12 Moments of Anime: This End Was So Damn Pretty~
The final episode of Munto or Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai. Really. It was just…incredibly pretty. Oh so very, very pretty. I can think of a hundred more ways to say it, but that’s all it basically amounts to. 
I think I have more fondness for this series than I would for others because it wasn’t discussed very much. Being underrepresented in the blogosphere allowed me to form my own opinions and to create my own fond memories. Memories that remained untarnished because it wasn’t the next big thing from KyoAni and it didn’t need a hatedom to compete with its fandom and talk about how overrated it was. Because it wasn’t overrated, it was just…what it was.
But let’s be honest. This series didn’t have an outstanding story. It was nice, but especially when it got into the actual new part for the TV series it seemed either confusing or just really simple alternatively. A lot of the characters were kind of just basic archetypes, Yumemi’s friends especially. Oddly enough after Yumemi the character who got the most development from her world was Kazuya who really wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things…nice to look at though. Characters from The Heavens side of things are barely worth mentioning don’t even really get screentime. They’re just sort of there because there’s a war going on.
So it was basically all just Yumemi and Munto saving the world. Munto stands alone as a king after the awesome Gass dies so that’s why there’s no other characters of importance on his side really that aren’t just plot devices. Yumemi is a young girl who needs to get by with the support of her friends so that’s why they play a role. They’re key to expressing a theme about friendship and stuff which…kind of gets abandoned once the girls all meet up again.
The plot is kind of just there and Yumemi and Munto are the only characters to get development (and in their cases it’s both unsubtle and faintly rushed at the end of each “event”). And I could pick at everything about it for ages.
But it was executed well.
The whole thing at the end kind of felt like a story specifically for movie release. A simplified, straight-forward telling for its fantasy elements that are trying to connect to the real world and deliver a message. Getting it across in a simple, time-constrained way. With the backdrop of nice music and ohmygodsopretty animation.
Especially the animation.
So most of all remembering this anime makes me retain a fondness for KyoAni. I didn’t turn against them for Haruhi’s second season because quite simply, I don’t care about that. Especially since the whole fiasco was apparently Kadokawa’s fault and I kind of fell in love with Kadokawa for that anyway (Having dealt with horrible fandoms myself, I often wonder if they didn’t do it a little bit just for revenge against the whiney fans).
My problem was that KyoAni hasn’t seem to be up to their former glory lately. The redesigned Haruhi mostly got me there. How things started to look downright K-On!-like in some episodes. Now, as some people got all defensive “What’s the problem with that!?” The problem is that if you look at the source material the two series had different styles. Then when you look at other studios, you see that they are capable of drawing many different series in many different styles.
Studios should have a style, but not for their character drawings I say. After seeing the K-On!-like Haruhi I flat out decided I didn’t really want KyoAni doing Little Busters! anymore, I wanted someone who could properly handle it. A Rin that looks like say…Mio is…not Rin. Not Rin at all! 
So this series in general allows me to believe that KyoAni still has a varied “style”. In general, they’ve cut back on details in their drawings, but in this animation it doesn’t really detract from it.
It also lets me believe that KyoAni is a studio that can branch out and do more series than whatever moemoe festival the otaku are craving now. I missed the days where KyoAni mostly brought to mind their Key adaptations and bringing the well-animated Haruhi to life. These days though they’re mostly connected to no-substance 4-koma adaptations which are…kind of a waste of what they can do. But I guess I support it if it brings in the money to do the good animation later on.
So, this series, but this final episode especially gave me some peeks at what KyoAni is capable of when they can do it. Making a (damn pretty) vision of something that isn’t from our world. It’s the stuff you’ve gotten peeks of in the more fantastic elements of their Key adaptations.
To be honest it’s basically just the vibrant colors and lights that makes it all look so good, but the fact is I just don’t get to see stuff like that too often. It seems like a simple way to make things look nice, but I still don’t get to see it that often.
Then being a dramatic conclusion in a fantasy setting filled with some sort of power…there’s wind. Fully-animated hair and clothes moving wind. Stuff is almost constantly moving whenever there’s something going on. Now I love wind and this just makes me remember how I fell in love with wind in animation (arguably it could be Disney, but I say most Disney girls didn’t have long enough hair to really do the trick). It was KyoAni’s Kanon opening. And I get to see all of that slow-moving “hair doesn’t move that way” pretty wind here.
I remember when I first watched the episode, I especially liked watching the part where the rock is rising up because it just looked so…well you know by now. So the whole episode, but especially that.
