10.05
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.*
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!
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.
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!
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!
(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 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