K-Off, Author at Star Crossed Anime

K-Off’s Ongoing Manga Recommendations (embedded links)

May 7, 2016 by K-Off, posted in Anime Reviews, Manga Experiment

If you frequent the frontpage of Imgur or r/manga often, you may have seen some of my past manga recommendation lists before, but here’s some ongoing manga that I’ll recommend for now. This is in no particular order of best-worst, I’ve also embedded the links to the scanlations into the images for your convenience.

1. Kumo desu ga, nani ka?

A girl is mysteriously taken from her classroom and is reincarnated as a spider in an RPG-like fantasy world. Now at the bottom of the food chain, she needs to adapt to the current situation with willpower in order to live. Adapted from a novel, it only has a handful of chapters out so far but as far as I can tell the release schedule isn’t too bad and the art suits the comedic narrative. It’s about a spider willing to do whatever she can to survive. That’s the extent of the story but it’s fun to read. I can see the premise becoming overly gimmicky later down the line, but I’d still give this a shot.

2. Katsute Kami Datta Kemonotachi

During a war, a handful soldiers volunteer to undergo experiments to become beasts to serve their country. When the war is over, they find that the country they served no longer has a place for them back home and it’s about the daughter of one of these monsters who wants to avenge her father. Great action, good art, but it’s let down by its pretty weak narrative and overly fast pacing. Despite that, its story isn’t all that difficult to follow and the characters are interesting, I especially like the background story into the war. That being said, I can see the story working better as an anime adaptation.

3. Kanojo wa Rokurokubi

A story about a long-necked girl’s love life: Kanoi Natsuki, a Japanese traditional long-necked creature Rokurokubi, and her childhood friend Itsuki, visit the same school and there seems to be more between them besides friendship. This is undoubtedly much more interesting than most other manga of this type. It’s supposedly by a hentai artist, but it’s really pleasant to see so little fan service. This is an all around fluff-comedic twist on japanese horror that’s yet another nice, slow-paced series from the looks of it so far.

4. Sumikko no Sora-san

About a philosophizing tortoise named Plato who, after moving to the countryside with his owner, finds a young girl named Sora whom he mistakes for Socrates and goes on adventures with, not much to say about its plot. I’m not big on philosophy but this is a really pleasant series to follow. If you don’t mind a slow, meandering series that doesn’t have an over-arching plot, this is looking good so far.

5. Chikyuu no Houkago

In the year 20xx, thousands of mysterious entities called Phantoms appear in cities around the world and people begin to disappear enmasse. Exactly one year later after their initial appearance, a group of students in Japan are seemingly the only people left in the world, and this is about how they go about their lives regardless of the post-apocalypse. This is by far the best of its genre in my opinion, the fan service gets tiresome and irritating at times but that’s just personal. Otherwise there is lots of intrigue around the Phantoms and it hits a soft spot for me as a fan of post-apocalyptic stories.

6. Watari-kun no xx ga Houkai Sunzen

Watari Nao’s life revolves around taking care of the only remaining person in his family, his little sister after their parents pass away. This is pretty risky for me to recommend because it’s currently going on a nosedive for me personally as it’s now devolving into a yandere-harem story with an awkward sense of narrative structure, but if you like that genre this is alright I guess. The “little sister” element isn’t much of a problem by the way, it’s frankly annoying at times but at least the writer never uses her for fan-service.

7. Ajin-chan wa Kataritai

Succubus, Dullahan and Vampire. They are known as Ajin, or “Demi”s and are slightly different than the average human. They have lived alongside humans for ages under persecution. However, in recent years, they have become accepted as members of society. This manga follows a high school biology teacher who has a great interest in Demis and his interaction with the various Demis in his school, each with their own first-world problems. For a story involving succubi, vampires, etc, there is no fan service at all and this is a really unoffensive slice of life. I highly recommend reading this if you’re into comedies with a great male lead and interesting side characters.

