Author: AidanAK47

Planet With – 07[Sirius]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Planet With

With that conclusive finale last episode, many of us were left wondering just where things go from here. As it turns out, our main protagonist Souya thought the same. The answer as it turns out is that with the palidains taken down, the sealing faction has risen up to become the new antagonist of the series. The former secretary of the paladins and member of the sealing faction has infiltrated Souya’s school as a student, which many joke that she is far too old to be pretending to be a student, and is brainwashing people into thinking she just transferred in. He little brainwashing power works on Souya but in a strange turn of events Nozomi isn’t affected by the power which either suggests that there is more to her than one would think or else her glasses managed to block out the power. It’s also nice to see that the two palidains that didn’t fight in the previous arc have joined the sealing faction and now Souya will be fighting them once again. On top of all this we have the introduction of a brand new mysterious figure who claims to be the oldest race in the universe. Seems he can only be seen by Souya and takes on the form of Souya’s brother with chances being higher that they were the ones to cause the dragon to go berserk in the first place.

We have gotten background on what happened to Sirius as well as who the odd maid girl(Ginko) who takes care of Souya is. Turns out that Ginko is a space princess(No matter how I say that it will always sound silly but hey we got mascot costume aliens so…) and at the time of the dragon attack Sirius was invading her planet. Looks like Sirius gains psychic power and started invading other planets to conquer. Which caused the dragon to deem them beyond salvation and thus wiped them out. Nya Sensei for once talks by himself in this episode and tried to prevent all this from happening but was ultimately too late, only managing to save Souya. It’s a bit sad that nya sensei wasn’t able to truly affect the outcome but I don’t truly see his actions as pointless. For one i actually believe that what he said to the dragon truly made a difference as if Tesuza was the reincarnation of the dragon it could mean that Nya Sensei’s words changed his opinion. So he sought to rule over earth rather than destroy it after seeing them close to taking the same path as Sirius.

In fact that is the entire reason that the sealing faction is the new antagonist as earth is close to awakening psychic powers and the sealing faction fully believes that once they do then they will repeat the mistakes of Sirius and start trying to conquer other star systems. Souya also looks to have awakened psychic power which has me wondering as to what role that will play. Seems there is some theory going around that Nozomi is going to take over the protagonist role now that Souya has decided this all has nothing to do with him.

Planet With – 05/06[Paladin Break 1/Paladin Break 2]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Planet With

Well that’s the end of Planet With and what a satisfying ending it was. I mean that final fight was something that would do Gurren Lagann proud and while there are some loose ends the majority of things were tied up quite nice…what do you mean this is only episode six? Hold on, there are six episodes left?! Um…alright, that are a rather conclusive way to hit the midpoint of the series and I truly have no idea of just where it will go from here. But I must say that if this was the ending of the series I would actually be alright with that. Yes Planet With hasn’t quite reached the heights of Satoshi’s other work but it has proved to be a fun series and that last episode was truly marvelous. After watching Fate/Extra’s lackluster conclusion this episode managed to pull off what it couldn’t with a incredibly satisfying final fight against the big bad. It is no joke that this was the absolute best episode of the series so far and has me very interested to see where this could go.

There is a some casualty to this midway conclusion as two of the paladins just straight up give up their powers without a fight. One rejected the leaders ideals and tossed aside her power at the end of episode four and the other just handed over his after the old man fell, stating that he was only staying to help take care of him. It is a little on the disappointing side but when thinking about it this series was making it a bit of a formula with the defeat of the paladins. It could have gotten a bit tiresome to run through the same motions with two other paladins. The old man’s fight against Souya was build up quite a bit in episode five but ended in a single strike in the first minutes of episode six but the fight against Takashi more than made up for that. Takashi’s father, Takezo, had me worried that like Nezuya that he would be a joke character as his alien flashback was just him hanging out with women and eating great food. But he brushed off that pretty easy and showed that there was more to him than he let on. Another nice surprise was that when Nozomi figured out Souya’s connection to the aliens and Souya even telling her who he was. Something like that is normally left for the final episodes which again makes this midpoint ending feel all the more final despite it not even being the real ending. But again it’s refreshing to she Satoshi set up what could be a tired cliche and end up turning it into a true moment of character growth.

