We’re done with the portmanteaus, no more Bakemono or Nisemono, just Monogatari Second Season. It’s a bit of a misnomer really considering we’re thirty episodes deep already with ONAs scattered about like confetti and a series chronology that’s increasingly difficult to cohere into a straightforward story. Straightforwardness is not what you get with the Monogatari franchise though, which is both in its favour and to its detriment; however more than any of the previous series - the watershed Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari then Nekomonogatari - this is what everything has been building up to.
this isn’t just fan-service, this is Shinbo x SHAFT fanservice
Not in terms of story mind you, it’s still the dialogue-heavy, supernatural-affliction scaffolding that has driven the plot from the outset. Certainly not in terms of characters either with the return of just about every female lead barring Suruga and barely a handful of new additions, some of which are difficult to tell apart from already established cast members. No, the build up has been there to tear down and put back together, to lay bare the characters and tropes that, to a certain extent, the franchise has built around itself.
Usagi Drop proves that good characters and a solid story never go out of fashion. It divorces itself from so many anime tropes - big eyes, sparkles, eyecatches - that it seems hard to understand why it was animated in the first place. With both the time-spanning manga and feature film recently released, like Kimi ni Todoke, you can now pick your particular brand of drama. But as the curtain closes on the final episode, it's obvious that without the watercolour palette, Rin's sparrow smile and the abstract perfection of animation, the series could only be half as charming and half as endearing.
it's just endlessly satisfying to have a story that doesn't stupefy, that deals in characters rather than archetypes
The story cheats somewhat by placing Rin as a cogent six year-old rather than a bratty teenager or howling babe, either end of that spectrum and moments such as losing one's first teeth, or going to school for the first time are lost and replaced by times far less adorable. Similarly Rin's demeanour as a mature proto-maid and Daikichi's chronic sensibility smooths over a lot of the abrasiveness that adopting a growing child would entail. Like all good stories though, it is brevity that keeps the story tight. Eleven episodes means omissions and dangling threads are many, but crucially these do nothing to alter the warmth at the heart of the series.
You'd be forgiven for recalling Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like a Lady" in the opening credits of the voluminously titled Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru; not for the song's namesake but because were it not for the obvious breasts, the lady would certainly resemble a gentleman. This is not surprising with an art style that revels in the androgynous, emblematic of a genre commonly characterised by male homosexual romances. Nothing in the opening episodes attempts to dispel this association, in many ways it revels in it with the liberal use of tropes that are keen to imply rather than extol. Despite the genre trappings however, the opening episodes are a muted but disappointing introduction to a series which while not widely accessible, plays to its strengths despite the ultimately derivative result of doing so.
women who are attentive, graceful and the only bright lights in a world populated by frowns and stoic metrosexual manliness
Yuki is an orphan, found abandoned in a hedge with only his name affixed to him, growing up feeling that he was unwanted by his parents. It doesn't help that he has the ability to see people's pasts and emotions with only a touch, making him increasingly isolated despite his looks earning him scores of adoring fans. Yuki's life is shaken up when his supposed half-brother makes an appearance and his ability to read other's emotions spins into overdrive, manifesting the unfortunate ability to shatter all glass around him. The sibling, Takashiro, seems to be involved was mysterious silver-eyed man, Zess, who saves Yuki when a classmate takes a deadly interest in him. Yuki's ability may yet come to have some greater significance and his life shows no indication of settling back down.
