07.19
Hey, folks. Sorry to distract you from this write-up, but if you want to donate to Kyoto Animation and help them in their time of need, you can give money to their GoFundMe created by Sentai Filmworks, or buy cels from KyoAni’s site. Any amount helps.
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest
This is yet another stupid isekai churned out because that’s the ticket every studio wants to buy. The main character is one more self-insert with a ridiculously chuuni story. But this time, he gets to eat giant wolves and bears. Raw. And he has the magic power to turn a bunch of rocks into a super gun. This is all portrayed completely seriously with a stupidly grim tone that can be compared to those Linkin Park AMVs of Disney Channel cartoons, all packaged in awful animation and a confusing non-linear plot. Reviews from other sites decry this show as one of the worst adaptations this season, making the excess of other fantasy anime this season look wholesome by comparison.
I actually had fun with this. Sure, this anime is stupid and has no redeeming unironic quality to give, but looking at it compared to shows like King’s Game or that Ulysses Joan of Arc and the Alchemist Knight series, it sits comfortably alongside those in the so bad it’s good collection. Every scene is oozing with incompetence, but it’s almost charming how many wrong turns this show is taking. Maybe it’s delirium from watching so much schlock this season, but I would happily watch more funny garbage like this than boring garbage. God knows how many bad anime this year have fallen under the latter category. – BloodyMarquis
Demon Lord, Retry!
Oh, look. Another isekai. Another isekai about an otaku. Another isekai about an otaku who becomes a stone cold, overpowered badass. Another isekai about an otaku who becomes a stone cold, overpowered badass with an underage girlfriend.
“But he’s an administrator who looks like a member of the yakuza this time.”
I don’t care. I don’t even care that he looks like Sakyo from Yu Yu Hakusho. It’s still going to be the same fucking thing as all the others. Being an administrator means nothing if he needs to gain skill points. Why do you even need to gain skill points when you’re the admin? And furthermore, who names their kid “Aku”? Why does she know how to read when she’s a peasant? Why does she have fancy clothes when all her neighboring villagers treat her like shit and make her work with shit? Why does the animation look like it’s from 2002? Why any of this? I didn’t even like Overlord. Why would I want shitty knockoff Overlord?
I guess it’s not offensively bad, but that’s worse. If you’re going to make an awful isekai, at least have fun with it. Don’t be boring like Demon Lord, Retry. If you’re going to crash and burn, do it with finesse. And the worst part? The studio making this show? This is their second ever anime. Their first show was some train show from last year I don’t remember at all. What’s the point of building a new studio if you’re just going to make the same shit every other tired anime studio does? – BloodyMarquis
Dr. Stone
Dr. Stone is the story of a supergenius with a napa cabbage for a head, and a brainless hunk of hotblooded man muscle. Both men fighting for survival after the most random apocalypse ever either ruined their lives or gave them new meaning. Sounds like the perfect setup for a fun buddy comedy, but no, its this season’s regurgitated battle shonen du jour. The kind of show that probably binges well when you have a dozen episodes to watch but really starts to wear out its welcome after week 5 of fuck all happening. You know, that kind of overpadded slowburn garbage that reddit demands to see on Toonami and then proceed to not watch because lets face it, its fucking boring.
Speaking of fucking boring, lets talk about this episode. Every human being alive (as well as birds for some reason) was turned to stone because…reasons. Over 3000 years later, literal human-leek hybrid Senku and happy fisted Philistine Taiju have somehow managed to escape their stone prisons through either sheer willpower or some sort of molecular acid. After getting drunk on wine, they spend the next several months trying to distill said acid into a form that can be easily replicated thus saving what survives of humanity, now that all traces of civilization have crumbled to dust. And….that’s where the episode ends. Its a load of nothing. Oh don’t worry, its gonna turn into a shitty ass version of Samurai Shodown judging from the title sequence but that’s not obvious from this dull slog of an episode.
You know, I’m probably being too rough on Dr. Stone. I mean this was your first shonen, you’d be easily hooked and want to come back next week begging for more. But me? I’ve had my fill of shows where Yugioh rejects club each other on the head until one side drops dead or the audience dies instead. Now if you excuse me I have to watch a show about hot firemen because this season is doomed already. – Lord Dalek
Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?
Hey, what if we remade Sword Art Online, but Kirito’s mom was still alive and jumped into the game with him? And she was actually better at the game than he is even though she knows nothing about gaming? All while dual wielding and doing all the cool shit Kirito would have done?
Unlike Arifureta, this was genuinely funny, and came from the mind of someone who was as sick of isekais as I was. Not a single cliché from that genre is taken seriously. The mockery’s not as thorough as I would like it to be, but when looking at how straight-faced the others are this season, I can take it. I like Masato’s relationship of lack thereof with his mom. It’s so refreshing watching a dynamic like this, instead of yet another fucking show where the main character is thrown into another world with his little sister or childhood friend. Now it’s a mom who keeps embarrassing him all the time.
