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Al's Anime Reviews - The Beginning After the End
Posted 7 months agoKing Grey is a once-powerful ruler reborn as Arthur Leywin, a boy with untapped potential. He discovers that his new life is filled with danger and adventure at every turn. From mastering powerful spells to facing fierce enemies, Arthur must use his skills and wits to protect those he cares about and uncover the secrets of his mysterious reincarnation. Along the way, he finds friendship, challenges and a destiny that could reshape the very world around him.
You know what's so frustrating about these "reborn-sekai" shows? Even if the story does have potential, there's often hardly any way to know right away because they all insist on wasting their premieres on all the same godforsaken story beats. I hope you aren't tired of devoting an entire episode to seeing an adult man narrate his way through the ups and downs of being reborn into a new life and forced to live as a baby, because that's what this one has to offer.
Now, credit where it's due, I enjoy whenever we get an isekai protagonist who isn't your average Japanese highschooler. The Beginning After the End takes it one step further with a protagonist who doesn't even come from our world. Rather, he's from a sci-fi fantasy world where he was trained to become a warrior king from a young age. In general, this premiere shows us the difference between his first upbringing and his second. From the brief glimpses of his first life, Arthur was molded to become a heartless king. He and other orphans were forced to fight, and only one would eventually be able to seize the throne. We also see that he wasn't revered even as he led his kingdom to victory in battle. He constantly had to watch for assassins in the night, and given how young he still looked when he died, it seems they got him in the end.
All this is to say, Arthur, in his first life as Grey, was raised without love. In his new life, it's the opposite. His parents are incredibly loving and supportive. They care for him and risk their lives for him. Their relief at seeing him safe at the end of the episode teaches Arthur the difference between duty and love. He'd assumed they were raising him as their duty, but now he can see it was for love, and he can feel that love himself for the first time.
The best way I can think of to describe the plot is "Jobless Reincarnation without the creepiness". Like Rudy, Arthur dies in a harsh world but is reborn in a land of magic to loving parents while retaining his memories. Their affection for him and each other softens his heart and inspires him to build a better life for himself this time, while his adult intellect allows him to master magic at a much younger age than expected. However, while Rudy died after he was kicked out of his home for being caught spying on his young niece in the bath, Arthur died a king. He focuses his energy on how his parents care for him, relearning to control his body and sneaking into his family's library when he thinks his mother's back is turned.
If I could say anything particularly positive about this premiere, it's that I did like how the episode placed some dramatic emphasis on Arthur's appreciation of his cozy family dynamics, what with the solitary and lonely existence he led in his previous life. I would've appreciated even more contrasts between his lives, both because they would offer a break from the overly cutesy tone of the episode and because it would've made for a more intriguing premiere overall. There might just be an emotional core to uncover somewhere beneath all the schmaltz and cliche.
Unfortunately, while The Beginning After The End lacks Jobless Reincarnation's sleaziness, it also lacks its visual splendor. I laughed out loud at an early moment where Arthur's mother holds him, fully dressed and presentable moments after birth, with Arthur's head making up about 50% of his total size and his mom's legs, visible under the blanket, being twice as long as the rest of her. Additionally, Arthur's outfit pre-reincarnation, consisting of pauldrons layered over a cape layered over a toga thing layered over full plate armor, had too many elements to the point of tackiness. It wouldn't quite be fair to say that this premiere is barely animated, but at the same time, I could practically hear the celluloid being stretched as far and thin as possible to pad out the runtime. This simply isn't a very attractive show to look at, which is a major problem for any anime. Incredible aesthetics can overcome a crappy script, and an incredible script can usually survive a sloppy adaptation. When the script and animation are more or less equal in their mediocrity, the negative consequences are far greater.
Another issue is that this episode attempts to cram in a lot of worldbuilding. Some of that, it could be argued, is necessary. The "mana core" idea is different enough that I could see where someone thought it needed to be spelled out early on. But most of it feels like something that could have organically slipped in during a more exciting episode. Why tell us about the continent's three kingdoms when it could be shown later? Do we need to spend precious minutes going over the types of magic when Arthur could extrapolate them from observation? Although I suppose I should be grateful that they didn't feel the need to explain why he can read.
Those complaints aside, this is a perfectly passable introduction to the story. There's an entertaining aspect to hearing adult Arthur (or who he used to be) narrate about being itchy or lamenting his poopy diapers, and the episode is 100% creep-free--Arthur never makes gross comments about breastfeeding or anything similar, the closest we come is him being embarrassed that his mom is changing the aforementioned diapers. The end of the episode, where Arthur fully begins to realize what it means to have a loving family, is easily the strongest part, and it's done well enough to make at least a small impact.
So what's my verdict overall? Honestly, I have no idea. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at all interested in seeing where it goes from here, so if, by some miracle, the show ends up being some kind of hidden gem by the time the whole season is finished, I might be persuaded to give it more of my time. The Beginning After the End isn't the worst thing you could waste a half-hour with, but in a season that's turning out as strong as this one, it's not what I consider priority viewing.
You know what's so frustrating about these "reborn-sekai" shows? Even if the story does have potential, there's often hardly any way to know right away because they all insist on wasting their premieres on all the same godforsaken story beats. I hope you aren't tired of devoting an entire episode to seeing an adult man narrate his way through the ups and downs of being reborn into a new life and forced to live as a baby, because that's what this one has to offer.
Now, credit where it's due, I enjoy whenever we get an isekai protagonist who isn't your average Japanese highschooler. The Beginning After the End takes it one step further with a protagonist who doesn't even come from our world. Rather, he's from a sci-fi fantasy world where he was trained to become a warrior king from a young age. In general, this premiere shows us the difference between his first upbringing and his second. From the brief glimpses of his first life, Arthur was molded to become a heartless king. He and other orphans were forced to fight, and only one would eventually be able to seize the throne. We also see that he wasn't revered even as he led his kingdom to victory in battle. He constantly had to watch for assassins in the night, and given how young he still looked when he died, it seems they got him in the end.
All this is to say, Arthur, in his first life as Grey, was raised without love. In his new life, it's the opposite. His parents are incredibly loving and supportive. They care for him and risk their lives for him. Their relief at seeing him safe at the end of the episode teaches Arthur the difference between duty and love. He'd assumed they were raising him as their duty, but now he can see it was for love, and he can feel that love himself for the first time.
The best way I can think of to describe the plot is "Jobless Reincarnation without the creepiness". Like Rudy, Arthur dies in a harsh world but is reborn in a land of magic to loving parents while retaining his memories. Their affection for him and each other softens his heart and inspires him to build a better life for himself this time, while his adult intellect allows him to master magic at a much younger age than expected. However, while Rudy died after he was kicked out of his home for being caught spying on his young niece in the bath, Arthur died a king. He focuses his energy on how his parents care for him, relearning to control his body and sneaking into his family's library when he thinks his mother's back is turned.
If I could say anything particularly positive about this premiere, it's that I did like how the episode placed some dramatic emphasis on Arthur's appreciation of his cozy family dynamics, what with the solitary and lonely existence he led in his previous life. I would've appreciated even more contrasts between his lives, both because they would offer a break from the overly cutesy tone of the episode and because it would've made for a more intriguing premiere overall. There might just be an emotional core to uncover somewhere beneath all the schmaltz and cliche.
Unfortunately, while The Beginning After The End lacks Jobless Reincarnation's sleaziness, it also lacks its visual splendor. I laughed out loud at an early moment where Arthur's mother holds him, fully dressed and presentable moments after birth, with Arthur's head making up about 50% of his total size and his mom's legs, visible under the blanket, being twice as long as the rest of her. Additionally, Arthur's outfit pre-reincarnation, consisting of pauldrons layered over a cape layered over a toga thing layered over full plate armor, had too many elements to the point of tackiness. It wouldn't quite be fair to say that this premiere is barely animated, but at the same time, I could practically hear the celluloid being stretched as far and thin as possible to pad out the runtime. This simply isn't a very attractive show to look at, which is a major problem for any anime. Incredible aesthetics can overcome a crappy script, and an incredible script can usually survive a sloppy adaptation. When the script and animation are more or less equal in their mediocrity, the negative consequences are far greater.
Another issue is that this episode attempts to cram in a lot of worldbuilding. Some of that, it could be argued, is necessary. The "mana core" idea is different enough that I could see where someone thought it needed to be spelled out early on. But most of it feels like something that could have organically slipped in during a more exciting episode. Why tell us about the continent's three kingdoms when it could be shown later? Do we need to spend precious minutes going over the types of magic when Arthur could extrapolate them from observation? Although I suppose I should be grateful that they didn't feel the need to explain why he can read.
Those complaints aside, this is a perfectly passable introduction to the story. There's an entertaining aspect to hearing adult Arthur (or who he used to be) narrate about being itchy or lamenting his poopy diapers, and the episode is 100% creep-free--Arthur never makes gross comments about breastfeeding or anything similar, the closest we come is him being embarrassed that his mom is changing the aforementioned diapers. The end of the episode, where Arthur fully begins to realize what it means to have a loving family, is easily the strongest part, and it's done well enough to make at least a small impact.
So what's my verdict overall? Honestly, I have no idea. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at all interested in seeing where it goes from here, so if, by some miracle, the show ends up being some kind of hidden gem by the time the whole season is finished, I might be persuaded to give it more of my time. The Beginning After the End isn't the worst thing you could waste a half-hour with, but in a season that's turning out as strong as this one, it's not what I consider priority viewing.
Al's Anime Reviews - Witch Watch
Posted 7 months agoMorihito Otogi's family is descended from a long line of oni familiars, and he has the inhuman strength to prove it. One day, his father comes to him with the life-changing news that he's to become the familiar of his childhood witch friend Nico, living under the same roof with her and protecting her from anything and anyone that may attempt to harm her. Meanwhile, Nico is excited to get to live with the love of her life, even if her crush is one-sided--Morihito is so serious about his duties to protect her that any romance is going to be an uphill battle. But he has every reason to be serious, as Nico has a prophecy of doom hanging over her head.
Are you telling me there's THREE anime about cute teenage witches this season and two of them are about one who's destined to die in a year?
Witch Watch is just one new entry in the long history of series about young witches whose powers get them into hijinks and situations, an idea about as old as the medium of the sitcom. Nico has more enthusiasm than sense, and her excitement at trying out new spells evokes the image of a young hobbyist eager to show off new skills. The problem is that messing up actual magic has much higher stakes than making an error with your sleight of hand or playing a note off-key. The episode's vignettes balance out their silliness with a hint of tension, both in the moment and with the end-of-episode revelation that Morihito has been asked to protect Nico because of a prophecy that she'll die within a year.
This certainly isn't without potential. Oh, its premise is fairly routine, right down to an opening scene that shows us Morihito and Nico were childhood friends who separated on a promise and a reunion that involves a highly contrived reason why the two of them must live together. Nico is a well-meaning, perky disaster of a person to contrast with Morihito's more stoic personality, and nearly all of their character interactions are something we've seen before in other shows. But once its story is established, there's a real chance that Witch Watch could branch out and become something much more.
Part of that comes down to the setting. At first I thought it was plain old urban fantasy, where everyone is aware of the existence of supernatural beings in an otherwise ordinary world, but as the episode goes on, it becomes clear that only Morihito and Nico know this, as an oni and a witch respectively. The rest of humanity is totally unaware of what's going on, and that makes for a swift shift in the way they interact with the world. Bully Momota has no clue that Morihito is strong because he's an oni, he just thinks he's some jerk with a good right hook. The old man is startled not because someone smacked into his window, but because a giant talking paper doll did. From the moment Morihito tells Nico she should be careful about using her magic in public, our entire understanding of the story changes.
There are two secrets to Witch Watch's success, with the first being the chemistry of its leads. Morihito is one of those serious-but-devoted anime protags whose overwhelming strength has forced him to develop a serious sense of self-discipline, lest he do an acrobatic motherfucking pirouette off the handle and into the deep end. This discipline and levelheadedness is going to come in extreme handy now that he's been appointed the familiar of Nico, a girl who answers the daring question of "What if Kiki was too stupid to live?" Thankfully, Nico's tendency to accidentally mangle and abominate anything she casts a spell on (including herself) is something that Morihito can handle, and that steadfast dedication is exactly why Nico chose him to be her partner in magical crime (and also definitely her boyfriend eventually).
The other secret to the show's success is that it isn't just cute, it's funny as hell. Usually my rule of thumb is that any comedy that can get me to laugh out loud more than once is an automatic recommendation, and from beginning to end, this premiere had me doing everything from giggling to having a good burst of laughter from deep within. Witch Watch has at least one perfect punchline waiting for its audience every few minutes, but the best bit of the premiere is the scene where Nico almost kills herself by impulsively transforming her body into a giant paper doll, only to immediately get blown out of the window and stuck in a crack between buildings. The voice acting, the change in Nico's character model, the classic "bluhbluhbluhbluhbluh" sound she makes when she vomits up a cloud of confetti, it's all great. And don't even get me started on the spell that makes things lighter, which it turns out makes people it's used on act like they're high as a damn kite.
The visuals are also really damn good in general, particularly details like how Morihito has one hair-horn and his dad has two, and I really like that Nico's wand and broom are the same object in two different forms. My only problem with this premiere is that the sound feels very unbalanced, abruptly and constantly going from soft-spoken to loud and back, requiring me to constantly adjust my TV's volume so I didn't wake anyone up. I hope they fix that issue in the coming episodes.
Y'know that one meme image of Pacha from The Emperor's New Groove, where he's talking about when the sun hits the side of the hill just right? If I could give that for a score, I absolutely would. Instead I'l have to settle for telling you all that Witch Watch is really, REALLY good so far. I cannot recommend it enough.
Are you telling me there's THREE anime about cute teenage witches this season and two of them are about one who's destined to die in a year?
Witch Watch is just one new entry in the long history of series about young witches whose powers get them into hijinks and situations, an idea about as old as the medium of the sitcom. Nico has more enthusiasm than sense, and her excitement at trying out new spells evokes the image of a young hobbyist eager to show off new skills. The problem is that messing up actual magic has much higher stakes than making an error with your sleight of hand or playing a note off-key. The episode's vignettes balance out their silliness with a hint of tension, both in the moment and with the end-of-episode revelation that Morihito has been asked to protect Nico because of a prophecy that she'll die within a year.
This certainly isn't without potential. Oh, its premise is fairly routine, right down to an opening scene that shows us Morihito and Nico were childhood friends who separated on a promise and a reunion that involves a highly contrived reason why the two of them must live together. Nico is a well-meaning, perky disaster of a person to contrast with Morihito's more stoic personality, and nearly all of their character interactions are something we've seen before in other shows. But once its story is established, there's a real chance that Witch Watch could branch out and become something much more.
Part of that comes down to the setting. At first I thought it was plain old urban fantasy, where everyone is aware of the existence of supernatural beings in an otherwise ordinary world, but as the episode goes on, it becomes clear that only Morihito and Nico know this, as an oni and a witch respectively. The rest of humanity is totally unaware of what's going on, and that makes for a swift shift in the way they interact with the world. Bully Momota has no clue that Morihito is strong because he's an oni, he just thinks he's some jerk with a good right hook. The old man is startled not because someone smacked into his window, but because a giant talking paper doll did. From the moment Morihito tells Nico she should be careful about using her magic in public, our entire understanding of the story changes.
There are two secrets to Witch Watch's success, with the first being the chemistry of its leads. Morihito is one of those serious-but-devoted anime protags whose overwhelming strength has forced him to develop a serious sense of self-discipline, lest he do an acrobatic motherfucking pirouette off the handle and into the deep end. This discipline and levelheadedness is going to come in extreme handy now that he's been appointed the familiar of Nico, a girl who answers the daring question of "What if Kiki was too stupid to live?" Thankfully, Nico's tendency to accidentally mangle and abominate anything she casts a spell on (including herself) is something that Morihito can handle, and that steadfast dedication is exactly why Nico chose him to be her partner in magical crime (and also definitely her boyfriend eventually).
The other secret to the show's success is that it isn't just cute, it's funny as hell. Usually my rule of thumb is that any comedy that can get me to laugh out loud more than once is an automatic recommendation, and from beginning to end, this premiere had me doing everything from giggling to having a good burst of laughter from deep within. Witch Watch has at least one perfect punchline waiting for its audience every few minutes, but the best bit of the premiere is the scene where Nico almost kills herself by impulsively transforming her body into a giant paper doll, only to immediately get blown out of the window and stuck in a crack between buildings. The voice acting, the change in Nico's character model, the classic "bluhbluhbluhbluhbluh" sound she makes when she vomits up a cloud of confetti, it's all great. And don't even get me started on the spell that makes things lighter, which it turns out makes people it's used on act like they're high as a damn kite.
The visuals are also really damn good in general, particularly details like how Morihito has one hair-horn and his dad has two, and I really like that Nico's wand and broom are the same object in two different forms. My only problem with this premiere is that the sound feels very unbalanced, abruptly and constantly going from soft-spoken to loud and back, requiring me to constantly adjust my TV's volume so I didn't wake anyone up. I hope they fix that issue in the coming episodes.
Y'know that one meme image of Pacha from The Emperor's New Groove, where he's talking about when the sun hits the side of the hill just right? If I could give that for a score, I absolutely would. Instead I'l have to settle for telling you all that Witch Watch is really, REALLY good so far. I cannot recommend it enough.
Al's Anime Reviews - The Unaware Atelier Master
Posted 7 months ago(Atuhor's Nose: Today you get a triple-feature, today's review plus two others I meant to post yesterday and the day before, delayed due to a variety of real-life factors that got in the way of my finishing and posting them on schedule. Enjoy!)
One day, a kind-hearted boy named Kurt is suddenly kicked out of the hero's party for being seen as useless. He finds that his aptitude for weapons, magic and all other combat-related skills is the lowest rank, so he takes odd jobs repairing the castle walls and digging for minerals to make a living, where his exceptional abilities are immediately revealed. He proves to be skillful in cooking, building, mining and crafting magical tools--in fact, his aptitude for every skill unrelated to combat had an SSS-ranking. Kurt, however, seems completely unaware of his talent and ends up saving people, the town and even the country through his unaware actions.
The Unaware Atelier Meister is one of those rare anime that has me thanking the Anime Gods that its premiere came with an English dub, no matter how much of a double-edged sword it may end up being. On the one hand, watching this in English makes it easier to pick up on how utterly and unabashedly devoid of any meaningful narrative or thematic hooks this story is. On the other, with the way my brain works, I might not have even been able to finish this damn episode if I had to throw in the intellectual labour of reading on top of everything else.
Here is the fundamental problem I have with shows like The Unaware Atelier Master: Their core premise simply cannot function unless every single character in the show--and I mean in the entire world of the show--is unfathomably stupid. I get that the whole "naive loser is kicked out of his party despite secretly being ultra strong" is just a clumsy, childish metaphor for the social growing pains that every 13-year-old boy goes through (even if they never manage to grow out of them), but we've gotten to the point where the analogy is just straight-up breaking the animeit's utilized in, folks. Here we have a world where parties of adventurers are limited to four people by law. Nevermind that this kind of forced party balancing doesn't make an ounce of sense outside of the context of literal video game mechanics, all I could think of during this premiere is why in the hell any party would go out of their way to waste one of their precious slots with what amounts to an indentured servant. Sure, we find out later that our boy Kurt is just overflowing with magical potential and whatnot, but the whole setup still relies on his former party thinking he's useless, and I just do not buy that this would ever happen. It's not like the other party members are incompetent or anything--we find out later that they pretty much immediately shoot up to triple-S rank or whatever the minute they kick Kurt to the curb!
All of this only makes Kurt's entire existence all the more head-scratching, because we find out that this chucklenuts is apparently too stupid to realize he has superhuman construction, mining and cooking abilities that can outmatch entire crews of normal people, and nobody has ever noticed until now because...the show wouldn't exist otherwise, I guess. It might sound like I'm nitpicking, but I promise you, this entire premiere is nothing but inane blather and an endless parade of Kurt's "Golly gee willikers!" shtick. It's so mind-obliteratingly boring that no force on Earth could prevent me from getting distracted by worldbuilding and plot inconsistencies. When we got to the scene where it turns out that a bunch of incredibly rare and conveniently specific high-powered magical devices just got left in some burlap sacks to be stumbled upon as cheap plot devices, I had to pause the episode for a good 10 minutes to cool down because of how irrationally pissed off this premiere was making me.
Sure, one could argue that at least this show is self-aware, but it's also comfortably bog-standard. Kurt is a combination of Lloyd from Suppose a Kid From the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town and every guy who's been kicked out of his party for imaginary deficiencies: He's been told he's useless for so long that he firmly believes it, plus everyone in his hometown appears capable of building entire houses overnight, so his sense of what's "normal" is completely out of whack. He's cheery, kind and enthusiastic, and honestly, hating him would feel like hating a kitten. That does make it a little weird that Kirshell and Yulishia, the first two of what the opening theme suggests are four women, fall for him, because he really does feel very childlike. But if I'm being fair, Yulishia seems more interested in protecting him, which isn't necessarily romantic. She's fully aware that Kurt has incredible powers, something confirmed when she pops into a mage's shop with magic crystals he made, and she's also pretty sure Kurt has zero clue how impressive he is.
I'm actually hoping that this follows more of a protective than romantic path, not only because that'd be something to set it apart from other shows, but also because Kurt feels like he works best as a sweet innocent. His earnestness is this episode's selling point, and while the title of the first episode, "The Common Tale of How the Guy in Charge of Chores With Low Self-Esteem Turned Out to Actually Possess Incredible Skills", indicates a definite parody element, it doesn't have to be over the top. Can the show change course enough to keep me from entirely disliking it? I guess we'll see once the next couple episodes air. It has fine production values, it's perfectly inoffensive regarding its tone and pacing, and I've seen "Kicked Out of the Party" shows that were FAR worse, but it's still gonna have to work harder than this to be appealing to me.
One day, a kind-hearted boy named Kurt is suddenly kicked out of the hero's party for being seen as useless. He finds that his aptitude for weapons, magic and all other combat-related skills is the lowest rank, so he takes odd jobs repairing the castle walls and digging for minerals to make a living, where his exceptional abilities are immediately revealed. He proves to be skillful in cooking, building, mining and crafting magical tools--in fact, his aptitude for every skill unrelated to combat had an SSS-ranking. Kurt, however, seems completely unaware of his talent and ends up saving people, the town and even the country through his unaware actions.
