And I guess while I'm here I'll drop some thoughts on my most recent finish, Non Non Biyori, one of last seasons 'cute girls, cute thing' slice of life anime. Not amazing by any standards, but a good fun show if you feel like watching something which requires absolute* no mental commitment what so ever. Not so much if your feeling in the mood for comedy though, it's not that funny, just 'turn your brain off' fare most of the time. Finished in 2 days.
Which, becasue I'm me, leads me to a discussion point/ my musings on a subject. The worst part of these types of shows, evident as much in it's progenitors like Lucky Star as it is today, is that episodes can vary in enjoyment based on how much exposure a character that the viewer actually likes gets.
There's plenty of ways to balance this, either by moving quickly between sequences so everyone gets screentime (Lucky Star), Keeping all of the characters well rounded enough that a viewer would probably enjoy watching all of them (Hidamari Sketch), having one character that appeals to the general viewership far more than the others (YuruYuri) etc etc.
If I had any quibble with NNB, it's that they went with the 'focus mostly on one character per episode' set-up. This is not necessarily bad in and of itself, but to do this sort of thing characters need to be equally likable and enjoyable to watch, and I just wasn't getting that. Frankly, I wouldnt have minded if they just cut Hotaru and Renge out completly and just made the whole show about Komari and Natsumi, becasue Renge's boring and Hotaru's creepy (lol).
But yeah, what sort of formula do you guys tend to find works better for you with this sort of thing?
23-Feb-2014 02:33:15
