New Anime Series – Page 10

GATE: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri (“The Self-Defense Forces Fight Like This in That Place”)

(24 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a light novel series about Japan being attacked by heroic-fantasy forces coming from another dimension, and fighting back.

Characters

Oh, dear.

Look, I can see why the show concentrates on setting up the core premise instead of developing the actual cast. Selling the high concept is important, after all. It may go a bit too far in overstating the novelty of it, especially with this amazingly tepid “cliffhanger” revealing that the access point between the two dimensions is called “the GATE”. Never would have guessed that.

And we do have an actual protagonist. Itami, off-duty lowly JSDF soldier who was at the right enough place during the initial attack to provide vital direction to the first responders and prepare the way for the actual defense forces. As a result, he gets a promotion, medals and much publicity he doesn’t really care for, as well as being part of the first serious wave being sent through the Gate and to try and occupy the neighbouring dimension.

For maximum audience identification, he’s also a massive otaku (who missed Comiket because of this). And he’s also having random visions of girls of assorted fantasy races who are probably going to be future love interests. The pandering, it hurts. And that’s the core problem with Itami as a character : he never feels like a coherent whole, but instead like a collection of traits the audience should like. He doesn’t feel like an actual person, you see ?

It doesn’t help that everyone else in this episode is amazingly one-note and forgettable. There’s some fuss about the Prime Minister driving much of Japan’s reaction dying before they get to the “invade the other world” part, but we’re given little reason to care about why that would matter. Please focus a random crying orphan girl instead !

Production Values

Nice enough ; you can always count on A1-Pictures to produce competent animation that’s not very flashy but does the job. And hey, the very generic designs for the heroic-fantasy armies may be part of the point.

Overall Impression

I’m sure there are many people ready to pounce upon the “JDSF, fuck yeah !” jingoism that constitutes the backbone of this show. And on some level, it is indeed a bit problematic. But that really wouldn’t matter if the series made a much better effort at making me care. Featuring some actual characters instead of paper-thing cutouts would help. As would a bit of world-building beyond the obvious.

But this first episode leaves me with very little confidence that it can deliver anything on that front. Everything here was by-the-numbers and obvious. There’s no twist (aside from the JSDF actually winning a fight for a change), no particular insight, the “enemy” have no depth whatsoever, and the blatant emotional manipulation showing up here and there gives me little hope on the plot suddenly becoming more even-handed between the various factions.

I just don’t care. Pass !

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

Classroom☆Crisis

(12ish episodes ?)

What’s it about ?

Er… A weird science-fiction/work-com/school thing ?

Characters

So, the future. Like many other countries, Japan has set up a colony on Mars where they focus on building awesome stuff. “Tokyo-4” seems to be mainly administrated by the Kirishina Corporation. They own an elite technical Campus called A-TEC, where they’ve gathered the most promising youngsters and seems to function as a glorified R&D lab.

Nagisa, a new transfer student to A-TEC, has been kidnapped by terrorists before he even showed up. The Kirishina board scramble madly to find a way to get him back. The 7,5 million ransom is of little concern, given that this guy is apparently more important than it seems, but the deadline is very strict indeed.

Under the guidance of their mellow teacher Kaito, the A-TEC students start looking into a way to mount a rescue operation. And since this is going nowhere soon, matters are taken into their own hands by…

Iris, the daredevil of the group. The kind who drives to school on a bike that can’t be street-legal and disregards any safety advice. She “borrows” the small shuttle prototype A-TEC had been working on, and gamely aims for the terrorists’ hideout. There’s little left of her vehicle by the time she gets there, but she does reach the place mostly unhurt.

The punchline is that there were never any terrorists ; Nagisa merely wanted to prove a point. Namely, that A-TEC spent about a billion on a rescue mission (to say nothing of wrecking a 15-billion prototype), despite the ransom being several orders of magnitude lower. In other words, the Kirishima Corporation is wasting billions on a money sink that’s far from delivering anything in proportion. So, as a member of the board and a relative to the CEO, he’s here to downsize A-TEC, or maybe even shut it down entirely.

