Anime Review: Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash

Okay, let's try this again, life isn't any less crazy but not blogging drives me crazier. Although I'm a little alarmed that I'm running out of anime to review faster than I expected. Guess that shows that I'm really watching fewer shows this year....

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash (Hai To Gensou No Grimgar)

Manga Review: Assassination Classroom

I may be jumping the gun a little bit here considering that the anime isn’t over yet (although it is ending in just two months) and the manga won’t be fully released in the US for another 2-ish years if Viz Media’s (print) publishing schedule holds steady (they've already run the final chapters in WSJ) but frankly having a review out earlier is better than later. Honestly I wasn’t even sure I would be able to finish the manga as it concluded serialization but as I went poking around online to see where the anime had adapted up to I was hit with manga spoilers everywhere and this was after the series two biggest twists.
Dammit fandom spaces.
So at that point it seemed like the only thing to do was to ricochet through a manga that the American Shounen Jump editors themselves said had no chance of being licensed here and talk once again (since I’ve highlighted AssClass before) about why the series isn’t nearly as dark as you would expect from the title.

Assassination Classroom (Ansatsu Kyousetsu) by Yuusei Matsui

Anime Review: Seraph of the End: Battle in Nagoya

With this I am finally caught up with my fall season reviews, wahoo! Straight onto the winter season reviews next week since one show I was watching (a short) has already ended and after that, geeze, maybe I'll have time for a few backlog show reviews too! Hmm, guess that means I'll need to actually finish up a few of them first....

Seraph of the End: Battle in Nagoya

Anime Review: Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works Part Two (2015)

God that is the longest title ever and this is my last review of the spring 2015 anime season! We're right around the halfway mark for the summer 2015 anime season so I know a lot of people have been doing mid-season review posts and I'm going to post mine next week, just wanted to finish what I started first.

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works Part Two (2015)

Anime Review: Garo

Most of the buzz I saw for Studio MAPPA last fall was their unexpectedly good series Rage of Bahamut: Genesis which I found enjoyable and way better than any card game-based series ever has a right to be, but it was there other series that first caught my eye. I've seen bits and pieces of tokusatsu shows before but the hamminess of Japanese live action is a mild turnoff at the very least so it's not a genre I actively seek out. Put it in anime however, which for some reason has that same hamminess much less frequently, and I'm game for trying it out!

Garo

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.

Gundam Build Fighters Try

Manga Review: Magi (volumes one through five)

In case anyone has looked at their title and then double-checked their calendar, yes this week should technically be a Webcomic Wednesday. However, in March all of my Wednesdays will be Webcomic Wednesday and that means if I don't review Magi now I won't get to it until April, nearly four months after I read it. So fret not, webcomics are coming next week and I would now like to talk about a series which was hot stuff in Japan for a while (and may still be) but never quite caught on in the US the way some other shonen series have.

Magi by Shinobu Ohtaka

Comic Review: Battling Boy

Another comic I would have read earlier if my library had let me, although this time it's my own fault since I simply forgot to check earlier to see if they had it, still haven't figured out how my city library buys their comics yet (especially since they have volumes 3-5 of Gundam: The Origin but not one or two, I'm really confused by this one!). I'm also confused how it seemed like I was seeing reviews for the next book, The Rise of Aurora West back at the end of July when it's not even out yet, wonder how soon my library can get that one..... 

Battling Boy by Paul Pope

Anime Review: Chaika the Coffin Princess

And I'm back! It feels a bit weird after that mini hiatus but also because wow we're almost halfway through the summer season of anime and I'm still playing catchup with all of the spring shows. Although this show would have felt odd to review no matter what the time, as people probably remember I was only lukewarm at best about it during the round-UP and only ended up continuing because I needed something to watch during my lunch breaks. I was seeing a lot of praise for it, hence why I choose that show over some other shows to be my catch-up show, but this is one of those cases were I never quite got the hype.

Chaika the Coffin Princess

Anime Review: The Pilot's Love Song

Management here again, a combination of work, a book that I didn't have much to say about, and a stubborn head cold made me realize that it would be best to push back this past week's book review to this Friday instead of putting out something subpar. And the only reason this review is going up is because I already had 95% of it pre-written which hopefully makes up for it! 



I'm not sure why but this title first started popping up on the summer 2013 anime charts and I was rather excited when I saw it, the cover art for the light novel looked rather pretty and the premise sounded like it was high fantasy with an adventure, action, and people hiding secrets, excellent! I learned a bit more about the series as the months went on and had a chance to see The Princess and the Pilot movie at Otakon which was based on a novel by the same author and set in the same world. It's not necessary to see it, there's technically only one crossover character who I hadn't even recognized since they were produced by different studios (another character is name-dropped and the story strongly hints that a third is involved but those references are much easier to pick up on) and this story takes place afterwards (and possibly before and during since P&P took place over three days and this one takes about two years). Regardless, that made me even more excited for the show, even when I realized it was by a different studio and wouldn't have the same budget because hey, I can put up with some less than stellar graphics for a good story.