But man that final fight. I am serious when I say that I haven’t felt this satisfied after a good punch up since Gurren Lagann. You can argue that it followed predictable beats but I felt it subverted enough to keep things interesting and the fight remained pretty high octane. The best part being the final strike where Souya from nowhere brings back the joke about the clogs and uses one as a makeshift brass knuckle to land the final punch. That was simultaneously hilarious and pretty badass that I was caught between hype, laughter and surprise. Having Souya completely mess up the message Takezo gave him to pass on to his son was also great but even the humor managed to lead to a good moment where Souya at least conveys the intent causing Takshi to admit that his father might have been right. After that he dies, yes, our protagonist accidently killed the guy. Well it’s likely his death was more the result of him overusing the dragons power but it does seem like this is going to weight pretty heavy on Souya. If there was a flaw in this episode it would be that rather hasty exposition dump about the nature of the dragon and how the sealing faction “absolutely destroyed” it. Sure they did, certainly that dragon ain’t coming back in any shape or form right? Well even the General even seems to doubt that point and convincing himself of it. To me this episode shows the true potential of a Satoshi’s writing could have for anime and how good he is at planning out concise and focused stories. The director is stating that things are going to get real crazy after this and you know what? I can’t wait.

Fate/Extra Last Encore Anime Review – 40/100

by AidanAK47, posted in Anime Reviews, Fate/Extra Last Encore, Reviews by AidanAK47

To many the Fate series is daunting with its numerous incarnations and spinoffs and here in the year of many a Fate adaption we get another one by Studio Shaft which was first thought to adapt the story of the PSP game Fate/Extra. Fate/Extra could basically be considered Fate with a sci-fi twist as this entire series takes place in a virtual reality where a massive Holy Grail War is taking place. The protagonist Hakuno and his Saber Servant must advance up seven Floors while defeating the servant and master that guards each floor to reach the Holy Grail at the top. The scenario itself certainly feels like that of a video game but this anime is not actually an adaption of the PSP game but instead an alternate retelling/sequel to that game. Despite claims from the writer that this anime could be experienced blind, the story itself does require context from the game to understand the story as a whole.

I will say that the story of this anime does sound good on paper and I am sure if you read summaries on each episode you would find yourself interested as the events of this anime do sound exciting, at least on paper. However the execution is botched heavily as the story was essentially a novel written by the author and handed over to be adapted into a anime screenplay. It’s source trappings remain in the show as Fate/Extra is an anime that prefers to tell you it’s story rather than show you it. There is an unforgivable amount of exposition and characters are not developed enough to make such copious amount of exposition interesting. The main character is essentially characterised as having no personality besides a vague anger which makes him a poor foil to the heroine of the series who mainly acts as fanservice. The massive amount of dialogue and Shaft being the animation studio has had people referring to this anime as Fatemonogatari which certainly seems like an apt comparison. The show is mainly dialogue and the battles between servants and masters on each floor all feel uninvolving and anticlimactic. Not helped when each fight either boils down to the protagonists trying harder or pulling out some previously unmentioned dues ex machina. I will say that Shaft make the show quite visually striking and there is some legitimately beautiful aspects like the illustration of the servant master duos in the episode endings. However the animation isn’t as strong as some other Fate entries and this series can take a bit too many of Shafts quirks as an anime studio.

The show follows a fairly formulaic pattern which makes the show feel vacuous as it continues to progress but the characters on screen remain machines for exposition or meaningless dialogue. What is likely intended to be the driving force of the series is the mystery behind what is actually happening as the story itself is very stingy on the details of what is actually happening causing many a viewer to just think “What?” which is the intention of the author but sadly backfired. Anytime you feel you are beginning to understand just what is happening in this show, it throws another curve ball and leaves you trying to figure it out all over again. Once pieced together the story becomes more straightforward but instead of being a rewarding experience to puzzle out it just becomes a reason why the viewer becomes so disconnected to the events on screen as we can’t engage if we are too busy trying to get to grips with what the plot even is. Upon its conclusion it just feels empty and meaningless, providing nothing of worth nor entertainment. Music didn’t leave much of an impression either. Overall there does feel to be a story under all this which could have made for a pretty good anime but the execution of it’s ideas where botched to the point that it just feels soulless and vacant , lacking anything which makes it recommendable besides finding out where that girl who looks exactly like Saber but in a red dress came from. Even then playing the Fate/Extra game would be a better experience even if that too isn’t perfect. So I pray…for Fate/Extra CCC to be localised for that certainly seems like it would beat out both the previous game and the anime. So get on it Marvelous or Xseed.

