October 2016 Summary

by psgels, posted in Monthly Summaries

In the past I wrote these summaries to give everyone an overview of as much of the series of the month as I could, therefore I tried to avoid spoilers as much as I could. Right now though, this feels like a good method to talk about everything that I’m watching, since I’m not going to do episodic posts, so I do want to talk about spoilers. Apologies for that. Also, in the past when I was a student with no life I really made an effort to post these summaries at the exact last day of each month, but right now I’m not going to even try to be on time. Still, this summary is about all episodes that aired in October of the shows that I’m watching, excluding anything that aired in the past four days. For the sake of clarity, I just included all relevant episodes after each title.

With these technicalities out of the way, this is a very solid season! It has really been a while since I witnessed so many solid shows together, that actually ended up delivering. There were a few shows that have started so show cracks despite initial favourable impressions, but there is really a lot of good stuff to be found here. So here are my impressions on the shows that I watched more than 1 episode of, in order of least favourite to favourite:

#12: Soushin Shoujo Matoi (02-04)

I gave this one four episodes, but I’m going to drop it now. The first episode was fun, it had diverse characters, humour; it was exciting. And episode 02 and 03 were also alright too. Not as good, but still fun enough to keep my attention. And then episode four happened, that blond girl arrived, and everything got so dark and dramatic and serious. It showed that yes, this series intends to take itself seriously.

Here’s the thing: this is a show where teen-aged girls in silly outfits throw waves of energy at evil monsters that want to destroy everything. You cannot pull that with a straight face, the only way for this show to work is to be a wacky action series carried by the antics of the lead cast. As soon as the blond girl started angsting this show was over. I mean kid, if you want to tell a serious story: there are way better series this season for that.

#11: Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku (02-05)

I cannot suspend my disbelief for this series enough. This is a show where you absolutely need that because some characters pull some really weird leaps in logic, but my ability to take it seriously got less and less (now that it’s episode 05 I finally cannot ignore it anymore).

So yeah, my predictions came true: this show tried to all be cute and lighthearted at the beginning, only to get really “dark” twists after a while. The dark twist being here that people die. Fair enough, you can make that work with the right development, but I do not think that this show knows that right development is. It tries, oh it definitely tries, however it just is so hard to take it seriously.

The characters are the problem here. The concept on its own is good: collect a bunch of magical girls, kill ’em off here and there, and watch the drama unfold. The creators really tried to have a diverse cast, and by that we have characters who aim to be the reincarnation of Mother Theresa, and other other hand we have the “yes rawr fight I kill” types, trying to cover the whole spectrum. That’s commendable, but the characters only get developed within the context of the game the characters are playing: everybody has a different tactic, a different way to interact with the rest of the cast, and a different way of looking at the game. That’s plenty of variety and it really is nice and all, but beyond that I have no idea who these kids are. Who they are in the real world… this show refuses to give us any background in that. We have a businesswoman. Okay, what about the rest. Any hobbies? Any nice tidbits? Just the bare minimum. Then there’s the lesbian couple. Good, but are they anything other than lesbians? The only reason is that one seems to be really rich. How? In what way? And nearly every character is like that. Even the lead character is a bit of a blank slate with the amount of time dedicated to her. How am I supposed to feel sorry for these characters?

So what about the rest? Yeah, the battles are boring, the animation is just a string of people talking keeping up mostly the same poses. So yeah, if then you pull stuff like “I like you and look up to you for your leadership skills but I need to kill you because I want to be a leader even though it’s totally out of character”… yeah it’s not gonna work. Heck, just use the reason that everybody was fed up with Ruler’s whining. I would totally have accepted that!

#10: Cheating Craft (02-04)

The only reason this show works is because of the completely ridiculous things the creators keep throwing at the characters. But hey, that’s enough, and I’m still entertained. I’m noticing that I keep watching to find out what ludicrous gimmick the next exam is going to have. I also really like how much this show takes itself seriously during these exams, because it has reached exactly that uncanny valley of “so bad it’s good”. Episode 04 had just a small one, but I loved the idea of just stuffing the characters into an airplane and blowing the roof off. Now that’s creative!

As for the characters… yeah, they work, I guess. They do their job, but the only reason they work is because everything is so over the top, and they’re not ashamed of it. If the male characters were even a little less subtle about their actions they’d be incredibly annoying, but the way they are now is sufficient and they make me laugh without annoying too much. I like the bespectacled girl though. Her biting cynicism speaks to me.

#9: Bernard Jou Iwaku (02-04)

This… is one of those shows that should not be good, yet I keep enjoying. Heck, all this show is, is name-dropping famous books and authors. It makes a point that it’s only interested about these names and not about the content, that it only wants to superficially seem smart but actually has the intellectual value of that one hipster you see at parties who tries to seem all educated.

And yet, it works! The really fast dialogue helps as well, but most of all: it packs a number of good jokes. And four episodes in and I still see no sign of them getting worse. I find myself having to actually pay attention in order to catch everything they manage to stuff into these three-minute episodes. Very few shows of its kind can claim this.

#8: 3-Gatsu no Lion (02-04)

Okay, so this one didn’t turn out to be as solid as I thought it would be, but it definitely still has my attention. Its portrayal of Tokyo still is as immersive as in episode one, and you can definitely see that it’s trying to do something new. Every episode so far has shown us a bit more about the different cast of characters, and they’re getting really well fleshed out, and the few bits of drama hit hard, yet with plenty of subtlety. They make you think.

