Sansha Sanyou
Short Synopsis: A awkward former rich girl makes friends for the first time.
For the love of god someone turn down the brightness! Either my computers screen settings malfunctioned for a moment or this anime is so bright it could burn a hole through my retina’s. That literally glaring issue aside this is a decent show for those who are fans of the cute girls genre thing. I mainly details how a rich girl whose family become poor managed to make friends with two odd girls after a strange encounter during lunch. So the first episode was mainly of her attempting to keep a haughty attitude while being extra self conscious to try and not scare off her newfound friends. Even I with a heart of stone and a dark mind found her efforts to be friendly rather endearing. So in the grounds of giving you that feeling of needing to protect something it gets a passing grade. The comedy on the other hand doesn’t do anything for me. I would look more to flying witch if you were looking for something to make you feel fluffy inside but if you need another show to fill the gap then this should suffice.
Potential: 40%
Tanaka-kun wa Itsumo Kedaruge
Short Synopsis: There’s a guy called Tanaka and he’s really lazy.
There are two comedy animes this season which are centered around a single joke. The first is Sakamoto desu ga and the second is this. Sakamoto’s joke is that Sakamoto is perfection incarnate. Tanaka-kuns joke is that Tanaka is very lazy. However Sakamoto is quite entertaining when Tanaka is just dull and boring. Why is that? Well the first aspect is that if you are building a series around a joke that you should make sure the joke is funny. In this case the joke is in the title and that joke is really more of a statement than a joke. Tanaka is very lazy, so what of it? Sakamoto made it’s joke work because of it’s ridiclous nature and the fact that the series is not corely about Sakamoto, but rather who Sakamoto effects though his actions. Tanaka is about Tanaka and there is nothing to him other than being lazy. Tanaka needs to be carryed everywhere…because he’s lazy. Tanaka is concerned with his position when he’s falling asleep…because he’s lazy. Tanaka wants to build up muscle so his legs and arms don’t fall asleep…because he’s lazy. This entire episode was refriming Tanaka was indeed lazy and that’s not a joke. KyoAni’s Chuunibyou show had a character just like this called Kumin and even she had more to her than Tanaka. This is a half hour of a comedian standing on stage talking about the weather. You sit waiting for the joke that never comes.
Potential: 0%
Kuromukuro
Short Synopsis: Giant Robot aliens invade. So it’s up to a naked guy and some bland teenage girl to save the day.
You know, I am tired of animes that start the series with a random battle between two unknown factions. I mean truly what is the point of that? Without context on who is fighting, why they are fighting or whats at stake this fights tension can be replicated by me watching Rock em, Sock em robots. Of course I don’t want an exposition dump layered on top as other anime usually do but truly I don’t see the need of jumping to this moment in time to watch two robots duke it out. Perhaps this was to ensure the mecha fans that this series does indeed have mecha before launching into a tremendously boring school life segment were a girl attempts to return a phone her mother left behind at a parent teacher conference. I will say that this isn’t a bad show but a rather uninspired one. As one of the first anime to be exclusively simulcast on Netfllix, you could have made a better choice. Honestly, Crunchyroll, Funimation and the rest of you anime companies, hows about hiring someone who knows anime to decide what gets licenced or not. Maybe then you could have nabbed the obvious goldmine that is One Punch Man before Viz got it.(Heard you were dubbing OPM last month so you better do a great job on that) Back on topic, Kuromukuro has trouble so far balancing out it’s mecha and slice of life segments. The mecha CGI is also fairly underwhelming and the plot so far is straightforward of the genre. I am getting reminded of Rinne no Lagrange which held many of the same problems. Though in this case our main female character is lacking any real defining points besides mother issues and I fear that the male protagonist’s character arc will mainly be a fish out of water story. As I said in my preview, what will make this worthwhile or not is the ratio of mecha and school life. If the school life is going to be at the forefront here this this should make for an excellent sleeping pill from sheer boredom.
Potential: 30%
Damn, I thought Tanaka-kun was hysterical, especially the piano scene and the water fountain skits.
I hear that Shounen Maid is actually pretty good. Surprised you haven’t checked it out yet. But I’m reserving my judgment for later on.
Admittedly I have been putting it and super lovers off for obvious reasons. I got one more impressions post coming. But don’t expect a favorable review.
Like most cliques I think the reason is that it guarantees sales. It’s like that Futurama episode that tells “people want to watch things they watched a million times before, when you put new things people get scared and when you put intelligent stuff people feel stupid.”
My take is that you can have the most clique thing in the world but you could play with the expectations of the audience.
I do get studios having to meet a certain time frames which makes it obvious most series are either the ones with an art style that fits a template or a visual novel because of the same reasoning.
My main complain as in american movies is having the whole cast being pretty looking people since my logic is if everyone is pretty no one is really the pretty character. I suppose we’re kinda graphic spoiled or frivolous, since we don’t like to buy different/ugly things.