Papa Iukoto Wo Kikinasai!, When life throws you a curveball...

I've been hesitant to create a discussion thread for Papa Iukoto wo Kikinasai! (PapaKiki for short), because I haven't been personally completely sold on it. That is, until episode 3, which made me a believer even more than episode 2 did.

PapaKiki stars Yuuta Segawa as a college freshman who meets a girl he likes, a playboy of a friend, and a weirdo of a club president. The show quickly introduces us to his older sister and her family, including three nieces -- Sora, Miu, and Hina -- that the series makes very clear will be the focal point. The first episode was merely okay in my opinion, setting the stage for a somewhat unorthodox approach at a standard anime comedy. And then, it throws the audience a curveball in terms of focus and even the very genre of the show.

I'm not going to go into too much detail here, because I feel it's something better discovered than told. All I really want to say is that I think if you give it a chance and watch the first two episodes, and especially if you watch through episode three, you will be pleasantly surprised.

Despite what I consider an unfortunate misstep in the first episode, save for that one distasteful moment, the series has been a veritable paragon of poise, framing, and maturity. I have very rarely seen an anime that impresses me with its restraint. It's probably going to blow the restraint, at least in one respect, but in terms of its handling of the core plot I can't imagine them having handled it better.

It's definitely one of my favorite new shows of this season...and in a season where Nisemonogatari is airing, I'm shocked at how much more I'm enjoying this. Hina is adorable, Yuuta is a very likable lead character, and the cast in general are played very well.

There are still some concerns I have, but my familiarity with the source material and the manner in which it has been animated thus far has surpassed my expectations.

Listen to Me, Girls, I'm Your Father! airs Tuesdays at 1pm ET on Crunchyroll.

This post has been edited by VRMaster on Jan 24 2012, 11:58 PM

Waiting for the sobbing sempai to return. She's like a direct graft of Hen Zemi on an unsuspecting Usagi Drop scenario.

basically.

Yeah, Raika is fun and, IIRC will command a fair bit of the comedic relief from here on out. I still fear to a degree the probably inevitable return of the fan service, and how much restraint they exercise in this regard will probably do a great deal in determining whether I consider this show good or merely okay.

i think this show is full of fanservice every episode, so there's not much to return to.

similarly i don't think too differently of usagi drop...

That's fair; what was in episode three barely even registered as fan service to me until someone pointed it out. Episode two's endeavor was just a retread of what was in episode one, so I discounted that as well.

It's basically at, "well, one deviation per episode is okay, I guess, because I think the plot is interesting for how it's handling a serious situation." Yes, it has echoes of Usagi Drop, but only superficially. Daikichi never really had to worry about making ends meet financially; it was all about making time for Rin that was the core of that drama (what little there was). Yuuta is in a much tougher, ridiculous, situation and, while what I've read kind of paves over the impossibility of his task -- despite saying how impossible it is -- it at least does so in a manner that, to me, made it work because of how they depicted it.

That stuff got me to look over the much, much more fan service-oriented nature of the manga. I'm hoping the moderation the anime is executing (by comparison) on that front is a trend.

the way I'm going to interpret what you said is that by fanservice you mean fanservice that you dislike versus fanservice that you can ignore or fanservice you like.

i find it all sort of amusing in that "ho ho where is this anime going to go next" kind of deal. is it going to be real or going to be anime? Looks like the latter for now.

Well, certainly. Who doesn't? I'm generally going to take issue with sexualizing Sora or Miu, whereas I wouldn't be as concerned with Raika being used in the same way.

That said, I feel that fan service typically undermines dramas whereas it's more easily ignored (or appreciated) in comedies or action shows. Since PapaKiki is trying to be a drama, I think it hurts the show to be going, "oh, here's this girl in her underwear" or, "haha bath scene." But it hasn't been so overbearing that I can't look past it.

This post has been edited by VRMaster on Jan 25 2012, 12:05 PM

people with enough ranks in contextualization.

I don't pretend to speak for anyone but me, so I don't try to. Everything I've said in this thread has been couched in terms of "for me" for precisely that reason.

that's already presumed.

i mean saying that just invites people to say "you are wrong"

no, i get you. it all makes sense. it's very much a double standard but nobody's keeping score so it doesn't really matter.

Well, it is an Internet message board. Anything you say invites people to say you're wrong anyway.

No it doesn't.

Apropos of nothing: along with Papakiki, the unofficially recognized abbreviation for this show is Paikoki.

All that aside, I really really enjoyed the first few books of the series. The anime has been pretty faithful to the feel of them, especially since I know when the fan service bits are going to be in advance and can skip/ignore them.

Hina is cute and makes me want a daughter.

IDK VRM. This is pretty fan-servicey for a 19 yr old vs tweens.

I'll check out eps 2 and 3 later tonight to see if you're good on your word.

This post has been edited by Aarin on Jan 25 2012, 02:17 PM

Yeah, the back half of episode one gave me a lot of pause. I was intrigued by what I had heard and went to check out the manga and was surprised by where the series went. The anime has impressed me with how it has adapted it.

It's not that the fan service goes away, which depresses me considering I think what they have can definitely stand without the pandering, but I think it's more of an afterthought. Especially considering the manga, which was rife with it. I was afraid that it would go as far as the manga did, but so far it's been minimal and I thank feel. for that.

what made you check out the manga by the way? seems to me if I am curious i would go look at the light novels.

Are they available in English? My reading comprehension of Japanese isn't high enough for me to attempt a light novel yet. I didn't check; I just assumed it was obscure enough that the LNs wouldn't have been fan translated.

This post has been edited by VRMaster on Jan 25 2012, 04:06 PM

ah, I would just go and read what people who have read it said about it, and that applies to the manga too. but that is because I am not actually interested in reading those.

Reading what people who have read the source material promising that the show would take a dramatic turn quickly got me to read ahead and see if I liked the direction it would take after a mediocre first episode. So it's more of a combination of the two; I don't like reading specific story events second-hand, so I went for an available English source -- the manga. Only a handful of (surprisingly long) chapters are out as it is, so it took me maybe 45 minutes to blow through it.

i think it's fine to read the manga for a hint if it's convenient, but it's the derivative of something that might be totally different, after all.

That's true and the manga has been different from the anime, but I was looking for hints of tone and the general premise, which is unchanged save for the anime being more reserved in terms of the fan service.

This post has been edited by VRMaster on Jan 25 2012, 04:21 PM

yeah, but did you know that beforehand? I mean that's the thing, why even rely on the manga at all :/

but hey, now i have someone to ask.

Of course I didn't know beforehand, but there was no guarantee that the anime would be loyal to the light novel either. I just wanted the jist of where this was going, figuring that the general premise would be the same across media platforms. I just didn't want to read about the twist secondhand; that's probably weird, but it's how I am.

This post has been edited by VRMaster on Jan 25 2012, 04:40 PM