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Since living in Okinawa, I often look out to the sea and think, "Man, I really want to go fishing, but its SO expensive for deep sea fishing gear!" So instead of going out and spending a few grand, I let this anime do it for me. If you hate fun, please leave this post now because this anime is full of it.
We first meet our main character, Yuki, as he is moving ti Enoshima, a bay area surrounded by the ocean. Yuki moves fairly often due to his grandmother's works, so it is heavily implied he never has time to make friends. We follow his first day at his new school only to find out he suffers from sever anxiety attacks whenever he is confronted with unwanted attention. To make matters worse, he is completely unaware that he makes one of the scariest faces while freaking out. As a result, many other students shy away from him because they fear his is always angry.
After Yuki introduces himself to his new classmates trying desperately not to freeze up and being ultimately successful, another transfer student shows and begins his introduction. Enter Haru, someone who absolutely comes out of left field. His introduction goes something like this, "I'm Haru! I'm an alien! Yuki!!!" Everyone in class immediately begins staring at Yuki, which prompts his incredibly weird anxiety face. Haru squirts him in the face with a water gun that can also control minds and both characters being to dance the "Enoshima Dance" which is shown in the opening credits.
Thus begins a show filled with laughs and additional knowledge on deep sea fishing. Yuki is forced to befriend Haru after grandma agrees to let him live in the same house and the two attempt to learn how to fish. with the help of their friends Natsuki, Akira, and his pet duck Tapioca. Haru is on a mission to fish out another of his kind that is messing up Enoshima's waters and citizens and so he enlists the help of Yuki.
The show was quite refreshing in an industry that enjoys regurgitating the same tropes over and over again which is why in recent years I find myself gravitating to series from the mid 90's or earlier. When I saw the first episode I got excited about the show. The characters seemed well though out and honest with real-world problems (except the alien thing) and the plot seemed well put together. There was an amazing balance between jokes that I actually laughed and and serious contemplative moments as well. The first half of the series serves almost as a beginner's tutorial to deep sea fishing and the second half gets more into the meat of the characters and what their goals are, but the show never broke that delicate balance despite the shift in plot.
Can we talk about the artwork because what initially brought me to this series was the gorgeous poster. This show makes me want to GO to Enoshima. The colors are vivid and the lines are fluid which makes HD a MUST. I watched this in 720p, but it was a direct TV rip so it wasn't true HD. I will definitely be purchasing the blu ray sometime in the future.
Final Thoughts:
Watch this. Tsuritama is light-hearted without resorting to cheap jokes and will leave you wondering whether you should go out at spend $1,500 on your own rod and reel. It is only thirteen episodes, so you aren't making a huge commitment time wise either.
For as long as I can remember, I have ALWAYS been afraid of the circus. Or rather, my fear of clowns and anger at the mistreatment of animals has kept me away from the circus. So when I came across images of Iva from the anime Karneval while searching for Emporio Ivankov cosplay, I became intrigued.
ANN's synopsis only pulled me in further,
Nai searches for someone important to him, with only an abandoned bracelet as a clue. Gareki steals and pick-pockets to get by from day to day. The two meet in a strange mansion where they are set-up, and soon become wanted criminals by military security operatives. When Nai and Gareki find themselves desperate in a hopeless predicament, they encounter none other than the country's most powerful defense organization, "Circus". The Circus is a Defense organization that works for the government. They perform raids to capture criminals and solve crimes that the Security force otherwise cannot handle. After their raids, they put on shows as an apology for scaring the citizens. Their group consists of the strongest, most capable fighters that use a special type of bracelet, known as Circus I.D., to fight.
Finally! Something that sounds new and refreshing! Action, suspense, and fun all in one! The character design looked fun and interesting as well, so I decided to give it a shot. Little did I know, Karneval was a hot mess plot-wise.
Pretty designs right? They are full of lies!
Upon watching the first episode, warning bells started to ring. I remember watching the colorful ending theme and seeing the cast of characters scrolling across the screen thinking, "Man, they just keep going! Oh wow, more characters! Still going...how are they going to pull this off in 13 episodes?" Spoiler alert, they didn't.
While the summary above isn't a complete and total lie, I can say for certain it only covers the first two or so episodes.
