Are those supposed to be clarinets?
If they are, that’s a point for irony considering they did Nodame Cantabile.
Looking back at the year, J.C. Staff really nailed down slice of life. The only series that prevented a clean sweep was the second season of Zero no Tsukaima, which was a sore point indeed.
Even in titles like Sky Girls and Shakugan no Shana Second, setups that imply more fighting than anything else, slice of life dominated screen time. So some congratulations are in order for, um, forcing slice of life upon areas where it was not only unexpected, but in the case of the latter, largely undesired.
I’m willing to let that kind of thing slide in Sky Girls, though, whereas even I have mixed opinions about SnS II despite not having seen the first season.
Maybe it can be chalked up to source material but whatever the reason, the end product was several episodes that had an atmosphere completely at odds with the opening. It was awkward, as if the original vision (combat, mythology) was ripped apart and a new one (school romance, relationship advice) spliced in, the result being an ungainly (and perhaps unsightly) amalgamation.
I guess what I’m trying to get at is, I felt that slice of life was worked into Sky Girls to decent effect, while elsewhere it was merely a tool of convenience, something tacked on to pad SnS II’s episode count. Its use felt like a gimmick, all sudden and with little relation to anything that happened in the first two episodes.
I’m not refusing to be enlightened or educated if a show makes an attempt, but no matter how well one rolls with the punches shift in direction, it takes a lot of something – be that courage, indifference, or courage to be indifferent – to not feel let down.
That’s what it comes down to: sudden shocks, being shoved off the path, a defiance of expectations. And not something ethereal like pre-release hype, but more substantial stuff built up over the course of two episodes (one episode for first season viewers). It’s as simple as managing expectations, but we see over and over again that simple is not necessarily easy.
2 Comments
I enjoyed the slice of life in Sky Girls. It made sense since doing missions wouldn’t be the -only- thing that happens on a cruiser at sea for weeks to months. And some of the simple things still involved the Sonic Divers (like fishing), so we still got to see various pieces of action. And if you eliminated the slice of life, the series would become repetitive and boring with a WORM-of-the-day schedule.
In Shana II, I guess there was far too much slice of life and too little action. And because the first season was around, viewers had expectations that weren’t met. Without season one, maybe we would have accepted Shana II as a slice of life series with a bit of action, instead of expecting the other way around.
Or if Shana would have just turned blazing and unsheathed her sword at Kazumi or Konoe more often while she was arguing with them, it would have been more fun.
You’re right in that no force can afford to fight all the time, so the focus in Sky Girls shouldn’t be, and isn’t, on destroying WORMs all the time. I liked the fishing shenanigans, too.