Month: July 2015

Summer 2015 capsules

Out first show of the season is My Wife is the Student Council President (Okusama ga Seitokaichou!), a series of 8-minute shorts adapted from an erotic comedy manga series. I have to say I feared the worst from the title. An underage wife ?

The good news is that the premise doesn’t involve any actual marriage yet and merely involves the student council president being, er, very “sex-liberated” (condoms for everyone !), and aggressively pursuing her vice-president. So far, he’s not receptive at all to her stalker ways ; which anyone would be even without the huge stick in his ass.

The bad news is that it isn’t really funny. I just can’t laugh with the show, as I find the title character more horrific than cute. And the boring, by-the-numbers point-of-view character doesn’t help matters.

Don’t bother with looking this one up.

 

Wakaba Girl is a typical adaptation of a 4-panel gag manga as a series of 8-minute-long shorts (extended OP sequence included). It’s basically a “cute girls being cute” affair, with the central gimmick of its heroine Wakaba coming from a very high-class family and being delighted to attend a normal high school where she can make normal friends. Cue many jokes from her being more than a bit sheltered.

It’s cute, reasonably well-paced and funny, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. That’s plenty enough reasons for me to keep watching.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015

 

Wakako-zake is a series of 2-minute (OP included) shorts about a woman who eats out at restaurants, with the constant in her menu being alcohol. And, er, that’s it. Not much in the way of jokes or story (aside from a couple of dudes trying to pick her up), just some food porn. Pass along, nothing to see here.

 

Sequel Watch !
– Dragonball Super picks up a few months after the Majin Buu arc, which means we’re ignoring Z’s epilogue with Uub and its timeskip. (To say nothing of GT.) The good news is that no knowledge from the recent movies seems to be required ; the new antagonists are introduced properly and seem to be heading towards their first meetings with the heroes. The bad news is that it’s a very slow start, reintroducing the dozens of members of the supporting cast and what they’re up to now. Even then, I think we missed Krillin & family, as well as most of the minor useless members of the Z-fighters ; we’re mostly focused on the extended Son/Briefs/Satan households for now. There’s little in the way of actual plot right now, aside from the Supreme Kais worrying about new villains showing up anytime now. But then they always do. Since I actually like the more slice-of-life comedy segments of Dragonball, I’m not complaining. (Although less Goten/Trunks screentime would be a relief.)

– Speaking of reintroducing dozens of supporting characters, Durarara!!x2 (Middle Part) feels it was the time to introduce more new characters. And hey, it does makes who comes to try and finish Izaya off in his hospital room a genuine surprise. A nice callback to his introduction, but still unexpected. Aside from that, it’s mostly a matter of positioning all the pieces back in place.

– Symphogear GX – Determination to Fist has a positively metal opening action sequence that’s going to be hard to top. It does unfortunately show again that Aoi Yuuki is miles behind Nana Mizuki & Ayahi Takagaki in singing talent, but them’s the breaks. At least we get another Nana Mizuki/Yoko Hikasa duet. Not feeling the new antagonists yet, but I’ll give them time.

– Gatchaman CROWDS Insight… I have no clue where they’re going with this new team member and the alien. But it’s certainly very energetic and colourful as usual, and Hajime is still very fun. (“Berg, shut up-su!”)

– As for Working!!!, I’m fearing the ship may have sailed. I quite enjoyed the first two seasons, but this reintroduction episode left me quite cold. Maybe it’ll pick up steam later on, but this wasn’t a good start.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 3

 

I’m sure that, like me, you rolled your eyes when Bikini Warriors showed up on the schedule, especially as an adaptation of a line of “sexy” figurines. The good news is that this series of comedy shorts makes its tired cliché of a premise the central joke. Yes, those bikini-style armours are ridiculous and can’t protect much ; let’s have fun with that ! And frankly, the few chuckles it raises are enough to overcome the rudimentary animation and the obnoxious fanservice. It just about gets away with it, and that’s the best it could have ever hoped for.

