Active Raid: Kidou Kyoushuushitsu Dai Hakkei
Short Synopsis: A police force uses robot suits to catch criminals.
It really is quite funny how little I care about this show. We have the director of Code Geass as chief director and yet all this show inspires from me is apathy. For you see Active raid belongs to one of the categories us critics hate. It’s not good enough to warrant praise and not bad enough to warrant hate. In other words, it’s mediocre. The humor of the series is pretty terrible and the main character has a completely predictable character arc. She starting off as this cocky, uptight, by the book policewoman who gradually going to learn that working in the field isn’t as simple as she thinks and how important it is to take it easy on the job. Chances are she will be given a choice to effectively betray the team and sides with them either after or before making the choice. The characters are all eccentric besides our straight laced protagonist and yet not really interesting. The concept is hardly new, with police making use of high tech technology to catch criminals. All and all it just lacks something to truly to catch the viewer’s attention. The action isn’t noteworthy, the comedy isn’t funny and the plot doesn’t hold any surprises. It’s just forgettable.
Potential: 0%
Boku Dake ga Inai Machi
Short Synopsis: A mangaka with the power to travel back in time finds himself facing an evil from his past.
Well we have the first contender for anime of the season. That was certainly a great first episode but I do have concerns. The pacing went fast by the second half and in terms of the manga this covered the entire first volume. The director has also stated that he intends to portray the original manga ending. There are currently 7 volumes to this manga and we have 11 episodes left. This is not good. The pacing didn’t kill this episode but if they continue like this I believe we may experience a adaption train wreck of the likes of Tokyo Ghoul. Due to the slow paced nature of the series this move might actually turn out beneficial but this director has his hands full fitting in that much content into such a small time frame without it feeling rushed. Still the first episode shows great promise. A good protagonist, a strong supporting cast and a fascinating plotline. Execution has so far been marvellous and the quicker pace did give a great cliffhanger to the episode.
Potential: 85%
Norn9 – Norn+Nonet
Short Synopsis: A girl boards a ship full of pretty boys
Why oh why does the protagonist of these things always have to be a bland dull nobody? I know the purpose of it is so you can transplant your face on to them but in practice I have found that never actually works. So we have a girl with a personality so bland that she could be replaced with a marionette and I am not sure if anyone would notice. As usual, companying the plank we call a girl is the pretty boy whose clinginess is on a very worrisome level. For one on first time meeting he saved her from falling into water by tying her up in vines. That fair enough but he didn’t untie her until someone saw him about to carry her into the ship. Less romantic and more like forced kidnapping. After that the guy practically stalks her at every turn. But my usual problems aside, why is this not engaging me? Well the story itself isn’t really all the interesting with the setting being on a ship that picks up people randomly to deliver to some place. The story is trying its damnedest to be atmospheric and surreal but I find myself disenchanted. We had some rather clunky exposition and it’s not exactly clear on the time frame. For the ship looks fairly futuristic but based on the flashes of memory from our protagonist, she’s from a Showa era setting. There isn’t much to our characters either as the few that made an impression seem rather one dimensional. One moment near the end that I found killed my suspension of disbelief was when our protagonist fell off a tree and fell hard into stone. She then rolled off and fell another 15 stories into water. Yet despite that she was perfectly fine, completely unscathed. So even if there is a threat on this ship based on that last scene, I doubt this terminator of a girl will have any trouble.
Potential: 0%
Boku Dake ga Inai Machi is excellent, that much I agree with.
You’re probably too harsh about the other two though. Neither first episode impressed me but I wasn’t feeling bored nor apathetic. It’s too early to say whether they will be truly predictable or not. A lot could change in a few episodes and the characters might become more engaging. Not all good shows start out good, and not all bad ones start out bad.
Of course, anything could change in the next few episodes but the point of these posts is to judge it based on first impressions. I do agree that I was pretty harsh on the other two, perhaps they deserve some potential. But I highly doubt these will become anything memorable.
Boku Dake Ga Inai Machi looks incredibly done. The VA for the lead is great, this is his debut as well and he’s freaking nailing it already.
My fiance played the Norn9 VN and she said they’ve done a pretty mediocre job portraying the characters already from what she saw.
Active Raid seems to just be an homage to old-school police/mecha anime. If you don’t want it to be fun, it won’t be fun. It’s easy to miss the nods (especially if you haven’t watched some of these shows before), and focus on the lamer comedy instead of the fourth-wall nudges. It’s just not for everyone, and the same kinds of criticisms could be leveled at other fun homage-style anime like Gurren Lagann, if you want to be joyless about your chosen passtime.
Homage is a word i have found often used to excuse a lack of creativity. Gurren Lagann was a homage to old school Mecha but it wasn’t all it was about. If anything it took those nods to the genre and then turned them up by thousand and with great animation with creative direction, became its own thing.
