Animation Revelation's Animation Blog

A lot of people watched Toyko Ghoul √A this year. I was not one of those people. I just didn’t care. And unlike Gakkou Garashi, which I regret having skipped out on during its initial run earlier in the year, I have no such regrets regarding the ghouls of this urban fantasy. Can I understand why people would love this show? Yes. Do I myself give two shits about this show? No. Non, et je ne regrette rien.

The root premise of both the Toyko Ghoul series is beautifully simple: there are humans. There are ghouls. Ghouls eat humans. Humans hate being eaten. Both species just want to chill and live life, but that whole “can only eat people” thing causes tension. It’s simple, but it is a pretty cool idea. And in some episodes, it can be cool watching both our ghoul and human protagonists try and juggle normal lives of going to work or attending book signings and dealing with the whole “war is just around the corner” thing. But…okay, I’m going to be frank with you guys. I wrote that first paragraph after watching the show a few days ago and I had a whole rant planned out at the time, but I just realized something very important: I don’t remember jack about this show. I’m serious, I watched four random episodes in a row a few days ago. And now all I can remember are pieces involving some called Owl, an old man, gangs with masks, and this one dude having a mental breakdown because he can’t see his friend anymore. And therein lies what might be the biggest fault of this show for me; in the moment, it can be a stupid and confusing ride. But in the aftermath, it was just something boring and forgettable to watch before Marquis and I skipped off to watch and riff on something else. I watched the final episode of Gurren Lagann only once, back in 2011, and I can still remember every plot beat that happened there, down to the final scene. I remember early bits of dialogue from Bleedman’s Grim Tales from Down Below, the incestuous subtext quickly becoming just text, and I haven’t touched that webcomic since middle school. I watched Toyko Ghoul √A on the 18th, and I remember…what? A really bad OP? So screw complaining about how stupid the show can get, or how much it bothers me that a 22-year-old male sounds and looks like your classic yandere chick. No, this show’s biggest crime is that, it bores me too much for my brain to jumpstart early-phase LTP and move it to long-term memory. Now if you excuse me, I have to catch up on One Punch Man.

There are a lot of bad works of fiction in this world, dear reader, and I have had the displeasure of “enjoying” many of them. But for the most part, they do not provoke any real emotion from me. Yes, they’re awfully written, sloppily passed, and often offensive in content, but they’re still fiction, so I often feel bored the whole way through. You become desensitized to things eventually, after all.

Then….there’s Grisaia.

Grisaia is such a convoluted concoction of just plain bad writing that it’s hard to write about it without just ranting like a rapid animal. The characters are dreadful, and they do ludicrous things at the drop of a hat. There are several attempts, especially with the main character, to add depth through drama, but it all falls flat. It seems whoever wrote this was trying to out do themselves. How much more revolting stuff can we cram into this episode?

Ultimately, it is up to the viewer to decide how good or bad an anime is. For your convenience, here’s a short list of observations made within the first nine minutes of the first episode of the Eden of Grisaia:

– Annoying harem with awful designs that all go to some school for some reason. Because harem.
– Red eyelashes for some reason.
– Older woman training a young boy to kill. They do the horizontal happy dance latter. For some reason.
– A puppy that dies. Of course.
– Said young boy is training to be a mercenary despite the fact that he spent time imprisoned in a place that trained child soldiers, where he was forced to dress up as a girl and raped, all after being raped by his sister and witnessing his father kill his mother. But really, training him to kill is the best option here.

This isn’t even getting into what happened in the first season. Or the rest of this season. Really, “Grisaia” and “stupid” are interchangeable at this point.

There are some pieces of media that are hard to recommend without revealing a twist that occurs within it, as said twist is often integral to the very identity that the show, film, or book has for its fanbase. It was difficult for my fellow Thaumatropists to get me to watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica without them constantly promising that “the twist is coming” or that “this episode will change everything.” They ultimately refused to tell me what made this magical girl series so damn special. Likewise, Steven Universe presents itself as a cute, magical slice-of-life comedy, but us fans will always urge you to watch until the episode 25/26 two-parter, screaming in your face that this is where the cartoon gets cool and all the events in previous episodes take on new meaning. Where I’m going with this is that Gakkou Gurashi! falls within the same boat; this isn’t your standard “cute schoolgirls doing cute things” anime despite the overly saccharine opening sequence and song. There is a twist come the end of episode one, and it is a twist that turns the show from a run-of-the-mill amusing diversion to something that, while not groundbreaking or thought-provoking, forces the viewer to reevaluate every single scene.

