On August 1, 2024, an interesting Anime News Network headline crossed my RSS feed: Can an Anime be ‘Carried by its Animation’? Late that same day, a headline from the always-excellent Sakugablog hit my feed reader: Gimai Seikatsu: An Eclectic Mix of Avant-Garde and Ordinary to Rise Above Limitations. I am not sure there has ever been so clear a case of one article in my feed set indirectly answering a question raised by another. Better yet – I thought of Gimai Seikatsu, localized by Crunchyroll as Days with My Stepsister, as soon as I saw the Anime News Network headline.
Last month, I wrote an article granting that in some cases, what would otherwise be a totally middling anime can be “carried by its animation.” But there are counter-points where a middling anime cannot be carried by its animation, no matter how impressive said animation may be. I thought of this when I read about the release of a new Blu-Ray box set of Aldnoah.Zero.
(The director of Aldnoah.Zero did direct my 2023 anime of the year, however, so redemption achieved!)
