Winter ’14 anime reviews part 1: Inari Kon Kon, Chuunibyou Ren, Golden Time

I can’t believe it’s spring already! The end of the season kinda sneaked up on me this year. I’ve been caught up in a lot of social engagements and other things these past few weeks. I haven’t even thought about what spring anime I’m interested in yet. However, I have been finishing up all the one-cour winter and two-cour fall anime I’ve been watching. Like last season, I’ll be reviewing them over two different posts starting with Inari Kon Kon, Chuunibyou Ren, and Golden Time…

Inari Kon Kon Koi Iroha
As I predicted in my first impressions review of the first two episodes, Inari Kon Kon turned out to be an alright anime. I got some good laughs from the early episodes, though the later ones seemed to get increasingly less funny. They still had their cute and touching moments though, which was enough to keep me somewhat invested. Being only 10 episodes long, I think the series did a decent job of offering likable characters and an okay story. The main conflict of Inari using Uka’s powers inadvertently causing harm to the latter was alright, but I really would have felt more engrossed if I had seen more interaction between the two. If we had seen a bond growing between Inari and Uka, the whole tragedy of the two losing their ability to be friends would have been more effectively emotional. But we don’t see them interact much as most of the episodes are focused on Inari and her friends at school. Even Uka and Touka got more screentime together than Uka and Inari, though their relationship didn’t really go anywhere.

But as I said, being a fairly simple slice-of-life anime with a dose of the supernatural, the characters were developed enough to be likable even if they’re not the most memorable bunch. Maru, Keiko, and Sumizome all had their times to shine…though love interest Tanbabashi was as bland as you can get. Oh well =P Sumizome’s random romantic interest in the tomboyish Keiko felt kind of forced too, like they just had to get that token yuri fan service in there. Like the relationship between Uka and Touka, Sumizome’s crush on Keiko didn’t go anywhere either and felt out of place to me in this kind of series. But anyway, on the supernatural side of things, I did like how we got to see the celestial plane where the gods live. But again, most of the episodes focused on Inari at school while there was this whole amazing world of gods we hardly got to see! Miya (with her big crow familiar) seemed like an interesting, fun character, but she was just glossed over, as were other potentially good characters amongst the gods, like Uka’s dad. In fact, the whole idea of gods and humans having a true relationship, as seen between Inari and Uka and Uka and Touka, is a very intriguing, deep theme that the series could have explored more, but again, it just went halfway with it in favor of focusing on mundane things like Maru and Sumizome trying to get along and Inari’s classmates bullying her. I can sort of understand this as the series is obviously trying to be a light one and not a complex one, with the slice-of-life comedy and drama being the dominant genre over any heavy fantasy themes. But I still would have liked it if there was a better balance between the two worlds in terms of episode focus. Well, at least I got my weekly dose of cuteness with Kon and the other adorable fox spirits :3 Kon would make one irresistible plushie~

I don’t have much else to say about Inari Kon Kon. For a mere 10 episodes, it did an okay job of telling a cute story with decent characters. Besides suffering from some lost potential (which may have been easily rectified with more episodes) it was an all around alright anime – nothing particularly great about it but nothing particularly bad either.

Chuunibyou Ren
Now that I’ve watched all the episodes of Chuunibyou’s second season…honestly, my thoughts about it aren’t much different from my initial impressions of the first three episodes. The majority of the episodes were on the light, comedic side rather than the dramatic side, with most of them featuring funny misadventures with Kumin, Dekomori, and Nibutani, along with the occasional love triangle antics between Yuuta, Rikka, and Shichimiya. Unlike last season where there was a stark shift from light episodes in the beginning to emotional episodes in the latter part, there was really just a handful of seriously dramatic or romantic moments in Chuunibyou Ren, just about all of which involved either Rikka and Yuuta trying to move forward in their relationship, or Shichimiya’s unrequited love for Yuuta. For me at least, most of these dramatic moments where effectively done – throughout the series and up until the end, I could really feel for Yuuta and Rikka struggling with their relationship, with the latter trying her hardest to acquire normal feelings of love despite the aversion to real world conflict her chuunibyou bestows on her, and the former trying to be the “adult” about it, but still feeling shy and uncertain. They’re one of the best examples of “cute, awkward, innocent young lovers” in my opinion. Shichimiya’s appearance this season to give us a pretty predictable love triangle dilemma wasn’t anything innovative of course, but again, her struggles with romantic feelings were well portrayed too – her breaking down in front of Yuuta at the end of episode 10 was especially heartbreaking.

As I said, this second season was more comedic than the first, and I guess because there were more jokes, I found that more of them clicked with me than not, and thus I got more laughs this time around. The only thing that bugged me is that I think they went a bit overboard with the chuunibyou-based humor. After many drawn out scenes of Rikka, Dekomori, and/or Shichimiya babbling on and on about their made up fantasy stuff, I thought to myself, “How delusional are these kids? When is enough enough? It’s funny sometimes but after a while it gets annoying and I have to wonder whether they need some mental help.” But other than the chuunibyou gags getting old, there were still plenty of cute, sweet, and funny moments. But everybody else had a starring episode, so why was poor Isshiki totally ignored this season? More scenes of his haplessness and flustering over Kumin would have been fine by me.