Unfortunately, the past few episodes are also trying to be funny… and they’re not. I mean I can see that the creators are trying to bring in this fun banter between the characters, the music gets all forcedly “quirky”, and we’re supposed to laugh as an audience and all, but I haven’t even chuckled at all during this series. And it’s not like the humour is terrible thankfully, it’s just… not funny. Because of that I’m a bit bored during the segments that are just focused on random jokes that are not getting anywhere, with the rival being the worst offender (however his silver lining is that he’s an overweight character done right, and his annoyingness is used actually well afterwards!).

Also, the close ups in this series! Usually this show looks gorgeous, until the camera is like inches from a character’s nose and then all kinds of problems appear, but what annoys me the most has to do with cinematography. I don’t get it. They put in so many inbetween frames in some of these shots, yet all movement looks weird and unnatural. Also, whenever a character turns his/her head to look at something: there’s like no continuity in that whatsoever. Usually this is a camera trick used to get the viewer to pay attention to the immediate next scene. This time they’re just randomly turning around with no reason from angles we did not see them turn to. And then the camera focuses on something completely different. What is the purpose of these scenes? Because I can vaguely recall that Shaft has done this before in the past. Is it to mess with the viewer’s mind? Shake things up? Because personally, my immersion is broken every time with such a shot.

#7: TO BE HERO (02-04)

Oh Nabeshin, you glorious bastard! I wait years and years for a new series of yours (Excel Saga still stands as one of my favourite comedies), and then you finally return, with THIS?! This show is off its knockers! We’re four episodes in now, and it’s still an incredibly disturbing watch, and yet I find myself in stitches from start to finish. This show completely butchers the idea of superheroes, and leaves nothing standing, and I love how it keeps searching for new ways to freak its audience out. Episode four was completely disgusting, but it just went with the idea and squeezed a ton of jokes out of it. My favourite though was the Transformers parody in episode 03, along with mister smilie face.

What’s also interesting: despite being a comedy, this show continues to evolve. These four episodes basically did everything they could about an alien invasion, and there’s no way they’re going to be able to add to that, so the creators decided to just ditch that whole storyline and we’re looking to go more into a sitcom. Okay, that works. Although in a few episodes it’ll have to change again of course, because simply devolving into a sitcom and staying there has been done many times before, with disastrous results.

#6: Shuumatsu no Izetta (02-05)

Contrary to what I suspected, Shuumatsu no Izetta turned out to be much more a series about political games. The titular character has huge powers, however also huge weaknesses, and in these first five episodes we saw them trying to use them in the best way possible. Characters actually use their heads instead of blindly attacking, and even though there is a bit of a “good versus evil”-theme going on, the evil empire isn’t just attacking because they’re evil: they’ve got their reasons, which are quite believable. The series really is about seeing how well such a tiny nation can hold against such a big foe.

There are times where it does do a number of weird things though. Like I did not expect this to be one of these series that thinks female bonding is groping each other. Or the squad of elite sniper teenaged girls in episode 05 also came from out of nowhere. Scenes like these feel so… out of place. “Oh, every show with cute girls does this, that means we should also have that”.

#5: Udon no Kuni no Kiniro Kemari (02-04)

Yeah okay, this show probably piggybacked off of the popularity of Usagi Drop (and wasn’t there this other show recently…? Barakamon I think it was called), where an “old” guy takes care of a child. But you know, that is how genres are created. More and more shows realize that it can be done to successfully make a series about a certain topic, and with a bit of luck there will be more and more good ones, using the original as a diving board to jump off to and explore other concepts. In the ideal world you’d obviously hope for total diversity, but unfortunately we’re stuck here in this boring real world and this will have to do. And they’re handling it well. What often happens is that copycats just start appearing, for example what happened with Shaft’s signature style: as soon as they got successfull inferior copies started hitting the market while they themselves had already moved on, and I guess that years later, anime has gotten kinda better overall with its use of colours… but the bad stuff about their style and the uninspired clones still persist unfortunately.

Udon no Kuni puts the focus on a character study. The kid in this case has some mystical relationship to him (it’s probably his child version), and it’s not so much about parenting as they use parenting as a vehicle to where they really want to go to: character-development. How well that turns out is still hard to say at this point because they’re still building up and all, but in terms of setting up the main character, they’re pushing a lot of the right buttons, these past four episodes just show him. His interactions with the closest people to him. why he made some of big decisions in his life. They show key moments in his past, but not too much of it so they can also use the vagueness for nostalgia. From the outside it’s obvious what the creators are trying to do, what matters now is them doing it well, and they’re right on track.

Is this a show for you? If you like laid-back slice of life series with a meaning behind them: yes. Obviously I’m biased because I recognize a lot of myself in this character, especially since we don’t get to see his age that often (and if I have to be totally honest: I find him to be more interesting than the lead of Usagi Drop). However there’s a lot to like here. It really tries to be adorable with the raccoon child, and so far it has only slightly tested my patience. Obviously though, because it’s not a real child the creators can get away with “yeah okay he acts child-like but not really childlike.

#4: Natsume Yuujinchou Go (02-04)

I seem to recall that Natsume Yuujinchou was at its best, the less plot there was. Just single episodes focused on a story of some youkai. The main storyline with the Matoba clan was good, but not AS good. This season starts off with a bit of both: we get two standalone episodes, plus two episodes about the main storyline. Natsume Reiko is gone though, despite my original thoughts that this season would focus on her like how Season 4 focused on Natsume’s family.

My memory is fuzzy, however the two Matoba episodes have been the best ones so far. He upped the stakes this time, got a bit more direct in his approaches, and at the same time we learn that the guy really has a bad reputation. Most people hate him and he only gets by by blackmailing. This will be a very good thing for Natsume to overcome next. He has grown now, and for example has gotten better at dealing with people, and became a lot less shy and isolated. Natori didn’t appear a lot, but the scenes he did have were also great for him. We got a tiny bit closer to his character.

