Golden Boy – the manga is so much worse

Japanese Title: Golden Boy

Related: Golden Boy (anime)

Genre: Comedy Ecchi Harem

Length: 104 chapters (10 volumes)

 

Positives:

• The first few chapters made a good anime

Negatives:

• All garbage past the first few chapters
• Art gets lazier as the series progresses
• Messy and unfocused arcs

Golden Boy is best known for being a fun six-episode ecchi comedy about university dropout Kintaro, who travels around Japan working various jobs (coincidentally under women) to learn new skills and broaden his horizons. “Study! Study! Study!” is his motto. While browsing for something to read a while back, I came across the Golden Boy manga and added it to the list, curious to see how the source material fared. After all, I enjoyed the anime and most of the manga’s 104 chapters wouldn’t have made it to the screen.

Good heavens. What a disaster.

The premise at first is of Kintaro doing this variety of jobs, incompetent at every one of them yet his hard working nature and determination makes him a force for good after a whirlwind of chaos. These chapters, the basis for the anime, are done with in the first volume. Afterwards, Golden Boy goes into longer “arcs” with Kintaro spending more time in one location doing a single job. The education aspect quickly falls to the wayside. It pretends to keep up the premise but none of the quality in that first volume remains.

Scenarios instead devolve into being all about sex fetishes. It gets quite graphic, though not in that erotic way. I believe it was meant to be erotic but this artist isn’t good, so it looks janky and it only grows worse. Sometimes the art is intentionally bad for comedy, though you’ll be waiting for when it gets good. Basic elements such as aligning the features of someone’s face is too difficult a task here. Character sizes aren’t even consistent from one panel to the next on the same page. It’s just ugly in general. You’re unlikely to find titillation. More importantly, the writing is terrible.

Golden Boy works best in single-chapter stories, where the author can extract all humorous material of any given scenario and move on before it gets old. The longer arcs are an absolute drag to get to through and painfully unfunny. A central problem is that they put the sex first and the work experience second, whereas the single chapters did it the other way around. The sex comedy isn’t funny when it so overt. Honestly, I’m not even sure if it’s meant to be a joke half of the time.

Alright, Kintaro is going to learn to be a more seductive dancer by becoming this woman’s slave and watching her have sex. Silly premise but it’s just a gag. Wait, you’re going to repeat it over and over and over and over and over and over. (Release me from this pain.) Later arcs repeat earlier material as well. Golden Boy anime versus manga is a great lesson in the benefit of keeping it brief.

Some arcs even try to “educate” the audience on love, romance, and relationships. However, it’s the worst advice to give anyone. You may be thinking, “But Kintaro is an idiot and this is a comedy manga. Of course the advice isn’t meant to be taken seriously.” I thought that as well until I realised these are the moral conclusions of the arcs and nothing contradictory occurs.

I have never seen such a disparity in quality between adaptation and source material than seen with Golden Boy. To have one version be better than the other to some degree or vice versa is expected, but for it to be this bad is astonishing. No wonder they only made six episodes.

Art – Low

Story – Very Low

Recommendation: Avoid it. Watch the Golden Boy anime instead.

(Find out more about the manga recommendation system here.)

Eating Crab with a Snow Woman – or the importance of build-up

Japanese Title: Yukionna to Kani wo Kuu

 

Genre: Drama

Length: 69 chapters (8 volumes)

 

Positives:

• The art is quite nice

Negatives:

• The big twist undermines everything
• Several-volume tangent with other irrelevant women

A man intent on killing himself wishes to fulfil one last item on his bucket list before kicking the bucket. He wants to travel north to Hokkaido and eat the best crab. Unfortunately, a loser like him doesn’t have the money for such a trip or such an expensive crab. And so, he decides to rob a rich housewife. Much to his surprise though, she offers not just the money he needs but also her body and company on the journey.

The road trip that follows is one of sightseeing, sex, and food with no concern for the future. Try as they might to celebrate, questions from the past and their private lives invade this last hurrah, entwining two strangers in a bond closer than what they had signed up for.

The premise has a good hook. He’s a piece of shit and we soon see that she is one as well, both of them broken by life and trying to end their grief in each other’s bodies. Classic literary novels very much inspired Eating Crab with a Snow Woman, primarily No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, a Japanese classic and second bestseller of all-time in Japan (also featured in the anime Aoi Bungaku).

