Blue Thermal

This came on TV. What catches the attention the most, aside from the unbearably blue and hopeful, pseudo/post-Ghibli kitsch of modern anime movies, is the most unbearably sweet and positive heroine one can find anywhere, which is exacerbated by how she is supposed to be a semi-realistic character and not a completely artificial cartoon (which would trivially undermine the point).

The story is some random nonsense about flying, magically being the best at flying or engineering and having the best summer days ever (forever) and being somewhere between 17 and 21 forever. This may sound familiar if you've ever caught a glimpse of these colourful anime dramas.

Based on a manga series named "Buru Samaru: Aonagi Daigaku Taiiku-kai Koku-bu," this anime is directly by Tachibana Masaki, who had also directed "Ghost in the Shell Arise: Alternative Architecture."

The Good: Here we get the story of freshman college student Tsuru Tamaki, who is trying to find her social place among the different clubs offered at her school. I think many of us can relate to this, so there is built in sympathy with her character.

The fabricated drama between the team captain and its financial backer is so typical Japanese - i.e. It's ridiculously dramatic and doesn't really serve a useful purpose in the story. But anyway that's what makes for a Japanese story :D.

The Bad: The animation is done in the style of the manga, which is to say the characters and background are more reminiscent of Mizayaki Hayao's earlier works. That is not bad, per se, but my own personal preference is for more modern detailed drawings.

Also, while Tamaki is drawn more like a young teenager, her sister, who is also in university, is drawn as if she is much older and unlikely to still be in university. That's the way the characters were drawn in the manga, so I understand the anime keeping to the same character design.

Overall this was an entertaining anime, but it's not very ground-breaking or memorable.