a predictable storyline is how well the characters are developed, and how well the emotional notes are hit. And this is what goes unexpectedly well with this story. 

Haru, essentially our protagonist, is much more likeable and sympathetic as a young adolescent than either a young teen or a kid, as seen in the main series. Being emotionally stunted, keeping others at arm's length and sometimes acting way too impulsively makes way more sense for a kid that age than for a young man, and I actually believe in this character much more than the main series' Haru. I believe he would get weirded out by a sudden change in his best friend and start avoiding him, even if it means eating only tinned mackarel and rice and ending up collapsing from hypoglycaemia. I can make allowances for his odd behaviour and the walls he puts up because of his age, where I find it difficult when he's pretty much a full-grown man. 

Makoto is also more interesting here than in the show, getting directly confronted with the question of what his character is when Haru is taken out of the equation. Does he even have his own identity without him? Does he like swimming or just like being with Haru? It was probably the least interesting dilemma but it was probably the most development this poor lapdog ever got. 

Then there's Asahi and Ikuya, the new characters. I loved their dynamic together and they were a pleasure to watch. They’re chalk and cheese but gel really well. It’s like throwing Naruto and Ciel Phantomhive together and watching what happens. I know these characters will show up in the newer seasons but I kind of don’t want to see them get messed up because they were hilarious here. And while Asahi’s personal problem was nothing that exciting, generally a confidence issue (though there’s a fun scene where a young Rei helps him out), Ikuya made his way to the heart of this movie, his conflicting feelings about his brother and his adorable overreaction putting him centre-stage and making him a catalyst for the final act.

The characters’ problems go away very easily, and it’s almost overly brief, watching the boys suddenly start gelling after a sleepover and a weird underwater sequence with Haru and Makoto that would never work in live action and only works here because the animators decide to totally ignore what water does to hair. But the core of the story wherein they struggle with them, with themselves and one another, makes for compelling viewing.

As usual, Kyoto Animation make beautiful, fluid, very cute character animation with pleasant backgrounds and generally nice water effects in spite of that one odd quasi-romantic sequence. They’re by now well established as a powerhouse of light-content but relaxing anime that’s always easy on the eyes. They tend not to know when to stop milking a series (see K-On) and I’m expecting to find the same problems with the Chuunibyou movie I’ve got lined up to watch next, but this was actually a pleasant surprise. Mostly KyoAni shows start well and get progressively worse. Free! might buck that trend, but I guess I’m mostly feeling that way because I don’t particularly like the main show. Now that I think about it, the same happened with Haruhi.

ユーリ!!! on ICE / Yuri!!! on Ice

Perhaps last year’s biggest anime, there was no getting away from Yuri!!! on Ice hype, especially if you have a predilection for this kind of homoerotic, overly passionate sports anime, as I do – for whatever reason. As moé fizzles out and straight male anime fans begin to tire of idol shows, this style of female-targeted anime only grows in prominence.

Certainly, homoerotic sports and games shows are nothing new. Prince of Tennis had many of the same tropes, and the underlying passionate rivalry is what made me love Hikaru no Go so much. Haikyuu!! is incredibly popular just now, and with a long list of basketball, soccer, cycling and imaginary card game-based manga and anime provide more and more fodder for the ladies of Ikebukuro Animate. Arguably, Free! brought the subgenre more to the fore, mixing atypically good art with homosexual overtones. So the path was clear for an anime like Yuri!!! on Ice.

The choice of figure skating was no surprise. Japan has for a few years now been giving a lot of attention to Hanyuu Yuzuru, a slim, pretty-faced young figure skater who won gold in Sochi. He won hearts with his optimistic attitude and love of Winnie the Pooh, and has since gone down the usual ‘talent’ road with photo books and acting appearances. While it would be a bit much to say he’s single-handedly responsible for the current prominence of figure skating over here, he’s certainly a central figure. Thus the choice of skating for last season’s homoerotic sports anime came as no surprise.

