04.20
Arte
It’s 16th Century Italy. A noble teenage girl wants to be artist. Her name is Arte because she likes art. But her mother tells her she can’t be an artist because she is woman, and must marry man. Art does not want to marry man, so she runs away and cuts her hair, because Mulan did it in that one movie called Mulan. Art becomes apprentice to a vague approximation of Leonardo Da Vinci. Leo tells her she can’t be a painter, but she says she can. This goes on until he lets her train because if you read every other “asshole teacher reluctantly accepts a young apprentice” story, you’ve read them all. Presumably more Renaissance painters from history but re-imagined as anime men will show up. Maybe at the end of show, Arte will become a legendary painter with her positive attitude and shining personality. Just don’t read her loosely related real life counterpart Artemisia Gentileschi’s story if you don’t want a sad ending.
There’s plenty of colorful, pretty animation and wonderful scenery in this show, that ultimately produces something no different from a by-the-books, 90s animated movie that tried to ride the Disney Renaissance’s coattails. It’s like a pretty snowglobe but with nothing in it, much like Violet Evergarden a couple years ago. Arte seems like a decent enough show you could show to children, but then I saw it’s an adaptation of a seinen manga so maybe the show won’t stay so inoffensively sweet? Maybe not? From the chapters I’ve skimmed through, it keeps on being this mediocre and safe. But the show looks nice, so you could do worse for background noise. – BloodyMarquis
BNA: Brand New Animal
Dear Studio Trigger,
It’s been a while. Not in the sense that you haven’t been doing anything of note in the past few years, but in that it’s been a few years since I’ve actually been excited about anything you’ve been doing. Space Patrol Luluco was the last time I really had no asterisks attached fun with one of your stuff. Kiznaiver bored me. I never got around to watching Little Witch Academia (sacrilege, I know). Darling in the Franxxx was a mess that I probably enjoyed in all the wrong ways. SSSS.Gridman just didn’t click with me. And people have told me to just ignore Promare, so who knows when I’ll ever watch that. The most hyped I’ve been for a Trigger work in the past four years was when I learned you were doing the opening animations for Indivisible and Shantae 5. Then I heard that you were doing a furry action show. You now have my undivided attention for the Spring 2020 season.
The problem with your productions, at least for me, has always been one with narrative. Your crew rarely fails in the animation department, with every single frame in a show or film often being a gorgeously kinetic drawing, and many scenes making clever use of limited animation to keep the energy high and the budget low. And while that’s delivering the eye candy, the music is close behind to serve as probably the best soundtrack you’ll hear out of a show that given season. But much of your catalogue tends to have underwhelming stories that fail to take advantage of all that talent, often being too bland for what I expect from a production house led by people who made stuff like Gurren Lagann during their Gainax days: a fact that you seem loathe to let us forget, considering how often a certain character design gets reused in your work. BNA: Brand New Animal is thankfully looking to be one of exceptions to that trend, though; a fun and strong story that takes full advantage of your aforementioned strengths, with no Kaminas in sight.
The series instantly grabbed me on concept alone: teenage girl becomes an anthro overnight and ends up as part of an action-filled detective story when she travels to a city filled with fellow beastmen to figure out why the hell she now has a bushy tail. And based on the first episode alone (though six are currently available should you want to fire up your VPN and check out Japanese Netflix), your squad is managing to back that premise up with fantastic execution. From Michiru trying to stealthily leave her hometown and make her way to Anima City, to running from violent specists on her way there, to the lighthearted fun of the city festival, to Shirou delivering a painful beatdown to the mercenaries who ruined the jovial occasion, I was completely invested in everything happening on screen: laughing at all the neat jokes, relishing all the sweet action, and wondering about all the weird abilities our heroine has (90% sure tanukis can’t do half the shit she can pull off). BNA’s first episode was fun in a way I haven’t felt with one of your anime since 2013’s Kill la Kill — which just so happened to be a Nakashima-penned show as well. So just don’t copy that one’s “now there’s aliens” twist, and this will have a good chance of being my favourite anime of the year alongside Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken.
