Some Quick First Impressions: Knight’s & Magic, Koi to Uso and Isekai Shokudou

by AidanAK47, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Knight’s & Magic

Short Synopsis: A programer dies and is reincarnated into another world with robots and magic.

Wow this is a pretty terrible adaption. I mean I don’t really care because I wasn’t fond of the source material in the first place but they really are not approaching this in the right way. This episode burned through 9 manga chapters and about half the novel at my estimate and it really hurts the story. The side characters had some development in the novel and manga but here they are pure side dressing to make the main character look good. But yeah, consider this the playbook of every Isekai cliche you can think of. Might be fine for some but stories like this lose their appeal quick once the protagonist becomes an unbeatable god that no villain can possible even threaten. Thus a story where a self insert character steamrolls over enemies while having every woman in the vicinity fall madly in love with them is just weak power fantasy. Pass on this.

Potential: 0%

 

Mario: Well, Knight’s & Magic is much more functional than I initially give credits too, as the pacing maintains its beat and there could be a decent story out of this. But it has many issues too, the main character, beside his enthusiasm for Silhouette Knight (a mecha robot), has very very bland personality. It embraces all its isekai cliché so far, like how he took advantage of knowledge from his previous life to make a magic gun. The characters are nothing stand out, but we aren’t for characters, we’re here for some (magic) action and as far as that goes, it does a decent job. This show will have nothing deep to say but it will give you some reasonably entertaining action, although I suspect the plot will get dull later on.

Potential: 30%

 

Koi to Uso

Short Synopsis: A boy decides to confess to his crush before the government assigns him a marriage partner.

I get that the theme of this show is to point out the artificiality and lovelessness of having an authority figure decide who you will spend the rest of your life with. After all doesn’t a marriage of convenience pale in comparison with true love? Oh I get it alright. It’s just that I have a hard time siding with our doomed lovers here. For one these two just sat on their feelings for over ten years until it was too late. And another, they feel in love because the boy lent her half his eraser in kindergarten. That’s all it took huh? Oh and wow you both kept the eraser because it was such a precious memory and…I’m sorry. I am having a hard time buying this as true love here. Well this show is a good bit trite and contrived as the writing tries to make the situation as tragic as possible. The protagonists phone glitches out and somehow shows his crush as his arranged marriage partner(Um…somehow.) Right then the government lackeys show up to hand him the form for his real marriage partner. Delivering it to the park…wait how did they know he was there? Also why go out of their way to send two people to deliver an envelope? At the stroke of midnight? Yes, I figure we aren’t supposed to think about it too much. Oh tragic love, torn apart by the evils of society and our protagonist chained to a women he does not love. Forever to never follow his heart…up until she lends him a pen or something and then everything will be fine and dandy.

Potential: 20%

 

Mario: Forbidden fruits are always the sweetest huh? I’m glad that I watched Tsurezure Children before this because we have another confession episode here, albeit drags longer and with overblown melodrama tone. The plot feels really contrived and forced when you get down to it: the guy confesses his crush the day before his 16th birthday, which also a day he will have a government’s assigned partner. Wait for 5 hours for a girl, until the minute he decided to leave, she appears. The girl happens to love him all along, and of course fate can’t allow them to be together. When the time comes that they have to separate, tears awaited. The main guy isn’t interesting at all, make me question how any girl would fall for him, let alone this attractive one. This show’s central theme is right on your face: a love triangle between true love and lust/physical/ whatever, but I do enjoy my time here. The triangle will become more apparent as the next episode will feature the other girl, so I’m still sold to watch the next one to check her character out. Scum’s Wish probably is the king about melodrama dark triangle love and while I don’t think Koi to Uso can reach that level, fans of romance will have something to shout at here in this series.

Potential: 30%

 

Isekai Shokudou

Short Synopsis: A restaurant in our modern world serves meals to beings from a fantasy land.

