Mashiro Iro Symphony
Short Synopsis: Our lead character transfers to an all-girl high school. While being a male.
This show is what I’d call pretentious: it tries to be serious, but has actually no idea what it’s doing. Here is what I mean by that: this show is very schizophrenic. On one hand, it really seems to want to tell a good story. It’s Manglobe: the character designs may be abysmal, but the inbetween animation is quite solid. This episode started off with a very quiet act, in which the main character is simply trying to find his sister, who got lost. This was actually very effective in establishing their characters, and to introduce the main female (no panty-shots, accidental groping or violence!). The acting here was pretty good. And then this show continues to just nullify that by having the sister attempt to bathe with the male lead. Nearly exactly like how TWGOK did it. Things then get from bad to worse when it turns out that the first half was saving all of its cliches for the second half. The most pretentious part is the drama, though. This show is trying to be very serious with it, but what is it about? The colour of pure love, and that the main female lead very stubbornly refuses to open up her school for boys. It’s completely insubstantial, even though this show acts like it struck gold with it. Also, who the hell designed that abomination that is supposed to be a cat?
ED: Who the hell designed that abomination that is supposed to be a cat?
Potential: 30%
Maken-Ki
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live together with a bunch of cute girls.
I really have a question to ask to the fans of harem series like Maken-Ki: what is their appeal? What is the appeal of seeing the same characters over and over again? What is the appeal of watching shows over and over where the main character is a loser, the main girl characters are idiots and stereotypes? What makes it worth watching when the characters are so damn unlikable as these people, and that over and over again (harem shows are often the most represented genre in any season)? Is it really just the boobs, or is my bias preventing me from noticing their merits? Why are there so many series entirely dedicated to fanservice, when there is plenty of porn around? In any case, my impression of this episode was as follows: it had the most unlikable male lead I’ve seen in any first episode this year. His acting was bad and his only defining traits are being wimpy and horny: during the entire episode he was either just standing there and mumbling, or getting horny from nearby females. The females meanwhile were the standard uninspired idiots and stereotypes that happened to have special powers. The fanservice also was pretty tasteless with the camera’s uncanny ability to always look for some angle to how a person’s ass.
ED: Is it really interesting watching a guy getting turned on?
Potential: 10%
Sengoku Paradise: Kiwami
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is another re-interpretation of the famous sengoku lords.
Sengoku Basara, what have you done? Ever since you aired there has been a sudden influx of series that try to cash in on the popularity of the Sengoku era. This ranges from very good and well constructed series (Hyouge Mono), to very silly and poorly written gag shows (Tono to Issho). I was ready to label Sengoku Paradise amongst the latter… however this first episode was actually funny. This is mostly due to a director who knows what a crappy premise he has to deal with, and just goes all out for the heck of it. The result is a camera guy who hyperactively jumps from one shot to the other and characters who have a lot of fun overacting the hell out of their characters. There are some good jokes in this episode. But to be honest, this doesn’t seem like a show with much staying powers, and this was likely the best episode of the series. The characters are bound to get dull after more than 3 minutes (yes, these episodes are only 3 minutes long), the jokes are of the type that get old when they’re already repeated once and I don’t think that the creators have enough ideas to keep this one fresh.
OP: Very badly sung, but that was definitely done on purpose.
Potential: 45%%]]>
Some Quick First Impressions: Mashiro-Iro Symphony, Maken-Ki and Sengoku Paradise: Kiwami
Also, now there’s like six manga with Date Masamune as the main character in GanGan Online only. Wow. And then there’s stuff like Rekishi hiwa Historia deciding to air a special episode on Date Masamune & Sanada Yukimura, just a few weeks after the Basara movie opened… 😀
Anyway, I’m curious of this show, mostly because oooh, Tachibana Muneshige’s armor is so shiny. (And because Ootani Yoshitsugu looks like he’s doing a crappy job cosplaying a mummy, instead of, you know, suffering from leprosy.) Too bad I can’t seem to find it anywhere…
I want Sengoku Rance!
God, there is a lot of crap series this winter 🙁
God, there is a lot of crap series this winter 🙁
The Maken-Ki manga is horrid. I would never attempt to even think about watching the show. Why “Harem” series can be “good” (a reply by Alt):
I dont care about tits and ass. Its as if folks mature to 13 then think they have discovered the world and live with what they decide is “the way the world works” for the rest of there life. Even tho they discovered it at 13.
Guys and girls obsess about finding that one person you want in life. In alot of folks its the only obsession. Everything else is just a side project to enable that primary effort. Work, cleanliness, nice new cloths and vehicles, nice houses, forming a band, etc, its all an effort to “find that one person who will let them “express them self” or “who understands who I am and likes me for it”.
That said.
Japan is a culture based on slavery. In the past you were either master or slave. In the present it is pretty much the same, with just different names. Females have far more power than in the past simply because of the world environment and the fact that most countries want to appear to be civilized. In reality most Nihonjin see interactions as between master and slave mentally. It is built into the language and thought process.
They have a large audio visual production capacity. Maybe 3rd or 4th in the world. Lots and lots of shows and movies have been made over the years.
They make porn. They make alot of porn. Its like the 2nd largest porn industry in the world. The country is tiny.
More than half (more than 3/4)of the porn they produce is based on rape or gangbangs.
The question I would ask is why are there so many rape scenes in anime and manga.
But I got off topic. The reason harem shows are pop culture is because its “a man’s romance”. Basically all harem shows are “love storys” with some action adventure and comedy mixed in. Its just that the idea of love (sex?) is not what some other people see as love or even a reason to put in effort to create art.
My dad loves tits and ass. He loves harem shows. He also loves Panty & Stockings. All other anime is “for kids and immature”. I really wonder how he defines “maturity”.