Meanwhile episode 2 with the towel was just completely adorable. Absolutely wonderful and it has shown that the creators haven’t lost their magic in creating these episodic gems.

#3: ClassicaLoid (02-04)

Okay, I can’t help it. This has the most ridiculous premise, and yet I just love this show. Each episode has me excited like no other this season, it’s just so incredibly uplifting! Really, the premise of the show is just about the only negative thing I can say about it, this is everything entertainment should be.

What ClassicaLoid does incredibly well is breathe life into its characters. It’s so chockful of emotions, completely over the top, but so incredibly genuine. Every character so far works, but I have to give especially credit to Mozart and that male lead. Not because they’re my favourites, but because they’ve mastered the art of being annoying. Every single episode I want to punch their smug faces really badly, yet their ridiculous antics crack me up at the same time. As for my favourite characters… Beethoven and the female lead. They keep everything together, and the female lead especially for surviving all of the crazy stuff that she has to deal with as the only responsible character in the show.

Speaking of responsibility: you would not expect this show to have so much continuity. A hole is blown in the wall? It’s not immediately fixed. Heck, the female lead is constantly cleaning. You want delicious tasty gyoza? Well then you’d better have the money for it. You do weird stuff? People will remember that, actions have consequences yo! Especially episode 04 was a very good example of that. And holy crap, did they bring in some former Ghibli staff for that episode or something? They managed to bring Ghibli’s expressive art into a freaking TV-show! That kite festival was just incredibly well done. Really creative to set your episode there. ClassicaLoid, I applaud you and please keep this up for your entire runtime of 26 episodes!

#2: Yuri!!! on Ice (02-04)

I was not surprised when I found out that Sayo Yamamoto is directing this thing. When it comes to TV-series, she is one of the best you can get, and she especially stands out with an impeccable sense of characterization and framing, and she did it again: the characters in this series feel alive. Not just because of how well they’re written, but also how they are on the screen: their movements, expressions, and presence: it’s all full of life, and incredibly fun to watch.

So far one criticism I’ve heard of this series is that it’s kinda gay. And why yes it is, but so what? I get that gay guys have gotten a rather bad name in anime due to all of the badly written gay fanservice that exists solely to please the fanservice, but this is the first time in years that it’s actually been done right: there is tension, but it’s not so ridiculously overblown: it adds to the characters. I can’t recall when the last time was in which this wasn’t done for either cheap comedy or fanservice, but simply a part that happens to the characters. I get that in both the cases of gay and moe fanservice that you have to prove that you’re not doing it for the porn of it, but at this point this show basically proved more than enough that it’s one of the top shows of the season.

Episode 03 in particular was big, and contained a ton of character-development. I love how they put Yuri and Yuri against each other, even though they’re completely different, especially the age part: rivals are rarely that much apart in terms of ages. Yurio is growing as a brat, while Yuri is trying to grab his last chance. It’s all wonderful coming together. What I loved about episode four was how it stressed that everybody had a life before the series started off. Please continue on with this amount of attention to detail!

#1: Fune wo Amu (02-03)

I cannot stress how good the animation in this series is. And it’s not just the budget here, but also how well it’s used. Characters move around in all sorts of ways, with as little corners cut as possible. They touch each other, they occupy each other’s space. Their faces and gestures are stuffed with subtle and not-so-subtle signs and details. Yuri on Ice breathes life into each characters by clever directing. This show just does it by the sheer force of its characters. You can almost literally feel these people and touch them. And the voice acting! Holy crap talk about good. Everyone gives such a layered performance: knowing when to ham it up, and when to be more subtle.

Like seriously, this show is actually doing it: they made a series about writing a dictionary interesting. At first I wasn’t sure whether the introduction of romance in episode 03 was a good idea, however it was surprisingly honest about it: so far it’s just a random crush from the incredibly socially awkward male lead. And he’s actually socially awkward in a believable way, because of how all other people react to it. That’s something you hardly ever see in anime. And it’s not romance for the sake of romance, but it’s first and foremost for the characterization of the lead male. I mean of course this guy would be horrible with girls.

But yeah, despite my praises: know what you’re getting yourself into. This show absolutely isn’t for everyone since the target audience is so far from the usual. The plot of this series is exactly what it is on the tin: they’re making a dictionary, and that can take up to 10 years. So far they’ve done a few pages’ worth. This is NOT fast-paced. The atmosphere depends entirely on whether you connect to the characters. If you don’t, there isn’t any humour, action or sad backstory to make up for it. Oh wait, episode 03, at the end, seemed to feature one twist. Let’s see where that takes the series.

And no, I am also not sure on the meaning behind the really silly and out of place dictionary skits and the exact kind of effect the creators were hoping to achieve with it.

Sound! Euphonium 2 – 05 [Miraculous Harmony]

by SuperMario, posted in Currently Watching:, Sound! Euphonium 2

What a bravura piece of performance! Usually if a show wants to showcase how good a music performance is, they’d go for cheap tactics like fast cuts, over-the-top sparkling effects, key still frames, and drawing reactions from audiences. Not with KyoAni. They’re confident enough, and of course talented enough, to play out the entire piece and let that speaks for themselves about the quality. This is easily the highlights of this season so far and will be the one that fans will keep coming back to.

