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Alice & Zouroku (TV)

Genres: supernatural
Themes:

Plot Summary: A group of young girls possess a mysterious power known as "Alice's Dream," which gives them the ability to turn their thoughts into reality. Detained and experimented upon, these youths are locked away in secret until one of them manages to escape. Her name is Sana—a girl with the power to ignore the very laws of physics. When this willful powerhouse crosses paths with a stubborn old man named Zouroku, his carefully-ordered life will never be the same again.
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Episode 1:

Hmm, I think the first episode was interesting. The CGI car stuff was distracting but besides that, I think the show built itself with its world setting in a way that I found pretty curious.

Surprisingly good soundtrack so far.

From the character cast, they introduced Sana, Zouroku, Hinagiri twins, etc. There's a feel of mystery in the air as well especially with Sana. I'm curious to know about her more. Between Zouroku and Sana, I like their character chemistry so far. In general, I think the first episode (44+ minutes) set up the story well. I'm interested to see more.

I like this so far, but I'm a bit wary. The tried and true, "let's pair a cute girl with a crusty guy!" is not one of my favourite set ups. The last time I remember this was Dimension W and it was really annoying. So far, this doesn't seem the dynamic between the two will be as irritating as in Dimension W but I'm not loving the old fart's occasional resort to violence. There is a way to get your point across without actually hitting or touching anybody, douchebag. Learn it. So we'll see.

Episode 1

I can see the ingredients here for something I would like, and I found myself fairly invested in the action and intrigue of the first part with the magical battles. I thought confident in this, but then there was a problem, I was not enjoying this. Something big was especially wrong that felt like it was pretty much making it unwatchable, like something really loud that must be in front of my face but I could not see it, and maybe around when the car crashed I realised what it was. The show is too damn quiet. I have seen soundtrack praised, but no, it is bad. In the first episode there were huge stretches of almost no music or background sound, and becoming aware the episode started to become deafening quiet. Sound is important for conveying tone, and for anime and like that is usually done through music (BGM), and when it is absent the tone can be a complete mess, especially if nothing else is there to pick up the slack, which poor car CGI models was not doing.

If you thought something was wrong but did not know what, watch some of it again. Not only is there no music for large sections, there is no background sound effects like you might expect from the environment like sounds of a street, crowds of people, or anything else ambient. While I do think some of the music they had was fairly nice, it was also incredibly quiet when it was playing, that it is completely drowned out by someone talking., which one might consider usually the opposite problem. And old guy was not carrying scenes just with his voice, he was super crusty and really did not connect why he would be the one to help the girl. We are told he has a granddaughter, but apart from that information nothing came across why he might be a good fit for this girl to cling onto, like he was fighting with it full force. Even she could have done with a bit of work to make her more exciting, like a focus on her being a fish out of water from not being outside the institute before, and we really only seem to get a comment of her being a bit interested in beer and not knowing how to use chopsticks.

Who here has seen the recent movie, Logan? Thinking about it, in essence there is kind of an overlap with themes with older guy taking on girl escaping evil corporation, and there is something to be said about a failure here in execution. Actually, talking about Hollywood movies, does this sound like the parts of something: Red Queen, Alice, pharmaceutical company, lab underneath a mansion in the forest.

Final thoughts after this first episode. I want to like this series, but I was super bored after this first episode and hope it improves.

@ DP - interesting observation about the lack of bgm and sound effects. I didn't notice that myself on a conscious level. I wonder if that was a deliberate choice or a result of rushed production? Just like the animation of a show sometimes needs to be "sweetened" for home release, I wonder if the same is ever true for sound? I appear to have liked the episode more than you did, DP, but I agree with the feeling of wanting to like it more than I actually did.

Episode 2:

Ah, I like that OP song. There's a good degree of creativity poured into it and is catchy.

Sanae and Sana's character chemistry is really cute. I feel like the two can become good friends. Honestly, I thought this episode had much more humor than compared to the first one thanks to Sana's powers.

Shizuku' fun to watch with the business relationship she shares with Ryuu.
It's also interesting to see a little bit more of Sana's past.

Second episode was much better than the first. At least for one I found the use of things like bgm and I would say some more sound effects made it much more enjoyable. Sana and Samae had some great chemistry with each other that I felt myself engaged. The best part of the episode I think was the pigs, it came off of a small gag of Sanae having a pig hand puppet, and after the joke novelty wears off the question is: Okay this is all well and good, but where did these guys come from and we should send them back. With no real answer other than it looks like Sana created these animals, probably cruel that they so suddenly get removed, so they just hole them up, and thinks like all their oinking was good tone. It was chaotic, but little piglets can be cute especially with all the pink which is a colour theme with Sana, and have done a good job of really setting a tone for her character.

We get more information about her and stuff, and although it looked like she could simply teleport herself and others in the first episode, it looks like there is more nuance to it. She connects to people, which is apparently how she developed her independence, she can create things, some sort of influence with memories, and I am guessing that the reason she teleported all over the place with Sanae without much control was because Sanae's mind was creating some sort of interference.

I am more into this show now.

Took me about halfway into the first episode to get interested, but, at least for now, I'll keep watching it.

