Anime: White Album (2009)

White Album 2nd Season and Summary: Back in the U.S.S.R. Japanese Soap Opera.

Well, another season of anime has passed us by, and bless (or, more accurately, curse) my nonexistent soul if 2008 Visual-Novel-Turned-Soap-Opera White Album didn't manage to get itself a second season to further obfuscate and mess up the non-ending given to it by the first season. Ok, 'second season' is actually stretching it: White Album is basically a one-season anime divided into two parts that were animated six months apart. The events of this season follow the first one directly with no explanations, pause or intermission happening in the story, which is kind of a kick in the teeth for people who have better things to do then to go around memorizing every detail of plots of japanese soap operas for six months. In other words, everyone.

Therefore, for the benefit of new viewers, I advise you go read my review of the first season. For the benefit of *lazy* new viewers, a rough abridging of the events of the first season will follow. Envision for this part, if you will, that the theme tune to some bad mexican telenovela is running in the background and that I'm doing this segment in a gravelly man-voice with a bad spanish accent:

*Ahem*

"On the last season of ¿Ay Mami, Por Qué el Hombre Estúpido Marcador con Todas las Mujeres?*: Tōya Fujii is still indecisive about his life in college and his relationship with up-and-coming idol, Yuki Morikawa. Meanwhile, unforeseeable events and a personal weakness in integrity continue his ill-fated encounters with several attractive women who all want to date him instead. Will Tōya and Yuki finally get together? Will the presence of his father's illness further complicate their relationship? Will the continued lack of communication because nobody has mobile phones? And how many more stupid plot twists will the writers throw in our faces before this damn farce is over? Find out, on this season of ¿Ay Mami, Por Qué el Hombre Estúpido Marcador con Todas las Mujeres?"

...Or, y'know, just read this review so you won't have to. Frankly I'd prefer if you Don't Pass Me By; I wouldn't want more people getting into this **** than strictly necessary.

Animation and Visuals: 5/10 -- (It Looks Nothing Like A) Rocky Raccoon.

So in starting this review, I Will be dually trying to both summarize the total score of White Album, since it is essentially one show, but I'll also try to see if the second season does anything differently from the first season. One of the places where this does take place, if in a somewhat limited fashion, is in the graphics department. The second season appears to have gotten a slight fortification to the budget -- while the graphics aren't all that much better overall in character detail or background work, it's a lot more consistent and the quality doesn't drop as the second season goes on, as happened in the first season. A few more backgrounds and a bit more varied locales are added into the mix, which is a nice-ish touch.

Overall the series is still not really what I'd call 'good' -- most of the males and females seem based off the same facial template, the backgrounds are pretty static (at best you may see a Blackbird fly by... Or not), much time is used on still images, the animation's nothing more than passable, and the colour palette is fairly limited (ok, fine, garish colours would ruin the series' sense of realism, but I still think it's underrepresented). But it works.

Audio: 5/10 -- While My Guitar Hope For A Half-Decent Soundtrack From A Music-Inspired Anime Gently Weeps.

The audio, meanwhile, is pretty much identical between the seasons and does a somewhat underwhelming but ultimately functional job. The music is still near unnoticeable with the exception of the violin piece playing during the "on the next episode" segments, the OP and ED are nothing special, and the voice actors don't exactly pull stellar performances with the exception of Romi Paku, who does a fairly good job at sounding like a Sexy Sadie as Yaoi, Yuki's manager (and is a good example of why playing against type is sometimes a very good idea -- I admit I kind of undersold her in my last review), and Show Hayami as mr. Slimy Record Executive. The rest of the cast don't really work well in doing low-key work -- they don't manage to give much life to their roles and even during scenes of great turmoil and Helter Skelter and whatnot most of the characters simply fail at the 'induce emotion' stage.

Oh, and the second season carries on with the idol music during the show's climaxes. Again, these are fairly well choreographed and something of a 'high point' of the anime. I'd be lying if I said that I liked idol music in any shape or form or that the voice actresses are unnaturally good singers, but the numbers work objectively speaking.

Overall, White Album's audio and voice acting has a few points of being 'better than average' but at the whole the impressions of both season are just plain uninvolving.

Story: 4/10 -- The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill The Amazing Man With No Spine.

Talking about the story of White Album's second season will inevitably just end up being a summary of the whole series. As my rather infantile abridging revealed, season 2 catches up directly following events of season 1 and continues the story of how fan-disfavourite Toya continues his odd jobs and coming into contact with his harem of badly-characterised females, all while further doing everything in his power to ignore his actual girlfriend due to his odd fixation on his 'goddesses' and half-baked manipulations by Yuki's manager and boss. This season throws some more curveballs into play like the declining health of his estranged father and Yuki's boss being involved in some bad business concerning a painting he obtained during the climax of season 1, but in the end all of it is merely fuel for the grinder of the story of his failing relationship with his metaphoric Honey Pie (the non-Wild kind).

And Dear Prudence, what a grinder. The story in both seasons of White Album is convoluted and involves a lot of unforeseen plot twists and developments so out of left field that nobody no amount of savvy in anime plots will make them foreseeable. Being unpredictable can occassionally be a good thing, and in White Album's case it's kind of a mixed bag: While the plot twists are beyond any measure of sanity and mostly make you wonder what the heck the scriptwriters were smoking, it also gives the show a morbid kind of staying power in that there's *no* way you'll ever figure out what'll happen next. There's still also a lot of plot threads that don't really pay off at all and feel too much like loose ends.

