As I said in my post the other day, it's time for the 12 Days of Aniblogging again and I am jumping into the fray once more this year! (and we're already a day behind because of a minor migraine, maaaaaan) In also following a past tradition, the idea is that you blog about things you saw this year with the implication, but not rule, that they should be from the current year as well. But I am going to toss this suggestion out the window and talk about two shows that are most definitely not from this past year and one is actually older than me!
Showing posts with label mecha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mecha. Show all posts
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Movie Review: Mobile Suit Gundam Movie Trilogy
I hadn't seen any movies at the JICC in a while but they decided to finish off the summer with a kicker by airing the three compilation movies of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series over the course of three weeks and, well, free movies! I also didn't realize until the night before the first movie that each movie was nearly two and a half hours long, and I also had to miss the third movie since it fell on the weekend of Otakon (which I was sorry about since it was preceded by a presentation from a JAXA worker about if Gundam is our future which sounds exactly like my kind of nerdy). However, the GundamInfo youtube channel, the same place that streamed Gundam Build Fighters, is also streaming the movies for a short while so I was able to finish up the series anyway. Despite their length, watching the final movie at home was much more comfortable, there was still something great about sitting in a small theater with a bunch of other people and having the lights go out to show sweeping scenes of space and sacrifice on the big screen.
Mobile Suit Gundam Movie Trilogy
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
TV Series Review: Voltron: Legendary Defender
As long time readers know, I like my giant robot shows and I haven't had any to watch the past spring season. Sure Kumukuro is airing, but since Netflix licensed the show I couldn't legally watch it week to week. Likewise, Macross Delta is airing this season but since the entire Macross franchise is tied up (I could've sworn I saw an excerpt from the contact on ANN and, as someone who has actually worked with licensing materials etc, holy cow what I thought I saw was baaaaaad) that's also off the table.
Enter the remake of a show I thought I was too young for (I have since been corrected, apparently the original Voltron reruns were showing in the US up to 1997 at least). Everyone else was hyped so I expected to try out an episode and go eh, not for me. Unfortunately if you put an entire season of a show in front of me at once I will binge (now that half of Kumukuro is out I've had to hold back from binging on that as well) and, whelp, I'm a fan now guys!
Enter the remake of a show I thought I was too young for (I have since been corrected, apparently the original Voltron reruns were showing in the US up to 1997 at least). Everyone else was hyped so I expected to try out an episode and go eh, not for me. Unfortunately if you put an entire season of a show in front of me at once I will binge (now that half of Kumukuro is out I've had to hold back from binging on that as well) and, whelp, I'm a fan now guys!
Voltron: Legendary Defender
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Anime Review: Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans
Normally I order these reviews from my most-favorite anime of a season to least so I should put up a little note that says: this was not my least favorite show of the season! I just go so slammed by con work back in February that I was barely keeping up with anything and even since then I've been non-stop busy and seeing folks make, disapproving noises at the last half of the show wasn't the kind of motivation I needed to finish the show. The fact that it's already dubbed and airing on Toonami in the US is however so let's get onto this very late post.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Anime Review: Gundam Build Fighters TRY
EDITORS NOTE: Hi guys, sorry everything is so late already this week and as a heads up, tomorrow's post is probably not going up to Thursday since I'll be out late babysitting and really don't like typing out huge posts on phones if I can help it (the autocorrect alone makes it a huge headache).
Much like Log Horizon, I did a whirlwind marathon of Gundam Build Fighters last year as the first season was finishing up and absolutely fell in love with it and was completely on board for the second season. It is seven years later and features a mostly new cast but I'm going to say that yes, you should see the first season first. It'll help you in the long run and come on, if you like this you'll want more of it and that's 25 episodes of more right there.
Much like Log Horizon, I did a whirlwind marathon of Gundam Build Fighters last year as the first season was finishing up and absolutely fell in love with it and was completely on board for the second season. It is seven years later and features a mostly new cast but I'm going to say that yes, you should see the first season first. It'll help you in the long run and come on, if you like this you'll want more of it and that's 25 episodes of more right there.
Gundam Build Fighters Try
Monday, September 29, 2014
Anime Review: Captain Earth
It's a fact that if you stick a Bones mecha show in front of me I'm going to watch it, there are several different general styles to how various creators approach mecha shows and I just rather like Bones approach. It's never just a war or a soldiers life for them, it's about the people who end up having to do these crazy things and a lot of self-discovery, this sounds pretty great to me especially since I know that budgets usually don't allow for down-and-out robot punching fests every single episode! And in case anyone reads this review and wonders at a few of the name choices, apparently Bones enjoyed having "The Tempest" and "Hamlet" references in another show so much they added in a number of A Midsummer Night's Dream ones here, although most of them are surface, name-only references without any deep, thematically related connections.
Captain Earth
Monday, June 23, 2014
Anime Review: Gundam Build Fighters
If some shows I've reviewed lately are a bit surprising but not wholly so since I've mentioned them before this has to be the oddest of the bunch. Considering that last fall people had next to no hopes for this show, that I remember seeing, there's no reason I would see the latest sort-of installment in a franchise I don't have any experience with (other than that one time my anime club watched a few episodes of Gundam Wing and I was deeply bored) and it seemed like a pretty blatant grab to get kids to buy toys, nope I have better things to spend my time on! But after the new year I was seeing more and more chatter about the show online and it seemed like people were really enjoying it and I actually had a number of friends who were also becoming interested in the show for the same reasons. Considering that Sunrise had done the rather unprecedented move of putting the show legally on youtube subbed in at least a half a dozen different languages I didn't have any reason to not try the show out when I found myself with some free time during my lunch and I was pretty quickly able to see why so many people were enjoying it.
Gundam Build Fighters
Friday, April 18, 2014
Spring 2014 Anime Round-UP
It's that time of year again folks, time for me to talk about the sudden onslaught of new anime and I'm starting off this season with almost a blank slate since just about all my shows have ended, as is usually the case since winter shows tend to be one-cour and it's rare to have a show run for more than two-cour so all my fall shows have ended as well. The one exception (well, Space Dandy is split cour but it's currently off the air) is the latest Pretty Cure series, Happiness Charge (nicknamed Hacha! by fans because that's just fun to say). In case people are trying to remember, no I didn't finish Doki Doki Precure since, well, it turns out that wasn't one of the better series. This I'm still a little cautious about, once burned twice shy after all, but I already like how they're fleshing out the character better and the fights are rather fun and silly, just what I want from a children's show!
Not included here are Break Blade and Knights of Sidonia since I already saw the BB movie's years ago and this is just a re-edit of those (possibly with a few new scenes and a new opening but nothing can compare to the movie's wonderful opening song) and Sidonia is actually getting broadcast, dubbed, on Netflix in the summer so I'm waiting for that. Well, that and Sidona's CGI is making me nervous, I hope it looks fine in the series but those trailers do not fill me with hope.
Not included here are Break Blade and Knights of Sidonia since I already saw the BB movie's years ago and this is just a re-edit of those (possibly with a few new scenes and a new opening but nothing can compare to the movie's wonderful opening song) and Sidonia is actually getting broadcast, dubbed, on Netflix in the summer so I'm waiting for that. Well, that and Sidona's CGI is making me nervous, I hope it looks fine in the series but those trailers do not fill me with hope.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Movie Review: Pacific Rim
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
Pacific Rim
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Winter Anime 2014 Round-UP
It's that time again and finally, between the fact that most of my anime ended the week before Christmas and that the rest all took a week or two off for Christmas and New Years (which I do completely understand) I was going a bit mad over here with nothing to watch. I tried out a number of things, half rewatched some others, convinced myself to not start rewatching even more shows, and just am very glad that I'm back to having a regular schedule of having anime magically pop up every few days to watch. As per usual, let me first spend a few minutes on what shows I'm continuing from the fall season (at this point I've more or less dropped Tokyo Ravens and don't even ask about Space Bros, I'm at least a full season behind):
Kill La Kill: Oh damn, when KLK (along with these other two shows) took a two week break I wasn't that impressed where it ended. Some new things had been revealed, the second half was set up, but a couple of major things I expected to happen, well, didn't. They still didn't happen here but the story has finally done it's "major upset to motivate the second half" and this should make things quite interesting, at least for the next few episodes. I still am torn about KLK in many ways, the story has grown on me, I like the soundtrack, I like the characters, yet dear god it's just so much fanservice each week. And no guys, I don't think you can really say "these super skimpy outfits empower the female characters!" when, well, unless I'm wrong this is a show with a mostly male staff and guys, characters don't technically get to decide what they wear. Cosplayers? Sure, people on the beach in skimpy bathing clothes? Absolutely, but not fictional characters, not really, and that's putting aside the "okay howcome it's empowering when I wear little clothing but not when I wear baggy clothes that I really like?" detail. It's a problematic show in a lot of ways yet it's also really fun, just be really really careful where you watch it since it's rare for it to go more than 10 minutes without hitting NSFW territory.
Nagi-Asu: Finally, we're back to the plot! For those just tuning in, Nagi-Asu is a semi-fantastical, semi-coming-of-age story about a group of kids from the sea who are going to school on land and it was slowing down right before the mid-season cliffhanger a few weeks back. However the story is moving forward once again and quickly, as predicated by many viewers we have had a timeskip (although, given the character designs if I hadn't been told how many years it was I wouldn't have guessed) and it works out much better than I would have expected. The show is at it's strongest when it treads the delicate line between happiness and sadness and for once I think the show made a good call to focus on middle schoolers, instead of an older age group, for a romantic story given just how tumultuous that time of your life is without all the additional problems. And those additional problems are why I love the series actually, it takes a while but the fantastical setting finally comes into play and both creates new problems for the series and uses it as a metaphor for others, I would love for the series to focus on the fantasy a bit more this time (which I think it will given the slight change in setting) and it's gone from being a show I was unsure of to one of my favorites of the season.
Samuari Flamenco: Oh man SamFlam, what are you doing now? To recap, SamFlam started out as a show about a regular guy who wanted to be a superhero except, well, since there's no such thing as super-villains he was doing stuff like stopping people from littering. I didn't like it at first, lead Mayoshi's viewpoint grated with mine but as he changed and grew (both in thinking and his ability to not get beat up by hooligans) and it progressed rather nicely until about a seventh episode which honestly felt like the end of the series with everything wrapping up. Then, completely out of nowhere, the series underwent a huge genre-shift (less of a shift and more of a "gets in a monster truck and jumps across the arena" actually, social media was fun that day) and then it played around with these new superhero tropes, seemed to get comfortable with those as well, and then in episode 11 it seemed to shift over into a new one again and frankly I just don't like the current setting. It's sentai, which I have nothing against, but it plays all the ideas and tropes too straight, there's too little of that real-world connection the first two arcs had (and Goto who serves as the series comedic straight man) and without that I'm finding it boring. I'm sure we're going to go through another shift and I just hope it comes soon and that I like the show more again after it!
