Hey, did you know? P.A. Works stands for “Progressive Animation Works”. If this fuckturtle of a show is progressive animation, then anime is dead.
Impression
This shit is over at last, and I can now rest in peace. Much of this review and overall thoughts below will be tantamount to me beating a dead horse, but I hope you are entertained at the very least. If you took the time out of your busy schedule to complete this show, rest assured that the fortitude of your mental strength has been proven. I salute you, good sir or madam.
Firstly, I’m sure it comes as no surprise that absolutely nothing was resolved. They just went back to school, and the show ended. Touko x Kakeru would arguably have been the most important issue, but no. After Touko’s high ended, she fainted. By requesting another piano piece I assume she requested a second joint, but we don’t even see what happens with that because they never bother showing us. I really should have set up a drinking game around halfway through the series – whereby I would be obliged to take a shot of vodka whenever something stupid or confusing was said. Maybe I’d have learned to hallucinate too!
Aghast at the thought of redeeming themselves somewhat, P.A. Works decided to make the very last conversation between the main couple of the show a vague, circular incorrigible mess. This is genuinely how it went, starting with Touko:
“I saw you.”
“Was that a coincidence?”
“Not quite… it wasn’t.”
“You saw it because you wanted to see it.”
“It’s not the future. It’s something that hasn’t happened, but it’s sure to happen… isn’t that the same?!”
“Did you mean it to be?”
“Maybe not.”
“Then it probably means something else.”
Clearly it was a bad idea to get the passionate confessions over with by the second episode, because now it feels like they’re sharing a surreal mid-life crisis together. No points for guessing that nothing surrounding the fragments of the future were resolved, either. I bet there are more Miuna x Kaname shippers than there were answers for this entire issue. The only thing we got was that apparently Touko’s mother was also a wizard when she was young – at that point, when they implied that even she didn’t know what the fuck the visions were I realized they were never going to tell us. I only hope that Hina doesn’t get afflicted by this terrible curse when she gets a bit older. In the end, the only meaningful thing Touko and Kakeru did was -when faced with the absence of shooting stars- throw a bunch of marbles in the air and hallucinate their own shooting stars with their eye powers. I shit you not.
God knows what the rest of the group were doing this episode. They say they want to see Touko, but they can’t call her and ask to meet up, oh no. They have to see her randomly. Yes, randomly. The thing that really added insult to injury was when Yana-chan and Kakeru started getting all friendly all of a sudden. I prefer Yanagi to the others in that group -maybe only because I like Hayami Saori- so I don’t want Tsumugu Proto anywhere near her. Of course, he then goes from calling her Takayama to Yanagi, soaring over the boundaries of Japanese social etiquette like a fairy riding a fucking unicorn over a rainbow.
Okay, I think I’m done now.
But before that, it’s time for everyone’s favourite chicken! This guy is like the onii-sama of chickens.
Overall Thoughts
Where did it all go wrong? Glasslip started out as one of the season’s anticipated shows, and now it’s finished in smouldering ruins – to the point that every time someone says something good about it, a baby seal gets clubbed. I suppose the warning signs were there from the very beginning, if only mildly – it tends to be the case that these sorts of shows start off slow, though P.A. Works evidently took our trust and shat all over it before flushing it down the toilet. By the halfway point, it was already going down a slippery slope – but instead of trying to pick itself back up, it headed even faster for the cliff with the whole snow hallucination, a bitchy Sacchan and dark sorceress Yanagi. To be fair, I liked Yana-chan, and Sacchan was great exactly because she turned out to be a calculating bitch – actually, Hiro and Yuki-kun are perfectly fine too. And Hina is best girl, if only because she had almost nothing to do with this fuckturtle of a show. By process of elimination that would mean that the main problem lies with Touko and Kakeru – and by extension, the whole mess over the future visions that weren’t. You can sort of tell that the pairing is doomed when the foundation it rests upon is a fantasy thingy nobody knows anything about, even after the show is over – sadly, they coincidentally happened to be the main characters. To P.A.’s credit though, both the animation and OST were beautiful. But it’s wasted on Glasslip. I love the OST in particular – it would suit a real romance or drama show, ironically neither of which this show was. Gone are the days when the quality of an anime could be guaranteed by ChouCho or nano.RIPE attaching themselves to the project.
A foreseeable defence for Glasslip is that it can be treated as a calm, iyashikei slice-of-life where you enjoy and de-stress from the fact that nothing really happens. There are a few problems with this viewpoint. The most significant of those is that it features a plot – or tries to, at least. It had a fantasy-type mystery, lots of drama and an attempt at romance, which is a far cry from shows like Aria or GochiUsa, which have wonderfully light and fluffy settings where everything is right with the world. This sort of thing certainly wasn’t the expectation we had of Glasslip – it wasn’t the expectation P.A. Works themselves had of Glasslip. I remember saying in my first impression post that I wasn’t sure what it wanted to be as a show – the fact that it failed and fizzled away with nothing happening as a result doesn’t make it a proponent of that genre all of a sudden. Ultimately, it wasn’t healing at all – it was boring. There’s a fine line between the two, but it exists.