All this builds up to what is possibly the second stupidest-most stupid (ye gods, the show's affecting my brain) ending of the fall season, only lodged a bit behind Gemini of the Meteor in sheer ham-handedness, coming right out of the blue and ham-fistedly forcing a *really* stupid conclusion (which was cribbed from Kanon) down our throats. In summary, the overall story of White Album wins praise for at least not grabbing for archetypes that make everything that happens foreseeable two episodes in advance -- but that's about the only thing I *will* praise it for.

Characters: 3/10 -- Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey The Poor Schlub Left Reviewing This.

As for the characters in White Album, season 2 carries on from season 1 in having some of the most low-key and at the *same time* overdramatisised characters in animedom, all of them acting like hideously irrational and idiotic little Piggies yet at the same time lacking even the pathos to explain us why. The core of the issue is, of course, the harem that has formed around Tōya. Tōya himself spends most of season 2 only reinforcing the image most people probably have of him since season 1, namely that he has precious little wit, maturity, charm or anything making him an interesting main character, and that chemically castrating him would probably *increase* his masculinity.

Imagine, then, just how bad the haremettes have to look when the show tries to tell you that they're interested in him. Even the manager gets a few low points as the certainty that she's just manipulating him decreases from time to time when she displays some obsessive moments towards him as well. Aside from their interactions from Tōya, most of the females get disappointingly little time for themselves: Although by this point familiarity has set in with many of them and you get a bit more of a 'feel' for how they are as characters, it's bred a heck of a lot of contempt too, and as I touched on in the text above everyone seems to have a hidden agenda of the kind you're not really familiarised with. There's one case of attempted character development in the ending -- 'attempted' as in 'it comes as much out of the left field as any other of the plot twists and feels about as organic as a rusted cog'.

There are a few improved points in season 2: The childhood friend and the loli has some half-decent chemisty as friends and letting them spend most of their airtime during the first half of the second season biking around being Mother Nature's Son and not being involved in the main plot at all is actually beneficial to their characters. The other main non-Tōya male is *slightly* less of a jerk this time around (and is run over by a truck, which is a nice bonus). Much of this is offset by the ludicrous side plot with the director of the idol company getting Yer His Blues on over some painting for no adequately explained reason, which reveals quite a bit of characterisation that served no purpose and that could very well had gone unseen.

Overall, the characters are definitively White Album's low point in both seasons.

Value: 4/10 -- Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Life Goes On, Bra (And Please Forget About This Part Of It).

What do you want me to say? White Album is hardly what I'd call either original, re-watchable or recommendable. Once seen once, and again let me add that if you do you're not doing it because I'm positively encouraging it, there's very little need to see it again. Even if semi-mature takes on romance are rarer than your average panty-flashing, moe-overdosed, "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?"-style ecchi harem, it's not so rare that you can't find better takes on it than this thing -- *especially* outside of Japan. This thing sure as heck isn't any sort of Revolution #1 of the romance anime world, so to speak. Heck, it isn't even Revolution #9.

Enjoyment: 6/10 -- Happiness Is a Warm Gun (If You Imagine You've Been Using It On The Cast).

White Album's enjoyment factor, in both seasons, comes mostly from my personal enjoyment of how bad the entire thing is. The plot and the characters are both objectively sub-par (or even genuinely awful at times), but to the right subject, like me, it can serve as a source of amusement. The whole thing has an odd sense of addictiveness to it, too -- for some reason I can't really explain, the weekly episode of White Album was way, way higher on my 'looking forward to' list each week than it had any business doing. Unfortunately it never quite reached the level of the first season for whatever reason -- possibly due to the familiarity to the show and its methodology while the hackneyed plot dragged on. While the basic source of enjoyment -- "the so bad it's good" factor and the unpredictability -- were still there, they were dampened a bit by the show being so damn Long, Long, Long.

Total: 4.5 (Rounded up to 5)/10 -- ...I'm So Tired.

So, after two seasons, 26 episodes, more bad plot twists than you can shake a stick at and now over 5000 words of whining snark, what's left to say? White Album is an objectively bad anime, saving itself to the level of 'mediocre' simply by virtue of being way funnier to watch than it has any business being, not to mention way funnier than it intended to be. I don't really want to watch any more of it, but you wouldn't make me go "Do it to Julia!" or anything by threatening me with reruns or anything -- it's not *that* bad. As I mentioned in the other review, a guilty pleasure devoid of any objective virtues.

Ultimately this thing's like a Glass Onion -- it's *shaped* like something intended to probably make you cry (or at least feel the drama), but not only is it so transparent that you can't see much of what's going inside, but also lacks the fundamental aspect of what makes it work (namely that it's not a bloody onion, it's just a glass figurine of one). So, one thing this show won't make you is Cry Baby Cry. It's no Savoy Truffle, more of a fried Mars bar -- tastes a lot funnier in ways but is ultimately forgettable and a lot less healthy for you.

With all that said, Good Night. And, because it's the only song left I couldn't cram in somewhere, "Martha My Dear".

* "Mommy, why is the stupid man scoring with all the women?"... Roughly. If you actually know spanish, don't correct me. It's probably funnier this way.