Since there would be no story otherwise, I presume we’re going to get a “Save Our School” narrative next.

Production Values

I’ve never heard of studio “Lay-Duce” before, but they do a good job here. The opening scene with the board’s panicked meeting being intercut with scenes of Iris driving to A-TEC is in particular very well-paced.

Overall Impression

Well, this is certainly trying something different. And it does have its good points, such as the well-structured opening scene, or the final reveal. The problem is what’s in between : Kaito is asked to carry the plot, and his utter lack of charisma drains a good chunk of energy from the show.

I’ll be honest : without the sudden twist, I would have been too bored to continue. Nagisa’s impressive villainous scenery-chewing buys it another episode. Don’t waste it.

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

Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace

(11ish episodes)

What’s it about ?

Surely you’re aware of Edogawa Ranpo, the godfather of Japanese mystery fiction ? The guy Detective Conan took half of his pseudonym from ? The creator of characters such as Akechi and the Fiend with Twenty Faces, who often get referenced or namechecked in mystery anime & manga ?

Well, later this month is the 50th anniversary of his death, so here comes this tribute project. It’s notionally adapting some of his stories (starting with The Human Chair), but with the original mysteries reframed completely in a contemporary setting and different characters involved. In many ways, it’s not entirely different from UN-GO, a similar project from a few years ago.

Characters

Kobayashi, our 13-year-old protagonist. Despite appearances, totally a boy. He wakes up one day in his classroom with a saw in his hand, and the mutilated corpse of his teacher at the other end of the room. Normal people would see this as the start of a very bad day ; Kobayashi is actually thrilled to the gills at something interesting finally happening to him.

Hashiba, the class rep and student council president, does his best to defend his friend in front of the police… and gets progressively more and more weirded out by the way Kobayashi is lighting up instead of showing any hint of panic. The really obvious solution would be for him to be the culprit, but I hope there’s more to the mystery than that. And it’d be kind of a waste to lose the one normal dude in the series whom everyone can explain the plot to.

Akechi, a 17-year old detective on the case. Notionally he’s in high school, but he’s got a special license to avoid going there in exchange of helping the cops out on weird cases like that. He’s exactly the kind of excentric genius you’d expect to find in this type of story. Kobayashi makes a beeline to become his apprentice (and is certainly clever enough to track his home address down). Akechi’s answer is that if the kid solves the case, it doesn’t matter whether he accepts ; Kobayashi will get dragged down into this world anyway. Of course, it wouldn’t be fun if Akechi didn’t stack the deck against him, such as calling the cops on him.

Kobayashi is totally game for this.

Production Values

The show makes the weird decision to keep all the characters in silhouette until Kobayashi bothers to truly pay attention to them. (You’d expect the cat-eared new teacher to warrant his attention sooner than she did, but apparently not.) Together with several other staging decisions, it contributes to make the proceedings eerily artificial… and hey, it’s not like classical mysteries aren’t artificial constructs anyway.

I think it’s great at setting the mood ; the jazzy music also helps.

Overall Impression

You had me at “mystery”, but this has turned out to be actually quite good. Very well paced, an intriguing and fun protagonist with incredible cheerfulness and communicative enthusiasm… Clearly the staff had a blast creating this. It oozes fun and love for the genre from all pores.

This has the potential to be very good, and in any case it’ll certainly be fun. I’m all in.

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

GANGSTA.

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a crime manga series featuring sex, drugs and ultraviolence.

Characters

The show follows the “Handymen”, a two-man team of hit-men/middlemen/whatever-you-pay-them-for-men, operating in the wretched hive of scum and villainy of Ergastulum. They take jobs that the big gangs would rather have a “neutral” party handle, although they also help out the local population on occasion. While they’re violent thugs, the idea seems to be that the city would be even worse off without them “regulating” the doldrums of its criminal underground.

Nick is the muscle of the pair ; an Asian-looking dude who wields a sword and does moves out right this side of wire-fu. He’s impressively lethal, although he can also leave people alive if he doesn’t like them. Also, the big gimmick of the show is that he’s deaf, overcompensating with heightened sight. He communicates mostly through grunts and sign language, although he can talk (in the very slurred way deaf people often do) if he gets angry enough. It’s certainly quite intimidating.

