life ends at 27
Operation Toast In Mouth to begin at 0800 hrs
Oh look, Maria†Holic is back. With the nosebleeding business as usual and Sugita’s hilarious OP, thumbs up in my book. In more Shaft news, Madoka will reach its (depressing?) ending on 4/21, with both episodes 11 and 12 aired back to back. I guess they have to take out all the water amirite, Shinbo?
tt—–>dd k qedft
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.
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.
Wrong manga to latch onto
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.
SPOILERS ABOUND
*OK, so my abacus is broken, sue me.
KIRABOSHI☆! We shall never see its like again, for good or ill.
And so all falls back to shounen shouting, the one gimmick (or cliche) that never fails. All in all, the show has generally been disappointing if you consider it end to end, not least because it’s clearly 13 eps of content dumped into a 25 ep time block. Basically, Bones sold out and compromised its vision, and what’s worse, the 25 episodes allowed for a lackadaisical pacing with the episodic filler fights that made it far too late to rectify the gaping problems with the plot when the team realized the problem, if they ever did. As much as I love episode 24’s incredible setting of mood, if the price was having 25 being a nearly plot-free mess that depended almost entirely on flash (and low budget flash at that, it’s clear most of the animation time went into the last 5 min, which served as a great Macross Plus homage) while badly handling the bulk of the characters and then dropping the bag completely, I think the price is way too high. Still, it’s fair to say this is a very average show that had some positively awesome and/or fabulous moments, and the sheer paucity of good execution doesn’t detract from the memories of those priceless bits. In the end, we have to be content with that.
More loony musing with spoilers in another post.
P.S: Wako is the most colorless female lead I’ve seen in ages. And to compound things, her gadawful monologue ruined half the climax of the show. Thanks a lot, you silly self-absorbed woman.
GONNA TRAINZ 4 BANKAI IN THREE DAYS HOURS
So Infinite Stratos is finally over, and boy, that finale summed up the show to a T. Full of nonsense and asspulls all the way down, all the Bleach-isms with the inner world stuff, 2nd level random powers up the wazoo and Ichika doing his best Shounen Jump impression when Houki wakes up just exacerbates the problems I.S has been having all season. The camera work also suffered as compared to ep11, and it degnerated into the unimaginative wide angle shots of two blobs ramming each other as Gundam is wont to. Good tracking shots were far and few in between. Also, considering they have one fast brawler and many ranged speciality I.Ses attacking a solitary target, they did a pretty poor job of pinning the opponent down with multiple fields of fire. They just tended to stagger their attacks neatly, which didn’t work at all against a much faster target.
We do get some interesting background on what Houki’s near-psychopathic (at least anywhere in the real world, that is) kawaiiko sister has been up to, which would act as a hook for the 2nd season if there is one (and supposedly there seems to be enough material in the light novels to do so). Now I haven’t read any of the LNs, and I can’t be sure if the show is suffering from Adaptation Decay, but in any case, I don’t have any hopes any additional material would be better in quality.
Taken as a whole, the final episode serves as a microcosm of the series in itself. That groan-worthy final scene just sums it up…..this is a show of two halves and the combat focus suffers from having to share airtime with the harem inanities. The action scenes are decently set up and animated, but the material (or the production team, or both) just doesn’t have the imagination to allow the fights to wind down in a logical fashion. Almost every one of them has to be concluded by an improbable plot development, which is really painfully obvious when the show doesn’t have the escalating duel format of a standard shounen series. Tactics also tend to get thrown out of the window in terms of winning fights, which is all the more unforgivable given that they’re paid attention to for most of the encounters. All in all, Infinite Stratos is a show where you watch if you’re an obsessive follower of the Strike Witches/Gundam formula, otherwise one should only try it if you have absolutely nothing going on.
WALK INTO CAMERALEGEND
I’m firmly convinced Chiwa Saito is Shinbo’s pet project, because hard as it is to top her role in Bakemonogatari, they’re trying their darn hardest here in Madoka as well. Episode 10 of Madoka will probably go into the annals of anime as one of the most ambitious efforts at infodumping ever in its history. For all of Madoka’s excess in visuals it’s really the beautiful stark simplicity of its storytelling that really captures the imagination. Now all that’s left to cement its place among the greats is the final act.
P.S:Nice fight there. Who said the series only did surreal? Not that it isn’t weird in its way…..