All three of these shows are streaming on crunchyroll, KLK also goes up on hulu fairly quickly and Sam Flam (both of which are licensed by Aniplex) has slowly been going up as well. Nagi-Asu has also been licensed but by NIS America instead.
Okay, time for the new stuff!
Kill La Kill: Oh damn, when KLK (along with these other two shows) took a two week break I wasn't that impressed where it ended. Some new things had been revealed, the second half was set up, but a couple of major things I expected to happen, well, didn't. They still didn't happen here but the story has finally done it's "major upset to motivate the second half" and this should make things quite interesting, at least for the next few episodes. I still am torn about KLK in many ways, the story has grown on me, I like the soundtrack, I like the characters, yet dear god it's just so much fanservice each week. And no guys, I don't think you can really say "these super skimpy outfits empower the female characters!" when, well, unless I'm wrong this is a show with a mostly male staff and guys, characters don't technically get to decide what they wear. Cosplayers? Sure, people on the beach in skimpy bathing clothes? Absolutely, but not fictional characters, not really, and that's putting aside the "okay howcome it's empowering when I wear little clothing but not when I wear baggy clothes that I really like?" detail. It's a problematic show in a lot of ways yet it's also really fun, just be really really careful where you watch it since it's rare for it to go more than 10 minutes without hitting NSFW territory.
Nagi-Asu: Finally, we're back to the plot! For those just tuning in, Nagi-Asu is a semi-fantastical, semi-coming-of-age story about a group of kids from the sea who are going to school on land and it was slowing down right before the mid-season cliffhanger a few weeks back. However the story is moving forward once again and quickly, as predicated by many viewers we have had a timeskip (although, given the character designs if I hadn't been told how many years it was I wouldn't have guessed) and it works out much better than I would have expected. The show is at it's strongest when it treads the delicate line between happiness and sadness and for once I think the show made a good call to focus on middle schoolers, instead of an older age group, for a romantic story given just how tumultuous that time of your life is without all the additional problems. And those additional problems are why I love the series actually, it takes a while but the fantastical setting finally comes into play and both creates new problems for the series and uses it as a metaphor for others, I would love for the series to focus on the fantasy a bit more this time (which I think it will given the slight change in setting) and it's gone from being a show I was unsure of to one of my favorites of the season.
Samuari Flamenco: Oh man SamFlam, what are you doing now? To recap, SamFlam started out as a show about a regular guy who wanted to be a superhero except, well, since there's no such thing as super-villains he was doing stuff like stopping people from littering. I didn't like it at first, lead Mayoshi's viewpoint grated with mine but as he changed and grew (both in thinking and his ability to not get beat up by hooligans) and it progressed rather nicely until about a seventh episode which honestly felt like the end of the series with everything wrapping up. Then, completely out of nowhere, the series underwent a huge genre-shift (less of a shift and more of a "gets in a monster truck and jumps across the arena" actually, social media was fun that day) and then it played around with these new superhero tropes, seemed to get comfortable with those as well, and then in episode 11 it seemed to shift over into a new one again and frankly I just don't like the current setting. It's sentai, which I have nothing against, but it plays all the ideas and tropes too straight, there's too little of that real-world connection the first two arcs had (and Goto who serves as the series comedic straight man) and without that I'm finding it boring. I'm sure we're going to go through another shift and I just hope it comes soon and that I like the show more again after it!
All three of these shows are streaming on crunchyroll, KLK also goes up on hulu fairly quickly and Sam Flam (both of which are licensed by Aniplex) has slowly been going up as well. Nagi-Asu has also been licensed but by NIS America instead.
Okay, time for the new stuff!
Monday, January 6, 2014
Anime Review: Valvrave the Liberator Season Two
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
Valvrave the Liberator: Season Two
Friday, July 12, 2013
Manga Review: Q-ko-chan
Another random pull from the not-so-local library for me, I barely looked at what this one was about or I probably would have noticed the "from the creator of FLCL!" tagline and put it back. Turns out Hajime only did the manga adaptation, he's not the original creator of the show, although I can still see some similar themes between this manga and what I've heard people say is the heart of that show.
Q-ko-chan by Ueda Hajime
Summary: Aliens are ravaging the Earth and countries have fractured as small military groups vie for power and people flock to where ever seems the safest. Kirio and his sister Furiko live in one of the safer areas but even it gets attacked by aliens fairly regularly, although Kirio seems to have made a contract of sorts with a robot that's rather good at fighting them off.
The Good: This is going to sound a bit odd considering all the problems I had with this story but I was actually enjoying the story when I could figure out what was going on. This meant that for a lot of it I was reading it with a very confused look on my face but for the rest of it I thought it worked and that it was telling a bit more of a cynical/sarcastic/world-weary story of aliens attacking (heck it even parodies the gung-ho "children will save us from the aliens!" at one point) and I liked how it flowed. However, while I did like parts of it I found it to be outweighed by all the problems I had with it.
The Bad: While I was able to follow the basic plotline of the story, aliens have been invading Earth for a while and people are fighting back there was a lot of the story I wasn't able to pick up. Like the dolls (robots), are they working with humans, just with human children, or are they actually working with the aliens? And what the heck is up with Kirio and Fumiko's antagonistic relationship (which seems to be one of the central themes of the story)? Just when I thought I figured out some of the characters they would go and say something completely different, I still don't know what the goals of any of the military characters were and I really did try. This manga is only two volumes long and I can't help but wonder if it was planned to be longer originally and shortened or if it was cut off suddenly, if it hadn't been for the "So What Happened?" page after all the translation notes I wouldn't have even notice it ended, so many things and character motivations were left unexplained and I don't feel like the characters had even developed much by the end. It's a frustrating story since while I'm sure some people could puzzle out a few of the things I had trouble with that there really are some loose ends that even the American staff couldn't work out.
The Art: The art style is loose and sketchy at times and simply minimalistic at others which I think fits well with the tone of the story, there's not a lot of explanation from either conversation or imagery here. It was easier to tell the characters apart than I expected after a bit and I didn't have as much trouble following the action sequences as I did with the plot.
So, 2.5 out of 5 stars for this one since while confusing it wasn't terrible, if that makes sense:I could see a story in there, I could see some character development and some distinct themes running through it, the tone was consistent, it just didn't have an ending. I'm sure that some fans of FLCL will like this so if you are one go check this out (although it was a Del Ray publication so it's out of print now) and if anyone can figure out the answer/an interesting interpretation to any of my questions then please comment!
Q-ko-chan by Ueda Hajime
Summary: Aliens are ravaging the Earth and countries have fractured as small military groups vie for power and people flock to where ever seems the safest. Kirio and his sister Furiko live in one of the safer areas but even it gets attacked by aliens fairly regularly, although Kirio seems to have made a contract of sorts with a robot that's rather good at fighting them off.
The Good: This is going to sound a bit odd considering all the problems I had with this story but I was actually enjoying the story when I could figure out what was going on. This meant that for a lot of it I was reading it with a very confused look on my face but for the rest of it I thought it worked and that it was telling a bit more of a cynical/sarcastic/world-weary story of aliens attacking (heck it even parodies the gung-ho "children will save us from the aliens!" at one point) and I liked how it flowed. However, while I did like parts of it I found it to be outweighed by all the problems I had with it.
The Bad: While I was able to follow the basic plotline of the story, aliens have been invading Earth for a while and people are fighting back there was a lot of the story I wasn't able to pick up. Like the dolls (robots), are they working with humans, just with human children, or are they actually working with the aliens? And what the heck is up with Kirio and Fumiko's antagonistic relationship (which seems to be one of the central themes of the story)? Just when I thought I figured out some of the characters they would go and say something completely different, I still don't know what the goals of any of the military characters were and I really did try. This manga is only two volumes long and I can't help but wonder if it was planned to be longer originally and shortened or if it was cut off suddenly, if it hadn't been for the "So What Happened?" page after all the translation notes I wouldn't have even notice it ended, so many things and character motivations were left unexplained and I don't feel like the characters had even developed much by the end. It's a frustrating story since while I'm sure some people could puzzle out a few of the things I had trouble with that there really are some loose ends that even the American staff couldn't work out.
The Art: The art style is loose and sketchy at times and simply minimalistic at others which I think fits well with the tone of the story, there's not a lot of explanation from either conversation or imagery here. It was easier to tell the characters apart than I expected after a bit and I didn't have as much trouble following the action sequences as I did with the plot.
So, 2.5 out of 5 stars for this one since while confusing it wasn't terrible, if that makes sense:I could see a story in there, I could see some character development and some distinct themes running through it, the tone was consistent, it just didn't have an ending. I'm sure that some fans of FLCL will like this so if you are one go check this out (although it was a Del Ray publication so it's out of print now) and if anyone can figure out the answer/an interesting interpretation to any of my questions then please comment!
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Anime Review: Robotics;Notes
The other noitaminA show from last season which frankly was a bit of an odd fit. While noitaminA hasn't had it's own real, genre I suppose in recent years, R;N is the third series in video game publisher 5 pbs "sceince;adventure" visual novels, the first two of which were Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate all of which are set in the same worldline so there are small references to each other, a far cry from noitaminA's original line-up of josei titles. But hey, I liked S;G quite a bit and when I saw people saying they didn't like the game of R;N, no big deal, I figured that a lot of them simply had over inflated expectations and were disappointed, which happens all the time with sequels, so I went into this with positive hopes and came out feeling, well, much less positive.
Robotics;Notes
Summary: The year is now 2019 and while some technology has changed a lot, people seem to be using min-tablets as computers/cell-phones which have a virtual reality app built into them, but in other ways life is still rather normal. Kai is the put upon friend of Akiho who doesn't want to help her complete her sister's dream of making a life sized robot from their favorite show but he's not heartless enough to completely ignore her either. One thing leads to another and Kai slowly begins to realize that there is something strange going on both in the background with mysterious reports appearing on his tablet foretelling the end of the world and even things going strange in his favorite video games. The more things he discovers the more things he starts to uncover until he seems to have stumbled upon the greatest conspiracy of human history.
