Midterm Review of Spring 2018 Anime by Anime Writers [Anime Column].

Approximately 80 spring animations began airing and distributing in March and April 2018. Among them, we pick up 5 notable works. Kiratto Pri☆Chan," the latest in the Pretty series; "Tada-kun wa Koi ni nai," an original work produced by Animation Studio; "Uma Musume Pretty Derby," in which racehorses have become beautiful girls; "Gegege no Kitaro," in its 50th anniversary year of anime adaptation; and "TV Yaro," wandering in the jungle in pursuit of a rare beast Nanana" will be introduced.

Kiratto Pri☆Chan

For those of us whose childhood days of being cute as balls are long gone and who missed the opportunity to become idols, idol anime with boys and girls singing and dancing is no longer a matter for us. But what the main character, Mirai Momoyama, delivers through the "Pri☆Chan" video site is something anyone could do if they wanted to: introduce a nice flower shop, taste a special sweet, or take on an athletic challenge. Her program teaches us that the very act of telling people what you find interesting is "Pri☆Chan.
The ED theme of this work is "Pri☆Chan! Look, look! It's starting! The song ends with the lyrics, "Look, look, look! This may not seem appropriate as the closing song of the work, but it should be taken as a message that "It's your turn to start Pri☆Chan. Because "Pri☆Chan" is a dream channel where anyone can become an idol.

Tada-kun Won't Fall in Love

This is an original anime that reunites the staff of the "Monthly Girl Nozaki-kun" anime. The opening scene is impressive: Mitsuyoshi Tada, who aspires to be a photographer, is setting his shutter on a cherry blossom tree when he suddenly takes a picture of a foreign student, Teresa Wagner, who comes into the frame. The story takes a sudden turn with the unexpected addition of this portrait to Tada's library, which had been full of landscape photographs.
When a work has a negative form in the title, the focus is on whether the negative is true or false. In the case of this work, the point is whether Tada-kun falls in love or not. In episode 3, there is a curious line, "A man and a woman fall in love if their eyes meet for eight seconds. If we review the beginning of the film from this point, we are left wondering how many seconds there really was in the scene where Tada-kun and Teresa look at each other through the viewfinder. The speculation that comes with an original work makes this one of the most exciting films of all time.

Uma Musume Pretty Derby

In the late 1870s, photographer Edward Muybridge took a series of photographs of horses and solved a long-standing question: "Do all four legs of a galloping horse leave the ground at the same time? Muybridge solved the long-standing question, "Do all four legs of a galloping horse leave the ground at the same time? This series of photographs, which made it appear as if the horse was moving, contributed greatly to the birth of cinema. The existence of horses has been deeply involved in the culture of film.
Therefore, it is inevitable that anime, in which horses have been replaced by Uma Musume, depicts events that differ from the historical reality we know. In this world, horses that did not participate in the Derby would compete with the winner, and horses that broke down in the Tennou-sho would be rehabilitated for their comeback. The mural-style illustration shown at the beginning of the first episode also seems to be a declaration of determination to create a new history. No one knows yet the outcome of Uma Musume's future races.

Gegege no Kitaro

This is the sixth season of "Gegege no Kitaro," a TV animation series that began broadcasting in 1968. The cast includes talented actors such as Miyuki Sawashiro as Kitaro and Masako Nozawa as Oyaji, and the cool and beautiful design of Neko Musume, who has been reborn as an 8-headed cat, has been talked about even before the broadcast. In the first episode, a video distributor reminiscent of a YouTuber appeared from the beginning. He surprised viewers with a development that incorporated modern-day world conditions by ignoring traffic signals at Shibuya's Scramble Crossing to gain access to the site.
In episode 9, "Kappa's Working Style Reform," a kappa is forced to work for a low wage of "three cucumbers an hour," and then raises the flag by pulling out all the human's buttocks. This new series shows the depth of "Kitaro's" open-mindedness in accepting everything from full-blown horror stories to nonsense gags.

Television Bastard Nanana

In this short animation, a film crew from the impoverished TV station "TV Nanana" travels to the jungle to get the scoop on the mysterious and rare animal "Keena. Inspired by TV Tokyo's mascot character Nanana, all the characters are represented as bananas. The legendary sexy program "Gilgamesh NIGHT" and the information variety "Dekago! Admachic Tengoku" and other popular programs that have supported Teletext, the film is packed with the appeal of the station's unique lineup.
The main cast includes Bibiru Ohki, who has dubbed live-action chimpanzees, actor Yoichi Atsumizu, and comedian Tsubayaki Shiro. Guests Masanori Hata, aka Mr. Mutsugoro, and professional wrestler Tatsumi Fujinami appear by phone to impart their wisdom on how to survive in the jungle, but the talk gradually digresses into an unintended direction. The mysterious dialogue, in which it is hard to tell where the dialogue is theatrical and where it is ad-libbed, draws the viewer in.

(Text by Katsunori Takahashi)

(C) T-ARTS/syn Sophia/TV Tokyo/PCH Production Committee
(C) TADAKOI PARTNERS
(c) 2018 "Uma Musume Pretty Derby" Production Committee
(C) Mizuki Production, Fuji Television Network, Toei Animation
(C) studio crocodile, TV TOKYO/"TV Yaro Nanana" Production Committee