Now combining these vibrant colors with fluid animation and it’s just…it’s great.
Plus, so many expressions in this episode too. Mostly (okay all) from Yumemi. Whose eyes and general character redesign for the TV series lends a lot of potential to emphasizing certain expressions. Emphasizing a lot of them to make her look all moe~ without having much of a moemoe personality. (Well it is still KyoAni)
Yumemi~ Why so moe?
She laughs. She gets worried. She looks serious. Then she looks determined. And then she looks…
…Well yeah. Then she looks kind of badass.
Yeah…also aside from all the talk of animation it’s just the “Yumemi looking badass in a dress” stuff that really made this memorable for me. Of course, that’s all because of art/animation because all Yumemi really is doing is talking and stuff like…explodes because of her power. But she looks badass when she’s doing it. (I introduce you to…badass moe…?)
Then she smiles and looks relaxed and confident when she’s saving the world. And then has this look of…mature amazement? I’m not sure. But something like that when she’s finished.
And she has a few subtle differences in her expressions when she’s experiencing the same basic mood to indicate her emotions at that moment. Compared to a lot of things that get stuck on “rawr determination” I find this to be just great.
It’s just another piece of animation that makes it all just…work.
So this series…would be crap. Without this end animated by KyoAni. It had other good parts, but being such a short series, this couldn’t even come close to being a satisfying conclusion without the animation kind of forcing us to think it’s believable.
Because it’s just that pretty.
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Now…being who I am since I never really got the chance to blog this series I’d like to just add a couple of things from this final episode here that also make it quite good.
This line…is great. 
Considering the series was so short, they got a lot of people on the Yumemi x Munto ship. Probably because they were really good about making the whole plot about them having a bond and working together or whatever in the beginning. Then they just dropped small little stuff like this to get the fangirls jumping up and down in their seats. (Fangirls react better to small hints of romance than full-blown in your face stuff a lot of the time)
And of course…
Saving the World Two Worlds With Hand-Holding = Awesome~
Aaaand Sailor Uniforms. Just because.
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Now I went on about it being “satisfiying” but the end the episode left those watching with a big “What the hell” when we discover that Munto just disappeared. Maybe they wanted to leave it that way because all of the OAVs left off on kind of optimistic but still unresolved moments and they wanted to keep that going for the original fans. Which I don’t really get but whatever. Or maybe they wanted to resolve it at the end of their movie release. Which I haven’t watched since any torrents I tried to download were effin’ slow.
Meanwhile life just went on with lots of running and shorter skirts in this world.
So we’re left with this as an end. Which is fine with me mostly because by itself it’s pretty much movie-quality in terms of animation (so pretty you guys, srsly). Too bad most of the fans I knew were girls and were left wanting at least some vague resolution to the little bit of romance we got going. Instead of more just ship-teasing from this episode. So mean~
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P.S. Isn’t this just the post that will never end? I just thought it was worth mentioning that when I saw how long this post was getting that I kind of wanted to just switch it to a video of all of the previews from the series. Come on! Who watched this series and didn’t laugh out loud at one of those at least once?
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December 15th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Munto was just so.. random. Nothing really ever made much sense… but it sure had its moments. It ran on pure emotional power, and that’s one thing it actually did do well. Like Yumemi being badass in that last episode. So fucking awesome
Oh and if KyoAni screws up Little Busters I will be VERY angry.
.-= Nazarielle´s last blog ..Shugo Chara =-.
December 15th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
No complaints here about Munto and Yumemi to be the only ones who got development (since Earth is boring and everyone else is just like you said, to be a cool-looking plot device, hahaha).
Ah, nice point there on the various styles. Not something I see mentioned often and even if so, it’s been quite subverted by “OMG! *insert studio name*! The guys who did ____! So watching this one!” I mean, it’s not like I always think about this topic but isn’t the way how a studio executes the animation (and all the other little hijinks) what made their name in the first place? Anyone can do an adaptation but it’s another thing to do it so well
), I’m not worried too much about their future projects (yet). I’d have to describe KyoAni as going through that teenage phase in life where you just go along with the crowd by doing what everyone else is doing (or what the money demands you to do, pfft). That or it’s probably just the recession or both, muu, but it won’t be too hard to go back to the good KyoAni even with the moe still being a big factor in everything they do. So Little Busters! is still safe. ^^
or bad(and different and better while retaining some aspects from their older works). Sad to say that with all this focus on 4-komas, performance hasn’t actually been on par and if it’s seeped into other anime a little too much as you’ve mentioned, that’s…well, kind of disheartening. Especially for KyoAni.On 4-koma adaptations, they’re just in a different playing field and should just be kept there. I mean, 4-komas are 4-komas. It doesn’t take much of an effort to animate them decently. Don’t mix them up with an actual series. No no no.
