2018
04.20

The Spring 2018 Anime Clusterfuck Part Two: Thump

23 Slaves and Me

Hitler would lose so badly.

Hitler would lose so badly.

A man walks into a studio. He asks to see the manager because he has a series to pitch. The manager comes out of his domain and asks, “What are you offerin’?”
“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” the man says. “You can’t believe the kind of anime I have for you!”
“Another one of them isekai whatchamacallits?” the manager inquires.
“Don’t you shut the door in front of me, because my anime will shatter your mind! You know those revenge shows where a girl gets personally wronged mentally and physically, and she has to put the law in her own hands to seek some good old Japanese vengeance?”
“Like a hentai?”
“No, not a hentai! Because, you see, there’s a never before seen technology in this show, a set of retainers you put in your mouth,
“Retainers?”
“Yes! And if you put another retainer in somebody else’s mouth, they can become your slave, you see, if you beat them in a game!”
“This sounds suspiciously like a hentai.”
“No, no, no! You think I’m sort of smut peddler? I am a purveyor of art, and my work will be beloved by critics and casuals alike!”
“What’s the name of your proposed anime?”
“23 Slaves and Me.”
“That sounds like a hentai title.”
“It’s not hentai, good sir!”
“Then how is it not hentai?”
“Because it has retainers! What hentai would use retainers as their slave tech? That would be pretty disgusting, am I right?”
The manager grabs his chin and rubs his beard. “There are a lot of disgusting hentai though. Like that one with the ‘Kaihou!’ guy.”
“But do they have retainers?!”
“And then there was that one where a girl as young as my daughter put a tube up her butt and shit in it.”
“Do they have retainers, good sir?!”
“Then there are all those where the girl screams ‘Onii-chan! Onii-chan!’ even though the guy isn’t really her brother. And the guy looks like a fat frog, so your chub gets soft the moment your eyes wander onto him. Like I’m not gay or anything, but more hentais need pretty boys instead of ugly frog people. And all these modern hentais have shitty flash animation, so even the ladies look ugly, making it so you’re basically watching an ogre fuck a dead animal. And fuck that, if I want that, I’d watch real people fuck. That shit makes NTR look nice, because I swear–”
“Please, sir! Do any of these pornographical films have any retainers?!”
“…no, can’t recall any. Guess you have me stumped.”
“So do we have a deal? Can my show manifest into reality?”
“Fine, fuck, whatever. But now I have hentai on the brain, so I gotta go back to my office and… uh, unbuckle these urges. Don’t disturb me.”
– A lapsed follower of Kaihou

FLCL Alternative

The cast of K-On watch as a cougar prepares to feast upon her prey.

The cast of K-On watch as a cougar prepares to feast upon her prey.

Not sure how we missed this one. Part of me feels like we should save it for the Fall write-ups, since that’s when the rest of the season airs, but hey; if the folks at [adult swim] felt like this year’s April Fools’ Day prank should be handing over a subbed version of FLCL 3’s first episode to American audiences, then why not get my thoughts about it out of the way now? Besides, Marquis or Dalek can write about it again in September/October.

My first experience with FLCL came in high school, when I started getting into anime more earnestly. It was on the list of anime to watch for a podcast project, where a bunch of my Twitter friends submitted some of their favourite anime for me and a few others to watch over the course of a year. Some of these shows managed to become some of my favourites as well, such as Kino’s Journey and Paranoia Agent. Others I came to roll my eyes at, like AiR. (If only my younger self knew anime could get much, much worse than that.) FLCL immediately joined that first list, and still ranks as one of my favourite anime of all-time: a coming-of-age story about learning to be comfortable in your own skin and to not grow up too quickly mixed with off-the-wall allegory and symbolism, hilariously kinetic animation and jokes, and small whispers of space opera in the background. It’s a fun six-episode romp that I loved back in high school and still love today as an unemployed twenty-something trying to figure out what to do with his liberal arts degrees. So when [adult swim] announced that they’ve ordered two more seasons of the show, I was hesitantly optimistic. Things can go dreadfully wrong when bringing something back, especially if it’s a postscript season made years after the original production wrapped up. The creatives behind it, even if it’s the same team that gave us that first work, can forget or misunderstand what fans enjoyed about what they made. They can double-down too much on elements that fans liked sparingly or in moderation, or forget some beloved aspect all together. The new ideas or stories brought to the table could run opposed to the ones that fans have imagined and built-up in their heads in the years since the last new episode. It could be a fantastic return to form, a disappointing trainwreck, or an unsatisfying whimper. From this first episode, I can safely say that FLCL Alternative isn’t a trainwreck or a whimper. It remains to be seen if it is truly great, but I’m certainly staying on the ride.

In a word, our little glimpse of FLCL Alternative was satisfying. It doesn’t feel out of place when watched immediately after FLCL, which is the first thing you’d want from it. After all, what’s the point of bringing something back as a continuation if you don’t retain the same feel? That said, while this still feels like the world of FLCL, there something about it that feels more subdued, from character actions down to the music that’s once again courtesy of The Pillows. There’s a clear method to the madness that’s immediately evident here, with said madness feeling awfully brief, whereas the first episode of the original OVA threw so much at the viewer that you were in a daze afterwards, trying to process it all. What we have here is something more slow and relaxed, having more in common with KyoAni slice-of-life than Gainax/Trigger insanity. New protagonist Kana’s days are spent hanging out with her friends in a club room and working a part-time job, not dealing with an older sibling’s ex-girlfriend/admirer and an immature father. Haruko’s first interaction with her is ordering lukewarm ramen, not running her over with a Vespa SS 180. Until the monster attack, Haruko is quietly hanging back and scoping Kana from the sidelines, while the Department of Interstellar Immigration wonders what she’s doing with equal reservation. Contrast with her inserting herself into Naota’s life with gusto, badgering him at every turn to see if banging him in the head with a Rickenbacker did what she wanted. Of course, I would be foolish not to acknowledge that all this is the point and that this season isn’t named “alternative” just for flavor. FLCL was a story about a preteen boy trying to grow up too quickly and learning to slow down and be a kid. Alternative flips that script with a teenage girl learning to accept that her childhood is coming to an end and that the responsibilities of adulthood aren’t just going to wait until she’s ready. And for that, the calmer vibe does its job; setting up a cute slice-of-life feel for an opening chapter that will give way to more serious events on a journey that will be more restrained this time around, though we’ll undoubtedly still see some ridiculous stuff happen along the way. This is still FLCL, after all. It may be a good four-and-a-half months before we see Kana and her friends again, but this first taste has me believing that bringing FLCL back wasn’t a mistake. For now, anyway. (Still bitter about Ashi in Samurai Jack Season 5. Don’t pull an Ashi, FLCL.) – RacattackForce

Magical Girl Site

The Magical Girl Site writer hard at work.

The Magical Girl Site writer hard at work.

Magical Girl Site is the latest anime to hop onboard the “Dark Magical Girl” bandwagon in an attempt to ride off the coat tails of shows such as Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna. Adapted from a manga published in Akita Shoten’s “Weekly Shounen Champion” (that’s right, shounen!) This magical girl/horror anime wastes no time in diving headfirst into edgefest. Now, as someone who loves the concepts of magical girls but hates the aesthetics and overall moralistic nature of most, the idea of a horror-focused magical girl series should be right up my alley, so what could go wrong? Unfortunately, much like 2016’s Magical Girl Raising Project, Site decides to wallow in gratuitous torture porn and suffering of its main characters and pointless cruelty for its antagonists, all while keeping an artstyle typical of common magical girls with little in the way of levity. This results in the worst kind of edge in a show and genre mashup that should be so much more.

As already mentioned in last week’s write-up, Site’s premier had the most disgusting tropes and bullying cliché’s ever written, all with little to no payoff for it. While I am, unfortunately, aware that the bullying seen there aren’t so disconnected from reality as we might wish it was, but I can only imagine what an actual middle school bullying victim must feel like coming from a crappy day and reading a manga where that exact same shit happens with almost no real catharsis. Indeed when main character Asagiri’s school bullies are finally dealt with neither she nor the audience is granted even a temporarily relieve as the circumstances just result in more angst and trauma for our protagonist, in spite of said tormentors being so one-dimensional and antagonistic they barely even qualify as human. This, more than anything, is Site’s greatest flaw; while a good dark story would allow moments of temporarily relieve in between the darkness, Site just pours misery on top of misery as if that alone builds good character. It’s a problem that’s plagued quite a bit of “grimdark” media, and very few have what it takes to pull it off in any satisfactory way.

Episode 2 is a vast improvement, though to be honest, that honestly just makes Site’s flaws more apparent (in addition to being the faintest praise you can get). We’re properly introduced to second protagonist and Asagiri’s potential love interest Yatsuhara, a veteran magical girl that can stop time (sound familiar?) and get more world building as well as hints of an overarching plot, and our first real antagonist, there was even some moments of levity that could plausibly be read as intentional black comedy! If you had condensed the first episode into ten minutes and add the first half of this episode to that, you would have had a much stronger, if flawed, narrative. Helping the case here was the episode’s antagonist actually being fun and enjoyable to watch, having the energy and mental instability of a typical enemy Stand user from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and though you could guess the plot twist about her coming from a mile away, the attempted intrigue with her identity was a nice effort, if future antagonists are more like her, then there may be hope for this show yet.

The idea of a dark and edgy magical girl series truly intrigues me, but I have yet to see it truly done well barring Madoka, so many have been plagued with the same problems that Magical Girl Site has, from needless angst and suffering to incredibly lame magic systems and clashing art designs. To give credit where credit is due, Site doesn’t give any pretenses it’ll be anything other than an magical girl edgefest and forgoes any form of bait and switch unlike the aforementioned Yuki Yuna or Raising Project, but when that’s the highest praise that can be given to it, then something’s certainly wrong with the execution of this sub-genre. Who knows? Maybe we will get a dark magical girl series that successfully blends action horror elements like how Lyrical Nanoha did for mecha and magical girls, or how Garo did for Tokusatsu and horror. Maybe we will get a magical girl show with stylish, gory action and set pieces that doesn’t feel like it’s catering to ryona fetishists. And maybe we will get another dark magical girl franchise that truly does live up to its potential and successfully attracts fans that would normally never touch a magical girl anime but with an art style that actually reflects its tone and subject matter. Whenever that may be, Magical Girl Site is not and will not be that show. – CrimsonRynnec

Megalo Box

"The one with the fastest jab wins. That's what Megalo Box is."

“The one with the fastest jab wins. That’s what Megalo Box is.”

My experience watching the debut of Megalo Box with Marquis and Rynnec consisted of me gushing over its fantastic animation for the duration of the episode, to the point of obnoxiousness. Later, I proceed to watch it again and privately faun over how much this anime pulled me into its world with a banging soundtrack and interesting characters. I expected to gain little enjoyment from this show, not because I thought it would be awful, but because I generally have little interest in sports anime. To this day, the only sports anime that I’ve watched more than two episodes of would have to be Aim for the Ace and Ping Pong: The Animation. Which means, yes, the fact that this is a science-fiction reimagining of Ashita no Joe meant absolutely nothing to me. The only thing in my mind was how misplaced this thing felt in the current anime landscape: a show with the gritty visual stylings of a 1980s/90s OVA smack dab in the middle of a modern anime season that’s once again 90% mindless schlock that I’d never revisit unless you paid me. And it was done by a first-time director? Megalo Box is just pure witchcraft. Nothing else this season comes close to touching it.

From the very start, I was invested in Junk Dog’s story. An illegal alien with only a motorcycle and a duffel bag filled with boxing gear to his name, throwing fights in the underground just to appease gamblers when he fully believes that he can sweep the floor with anyone if given the chance. Maybe that’s nothing more but a slight variant on the classic “kid rising from the slums/ghetto and proving themselves” idea that’s the foundation of a great number of sport stories. But does that really matter when, by the end of the first episode, you’re just as excited as Junk Dog is when the opportunity to let loose is finally granted to him? Even if he finds himself the victim of a one-round KO at the hands of a champion boxer in the next one. Junk Dog is cocky as hell, but make no mistake, he’s that confident because he knows exactly what his potential is. And he isn’t going to stop until he finally reaches it and gets what he desires: a challenging fight with a man who may very well be capable to knocking him out for good. I have nothing but excitement to see him work towards becoming the boxer he wants to be in the episodes to come and can only hope the show never falters from the promise made in the first two episodes. Megalo Box was sublime from moment our protagonist’s motorcycle raced past the camera. I can only hope it stays that way until the very end. – RacattackForce

Uma Musume Pretty Derby

"Oh. My. Quads. Look at those legs!"

“Oh. My. Quads. Look at those legs!”

(to the tune of CatDog)

One fine day with a whinny and neigh/
A baby was born with an odd taste for hay/
Possessed by equine (I didn’t misspeak)/
Her bewildered moms named her Special Week!

Special Week!
Special Week!
Idol racing horse-girl Special Week!

This moe young gal aims to be the best/
Her pervy new owner will put that to the test/
Runnin’ down the track/
Prancing all day long/
Everypony gather round n’ sing this song

Special Week!
Special Week!
Idol racing horse-girl Special Week!

Special Week!
Special Week!
Idol racing horse-girl Special Week!

…Wait, what? I was supposed to write this entry to the tune of the My Little Pony theme song? And I still have to actually review it? Okay, I’ll review the show, but I’m not rewriting the song.

Pretty Derby is an anime about horse-girls learning how to best horse-girls they can be. They’re cute, I guess. My favourite one is the American exchange student who dresses up like a luchador. But if I have to be serious, then the whole concept strikes me as odd. Humans who are possessed by deceased racehorses? That’s what we’re doing this season? Do horse-girls have equal human rights in this world or are they second-class citizens? Can young When Lightning Strikes or Mango Madness endeavor to be architects or chiropractors, or are they doomed to race for money? Am I going to hell for chuckling every time the main character is called Spe-chan? I don’t know, guys. Once the novelty of “lol, Japan did another silly weird thing” wears off, all you’ve got is your run-of-the-mill CGDCT cartoon. You could certainly do worse than this, but unless you’re really into horse racing, there isn’t much here for you. The show did remind me that I should charge my 3DS and play some more Pocket Card Jockey, though. So that’s cool of it. – RacattackForce

2018
04.12

The Spring 2018 Anime Clusterfuck Part One: Seriously, What The Fuck Was Up With Magical Girl Site?

