This was a post that I originally wanted to write for the Spring 2024 season. The series in question were Astro Note for the quiet side and Shuumatsu Train for the loud. You know, with Astro Note being about people who live in an apartment complex to ground it and then having alien politics over it to spread a layer of insanity. Train started out strange and only got stranger at each train stop because the imagination is almost limitless. Sure the train had the girls to ground some of it in reality, but every strange thing was yelled at because it had to be pointed out that it was strange. Note just lived in it and thought the viewer would go along with it.
Those were my quick thoughts towards the insane series from last season. This time in summer 2924, there is Nokotan that tried to meme it's insanity before it started to air. That one specifically is about a former delinquent girl trying to live a normal life with the perfect instrument of her sanity's destruction in the form of a deer girl. So the series is very loudly taking away that girl's sanity. Showing the same day on Crunchyroll at least is Narenare cheer for you which is a cheerleading anime, but has a schoolgirl performing high level parkour on her way to and from school.
From the perspective of the loud vs the quiet absurdity levels in anime, I prefer quiet. I like just living in the world of anime and letting the abnormal happen without much commentary. If a character is ridiculously strong and/or a space alien, let them show it to normal people. A unique, lived in world like dragon ball has normal people living in cities and other places throughout that world. Dragon Ball follows strange and unusually strong people outside of the norm fighting bosses to save the world. The normal people hardly ever know it happens. I love that kind of stuff.
I also love the kind of stuff where a character is placed into a strange area and then has to explore it. Especially when a main character is interested in knowing why things are weird and how that world changed things from how we know it. That's why something like the original Kino's journey and so many little bits of older Sci-fi things are favorites of mine. They are so interesting because it's classic sci Fi to put an idea out there and then explore it. This strangeness that is behind a weird civilization of people as a thought process.
I can't say that I enjoy Nokotan and Shuumatsu Train as much as I could, because they are about declaring something that is weird as loudly as possible. I can't say that I enjoy Nokotan and everyone else just knowing everything about the former delinquent girl and immediately tears her apart in front of a crowd of people in a meta way. It's not just mean, but it's trying to sound cooler than it actually is by getting as much laughter as it can in each moment. Shuumatsu Train does similar things.
The insanity in these series isn't like when the owner of the Astro Lodge pulls out a space bazooka to shoot down aliens like it's no big deal in Astro Note. Especially since aliens are not normal things to normal people and are attempted to be kept away from those humans until they can't be. Parkour girl is just a normal part of Narenare cheer for you and she does get attention on social media, but everyone just accepts it. If a series isn't about exploring weird worlds, at least put in weirdness like both of these.
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