Not Red Reviews

PA Works’ newest show is pretty fucking awesome. It’s about five boys and girls trying to make the most of their senior year of high school. (Making memories, yeah!) I know that sounds incredibly derivative, but the execution is just fantastic. If PA Works can keep up the production quality, characterization, and plot, they might have a masterpiece on their hands. Enough gushing, though. It’s time for my review!

r/a/ge level: 30/100. Maymays are fun!

+ Honorifics (except sensei)

+ Eastern/spoken name order (I think)

– No opening and ending translation

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Sup, FaggotX?

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Wow, Crunchyroll used italics to help get the point across! Sadly, it’s underused. There were a couple more places italics would’ve improved the pace of a line.

Oh, and someone somewhere is bitching about the forever alone line.

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Wait. It’s actually appropriate. Look at this faggot play badminton by himself.

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The music for this scene is simply incredible. It truly sounds like a choir lined up to sing. The singers mesh well to create a very soothing sound. I don’t care much for the lyrics in Japanese songs, but I just love how it sounds. Singing seems like it’ll be a recurring theme in the show, which I look forward to. I hope the choir gets an even bigger spotlight in future episodes.

So far, this is the only show I know for sure I’ll finish.

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“Thank you (or thanks) for everything and congratulations!”

This is relatively minor. I think I only took this screenshot to show of the an8 skills Crunchyroll have recently come into, but looking at the screenshot with no context makes me think there’s something wrong with the line.

“Thank you” by itself doesn’t really capture what the students are doing for their teacher. They’re congratulating her on her baby, saying their good-byes as she goes on maternity leave, and thanking her for her time as their teacher. Thus, it would sound better if they said, “Thank you for everything …” Not to mention, “thank you” going straight into a “congratulations” simply reads awkward as fuck with the full stop of the first exclamation mark.

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Preggo teacher is totally smokin’ and freakin’ awesome. If she’s gone in the next episode because of maternity leave, I’m going to be really disappointed. She’s a great character and teacher to be able to banter with her students, offer them her support when they need it, and so on. It’s stuff like this that kept me hooked on Tari Tari‘s first episode. Everyone’s generally realistic. You know, at least within the bounds of an anime. Their interactions are also really natural, and that’s in no small part thanks to Crunchyroll.

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I just love these lines. They’re totally cynical, but you really can’t deny her logic because there’s probably evidence for it in everyone’s lives. Maybe there are things you want to do, but try as you might, you just can’t do it. You can’t always accomplish anything if you set your mind to it. Not everyone gets to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, singer, actor, etc.

I like that the adults in this show contribute to the plot and characterization of the protagonists. Crunchyroll’s excellent treatment of their lines helps, too.

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Yes, the teacher says “address,” but she’s referring to her email address, not a home address or anything. Sure, the characters have their phones out, but this is another one of those ambiguous lines that may confuse some newer viewers. Why do that if you can help it? Oh, yes. In this case, it can be helped!

The line should really be “Here’s my email (address).” It may be weird to a newcomer to anime and/or Japanese culture who doesn’t know Japanese people use emails more than discrete phone numbers for “texting,” but hey, at least they won’t be confused about the actual meaning of the line. I’m sure liberal- and literalfags can agree on this change.

Also, the sky is blue.

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The teacher previously referred to headphones-girl as a catalyst to get Minko-clone back into singing and later says this line. I’m not sure if it’s a liberal interpretation by Crunchyroll because the words are too big for me (that’s what she said), but damn does it work. Such imagery. I love it.

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Here’s one legitimate mistake. Shame on you, Crunchyroll. This is why you should read over your work, have a separate editor/QC, or use spellcheck (loljk). I personally never use spellcheck because Aegisub’s spellcheck is pretty terrible.

There are two other typos I don’t have screenshots of, but oh well…

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I also would’ve accept “old hag,” though that may be redundant. Once again, I just love the natural dialogue and character interactions in this show. It’s one of the few shows where I actually enjoyed the majority of the first episode.

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What I liked:

Someone at Crunchyroll must really like PA Works because a lot of effort (or skill) went into the making of this release. The dialogue flows like melted butter, it has soul, and the characters all feel distinct. Everything is just spot on. There’s a lot to like in this release.

Honestly, many fansub groups can take Crunchyroll’s release and add their own spin to it, but there probably won’t be much difference between them. If I actually edited this show, I’d only make a few tweaks to discreetly improve the flow, but not much else. Crunchyroll is already doing an excellent job with this.

+ Great dialogue

+ Great characterization

What I didn’t like:

No matter how well Crunchyroll does, though, they’ll likely always have problems with punctuation. There are many superfluous commas in the insert songs, which can hurt the flow, sadly. It’s all minor in the grand scheme of things, however, and the pros definitely make up for the cons.

– Punctuation

– Couple lines

Rating: 5 high schoolers just trying to get by… out of 5.

This entry was posted by brainchild.