Month: July 2013

Yellow Mosaic (Kiniro Mosaic)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a 4-panel gag manga about an English girl transfering to Japan. (Except the first 15 minutes in this episode are a flashback that explains why she’d do that.)

Characters

Shinobu, our initial point-of-view character. A few years ago, she spent a week of vacation in England at some friends of her parents’ country house. (Good thing they were fluent in Japanese, because she can’t speak English to save her life.) By all appearances, everyone had a great time.

Alice, the daughter of said family, was very shy and reluctant to approach Shinobu at first, but by the end of the week they were BFF. And this was such an important encounter for her that a few years later, she transfered to Shinobu’s high school after learning the language. And she’s staying at her home, too.

There are a couple of Shinobu’s school friends (the nice one and the sarcastic one, respectively, in contrast with Shinobu’s ditzy ways) that look like they’re going to be part of the main cast. The OP sequence (shown near the end here) also makes it look like Alice’s best friend in England is also going to be prominently featured, which is a bit problematic, as it’d kinda dilute the uniqueness of this blonde foreigner in Japan (which is what the series takes its name from, after all).

Production Values

Gorgeous backgrounds, although the CG landscape during the train ride is a bit of a misfire. Still, this is quite nice to look at.

I’m really not sure about the score, which makes damn sure to underscore that Shinobu’s original trip was an Epic Adventure and plays up the sense of wonder up to eleven. It works, but it’s a bit heavy-handed when the events are so mundane.

Overall Impression

Il was all ready to dismiss this one quickly, but you know what ? This is actually quite pleasant to watch. We’re all used to foreigners randomly attending anime schools (often rationalized as half-Japanese or whatever), but this commits all the way into re-establishing the novelty factor of it and having fun with the cultural differences. Having all the English characters talking English (with subtitles) when they should helps quite a lot, too (although the voice actors seem to struggle more than a bit with the accent.) I’m less thrilled with how quaint England looks, but it’s not too distracting.

I also quite like the relationship between Alice & Shinobu, especially how once in a while Shinobu will absent-mindedly do something ditzy that’s very scary for Alice. Comedy gold, there.

It’s more than a bit rough around the edges, and I’m not sure the joke can sustain 12 episodes. But I’m willing to give it a bit of rope, which I didn’t expect coming in.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013 – Page 5.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya

(10 episodes)

What’s it about ?

A comedy spin-off of Fate/stay night with Illya as a magical girl.

Characters

Illya, our prepubescent heroine, who lives in a weird parallel universe where the von Einzberg family is all happy, and especially her mother is stated not to be dead (although she’s on a business trip or something). She’s also got a random older sister, as well as Taiga acting as housekeeper and “cousin” Shirou living with them. Er, sure.

It turns out it was Rin who was originally given the magical girl powers, but since she kept using them to feud with her new rival Luvia (a haughty noble cliché) instead of their nominal goal of hunting “Class cards”, bother their power artifacts got fed up with them and left. (While they were battling in the sky. Ouch.)

Magical Ruby, Rin’s wand, has a LOT of personality (the same for Magical Sapphire, Luvia’s, but it gets less screentime). Unfortunately, when it stumbles onto Illya while looking for a replacement for Rin, that makes it sounds fishier than Kyubey having just binged on salmon. Ruby is a very nasty bugger who isn’t above tricking Illya if that suits its purposes.

The OP sequence makes it look like there’s going to be an age-appropriate rival for Illya (presumably powered by Sapphire), but that’s for future episodes.

Production Values

Well, it’s a bit hard to tell since the streamed pre-air had a lot of nasty blocking whenever there’s a little action, but this looks quite good indeed.

Overall Impression

Well, I’ll give it that : it’s funny, and you really don’t need to know anything about the Fate/ series to understand it. Let’s be honest : those are very shallow versions of the characters, put into new roles for comedic effect. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Well, except that I don’t see the joke carrying 10 episodes ; and the genre-parody at work here is a bit too bad-natured for me to tolerate too long. It’s nasty for the sake of being nasty, and I can only laugh at that for so long.