The Unaware Atelier Meister is one of those rare anime that has me thanking the Anime Gods that its premiere came with an English dub, no matter how much of a double-edged sword it may end up being. On the one hand, watching this in English makes it easier to pick up on how utterly and unabashedly devoid of any meaningful narrative or thematic hooks this story is. On the other, with the way my brain works, I might not have even been able to finish this damn episode if I had to throw in the intellectual labour of reading on top of everything else.
Here is the fundamental problem I have with shows like The Unaware Atelier Master: Their core premise simply cannot function unless every single character in the show--and I mean in the entire world of the show--is unfathomably stupid. I get that the whole "naive loser is kicked out of his party despite secretly being ultra strong" is just a clumsy, childish metaphor for the social growing pains that every 13-year-old boy goes through (even if they never manage to grow out of them), but we've gotten to the point where the analogy is just straight-up breaking the animeit's utilized in, folks. Here we have a world where parties of adventurers are limited to four people by law. Nevermind that this kind of forced party balancing doesn't make an ounce of sense outside of the context of literal video game mechanics, all I could think of during this premiere is why in the hell any party would go out of their way to waste one of their precious slots with what amounts to an indentured servant. Sure, we find out later that our boy Kurt is just overflowing with magical potential and whatnot, but the whole setup still relies on his former party thinking he's useless, and I just do not buy that this would ever happen. It's not like the other party members are incompetent or anything--we find out later that they pretty much immediately shoot up to triple-S rank or whatever the minute they kick Kurt to the curb!
All of this only makes Kurt's entire existence all the more head-scratching, because we find out that this chucklenuts is apparently too stupid to realize he has superhuman construction, mining and cooking abilities that can outmatch entire crews of normal people, and nobody has ever noticed until now because...the show wouldn't exist otherwise, I guess. It might sound like I'm nitpicking, but I promise you, this entire premiere is nothing but inane blather and an endless parade of Kurt's "Golly gee willikers!" shtick. It's so mind-obliteratingly boring that no force on Earth could prevent me from getting distracted by worldbuilding and plot inconsistencies. When we got to the scene where it turns out that a bunch of incredibly rare and conveniently specific high-powered magical devices just got left in some burlap sacks to be stumbled upon as cheap plot devices, I had to pause the episode for a good 10 minutes to cool down because of how irrationally pissed off this premiere was making me.
Sure, one could argue that at least this show is self-aware, but it's also comfortably bog-standard. Kurt is a combination of Lloyd from Suppose a Kid From the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town and every guy who's been kicked out of his party for imaginary deficiencies: He's been told he's useless for so long that he firmly believes it, plus everyone in his hometown appears capable of building entire houses overnight, so his sense of what's "normal" is completely out of whack. He's cheery, kind and enthusiastic, and honestly, hating him would feel like hating a kitten. That does make it a little weird that Kirshell and Yulishia, the first two of what the opening theme suggests are four women, fall for him, because he really does feel very childlike. But if I'm being fair, Yulishia seems more interested in protecting him, which isn't necessarily romantic. She's fully aware that Kurt has incredible powers, something confirmed when she pops into a mage's shop with magic crystals he made, and she's also pretty sure Kurt has zero clue how impressive he is.
I'm actually hoping that this follows more of a protective than romantic path, not only because that'd be something to set it apart from other shows, but also because Kurt feels like he works best as a sweet innocent. His earnestness is this episode's selling point, and while the title of the first episode, "The Common Tale of How the Guy in Charge of Chores With Low Self-Esteem Turned Out to Actually Possess Incredible Skills", indicates a definite parody element, it doesn't have to be over the top. Can the show change course enough to keep me from entirely disliking it? I guess we'll see once the next couple episodes air. It has fine production values, it's perfectly inoffensive regarding its tone and pacing, and I've seen "Kicked Out of the Party" shows that were FAR worse, but it's still gonna have to work harder than this to be appealing to me.
Al's Anime Reviews - Once Upon a Witch's Death
Posted 7 months agoOn Meg Raspberry's 17th birthday, she learns she only has one year left to live. Her mentor, Eternal Witch Faust, explains that she's cursed and the only way to save herself is to grow a seed of life using 1,000 tears of joy. Of course, such tears aren't easy to come by. As Meg begins her quest, she finds herself drawn into the lives of her friends and neighbours in ways she never imagined. By sharing their burdens and using her magic to comfort them, she learns how precious those moments of connection can be, even in the face of impending death.
About halfway through the premiere of Once Upon a Witch's Death, our protagonist Meg narrates "Apparently, I lost both of my parents when I was little. I say apparently because I have no memories of them." There's some vaguely wistful music playing on the soundtrack, and we're meant to connect this tragic void in our heroine's life with the looming family tragedy of the little girl Meg must help to get the first magical tear that she'll need to keep from dying in a year. The problem is, Meg conveys this information with all the emotion and depth of your great-aunt telling you what the weather was like during her recent trip to the dog park. It gets the point across, sure, but there's simply no ignoring that sinking feeling that everyone involved in this exchange is simply filling dead air and killing time.
Once Upon a Witch's Death is, in other words, a show that's not so much bad as it is simply not good. The protagonist is blandly chipper and sweet in a way that'll leave no lasting impression, the character designs and animation achieve the minimum they set out to accomplish without actually providing a single standout visual or scene, the writing is chock-full of cliches and platitudes, so the audience will be able to easily follow along with what's happening but be very hard-pressed to actually care...
Watching this episode, I kinda felt like I was being played, treated like some kind of garden-variety fool. Part of it was the downright blatant attempt to play on my emotions. I mean, a young girl with a dead mom who seems to not understand the concept of death and wants to give her mom flowers so she can rest better... That's some serious manipulation right there. However, the real issue isn't that the show is attempting to elicit an emotional reaction, that's pretty much the goal of all fiction. No, the problem is that the situation, while objectively sad, is also painfully cliche. There's no real twist on the formula, the drama plays out beat-for-beat exactly as you'd expect.
It's never a good idea to overplay your hand, especially not in the first episode. I'm not entirely sure that Once Upon a Witch's Death is doing that in the strictest sense, but it still seems as if it's getting there. No sooner is Meg slammed with the revelation that she only has a year to live then she bumps into Anna, a little girl who tells her that "Mommy was in the hospital, but she left and is sleeping now." Meg's first task is, naturally, to help Anna and her father Hendy cope with their own recent loss. The implication is that prior to this moment, Meg didn't fully understand what death meant either. As mentioned before, Meg remarks early on that she thinks her parents died, but she has no memory of them, so she's not really affected by their loss. Even when she's told that she herself is doomed to die, she only thinks of it in terms of no longer existing. But her interactions with Anna and Hendy serve as a demonstration that death leads to grief, thereby showing Meg the importance of life.
Then we get the other issue with this episode: The entire premise feels false. I'm not sure that I believe that Meg is going to suddenly wither away and die in a year. Apparently, Meg has had this curse since birth, a curse that will kill her shortly after she turns 18, and the only way to hold off the curse is by making an immortality potion, which she'll have to keep making and taking at regular intervals forever, that can only be made by bringing pure joy to a thousand people. The only evidence of such a curse (or such a cure) is the word of one of the seven most powerful witches in the world, Meg's mentor who looks like Yubaba with more human proportions, and the more she talks about Meg's curse, the more fake it seems. Faust claims that she never told Meg about the curse because, without a sense of urgency, Meg would just procrastinate. However, as of now, Meg has only 365 days to make 1,000 people experience pure tearjerking joy!
Simply put, all of this feels like a final test for Meg as Faust's apprentice. Meg has basically learned all the magic she needs to become a powerful witch. What now needs to be taught is how to use that power. Thus, Faust has created a situation that forces Meg to use her powers for good, likely in the hopes that this will show the young witch all the good she can do in the world and the personal/emotional reward that comes along with it. The curse could very well not exist at all. And while this may or may not be the case, it certainly feels like it to me, which has utterly drained any and all tension from the plot in my eyes.
Still, there are some positives to be found. Carbuncle is adorable, albeit really toeing the line of plagiarism, and the scene of Meg feeding all the family pets looks like breakfast time at my house. The worldbuilding is at least moderately interesting, since it appears to take place in our world but with the addition of magic, and the scene in front of Iris' grave is at least a little touching. I don't exactly love Meg herself, but she's okay, and I can see this improving as it goes on, but only if it gives itself some space to breathe.
Overall, I don't feel like this is a bad show, but it doesn't really draw me in either. It's inoffensive and easy enough to sit through, but that's not much of a compliment. So in the end, I'm gonna just give it a middle-of-the-road score, tell you to check it out if it sounds interesting to you and move on.
About halfway through the premiere of Once Upon a Witch's Death, our protagonist Meg narrates "Apparently, I lost both of my parents when I was little. I say apparently because I have no memories of them." There's some vaguely wistful music playing on the soundtrack, and we're meant to connect this tragic void in our heroine's life with the looming family tragedy of the little girl Meg must help to get the first magical tear that she'll need to keep from dying in a year. The problem is, Meg conveys this information with all the emotion and depth of your great-aunt telling you what the weather was like during her recent trip to the dog park. It gets the point across, sure, but there's simply no ignoring that sinking feeling that everyone involved in this exchange is simply filling dead air and killing time.
Once Upon a Witch's Death is, in other words, a show that's not so much bad as it is simply not good. The protagonist is blandly chipper and sweet in a way that'll leave no lasting impression, the character designs and animation achieve the minimum they set out to accomplish without actually providing a single standout visual or scene, the writing is chock-full of cliches and platitudes, so the audience will be able to easily follow along with what's happening but be very hard-pressed to actually care...
Watching this episode, I kinda felt like I was being played, treated like some kind of garden-variety fool. Part of it was the downright blatant attempt to play on my emotions. I mean, a young girl with a dead mom who seems to not understand the concept of death and wants to give her mom flowers so she can rest better... That's some serious manipulation right there. However, the real issue isn't that the show is attempting to elicit an emotional reaction, that's pretty much the goal of all fiction. No, the problem is that the situation, while objectively sad, is also painfully cliche. There's no real twist on the formula, the drama plays out beat-for-beat exactly as you'd expect.
It's never a good idea to overplay your hand, especially not in the first episode. I'm not entirely sure that Once Upon a Witch's Death is doing that in the strictest sense, but it still seems as if it's getting there. No sooner is Meg slammed with the revelation that she only has a year to live then she bumps into Anna, a little girl who tells her that "Mommy was in the hospital, but she left and is sleeping now." Meg's first task is, naturally, to help Anna and her father Hendy cope with their own recent loss. The implication is that prior to this moment, Meg didn't fully understand what death meant either. As mentioned before, Meg remarks early on that she thinks her parents died, but she has no memory of them, so she's not really affected by their loss. Even when she's told that she herself is doomed to die, she only thinks of it in terms of no longer existing. But her interactions with Anna and Hendy serve as a demonstration that death leads to grief, thereby showing Meg the importance of life.
Then we get the other issue with this episode: The entire premise feels false. I'm not sure that I believe that Meg is going to suddenly wither away and die in a year. Apparently, Meg has had this curse since birth, a curse that will kill her shortly after she turns 18, and the only way to hold off the curse is by making an immortality potion, which she'll have to keep making and taking at regular intervals forever, that can only be made by bringing pure joy to a thousand people. The only evidence of such a curse (or such a cure) is the word of one of the seven most powerful witches in the world, Meg's mentor who looks like Yubaba with more human proportions, and the more she talks about Meg's curse, the more fake it seems. Faust claims that she never told Meg about the curse because, without a sense of urgency, Meg would just procrastinate. However, as of now, Meg has only 365 days to make 1,000 people experience pure tearjerking joy!
Simply put, all of this feels like a final test for Meg as Faust's apprentice. Meg has basically learned all the magic she needs to become a powerful witch. What now needs to be taught is how to use that power. Thus, Faust has created a situation that forces Meg to use her powers for good, likely in the hopes that this will show the young witch all the good she can do in the world and the personal/emotional reward that comes along with it. The curse could very well not exist at all. And while this may or may not be the case, it certainly feels like it to me, which has utterly drained any and all tension from the plot in my eyes.
Still, there are some positives to be found. Carbuncle is adorable, albeit really toeing the line of plagiarism, and the scene of Meg feeding all the family pets looks like breakfast time at my house. The worldbuilding is at least moderately interesting, since it appears to take place in our world but with the addition of magic, and the scene in front of Iris' grave is at least a little touching. I don't exactly love Meg herself, but she's okay, and I can see this improving as it goes on, but only if it gives itself some space to breathe.
Overall, I don't feel like this is a bad show, but it doesn't really draw me in either. It's inoffensive and easy enough to sit through, but that's not much of a compliment. So in the end, I'm gonna just give it a middle-of-the-road score, tell you to check it out if it sounds interesting to you and move on.
Al's Anime Reviews - Catch Me at the Ballpark!
Posted 7 months agoMurata, an office worker, meets Ruriko, a vendor selling beer who looks like a gyaru. He becomes her first regular customer. Ruriko acts cold toward Murata, but she has an innocent personality that comes out when he is out of sight.
Stadiums, regardless of the sport they are designed for, are fascinating buildings. They're built solely to show off a central area and cater to the needs of the people watching what's going on there. This means that not only are there giant corridors filled with food, shops and washrooms, but also an unseen labyrinth beneath that caters to the players and the staff needed to keep thousands of people happy. Each one is almost like a fully functional micro-city that's only operational for a few hours each week.
In general concept, this anime is about all those people who work behind the scenes at a baseball stadium. This episode introduces us to our first two jobs, a beer vendor and a security guard. The former, Ruriko, works on commission, getting a cut of each beer or snack sold. Thus we see her roam the crowd and flirt with a regular to the park, hoping that he'll actively seek her out night after night when he wants a refill. It's a cool look into her job, especially once it's revealed that Ruriko is far from the flirting machine she appears to be when off the clock.
As for the latter, we get Iga, a man who's been working as a security guard for the park his whole life and takes pride in this job. While he just stands by a door all day, saluting those who walk past, everyone, from the players to the vendors, knows his name and greets him warmly. But now that he's getting older, he's attempting to pass on his knowledge to the next generation, even if they got the job only because they wanted to see baseball games for free. Through the simple act of watching him deal with a lost child, we see how and why this supposedly menial job has given his life meaning. He's made a lasting impact on many, even if he spends most of his days standing alone in the hot sun.
The best thing that Catch Me at the Ballpark! has going for it is its novelty. We've seen plenty of "introvert gets teased by a cute girl" anime, but the baseball stadium setting and the focus on Ruriko's job as a beer girl gives this show a unique enough flavour to stand out from the crowd. I was charmed enough by the premise that all it really needed to do was avoid fucking up the execution. Thankfully, that's exactly what it does, though I can't say it accomplishes much more than delivering exactly the product it advertises. Murata is your typical Joe Average that most any straight male viewer could relate to enough to make the romcom elements of the series work, and Ruriko strikes a good balance of being a flirty tease without coming across as artificially cutesified. My favourite part of the premiere, in fact, is the bit where we learn that she's actually just as shy and awkward as Murata and has to put on an extroverted face to fulfill the professional obligations of her job.
Unfortunately, I don't love the format or the look of it. The show seems to have episodes divided into three short segments, although the first two segments of the premiere might as well be one and the same. This gives the episode a choppy feel that seems at odds with its cozy vibe, because no sooner do we settle in with a plotline, we're moving on to the next. Part of the issue may be that those first two segments do feel like they overlap, albeit not in a natural way. They focus on Murata and his initial interactions with Ruriko as she sells him beer and chitchats with him. It's cute but hampered by the baffling translation of "bento" as "meal pack", which makes Murata's lunchbox sound like a Hungry Man dinner or something.
The third segment, which shifts the focus to Igarashi and the comfort he takes from daily life at the ballpark, is the strongest. I almost wish they'd led with this one, because it not only establishes the venue as a character in its own right, it also creates a sense of timelessness. Iga helping Ruriko tend to a lost child leads into a flashback when the new security guard realizes that Iga did the same thing for him when he was five, and that gives the place and pastime a layer of history that, upon reflection, we can tell is what Murata is feeling there.
Still, I found this episode more interesting than I expected. I don't know if I'll be making this one of those shows I MUST watch on the dot every week, but I am interested to see what other backstage jobs we'll be introduced to and how the ever-increasing cast interacts as things go on. If you like chill slice-of-life stories or have a fondness for baseball and especially the act of watching it in a stadium, I think you'll find things to like here. It's not visually striking and the pacing's a bit off, but it still hits enough good notes to be recommendable.
Stadiums, regardless of the sport they are designed for, are fascinating buildings. They're built solely to show off a central area and cater to the needs of the people watching what's going on there. This means that not only are there giant corridors filled with food, shops and washrooms, but also an unseen labyrinth beneath that caters to the players and the staff needed to keep thousands of people happy. Each one is almost like a fully functional micro-city that's only operational for a few hours each week.
In general concept, this anime is about all those people who work behind the scenes at a baseball stadium. This episode introduces us to our first two jobs, a beer vendor and a security guard. The former, Ruriko, works on commission, getting a cut of each beer or snack sold. Thus we see her roam the crowd and flirt with a regular to the park, hoping that he'll actively seek her out night after night when he wants a refill. It's a cool look into her job, especially once it's revealed that Ruriko is far from the flirting machine she appears to be when off the clock.
As for the latter, we get Iga, a man who's been working as a security guard for the park his whole life and takes pride in this job. While he just stands by a door all day, saluting those who walk past, everyone, from the players to the vendors, knows his name and greets him warmly. But now that he's getting older, he's attempting to pass on his knowledge to the next generation, even if they got the job only because they wanted to see baseball games for free. Through the simple act of watching him deal with a lost child, we see how and why this supposedly menial job has given his life meaning. He's made a lasting impact on many, even if he spends most of his days standing alone in the hot sun.
The best thing that Catch Me at the Ballpark! has going for it is its novelty. We've seen plenty of "introvert gets teased by a cute girl" anime, but the baseball stadium setting and the focus on Ruriko's job as a beer girl gives this show a unique enough flavour to stand out from the crowd. I was charmed enough by the premise that all it really needed to do was avoid fucking up the execution. Thankfully, that's exactly what it does, though I can't say it accomplishes much more than delivering exactly the product it advertises. Murata is your typical Joe Average that most any straight male viewer could relate to enough to make the romcom elements of the series work, and Ruriko strikes a good balance of being a flirty tease without coming across as artificially cutesified. My favourite part of the premiere, in fact, is the bit where we learn that she's actually just as shy and awkward as Murata and has to put on an extroverted face to fulfill the professional obligations of her job.
Unfortunately, I don't love the format or the look of it. The show seems to have episodes divided into three short segments, although the first two segments of the premiere might as well be one and the same. This gives the episode a choppy feel that seems at odds with its cozy vibe, because no sooner do we settle in with a plotline, we're moving on to the next. Part of the issue may be that those first two segments do feel like they overlap, albeit not in a natural way. They focus on Murata and his initial interactions with Ruriko as she sells him beer and chitchats with him. It's cute but hampered by the baffling translation of "bento" as "meal pack", which makes Murata's lunchbox sound like a Hungry Man dinner or something.
The third segment, which shifts the focus to Igarashi and the comfort he takes from daily life at the ballpark, is the strongest. I almost wish they'd led with this one, because it not only establishes the venue as a character in its own right, it also creates a sense of timelessness. Iga helping Ruriko tend to a lost child leads into a flashback when the new security guard realizes that Iga did the same thing for him when he was five, and that gives the place and pastime a layer of history that, upon reflection, we can tell is what Murata is feeling there.
Still, I found this episode more interesting than I expected. I don't know if I'll be making this one of those shows I MUST watch on the dot every week, but I am interested to see what other backstage jobs we'll be introduced to and how the ever-increasing cast interacts as things go on. If you like chill slice-of-life stories or have a fondness for baseball and especially the act of watching it in a stadium, I think you'll find things to like here. It's not visually striking and the pacing's a bit off, but it still hits enough good notes to be recommendable.
Al's Anime Reviews - Tasokare Hotel
Posted 10 months agoTasokare Hotel is engulfed in perpetual twilight, with no distinction between day and night. It exists as a place between life and death, where souls unable to decide whether to move on or return to the living world can rest their wings. Neko Tsukahara wanders in without remembering who she is or why she's there. Guided by the hotel staff, she's led to her room. There should be items related to the customer's memories in each room, and these might serve as clues to help them regain their identities. She then gets caught up in an incident while searching for a way to remember who she is.
A great premise can get you a long way in this industry, and Tasokare Hotel has a real humdinger of a setup. Our heroine, Neko Tsukahara, has found herself a sudden new guest of the titular hotel. Some of its guests may be well and truly dead, and some may simply be fighting for their lives, but the gist is that you can't recover your true face or your memories until you figure things out for yourself. Neko seems to have a knack for solving the mysteries of the other guests' lives beyond the hotel walls. Since there's really nothing else to do in the place besides listen to the radio or day-drink at the bar, it only makes sense that she'd take up work as the place's official detective until she can sort out her own reasons for being there.
Tasokare Hotel makes good on its premise by filling the place with all manner of bizarre and interesting characters. The hotel manager who looks a bit like Grillby is maybe the most relatable character outside of Neko. The bartender is a cute-as-hell flapper girl with horns who I'm very excited to see more of, there's a monkey-looking weirdo in a funny hat who's sure to be important later, and the first guest whose identity gets solved has a whole tarot card deck for a head, which is some Kinnikuman-tier ace design.
The setting itself is the star here though. We have a kind of purgatory that takes the form of a hotel. When suffering a near-death experience, you awaken here without any of your memories. To leave, you need to remember three things: Your name, the circumstances leading to your experience, and whether you're still alive or dead. Luckily, you have the hotel staff to help you, not to mention the shape-shifting hotel itself and its attempts to jog your memory. This setup gives Tasokare Hotel the perfect "mystery of the week" premise.
I suspect that most people are going to watch this show and make comparisons to Death Parade. Those are warranted, but I had a different reference in mind: Hotel California. It's certainly not a perfect fit because it doesn't appear that "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." Still, there's something about a mysterious hotel on the borders between life and death, in a space forever in twilight, appearing in the desert like a mirage or a miracle, that calls to mind the song. And hotels are liminal spaces anyway, homes that exist to be temporary, where people come and go but never fully settle--unless they can't bring themselves to leave.
