Anime fans are no strangers to endless debates: is Gen Urobuchi a genius? Is Neon Genesis Evangelion the most-influential anime of the last 25 years? Does new anime suck? However, no debate is more fascinating than that of Princess Mononoke versus Spirited Away.


I’m sure some of you are already prepping a response, but I ask that you wait. I think it’s an entirely unproductive debate to have without context, and it’s gonna vary depending on who you talk to. I know my own stake in this matter (it’s Spirited Away,) but since it was recently brought to my attention by a fellow Infinite Rainy Day writer, I figured I’d go into depth about the films, what makes them special and whether or not this debate is necessary.


Some history on these two films: Princess Mononoke was released on July 12th, 1997 in Japan. A passion-project of legendary director Hayao Miyazaki, the movie had been in the works since the late-70’s and had changed concepts several times. The movie cost roughly $24 million USD, was the last anime film to use hand-drawn cels and generated close to $160 million USD at the Japanese box-office. It currently holds a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 76 on Metacritic and an 8.4/10 on IMDb.

Spirited Away, conversely, was released on July 20th, 2001 in Japan. A passion-project for Miyazaki for close to 2 years, having been inspired by the daughter of a friend, the movie cost $19 million USD, was the first Miyazaki film done entirely digital and generated a little over $289 million USD at the Japanese box-office. It currently holds a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 94 on Metacritic and an 8.6/10 on IMDb.

Both films are held in high-regard by Otaku and general audiences, but it seems like a clear victory for Spirited Away; after all, it was better-received, made more money and is more highly-regarded by people who aren’t big into anime. It swept all the big awards, including an Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003, and is found on personal favourite lists of big-names like Time Out and AFI. Princess Mononoke, though highly-respected, seems like another anime film in comparison, even getting the shaft in marketing by Harvey Weinstein due to his rejected request to cut the length for Western audiences. Still, I find the consensus is never clear over which is better, even generating huge debates. This might be a generalization, but I find that Princess Mononoke bodes better with hardcore Otaku and film nerds, while Spirited Away is more highly-regarded by critics and mainstream audiences.

Princess Mononoke tells the story of an Emishi warrior, Ashitaka, who gets his arm cursed while fighting a demon boar. He travels to a far-off forest to request a cure from The Great Forest Spirit, an animal that controls life and death, all-the-while bumping into a mining town at war with the nearby forest. Figuring that stopping this war will help him, Ashitaka plays mediator and constantly travels back-and-forth between the two sides. He also meets another human, a girl named San, who’s been raised by wolves, and they start developing a relationship.

Spirited Away is the story of 10 year-old Chihiro Ogino, who’s in the process of moving cities with her parents. The three of them wind up at an abandoned theme park, only to discover that it’s really a bathhouse for spirits. After her parents are turned into pigs, Chihiro takes up a job at said bathhouse and changes her name to Sen. From there, she meets weird spirits, helps a boy named Haku and learns to be more independent and caring. And, of course, wacky hijinks occur.

The stories themselves are simple enough, one’s a war movie and the other’s a rabbit-hole movie, but if you look at their premises, you’ll notice a lot bizarre components that, at first-glance, don’t add up; for example, why did Ashitaka go into exile? Shouldn’t his own people have tried to help him lift the curse? And Chihiro’s whole dilemma with her parents could’ve been avoided entirely had they not, I dunno, entered the weird amusement park! However, you quickly realize that, in the end, it doesn’t really matter, as Miyazaki operates more on emotion and character logic than narrative consistency.

Both movies are excellently-animated, as per course for Miyazaki, and both are examples of what anime is capable of with the right time and talent. Both have wonderfully-detailed backgrounds too: Princess Mononoke is incredibly well-rendered considering its three settings, while Spirited Away is so retentive about its bathhouse that you’d be surprised to learn that it’s fictional. And both integrate their limited CGI wonderfully, with the former reserving it for the demon tentacles and the latter some of the scenery shots.

Thematically, both films are incredibly rich. You’d expect that with Princess Mononoke, with it being a war movie wrapped inside an environmental movie, but the story plays out with a nuance and grace reserved for many of the great epics. It basically argues that man and nature can co-exist, yet are constantly at ends because of their common goal of survival. Despite this, it favours nature as the long-term victor, and that it must be respected if the Earth is to endure. This could’ve easily been preachy and heavy-handed, and that it isn’t is a testament to Miyazaki’s integrity.

That not to say that Spirited Away is a slouch in comparison. Far from it, as evidenced by themes of companionship, greed being detrimental and the dangers of child labour for immediate self-gratification. The film has so many layers that one could easily mistake it for a traditionally-drawn Pixar film, and the comparisons to Disney have been made frequently. It’s a coming of age story that isn’t overly-critical, and it’s been called a subtle commentary on the Japanese economy. I discover something new about it every time I watch it, and that’s always fun.

Musically, the two are different, yet similar. Both feature compositions from Japanese legend Joe Hisaishi, and he brings his A-game. Princess Mononoke’s running motif is beauty amidst chaos, and Hisaishi’s score emulates that with somber tunes like The Journey to the West and much harsher ones like Tatari Gami. Conversely, Spirited Away is all about a child’s personal journey, hence The Dragon Boy, a chaotic piece from the first-act, being juxtaposed with The Waltz of Chihiro, a somber piece from the third-act. Both scores are fantastic, however, so it’s really personal preference.

The cast of characters are also preference. Princess Mononoke’s cast is bigger, but it also has the drawback of not enough time being dedicated to each one. It fleshes out those that matter most, although San sometimes flips on a dime, but then you have Kia, whom you learn nothing about save when she accidentally shoots Ashitaka in the chest. This flip-floping leaves a good chunk of the cast underdeveloped, which is a real shame. Then again, if it fleshed out every character the movie would be close to 5 hours long, and Lord know it’s long enough!

On the other hand, Spirited Away’s cast of characters is smaller, as the conflict is also smaller. This allows more time for developing Lin, Yubaba, Zeniba, Boh, Haku, Kamaji and yes, even Chihiro. But this presents a different problem, that being that there are moments where the side-characters dominate. The film is roughly 2 hours, yet Chihiro’s conflict is so minor in relation to the world she’s in that it sometimes takes a back seat to The Stink Spirit getting a bath or No-Face going drunk with power. None of it feels wasted, but the focus isn’t always where it should be; in fact, when the movie finally reaches the climax, that being a test to see if Chihiro remembers her parents, it feels rushed.

Additionally, the structure and pacing in both films isn’t always the best. I love Princess Mononoke, but its first-act feels like lots of set-up. Its third-act also drags, with the obvious conclusion being stretched to create tension. I also love Spirited Away, but it takes its time setting up its premise too. Its third-act also drags, except this time it’s because the film requires breathing room in-between the hectic scene prior and the climax. Both films, essentially, suffer from wonky pacing.

Admittedly, this can be attributed to Miyazaki’s skill as a storyteller. It’s minimal, mostly because Miyazaki sculpts his stories around what he’s already animated. He loves atmosphere, so while his films ooze with depth and detail, his writing is…passable. Actually, his dialogue is nothing to write home about anyway, it’s simply more noticeable in some of his films. As long as you don’t mind, it’s all, once again, personal preference.

The overall question that needs addressing, which is better, is also personal preference. It depends on what you’re looking for in a movie: do you want a grand epic, or a small maturation? An allegory about the environment, or a microcosmic commentary on society? Do you want violence and death, or tameness and life? A mature tale, or a family tale?

That’s probably why there’s such a divide between Otakudom and the general masses: they’re both looking for different components in a Miyazaki movie. The former often chooses Princess Mononoke because it’s steeped in Japanese lore and pacing, something they’re more familiar with. The latter, on the other hand, chooses Spirited Away because it’s more accessible to those unfamiliar with anime and has more universal themes. That doesn’t make one better than the other, but rather different. Hence why this argument is unnecessary.

In conclusion, which is better: Princess Mononoke, or Spirited Away? I think the question is more like, “Which do you prefer: Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away?” But that’s my take.

Under the Dog has had a strange and oddly long journey for a 30-minute OVA. Starting as an idea for a 26-episode series in the mid-90s when Ghost in the Shell was one of the big influences on the anime world, it was mothballed until it was brought back by Japanese companies Creative Intelligence Arts (CIA) and Kinema Citrus animation studios, hoping to capitalize on 20 years worth of nostalgia. It succeeded with over $850,000 in funding thanks to a trailer that featured some well done futuristic action in a surprising colorful and detailed metropolitan landscape. After a few short Q&A updates and random congratulations and endorsements (Including, perhaps ominously, Keiji Inafune), the project went silent for a few months before the producer made an update where he stated he was leaving the project and dropped a press release that revealed CIA, the entire company managing the product, was gone as well. This was all delivered in the casual tone of Julie Hagerty in Airplane! asking the passengers, "By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?"

Kinema Citrus animation took over production with much of the same creative team on board (though there has been a seemingly revolving door of people writing the script from Jiro Ishii's original story, settling on Keigo Koyanagi in the final credits). Over a year passed and last April, this trailer dropped, revealing a potential other protagonist who less resembled badass blonde project mascot Anthea and more Lain with an assault rifle (I'm game for that, but I am also a gigantic Yoshitoshi Abe fan). So, what is the final result, at least with "Episode 0" that dropped on August 1st? Will it make us cry like an anime fan on prom night? Let's find out! DISCLAIMER: For the sake of full disclosure, yes, I am one of the Kickstarter donors. Use that information as you will.



After all this hullabaloo, what is Under the Dog? There is more straight-up information made available in a 40-second trailer if you pause at the right time, but we'll go with the anime's more scenic route. We start on transfer student Hana who is seemingly fretting over her first day at a new school. As she gets closer to school, we realize it's not first day jitters that have her fidgety as she puts in a communication earbud during her walk and nervously pulls a gun in a bathroom stall. A blatant sign things are not as they seem occurs when the U.S. army lock down the school and raid it while Hana suddenly turns to classmate Shunichi and pulls pulls him out of the room, saying, "Stick close... or you'll die."

Hana is a member of a task force/assassination team called Flowers, named such because they're made up of pretty teenagers who die young, or something like that (Original creator Jiro Ishii surprising listed Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go about teen clones who are raised to be organ farms. This makes a little more sense within this context). They are one of the "fortunate" ones who control the Light of Humanity, which are special powers vaguely set up here. Hana can overpower small groups of trained military and jam their rifles with her mind, but it's not completely clear what it does as of yet. What is clear is that the Light of Humanity can change to Pandora energy in some people or can corrupt the Light of Humanity powers if they are strained., turning them into nearly unstoppable monsters. The Flowers try to keep Light of Humanity users out of the hands of various countries that are using them as some kind of the power play, especially the test subjects whose results turn out "white," marking them as the saviors of humanity (If the test is black, they put a bullet in them as quickly as possible). Lest you think Hana and her ilk are doing this for the good of humanity, the organization in charge of them is literally holding Hana's family hostage and will murder all of them if she fails in her task, dies, or her power is turned into Pandora. Poor Shunichi is a test subject whose color hasn't been revealed yet, but has so much potential to be white that the American military felt it was worth invading a foreign country and leveling a school to get him.

Episode Zero is pretty much a sampler platter of what to expect from the franchise should it become something more. It doesn't over commit to a full vision, but it definitely sets a tone and that tone is BLEAK. You can see the darker, nineties origins within it as you'd be hard-pressed to call any of the parties "heroes" and oh yeah, the gruesome, ferocious violence. Hana has to defend herself against the military and she rarely shies away from blasting brain matter on the walls. That's not to mention a Pandora creature eventually tears through the school while the cat-and-mouse game is afoot, tossing about quite a bit of misplaced limbs and torsos. The best analogue for this series would not be Ghost in the Shell, but Blood: The Last Vampire with beasts ripping apart an area surrounded by American soldiers while one super powered girl who works under a very gray organization tries to fight their way through.

In a departure from the introductory trailer, the colors are toned down, the locale changed from a mammoth cyberpunk metropolis to an island schoolhouse, and the object depth scaled back. Despite this seemingly being a betrayal of concept, this is really no problem as it's a prologue to a main story that doesn't exist in consumable form yet, and the animation is in constant motion in ways you don't see in modern anime.  If you've watched a decent amount of anime, you know it tends to value art design over motion and there are shortcuts taken with projects on very limited budgets and severe time restraints. Under the Dog has very few scenes where it feels like they're trying to get away with hiding mouth flaps or skimping on motion. It's very fluid and most of the scenes are set up to showcase the animation rather than work around it. The blood and gore is there and fairly detailed, but it feels like it exists to properly portray the level of physicality and seriousness of the parties involved rather than exploitation. Even the choice to make gray the dominant color unifies the style to keep the focus on what's happening as well as making the 3-D work by Orange Co. (Ghost in the Shell Arise) blend with the rest of the animation as much as possible. The only thing that didn't work was the Pandora creature, which feels like a mishmash of monster designs that prompts questions more than it ignites fear (Where the hell did all the eyes come from?).

For those who were sold the Major's equally effective little sister as hero and seem to have been given Gunslinger Girl instead, no worries. Anthea is present and assumes the role of main character by the end of the episode. They choose to slow play her in order to show the world not through those more embedded in it, but the ones who get caught up in the hurricane as a matter of circumstance. The episode is heavily bent on the sympathy generated by Hana as an unfortunate pawn trying to find a way out of a seemingly impossible situation with Shunichi, a normal kid ensnared in an international game that is way beyond him. They give humanity to exceptionally dark material which keeps it from being nihilistic. The trick this series is going to have to make if it continues is bringing that same balance to characters who are morally ambiguous and at home in these dire times. We get glimpses of the established Flowers throughout the episode, including a sniper who responds to being forced to put someone down with the cavalier delivery, "Darn it. He's handsome."

One aspect that stands out is the American troop dialogue is all done in English, In a primarily Japanese production, this used to be an eyesore with poor performances given to people with no ear to understand what's wrong. It's gotten better over the years and this is on the higher level of that upswing. I'd put this at the level of Eden of the East where the knowledge of the language is competent, but there is still some stilted delivery or incorrect tone in regards to what's being said. At one point, a soldier reacts to a Flower being in the school with, "Goddamn underdogs! What the hell are they doing here?!" in a manner that Hana had shown up at a party wearing the exact same outfit. It's not too distracting, though. While we're on the audio side of things, the music by Australian Kevin Penkin is the most consistent aspect from the original Kickstarter trailer to the finished OVA, providing melancholy and occasionally stirring accompaniment that hits the mark without calling too much attention to itself.

Under the Dog's initial effort may not be a precise replication of the trailer used to sell the venture (I'm guessing the creative differences that caused CIA to split had something to do with it), but it's a slick, action-packed 30 minutes that will make most content with the money they sunk into the project. Since it's supposed to be the beginning of a series, much on how this stands up on its own will depend on if those follow-up episodes are coming down the pipe or not since it's merely the appetizer. For now, it's a good setup to a hopefully greater payoff, and perhaps an entry point to more quality anime the people want funded outside the usual otaku machine. The journey wasn't smooth and some of the contents may have shifted, but a safe landing is all that matters, right?

Art is subjective.

I know that that’s the most clichéd way to start this piece, but it’s true. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, and no two people will react the exact same way to it. The same can be said of acting; true, there are general expectations for a good performance, but even then they’re not empirical. They’re merely guidelines, albeit ones that are flexible.


I bring this up because of an interesting article written by a man named Charles Dunbar for Ani-Gamers. I’d never heard of him or this site until now, but it had a fascinating editorial about anime dubs and cultural exchange. At first, I was expecting another “dubs suck” or “only certain dubs are good” eye-roller, but thorough examination proved me wrong. The article was, honestly, really interesting, even adding perspective to the argument of “dub VS sub” that I’ve brought up before. That doesn’t mean I agree 100% with the author’s position, but y’know…


Anyway, Mr. Dunbar brings up two points that I thought were interesting. His first, which he mentions in the title, is that good dubs allow for cultural discourse. I’d never actually thought of that before, but it makes sense. Art’s primary objective is communication, and art that’s inspired by other art is meant to engage in a dialogue. It’s true as much about Akira Kurosawa’s influence on Star Wars as it is a voice track being translated from one language to another. Great art may have no equivalency, but it can still inspire responses from people intelligent enough to get what made it so special. A good dub is, when you distill it, simply another attempt at conversation.

The second point is where the disagreement begins: that there are objective standards for dubbing, and that dubs that are “done right” meet them. As nice as that sounds in theory, I have to call him out for the reason I mentioned earlier on.

See, I watch dubbed anime. It’s my means of watching anime, as I don’t speak Japanese and can’t stand subtitles. I’m quite familiar with how a performance in English should sound because it’s my native tongue. I can’t explain to what separates a great performance over a good performance, but I know the difference between a Heath Ledger Joker and an Anakin Skywalker. Voice acting is the same way.

I bring this up because I think arguing the fine details of a performance is a waste of time. Perhaps I’m over-simplifying it, but those “grunts” and “tics” Dunbar mentions? They’re cool and whatnot, but they’re not necessary. Not everything needs to be David Fincher-level acting, especially considering how time-consuming and draining his style has been purported to be. Sometimes, simplicity is preferable.

For example, Christopher Reeve’s Superman is more iconic than Eddie Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking. The latter required copious amounts of time and attention to detail to do properly; in fact, its most-admirable component was that the scenes in The Theory of Everything were, apparently, shot out-of-order, so Redmayne had to do a lot of on-the-spot improvisation for Hawking’s debilitative condition. The end-result shows: Redmayne meets the “grunts” and “tics” that Dunbar describes, and his Oscar for Best Actor proves it. But Reeves gave the more memorable performance with less effort. Not to discredit either of them, but Christopher Reeves as Superman is more iconic without the subtle nuances of replicating ALS.

The same can be said of voice acting. Dunbar mentions Only Yesterday as the prime example of voice work done right. The actors and actresses pause between sentences to catch their breaths, the “grunts” and “tics” of real speech patterns are present, it’s a great vocal track all-around. But that shouldn’t detract from voice work that doesn’t meet those qualifications. Not every director is a perfectionist like Isao Takahata, there simply isn’t enough time. So that the dub, which I’ve defended in the past, doesn’t match the sub track shouldn’t negate the effort put into it in the first place.

The one area that I blatantly disagree with Dunbar on is his claim that Disney’s dub of My Neighbor Totoro is “flat-out wrong”. I get it: he likes the Streamline-produced, 20th Century Fox dub from the 90’s. I’ve yet to hear that track in its entirety, though the few clips I’ve come across sounded fine for the time period, but demeaning the newer dub is insulting. It might be a celebrity dub, but it had effort put into it. The performances are solid, and while the Fanning sisters might underact, it’s still serviceable. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, in other words.

Besides, I’ve heard this argument used for many of Disney’s Studio Ghibli re-dubs. Castle in the Sky, in particular, is criticized for many “wrongdoings”: its leads are too old, it adds too many jokes, the music isn’t organic, the list goes on. In contrast, the original 1989 dub is praised for being “more organic”, when a simple listen would argue quite contrary: it’s flat and uninspired, with the actors sounding lost half the time. It might be “more faithful”, but it lacks the “grunts” and “tics” of the newer dub.

But even with newer dubs, there's still a disconnect here. I’m glad that Dunbar mentions FUNimation’s dub of Ouran High School Host Club, because for as much as that show was cartoony, and might’ve lost something in translation, I got a naturalistic, realistic vibe from it. I felt those “grunts” and “tics”, even if not everything successfully got localized. In fact, I find that even when FUNimation makes a joke dub, which is more common than I’d like these days, or when their casting is off, which sometimes happens, they still include those “grunts” and “tics”. And no amount of excessive Tatum-isms (aka superfluous writing) or Marchi-isms (aka obnoxious memes and pop-culture references) can change that.

Admittedly, this is all subjective, like I said earlier. But I remain firm in my assertion that it’s not as simple as a “dub done right”. For as much as there are standards for good dubbing, that’s exactly what they are: standards. They’re not “objective standards”, they’re standards. And while I’m aware that bad dubs exist even today, see most of Steven Foster’s work, these standards allow for far better dubs now than in the 80’s and 90’s simply because most of the mediocre ones still have those “grunts” and “tics” that Dunbar pointed out…even if they’re not necessarily necessary for a good dub overall.

Bad anime. It's everywhere. Right turn, BAM, overly long shonen wank! Turn left, POW, lifeless slice of life show from the era of Lucky Star! Turn back and KERPAPPLE, a stampede of LIGHT. NOVEL. MAGICAL. SCHOOL. ANIME.

No matter what age you grew up with the big A in, you have probably seen a fair bit of crap. Sure, I wasn't around for the dark ages of the OVA boom, where lies the horrible myths of gay murderous super soldiers and tentacle monsters, but bad is not exclusive to any time period. It is everywhere. The worst can strike when you least expect it, or in the exact form you'd expect (aka any light novel show about a magic school except Asterisk War). It can be hilarious, pathetic, or just maddening. Bad has countless forms, and it's time I laid out the worst of the worst that I've seen up to this point. Seasonals certainly added a good chunk here, but I've been here for years, rockin' my peers and keeping suckas in fear. If it's one thing I'm well vested on, it's bad anime.

I have a list of the twenty worst, but I'd like to start us off with some not so honorable mentions first. These shows didn't make the final cut for one reason or another, but they all deserve a good punch in the teeth. So let's do this right.

*ahem*



.hack//SIGN– If I wanted to watch a bunch of teenagers talk endlessly about meaningless things instead of actually saying what was bothering them, I'd go to any high school in existence. NEXT!

.hack//Legend of the Twilight Bracelet – What an inventive idea, take what people like and then make it terrible. The title is appropriate, though, but the bracelet isn't the thing having the twilight – that would be the franchise. NEXT!

Blood+ - Tossing around a bunch of meaningless gore and having the most interesting stuff at the very end of a grueling slog of nothing? What is this, the latest Zack Snyder film!? Well, no, there would at least be production values then. NEXT!

Elfen Lied– Because when I think an instant classic, I think of a mentally challenged catgirl urinating on the floor and crying. Nothing has given me tone whiplash like this since the last time I talked to a compassionate conservative. NEXT!

Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid– What braindead monkey makes a show filled with lesbians, and somehow still includes a hetero gangrape scene and thousands of lesbians going gaga for a person they think is a guy? I expected more from the man who packaged a game with a panty scented strap. NEXT!

Queens Blade S1– Novel idea, give us a cast of interesting and bizarre characters and have us follow the child with giant tits and then watch her get beat up and cry for two thirds of the series! When terrible characterization is more notable to me than the scene where one girl feels up another while poisoning her with her crotch snakes, you've invented new ways to embarrass your parents. NEXT!

Naruto– Believe it? What, believe that the animation studio didn't care the majority of the time and that I wasted years on this garbage? I'd rather believe there wasn't eighty episodes of vapid, thematic repetition that ended up used as part of the enhanced interrogation program at Guantanamo. NEXT!

Bleach– I don't know what's worse, the awful filler arcs, or the awful endless monster arc they were supposed to be adapting in the first place. There are times in this show where I feel like putting bleach in my eyes. NEXT!

Who is Imouto!? - Boy tries to figure out which of these generic, obnoxious cartoon girls is his biological sister so he doesn't fuck her on accident. That's not the plot of an anime, that's the plot of a 60s exploitation film. NEXT!

Pupa– This show isn't a show, it's an IOU that will never be cashed in, and in the fine-print reads “onii-chan” on repeat for thirty-three lines. But I suppose it's necessary, how else will your strange neighbor fulfill his incest vore fantasy? NEXT!

Ninja Slayer From Animation– It's like an Adult Swim parody show, but shit. Adult Swim parody shows are shit by design. Imagine how shit you have to be to be shittier than purposeful shit. This show is the droppings of Assie Mcgee, animated by a studio that didn't know if they were making a shitty show or a shitty joke. It's so shitty that you can find corn between the attempted rape scenes. NEXT!

Shaman King (4Kids Dub)– They named the Chinese kid Lenny! That's like naming Shaft “Peppy the cute street urchin.” The king is dead, good riddance. NEXT!

One Piece (4Kids Dub) – If only this dub was in one piece! Removing entire major arcs, painting guns green, replacing a character's dialog entirely with puns, and the rapping! If you're wondering where Soldja Boy came from, wonder no more. NEXT!

Air– Key is a good name for the group behind this Lifetime by the way of anime highschoolers original movie. They're the key to my endless frustration and disgust. NEXT!

Street Fighter II V– Just another in a long line of fighting shows that forgot to have well animated fighting. This atrocity gets bonus points for having the general energy of a crippled sloth. NEXT!

Tokyo ESP– ESP? Oh, are you psychic? Well, I wish I was so I'd known to never have watched this perpetual disappointment! This is the worst thing the Ghostbusters have been attached to since Dave Coulier! Look it up, kids, your parents had awful taste in comedy. NEXT!

Manga Artist and his Assistants – Sir, if you wanted to have anime girls molested and sexually harassed, don't pretend to be making a comedy about making manga, just go make some porn. That way, we can all more easily ignore it. NEXT!

In Search of the Lost Future – Well, I'm in search of my lost hours watching this Steins;Gate wannabe trash! This show is like Schrodinger's cat, in that it's a bad joke people took seriously. NEXT!

Devil May Cry – Instead of exploring the interesting detachment the main character has from humanity while acting as its protector, just have him eat strawberry sundaes every episode. Brilliant! No wonder Capcom let the west take a stab at this property, we can't have done worse than its home country already did. NEXT!

Tokko– This brave, ambitious demon slaying drama has subplots about an angry man doing office work and hints of incest. This show is not a sunny day, it's one during a rain of frogs. NEXT!

Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn– The latest from the creator of Ghost in the Shell, one of the most influential sci-fi properties ever made. Proof that failure knows no limits, not even success. Also proof that he's probably on a few watchlists. NEXT!

Aldonah.Zero– What happens when someone tries to do Urobuchi's Code Geass while also being a complete failure as a writer? The most disappointing thing since the Obama presidency.

AND THAT'S THE GARBAGE THAT DIDN'T MAKE IT! Strap in, because there's some live changing horror ahead. You'll laugh, you'll cry, mostly that last one. Join us next time for the exploration for the source of all my despair!

With One Punch Man now airing on Toonami, I'm sure a lot of you tykes are enjoying all the punching and explosions (and they are certainly beautiful punches and explosions), but I doubt you were there when the anime started airing and debate grew over what the series was actually about. While the manga was a celebrated cult thing, the anime has grown into a very decisive topic because of new audiences examining how the show treats its cast, and there's definitely a lot of criticism to detail. To properly engage with this debate, it's important you all understand some of the core ideas and themes of the series. Of course, to figure out what those are, we need to examine the titular character himself, Saitama.

Life Goals

The hook of the series is that its lead character is so strong that he can defeat anyone with a single punch, thus the title. The joke is that Saitama, this all mighty hero, doesn't really do what he does solely for the good of others, but for his own enjoyment. Without a sense of challenge, he's stuck living a mundane life and wishing for a villain even a fraction as tough as him would come around for a good fight. His back story shows that he wasn't much different before he got his powers, in that his job left him completely unfulfilled, and possibly mildly depressed.

As strange as it sounds, One Punch Man is less interested in heroics as it is in artists and enthusiasts. Hear me out. The series creator, ONE, has an interest in frustrated prodigies. Where characters like these are the aces of other tales, or maybe some sort of rival for the main character, ONE deconstructs them into flawed, confused people who are too defined by their own abilities to have any sort of identity beyond that (not unlike Danganronpa, actually). Mob Psycho 100 explores this much more openly, as Mob tries to improve himself beyond his powers to be a more interesting person. Being defined by his incredible psychic powers has left him unhappy and lonely, so trying to improve more mundane aspects of himself is far more important to his own goals than becoming more powerful.

I Got 99 Problems But The Physical Personification Of Nature's Rage Ain't One

Saitama is similar, though his wants are very different. Where Mob sees the wall and tries to walk around it, Saitama hit it hard and has stopped bothering to figure out a way to overcome it. Saitama wants to define himself as a hero because doing something heroic was the one time in his life he felt like he was actually doing something fulfilling. He's just so good at it now that he can't find any satisfaction in it anymore. He worked hard and accomplished his goal ...and didn't really think any further than that. Where most characters like him get a happy ending at the end of a story, we're at the beginning of Saitama's, and it's now about what you do once you've finally made it.

The series isn't a reflection of ONE's past success (this was the guy's first manga, as far as I can find, and it started offf ugly as sin), but more like him musing on what it's like to be seemingly accomplished. One Punch Man wasn't originally a published manga, but a web manga. It was released for free on the internet in ONE's spare time, and only got picked up once a far better artist started remaking it into the more read version, which lead to the anime. Where the art angle comes in is how Saitama approaches his hero work, and where a lot of the debate on the shows themes start coming in.

adulthood.jpg

During an arc where Saitama destroys a meteor but fails to stop the rubble that results from the act, a bunch of people chew him out in the aftermath, and he gets upset. It's hard not to draw comparisons to the god awful Zack Snyder DC films, with this development mirroring the Man of Steel destruction in a lot of ways, but the intent is very different. This scene establishes that Saitama is doing this because he wants to, not because of popularity or a moral obligation (though that is partly a motivation, he doesn't get hung up on failures). He's “made it big” in the sense that he's become the strongest of the heroes, but he doesn't care about his reputation. What he cares about is his own sense of satisfaction. Of course, you may also realize this stinks of the philosophy of objectivism.

Objectivism is a junk philosophy that values one's own accomplishments over helping one's fellow man. One Punch Man trips into this idiotic way of thinking, but not as much as you'd think. Fellow hero Mumen Rider, for example, is an actual selfless person who's just trying to do the right thing, and despite how goofy many of the heroes are, and how corrupt certain others are, we do see them doing the right thing for the little guy when the chips are down. Even if many of these characters do care about validation, that doesn't define how they think or act.

I want to protect that smile.

Where Saitama differs from most objectivist thought is that he wants others to do well and doesn't view them as competition. He becomes fast friends with Mumen Rider because he recognizes the guy's pure heart, and while he half-asses being a mentor, he honestly values his friendship with Genos. Despite how detached he's become from the world, in no small part because of his own cynicism, he doesn't buy into a selfish narrative as much as you'd think. So, what is Saitama? Well, he just seems to be an enthusiast.

