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Old 04-12-2015, 12:46 AM   #1
lilboocorsola
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Eevee Mikagura School Suite


The Mikagura School Suite is a a boarding high school, where each of the students must join an after-school activity club. The representatives of the clubs then battle between each other with their special abilities, and the results of these battles influence school life of all of the club members. The school only allows clubs of the cultural type.

Based off a series of popular Vocaloid songs by Last Note, the story begins with Ichinomiya Eruna, who is a freshman at Mikagura High School, and shows her first days at the new school and how she interacts with various other students who all belong to a different school club.
(Adapted from the Vocaloid Wiki)
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Old 04-12-2015, 12:50 AM   #2
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Character Bios

(This post reserved for a list of characters.)
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Old 04-12-2015, 02:25 AM   #3
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Lil' Bluey LET'S [TENSION MAX]


Episode 01:

Spoiler: show
These will just be some general thoughts since I only watched the raw version, but I have enough background knowledge from the manga to follow most of it.

Going into it, my impression/expectation of Mikagura was that it would be a mix of Ouran and Dangan Ronpa. However, what it really reminds me strongly of is Gakuen Alice. The similarites are actually kinda uncanny, as I can come up with counterpart correlations for almost all the characters. Gakuen Alice was a pretty cute and colorful show, so I have hopes Mikagura will be of the same caliber. (It already looks far better than MCA. *shot*)


Seriously even the lesbianism matches up wtf.

Eruna's defining trait so far is basically that she likes cute girls. A lot. (Her reaction to seeing a maid actually reminded me of Cibbir. *shot*) That and she has an overwhelming amount of energy. Enjoyment of the series will probably largely depend on one's ability to tolerate her antics. For as much as I anticipate her to become the red scarfed hero who helps the other club members deal with their issues/come out of their shells and fix the school system(?), she has all the qualities to quickly become an annoyance.


The gay genki is off the charts.

On that note, I only just read chapter two of the manga, which covers the second half of the episode, and I'm admittedly a bit disappointed at some of the changes made in the TV version. In the manga, Eruna doesn't hesitate to literally leap (from a high balcony no less) between Ginti Kyoma and girly shota Asuhi to try and stop the confrontation before the "Goddess" Seisa shows up to put an end to it. In addition, Eruna is then immediately introduced to all the club representatives, whereupon her monologue reveals her close insight of each individual off the bat. While it would understandably be difficult to fit them all within the episode timeframe - especially with narration - I would've preferred the brief overview to get a sense of what kind of people our main cast are and to show there's more to them than meets the eye. Although at least we got this gem instead:


RIP Kano clone Akama Yuto Episode 1 - Episode 1

But yeah, I would've liked to see more actual personality than lesbian fantasies. (The second one with the meteor seemed totally unnecessary and out of place.) I also felt the introduction of the superpowers element through a welcoming ceremony right after the break was kinda abrupt, but it was apparently the same way in the manga so- *shrug*


In all, I liked it and am looking forward to more based on what little I know of the songs and story. (Not a big fan of the ED remix though. Something about the chorus feels off.) Since I did it with MCA, I'll also post related music along with the ep. Here's the original Houkago Stride:

Spoiler: show
BORKED

Last edited by lilboocorsola; 04-12-2015 at 01:20 PM.
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Old 04-12-2015, 03:02 AM   #4
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Oh my. This is a debut show?

/wonders what Mikagura means
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Old 04-12-2015, 03:29 AM   #5
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Lil' Bluey

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Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
Oh my. This is a debut show?

/wonders what Mikagura means
It started airing a week ago, although subs were slow to come out as FUNimation is handling them. (I've still only seen the raw version.)

There's no special meaning as far as I know, it's just the name of the school, like Kouyouen Academy (or however you spell it). Maybe Talon can tell something about the etymology, although it's written in katakana so I'm guessing it's made-up in this case. The full series name is Mikagura Gakuen Kumikyoku (ミカグラ学園組曲).
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Old 04-12-2015, 07:16 AM   #6
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I would think Mikagura is written as 美神楽, Mi being the "Beautiful" prefix and Kagura being the famous dance. A number of fictional characters have borne the name Kagura, and so my initial thought -- given the name of the school -- is that someone named Mikagura is who the school was named after. But given Yuki's information about this being a cousin project to Mekakucity Actors, I can just as easily see the reading of Mikagura being more literally "the Beautiful Dance" and that the story you're about to watch is the titular beautiful dance between characters.
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Old 04-12-2015, 10:29 AM   #7
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Lil' Bluey

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
I would think Mikagura is written as 美神楽, Mi being the "Beautiful" prefix and Kagura being the famous dance. A number of fictional characters have borne the name Kagura, and so my initial thought -- given the name of the school -- is that someone named Mikagura is who the school was named after. But given Yuki's information about this being a cousin project to Mekakucity Actors, I can just as easily see the reading of Mikagura being more literally "the Beautiful Dance" and that the story you're about to watch is the titular beautiful dance between characters.
I forgot, but the school is actually named after the administration. One of the main characters is Mikagura Seisa (御神楽星鎖). I should probably make a list of characters but I'm not actually too familiar with them. Kin probably knows more about the project than I do.

