Sorry for the delay guys, ended up having a much more full work day than I expected yesterday and wanted to make sure this review was actually coherent before I posted (which I'm sure everyone will grudgingly admit they prefer)
While I don't regret trying to review a webcomic every month, since I'm not worried about running out of comics to talk about anytime soon, I am starting to realize just how delayed all of my regular comic reviews are becoming now. Partially since I alternate them with movies/tv shows every week anyway, since I usually don't consume enough of either of those to have a full review each week, I'm really wondering if I should come up with a new plan so I can talk about even more, wonderful comics here....
I remember when this title was announced by Vertical a few years ago (it was actually a license rescue from Viz from ages ago) and it was something that sounded cool and exciting but not only were the books completely out of my price range at nearly $30 a book, the print runs were going to be tiny, 2-5,000 books (I want to say closer to 2.5k than 5) so there was no chance I could ever own the series, even once I had a chance to save up some day in the future. Well, thankfully the series did much better than expected so the print runs are larger and it's gone to re-printings (especially since my paychecks still aren't big enough to cover these books!) and this past summer I found volumes 3-5 at my local library. I got a librarian to show me how to use the book request system to ask them to buy the first two volumes and they obliged and even tossed in volume 6 as well. While I was waiting for my holds I discovered that the website Comic-Walker was also posting the chapters, completely independent from Vertical so their translations may be different but it's still a chance for more people to check out this series since it really is one of the best manga series I read in 2014.
Gundam: The Origin (volumes one through six) by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
In the past I determined that 12 shows is about the max I can watch in one season and this summer season seemed to prove that, I didn't even watch 12 shows every week and my weekends were still too full! On Saturday's two shows primarily competed for my attention, Captain Earth and this one and they were both a bit uneven, I can't actually remember any weeks where they were both strong, and in the end this was the more uneven, and ultimately weaker, of the two which is the exact opposite of what I would have predicted!
Aldnoah.Zero
And so it's time for my first Summer 2014 anime review although I feel like I'm a bit behind the curve since nearly everyone else already has their review of this show up! Which probably made a few people double-take and look at the calendar, Knights of Sidonia is a unique show since instead of being licensed by a traditional licensor it was actually picked up by Netflix who, instead of releasing it as a simulcast in the spring, released the entire show subbed and dubbed back in July which certainly got the attention of more mainstream nerd sites. And it sounds like the show has done well thus far, I had been worried when I heard that Netflix was using this show to test their new idea since I didn't think it would be a hit but it seems like if you put anything on Netflix then tons of people will watch it anyway (plus, given it's status on the "Recently Popular" when I was watching it, that sounds like people are watching it because they like it, not just the first episode out of curiosity and then not following it up).
Knights of Sidonia
I've been dying to see this film ever since it came out but, due to an error in communications on my part, I didn't have a chance to watch it over the summer and was holding off until I could get over to redbox or such. And then one week I jokingly said "oh maybe the film that [my step-sister] is bringing this week is Pacific Rim!" and I was right! Clearly I need to tempt fate more often, this is so much easier than putting my name on the holds list in the library, as far down as I am for some of the 2013 films currently I'm not sure I'll have a chance to see them before the next New Years.
Pacific Rim
To refresh everyone's memory, I started the first season of this back in the spring, dropped it a few episodes in (since I dropped shows left and right last year), was really glad I dropped it when I heard about the rape scene, and then got kind of curious about it again. I dropped it four or five episodes in the first time which is rather late for me and, well, sometimes I want to watch shows with amazing world-building with deep characters and other times I want to watch flashy, fluffy mecha shows. So I finished it and decided that since it was one of the few shows I wouldn't have to wait a week to watch each time, well, why not?
Valvrave the Liberator: Season Two
I saw a few episodes of this back in the spring when it was first airing, I believe four, and then had to give up since I just couldn't get through the rest of the episodes without the intense urge to snark commentary at whoever was online with me at the time. And some of the things I had heard about the show were far from great as well so I wasn't in any hurry to finish it up. But as fall starts to roll around, the second half of the show hits the internet in just a couple of weeks, I started to get curious about it again and, well, since I only had 8 episodes left and I already knew all the headdesk worthy plot twists what did I have to lose except about four hours of my free time, right?
Valvrave the Liberator
Summary: In the future humanity has enclosed the Sun in a dyson sphere where they live and there are three main factions, ARUS (which seems suspiciously like a militarized United States), Drossia (who pretends they're not actually space nazis), and innocent little Jior who of course wants nothing to do with the growing hostilities between the two. But as Haruto and his classmates discover when their school's module is attacked and they discover power mechs lying hidden beneath it, powerful enough to change the course of the entire war, something doesn't add up here.....
The Good: The last time I talked about a show which seemed like it was trying too hard to be the next Code Geass I was discussing Guilty Crown and man was it terrible. Valvrave as well isn't quite CG but thankfully it's better than GC by a long shot and actually an okay show by the end. In the last third the show starts to find it's feet and the characters become a tad less ridiculous and more competent which greatly helps and it starts explaining some of it's absolutely nuts backstory (I have to admit, I did not expect the show to turn out to be NEARLY this crazy when I started it and I do have to give it some credit for that). Finally, one large thing this, GC, and CG have in common is that at the heart of it there are two characters who stand larger than the rest and each of them does it a bit differently. In CG we have Lelouche and Suzaku who are formiddable enemies to each other, in GC we have Shu the unwilling protagonist and Gai the leader whose mantle Shu takes up. Valvrave has Haruto, again a bit of an unwilling protagonist and L-Elf, a strategist whose been waiting for a moment like this to launch some plan of his and it actually pulls off that balance much better than I would have expected, they come to depend on each other, plan on each other, and yet don't still fully trust each other (nor should they) and that was an interesting character dynamic to watch unfold and something I had been looking for in anime was curious why no one had done it yet.
The Bad: To be blunt, there is a rape in the show, I don't want anyone to go in not knowing that since it's not anything you could have guessed after just the first couple of episodes. I am frustrated and confused for why the writer decided that the violence against a female character HAD to be rape instead of just, violence (even if it was creepily hinted at a bit earlier on, gaaaaaah). Other than that elephant in the room, the show's main problem is that it thinks it's a serious show with meaningful themes and quite frankly it's not. It's a bit of a mess, makes quite a few things unintentionally hilarious (you know it's a bad sign when everyone tells you you HAVE to stick around after the credits of the first episode), and a number of plot events are just so illogical that it's simply impossible to take the show as seriously as it wants you to. And for some people they might be okay with that, if I had been with friends I would have enjoyed this quite a bit just for all the snark potential it had but if you don't want that then avoid it, there are far better mecha shows out there.
The Production Values: I'm rather curious why the show changed it's ending song halfway through the season since I loved the first ending song, it worked nicely and even though the second song did grow on me I simply liked the first better. And I also loved the opening song, it was catchy, bouncy, upbeat, everything I want in an action OP and I feel like it reflected the show well also since it wasn't serious, just fast paced and a bit crazy. As for the visuals, I'll admit the main reason I watched the show (both times) was because I wanted to see some eye candy mech fights and everything did look pretty good. It was rather colorful, I didn't see too much CGI although it must have been there with all the mechs, and I liked all the designs so all in all this was the part of the show I had the least problems with, hurray!
In the end I can only give this show 2.5 out of 5 stars for the unnecessary rape scene and for just completely missing how silly it is and how that doesn't fit at all with the tone it was going for. Do I plan to watch the second season? Maybe??? There are so many shows coming out this fall that I certainly won't be twiddling my thumbs like I was this season so I'm not sure I'll have time, although I'll likely make time for it at some point and finish it up then and see just how crazy it decides to go (I'm betting on pretty far).
Back when Toonami was on tv (no not as the Adult Swim-esque midnight slot, when it was actually on tv at the time it's target audience was supposed to be watching tv) I remember seeing some ads for it on tv but dismissed it since I thought it would just be weird racing every episode without any changes. I know I've said similar things about other shows before which should really tell you what my general opinion of American cartoons from my childhood was. In any case, the revived Toonami was able to obtain the rights to broadcast the show again (probably because even though the show was put on DVD by Bandai it's actually a co-production between Cartoon Network and Production IG, weirdly enough this happened two years after the initial idea was rejected and they had Bee Train make a series of 5 minute pilots which apparently are more than a bit different) which got me excited until I realized the broadcast time was at 2am. Thankfully I have some friends who liked the show and were able to loan me their DVDs, silly people who think they'll get good ratings for shows aired at 2am. Although, that's what killed the show actually, half the show was broadcast in the Toonami slot mid-afternoon and the second half was broadcast around midnight where it did poorly and was canceled, sadly this kind of weird scheduling isn't that uncommon in American shows either.
IGPX
Summary: In the future a new sport has captured the world's attention, speed skating mechs that go hundreds of miles an hour and compete in three person teams. Each year some of the best teams move up in the division and this year Team Satomi has just moved into the pro league. But as it's members, Takeshi, Liz, Amy and Luca, quickly see for themselves it won't be as easy to become champions and they've got their work cut out for them.
The Good: Let me just say that even though the show was technically canceled from what I've heard it actually ends in a really good place, I suspect (and only suspect, I don't actually know) the show was planned to be either 13 or 26 episodes from the start and it just wasn't renewed considering how it ties up a lot of things rather neatly (although it's still sad since the pacing was perfect for those last four or six episodes, I couldn't finish the series fast enough!). As for what was produced it's got a lot more heart than I expected, by the end all of the major cast and a lot of the supporting cast has had some development/insight given and Takeshi really is a better leader halfway through the show than he was at the beginning, even with his fluctuations (although I then have a hard time buying how they even got to the top racing group with such dysfunction in the first place). And by the end I got the impression that everyone was really having fun with the dialogue, there was just a liveliness and banter to it that not every show has. It was a fun show, not exactly a sports show and not really a character driven show either but I had fun watching it and I think I probably would have enjoyed it back in high school too.
The Bad: As I mentioned earlier, I had a bit of a hard time buying that Takeshi could have ever been the leader of Team Satomi given where he starts and I'm also always torn about characters who yo-yo in character development during a series, realistic portrayal of teenagers or lazy way of reintroducing conflict into the series? Also, this show left a few details unexplained that bothered me, such as if the pilots of the mechs can hear the other teams while racing or not. I assume not but the dialogue made it unclear, heck it's not until the very last episode that it's made explicitly clear that the rest of the team couldn't hear Luca, Amy's co-pilot cat which again I wasn't sure about since the characters seemed to talk and react like they could (actually, they didn't explain that idea immediately either so for the first few episodes I thought Amy was nuts for bringing her cat along and that people were just humoring her). Those could have been problems that came about from the dub presumably having to rewrite the script a bit to match lip flaps or that could have been a problem in both languages. This is a bit of a minor quibble considering this is just a detail, but considering how often the show has races and how much that changes the interactions in them it's a detail that came up to bother me quite often.
The Production Values: This show looks exactly what I expect a show from the mid-aughts to look like, letter-boxed, color scheme slightly muted (I think that shows become at least 5% more colorful with each passing year), completely obvious CGI (which they don't show with traditional animation in the same cut which makes it better), and simply nothing stunning. It all works, although I thin I'm actually more forgiving of CGI at this point than some so when I say it doesn't bother me it still undoubtedly bothers some people. What's really interesting about the show is the English dub cast, it's a mixture of people who never work in anime for the main three and a combination of anime regulars and people who voice American cartoons but again not anime for the supporting cast, it's a really strange mix. Actually, the DVDs I borrowed were a combination of the first box set and four singles for the second half, the set didn't have an option for the Japanese dub and doesn't have the Japanese opener and closer on it (it was only when those appeared in the second half that I realized there was in fact a Japanese dub). I have no idea if all of the singles had the dual audio option and both of the sets didn't or if they only added that on to all of the later episode DVDs but it's certainly odd, especially since you can't tell me there were fears of reverse importation for this show.
So I'm giving this show a 3.5 out of 5 for being fun and possibly worth a rewatch although I know of quite a few shows that used various elements of it better.
Just chugging along with my spring anime reviews, this one is the only one out of the three mecha shows that I watched to completion (although I might pick up Valvrave again and then review the whole thing in one fell swoop in December, maybe) which did surprise me a bit. I was expecting that I wouldn't like all three mecha shows and would probably drop one of them but I was expecting to be so disappointed by all three, although I was the least disappointed with Gargantia in the end, I feel more ambivalent on it than anything else.
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet (Suisei no Gargantia)
Summary: Ensign Ledo lives in the far future where humanity is engaged in perpetual battle against space-squids who want to destroy humanity and while returning from a skirmish he is accidentally wormhole-d across space to Earth, the homeland that humanity had long forgotten the location of. People still live on this water covered world however yet it's going to take some time for Ledo to adjust to this new culture with morals and values the complete opposite of those he was taught.
The Good: I'm a fan of both slice of life and space opera settings (which isn't the best description of Gargantia's settings but it gets the point across) so I didn't mind the shifts back and forth and thought that they actually worked well together and Ledo's character development (which I think is at the heart of this show) wouldn't have worked if he had experienced that shift. I do like how Ledo eventually ended up developing, although I had some problems with it as well so more on that later. Finally, I was a bit worried when I saw Amy since Cute Genki Girl who is the side character in a story with a Male (Straight) Brooding Main Character often involves some tropes I'm not fond of. But thankfully Amy's character is written more smartly than this character normally is, she's perceptive enough to realize that many of Ledo's actions are out of ignorance rather than meanness (so we're spared of any tsundere scenes between the two of them) and has her own troubles and joys in life as well. Finally, early on in the show the people on the ship Gargantia have to explain to Ledo pacifism, how it works and why they do it and while a lot of viewers seemed to take issue with it I totally understood their philosophy and loved that it was included. This post on tumblr (both the initial link at the top and an author's reply in the linked page) help spell it out, I am of the belief that most of the people in the world, except in the more dire of circumstances (which the people on Garganita were not yet at) would have trouble killing people. It's just too emotionally difficult to acknowledge other humans as people and then be fine with taking away their lives and the philosophy of the people on Gargantia matches with this perfectly so it would have been more jarring if they hadn't been at least semi-pacifistic. Yet a lot of writers would prefer to take the simpler way out and have them simply kill the characters instead of wrestle with that choice and then find a way to live with it and I do really respect any of the writers involved with that decision to make that call and then make it work.
The Bad: This is a 13 episode show and for short shows your pacing and timing has to be nearly perfect to make the show amazing, there just isn't the time for filler the way that longer shows have. Sadly Gargantia flounders in some of it's middle episodes, instead of using them as a way to show how Ledo's character is developing from point A to point B we instead get a little bit of that and then more fanservice than the show has time for (and I'm still a little creeped out by the dancing scene when I remember that the characters involved are just 14 or 16). And then as if to make up for that the show races off in a bit of a different direction and focuses on different side characters around Ledo so in the end while he develops we neither get to see all of the steps of his development (which leads to some rather abrupt changes of heart) nor do any of the side characters develop as fully as they should and it makes this show come off flatter than I think the staff hoped it would be.
The Production Values: Holy smokes that was a stunning looking series, the backgrounds were rich and detailed and you can tell that some of the staff put some serious thought into both the lighting and color schemes for this show. Heck, the lighting alone on the very last mecha fight looked downright cinematic and then it was followed up with great animation and wonderful usage of the fact that you can put the "camera" for animation where ever you want. I will admit that that last fight was so great looking that it did help make me think more highly of the show overall, it was that awesome and I really did like a lot of the other designs throughout the show (although I also questioned some of them, not entirely sure why the ladies always seemed to be running higher body temperatures and therefore always needed a tad bit less clothing than the guys). The voice acting seemed fine, apparently this is one of the first big roles for Ledo's seiyu and I thought he did just fine along with everyone else. Although, while I don't think that either the OP or ED were bad I just never got into them and felt like they didn't fit the series as well as I wish they had.
In the end, I give this series three starts out of five (3.5 if I'm still feeling hyped up about that fight) and I'm not sure if I want to buy it. I saw the series streaming on crunchyroll but it has since been licensed by Viz and they plan to bring it and the OVAs over (according to some Anime Expo sources they may even stream the OVAs which would be great), dub it and release it which doesn't help me decide. On the one hand, they've making a concerted effort to actually interact with anime fans instead of chasing after a more "mainstream" audience that doesn't seem like it'll ever materialize and even put out a survey asking about LE sets (I'll admit I'm quite jealous of the fans who can afford the Japanese BR set with the art book, I'd love to see scans of that). But on the other hand they don't do combo packs and by the time this is out I won't have a BR player (and there's no reason for me to buy something this pretty on DVD) and I tend to not like their dubs very much either. So for now I'm on the fence, also on the fence about recommending it since I feel like the middle brings down the series that much but it's certainly not terrible and at this point I do recommend it more than Majestic Prince and Valvrave.
And the spring shows have started folks! Trying to get this out a bit earlier than usual so for all of the shows here I’ve seen just one episode and I’m cramming everything into one post, should be fun to check back in three or six months to see what I actually kept/dropped. And as a quick note, I’m still following three shows from the winter season, Chihayafuru 2, Doki Doki Precure, and Space Bros. So far Chihayafuru feels a little weaker pacing wise than the first season (they only spent a few episodes at Omi Jingui and had completely wrapped that arc up by episode 15 but here we’re at 13 and still in the team matches, I’m wondering if the rest of the season will be spent at Omi Jingui and I really hope not) but it still has my attention and it’s managed to flesh out the two new club members better than I had hoped and the rest of the gang continues to grow (even if Arata still isn’t showing up on screen much, I finally found a word to describe him though guys, he’s a tritagonist!). Doki Doki Precure isn’t as good as Heartcatch so far but it’s self aware enough to make me laugh along with it and have fun casually watching it each week, although I’m having real trouble with the villains each time (instead of focusing on the monster/victim of the week like Heartcatch did we see a quick shot of them thinking a selfish thought, being mature and saying “naaaaah” and then they turn into a monster anyway, this idea is as awkward as it sounds in writing). However, unlike most of the shows I watch I don't feel super motivated to find fansubs for it each week and if this season gets busy I'll probably drop it and check back on it later to see if it's worth picking back up. And finally it looks like Space Bros is in for the long haul, it sounds like the anime is somewhere around volume 10 out of 20 volumes so far and I want to say I heard that the manga-ka is predicting it to go on for around 30 volumes. I’m really curious how much longer this one is going to be sticking around, it would be hugely impressive if it went all the way to the end, at the current pace they have about a year’s worth of material to animate still and in the past the manga-ka churned out an impressive four volumes a year but last year only produced two. I guess in theory the manga could stay far enough ahead (and it seems like the anime pads a bit with recap bits to help with this) and the show just got placed in a new timeslot which is right before Detective Conan on Saturday afternoon/evenings which is apparently a really really good sign. Regardless I still enjoy it’s humor, all the space stuff, and all the stuff involving it’s multiple sets of siblings now which makes me reflect on my own relationship with my siblings, although I do feel like a mediocre big sister when compared to Mutta.
Arata the Legend (Arata Kangatari)
Arata (no not that one) switches places with Arata (again, not that one) from another world.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure this is Yuu Watase’s only non-shojo work and it’s always interesting to see when an author (of any medium) who is very heavily associated with one genre (in her case shojo) switch to a different one (shonen) and seeing just what tropes carry over. You could actually make this into a shojo very easily so I'm wondering what this genre switch will bring besides male main characters (which she's had before, Alice 19th had them for sure and a lot of her earlier works have a good amount of action as well). Also, I noticed on a scanlation site the other day that in Japan that the story is over 150 chapters yet the show is only going to be one cour, how the heck is that a good idea? With a story that long I can almost guarantee that individual arcs in the story are going to be longer than 13 chapters and, even if the pick up the pace and put multiple chapters into one episode (like they did here) they’ll still have a freakisly hard time making that work. Really at this point that’s what’s keeping me from getting really excited about this series, while it has potential I just don’t know if it has the time to make it work.
Arata the Legend is streaming on crunchyroll but only for United States and Canadian viewers and it might be for subscribers only. If it is subscribers only, the wording is a bit strange, I 'll have to drop it since I'm using a free subscription now to save money and won't be continuing with it.
The Devil is a Part-timer (Hataraku Maou-sama!)
Satan escapes a crusading Hero and flips burgers.
Someone pointed out this one to me a few months back when they noted that a voice actor I had heard and liked had landed the leading role here so I checked out the manga (adaptation of the light novels this is based on that is) and found that the humor worked surprisingly well there. And here the humor continues to work, the first episode starts off a bit slow as it gets through the backstory of “how the hell a conquering demon lord is now trying to become a full time McRonald’s employee” but once it hits the second half it pulls off the situational humor pretty well. So I have high hopes that the entire show manages to stay funny and keep my interest, if that manga adaptation is any indication then it should fulfill those expectations very nicely.
Funimation has picked up the show for streaming and can be viewed either on their website or on hulu.
Devil Survivor 2 the Animation
Kids summon demon’s with their cell phones.
Initially this wasn’t on my to-watch list since I’ve never played any of the Shin Megami Tensei games of any franchise but, since I saw a number of good reviews for it and that reasoning hardly stopped me from watching Persona 4 the Animation, I gave it a shot and yeah, that was pretty solid. Thankfully here they’ve chosen to give the main character, in the game the player avatar, a real personality instead of trying to develop him as the show went on a la P4tA and the story gets to the action pretty quickly. I can still see that this was adapted from a game (“oh here is the exposition, this one is probably the tutorial fight” etc) but it doesn’t feel like I’m just watching a Let’s Play of the game so for the moment I’m sticking with it.
DS2tA (DeSu2A?) is streaming on crunchyroll for people in : USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, and Scandinavia..
Gargantia on the Verduous Planet (Suisei no Gargantia)
Mech pilot accidentally space-warps to backwater Earth
This was one of the shows I was most excited for going into the spring season. Scratch that, I was curious about a number of shows but only really excited for this one, it's a low-key season for me this time around, and I had such a hard time waiting for the second episode that I eventually found a fansub of the second episode (ripped from a DVD given out a few weeks earlier) with subpar subtitles and still enjoyed the heck out of it. Somehow this one just worked for me, I've seen a lot of people say that the first half moved a little too slow for them but I like space battles and space operas so I was just fine with epic-scale outer space fighting (and no the CGI does not look bad, it's not quite as nice and neat as Majestic Prince's was but it's perfectly fine guys, the show in general looks fantastic) and I was also okay when the story did a pretty large genre shift for the second half of the episode/for the rest of the series it seems. I’m okay with how they’re handling the shift to a quieter, not exactly slice of life but certainly smaller in scale story following the remnants of humanity on Earth living on boats and endlessly moving on the all-encircling ocean.
Gargantia is steaming on Crunchyroll for United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, and Portugal.
Karneval
Two boys get entangled in secret, colorful, organization.
I’ve been a bit worried about Karneval for a while now since I’ve read the manga and I can say first hand that this series has it’s strong points and it’s weak ones and the beginning is most certainly one of the later. The anime works with the source material as best as it can, namely by compressing the first three chapters into one episode which does cut out some problems (I don't think the manga-ka even knew what they wanted Circus to be in the very beginning) but the pacing as a result just does not work. I’m tempted to say that the staff spent more time trying to figure out how to make the story look cool than how it was going to make sense and I’m really hoping that it gets smoother as the series goes on but that’s another thing I’m worried about, the length. This has been confirmed to be a one cour series and based on what characters have been posted on the website I can guess at least how far they’ll go and frankly I don’t think there is a really good stopping point after just thirteen episodes. All all I'm nervous about this series, I've seen manga fans say "yep that made about as much sense as the manga did at this point" and non-manga fans optimistically say that they think they like where it's going but yeah, I'm going to hold off recommending this show until it ends and I can say whether or not it worked.
For those willing to risk dazzlement and confusion, Karneval is being streamed by Funimation for Region 1 viewers.
Majestic Prince (Ginga Kikōtai Majestic Prince)
Five failing teens are flung into mecha fights.
Another of the mecha shows this season and one where I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I went into it. The good news is that the snark I saw in the trailers was present in the actual show, but a bit of snarking alone isn’t enough to make me keep watching a show especially when it’s got weird character designs (seriously, here are the original designs, here’s some promo material, and here’s an actual screenshot, I think a side character in the first few minutes stole everyone else’s noses in order to have a large schnoz, this is even worse than the Moyashimon Returns character design changes) and nothing new about the premise in general. Heck, while it is also fast paced and has some nice fight scenes it’s seriously lacking in the explanation department (or perhaps the common sense department, I want at least a line about why they took the worst teen mecha pilots and gave them the best robots they had AND someone at least noting that they seem to be working much better as a team than they were just a few hours earlier) and sure that can be remedied in further episodes but with so much other stuff coming out this season I’m not going to stick around to find out.
Majestic Prince is streaming on crunchyroll for USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand and has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks.
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru or literally My Youth Romantic Comedy is as Wrong as I Expected)
Teacher forces student to join service club.
Intially this wasn't on my to watch list since, well, the premise on the lists and charts of the upcoming spring season didn't interest me and it sounded like Brain's Base was just redoing a less interesting version of My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun) half a year later. But after seeing a couple of good reviews, plus the fact that I wasn't interested in that show before trying it either, I gave it a shot and nope, my instincts were spot on. The show actually reminded me more of Bakemonogatari in how it sets up two of it's lead characters, the guy's appearance to a small extent, how it tries to be artsy with flashbacks and such, and guys, if you're going to be similar to another show you had better be better than them and that's not what happened here. I'd like to say that I'm not saying that one light novel series copied the other here but this one is certainly the weaker of the two and I'm not a huge fan of the -monogatari series to start with. Also, as I was watching this I thought "the author here feels young" and yep, the original author is only 27 and since this series is now on it's fifth or seventh book he must've started when he was even younger and it shows. Neither he (I believe it's a man) nor the director/writers of the show were able to make the characters believable or even interesting and the idea of a group/school club that helps people is a pretty tired premise yet they didn't do anything to spice that up either.
Another dropped show for me but those interested in checking it out can go over to crunchyroll, provided you live in United States, Canada, South Africa, Finland, Norway, Sweden, or Denmark.
Red Data Girl
Girl breaks computers and boy is broken.
So I caught one of the rips of the niconico stream a week or so back and man, maybe the fact that I was watching the worst quality video I’ve ever seen that wasn’t a copy of a copy (etc) of a VHS tape but this first episode just didn’t grab me. Looking at other’s screenshots I can say now that yes the art looks fine, lesson learned there, but the first episode just felt a bit awkward. We can see the characters acting but we don’t know why, why is cutting Izumiko’s hair so important (it’s not like this is Crime Edge, heck that makes this the third anime this year to place a focus on hair so I'm declaring 2013 "year of hair" at this rate) and why is Miyuki’s dad so insistent that he’s going to help her? Since there are a few more episodes out I’ve seen some people say it gets stronger I am going to give it a few more episodes (especially sine Funimation is streaming it) but there's another problem, the legal streams (and the tv broadcast) are a full three weeks behind, almost a month in Funi's case, the internet streams which is going to make avoiding spoilers for the series nigh impossible. I have absolutely no idea why there's such a huge delay, it was weird enough last season that there was a three day delay between when the first tv stations showed From the New World and when the main station/crunchyroll did and this is even stranger. Oh well, at least I'll have something to watch on Wednesdays.
As noted above, RDG is being streamed by Funimation, also make sure you use the hastag #rdg_anime on twitter or apparently you'll offend a small town in England.
Valvrave the Liberator (Kakumeiki Valvrave)
Average teen meets mech, gets messed up
And the award for the show which made me snark the most this season so far goes to Valvrave! Seriously folks, this show has some okay moments (when part of the what looks to be a good sized cast chilling in school), some bad moments (maybe I'm getting jaded but I couldn't take any of those military operations/people seriously), and then, well, one rather large WTFDIDIJUSTSMOKE moment at the veeeery end of the episode, make sure to watch past the credits guys. I seriously don't know how to feel here, the show looks great but the plot alternates between being generic and feeling like the creators are trying to hard to replicate their past successes, namely Code Geass. Here's the thing, I liked Code Geass (or at least the first season, the second season promised to reveal some things which it didn't and that annoyed me) and even Guilty Crown (which I believe also shares a lot of the same staff) didn't have me snark-raging as much as this did. Honestly in that respect the show reminds me a lot of K but with K I tried the second episode and went "you know, I think the writers are aware that what they're writing is kinda silly and they're just rolling with it, I can deal with this" and enjoyed the show, I don't think that's what Valvrave is doing. I'm going to give it another episode or two (mainly because of how pretty it is) but if this doesn't get at least more amusing then I'm going to find other shows to spend my Fridays watching.
Valvrave is streaming on crunchyroll for US, Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland.
SO, now that I've finally gotten through everything, my final verdict? I am following Gargantia, Chihayafuru, Maou-sama, and Space Bros for sure (and most likely Doki Doki) and I'm gonna be pumped for them each week. And I'm going to continue with Arata, Karneval, RDG, Devil Survivor, and Valvrave for now, if any of them fail to keep my interest for a few episodes I'll drop them with no hesitation. And dear lord, all of those shows except Precure and Space Bros (maybe Devil Survivor, Valvrave is apparently confirmed as split cour) are going to end this summer, I am going to be very busy come late June/early July with reviews.
Okay, getting close to getting back on schedule, for the rest of this semester anime reviews are moving to Tuesdays instead of Mondays (since I ended up with more school work on Monday's than I initially expected, oops) and I'll try to stick to that schedule as closely as I can, sorry about all of this weirdness folks!
Speaking of weirdness, I had heard about this show when it was first airing and saw a lot of people talking about it and then again it popped up on people's end-of-year lists where people all seemed to be saying the same thing, this was way better than they ever expected. I had been put off by the premise (gurellia idol singers in a world where entertainment isn't allowed? Please....) but then I reminded myself that if I could sit through Shoji Kawamori's other recent work, Aquarion Evol, which requires a serious suspension of disbelife and weird sense of humor (or at least a strong tolerance for puns) then hell I think I could put up with this show.
AKB0048
Summary: Sometime in the near future humanity fled Earth and colonized other worlds and, sometime after that, many of the worlds banned all kinds of entertainment with harsh punishments for those found participating or supporting it. Not that this is going to stop some people and the mega idol group AKB0048 sees it as their job to go to these worlds and hold highly illegal (and dangerous) concerts to give the people there at least one chance to experience real entertainment. Nagisa and her friends saw an AKB concert when they were young and ever since it's been their dream to join the group themselves, something that proves to be much harder than they ever expected.
The Good: Yep, this was much better than what you would expect from a crazy premise like that and I think it's partially because the show (/the staff) know how crazy it is and just how far they can push people's suspension of disbelief. The show actually spends a lot of time showing the girls training to become idols and connecting with one another (which I think helps since all of that seems quite believable) and apparently a lot of the little details about the girl's lives are based on their real life voice actresses, something I didn't know until I did some research but thought was really neat. The show has a pretty large cast and while it doesn't give everyone equal amounts of screen-time most of the characters have enough, although weirdly enough there wasn't as much character development as I would have expected out of this show (one or two individuals got a fair amount but by and large most of the characters were static, I guess this is what happens when the majority of your cast is supposed to be around 13?).
The Bad: There was one episode I really had a problem with, the one with the hater (one of the girls gets a message from a hater saying she should kill herself and will never be good enough to be the successor to the girl she wants, which understandably shakes her) and the show ends with "hater just make you do better and should be thanked for it!" No, cut the crap writers, there is a big difference between criticism and a vile-spewing hater, even with mean, unwarranted criticism there's still a rather large line separating the two. Honestly the "sex scandal" about AKB that just broke (in short, one of the real life idols, with no ties to the show, had a boyfriend which violated the rules and had to shave her head and post an apology video for it) reminds me a lot of this episode, the idea that the fans are so important that you have to please all of them, even the messed up ones (which in the real world case insist on everyone being "pure," as if romance and sex are somehow dirty things). So, oddly enough considering how different the show is from it's real-world counterpart, the worst part of the show mirrors the idol industry quite a bit and sadly it's not of one of it's better aspects.
The Audio: As far as I can tell, the nine trainees (the nine girls in the promo piece above) are all voiced by girls from the various groups within the real AKB48 and the actual successors in the show are voiced by regular voice actors which is a bit of an interesting choice. Honestly I can't tell whose singing any of the songs and since the group members do sound alright as voice actors (not as polished but they also sound a bit more "real" than your standard anime voices) and certainly never drew me out of the experience I think the casting was done well. I also liked how well both the opening and ending song worked with the show, as I was watching I thought the lyrics worked really well and then both of the songs made appearances within the show itself later on (told you I couldn't tell who was singing or this wouldn't have surprised me as much as it did). So, thankfully for a show that's based more than partially around a group of singers the audio holds up here, I'm curious if they'll even try to dub the show in the US though (that and I still don't know how they managed to license this show and presumably most or all of it's music rights as well).
The Visuals: Quite honestly what first caught my eye about this show was just how colorful it was, then again I don't think I've seen a show from Studio Satelight that wasn't crazy colorful (even Croisee made good use of color, although I've only seen about half of the shows they've produced). The art looks good throughout although some people will probably be frustrated with the CGI used for the big dance scenes. The way I see it is that with CGI we're able to have scenes which would be far too complex to be well-animated by hand (that is, it's cheaper to do it this way, plus with all the constantly changing angles I have to wonder how on-model all the characters could stay) plus the dances look like real, choreographed performances, I wouldn't be surprised if they were based off some of the actual shows. So just, well, deal with it and know that you're forewarned if this isn't your thing.
So I'm giving this show a solid 3.5 out of 5, going to watch the second season when I have a chance (since I am swaaaamped with stuff to watch right now, curse you school!) and since Sentai has licensed this I'll probably pick it up sometime. Crunchyroll finally announced earlier today that their going to start putting the first season up on Sundays as well as the new episodes so unlike me you can avoid fansubs and head over there this Sunday to give it a whirl yourself.
The sequel to the winter anime title of the same name, there's not much else I can say to introduce. If you haven't seen the first half, watch that first, this is a direct sequel, and it's all streaming on hulu for free anyway.
Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne
Summary:Over nine months have past since Lan and Muginami went back to their respective sides in the growing galactic feud and ever since Madoka hasn't been able to awaken her Vox and has felt a bit depressed. She hides it well but even the people around her have started to notice how lonely she's feeling. Thankfully for her Kamogawa is about to get a lot more exciting again as the "the planets orbits collide and cause them to nearly crash into each other once every 1000 years" event draws closer and the town is chosen as a meeting place for the various officials to come and figure out how all of them can live in peace.
The Good: There was some very funny writing in the show at some points, especially early on, and at some point I will go through all the cast lists to see if I can pin down who exactly did the writing I liked since I want to see what else they can do. I also liked, and wished they had expanded more on, how it was shown that yes, Madoka is depressed when her friends have left since rarely do stories give a main character enough time by themselves away from the action to have that happen, although I also would have liked if Madoka was toned down a bit as well.
The Bad: The show tried to strike a balance between being a more action-y, with a little bit of politics, mech show with a slice of life show and in the end it felt lopsided with the slice of life aspect taking up much more (and, since I was in it for the other stuff, I was a bit frustrated by this). All in all I think the first half was the stronger one both pacing and ending wise and, while the show did have good writing at times, it felt like it was stretching what central plot it had too thin, threw in too much fluff, and was perfectly fine with letting the characters grow and regress as much as the plot needed them to.
The Audio: While the new opening and ending themes weren't bad they just didn't grow on me as much as the ones from the first half did and I even fast-forwarded through them a few times (which is pretty rare for me to do unless I'm marathoning a show). Even though there was kinda a new character they had spoken in the previous season so there weren't any new major characters at all and nobody got suddenly better or worse at their role over the break, really there's less to say about these split cour shows in general.
The Visuals: The show is pretty much unchanged in this aspect, there is only one new character and there aren't any new costume designs otherwise, no new mech designs either, and while there were some new locations none of them felt like something I hadn't ever seen in anime before. I still like the mech designs in this show, they seem a bit more impractical than usual (why do they need legs if they just fly?!?) but I do love the sleekness of them.
So, I liked the first season better and this one just never got as great as I hoped. Due to popular request, I shall start giving number ratings on anime (since I do already do that on anime-planet, the site I use to keep track of what I'm watching) and I rate this season a 3/5 and the first one as a 3.5/5. So, would I buy it? Ehhhhh, probably not, although if I'll have a chance to buy it is almost moot. The show will be dubbed and streamed on Neon Alley and apparently if it does well there then it'll get a physical release. Of course, it's a live channel, on a PS3 (which I don't have), and subscription only (which involves money) so I have no chance of seeing it that way and I'm slightly miffed that the best way to get a physical release of shows I'm interested in is to support them in a way that is completely unfeasible for me. That's a rant for another day though, if you're in the US you can however watch the sub-titled release over on hulu.
