/a/ - anime/random

Forget Junji Ito collection, this was the scariest monster this season.

Japan's Antarctica story was cool as fuck.
After WW2 they were let to reach Antarctica, but only through a route that was considered impossible. The Nips said "fuku uu", collected money from all over the country, build a boat and reach Antarctica by breaking the ice with their boat. And they have too keep on doing this every time they go there. But the mad men just don't give a shit.

Shirase's mother is a shitty parent.

You know, this show really starts to annoy me. It started so swell and now I just grind my way through because, well, might as well finish it at this point. 9 episodes. 9 out of 13 episodes and they're still technically not there. And the newest episode basically amounts to some weak development between the icy captain and Shirase and TENNO HEIKA BANZAI.

>>23690
I'm in the same icebreaker. The character drama at this point is frustrating given that I'd kind of expected the show to focus more on the actual challenge of their expedition now that they're practically there. Had been hanging out for the local connection of Fremantle but since they just showed the markets and glossed over the rest the only thing keeping me going is commitment to see it through to the end and maybe some airfield and helicopter operations.

>>23690
>>23694
Watch out for the sunken costs fallacy. If an anime really isn't for you, you don't 'cut your losses' by watching until the end, you just lose more. There are corner cases where it's worth giving it a chance until the end, but if it becomes clear that the place the anime is going isn't where you want to go, it's never too late to get off. I've dropped anime in the last 2-3 episodes, even after the final episode on some occasion.

Myself, I rather enjoyed the latest episode. I found the scene where they set foot on the ice highly climactic, and I appreciated the backstory/development between Shirase and the captain. The random bitch-dude and patriotic themes are capable of annoying me but I found them to be used correctly to drive the main themes forward. I'm telling you this to give you an idea of what liking this anime looks like, for comparison.

Now let's stop and consider what lies ahead. Weather hardships, probably used to enhance drama and for comedic effect. Shirase coming to terms with the loss of her mother, and the girls generally learning something about themselves. The Kimari-Megumi reencounter, with both having grown a bit. Sound like something worth sticking around for?

>>23690
Yuzuki is the main reason I'm still watching along with the possibility of seeing base operations as >>23694 said.

>>23662
I can't actually find any online sources for that in English, only in Japanese. Funny how these language barriers work. It is probably well sourced in print, though.

We are at the Antarctica base now!
I won't lie, I might have wanted an episode or two more on Antarctica itself, but let's not kid ourselves. If was going to be an anime just about Antarctica we wouldn't even have the high school girls in it. Antarctica is important, but is also the method through which Kimari got her wish from episode one granted. The show is also about her and the rest of the girls and their journey as people. It is a coming of age story no matter how you look at it. Could this element itself have been done better? Sure, there were some kind of very episodish and whatever parts especially after they left Japan. I would definitely say the first episodes were a lot stronger, but you also got to experience more emotions of excitement and strive with the characters. Everything was connected properly, not it is more episodish. Now that they were already on the boat and even Antarctica, it is going to be realistically a lot of boring work. So the creators of the anime tried to add some high school spice to it. And by no means was there any hard drama.
Also they took 3 months off school. They spend like a week at least in Australia. It probably takes at least a week if not more to get to Antarctica itself by ship. In total that easily would be a month or more of travelling around.
Now we are at Antarctica. The most "exciting" thing will be when they show us the more Hollywood movie moment of how Shirase's mother disappeared. The rest I really don't expect it to be much different than the boat. Some character things mixed with some showcases of what people do in Antarctica. And it is the summer at that, otherwise I guess it would make even less sense for high schoolers to be there and even "civilians" honestly.
Including today's episode we have 4 episodes in Antarctica. Even the Megumi situation was resolved today so I expect a montage of them coming home at the end. We were already on the boat once, they won't repeat it. And they implied from next episode they will be doing their TV documentary thing, which means we will get to see more of what they are doing at the base. Just about what you would expect.

It's finally reaching an end. These last episodes went full emotional and they managed to do them pretty nicely, seeing the girls grow so close has been heartwarming.
The last episode was a little too intentionally tear-jerking, but nevermind that, there where so many good scenes, so many masterful direction moments in so little time. Despite not being my favorite show this season it truly is the most well-done anime in some time.

I cried really hard.

>>24008
>The last episode was a little too intentionally tear-jerking
Then consider me successfully jerked off.

Trolled.
Yes, it wasn't a documentary, but then again maybe it is silly to expect one from anime to begin with.
It was a coming-of-age drama and it did a great fucking job at it. It never turned into melodrama and never felt annoying, while at the same time there was Mahoutsukai no Yome, which was that the whole time. Instead in Sora Yori I felt closer to the characters and their simple, but genuine emotions. I actually managed to related to them.
The one truly bad thing was the last episode CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Fucking Japs, I hope they burn in hell.

>>24105
>Fucking Japs, I hope they burn in hell.
What kills me is that she looks worse with the short hair.

>>24110
Isn't that usually the case?

>>24110
>>24111
It's never not the case.

>>24111
>>24118
I usually like short hair, but Shirase just looks dumb like her incompetent mother did.

>>24119
>like her incompetent mother did
Very rude.

>>24120
I could be a better mother. In fact, it's one of my dreams.

>>24122
Follow your dreams, anon. I'm sure you'll make a wonderful mother. Try a plant or a tamagotchi first, though.

All in all, it's been the show of the season for me, and a very unexpected one at that. It was just very well written and had some excellent VA. It's shows like this that remind me why I still watch anime.

One of the main reasons I kept watching to this point was because I wanted to see them go to Australia. And then right after the episode where they spent half of it going around Singapore and showing off sights, they then say "hey we're in Fremantle" and you see some markets for 10 seconds and that's it. I am fairly annoyed. But I can't really hate the episode after this ending.

I guess I could've read some of the thread before continuining on, since I would've seen >>23694 complaining about the same thing. Still, I didn't hate it, and the last few episodes were great, aside from the fucking CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. When will it end?
Also, Shirase > Hinata > Yuzu > Kimari

>>24190
>>24189
By the way, they were never in Signapore. Or was this just some joke that went over my head?

>>24191
Did you accidentally skip episode 6? In episode 10 or 11 they even mentioned Singapore by name again.

>>24193
Well fuck. I thought they were in Sydney.

>>24194
Did you think that was the opera house?

>>24195
No. But didn't they show it in another shoot? And I think they showed a lot of European-looking people. Was going to Singapore and then to West Australia really that optimal?

>>24194
Allow me to share your shame. For most of that episode I thought they were supposed to be in Australia too. It kept puzzling me that they showed some landmarks I'd never seen while avoiding the obvious ones.

Maybe I simply forgot, but I don't remember them explicitly saying they'd stop by at Singapore. I suppose the particularities of a Japan <-> Australia trip, not to mention Singapore's most prominent sights, are well-known enough in Japan that they didn't need to be explicit about it.

>>24199
I don't think they ever mentioned beforehand that they were going to be stopping in Singapore, or where they were at the time; they only clarified it later on when they mentioned being there before. So I wasn't sure where they were at first (aside from definitely not being Australia) but I recognised the hotel so as soon as they showed that I figured it out.

>>24194
Being a seppo must be tough.

>>24206
But I am European.