Anyways, my recent experiences with SoL is that its hard
to tell if a show is shit or not. A good'un is always pretty obvious, like
nobody watched K-On episode 1 and thought it was nothing special. But
I seem to be finding it hard to recognise when a show is truly good
until a week or so after I finish it. I don't really get it. It only ever
happens with media types that I consume an unholy amount of. I'll be the
first to point out the flaws in any Shounen-Harem show or an FPS vidya.
It's probably because I'm inherently attracted to the concept or
something. I can easily blaze through a mediocre 2-cour SoL; but
getting through just 12 episodes of shounen battle show is a slog no matter
the show's quality. In fact. That may be the crux of the whole
problem. I seem to get bored with a show much faster the more action
there is. If there is no action, I'll scream through; if there's only
action, I'll end up dropping before half-way. A good case study of this is
Cardcaptor Sakura. I really loved the show, its been the benchmark of
mahou shoujo for nearly 20 years and its animation blows most of
today's stuff out the water. But it took me an age to get through,
because it insisted on not only being SoL, but also action. I'm not saying action is bad. Action is cool. But
so is not-action. And it just so happens that I get bored with action
way faster that not-action. Maybe it drains me faster? I don't know.
Oh fuck yeah this was meant to be about Manabi Straight.
Manabi
Straight is a cool anime centred around cute girls in high school. But
I don't care about you so if you don't know it then oh well fuck off. But the
reason it's worth toalking about is that watching Manabi Straight made me the
least bored I've been in ages. Usually I end up putting a show on
auto-run and falling asleep around 3 episodes in. With Manabi
Straught I binged straight from midnight till sunrise. And I think the
reason why, is that my subconscious innately knew it was a well made
show. It'd been crafted in such a way that it held my attention, made
me care about the story and all the while still pandering to moe culture. I think some
dick with a mic and an inflated ego could go into great depth over each scene individually and how
well its made, but as a consumer I don't give a shit. I can just feel
that it works, everything clicks together. The plot never gets too
big, meaning all the loose ends are tied up at the end. There are 5
(five) main characters, the optimum amount to give each an in-depth
development arc but not to be too smushed in to one another. The
character's personalities aren't overly anime, and are grounded in
some sensible realm (except for Manabi's) without going and being all “realistic” and just removing the reason why people find fictional
characters fun in the first place. The list goes on. But the overarching problem here is
that I don't actually know. Unlike other favourites where I can give
conclusive reasoning behind my ratings, with this one I can't put my
finger on it. At the time of writing its been 3 weeks since I finished it, and
I still would rank it among my tops, so I doubt its just a matter of
the post-binge wankfan. Bringing this sprawl back to the start, I think my love for
this show is just that its a really good version of a formula that I
love. Its a high school SoL that stands out from the crowd, if only
for being sufficiently proficient in every area I notice or care about. And of course the
weird funky aesthetic design choices are a huge plus for me; being an
arthouse-fag.
Cool all around with a hint of spice.
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