Sincerely,
RacattackForce
Digimon Adventure:
It’s hard to be disappointed. All long-running franchises, especially the ones that primarily exist to sell toys to children, are doomed to repeat themselves. Even more so when you haven’t had a consistent success since the early 2000s. There are some temporary successes, sure. Xros Wars did well enough to earn a sequel, Cyber Sleuth had much better than expected sales to warrant a follow-up, but those don’t hit the amount of attention and money a company wants, they want the attention where you could print money just by showing stock footage of MetalGreymon shooting missiles at somebody. And so they’re brief solutions that keep a brand from lying dormant like the other toy anime shows that had a good run before falling off. But some companies don’t want their properties to die, definitely not for artistic reasons, but so they can keep the money flowing, even if it’s barely a fraction of what they used to make. Then they look at the aging fans who are still following the product years after the fact, and decide the best way to profit is to recycle.
Admittedly, these first two episodes are fun. It’s refreshing to see Greymon and Garurumon with actual animation instead of the slide-show look they had back in the old days, almost to assure you Toei won’t Super this. It’s not going to be like Tri this time and test your patience. But then the pieces are put together, and it becomes too much like Our War Game for my liking. Our War Game’s a pretty fucking good Digimon piece, but it’s also one of the most overused influences any Digimon media after uses. Even the original director took the short film and remade it into a feature-length movie a decade ago. And then, Omegamon shows up because everyone liked that bit in Our War Game too, despite how much it throws away power scaling and makes every other Digimon after less interesting. In fact, none of the other six have shown up, and Sora, Mimi, and Joe haven’t even had lines. It’s all “Digimon: The Best Hits”, fun to watch, but ignoring everything I liked about Digimon like the character interaction and all the weird concepts the Digital World threw at you.
And yeah, like I said, this show’s just meant to sell merchandise, so Greymon shooting fire at enemies will always take precedence over story and character drama. That’s been the case even in seasons like Tamers. Pretending Digimon should be made for art’s sake is naive. But what made Digimon stand out from all the other kids with monsters anime back in the day, and what keeps people talking about Digimon for twenty years, was that it could mix drama and storytelling with all the toy-shilling and game-hawking well enough that I could enjoy the show without any real desire to buy anything with the word “Digimon” on the cover. But over the years, as the bad installments outnumber the good, the characterizations become chores to watch, the arcs become retreads, and the good seasons appear to be made by freak accident in hindsight, I’ve found I like Digimon more as a concept than its execution. Yet Digimon won’t keep going due to its concepts, but only because fans like seeing Omegamon pop up with a brand new cape. – BloodyMarquis
The Eighth Son? Are You Kidding Me?