I don’t recommend this manga. I can’t fully explain why without going into spoilers, as the big twist undoes this story. So, if you are interested in reading Eating Crab with a Snow Woman yourself, do not read further in this review until you are done.

Okay, before we go on, I need to talk about the main inspiration for this series since it is relevant. No Longer Human is a quasi-autobiographical work about a man suffering from depression, distancing from society, and suicide. It’s a seriously depressing novel. Dazai drowned himself along with his mistress shortly after the release of this book.

The woman in this manga presents herself as a lonely wife betrayed by her successful husband, who has an affair – one similar in circumstance to when he first got with this woman – and leaves her with all the money she could want but none of the love. Her husband even used her holiday plans with his mistress instead. She goes along with the protagonist to escape it all and ends up falling in love with him. However, just before the suicide (they are to drown), when he gets cold feet, we learn that none of her story is relevant to her feelings. In truth, she is fanatically in love with her author husband and wants to kill herself like in his book (inspired by Dazai’s work) so that the attention garnered when the “reality is stranger and more dramatic than fiction,” it will propel him into literary history like Osamu Dazai.

He was her teacher and wrote a literary novel she admired under a pen name, which she figured out. He was much older than her, of course, and they started an affair. She did everything to support his career, including selling herself. He soon realised that she didn’t love him the person – she loved him as the future literary great. Interesting concept. Should have been laid throughout the story and not in a single chapter towards the end. This would allow us to see how she is playing this guy to achieve her dream.

This story highlights the importance of building up to a twist. When you don’t have the build-up, a final act twist will feel as if the writer changed their mind at the last minute. Yes, the twist can fit the world but does it fit the story? Take for instance Jurassic Park and image we are entering the final act, where the writer suddenly decides that the best twist would be to reveal that everything was just a virtual reality simulation. This twist doesn’t break anything but it does make for a rubbish story. Furthermore, it undermines the theme of humanity pushing too far at “playing God” with the resurrection of the dinosaurs, given now that the park wasn’t real. See what I mean? You could have a great VR story about a dinosaur park; however, the story and themes would need to be nothing like Jurassic Park from the start.

There are other moments of pain in Eating Crab with a Snow Woman as well. While he’s beating up the husband for driving the woman to suicide, she “rises from the dead” and catches up to them. This guy lay beside her “dead” body for hours and never noticed she was alive. Rubbish.

The worst section prior to the final act is this tangent lasting several volumes, where the man separates from the woman by accident and can’t find his way back to the hotel. This scenario is itself stupid enough, only then for it to waste our time as some random woman picks him up. She takes in this homeless guy and we meet several of her friends, get to know about her life, and so on, nothing of which is engaging or relevant to the grander story. Honestly, it feels like filler for the author to stall while she figures out the ending (see my Jurassic Park analogy for what happened next).

The twist isn’t infeasible. All it needed was build up in the first half of the story. While you’re at it, cut the entire side story with those other women. This could have been a great tragic manga.

Art – High

Story – Low

Recommendation: Don’t bother. The final twist of Eating Crab with a Snow Woman is so contrary to the story prior that it kills all value. The happy ending is unearned too.

(Find out more about the manga recommendation system here.)

Yasuke – why the mechs?

Japanese Title: Yasuke

 

Similar: Ninja Scroll

Afro Samurai

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit

 

Watched in: Japanese & English

Genre: Action Fantasy

Length: 6 episodes

 

Positives:

• Great animation
• Lo-fi beats you can study to

Negatives:

• Thin on character
• What’s with the robots?

(Request an anime for review here.)

Did you know that an African man served under Nobunaga in 16^th century Japan? He arrived as a slave to an Italian missionary before Nobunaga bought him, fascinated by the look and strength of this foreigner. A letter from the time indicates Yasuke was likely the first black person Nobunaga had ever seen, as he had his servants try to clean the “ink” off as if his skin colour was some prank.

The historical character of Yasuke is the basis for this anime of the same name. In this, he is a samurai ronin, masterless after the death of Nobunaga. If you’ve never heard the story of Nobunaga, it is a fascinating one though for another time (I recommend the documentary series Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan to start). Short version: he was one of Japan’s greatest warriors, nicknamed the “Demon King,” and set events in motion to unify the nation. There’s a reason so many anime feature him as a character. As for Yasuke, there is no indication that he received the rank of samurai, but he was a warrior for Nobunaga by all accounts.