The main characters of the show differ from other characters in this adorable genre in that they spend pretty much all their time in school; they live on the school grounds, hence the English translation of the title being School-Live. How this came to be is once again a part of the eventual reveal, but the decision to do this on the part of the original mangaka leads to some interesting little stories that wouldn’t have worked remotely as well if our girls were constantly running around off of school grounds. Even so, you have probably seen these character types before: the happy-go-lucky protagonist, the tough-as-nails action girl, the motherly/big sister type, etc. Really, the thing that has quickly made this one of my favourite anime of the 2015 after only watching two episodes for this very review are the ways these characters play off each other and the school environment. Everyone has their own little secrets and quirks that only become truly apparent once you see the reactions that the characters surrounding them have. Abundant joy doesn’t feel especially weird until you realize the reserved looks other characters give the genki girl and the deliberate manner in which they word things when she is in the room. Reserved is probably the best way to describe the direction that the anime is going after watching these first two episodes. Even though the show revels in bombarding the viewer with chibis and cuteness from time-to-time, Gakkou Gurashi is also more than willing to step back and allow a simple gaze or a lack of speaking set the tone for a scene. Zig-zagging between different atmospheres is a prevalent thing in fact, with the tone of a given episode jumping back and forth between a happy playfulness and a more somber realism. Over the course of the second episode, for example, we jump between the happy Yuki trying her best in class and the shovel-bearing Kurumi coming to terms with an awful breakup…and it works. Maybe the mood whiplash trope isn’t a favourite of yours, which is fair. But I can’t help but feel that the juxtaposition of joy and sadness that forms the foundation of this work is executed very well, letting neither tense or funny moments to overstay their welcome. Inside this cute production is something that happily managed to subvert my expectations in the same as the shows previously mentioned in this article, which I suppose brings us back full circle. Explaining a show without giving away the big reveal can be a struggle, with one having to tip-toe around what is possibility the biggest draw. So I find myself having to close out with just this statement: check out Gakkou Gurashi, because if you are like me and have been struggling to really get into most of 2015’s offerings, you may find this to be a pleasant diamond in the rough.

For 13 years a very vocal section of the Digimon fandom has been clamoring for a continuation of the Adventure series, despite the controversial epilogue in 02 that wrapped up the series in a nice little bow, fans would much rather forget that flash forward (and for good reason) in exchange for a third Adventure series. In 2014, they finally got their wish, cue Digimon Adventure Tri. Tri promised to show the adventures of the now teen-aged Digidestined and their Digimon partners in an all new television series set to air in the spring of 2015! Except it didn’t air in the spring, nor did it even air as a series, instead it was delayed all the way until fall and was suddenly announced that it would be a series of 6-movies instead. Once more was the announcement that the director of the infamous School Days anime would be in charge of the films. with all this combined with a slew of other announcements, fans were suddenly split (what else is new?). Some were mortified, some were skeptical, others remained optimistic, and the rest just wanted the damn thing to air and get it over with. Now that Tri’s first movie has finally aired, was it worth the wait? Well, that depends on who you ask.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, general reception has been mixed, and it’s not hard to see why. While the more mature tone and storytelling and Tamers-esque focus on how dangerous Digimon can actually be in the real world is much appreciated, the actual character drama leaves much to be desired. The infamous broken cell phone instantly springs to mind, not only does the movie beat us over the head with the image, but it’s not even a particularly good image for the emotion and drama it’s used to convey. It’s obvious the cell-phone was used to signify civilian casualties, so why not just show an actual dead body instead? It’s no secret that Digimon has undergone an audience shift in recent years, now being targeted at an older audience, with recent games being aimed more at adults. So why the pussyfooting? It doesn’t even have to be a particularly gory image, just a shot of an outstretched, lifeless arm protruding from some rubble would be an adequately powerful image. As it is, it just makes Tai’s doubt throughout the movie look unfounded, as if someone’s broken cellphone is the most traumatic image ever, and as a result makes Tai and Matt’s obligatory lover’s quarrel conflict seem forced. All of this comes to a head in the climactic battle with fan-favorite Alphamon (which also not only marks his traditional animation debut, but is also his first anime appearance since X-Evolution in 2005!) where Tai flashes back to the damned cellphone for a half-dozen times before finally getting his resolve. At that point the audience would just want the movie to get the fuck on with it.