To be clear, Mikagura has nothing to to do with Mekakucity Actors outside of both being based on Vocaloid song series written by different producers. The stories and characters are completely separate.
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Old 04-12-2015, 01:30 PM   #8
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The mi there is the politeness prefix. You're probably familiar with o- and go-, as in ocha, obentou, goshujin, and gohan, but another reading as seen here is mi. It's much rarer than the other two; the only example that immediately comes to mind is Mikami Shrine (御神神社 Mikami Jinja, "O' Gods' Shrine") which is a play-on-words of the mountain it's situated near, Mt. Mikami (三上山 Mikamiyama, Mt. Mikami).

So her name, Mikagura, would halfway literally be O' Kagura (as in "O' Gods", not as in Irish O'Clanname), fully literally "O' Gods' Entertainment."

While were on the topic of wordplay, her last name of Seisa, 星鎖, literally means Starchain. 星 hoshi star, 鎖 kusari chain. Read Seisa as it's onyomi. Thing is: it's a made-up name straight out of the Book of Doppel. There are much more common words that approximate its reading and may factor into canon or fanon plots:
  • 生産 seisan "production" (lit. "live birth")
  • 正座 seiza "the correct way of sitting; seiza"
  • 星座 seiza "constellation" (lit. "star seat")
Not that they're that common, as you can see, nor that they forebode anything major. I just imagine they may show up in fanart done by the nation that is one of the greatest lovers of puns. And since the project is kinda fanarty to begin with, that it might show up in the official story too.
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Old 04-12-2015, 01:50 PM   #9
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Lil' Bluey

Seisa is her given name, Mikagura is the family name. Sorry I've been kinda inconsistent with making that distinction. (I'm still learning most of the names myself.)

It's interesting she has a name related to stars, considering it's a different character who's member of the astronomy club. I am kinda curious now if their names have anything to do with their specialties. Just for fun if you want to take a look, these are the students' names without giving anything away about them:

一宮 エルナ Ichinomiya Eruna

御神楽星鎖 Mikagura Seisa

九頭竜京摩 Kuzuryuu Kyouma

赤間 遊兎 Akama Yūto

二宮 シグレ Ninomiya Shigure

藤白おとね Fujishiro Otone

射水アスヒ Imizu Asuhi

湊川貞松 Minatogawa Sadamatsu

八坂 ひみ Yasaka Himi
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Old 04-12-2015, 01:55 PM   #10
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Ah, okay. As much as I use Japanese name order myself, I'm unsure as to why I would have assumed you did it in Western order. Maybe because you usually do or something and I subconsciously knew that? No idea. Regardless of which is the surname and which is the given name, a) you've got the meanings to work with and b) I feel it's kinda thread-derailey but ehhhhh I haven't seen the show so ... ^^;
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Old 06-09-2015, 02:36 PM   #11
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Been catching up on this and just got to Episode 6. It's been good so far. Nice characters with really good designs, the abilities are cool, and it's just been enjoyable to watch, but it's not perfect. Eruna, every once in a while, gets to be a bit much, but it's not often enough to have a big impact. Really all that's been lacking for me is the fight scenes. I figured the animators either had a lack of budget or were just kinda lazy from the uncolored unimportant characters, but it really shows, and it pretty annoying, when it comes to fight scenes. The what happens in them is good, the powers are good, but just the way they're animated isn't. They're paced pretty poorly, and it seems to me like there just isn't enough fighting, with too many still parts with little movement even when the two characters aren't talking.

The thing that really got me though, regarding Episode 6, was:
Spoiler: show
The fact they don't even bother to show Eruna losing. When she just says, "Oh yeah, I lost by the way," I actually just thought what the fuck. We just saw her pull off a nice victory against Tonkyun and seconds later she's out without a fight. I'm assuming they skip it to keep Haruko's (think that's her name) power a secret for the next episode but still, it's pretty annoying.
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Old 06-27-2015, 01:11 AM   #12
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Finished this up tonight. Overall, it was another case of really good potential with poor execution. The pacing felt all over the place, especially in the last two episodes, Eruna...honestly got to be too much (I still like her but it never felt like she could have a serious moment ever. You can still be upbeat but have a serious moment. All her stuff was pretty much just hyper uppity and had very little serious impact when it felt like it was supposed to), Otone...

Spoiler: show
Kinda started to feel like a plot device since it felt like her entire purpose was to come in for the sole reason to push away Seisa to make her warmness towards Eruna reset again. I feel like she wouldn't have felt as much like a shoe-in if the anime had been a bit more clear in regards to her character with some more serious moments. I mean, I don't want to flat out be told everything about her, and I get she's supposed to be a pretty confusing character, but I just feel like her, and many other things, were handled very sloppily. Like, don't get me wrong, this anime is so much fun it's ridiculous. But it really isn't very good in many aspects. It's nothing to feel offended over, so I don't want to call it bad. But just very lacking in comparison to what could have been done with the source material. The fight scenes, even the final big shebang, were extremely lackluster, but just the situation still got me a bit hype, which really makes it even worse because I just imagine how hyped I'd be if the fight scene was worth talking about. I mean, case in point right here from a 3-4 seconds bit of the last fight:



Holy shit I laughed so hard.


So yeah, I'd say personally it's a 6/10 by more or less sheer virtue of what it was trying to do and the fact I still had fun with it despite its numerous flaws.

And Himi is the most adorable thing ever omg
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