Worick, his partner, understandably handles most of the talking. And boy does he keep babbling. Fortunately, he’s got enough charisma not to be too annoying. He mostly uses guns, and holds his own enough to run a playful kill tally against Nick.

Our plot this episode involves a small gang of upstarts thinking they’re all that and making a move into “forbidden” zones against their superiors’ orders. Clearly they’ve bitten up way more than they can chew, as the mafia lords commission the Handymen (through the intermediary of an unsurprisingly corrupt police officer) to get rid of them. Which they do without breaking a sweat.

Alex is a prostitute often hanging in the back-alley behind the Handymen’s office. Her abusive pimp was part of the upstart gang, so in theory she should have been wiped out with the whole of them ; however, the pair obviously grew sweet on her, and spared her. She’s back in the alley by the end of the episode, but Worick does ask her to mind the phone whenever he’s away (since obviously Nick can’t answer it). Clearly she’s under their protection now, and there are worse positions to be in within this hellhole of a city.

Production Values

Quite nice indeed. The fight scenes are decently animated, and there’s some good direction to keep the action fluid. It does good work at selling Nick’s deafness. It’s also mercifully way less brown than you’d expect of such a premise, although only the OP & ED sequences really get wild with colour.

Amazingly, it’s way less exploitative than you’d expect, given that one of the three main characters is a prostitute we often see on the job. Those short scenes are rather tastefully done.

Overall Impression

Hello, Black Lagoon clone ! And hey, there are worse shows to emulate, especially when it’s actually rather well executed. The characters are fun, the city has lots of atmosphere (I like that the Handymen spend some time helping out random “citizens”), and I’m already getting interested in the struggles of influence between the major gangs. (Which includes the police, presumably.)

The “deaf” gimmick is a bit weird, but at least the show makes enough effort to sell it without feeling too contrived. As a pilot episode, this works very well.

I’m sold.

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

Anime from 2000 : Post-Mortem

You know what ? I haven’t been entirely idle during the couple of months this project fell by the wayside. I’ve actually been watching a good number of the shows I had selected.

So, without further fanfare, a few comments regarding each of these shows :

Miami Guns
It quickly becomes apparent this follows the Excel Saga formula of parodying a different type of cop show in each episode. As a result, it’s more than a bit uneven, and the attempt to inject a bit more of serious drama in the last stretch doesn’t really work. The show really is at its best when it’s unashamedly stupid.

And this shows nowhere better than in the second episode, which is by far the best of the lot (and worth watching by its lonesome). It’s a recap episode that plays as though this was a long-running series that’s been on the air for ages, and as such much of the (completely fake) earlier material being recapped feels quaint and at odds with the “current” set up (such as the Chief being black because the writers hadn’t decided yet he was Lu’s father, and major characters in the magnificently retro “original” OP sequences have been written out long ago). It’s also a series of smaller vignettes within the framing device, allowing each joke to run its course quickly, without outstaying their welcome.

Boys Be…
So, as it turns out, this is halfway between an anthology series (“a different couple each episode !”) and a more traditional romance series with continuing plot threads (as the four leads – Kyoichi, Chiharu, Makoto & Yoshihiko – are usually involved in turns). This allows for quite some variety (as not all pairs go anywhere, or are even romantic), while letting some room for some decent character development to occur. The way the series juggles with everything is actually quite impressive, from a structural point of view.

… On the other hand, it’s been two months since I’ve watched it, and I’ve already forgotten about most of it. So, while it’s a pleasant way to pass time, it’s not exactly memorable.

NieA_7
I didn’t think this show would turn out to be so depressing.

What really got me was the impressively realistic depiction of Mayuko’s abject poverty. (And it’s not like her close circle of friends and acquaintances are much more better off.) As the series goes on, this is clearly taking a toll on her, leading her to both reject NieA for her obnoxiousness, and then blaming herself when the alien disappears. Even the relatively pat ending can’t make up for how raw an emotional roller-coaster this is.

