Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru

To be honest, I didn't know what to expect from this adaption. I was familiar with the source material, but since the production was in the hands of Shaft, yeah. For the unitiated: If Japan's anime industry was a party, and the studios were the invited, Shaft would be the high guy smoking joints on your favourite couch while eating all your snacks. They're just completely unpredictable. Some times they'll create excellent animation and sharply delivered dialogue, other times they'll churn out something that looks more like a slideshow and the boring, endless monologues which are associated with them.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The plot of ... Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru is fairly straightforward. Enter Hotori, a quirky high school student whose dreams is to become a teenage Sherlock Holmes. After school she works in Seaside, the maid cafe owned by her grandmother, together with her classmate Tatsuno. Throw in a large cast of interesting characters, a bunch of puns, some lateral thinking puzzles, a couple of love triangles/squares and you've got yourself a winner. The story is slice-of-life style, with two chapters from the manga adapted into each episode, keeping things fairly fast-paced and never boring in any sense of the word. It's all very simple, but due to Shaft's style of blowing simple things up to bizarre proportions, it works.

One thing that was unexpected was the quality of the animation. It was very fluid and quite detailed, and not only during the first episode, it kept the quality level relatively uniform during the whole series. This is REALLY uncommon for this studio's shows, usually featuring big dips in animation quality throughout. I guess their budget might be bigger this time due to Bakemonogatari's success, but I digress. The typical eye close-ups and large amounts of on-screen text which the studio is rather infamous for were also mostly absent. I'm not complaining. The black and white "I'm in despair!"-animation from the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei-series is still there though, if anybody is wondering. Both wide-angle and extreme frog-perspective shots see frequent use (or abuse, depending on your opinion), which brings a nice sense of Shaft-flair to the scenes.

When you think Shaft, you think great OP animations (well, at least I do). Soremachi is no exception, I don't think I'm going too far by saying it's the best OP of 2010. But to be fair, when combining the sweet sounds of ROUND TABLE with the OP animation of Shaft, you wouldn't expect anything less. Which brings me to the soundtrack of the series. I wouldn't call it amazing or anything, but it's pretty good and it serves it purpose well. The ED is also great by the way, maid rock! Oh, and while we're in the sound section of the review... The voice-acting cast is fairly strong. You have both established voice-actors like Sugita Tomokazu and more unknown ones like the voice of the main character, Omigawa Chiaki. I gotta hand it to Omigawa though, she really brings out the essence of Hotori in her voice.

Anyways, the thing that I really liked with the show wasn't animation or OP or anything like that. It was atmosphere. When it comes to the general mood of Soremachi, it feels like a more energetic, more silly version of such classics as Aria or Kamichu. This is just one of those nice relaxing series you can wind down to. If you enjoy shows like that, you're in for a real treat; if not, well just try watching it anyway. This is not the best thing to come out this year, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile watch.

The best way to enjoy this anime is to be a fan of either SHAFT shows or a fan of wachy episodic comedies. If for example you demand a story with a plot, evolving characters, or artsy visuals ain’t your thing, then you better not head this way.

As far as SHAFT works go, this one seems to look a lot better, with a lot more actual animation and a lot less bizarre imagery and real life photographs that border hollowed pretentious nonsense. The camera does all sorts of motions and the sequence of scene transition is almost frenetic, while occasionally zooming in to cute faces ... and naughty female parts of the body, which is SHAFT’s trademark and recipe of success. It is a fine way to help the viewer visualize how awkward and troubled the minds of the characters are, and to spice up the jokes. They even try to change the formula as the episodes move on, from slightly changing the gimmicks to even adding more info about one’s inner self. There is still weird imagery, symbolisms, and trademark punch lines, albeit in a lot less degree than in, let’s say, Sayonara Zetsubo or Arakawa Under the Bridge. I must say that makes the characters to feel a lot less like caricatures defined by a few sentences or personality gimmicks.

At the same time, I must also say that the cast of this anime is a lot less memorable because it does not follow a theme in its setting. Although the first episodes will make most think it is a comedy centering on maids in a maid café, after awhile it becomes just random shorts of practically anything the characters do in their everyday life. With this in mind I say that although Soredemo is a lot more down to earth than most comedies by the same studio, at the same time it also lacks something to make it distinguishable amongst any other similar show. I am not a fan of episodic comedies and in most of them the characters start to become boring fast without some development. When that happens it is the theme of the setting that can keep me interested for more and in this case there is nothing to pay attention to. The whole maid café is nothing but a minor element (perhaps yet another troll joke by the producers) so you end up looking at random people doing random things in hope of laughing. They are the usual “unusual” bunch of misfits and typical of SHAFT most of the humor is based on their total lack of common sense that helps the jokes to work better and the characters to be memorable. As usual, their appeal is mostly based on quirks and bizarre personality and not character development. They may not have punch lines (at least not lines that remain for more than a few episodes) but are still quite simplistic as personalities and basically all follow some archetype. I am not saying the comedy is bad; it’s actually very good in overall; but the interest drops considerably without a hook to keep you interested for more. I can even say that you start to get used to the jokes and that their volume of boldness drops a lot later on. It becomes tiresome after awhile.