That's where Neko seems to be. We know that she was stabbed and is currently bleeding out in the street, but all she can remember is that she was at an idol concert, and as the episode goes on, it begins to look like that's all she wants to know. She's much more invested in exploring the hotel and helping another guest figure out her identity. This raises the question of whether Neko deliberately tries not to recall her past, because she certainly jumps at the chance to avoid choosing between life and death by taking a job at the hotel. Two other humans do work there, so it's not an unprecedented decision, but it is one that screams deliberate avoidance, a possibility we really can't ignore.
Where it falls short lies mainly in two areas. For one, the direction is a bit lacking. You'd think that a show like this would revel in the chance to get at least a little spooky, but the presentation generally comes across as quite flat. It's serviceable, but nothing elevates the material above what you could probably get from playing the game it's apparently based on. Also, the actual mystery angle doesn't seem to be firing on all cylinders yet. I get the broad appeal of a story like what we get with the girl whose obsession with a psychic livestreamer ended up putting her in harm's way, but it's more of a sketch for a good plot than a compelling tale in its own right. I can see how such a basic opening chapter would make sense as, say, the tutorial for a video game, but I'm hoping that the show has meatier meals to serve up in future episodes.
Still, there's enough cool stuff happening in Tasokare Hotel to warrant further investigations into Neko's adventures in the world of spirits and lost memories. It could honestly go either way at this point. I could see the show fizzling out into a barebones cycle of anemic episodes, and I could see it blossoming into a much more complex and satisfying collection of mysteries. Here's hoping the latter ends up being the case!
A great premise can get you a long way in this industry, and Tasokare Hotel has a real humdinger of a setup. Our heroine, Neko Tsukahara, has found herself a sudden new guest of the titular hotel. Some of its guests may be well and truly dead, and some may simply be fighting for their lives, but the gist is that you can't recover your true face or your memories until you figure things out for yourself. Neko seems to have a knack for solving the mysteries of the other guests' lives beyond the hotel walls. Since there's really nothing else to do in the place besides listen to the radio or day-drink at the bar, it only makes sense that she'd take up work as the place's official detective until she can sort out her own reasons for being there.
Tasokare Hotel makes good on its premise by filling the place with all manner of bizarre and interesting characters. The hotel manager who looks a bit like Grillby is maybe the most relatable character outside of Neko. The bartender is a cute-as-hell flapper girl with horns who I'm very excited to see more of, there's a monkey-looking weirdo in a funny hat who's sure to be important later, and the first guest whose identity gets solved has a whole tarot card deck for a head, which is some Kinnikuman-tier ace design.
The setting itself is the star here though. We have a kind of purgatory that takes the form of a hotel. When suffering a near-death experience, you awaken here without any of your memories. To leave, you need to remember three things: Your name, the circumstances leading to your experience, and whether you're still alive or dead. Luckily, you have the hotel staff to help you, not to mention the shape-shifting hotel itself and its attempts to jog your memory. This setup gives Tasokare Hotel the perfect "mystery of the week" premise.
I suspect that most people are going to watch this show and make comparisons to Death Parade. Those are warranted, but I had a different reference in mind: Hotel California. It's certainly not a perfect fit because it doesn't appear that "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." Still, there's something about a mysterious hotel on the borders between life and death, in a space forever in twilight, appearing in the desert like a mirage or a miracle, that calls to mind the song. And hotels are liminal spaces anyway, homes that exist to be temporary, where people come and go but never fully settle--unless they can't bring themselves to leave.
That's where Neko seems to be. We know that she was stabbed and is currently bleeding out in the street, but all she can remember is that she was at an idol concert, and as the episode goes on, it begins to look like that's all she wants to know. She's much more invested in exploring the hotel and helping another guest figure out her identity. This raises the question of whether Neko deliberately tries not to recall her past, because she certainly jumps at the chance to avoid choosing between life and death by taking a job at the hotel. Two other humans do work there, so it's not an unprecedented decision, but it is one that screams deliberate avoidance, a possibility we really can't ignore.
Where it falls short lies mainly in two areas. For one, the direction is a bit lacking. You'd think that a show like this would revel in the chance to get at least a little spooky, but the presentation generally comes across as quite flat. It's serviceable, but nothing elevates the material above what you could probably get from playing the game it's apparently based on. Also, the actual mystery angle doesn't seem to be firing on all cylinders yet. I get the broad appeal of a story like what we get with the girl whose obsession with a psychic livestreamer ended up putting her in harm's way, but it's more of a sketch for a good plot than a compelling tale in its own right. I can see how such a basic opening chapter would make sense as, say, the tutorial for a video game, but I'm hoping that the show has meatier meals to serve up in future episodes.
Still, there's enough cool stuff happening in Tasokare Hotel to warrant further investigations into Neko's adventures in the world of spirits and lost memories. It could honestly go either way at this point. I could see the show fizzling out into a barebones cycle of anemic episodes, and I could see it blossoming into a much more complex and satisfying collection of mysteries. Here's hoping the latter ends up being the case!
Al's Anime Reviews - Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf!
Posted 10 months agoEver since he was young, Kazuhiro Kitase would enter a wondrous world in his dreams and go on thrilling adventures. One day, he goes on an adventure with an elven sorceress he's gotten to know named Marie, but it's put to an abrupt halt when they both get scorched by a dragon's breath. As he wakes from his dream as he always does after fainting or dying in the dream, he notices a familiar figure sleeping beside him...
I'm not sure how the reverse elf-sekai anime became such a trend in recent years, but screw it--I'll happily go along with a new trend if it means a chance at getting some novelty injected into this tepid season. And I mean, far be it from me to complain about getting more sexy anime elf girls that can enjoy lives free from the insipid potato golems they're usually paired with in crappier isekai shows. Good for them, I say!
Every so often, we get an isekai story where the concept just sells the show. Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf! presents us with the story of Kazuhiro, a young man who's been living two lives--one in the real world and one in a fantasy world--without really knowing it. Each night, when he goes to bed, he awakens in the fantasy world and goes on all kinds of adventures, but if he loses consciousness or even dies there, he simply reawakens at home. He's always treated this as a kind of continuous lucid dreaming with grand adventures and recurring characters. It's only when he brings Marie from the dream and into reality that he realizes he's been travelling between worlds for years.
The reason this setup works so well from a metatextual perspective is the fact that it basically allows for two genres in one. On one hand, we have a fantasy adventure as Kazuhiro and Marie explore dungeons and fight dragons. On the other, we have a slice-of-life tale that sees Marie becoming acquainted with our reality and all the ways it's so drastically different from her own. This mixture leaves room for all kinds of different plotlines, and it allows things to go from calm and lighthearted to dangerous and tense as the story wills.
It has a lot of good details once Marie arrives in and sees Japan too, like her being so freaked out at the concept of riding in a car that Kazuhiro has to drive at pedestrian speed to him asking the waitress for a fork at the restaurant because Marie won't know how to use chopsticks. Marie's enthusiasm is contagious in a very real way. Did the outfit he bought for her need to look like a school uniform? No, but the rest of this is charming enough to forgive a little pandering. There's still plenty of fanservice, but the show remembers to balance its lewd impulses with enough cute antics to appeal to just about anyone. That is, as long as you can tolerate more than a few shameless lingering shots of Marie's boobs.
Now, if I had one major complaint about Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf!, it would be that Kazuhiro is still a bit too much of an everyman audience surrogate to make for an especially compelling protagonist. I'll honestly never understand the need for such blatant self-insert characters in stories like these, especially when there's a romantic angle. Then again, we do get some genuinely endearing moments that show off why anyone would end up falling for him in the first place, like when he greets his lizardman buddy in the fantasy world with an adorable high-five and a "Yay!", so he's got more going for him than the MCs of most other shows like this.
The premiere also serves as a setup for a solid romance story. Up until now, Kazuhiro hasn't been too serious about his life in the fantasy world, believing that it, and all those within it, were figments of his imagination. Knowing that they're all real people means that his view of them has shifted, especially with Marie. Once she was a tsundere elf that he sometimes went on adventures with. Now he sees her as a beautiful woman who's infatuated with him and his world.
But more than that, for the first time, Kazuhiro has someone he can share his whole life with. Before, it was strictly separated between worlds, but with Marie, there's no need for secrets. He can truly be himself.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with this one. Kazuhiro and Marie have some real chemistry, and the story framework allows for a story that's anything but predictable. I suspect I'll be watching this one all the way to the end.
To quote the great chef Romron Gramsay once again, "Finally, some good fucking food."
I'm not sure how the reverse elf-sekai anime became such a trend in recent years, but screw it--I'll happily go along with a new trend if it means a chance at getting some novelty injected into this tepid season. And I mean, far be it from me to complain about getting more sexy anime elf girls that can enjoy lives free from the insipid potato golems they're usually paired with in crappier isekai shows. Good for them, I say!
Every so often, we get an isekai story where the concept just sells the show. Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf! presents us with the story of Kazuhiro, a young man who's been living two lives--one in the real world and one in a fantasy world--without really knowing it. Each night, when he goes to bed, he awakens in the fantasy world and goes on all kinds of adventures, but if he loses consciousness or even dies there, he simply reawakens at home. He's always treated this as a kind of continuous lucid dreaming with grand adventures and recurring characters. It's only when he brings Marie from the dream and into reality that he realizes he's been travelling between worlds for years.
The reason this setup works so well from a metatextual perspective is the fact that it basically allows for two genres in one. On one hand, we have a fantasy adventure as Kazuhiro and Marie explore dungeons and fight dragons. On the other, we have a slice-of-life tale that sees Marie becoming acquainted with our reality and all the ways it's so drastically different from her own. This mixture leaves room for all kinds of different plotlines, and it allows things to go from calm and lighthearted to dangerous and tense as the story wills.
It has a lot of good details once Marie arrives in and sees Japan too, like her being so freaked out at the concept of riding in a car that Kazuhiro has to drive at pedestrian speed to him asking the waitress for a fork at the restaurant because Marie won't know how to use chopsticks. Marie's enthusiasm is contagious in a very real way. Did the outfit he bought for her need to look like a school uniform? No, but the rest of this is charming enough to forgive a little pandering. There's still plenty of fanservice, but the show remembers to balance its lewd impulses with enough cute antics to appeal to just about anyone. That is, as long as you can tolerate more than a few shameless lingering shots of Marie's boobs.
Now, if I had one major complaint about Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf!, it would be that Kazuhiro is still a bit too much of an everyman audience surrogate to make for an especially compelling protagonist. I'll honestly never understand the need for such blatant self-insert characters in stories like these, especially when there's a romantic angle. Then again, we do get some genuinely endearing moments that show off why anyone would end up falling for him in the first place, like when he greets his lizardman buddy in the fantasy world with an adorable high-five and a "Yay!", so he's got more going for him than the MCs of most other shows like this.
The premiere also serves as a setup for a solid romance story. Up until now, Kazuhiro hasn't been too serious about his life in the fantasy world, believing that it, and all those within it, were figments of his imagination. Knowing that they're all real people means that his view of them has shifted, especially with Marie. Once she was a tsundere elf that he sometimes went on adventures with. Now he sees her as a beautiful woman who's infatuated with him and his world.
But more than that, for the first time, Kazuhiro has someone he can share his whole life with. Before, it was strictly separated between worlds, but with Marie, there's no need for secrets. He can truly be himself.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with this one. Kazuhiro and Marie have some real chemistry, and the story framework allows for a story that's anything but predictable. I suspect I'll be watching this one all the way to the end.
To quote the great chef Romron Gramsay once again, "Finally, some good fucking food."
Al's Anime Reviews - From Bureaucrat to Villainess
Posted 10 months agoKenzaburo Tondabayashi is a 52-year-old public servant who one day gets hit by a truck while rescuing a child who'd wandered into the road. When he regains consciousness, he finds himself reincarnated into a fantasy world's academy, reborn as the haughty 15-year-old noble Grace Auvergne.
Of all of the dead-horse genres and subgenres that have been well and thoroughly pulverized by the merciless whipping of an industry driven mad by profit margins and quick turnarounds, the "Reincarnated as the Antagonist of an Otome Game" subgenre of isekai has already become the stuff of tired, cliche-driven retreads less than a decade after it was born. But From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated! is special stuff, breathing life into tropes I thought I'd given up on. Is the premise of a middle-aged father being reincarnated into his daughter's favorite otome game the sort of idea that's going to set the industry aflame and set trends that'll last for generations to come? No, but hell, it's at least the kind of small demonstration of respect for the audience's intelligence that'd secure a full-season run for a family sitcom in the 1970s around these parts. Y'know, like how The Funky Phantom was just "Scooby-Doo, but with a Revolutionary War veteran ghost for some reason"? From Bureaucrat to Villainess is "Reincarnated as the Antagonist of an Otome Game, except the main character is a goofy old man who barely understands what's happening." It's just formulaic enough to avoid justifying any pay raises at the animation studio, yet just creative enough to enjoyably fill a 23-minute void in your evening.
It probably sounds like I'm giving this show a backhanded compliment, but I genuinely respect a silly little comedy that remembers that it needs to tell actual jokes in order to justify its existence. From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated! is built around a single joke: A 52-year-old salaryman reincarnated into the body of a teenage ojou-sama. While this could easily be mined for humor all on its own, there are a few extra layers to it that keep the laughs coming. One of the most crucial things that makes it work is that Kenzaburo, despite being a 52-year-old man in the body of a 15-year-old noble, is a big anime and video game fan with a fondness for the otome game subgenre as something he's encountered through his teenage daughter. Before he was hit by a truck while saving a child in the street, we saw that the two of them had a great relationship, affectionately ribbing one another and chatting about nerdy stuff. It made me like Kenzaburo immensely straight from the get-go. However, because what he knows about otome games comes entirely from talking with his daughter about them, this makes him the wrong genre-savvy most of the time, misunderstanding what's going on with the people around him. The other additional source of humor comes from the fact that even when he's trying to be a villainess (a role he only somewhat understands), he tends to respond as a dad by instinct, utterly ruining any "evil" act he was planning to pull off. Frankly, my affection for the character only grew as he offered game protagonist Anna fatherly advice and his experience in Japanese business etiquette translated into comportment as a young noblewoman.
One of the failings of the villainess subgenre is that aside from its incepting series, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, they've tended to have weak animation. Not so here--this is a top-tier production, staying true to the genre's stylistic conventions but with detailed character animation. Every gesture is smooth and naturalistic--except maybe the over-the-top bouncing of Grace's giant ringlets. The voice cast includes the likes of Kikuko Inoue as the narrator, Kenshiro Inoue as Kenzaburo and MAO as Grace. Inoue and MAO are clearly having a blast playing the dual role of Kenzaburo and Grace. Through their acting, we get to see the contrast between Kenzaburo's thoughts and how they're interpreted by Grace's body. It's genuinely funny, and the animation supports their acting perfectly. Even better, his inner/outer personality difference is a core aspect of the plot. It's presented as a kind of isekai cheat skill, but one that isn't overpowered and actually works towards comedy, ie. the most important aspect of the show.
Am I personally planning to go out of my way to check out every episode for 12 straight weeks? Probably not, but I can definitely see myself eventually binging a handful of episodes at a time later. Again, that might not sound like a compliment, but really, it's okay to be just "good". I don't need every anime to strive for high art or subversive spectacle. Genuine effort and competence is all I really ask for at this point, and that's something this anime has no problem delivering. It's lighthearted, clever and able to use its premise to maximum effect, and that's at least enough to have me recommending you give it a shot.
Of all of the dead-horse genres and subgenres that have been well and thoroughly pulverized by the merciless whipping of an industry driven mad by profit margins and quick turnarounds, the "Reincarnated as the Antagonist of an Otome Game" subgenre of isekai has already become the stuff of tired, cliche-driven retreads less than a decade after it was born. But From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated! is special stuff, breathing life into tropes I thought I'd given up on. Is the premise of a middle-aged father being reincarnated into his daughter's favorite otome game the sort of idea that's going to set the industry aflame and set trends that'll last for generations to come? No, but hell, it's at least the kind of small demonstration of respect for the audience's intelligence that'd secure a full-season run for a family sitcom in the 1970s around these parts. Y'know, like how The Funky Phantom was just "Scooby-Doo, but with a Revolutionary War veteran ghost for some reason"? From Bureaucrat to Villainess is "Reincarnated as the Antagonist of an Otome Game, except the main character is a goofy old man who barely understands what's happening." It's just formulaic enough to avoid justifying any pay raises at the animation studio, yet just creative enough to enjoyably fill a 23-minute void in your evening.
It probably sounds like I'm giving this show a backhanded compliment, but I genuinely respect a silly little comedy that remembers that it needs to tell actual jokes in order to justify its existence. From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated! is built around a single joke: A 52-year-old salaryman reincarnated into the body of a teenage ojou-sama. While this could easily be mined for humor all on its own, there are a few extra layers to it that keep the laughs coming. One of the most crucial things that makes it work is that Kenzaburo, despite being a 52-year-old man in the body of a 15-year-old noble, is a big anime and video game fan with a fondness for the otome game subgenre as something he's encountered through his teenage daughter. Before he was hit by a truck while saving a child in the street, we saw that the two of them had a great relationship, affectionately ribbing one another and chatting about nerdy stuff. It made me like Kenzaburo immensely straight from the get-go. However, because what he knows about otome games comes entirely from talking with his daughter about them, this makes him the wrong genre-savvy most of the time, misunderstanding what's going on with the people around him. The other additional source of humor comes from the fact that even when he's trying to be a villainess (a role he only somewhat understands), he tends to respond as a dad by instinct, utterly ruining any "evil" act he was planning to pull off. Frankly, my affection for the character only grew as he offered game protagonist Anna fatherly advice and his experience in Japanese business etiquette translated into comportment as a young noblewoman.
One of the failings of the villainess subgenre is that aside from its incepting series, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, they've tended to have weak animation. Not so here--this is a top-tier production, staying true to the genre's stylistic conventions but with detailed character animation. Every gesture is smooth and naturalistic--except maybe the over-the-top bouncing of Grace's giant ringlets. The voice cast includes the likes of Kikuko Inoue as the narrator, Kenshiro Inoue as Kenzaburo and MAO as Grace. Inoue and MAO are clearly having a blast playing the dual role of Kenzaburo and Grace. Through their acting, we get to see the contrast between Kenzaburo's thoughts and how they're interpreted by Grace's body. It's genuinely funny, and the animation supports their acting perfectly. Even better, his inner/outer personality difference is a core aspect of the plot. It's presented as a kind of isekai cheat skill, but one that isn't overpowered and actually works towards comedy, ie. the most important aspect of the show.
Am I personally planning to go out of my way to check out every episode for 12 straight weeks? Probably not, but I can definitely see myself eventually binging a handful of episodes at a time later. Again, that might not sound like a compliment, but really, it's okay to be just "good". I don't need every anime to strive for high art or subversive spectacle. Genuine effort and competence is all I really ask for at this point, and that's something this anime has no problem delivering. It's lighthearted, clever and able to use its premise to maximum effect, and that's at least enough to have me recommending you give it a shot.
Al's Anime Reviews - Possibly the Greatest Alchemist
Posted 10 months ago(Atuhor's Nose: This'll be one of those double feature days--this was meant to go up yesterday, but full disclosure, I got distracted by AGDQ.)
Takumi Iruma gets accidentally mixed in with a group of heroes chosen to be summoned to another world. As compensation for the mixup, a goddess offers him the right to choose any skill he wishes for. Hoping for a peaceful and quiet life with nothing to do with going into battle, he chooses a seemingly boring creation skill. However, it turns out that "Alchemy" is the most powerful skill that allows him to create everything, from a holy sword to flying ships. This cheat skill he unexpectedly acquired turns him into a wealthy merchant and makes him undefeatable in battle.
Recently there's been a lot of chatter about how Netflix is instructing showrunners not to write scripts that require a lot of audience engagement to follow or to have characters just describe what they do as they do it. It made me think of all the light novel adaptations where the protagonist narrates incessantly, listing every action as they make it. Since Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of All Time (based on a light novel series actually titled Someday Will I Be The Greatest Alchemist?) premiered with an English dub, I decided to try something: If I put it on and laid in bed staring at the ceiling, playing my Switch or just doing anything else, would I still be able to follow it?
Yes, yes I was. A few things weren't immediately obvious, but properly watching the Japanese version afterwards indicated that I had inferred everything correctly based on genre awareness. The script made it crystal clear what was happening at all times, no visual cues needed. In fact, the visuals failed to add much at all, with the dull world and bland character designs (though I did like the goddess' skeletal wings, something interesting or unique for once), and even though I could see as well as hear everything that was happening, it wasn't much more interesting. After all, it's like almost every other uninspired isekai ever. So much of this premiere feels like it's just going through the motions. We have the hero's meeting with a goddess who explains the plot and then the hero rescuing a random girl from danger shortly after his rebirth. The rest of the episode is just an extended amount of time with Takumi figuring out how the magic system works, and of course it's based on video game stat screens. It's lazy, boring, and all the more egregious because it has no obvious twist, no new take on the formula, to separate it from the myriad of other isekai stories.
Sent to another world due to a goddess messing up? Seen it! Accidentally summoned and not the true hero? Might as well be a staple at this point! Reborn with totally overpowered skills? I mean, that's kind of a core facet of the entire subgenre! Cute animal companion that'll almost inevitably turn into a sexy waifu at some point? Goes without saying!
But what actually upsets me about this premiere is that there are moments where something genuinely interesting happens, only to cut back immediately to the same old boring cliches. To its credit, there are little hints at more friction than there initially appears to be--for some reason, Lady Nolyn has chosen to plop Takumi down a year before the people he was accidentally summoned alongside. He amasses levels easily enough, but not always in the areas he wants to, and it's a struggle to keep points allocated to his desired skills. There are clear indicators of a whole second story going on with Nolyn and the empire battling it out. And I'm not gonna lie, the fight between a goddess and a human empire sounds like it could be a really cool story, especially as Nolyn has to act through proxies while the empire can act out in the open. It's something, but it didn't keep me from groaning out loud when I checked the timestamp and realized I was only halfway through the episode.
