Deep-Dive Discussions

Just Because! Episodes 11 + 12 – The Pitch and The Home Run

Selie 1 Comment

Quick note for any Just Because! viewers outside of America:  Lucky for you, HiDive got ahold of this one because still at the point of this writing, Amazon has not translated the signs and text for this show along with the official subs.  So if you’re watching this show, might want to head over to HiDive for those translated signs on the last episode given the incredibly important use of text messaging in this show.  Us Americans will just be over here crying and raising a defiant fist against our Amazon overlords who will still not turn over the full rights to HiDive.

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Well here we are, the end is near, we face the final curtain, and my friends, I’ll say it clear.  I’ll state my case of which I’m certain…  This was such a good anime.  Since the first episode, I’ve been impressed with this show and I’m so happy that Just Because! never let me down.  Of the shows that we’ve written about thus far as a group on this site, this one was probably my favorite to watch.  And now we’re at the end.  I guess if the previous episodes were the wind up, this would be the pitch… and then the aftermath.  Though, to be less haughty for a sec, it’d probably be better just to call this the exam arc ‘cause hot damn is there a lot riding on these college entrance tests.

We initially pick up from where episode ten leaves off, with Komiya readmitting her feelings. However, we see that she tells Izumi not to give her an answer until he passes his test, stating it with the assurance that he will.  He promises her he will with the same earnest and serious face I’ve come to love on this deadpan boy.

[HorribleSubs] Just Because! - 11 [1080p].mkv_snapshot_00.56_[2018.01.18_03.31.12]

Hmm, yes, the “I’m very tired but I appreciate you as a person” look.  Vintage.

The next day, Izumi fills in Souma about what’s going on with him and his exams while Souma in turn explains his relationship with Morikawa and his plans for the future.  The standout moment here, however has to be when Izumi tells Souma to stay in touch with Morikawa, as it’ll get harder to message her if he waits too long.  It’s thrown out so nonchalant but the meaning is easily picked up by Souma as Izumi alluding to how they fell out of touch, bringing us back to the beginning of the series and the lost friendship they thankfully were able to rekindle.  It’s a nice touch to one of the last major bonding moments these two have with each other as we head towards the end.  With a promise to stay in touch with Morikawa that also seems to be an affirmation to be there for Izumi as well, Souma then throws it back to Izumi, telling him to stay in touch with Natsume to which Izumi promises Souma that he’ll tell her everything when he passes his test.  A lot riding on these exams, huh?

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Just Because! Episodes 9 + 10 – The Windup

generaltofu 4 Comments

In looking back on episodes seven and eight of Just Because!, it genuinely feels as though those episodes were in a way a fairly bubbly (by comparison) reprieve from some of the existential and romantic angst that has come from the show in previous aspects. The focus on Eita’s dedication to Natsume, the admittedly fun date that Komiya dragged Eita into, and Souma’s optimism over his possible future prospects with Morikawa all really gave the last two episodes an easy sense of genuinely not having to worry too entirely much about what the future holds. It is, of course, a naive sort of reprieve, one which comes with some of the youthful and childish kind of optimism that is so easy for us to hold on to. I guess it’s only appropriate, then, that with the episodes nine and ten, “Answers” and “Childhood’s End”, we are brought fully back into the show’s dealings with difficult questions, and some genuinely painful, adult answers.

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Just Because! Episodes 7 + 8 – The Things We Do For Love

generaltofu 4 Comments

When I talked about some of the previous episodes of Just Because! serving as the climax for a first act of the show, I feel as though I inadvertently hit the nail on the head with regards to the shifts that episodes seven and eight set in place for what might be the last (or at least most central) major arc for the rest of the show’s season. There’s always been a focus on Eita in the show (and rightly so, considering he is set as the central character of the series from the outset), but for about the first half of the season, I felt as though Eita was mainly just playing a support role, and didn’t seem to have quite as active a role in the major plotlines. We knew, for instance, that Eita was quietly doing his best to pursue Natsume and support her, but we didn’t see anything quite as in-your-face as some of the antics surrounding Souma. The central focuses for the first six or so episodes largely gravitated towards Souma and the sort of love-parallelogram that encompassed him, Natsume, and Morikawa. Now that these threads have been resolved at least to a point, it feels like the stage has been set for us to see Eita’s own tangled web of infatuation sprawl out before us.

And boy, does it ever.

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Just Because! Episodes 5 + 6 – Starting from Scratch

generaltofu 1 Comment

As Just Because! has continued its chug through to the midway point of the season, I had honestly expected it to stumble in some way that would break the spell that the first two episodes cast over me initially. Thankfully, this has not been the case, as it has actually kept a steady pace with regards to its plot pacing and genuinely interesting character interactions. I’m definitely still deeply enjoying the show’s depiction of the existential trepidation that comes with, essentially, every aspect of high school life, and feeling for the characters as they wrestle with issues that, frankly, many of us struggle with today. Episode four, as Mythos said, brought the relationships between Eita and Natsume, as well as Souma and Morikawa, to a very early sense of heavy drama for the show – the climax of the first act, if you will. Coming right on the heels of that, episodes five and six have a lot of weight on their shoulders – the climax is important, flashy, and heavy, but the resolution of the events that transpired is just as important, if not more so.

