Last night (Wednesday, August 31st) I was going to work on the next edition of Extra Pulp OJ. That didn't happen.
When I finally made my way to bed around 2 AM Thursday morning, I laid on my air mattress and wondered if I should get back up and start writing. I had gotten side-tracked by our fantasy football draft and playing RuneScape (no wait, I can explain!) with a friend, and all of a sudden, it was way past time when a normal person should be going to sleep.
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| Some truth from Yuyushiki (ゆゆ式), Episode 4 |
With my weak, procrastinator's spirit, I ended up watching an episode of an anime, but when that was done, I was faced with the same dilemma.
I'm running behind on the piece. It's not ground I can't make up, but the task itself is daunting. I'm still keeping the piece a secret, but it's incredibly obvious what I'm writing about this month (hint: it was supposed to be Reader's Choice this month), and I'm just intimidated by the standard with which I'm setting for myself.
I couldn't focus on that in my sleepy state. Instead, I kept thinking about what I'd just watched, and how it was comparing to similar experiences lately.
I'll just get to the subject already. We're talking about the two anime I've kept up with most this season.
Note that I am watching Re:Zero, Sweetness and Lightning and This Art Club Has a Problem (I'm gonna watch Amanchu! when it's finished).
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| I doubt I'll ever find a show that makes me as happy as Flying Witch did last season. |
We're not talking about any of these titles. Instead... Well, you've probably already read the title: New Game! and Orange. There's a specific reason as to why.
The Predisposition
When the summer anime season started, though I know better than to do this, I passed my damning judgement on many shows before I could even pass my cursor over their cover art. Among those shows was New Game!, and one that survived this ridiculous test was Orange.
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| Paper Peach gets me. |
After the first few weeks of the season however, I had ended up watching both of these shows. I felt I had a lot better grasp on these shows up to a couple of weeks ago, but that's when things started getting weird.
Let's bring everyone up to speed: These two shows are about very different subjects entirely, especially in terms of genre and art style -- There's very little comparison between these two shows.
New Game! is a comedy/seinen/slice-of-life following a recent high school graduate, Aoba, at her first job at a game studio. All of her coworkers are girls. It looks like this⤾
If you still don't get it, Cute Girls Doing Cute Things. More on that later.
The girl, Naho, struggles with actually being able to actively address these problem for many reasons, but mostly because of her reserved personality (read: "crippling shyness") causes her to believe that her future self is asking too much of her.Also, the main character is voiced by KanaHana, my voice actress infatuation.
With this all I think it becomes apparent why I favored Orange over New Game!. Sure, it was a typical setting, and the premise was one that had been explored in various forms many times before, but there was potential for great character interactions and study, and morality was sure to fall into many shades of gray.
As I said before though, I did end up watching (and now I keep up with) New Game!, so there had to have been something I saw potential in, and there were a few things.
For starters, I'm a gamer, and New Game! advertised itself as a look into the workplace of a game development studio. That's something I myself had never seen in anime, not that it has or hasn't been done. Was it a way for me to see an interesting anime all-the-while staying current? Then how could I pass it up?
Possibly a bigger reason behind this decision was a lot shallower of a reason: I wanted the context behind a lot of the memes posted in r/anime_irl.
It's the simple desires that drive us.
Initial Impressions Might be Less Valid than Preconceptions
I'm fine with being wordy. That title would have never made it in a "real" Extra Pulp OJ piece -- It's a bit pompous.
I reformed my ideas a bit after I had watched about 3 episodes of both shows. I really felt that by that point, I had gotten a taste of the "real" show.
I did that thing where I put "real" in quotation marks twice in as many paragraphs -- now thrice.
Orange was the good taste (heh heh). The OST was fantastic minus the OP and ED, The voice work was great, and I could see glimpses of what trials each character would have to go through, and which other characters they would have to rely on to get through it all. On top of all that, the comedy was well-timed and genuinely funny. Couple that with good pacing and I had an early contender for best show of the year! I think I gave it a 9 (Great) /10 on MAL after 3 episodes.