The wacky hijinks end up being gallows’ humour : desperate attempts to let out steam to avoid everyone collapsing into clinical depression. That was quite a harrowing watch indeed, and not exactly what I expected.

Strange Dawn
Wow, you really weren’t kidding about the “no ending” thing ; on the other hand, it plays quite well with the themes of the show. Our two heroines’ presence in this fantasy world progressively makes the political situation deteriorate faster and faster, and there’s very little they can do about it. The series ends with them making an empty symbolic gesture akin to throwing a tantrum in despair at the cycle of violence, and them being suddenly whisked back to Earth by a deus ex machina. And of course, this solves nothing for the natives, and if anything leaves the ones the viewer has grown most fond of in a terrible situation.

I don’t have a problem with this. Oh, sure, the original 50-episode plan would have been interesting to watch, but there’s something fascinating with the idea that the two teenagers from Tokyo didn’t make the fantasy world a better place just by showing up, and didn’t lead any kind of uprising against the terrible status quo. (They kind of tried, but it quickly petered out and if anything it made things worse.)

Love Hina
In many ways, this is the platonic ideal of wacky harem comedies : archetypal, borderline one-dimensional characters (especially in the supporting cast) ; many episodes going into random tangents for the heck of it ; and a main romantic thread that makes very slow but definite progress. The slightly surreal atmosphere helps it out, giving the impression that anything can happen if it looks fun enough. And it usually does.

As it is, the series is decently entertaining, with the couple of TV specials bringing it to an adequate conclusion. I wasn’t blown away by it, but it was fun enough.

… And then I watched Love Hina Again, and argkfgerfgrg. This goes wrong in every possible way : the art direction has taken a turn for the worse, as the new designs are ugly and barely animated ; most of the characters see their character development regress (or get derailed into wholly unlikeable territory, such as Keitarou turning into Seta 2.0) ; and worst of all they introduce a creepy incestuous little sister character who’s not only super-annoying and unwelcome, but warps the whole show around herself.

WHAT THE HECK WERE THEY THINKING ?

Vandread
That was… interesting. The first episode was so dense that there’s a few major points I didn’t get until a bit later :
– The female warship who captured our few male protagonists are actually pirates, and thus only loosely associated with the female homeworld ; this explains why they have a less hostile attitude to the dudes than average.
– The male warship being inaugurated was actually a refurbished relic from ages ago, and something really bizarre happened when the female warship docked with it ; they kinda fused together, and it also changed the mechas (from both sides) inside. None of the science makes any sense, but then this is a very soft SF show that’s clearly using all this for metaphor. (And a very obvious one, given all the “combining” going on.) I like that none of the technical crew have any clue how any of this works, and after a fashion they just go along with it.
– The combined warship somehow got transported by a space wedgie to the other side of the galaxy, and they’re several months away from getting back to their two home planets. This means that the show takes a very episodic travelogue format, with our heroes stumbling onto a number of other planets with normal male-female coexistence, making Tarak & Marjale an anomaly rather than the norm. Which is a great framework to focus on the crew and give them fodder for character development. (With the looming threat of the Harvesters giving the plot a bit more direction.)

Anyway, this was a great show. Often very silly, but a fun exploration of gender roles, with likeable characters and a clear idea of what it’s doing. I really enjoyed spending time with these people and sharing their struggles, and isn’t that the whole point ? One could quibble about the combining mecha being a really stupid plot device, but they’re used in a fun way that’s really all about the pilots.

Sakura Wars.
This turned out to be quite a disappointment.

At the time of the review, I was actually quite pleased by the absence of an obvious player character avatar dude. Well, he shows up in episode #4, and is very bland indeed. He’s not even mucking the series up by romancing the girls or anything like that : he’s just a generic competent field commander with the charisma of a cardboard cutout.

No, the real issue I have with the series is that it completely ignores the potential of its intriguing setting. The elite mecha unit somehow doubling as a Takarazuka Revue-style theatre troupe ? Never really explained, aside from some lip service as “concentration” training. It’s just the thing the girls do whenever the main plot is on hold. But at least this part of the show is mildly entertaining, if mostly irrelevant aside from the team dynamics.

