Post by Sirius on Jul 18, 2015 7:47:49 GMT -5
Meh, might as well. All of these are based on episode one. Will update when I get halfway through a series. Doesn't include Spring leftovers.
Summer Anime 2015
Akagami no Shirayukihime:
Snow White with the Red Hair is based on a shoujo manga, and the effect that has on the story is evident throughout, if not necessarily in the artistry; those, like me, who are normally turned off by distinctive shoujoartistic style points have no need to worry here. While Shirayuki is clearly not going to become an action hero (that role will be left to one of Zen's companions, a woman who is apparently quite physically capable), she is nonetheless a woman of means and determination, one who is not going to merely let herself be swept off her feet by a prince and is looking for something much more than just being a concubine. That makes her instantly likable and respectable as a heroine. Definitely one of the good ones this season and easily my best so far.
Rating: 4.5
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Ranpo Kitan:
Rampo Kitan creates a very deliberate disconnect between Kobayashi's desaturated everyday life and his love of mystery. The show opens with him following a gold and violet butterfly through a faded-out world, and any characters that haven't been formally introduced are represented as gray outlines. The underlying backgrounds aren't particularly evocative, but the show twice jumps into a kind of stage-play “mystery-solving vision” style where the characters stand in spotlight as they attempt to figure out a mystery, and that helps add some visual dynamicism to the production. The music also works well, supplementing the show's slightly camp aesthetic with suitably campy horror tunes. There are a fair number of solid pieces here, and the show is based on works by a classic mystery author, so Ranpo Kitan seems like a show worth keeping an eye on. Also, the main character may put you off a little considering he's a boy but looks like a girl; reminds me of Nagisa from Assassination Classroom. I can feel a big myself coming on and I have a feeling we may have a final boss and I already have my suspect. Definitely going to keep this one.
Rating: 3.5
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Gate:
The combination of modern military might and high fantasy imagery is definitely a point in its favor, making this at least an interesting premise. Itami is an affable hero, a mix of insecurities and prowess that holds potential for this type of story. It's different enough that even if it trades in tropes it should still work fairly well. While this wasn't the most enthralling this season , it definitely has potential, and I'm certainly curious to see how it is going to develop. Plus that one scene where Itami jumps over a barrier is just impressive enough that I'm hopeful for some good visuals...
Rating: 3
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Aoharu x Machinegun:
If you're really into survival game shows and find mistaken gender hilarious, there might be more here for you than I found, but I'm also sure that there are better versions of both stories to be found elsewhere. While the idea of a host club where they have random BB gun duels is pretty amusing, it doesn't quite pull it off, which is really how I would sum up this show. It may have some promise, but basically it shoots itself in the foot with its execution.
Rating 1.5
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Charlotte :
Unrepentant self-impressed dickhead teen Yu has a secret – he has a very limited special ability that allows him to possess the body of another for 5 seconds. At first he just uses it in all the ways you might expect a teenager to use an ability like that – he possesses girls to see their boobs, possesses bullies to fight one another, that sort of thing. It's only when he gets too ambitious and starts cheating his way up the academic ranks (and manipulating events so the school's most beautiful girl falls for him) that people start taking notice. Unfortunately for Yu, the folks who noticed were Takajo and Tomori, two teenagers with similarly limited superpowers, who give Yu a choice: join them at a Hoshinoumi Academy, a Magic School for Magic Teens™, or they'll expose him. He has to move and leave his old life behind, bringing along only his genki little sister (who he lives with alone, as their parents are nowhere to be found).
The show has enough interesting plot threads going on to hold my interest for now, and it's nicely animated. They're already seemingly dismantling Yu's godawful selfish personality, so that's a plus - when a show presents a character like this and opts to wallow around in his thinly-veiled self-hatred masquerading as righteous anger toward the world, it gets stale quickly, but they're immediately softening it. The next episode will be make-or-break; if it immediately dives into the Anime Hogwarts clichés we've all seen in show after show then it's a writeoff, but given this is Jun Maeda, he of Angel Beats! fame, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that it'll be more than just your average magic high school show.
Rating: 3
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Shimoneta:
In the world of Shimoneta, all sexual words have been banned, along with porn and anything else that might contribute to “unhealthy public morals.” As a result, Japan has become the country with the healthiest public morals in the world. Tanukichi Okuma is a new student at Tokioka Academy, the most prestigious public morals high school, a school he is attending in the hopes of getting closer to his beloved Anna Nishikinomiya, the student council president. But when he's conscripted by the student council to allegedly fight decency-terrorism, he learns the vice president Ayame Kajo is secretly Blue Snow, the terrorist tossing out pornos and double entendres to terrify the student body. Dragged by Ayame into her anti-decency campaign, Tanukichi's life is about to get a whole lot more interesting.
