Board 8 > Anime & Manga Discussion Topic 299: Girls Love Music

(+) Yeah! (+)

Speaking of music anime, this is why I made the topic rather than waiting for someone else with a better poll idea to do it! I finished a show and needed to post about it.

Dropout Idol Fruit Tart is an anime I saw on one of those random lists on the front page of Crunchyroll (Perfect in Pink, a list of shows with pink-haired girls). I've been in the mood for music anime lately and this looked like it could be a fun cute girls idol show. I usually enjoy those even at their most generic, like Music Girls or Shine Post.

Unfortunately, this anime was pretty lame. It tried to be a comedy more than anything but most of it was bland. Even the fanservice yuri-baiting jokes largely fell flat. Gags about girls comparing breast sizes are rarely funny, and I swear this anime did it seventy times in twelve episodes. I didn't hate Dropout Idol Fruit Tart but I'm genuinely struggling to think of anything else to say about it. There was essentially zero character development and it felt like it had no original ideas whatsoever. The actual music content was minimal, too. I guess I'll give it points for not using bad CGI during the dance sequences (which were super short and not very good either, but still). One of the girls also had a Canadian flag maple leaf on her shirt for some reason, that was kinda neat.

5 days off in a row. Lots of time for Koro-sensei weirdness

I can't believe haruhi got no votes in the last thread

Robazoid posted...

Speaking of music anime, this is why I made the topic rather than waiting for someone else with a better poll idea to do it! I finished a show and needed to post about it.

Dropout Idol Fruit Tart is an anime I saw on one of those random lists on the front page of Crunchyroll (Perfect in Pink, a list of shows with pink-haired girls). I've been in the mood for music anime lately and this looked like it could be a fun cute girls idol show. I usually enjoy those even at their most generic, like Music Girls or Shine Post.

Unfortunately, this anime was pretty lame. It tried to be a comedy more than anything but most of it was bland. Even the fanservice yuri-baiting jokes largely fell flat. Gags about girls comparing breast sizes are rarely funny, and I swear this anime did it seventy times in twelve episodes. I didn't hate Dropout Idol Fruit Tart but I'm genuinely struggling to think of anything else to say about it. There was essentially zero character development and it felt like it had no original ideas whatsoever. The actual music content was minimal, too. I guess I'll give it points for not using bad CGI during the dance sequences (which were super short and not very good either, but still). One of the girls also had a Canadian flag maple leaf on her shirt for some reason, that was kinda neat.

.......I actually really like Dropout Idol Fruit Tart, particularly for the yuri-baiting and breast jokes. But it is a pure comedy that makes fun of idols rather than an actual critique, so the rampant exploitation can be uncomfortable in a bad way, since it's just a punchline rather than an actual statement. Still, I did think it was funny, though I could have done without the piss jokes.

That last option is too harsh, but I don't really watch music anime.

pjbasis posted...

I can't believe haruhi got no votes in the last thread

Made me feel slightly better about being the sole LotGH voter... but there were a ton of titanic anime options there!!

I actually think Jellyfish has kind of revealed itself to not actually be a music anime. Obviously the music is an important narrative factor, but not in the same way as the rest of these. Still, an argument could be made, and obviously it's WINNING, so...

Re:Re:Zero, I distinctly remember when the PVs were hitting before the release, I turned that show into kind of a punching bag, "oh rhis looks like shit, are we really just doing this Isekai crap all the time now, is this really what anime is going to be moving forward?"

Obvious irony that A) Re:Zero ended up being completely above and beyond any expectation I could have had, and B) however I was technically still correct, because throwaway slop Isekai did become the law of the land moving forward around that time, and hasn't slowed down at all since.

pjbasis posted...

I can't believe haruhi got no votes in the last thread

Most of the old hats here have other shows they would choose (and did), and amongst more recent anime fans in general Haruhi is a completely irrelevant franchise. There was a popular thread a couple weeks ago about how older anime fans were going to conventions and running into younger anime fans who had never even HEARD about shows like Soul Eater and Haruhi.