The Good: The mecha genre (or the giant robot genre in general) like all others has gotten a bit stale and boring after decades of stories and it can be hard to make it interesting again. I'm not saying that R;N did quite that but I did like how they paired together the mecha genre with slice of life and I generally amused at how for once our heroes have to build their giant robot, there's no secret government organization that's already made it for them. As contradictory as this is about to sound, while R;N was originally a visual novel with dating sim aspects in it (there were about four girls, each with a different route and ending to the story and only one of them was the "true ending") and did focus on each route a bit none of those events took away from the rest of the story or felt like they were abandoning some of the mysteries in favor of romance. The romance isn't as well integrated as S;G's was (although that story had a bit of a cheat to make it work better) but I certainly think that this means it was easier to adapt than a lot of more traditional dating sims.
The Bad: As mentioned earlier, I already knew that a number of people either hadn't liked or had simply been underwhelmed by the original visiual novel, wrote that off, and expected a show that I wouldn't adore as much as S;G but that would still be rather solid. Sadly no, even knowing that this story just wasn’t anything above mediocre by the end and failed to make some of it’s plot threads come together in a cohesive and emotionally pay-off-y sort of manner (heck, there are some details that were either addressed so quickly I missed it or not at all, important ones) and by the end of the series I just didn’t care what was happening. I guess lighting doesn't strike twice since whatever that spark of specialness that made S;G come together and work, plot wise and character wise, for me just never happened here and I was frustrated that I never got the payoff that I had every logical reason to expect was coming.
The Audio: I liked the first opening and ending songs a bit better than the second set but none of them have really stuck with me the way some of the other OPs/EDs from the winter season did. The voice acting was all fine and a bit more memorable, there was only one crossover character from S;G and they actually had the same seiyuu (which rather surprised me given the 18 year gap between the shows) and I don't have much more to say here. The actors gave the characters the right emotions that matched up with what the characters were doing on screen so they did their job just fine, even if I thought what the characters were doing was dumb a lot of the time.
The Visuals: Production IG actually worked on both noitaminA shows this season and thankfully R;N did not suffer the random decrease in quality that Psycho-Pass had once or twice. I actually really liked the design of the Gunvarrel (you can tell that the same designer also did some of the mechs in this season's Gargantia), although the CGI for some of the later scenes wasn't as well integrated as I would have liked. The character designs were likable, the scenery looked fine, honestly there was nothing spectacular here that I can talk about but the show didn't look bad by any means either.
I'm going to be a bit mean and give this a 2.5 out of 5 for just not explaining some important details in the end and being, well, boring. Don't feel the need to pick this one up for Funimation (they're streaming it and have the physical rights I believe) or even rewatch it, next show please!
*How Helen would have re-ordered the anime, the spoiler edition. Basically we discover what was going on with Misaki, Akiho’s sister, very close to the end and it seems like she had a very tense, interesting story to tell. So I would propose a rather radical re-writer where the first half of the story is half set in 2019 with Kai and the others meeting up and slowly learning about the reports and the other half (so alternating back and forth within an episode) with Misa’s story, slowly showing how everything started going wrong years ago to add more tension and to well, help pad out the story. I figure that by around the halfway point her story would be done and the story could then focus exclusively on the 2019 part with the current events, just given how this show meandered a lot I think this would have at least forced it to be tighter in plotting and execution and that Misa’s story was probably a heck of a lot more interesting than a lot of the stuff that actually transpired.
Robotics;Notes
Summary: The year is now 2019 and while some technology has changed a lot, people seem to be using min-tablets as computers/cell-phones which have a virtual reality app built into them, but in other ways life is still rather normal. Kai is the put upon friend of Akiho who doesn't want to help her complete her sister's dream of making a life sized robot from their favorite show but he's not heartless enough to completely ignore her either. One thing leads to another and Kai slowly begins to realize that there is something strange going on both in the background with mysterious reports appearing on his tablet foretelling the end of the world and even things going strange in his favorite video games. The more things he discovers the more things he starts to uncover until he seems to have stumbled upon the greatest conspiracy of human history.
The Good: The mecha genre (or the giant robot genre in general) like all others has gotten a bit stale and boring after decades of stories and it can be hard to make it interesting again. I'm not saying that R;N did quite that but I did like how they paired together the mecha genre with slice of life and I generally amused at how for once our heroes have to build their giant robot, there's no secret government organization that's already made it for them. As contradictory as this is about to sound, while R;N was originally a visual novel with dating sim aspects in it (there were about four girls, each with a different route and ending to the story and only one of them was the "true ending") and did focus on each route a bit none of those events took away from the rest of the story or felt like they were abandoning some of the mysteries in favor of romance. The romance isn't as well integrated as S;G's was (although that story had a bit of a cheat to make it work better) but I certainly think that this means it was easier to adapt than a lot of more traditional dating sims.
The Bad: As mentioned earlier, I already knew that a number of people either hadn't liked or had simply been underwhelmed by the original visiual novel, wrote that off, and expected a show that I wouldn't adore as much as S;G but that would still be rather solid. Sadly no, even knowing that this story just wasn’t anything above mediocre by the end and failed to make some of it’s plot threads come together in a cohesive and emotionally pay-off-y sort of manner (heck, there are some details that were either addressed so quickly I missed it or not at all, important ones) and by the end of the series I just didn’t care what was happening. I guess lighting doesn't strike twice since whatever that spark of specialness that made S;G come together and work, plot wise and character wise, for me just never happened here and I was frustrated that I never got the payoff that I had every logical reason to expect was coming.
The Audio: I liked the first opening and ending songs a bit better than the second set but none of them have really stuck with me the way some of the other OPs/EDs from the winter season did. The voice acting was all fine and a bit more memorable, there was only one crossover character from S;G and they actually had the same seiyuu (which rather surprised me given the 18 year gap between the shows) and I don't have much more to say here. The actors gave the characters the right emotions that matched up with what the characters were doing on screen so they did their job just fine, even if I thought what the characters were doing was dumb a lot of the time.
The Visuals: Production IG actually worked on both noitaminA shows this season and thankfully R;N did not suffer the random decrease in quality that Psycho-Pass had once or twice. I actually really liked the design of the Gunvarrel (you can tell that the same designer also did some of the mechs in this season's Gargantia), although the CGI for some of the later scenes wasn't as well integrated as I would have liked. The character designs were likable, the scenery looked fine, honestly there was nothing spectacular here that I can talk about but the show didn't look bad by any means either.
I'm going to be a bit mean and give this a 2.5 out of 5 for just not explaining some important details in the end and being, well, boring. Don't feel the need to pick this one up for Funimation (they're streaming it and have the physical rights I believe) or even rewatch it, next show please!
*How Helen would have re-ordered the anime, the spoiler edition. Basically we discover what was going on with Misaki, Akiho’s sister, very close to the end and it seems like she had a very tense, interesting story to tell. So I would propose a rather radical re-writer where the first half of the story is half set in 2019 with Kai and the others meeting up and slowly learning about the reports and the other half (so alternating back and forth within an episode) with Misa’s story, slowly showing how everything started going wrong years ago to add more tension and to well, help pad out the story. I figure that by around the halfway point her story would be done and the story could then focus exclusively on the 2019 part with the current events, just given how this show meandered a lot I think this would have at least forced it to be tighter in plotting and execution and that Misa’s story was probably a heck of a lot more interesting than a lot of the stuff that actually transpired.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Manga Review: Heroman (volume one)
Another manga that I won in a contest recently, this time Alexander Hoffman of Manga Widget was giving away a few volumes of various Vertical Inc series and I obviously ended up with the first volume of Heroman. I was familiar with the title thanks to the anime (which I think technically came first) but held off watching it back then since people were predicting that it would get picked up and dubbed fast and I prefer to watch shows set in the US with dubs. Well, no license yet (it's still streaming on Crunchyroll for those interested) so there's no point in waiting any longer and I've never read any of Stan Lee's works, although I would love to know how much of the writing here is his or if he provided the basic plot points and scenarios and if someone else is responsible for adding in the details and putting it all together.
Heroman (volume one) by Stan Lee, Bones, and Tamon Ohta
Summary: Joey Jones is a sweet, hardworking boy who lives with his grandmother and is decidedly not one of the cool kids at school. It seems that even getting his hands on a transforming robot and helping save the town several times over isn't helping with that but it's certainly catching the eye of the girl he likes.
The Good: While formulaic the story did manage to move at a much quicker pace than I was expecting and it was nice to see that the girl Joey is crushing on, Lina, already seems to like him back (especially since it's more common for it to take the girl a while to notice the nerdy guy in American fiction). The side characters get a reasonable amount of screentime and I was impressed at how well the story makes the eponymous Heroman feel, well, not just like a robot, especially since he doesn't talk at all.
The Bad: This book just didn't grab me at all. The pacing seems a bit odd, like it's trying to cram in down time for the characters while still moving the plot forward as fast as it can and it's a balancing trick that doesn't quite work. Also, after a full volume of characters, many of which with a lot of page time, I just can't care about any of them since they all still feel so flat. Even Joey, who fares better than the rest of the cast, is still only a mash of character traits without any reasons behind them to make me care. This could obviously change quickly depending on how the story progresses but, well, after this volume I have no motivation to pick up the next one.
The Art: Man, Joey has one of the most feminine looking designs for a guy I've seen in quite a while, heck if he was a girl that might've made the series a bit more interesting since that would have been a little more different. Regardless, there's nothing really special about the art here. It has a nice level of detail and that artist (whom I think is Ohta but I'm not 100% sure) knows how to use screentones well so everything looks fine, but it just doesn't have that special thing that makes the art stand out and grab me. In that respect it feels rather generic, maybe it works better in the anime where it's full color.
So a 2.5 out of 5 for this volume and I'll probably take the anime off of my to-watch list now as well (or at least file it under "if you and a friend really need something to snark at this might work" which isn't a good place to be filed). Maybe this would work better for a younger audience who hasn't seen every story trope out there done to death already, there's no age rating on it but I'd say it's probably 10+ or maybe 12+, but that's not me so I guess this series just isn't for me.
Heroman (volume one) by Stan Lee, Bones, and Tamon Ohta
Summary: Joey Jones is a sweet, hardworking boy who lives with his grandmother and is decidedly not one of the cool kids at school. It seems that even getting his hands on a transforming robot and helping save the town several times over isn't helping with that but it's certainly catching the eye of the girl he likes.
The Good: While formulaic the story did manage to move at a much quicker pace than I was expecting and it was nice to see that the girl Joey is crushing on, Lina, already seems to like him back (especially since it's more common for it to take the girl a while to notice the nerdy guy in American fiction). The side characters get a reasonable amount of screentime and I was impressed at how well the story makes the eponymous Heroman feel, well, not just like a robot, especially since he doesn't talk at all.
