Jitsu wa Watashi wa – 04
Every girl loves being in a Princess Carry, even serious Class Reps
It’s nice when a show comes along that takes fairly well-used paths, but with some landscaping and some great tweaks, makes them interesting and fun.
Recharging Her Batteries
Asahi just has to accept it…
It’s not like Jitsu wa Watashi wa is coming up with brand new gags left and right. But what it does do is use what it’s got to great effect. And one of the main things it has is a very good lead character. From being originally sold as kind of a ‘lovable loser’, or maybe more pitiable than lovable, Asahi has really been shown to be a person who makes things happen and gets the important-to-him things done, even if it costs him some reputation. And being the guy who finds out about the secrets of the others, he’s the one that they turn to when they have problems…
chiisai iinchou is really terrific
Like this week when, through her own prurient interest in overhearing other people’s conversation, Nagisa manages to run her External Unit out of power halfway through the school day. Instead of getting to the nurse’s office (is this a daily occurrence? Or was this just an instance of poor planning?), Nagisa ditches the big body in a bathroom stall, and then presses Asahi into helping her. And while things don’t go as easily as they could, eventually he gets her to the infirmary and plugged in. On the way, we get some of those well-used jokes, but the performances of the people involved really bring them off well, like Asahi having to go into the girls’ bathroom, Nagisa’s embarrassment at “herself” seeming to cuddle up to Asahi, and Youko’s complete denseness about Asahi’s feelings. It’s also a situation where just a little toilet humor helps make a standard setup funnier, both with Asahi’s insistence that he has to leave class and his off-the-cuff remark about Nagisa flushing. There’s also the conversation that got Nagisa all hot and bothered in the first place, where a completely innocent conversation is misinterpreted, and it works because of Nagisa’s uptight personality and the complete ludicrousness of thinking that these two would be openly talking about having sex all night right in the middle of the classroom.
Someone misunderstood an innocent conversation. Someone’s got their mind in the gutter.
Putting It On The Line
The wings just add another level of expression
But the episode’s rocket really gets lit when it brings Mikan into the picture, nabbing tiny Nagisa, leading to the idea that it’s a scale figure of the class rep. I think this did a lot to bring Mikan down from ‘terrible person’ to ‘normal school girl’, because even though she has a lot of questions about it, they’re all normal curiosity. That doesn’t stop Asahi from getting his reputation in trouble again to help Nagisa, especially when Youko turns to the other side, and starts calling him “Eromine”. But the show again distinguishes itself with the back and forth reactions of Asahi, Mikan, and Nagisa, using the expressivity of the art style to tremendous effect. They even manage to work in a little bit of exposition by having Mikan recount the School Mysteries (which are all things that are going to be in the show).
Of course Mikan peeks, doesn’t she? Investigative reporter and all…
But Asahi really goes the extra mile with his “Whatever it takes” attitude about protecting the secrets of Nagisa and Youko (even though it seems like Youko is hardly worried about her fangs anymore). From the “sullied name of Eromine” to literally taking it on the chin when Big Small Nagisa punches him to get them out of the trap they’re in, his willingness to take any hit – rhetorical, emotional, or literal – to protect the people he knows (because I think he’d totally do the same for Okada, Shimada, or Sakurada as well) helps the audience in believing that girls like Mikan or Nagisa (and hopefully even Youko) would fall for him. It’s not like the shows where the MC does one nice, but hardly extraordinary, thing and gets legions of girls devoted to him. If he does anything at all. And that’s nice to see, especially in a season that follows an airing of High School DxD, where Issei Hyoudou exhibits the same kind of selflessness in helping the people he cares about, an example I’ve held up before.
Where do you think you’re looking!?!?
Yes, we’re definitely going to see the “ephemeral horned lady” and the “Pervert of Light”. In fact, we got a taste of the horned lady this week. I’m a bit spoiled, but I won’t go into it more, but I think it’s obvious that she’s someone at the school, with her own office. That leads to just a few possibilities. But as always, I like this kind of mixed universe, where we have vampires and aliens and divine spirits and others all existing. And along with that, we have a normal guy who is a really good guy, and just tries to do the best he can to help the people he cares about.
Can’t just put someone in for that short amount of time, can they?
About Highway
Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
There’s a tired old dog in drama writing that I’ve complained about before. The Third Leg. It means that conflict should not have two sides, but three, just to complicate things and make them more interesting/compelling. It rarely works. In this show, with Youko’s turn “helping” out, they’ve done new tricks with that old dog. There was plenty of exasperation and exaggeration here, but they built it carefully from the easiest of parts. Damn good pacing, and I laughed me arse off to the point of not being able to breathe…
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
The exaggeration works in this show for me because they’ve given themselves the large range for it to operate in. Much like I enjoyed Nazo no Kanojo X because it used economy of emotion to allow for a large range of reactions, I enjoy that this show has broadened the possible range of reactions by using such expressivity with the exaggeration you mention. There are obvious stages of surprise, happiness, shock, etc. Just in Youko’s wings are more expressiveness than most anime use.
POWUH: Beginner (20-35) with 27 comments
I’ve been anticipating this anime and I’m satisfied. Too bad, it does deviate quite pointlessly from the original source earning some ire from the fans. It’s a shame other than that everything else is well-executed.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I highly doubt it was entirely ‘pointless’, if someone made the decision to make changes. If it was pointless, why make the change, especially knowing what the expectations generally are with adaptations? Therefore, if it was content, one can conclude that they either left it out because it was a disliked part of the story, it was an unnecessary part which would have added cost or thrown off the timing, or that they thought it simply worked better without it. And if it was art style, as it seems most of the discussion in episode 1 was about, then I think that was explained pretty well in Shirobako, when Iguchi struggled with the character designs. It’s certainly not at the level of something like Isuca, where they didn’t even bother to make the characters look like the source. And if one of the differences is the great visual range of expression that they gained, then I’m all for it.
Whether one likes or dislikes the changes is up to the individual, but as someone who is just watching the anime, there are no holes that have been opened up in the plot or setting, and the characters seem to be attractive and still distinctive.
POWUH: iLurker with 1 comments
[…] Mikan is totally vindicated! […]