It’s an alright watch. I appreciate the animes efforts to give this anime more of a story as the original source material was basically people ending up at the restaurant and being amazed over the food. Judging from the second episode preview however it looks like thats whats coming in later episodes. It is a better take on Isekai than most but I really wish the other worlds wasn’t so uninspired and stereotypical. I do appreciate that this show didn’t going for the so called “Foodgasm” much like other food porn shows like Shokugeki no Soma. But story wise I don’t see it offering more than it already has. A fantasy outlander comes in for a meal, gasps over how good it is and thus thinks it’s some mythical meal of outstanding quality. When really it’s just an ordinary restaurant in our world. Where can it really go from here? Still the characters are likable and the first episode was entertaining enough to keep my attention for twenty five minutes. Plus the girl with the goat horns is rather adorable. At the moment this is a good inbetween show to pass the time. Though how it fairs from this point will determine just how memorable this will be.

Potential: 60%

Mario: This is so nerve-wrecking… you know, the suspenseful feeling in Master Chief or My Kitchen Rules when the judge tastes the food and contemplates – the foods that we never have a chance to taste to begin with – thus why should we care. There’s so much foods in this show that it borders on the level of your regular cooking show. The fantasy mix is another catch, so far it’s a miss and hit as they never really explore the people from other worlds’ origins, save for the main girl. On the other hand, I absolutely love the designs of the two leads and the restaurant. They’re so attractive that I can’t get my damn eyes off. The girl’s backstory though, told in a flashback fashion, isn’t great to be honest. Just a few lines of explanatory would be sufficient enough but they decide to drag them out. One more questionable factor I noticed while watching this show is despite (or maybe because of) its premise, there are a fan-service undertone here: the customers’ “satisfied” face, the girl taking showers… They’re not blatant so I can let it pass for now. Lastly, the chemistry between the leads are quite good so far. So in the end we have a show with solid main components: (great) food-porn, likable cast that have good chemistry together, and a hint of fantasy on top. Not all of them work well together but it’s good enough for me.

Potential: 50%

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!

Shoukoku no Altair – 01 [The Golden Eagle General]

by SuperWooper, posted in Series which were Dropped, Shoukoku no Altair

As a fan of both historical fantasy and MAPPA, the studio behind this series, I had high hopes for Shoukoku no Altair coming into this premiere. Its Middle Eastern setting and young, eager protagonist make it a dead ringer for Arslan Senki, the first season of which I enjoyed. Arslan was a bit dry, and its battle scenes were riddled with CG elements, but it also had the disadvantage of being produced by Liden Films. My thinking was that with a more trustworthy animation house behind it, Altair had a shot at being the complete package.

The going is still early, but after one episode, my expectations have been appropriately tempered. Altair is a distinctly average show from a visual perspective, with most of its flair coming from the ornate Turkish outfits and architecture (Turkiyean, to use the show’s vocab), rather than its composition or sense of movement. I haven’t done much more than skim through the first chapter of the manga for this one, but it would surprise me if the art were this standard in its original form. Seeing how much material was crammed into these 22 minutes, though, makes me think that the episode director had a lot more on his mind than making the show look pretty.

Despite only introducing a handful of characters in its first outing (with plenty more to come if the OP is any indication), Altair feels jam-packed with content. I’ve seen it written that the show will likely burn through its first couple arcs to get to the good stuff, and if that’s the case, we ought to be rewarded down the line. For now, though, we’re relying on flashbacks, rooftop statements of purpose, and narrated exposition to learn about the world of Rumeliana. Turkiye is a small fish in a much larger pond, and until all the major players have been introduced, I don’t expect this style of delivery to change.

The most significant player in this story is Tugril Mahmut Pasha, “Pasha” being a title for Turkiyean generals. As the youngest person ever to join that distinguished assembly, he’s clearly being set up as a prodigy. His mother is dead, and he’s so inexperienced with women that he opts to sleep on the roof when he finds one in his bed, so he’s ticking all the normal boxes as far as anime protagonists go. Mahmut discovers a plot by the neighboring Balt-Rhein Empire to frame Turkiye for the assassination of their Prime Minister, who is given the name “Franz” in one of the silliest World War I references ever. Our hero conveniently overhears the name of the conspirator from a band of assassins, sets his army of eagles on them, reveals the identity of the traitor to the Emperor of the opposing nation, and saves the day. If that sounds like a lot of material for a first episode, that’s because it is, and that’s without the handful of characters and plot points I’ve neglected to mention. Still, Altair makes itself easy to follow, even as it moves rapidly through its material.

