It’s not a huge secret that most people weren’t pleased with Minami-ke Okawari. For reasons unknown, Okawari was produced by a different studio and the two seasons aired back to back. It wouldn’t have been too bad, but the writing and animation styles were completely different, and the change was made even more jarring because the two seasons aired within a week of each other and the fact that everyone adored the first season.

I remember getting cautiously excited when it was rumoured that Kyoto Animation would be producing the third season of Minami-ke. Shortly after, I had to lower my expectations once I discovered asread would be doing it again. It’s puzzling to me why asread was allowed to continue with it, even when there was a studio that managed to do Minami-ke right.

I will credit asread with being able to listen to criticism. There’s really no other reason for the writing changes in Okaeri. It’s pretty much what everyone asked for: more other Minami family, less shoehorning in every character into every episode, no annoying out-of-place original characters, and no forced drama. This is enough of an improvement that it puts Okaeri above Okawari.

And yet, even with all of these changes, it still feels like Okaeri’s missing whatever made the first season so special. Okaeri feels like a Minami-ke clone as opposed to the real deal. Okaeri’s OP tries to be like the first season’s OP, but falls short. The teardrop mouths try to make a comeback, but they don’t look like they fit. It’s the uncanny valley effect. Everything’s almost close enough, but the razor-thin separation from the likeness of the first season makes us recoil.

So to me, Okaeri is acceptable. It’s alright. It doesn’t invoke revulsion like Okawari did. It doesn’t compel me to heap praise upon it like the first season did. It just sort of sits there and I watch it and sometimes I’ll get some entertainment out of it. Like Soul Eater, it’s disappointing not in what it does, but what it could have done.

In which I give my impressions on shows that everyone’s already talked about for the past week.

Maria+Holic

Maria+Holic doesn’t fall in my target radius for stuff I’m really interested in. The main characters are a closet lesbian who falls for a guy who’s crossdressing for reasons that haven’t been made apparent yet. But, I really like SHAFT, so I decided to have a look at at least one episode. The show is still awkward to watch, but the trap character is a lot funnier than I expected him to be. We’ll see how the rest of this goes.

Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou

One of a billion sequels this season, this one is for a show that most people didn’t follow from last summer. This second season starts with the advantage of having the characters already gone through some development. This is a really character driven show and the first episode gives us a Natsume and Nyanko that are comfortable in their relationship already and who know how to react when problems show up. It’s a nice watch that’s pretty much only for those of us who liked the first season.

Minami-ke Okaeri

I really didn’t like Okawari and I was unimpressed upon learning that asread would be doing Okaeri. But, it looks like they’ve listened to a lot of the criticism of Okawari. For one thing, the writing and direction is a lot closer to that of the first season. There’s no constant barrage of Mako-chan, there’s no annoying original character, and the glimpse of the Minami brothers in the OP gives everyone hope. On the downside, it looks like the animation quality took a hit. I guess it’d be too much to ask for them not to screw anything up.

This week I finally decided to slog through the latter half of Minami-ke Okawari so that I could put it behind me and hope for the best in January, when Minami-ke Okaeri airs.

M-I-N-A-M-I-K-E LET’S GO

Minami-ke is a slice of life anime about the Minami family, which consists of three sisters. The anime follows the sisters as they go about their lives and interact with people in their classes. In addition to the main characters, the show features a wide stable of characters that, along with the Minamis, partake in various shenanigans. The first season, produced by Dome and aired in Fall 2007, was funny, charming, and solid throughout. Minami-ke’s style includes the drop-mouths and serious-face.

Okawari

For whatever reason, the season following immediately was produced by another studio, asread. The first impression is that the art style completely changed. I don’t really consider that a weakness, since I got used to it over time. What I do consider a weakness is the writing.

It seemed like every episode tried to cram every single one of the side characters in, especially the elementary school kids. As a result, every episode seemed to involve some sort of Mako-chan joke, which got really monotonous. Unfortunately, this also meant that the other side characters were only tangentially visited. We don’t get stuff like intimately detailed schemes from Hosaka anymore. Even worse, we don’t see the other Minami family at all.

The other problem was that it tried to inject some unnecessary drama with Fuyuki. Not only was he unnecessary and uninteresting, but he didn’t fit in at all with the cast. Minami-ke does not need drama. This is further proven by the fact that nothing Fuyuki did mattered. He just showed up, got shoehorned in, and left. The nature of slice of life doesn’t lend itself to this sort of thing, and its apparent failure shows why.

Basically, watch the first season and pretend Okawari doesn’t exist, because you can do that sort of thing with slice of life.