What really brings it down, though, are the villains. The awful, boring, cliché villains. Including a femme fatale who doesn’t get to do much, a groaning strong dude with no personality, and a creepy annoying kid with mind-control powers that allow him to slaughter redshirts by the dozen. (And of course he’s voiced by Akira Ishida on autopilot self-parody.) You just stop caring by the first time they’re randomly resurrected (and lose any personality or plot relevance they showed before.) Worse than all of them combined, though, is the “main villain”, the turncoat who betrayed humanity 5 years ago for barely explained reasons. I might have cared about the connected characters’ angst about his betrayal if the guy wasn’t just a one-dimensional evil dude who smirks a lot and never shows a hint of depth. (He even unironically calls himself “Blue Satan” ! Seriously ?)

This just doesn’t work. The antagonists are just this traitor, a few zombie generals he keeps reviving, and tons of monstrous mooks. At first it looked like the enemy was slowly crossing over from another dimension, but after a while it turns out that nope, this is all of them. No clash with a parallel world : once the Big Bad is disposed of, that’s it. It’s like all the world building was flushed down the toilet.

At this point I must ask : are the various strings of OVAs (which are set in a parallel continuity, as far as I can see) any better ? I’m not exactly looking forward to trying them out…

Anime from 2000 : The Final Tally

So, that’s it. 35 shows reviewed (+ 11 I couldn’t find and 6 sequels). How does the tally go ?

Must Watches (4)
Those were so promising I’m going to watch them asap :
– Niea_7
– Strange Dawn
– Vandread
(Boogiepop Phantom would be here too.)

Good Enough For Me (10)
I’ll catch up on these decent shows down the line :
– Miami Guns
– Saiyuki
– Sakura Wars
– Boys Be…
– Love Hina
– Sci-Fi Harry
– Android Kikaider
– Ghost Stories
– maybe Argento Soma
(Tsukikaze Ran would probably be here too.)

Not My Thing (12)
There’s nothing really wrong with these shows, but either I’m not the target audience, I don’t care for their subgenre, they’re too long for me to invest time in, or they just didn’t do anything for me :
– UFO Baby
– Gate Keepers
– Kaitō Kiramekiman
– Hamtaro
– Brigadoon
– Descendants of Darkness
– Hajime no Ippo
– Gravitation
– Gear Fighter Dendoh
– Legendary Gambler Tetsuya
– Inuyasha
– Hiwou War Chronicles

That Was Just Bad (9)
Those shows had way too many problems :
– Candidate for Goddess
– Shinzo
– Hero Hero-kun
– Platinumhugen Ordian
– Transformers: Robots in Disguise
– Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters
– Ceres, Celestial Legend (with hindsight)
– Hand Maid May
– Tri-Zenon

Frankly, that’s not bad at all, overall. I got twelve-ish new shows on my plate, which I appreciate. Aside from that, I got to have a taste of more than a few series I vaguely knew about (Hajime no Ippo, Gravitation, Hamtaro…) and can now have a slightly more informed opinion of. And heck, there are quite a few shows I’m glad I was exposed to, even if they weren’t my thing.

Anime from 2000 : The Leftovers

Over the course of this project, there were a number of show I decided not to cover, or just couldn’t. Those were :

Sequels to earlier shows (and thus not NEW shows). There’s a few spin-offs I still chose to try and cover for significance reasons, but overall I skipped most of them.
A good number of kids’ shows that just weren’t available in any form (even in massacred English dubs). Those I had no option but to skip entirely.
Also, I didn’t do OVAs and movies. Sorry, FLCL.

So, here follows a list of everything I didn’t review :

#03 on the list is something called Mon Colle Knights, adapting some collectible cardgame. It’s the first of the many kids’ shows I just couldn’t get any hold of for this project. Not that I’m really heartbroken about it.

#05 is OH! Super Milk-Chan, a sequel to a 1998 comedy kids’ show.

#08 is Ojamajo Doremi #, the second season (out of four) of the magical girl franchise that eventually left way for Precure.