The Pilot's Love Song (Toaru Hikuushi e no Koi Uta)

Anime Review: Log Horizon

So some people who don't follow me on twitter might be confused to see this title since I said I dropped it last fall and didn't talk about it at all during the winter anime round-UP. What happened was that I has caught up with all my current shows and asked twitter what I should try out next, Witch Craft Works or Log Horizon. They actually had me watch WCW first but I decided after three episodes that even though the through gender flipping of the situation amused me, if this had been your standard "girl has mysterious powers and is defined by equally mysterious boy" I wouldn't really be interested in it either so it's no wonder that it just wasn't grabbing me. I have also heard that originally both of those characters were female but even that doesn't really interest me (and why Riddle Story of the Devil doesn't either). So, I did have a few friends recommend LH to me a few hours later and decided to give it a second shot after all, especially since I hadn't dropped it for having a terrible first episode. 

Log Horizon

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

Manga Review: Rurouni Kenshin

Well this review has been a long time coming, back in the fall of 2011 I gave in one night, wondering what this series was all about (probably after seeing half a dozen posts on tumblr about the live action movie) and read more than I meant to. I was wondering what to do the next day, especially since I try not to read licensed manga online, when I was in a local use bookstore, looked up in the manga section and found two omnibuses about to beam me in the head and magically enough they started right where I had stopped reading the previous night. Not one to ignore the universe I grabbed those and picked up the next omnibus soon afterwards, I really liked how long they were, but soon after that was when I had to cut my manga spending down to next to nothing to save up money and didn't come across any more omnibus editions at the used bookstore. However, when I moved this time around I noticed that the local library seemed to have all the volumes and recently I decided to take advantage of that and finish off the series in more or less one go.

Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki

Fall 2013 Anime Round-up

And it’s time to start another season of anime and the one that is usually the strongest for me, autumn! As was the case last season I don’t exactly have any continuing shows, I’m starting to get back into Space Brothers but it sounds like that show is past it’s prime and Doki Doki Precure was always up and down in terms of enjoyment so I’ve semi-dropped that one as well (although I’ve thought about picking it back up to watch raw so I can practice my Japanese, after all if it’s aimed at four year old little girls then the vocabulary shouldn’t be completely and utterly outside my range of knowledge right?). In any case, I’m also moving through as much of my backlog as I can while juggling new American fall tv shows as well and there are one or two series which I don’t mention here since I didn’t finish an entire episode (Coppelion is one since I tried the manga which didn’t grab me so I just gave up a few minutes into the first episode). But for those I did get through an entire episode or more let’s talk about those!

Beyond the Boundary (Kyoukai no Kanata)

Character stabs monsters with blood sword

I was pretty excited for this show, with the budget Kyoto Animation always seems to have I thought it would be awesome to see them do a full on fantasy show but the first episode was a bit of a let down. It was slow, felt like it had been adapted from a light novel in a bad way (just a lot of the same tropes character and plot wise, boring!) but once the action picks up in the second episode it seems to flow much better. The action scenes looked as amazing as I had hoped, the character interactions went smoother, and I already had a lot of the exposition out of the way which always helps. I was a bit unsure after the first episode but having seen the second episode I’m in for the long haul here and hope it gets even better.

Beyond the Boundary is on crunchyroll

Galilei Donna

Sisters suffer attempted kidnappings simultaneously

One of the two new noitaminA shows and the one I was more excited for going in and I liked it! It was a little bit of a rough start (that cold opening was not a good idea) but I liked all the design work and, aside from that opening, the action sequences flowed well too. It's the next few episodes that will make or break this show though, the premise has been mostly established so it's time to start fleshing out our lovely leading ladies and hopefully they'll be more nuanced than they were here (and explain the setting, I know a bit about it from outside material but that's it).

Galilei can be watched on crunchyroll

Gingitsune: Messenger Fox of the Gods

Girl is an oracle in training

The commercials for this series didn’t really grab me but since I tend to like slice of life style supernatural shows I thought I would give this one a shot anyway. However I’m going to have to go with my first instinct and drop this after all since the first episode was just a bit too clumsy. Things move too fast, the characters feel too flat with their constantly changing emotions, I just didn’t like it and I’ll just go find something in my backlog if I really want to watch soft, slice of life supernatural shows anytime soon.