Million Doll is an adaptation of a web manga series as 8-minute shorts. It’s an exploration of idol fandom culture that just rubs me the wrong way. I think that’s because it seems to lionize its shut-in protagonist and agree with her contempt of the more dilettante fans who are quick to move on from an idol group to the next… never mind that she’s already much creepier and unhealthy than all of them combined. It’s a show that requires you to adhere unconditionally to the glamour of the idol subculture (and dismisses its unpleasantness as coming from a few icky fans), and that’s not something I can get into. It doesn’t help that it’s barely animated, and suffers from a downright ugly CG-animated dancing opening sequence. Avoid like the plague.
SuzakiNishi the Animation is a weird beast. It’s notionally an adaptation of voice-actresses Aya Suzaki & Asuka Nishi’s radio program, where they discuss business models. In practive, this is a series of “comedy” shorts depicting them as new transfer students in high school. The gags are trite and there’s just nothing here that builds upon its name characters or the original premise. Really don’t bother with this.
Kurayami Santa is a bizarre oddity : a series of horror shorts set in the 60s that’s half animation looking like it came from that period, and half actual vintage live-action footage from then. It features a demon looking like a creepy child who punishes evidoers, but in cruel and circuitous ways that make you shudder more than applaud. While I’m intrigued at how this came into being, there’s a gap between that and actually finding it entertaining ; it’s just too weird for me.
Danchigai is an adaptation of a 4-panel gag manga about five siblings rough-housing each other. (Well, they mostly all gang up against the one boy, second oldest of the lot.) It’s very mildly funny, but nothing to go out of your way for.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 5

God Eater

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a PSP action-RPG videogame. It also got a short “prologue” OVA back in 2009 by the same studio.

Characters

Renka, the player stand-in. He one of the talented trainees among Fenrir, an organisation devoted to exterminate the “Amagami”, monsters that have nearly destroyed civilization as we know it, aside from those small resistance forces. He’s aching to get in the field ASAP, but he’s rebuked by…

Ms Amamiya, the instructor for his rookie group, who insist on them training more. She takes this “tough love” approach because she doesn’t want them to die pointlessly, of course. But it’s a given that Renka is going to get into the field anyway, at which point she’ll be relegated to mission control over the radio.

Other characters include Renka’s bungling pal Kouta, and a bunch of other Elite God Eaters who just about manage to join the fray in time to save Renka’s bacon. Frankly, the characterization here is so minimalistic I have trouble remembering anything about most of them.

Production Values

Yikes. This is a show whose premiere got delayed by a week to try and fix the quality issues, and boy does it show. I think the action sequences mostly work, providing the flashy spectacle that has become studio ufotable’s trademark. The problem comes from the quieter scenes (i.e. most of the episode’s runtime), as the weird blend of traditional animation and enhanced CG colouring (or is the whole thing cell-shaded ?) looks very, very bad. It even manages the make the dialogue sound slightly out of sync, which suggests much last-minute tinkering. It’s frankly embarrassing for everyone involved.

Overall Impression

So, it’s a series that looks quite bad (and I’m really not sure the studio can fix things for further episodes ; I fear it can only get worse). But that only compounds the main issue : aside from spectacular battles, the show just doesn’t have much to offer. The plot is bland, the setting is beyond generic, the characters are walking clichés, and there’s no sense of the enemy being much more than cannon fodder. It’s aggressively boring and forgettable ; that may have worked fine in the original game, but it won’t cut it as an anime.

I have better things to do with my time than wasting it with this train wreck.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 5

Prison School (Kangoku Gakuen)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a cringe comedy manga series.

Characters

Kiyoshi, our protagonist, has enrolled into yet another of those high schools that used to be female-only but are now opening up to boys. That’s less awesome than it sounded at first to him, since it’s hard to mingle into the massive numbers of girls.

