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EP. REVIEW: Super Cub

Really like the atmpsphere/directing but I just don't care about moped in general and even less when it's ultra focused on just one model. So the long... exposition dialogue I guess about the cub in ep 2 just did nothing for me and I was pretty bored. I hope these will become less prevalent over time. As a results of that, I just don't really like the other girl which kinda "ruined" the aspect of "oh my gosh, she got a friend, squeee!!!".

When I watched the first episode, I wasn't quite sure I liked it initially. I thought, and frankly still do, that some of the early monologue from Koguma was redundant to what it was showing. We didn't need her to say that she had nothing and was alone. The animation, art, and direction demonstrate that fantastically well without it.

But what kept me going was her smile. It has a Peanuts quality to it in its imperfection and in its sincerity. The direction from the second episode is also very promising, giving us a deeper look into her world and anxieties. From her imagining what it would be like to tell everyone she rode her cub to school to her brief panic at struggling to put her helmet away, this show is a sleeper this season.

Some of the best direction and cinematography of any series this season, which is quite unusual for a cute-girls-doing-cute-things series and especially for one that's really just a glorified Honda commercial.

And I like how Koguma and Reiko don't immediately become best friends and start hanging out all the time. They're both kinda loners and don't really know how to interact very well. The first time they talk, Reiko ends up gushing about her motorbike and then just leaves without any fanfare. Later, when Reiko is talking about how amazing motorbikes are and how they can take you anywhere, Koguma sulks and says she doesn't really wanna go anywhere.

I also love that Reiko drags Koguma down to eat with their bikes, which is just the most teenage hobby enthusiast thing ever. But I also like that it's a very tentative friendship: they're starting what will most likely be a really powerful friendship, but... it's not quite there. It'll have to grow, and honestly? I'm here for it.

This is an enthusiasm her classmates share in a deeply touching scene where they crowd Koguma and press her for questions about her new ride.

I appreciate this show on two distinct levels. It's both an incredibly high quality, show-don't-tell expression of everything anime can and should be...and an incredibly well-calibrated ad for Honda. Absolutely everything in it is at once naturalistic in the moment but upon reflection can be read as part of a larger machine driving the message home: you really want a Honda Super Cub. You too can go from insular, lonely, isolated, drab and virtually insignificant, and all you need is this awesome little vehicle to freedom, new friends, vibrancy, joy. Stop going straight home; turn right (or left) and go somewhere new! The real you is waiting behind the wheel...er, handlebars of a Honda Super Cub!

...And while I might sound cynical, I want to make clear: I admire the heck out of it, the same way I do any ad that transcends its product and becomes art in itself. And let's be honest: Honda money makes far better anime than yakuza money, so...let's hear it for The Power of Dreams!

Umm...that didn't happen, sorry. She just imagined it could. When her classmates actually found out, they merely expressed surprise she'd gotten a license, and only one guy was excited -- until he found out it was just a Super Cub and not a "real" motorcycle.

What I noticed about that scene though was the low-key bullying by the other girls, and how she kept emphasizing that it was a used one, as if trying to make it less impressive and less worth their attention on her, or maybe even making sure that its being used wouldn't be something they could use against her later on (like, "Oh, you made us think it was new! But really you just bought someone else's castoff" or something to put her in her place).

The scene when she gets on the Cub for the first time just encapsulated the moment I wanted to keep watching it.

The animation, the sound, the colour, the character art design, how it all synched up perfectly, how it all came to life in that moment and I didn't think about the anime... I remembered growing up around motorbikes as a child (my parents used to own a bike shop) and thinking thats exactly what it sounds and feels like.

I am enjoying the show. In regards to the reviews however, you have to break the soundtrack down more. Here's an example: The first episode had three long instrumental passages, the first and third just being a solo piano with long drawn out flourishes... no sense saying what it symbolizes as I'm pretty sure the music is actually in Koguma's head, more on that one later... but the middle passage on the Super Cub is a piano, bass, snare drum trio.

It's funny how music works as some people here thought "That's a Peanuts smile!" when my mind went : "Oh, that's Peanuts music" to "OH! That's a Peanut's smile!" So far, all the music is piano centered but it feels more like an exploration in how many emotions you can get out of it. But the jazz trio section wasn't happy or jaunty nor was it as out an out depressed as that music could get either. Yet.

Also, all signs point to [blank]. I don't what's more unsettling, that a "modern" Slice of Life Show reminds me more of "Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou" then any other manga or anime I've seen... or that a presupposed slice of slice show has Lost like background events/ literal signs in the first place.

Remember, "Support your life". If you have to go shopping... don't forget you have to go shopping? Episode 2 already has me putting down Koguma as an unreliable narrator so hopefully they do a better job at it than that Joker movie.

You can't and I mean can't have an unreliable narrator in only just one regard. You have to make the audience question everything that character tells us, mostly because they should. She told us she's the girl who has nothing... but.... she doesn't?

I don't think this show is product placement for Honda, I just think this show is using a real brand item as an anchor... do I mean that figuratively or literally... yes, an anchor.
8888... both. 8 is infinity, 4 is death but 8888 is also 4 of 2 x 4.
But I'm just here for the ride that is life. And whatever that is after it.

That was the same convenience store in both episodes right? Because in the first episode, it was an imposing figure of a journey's end and in the second, it was right by the road. So inconsequential, she could ride right by it without a second glance.

Oh, see I took that little scene quite literally been Koguma strikes me as the kind of kids who would actually exclaim, "Hey, I got this thing I like and did this thing I like too!" because she's privately that happy. I think it's interesting to consider that she actually imagined it.