Author: Lenlo

The Reflection – A Look at the Creators

by Lenlo, posted in Finished Series: Action, The Reflection

For years in the anime community there has been a question about what exactly qualifies as an anime. Many argue that anime specifically means animation made and produced in Japan alone by the Japanese. Others argue that anime is shorthand for animation and thus should be extended to western inspired pieces such as Avatar the Last Airbender, Teen Titans and RWBY. But what about those in between? What about pieces created by the West but produced by the East? It is in this middle ground that Stan Lee’s The Reflection lies. The Reflection doesn’t being airing until July 22nd, and because of its unique position, I thought it would be good to take a look at it. To take the opportunity to talk about what The Reflection is, where it’s coming from and what we can look forward to in this upcoming season.

To start, lets introduce out key players, Stan Lee, Hiroshi Nagahama and Studio Deen. I find it difficult to believe there is someone in this day and age who doesn’t know about Stan Lee but here is a quick primer. Stan Lee is the man who brought us Marvel Comics and is basically the father of western comics, with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko the artists at his side. With the recent advent of Superhero movies, Stan Lee is back stronger than ever and is preparing to make another foray into anime. His previous works in the east include Heroman and the Ultimo manga series made in conjunction with Shaman King creator Hiroyuki Takei.

Next we have Hiroshi Nagahama, a longtime Key Animator and Director. Nagahama started out at Madhouse before eventually going freelance. On his own he worked on the design for Revolutionary Girl Utena and began doing animation direction for Ojarumaru. Eventually, he came to direct his own critically acclaimed pieces such as Mushishi, Detroit Metal City, and The Flowers of Evil. Today, we are fortunate to have him directing The Reflection.

Finally, we have Studio Deen, a place many of you know well. Studio Deen is one of the old hats in animation and have been doing it as far back as the 80’s with pieces such as Angels Egg and Ranma 1/2. More recent examples of their skill include Log Horizon Season 2, Hetalia, and one of my personal favorites Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu. With recent quality like that and the heavy hitters as mentioned before, The Reflection has a good baseline to start from. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be much information on how these three came together, but no doubt after his time with Bones working on Heroman, Stan Lee has a few contacts in the industry for The Reflection.

With its pedigree laid out, lets take a look at The Reflection, coming to simultaneous distribution July 22nd. As expected with Stan Lee, we are looking at a Superhero story, though this one is more along the lines of My Hero Academia than Superman. Our story begins with an event called The Reflection (early title card!), after which many individuals all over the world are discovered with super powers. These powers range from our hero Xon who can copy and stockpile other peoples powers, I-Guy who can generate a concussive blast with his voice and Deadwing a man turned bat who fights with ultrasonic waves. With these powers some naturally choose to use their powers as villains, so of course heroes must appear to oppose them. Over the course of this conflict we will no doubt learn about The Reflection, what caused it and if there was a deeper plot behind it.

With Stan Lee as the creator, the man who has made some of the most loved comic book characters in history, and Nagahama as the director, with his experience from Mushishi, I expect we will be treated to more than your average super hero fare. The Reflection has yet to receive a rating and will consist of one cour, airing on Funimation and Crunchyroll starting July 22nd at 11 pm. Be sure to check it out!

Katsugeki Touken Ranbu – 2 [Commander]

by Lenlo, posted in Finished Series: Action, Katsugeki Touken Ranbu

Our story resumes immediately from where we left off, our six leads battling their way across the rooftops to some undisclosed location. Just like last week, we are greeted with some beautiful visuals ranging from a halo in the clouds to the best bullet casings I have ever seen in anime. Truly Ranbu is a feast for the eyes. Sadly, that is all the series seems to have.

This episode can be easily split up into three distinct sections. The opening fights, a boardroom meet’n’greet and the buildup. For the opening fights section, we get brief glimpses of what each of our leads can do and just how strong they are compared to their opponents. There are a lot of issues with this section, such as where did the fire from last episode go, how does no one from this era notice the red bolts of lightning summoning zombie swordsman and the fact that these time police are using swords and spears when they could easily use guns and bullets. This is explained later on, but that explanation only opens more questions.

Next after our team dispatches the remaining Revisionist forces, the leader of our motley band must leave, as cannot stay in the same period for to long, assigning Kane to be the team leader. Our party heads out, finds an inn and rests up, waking up to the aforementioned meet’n’greet. This section has the most meat of the episode, but the dialogue and how it is presented is agonizingly slow and boring. They essentially do “State your name, home city and one interesting fact”, as if they were freshman university students. Contrived, but we do get a lot of information from this.

Our main cast, and supposedly everyone else in their task force, are apparently weapons once wielded by historical figures. This explains each characters predilection for the weapon they once were, it explains their personalities since they are similar to their old wielders and it explains some of their dynamics. For example, Mutsunokami (Gunman) and Kanesada (Our Mentor MC) were wielded by Sakamoto Ryoma and Hijikata Toshizo, two commanders on different sides of a war, explaining their hostility towards each other. Sakamoto Ryoma also had an interest in military technology, such as guns and ships, explaining some of Mutsunokami’s reverence in regards to such technology. It helps a good bit with fleshing out the characters, but it opens up the question, how did these ancient weapons become time police? Hopefully that will get answered in the future.