So he soon finds himself into the small social circle of the few other boys who joined up : Takehito the history-obsessed nerd, Shingo the handsome guy who’s got relations, “Joe” who’s always sick and spits blood when stressed, and “Andre” the fat guy. It doesn’t help that they’re all horny dudes, and soon embark in a massively ill-conceived attempt to peep on the girls’ baths. Kiyoshi himself has misgivings about this, because of…

Chiyo, the one girl in his class with whom he’s managed to strike a conversation, thanks to their mutual love of sumo wrestling. (Well, technically Kiyoshi is just parroting what he remembers of his mom’s passion, but close enough.) You can be sure their relationship is going to crash and burn horribly.

Of course, the five peepers quickly get caught, thanks to the vigilance of “the Underground Student Council”, a trio of sadists who sentence them to build their own prison on schoolgrounds, and spend a month there. Unless they want to be expelled outright for their shameful behaviour ?

Production Values

The animation feels a bit stilted, especially for dialogue scenes ; you get the impression the animators had trouble bringing the manga’s quirky artstyle to life.

The fanservice levels are quite high, and there’s some degree of censorship going on here (especially in the bath scene), but nothing too obnoxious.

Overall Impression

Do you love seeing dudes getting repeatedly beaten up by castrating dominatrices ? (A fate they kinda deserved, honestly.) Well, then you’re in luck. Heck, even the boys themselves seem to enjoy it somewhat.

There’s a lot of buzz about the manga being the funniest thing ever, despite the dodgy premise. I’m not quite seeing it, at this point. There are some really good gags, and the show certainly knows how to ratchet up the absurdity quickly. It’s got awesome sight gags such as the five boys getting spy catsuits out of nowhere for their night expedition.

But there’s the huge problem of just about every character being despairingly one-note caricatures (including the protagonist), and the jokes quickly becoming quite repetitive.

The one thing that makes me want to watch another episode is the impression that the anime is rushing through these early stages of the plot, presumably so that it can quickly get to the good bits. But I only have so much patience.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 5

School-Live ! (Gakkou Gurashi!)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of yet another slice-of-life manga series… Er, wait, not quite.

Characters

Yuki, our protagonist, loves attending her high-school. She’s even a member of the “School Living Club”, who stay the night in an empty classroom on campus instead of going home. She’s a bit airheaded, to put it mildly, and you can quickly sense that her friends are a bit worried about her.

She has basically two sets of friends. Her classmates, of course ; the go from the completely forgettable to the bad girl who comes to school wearing a collar. And the School Living Club :
– Yuuri, the motherly club president, who spends most of her time cooking or gardening on the roof ;
– Kurumi, the one who gets most angry at Yuki’s antics and is never seen without her trusty showel ;
– and Miki, who’s technically more junior than Yuki but seems to have a better head on her shoulders.
(They also have a dog whose running around causes much hijinks.)

After a while, you get the feeling that something’s not quite right. Aside of Yuki, none of the School Living Club members seem to go to class. Whole areas of the building are cordoned off, and nobody ever sets foot outside. And there’s the worrying fact that, Yuki aside, the two sets of characters never really interact (although the show does its darnedest to camouflage it).

The twist, which comes to light at the end of the episode, is that the school is in the middle of a zombie apocalypse ; Yuki has snapped and is entirely delusional. None of her classmates or teachers are alive (there’s the striking visual of a half-torn collar on a desk in her classroom), and the other members of the School Living Club are merely indulging her, hoping she doesn’t do anything dangerous in between attending empty classes and talking with non-existent people.

Production Values

Quite good ; there’s certainly a lot of effort put into foreshadowing the twist with background details, before finally pulling the rug and showing the actual state of disrepair for the school.

Points for the misleadingly cheerful OP sequence that does go out of its way to only never actually show other people onscreen with the main four characters, except in Yuki’s solo spots.

Overall Impression

Hmm. I had seen enough promotional material about the show to be mostly spoiled on the premise ; watching the episode was mostly an exercise on spotting the hints and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Even with that additional layer, there’s no escaping that this first episode is rather boring, all told. With the rest of the School Living Club staying mostly in the background (or entirely deadpan, in Miki’s case), it’s up to Yuki to carry the show, and she doesn’t quite have the shoulders for it. It doesn’t help that the twist that makes her at least somewhat interesting is relegated to the last couple of minutes. It’s an entire episode of slow build while nothing really happens (so as to preserve the surprise), and that’s not really thrilling to watch.

