Star Crossed Anime

Vanitas no Carte

Short Synopsis: Vampire Hunter V: Bookworm.

Lenlo: I have to admit, Vanitas surprised me. I wasn’t expecting much from another vampire show, especially not after Mars Red. But the unique blend of Studio BONES visuals and the Monogatari Director Tomoyuki Itamura’s flashy, over the top style blend together in interesting ways. It’s dramatic but doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously, often utilizing the same chibi visuals we saw in Sk8 earlier this year. Though one might argue it uses them too much. The fights themselves also aren’t terribly impressive but they also aren’t uh… terrible. The only part that I’m up in the air on is the story. So far it’s pretty rote, happy ending type stuff. Good guy saves the girl, etc etc. The only part that has me interested is how Vanitas tells us, right from the get go, how it’s going to end. That’s always a ballsy move in my book and if it can pull it off, I’ll count myself as satisfied. All in all I would say this is a decidedly average showing from BONES. But in a season as dry as this it’s at least worth watching for a bit.

Potential: 50%

Armitage: Unlike Lenlo, I had rather lofty expectations from Vanitas no Carte and it met those satisfactorily for the most part. This was more of an introductory episode getting us acquainted with our lead duo and the lovely catto, Murr. It looks like this is going to be a vampire hunting show which is what almost all vampire anime ever seem to be. So not much in the name of a unique premise. Still, I have always adored the Victorian Steampunk aesthetic and the nice backgrounds do tend to render the setting well. The real highlight of the premiere for me was the score composed by personal favorite Yuki Kajiura. It amplified the atmosphere and picked up any slack in the animation department to make the premiere feel interesting throughout. The narrative itself has just about started to unfold but the hook delivered at the end makes me really excited for what’s to come. So, in parallel with Jun Mochizuki’s Pandora Hearts, Vanitas has also been slow to start off, but I expect it to make for a highly enjoyable experience once it hits its stride.

Potential: 70%

Kanojo mo Kanojo

Short Synopsis: A high school boy enters a throuple with two cute girls by begging and shouting a lot.

Wooper: Kanojo mo Kanojo depicts the realization of every teenage guy’s dream: dating two girls at the same time, both of whom are cool with the arrangement. How does it approach such an unrealistic scenario? As unrealistically as possible, of course. That’s the secret to the show’s appeal – every line is delivered as theatrically as possible, and developments like the three kids moving in together are basically achieved by magic. The male lead’s noisy demeanor isn’t winning, exactly, but he’s so persistent that he warps the rules of courtship to his will – a top five superpower for sure. The visuals are just as loud, with plenty of closeups on the characters’ shocked faces and scrolling rainbow effects in the background. Even the soundtrack was manic, but I guess it would have to be, as the episode would crash and burn otherwise. All in all, I got a few laughs out of this premiere, most of which stemmed from its stupidity, but I can’t deny its commitment to the bit. Just don’t go in expecting Tsuki ga Kirei or anything on that level.

Potential: 20%

Mario: Frankly, the show already lost me after its first 10 seconds. Here we witness a boy’s wish fulfillment wet dream cranked up to 11. There’s a line in the show that perfectly reflects my sentiments: “What is it about him that you fell in love with?” One thing I can say is that he doesn’t bullshit about two-timing, but does the show expect him to get away with his plan just because he’s honest? The girls, then, are created solely to please both their boyfriend and the males in the audience, and guess what, based on the ED even more girls will join the cast. OF COURSE THERE WILL BE MORE GIRLS. The only point I can give Kanojo mo Kanojo is its sheer commitment to its message, aligned with the boy’s unflinching devotion to NOT let anyone go. For me it’s just painful to see girls written and acted this way.

Potential: 0%

Re-Main

Short Synopsis: A boy wakes up from a coma with missing memories, but can’t say no to the power of water polo and muscular dudes.

Mario: It’s tricky to write about a protagonist who has amnesia going on with their life. It works best in the mystery genre because of the way it utilizes the unreliable narrator – for comedy, though, it’s tough to get it right. Re-Main reminds me a fair bit of the 2010 film Colorful, and it suffers the same problem as that film. First, throughout the 20 minute episode it wasn’t clear how much time had passed since the accident. I reckon the writing is to blame for this, as it tends to replace a lot of events that would show him navigating his new life with “a few months have passed.” Second, the way the lead boy behaves is not at all believable. It’s a three year time span that he lost, but apparently he can still enter high school after just eight months of self-study? I don’t buy that at all. Re-Main glosses over so many details which would have been compelling in their own right and focuses on the water polo part, but it doesn’t actually show us a match, leaving me disinterested in both aspects of the show. Just like the amnesiac protagonist, it’s better to erase this water polo series from our memories.

Potential: 10%

Lenlo: I… what? What are these scribbles? Is this how badly MAPPA is running out of animators? I know that staff/animators are leaving en masse, op-eds about hellish working conditions are being published, and people are literally going to the hospital there but come on! What’s that Wooper? Get off my soapbox? Fine, back to Re-Main. My general impression is one of utter boredom. Visually, narratively and tonally there is absolutely nothing that engages me about this show. Maybe it can get a story out of the family working through the effects of the MC’s coma but that’s about it. But all of that aside, you wanna know what the real crime is? That MAPPA couldn’t even give us some quality butts. Seriously, you’re going to give every guy in a show about speedos and swimming some cardboard asses? Are they all Ken dolls?! I’m very disappointed.