Son, I want to inform you about the escalating horrors of reading. One afternoon, in the library, a fucking Gabriel Garcia Marquez book fell on my friend’s head and gave him a fatal seizure. Then the next day, my aunt got a papercut after reading Lily Singh’s memoir and died on the spot. And the after that, I saw a guy choke on a Hop on Pop book. Now the doctors said she had hemophilia, and that my friend had epilepsy and a soft head, and Hop on Pop isn’t food, but I blame reading. I blame the literary devils for cursing my loved ones and that one man into a not-so-early grave. Not a day goes by when I want to enter a Narnes and Boble and burn their precious books, but I don’t know how to light a match because I can’t read. And because your mother won’t let me start fires. But just remember, don’t take a look in a book. LeVar Burton takes adrenochrome anyway, and you know what andrenochrome comes from? Because I don’t, because I can’t read. For the greater good. – Bibble Madibble the Fiftyfibble
Gal & Dino
A drunk girl wakes up to find a dinosaur in her room, who quickly becomes her roommate. Wacky shit happens. The end. Except that was just another short, so here’s another one. And another one. And now it’s live-action. And now it’s all sad. And that one singer from Pop Team Epic appeared and—
This show is one long practical joke on the viewer and I love it. I didn’t realize a show this season about someone living with a muppet dinosaur could be so charming. The bad part is it only starts being charming when it stops being an anime. Not that the animated parts are bad, but the live-action segments are just more endearing. Perhaps it’s the amateur quality of the animation, but when it’s just a live-action guy and his dino, the show feels like I’m reading a newspaper comic written by fun aliens. But when it’s two-dimensional, the show just seems like any other gag anime. Nothing pops until the pencils fall and the cameras turn on. So what I’m saying is skip the first half of the episode, and you’ll be fine. – BloodyMarquis
Gleipnir
My immediate thought before pressing play on the first episode of Gleipnir was that this was going to be the edgiest show of the season. There’s a lot of opportunity for fun in the premise: a teenage boy who gains the ability to turn into a monster, except that monster is basically a superpowered living mascot costume that his sadistic classmate can jump inside and operate like a meat puppet whenever he’s too much of a wuss to actually murder his opponents. The poster and show description suggested that Gleipnir could be schlocky, gory fun in the same vein as Killing Bites (he has pretty sharp fangs, after all), with me even having some hope that I could maybe enjoy it for the reasons the creators hoped. Sadly, neither happened by the time the credits rolled. I came away from the experience unimpressed, and sad that this episode didn’t even grace us with the meat puppet bit of the premise.
All this first episode grants the audience is a lot of build-up and questions. You’ll be wondering what the deal is with the Super Mario star coins, for example. This isn’t a problem on its own, but when the most action-packed moment of your edgy battle anime’s first episode is just someone punching a whole in the wall, you better have some interesting dialogue and character interactions to pick up the slack. Unfortunately, Gleipnir is very lacking in that regard, with half the dialogue being generic lines you’ve probably heard in dozens of other anime over the years, and our main characters being a bland boy who – despite his admittedly justified whining and confusion about his situation – doesn’t care about getting answers to why his life is now like this, and a sadistic girl whose behavior is more aggravating than it is entertaining, despite the fact I should definitely be on the side of the person who the MC nearly raped in his monster form. Then again, the character herself only brings up the sick nature of this up as a brief afterthought, as if the sexual assault was as according to plan as her “attempted suicide.” Her being our resident fanservice girl only makes it worse.
There are definitely pieces of intrigue here that will have others coming back next week to a show that will hopefully be ready by then to start playing with its premise and answering some questions. The entire cold open in particular, what with the glitchy POV and strange gentleman climbing out of a vending machine, serves as the highlight of the episode and an event that, had the rest of the episode been worth a damn, I’d be eager to see explained. But continuing to watch the episode had my interest in the story quickly waning, and by the credits, what had my attention the most was my private question of why the MC took his classmate’s photo blackmail so seriously when his monster form just looks like someone wearing a mascot costume. You’re graduating in a year, man, so just claim you have a fursuit and get on with your life. – RacattackForce
Kakushigoto
From the creator of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei comes another gag series full of Japanese wordplay and contrasts between the innocent and the obscene. An ecchi manga artist must hide his career from his daughter until she turns 18, but this challenge is easier said than done. It’s fun. It’s sweet. It’s crude. I’m fine with it. The show can be pretty funny one second, but the next, it goes back to being fine. The wordplay varies a lot here. There’s some that’s kind of witty as soon as I read the translation, but then there’s calling legendary manga artists “mangoes”. I get what you’re doing, but it’s hard to muster up anything beyond a smile. But I did like the Starbucks joke, so that evens out.