Fate/Extra Last Encore – 11-13[Resurrected Sword of Victory – Excalibur Galatine -/Turner of the Wheel – Chakravartin -]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Fate/Extra Last Encore

It’s been a while but the final episodes of Fate/Extra are out and I thought that I couldn’t really add anything to what I previously said about this series. The last three episodes did nothing to change my opinion on the series as a whole, if anything it solidified my previous opinion and pretty much confirmed that the series as a whole was a rather pointless addition to the Nasuverse. But I happened upon this quote from a blog post that Nasu wrote before the first episode aired. And I quote:

“And this is how I got my engine running, but since I have no experience with writing anime scenarios, I wrote the source novel-ish book for “Last Encore”, and had Sakurai-san help me adapt and adjust that into anime scenario format.”

Thus like a thunderbolt it hit me and suddenly everything wrong with Fate/Extra Last Encore makes sense. Even in my previous posts about this series I remarked that it was far too much tell and no show but of course it is, for the source is a book. Also Sakurai was involved and I swear this woman is involved with some of the worst the Nasuverse has to offer, she has proven time and time again to be a terrible writer. Of course I am not pinning the blame entirely on her, her fault is in poorly adjusting Nasu’s novel to an anime format. Nasu is at fault for writing a novel when he’s supposed to write a screenplay, clearly he wrote too much to be conveyed and didn’t make use of the visual medium of anime to tell the story through other methods besides excessive exposition. The director is at fault for not making the fights stand out animation wise and ending anticlimactically. But these flaws all originated from this supposed to be anime original adaption turning out to be a adaption of a novel. Thus i must ask…if you had time to write a novel for Fate/Extra then why the hell is the Tsukihime remake a decade late at this point?!

The final episodes focus on Hakuno and Nero taking on the final floor master and the mastermind behind everything. The fights themselves lack any real gravitas as while the two lost to Gaiwen at first, they effectively beat him the second time by…trying harder? Oh and Gaiwens master decided that he wasn’t going to fight Hakuno and just stand there unlike the first time where he took an active place in the battle. Not much f worth happens, it plays out much like any other floor master with two episodes, heavy amount of exposition to explain everything and a anticlimactic fight. The final battle against twice Pieceman, or to be exact Twice Piecemans deadface, was made fair less exciting when he revealed that his Servant who was shown at the beginning of the series pretty much left offscreen and just handed over his Noble Phantasm to Twice. The final boss of the anime essentially abandoned the story and I don’t understand how that could be see as anything but disappointing. So the climax hits and I still don’t give a damn about Nero or Hakuno so their noble sacrifices mean nothing to me.

The final twist was pretty much expected with the earth being beyond help and practically ended but Hakuno decided to use the Moon Cell to create a virtual paradise which the remaining people on earth struggling to survive can escape to. I am reminded of the end of Apocrypha which also had the main character sacrifice himself in order to save the world and much like that series I find that the the character being sacrificed doesn’t have enough character to make me care. The end result of this series is that despite Nasu saying it would be a good entry point into the Extra spinoff of Fate, he was blatantly lying as without playing the Fate/Extra game this anime is missing valuable context. The semi sequel/Alternative path nature of the series makes it not an adaption of Fate/Extra nor providing anything of worth to the lore as a whole besides some Deadface ability which seemed to be invented for the sole purpose of trying to make Hakuno interesting. A straight adaption of Fate/Extra, which is briefly shown with flashbacks to Hakunon, actually looked to make for a far more interesting story than the one we got here. Not to mention a complete missed opportunity to have a Fate anime with a female protagonist. It’s sad really and this anime marks a pretty low note for the year of Fate Adaptations to end on. Well…at least Heaven’s Feel is pretty damn great.