Gingitsune is streaming on crunchyroll.com

Kill la Kill

Students fight with power of uniforms

One of the most hyped shows to premier this season and I have mixed feelings on it. On the one hand, a lot of the time it's overly the top in an amusing fashion and it's fun to watch and the limited art (yes I'm saying it, it does have moments with wonderful animation but it's always made itself highly stylized so it can get away with tons of still frames and cheap effects that would make a 1970s show proud) looks cool. On the other hand it has our lead Ryouko in an incredibly revealing outfit (I can't think of many cons where that outfit would pass muster) and seems to take some pleasure in putting her (and one or two other female characters so far) in really sexualized positions with a ton of male gaze camera angles and I find it creepy, plain and simple. I want to like the show and I'm sticking with it for now but while I spend half the time enjoying it I'm spending the other half of my time completely skeeved out which isn't a fun combination.

KLK is an Aniplex title and can be found streaming on crunchyroll, hulu, and daisuki, although it doesn't start at the exact same time on each site and each site has it's own restrictions.

Kyousogiga

More adventures in mirror Kyoto

First off, I’m going to refer to this as the tv series, the original short that started it all as the OVA, and the mini-series from last fall as the ONA, got it? If not please refer back to these sentences as often as needed.

In any case, it’s baaaaaack, finally! I’ve been hoping for almost two years now that we’d get a full show based off of the OVA and it’s happening! Well sort of, last week was episode 0 which was just the OVA with an opening song and the show is scheduled to have 10 episodes, 2 recaps, and one special which I guess is what last week was. I’m a bit confused about the recaps though, originally I thought that was how they were going to work in materials from the ONA but since a good chunk of this week’s episode came from the ONAs I’m not sure anymore. In any case, that’s not actually a bad thing since this episode took the premise of the last ONA, added some scenes and voices to make what was going on clearer, and then expanded on it so newcomers and old fans alike are on more or less the same page for how Mirror Kyoto got started. The show also added in some interesting bits, when I think about it it didn’t actually add in a lot of new footage but by re-using the old footage and then having the characters actually confirm what fans had been speculating about (with dialogue) it feels like there was more added than there actually was yet I wasn’t bored at all. Basically what I’m saying is, you can be a complete newcomer to the story or already familiar with it and you’ll do fine, just watch episode 0 if your new and then hang on for the ride with the rest of it.

For some reason no one has licensed this show and I’m incredibly sad about it. However, I feel like it stands a good chance at being licensed eventually, much better than it’s chances of being licensed as a collection of OVAs/ONAs was just a year ago.

Log Horizon

Gamers trapped in game

This is not a new genre in anime and manga, although oddly enough it appears way more here than any other medium of fiction I can think of, and truth be told it’s not exactly like either of the two main things people are comparing it to (Sword ArtOnline or the .hack franchise in general) but rather a pretty even mixture of both of those. Heck, I’d argue it’s one third each of those and then the last third is where it becomes rather evident that the light novel’s original author was the same guy who wrote Maoyuu and I suspect that’s what the show will feel most like in the end, a show more about the mechanics about people being trapped in a game rather than trying to beat a quest or, erm, whatever .hack//SIGN was trying to do. I was okay with Maoyuu at points but honestly I still prefer the manga adaptation I read of it first (the lone time I have preferred the version of something with more boobs in it) and I just don’t think Log Horizon is going to keep my interest from what I’ve seen so far. The setting will probably be fairly standard for a game, the plot probably won’t have an overarching story like I prefer, and I didn’t really connect with any of the characters in the first episode, at this point there’s just no reason for me to come back for another episode unless I hear other people talking down the line and saying that it got really good.

Log Horizon can be viewed on crunchyroll.com

Nagi no Asukara (no idea what a good translation is)

Underwater kids attend school on land

I’m on the fence with this one, on the one hand so far it’s a story about a bunch of middle schoolers going through some major changes in life and being awkward about it and I'm not sure I want to see a show about middle schoolers falling in love with a bit of raunchiness in it  but on the other hand that’s a lot like what middle school is like so I can't exactly fault it for that. On someone else’s hand though, there are so many other good shows this season that I'm not sure I want to watch something that doesn't completely have my attention. So far I’m staying with the show because of it’s fantastical setting and because I’ve heard it’s going to be two-cour and I’ve love to see what PA Works turns the show into then, it does sound like it's building up to a larger story or at least into having some interesting overarching themes. And in a season of good looking shows it’s also quite pretty, I guess at this point I’ll keep watching and if I do lose interest I’ll be sure to check in on what other reviewers are saying at the end of it’s run to see if it’s worth picking back up.

Nagi no Asukara is being streamed on crunchyroll.