It might be true that I do not get it but that doesn’t mean I am the joyless critic hoping to rip apart anything that enters my sight. My opinion on this show is different from yours, that’s all there is to it.
Alright then, if those are the kinds of things that made Gurren Lagann special to you, then I can see why Active Raid would fail. You do come across as trying to not enjoy yourself in these posts, though (and no, I don’t mean that you’re “thinking too critically”, just that it sounds like you’re generally only looking for things to dislike in your first impressions posts).
I tend to dislike hype. If I am going to recommend you something, even when it comes to something I really love, then I would make it a point to mention something negative. I find when people are trying to get you to watch something that they only mention the positive and over-inflate your expectations. It’s a bad way to approach an anime. So I try to mention something both positive and negative. But if I really dislike something, I make it apparent. Case in point Divine Gate. That’s when you know I really hate something.
To be honest, I can’t really tell if you disliked Active Raid more than Divine Gate given your first impressions posts. If you meant that you disliked one more than the other, then it didn’t come across, and that’s why I was so surprised.
I just find that people who are critical tend to miss the good stuff in a quest to find the bad, once they don’t immediately see what they like. You may not be that kind of person, but your posts make it seem that way. I’ve learned to just let the show disappoint me while I search for its intent and ambitions, and what it does right. If it can’t even pass with me giving it the benefit of the doubt (being the critical type) then I won’t recommend it to others.
But then I certain don’t want this to come across any worse than my original post did, so don’t mistake me as presuming any such things about you. I just saw some clues that implied it might be the case, and wasn’t feeling very diplomatic at the time I posted.
Another approach is mentioning you could add or take points if a certain element isn’t your thing. [Could be more effective for average shows].
It’s hard when the pros and cons are even. And there are those shows that kinda of require you being on a certain mood. Like a heavy drama or a typical sliceoflife/shounen/sports/shoujoromance, etc.
As a side question which do you think is harder to review. An overall good show that has a twist that mostly brings it down. Or a bad show that manages to make something really really good. [I’m blocked at the moment in regards to examples, but I do remember feeling that at some point watching anime].
I would say both examples are easy enough to review as they both give you something to talk about. Truly hardest thing to review is something that’s mediocre. It’s hard to say anything about a mediocre show besides calling it mediocre. Can’t complain about it because nothing is worthy of scorn. Can’t praise it because nothing is worthy of notice. Even finding just what makes it mediocre is a task that is abstract and mainly dealing with personal taste. It’s the kind of how that’s just there, existing. And remains so till it is forgotten. In many ways it is far worse to be mediocre than it is to be terrible.
I definitely agree with you on mediocrity, Aidan… but that’s another reason why I try to hunt for good points instead. Not that the approach will suit everyone, of course. I just have found a number of shows that began on a mediocre note, only to slowly improve, while a bunch of shows started off with a bang, leaving me hopeful through a lot of mediocre dreck. Very tough to give such shows a fair shake if you get stuck in a rut while watching them.
As for awarding points, Vonter, I’m not sure. I dislike point systems because they tend to miss nuance, or be so complicated that you might as well just list the actual good vs bad vs mediocre aspects of a show (from your perspective), so people will know what you’re talking about. I’ve discussed this with several reviewers and we’ve more or less agreed that if you’re not just entertaining people with your reviews, then it’s best to not try to lump shows into categories at first, but simply to mention how they stand out, and who will like/dislike the ways they stand out (good and bad). That makes things concrete, and easier to lump into categories like “good” or “mediocre”.
I also like what some people told me about their methodology: they ask HOW a show succeeds/fails, not WHY. That has a natural tendency to force you to actually think about your opinion, rather than just getting increasingly positive or negative about something, to the point where you miss it’s strengths or flaws. Asking “why” instead seems to have the opposite effect for some reason… possibly because when you can’t answer the question, you just blame the show in a simple-minded way, rather than your own inability to articulate your opinion. This “how, not why” approach sounded like BS to me until I actually tried it out for a while myself. For instance, “Why is the comedy bad? Because it’s not funny.” vs “How is the comedy bad? Because the timing of the delivery is poor, and there is no expectation being defeated since the jokes are so commonly used.”
I’ve given Active Raid a shot, but I could see it falling down the queue easily. This is a show about a superhero duo, but Tiger and Bunny did this so much better. Way better.
Sorry Aiden off topic but was wondering if you are going to do a summary of 2015? would be cool to read.
Aidan I mean
Don’t worry, people mispell my name all the time and I certainly have no ground to stand on in regards to spelling.
I would like to get the rest of the impressions done first and then I will try to get something made up. Would be nice to take a look at how the overall year went.
Cool look forward to it, still have loads of shows to catch up on from last year, am trying to work through my mammoth backlog and keep up with the really good new shows. End up watching mostly older Anime though as there’s so much good stuff.