It's a sex comedy, and as a sex comedy, it fails - it's really simplistic and juvenile and just not funny. The visual execution is solid enough, but execution matters more in some genres than others, and in a comedy, if you can't bring the jokes, you're not offering much. This first episode unfortunately comes off as more tedious than subversive.
Rating: 1.5
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Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers
Unrevealed by the first episode, but part of the core premise of the series, is that seven Braves are going to show up instead of the expected six, meaning that one has to be an imposter. That throws a very interesting twist onto what otherwise sounds like a very conventional fantasy premise. Director Takeo Takahashi is the man who has successfully brought both MAOYU and Spice and Wolf into anime form, so he knows very well how to handle fantasy, and that gives me confidence in the direction that this series may go and its execution. Here it bogs down a bit in taking a little too long to relate the myths behind the story, but both Adlet and Nashetenia seem like fun and capable characters (and the princess certainly seems more like she just needs companions rather than protectors) and the spirit of the show and its technical merits are certainly up to par.
As anime fantasy series go, this one looks pretty promising.
Rating: 4
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Ushio to Tora:
Ushio and Tora really does feel like an old-school production. From the premise to the character designs to the storytelling, “early '90s” is written all over this one, which in this day and age actually gives it a pretty unique flavor. Ushio feels more confident and full of bluster than your average protagonist, and the animation-rich production arms him with all manner of fun gestures and cool poses. Tora seems like a product of latter-day hair metal character design (hair = power seems kinda big here), but his general menacing design is nicely undercut by the show's constant divergence into silly bickering between the two leads.Parasyte's rapid descent from beautifully animated action into deeply inconsistent drama leaves me hesitant to trust the strong animation and unique style of this premier, but as a standalone work, the execution here is definitely solid.
Rating: 3
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Gangsta.:
Back when the announcement was made that the manga Gangsta.would get an anime adaptation, I was of two minds. One part of me was thrilled that the series was popular enough to merit such attention, but the rest of me was not entirely convinced that it was possible to do the series justice in anime format. This episode laid those fears largely to rest, and in fact I rather think that the addition of color helps to convey the down-and-out grit of the city of Ergastulum.
While Gangsta.'s chief appeal may simply be in being different from everything else, it also is interesting in its own right. Set in a city that has more than its fair share of problems and peopled with a group of characters we don't normally see in the “protagonist” role, as well as claiming good source material, this is worth checking out. The episode may start out feeling all over the place, but by the end it proves that it can tell a story we don't always get to see.
Rating: 4
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Durarara! X2 Shou:
We're back to the wacky world of Ryohgo Narita's Ikebukuro, rife with gang wars, sympathetic psychopaths, and heaping helpings of the supernatural. Durarara!! fans, poor stockholmed saps that we are, just keep coming back as the show bait-and-switches us with constant anticlimax and new webs of intrigue, when the story is already packed to the brim with conspiracies. After the rocky ride of last winter's premiere cour, I was skeptical about the show continuing for two more 12-episode packs. While I've learned to love the show's obsession with shaggy dog plotting, the passionless direction and sometimes embarrassing production values had me struggling to summon enthusiasm for the rest ofDRRR x2's race to the finale. Then I watched this episode. It was intriguing, well-directed, well-paced, consistently on-model, and despite being about 50% recap content by volume, it was a genuinely enjoyable return to form for the series. Never leave again, Durarara!! I do want you around after all, I just wish you wouldn't do me wrong no more. Is that so much to ask?
Mostly, this episode just reminded me of how poorly this second season handled its premiere episode back in Winter. The hodgepodge montage of "Well the status quo is quo!" that started Winter's cour—focusing heavily on Celty even when Celty had nothing to do, and filling the space in between with characters no one cared about that had some part to play in the Hollywood arc—was a mistake, and it seems like the production staff has learned from it. This episode frames recap material around the fallout from Izaya's sudden stabbing, as the scummy little troll waits around in his hospital room for someone to try and kill him while he's weak. As he wonders to himself who would be most likely to try and assassinate him, we see the many people whose lives he influenced reacting to the news (or missing it entirely) and the episode does a fantastic job of framing the events from their recent past against the conflicts they face in the present. It was a great refresher for all the big events from the first cour without ever dragging or feeling redundant, and the snippets of new content we did get were juicy.
Rating: 3.5
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Monster Masume:
Monster Musume starts out like many harem shows—the male protagonist wakes up in bed, only to find himself staring at a woman, her breasts smashed against his body. She moans something in her sleep and tightens her grip around him.
Except this time, that grip is a snake wrapping itself tighter around its prey. And the girl is a lamia, a half-snake half-human named Miia who's been assigned to live with him, now that humans are allowed to interact with demi-humans. When he tickles the tip of her tail, hoping to find a "weak spot," she moans again, leading to one of the episode's most bizarre and memorable (but perhaps not in a good way?) scenes. As he basically jerks off her tail, she cries out in ecstasy, and announces that she's orgasming.
