First impressions – Shoushimin series (How to become ordinary)

OP: “Sweet Memory” (スイートメモリー) by Eve

This weekend summer is in full swing and some of the big titles on my list are being released for the first time. Shoushimin series certainly falls into this category, and the main reason for this is simple – Yonezawa Honobu. He is the novelist of the source material and the creator of Hyoukawhich is both my favorite Kyoto Animation show and the most beautiful TV anime of all time. Of course, one wonders why Hyouka never got a second season and why KyoAni is not taking on this adaptation.

I don’t know for sure, but a few obvious possibilities stand out. These days, KyoAni prefers to adapt stuff that they own all the rights to. That way they can skip the production committee and take all the profit. I’ve also heard rumors that Yonezawa is unhappy with them (certainly not because of the production values). Whatever the reasons or reasons Shoushimin series has landed at Lapin Track, who are no losers – they have made it with Murder farce with undead girl. Neither are directors and screenwriters Kanbe Mamoru and Oono Toshiya. It’s a bit disappointing that the series only gets the odd allotment of 10 episodes (perhaps there’s something in the source material that dictates this), but overall it seems to be in good hands.

First, no – this doesn’t look nearly as great as Hyouka. The OP and ED are pretty cool and the overall look is good, with a few stylish touches from Kanbe. But if you are looking for Hyouka It shouldn’t be, at least visually speaking – nobody but Kyoto Animation (and probably director Takemoto Yasuhiro, a tragic victim of the arson attack in KyoAni) could have ever made this show. Narratively, there are definitely elements of How to become ordinary this will sound very familiar. Yonezawa has a style that is both quirky and peculiar, and is hard to confuse with anyone else’s.

The two main actors are Kobata Jougarou (Umeda Shuuichirouwho develops into something of a seiyuu “it” boy) and Osanai Yuki (Yomiya Hina). The setting is the city of Gifu, a few hours drive from Hyouka’s Takayaama. In terms of character, they are very different from Oreki and Chitanda. We pick them up when they have just found out that they have passed their high school entrance exams. He is sociable and modest, she is more gentle and tends to hide behind him. As in Hyouka The protagonist has a goal in life – in this case, to be “completely normal,” a goal that Osanai supposedly shares.

It is probably a reference to Kobata’s character that when he meets his elementary school friend Doujima Kengo (Furukawa Makoto) at their new school, Osanai-san immediately worries about “imposing” on Kobata-san. And indeed, his obsessive reluctance to say no (it would make his fingernails stick out) makes him seem like a weakling. And Doujima is certainly a pushy bastard who even comes across as an asshole. Jougarou’s family runs a Japanese candy shop and he doesn’t like sweets – Yuki loves sweets, but prefers Western ones (which will be the main plot driver of the premiere).

The rest of the episode should seem very familiar to Hyouka veterans. Lots of chatter, a seemingly trivial mystery, lazy landscape shots with the main couple leisurely flying through. In this case, we have Osanai searching for limited edition strawberry tarts, asking Kobata for help since there’s one per customer, and he gets kidnapped by Doujima to help find a girl’s missing pochette (a kind of small handbag). Do I really care about that lost handbag? No – and I’m not sure why Doujima is so involved in it that he bullies three guys into helping to find it. And of course, Kobata-san will be the one to solve the mystery – if he wasn’t a genius, he wouldn’t be a Yonezawa protagonist.

I have to remember that my first reaction to Hyouka was pretty lukewarm. Yonezawa usually takes a while to draw you in, but this is another reason to worry that Shoushimin series is only ten episodes long. The portrayal of the idyll of adolescence is the essence of his writing, and with Hyouka at least I eventually got carried away by the atmosphere and the characters. No one here particularly impressed me, but no one in Hyouka At first and by the end, all four main characters developed into really interesting kids. This premiere left me quite indifferent, to be honest, but by the end I was oddly more curious about the story than I should have been. And if anything exemplifies the appeal of this author, this is it.

ED: “Itokenai” (意解けない) by ammo