Indeed, the main problem here is that nothing was a surprise. There was a sense that this was a groundbreaking show in some way – for example, there was some fuss over a moment that was maybe-or-maybe-not a kiss. And then the main pairing exchanged rings that could have been a platonic symbol or could echo engagement. They bathed together, lived together and often drove one another to tears. And I guess there were a lot of people in the audience thinking boundaries were being pushed for a mainstream anime. After all, Free! never went this far. But for me, I kept thinking of No.6 and how much more realistically and respectfully it portrayed a gay relationship in an relatively mainstream Noitamina anime.

Not that the anime needed to be groundbreaking to be enjoyable. With good characters, compelling pacing and interesting relationships, it could have been great fun. The problem was that for me, I didn’t connect with any of the characters, find them realistic or likeable. The main character, Yuri, struck me as self-pitying, judgemental, unkind and ungrateful, which was bad since he was meant to be the heart and soul of the piece. His enigmatic mentor and love interest, Victor, did what he was meant to do, being an impetuous, compelling, often bizarre selfish genius type – he was what he was meant to be, but that doesn’t mean I like that kind of character type. Then there was the other Yuri, young Russian Yuri Plisetsky, who is a skinny, feminine, totally beautiful 15-year-old Russian boy. His appearance is cute but his personality is harsh and cruel, and though his tsundere side occasionally makes him more sympathetic, he was still a totally unlikeable brat. Most of the other characters are the kind of total oddballs that often populate sports anime, though mostly a little too exaggerated for the overall tone.

The only characters I actually liked were Phichit from Thailand, who strove to please others and whose main fault was just being dull, and Kenjirou, a chirpy younger skater who idolises Yuri, does the cutest skate of the series and then gets relegated to the cheering division for the remaining episodes.

In technical terms, the anime had some nice fluid skating animation, but often looked scrappy or made bizarre decisions in terms of camera distortion, especially when it came to Swiss Christophe’s ‘sex appeal’ skates. I can’t say I felt strongly impressed by the skating animation, and it often looked awkwardly rotoscoped.

Certainly the show was light and often funny, and some of the cross-cultural observation was insightful, and I’ll probably watch a continuation if and when it appears, but overall I have to say I felt Yuri!!! on Ice was mediocre even in the fujoshi-bait world of homoerotic sports anime. 

ハイキュー!! / Haikyuu!! Season 3

Given how much can be covered in an entire series of an anime, it feels almost redundant to write about 10 episodes of a sports anime covering just one volleyball game. The previous seasons have been 25 episodes, so this felt more like a series of specials than a full season. However, following the underdogs as they go up against the formidable Shiratorizawa was certainly fun.

Tragedy hit the series as Tanaka Kazunari, voice actor for coach Ukai, passed away during the production of this season. He delivered some fantastic final lines and his replacement of course doesn’t sound quite as he should, and it’s a poignant note to remember this production by.

This season is focused on the single game, but succeeds very nicely in the two core strengths of Haikyuu – bringing new light to the established cast, and introducing some highly compelling oddballs on the rival side. The intrigue of Shiratorizawa comes not through the powerhouse giant Ushijima, but the bizarre-looking jester-like Satori. Sports anime and manga have long thrived on being able to pitch the heroes against oddballs, be they the super-powered children of Inazuma 11 and Saki or the tactical mind-game masters of Hikaru no Go.

But this season is effectively Tsukishima’s time to shine, which is great to see. From detached, sarcastic cynic too afraid to commit his all, he’s become the team’s strategic cornerstone. It’s pretty great to see that change, while retaining his bluntness.

Hinata remains the reason I watch the show, though. With his boundless enthusiasm, determination, ability to shock and occasional blind luck, he’s what gets under the skins of the opposing team and what makes Karasuno an oddball team. He’s everything I want from a shounen protagonist and I have to say that I can’t get nearly as interested as the rest of the fandom in all these random captains and setters when they just don’t seem nearly as compelling as what’s at the centre of this story.