But the first half by no mean is no duds either. By following Kumiko and the band go through a day leading up to the Kansai Competition, the show again excels in showing many subtle moments and development that blink and you might miss it entirely. First, Taki announces to the band that his friends’ duty has ended, which for me was quite sudden because I still don’t know what their real roles are in the whole picture. I think the reason they are presented is to support and shed more lights to Taki’s character, but they actually didn’t do much except being either an info-dumper, or an obvious setup for Reina to get fired-up nonsensically. I hope they’ll be back soon as I still don’t see the show used them to their full potential. While on the train, Hazuki (who sadly was under-developed this season) gives a really light but on-point touch on what she is thinking the upcoming tournament. Being one of a few who isn’t qualified enough, it’s understandable that she sometimes feels like she was left behind by her friends. But being Hazuki, obviously she’s sad, but she isn’t the one who’d disheartened by that. Instead, she vows to work hard to get her place for next year, and encouraging her friends to make it to the Nationals so that would inspire her is a really nice characterization by the show. Aiming to the Nationals not only mean a whole lot for the competitive members, but for the rest of the team as well.

When Kumiko got back home that afternoon, she receives a phone call from her middle school friend, Azusa (who briefly appeared in the first season). Her school Rikka High School will compete in the morning, moreover she asked Kumiko to not to speak with her that day. That again is a nice touch from Sound Eupho because the show keeps adding more perspectives from other cast, making more layers to the story. I totally agree with Azusa here, they might be ‘best friends forever’ but on that one day they’re competitors (I love how Kumiko keeps picking up her toes), and like Kumiko later said the amount of time and efforts all of them put in to practice for that one day affects pretty much everyone in the band, so “no one can think straight now” isn’t an overstatement at all.

I have to give it up for Yuuko for again being shine in her brief moments. She basically acts like herself this episode but the moment feels truly earned. Although qualifying to the Nationals is their goals, the team (especially the third-year students) knows that it’s a hard goal to reach. In addition, for the third-year students, this might be their last performance so they sometimes feel like they’re at the end of the road. This sentiment is echoed by Kaori this week as she tells Yuuko to keep looking after then band or Asuka last season when she said that the fun of practicing is about to conclude when the competition ends. But Yuuko points out correctly that their journey isn’t going to be done yet, let’s try and reach the Nationals together. In other notes, while Sound Eupho never really a show that is strong in terms of comedy, this episode has its absurd moments. Upon hearing Yoroizuka saying that the she will play a solo piece for Nozomi (which still doesn’t sound right for me either), Reina asks Kumiko if she can play the solo part for her. I know Reina isn’t the one who is easily affected by other people so this is really more like the show poking fun on the very notion of playing the piece for someone else. In fact, the very last moments of the episode when Yoroizuka expresses that she’s happy with the competition sadly is the weakest part in otherwise flawless episode for me, as I see for much of her struggle, she comes out as too clean a cut, the drama of her last episode pretty much resolved everything that I don’t feel her grow is natural at all.

But this first half’s best moments come directly from the speech of Asuka. As this show has many times addressed this issues, while Asuka isn’t the president of the club, she has a leader traits and clearly everyone sees her as more influential figure than Haruka the president. This time, she speaks up for the whole band and for once, she lets herself loose and being direct in front of everyone. She wants to try to reach to the Nationals. I noticed the brief exchanges between her and Kumiko during the performance and at this moments I’m not really sure what those exchanges supposed to be. The very nature of concert band is teamwork as everyone contribute their parts to form a collective whole, but for those from the same sections sometimes it means they have to fight each other for the roles. This will put our main Kumiko in an interesting position as Asuka and she both playing Euphonium. I reckon Asuka and Kumiko relationship is going to be the main focus for the latter half of this season, which I will totally be on board.

And now to that wonderful second half performance, it’s just simply mesmerizing. KyoAni always has been very consistent when it comes to the production values, but even with their standard the performance is still a standout. I noticed they used some footages from the previous performance last seasons, but overall the whole performance flows magnificently. Some might say it’s not fair to just focus on the band’s performance so we don’t know how good other bands are, but that’s essentially the point here. When the announcement starts, we’re rooting for them not because how incredible their performance was, but because we have witnessed how hard they tried to produce that piece of music so the results are satisfying because we know they deserved it. And you deserved it too, KyoAni.

Magical Girl Raising Project – 05[New Character!]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Magical Girl Raising Project

Being the peacemaker in a death game is one surefire way to paint a target on your back. Sure it’s a good thing there are people to run around yelling to give peace a chance but I admit that I agline more with how Ripple sees Nana’s proposal for peace. Empty ideals may be technically right but without anything backing up those flowery words they essentially become hollow. At most Nana has appealed to the administers of the game through Fav which in itself is rather silly as Fav wouldn’t deliver the message if he was behind all this and it’s likely that the Admins know full well whats going on. Other than that Nana has got good intentions but not much else. Based on what we have seen here with Magicaroid scamming Nana with junk items and how she acts at home, it doesn’t look like Nana has any ill intent. However there is an  interesting little bit of info in Winterprisms eyecatch in the midpoint of this episode. It said in her description that “She accepts Nana fully, despite knowing her intentions.” I am not certain as to what this alludes but perhaps Nana isn’t quite as pure as she seems.

For one I find her reasons for wanting to make Winterprism into a magical girl to be odd as she was stating how she was her knight and rambling on about how she can’t be stronger than her protector. I don’t think she is a skemer but perhaps she isn’t quite mentally well. While talking about this two we might as well bring up that Winterprism and Nana are lesbian lovers outside of magical girl form and I certainly appreciate that the yuri angle isn’t being pushed all two hard. The two act like a regular couple instead of yuri fan bait. I would like to say these two are the first official lesbian magical girl couple but that honor goes to Sailor Uranus and Neptune. Even discounting them I consider Nanoha and Fate to be canonical in a relationship.(They live together, sleep together, blush like red beets at each other and they have a kid who calls them both mom. It isn’t outright stated but these two have got to be together.)