Spring is in the air, and so is anime.

Caligula

Energizer. They keep going. And going. And going. And going.

Energizer. They keep going. And going. And going. And going.

I remember as a teenager thinking the Matrix sequels had interesting things to say about philosophy and the human mind. I know, bear with me, but I legitimately thought shit like the Merovingian’s cake orgasm speech and Agent Smith asking Neo why he keeps fighting were cool. But that was over a decade ago, and now I think all those attempts at psychological science were stupid. Nothing except for a couple fight scenes aged particularly well. All the writing was ripped out from a Philosophy 101 textbook and sprinkled with black and green glitter. And I sit here wondering what I saw in those films in the first place. I can’t even watch the first movie anymore without finding the dialogue stiff and lifeless. Now this is exactly what I think a teenage anime fan would feel upon watching Caligula, something they’ll think is deep and insightful only to look back and realize it was tripe years later. It’s catnip for the easily impressed, introspective kid.

And it couldn’t be more blatant. Majority of the episode is nothing but the main character going about his life while monologuing about Jungian psychology that he recently read from a book in his hand. Even when he’s eating ramen with friends, he’s talking about the aspects of the human mind. It’s the level of filibustering that I previously saw in Steve Ditko’s Mr. A. Occasionally, some visual tricks happen to make you think you’re watching a more interesting show, but before you know it, it switches back to more talking. Only to snap at the last minute and shift to Vocaloids coming out into reality and murdering schoolchildren. That was the surprise of the episode. Not a welcome one though. It’s a story that props itself up as insightful, but only tells a confusing tale while hoping you’re too distracted by the violence and pretty colors to complain about it. If I wanted that, I’d break into a high school and listen to the pretentious tenth grader talk for twenty minutes while he plays phone games. But I suppose Caligula is the alternative if I don’t want to be arrested. – BloodyMarquis

Fist of the Blue Sky: Re:Genesis

You gonna make all them people laugh, Kieeeeen?

You gonna make all them people laugh, Kieeeeen?

Recently, I thought that a new adaptation of Fist of the North Star would do wonders in the modern day. Jojo’s proved that anime fans were interested in old-school shonen works, and the political climate right now matches the one when the first anime came out. In practice, it would be like cake. But instead, the evils of cheap CGI make their move, turning what could have been a gateway for a new generation of Hokuto fans into a strange, lumbering beast. One that somehow feels even more dated, more of a period piece than a show with “We Are Living in the Nineties” in the second opening’s lyrics. Perhaps that’s because this is an adaptation of the little-known prequel where Kenshiro’s teacher shows up, meaning the people who will get the most out of this series are already fans of the franchise, though I’m not sure how they’ll appreciate animation comparable to 6-frames-a-second stop motion. It’s not just regularly bad CGI, but quality that makes Transformers Energon look like a Weta production.

For a city as easy to make into scenery porn as Shanghai, the direction makes this setting so lifeless and sullen, to such a degree that the post-apocalyptic landscape of the first series has more atmosphere and soul. And while it maybe unfair to compare this series to one from decades past, this show almost begs for you to do so. Like the character who looks like Rei, acts like Rei, and has his own version of Nanto. Then we’ll have him fight Kenshiro’s namesake to trick people into thinking they’re watching the old show, instead of poor substitutes with less movement than 80s Toei. This is like if instead of making Dragon Ball Super, Toei made a CGI adaptation of Jaco the Galactic Patrolman. Sure, Super was also a cashgrab, but at least it was a successful cashgrab. A cashgrab that got people worldwide to cheer for Goku again. Whereas this barely merits acknowledgement. And that’s the worst thing this show can possibly do: It made me think Toei of all studios can do a better job. – BloodyMarquis

Heldensagen Vom Kosmosinsel: Die Neue Thiese

Est Englische? Nein! Deutsche!

Est Englische? Nein! Deutsche!

Ah The Legend of Galactic Heroes…a beloved 100+ episode saga of revenge, lust, chivalry, nobility, and honor. A work of suck monumental length and stature that just merely mentioning its name sends a major shiver in the spines of our dear fanbase. This is the show that separates boys from men. The great walkabout into legitimacy for true born otaku. What? You like DBZ? FUCK THAT CASUAL TRASH! LEGEND. OF. GALACTIC. HEROES!!! That is how you pass judgement against lesser mortals who do not know the awe and wonder that is LOGH.

Personally though…

…I think its the most overrated pile of pretentious codswaddle to ever get unleashed out of Japan. No really. Watching LOGH, for me, is not so much a test of my manliness, but rather one of my intention span, as small as it is (thanks Aspergers!). Most episodes of the OVA just involve a bunch of men whose names you cant remember standing in rooms talking about things you instantly forget about while Wagner and Ravel play in the background. Occasionally spaceships go pew pew for a seconds because the studio lacked a budget to animate them. Its the Cure for Insomnia but designed in a way where you’re supposed to take a quiz at the end because LOGH is as important to humanity as the Fall of the Roman Empire, thus forcing you to hold on for dear life while being buried under a stream of nonsensical subtitles! Oh did I mention its not dubbed and never can or will be? Because of course not!

So why am I talking about this? Oh that’s right, the remake! Yes Production IG has elected to remake LOGH…but with a budget! Now Reinhardt and Kircheis, instead of just standing or sitting in rooms can…*GASP* walk around in them! Now space battles, instead of consisting entirely of jerky white lines rendered at 15fps, have dramatic new CGI because IG has MOOOOONEYZ! Hate public domain classical music? Well good news! Here’s Sawano to recycle the same soundtrack he’s been doing since 2011 for the trillioneth time. Yup change is in the air!…but not for Kircheis’ height because he’s seven centimeters taller than Reinhard and that’s clearly enough. ACTUAL DIALOGUE!

But can these changes bring life to the shambling corpse of monotony that was the original LOGH? Well the answer to that question is…sorta. The problem remains that this is the most emotionally cold space war show ever made. The characters are often aloof and devoid of personality, lording over the battlefield as if they were players in a chess game. Unlike Gundam, LOGH has always lacked that sense of personal horror when it comes to war anime, instead its all about power, majesty, and myth. That might be fine and dandy when it comes to some sort of propaganda piece but I demand some sort of emotional truth behind it. That is why at the end of day LOGH has always rung soulless and hollow to me.

On the other hand, Die Neue Thiese really puts that budget to good use in an area the old OVA was severely lacking in and that’s a sense of scale. These space battles are really well animated and dramatic, appropriately showing the chaos that occurs when incompetent space commanders get run over by Reinhard Von Lohengramm. Its just a shame I don’t give a fuck about anybody because Reinhard and Kircheis are too dominant figures in this plot…until Yang Wen Li shows up in the last two minutes to rain on their parade.

Ultimately though I’m not sure if there was a point to LOGH:ANT. While I appreciate the attempt to freshen up this story to make it more accessible, it still doesn’t make it any less of a ultimately hollow experience. But that’s a problem of the source material and I can not overlook it. A worthy effort but a futile one. – Lord Dalek

Opinion from someone who watched the old show

Basketballs are humanity's friend. Can I abandon a friend?

Basketballs are humanity’s friend. Can I abandon a friend?

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of Legend of the Galactic Heroes’ localization,
it was the age of no dubs,
it was the epoch of buying LOGH DVDs,
it was the epoch of $800 boxes,
it was the season of a new anime,
it was the season of a shitty production staff,
it was the spring of a fresh remake,
it was the winter of only 12 episodes,
we had every CGI ship before us,
we had Kuroko no Basket character designs before us,
we were all going direct to Iserlohn,
we were all going direct the other way—
in short, the season of anime was so far like the present season, that some of its noisiest reviewers insisted on its being received, for plebs or for weebs, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

The old Legend of the Galactic Heroes show was a treasure in every sense of the word. 110 episodes and dozens more in the sidestories all produced for the OVA market, starring almost every seiyu active at the time, released over the course of almost a decade. It was a labor of love that few other anime have equaled in their ambition, so anybody who wanted to make a new series had Herculean boots to fill. This show is not going to fill those shoes. I know that’s dismissive, but after watching the premiere, and seeing the credits for this re-imagining, I have no reason to believe this version will satisfy. There’s no way this will get to any of the great parts of the series in under 12 episodes unless they speed things up, and if that were the case, this would just be the Greatest Hits edition of LOGH. Shined and given a spit job to give the appearance of a new interpretation.

Instead, just watch the previous show. I know what you’re thinking, it’s 110 episodes. But when most anime fans could watch over 130 episodes of Dragon Ball Super, and tons of people can watch sixty something episodes of Game of Thrones even though it stopped being enjoyable after season four, it’s not that much by comparison. Go ahead and give the show a try. I believe in you. – BloodyMarquis

Magical Girl Site

You know... if JonTron hadn't destroyed himself last year, this show would be the ultimate in "STOP!" edits. Just saying.

You know… if JonTron hadn’t destroyed himself last year, this show would be the ultimate in “STOP!” edits. Just saying.

Whelp…it finally happened! I finally have to write up a show with a fucking waterboarding scene! Oh sure its actually a toilet but close enough. Not only that but this is, as the title states, a magical girl show. A magical girl show with waterboarding! I don’t know if Madoka ripoffs were a thing before outside of Wixoss and Yuki Yuuna, but if they are, then this is the bottom of the barrel: literal torture porn. Lord help me, I’ve still got 17 minutes to go watching this.

Anyway back to poor Asagiri here, who’s being drowned by a bunch of sadistic gyarus. To see the least, this girl is nothing but pure sadness. She desperately wants one thing and one thing only: to off herself. Whether it be in front of a passing train or with a can of straight razors she keeps in her school locker. But naturally this is only a problem at school right? I mean surely home life should provide enough security for her t-OH wait, here comes OLDER BROTHER to horribly beat and molest Asagiri…..

(Excuse me for a moment)

*ahem* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!

(okay)

Oh hey she’s got a cute little cat that she takes care of—oh wait the bullies just threw it under the train! And now she’s gonna get raped by some big guy named Shota. Great, just great. But wait! What’s this? A weird website? A mysterious gun? Magic powers? Magic powers that MURDER PEOPLE?!?!!?! Yup you’re a killer now Asagiri, but hey here’s Not-Dio to bail you out! Now go kill more people, because this is Gantz now on top of being Madoka. Way to go.

To say the least, Magical Girl Site is easily the most horrifying 23 minutes of anime I have sat through since The Labyrinth of Grisaia. Every time you look at this and think “whelp that can’t get any worse”, it of course it does that…and then some. To be fair MGS is supposed to be a horror show, but this is just sick. I cannot for the life of me understand why I just elected to watch this. I cannot for the life of me understand why ANYBODY would want to watch this. You know what? Don’t watch it! Watch something else. Watch Laid Back Camp from last season. Watch Made in Abyss. Hell watch fucking SAO, I will honestly take SAO 25 over this that is how far I have lost my mind. BUT DO NOT WATCH MAGICAL GIRL SITE. DON’T DO IT!!!!

AND DON’T WATCH LABYRINTH OF GRISAIA EITHER! – Lord Dalek

Steins;Gate 0

Hello

Hello

The first season of Steins;Gate was an intriguing mess all those years ago. The first few episodes were trash, and there was no hint that the series would get good, but then by the halfway point, the series suddenly changed and got really interesting. Sometimes, I wonder if that was a freak accident, as the writer’s other works like Robotics;Notes and Occultic;Nine have never reached those highs. Could it have been that they unknowingly wrote a good story when they were otherwise focused on unambitious dating sim scenarios? Because I want to know what we’re getting this time. Are we getting a cool take on time travel that proves to break the character physically and mentally? Or will we get more bullshit featuring Luka and Feyris?

Thankfully, the premiere leans toward the former. Mere months after the events of the first season, Okabe is now suffering from PTSD and requires hypnotherapy to get by. What used to be a zest for scene-chewing and mad science has been replaced by shell shock and paranoia. Even assurances from the girl he saved through timeline leaping hasn’t helped him. And just as he’s figured out how to hide it from his friends, friends from the future come back to warn him of World War III. New advances in technology plague his thoughts, and the fate of the world is once again a venture he must take.

But then the 21-year-old who looks like she’s 12 shows up, and Okabe calls her a “legal loli” just in case we didn’t notice. I don’t get it. As soon as the series enthralls me with something compelling, it takes a break to deliver some stupid harem cliché. Maybe that made sense for the first season since they didn’t know if audiences would want to keep up with the plot without being pandered to, but Steins;Gate became popular. Popular enough to get a movie and this sequel. This installment has no excuse to continue waving shiny keys in my face instead of focusing on what’s important. Unless the writer has certain urges that demand him to write with his pants off. Certainly explained the girl in Occultic;Nine. – BloodyMarquis

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

Is it still duck season?

Is it still duck season?

When is Sword Art Online NOT Sword Art Online? When it…

  • Isn’t written by Reki Kawahara
  • Isn’t illustrated by ABEC.
  • Doesn’t star Kirito.
  • Doesn’t star Asuna.
  • Doesn’t feature any of Kirito’s harem.
  • Barely makes any references to previous seasons of Sword Art.
  • Has characters that are actually interesting and well written.
  • Is incredibly well paced and actually entertaining.
  • Is completely lacking in straight-up idiot or perverted trash creeper villains
  • Is completely lacking in random fanservice
  • Is completely lacking in contrived plot devices akin to a bad visual novel like…oh I don’t know Super Cancer AIDS.
  • Ends its episode on an actually surprising and clever twist.

When is Sword Art Online NOT Sword Art Online? When its actually good. Come back in October for the real shitshow. — Lord Dalek

2018
03.01

A Very Special Animation Revelation Article: One the Whole Family Shouldn’t Miss [Bloody Marquis]

Get it? Get it?! We'll sing the song again if you don't get it!

Get it? Get it?! We’ll sing the song again if you don’t get it!