Historical accuracy isn’t a cornerstone of Yasuke, which is clear from the opening scene as a massive battle takes place involving samurai mechs and magic. I was disappointed to see these, for I had hoped this anime would be more historical drama and less action fantasy. Yasuke isn’t action fantasy – it is only action fantasy. That fact may be a selling point to some. However, I find it to be the greatest weakness. Let’s explore.

After a brief prologue chronicling the death of Nobunaga, we cut to Yasuke in a quiet mountain village living the life a drunk recluse. He has lost his master and purpose. He keeps to himself as he trades fish and rides on his boat along the river to survive. All of this changes when a local songstress asks for his help in getting her magically ailing daughter to a special doctor in the north. In war country.

On their tail is a group of foreign mercenaries led by a psychotic Catholic priest, including a giant shapeshifting Russian woman, an assassin, a Nigerien shaman, and a robot. From here on, the series is about ninety percent action. While the action looks great outside of the occasional messiness (might be intentional to represent the chaos of battle), there isn’t much more to it. The lack of character is particularly noticeable, further highlighted with every flashback to Yasuke’s past under Nobunaga. The present day will pause – usually when Yasuke is asleep, since most flashbacks are dream sequences – and rewind to a key moment. And just as that moment is getting interesting, he wakes up and we are off to the next fight. The action isn’t spectacular enough to carry.

That historical account of having his skin cleaned is in the story, yet there isn’t enough. What happened next? Can we have more dialogue between Yasuke and Nobunaga to know them as people first, action stars later? This depiction of Nobunaga differs from historical accounts as well, so take the time to convey his ideology and how it became that way. In truth, he’s barely in the show. He’s in plenty of scenes, all of them too brief. The most appealing element of this story is Yasuke’s past, which happens to be the lowest priority. Below is an art piece from the era likely depicting Yasuke versus a local in a sumo match, an event also glimpsed in Yasuke. I wish it were more than a glimpse. This anime seems to pay lip service to the real Yasuke, the biggest draw of the story.

The supporting cast don’t fare better either. The magic girl is little more than a magic girl with a headstrong personality. You won’t care for her as you would a Ghibli child. Her mother dies early to no emotional impact. The mercenaries are a tad more realised though only to the point of action characters.

Speaking of the mercenaries, the robot brings up another issue. What on Earth is with the technology? This world has samurai mechs and a fully autonomous self-aware robot, yet everything else is Edo period Japan. This detail has to be the laziest world building I have ever seen. My issue isn’t the robots in ancient Japan. Couldn’t care less. I’ve read crazier fictional worlds. However, if there is a robot more advanced than any technology in our modern day, why is the rest of society as it was? If I didn’t know better, I would say someone edited him into Yasuke to see if anyone would notice the odd one out. I mean, why?

There is a lack of attention to small narrative details as well. For example, Yasuke is accused of killing the girl’s mother. The villagers he lived with believe it because they mistrust him as a foreigner. Who tells them of the murder? A group of psychotic looking foreigners and a robot. Someone even points out the absurdity of the claim and the story still rolls with it! Come on, I’m trying to find the good in this but you aren’t making it easy.

If you sit back and “switch your brain off” as some like to put it, Yasuke is an alright action anime. At six episodes in length, it isn’t a large commitment. Any longer at this quality and it would rapidly grow thin on me. Want something better in action fantasy? Go for Ninja Scroll. Want more drama with that mysticism of a magic child? Moribito is waiting for you. Yasuke is a watch and forget for me. A drama anime on Yasuke’s life is still open for a studio to adapt, by the way. Anyone?

Overall Quality – Medium

Recommendation: For action fantasy fans only. With nothing but flashy action to recommend itself, Yasuke is for a specific audience. I’m probably being too generous.

(Request reviews here. Find out more about the rating system here.)

 

Awards: (hover over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive: None

Negative: None

Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song – The Terminator is a pop idol?

Japanese Title: Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song

 

Similar: Steins;Gate

Violet Evergarden

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

 

Watched in: Japanese & English

Genre: Action Science Fiction Thriller

Length: 13 episodes

 

Positives:

• Engaging and fast-paced time travel thriller
• Some fascinating future world concepts

Negatives:

• Wildly inconsistent art can be jarring

(Request an anime for review here.)

Take Terminator 2: Judgement Day, combine it with J-pop, and you have yourself a lovely old Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it works.