The Bad: This book just didn't grab me at all. The pacing seems a bit odd, like it's trying to cram in down time for the characters while still moving the plot forward as fast as it can and it's a balancing trick that doesn't quite work. Also, after a full volume of characters, many of which with a lot of page time, I just can't care about any of them since they all still feel so flat. Even Joey, who fares better than the rest of the cast, is still only a mash of character traits without any reasons behind them to make me care. This could obviously change quickly depending on how the story progresses but, well, after this volume I have no motivation to pick up the next one.
The Art: Man, Joey has one of the most feminine looking designs for a guy I've seen in quite a while, heck if he was a girl that might've made the series a bit more interesting since that would have been a little more different. Regardless, there's nothing really special about the art here. It has a nice level of detail and that artist (whom I think is Ohta but I'm not 100% sure) knows how to use screentones well so everything looks fine, but it just doesn't have that special thing that makes the art stand out and grab me. In that respect it feels rather generic, maybe it works better in the anime where it's full color.
So a 2.5 out of 5 for this volume and I'll probably take the anime off of my to-watch list now as well (or at least file it under "if you and a friend really need something to snark at this might work" which isn't a good place to be filed). Maybe this would work better for a younger audience who hasn't seen every story trope out there done to death already, there's no age rating on it but I'd say it's probably 10+ or maybe 12+, but that's not me so I guess this series just isn't for me.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Anime Review: Eureka Seven Astral Ocean
This year has been a weird year for sequels. We started out the year with Last Exile: Fam of the Silver Wing (whose first half I think was better than the part that aired this year), Legend of Korra (which, to sum it up, tried to cram 20 episodes worth of material into 12 which gave it some terrible pacing problems towards the end) and then this, the sequel to Eureka Seven: Psalm of the Planets, despite the fact that it's set in the early part of the 2000s on Earth which is about 10,000 years earlier than E7 and, knowing how history went down on E7, seemed to be an alternate world (which reminded some fans of the movie, I only saw part of it but even after that small part I saw I had to spend about 15 minutes explaining to a friend what the tv show was actually about). So, as per usual for me, I was excited for the new show to see how exactly this was going to work and a bit cautious but hey, this is a group of people all working together, surely they can call each other out if they did something stupid right?
Well, from what I've heard (I haven't been able to double check this since I don't read Japanese) apparently the show changed from a more, monster-of-the-week approach early on (with Naru being a prominent character) to what we got which was more connected to the original series and, given the strange difference between the early promo art/first opening and what actually happened I'd believe it. I am happy that it wasn't just monster-of-the-week but I don't think it was a good call to apparently re-write the entire story just weeks before the broadcast start.....
Eureka Seven: Astral Ocean
Summary: Ao has never known his father and his mysterious, turquoise haired mother vanished years ago in a scub burst. So he's grown up on the semi-independent island of Okinawa shunned by just about everyone but his sickly friend Naru and, through a slightly complicated series of events, ends up piloting his mother's old mech to save the island and becomes closely entwined with the eventual fate of the world and it's fight against the secrets and the scub.
The Good: When the show is firing on all pistons it's a really great show, for the spring and summer it and Hyouka were the two shows I was most pumped about. Ao is a sympathetic character, like the viewer he's caught up in the growing, changing politics and (since for the majority of the show even veteran viewers had only theories on how the two shows were connected) there really is no easy or right way out in this show IMO. The side characters got a bit more fleshed out than I expected, the show showed off more of it's setting than I expected and it did do one of the better versions of a parallel universe that I've seen. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that, since you say a series is a sequel and it's set 10,000 years earlier it's logically got to be something like that, and it actually explains how that happened and puts the viewer in the interesting position of knowing that the "real" world (ours/the one that the people in the original show left and came back to) is out there but wondering if that's really what the characters should be aiming for. I imagine most people didn't care that much about that detail but I really liked it, now if only they had actually answered that question in the end....
The Bad: The show reached it's peak towards the middle of the series and it's not like it skyrocketed downhill from there, it got really confused and it only became apparently in the last few episodes (especially the last two) that it just wasn't working. The short version is that the show took all of the themes that were so important from the original series and tossed them out the window by ignoring them/having the characters destroy them, the long version was eloquently written up by some of the users on tvtropes (especially the 10th post down, number 510, spoilers for the last two episodes apply to the entire page but everything should be behind spoiler tags). I'll admit, I'm biased against series where to create a sequel they have to undo what was supposed to be a happy ending in the first series (as opposed to a show which was always meant to have a sequel and this was always the intent) and again, in doing so the writers ended up contradicting all of the themes from the first show which just didn't work. I had some trouble with some of the other subplots, I feel like they changed whatever was going on romantically with Ao at least twice during the show, Elana's bit was dragged out too long (not a lot too long but long enough and it was really confusing at parts), and both Naru and Truth didn't quite work in the end (which is an understatement for Truth in my opinion) but I was still okay with the show up to those last two episodes, now I'm confused about how I feel and just generally unhappy that whoever was in charge of the writing thought this made sense and made for a good story.
The Audio: As far as I can tell, ANN isn't being really clear here, the musical team behind AO is not the same as the team behind the original but damn the music is still catchy none the less. I do question some of the music (like the second ending theme, is it just me or do shows these days love to have catchy outro music when the show gets dark?) but hey there were some parts in the original show that I really questioned as well. The voice acting was pretty good, Ao was even voiced by a teenager which gave his voice some nice rawness, although there was one casting decision I questioned. I probably shouldn't say who it is but again, it's from the last two episodes and if you've seen E7 recently (and in Japanese obviously) you'll know it when you hear it and I really didn't like it, although it does fit in with the destruction of themes if you think about it in a sideways kind of manner.
The Visuals: Like the audio, no complaints here, the show looked fantastic! It was colorful, the mechs looked similar enough to know that they were based on some from the original series (no literally, that's the in-universe reason) yet different enough because they did come from two different groups of people (again in-universe), and the fight scenes looked glorious. The character designs also looked similar to the original series (as far as I can tell neither the character no the mecha designer are the same people from the original show, although it looks like some of the other people who did design did some in both) and the backgrounds were nicely detailed as well. So, like Fam and Korra (hell, did all three sequel shows have the protagonist's name in the title?) this is a show which had amazing production values yet some writers which seemed to have trouble this time around.
I probably should have said this at the beginning but no, I don't think that the original Eureka Seven was a masterpiece beyond words or anything like that and that's not why I'm so hard on this show. I did really enjoy it, especially in the end, but I still swear that the second cour was entirely filler (and joke that it should've been given to X'amd, which until now was considered E7's spiritual successor, since it needed more episodes) and it had a lot of situational gags which I know where supposed to be humorous but I just didn't find so. Eventually I'll rewatch the show for a full review, I meant to do that but didn't have the time last spring, but in the end while I still want to buy all of E7 I'm now torn on getting AO, maybe if I get it for a good price and just pretend that the ending is way different but usually when I say that I end up not buying the show, I'm just going to have to think about it some more. As it stands I give the show three our of five stars for having some really good bits but yeah, those last two episodes. :\
Well, from what I've heard (I haven't been able to double check this since I don't read Japanese) apparently the show changed from a more, monster-of-the-week approach early on (with Naru being a prominent character) to what we got which was more connected to the original series and, given the strange difference between the early promo art/first opening and what actually happened I'd believe it. I am happy that it wasn't just monster-of-the-week but I don't think it was a good call to apparently re-write the entire story just weeks before the broadcast start.....
Eureka Seven: Astral Ocean
Summary: Ao has never known his father and his mysterious, turquoise haired mother vanished years ago in a scub burst. So he's grown up on the semi-independent island of Okinawa shunned by just about everyone but his sickly friend Naru and, through a slightly complicated series of events, ends up piloting his mother's old mech to save the island and becomes closely entwined with the eventual fate of the world and it's fight against the secrets and the scub.
The Good: When the show is firing on all pistons it's a really great show, for the spring and summer it and Hyouka were the two shows I was most pumped about. Ao is a sympathetic character, like the viewer he's caught up in the growing, changing politics and (since for the majority of the show even veteran viewers had only theories on how the two shows were connected) there really is no easy or right way out in this show IMO. The side characters got a bit more fleshed out than I expected, the show showed off more of it's setting than I expected and it did do one of the better versions of a parallel universe that I've seen. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that, since you say a series is a sequel and it's set 10,000 years earlier it's logically got to be something like that, and it actually explains how that happened and puts the viewer in the interesting position of knowing that the "real" world (ours/the one that the people in the original show left and came back to) is out there but wondering if that's really what the characters should be aiming for. I imagine most people didn't care that much about that detail but I really liked it, now if only they had actually answered that question in the end....
The Bad: The show reached it's peak towards the middle of the series and it's not like it skyrocketed downhill from there, it got really confused and it only became apparently in the last few episodes (especially the last two) that it just wasn't working. The short version is that the show took all of the themes that were so important from the original series and tossed them out the window by ignoring them/having the characters destroy them, the long version was eloquently written up by some of the users on tvtropes (especially the 10th post down, number 510, spoilers for the last two episodes apply to the entire page but everything should be behind spoiler tags). I'll admit, I'm biased against series where to create a sequel they have to undo what was supposed to be a happy ending in the first series (as opposed to a show which was always meant to have a sequel and this was always the intent) and again, in doing so the writers ended up contradicting all of the themes from the first show which just didn't work. I had some trouble with some of the other subplots, I feel like they changed whatever was going on romantically with Ao at least twice during the show, Elana's bit was dragged out too long (not a lot too long but long enough and it was really confusing at parts), and both Naru and Truth didn't quite work in the end (which is an understatement for Truth in my opinion) but I was still okay with the show up to those last two episodes, now I'm confused about how I feel and just generally unhappy that whoever was in charge of the writing thought this made sense and made for a good story.
The Audio: As far as I can tell, ANN isn't being really clear here, the musical team behind AO is not the same as the team behind the original but damn the music is still catchy none the less. I do question some of the music (like the second ending theme, is it just me or do shows these days love to have catchy outro music when the show gets dark?) but hey there were some parts in the original show that I really questioned as well. The voice acting was pretty good, Ao was even voiced by a teenager which gave his voice some nice rawness, although there was one casting decision I questioned. I probably shouldn't say who it is but again, it's from the last two episodes and if you've seen E7 recently (and in Japanese obviously) you'll know it when you hear it and I really didn't like it, although it does fit in with the destruction of themes if you think about it in a sideways kind of manner.
The Visuals: Like the audio, no complaints here, the show looked fantastic! It was colorful, the mechs looked similar enough to know that they were based on some from the original series (no literally, that's the in-universe reason) yet different enough because they did come from two different groups of people (again in-universe), and the fight scenes looked glorious. The character designs also looked similar to the original series (as far as I can tell neither the character no the mecha designer are the same people from the original show, although it looks like some of the other people who did design did some in both) and the backgrounds were nicely detailed as well. So, like Fam and Korra (hell, did all three sequel shows have the protagonist's name in the title?) this is a show which had amazing production values yet some writers which seemed to have trouble this time around.