8. Asagao to Kase-san

Yamada, the Plant Appointee to her high school and responsible for weeding the campus grounds, catches the attention of the school’s track and field star, Kase and this is about two young girls’ romance. This is probably one of the best yuri slice of lifes out of the few I’ve read, the art style is airy and the story itself is great without becoming too angsty at any point. I almost always do not have the patience for a series like this but this one was approachable and easy to follow, thanks to Mike for this recommendation. Even if you’re not into shojo/yuri manga, I’d recommend you give this one a try, it reads more like a shonen along the lines of Horimiya in terms of its target demographic. This series officially ended with issue 14, but it’s still being continued by the writer online but a group has unfortunately yet to pick them up. But the chapters that are currently translated are pretty much good on their own.

9. Exciting Feelings

This is currently one of the best yuri stories out there, recommended again by Mike (or was it realjustified, can’t remember) from this site. This follows the story of two college girls, each with their own problems, tired by the drudgery of a typical college romance. The build up to their romance is simply very well paced, the writer has explicitly stated he won’t ever rush the pacing. Support the artist by only reading it from the link above, because it doesn’t cost much to support the author via viewcounts. This link shows you how to read the English translated chapters on Comico. You can try reading a few chapters yourself on Imgur here but again I’d recommend you read this via the link I’ve embedded into the image.

Langrisser Re:Incarnation Tensei video game review- 35/100 (avoid it like the plague)

May 6, 2016 by K-Off, posted in Anime Reviews, Game Reviews

To preface, I’d call this the poor man’s Fire Emblem if it wasn’t so damn expensive for its quality, not to mention so difficult to find. Here in New York City outside of lower Manhattan, there’s game stores in Brooklyn, Queens, Flatiron, and Newport, to a total count of 12 game stores in a 20 mile radius, and not one location had this cursed game for a while. I certainly did not want to preorder this because the Japanese E-shop rated this game 1/5 stars at one point, and the way in which marketing constantly hit us over the head with the fan service characters did make me not want to buy the game at all. But I just got out of Fire Emblem Fates and finished Bravely Default, so I needed to try this series out for myself. I won’t even bother to structure this review like my Fates review, because it’s just that cynical, shallow, and undeserving of your money. I’m going to compare this game to Fire Emblem a lot, because that’s clearly what it wants me to do by riding on the coat tails of the Fire Emblem hype train.

It’s difficult to play this without thinking about why this was released in the first place.

Immediately upon jumping into the game, I noticed a lack of quality on the production end of things, despite its improvements from the Japanese version of the game. For one, the voices. God, the voices. It follows the Fire Emblem route of dialogue in that the characters say a short phrase followed by a line of text, but the voices still cut in and out inconsistently from time to time – this originally happened on the Japanese version a lot more and it doesn’t seem to have gotten much better in the NA localized version. Speaking of which, there is no sense of pacing, characters pop in and out of dialogue text scenes without even a fade transition and it’s pretty jarring to sit through when you start to say “where the hell did he/she come from?” to yourself. But the NA version is apparently a masterpiece compared to the initial state of the Japanese version last year. Whenever there was a transition from one scene to another, there was apparently an abrupt black screen for a few frames before it cut back into another scene. Those black frames are still there, but now they have fade transitions. Great job, they’ve finally remembered to do the basic minimum: test the game.

Look at this embarrassment. The game would have you believe these are two separate locations, and this happens only a minute apart from each other just minutes into the game.

That was the state of the game back then and it hasn’t gotten much better. It’s to the point where they reuse the same, bland backgrounds with a lazy color adjustment done in Photoshop just a minute after they last used it. You have to wonder if they even knew what they were doing when they were making this Fire Emblem clone or just didn’t care; I’m going with both. On the art department, there’s really nothing outstanding about any of it, it’s by Satoshi Urushihara and Hiroshi Kaieda so I suppose I expected better from them besides bland character designs, over-use of fan service, and the uncomfortable sheer number of half-naked loli characters. It’s not as if other JRPGs don’t have fan service, but once it begins going overboard I can tell that the developers are hoping to cover up the crappy game itself with pretty visuals and pandering fan service.

Lastly, the music is just terrible, it’s a stupid cluster of 10-15 second loops of generic fantasy rpg music, with bland rock music that isn’t rock, and it’s frankly just hilarious that they made a soundtrack CD, as if anyone would ever want to listen to this garbage ever again. Yet I know that with this situation, it’s a desperate attempt to try and attract as much buyers as possible, because they can’t possibly be proud of this soundtrack, very similar to the hole that Lord of Magna was in a few years ago. Yet at least Lord of Magna wasn’t a disaster, and it actually had a decent soundtrack.