The beginning starts with Nai, a young, naive boy who is on a quest for the only companion he has ever known named Karoku. The first scene shows him laying on a bed in chains with a woman twice is age on top of him. Mind you, this kid looks like he is in elementary school and he is basically a sex slave to a very affluent older woman. Fortunately, the rapiness ends there as Gareki, our other main character, sneaks into the room when our lovely lady host leaves to check up on some things. Gareki sets Nai free just before they are caught raiding the room and the two attempt to leave. They are then chased by this unknown woman who begins to form what I can only describe as spaghetti arms. As the spaghetti arms are flailing around aimlessly wonderfully solving nothing and failing to inflict any harm upon the supposed targets, Gareki blows a hole up in the house giving our heroes a means to escape. It is within these 10 minutes that Gareki and Nai form some sort of weird pseudo romantic relationship that continually makes the viewer cringe whenever they are seen together especially after finding out what Nai really is.
Cuteness does not make up for plot.
Gareki, after blowing up a mansion, makes the logical choice to skip town...by jumping on top of a moving train. While holding Nai. I will just assume this is because: anime physics. Anyway, they board the train and it isn't until 30 min or so in, they notice no one else is in the car. Gareki gets up and is immediately bitch slapped by some mysterious characters who have only appeared for a total of 5 min thus far. Meanwhile, Nai starts freaking out about noises in the train. Gareki grabs Nai and runs towards the front of the train, following the mysterious group from earlier. Come to find out, the train is being hijacked and is being pursued by the two people who handed it to Gareki. They introduce themselves as agents of Circus, a super secret government defense force who also put on shows in order to apologize for scaring the locals. The circus agents we now find out are Hirato and Tsukumo, the former a tall handsome gentlemen in what can only be described as a magician's getup and the latter being a small, cute girl in blonde pigtails.
Once the circus agents confront the hijackers/kidnappers (they kidnapped a CEO and his granddaughter), they do...nothing. That's right. They simply say they can not take action since hijacking is out of their jurisdiction and allow themselves to be caught and bound. Gareki and Nai burst in shortly after without thinking and are immediately held at gunpoint. The Circus members break free and kick the shit out of the hijackers because a CEO was not enough to break jurisdiction, but two kids are?
Welcome to Karneval, where the characters don't matter and the plot makes no sense! Some examples of the writers complete and UTTER lack of story coherence include:
Nai is an animal, but in human form? This is never EVER explained. He just magically became like this. During Nai's flashback scenes, we see him as an animal, but are never told how he became a human. Also, because he is a RARE animal, he is sought after for almost two episodes and then no one cares anymore.
Why was Karoku abducted? Why did he have an old Circus ID band? We find out that Karoku has become evil and wants to kill his gentle side. What is his motivation for this? He always has bandages on, did he undergo human experimentation?
We learn that there is a secret organization named Kafka who is dealing with genetic enhancement and creating monsters with superhuman abilities because...? Because. We never find out why nor do we ever find out the history behind them. They are also never brought to justice. In the end, the enemy quietly slips away and no one questions this.
The main face presented for Kafka is a character known as Uro. Uro lives in a lavish mansion with the formly abducted CEO's daughter who is obsessed with Karoku. Uro wants to grant all of her wishes. Why? What is the significance of this fourteen year old girl? Why is she kept in the dark about Kafka? How does she not notice all the creepy mutating animals?
Splashed in between "main plot" episodes, if you can even follow it, there are fun light-hearted episodes that try to give the characters some sort of background. The problem with this show stems from the fact that the writers were only given thirteen episodes to pack so much plot and character development in and this means there really is no time for lighter filler episodes making the characters very two dimensional. While watching, I could not care less about any given character because no connection to the audience was ever given. Why SHOULD I care?
My face at the end of this show.
Probably one of the worst parts of this show is the ending. I have watched a LOT of anime and have seen some pretty shitty endings. Inuyasha's original ending before the new series was one of the worst out there, BUT I actually cared about the characters and what was to happen to them since I had grown with them over the course of eight or so seasons. Imagine having Inuyasha's unresolved ending and only having thirteen episodes to get acquainted with a character list almost as large. The audience is left with Gareki randomly leaving for school so he can join Circus, not knowing anything about Kafka, Karoku in the hospital in a coma, and everyone is happy. The plot has not moved forward in any way, but the audience is supposed to be happy? I know I wanted to throw my monitor across the room.
Final Verdict:
Stay far, far away from this show. The character designs and artwork are pretty and the ending song is pretty catchy, but it is not worth your time. You'll just want to beat your head over a rock.