While Koyuki warms up to the idea of making Souta her boyfriend, Swim Swim seems to be having trouble figuring out how to handle the Magical girl team with Ruler gone. She’s decided on stealing more Candies but it appears she doesn’t quite know how to go about it. While she’s figuring this out we get introduced to another chaotic addition to the game, Cranberry.(The villains of this show sure do have the least threatening names.) Our new girl seems to not really care about collecting candies and is more in it to face off against strong opponents. Not exactly a original motivation but she is a much needed fire to set off all the oil laying around. One particular thing I noticed about Cranberry is that the group mention she is the oldest magical girl in the area and that makes me think back to the opening scene of the first episode. And sure enough I am certain the girl standing in a magical girl massacre in front of a monster was wearing the same roses on her head as Cranberry does now.

It even added up to her motivation as the girl in the opening scene smiled when fighting off the monster and Cranberry is seeking out the same thrill of fighting strong opponents. This may be insight into what lies beyond this current death game as there appears to be monsters like those in the phone app. Possibly this whole elimination game is a whittling down of the girls in order to get the best fighters to take on these monsters. Magicaliod and Calamity mary continue to get along seeing as they are both scumbags who are willing to go to any means to win. Lastly we have Alice, the newcomer who looks to be very interested in Snow White. The show is trying to paint her as a potential foe but I think she will end  up an ally instead. There was a brief shot of a girl looking up message boards for snow white and I think she’s a fan who wants to help her. Considering that we are reaching the halfway point I think we really should start knocking out some girls as only two have been eliminated so far out of the eight.

Drifters – 04[Active Heart]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Drifters

Even with a show that is style over substance, there comes a time when a story needs to sit down and lay out what’s going on. Though when I finished this episode I was surprised by just how little actually happened in this episode. Basically we get some info on the world, namely that a Kingdom of Orta is currently taking over large amounts of land and subjugated the elves and dwarfs. These guys seem unrelated to the ends and it looks like them will be a  major obstacle in defeating the ends. One particular detail that Oda figured out through questioning the girl was that the Octobrist organisation don’t have any armies or the like and seem focused on only gathering together the Drifters.

They have managed to provide the drifters with a means of communication with magic translation devices. Other than that however it doesn’t seem like they have much of a plan.This leads to Oda’s conclusion which does bring an interesting problem. Basically he figures the only way to put up a fight is to gain an army, and he plans to do this by taking over Orta. This brings a particular interesting point to mind, namely that Oda gives the people of this land two options. Either die or live under a foreign tyrant. This really does point out just how much damage these foreign invaders are doing to this world.

Hints of the Black Kings identity are shown as the man goes around his soldiers healing their wounds and he mentions that at one time he tried to save humans. I will be blunt as the hinting is getting heavy at this point but it is suspected that the black kIng is in fact Jesus Christ. In our current age I don’t know how controversial it would be to make Jesus the villain of this series. Possibly considering the niche nature of anime it could barely be a blip on anyone’s radar and it’s hardly the most controversial position Jesus has been in. But I love the idea of making Jesus the villain of Drifters. The ends are mainly Martyrs so who better than the most famous martyr in history being their leader. This pit stop is hopefully over and we will be right back with bloody carnage as the Drifters gather up the elves to fight the incoming army.

3-gatsu no Lion – 04 [Hina – Buiesu]

by SuperMario, posted in 3-gatsu no Lion, Currently Watching:

Seems like overalls it’s not a good week for my anime blogging, as all the shows that I’m covering haven’t fared very well this week. Not that they are disasters but all the shows veer off from their greatest strength to a more mediocre approach. For Sound Eupho they went for big climatic drama instead of their focus on dense little moments. For Flip Flappers they abandoned their wild Pure Illusion world for a more mundane and aimless plot, and for 3-gatsu no Lion they passed on their intimate look on real characters for… well… cartoonish characters. 3-gatsu no Lion is at its strongest when the show concentrates on Rei’s inner emotions and how the characters around him in a way change his very perception to be more open and honest to himself. Sadly this episode has little of those moments and instead relies on exaggerated silly moments which simply isn’t as engaging.

As soon as I knew the next chapter was going to focus on Hina, I was actually looking for this since Hina is my favorite character out of the three sisters. But boy, they decide to fall on the usual pitfall of portraying preteen middle school girl: through romance and first crush. Takahashi is the tall boy, baseball-ace from her school and she makes up her mind to cook a bento for him. Takahashi is almost an object of affection from the outside looking in, literally; as Rei stands from outside the field looking into the boy. Hina wants to make the most perfect bento out there, and the whole plan goes as everyone would expect: failed miserably. It’s fun to see her struggling with making foods, each time goes more and more horribly wrong and completely running out of time. But when it’s time for her to give the bento, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

While so far this chapter stumbles a bit because it ticks all the cliché teen romance plot, at least the chapter ends in a solid note. The ending works because the show still understands its character very well. It explores the insecurity of Hina, something fairly normal for someone her age: about her shyness got the better of her, about feeling vulnerable compared to the “near-perfect” sister. There is a huge age difference between the three sisters, but that makes sense in this context because the three sisters represent different stages of women’s life (I know, I know I might be obsessed with women’s issues but please bear with me this time). This theme becomes apparent here as Hina’s efforts remind Akari of her own, years ago and I believe although they’re different in term of personality, this is a phase that they all had to go through. Furthermore, this chapter ends with the most brilliant execution in this episode, as the voice-over switched gently from Rei to Akari. Up until now, we always follow Rei’s train of thoughts so it’s a nice change to hear other characters say what they’re thinking, and Akari sincere voice really gives of a warm and sweet feeling (unlike the first love) that the chapter wanted to achieve.

