OP: “Sweet Memory” (スイートメモリー) by Eve
Summer kicks into high gear this weekend, with a number of the big titles on my list breaking ground. Shoushimin Series certainly falls into that category, and the main reason for that is simple – Yonezawa Honobu. He’s the novelist of the source material, and the creator of Hyouka, well in the running both as my favorite Kyoto Animation show and the most beautiful TV anime ever made. One’s mind naturally wanders to the question of why Hyouka never got a second season, and why KyoAni isn’t handling this adaptation.
I don’t know for certain, but a couple of obvious possibilities stand out. Nowadays KyoAni prefers to adapt stuff they own all the rights to. so they can dispense with the production committee and pocket all the profits. I’ve also heard buzz that Yonezawa is unhappy with them (not for production values, certainly). Whatever the reasons or reasons Shoushimin Series has landed with Lapin Track, who are no slouch – they killed it with Undead Girl Murder Farce. Neither are the director and writer, Kanbe Mamoru and Oono Toshiya. It’s a bit disappointing that the series is only getting the weird allotment of 10 episodes (maybe there’s something in the source material that dictates that) but overall it looks to be in good hands.
Firstly, no – this doesn’t look anywhere near as gorgeous as Hyouka. The OP and ED are pretty cool and the overall look is fine, with a few stylish touches by Kanbe. But anyone looking for Hyouka shouldn’t be, visually speaking anyway – no one but Kyoto Animation (and probably director Takemoto Yasuhiro, a tragic victim of the KyoAni arson attack) could ever have made that show. Narratively there are definitely elements of How to Become Ordinary that will feel very familiar. Yonezawa has a style that’s both particular and peculiar, and is hard to mistake for anyone else’s.
The two leads here are Kobata Jougarou (Umeda Shuuichirou, who’s becoming something of a seiyuu “it” boy) and Osanai Yuki (Yomiya Hina). The setting is Gifu City, a couple hours down the road from Hyouka’s Takayaama. Personality-wise they’re very different from Oreki and Chitanda. We pick them up just as they discover they’ve passed their high school entrance exam. He’s agreeable and humble, she’s somewhat meek and prone to hiding behind him. As in Hyouka the protagonist has a goal in life – in this case to be “perfectly ordinary”, a goal Osanai professes to share.
It’s probably a clue to Kobata’s nature that when he meets elementary school classmate Doujima Kengo (Furukawa Makoto) at their new school, Osanai-san immediately worries that he’ll “impose” on Kobata-san. And indeed his compulsive aversion to saying no (it would threaten to make the nail stick up) paints him as a bit of a pushover. And Doujima certainly is a pushy bastard, to the point of coming off as an asshole. Jougarou’s family runs a Japanese sweets shop and he dislikes sweets – Yuki loves sweets but prefers Western ones (which be be the main plot driver of the premiere).
The rest of the episode should seem very familiar to Hyouka veterans. A lot of talking, a seemingly trivial mystery, languid landscape shots with the main pair leisurely flowing through them. In this case we have Osanai on a quest to get limited edition strawberry tarts drafting Kobata to help as they’re one per customer, and his getting hijacked by Doujima to help find a girl’s missing pochette (like a small handbag). Do I really care about this lost handbag? No – and I’m not sure why Doujima is so invested that he bullies three guys into helping look for it. And of course Kobata-san is going to be the one to solve the puzzle – if he wasn’t a genius he wouldn’t be a Yonezawa protagonist.
I have to remind myself that my initial response to Hyouka was pretty lukewarm. Yonezawa tends to take a while to draw you in, but that’s another reason to be concerned that Shoushimin Series is only ten episodes long. Portraying the idyll of adolescence is the essence of his writing, and with Hyouka at least I eventually became caught up in the atmosphere and the characters. Nobody here made much of an impression on me but then, neither did anybody in Hyouka initially and by the end, all four leads were developed into really interesting kids. This premiere left me frankly pretty indifferent, but in the end oddly more curious about the story than I should be. And if anything exemplifies this author’s appeal, that would be it.
ED: “Itokenai” (意解けない) by ammo
The post First Impressions – Shoushimin Series (How to Become Ordinary) appeared first on Lost in Anime.
