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Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Remake Our Life!
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1041 |
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I haven’t watched this and to be honest probably won’t get around to it unless I hear great things, but voted for it in the poll just because it sounded to me as if some of the previews weren’t giving it a fair shot. Glad to hear it seems more worthwhile than initially expected.
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moroboshi-kun
Posts: 68 |
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I really liked the premise, and I'm hoping they can follow through. We've seen this idea before, with Relife being the most recent example that springs to mind, but I lost interest when it seemed to be turning into a run-of-the-mill high school drama. I liked in episode 2 that Kyoya seemed to get the message that he was going to have to work harder and break out of his bad habits or habits of caving or settling for less if he wanted to succeed, and I hope they build on that.
That may be part of the problem with the show, though, that he doesn't seem to have a lot of bad habits to break out of - he was a hard working guy when he was at the game company, and very much a go-to for everyone who needed help. Even when he first met Kawasegawa as an adult, he jumped at a found opportunity and made the most of it. I hope we get some flashbacks and maybe more about why he made the choice he did back in the day - playing it safe is something that can hold you back, especially if it's fear of failure that drives it. I like the idea, and it mirrors some of my own experience - I went back to school to learn animation in my early 30's (and wound up in games) and had a whooooooooooooole bucket of personality defects I had to get past - me in my 20's would have made for a very flawed character, but not nearly as likeable 
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pixelatedlenses
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 35 |
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I'm actually really enjoying my time with it and put in a request specifically to review this series because I think it has a lot of potential. I'm glad to be giving it a fair shake from my own perspective, and hope that my optomism about it being a solid series plays out, haha. |
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pixelatedlenses
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 35 |
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Episode 2 and 3 are where I really started to like Kyoya, especially episode 3. I'm rooting for him and hoping that now, he'll start to use his current situation more than relying on his memories and a decade of experience. I'd like to see him really life in earnest, you know?
Oh goodness, I definitely think 22 year old me would not have been a good anime protag, haha! |
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michizure
Posts: 177 |
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This was the first of two shows (the second was Realist Hero) I saw this week bust out a vintage anime theme as an insert song. Is there some kind of nostalgia thing going on, or are they aiming for the middle-aged fan demographic? "Freckles" ran as the opening theme for Rurouni Kenshin in 1996. Assuming that's where Nanako came across it, she would have been ~8 years old -- not impossible, and certainly might leave an impression. What does the choice say about her character, though? In general, I am looking forward to seeing Our Dense Hero realize who the other two Platinum Generation artists he admires are. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18444 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Wouldn't get your hopes up on that. The first three episodes give me the impression that the fan service will remain mild and sparse, but titles which emphasize it as much in the OP and especially ED as this one does rarely mislead. I will agree that I don't think we've seen the best that this series can offer yet, although episode 3 is a definitely a step in the right direction. I can't ever see this being a high-priority view, but it is one that I expect to follow for the season. |
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09jcg
Posts: 535 |
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Its funny how different people can view the same thing differently. Episode 4 was good, but I agree that it was very much a transitional episode. It didn't feel slow paced though. If anything I thought it went wayyyy to fast. It felt like they compressed two or three episodes into one. It has me interested to see how this episode plays out in the light novel. It wouldn't shock me if they shoved a whole volume into one episode.
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moroboshi-kun
Posts: 68 |
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I'm still liking this show, and I like the angle of finding yourself in school like this...but the time-jump element seems all but forgotten. I'm not sure what else I'd expect, but Kyoya seems mostly to fall into a roll of "undercover mentor" more than "person trying to figure himself out". It's almost a college version of Shirobako (not a bad thing) and it's only episode 4, but I wonder if there needed to be the time jump at all. The first episode could have been Kyoya just looking at the two acceptances and picking the Visual Arts school.