And instead of focusing on that story, we watch a bog-standard isekai protagonist, one so unremarkable he that doesn't even have a backstory beyond "was a company employee"--mess about with magic for 22 minutes. And honestly, I don't need more anime like that in my life.
Takumi Iruma gets accidentally mixed in with a group of heroes chosen to be summoned to another world. As compensation for the mixup, a goddess offers him the right to choose any skill he wishes for. Hoping for a peaceful and quiet life with nothing to do with going into battle, he chooses a seemingly boring creation skill. However, it turns out that "Alchemy" is the most powerful skill that allows him to create everything, from a holy sword to flying ships. This cheat skill he unexpectedly acquired turns him into a wealthy merchant and makes him undefeatable in battle.
Recently there's been a lot of chatter about how Netflix is instructing showrunners not to write scripts that require a lot of audience engagement to follow or to have characters just describe what they do as they do it. It made me think of all the light novel adaptations where the protagonist narrates incessantly, listing every action as they make it. Since Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of All Time (based on a light novel series actually titled Someday Will I Be The Greatest Alchemist?) premiered with an English dub, I decided to try something: If I put it on and laid in bed staring at the ceiling, playing my Switch or just doing anything else, would I still be able to follow it?
Yes, yes I was. A few things weren't immediately obvious, but properly watching the Japanese version afterwards indicated that I had inferred everything correctly based on genre awareness. The script made it crystal clear what was happening at all times, no visual cues needed. In fact, the visuals failed to add much at all, with the dull world and bland character designs (though I did like the goddess' skeletal wings, something interesting or unique for once), and even though I could see as well as hear everything that was happening, it wasn't much more interesting. After all, it's like almost every other uninspired isekai ever. So much of this premiere feels like it's just going through the motions. We have the hero's meeting with a goddess who explains the plot and then the hero rescuing a random girl from danger shortly after his rebirth. The rest of the episode is just an extended amount of time with Takumi figuring out how the magic system works, and of course it's based on video game stat screens. It's lazy, boring, and all the more egregious because it has no obvious twist, no new take on the formula, to separate it from the myriad of other isekai stories.
Sent to another world due to a goddess messing up? Seen it! Accidentally summoned and not the true hero? Might as well be a staple at this point! Reborn with totally overpowered skills? I mean, that's kind of a core facet of the entire subgenre! Cute animal companion that'll almost inevitably turn into a sexy waifu at some point? Goes without saying!
But what actually upsets me about this premiere is that there are moments where something genuinely interesting happens, only to cut back immediately to the same old boring cliches. To its credit, there are little hints at more friction than there initially appears to be--for some reason, Lady Nolyn has chosen to plop Takumi down a year before the people he was accidentally summoned alongside. He amasses levels easily enough, but not always in the areas he wants to, and it's a struggle to keep points allocated to his desired skills. There are clear indicators of a whole second story going on with Nolyn and the empire battling it out. And I'm not gonna lie, the fight between a goddess and a human empire sounds like it could be a really cool story, especially as Nolyn has to act through proxies while the empire can act out in the open. It's something, but it didn't keep me from groaning out loud when I checked the timestamp and realized I was only halfway through the episode.
And instead of focusing on that story, we watch a bog-standard isekai protagonist, one so unremarkable he that doesn't even have a backstory beyond "was a company employee"--mess about with magic for 22 minutes. And honestly, I don't need more anime like that in my life.
IT KRIMAH
Posted 11 months agoMerry Christmas to everyone celebrating it! I hope you all have a happy, fun and safe day, and feel free to share what you did/will be doing this year in the comments! ^o^
To everyone who voted for the rotten orange menace
Posted a year agoEnjoy your bigot paradise dictatorship Hell on Earth. And pray that none of you are non-white, non-Christian, female, intellectual, environmentalist or LGBT enough to be impacted by Glorious Leader's horrid plans or become the targets of your own fellow Trumpanzees.
Can't wait to see how much of your country's disgusting apparent majority mindset (oh, who am I kidding, we all know your precious god-king cheated his way in again) oozes its way into my country this time.
PS. Because I know this'll hurt any Trumpers watching me more than any insults could, yes I do support Ukraine in their fight against Trump's sugar daddy who wants to revive the USSR, I'm pro-Palestine because regardless of how their governing powers view gay people, genocide is bad, and unlike Trump, I believe women and trans individuals are human beings. And if you have a problem with that, lick my fucking dick.
Can't wait to see how much of your country's disgusting apparent majority mindset (oh, who am I kidding, we all know your precious god-king cheated his way in again) oozes its way into my country this time.
PS. Because I know this'll hurt any Trumpers watching me more than any insults could, yes I do support Ukraine in their fight against Trump's sugar daddy who wants to revive the USSR, I'm pro-Palestine because regardless of how their governing powers view gay people, genocide is bad, and unlike Trump, I believe women and trans individuals are human beings. And if you have a problem with that, lick my fucking dick.
Al's Anime Reviews - Magilumiere Magical Girls, Inc.
Posted a year agoBeing the jaded oldhead anime fan that I am, it's always fun to see a series twist the typical tales in interesting ways, especially through the lens of workplace mundanity. What's more fun than a magical girl anime? As it turns out, a magical girl anime where the flying brooms and fancy wands are hampered by overdesigned software interfaces and our heroines have to hustle for clients as they compete with like 500 other understaffed companies vying for the opportunity to earn some cash blowing up monsters that wreak havoc across Japan.
Over the years, we've gotten a few of these "fantastical concept meets corporate hellscape" anime. Honestly, taking some of the worst things about modern life (ie. financial worries, workplace drama and patience-testing customer-facing jobs) and mixing them with something that's supposed to be fun escapism just doesn't usually mesh well with me unless the concept goes full comedy like Ghostbusters. However, Magilumiere Magical Girls, Inc. managed to get me on board despite my initial worries. How? Well, can I just say how nice it is to have a hero who's not only good at her job, but also has fun with it? Secondary lead Hitomi Koshigaya seems to have a blast looking cool fighting eldritch monsters. Even in mortal danger, she's smiling, full of confidence and joy at the challenge. She's not representing some tired cynical take on superheroes where they're only in it for money, fame or obligation like what My Hero Academia sadly turned into near the end, she's where she wants to be in life, doing exactly what she wants to do, and that's a dream we should all strive for.
On the other side of the equation, we have our main heroine Kana Sakuragi, a recent college graduate who's out job hunting. Kana's issue is that her greatest strength is her greatest liability: Her memory. This is a problem a lot of young Japanese people have now, in fact. Passing the appropriate standardized test is almost always the only deciding factor for getting into college or a private highschool, things like grades and extracurriculars are utterly meaningless. Thus, in general, the entire Japanese school system is based around rote memorization instead of critical thinking, as that's what you need to pass the tests. So when Kana, with her photographic memory, is going through the job interview process, she just repeats what she's planned beforehand, what she thinks the interviewers want to hear. This makes her come off as anything but authentic, and it doesn't help that Kana saying she's good at research and preparation can also be interpreted as "I'm unable to think on my feet and do what needs to be done in a crisis."
Of course, this is proven untrue as Kana alone steps in to help Hitomi fight the monster of the week and uses both her memory and her quick thinking to turn the fight in their favour. While Kana may have never thought about going into the magical girl industry, or even a small company instead of a large one, both the job and the environment seem to be what she needs to thrive--that is, if she can get past her boss crossdressing as a magical girl.
I knew Magilumiere was gonna be fun by the time its first fun action scene wrapped up and its premiere continued to impress me with its cool worldbuilding and interesting characters. The Kaii are well-designed monsters with a variety of forms and effects, and I dig the ways that their menacing presence has become just another everyday worry for the adults of Japan to have to figure out inbetween scheduling job interviews and complaining about workplace maintenance compliance. Hitomi makes for a likeable, feisty heroine, while Kana serves as an ideal perspective character. She's tired of the job hunt grind and just wants to find a place that won't inexplicably brush off her committed work ethic and freakishly powerful photographic memory. It's easy to root for her to meet up with Hitomi and find her destiny as a magical girl.
I don't love the technological aspect of the way the magical girls fight though. Kaii being sucked into USB drives is inherently funny, but the technology to fight, complete with tablets linked to the magic wands, feels overly complex. Hitomi has to yell out her commands to the tablet, which sends the attacks to her wand, but she also needs someone to hit the reload button on the tablet, which is how Kana gets involved. It's an attempt to update something like Pretty Cure's group attacks for a more futuristic setting, but it doesn't really work for me. I do find their BROOMs (which is spelled in all-caps, by the way), which look a bit like the magic drive shafts from Wish Upon the Pleiades, to be entertaining though--they make sense in a world where motorized transportation is the norm, and I enjoyed that Hitomi puts stickers all over hers.
If you need a perfect example of the good, funny vibes that Magilumiere is delivering, we get a surprisingly well choreographed and animated transformation sequence for Hitomi, except her transformation totem is just...her work ID lanyard. Slay those monsters, queen, and make wise choices with your pay. I'm not thrilled by office politics and bureaucracy, which is already sneaking in a bit, but the show has promise, and it's definitely worth recommending so far.
Over the years, we've gotten a few of these "fantastical concept meets corporate hellscape" anime. Honestly, taking some of the worst things about modern life (ie. financial worries, workplace drama and patience-testing customer-facing jobs) and mixing them with something that's supposed to be fun escapism just doesn't usually mesh well with me unless the concept goes full comedy like Ghostbusters. However, Magilumiere Magical Girls, Inc. managed to get me on board despite my initial worries. How? Well, can I just say how nice it is to have a hero who's not only good at her job, but also has fun with it? Secondary lead Hitomi Koshigaya seems to have a blast looking cool fighting eldritch monsters. Even in mortal danger, she's smiling, full of confidence and joy at the challenge. She's not representing some tired cynical take on superheroes where they're only in it for money, fame or obligation like what My Hero Academia sadly turned into near the end, she's where she wants to be in life, doing exactly what she wants to do, and that's a dream we should all strive for.
On the other side of the equation, we have our main heroine Kana Sakuragi, a recent college graduate who's out job hunting. Kana's issue is that her greatest strength is her greatest liability: Her memory. This is a problem a lot of young Japanese people have now, in fact. Passing the appropriate standardized test is almost always the only deciding factor for getting into college or a private highschool, things like grades and extracurriculars are utterly meaningless. Thus, in general, the entire Japanese school system is based around rote memorization instead of critical thinking, as that's what you need to pass the tests. So when Kana, with her photographic memory, is going through the job interview process, she just repeats what she's planned beforehand, what she thinks the interviewers want to hear. This makes her come off as anything but authentic, and it doesn't help that Kana saying she's good at research and preparation can also be interpreted as "I'm unable to think on my feet and do what needs to be done in a crisis."
Of course, this is proven untrue as Kana alone steps in to help Hitomi fight the monster of the week and uses both her memory and her quick thinking to turn the fight in their favour. While Kana may have never thought about going into the magical girl industry, or even a small company instead of a large one, both the job and the environment seem to be what she needs to thrive--that is, if she can get past her boss crossdressing as a magical girl.
I knew Magilumiere was gonna be fun by the time its first fun action scene wrapped up and its premiere continued to impress me with its cool worldbuilding and interesting characters. The Kaii are well-designed monsters with a variety of forms and effects, and I dig the ways that their menacing presence has become just another everyday worry for the adults of Japan to have to figure out inbetween scheduling job interviews and complaining about workplace maintenance compliance. Hitomi makes for a likeable, feisty heroine, while Kana serves as an ideal perspective character. She's tired of the job hunt grind and just wants to find a place that won't inexplicably brush off her committed work ethic and freakishly powerful photographic memory. It's easy to root for her to meet up with Hitomi and find her destiny as a magical girl.
I don't love the technological aspect of the way the magical girls fight though. Kaii being sucked into USB drives is inherently funny, but the technology to fight, complete with tablets linked to the magic wands, feels overly complex. Hitomi has to yell out her commands to the tablet, which sends the attacks to her wand, but she also needs someone to hit the reload button on the tablet, which is how Kana gets involved. It's an attempt to update something like Pretty Cure's group attacks for a more futuristic setting, but it doesn't really work for me. I do find their BROOMs (which is spelled in all-caps, by the way), which look a bit like the magic drive shafts from Wish Upon the Pleiades, to be entertaining though--they make sense in a world where motorized transportation is the norm, and I enjoyed that Hitomi puts stickers all over hers.
If you need a perfect example of the good, funny vibes that Magilumiere is delivering, we get a surprisingly well choreographed and animated transformation sequence for Hitomi, except her transformation totem is just...her work ID lanyard. Slay those monsters, queen, and make wise choices with your pay. I'm not thrilled by office politics and bureaucracy, which is already sneaking in a bit, but the show has promise, and it's definitely worth recommending so far.
Al's Anime Reviews - The Healer Who Was Banished
Posted a year agoTwo centuries have passed since a hero defeated the evil Jaryu and saved the world. In one of the many dungeon cities, Laust, a healer, is unjustly kicked out of his party for being too weak. Scorned by other adventurers because of his reputation as "incompetent", he's unable to form or join a new party and struggles to find his place. Amidst despair, he meets martial artist Narsena, who he first met some time ago but currently doesn't recognize, and she immediately invites him to form a new party with her. Since Laust does have experience and a great many other hidden talents, he agrees, and with a fresh start and renewed motivation, the two begin their journey to greatness.
Okay, time to think of something interesting or unique about The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party is Actually the Strongest. Well, it was actually pretty fun when Narsena and guild secretary Amherst talked to each other. It was nicely physical, as the two were prone to grabbing each other's shoulders and kinda throwing each other around as one desperately tried to talk the other out of seeking Laust's help. It gave the scene more energy than average for shows of this kind.
Even as I write this, I genuinely can't decide if I appreciate the fact that The Healer Who Was Banished From His Blah Blah Fucketty Blah actually tries to be a real TV show, or if it just makes me mad that I had to take an anime with the words "Banished" and "Strongest" in its title seriously enough to think this hard about it. This premiere had the gall to care somewhat about telling an interesting story, even though what it's working with is as bog-standard as it can possibly get.
As I always say though, execution matters more than most things in this business. Now, I don't wanna oversell what The Healer Who Was Banished is doing here--the show is just fine, okay? But hot damn, "just fine" feels like an oasis in the desert to us poor wanderers of the Crappy Light Novel Wastes. It looks halfway decent, it's paced just well enough to keep even the likes of me paying attention, and it clearly is attempting to do something interesting with our heroine Narsena and her almost obsessive need to pay Laust back for saving her life many years earlier.
There's an old saying that you should never meet your heroes, but that doesn't appear to hold true for Narsena. Her hero was Laust, who saved her as a child and then clumsily healed her wounds. Now she's all (or at least more) grown up and determined to be in an adventuring party with him, despite everyone calling him Laust the Ignoramus. And thus, a flimsy plot is born. Although it may be at least marginally more intelligent than I'm giving it credit for, since it turns out his name comes from the Icelandic word for "loose", which perfectly describes his state when Narsena is reunited with him.
The reason is right there in the title: He's been let go from his previous party, and all earlier parties he joined, for being a terrible healer. Apparently this comes from his inability to cast powerful healing spells, and it's true that when we see him healing Narsena's scratch, it seems to take a long time to deal with even that. This was true of his healing in the distant past too, and the fact that he doesn't seem to have improved suggests that maybe his reputation is earned. But as we've seen twice already, he's a lot better with a sword (or a big stick), so the truly odd thing is that he's determined to be a healer at all.
A couple of good characters and a script that functions as a basic narrative--that's all I usually ask for from these goddamn shows. Thankfully, The Healer Who Was Banished has those two qualities, and that's enough for me to excuse the nonexistent worldbuilding and the fact that we are, at the end of the day, dealing with the 10,000th anime about a guy living in an RPG world who's picked on by everyone but secretly the super-duper-strongest badass of them all.
But yeah, what does make me curious to see more is the way that this premiere treats Narsena and Laust like real, honest-to-god characters with nuanced personalities and hidden facets and shit. Am I curious enough to make watching this show a priority? No, but I am curious enough that I could imagine myself watching more and not hating it. Isn't that just as good?
Okay, time to think of something interesting or unique about The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party is Actually the Strongest. Well, it was actually pretty fun when Narsena and guild secretary Amherst talked to each other. It was nicely physical, as the two were prone to grabbing each other's shoulders and kinda throwing each other around as one desperately tried to talk the other out of seeking Laust's help. It gave the scene more energy than average for shows of this kind.
Even as I write this, I genuinely can't decide if I appreciate the fact that The Healer Who Was Banished From His Blah Blah Fucketty Blah actually tries to be a real TV show, or if it just makes me mad that I had to take an anime with the words "Banished" and "Strongest" in its title seriously enough to think this hard about it. This premiere had the gall to care somewhat about telling an interesting story, even though what it's working with is as bog-standard as it can possibly get.
As I always say though, execution matters more than most things in this business. Now, I don't wanna oversell what The Healer Who Was Banished is doing here--the show is just fine, okay? But hot damn, "just fine" feels like an oasis in the desert to us poor wanderers of the Crappy Light Novel Wastes. It looks halfway decent, it's paced just well enough to keep even the likes of me paying attention, and it clearly is attempting to do something interesting with our heroine Narsena and her almost obsessive need to pay Laust back for saving her life many years earlier.
There's an old saying that you should never meet your heroes, but that doesn't appear to hold true for Narsena. Her hero was Laust, who saved her as a child and then clumsily healed her wounds. Now she's all (or at least more) grown up and determined to be in an adventuring party with him, despite everyone calling him Laust the Ignoramus. And thus, a flimsy plot is born. Although it may be at least marginally more intelligent than I'm giving it credit for, since it turns out his name comes from the Icelandic word for "loose", which perfectly describes his state when Narsena is reunited with him.
The reason is right there in the title: He's been let go from his previous party, and all earlier parties he joined, for being a terrible healer. Apparently this comes from his inability to cast powerful healing spells, and it's true that when we see him healing Narsena's scratch, it seems to take a long time to deal with even that. This was true of his healing in the distant past too, and the fact that he doesn't seem to have improved suggests that maybe his reputation is earned. But as we've seen twice already, he's a lot better with a sword (or a big stick), so the truly odd thing is that he's determined to be a healer at all.
A couple of good characters and a script that functions as a basic narrative--that's all I usually ask for from these goddamn shows. Thankfully, The Healer Who Was Banished has those two qualities, and that's enough for me to excuse the nonexistent worldbuilding and the fact that we are, at the end of the day, dealing with the 10,000th anime about a guy living in an RPG world who's picked on by everyone but secretly the super-duper-strongest badass of them all.
But yeah, what does make me curious to see more is the way that this premiere treats Narsena and Laust like real, honest-to-god characters with nuanced personalities and hidden facets and shit. Am I curious enough to make watching this show a priority? No, but I am curious enough that I could imagine myself watching more and not hating it. Isn't that just as good?
Al's Anime Reviews - You Are Ms. Servant
Posted a year agoTold from an early age that her only worth is as a killer, Yuki had known nothing but cold efficiency and following orders. Now that she has a chance to leave her past behind, she arrives at the doorstep of Hitoyoshi Yokoya, asking to be employed...as a maid. Thus begins the journey of a former assassin learning what it means to be "normal".
Before we start, I must mention the weird localization choice evidenced in the title. Hitoyoshi refers to the titular housekeeper as "Meido-san" in Japanese. Seems like an easy one, right? But instead, they went with "servant", in the subs, which has a bit of a different connotation in English. Plus, despite being used as a proper noun, "servant" is the only word in the title that's not capitalized for some reason, which implies a terrible lack of understanding of basic English language mechanics. I took it upon myself to correct this for the review because it was bothering me that much.
I had to look up the starting date of the manga that You Are Ms. Servant is based on, and I was half-convinced that I would discover it dated back to anywhere between 1995 and 2003. As it turns out, it began serialization in 2020. In fact, lead guy Hitoyoshi looks an awful lot like Otaru from Saber Marionette J, which isn't a terrible thing but does draw attention to the fact that I feel like I've been rocketed back to the late 90s/early 2000s with a story like this. You Are Ms. Servant's concept doesn't resemble modern shows so much as things like Hand Maid May and Mahoromatic, where a teenage boy finds himself with a superpowered maid because reasons. The boy is living on his own yet incapable of caring for himself, and one day a beautiful woman shows up on his doorstep ready to devote her entire life to him for some inexplicable reason. I was shocked to get through an entire episode without Hitoyoshi falling face-first into Yuki's tits.
In fact, if there can be said to have been a golden age of maid/butler anime, it was probably the 2000s. Were there others that came out before and after the decade? Of course, and other decades have given us plenty of iconic maids and butlers, even outside of anime specifically about them. But the period of 1999 to 2010 had something that no other decade had: Quantity. Sheer numbers. Hand Maid May, Mahoromatic, Hayate the Combat Butler, Black Butler, Emma: A Victorian Romance, Hanaukyo Maids, Ladies vs Butlers--the list goes on. Hell, you could even probably count Tokyo Mew Mew, given how its main cast all worked as waitresses at a maid cafe.
As of this premiere, the show doesn't even seem entirely sure what kind of story it wants to be. There are definite wish-fulfillment aspects, mostly in the premise: One day, a lone maid in pseudo-Victorian clothing presents herself at Hitoyoshi's door. He's living alone and in filth, so this seems like a godsend. The humor angle then kicks in, as she's not actually a maid, but a former assassin inexplicably dressed like a maid, and if you give her a mop and bucket, within seconds the one will be broken and the other on her head. But wow, can she ever shred lettuce with her amazing knife skills. Then, just as you're settling into the idea that this'll be a silly show, it turns out that Yuki is breathtakingly lonely and has never eaten something that tastes good, and Hitoyoshi's mother left the family when he was little, taking his younger sibling with her, something he still has nightmares about. And while there's no law stating that you can't combine multiple genres into a single show, cramming them all in a single episode feels like a bit too much.
I know what this is supposed to be, a sweet, innocent love story between a mismatched pair. On the one hand, we have Hitoyoshi, a normal kid living alone. On the other, we have the titular Ms. Servant, an assassin let go from her old job with no idea how to live a normal life. The issue I have is that this is, in part, another of those dumb fantasies where the guy doesn't have to do anything besides exist for a pretty girl to randomly come into his life and be obsessed with him. Like, Hitoyoshi literally lives among piles of trash--his entire sizeable house is littered with full garbage bags. Though I have to wonder, how is he clean enough to bag his trash but lazy to the point that he won't take the bags outside? Is it just that the creators wanted to emphasize how helpless he is but didn't want him to seem too gross? All Hitoyoshi has going for him is that he's a baseline decent human being, in that he doesn't do bad things and is generally kind to those around him.