Lately, an episode of OK KO has been making the rounds for bringing back the almost dead very special episode trope to make a show about gun control, one so blatant that it ended with the show telling you to call your congresswoman. And because of all the school shootings over the years, this was a hot button issue. People against guns were praising this episode for touching on such a delicate message. Those for guns were angry that a Cartoon Network show was pushing politics. For me though, I just thought it was silly. I’m in favor of gun control and all that, but I didn’t OK KO handled the message well at all.

First off, OK KO’s an inherently absurd show about a kid protecting his mall from robots, with said kid being able to purchase laser swords and fire gauntlets without much fuss. It’s like that scene in Pokemon the First Movie where the cast were horrified at seeing Pokemon fight each other, even though that’s something the show regularly does. Sure, you have people arguing that the message in that film was valid because the Pokemon was basically mauling each other instead of using moves, but that’s just semantics to say breathing fire on your opponent is somehow more ethical than biting them. And that’s the problem with OK KO’s message, especially when the guns in this episode don’t even kill people. They just turn their targets into skeletons. Skeletons, but alive skeletons with fully intact consciousness. The show wraps its message in so much allegory that it forgot why gun violence is bad in the first place, instead unintentionally dishing the aesop of “Kids, if you shoot your friend with a remote, they’ll turn into a skeleton but they’re still alive anyway so you haven’t really done anything that wrong.”

Very special episodes have always been interesting to me ever since I was a kid. Not because they taught me anything, but because of how they failed to. I have never met a kid who watched a very special episode and learned anything from it. They either thought the episode was boring, or didn’t even know there was a message to begin with. Not a single person who watched that Cartoon All-Stars special learned that drugs were bad, they only learned that hearing chipmunks sing about marijuana was stupid. People who saw that episode of Arthur where he punched his sister either sympathized with Arthur, or made memes out of it. Occasionally, there will be a preachy episode that works, like that episode of Gargoyles where Broadway shot Eliza, or Avatar’s overarching look at how war takes away from everybody. But for the most part, when a cartoon does a message episode, it’s not going to convey its message with tact. Often, it will be written by people who haven’t done any research, like that episode of Captain Planet about the Troubles in Ireland. Or that episode of Captain Planet where they fought Hitler. Or that episode of Captain Planet about gang violence. And that’s what this episode of OK KO felt like, an episode about gun control by people who have no idea what gun control even is, and have mishandled their message so much that kids will roll their eyes instead of go amen at what they’re watching.

I think that’s why preachy episodes in cartoons haven’t been as prevalent as they used to be back in the 90s, because kids have grown more aware of TV and its inner workings. They’re more savvy of what makes a story than we were as kids. They’ve got the internet, and more connections than we ever had. Kids might be little shits, but for the most part, they aren’t dumbasses. So when a cartoon that normally plays stuff for laughs suddenly teaches a message, they know that something’s up and call bullshit. The age of cartoon characters directly looking at the screen and telling children to go see an adult if somebody bad touched them is dead because of that. Each succeeding generation is more skeptical than the last, and hearing that kind of shit only make them roll their eyes instead of confront an uncomfortable truth.

The other problem is that very special episodes often teach messages that kids are already going to learn at school. They already know that drugs are bad, that guns kill, that eating junk food makes them fat, and so on. Their cartoons telling them the same thing isn’t going to make the point more valid. If anything, it just disillusions a kid if every facet of their life is hammering the point home until they just want everybody to shut up. But you seldom get VSEs with complicated, uncommon messages. You just get the basics, instead of something that can help build on those facts and teach people further, most VSEs only end up giving them one step and leaving them at that.

Like half of South Park’s episodes. South Park’s been heavily criticized over the years for being centrist or preaching apathy, but I argue that the show instead teaches people to be skeptical rather than blindly following traditional aesops. How drugs might be bad, but scaring kids away from drugs instead of telling them the truth only blurs their view and makes them more susceptible to addiction. How a friend you know can be following an obviously corrupt person, but constantly mocking your friend or demonizing their views only makes them double down on their positions. Occasionally, the show fucks up its messages, like the Al Gore episodes, but for the most part, Trey and Matt have points to make. It’s not a show that goes “both sides are bad, so don’t bother caring”, but a show that portrays everything in moral grays and how people should figure out another solution of their own rather than adhering to the extremes of others.

And I think that’s what very special episodes need to learn in the future, instead of abiding by the old Captain Planet cliches. Because for as much as Captain Planet has been a figure in pop culture, environmental rights haven’t gotten much better in the decades since its airing. If anything, I’d argue the show hurt the cause by making people think the environmentalists were lame and annoying to listen to. Captain Planet did to eco-rights what Michael Moore did to modern liberalism. Unfortunately, the OK KO writers are massive Captain Planet fans. So much they made a crossover episode. Instead of looking forward and figuring out how to tell messages in new ways, they go with having KO sing his feelings about skeleton remotes in the same way the Chipmunks sung about marijuana. And honestly, I don’t think this will stop the next Nicolas Cruz, the next Adam Lanza, or the next Cho Seung-Hui. Instead, it might make kids take gun violence less seriously, that it’s all a big farce rather than something with horrible consequences.

2018
01.22

The Winter 2018 Anime Clusterfuck Part Three: FranXX: An XXX Parody

DARLING in the FRANXX

SHAFT tit...er tilt.

SHAFT tit…er tilt.

You know what? Hype is a bitch. And nobody knows that more than Studio Trigger (for better or worse). Ever since they were declared “THE SAVIORS OF ANIME!!!”(tm) by one of my colleagues (the one who doesn’t write here anymore because he’d have to apologize to all of us for making that inane claim), the studio’s name always gets attached to some high profile, heavily promoted, stylish as hell supershow, only for it turn out either some half-baked light novel-grade shit (Inou Battle and Kiznaiver) or lazy troll job that was funnier internally than it was for the rest of us (Ninja Slayer). Hell I’m gonna say this right now, Kill La Kill doesn’t hold up anymore. We only liked it for Imaishi’s scratchy art style. Why do I know this? Because that is all the show had going for it since it’s main plot was pretty awful once Trigger actually got to it 14 episodes in. So that makes their kids show Little Witch Academia the only consistently good thing they’ve made! For that reason I am done giving The House That Imaishi Built the benefit of the doubt. They will be treated like any other “celeb” studio that disappointed me one too many times. They’re just Gainax…again.

And with that out of the way let’s talk about DARLING in the FRANXX, the new Trigger thi—oh wait this is actually an A-1 show isn’t? But it is an A-1 show WITH Trigger…although I’m not exactly sure to what degree each company contributed in the production. Early documents suggested A-1 did the hard lifting while Trigger contributed design work and key animation. This would explain why this show feels like one of A-1’s stock robot show cliché factories…albeit with that signature unrefined “we just colored in our storyboards” Trigger look. Color me unimpressed.

So the world has come to an end! Hooray! Whats left is a vast desert wasteland ravaged by giant monsters called klaxosaurs. The remaining humans huddle together in a glass dome containing the last plant and animal life on Earth while their leaders, a bunch of KKK guys because Trigger, use pairs of orphaned children known as “parasites” to fight the giant monsters with rather impractical looking robots called FRANXX. Our story concerns two of them: Hiro, a Shinji-Clone whose only saving grace is his balls have dropped (albeit only half way), and a mysterious girl with horns who just wants to lick him. Licking in this case is good, because these FRANXX apparently run on orgasm fuel because of course they do this is an A-1 Robot Show. Oh yeah the giant robot (named the Iron Maiden because lulz) actually talks and has tits, because Trigger.

Now I’m pretty sure I know how this show came about. A-1 had a crappy idea for a robot show and a set of crappy old robot show scripts. They knew if they had made that show alone, it would just be another version of Star Driver/Valvrave/Guilty Crown/whathaveya. So Trigger was brought in to weird it up. But at the end of the day, its still that same crappy robot show script. Characters spew dialogue that was already wooden 15 years ago and is now downright petrified. And the plot, your basic “get in the fucking robot Shinji” storyline albeit with more cunnilingus, feels even older. DARLING in the FRANXX is ultimately just an average teen dystopic robot show. Just like the ones that aired last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. The only thing missing is Hisashi Hiirai character designs to make it Gundam Seed.

Clearly this is why we’re only getting the bare minimum of story information when this kind of show is announced these days. The makers know they’re giving us the same old shit so better not go into the details or else we’ll know its the same old shit. Just…typical. – Lord Dalek

Second Episode Review

The prototype for the FranXXs required pilots to be seated in rim job position.

The prototype for the FranXXs required pilots to be seated in rim job position.

You know, I was going to write this show off by the first episode. But then I watched the second, and oh man. This show is going places I’m not sure I want to go. First off, this is another mecha show that’s all about teenage puberty like Aquarion and Eva, except this show skips all the subtext and gives you metaphors as subtle as shoving a wet banana through a pink donut. All the female mecha pilots are on their stomachs in doggy-style position while the males use steers and controls attached to their buttcheeks, with one incident causing the girl to moan in ecstasy over her ass handles being touched. Yet, these same pilots are so sheltered that they have no idea what kissing is. They’re all teenagers who have little idea of their world, guided by strange looking elders and given little reason to live except to pilot the FranXXs. Perhaps we’re meant to see this as tragic, as an allegory for how modern-day Japan is mistreating its youth and forcing ridiculous standards upon them, if this hadn’t been played out in almost every mecha series in the last two to three decades.

Though Darling in the FranXX is at least bombastic enough that every form of symbolism seen through its first two episodes is blatant and in your face. One of the major arcs that’s sprouting out is the main character going through erectile dysfunction after successfully flying a FranXX with an exotic pink-haired girl, but then failing to get it up when another girl’s his co-pilot. She even kisses him and shakes her ass in order to get some sort of reaction, but he feels nothing. He suffers through performance anxiety in the sheets and out. It’s almost funny to watch when out of context, or even in context. And I’m not sure if the show knows that or not. It has all the blatant sexuality that fueled Kill la Kill or Gurren Lagann’s more Freudian moments, but without any of the self-awareness. At least those shows had more going, and Simon and Ryuko’s character arcs weren’t driven entirely by their reproductive organs, while FranXX seems content in throwing sexual imagery everywhere and hoping you’ll think it’s deep or something. I’m not sure what this show wants to be.

Does it want to be goofy and ram the viewer with basic penis and vagina symbolism, or a dark methodical mecha series about how dangerous a teenage boy’s sex drive can be? Because the Deadman Wonderland-esque opening suggests they want to do the latter, while the dumb jokes and silly characters like the egotistic midget kid or the fat guy who eats bread in every scene he’s in suggest otherwise. Maybe that’s what happens when you cross A1 Pictures with Trigger. Their styles just can’t coalesce, and you get a bizarre Frankenstein show that doesn’t know whether to kiss or to bite. And that’s a shame, because this show sounds like it wants to say something interesting about sexuality and coming-of-age, but they lack the cognitive faculties to express those ideas without coming across as horny teenagers who just figured out what vaginas look like. – BloodyMarquis

Killing Bites

You can kill five or six girls... or just one!

You can kill five or six girls… or just one!

Okay, let’s get the elephant out of the room first: the first two minutes of the show has attempted gang rape, with a high school girl being dragged into an van while the driver wonders if he has enough courage to attempt stopping his colleagues from penetrating all her orifices. Yeah, turns out said teenage girl can become a furry monster and utterly tear her assailants limb from limb, but still: our introduction to this show’s violent heroine (a girl named Hitomi that’s half-honey badger) and hapless male lead (I don’t care about his name, he drove a rape van) is an attempted rape scene. It’s a bad start, but it lets you know exactly what you’re getting into. Killing Bites is a tasteless, schlocky, violent fanservice anime. To steal a joke, this show is basically Kemono Friends: Top Cow Edition. The OP and ED are filled with wank fodder, our heroine spends most of her time in a bra and panties, every fight comes with copious amounts of blood and dismembered body parts, and we get animal facts every once in a while (did you know honey badgers are also called rastels?). All bookended by some sweet garage rock. This show is stupid… and I love every second of it. I mean, I don’t love the rape part. I could have done without the rape part. That shit lingers over the rest of the episode like a bad fart and almost made me tap out before we hit the opening titles. But everything else brought out my inner teenager who just relishes in sex and ultraviolence, and I can’t help but wait in glee for whatever happens in the next episode. Not just because of the fighting though, as there is more to the show than that. We have good old shady organization #45129431 running these fights, and despite them clearly existing as an obvious excuse to justify all this, I can’t help but hope to learn more about them and the creepy tongue-wiggling, screen-licking psycho at the very top. And it looks like we’ll be having some school shenanigans in our near future, as well. That’s all secondary to the furry fights that are this anime’s bread-and-butter, however. And those fights will be the main reason why I, and a number of others, will continue watching. I just wish it didn’t have that attempted rape scene at the start; that would make it easier for me to recommend without feeling too uncomfortable about it. – RacattackForce

Mitsuboshi Colors

Kids Next Door, battle stations!

Kids Next Door, battle stations!

You can clearly see that picture above, with three elementary schoolers aiming an anti-tank missile at a police officer. Do you really need more? Mitsuboshi Colors is probably the most fun “cute girls do cute things” anime this season, as it doesn’t try to hook the viewer with odd gimmicks like ramen, camping, or being a year older than all your friends. It just gives us some basic character types (the crybaby, the energetic one, the laidback gamer) and revels in the straightforward fun to be had in watching these little kids be little kids: playing video games, hanging out in the park, disturbing the peace, and just messing around under the guise of being town heroes. Every winter season manages to have that one show that just embodies fun and is all about hitting you with joke after joke, and this year’s seems to be Mitsuboshi Colors. – RacattackForce

Slow Start

Maybe the title actually refers to puberty?

Maybe the title actually refers to puberty?

These are supposed to be high schoolers? I mean, I’m one of those people that can look at Nowi from Fire Emblem Awakening and go “I’m okay with this. I’m gonna make her bang that other dude so time travel shenanigans grants me a dragon halfling baby to use in my army.” But I have my limits, and that limit is having 3 out of 4 of your normal human main characters look like they should still be having mandatory nap-times after lunch. But whatever. Loli character designs aside, this show has bigger problems: nothing here is halfway memorable.

