As the new anime season progresses, I’ve been doing my best to keep up with the major series, and mostly failing. One show I started last night was Hibike! Euphonium, about girls in high school who join a club in order to make music…not the light music club, of course, but brass band. To my surprise, Mrs. J-List (who was sleeping on the couch, then woke up to watch what I was watching, which is a theme in our marriage) loves the show, thanks to her background in music. As you’d expect from Kyoto Animation, the quality is high, and the moe-level of the characters is off the charts. In keeping with recent trends, there’s a yuri-tastic character that fans will love, especially since she shares a voice actress with Mugi-chan. One of the main girls has a rather unique name, 緑輝, characters which mean “green shining” and are pronounced “Sapphire.” This is a nod to the recent trend of parents giving their children “Kira Kira names,” extremely cute but odd-sounding names like 心愛 kokoa (Cocoa, written with characters that mean “heart love”), 男 adamu (Adam, written with the character for “man”) or 今鹿 naushika (Nausica, written with characters for “now” and “deer”). All of these names are quite nonsensical and impossible for anyone to read, yet many Japanese parents seem to love choosing them for their children.
One of the more interesting aspects of Japanese society is the way many relationships are “vertical,” with significant separation between, say, a senpai (a senior member of a school, company or other organization), doukyusei (a student who’s in the same school year as you), or kohai (a junior member of a school etc.). While being senpai sounds great — you get the respect of others automatically, for free — it comes with some strings attached, for example an unwritten requirement that you look out for the welfare of those under you, pick up the tab if you go to a restaurant with them, etc. While this system of “social levels” generally goes in sync with peoples’ ages, there are times when it can break down, for example if a 35-year-old man switches careers, he might find himself with a 20-year-old senpai at his new company. In the excellent Plastic Memories anime, 18-year-old Kazuki joins the Terminal Service division and discovers that the hard-hitting tsundere Michiru is a year younger than him, though she’s his superior.
JAST USA and J-List have been hard at work to clear our backlog of games and get them where they belong, into the hands of dedicated visual novel fans.
In addition to recently shipping the Nitroplus “sword opera” Hanachirasu and the total remake of Kana Imouto and announcing the upcoming Starless, we’re now taking the wraps off the Limited Edition for Shiny Days. It’ll be great: a large Japan-style box, with the massive game (18GB on
two dual layer DVDs), a 48 page artbook, original mouse pad and more. Preorder your copy now!
