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EP. REVIEW: Handa-kun


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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 10:02 am Reply with quote
Pretty funny show. Wish it got better production quality but I think the humor overshadows that part especially with Handa's life.

It's pretty simple, the character reminds me of Sakamoto somewhat from Spring season.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 10:21 am Reply with quote
Yeah second episode was much stronger than the first one, I don't min the 4th wall breaking so much, but since its literally the first thing that happen with a bunch of character we don't know (if people start with hands-kun without having seen Barakamon they'd most likely assume those were character from the previous show) its just a plain bad idea. I'm assuming that's not how the manga start which cast serious doubt over the comedy chops of the studio doing the adaptation.

But otherwise its pretty funny in a somewhat surreal way.
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JaggedAuthor



Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Posts: 981
PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 11:21 am Reply with quote
I'm fine with them recasting teenage Handa, but it seems a little unnecessary. Late bloomers notwithstanding, don't most guys settle into their adult voices by 16-17?
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Silver4000



Joined: 07 Aug 2015
Posts: 181
PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 11:43 am Reply with quote
In my opinion the point of an original part at the beginning of the first episode is just to show what kind of series Handa-kun is going to be. Because the people who just watched the anime (Barakamon) won't stop comparing both. And expecting both (even though if Handa-kun was the exact same as Barakamon, there would be no Barakamon).

With that said, the first chapters of the manga are slow, but the comedy is ways better than Barakamon. And when the Handa team is fully built, things will get way better than the first impressions the anime can give. Although, the manga is already over with 6 volumes iirc, so I wonder if they are going to adapt everything in a 1 cour season, which means that some content would be left unadapted.
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Hameyadea



Joined: 23 Jun 2014
Posts: 3679
PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 1:01 pm Reply with quote
It's all fun and games until the teacher nonchalantly admits to have rigged the class poll ("I cast a vote on the behalf of the truant").
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 6:55 pm Reply with quote
I love that the X=12 is still on the chalkboard. Smile

Quote:
Handa is completely clueless and just happens to win his classmates' hearts through coincidence and misunderstanding.

I think there's a little more going on here than that. This kinda reminds me of my free-form text-rpg days. There were always a handful of characters who gave off the cool, brooding loner vibe. They'd come into the room, grab a corner table and throw out a descriptive line once in a while, but mostly just remained silent. And they ended up with reputations for being total badasses by doing almost nothing. What was really interesting was that when I'd talk to some of these characters' players behind the scenes, more often than not they were just shy kids who could barely hold an intelligible conversation, or posers who created elaborate "real life" backstories for themselves for which they couldn't keep the details straight (I guess when someone was actually talking to them they felt they had to make up something).

The point is that their in-character reps were essentially based on the projections of the other players who filled in the abundant blank spaces themselves, making those characters much more interesting than they actually were.

I think people do the same in real life, based on others' appearance. It's kind of like the old saw, "Better to remain silent and let others think you're stupid than to speak and remove all doubt," except that others don't think you're stupid if you look cool enough. Smile Handa has the looking cool part down.
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crosswithyou



Joined: 15 Dec 2007
Posts: 2892
Location: California
PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 6:38 am Reply with quote
JaggedAuthor wrote:
I'm fine with them recasting teenage Handa, but it seems a little unnecessary. Late bloomers notwithstanding, don't most guys settle into their adult voices by 16-17?

It's an entirely different production staff and company which is why everything, including the cast, was changed.

Imo, the first two volumes of the manga were the funniest. The later volumes were still funny, but didn't quite match the humor of the first couple which I found to be even funnier than Barakamon. Vol.6 just came out earlier this month. We'll see how far the anime series gets.

I, too, liked how the ""x = 12" has remained on the chalkboard since Handa wrote it in ink. Anime hyper
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2016 6:50 am Reply with quote
What the heck is going on with the ED animation? Their arms are in perfect sync with the beat all the way through, but when their feet appear somehow they're timed wrong and it's like how windshield wipers never quite match what's playing on your radio. Smile I'm not sure how that's possible since they should end up with more steps than arm swings, and yet they don't. I've watched it several times to try to see why it's working out that way, but all I know is it's driving me crazy.

I do love the song though. Very Happy
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JaggedAuthor



Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Posts: 981
PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2016 6:45 pm Reply with quote
Kondo just might be my favorite character. I love the idea of someone being immune to Handa's purely inadvertent charms and offering up semi-realistic reactions to the rest of the school's reverence for him. I also picked up on some distinctly dark comic vibes toward the end of the episode, due largely in part to Kawafuji's big reveal. (Not to mention Kondo being strong-armed into eating Handa's pudding by the latter's zombie-like followers.) Takao being amused by the fact that he turned his best friend into the poster child for social anxiety certainly wouldn't fly in the parent series, but it sort of meshes with this show's general tone.
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tsvkkis



Joined: 21 Dec 2015
Posts: 87
PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2016 7:42 pm Reply with quote
Kawafuji is by far my favorite character in the series. Probably because he reminds me so much of myself.
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Merida



Joined: 21 Feb 2012
Posts: 1945
PostPosted: Sat Jul 30, 2016 1:10 pm Reply with quote
This show has been a bit of a weird viewing experience for me. It probably makes me cringe just as many times as it makes me laugh. Handa-kun's delusions of being universally hated may solely exist in his head but the resulting suffering is very real and i can't help but feel sorry for the poor guy more often than not...
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dash56



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
Posts: 151
PostPosted: Sat Jul 30, 2016 8:00 pm Reply with quote
Another great episode. I can't get enough of the awkward misunderstandings.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Sat Jul 30, 2016 9:50 pm Reply with quote
Merida wrote:
This show has been a bit of a weird viewing experience for me. It probably makes me cringe just as many times as it makes me laugh. Handa-kun's delusions of being universally hated may solely exist in his head but the resulting suffering is very real and i can't help but feel sorry for the poor guy more often than not...

Very much this, though I laugh more than feel sad. However, his attempt at conversation with his mother stabbed me in the heart. That brief scene, together with his earlier despair at the prospect of his mother learning the whole school hated him, spoke volumes about their relationship.

Quote:
...the revelation that Handa's “girlfriend” is actually his mother isn't as much of a stunner as the series might want it to be.

I'm sure they didn't expect it to be a surprise since we met her in Barakamon. I think it was more of an I Love Lucy "uh-oh" moment where you can see from the start Lucy's going to have some 'splainin' to do, and you're just waiting to see how out of hand things are going to get.

I didn't quite get the final joke - did she actually leave hair for him, or was that part of his imagination? It confused me because it began with him looking at the shi ne/nu on his desk. I also couldn't tell if he was crying because she scared him by leaving a curse-like message, or if he was sad that people hated him so much that they actually created new ways to bully him rather than sticking with the normal ways, or both.

Btw, I was really expecting this to be the thumbnail this week. Very Happy

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Merida



Joined: 21 Feb 2012
Posts: 1945
PostPosted: Sat Aug 06, 2016 11:52 am Reply with quote
I could have done without the lame feminism equals misandry "joke" from the first part, but amnesiac Handa-kun was pretty hilarious. And even though i wrote in my previous comment that i sometimes feel bad for him, if this is the alternative, i think i prefer his gloomy self (sorry Handa-kun, please suffer some more for our sake...).
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Silver4000



Joined: 07 Aug 2015
Posts: 181
PostPosted: Sat Aug 06, 2016 2:41 pm Reply with quote
Such a shame they skipped Dash...
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