The models are just lazy. Look at that puke-green grass.

Now, the gameplay. This is perhaps the most atrocious abomination I’ve ever seen as of late, surprising when all Langrisser has done is attempt to copy Fire Emblem’s combat mechanics. Since they just rushed it out the door in order to release the game at the same time as Fire Emblem Fates in Japan, everything is shallow, irritating, and half-assed. The battlescapes look like they were ripped straight from a 2006 DS game, the UI is awkward, the bottom screen is rarely used at all, and the battle animation scenes (as you can see above) are just utter trash. They didn’t bother to render a proper battle area and we get just a space with some textures and low-res buildings slapped onto it, with 3D sprite characters which were clearly not a stylistic choice – they did it because it would save time and money. Aside from the utterly garbage visuals of the gameplay, combat itself is very similar to Fire Emblem, with a rock-paper-scissor mechanic, except you can control multiple grunt units in addition to the main characters in your party. This sounds interesting, until you see just how boring it is in actual gameplay. There is little to no difference between different types of units, the range of your units is basically the same whether they’re on horseback or motorcycle (yes, an out of place steampunk motorcycle in a traditionally fantasy RPG). I haven’t played any of the original Langrisser titles so while I can’t say whether or not this game is an improvement, it brings nothing interesting to the table. Ultimately, the gameplay isn’t just simply a shallow rip-off. It’s a frustrating, uninteresting, and unbalanced experience that somehow managed to infuriate me within the first ten minutes. I wouldn’t recommend this even with a price drop.

~~K-Off~~

Storytelling:	5/10 – By-the-books-fantasy RPG story.
Gameplay:	2/10 – Unbalanced, clunky, and lazy.
User Interface:	3/10 – Messy, cluttered.
Production values:	4/10 – Decent-yet bland art, terrible music, lazy visuals, and buggy dialogue.

Fire Emblem Fates Video Game Review – 77/100

April 14, 2016 by K-Off, posted in Game Reviews

Now that Revelations has been out for a month and I’ve had a chance to thoroughly replay all three games and virtually explore all of their gameplay elements, I figured now would be the best time to review the latest editions to the Fire Emblem franchise.

As a pretext, I’ve decided to review all three games at the same time in this spoiler free review, because they’re essentially the same games in terms of their core gameplay aspects. I’ll be breaking them down first with respect to their gameplay, then I’ll split my discussion about their stories into a spoiler-free review.

Continue reading “Fire Emblem Fates Video Game Review – 77/100” →

Some Quick First Impressions: Punchline, Sound! Euphonium, Triage X

April 10, 2015 by K-Off, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Punchline

Short Synopsis: A guy whose spirit has been separated from his body

As I expected from just looking at the director and the studio’s pedigree from the last three or four years, this show rehashes stereotypes and fails to distinguish itself from the wacky comedies of the past. Because I’m rather tired of this genre at this point, this first episode needed to impress me, but it unfortunately did not–through its crappy soundtrack and generic set of uninteresting characters.

Potential: 40%

Sound! Euphonium

Short Synopsis: Our protagonist joins the brass band

Judging from the first episode, it’s just another music anime, and seems like a dull series I really don’t have much to say about at this point. Seems like a copy/paste of Hanayamata’s formula.

Potential: 30%

Triage X

Short Synopsis: Half naked women go around acting like the Thought Police

I hope you like fan-service, because unless you do, there is no enjoyment in this show for you. A terrible premise? Check. Blatant fan-service? Check. Yeah, I’m not going to bother watching this one. The manga was written by the writer of Highschool of the Dead, so I guess fan-service is kind of his thing, but at least Highschool of the Dead was entertaining in that it brought a genre of horror we hadn’t seen very much in those days into anime. This is just…stale and nonsensical.

Potential: 10%

Kantai Collection Video Game Review- 45/100

April 9, 2015 by K-Off, posted in Game Reviews

After the dreadful Kantai Collection anime of the last season, I’ve been wanting to try out this free to play Japanese web browser game, because its gameplay is constantly being compared to the likes of Fire Emblem by fans. However, after 40+ hours of gameplay I can say that while it is nowhere NEAR good enough to be even compared to other free to play tactical rpgs, much less Fire Emblem, I want to praise the things it does well first, because it is definitely popular for a reason.