#10 is Digimon Adventure 02, which feels enough like a straight sequel of the original (unlike, say, Tamers) that I am not covering it.

#14 is Hidamari no Ki, an adaptation of a late Osamu Tezuka manga about the friendship between a samurai and a doctor in the Edo period. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a copy of even the first episode of it. A shame, as it sounds quite interesting.

#15 is Doki Doki Densetsu Mahoujin Guru Guru, a sequel to a 1994 kids’ show adapting a manga lampooning Dragon Quest-style RPGs. It actually sounds quite fun, but it’s outside the scope of this project.

#21 is Inspector Fabre (Fabre Sensei wa Meitantei), another kids’ show I couldn’t lay my hands on.

A few words on #22, Banner of the Stars. It’s basically part two of a trilogy of anime adaptations of a light novel series, so it’s outside the scope of this project. But I should note that it’s the weakest chunk of this S-F saga. Crest kept things close and personal to its lead couple ; Banner II also had a tight focus as they dealt with a prison planet. Banner, on the other hand, throws them in the middle of a massive military campaign, depriving them of agency and relevance in their own series. It’s got its moments, but I found it distinctly less enjoyable.

#23 is yet another unavailable kids’ show, Taro the Space Alien, adapting a children’s manga.

#28 is something called DinoZaurs: The Series, which is apparently a sequel to a few OVAs that were bundled with a toyline that’s also known as “DinoZone”. Anyway, I couldn’t find it, and I had no inclination to dig too much.

#29 is Medarot Damashii, the second season of the adaptation of the Medabots RPG videogame franchise.

#35 is Mr. Digital Tokoro, a full-CG-animated series of shorts (130 3-minute-long episodes) based on comedian Tokoro George. (A guy famous enough to lend his name to half a dozen Mahjong videogames ; he also dubs Homer Simpson.)
Frankly, this sounds dreadful, but I couldn’t find even one of them.

#43 is Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children, an adaptation of that RPG franchise’s attempt at emulating the success of Pokémon, with simpler gameplay more accessible to kids. It got a sequel in 2002, adapting a further game (and apparently having a troubled production). Anyway, I couldn’t find it.

#44 would be Baby Felix, a spin-off from the old Felix the Cat cartoons (which were apparently popular enough in Japan). Again, I couldn’t find it.

I thought I had gotten my hands on #50, Dotto Koni-chan, but my copy has no subtitles. It’s a comedy kids’ show about kids messing around and getting into hijinks. It’s mostly notable for being animated by studio Shaft before they became SHAFT, and directed by Excel Saga‘s Nabeshin himself. It does look kinda fun.

#51 should be Pipopapo Patrol-kun, a kids’ show featuring a friendly neighbourhood cop that might have been educational if I could have laid hands on it.

Our final and 52nd entry would have been Suteki! Sakura Mama, a series of shorts I could find nearly no information about. A bit anticlimactic, eh ?

#49 : Hiwou War Chronicles (Karakuri Kiden Hiwou Senki)

(26 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Clockpunk show set in the Meiji period. It also has the honour of being the first show ever animated by studio Bones after their split from Sunrise.

Characters

For no obvious reason, the series opens with a few German merchants/tourists on a boat nearing the coast of Japan, expositing at length on this being the Meiji Era and what this entails on a geopolitical level… only for the rest of the episode to completely ignore this context, and showing that this version of Japan is actually full-on clockpunk.

Hiwou, our protagonist, is the bratty and plucky kid who’s at the center of the youngsters’ social club in his rural village (including his younger siblings). The big thing with this village is that they’ve been producting tons of clockwork dolls, mostly for entertainment purposes.

Enter the Wind Gang, a bunch of paramilitary thugs who swiftly conquer the village by surprise, capturing all the adults… but not the kids, who were off exploring a cave at the time. There, they find a clockwork proto-mecha that allows them to escape.

… But maybe not for long, as some of the kids want to double back to try and save their parents. That sounds like a really stupid idea, considering how they barely managed to escape the first time around.

Production Values

You can always count on a Bones production to be reasonably polished, and this is no exception.