The general consensus is that the Aughts are the "lost decade" of anime for the younger anime fans. Besides legal anime streaming picking up stream right around the turnover to the 10s, the shows are too old for them to have easily engaged with them growing up, but not old enough to give off the vibe of a "classic" from before the turn of the century like Bebop. Some stuff breaks through, like Death Note and FMA, but a lot of these folks still seem to have not actually watched those shows despite being aware of them.

As for the poll, upset to see A Place Further didn't keep it's early 4 vote lead over everyone, but I guess everyone who would vote for it are people who would come into the anime topic on Day 1 lol.

I mean, if you were the show responsible for the Endless Eight, I wouldn't want to rewatch you or confirm you existed either.

Kinema Citrus opened up a YouTube Channel of their own to announce 2 new original anime. Both look like they're very much worth keeping an eye on, Goodbye Lara is particular. I'm usually warry of "Concept Trailers", but it's hard to deny how amazing this looks.

https://youtu.be/oJSna-vMATY?si=I2LIXph_bhCeVvvK

https://youtu.be/zkOZWbhPdLo?si=0aAJZzrSKuXzBYus

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but one time I was at an Anime Convention where Wake Up, Girls performed and they did a cover of Hare Hare Yukai.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIWyewdQiBg

I was next to these middle school-looking girls who couldn't even recognize where it was from, and this was in 2014!

UshiromiyaEva posted...

The general consensus is that the Aughts are the "lost decade" of anime for the younger anime fans. Besides legal anime streaming picking up stream right around the turnover to the 10s, the shows are too old for them to have easily engaged with them growing up, but not old enough to give off the vibe of a "classic" from before the turn of the century like Bebop.

Are pre-2000's shows really any more popular with modern fans? I feel like the drop in popularity for 00's anime is only more noticeable because more fans from that time are still around to point it out.

https://twitter.com/zenatzura/status/1792169357750980633?t=KQszOLKaTrx_VtOtVtAk4A&s=19

Xeybozn posted...

Are pre-2000's shows really any more popular with modern fans? I feel like the drop in popularity for 00's anime is only more noticeable because more fans from that time are still around to point it out.

It's not so much that they're more popular, but there's going to be a subset of them fans that are going out of their way to know about anime from that era just "to know". In most cases they're still not watching them, probably. Obviously things like DBZ are a different beast too....which of course has anime from the 90s and from the 2010s, but not from the 2000s!

WhiteLens posted...

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but one time I was at an Anime Convention where Wake Up, Girls performed and they did a cover of Hare Hare Yukai.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIWyewdQiBg

I was next to these middle school-looking girls who couldn't even recognize where it was from, and this was in 2014!

WUG criminally underrated. Ahead of its time.

WhiteLens posted...

I was next to these middle school-looking girls who couldn't even recognize where it was from, and this was in 2014!

I was talking about this elsewhere a week or so ago, but the rise and fall of Haruhi as a franchise is one of the more interesting things in the industry.

In 2006 (and 2007, the aftermath of its original airing), it was huge. Legit cultural phenom eon, especially in Japan. In 2008 it was starting to kinda fall by the wayside among people not reading novels. Then 2009 had the huge controversy with Endless Eight in the reairing/season 2, and interest peaked then. Disappearance came out a year later and was massively well regarded as well.

But, while there was some further content after that, the series basically disappeared off the face of the earth after ~2011 or so as far as relevance goes. And, really, there's two reasons why. First off, Aya Hirano's scandal around then kinda squished any projects that had her as a relevant role (And you can't really have Haruhi without Haruhi...) for a while. But second, and probably just as important I think, is the LN release schedule.

Volume 9 came out in 2007. Volumes 10 and 11 were released together in 2011.

Volume 12 was 2020

But, yeah. By 2013, the series was dead for all intents and purposes. A spinoff anime came out in 2015, but it got little acclaim or recognition that I recall (And was also just kinda mediocre, which really didn't help), and only really served to further drive home that the series was completely irrelevant by then.

Baccano volume 22 was in 2016. Volume 23 still TBD! Sometimes these things just stall lol. At least the English releases have fully caught up.

