Anime Fall Season 2013 Review, Part 4

All good things must come to an end. This is it, the final word on the 2013 Fall anime season.

Galilei Donna also seemed to be a show rushing with nowhere to go. The premise was a little odd; three sisters living in a future where people travel by airships that tend to look like goldfish, where global warming has begun to wreck the climate, and there is a severe global energy shortage. The three, who are apparently the descendants of Galileo, are being hunted down by a nefarious organization looking to steal some amazing but non-descript object he left behind that they expect the sisters have. Yeah, the premise is out there, but it had potential. The animation was outstanding, and the action was well done. But the story seemed haphazard. Events were logically connected, but tied together loosely. That all could have been forgiven by a better ending. The ending was plotted out poorly. The whole courtroom scene was cheesy and done terribly. The ending for Roberto was nonsensical to say the least. It’s good for what entertainment and drama it offers, but it easily could have been much better as a series. You constantly feel like there should be something more to it, even if you don’t know exactly what that thing is.

Similar to White Album, I had not started Little Busters: Refrain at the start of the season because I had to catch up on the first Little Busters. It’s a clearly different situation, however, since Refrain actually picks up directly from where the original series ends off, thus my impression of Refrain bares directly on the first Little Busters. Based on the way I know many people looked at the series, the comment I am about to make is simultaneously not a big surprise, and will anger fans. Here goes; too much pointless drama.

The show is set up like many of Key’s stories. You will have a surreal, supernatural tinted story, full of drama, crying, sadness and tragedy. And shows like that are good all their own. But LB and LB:Refrain just had too much drama for the sake of drama. For instance, the arc when Kyouske had Rin “go away to another school” was way overdone as far as I’m concerned. It was done as though she was literally being sent to die. I understand she was shy and had a hard time fitting in with others, but to raise it to that level of drama was borderline absurd. Furthermore, the fact that they ended the story so cleanly, while satisfying in the sense that what are actually very likable characters avoided death, did not sync with the series itself. The premise is that the situation was dire enough that no one else but Riki and Rin could survive, yet after all that reliving of the same several days they manage to wake up and pull everyone off the bus safe and sound. It all just seemed a bit too easy.

Overall I’d say that the story’s characters are very likeable, and that the majority of their stories are engaging and entertaining. Separated as standalone shows, as in completely different anime, they each might have been especially great. But tied together as they are it’s just too much and overkill. The same way a tad bit of fan-service across an entire series means little to it overall and too much kills it, drama makes a series worth watching while piling on the drama like they did here makes it a soupy mess in the end. It’s not a complete mess. It’s one of the better shows of the season, and of the year, but you want to be a bit of a drama hound to enjoy this show, or alternatively be able to ignore the drama parts when it so suits you.

The one thing missing from anime this year was a truly relaxing anime, a series that isn’t full of drama, or strife, or over-the-top antics or any such thing. Gingitsune: Messenger Fox of the Gods filled that role quite nicely. I know a number of people who compared it to Natsume and His Book of Friends, but really the story is possibly even slower than that. It is a story all about a girl who is the daughter of a shrine keeper, and has inherited the power to see the messengers to the gods. The comedy is subdued, the drama is next to non-existent. The show reminds me a lot of Aria. It has a story that could easily be drawn outwards into a complex and intricate parable of one sort or another, yet it remains down to earth despite its definitive grounding in the supernatural. It is easily a show to love, but also an easy one to hate. Adrenaline junkies will hate this show. If you love something like Kill la Kill, this show will be far too slow and neat for you. Even if you love something like Little Busters, this show lacks any of the massive level of drama so they likely won’t be entertained. It is, nevertheless, my number two (this or Arpeggio, not completely sure).

So, if you’ve been keeping track, that leaves one show left. My number one series of the fall season, without a doubt, is Kyousogiga. The mini-series from last year was like the ultimate tease compared to the full series. The surrealism of the story, the blending of the fantasy and history, the sometimes frenetic and sometimes slow pacing, the melancholy and the exuberance, even the animation style, all together makes for an amazing series. Plus, I can’t think of any series that has ever started with episode 0, had a .5 episode, and ended on episode 10. Okay, the those three things didn’t really serve any part of my judgment, but the fact that you can point out such eccentricities about the series points to the spirit behind the show that made it so enjoyable.

Younger Koto’s wildness and literally wide-eyed view of the world, mixed with her perceptiveness and moments where she reflects that she is a child struggling to find her place and connect with her family, makes her easily one of the most relatable characters all year, despite the fact that she is literally the child of a god and the incarnation of a god. Older Koto is elegant and has such a graceful presence, while also having an insanely childish spirit to her too, which is hard to convincingly merge in any character but was done well here. The three siblings are entertaining apart, and even more so together. There is very, very, little about this show that you can say was bad. I know that because it is more eclectic than most series many people will not see it, let alone rank it so highly in the best shows of the Fall or 2013, but for my money it is indeed the best series of the Fall 2013 anime season, and one of the best of the entire year. I think this show deserves to go into the pages of history as one of the classics.

Well, that ends that. 2013 was an amazing year for anime. Things seem to be getting off to a fast start for 2014. But, to know exactly what I will be following this winter, you’ll have to come back here next week. Hope to see you then.