Another point of contention is the fate of the 02 cast, Davis, Ken, Yolei, and Cody, shown in silhouette being defeated by Alphamon, and aren’t mentioned again for the entire movie, leaving many people to wonder what the fuck happened to them. Now let’s not fool ourselves here. These characters aren’t dead, and if they are, they’re not gonna stay that way. However, the fact that Davis and the others aren’t even so much as mentioned is incredibly jarring. With Imperialdramon slated to show up next movie, we can only hope for answers then.

And therein lies our next problem: the inevitable schedule slip. It’s no secret that Toei is notorious for not delivering things on schedule (just ask Sailor Moon fans), and with Tri being a movie series, episodes will be delayed, even the biggest optimist can’t deny that. And that will be Tri’s biggest obstacle. When all is said and done, will the audience still care enough to tune in?

Personally, I found Digimon Adventure Tri to be enjoyable in spite of all its faults. Visually it’s everything I wanted out of a Digimon anime, and as far as Toei’s revival attempts go, it’s miles better than Sailor Moon Crystal and Dragonball Super (but below Battle of Gods and Resurrection F). I’m interested in seeing where the plot goes, I want to see more interactions between these characters after so long, I want to know what the deal is with newcomers Meiku and Meiccumon, I want to see more of Alphamon, I want to know what role Hackmon will play, and it vexes me that I’ll probably have to wait 5 years to have any of these questions answered.

Shimoneta and Prison School made plenty of controversy this year involving obscenities, sexuality, and a certain dub line that I’ll decline to talk about. They were made to challenge controversies to the point where even fans of this comedy style would get annoyed at how much their excesses invaded the screen. Subtlety was unheard of as episode after episode of these two shows pumped out meat for Sankaku Complex articles while some couldn’t tell whether or not these shows were meant to criticize societal norms or just be exploitation for its own sake. There hasn’t been any definitive word on how one should view the subject matter. Even long after those names are forgotten, anime fans will still discuss love nectar and Kana Hanazawa getting pissed on with sick interest. These shows being more victims of abundant censorship does not help.

Shimoneta for the most part had an indecisive run. The first episode felt like an overeager Catholic school giggling because she heard the word ‘fuck’ for the first time. Swears and phallic objects were considered jokes in and of themselves, which is less what you expect from a satire and more from a kid who masturbates to a pair of oranges. Maybe it can be justified through Japan’s tyrannical censorship laws, but I’ve seen better dirty jokes from anime. I’ve laughed at hentai before, so this show’s platform was already in question from the beginning. Then, the show revealed Anna was a crazy-ass ho. She pushed the innuendos that we had all seen a thousand times into insanity by pissing out a rainbow of love nectar when falling down a cliff. She was the perverse insanity that Kajo and the rest of SOX wished they could be, encapsulating the kind of society that bans sexual education in favor of faked innocence. By constantly trying to rape Tanukuchi, she gave Shimoneta the kind of abhorrent subject matter it needed to show what it fought against. Otherwise, it would have been an argument without much of a point.

Prison School was more visceral, if only for the more realistic designs aside from Andre. Some people straight up called this a feminist work, whereas critics accused the series as nothing but more exploitation except this time for the dominatrix demographic. If you wanted to see hot women assault men over and over until they were red in the face, you needed this anime in your life. Otherwise, when does any anime ever portray women being the doms in the situation? Like Shimoneta, it was a refreshing take on on-screen sleaziness, yet it strikes me how this show received a live-action adaptation just after the anime ended. That just leaves me dumbstruck.

Well I finally did it. I have watched the entire 2011 version of Hunter x Hunter. It had always been on my series bucket list years back, but never really got into experiencing because of other commitments. The trudge could be daunting at times, and I had to remind myself I watched much longer series to get ahead, but all in all, the binge has been a net gain in my eyes. Nevertheless, there is that one headscratcher I have after watching the last episode, and something that I believe with no doubt other fans suffer. And that is how there is not a chance in Hell the majority of those lingering plot threads will ever get resolved.

