All great things must come to an end. All relentlessly weird things too, for that matter, and so we must at last bid The Lost Village adieu. I was surprised by this show plenty of times, but it ultimately developed its own strange kind of consistent rhythm. It was funny and ridiculous and regularly charming, an unexpected slice of the kind of comedy you almost never see in anime. I think this show’s creators had a lot of fun making it. I certainly had plenty of fun watching.
You can check out my final review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Speedstar has tamed his awful CG Nanaki grandmother!
“We’re going to be executed!” oh my god the dramatic irony
Mitsumune trying to argue about Masaki’s good qualities oh my god
THE PENGUIN IS IN A TINY CAGE
“It’s a-gore-able!” OH MY GOD
The penguin waving its stubby little arms as Mitsumune talks about his character development. Another great example of the show deflating its own tension
“I want to become your equal, Hayato!”
The fight for Hayato’s soul!
Koharun strikes back!
MITSUMUNE LITERALLY CARRIES HIM LAWL
“I have a birds-eye view of human psychology.” CUT TO A BIRDS-EYE SHOT
Koharun’s dad is god! She’s trying to revive his trauma to save him!
God is just super down with everything that’s happened
Reiji was Masaki’s imaginary friend DUN DUN DUN
As far as actual themes go, Reiji does work – he represents hiding away from your trauma, and pretending things are okay
“I feel like I’ve always been looking for you, ever since I got here” well that is just literally true
“If my Nanaki – the penguin that represents my memory with Tokimune…” so good
“Her dark past is a boy?” god I love this show
“Who cares about men? Well, who cares about anything?”
The Nanaki are scared of being left behind, which is pretty cute
“What’s all this mumbo-jumbo?” “Is he some shady therapist?”
“But if I think of it as myself, my trauma feels kind of cute”
“Now that I’ve come here, I’ve realized we’re all the same.” Yep, everyone’s a fuckup in their own way. A pretty inspiring point to arrive at
“It’s much easier to think everyone else is having a good time and giving you all the shit to deal with.” Plenty of good lines here
“I’m getting tired of living in purrvival mode”
“Koharun was the villain?” oh my god
“Okay, let’s go.” AND THEN JUST IMMEDIATE CUT TO CREDITS WHAT THE FUCK
WHAT A RIDICULOUS NON SEQUITUR
OH MY GOD
He did a Mayoiga post before a Concrete Revolutio post ;.;
I suspect a Mayoiga post required less reflection for him than a ConRevo post. :p
One-dimensional numerical ratings are a poor way of conveying depth or meaning of admiration for a show, but – having read your prior explanation (I can’t even remember where!) that your episodic ratings are generally given relative to your expectation for that show’s average rather than relative to some ideal, Nick – I do wish you’d either get the chance to give two episodic ratings (one episode-versus-show, one show-versus-universe) or that you could include some kind of boilerplate about how your rating system is intended to be understood.
Not that I disliked the final episode of Mayoiga – impressive that it mostly made sense, and that it rounded meaningfully upon so many of its own genre cracks and absurd puns.
One question: what did you make of Masaki literally disappearing as she left town? I thought for a second that we were going to be seated with something like “Actually, Masaki was Mitsumune’s Nanaki, so Reiji was Mitsumune’s Nanaki’s Nanaki!”, which would’ve felt pointlessly complicated and not really rounded out any of the characters’ narrative arcs meaningfully.
Might be true for everyone but Mayoiga is a perfect example for what I consider to be your Achilles’ Heel as a reviewer, which is in fact creator bias. If a work is made by one of your favorites you tend to overstate its quality. Let’s say you bring a 6/10 to a 9/10. You’re obviously doing that with this show (Mizushima), it was apparent with Yurikuma (Ikuhara) and others (studios like KyoAni).
Or it could be I liked the show and found its structural approach to humor really interesting. I didn’t particularly care for Prison School, Mizushima’s last show, and my feelings on KyoAni shows run the gamut from “fantastic” to “dropped,” so…