Maybe it’s not my thing, but the show is a little too easy-going. I wish the jokes hit harder, and while I do like the characters, it all seems fine. Even the premise isn’t as ridiculous as it should be. The dad being a complete goofball I get, but I wish they could raise it up a level or two. Perhaps in the next few episodes, the show gains some momentum. But right now, everything needs more oomph to it. I don’t know how to describe it without sounding like a shitty film director, but it needs a little more dimension. I always wished Zetsubou Sensei had more of the chaotic animation and ideas its vibrant openings promised, and the same goes here. – BloodyMarquis
Listeners
You would think taking the Tale of the Pied Piper and setting it in a dystopian future could be cool, but it’s all very malaise in this first episode. When I heard about how there’s no music in the world the characters live in and seeing the oppressive mayor destroy a jukebox just for playing a song, I noticed how thin the text of this show was gonna be. It’s something I could see working better in a series for kids, but not in the tone this show’s going for. I think the intended audience knows that listening to music can be good and anybody telling you not to is an asshole. But this show wants to tell you that fact like a sledgehammer to the face.
It’s not creative in the naming either. The heroes of the story who fight evil are called Players. The monsters who plague Earth are called Earless, even though they all resemble big-eared rats. The main character’s called Echo. There’s no subtlety in any of this episode. It deflates what could have been a decent premise into a blunt instrument. I’m sure the cast are going to meet an alien species called the Tone Deaf and fight an arch-enemy called White Noise. Or better yet, they’ll have to fight the Man and the Establishment. Maybe if the show becomes what the ending credits promise, a mecha show brimming with Prince references, then it will be worth watching. But for now, it’s dull. Especially dull for something that’s come from a writer of shows like Samurai Champloo or Stand Alone Complex. – BloodyMarquis
My Next Life as a Villainess
Alas, here’s yet another isekai video game thingy, except the main character’s a girl living in a dating sim universe this time. But instead of being the love interest all the indistinguishable pretty boys have to swoon, she’s destined to be the villain who suffers death or exile by the end, so as a connoisseur of dating games, she’ll pull out every trick in the book to defy her fate. I’ll admit, this sounds like a much better premise than most other isekais. And I wasn’t looking for an exit door when sitting through this episode, so it already has two comparatively major pluses over something like The Eighth Son, but I can’t say I was wowed or impressed. More passively relieved than anything.
Because while the show sounds interested in fucking around with dating sim tropes, the first episode only plays with them instead of twisting them inside out. We already have anime that subvert stupid romance plots, so much so that it can’t even be called subversive, so maybe it’s time to take it even farther instead of dancing around. Same issue I’ve got with Arte, that we’re uncovering already discovered country. – BloodyMarquis
Second Villainess
You can only see so many isekai come out each season before you start losing your shit and spend half a Discord call screaming about how much you just want the now decade-long long trend to die. This isn’t to say I don’t like any anime from the past decade that follows the current isekai formula of “modern-day Japanese teen gets transported to a fantasy world with magic.” I was alongside everyone else watching Re:Zero and yelling at their screens when Subaru threw away Rem’s love confession like a fucking asshole, I mean, she would die for you and is a million times cuter than Emilia, you bloody moron , but oversaturation has a tendency to make one jaded towards the idea of getting hit with more of that genre, unwilling to parse through the chaff to find anything worthwhile. In that regard, My Next Life as a Villainess isn’t chaff, but isn’t the best quality hay either. It isn’t going to wow anyone, but it uses its premise well enough to to be a pleasant, comfy experience.
The plot is simple enough, with our heroine being someone who was reincarnated not as the protagonist of the world, but an evil rival character. A role that she probably might have embraced if it wasn’t for the fact that following the plot would end with her six feet under. And so hijinks ensue as Catarina tries to make it so she can actually get past her 18th birthday, and in the process, unknowingly takes the protagonist role for herself. Which in this case means accidentally seducing all her friends. I’m a sucker for romantic comedies (my first manga was Karin), and Catarina is already showing herself to be a charming protagonist, with her absent-minded personality and game knowledge combining to form a lovable dunce whose plans come to accidentally succeed as much as they intentionally do. Though there admittedly isn’t a bevy of laugh-out-loud moments, the show has a general easy-going atmosphere, despite the countdown clock aspect of the premise, that I feel comfortable spending half-an-hour each week relaxing in. Phrased another way, this show is cute, makes me smile, and sometimes that’s all I want or need from a piece of entertainment. Plus, I can’t hate a show where an episode ends with an eight-year-old breaking down doors with an axe.