My love for Nagi no Asukara is as great as my distaste for Glasslip, and it is the only reason why I still retain a bit of trust in P.A. Works. In retrospect, there were flaws with Red Data Girl and Tari Tari too, but those two don’t even compare with how badly they fucked up here.
Jonathan/10
IT’S OVER. IT’S FINALLY OVER.
I CAN REST IN PEACE KNOWING I WON’T HAVE TO EVER SEE THIS SHIT AGAIN
DEAR PEOPLE, DON’T WATCH IT JUST, DON’T. YOU WILL WASTE VALUABLE HOURS OF YOUR LIFE IF YOU DO SO AND YOU’RE GONNA WANT IT HAVE IT BACK.
AND FUCK THIS SHIT. SENTAI-FILMSWORK I PITY YOU FOR HAVING LICENSED THIS BS. IT’S LIKE FUNIMATION LICENSING BLOOD-C. OH GOD I FEEL FOR THE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT READ REVIEWS IN ADVANCE AND BLINDLY BUY ANIME WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT PEOPLE THINK OF IT. OH GOD THE PAIN I FEEL FOR THEM!
Sentai Filmworks licensed it?! Please tell me they did that in advance, because that would be most bizarre business decision to make after actually trying the show out. Actually, you know what? Imagine if there was a dub attached to it. And people went and paid money to buy a Glasslip dub.
Oh god, I just remembered that P.A. Works produced Uchouten Kazoku recently too, and that was absolutely brilliant. I would have loved it if Glasslip was just a quiet show about people making glass. Wixoss was more about card games than Glasslip was of glassblowing.
Yeah I believe they licensed it before it aired, can’t remember for sure though (but it’s been something they have been doing often).
I pray that Sentai-filmswork will not invest in Dubs for this show, it’s not worth it at all. There are so many better quality shows to invest English Dubs to.
The opening comment seems to be a little harsh, though I can understand where you guys are coming from. To be honest, I haven’t read the review yet cause I haven’t watched the latest episodes, so I won’t comment on how you feel, but I kind of just wanna say…based on opening line, it kind of reminds me of Angel Beats. A work which could be considered really good, but ultimately kind of fell a little because of its short length…that’s the kind of vibe I’m getting right now..Perhaps if there had been more episodes these reviews would be a bit more positive? Sorry, just me being optimistic. Anyways, don’t mean to be a troll, just wanted to say this, that’s all.
It is hard to be positive when nobody knows what is going on. Look at Crunchyroll’s comments for Episode 12 in particular, and you will see just how confused everyone was. I tried to be positive, hoping and praying that for the love of our time and sanity that they would pull through with some SORT of explanation- alas, they didn’t.
I don’t think its length was the issue – if anything, I’m glad they didn’t prolong it into half a year’s worth of suffering. It’s not like anything even happened – even if there were more episodes, it’s worthless if they never intended making a coherent story along with it. Instead it’s like Nishimura Junji followed a HowToBasic on how to create a great anime, then got his dick caught in a ceiling fan after interpreting unclear instructions.
I backed out after episode one and I am so happy, lol. Never made a better choice. The first episode alone was already so stupid and made close to no sense. It had like, less than a minute of actual glassblowing. Instead we immediately got bloody chickens and a 7 minute fireworks sequence where everyone makes the same expression and nothing happens. For 7 goddamn minutes. Aside from Akame Ga Kill this show was the only other show to genuinely offend me this season, because of just how goddamn stupid it is.
Just thinking about it makes me kinda mad and I backed out after 20 minutes. What about all you poor souls who stuck out till the end 🙁
Hey, the chickens were the best part of the show!
For the first couple of episodes, the pilot episode especially, I had my rose-tinted glasses on. Handmade by P.A. Works. Then they broke and a couple of shards got into my eye, where they were painfully lodged for the rest of the show. I hardly ever write scathing criticisms, but Glasslip wholly deserved it.
I used to like PA Works but I guess I got tired of their pretty backgrounds gimmick. Last thing they made I actually liked was Eccentric Family, but I’m pretty sure we’re never going to get another series like that again.
Man, 2013 was a pretty good year for anime :’-)
Look on the bright side, maybe Hina and Jonathan can get their own spinoff now!
OOOOOH OOOH HOW ABOUT AN OVA JONATHAN’S POV OF EVErYTHING THAT HAPPENED. XDDDDD
Hina does actually have her own spinoff! It’s a manga called Hina’s Lip. No idea what it’s about, but at least it’s drug-free.
I accidentally downloaded the German subs instead of the English ones for this episode. Still watched it through since I thought I’d understand it as much in either language. Haha, even though you transcribed what they said in the forest, it still makes next to no sense.
At least it was pretty.
I bet that made for an even more fascinating viewing experience. Makes me wish someone had done some trollsubs so that the torture could have been a little less painful.
Oh man troll subs would have been awesome to watch it with. Maybe someone will do an abridged series on this- it certainly provides a lot of opportunities that’s for sure!
If anything, I wish this anime would keep running JUST so I could keep reading your reviews on it.
A friend of mine is starting Glasslip soon (with very high hopes, just like you had), and he won’t be deterred. But he has quality taste, so he’ll probably get fed up too. Once that happens, I’ll direct him to your reviews! xD