The person that interests me the most is Zaganos Pasha, a young general who wants war with the Empire despite their superior numbers, and with whom Mahmut immediately clashes. There’s a possibility that he’s feeding information to Louis, the Imperial conspirator, to achieve his goal, but his level-headed demeanor makes it hard to predict whether that’s truly the case. The Emperor of Balt-Rhein is also a bit of a question mark – his refusal to listen to all of Mahmut’s testimony indicates prior knowledge of Louis’ plot, but there’s no confirmation that he orchestrated the whole thing. Hopefully these characters, along with those who have yet to be introduced, will lend a bit of spice to a show that could really use it.

Some Quick First Impressions: Kakegurui, Hina Logi – From Luck & Logic and Katsugeki Touken Ranbu

by AidanAK47, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Kakegurui

Short Synopsis: A girl transfers to a school where students engage in high stakes gambling.

This series has one of the worst cases of unnecessary school setting that i have ever seen. By all accounts it makes no sense whatsoever for a school to approve itself turning into a gambling den as soon as classes are over or that anyone would tolerate kids gambling real money and getting reduced to a slave. It’s honestly funny that when a gamble is declared they pretty much transform the room to match. Still this isn’t supposed to make any real sense and the ridiculous nature is part of the overall fun. The death note director was perfect for this show really, he can bump even the most mundane actions right up to 11. I must ask though, why is there so much fanservice in the opening and ending? I may be mistaken but I don’t remember the manga being all that fanservice heavy. Well anyway if you happen to like shows with mind games then this is most certainly your jam. However I will say that what you see here is the only thing you are going to get for the rest of it’s run. That could be fine for some but let me say not to expect much else from this show. This is the only trick it’s got so it’s lucky that it’s a damn good trick.

Potential: 75%

 

Mario: “Ridiculous” is a word of the day. Kakegurui embraces its premise of gambling wholeheartedly that I don’t think you’d have hard time figuring out if this series is your thing or not. To add more dark effects to the topic of gambling and how characters lose themselves for the game: creepy smiles, red eyes, deranged faces are all featured frequently here, coupling with cheating, game manipulating and slavery and you have quite a no-hold-bar, cynical beast of anime about the thrilling of gambling – play with the devil as they say. I did notice there are more still frames than necessary so I hope the animation quality won’t drop too jarring on coming episodes. Characters here are decidedly love it or hate it so don’t expect any real development from the cast save maybe the love interest between the two leads. We’re here for gambling and whatever bets and games they come up with so if you find those intriguing then it’s your thing. I certainly expected more than “Rock-scissor-paper” variations but as an introduction it did its job. Take it or leave it Kakegurui sure leaves its mark boldly.

Potential: 60%

 

Hina Logi – From Luck & Logic

Short Synopsis:  The daily cute adventures of magical girls in school

You know maybe I should make a special test like the bechdel test wherein if a anime throws it’s female characters in a hot spring in the first episode when it doesn’t have a hot spring setting that it will automatically be terrible. Off the top of my head I can’t think of shows that could be the exception. So I am still wondering why this exists, for I don’t remember luck & logic being smash success but apparently now it’s magical girls doing cute things and stuff. Oh joy. Full disclosure, I did start skimming through the episode when I found my attention span ebbing away. I don’t normally do that but it was getting late and I will be damned if i lose shut eye over this show. So what I could summarize of the appeal of this show is yuri undertones, girls talking about stuff I really couldn’t care less about and some girl with plant powers trying to assault one of the main heroines. I admit that maybe I should have given this a fairer shot but let’s be blunt, it doesn’t deserve it.

