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im the sweetest internet-demon, EHEHEHEHEH

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The Maid I Hired Recently is Mysterious

最近雇ったメイドが怪しい

Romcom by BLADE, SILVER LINK Based on a manga by Wakame Konbu

Length: 11 episodes Aired: 2022 (Summer) Rating: C

Plot: After his parents died in a car accident and had to left the old staff go, young Yuuri tried to live on his own, which was a lot harder than he expected. One day, he's surprised on his doorstep by Lilith, a maid offering her services, which he reluctantly accepts. Yet, he feels something is off with her: she's far too competent to be working for free in a dingy old mansion, sometimes looks like she's muttering curses, and he seems to lose himself in her eyes.

Thoughts: A few months ago I looked at The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated, which I've found to be an extremely amusing show that combined a lot of the things I look for in the cute girls genre to the point I'll probably write about the manga once it wraps up, so it's only appropriate I look at another adaptation of of Wakame Konbu's work, which came out the following year. Unfortunately, while the premise had some potential, there's so little meat in the story it could have easily been a 4 part 30-45 minute OVA.

While the romance angle was a bit weird, the dynamic between both can be funny at times: Lilith teasing him and saying something like "oh, of course I put a love potion on your food" and Yuuri, no filter fully honest replying "I KNEW IT THAT'S WHY I LOVE YOUR EYES AND CAN'T STOP THINKING OF YOUR BEAUTIFUL FACE", cut to Lilith blushing, but I've found that a bit too thin and yet, a bit too reliant on repeating this over and over. While I often complain these sort of shows (or the manga they're based on) often go overboard with the number of characters they feature and then end up not having enough time to do anything with them, I think this was one case where the cast is too small, and with just Yuuri's classmate Tsukasa and her butler Fujisaki (who is aware of who Lilith really is), closer to being recurring than regular characters, the problem of the show feeling just a one-note joke gets a lot harder to ignore because you are seeing the same episode repeating over and over, and when the character dynamics change, it's something like Yuuri crying how he can't live without Lilith anymore and then the next story he's thinking she's suspicious again. Overall It feels there's no progression at all and it's just repeating the same scenario over and over, same reason why I maybe should have written something about a show like Kimagure Orange Road or Miyuki by now but then realise I'd have to watch them again and I'd probably just prefer to write about their soundtracks (yes yes I'd still say after hearing that song), really not a fan of the style of romcom that resets everything at the end of the chapter/episode, and also why I regard Maison Ikkoku so highly: sure, there's a lot of padding based on misunderstandings because Takahashi gonna Takahashi, but it isn't just a love story, it's about growing to be worthy of someone's love on one side, and about overcoming grief and allowing yourself to be loved again on the other. On something like Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro, which you could argue started from something even thinner, a fetish webcomic by a erodoujin author, you can see the dynamics between the characters gradually change. At least in this adaptation, by the end it doesn't feel it changes that much from the first three episodes. Maybe the biggest problem was that the payoff for the story just wasn't there, the big mystery that made Lilith look so suspicious and cagey about her past really doesn't feel that much of a big deal. Something that would be more interesting would be getting into if Yuuri loves Lilith romantically, as an older sister or as a friend, which comes too late to the story, I'm sure not for the manga, although if it explores this is a different matter, I just read the last chapter after watching the last episode.

Visually it's one of those shows that tries to do something a bit different: colours have the textures of very vibrant watercolours, which works in some places, in other it gives "flash game developer running photos in Akvis for backgrounds", and characters have a pencil-like outline. This is something other shows also did and even I experimented with when I did the Gunbuster Science Lessons in HD, but I ended up also adding a denser, thinner line for the same reason it irks me a bit here: sometimes it has a big gap and it annoys me because the rest of the colours are quite strong. While I'm not fully on board with how this looks, it's not something that gets way too distracting and I'm always in for studios to experiment in shows that could look pretty generic otherwise.

At the end, this is a show that I wanted to like more, but the premise was far more basic than I expected and stretched pretty thin, when there were other themes the story could have explored. These sort of shows are almost always an automatic B-grade around here, but this is closer to a D. Quite disappointed after the ride that was The Great Jahy.

Plus:

The initial dynamics are fun (Yuuri having no filter, Tsukasa being a romantic, etc)...

Minus:

... but it doesn't have anything else beyond that, making it feel stale.

—

Hello everyone! My name is Author (Milk545), and this is my blog!

Art, fanart, various shield posts, AUs and much more are posted here. It's like a warehouse of all sorts of stuff🤙

I also have other social networks like VK, Pinterest, and maybe more will appear. If I even like anything from the others. I don't see them as vibrantly as Tumblr, but they still need to be shared. Oh, there's also another blog - Ask blog 'bout Guiseppe Spaghetti(or DR!Peppino). There will be answers to questions from the character's point of view, and a little lore. Here he also appears in the form of cute sketches

About my AUs. . .

TADC X PT Slop — A fusion of two projects, a game and a TV series, into a single universe. The characters are also combined, and there's a sort of middle ground.