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| What a joyous time! Orange, Episode 9 |
New Game was a different case entirely. I knew what the show was going to be within the first two episodes, and I wasn't interested. I saw them throw the "we work for a game company," angle on the narrative out the window as the focus shifted on, well, cute girls doing cute things. Conversations were centered around how the protagonist looked like a middle schooler, and we already had a handful of scenes/shots of the group leader sleeping in her panties in the office, and how that makes for awkward situations. I told myself that I would drop the show...
...
...more than once.
The OP was fan-tas-tic. I can't believe how much I liked it; it appealed to every shallow and guilty pleasure I have for music. I still can't listen to it without smiling. I'm not saying it's perfect, and I'll probably forget about it in less than a year, but the fact that it kept me coming back to the show is a testament of some sort.
These initial impressions did little past strengthening, or even exaggerating my preconceptions of their respective shows. Where I though Orange could be interesting enough, I was now convinced that it was "great!" Similarly with New Game!, where I thought it was uninteresting for specifically me, I now felt as if it were somehow a parasite on the anime industry. How dare it take an interesting concept and make an uninspired show, void of any creativity. I mean, even if it didn't take itself seriously, it could at least pull a Konosuba and be a parody of itself!
But I digress.
Oh, How Things Have Changed
Here's the thing. I'm terrible at guessing what an anime experience is going to be like. I thought Steins;Gate was going to be an action/thriller that couldn't hold my attention; I thought The Monogatari Series [1] [2] was going to be a love story buried under borderline softcore pornography that I wouldn't be able to sit through; I thought I would like Madoka Magica [3], AND THEN I thought there's no way the trudge to the end was going to be worth it.
Again I'm bad at this stuff, but I love that I am, because I'm learning to do something about that.
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| I don't think I get bonus points for thinking that a show about a guy who likes marshmallows was going to be dumb, unfortunately. Ojisan to Marshmallow, Episode 7 |
Look, I was already something to the tune of four (4) episodes in to New Game!, and I'm not a quitter. If I could stick with Katanagatari [4] through its slow spots, I could get through this. So I kept watching, and then something happened around the mid-point of the season.
If you're not familiar with the structure of how anime is released, it's easiest to describe it as being significantly less independent than American TV is. There's a spring season, summer season, etc. etc., and almost every anime that's ever come out has fit snugly into one or multiple complete season time-frames with few exception. This is why you get terms like OVA, ONA, Specials, and finale movies so often. When a show wants to operate outside of the bounds of this structure, the extra bits usually don't air at all, and go straight to the web, or box sets -- whatever is available.
I bring this up because New Game! and Orange will hit similar episode numbers at the same time, so they were at the mid-point of their seasons at the same time. This weird thing happened during their shared mid-point.
Both of these shows changed.
Well, it may not be that they changed, but a lot of things cleared up, and I was no longer seeing things that weren't there, and claiming that a show didn't have one thing when it simply hadn't gotten there yet.
Orange
Again looking at Orange first, it's failed to live up to any of its potential up until now, and it's a damn shame. I read on r/anime that a big problem with the show was that they've changed some of the order of events, and it's causing a lot of statements and actions to not make sense. Even without knowing the specifics, you should be able to infer what this means.
The show has stagnated. Romance plots are spinning their wheels, where confessions of love have been proclaimed, but characters are still acting as if they're trying to hide their true feelings. Characters who were immediately interesting and complex are now back-tracking and trying to develop themselves into something that we already know they are. There are many contradicting actions and motives.
Possibly worse than that, however, the visual quality has tanked. I can't exaggerate this. Another reddit user jokingly said that they spent their entire budget to get Kana Hanazawa [5], but I would not put it past that being the case.
This isn't me being nit-picky, either. Omitting establishing shots and face close-ups, there are an unbelievable number of scenes where the main subject is mangled or impossible to differentiate between other characters. And yeah, I am a little particular about animation an opinionated about art-styles, but this is beyond that. It is a technical liability for the viewer because these quality errors inhibit their ability to understand what's going on.
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| "Hey honey, if you want to change your clothes and hair color, get someone to greet you!" |
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| It kind of worked, with some unintentional casualties. Note that these are families of main characters. |
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| "I got my eye on you~" |
Couple that with a narrative with no drive and the show is basically unwatchable. I've since downgraded it to a 4 (bad) /10 on MAL. Also, it might be the only anime where every guy character is more enjoyable than the female characters, and it's not because the guys are particularly enjoyable -- Naho is almost unbearable at this point.