Potential: 0%

 

Mario:  Well, Hina Logi is a magical girl slash cute girl doing cute things anime, so right off the bat you know what you’re getting into. The show details the everyday school day of those girls before graduating into a magical girl, and there’s some hints that they will have to fight off monsters at the end of the season. Although based on its cheering tone I’d think the monsters are your typical bad guy, no grey moral here. Other thing I did notice from those kinds of shows is where all the male gone? Even that mascot is a female for Peter sake. I like the design of the academy though, and I think they know it as well as they show the academy multiple times from different views. Girls are your typical character stocks here so there’s nothing to write home about. I believe if you skip this one you won’t miss out much.

Potential: 0%

 

Katsugeki Touken Ranbu

Short Synopsis: Time traveling samurai in the edo period try to stop monsters from altering history

Why would you invent a story with time travel and then restrict to just one time period? What a waste. So this story feels familiar as I certainly remember an anime about a bunch of samurai protecting time. Though this is more likely the original story based on the quality. My first impression of it was correct. It’s pretty but not much in terms of substance. I thought we might get something interesting when one of our two leads starts lecturing his partner on how they cannot alter historic events. However that is really undercut when literally minutes later they save a child and brush it off easily. I also wonder why no one in the past is questioning the giant weird fox thing that’s following our main characters. Also on that front why are they using swords instead of guns? I originally thought it was due to some prohibited law or something up until another character arrives with a gun. So I just don’t get why they are making their job more difficult. Action scenes are great, frankly the production is more than this series deserves. Character though are very bland and the cast feels like Bishi bait. Overall it’s a fairly watchable piece but the story lacks anything to truly grip the viewer.

Potential: 40%

 

Mario: The animation here is seriously great, you can’t go wrong with ufotable huh. Story-wise, I must compare this show to Touken Ranbu: Hamanaru few seasons back to see how this one works while the other didn’t. Hanamaru starts off with introducing most of the main cast (about dozen of them) before picking some for the battle; as a result we don’t remember most of them and the light tone doesn’t mesh well at all with the battle in latter half. Here in Katsugeki it’s the opposite, we focus on 2 guys with various missions before other swordmen showing up. Doing it this way allow us to know more about these 2 main characters (although the moping guy is a dead weight), their chemistry and the difficult level their jobs are. Honestly I prefer it this way, and this show also back up by some truly outstanding animation and mostly great character designs. They say it’s a shame that ufotable choose this project rather than Fate franchise but maybe doing it this way we gonna have 2 solid shows in our hands. Definitely recommended.

Potential: 50%

Ballroom e Youkoso – 01 [Welcome to Ogasawara Dance Studio]

by SuperWooper, posted in Ballroom e Youkoso, Finished Series: Sports

Much of the conversation leading up to the premiere of Ballroom e Youkoso has focused on its English distribution. Amazon, who continue to wade deeper into the anime marketplace, snapped up the series to headline their Anime Strike channel, and plenty of digital ink has been spilled about how its double paywall spells doom for the future of legal streaming. The first episode of Ballroom also had its worldwide debut on Twitch, where a live audience of thousands welcomed its delayed subtitles with KappaPride emotes, copypasta, and an obsession with the size of the characters’ necks. But let’s put all this aside for a moment and ask ourselves: did Production I.G. succeed in preserving the appeal of the manga in its journey from page to screen?

For me, the answer is “pretty much.” Ballroom is a plucky, well-paced series in manga form, and I.G. kept things rolling during the first episode, as well. They had to cut a few corners to get there, however, and one of them cost me some attachment to Fujita, our middle school protagonist. The manga presents him as a willing participant in his first group lesson, having been inspired by a professional dancer named Sengoku, who rescues him from a trio of bullies. The animated version of the story keeps Sengoku’s role the same, but omits the group lesson, and skips straight to a coerced partnership with Shizuku, his schoolmate and newfound crush. As a result, it was much harder for me to swallow the idea that Fujita wanted to go pro by the end of the episode, or that he’d lose track of time and practice the box step for what must have been twelve hours straight.