As an artist, a lot of what Saitama says and thinks feel familiar to me. When he felt something when he did his first heroic deed was a similar description to me writing my first opinion piece outside the suffocating confines of high school. When he tells off the crowd, it reminded me of how I feel when people say what I do is meaningless or pointless. One Punch Man does play with ideas of heroism with the rest of the cast, but it seems more interested in using that as a backdrop to explore being an enthusiast. You do something because it's fulfilling to you, no matter how pointless or ridiculous it seems. You may realize how silly the endeavor is, and everyone else will certainly say so, but you do it anyways because it matters to you.

*swoons*

An arc a lot of characters go through in this series is realizing how pointless trying to be great can be at times. Sometimes, just settling with the here and now and finding something in that is more than enough. Saitama, to the rest of the characters, is the reality check that comes storming in and making them realize just how truly insignificant they are in the grand scheme of things. But Saitama understands that about himself as well. They all realize being the strongest means little, but doing something because it is fulfilling to you can be freeing. That message is drenched in nihilism, and the series tends to become too cynical for it's own good sometimes, but I love just how perfectly it captures the feeling of being an artist, just one type of enthusiasts.

And no, the series is NOT perfect. Where we start running into problems is how the hero theme clashes with the major themes. Superheroes are beings capable of inspiring people, and the series makes use of this a lot, but they also are defined by how they restrain their power and use it responsibly for the good of everyone. Because the series is so focused on self-satisfaction, it has a bad habit of delivering problematic messages when characters use force, such as suggesting that might makes right or that the naturally stronger are just better. Saitama is a pathetic character, but how people react to him mixes that a bit, and thus we hit a big knot of thematic confusion. It doesn't help crowds of civilians are commonly populated entirely by jeering assholes. The series deeply rooted cynicism is a cause of most of these issues, sacrificing heart and humanity for gags that don't really mesh well with the themes at play. Saitama's detachment from others because of his incredible power is also an issue that leads to some great dark humor, but it doesn't mesh with the commentary and themes that well. I get why this is, as it's easy to start viewing the public as people who don't just get what you do, but the context provided is disgusting, and that viewpoint is a toxic one that can hurt one's art and personality if embraced too heavily. This may be why the Sea King arc ends with the heroes trying to protect the crowd as Saitama is still making his way there, undercutting the constant civilian deaths from earlier gags and signaling that the series would be going in a more human direction as Saitama would become more of a plot device than a lead for most arcs. A little too late for many, which is understandable.

There also a ton of issues here with the portrayal of women and queer characters. The two major female heroes are an obnoxious brat mainly defined by how she eventually looks up to Saitama, and her sister that exists solely for cheesecake shots and to be another jab at people looking for validation from others in a pretty sexist way (seriously, personality is almost entirely make-up and posturing). The first gay character we meet is a goddamn prison rapist, coded as feminine buff in a comedic way, and is also mentioned to be a stalker. He's basically a collection of gross gay stereotypes, and unfortunately stays around after the initial arc because of his high ranking status in the heroes association. It really hurts the series possible appeal, especially with so many queer and female artists out there. I mean, we do get thrown a bone with Speed O' Sound Sonic being completely nude for most of an arc, but that's not enough.

He should be nude all the time. Please sign my petition for an entire arc where Speed O' Sound Sonic runs around trying to murder people while naked.

*SWEATS*

The later made Mob seems to be ironing out a lot of these issues, thankfully. It may make for a great successor. As for One Punch Man, it's a really intriguing case study, and I'm really interested in how the manga will wrap up and possibly improve on a lot of these issues. ONE's understanding of frustration with society and desire to live happily is deep, and he explores those ideas well. He just needs to keep learning to self-reflect more, or else it risks becoming a pig-headed preacher.

Well, you all waited long enough. No more stalling. It's time to talk about the twenty worst anime I have ever seen in my entire life! I've split this list into two parts, so I can really dig into just how awful all of these are, and this is also where most of the seasonal stuff ended up. As I said, I have seen some shit. There's a few things I've rated not too terribly in the past on here as well, and that's because time lets you realize bad things may be worse than you first thought sometimes. I also took into account the flavors of bad and my own personal feelings on each show, and I feel this order is a great ordering of bad to scream inducing.

Also, I may end up talking about sexual assault because bad anime sure loves that, so you have been warned if you're sensitive to that.

Now, onto out first entry, and the first anime I reviewed for this site ...11eyes.


Ah yes, I still remember 11eyes. People warned me about this random watch and I didn't listen. I don't regret this, though. I was immensely entertained while also being horribly confused by nearly every single decision. 11eyes is utterly fascinating once you look up info on the source material and realize just how badly this was butchered. This is seriously one of the worst adaptations I have ever seen that still managed to stay in the ballpark of the concept, mainly because every single change made is goddamn insane.

The worst come from they very limited episode run. The major antagonists, the black knights, get absolutely no definition or development beyond “bad,” while major supporting characters get their own stories cut or watered down so much that they don't feel much like characters at all. The worst of this is the main love interest, who goes from terrified girl with powers that went out of control and lead to all her friends killing each other, to Yuno level yandere who tries to fucking murder someone with a razor blade in the tea because she's interested in her childhood friend. Also, she walks around outside in her underwear at one point. I can't make this shit up. Oh, and she wins the main character in the end, despite being the cause of almost every horrible thing in the series. Because the writing staff have some serious issues they need to work out.

What's even more baffling and downright inexcusable is that there's an entirely pointless episode here. I don't mean character focused filler or comedy break, I mean actually pointless because it's a non-canon what-if right before the last, incredibly lame episode that basically shows a bad ending instead of the good one. Now, granted, that bad ending is the most amazing thing I have ever seen, but the fact that's not the actual ending and the staff didn't have the balls to give the entire audience the middle finger actually pisses me off even more. 11eyes is a confusing train wreck as it goes on, and there's something to that. This is good bad movie bad here, genuinely terrible and inept, but there was a scene where a girl dressed only in her underwear went out into a garden and rubbed against her childhood friend, whom only reacted with “what.” That counts for something.

Still garbage, though.

Now here's some bad you can hate! Dimension W was one of the most promising anime of the year, gifted with beautiful animation, interesting ideas, a lovely color pallet, and a fantastic score. I was betting that this would be one of the best of the year at one point.

I'm sorry for recommending this to some of you, by the way.

Dimension W's problems come entirely from the source material, which somehow pretends to be the next Cowboy Bebop, when it's actually some 90s dark age comics garbage. The problems here don't come from structure, presentation, or ideas, but entirely from the characters and politics. See, this high minded sci-fi series is not actually about the cool ideas of energy from another dimension changing the very concept of time, but one unlikable, emotionless asshole guy being mad that technology killed his girlfriend.

No really. That is his back story. His girlfriend died because there was an accident with a new technology so all of this new technology is bad and that's why he keeps hitting the cute robot girl over and over while also emotionally abusing her. Because MY GIRLFRIEND IS DEAD. I can't make this shit up. Someone thought this was a good idea.

The lead, Kyouma, is a terrible person and portrayed as someone we should root for. He's cold to everyone around him, never emotes, and did I mention emotionally and physically abuses the cute robot girl who has self-awareness and is more human than machine? He is where nearly every problem centers, and also an example of its gross, misogynistic worldview. Women are constantly victimized and fridged, heroine Mira mainly exists to be the subject of the creator's sadistic fetishes (DESPITE HAVING SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH AND AGILITY), and they aren't allowed their own stories but to be stops on the arcs of the male characters. This series honestly makes me want to vomit sometimes.

And hey, there's nothing wrong with having a BDSM fetish. But there's a time and place to have a cute robot girl tortured with chains or an African dictator showing off his bizarre control powers on his servant/slave girl, and that's not in A GOD DAMN SCI-FI STORY ABOUT TECHNOLOGY THAT WARPS TIME AND SPACE. HOLY SHIT.

I hope you like light novel anime because you're going to see a lot of them on this list. You're going to see a LOT of them. Rating them was hard, but Anti-Magic Academy ended up being the least terrible of the placers, which is impressive because this one pissed me off a good deal. It's a series about fascism and terrorism, showing the horrors that both of these extremes cause, except it keeps failing to engage with those concepts because if we don't have the personality devoid main guy getting his dick chased by a bunch of obnoxious anime girls, then the audience won't be able to self-insert. Also, everyone is a goddamn cartoon with no depth or complexity, outside two exceptions.

Usagi and Ikaruga are actually likable, have good concepts in their back stories, and should probably just leave this series forever and go be gay together. But even they don't get off well, as Usagi's arc involves an abusive boyfriend and an attempted rape, while Ikaruga's personality is a bit lacking definition because the writer can't decide if she's really emotionally stunted or just repressed. The rest of the series is either obnoxiously unfunny, or terribly boring, filled with the failure of making use of interesting ideas. It also pulls out a lot of tired cliches, mainly the poorly defined villains. None of their plans make sense, not a damn one. Why do they even keep that crazy flower guy around if all he does is ruin every goddamn plan!?

That said, the last arc is so mind-numbingly awful in the BEST WAY. It pissed me off when I first saw it, but looking back, I adore how bad this arc is. Every single decision is terrible, especially the eldrich monster little sister that definitely wants to fuck her brother's brains out, but it manages to fail so spectacularly that it becomes shocking and hilarious. And kudos for that one guy who decides to be the bad guy just because. His character becomes evil laughter and “fuck it” at just pure random, even looking at the audience directly as he questions why he's not doing something horrible right now. That saves it a little in my eyes. But don't watch it. Everything else is fucking awful and I hate it.

Dragon Crisis is a complete failure on every conceivable level. Absolutely nothing about it is good or does anything right. It's only low on this list because it's not particularly offensive or terrible, but that's still not a compliment. Dragon Crisis is like an endless humming noise you can't find the origin of. You can live with it, but it will drive you into constant frustration. From episode one, it's a disaster that creates a world hopping, treasure hunting concept that never gets used so we can unfunny high school antics with a loli dragon and a spineless loser main character. Every single arc has at least one good idea, but it is instantly undercut so the main character can pull out a deus ex machina power with the loli dragon to instantly solve the problem. Action scenes have no tension, there's barely any actual animation, the music is awful, and the comedy could be used to punish small children.

Even worse than that is how the entire series revolves around the awful generic light novel lead, including one episode that could have been used for character development for the entire major female cast, only for it to become a seven minute long scene where they all massage the little twerp's ego. It is astounding how little their own struggles or desires matter because it all ends up being focused on the main character, who has no actual desires or significant arc beyond “i find the loli dragon hot.” He's not a main character, he's a lamp. I've seen hentai manga self-insert leads with more personality than this deformed Shinji clone. And I mean Shinji clone because, yes, he has mommy issues! Mommy wasn't there enough so everything is bad! Hold me back before I start screeching in tongues.

It's not a particularly terrible thing, though. This isn't going to stay in my brain beyond the last arc's conflict revolving around the loli dragon almost dying because she hits puberty and really wants to fuck the main character (that is the literal, actual last arc conflict). Dragon Crisis just pathetic mostly, and a lot of it has already left my brain. I had to look up what happened in the wolf girl's arc, and I saw this only a few months ago. I hope it gets wiped from the collective human memory forever.

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I'm still not sure how this series even came into existence. It defies all logic. It's something that NEEDS to be experienced. This is grade-A bad anime right here. Day Break Illusion is basically Pretty Cure mixed with Madoka Magica and Magical Girl Ai. Do not search that last one, trust me on this. What I'm saying is that this show is somehow trying to aim at the audiences of little girls, older audiences, and disgusting perverts into tentacle torture all at the same time.

This series was backed by Square-Enix and Aniplex. This was supposed to be the start of a huge franchise to rival Pretty Cure as its darker counter-part. To say they failed would be like saying the reaction to the newest Happy Madison project was met with less than stellar reviews. Day Break Illusion is the most tonally confused show I have EVER seen. It has absolutely no idea what it's supposed to be or what it wants to do, and it keeps jumping around from girls growing up and becoming friends to horrific monster murders and psychological horror from the monsters being corrupted human beings that can only be killed and put out of their misery to save other people. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, in this series works or fits together, and the sloppy world building does not help.

They outright take old magical girl archetypes and then attach bizarre dark drama to it, like complexes over failing to save a good friend (and flashback portrayed like something out of Evil Dead) or becoming an evil magical werewolf with dangling tits because of a gay crush. I have to stress with this list that these insane things I describe actually happened. The designs are like an edgy take on Pretty Cure, so they have all the terrible business with none of the charm. Supporting characters look like side characters from an episode of Pokemon, yet exist in stories with horrific murders and psychological breaks. Hell, the bad guy's big plan is to make the main character fuck him and give birth to some sort of evil god.

I stress, none of this is made up.

But the execution is even weirder, because it's either played straight, or the writers know how stupid all this is and make jokes, and it's never clear what is what. For every scene you have with children happily singing as a demonic murder train is charging towards them, there's a genuine attempt at emotional resonance. Then you have confusingly amazing moments, like when the bad guy has some business guy who has no point in being here convince the towns people that the magic school the girls go to is run by witches and they form an angry mob with pitchforks and torches within minutes.

This series takes place in the modern day.

This series needs to be seen to be believed. You will never see so many baffling decisions piled up so heavily in the modern age of anime.

Remember, despite how good Rage of Bahamut was, most all videogame anime is garbage. Take Bakumatsu Rock, one of the laziest things Studio DEEN has ever put out (which is saying a lot). The idea of this series is so stupid that there should be some face value entertainment to be had. A bunch of hot guys in a poorly defined time period want to play music, which will start a revolution because it destroys the stifling idol industry the government uses to control the populace. They get shirtless a lot. I'm fine with that part, the problem is everything else. For a comedy, Bakumatsu Rock has a shocking lack of jokes, and the ones that are there suck pretty hard.

It's all very tired filler episode premises strung together, and the jokes in them rarely make sense or feel fleshed out. A comically inept female idol group that can't sing worth a damn aren't nearly as terrible as the reaction to their music says they are in one episode, while another goes a long way for a penis gag where the joke is that the guy's dick isn't small but big. Wow. How wacky. That certainly isn't a joke that I haven't seen in every single low brow comedy ever made. It's almost always boringly predictable or confusingly told, but the actual story of the series fairs even worse.

There are massive structure issues here. At one point, an episode opens forgetting the character development that happened in the previous episode so it can have it in this episode again in a more dramatic scene. The idol industry conflict is poorly built up, and it goes on and on to get to the damn point. The story goes nowhere for most of the run-time, and when it does, it does it in the most melodramatic way. That could be entertaining, but the complete lack of quality animation and constantly repeated songs drain all life out of every scene. Our villain also gets no real definition for most of the series, a common hallmark or poorly planned out cash-ins and bad comedies. I can't really give a description justice to show just how bad this series is, but it is truly one of the most amateur anime I have ever seen. Nobody making this clearly gave a shit.

Except for the animation where the pretty guys are shirtless and playing their instruments at the same time. They cared a lot about that, bless them. But that's, like, one sequence that gets repeated over and over. I demand more shirtless hot guy scenes.

I despise this franchise so, so much. When I first reviewed this, I gave it a fairly average score, but as I look back at it more and more, I just get angrier and angrier this series exists. Fantasista Doll is a thankfully dead magical girl/card collection series that wanted to hit up that ever popular young girls market by combining two concepts that practically print money. The reason it never took off is that it's insulting trash. Say what you will about Day Break Illusion, at least it tried to empower its cast of little girls (which may be the only thing it managed to do with any success at all). This heavily marketed garbage, however, only manages to be a checklist of sexist bullshit.

I'm serious, this is ungodly gross once you stop and think about it. The premise is that a normal girl gets magical/sci-fi (fuck if the series can decide) cards that can summon five different magical girl warriors, plus give them boosts or cast spells and traps. She becomes involved in a tournament with a free wish as the prize, but she has no agency or desire and mostly just farts around every episode, helping other characters get what they really need or want without magical wishing. All fine and good. But then you look at the cast and they are all kind of the worst thing.

While our main doesn't really have a personality beyond “really does not want to be here right now,” the dolls are all gross cliches with a creepy amount of loyalty that basically paints them as really happy slaves. They all have stock personalities (the child, the tough one, the cold one, ect), but their desires and wants make them out to be closer to pets than human beings. They have no desire than to have a loving master and yeah that sounds REALLY fucked up. But for the target audience, the real problem is that these characters have no real journeys that human beings would go through, making them objects more than characters. Does not help here is an entire episode where this gets flipped around in a really creepy way with a little girl that sees her dolls as her “masters.” But that episode also has one of the most bullshit endings ever, because this show can't let itself have actual stakes. And don't even get me started at that running gag where the dolls want snacks all the time. Nothing in this show works or has personality, you can see every coldly calculated move, and then see the bizarre fetish stuff. This is what happens when a bunch of guys have no idea how to make a show for little girls.

Note that this is not the worst of the light novel shows. Only the second worst. You all probably figured out what the first was if you've been following me for awhile, but make no mistake that Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle is absolute fucking trash dump. For the get go, the character names are a massive, flashing warning light. The main character is a twink named Lux. It can only get worse from there.

This series is so openly and constantly gross that it's almost impressive. Like Anti-Magic, we do have two characters here worth saving from this show, Krulcifer and Phi (MY DOUGHNUT EATING DAUGHTER), but everything else is so horrible that it almost doesn't matter. These two shows have similar sins in that they're both boring and forget to explore their own themes and ideas so every single girl can pine after the main character's dick (or in Krulcifer's case, pine to step on Lux's face). But this one here goes several steps further into gross territory. Anti-Magic did do an awful job with Usagi's back story, but I can't really say the same with everyone else. Their conflicts made sense and actually avoided a lot of grosser stuff. But not this series! It always comes back to the threat of rape, a symbolic act that was basically rape, or a misogynistic ass of a villain that really wants to rape someone. Exceptions are made to the ninja girl and head knight character, but the ninja is barely in the show, while the head knight is built up as a lesbian who hates men when she turns out to really love men and is just awkward around them. I'm serious. Also, the girl that was hinted to be her girlfriend was also a bad guy the whole time.

Please stop light novel writers.

What's worse is that this series is so aggressively BOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING. Anti-Magic at least had moments of lunacy, or comedy so bad that it actually transcended into hilarious at times (there's a scene where every girl in the series gets drunk and it's kind of the best thing), Bahamut Chronicles remains lifeless and stock the whole way through. The only good bits come from Krulcifer occasionally reminding us she's totally into femdom or Phi just eating a donut as something stupid is occurring, and even those jokes are very been done. The worst offender is Lisha, the main heroine who thinks you make babies by kissing. I hate her. I hate her so, so much. If the series isn't making me mad, it's making me sleepy, usually the latter. The villains are all just so terrible, the kind of bad guys you'd see as the starting baddie to get owned and forgotten, and they keep coming back to major twists and revelations. The main conflict is also hilarious inept, because it's so bloody simple, yet treated as some complex political drama. The series has so many interesting themes relating to the right of rule, responsibility of those with power, might and emotional connection, and so, so much more, but not a single idea is used or explored properly. The end result is an absolute waste of a show that should only be remembered for the one ballbuster girl and Phi, who is a universal good.

Holy shit fuck this show. Hard sci-fi is a difficult genre to pull off. It can be very dry and uninteresting to an audience that doesn't really get what its talking about, but trying to please an audience too much leads to something very stupid and insulting to those who do get the ideas at play. Divergence Eve is dead smack in the center of those two extremes, and is somehow even worse for it. I'm not even sure why this is a show that exists. The series released at a time where sci-fi was all the rage in the anime scene, especially sci-fi that explored psychological issues. EVA's influence could still be felt quite a bit, and bless it if we didn't get a few interesting works out of it. But then you have Divergence Eve, an absolute disaster that had the exact wrong staff for the exact wrong show.

The idea here is that the series explores memory, time, and alternate realities, as our cast are apart of an experiment relating to reality warping phenomenons. It has a slow burn pacing slowly revealing everything and leading to a bizarre conclusion. That's all fine and good, but the characters we have to invest in are either assholes (fuck that reporter) or poorly defined characters that are meant to be normal, but come out as undeveloped. I can describe each character's personality roughly the same as the last, outside the villain and that fucking reporter, making it really hard to be invested in anything that happens to them. It does not help the science the series explores is theoretical, and it doesn't really explore it as well as it could. The weird reality warping stuff mostly just leads to zombie robot pilots, which is the most boring idea you can come up with for a show like this. Noien explored the exact same ideas and did it worlds better, with a wide cast of diverse characters, complex drama with no easy answers, and interesting discussions on memory and alternate realities that remembered to have a human element. This series does not.

The biggest problem, though, are the character designs and directing staff. The team they got for this series worked together on a Burn Up OVA, and their resumes show them taking charge in works of fluff and titty shots. These were not the right people for this show. Toshinari Yamashita's character designs are pretty samey and poorly structured to begin with, but their presence here only distracts further, especially with all the focus on boobs and ass. Hiroshi Negishi also isn't a bad director by any means, but he works best with action and cheesecake, leading to a series with lifeless shots because he has no idea what to do with dialog scenes, the large majority of the show. Worse yet, he's working with early CG for the mech scenes, which have aged just so, so horribly. This series did have talent, but it was the wrong talent, and that made all the difference. I wonder what this could have been with a proper staff.

The Sci-Fi channel introduced me to a lot of garbage. The worst of it I could stand to finish (I had to tap out of Vampire Wars) was Virus Buster Serge, a truly idiotic, poorly thought out mess. It was another one of those deep and meaningful sci-fi shows from the era, and by deep and meaningful, I mean as shallow as an average pop star's personality and as simplistic as ...well, an average pop star's personality. It's partly an excuse to have a bunch of“”””””hot”””””” guys do things, but also a cyberpunk thriller about a virus that controls people, dealing with questions of individuality and the nature of being human. In other words, it fancied itself Ghost in the Shell.

It was not.

This show is really frustrating to explain, because a lot happens in it, yet it feels like nothing happens at all. This is partly because our main character, Serge, is a character who knows nothing about himself and slowly pieces it together over time. Except not really, because the show loves to slather itself in pretentious symbols and imagery when not showing off the ridiculous outfits on the main characters. This show has a lot of fujoshi in its blood, which I'm normally okay with (they gave us Free and all), but the costume designs are some of the worst I have ever witnessed. These outfits are less hot stripper gear and more slapped together objects on a slab of man meat, which just distracts from all the man meat because you're wondering what the fuck all these random things they're wearing are supposed to do. The character designs are also hideous in general, with weird eyes and scratchy blush marks. The character designer was the same one for Angel Blade, and while that OVA looked awful, that guy trying to make hot guys is somehow even worse.

And fuck if I can explain what this show is even about. I mean, it's about Serge finding himself and tying that into the virus plot, but the show takes heavily from EVA's playbook of mixing in a lot of obtuse imagery in place of sensible scenes. The issue is that EVA's bizarre storytelling had a point to it, while this is trying to make a style out of something lacking style. By the end, nothing is properly explained, and nothing relating to the themes of the show gets explored in any meaningful way. The end result is a weird, empty, boring, and ultimately confused series that wants to be about three different things, and does not get why any of those three things work. I'm kind of glad the late 90s, early 2000s boom of hard sci-fi anime ended, because for every Serial Experiments Lain or Ghost in the Shell, we also got about ten Virus Buster Serges.

The top ten comes next installment, so strap in and prepare yourselves for the highest level crap. Trust me, it can get much, much worse.

We are now at the halfway point of the season, so it's time for a check-up on our premiers and see what's worth looking at, now that we have a better idea of what these shows actually are. We got a lot of gems and crap to go over, and the staff is free to drop up to four full shows because we all have shit to do and halfway into the season is a good point to make a judgement call.

Apologies for lack of second opinions, many of us were very busy. With the intro out of the way, here's the halfway report for the Summer 2016 season.

Full Shows

91 Days
Thom "Tama" Langley

Much like the show it's a spiritual successor to, 91 Days has practically rattled along these last few weeks, bringing Avilio bit by bit closer to his revenge; and what a trip it's been so far, beginning with mob war, and Avilio bringing the first of many shipments to a wedding party thrown by the Vanettis. Whilst there's obvious comparisons to The Godfather to be made here (heck, we get a scene with the Vanentti head honchos, complete with opera on the record player and a Coppela-ish intrigue against the rival Orco family), it's done with enough aplomb that the homage fits rather than being slavish-it also gives us insight into the struggle at the top of the Vanetti family, and the failing health of its patriach. Away from the wedding, Nero's faction discuss their plans, surprisingly suggesting that they kill  Fango-Nero, in a stroke of genius, decides to test Avilio by giving him the job-here, we get an insight into the mindset of Avilio, something the first few episodes do superbly.

The (botched) murder itself is one of the best scenes in the series thus far, a beautifully cut, beautifully executed scene that typifes the series, and the brutal dispatch of Serpente, another Orco man, by Vanno is on a par with any death of any mob series. Of course, the blade cuts both way in revenge, and Vanno himself is gunned down by Avilio, thus completing the first part of his revenge. Of couse, this arouses the suspicion of Nero-who orders him to kill the head of the local speakeasy, Ceretto-Colteo comes to warn him. From here we meet the corpulent Don Orco, who has his laxidasical chef murdeered, before Fango rocks up at table, and announces someone's tried to kill him. Fango...is one of the best things about this series so far, an unpredictable genius of violence who still seems more friendly than his Orco handlers. Plus, he's perhaps the funniest thing about 91 Days to date.

Having told his story to Colteo, Avilio arrives on scene looking for the body of Serpente, which, unfortunately is now in the hands of law enforcement who want a hefty bribe. Nero breaks into the warehouse where the body is hiddden, whilst Fango breaks one of Nero's men up and is about to stub out a cigarette on him when the duo are distracted by a sound. Inside, they find Nero, and what seems to be Serpente...only, it's a trap, and "Serepente" is, in fact, Avilio. All hell breaks loose, and a shoot-out begins...only, by now, Nero and Avilio have made their mistake, identified that Serpente is indeed dead, and skipped town, leaving Fango to essentially declare gang war. Nero and Avilion go on the run together as a mysterious figure is told to kill them both. Said mysterious figure is promptly splashed with mud by them at the beginning of the next episode, whilst our heroes go for breakfast, getting advice to head to a local autocamp, where Nero shows his...surprisingly sensitive side, juggling for a group of children. Meanwhile, our Clint Eastwood type assassin slowly gains on our heroes, whilst Nero reminises. It's then that Avilio realises that there's a discrepency between the letter and what he remembers...rather drunk. Nero promptly picks a fight with the Poncho wearing gentleman, before Avilio drags him off.

Losing the car, Avilio and Nero run off, but Mr Poncho is in quick pursuit, before Avilio saves him. With the families making peace, Nero and Avilio return to the Mafia, and it's revealled to be a trap, with the duo making their escape-Frate revealls that the cost of the truce was Nero's life-Colteo begins, meanwhile, to question to what extent his friend will go to gain revenge-in order to save an injured Vanetti man, Avilio and Colteo promptly cross to the neutral island, and come face to face with Fango, who eventually makes them a deal. Fango mugs a little bit, Nero tries to stab him in the foot, and Boss Orco complains about his lunch. Finally, Boss Orco and Nero meet and...boy, this scene is great-straight outta Francis Ford Coppola, with Nero pouring the drink offered to him by Boss Orco on the table, and instead suggesting he try their bootlegged liquor. From this, somehow, Nero cuts a deal with Boss Orco, trading the entire alcohol production line for his freedom. Left behind whilst Nero goes inside the cave where the still is hidden, Avilio trades words with Boss Orco, revealling his true identity.

Of course, once again...it's a trap,  as one of Nero's men suddenly appears from behind the barrels to shoot the Orco clan-in the crossfire, Avilio promptly shoots Nero, leaving him to die...offering a drink to the seemingly victorious Orcos, Avilio has one final trick up his sleeve-the alcohol is drugged, and Nero is far from dead. Dumped before Fango, a huge discrepency appears-perhaps the Vanettis are not the murderers of his family, and it's instead the work...of someone very different. Fango takes over the Orco family and serves the family...something...or someone rather. We end this half of the season with Nero and his allies eating...what else, lasagne.

91 Days is a twisting, turning beauty of a series with larger than life characters, a punchy plot, a great soundtrack, and a all-round pleasure to watch. Its second half could cement it, not only as the unopposed show of the season, but also as one of the great shows of the 2010s so far. A story of crime and revenge to rival any of the HBO fare, and maybe even The Godfather or The Sopranos.
Capolavoro! (Masterpiece!)

Strong Recommendation

Alderamin on the Sky
David O'Neil

The first episode of Alderamin On the Sky really was something of a pleasant surprise. It didn't quite hook me, or hugely impress me, but with no real expectations going in it was a pleasant, well put together comedy, action drama about a bunch of teens getting wrapped up in a larger military conflict of sorts. And as its gone on, for better or for worse, Alderamin has continued what it started, essentially being a long series of pleasant surprises.

The show really does have more going for it than it appears at first glance. Despite the pretty tired premise (a bunch of teens joining a magic/military school and the protagonist is a lazy asshole who's also amazingly talented because reasons) it does well at expanding beyond that to create more interesting conflicts. The main character and his childhood friend, Yatori, have been the biggest surprise as far as the show's story goes. Light Novel adaptations usually tend to be pretty iffy in terms of portraying protagonist's relationships with girl characters, but the relationship between Yatori and Ikta is a really heartfelt, well realized one. It isn't simply a tsundere routine, or one relying on the other, it's a relationship where they both help and support each other, and the series has shown that both through their everyday interactions, how they act under pressure, and even an excellent episode that expanded on how exactly they came to become friends. Beyond the characters, the world of Alderamin also has more going on than one may guess. It deals with a lot of themes about the dissonance between war and science, and the weight war can put on ordinary people. They especially accomplish this through how it effects the protagonist. He's someone who never wanted to be involved in a war, but was dragged into it against his will. Watching him grapple with that and clash with other characters who don't share his ideals has made for some good scenes, even if the show doesn't have all that much to say that hasn't been said before.

That is the drawback of Alderamin, I suppose. Although it's filled with all these pleasant surprises in nearly every area, as a whole the show never excels at anything. Sure, there are moments of cool fighting animation, but a majority of the time the animation is stiff and uninteresting. Sure, there are moments where Yatori and Ikta's relationship really feels fleshed out, but most of the other character interactions feel lifeless. Sure, the world provides some interesting ideas and commentaries on war, but it's still by the numbers as far as war stories go. I have considered dropping the show, but so far I am enjoying the show's small victories enough to want to stick with it. I do hope over time it can utilize its strengths more effectively, and expand its horizons beyond the limited moments of character growth the series has explored thus far.