Of course, there’s no way the show can keep going like this ; but I have no clue where the balance will fall between brainless slice-of-life (i.e. Yuki’s perspective) and an actual examination of the consequences of the setting, and its emotional baggage. Surely Yuki is going to snap back to reality at some point ? (On the other hand, the manga is still ongoing, so…)

I’m giving it a second episode to see where the chips fall, but there’s a lot of work yet to do in order to transform it into an actual watchable show.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 5

Everyday Life with Monster Girls (Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a harem romantic comedy manga series. Warning : this is often borderline softcore porn.

Characters

Kurusu, our protagonist, is an ordinary dude whose life got upended when he became a “Host” for the Semihuman Cultural Exchange program : basically, the monster-people who had remained hidden by the governments until a few years ago are now mingling with humans so as to achieve peaceful coexistence.

Miia, his charge, is a lamia (half-snake) girl. She appreciates him not recoiling in horror at her sight and is very affectionate… maybe a bit too much, as her affections and attempts to snuggle often end up with her strangling him.

Ms Smith is the government agent in charge of supervising Miia’s stay. She’s very obnoxious on monitoring them, although this is presumably partly to cover up her own mistake (as Kurusu didn’t volunteer, and Miia got to him by error). She’s very keen on enforcing the “no sex” rule, too.

The OP and promotional material promise that more monster girls will show up soon and join the regular cast.

Production Values

Very, very fanservicey indeed, with next to no censorship. You’ll get to see nearly every inch of Miia’s body.

Overall Impression

You know a show has its priorities straight when it starts off with a three-minute-long “snuggling in bed” scene, continues with a bath scene, and only after that bothers to explain the plot in a few quick flashbacks. The episode also manages to visit a lingerie store and a love hotel.

I’m sure this appeals to people with certain fetishes, but I found it rather boring. The “racism is bad, m’kay” subtext feels rather perfunctory, and the contrived reason for the constant cock-blocking makes the numerous foreplay scenes more frustrating than arousing. It certainly stopped being funny very early on.

Let’s be frank : I nearly fell asleep watching this. I just don’t care, and won’t be pursuing it any further.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 5

Himouto! Umaru-chan

(12ish episodes ?)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a comedy manga series.

Characters

The title has a pun between “little sister” and a slur against women who offer a perfect image in their public/work life, but are slobs back home. Which is awful when it’s women doing it, right ? [/sarcasm]

Anyway, that’s an apt description for Umaru, aside from her being a high school student. Perfect grades, great at sports, loved from her schoolmates and the neighbours… but as soon as she comes home, she turns into a super-deformed caricature of herself who only looks up from her manga and games to munch on snacks.

Our actual point of view character is Taihei, her older brother, with whom she’s come to live. He’s quite annoyed by her antics, but succumbs way too often to her puppy-dog eyes. When he’s not just caving from social pressure not to look like he’s bullying this “innocent-looking” girl.

And that’s basically it ; some classmates of Umaru’s look like they may become regular supporting cast, but none of them are more than one-note so far.

Production Values

Okay enough for a gag show, I guess.

Overall Impression

Well, aside from the whole premise making me feel a bit uncomfortable, the core point here is that the joke isn’t that funny, and quickly becomes repetitive over the course of an episode ; I can’t imagine how you can string along a whole series from it.

I’m pretty much done with this one.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 5

Sky Wizards Academy (Kuusen Madoushi Kouhosei no Kyoukan)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a series of fantasy light novels in my kryptonite subgenre : the wish-fulfilment fantasy where super-powered teens are enrolled into a vaguely military magic high-school, and somehow the male lead gets a harem of girls around him. At least we’ve only got one of those this season.