Samurai Flamenco

A "realistic" superhero

This show has big shoes to fill for me because it happens to be in the same genre as my favorite show of the year (so far, Gatchaman Crowds) but that show I think was even one of the best takes on the superhero genre in recent years and I even wrote a nearly 3000 word post comparing it to Agents of SHIELD yesterday so you can bet it's quite prominent in my mind right now. And does it work? Weeelllll, not really, no, not yet for me anyway. As summarized, the basis of this show is a "'realistic' superhero" in the completely opposite way that Tiger and Bunny did realism (there, I've named dropped all the important shows) with an ordinary guy dressing up as a superhero and trying to get people to do the right thing. My problem with the show is that I don't agree with it's philosophy at all, yes it is a problem that people jaywalk and smoke but the way you handled it wasn't right either buddy, you got into a fight with a drunk over that (and lost. And had your outfit set on fire, clearly you did this wrong). It's just, how am I supposed to take these characters seriously (or at least seriously enough to not feel secondhand embarrassment when one starts yelling at middle schoolers in a park to shape up) if it's trying to make a story based on such basic values? And speaking of values, I noticed this after I saw some other people commenting on it but compared to Galilei the coloring of this show is super basic, it's like someone chose a color, chose other colors that were all the same tonally and used them and made the show look really flat. That could be deliberate, some contrast between the real world and the colorful world of cartoon justice, and the basic values could be on purpose as well and the show intends to build them up later, it's got 22 episodes after all. But, going after just this first episode, I'm not impressed nor am I super excited by the show and that makes me rather sad.

Much like  KLK, Samumenco is licensed by Aniplex and streaming in their usual places.

Tokyo Ravens

Kid doesn’t want to become an onmyouji

In the effort of full disclosure, I’ve read some of the manga that was based on the same light novels that this anime was so I can’t really say too much about the story since I know how it’s going to go. I will say that I thought it was paced well, like most urban fantasy shows this one has a lot of general background to set up first to explain why the characters are in the positions they are (and there are a couple of key details coming next week) and I’ve heard rumors that this one will be two cour which is great since I really can’t figure out how it could end well after just 13 episodes. And as for the actual story, I get the same feeling from it that I get from Blue Exorcist actually. Not because of any particular details, they’re actually rather dissimilar in that regard and in the general premise, but they’re both supernatural shonen shows with a lot of action and a similar sized cast which has been done over and over yet they both just have a spark to them, in the setting and the visuals, that makes them interesting. Everyone is going to see a show or two at some point in their anime watching lives, it just happens, and if this show continues to be a solid show I’ll happily recommend both of them as less generic than usual supernatural shows that are fun watches (well, with the cavet that Blue Exorcists’ ending gets a bit weird, I’ve seen even non-manga readers comment on that).

Tokyo Ravens has been licensed by Funimation and is streaming on their new site (which be forewarned seems to still have some bugs, I haven’t been able to get a video to load in Chrome yet).

Unbreakable Machine Doll (Machine-doll wa Kizutsukanai)

Puppeter and raunchy doll start school

Every season there is a show I start against my better judgement, this the show this time around where despite the ecchi tag attached to it I was curious. However, while I didn't like those moments what really made me regret it was the CGI and oh ye gods, everything else this season looks perfectly, completely fine by comparison. Holy cow you’re supposed to bring your A-game the first episode and then have the budget vanish, I don’t want to know what this show is going to look like by the end. And the large amounts of exposition were handled almost as clumsily as the show tries to introduce you to a lot of background all at once yet everything still feels rather flat (the characters) and generic (the setting) so in the end I just couldn’t care more than one iota about the show and have dropped it.

Machine Doll is streaming on Funimation’s website who has also licensed it.

Valvrave the Liberator (part two)

We still have vampires piloting mechs

So, not much to say about this show so far since it picks up exactly where the previous season leftoff and doesn’t look to be deviating from the tone and characterization at all. So, if you liked the first season go ahead and keep watching this, alternatively if you watched the first season for it’s WTF value keep watching as well, that’s more or less why I’m here. As usual with sequels this is a terrible place to jump in so if you’re curious I recommend you check out my earlier review (especially since this show crosses the line at least once in a major fashion) and if that doesn’t have you running away as quickly as you can then you might enjoy the show. Also, while a lot of shows look great this season I swear that with the amount of action sequences in Valvrave (the first five minutes are almost solid action IIRC) I think this first episode had the equivalent budget of three Machine Dolls.

Just like last time, Aniplex is distributing the show in the US/Canada and has it streaming on multiple outlets, the same as Samumenco and KLK.

Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta

Humans and yokai live in a town

So I’ve never seen the original anime for this show or read much of the manga (I started reading some and then felt guilty when I realized it had been licensed at one point in the US, given that I never see people talking about a license rescue for it here I guess that means it has next to no fans) but this reboot of sorts is supposed to be newcomer friendly so I decided to give it a shot. From what I can gather though, this show isn’t going to just retell the early part of the story and then follow the manga after the original anime diverged (a la Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) but is somehow doing side stories to sort of introduce new fans before joining up with the manga material that wasn't previously cover, is that right? I know that it’s connected to a series of OVAs that came out recently, (those two have similar art styles which are also closer to the look of the original manga than the first series, no idea if any of the voice actors have changed) although those are set farther down the line, regardless of all of that this first episode was just plain fun. It has some whackiness to it that I adore in supernatural series and after the way it gleefully barreled through the first episode I felt like I was starting to get a grasp on the characters and the basic politics of the town they lived in (although remembering everyone’s names might be beyond me at this point), loved the music during the more action-y scenes, and I’m certainly interested in what it’s going to do next!

While the first anime was licensed by Sentai no one has picked up this iteration for legal streaming, however I’m hoping we’ll have an announcement from them before the season is done.

So it's a bit of an odd season, it's jam packed with good shows but just about everything airs on Thursday for some bizarre reason. I also have a problem that I haven't had since the summer of 2011, fansubs. I have a one-or-none rule for fansubs (which I sometimes toe the line with Precure/older shows which I know will never be licensed at this point) yet there are two shows I really liked but are both fansubbed, Kyousogiga and Quartet. As it stands however, Kyousogiga is my baby practically with how I've dreamed of this full show for two years and it's even better than I could have hoped so far which means that, unless one of those two gets licensed, Quartet is going to have to go onto the back burner (at least that way I'll be able to hear from other fans how accessible it really is and what, if any, episodes I need to see from the original show to get my bearing). Otherwise this is what my schedule looks like:

Tuesday: Tokyo Ravens

Wednesday: BtB, Kyousogiga (which since it's fansubbed will probably be out Thursday instead)

Thursday: KLK, Galilei, Samumenco, Nagi, Valvrave

8 shows and a completely unbalanced week especially since my American tv shows also air on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Well, at least at this rate I'll have plenty of time to catch up with older shows as well! What's everyone else watching? Also, is it just me or does Nagi remind everyone a little bit of From the New World and KLK a tiny bit of Utena? Could just be the character designs for both of them but I know i'm not the only person for Nagi in any case....

Anime Review: Heartcatch Precure

I've heard a lot of good things about this series for a while (for one thing, I've seen a lot of people debating over what series within the Precure franchise are actually good and this one and the original are the ones that just about everyone seem's to agree on) and dammit I don't watch enough magical girl shows as a self-professed fan of the genre, clearly I need to fix that. I'm going to make a real effort to watch more magical girl series next year (provided that my currently airing and school schedules give me enough time) although I am a little worried that since I enjoyed this one so much my expectations for everything else is going to be too high.

Heartcatch Precure

Summary: Tsubomi is a shy girl who has just moved to a new town so her family can be closer to her grandmother and is trying to change her personality as she enters her new school. She's helped by her new friend Erika and the two of them also find themselves fighting to protect the Earth from the Desert Messengers by turning into the legendary Pretty Cure. They're not very good at first but they have some unexpected allies and the more they fight the better they get and the more they grow too.  

The Good: This show is an odd combination of things even for the franchise (since I'm unfamiliar with the other works I doubled checked these things on tvtropes, as always correct me in the comments if I mess up). On the one hand it has some very blatant merchandise pulls with the tools the Precures use, which reminded me that at it's roots it's a kids show meant to sell toys, but it's also surprisingly dark in places with rounded characters who grow and have some rather badass moments. Honestly if you doubt that a magical girl show can actually be called badass, look at this list which sort of compares Madoka Magica and Heartcatch by laying out all of the badass and "grimdark" moments from the show (not really spoilers unless you don't want to know how many dragons were punched in the face in either show). The plot also isn't very complicated, neither the overall plot (the Desert Messengers want to turn the Earth into a desert and the Precure have to defeat them) nor the week to week plot (a new character is shown who has a reasonable insecurity that's exploited to turn them into a monster and the Precure have to return them to normal). I do wish it had varied from it's victim of the week formula at times (there were some episodes which I honestly think could have worked without a monster and that kind of deviation can be really leave an impression if you're a kid) but it does everything well and I didn't get bored with it. Also, I don't want to say much for fear of spoilers, but I ended up really loving the main characters (especially the third and fourth precures) who all go through a good bit of character development (it's more obvious in the third and fourth precures but Tsubomi and Erika really do grow as well) really that's why I was able to get through such a long show which had, well, a number of periods where not a lot happened.