I probably should have said this at the beginning but no, I don't think that the original Eureka Seven was a masterpiece beyond words or anything like that and that's not why I'm so hard on this show. I did really enjoy it, especially in the end, but I still swear that the second cour was entirely filler (and joke that it should've been given to X'amd, which until now was considered E7's spiritual successor, since it needed more episodes) and it had a lot of situational gags which I know where supposed to be humorous but I just didn't find so. Eventually I'll rewatch the show for a full review, I meant to do that but didn't have the time last spring, but in the end while I still want to buy all of E7 I'm now torn on getting AO, maybe if I get it for a good price and just pretend that the ending is way different but usually when I say that I end up not buying the show, I'm just going to have to think about it some more. As it stands I give the show three our of five stars for having some really good bits but yeah, those last two episodes. :\
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Movie Review: Eva 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance
Funny story here, when I moved home for the summer last year I noticed I had one more package on my bed than I could account for and the mysterious package was from Flower Mound Texas, or Funimation's headquarters. And in it was this blu-ray copy of Eva 2.22 and I still have no idea how I got it, I've assumed I won a contest somewhere and Funimation mailed it to me but I still don't know where that would've been. In any case, at this point I still hadn't seen the original NGE series, let alone 1.11, and didn't have a blu-ray player to play the movie on in the first place so it sat on my shelf for about a year. I finally got a chance to see 1.11 and had a BR player to watch this movie just a little while ago, although after seeing 1.11 I wasn't that keen on seeing how 2.22 fared.
Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance
Summary: As the angels continue to invade Earth, Nerv gets a few reinforcements in the form of German Eva pilot Asuka and a former colleague of Misato whose position within the group seems unclear, Kaji. Asuka, like Rei and Shinji, has her own issues but slowly the three of them start to grow and develop, just in time for a truly catastrophic series of events that threaten to cripple Nerv for good.
The Good: Oh wow, I actually liked this movie and thought it worked much better than 1.11. Assuming that people have seen 1.11 before hand (and really, it's a series, you watch a series in order) the world building is mostly out of the way which helps, the pacing felt a bit better, and the characters are starting to develop differently from the tv series and I really liked that. I wasn't sure how much of the film was original and how much of it was based on the tv series but I think that at least 50% of it was new material, I'm actually excited now to see if the third film has any stuff from the tv series. And that's the big thing, after the first film I probably wouldn't have tried the second if I didn't have it on hand already, but now I actually care about what the next two movies are going to do.
The Bad: As a heads up, make sure to watch past the credits for the actual ending, otherwise the ending doesn't really work. And, similar to the previous review, this film in no way, shape, or form stands on it's own as a movie which I do consider a failing since movies are supposed to do that, even if they are in a series (if it was an OVA instead I would be a bit more lenient since those are a different case). And I am going to be that strict on it also because it's been at least two years since this movie came out in Japan and the third film still is not out yet, it's not even like Lord of the Rings where at least there was a new film each year and there's still two more films here. Quite honestly I'm not sure what could've been done to make these films more like movies but it still does bother me that they're being released so far apart yet you really need to see all the films for the story to work.
The Audio: Something weird I did notice was that with the first film I didn't need to adjust the volume much at all during the movie but here I really had to turn it up at points (like for the first scene or two) and had to adjust it more later on. I have no idea if that's a problem inherent to the film or caused by something on my end but it did bug me some. Other than that, I continued to watch the English dub which continued to be fine (although for some reason I thought Mari sounded more "sterotypical anime girl"-ish than any of the other characters) and I still didn't notice the background music as much (well, except for the "inappropriately place on purpose" children's choir part).
The Visuals: While I didn't notice much of a difference between this film (on BR) and the previous one (on a DVD, although played through the same BR player) it still certainly looked stunning the entire way through, quite a difference from the original show which started running out of money by the end I've heard. There's not much new to say here, it's hardly like the art styles changed and like I said, the first film already looked really good, so hopefully it will suffice that I have no complaints in this department at all.
I have to admit I'm torn now, originally I thought this would be where my experiments with Eva would end but now I guess I'll see if Netflix gets 3.33 when it gets to the US (in a year and a half at the earliest is my best guess) or if it shows up in a theater near me and see where the story continues to go.
Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance
Summary: As the angels continue to invade Earth, Nerv gets a few reinforcements in the form of German Eva pilot Asuka and a former colleague of Misato whose position within the group seems unclear, Kaji. Asuka, like Rei and Shinji, has her own issues but slowly the three of them start to grow and develop, just in time for a truly catastrophic series of events that threaten to cripple Nerv for good.
The Good: Oh wow, I actually liked this movie and thought it worked much better than 1.11. Assuming that people have seen 1.11 before hand (and really, it's a series, you watch a series in order) the world building is mostly out of the way which helps, the pacing felt a bit better, and the characters are starting to develop differently from the tv series and I really liked that. I wasn't sure how much of the film was original and how much of it was based on the tv series but I think that at least 50% of it was new material, I'm actually excited now to see if the third film has any stuff from the tv series. And that's the big thing, after the first film I probably wouldn't have tried the second if I didn't have it on hand already, but now I actually care about what the next two movies are going to do.
The Bad: As a heads up, make sure to watch past the credits for the actual ending, otherwise the ending doesn't really work. And, similar to the previous review, this film in no way, shape, or form stands on it's own as a movie which I do consider a failing since movies are supposed to do that, even if they are in a series (if it was an OVA instead I would be a bit more lenient since those are a different case). And I am going to be that strict on it also because it's been at least two years since this movie came out in Japan and the third film still is not out yet, it's not even like Lord of the Rings where at least there was a new film each year and there's still two more films here. Quite honestly I'm not sure what could've been done to make these films more like movies but it still does bother me that they're being released so far apart yet you really need to see all the films for the story to work.
The Audio: Something weird I did notice was that with the first film I didn't need to adjust the volume much at all during the movie but here I really had to turn it up at points (like for the first scene or two) and had to adjust it more later on. I have no idea if that's a problem inherent to the film or caused by something on my end but it did bug me some. Other than that, I continued to watch the English dub which continued to be fine (although for some reason I thought Mari sounded more "sterotypical anime girl"-ish than any of the other characters) and I still didn't notice the background music as much (well, except for the "inappropriately place on purpose" children's choir part).
The Visuals: While I didn't notice much of a difference between this film (on BR) and the previous one (on a DVD, although played through the same BR player) it still certainly looked stunning the entire way through, quite a difference from the original show which started running out of money by the end I've heard. There's not much new to say here, it's hardly like the art styles changed and like I said, the first film already looked really good, so hopefully it will suffice that I have no complaints in this department at all.
I have to admit I'm torn now, originally I thought this would be where my experiments with Eva would end but now I guess I'll see if Netflix gets 3.33 when it gets to the US (in a year and a half at the earliest is my best guess) or if it shows up in a theater near me and see where the story continues to go.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Move Review: Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone
So, last summer (thanks to the local college library) I was finally able to see Neon Genesis Evangelion and, well, I didn't really like it. I seem to fall into the group of people that prefer RahXephon and Eureka Seven when it comes to big mecha stories and I'm okay with that. So why watch the rebuild films? Well, actually I already had a copy of the second film (which I'll explain more when I actually get to that one) and the rebuild films have apparently done some parts of the series very differently so I was curious that perhaps a slightly less "emo" Eva would be more to my tastes. The first film only covers the first six episodes so there's nothing new here yet but does it at least do a good job of introducing the series and can it stand on it's own?
Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone
Summary: 15 years after the Second Impact, where an object from space hit Antarctica hard enough to tilt the Earth's axis and the resulting disaster kills half of the people on Earth, Shinji Ikari has been called by his father to his workplace, the mysterious organization called Nerv which seems to exist outside the control of any governmental agency. There he learns that there are strange aliens, called angels, attacking Earth and for some reason (as of yet unexplained) he's one of the few people who can pilot the gigantic mechas called Evas and fight off the angels. And thus the fate of the Earth rest in the hands of this mentally unstable teenaged boy and in the hands of quiet, mysterious girl named Rei who is almost as odd as the angels themselves.
The Good: The one big difference from the tv series I noticed was Misato showing Shinji the real reason Nerv exists which I thought was an interesting choice and that should certainly effect Shinji later on. Other than that the movie is a straightforward adaptation of the first six episodes and, like at this point in the original story, I don't mind Shinji and still find Rei confusing but not so much that I couldn't enjoy the movie. I had actually forgotten how much I liked Misato in the early part of the story (I just didn't like any of the characters by the end of the tv series, not just her in particular) and I'm really curious to see how they change differently in this version.
The Bad: My brother was half watching this movie along with me and, since he normally asks a lot of questions about movies, I was trying to figure out how to explain various parts of the movie and found that it's really hard to do and nigh impossible with just the information given in this movie. Sure you can see that Shinji has problems with his father and people can infer that he has abandonment issues but the movie didn't address why those exist. The movie did say why the angels are targeting Nerv all the time but other than that there was barely any world building and the setting should be important to every story. Heck, that summary I posted makes use of one or two details that I learned in the tv series, they never say what the second impact actually was and I think by this point it's clear that this movie really isn't a good introduction to the franchise if you don't want your viewers to be lost. Perhaps once the series is over I'll have a different opinion on it, I certainly hope so in any case, but this movie cannot stand completely on it's own and that's not a good thing.
The Audio: This time around I decided to listen to the English dub (which I believe brings back the original dub cast for almost, if not all, of the roles) and it was a very solid dub. I had heard one or two clips of Spike Spencer's Shinji before which sounded iffy but here he certainly sounds like a 14 year old boy and the rest of the cast also sounds appropriate for their roles. There were one or two spots for many of the characters were they sounded a bit odd, not surprising considering how many years it's been since the original show was dubbed, but I have no problems with recommending the English dub.
The Visuals: I had the pleasure of watching the DVD version of this on our new HD tv where it looked amazingly good (I don't believe our accompanying new blu-ray player upscales DVDs but I could be wrong and that could've contributed). As with the rest of the story, there was barely anything new on screen but what was there looked good. There was some CGI used for the angels but it was well done, the lines on everything were crisp and the animation all looked fine. Since I'm already familiar with what the story should look like there's not really much to say except that it was a very good update in that area.
