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asphodelical · 2 years

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The Great Anime Rewatch of 2022 - Part IV

Bokurano

First watched/read: October 2011 Rewatched/reread: June 2022

Original rating (manga): 9 New rating (manga): 6

Original rating (anime): 8 New rating (anime): 6

Of all the Evangelion-spawns, I distinctly remember liking Bokurano the most. I also remembered that the anime and manga are two very different creatures, but only one crucial change stuck with me these last eleven years. So I ended up revisiting both versions. Let’s start with the manga, since I know I liked that version more back in 2011.

One of the things I realized is that Bokurano’s storytelling doesn’t work on me anymore. We only learn everyone’s backstories after they’re selected to be the next pilot, giving us only a few chapters to get to know each kid. For a lot of people, this is a surefire way for an emotional gut punch. But I still feel like I don’t know them well enough to care. Bokurano also doesn’t exactly focus on the relationship the kids have with each other, and I wish it did. It also doesn’t allow the cast to grieve or cope with the continuous losses of their friends. There were also a couple of things that really rubbed me the wrong way and/or felt very dated. I.E. Maki’s tired ass story of trying to be more feminine, and the author putting her in the most inappropriate-borderline fetishy leotard. Don’t do that shit. Onto the anime.

It’s always interesting when a director is helming a project where they have no love for the source material. — Bokurano’s anime took more time with the kids and their backstories. A lot of them changed, and some got way more screentime than others. But it occasionally fixed the problem I had with the manga—the one where it didn’t focus on the relationship between all the main kids. This was exemplified in episode 11, where all the female pilots got together in one scene. It was small, but it’s more things like that that I wanted. It still doesn’t allow the pilots to grieve/cope over the continuous losses, but at least the cast interacts more.

On the other hand, it adds a lot of generic nameless politicians talking about Zearth that I’m sure no one actually cares about.

Unsurprisingly, the CG doesn’t hold up at all. The music was often distracting, and some of it was just bad. The bookend songs by Ishikawa Chiaki are still great though.

Looking at both versions of Bokurano, my opinions on them clearly worsened. The manga is more focused, but formulaic. The anime spends more time on the group dynamic, but has lots of padding with politics and added characters I don’t care about. I’d say the anime over the manga though, since the two final pilots get way better endings than their manga counterparts. But overall, I just feel the same way about both, with no clear winner. And that’s kind of sad.

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Steins;Gate

First watched: 2011, original airdate Rewatched: June 2022

Original rating: 8 New rating: 7

Let me start with this: the archetype and term “trap” is woefully outdated and transphobic. I haven’t been involved with the anime/manga fandom in many moons, but I hope that the term is no longer used. Hopefully the derogatory interpretation of the archetype is also on its way out, too. Onto the assessment.

Time travel stories are almost always about trying to fix the mistakes the time traveler made by accident. Steins;Gate is no exception, but this time a portion of the cast is actually intelligent: Kurisu, Daru, Suzuha, and, most importantly, Okabe.

Okabe is such a strong protagonist and he’s a joy to watch. Watching his mad scientist persona merge with his actual self as he jumps back in time more and more is terrifying and I love it. Since Steins;Gate is a VN adaptation, we’re pretty much glued to Okabe’s POV for the entire show. I don’t mind since he’s great, but it leaves no room to see any of the other cast members on their own, or interacting with each other when Okabe isn’t around.

The other issue is that there are only a couple of other characters who are remotely interesting: Suzuha and Kurisu. Both of these girls have personalities and agency within the story. Suzuha has one of the strongest motives in the show, second to only Okabe. Faris and Ruka have understandable and relatable desires, but as characters they are throwaway. Moeka is the worst to watch—a girl so damaged that she’s a slave to someone she doesn’t know and only communicates with via texts. Daru is an otaku archetype and ruins his only emotional moment with his own pervertedness.

And Mayuri…oh, Mayuri. She has no wants, goals, and little agency. I had absolutely no reason to care about her, and never understood why Okabe cared about her to such a great extent, aside from being childhood friends. The birth of Okabe’s mad scientist persona could’ve easily been changed to be a coping mechanism for his own grief.

The weakness of of being a harem VN adaptation really showed from episodes 17 and 18, when Faris and Ruka were throwing themselves at Okabe, and he was going on dates in back to back episodes. Of course Okabe genuinely likes both of them as friends, but he only did it so he could get them to willingly undo their own actions. For Faris, this means losing her dad, who died in an accident ten years ago. Faris loses all that time with her father who loves her, while the man himself never survives and sees his daughter grow up. In Ruka’s case, it means not being female anymore, and going back to being a boy. Imagine asking a trans person to go back to their pre-transition self. That’s really not it for me, chief.

I really dislike the idea of someone trying to make others sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of one childhood friend/moeblob. “But wait, it’s also to prevent SERN from achieving world corporate domination!” Yes, it is. But Okabe specifically states he’s not doing all of this to save the world—he’s doing it to save Mayuri.

Steins;Gate is a slow and deliberately paced anime. I had forgotten some of the reveals, and a lot of them still work. Its slow pacing also started to tire me out by the latter half. Overall, Steins;Gate is still one of the best VN adaptations out there. Its animation still looks fine, and the storytelling is more than competent. But the lack of depth/nuance in most of the cast, and the message of robbing others of their own happiness to save one person really does the show in.

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Un-Go

First watched: December 2011, original airdate Rewatched: June 2022

Original rating: 7 New rating: 5

I don’t have a lot to say here. The first two episodes are absolute garbage, while the rest of the mysteries are fundamentally uninteresting. All of the world building with the war didn’t work for me, and I couldn’t care less about the characters. Inga’s power feels more like a a video game mechanic than anything.

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Outlaw Star

First watched: I have no idea Rewatched: June 2022

Original rating: 8 New rating: 3

This one hurts.

Outlaw Star feels like an embodiment of 90s anime, for better or for worse. The character designs and tropes are all things that feel like relics. (Aisha Clan Clan in particular.) There are lots of things that didn’t age well, like Fred. Wow, what a terrible gay stereotype character. But Outlaw Star is plagued with a lot of foundational problems:

The story and pacing - The first four episodes are undoubtedly the strongest in my opinion. Quick pacing and lots of intrigue surrounding Hilda, the coolest character in the show. Then after episode four, when Hilda leaves the story, the tone and pacing are all over the place. I guess the central conflict was getting to the Galactic Leyline and discovering Melfina’s origins. But there’s a huge gap in the middle section where nothing relating to either of these things is brought up at all. It’s like the writers had a bunch of ideas on a dartboard and picked whatever they landed on. Most of the episodes have nothing of consequence occur. If something important does happen, it only takes up a few minutes of a full length episode. (I.E. Episode 18: we get some talk about the Galactic Leyline and the man behind Hilda’s death, and then we go to cringy space wrestling? What?) This leads into the other main problem I have:

The characters - the central five cast members are not strong enough to carry the story when nothing of interest is happening. Their antics are dull, and we don’t really learn anything about anyone. Gene conquered his fear within the first third, and Melfina wanted to discover her origins. As for Jim, Suzuka and Aisha? I don’t know enough about their wants, needs, or fears to care. Aisha is a walking, talking stereotype, and Suzuka doesn’t fare much better. (Neither does Melfina, honestly.) No one really has an arc or tangible development. AH WHY? Why did we all think this was the coolest shit back then?

With all that negativity out of the way, I have to say I still really enjoy the music. The opening song is still an absolute banger, and the ending songs are still lovely. But if the opening and ending are where my enjoyment peak, that’s not a very good thing. Nostalgia absolutely did not cloud my judgement here.

#anime

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