Solid Recommendation

Amanchu!
Thom "Tama" Langley

Oh, boy, this series. This beautiful, crazy, wonderful series. Whilst diving is its focus, and, heck, this series not only pretty much teaches you the basic safety and regulations for diving (pressure regulation, warning against the bends, etc) with great attention to detail, whilst making the entire hobby/sport look beautiful, its true story, as it approaches its halfway mark, is that of the shy, somewhat distant Futuba opening up to Hikari, living, as Hikari does, more in the moment. And, boy, is Hikari a fun character-her genki-girl antics make even scenes around scuba-gear and diving practice fun and watchable-more than that, Hikari is essentially the core of this series; it's her hobby that Futuba is gently press-ganged into, its her sweetness and optimism and...oddness that draws Futuba to her, and heck, she's a fun, slightly odd-ball sorta girl. That, and some of her facial expressions (particularly her typical highly simplified and goofy eyes) are things of beauty. The rest of the diving club are also great characters-their homeroom teacher, the smart but deadpan Mato is a secret diving fan, and her exchages with Hikari are some of the best scenes of the series, and of course, Hikari's grandmother remains one of the best characters of this season-her worldly wise nature and attitude is a nice contrast to the youthful exuberance of her grand-daughter-all in all, it's a small but well-developed cast who show development throughout the series so far.

So, what have our diving club been up to? Well...Essentially, for the first couple of episodes, Hikari is simply getting to know Futuba better, as well as her homeroom teacher, who she races to school before revealling she is also a diving fan-diving still on her mind, Hikari promptly brings Futuba to the diving club room, introducing her to the basic tools of the hobby, before dragging her gently to the pool and suggesting some of the fun that can be had in diving-she's then admonished for taking the geat without asking, but promptly joins the club along with Futuba; Matoi then talks the duo through the concept of ear pressure and air pressure, before, the day after, taking her first steps into the pool-at first she seems scared, and almost gives up, but Hikari eventually talks her around-the scenes of Futuba and Hikari diving together are among this series' best so far, not only beautifully animated but full of pathos. Confidence growing, the duo tackle the next big issue-Futuba's stamina. Or lack thereof...oh, and it turns out the other members of the diving club are...both fairly mad, and previous clients of Hikari. After a chase from the club member, not overly happy with them using the club's items without permission, the duo manage to talk her round. During a meeting, they promptly start a drawing context, filling the board with all sorts of colourful sea-life. And...Futuba cannot swim properly; nevertheless, the club aim to help her.

All in all, Amanchu may not be the loudest, not the coolest nor the most action packed show of the season, but where it is stronger than anything else this season is heart-this show is a joy to watch, a beautifully animated, superbly written little show. I cannot wait till Futuba finally takes her first steps into the wide blue ocean.

Strong Recommendation

Ange Vierge
Joe Straatmann

The makers of Ange Vierge had to have that feeling they were forgetting something going into the third episode. Maybe it was their car keys, maybe it's... wait a minute! They forgot to give the audience any interest in the main conflict! About six episodes in and I get what they were going for. They set it up (kinda') and then they implemented it clumsily, but it's there. A group of C-level super heroes have to stand up to their superiors and mentors who have them outgunned to save the worlds they come from and to rescue their good friend they never knew meant so much to them until it was too late. That sounds like a reasonably good series, right? Too bad they wasted so much of the first couple episodes going way over the top with constant bathhouse scenes and nudity edited by lens flares that they only did the bare minimum to establish the characters and their relationships to each other. Now without any emotional heat, the writing is trying to backtrack and do all of the work it was supposed to be doing instead of selling reams of censored boobs.

Plenty has happened since the first review. To put it simply, the Ouroboros lured the Progress girls with the greatest abilities on a wild goose chase. While they were doing that, the Ouroboros secretly dug under the Earth's island home base and captured all the alpha driver girls who are responsible for amplifying the abilities of the Progress girls and encased them in a special crystal immune to their powers. Not only does this stymie the power of the lower ranked girls, the crystal causes inverse negative energy to flow to the higher ranked girls, turning them evil and making them assist in the destruction of Earth and the alternate worlds that are constantly explained in the info-dump introduction that exists to cut a minute or two off the time they have to animate each episode. So the UC-ranked Progress girls must find some way to defeat their counterparts who have proven their abilities at wiping the floor with them or else all life will be obliterated.

Not bad, but you have to do the work to make it resonate. There are series that love their characters and live through them, and then there are series that live through their world building and the less tasteful selling points. Ange Vierge spends its first episode 90% in bathhouses with naked girls spouting how the Progress system works and how the ranking system operates. Where do you think it falls? Starting in the second episode, they try to bring it back around with Amane, the supposed idiot of alpha driver keeping the UC Progress girls down and lead Saya calls her out for it. Only Amane's not terrible. She's trying very hard at almost every open moment and it's her lack of connection to everyone that causes failures in battle. On the other hand, it is their lack of connection which is the only reason the worlds aren't collapsing in on themselves immediately.  In all of this, the only thing that's established more than the bare minimum is Amane's screw-ups. I suppose that puts one in the same mindset as the band of heroes who've only seen Amane through her failures on the job and not their own, but this is me bending over backwards to try to work their mindset out.

Once the main concept has been unfurled, the entire series seems to be some weird yuri pairing gone mad where they take one of the main party and pair them with their senpais who have turned evil, Amane, and eventually lead character Saya all at the same time. This subtext and text text is given plenty of time because the Ouroboros and their slaves seem to be in no great hurry to accomplish their ultimate task of ending the worlds. The evil Progress girls would get a whole lot more done if they tried to take all the planets' crystals at once with so few resources left to stop them, but they don't. One of them says it makes it more fun this way, which reeks of lazy writing. They'd much rather take baths because that's this series' kink. Evil or not, habits are habits, I guess. Why are the Ouroboros out to destroy the worlds, anyway? The evil Progress girls setup seems to excuse the main villains behind them from having any definition whatsoever. Oh, and there're weird comedy interludes where sisters from the military planet who've turned evil are trying to be good soldiers and failing, mostly due to the little sister having no idea how objects like grenades work despite being from a planet SOLELY DEVOTED TO THE MILITARY. They come out of nowhere and do nothing worth wasting two minutes.

The visits to the worlds so far are as one-note as you would expect from places that are based around singular themes. The planet of witches and vampires, Darkness Embrace, keeps its world crystal in a Dracula-esque castle surrounded by infinite midnight. The UC Progress girl Alma is a vampire with a witch hat who has to face her fear of drinking blood from others to increase her power as one of her few traits while squaring off against her senpai Sofina. She also thinks back to the times she spent with Amane. Guess where they spent the most time together? I'll give you two hints: You're usually nude when you use it and it gets you clean. At least when they introduce angel Elel, they're clothed and it works in a much goofier manner with two people who don't know how to be friends becoming friends. When issues are resolved, Alma becomes VERY attached to Saya, or at least her blood.

Everything else is average average average. Animation... meh. The music has nice qualities but is ultimately forgettable.The action is fairly decent but will remind you of many other better things. The characters and worlds are shallow and only fleshed out enough to make the card game this is based off of work. There's a good series to be made out of it, but the creators have to bring their own imaginations to the plate, and there's very little of it to be found here. Whether it's the constant edited nudity used so much it loses its purpose, cliche writing, or lack of any meat to any part of the series, it's forgettable in the worst kind of way.

No Recommendation

Battery
David O'Neil

I feel like I should enjoy Battery more than I actually enjoy it. It's a show that's solidly executed in nearly ever area, but for whatever reason it just doesn't really click with me. There are a few reasons why I feel this may be, but in general something about the show just feels oddly mundane. Like it doesn't have the right amount of passion or heart to deliver these themes and ideas- that have been told by other shows before- in a way that feels fresh or engaging.

Part of it could just be the fact I'm not a fan of sports, and by extension sports anime. This isn't the first time I've gone into a sports show/manga like this that was competently executed, something I felt as if I should like, but simply couldn't get into it. After all, Battery is for the most part a well put together show. It's slow and low key, sure, but it manages to intersperse plenty of big, dramatic moments, and smaller moments of character building as well, to keep it from ever getting boring. It also has effective visuals, with animation that's just good enough to make big moments feel more emotionally involving, and a meticulous attention to detail in terms of its visual storytelling. Yet, I always ended up forcing myself to watch each new episode, not because I wanted to but because I had to. Something about the way the show approaches its emotional conflicts just feels too calculated, too clean, too predictable. Especially in a show like this that's dealing with pretty basic sports-based ideas (learning to consider teamwork/other's feelings, the dissonance between dreams and reality) I feel like it needs more bite to make these emotional moments pay off, but Battery's presentation consistently comes off as very monotone, even distant. I do have some trouble explaining why, especially since its purely based on my own emotional reaction to what is a well constructed narrative, but essentially I feel while the show is carefully following the beats of the main two character's development, it lacks any of the tact or heart to do more than the bare minimum.

It also didn't help that I found it impossible to care about one of those main characters, Harada to be more specific. It's clear that the show is supposed to be about him becoming less of a self-centered jerk, but he's so terrible all the time I couldn't give less of a damn if he ever got there. Even six episodes in I feel like he's so stubborn he hasn't learned anything at all. Overall, Battery is a well put together show that fans of this sort of laid back sports anime will probably enjoy, even though I found myself unable to become invested in the show's cold attitude towards its drama and characters.

Solid Recommendation, dropped at episode six

B-Project
Andrew Lepselter


Cheer Boys!!
Jonathan Kaharl

As Cheer Boys continues, the more unlucky it gets as it can't escape how much it follows the Love Live formula, which has now been trounced by the successor series this season. Cheer Boys picked the worst possible time to get aired, because it is just so endlessly similar to Sunshine, which blows it out of the water. But that doesn't mean it's a bad show by any measure. It's one of the more enjoyable follow your dream dramaties I've seen in awhile. It's got a cast of colorful and likable characters, the conflicts are well built and don't feel forced, and there's a lot of solid jokes. Unfortunately, it has some production issues and much more half-hazard writing compared to the tighter Love Live Sunshine.

Haru and Kazu remain the hearts of the show, and do a great job there. I love that Kazu is very serious about his passion and wants to improve the team with a good coach and leadership, and Haru's arc in overcoming his fears and learning to be more aggressive is a refreshing thing to see from a show like this. Passive guys like him tend to remain passive in a lot of similar works, so directly confronting that and going beyond self-improvement for his personal goal is an interesting approach. Mizoguchi also remains hilarious and weird, a near perfect comedic relief used just the right amount. The main cast are all strong, especially the practice leader Sho, a former cheerleader with his own personal issues. The newest members of the team, however, don't really have much of a place in the dynamic yet beyond some solid gags. The ballerina kid is the closest to working, but his feminine personality and constant gay crushing on Kazu being his defining traits fail to make him feel like a character. The Chinese kids shadowing the group is also kind of racist. I have no idea why here's here other than to give the native audience a chance to laugh at those silly Chinese people. Because racial stereotypes are hilarious!

I also can't stress enough how bad the production has been hit. Repeating animation pops up a lot, and it's clear they didn't have the time to really animate all the cheerleading scenes properly. There's no real visual flair here, making the show feel very flat most of the time. That only makes it feel even weaker compared to some of the other shows who were hit by similar problems and handled them far better (mainly Orange). The writing saves the series in a lot of ways, but it's lacking a lot of polish and a really effective core element to the story. The character arcs are good, but there's not really a unifying theme explored or emphasized well. It's a fun series, but also very forgettable, and I don't see that changing. It gives you a smile, but it fades pretty fast. I want to recommend it more than I currently am ...but I can't. There's just so much better doing the same stuff this season.

Weak Recommendation

DAYS
Megan "Queenira" Z

In many ways I find it very hard to describe what makes Days so damn likable and enjoyable. Out of all the shows I’m watching for summer seasonal work this one has been one of the easiest to just sit down and watch. While in no way am I a football/soccer fan in real life I feel like the true heart of this series doesn’t lie in the game play or the explanation but rather in a sweet tale of human nature and the will to keep going. There lives a sense of sweetness and kindness to days even in the moments of heartbreak and tension and yet at the same time the series doesn’t pull punches emotionally.

The tone and expectations set in Days are clear and bright just like the animation. Sure there are moments of horrid CGI and lack luster still shots but Madhouse keeps pulling their weight but again the true winner in the stable house has to be the writing team.

Each episode has a clear cut path and theme and with their guidance each episode is like a gem. Are there times where the characters calling Tsukushi every combination of slow and dumb gets old? Yes. There’s a ton. However each time he proves to show he’s the heart and soul of the team.

And the drama in Days is some of the best I’ve seen in a sports anime. While shows like Haikyu and Kuroko’s Basketball had small moments such as Hinata and Kageyama’s spat and the Teiko arc for each series it’s this one that can balance and integrate teaching about the game of football. Moments such as the team selection and repairing cleats amp this up but they all seem to cement a running goal; Tsukushi’s childishness and sweetness will bring the best out of not only Seiseki as a team but even Tsukushi himself.

Yet the best character to be introduced is team manager Ubukata. She’s a given gift to the show in her outright hate of Tsukushi and his straightforwardness. However the episode centered on her was the best one so far and makes me wish that she was kind of the lead of the show. While I do really love how Days is written her view would be just as awesome. Overall I will watch Days for more days to come.

Strong Recommendation 

First Love Monster
Megan "Queenira" Z

In the nicest words: FUCK. THIS. ANIME. For the love of god I knew this was going to get more painful but dear lord I didn’t think it was gonna be this painful. If there is some biting social commentary in this series it is lost behind piles of creepy bullshit and dick jokes. If this is a series about love being love regardless of an age gap it is lost in the translation, dubbed or subbed, to an English audience. Hell I’m not surprised if it’s lost on its original audience as well.

The only major shake ups in the show are that Shinohara throws his hand into the ring to be a love interest for Kaho, Kaz falls for Shinohara’s poems, we learn suddenly growing hot may be a family trait for Kanade’s family, someone keeps stealing Shugo’s undies and Kanade and Kaho break up. You would think the last thing in this is a major bomb shell but it actually causes some of the creepiest moments of the show.

Kaho gets actively jealous of a fifth grader and at one point gets dragged away by a cop. Which we have found the only sensible human in this show. But in all honesty I question most of the people in this damn anime. They treat this all like some big game, just like fifth graders do. It’s honest to god unsettling and creepy. And there’s honestly no point for me to continue for me. While this show has its moments of outright hilarity (which mostly comes in episode fours introduction of the psycho Maifuyu) it’s not enough to outweigh the outright creepy.

The only semi-redeeming thing is the hints at what Kanade is like this. Having lost his mom there are hints his crush on Kaho may be from an Oedipus complex, mostly used by the abusive Taiga as teasing, that Kanadae claims is how he learns to love by acting on his feelings. While the drama from this could be good we lose it to jokes a high schooler and a fifth grader may be fucking and another oddly baritone’d fifth grader catching a hula-hoop with his ass.

And Funimation's decision to broadcast dub this is all the more strange and they play it straight. This would have been an amazing gag dub in the vein of Shin-Chan and Ghost Stories. Of course there are moments peppered in thanks to a mysterious writer. Also this dub is far too good for the series it’s attached too.

Overall if there’s a social commentary to this show it’s lost. I will admit this show may be about love in all its forms but the dick jokes and poop loose it. I also feel like you need to change genders and then do nothing there’s no point. The social commentary isn’t there if you’re doing the same things what you’re trying to critique are. The bite is all bark and that’s all this show is; creepy, pedophilia barking bull shit.

NO Recommendation, dropped at episode six

Handa-kun
Andrew Lepselter


Hitorinoshita – The Outcast
Thom "Tama" Langley

I said this when I gave my initial views of this show, and it bears repeating...Hitorinoshita is...surprisingly watchable, and with half the series now aired, I'm getting a better idea of the point of this rather odd, somewhat ungainly, decidedly perverted, shlocky wonderful mess of a show. And it's pretty much this: The universe hates Chulan, Chulan is the big important Mr MacGuffin who will alter the world of the titular Outsiders (or Outcasts as I'm pretty sure they're meant to be called), and everyone either wants Chulan dead or...just wants him. Yuuuup. What does this mean? He knows super-magical-kung fu! His grandfather (the subject of Episode 1's adventures in dark cemeteries) was kinda a big deal and the target of the nefarious (if somewhat incompotent Zensei), and it's nice to actually see him alive, teaching his grandson how to control his powers. Which leads to some uncomfortablness as the older sister of the Zensei duo decides to tell Grandpappy's exactly how powerful she's sure he was in life; and here's my only big issue (surprisingly) with the series so far-like many horror series/films/anime/etc, it's very very keen on dumping as big a dollop of good ol' tits and ass on top of itself as it can muster-chief culprit being Natsuka, whose outsider/magical powers pretty much attract men to her, although the hapless  Kenken's seduction of Chulan is equally eyebrow raising. Still, it basically only adds to the series' slightly sleazy B-Movie stylings.

So, what has our hapless hero been up to in the intervening episodes? Uh...mostly being Baobao's slave/servant and having various women either try and murder him or screw him.  Did I mention I liked Baobao (or Hoho or whatever Crunchy have elected to call her)? I really really like Baobao. In a show where everyone else seems entirely clueless (even the villains are somewhat inept at actually doing anything, she's a breath of practical fresh air, who kicks a lot of ass. In fact, much as with my first look at this series, alongside Baobao, the fights are the best thing about Hitorinoshita, whilst its supposed hero is pretty much lugged around and traded like a pog; in the space of four episodes, he's beaten and loses his clothes to Baobao, captured by Kenken and rescued by Baobao, promptly forced to join the organisation that she works for and then kidnapped again by a group of Outsiders and their Pokémon-looking-sorta-thing. Throw in some tits and ass, eastern mysticism and a healthy dollop of kickass girls, and this show continues to be a trashy, inessential but fun watch.
Needs more Baobao tho.

Weak Recommendation

Hybrid X Heart Magias Academy Ataraxia
Jonathan Kaharl

No.

Don't watch this show ever, even for mild curiosity or the desire to see something hilariously bad. If Hybrid X Heart had come out a few months earlier, I would have slapped it onto my worst ever seen list in the top fucking five. it is horrifically awful. Even for bad smut shows, this is incredibly terrible. This show makes me equally bored, angry, and disgusted, all at the exact same time. It has awful light novel author self-wank writing, the vile sexual politics of your average hentai, and an artistic style that can only be defined as a mess of colors and shapes that have no purpose or thought put behind them. This show manages to offend on a constant basis and without rest.

Even if you like garbage ecchi shows, you shouldn't have to subject yourself to this. Anything is better than this in that field.

Since last time, the show has dumped some surprisingly dark back story involving the main character's mom outright murdering innocent girls in human experimentation, implied the white haired lead heroine was apart of some gangbang ritual before being emotionally abused by that evil mother I mentioned to turn her into he ultimate weapon against her former kingdom, introduced a new human society controlling all those generic tech monsters, and also revealed that the main character's powers basically restore the life energy of those he fondles because their powers drain it. Also he can now copy their powers because if the main male lead doesn't show how manly and strong he is, the misogynistic audience will have a shit fit. Near every sex scene shown has been atrocious, outside one BDSM session that sort of worked kind of, but now this has gotten grosser and more ridiculous. See, the big sister character, who leads the school, has commissioned a portable holodeck for the main character and the heroines so they can bone in it by creating erotic scenarios so they can better fight bad guys.

Oh, and that violent tsundere? She has a tragic back story where she failed to save civilians and has PTSD but her PTSD is healed by the main character feeling her up.

I'm not making a joke. That's her character arc.

The only gay characters presented are villains working for the evil other civilization, meaning they probably won't get to be gay by the end of this series because you just know all the gay is going to be fondled out of them. The animation is remained embarrassing on all levels, with some of the worst action scenes I have ever seen in my entire life. There are all these flashy, ridiculous powers, and not a damn one leaves any impact. There's also a bizarre amount of effort in censoring this show with distracting borders made of complex robot parts that cover naughty parts in still frames, all while the rest of the scene is animated properly. It's actually worse than glaring lights or silly censor images.

Nothing about this show is in any way salvageable. About the only thing that kind of works on any level is the design of one of the villains, a blonde, tan woman in a white uniform, but her character is so forgettable otherwise that it hardly matters. This show is an abomination I can't even get ironic enjoyment out of. It is truly one of the worst anime ever produced.

Never. Never. Never. Never watch this.

IT'S TIME TO STOP, dropped at episode seven

Love Live! Sunshine!!
Jonathan Kaharl

To the surprise of no one, Love Live Sunshine is still really, really good. It's damn formulaic, though. With the main trio of Chika, You (who would be a favorite if not for this show having three Nico characters), and Riko established, the series moved onto gathering the first years and talking about what the deal with the third years is. And the first years ...my god. I was worried there was going to be at least one lame character here, and I was expecting it to be Ruby or Hana. Ruby is just adorable, while Hana is one of those three Nico-like characters I mentioned. She turns out to be a sheltered loon that goes nuts over the most simplistic technology, even to the point where a flashback shows her happily declaring that she's living in the future while under a hand dryer at full blast. And need I even explain Yohane? She was a delight in her few scenes in the first three episodes, and she's only gotten better since, as it turns out she's unable to control her inner dweeb and commonly walks around in gothic lolita fashion and makes public declarations about dark magic rituals. The best part is that she actually has a complex about this, and her character arc deals with her overcoming her insecurities and being happy as her own weird self.

The third years, on the other hand, are so beautifully melodramatic. I've seen their scenes described like Mari getting Kanan and Dia back together for one last job, while every single scene between them is sparking with emotional wreckage and sexual tension in the most amusing, overdone fashion. Their back story in the most recent episode is handled really well, and it fits back into the conflict the other six are going through. All the pieces are set up to bring Aqorus together as a full unit, now it just comes down to getting Kanan to confront her trauma.

The beats of the story here are really predictable, down to the introduction of St. Snow, whom can only be described as dark idols (and they are just the best thing). But it hardly matters much because of how well the show sells it all. It's a very in the moment thing, using the simple concept and a lot of thick imagery, scripting and acting to sell what the characters are feeling. That works wonders for just about every mood of the show, from the great lively comedy (I cannot praise the seiyus' energy enough) to the self-indulgent drama. It never gets too heavy outside the performance in episode three, but it's constantly entertaining.

At its core, though, the main theme of doing what you want to do for yourself remains strong, despite cramming in the unmissed save the school story (which, amusingly, is barely even validated by the main six). It's not so much a follow your dreams show, but more a show about doing what makes you happy and putting your all into it, and that's a significantly more useful and healthy message. This show just makes me so, so happy from start to finish, and I implore you to at least give it a chance, even if you don't think it's your thing. Give it three episodes, you may just find something special.

Strong Recommendation

Mob Psycho 100
David O'Neil

Mob Psycho 100 got off to a good start with a fun, intriguing first episode but one that left me with restrained expectations. While it had excellent animation and a solid sense of humor, it did have a set-up very familiar to fans of its spiritual predecessor One Punch Man, featuring only hints of further character conflicts and themes to come. As a result I was left unsure whether it'd really have the strong underlying themes that made One Punch Man more than just a goofy action comedy. To say it accomplished that would be a gross understatement. Mob Psycho 100 has far surpassed One Punch Man in nearly every respect, and completely set itself apart in terms of its approach to exploring its characters, in everything from its writing to its visuals.

Mob Psycho 100 is a coming of age story in pretty much the purest form of the word. It's about high school, puberty, isolation, talent, family pressures, social pressures, mob mentality, and the dangerous, often uncontrollable nature of pent up emotions. Every episode after the second has had an emotional crux at the center that drives the characters beyond just comedy and action, but exploring the themes of the show and how each character, especially Mob, fits into it. Episode three gives us our first in-depth look at Mob, and how his fear of hurting other people or being hated by them, has caused him to isolate himself from people bottle up his emotions until they burst in a wild storm of self-hatred. After that Mob faces a rival that represents the pure opposite of himself, someone who utilizes their psychic powers for popularity and acknowledgment of his peers, even if it means hurting others with said psychic powers. What results isn't just a cool looking fight (and it is a cool looking fight) but also a battle deeply intertwined with each character's ideals, as they both contradict and mirror each other. And after that, we learn more about Mob's brother, and how despite his popularity and academic success he sees himself as useless, because he was born without the natural psychic abilities of his brother, resenting the abilities that he believes make Mob a better person than himself.

I know it doesn't seem like I'm even reviewing this show as much as reciting its conflicts but each episode is just a fascinating whirlwind of plot points that I want to touch on them all. At times the show almost shifts from comedy/action to something more akin to horror in its portrayal how scary high school, finding yourself, and growing up can be. The fact it manages to accomplish such a heavy, dramatic tone in some places while still managing to stay consistently light hearted and funny is a goddamn miracle. The characters are brilliantly fleshed out, the themes are powerful, and it's visuals are top tier in every aspect from the action, to the comedy, to the visual storytelling. It feels like an evolution of ONE's style in nearly every respect, and excels at nearly everything it sets out to accomplish. So far, I consider it a must-watch for pretty much anyone.

Strong Recommendation

momokuri
Thom "Tama" Langley

Sweet gods, this series is cute. If cute was weaponised, this series would be a veritable arms dealer of cuteness. And yet, despite barely changing their formula of cute, largely non-connected vignettes of the daily life of cute boy (Momo) and adoring slightly older lover (Kuri), as well as their respective friends, this sweet little series seems to have got even better; quite possibly because Kuri now has a rival (of sorts) in the tall but awkward Rio, who thinks that potatoes are SERIOUS BUSINESS among other things, and that a girl who doesn't know differing potatoes is an unsuitable match. In a lesser series, Rio would be one dimensional, a mere cypher for Kuri to overcome, but here, she's an equally sweet, well fleshed out character, and an excellent adversary of sorts for Kuri. So, what have Momo and Kuri been up to in the intervening weeks...?

Well,, in Episode 5 and 6, Kuri's finally reached a milestone in her pictures of Momo, (a mighty 200), the duo have to deal with exams, (and slowly, some-what awkwardly making progress in their shyness with each other), whilst Momo and Rio cross each other's paths for the first time. And completely weirds Rio out. Episode 7 and 8 meanwhile, has the group visiting a local botanical garden, Rio continues to find the smaller Momo very cute, angst about her own height, whilst Momo has done well in exams. Strangely, Kuri seems to be avoiding Momo, who walks home on his own, reminiscing about the memories of the place and noting how different they are without her. This scene in particular is pathos driven, and reminds you that, after all, Momo and Kuro are in different years; of course, Kuri and Rio seem to be plotting something...lewd. Finally, Momo and Kuri seems to get closer, and share a heart to heart. Episode 9 and 10 takes us to that most beloved of anime wlocations, the beach, where Kuri angsts over her swimsuit whilst Kuri's friend seems to wonder what Rio is like. We're then introduced to  various other characters, whilst Momo and Kuri go off to find bubbles and waterpistols whilst two of their friends enjoy each others' company. There's a touching scene with the duo blowing bubbles, which float across Rio's vision. Sadly, their plan to swim is spoilt by the fact they need to eat. The group promptly doze for a bit, Kuri promptly shows MMomo her swimsuit, embarresses the hell out of him, but, hey, it's cute! Next, to that other great staoke of anime, the summer festival, and Momo is lost! Oh no! And without cellphone signal! OH NO! Previously, though, they'd been having a great time, enjoying yakisoba and the sights of the festival, and Momo begins to worry that he'll feel more like a friend than a boyfriend. Back to the present and he's shanghai'd by a trio of older girls, and then rescued by Rio. Meanwhile, Kuri is herself panicking, whilst Rio and co help Momo to search for her-it seems that Rio chan may be more understanding of Kuri than she lets on, but eventually they're reunited-but, Momo trips and both Rio and Kuri save him. Finally. Momo seems to be having issues about being cute...and he's ill!

In short, MomoKuri does what so many romance and so many shoujo shows have failed to do; show a relationship, particularly among two relatively young people, progressing, the little trips and issues and worries of both of them-the deepening of their relationship and their increased confidence with each other. Not only does it remain cute, it's got cuter, the writing better, and Momo and Kuri remain perhaps this season's best couple! Too cute in places for words.

Strong Recommendation

The Morose Mononokean
Thom "Tama" Langley

Oh dear. To be honest, with its weak visuals, paper-thin characters and generally being a poor man's budget equivalent of a series now lolloping happily into a fifth season (Natsume's Book Of Friends, in case that comparison wasn't blindingly obvious), this series was head of the queue for the drop. And to be honest...it deserves it. Mononokean is almost...impressively unoriginal. The yokai look like rejects from better shows (think Noragami meets the less inspiring creations of Pokémon or Yokai Watch), the dynamic between the hapless Hanae and the abusive, lazy Abeno is straight out of CLAMP's xxxHOLIC, and the plot rattles around in the shell of each episode like a brick in a washing machine. So, as we gently remove the fingers of this series from the cliff edge of covered series, and give it a cheery wave as it plummets into obscurity, probably to be bargain-basemented at your local DVD store care of the redoutable MVM, what does the second episode add to the series?

Uh.

Nothing. With Abeno being in Hanae's class, and his master, he dispatches him to go get lunch. Unfortunately, he runs into a girl affected by Yokai. Removing it from her leg, he promptly gains the attention of said yokai, and turns to Hanae's aid. After hiding in the room of "Yokai Can't Get Us Here", they promptly seek to remove them from the school, but run into trouble when the head of the (rather large) yokai pack, (who basically acts as the mouthpiece of the group) promptly reveals Abeno is...A YOKAI. DUN. DUN ...duh.

Or maybe not. Instead the yokai pack want to be sent to the Underworld, and happily flop through the doors of the underworld, leaving their boss to go last. Unfortunately, he's now too fixed to the world of humans, and can't be cured. We get a poorly shoehorned in moral, Abeno pulls something out of his ass, and saves the yokai chief, albeit painfully for him. And loudly. And perhaps too screamy. Anyway, the child yokai are here to get him, and off they go to the afterlife.

There is nothing to recommend this series. It's instantly forgettable, it's plotted slowly and boringly, its heroes are two of the most boring characters in modern anime, and it's blander than syrofoam-flavoured rice-cakes.; the origin of the majority of its ideas are clear, almost slavishly copied. It doesn't need to exist, and to be entirely blunt, why bother watching this when Natsume's Book of Friends is back for another season in the next few months, and Noragami is still ongoing?