Luckily, the rest of Ballroom’s characters more than pull their weight. Sengoku initially appears to be a good-natured role model, but after witnessing Fujita’s sudden insistence on becoming a professional dancer, he seamlessly transforms into a drill sergeant with a chip on his shoulder. Similarly, Shizuku is suspicious of her temporary partner’s motives, and asks him directly whether he’s just a pervert looking for kicks. It’s only after he demonstrates some proficiency at a beginning technique that she gives him the time of day. This prickly behavior lets us know that ballroom dancing is no walk in the park, and that experienced dancers won’t take kindly to upstarts who haven’t put in the hours. Hopefully, the series will permit Fujita to struggle for as long as possible, and give us a glimpse at the mental fortitude necessary to compete even at the amateur level.

Perhaps the most worrisome thing about this premiere was the lack of any one expressive dance scene. Production I.G. has done some great work on Haikyuu!!, and given the visual similarities between that series and Ballroom, I assume that it’s being handled by the same team. My expectations were high coming into the episode, but even during the scene where Fujita gawked at a dance competition on DVD, there were low-detail models, panning stills, and even what looked like CG dancers in a couple spots. On the plus side, the character designs are strong, even if they’re not identical to the manga, and they’re expressive enough to cover for the holes in the animation department. Still, the first major burst of painstakingly-drawn dance choreography should be a treat to behold.

All in all, this was a good start to an adaptation of a manga that certainly deserved one. I’m already looking forward to the next episode, and to covering the series from week to week.

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.

 

Announcement Time – Writers Recruitment Results

by AidanAK47, posted in About, Special Articles

Ladies and gentlemen it is I, your resident anime blogger AidanAK47 and I bring with me news. As those of you who visit our little abode might know, we have been running a recruitment drive to get more writers so that we can cover more shows each season. Thank you to all that applied for the position. It is great to see those who wish to contribute to this site and help keep it strong. But alas you could not all be chosen. The results are in and we have decided to take on two new writers: Lenlo and Superwooper.

Lenlo:

Hello everyone! I want to take this chance to quickly introduce myself and tell you afew things about me, so lets get started. I am a recent University Graduate with a degree in Computer Science, my personal focus being Machine Learning. I currently live in Texas in the United States but expect that to change soon. My hobbies include Fencing at the regional level, gaming with my current addition being Final Fantasy 14, and now writing. As far as anime goes, my tastes are pretty simple. I enjoy drama’s, things with a meaty story, and darker pieces with no guarnteed happy ending, things such as Monster, Mushishi, Sword of the Stranger and more recently Rakugo. I also enjoy a good romance such as Ore Monogatari and Your Lie in April, though those are harder to come by. Finallly, for this season I will be covering Stan Lees The Reflection and Katsugeki Touken Ranbu. Im looking forward to writing for you all!

Superwooper:

Hey there! I’m Superwooper, a 27 year old Education student and recently-minted anime blogger. When I’m not at school or working as a tutor to pay the bills, I’m usually attending Smash Bros Melee or Pokemon TCG tournaments. My list of favorite anime includes Cross Game, Mushishi, Seirei no Moribito, and Usagi Drop. I’ll be writing about Ballroom e Youkoso and Shoukoku no Altair this season, along with Space Battleship Yamato 2202 if the next few episodes appear online soon. I’m grateful to be writing for a blog that’s been a personal resource for years now. Thanks for having me!

So what does that mean for you? Well it means that more shows will get covered each season and this site will be significantly more active with content. Now I must ask for you readers to be kind to our new writers. Constructive criticism is welcome but blatant abuse will be met with the reception it deserves from yours truly. Now I doubt such a scenario will come to pass as I like to believe our little reader community has a little more class than others…well, mostly. Thus I hope this change will result in a more positive direction for this site. Our two new writers will be starting with us in this new summer season so we will be covering quite a lot from this point forward. May you enjoy reading our written musings on anime to come.

Some Quick First Impressions: Fate/ Apocrypha, Battle Girl High School and Keppeki Danshi! Aoyama-kun

by AidanAK47, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Fate/ Apocrypha

Short Synopsis: Masters gather to fight in a great holy grail war.

