04-18-2016, 06:01 PM | #1 |
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Kuma Miko
Kuma Miko is the story of a shrine maiden from the sticks who dreams of living the city life. A tribe of talking bears lives in the area, and she is the latest shrine maiden in a long lineage of maidens charged with bridging the gap between the human and bear worlds. Kuma Miko is billed as a comedy seinen series, meaning it's for men in their 30s to 50s to laugh at and have a good time with. Would I say that's accurate? Pretty accurate. I've had a blast with the show so far, only two episodes in, although I don't know that I'd place an age range on it. More like ... "this show will appeal to your inner father." The girl is adorable, cute, funny, and just all around great surrogate daughter material. Hey wait a second ... That's right: this show is Gingitsune's spiritual sister. They're different enough from one another to not be confused for each other, and yet both have to do with a cute shrine maiden and an animal with human characteristics bridging the gap between two worlds, both have the animal being an older male, both have the two main characters having been inseparable since the shrine maiden's childhood, and both start us off where the girl is in her early-mid teens and is ready to start a new life for herself. If you haven't seen Gingitsune before and are enjoying Kuma Miko, then I suggest you check out our Gingitsune thread here. They're not 100% the same, but they have too much in common to be ignored. Kuma Miko is also being billed by the Internet at large as being a somewhat raunchy, pervy show. Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii don't think that's really accurate at all. Judge for yourself whether I'm right or not, but I feel like the Internet took the one lewd story from Episode 01 (not even a scene proper! just a story!) and ran with it. So far I've felt this show to be extremely family friendly, maybe even moreso than Gingitsune, except for that one scene. And the disappointment I'm finding on websites from people who are let down that the show hasn't been as |
04-18-2016, 06:02 PM | #2 |
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Characters post (reserving for future use, if ever)
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04-18-2016, 06:02 PM | #3 |
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Post in which to edit in people's posts from the Suggestions Box thread (too lazy to do it right now)
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04-18-2016, 07:38 PM | #5 |
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Not exactly ... though Natsu does have some similarities to Polar Bear in personality. This show is more about a duo (Machi and Natsu), and it has a much smaller cast, and the humor is different ...
It's really a lot like Gingitsune. They're different too, but to use life forms as an analogy, I'd say if Kuma Miko's a human, then Gingitsune's a chimpanzee, PBC's a lizard, Kannagi's a newt, and Monster's not even in Animalia. The show so far has been a lot of saccharine comedy. It's very adorable but in a "aren't girls so adorable" sense, not in a "aren't kittens so adorable" sense. It's 100% a show with moe appeal. But while less educational than Gingitsune, it's still ever so slightly educational. Episode 03, for example, brings up that Machi's unique shrine maiden outfit combines the traditional dress from southern Honshuu with the Ainu dress from the north. (Surprising to me, the episode even teaches Japanese viewers that Ainu weren't just in Hokkaido. Umm ... yeah. I thought everyone knew that!) It's ... its like if K-On! or Kannagi melded with Gingitsune. The setting is Gingitsune, the protagonist is Kannagi, and the moe is K-On! Long way of answering that I wouldn't really compare it with PBC. That series was much more sedate, appealed to a much broader audience, and was about lots of characters.
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04-18-2016, 07:56 PM | #6 |
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The lewd story was kind of out of nowhere. Up until that point, the story did feel a lot like Polar Bear Cafe. Then it went Seitokai Yakuindomo.
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04-18-2016, 08:47 PM | #7 |
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I didn't feel that way at all, but maybe only because everyone and his mother said the show (Episode 01) gets surprisingly raunchy in its second half. The real deal was very tame and entirely played for laughs.
Oh, I forgot to mention: we need to look it up later, but when I watched Episode 01 and heard the 9-year old girl speak, I am like 99% certain that's Makoto from Gingitsune. It's like, they knew the projects are really similar. They just had to have her voice a bit character! I will be very surprised if I am wrong.
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04-18-2016, 10:06 PM | #8 |
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I heard the 9-year old yell "SEKKUSU HARASUMENTO" and realized she was voiced by a 24-year old*.
*she could be thirty for all I know
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04-24-2016, 11:46 AM | #9 |
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The first half of episode 3 was awesome. Second half featured something that I think harem protagonists should do more often.
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04-26-2016, 04:11 PM | #10 |
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Just finished Episode 04. The first half wasn't as strong as previous weeks have been, and the second half was in a different league of boring. It's probably more entertaining to Japanese people who grew up knowing what a Shimomura is and what the stereotypes are about it, but even with the episode kinda explaining everything as it went I still thought this part was really dull and pointless.