Luckily, Yuki has a bit more to her than that. She's a young woman who who feels like she's lost her purpose. Up until now, she had a job, a reason to exist, and without that, she's floundering. She has no social network of friends to fall back on, no home, no basic life skills. The only thing she knows how to do is kill, and she's rightfully proud of those skills, but what she wants to be, even if she can't yet articulate it, is an ordinary person. Having someone treat her normally, take her in and want to help her, means everything to her as someone who has nothing. And so we get the numerous cute interactions between the pair. But what really sells these scenes is the art design, particularly Yuki's character design and facial animations, which are top-tier, making her attractive and pitiable in equal measure.
We're still only two episodes in, so maybe we've only barely seen what this anime has in store, but it's so simple and straightforward that I can't help but wonder if it really needs this much time for setup. We've had a few cute and silly moments, like Yuki's dream about the tonkatsu sauce and her moments with the dog, but nothing especially memorable yet. Still, that's not exactly nothing, and I'll give it some credit for that. Oh, and speaking of the dog, I do want to say that I love him. He's very round and squishy and sweet and he deserves love and protection.
I know you can only expect so much from two episodes, and this series still has plenty of time to change my mind about it, but so far I'm just not especially interested in either of our protagonists. Not because I dislike them, which I don't, but because I'm just not feeling strongly about either of them one way or the other yet. Well, I guess that's not entirely true--as mentioned earlier, Yuki has her moments, and I could see myself growing to like her more as the series progresses. But these moments are always sandwiched between several minutes of bland interactions between her and Hitoyoshi that rarely amount to anything new or meaningful--just Yuki talking about how she wants to be normal, which is fine, but I'd rather see her actually trying to lead a normal life than hear her talking about it so much, since she rarely makes any fresh points. Or if she is going to talk a lot, then I'd be more interested in hearing her talk about what specifically led her to wanting to pursue a normal life, or how she even learned that there was a life beyond killing in the first place.
Meanwhile, Hitoyoshi might as well be a naive talking standee with the way he just agrees to everything, consequences (not to mention the fact that his remaining parent constantly isn't home but seems to still sometimes live there) be damned. So far, his personality has been really one-note, beginning and ending entirely with his trust issues. And I get it, this isn't exactly uncommon in anime, but that doesn't make it any less uninteresting for me as a viewer.
The basic structure isn't unsalvageable, as evidenced by series like Ms. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, but you need to have solid enough writing to back up such a forced concept, and I don't think You Are Ms. Servant quite has the juice. The strongest element right now feels like the bittersweet one. Both Hitoyoshi and Yuki are lonely, and while the exact reason she showed up on his doorstep is vague, it's still clear that they could find a lot of solace in being there for each other. Since this is the note the episode ends on, I hope it'll be the dominant one. Hitoyoshi and the narrative are equally busy presenting what they want us to see. Hitoyoshi's narration even tells us that he's "enjoying his summer vacation" when it's plain that no such thing is happening. This isn't completely without potential and perhaps deserves another episode or two to prove itself, but it also doesn't really excite me to see more.
So yeah, I wouldn't say this show's sweeping up its competition, taking them to the cleaners, wiping the floor with them, or any other number of cleaning puns. Relative to other shows I've seen this season, these first two episodes have been pretty middle-of-the-road, among neither the best nor the worst. They're just fine. But there's potential here, and the season's only just begun, so I guess I look forward to seeing if I'll be eating my words with a generous helping of tonkatsu sauce when it comes time to do a full series review.
Before we start, I must mention the weird localization choice evidenced in the title. Hitoyoshi refers to the titular housekeeper as "Meido-san" in Japanese. Seems like an easy one, right? But instead, they went with "servant", in the subs, which has a bit of a different connotation in English. Plus, despite being used as a proper noun, "servant" is the only word in the title that's not capitalized for some reason, which implies a terrible lack of understanding of basic English language mechanics. I took it upon myself to correct this for the review because it was bothering me that much.
I had to look up the starting date of the manga that You Are Ms. Servant is based on, and I was half-convinced that I would discover it dated back to anywhere between 1995 and 2003. As it turns out, it began serialization in 2020. In fact, lead guy Hitoyoshi looks an awful lot like Otaru from Saber Marionette J, which isn't a terrible thing but does draw attention to the fact that I feel like I've been rocketed back to the late 90s/early 2000s with a story like this. You Are Ms. Servant's concept doesn't resemble modern shows so much as things like Hand Maid May and Mahoromatic, where a teenage boy finds himself with a superpowered maid because reasons. The boy is living on his own yet incapable of caring for himself, and one day a beautiful woman shows up on his doorstep ready to devote her entire life to him for some inexplicable reason. I was shocked to get through an entire episode without Hitoyoshi falling face-first into Yuki's tits.
In fact, if there can be said to have been a golden age of maid/butler anime, it was probably the 2000s. Were there others that came out before and after the decade? Of course, and other decades have given us plenty of iconic maids and butlers, even outside of anime specifically about them. But the period of 1999 to 2010 had something that no other decade had: Quantity. Sheer numbers. Hand Maid May, Mahoromatic, Hayate the Combat Butler, Black Butler, Emma: A Victorian Romance, Hanaukyo Maids, Ladies vs Butlers--the list goes on. Hell, you could even probably count Tokyo Mew Mew, given how its main cast all worked as waitresses at a maid cafe.
As of this premiere, the show doesn't even seem entirely sure what kind of story it wants to be. There are definite wish-fulfillment aspects, mostly in the premise: One day, a lone maid in pseudo-Victorian clothing presents herself at Hitoyoshi's door. He's living alone and in filth, so this seems like a godsend. The humor angle then kicks in, as she's not actually a maid, but a former assassin inexplicably dressed like a maid, and if you give her a mop and bucket, within seconds the one will be broken and the other on her head. But wow, can she ever shred lettuce with her amazing knife skills. Then, just as you're settling into the idea that this'll be a silly show, it turns out that Yuki is breathtakingly lonely and has never eaten something that tastes good, and Hitoyoshi's mother left the family when he was little, taking his younger sibling with her, something he still has nightmares about. And while there's no law stating that you can't combine multiple genres into a single show, cramming them all in a single episode feels like a bit too much.
I know what this is supposed to be, a sweet, innocent love story between a mismatched pair. On the one hand, we have Hitoyoshi, a normal kid living alone. On the other, we have the titular Ms. Servant, an assassin let go from her old job with no idea how to live a normal life. The issue I have is that this is, in part, another of those dumb fantasies where the guy doesn't have to do anything besides exist for a pretty girl to randomly come into his life and be obsessed with him. Like, Hitoyoshi literally lives among piles of trash--his entire sizeable house is littered with full garbage bags. Though I have to wonder, how is he clean enough to bag his trash but lazy to the point that he won't take the bags outside? Is it just that the creators wanted to emphasize how helpless he is but didn't want him to seem too gross? All Hitoyoshi has going for him is that he's a baseline decent human being, in that he doesn't do bad things and is generally kind to those around him.
Luckily, Yuki has a bit more to her than that. She's a young woman who who feels like she's lost her purpose. Up until now, she had a job, a reason to exist, and without that, she's floundering. She has no social network of friends to fall back on, no home, no basic life skills. The only thing she knows how to do is kill, and she's rightfully proud of those skills, but what she wants to be, even if she can't yet articulate it, is an ordinary person. Having someone treat her normally, take her in and want to help her, means everything to her as someone who has nothing. And so we get the numerous cute interactions between the pair. But what really sells these scenes is the art design, particularly Yuki's character design and facial animations, which are top-tier, making her attractive and pitiable in equal measure.
We're still only two episodes in, so maybe we've only barely seen what this anime has in store, but it's so simple and straightforward that I can't help but wonder if it really needs this much time for setup. We've had a few cute and silly moments, like Yuki's dream about the tonkatsu sauce and her moments with the dog, but nothing especially memorable yet. Still, that's not exactly nothing, and I'll give it some credit for that. Oh, and speaking of the dog, I do want to say that I love him. He's very round and squishy and sweet and he deserves love and protection.
I know you can only expect so much from two episodes, and this series still has plenty of time to change my mind about it, but so far I'm just not especially interested in either of our protagonists. Not because I dislike them, which I don't, but because I'm just not feeling strongly about either of them one way or the other yet. Well, I guess that's not entirely true--as mentioned earlier, Yuki has her moments, and I could see myself growing to like her more as the series progresses. But these moments are always sandwiched between several minutes of bland interactions between her and Hitoyoshi that rarely amount to anything new or meaningful--just Yuki talking about how she wants to be normal, which is fine, but I'd rather see her actually trying to lead a normal life than hear her talking about it so much, since she rarely makes any fresh points. Or if she is going to talk a lot, then I'd be more interested in hearing her talk about what specifically led her to wanting to pursue a normal life, or how she even learned that there was a life beyond killing in the first place.
Meanwhile, Hitoyoshi might as well be a naive talking standee with the way he just agrees to everything, consequences (not to mention the fact that his remaining parent constantly isn't home but seems to still sometimes live there) be damned. So far, his personality has been really one-note, beginning and ending entirely with his trust issues. And I get it, this isn't exactly uncommon in anime, but that doesn't make it any less uninteresting for me as a viewer.
The basic structure isn't unsalvageable, as evidenced by series like Ms. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, but you need to have solid enough writing to back up such a forced concept, and I don't think You Are Ms. Servant quite has the juice. The strongest element right now feels like the bittersweet one. Both Hitoyoshi and Yuki are lonely, and while the exact reason she showed up on his doorstep is vague, it's still clear that they could find a lot of solace in being there for each other. Since this is the note the episode ends on, I hope it'll be the dominant one. Hitoyoshi and the narrative are equally busy presenting what they want us to see. Hitoyoshi's narration even tells us that he's "enjoying his summer vacation" when it's plain that no such thing is happening. This isn't completely without potential and perhaps deserves another episode or two to prove itself, but it also doesn't really excite me to see more.
So yeah, I wouldn't say this show's sweeping up its competition, taking them to the cleaners, wiping the floor with them, or any other number of cleaning puns. Relative to other shows I've seen this season, these first two episodes have been pretty middle-of-the-road, among neither the best nor the worst. They're just fine. But there's potential here, and the season's only just begun, so I guess I look forward to seeing if I'll be eating my words with a generous helping of tonkatsu sauce when it comes time to do a full series review.
Al's Anime Reviews - The Do-Over Damsel
Posted a year agoJill is sentenced to death by her fiance, Prince Gerald, after she discovers a terrible secret he's hidden from everyone and refuses to keep quiet about it. Just before she dies, she's sent back in time six years to the party where their engagement was been decided. To avoid this route of ruin, Jill immediately refuses and proposes to someone else, who turns out to be the man who was her greatest enemy, Emperor Hadis. Jill knows all about his future descent into evil and quickly retracts the proposal, but the delighted Hadis takes her back to his castle and makes dinner for her. Completely won over by his kindness, Jill goes ahead with her life-changing decision.
From the author of I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss comes a story that looks significantly better but is also about 70% more controversial!
I'm sure the ridiculous emphasis on age-gap romance in The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor is gonna make this show an instant skip for a lot of potential viewers, and I totally understand that--again, no one's saying you have to like lolicon or that it isn't inherently weird, people are only being told to stop fucking treating it like it's on par with or worse than real actionable sex crimes against real flesh-and-blood children. Not only does the original timeline's pairing of Jill and Prince Gerald already come across as iffy since he was 15 and she was 10 when they were betrothed (which, let's be honest, fits the fantasy-medieval setting), but the rewound version of events sees a future-savvy Jill, having the mind of her 16-year-old self in her 10-year-old one, running into the extremely eager arms of 19-year-old Hadis. A man who already keeps a closet's worth of little girls' clothing that he even takes with him while travelling and says Jill's age is just about perfect and she'd be even better if she were two or three years younger.
That said, I find that the show is playing so broadly and comedically with its material that it's hard to see how any normal person could be offended. If anything, the way the script is constantly drawing attention to how conspicuously excited Hadis is to be engaged to this kid makes it feel like we're supposed to be in on some sort of satirical joke. At the very least, it comes across like a winking nudge to genre-savvy fans who've seen similar stories play out, except here it's being played up to the extreme. I mean, our dude Hadis gets dunked on by his cute dragon friend for being the kind of reclusive weirdo who's apparently only ever experienced the concept of romance in the pages of books, so I think there's something else going on with the guy that could potentially...well, "justify" isn't the right word, but we might get an explanation for why he's so deranged, despite also being the a potential warlord of death and destruction in the future.
The story is something like a cross between I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss meets Teardrop Empire. Jill is a bit of a Not Like Other Girls™ heroine--her parents talk about how she's not much good at the usual feminine pursuits like embroidery and more interested in food than dancing. In her previous life, before her fiance Prince Gerald orders her death, she'd been nicknamed "daughter of the god of war" and had eschewed the life of a noble lady to become a warrior.
Gerald has her killed, by the way, because she found out he's been fucking his sister Faris. Yes, there's incest in this one too, and in a surprising change of pace for anime, it's absolutely painted as bad--Gerald certainly wouldn't have sentenced Jill to death for discovering his relationship with Faris if it wasn't. He's utterly reprehensible and the story knows it--he clearly planned to use his marriage to Jill as a cover for children he's gotten Faris pregnant with, which he basically says himself early on in the episode, and he thought that Jill being younger than him would help him fool her. Unfortunately for him, Jill isn't an idiot, she knows right from wrong, and her skill on the battlefield makes taking her out harder than Gerald would've liked.
After a strong, dramatic opening, the tone admittedly becomes rather uneven. Handled with some grace, I'm fine with this--contrast can strengthen both the highs and lows. Here, however, the tone will shift from dramatic to comical and back within just a few minutes, without the punchiness needed to make it work. Within a few seconds, Hadis will go from acting like a puppy towards Jill to genuinely threatening to being teased by a sassy comic relief dragon. His response to the idea that this child may regret impulsively proposing to him, turning menacing at the idea of rejection, also gives him some unintentional incel vibes.
Also, I should point out that the show isn't being pervy at all about Jill and Hadis' whole deal. Despite its inconsistent tone, this was honestly a breezy, entertaining episode. Jill is a really likeable girl who's proactive enough to keep the plot going, and I could honestly see her back-and-forth with Hadis becoming pretty cute and funny. Like I said, I fully get why people just won't be into this show at all, but The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor has plenty of charms beyond its questionable premise that I'm sure will appeal to plenty of folks out there for totally non-degen reasons.
From the author of I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss comes a story that looks significantly better but is also about 70% more controversial!
I'm sure the ridiculous emphasis on age-gap romance in The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor is gonna make this show an instant skip for a lot of potential viewers, and I totally understand that--again, no one's saying you have to like lolicon or that it isn't inherently weird, people are only being told to stop fucking treating it like it's on par with or worse than real actionable sex crimes against real flesh-and-blood children. Not only does the original timeline's pairing of Jill and Prince Gerald already come across as iffy since he was 15 and she was 10 when they were betrothed (which, let's be honest, fits the fantasy-medieval setting), but the rewound version of events sees a future-savvy Jill, having the mind of her 16-year-old self in her 10-year-old one, running into the extremely eager arms of 19-year-old Hadis. A man who already keeps a closet's worth of little girls' clothing that he even takes with him while travelling and says Jill's age is just about perfect and she'd be even better if she were two or three years younger.
That said, I find that the show is playing so broadly and comedically with its material that it's hard to see how any normal person could be offended. If anything, the way the script is constantly drawing attention to how conspicuously excited Hadis is to be engaged to this kid makes it feel like we're supposed to be in on some sort of satirical joke. At the very least, it comes across like a winking nudge to genre-savvy fans who've seen similar stories play out, except here it's being played up to the extreme. I mean, our dude Hadis gets dunked on by his cute dragon friend for being the kind of reclusive weirdo who's apparently only ever experienced the concept of romance in the pages of books, so I think there's something else going on with the guy that could potentially...well, "justify" isn't the right word, but we might get an explanation for why he's so deranged, despite also being the a potential warlord of death and destruction in the future.
The story is something like a cross between I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss meets Teardrop Empire. Jill is a bit of a Not Like Other Girls™ heroine--her parents talk about how she's not much good at the usual feminine pursuits like embroidery and more interested in food than dancing. In her previous life, before her fiance Prince Gerald orders her death, she'd been nicknamed "daughter of the god of war" and had eschewed the life of a noble lady to become a warrior.
Gerald has her killed, by the way, because she found out he's been fucking his sister Faris. Yes, there's incest in this one too, and in a surprising change of pace for anime, it's absolutely painted as bad--Gerald certainly wouldn't have sentenced Jill to death for discovering his relationship with Faris if it wasn't. He's utterly reprehensible and the story knows it--he clearly planned to use his marriage to Jill as a cover for children he's gotten Faris pregnant with, which he basically says himself early on in the episode, and he thought that Jill being younger than him would help him fool her. Unfortunately for him, Jill isn't an idiot, she knows right from wrong, and her skill on the battlefield makes taking her out harder than Gerald would've liked.
After a strong, dramatic opening, the tone admittedly becomes rather uneven. Handled with some grace, I'm fine with this--contrast can strengthen both the highs and lows. Here, however, the tone will shift from dramatic to comical and back within just a few minutes, without the punchiness needed to make it work. Within a few seconds, Hadis will go from acting like a puppy towards Jill to genuinely threatening to being teased by a sassy comic relief dragon. His response to the idea that this child may regret impulsively proposing to him, turning menacing at the idea of rejection, also gives him some unintentional incel vibes.
Also, I should point out that the show isn't being pervy at all about Jill and Hadis' whole deal. Despite its inconsistent tone, this was honestly a breezy, entertaining episode. Jill is a really likeable girl who's proactive enough to keep the plot going, and I could honestly see her back-and-forth with Hadis becoming pretty cute and funny. Like I said, I fully get why people just won't be into this show at all, but The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor has plenty of charms beyond its questionable premise that I'm sure will appeal to plenty of folks out there for totally non-degen reasons.
Is my birfdae ^o^
Posted a year agoHappy birf to me :3
Al's Anime Reviews - My Wife Became a Gradeschool Student
Posted a year agoAfter his wife Takae's untimely death in a car accident, Keisuke Niijima, an honest and loving but overly dependent family man, becomes a despondent shell of his former self. Ten years later, he's still wallowing in his own despair, shut off from the world and hardly even paying any attention to his now-adult daughter Mai. One night, Keisuke answers the door to a 10-year-old girl named Marika Shiraishi, who claims to be a reincarnation of Takae. Keisuke dismisses her, only for Marika to tell him things that only Takae would've known. She immediately scolds both Keisuke and Mai for living such sad, unfulfilling lives and helps them get back on track. Now Keisuke is trying to make up for lost time, while Marika struggles as a gradeschooler with the newly awakened mind of a 40-year-old woman, trying create situations where she can meet with Keisuke.
I've been looking forward to My Wife Became a Gradeschool Student ever since its announcement set the Twitter freaks off like a chain reaction of mentally unstable fireworks. The "very normal" people who reacted to this show with immediate unhinged rage, calling it pedo bait, expressing their desire for the creator to die, calling anyone who's even remotely interested in watching it a fucking "Epstein disciple" because the man's ghost lives rent-free in their heads and they're addicted to trivializing his victims' suffering, etc., all from just seeing the title because they each have the attention span of a flea, never actually read what the show is about, and are so deeply convinced that anime is real that even Undyne would tell them to dial it back a bit. Are you surprised? It's like that one finely aged legacy tweet said, people on that godforsaken platform talk about cartoon characters like they're real and then treat real people like they're fictional. As proven by the complete lack of shits they give about protecting real kids, constantly wasting the FBI's time and resources crying to them about inactionable content while advocating for a "height of consent", throwing false allegations at loli fan VTubers like Rev Says Desu and Little Nii but curiously not high-profile ones like Gura, Okayu and Peko, and huffing copium over Loli God Requiem not actually being their anthem.
Rather than talk in a whole lot of depth about this show's premiere, however, I'm going to focus on what I feel are the most important aspects of it. This is one of those anime that has excellent control of its tone. Because of this, it can go from lightly comedic and heartfelt to serious and dark while still feeling like the same cohesive story. This is important because this is a story about grief, and how it affects you and the people around you.
Keisuke has never managed to get past the death of his wife. He's continued living for the sake of his daughter but all the joy, ambition, energy and hope left his life when Takae did. He's spent a decade on autopilot, the hole in his heart never healing. His daughter is in a similar position--without her mother around, she just gave up on going out into the world. Instead she lives in the same house she always has, goes through the same depressing routine, and does odd jobs working from home to bring in at least a meager amount of money.
On the other side of the story, we have Chika Shiraishi, the mother of our titular reincarnated wife. While death isn't the cause of her loss, hers is no less final. She lost her husband in a way that absolutely destroyed her trust in others. But unlike Keisuke, who's left the empty space in his life open, Chika is doing all she can to fill it with anything she can, including deadbeat douchebags who only want to take advantage of her. So eager is she to fill this void that she's actively deceiving herself, forgiving lies that hurt her and taking out her pain on her daughter. The scenes with Chika are a bit hard to watch, showing how her emotional pain nd unhealthy coping methods affect her daughter, who in turn is being harmed massively on a psychological level even after awakening to the fact that she's a 40-year-old woman on the inside. Contrasting this, we see how the little reincarnated Takae has brought light back into Keisuke and Mai's lives. Keisuke has his happiness and drive back and is once again a vibrant man who coworkers appreciate and even pine for. Meanwhile, Mai also wants to better herself, working to find a job she both enjoys and fits well into.
And yet, with these positive shifts comes a cloud of looming dread. At the moment, Keisuke, Mai and Marika are experiencing a miracle. When it ends, will this second chance have helped them grow enough to accept the loss a second time and continue once Marika inevitably moves on from their lives, or will it make their despair all the deeper? We'll just have to continue watching to find out.