If you’re a die-hard fan of the franchise, you’ll probably get more out of this than I do ; there are tons of easter eggs and it’s as good as such a comedy spin-off can be. But I already have a lot on my plate this season, and I can do without this one.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013 – Page 5.

Il Sole Penetra le Illusioni – Day Break Illusion (Genei wo Kakeru Taiyou)

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

We’ve all been waiting for a Madoka clone that completely misses the point, haven’t we ?
(Okay, that’s probably a very unfair comparison.)

Characters

Akari, our protagonist. This young girl is an apprentice tarot card reader, and quite good at it ; she works at the local fortunetelling house run by three eccentrics. By all appearances, this makes her very popular. On the other hand, she’s an orphan (her dead mother also had the talent) and lives in a foster family.

Fuyuna, the daughter of that foster family (I think ; this series’ not good with exposition), at first looks like she’s taking her eccentric “sister” in stride (such as the plant overrunning Akari’s room) ; but it’s clear her resentment at her popularity (despite Fuyuna being the class’s top student) is slowly growing and eating away at her.

And then Fuyuna gets possessed by something ; Akari manifests magical girl powers (which comes at a surprise to her) and kills the thing attacking her… including Fuyuna. And then things get really weird, as time rewinds back a day and everything resumes as normal… except Akari’s foster family never had any daughter.

WTF ?

There are three other magical girls hovering on the edge of the plot and cryptically monitoring what’s happening (without the courtesy of giving any explanation to the audience). They rescue Akari after the fortunetelling house gets burned down by a random zombie fire demon (I don’t know what the heck either).

Production Values

I really dislike the character designs and colour palette, as they make everyone look flat (and they really don’t need that). Other than that, I guess it’s decent (if very pedestrian), and it’s got the one good special effect idea to indicate that something weird has happened.

Overall Impression

Warning : the above summary may have given you the impression that interesting stuff happened in this episode. That couldn’t be farther from the truth, as a parade of flat and boring characters are put through the wringer of horrible things happening to them for no discernible reason, without any sign of a proper antagonist. I have no clue how you can make this so dull, but somehow this show has succeeded.

Who knows, maybe it’ll start making sense next episode, when we hopefully finally get some exposition in. But I have no confidence in this mess of a series, and I don’t plan on sticking with it to find out.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013 – Page 4.

Love Lab (Renai Lab)

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Comedy about students at an all-girls middle school practicing romance.

Characters

Riko, aka “The Wild One”, because she does delinquent-ish things like hiking her skirt up and tying her hair up. (This is the kind of elite middle school that frowns down on such trivial matters). Also, she’s athletic and more than a bit of a tomboy, which has netted her many female admirers. To tell the truth, she’s a bit bored, until she stumbles upon…

Maki, aka “The Princess”, the student council president. To everyone else, she’s perfect : diligent at her work, good grades, pretty. In reality, though, she’s a complete goofball that Riko finds practicing kissing on a bodypillow. Maki is absolutely obsessed with preparing herself for romance, and forcefully enlists Riko as a coach, because surely she must have tons of experience ? (Riko has too much pride to admit her love life has been pretty crap so far.)

There were originally three other members to the student council, but…
– The actual president (Maki was only vice-president originally) got annoyed by Maki doing all the work and leaving nothing for her to do ;
– The treasurer got thrown out for acting way too creepily while counting the money ;
– And the secretary still comes in occasionally, but she’s got so little presence you’d barely notice she was there.

Production Values

Perfectly okay for this kind of thing.

Overall Impression

I’m shocked : I was in stitches for the whole episode once we got to the reveal about Maki. This is very funny stuff, mostly because Maki never stops being hilarious. This combination of earnestness and cluelessness works perfectly, especially as she’s still able to be menacing to Riko when she feels the need to. Riko herself has some good jokes, too ; the flashbacks to her failed love life have perfect comedic pacing.