You will never get to see Gon win a battle against Hisoka. You will never witness Kurapika killing all of the Phantom Troupe. You will never watch Illumi finally leave his brother the fuck alone. Anyone hoping for anything resembling a final showdown should not watch Hunter x Hunter if that’s all they want. Even when the last episode finally has Gon meet up with his dad, they open a whole batch of other stuff involving the Dark Continent, which I’ve heard will take longer than the Chimera Ant arc to resolve and will most likely dawdle even more so thanks to Togashi’s infamous breakdowns. By the time your grandchildren are old enough to read hiragana, they’ll go on an illegal manga site and find out only half a dozen chapters came out between now and then.

And yet, one of Hunter x Hunter’s crucial strengths lie in avoiding conclusions. I don’t think Togashi ever intends to finish Hunter x Hunter, because he would have done so by now. Stories with the Chimera Ants and Greed Island are examples that he would rather appreciate the journey in the moment than the endgame. The show is all about how you can never be certain about the future, so you have to enjoy what’s going on right now rather than fret over what could happen next. One moment, you’re looking for something important. The next, an army of giant bugs show up and try to kill you. Even when the battle’s over, the war never truly ends. Personal arcs like Kurapika’s in York New City are left open to contemplation rather than closed off with a sure climax. And so on. “As one door closes, another opens” is the theme running through the show. Major events in real life never get resolved decisively, so is the same with Hunter x Hunter.

Plus, I like to think the story’s open-ended nature is meant to drive the reader or the viewer to imagine what could happen next. Hunter x Hunter doesn’t spoonfeed you everything, but expects you to come up with your own conclusions as to what connects to which. Yeah, it can be infuriating at times, but it’s also probably why the manga’s had such a dedicated fandom after all this time. Admittedly, this could all be bull and Togashi really is struggling to figure out how to close his series the same way Kishimoto didn’t know how to kill off Madara, but an article about that wouldn’t be as thoughtful now would it?

Shinmai Maou no Testament—still running as of this writing—is not a good show for many reasons. The show revels in derivative light novel clichés and sleazy fanservice that only the most desperate teenage boy could enjoy in earnest. Our main character Basara breastfeeding on his stepsister or massaging cake batter on a succubus’s ass become regular occurrences. Boobs jiggle more than there are breaths from my lungs, shaking and quivering as much as I presume the intended audience’s right hand is doing. But any sexual release from the broadcast is a hollow pursuit, as what this show loves more than bizarre sexual acts is blinding censorship.

I know complaining about censorship in ecchi anime is like yelling at clouds for blocking the sky. They all have beams of light in the way of any nipple, or dark matter in the place of ass. But Testament takes it one step further. Any hints of perversion are bowdlerized with yellow tape and chibified pictures of the characters warning us to not look. For those moments, the show shifts into abstract territory, with nothing but the viewer’s imagination to discern what’s going on in front of them. In time, the censoring went from annoying to amusing to absolutely Orwellian. At one point, I wondered if this show had an inner struggle going on. One side wanted to show all of this decadence while another demanded it be gone from their sight.

Of course to any weathered anime viewer, they are naught but only the most cynical attempts to drive the curious viewer to buy the blu-ray. These were only a vain cry to squeeze a few thousand yen from the people who could willingly buy these, before more savvy connoisseurs would just download them off of some torrent site. But why were they so abundant? I saw the uncensored clips, and there was nothing to suggest a more thorough suppression than the standard jigglyfest. And as the closest thing this blog has to an occultist, I didn’t sense any bizarre symbols of Illuminati hints from the blu-ray rips.

Indeed, the censors overstep their boundaries at points and even block kissing from being seen. Is this a mistake on their part, an artistic statement criticizing this discretion, or the producers’ legitimate belief that their audience is not mentally prepared to see kissing? Were the producers hoping to market this anime to nearby caliphates and prepared in advance? I want to believe there are better intentions than that. But there will always be that suspicion, one that will eventually be confirmed if a leading member of Islamic State is seen carrying a Mio Naruse body pillow.

How Much is an Euler? 99 cents! Does that make sense? No? Well, neither does this show. When the latest anime adaptation of the Monogatari series was released this Fall, my expectations were low. I mean, I hate this series. I only watch it because I hang out with Dalek and Marquis, and those two are utter sadists who love the pain that accompanies viewing this all style, no substance dreck. But we aren’t talking about the show as a whole. No, we’re talking about Oikura Sodachi, a math whiz that was Araragi’s childhood friend…but the audience never knew her about until just now.

