Your Week in Anime (Week 668)

[u/Soupkitten]

This is a general discussion thread for whatever you've been watching this last week (or recently, we really aren't picky) that's not currently airing. For specifically discussing currently airing shows, go to This Week in Anime.

Make sure to talk more about your own thoughts on the show than just describing the plot, and use spoiler tags where appropriate. If you disagree with what someone is saying, make a comment saying why instead of just downvoting.

This is a week-long discussion, so feel free to post or reply any time.

Archive: Prev, Week 116, Our Year in Anime 2013, 2014

[u/VoidEmbracedWitch]

A perfect driver is one who makes no mistakes. Fortunately for Overtake, anime does not work the same as motorsports. While it's far from taking every turn flawlessly, it manages to nail the moments that really matter. How fitting that, unlike other sports anime, this one is actually not about the athletes — it's about a photographer. Madoka leaves a difficult impression right off the bat, being a man who fails at his profession more often than not due to this inability to take pictures of people.

Before I can zoom in on the strong suits and Madoka himself, it's important to establish where the show doesn't quite hit the mark and that's predominantly in the races themselves. There's a clear effort to emulate the look and feel of races in the camerawork, on top of several additional techniques to spice things up like tracking shots with the camera located over one of a car's front wheels. Yet it falls short of its ambitions because the car models move ever so slightly too smoothly. The races resultingly come off as rather floaty. Combine this with the environments around the track being neither stylized or realistic enough to be believable and the actual competitions end up being the weakest part. The backgrounds aren't much to write home about either, leaving the show with a rather flat daytime look for its color palette.

However, the characters placed in front of those backgrounds are realized beautifully. This can be seen from the very beginning with the portrayal of Madoka's struggle to press the shutter of his camera. The trembling of his finger and the ominous flashbacks to waves whenever he struggles to photograph a person immediately convey there's more to his weaseling out of jobs where he has to than just not liking it. While he's usually far from the most serious person and regularly out of his depth when it comes to F4 racing, in these moments he seems outright traumatized with a vague indicator of the cause. And the people in and around the Komaki Motors team he follows are all endearing in their own right. Arisu takes the crown for the funniest. Her overexcitement and panicking when talking to her crush, and rival team driver, Satsuki gets me every time. Whether serious or comedic, the thought put into how characters are portrayed is thoughtful and effective. This doesn't just extend to their movements or expressions, but also cinematography. Nowhere is this more evident than episode 9, the one ||finally addressing Madoka's past||. The episode consists in large parts of conversations between Madoka and Komaki's usually more reserved driver Haruka and there's a lot of care put into who's visible and when. From clever applications of depth of field to clever staging with environments obfuscating Komaki to leave Madoka as the only focal point of shots, ||the episode visually conveys the emotional weight of Madoka's introspection||.

I lied a bit at the start. Overtake isn't just centered around Madoka, he works as both the centerpiece of his own dramatic arc while also acting as a supporter of the Komaki team and primary lens through which the audience experiences their story. So the show splits its attention a bit and bounces between modes of storytelling for Madoka and, during races, Haruka as well as selects other competitors. While the result doesn't have any aspect consistently in focus, it executes all sides of its story solidly and shows ambition in its production that makes the pivotal parts stick.