This is why I’m glad I’m doing those season reviews and watching the first episode of everything : once in a while, one of these shows that were completely under my radar and would never have tried out otherwise (how can you make a title more unpromising than “Love Lab” ?) turns out to be a very pleasant surprise.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013 – Page 4.

Danganronpa – the Animation

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

15 of the most promising (and eccentric) of this generation’s high school students, each with their own speciality, have been scouted by this new super-shiny academy… but they learn just after stepping inside that it’s all a trap and they can’t leave unless they kill one of the others.

Adapted from a visual novel that I’ve seen described as “Battle Royale meets Phoenix Wright”, and that sounds about accurate.

Characters

THE GAMEMASTER is “Monobear”, an impressively obnoxious bear puppet. You can’t even strangle it for stress relief, as it can self-destruct and it’s got spare bodies.

Makoto, our protagonist, is THE LUCKY GUY. (Or maybe THE UNLUCKY GUY, given the circumstances.) He’s utterly ordinary on every respect and got his place via random lottery. Really, he’s just there for audience projection, and has no personality whatsoever.

Sayaka, THE IDOL, is the one familiar face among the crowd : they attended the same middle school, and for some reason she remembers this complete nobody.

Also of note : Celestia, THE GAMBLER, who’s already trying to game the system ; Mondo, THE THUG BIKER, who easily goes into other people’s faces ; and Kyouko, who’s only describes as THE ??? and is thus immediately mightily suspect.

(Other participants include THE HALL MONITOR, a guy whose chief talent seems to be obeying rules ; THE FIGHTER, a 8-feet-tall mountain of muscles ; THE SWIMMER, who’s very cheerful ; THE BOOKWORM, always anxious and paranoid ; THE MODEL, a gyaru stereotype ; THE HACKER, who’s adorably cute ; THE FORTUNE TELLER, who, er, yeah ; THE BASEBALL PLAYER ; THE SCION, whose talent seems to lord over everyone ; and the FANZINE PUBLISHER, your token overweight otaku.)

Production Values

The least you can say is that it’s got a very distinctive style : cooler-than-thou character designs, surrealist colorful backgrounds, and weird shot transitions. On the other hand, it wears its status as a visual novel adaptation on its sleeve, down to the exact camera angles and the characters having stock idle animations. Most of the time, the aesthetic succeeds ; but there are times when it gets a bit awkward.

Overall Impression

Look, it’s another “let’s play” of a popular visual novel by the director of Persona 4 ! Not that there’s anything wrong with that ; indeed, this one seems better suited to his strengths, as the jerky pacing suits the darkly comedic tone. And this story sounds like a fun ride : the characters aside from the PC are the right sort of quirky, and I’m intrigued to see where it goes.

Okay, I’m game. Bring it on.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013 – Page 3.

Rozen Maiden (2013)

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Magical dolls fighting each other.

(In case you’re wondering, this is a complete reboot of the franchise ; not having watched any other version, I’m treating this as a new show.)

Characters

Jun, our male lead. He may be a recluse, but the breakneck pace doesn’t have room for much elaboration. He receives a box with a living winding-doll out of nowhere one day, and stays in perpetual bewilderment of all the craziness that ensues.

Shinku, said winding-doll. She’s part of a lot of seven that are part of the “Alice” competition, where they all battle against each other. I gather that the idea is that each one has a portion of the soul of someone important, and the goal is for the winner to collect all seven bits, by absorbing their opponents’.

Suigintou is clearly the baddie amongst the seven : she’s got black wings, which is never a good sign, engineers confrontations between the other, and kill-steals on at least one occasion.

Suiseiseki is at least on friendly terms with Shinku, and doesn’t look like much of a threat anyway -desu. She’s come to ask some help against her twin Souseiseki -desu.

We actually see all of the dolls this episode, including the one who doesn’t have a proper body anymore.

Production Values

This looks much nicer than I’m used to from Studio DEEN, with tons of CG elements that sometimes look a bit like overkill (the ballpoint-pen, really ?). There’s no denying this has got tons of budget, at least for the first episode.

