Beautiful Bones has returned! And it’s still garbage, don’t watch it.
Seriously, it’s just garbage. Not even interesting garbage. Just a bad show.
Here’s my writeup of the third episode. Notes below, somehow.
Now to sleep off the headache I get from writing about writing this bad.
The backgrounds are nice, as always
Shoutarou is learning to identify bones
“So you’re still calling me ‘boy,’ huh?”
They go on another expedition
“If you need to go, just do it in the bushes” an actually funny line
Sakurako’s expression when she runs into the body is great
They’re really keeping up those boob shots
More bodies. But they abbreviated the transformation sequence this time!
I like that this mystery is just a random thing that happens, and not another conceit dominating the episode. Nice structural variation
Sakurako’s deductions also seem reasonable here. Better in general
“That’s Soutarou. My dead younger brother.” And they’re not dragging this out! good stuff
I like how Shoutarou only cares about food
His classmate Kougami has some issue with her grandmother
Ah, it was her grandmother’s bones that they found
“And why must I come along? I was planning to assemble a monkey skeleton today.”
Welp, back to introducing Kougami boobs-first
“I’m her guardian”
Kougami blames herself for driving her grandmother to suicide
They’re trying to make Sakurako weirdly profound, but she just comes off as weird
They try to make these stories more about the emotions of the characters than the mysteries, but they’re just not that compelling as emotional stories
Her grandmother was walking up to the view her husband painted
Is Japan just riddled with skeletons that all have a strange mystery to solve behind them? And it’s not just any mystery set of bones this time. No, these just so happen to be related to a friend of the main character.
What a contrived piece of nonsense this show is.
lol – I have to say that you opinions have greatly influenced how I am thinking of this anime-
Agree
The dialog is kinda cheap
Characters are a bit bland
The art is nice
The stories themselves can’t decide whether to stick with mystery or emotion and it weakens the show
I also think that the show suffers terrible from telling the viewer exactly what happened as opposed to showing the events and effects
despite how trashy the show it, I am still holding out hope that it will get better and commit to a (stronger) storytelling method
Kougami offers a frustrating glimpse of what this show could be, if it was actually interested in the relationship between Shonen and Sakurako, and what’s different about their relationship to make it so important to him compared with the interactions he has with his classmates, parents, teachers.
Elementary, the surprisingly great Sherlock Holmes-in-New York TV show had a similar problem in its earliest episodes; it wasn’t until Holmes’relationships with Watson was juxtaposed against his relationships with everybody else that their unique connection made sense (and mattered).
Yeah, it still feels like we don’t know anything about what Shoutarou gets out of this relationship besides “I’m bored” and “she’s attractive.” I want to feel invested in this relationship, but they’re not selling it.
How well do you speak Japanese? Cause I see you complaining about Sakurako’s lines feeling unnatural, but to me her subtitled dialogue actually feels okay because her Japanese speech pattern is much, much worse. She falls almost to the level of demon overlord characters and the chuunibyou characters who copy them.
The worst bit for me was having Kougami, who’s perhaps had 5 minutes of screen time up to this point, come front and center with her drama. every time she said oba-chan I cringed.