Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - A Toast to Bartender
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13242 |
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I remember it being hyped up before airing (this was at the height of the GAR meme) but I don't think it was all that popular when it actually came out. But I still remember watching the first episode. Funnily enough, there was a scene where the guy gets a bottle of water and downs it and that made me really want some water. I'm a teetotaller so the alcohol was never appealing.
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Neko-sensei
Posts: 286 |
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I also haven't seen this since I watched the first couple of episodes many years ago. Although I wanted to like the show, I simply couldn't overcome its guffaw-inducingly inaccurate etymology for the word "bartender," which colored the entire experience with that aura of know-it-allness radiated by those at the heights of the Dunning–Kruger effect's "Mount Stupid."
(Although both the "tender" in "bartender" and the "tender" meaning "gentle" passed through the Middle French word tendre, the noun is from Latin tendere or attendere while the adjective is from tener, and there was no confusion between the two when the compound word "bartender" was coined. The anime's version represents exactly the kind of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" claim I often see Western anime fans making about Japanese words.) Since so much of the show hinges on such pieces of misapprehended knowledge, I simply couldn't muster up any respect for it. |
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njprogfan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 1232 Location: A River Named Toms |
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Having never watched an episode, just by the screen shots it gives me a Death Parade vibe; backstories of patrons. Would that be accurate?
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Lactobacillus yogurti
 Posts: 858 Location: Latin America |
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Quite accurate, actually. Ryu's just a bit of a catalyst for the story, but very rarely does he interfere in the stories themselves. he just comes up with a relevant drink..
But all I'll say is that episode 7 is pretty damn good. I have the entire series and the soundtrack. Well worth it. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3848 |
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Sounds interesting, I'll check it out
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Cho_Desu
 Posts: 242 |
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Makes me think of Midnight Diner (live-action series based on a manga), which I've enjoyed a lot. I don't drink, so any talk about how amazing alcohol is tends to be white noise for me -- but I have a soft spot for series where the episodes are about one-off characters, and the protagonist is just the person who happens to interact with them a bit. (More used to supernatural takes on that in anime though.) Just not as many of those sorts of anime these days. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Bartender was one of the first series I watched when I started with anime around 2006. I was a bit disappointed to discover this fine series was pretty aberrant by the standards of seasonal anime with its stories about mature adults. It remains one of my favorites to this day. The second one about Miwa and her family remains one of the best single episodes of anime I've ever watched. It captures in just a few moments what must have been the enormous strains on Japanese society during the Occupation and the recovery from World War II. Another noteworthy episode is the one with the movie directors discussing Scotch as the "whiskey of rebellion."
Not all episodes worked for me, particularly the Christmas episode. I can't imagine attending a reunion of my middle school, and even more can't imagine taking a copy of my dissertation with me. Still we got to see Ryu perform the magic "double pour" to make a Black Velvet despite the fluid dynamics suggesting it can't be done. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11619 |
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We also got to see a real bartender pour it.
That's one of the things I liked about the series - the end credits live action bits of making the drinks featured in the episode.
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