So, as the story currently stands, you can't watch just the first film and expect a comprehensible story that will stand on it's own which is a bit of a problem. Even though it's a series of movies, movies are supposed to be able to stand and make sense on their own (which I think is doubly important given how long the gap between some of the movies has been, do they even have a release date for the third one yet?). As mentioned earlier I already have a copy of the second film so I'll be checking that out but if it wasn't for that I wouldn't feel terribly motivated to continue on.
Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone
Summary: 15 years after the Second Impact, where an object from space hit Antarctica hard enough to tilt the Earth's axis and the resulting disaster kills half of the people on Earth, Shinji Ikari has been called by his father to his workplace, the mysterious organization called Nerv which seems to exist outside the control of any governmental agency. There he learns that there are strange aliens, called angels, attacking Earth and for some reason (as of yet unexplained) he's one of the few people who can pilot the gigantic mechas called Evas and fight off the angels. And thus the fate of the Earth rest in the hands of this mentally unstable teenaged boy and in the hands of quiet, mysterious girl named Rei who is almost as odd as the angels themselves.
The Good: The one big difference from the tv series I noticed was Misato showing Shinji the real reason Nerv exists which I thought was an interesting choice and that should certainly effect Shinji later on. Other than that the movie is a straightforward adaptation of the first six episodes and, like at this point in the original story, I don't mind Shinji and still find Rei confusing but not so much that I couldn't enjoy the movie. I had actually forgotten how much I liked Misato in the early part of the story (I just didn't like any of the characters by the end of the tv series, not just her in particular) and I'm really curious to see how they change differently in this version.
The Bad: My brother was half watching this movie along with me and, since he normally asks a lot of questions about movies, I was trying to figure out how to explain various parts of the movie and found that it's really hard to do and nigh impossible with just the information given in this movie. Sure you can see that Shinji has problems with his father and people can infer that he has abandonment issues but the movie didn't address why those exist. The movie did say why the angels are targeting Nerv all the time but other than that there was barely any world building and the setting should be important to every story. Heck, that summary I posted makes use of one or two details that I learned in the tv series, they never say what the second impact actually was and I think by this point it's clear that this movie really isn't a good introduction to the franchise if you don't want your viewers to be lost. Perhaps once the series is over I'll have a different opinion on it, I certainly hope so in any case, but this movie cannot stand completely on it's own and that's not a good thing.
The Audio: This time around I decided to listen to the English dub (which I believe brings back the original dub cast for almost, if not all, of the roles) and it was a very solid dub. I had heard one or two clips of Spike Spencer's Shinji before which sounded iffy but here he certainly sounds like a 14 year old boy and the rest of the cast also sounds appropriate for their roles. There were one or two spots for many of the characters were they sounded a bit odd, not surprising considering how many years it's been since the original show was dubbed, but I have no problems with recommending the English dub.
The Visuals: I had the pleasure of watching the DVD version of this on our new HD tv where it looked amazingly good (I don't believe our accompanying new blu-ray player upscales DVDs but I could be wrong and that could've contributed). As with the rest of the story, there was barely anything new on screen but what was there looked good. There was some CGI used for the angels but it was well done, the lines on everything were crisp and the animation all looked fine. Since I'm already familiar with what the story should look like there's not really much to say except that it was a very good update in that area.
So, as the story currently stands, you can't watch just the first film and expect a comprehensible story that will stand on it's own which is a bit of a problem. Even though it's a series of movies, movies are supposed to be able to stand and make sense on their own (which I think is doubly important given how long the gap between some of the movies has been, do they even have a release date for the third one yet?). As mentioned earlier I already have a copy of the second film so I'll be checking that out but if it wasn't for that I wouldn't feel terribly motivated to continue on.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Summer 2012 Anime Write-up
Following up last week's continuing spring shows I'm enjoying post it's time for me to talk about all of the new shows I've tried out in the past four days (yes, I've seen all of this in four days, fear for my sanity). As usual there were one or two shows that sounded like they might have been kinda interesting that I didn't get around to watch but might pick up later. I'm trying to be picker with what I watch so I have more time to catch up with older series and, since summer is one of the "weaker" anime seasons, I might actually have some luck with that this time around! So I'm just going to go and make one post for all the shows, sorry to anyone whose using an RSS reader since I probably just killed your feed.
Arcana Famigila (La Storia della Arcana Famigila)
The Premise: On a small island ruled by the local mafia, the head of the family is retiring and has ordered all members who have made a contract with the tarot (as in tarot cards) to participate in a fighting tournament to determine the next head and marry his daughter. His daughter is not happy about this and decides to fight as well.
Another anime adaptation of an otome game and I was looking forward to this one based on the original artwork, which was of course made rather generic looking for the anime (I know I know, it's easier to animate, still doesn't make me less sad about it). As for the rest of the show, that wasn't a very good opening episode, I'm hard pressed to think of a single well-done part of the episode. Everything felt clunky and wooden, all the characters felt like walking stereotypes (yes they haven't had character development yet but plenty of other shows manage better than this in their first episode), and the info dumps seemed rather pointless. Between all of that and news that the show is probably going for a romantic route I wouldn't like* I've dropped this show and am starting to lose faith that good, interesting reverse harems show exist.
Arcana Famigila is streaming on Crunchyroll and has been licensed by Section 23.
Campione!
The Premise: Japanese tourist Goudo goes to Japan to return an artifact owned by his grandfather, kills a god and receives the title (and powers) of Godslayer.
Honestly I tried out this show just because the idea of a "Godslayer" amused me and I certainly enjoy flashy action shows, provided that they have a plot that holds together. At this point it's a bit hard to tell if Campione has that however, the first episode was paced much to fast (according to fans of the original novel they compressed an entire light novel, which run about 200-ish pages in my experience, into one episode) and instead of starting out in media res (as the first novel does, I read some of that and it worked alright there) they also chose to adapt the third novel, which was a flashback to how Godou got his powers. I can understand why they did this part first and fast but the episode could have been much sleeker and really makes me worried how the rest of the series will be paced. For the moment I'm giving it another few episodes but I'm much less optimistic about it now.
Campione! is also streaming on Crunchyroll and has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks (another name for Section 23).
Humanity Has Declined (Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita)
The Premise: In the far off future the world may look bright and cheery but the human population has dropped precariously and many places struggle with things such as food shortages. Our protagonist, let's called her Mediator, is from the UN and her job is to mediate between humans and faeries, tiny, perpetually smiling creatures who now have a larger population and more advanced technology than humans.
Oh where to begin with this show, if you want weird, black comedy this is the show of the season, I'm torn between thinking the show is too strange and over the top and laughing at the worst of the jokes. All of the comedy involves some form of absurdism, dead-panning on the part of at least one character, and for good measure some of them involve puns as well (oh kami....). At this point I'm kinda torn about continuing the show or not, at times I find it too strange but I am enjoying it and it's only one cour so for the time being I'll continue following it.
HhD is streaming on Crunchyroll and has also been licensed by Sentai/23.
Lagrange- The Flower of Rin-ne (season two)
The Premise: Continuing about a year from where the first part ended, Madoka has never quite recovered from making the closest friends she's ever had, Lan and Muginami, to have them leave her, go to fight in opposite sides in a war, and her own abilities to pilot the mysterious Vox Aura have vanished as well. But all of a sudden Lan comes back into her life with Muginami in hot pursuit, although it seems like both of them want Madoka for their side's own, manipulative purposes, all the while Madoka's cousin attempts to puzzle out just what happened all those thousands of years ago to spark the legend surrounding the Flower of Rin-ne.
I am quite happy this show is back since it developed into a great show last winter that took a number of old, mostly mech, tropes and just slightly subverted or played with them. By now Madoka is broken for sure (she probably wasn't in the best mental state when the whole show started but by now she really doesn't seem to be in a good place), the politics seem to have gotten a bit more complicated, and Earth is in serious trouble this time when two of it's three Voxes, the only hope they have in case either of the "alien" sides decide to fight, are now possibly against them and the last is out of commission. While I don't like the new ED and miss the old OP the rest of the show is firing on all cylinders so far and, while I don't expect the show to end in tragedy, I am curious to see how much of a happy ending it can produce and what the characters have to do to work for it.
Lagrange is licensed by Viz media and can be found streaming for US audiences on Hulu.
Moyashimon Returns
The Premise: Not more than a month after the first season ended in-universe, the gang returns for more hijinks involving fermentation, college life, and microbes with microbe seeing Sawaki as the main character.
Well, if you've seen the first season you know what to expect and if you'll enjoy it, if you haven't you really need to start at the beginning of the show. Actually, the most note-worthy thing about this first episode (which, like many other shows, had weak pacing which I'm hoping will get better) was that the character designer was different this time around which resulted in some of the characters looking radically different, stolen from RandomC (here's the comparison for Sawaki as well, ultimately all the characters look much less detailed this time around). Between those two things it didn't make for the strongest first episode but I do like the series so I'll obviously be sticking around.
Moyashimon Returns has not been licensed/simulcast by anyone so fansubs are the way to go for this show (unless you know enough Japanese to keep up with a discussion on microbiology and fermentation that is).
Natsuyuki Rendezous
The Premise: Hazuki, a man in his 20s, has a crush on the owner of a local flower shop and gets hired on as part time help after several months of stopping by nearly every night to buy flowers. He's trying to grow closer to her when he discovers that not only is she a widower but he is the only person who can see the ghost of her husband who is constantly nearby.
The second noitaminA show of the season and I enjoyed the first episode much more than I expected it to. It was a paced quickly but perfectly, no scene felt too short or too long and, considering that the original manga is only four volumes long (and completed!), I think this show might fit perfectly into the 11/12 episode constraint of the timeslot. I'll need another episode or two to really like the characters but already they've started being fleshed out and I also really like the look of this show (I know everyone is talking about HhD and SAO but I really liked the use of color here and the character designs were nice and distinctive). The show is a slice of life romance, not my favorite combination of genres, but hopefully with older characters I'll enjoy it.
The show is both streaming on crunchyroll and has been nabbed by Sentai (proving that they don't really care what a show is as long as it stays still long enough for them to grab it).
Sword Art Online
The Premise: The year is 2022 and full immersion virtual reality video games have finally arrived and the creator of the technology (a helmet like apparatus) has created his own game called Sword Art Online and limited the sales to just 10,000 volumes. But after the beta has ended and all the new players have logged in they discover that there is absolutely no way to get out of the game, unless as a collective group they beat all 100 levels of the game without dying since death in the game means death in the real world too.