Catchy opening and ending songs, solid production, a pretty aesthetic and very strong vocal performances made for ten enjoyable episodes that are guaranteed not to be the last in this story. And I’m very pleased by that.

Haikyuu: Season 2

Haikyuu is a very popular anime in Japan, especially with the female crowd who love that passionate homoeroticism that’s a big part of sports manga. Maybe not up there with the sheer hysteria currently surrounding Osomatsu-san, but at this stage probably outshining all other sports titles, even Kuroke no Basuke and Yowamushi Pedal. A series of decent figurines have been released and usually take up at least a couple of the crane machines in every arcade, and the new theme song, ‘Fly High’ by Burnout Syndromes, gets a fair bit of airplay anywhere that plays anime songs.

It’s my current slightly guilty pleasure, though I have to say I avoid the ugly art of the original manga, running in Jump so I won’t win any ‘true fan’ contests. I’ve been a sucker for the figurines and conbini lotteries and find the eternally optimistic main character Hinata very sweet. The rest of the fandom largely fixates on the tall, handsome and confident minor characters, but the underdog type is much more appealing to me.

In the first season, we had the admirable theme of gimmicks in sports only getting you so far. Kageyama and Hinata developed a surprising and strange volleyball attack, but once they reached competitions with actually talented, solid teams, gimmicks stopped working. So instead of relying on their bizarre talents, they work on the basics until they can perform at a good all-round level – and more critically, they learn that volleyball is a team game and they have to fit in with the rest. Even if there are moments of glory or high individual skill, they have to be cogs in the machine to win matches, and this strikes me as an admirable direction for a show about sports to go. At some point, the players have to grind, cooperate and experience less enjoyable periods to progress.

To improve, the Karasuno team head to a training camp with a number of very high-level players. They begin as the worst team by far, but keep pushing to improve and hone individual specialities until they can compete.

The series moves on to the qualifying matches for the high school nationals. The keystone of many sports anime, going to the nationals is easy fodder for storytelling – passionate matches, emotional rollercoasters and the chance to introduce any number of quirky opponent characters. Between the training camp and the nationals, Haikyuu s2 introduces a whole slew of interesting new characters as friends and foes, my favourite being the somewhat strigine Bokuto.

The worst part of watching Haikyuu is knowing it’s not a long-runner, and as expected, it ended on a high note, but at a point where I was definitely wanting more, and soon. So I hope that’s exactly what I get. 

イナズマイレブン 最強軍団オーガ襲来 / Inazuma 11 Saikyou Gundan Ouga Shuurai/Inazuma 11: Strongest Ogre Army Attacks!

The Inazuma 11 theatrical theatre animation is in many ways lazy, yet feels less so than many similar releases. Most of the film retells the series very quickly, albeit with the nice little addition of the year during which the football team was just Endou, Someoka and Handa, until it diverges at the end. A recap film is certainly a disappointment, but as there’s quite a large gulf between OLM’s cheap weakly animation and the slick but still charming work in films like Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, it was quite a joy to see old scenes redone.

Plus threaded through all this was a very, very silly time travel story. As silliness is what Inazuma 11 does best, I had no objections. The framing device for all the recaps is that Endou is being watched from the future by a shadowy organization. At their head, Hibiki – apparently a descendent of the coach but far more sinister. In their time, football has apparently become regarded as amoral or socially undesirable. Welp...okay, fine. Either way, there’s an evil organization out to stop Endou through a time portal. To do this, they change history in the Football Frontier we saw in the first season of the anime, and which was the centre of the first game. After Zeus destroy Teikoku, instead of clashing with our heroes Raimon, Zeus are then themselves crushed by Ogre, sent back from the future and somehow entered into an interschool tournament.