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The game basically breaks down into a game of unit and resource management with your fleet, aka “ship girls” who have armaments identical to their real ww2 ship counterparts. As the game progresses you can choose to modernize them, and there is a somewhat extensive level of ship customization. This part I like, because it’s definitely a challenge determining which fleets you want to keep for later upgrades, while doing quests to unlock new ships and obtaining essential materials in order to do the various tasks. This forced me to think long term about my fleet because the enemies do get progressively more varied as you level up. Because of this, I found myself in situations where I wished I hadn’t scrapped an older ship because an upgrade would have been more efficient than building a newer ship.

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The voice acting and art assets are amazing, beautiful at times, and I can tell that the art department really cared about these characters when designing them. All of the characters have top notch details (such as Yamato’s decorations that are all historically accurate). But if Kadokawa Games thinks that high art production and a lazy game mechanic (more on this later) is going to cut it, it’s not.

First of all, I can’t stress how rage inducing it is to even try to start the game. Because the game’s servers at DMM Publishers are incapable of holding large numbers of people at once, they 1)don’t allow people outside of Japan to play the game and 2)In order for new players to join the game, they must take part in a lottery where the studio chooses a handful of people who can join their game. So in order for me to play, I need a VPN/ Proxy to connect to the game through a Japanese IP and enter the lottery. I was fortunate enough to register with DMM on my third lottery attempt, but I’ve heard of some fans who weren’t able to play until several draws, which is just ridiculous. This game has been out for years now and it is absolutely inexcusable that they don’t switch to a better server system. If it’s about money, charge people for some expansions or hell, even make some ships only attainable by purchase–this game NEEDS dedicated servers and the studio/publishers are clearly not seeing the value in opening up this game.

However, despite my initial excitement to finally get to play the game after that hassle, what I got was highly disappointing and I haven’t yet seen any review that was honest enough about the game’s flaws to speak about it. First of all, what immediately jumped out at me was the soundtrack–there is none. There’s a generic 10-15 second loop playing at the naval base that changes as the game progresses, but with a game that requires you to sit and grind for hours on end, I quickly played my own music over it, because holy crap it got annoying real fast. But on the other hand, it’s eerily silent at times much to my confusion. I know that it’s a free to play game so it wouldn’t have the budget of, say Civilization V or even another free to play game like League of Legends, but since its conception, this game has gotten tons of additional income sources besides the in-game purchases. Where the profits from the anime, manga spin offs, figures, and micro transactions are going, no one knows, but it’s certainly not here, in improving the core gameplay experience unfortunately.

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Now let’s delve into the meat of the game, the unit management and combat system. Unfortunately, they’re both done poorly here as well. In this game, you allocate resources to build the fleet girls and as the game progresses and you gain exp, you can build better ships like heavy cruisers, aircraft carriers, and even battleships like the Yamato. This is where patience is needed to play this game, because once you commission a ship, building a single ship can take up to eight hours of waiting (depends on the class of ship. A heavy battleship will take four times as long to build as a light aircraft carrier), which would be completely fine with me if only they DIDN’T COMPLETELY RANDOMIZE the process of getting the freaking ships after I’d waited several hours for them. I frequently got the same ship girl that I already had, forcing me to scrap the older one once they got badly damaged because I didn’t want to waste resources repairing a duplicate. Why the game doesn’t allow me to choose what ships I build according to my PLAY STYLE and SITUATIONAL NEEDS is completely beyond me, and it’s possibly the worst sin this game commits as a “strategy” rpg.

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No, I already have you. Please go away.