Baccano kept going beyond what was in the anime?!

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Baccano volume 22 was in 2016. Volume 23 still TBD! Sometimes these things just stall lol. At least the English releases have fully caught up.

This actually annoys me too because I've been buying the English releases!

Maniac64 posted...

Baccano kept going beyond what was in the anime?!

Yes. Very, very far. The anime is the first ~3 volumes, iirc. Meanwhile, my understanding is that 23 is planned to be the last climax of the series and 24 is going to be not much more than an epilogue.

I think the Baccano OVAs are actually from, like, volume 13 or something? And yeah, the anime itself is mostly just a few early volumes with a little bit of other volumes tucked in for a scene or two. Remember when they showed like 10 unexplained seconds of Isaac being cut with a spear in some mansion surrounded by characters you never see anywhere else in the anime?

Modern music anime kinda does suck in some ways <_<. Mostly the performances aren't my thing, and a lot of them have bigger casts than I'd like.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Remember when they showed like 10 unexplained seconds of Isaac being cut with a spear in some mansion surrounded by characters you never see anywhere else in the anime?

Still burned into my memory, lol

Actually that reminds me Roba, popular recommendation is to skip watching first ep of Baccano, and having watched it (and being super confused) I kind of echo that! For whenever you get up to it in your project.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/42d25ad5.jpg
says the woman who made a hit song that raked in the cash??? gonna guess this ep had a different writer lol

Also kinda hilarious that they have a woman voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro come up who instantly makes all the main VAs sound worse by comparison.

Definitely the worst ep of the show so far, sadly.

Easily the best episode of the show lol.

Was also pretty clear to me that she means she's afraid to reach that level of success at this point. She's been fighting back against the idea of mainstream popularity this whole series.

MartinFF7 posted...

Actually that reminds me Roba, popular recommendation is to skip watching first ep of Baccano, and having watched it (and being super confused) I kind of echo that! For whenever you get up to it in your project.

Oh, thanks for the heads-up. Should I watch the episode at the end then or just skip it entirely?

I don't know why the Baccano episode should be skipped, but seeing this tip reminds me of Haruhi's episode order controversies. I remember seeing a lot of people, even those who favor chronological order, still recommend that people should start with the episode where they made that amateur movie. I never understood that idea myself. Chronological order all the way.

I did Haruhi broadcast order and seriously regretted it. Doing the dub also didnt help. Next time, sub and chronological order, I'm sure I'll appreciate it more.

....and I cant remember the first Baccano ep so I can't answer that, I do think it's worth watching after the show (but before the OVA eps) but I'll get back to you on that.

I would recommend against skipping the first episode of Baccano personally. The argument comes down to it being confusing and sporadic, and that it may turn people away. However I don't think anyone in this topic nowadays is going to sit down to watch a completed single cour anime from a decade and a half ago and drop it after a single episode. I think it established a lot of intrigue!

Also, most importantly, you'd be missing out on crucial Keyaro-ool pronunciation if you're watching subbed.

https://youtu.be/Pl8u_hZ3xQ0?si=OOsBciMz880sIa7E

Oh, if it's just a potentially confusing intro, I think that's fine. I figured it'd be something with events from later in the series or something that'd make more sense if I watched it out of order.

The first episode of Baccano can't be any more confusing than trying to puzzle out what the writers of Highspeed Etoile are thinking, and I haven't dropped that!

Yeah, you shouldn't have to skip the first episode. Look at it this way, people over in Japan watched these shows as they were broadcasted on TV. If they were capable of piecing things together, you can as well.

That's also my defense of watching Haruhi in broadcast order.

WhiteLens posted...

That's also my defense of watching Haruhi in broadcast order.

Does that mean you shouldn't watch S2? Or do you have to rewatch S1 when you do S2, since it was interspersed with S2 when it aired?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/431016d1.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b20207b0.jpg

Watching Haruhi in 2006 broadcast order has been indefensible for 15 years now tbqh.

MacArrowny posted...