Ogre are absurdly powerful and of course Raimon at this stage cannot compete. But throughout the film, a sweet little boy who looks a little like Toramaru but has a headband rather like Endou’s has been watching proceedings. He, of course, is also from the future, and shows up at a crucial moment – revealing himself to be Kanon, Endou’s great-grandson (and, I have to say, a character design I rather prefer to Endou’s). Kanon not only has formidable skills, but also brings Fubuki, Toramaru, Tobitaka, Hiroto and even Fidio to help. No Tachimukai, sadly – Endou is the only goalie needed, after all.

Ogre don’t object to these reinforcements, and everyone takes the utterly bizarre time-travel story in their strides. With a newly empowered team, the ability to chain shoots and Endou spontaneously acquiring his future skills, including the not-yet-seen-in-the-series Omega the Hand, Raimon pull through and history does not change. Endou of course can give his silly pep-talks in his Naruto voice and the bad guys see the errors of their ways.

This is strictly for the fans, incredibly silly and with its recap elements, decidedly lazy. But Inazuma 11 remains a guilty pleasure, and this was still a part of that. Including the ‘pleasure’ part.  

イナズマイレブン / Inazuma Eleven: seasons IV & V

I’ve come to realize that whoever labelled these ‘seasons’ of Inazuma 11 was going purely by the different opening sequences, labelling a new season each time the song and animation changed. That isn’t what makes a new anime season, but never mind – I’ve started this way, so I might as well finish. On the other hand, it didn’t seem worth doing just ‘season IV’ when the next one was very much a continuation of the same arc, so I’ve combined four and five. The sixth and final ‘season’ is still the same arc, but as we finally saw the back of Kabeyama here, it seems a good breaking-off point.

After defeating the meteor-powered kids masquerading as aliens, and the new adorably-unitarded dark team made up of former Raimon Eleven members, only one challenge awaits the team: to be the best in the world.

Luckily, the ‘Football Frontier International’ tournament is in place for them to compete for just that title. This is the first of its kind, with the best youth footballers of the world competing to stand on the highest possible level (bar real aliens appearing). First, our beloved characters must compete for a place on the team, which is by no means assured. A mysterious new coach selects the team not just from Raimon members, but from their old rivals too, making for some tensions within the ranks – all of which are resolved with lots of delicious melodrama. There are some new characters too, most notably one yankii kid with a hilarious pompadour who can’t play football at all (but has a mysterious nullifying power) and the adorable Toramaru. Toramaru is a lot like Gon from HunterxHunter in looks and personality, with great skills and an adorable boy-crush on Goenji – and hasn’t been seen before simply because he’s an elementary school student!

Once the team is finalized, they have to qualify in the regional tournament. Here come some small surprises, most notably that Aphrodi, of ‘God Knows’ fame, is not Japanese, nor Greek...but Korean. Well, why not?

The real fun begins after qualification. Hilariously, this football competition is such a big deal that an entire island has been converted so that each team and its supporters can stay in an area that looks like their home country. So riding the bus around the island, one goes from areas reminiscent of Japan to Italy to Argentina to England.

The first rounds of the competition are dramatic. England are particularly amusing, their team ‘Knights of Queen’ having some amusing techniques involving Excalibur and suchlike. On the other hand, perhaps fittingly given our usual World Cup performance, they are the first losers of the tournament. Inazuma Eleven lose to Argentina because of Kageyama’s machinations, but scrape through qualification thanks to the points system and securing a draw with Italy – who the audience sympathizes with because they were manipulated by Kabeyama, yet also manage to finally bring out his humanity. Just in time for him to be arrested and face justice.