Probably the most hyped and anticipated anime of the summer season, written by the same author who wrote the Accel World light novels^ I seem to be in the minority here by finding the pacing a bit rough. Funny enough it's similar to the problems I had with Campione!'s first episode, I can see why they had so much happen in one episode but felt like a few things could've been cut down (do we really need to know so much about how the mechanics of a game that we can never play work?). Also unlike most people it seems (well, unlike most non-light novel readers anyway) I actually didn't have any problems with the "there is no way out of SAO except my way" part, I'll admit that I've read so much background on the show that I've forgotten exactly what was outlined in the episode (and hopefully the parts that were left out of the first episode will be addressed soon) but they went to such extremes to show how there really is no way to get out of the game internally or externally^^ that I have no problems with the set-up. So with all of that out of the way hopefully the pacing will smooth itself out a bit and make for an interesting ride.
While not licensed, people are speculating that Aniplex plans to release this series themselves (oh god those prices) the show is legally streaming on crunchyroll.
Tari Tari
The Premise: After screwing up in her club's musical performance last year, Konatsu isn't allowed to sing this year. To get around this she finds four other classmates to join her club so that she can sing as part of her new club.
I feel so odd for saying this but I do like slice-of-life, there just happens to be more than one kind of sol and this isn't the kind I like. The characters, even the Austrian exchange student (do the Japanese really think the travel guides are written so poorly?), are just too mundane to be interesting and sadly the characters look just enough alike that I started confusing some of the female characters, something that I do rarely. The show looks pretty, really pretty and makes me wish that I liked the show more, but it just bored me and I see no reason to continue further with it.
Tari Tari is streaming on crunchyroll and has been added to Section 23's ever-growing horde of anime titles.
UtaKoi (Choyaku Hyakunin Isshu: Uta Koi)
The Premise: A "liberal interpretation" of the hundred poems used in games such as karuta, each episode focuses on one or two of the poems, all of which are love poems, and speculates on how they came to be.
I'll admit it, I wouldn't have looked twice at this series if it wasn't for Chihayafuru and I imagine most wouldn't have either (which makes this either great planning or the luckiest coincidence ever for the show). Love stories on their own generally aren't my cup of tea but, due to their short nature and the visuals of the show (which indulges in the non-moving plaid technique and adds a thick line around all of the character which produces an effect I rather like) I'm hooked. I'll admit the animation isn't very high quality (and considering I normally can't tell that's a bad sign) and the ending song is the strangest pairing I've ever found for an anime (the opening song is hit or miss it seems, the singer certainly could be less nasally but the song has charmed me) but so far I've had fun with this show and at one season I can spare the time to watch some more.
UtaKoi is streaming on crunchyroll.
There's an interesting bit of variety for me this time around, including my continuing shows I'm watching two mech shows, one or two more with strong sci-fi elements, three action heavy shows, two romance heavy shows, a few that are half slice of life half something else, a mystery show, and two shows where one of their genres is "just plain weird." It's a nice mix, and I'm watching some high fantasy on the side to balance out the sci-fi, so here's to a summer with a few unexpected gems and hopes that none of these shows crashes and burns!
*the only reason I'm squicked out is because it appears they are going to pair up Felicitá with either her cousin or her nephew, which I do recall noticing in the preview material but ignored. Actually, I agree with this poster on what the best route would be since that would totally be the route I'd go for in the game (well, if there wasn't an option for dating everyone, if it's a dating game I demand the option to date as many people as I want!)
^all the author has given a no-comment comment on whether or not the two series are related thus far (from what I can tell there is an extra story somewhere where the leads from the two series have a duel, somehow) although I'm inclined to think that they are alternate universes. Honestly I just can't believe that the NerveGear technology from SAO had progressed so far in just eight years (it's only about six or nine month's old at the start of SAO) that people were putting the internet connectors onto babies (which is one of the rules for brain burst in Accel World and the oldest brain bursters would have been born around 2030). Someone could probably make a very good argument to convince me otherwise but for the moment I'm sticking to my position.
^^unplug them? Has a battery. Battery is unconnected too long? Explodes. Try to disconnect battery? Same idea. Hack the servers? Government tries, fails, can only monitor from the outside. Take helmet off? Explodes. People die of starvation? Creator left a two hour window and info for all players for the government to move everyone to hospitals. Shouldn't safety concerns have been raised? Dude created SAO AND Nervegear and was the first to completely take advantage of all of it. Plus, see that this platform is less than a year old and has a battery that likes to explode when people mess with it, might not have been reverse engineered yet (I will also say that the original web novels for this were in 2002, before everyone and their mom started jailbreaking iPhones and the like, it was written in a slightly different culture). I'm also betting on the theory that he did almost everything on his own and that the company doesn't really exist so there was no one to stop him.
Arcana Famigila (La Storia della Arcana Famigila)
The Premise: On a small island ruled by the local mafia, the head of the family is retiring and has ordered all members who have made a contract with the tarot (as in tarot cards) to participate in a fighting tournament to determine the next head and marry his daughter. His daughter is not happy about this and decides to fight as well.
Another anime adaptation of an otome game and I was looking forward to this one based on the original artwork, which was of course made rather generic looking for the anime (I know I know, it's easier to animate, still doesn't make me less sad about it). As for the rest of the show, that wasn't a very good opening episode, I'm hard pressed to think of a single well-done part of the episode. Everything felt clunky and wooden, all the characters felt like walking stereotypes (yes they haven't had character development yet but plenty of other shows manage better than this in their first episode), and the info dumps seemed rather pointless. Between all of that and news that the show is probably going for a romantic route I wouldn't like* I've dropped this show and am starting to lose faith that good, interesting reverse harems show exist.
Arcana Famigila is streaming on Crunchyroll and has been licensed by Section 23.
Campione!
The Premise: Japanese tourist Goudo goes to Japan to return an artifact owned by his grandfather, kills a god and receives the title (and powers) of Godslayer.
Honestly I tried out this show just because the idea of a "Godslayer" amused me and I certainly enjoy flashy action shows, provided that they have a plot that holds together. At this point it's a bit hard to tell if Campione has that however, the first episode was paced much to fast (according to fans of the original novel they compressed an entire light novel, which run about 200-ish pages in my experience, into one episode) and instead of starting out in media res (as the first novel does, I read some of that and it worked alright there) they also chose to adapt the third novel, which was a flashback to how Godou got his powers. I can understand why they did this part first and fast but the episode could have been much sleeker and really makes me worried how the rest of the series will be paced. For the moment I'm giving it another few episodes but I'm much less optimistic about it now.
Campione! is also streaming on Crunchyroll and has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks (another name for Section 23).
Humanity Has Declined (Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita)
The Premise: In the far off future the world may look bright and cheery but the human population has dropped precariously and many places struggle with things such as food shortages. Our protagonist, let's called her Mediator, is from the UN and her job is to mediate between humans and faeries, tiny, perpetually smiling creatures who now have a larger population and more advanced technology than humans.
Oh where to begin with this show, if you want weird, black comedy this is the show of the season, I'm torn between thinking the show is too strange and over the top and laughing at the worst of the jokes. All of the comedy involves some form of absurdism, dead-panning on the part of at least one character, and for good measure some of them involve puns as well (oh kami....). At this point I'm kinda torn about continuing the show or not, at times I find it too strange but I am enjoying it and it's only one cour so for the time being I'll continue following it.
HhD is streaming on Crunchyroll and has also been licensed by Sentai/23.
Lagrange- The Flower of Rin-ne (season two)
The Premise: Continuing about a year from where the first part ended, Madoka has never quite recovered from making the closest friends she's ever had, Lan and Muginami, to have them leave her, go to fight in opposite sides in a war, and her own abilities to pilot the mysterious Vox Aura have vanished as well. But all of a sudden Lan comes back into her life with Muginami in hot pursuit, although it seems like both of them want Madoka for their side's own, manipulative purposes, all the while Madoka's cousin attempts to puzzle out just what happened all those thousands of years ago to spark the legend surrounding the Flower of Rin-ne.
I am quite happy this show is back since it developed into a great show last winter that took a number of old, mostly mech, tropes and just slightly subverted or played with them. By now Madoka is broken for sure (she probably wasn't in the best mental state when the whole show started but by now she really doesn't seem to be in a good place), the politics seem to have gotten a bit more complicated, and Earth is in serious trouble this time when two of it's three Voxes, the only hope they have in case either of the "alien" sides decide to fight, are now possibly against them and the last is out of commission. While I don't like the new ED and miss the old OP the rest of the show is firing on all cylinders so far and, while I don't expect the show to end in tragedy, I am curious to see how much of a happy ending it can produce and what the characters have to do to work for it.
Lagrange is licensed by Viz media and can be found streaming for US audiences on Hulu.
Moyashimon Returns
The Premise: Not more than a month after the first season ended in-universe, the gang returns for more hijinks involving fermentation, college life, and microbes with microbe seeing Sawaki as the main character.
Well, if you've seen the first season you know what to expect and if you'll enjoy it, if you haven't you really need to start at the beginning of the show. Actually, the most note-worthy thing about this first episode (which, like many other shows, had weak pacing which I'm hoping will get better) was that the character designer was different this time around which resulted in some of the characters looking radically different, stolen from RandomC (here's the comparison for Sawaki as well, ultimately all the characters look much less detailed this time around). Between those two things it didn't make for the strongest first episode but I do like the series so I'll obviously be sticking around.
Moyashimon Returns has not been licensed/simulcast by anyone so fansubs are the way to go for this show (unless you know enough Japanese to keep up with a discussion on microbiology and fermentation that is).
Natsuyuki Rendezous
The Premise: Hazuki, a man in his 20s, has a crush on the owner of a local flower shop and gets hired on as part time help after several months of stopping by nearly every night to buy flowers. He's trying to grow closer to her when he discovers that not only is she a widower but he is the only person who can see the ghost of her husband who is constantly nearby.
The second noitaminA show of the season and I enjoyed the first episode much more than I expected it to. It was a paced quickly but perfectly, no scene felt too short or too long and, considering that the original manga is only four volumes long (and completed!), I think this show might fit perfectly into the 11/12 episode constraint of the timeslot. I'll need another episode or two to really like the characters but already they've started being fleshed out and I also really like the look of this show (I know everyone is talking about HhD and SAO but I really liked the use of color here and the character designs were nice and distinctive). The show is a slice of life romance, not my favorite combination of genres, but hopefully with older characters I'll enjoy it.
The show is both streaming on crunchyroll and has been nabbed by Sentai (proving that they don't really care what a show is as long as it stays still long enough for them to grab it).
Sword Art Online
The Premise: The year is 2022 and full immersion virtual reality video games have finally arrived and the creator of the technology (a helmet like apparatus) has created his own game called Sword Art Online and limited the sales to just 10,000 volumes. But after the beta has ended and all the new players have logged in they discover that there is absolutely no way to get out of the game, unless as a collective group they beat all 100 levels of the game without dying since death in the game means death in the real world too.
