Some Quick First Impressions: Aoharu x Kikanjuu, Joukamachi no Dandelion, Prison School and God Eater

Aoharu x Kikanjuu

Short Synopsis. A girl dresses like a boy for some reason and gets in survival games.

The main character of this show confuses me, for she dresses like a boy, acts like a boy but isn’t transexual and wants to be more feminine. I don’t understand it and really when you get mistaken for a boy and forced into a survival game then really it’s your own fault. What’s also contradictory is that a man thinks she’s a boy yet keeps making suggestive advances on the main character despite clearly not being gay. I mean…I just don’t get it. Well anyway there’s not much to see here, we have highly over dramatic fights between people who act like they are having a live or death battle despite using toy BB guns. So really it’s just a show about the main starting to love survival games and trying to cover up the fact that she is a girl to the other team members.My interest is missing cause I generally know how this is all going to go, I have no interest whatsoever in surival games and the characters in this series don’t really interest me. For one the main character I find immensely annoying and while the host fellow doesn’t seem too bad I can’t really see him getting any more interesting. Might be some peoples kind of show but I think I will pass.

Potential: 0%

 

Joukamachi no Dandelion

Short Synopsis: A large royal family with superpowers must play games to decide the heir to the country.

Fairly decent I suppose, nothing really special but nothing that stands out too much. I find these shows the hardest to talk about. It’s not special but it’s not horrible either, just there. It’s a mediocre show that could interest but I find it just doesn’t have enough to get me to care. Though I must criticise that when you have the power to manipulate weight, that does not equal flight. In order to fly you need a means to propel yourself forward. The power of probability must be one of the worst powers as well considering that there are computers that can do the same thing. And the power to remember everything, so sort of a photographic memory? These are some truly useless superpowers. I think this one is something you can check out yourself and decide whether it’s worth continuing but I don’t think it’s something anyone will get really excited about.

Potential: 10%

 

Prison School

Short Synopsis. Five boys are forced into a school prison after trying to peep of girls changing.

There’s physical comedy and then there’s just pure sadism. Seeing this in animation as opposed to manga panel has had a strange effect on me, where the show is trying to make me laugh at these guys situation but instead I find myself getting filled with righteous indignation. While it is true that these guys are perverts with no redeeming value I find that the level of abuse thrown at them is quite potentially lethal and if their wounds didn’t magically heal somehow this would be a very different story. There are other problems with this series besides that, for one the cast of characters are all really unlikeable. The male characters are all desperate, pathetic sex crazed losers and the female characters are all sadistic superficial horrible people. The only exceptions to this is the main lead and what looks to be the main lead’s love interest, though the main lead is only just a small amount of good traits and the girl is fairly naive. The fan service doesn’t work not because of it being censored but rather because the female characters personalities are repulsive to me. Call me sentimental but I prefer girls that look like they would be fun to hang out with and looks aren’t everything. So the comedy is along the lines of gross out humor or sex jokes which I have seen every example under the sun and the fan service is ineffective so what does this show have to offer besides that? Not a lot it so seems. It is possible that maybe just the premise annoys me to the point that it stops me getting any enjoyment out of this. However this does seem like the kind of show that would only appeal to you if you like barrels of fanservice and low brow humor.

Potential: 0%

 

God Eater

Short Synopsis: Humanity lives inside walls and must send out teams to kill all the Titans…um…Aragami I mean.

Ufotable, I respect unconventional choices, I really do. It takes guts to adapt something that’s not really guaranteed to sell however I really wish you could have picked someone much more deserving than this. It’s clear that God Eater doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment, honestly it’s like presenting a five star meal to a hobo. The story is highly generic and the characters are fairly stereotypical with the main lead being the standard personality for this kind of show. But the visuals are certainly something, God eater sports a unique style where the characters all have this shiny look that reminds me of an oil painting. I am still on the fence on whether it looks good or not, as there are times when it looks impressive and other times when it looks just off. In particular I find the shading of characters to be inconsistent and not really adearing to where the light source is coming from. Music and animation are top notch but editing is a bit schizophrenic as some scenes have this jarring jump frame that looks like the film skipping on a projector. It seems to be there for a stylistic reason but I find it just distracting. This anime to me just looks like an experiment from Ufotable and while I think that it is interesting visually, I am afraid that story wise it has no value.

Potential: 30%