I've been looking forward to My Wife Became a Gradeschool Student ever since its announcement set the Twitter freaks off like a chain reaction of mentally unstable fireworks. The "very normal" people who reacted to this show with immediate unhinged rage, calling it pedo bait, expressing their desire for the creator to die, calling anyone who's even remotely interested in watching it a fucking "Epstein disciple" because the man's ghost lives rent-free in their heads and they're addicted to trivializing his victims' suffering, etc., all from just seeing the title because they each have the attention span of a flea, never actually read what the show is about, and are so deeply convinced that anime is real that even Undyne would tell them to dial it back a bit. Are you surprised? It's like that one finely aged legacy tweet said, people on that godforsaken platform talk about cartoon characters like they're real and then treat real people like they're fictional. As proven by the complete lack of shits they give about protecting real kids, constantly wasting the FBI's time and resources crying to them about inactionable content while advocating for a "height of consent", throwing false allegations at loli fan VTubers like Rev Says Desu and Little Nii but curiously not high-profile ones like Gura, Okayu and Peko, and huffing copium over Loli God Requiem not actually being their anthem.
Rather than talk in a whole lot of depth about this show's premiere, however, I'm going to focus on what I feel are the most important aspects of it. This is one of those anime that has excellent control of its tone. Because of this, it can go from lightly comedic and heartfelt to serious and dark while still feeling like the same cohesive story. This is important because this is a story about grief, and how it affects you and the people around you.
Keisuke has never managed to get past the death of his wife. He's continued living for the sake of his daughter but all the joy, ambition, energy and hope left his life when Takae did. He's spent a decade on autopilot, the hole in his heart never healing. His daughter is in a similar position--without her mother around, she just gave up on going out into the world. Instead she lives in the same house she always has, goes through the same depressing routine, and does odd jobs working from home to bring in at least a meager amount of money.
On the other side of the story, we have Chika Shiraishi, the mother of our titular reincarnated wife. While death isn't the cause of her loss, hers is no less final. She lost her husband in a way that absolutely destroyed her trust in others. But unlike Keisuke, who's left the empty space in his life open, Chika is doing all she can to fill it with anything she can, including deadbeat douchebags who only want to take advantage of her. So eager is she to fill this void that she's actively deceiving herself, forgiving lies that hurt her and taking out her pain on her daughter. The scenes with Chika are a bit hard to watch, showing how her emotional pain nd unhealthy coping methods affect her daughter, who in turn is being harmed massively on a psychological level even after awakening to the fact that she's a 40-year-old woman on the inside. Contrasting this, we see how the little reincarnated Takae has brought light back into Keisuke and Mai's lives. Keisuke has his happiness and drive back and is once again a vibrant man who coworkers appreciate and even pine for. Meanwhile, Mai also wants to better herself, working to find a job she both enjoys and fits well into.
And yet, with these positive shifts comes a cloud of looming dread. At the moment, Keisuke, Mai and Marika are experiencing a miracle. When it ends, will this second chance have helped them grow enough to accept the loss a second time and continue once Marika inevitably moves on from their lives, or will it make their despair all the deeper? We'll just have to continue watching to find out.
Al's Anime Reviews - Let This Grieving Soul Retire!
Posted a year agoKrai makes an oath with his friends to become the strongest hero in the world, but his hopes are quickly dashed when he realizes that his talents lie elsewhere. Despite the reality check, the expectations from the people around him seem to rise exponentially every day. Now Krai must deal with this huge misunderstanding and the outrageous consequences of it.
Okay, so something interesting or unique about Let This Grieving Soul Retire!, uh... Instead of adventurers and an adventurers' guild, this show has hunters and an explorers' guild! That's new and semi-creative! Does it make up for the rest of the show and its worldbuilding being RPG-inspired fantasy's lowest standard? Well, no, but we must find hope wherever we can in these dark times.
Well, I'm probably being a bit harsher than is strictly necessary, because there's also something at least a little different in our ostensible hero Krai, who looks like he's always in need of more sleep and is the unlikely leader of the strongest clan (a grouping of parties together under one united leader) in the capital. He doesn't look all that impressive, and if you ask him, he in no way deserves the position, but Krai is almost certainly selling himself short--while he probably is exactly as unobservant as he claims to be, he also likely has amazing instincts and judgment that he's unaware of. Sure, he could have coasted to the top of the organization on pure luck, but the few glimpses we get of him acting in a leadership role imply that he's simply suffering from a low estimation of his skills on top of needing more rest. Given that his childhood friends, with whom he started the party The Grieving Souls, are all more overtly talented in swordsmanship, magic, and other classic fantasy skills, it would be easy for him to write himself off because he lacks those talents.
The other possibility is that he's fully aware of his gifts and is just incredibly lazy or finds adventuring, er, hunting, to be too much work. Right now, that feels like a tossup; we see him not noticing a slavering beast behind him in a dungeon, but we also watch him very cannily figure out which of the slew of would-be clan members are likely to be the best picks. He's also risen to level eight when most people are boasting about being level three or four, and he's unlikely to have attained that rank by riding on his friends' coattails. It's clear that this is meant to be the hook, and it isn't terrible, but it's also not quite enough to make this stand out.
You know you're in for a rough time when a fantasy anime spends the first half of its premiere re-expositing about all of the RPG mechanic-adjacent worldbuilding that we're all too depressingly familiar with by now. Let This Grieving Soul Retire! has decent enough production values and is at least attempting to be entertaining in a workplace-comedy sort of way, but man, this show just isn't giving us anything to work with at all. I would have an easier time writing an in-depth recap of the sandwich I invented the other day. In fact, can I just do that instead? See, I made a variation of the classic Reuben with toasted white bread instead of rye and minus the sauerkraut, and I added Dijon mustard and mayo mixed with hot sauce for an extra kick. I call it the Rachael. It's delicious, try it sometime.
Anyway, all you need to know is that everything about this show's characters, setting and tone consists of minor variations on themes and archetypes we see pop up a dozen times each year. We've got a fantasy world full of monsters, we've got a network of adventuring parties that compete for wealth and fame, we've got several characters who possess absurdly OP skills that put them leagues ahead of anyone else, etc. Just about the closest thing that Let This Grieving Soul Retire! has to a "gimmick" that might set it apart is the fact that Krai didn't get unceremoniously booted from his party by a conniving bitch or smug douchebag or whatever, he just recognized that his ordinary capabilities were never going to measure up to the rest of his friends in the hilariously named Grieving Souls clan, so he opted to see himself out. Naturally, a series of comical misunderstandings about his abilities and intentions make that impossible, and Krai ends up roped into more misadventures and shenanigans than he ever bargained for. Some girls also show up to become increasingly obsessed with Krai, because why the fuck not, gotta have something to keep the target audience interested in seeing more.
It seems to be riffing on The Eminence in Shadow's plot, except in this case the hero is the least delusional one in the group. I have yet to catch up on that show, but what I've seen of it is actually fun and loads of people who've seen more of it than me share that sentiment. Somehow, I doubt that Let This Grieving Soul Retire! will end up garnering the same reputation. There's nothing terrible about this premiere, other than the fact that every attempt to make me laugh or get me interested in its world slid off of my brain like the cheese off of a greasy underbaked pizza. It's just the kind of anime that could not make less of an impression on me if it tried.
Okay, so something interesting or unique about Let This Grieving Soul Retire!, uh... Instead of adventurers and an adventurers' guild, this show has hunters and an explorers' guild! That's new and semi-creative! Does it make up for the rest of the show and its worldbuilding being RPG-inspired fantasy's lowest standard? Well, no, but we must find hope wherever we can in these dark times.
Well, I'm probably being a bit harsher than is strictly necessary, because there's also something at least a little different in our ostensible hero Krai, who looks like he's always in need of more sleep and is the unlikely leader of the strongest clan (a grouping of parties together under one united leader) in the capital. He doesn't look all that impressive, and if you ask him, he in no way deserves the position, but Krai is almost certainly selling himself short--while he probably is exactly as unobservant as he claims to be, he also likely has amazing instincts and judgment that he's unaware of. Sure, he could have coasted to the top of the organization on pure luck, but the few glimpses we get of him acting in a leadership role imply that he's simply suffering from a low estimation of his skills on top of needing more rest. Given that his childhood friends, with whom he started the party The Grieving Souls, are all more overtly talented in swordsmanship, magic, and other classic fantasy skills, it would be easy for him to write himself off because he lacks those talents.
The other possibility is that he's fully aware of his gifts and is just incredibly lazy or finds adventuring, er, hunting, to be too much work. Right now, that feels like a tossup; we see him not noticing a slavering beast behind him in a dungeon, but we also watch him very cannily figure out which of the slew of would-be clan members are likely to be the best picks. He's also risen to level eight when most people are boasting about being level three or four, and he's unlikely to have attained that rank by riding on his friends' coattails. It's clear that this is meant to be the hook, and it isn't terrible, but it's also not quite enough to make this stand out.
You know you're in for a rough time when a fantasy anime spends the first half of its premiere re-expositing about all of the RPG mechanic-adjacent worldbuilding that we're all too depressingly familiar with by now. Let This Grieving Soul Retire! has decent enough production values and is at least attempting to be entertaining in a workplace-comedy sort of way, but man, this show just isn't giving us anything to work with at all. I would have an easier time writing an in-depth recap of the sandwich I invented the other day. In fact, can I just do that instead? See, I made a variation of the classic Reuben with toasted white bread instead of rye and minus the sauerkraut, and I added Dijon mustard and mayo mixed with hot sauce for an extra kick. I call it the Rachael. It's delicious, try it sometime.
Anyway, all you need to know is that everything about this show's characters, setting and tone consists of minor variations on themes and archetypes we see pop up a dozen times each year. We've got a fantasy world full of monsters, we've got a network of adventuring parties that compete for wealth and fame, we've got several characters who possess absurdly OP skills that put them leagues ahead of anyone else, etc. Just about the closest thing that Let This Grieving Soul Retire! has to a "gimmick" that might set it apart is the fact that Krai didn't get unceremoniously booted from his party by a conniving bitch or smug douchebag or whatever, he just recognized that his ordinary capabilities were never going to measure up to the rest of his friends in the hilariously named Grieving Souls clan, so he opted to see himself out. Naturally, a series of comical misunderstandings about his abilities and intentions make that impossible, and Krai ends up roped into more misadventures and shenanigans than he ever bargained for. Some girls also show up to become increasingly obsessed with Krai, because why the fuck not, gotta have something to keep the target audience interested in seeing more.
It seems to be riffing on The Eminence in Shadow's plot, except in this case the hero is the least delusional one in the group. I have yet to catch up on that show, but what I've seen of it is actually fun and loads of people who've seen more of it than me share that sentiment. Somehow, I doubt that Let This Grieving Soul Retire! will end up garnering the same reputation. There's nothing terrible about this premiere, other than the fact that every attempt to make me laugh or get me interested in its world slid off of my brain like the cheese off of a greasy underbaked pizza. It's just the kind of anime that could not make less of an impression on me if it tried.
Al's Anime Reviews - Trillion Game
Posted a year ago{Note: I'm a dumbass and thought I'd posted this yesterday. I hadn't. Enjoy another double feature today.}
Carefree Haru and serious Gaku are two men who plot to earn a trillion dollars in order to afford anything they might ever want in the world. Haru is an eloquent, persuasive, and confident speaker, which allows him to be in anyone's good graces. Gaku is an awkward but highly skilled programmer. The two were schoolmates in middle school and reunited when Gaku's application to a bank company was rejected.
Trillion Game's double-length premiere is competently animated, and the Madhouse team has done their work to translate legendary artist Ryoichiro Ikegami's art to the screen. Its distinctive look immediately sets it apart from the other premieres. The opening and closing themes are infectious, and the use of actual manga panels in the ending sequence is a fun choice.
Unfortunately, I bounced off of every other aspect of the production.
Trillion Game is the kind of anime that 95% of anime fans will dismiss out of hand for its unconventional artstyle, or for the story, which exclusively stars adults and has no speculative or fantastical elements. Of the remaining percentage, an undetermined number will become devotees of it, swearing up and down that it's the year's best underdog anime no one's watching, and everyone else is missing out on Haru's ridiculously over-the-top capitalist antics. The remainder will be people like me, who did their best to give it a fair shot but just did not like what they saw.
The one biggest and most glaring hurdle is that Trillion Game stars one of the most unlikeable leads I've encountered in a hot minute. The short version is Haru is full of shit. That's his entire gimmick. He mostly knows he's full of shit, he entirely knows he has no real ideas to work with or practical skills of his own to speak of, but he has the unearned confidence to sell a facade of brilliance to people in the hopes that they'll part with some of their money so he can become absurdly wealthy and achieve his goals. So basically he's a Japanese Elon Musk. He's joined by Gaku, a slightly more tolerable guy whose only real skill is being a self-taught hacker. On obsolete equipment.
I can't tell if Trillion Game's central concept is the point or if it shows an overall weakness in the source story. It seems like Ikegami just wanted to write a story about two guys building a tech empire from scratch, not unlike Bill Gates and Paul Allen or Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. That's a decent premise on its own, but you need characters smart enough to conceive of the tech involved and able to realize the dream. As it stands now, neither character really fits the bill, but that won't stop Haru from asking for tens of millions of yen in investments and trying to get conglomerate heiresses to sleep with him anyway. And frankly, I'm simply not going to enjoy a story celebrating these guys' quest to become the most obscenely wealthy douchebags in the world.
I just can't express enough how much I detest Haru. Unlike Kirika, the one major female character, I was not charmed by his cockiness or skill at bluffing. Although exaggerated, his audacity draws too much from an economic truth: If you swagger enough, you don't need a business idea or a product to sell in order to become inexplicably successful. It remains to be seen if the story will actually become critical of Haru's actions or if it fully intends to try and make his unethical practices look appealing and romanticize them, but I don't really want to spend any more time looking at that smug grin full of those individually drawn horse teeth than I've already had to.
Maybe this is some kind of commentary on the tech bros and start-up culture of Silicon Valley, but I wouldn't get my hopes up, nor would I like to see Haru attempt to seduce Kirika with that smarmy-ass face of his again.
Carefree Haru and serious Gaku are two men who plot to earn a trillion dollars in order to afford anything they might ever want in the world. Haru is an eloquent, persuasive, and confident speaker, which allows him to be in anyone's good graces. Gaku is an awkward but highly skilled programmer. The two were schoolmates in middle school and reunited when Gaku's application to a bank company was rejected.
Trillion Game's double-length premiere is competently animated, and the Madhouse team has done their work to translate legendary artist Ryoichiro Ikegami's art to the screen. Its distinctive look immediately sets it apart from the other premieres. The opening and closing themes are infectious, and the use of actual manga panels in the ending sequence is a fun choice.
Unfortunately, I bounced off of every other aspect of the production.
Trillion Game is the kind of anime that 95% of anime fans will dismiss out of hand for its unconventional artstyle, or for the story, which exclusively stars adults and has no speculative or fantastical elements. Of the remaining percentage, an undetermined number will become devotees of it, swearing up and down that it's the year's best underdog anime no one's watching, and everyone else is missing out on Haru's ridiculously over-the-top capitalist antics. The remainder will be people like me, who did their best to give it a fair shot but just did not like what they saw.
The one biggest and most glaring hurdle is that Trillion Game stars one of the most unlikeable leads I've encountered in a hot minute. The short version is Haru is full of shit. That's his entire gimmick. He mostly knows he's full of shit, he entirely knows he has no real ideas to work with or practical skills of his own to speak of, but he has the unearned confidence to sell a facade of brilliance to people in the hopes that they'll part with some of their money so he can become absurdly wealthy and achieve his goals. So basically he's a Japanese Elon Musk. He's joined by Gaku, a slightly more tolerable guy whose only real skill is being a self-taught hacker. On obsolete equipment.
I can't tell if Trillion Game's central concept is the point or if it shows an overall weakness in the source story. It seems like Ikegami just wanted to write a story about two guys building a tech empire from scratch, not unlike Bill Gates and Paul Allen or Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. That's a decent premise on its own, but you need characters smart enough to conceive of the tech involved and able to realize the dream. As it stands now, neither character really fits the bill, but that won't stop Haru from asking for tens of millions of yen in investments and trying to get conglomerate heiresses to sleep with him anyway. And frankly, I'm simply not going to enjoy a story celebrating these guys' quest to become the most obscenely wealthy douchebags in the world.
I just can't express enough how much I detest Haru. Unlike Kirika, the one major female character, I was not charmed by his cockiness or skill at bluffing. Although exaggerated, his audacity draws too much from an economic truth: If you swagger enough, you don't need a business idea or a product to sell in order to become inexplicably successful. It remains to be seen if the story will actually become critical of Haru's actions or if it fully intends to try and make his unethical practices look appealing and romanticize them, but I don't really want to spend any more time looking at that smug grin full of those individually drawn horse teeth than I've already had to.
Maybe this is some kind of commentary on the tech bros and start-up culture of Silicon Valley, but I wouldn't get my hopes up, nor would I like to see Haru attempt to seduce Kirika with that smarmy-ass face of his again.
Al's Anime Reviews - Blue Box
Posted a year agoTaiki Inomata is on the boys' badminton team at sports powerhouse Eimei Junior and Senior Highschool. He's in love with basketball player Chinatsu Kano, the older girl he trains alongside every morning in the gym. One spring day, their relationship takes a sharp turn.
I'd heard quite a bit of buzz about Blue Box, a sports series running in Weekly Shonen Jump where the sports story is partnered with a sincere love story. I always say that I'm an easy mark for sappy romances when they're executed well, and while that's as true as it ever was, I've found myself becoming pickier about sappy teen romances in particular as I've gotten older. When it comes to anime, such stories have a ridiculously huge percentage of market domination, and I yearn for more well-written love stories about adults. This is all to say such a show has to put in some work to get me to really enjoy it. Well, lemme tell ya, folks, I loved the premiere of Blue Box.
This first episode is mostly focused on the romance side of things. We have Taiki, a low-level badminton player, who has a crush on his senpai Chinatsu, the star basketball player. Through a bit of luck and awkward-but-well-meaning fumbling, he's able to start getting to know her, and they've quickly started to positively impact each other's lives just by being themselves. Then the episode ends with a twist: The two are going to live together--or, more accurately, Chinatsu will be moving in with his family for a year while her parents are working abroad, as it turns out her mother and Taiki's are close friends who were once the stars of Eimei Highschool's basketball team themselves.
When it comes to shows that center around kids with Big Feelings About Sports™ and also Big Crushes on Their Senpais™, Blue Box basically does everything right. Seeing the world through Taiki and Chinatsu lets us feel their vivacious and romantic ambitions. And just talking about the sports aspect, it taakes no effort to make basketball look cool and exciting, because it already is, but Blue Box makes friggin' badminton seem like the sport of a generation, and I never thought I'd see the day that any show other than Hanebado managed that feat.
More importantly for a viewer like me, the connection that our protagonists share feels genuine and compelling. I have seen so many goddamn cartoons about teenagers brought together through the magic of friendly sports rivalries and love interests who suddenly become roomates due to absurdly convenient plot developments, but Blue Box still ends up feeling fresh the whole way through. I never felt like I was being manipulated or pandered to, and small sequences like Taiki's panicked under-the-covers limb flailing at the end of the episode is just such an accurate representation of what it feels like to be terrified by and hopelessly entangled in your own feelings at that age.
To be fair, of course, the story isn't doing anything new--if I had to levy any criticism at Blue Box, it's that its sincerity can sometimes threaten to veer into saccharine territory. However, I can't bring myself to fault the production for going this hard with the sentimentality. There are lingering shots of the school cast in the colors of sunset, held frames of haphazardly placed sports equipment, slow pans of Chinatsu dreamily reading up on sports tactics as strands of her hair catch the light... Blue Box's visuals are selling a nostalgic, romanticized idea of highschool life, and if you aren't willing to play along with its picturesque standard, it could be enough to make one declare "That's hokey. And old JonTron was better."
But whee's the fun in that sort of cynicism? Taiki is a genuinely sweet kid with a cute crush on a beautiful and kind girl. Chinatsu's personality still feels a little weak at this point and I'd have difficulty describing her beyond "generally nice" and "dedicated to her sport". While not the primary heroine, the tiny gymnast Hina steals the show far more with her injection of playful ribbing. Taiki's friend Ryo rounds out the early cast as the filthily frank friend with no filter. So far this seems like a fun group to follow.
Oh, and did I mention that the anime is obscenely beautiful to look at too? Yeah, outside of maybe one or two moments where the character animation and lighting effects try maybe a little too hard to impress, one of which results in a rather chuckleworthy moment of Chinatsu appearing outright weightless as she takes a shot at the hoop, this is a gorgeous work, hands down. The animation is smooth and the character designs are both wholesome and attractive, and the CG they use looks good for the most part, especially the big sweeping shot early on of the whole gymnasium and all the different sports being practiced there. That lush, cinematic flair only makes all of those Big Feelings™ hit that much harder, and I have no reason to doubt that Blue Box will be able to keep those hits coming so long as the artists at Telecom Animation can keep up the work at a healthy pace.
This is by far one of THE must-watch premieres of the season. Overall, it's safe to say that if you like romance anime or sports anime, you'll probably get some enjoyment out of this one.
I'd heard quite a bit of buzz about Blue Box, a sports series running in Weekly Shonen Jump where the sports story is partnered with a sincere love story. I always say that I'm an easy mark for sappy romances when they're executed well, and while that's as true as it ever was, I've found myself becoming pickier about sappy teen romances in particular as I've gotten older. When it comes to anime, such stories have a ridiculously huge percentage of market domination, and I yearn for more well-written love stories about adults. This is all to say such a show has to put in some work to get me to really enjoy it. Well, lemme tell ya, folks, I loved the premiere of Blue Box.
This first episode is mostly focused on the romance side of things. We have Taiki, a low-level badminton player, who has a crush on his senpai Chinatsu, the star basketball player. Through a bit of luck and awkward-but-well-meaning fumbling, he's able to start getting to know her, and they've quickly started to positively impact each other's lives just by being themselves. Then the episode ends with a twist: The two are going to live together--or, more accurately, Chinatsu will be moving in with his family for a year while her parents are working abroad, as it turns out her mother and Taiki's are close friends who were once the stars of Eimei Highschool's basketball team themselves.