No Recommendation, dropped at episode two

NEW GAME!
Joe Straatmann

The all-women shipping has certainly taken over. They do make attempts to keep the concept of game designing within close range of the rear-view mirror. However, one can't deny the focus is mostly on this band of women and how they have adorable relationships with each other. And you know what? New Game! doesn't have to be Shirobako. It strikes the same pleasant chord Doga Kobo's Mikagura School Suite did in providing a friendly experience that bathes in the pleasantness of these nice people having a good time together.

Aoba has moved into building 3D character models for the upcoming game, and she is being trained by her supervisor Kou to not accept good enough as a standard. What she isn't being taught is how her work is leaving a ton of programming errors, which programmer Umiko strictly points out (And then worries she was too harsh about later). Deadlines are coming up, so the work is increasing enough for Aoba to stay overnight in her bear sleeping bag with feet to walk around in. Really, the bear sleeping bag is more of a focus than much of the conflict. In fact, an episode title called "Like... the Release is Canceled?" only has a short conversation about the possibility of the game not being released. Their rush to deadline has to be the kindest, gentlest deadline I've ever seen. Aoba's bosses could start talking like Lumbergh in Office Space and she'd think the prospect of losing her entire weekend would sound neat.

With these series that are mostly about women with emphasis on cute interactions, the one request I have is at least have them work towards a goal. The concept of them being game designers working on their next big title has them covered so everybody doesn't feel like they're constantly pushing their broad character traits over and over to diminishing returns. Not to mention they resemble humans and not anime waifu prototypes. There's a little subplot where Aoba goes to a children's magical transforming girl movie and many of the adults also went to movie with various levels of shame. They're adorable, but it doesn't lose sight of the fact that they are adults and they have responsibilities.

As a series of all women planted square in the middle of anime sensibilities, there is shoujo ai subtext, and it's not laid on too thick. At first, it seems like they're creating pairs out of work relationships. Aoba paired with the first work buddy to her help Hifumi and tomboy Hajime with the host of the tea parties at work Yun. Now, it seems like everybody wants to like main character Aoba in their own way you can take too far in your non-canon work if you so choose. Her supervisor Kou as the mentor, her friend who's still in high school Nene, and so on. They seem to really like and care about her in nurturing ways that suggests a deeper bond. It's not distracting, but you can see the series trying to work a separate, more otaku-baiting level. As long as that's not the only level, I'm good.

New Game!'s only gigantic flaw is it came after THE defining women working in a nerdy field show.  It's very light and the episodes sometimes unexpectedly veer off from the main story into some plotlets like the gang visit the doctor's office, but it's a friend you haven't talked to in years randomly sending you a compliment level of nice. These characters are fun, I like hanging out with them every week, and there's a moderately large cast with some decent depth to them. If you're like the rest of the Internet who has already watched this week's episode and screencapped EVERYTHING before I get to it, you already know, but this a fun ride with good people when taken on its own terms.

Solid Recommendation

orange
Jonathan Kaharl

Well, I can safely say this show is good. And sad. Very sad. It's hard to talk about this one, because in order for me to do so, I have to dance around spoilers, but also give a warning to anyone dealing with suicidal thoughts or people dealing with said thoughts, because this show dives right into that subject matter and does not hold back. Orange is a really melodramatic show in a lot of ways, but it's not Key inspired trash either. What sets it apart is just how human it can be in its thoughts, themes, and character arcs, despite it falling into familiar territory and tropes for these sorts of dramas.

For those who missed the first review, the hook of this series is that main girl Naho gets a letter from her future self highlighting her major regrets, especially one that will lead to the death of her new friend Kakeru. She aims to correct them, which is a solid if formulaic start. But these last five episodes decided to get real, tackling some subjects very maturely. Naho has issues actually acting or being assertive because of general teenage awkwardness, raising observations that when even armed with information that changes one's standing in a situation, emotion plays a huge role in how one acts. It's easy to look back, but not act within the moment. Suwa, one of the guy friends, also has to deal with trying to do the right thing and nurture the love between Naho and Kakeru when it's clear that the two have feelings for each other, choosing the happiness for the people he loves over hurting them for his own desires. There's a lot of payoff for both arcs, but then Kakeru's steps in and hits like a truck, painting all the future scenes in a new light as his friends meet up again and say their goodbyes to him. Without going into too much detail, Kakeru is horribly depressed (hinted by his not completely sincere smiles), and Naho has to break down his emotional defenses to try and have any chance of helping him.

Despite production issues in later episodes, the show still does its damnedest to look as good as it can, employing different animation techniques to keep the atmosphere of those first two episodes. This show simply looks wonderful on all fronts, and it's beautifully acted and given a moving score. Where it falters is some of the more trite dramatic elements. There's a bully character Kakeru dates that feels completely inhuman, despite her very human qualities. Her importance in the story is so minimal beyond showing steps in the cast's development here and there, making her hollowness stick out in a bad way. I'm also not wild about how the last episode ended. While it's a gut punch of a moment, it is simplifying a very delicate issue for the sake of story flow, and I think that hurts what it's trying to do a little. But these are minor gripes in an otherwise spectacular show. There are few dramas out there that have gotten to me like this one.

Strong Recommendation

Qualidea Code
David O'Neil

I'm not sure if it's fair to say Qualidea Code exceeded my expectations, because in all fairness, my expectations were pretty much zero. No, that may not be fair. Less then zero. Like, negative ten maybe. That may sound harsh, but the first episode of the show felt like a surefire recipe for twelve episodes of completely lifeless garbage, and by all means I expected it to remain as such. Yet, it ended up having more worth than I gave it credit for. Even if that worth still...wasn't all that much.

As I touched on last time, Qualidea Code sets up pretty much the most by-the-books, magic school Light-Novel-esque plotline imaginable. Humanity on the brink of extinction from generic mysterious evil beings, teenagers fighting back with generic superpowered weapons, said teens going to a generic magic high school, a generic super strong main character who's obsessed with protecting his sister, you get the picture. And yet, I did get some sort of odd enjoyment out of the show. I guess the main thing keeping me entertained was the characters, and the show's surprisingly effective sense of humor. Honestly I found myself laughing pretty consistently throughout each episode. It's not especially clever or anything, but it utilizes the characters differing personalities and how they play off each other quite well. The characters aren't just there to spout exposition (well, not always at least), they're constantly clashing, arguing, and conversing like normal people, and when the show stays on the lighter side of things, they're actually pretty fun to watch on a basic level. Most of the cast are inconsiderate assholes, but the show is aware of that, and most of the characters are aware of it as well. It does a good job performing the balancing act of having mean, stupid characters but having them be mean and stupid in a fun, likable fashion.

The show's attempts at drama however are less successful. Especially in more recent episodes the show has attempted to raise the stakes and be more serious (to an extent) with mixed results. The big twist at the end of episode four was horribly done, to the point I was laughing my ass off when I was clearly supposed to be shocked and emotionally effected. In addition, the aftermath felt strangely mild for what an actually big event it should have been for the characters. A subplot involving Maihime, the eccentric girls with pigtails and a big sword, was surprisingly decent. It explored the character taking on an excessive amount of work and emotional stress while trying to bury it all deep inside, and the climax did get to me a little. But still, it was a small success that was mostly surrounded by droning exposition, predictable character development, and foreshadowing with the subtlety of a shovel to the head. Add on how god awful the show is from a production perspective, from its painful soundtrack, to its stiff, messy animation, to one episode where they straight up clearly didn't finish the final attack of a fight scene in time so just had the screen get really bright for like twenty seconds over still frames. It had more value than I expected, but in the end not enough to want to stick with it.

Weak Recommendation, dropped at episode five

Regalia: The Three Sacred Stars
Andrew Lepselter


ReLIFE
Joe Straatmann

(NOTE: Since all 13 episodes of ReLIFE were available for streaming from the outset, I've spread out my viewing for seasonals. This will apply for episodes 5-8) 

There are two essential sides to ReLIFE, one I'm enjoying a whole bunch, and one I'm not really attached to. On one side, there's the school life aspect which is truly fulfilling the goal of examining the dynamics of high school  through older eyes. On the other, there's the side of the organization running this ReLife program seen through employee Ryo as he tries for his first successful rehab. Here there is an emotional wall between Ryo and his experiences, especially in a flashback with his first subject where we only get the know the person through the results. That, and the organization itself feels like it would only exist in an anime with outrageous amounts of resources spend into such limited results. The latter makes the experience a little uneven, but it's still strong enough in all other aspects to be a good series.

Most of the midsection focuses on the understanding, or lack thereof of the core characters as they try to deal with their issues and live with each other. Ultra-competitive Rena is starting to act out in anger of being out-matched on both academics and athletics, while the academic achiever Chizuru is not helping with her attempts at emoting and being friendly coming off unintentionally as demented sarcasm. As for the actual life rehabilitation subject Arata, he is still failing in his classwork while trying to sort out everyone else's mess with his extra ten years of life, as limited as it is. Unfortunately, he can't even relate with his study buddy An, as she not only passes the tests he couldn't, but turns out to be a handler-in-training with the same company Ryo's in (albeit she's far more free-spirited). This all comes back around to Rena and Honoka, her rival in sports who she respects and defends, yet also secretly hates a bit even though it hurts to admit.

The difficult part in discussing this series is what really works about it. The look is warm and inviting with a playful all keys soundtrack, and the comfort of an easy comedy perhaps makes it a cozy nest to explore some harsher issues. At one point, Arata's experience with trying to help a co-worker escape harassment to disastrous results parallels with the bullying of a student, and he's discussing what to do with Chizuru, and their conversation brings about how psychologically complex the matter is and how helpless they feel even with the best intentions and the will to act. On the other end of the class is Rena, whose jealousy has created a web of emotional dominos leading to her volleyball competitor Honoka. They are both the reason they are in volleyball and so good at it, but they are also the source of many of their sorrows (By the way, their practice sessions are some of the best animated sports I've seen in a non-sports series). Arata tries to keep on top of it, but everybody's real feelings are kept close to the vest and far from a solution, so what do you do? Don't get me wrong, this is very much a comedy, though thankfully the broader, groan-inducing bits have been cut down quite a bit. Yet there are very real problems-both adult and adolescent-at play and I appreciate a series where a pill magically turns you ten years younger is at least well tethered to reality apart from that.

The middle episodes do expand upon the company behind the pill and it seems as much like an artificial construct as the pill itself. The more I watched how they operate, the more questions I have. How can they afford to stay in business when they spend all this money and time on one person? Are they funded by the government? If they are, they seem to be wasting millions of yens on a handful of people.  I know, I know, it exists because you wouldn't have an anime without it. My nitpicky mind just finds it a little too large of an organization for how little it does. Also, Ryo seems to have a fake sense of hiding a deeply troubled past. Perhaps it wouldn't be problematic if they went in-depth into his last subject and why it failed other than the vaguest of details, but he seems to exist as some kind of secret time bomb waiting to give the experience one out-of-nowhere crisis.

We'll see if Ryo is going to drop a drama bomb next time. For now, ReLIFE is an enjoyable show with more than enough dramatic chops to keep it at a higher level than your usual high-concept anime.

Solid Recommendation

Rewrite
Joe Straatmann

This seems not so much like an adaptation of a Key visual novel, but spare parts of a Key product hastily assembled into a crude automaton with springs bouncing out of its head and bolts dropping with every step. It's not the worst thing associated with the Key brand, but it would be difficult to find anything more lazy. They couldn't decide between the pervy self-insert lead and the super nice self-insert lead, so they split the difference and have a complete non-entity for a main character. Super powers are matched up in a nonsensical manner with at least one having tragic implications (Because you can't have Key without forced, manipulative melodrama). At least there's focus unlike the scattershot introduction... sort of. The occult club has been formed and they are out solving cases trying to prove the supernatural is real with the series' ultimate goal of showcasing environmentalism. Man, even accurately describing the ironed out plotline comes off like a mad-libs creation.

For awhile, Rewrite acts like an unfrozen harem from maybe 2002. Self-insert Kotarou is investigating something that leads to the tragic backstories of the various women in the occult club he got entangled with in the first couples episodes and one of their butlers. This usually involves super powers that are completely unrelated to each other. In one story, Kotarou finds out the truth behind a cursed girl who can both shatter windows with her mind and destroy the life of anything she touches. Or Shizuru's ability to heal while also having the ability to make people forget her. How arbitrary these powers are in relationship to each other is nothing compared to the lead, who can just "rewrite" himself to get out of any damn situation he sees fit. Grazed by a girl with the touch of death? He just rewrites himself so it doesn't harm him anymore! Chased by gigantic wolves that come from an unknown portal?(!) He just makes himself stronger and faster. He can even summons green, two-feet wolverine claws in emergencies. Sure, let's allow him to do that. Why not? He has the potential for every other power stuffed in his ass.

That it feels completely dated is the least of its worries. Perhaps as a sign of desperation or maybe an effort to get to what the hell is going on, this series does what I call turning the Key. Key visual novels tend to go from a harem of variable to rabidly insane melodrama at the drop of a hat, and that moment is turning the Key. Here, we have the investigation of the occult turning up a polluted "rainbow" river with mutant creatures. Their reporter pal Inoue heads off to investigate it and disappears. Now, LIGHT SPOILERS, the occult club goes out to the woods to track her down, and then uncovers a metric ton of gigantic creatures, mutant and otherwise. It's revealed there's an organization called Gaia a couple of the girls in the club are with, and on the other end there are a couple girls who are superhuman Guardians working against Gaia. So all of Kotarou's harem is at war with each other and missing from school. Not to mention they rip gigantic plot holes into the narrative. Okay, so if you're the person involved in this mess and run the website of the occult club, why in the world would you not immediately moderate a post that directly leads to people investigating the weird things you're wrapped up in?

I feel like I can keep it short with this particular series. Rewrite is complete nonsense. What's worse is I don't think the makers buy into it, which is essential. They see it as, "Eh, dragon with 20-foot long tongue that sucks blood. Whatever. As long as the check clears." Yes, giving into insanity has made some of the worst anime in existence, but if you're going to be this bad, you might as well be infamous. This is simply professionals taking creaky and amateurish writing and animating it. Sure, some of the forest scenes have a very nice depth of shadow to them or some other nice scenery that isn't 3D CG. That doesn't change how much I can't buy the characters as their mix of quirky and tragic does not blend at all, making only bald attempts at emotional manipulation. The story is a disconnected mass of ideas that started with environmentalism and then drunkenly staggered around until it passed out in a public bathroom. Whether you love the Key brand or just want to see how the story crashes and burns, this has been really underwhelming.

No Recommendation

Scar-red Rider XechS
Jonathan Kaharl

You know, maybe some things just don't work as anime. I've seen amazing shows based on visual novels, but those shows tend to be based heavily in grounded settings, or have such fantastical settings or concepts that the visuals of the adapted work can go absolutely wild. But then you have the ridiculously titled Scar-red Rider XechS, a pretty boys sentai otome that has a lot of good ideas, but some of the most horrifically bad designs I have seen in a good while. Some of the best looking anime realize that simplicity is the key to making a striking scene, but the source material of this show was drenched in overly designed nonsense. It works there, because it's mostly still images and amazing illustrations. But once you animate it and don't have an animation powerhouse like A-game Ufotable on it, those designs are going to look god awful in motion. With the cheap production here, that's not surprising. But the poor handling of the material doesn't help.

At its heart, XechS is a story about the meaningless nature of war and the real impact it can have on those fighting it, along with how they're treated as pawns by those not directly involved in fighting. It has a really great twist introduced around the halfway point, plus some good moments of drama here and there. But the first episode is a baffling mess that doesn't even introduce the lead character until the end of the episode in the most bizarre way. It makes sense in hindsight, but an adaptation for an years old game should have the freedom to shuffle things around a bit to better flow with the new format. The episodic comedy doesn't work, and the character arcs aren't explored enough. There are a lot of great ideas for character here, especially the super serious team member actually being a shy dork, but it all feels very shallow. Once the ball drops, it's too little, too late, and nothing has any real impact beyond the initial shock that something is actually happening.

Also, all of the awful, awful world building. There are so many stupid nonsense words given as titles and definitions to very simple concepts. It's all such a confusing jumble of words that I honestly cannot remember any of it, and it leads to some truly pathetic lines of dialog where characters use these ridiculous names to describe what's happening. I was planning to be a bit nicer to this show because I can see some untapped potential from the source material still in there, but it's all handled so badly that I can't get into it. I mean, there's a huge massacre in the most recent episode, and they don't actually show anything besides some destroyed buildings. This is just such a boring, empty, confusing mess.

No Recommendation, dropped at episode seven

SERVAMP
Megan "Queenira" Z

I like to be wrong about things oddly. Servamp is one of these things. While certainly not one of the strongest series of the season it does serve to be honestly entertaining and strangely layered as a series. It’s not surprising as most fujoshi bate shows tend to have something more to them. Hell even Seraph of the End and Bunugo Stray Dogs had good story telling and visuals to go with them and Servamp has been gaining it slowly but surely.

Since episodes one and two a lot have happened. We’ve learned that Mahiru’s best friend Sakuya is actually a subclass of Tsubaki. Subclasses is our friendly neighborhood term for a human, at the brink of death, turned into a vampire by a Servamp.  Subclasses are also not allowed to disobey their masters and thus Sakuya will have forever follow Tsubaki for this and the fact Sakuya may see the melancholic servamp as something more than master. Episode four delves a lot into this and is well worth the watch. We also get some insight into Sakuya and Maihru’s relationship and its effects on memory. That is my heavy handed way of saying Sakuya has been messing with Maihru’s.

With this revelation we also learn that Sakuya has affected the memories of Maihru and their relationship. However now that he’s bound to Kuro his memories can no longer be affected.

This raises a lot of layered questions. Maihru’s memories seem to be a key to his character and especially the ones of his uncle. It’s unclear if he was even real at this point as we never see a face, as opposed the memories of his mother which we see made by Licht in episode six. I’d love for this to be explored more in the series and it seems as if the series will.

We’re also seeing development for Kuro as well. The lazy bag of bones and fluff seems to be more than Maihru’s sarcastic sidekick. Of course this proves to be near fatal in episodes six and seven. Kuro gets turned into a Kuro ball and can’t get out. We see that he and Maihru don’t always talk let alone see eye to eye and Mahiru wants to face this head on while Kuro is more than happy to run away from his problems. However in the fight with the Servamp of Greed and his Eve Licht we learn a bit more about how the Tsubaki problem came to a head and how Kuro’s fear of facing his problems stem from it.

The animation and music in those scenes were beautiful and honestly it caught me off guard. Of course the gag scene animation still bothers me but I can get over it. And honestly Servamp’s cast of characters is growing on me. They’re all fun from the coffin man child Tetsu and his haughty mini-pride servamp Hugh to Tsubaki’s old man artist subclass and Greed and Licht. The dub for the show is also hit and miss with odd choices like Chuck Huber for Kuro and amazing out of the box choices like Micah Solusod as Tsubaki. Over all I’d give Servamp a watch just because the long haul is looking like it will pay off if you’re into some semi-mindless shonen, fujo-bait fodder.

AND YES THE OPENING STILL SUCKS.

Solid Recommendation 

sweetness & lightning
Megan "Queenira" Z

If there’s one thing that Sweetness and Lightning makes me appreciate is what the fuck my poor parents went through in trying to feed my fatass as a child. Even though I could eat broccoli and stuff like a champ I too was once a fickle child. There’s even a story of how as a teen I broke a chair (by accident mind you) after my mother tricked me into eating lamb by saying it was a beef roast. But dear reader why I doubt you want to read any more about the life of a baby fujo but instead about the times of Tsumugi, Kohei and Kotori. Needless to say if I’m into Days for the story. I’m into Sweetness and Lightning for the characters and little moments.

And honestly this show is absolutely amazing at making me feel the warm and fuzzies while also making me feel honest to goodness dirty for how much of a shit lord of a child I must have been. In many ways I feel like this is a show that may as well be what I truly wanted out of a show like Usagi Drop. For as good as that show was, and still is in anime format to this day, it now seems like it lacks something that Sweetness and Lightning has in spades; amazing chemistry.

Much like cooking can be a science in itself so can writing a cast of believable characters and their interactions. The scenarios that Tsumugi, Kohei and Kotori go through can be extreme but there lies in them a sense of heart. From a small spat at a school that causes an angry five year old, to picky eaters and even what happens when you go out without dad’s permission everything feels in line with how the series is playing out. Unlike Tsukiuta’s blandness in its episodic nature its where Sweetness and Lightning thrives. It proves putting effort and not relying on a gimmick can bring out the best.

However I feel like my biggest fear may come true; Kohei and Kotori falling in love. While the show makes it feel natural that Kotori is falling into a motherly role for Tsumugi I am at least happy that they aren’t playing up this aspect. However Shinobu, her childhood friend and vegetable sales woman, does bring this up but it’s more framed as if these small moments with Kohei and Tsumugi are just what makes her happy. We also get some hints at this with Yagi saying “im in this position again” as if he’s a third wheel.

I also highly enjoy that we see in small moments Kohei isn’t totally over his wife’s death. I feel like this plays into how low key a potential paring between Kotori and he may play out as he does seem to see a lot of his wife in his tutor. Overall you seriously just need to be watching this. It’s the warm and fuzzy show you may need to plate cleanse out the other shit shows you’re forced to watch.

Strong Recommendation

Taboo-Tattoo
Andrew Lepselter

I feel I wasn’t completely fair to this show when I started it. I went into the show with the expectation that it would be a schlocky light novel adaptation with loads of magic and science, excessive fanservice and a self-insert protagonist who’s blander than stale bread. It was unfair of me to go into this show assuming those things and holding that bias towards it.

……….Is what I would say, if that kind of wasn’t EXACTLY what the show actually was. You know expect for it being a light novel, cause it’s…not?

Honestly when there’s a point where a character quite literally compares the absurdity of the main character’s clique scenario to being that of a light novel I almost think that this show KNOWS exactly what it is. Except instead of being clever or meta, it kind of just comfortably accepts what it is and decides it’s easier to comment on cliques rather than challenge them.

Okay, for positives I’ll give it this. The action sequences are kind of much more visually dynamic and choreographed than I would have expected for this kind of show. It’s interesting to look out, but like the majority of this show, not necessarily “good” to look at. See, while the camera work is dynamic and frequently moving around, the problem is the use of bad CG that doesn’t blend with the already ugly character designs and really weird lighting makes it a spectacle to watch, but not really a “treat” to watch either. It’s kind of the part where I feel this show is so jank it’s kind of fun during these action parts. It’s easily the most amusing and entertaining part of the show is the action fight scenes. Also there’s been some jokes here and there that are as dumb and absurd as everything else that managed to get a laugh. Personal favorite is the Japanese trend of making American/Westernized sounding names and boy oh boy will those never cease to entertain me. Bluesy Fluesy, Aryabahta, Brad Blackstone, Iltutmish, and my personal favorite, a character ACTUALLY, honest to god, named Colonel Sanders.

As for everything else, I can’t be so kind. As of this season, J.C. Staff is working on 4 different shows, and I can kind of feel it that this show definitely wasn’t a passion project by any means. Seriously, putting this show next to BOTH Food Wars and Amanchu, both shows which are absolutely gorgeous to look at and then you look at Taboo Tattoo….it’s really one of those “we were paid by the Light novel company to do this” kind of shows. Though it does work for the EDGE factor I guess. I really dislike shows that work hard to be edgy and violent that really only ever come off juvenile in their attempt to be adult. It reminds me an awful lot of Akame ga Kill, another try hard edgy anime that in the end only came across as being juvenile action. At least Akame ga Kill LOOKED good and had some fun characters I liked. This one kind of lacks in both of those areas, and just has a whole bunch more yuri fanservice / groping scenes. I’m honestly kind of fascinated to see how bad this one gets as it’s made me laugh and entertained me with how weird or bad it got, but outside of that it just isn’t great by any means.

Weak Recommendation

Tales of Zestiria the X
Joe Straatmann

Well, I was going to talk about how the series was doing well to avoid the pitfalls of Tales games by continuously switching points of view to other characters besides the typically bland RPG cliche of a lead character. I mean, a whole TWO EPISODES on this dark character Velvet Crowe, completely fleshing out her backstory while allowing us to feel her struggle! Stupid me, these two episodes were a commercial for the just-released-in-Japan Tales of Berseria. I know, I should probably play the games even though I'm completely backlogged on Tales titles all the way back to being only 3/4ths of the way through Vesperia. In my defense, maybe they shouldn't start the episodes by PUTTING UP THE TALES OF ZESTIRIA THE X LOGO!

So, um, how's the beginning of Tales of Berseria? It has a surprisingly refreshing concept for a Tales story. The main character is Velvet, a Daemoneater who has been forced into an island maze of, well, Daemons by the priestly rulers of this world, living a horrid existence to make the Exorcist soldiers look like they're doing a swell job. A Mallak named Seras takes pity on her and busts her out of prison. Her ultimate goal is revenge on the leader of priests, Artorius Collbrande, who got his power by sacrificing someone dear to Velvet. It's very much an anti-hero setup, though still with Tales trimming. Unlike Zestiria, which ufotable had time to polish, the flaws of the franchise are more front-and-center here. The dialogue has that calling card of hack writing where proper nouns, titles, and events are awkwardly hammered into exchanges to make establishing people and places easy. ufotable also wears its shortcomings on its sleeve with bad 3DCG all over the pace. The second episode airs all of these flaws out and throws in awkwardly introducing the comic relief to boot. All that said, it seems decent enough.We'll see how this turns out in game form next year! Or 3-4 years when the game's on sale for me.

Oh yes, the actual series I'm reviewing. Like I said, there is a whole lot of polish put into this one with more thought with how the elements should be arranged. Sorey is the legendary hero the Shepard who pulls the sword protected by Ladylake to take on the Malevolence in the world and it has all of the blandness associated with mashup of fantasy hodgepodge. He does has a best friend in Mikleo as a Seraphim nobody else can see and they have reasonably good repartee with Alisha, the princess knight who ufotable secretly knows should be the main character and they give her an enhanced role as a result. Also, the style over substance can be a fairly persuasive argument when a title looks as gorgeous as this. The way rain rolls off the windows in a storm, the little indentations in masonry, the way layers of clouds swirl move around each other, it's all fantastic. The battle in which Sorey discovers he can wield Ladylake's sword is wonderfully fluid and painstakingly well done. As I've said before, it might be the best Tales adaptation even if it contains all of the franchise's flaws.

Solid Recommendation

This Art Club Has A Problem!
David O'Neil

This Art Club Has a Problem has continued to effectively adapt the original gag comedy manga about as well as one would expect, which I suppose you could say is both its strength and its weakness. The show is still quite good, I still enjoy the show, and I intend to keep on watching the show, but similar to studio Feel's last big show (Dagashi Kashi) it really does border on being consistent to a fault. At the least, it certainly makes the show more difficult to talk about when not much has changed since its first episode.

This Art Club Has a Problem is at its core a gag comedy, and like most gag comedies it follows a pretty basic structure. Introduce more characters every couple of episodes to mix things up, but for the most part stick to the status quo while finding new ways to utilize each character's unique personalities for new and inventive gags. And the show has continued to do just that. Each new character introduction has been a lot of fun, from the eccentric Colette, to the easily flustered rookie teacher Tachibana. Each new character adds a lot to the comedy, which is still as strong as ever. Like with most gag comedies it can vary in terms of jokes with extended set ups. If a joke just doesn't work, some parts can drag on. But for the most part the show's humor has been on point. I've found myself laughing throughout most of these episodes, even in one's where I remembered the jokes from the manga source material. Perhaps it helps, in a way, that I was already a fan of the characters on account of me having read the manga, but still, I think the show has a strong enough sense of comedic timing and likable enough characters to pull the whole thing together.

It does make me somewhat disappointed though,  that the shows occasional forays into drama and romance haven't really succeeded at much. The show is directed by Kei Oikawa, who did an exceptional job taking both Outbreak Company and the second season of Romantic Comedy SNAFU and elevating their more dramatic moments to even more powerful heights. Unfortunately, This Art Club Has a Problem has provided much less to work with, being a pretty straightforward gag comedy, with only brief, occasional moments where examples of Oikawa's craftsmanship shines through. As a whole though, This Art Club Has a Problem is mostly just a well executed comedy series, with lots of cute moments, strong visuals, and a great sense of humor.

Solid Recommendation

Time Travel Girl
Andrew Lepselter


Tsukiuta: The Animation
Megan "Queenira" Z

Seriously. How the fuck do you make a damn idol show boring as shit. This show is like the paint drying on the walls of idol shows. You know I can get behind episodic adventures of characters. I mean for fucks sakes I enjoy the shit out of Mushishi. However there is no development of these characters outside of their days in the sun.

However there is a nice little sense of heart of the series that every other damn idol show has done better than Tsukiuta ever has.

I also dislike that this show keeps alternating from group to group each episode. This show, though the idea will come off as rater formulaic, should have been a rivalry between the two groups of Six Gravi and Procellarum. There’s no true sense of any animosity between them. It’s all sunshine and rainbows minus one off little moments that provide insight to each special snowflake of a boys personal problems.

And what’s worse is that I couldn’t give two shits about half of these guys. Heck even the episode delving into Kai’s past wasn’t compelling. Heck the most entertaining episode wasn’t the island ones or the haunted house it was the one about the anime store. That episode worked because it was about the fans and people who help the idols more than the idols themselves. Look if you want an idol anime with cute boys again hold out for the next damn installment of Utapri. Until them you’d be better off watching paint dry with said Utapri soundtrack  playing in the back.

Weak Recommendation, dropped at episode six

Shorts

Banayan
Andrew Lepselter


The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.
Joe Straatmann

It always feels like self-aware series are hedging some bets.  It gives the aura of intelligence above the material, and it's a decent cover for any flaws. It's SUPPOSED to be stupid because it underlines the dumb parts of what it's poking fun at. There's a certain smugness about Saiki K. where Saiki knowing he's in an anime and constantly talking to the audience gets annoying, but at least it understands the characters that are most entertaining are the ones that aren't in on the joke. The guy who thinks he's in a way too complicated shounen action drama still delivers the goods as well as the sweet shoujo lead girl. The episodes are the perfect length for the material as well, but the number of episodes and their frequent releases brings it down a bit. As of writing, there are 35 episodes out in the time frame normal anime scheduling has 6 or 7. This gives more than enough time for the material to wear thin since its comedy is based around a world that is entirely made up of anime tropes. The twentieth time the, "GO FOR IT!" super inspirational sports character completely loses his mind over a simple task ensures that the joke has run its course, and that course is the Great Wall of China. It's okay, but it's not as good as thinks it is.