There’s lots of nice personal drama too. The new coach, just like the last one, makes mysterious decisions that the team only understand when they gain a deeper understanding. The new female manager has amnesia thanks to a tragic past that Endou’s strong heart can save her from. Adorable Tachimukai must overcome being imitative and make his own techniques, which Endou himself also has to think about since his techniques come from his grandfather’s notes. Italy have their own issues, not just with Kageyama but with their absent captain, though cute and highly skilled second-in-command Fideo can bring the team together. Then there’s the American team, where of course prior teammates Ichinose and Domon are good enough to have made the team and can clash with their old nakama. Kabeyama finally upgrades THE WALL to THE MOUNTAIIIIN. Then there are the former female Raimon members: it isn’t actually mentioned at any point, but only male team members can participate, so the girls come as...yup, supporters to cheer from the sidelines. Oh well. In fairness this kind of tournament would have been gender-segregated.

The other plot strands that will be going into the final ‘season’ are the fact that Endou’s famous grandfather is still alive, and already met Endou when he was driving around with tire in his truck (though Endou of course didn’t realize who he was talking to), and that the organizers of the tournament are clearly shady types who have an evil ulterior motive. And then sadly that will be it for this particular team.

But the Inazuma Eleven saga doesn’t end there. We’ll have a little timeskip and continue with Inazuma Eleven Go! and a whole new main cast. Will I keep watching? Damn straight I will. I love the brainless enjoyment of this daft little show. When I’m done with it I’ll probably have to go on to Youkai Watch for the same kind of enjoyment. 

ハイキュー!! / Haikyuu!!

If I said another sports anime was my favourite recently, then that didn’t stand for long. Because I fell in love with Haikyuu!! at episode one and basically watched the whole 25-episode season in three days.

I noticed Haikyuu!! figurines all over the place on my most recent trip to Japan, and liking the designs – the main characters represented being Hinata and Kenma – but decided against buying any (or taking chances on the UFO machines for them) because (a) I didn’t know the characters and might have ended up hating them, and (b) slightly embarrassingly, I thought they were actually characters from Kuroko no Basuke.

Haikyuu!! does something rather special, sitting in the middle of the cutesy passionate-boys-bonding thing Inazuma Eleven makes so enjoyable and the rough, relatively gritty, boys-with-issues-finding-purpose-through-sport thing that you find in the likes of Rookies and Slam Dunk. It also has the best rivals-who-become-allies story since Hikaru no Go, with which this series shares much. Since HikaGo remains my favourite manga of all time, that’s high praise.

Haikyuu!! has a classic rival-story opening episode: at a school tournament, there is a gruff and moody elite player, who goes up against a good-hearted, naive go-getter type. They clash but the go-getter is actually a genius and very much impresses the elite. The genius cannot carry the whole team, though, so they lose, but the episode has a deep effect.

A year later, the boys begin high school and discover they are now in the same club. They are chalk and cheese, so are soon at one another’s throats, but it soon becomes clear that the shortcomings of each are balanced by the skills of the other, so they begin to develop a real bond. However, will this allow them to compete with much more established players?

This central relationship is brilliantly-done. Our main character, Hinata, is short for a volleyball player, even mistaken for an elementary school boy at one point, but can jump extremely well and idolizes another short player recognized as brilliant. The secondary character is the tall, extremely intense setter, Kageyama, who has undeniable skills but is seen as very arrogant and hard to get along with. He’s the kind of gruff character I usually dislike, but as he reveals more of his goofy side and is coaxed out of his shell by Hinata – as well as shown that his way of playing is terrible for a team game – he really grew on me, until eventually I came to realise I actually identified with him more than I have with any character since Tomoya in Clannad. That was deeply unexpected, as was how much I enjoyed seeing the interaction between these two. They’re very like Akira and Hikaru in HikaGo, and that’s certainly no bad thing. They spark off each other, and it’s brilliant to watch, and by the time they start to rely on one another it’s like they’re in a comedy routine together. Very sweet.

Very much helping this is the fact that the minor characters are extremely strong. They come from stock, but they are extraordinarily well-developed. The volleyball team also contains a typical yankee, an extremely tall surly bully type, a dependable captain who has an extremely scary side, a wild child even smaller than Hinata, a gentle giant who has great spiking strength but the heart of a coward and an older setter who may not be a genius but has a lot of clever ideas and is very relatable as the underdog.

