Too bad Japan now has a negative interest rate.
Impression
The highlight of this episode was seeing the twins in casual winter clothes.
I think they got a couple more lines than they normally do, too. For the record, I like Sae better than Kae. Her ball hair ties look really cute on her. In general Haruchika seems to be improving – it’s still not great, but it’s the first time I can actually call the events of the episode a proper mystery (even though it wasn’t a particularly good one). Also the English in this show is actually really good. I love how Chika just casually mentioned that Maren joined the club at the start of the episode, along with a series of his female admirers – again, it’s something Kumiko would spit distastefully at, but it’s not like this ensemble were particularly keen on the music side of things to begin with.
Haruta is as immature a dick as ever. I like all his onee-chans by the way, purely by default – because they make him suffer. If they’re scary enough to make him camp outside instead of returning home, I really hope the other two appear at some point just to put him through some pain. It’s honestly baffling that he’s so adamant against returning to his parents’ house though. He’s actually just a real brat, at the end of the day – he’d rather rent an apartment by himself despite having a house he could live in any time. Is he even aware of how much rent is these days? Who’s paying for it? If Haruta is, then he should tell me where such ridiculously cheap rent can be found. If his parents are, then fuck him, money doesn’t grow on trees. He doesn’t want to get into his sister’s car when she’s offering him a ride somewhere, and he carries around travel chopsticks so he can eat food at other people’s houses. What a faggot, show some courtesy. I think I’ve finally found my general problem with Haruta – he shows no consideration for the people around him, and doesn’t even stop to think that his actions might be causing trouble for others.
I would have flipped a couple of tables if Haruta had turned out to have a law degree as well. I seriously thought things were going to head that way for a minute, when Amano talked about his friends’ creditors fucking him over when they defaulted (his fault for being their guarantor, no sympathy from me) followed by his co-owner defrauding him and him being shit on by inheritance taxes. This is why lots of parents do what they do, by the way, in leaving houses and stuff early to children when that’s who they want to give it to – if they leave it in their wills, the government will fuck them in the ass by levying extortionate amounts of inheritance tax on the property they pass down. It’s only when transfers happen seven or so years before your parents die that you don’t get hit by those taxes. So some parents estimate roughly when the right time to pass on their stuff is (which is kind of depressing in itself) so that their children actually get the full amount of what they intended to give them. The house goes in the child’s name, and the parents get a licence or some sort of equitable interest in the property to stay there until they die.
Sorry. That was completely irrelevant, but I have hardly anything else to say really. I don’t feel like harping on about the magic Haruta used to somehow realize there was a small fortune of 500-yen coins hidden beneath the house, it’s definitely a stretch. I hope Amano converts it all into foreign money before the exchange rate gets even shittier. Of course Haruta invited Kusakabe-sensei, there’s no point if he’s not there to be impressed by him. And the key-shaped lock they found behind the house was massive, surely Amano would have known his property well enough to have found it before? Sometimes I even ask myself why I’m still blogging this. The better question is perhaps why, when faced with objectively better shows like Phantom World, I choose to watch this first with my limited time. This world is full of strange things.
Finally, Narushima a cute! Chika and Narushima are so cute together, I’m glad she’s unofficially become the most important side character. The two of them would make a much better set of main characters than Haruta and Chika.
Lol I think I may be dropping this show, to be honest…I haven’t got the determination to actually spend 24 minutes of my time on something I may not enjoy properly. ^^;
You were a fellow Glasslip victim a couple of years ago, weren’t you? I don’t blame you, this is basically a Glasslip-level catastrophe except without the stellar animation and chickens. I remember not being all that fond of the characters in Glasslip too. The reviews were so fun to write though, maybe that’s why I’m still watching this.
P.A. Works are so hit and miss these days. To be honest, before Glasslip the only arguable miss was RDG, and even then that wasn’t bad. It even pulled out really beautiful adaptations like Uchouten Kazoku. Since then the only real hit it’s produced is Shirobako, given that Charlotte had its own fair share of problems.