Weak Recommendation

The Highschool Life of a Fudanshi
Thom "Tama" Langley

Three and a half minutes is an awfully long time to not be funny, but hell, this show tries, and tries hard. To be honest, I'm rather glad that this show ISN'T more than three and a half minutes or this inexorable mess of a series would have gotten the boot about five minutes into Episode 2. Because it's not funny.

At all.

It has precisely one joke and it is this:

"I like watching guy on guy, but I'm not gay."

And it repeats this ad naseum throughout every single episode in about three forms.

A) Hey look, the activity my schoolmates, (who, being real people are not merely my amusement but hey, if we opened every can of worms this series presents to us we'd be knee-deep in de-canned and rather confused worns) is doing could be regarded as homoerotic! What larks! Let me ship them together like a pubescent teenage girl on her JohnLock/DeanCas/DoctorRory themed tumblr! Oh, by the way I'm not gay.

B) Boy, isn't going into places that sell BL weird? For I am a man, and being a man, it is unusual form me to buy things that are female coded! Like fairy cakes, washing up liquid and Barbara Streissand CDs. It's not like I could use the internet to buy these things, save myself what little embarressment interacting with people who may be surprised (by the way, I've never come across a retailer that's batted an eyelid at my BL purchases, but there you go) at my purchase. Oh, by the way, I'm not gay.

C) Whoa, isn't this pairing/this circle/this series cool! Oh boy, aren't fujoshi weird for liking the same stuff I do but in different ways? Oh boy, aren't people on the internet odd? Oh by the way, despite liking what at points is pretty blatant gay porn in its more extreme forms...I'm not gay.

Fuck. This. Series. It's not funny, it's pretty painfully paced, especially for the three and a bit minute timeslot, and it wears out its single, cringe-inducing, unfunny concept in about two episodes. There's nothing here for normal anime fans, and BL fans will find only the sort of satire that reminds one a little too much of The Big Bang Theory, only worse. Awful, stilted crap. Avoid at all costs.

No Recommendation

Mahou Shoujo? Naria Girls
Jonathan Kaharl

Why does this exist. Why does this show exist. There's no way this is being televised. At least, I hope so. This show is exhibit A in why only professional comedians should be allowed to attempt improv. if anyone else tries, it's just embarrassing and depressing for everyone involved. Well, maybe not everyone. The actors are clearly having a lot of fun. But they aren't funny in any way. This Miku Miku Dance animated trash just gets more and more numbing the more I watch. The idea of jokes here include making weird noises or talking about boobs. The entire joke is "LOL RANDUMB XDXDXD," like a twelve year old Tumblr user's blog got an anime adaptation. It's terrible and nobody should have to sit through it.

How did this show happen. Who's watching it besides me? One of the most recent episodes on Crunchyroll only had 14 votes in its rating. This means at least 14 other people on this planet are aware that this exists and are watching it for some unknown reason. Why are they doing this. Is it for review, like me? Or are they actually enjoying this? How miserable does your life have to be that some Japanese women going on a tangent about how weird the word for "Picture" in Japanese is becomes entertainment?

The possible audience for this show is far more interesting than the show itself.

No Recommendation

Ozmafia!!
Megan "Queenira" Z

Again why am I watching this? I think the show sums it up with Bercy’s introduction. He asks if I remember him and I barely remember what the flying fuck this is about since I last touched it for seasonals. The Diabolik Lovers look ripoffs are back and I have one question…WHERE THE FLYING FUCK IS DOROTHY? According to the damn Crunchyroll description a girl named Fuuka, who contently has zero memory so can you pair her with your fetish male of choice, is supposed to be our lead. However we have Scarlett here who is clearly NOT Fuuka. And then I watched the ending theme where a red head is coloring these fetish boys.

THIS SHORT IS LITERALLY HER FUCKING FEVER DREAMS.

You know what this girl needs a real kick in the ass in the story telling department. There some sort of attack in the show but it’s rather meaningless because I give zero fucks if these little shits die. Also they turn into their Wizard of Oz forms when they use their powers. I’m honestly half confused and half wishing this chick had a better imagination. Seriously just go watch a better show.

No Recommendation 

Show by Rock!! Short!!
David O'Neil

Show By Rock Short is pretty transparent in its intentions to draw in fans of the original show and get them excited for the new upcoming full season of the anime. But to be fair, at least for me, it is working. It is interesting, this shorts series almost makes me wonder if Show By Rock would be better suited for a short format series in the first place. I always thought the original Show By Rock had fun characters, and a good over-the-top sense of humor, but it was spread too thin and dragged on whenever its comedy wasn't the focus. Yet, in this short format, it's so brief and crammed together neither of those issues ever rear their head. Each episode is quick, funny, and felt as if it made the best use of its time possible. It is nice how well it retains the humor and the spirit of the original characters, making for plenty of entertaining moments. The second episode, which focused on the group Shingancrimsonz (objectively the best characters in the show) having a heated game of Ping Pong, has by far been the high point of the series, leaving me laughing my ass off from beginning to end. But as a whole, my feelings of this short series hasn't changed much. If you liked Show By Rock and its characters, you'll definitely have a blast with this.

Solid Recommendation

Second Opinions

91 Days

Joe: The head spins with all of these betrayals and loyalty switches! In a good way. The complications come naturally from the characters and circumstances, making it fully enthralling and genuinely entertaining. A lot of work has to be done for the main characters to be forced to turn to a legitimately insane man like Fango, but 91 Days does the work and it plays like one of those high-level cable dramas you have to dodge Facebook every time it's on to avoid spoilers. It's patient enough to craft a full fleshed out world, and also an array of twists, cliffhangers, and grandstanding moments delivered with a certain relish. It's familiar to anyone who's watched even a small smattering of gangster movies in case the logo didn't clue you in, but it's a new and vastly entertaining addition to a well explored genre while at the same time being a refreshing change to the average anime lineup. Seriously, watch this show! Strong Recommendation

Amanchu!

Joe: I like Aria better. Whether I should bring the baggage from a creator's previous work into their new universe that is doing something entirely different, I don't know. I just love Aria and that I only like this makes me feel like a spoil sport when it's one of the series that explodes on anitwitter. Look, Hikari is perfectly charming and Futaba is good foil for the yuri pairing. J.C. Staff puts together some occasionally beautiful moments. It just doesn't capture my imagination or my heart with diving buddies the same way gondola guides on Mars learning small lessons in life while weaving an intricate web of relationships within the beautifully terraformed planet. It's nice. It just doesn't quite meet the sky high expectations I had for it, whether they are fair or not. Also, did they REALLY wait until almost half a cour in a show about ocean diving to bring up a little tidbit about how one of the two leads can't swim? Solid Recommendation

Bananya

Joe: NYA! Strong Recommendation

Orange

Joe: No other series this season manages to live in the moment quite like Orange. I completely understand this is one of those deliberately paced things only I love that never quite catches on with general popularity. Hey, if I can't be me, who can I be? Even if the plot is moving in an expected direction for three episodes strings and takings its sweet time about it, it captures nearly perfectly the uncertainty of youth and the barriers we put around ourselves. It's a small series with a big heart, and I hope a larger audience at least gives it a chance. Strong Recommendation

Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 anime film from Isao Takahata. The 1st of his 5 films under the Studio Ghibli banner, and the 5th of his films in general, it’s often considered one of the greatest anti-war movies ever made. It holds a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.5/10 on IMDb. In spite of this, I remain divided on it. Why is that?


When I began my “What Works/What Doesn’t Work” series with Howl’s Moving Castle, I had this film in the back of my mind. I’ve been meaning to write about Grave of the Fireflies for Infinite Rainy Day for a long time, yet never had the right format. Now that it’s been long enough, I figured I’d finally try. Here goes.

As with my previoustwo pieces, there’ll be heavy spoilers. You’ve been warned.


Grave of the Fireflies has a lot going in its favour:

For one, the movie is stunning, even nearly 30 years later. Part of that comes from the late-Yoshifumi Kondō’s and Michiyo Yasuda’s realistic art-designs, as all of the backdrops feel directly out of a bleak, unhopeful war story. The colours are rough, the buildings are in various states of decay and the lighting evokes dread and unease. Even the character models give off a feeling of nostalgic remorse, being sickly, pale and at times even ghostly. It all fits the tone quite well.

The decision to have the movie told through Seita’s flashbacks also works in its favour. We see him die in the opening scene, reunite with his dead sister and then recount how the two of them got where they currently are. It adds to the inevitable pain that is the remainder, and, save a line or two, it’s all done without words. To convey Seita’s thoughts and feelings through images is one of the film’s real strengths. And given how this is based on a true story from one of Japan’s greatest novelists, it’s nice to see the author’s voice shine through without feeling overbearing.

The music is also really fitting. Michio Mamiya’s decision to use quieter, more subdued arrangements makes the film all the more harrowing. Even listening to the tracks separate from the film is enough to move even the stubbornest of individuals to tears, a testament to how powerful they are. Perhaps the biggest arrow to the heart is Amelita Galli-Curci’s “Home Sweet Home”, which plays right before Setsuko’s burial. The juxtaposition of seeing Setsuko’s ghost roaming around to such an optimistic tune is impossible to listen to without crying, and I’ve heard it many times.


Of course, the final scene melts the heart. Seita and Setsuko’s spirits are reunited in the opening scene, and the next hour-and-a-half shows how they died. So to see the ending after the constant sorrow? Well, it’s tragic, but also earned. Besides, the final scene begins with the cremation of a little girl! How that isn’t heartbreaking is beyond me!

I like the leads in this movie, and how they interact with the world around them. Seita and Setsuko have one of the best big-brother/little-sister dynamics in any film I’ve seen, even though the relationship’s doomed to fail. You see Seita’s stubbornness in his refusal to swallow his pride, yet he’s never overtly selfish. His actions are influenced by his upbringing, something you can sympathize with despite it not playing out well. And Setsuko is one of the cutest, most helpless 5 year-olds I’ve ever seen, which adds to the heartbreak of her demise.

Finally, Grave of the Fireflies is short. The common tendency with wartime dramas is to stretch the length out; after all, Schindler’s List is over 3 hours long, and that’s A-prime war drama material! But this movie condenses its tale to 89-minutes. That it has something compelling to say about war at all is neat, but that it does so in such a short period of time is another. I commend Takahata for pulling that off.

Anyway…

Not much, but it’s pretty glaring.

For one, the movie gives away its ending in its opening. Right when we see Seita die in the train station and be reunited with his dead sister, it’s pretty obvious what this is gonna be about. I understand why it was done like this, and on some level I respect the decision. But knowing that our hero doesn’t make it robs the film of suspense. I think it’d have been more effective and tragic to save the opening scene for the end of the film.

Speaking of which, the film takes its sweet time to arrive at its point. Remember how I said that Grave of the Fireflies was 89-minutes long? It feels a lot longer because of its pacing. It’s a criticism I have of Isao Takahata’s films generally, as even my favourite work of his, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, feels like it could’ve shaved off some of its run-time. I’m aware that anime films in general tend to be long and slow, but Takahata's body of work feels extra long and slow.

Perhaps that’s because the middle of the movie is about the search for food, which leads to my next issue. About 70% of Grave of the Fireflies is about the struggle to survive in wartime, and a constantly-running theme in that is the desire for Seita and Setsuko to feed themselves. This resurfaces many times throughout the film, to the point that it started getting tedious. I understand that food is scarce, movie! You don’t need to spend 89-minutes on that!

If the movie had cut 20 or so minutes of its runtime, much of which would involve taking out the redundant foraging and scrounging for scraps of food, maybe I’d have appreciated it more. There’s a great premise here, and while I don’t want to detract from it, as this was based on a true story, I still think the monotony of looking for food gets boring. Besides, not everything in real life makes for compelling storytelling. It’s okay to fabricate details for the sake of movie magic, audiences are more forgiving than you’d think. Anything to get away from the tediousness of food! (I can’t believe I’m actually saying that.)

Another aspect that really bugs me is the underlying subtext. According to Takahata himself, the film is a commentary on the 80’s generation and how much they took everything for granted. Japan’s economy was a bubble ready to burst then, and while the message might’ve been admirable, it comes off as really condescending in practice. Plus, it dates the film quite a bit.

Finally, and this is no fault of its own, the original dub from Central Park Media is iffy. It came out when dubbing wasn’t what it is today, so it’s forgivable in that regard, but for every good performance, (Veronica Taylor as the protagonist’s mother) there’s an equally okay performance (Amy Jones as the aunt) and a flat one (Rhoda Chrosite as Setsuko). I guess it’s not as bad as the newer dub, which I’ve heard is worse, but it brings down a lot of the dramatic weight.

I find myself feeling regret not being able to appreciate this movie more. On one hand, it’s brilliant, and it gets me whenever I watch it. On the other hand, the aforementioned flaws keep me from considering it a masterpiece. Given that I’ve watched it several times, I got it as a birthday gift from a friend in England, that it still hasn’t fully clicked is enough to make me wonder if it ever will. Maybe some day, but not now.

It’s interesting because I get confused looks and reactions from my Twitter Followers whenever I bring up my complaints. The most-bizarre one was when someone posted a .gif of Batman shaking his head in disappointment: why Batman? What does that even mean? And why do you care so much?

I’m really sure what else to say: is the movie “overrated”? Maybe, but that assumes that it didn’t do what I expected. It did, it simply didn’t exceed my expectations. Is it worthy of its praise? Ignoring its director’s true intentions, I guess so. It’s not like it can’t resonate with people, as it has. I simply wish the middle of the film was more interesting, and that it’d kept its opening reveal to the end. Perhaps then I’d have loved it.

But I digress. Grave of the Fireflies is a must-watch for anime and Studio Ghibli fans, containing all of the elements of a classic. It’s unpleasant and depressing, but not without due cause. And it’ll probably click with you more than it did for me. I simply think that Isao Takahata, whom I’m already cold on, has done better with The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk to you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Made me really angry because HOLY SHIT WHY THE FUCK ARE THESE ANIME SO BAD JESUS FUCK

Play time over, time to look at the ten worst fucking shows I have ever seen in my life so far. Holy shit who thought this garbage was okay. And I'm sorry GATE and Mahouka are not here I have not seen enough of them but yes they are the worst goddamn things.


I am convinced the early 2000s were the drunken haze years of the anime industry. Nobody had any idea what the fuck they were doing. OVAs were fading out, and full TV series were becoming more and more common. At the same time, there was a question of what the hot thing was, as EVA's influence was starting to wain a little and more shows tried to actively dismiss its influence (see Gaogaigar). The western licensing scene was even crazier, as the success of televised anime on western channels opened the flood gates for dubbing companies to try and find the next Dragonball Z or Pokemon. A big problem was that these companies rarely paid attention to what they were picking up. If it was popular, they would try throwing it at us, because nobody thought those weird anime things would be a big success before, yet Z-fighters and pocket monsters ruled the world. This was like the early PS2 era of anime, where everyone was throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticked.

Zatch Bell was one of the things that did not stick.

I cannot begin to describe to you how much this series sucked, and you can't blame it entirely on the hack job dubbing, because some of the original material was even worse. As annoying as Parco was in the English dub, at least he wasn't singing about tits, and we were also spared up-skirt shots of little boys. Manga creator Makoto Raiku tried making a successful shonen battle series and succeeded, but the guy's style was kind of the worst thing. His art exploded with ugly gonks for comedic effect, which is fine, except many of those gonks were major characters. Costume design was HORRIFIC, and it robbed some of the surprisingly dark story elements of any weight or power. There's some comedy to be had from a bunch of demon children acting like idiots with their human handlers, but it all gets very old, very fast. The series has so many groaner jokes that get repeated so often, and the dub script did not help matters. If you think Japanese puns are bad, you should see what the dubbing company had to replace them with. Yesh.

The only two characters worth a damn in the series, Sherry and Brago, can't even escape unscathed. Brago looks like a pedophile's BDSM fantasy mixed with an edgy DBZ fan character. Despite the awesome that is the well dressed badass Sherry, Brago is impossible to take seriously, despite his powers. Everyone else is just obnoxious, main duo of Zatch and Kiyo included. Kiyo is just all around generic, while Zatch rarely manages to grow as a character and remains a dumb child for most the run. A large part of the problem is the long episode count, which drags out simple stories to absurd lengths. Bleach, Naruto, and DBZ managed to get away with it to some extent (SOME) due to the strength of the characters, but Zatch Bell doesn't have that same quality.

The story is paper thin, the characters are annoying and I wish death on the majority of them, the entire style of the series is one of the ugliest atrocities I have bore witness to, and the comedy is about as funny as watching dolphins get cut open. Zatch Bell is the shonen battle equivalent of jangling keys in a baby's face, and I am shocked this anime ran for three goddamn years. Even for the early 2000s, this was inexcusable. FMA was airing at the same time, so I know incredible stuff could still be found. But Zatch Bell lasted for three goddamn years. This turd got multiple videogames, and Demon Detective Neuro couldn't even get to the Sicks arc. Fuck everything.

I was surprised just how much I loathed this piece of garbage. Samurai 7 is yet another stain on the “good” name of GONZO, a studio famous mainly for being the anime studio version of a game of dice. You never knew if you would win big or get stabbed in the knee by an enraged participant. GONZO is practically bi-polar, and Samurai 7's reception is similar. Some people like it, some people hate it. I definitely hate it. Oh, I hate it so, so much.

This is basically a weird fantasy and mech version of The Seven Samurai, and also stupid and bad and horrible. The recipe is there for a good series (and kudos on the quality dub work), but our two lead characters are selfish, awful idiots who don't actually grow as people, while the actually interesting samurai get cast to the wayside or get story development in exposition dumps, if any at all. What was with anime in the early 2000s and casting horrible, whiny shitheel kids as leads? Sure, they're relatable on some level, but there's a point where they become reprehensible, and that's almost the entire run of this show. Its ironic, because GONZO also adapted Linebarrels of Iron, a great series about a shitty kid who actually has a character arc where he realizes he's being the worst thing ever and aims to become a proper hero. But Shitheap here is so petty and obnoxious, with his main character trait being envy of the other samurai because he's so worthless. The fact that some of them die for his sorry ass only adds to my seething loathing.

The CG does not help. GONZO loves bad CG, and trying to combine CG mechs and normal sized, 2D sword fighters does not work. At all. What little action we get that's not snore inducing is horribly portrayed, and usually with the characters we don't actually get development for. The story is a mess plot wise and thematically, and by the time it was ending, I was just glad that soon I would be free of the anger this thing caused in me. It is simply astounding how such a brilliantly simple idea of Seven Samurai with mechs went wrong so, so fast. It's a real shame, especially with the lovely world and character designs. Still, you can only polish a turd so much.

I wonder how many of you even remember what Inuyasha is. Before the filler string of Naruto, before the arrancar arc of Bleach, there was Inuyasha. It was based on a manga by a manga legend, and it was genuinely one of the worst things that the western anime world has ever liked. Worse than Sword Art Online. Worse than Parasyte. Hell, worse than Naruto Hurricane Chronicles, and that series outright has gif animation and early 2000s CG in it. Inuyasha isn't just a cheaply produced production, it's a series that should have been mercy killed years before it ended.

Inuyasha started off good, amazingly enough. It followed a high school girl named Kagome traveling to Warring States Japan and searching for the shards of a sacred jewel that gave powers to demons. Along side her was the titular Inuyasha, a half-dog demon guy who was pinned to a tree for fifty years, scorned by someone he once loved. The series had drama, emotion, comedy, and great character dynamics, not to mention a very effective villain in Nuraku, a dirty schemer responsible for all the tragedies of the show.

Hey, remember how Aizen in Bleach started out as one of the coolest shonen villains ever and then became one of the most hated because he wouldn't fucking die? Nuraku is the 1.0 version of him. Inuyasha fell apart quickly because it just. Wouldn't. End. IT WOULD NOT END. Plot contrivances kept rearing their head to keep dead characters in the story, filler episodes were everywhere, and character development was practically a foreign concept after awhile. Worse yet, the production values dive bombed as the series just kept reusing the same animation over and over for Inuyasha's wind scar, a one shot kill move that wiped all tension out of every given conflict constantly. Everyone had exactly one move except Shippo, who contributed nothing because comedy. This series lasted ONE-HUNDERD SIXTY-SEVEN GODDAMN EPISODES AND THE VAST MAJORITY OF IT IS THE SAME STORY BEATS REPEATED OVER AND OVER AND OVER WITH THE SAME HANDFUL OF CHARACTERS OH DEAR GOD MAKE THE MEMORIES STOP WHY WON'T KIKIYO JUST DIE FOREVER ALREADY CALL A FUCKING EXERCIST

There are so many good ideas here, especially the wonderful Band of Seven and their surprisingly strong arc (if you can overlook the crossdressing member being a walking collection of every negative queer stereotype in the book), but the series desperately needed to stop at some point. It ended up a zombie that didn't even get to finish the manga's story until a second series years later everyone quickly forgot. They say brevity is the soul of wit, and that definitely applies here. Inuyasha's story makes Bleach's arrancar arc look like a masterpiece in pacing, and that arc was so drawn out that it cut the reader base nearly in half.

Like we could go through a bad anime list without the girl who brought us to prom. The Dragon Ball series will forever be apart of anime culture east and west for better or worse, and mostly for worse. That's not to say there isn't anything to like about the monster franchise. Au contraire, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z dominated the world because they latched into certain childhood obsessions and made some really entertaining stories in the process, despite their shows dragging on until the end of all things.

But at least we can all agree that GT is a steaming load!

Toei, lovers of money and crusher of all hopes and dreams, decided to keep the money machine working by fueling it with brand new Dragon Ball, despite having no manga to draw from. But that has never stopped a greedy company before, so they went ahead and made brand new episodes after DBZ with an age reversed Goku and a return to basics premise with a planet hopping concept to invoke the feel of the original series.

They failed miserably. They failed soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo bad you guys. So bad. The first few episodes of GT were so boring that Toonami decided not to air them at all so they could get to the more DBZ like stuff. And make no mistake, these episodes are boring. You can't just turn things back after Z's ridiculous spectacle, especially in the half-assed way they did with an old Dragon Ball bad guy wishing Goku was a kid with cursed dragonballs that never existed before now because money. There are some good ideas (that guy who turns people into dolls was creepy as hell, for example), but everything they tried ended up not working because two of the main trio for this series are now mostly associated with violent murders (TRUNKS CHOPPED FREIZA IN HALF WITH A SWORD, WHY IS HE SO NICE AND BLAND NOW).

But the DBZ stuff ended up being just as bad because Goku was depowered, so they had to make up a Super Sayian 4 to write themselves out of it …and it was lame. That form was the entire reason anyone cared about this series and it was the lamest thing, trading out god power for monkey power. Oh, watch out, Goku is really hairy now! Did not help every single villain but one of the dark dragons failed to inspire any sense of danger or power. Baby was a particular disappointment, promising to be a new type of bad guy with body possession powers and a genius intellect, but he proved to be one of the least threatening DB characters ever. And opening a gateway to hell? You realize how power levels in this series work, right? Vegeta could one shot almost every single one of those bad guys by himself.

Lame is really the best way to describe GT. It doesn't have the balls to take things further, trying to play it safe. But it plays it so safe that it fails to remember what made the original works so good and loved. There is no life here, and the few new ideas they do have are bad fanfiction fodder stuff. Not even Dragonball fanatics like GT, and they still love Dragon Ball Z! Think about that for a moment.

Yeah, I'm putting down a series of shorts on this list, fight me in real life and not online. The good thing about shorts is that they're short. Even if they're bad, they take such little time that you can easily forget them. At least, in theory. Bad knows no bounds or limits, just look at Military. This is an adaptation of a gag manga about anime girls who are tasked with protecting a kid who's dad ended up accidentally joining the army, and instead of making jokes based around the absurdity of soldiers hanging around a Japanese high school ala Full Metal Panic, the creator of the series decided to make “”””””””””””””””””””jokes””””””””””””””””””” about pedophilia, masochism, and boobies.

Military enrages me. I want this show to be scrubbed from the cultural landscape, and it sort of already is, but we really need to be perfectionists about this. There is nothing redeemable about this trash. It's nothing but a collection of gags so terrible that even Happy Madison would pass on them, and their last film was basically an MRA love letter. Want to see an older guy walk in on a little girl peeing while trying to avoid being murdered and not just explaining someone is trying to murder him but having the fuckboy freak out and creating an insane situation where it looks like he's trying to abduct her? No? Well fuck you! Want to see a grown man walked around and abused by a little girl because he loves pain and humiliation? I actually like masochism jokes and even I was disgusted. Oh, how about a running gag where a teenage boy sees something erotic, then blood explodes from his nose while he screams “PORNO” in engrish? It's just as tired and grating as it sounds.

Every gag is either gross and offensive, or not actually a joke, but just things happening. The absurd tech the girls take out never really have a joke to them, they're just big and weird and that's funny or something. It's not absurd enough to be comedic on its own, and in a medium exploding with ridiculous action shows and visual pun gag series, giant tank isn't going to cut it as a gag. The awful production values and weird coloring only make the series unpleasant to look at, and not just unpleasant for the writing. It's a pathetic mess that should have never been adapted, nor written and drawn as a comic in the first place. It's further proof that the more focused your interests become, the duller your art may end up. If you can't convey your love or humor to an audience not familiar with the subject matter, or even for the target audience, you've failed on a whole new level.

Are you ready for this real shit!? Because when it's time to talk about the real shit, there's only one studio you need to look at. Pierrot's little baby studio, ARMS, is infamous for producing some high grade fecal matter, which isn't surprising as they were a product of the OVA boom. Their primary reason for existence was to animate tittles and flying gore, which made things awkward when the OVA market started to weaken around the time they came about. Whoops. But they are responsible for some interesting video animation stuff, primarily giving the world the incredibly mixed but poorly treated Yasuomi Umetsu (someone please give this man another stupid action movie to direct). They're also the go to company for exploitative crap, like Queens Blade. However, you may notice that's not on here. No, there is much worse on ARMS' resume, even up into the modern day.

ISUCA is a manga adaptation made in 2015 that looks like it was made in 2001. It is shockingly cheap and phoned in, which is understandable because the material they had to work with was garbage, even by ARMS' standards. Remember, these people animated Queens Blade. This is worse than that. ISUCA's entire premise is dated, even by the time it started getting published in 2009. It's a generic evil demons pop up in modern Japan stuff, and most of it at a high school because of course they would. The main character is a spineless wuss with no actual characteristics, the main heroine is a horribly unlikable tsundere, her sister is a horribly unlikable creepy sex doll, there's an older woman acting as a parental figure and is any of this starting to sound familiar? Okay, the penguin is changed for the only good character of the show in cat girl Tama, but you get what I mean. This is pure uninspired early 2000s derivative cash-in trash filled with slap dash and soulless version of the EVA archetypes, but with added titty and gore.

But man, the series goes above and beyond in being creepy rape fetish sludge. The first episode has the heroine trapped by electricity that puts a fire in her pants, and not a literal one. And she's in her underwear the whole time. I've described that fucking scene many times, but it must be repeated. The entire show tries to use shock value from sexualized violence and ridiculous gore, but the awful animation and generic character designs suck that shock out before it can even happen. The 80s and 90s OVA boom didn't have to worry about TV censorship, they could go absolutely crazy, but ISUCA was stuck not being as gross and horrible as it could have been, which I would have defended because at least then maybe we'd get a monster that didn't look like a TMNT reject or the car from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That car eats people, by the by.

But god if this wasn't a bore. ARMS has a weird talent for making their worst shows a chore to sit through. After awhile, all the shock wears off and they just become empty and flaccid. Nothing, not even the worst elements, engage anymore, and ISUCA fits that to a tee. Despite introducing a villain who's entire personality can be summed up as sadistic blood lust, nothing of any interest or impact happens for the longest time, and the show just stops with a cliffhanger that will probably never get resolved, thankfully. This entire show's existence is a waste of everyone's time, including the people who made it. They could have been letting Umetsu do something besides work on credits! Seriously, someone please give this man another director job. I need more of his incredibly detailed action, even if it means more weird young girl and old guy romances. He should see a therapist about that. Galilei Donna could have been good with a second cour, damn it!

You know you've fucked up royally when you've done a worse job that Koichi Ohata, the man who directed M.D Geist, one of the worst anime ever produced. I mean, the guy directed the fucking Burst Angel series, and all his Ikki Tousen seasons are at least passable, smutty fun. But season one of this infamous high school titty fighter show was directed by Takashi Watanabe, known for Boogiepop Phantom, Slayers, and Kino's Journey movie. This man is not a bad director by any means, but as the years have rolled on, he's attached his name to some serious garbage. However, Ikki Tousen somehow sticks out as the worst for baffling reasons. As insane as it sounds, this adaptation of a bad ecchi manga actually disgraces the source material.

The first season of Ikki Tousen is why you know about Ikki Tousen. It is truly the worst abomination ARMS has ever shat out. It's somehow both boring and endlessly frustrating at the same time. I'm still not sure how something like this even happened, and how this wasn't the product of the man who made a series about a gay genocidal super soldier killing the entire world for no reason. That guy directed the “good” seasons. The premise of the show is that the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is happening in modern day Japan with high school students, but they're also all aware of it because they're reincarnations of those characters, meaning they should be able to NOT do the stupid and pointless war shit because why the fuck does it matter in modern day Japan and don't think about that and look at that naked anime titty. The show instantly falls apart from premise alone, but it gets so, so much worse.

Every character is either boring, despicable, or obnoxious. Lead girl Hakufu is basically girl Goku with a severe learning disability (like, she literally has the mindset of a four year old child, yet is still constantly sexualized), her cousin is a personality devoid guy character, true villain Saji is practically a rapist with a ridiculous obsession with using people as pawns for no discernible reason besides evil, Ryomou's entire time in the show is spent getting owned by other girls (way to waste your sadist character, guys!), Gakushu is just one of the worst characters in concept alone, there's a random final battle with a character who appears out of nowhere that doesn't have a reason to actually fight anyone, Hakufu's mom only exists for bad jokes and to confuse the only character who's not a monster (I simply call him “Basics guy” because he likes the basics, apparently), and I could go on and on. Toutaku sort of works like a cheesy villain, but having this crazy murderous kid express any sort of sexuality is weird and uncomfortable for everyone involved.