The Bad: Precure series are meant to run for an entire year so there is a lot of filler in here (defining filler as "periods when nothing plot-shattering happens") and I really can't advise people what episodes to skip if they don't like filler. The good news is that it's not bad filler, the show makes an effort to bring back all of it's side/victim-of-the-week characters (heck, the third and fourth precures appear a lot before they join the group) and it lets the girls develop as well. The bad news is that this is a 49 episode show so this isn't something you can necessarily blow through in a few days. Also, assuming that their transformation sequences take about two and a half minutes each episode  (and by the end of the series they are quite elaborate) I've calculated that they take up the equivalent of four full episodes which is rather impressive. So in short, where Heartcatch falls short is where many long running magical girl shows do but not in either it's character or plot department.

The Audio: I didn't really like the opening or either ending for the show and at times the faeries voices got a little too squeaky for me but by and large the show sounded fine. The characters didn't exactly sound like real kids but they didn't sound like adults trying too hard to act like kids so I was satisfied there. Honestly I was paying more attention to the art (which was one of the reasons the show caught my eye in the first place) so let's just move onto that.

The Art: If the art looks familiar then yes it probably is! Funny enough the character designer is the same person as the one who did the designs for for Ojamajo Doremi ( Toei's big magical girl franchise before Precure) but more notably the staff also worked on Casshern Sins, and episode of Penguindrum, and are currently working on Saint Seiya Omega*. So, as tvtropes puts it, the art changes from it's normal look to an even more stylized look whenever it damn well wants to and holy cow guys, I don't recall the last time I saw hand to hand fights in anime look that good. The fourth precure is especially good at them, the fights in the last few episodes look simply spectacular, and it's a nice change to pace to magical girls whose primary means of fighting is to punch the crap out of something. I mean, sure there final magical attack is awesome in a bit of an amusing way but there's an unexpected almost hilarity to having a show for little girls have the characters defeat the monsters in such "un-girly" ways.

In the end I give this show 4.5 stars out of 5 which is really high for me but hey I enjoyed it, why not rate it highly. I also had a chance to watch the franchise movie which doesn't need to be seen to watch the show, however the characters from it have a blink or you'll miss it cameo in one of the final episodes and a character has a line or two of foreshadowing there as well. It's a plot that wouldn't have fit well into an episode/two parter of the series so I think it was a good fit for the movie. I'm not sure if I would buy the series if it ever came out in the US (which it won't but hypothetically speaking) since it is so long but I did enjoy it a lot regardless, going to check out at least the first Precure series next year as a result and I'll see if any of the other catch my eye as well.

*which makes me joke that the fights here aren't Saint Seiya Omega levels of badass, the fights over there must be Heartcatch Precure levels of badass. Or they could both just be Casshern Sins level of badass, I guess the niche for these guys is retro art style combined with awesome hand to hand combat.

Anime Review: Accel World

Ack, sorry this wasn't up last night, a combination of a sudden cold (with no real meds to speak of) and midterm paper/test/project stress kept me from finishing this review. Although, now that I have finished it, this is going to be a bit of a short review regardless since I don't need to get into much detail for why I liked and disliked it.

Accel World

Summary: The year is 2046 and virtual reality is now everywhere in Tokyo and the technology has become so advanced that people can interact with it thanks to little computers worn around the neck. These neurolinkers have another use not intended by the manufactures however, if you've had one since birth and have a high reaction speed then it's possible to download Brain Burst, an illegal fighting game program where if you lose all your points then the game permantely uninstalls and you lose all memory of the game as well. Haruyuki is a bullied middle schooler who when given the chance by his upperclassman Kuroyukihime (no seriously, apparently no one knows her real name) to install Brain Burst takes it and finds his life changing for the better (even if it's gotten a bit more complicated in the process).  

The Good: The premise here is a bit of a fun one, even if it's more than a tad unbelievable, and honestly if we did have super-advanced technology like a neurolinker today I would completely expect illegal games/hacks for it. And, even though Brain Burst flies in the face of a lot of science, that part about the show never bothered me and I think it's because the show presented it like magic (ie, "it exists, we're not going to tell you the reasons why but as you and the characters can see it clearly exists and works so let's get on with the story"), although some parts of the story later on required a bit more suspension of disbelief. 

The Bad: The second half of the show was centered around one arc with one villain which makes sense when you consider that that particular arc took up two light novel volumes. So my problem lies more with the source material, there's no reason that arc should have been that long. The villain wasn't a good villain at all, their only motivation was "for teh evluz!", was it was implied that there was something bigger going on behind the scenes it wasn't explained, and that arc simply took too long. I have issues with Haruyuki as well, namely that his character seems to be written to act like however the arc requires him to act, not based on what character development he's had. Since he really regressed at the beginning of that arc, got a bit better, regressed again, and seems to be back to where he was before by the end of it which was really quite frustrating.  

The Audio: Both opening and closing themes were fun and I have no complaints about either the background music or the voice acting, although I think it's sad yet amusing that the original author voiced one of the burst linker avatars (one based on how he appears in the back of his books) and fans complained that they didn't like how he sounded so he was replaced in the DVD version by a real actor. 

