We’ve all been there- we’ve seen so many different shows over the years, so many of what would be dubbed ‘classics’ by the anime fandom, that we think: ‘There can’t possibly be any more gems out there for me to watch!’ I’ve been watching anime for almost four years now, and this is something I remember thinking barely into my second year!! Granted, it may have been a bit early for me to have thought such a thing back then (blimey, I hadn’t even seen Berserk or Ghost in the Shell at that point), but these days thing are certainly a little… thin on the ground in terms of shows…
This year’s been very difficult in terms of deciding what to watch. I’ve mainly stuck to watching fairly new releases, and shows I wouldn’t even have dreamed of bringing myself to watch but a year or two ago. Understandably, given I felt forced into watching some of these shows, my thoughts on them, pre-viewing experience, were, for the most part, negative. However, on more than one occasion, with more than one show, I’ve been blown away this year. Below are three examples of shows that have done this.
Ga-Rei Zero- I hadn’t heard much about this before starting it, but what I had heard had been negative, a friend of mine even called it boring! So when I actually watched the show myself, I was taken aback to find this wasn’t the case at all!! GRZ has one of the strongest opening episodes I’ve ever seen, starting by showing what we’d later discover was the explosive conclusion of the girls’ stories- a risky move as it could potentially put people off continuing (well I know how it ends now, so why bother?), but I loved it- it was incredibly satisfying to later see characters’ motivations fleshed out, and learn just what had happened to lead up to the cataclysmic events shown during episode one.
Nichijou- I hadn’t heard many positive things about Nichijou either, and what was positive simply focused on it being funny, and seeing as what’s funny is so incredibly objective, that’s hardly the strongest argument for watching a show! But Nichijou actually was… very funny!! It was ridiculous, and over-the-top, and so incredibly enthusiastic in its presentation, you couldn’t help but laugh!!! Having KyoAni animate it helped massively- some scenes were very experimental in terms of animation, the scene with the girls trapped in an elevator, for example. Only showing rectangular glimpses of their faces, and having the rest of the background black, really added to the scene’s claustrophobic feel, making the girls’ momentary lapse of sanity easy to catch on to!
House of small cubes- A beautiful short which follows one elderly man as he reminisces over his life. Such a simple premise- and that’s what made me originally overlook it, but I felt blessed to have seen it when I watched it over summer. As there is no dialogue much of the short relies on symbolism. I loved the symbolism of the man’s house itself, its rooms gradually becoming smaller and smaller, as it to symbolise his world growing smaller, or his life drawing to a close. Simply beautiful.
So as you can see, no matter how much of a grizzled anime veteran you become, chances are, there’s always something worthwhile out there for you to watch, something that will blow you away. Who knows, maybe, like me, you’ll feel coerced into watching shows you might not have given a chance before when there were still so many obvious choices for shows to watch out there, and, like me, your low low expectations of these shows will make it easy for them to catch you off guard, and being better than you, with your jaded views, could ever have possibly imagined…
Watashi Wa Bucho!! 