It does have a Gakuen Alice vibe to it, though. I'm hoping that it doesn't try to copy it.

I love the fact that one of the MC's is a crotchety old fart. All too often in anime, if an old guy is in the story he's depicted as either evil or a pervert, someone for the rest of the cast to either ridicule or overcome. Zouroku is none of these. He's simply an ordinary guy who's been around a long time. Some shades of Silas Marner in his decision to basically adopt Alice, tho so far as we know (yet) there doesn't seem to be any tragedy to his back story (Other than his child dying, that is).

Favorite scene wasspoiler[ him berating the children for the property damage they caused; even tho the twins were the nominal "bad guys" of the episode, they still behave respectfully towards him and even apologize (while the onlookers all clap and cheer him on). ] Zouroku definitely lives by his own rules and doesn't care what anyone thinks.

Emphasis on his cigarette use and its potential health effects makes me think that's going to be a plot point somewhere down the line. I expect we'll see him diagnosed with something like cancer before the series ends. Which he'll probably subsequently use to teach his young charge about living one's life to its fullest.

Anyway, this series was certainly a very pleasant surprise for me and I look forward to more of it in the coming weeks.

I doubt Sana-chan would have a problem curing Zorouku of lung cancer. She seems pretty capable of most anything, though the boundary between her world and the real world could become an issue.

I like this show despite its use of stock chaacters pretty much throughout. Sana-chan is the usual genki ojou-sama. She reminds me a lot of Murasaki in Kurenai with her imperious attitude. She even wears the same striped tights. Zorouku plays the oji-san with the heart of gold. A number of the characters have echoes in Flip Flappers, like the twins with Minnie-C in the Yayaka role.

Despite all that I found the first two episodes amusing, and the show worth continuing. I like Zorouku's down-to-earth character; who expects a florist to be the hero?! Watching Sana-chan mature should be fun to watch as will her interactions with Sanae in the onee-sama role.

I did wonder why Sana didn't send the pigs to a more appropriate locale like a farm. Sanae seemed remarkably copacetic with having a herd of baby pigs in her and her grandfather's home.

yuna49 wrote:

I doubt Sana-chan would have a problem curing Zorouku of lung cancer. She seems pretty capable of most anything, though the boundary between her world and the real world could become an issue.

Probably. But still, the way they've been presenting it in the first few episodes makes me think its definitely a Chekov gun.

Episode 3

Minnie-C looks to be a villain, but a much more sympathetic one. In fact, I suspect the supposed "bad guys" of this series may be much more gray than black. The government agents too seem a little on the shady side to me, and I suspect they'll wind up being just as worrisome as the people they are trying to catch. Zouroku will have some tough decisions to make in the future as to who he can trust.

Laughed at the Carl's Jr. product placement. I think that was the most blatant bit of advertising I've ever seen in an anime series; it happened not once but twice, and the second time was practically a commercial. I didn't know Carl's Jr. was in Japan, too, tho I'm not surprised.

spoiler[Looking forward to see how they resolve Alice's kidnapping, and hope they don't make Minnie-C out to be a complete psycho; I know a gold-star family, and its a tough thing to go through.]

Overall, this series is probably my second favorite of the season, beaten only by Re:Creators. Its way better than most of everything else that I've tried this quarter.

Episode 6

We missed a week for recap, but I really liked this week. It landed in a great spot of Sana acting like a child, with learning many different things, and maybe actions that could come across as somewhat annoying, but also totally adorable, and learning barriers. Parent nightmares in Sana running off by herself too, it felt like there was a lot in this episode.

Although an adition, kind of a bit creepy that the bride to that man, which I think was yakuza, is a teenage high school girl. Not sure how I feel about that.

But the down to earth elements of this episode were kind of great, with nice characterisation, and in general it felt engaging, the best since the second episode. Has me wondering if we will have Sana going to school soon, this episode was called "The Kashimura family" and was all about her really joining as a member of the family, and with the next episode being "Friends" it makes me think she will have people closer to her age. As a change of character she has already had a haircut. And pig plushie.

The show got a bit weak in the middle, but definitely ended strong.

Episode 12 (finale)

I think it was that this kind of went strong when it had a theme to talk about, especially in hindsight the action heavy stuff early on were pretty pointless. The stuff where we had Sana learning like a kid would, like in this last arc that things are not always so black and white, had it be interesting. You had this feeling of character development as she learned things, and the times it could kind of channel this child sense of creativity.

But I also had this thought that it was kind of cool that I did not know which the show would go, it started off action before becoming more about people, the evil organisation was actually brought down with the children taken somewhere good, and Sana spends half the season with a different haircut. The evil witch story of it almost simply being about kids dealing with a hard situation actually made it more interesting than if it was some revenge plot from earlier in the show.

I give a rating of Good (7/10), I was pretty harsh earlier in the show, but with some more focus and something that might be more relatable, it became an easier watch and I think made up for its stumbles. Maybe some extra additions, I had this little fondness for the little fairy tale like aspect that came in from things like the ED which reminded me of Humanity has Declined and Azumanga Daioh.

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