Overall Impression

Well, this was inoffensive enough, I guess. The problem is that the first episode didn’t manage to make me care about those kids, or even the fate of the village. It’s got some decently-paced action sequences that are all about the flash and carry little substance. Really, it’s just a bit too bland.

I’m not really interested in watching any more of this.

Source: [In Which I Review] Anime series from 2000 – Page 13

Spring 2015 capsules

A few words on Vampire Holmes, first. It’s an adaptation of a… smartphone game app (!) as a series of barely-animated shorts ; the premise is that this Holmes completely sucks at using reason… not that it stops him from solving the crimes. It’s supposed to be funny, but this one joke is way too slight to support even a 3-minute short, let alone a whole season of it. Don’t bother with this one.

via [In Which I Review] New anime, Spring 2015.

Oh, frack it, I’m not doing a full review of Wish Upon the Pleiades (Houkago no Pleiades). For one thing, I already reviewed the pilot web-thingy 4 years ago, and this first episode is a slightly abbreviated version of the same story. I think Gainax reanimated the whole thing thanks to that sweet Subaru money, but I can’t be arsed to track the original version down to compare.

Anyway, it’s still as boring and utterly bizarre as a use of a sponsor’s money (the magical girls’ brooms roar like motorbikes ! The main character is named Subaru ! And, er, that’s it for product placement…) ; I can only fathom that the few people left at Gainax needed the money, no questions asked.

On Sunday aired a short called Rainy Cocoa (Ame-iro Cocoa), about a bunch of handsome dudes running a café. It’s a string of mediocre jokes and stereotypical characterization that just abruptly stops because we’ve hit the 2-minute mark. (There’s technically a cliffhanger with a dude suddenly showing up, but come on now.) Nothing to see there.

via [In Which I Review] New anime, Spring 2015 – Page 4.

A few words on a couple of shorts, first.

BAR Kiraware Yasai features a bunch of vegetables having a drink and complaining about how nobody likes them. It’s mildly cute as a concept, and at least it’s a joke that fits the “series of shorts” format, but there’s nothing particularly compelling in the execution to make me come back next week.

Urawa no Usagi-chan is *COME TO URAWA CITY* a series of shorts featuring a girl called Usagi *PLEASE COME, WE’RE DESPERATE ENOUGH TO COMMISSION THIS* who has utterly normal fri- *NO SERIOUSLY, WE NEED YOUNG PEOPLE TO COMPENSATE OUR POPULATION’S AGING* -ends *TOURISTS ARE FINE TOO*…

Excuse me, please wait a second.

/Shoots the representative from Urawa City’s tourism board.

Now, that’s better. Unfortunately, while there’s enough budget to make this look decent, the producers forgot to include anything like a plot, characters doing anything, or even the glimmer of a single joke. It’s just a scene that lasts for more that three minutes and accomplishes nothing in that duration.

via [In Which I Review] New anime, Spring 2015 – Page 4.

No full review for Saint Seiya : Soul of Gold. I’m not sure whether this is a proper sequel or just a side-story ; the premise is that a good chunk of the supprting cast sacrificed themselves in the Hades arc (which I haven’t watched), and now at least some of them find themselves surprisingly not dead (or maybe undead), in Asgard of all places. And of course there’s something nasty going on there.

This is a perfectly alright on all levels : it looks alright, it quickly establishes the premise and the first miniboss, and even takes the time to allude to the Lion Gold Saint’s origin story as a stab to make him engaging as a protagonist. There’s even a weird cliffhanger to make the viewer question what’s really going on. Quite competent all around… It’s just that unlike the Latin-American market who demands the franchise to be revived every few years, I have no particular nostalgia for Saint Seiya (easy “endless stair-climbing” jokes aside), so I don’t particularly care about this project. Not for me, I guess.

via [In Which I Review] New anime, Spring 2015 – Page 5.

Now for the final straggler… and there’s no way in hell I’m doing a full review of Ninja Slayer From Animation.