When it comes to shows that center around kids with Big Feelings About Sports™ and also Big Crushes on Their Senpais™, Blue Box basically does everything right. Seeing the world through Taiki and Chinatsu lets us feel their vivacious and romantic ambitions. And just talking about the sports aspect, it taakes no effort to make basketball look cool and exciting, because it already is, but Blue Box makes friggin' badminton seem like the sport of a generation, and I never thought I'd see the day that any show other than Hanebado managed that feat.
More importantly for a viewer like me, the connection that our protagonists share feels genuine and compelling. I have seen so many goddamn cartoons about teenagers brought together through the magic of friendly sports rivalries and love interests who suddenly become roomates due to absurdly convenient plot developments, but Blue Box still ends up feeling fresh the whole way through. I never felt like I was being manipulated or pandered to, and small sequences like Taiki's panicked under-the-covers limb flailing at the end of the episode is just such an accurate representation of what it feels like to be terrified by and hopelessly entangled in your own feelings at that age.
To be fair, of course, the story isn't doing anything new--if I had to levy any criticism at Blue Box, it's that its sincerity can sometimes threaten to veer into saccharine territory. However, I can't bring myself to fault the production for going this hard with the sentimentality. There are lingering shots of the school cast in the colors of sunset, held frames of haphazardly placed sports equipment, slow pans of Chinatsu dreamily reading up on sports tactics as strands of her hair catch the light... Blue Box's visuals are selling a nostalgic, romanticized idea of highschool life, and if you aren't willing to play along with its picturesque standard, it could be enough to make one declare "That's hokey. And old JonTron was better."
But whee's the fun in that sort of cynicism? Taiki is a genuinely sweet kid with a cute crush on a beautiful and kind girl. Chinatsu's personality still feels a little weak at this point and I'd have difficulty describing her beyond "generally nice" and "dedicated to her sport". While not the primary heroine, the tiny gymnast Hina steals the show far more with her injection of playful ribbing. Taiki's friend Ryo rounds out the early cast as the filthily frank friend with no filter. So far this seems like a fun group to follow.
Oh, and did I mention that the anime is obscenely beautiful to look at too? Yeah, outside of maybe one or two moments where the character animation and lighting effects try maybe a little too hard to impress, one of which results in a rather chuckleworthy moment of Chinatsu appearing outright weightless as she takes a shot at the hoop, this is a gorgeous work, hands down. The animation is smooth and the character designs are both wholesome and attractive, and the CG they use looks good for the most part, especially the big sweeping shot early on of the whole gymnasium and all the different sports being practiced there. That lush, cinematic flair only makes all of those Big Feelings™ hit that much harder, and I have no reason to doubt that Blue Box will be able to keep those hits coming so long as the artists at Telecom Animation can keep up the work at a healthy pace.
This is by far one of THE must-watch premieres of the season. Overall, it's safe to say that if you like romance anime or sports anime, you'll probably get some enjoyment out of this one.
Al's Anime Reviews - Kinokoinu
Posted a year agoKinokoinu was born one day in the yard of picture book author Hotaru Yuyami, whose beloved dog Hanako recently died. It wags its tail just like a dog, but it's unknown if it's a dog or a mushroom. Although it draws pictures where it shouldn't and always wants to eat Hotaru's takoyaki, it may be just what Hotaru needs in his life.
It's still pretty early in the season, but Kinokoinu is already a contender for the strangest show of Fall 2024. Children's book author Hotaru is grieving the loss of his last remaining family member, Hanako, his dog he spent 17 years of his life with. Two months after her passing, a big pink-and-white mushroom growing in his yard pops out of the ground, revealing a walking, sentient mushroom creature in the shape of a puppy.
Boy, I gotta say, this one was kinda disappointing... I was all-in on the concept of the adorable mushroom dog from the moment I saw Kinokoinu's trailer--the titular mushroom pupper was the part of the show I figured I'd like the most, honestly. Having seen the premiere, however, while Kinokoinu himself is pretty cute, I never expected this show to be such a friggin' downer. It's not a concept that should work, and yet, maybe because of my own pet losses and because there are multiple fresher sources of grief in my life, I did cry a little watching it. After losing his beloved canine companion, Hotaru is definitely showing signs of severe post-pet-lost depression, and he's barely had a couple of months to process his loss. Hotaru spacing out during a book signing, the flashbacks to his life with Hanako, the feeling of emptiness that pervades the big house where he now lives alone, it all got to me. The background music went further to highlight the mood of the scenes, and it was almost too much for my heart to handle. I don't begrudge the story taking its time to show how low Hotaru is at this point in his grief, as he tries to process that his whole family is gone now, and the anime does a good job of putting us in his dreary headspace, but it isn't exactly fun to sit through. It's not even compellingly depressing in an artistic way either, the experience mostly just reminds me of those regular everyday grief days where things just suck in a quiet and nebulous way that there's no way to fix.
Again, I don't necessarily consider this a "flaw" on the show's part, since the mood is clearly an intentional choice, but what I do think is a problem is the way the premiere doesn't manage to pick up the pace or provide any kind of meaningful tonal shift after Hotaru finds himself the owner of a magical sentient mushroom creature vaguely shaped like a dog. His editor is thankfully reasonable enough to at least be curious (and somewhat concerned) about Kinokoinu's arrival, but Hotaru just can't be bothered to care, because of... Well, yeah. Given the mushroom dog's design and the general way these sorts of shows tend to go, you'd think that the little pup would liven things up a little, but the premiere is as gloomy as ever right until the very end, all the way through the scene where Kinokoinu takes it upon himself to burn one of Hotaru's mementos of his dog to help him "move on".
Look, I get what the show is trying to do, and the guy is clearly struggling to cope with his loss in a way that's starting to affect his job, but this episode simply doesn't go far enough to make its titular character likeable or compelling enough to earn the catharsis of this moment, so the whole sequence comes across as creepy instead of moving. The mushroom-thing is just standing there, tossing the dead dog's collar into the fire while staring blankly into Hotaru's eyes, and the effect was personally a little horrifying. Maybe I'm just too involved and can't imagine forgiving something that's still a total stranger for violating my treasured memories like that and refusing to let me take my grieving process at my own pace. Or maybe the show just isn't as good as I'd hoped.
Even putting this aside, I still find myself unsure if Kinokoinu can sustain itself for a full season. Focus too obsessively on the grieving and it can become schmaltzy or come off as a load of misery porn, sure, but without that element, it doesn't have much to do other than be a slice-of-life show about a man and his dog-shaped mushroom. I can only hope it improves from here, because it left a pretty poor first impression. I can't really recommend it, but I wouldn't say stay away from it either. Watch it for yourself if you want, and then you can make the call.
It's still pretty early in the season, but Kinokoinu is already a contender for the strangest show of Fall 2024. Children's book author Hotaru is grieving the loss of his last remaining family member, Hanako, his dog he spent 17 years of his life with. Two months after her passing, a big pink-and-white mushroom growing in his yard pops out of the ground, revealing a walking, sentient mushroom creature in the shape of a puppy.
Boy, I gotta say, this one was kinda disappointing... I was all-in on the concept of the adorable mushroom dog from the moment I saw Kinokoinu's trailer--the titular mushroom pupper was the part of the show I figured I'd like the most, honestly. Having seen the premiere, however, while Kinokoinu himself is pretty cute, I never expected this show to be such a friggin' downer. It's not a concept that should work, and yet, maybe because of my own pet losses and because there are multiple fresher sources of grief in my life, I did cry a little watching it. After losing his beloved canine companion, Hotaru is definitely showing signs of severe post-pet-lost depression, and he's barely had a couple of months to process his loss. Hotaru spacing out during a book signing, the flashbacks to his life with Hanako, the feeling of emptiness that pervades the big house where he now lives alone, it all got to me. The background music went further to highlight the mood of the scenes, and it was almost too much for my heart to handle. I don't begrudge the story taking its time to show how low Hotaru is at this point in his grief, as he tries to process that his whole family is gone now, and the anime does a good job of putting us in his dreary headspace, but it isn't exactly fun to sit through. It's not even compellingly depressing in an artistic way either, the experience mostly just reminds me of those regular everyday grief days where things just suck in a quiet and nebulous way that there's no way to fix.
Again, I don't necessarily consider this a "flaw" on the show's part, since the mood is clearly an intentional choice, but what I do think is a problem is the way the premiere doesn't manage to pick up the pace or provide any kind of meaningful tonal shift after Hotaru finds himself the owner of a magical sentient mushroom creature vaguely shaped like a dog. His editor is thankfully reasonable enough to at least be curious (and somewhat concerned) about Kinokoinu's arrival, but Hotaru just can't be bothered to care, because of... Well, yeah. Given the mushroom dog's design and the general way these sorts of shows tend to go, you'd think that the little pup would liven things up a little, but the premiere is as gloomy as ever right until the very end, all the way through the scene where Kinokoinu takes it upon himself to burn one of Hotaru's mementos of his dog to help him "move on".
Look, I get what the show is trying to do, and the guy is clearly struggling to cope with his loss in a way that's starting to affect his job, but this episode simply doesn't go far enough to make its titular character likeable or compelling enough to earn the catharsis of this moment, so the whole sequence comes across as creepy instead of moving. The mushroom-thing is just standing there, tossing the dead dog's collar into the fire while staring blankly into Hotaru's eyes, and the effect was personally a little horrifying. Maybe I'm just too involved and can't imagine forgiving something that's still a total stranger for violating my treasured memories like that and refusing to let me take my grieving process at my own pace. Or maybe the show just isn't as good as I'd hoped.
Even putting this aside, I still find myself unsure if Kinokoinu can sustain itself for a full season. Focus too obsessively on the grieving and it can become schmaltzy or come off as a load of misery porn, sure, but without that element, it doesn't have much to do other than be a slice-of-life show about a man and his dog-shaped mushroom. I can only hope it improves from here, because it left a pretty poor first impression. I can't really recommend it, but I wouldn't say stay away from it either. Watch it for yourself if you want, and then you can make the call.
Al's Anime Reviews - Murai in Love
Posted a year agoMurai is an unassuming highschool boy who confesses his love for his teacher, Ayano Tanaka, a woman who's a fan of otome games. When Ayano curtly refuses Murai's advances, Murai returns the next day a changed man--new hair, new style, all unintentionally emulating Hitose, Ayano's husbando from her favourite otome game. Now Murai sets out on a quest to be Ayano's dream man.
Okay, let's get all the standard stuff out of the way for those who really can't manage to look past it. Teacher/student romance is inherently unethical in real life. Comedy is subjective and cultural. This show requires suspension of disbelief that a human could look like an otome game character, though I suppose in-world otome games could also be less abstracted. Most importantly, fiction is not reality, no matter what you might've heard from severely reality-detached lunatics on Twitter who compare you to Jeffrey Epstein for so much as looking at Ilulu because she claims to be 16 before happily jerking off to lewds of Yoko Littner, Marin Kitagawa and every female Pokemon trainer.
Everybody got that? ...Good!
Now we can talk about the bigger issues with Murai in Love, like that it's plug-ugly. It has the same sort of motion comics-style animation that rendered the anime adaptation of Way of the Househusband unwatchable. The frame will be almost completely static other than the characters moving their mouths, otherwise their whole bodies move at once, holding a static pose while they tumble through the scene like a paper cutout. But I guess that's not entirely accurate, because if they were actually paper cutouts, it'd be a lot more impressive because then it'd be something like stop-motion or the infamous popsicle stick puppets episode of Kare Kano. The insistence on the most limited animation possible robs the show of much of its comedic potential.
A bit of quick searching tells me that Junta Shima's original manga doesn't look like this, and it in fact does a better job of conveying motion through still images than this anime does with actual motion, which has me suspect that the Murai in Love anime is the result of an underfunded, understaffed crew who realized there was no way to make their show look any good, and so they instead decided to just make it look audaciously terrible. It doesn't approach standard-bearers of shitpost brilliance like Pop Team Epic, mind you, but come on, they HAD to have done this on purpose. Just...fucking LOOK at it! I refuse to believe that Murai in Love could see the light of day in this form by accident!
The rest of the problems come from the obnoxious characters and story. So, to reiterate, the basic plot is that Ayano is a newbie teacher who wants nothing more than to do the bare minimum at work to get paid and then go home and play dating sims. That's it. That's her entire goal in life. However, one day, one of her honours students, Murai, gets it into his head that he's in love with her and actually has a chance with her, and now he's determined to overcome any and all obstacles to be with her, societal expectations be damned. While Ayano has no feelings for Murai (or any real-world man, for that matter), once he dyes his hair blonde, he happens to look exactly like her favourite game character. As expected, this throws her for a loop, and suddenly she can't quite differentiate where her feelings for her favourite character end and her feelings for Murai begin.
There's no reason given as to why Murai is in love with Ayano, and the rapidity with which she crumbles in the face of his new look is more than a bit off-putting. It doesn't help that she screams most of her dialogue, a vocal style I tend to dislike. In a presumed attempt at creating comedy through incongruity, Ayano is constantly internally losing her shit over how much Murai looks like Hitose. I get the impression that it's supposed to be super funny and wacky that Ayano is both a teacher and a total nerd or something. I found the pieces of the episode that dealt with Murai's classmates to be much more entertaining. The episode picked up a bit at the end with the introduction of the Nishifuji twins, a cosplayer and a fanartist who are both super into Murai. They bring some energy beyond just internal screaming and, along with it, the first gags that made me chuckle.
I think this could still work for you if you like deliberately zany comedies that move at a quick, disjointed pace and can tolerate Ayano's shrieking. I doubt the visuals will win anyone over, but there are some moments that could foretell a smoother style of weirdness as the series finds its footing. But thanks primarily to the animation and voicework, it didn't work for me. All the same, I can't bring myself to hate something that's so earnestly pathetic, y'know? Could I ever recommend it to anyone without immediately being told I have shit taste? No, of course not. But no matter how you feel about student/teacher relationships in anime, it's impossible to be offended by the romantic misadventures of a couple of barely animated post-it notes masquerading as people.
Okay, let's get all the standard stuff out of the way for those who really can't manage to look past it. Teacher/student romance is inherently unethical in real life. Comedy is subjective and cultural. This show requires suspension of disbelief that a human could look like an otome game character, though I suppose in-world otome games could also be less abstracted. Most importantly, fiction is not reality, no matter what you might've heard from severely reality-detached lunatics on Twitter who compare you to Jeffrey Epstein for so much as looking at Ilulu because she claims to be 16 before happily jerking off to lewds of Yoko Littner, Marin Kitagawa and every female Pokemon trainer.
Everybody got that? ...Good!
Now we can talk about the bigger issues with Murai in Love, like that it's plug-ugly. It has the same sort of motion comics-style animation that rendered the anime adaptation of Way of the Househusband unwatchable. The frame will be almost completely static other than the characters moving their mouths, otherwise their whole bodies move at once, holding a static pose while they tumble through the scene like a paper cutout. But I guess that's not entirely accurate, because if they were actually paper cutouts, it'd be a lot more impressive because then it'd be something like stop-motion or the infamous popsicle stick puppets episode of Kare Kano. The insistence on the most limited animation possible robs the show of much of its comedic potential.
A bit of quick searching tells me that Junta Shima's original manga doesn't look like this, and it in fact does a better job of conveying motion through still images than this anime does with actual motion, which has me suspect that the Murai in Love anime is the result of an underfunded, understaffed crew who realized there was no way to make their show look any good, and so they instead decided to just make it look audaciously terrible. It doesn't approach standard-bearers of shitpost brilliance like Pop Team Epic, mind you, but come on, they HAD to have done this on purpose. Just...fucking LOOK at it! I refuse to believe that Murai in Love could see the light of day in this form by accident!
The rest of the problems come from the obnoxious characters and story. So, to reiterate, the basic plot is that Ayano is a newbie teacher who wants nothing more than to do the bare minimum at work to get paid and then go home and play dating sims. That's it. That's her entire goal in life. However, one day, one of her honours students, Murai, gets it into his head that he's in love with her and actually has a chance with her, and now he's determined to overcome any and all obstacles to be with her, societal expectations be damned. While Ayano has no feelings for Murai (or any real-world man, for that matter), once he dyes his hair blonde, he happens to look exactly like her favourite game character. As expected, this throws her for a loop, and suddenly she can't quite differentiate where her feelings for her favourite character end and her feelings for Murai begin.
There's no reason given as to why Murai is in love with Ayano, and the rapidity with which she crumbles in the face of his new look is more than a bit off-putting. It doesn't help that she screams most of her dialogue, a vocal style I tend to dislike. In a presumed attempt at creating comedy through incongruity, Ayano is constantly internally losing her shit over how much Murai looks like Hitose. I get the impression that it's supposed to be super funny and wacky that Ayano is both a teacher and a total nerd or something. I found the pieces of the episode that dealt with Murai's classmates to be much more entertaining. The episode picked up a bit at the end with the introduction of the Nishifuji twins, a cosplayer and a fanartist who are both super into Murai. They bring some energy beyond just internal screaming and, along with it, the first gags that made me chuckle.
I think this could still work for you if you like deliberately zany comedies that move at a quick, disjointed pace and can tolerate Ayano's shrieking. I doubt the visuals will win anyone over, but there are some moments that could foretell a smoother style of weirdness as the series finds its footing. But thanks primarily to the animation and voicework, it didn't work for me. All the same, I can't bring myself to hate something that's so earnestly pathetic, y'know? Could I ever recommend it to anyone without immediately being told I have shit taste? No, of course not. But no matter how you feel about student/teacher relationships in anime, it's impossible to be offended by the romantic misadventures of a couple of barely animated post-it notes masquerading as people.
Al's Anime Reviews - Loner Life in Another World
Posted a year ago{Note: Once again I meant to post this review yesterday but was a dumbass and forgot, so you get two today. Enjoy.}
Due to ariving late thanks to his attempts to avoid being summoned, Haruka is the only one in his class who didn't receive a "cheat skill" during his class' sudden summoning to another world. He's determined to enjoy a loner life in this new world using the leftover bad skills he was given.
Oh man, the season is JUST starting and already my resolution to find something interesting or unique about every generic light novel fantasy is being challenged. I feel like a kid struggling with a prompt in a school essay: "The most unique thing about Loner Life in Another World is..." Oh god the clock is ticking, I only have a few minutes left! Uh...
The most unique thing about Loner Life in Another World is that the protagonist gets the supposedly crappy skills because of his own choice to try to avoid getting isekai'd. Usually when that happens it's arbitrary and his classmates treat him like garbage because they're meanie poopheads, but this time, he gets there late because he doesn't want to be bothered and ends up with the leftover skills.
Whew! That was pretty hard, because Loner Life in Another World is as generic as they come. And y'know what, if they couldn't be bothered to make something interesting, I shouldn't have to bother writing something interesting. Do they give me a checklist of tropes? I'm gonna give them a checklist of complaints. Oh look, I already get to check the first box: "Compare the story to a checklist"!
And hey, good thing I learned the protagonist's name before watching, because I'm pretty sure it's never actually spoken in the premiere. Haruka's the only one who speaks the entire episode, no exaggeration, so I guess he didn't need to mention his name to himself. That's the only thing he didn't describe, as he goes on and on and on describing everything that's onscreen. You put the meat and mushrooms in a pan, you say? Why, thank you, we couldn't possibly have surmised that from the visual of you putting meat and mushrooms in the pan! You feel the need to tell us that the cave you pitched your tent in will be a good shelter for the time being, but what is a cave? Please explain, dear protagonist! I, a person with functional eyesight and basic literacy, could not possibly figure this out on my own. And reader, you may be shocked to learn that his supposedly useless skills are, in fact, very good! He levels up and all his stats increase! Remarkable!
It's a shame that this episode is so grating, because it's also entertainingly self-aware. The very moment that the giant glowing summoning circle appears on the floor of his classroom, Haruka decides to nope the hell out of there, knowing full well what's about to happen. Unfortunately for him, this is the world's most determined isekai, and not only are the doors sealed shut and the windows unbreakable, but even hiding in the ceiling doesn't save him. All it does is ensure that Haruka is the last to get to pick his skills, meaning the exasperated god throws all the leftovers at him and tosses him out into the world. This entire sequence is much more amusing than it ought to be, largely because Haruka is not only genre-savvy, but also not interested in the boilerplate isekai experience. Sure, parts of it sound okay, but our hero seems aware of the basic differences between fiction and reality, which is refreshing.
Regretfully, that one joke can't carry the entire episode. In its defense, it doesn't exactly try, opting for mildly silly animated menus and a slideshow of Haruka finding ways to make his skills useful, but the fact remains that most of the episode's runtime is devoted to the usual fighting low-level monsters, learning the ropes and eating, all while discovering that "loser" skills are actually great. By the time his other classmates, all suitably grouped in their pre-transportation cliques, showed up, I was practically begging to hear someone else talk or for Haruka to find someone to narrate to besides us.
I could complain about so many little things in this anime. Take his appraisal contacts for example. How can he put them in with leather gloves on, and without contact solution too? And does he never have to take them out? Then there's stuff like, why would a normal-ass villager have luxury items like fancy spices or a bag of holding? Why does Haruka think staves are a bad weapon? And why is he so okay with murdering goblins who are simply gathering mushrooms and not actually bothering anyone? I mean, it's not even like they attack him first!
However, focusing on the details would be missing the biggest problem, the premise of Haruka being alone in the fantasy world by choice. It's insanely difficult to do a story with only a single character. It puts all the responsibility on a lone actor to draw in the audience. Simply put, if you don't care about the main character, you don't care about the story. Now, this has been done successfully before. The anime example that comes to mind is So I'm a Spider, So What?, where the vast majority of the story is focused on Kumoko attempting to survive the dungeon alone. But it only works because Aoi Yuki is just that good of a voice actress. Her constant running monologue and wide acting range make it possible to love the character despite her faults. And to be frank, while he gives it a good try, Shuichiro Umeda is no Aoi Yuki in this regard.
It's just... Ugh, FUCK, man! Please, my spiritual siblings across the anime community, and all within the industry, start having higher standards for isekai stories! Want something better to spend your one precious life on! Demand basic storytelling competence! Aspire for more than the lowest common denominator! Goddamn!
Due to ariving late thanks to his attempts to avoid being summoned, Haruka is the only one in his class who didn't receive a "cheat skill" during his class' sudden summoning to another world. He's determined to enjoy a loner life in this new world using the leftover bad skills he was given.