Planet With – 03/04[Avenger 1/Avenger 2]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Planet With

Missed a week thanks to work being a hectic mess but I can say that it’s not due to a lack of interest in this show. For this show actually gets better and better each week. The backstory of what is going on is still rather vague but we at least know now that the main protagonist is an alien whose home planet was destroyed by a giant dragon. It seems that the heroes are currently making use of the dragons remains to be able to summon god armour to combat the Nebula sealers sending down the weird monsters which give people visions. Said sealers all appear to look like mascot characters and the cat sensei branched off into his own faction after failing to stop the dragon from destroying the main protagonists homeworld. Now he enlists his help because working with the boy ampilies his own powers and he wants the kid to start a new life on earth. Meanwhile the paladins leader appears to have the goal of using the dragons power to take over the world to form world peace which has caused a rift to form between him and one of the remaining paladins.

Episode four certainly shows the dangers of using the dragons power and I find it interesting in that this girl was essential repeating her past of wanting to avenger her best friend and despite events playing out similarly, the end result was far more disastrous. I am a little disappointed that they threw out some haphazard explanation about the area she shot a fireball at having be evacuated insuring no was hurt but I suppose it would have been a bit too much of a dark turn for this series.

It’s a bit of a shame that Nezuya didn’t happen to get his characterisation moment with the Sealer vision and looks to be confirmed to just be a big joke character as his vision just has to do with him wishing to be a harem protagonist like any anime very clearly catered to his demographic. If there is a weak link in this show I would say it’s him as he’s a comic relief character whose just not very comedic. I got more laughs out of Souya’s reaction to the “Cat Doping” transformation with him just echoing the thoughts of the audience as Cat sensei swallows what is essentially steroids. Not to mention that the aftereffects of it is a massive hangover which sort of is the opposite of berserker dragon Harumi who came out of this better. I do actually question her friendship with Miu and while I normally don’t go into these kinds of assumptions as I feel it’s short sighted and generally unfounded, here I think there is some evidence to suggest Harumi’s feelings for Miu go beyond simple friendship. I mean in her vision she saw herself as a princess with Miu being her prince which certainly is quite suggestive. So we have hit episode four and the paladins have been brought down to two not counting the president. This series has yet to truly excel yet so can it change from good to great with it’s remaining eight episodes?

Satsuriku no Tenshi – 04[A sinner has no right of choice]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Satsuriku no Tenshi

We hav sixteen episodes to work with and yet the pacing of this anime is almost breakneak, but admittedly that doesn’t quite feel rushed. It could do with a few more moments of slowing down and letting the atmosphere speak for itself or even just some back and forths between Zack and Rachel. So after alleyways, a hospital and s sewer with a graveyard we are brought to a prison with a new floor master who is keen on punishing those that enter. Unfortunately this new villain falls under the same problem as many of the others as being rather one note and going so over the top crazy that it’s hard to take her seriously. But I do like that she presents herself like a tv show host when talking of her plans to execute the two of them as it sort of eludes to the nature of executions being used as a form of entertainment in early humanity. Even prison executions has a audience and the idea of some bubbly host girl presenting the whole thing like a game show is rather novel. The theme of this floor is very much on punishing the wicked or excessive punishment as the traps the two encounter are all elaborate forms of execution.

Zack getting strapped into an electric chair is quite cathartic but I admit that I find Rachels extremely delayed reaction to releasing him rather frustrating. It is rather odd for how quick witted she’s supposed to be to not think of the factor that Zack can’t kill her if someone kills Zack. But admittedly there is the question of just why it has to be Zack that needs to kill her. The question that was brought up time and time again last episode was that if the goal is for Rachel to die then anyone could kill her. The only point that gives Rachel undying loyalty to Zack is that he swore to god that he would kill her. So let’s examine things. Rachel wants to die but she does not want to commit suicide. Thus she cannot give up and let others kill her as that would be a form of assisted suicide. Of course the big contradiction her is that once they get out of that place and Rachel lets Zack kill her then that too would essentially be assisted suicide. The only differentiation being the oath to god. Therefore I see this, Rachel wants to die but she does not want to be punished for taking her own life, or that she does not wish to be sent to hell. A point of interest as while it may have been a figurative taunt, the doctor in the first episode also stated that her parents where in hell. So could it be that Rachel doesn’t actually want to meet her parents and that is the reason she has an apprehension towards the idea of suicide? Because it would send her to hell where she would be reunited with her parents? Or it could be that she has a apprehension towards suicide because she already committed it? The opening does show a girl hanging from a noose which could very well be Rachel. Speaking of the opening I did find it amusing that Rachel and Zack had to take the same mugshots they were posing for in the opening in order to proceed.