The plot makes absolutely no fucking sense due to the broken concept, but even with that ignored, character motivation is poorly explored, and there doesn't seem to be a real reason for these characters to fight anyone besides “but the ancestors did that!!!” The humor is so bad that it actually manages to numb my soul, and most of the dialog besides that is exposition hat undercuts what character development we do get because it spells everything out. It is necessary to make sense of the ridiculous political plot, but it's so contrived and needlessly complex that it just confuses even more, especially because most of these conflicts don't matter in this season at all, and get dropped in future season anyways so there can be more actual titty fighting. This war is so overly thought out that it makes Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle's political dealings look like point A to B stuff.

It's also shockingly cheap, even for ARMS. The animation is either poor, shown in still frames, or involves incredibly boring combat techniques that require almost no movement whatsoever. Ryomou's fights all revolve around her wrapping herself around someone and then just holding there for several minutes until they fall or she gets dunked on for the millionth time. And the music, oh dear god the horrible music. The opening is especially atrocious, one of the worst theme songs any show has ever had. It's a mixture of bad 90s pop production in an endless loop and some truly lifeless singing with a random rap chorus. Nothing about this show is engaging, with exception to one character who might have saved it on some level.

THE MISSING T HERE IS WHY YOU SHOULD ALWAYS SAVE A PSD FILE :[

I genuinely like Ryofu quite a bit. She's a bisexual schemer and badass in charge of her own sexuality, has a loving relationship with her girlfriend, and has one of the few designs that has some life to it (I also like Ryomou's maid attire ...which she rarely wears). There is the possibility for a strong character here, and she might be in the original manga with a story line based around a terminal illness and her and her girlfriend actually getting a meaningful end together.

In the anime, Ryofu's girlfriend is raped by two men and dies off screen.

Her lesbian girlfriend is raped and killed off screen.

Let me stress, this season did not have the involvement of the man who made MD Geist. The man who directed Boogiepop Phantom and Slayers, and a goddamn Kino's Journey movie, a film apart of one of the most thoughtful and moving anime franchises in existence, thought it was a good idea to change a tragic double suicide that would have at least had both characters keep their agency, and instead have a lesbian character die after being raped by men.

The rape happens in the manga too (it's by no means high art), but she doesn't fucking die from it. She still has a purpose and an ending to her story in the manga. But not here! And it leads to a confusing, pointless fight with Hakufu and the crazy kid bad guy because revenge, despite Hakufu not having anything to do with anything because she has the brain of a hamster. AND IF THAT WASN'T FUCKING ENOUGH, THE ANIME ADDS A SCENE WHERE RYOFU OUTRIGHT RAPES RYOMOU INSTEAD OF JUST COUPING A FEEL. LIKE, SHE LICKS HER FINGERS AFTER AND WE GET A SLOW PAN OF RYOMOU'S PARALYZED BODY COVERED IN SWEAT WITH HER PANTIES PULLED DOWN.

And the fucked up thing is that this fucking scene is the high point because it's one of the few parts that engaged me on any level. I despise this show. So much.

BUT GODDAMN IT THERE ARE THINGS EVEN MORE HATE WORTHY

Fractale is a goddamn insult. It was so bad that the person creating the manga adaptation publicly complained about how poor the material was. I've whined about this trash on Heavy Storms before, but I cannot stress enough the endless wells of hatred I have for this show. This is disgusting. This is vile. This is insulting. This is one of the worst sci-fi stories ever written. This belongs among the names of the worst of the worst in this medium. This is the fucking Atlas Shrugged of anime, and  don't mean in that it's Objectivist garbage, but that it's blunt propaganda based around ignorance, idiocy, and stereotyping people different from you. This thing is a borderline farce, but it actually believes the crap it spews. Hell, it even throws out motherfucking rape as back story, and makes it more about the guy attracted to the girl freaking out she's not a virgin.

I hate, hate, HATE this rancid, backwards, hateful, judgmental, egotistic, idiotic, misogynistic, preachy, well produced vomiting of xenophobia and anti-science. Fractale is a show about a twerp named Clain who's wrapped into a terrorist organization that's trying to free the world from the Fractale system, basically the super internet, and gains an AI partner free of the system while helping a girl he gets a crush on escape an evil technology cult that runs the world. What it's actually about is people whining that the internet sucks away all individuality and free will for eleven episodes and saying we should have stopped all technological advancement in the 30s or so because easy mass communication and access to all the world's vast collected knowledge will make everyone dumb puppets for a crazy religion that worships a satellite in the sky.

I think you can see where my hatred comes from.

Fractale's entire narrative is basically one long, smug baby boomer think-piece about those silly millennials, but with more murder and rape. It's also really shitty and justifying its supposed heroes. The rebels Clain joins with are supposed to be the more peaceful, lead humanity down the path with teaching guys, but one of the first things we see them do after the initial Ghibli comedy antics is slaughter a bunch of innocent people in the middle of a Fractale upgrade that leaves them completely defenseless. The bad guys we see later that blackmail a group of people into their army don't seem that much worse in comparison, so the series has to make them worse by having their villain use the Fractale system to properly lead an attack. Cause the internet is evil and that's what Fractale is and if you use it you are evil, who don't you silly kids eat your cereal or buy houses :)))))))).

The show is genuinely gorgeous, mind you. It's one of the most beautiful looking anime I have ever seen, and the JRPG like soundtrack is a great touch. Even scene direction is strong, and would have made the series salvageable if the script and politics weren't so vile. It also manages to fail as propaganda by actually raising good points on the contrary they never have an argument for, like one episode ending by revealing the bad guy of the week was crippled and could only live as a human being through the Fractale system. It never gets brought back up again. He was just bad because Fractale, I guess. How dare he want to have human contact and communication he was unable to have in the real world!

But then there's all the creepy misogynistic stuff. The show seems to be trying to have feminist themes based around criticizing objectification of women, but it's all so cartoonish and horrifying that it feels more like the writer was just a creeper. The cloning reveal and disposal of useless girls comes close to working, but its barely explored. There's a lot of hinting that all the women of the cult are rape victims, but its never explored, or they make that back story hinted as justification for them victimizing other girls, which could have been thoughtful commentary if it didn't have such bad writers. It reads more like a dark porn story than actual commentary or criticism. And then you hit our heroine's back story, where we have a creepy smiling fucker lick her face as he explains that he fucking raped her as a child, leading to her having a mental break and murdering the bastard while Clain has goddamn hallucinations based around the shocking revelation that the girl he love is used goods. He shows no actual attempt to understand or emphasize with her pain or trauma, it's instantly all about him loving someone who isn't a virgin.

This show just makes me hate, hate, hate, HATE. I hope everyone who write this show never works again (except Okada, she is forgiven as she always is). Nothing has ever made me so angry before, not even Hungry Joker or my number one. This show is truly, truly one of the worst stories we have ever produced as a species.

Okay, enough mad, time for some glad. It's time for the most spectacular mess of a show I have ever seen. Magical Warfare is an experience. If you haven't listened to our hour and a half episode of Heavy Storms on it, you should, because you can actually hear the point where I lose my sanity. Magical Warfare is a light novel adaptation, and the most baffling I have ever seen. This wasn't just a result of adapting a work that wasn't ready yet, there are so many bizarre decisions and events in this series that I'm not sure you can entirely blame the original work. This show is so bad that it wraps back around into good, and then bad again, and then it might have ended with Fry becoming his own grandfather. It's that special sort of train wreck you rarely see in the televised world outside game or reality shows.

Now stay with me here, because describing the plot of this show is like explaining quantum mechanics. So, there's this generic light novel protagonist named Takeshi, who lives in a house where his mom and brother stare at him with deep wells of anger. This is the first scene we see with him in the entire show, implying this happens to him every day.

You might want to get some booze, things only get worse from here.

After a bunch of wizard people try to murder him and the Rukia-ripoff of the show (short, support focused powers, obsessed with her big brother and pudding, incredibly awkward yet egotistic, ect), he gets taken to magic school after showing magic powers, which is good because him and his friends would probably be murdered otherwise. His best friends include an idiot shonen protagonist who looks like Gilgamesh, and a blond tsundere with shape-shifting and illusion powers that are completely useless, and her entire role in the show is to suffer from PTSD after an attempted rape in her childhood and to give Takeshi's brother Gekko a reason to be evil. Progressive!

The show ignores the characters actually learning magic or having cool fights between all the wizards in the ruined alternate timeline hellscape city the school is located in, instead having dumb story arcs about the Ghost Trailers. That's the name of the bad guys. I'm serious. They brainwashed not-Rukia's brother and now he's a violent murderer who gets one-shot by a guy who has no real magical training at all in the first major arc, and then gets beaten again after actually remember he can make giant ice castles and destroy buildings, and he's good again so whatever. Also, the good wizards aren't actually good and brainwash some minor villains (one I affectionately nicknamed “Taco”) and supposedly do this regularly to bolster their ranks ...but this was pointless for these minor villains because they just give them back in a failed hostage exchange. So they were mind raped for no reason at all. Their dickery also acts as the main motivation of the antagonist, but the “who's the REAL evil one” thing falls apart instantly because the Ghost Trailers do the same shit plus also mass genocide.

I have described the first half, which would only make this show an honorable mention at worst. It's the second half where things go completely mad. See, our main character has this magic sword that is also a girl because aren't magical anime swords always anime girls? Well, this magical sword fucks with him because she don't need no man no how and he has to fight her to get control of her. Remember this, it will be important later. Well, the magic anime girl sword waifu also has this power to give people visions of the future, and she basically spoils all the major events of the show, and also shows a scene where not-Rukia chases pudding while in her PJs and gets injured. The next day, she falls down the stairs to go get pudding.

A relatable character.

This future dream stuff is central to everything that happens from here. But we'll get there. Oh, we'll get there. First, the Ghost Trailers. They are dumb. Nothing they do makes sense. They want to win a war but never actually make significant progress or moves until their leader wakes up, they ask him what to do, and he basically goes “why the fuck are you guys not murdering the other guys what the fuck, I was in a coma and the murder stops, the fuck guys.” Paraphrased. But boy, when they decide to actually do something, they just SLAUGHTER the school, with minor characters murdered all over the place, including that perfectly nice person who accidentally triggered Takeshi's not girlfriend and never got a chance to apologize. Shit also reached the non-magic real world too, and we see people horrifically vaporized and buildings blown up. But we don't focus on that because we're focused on Takeshi and friends. AND OH MY.

OH MY.

DO WE FOCUS ON SOME STUFF THERE.

Not-Gilgamesh has his sister taken away by the good wizards to be apart of some sort of super secret magical training program, but doesn't care that much because everyone is dying horribly (so understandable). Not-Rukia gets nothing to do besides deliver a macguffin, sadly. But Takeshi and not-girlfriend?

*SQUEE* I FINALLY GET TO TALK ABOUT GEKKO

Takashi's brother Gekko is goddamn insane. He was accidentally thrown in front of a car and got a bum leg for it, and it happened while he was mad that Takeshi was dating not-girlfriend, whom he loved (the tragic irony being they were just pretending so men would leave her alone). So he's basically super mad he got cock-blocked and also pushed in front of a car. So he constantly stares daggers at Takeshi whenever he gets the chance, and wonders what he's doing when he's not around because nothing else but his hate matters to him. Okay.

The kid is basically a combination of Medaka Box's Kumagawa and Nic Cage in Deadfall. And it's incredible. The minute he shows up on screen, nothing else matters. He is an explosion just waiting to happen, and every character understands that instantly. Takeshi is on the edge of losing his shit whenever Gekko enters the room. That's justified. He joins the bad guys, gets OP speed powers, and proceeds to just DESTROY his brother. And it's so incredible. The laughter, the smugness, the lash outs. When he tries to kidnap not-girlfriend, he has officially stopped giving a shit as she's freaking out that the guy she loved is on the floor bleeding out. He's like a bored child trying to convince his friend to play tag with him. It's supposed to be terrifying but it's just hilarious. And the faces. THE FACES.

And then the series just loses its goddamn mind. Turns out the magic sword was owned by Takeshi's mom, she's known about the magic stuff and never told her kids, and thought this was a good idea because the sword showed that Gekko would become a crazy monster man. Except that only happened because she reacted to the dream ...WHICH IS WHY EVERY SINGLE VISION COMES TRUE (except for not-Rukia's pudding run, her love for pudding is a universal constant). Because the magic sword shows people a vision, they make it happen by reacting to the vision. Takeshi falls for the same shit too, getting a vision that Gekko kills their mom and he ends up fighting him. You'll never guess what happens.

During all this, not-girlfriend is kidnapped by the bad guys, she does nothing of importance, there's a fight with Taco that doesn't matter or add to the story in any way, and nothing is accomplished. It's not till round two with Gekko that everything finally gets spilled, and ...I don't even know where to begin.

I JUST

WHERE DO I START

Okay, so Gekko has the magic sword now, and it's implied he raped it because when we see it in girl form, it's visibly terrified and covered in chains. Meaning there is a canonical moment in this show where a crazy man makes a girl in a magic sword his BDSM slave. He brags about effectively NTRing his brother by taking said sword and making it do what he says.

A guy is NTR'ed by a magic sword girl and his brother.

It's only going to get crazier from here.

So, the two fight and all, and as that happens, a the principle we thought died appears and does something that seems to help the bad guy, and then we find out the bad guy has the same picture of the mom Takeshi has, meaning he actually IS Takeshi. That's simple enough to understand, maybe some sort of stable loop thing being set up. Except why would the other wizards help the guy leading the evil wizards???? Oh, and what does that spell do? She's setting up the conditions for Takeshi and Gekko to collide so hard that they travel back in time, Takeshi starts to freak out when he sees his young mom and the bad guy (BUT IF THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON WHY DID HE GO BACK TO A TIME WHERE HE IS STILL THERE, AND BY HIM I MEAN HIMSELF????) AND THEN GEKKO APPEARS, IS ALREADY FRIENDS WITH EVERYONE, AND IS ALL LIKE “OH HEY BRO HOW'S IT GOING” WHILE SMILING LIKE A SMUG SHITHEAD AND TAKESHI SERIOUSLY LOOKS LIKE HE'S GONE JUST AS MAD AS I AM

CUT TO CREDITS

HOLY SHIT

WHAT

HOW

WHY

OH GOD. MY BRAIN STILL HURTS JUST REMEMBER IT.

*cough*

Christ.

Magical Warfare.

Also the production was shit.

This show is why I never plan to ever let people decide what I review for a Christmas gift ever again. See, I once offered this service to someone in a Secret Santa exchange, and they decided I would review a twenty-six or so episode anime series called Shuffle.

If you've known me for awhile, then you knew this fucking show would probably be at top. Now, Fractale is offensive, idiotic, and endlessly rage inducing, Magical Warfare is a disaster of unimaginable proportions, and Ikki Tousen is somehow both equally boring and disgusting. But not a damn one of them comes close to the sheer bad that is Shuffle. Based on a visual novel “”””””””””””””inspired”””””””””””””” by the works of Key, Shuffle is a mixture of some of my least favorite things in anime. Magical bullshit tossed in for easy drama? Check. Every girl being an obnoxious cliché? Yup! Sexualized loli character? She also gets shirtless the most (kill me). Generic nice guy protagonist? Oh yeah. Terrible pervert sidekick? Yeah. Harem series? Yes. Never ending will they or won't they bullshit? THE ENTIRE FIRST HALF OF THE SERIES.

This show fucking broke me by the end. It actually surprised me too, because that second half is where all the story is stuffed, and it's a whole new type of bad. It's like they found a terrible Tenchi Myuo ripoff (or a terrible spinoff, knowing the “quality” of that franchise) and a terrible Key wannabe show, then decided to smoosh them together and get all the pathetic otaku money. The premise of Shuffle is that gods and demons exists and the future rulers of Heaven and Hell have both decided that they really want to jump the bones of a random mortal. Main character Rin has no discernible characteristics beyond “is nice” and gets a harem of girls after him, including Satan's girl Rina, God's daughter Sia, his childhood friends Kaede and Asa, and also a little girl named Rimu because anime is terrible. Hyjinks ensue for the first half of the series as everyone keeps trying to push the main character with one of the girls, they all try getting along at certain points, and we have an incredibly boring first half finish with teasing that Sia is going to win out but nothing comes from it because the creators of this anime wanted to prolong our suffering.

The first half seriously has some of the worst comedy I have ever seen in an anime. It's not because the jokes lack structure or are particularly offensive (though I am offended they keep fucking finding reasons to get the loli's shirt wet or to get her shirtless, not to mention how fucking creepy God and Satan are when it comes to pushing their daughters on the guy through sex appeal), it's that there is absolutely nothing funny in them. At all. At best, it's tired sitcom and harem comedy cliches, like the dumbass dad or the girl being bad at cooking. Cause women are usually only good for cooking! HAHAHAHAHA KILL ME. But at worst, there's not actually a joke to be found. Oh, there are elements of a joke, but the joke tends to get lost in a cheesecake moment or in utter confusion where nobody seemed to know why this scene even existed in the first place.

That first half is an endless switching between painful and boring, but it's the second half where the shit really hits the fan and paints the room in green and brown. See, because Shuffle was a visual novel with multiple female characters wanting to fuck the player character, there were routes for each character. Because the writers forgot to actually explore any of those routes in the first half (THAT FUCKING BEACH EPISODE WAS SO NECESSARY), the second half goes by each route, arc by arc. Except Rina's, who's gets mentioned at the end of the loli's because the writers needed room for the mother of all ending arcs. Which was probably the only good call they made through this entire production.

The loli's arc has sad science experiment bullshit, personality devoid Sia suddenly has a freakout with her second personality's aggressive attempts to get into the main character's pants that was never built up or even hinted at before, and Rina just has a sad realization of how she met the main character before and her own cloning blues that could have been one of the few good elements of the show IF THEY ACTUALLY EXPLORED IT. Really, this is all filler compared to the final arc which combines together the stories of Kaede and Asa.

This is where the show starts to come to life and sort of work. Asa is the only one of the girls the main character seems to have any chemistry with, mainly because the two have a significant history that's well established and explored. They even have dates and feel like a real couple. Her winning in the end was a smart move, because even the awful writers realized she was the only one of these people that was in any way an actual person and not a ball of Key magical bullshit.

Except for Kaede.

Oh yes, Kaede.

She is, without a doubt, the single best part of this entire trainwreck. And the worst.

Kaede appears in the first half to be a doormat that serves the main character, despite him finding it slightly creepy. She just seems to be a normal waifu archetype and nothing more.

Until you reach her arc in the second half.

Oh yes, Kaede's arc. Her arc.

Kaede is clinically insane. Like, she needs to desperately see a doctor. See, her mother died when she was young, as did the main character's parents. Through reasons too stupid to explain, MC took the blame for the accident that lead to this loss, and Kaede fucking snapped. She regularly tried to murder the guy, while both of them were still children (the fucking stairs scene you have no idea), and then eventually found out he lied. She felt so much grief that she snapped again in the complete opposite direction. She's a full blown, crazy as a juggalo yandere that gives Asa a fucking heart attack after completely losing her shit and threatens to murder her, and the faces the animators gave her are Higurashi levels of lunacy.

It actually gets worse, because her arc is realizing that MC won't love her, but she's going to keep loving him, even though she feels like she's not worthy of his love. Someone please take this girl to a doctor, she's making Yuno Gasai look ...well, not as crazy.

This story is an absolute mess. Kaede is treated as an actual character and not the hilarious joke she actually is. Up until all of this, she's just the boring, seemingly perfect girl that could easily be forgotten because of the erratic personalities around her, outside one or two creepy vibes. When she is focused on and given actual definition, it's so ridiculous that it feels more at home in a trashy manga about serial killers than an actual drama. It's at least a bad I can stomach, mind you.

But Asa's story is still going, and I had thought she'd be the one character free of magical or tragic bullshit.

I really should have known better.

She's a human/demon hybrid, as her mom is a cat person, and this somehow means she has too much magical bullshit in her body and it's killing her or something. Humans can't handle the magic bullshit or whatever, fuck you. So now we have this incredibly idiotic non-conflict where she needs to let out magical powers, but won't because of poorly explained guilt complex shoved in here out of nowhere, and her mom won't help because her mom is a goddamn idiot who thinks the MC has to solve it because she loves him more (?????????). They end up kissing after a big argument about absolutely nothing, this gets rid of her excess magical bullshit or something, and then they're an item while the angel girl suggests that he have a harem because you can do that in heaven OH MY GOD THE MORMONS WERE RIGHT.

I cannot accurately describe the hate I felt during this ending. It is so, so awful. It is built on a conflict that only exists because the characters refuse to act like people, and it pushes aside relationships the cast have to push the bullshit harem stuff some more because the conflict has to come back around to “ARE THEY GOING TO FUCK!?!?!?” As much as I rag on Key (and they fucking deserve it), they understand there are things more important than teenagers dating. This show does not. Air is a fucking trash pile, but that last arc could have worked in a completely different context because it tapped in so well into the connections of family. In most every Key show, I can at least point and see one good idea realized in some way.

But Shuffle is so up its own ass with harem shenanigans and cliched archetypes that it actually feels like it's too scared to do anything too human or relatable. The ideas at play aren't fantastical enough to be abstract or interesting just by their strangeness. People with multiple personalities exist. People with toxic ideas of love and hate exist. People suffering from incurable illness exist. The cloning thing doesn't, but the show actually runs scared from that concept and writes it off by skipping an entire major route. If you want the audience to give a shit, you need to look at these things in a more human way. You can't be afraid to challenge Kaede's damaging views of herself and those around her. You can't be afraid to explore the problems Sia's second personality causes her outside a single arc. You can't be afraid to really explore the strain Asa's condition has on not only her relationship with her friends, but with her deeply caring mother.

You can't be afraid to actually be human. To be real. To be meaningful. No matter how bullshit Key gets, they understand that you have to keep that emotional human core somewhere. Without it, absolutely nothing would work.

It's hard to give a shit when you decide development is stringing together a bunch of cliches, ten making the drama reliant on idiotic magical bullshit that feels like a slap to the face towards anyone capable of simple thought. Books can get away with abstract ideas for major conflicts because of the nature of that medium relying so heavily on abstraction, and the same goes for visual novels. But once you make an anime or film, those ideas need to be reworked so they're believable in this new context that relies on definition and form. Also, have actual fucking character moments and not tired a decade ago harem shenanigans. Put in some fucking effort.

There's so little to enjoy from this series, and what is enjoyable is ruined by gross, stupid endings. There's a good show buried in Shuffle, but by its very premise, it was doomed from the start of the project. That sure didn't stop the staff from going the extra mile to make some truly, truly legendary garbage.

Fuck this show, didn't even have the decency to remain entertaining by the end. How things could have been improved if Kaede just up and fucking murdered everyone.

Let’s talk “feminism”.


Assuming you haven’t decided to ignore this piece because of that sentence, I should note that feminism, like racism and Zionism, is one of the most frequently-maligned and least-understood “isms” out there. Feminists are shafted for being "greedy" and "dominating" by dude-bros who fear the desire for equality amongst the sexes will “ruin all that’s pure in this world”, when this isn’t the case at all. Feminists really want women to treated respectfully, yet this resistance has led to many straw-man representations in media. Feminists are so frequently written as jerks that need to be humbled by men that the few instances where they’re treated with respect is refreshing.


This leads me to Sailor Moon, a 1992 anime series based on the Manga by Naoko Takeuchi. I once wrote a piece on Infinite Rainy Day stating I’d never discuss this show because of how insanely long it is. I still hold the latter to be true, but I have to renege my words because Sailor Moon refuses to leave me alone. I frequently listen to its theme song, both dub and original, and I find myself stumbling upon clips of the show on YouTube when I’m bored. So while I refuse to openly review it, I guess it’s only fair to discuss what keeps attracting me.

Sailor Moon is about Usagi Tsukino, a diminutive, over-emotional 14 year-old with bad grades and a short-attention span. Usagi spots a cat being tormented by some boys one day on the way to school, which she helps out of the goodness of her heart. The cat then tracks her to her home and catches her while she’s sleeping, only to surprise her by being able to talk. The cat’s name is Luna, and she’s the messenger of a celestial goddess of whom Usagi’s believed to be the reincarnation. After an awkward exchange, Luna gives Usagi a magic pendant that transforms her into Sailor Moon, which she promises to use to fight evil.

From there, the show becomes a traditional action series. Usagi ends up teaming with several girls that also are bequeathed pendants and they become The Sailor Scouts, which adds an interesting dynamic akin to Sentai shows of the time. Sailor Moon became the girl’s Sentai series, with each of the main heroines, Usagi, Minako, Rei, Ami and Makoto, working together to fight baddies with their powers, all of which were based on planets in our solar system. But the show also focused on the mundane, everyday lives of these girls, showing them growing up, going to school, dealing with bad hair days, flirting with boys, going to the mall, playing video games and being teenagers.

I think that’s why the show resonated strongly with young girls, even with a butchered dub from DiC Entertainment. Far too often in entertainment, boys are given more attention than girls when it comes to character writing. They’re either the only ones getting development, or they’re getting more. Girls, in contrast, are relegated to the sidelines/secondary tiers, being damsels-in-distress, love interests or window dressing. It’s a shame because girls deserve their share of adventure, role models to look up and relate to, and they’re not getting that. So having a show that directly catered to them is a plus.

I’m not kidding when I say that Sailor Moon was a big hit with little girls. Similarly to how boys had Dragon Ball Z to keep them entertained after school, girls had Sailor Moon. I remember my next-door neighbours having two daughters, and whenever my younger brother and I went over the show was always on. They were obsessed, and while I didn’t quite get why at the time, in hindsight it makes sense. It was to anime what The Powerpuff Girls was to Western animation: a show that appealed to girls of all ages.

But time can be unkind to children’s entertainment, so the adult me initially wondered if Sailor Moon was based purely on the novelty factor of girls as main characters. It’s not like being a novelty hasn’t backfired before, I don’t think Toy Story holds up, so the expectation isn’t unreasonable. But Sailor Moon, the uncut version, actually does hold up. It’s not “fantastic”, it has its share of issues, but its timeless appeal is reliant upon three factors:

Firstly, the background characters are interesting. There’s a common trap many power fantasy stories fall into, being that the side characters are either window dressing, or downplayed to make the heroes look better. This is doubly the case for feminist empowerment, which relegates the men in the stories to idiots or cut-out stereotypes. It’s a shame because although many male-centric stories do this to women, it doesn’t make it right. If feminist tales are to endure, they have to show that they’re better than that.

Sailor Moon avoids this. Sure, the side-characters aren’t the focus, but they’re not window dressing. Usagi has a defined relationship with her mother and younger brother, as well as her best friend Naru. She also has a defined relationship with Mamoru, who’s equally as interesting as she is. And that’s the case all around with the scouts: each of them have clear connections to families and friends, all of whom are interesting and relatable. Like Digimon, the inhabitants of Sailor Moon are fully-realized.

Secondly, the show has believable drama. It’s, again, a common trope in fantasy to make the stakes silly and cheap for the sake of keeping the audience entertained. It’s a frequent issue even in many modern-day anime, and it’s lazy. Sailor Moon is guilty of it to an extent, see the episode revolving around Minako nursing her friends to health, but it also avoids it when the situation calls for it. There’s even a plot thread surrounding Naru and one of her kidnappers, Nephrite, developing romantic feelings for one another, culminating in one of the show’s most heartbreaking moments. This is the kind of investment you want from a power fantasy series, and Sailor Moon has plenty of it.

Finally, this is one of the earliest anime, let-alone cartoons/shows, to feature a lesbian couple. The original dub tried to awkwardly skirt around the subtext by making them “cousins”, but there’s no hiding that Haruka and Michiru are in a relationship. That the show treats this maturely means that Sailor Moon can also appeal to the LGBT community, which it did. Not only did the show help young girls embrace their identities, it also helped queer individuals. That’s something the West is only beginning to understand, making Sailor Moon years ahead of its time.

Of course, this isn’t to say the show is flawless, as it isn’t. Ignoring the cheap animation and goofy sound effects, Sailor Moon spans 200 episodes and 5 movies. The show also has mundane and obnoxious filler episodes, including the aforementioned one with Minako being a nurse. And, of course, the show keeps treating death in a such way that none of the scouts stay dead long enough to actually feel the weight of their loss. These annoyances, when imbued with the suggestive transformation scenes, make it hard to fully appreciate the show.

But I still respect it. Sailor Moon, like Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon and Digimon, paved the way for anime in North America. It also made a huge impact in Japan, allowing writer Kunihiko Ikuhara to spread his wings before working on Revolutionary Girl Utena in 1997. Overall, it holds up as a show for girls, something really needed in a male-centric medium. So while I might be unable to fully embrace it, I still have no problems recommending it…so long as you're aware that it’s 200 episodes and has 5 movies.

What in the ever-loving-

*Ahem*


A while back, I wrote about Aniplex of America yanking the Fullmetal Alchemist IP. I, fortunately, managed to secure a BD copy of Fullmetal Alchemist before it went permanently out of print, but for the longest time it’s bothered me that something so inherently linked with FUNimation Entertainment has received such terrible treatment. It didn’t make sense: Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood were FUNimation’s biggest money-makers outside of Dragon Ball Z. They were the reason so many people became anime fans in the West. They were what came to mind immediately when you thought of great Shonen outside of The Big Three. Why yank what was making big bucks?

Apparently, Henry Goto, the president of Aniplex of America, has finally given us the answer. Recently, an article on Anime Herald cropped-up containing snippets of an interview between staff writer Seth Burn and Goto on the current state of Aniplex. The details are…interesting, but there’s one part that rubs me, as well as many other people, the wrong way: Aniplex of America’s pricing models. To quote Goto directly:

“I don’t want to devalue the content.”

Wow…


He then informed Burn that if fans were so insistent on buying their products, they’ll pay the price. Which I guess is kinda true, seeing as many anime fans are collector junkies, but that doesn't excuse charging an arm and a leg for something as trivial as a TV show. Entertainment is meant to be consumed, yes, and good entertainment has no true price tag, but charging $12-14 for a single episode is pushing it. To put it in relative terms, Goto’s charging movie ticket prices for a 30-minute episode 12-26 times in a row. That’s not factoring in Shonen shows, which are double that at best.

