This is only the first episode, but it’s obvious the show boasts some really amazing art direction, and Ohana is a great lead, with a genuine personality that doesn’t feel forced into the tsundere/genki/bancho mould. Judging from appearances, this will be a coming-of-age drama that’s going to be almost entirely character-driven, which makes it probably unique in this spring stable of shows. Hopefully it continues to deliver, because the world needs less Working! and more hot spring forced labour.
Look at this scary, SCARY man hating on the….….poor little thing. Why does the cruel world hate Genius(tm)?
While Level E didn’t actually reach the heights it promised, it’s still a stellar effort, especially compared to Occult Academy, which had a fatally flawed central plot that wandered all over the place like a drunken sailor. In fact, it’s quite the reverse for Level E, the series tends to suffer in quality if at least 2 of Yukitaka, Craft and/or the Prince aren’t involved in the short arcs. Kudos must be given to Teh Koyasu for chewing scenery like it’s going out of season as Craft. Their comedy gold interaction just meshes well with the surreal atmosphere that Level E is fond of using, and the arcs they’re in tend to be the most surprising in terms of hilarious twists. The show also starts well and ends well, which is not really the forte of most anime we see these days. They’re either open-ended for sequels, or the writing simply goes downhill for whatever reason. Level E is clearly atypical in this regard, since the bookend arcs are the best of the lot, and plays delightfully on the characterization of the Prince we’ve seen so far. His delicious comeuppance and the fate of the Earth both end on a good note, so the sense of closure is as well executed as anyone could expect.
People have lamented the short length of the original manga, but either Togashi thought it wasn’t suitable for the shounen-specific nature of his portfolio and wanted to keep it short, or he didn’t want to ruin the series integrity by continuing once the ideas ran dry. In any case, it’s more than 10 years since the manga ended, and since Togashi can’t even be arsed to work on a regular schedule with HunterXHunter, that ship has not only sailed, it’s halfway across the ocean.
Sengoku OtomeBattle Girls is a double whammy in terms of not only being a pachinko adaptation like Rio, but also yet another entrant in the never-ending run of gender-swapped alternative history treatments, so it doesn’t take a genius to guess the level of quality on display. About the kindest thing I can say about this show is that it’s not as bad as Samurai Girls, which didn’t have one single redeeming value (besides the art style and that got old within a few episodes) and is one of the reasons why people are ashamed to admit they watch anime. As the market constantly narrows to cater to otaku scum, this is simply to get worse in the future. S.O is probably more like a more plot-focused version of Koihime Musou, but with blander character designs, so although it might not be panned that much, it’s simply not distinctive enough to grab eyeballs.
Now, if the industry wants to turn Oda Nobunaga into Red Sonja, I won’t say I’m automatically going to grab a pitchfork. The thing about the gender-swapping is that it never results in anything remotely interesting that relates to it, it’s just an excuse to heap on the fanservice. In this case it’s not even particularly inspired fanservice, so it’s doubtful the otakus will bite. Even worse, when someone tries to spice up the plot up, such as with a Connecticut Yankee spin in this instance, we just don’t get anything momentous and/or clever from that kind of treatment. In fact, I can’t recall a single case of a time travel plotline anime has ever produced being anything inspired (except perhaps in the case of Psyren)……resurrection/reincarnation themes seems to produce better work in traditional Japan. The jokes are also restricted to bog-standard “fish out of temporal waters” efforts, and the only absurdist gag that drew a chuckle was right at the end, so this series has its work cut out for it to attract any casual viewers at all.
There is only one phrase to describe this series…….MOSTLY HARMLESS(tm). There is zero orginality here, the jokes elicit a dry chuckle at best, but it’s not offensively bad like some other Jump material I could mention. If you’re below 12, this is generally wholesome animation you could spend your afternoon on. If you don’t belong to that age group, you should have bigger fish to fry.