Something similar can be said about the music. The music score is funny and artistic but not memorable for any given reason. Voice acting is very good in overall although at times you feel like some actors are not as passionate as they should be. Especially for the main heroine who seems to scream 90% of the time yet her actress is just trying to make her sound as stupid as possible.

In all, it is a good comedy but it definitely is not going to be remembered for most, plus any continuation of the same setting would be pointless since the humor has already run thin and there is no theme or development to excuse another season. Very good at first but loses steam fast and becomes quite bother towards the end.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 8/10
General Artwork 2/2 (artsy)
Character Figures 1/2 (generic)
Backgrounds 2/2 (basic but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Animation 1/2 (basic)
Visual Effects 2/2 (artsy)

SOUND SECTION: 7/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (silly but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Music Themes 3/4 (not great but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 2/10
Premise 1/2 (typical)
Pacing 0/2 (episodic)
Complexity 1/2 (not much)
Plausibility 0/2 (none)
Conclusion 0/2 (none)

CHARACTER SECTION: 6/10
Presence 2/2 (funny/sexy)
Personality 2/2 (cheesy but well founded)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 0/2 (none)
Catharsis 0/2 (none)

VALUE SECTION: 3/10
Historical Value 0/3 (none)
Rewatchability 1/3 (low as there is very little to expect from a second watch)
Memorability 2/4 (besides being a SHAFT show, I see no other reason to remember it)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 4/10
Art 1/1 (looks artsy)
Sound 1/2 (sounds meh)
Story 0/3 (what story?)
Characters 2/4 (funny stereotypes but that is all)

VERDICT: 5/10

And Yet The Town Moves, or Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru, has as much substance as a g-string. It’s thin, flimsy, and far too voyeuristic to have any lasting significance. The plot revolves around three teenage girls who you constantly see talk about quirky, shallow things, while working in an uncanny valley café with an elderly woman in a maid uniform, and that’s really all there is. Oh! And an uncomfortably intimate view of their bodies to bridge dialogue gaps!

• I usually don’t care about fanservice, but this series is so saturated with it that the characters are practically a pair of talking ass and tits. It’s ... to be expected of SHAFT because the Monogatari series is a thing, but to NisiOsin’s credit―he knows how to flesh out characters with more than just flesh, if you know what I’m saying.

• I feel like I had an immense amount of difficulty even having a favorite character because so much of each of the girls’ characterization were based on core traits: like this one is the dumb one that wants to be a detective and has a crush on her teacher (though there is seemingly no motivation for any of this), this is the one with glasses that’s perfect at everything and has a crush on generic main guy that likes the main girl because they’re childhood friends, I guess? And this one is the rocker chick that lives by herself, has issues with her mother, and is lonely? There’s never an exploration into that either.

• The characters just talk about obscure, random things while being a three person gag-reel. The humor isn’t even worth a dry chuckle, just INCREDIBLY awkward most of the time and there are often scenes that are left with a weird shot of a girls’ asses and the implication that every grown-man in the vicinity wants to bang her… honestly, this series just feels like doujinshi fodder.

• There are two episodes that I enjoyed slightly more than the rest of the series: 1. When Hotori’s (the protagonist who’s practically the living embodiment of an ass) older sister wanders into another dimension while looking for a mysterious rainbow snack that doesn’t exist in our world―this one piqued my interest because of the spooky atmosphere and there actually being a point of intrigue to follow, but sadly, this episode doesn’t match the rest of the series’ humdrum tone and is ostensibly a disembodied one-shot. 2. Another episode I enjoyed was the one where the three girls get trapped in a laundry mat while it’s pouring rain and decide to mess around with vending machines in their underwear―this episode had a very comforting and warm atmosphere, unlike many of the episodes that feel like cold, detached punchlines.

• The series lost even more traction towards the end, when there were entire episodes fixated on characters that were loosely associated with main characters… for no particular reason. Rather than using the episodes leading to the climax to give more insight to characters that are skeletally written, they chose to have segments where the main characters didn’t even show up!

• As anyone who’s followed me for long enough knows, I am not a fan of SHAFT, and despite that, this is still one of the worst that I have seen by them. Maria†Holic was even better than this hollow drivel because the focal characters of the series had motives that were used as either a self-inflicted hinderance or the layout of certain scenes and jokes, though admittedly Maria†Holic careened off the path of a structural narrative and never had a concrete resolution. The closest thing we got to that was the reveal towards the end of the first season with Mariya’s twin sister.

• Overall, And Yet The Town Moves felt like an empty visual spectacle with some enjoyable moments. There’s very little to remember with the characters and story, and the jokes aren’t very inventive. I give this lukewarm soup of a series a 3/10.