Oh man, the season is JUST starting and already my resolution to find something interesting or unique about every generic light novel fantasy is being challenged. I feel like a kid struggling with a prompt in a school essay: "The most unique thing about Loner Life in Another World is..." Oh god the clock is ticking, I only have a few minutes left! Uh...
The most unique thing about Loner Life in Another World is that the protagonist gets the supposedly crappy skills because of his own choice to try to avoid getting isekai'd. Usually when that happens it's arbitrary and his classmates treat him like garbage because they're meanie poopheads, but this time, he gets there late because he doesn't want to be bothered and ends up with the leftover skills.
Whew! That was pretty hard, because Loner Life in Another World is as generic as they come. And y'know what, if they couldn't be bothered to make something interesting, I shouldn't have to bother writing something interesting. Do they give me a checklist of tropes? I'm gonna give them a checklist of complaints. Oh look, I already get to check the first box: "Compare the story to a checklist"!
And hey, good thing I learned the protagonist's name before watching, because I'm pretty sure it's never actually spoken in the premiere. Haruka's the only one who speaks the entire episode, no exaggeration, so I guess he didn't need to mention his name to himself. That's the only thing he didn't describe, as he goes on and on and on describing everything that's onscreen. You put the meat and mushrooms in a pan, you say? Why, thank you, we couldn't possibly have surmised that from the visual of you putting meat and mushrooms in the pan! You feel the need to tell us that the cave you pitched your tent in will be a good shelter for the time being, but what is a cave? Please explain, dear protagonist! I, a person with functional eyesight and basic literacy, could not possibly figure this out on my own. And reader, you may be shocked to learn that his supposedly useless skills are, in fact, very good! He levels up and all his stats increase! Remarkable!
It's a shame that this episode is so grating, because it's also entertainingly self-aware. The very moment that the giant glowing summoning circle appears on the floor of his classroom, Haruka decides to nope the hell out of there, knowing full well what's about to happen. Unfortunately for him, this is the world's most determined isekai, and not only are the doors sealed shut and the windows unbreakable, but even hiding in the ceiling doesn't save him. All it does is ensure that Haruka is the last to get to pick his skills, meaning the exasperated god throws all the leftovers at him and tosses him out into the world. This entire sequence is much more amusing than it ought to be, largely because Haruka is not only genre-savvy, but also not interested in the boilerplate isekai experience. Sure, parts of it sound okay, but our hero seems aware of the basic differences between fiction and reality, which is refreshing.
Regretfully, that one joke can't carry the entire episode. In its defense, it doesn't exactly try, opting for mildly silly animated menus and a slideshow of Haruka finding ways to make his skills useful, but the fact remains that most of the episode's runtime is devoted to the usual fighting low-level monsters, learning the ropes and eating, all while discovering that "loser" skills are actually great. By the time his other classmates, all suitably grouped in their pre-transportation cliques, showed up, I was practically begging to hear someone else talk or for Haruka to find someone to narrate to besides us.
I could complain about so many little things in this anime. Take his appraisal contacts for example. How can he put them in with leather gloves on, and without contact solution too? And does he never have to take them out? Then there's stuff like, why would a normal-ass villager have luxury items like fancy spices or a bag of holding? Why does Haruka think staves are a bad weapon? And why is he so okay with murdering goblins who are simply gathering mushrooms and not actually bothering anyone? I mean, it's not even like they attack him first!
However, focusing on the details would be missing the biggest problem, the premise of Haruka being alone in the fantasy world by choice. It's insanely difficult to do a story with only a single character. It puts all the responsibility on a lone actor to draw in the audience. Simply put, if you don't care about the main character, you don't care about the story. Now, this has been done successfully before. The anime example that comes to mind is So I'm a Spider, So What?, where the vast majority of the story is focused on Kumoko attempting to survive the dungeon alone. But it only works because Aoi Yuki is just that good of a voice actress. Her constant running monologue and wide acting range make it possible to love the character despite her faults. And to be frank, while he gives it a good try, Shuichiro Umeda is no Aoi Yuki in this regard.
It's just... Ugh, FUCK, man! Please, my spiritual siblings across the anime community, and all within the industry, start having higher standards for isekai stories! Want something better to spend your one precious life on! Demand basic storytelling competence! Aspire for more than the lowest common denominator! Goddamn!
Al's Anime Reviews - Tying the Knot With an Amagami Siste...
Posted a year agoUryu Kamihate has had a rough start to life, but plans to forget it all by achieving his dream of getting into medical school. When he arrives at his new foster home, a working shrine, his dream of a quiet place to study goes up in smoke. Not only will he be living with the three beautiful, lively sisters, but he learns that he must marry one of them and take over as the shrine's head priest.
I can't decide if it's a blessing or a curse to trade one creatively bankrupt pastiche of a mercilessly flogged horse corpse of a genre with another. On the one hand, Tying the Knot With an Amagami Sister doesn't feature any fate-enforcing, truck-shaped harbingers of death, its protagonists possess no video game powers, there's not a single godforsaken stats menu in sight, and so far, nobody has defined their entire personality around being the "Most Powerful or "World's Weakest" whatever-the-fuck. Then again, all we've really done is land smack in the middle of a generic, lazy, terminally unfunny Love Hina clone that only has some modern-looking character designs to help prove that it wasn't literally ripped straight from some long-forgotten mid-2000s discs that ADV was keeping locked up in a vault somewhere deep in the heart of Texas for the last 20 years. Instead of being a hapless loser, our protagonist Uryu is more of a reserved loner type. However, he still manages to spend most of this episode finding ways to fall head-over-dick into the boobs and butts of the three miko he's found himself living with. There are the requisite scenes of Redhead Tsundere-chan beating him up for his mishaps, we've got cracks about how guys must obviously be hiding porn mags under every nook and cranny of their living space, and naturally, all of the girls end up growing quite fond of our guy for no actual reason before the premiere can even reach its end credits, just because that's what the genre demands.
It certainly doesn't put its best tit forward--the episode opens with Uryu getting blamed for walking in on the eponymous sisters in their underwear despite doing no such thing, he's just there when eldest sister Yae opens the door. This is followed by a series of 90s-era romcom standbys of the "lucky perv" variety. Y'know, the giant-boobed sister falling over on him and ending up with her breasts on his head, him falling on the youngest sister in a suggestive pose, the tsundere sister (who keeps throwing salt at him) thinking he's looking to pounce on her in the night when he's obviously not... It's exhausting. There are no surprises to be found in a Basic McBitch harem series like this, an amalgamation of stale tropes stretching all the way back to Ranma 1/2.
It also may not be faithful to what the story is supposed to be about. The underlying theme appears to be Uryu's refutation of faith and the fact that he's just come to live at a shrine. The implication is that he lost his faith when the gods failed to answer his prayers as a little boy, apparently resulting in his mother's death and his going to live in foster care. The sisters, on the other hand, are very devout Shintoists who resolutely believe in the gods despite their mother's passing when they were around the same age as Uryu when he lost his mom. They religiously wear the red hair cords she left them as a means to link them to her, and by the end of the episode, it looks a lot like someone is listening to them. Right now, I suspect it's a god, but it could be the spirit of their mother still watching over her children. There's even a beautiful moment when Uryu sees a combination of shooting stars and falling sakura petals and realizes that he may not be as steadfastly anti-fairytale as he assumes.
And then we wrap up with the girls' grandfather coming home and announcing that one of his granddaughters will marry Uryu, no questions asked. It's a splash of cold water in the face after a lovely middle of the episode, resulting in this feeling incredibly uneven. It's as if the original manga's creator wanted to write the middle story but was compelled by someone to incorporate the beginning and end elements. There's such a stark divide between them that it feels awkward as all hell.
Believe it or not, I'm not averse to an actually good harem romcom every once in a while, as proven by my love of such shows as Princess Lover or Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, but these ones that just go down the checklist of harem cliches are rough to sit through. Honestly, there's only one thing that's really all that original in this premiere, and it's the worst part: Uryu himself. Uryu is the worst kind of atheist. It's not that he doesn't believe in the gods that's the problem, it's not even that he thinks it's stupid that others believe in them because it doesn't match up with "facts and logic", it's that he uses every fucking opportunity to preach his own gospel and belittle everyone around him. These girls are literally shrine maidens and you come into their house, right next to their holy shrine, and dump ass on their most deeply held personal beliefs? You don't have to agree with them, but common politeness should at least tell you to keep your trap shut!
But Uryu just can't seem to do that, even going so far as to hit the girls with his bullshit when they're down. Is it naive to think that the gods will perform a miracle just to help Yuna find her hair tie? Sure, but time and place, man! Besides, it's not divine intervention the sisters are talking about, not really. They're using their belief in the gods as a morale boost. They don't literally think the gods are going to magically return the hair tie (even if that's what actually happens in the end), but even an atheist should be able to understand that if the girls are driven and in good spirits, they'll have a much higher chance of finding it than if they were hopeless and depressed.
The worst thing about Uryu, however, is that he's a goddamn hypocrite. It only takes about an hour in the woods for him to throw his beliefs out the window and pray for divine help. This goes to show that he doesn't have any real convictions, he's just using every possible chance to lash out at the gods for not saving his mother, even if he's hurting real people by doing so. What's happened to him is tragic, and I'm sure the series is about him overcoming his pain and the hatred in his heart, but honestly, I'm not sure I care enough about him to make it through that.
Like I said before, there are a few nice moments sprinkled in, like Yuna struggling through offering a talisman to a little girl in English. It's not really worth watching for those though, and the animation certainly isn't going to be a draw. At the best of times, it has the dull sheen and washed-out colours of any other cheap, haphazard romcom production, and at worst, the sisters straight-up look like pugs, with their eyes bulging from their sockets as they point in different directions.
In other words, despite its meager attempts at looking and sounding like a real drama with characters you might give a damn about, the entire premise relies on no one behaving like a normal human being to generate "laughs" and "romantic chemistry", and I can't tell you enough just how immense those sarcasm quotes are meant to be. I can maybe see this show working as decent background noise for folks who want a show that requires absolutely zero energy to consume, but from what I've seen so far, it's just not for me.
I can't decide if it's a blessing or a curse to trade one creatively bankrupt pastiche of a mercilessly flogged horse corpse of a genre with another. On the one hand, Tying the Knot With an Amagami Sister doesn't feature any fate-enforcing, truck-shaped harbingers of death, its protagonists possess no video game powers, there's not a single godforsaken stats menu in sight, and so far, nobody has defined their entire personality around being the "Most Powerful or "World's Weakest" whatever-the-fuck. Then again, all we've really done is land smack in the middle of a generic, lazy, terminally unfunny Love Hina clone that only has some modern-looking character designs to help prove that it wasn't literally ripped straight from some long-forgotten mid-2000s discs that ADV was keeping locked up in a vault somewhere deep in the heart of Texas for the last 20 years. Instead of being a hapless loser, our protagonist Uryu is more of a reserved loner type. However, he still manages to spend most of this episode finding ways to fall head-over-dick into the boobs and butts of the three miko he's found himself living with. There are the requisite scenes of Redhead Tsundere-chan beating him up for his mishaps, we've got cracks about how guys must obviously be hiding porn mags under every nook and cranny of their living space, and naturally, all of the girls end up growing quite fond of our guy for no actual reason before the premiere can even reach its end credits, just because that's what the genre demands.
It certainly doesn't put its best tit forward--the episode opens with Uryu getting blamed for walking in on the eponymous sisters in their underwear despite doing no such thing, he's just there when eldest sister Yae opens the door. This is followed by a series of 90s-era romcom standbys of the "lucky perv" variety. Y'know, the giant-boobed sister falling over on him and ending up with her breasts on his head, him falling on the youngest sister in a suggestive pose, the tsundere sister (who keeps throwing salt at him) thinking he's looking to pounce on her in the night when he's obviously not... It's exhausting. There are no surprises to be found in a Basic McBitch harem series like this, an amalgamation of stale tropes stretching all the way back to Ranma 1/2.
It also may not be faithful to what the story is supposed to be about. The underlying theme appears to be Uryu's refutation of faith and the fact that he's just come to live at a shrine. The implication is that he lost his faith when the gods failed to answer his prayers as a little boy, apparently resulting in his mother's death and his going to live in foster care. The sisters, on the other hand, are very devout Shintoists who resolutely believe in the gods despite their mother's passing when they were around the same age as Uryu when he lost his mom. They religiously wear the red hair cords she left them as a means to link them to her, and by the end of the episode, it looks a lot like someone is listening to them. Right now, I suspect it's a god, but it could be the spirit of their mother still watching over her children. There's even a beautiful moment when Uryu sees a combination of shooting stars and falling sakura petals and realizes that he may not be as steadfastly anti-fairytale as he assumes.
And then we wrap up with the girls' grandfather coming home and announcing that one of his granddaughters will marry Uryu, no questions asked. It's a splash of cold water in the face after a lovely middle of the episode, resulting in this feeling incredibly uneven. It's as if the original manga's creator wanted to write the middle story but was compelled by someone to incorporate the beginning and end elements. There's such a stark divide between them that it feels awkward as all hell.
Believe it or not, I'm not averse to an actually good harem romcom every once in a while, as proven by my love of such shows as Princess Lover or Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, but these ones that just go down the checklist of harem cliches are rough to sit through. Honestly, there's only one thing that's really all that original in this premiere, and it's the worst part: Uryu himself. Uryu is the worst kind of atheist. It's not that he doesn't believe in the gods that's the problem, it's not even that he thinks it's stupid that others believe in them because it doesn't match up with "facts and logic", it's that he uses every fucking opportunity to preach his own gospel and belittle everyone around him. These girls are literally shrine maidens and you come into their house, right next to their holy shrine, and dump ass on their most deeply held personal beliefs? You don't have to agree with them, but common politeness should at least tell you to keep your trap shut!
But Uryu just can't seem to do that, even going so far as to hit the girls with his bullshit when they're down. Is it naive to think that the gods will perform a miracle just to help Yuna find her hair tie? Sure, but time and place, man! Besides, it's not divine intervention the sisters are talking about, not really. They're using their belief in the gods as a morale boost. They don't literally think the gods are going to magically return the hair tie (even if that's what actually happens in the end), but even an atheist should be able to understand that if the girls are driven and in good spirits, they'll have a much higher chance of finding it than if they were hopeless and depressed.
The worst thing about Uryu, however, is that he's a goddamn hypocrite. It only takes about an hour in the woods for him to throw his beliefs out the window and pray for divine help. This goes to show that he doesn't have any real convictions, he's just using every possible chance to lash out at the gods for not saving his mother, even if he's hurting real people by doing so. What's happened to him is tragic, and I'm sure the series is about him overcoming his pain and the hatred in his heart, but honestly, I'm not sure I care enough about him to make it through that.
Like I said before, there are a few nice moments sprinkled in, like Yuna struggling through offering a talisman to a little girl in English. It's not really worth watching for those though, and the animation certainly isn't going to be a draw. At the best of times, it has the dull sheen and washed-out colours of any other cheap, haphazard romcom production, and at worst, the sisters straight-up look like pugs, with their eyes bulging from their sockets as they point in different directions.
In other words, despite its meager attempts at looking and sounding like a real drama with characters you might give a damn about, the entire premise relies on no one behaving like a normal human being to generate "laughs" and "romantic chemistry", and I can't tell you enough just how immense those sarcasm quotes are meant to be. I can maybe see this show working as decent background noise for folks who want a show that requires absolutely zero energy to consume, but from what I've seen so far, it's just not for me.
Al's Anime Reviews - The Most Notorious Talker
Posted a year agoNoel longs to be a Seeker like his heroic grandfather, slaying the beasts that emerge from Abysses and exploring far-off lands. Unfortunately, it turns out he's a Talker, a job with no combat skills whatsoever. Undaunted, Noel sets out to establish the strongest clan in all the land, using his silver-tongued Talker skills to unite assassins and heroes under his leadership.
I've set out a goal for myself this season: Find something interesting or unique about every generic fantasy or isekai light novel adaptation I watch. I'm excited to see how long I can manage to keep up the gimmick and which show will force me to break this resolution. My pick for The Most Notorious Talker Runs the World's Greatest Clan is that Noel is femininely beautiful, complete with a beauty mark and long, luxurious lashes, which is unusual among main heroes for these kinds of shows. Even comparing him to the other men in his party, it's plain to see that this was a deliberate choice and not just what people look like in this world.
Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, I can say how I really feel. The Most Notorious Talker does little to distinguish itself from other isekai that carry the Virgin X vs Chad Y mentality. After an introduction to Noel's tragic backstory consisting entirely of proper nouns and numbered stat mush, we learn that this is a world where everyone has an immutable class. Noel is "Talker", essentially a support class who uses his magically charged words to buff his party members. Of course, all the Chad DPS and tank classes HATE the Virgin support classes, so poor Noel is completely unappreciated and treated like he never contributes. Oh, but healers are apparently perfectly fine though.
And then he pulls out a gun that shoots incredibly powerful spells and times himself on his smartwatch to see how quickly he can bring down the baddies.
Look, anime producers of the world, we need to sit down and have a real talk. Can we all understand that there is a difference between channelling the edgy, self-centered fantasies of our cringey tweenage selves from yesteryear and actually just pillaging the pages of an actual dipshit edgelord highschooler's journal? I shouldn't need to explain the difference between those two things, right? One of those methods can produce schlocky but fun exercises in pulpy, campy ridiculousness. The other method is, at best, a really embarrassing way to admit that you're creatively bankrupt enough to steal from people who aren't even old enough to drink away the sorrows that come from living in a late-stage post-pandemic capitalist hellscape.
Okay, fine, I will admit that I can't prove that the creators of this show just copypasta'd a bunch of random chapters from some poor kid's fanfics and changed enough of the names to keep from being sued. All signs technically point to this anime having been produced by professional adults with plenty of experience in their respective fields. If anything though, that just makes the anime's faults harder to excuse. At the very least, if the anime were the product of a lone teen with too much time on their hands and too few friends to help them put the whole thing together, I could justify the glaring flaws in the basic premise, like how our supremely tough and totally legit badass bard of a main character lives in a world where people somehow don't all want to become best friends with the guy who can give everyone superpowers at the drop of a hat while he shoots monsters with his big fucking guns. I could also see how hard it would be for such a kid to actually sit down and play enough Dungeons & Dragons to realize that nobody, real or fictional, is about to give a bard shit for actively buffing their party members and supporting the team. I could even understand why that kid would think covering up his sloppy animation with ugly colour filters might be what "real animators" would do to trick people into thinking their show looks hideous and half-finished on purpose. As, like, a stylistic choice or whatever.
But this is an anime made by grown-ups, and even if the intent was to appeal to an audience of young, angry misanthrope hopped up on caffeine and a lifetime of algorithmically sourced ragebait social media posts... I mean, come the fuck ON! Are you not bored with this by now? Are you not tired of regurgitating the same tired cliches and ugly animation in the name of a quick buck? If you need me, I'll be recovering from this overdose of cringe with a double dose of literally any other series premiering this season and a side order of the Plus-Size Elf episodes I need to catch up on.
I've set out a goal for myself this season: Find something interesting or unique about every generic fantasy or isekai light novel adaptation I watch. I'm excited to see how long I can manage to keep up the gimmick and which show will force me to break this resolution. My pick for The Most Notorious Talker Runs the World's Greatest Clan is that Noel is femininely beautiful, complete with a beauty mark and long, luxurious lashes, which is unusual among main heroes for these kinds of shows. Even comparing him to the other men in his party, it's plain to see that this was a deliberate choice and not just what people look like in this world.
Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, I can say how I really feel. The Most Notorious Talker does little to distinguish itself from other isekai that carry the Virgin X vs Chad Y mentality. After an introduction to Noel's tragic backstory consisting entirely of proper nouns and numbered stat mush, we learn that this is a world where everyone has an immutable class. Noel is "Talker", essentially a support class who uses his magically charged words to buff his party members. Of course, all the Chad DPS and tank classes HATE the Virgin support classes, so poor Noel is completely unappreciated and treated like he never contributes. Oh, but healers are apparently perfectly fine though.
And then he pulls out a gun that shoots incredibly powerful spells and times himself on his smartwatch to see how quickly he can bring down the baddies.
Look, anime producers of the world, we need to sit down and have a real talk. Can we all understand that there is a difference between channelling the edgy, self-centered fantasies of our cringey tweenage selves from yesteryear and actually just pillaging the pages of an actual dipshit edgelord highschooler's journal? I shouldn't need to explain the difference between those two things, right? One of those methods can produce schlocky but fun exercises in pulpy, campy ridiculousness. The other method is, at best, a really embarrassing way to admit that you're creatively bankrupt enough to steal from people who aren't even old enough to drink away the sorrows that come from living in a late-stage post-pandemic capitalist hellscape.
Okay, fine, I will admit that I can't prove that the creators of this show just copypasta'd a bunch of random chapters from some poor kid's fanfics and changed enough of the names to keep from being sued. All signs technically point to this anime having been produced by professional adults with plenty of experience in their respective fields. If anything though, that just makes the anime's faults harder to excuse. At the very least, if the anime were the product of a lone teen with too much time on their hands and too few friends to help them put the whole thing together, I could justify the glaring flaws in the basic premise, like how our supremely tough and totally legit badass bard of a main character lives in a world where people somehow don't all want to become best friends with the guy who can give everyone superpowers at the drop of a hat while he shoots monsters with his big fucking guns. I could also see how hard it would be for such a kid to actually sit down and play enough Dungeons & Dragons to realize that nobody, real or fictional, is about to give a bard shit for actively buffing their party members and supporting the team. I could even understand why that kid would think covering up his sloppy animation with ugly colour filters might be what "real animators" would do to trick people into thinking their show looks hideous and half-finished on purpose. As, like, a stylistic choice or whatever.
But this is an anime made by grown-ups, and even if the intent was to appeal to an audience of young, angry misanthrope hopped up on caffeine and a lifetime of algorithmically sourced ragebait social media posts... I mean, come the fuck ON! Are you not bored with this by now? Are you not tired of regurgitating the same tired cliches and ugly animation in the name of a quick buck? If you need me, I'll be recovering from this overdose of cringe with a double dose of literally any other series premiering this season and a side order of the Plus-Size Elf episodes I need to catch up on.