Alt, that was an unfortunate rant. I wouldn’t say Japanese see everything as a slave relationship, but you may be correct that the language retains part of a master/servant relationship. The difference between what westerners think whey they say slave and the Japanese perception of vertical relationships is drastic.
I think many people miss that when the system is working correctly the people at the top are as much servants to the people on the bottom as visa versa.
As for porn it’s produced all over the modern world. Incidentally I know people who believe that the blend of puritanism and the 60s culture is why the US has sexual assault rates 30 times that in Japan.
Also, I liked the music in Mashiro-iro Symphony…very amusing.
Um…Alt. I am not going to take that opinion seriously unless it’s coming from someone who genuinely knows what he is talking about and has experienced it first hand.
As for why Harem shows are popular, well I think that’s obvious. It’s the unpopular kid’s dream. Someone somewhere is pasting his face on the main characters body and imagining that he’s the one getting worshipped. I don’t think that the fanservice is a part of it but it helps making sex fantasies easier to make for the imaginative. It’s more the idea that someone is idolised by beautiful girls not for being good looking or smart or any redeeming character trait but just by being you.
So a guy dreams that though virtually no effort he can obtain bountiful supermodels to recognise the greatness you think you have that for some reason others can’t find. Little does he know that a harem in reality would be a kind of personal hell. Five giant cock tease girls that surround you every day and waking moment that you can never screw because the other four will prevent such an occurrence. Even if you pick one and dump the others there is a high chance one could turn out psychotic considering the level of devotion they have. That’s the one thing I give School days credit for. A realistic end to a harem protagonist that takes advantage of a harem.
All and all it’s pretty much escapism entertainment for sad pathetic losers. How do I know? Because I used to like harem shows when starting out in anime. There! I said it!
Why I love Harem Comedys?
Its something as a male I can laugh at and enjoy some childish humour while the secret romanticist in me routes for the main couple to acknowledge their feelings for each other and finally get together. While the same situations are repeated there is usually a secondary plot that keeps the story moving along albeit at a slow pace.
Ranma 1/2: Transformations and search for cure
Love Hina: Getting into University, finding first love again
Fruits Basket: Break the animal transformation curse
Essentially Male Closeted Romance.
I will agree with alt that a good deal of people who like harem series do so because they have not progressed mentally from the state of being a thirteen year old. I unfortunately know people who have this kind of mentality and they are supposed to be adult males.
However, I refuse to agree with the statement made about slavery and Japan. “In the past you were either master or slave,” is a false statement because not everyone was a master or a slave.
The samurai, for example, were neither. Sure, they were tied to their Lords and their Lords were masters, but they did this because of honor and loyalty. Many choose which master to serve, or their family had served a particular family for some time.
I wasn’t going to watch Mashiro, because I don’t have the world’s strongest interest in this genre. I’d say my base interest is some large negative value. I voted for it in the poll, but that was just me trolling, because I expected it to be ridiculously bad and people were complaining in the shoutbox about other people voting for shows that didn’t look like anus. My curiosity was piqued though when you described it as pretentious, because my expectations as an adaptation of some kind of eroge, it would have to rise to White Album levels and that could be good for a laugh. I mean, when I think of pretentious anime, I usually think of Gundam series, where the causes of large conflicts are trivialized into some childish blather; or Ghost Hound, where the author puts crackpot theories into the mouths of its experts without having any idea what he’s writing about. I expect highly exaggerated drama centering around relatively mundane things in porn game adaptations and not much else.
So I have to admit I’m a little disappointed. Mashiro doesn’t strike me as even a little pretentious. It even ends the first episode on a gag. If anything it reminds me of Clannad, which already pushes it in a better direction. The initial conflict is not particularly compelling, but I imagine it’s just a pretext and the real issues will center around character drama. If it ends up being funny and not being too stupid, then I might even watch it. Although it loses points for having more than zero maids. Zero is almost always the correct number for maids for a series.
I would just like to point out that one of the characters has bright blue hair.
Bright…blue…hair…
Purple is believable
And I guess Crimson could happen in some kind of freak gene accident
but bright…blue?
Maken-Ki:
That was horrible. Every SINGLE annoying harem cliche is here: wimpy lead with some secret potentia. All girls fall for him for NO reason. Girls move in with him for NO REASON. Childhood friend has big boobs and is jealous. Guy gets punched in the face all the time. Sorry…. PASS!
PS: I watched Qwaser and LIKED IT.
lol DmonHiro.
But I see tons of those examples in the real world as well :O
I dunno, I find if you seek to describe the harem show based on its plot / characters it sounds terrible, and yet there are still some of these that are good (Love Hina).
If I were making a point of liking Love Hina, for example, I would talk about positives in the setting, music, or direction.
That being said, I dont seek out Harem styles at all, w/ Love Hina as the only exception.
I like that I spawned some comments. Good job guys/gals. And yeah, just to let you know I dont really see things in “absolutes” and or “black and white”.
As far as harem shows go I loved the first season of “Sora no Otoshimono”. Many parts were pretty damn funny. I want the “Tomaki song” as my ring tone.
Is there some kind of law in Japan that this plot has to be used every season? I know “ordinary teenager gets transported to a magical land and must become The Hero” frequently gets brought up as the most over-used premise ever, But I think this tops it.
What DmonHiro said. Not even sexy female character designs and fanservice could save that one.
I like your writing a lot, and appreciate it given that I have a very similar blog (click my name 4 the link). Although I’ve gotta ask, where did you find Sengoku Paradise? Neither of the 2 anime sites I usually use have it =(
Maken-Ki. About a guy who does nothing but make weird facial expressions and gets turned on by any female he comes into contact with. Also involves undies, boobs, and every ecchi cliche under the sun. DIE!!! Your day will come!!!