The signs should have been obvious. It’s adapted from an elaborate prank (an alleged “traduction” of an American novel, serialized on Twitter). Episodes are barely 12-minute-long, and broadcast only on NicoNico over in Japan. (They’re in a goddarn 4/3 format !) They got the Inferno Cop guy to direct it. Of course it was going to turn out to be a no-budget, no-plot “gonzo parody”.

The thing is, this is actually much worse than Inferno Cop. I may not have liked it, but that show had personality and embraced its own lunacy. It wasn’t boring like this crap, and its shorter episode length made for much better pacing. Ninja Slayer, on the other hand, has an even thinner premise (“dude who hates ninjas gets reborn as a ninja who kills ninjas”), characters with no depth whatsoever, and just piles on cliché after cliché without ever doing anything interesting with them. It doesn’t even have the guts of going all paperdoll-style like Inferno Cop, instead having random bursts of semi-decent animation that make it look even more boring.

The only kind thing I can say here is that it’s got good colour design, and an okayish soundtrack. Everything else about it is pure, unadultered crap. Congratulations, Ninja Slayer ! You’re easily the worst show this season, and by far.

via [In Which I Review] New anime, Spring 2015 – Page 6.

Yamada & the Seven Witches (Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a comedy manga series, the first episode of which features a conspicuous lack of witches. Hm.
Apparently it also got a short-lived live-action TV adaptation back in 2013.

Characters

Yamada, our protagonist, is nearly the platonic ideal of the “delinquant” high-schooler : a barely-contained ball of anger who’s rude, violent, and terrible in his studies. Fortunately, before he can get onto my nerves, he suddenly swaps bodies with…

Shiraishi, the best student in his class. Who doesn’t have much of a clue how this happened either, but wants him to wait until after school for them to sort this out, as she can’t afford to miss any more classes. So Yamada spends the rest of the day as her… and learns that she has more depth than the “boring honor student” he’s always dismissed her as : he now sees the creepy harassment from some of the boys, the intense bullying by some of her female classmates, and the fact she has no friends whatsoever. And you can clearly see his own personal growth that comes with this nascent understanding. Also, he has to deal with the fact that Shiraishi refuses him to resort to his go-to answer to everything (i.e. violence), especially as he’s still in her body.

Miyamura, the student council vice-president, who quickly guesses what’s going on and seizes this opportunity to revive the Supernatural Studies Club (of which he was the only member left). Yamada & Shiraishi had already figured out they switched bodies whenever they kissed ; Miyamura is the one leading the experiments that led to the discovery that Yamada could apparently do it with anyone. (One guess how. Shiraishi was surprisingly enthusiastic at the prospect.) Anyway, this lets everyone have a room where they can discreetly swap bodies, provided they occasionally help the student council out.

As I wrote earlier, no witches in sight. The OP sequence goes out of its way to try and frame Shiraishi, the head bully, a tentative applicant to the club who shows up at the end, and four other girls as the titular seven witches, but that feels more symbolic than implying any actual witchcraft at play here. (And if they do turn out to be real witches, that’d be a really surprising twist.)

Production Values

Quite good. It’s a show that relies on comedic timing and a good understanding of body language to sell its central concept, and it handles that well. The exaggerated way Yamada walks may be a bit too much, though.

Overall Impression

This is way better than I expected it to be. The core reason is that it spends very little time dwelling on the obvious jokes, and instead focuses on building everyone into stronger characters and finding fun ways for them to abuse the strange premise. That’s quite refreshing, really.

It’s also an impressive performence showcase. Admittedly, not really from Ryota Osaka ; his Shiraishi-as-Yamada is just kinda flat. But Saori Hayami really gets to stretch herself here ; her Yamada-as-Shiraishi is hilarious, either as a hoarse default-mode or as a parody of feminimity ; and even her normally flat Yamada can turn out to be surprisingly playful and fun. Between this and the 2:15-minute rant, I’m getting more and more appreciately of her range.

This show had me laughing non-stop nearly throughout its first episode. It must be doing something right. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll keep watching it to the end. (And probably catch on that OVA episode that got released a few months ago.)

via [In Which I Review] New anime, Spring 2015 – Page 5.