Animation Revelation's Animation Blog

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.)