Abandoned #5 (Shigofumi, Penguin Highway & Tales of Zestiria the X)

Here we go again with a new ‘Abandoned’ post and my usual disclaimer that I might come back to these one day!

1. Shigofumi (2008)

I think I liked the concept better than the approach when it came to Shigofumi. Like many of the shows I mention in these posts I don’t think I’ve ruled out finishing this one day, however.

Shigofumi follows a ‘girl’ named Fumika who delivers after death letters and again, the premise I loved, but part of my issue was the structure. Now, as I type this I know I’m ‘on record’ as saying I love episodic shows and it’s still true, however for at least as far as I watched here, these episodes generally moved between unconnected cases.

Now, for a crime series that’s very, very normal and no problem at all – but the draw there is often the detective, I reckon. You get to know and spend a lot of time with the person solving problems in those instances. Here, Fumika is fairly passive and the mystery around her world (and her role) was offset by not really getting to know her soon enough. That meant that for me her (almost) cameos in the episodes just weren’t enough.

2. Penguin Highway (2018)

Looks great and has what sounds like a fun mystery for kid protagonists to solve – penguins randomly appear in their village.

Now, I haven’t finished this quite obviously, but Aoyama seemed equally obsessed with breasts as he did the mystery of the penguins and I assume it was meant to be cute but it struck me as odd.

Definitely haven’t ruled it out but I’m not rushing back just yet.

3. Tales of Zestiria the X (2016)

I stopped Tales… a while ago now and just haven’t come back, and for a change I know exactly why.

In the beginning, I was enjoying the action, adventure and magic, along with the ‘King Arthur’ feel. There were mysteries and other things that had me curious, along with some great settings that I wanted the characters to explore… and maybe you can see where the ‘based on a video game’ aspect comes in 🙂

But around episode 6 or 7 the narrative leaps away from characters I was beginning to become invested in to settle in with other folks who I just didn’t care about. And perhaps due to that, and not knowing when the focus would return to the ‘proper’ main characters, I just haven’t gone back.

Now, I’d argue it’s really hard to tell an expansive story without jumping between viewpoints of a large cast but where I stopped, I think it had been a couple of episodes without even checking in on the main team and so I just kinda moved on to other stuff.

One day I want to try this again, just not sure when.