This show is still weird but interesting but I do admit that I am having difficulty with Zacks voice actor. The problem is that having watched A certain Magical index subbed, every time this boy speaks I hear Accelerator. Word on the net is that most hear Bakugo in his performance but for me I hear more of Accelerator and that admitly takes me out of the show a bit. So seeing as the first episode of the simudub came out I figured this would be a good time to get some use out of my funimation subscription. I got to say that the dub for this show is really quite good, better than the sub in my opinion. I feel the english actor for Zack captures the goofball aspect of Zack a lot better than his Japanese and the small little dialogue changes add a lot more. If i had not chosen to blog this I would have likely watched this dubbed but admittedly I said I would watch Steins;Gate 0 and Hinamatsuri dubbed and yet fell behind on both. Watched High School DxD Hero week by week to completion yet fell behind on those…I am actually disappointed in myself for that.

Grand Blue – 03[A New World]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Grand Blue

At this point I think I know enough to see how this will all turn out for this show. The three episode rule may not be an ironclad measure of a shows worth but here I can see that without a big change in direction or animation this show isn’t going to live up to the manga. The director definitely seems to be using the philosophy of Illumination animation of making animation as cheap as possible. Case in point, the titan faces of the manga were often used for exaggerated outburst but in the anime it’s definitely not used out of loyalty but instead as an animation saving technique as just pulling a still image from the manga is easier than animating it. We even have this show pulling the removal of the background and replacing it with a gradient colour. The animation in these episodes is parse and once again I am reminded of Wotakoi which was hampered by its production values too. But the direction of the jokes also has me confused as the pacing is just wrong and jokes are changed to less funny versions.

As an example there is a joke with Iori planning to play strip rock paper scissors with the newcomer Azusa but has to play with some other guys first. Ten minutes later he comes back to Azusa posing dramatically ready to play but he’s got nothing left to strip. In the anime however, rather than have Iori go away for ten minutes, they just jump straight to the punchline and before it has even time to land the anime moves on. They also cut out Asuza laughing her ass off and saying to the other guys about how Iori was the best.

Same with the more lighter jokes like the guys trying to figure out how a girls school uniform could have to do with diving and Kouhei just casually dressing up a hug pillow in it. The punchline is there but the anime never lingers on it enough for it to make an impact and it just passes without much notice. This is part of the process of adaptionas with manga you have time to linger on any panel for how long you want and the sudden page turns make jokes hit you right in the gut. An anime needs to put extra effort in presentation to make the jokes land. You can’t just put the manga on a screen and call it a day, it needs work for the joke to land the same. The problem I see here is that the anime has the same punchlines of the manga but none of the build up to make them as funny as they were. Of course this problem doesn’t quite seem to be affecting first time viewers from what I see so it could be just that I know the jokes and hearing them a second time isn’t as funny as the first. Like a meme that gets repeated ad nauseam with slightly altered context to the point where it loses any humor it once had and just becomes a reference that people point at and say they get. Quite a number of Grand Blue jokes got ruined in this manner, like the lighter and water joke or the Grand Blue is a Diving anime joke.

Satsuriku no Tenshi – 03[I swear to God]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Satsuriku no Tenshi

I still file this anime under the category of interesting but flawed as it does hold elements that make it stand out but there are significant cracks forming in regards to the characters and lack of context for the setting. Rachel, or rather Ray as she was nicknamed in this episode, has officially run her suicidal gimmick into the ground that even Zack is wondering why she keeps reminding him to kill her. T his episode did bring out an interesting point in that she doesn’t want to be killed by just anyone and for some odd reason seems to place her trust in Zack. But the really interesting factor was that what made her ultimately decide that Zack was the one to kill her was that he swore to god that he would. This has been a bit hinted at before but it seems that Rachel is very religious, in that she stated that she cannot kill herself because God deems it wrong. Likewise here Zack didn’t seem to put too much thought into the statement but Rachel latched on to it with a maddening degree. I am interested in just who Rachel was to provoke these responses but her character as it stands now is still a bit one note.

