Notes on Mitsuboshi Colors

I wrote about Mitsuboshi Colors in my Winter 2018 Preview I.

I’m expecting a cute slice-of-life, an iyashikei anime. Barely anything will happen… something like Non Non Biyori. Which is a fitting comparison since both are made by Silver Link.

Well, I can certainly say the series did not meet my expectations. There were some good moments, but those could be recounted in a pretty short post. So that is exactly what I’ll do.

Going by episodes, I have two notes on the first one. First off, the anime is very true to the manga. That’s not a good thing, because the manga is rather boring. And second, the CG is awful.

In general, the art style and the animation aren’t exactly stellar. Through out the anime you will see some scenes repeating and a lot of barely modified photos for backgrounds (at stores, the zoo and in the museum). The characters and foregrounds are animated in a very average style, nothing to write home about. There is nothing wrong with any of that, but it sure gives of a lazy/low-cost feeling.

Winter 2018 Preview I.

I would like to watch eight anime series from the 48 airing this winter. (I’m excluding 18+ titles.) I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to keep up with all of them, because of other responsibilities (aka school and work), but I sure am going to try.

Today I will go over three of them – their source manga (it just so happened that all six are manga adaptations), synopsis, promotional videos and art et cetera. Cutting to the chase, today you can read about: Mitsuboshi Colors, Kokkoku and Dagashi Kashi 2.

Yuri Kuma Arashi and M. C. Escher

In episode 7 of ユリ熊嵐 [ユリくまあらし, Yuri Kuma Arashi, Lily Bear Storm], you may have noticed this pretty pattern on the glass.

The negative space between the 鳥 [とり, tori, birds] morphs into 百合 [ゆり, yuri, lilies]. It’s a beautiful transformation. Now, the team behind ユリ熊嵐 is very creative, but here I think it’s a reference. After all the anime is chock-full of references.

This is a woodcut by M. C. Escher from 1938, where the white space between geese morphs into fish. It definitely looks similar, doesn’t it?

M. C. Escher did a large number of these “transformation prints.” To see some more visit the website of the M. C. Escher Foundation and M. C. Escher Company.

First Impressions: Stella no Mahou

Stella no Mahou, Magic of Stella in English, is originally a yonkoma manga (see cover of the second volume to the right). It’s about a small group of high school girls who make indie games. Two have already worked on one game, but the main character, Honda Tamaki, is a newbie. She joins the SNS部 to fill the position of an artist, even though she is a little rusty at drawing and can’t draw digitally at all. It seems like the anime will depict their journey through making a new game together. It’s a pretty simple story with a clear goal.

Unfortunately I haven’t read the original manga, but I feel like the adaptation is a lot smoother than what I would expect from a yonkoma one. The episodes aren’t cut into smaller segments, but flow naturally.

So far, not much has happened. (Though I should have expected that. It is a slice-of-life anime after all.) Meaning we have been introduced into the story and gotten to know the main characters. I wouldn’t say they’re too inventive, but they’re not cookie cutter either.

Backlog: Week 5

I thought I was going to make a progress check, but even though I’ve finished 20 anime in the past five weeks, I’m still “watching” roughly the same number on MAL. So it really doesn’t make sense. This week I watched 21 episodes, including 13 shorts. I got some (four) one-episode OVAs out of the way…

Non Non Biyori OVA: We’re Going to Okinawa

I loved Non Non Biyori. It’s a very easy-going cute-girls-doing-cute-things from the lazy countryside. The whole two seasons pretty much nothing happens. The OVA is similar. Spoilers: It’s all about their preparations and ends at lift-off.