Characters

Kanata is our protagonist. The opening action sequence sees him holding off hundreds of insect-like enemies to allow his teammates to escape, so it’s very confusing that for the rest of the episode nearly everyone in his floating city labels him a traitor. This is probably supposed to be an intriguing mystery, but it just comes off as annoying. Anyway, he’s an overachiever nice guy.

The student council appoints him as the new teacher for the Loser Class, because of course it would be silly to involve actual faculty in this decision. And of course he’s just run into all three members of this class before, and they all believe he’s a pervert because of these terrible first impressions.

They are :
– Misora, the very angry girl who will make it your fault if she bumps into you. Doesn’t seem to work well for her, as she’s lost every single training fight so far. And dear gods, she arrives late to school with a piece of bread in her mouth ? Seriously ?
– Lecty, the wallflower who can barely get a word out.
– Rico, the egomaniac who’s in love with herself and spends most of her time admiring her reflection. She’s the only one whose gimmick is actually mildly funny, as her self-absorbed rants are at least awful by design, instead of accident like the rest of the show.

Production Values

Ouch. The CG insect enemies looks awful, mostly due to bad compositing and effects. This also affects the flying combat scenes, although there’s not much of them beyond the prologue.

Overall Impression

Cards on the table : I don’t like this genre of shows, and they face an uphill struggle with me at the best of times. It’s often an excuse for the writers to be lazy, avoiding having to write an actual plot when they can instead fall back on cliché highschool and harem hijinks to fill up pages and screentime. The rushed and truncated anime adaptations don’t do what little depth the novels may have had any favours.

This one still manages to be way worse than average, somehow. All the characters are annoying and one-dimensional. It looks awful. The plotting is a mess. The world-building makes no sense. And there’s an hilariously nonsensical bit where Kanata broods and monologues about his fallen comrades in arms being forgotten by the Normals, as only Wizards don’t suddenly get there memories erased or something (for whatever reason)… only for a further scene to reveal that there’s like 10% Normals and 90% Wizards in the flying city, so why the heck was he getting all worked up for ?

Even if this show didn’t take itself so seriously at times, it still wouldn’t be funny. It’s a trainwreck in motion, and I have no wish to stick around.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 5

OverLord

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a light novel series with the novel premise of “player stuck into a MMORPG that became real”. Never seen that one before.
From what I can gather, it has nothing to do with the various videogames of the same name.

Characters

So, Yggdrasil. One of the big full-immersion MMORPG of its time. But it’s been 12 years, the player base had been dwindling down considerably for a while, so its editor has decided to call it a day and shut the servers down tonight.

Momonga, our protagonist, was the leader of one the biggest and strongest “monster” guilds of the game. Max level, tons of stuff and unique items (including his super-wand that can wish nearly anything and even bypass some programming), their own giant demon castle lair, dozens of custom NPC servants, the works. By now, of course, most of the guild members have left, with barely a few of them making an appearance on this last day. But Momonga has decided he’s going to stick around until the end, reminisce, and let the system log him out when the servers shut down.

When he wakes up after midnight, he notices with shock that he’s still in the throne room. The HUD and menus are gone, and he can’t raise anyone (be them other players or GMs) through voice chats. On the other hand, the NPCs now act a lot more real than their previous AI-constrained selves, and obey to all his casually-phrased orders (instead of needing specific commands).

And well, there’s Albedo, his NPC demon secretary, whom he had just rescripted to be in love with him, on a whim. This might have been a poor decision…

What’s going on here ? Has he slided into another world that’s identical to Yggdrasil somehow ? Can he get back to the real world ? Does he even want to ? Will the NPCs keep obeying their very confused master ?

Production Values

Quite good ; there’s some obvious CG work on some undead battle sequences, but it looks okay. And the animators have really managed to make Momonga expressive, with a body language belying clearly a benign middle manager disguised as an over-the-top overlord.