Ever since losing her will to life she has based the entirety of her persona around being suicidal and while this has opened up a nice dynamic with Zack, it basically means that she reacts to everything with deadpan stoicness while only showing emotion in regards to anything that could lead to her death. So when Zack is out of the picture and it’s only Rachel and the newly introduced Psychopathic Edward talking, the dialogue felt it was running in circles. A constant back and forth of debating whether Edward has permission to kill Rachel or not that just kept circling and even when she finally made up her mind Edward just kept hammering the point home of how much he wanted to kill her. This kid wasn’t all that interesting character wise but I do feel like there is underlying symbolism in his desire to give her a grave. Going through each floor there does feel like there is a connecting theme and I do love that the grave he so miraculously prepared was where he was killed with his casket being closed by a falling tombstone. If I had to make my own theory I would say that each floor represents a place of death and Rachel is unknowingly conquering death so that she can finally die.

The game logic of the world is once again at work with what looks to be a clear boss encounter as well as some rather game like moments such as Zack breaking a human sized hole in the wall. Which certainly is odd what he had to use a pickaxe to break graves in the last episode because he didn’t want to break his scythe. Rachel’s logic when she comes up with solutions for problems certainly feels less like human ingenuity and more like a player with a walkthrough. How exactly did she know that the kid has a remote as I certainly didn’t see him press anything to make the lights go out. Not to mention I just already assume these characters have some supernatural control over their floor as we haven’t exactly established ground rules on what they are capable of. If you were to analyse it you can certainly start poking some holes in this series and I fear it may go down the route of Fate/Extra last encore where it depends too much on the mystery of the setting to engage you while the characters remain rather underdeveloped. Well in that regard this series isn’t at least shoving paragraphs of expository speeches down our throats and Zack still remains a pretty fun and interesting character.

Grand Blue – 02[Underwater]

by AidanAK47, posted in Grand Blue

When picking series to cover for an anime season I admit that there are certain series that I pick up solely due to my familiarity/love with the source and as such little thought goes into the choice itself besides the desire to cover it because there is no one else on the team that know this story better than you do. Grand Blue was one of those series for me and the minute it was announced to have anime adaption I pretty much decided to cover it then and there. The reason I bring this up now is to try to justify what I about about to say next as when I sat down to do a write up of this week’s episode, I immediately realized that I effectively decided to fight a dragon with a wooden shield and a toothpick. I likey mentioned this before but allow me to mention it again, out of all genres of anime, comedy is undoubtedly the hardest to blog. For while personal opinion of anime is highly subjective, comedy is situationally subjective. To clarify let me say that I think Team America is a pretty funny movie, I mean the America Fuck Yeah has pretty much become synonymous with overzealous ridiculous American patriotism and the puppetry tech on display was truly impressive.

But one night in college myself and a large group of people decided we were going to watch Team America and when we did not one person so much as chuckled. The movies jokes were met with deadening silence and I truly believe that regardless of what comedy was on screen it would have died in that atmosphere. Likewise once upon a time I found Mel Brooks Men in Tights and the first Austin Powers hilarious but in my later years I went back and rewatched them only to wonder just what I found so amusing about these movies in the first place. The point of this long rambling session is that I have effectively taken the position of trying to explain to you lot just why this show is funny which is a factor that can change drastically very easily. Besides, if you have to explain the joke, then it’s not funny anymore.

So let me procrastinate by talking about the adaptation itself. So far I would say the adaption of Grand Blue is serviceable but there is a definite feeling that the jokes are working in spite of the animation direction rather than because of it. This feels like a budget effort as this is the first show of a budding studio and perhaps I should have considered that the Director has done Gintama so naturally he would know how to do comedy within a budget. After all how many bloody episodes of that show are out? Willing to bet that the show is far from an animation showcase. The big offender her is the titan face moments were they effectively use still frames instead of actually animating it which results in Iori and crew turning into cardboard cutouts of attack on Titan rejects at times. This is one of the strengths of manga that the artstyle can change so drastically for comedic effect without feeling jarring and the change can really hyper exaggerate the characters feelings, hence upping the comedic effect. In anime however this change is basically watching a animated character briefly turn into a still image and break a viewer’s immersion. What worked in manga does not always work in animation and therefore the purpose of an adaptation is to make the story work within the medium. Adaptation decay is often an inevitability but the anime should bring something to the table to make it a viable or preferable alternative to just reading the manga.