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My goal now is to reach 200 subscribers (that's so low), at least by mid-2027 or even the end.

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Welcome! I make fanart of OC's, my favourite ships, art in general and here to support my friend @laxxtothemaxx with her shenanigans.

Self taught and beginner artist.

I love music, indie animations, games, art (obviously), both anime and manga!

Multi-fandom,but currently in:

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FAVORITE COMMUNITY: All 420 children of Oswald post made: 6-09-26 last updated: 6-12-26

Millennium Actress

千年女優

Drama by Madhouse Directed by Satoshi Kon

Length: 87 minutes Released: 2002 Rating: S

Plot: Film production company Ginei has decided to demolish their outdated studios, and to celebrate the occasion, documentarian Genya Tachibana does an interview with Chiyoko Fujiwara, once the brightest star of the company but retired and living in seclusion for the last 30 years. A big fan of hers, he brings her a key, which becomes the starting point of the retelling of her memories.

Thoughts: And finally, it's time to close this joint's dive into Satoshi Kon's work, regrettably as It's one that should have taken a lot longer, but happy to have completed it. It's the one I'm rewatching remembering less of the plot, so it's probably much closer to a first watch than any of the others, although I did remember bits of it here and there.

Chiyoko's story is one of a shy girl from a moderately well-off family during the era of increased military adventurism across East Asia of the early Hirohito reign. After her mother turned down an invitation for her to become an actress, she comes across a man on the run holding a painting, send his chasers the other way and shelters him. The main visual device is putting Genya and his cameraman Kyoji in the middle of her retelling of her story, making them like crew on a film, and during these moments it's never clear how much is Chiyoko's retelling parts of her life or her roles, as they move quickly from one movie to another, or if there's even any meaningful difference: how much did Chiyoko put of herself in her roles? Was her rise to stardom influenced by her ability to channel the sense of loss and holding on to hope she shared with a country recovering from political struggles and then obliteration, where I'm sure it could be years to discover if someone you knew was alive or dead, if ever? Up to a point, it's really not important to know if she really did chase him on a train platform or it was just a scene from a movie, the feeling was there all the same, and the only reason she accepted to do movies was so that she could blindly follow him to Manchuria, and becoming a star was maybe just in service of making herself as visible as possible so he could see her face and find her. Genya isn't a reliable indicator either, as he's both well versed enough to remember the lines as Chiyoko re-enacts moments of her acting career, but is also aware of her personal life, and as we learn even later, was even closer to her than he let on, having working as a directors' assistant in productions where she took part. Still, like Perfect Blue, all this blending of what may be fiction and reality is never confusing, which is something that many directors who try these sorts of stories often look track of, and as I've mentioned, end up doing the “it hurts itself in it’s confusion” thing where the viewer is left more confused than the characters. Of course she was never a princess in feudal Japan, but I feel the temptation for many would be to repeat the train platform sequence over and over again, because "yesssss let's show how deep this is by making it extra confusing". The movie doesn't try to be either, ultimately it's a story of finding purpose in life.

As the years went by, she still held to the key he gave her as a reminder on the promise she made to guess what was the key is for, to the point Junichi, one of the directors in the studio and who wanted to marry Chiyoko, conspires with Eiko to make the key disappear, knowing the reason Chiyoko abandoned her first production to chase the painter into Northern Manchuria after being tipped by a fortune-teller was nothing more than a plan to get rid of her, knowing the potential she had to overtake her as the brightest star in the studio. She later discovers the key hidden away by him, at the point she gets one final tip, a letter from the painter from the hands of the policeman who chased the painter, now a decrepit old man atoning for his wrongs. She gives chase to Hokkaido once again, but it was fruitless, as the man confides to young Genya he tortured him to death. Chiyoko returns to acting and during an earthquake she is saved by Genya, but on the reflection of the helmet she sees the old lady who has been haunting her, maybe no more than her subconscious realising she's not the same teen girl who helped a dissident escape from the police and who he painted on the walls of her now destroyed home, she loses the key one final time, kept by Genya, and retires. Back to the modern world, the earthquakes take a toll on her fragile health and she collapses, still having time to tell Genya on her death bed her final realisation: even if she was not reunited with the painter, she loved to chase him.

Visually, it's graded on a midpoint between the ramped up OVA of Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers; the character design is an unmistakably a Satoshi Kon work, and while they might lack some technical detail, they are extremely expressive and given the nature of his works, it's not a bad trade-off. I do wish I was more knowledgeable of Japanese cinema, because sure, I think everyone picks up the reference to Toshiro Mifune sequence in Throne of Blood as Kyoji is bombarded by arrows and the Godzilla-type film, but I'm sure there's a few more clues here and there (I just know I've see that shot where Chiyoko's character is pointing a short sword at her own throat, although it might just be one of those visual clichés with hundreds of years of history). In terms of music, this was the first step of his partnership with Susumu Hirasawa, being a fan of him and at this point with a couple of credits under his belt, with the Detonator Orgun OVA I've looked at last week and Berserk. As mentioned before, it's a match made in heaven, and he's the perfect person to put to music the otherworldly visuals and oneiric plots Kon committed himself to.

