Dimension W
Short Synopsis: A man is hired to reclaim illegal power sources and runs into a female Android.
I guess this proves that style and animation can breath life into manga. I previously wasn’t all that enthralled with the manga but seeing it in motion really gives it a better feel and the anime is adding to the source material. There’s a lot of style here and if there are those of you getting reminded of darker than black that would be because the mangaka of this work provided the character designs for that very show. We have some really impressive animation here, especially with that opening. Shortcuts were taken in the episode but the series still looked very good. Through there are some off putting block colour effects sometimes. The story holds quite a lot of potential and the nature of the power source known as Coils reminds me a lot of Giant Robo’s Shizuma Drive. Our main protagonist is a lot like Mugen from Samurai Champloo and his new robot sidekick has her own quirks. If they keep up with this presentation we could be looking at a very memorable title.
Potential: 75%
Dagashi Kashi
Short Synopsis: A girl must convince a boy to take over for a sweets shop owner.
In terms of enjoyability I would put this near ServentXService or your normal comedy. It’s unique enough to not be predictable and the characters are fun. Being a comedy show it really is something that relies on the jokes, I can say while it didn’t make me laugh, it was at least still a pleasant watch that I didn’t find myself bored. I won’t be singing it any high praises but it’s a lot better than most comedies I have come across. There are still elements that find all too often in comedies like a romance that is doomed to go nowhere and in general the series will just be this and nothing more. But while they did do the old cliché of the lucky Pervert, it’s at least fresh that they had the girl react differently from “KYA!” Another character did fill in for the unjustified beating but it’s nice to see a girl so openly unashamed of her body. Or just too caught up in her own dramatics to notice. It’s a fun watch.
Potential: 60%
Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation
Short Synopsis: A student council President wants a boy to start playing an MMO.
This was a little better than I expected but I must ask one thing. If you were given the task of adapting a sci-fi space epic MMO into an anime, why would you set it in a school setting in modern day? That’s like making an anime out of the Fallout series and making it about people playing the game Fallout. Also school is terrible, I don’t know why anime is so infatuated with it. I was truly glad to leave it and move all memories associated with it to the recycle bin of my brain. Not because of any hard time or anything(My school life was utterly mundane) but because it was dreadfully boring and a period of my life when I was a complete imbecile. Ah, sorry, the impression, yes. Well leaving aside the complete madness of ditching an opportunity to make a Sci-fi adventure anime, this is decently done. It’s sort of interesting from the front of someone first getting into MMOs though his reasons for doing so are strange. The student council, naturally a important governing body instead of there real life counterpart, gives this kid a mission to start playing this MMO to…research his experiences? Personally it looks more like the council President wanted a raiding buddy and came up with some excuse to recruit someone. The creators certainly are taking creative liberties with the games as the level of player interaction is beyond a normal MMO. I am not sure if combat is representative of the product either as I don’t see health bars or attack numbers anywhere. For what it is, it certainly could have been a lot worse but it still remains a potential idea squandered to appeal to a mass audience…and college was a lot better than school.
Potential: 30%
“That’s like making an anime out of the Fallout series and making it about people playing the game Fallout. Also school is terrible, I don’t know why anime is so infatuated with it.
I was truly glad to leave it and move all memories associated with it to the recycle bin of my brain. Not because of any hard time or anything(My school life was utterly mundane) but because it was dreadfully boring and a period of my life when I was a complete imbecile.”
I think the line of thought it’s how Disney makes in children’s movies, appealing on older people nostalgia [the good ol’ days] and giving vibes to younger audiences on how the world is a big adventure waiting to be discovered. Etc.
With that all said, I kind of wonder if an anime really being about the classes would be that boring, considering how much that setting is used, it really has never been about the purpose a school is for [aside from the plays and school clubs].
Also a school setting in the Fallout world could be interesting if classes were like the missions those games give. I mean, at that point basic education is survival of the fittest, or finding the bigger gun.
High School for me was especially lame. [I think Aku no Hana might be one of the few that conveys more realistically the mundanity of the school years].
P.S. Didn’t you find odd the character designs in Dagashi Kashi? I don’t know, seems like smaller irises makes for less expressive characters in this style.
Phantasy Star Online 2 can eat my ass. They should really have focused more on showing us the game, raher than trying to blatantly promote it.
Dagashi Kashi has lower potential than Dimension W? but it was hilarious xD Side note i completely agree with YotaruVegeta on Phantasy Star Online 2, i was so disappointed after watching it.
Anime Comedy has never really gelled well with me. I do enjoy Dagashi Kashi a good bit but I never find it all that funny.
I went into Phantasy Star knowing that it wasn’t going to be a space epic and instead a school life show so perhaps the disappointment was much lower for me. But I still think it’s the dumbest way to adapt a online MMO into an anime.
There are anime comedy that I think just transcend the culture. Do you have a top anime comedies list?
Personally I think it’s just the subtitles ruining it for me. I think dubbed comedy anime work a lot better for me. I may be putting a top ten in the year summery I am writing but I find it a rather pointless thing to do top ten when the order changes all the time based on mood.
If I was going to make a top ten chances are Great Teacher Onizuka would be pretty high on the list.
I think you have a point there. I run subtitles on anything I can, not just anime. Sometimes the jokes get ruined for me when I’m reading the subtitles.
That’s funny, I am the opposite in that regard. I tend to go for dubs anytime I can as I find it easier to get immersed in a show. Dubs can ruin a joke too as well, in practicular Clannads dub outright kills the comedy of that show. Not really the voice actors fault on that one as Key comedy doesn’t really translate well to English.
I don’t go for dubs because I’m not a media consumer, and the subs come first. I think the quality of dub casts is, at the least, average, but I don’t really seek them out.
I think stuff like Osumatsu or One Punch Man also have comedy that’s also visual or physical, so it’s not only verbal comedy that the show relies on.
My favorite comedy is A Cheeky Angel (Tenshi na Konamaiki). It makes jokes about gender roles, despite being a gender bender it curiously doesn’t delve in ecchi or fan service situations.
Still, the animation and art is rough, but I can argue that good comedies do get away with unremarkable visuals if the script is good. This one also uses that narrative structure the Simpsons has in which they start an episode with a topic or situation and then end it with another.
Finally, humor is subjective. But I can see that most of the issues in japanese humor lie in cultural knowledge, hence why I couldn’t get as much as I wanted into Zetsubou Sensei.