So rambling segways aside, what happened in todays episode of Grand Blue? We have three main parts here, one is Iori attempting to convince Nanaka that he is a grown adult so he can go out drinking with the guys who are meeting up with a woman’s university He is attempting to do this by decorating his room which of course has disastrous results. The second part is Teaching Iori to get used to being underwater with equally disastrous results. Finally we have a trip to the Aquarium which Chisa set up for Iori to understand the appeal of diving. The last part was a more serious aspect of Grand Blue which admittedly does feel rather hollow, almost as though going through the motions because we need Iori to get interesting in diving so that he stays in the club and has more wacky hijinks. Sadly a scene was cut during the water training where Iori and crew proceed to suplex each other into the water titan faced while Iori thinks “Fuck diving”. Not sure why they cut that out, makes me smile just thinking of it. Some jokes hit like Nanaka bringing up to Iori that despite living there for three days he still didn’t know where his room is because he’s getting plastered every night. Others sadly feel a bit flat as I remember grining harder when Nanaka congratulated Iori for wearing clothes for once. I feel like more of an effort should be put into presenting the punchlines as in the manga they were very snappy and caught you off guard but in the anime the build up is too obvious and the payoff too drawn out. So far this adaption is proving okay but not circumventing the counterargument of “Why not read the manga instead?”

Darling in the Franxx Anime Review – 57/100

by AidanAK47, posted in Anime Reviews, Reviews by AidanAK47

In following anime seasons it can be quite an experience to follow a show as it airs as the hype and rollercoaster of reactions can be entertainment in its own right. In that regard Darling in the Franxx was a hell of a ride as week by week peoples feelings for it ran hot and cold. An odd aspect of this show which I found troublesome is that I was never quite sure how to evaluate it. For example, if you were to ask me if I enjoyed Darling in the Franxx I would have to say yes, week by week it certainly was an enjoyable watch at least up until it’s final four episodes. But at any point of this series if you asked me if I recommended it then that would be met with a solid “Hmm..I wonder”. Because this show is a mess. There are sudden tonal shifts as it jolts from lighthearted comedy to dead serious drama. At times it can be a grim as Evangelion and at others it can be as ludicrous as Kill La Kill. Sometimes it can have a great episode and other times it can have a trainwreck of an episode. Sometimes it decides to take it’s time and others it moves the plot along at lightspeed.

Developments can be forced and others can be decently thought out. Suddenly stakes are raised only to be negated on episode later. Interesting Ideas can be brought to the board only to be thrown aside. It even starts with joking double entendres with stupid fanservice while portraying a tale about child soldiers in a dystopian regime. This is a confused mess of a series that didn’t know where it was going nor what it was trying to accomplish which results in a storyline which feels like it’s reaching for the stars with the right hand while attaching weights with the left. Do I like Darling in the Franxx? Honestly with the bad taste the final few episodes left me which I would be inclined to say no but there was a point where I legitimately thought this series could turn itself around and become something to be remembered.

The story would be familiar to who’s familiar about the Mecha Genre as it is about a bunch of teenagers who pilot giant robots to fight off some unknown monsters. What made Franxx stand out initially was its focus on sexuality with the male and female pairings to control robots and on the dark insinuations of the dystopian society that these children lived in. However as the series continued it eventually scrapped all this and became a derivative of many a Trigger/Gainax anime before it. The characters can be enjoyable and likeable provided the plot doesn’t force them into a hateable position for the sake of drama with the titular character Zero Two acting as poster girl for the series. If there is one thing that likely carried the series in its weaker moments it’s likely this cast of characters as while not particularly deep, they still proved likeable and relatable enough to care about their circumstances.

The opening is alright with the general soundtrack being passable. Animation wise it could be quite impressive with the show forgoing CGI mecha and instead having 2D drawn mecha. The action set pieces can be a spectacle. Ultimately this is a show that some might enjoy up until it’s final few episodes wherein I would find it could leave them disappointed or disgruntled. It’s a series that shouts a lot but says nothing. One which is a rollercoaster of emotions that when it ends makes you question if you really had fun with it. A deeply flawed series which I cannot completely dismiss as garbage yet cannot praise as well. When all is said and done, Darling in the Franxx just left me empty, apathetic as the finale unfolded and I was left watching credits. I would say the best metaphor for this series is that it is like scoffing down junk food. While eating it’s tasty and satisfying but as you run out you find yourself sick of it and feeling the pains of your digestive system. Left wondering why you bothered eating it in the first place.