On the second half, things got real noisy for Rei as Harunobu came to his house unannounced to practice shogi with him. I certainly like him as a character, since last week the show gives more light to his character, but he also turns me off whenever he’s in that loud and hyperactive mode. Sadly the first half of this chapter was full of this and only when the duo meet the three sisters, things get more interesting. It turns out that he’s getting along well with kids, which actually is unsurprising because he himself still acts like a kid. I like the way the show makes references that obviously inspired by real-life counterparts. Well, others might say Bodoro is a blatant rip-off to Totoro, for me I say that this Bodoro has his own charms. Then it’s Akari who has a weird fetish: she likes everything soft and fluffy and has a affection for Harunobu considering his… ahem… body. Now, that actually becomes an issue. Like I mentioned last week I think the best strength 3-gatsu no Lion has is those characters feel like real people. This episode making their quirks so cartoonish (no, I’ll rephrase: so anime-ish) that they don’t feel like actual people anymore. I know maybe this problem comes from me so if the show still goes with these cartoonish traits then I’ll have to re-evaluate my own judgement.

Overall, besides being the show’s most unremarkable episode yet, I find some of the jokes actually landed well, like all the parts involving “some other people’s kids” or the last scene with Harunobu’s butler Hanaoka and I still think Shaft adapting the show quite effectively so far. There is a lack of Rei’s inner voice this week which actually hurts the show a bit, but we got one brief scene when he’s mentioning ‘love’ and it seems like he was in some kind of abuse with a girl before. This week is just a slightly misstep so I’m not worry too much. 3-gatsu no Lion is still a strong show and I can’t wait to spend more time with them next week.

Flip Flappers – 04 [Pure Equalization]

by SuperMario, posted in Currently Watching:, Flip Flappers

Nothing much has happened to Flip Flappers this week, which I can really summarize the plot in one sentence: Cocona and Papika live together for a while and they spend their time getting foods and taking baths and sleeping together. In fact, there’s not much to say in this episode. This is so far Flip Flappers’ most mundane and ordinary episode and frankly compare to the first three episodes it’s a clear step down, but then again you can’t expect a show to hit home runs week after week.

As you probably know me I’m never a big fan of forced plot so forcing the two girls to stay together until they can sync again doesn’t bode well for me. It seems really like a plot excuse to gather them together and worst of all, in this episode all the girls do is just hanging around in search for the plot. Now I never mind the fact that the show keeps us in the dark regarding Flip Flappers world but this is the first time I get the feeling they don’t give us enough info because they have little to say. Usually for an episode that supposed to be a break between two big episodes, they can either fleshing out the world, giving more context to the side characters, or deepening the main characters; unfortunately, this episode achieves none of that. Cocona and Papika’s chemistry just isn’t strong enough to carry the whole episode and as a result the story feel drags at times; there’s no real urgency to the plot and little ‘world-wonder’ like we encountered previous episodes.

In any case, this episode still gives some more insights (albeit very little) to work with. We have an extended dream of Cocona this time that she was in a floating boat with a mysterious woman (a nod to the very well usage of optical illusions) and for now I’m guessing that the mysterious girl is another version of Cocona. To align with her masked persona last week, Cocona might be a girl with many faces, because she doesn’t have any real identity to begin with so she’s easy to be manipulated into other personalities. This series is going to be Cocona’s journey to find her real self. On other notes, I found it rather amusing that Papika seems to un-noticed the art-club unnamed girl again, that made me feel like that art-club girl is some kind of a ghost/ spirit (or mushi if I let myself loose). Cocona gives a bit of context on her lost parents and her wish to meet them again. As of now all I think of is her parents’ death/ disappearance might be a result of one of the Pure Illusion world, so she might actually get to meet them later in the Pure Illusion reality.

At least, the girls were sucked into another Pure Illusion world so I know in next episode we will have a good time. It might sound harsh of me regarding this episode but it is simply because at this point I have a high expectation for Flip Flappers. I get to Flip Flappers expecting to experience something unique and I know the show is capable of delivering that, so spending an episode to see those girls just hanging around and waiting for the plot to kick in is simply not good enough.

Sound! Euphonium 2 – 04 [Awakening Oboe]

by SuperMario, posted in Currently Watching:, Sound! Euphonium 2

This week Sound Eupho goes full-blown drama, exploring the struggles from Yoroizuka towards Nozomi. As a result, this episode is the show’s most emotional resonance, but at the same time is the show’s most straight-forwards in terms of plot. What you see is what you get, but the drama is resolved so well that I’m pretty happy with how all this played out.

It’s interesting to note that for how much the show set up this little drama, the conflict reaches its peak from something completely incidental, at first glance. Nozomi, upon hearing about Yoroizuka’s oboe criticism, decides to see her… to say hi, that’s enough to swell Yoroizuka’s emotions up and explode like a torrential rain. This turn of events might seem a bit randomly at first, but take a closer look and you can see their situation has been in a crumble ground that it’s a matter of time for that relationship to collapse on themselves. Before going to Yoroizuka’s point of view, let me raise this: people might think that Nozomi doesn’t really consider Yoroizuka as her friend because after she quit, they cut off their communication, which is something a close friend wouldn’t have done. Yeah, Nozomi might be a bit insensitive but truthfully, she did all that because that’s who she is. Who would blame her for that? She said that she didn’t tell Yoroizuka she quit because she didn’t want to drag her friend into the whole mess, which for me is fair enough.

