Asterisk War – The Academy City on the Water (Gakusen Toshi Asterisk)

(12 episodes + another season already announced for Spring 2016)

What’s it about ?

You may have noticed over the years I’ve been doing this that there’s a specific subgenre I can’t stand and will take a lot of work to make me care about : the light novel adaptation about teenagers in magical high school, with tons of gratuitous fighting and technobabble.

Well, lucky me : there’s three of them this season, and this is the first one.

Characters

Ayato, our boring male lead, is a new transfer into this magical academy, and thus everyone happily exposits to him how everything works here and in the world. Not that he really cares ; and I can’t really blame him, since I don’t either. He’s vaguely following the footsteps of his older sister, whose stay at the academy 5 years ago was apparently so tumultuous that records have been expunged (and the action prologue certainly seems to concur with this)… Wait, that sounds way more interesting than anything else in the current timeframe. Why are we following HIM instead of HER ? It’s not even like he’s passionate about finding out what happened to her !

Julis, our token tsundere love interest. With fire-related powers, of course. And even a literal princess from some random European country, because of course monarchy has made a resurgence in the future somehow. Cue avalanche of terrible romantic comedy clichés : him walking on her while she’s in her underwear, the token magic duel where he ends up cradling her and grabbing her boobs by total accident, them being forced to sit next to one another in class…

Claudia, the scheming student council president. She’s intent on getting on board for the inter-academy magical tournaments (for reasons that escape me, since he looks like nothing special so far), and she goes about this through a fix of friendliness, helpful exposition, and downright sexual assault and trolling.

In case you’re wondering, the mandatory pervert best friend does show up in due time, just in time for more clunky exposition.

Production Values

Decent enough, I guess ? The camera is firmly stuck into pervert mode, though.

Overall Impression

Have I mentioned why I heavily dislike this subgenre ? Well, it’s because most of them are crap like this : uninspired, tedious, heavily derivative, and relying on clichés to make up for the lack of creativity. All of the characters are annoying (aside from Claudia, who’s just creepy), the jokes should have been retired decades ago, and the plot seems to be heading nowhere but towards a generic tournament arc. This show has absolutely nothing to it beyond the wish-fulfilment value, but that’s completely lost on me.

And this has already been greenlit for two seasons ? Dear gods. Well, I’m not sticking around, that’s for sure.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Fall 2015 – Page 2

Young Black Jack

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Adaptation of a recent manga series spinning out of Osamu Tezuka’s famous 70s opus. It’s basically a prequel set in the hero’s college years.

Characters

Our point-of-view character (and obvious audience identification point) is Maiko Okamoto, a medical intern. She’s a bit clumsy and mostly does paperwork at this point, but she takes her vocation seriously. So when the world’s stupidest transit accident happens and all the regular doctors are too busy to deal with this one kid who’s in danger of losing half his limbs, she’s desperately looking for anyone else who’ll step in and achieve a miracle.

Hazama, the man who would later become known as Black Jack, guerilla surgeon with a patchwork face. For now he’s just a mere medical college student, and has yet to operate on anyone. But he’s clearly been preparing mentally for it, and he’s willing to help out, so off they go. It helps that he happens to own a favour from a washed-up surgeon nearby, who’ll lend his his operation theater.

As apparently always happens in Black Jack stories, the patient’s father is an asshole : even after our hero miraculously patches up the kid’s limbs, he refuses to pay the previously-agreed amount. Screw you too, jerk Dad.

Production Values

The OP sequence wastes no time in pandering to the target audience, as it immediately show the hero shirtless and in bondage.

The ED sequence, on the other hand, makes a terrible mistake : it shows side by side Tezuka’s original character designs, and the “updated” versions this show is going with. Which only demonstrates how badly the redesigns have gone : either they’re much blander and less expressive, or they’ve barely different from the Tezuka blueprint and then they look horribly out of placed next to everything else.

Also looking awful : the surgeonning sequences. Most of the screentime is spent on Hazama playing with scalpels and strings at random in a very abstract way ; what we’re actually shown of the actual operation looks ludicrous. It’s like the storyboarders noticed halfway through that this should be a very bloody mess, and then endeavoured to show as little of it as possible.

