Rating ymnk works based on how easy they are to recommend
MILGRAM - 10/10. Very accessible, big-name vocaloid producers and voice actors are on it, Really good visuals and music, and a really exciting premise.
Caligula 2 - 8/10. Less accessible and reputation is a bit ruined by the first game. Good visuals and music and a good premise, and easy to seperate for the first game.
The Harmony of Mille-Feuille - 5/10. Accessible and has a unique and interesting soundtrack, with positive reviews. However it's clear it's done on a budget of two cents and a button, and it's hard to get anyone interested in the premise of "choir singers with high schooler syndrome start acapella group". All the voice actors also seem to be no-names except Moepi.
Caligula Effect - 4/10. Less accessible, and many people are driven away by the visuals, it's similarity to Persona or the overwhelming negative reviews. Has a really good soundtrack and an exciting premise.
Negative Happy - 2/10. Completely impossible to watch for non-Japanese speakers. Only reccommend to people who are highly committed to the bit enough to guess what's going on, use machine tl or rely of the very few fan tls. Clearly low budget and only has one mid-sounding song.
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annoying thing about utamille is i can't make fun of komaki uta because. she's in a band and i'm not. look at who i'm losing to. when i watched ep1 of utamille i was really annoyed w uta's shyness before realising i'm literally as bad as her if not worse and so, i begrudgingly watched the whole thing.
utamille caligula au where μ agonises over the fact that nothing she can do can make uta happy since the only person making her a miserable loser is herself
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Miserable subtitles cause this wasn't licensed, there's some Aniplus Asia stream rip that was hardsubbed and someone OCR'd them and put it in better video but these subtitles were full of typos and missing multiple lines throughout the episode - it really put my Japanese to the rest. If I liked the show I'd probably put it on hold until someone actually picked it up with a little more dedication.
But we all see the drop, I didn't like the show. Dropped 1/10 is the episode count but feels about where I'd score this. I really just didn't like this. Main character is Bocchi but a rude insanely cynical asshole that denies the premise of the show because it's not seishun enough, but we have to convince her to like a capella because it is the premise of the show after all, but they just fuckin suck at making us the audience care. All your episode 1 of a hobby show scenes where it clicks for the main character are done so weirdly, like sheet music billows in the wind when we walk into the clubroom but nobody's singing or saying anything yet and we just sit down and chat. We finally convince mc to sing and the world fades into black apart from her as the camera pans around her head, and when the world comes back she doesn't start singing until like 10 seconds later. I hate the character designs because they just wanted to have every type of school uniform in a single setting so nobody looks like they go to the same school. Weirdly the new voice actors all do a pretty decent job but the ones that have been in the industry for longer have the most deadpan "just read the lines off the script" delivery I've heard in a while. I just had no fun watching this and was desperate for it to be over. The end.
the first parabola audio drama drops tomorrow in a few hours so here are my preliminary thoughts about the members
Mizuki
honestly I feel like this says enough. Jesus fucking Christ girl
I think the dichotomy between the groups (or at least their leaders) reason for doing acapella is interesting: parabola in it for "success" and to achieve heights in the music industry while temarizawa is in it just for the passion of it all and for the bonds they strengthen with each other (see airi's quote). It reminds me a little of the contrast ave mujica and mygo's philosophies/worldviews.. idk if utamille's writing is gonna get AS insane as avemygo (because Yamanaka could if he really wanted to/was able) but you see the overlap right...? I'm curious to see how that difference leads to conflict though: Mizuki has that line in the trailer that's like "you all that aren't even thinking of aiming higher" (my Japanese is VERY amateurish [please keep that in mind throughout the rest of this post lol] but I think that's the gist), I initially thought she was addressing the rest of parabola but it'd make more sense for it to be directed to temarizawa instead...she knows airi and reirei already but that was when it was just the two of them, so I'm looking forward to how their dynamic changes. speaking of conflict: her "that youth that those girls hold so dear just might be destroyed" line (also from the trailer) is so fucking funny to me like girl you are ~21 years old beefing with a bunch of HIGH SCHOOLERS!!!!! airi and rei are the oldest but they're still 17 like those are some KIDS. not saying she's ~weird~ or anything like that, I just always find the whole "rival group is all adults and main group is all teens and there is a lot of tension and antagonizing between them" trope a riot so im honestly kinda looking forward to it. again I don't know how intense utamille is gonna get but (pointing to her CV being moeka koizumi) we should all be a little scared of her guys. "Hobby: finding young people with potential" YOU NEED TO CHILL!!!!!!!!!!!!
Zoe:
hmmm. honestly she's the one I have the least thoughts on? Like my least favorite member in Temarizawa is rei (not as in I dislike her I just like the other members more) so like....I guess i lean away from the more "responsible" types. Although I'm just now realizing that she's the first Yamanaka character that's fully foreign and not of mixed descent like muu/stork/azuma (I still haven't played caligula2 so I'm not sure if there's anyone there), so I wonder if that's gonna come up at all
Kikka:
this sounds like a real reach but I have a theory that she's actually uta's older sister...like ok listen. uta mentions having an older sister that is in uni (like kikka) and seems to live with just her dad, and not uta herself and her mom, so people were wondering if they had divorced....it would explain the difference in surnames because iirc in Japan when parents split up the children take on the names of the parent that they are in the custody of. and they have a naming scheme of æŒ in their given names, even though the reading is different! And the meanings of the first character in their given names are similar too:
Also å–œæŒ is part of the word for 嬉æŒåŠ‡ (comic opera) which is cool....overall her attitude feels like a contrast to some of the others like Mizuki and tama and closer to that of temarizawas like I was talking before. all very interesting
Tama
It's too early to try and figure out who's supposed to foil who but I feel like she definitely is one to Ururu, she's a successful and popular influencer while Ururu has like...40 subs on YouTube LMFAO. it looks like she's in charge of the arrangements? The system of 3 vocalists sounds so sick, I want to see how she conceptualized it! Also it would be funny if she only had the :3 face on when talking to her fans
Karin:
I wonder if she's supposed to parallel Kuma in that they don't talk.. although in her case it doesn't seem like it's due to insecurities BECAUSE of her voice. I love how they got an actual beatboxing player for her. I think the difference between her and temarizawa having a voice percussion and bass will be fun to listen ro