In fact, it’s Yoroizuka who had a problem and the show highlights her issues quite effectively. Since Nozomi left the band without telling her, she felt left out. Nozomi had always been a precious friend to her, being the one who introduced her to play instrument. Yoroizuka fears that facing Nozomi again, she’d be rejected and that feeling keep boiling up inside her to the point that she gets sick just from listening to Nozomi’s sound. That is indeed scary when one’s too dependent on their relationship to others. For around a year she has been playing music for Nozomi and therefore overlooked Yuuko’s friendship and her enjoyment to the band. The visual alone conveys many feelings by the way they frame the characters, like how the show underlines Yoroizuka’s fragile emotions by displays her shutting herself up, literally, under the desk; or when Yuuko tears fall into her face (sharing the pain) and later when Yuuko literally knocks some sense out of her and raising her up to the bright sunlight. The drama sure is overloaded but the visual language is still as sensitive as ever. I have to give Yuuko an extra praise since this season she’s growing to be a very carefully constructed character (despite being very unlikable in first season) and I’m glad that she and Natsuki returning to tease one another again.

But the last five minutes of the show, right after the drama ended is when Sound Eupho returns to its dense storytelling. Asuka again proved to be a genius in pointing out the worst in people by commenting that Yoroizuka’s obsession to Nozomi is due to the fear of being alone, and afterwards making friend with Yuuko as an insurance, to which Kumiko completely disagrees. Asuka has been the most complex character of the series and the scariest thing about her is even when she’s putting up a front, she always makes sense. I doubt that her decision not to allow Nozomi back to the band is only because of Yoroizuka (well, mostly but hardly the only reasons). What she says might not be what she truly feels and I love to see how the show manages to crack into her true personality. Overall, while I think going for heightened drama is not the strongest suit (that would be the show’s emphasis on little moments) and the conflict was resolved a bit too quickly for my taste, it’s still a very well-executed episode. At least now we can move on to the Kansai competition and it’s time to give more spotlights to other members of the cast. Give me more Reina please!!

Occultic;Nine – 03[She Cracked]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Occultic:Nine

This week on Occultic;Nine…stuff happens I guess? In watching this i am getting reminders of Chaos;Head in a lot of ways. Now the Chaos;Head anime was a mess but the visual novel actually started really well with a lot of intrigue before D-swords were introduced and the whole narrative just became a giant nonsensical mess.  There are some common elements here as in Chaos;Head there was a murder influenced by a goth punk singers lyrics who was then claimed to be a prophetic. Here we have a murder influenced by a manga doujin where the mangaka claims to see in dreams. In Chaos;Head this whole prophetic singer thing just turned out to be a waste of time because it turned out the singer was batshit insane and the similarity to the murder was just pure coincidence. I feel this thing with the mangaka girl is going along the same vein. Basically  that she sees stuff in her dreams and pretty much has nothing to do with anything. I at least see the Occult part of the title is starting to appear with demon creatures and ghosts and whatnot, though I doubt we’ll be seeing even half the stuff in the opening.

I will be blunt and say I have little interest in what’s happening here. I can follow it though that certainly is a challenge but I find this show is trying to peak my interest by withholding its cards. So this episode we get a bunch of people acting suspiciously and a bunch of questions raised. Thing is I don’t care about these people and I am certain that any of the questions raised here will not have satisfactory answers. You may say I am speaking too soon and that I really could be surprised by what this show does with all this, and frankly you are right. However when looking at what is presented I see no possible way this is going to make any real sense. We already have the Occult involved so any mystery this series presents can pretty much be explained with “A wizard did it”. The idea of someone masterfully planning the suicide of over hundred people sounds like one hell of a feat in a story without the supernatural. However here Demons probably Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Booed them and they went and killed themselves. This series is trying to establish a massive conspiracy with connections everywhere in this mystery but the problem with that is that to make it all sound convincing and not contrived you need to be a damn good writer.

Ryukishi is one of the few who can build a massive intricate mystery without it feeling contrived and even he needs to cheat every now and then. It’s easy to build suspense and intrigue with questions but eventually you need to answer those questions. This is generally the point where everything falls apart. Here we have a murder where the victim had a key hidden as a tooth in his mouth which is connected to both a Doujin artist and a girl who set a curse on the victim using some sort of devil creature(Girl was also sent the victim’s scalp in the mailbox) along with a mass suicide, people who seem to be involved with secret organizations, a self proclaimed NEET who isn’t a NEET getting instructions from a toy doll that seems to know everything, the murder victim researching into Nikola Tesla and some Phantom plane, and a weird boy who abducted the friend of a popular fortune teller girl. Tell me honestly, do you think there is a way to tie all that together without resorting to something dumb? Because I certainly doubt it.

Magical Girl Raising Project – 04[Add More Friends!]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Magical Girl Raising Project

Guess I gave Ruler a bit too much credit than she deserved. I still think in her own way she did care about her team but she had a much bigger ego than expected when you see her real self. Ruler has the problematic nature of overestimating her own worth and in doing so pushes away others under the guise that they are not at her level. Problem is that when you push away everyone you have no one who can point out your own faults and thus never improve as a human being. Ruler was a big shot at school but when she entered the working world she started bottom of the rung and was doing pointless odd jobs. Seeing as she had the ego the size of a small continent this naturally didn’t sit well with her and she used her Magical girl identity to flatter her ego. It’s funny when you think about it, she couldn’t rule the world of adults so instead she chose to rule over children. Truly she was petty creature which doesn’t deserve much sympathy as she killed off this episode.