Spoiler: show
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05-02-2016, 04:56 PM | #11 |
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Episode 05: the exploration of "tsundere" episode.
Spoiler: show The show's very cute but is getting very little done. Some would see it as a huge waste of time, others not. I guess I'd call the time spent with it ... "therapeutic"? It's similar to K-On! in that sense.
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05-05-2016, 01:24 PM | #12 |
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Hahaha, Machi is a huge pig! She put away that whole freaking cake like it was nothing! Oink oink!
Oink oink! Snort. Wahahahaha! Yoshio's an odd duckling to me. He acts in a really familiar way to me...which I can only interpret as myself. I don't think I've seen a character act so eerily close to home as Yoshio has. ... This anime is full of leg-service. Which is the best fanservice when you're a perv like me, but also speaks about why people are can't stop sexualizing it. It's not 100% pure - there are some "tee hee!" ulterior intentions behind a lot of shots. ... I've spent some time trying to discern Natsu's bear species. I've come to the conclusion he's most likely a giant panda.
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05-09-2016, 11:02 PM | #13 |
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Episode 06 was filled with lots of adorable imagery and moments. Lots of "aww"s directed both Machi's and Natsu's way. The show definitely knows how to tug at its target demographic's heartstrings.
I don't really have too much to say about this episode without regurgitating the plot. I guess one thing I can think of to comment on ... Spoiler: show
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05-14-2016, 08:30 AM | #14 |
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Yikes, Talon is right about Hibiki. Her behaviour is pretty un-predictable and I'm actually afraid of her cause of that.
AND MAN, this show can feel like Dagashi Kashi at times. Weird eyes... Product placement (or propaganda)... ... Unrelated, everyone was making ratings in Episode 03 so I thought it was odd we didn't chime in! WHICH DO YOU LIKE BEST
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05-14-2016, 08:32 AM | #15 |
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Oh, 3, easily. 3 > 1 > 4 > 2.
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06-29-2016, 04:24 PM | #17 |
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Doppel's hinted that this series had a controversial ending. I was only through Episode 07 when he posted, but I've since caught up all the way through Episode 11, the second-to-last episode. Weighing in real quick, I can say that nothing worthy of controversy (at least not within the anime community) has happened so far.
Spoiler: show
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06-29-2016, 05:35 PM | #18 | |
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Alright, I just finished 12. Wasn't really sure what your spoken-of big deal was, but reading your post in full now and having seen the episode I can weigh in.
Quote:
Spoiler: show At the end of the day, Kuma Miko was at best a 6/10 and more like a 5/10 with gorgeous animation. (Seriously, what the hell with that animation.) So I can't get too upset even if the Internet's interpretation of the ending is completely right. It wouldn't be a great show getting ruined. It'd be an only okay show getting ruined. Putting it differently, if you were to delete the second half of Episode 12 I still don't think you'd see very many DVDs or Blu-Rays sold. Hard to imagine this being many people's must-own TV series.
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07-07-2016, 10:46 PM | #19 |
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The soup...gets thicker.
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07-07-2016, 11:04 PM | #20 | |
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Quote:
The author will get the last laugh. The anime can only improve sales of his manga, even if only modestly, whereas the bad ending will tank DVD sales. I still feel like it's all being blown out of proportion. Yes, the ending was jarring and frustrating. No, it didn't ruin the franchise. Like I said before, a, you needed something like that -- any form of rollback -- to return her to her pre-thelastfourepisodes self if you wanted to leave the door open for a Season 2; and b, it can easily, easily be written to be as transient as many of her other juvenile episodes. There's no reason for the hardcore fans to panic so badly, as though the series were irreparably ruined. They could easily do a Season 2, not that they ever will now, that glosses right over the final two to four episodes.
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07-11-2016, 04:22 PM | #21 |
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I guess with nothing going on lately, people feel the need to blow something out of proportion. I think the animators just tried to make the ending moments as moe as they could. They probably didn't think of how dark it seemed.
From start to finish, Kuma Miko was an okay show with some fun moments here and there. I hoped it would have something to offer along with that animation budget. I guess the animators felt that since Gochuumon did so well, they could super moefy another show and do well. Kuma Miko gets a 5 from me. I'm still trying to figure out why every time I see a manga image of Machi, she looks emotionless. She's not like that in the manga (atleast from what I glanced of it), so I don't know. |
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