At the end of this trip, there's a part of me who thinks all the big guys who want to make shows and movies for recap obsessed people that are MINDFUCKS full of PLOT TWISTS purely to make bland stories look more interesting by turning them into conversation fodder should all be rounded up and thrown into an active volcano in an attempt to bring Satoshi Kon and David Lynch back from the dead.

Plus:

Another extremely touching story by Satoshi Kon

Minus:

This is my roleplay blog for the Dragon Priests! Note that headcanon is heavily used and several ocs are featured. Please play nice!

Yuru Yuri

ゆるゆり

Comedy yuri by TYO Animations (2015), Lay-duce, W-Toon Studio (2018) Based on a manga by Namori

Season 3, OVA, ONA Length: 12 episodes, Aired: 2015 (fall), 2018 Rating: B

Plot: More adventures of the Amusement Club and the Student Council.

Thoughts: And we're back. Well, a month for you, for me it's a couple of days after I finished writing my thoughts on the first two seasons produced by Doga Kobo and scheduled the posts, and now I'm heading into the TYO adaptations, which all were released in 2015, and also the 2019 OVA .

I'm doing it chronologically, so let's start with Nachuyachumi! a 60 minute OVA that starts with a hot day at the Tea Room, Chinatsu spiling tea on herself, Yui thinking she wet herself then helping her change, at the moment Kyouko walks in and witnesses what she thought was some sort of perversion she wanted to take part in. After finding a tent, they decide go on a short adventure camping for their Shummer vacashions, starting on a trip on a Mirakurun train, then the student council joining them in and doing the mistake of trusting Sakurako with buying food preparation stuff, and then a test of courage at night in the woods which ends up with Kyouko and Ayano seeing a bloodied head, which you can guess what it was at this time. It's overall nothing spectacular, and feels more of a refresher of the characters and the kind of hijinks they get up up, bringing back some of the recurring bits, like Kyouko's animal pajamas, their sisters, or Nana never being too far away from exploding something. It would be probably something that felt a lot better after two and a half years since the last episode of the adaptation, but it's still something quite fun to spend an hour with (B). It got two extra TV length episodes, the first had the girls on the Amusement Club playing catch with water balloons until Kyouko had a better idea, Sakurako swearing she saw the ghosts of four girls stumbling in the night, Kyouko taking her camera to the club, and after taking some new photos they reminisce with photos of their camping trip, and in the second Sakurako (who for some reason leaves has a Christmas tree on her bedroom all year long) decides to do something for Ayano since she's always sharing her pudding (well, not willingly) and Himawari suggests inviting them to dinner, while Kyouko goes to Yui's to finish homework but they end up playing videogames with Akari and Chinatsu, while they try to tire her out to they can get a photo of her sleeping, since she did the same to all of them. Fundamental viewing? Probably not, but still fun (B). After these re-introductions to the characters we got to the main course, the third season of the show, where I feel it tried to be more "cute" and rely less on bits, or at least in repeating most of the recurring jokes from the first two seasons. It has, however, one of my favourite stories of the whole show, where Rise arrives and starts helping everyone in the cast one by one with something the previous character gave them before as thanks. It has no dialogue, only music like a silent film. They did remove Akarin's introductions, can't say I approve of that, but it's still a quite entertaining show (B).

Visually, for all three 2015 releases it feels they just looked at the original adaptation and said "don't change a thing", and if I don't know why Doga Kobo were not on board, although in 2015 they had their hands full with Himouto! Umaru-Chan (so they were too busy with the Umaruuuun to get back to Akariiiiin), TYO Animations did a good job on making the transition between studios feel seamless. There's maybe a moment here and there you might have felt Doga Kobo would put something a bit more, but nothing really worth mentioning, beyond a really weird scaling error where Sakurako seems to have a giant head (or Ayano a really small hand) and some occasional animation slip-ups.

Then, another four years down the line in celebration of the 10th year of serialization it got a crowd-sourced new 30 minute OVA, this time by Lay-duce. It starts with the Amusement Club playing cavemen, because they wanted to reminisce about the last 10 years but gone too far, then decide to hold a big party with food and games. And wigs. It's another fun episode to add to the series at a point I think everyone realised it was very much a fans only thing, around the same level as most the the 2015 releases (B), and leading to it to promote it, also got a collection of four web shorts, Mini Yuri, with the characters in their chibi forms from W-Toon Studio. First has Kyouko making a very wrong presentation of the characters, second has the amusement club becoming YuriTubers, third Kyouko decides to organize the Yurilympics, and finally a murder mystery. I'm all for making omake cuts with cute versions of the characters, but it's strange when the original version are already that cute. It's just a bit of fun (that even has the VAs of Kyouko and Yui cosplaying as the characters) so let's just leave it at that (-). From here, while the manga keeps going there's no new adaptations since, but there's still two movies left based on the spinoff about Sakurako and her sisters that I'm sure I'll get to in another time.

Plus:

Makes a good use of its expanding cast

Minus: