OK, Dave was suggesting I do a review page of the new anime shows showing up on fansub and streaming and I see he put up one post, so I’ll work on a the new batch. The spring batch of anime started off slow, the first shows I watched were pretty bottom of the barrel drivel.
Toriko – Big muscle bound guy is a food hunter in search of this worlds greatest gourmet ingredients. All made up fictional fantasy world and nonsense. I’m a big super strong guy going around manhandling suposedly extremely dangerous delicious creatures and killing and eating them.
root: Sheeze, even writing this much is a waste of effort not worth this show. It’s so bad I spared Dave and didn’t bother giving him any eps to watch. I can’t believe I actually got as far as watching the second epsiode. Trust me, don’t bother. 0 out of any amount of angry monkeys.
Risu: Sorry. I absolutely can’t bring myself to even watch this one!
Happy Kappi – Lord, the fansubbers must be hurting for material. Young daughter of animal hospital parents comes across a weird creature blobbed accross the road. What is it? Why its a magical capibara prince of capi world, or something. Of course, I have magical capi powers, only if you feed me doughnuts!
root: This CG bright pastel show is obviously a young girl merchandizing show. Is this supposed to make kids not fear the monkey eating capibara? This show instantly raised violent urges within me, I guess something of an anti-toxin reaction to its vapidness. Yet another fat zero! Run away monkeys, or the capibara will get you and eat you! (Sorry, I can’t find any online references to the real life incident referenced by Dave of such an event at a Japan zoo)
Risu: Whoa! Just looking at the oversaturated pastel colors makes my teeth hurt! I thought the fact that the capybara was a prince and not a princess was unusual, but I’m not a kid’s show programmer, so I don’t know what little girls in the target demographic go for these days. The show is totally done with CG, and although it is slightly more advanced than a couple of years ago, it still looks about as terrible as the “Pinky Street” CG animated shorts. Oh, here’s the monkey-eating-capybara news. I didn’t see it live, but I did visit that display at that zoo. One out of four (sorry, I’ve always used a 4-point scale).
Yes, you are flying, right off of my playlist!
Dog Days – Young acrobatic school boy (does that automatically make him gay? Not that there’s anything wrong with that…) get’s sucked into alternate fantasy setting world, acclaimed to be the saviour of the kingdom. This world has the cat furries fighting the dog furries, in battles in full medeviel style regalia, but no one dies, you just get turned into unhumanoid cats and dogs. Um, yeah.
root: Mediocre art, lame story, bland characters, the warring is played as a game and no one dies kills any smidgen of compelingness (is that a real word). What’s the monkey scale we’re using? I’ll go 1 out of 5 neko/inu-mimi monkeys, for fans of furries have something to see that isn’t completely ugly.
Risu: I’m just not even going to start in about how I just dislike “sword-and-sorcery” fantasy realm shows, games, or whatnot. It really just doesn’t interest me. I won’t get into the issues with bird physics or biology, nor will I get into the anachronistic items of clothing in the other realm. The story starts out with all these apparrently gaijin schoolkids with oddly Nihonjin names that go to an international school, so I guess the “fantasy” starts before the boy is sucked into the alternate reality. There done. One out of four.
30-sai no Hoken Taiiku – 30 year old salaryman gets a visit by the “god of sex” to assist him in losing his virginity.
root: Crude art and animation, which doesn’t necessarily make a bad anime, ex. Astro Fighter Sunred from a year ago that I enjoyed. Unfortunately this sex gag comedy isn’t very funny, or sexy. The god of sex character is an annoying guy who pops up to purportedly give our virgin sage advice. He instead is just annoying and makes homoerotic passes at him. 1 out of 5 non-spanking monkeys.
Risu: This looks oddly like it’s from the same group of people who did “Hetalia” – same lame gag humor, same krappy animation. Uninteresting to say the least. If you want to see something along these lines that doesn’t suck, go read the “Futari-H” manga (the anime sucks, so don’t watch that). I’d have given it a zero, but the one female character (who hasn’t appeared yet except for the opening sequence) is somewhat cute, but I can already tell how this story will go, so this gets a one out of four.
Fireball Charming – A Disney Japan produced super short CG anime with two robots. Honestly I can’t say much else about it, not much else happens.
root: It’s hardly charming, or interesting in any way. It’s one redeeming point is that its only a couple minutes long. Another resounding 0 from me.
Risu: CG for the sake of CG. Exaggerated movement for the sake of exaggerated movement. There is no point to this show. I’d get into all the issues of unresolved hydraulic piping and incorrectly size-biased hydraulic cylinders, but I don’t think they got an “A” class mechanical designer. the fact that it is Disney only makes it worse. Garbage. Zero out of four.
After watching these shows, things thankfully could only go up.
A Channel – Fairly hyped, this is one of this season’s school life group of cute girls doing cute things in a world of soft light.
root: Pretty decent art, although I’m not sure I like the CG. I’m not sure how much I like the character designs too, but I guess it’ll grow on me. It pales in comparison to others of this genre, it lacks the rapid zany humor and inside jokes of Lucky Star and doesn’t have the moe level of other recent shows. But it’s decently entertaining and done. It just makes a 3 out of 5 yonkoma loving monkeys from me.
Risu: I think this one will be this season’s “K-On!”. Character and BG artwork is very good, and the movements fluid and direction very good. One episode in and I already like the characters. They are all architypical, but each one brings something a little different to the table than a cookie-cutter experience. After stuff like the Azumanga Daioh anime ran, it became pretty hard to work within the classroom and come out with something that didn’t seem ordinary. This show proves that you don’t need a zombie plague to have an original, entertaining school show. Three-and-a-half out of Four.
Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera – Another remake of an oldschool anime of non other than old school ecchi oyaji Go Nagai. Enma is the Nephew of the devil and has come to the human world along with helper Princess Yukiko, a kappa, and a sentient hat in order to subdue and return errant demons.
root: updated designs are good, art is nice. Although the character designs aren’t immediately recognizable as Nagai characters, the trademarks show up soon enough, like the teacher. And of course there’s naughty and warped tidbits like granny boobs and monster chinko. This show is pretty fun, currently it’s running a monster of the week format. 4 of 5 sideburn monkeys.
Risu: This one is really good. There isn’t anything directorially that is unusual or outstanding here, but the early-Showa-era setting is done amazingly well, from the milk delivery boxes to the 3-wheeled Otocharin, it’s like a history lesson into the world at the time when Nagai did the original work, unlike the somewhat culturally vacant original animated series. The character artwork preserves enough of Nagai’s intent with some kind prettying-up. Three out of four.
Sofuteni – girls soft tennis team in a rural area school. Contains fanservice and ecchi imaginating.
root: Its a sports anime which I’m not particularly fond of, but thankfully it spends as much, if not more, in the genre of cute girls doing cute things rather than explaining the intricacies of the sport. And when it does, it uses it for comedic purposes. It doesn’t fall into the stereotypical sport dorama plot like this newspaper clip of the Farrington girls water polo team. The art is pretty decent, I’m thinking it has some of the same designs as Kanokon but simplified. It has a mostly pastel palette, but that soft light and airbrush coloring doesn’t show up except for the delusion sequences. Anyway, I find this show entertaining, but nothing extraordinary. Not a must see so far, but fills time pleasantly enough. 3 of 5 fanservce monkeys.
Risu: This one just falls flat for me. The artwork is all bland and generic, and the storyline is like pulled from a bunch of earlier shows. It’s like someone said, “hey, they made “Working” into an anime, let’s do this!” and proceeded to take the low budget route to Fail. I won’t even watch it for the fan service, and this is coming from someone who watched “Kampfer” and “Ichiban Ushiro Daimaoh” only to see how the story would resolve! Actually, the alleged fan service actually pisses me off – it is all random and senseless. I think they are just pushing the DVD sales by censoring stuff that really doesn’t need to be censored, like “Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne!!”. Zero out of four.
Hanasaku Iroha – young girl gets abandoned by irresponsible mother into the care of her onsen ryokan owning grandmoter. Follow along as she attempts to adjust to life working in a ryoukan. Available on Crunchyroll.
root: first off, the art is gorgeous, animation is nicely done. If nothing else, this show is very nice to look at. Story and character wise it’s all predicatble. Maybe it’s because I’ve been through a couple seasons of the l/a dorama Onsen e Ikou already, I’ve seen all the elements and character traits. You know the outwardly evil proprietess grandmother is being how she is for the benefit of the girl. The initially hostile coworker will probably eventually become a best buddy. The plot device of the writer guest having his manuscript thrown out in the trash is oh so used, but the twist when its found prob wouldn’t have shown up in a prime time TV dorama. And there so far has been no unusual elements to take advantage of what you can do in anime vs live action. Despite all that, it’s pretty well done and worth the watch if you’re into the personal growth type thing. 4 out of 5.
Risu: See my review elsewhere on the blog.
Hyouge Mono – Historical anime set during the sengoku period. Main character is one of the lower members under Oda Nobunaga’s rule, who is more concerned and obsessed with objects de art of tea than the warring.
root: the first ep gave me a feel it was trying for a Samurai Champloo thing with its musical stylings, but this is nowhere close. There is no anachronisms, and none of the style within the episode either. The art is not that great, the animation minimal pedestrian, and as is often the case with period shows, the character designs are ugly. And the story in the first ep did not pull me in. The second ep was a little better, but I don’t think I’ll be following this show. 2 out of 5 samurai monkeys.
Risu: I don’t know what’s the point of this. It introduces a fictional teacup-phile into a historical period where he is in a position to come across various rare and famous implements of tea making and consumption. The historical aspects are all weird, like Oda Nobunaga being a goofy fan of things Western with a top-heavy navy. Add to this bizarre exaggerated facial expressions like something out of a U-jin or Egawa Tatsuya manga. Whatever the point is, it misses me. Zero out of four.
Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai – possibly this seasons winner for longest title. Show about shut in teen who is seemingly haunted by the spirit of a cute girl.
root: haven’t we seen this shtick a million times? But this time this feels like no comedy, the first ep is pretty somber and almost depressing. Of course he is the only one who can see and hear the girl, leading to undesired one sided conversation on his part, but instead of leading to comical hijink, it serves to depress him only more. It becomes obvious quickly that the girl is from his past and there is some traumatic event that led to his current state. The art is good and it looks like they spent a good amount on the character animation, which is good for a show like this where its driven by the characters. And talking about characters, in this first introduction to the characters, the first impressions are unfavorable personalities. The first girl to show up (who has the unfortunate nickname of “Anaru”) comes across as a bitchy in fashion gal. Next guy comes across as cold and somewhat elitist. But the conclusion of the first ep brings about the turning and it looks like we’ll be seing the characters developing. I’m liking this show. I’m not sure but I see stylings from Durara, which I also enujoyed. Anyway, I’ll definitely be following this one. 4 out of 5 hikkikomori monkeys.
Risu: I can see where this one is headed, but at least it should be an interesting ride. The characters are interesting from the get-go. Seeing how the passive, hikkikomori protagonist will accomplish the task set before him will obviously be the driving theme. It’s like a darker version of “Kannagi” with none of the friendship. Character and BG art are both very good, and the motion is very natural. Three out of four.
Hidan no Aria – schoolkids with guns. School for training of private law enforcers is the setting. Opens with guy on his bicycle being chased by an uzi toting segway.
root: sillyier things have been seen on anime. When guy gets sexually aroused, his personality changes into a super James Bond. Passable art, average chara designs and animation. Character and gags pretty stereotypical. Not a higher point in anime, just an average show, good enough to pass some time if there’s nothing better, but not worth seeking out. 2.5 out of 5 gun otaku monkeys.
Risu: It’s got Kugimiya Rie in the heroine’s role, so comparisons to Shakugan no Shana are inevitable. Take away Shana’s sword and give her a couple of 1911’s and you get the picture. The male protagonist at least has a spine and a pair in this one though. As is typical of anime and manga involving firearms, there is little realism as to the usage of firearms and the consequences of having bullets flying all over the place. Artwork and animation quaity are average. It isn’t terrible, but it doesn’t quite offend me. I’ll probably end up watching it all the way through. Two-and-a-half out of four.
Steins; gate – Dellusional psuedo academic leader of misfit trio attends a seminar on timetravel theorey and witnesses the murder of a girl, or does he? Sci Fi show with a rather vague begining. Available on Crunchyroll.
root: first version I watched had bad transfer that suffered from the shows washed out and/or dark and muted colors. Art is decently good, animation and character designs are decent. There’s enough going on with the time travel thing for me to continue to see where this goes. 3 out of 5 dellusional monkeys.
Risu: I’ll have to give this another chance after seeing the special terrible version. The stereotypical and over-the-top characters just didn’t grab me on the first watch-through. After seeing the first four episodes, it still doesn’t excite me. The character design is weak, and they rely a lot on washed-out, over-exposed backgrounds. In the first episode, they’re trying to hook you in with the mystery that will be unraveled throughout the run of the series, but it just comes off as being purposely obtuse and incomprehensible. It’s convoluted like last season’s Occult Academy or the classic Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu with none of the joy or charm. One out of four.
Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko – school boy goes to live with hot aunt, discovers he has a cousin who of course is a cute girl. And claims to be an alien. Wrapped up in a futon.
root: decent art, decent animation, decent character designs. The futon thing is bizarre. The cousin spouts all kind of bizzarre pseudo alienisms. You’re left to wonder, just as the guy is, just who is this girl? There’s enough here to keep me intrigued and to keep me watching. 3 out of 5 pizza absorbing alien monkeys.
Risu: Good art and animation. It’s all pretty odd and strange, but the characters draw you in and make you want to keep watching ot find out what the heck is going on. I’m sure there will be something sad or traumatic like some Key property, but hopefully hte ending won’t be as dark as one. One of the better ones this season. Three-and-a-half out of four.
Nichijou (My Ordinary Life) – cute girls slice of school life show. If your school life involved a humanoid robot, flying foodstuff, or a goat riding classmate. Streaming on Crunchyroll.
root: nice art, animation, clean cute designs. This is probably this season’s best slice of life gag shows. It’s pretty off the wall. 1st ep prob has the most epic animated depiction of the 3 second rule. It injects totally random things and runs with it. I find it hilarious. 4 out 5 goat riding monkeys.
Risu: I was making a comment earlier about how Azumanga Daioh sort-of ruined it for all subsequent classroom shows, but this one is easily one rung above the preteen humor level of Azumanga Daioh on the sophistication ladder. This one has found all the charm that the krappy Disney property failed ot find. If you liked “Kyou no Go no Ni”, this one is sort-of in that direction, but graduated from elemantary school. The art is wonderful and the characters endearing. It’s like the Lucky Star anime where the setting is actually well-resolved. Definitely one of the top shows this season. Three-and-a-half out of four.
Honto ni Atta! Reibai Sensei – short gag anime with school class room getting new teacher, a occult conjuring teacher!
root: looks totally like a flash animation. Flash animation level art, animation and characters. The ED art & animation is loads higher quality. That said, I find this pretty amusing. What, another bit involving Oda Nobunaga and the sengoku period? This time though, for gags and I find it pretty funny. 3 out of 5 possessed monkeys.
Risu: It’s like being stuck in a world of bad flash animation based off a bad yon-koma manga. I’d rather watch this than Soft Tennis though. One out of four.
Showa Monogatari – story of the ordinary life of a typical working middclass family from the showa era.
root: passable art, untilitarian animation, plain character deisgns. I guess this is to cash in on nostalgia and for parents to show their kids that this was how it was when they were kids growing up? It’s alright, but sometimes I wonder when you have an anime that could be just as easily a live action dorama. Although in this case I imagine its easier to animate the setting than recreate it in live sets. I’ll watch it out of curiosity as I did spend half a year of my childhood at the same age as the main character in that same period. I suppose if I had kids I could regale them with tales of pooping over a stinky hole in the ground and wiping with newspapers, the furo with a fire under it, we had no car, no heating, no A/C, single wired dial telephone. I actually don’t recall the TV there. Anyway, 2.5 out of 5 nostalgic monkeys.
Risu: It’s pretty accurate from the historical context, both in setting and the cultural norms, but it is really uninteresting. Not quite painfully uninteresting though. Probably one step below Binbou Shimai Monogatari on the “nothing really happens” scale. One out of four.
Pretty Rhythm – Young klutzy girl has the latent ability to release the power of clothes to become the next great ice skating dance idol. Really.
root: and so it comes full circle, we have here another pastel colored girl merchandising show. This one is aimed at young teens so it’s not quite as vapid. Art, animation and character designs are all par for the course, it gets the job done. With the advent of CG modeling, the dance animation is highly detailed, which although doesn’t make up for everything else, it sure beats watching the three cell animation of idol anime dancing of the past. Oddly enough, I didn’t run screaming in the opposite direction, I don’t hate this. Yes, announcing your signature move as you perform it is just as silly as giant robots fighting yelling out their special attacks. Yes, it looks like mascot creatures are forthcoming (Madoka Magika got this part right, mascots are evil!), yes there’s pretty boys, and still I watched. What was it? Maybe the main character and her VA? I don’t really know. So do I actually give this 2 out of 5 body conscious monkeys?!
Risu: It took me three attempts to even get through the opening sequence. On two occasions I had to close the window when the white-tuxedoed male characters show up. It’s definitely a marketing tie-in show. Those hideous mascots will become stuffed toys, and the main characters will be dolls. Not quite as bad as the Choco-Mimi L/A where there was a tie-in to an actual kids clothing store chain. The CG is awsomely horrible like the Capybara show. They don’t even have the budget nor desire to even make background characters – everyone other than the primary characters are just pink silhouettes. Zero out of four.
Oh, and few shows getting continuation new episodes, whee?:
Seikon no Qwaser – everyone’s favorite anime from the milk board campaign? Continues the story, which I never finished.
root: everything seems to be par from the first series. yay. I lost interest with the first series, I don’t think I’ll follow this either.
Risu: The first season of the anime didn’t really do this story justice. All the charm and humor of the manga was lost in the translation. The characters lost a lot of their depth and came off as 2D and mean-spirited, and the core story seemed overly obscure and incomprehensible (but that may be just terrible fan-subbing by people who neither fully understand Nihongo nor English). The second season seems to preserve a little more of the humor of the original work, but there isn’t a whole lot of “dere” in the Russian tsundere boy – just a whole lot of boob-grappling “tsun”. I’ll still watch it because I enjoy the manga so much. Two-and-a-half out of four.
Kampfer fur die Liebe – I think it’s only a two episode followup, a bit confusing as one ep aired on broadcast and the other not, so do you call this an OAV series?
root: again, par for course. The art and character designs were actually not bad, but the story was derivative and nothing great, and yet I watched it through to it’s unconclusive end. Unfortunately the one sequel ep that aired that I watched does nothing to remedy this, it’s merely a fanservice episode.
Risu: I don’t know what posessed me to watch the first season of this all the way through. I guess I wanted to find out what was going on. It definitely wasn’t for the fanservice, which was neither good nor abundant. I’ll probably end up watching this one all the way through too. I really hate the annoying mascot animals. One-and-a-half out of four.
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