I very much enjoyed the art style, which was pitched very well. Production I.G. have done a lot of very flashy productions, but this one is more modest, yet moves slickly and captures the manga’s aesthetic well. It is not cutesy or pretty-pretty, and it is not ugly and scratchy, but can pull off elements of both styles without them seeming incongruous. Thus, Hinata and the diminutive libero Nishinoya are very cute, but the yankee types like Tanaka can pull faces right out of Cromartie High School without it seeming bizarre. This allows for both broad and subtle character-based comedy and the some very sweet good-hearted childlike characters, which I very much enjoy seeing together.

The series is of course based on an ongoing manga, and ends at rather a heartbreaking moment, though that makes sense for leaving the audience thirsty for more. This isn’t a feelgood anime where the characters power up to win every match like Inazuma Eleven, but a fairly realistic take on an interesting sport where there aren’t any superpowers – only particular strengths and weaknesses, none of which are infallible.

It’s perhaps telling that not only did Haikyuu!! make me want to try out volleyball, it made me want to go and compete in the sports I’m good at again. I don’t think that I’ll have a hot-blooded rivalry blossoming, but the series captured something of the adrenaline rush of a close competition, and I consider that praiseworthy. 

フリー！エターナルサマー / Free! Eternal Summer

As predicted, there was a second season of Free!. Very probably there will be more, too. And I must say, I didn’t mind. This second season did a lot of things wrong, but a lot of things right as well.

The problem with Kyoto Anime follow-ups is that they often stagnate. The characters are established and liked by the fandom, so we get the likes of K-On!! Where cute girls do cute things. And this continues until the fans get bored and reject the show, which sours any early success.

This series looks badly like it is going in that direction. For the first half, not a lot of swimming happens, and there’s a whole lot of regurgitation. There’s another struggle to find new members (none arrive, at least for the main bulk of this season), worries about what the boys are eating, and a cultural festival where they have to run a foot race in their swim clothes. There are rather dull episodes about each of the characters, usually revolving around a misinterpretation where the others think something serious is going on, which turns out to be nothing. The best of these is when Makoto seems to come to realise that he’s not going to be able to keep up with the prodigies around him but would be better off thinking of becoming a teacher – being naturally good with kids and caring enough to check on their well-being outside his classes.

But what the series does well is to break out of this closed circle and look elsewhere for more interesting stories. The most obvious place to do this is with Rin’s swimming club. Rin himself is developed a lot here, and becomes far more likeable as his story is fleshed out, he begins acting less selfishly and actually does some very kind things for others. We also get new characters, lone wolf Sousuke, brooding and stirring up competition yet having a tragic fate (of course), and chirpy, naive comedy loudmouth Momotarou. Aiichirou also gets a lot more development, falling behind badly but working extremely hard to catch up and being vindicated – as well as being the straight man in a fun manzai comedy-like relationship with Momotarou.

There are really two emotional threads running through the season, which work quite well. One, presumably relating to the title, is the grim inevitability of happy times ending. The older characters are going to graduate, new relay teams are going to have to be formed, and kohais are going to have to accept that their sempais are going to leave their lives, or at least their daily lives. The second, closely related to this, is the coming-of-age of the characters and the need for them to find their true paths. Haru in particular is just uninterested in his future, or taking any responsibility, feeling that career paths inhibit his ability to be free. The high point of the season, perhaps of both seasons thus far, is Rin spontaneously taking him to Australia to show him the competitive swimming scene there, opening his eyes to the wider world. It’s a very sweet gesture and works well. Even with some rather awkward attempts to make Rin sound fluent in English.

Of course, the series is still aimed squarely at the fangirls, and in all honesty, the homoeroticism gets strained here. As I suggested in my review of the third season of Inazuma Eleven, these aren’t a bunch of young kids who might all be very confused about their sexuality and ignore it. 