You know sometimes I think I will not get into a new Fate franchise when I start it, only to get deeply invested by the first few minutes. I was worried about A-1’s animation here and while the character designs are not the best, the animation was great. Now Apocrypha is more of a standalone though some Fate knowledge would be preferable. I say anyone watching this likely knows the deal by this point and the anime does fast forward through the usual basic info dumps. Seven Masters, Seven servants, holy grail, go nuts. This episode has me very hyped for the rest of the series and it’s confirmed to be two cours which means the light novel will be covered to completion. I hope A-1 can keep the quality consistent throughout it’s run. Loving the new servants, love the setup, love the Waver and Flat cameo(Strange Fake adaption foreshadowing?) and well…I love it all. Anyway I am following this journey right to the end so let’s hope Apocrypha manages to live up to the Fate monikar.

Potential: 100% (Yes,it’s Bias. But I don’t care)

 

Mario: Unlike that Fate fanatic up there, I am unfamiliar with the Fate franchise in general so I can only talk from what I saw in this episode. It was a setup episode which info-dumps everywhere, but they manage to propose the main conflict really quickly. The great Holy Grail War? Sounds good to me. Many Servants and Masters are introduced, yet we only reach about one third of them, I guess? Anyway, the animation is solid and I’m already intrigued in the red Master and his servant. This gonna be epic battles so if you’re already a Fate fan you know what to expect and I know there will be a lot to talk about later on as the plot thickens. I will give this series a 3-episode rule.

Potential: 50%

 

Battle Girl High School

Short Synopsis: Watch our anime! Buy our songs! Play our mobile game! Give us money!

A wise man once said and several hundred thousand people repeated that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Not too long ago, an anime aired that promoted a mobile game and tried to capitalise on the popularity of love live, kantai collection and Symphogear. That anime was called Schoolgirl Strikers. It made about as much impact as a cotton ball thrown at a steel drum. Thus here we are again, with an anime promoting a mobile game which is trying to capitalise on the popularity of love live, kantai collection and Symphogear again. Which is going to fail, again. After all, it’s a derivative of a derivative of likely another derivative. So what’s the problem? Too many characters who all have such stock personalities that they could be literal body swaps of other characters from other series. Pointless idol inclusion which is clearly there to sell songs. Lackluster battle animation and music. A plot so phoned in that you most likely have literally seen it all before. Do yourself a favor and just save yourself 25 minutes. We go through this pain so you don’t have to.

Potential: 0%

 

Mario:  Anime industry, I know you will find a way to cash out as much as possible, but this is just way too blatant. Battle Girl High School shoots in every direction in hope that some of its bullets can land, but none works. In essence, this show is another magical show of good girls fight bad monsters, then they dress it up with high school, outdoor activities, idols and everything is all over the place. The action and the slice of life doesn’t work well at all for example. Then we have about dozen girls and each time the show switches to different girl’s groups they all seem just the same to me. I don’t even know what kind of show we are looking forward to the next episode since they end with the appearance with the new girl, but I’m sure that no one really care about this world or the characters or anything going on. An easy skip.

Potential: 0%

 

Keppeki Danshi! Aoyama-kun

Short Synopsis: A talented football player is also an obsessive germaphobe

There is an inherent problem with a comedy series when you base the entirely of your comedy around one joke. In this case each character introduced has there one gimmick which grows tiresome fast. Aoyama is a clean freak, another footballer is the straight man and the enemy footballer likes to show his abs randomly. Plus I don’t really like the concept of mocking someone for a personal phobia though in this case that phobia somehow has him be really popular? I mean girls are fawning over him washing his hands in the sink. Comedy I guess? The animation is also very limited as while the opening scene displayed so rather good animation, the rest of the episode had a number of animation shortcuts and artstyle deforming to try to emboss the comedy. I never liked that. It didn’t work in Drifters, it doesn’t work in shoujo anime and not even fullmetal alchemist brotherhood pulled it off. I originally thought this might be a pretty watchable show and there are those that might get a kick out of it. As for me though, I pass.