This show’s gimmick is that our main character Hana is a full year older than her new classmates, not because she was left back, but because she was busy studying to get into this particular private academy. That’s where the title comes from. We learn this at the end of the first episode, and frankly, I can’t see how anything interesting could result from this setup other than maybe an awkward conversation or two with a former classmate that’s now a grade level above her. It’s the sort of thing that takes a sentence to explain, and unlike being held back a grade, it doesn’t seem like something a teenager would be ashamed of. Hell, her new friends would probably be jealous that her folks let her take a year off instead of force her to just go to any old local high school. I think the only time where not being the same age as your peers due to being out of the education system for a year would be awkward is middle school, and that’s mainly because kids at that age are extra ruthless with the teasing and bullying. But no one studies to get into middle school, so that wouldn’t work as a gimmick. But the “year older” thing is a shitty gimmick as it is, and they already have these really young-looking character designs, so changing it so that Hana was left back in primary and now has to deal with middle school would make things mesh more.

I can’t help but feel like I’m getting a bit side-tracked on the purpose of this review, which is elaborating why Slow Start is lame, but you need to understand. Slow Start’s first episode is the main quartet going on series of tangents, making observations about how each other’s names are written or what foods they like to eat. None of these conversations are funny in the slightest, much less memorable. And I only remember that much because I cheated and went to ANN to refresh my memory. Can I apologize to Laid-Back Camp for that “white noise with pretty pictures” jab? It may be boring 90% of the time, but at least I can remember most of the little gags that show had in its first episode, and I haven’t watched it in two weeks. All I remember about this is the large amount of nothing that was happening for 15 minutes and a strong urge to scroll through Tumblr to look at Steven Universe fan comics. I’m getting side-tracked because the core of the show is so bland that I needed to vent about character design and pitch tweaks to the premise in order to make this review more than a sentence. This is a solid skip. – RacattackForce

2018
01.12

The Winter 2018 Anime Clusterfuck Part Two: Get Blinded by KyoAni Filters!

Citrus

Do dah-do do-do-do do dah-do do-do/Have you read Mein Kampf today, gyaru?

Do dah-do do-do-do do dah-do do-do/Have you read Mein Kampf today, gyaru?

I don’t like Citrus. Watching it makes me feel like I’m seeing a teenage girl being sexually abused by another teenage girl. Because that’s exactly what I’m watching, and no amount of camerawork trying to frame it as romantic or erotic will make me feel better about a young woman being forced to the ground and violently kissed by her step-sister, tears welling up in her eyes. I’m not interesting in seeing the groundwork being laid for a relationship that, in real life, would be dreadful cause for alarm. That is, if it got past Yuzu going “Mom, everyone at my school acts like they’re in a cult, my new step-sister molested me in front of a crowd, and five minutes ago she forced her tongue down my throat.” A statement immediately followed by her mother filing for divorce (plus a few restraining orders) and transferring her daughter to a new school, if not them moving to another prefecture. Which is what should happen. But it won’t. So let’s not talk about this yuri that everyone else is going to love as much as they did NTR – Netsuzou Trap. Let’s talk about Doug.

It’s August 1991. Of three animated programs that premiered on Nickelodeon in the United States, one of these shows was a slice-of-life comedy. Perhaps the first of its kind, at least in the Western animation sphere. This show was, of course, ­Doug. Doug was a pretty good show. It would never be on a favourite shows list of mine these days, but I have fond memories of watching it as a kid and it still holds up remarkably well. But apparently the grandfather of this show’s other lead (the molest-y one) loved it enough to start the International Church of Doug Funnie. Let’s imagine the timeline for this, shall we? Old man glances at the television one day and sees a young boy wearing a sweater vest. He begins to lust after this cartoon boy. This plain-looking American child consumes his thoughts. He watches every episode. He buys every piece of merchandise he can. He exchanges most of his clothes for green sweater vests and brown shorts. When learning the creator of his love was visiting Tokyo Disneyland, he steals Jim Jinkins’ sketchbook and gropes his butt. After several self-pleasuring sessions to the Doug sketches found in his prize, this old man decides that he must share this love with the world. But how?

One day, he’s browsing his local video store for more Doug tapes and finds a VHS by a group called Family International. He decides to go home to watch it. Endless Doug marathons can become stale after all, and this can help break things up a little. Watching the music videos, the path forward is now clear. But just as Family International has these music videos to distract from their more crazed cannibalistic tendencies, our “hero” also needs a light-hearted cover for his operation. But what could have possibly be? Music videos are an option, but his beloved Doug deserves something far more dignified. The next day, he walks past a school and sees a bunch of children dressed like Donald Duck. Bingo. For the next few years, he gathers supporters (from whence they came, I know not) and they pool their resources to buy a large school campus that no one was using due to the high levels of radiation surrounding it. They were told long exposure to this radiation would make students uncontrollably shift into strangle, low-polygonal forms while on campus, but they did not care. They had their school. And they would train new generations in the art of Doug Funnie, with daily Quailman classes instead of P.E., and lunches that always included beets. Oh, how it became an all-girls school? Um… as a private school, the tuition was too high for a lot of families, and the ones that could afford only had female children, so they just decided to work with it. Plus, it was too hard to convince the district school board about brown booty shorts for the male uniform.

See, wasn’t that thought experiment more fun than talking about shitty yuri? Let’s move on. – RacattackForce

Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody

Well so much for this caption.

This important announcement brought to you by Crunchyroll.

A little over five years ago, when I was dragged back kicking and screaming into this…this morass of depravity that was modern anime, I thought I had seen the worse. I was green then, and thus I believed this whole concept of Isekai was just Sword Art Online and Sword Art Online alone. And SAO was… to put it mildly… not very good. But then…the Isekai kept showing up and getting worse, and worse, and worse. Oh sure there were bright moments in the mire like Log Horizon, Grimgar, and Re:Zero, but they were buried under horseshit like Outbreak Company, GATE, and yes…fuck you Sketch…Konosuba. Last year I witnessed the first isekai I could argue was worse than SAO in form of the truly atrocious Isekai Smartphone (coincidentally in the same season as the actually rather good Knights and Magic). This seemed timed with an announcement that light novel publishers would no longer be accepting isekai stories, suggesting they too had become annoyed with a genre that was quickly becoming assembled from various stock parts. It seemed the age of hell that was isekai was coming to its ordained end.

…except in Anime because here we have another one. And its just SAO with cheaper animation and no point. Great.

THE “PLOT”: Dorky programmer for a company that makes cellphone RPGs goes to sleep one night after completing a so-called “death march”; corporate slang for a super all-nighter to fix bugs. Something happens and he finds himself 10 years younger in a mishmash of two RPGs he was working on because….reasons. The rest is just some endless monologue about RPG controls and how dorkface is expecting to wakeup but isn’t because this show is contrived. Eventually he’ll get a harem too of stock characters because every isekai has to have an effing harem now. Our lord and savior Kawahara wills it so.

Well the good news at the very least is Death March isn’t as bad as Isekai Smartphone. It would take an isekai version of Pop Team Epic to match that “amazing” feat. That doesn’t mean I actually have anything “good” to say about it though. Oh no, this show is about as pedestrian as people crossing the street. The protagonist is too boring to be annoying and too forgettable to be terrible. He just merely exists for the sake of existing. Much like this show, its neither bad nor good, it just exists.

Until next week of course when it’ll get 10000x worse. In which case I won’t be watching. – Lord Dalek

Gakuen Babysitters

This is the best baby. She’s adorable, has a giraffe, and her mom is a hot teacher. A+.

This is the best baby. She’s adorable, has a giraffe, and her mom is a hot teacher. A+.

Do you think babies are cute? Good. Do you like taking care of babies? Okay, less takers, but a good amount of you are still here. So have I got an anime for you. It’s about taking care of babies after your parents die in a plane crash, because planes are the cool thing this year. Not trucks. Trucks have become a bit overused in recent seasons and have recently unionized to increase their wages, so the industry is taking a break from using them for a while. But to the topic at hand, School Babysitters is an anime that appears to be aiming for a nice middle ground between “cute boys and cute babies” antics and the emotional trauma that occurs when you lose your parents. Yeah, you have your moments like our main character Ryuichi being ganged up on by five toddlers in a play fight. But you also have the second half of the episode, where Ryuichi’s baby brother Kotaro gets sick from stress and needs to be taken to a clinic, and during the panic, Ryuichi tries to call his father before remembering that he can’t: he and his brother are all that’s left of their family. The duo are at this academy because the headmistress lost her son and daughter-in-law in the same plane crash that took our protagonist’s parents, and she decided to adopt them out of sympathy and to get more help with the school’s daycare service. But I expected that to just to be throwaway information. Nothing more than a bleak excuse to justify why he’s being made to watch the teachers’ children. But no, Ryuichi is still dealing with the reality that his parents are dead. Kotaro is still really young, but he seems to understand what has happened as well. And the woman who adopted them is also trying to cope, with taking care of the two boys appearing to be her method of doing so. I’m a sucker for cute things and love playing/working with children in general, so just that aspect may have been enough for me to continue watching this anime. But if School Babysitters continues to dive into the story of this newly formed family trying to cope and move past the death of loved ones? I can safely say that I will definitely be coming back for more. – RacattackForce

Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens

Now do you want that body wrapped in paper or plastic?

Now do you want that body wrapped in paper or plastic?

Hey, didn’t you love the shit out of John Wick? Wasn’t it great to see a universe where almost everybody was a supercool assassin, and how they were being hunted down by an assassin of assassins? Didn’t you love that? And don’t you love anime? So wouldn’t you like it if someone combined those two? Because that’s not what you’re going to get here. This show tries to be like that though. It surely tries. It wants you to see the show as this cool thriller where hitmen are hunting each other down, but Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens (now that naming your shows Re:something has fallen out of style, I guess it’s now cool to add the word “ramen” to your title) lacks that certain style other crime shows and movies have.

Like I see quite a few other writers comparing this show to Durarara, but that series had easily memorable characters who had striking first impressions. Nobody in this anime is as interesting, not even the Chinese crossdressing hitman played by Yuki Kaji. The people running this series clearly want to have some fun, like casting Koyasu as an opportunistic man running for mayor, but there’s little soul to it. I would compare this first episode to a guy who watched Shaw Brothers movies like the 36th Chamber of Shaolin and wanting to make a movie just like that, but what they create is unmemorable direct-to-VHS schlock. And that’s what this is, a regurgitation of something more stylish while carrying none of the wit of its spiritual progenitor. For instance, the central devious corporation hiring all these hitmen and giving the police a ton of headaches? They’re called Red Rum Inc. It’s like watching a show where the military is investigating whether or not a group called “Absolutely, Totally not Terrorists, We Swear” is up to anything. This show promises a lot of mind games, but elementary word play like that implies this will be another dumb show that thinks it’s smart. – BloodyMarquis

Violet Evergarden

Don't get your hopes up Rynnec.

Don’t get your hopes up Rynnec.

There’s something oddly familiar about the premise of Violet Evergarden than I just can’t put my finger on. Like it was something from a show I watched several years ago but don’t seem to be able to place. Hmmm, well anyway this is the new KyoAni show, produced in partnership with Netflix but behind their inane time wall. However, Netflix International apparently doesn’t give a crap about binge releasing which means for the second week in a row I get to review a show in…English?!? Ummm, thanks Canada.

So what exactly is this about anyway? Words. Words and robots. That’s what I got from it. The eponymous Miss Evergarden was apparently some sort of superweapon designed to win another WWI-esque conflict in a steampunk fantasy land. However, after four years, the war is over and poor old Violet has lost both her limbs and her commanding officer/probable lover in the process. As part of dead guy’s last wish, she’s sent to his family home to be looked after and find her purpose in life. And what purpose is that? Why working as a dictation machine for a mail company run by a grizzled older version of Pimp-Kun from Free of course!

….yeeeeeeeeeeeeah this show isn’t really a taut thriller. Oh sure KyoAni TRIES to get some action in there with the frequently grisly footage of Violet Evergarden’s past life as a killer death machine but it just sticks out of place in the end and creates mood whiplash with the hohum slice of life framing story I’m stuck having to watch over it. As a premiere its just shrug inducing, with no incentive to come back and finish the series. No wonder Netflix is sitting on it till April here even though its already dubbed and ready to go.

But still… I just can’t get over the familiarity of this. I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere before. Maybe if Violet, instead of a book on tape, was a maid or some….

OH.

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

This is just fucking Mahoromatic again! But boring! And with no maids! Goddammit KyoAni you wasted all of our time on a boring version of Mahoromatic. Clearly this is the reason why we’re never gonna get a second season of Amagi Brilliant Park. You’d just turn that into Mahoromatic too! Goddammit!!!! – Lord Dalek

Yuru Camp

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<page flip> …….. <sips hot cocoa> …….. <throws stick in fire>

Everything you need to know about Laid-Back Camp is in the title and I appreciate that. If you ever wanted a chill anime about some teenagers going on weekend camping trips to Mt. Fuji and doing little else, then this is your show. If you aren’t into that, then you can skip it. Really, I can end the review there. This is slice-of-life at its most relaxed, with few jokes to be seen throughout the entire proceeding. If you are watching this show, you’re watching it to feel comfy. To reignite memories of your own camping trips and to look at beautifully drawn scenery of the forests around Mt. Fuji. You won’t be watching this show for the comedy, I can tell you that: the first episode had ten minutes of a girl slowly setting up her campsite with nary a joke in sight. Quite simply, this anime is the equivalent of an easy-listening station punctuated by a DJ doling out occasional camping advice. It’s an anime that requires the viewer to be pretty laid-back themselves or willing to enter that mood before watching, or else you’ll just be bored out of your mind. So yeah, Laid-Back Camp tells you everything about it from the moment you finish reading that title. Personally, if I ever have a really stressful day, I could see myself watching this show before taking a nap or something. Now, I don’t want to knock on a competently made show, especially when it’s actually one of the better anime joints this season so-far (not like that’s a high bar when your competition includes a show about ramen). But beyond its ability to act as a white-noise machine with pretty pictures, there’s little to bring me back to Laid-Back Camp in the future when something like A Place Farther Than The Universe premieres the same week, takes the same basic “girls go into the wilderness premise”, and weaves a story I relate to on a level far greater than “oh yeah, I went camping in the woods back in middle school too.” If you give me a slice-of-life, it needs to have some drama and/or comedy in the mix. Something like this just isn’t going to do it. – RacattackForce

2018
01.11

The Winter 2018 Anime Clusterfuck Part One: ♬CARDCAPTORS! A MYSTIC ADVENTURE! CARDCAPTORS! A QUEST FOR ALL TIME♬

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No. No they haven’t. Welcome to the worst season of the year (until the next one).

Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card Arc

cardcaptor

It's like a maze...

And you thought Kingdom Hearts had a wacky timeline.

Aw, yeah. It’s Keerdkapteers! Sucker-a’s a junior high school student now! Madison’s still a dirty, shameless voyeur! Eli Moon’s back! Ms. McKenzie’s back and she’s got tea! Yue’s back! Syao-show-xiao-Michelle-whatever-ran’s back! Kero’s back but he doesn’t sound like surfer dude Matt Hill anymore! That sucks, but who cares?! Everybody’s back! Except for that annoying Chinese girl who wanted to bone her cousin, and that girl who was in a relationship with her teacher even though she was like ten. And… come to think of it, Sakura’s parents met each other when her mom was a high school student and her dad was a teacher. And Tomoyo is Sakura’s second cousin even though she’s crushing on her. This series had a lot of weird romances, didn’t it?

Oh, CLAMP. Darling, delirious CLAMP. After dominating anime and manga for years back in the 90s and mid-00s, you fell in a rut with that Blood-C series. Few people give a shit about Kobato or Legal Drug, and nobody can even reminisce of their time with Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle without remembering how convoluted and nonsensical the plot became as seen in the above images. But you know what you have got to do when you’re yesterday’s news, you pull the nostalgia string and make people excited for Clow cards again. I’d call it a shallow attempt to revive past glories because nobody’s biting at the new fish, but this episode’s actually kind of cute.

Sure, it’s not as engrossing as it could be, and newcomers will probably be confused and have to watch the entire previous show to understand what’s going on, but this show’s a little like meeting an old friend. No labyrinthine plots or identity crises, just a girl who’s out with her magic cards. After how badly Sailor Moon Crystal mangled its attempt to bring Sailor Moon to the modern day, seeing something like this feels less alienating and more comfy. And maybe CLAMP will go full CLAMP and ruin this trip to memory lane, but you could do worse than watching this premiere. – BloodyMarquis

Citrus

Forget the kissing. Real question is: Why would you only read books with monochrome colors?

Forget the kissing. Real question is: Why would you only read books with monochrome colors?

You know, if you wanted to make a show where two girls kiss, you could have come up with a less stupid plot than what goes on in Citrus. A girl who has never known love but lies to her friends about it named Yuzu goes to her new high school, full of young women who dress up like Doug Funnie and act a little like Nazis. All of these girls look the same, many are CG models, in fact the same CG model pasted a dozen times into a shot, and poor Yuzu’s rebellious personality just doesn’t fit in with such a conformist school. What to do? Oh, she can just let the student president molest her in front of everyone. And said student president is having a relationship with one of her teachers. And she’s Yuzu’s stepsister! And her grandfather owns the school!

As you can tell, this isn’t a show that runs on any sort of logic. The writer throws whatever they can on the screen and uses that as the backdrop for their yuri, not realizing how questionable this relationship looks like with all these off elements. Yuzu gets molested twice in this episode, yet the angles and direction imply we’re supposed to ogle at her being violated. And anyone who’s watched a hundred of these shows knows what will happen. Yuzu’s stepsister will eventually lighten up and be less of a predator regarding her actions, while Yuzu will grow to enjoy it. And they’ll start a steady pseudo-incestuous relationship while hiding it from friends and family. The shame of it all is Yuzu’s actually an interesting character, and it would be cool to see her in another show, and especially another school rather than the bizarre and poorly-rendered institution shown here. It’s telling that the school’s aesthetic stayed in my mind for far longer than the groping and kissing scenes. – BloodyMarquis

Devilman Crybaby

They did not sing a happy song and there was no music in the air.

They did not sing a happy song and there was no music in the air.

In years past, Netflix has been a bit of a thorn in the backside of many an anime fan who refuses to indulge in the dark arts of fansubbery. The reason not being that of a douchebag double paywall like Amazon’s ill-begotten (and now mercifully defunct) AnimeStrike, but for being a timewall. Wanna watch first run anime on Netflix? Well too damn bad you gotta wait 6 months for the show to finish airing in Japan. Now this form of troll toll has been awfully crippling for fans of Knights of Sidonia and Little Witch Academia but also more of a fitting punishment for what few fans exist of the Seven Derpy Shits. But no more! This year begins Netflix’s ridiculous new anime initiative in which most anime being aired on Netflix will be first run. No more Japan network run embargo redtape. When they say its “original” they mean it! And what’s the first on the agenda? Its Devilman Crybaby! Directed by….NO. NOO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Yes my old friend Yuasa, aka Makoto Shinkai for people on their third bout of seasickness. Somehow he keeps getting work as if a divine power wishes to punish me for my sins and/or Dalek Exterminates rants on GSB. As if that rant I wrote here all those years ago when Kick-Heart came out wasn’t justifcation enough. To add to this is its well….Devilman. Now I have only watched one form of this franchise, the 1991 OVA Remake Devil King Dante, which typical for an early 90s OVA was just a steady stream of tits and giggles. However it was apparently a fairly decent representation of the series. And we all know series creator Go Nagai is only it for the tits and giggles.

Did I mention I don’t like Go Nagai that much either? Because I don’t.

So this is Devilman directed by Yuasa. In it everyone is an underdetailed rubber band fluctuating between faceless cadavers and the frog people from Your Lie in April. Also one lady’s boobs turn into the fricken Thing from Another World. But otherwise its pretty much a faithful adaptation. In other words its that same godawful OVA I watched with Shadow and Rac all those years ago but even more fuck ugly because that’s how Yuasa rolls. Hell it even ends in the same exact spot. Does that mean next time Dante goes to a picturesque landscape made up entirely of boobs and uvulas? You know what? Don’t answer that question. I’d rather wish I didn’t know the original answer. – Lord Dalek

Junji Ito Collection

Your hausbando this season guaranteed.

Junji Ito, to put it mildly, is the greatest mangaka of all time. What? You disagree? Well fuck you then! Go back to playing with your turds then as well your pwecious Kenshin by that pedophile guy. Because seriously anyone who came up with something as awesome/horrfic as Uzumaki (aka the one with the killer spirals) or fan favorite Gyo (aka the one with the zombie robot fish) must be high on something stronger than what Araki usually takes for his evening snifter. Strangely however he hasn’t been given much of a fair shake in anime land though, but that’s not too surprising as honestly how the hell would you make a single cour anime out of a manga about killer zombie robot fish seem not ridiculous (and yes I know there’s a Gyo anime…it wasn’t very good). Nevertheless its time for the anime world to pay its dues and so we have Junji Ito Collection, a series made up of adaptations of Ito’s assorted one shots for various manga anthologies. Because apparently Junji Ito’s vast catalog of horror writing just wasn’t enough for ONE adaptation mirite? HAHAHAHAHaaaaohgod.

Well anyway we begin with an adaptation of 1997’s “Souichi’s Convenient Curse”, in which regular Ito asshole Souichi Tsujii (a taciturn young punk who looks like Klarion The Witch Boy’s far east cousin twice removed) uses a sort of voodoo magic to get even with his enemies by nailing dolls to the sides of trees and or attacking them with giant spiders and the fucking Slender Man. Why? Why not! He’s an asshole! But of course you would know that if you read or seen the anime any of the ½ dozen or so Souichi stories that came before this one! Wait what’s that? None of them have been translated and or animated? Well that’s just…super. Either way it ends well and the kid has to suck the fumes of a dead frog! Moving on!

The episode also throws in a bonus adaptation of “Hellish Doll Funeral” in which a weird virus turns some poor schlub’s daughter into an actual doll that withers and dies before his and his wife’s very eyes. It is pointless, and virtually plotless but lord is it disturbing….let’s move on.

In a way this is almost like an anime version of Night Gallery, just without Rod Serling and those weird paintings (then again Junji Ito art could easily be mistaken for some actual Night Gallery paintings). We’re just sort of kicked into the plot and expected to make our way alive before the commercial break only to get further wrecked by the mood altering whiplash of the quote-unqote bonus short. Although ironically it was usually the longer stories on Night Gallery which had the disturbing endings, with the goofy shorts stuffed in the middle having the comedy ones. Here its the other way around, think Souichi’s a little too frivolous? Whelp here’s two minutes of nonsensical nightmare fuel for ya! But this is not helped by the fact that the makers of the show elected to pick two completely random stories for their premiere episode and to add additional insult, one featuring a character who was on his 7th story at this point. There was enough Souichi material out there (two whole manga volumes in fact) to make a single cour show, why couldn’t you just do that instead?!? Its one thing to have an anthology show. Its another to stick a random episode of another show into it. Oh hey I guess that DOES makes this Night Gallery and that non-existent Souichi thing must be The Sixth Sense! HAHAHA I love making random references nobody will get!

Oh yeah its Deen and look like five cents was spent on it in total. Fuck it we’re done. – Lord Dalek

Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles

There. I saved you 20 minutes.

There. I saved you 20 minutes.

Okay, fess up. This is a fetish show, right? Is that the only reason this series exists? To pander to the audience getting off to teenage girls making slurping sounds? Because I can’t find any other reason one could watch this show, unless you were so bored with your life that you wanted to know about ramen trivia. If this was a 2-minute gag anime, it would be fine. This show could be thrown to the corner, and wouldn’t waste anybody’s time. But this is full length. Your weekly serving of Japanese animation, boiled and seasoned, something this show does nothing to earn. It’s just one girl lusting after another girl, and that girl eats ramen. It’s not even good-looking ramen. Instant noodles coming right out of a Styrofoam cup look more edible than what the animators draw here. Food porn addicts stay away.

Perhaps this premise could work if it was a backdrop to something else, but no. One part of the episode involves the main character Yuu thinking horse oil was an ingredient used in ramen instead of chicken broth, with a joke that only makes sense if you’re versed in kanji. Nothing else in particular stands out as funny, and neither does the show succeed in romance. Yuu is a fucking creep, stalking Koizumi and savoring over the sight of her eating ramen. We’re supposed to think this is cute when this feels like the prelude to a failed kidnapping plot, or a particularly cringeworthy love confession at least. For a show centered around food and the love of it, this show has a poor aftertaste. If you are that desperate to watch people eat ramen, go find a youtube video. Search “girl slurps ramen” and you and your nether regions will be more satisfied than whatever this episode will offer you. – BloodyMarquis

A Place Farther Than the Universe

"Fuck you, mom! I'm gonna go to the South Pole and become bros with penguins! You'll see!"

“Fuck you, mom! I’m gonna go to the South Pole and become bros with penguins! You’ll see!”

We all have those moments, those third-life or quarter-life or even fifth-life crises, where we question our place in this world. If anything we have done matters, or if anything exciting happened in our lives. For many, there’s that sinking hole in our hearts following the realization that we haven’t had the most adventurous life, and how we’ve let monotony become the norm. But sometimes, there’s a rare person who decides they don’t want to let routine life become the rest of their existence. They don’t want to be one of many cogs in the system. They want to do something amazing for once, commit to a life that few others have done. And what better way to do that than… go to Antarctica?

I had no expectations when going into this show, thinking this would be yet another “cute girls doing stupid things” show that’s clawing at whatever “insert stupid thing here” it can to maintain relevance and stand out amongst the other shows. I thought it was going to be like that boring camping show that premiered on the same season, but this is a surprising treat. The lead of the story Mari Tamaki has an aim that almost everyone experiences in their lives, that nothing cool has happened in their life and they need to do something to compensate for it. But unlike many (including me, sadly), she acts on that promise thanks to a chance encounter with another girl named Shirase who’s hoping to go to Antarctica to rescue her missing mom.

It’s a show that easy to relate to, no matter where you are in life. Behind the cute designs and charming art is a little existentialism, where the show asks us if it’s better to risk nothing and lead a boring life or pursue a costly adventure that might lead to nowhere. Combine that with instantly likable characters, and you get a great premiere. I know I’m making this show sound sappier than it actually is, but this show is genuinely worth watching. – BloodyMarquis

Pop Team Epic

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Record of Grancrest War

"Can't have a fantasy anime without twin maids!"

“Can’t have a fantasy anime without twin maids!”

I only watched two or three episodes of Record of Lodoss War like twelve or thirteen years ago on the International Channel, and don’t have any real urge to pick that show back up. Only thing I remember about that show was the elf character Deedlit, and not because of her personality. The memory is such a blur, and that’s how I’d describe Lodoss’ apparent sibling series despite watching it just now. It’s a 24-minute blur where I didn’t feel invested in any of the characters or settings. I could tell you more about an episode of an anime I last watched back when I was ten years old than I could this show.

Not to say I hate this episode, it has decent animation and the designs are okay, but it’s really hard to muster up any reaction than “Oh, this is a JRPG anime” or “Oh, the main girl is a blonde tsundere” or “Oh, she’s setting up a contract with the main guy. Kind of like Saber except not really”. It’s unfair of me to expect this episode to be exciting from the get-go, but the premiere feels like background noise. It’s a show you watch not because you want to, but because it’s on and it’s either this or twenty minutes of staring at social media accounts or forum threads. But what should I expect? This is a light novel adaptation. It’s not made for newcomers. It’s made the built-in audience who’s going to watch every episode either for their waifu or to see their favorite fight scenes animated.