Does that mean you shouldn't watch S2? Or do you have to rewatch S1 when you do S2, since it was interspersed with S2 when it aired?

You should watch S1
Wait 3 years
Then rewatch S1 with S2 content weaved in, including all Endless Eight episodes.

That way you get the quintessential experience of someone living in Japan during 2006-2009.
...that doesn't buy DVDs.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/40147806.jpg

*SPOILERS*
When the Imouto takes center stage.

Robazoid posted...

still recommend that people should start with the episode where they made that amateur movie. I never understood that idea myself.

I feel like this is the worst example of the original haruhi to use though. That episode is SO framed like an episode 1.

Fucking Chainsaw Man, dude. This is rough. What a fucking character Denji is.

https://ibb.co/r0m6N1v

https://ibb.co/9h6YtRD

we just watched through "say i love you" - surprisingly good one!

SeabassDebeste posted...

we just watched through "say i love you" - surprisingly good one!

I tried watching this recently and absolutely hated it. Main dude sexually assaulted the main girl several times just in the three episodes I suffered through.

Speaking of!

https://x.com/sandman_AP/status/1793118735680913872

Yamcha fucked up.

I finally finished Mushishi. I started watching it roughly a year ago, but it's extremely episodic and isn't the type of show that's easy to binge. I've been watching an episode every here and there whenever the mood struck. It's about a guy who wanders around handling weird supernatural problems relating to otherworldly beings called mushi. It's a premise that should've really appealed to me. I usually like this kind of slow-paced supernatural mystery. Some episodes were great, too! Every so often there'd be a story with a really interesting idea handled in a captivating way. One-Night Bridge was my favorite. Cloudless Rain was great too.

In the end, however, I felt Mushishi had way more misses than hits. Sometimes the morals of a particular episode just didn't jive with me. Other times the stories were simply boring from beginning to end. I had trouble relating to the characters a lot of the time, too. The art style didn't help. For as beautiful as the backgrounds and stuff could be, the character art was all very samey. The eclipse special episode had, according to the Crunchyroll comments, a bunch of cameos of previous characters watching the eclipse... but I couldn't tell because everyone in this anime looks more or less the same.

This is the kind of anime where I can definitely see why it would really appeal to certain people. For me, it just felt like a lot of the stories missed the mark. I'm glad I pushed through for the occasional winner, but overall I thought Mushishi was pretty meh.

The strength of Mushishi is whether or not the stories at play work.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Speaking of!

https://x.com/sandman_AP/status/1793118735680913872

Yamcha fucked up.

Oh no! Not the voice of Chris-san from this season's popular racing anime, Highspeed Etoile :P

It sucks that he sucks.

Where's a saibaman when you need it?

NEED

https://youtu.be/3R4wTw_29KI?si=jFCy_KMW-Lp4GKSh

https://twitter.com/SydusArts/status/1767653250914775441

Urge to watch Frieren (and Konosuba season 3) rising...

Which reminds me, I don't think I posted how I watched the Konosuba movie and loved it. Even if the Megumin focus put Aqua and Darkness on the sidelines it was really great stuff and I can see how it led into the prequel series (or that was a coincidence, either way). Did first ep of S3 but will catch up on rest after my vacation, hopefully it's getting good reviews and ratings, I want even more!!

No problem with S3 so far. Thought the temporary location change would get tiring fast, but it got so wacky by the end it was totally worth it.

Real reason Megumin might have gotten her own series is because shes enormously popular. Fairly sure shes the most popular one in the series

Frieren is great, but I don't think Konosuba is the best approximation, even for a joke post. It's more like generic fantasy #100000, but it realized that stuff happens during and after the fights with the demon lords, and the characters and the world should be fun, interesting, and kinda dour at times.

As for Konosuba, all it needed was Kazuma, Aqua, and Darkness back. Megumin cannot carry comedy, nor any show, regardless of how popular she is.

I don't know if there a single example of a comedy ensemble cast where they've tried to spin one of the characters off into a solo series and it worked ouoh wait Frasier.

Megumin is no Dr Crane.

Forgetting animated series of all time Velma already