I get it: Goto wants money. He feels that these shows are worth the asking price. He doesn’t want to suffer losses. He’s, essentially, being a businessman. On some level, I can respect that and sympathize.

That having been said, charging movie ticket prices for something that isn’t even a half-hour long is absurd. I’d argue that paying $12-14 for a movie ticket is absurd anyway, but movie theatres barely make money on the films they screen. I used to work at a theatre chain, and I remember how annoying it was to keep screenings available when a film wasn’t selling tickets. Employees have lives and families to feed, and given that theatre attendance has been dropping with PVR, instant-streaming and piracy, the mark-up has to come from somewhere. Also, a movie is an hour long in the best-case scenario, so at least you’re putting in a sizeable investment.

What Goto’s doing, however, is inflating the price of something for the sake of it. He’s pulling a Martin Shkreli, in other words. And yes, I know it’s not the same, Goto’s not overcharging for life-saving medications, but the concept of price gouging is similar. No show, not even a good one, is worth $12-14 per episode. You don’t buy shows in single episodes, you buy them in collections, half-seasons or full seasons.

But wait, it gets better! The interview goes on to bring up Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Yeah, that Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. According to the article:

“President Goto made it clear that Aniplex has had a shift in philosophy, and wants to bring their properties back home under their roof. He considers Fullmetal Alchemist to be one of Aniplex of America’s greatest successes. The fact that people thought of it as a Funimation product concerned him. Aniplex of America’s brand is very important to him, and Fullmetal Alchemist is one of the most important shows in Aniplex’s library.”

*Cue nerd rage*

This is arrogance at its finest. For one, Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, while technically Aniplex IPs, aren’t solely Goto’s. Ignoring that Hiromu Arakawa wrote the Manga from which both shows are based, there’s the staff at Studio BONES to thank. You also have to acknowledge the seiyuus for lending their voices to the shows, as well as the directors and composers for giving them their aesthetics. That’s not even factoring in localization in the West by FUNimation, which adds further complications via the talent involved. And, of course, there are the fans who routinely watch and buy the content.

Saying the Fullmetal Alchemist IP is one of Aniplex of America’s biggest successes is, therefore, being dishonest, especially if you’re trying to take full credit. Because it’s not. It’s more the success of FUNimation Entertainment, and ignoring that means neglecting those that helped make it so. Goto’s claiming full-ownership of something that’s not his. He’s pulling a George Lucas and treating this like his Star Wars, holding it for ransom, shafting those who helped him along the way and forcing fans to acquiesce. He’s being a real jerk, basically.

It also begs the question of why Aniplex of America pulled the license from circulation, especially given its popularity. If he wanted to raise the prices of the boxsets, frustrating as that may be, I could understand. If he wanted to make the shows only available on Aniplex’s website, again, frustrating as that may be, I could understand. But yanking the properties altogether? I know it’s within his legal grounds, but it’s really stupid and nasty. Especially when it’s such a big cash cow.

I guess this wouldn’t be a problem if there was something the consumer could do about it. I don’t loathe capitalism like most out there, I think it’s more practical than pure socialism, but this is another reason why it’s problematic and obnoxious. Because you’re taking something people love, something you’ve been benefitting from, and blowing your nose on it to spite everyone. It’s greedy, it’s selfish and it makes people hate you. And it doesn’t win you any sympathy points either.

I’m not sure what to add to this piece, so I’ll end here. But I’m definitely disgusted, especially by Goto’s closing remark:

“If they like your show, they’ll watch it twenty-six times.”

A little something to remember the next time you hear Henry Goto’s name pop-up in the anime world, methinks.

I find that anime and its surrounding mediums and cultures are really interested in queer people in interesting ways. Japan's particular brand of sexual repression has resulted in some strange and varied examples of queer character in their pop-fiction, and a lot of those characters helped me figure out a lot about myself and others. However, they're almost always loaded with problems in how they're represented, or the text is afraid to actually state their sexuality or gender identity outright. So, for this series, Otaku Queer, I'll be looking at different queer or queer coded characters in Japanese media (I will try to avoid headcanon stuff too often) and seeing what is done right and wrong in how they're represented.

To start off, I decided to look at a character from one of my favorite anime that happens to share my own sexuality, bisexuality. We begin with a look at Code Geass' Milly Ashford.

Now, this is Code Geass we're talking about, so I plan to return here a lot because I am convinced with every passing year that less than half of the cast was in any way straight. That series is basically a bunch of pretty bisexuals trying to kill each other over international politics and magical conspiracy. But I wanted to start with Milly because she's one of the three most obviously queer characters in the cast, and arguably the best represented because she's not the main antagonist or creates the atomic bomb. She's also especially interesting to me because she's the first character I can remember in anything I watched televised that made me think “wow, this person is really, really gay.” She might be my first example of bisexuality that I can remember so clearly.

Milly is apart of the family that runs Ashford Academy, a school main character Lelouch attends between his rebellion plans with the Black Knights. While she ends up on the back burner as the series goes on, she isn't an insignificant character. She effectively rules over the academy, where the main cast live normal lives and the series can take comedic breaks from the grim main story. She's also the guardian of Lelouch's normal life and family, helping hide them from Britannia after their invasion of Japan. As a result, she's central to Lelouch's growth as a character by giving him a safe zone, and also forcing him and other characters into situations way outside their comfort zone. She's basically a comedic character forcing herself into a drama and making the series bend to her wills and desire for an episode at a time, sort of like a less fantastical Bat-Mite, in a way.

Even when R2 takes away a lot of her importance due to plot developments forcing Lelouch and Kallen out of the school, she's still given her own character arc, and an entire episode dedicated to that arc. Milly is treated as the big sister to the school cast, messing with them but always looking out for them. She keeps Kallen's family situation secret, tries to hear out Lelouch when she feels he needs it, and is the only cast member to give Shirley actually useful advice after the death of her father. She also remembers all of her friends closely, even offering advice to Nina when she runs into her again after graduation. Her kindness, empathy, and boundless hope is necessary in the series ending, as people like her help bridge the divides between different countries.

In many ways, she's one of the series best characters, and her sexuality fits into her wild and eccentric personality. She likes putting on parties and celebrations partly for her friends, trying to help them out of funks or connect better with each other. Those parties usually revolve around outlandish outfits, cross dressing, ridiculous spectacle, or relationship games. She also tries creating a safe space for the Japanese as well, who are shown to be allowed in the school with no problems during one festival. That positive energy and thinking she shows is what really makes her stand out, as she's constantly shown as a symbol of emotional love. She also teases Shirley a lot. A LOT. That and the crossdressing party feel like the writers going “SHE'S NOT STRAIGHT” as loud as they can without just saying it. She also clearly has complicated feelings for Lelouch, so bi is definitely the read. It's that love angle that seems to say the most, though, as the writers seem to use her sexuality as shorthand for her caring nature, not worried about how she acts around the same or opposite gender, unlike most of the other cast when emotions get high.

Milly is a great character in a lot of respects, and one of my favorite bisexual characters, but her sexuality is also presented a bit too comically. There's this running problem with queer characters that making jokes or gags based around their sexuality or gender identity too often can rob that character of their queerness in the eyes of an audience. This happens all the time with characters like Deadpool, who's one of the most openly queer characters in comics, yet constantly gets mistaken for straight and cis (identify as their assigned birth gender) because so many examples are gags (for the record, he's pansexual and hinted to be bigender). Milly ends up falling into the exact same trap.

I can't help but notice that a lot of fan circles ignore how ridiculously thick her sexuality is laid out and try attributing it to seeing characters as romantic rivals. That is part of it, but it also seems to be simplifying the relationships she has in the series. This is because her teasing Shirley is presented mostly as a joke, as is the majority of things she does. It ignores that her playful actions inform to her character and that she's just not a thing for people to point and laugh at. The series inability to show her more complicated emotions more openly ultimately hurts her presence a little, which is a significant issue.

I can at least say other media doesn't hold back as much. The DS visual novel, Lost Colors, has a pretty funny crossressing sequence that really amps up Milly's obvious queerness, and a lot of fan groups tend to portray her as bisexual (and I noticed they pair her with Kallen a lot, which I am okay with). But this series is far more clear with the sexuality of other characters, though those characters end up being demonized in some way, or their homosexuality ends up playing a massive role in causing a tragedy. Despite how amazingly gay a series Code Geass is, the hetero-normative writing feels suffocating at times, Milly just gets out best in that department. Overall, I adore her, and she was one of those characters that managed to get me to realize my own sexuality. I just want her queerness taken a tad more seriously.

With the Autumn season around the corner, I figured that now was the best time to discuss the Oscars. You might think I’m crazy to mention something that doesn’t occur until the end of February, but this is the beginning of the biopic/Oscar drama cycle anyway. Besides, anything to be heard before I’m drowned out by the whiners!


There’s a lot to unpack with the Oscars. On one hand, there’s the horse betting, or picking a movie and getting mad when it, yet again, loses to something “inferior”. I find that tedious and subjective, something I doubt most people understand, so I won’t discuss it. Then there’s the racial politics, which is a little more interesting, but-again-I’ll avoid that because it’s complicated. Finally, there’s the issue of whether or not there even needs to be an award ceremony, especially given the first two points I mentioned. Once again, however, I’ll be avoiding that.

I’d like to, instead, focus on something that’s been bothering me for a while now. It’s not really about the Oscars, but rather how it’s perceived by certain groups in the film community. More specifically, how it’s perceived by the anime community. I’m sure some of you know where I’m going with this, but it’s worth re-stressing: whether or not an anime film deserves Best Animated Feature simply because it’s an anime film. The short answer is, “No, so stop asking.” But since it requires elaboration, especially whenever a Studio Ghibli film gets nominated, that’s exactly what I’ll do.


I’ll get the pink elephant in the room out of the way right now: Studio Ghibli films aren’t underrated. At all. They have more films in the IMDb Top 250 than any other anime film studio. In fact, next to Pixar, they’re easily the most well-loved animation house there. 8 of the company’s 22 films have fallen under the criteria for that list, 6 from Hayao Miyazaki alone, second to Pixar’s 9. This isn’t even counting the consecutively strong reception on Rotten Tomatoes, with all but Tales From Earthsea reaching “Fresh” status, and their strong showings on Metacritic. Calling Studio Ghibli “underrated” is like calling water “dry”: it’s nonsense.

That having been said, I still don’t think Studio Ghibli deserves every Oscar simply because it’s Studio Ghibli, and the reason is quite simple:

See, there’s this arrogant notion amongst many anime fans that anime is better than Western animation. It doesn’t matter if that claim is weightless, it’s touted as factual. The problem is that anime’s another form of animation. Regardless of region of origin, it has to take into consideration storytelling, character writing, direction, lighting, blocking and music, to name a few details. Saying that anime is inherently superior to Western animation completely ignores the human factor. Like it or not, everything about art, right down financing, begins and ends with people.

I mention this because talent doesn’t discriminate. Pixar, for example, are incredibly talented, and they deal with computer animation. They’ve completely flipped the whole “machines lack heart and soul” argument on its head by sheer virtue of their line-up. Even their weaker movies have talented people behind them, that’s undeniable.

So to say that Studio Ghibli deserves the Oscar every year for merely being itself is disingenuous. For one, they have competition in Pixar. And two, even outside of Pixar, they have competition every year anyway. Howl’s Moving Castle had to compete with Aardman Animation’s Wallace an Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Ponyo lost its nomination to The Secret of Kells and Up. The Secret World of Arrietty and From Up On Poppy Hill were both released too late in North America to qualify, and even then I don’t consider them the best offerings of 2010 and 2011. The Wind Rises had to compete with Frozen, while The Tale of the the Princess Kaguya only had a shot because The LEGO Movie didn’t get nominated. And, of course, Only Yesterday was a 1991 movie released here in 2016, so it missed the boat by 15 years.

Honestly, the only time Studio Ghibli stood a chance, both qualitatively and timing-wise, was with Spirited Away. And even then, Disney had to-allegedly-kneecap its promotion of Lilo & Stitch. Spirited Away wasn’t the rule, it was the exception. For another Studio Ghibli movie to win the gold, it’d have to lay down the cards in the exact same way as that film, which is next-to-impossible.

I remember once stupidly responding to a YouTube commenter who was mad that The Wind Rises lost to Frozen, using an explanation of why I thought it was the inferior film. To say that I got barraged with angry responses is an understatement:

“captain raccon whatsoever , youre a fuckin idiot.
Yes , i do see your point on the writting , but i dont see a problem in that here , besides , myazaki is trying to show something that really happened. It can get somehow of a bit not so good on the writing , but the key of the movie is ANIMATION. The movie is gorgeous and it tells a simple beutiful story about life. U can literally see their lives from the moment they are born till they die. I dont think its one of myazakis worst , its one of the best , and he he goes out with a bang. the only one i though that wasnt so good was nausica , and thats still a really fuckin good one in what it tries to do.
And seriously , fuck Frozen. No , it didnt deserve to win over the wind rises , far better animation , far better story , its just fuckin beutiful.
Frozen is disney trying to get back to her old self , its a princesses movie , and im not saying it is bad , i enjoyed it. But to say its better than this ? Nop , its not. Disney has far better movies , frozen is just plain overrated with cheesy fans like yourself who think it was so damn good. When , in fact , it was not.
Its movies like this that makes us think about life in general , that is what the wind rises is all about , a lesson that disney needs to remember again.
Have a good day.”

The above comment is one of many lobbed at me for stating my thoughts. Ignoring the typos and grammatical inconsistencies, it represents the overall sentiment when I claimed that Frozen was better: I was a blind fanboy who couldn’t see past the film’s clichéd and bland story. This ignores that I’ve been openly critical of Frozen in the past, but whatever!

As a final note, I can’t stay silent about the claim of how The Academy hates Studio Ghibli, as it isn’t true. Studio Ghibli has been nominated for Best Animated Feature five times, winning once. You know how many times the late-Satoshi Kon was nominated? Zero. You know how many times Mamoru Hosoda has been nominated? Zero. Studio Ghibli is extremely well-loved by The Academy, or they’d have been nominated zero times too.

This ties in with my belief that Studio Ghibli fans are entitled brats (some of them, anyway). So what if your movie of choice didn’t win the Oscar? So what if it only got nominated? It’s not the end of the world, is it? You can toss out as many excuses as you want, but at the end of day you’re still getting mad over celluloid.

Besides, the Oscars have problems worth criticizing. Like how the members of The Academy are mostly old, white males, hence their perspective is really limited. Or how movies that get nominated are partly nominated based on box office returns. Or how most Oscar winners for Best Picture are rooted in one of two genres, the biopic or the drama. Or even how the voters for Best Animated Feature have little-to-no respect for animated films. There’s stuff to be angry about, and yet, every single year, it boils down to people’s horses not winning the race.

But whatever, who am I to talk? It’s your choice!

Bookwalker is one of the few digital manga sites of recent years that could be considered a success.  It started merely as a digital spinoff for Kadokawa with only a barely localized site and a handful of titles to its name.  These days they've got partnerships with Viz, Seven Seas, Yen Press, and other notable manga publishers and their digital manga offerings represent one of the biggest and most diverse selections to be found.  While digging around in their library, I found a trio of food-themed manga that practically begged to be examined for our most literal Manga Sampler yet.





EKIBEN HITORITABI

Daisuke spends his days running a busy bento shop with his wife, but he longs to take some time to explore his two favorite things: old trains and ekiben, the regionally-specific bento boxes sold on many Japanese rail lines.  For his anniversary, his wife gives him a rail ticket and an opportunity to do just that.  Thus, Daisuke begins his culinary adventure across Japan as he makes many pretty new friends, sees new sites, rides all sorts of trains, and enjoys all sorts of good food along the way.

This is the sort of manga that you could only find on a digital site.  It's not only targeted towards older men, but it's practically laser-focused on its two very dorky pursuits.  Often, it can start to feel like a lecture as Daisuke rattles off all sorts of trivia about old Japanese trains and every aspect of his meal to whatever grateful soul comes across his way.  In spite of that, I found this manga weirdly compelling.  Maybe it's just the sheer novelty of something so unusual, maybe it's my own deep and abiding love of food manga, but I couldn't help but keep reading this manga...even if I did tend to skim over the more railroad-intensive parts.  It's certainly not the art that keeps me reading.  It's perfectly serviceable, but between the scenery, the trains, and the nigh-photorealistic food there's a lot of rotoscoping going on.  The characters are all fairly attractive adults, but it's a style you couldn't get from a lot of other, equally down-to-earth seinen works like this.

It helps that while he's kind of an idealized version of the target audience, Daisuke is a friendly and engaging guy.  He never comes off as a know-it-all oppressing others with his superior knowledge, but instead as an enthusiast who simply can't help but share his own passions with others.  It's just terribly convenient that those who seem to need Daisuke's influence the most just happen to be pretty young women.  It's also rather convenient that none of them happen to know that much about trains, the Japanese countryside, or the details of Japanese cuisine, thus making them the perfect empty vessels in which Daisuke can pour his knowledge.  Thankfully, the series never crosses the line into infidelity.  The girls usually end up smitten, but Daisuke never crosses the line into infidelity.  That's for the best, as it would spoil what is otherwise a very laid-back, very dorky, yet weirdly entertaining ride of a manga.  RATING: 7/10

SHIAWASE RESTAURANT

From a young age, Yamazu was determined to keep his father's dream alive by recreating the fine French cuisine he was known for.  He's determined to refine every component of his father's restaurant into a five-star experience from the ingredients down to the clientele.  That's why he is so endlessly frustrated by the fact that his customers seem to prefer the more homely dishes made by his stepmother, Yuko.  Is it the fact that she mixes fine ingredients into her homestyle dishes?  Is it that she serves everyone who comes in their door, regardless of their circumstances?  Or is that she's simply better at understanding what her customers truly need?

Shiwase Restaurant is obviously a family drama, but at times it feels like a softer, gentler take on the sorts of culinary-themed tournament manga occupied by works like Food Wars.  The big difference is that the competition isn't fueled by the promise of any formal prize or recognition.  Instead it's driven by Yamazu's emotional maturation, and it's by far the most successful and fascinating drama in the whole book.  The individual stories of the patrons are all fairly maudlin and predictable, but creator Masaharu Nakanishi manages to get across what Yamazu's real issues are without having to club the reader over the head with them.  He doesn't have to explain how Yamazu has clearly not come to terms with his father's death or needs to put his pride in check; instead, he conveys it through how rigidly Yamazu clings to his father's recipes and memory or how callously he treats everyone in his life, be it his stepmother, his girlfriend, or his patrons.  He captures Yamazu's personality in a way that's quite vivid, even if in practice it means that most readers will want to punch Yamazu in the face quite frequently.

If anyone comes off as unrealistic, it's Yuko.  She's so impossibly sweet, patient, and empathetic that it verges on saintliness.  She's never shown to have a moment's doubt or frustration, no matter how often she has to deal with surprise customers, a shortage of ingredients, or an ungrateful stepson.  Her unnatural calm makes her a good foil to Yamazu's hotheadedness, and the exchanges they have about cuisine and their family are what give this manga substance.  That's more than can be said for the customers, all of whom have sob stories that sometimes verge upon the ridiculous and all of whom come to terms with them through a good meal.  The artwork is nothing special on a technical level, but Nakanishi's character designs have a weirdly shonen-esque style that's rather unexpected in a sentimental work like this.  This kind of story normally features sedate, run-of-the-mill seinen designs or safe and unremarkable shoujo stylings, not the sort of Toriyama and Togashi-inspired folk that populate these pages.  On the other hand, that's almost perfectly consistent with the genre-mashing going on in the manga as a whole.  It's a work where sentimental sob stories can exists alongside culinary manga minutiae and shonen-style character art, and it manages to come together into an intriguing, if not superb whole  RATING: 6/10

SEIWA HIGH SCHOOL BENTO CLUB!!

Sayako Mikami is the eldest of 10 children in an impoverished family, so most days her only substantial meal comes from the bakery where she works.  Her nose leads her to the culinary campus of her school, as well as to a bento club run by a handful of handsome, rich young men.  They take Sayoko on as their taste tester, but over time her keen sense of taste and her big heart makes her their secret weapon against their equally posh competitors.

It's not often that I say this, but this is a manga that would genuinely benefit from being wackier.  It starts off wild, but it loses whatever flavor it has as Sayoko starts to bond with her clubmates.  Sayoko herself is like so many reverse harem protagonists: kind but bland.  Her only distinguishing characteristics are her extreme poverty and her endless appetite.  The former is forgotten once the club starts to feed her consistently, and the latter is driven into the ground as an endlessly lame gag.  That's still more than can be said for the boys around her.  If it weren't for the different hairstyles and heights, I wouldn't have been able to tell most of them apart.  The only one I could distinguish was Kamui, and that was simply because he was the one with such a mother complex that he dresses up as her at home.  You just don't forget something THAT creepy.

It doesn't fare much better as a food manga than it does as a reverse harem.  The contests aren't so much about the food onto itself as it is an excuse for the competing clubs to do a lot of metaphorical dick measuring.  They all use the fanciest of fancy ingredients, but they're all indifferently drawn and Sayoko always ends up favoring her own clubs because the secret ingredient is love or some other such nonsense.  It's not just the food that looks bad, though.  Everything on the page is drawn in the most mediocre manner, and it'll be forgotten the moment you swipe to the next page.  It's a paint-by-numbers effort from beginning to end, and it's not even worth a look as a curiosity.  RATING: 1/10.

Next time will take things back to Crunchyroll, where dozens more manga are simply waiting to be sampled, including a few new fresh flavors.  Here's hoping that next time will bring us a more interesting selection of titles.

A stubborn and impulsive teenager jumps into the air, rewinding time to fix her mistakes. A family gathers around a computer, desperate to fight an AI hell-bent on destroying the internet. A young mother moves to the countryside to raise her halfbreed children shortly after her lover dies in a tragic accident. A recently-orphaned boy runs away and learns martial arts from a humanoid bear. Time-travel. Virtual worlds. Motherhood. Adolescence and manhood.

Welcome to the world of Mamoru Hosoda.



I’ve been meaning to start a series of reviews on this man for some time. Not only is he slowly becoming one of my favourite directors in anime, right up there with Hayao Miyazaki, but his films speak to me in a way I never thought possible until fairly recently. They touch my heart, warm my soul and embrace my mind all at once. They’re beautiful to look at, well-scored and wonderfully mesmerizing. Hosoda films are, much like the works of Miyazaki, an experience. It’s hard to believe, therefore, that he got his start so modestly, but he did.

Mamoru Hosoda was born on September 19th, 1967, in Kamiichi, Japan. Though not much is known about his childhood, he did graduate from the Kanazawa College of Art after studying oil painting as his major. Despite jumping around as a background artist and planner on various projects early on in his career, Hosoda was largely commissioned by Toei Animation to work on some of their popular IPs in the late-90’s, most-notably as a director on two short films for and an episode of Digimon Adventure. His work for the series, the films Digimon Adventure and Our War Game, as well as the infamous Episode 22 of the first series, remains unique even to this day, being bleaker and better animated than the series proper. It was here that Hosoda really began to stand-out as a director, eventually leading him to direct a tie-in film to the then-emerging One Piece anime, aka One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island, that’d later be viewed by major Shonen enthusiasts as one of “The Big Three”.

To-date, I’ve yet to see Hosoda’s stand-alone One Piece film, though I’ve heard that it’s vastly different tonally from the rest of the franchise. I have, however, seen his Digimon work, and I can assure you that it stands out. Both films have real life to their animation despite the budget constraints, while his solo episode feels more weighted amidst a rather light and cartoony show. To say that it’s more impressive than the rest of the franchise visually is nothing to take lightly, but, at the same time, I, personally, feel that it’s beneath him artistically. It’s solid stepping-stone material, if nothing more.

Shortly after leaving Toei Animation, Hosoda was commissioned to work on Howl’s Moving Castle as a director. The project eventually lagged behind when Hosoda had a falling-out over the direction he wanted to take it, causing him to leave Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki to take over the project. Hosoda would eventually wind up at Studio Madhouse, where his real career would begin…

Anyway, since Mamoru Hosoda’s birthday is September 19th, I figured that I’d use the next few weeks as a way of celebrating the artist’s impressive filmography. He has, after all, directed four major films to-date, so it seems like a fitting time to cover all of them in detailed reviews. Note that I’ll be assigning scores at the end of each review, followed by a ranking of the four films at the end based on personal taste. I’ll also be covering his body of work in chronological order, meaning that The Girl Who Leapt Through Time will come first, Summer Wars will come next, The Wolf Children will be third and The Boy and the Beast will finish it off. It’ll be interesting to see where this project takes me, but I’m excited.

Also, do keep in mind that, despite loving the man’s body of work, this won’t simply be me gushing. Well…most of it will be, but I’m also fairly critical of Hosoda as a director. I recognize that he has his areas that need improvement, so I’ll be sure to cover those too. I also recognize that not everyone will agree with me on these movies, and that’s fine! Art is subjective, so I’m not expecting you all to share my sentiments 100%. All I ask is that you consider where I come from and be respectful if you don’t agree with whatever it is that I have to say.

But I’ve droned on long enough about this as is. I’m also aware that this has been a little rough as an introduction, and I promise that my actual entries will be much more organized than this. Until then, have fun with my reviews!

I’m assuming you’re caught up, right? If not, click here for my mission statement.

Anyway, onto the review!


My relationship with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time goes back to the days of ScrewAttack Version 4. I’d recently become a die-hard anime fan, and I was seeing which directors tickled my fancy. Some, like Mamoru Oshii, bored me to no end with Ghost in the Shell, while others, like Satoshi Kon, I respected, yet never got the appeal of. No director grabbed me quite like Hayao Miyazaki did, leading me to wonder if my excitement was doomed to backfire. That changed when I discovered this film.

It was pure chance that I found it, having seen a review of another movie by Mamoru Hosoda from a fellow g1 who’s now a contributor at Infinite Rainy Day. The premise intrigued me, so I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes for further info. Once there, I was surprised to see that Hosoda had not only worked on the Digimon franchise, but also had two films under his belt. Deciding to go chronologically, I picked The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, found it in 8 parts on YouTube and gave it a go. I haven’t looked back.


The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is the story of 17 year-old Makoto Konno. Makoto’s a brash tomboy who struggles with schoolwork, is lazy and has a bit of a selfish streak. Normally, her quirks aren’t that big a deal, but on one particular day everything goes wrong. After waking up late for school, she arrives to a pop quiz that she wasn’t prepared for. She then messes up in cooking class, nearly causing a fire, slips while carrying the test papers to be marked and is the unwanted victim of a prank gone wrong. All of this culminates in her bike brakes jamming on the way to deliver peaches to her aunt, causing her to slam into an oncoming train and die…

…Or so she thought. It turns out that she’d acquired the ability to time travel to a few minutes before the crash, which freaks her out. It isn’t until her conversation with her aunt that she realizes this sort of experience “isn’t new”, and that she’s actually “time leapt”. After fooling around with her newfound ability, she gains the confidence to change her life for what she considers the better. It isn’t long before she realizes that maybe her time leaping skills are causing more harm than good, hence she tries to fix that too. Ultimately, Makoto accepts the reality that is making mistakes, being something to learn from and not try to correct.

Right off the bat, the most-striking aspect of this film is its design. Despite being modest compared to future works, complete with reused footage, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time has realistic backdrops that compliment Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s subdued character designs. Additionally, the fluidity of character movement is constantly staticky, as no two characters behave the same way when completely solitary. It’s this attention to detail that makes Hosoda unique, especially when juxtaposed with his incredible restraint from his in-film camera movements. In a word, the movie looks beautiful.

Musically, the film features quiet, piano-like ballads and soft-tune orchestrations, courtesy of composer Kiyoshi Yoshida. The tunes mostly serve as ambience, but every now and then a big, sentimental piece will compliment a sad moment. It works quite well. The film also has two lyrical ballads, both sung by Japanese singer Hanaka Oku. The former, "Kawaranai Mono”, underscores the film’s big climactic moment, while the latter, “Garnet” comes in during the credits to help recap the film. The score isn’t something I’d listen to routinely, but it’s not half-bad in-film.
The voice acting is fantastic. I can’t say much about the Japanese, although what I’ve heard sounds good, but the dub, helmed by Vancouver’s Ocean Productions, has one of the best teenage dub performances I’ve ever heard from then teenage actress Emily Hirst. Hirst gives it everything as Makoto, right down to her crying scenes (which, by the way, feel authentic.) Dub fans of Canadian voice actors will also recognize Andrew Francis, one of the many voices of Megaman, as Chiaki, in what’s, arguably, one of his best. Overall, it’s a solid dub.

Speaking of which, I love the characters. I remember seeing a video review of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time that stated that the background characters were virtually non-existent, and I couldn’t disagree more. I think they’re much so existent, such that the film wouldn’t have worked without them. Everyone from Makoto’s closest friends, Chiaki and Kōsuke, to minor characters like Takase and Kaho, are all wonderfully-realized. And, of course, let’s not Makoto. Brash, selfish and short-sighted, she’s one of the more-relatable characters I’ve seen in a coming of age story.

And that’s really what The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is: a coming of age story about owning up to your actions. Far too often in life, we feel regret about our mistakes and want desperately to change them. This film plays to that and flips it on its head, suggesting that changing the past isn’t the best idea. It’s important to make mistakes, necessary even, as it teaches us what not to repeat. This is played out so innocently, both for humour and drama, that it really drives the point home. Besides, anything to have Makoto’s aunt, who frequently acts as the voice of reason, feel like a real person!

All of this having been said, there are little details that hold it back from absolute greatness. For one, the animation, while mostly fluid and realistic, occasionally falls victim to Manga Iconography. Manga Iconography is when characters make Manga-style facial expressions that are meant to “elicit laughs from the audience”. This level of cartoony expressionism, however, is distracting, really ugly and completely breaks the flow. It’s something Mamoru Hosoda’s works would eventually ditch, but for now it sticks out like a sore thumb.

The movie also tries its hand at being artsy, to mixed results. Sometimes, like in the time travel sequences, it looks beautiful, with moments that resemble oil paintings and hard sci-fi. But then there’s a weird scene where Makoto runs to keep up with a pan-shot. I know it’s supposed to speak volumes about her stubbornness, but I find it distracting. There are other ways, I’m sure, to get the message across.