Potential: 0%

Sonny Boy

Short Synopsis: Infinite Ryvius but set in the only place scarier than space: High School.

Armitage: I can safely assume that most of you reading this have not seen HBO’s The Leftovers, though I highly recommend you do so as I consider it to be the best story I have experienced in all of entertainment media. Sonny Boy’s core concept is basically a rip-off of The Leftovers but set in a more constrained setting of a high school, because anime. There are also elements of Lord of the Flies, the art is reminiscent of Anthem of the Heart and the school kids have superpowers, because anime. Basically, it’s not a highly original setup. But it’s the presentation of all these disparate elements conjoined together that makes for an incredibly arresting viewing experience.

The world, well… the school, truly feels like an actual place with paint coming off from the walls and iron rails covered in patches of rust. This is very much a place that’s been standing for years, maybe decades. Even with the empty void that surrounds it, it feels like a place that people lived in. A place now inhabited by a cast of somewhat emo teenagers who just want to escape. To be anywhere but here. The ‘punishment rules’ in place are supposed to mirror a totalitarian governing system and I do believe the superpowers and lack thereof would lead to some scenarios of prejudice reminiscent of BnHA and MP100. But while watching this premiere, I couldn’t help but get that nagging feeling of having seen it all before. That is until the last 30 seconds of the episode when Sonny Boy took a deep dive into uncharted territory. There’s every chance that it might still end up rehashing established genre tropes but it’s given itself a solid opportunity to stand out as something more than the sum of its parts.

Potential: 80%

Lenlo: I’ll be frank: I have no idea what this show is. High school? That’s normal. Superpowers? Ok, we’ve seen it before. Transported to another world? All’s good in the hood! Yet Sonny Boy’s strange mix of them all feels… unique. Perhaps that’s just the mystery of the whole thing tinting my perception. Whatever the case though I am intrigued by what Sonny Boy is doing, even if it doesn’t yet make any sense. Meanwhile production wise Sonny Boy is right up my alley. The loose style reminds me a lot of Yuasa’s more fluid, low-detail character designs – the kind that tend to allow his team to distort the bodies to really fit the movement they are trying to sell. Top that off with some great effects work on the powers, such as shattering the entire screen (plus some iffy CGI), and you have my hope for the season (he says after watching one show so far :p).

Potential: 70%

Scarlet Nexus

Short Synopsis: A psychokinetic teen and his childhood savior fight against alien flower monsters.

Wooper: I’ve seen some recent pushback against the habit of calling anime adaptations “advertisements for the source material.” I get why people are moving away from the phrase, since it paints with too broad a brush, but a series like Scarlet Nexus demonstrates why it became prominent in the first place. The show started airing just days after its parent video game’s release, and it’s so disinterested in its own story that spending 60 dollars on the game seems worth it, if only to avoid the anime. Characters talk in bullet points, introducing themselves and providing background information with robotic precision. The very second they’re finished reading their lines, aliens appear, creating a sterile transition into unexciting combat scenes. A little girl unleashes a classic cry of “Momma!” as a means of motivating the rookie protagonist to join the battle and Save the Children. If you’ve ever read or watched a piece of dystopian fiction, Scarlet Nexus won’t have anything new to offer you (apart from its bizarre antagonists, which might best be described as legged floral arrangements).

Potential: 10%

Lenlo: As far as sci-fi video game adaptations go Scarlet Nexus is… fine? Wooper hits all the notes above, it’s a straight laced, stereotypical dystopia with a sci-fi aesthetic. And the sad part? I actually think the video game looks better. The outfits are clearly designed for 3D models and are far too complicated to animate any complex actions. Meanwhile the pacing, as Wooper points out, is more suited for a game than it is a 24 minute-per-week TV show. In fact I actually went and watched the opening hour of the playthrough and I think you would get more value out of just watching the cutscenes or a Let’s Play of that game than you would watching this anime. I don’t know whose idea this series was but the money would probably have been better spent taking everything they put into this and instead recycling it back into the game.

Potential: 5%

Peach Boy Riverside

Short Synopsis: A runaway princess meets a demihuman rabbit who then follows her to repay her debt.

Lenlo: I don’t think there is a single unique or creative thought in this show. It’s a medieval fantasy with a big-breasted female lead and shallow racism that, for some reason, our lead has never heard of and doesn’t believe in despite growing up in this world just like anyone else. There’s nothing about Peach Boy that in any way catches my eye, except maybe like… the cute rabbit monster.

Potential: 1%

Mario: Apparently Peach Boy Riverside’s director chose to rearrange the source material for the anime, which explains why it starts in media res. It’s not that hard to grasp the story, though, as it’s pretty straightforward. So far it’s a road trip where the main girl finds out about demihuman discrimination and her own bloodlust, but neither she nor her discoveries are appealing so far. The way Peach Boy tackles discrimination is totally on the nose, and the fact that she was previously unaware of it is so unnatural. Moreover, what I found most underwhelming is how it approaches the story. The tone is all over the place, to the point we have no idea if certain scenes are supposed to be funny or not. In one sequence, when offered octopus, the main girl immediately thinks of tentacle sex. The way the show focuses on her bouncy boobs, the rabbit girl’s habit of wearing a modern school uniform despite the fantasy setting… all the obvious otaku pandering left a distasteful impression on me. (sigh) I did have some hope for the show before watching it, but with its generic setup, shallow exposition and thinly-written characters, Peach Boy Riverside sets the bar incredibly low for this Summer season.

Potential: 0%