No flaws. 9/10
Maybe a little too subtle on the lgbt themes but I also kinda enjoy it in a “I can understand what that means!” kind of way that makes you feel clever. Could have developed more characters with 2 cours instead of 1.
Should be compared to A Place Further than the Universe. I’d say Jellee’s characters are slightly more mature and feel more real though.
Loved it.
Even though I didn’t bother watching the show I heard that it did a bunch of queerbaiting only to have the characters be “really good friends!” Is that accurate?
>an anime comes out
>people say it’s super gay
>tell them that my coffee maker has one job
>show ends
>people were subject to coffee undertones
I find that the “cute girls doing cute things”
is usually a big red flag that says Q U E E R B A I T
I’m gonna make a libre office calc sheet to keep track of queerbaiting anime at this point
Post it if you do!!
I don’t watch much anime. This is all I’ve got so far. I added alt text/descriptions for explanations, which is obviously not visible here. Tbh I could probably combine technically gay/partial queerbait?
Yeah probably. I’m sure tons of people here (Cromalin lol) could contribute as well.
Basically. There’s a trans character and that was handled reasonably well, but the sort of core storyline of both Kano and Mahiru just sort of faceplanted towards the end in a way that feels so weird and drastic that I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t rewritten. All the themes of defiance and openly chasing what makes you happy despite social scorn just evaporated completely, it tries to recuperate and humanize the two largely-absent and irrelevant antagonist characters for no reason and with no payoff, the two main characters grew more distant in a way that was narratively unsatisfying and didn’t really lead into anything, and their reconciliation was tepid and disappointing. Like I can’t stress enough that it feels like the story was building up Kano and Mahiru’s relationship and personal character growth arcs, and then an eraser was crudely taken to the last quarter of all of that and someone else added some filler to connect the shreds of what was left.
It’s really disappointing. Not specifically because it wasn’t queer enough, but because the first seven episodes are great and poignant and sweet, and then with the exception of Watase’s story in episode eleven the last four episodes are really weak and have the other three main characters in a sort of narrative stasis. It would have been fine for Kano’s clear feelings for Mahiru to not be reciprocated, if that had at least been acknowledged. It would have been fine if it had been cut short by a dramatically meaningful conflict between them. But instead just a whole lot of nothing happened, emotions were flat across the board, and then it got a lukewarm ending without even the level of the earlier yuri-baiting moments.
spoiler
I felt like it hints that they’re gay without ever actually exploring it. The two act like partners and then it never really goes into it, instead focusing on their music exploits with the idea that they’re into each other just sitting in the background.