For the life of me I can’t find time to sit down at my computer and watch anime and cap it at the moment. I’ve been watching Suzuka<\/I> on the train, though, so I’ll say a few words about it.<\/p>\n
Suzuka<\/i> is one of the most horribly derivative anime ever made, if you go by a general series overview; it’s about a teenaged boy who moves to his aunt’s house for school. His aunt’s house happens to be a female only dormitory with its own bath house built in. Plus he has a crush on a high jumping girl who turns out to be his neighbour and upon whom he makes a bad impression.<\/p>\n
Yet, despite that, there’s an air of charm to Suzuka<\/i>: it doesn’t play to the violent stereotypes of this genre, nor does it emphasise fanservice. In addition to this, it is on some level a sporting anime and is presented in a distinctly unpretentious fashion.
\n
\nThe boy in question is Yamato, who has moved from Hiroshima to Tokyo to begin high school. His neighbour is the titular Suzuka, scouted to Tokyo for her athletic abilities. In the fourth episode, Yamato’s sprinting talent is discovered, and this brings to the fore feelings in Suzuka that she didn’t realise she had; feelings she doesn’t want to have.
\nAt the same time Yamato’s friend Hattori tries to set them up, and everyone remains oblivious to young miko Honoka’s obvious crush on Yamato.<\/p>\n
Yamato is a good character in that he isn’t a spineless loser; he’s just a bit clueless as to things that he has no experience of. The writing gives a lot of time to Yamato’s thoughts, so one can see that he isn’t an insensitive bastard but someone overly concerned about the outcome of his actions. One of the funnier parts of the show – a show that isn’t a comedy but at the moment isn’t a drama – is that Yamato publicly reacts to things, manifesting his mental state in hand wringing and various insane shakes.<\/p>\n
Suzuka is naturally going to win the love battle, as she is the character of title. She’s a girl who doesn’t seem to want to be honest with herself, and therefore comes across as cold and reticent. Unlike Yamato, we’re not given a clue as to what she’s thinking beyond the tell-tale blush, but her self denial would be liable to get old if the series didn’t get shaken up a bit. At this point there are characters left to introduce, so I have great faith in that.<\/p>\n
The ensemble that presently consists of Suzuka, Yamato, Honoka and Hattori is fun to watch and believable in their niceties. For an alleged womaniser, Hattori spends a lot of time hooking up other people and singing by himself. Hattori is presented as a rogue in his first appearance, but there is very little clue as to that thereafter. Honoka, on the other hand, begins as a shaky bundle of nerves but might become stronger during the series – despite her goal being a lost cause. I hope that she finds happiness with someone else in a way that doesn’t seem too contrived.<\/p>\n
Suzuka<\/I> doesn’t physically look special, although its OP and ED are several shades of wonderful. Somehow this increases the appeal to me as it reminds me of the early days of late night anime in the mid to late nineties, when things were low budget but had a special aura to them.
\nSuzuka<\/I> has that aura of magic about it, and for that special feeling it simply can’t be beaten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the life of me I can’t find time to sit down at my computer and watch anime and cap it at the moment. I’ve been watching Suzuka on the train, though, so I’ll say a few words about it. Suzuka is one of the most horribly derivative anime ever made, if you go by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-suzuka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}