Animation Revelation's Animation Blog

100 Sleeping Princes and The Kingdom of Dreams: The Animation

I can only imagine this show came about because some fujoshi at a video game company thought “What if…Kirby but they were all bishies.” Now 20 years ago this would have gotten you an instant pinkslip, but such is Japan’s incresasing degree of depravity that it actually got made. And somewhere along the way that half-assed premise was deemed worthy of a tv adaptation so here we are with this instantly forgettable crap.

There’s barely a story here. Our nameless Otome Game girl heroine used to be an office lady but now she’s been summoned to some isekai dump under attack from leftover Precure monsters. To save the world, she must awaken a bunch of pretty boy princes who have been turned into rings and scattered across the countryside. Assisting her in this task is her butler, a leftover Precure reject fairy rabbit. So yeah, on top of being every Non-rapey Otome game anime ever, this is also Precure now. Splendid. >_>

You know its funny, the last few times I’ve done Otome shows for the clusterfuck, I have at least found something that made me wanna throw up about. 100 Sleeping Princes? Forget it! This show is about as interesting as watching paint dry. And that might be the greatest irony. How a show about dream-land can actually cure insomnia. In which case, job well done moronzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. – Lord Dalek

Back Street Girls: Gokudolls

I’m not sure why you would greenlight an anime but funnel absolutely no money into the project. Through twenty minutes of what I could only assume were colorized panels of the manga with no hint of animation whatsoever, Back Street Girls is a show that offers no thrills or gaffs. Only confusion and yearning for death. Perhaps it’s appropriate, to subject ourselves to the same trials that the main leads, former yakuza given severe training and surgery to become idols, are put through. And it would be admirable if that was the intention, but this is clearly marketed to fans who like Cromartie High or Sakamoto. This is meant to be this season’s wacky comedy that puts stone-faced men in absurd situations. And it fails in that regard. This show is a joke that could have been sort of funny for ten seconds, stretched out to an entire series. It’s the Heil Honey, I’m Home of anime, a novelty that wears out its welcome before the opening credits are even over. And that shouldn’t be the case. Idols turning out to be hardened yakuza members? You can make something interesting out of that. Some clever critique over how the idol industry is no better than organized crime. But this show doesn’t do this. It churns out the cheapest animation this season, and turns any emotion that could possibly be gained into an aching bore. Even if you were offended by the show’s premise, don’t bother. The show can’t even do offensive jokes. I wish I was triggered watching this. Some kind of emotion. Anything. But I couldn’t bother, because this show couldn’t either. – BloodyMarquis

Banana Fish

Ash Lynx, a former gay porn star and sex slave groomed by a pedophile kingpin becomes a leading force of a criminal empire, in order to find out why his older brother who served in the military committed friendly fire and shot several of his soldiers in a fit of insanity. Meanwhile, a journalist assistant who has apparently never watched a single mobster movie in his entire life and has the genre blindness of a slasher movie victim gets tangled up in this case, becoming a hostage in a situation he couldn’t predict would spiral out of control. All based off of two words. Two words the older brother said after killing his fellow brothers in arms. Banana fish. Oh, and this is adapted from a shoujo manga.

Once again, Studio MAPPA pulls out a wildcard to make and distinguish themselves from the oceans of phone game and isekai anime. It’s all over the place yet keeps a consistent tone, the sort of thing that Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens show should have been. Even the dialogue is wild at times. I would love to say the episode is great and everybody should watch it, but I don’t know. For all of its setup and action, all I could think of after the episode was over was “Well, that happened.” I’ll admit it’s the highest quality anime to premiere so far this season in terms of animation and storytelling, something sorely needed after how stupid shows like Island or Back Street Girls can be. But there’s something off. Maybe it’s because the show’s adapting an 80s crime manga while trying to modernize things by adding iPhones and having a character make a CSI reference. It’s a sort of uncanny valley but applied to changing the time period of a story. Like when you watch Homer Simpson playing with a laptop. It’s a particularly anal nitpick, and the rest of the episode was fine. But then I remember 91 Days, a show very similar to this one, started off great but quickly screwed itself into mediocrity. So it’s easy to be wary. – BloodyMarquis

Calamity of a Zombie Girl

What IS a zombie? Are vampires zombies? Are homunculi zombies? Are little sisters zombies? Is Frankenstein’s Monster a zombie? Well, the answer to that last one is probably a “yes” when you think about it, but no. Being a zombie is, in fact, the act of spending eighty minutes arguing with a friend about what the hell qualifies as a “zombie” while accidentally watching an eighty-minute movie with him, as you were both under the pretense that it was going to be a weekly show. And I’m kinda sad that it wasn’t, because after a bland first twenty minutes filled with banal dialogue and enough “fade to black” scene transitions to last a lifetime, Calamity of a Zombie Girl, ended up being some ridiculous, gory fun. Even if it allegedly doesn’t know what a zombie is, according to Marquis.