The OP is the ALI project doing the same song they always do. The ED is a much more atmospheric piece.

Overall Impression

Hey, who’s got their finger stuck on the fast-forward button ? There’s just so much stuff happening in this episode that it becomes a bit overwhelming, and doesn’t allow much depth for any of the characters. As a result, there’s very little incentive to care about anything that happens. There doesn’t seem to be much substance beyond the battle royale plot involving dolls with pretty clothes.

The main problem seems to be that it needs to slow the hell down and give the characters room to breathe ; as I don’t expect it to do that with such a short running time, I won’t be bothering with it.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013 – Page 3.

Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C3 (Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C³-bu)

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Slice-of-life comedy about an (all-female) airsoft high school club.

Characters

Yura, our point-of-view character. She’s a very shy and introverted freshman who’s just entered the Stella Academy, which seems to have more budget than small African nations. She’s trying to change herself and get some friends, but it’s an uphill struggle.

Sonora, her roommate, barely appears onscreen at all ; as a senior, she’s still off visiting her family before school starts. Yura finds tons of guns and military attire in the room & starts getting a bit suspicious…

Besides Sonora, there are four members to the “C3” club : the strategic-minded one, the tea-and-cake-providing one, the hyperactive small one, and the way-too-much-into-this one. They’re definitely looking for more members, and would be delighted to add the weirdo they found play-acting Rambo with Sonora’s gear to their group.

Production Values

Hey, since when does Gainax have budget again ? This looks quite nice indeed, with beautiful backgrounds and a very well-designed mock-battle scene at the end. (I especially love the jazzy soundtrack that starts playing there, making it very intense indeed.)

Overall Impression

Hey, this was surprisingly fun ! It’s not a particularly innovative concept (“cute girls doing cute things… with guns !”), but the characters are charming and the jokes work. It’s just very-well executed overall.

This looks like a keeper to me.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013 – Page 3.

Servant x Service

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Work-com about civil servants at the welfare office.

(Adapted from a manga by the creator of Working!!.)

Characters

Yamagami, our protagonist. She has just joined the welfare office for one purpose only : finding and exacting revenge on the person who authorized her parents to name her

Lucy Kimiko Akie Airi Shiori Rinne Yoshiho Ayano Tomika Chitose Sanae Mikiko Ichika […]

. For very understandable reasons, this is a bit of a berserk button for her, and she’s got a general grudge against public servants.

Hasebe, another new hire, is the epitome of everything she hates public servants : he’s lazy, takes every opportunity to slack off, and uses his job to try and pick up girls. He’s also surprisingly competent and reliable on the very rare occasions he takes his job seriously and helps the other newbies out.

Miyoshi, the third newbie, is very awkward, but absolutely loved by the customers. Maybe it’s because she looks like the ideal daughter.

Ichimiya, their supervisor, has eight years of experience… and absolutely no clue how to handle them. He seems to spend half his time running ragged trying to prevent Hasebe from slacking off.

Chihaya, Yamagami’s senior at her desk, is very efficient at her job but sounds terminally world-weary. Yeah, this job can do this to you after a while.

Production Values

Quite nice ; a lot of the jokes are sold by the attention given to body language in this. Also, I quite enjoyed the gimmick for the OP sequence (which is only slightly less catchy than “Someone! one! one!”).

Overall Impression

Even better than I expected. This is a very funny series, made all the more hilarious because all of it sounds so true. It strikes exactly the right balance between mocking and empathizing with its characters. It’s also quite well-paced, letting the mystery of why the heck Yamagami is always hesitating before omitting to say her given name when introducing herself build up nicely. And it’s got more than one joke, which is always welcome in a gag show.

Definitely a must-see for me this season.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013 – Page 2.

Chronicles of the Going-Home Club (Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

The “Going-Home Club” is an euphemism for the students who don’t join any club and just go home after class. (In the Japanese school system, there’s a lot of pressure to join a club, any club for social purposes ; the students who don’t are usually a minority.) Here, the joke is that there’s an actual official Going-Home Club, with clubroom and everything.

