Erin - Episode 1
So I'm going to start off the first impressions with an anime I have wanted to watch for a while, called Erin. I watched the first episode. I was actually quite surprised. It opening with a narration that was almost like a storybook. I was a bit put off by it, but a little bit more in realized how it was necessary. It filled in history and bits of information about the villages culture. The story centered around a little girl, and her mother, and showed their relationship and her mother's relationship with these dragon-creatures called the Tohda that the village is dependent on for protection. The main conflict was that the village has a very defined set of gender-roles. The men look after the Tohda, and the women do chores and work in the fields.(pretty much servant work, perhaps because of some religion) But Erin's mom is a Tohda Healer, something she is not allowed to be as a woman, and when a baby Tohda goes missing, the village elder(I think) tells her if she doesn't find it, she is going t make her conform to the village's rules, but Erin and her friends find the baby, and her mother saves her from the mom Tohda(?) that attacks Erin. I can sense a feminist theme here and that makes me happy, as does the mother and daughter focus, because that is rare to find in anime. I'm actually really intrigued. The plot was simple, but there is 49 episodes ahead of me and I foresee this potentially being really intelligent and different. I really liked the art-style as well. It was simple and very unusual, with soft painted-looking backgrounds.(kind of reminded me of Naruto's style.)
Erin can be watched here: http://www.crunchyroll.com/erin
Humanity Has Declined - Episode 1
First thing I noticed was the background art-style. I loved it. It was like Tsuitama, so colorful and bright, with that splashy digitally-painted look to it. I wouldn't be surprised if it was done by the same person. The character designs were moe though unfortunately, but not super moe, so they're okay. Then I got to the opening and went wtf?(well, it wasn't as weird as The Eccentric Family's opening, but still) I continued watched after that, thinking it would be light-hearted until it introduced the concern of a food-shortage among the people.(I have a feeling this anime may turn out to be rather political.) The protagonist was rather nonchalant about this concern, having accepted that humans would soon be extinct, and even with this reveal, the anime keeps it's light and casual atmosphere. It had that village setting like Erin did. The main protagonist was something called a mediator, and interacted with these small elf-like people called 'fairies'. I got the impression that she's a bit of a cold strategist, willing to lie and manipulate the people with her about not bringing back a chicken(?) to protect her reputation. As it continued it revealed more of a post apocalyptic atmosphere, with crumbled buildings and a collapsed freeway, and they got to an old factory that the fairies revived, it got kinda creepy as a robotic piece of bread talked about making bread out of ingredients that weren't food(using garbage as one example.) and then self-destructed. It strongly reminded me of some of the food production of today.(albeit more exaggerated.) Humanity Has Declined was kind of quirky and unsettling, but I liked it. I think I may watch more and see more of what it has to say about how humanity lives now. I rather liked the quirky ending song as well.
Humanity Has Declined can be watched here: http://www.crunchyroll.com/humanity-has-declined
Well, that's all for now. I'm tired and have to do my driver's ed.
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