They’re young men, and there’s a certain point where the obviously unusual intimacy between these guys simply wouldn’t go unspoken – even in Japan. The way these boys act, people would be making a whole lot of comments. The closest the series gets to addressing the possibility of homosexuality is when Rin gets angry that the hotel he’s booked for himself and Haru has a double bed. As a result, I found it all very contrived and unconvincing, especially since I continue to not actually ship any of the muscly men together at all (though Nagisa and Ai finally got some scenes interacting with one another, hoorah! If they didn’t have such weird bodies, I’d totes ship it). And I ship characters very easily, from just about everyone who isn’t hideous in Inazuma Eleven to the vast majority of the pretty girls in Saki. I just don’t see the men in Free! as cute in any way. (Flashback versions are another story of course!)

I don’t know that there’s much more that can happen in Free!. It may be better to leave it open as to how well Haru does in the adult world, and who the new swim team recruits might be. But if there’s a movie, or another series, or even just some OVA, I’ll probably tune in. And I’m all for more series like this, treating boys just the same way that anime has long treated girls. But preferably slightly less...bara. Please. 

イナズマイレブン/ Inazuma Eleven: season 3

Well, the short third season of Inazuma Eleven is more a transition than anything else, but it gives some fun surprises.

Firstly, and not exactly surprisingly given Level-5’s usual silly twists, the aliens from the last season are revealed to not have been aliens at all – only determined regular children who have been affected by strange materials from a meteor. Because in Japanese Manga-world, the ones who work hard always trump the ones who dope, and the meteor is effectively a kid-friendly metaphor for doping in sports. So of course, strong feelings eventually get through to the kids and they see the error of their ways, once they get past the manipulative adult controlling them, of course. And the true feelings of the nice adult who ought to be protecting them comes through.

Since this clears things up pretty neatly, and our heroes reach a truly absurd level of power, the question of what’s happened to all the old teammates left behind comes up. They haven’t shared in all the experiences that powered up this season’s main team – but they also haven’t been left alone. 

They’ve had another evil adult controlling them, and have gained enough power to challenge their former teammates and the new members. It’s a good way of having old issues come to the fore and the question of what will happen once the team is way bigger than eleven kids...or even fourteen with a few extras.

Of course, with Aliea dealt with, of course, some of the kids who were picked up on the tour around the whole country no longer really have a reason to be part of the team, their friends and families being far away – so there’re some fond farewells at the end.

This is of course another fun continuation of a fun, stupid season. I enjoy having Inazuma Eleven in my life. The cast is either adorable, absurd or both, the plotlines are downright stupid, and the special attacks are hilarious. The series gets homoerotic undertones just right – possibly because the boys are a bit young for romance, as opposed to the ones from, say, Free!, where the fact that it seems to go over all of their heads just isn’t believable.

In technical terms, I don’t think anything’s likely to change with the series from the beginning to the end. It’s a cheap kids’ production and it runs continuously, so there aren’t gonna be many differences between the series. OLM keep things nice and bright and smooth and simple, and that’s what woks best.

I have to say, though, the problem with having this kind of likeable but huge cast is that I know I’m likely not to see a fair few of them again. They can’t keep having half the team hospitalized, and I know they’re going to go on a tour of the world to fight kids from around the world (which I’m looking forward to!). This means that they’re gonna get rid of quite a few of the team...and I don’t want that!  

咲-Saki-全国編 / Saki - Zenkoku-hen/ Saki – Episode of the Nationals / Saki: The Nationals

It seems that every successive series of the Saki anime is going to be not what I expect. I thought this series would cover the Nationals tournament – as indicated by the title – incorporating Saki finally facing off against her scary sister and what happens to the cute alternate team from Nara we got to know in Episode of Side-A. Perhaps they’d be sacrificial lambs.