Adapted from a 4-panel gag manga, obviously.

Characters

Natsuki, our point-of-view character ; as a high school freshman, she joins the Going-Home Club on a Wacky Misunderstanding and spends the whole episode (and probably the whole series) complaining on how this club makes no sense.

Karin, the other new recruit of the club. The naive one, who pushed Natsuki into joining despite having herself no clue what the club’s about.

Before that, the club had three members : the very enthusiastic president Sakura, and two high-class girls whose social standing demands that they belong to a club but presumably didn’t want the hassle of join a real club.

Production Values

Not much good. There are some decent backgrounds, but the animation is very limited and the character designs leave something to be desired.

Overall Impression

Not very good. It’s got some decent jokes (I loved the “premature cliffhangers” where the ED music starts playing despite the show not being over), but they get fewer and farther between as the episode goes, and the premise is already wearing thin by the end of it. I just can’t see the joke supporting a full series.

Just not funny enough for me to bother with.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013 – Page 2.

FREE! – Iwatobi Swim Club

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Sports show about FREESTYLE SWIMMING ! Well, whenever they actually get around to restarting the swimming club, presumably.

Characters

Haruka, our lead character. Utterly obsessed with swimming, to the point of wearing a swimsuit (and often not much else) at all times. Unfortunately, his current high school doesn’t have a functional pool, let alone a swimming club. And it’s too cold to dive into the ocean yet. Not that he’s got much competition drive at this point, anyway. If only he got some spark…

Makoto, his best friend from way back. The kind of childhood friend that’s totally comfortable with entering his house, finding him in his bath, and gently scolding him for being late. It’s pretty obvious that Haruka is mostly ignoring him, but Makoto can’t take the hint. He’s the guy who acts as a straight man in all conversations.

Nagisa, who used to be in the same swimming club back in elementary school, and only just came back in town, joining the same high school. He’s kinda miffed that his old friends aren’t doing any competition swimming anymore, but as the enthusiastic one he doesn’t let that stop him from convincing the two others to break into their old (abandoned) elementary school at night so that they can retrieve the trophy they had left in a time capsule.

Rin, formerly the fourth member of their relay team and Haruka’s rival ; he’s just come back from Australia, but has enrolled into the super-elite school nearby with the top-class swimming club. His mere reappearance (checking in on the buried trophy too) is enough to start reigniting Haruka’s competitive drive.

Gou, Rin’s sister, is in the three others’ high school too. She doesn’t seem to be very close to her brother, and I highly suspect she’s going to be their inevitable swimming club’s manager or something. (Also, in keeping with the running joke that all the boys have girl-ish names, she has a boy-ish one.)

Their new homeroom teacher is presumably going to be important too (club advisor, most probably), as a point is made to mention that teaching was her second-choice career. Three guesses what she tried to do before that, and the first two don’t count.

Production Values

This features KyoAni’s usual attention to detail regarding backgrounds and animation of body language… which in this case means much focus on those young muscled, supple half-naked bodies. But hey, it’s not that much different from your usual testosterone-ladden sports show.

Speaking of testosterone, I love the ridiculously gung-ho rap tunes that start playing whenever Haruka & Rin are in the same room.

Overall Impression

The question was on everyone’s mind after those trailers : is this just trolling, or is there a proper show in there beyond the homoerotic subtext ? Well, the good news is that this does have a perfectly serviceable premise… but it doesn’t rise much above the sea of clichés inherent to the genre. It also has no subtlety whatsoever. (The naming joke mentioned above is spelt out explicitly, for example.)

But hey, I have a weakness for sports shows, and I have no problem watching one that’s in about the same league as, say, Kuroko’s Basketball. (Well, a bit prettier, maybe.) I’m probably going to keep with it, although I really don’t expect it to be great.

via [In which I review] New anime, Summer 2013 – Page 2.