Ginban Kaleidoscope, full series discussion

[something]

I know I'm way late on this one, but I had seen the first episode early on and then forgotten about it. Now I marathoned it, and wanted to see if anyone else had followed it.

Anyway, here's the non-spoilery description of the premise:

So, we have Sakurano Tazusa, an extremely talented and highly ranked Japanese figure skater, who is in a bit of a bind in her quest to become Japan's Olympic representative, because she's had a few misses lately and is up against the top skater in Japan, Shitou Kyouko. And don't forget that the mass media considers Shitou their darling while Tazusa is the upstart "brat" they all love to hate, and that they villify everything Tazusa does in their quest to discredit her in her quest for the position of the Japanese representative.

Into this mix falls (literally, all the way from the pearly gates into Tazusa's body) Pete Pumps, a recently deceased 16 year old Canadian who is told by god that he has to wait 100 days before entering heaven, in order to atone for his sins on Earth. In other words, he'll be sharing her body for that time, seeing what she sees, feeling what she feels, tasting what she tastes (which she takes advantage of, much to his chagrin...) and basically, just being inseparable from her. As the pressure for the Olympics representative competitions heats up, Tazusa will have to deal with the media, her skating, her opponents, and the crazy dead Canadian boy in her head. Whee!

Some basic comments (spoilers start here):

First thing to get out of the way is the only real negative, which really isn't much of one, so much as it is a major inconsistency. The exact situation between Tazusa and Pete is really sketchy. Can he see her from outside, as a third party? Can she see him? The answer to both questions is supposed to be no, but they animate it precisely in that manner all the time. They'll look (to the side) at each other, and react to the other's movements, but that shouldn't be possible. Pete shouldn't be capable of any independent movement at all. More than once he says he can't do something if her body isn't cooperating ("Can't read the book if you don't look at it", for example), but then they have scenes like the one where Pete tries to get her to act like a waitress (ep 7), and they interact like two discrete bodies... But anyway, I didn't mind when they did... I just wish they were consistent about it.

Speaking of their connection, it gave rise to perhaps my favorite scene of the show (apart from the last ep of course) -- the rush for the bathroom when she finally gives up trying to, er, hold it in [img]/images/graemlins/sweat000.gif[/img] When I first saw it I just cracked up laughing and was caught totally off guard. Absolutely hilarious.

I also like how they dealt with the waitress performance in the second half of episode 7 (and again in 11). Animating it entirely on the ice would have been difficult, and a bit too abstract, so the way they instead animated it as if in a restaurant worked well. Especially since they'd go back to the ice for important crowd/judge interaction pieces when necessary. Great Pete/Tazusa dynamic there too. Similar approach to her last free performance at the Olympics.

The characters:

As for the characters in general, high positive marks from me. I enjoyed Tazusa immensely, in all her adorable insanity. She was devious, playful, shy, brash, loving, violent, whatever the situation called for, she had it in spades. The world was against her, and she pulled through, and looked great doing it. That's my kinda heroine. <3 Tazusa~!

Pete was a great foil for her, and a really good guy himself -- no wishy washy halfassedness, he just makes the best of a difficult and unexpected situation. He has the wit to keep up with Tazusa, and that extra bit of emotional maturity needed to keep her afloat in her darkest moments. His integration of aerial acrobatics with her figure skating worked very well, I loved the comparison.

The freelance reporter Niita kicked ass. He didn't have much development as a character, but he didn't need it... he was freelance reporter man, champion of justice! It was great to see someone in the media fighting on her side.

The coach and Yohko were simple but good secondary characters. Coach Takashima plays the cheesy, always-worried fatherly type well, even if there's not much more to him than that. Ditto on Yohko, who played the cute little "sigh, poor me surrounded by fools and crazies" part equally well. For her part, Mika played the "through thick and thin" best friend, and all she got in return was a lot of misunderstandings, thinking Tazusa was always yelling at her XD

Actually, on that topic... how much does it such for Tazusa that in order to communicate with Pete, she had to speak out loud? Man, she couldn't even get some telepathy or anything. Harsh [img]/images/graemlins/sweat000.gif[/img]

Final thoughts:

The opening (animation and music) and ending (music) were very well done, and perfectly fitting to the tone of the series. The animation in general is of relatively high quality, and I like Tazusa's design in particular. It doesn't have the amazing costume work of Kaleido Star (except that last one that appears in the op - that was awesome), but it's still a quality production from start to finish, barring a few off-model talking-head scenes.

The ending was beautiful. Pulled no punches, emotional, appropriate, well acted, properly paced, a picture perfect ending to the show. I admit to wishing more than once that some sort of deus ex machina (or would it be deus ex deus, what with it actually being god behind the scenes? [img]/images/graemlins/sweat000.gif[/img]) would intervene and let them stay together. I was so tempted to accept the easy way out, the feel-good plot hole approach. But in the end, the emotional impact was far more genuine the way they did it. Besides, it did make me feel good. From the final free performance (absolutely fantastic) to the goodbye on the frozen lake, the ending made me feel sad, yet wonderful. It's 430am now, so I won't feel wonderful when I wake up, but it was absolutely worth it. People, this is why I love anime.

Well, this is ludicrously long already, so I'll wrap up by saying, great story, wonderful character interaction, nice animation and music, great bittersweet romance, and a total package that I enjoyed immensely. Funny when it needed comedy, dramatic when it needed drama, and romantic when they just needed a little love. A definite must-buy should it ever get licensed (which it won't, I'm sure).

I'm so glad I finally watched it. Absolutely recommended with no hesitation whatsoever.

[pianocello]

I didn't expect to like this show considering the low-budget animation (I mean c'mon - they reused the entire waitress sequence) and the predictable nature but I guessed the fact that Ayako Kawasumi was voicing the female lead and it had a main Canadian character was interesting enough for me.
I thought it was funny when Tazusa implied that she couldn't masturbate anymore. [img]/images/graemlins/shy00000.gif[/img] Seriously though I'm a little disappointed that with the whole "two people sharing one body" concept, they missed a lot of opportunities for some good ecchi [img]/images/graemlins/shy00000.gif[/img] that Midori's Days did better. [img]/images/graemlins/catgirl0.gif[/img]

[something]

piano_cello_conducting said: I thought it was funny when Tazusa implied that she couldn't masturbate anymore.

I think she was referring to the need to take a crap, not to masturbate, although I'm not surprised you'd read it as such =P What with the fact that she was grabbing her stomach and what happens later, it wouldn't make sense for her to be talking about masturbation. That and it's not really in line with the mood of the show.