The Visuals: This was a fun, colorful show to look at and I'm told that it had pretty good animation underneath all the special effects used in the fight scenes (seriously, pause during a random moment during some of the later fight scenes and see if you can even tell what you're looking at). One of the earlier fight scenes however (I think around episode 11) isn't buried under special effects and I remember thinking that it was pretty great looking, even compared to all the fights in Fate/Zero and The Legend of Korra which were airing at the same time. I also really liked the designs of the avatars, looking at the designs in the original novels I think that they've improved on the designs quite nicely.


All in all Accel World and Sword Art Online are rather alike in the respect that, while the settings are cool and the concept is interesting enough, I just don't find any of the characters likable/sympathetic enough to root for them and the storylines just aren't always that interesting. So I'm torn, do I want to buy this show? I'm not sure, although if there was a second season I'd watch it (partially because I read some spoilers for it and holy, now THAT'S got some interesting bits, although I bet that it's probably not as well executed as I'd hope). And just to weigh in on the "are SAO and AW connected?" debate, I'm not sure. I'm VERY sure that the main couple of SAO aren't KYH's parents despite physical similarties (KYH seems to have rather distant parents, plus there are some spoilers I've read that indicate that she has really terrible parents), although I'm not ruling it out that they could be the parents of another character (who hasn't exactly appeared in the books except in flashbacks? Slightly confused about that part). Funny enough while the books seem to be more ambiguous about the subject (there was even a crossover short story which implies that they're alternate universes) the anime seems to be saying that yes, these two are in the same world which has left me more confused than ever.  
For those who do wish to check out the show however it is being streamed on hulu by Viz Media (so only Americans and people with proxies can view this one legally, sorry).

Anime Review: X TV

Moving right along with the Year of Clamp livestream we've gotten to X TV, the animated version of one of Clamp's more infamous works which I had been curious about for a while but hadn't tried out either version since I hadn't read all of Tokyo Babylon (to which it's sorta-kinda a sequel, more a spinoff but knowing what I did of Subaru's story made the parallels between him and Kamui much more obvious and tragic). But that sounds like something I should put into the actual review so onto the review!

X TV

Summary: The year is 1999 and with the new millennium upon them the world has come to a crossroads, unbeknownst to all except for a few magic users in Tokyo. They are the Dragons of Heaven and the Dragons of Earth, those who wish the save humanity (and bet the eventual fate of the world on the belief that the humans won't destroy it) and those who wish to end humanity so the world can be born anew. At the heart of this conflict is Kamui, an angsty teen whose presence causes fate to shift who doesn't seem to care much about the conflict one way or another but both sides are determined to bring him around.

The Good: I know the anime ending is radically different from the manga's cliffhanger (I've actually seen that bit) but you know what, I liked how it ended. It made sense logically and thematically and I was satisfied with it, although I think I can hear manga-readers disavowing me now. While I do wish that Fuuma had been explored more (especially after the mid-point of the series) I was surprised at how much screen time nearly every other side character got and was pleased to see that many of the Dragons of the Earth had a reason that they were on that side, even if I didn't agree and I felt like overall what side they were on had almost nothing to do with free will and was all predestined instead (which did bother me). If you're already a fan of Clamp's work and want to see more of their series I recommend this one over a few others I've seen this year although I know in my case if it wasn't for that I probably would have dropped it after four or five episodes. 

The Bad: I should probably note that I didn't see Episode 0 but I have heard that it spoils a lot of the anime if you're a new viewer so people should choose carefully if they're thinking about watching that first (also, I had no trouble understanding the show without seeing it so clearly it's not crucial viewing material). As for the show itself, it took me a while to get into the show and I only really started enjoying it once Kamui stopped being so much of an ass. While I certainly liked most of the side characters long before that point they just weren't enough to keep me interested in the story for whatever reason. And speaking of the side characters, I feel like at some point the production team said "oh right a lot of people are supposed to die, let's kill off these characters and we don't care how" because that would explain a lot. I'm tempted to look up what has happened to the characters by the end of the manga (given the sheer number of Clamp fans out there someone must have a comparison chart or something) and I really hope the deaths felt less random than the ones here.

The Audio: Well I hope you like the track "Sandame" (which I believe means destiny) because you're going to be hearing it at least once an episode if not more. It's actually such a distinctive piece that after hearing it just a couple of times and then watching the trailers for the anime Blood-C I was immediately able to tell that it was the same composer, although I'm not so sure that's a good thing. I didn't really care for either the opening or the ending themes (possibly because I kept going "KAMUI, WHY ARE YOU A VAMPIRE, THIS IS NOT TSUBASA" at the opening sequence....) so I skipped them almost every time and I watched the show in Japanese and I thought the voices worked well there (and I'm a bit curious, and a bit worried, about how some of the accents must have translated, even though I don't know much Japanese I could tell that Sora had a really thick dialect). 