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12 Days of Anime 2017 [Day 12]: Anime-gataris — How A Sense of Community Creates A Closer Relationship to Art

Owningmatt93 5 Comments

It seems appropriate to cap off this set of 12 Days of Anime posts with Anime-gataris, as I think it’s something that both readers and other content creators can appreciate to end the year on a more uplifting note than perhaps some of us may have experienced over the last several months. Anime-gataris itself may not seem to have a lot going for it at first, as many of its jokes start off as being solely referential or just about wacky club dynamics that you can get from plenty of other anime as well.

At first, there may not seem to be enough appeal for a sort of show that runs on those concepts alone though, and perhaps if the show had just left it at that, it would have never really become something that would have been worth talking about in of itself.

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12 Days of Anime 2017 [Day 11]: Girls und Panzer – How Unity Can Help Us Support Each Other

Owningmatt93 1 Comment

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from a show that basically has the synopsis of “girls join a tank club and fight with tanks”, especially since I heard some rather good remarks concerning the recent film that the series had gotten, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised with the series as a whole. While I still don’t think that it’s the best of its kind and other anime, such as High School Fleet have expanded on this sort of “genre” (if you want to call it that) in a much better way, it’s always good to see the roots from what those newer, better shows were built off of, something I addressed in my previous 12 Days of Anime article.

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12 Days of Anime 2017 [Day 10]: Doki Doki Literature Club – How We View Media Can Refine Our Perspective

Owningmatt93 2 Comments

Now, I’m going to start this off with saying that I realize that this may not feel like it meets the definition for “anime” for some, but personally I feel that Doki Doki Literature Club is close enough and unique in its own way to at least consider it a part of the “anime-esque” media, considering it greatly pulls from the convention of Japanese visual novels. Oddly enough, I could probably be writing this about the actual Japanese visual novel Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi (Totono) and make the same sort of comparison, but without any translation for it (something which I hope happens at some point), this is what I have to work with.

Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) is questionably innovative in what it does for this reason, but that doesn’t make it any less gratifying to see it play out in of its own. There’s something to be said about how we perceive media, and I think DDLC makes an excellent observation about that which can change how we view certain works in the future, while also giving us appreciation for the past works that led up to the creation of a better one. It becomes a sort of love letter to the creators and players of these sorts of games, which I think is pretty neat in its own regard.

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12 Days of Anime 2017 [Day 9]: No Game No Life: Zero – How Accepting Others Diversifies Our Life Experiences

Owningmatt93 1 Comment

No Game No Life is one of those franchises that it’s really easy to love, but also just as easy to hate as well. For every potential good thing that the series does, there’s a potential bad thing to offset it, and while I can highly appreciate the series for how it presents itself with some of the interesting visual techniques and just capturing the thrill of what playing games is like, there’s plenty of things wrong with the original series too. It’s overabundance of weirdly sexual scenarios with the involvement of the Sora and Shiro duo as siblings can really go either way in terms of humor depending on your views of those things, but it makes it hard to watch and definitely runs a lot of people away from the series in general for those seasons, despite what good content is actually beneath the surface.

The reason I bring all this up is that the movie decides to approach all the content in a different way, far differently than the series itself portrays anything and really, could almost stand on its own as it’s a prequel movie with nothing but history to tell about the world that the story takes place in.

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12 Days of Anime 2017 [Day 8]: White Album 2 – How Romance Can Affect Our Adolescence

Owningmatt93 5 Comments

One of the more interesting shows that I had the “pleasure” (if you can call it that) of watching this year was one I had only heard stories about, yet never knew why it was one of the more iconic visual novel adaptations and romance stories in anime. It’s not necessarily a popular story, but it’s an interesting one for varying reasons. One of those reasons being how White Album 2 portrayed adolescent romance quite differently from many anime of its kind. This isn’t really comparable to your Toradora‘s, Sakurasou‘s, or even OreGairu‘s in terms of a typical romance story; it’s sort of a mixture of those anime, but decides to go a different direction with its story and characters.

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12 Days of Anime 2017 [Day 7]: Makoto Shinkai and Your Name – How Our Future is Shaped By Decisions We Make

Owningmatt93 3 Comments

Shinkai’s films are always an experience for me. While I haven’t seen all of his works, the ones that I have seen have completely changed the way I view anime films in general, but I suppose my perspective on anime films is a bit different than what would normally be expected from an anime fan.

It’s no secret (or if it was, it’s not anymore) that my experience with anime in general doesn’t extend far beyond the reach of prior 2010 works as I began watching anime in early 2012. It was a sort of time when Shinkai films were already well-known because of 5 Centimeters per Second and others being released around that time, but I had never gotten into any of his films until later in my anime “career” (around the end of 2014).

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