Overall Impression

Urgh. Nevermind how terrible it looks : the script is much, much worse. Because it relies on nearly everyone but our two main characters to be either a moron or an asshole. (And even then, Maiko’s mostly there to fawn over Young Black Jack being so awesome.) The accident is beyond stupid, the circumstances that lead to him taking the case only happen because people are being jerks, and the ending just comes out of nowhere to make the point that the people he helps are jerks too. Heck, even Hazama is a bit of an entitled git, too.

And then there’s the politics of it. The reason the hospital is short-handed is because the interns and the medical students have gone on strike and are organizing protests. This is set in 1968 (which was a hotbed of unrest in Japan too), and they do have legitimate grievances (such as internships being unpaid). But the show thinks this is all frivolous, and depicts the lot of them as utter assholes, with not a single on willing to help out in an emergency. Now, the late-60s student movements were far from sainthood, but this reactionary and revisionist take on them sits very badly with me.

Forget about the franchise’s prestigious pedigree ; it only makes this look worse in comparison. And it was already so annoying that I refuse to watch any more of it.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Fall 2015 – Page 2

Heavy Object

(24 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Exposition, the anime ! Adapted from a light novel series, of course.

Okay, here’s a quick summary of the premise : in the future, conventional weapons (and even nuclear missiles) have been rendered obsolete by the titular “Heavy Objects”, ball-shaped mechas with impressive firepower and even more impressive shielding. So now wars have become skirmishes between Heavy Objects. This first episode goes into much more extraneous detail than that, but that’s the gist of it.

Characters

Qwenthur (sic), our protagonist, is a mechanic student who’s enlisted into a military outpost in the middle of nowhere, so as to study the Heavy Object stationed there. It’s an old, non-specialized model, which is all the best for him to learn as much about the tech as possible. And then, PROFIT ! (He’s very vague about how merely knowing how those things work will allow him to easily become an engineering tycoon. Surely the field is already crowded as heck ?)

The thing you quickly notice about Qwenthur is that he. never. shuts. up. Which is doubly bad, as he’s also our narrator : even with his mouth closed, his inner monologue will drown the audience with tedious and clumsy exposition. I usually don’t mind Natsuki Hanae, but by 3/4ths of the way through this episode I was yelling at the screen to just shut the — up.

“The Princess” (who may have an actual name) is the Heavy Object’s actual pilot. Supposedly super-elite and stuff, but she spends most of the episode idling around on standby, or taking a gratuitous shower to liven up Qwenthur’s droning narration. (And of course additional material states she’s 14. Urgh.)

Major Capistrano is the local commanding officer, at the grizzled old age of 18. She’s actually coordinationg the operations of at least 4 other Heavy Objects, if her tablet display is any indication. Or maybe it’s just a casual game/training program she plays ; she certainly looks horribly bored doing so.

The show makes it look like there are only five people total on the base (with Qwenthur’s hardass boss at the mecha maintenance shop, and his best pal/rookie radio operator), despite the vague suggestion more soldiers are around.

Production Values

Well, the direction makes it darnedest to liven things up, with decent battle visuals for the Heavy Objects and some desperate fanservice scenes, and even the music swelling around to try and make it epic, but nothing can overcome the dreary exposition.

Overall Impression

Oh, dear. I came into this cautiously optimistic, as the same author’s Index series led to a decently entertaining anime series… but gods, this is unengaging on every level. I’m used to screenwriter Hiroyuki Yoshino being widely inconsistent in his adaptations, but this is an unfortunate failure to weed down the inherent wordiness of the source material. The already rather flat characters become mere vessels for the exposition, what little humour filters through isn’t particularly funny, and the script even goes out of its way to state that Heavy Object warfare just isn’t very interesting period. Why should we care, then ?

Very disappointing, and I won’t be bothering with any more episodes.

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

Lance N’ Masques

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Dashing knights ! (Adapted from a light novel series.)

Characters

Yotaro, our teenage protagonist, has been trained since childhood to become a knight, as part of the order of the Knights of the World, a peacekeeping organization who have their own island country. He’d actually like to live a normal life, but that’s not easy when his body feels compelled to white-knighting whenever girls around him are in any kind of trouble. Girls his own age find this a bit creepy, really. (The goofy mask and the huge lance he carries around don’t help.)

