SHOSHIMIN: How to Become Ordinary

'SHOSHIMIN: How to become Ordinary is a refreshing series, with around ten episodes so far.

Sorry for the banality, but this series is very similar to Hyouka in its tone, mysterious, mystical atmosphere and relatively light-hearted approach to events.

It's really relaxing and makes you smile and think.

The graphics, animation and chara-design are magnificent.

The soundtrack fits the atmosphere perfectly.

There's a lot of potential here, and the series can really take a turn for the worse, like Yuki's menacing aura in episode 3. You feel that the characters could play in a completely different register if the author wanted them to. But that's not the point of this anime.

A very nice series for the moment. To be followed...

Almost nothing happens for the entire show, and we learn almost nothing about any character, but I was riveted by the end. The whole thing is incredibly thick with anticipation, and the anticipation never pays off, but I was satisfied nonetheless. I still don't understand how the producers spun so much quality out of so little material -- like a delicious stick of cotton candy, which is exactly the kind of thing our protagonists would eat.

It's like Encyclopedia Brown, in Japan, but with the unfulfilled promise of incredible violence. It's a romantic drama where the characters never touch and aren't in love. The last episode spun me around like a top, twisting and turning and arriving in an entirely unpredictable place that somehow competed multiple satisfactory character arcs at the same time. I just said "Wow!" again out loud while typing this. Oh my goodness.

(Maybe this is more like a 9/10? But the middle episodes did drag, until I saw the whole picture, so... maybe I'm just due for a rewatch in a few years.)

This anime is based on another school-mystery novel from the author of Hyouka. It's adapted by studio Lapintrack (which brilliantly adapted the mystery novel "Undead Murder Farce" as well). These were the reasons why it was my most anticipated anime this summer.

So how was it?

I think this should have been a consecutive-cour (20 episodes) anime rather than a split-cour (Season 2 is scheduled for next spring). Because of the kind of story this is, I can't really decide how this anime is with the first 10 episodes. As of now, I think it's fine and enjoyable. There are plenty of things I admire about the adaptation, but I don't know enough about these characters to judge how the writing is.

This is a very slow-paced story. It's full of small-scale school mysteries, so the story doesn't always feel that happening. But at the same time, it builds up a very strange, mysterious aura around its main characters, which makes the viewers curious to know more about them. But that's exactly why as of now, while I am curious about them, I find them a bit unlikeable. Especially Yuki, from the very start of the anime, I found her a bit unreasonable. There is just something about her that makes her feel fake. The reveals in the final 2 episodes didn't help her cause either. But again, season 2 might make me understand her more.

That being said, I did like the mysteries, even if they were small-scale. The author really understands the thinking behind deductions. I had fun watching how the main character, Kobato, approached the mysteries. We are given the opportunity to follow his way of thinking while he's solving them.

Studio Lapintrack's work on this anime is as good as it gets. They're really great at adapting mystery novels. The staff did a great job (especially the director) and I'm really liking their style of animation. I can't wait to see what else this studio does.

Overall, this is a nice anime but I can only give my final thoughts after watching the second season and understanding these characters.

A pair of teenage friends will try not to be Sherlock Holmes, something they seem to be good at, but it causes them problems. Still, they will find themselves in situations where they will use their great deductive skills nonstop.

If you really like the detective genre, so much so that you've seen countless works, then and only then, this might seem refreshing and like a great piece of work to you.

For the rest of us mere mortals, among whom I count myself, it's a bland work, shoehorned in, with a very large shoe. The script is overly forced, and the characters are so strange that my initial hypothesis was that they might be extraterrestrials.

It does deliver in the visual department, with a more than decent artistic design, where the standout feature is the wide variety of candies, which are relevant to the story.

For me, the result is insufficient because it never quite figures out what type of work it is. It's not teen, it's not detective, it's not romance, it's not drama. It simply isn't.