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Now, combat breaks down into choosing one of several battle formations in the beginning of a battle that caters to your playing style and needs–certain formations are good against certain things and weak to others. For example, the diamond formation is powerful against submarines while weak to torpedoes as opposed to the line offensive formation which is weak to submarines. This is a good concept, because certain formations allow you to avoid a lot of the enemy’s brunt force, yet sacrifice some power of your own. But I never felt the need to stray from the safe double line formation (basically one that gives the highest accuracy in shelling, but less damage than a line ahead form. Torpedoes have moderate accuracy and damage, and the fleet is moderately weak against submarines), which meant that combat was always the same old with changes to tactics only happening when I felt like it. Simply put, there never was a risk so great that would force my hand into a more extreme formation, besides bosses in the higher levels. In my opinion, allowing both sides to change their formations to outplay each other during sorties would make combat just slightly more interesting. If this were a ten hour long game, the combat here would be alright, as there are variations such as night battles to keep things a bit more interesting, but for a game that expects players to play for weeks, it just fails to stay fresh and interesting. However, I will say that the game improves in the higher levels as I’ve mentioned with the bosses, but it’s not significant enough to wash away the bad taste left in my mouth from the first handful of hours.

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At this point in the game, battles are somewhat exciting. But if you sat through hours of staring at a screen like this as I did, it’s no surprise.

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So finally, in a game that emphasized unit building and combat, the unit building relies overly on RNG, and the combat is too easy and repetitive. Yes, the main appeal in this game is the fleet girls meant solely for fan service, but that is no excuse for the fact that Kantai Collection is setting a terrible standard for free to play games in Japan by using the idea that a half-assed game is okay as long as you have amazing art and fan service. Through the stupid server practices all the way to the mind numbingly dull combat, I have to give Kantai Collection, a 45/100, a below average game, that no real fan of strategy games should play unless they can’t spare seven dollars for Battlestations Pacific on the PC.

But if you can steam through a weak game mechanic and utter lack of story (the enemy fleet are generic and have zero intrigue) just for the fan service, go right ahead, as seemingly thousands of people are doing. Yes, it is a free to play browser game so while my review may seem unfairly harsh, it is only logical to point out flaws where they exist and call them out as elements that need balance in the overall scheme of things. In the end, this just isn’t the browser game for me personally nor is it something I can recommend.

Storytelling:	0/10 – There is none here
Gameplay:	6/10 – Simple and intuitive, but tiresome for a 20+ hour long game.
User Interface:	7/10 – I’m sure if I understood Japanese and didn’t need a wiki page it’d be excellent
Production values:	5/10 – Great art, music I can only describe as torture. Music should be where it matters most in a game like this.

Also, let us know if you’d be interested in any more anime-related game reviews and visual novel reviews. Thanks!

Parasyte The Maxim Review-82.5/100

March 26, 2015 by K-Off, posted in Parasyte

Parasyte, along with Gugure Kokkuri-San, are the only two shows from the last season that I’ve actually finished, and that’s actually saying quite a lot–seeing as how I haven’t been watching (much less blogging) anime at all this past season. However, I figured I should at least write a final review for Parasyte, just because it’d been such a consistent and solid series.

A lot of time in this series is spent building up Shinichi’s humanity (or rather his loss of it) as he meets a creature named Migi. It’s not even anywhere near as slow paced as Shiki, another anime similar in theme and story, but this show still puts emphasis on creating an atmosphere to draw the viewer in, and this is also what makes this show good; the contrast between surprisingly relatable characters, and the really intense scenes.

Most of the time with a lot of mediocre horror shows, the directors spend almost no time on the less significant characters, and Parasyte was no exception at first. Yet what separated this from the others was that this series fixed a lot of its initial problems very well over 24 episodes. I mentioned several months ago how Shinichi wasn’t a very good character to show the gradual loss of humanity because we didn’t know him at all before he met Migi–but as we saw more of his own humanity, we saw Shinichi turn into a much more self-reflective character for the better. In addition, his change as a character is so completely different from early on that it’s commendable that the producers did it so seamlessly. Migi, on the other hand (excuse the pun, I had to make it), was an amazing character from start to finish, and it was interesting to see his character wrestle with problems that were the exact opposite of Shinichi’s in that he gradually learns what it means to value human compassion. Because of that, the ending was great in that Migi, the initial source of Shinichi’s inhumanity, saves Satomi’s life through a spur of human compassion–a very fitting ending, I have to say.

The show has great control over every climax. It evolves very nicely as we learn what’s going on with the characters, and loves to drop random tense encounters with the Parasytes everywhere–which really spices up its scenarios. Because of this, Reiko was definitely a highlight throughout the entire series. While this show doesn’t answer everything like the lingering questions about the parasites, the closure it gives at the end does wrap things up well. So in the end, Parasyte remains a thrilling “horror” story that never really dragged on longer than it needed to.