Maybe he wakes up one day and he's bounced to the future and it's somehow worse? I'm not going to stop watching or anything but I hope the show gets a bit bolder. |
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michizure
Posts: 177 |
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I find myself wanting the show to go beyond this: what events is he preventing or disrupting, because of his return to the past and the subsequent changes that precipitates? As of the end of Episode 5, it's looking more as if Kyoya isn't so much achieving things as re-inventing (re-making?) them. Remember, the members of the "Platinum Generation" were famous and successful in the original timeline. This implies there were intervening causes that led Shino to embrace her art, Nanako to get serious about her singing, and Tsurayuki to do whatever it is he needs to do. Kyoya's presence was not necessary, and may, in fact, be interfering with other processes that led to these outcomes. Essentially, he is gambling with their futures to improve his own life outcomes (and probably Eiko's, as well). If he does something (e.g., falls into a messy love-polygon) that disrupts their paths, what then? Further, while it's possible (probable, even) that all these intervening causes were different in the original timeline -- perhaps the Plantium Generation members just helped one another -- it's also possible that there's some poor schmuck who would have gotten into Oonaka as an alternate, moved into the vacant room in Kitayama, and been the catalyst we see Kyoya becoming. Instead, he or she is condemned to a life of failure and drudgery by Kyoya's "take 2" trip to the past. On a different note, I have conflicting feelings about choosing "God Bless" for this week's insert song. On the one hand, it was a masterful bit of musical shorthand, invoking a whole raft of associations from the first beats on the high-hat. It was also, quite plausibly, one number that Nanako and her back-up band might be expected to know and be able to perform without ever rehearsing together -- if the dates work out. When did this episode take place? Episode 12 (in both chronological and broadcast order, "Live Alive") of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu aired on June 18, 2006. The festival appears to take place in the fall. Kyoya's checklist in the teaser is dated the 1st of an unreadable month, and the festival is three days away. If the date is ~September 4th, it is barely possible for Nanako and the band to be familiar enough with "God Bless" to perform -- but it would have been a lot more plausible a year or two later, after the DVDs came out. |
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one3rd
 Posts: 1818 Location: アメリカ |
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The nostalgia hit pretty hard when that song came on, probably because it was just so unexpected. Anyway, I think I saw a banner in the episode stating that the festival took place in 2006. So if that means fall of 2006, it's not just barely possible for them to have learned the song within a couple of months, it's entirely plausible. Don't forget that insert songs in anime don't exist in a vacuum. They're exploited for profit. The CD single was released on June 21, 2006, just a few days after the episode aired. It wouldn't have been hard to hop over to their local Tower Records to buy it and start learning it right away. Given how big Haruhi was at the time and how striking the guitar intro is, it's almost certain that a lot of real people (video is actually from 2006!) went out and did just that. And even if they just learned it from the anime episode, there would have been nothing preventing them from recording it when it originally aired. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18444 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Just finally got around to watching ep 5, and yeah, I was floored at how thorough a tribute (or rip-off, depending on how you look at it) the performance was to the Haruhi Suzumiya rendition: girl in costume at a school festival doing an emergency fill-in, the way the crowd got into it, the male lead in the crowd being joined by a close associated of both him and the girl.
As for other comments that have been made, I feel that the time slip still has a place here. Kyoya is basing a lot of what he is doing in interacting with others on his own experiences and regrets; that's why he's gotten the "you seem like an adult" kind of comment several times already. Essentially, it's providing an explanation for why he seems wise beyond his years. |
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michizure
Posts: 177 |
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Thanks for the follow-up, one3rd. Recordings had occurred to me, but I hadn't realized that there was a CD release so soon. Point answered.
I think framing and motivation are important here: Nanako is up there reluctantly as a legitimate filler, whereas it's implied that Haruhi injured two people (subconsciously, but still...) just to satisfy her own ego. It seems to me that the contrast is deliberate and effective. |
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moroboshi-kun
Posts: 68 |
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Having not been a big fan of Haruhi (watched it once) the crossover drama of the end was definitely lost on me. But I did like it, although it seemed a smidge predictable. Honestly, it would have been more interesting to me if she flopped - a big part of becoming any sort of artist is learning how to pick yourself back up after you bomb. Nanako is desperate not to fail at something she's passionate about and it holds her back.
Every artist makes a bad pieces, every comic dies on stage more than once, and every singer has bad performances.Learning how to survive failing in public is a big part of that life. And it's not like I'm rooting against Nanako or anything, I'm just saying that would be an interesting to see that angle. One of my favorite things about Shirobako was that there was a lot of struggle, doubt, disappointment, compromise, and all the negative stuff that goes along with starting out in a commercial art field. I will confess to being faked out when Kyoya passed out - I thought he was going to wake up back in the "present" or 10 years ahead. While he is, as someone else mentioned, kind of an undercover mentor, I'd still like to see this angle explored more. But hey, it's only episode 5... |
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michizure
Posts: 177 |
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While I appreciate that Kyoya is looking out for his friends, I still wonder how things worked out without him in the original timeline. His attitude that "I alone can fix this" (very nearly a direct quote, if I recall correctly) is just begging for a comeuppance. I was amused by Team Kitayama's failure to buy into the absurdity of Porn Logic when Kyoya introduces them to an erogame. With the show's harem elements on a slow burn, is this foreshadowing? |
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Dian Z
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Reading your comment, I suddenly have this theory that it's the type of time travel story in which there's only a single timeline. Or at least the original timeline and the current timeline is related. It'll be paradoxical, prompt many questions, and the time traveller aka Kyouya would be isolated in a strange timeline/logic. But it could be that if Kyouya goes back to the original timeline, he would actually find the now famous friends owing to him for (their early steps on) their success. Although this theory can be easily rejected if Eiko really didn't know Kyouya from their first meeting in the original timeline. So just a thought. Anyway, since it's called Remake Our Life. I understand it would remake Kyouya's life at least, and then maybe Eiko's life. These two were met with failure in their project (and life), but maybe the others have their own problems too despite their success. |
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