Finally, we have our buildup to next episodes inciting incident. It appears the Revisionists plans are to spark a war between the Dutch and Japan. For a bit of background, the Dutch were the only Europeans allowed to trade in Japan after the Christian Rebellion, so a break in their relations could cause serious harm to Japans economy and technology at the time. Not a bad plan all things considered, and the Revisionists don’t seem to be stupid as they ignore our Leads and instead attack the Dutch steam ship scheduled to sail home. Had the meet’n’greet been half as long, this episode might have gone somewhere. Instead we are faced with one of Ufotables greatest weaknesses, writing.

Ufotable is fantastic when it comes to things like animation, sound and visual effects, but so far nothing they themselves have written has been good. Tales of Zestria, while beautiful, lacked substance, just as Ranbu does. All of our characters seem like cardboard cutouts, and the story itself feels hollow. I am sure those who played the game will get a lot more out of it than people like myself, but from where I am standing the only redeeming factor is the art. Its a shame, because we know from anime such as Fate/Zero that Ufotable is capable of making an episode with 90% dialogue engaging. Just go watch the Feast of Kings episode as proof! Yet here we are treated to a 10 minute info dump, which while necessary, could have been done in a number of different ways.

So it’s clear Ranbu has issues, but we are only two episodes in. With time and patience, its not to late to recover, as a large cast takes time to flesh out. Assuming some quiet character moments and less info dumps, it could work. I am not expecting it to, but it could. At the very least, we will be getting some gorgeous wall papers and action scenes from this season.

As a final aside, all future reviews for Ranbu will be posted the Sunday after that episode airs. With being brought on as a writer, the transition and all that, episode one was a bit late. From here on out we are on a schedule!

Katsugeki Touken Ranbu – 1 [To the Frontlines]

by Lenlo, posted in Katsugeki Touken Ranbu

Hello everyone, and welcome to my first post on the blog! Today we begin our series on Katsugeki Touken Ranbu (Ranbu henceforth), by Ufotable and directed by Toshiyuki Shirai. Now lets hop into it!

To start, lets quickly talk about two of Ufotables most notable qualities that are also present in Ranbu, those being the art/effects and the music. Right off the bat we get hit full force by the digital effects team with some beautiful rain shots, both up close and with some 3D tracking. The 3D used on the enemies is well placed, especially compared to Berserk 2017, it gives them an otherworldly style compared to the rest of the characters we see. In regards to the lighting, throughout this episode we get both flashes in the darkness and fire on the horizon. None of it stands out or catches the eye, which is typically the sign of good lighting, that it seems natural. Finally, for music we get some sweeping orchestra tracks, moments of silence, and decent fight music. Nothing stands out, but it also manages not to overstay its welcome, knowing when silence is better than loud instruments.

Now lets get into the story and characters. We are introduced to our main duo, Kane and Kunihiro, and their pet future cat-dog thing. I can’t help but draw a parallel between Kamina and Simon from Gurren Lagann between these two in regards to their relationship and color pallet. I would not at all be surprised if our resident Mentor Kane died in the future to give Kunihiro the motivation he needs to step out of his shell. For our story, it looks to be a sort of Time Police gig. Its a time-travel premise I have not seen before in anime, and by its nature directly addresses the issues most time travel stories have with things like the Butterfly Effect. Our main duo is introduced en medias res fighting against the forces of the “Time Retrograde Army” or “Historical Revisionists” as they are later called, who appear to be the main antagonists for this story. They have been sent to this time to prevent these Revisionists from changing the past, for what purpose we do not yet no, but it is no doubt nefarious!

Next Ranbu takes some time to explain some of its rules, such as how their as of yet unnamed organization can only send 2 people but the Revisionists can send dozens. Our resident mentor Kane also explains to his student, and by effect us, some of the moral quandaries of their job. As a fire breaks out in the middle of the night, Kane explains that their job is not to save people but to preserve history, which means we may run into a scenario in the future where the Revisionists are trying to save someone and our heroic duo actually has to commit murder to preserve the future. It would be a great character moment… if Ranbu didn’t immediately go and break its own rules by having Kane save a young girl and then joke about coming back to kill her. Imagine how hard hitting the moment would have been, how ironclad that rule would have seemed, if we simply got a shot of the beam falling and then silence. We would be left with a beautiful character moment in the future as a result, where Kane breaks this one rule. But now we already know it means nothing to him.

This is one of the main issues I have with Ranbu right now, even though it just began. They setup their rules, their moral quandaries, their main conflict, and then break their own rules. Cant save people? Unless its a little girl. Cant have more than 2 people in an area/period because of limited resources? Well lets just beam in 5 more people to help with a fight our duo can’t seem to win. In the end the only rule that matters in Ranbu is the titular “Rule of Cool”, which I am sure everyone is familiar with. Finally at the end, we are introduced to 5 more character (Wow that is a lot of characters for episode one), names Tonbokiri the large spear man, Unnamed Male Ninja #1, Musunokami the Gunman, and Saniwa the boss-man. At this point I care for none of them, but they have 11 episodes left.

There is more I could get into, for example we could disect the Ending Song, but with how long this post is already I will save that little bit for a slow week and do the Opening Song with it as well. I give this opening episode a 6/10. Beautiful to look at, engaging at the start, but breaks rules as soon as they are established and ruined what little tension was left for the end of the episode. They still have time to fix it though, so lets just sit back, enjoy the visual roller coaster and hope it works out.