And I guess that’s okay. Count my blessings this isn’t another isekai show, but couldn’t I just watch someone’s playthrough of a Tales game instead of this? Like instead of focusing on another overpowered boy and girl couple who are learning magic to fight the forces of Chaos story, why not focus on the government in this show? Figure out why the Factory Federation and the Fantasy Alliance are at war with each other, and see what extremes can be taken when conflicts escalate. Something other than this formula that I’ve seen so many times that I have nothing new to say anymore. But what can I expect from a series where one of the villains is called “Demon Lord of Diabolos”? – BloodyMarquis

2017
10.16

The Fall 2017 Anime Clusterfuck Part Three: PRAY FOR SIIIIIIIIISTAAAAAA LIIIIIIIIIILYYYYY

Dies Irae

The common plebeians reaction to seeing cute anime nazi's

The common plebeians reaction to seeing cute anime nazi’s

Welcome to the real premiere of Dies Irae! You’re probably asking yourself “What’s the deal? Why are we dealing with high school shenanigans? Where are the Nazi’s?” Well as you could probably tell by now, episode 0 was supposed to be an appetizer meant to show off the villains and entice people into the show. Yeah, general reception by fans and non-fans alike should tell you how well that worked out. I myself didn’t watch it because the episode itself was adapted from a side story in the VN you’re not recommended reading until you’ve done at least 2 specific routes first. Basically; they fucked up right out of the gate. Can’t you tell we’re already off to a great start? Before we delve in to the proper first episode, let’s go into the history of this crowd funded adaptations real quick. Initially pitched as an “anime pilot”, the campaign did so well that they decided to do a full blown adaptation instead. Unfortunately the results so far leave much do be desired.

The proper first episode adapts the second half of the VN’s prologue and its entire first chapter. As mentioned before most of the episode is high school shenanigans and getting a taste of Ren’s “normal life” he claims to value so much while building up the larger plot. While I can appreciate taking time to build things up, I can’t help but feel that things went by a tad too fast to the point where things felt disjointed. In fact, most of the time I felt that the only reason I knew what was going on was because I read the VN, I can only imagine how bored or confused newcomers must be by all of this. I know condensing roughly 2 hours’ worth of reading into a single 20 minute episode is nothing new for VN adaptations, but the way the Dies anime went about it was poor, almost as poor as its animation. There were a few things I appreciated like music from the VN being used, and the quick flashes of the disembodied souls inside the LDO members’ (aka those “Nazi” guys from the last episode) bodies, but those would only mean something to VN readers.

Now as of this writing I’m only 15 hours into the VN, so I can’t claim to be a superfan or anything, but I would of rather the studio went with the original OVA plans and use that extra crowdfunded money to improve on the animation and pacing in a way that would of at least pleased VN readers instead of going for a TV anime that’s pleasing nobody. Anyone who’s interested in checking out Dies Irae is better off reading the visual novel itself, which is worth a read if you’re interested in over-the-top fights, characters, and Nazi shenanigans. There’s really no reason not to read it if you’re interested because the first 7 chapters are in fact free on Steam, which just calls into question why this needed to be a televised anime to begin with. As of now, the only thing this adaptation has going for it is the ED sung by Junichi Suwabe and Kousuke Toriumi. – CrimsonRynnec

Girl’s Last Tour

War has changed.

War has changed.

I’m not sure how they made an anime about child soldiers dealing with life immediately after a horrific war so chill. I read the synopsis to the show and expected something more grim, but this is more cute and fluffy than another Now and Then, Here and There. Not to say it goes with that tone throughout the episode. There’s times where crucial moments like being able to shoot on target and getting food to stave off hunger are presented in such a humdrum way that it’s as if the characters have gotten used to living like this. They might treat their routines like a highschooler in a slice of life show would treat theirs, but their background gives their actions a starker atmosphere. When thinking about it, these soldiers’ lives are tragic and hopeless, but the premiere doesn’t seem to dwell on that, instead looking at the glass half full.

Not sure if that’s a good thing though. This show takes it sweet time going to places, with a bit of dead air that leaves little to discuss without drawing a blank. What am I supposed to get from this? “War is bad?” I’ve had dozens of shows drill that into my skull already. I know war’s a hellhole that cruelly judges people without a single hint of mercy, and even kids who should be out playing are sent to fight in the battlegrounds. I do like this show doesn’t make that the entire message. It shows that just because you’re in the middle of a war doesn’t mean you can’t have a cup of cocoa with your friends. And I guess that’s a good message to add on. Gives some levity to a show with a grim aftertaste.

Could do without the faces though. When I think the ravages of combat and bloodshed, I don’t think Hidamari Sketch. – BloodyMarquis

Kino’s Journey -the Beautiful World- The Animated Series

Barry the Slinger's sister, Mary the Chopper

Barry the Slinger’s sister, Mary the Chopper

Before I befriended the Animation Revelation crew, I was part of a different crowd of cartoon and comic nerds. In this group, we tried making a podcast called “Notaku Diaries” in which both the anime lovers and the anime newcomers in our circle watched and discussed shows and films recommended to us by our friends. This project didn’t last more than a few months, due to occasional in-fighting and me utterly failing as a project manager, but I remember it fondly, as it introduced me to works that quickly became some of my favourite pieces of animation. One of these works being the 2003 adaptation of “Kino’s Journey.” The phrase “The world is not beautiful, therefore it is” quickly became a personal motto throughout my remaining years of high school; a bittersweet mantra that helped me cope just a little bit more with my social anxiety issues and allowed me make better sense of the world. Kino’s thoughtful and meditative vibe was refreshing to me, and I relished in a show that took me to new locations every week and asked me to think about the ideas and philosophies just expressed. It was a great experience, and I find myself going back every once in awhile to re-watch episodes like “The Land of Visible Pain” or “A Tale of Mechanical Dolls”. So when I heard that another adaptation was in the works, I was filled with both excitement and dread. Would this show be as good as the last, or would it somehow fail to recapture the atmosphere I loved so much? From the first episode, I can’t say I’m quite sure yet.

The first episode of “Kino’s Journey -the Beautiful World-” hits all the beats long-time fans expect to see in one of these stories, which should have been comforting. Kino and Hermes ride into a quirky country for a three day stay, with said quirks mirroring some greater philosophical or societal struggle or idea. They then proceed to make nice with some of the locals and learn about how said quirk affects life there, not casting too much judgement in the process. The episode finally ends with the duo leaving the country and Hermes asking Kino a question as they head off to their next destination. Roll credits. Yes, the execution was there, but the problem for me was the chosen story. “The Country Where People Can Kill Others” was a fine reintroduction to the world our protagonists inhabit, but compared to the stories told in the first show, it was weak. Not bad mind you, as the story was executed just fine and got its message across well enough, despite straight-up having a character plainly state the “not prohibited ≠ permitted” message. I’m just saying that it didn’t start with its best foot forward, as this episode was severely lacking in the type of interesting characters that Kino often interacts with and the pacing felt a bit off, as though it was speed walking towards its conclusion. It was good enough to keep me engaged, but I’m ultimately forced to look towards future episodes to see if the current crew truly have the idea behind “Kino’s Journey” down and that this was just a case of them choosing what I personally saw as a boring tale rather than them botching what may have been a perfectly great story in the original light novels by Keiichi Sigsawa. With the next episode set to re-tackle “Coliseum”, a story that the previous adaptation did as well (and as a two-parter no less), perhaps we’ll see if it is indeed worth continuing on this journey. I certainly hope it is, but I do find myself worried about whether or not the first adaptation already took all the best stories that the light novels told, and if now we’re stuck with mostly doing B-grade material rather than the A+ stuff with which became enamored by. I’m sure that’s not the case, but I’ll be crossing my fingers regardless. – RacattackForce

Pingu in the City

Frustratingly every copy of this episode was a raw.

We did Pingu. Top that Theron Martin!

Your eyes are not deceiving you, this is indeed Pingu. Its made in Japan now and CGI instead of the original stop motion plasticine but Pingu it remains. So what the hell happened since the days of when Pingu pissed on his dad’s rug (REAL EPISODE NOT KIDDING)? Well apparently the family got kicked out of their igloo by that scary sea lion and now Pingu has to support them at some jerkwad’s restaurant. He fucks up a soup, then makes it better, then gets fired, because Pingu sucks, we’ve known that for 30+ years.

So in conclusion….Pingu. – Lord Dalek

Wake Up, Girls! New Chapter

In memoriam: September 11, 2001. NEVER FORGET.

In memoriam: September 11, 2001. NEVER FORGET.

Oh WUG… the saddest sack fake idol group of all…played by the saddest sack real idol group of all. Its been three long years since they got their asses kicked by that army of idolmaster robots in that 9/11 tribute show. Since then, they were dumped by their anime director/founder Yamakan after his vanity studio went belly up and have been forced to subside on whatever they could scrounge on the street, an anime where they dressed up as animals, and weird theme song gigs (seriously? Love Tyrant?). But I guess somebody really wanted a season 2 so here it is from a different studio looking nothing like the first season. I take it that makes this the Weiss Kreuz (WUG Kreuz?) Gluhen of Wake Up, Girls.

So yeah, unlike the real Wake, Up Girls, the fake anime WUG has actually succeeded! In 2015, they beat those robots in the I-1 cult to become Japan’s new top idol group and not have to work at stripjoints and various houses of ill repute (thanks a lot Yamakan!) Unfortunately, that success was short lived and now they’re back to preforming fur piles for the entertainment of bored Sendai housewives. However hard times have hit every idol group as even I-1 has been forced to close their billion yen theater. But WUG, which has no money, no studio, and no corporate office, has nothing to lose and that means recording an album as opposed to the limited exposure singles they’ve been doing. Getting an album deal means going on national television and that means…awful LFR CGI dancing….yay.

The theme of this season of WUG is noone knows who WUG is and that includes me. I actually watched the entirety of WUG season 1 when it aired in the winter of 2004 and I don’t remember who the hell any of these characters are, no doubt due to the new look character designs. It is still the same old group made up of the same old voice actresses so I guess the short haired one was that one fallen idol veteran girl. Hard to tell, the WUGs have no individual personality now that they’ve been together both in this anime and real life for a while so it could be the plain one. Music wise (this is an idol show, so it has to come up) WUG’s repertoire hasn’t grown much since we last saw them as both OPs from season 1 make an appearance as diagetic music in this episode. Guess we couldn’t use that Love Tyrant! OP after all.

Basically if you want 30 minutes of idol misery like the first season this will deliver somewhat as WUG is not quite in the toilet as they once were. Not much left to be said. – Lord Dalek

2017
10.09

Autumn 17 Years After Millennium Japanimation Orgy Part Two: Crucify the Umaru

Dies Irae

Gesundheit.

Gesundheit.

Let it be known that in an era marked by social strife and the rise of fascism I am watching an anime about bishounen nazis.

BISHOUNEN NAAAAAZEEEEEEEEES.

Not only that but a show about Bishounen nazis funded entirely with kickstarter money. Somebody gave up their hard earned cash to see a show about bishounen Nazis. This is flat out appauling but not surprising considering Japan gave us Tanya The Evil earlier this year. And wasn’t Tanya the Evil just greeeeeaaaat?

Now I know what you’re going to say: “But Dalek! Hetalia!” Well Hetalia was a stupid comedy about buffoonish country people. This is played deathly straight. Dies Irae wants me to root for Bishounen Nazis unironically. That is unacceptable

On top of that its also Fate/Stay Night with Nazis and the whole episode is just background filler. Three strikes, we’re done. – Lord Dalek

Schindler’s Opinion

"Why don't you read visual novels, Marquis? They've got some great prose!"

“Why don’t you read visual novels, Marquis? They’ve got some great prose!”

This was a kickstarter-funded anime, right? Implying the guys who made this show didn’t want to do this out of money but out of sheer ambition, like they were absolutely determined to make Dies Irae into a show? So why does this look as well-animated as a 2003 anime? This was apparently a big deal for the visual novel’s fans, enough that the funding exceeded expectations, so why doesn’t this show have the care put into it that Ufotable adds into their Type/Moon installments? Those have some beautiful animation, while this has off-model Germans performing acrobatics at each other. I couldn’t even tell who I was supposed to root for or even sympathize with. We get scattered scenes of this albino guy fighting an albino crossdresser, and then Reinhard’s forces show up to fight them. And the premiere focuses on Reinhard enough that you’re led to believe he must be the main character, but then he promotes his weird beliefs while nonchalantly smacking his female lieutenants. Then there are hints it might be a yaoi, and something about a golden fortress that gets its power from dead souls the Nazis kill. I had no clue what was going on.

I know it’s episode 0 and we’ll probably get the real protagonist next week, but then what is this supposed to be? An appetizer to show how badass the villains are? Maybe I was expected to read the entire 50-hour visual novel to appreciate this, but is the rest of the audience meant to do that too? Was there a large enough fanbase that they could adapt an out-of-sequence chapter and expect everybody to get it? Outside of seeing guys argue about power levels, I hadn’t seen anybody else mention Dies Irae until this month. I’m only expecting another Grisaia fiasco, where some guys rage over how they ruined the source material while I sit and watch the show in complete shock as to what’s occurring. This is already “Nazis with Bankais” stupid, so I can only imagine how it can increase the scale. – BloodyMarquis

Infini-T Force

No its Shibuya. Superhero Time is up the road in Yokohama.

No its Shibuya. Superhero Time is up the road in Yokohama.

Once in a blue moon there comes a show that defies description. A show so inept and so baffling dumb that you can’t help but say… well that was a thing. Because we’ve all watched bad anime. We all know what its like. Its badly written, its disgusting, it leaves you emotionally bereft and angry and wondering what kind of lousy people do those trolls at certain websites who praise this hot crap have to be in real life to like it.

And then…you get a show like Inifi-T Force, and it all makes sense.

Admittedly the concept, a Crisis On Infinite Earths-style crossover between a slew of old Tatusnoko super heroes from their Ippei Kuri heyday (Eagle Ken, Polymar, Tekkaman, and Casshern), sounds brilliant on paper. However those geniuses at Tatsunoko never knew a reboot they couldn’t fuck up and so somebody decided “Hey! Lets do it entirely in CGI, and make the protagonist a girl who wears an Italian restaurant tablecloth to school and owns a magic pencil! What a horrible idea! That’ll teach ’em for throwing up over Gatchaman Crowds!”