Calamity of a Zombie Girl is your standard “don’t mess with the dead” story: a bunch of a idiots loot a corpse of its mysterious, eternal life-granting stone, so said corpse and her maid wake up and start shit in order to get it back, with all the idiots dying one-by-one because they lack both common sense and the need for self-preservation. Granted, the one guy who immediately realizes that they’re being targeted by super-powered zombies and says that they should just give the stupid stone back gets his head accidentally caved in by a toilet for his troubles, so they were all probably screwed regardless. My favourite death has to go to the “I know kung-fu” girl who tries to avenge the decapitated friend she was tsundere for, only to get throw around Bam-Bam Rubble style, with the titular zombie girl hitting her against every tree in the immediate vicinity before tossing the corpse (breasts now flapping in the wind) over a cliff. Good stuff. Dumb stuff. And the deaths and fights only get more silly as the movie goes on, leading to a climax that would make Michael Jordan proud. There’s nothing groundbreaking about Zombie Girl, but if you treat it like the B-grade horror movie schlock that it is, then it’s not a bad pick for movie night. – RacattackForce

Happy Sugar Life

Happy Sugar Life is the heartwarming tale of Little Shio-chan and her adopted mother-type figure Sato-san. Sato-san loves Shio-chan so much that she’s having to work difficult hours at a mid-range maid cafe where she rejects the advances of her co-workers because she just loves little Shio-chan sooooo much. Happily it all works out in the end as Sato-san makes her manager see the error of her ways and thus can be togethre with Shio-chan more. Clearly this will be a simple slice of life about to get around those simple life problems and thus I can stop writing this review right now…

…Yeah no. Turns out that Sato-san is actually a mentally unhinged serial killer and Shio can’t leave the house because her real parents (or somebody to that effect) are desperately trying to find her. Because…anime.

So yeah, this is School Days again, except Kotonoha ended up in a creepy, borderline pedophilic relationship instead of Makoto’s head. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and this show is definitely better than last season’s exercise in domestic abuse revenge porn, Magical Girl Site. That said, everything about this is immediately colored by how utterly cringe worthy Sato’s personality is and why said personality being a mask for her true homicidal tendencies makes her even less sympathetic (which is probably intentional). Why should I be emotionally invested when I hate your guts and am rooting for the federales? Then again, shoulda seen this coming as the first scene depicts Shio pushing herself and Sato off the roof of a burning building, presumably ending the series with their deaths. Great, now I have even less of a reason to watch. – Lord Dalek

How Not to Summon a Demon Lord

Sixteen Steps on How Not to Summon a Demon Lord:
1. Don’t forget to baptize your firstborn.
2. Don’t scare away or anger any nearby mystics.
3. Don’t spill blood on sacred territory.
4. Don’t read the works of Aleister Crowley while high on black tar heroin.
5. Don’t go on a trip to Gehenna.
6. Don’t perform any rituals, especially rituals that involve animal sacrifice.
7. Don’t speaks the ancient dead languages long purged from the face of the Earth.
8. Don’t commit impure things on a picture of Jesus Christ.
9. Don’t participate in blood orgies anywhere, especially in your basement.
10. Don’t say “Beetlejuice” three times.
11. Don’t wear a behelit around your neck.
12. Don’t inadvertently piss off somebody wearing a behelit around their neck.
13. Don’t do butt stuff with a jackal while bathed in the light of a blood red moon.
14. Don’t star in any Poltergeist movies.
15. Don’t carve a pentagram on your forehead and then practice meditation while using binaural beats.
16. Don’t watch this anime.
– BloodyMarquis

ISLAND

…..sigh.

Why do I keep doing these write-ups? Its clear they’re not benefiting me or anyone else. It was so much easier five years ago when I was just taking the piss at these lousy shows…but now?…its just a struggle with futility. I have officially lost all hope in humanity. Why is Pop Team Epic popular? Why goddammit? Why?!? ANSWER ME!!! AAAAAAAAAAANSSSWWEEERR MEEEEEE!!!!!

…anyway here’s ISLAND, a show based off a Front Wing VN which begins with implied child ra–oh god this is just Grisaia again isn’t it? Yup its another story of some weird guy falling in with a bunch of broken girls and having to fix all of their problems. In this case, its Joe Amnesiac Player CharacterTM (we’ll call him Setsuna because why the hell not), a young man who thinks he’s a time traveler for some reason. Setsuna’s been sent to this island to save some girl and the world as well as to kill some other girl. Which one is it? The dumb blond tsundere with faternal issues who gave him an accidental BJ? The dorky wallflower miko with extreme bedhead who’s obsessed with quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity? Or the creepy girl who dresses like a ship captain and is apparently also a time traveler or maybe a vampire?