Probably the most hyped and anticipated anime of the summer season, written by the same author who wrote the Accel World light novels^ I seem to be in the minority here by finding the pacing a bit rough. Funny enough it's similar to the problems I had with Campione!'s first episode, I can see why they had so much happen in one episode but felt like a few things could've been cut down (do we really need to know so much about how the mechanics of a game that we can never play work?). Also unlike most people it seems (well, unlike most non-light novel readers anyway) I actually didn't have any problems with the "there is no way out of SAO except my way" part, I'll admit that I've read so much background on the show that I've forgotten exactly what was outlined in the episode (and hopefully the parts that were left out of the first episode will be addressed soon) but they went to such extremes to show how there really is no way to get out of the game internally or externally^^ that I have no problems with the set-up. So with all of that out of the way hopefully the pacing will smooth itself out a bit and make for an interesting ride.
While not licensed, people are speculating that Aniplex plans to release this series themselves (oh god those prices) the show is legally streaming on crunchyroll.
Tari Tari
The Premise: After screwing up in her club's musical performance last year, Konatsu isn't allowed to sing this year. To get around this she finds four other classmates to join her club so that she can sing as part of her new club.
I feel so odd for saying this but I do like slice-of-life, there just happens to be more than one kind of sol and this isn't the kind I like. The characters, even the Austrian exchange student (do the Japanese really think the travel guides are written so poorly?), are just too mundane to be interesting and sadly the characters look just enough alike that I started confusing some of the female characters, something that I do rarely. The show looks pretty, really pretty and makes me wish that I liked the show more, but it just bored me and I see no reason to continue further with it.
Tari Tari is streaming on crunchyroll and has been added to Section 23's ever-growing horde of anime titles.
UtaKoi (Choyaku Hyakunin Isshu: Uta Koi)
The Premise: A "liberal interpretation" of the hundred poems used in games such as karuta, each episode focuses on one or two of the poems, all of which are love poems, and speculates on how they came to be.
I'll admit it, I wouldn't have looked twice at this series if it wasn't for Chihayafuru and I imagine most wouldn't have either (which makes this either great planning or the luckiest coincidence ever for the show). Love stories on their own generally aren't my cup of tea but, due to their short nature and the visuals of the show (which indulges in the non-moving plaid technique and adds a thick line around all of the character which produces an effect I rather like) I'm hooked. I'll admit the animation isn't very high quality (and considering I normally can't tell that's a bad sign) and the ending song is the strangest pairing I've ever found for an anime (the opening song is hit or miss it seems, the singer certainly could be less nasally but the song has charmed me) but so far I've had fun with this show and at one season I can spare the time to watch some more.
UtaKoi is streaming on crunchyroll.
There's an interesting bit of variety for me this time around, including my continuing shows I'm watching two mech shows, one or two more with strong sci-fi elements, three action heavy shows, two romance heavy shows, a few that are half slice of life half something else, a mystery show, and two shows where one of their genres is "just plain weird." It's a nice mix, and I'm watching some high fantasy on the side to balance out the sci-fi, so here's to a summer with a few unexpected gems and hopes that none of these shows crashes and burns!
*the only reason I'm squicked out is because it appears they are going to pair up Felicitá with either her cousin or her nephew, which I do recall noticing in the preview material but ignored. Actually, I agree with this poster on what the best route would be since that would totally be the route I'd go for in the game (well, if there wasn't an option for dating everyone, if it's a dating game I demand the option to date as many people as I want!)
^all the author has given a no-comment comment on whether or not the two series are related thus far (from what I can tell there is an extra story somewhere where the leads from the two series have a duel, somehow) although I'm inclined to think that they are alternate universes. Honestly I just can't believe that the NerveGear technology from SAO had progressed so far in just eight years (it's only about six or nine month's old at the start of SAO) that people were putting the internet connectors onto babies (which is one of the rules for brain burst in Accel World and the oldest brain bursters would have been born around 2030). Someone could probably make a very good argument to convince me otherwise but for the moment I'm sticking to my position.
^^unplug them? Has a battery. Battery is unconnected too long? Explodes. Try to disconnect battery? Same idea. Hack the servers? Government tries, fails, can only monitor from the outside. Take helmet off? Explodes. People die of starvation? Creator left a two hour window and info for all players for the government to move everyone to hospitals. Shouldn't safety concerns have been raised? Dude created SAO AND Nervegear and was the first to completely take advantage of all of it. Plus, see that this platform is less than a year old and has a battery that likes to explode when people mess with it, might not have been reverse engineered yet (I will also say that the original web novels for this were in 2002, before everyone and their mom started jailbreaking iPhones and the like, it was written in a slightly different culture). I'm also betting on the theory that he did almost everything on his own and that the company doesn't really exist so there was no one to stop him.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Anime Review: Aquarion Evol
Ack, my schedule yesterday was a bit thrown off so it wasn't until long after I went to bed that I realized I had completely forgotten to write this post. I've been in a bit of a blogging slump lately so I've decided that I'm going to take next week off to see if that helps (since this is hardly the first post I've forgotten to write recently).
In any case, Aquarion Evol! I started watching this with a friend to cheer them up one day without having seen the first show but after a bit I decided to watch the first show as well to understand the back story better which I decided not to review since I have complicated feelings on it. In short, the ending was strong and I liked the premise (darker than I was expecting), but it had too many comedy episodes which made it seem like they had forgotten the premise which ultimately didn't mess well and made the series feel awkward. However, Evol does a very good job summarizing the important parts of the original series so you don't have to watch it to watch Evol (if you do so desire however, Funimation has licensed it for Region 1 and it can be found on Hulu). So, how does it's sequel, because that's what it is (the original series even has To Be Continued after the last episode), fare in comparison? Well, again it's a bit complicated.
Aquarion Evol
In any case, Aquarion Evol! I started watching this with a friend to cheer them up one day without having seen the first show but after a bit I decided to watch the first show as well to understand the back story better which I decided not to review since I have complicated feelings on it. In short, the ending was strong and I liked the premise (darker than I was expecting), but it had too many comedy episodes which made it seem like they had forgotten the premise which ultimately didn't mess well and made the series feel awkward. However, Evol does a very good job summarizing the important parts of the original series so you don't have to watch it to watch Evol (if you do so desire however, Funimation has licensed it for Region 1 and it can be found on Hulu). So, how does it's sequel, because that's what it is (the original series even has To Be Continued after the last episode), fare in comparison? Well, again it's a bit complicated.
Aquarion Evol
Summary: 12,000 years after the events of Genesis of Aquarion (and 24,000 years after the war between angels and humans that started everything) Earth is facing a very different kind of threat, people from another world in another dimension who have come to try and steal away women in hopes of finding their "true eve." Not that this concerns Amata, a boy with the odd power of being able to fly whenever he has strong emotions (via wings on his feet), and Mikono, the untalented sister of Neo-Deva's most talented aquarion pilots. But fate has brought these two together and to Neo-Deva to fight and perhaps fate has even more in store for them.
The Good: Quite honestly I started watching the show because the premise of "teens ride in mechs that combine in a three-way orgasm" sounded utterly amusing (hell, I always giggled when the characters in Star Driver started yelling about how libido affected their piloting abilities) and no that's not an exaggeration or simplification of the show, that is literally what happens. Unexpectedly, with a show that has almost-sex as a major part, there's a lot of romance and I ended up liking a lot of the side characters and their romances more than I expected. It's a fun show most of the time for it's over the top and regular random moments (and believe me, Fudo is never as strange as he was in the original here) never failed to have me laughing, although I don't think all of those moments were meant to be funny.
The Bad: Ultimately the stakes never felt as high here as they did in the first show, even when the story was at it's climax it felt forced and silly. And speaking of the first series, the "twist" regarding this round of reincarnations (since there was a twist in the first series that meant there had to be one here as well) makes very little sense considering the first series and produced some weird continuity problems*. Finally, while Mikono and Zessica (another female character) both had their good moments neither of them were as well fleshed out as they could be which bothered me. It's true that the guys weren't much better but both of the girls had a lot more potential to be deeper, more interesting characters so this was rather unfortunate (as was the choice in Zessica's outfit, I try not to get too annoyed by what female characters wear, otherwise I would be annoyed all day long, but her second outfit was facepalm worthy dumb).
The Audio: Yoko Kanno returns to work on the music (and either one or both of the openings, at a glance it seems like ANN doesn't specify which) and the music is quite fun. It's big, often over the top, and blood-pumping which fits with the show very well. Both of the ending songs are a bit sadder but tragedy is part of the story as well so in the end they both fit well (although it took me some time to get used to the second ed). The music was some of the most fun parts of the show and, while I don't feel the need to buy the show on DVD, I would happily buy the soundtrack regardless.
The Visuals: Evol has different character designers from the original series (which is immediately obvious during the flashback scenes) and overall I liked how this series looked more than the original. Sadly this show isn't very visually distinctive, there's no stylistic flair in the designs, coloring, backgrounds, etc. and even the mechas don't look so distinctive that someone unfamiliar with the genre would be able to recognize them (compare to say the mechs from Gundam or Neon Genesis Evangelion which are immediately recognized by most anime fans). So, while the show is pretty, it's not something that will stick in most people's minds a few years after the fact.
In the end it was a fun show but not an especially good one. I was entertained, I had fun watching this is with my friend, and in that way the show served it's purpose, but considering some of the problems it had I just can't call it a good show despite those reasons. The show is not licensed in any way, shape, or form in the US but has been solicited for an Australian DVD release if people really want to buy it and don't want to pay Japanese DVD prices.
*since I need to get specific here, spoilers for Genesis and Evol: in the first series it's implied that Fudo Gen is 12,000 years old and that he was the third pilot of the original Aquarion which I thought was a neat idea (the OVA/movie version of Genesis introduced a new character for that but that's an alternate continuity). In Evol however it's revealed that he is Apollonius, the angel who fell in love with a woman and jilted his lover (Tohma/Mikage) and started the whole mess which wasn't implied at all in either series and something like that NEEDS foreshadowing. Also, that means that Apollo (and by dint his reincarnation in Evol) was not the reincarnation of Apollonius but in fact a dog which had about three minutes of screen time in the original (which I only noticed because I saw fan theories that Rena, who either is Crea or reincarnated into her for Evol, was that dog reincarnated 12,000 years later). The only thing it does is explain why Touma is still angry and reincarnated (since at the end of the original series he seems to have accepted his fate and not be mad at Apollonius anymore) but I'm pretty sure the story could have figured out a way to work without him.
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