Makio, on the other hand, is 6 years old, and thus finds “Knight Lancer” awesome. She hasn’t twigged that her hero is the same person as the more ordinary-looking Yotaro, but that doesn’t prevent her from inviting the latter home when she learns he’s hungry. Said home is super-huge, has a number of maids on the payroll, and is inhabited exclusively by Makio. (Mom is dead, Dad rarely comes.)

Yuifa, the maid closest to Makio (despite strict orders from Dad not to get too close), is of course suspicious of this boy more than twice her age she’s brought back home. You can’t blame her for being a bit overprotective, especially as gangsters barge in later on to try and kidnap her charge. (They’re defeated by the Knight Lancer, of course.)

Looking for Yotaro are his quirky entourage : a cranky girl, a snarky horse-girl, and a stern maid. Sure, whatever. They find him at the end of the episode.

Production Values

I’m not fond of the character designs, who all look very same-y and generic combined with the super-pastel colour palette, but there’s a lot to like in the actual camera work. The proportions go wildly out of control in the action sequences (and Yotaro’s lance in particular keeps changing sizes), but I’m pretty sure that’s a stylistic choice. Especially with the nice sight gag of the huge third thug unfolding from behind the two others despite having no room to hide before that ; the direction knows how to play with this for maximum effect.

There’s no notable fanservice, which is a relief given the lolicon potential. Even Makio being nude for a chunk of the OP sequence looks rather tasteful.

Overall Impression

Wait, that’s it ? I kinda expected some hook to come in at some point, but nope. It’s all about white-knighting, with one-note characters that range from the okay to the unbearable (Yotaro’s entourage, urgh…). While it does have some self-awareness, it’s still rather shallow, and I just can’t bring myself to care. It’s got style, I’ll give it that, but not enough to overcome its innate blandness.

I’ll pass.

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

One Punch Man

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Offbeat superheroing, adapted from a very popular shonen manga series.

Characters

This episode is wholly devoted to selling the concept of One Punch Man, our protagonist. He lives in a world where supervillains (and subterranean species, and the Earth’s immune system, and…) keep sprouting up and wrecking shit up. There are a number of superheroes in activity to stand up to all of those, and our hero is one of the latest.

We’re shown a flashback to his “origin story” three years ago, and it’s (purposefully) less than impressive. Random nobody stands up to a crab supervillain to save a kid, discovers he’d actually like to pursue his childhood dreams of fighting evil, goes and trains offscreen so hard he loses his hair, the end. That’s it, and it drives the point home that the story doesn’t care about the how and why One Punch Man exists.

His gimmick, as the name indicates, is that he can beat any kind of opponent in one punch. (He also has enough resilience to withstand being thrown around a bit before getting a good shot.) And if you think that’d make for boring fight scenes… Well, so does he. It’s all about his existential crisis as he mows down no less than five different baddies over the course of the episode. The only time that looks like he’s breaking a sweat (because there are several baddies to punch), it’s actually a dream sequence articulating his anxieties.

The only other regular-looking character shows up wordlessly, looking at some dead cattle, in the last 30 seconds. Presumably he’s going to actually do something next episode.

Production Values

A preview of this first episode aired on NicoNico a bit ago, so I saw this in eyebleed-o-vision and no OP/ED sequences. It looks okay enough ; the direction has good comedic timing and sells the scale of the threats (or the absence thereof) very well. It’s also got a good grasp of body language… or the absence thereof, in the case of One Punch Man himself.

Overall Impression

Well, it’s a decent joke that’s well-executed. The big question is whether it has legs ; won’t the “One Punch” thing get old really quickly ? This is a show in a dire need of a regular supporting cast to add some depth to the premise. I presume that’s what the second episode’s going to tackle,n of course ; and the manga has been going on for long enough that I presume the author knows what he’s doing. (I certainly hope he never runs out of really silly supervillains.)

Still, this is a bit of a “wait and see” show ; it’s going to need to be funnier than this pilot for me to stick with it.

Source: [In Which I Review] New anime, Fall 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