Overall Impression

Well, there’s a reason the cliché premises are still being recycled : they caught on our imagination and offer numerous variants. And hey, I don’t think I’ve seen any of these stories take the point of view of “the bad guys” (who are actually punch-clock villains more than anything else), so that’s something new for this show to explore. And it does so quite well ; Momonga truly feels like a MMORPG guild leader, and a very sympathetic protagonist. The NPC supporting cast also feel like they could grow into interesting characters (or at least entertaining ones).

If there’s one thing that’s lacking here, it’s a clear notion of where the story is going ; we don’t even know whether there’s anyone outside the lair at this point. But hey, that’s something for future episodes to explore ; this one has accomplished its job of selling me on the premise, at least for now.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 5

Seiyu’s Life! (Sore ga Seiyuu!)

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a semi-autobiographical 4-panel gag manga about voice-acting. (The writer, Masumi Asano, has been in the business for more than a decade and is currently voicing Cure Mermaid in the latest Precure series.) And wait, it was illustrated by Hayate the Combat Butler‘s author ?

Characters

Futaba, our heroine, is a newbie voice-actress who gets a minor role as a mascot character in a mecha show. And of course she makes minor blunders one after the other, as this is a gag show. She got into this career because, well, the economy’s tough and jobs are hard to get anyway, so why not go for the dream job ?

Ringo Ichigo, another newbie who got the “Classmate A” role. I have no clue how Futaba can keep messing up her name, as she’s clearly putting on a strawberry-themed persona. She totally didn’t get into this field because she was an anime fangirl, honest !

Rin, a junior high school student, isn’t lost in the building. She’s actually three years their senior, and indeed quite good at it ; it’s impressive how she doesn’t mess up any of the technobabble her bridge bunny character spouts out.

Masako Nozawa is guest-starring as herself, i.e. the respected and admired veteran who turns out to be kind to the newbies despite how intimidated they are. They still expect her to break out a Kamehameha during recording sessions, though.

Production Values

Wait, studio Gonzo are still alive ? That would explain why they got a series where they can get away with leaving all the action shots unfinished.

Overall Impression

Exactly what I expected : a pleasant and modestly entertaining, if a bit slight, look how voice-acting actually works in practice. It’s full of little details that are clearly drawn from experience.

Sure, it’s nowhere as good as SHIROBAKO, but that would be a high bar to clear. But hey, it’s entertaining and instructive enough about the behind-the-scenes of the industry that I’m sure to keep watching.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 5

Castle Town Dandelion (Joukamachi no Dandelion)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a 4-panel gag manga. Wait, the author’s named “Ayumu Kasuga” ? Osaka is drawing manga now ? Well, that might explain the weird premise.

Characters

The series focuses on the Sakurada family, whom beyond Mom and Dad are composed of 9 siblings of various ages. All of them have different superpowers.

Also, Dad is the king of the country. But he insisted on having his family live a “normal” life, so they all live in the suburbs, and attend normal schools in the neighbourhood. Sure, there are tons of bodyguards trying to stay inconspicuous, but it seems to work out.

Aoi, the quiet eldest daughter, is about to graduate high school, so Dad has decided it’s time to settle on a heir to the Crown. Through a televised popularity contest in the whole kingdom, of course ! And so each of the kids will be assigned points in a series of trials.

Akane, our teenage protagonist, could do without that. She already didn’t like the attention of the thousands of security cameras observing the neighbourhood, and the attention is only going to get worse. It doesn’t help that her own power, weight control (which she mostly uses as a form of telekinesis and flight) means she must be very cautious to avoid underskirt shots.

As for the other siblings, they don’t get to be much more than one-note so far.

Production Values

Decent, and the camera refrains from doing any actual panty shots of Akane. You have my thanks, show.

Overall Impression

Well, it’s a quirky comedy with a bizarre premise that somehow completely fails to catch my attention. Maybe it’s the haphazard pacing ? Or maybe it’s just me getting a bit tired ?

Anyway, I won’t be watching any more of this, despite there being nothing really wrong about it. I just have to draw the line somewhere.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Summer 2015 – Page 5