Finally, the movie has a tendency to go full-out soap opera. Usually it leads to humorous moments, mostly involving the bizarre ways Makoto makes situations worse, but every-so-often it feels like we’ve entered cheesy rom-com territory. This is especially apparent in how The Girl Who Leapt Through Time hits all the traditional notes of a romantic comedy, particularly once Makoto starts developing feelings for one of her friends. It eventually hits hard, throwing everything you learn prior off-kilter, but in the immediate it feels…schmaltzy. I could’ve either done without it, or done with it better-executed.

But I digress. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time isn’t a perfect film, but it makes the best of a premise based on a simple book. Fans of anime can get behind the animation. Fans of science-fiction can get behind the time travel. Fans of rom-coms can get behind the romance and silly humour. And, above all, fans of film in general can get behind this incredibly well-written, 99-minute story. I give it a…
Join me next time as I dive into the world of technology and the internet with Summer Wars. I’ll see you then!

Well, since I gushed about a queer character last time, I figure it's time to get more critical with the next subject. However, I wanted to stay positive, so I decided to go with a character I really like, yet is so horrifically mishandled that I can't believe someone allowed her to exist like this. For this installment, I'll be going over the messy history of one of the most mishandled characters I have ever seen, Chikane Himemiya.

Now strap in, because this particular character hasn't just been in one series, she's been in three, and one of them had an anime that significantly messed with the material. Chikane Himemiya is one of two heroines of Kaishaku's yuri/fantasy/mecha manga series Kannazuki no Miko, translated in English to the far more boring title of “Destiny of the Shrine Maiden.” I will have words on Kaishaku a bit later (and I will have many, MANY words), but as for Kannazuki no Miko itself, it was a series that gained a surprising following because it was so open about all the gay. See, this was a yuri series released in the early and mid 2000s, back when yuri was a rarity that didn't have a Love Live around as the big market perpetrator. Gay guys were fucking EVERYWHERE, but gay girls were usually shoved to the side in one-shots, timid adaptations too afraid to go full gay, or quickly canceled series. Kannazuki no Miko was only two volumes, but it stuck around, especially in the west, and especially because if its anime adaptation.

The series itself was a poorly thought out mess, but a fun one. A normal girl named Himeko Kurusugawa discovered that she was the reincarnation of a shrine maiden that helped seal away the great demon Orochi many eons ago, and she's needed again to summon a god to fight back the beast. Chikane, the school's princess of sorts (she comes from a rich family), grows a friendship with Himeko and quickly falls in love, and the anime also makes it very clear that she's the other maiden alongside Himeko (the manga made this a late series reveal). Side by side with the main plot is a love triangle involving the prince of the school, Soma Ogami, who is in love with Himeko as well.

I'd normally complain about guys in yuri works, but Ogami ends up being a genuinely nice and supportive person who has no ill feelings towards Himeko going with Chikane and finishes the big bad for them so they can have a private moment at series end. He also doesn't really erase Himeko's sexuality, which is coded as bisexual, and just generally does a good job of helping the gals out when they need it. He's an actual welcome member of the cast who even gets his own little sub-story (though it ends up underdeveloped).

Really, the reason the series works despite its many, many, many flaws is Chikane. She's the only character who feels like a fleshed out person, because she has motivations and goals beyond generic “I wanna be better” or “I wanna protect.” Chikane has fallen madly in love with Himeko, and she's unable to admit her feelings because she believes she's already picked Ogami. When the Orochi mess starts, she uses it partly as an excuse to get closer to Himeko, whom she already meets with in secret for lunch, by letting her use her home as a safe place. She constantly acts creepy when Himeko isn't aware, mainly looking at her, and she shows she's incredibly protective when she scares off a bunch of bullies with just one nasty stare. She balances a line between being creepy and being relatable, thanks to the scenes with her and Himeko talking or doing stuff together, and we get a real sense that she does genuinely care about Himeko as a person and not just as an obsession.

By the time the series end, we discover that Chikane has full memory of her past life, which included killing Himeko in a ritual to rebirth the world, and it's suggested this isn't the first time this has happened. Chikane and Himeko are stuck in an endless cycle of tragic love, and Chikane has realized this and begun to hate the god that gave her this endless bloody task. But what makes Chikane so great is that she realizes this. She knows she can never do what's necessary to stop Orochi anymore, so she tries to create a scenario by pretending to become the embodiment of Orochi to give Himeko a chance to become the strong willed person she always knew she was (Himeko accepted her death in their past lives for the good of the Earth, for example). He actions are incredibly flawed, but make a lot of sense from a character standpoint, and seeing her and Himeko finally get their happy ending at the end of the anime remains one of the best ends I've ever seen. The manga reincarnates them as sisters as the cycle continues and I thought that was dumb and stupid so let's skip over that.

The two were so popular among Kaishaku's output that they became supporting characters in a crossover work, their lesser Tsubasa if you will, called Shattered Angels. It wasn't a particularly good series, mind you, but Chikane and Himeko got to be gay for the entirety of it so that was nice. But Kaishaku also brought them back for one other series ...aaaaaaaaaaand now we need to talk about the many elephants in the room.

See, Chikane handles her evil bluff not by just betraying Himeko ...but assaulting her.

Sexually.

Would it surprise you to learn that Kaishaku has done porn, and the anime director would go on to work on High School DxD?

Despite all the good ideas Chikane's story has, this one point ruins almost everything the series tried to do in one fowl swoop, and I fully understand why anyone would dislike or hate this franchise after that scene. I like the anime a great deal, but even I have to admit it would be worlds better if they didn't decide the rape as motivation thing was the way to go. It's also arguably too dark for Chikane. I get the idea behind it, make the viewer question Chikane's motives, but a stolen kiss and swing of a sword would have done that perfectly fine and be far more effective without grossing out the majority of the audience.

But it gets worse, because Kaishaku's spiritual successor to Kannazuki no Miko, Zettai Shoujo Seiiki Amnesian, remains one of the worst manga I have ever witnessed, and by far the worst possible way to bring these characters back. This manga is a baffling exercise in pornifying a non-porny series. I mean, there were a few risque moments, but even that sexual assault scene was handled with some drama and class. Here, we have a rapist comedic relief (WHO'S ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS) and a crossdressing sadist bounding up and raping Himeko IN THE SECOND GODAMN CHAPTER. There are so, so many bad things in this series, but the absolute snow job done to the leading girls would make me wonder if this was even the same creative team, if not for me being familiar with the rest of the trash they made.

Scan groups gave up on this one six years ago, almost nobody liked it. There was attempted rape in every other chapter, and due to an idiotic clone plot, Chikane was introduced basically as a sexually aggressive Goku. She was also still a lesbian, but weirdly did a lot of non-lesbian stuff for fanservice, like seductively eating phallic objects. Kaishaku tossed out all pretense and made awful porn (CHIKANE'S EX GIRLFRIEND FUCKING SLAMS HER AGAINST A FENCE TO REMIND HER SHE LIKES IT ROUGH TO TRY AND RESTORE HER MEMORY), and that comedic rapist I mentioned, Date, is the physical embodiment of the series worst sins. HE. KEEPS. TRYING. TO. RAPE. THE. LESBIANS. CUE LAUGH TRACK. I could go on and on about the bad decisions beyond the creepy fetish stuff, but then we'd be here for many paragraphs more.

What Chikane became is a great example of some big problems yuri faces in Japan when it comes to being mainstream, which I will continue with once I decide to talk about Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid again. There's a mistaken belief that you have to skive things up to get attention, usually by tossing in something het or using popular smut series tropes, like GODDAMN ATTTEMPTED RAPE. It's a shocking misunderstanding of why the genre has a following in the first place, and the exact wrong way to try and make a yuri work more sexually charged. In practice, it destroyed someone who was once one of the most well known lesbian characters in anime back in the 00s.

Chikane is such a frustrating character, but damn it, I still really love her. I haven't seen a yuri with a character quite like her before or since, and there are so many interesting directions you could take her morally complex personality. At the same time, you can't ignore the reality of what she became, which has made Kaishaku one of my great hated names among manga artists. I mean sure, they made one of my favorite characters ever, but they also ruined her in most vile way possible. Still, they couldn't completely destroy her, and Kannazuki no Miko had some influence on the yuri scene, especially in giving it greater exposure to western audiences. It's just never going to get a revival after that horrific second act.

For those who are unfamiliar, here’s my intro and review of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Everyone else can continue with this piece.


Right after finishing The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, I was enthralled. I had to see more from this director! Fortunately, the opportunity was waiting with that g1 review that led me here via another Mamoru Hosoda film: Summer Wars. The movie seemed to be well-loved, although not to the same extent, so why not? A good movie is still a good movie, and if people were singing its praises it was worth checking out.

So I did. The method of watching wasn’t ideal, I didn’t know what constituted as illegal streaming in 2011, but I was desperate. As expected, the results paid off. Mamoru Hosoda had proven he wasn’t a one-trick pony if he could make a follow-up almost on-par with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I didn’t like it quite as much, but how could I? Every director has to have a lower-tier film, this happened to be Hosoda’s.


Summer Wars centres around 17 year-old code monkey named Kenji Koiso. Originally slated to go to the Math Olympics in Tokyo, he’s relegated to spending his Summer working as an admin for OZ. OZ is a virtual world where people across the globe store personal information, do business interactions, chat with strangers and compete in a variety of sports and games. In other words, it’s the internet and virtual reality in one. His job keeps him busy, until he’s one day requested by the most popular in school, 18 year-old Natsuki Shinohara, to visit her family’s cottage in the north to celebrate her great-grandmother’s 90th birthday. Once there, Kanji’s tricked into playing the role of Natsuki’s fiancé, much to his and her Granny’s shock.

Kenji, being a shy introvert, decides to go along with it, figuring it’d make Natsuki happy, but still feels guilty about lying. The situation gets more complicated when he receives a text that night with a mysterious algorithm, which he solves without thinking twice. It’s only the next day that he wakes to find OZ has been hacked, his avatar stolen and that he’s being blamed for the mess. Kenji tries to prove his innocence, but it isn’t long before he and everyone else realize there’s something bigger at stake. OZ has become the petri dish for a global catastrophe, and if Kenji and company don’t do something, the entire world might end.

Like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars is beautiful aesthetically scale. The backgrounds are richly detailed, the character models soft and subdued and the animation wiry and fluid. No two characters behave the same, and no one is completely solitary when stationary. This is complimented by an increase in budget from Hosoda’s previous film, as everything looks and feels cleaner and smoother. This further proves that Mamoru Hosoda knows how to make a good-looking movie.

Musically, Summer Wars is quite lively. Unlike The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, however, there are memorable tracks outside of the film proper, thanks to composer Akihiko Matsumoto. Tracks like 150 Million Miracles and Overture of the Summer Wars are on-par with any Hollywood Blockbuster, really cementing Matsumoto’s mastery, while some of the quieter beats, like Letter, drive home the somber moments in the second-half. Not to mention, the film’s theme song, “Bokura No Natsu No Yume”, once again plays in the credits and drives home what the film’s all about. It’s a great OST all-around, arguably the best in a Hosoda film.

The voice acting in the movie is, again, top notch. Like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, I can’t say much about the Japanese, but the dub is one of FUNimation Entertainment’s best. Helmed by ADR director Mike McFarland, it features some of the best in the studio’s stable, including veterans like Maxey Whitehead, Caitlin Glass, Brina Palencia, John Swasey, J. Michael Tatum and a slew of others. Even the children, who are voiced by adults, sound appropriate for their ages, which isn’t easy considering the trap women VAs tend to fall into. But the big surprise is Michael Sinterniklaas as Kenji. As some who was quite fond of TMNT, it was great hearing Leonardo’s voice coming from a shy nerd.

I love the characters in this film. Natsuki’s family, i.e. the Jinnouchi clan, is massive, and it’s easy to lose focus on characters with such a big cast (that’s what the X-Men movies are often criticized for). But Summer Wars uses its cast the way it should, with each character getting as much screen time as necessary. Personal favourites include Kenji, Natsuki, Kazuma, Sakuma, Wabisuke, Granny and Mansuke, although the rest are also great. Like any good ensemble cast, it’s easy to pick favourites and get attached to them. True, most of them never really transcend basic trope characterizations, but given how they’re not the focus I can forgive that.

Last-but-not-least, the themes of community and family are a big driving point behind Summer Wars, digging deep into the strengths of both. Are they new and fresh? Not really. Does that matter? Again, not really. Besides, it’s nice to see a film discuss the dangers of virtual security without condemning technology.

Unfortunately, like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the film has glaring issues that hold it back from being a masterpiece. Unlike The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, however, they’re pretty severe:

For one, the Manga Iconography is back. As previously stated, Manga Iconography is comic-like animation designed for cheap laughs, and it’s jarring to look at. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time had it in small doses, while Summer Wars has it by the truckload. It keeps popping up in awkward places, such that the intended comedy is completely ruined. This’d be the last time Manga Iconography would be used in a Hosoda film, but for now…it’s hard to sit through when it pops up.

The film’s premise isn’t terribly original. I didn’t know this at first, but Summer Wars is a direct remake of the Digimon movie Our War Games. I have no real problem with this, especially since I have no love for Our War Games but the movie doesn’t try to hide its similarities. Everything about its OZ portions, right down to its double-climax, is an aesthetic rip from it, save some differences. Add in that it doesn’t accurately portray how the internet works, and I’d almost call it lazy.

I also don’t like Shota. At all. He’s useless, whiney and overly-protective of Natsuki. Even during that one scene where he tries being useful, which I won’t ruin, he actually makes the situation worse. Shota actively ruins the scenes that he’s in and he’d kill the film had everyone else not been so well-written.

Finally, the ending. I’ve already ranted about it, even on Infinite Rainy Day, so I’ll keep it brief: I hate the final scene of Summer Wars. Everything I don’t like about the movie culminates in that one moment, and it’s terrible. Plus, it ends on a tonally-inappropriate joke, and not even a funny one. It baffles me why Hosoda included it, as the movie would’ve been better without it.

In the end, it’s not enough to kill the experience. Summer Wars is a fun action film, containing universal themes of love, family and community in ways I rarely see in anime. Is it the most original, or the greatest from Mamoru Hosoda? The answer to both is “no”, but I don’t care. I give it an…


Join me next time as I delve into motherhood and animals with The Wolf Children. I’ll see you then!

Sit down, everyone, because I'm going to tell you a story.  Long ago in the dark days of the mid-90s, if you wanted to enjoy a bit of shoujo in the United States you had to work for it.  Sure, there was Sailor Moon on TV, but if you didn't go for magical girls your options were mostly limited to whatever VHS bootlegs you could get your hands on.  Even the manga world didn't have much to offer until Mixx Magazine came along.  Knowing that, it's pretty easy to understand how a series like Fushigi Yuugi could get popular. It was a series about a girl getting sucked into another world and having adventures with a bunch of pretty warrior boys. With elements of fantasy and romance, it was all but made for teenage girls to throw money at it.  Teen girls did indeed throw lots of money at it, which not only proved there was a market for shoujo in the States, but made creator Yuu Watase a wealthy woman in the process.  For many years Fushigi Yuugi had a reputation as one of the go-to titles for introducing people to anime, much less shoujo anime. 

I was not one of those girls, though. Having gotten into anime in 2010, I knew Fushigi Yuugi only from its reputation.  It was that reputation that led to pull this series and its two OVAs up on Crunchyroll one dull day.  That dull day turned into many days, considering that I had 52 episodes to cover and 13 OVA episodes on top of that.  Nonetheless, I preservered in watching the entire thing.  Having watched the entire franchise now, I'm honestly baffled by its past popularity.  Were shoujo fans truly so desperate for material that they would get invested in such a cheap, schlocky, convoluted, and downright offensive show like this?
The franchise stars one Miaka Yuki, a ditzy 15 year old girl with dreams of love, food, and getting into a prestigious high school alongside her best friend, Yui Hongo.  A study session at the local library leads them to an old Chinese book, The Universe of the Four Gods.  Upon reading it, the two are sucked into its world, only for the two to get quickly seperated.  Miaka is forced to team with a local rogue by the name of Tamahome to survive, and the two soon discover that they are part of a far larger destiny.  It seems that Miaka is the prophesized Priestess of Suzaku, and she must gather seven divine warriors to help her summon the god Suzaku to protect the kingdom.  Along the way, they must fight back against the forces of Nakago, who himself has recruited Yui to summon the opposing god Seiryu for his own purposes.  All the while, Miaka and Tamahome must fight against the strength of their own growing feelings as the completion of their quest might separate them forever.

That sounds perfectly fine as a premise on paper, but it doesn't take many episodes to see that there are some major flaws.  First and foremost amongst those flaws is Miaka herself.  Even fans of the series rarely have a kind word for Miaka, as she's the sort of hapless, helpless shoujo damsel that mostly went out of style in the new millennium.  She constantly wanders into danger without a thought for herself or others and thus is constantly dependent upon someone else to save her.  From the moment that her love interest Tamahome enters the picture, he becomes her entire world and remains so for the rest of the franchise.  Worse still, the plot encourages this at every turn by handily pulling solutions to her problems firmly out of its ass, all under the name of True Love and/or Friendship.

Her obsession with Tamahome is so great that it frequently derails her from both her sacred quest and her efforts to save Yui, which is a big reason as to why this premise was stretched out for 52 episodes.  Why would she worry about getting back to her world or saving her supposed best friend when she can instead fret for the 23rd time if Tamahome truly loves her or not, despite him making his feelings quite clear on the matter?  To Miaka, every moment with Tamahome is pure bliss in her eyes (and pure tedium for the audience), and the mere prospect of being apart from him is enough to turn her into a weeping wreck. The worst part is that Miaka never grows as a character.  She never gains any courage, inner strength, perspective, or any sort of real trust in her non-romantic allies.  All she does is become utterly dependent on her boyfriend, and is rewarded for this from beginning to end.  Who needs character arcs when you can get yourself a man?

The guys aren't much better handled than Miaka is.  Tamahome is meant to be a charming rogue with the oh-so-laughable quirk of being greedy.  Of course, he turns out to have a noble cause, even if said cause is eliminated rather dramatically midway through.  All of this is mostly forgotten once he and Miaka become a proper couple.  At that point, he becomes the blandest romantic hero you could possibly imagine.  He also picks up some bad habits from Miaka, as he starts to run away from Miaka for dramatic purposes all the time too.  He's pretty much a teenage girl's fantasy of what a boyfriend is like: strong, handsome, committed to you no what sort of stupid stunts you might pull, and will endlessly shower you in love and compliments because you have nothing in common other than your mutual love for one another.  Maybe that's super dreamy when you're 15, but to this 32 year old woman it comes off as ridiculous.

Still, Tamahome's handling is positively lavish compared to the development that the rest of the Suzaku Warriors get.  Most of them get their own mini-arcs to establish themselves, and from that moment their characters are set in stone.  Tatsuki will always be the hot-headed comic relief.  Chichiri will always serve as the resident deus ex machine, all while spouting his stupid vocal tic of "no da"/"y'know."  Hotorhori will comment on his own beauty, even as he tries desperately to win Miaka over.  Mitsukake will be mostly silent until someone needs healing.  Chiriko will be...well, he never did much other than serve as the token shouta of the group. 

The only one to get anything resembling an actual character arc is the super-strong Nuriko, and even then it comes with a lot of caveats.  She's initially introduced as a wedge to keep Miaka and Tamahome apart.  The complication comes from the fact that Nuriko is biologically male but presents as a woman.  These days most people would recognize her as a transwoman, but the writers never quite settle on whether she's meant to be that or a gay transvestite.  Sadly, her gender/sexuality issues are mostly used as fodder for a bunch of homophobic jokes early on, and once the story starts exploring Nuriko's backstory it writes off her gender issues entirely.  Still, she grows from a catty rival to the voice of reason in the group, especially where Miaka and Tamahome are concerned.  Unfortunately she falls victim to the same fate as most of the Suzaku Warriors: to die to show that the situation has gotten truly serious.  It seems that was the true purpose of Miaka's little reverse harem: not to serve as romantic rivals, but as cannon fodder.  It becomes such a frequent trend that you start to dread learning their backstories, as it becomes the dramatic equivalent of a movie cop announcing they have only two days until retirement.

I haven't even touched upon the problems of the actual plot!  The biggest problem is that Fushigi Yuugi cannot sustain a dramatic arc to save its life.  Every twist, be it big or small, is seemingly resolved within two or three episodes, so Watase & Co. have to keep throwing new complications and hurdles to be overcome.  This is doubly true for Miaka and Tamahome's romance.  While I am thankful that they did not stretch out the will-they-won't-they nonsense for the series' entire length, I do believe that they made a grave error in bringing the two together as a couple before the first cour was over.  In doing so, they had nowhere to go with these two dramatically, so all the writers could do was find increasingly new and stupid ways to tear them apart and reunite them.  This turns what is meant to be a touching romance into an exercise in frustration, making every declaration of love feel all the more hollow.

Then there's the main villain, the scheming opposing general Nakago.  He's meant to be this great mastermind who starts a war, overthrows another emperor, manipulates Yui into serving Seiryu, and hunting down his own band of celestial warrior all in the name of obtaining ultimate power and taking over both realities.  Aside from the fact that his ultimate goal is incredibly generic, the problem is that we're never shown a moment of Nakago being truly clever.  Instead he mostly stands in place and announces how every stupid plot twist is all part of his plan.  It's hard to believe that this guy, out of the entire cast, is reputedly Watase's favorite character.  You'd think she would make her favorite far more intimidating or charismatic.  The closest he comes to cleverness is when he tricks Miaka into coming to him with the intention of raping her, and even then he completely bungles this by faking it instead for incredibly petty and mind-bogglingly dumb reasons and flat-out telling her what the real deal with Yui is.

Rape is a common threat in the world of Fushigi Yuugi.  Indeed, you have to wonder just how bad Hotohori must be at being emperor when his own kingdom seems to be overrun with wandering rape squads ready to threaten strangely dressed young ladies at the slightest provocation.  The power of the priestesses is contingent on their virginity, so rape seems to be the only way the writers can threaten any notable woman in the cast.  It seems that the show can't go more than half a dozen episodes at a stretch without threatening Miaka with rape.  A rape threat ends up being one of the major factors behind Yui's turn to the dark side.  Rape even ends up motivating the villain, as the show hints that Nakago was raped by the evil emperor as a young boy.  This is yet another artifact of the show's age, as many notable shoujo manga of the time also used rape threats indiscriminately in the name of drama.  Nonetheless, few of those contemporaries can be said to have used rape as frequently or as casually as a plot device as Fushigi Yuugi.

That's far from the only way Fushigi Yuugi mishandles its female cast.  It seems that Watase believes that the only way two women can interact is to be openly or secretly jealous of one another over a man .  This is what motivates Miaka and Nuriko's initial rivalry, as Nuriko is interested in both Tamahome and Hotohori.  It's also what ultimately drives the rivalry between Miaka and Yui once the two are reunited.  That's right, it's not driven by Yui resenting that Miaka has generally had an easier time of things inside the book or by Yui misplacing her anger and resentment under Nakago's guidance.  Nope!  She's simply jealous that Miaka has Tamahome.  She totally met him at the same time and spent all of five minutes with him!  Therefore he should be in love with her!  There are not enough facepalms in the world to convey just how jaw-droppingly insulting this is as a motivation.

Mind you, it's hard to believe that these two are meant to be the best of friends considering that every glimpse of Miaka's home life shows her to be constantly mocked by all of her friends for her stupidity and gluttony.  Still, it makes the nominally brainy Yui look no brighter than Miaka herself.  It's also terribly telling of what Watase and the other writers think about the intelligence and loyalty of their own audience.  It's telling that the only committed friendships we see are those between the Suzaku Warriors and between Miaka's older brother Keisuke and his pal Tetsuya, who follow the events of the book for much of the show's run.

All of these flaws would be easier to ignore if the show had any sort of visual flare or something nice to listen to, but this show fails this on nearly every front.  Studio Pierrot has never been known for lavish animation, and Fushigi Yuugi was no exception to their output.  It cuts corners all over the place, as nearly every action scene involves panning over stills, reusing footage, or features montages of barely animated heads.  Only the occasionally moody background paintings bring any sort of visual relief.  The score is shockingly minimal and out-of-place for what is meant to be a romantic fantasy epic.  This is the sort of story that begs for a full orchestra, but instead we get a few pieces reissued over and over.  There's a wacky bit of synthesized nonsense for the comedy scenes, a hilariously mismatched sax solo for some of the dramatic moments, the weirdly peppy coda that leads into each episode's ending, and many a supporting character's death is underscored by their own image song.  The only piece that worked for me was the opening, or at least the first half where the song tries for an ethereal, exotic air. 

The voice acting is a different matter altogether.  The original Japanese cast is fairly archetypical and even in quality, but it's studded with seiyuu that were just as notable then as they are now.  I particularly liked the suitably girlish tone of Kae Araki's performance as Miaka.  In all fairness, she was already used to playing annoying shoujo characters having spent many years playing Chibi-Usa on Sailor Moon.  The only notable cast member that felt off was Tomokazu Seki's weirdly pitched take on Chichiri.  Also, despite the protestations of many older reviews, Chichiri's vocal tic isn't any less annoying in Japanese.  It's simply less noticeable to English-speaking teens.  It's probably the best way to watch the show, but I mostly soldiered on with the dub.

The English dub is also full of familiar names (even if most of them are using their non-union aliases), but it's a far shoddier affair that serves as a reminder of what a lot of anime dubs were like at the time.  Bridget Hoffman is a notable dub actress in her own right, but Fushigi Yuugi marks only one of two times she was called upon to adapt and direct a dub and her inexperience shows.  Most of the performances are broad or horrendously flat.  Nakago's dub actor in particular sounds so robotic that you could have easily convinced me that it was actually performed by a digital speech simulator.  What's truly shocking is how bad Hoffman herself is as Miaka.  She plays the character as loud and shrill.  She improves some as the series progresses, but never to the point where it starts to sound good.  The only saving grace of the dub is Tamahome.  I'm fully convinced that fangirls of this show back in the day weren't in love with Tamahome per se, but instead with David Hayter's take on Tamahome.  His is by far the best and most natural performance in the dub, and he lends Tamahome all the charm and heroic stalwartness he's meant to possess.  It's a shame that he couldn't stick around for the entire franchise, as the role was recast in the final OVA and the change is a jarring downgrade.

Like most popular shows of the past and present, Fushigi Yuugi's financial success was all the motivation the production staff needed to create some sequel OVAs.  Technically there are three of them, although the first two were stitched together and marketed as one.  You'd like to think that the show's success would mean that the production team would take their time with the story or spend more money on the visual.  You'd be sadly mistaken, though, as the first episode of the first OVA was released within six months of the series finale in Japan and the rest were churned out regularly over the next couple of years. 

The two OVAs cover nine episodes total that are loosely and clumsily tied together.  It starts with Tamahome getting sucked back into the world of the book, where Miaka, Yui, and the Suzaku Warriors must team up to fight Tenkou.  It's not explained well until the very end, but he's an angry god who tries to reboot the cycle of priestesses to take over the world of the book.  Miaka is forced to part from Tamahome, but this sacrifice lasts all of a few minutes as she immediately meets up with his real-world reincarnation Taka.  The second OVA has Taka sucked into the world of the book yet again, where he has to go on a quest for special soul gems tied to each Suzaku Warrior that will restore his memories as Tamahome.  This quickly devolves into a convoluted plot where Tenkou returns to challenge most of the warriors by setting both living and dead loved ones up as demonic challengers, leading up to a fight with Tamahome himself.  While the first OVA shows some promise on the animation front, it quickly reverts to the cheap standards of the series proper and most of the faults of the original are still very much alive and kicking here.

The Eikoden OVA, based on a couple of light novel spinoffs by Watase herself, was the last installment of the franchise, debuting at the tail end of 2001.  Reviews and comments from the time suggest that the fandom were far from fond of this installment, but truthfully I thought it to be the mostly solidly constructed of the OVAs.  It certainly helps that the story isn't about Miaka (who spends most of the story in a coma), but instead the villainess.  Once more, Taka is sucked into the world of the book, but this time the cause isn't a god, but instead a high school girl named Mayo Sakaki.  She's a 16 year old girl with a lot of family drama and a deeply misplaced crush on the now very married Taka.  The book shows her the events of Miaka's time there, and she uses this information (along with Miaka's magically transporting fetus inside her) to try to turn herself into the new Suzaku priestess, with Taka by her side. 

To the OVA's credit, it makes no bones about the fact that Mayo is not meant to be a good person.  She's spiteful, jealous, and manipulative even as she's being manipulated by forces far greater than her own.  Mercifully, most of the cast is not willing to play along with her power trip, as Taka and company have to set off to find the remaining reincarnated Suzaku warriors and save the world YET AGAIN.  Still, Mayo has a focus of purpose that few other characters in the franchise possess.  Unlike the other villains, her motivation is clear and her story arc is well-defined.  Mayo is ultimately forced to confront the consequences of her actions and repent, and it's handled in a way that's not completely awful for once.  If she weren't so thoroughly unlikeable, I'd argue that she was one of the best characters in the franchise!  Eikoden even improves ever so slightly on the animation, although it suffers from some laughably bad CGI in places and every frame is coated in the tackiness that can only come from the era of early digipaint.

Some older anime franchises can withstand the passage of time and stand proud as true classics. Fushigi Yuugi is not one of them.  It's a dinosaur of a series, a fossil of a far more melodramatic time in shoujo and one that bears little resemblance to its modern descendants.  It's weird to think that this show aired in the same year as the second season of Magic Knight Rayearth and the Super S season of Sailor Moon, yet those shows have held up for the most part when compared to this one.  Even some of its imitators have held up far better.  For proof of that, look no further than The Vision of Escaflowne, which aired just a year after Fushigi Yuugi.  The two share a basic premise, if not much else, but Escaflowne has more nuance (and budget) than Fushigi Yuugi could have ever dreamed of.  Most of all, watching this series now makes me truly thankful that shoujo fans no longer have to settle for crap like this just to get their fix.  Nowadays, no one would argue that there isn't a market for women in the world of anime and manga.  It might not have as many crossover hits as shonen does, but it lives and thrives even today.  That means that modern shoujo fans, be they anime watchers or manga readers, can be more discerning about their media choices.  They can sit down and enjoy similar concepts done better in works like Escaflowne, Yona of the Dawn, The Story of Saiunkoku, and many more.  Like most fossils, Fushigi Yuugi spawned a legacy that lives on to this day.  It's just a legacy that has far outgrown its predecessor.