Animation Revelation's Animation Blog

Spring is in the air, and so is anime.

Caligula

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

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

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

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

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

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

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