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Just Because! (TV).




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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Thu Oct 05, 2017 3:11 am Reply with quote


Just Because! (TV)

Genres: drama, romance
Themes: coming of age, love triangle, school, school life

Plot Summary: For a group of high school seniors, a chance reunion with a transfer student will change the course of their final year. Eita Izumi has come back to his hometown after four years and encounters some unlikely acquaintances: Haruto Soma, Eita’s childhood friend; Ena Komiya, the photography student who witnesses Eita and Haruto's reunion; Mio Natsume, whose feelings for her middle school crush still linger; and Hazuki Morikawa, a girl who seems uninterested in romantic relationships. When the paths of these five cross, their fates turn in a way none of them could have seen coming.
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A new original Fall 2017 anime title. First episode premieres today.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15434
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Thu Oct 05, 2017 9:08 pm Reply with quote
Episode 1

For some reason when I saw the promotional art for this series, with just a very basic description, I could feel something drawing me, and coincidientally finding out that this will be one of the few series produced by PINE JAM, that did last season's Gamers.

Honestly, I was a little surprised to find this a very methodical and slow slice of life, along the lines of Tsuki ga Kirei. But I find myself more interested than that series, and I think it partially comes down to where this is taking place, towards the end of seniors in High school. It kind of made me think of that feeling towards the end of high school, and the art so far feels like it has this fitting style.

Who knows what this will be like going forward, but my interest is kept.
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Galap
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Joined: 07 Apr 2012
Posts: 2354
PostPosted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 1:29 am Reply with quote
Reposted from the preview guide thread for posterity:

I tend to like things where the central conceit is either nonobvious and you have to figure it out as you go, or it's just kind of nebulous anyway. Because to me that discovery, the sense that you have to play the game to figure out why you're playing the game, is something that I really enjoy. Probably because it's kind of realistic: one's life doesn't really have a 'central conceit'. And for that to be true for the characters give a lot of room for them to be realistic in a way that's less common in fiction.

I really liked the intro to Just Because; I really liked how the animation was rugged but very subtle. And I also liked the 'about to graduate high school' setting, making me remember that period of my life as well. It was long enough ago that I don't really think about it that much, and since present-day me knows what came after, it was a little hard to remember what not knowing was like. I remember being ready to try something new and move on, but it was a little weird to be leaving the environment and the people I'd been around for a significant fraction of my life up to that point.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15434
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 3:11 am Reply with quote
Don't know if it is relevant, but I am actually having the 10 year reunion for my high school next month, so the end of high school is on my mind. And probably especially not relivant as this is not really the place to do life blog like things, but I kind of just today got another kind of milestone in being employed today.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 5:26 am Reply with quote
Episode 2

Oh boy, I'm already having trouble telling the girls apart, since they all seem to have red hair (and a weird shade of red at that). I'm not sure I understand what happened this episode.

Ok, Haruto likes Hazuki, who maybe likes him but for some reason thinks he likes...Mio? Who probably likes Eita but acts like she doesn't, same with Eita liking her. I don't know what Yoriko has to do with it besides being Hazuki's friend, but she seems to keep cockblocking everyone in or out of sight.

So did Haruto text Hazuki or the whole group? Or more to the point, did she text her thanks to the whole group? I don't know how to tell the difference, so I thought he'd grab the opportunity to just reply to her text, not send out a mass invite.

And Yoriko's avatar looks obscene. I had to really zoom in before I could tell it was, I think, her sitting on a red railing and taking a picture of her knees and feet with a V sign?

How long I stick with this will come down to whether i love Haruto (he's the only character I like so far, but I already adore him) more than I hate the paparazzi pig. Every time she's on screen I start fantasizing about hammering a pike through her camera lens and nailing her head to the wall.

Episode 3

And PP is really testing my patience. Somebody please body slam her in front of an oncoming train. If not for how adorable Haruto is, there would be no 4. He really should hook up with Yoriko, since she's the only other character in this who doesn't seem to be clinically depressed (or possessed by a pig demon). The two could bond over their mutual love for Hazuki.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15434
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Dec 29, 2017 9:08 pm Reply with quote
Episode 12 (finale)

How are we meant to feel about this ending? The end with this supposed couple mutual confession came the way from failure, in spite of having poor communication. It is kind of the worst part of how this ended, we ended up here despite such poor communication, he would not tell her, and she would not tell him. She decided some arbitrary place to try a confession, he decided on some arbitrary goal of a homerun to go to her, and the moment passes because they both suck at communication. At the least she messaged him that she wanted to talk to him, but he did not message her that he even got the message. These two are so bad at talking to each other that I suspect their relationship will be doomed from still not be able to do it.

And how that maybe frustrates me so much is that to get there he turned down Komiya, a girl he actually had great communication with. She would talk about what she wanted, he would complain if he found something a problem, and was so open that she pretty much confessed before the time of her goal to reach before confessing. In the end he was easily able to talk to her, and able turn her down, sad, but it was good communication. The chemistry between the two was just great in that they spent time, rather than him being into a girl that he mostly watched from a distance in the past, whose claim to not being able to get involved was that she needed to study for an exam, but if that is any message it should be that plans she has to take steps of next steps are more important than these relationships right now.

There maybe should be a lesson here that one should not wait, not make up excuses why one cannot act now, or any number of excuses without just being honest about real reasons. But with everything that happened it fell on regardless the silly answer that these two happened to end up in the same college, in spite of other factors. There be complaints romcoms relying on coincidences, and I think that is because people don't like the idea one would have to rely on something so unlikely, so what are we meant to think when these characters do nothing despite the chances, leaving it to some right moment?

Was it just me, or did animation seem strangely limited in this episode, too? There was some nice atmosphere, but characters really did not move that much, and an overreliance on a lot of still shots. Maybe it was always like this, and I happened to notice things here. Generally it was not a bad show, I enjoyed it for the most part. Although the show's setting was a little weird, weird in its title being Just Because, and it kind of felt like we were watching this just because. Of course some drama and the like, but had me wonder why. I think that the best line was when I think Mio asked why Komiya bothered to ask for permission with Eita if she was going to ignore it, and Komiya said "just because", that felt like a good line of the don't wait theme the series could be working on. I think it even tried to end on the don't wait thing, but it happened after waiting a dang long time.

I give a rating of Decent (6/10), even if it was a fairly interesting choice, in general I can say it was something that I did not lose time watching. It was not incredibly pretty except for some atmosphere choices, most of the characters were not incredibly interesting, and although it did the graduation thing reasonably well for a representation of the time of lives, I can't say it came across incredibly strongly. Still it was a fairly easy watch, nothing too wacky, and characters were consistent.
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prodigy1807



Joined: 10 Jan 2018
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:45 am Reply with quote
Ummm... hello everyone , well i was just wondering if this season would have a season 2. I feel like the story could have been extended for another 12 episodes showing from college>graduation>marriage and so on.. Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy
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