Potential: 10%

 

Mario:  Like Tanaka-kun is always Listless or Haven’t You Heard, I’m Sakamoto before, Aoyama-kun show has only one main joke: this guy is a clean freak who happen to be genius at football. Everything revolves around that joke and its humor already wears thin at the end of this episode. I know that this is supposed to be ironic: because he’s a clean freak he won’t let anyone near him, hence his super-fast move that no one can touch. But here’s the thing: football is teamwork sport, having one great guy in a team can’t make the team excellent. This episode does reflect some of that but when the main guy is overpowered it’s rather boring to see. The animation is not great with too many still-frames and the characters so far aren’t memorable at all. I don’t see this joke funny in the first place so I’m pretty sure I’m not an audience target for this one.

Potential: 10%

Tsuki ga Kirei (Spring 2017) Review – 88/100

by SuperMario, posted in Anime Reviews, Reviews by SuperMario, Tsuki ga Kirei

It’s hard for me not to go overboard on Tsuki ga Kirei: out of all the show I’ve followed this season, I resonated the most to this one; but even when I’m judging this show objectively, Tsuki ga Kirei is one of the most perfect one, in a way that it achieved exactly what it set out to do, and achieve it flawlessly most of the time. The story that they tell – detailing the first love relationship of our young Kotarou and Akane – is decidedly simple, mundane but honest that it feels more like a love story taken from young best mates. It has that “sincere” quality, something that the anime medium often cranks it up to the max with “moe” and exaggeration everywhere. Not here. Tsuki ga Kirei has great flair of visual storytelling (something that benefited from being an original show, they don’t tie up to your usual LN and manga visual cliché), using show-don’t-tell approach that often focus on small moments and little gestures than big emotional melodramatic scenes. The characters never play off their roles, they’re the most natural group of kids that feel exactly kids their age: naïve, inexperience and pure. This show ends up at top of its genre as I consider it the most effective romance anime out there. In short, I freaking love almost everything about this show.

What Tsuki ga Kirei will be remembered the most for lie in real depiction of first love relationship. The more you watch romance anime, the more you surprise at how simple, yet distinctive achingly honest this show aim for. Ordinary romance anime would spend its entire time on how boy gets girl, throw in some other love interests that make them realize how much they mean for each other, and if we’re lucky we might actually see they confess to each other in the end. Tsuki ga Kirei is an entirely different beast, we got the confession right at the end of episode 3, and from there we follow every stage of that relationship and see their love progressing. Moments like Kotarou had to search the internet on what people do when they’re dating, finding a way to spend time alone together, or thinking how to continue their love after graduation – all feels so real and progresses so naturally that I suspect anyone who have been in relationship will find a thing or two from this show that speak directly to their experience.

Moreover, they understand that in order to make this relationship work, we have to relate to Akane and Kotarou and they did a damn fine job at that. Both have their own lives and their own troubles to deal with, so we can see them as characters who have distinctive personality, with well-defined goals and struggles. In one of the episode, they both reach a new low in their personal dreams, as Akane underperformed her track competition and Kotarou got a call from a real publisher just to receive an advice that he had no talent in serious writing. Then in small moments when those characters act without much thinking, it’s a treat to see how their personality plays out: I love how every time Kotarou get excited he will punch the light’s chord in his room, or Akane whenever she gets nervous she will press that pushie hard. Their circle of friends also adds to the naturalism of the story and although they aren’t developed much, they clearly belong to this universe.

The visual storytelling is another great strength of the show. As both Kotarou and Akane are introverts and tend to keep their feelings inside without saying out loud, it’s showing their subtle gestures, their glances that we get to know a lot about them. As a result, this show is decidedly quiet, there’s not much monologue going on but that is the reason why this show feels just like in real life. The designs are simple, again emphasizing on subtle over excessive details. Great shot compositions everywhere. This is one of the rare show where I can argue that the visual components play as an important part of the show and they achieved it almost exactly what they’re aiming for.

Another factor that feel like a character itself that I feel the need to acknowledge, it’s LINE. Just like kids their age, Kotarou and Akane’s main communication is through LINE and we witness a huge chunk of amount that they exchanged through LINE, as they are, no shortcut. It’s just like how real kiads would do and to achieve this effortlessly is no small feat at all, so congrats to Tsuki ga Kirei for its respectful use of social chatting. The shorts in the end also a part of this show’s identity, as they depict the love relationships from Kotarou and Akane’s friends with more bawdy and comedic tones, which in turn made that world so inviting to watch.

