Mankind has Declined – lovable fairies, simple character designs and vivid colors that bring both to life. The perfect packaging for a sugary fairy tale. Well, sugar is an important plot point, too…
But if you’ve seen the first episode or two, you don’t need me to tell you that what’s inside the package isn’t exactly your typical fairy-tale. The social commentary is harsh, the characters jaded. But it’s exactly because of the show’s cutesy style that it never feels gloomy or preachy.
The episode title screen shows how much though goes into maintaining this unusual balance. To create a fairy-tale like feel, we have:
- a fairies-and-sweets theme
- a rich and curly font style
- non-standard hiragana usage
- non-standard honorifics usage
The first two points are obvious enough. What about point three? We have three nouns that would be written with kanji in standard Japanese: fairy (妖精), secret (秘密), and factory (工場). Japanese children learn how to write the kanji for ‘secret’ in sixth grade and the kanji for ‘factory’ in second grade, but both are intentionally written with hiragana in the title, like they would be in a picture book geared towards young readers. The kanji for ‘fairy’ stand out here, especially since the first half of the word uses a kanji that goes beyond the basic schools curriculum entirely. But this, again, is common treatment for a select few keywords that will repeat again and again in a given picture book (usually with furigana to help the children out).
The fourth point regards honorifics. The honorific –san is probably one of the best known among anime fans, often equated with the English Mr. and Ms. In this case it is attached to a plural noun, and a species name in particular. You’ll probably never see this usage in everyday Japanese… except in fairy tales and when speaking to children. Mr. Doggy and Ms. Sakura Tree are perfectly valid characters of a fairy tale, and the honorific helps distinguish those ‘characters’ from simple ‘creatures’.
Every part of Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita is packed with detail like this, and it will certainly be fun to look for those details in the episodes to come. Though to be honest, I was sold when I heard Nakahara Mai’s performance in this…
Those are interesting points about how the title of the episode is written. I’m glad you pointed them out =)
I’ve watched two episodes of the show so far and it may be too bizarre for my taste. I’m trying to give it a fair chance though. If you’ve seen episode 2 yet, the skinned chickens kind of pushed me over the edge =P
There are some weird things going on in the show, but so far they always pay off. I thought the haircut business was just some random fun in ep.1, but then it becomes important in ep.2 etc. I have high expectations for Suitai.
Looking forward to seeing your watchlist, too :).
Most inspired casting decision of the season to put Mai Nakahara in this one, heh. Also, this feels like a wayback machine season, what with her being in 2 lead roles, ntm smaller ones like in Saki and Horizon.
Nakahara can do basically anything well, from kuudere (Aono @ Sola), through iiko (Nagisa @ Clannad) to tsundere (Zakuro @ Otome Youkai Zakuro), but her masterpiece performances are often the ‘nice girl with a dark side’ ones (Rena @ Higurashi, or this show). Like I saw one blog comment, she’s a ‘female Kyon’ in Suitai, which I personally love listening to.
I’ve seen the first episode of Muv-luv (Nakahara’s second main role this season), but I found the opening episode both cliched and badly planned, so I won’t be following that (I generally dislike mecha, too). As for Nakahara in Saki… she’s great whenever she gets to say anything other than:
“Ron.”
“Tsumo”
“Ron 7700.”
“Tsumo 2000 All.”
xD
I think Muv-Luv is probably a double header in the sense that ep01/02 goes together. You’ll probably get a more accurate picture after watching both. By the way, her “rival” in the show is voiced by Ueda Kana, which makes what happens in ep02 rather amusing in a twisted sort of way.
Not sure if I can handle another episode xD. Seems like I’ll be watching quite a few shows this season either way.
[…] seasons ago, we had Mankind has Declined replacing its kanji and katakana with hiragana to strengthen the fairy-tale feeling of the setting. But this is probably not what is going on […]