A few days ago, I was talking to a friend about anime, and one of the things that had slowly driven him away was all the repeated tropes that he saw. I somewhat glibly replied "that's why I'm mostly watching slice-of-life stuff any more, I haven't had all the tropes pounded into my head for 20 years the way I have with mecha and action"
I bring this up, because I really do find myself transitioning to slice of life stuff more and more as I choose what to watch. I've mentioned it here before, but it's been driven home to me again in a couple of ways this weekend.
First of all, one of the CM's at Crunchyroll had a tweet up asking people to list their favorite anime from each of the last 5 years. My list:
2013 Chihayafuru
2014 Your Lie in April
2015 Sound! Euphonium
2016 March Comes in Like a Lion
2017 Interviews w/Monster Girls
Now, Interview is a bit of an odd man out there, mostly because 2017 is still pretty new. (Sakura Quest is promising so far, but its only a few eps in, and we have most of the year to go.) Otherwise, all the rest are very firmly into the "slice of life" realm. No magic, no mecha, no violence worse than an occasional slap. Card games, music and shogi drive the stories.
Yet, these are the stories I find myself drawn to. For that matter, I find myself drawn to these small stories when I look at new shows and the like.
The second thing that drove it home was that I've spent a good bit of the weekend power-reading the manga "Cross Game." It's a few years older, but its the story of 2 neighbor kids who both love baseball, who slowly but surely become closer after the older sister of the girl tragically dies in the 5th grade. (For that matter, I really wish I'd watched it before Hulu took it down. I'd wanted to, but never got that far. Grr.)
Why have I done this? As I've said before, it's not entirely unheard of for me. I loved Kimagure Orange Road back in the early days, and there are times I wonder what other SoL gems I may have missed in the years that few of them were brought over. Still though, why?
I guess it's that the stories are so intensely character focused. Now, that's not to say that action and mecha shows aren't. Macross isn't anything special without Misa and Minmei, Patlabor is nothing at all without Noa and Gotoh and Clancy, and so forth.
Yet, it seems that something in those slice of life shows just grabs me at this point in my life. It may have something to do with my age, where I am in my life, the struggles I'm fighting with. I don't know.
I can sit here, and think about some of the themes that are in those stories, the voices, and how they hit me in my current struggles, but I'm not sure I want to just throw those aspects of my personal darknesses onto the net at the moment. Heh.
I don't remember the last mecha show I truly got into. There are still some fantasy/adventure type shows I've greatly enjoyed recently, but they're absolutely a tier down from here.
Anyway, I'm always looking for suggestions about good SoL shows. Just be sure I can get at them on CR, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Strike or the like. Heh. I'm still an old fussbudget.