Yeah… its clearly the last one. Or is it? You see JAPC(tm) is actually here to kill… Setsuna…which means he’s not Setsuna which means…I honestly don’t care. Yes, this is a mystery show but the mystery is hampered by the fact that A: I hate all the characters, and B: knowing Front Wing they’re just going to fuck it up anyway.

But hey! At least it hasn’t had a scene of rabies induced cannibalism! That’s a plus ri—NO. – Lord Dalek

The Master of Ragnarok and Blesser of Einherjar

You know everytime I have to write up one of these shitty isekai shows I hope I might get surprised and end up with a Grimgar or Re:Zero (you know… a GOOD show) instead of having to type “This is Sword Art…again”.

Alas…

This is Sword Art…agai—no actually its worse.

This literally everything I hate about Isekai distilled to its most putrid form. A black, soulless expanse from which no light emerges. I think it was trying to be a parody? But no….no there is noting good about Ragnarok. It is already a strong competitor for worst anime of the year and this is a year that already gave us Death March and Darling in the Franxx. But none of those shows had a plot point where the main protagonist threatened to rain death and distruction on his captured princess’ kingdom unless (and I’m being perfectly seriously here) she became his imouto. You see friends this is the harem show from the hell. The one where literally everybody wants to fuck the guy in a bizarre orgy of pseudo-incest. Every time I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.

And then… upon typing those words that you have just read I realized what I was doing wrong. 7 years it had taken me to learn what kind of caressing gaze was hidden beneath the dark rimmed glasses. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two espresso-scented tears trickled down the sides of my nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. I had won the victory over myself. I loved Reki Kawahara. – Lord Dalek (appologies to George Orwell)

 

Miss Caretaker of Sunohara-sou

So here’s another show that was probably pitched as a hentai, but somehow became an anime on TV instead, meaning anyone who looks at the poster and goes “Mmm! Straight shota!” will be inevitably disappointed by how softcore this is. Sure, there are inhumanly sized boobs and a modestly sized harem, but even by the first episode, it knows the audience has a short attention span. So it throws the main girl in a school uniform while making the boy touch her breast. It’s not interesting cheesecake. It’s Baywatch cheesecake. Something that would have been alluring decades ago but now looks dull and conservative in an age of internet porn and H-doujins.

I guess if you wanted to pretend you were a twelve-year-old boy getting seduced by women twice your age, this show would appeal to you like honey to bees. And I suppose the show might know that. It knows it’s just gateway ecchi for people who want to try slightly safer material before getting into actual hentai. Maybe I should be happy this show doesn’t have slavery like Death March or the dumb metaphors Franxx made. But at least those shows weren’t boring, while Sunohara-sou is just there. It’s background noise, and no fanservice show should ever aim to be background noise. – BloodyMarquis

Planet With

Planet With is a show that is completely and utterly incomprehensible. Completely and utterly. Scenes seem to be glued together from parts of random other anime. Characters are either barely developed or in the case of the class rep, severely overdeveloped. The plot twist doesn’t seem to be much of a twist as it is the plot showing up at the very last minute. And then it doesn’t end as much as the episode just kills itself right before your eyes. Kind of an interesting trainwreck innit.

But…

It DOES have a cat that turns into a giant Kamen Rider mech, and a storyline involving killing a bunch of phoney-balloney Sentai types for… revenge…I guess? I mean that’s clearly worth the price of admission right?

…yeah what was this show supposed to be about again? — Lord Dalek

The Thousand Musketeers

Oh, they’re guns this time. And they’re French now.

The Thousand Musketeers or Senjuushi is the latest in the “historical things from some time period turn into pretty boys/girls” saga that Axis Powers Hetalia cursed upon the world all those years ago. We had samurai swords. We had World War II-era boats. Now let’s go with Napoleonic era guns, because that’s what the kids in Japan are into. An untapped market that only this show has discovered. Let your girlhood tremble as this one gun owned by Napoleon turns into a hot guy, or your boyhood if Upotte disappointed you. We won’t judge, as long as you spend all your money on doujins and dakimakuras of our characters. No, not characters. Your idols. Your graven idols. You think you’ve grown up and can avoid all those franchises meant purely to sell merchandise, but you’re wrong. Now buy all the keychains and figmas you can find, and become the kind of person the PreCure executives wish they could milk to death. Buy all the Drama CDs that Soma Saito phoned in. Consume each weekly episode as society all around you collapses into the kind of hellhole that created Napoleon in the first place. And be sure to buy our phone game. I hope you spend hundreds of hours spending money while playing it. Let the aura surrounding you become nothing but grime as your stubby fingers push on your phone, playing all day and all night while your mother begs you to go outside. While your friends ask where you’ve gone. While your carers can do nothing but stare. Without The Thousand Musketeers, you are nothing. With The Thousand Musketeers, your flesh is granted validity. It’s blisssssssssss.

Also, I get it. They’re musketeers. But they’re also muskets. That’s adorable. – BloodyMarquis