And yet…some how… they made it work, probably by accident.

Let it be known that Inifini-T force is this season’s Springtime for Hitler. A show so amazingly bad you can’t help but love it. It commits every sin in the book: looking like Final Fantasy, having a script full of philosophy so cringeworthy it would make Nasu blush, getting performances out of its cast so wooden you could build a house out of em, etc. But that’s the charm of Infini-T Force. When you do so much wrong it becomes so laughable that you get into and enjoy it. Its probably the same reason all those creepers love that weird animal loli show from last Winter. It did nothing right, except existing.

And that my friends, is a triumph, it still sucks but its a triumph none the less. – Lord Dalek

Just Because

*applause* *rolls credits by Miller-Boyett Productions*

*applause* *rolls credits by Miller-Boyett Productions*

Oh joy, another romance show where a boy falls in love with a girl and he’s unable to confess. After making a surprisingly okay show with Gamers, Studio Pine Jam is stepping into PA Works’ territory and proving to us that newcomers like them can be as good as any other studio, by producing the same shit as any other studio. Now we can see their take on the “boring guy falls in love with boring girl over more interesting girls while annoying friend of boring guy makes stupid jokes” genre. As we’ve seen again and again and again. Not like audiences will actually remember these shows after they ended, so we have to keep pumping out new ones to briefly capture their attention. It’s as if anime studios have invented their own Mari Okada script generators. I mean, she’s going into directing now, so something has to take her place.

Too bad it’s harder to replicate the animation of her shows than the writing, as the art quality and movement of this show leave much to desire. Characters regularly have one eye larger than the other eye, or pencil scribbles for knees. Take Senpai Club, but remove all the jokes. That’s what the overall design resembled. The landscape and backgrounds are so lifeless and gray that I initially assumed this was a post-apocalyptic anime. During one elongated scene of baseball, I could have sworn the main characters were playing in the middle of a dust bowl.

I don’t know. Maybe I need more time to ponder the romantic lives of Recoome and that one blue-haired guy from Chaika. Could this show possibly be a reflection of our high school lives, how grey and lifeless they were that even a simple game of baseball was the highlight of our day? Or is this show so dull that my mind wanders into Brendan Fraser memes instead of focusing? All I know is that one girl with the camera who took pictures of everybody is a fucking creep and doesn’t deserve anybody, not even Recoome. – BloodyMarquis

Junni Taisen: Zodiac War

Rabbit is a victim of racial profiling.

Rabbit is a victim of racial profiling.

Before anything, I have to say that I don’t care much for the palindrome that is Nisio Isin. At the very least, I don’t care for the adaptations of his light novels, though the feeling I get watching the “Monogatari Series” alerts me that his work would probably too verbose for my liking. Akiyuki Shinbou’s directing of that anime delivers the equivalent of watching random experimental animation being showcased while listening to an unrelated audiobook. I don’t doubt that there is a clever narrative connection between the visuals and dialogue that’s just going over my head, but the story doesn’t entice me enough to dig for and dissect it, causing the entire work to fall apart in my eyes. But maybe something aiming to be less cerebral might do it for me. An ultraviolent action series utilizing the deadly survival game trope, following twelve characters that each represent parts of the Chinese Zodiac, perhaps? With a more grounded animation style in lieu of grandiose experimentation? Hmm. Maybe that could turn me around on Nisio Isin…unfortunately, it didn’t do too much in that regard.

Watching “Junni Taisen” reminded me about that time back in high school where I was trying to write a black comedy/urban fantasy about a teenage serial killer: silly bordering on the absurd, riddled with clichés, and trying a bit too hard to hit every desired beat. From the ridiculous flashback scenes that detail how the Boar manipulated her little sister into committing suicide, to the unexplained and glossed over existence of magic, to the barebones premise, “Junni Taisen” strikes me as a bit juvenile at its worst. At best, it comes across as a small project that was written to relax and cool down between the crafting of larger and more important stories, rather than an earnest attempt to bring a unique take on a popular genre. Which is a bit of a shame, since Isin obviously enjoys playing with harem tropes with the “Monogatari” books. Seeing not even a little hint of that in the first episode of “Junni Taisen” disappoints me. Eh, in any case, I hope the Monkey wins. – RacattackForce

King’s Game

Asu...ka...

Asu…ka…

King’s Game begins with our protagonist finding himself on what appears to be the set of The End of Evangelion. Considering he bares a resemblance to Shinji if Shinji was older and a lot taller, I’d expect him to proceed to find the nearest red-haired tsundere with one eye and start strangling her. But alas… this is actually not Evangelion but just another rehash of Danganronpa, making our hero less Shinji Ikari and more Makoto Naegi.

…wait a minute…Shinji and Naegi had the same VA in Japan…Oh crap! Danganronpa was Evangelion the whole time! GODDAMMIT!

Well anyway back to King’s Game, the saga of death, murder, and various humiliating tasks. Our “hero” has already been subjected to and been the sole survivor of the King’s Game once before, to the point of actually having to rape his old girlfriend shortly before her limbs exploded….because clearly Danganronpa and SAO weren’t horrible enough. Things get even more real when one of sad-sack loser kid’s classmates dies horribly in front of him and the rest of the class when his bodily fluids literally erupt out of his own skin. Clearly King’s Game knows no bottom it won’t scrape and oh boy has it scrapped a lot already.

In a way King’s Game is the ultimate distilation of everything wrong with the anime of 2017. Its badly written, the characters are either 2D cut outs or just completely unlikable, and its gross for the sake of being gross. And the sad part is I can’t even call it the worst show of the fall when we had Neo Yokio two weeks ago! …how the fuck does that work???

On the other hand, we may have found a show this year worse than Hand Shakers. And that is a feat unto itself. – Lord Dalek

A Sister’s All You Need

"They taste almost as good as her cloaca."

“They taste almost as good as her cloaca.”

I’m actually quite sad the first minute, where a young man chews on his little sister’s freshly worn panties from another dimension, wasn’t the real show. By all standards, it was awful and would’ve been a complete and utter scorn on Japanese culture as a whole, but I wanted to see how it could get worse. A naked girl laid eggs and fried them for her big brother, for God’s sake. And because it’s incestuous, those eggs were probably fertilized with his own seed, and he was ready to eat his own unborn fetus children. Yet it was all portrayed like a romantic fantasy, and it’s sad that level of black comedy faded away in favor of Eromanga-sensei but without an actual imouto.

Coming from the author of…sigh… Haganai, we get more of our favorite harem cliches. Reverse-reverse-double-quadruple-agent traps who are not related by blood but still a sibling to a character. Albino teenage girls who thirst for dick and aren’t afraid to admit it in every sentence they utter. MC who desperately wants to fuck little girls, yet is too beta to bone the girl in front of him, and will probably take the rest of the season until he actually holds hands or kisses somebody. If I were writing one of these, I’d have the main character fuck somebody by the first episode and call that the official couple. Sure, it’ll alienate and scare people who want their waifus to be pure, but fuck ‘em. Fuck ’em where their imaginary little sisters never would.

Besides all else that happened was some Phoenix Wright bullshit where the characters debate about potential LN plots. And a sobstory about a lonely teenage girl who was so inspired by a young writer’s work that she became an inexplicably young author herself to chase the man of her dreams. Wah-wah-wah. It’s another LN adaptation that indulges in dumb smut, but uses the excuse of metafiction to justify its skeeviness. It’s not an anime where a guy wants to fuck his sister. It’s an anime that “satirizes” the concept of guys wanting to fuck their sisters. Because it worked so well for Oreimo.

This show does have some good reaction pictures though. Can’t deny that. – BloodyMarquis

Yuki Yuna is a Hero – Washio Sumi Chapter

Yuki Yuna.png

Yuki Yuna.png

Ohhhhh YuYuYu… the show that went from being on the top of everyone’s 10 best lists to the bottom of everyone’s 10 worst lists within a matter of weeks. I had actually forgotten what this show was supposed to be about again until I noticed the entire run was on Netflix. Remembering that it was getting a long delayed 2nd season this month, I decided to refresh my memory…and it all came flooding back. The shameless Madoka thievery, the bs ableist pandering, the shoehorned out-of-left-field Post Apocalypse angle, the Sword Art Online-reject character designs, etc. etc. This show was just as awful as I remembered it. And now, here we are again. More depressing lamb to the slaughter magical girl bullshit courtesy of the Sage Quiche, Akame ga Kill creator Takahiro and famed light novel illustrator abe-I MEAN BUN-BUN! I… just… can’t… wait…. –_–

Anyway this arc of Yuki Yuna is actually a chopped up version of a series of movies released earlier this year and is a prequel. The real sequel isn’t airing for another 7 weeks. That should give the production team ample enough time to produce a horribly rushed epilogue that will be just as bad as the first season. But until then, we have the saga of Sumi Washio, a well bred girl from an elite private school who will eventually lose the ability to use her legs and her memory to become Mimori Togo, the lame Homura clone from season 1; Sonoko Nogi, who ends up bid ridden, with half her face and most of her body horribly burned, praying for a death that will never come; and the previously unseen Gin Minowa whose absence suggests she either didn’t make it or something far worse (translation: stupid). And if you’re going to complain about me spoiling all that… well that show aired back in 2014. We’re well past the sell-by date for spoilers here especially for a tragedy where we already know the outcome. Its like watching the Star Wars prequels and complaining about Darth Vader being a spoiler.

So ultimately I’m not exactly sure what was the point of doing the show this way. We know these girls are all going to end up badly so there’s no dramatic impetus for the story to proceed. We’re just killing time before the inevitable lame ass finale. On the other hand, if there’s anything worthwhile to come out of this, its once again the soundtrack done by Keiichi Okabe and his collaborators at MONACA. And if Season 1’s ost sounded like leftovers from Drakengard 3, these must be leftovers from NieR Automata. That’s not a bad thing at all. But you know what is a bad thing? Watching another boring ass episode of YuCubed and wondering what the point was. Thanks a lot, Sage Quiche. – Lord Dalek

2017
10.05

The Fall 2017 Anime Clusterfuck Part One: “This is the Anime Liberals Want”

Hello, scoundrels. Hope you’ve been well, and watching good Christian entertainment like Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party. As a reward for your good behavior, here is the new clusterfuck. Disobey in the future, and charlatans will lick your eyeballs clean.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride

Boy does this look familiar. So familiar that I feel like wrote it up LAST YEAR.

Whoops. – Lord Dalek

Black Clover

*Loads barrel with five bullets. Pulls Trigger.*

*Loads barrel with five bullets. Pulls Trigger.*

Oh boy, more shonen shit! More obnoxious, irritating, generic pablum destined to be “highly requested” for a certain tirefire of a late night cable animation block where it will fail miserably! Just like all the others that came and flopped before it (still salty aren’t we eh #onepiecesailson?). I can see it now: 659,000 viewers a week for this…. this awful thing….why I wonder…

Well anyway, Black Clover is the crap story of a crap protagonist with a crap voice who is crap at everything. However unlike a certain other crap protagonist from last year (cough)DEKU(cough), young Asta here has NOTHING going for him. Asta is so unlikable that he makes Bort’s Dad look like Joseph Joestar. Yeah…I went there. Fight me.

Actually though, it does seem the makers of this show kinda knew that when they made this as they do try to play off how rubbish Asta is. However the character is so awful that when the payoff finally comes…I don’t care. I just don’t care.

Yeah I know what you’re gonna say: “read the manga”. Here’s a better idea… READ A FUCKING BOOK! – Lord Dalek

Gintama -Porori Arc-

 He's made of shit! How did that happen? Yo ho ho he took a bite of crap crap!


He’s made of shit! How did that happen? Yo ho ho he took a bite of crap crap!

As they lampshaded in this episode’s opening sketch, I think Bandai Namco expected that the Gintama manga would have ended by now. It hasn’t, and with the ways things are going it’ll probably be a while yet. Luckily, they have at least a cour’s worth of unadapted mini-arcs from the manga to tide them over, which is a treat for fans like me who wanted to see them animated! Gintama never took its continuity that seriously, so just take this short break between the final arcs for what it is, though canonically all of these story arcs do take place between the Courtesan of a Nation and Shogun Assassination arcs.

The show itself looks as great as ever and is funny as ever. The best part of this opener was easily the sketch at the beginning, lampooning long anime recaps and timeskips and parodying everything from One Piece to Kemono Friends. They even manage to squeeze in some gags about the live-action movie! It’s also clever choice of them to begin this cour adapting the Kagura’s Boyfriend arc, considering the Rakuyou arc was a fairly serious storyline about Kagura’s family. Here we get to see Umibozu’s last comedic storyline in the show animated and it’s a reminder of how funny the dirty old man is. Most of the humor in this plot comes from Umibozu and Gintoki acting like intrusively overprotective dads, and taking “growing up” a little bit too literally. Yet the episode also sneaks in a genuinely thoughtful conversation between them about forgetting how watching the kids grow up used to make them happy, and realizing they need to let them become adults, and need to start being adults themselves. It’s a thematically important message that was reflected in Kagura coming into her own in the Rakuyo arc, and presented here it’s a great bit of introspection as to her and Umibozu’s character development.

The material doesn’t necessitate grand gestures of animation, but what’s there is enough to sell every scene, and the comedic timing is solid. This cour of Gintama will be back-to-basics hilarious hijinks. Regardless of how impatient you might be to see the final arc animated, Gintama at its funniest is the best anime comedy ever made and getting any more of it should be treasured. It’s certainly more accessible to watch for those who aren’t caught up with the plot, and I can assure you there won’t be many continuity-heavy episodes in this cour (with one exception). That said, the opening definitely implies they will get to everything they haven’t done yet, so this is the last hurrah for purely comedic Gintama. The next season is where it’ll all end, so you’d better enjoy the show while it lasts. – LumRanmaYasha

Konohana Kitan

You scream and everybody comes a running. Take a run and hide yourself away.

You scream and everybody comes a running. Take a run and hide yourself away.

A couple of weeks ago, that great source for intellectual discourse in animation news, “Anime Now!”, described Konohana Kitan as being “kind of like Spirited Away, but with 600% more Fox Girls(!)”