Back to Munto and just looking at the stark contrast between the past OVAs and the new episodes (they’re so friggin’ lazy they can’t even reanimate the whole thing
Confusing redundant schmet aside, heck yea, it was a damn pretty thing to watch. I’m surprised you didn’t say something like “It just looks pretty…and that’s simplicity”, tbh. Lol J/k. J/k. xD
Hmm, nothing much else to add about the ending so I’ll just move onto the shipping. I was honestly wondering what they were smoking that made Munto suddenly go so OOC on us but if it’s owed to Yumemi’s own badass moe, I’m willing to forget it. lol
And I know this is just me being stingy but gawd, I wished Ichiko and Suzume just stayed on that floating island and let the OTP finish up the job themselves. Of course, this is me talking several months after it finished airing and just coming back from a weekend doing nothing but reading MuntoxYumemi fanfiction (which is super freaky given the time of your post |D; ) but meh, looking at the seifuku screencap, it feels like they were just there for that.
And Suzume has no skirt and Ichiko, still no girly charm in her whatsoever.Yeayeayea, power of friendship was crucial to saving the world, too, w/e.
As for the movie, don’t even bother getting your hopes up for it. It’s just all the newly animated episodes smushed into one with 6 minutes of extra footage, only 1 minute at the end scene where Yumemi sees Munto again. It’s not even that, more like 20 seconds and the rest is just about Gntarl pushing some lolis down to Earth or something. Serious disappointment. But it’s up on Youtube. You just have to ignore Ichiko and Suzume. :D
And aww, I loved those previews. Especially the last one. Ahaha~ XDDD
December 15th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Due to the subject matter, I feel the need to comment.
I won’t lie, I really liked this show. Sure, it’s not perfect, but I’ve seen much worse out there. Especially this year. It had nice designs, visuals, music, and a nice, simple story that didn’t try to throw moe down my throat. I think the biggest disappointment was the third part, which did look extremely pretty, but I just had problems with the story. It made no sense to bring Ichiko and Suzume to the Heavens, heck, it didn’t even make sense as to why they were risking their lives on that fallen Ferris wheel. But I digress. As a whole, it was just what I needed in a fantasy. Tugging at our heartstrings more than appealing to the fanservice side of things, which seems to be the selling point of almost all anime nowadays. It was a nice change, and for the people who enjoyed it, it certainly succeeded on a few levels.
Personally, I don’t think the story was meant to be about the supporting cast . This is a story about Munto and Yumemi, their experiences, and how they grow and interact with one another. At least, that was the first two OVA’s. In the third part it seemed like they were trying to give Ichiko and Suzume a role, and it just didn’t work. They’re Yumemi’s ‘precious things’ that most anime heroines fight for. That’s what they should have stayed.
Finally, yeah, we’re all squealing like the fangirls we are at the end. Dang, I like the Munto x Yumemi ship, and I’m not giving it up! To me, it’s just another thing which makes the series different for the better. It’s a relationship that based off trust and relating to one another more than, “Oh, he saved me, I’m in love with him!” or “He’s so good looking!” it’s a relationship that actually has substance, and if the series had been longer, it probably would have taken off… -sigh-
This show just proves that KyoAni can do something besides Key and moe, it just needs to try a little harder. I really think that all the problems are just related to length. Had they done this from scratch and expanded more on it and the story, it would have been close to perfect. Hopefully it’s get more material one day, but I can only wish.
December 15th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
That ending was pretty. Overall I prefer the art style of the second movie, but the animation and colors of the ending were definately pretty to look at.
I still don’t like the way bodies are drawn in the new style, though. Impossibly long and stick thin legs aren’t so pretty to look at.
Badass moe Yumemi pretty much made the episode for me. <3 That moment when everything around her is bending and waving under her power was just great.
That shippy scene between Yumemi and Munto would have made the episode for me if it wasn't already made. I loved Ichiko's awkward romantic scene-killing cough.
Gotta love the animation with the hair. When a character's hair was blowing in the wind, it tooked so interesting and pretty. You hit the nail on the head- this episode's art/animation seemed kind simple and clean, but really pretty.
Okay. The random outfit change scene. I didn't even know what to think.
So I just kind of laughed.
December 17th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
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