So, obviously City was a great show, best of the season, an absolute must watch, on par with Nichijou, you know, whatever, great experience. You should definitely watch it, but I don’t think I could write something compelling just talking about how good it is. I mean, I had to resort to begging Michael to watch it during a recent podcast episode because my brain could not form something coherent. Instead I’m going to hijack my own review to talk about a rather specific feature of City that I wish applied to more shows.
As I’ve grown older (not that I’m *old* old), time seems to get away from me more and more. An hour passes in the blink of an eye when it used to take forever. 13 consecutive 25 minute episodes of some mid-tier fantasy anime that I’ve randomly fallen in love with passes before I’ve realized that it’s 3 a.m. and I need to catch a flight tomorrow. And while I enjoy these binges and other such fast-paced shows, the stand outs to me recently have been the ones that make me feel like 30 minutes have passed. Each episode of City is filled with so much detail and character that I’m rewarded for recognizing and remembering every minute that passes me by. The end of the episode left me not desperate for it to continue in the next episode but fulfilled and looking forward to being as satisfied next week. I think these characteristics are why I liked Nichijou so much too. I distinctly remembering saying, after starting Nichijou for the first time, “I could only get through two episodes in one sitting, I was laughing too hard” (or something like that; I don’t have a perfect memory).
This kind of satisfaction is what I’ve really missed from the shift away from the classic episodic format of TV. Its not that I don’t find the more streamlined bingeable shows enjoyable (see top of previous paragraph), but presence has really made me long for short stories and episodic tales. More importantly, if a show doesn’t end with an unhinged, out of nowhere musical number, I will not be giving two shits about it.