This is, for all intents and purposes, the show’s sixth season, so I guess now is as good a time as any to start adding new characters to keep people interested in the weird story. In the three story arcs concerning Sodachi, I guess there was something about people cheating on a math test because they had a study group and she getting the blame. But I was tripping on all the random imagery and references to early 00s Cartoon Network (the hell?) to really focus on the constant, unending stream of dialogue. Anyway, I think the whole incident made her go cray-cray and Koko loco, because our “hero” Araragi finds out that she lives on government support with her mom. But then it turns out, in a huge twist, that her mom has been dead for years, so she’s been taking care of a corpse. And she didn’t know it was a corpse! And she’s just been there for years with a dead mom in a bed! Such hijinks! Sadly, the government found out, and reduced her SSI checks as a result.

And now the show will go on to ignore what would have probably been an Oscar-worthy story of a mentally-ill Japanese teenager accepting the loss of her deranged mother and making her way in modern Tokyo or whatever. I mean, I suppose that she and Araragi became friends again, which is nice. But to be completely straight with all of you, I was too busy being frightened (yet strangely aroused) by Ougi. Seriously, that girl stole the show, and I’m not completely sure if I mean that in a good way or a bad way.

Every year there is that one weird slice of life comedy show that becomes inexplicably popular for a half dozen or so weeks before being immediately discarded with yesterday’s trash. You know the kind. Series like Watamote, Sabage-bu, and the granddaddy of them all, Lucky Star. And in the summer of 2015, suddenly my twitter feed was filled with .gifs of a moe blob wearing a gerbil costume and drooling like a maniac. Himouto Umaru-Chan had arrived.

This is a show we actually skipped in the clusterfuck for that season. Just from the key promo art, I was easily reminded as to why. Both on a visual as well personal scale, Umaru is wholly detestable as a character. Yeah its a comedy (and a 4koma adaptation at that), but there’s nothing to get me interested in such a worthless, unlikeable brat with no development and no real arc. I have watched at least four episodes of the show including the premiere and finale and at no point is there any progression between the two. Its just a reset button all the way through. Umaru is annoying, oni-san is annoyed. Rince, repeat.

So why did people like this show? If I were to make a guess, its because of two things specifically. The Hamster suit itself which seemed premade for the nendoroid market (no surprise, they started selling like hotcakes) and the show’s knack for pandering to that half of fandom that obsesses over every Japanese video game franchise under the sun (if you haven’t gotten that from the opening title sequence already then something’s wrong with you).

This would probably also explain why I haven’t heard about Himouto in months. Silly costumes and cheap gamer cliches will only get you so far in anime. No, really! Look at Danmachi!

Welcome one and all, to the 12 Days of Anime. 2015 was a spastic year for us fans, but we persevered. And we witnessed things you wouldn’t believe…

Hey, remember Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Because I barely do. On the top of my mind, I can recall an albino boy brushing his teeth, and something about this one girl who carried a giant sack around her. I also remember it taking so many episodes for Hestia to give the damn boy that knife. People who marathon this show will never feel the scorn of waiting week after week for Hestia to just hand over that fucking knife, the chaos that rose into your mind when characters failed to do basic tasks. Even knowing the payoff won’t mean anything passes your head. You just want this to be done and over with, so you don’t want this anime to creep out of the back of your head and rue with your train of thought.

So actually, I do remember this show quite well. Thank you, repressed rage. These images are flooding back to me like a bad break-up or a petty Internet fight. Remember when this anime was everywhere, my friends? Bear in mind when the light novel kept appearing in your local Barnes and Noble? Would you like to consider when all of your anime-loving friends on Twitter shared pictures of Hestia? Because no matter how much you deny, all of that happened. It’s true. All of it. The boob strings. The harems. They’re real. A single sentence will drive you back into the meme, no matter how much you hated hearing about it. You’re clenching your fists and clawing into your palms right now, aren’t you? Even when you focus on issues going on in the real world, you can’t help but imprint some of this Dungeon show onto that thought. You’re imagining that blue ribbon wrapped around Donald Trump’s cleavage. You’re wondering what climate change would look like if wrapped in tight blue string. This is all in your head, and you don’t know how to get it out!

(By the way, what was everyone’s obsession with the string? Were they appealing because they reminded one of bondage, but not too much to turn off the casuals? If I wrapped some blue string around Kenan Thompson’s crusty breasts, would SNL get better ratings? But the moment he takes that off, people just forget and that sensation will only become a ghost deep down the cortex? And now you’re imagining Kenan Thompson wearing a Hestia cosplay. You’re welcome.)