Bungaku Shoujo

6/10

Human beings can be quite irrational creatures. Which is why, whenever we see anyone acting in an irrational manner, we get frustrated with them. Most of the characters in the Bungaku Shoujo movie act with a great deal of irrationality. The emotions that the producers were trying to evoke were quite beyond me. I just didn't care about them because, rather than producing something that made one feel empathy towards the characters, I wanted to grab them and throw them off the edge of that school building they keep threatening to jump from. And the resolution to that irrationality dripped as much with bathos as it did pathos.

If this is, indeed, then end to a series that exists mostly as a written work, then okay, I can understand where this film is coming from. That doesn't change the fact that, if so, this film was only designed with the readers of the Bungaku Shoujo series in mind. And that can't have been a huge number of people. Essentially, right from the start they've limited their potential audience. Though if one looks at anime as an elaborate advertisement for other media (such as manga, light novels, visual novels etc etc) then this film could be described, even there, as a minor failure. I certainly didn't feel any need to investigate Bungaku Shoujo any further after viewing this.

All in all, quite an average effort.


Strange Dawn

7/10

That I'm giving Strange Dawn 7/10 and Bungaku Shoujo 6/10 should tell you all you need to know about the movie. Because Strange Dawn is a great 13 episodes of build-up which culminates in director Satou Junichi (Sailormoon, Aria, Umi Monogatari, Golfdish Alert, Junkers Come Here, Ojamajo Doremi, Mahou Tsukai Tai, Princess Tutu, Gate Keepers, Keroro Gunsou, Kaleido Star amongst his many credits) going "whoops.... we've run out of episodes". And thus everything is concluded in a hurried manner without having anything actually resolved.

And maybe that was the point. Most of the show was Yuko and Eri, having been transferred to a world of warring munchkins, and declared the "Great Saviours" of that world, getting increasingly piddled off with the politics and murderous face-saving between the various kingdoms, factions and armies. And it wasn't as if they had any powers anyway. In most shows when a schoolgirl (it usually is) is transported to another world, they have some kind of secret power that saves the day. Yuko and Eri are two normal girls who scare off armies by shouting and charging because they are bigger than everyone else. And between those times, they wander around aimlessly and concern themselves with personal hygeine. And then they get transported back to their world at the end. I think. The ending is so rushed, I have no real idea what happened.

And neither, probably, does Satou Junichi.