Well, all of that remains for some as-yet unmade series – there’s an OVA on the way next year, for starters. What this series did was some of the preliminary rounds of the Nationals competition. True, there were some fun new character introduced – I loved the extremely tall girl and the ridiculous shrine maidens who could summon the powers of gods – but ultimately there was little here that was particularly consequential. The fact is that the fun of super-powered Mahjong games eat up episodes, though, and this half-season flew by. What Saki really needs is to be very long and ongoing – too little happens for this sort of length of series to satisfy.

So while our heroic team manage to prevail thanks to each member’s skill and Saki’s ridiculous luck with her rinshan kaihou hands, all that has really happened is that the central conflicts of the larger series have been delayed for another future adaptation – if we even get there. It may be that to see the actually important parts of this story following its exposition, I may have to go to a manga.

But for all that annoys me, I can’t deny how enjoyable the ride is. The ridiculous characters and exaggerated drama of the hands played, the way formidable players can sense one another’s auras, the fanservice – it’s all very funny and entertaining, and makes for compulsive, brainless viewing. And I need a few series like that here and there.

So yes, I will go on watching whatever Saki I can get. But until I have to, I won’t feel any real need to read the manga.  

咲 Saki 阿知賀編 episode of Side-A / Saki Achiga-hen episode of Side-A

Saki was the latest very silly, brainless anime I enjoyed. I always like to have at least one of these on the go (the other one I currently have being Inazuma 11), which I can put on in any mood, no matter how tired, and enjoy myself. And Saki episodes are compulsive fluff – they’re stupid, the way the game at the centre of the story is played is largely irrelevant, and the fanservice is often tedious, but the fact is that it’s extremely enjoyable nonetheless.

There are some odd choices with this second season. Firstly, it’s a complete side-story. The first season’s main characters are seen only in glimpses and flashbacks. Instead, we follow some of Nodoka’s childhood friends as they see her on TV, revive their Mahjong club and make their way to the national competition to be reunited with their old friend. Of course, this involves placing highly their regional tournament, which as ever means confronting girls with mahjong super-powers.

The powers here are even more extreme than the last season’s ability to disappear from view or mess people up with ultra-beginner’s-luck. Here, we have girls whose bonds are so deep that if one wins a hand in a round having placed imaginary bondage restraints on herself, her partner is guaranteed to win that hand on the next round – after having a rather erotic reaction. We have a girl who can see into the future after a near-death experience, who can grant that ability to her best friend by rubbing her head on her thighs. Yes. And one of our main characters spent a long time deep in the mountains, which has bestowed her with the gift of claiming any territory she can perceive as a deep mountain as her own – including going up against formidable opponents, who are like mountains, and being deep into the tiles lined up in front of her. What even more absurd abilities await in the next season I am eager to know, and the way the absurdity is racked up and up reminds me in a good way of Yakitate!! Japan.

However, one of the problems here is that there are so many interesting, colourful characters. There’s Saki’s strangely indifferent sister, who is an indomitable monster held off only by another player’s bizarre ability to never lose all of her points, even if she is not very strong. There’s the adorable tomboy who gets embarrassed when she has to wear a skirt – always my preferred character type. There’s the sharpshooter who makes people feel she’s an archer as she shoots them down with targeted mahjong hands, and the angler who can always pick out what she needs. Beside all these, the core group of five, who have character quirks like feeling cold all the time and having been keen on bowling, just don’t stand out very much. I ended up much more invested in the teams trying to get in their way than the main characters themselves, and that’s a bit of a problem. They were just relatively uninteresting.

And of course, the whole endeavour seems a little pointless. Presumably, these are going to be sacrificial lambs in the end, losing to Saki’s sister so that they can have a big showdown at the end. I may be wrong, and the final may be between two teams we’re supposed to root for, but that just doesn’t seem likely. That probability in the back of my mind just makes it harder to feel very engaged with these side-story characters.

Still, for all it seemed like a strange diversion, the actual journey was extremely enjoyable and I shall certainly progress to the next season. And as for the change of studio, as Gonzo staffers split to form Studio Gokumi? Well, honestly it made no difference at all.