This story is about an AI called Vivy (a.k.a. Diva) charged with the mission of changing the past to alter the future where AI rose up and massacred humanity. A scientist in the future sends the AI Matsumoto to tell Vivy of the calamity and guide her through time. The scientist chose Vivy because is the last of the old AIs and wasn’t affected by the calamity, and as the first autonomous AI, she sits in a museum in the future, unaffected. Her design was to be a singer at a theme park, her dream to bring everyone joy. Matsumoto is of limited physical capacity, residing in either a teddy bear or a cube, but has great knowledge and analytical capabilities with a preference for hacking. And he loves to talk.

What immediately grabs me in Fluorite Eye’s Song is the world design and general atmosphere. The premise hooks me, yes, but we’ve seen similar many times before. I love the grounded feel of this clean near future world, akin to Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

We start at the genesis of the AI revolution. AI in the form of androids already exists, but they rarely pass for human. Each has a singular purpose – this AI is a waiter, this AI cleans the streets, this AI is an information guide, and so on, fulfilled with precision. AI do all menial jobs now, leading to a more utopian society. However, as the technology improves, they become more and more human. Thus, the question becomes, when do we treat them as human? When do they get rights? The opening scenario centres on this very question as a politician campaigns to give AIs names, treating them as individuals. Such dilemmas always fascinate me.

Fluorite’s story focus isn’t on these questions though; they are background to inform the main plot, which is the consequences of the answers garnered by these questions. In the future timeline, for instance, this politician dies in a blast setup by an anti-AI group. Unfortunately for this group, his death draws sympathy and support for a bill that few people initially cared about, setting in motion a series of catastrophic events. Vivy’s first mission is to keep him alive.

Funnily enough, the anti-AI group were right.

One change isn’t enough of course. Fifteen years later, Matsumoto returns to Vivy with a new mission, a new event to nudge in another direction. This time, an AI is going to crash a space hotel on a city. Furthermore, the previous change they made didn’t have the desired effects either, as is traditional for time edit stories. You fix one thing and a dozen other problems arise to take its place. This makes Fluorite engaging, for you never know what will happen next. You simultaneously experience relief when they avert one disaster and a sense of foreboding for the consequences of their actions. Fluorite evokes a bit of Steins;Gate in this way.

Each key event in the timeline occurs some years apart, so we get to jump through time and see the evolution of this world influenced by AI. A few human characters also stick around, aging with each time skip. This structure works.

While the main plot is a success, I do wish there was a little more time for the philosophical and moral aspect of AI. There’s a little bit with moments such a human marrying an AI, just not enough. Perhaps they thought it best not attempted if they couldn’t do it justice, as what is included is executed well enough. For those of you interested in the subject, I highly recommend the film Ex Machina and the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, specifically the episodes focused on the android Data (happened to rewatch stellar episodes “Measure of a Man” and “The Offspring” while going through this anime). Seeing those other titles does show how Fluorite could be better and have more depth in several ways. If the whole concept is new to you, then Fluorite will be an absolute ride – then watch the others afterwards (start Star Trek TNG at season two though – long explanation).

My other criticisms are towards the art and music. The art looks amazing sometimes with high detail, textured colouring, multi-layered shading, and fluid animation. Other times it has no detail, flat colours, single tone shading, and two-frame animation. We’ve seen plenty of amazing looking anime and plenty of downright ugly works, but I can’t recall one that is so inconsistent. This isn’t a case of great action and static in between either. It will randomly cut to high quality shots and then seconds later we’re looking at late 90s anime done on a computer. It stands out every time. Hard to describe without experiencing it for yourself.

As for the music, my criticism isn’t that it’s bad. I wish it were more creative. When you consider Fluorite is all about the future, advanced technology, and AI takeovers, I would expect the music to be more creative than generic J-pop. Even by today’s standards, there’s nothing in this music. Give me something wilder like the opera from The Fifth Element, where they used a computer to make the singer hit impossible notes, infusing that sci-fi element.

Inconsistent art and forgettable music aside, I had a great time with Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song. I want to go to that space hotel (with a different fate than in the anime, of course). It’s quite likely the best anime of its season. I have a couple of others I need to complete, though my sampling doesn’t promise anything better than this or Odd Taxi.

Overall Quality – High

Recommendation: Watch it. Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song is an easy recommendation.

(Request reviews here. Find out more about the rating system here.)