Much like my opinion of 91 Day’s I am not fond of putting someone in the spotlight in the exact episode they are killed off or involved with a twist. To the viewer it then becomes obvious that whoever gets backstory is going to die and thus ruins the surprise of the episode. I knew that with Rulers attitude that it was really only a matter of time before she was killed off and the coup d’etat was really inevitable. However I didn’t expect it to happen this quickly and the way she was killed was rather unexpected. I don’t mean that I didn’t know Swim Swim would betray her as I pretty much pegged that by the last episode. I even was right on the money about Nemurin being the one to inspire the revolt in the second episode. But Swim Swim, despite the very silly name, could be turning out to be a very interesting villain. Despite her magical girl appearance, Swim Swim is very young and is quite intelligent as seen by how she purposefully distributed the stolen candies from Snow White in a manner that would leave Ruler in last place.

But what makes this interesting is that she didn’t kill Ruler because of hate, or because she saw her as a poor leader. In fact she seems to hold great respect for her even after ending her life. Basically it seems that she was following Rulers teachings in that all the members of the team should strive to become her. However in Swim Swims mind this meant that she can’t become Ruler if Ruler is still around. Thus logically Ruler must be eliminated. So in Swim Swim’s mind she sees this as carrying Rulers torch and quite honestly this makes Swim Swim rather scary. She’s young, smart, and can kill without remorse but is also highly impressionable. She is working with an entirely different ruleset and morality. She spent a large amount of time with the worst role model and now could start a bloodbath while seeing nothing wrong with it. I originally pinned Calamity Mary down as the villain for this arc but right now it could be possible Swim Swim is the true villain.

As for other matters the writing continues to not really be on the level of quality it needs to be on. Souta really should have known better to run off after the twin angels when he knew they worked in a team. I also find his power to be a little too on the nose. An expanding sword? Really? We all know exactly what that symbolises and quite frankly the show does as well. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he holds the sword directly in front of his crotch. The action scenes lack real excitement though it could be just this fight that wasn’t particularly exhilarating. Souta has pretty much confirmed that he will be acting as Koyuki’s protector in this fight which makes me fairly certain that he’s going to die. We have another Magical girl targeting Snow White and it looks like everyone is dividing into factions as Top Speed and ninja magical girl meet up with the nun magical girl. This series still does have the potential to deliver on it’s premise and we have enough of a build up to really get started. I hope it can at least live up to the magical girl battle royale it is promising as we have far too many Dark Mahou Shoujo failures.

Drifters – 03[Army of Ours–Sortie at Dawn]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Drifters

After two episodes of pretty solid quality I happen to notice this episode took a bit of a downturn in animation. Though to be fair this was the most action focused episode yet which strangely didn’t feature our main trio. Instead we get introduced to the other protagonists and our main antagonists. We also get some clarification on just what is going on here. Basically historical figures called ends have been thrown into this world and have decided to kill everything. In order to combat them a magician’s organization is trying to gather Drifters who also happen to be historical figures. The main difference between the two seems to be that Drifters are taken to the world before their death while ends are transferred after they die. They also seem to have died rather tragic deaths and unlike the Drifters seem to have supernatural powers. We got a lot of new faces here and chances are you don’t know the half of them. On the drifter side we got two cowboys with Butch Cassey, the Sundance Kid and a Japanese fighter Pilot from WWII by the name of Naoshi Kanno.

On the ends side we got Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova who you likely don’t recognize but there was a Don Bluth film called Anastasia which took the cliff notes on her and tried to turn it into a Disney knockoff. Basically she was princess who was killed by the Bolshevik secret police and there were long rumors that she didn’t really die in the attack. Seems to be hints that the man with her is Rasputin. We have Toshizou Hijikata, vice commander for the shinsengumi who died during the boshin War. And we have the most surprising of the bunch with Joan of Arc who seems to have not taken her being burned alive all that well. I certainly remember raising an eyebrow when I saw Joan of Arc acting like a psychopathic pyromaniac but seeing as being betrayed and burned alive would likely be fairly traumatic experiences, I say it might be rather reasonable if she didn’t take it well. Last but certainly not least we have the Black King, a mysterious figure in a white robe whose identity has yet to be revealed. There are theories of course and boy, is there one most interesting. Mainly because of the scars on his hands and the religious nature of his declaring this war a crusade there is speculation that the black King is a certain religious figure. If Hirano decides to go there and make it THAT person, then quite frankly this story will gain a whole new level of amazing. Quite honestly there is a distinct possibility that he just might do it and there are hints I have seen which seem to confirm it but at this moment in time the Black kings identity has not been specifically confirmed.

I honestly felt the pain of the magician commander as the other world soldiers started bragging about how there wall is undefeated and invincible. Yep, and they said the Titanic was unsinkable and look where that got them. These guys were cannon fodder the minute they started laughing off the enemy and I hold no sympathy for them, as any man that laughs at Hannibal deserves such a fate. It was nice to see Scipio defend him as he was his major rival and even if he pissed himself in front of a crowd thanks to old age, the man still rode war elephants over the alps. He deserves massive respect for that. But man I laughed when he reacted to Butch and the kid pulling out a gatling gun and his first words were “Give me that, I am gonna destory rome with it!” because goddamn, Hannibal really would have said the same thing. I think that’s what’s really going to carry this series, just how these characters are going to play off each other and their own history. After all it was a powerful moment when Naoshi Kanno decided to fight off the Dragons because their attacks reminded him of the US bombings of Tokyo. Still I am a simple man and I see dragons fighting WWII airplanes with blood and carnage everywhere. Quite frankly, I don’t know about you but I am having a blast.