While this show does nothing to stem my rallying cry that the genre should go on ice for a years, Villainess’s simple tweaks like not making the character the in-universe protagonist and shifting the mechanics from JRPG to dating sim are enough to make me feel like there’s still some imagination left in the vast ocean of isekai that we’ve been getting month after month, and makes me hopeful that we’ll soon get other settings and “gameplay” thrown into the mix. Dating sims are fun, but when are we going to get a teen hit by a truck and wake up in a horror world ala Silent Hill? Or a sci-fi universe like Mass Effect? Or the exercise dimension of Wii Fit? – RacattackForce
Shachou, It’s Time For Battle!
Weird gates fall from the heavens and lead to cool dungeons. Companies form to take advantage of the treasures that can be found. MC is pushed by a childhood friend to take over her dad’s failing one. That’s your plot, but I got distracted by the character designs for the most part. I hate all of them. And I couldn’t focus on the story because I spent the entire runtime complaining to Rynnec and Marquis about how much the designs suck. The main character is the first time in years I’ve gotten confused about the sex of an anime protagonist. The main girl has pressure values in her hair and wears gloves and boots with the ugliest shade of orange. Another girl has electrical plugs attached to her hair and has a dumb heart cutout at the bottom of her shirt to bring attention to her crotch. And the other girl has a stupid headband and a breast harness. I could rewatch the episode and put more effort into this write-up, probably. Give the show some respect. But why bother? The show is as basic as any anime based on a mobile game comes. The bad character designs are the only highlight, as everything else this adaptation tosses at the viewer is painfully unmemorable outside one joke involving the MC having to watch an employee training video, and maybe the running gag of him confusing his childhood friend’s business talk with a romantic confession. But those two things aren’t even as funny as that single line in The 8th Son, Are You Kidding Me where the dad says he doesn’t know how to read. And seeing as I wouldn’t recommend that show, I’m sure as hell not recommending this. – RacattackForce
Tower of God
Last fall, I turned 25. It’s sometimes hard to remember that I’m in my mid-20s. I still live in the same bedroom I’ve had since middle school. I still spend my free time reading fanfiction, playing Nintendo games, and occasionally strumming a guitar. I can, and thanks to the current COVID-19 pandemic regularly do, stay up all night for days in a row with little consequence. Pursuing my Master’s in counseling and doing contract work at a local gallery are the only things that prevent me from being called a NEET, but I still feel that I’m basically an overgrown teenager spinning his wheels whenever things are a bit too dull. But time keeps on slipping, and so reminders frequently pop up to remind me that I’m no longer a high schooler. All those words to say that I think teenagers will absolutely dig Tower of God, but I’m going to have to pass.
Tower of God, adapted from a webcomic I’ve known about in passing due to the teenagers in my church who watch anime religiously, has a bland start. Yes, I start to wake up towards the end of the episode, when the series decides it is done with setup and finally starts to revel in the “every floor is a different challenge” part of its premise, and I have no doubt that it will be enjoyable going forward. But it didn’t leave the best first impression and I couldn’t help but think of it as being a “starter anime” throughout the entire runtime. If I was ten years younger, I would have probably been into much of what the show will have to offer as the main character climbs his way to the heavens. Probably would have been new and exciting; oh shit, what kind of world is this? Every floor is a brand new challenge like some weird video game! The main character’s sword is actually a hot female spirit? Sweet. And the other girl who gave it to him is a tsundere? I don’t know what that word means, but I like it! But as it is, I view the writing as standard and the characters are too cookie-cutter for me to immediately care about them. So I’m giving this one a pass, though I’ll happily say it’s better than other action shows this season like Listeners or Shachou, Battle no Jikan desu! (not like that’s a low bar with the latter one). – RacattackForce