Now I know this show will turn into fanservice schlock soon. It’s destined to be. But it doesn’t care. It doesn’t give a shit about the rules or the world because it knows you’ve seen this world hundreds of times before in other shows. Kind of like hearing a drunk guy regale you with how he would write and direct an isekai anime. A stupid time, but a fun one. – BloodyMarquis
Fire Force
I remember when Soul Eater was a big deal in the anime community. The kind of show almost everyone was watching and talking about. But then it ended, and we got that Soul Eater Not show. Then the fandom faded out, leaving only a handful of people demanding a Soul Eater Brotherhood or some other continuation of the franchise. Now I remember kind of liking the show when it first aired, but looking back, all I recall enjoying were the openings and endings. The actual show was too style and little substance, but unlike Jojo, the style couldn’t compensate and become the substance. And all I’m left with are unmemorable characters and a plot that peters out by the end, even in the manga.
So when I watched Fire Force, a show from the same creator, I recognized all the warning signs. The same catchy opening I’m going to listen to for weeks. The same boring characters with cool designs. The same fight scenes that rely so much on looking cool they become silly instead. One of the characters shoots bullets into a fire zombie even though nothing indicates it working. I’m not a fire fighter, but I’m pretty sure shooting a fire doesn’t make it better. Why doesn’t the nun have a F.L.U.D.D. backpack so she can spray holy water at their enemies? It’s a show where I’m stuck asking “Why don’t they do this?” instead of staying focused at all the action scenes. Instead, we have to take “fight fire with fire” to its ultimate conclusion.
And I hate Shinra’s smile. Despite the psychological reasoning they gave for his facial tic, I see right through it and know the author just wanted to draw the same slasher smile protagonist he did with Soul Eater. Just put on a mask if you’re so embarrassed at your lack of a poker face. But like I said, the show looks cool, it sounds cool, a shame the writing’s a wet dishrag.
Oh yeah, I noticed all the non-Japanese names in the opening credits. Guess Funimation is really invested in this. Maybe they thought “Hey, this manga’s made by the Soul Eater guy, and it’s about guys with superpowers doing hero things like My Hero Academia. We can make money off of this.” It definitely feels like something made in response to My Hero Academia. And Fire Force started publication over a year after MHA did, so there might have been enough wiggle room to follow the trend there. – BloodyMarquis
Isekai Cheat Magician
Nothing apparently matters anymore. What seemed like the end of a long battle with isekai light novels and their many, many anime adaptations was nothing more than a false promise and a dirty trick. Now all publishing companies like Dengeki Bunko need to do is insert random words and plots into a super computer and out pops a fully illustrated volume 1 in a 15 volume series. We’re past mad libs at this point. Everything we have seen has happened before, and will happen again. Hence this show might be Isekai Cheat Magician, but it could also be Wiseman’s Grandchild, or Is it Wrong To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon, or Gate, or Sword Art, or Konosuba, or Grimgar, or any fucking isekai from the last decade. Its gotten to the point that I actually miss Infinite Stratos-clone Battle School shows…wait…no…that’s just the Stockholm Syndrome rearing its ugly head again.
SO ANYWAY…the plot…such as it is: Taichi and Rin are high school students who are summoned by the Princess of the same stock walled fantasy land that every isekai seems to take place in these days. And since this show runs on El-Hazard logic without the quality of writing, they’re given godmode stats and abilities right out of the box. Because cheat codes! Get it?!? Iskai CHEAT Magician?!?! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
AHAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHHAAAAHHHHHAAAAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Yeah who the hell cares. – Lord Dalek
To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts
By the year 1862, the war between the states had ground to a stalemate. With little to no progress made in the meantime and a major election looming, the president of the union was forced to take drastic actions. The Union needed manpower and fast. The cause of the conflict would not suffice. A simple despute over territory reclaimation did not entice interest for the war weary Union. They would have to use what they had on hand. But they would have to make them stronger.
And so…the President made a deal with the devil. He created ..monsters.
The Union’s best scientist was charged with blending man with ancient beast. Where once long ago these would be called chimeras, now they had a new name: Incarnates. Hastily a group of test subjects was assembled to receive the treatment and in 1863, they were ready for deployment. A new kind of battle regiment even the Confederacy could not withstand. It was to be their high tide.
“What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?
Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?
Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?”
—Walt Whitman
Unfortunately this project had a curse attached to it. The monsters began to over take the man. They lost all control of themselves and began to go berzerk. However by that point it was already too late in the war to matter. The Union had throughly crushed the Confederacy. Taking back their stolen prize, the government decided that, for the good of society, these monsters had to be destroyed. And so they were rounded up and disposed of. As the last one fell, only a single sound could be heard. That of hands clapping three times. They were the final casualties of the Civil War – Burnman Ken
Oh yeah this is supposed to be about anime again wasn’t it?
I fell asleep. – Lord Dalek