Final Verdict: 82.5/100

Storytelling:	7/10 – Lots of action, and does this well, knowing how to balance it out with its plot.
Characters:	10/10 – Simple, but effective and likable.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Alright soundtrack. Animation has a lot of weaknesses, but still remains pretty solid for an action series.
Setting:	8/10 – The backstory actually does what it needs to do to make this series interesting for a full 24 episodes.

Ultimately, I gave this show an 82.5/100 because of all of the great qualities I’ve already raved about above–yet the fact that it fumbled the pacing of the first handful of episodes as well as the existence of Shiki, which accomplished what Parasyte did and even went above and beyond in just the span of 22 episodes (excluding the OVAs) means I just can’t see myself giving it the 9/10 I would’ve initially given it. However, it goes without saying but 8/10 is not a low score by any means, I’d recommend it to anyone.

Suggestions:

Shiki

Shingeki no Bahamut:Genesis- 05

November 11, 2014 by K-Off, posted in Shingeki no Bahamut

Ah, the story progression that I was looking for. I finally find myself having a reason to get attached to Leone and Kaisar, because this episode devotes an entire episode to their rivalry and is just all around an improvement from last episode.

I’ve talked about how the slow pacing hurts this show, and this is one instance where taking a break from the monotony of side activities does a lot to build the story. In this episode, we follow Leone and Rita (possibly my favorite character so far) as they try to get Kaisar and Amira back, who were captured by demons in the last episode. The old rivalry between Leone and Kaisar finally come to a head, and it’s been delivered in such a satisfying manner here- the rising action was not contrived in any way and it was packed with a lot of tension. Regardless, there remains much to be worried about when talking about where this anime will end up-take Amira’s exponential “moe-ification” and the sluggish pacing, which appeared plenty of times in the last few episodes. Those will, without a doubt, stay relevant as the show moves forward.

In addition, Jeanne D’Arc and the Knights had at most 3 minutes of screen time ever since the series began, so I do think that it’s a mistake for Sato to put them on the sidelines for so long. Jeanne D’Arc is probably the only well-known historical figure in the anime, and she’s yet another character being cast off as a minor supporting character when she has so much potential.

Parasyte-the Maxim- 03-05

November 11, 2014 by K-Off, posted in Parasyte

Let me put up a disclaimer: When I first started to review this series, I didn’t foresee the obvious outcome that this show would end up so mediocre. I debated whether or not I should write reviews in groups of 2-3 episodes versus reviews that would drone on about the same issues every single episode, and I ultimately decided on the former. Parasyte is yet another anomaly- because while the pacing and story are solid as hell, various weaknesses in character development and a total failure to create an effective setting ultimately bring the show down.

First, I think we can all agree that Migi is by far the best character in this show. But besides him, who else do I genuinely care about? Shinichi’s “dehumanization” continues to occur far too rapidly for us to care about it very much, yet the writers seem to keep beating us over the head with evidence that he’s changing- when Mr. A is approaching Shinichi in episode four, Shinichi feels strong remorse about having to kill A, even though he ultimately kills him out of self-defense. So I was initially under the impression that Shinichi doesn’t want to kill any organism regardless of their threat level, because his actions had demonstrated that very same idea up to that point. However, when a pregnant Miss Ryoko is literally causing zero harm to anyone, all of a sudden, Shinichi wants to kill her- what a textbook definition of beating us over the head with character development.

This also directly correlates with the failure to create tension whenever Shinichi goes outdoors. With a premise as this reminiscent of vampires, there was so much potential here. Although this is obviously a minor issue in comparison to something like character development, creating an unnerving tension whenever Shinichi goes outside to interact with other humans would take the story this show seeks to tell and drastically further push the narrative. How awesome would it have been, had the writers shown Shinichi suspecting every person he saw in the city simply because one of them might be a parasyte? Because so far, the only things that remind us that there are other parasytes out there are the “boss fights” we get every episode.