Still, if you were somehow able to look past the objective technical problems the show has, you'd be hard-pressed to find something subjective to like here. It doesn't capitalize on any of its moral potential, and the characters are barely unique, and some never act as such. There's no reason to care for a character when their decision-making is indistinguishable from the rest of the cast, omitting the antagonist.
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| I didn't mean it literally, but here, the animators moved the wrong character's mouth. One voice, entirely different character. |
Many of the Orange pictures came from the users in this thread. This is all just one giant reddit shoutout!
New Game!
I won't jerk you around, I wouldn't be writing this piece if it wasn't for a polar opposite reaction here, but I entertain the thought that there's a little more insight here.
No, New Game! may not be a great anime, but it's pretty good. In fact, I think that somewhere deep down, I understood that there was something worth watching when I was still with the show despite the fact that the only thing I could pinpoint as a "pro" was the OP.
A big part of my retraction of my knee-jerk reaction comes directly from what I originally saw as a con --
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| No, not that now I like watching cute girls doing cute things, but have I ever mentioned that I will eat up any character design that's a brunette in a ponytail? You can blame that one on Tifa, I bet. |
-- I understand the angle that the show was trying to take on the "working for a video game company" element now, and it's an interesting implementation.
New Game! is a story about working for video game companies (and similar work environments) in the small things. People message each other instead of talking face-to-face because of its familiarity and convenience; your desk space turns into a visual representation of your hobbies; your coworkers become a huge part of your life despite your differences; staying overnight to work on a project is going to become the norm.
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| Hajime Shinoda is on the animation team. She keeps replica weapons at her desk because she likes them, but also because she can get a feel for how they might affect character movement, as seen above. |
Oh look, somebody reputable actually wrote about just that.
The thing is, New Game! was actually clever in its implementation of its setting. The tropes are all there, but if you're going to compare the experience to say, K-On!, you're going to be hard-pressed to find any connections to make. Also, you'll notice the two pictures immediately above are both in front of the same wall; the cubicle space is pretty realistic.
Other than that, it's just pleasing to watch. Hifumi is an absolute darling, and fortunately, all of the other characters are equally as interesting. Save Sakura Nene, every character is a joy to see on screen, and I don't ever recall thinking that one character needed more time or that any others needed any less on screen (Again, Hifumi and Nene are the exceptions. Put Hifumi on the screen 24/7 please.)
Now, where New Game! really brings out my sharp disappointment in Orange is in its animation and art. I mean, just look at these character designs:
Every single character looks unique. As the show demands, they're all cute for sure, but you can just about pinpoint what every character is supposed to be without any extra information.
Again though, it goes beyond that; they're beautiful designs, and I never get tired of looking at any of them. There are moments in the show where the characters are fetishized, but it's never obscene, for example.
What I can't show you in a simple picture is the love put into the animation (If you really wanted to see, you could go back up to where I liked the show's opening; The entire show looks as good as, and dare I say at times better than the OP). It's crystal clear and smooth, and before my experiences this season, I would have definitely taken that for granted. Even if it's just meeting a basic standard (which in my opinion, it surpasses), it turns into a plus for me in light of recent events.
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| "Recent Events" |
I'm still not saying it's a great show, or even that I recommend it, but I've enjoyed it, and I'm not ashamed that I enjoy it.
Why Does Any of This Matter?
It doesn't really. If you don't watch these shows, I don't think you're particularly missing anything. All this really was was an excuse for me to share an experience I though epitomized what I've been forcing myself into in the anime consumption department. It may not be that broad horizons and expanding your tastes is good or bad, but I think that being narrow-minded is bad, and I've set to remedy myself on that. A year ago, I would have still claimed that Orange was better than New Game! just because it didn't fit my definition of what makes a show good.
So I don't know, call it a testimonial for trying new things. Maybe I had a thought in the middle of the night that I couldn't put to bed. Maybe it's just extra pulp.
References
Finalemonogatari pt. I [1]
Finalemonogatari pt. II [2]
There's a small review of Madoka Magica in An Update, My Absence, and a Couple of Small Reviews [3]
Katanagatari as an Argument [4]
A link to that almost verbatim quote [5]