The Visuals: While the show was made in the early 2001s the original manga was started back in the 1990s so it looks more than a bit like 90s shojo (is it just me or did eye size for shojo seem to peak in the 90s and go down since?) which I was cool with. I don't recall any usage of CGI in the show, it was produced by Studio Madhouse (who also did Cardcaptor Sakura amusingly enough) and they don't seem to use a lot of CGI in most of their shows, even the ones they produce today.

So, now all I need to see is Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles and xxxHolic and I will have seen every full length tv anime based on a Clamp work, wohoo! Except that's still around 70+ episodes all total, I don't really like the art of the Holic anime and I'm told that TRC can get dull in places, hoo boy. For those who want to see X it can be viewed on Hulu, although they are missing Episode 0 and I don't know if there's a legal place to watch that online, weird.  

Anime Review: Zetman

Normally during an anime season I can look at a few shows, seem some superficial, yet oddly specific, similarities between them and declare that the "theme" of the season, like how there were an awful lot of girls piloting ships/mechs last winter (with Bodacious Space Pirates, Last Exile: Fam, Aquarion Evol, Lagrange, and Ozma kinda, and I'm only being half serious/facetious here). The only theme I could cobble together for the past spring season however was "really fast pacing for shows that should've had/really needed more episodes". Kids on the Slope could've used more, Legend of Korra really could've used a few more, and Zetman, while it worked as well could be expected, had the tall order of adapting a 17 volume manga series (which is still on-going in wikipedia is correct) in just thirteen (!!) episodes. I'm not familiar with the source material at all, or even realized there was quite that much when I started following the show, so let's just see if this show works as an anime (since I can't imagine it succeeded as a really good adaptation with those crazy limitations). 

Zetman

Summary: Jin begins the series as a young kid living with his "grandfather", Gorou Kanzaki, actually a former scientist for the Amagi Corporation where he created genetically modified people to fight in matches to earn money. After they began to escape the others saw the damage they had done and created Jin to hunt down those players and Gorou stole him away so he could live a normal life. But that was never meant to be and after several years Jin gets wrapped up in fighting and killing these escaped players and sometimes working alongside of the grandson of the man who created the whole mess, Kouga Amagi   

The Good: The show has a lot of fun playing around with the hero and anti-hero tropes and the most interesting part of the show for me was seeing how those ideas played out. Considering that Kouga started out as the idealistic character, especially compared to how Jin had his destiny forced upon him before he was even born, I was surprised that he was the one who went down the anti-hero route and had some rather villainous moments by the end. And, even though it's very easy to see the series is compressed and moving at a breakneck pace it does in fact work as a stand alone property.

The Bad: I have to admit that I really disliked the ending (I have no idea if it was similar to the manga or on a completely different track by that point), mostly for reasons that involve too many spoilerly details, and I'm also frustrated that in the end it was clear that Jin and Kouga were The Main Characters and, no matter how awesome or sensible they might be, nothing All The Other Characters could do would make a difference in the end. Few of those characters were fully fleshed out, heck the last few episodes created a bit of a plot hole for one important minor character, but that doesn't stop me from feeling frustrated about all of it.  

The Audio: While it didn't have the fun visuals of tsuritama's opening, Zetman's opening was one of my favorites of the season for it's jazzy beat. I have absolutely no idea what the lyrics were (Viz's stream didn't provide subtitles for the OP or the ED) but I still loved it and would love to hear the full version of the song. Other than that though, none of the voice acting really stood out to me and the same for the background music. And, considering my overall feelings on the show, I'm not terribly surprised by that. Nothing was bad, it was just that nothing stuck out.

The Visuals: Like the majority of the music I just didn't see anything super special or memorable about the art. The players were appropriately creepy to look at, the fights looked alright (there were a lot of shows in the spring season with absolutely fantastic fights so that might have made the ones here look worse by comparison), but there just wasn't anything really special about how the show looked overall.


In the end this just wasn't the show for me. It did do some stuff right, Jin turned out to be a more sympathetic protagonist than I would've expected but the show had a lot of problems as well. Viz Media has licensed the show in the US and is streaming it (which, since it's on Hulu, screws over any Canadian viewers who wanted to watch it legally, sorry guys) and have mentioned that it will be part of their new Neon Alley line-up so it'll be getting a dub sometime in the near(ish) future (and, logically, a DVD release later, but this is Viz so that's not exactly guaranteed). In any case, I do wonder if Viz licensed this show because of how well Tiger and Bunny, another superhero show with a different take on the traditional tropes, did last year and if they did I do hope they realized beforehand that these are two very different shows.  

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.