Overall, although I’ve only listed the negative aspects of the show fron episodes 3-5, the parts this show does right remains the same as what I wrote for my episode 2 review. Regardless, the soundtrack is definitely now a problem- the big emotional reveal in the fifth episode was ruined for me because of the badly composed dubstep (a genre of music that I normally enjoy.) Ultimately, the positives and negatives of this show make this series a fairly average one so far.

Gugure! Kokkuri-San- 05

November 4, 2014 by K-Off, posted in Gugure! Kokkuri-San

This. This is what I was asking for, and it delivered. This episode finally starts to create a distinct voice for itself by not adding to the hodgepodge of comedic styles this show already had, opting for a slow, drawn-out humor rather than the experimentation this show seemed to be doing with these past four episodes. It’s finally good to see this show starting to show some consistency, at least in the style of comedy it’s trying to go for.

Besides that, the part about the bully in Kohina’s school was mind-numbingly dull. I don’t see the jokes about the flower working for a Westerner with no prior knowledge of the context behind Japanese flowers, so the first half of this episode was very painful to sit through. However, I wouldn’t fault this on the show by any means, and I’m sure I would have appreciated it far better than I did had I known.

Let me talk about gender-bending real quick. Often, it’s over-used as fan service of the lowest degree and is one of the worst things a writer can do without giving the proper context. In addition, the explanations given for such gender-swaps are usually so contrived and idiotic that I can’t help but wonder who these shows were supposed to pander to. Even if one has a gender-bend fetish, wouldn’t they want their material being handled with all proper respect? Just like fan service, even gender-bending stories are proper in the right context- and in this spectrum, Gugugure! Kokkuri-San handles gender-bending excellently. Not only is the reason for sex-changes perfect for this story (they’re all spirits/gods, so they’re genderless), it’s handled in such a way that the fan service is covert/almost entirely nonexistent. Chiefly, Inugami. He may only be a side character, but he remains one of the most interesting character next to Shigaraki thanks to this ability. The character interactions change dynamically with Shigaraki when Inugami turns into a female this episode, and this was easily the second highlight of this episode, which was pretty damn funny.

I really started to enjoy this episode after the first half of the episode, as Kokkuri-San and Inugami enroll in Kohina’s school under cover, allowing for more character development for Kohina whilst getting some genuinely good laughs in.The school setting this episode seems to introduce dynamicism to the plot by expanding the scope of the character interactions- now, not only do we get to see Kohina interact with the spirits, we also get to see how Kohina, the spirits, and the classmates all mingle simultaneously.

If this show keeps going at this pace, it can finally polish itself to become a really great series, possibly better than Barakamon.

Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis- 04

October 31, 2014 by K-Off, posted in Shingeki no Bahamut

By now, I have a general idea of where this story is going. Our characters finally face the main villains of the story and starting next episode, I reckon that we’ll get some real story progression because frankly, the past few episodes did almost nothing to get me to care much for the characters, no matter how charming they may have been.

The problem with the show thus far, is that it uses character tropes borrowed from various Westerns to the detriment of interest on the viewer’s part. This is where the slow pacing is actually hurting character development, an ironic condition owing to the fact that we’ve come to expect slow-paced anime (like Space Brothers) to have too much emphasis on its characters, which usually bores everyone. Even with the slow pacing, Kenichi Sato decides to place fast-action in every episode, and while those scenes are very fun to watch, there is such thing as too much of a good thing. By placing action in a story that is barely progressing, you force the viewers to miss the subtle character expositions you want them to pick up. Sato is clearly much more concerned with the action over exposition, and I’m concerned where this anime will end up . Take more time to focus on Favaro and Leone’s pasts longer than the forced-in exposition we got in this episode, because the “twist” we get in this episode was way too rushed.

I also worry that Amira might permanently devolve into a vessel for moe, because her character literally did nothing this episode besides acting “cute” and fighting. I much preferred the Amira we got in the first episode, because although that one was very generic and without nuance, she at least had intrigue built into her personality. She’s a badass demon. If you’re going to show a human side to her true form, make the audience become invested in her character with some character development rather than an abrupt shift in personality. Other than that, the only character I find interesting so far is the necromancer, because she’s pleasantly gruesome. If there are to be any highlights in this episode, they are the scenes that involve her. The voice actor does a fantastic job portraying her personality, and I look forward to seeing more of her character.

Ultimately, this episode was not a bad episode so much as it was a red flag.