Although the show succeeds most of the time in term of production values, I can still see some production troubles from the show and the delay in airing in later half further reflected that. Tsuki ga Kirei does suffer from that as in one of the episode the production values just fall apart. But I’m genuinely surprised that after that disaster episode they managed to keep up a consistent quality and the more I know about their trouble backstage, the more I’m in awe about their efforts. It’s obviously a product of many sleepless nights from the production team so I thank studio Feel for their outstanding performance.

And all of what I was written above was just how I access the show objectively and that kinda demerit one of Tsuki ga Kirei’s most appealing factor: it’s right down charming that touch the hearts of viewers with its bright and delightful portrayal of pure love – I don’t deny I fall under its spell, actively care for the couple and goddamnit I just want them to be happy together. Tsuki ga Kirei is breathtakingly intimate in narrative scope and I know I will remember the show and its characters very fondly. Arigatou.

Seikaisuru Kado Review 51/100

by AidanAK47, posted in Anime Reviews, Reviews by AidanAK47, Seikaisuru Kado

Seikaisuru Kado was a title which caught my attention for a number of reasons. For one it’s visuals showed not a single teenager in sight and a cast mainly consisting of working adults. Another is that it deals with a premise not often tackled in anime, Philosophical Science Fiction. The story features an alien being who lands on earth and gifts humanity with revolutionary devices which could throw the economic, social and political climate into pure chaos. Our main characters are a Japanese Negotiator by the name of Shindo and an Alien being from something known as the anisotropic who refers to himself as ZaShunina. While I wouldn’t call the cast great, I do say they perform the needs of the plot well and are interesting enough to engage the viewer. Well up until the point where there characters are forced to change due to the direction of the story. There are examples of anime tropes which only cheapen the serious atmosphere of the stories tone such as a scientist girl who eccentricity is at a far too unbelieveable level. Though sadly anime tropes show up in other parts of the show as well, mainly in the rather rushed romance of the second half.

A positive aspect of this series is that it has some of the best CGI integration I have seen to date in a anime. In most series CGI is jarring and breaks immersion but here the CGI is included well enough to keep things looking natural. It does use a combination of 2D and 3D visuals and it is noticeable when it changes between the two. However I never had a moment watching this series where I was just taken out of the experience completely by shaky 3D work. The CGI also works wonders in displaying ZaShunina’s alien nature as his cube structure is a pure prism of visual marvel. The music likewise processes a grandiose and majestic feel which illustrates how this is the turning point of mankind. On the technical side of things I would consider Kado to be a success.

But when it comes to a storytelling standpoint this is where Kado fails. At first things look good as there is a focus on the diplomatic systems reaction to the sudden arrival of an Alien entity, while the Alien itself is slowly growing accustomed to human ways and learning about human culture. From the outset it feels like Kado is revving up to really dive into some deep topics but as the series continues you will find that these topics continue to get pushed into the background and not addressed. The series focuses more on ZaShunina introducing the amazing device and then implementing it. But when it comes to the long term ramifications to integration of such advanced technology, then this series instead decides to ignore it and move on to the next gift. You see the introduction and integration of the device, but never the conclusion. It appears as though the writer was never interested in these ramifications but instead in pushing some generic themes of humanity instead.

In the end Kado is a story that starts with a lot of potential and looks to bank on that potential within its first six episodes. However it moves away from a multifaceted issue to have a more black and white conflict instead. The story and characters suffer for it and it concludes in an ending that’s nonsensical, disappointing and terrible. As a result Kado is a series which most would likely regret watching as you see great ideas tossed aside to portray a stereotypical good vs evil conflict. Ultimately Seikaisuru Kado is evidence that just because someone is writing the story does not mean they know the best road to take it and in the future I hope there are those who see just what this series could have been so that they can fulfil its lost imaginable value.