Oh gosh…how did you know that I had watched Glassli – wait. WAIT. You had reviewed that one too! Oh man, I had almost forgotten about that series…now THAT was a disaster. XD Indeed, the animation and chickens were the best part (all hail Jonathan the chicken, the only character whose name I actually remember). Now that I think back, your reviews were the only true highlight that came out of that show existing though, hahaha…
To be honest, the only other shows I’ve watched from this studio are Another, Angel Beats, and Charlotte (well I watched a couple of episodes of Nagi no Asakura, but I couldn’t really get into it unfortunately…it’s such a pretty show though). Lol although Charlotte was like a guilty pleasure for me, honestly speaking ^^;. It had so many narrative problems, but gosh I couldn’t help liking it and the characters so much.
Haruchika, on the other hand…it has elements that I like (the opening song is so good; the personal issues that they give the characters, like Narushima’s story about her brother, are interesting enough on their own; I like all the female characters, as well as the fact that they include a gay character who isn’t a punchline, and addresses adoption alongside including a Chinese-American character who doesn’t follow any stereotypes, which isn’t common in anime as far as I can tell) BUT the other parts of the show are frustrating. The writing is fairly weak, honestly. There’s a lot of conveniences involved to solve the mysteries, making it seem contrived, rather than natural. The biggest issue honestly though, is that Haruta is insufferable. The thing is this wouldn’t be such a big issue if it wasn’t for the story making HIM the one doing everything important and being the biggest focus. Since he’s the one in the spotlight 90% of the time, it’s even more prominent how annoying his character is.
Whoops, I didn’t mean to type this much ahaha…. ^^;
I did, yes. It was so easy to criticise Glasslip, it was just that bad. If you look back at my reviews you can actually see me going as the weeks passed from optimistic and impressed to increasingly disillusioned until I hit bitter, jaded disappointment. Charlotte suffered from similar but more obvious narrative problems as Angel Beats (which was supposed to be two-cour). A common criticism is that it could have developed its last episode into a whole new season. It also got a bit over its head with the time travel stuff. Other than that, it wasn’t actually that bad.
fhana is great. I’ve loved them ever since Uchouten Kazoku, and I’ve got strong memory association between them and Kawaisou and Witch Craft Works because of their OPs. As I think I said with Glasslip, Haruchika suffers from trying to do too many things at once – music and mystery together, with romance as some sort of side-plot. With effort and a budget as low as what P.A. Works’ C-team are providing, the end result is that all of those components are shit. Also yes, I would have liked it if we saw the story through Chika’s eyes like we did in the first episode.
Chika looks sexy in that front page picture, she’s really wasted on this show.
That said, I though this might be a case of bad adaptation so I tried to look deeper into that.
Unfortunately, I found nothing. Might search harder when I feel like it.
Chika always looks sexy, Haruta has no idea what he’s missing out on. She’s a kyuuto gaaru, after all.
The twins are sexierP.A. Works really messed around with the original novel designs, even more drastically than what Kyoani did with Hibikek. Chika was supposed to look like this, and Haruta like this. I have no idea what the quality of the original story is like, but I feel like I could take the novels a bit more seriously from just the cover art alone.
There’s a bit here: haruchika.dreamwidth.org
About the rent, Haruta said (also in episode 2 iirc) that he and his parents split it 50-50, without explaining where his half comes from.
I can’t believe his parents are paying to support his little tantrum. Houses are so fucking expensive these days. I also had a quick skim through those translations – having the story told through Chika’s perspective makes it seem so much more mature. Though they still don’t seem to be playing down Haruta’s special snowflake status any more than they are in the anime, if ‘Speed Cubist Haruta’ is any indication.
Thank you. Reading it did give a different feel to the narrative but as Vantage said, Haruta is still a Gay Stu. Annoying.
Anyway, I enjoyed it more than the anime.
I think I’ll just watch the anime to stare at Chika and read the story from there when more is translated.