….

If that’s not a selling point I don’t know what is. Unfortunately as we all know however, Anime Now is actually a steaming crap hole of Kotaku rejects (Richard Eisenbeis, ’nuff said), and anything they say must be taken with less of a grain of salt and more of the entire shaker. This is not to say Konohana Kitan is a bad show, in fact its perfectly ok, kinda forgetable actually. Its just you can’t liken anything to Miyazaki without illiciting some sort of spit take. That’s like saying Yuri on Ice is “like Spirited Away but with 1000% more gay sakuga figure skating” because its set in a bathhouse. You just. don’t. do. that.

Well anyway what was this supposed to be about again? Oh yeah, um…fox girls. There’s absoulutely nothing to be said about this show whatsoever, a fact which is quickly becoming a common problem with me and these so-called “healing shows”. There’s nothing to hate so I can’t hate it like you expect me to, but there’s also nothing to like either so I can’t say I like at all. Same problem I have with a show like Aria. I don’t hate Aria but I don’t really feel like there’s any real emotional attachment to continue watching it. Likewise I feel inert to this slice-of-life-as-fuck saga of an insecure (and probably underage) fox girl who is dumped at a remote sauna run by fellow fox girls and repeatedly pistol whipped by her tsundere sempai. Whatever. Ye are a show with nothing notable to say for it.

… other than the fact that the proprietress of the bath house is literally just a retrace of Saber mashed up with Yukikaze from Dog Days. Oh fuck this show just reminded of that show. The flashbacks THE FLASSSSSSSHBAAAAAACKS!!!!!!1312!!@!!!!!!@!@#$!@#$!@$!@$!@$!! – Lord Dalek

Mr. Osomatsu Season 2

 Some things never change..and sometimes that's a good thing!


Some things never change..and sometimes that’s a good thing!

After a year and a half of waiting, our favorite trashy sextuplet NEETS are back! Studio Pierrot’s satirical reimagining of the classic Showa-era gag comedy was a surprising hit with fujoshi and comedy anime fans across the world, and against all odds we’ve been graced with a second season. One might be concerned that the first season was a fluke, and the second wouldn’t live up to it. Certainly, the premiere of the second season couldn’t live up to the first, which was so outrageous that it was banned from every being aired or legally distributed ever again! So does Mr. Osomatsu’s second season premiere recapture the magic?

You can put those worries to bed friends! This premiere delivers a hilariously insane satire of its own success, showing the Matsuno siblings becoming fat, grotesque money-grubbing scumbags that do nothing but laze around and shake the hands of their blindly-passionate fujoshi fans. The show not only mocks how fans have fallen in love with the Matsunos in spite of how disgusting they are, but also how they’ve become such a lucrative franchise that even crappy products can be pedaled to the masses at the highest prices because the fans will but it anyway. The Akira-esque monstrosity that Jyushimatsu has become even devours his own fan, expressing how fans’ love for the franchise is being consumed and exploited for the production committee’s benefit. The show holds nothing back in its honestly cynical meta-commentary of the show’s success and how ridiculous its popularity is, poking fun at both itself and the fans for the situation they’ve found themselves.

If that’s not enough, they also throw in some Go Nagai-esque jabs at the PTA, which storm into the Matsuno house to beat them up for being trashy bad influences. And if that’s not enough, this is only THE FIRST HALF of the episode! The second half gets even crazier, as the past versions of the Matsunos resolve to become a “proper anime,” which apparently involves doing a Your Name. ripoff with a 90’s shoujo aesthetic, Iyami becoming Crystal Boy from Space Adventure Cobra, and a CGI Jyushimatsu. And it all ends with the Matsunos realizing they’ll always be trash not matter what they do. It’s a great commentary on the burlesque nature of the show’s comedy, and a hilarious reassurance of its creative integrity!

So yes, Mr. Osomatsu recaptures the magic of the first season and then some. This was an ingenious premiere that demonstrates the staff is self-aware about why this show is popular and what makes it good, while they give the middle finger to commercial interests and the PTA by saying “fuck you, we’ll do what we want!” Mr. Osomatsu is among the few anime comedies analogous to western animated fare like Ricky and Morty in their defiance of authority and penchant for deliberately political satire and satirical parody. It’s this anarchic spirit that makes it so refreshing in the very homogenous landscape of mundane anime comedies, of which its only real compatriot is Gintama (which happily enough is also airing this season!) So if anything, expect this season to be more bizarre, more offensive, raunchier, and even weirder – because with this show they are no sacred cows, not even the audience. – LumRanmaYasha

Neo Yokio

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE! (also this was the best gag in the whole episode)

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!
(Author’s Note: If you were expecting the Toblerone, the reason why its not here is    I only watched the first episode of Neo Yokio and it didn’t come up)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      ***                                                                     (Author’s Note Addendum: Asking me to post the Toblerone would require me    to watch more episodes of Neo Yokio. In which case… go fuck yourself.)

In case you missed my round of Twitter primal scream therapy over the apocalyptic death mass that is Neo Yokio let me summarize for you. I literally turned off my tv only five seconds in to the episode. FIVE. FUCKING. SECONDS. What made me do it? Was it the awful animation? The Deviantart grade character designs? The awful writing that is literally two Jaden Smiths talking to himself? NOPE! It was the random fucking usage of Johnny Hawksworth’s classic ITV ident jingle “Salute to Thames”. Now for some casuals out there, this would be a minor formality, but that was enough for me to walk away.

…five minutes later I turned it back on. It should have stayed off.

In a year that has given us hot garbage like Hand Shakers and Isekai Smartphone, Neo Yokio is the ultimate insult. A bad brew of insufferable characters engaged in nonsensical activities with the soul purpose of being GQ worthy. There’s no plot here. No structure. No development. Everything is a series of bullet points and lulz parody, like a slightly more expensive episode of Kappa Mikey. If you were to ask the writers of Anime Swag to come up with an actual anime it would be Neo Yokio. The difference being this animu wasn’t devised by Soulja Boy but instead that guy from Vampire Weekend who you think is related to Chekov from Star Trek but probably isn’t. I’d say there is a difference but I am too tired and emotionally dead to care. Such is the long night of the soul that is Neo Yokio

Adding to this is the most eggregiously all-star cast ever wasted on a mindless vanity project since the first season of Captain Planet. Don’t Richard Ayoade, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman, and Steve Buscemi have something better to do than star in Neo Yokio? What did NoRelationtoChekov give them? Was it a high price? Would that explain why this show was made by Deen? Its just doesn’t make any sense…except for Jaden Smith, he’s garbage and deserves to be the lead. Asshole.

By the end of it I didn’t want to write up Neo Yokio. I wanted to bury myself in my yard and hope I decomposed instead. Neo Yokio was so bad I strongly considered simply copying and pasting Harlan Ellison’s “Hate!” speech from “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” and calling that a review. Alas Marquis talked me out of it. Shame really. It would have been a lot shorter, a lot more entertaining and far more than this dumpster fire deserves. – Lord Dalek

UQ Holder!: Magister Negi Magi Negima! 2

He slices! He dices!

Well well well… look who came crawling back. Ken Akamatsu, my friend, its been….soooo long.

UQ Holder! is the sequel to Negima!, Akamatsu’s fondly remembered attempt to get out of the title of “King of Harems” by writing an action fantasy shonen intstead. It was also a manga that crashed and burned not once but twice in anime form due to a half-assed treatment from those sad basement dwellers at Xebec and subsequent subjection to the early pre-Monogatari days of SHAFT’s art animu obssession. Both of these adaptations petered out before the manga dumped its original harem shit pretense and went full on battle shonen. So instead we have the battle shonen Negima was allegedly supposed to be in the first place…albeit with shit harem antics shoved in. Grreaaat.

80 years after two years worth of Negi’s semen flowed endlessly into Asuna, we have the product of the product of that semen: young Tota. His whole family’s kinda dead though thanks to a nasty car accident. As a result, Tota’s been forced him to live with the rather well endowed (well it is Akamatsu) Yukihime. But surprise, Yukihime’s actually that one vampire from the previous series and is being chased after by nasty salaryman bountyhunters. And then… it gets a little violent. As in limbs flying all over the place. …yay.

Ultimately this is just your bare bones battle shonen introduction episode. We have two characters and a quest, to get to the top of a tower where Tota hopes to find some meaning to a series of visions he keeps having of Grandpa Negi. They don’t actually set out on that quest until the very end and no other characters are introduced so we don’t know what the conflict is exactly. Not surprising for a pretty run of the mill shonen. On a technical scale, UQ Holder! is probably the best looking anime ever produced from an Akamatsu work but then again Akamatsu’s previous sorties into animation were done in the early to mid-2000s when noone gave a crap about frame rates and expressive visuals.

I honestly can’t say much more about UQ Holder! If you’re a fan of Akamatsu and/or every shonen ever made you’ll probably like it. Otherwise its just harmless. – Lord Dalek

Urahara

Using child support for your dose of krokodil.

Using child support for your prescription of krokodil.

Normally, an anime like this should be lauded. It’s an anime original project directed by a relative newcomer, with few other credits. Experimentation in casting is utilized by having the singer of the second Sword Art Online ED (the one that goes ‘Takakuuuu~) play a main character. And instead of just licensing this anime, Crunchyroll is also directly involved in the production. A mixture of subversions that should make for an interesting show, one that can stand out beyond the isekai light novel adaptations and be remembered outside of the season it aired. But something doesn’t click with this series. What should be trendsetting feels decadent. What should aim for the bizarre instead hits the target of mild confusion. Like a fancy, multicolored balloon that pops faster than the plainer red ones. Maybe it’s because it was yet another show that glorified Akihabara, like we needed another after several anime and even a Super Sentai parody indulging in that setting.

But it isn’t bad if you view it from another light. The hallucination-inducing colors and odd character designs beg for a completely different interpretation from what the studio probably intended. For it was at the sight of everybody’s sleepy faces and bushy eyelashes, that I quickly interpreted this show as the main characters’ LSD fantasy. I didn’t care that this show was a weird celebration of Harajuku culture anymore. Instead, it became the sensationalist exploits of drugged-up teenage girls without adult supervision, thinking they’re going on Sid and Marty Krofft adventures when they’re wandering in the middle of the street. That pink girl they befriend? She’s actually a random tourist they kidnap. The UFOs that show up the sky? They’re just the police trying to apprehend them for public indecency and child abduction. Nothing feels quite right in this first episode, making it easy to suspect there’s more going on than what we’re presented. The post-credit scene even supports this theory, as the conscious shrimp tempura the girls were talking to makes a live-action appearance. Perhaps the finale will break the fantasy, and this anime turned out to be a J-Drama in disguise. – BloodyMarquis

2017
08.26

Death Note (2017): My Twisted World [Bloody Marquis]

deathnotenatwolff

At last, after over a decade of production talks and Zac Efron scented rumors, we finally have our American Death Note movie. Precious years have been spent to calculate the absolute best way to adapt the series into a film, and all those mountains of research have resulted in a movie where the blind guy from The Fault in Our Stars screams like a little girl for twenty-five seconds. Bask in this new picture, now that the pathos of Death Note has been translated into over the top death scenes worthy of a Final Destination sequel. Where the once genius Light now reveals his Death Note to a girl he only casually knows all so he can get laid. And a climactic series of events that ends with a shop owner smacking L across the back of his head so he can save Kira from the blast of L’s space gun. All those billions of dollars of debt Netflix is currently in was money well spent for this masterpiece of cinema.

Leave it to brilliant director Adam Wingard, creator of such treasured films like that one Blair Witch sequel from last year that everybody forgot, to subvert and mix the familiar tropes we’ve grown tired in Death Note. No longer is Light a young prodigy who could have been destined for greatness, but now a lanky Elliot Rodger wannabe who has no idea how to hide a notebook from anybody. Misa has thrown away her idol trappings to become Mia, an assertive and manipulative young woman who inconsistently switches back to her source material’s personality at inopportune times. And notice how Mia is brunette and Light is blonde, suggesting that the genders and roles have been switched in the relationship between their original counterparts. Or possibly the make up artist fucked up. I dunno. What used to be an aspiring god and his psychotic follower have now become a gaggle of sexually-charged teenagers who use reddit. Truly Wingard’s penchant for modern culture has helped shape Death Note to match our current times. Perhaps in the potential sequel, we will witness Light using tumblr and doxxing tactics to find guilty names to kill.

But let’s not forget about the main villain of our story, Ryuk. Gone is the amoral, but not evil Death God who stayed in the sidelines and watched as Light made a mess out of his godhood. Now he steps forth and takes an active role, alluded to killing federal agents and police officers so the movie doesn’t end at forty or so minutes, until we find out at the last minute that Mia did it all for some reason. As Light’s intelligence has been hampered to reflect Wingard’s view of the modern twenty-one-year teenager, Ryuk and Mia are now our protagonist’s crutch. They are the cane that holds this story from tripping more than it already has. Now, Ryuk has all this cool powers, like the ability to destroy a ferris wheel simply through a wave of his arm. And for that, we must thank Willem Dafoe for what must have been a couple days of voice recording. Not since Marlon Brando’s iconic Superman speech that he refused to memorize and instead read off of a baby’s diaper have we heard such an impassioned performance from a class actor, one that utterly dwarfs his supporting cast and makes them look as qualified as Nickelodeon child stars.

That’s not to besmirch actors such as L’s though, for he makes a grand performance as he fumbles his way to Light during a chase scene almost reminiscent of great works such as Heavy Rain. Focus as L goes out of his way to attack random bystanders during his pursuit for Light, adding some much needed slapstick like shoving a man’s face into a bowl of soup so we as an audience can taste the chaos that is L Lawl—whatever his last name is in this movie. Have a feast for the ears as the movie’s soundtrack switches back and forth from Celine Dion songs to the soundtrack for a future Stranger Things season. Wingard has taken a boy’s adventure comic and turned it into cinema that must be viewed not twice, not thrice, but dozens of time to attain pure enjoyment. With this centerpiece, he has attained quality not seen since the likes of Neil Breen or Len Kabasinski. Make haste with your neighbor’s Netflix password and experience this film as early as you can.