Compared to the first season, Chuunibyou Ren didn’t have much of a direction and was more or less episodic. While season 1 was actually kind of story-driven, with Yuuta and Rikka’s growing relationship being the main progressing plot and focus of most of the episodes, this season just seemed kind of “extra” as there was really no big change in any of the original characters by the end. But for what it offered – side stories to see the characters in comical situations and the occasional “awww” moments for Rikka and Yuuta – it was a decent follow up. Funnier than the first season, not as good in terms of everything else, but I still enjoyed it.

Golden Time
A romance drama based on a light novel by Toradora! creator Yuyuko Takemiya, I can’t say that Golden Time ended up being as emotionally gripping a series as its predecessor. But while I had issues with it, there were a lot of good things I saw in it too. The best thing about it to me was its main conflict of Banri’s struggle with his past self: the fear of regaining his old memories and losing his current ones, and with them, losing the feelings of love he developed for Koko in favor of regaining his old feelings for Linda. This was a suspenseful conflict because, not only could you not tell when his old memories would suddenly take over, but because he had no control of it and thus you couldn’t blame him for it, which also helped make Banri a sympathetic protagonist, as well as providing a reason for his rather bland personality: he had lost his old self and had to create a new one. He himself wasn’t torn between two girls he loved, but rather, his current self loved one while his old self loved the other, and tragically they share the same body and can only have one set of memories at a time. Because of this engaging conflict, there was plenty of heart-wrenching scenes between Banri and Koko, as well as between the other characters.

But despite having such a good main conflict, Golden Time unfortunately didn’t do well with some of its other elements. As is the case with many otherwise dramatic anime I watch that try to insert comedic scenes too, the ones in Golden Time just didn’t work for me. I found most of the jokes either weird – like those creepy chicks from the Tea Club and Koko’s whole thing as “Robo Girl” – or jarring to the mood, often having the characters act in exaggerated ways just for the sake of pulling off a gag, like Nana abusing Banri and Koko’s obsession with Mitsuo. There were a lot of scenes in the show that attempted humor like this and failed for me, and sadly I would have rated the series higher if it didn’t have them. It’s the kind of thing where I’d be watching a really effective dramatic scene, and then suddenly, I could feel the show shifting to (bad) comedy and I’d be like, “Darn, why do you have to have a joke now? You were doing so well!” Thankfully the humor wasn’t so bad that it ruined the show for me, and occasionally I did find some things funny. As for the characters themselves, it took a while to warm up to them, but I found all of the main ones, like Mitsuo, Chinami, and “2D-kun” likable enough. As I said, Banri turned out to be a sympathetic male lead and Koko…well, I found her kind of inconsistent – one minute she’s very nice and polite, other times she’s foul-tempered and haughty, other times she’s really insecure and quick to tears, still other times she’s confident and tough. It was hard to figure her out and I’m not sure if it’s due to bad writing or she’s simply a character with a chaotic personality. Either way, it made it difficult for me to sympathize with her the way I could with Banri. I was also waiting for the episode where we’d find out exactly why she was so crazily obsessed with Mitsuo, in a much more stalker-ish way than she was with Banri? She fell for Banri because their feelings of love were mutual and they enjoyed being with each other, but what made her love Mitsuo so much when he clearly wanted nothing to do with her? There were a few times I thought she was a bit mean to the other characters too, but nothing extreme…except for when she flat out dumped Banri at the end of episode 21, with no explanation, leaving the poor guy standing there heart-broken. She did give him a reason later and apologized, but still, that was an awful thing to do to a guy who obviously loves you and already has a lot of emotional problems as it is.

As for how Golden Time ended, I thought it was an alright ending. I guess I can’t think of a better way to end it, though it was hard to believe that Banri was suddenly able to permanently keep his past self away by just…talking it over with him? I was also confused about how Linda was able to come to terms with her feelings for Banri – it looked like she was actually interacting with the ghost of his past self, but I’m assuming that was just figurative. But did her “Yes” response mean she really did love Banri too? And now that she was able to get that out, she can start falling for Mitsuo? So yeah, some things left me scratching my head, but for the most part it was a cute, happy ending.

As far as romantic dramas go, I would say Golden Time is a pretty good one. Unfortunately it had too many failed attempts at humor for me to say I fully enjoyed it, and Koko’s inconsistent actions got on my nerves sometimes. But despite some negativity, I would say I liked it more than not.

—–

Next week, my reviews of Nagi no Asukara, Wizard Barristers, Tonari-no Seki-kun, and as a bonus, Space Brothers!