 

Awards: (hover over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive: None

Negative: None

Odd Taxi – A great oddity

Japanese Title: Odd Taxi

 

Similar: Aggretsuko

Baccano

Paranoia Agent

 

Watched in: Japanese

Genre: Mystery

Length: 13 episodes

 

Positives:

• Excellent main mystery
• A strong finish
• Memorable visual design

Negatives:

• Some side plots are superfluous
• Jarring CG cars

(Request an anime for review here.)

If you, like me, are a seeker of more unique anime each season, then this one is for you. Odd Taxi is the “something different” of the spring 2021 slate and one I recommend.

It follows a dulcet walrus taxi driver that keeps his tusks clean. Odokawa finds himself thrown from the comforts of his taxicab when he gives rides to several disparate characters, seemingly unrelated, amid the disappearance of a high school girl. He encounters a pop idol, a nurse, a yakuza member, and even the police, amongst others.

In addition to being the different anime, Odd Taxi is the “furry” anime of the season – seems to one in each slate these days. However, Odd Taxi’s use of animals as character is different from the rest. In fact, I can’t recall any other story using an animal cast in this manner, which it succeeds in doing. It seems arbitrary at first, but it makes sense as you progress.

Similar sentiments apply to Odd Taxi as a whole. It starts a little slow and the various threads don’t seem to have much connection or relevance for a few episodes, but it grows better with time and the final act is excellent. The various characters and their threads are fascinating to follow (for the most part – more later) as you piece together the mystery of the girl’s disappearance. I always say that to have a great mystery, the viewer should be able to solve it before the revelations, even if they are unlikely to. Odd Taxi succeeds in that regard, so I’ll avoid spoilers.

The character arcs are a mix of noir crime and social commentary. The former mostly relate to the primary characters – the yakuza, the corrupt police, the dame – while the latter is for subplots. Ironically, the main crime threads have more comedy than the subplots do, where the social commentary gets dark at times.

The most interesting of the subplots relates to a gacha addict. The obsession started in school after his teacher’s attempt at equality between rich and poor students backfired by promoting inequality in other ways. For this guy, it manifested in the form of rare eraser collecting. Whichever kid had the rarest, most valuable erasers was the king of the playground. One thing leads to another and this kid steals his dad’s credit card, gets scammed, and he grows up with an addiction to collecting expensive yet meaningless exclusives, like units in a gacha mobile game. Despite being a whale (big spender), he can’t compete with a super whale. He too crosses Odokawa’s path. I won’t give away anything further.

On the other side, some subplots aren’t interesting or even relevant. At worst, they feel like cast padding. As in, “This show has too few characters. Add some more, slap on some social stuff to give them arc, and don’t worry about tying them to the main plot.” The most egregious of these and the one I would outright delete is the lonely monkey in search of a girlfriend. He’s so desperate for a girlfriend that he doesn’t care about being a sugar daddy as long as there is the illusion of a genuine relationship.

Apart from recurring appearances, the show dedicates an episode to him and that is where I zoned out. Odd Taxi hadn’t hit its peak – the third act – by this episode, so I had doubts about it being worth finishing after wasting time on this guy and other minor characters. His minor relevance isn’t worth the screen time wasted or the pacing slowed. I thought perhaps that he was a poor attempt at a red herring on the writers’ part, which if done properly would have been good. This guy is seeking a younger woman; maybe he took it too far with that high schooler and now her body is in the drying concrete at his work site. Pick any Agatha Christie novel and you’ll find a sizeable cast of characters, all of which are relevant and engaging because they matter to the construction of the main plot. Thankfully for Odd Taxi, these excess characters don’t diminish the main mystery directly. They’re just filler.

I’ve noticed a lot of 13-episode anime recently that bloat their casts of characters when they don’t have enough screen time for everyone. May be a coincidence.

Speaking of coincidence, the final negative I want to address is the contrivance in some cases. Coincidences should be used sparingly, particularly for the purposes of solving a situation. Odd Taxi isn’t too bad in this sense but it would have been even better if the writers had shaped events to avoid coincidences.

Negatives aside, Odd Taxi comes together to deliver a great mystery in an excellent third act amid an eccentric cast of characters. Can’t forget the unique use of anthropomorphism either. Recommended!

Overall Quality – High

Recommendation: Watch it. Odd Taxi is a rarity in anime, being both unique and great. Ideally, go in blind.

(Request reviews here. Find out more about the rating system here.)

 

Awards: (hover over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive:

Negative: None