It's a hell of a way to start off a series, especially in a genre that's usually so saturated with similar setups (minus, of course, the manual snake stimulation). But unlike your usual harem, there's something delightful and laugh-out-loud humorous about Monster Musume. Feel what you want about "sexy monster girls," but there's a playful absurdity in having the source of lustful energy be a snake-woman. Her breasts may be voluptuous, and her face may be beautiful, but as her serpentine body writhes around a bathtub or skitters down a sidewalk (jean skirt and all), there's a disconnect with reality that helps place the scenario firmly in the comedy camp. Another typical harem scene, the "date" that almost always involves lingerie (or swimsuit) shopping, gets a humorous twist when the main character learns that Miia's panties are an adhesive triangle that stick to who-knows-where.
That's not to say that Miia exists only as a joke, though. In fact, the episode is quick to address that, while the setup may be absurd and fantastical (surely humans can't have intercourse with snakes… right?), Miia is a respectable character with very human emotions. Her feelings are hurt when two strangers make fun of their relationship, and rightfully so. We may chuckle at the thought of a snake coiling coquettishly around a hapless man, but to scoff at a non-traditional relationship in a world where humans and demi-humans are supposedly equal strikes too close to parallels in reality.
This delicate balance between absurdist comedy and thoughtful character romance goes a long way in making the first episode enjoyable. It helps push the show beyond "just another harem anime," all while giving it the leeway to use the premise as a playground for tawdry hijinks. If the rest of the series is anything like the first episode, I think it'll be a fun ride.
Rating: 3.5
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Overlord:
If only this were my first time to the VRMMO rodeo. (Or D-MMO as it's called in Overlord.) Sadly, it is not, and as an entry in the rapidly expanding "trapped in a video game" anime genre, Overlord is mostly a snooze.
You've all heard the story before. Our misbegotten gamer hero has become trapped in a whole new massively multiplayer online world. In Sword Art Online, this was a brand new launch title, and in Log Horizon, it was an active worldwide hit game, but in Overlord, our protagonist finds himself living in a game world that only flickers to life after its host servers have all shut down. Yup, "Lord Momonga" was the last avatar logged into passé MMO Yggdrasil when the game finally went dark from inactivity. Instead of just getting booted from the game, however, "Lord Momonga" finds himself in the literal body of the giant skeleton-man guild master he once controlled through VR. The NPCs he had guarding the floors of his guild are now flesh-and-blood servants at his beck and call. The only question now is what kind of "overlord" this once-timid nerd will become.
There's just one problem. Someone forgot to give this skeleton story a heart and soul.
I say this because it's just way too easy to compare this show to Log Horizon, which infused a similar premise with a far stronger human element right from the get-go. Now yes, Log Horizon had multiple players "trapped in the game" to bounce off one another and Overlord only has one, but Log Horizon also turned its former NPCs into fully realized human characters very quickly, so that still doesn't seem like an excuse to me. The emotion in Log Horizon was palpable. "How did this happen? Are we immortal now? What about our families? How do we govern ourselves? I miss food." Overlord starts and ends with its confused Accidental Skeletor musing to himself about the logistics of his new situation in noncommital confusion. It's just his uninteresting skull-head soliloquizing in a void, with minimal animation and completely uninteresting production design, and while I'm sure his NPC servants will be humanized over time, his interactions with them largely consist of figuring out their new "specs" from their ability to use skills to whether or not he can touch the female floor boss' boobs. (Sigh.)
Overlord might deal in brainier or more playful concepts down the line, but this first episode was mostly boring and emotionless, too similar to the conceits of other hit anime without improving on anything from them or indulging in the excitement or fear that comes so easily to the premise and makes it interesting in the first place. I'm not impressed, Lord Momonga.
Rating: 2
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Jitsu wa Watshi wa:
It's really difficult to get away from the show's moldy aesthetic and threadbare execution, but trying to judge it in a void as a comedy, it's perfectly sweet and competent. The romantic leads have complementary gimmicks that give them solid potential chemistry, and the future side characters previewed in the opening theme look like they'll be providing the extra raunch and spice the show needs to be more memorable. It's a nice little show that's cruelly hampered by its hideous appearance. (Even the aforementioned opening song is pretty ear-poisony.) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, so if you're on the lookout for a charming harem-style romantic comedy, there's some warmth and joy to be had from this one. There's not much bite in it, but it certainly doesn't bite in the bad way either.
Rating: 2.5
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God Eater:
Nothing much really. The art style looks unique, that's actually one of the things I was looking forwards to. Unfortunately, the plot is cliché and it has lost my hopes in it. Maybe episode 2 will be different, but I don't know.
Rating: 1.5
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Prison School:
This is not a fanservice show.
This is not a sex comedy.
This is not a seinen drama or romance.
And most baffling of all, this is not a satire of any of the above genres.
It's just "Prison School," and Prison School belongs to some genre I'm not sure I've ever seen before. It's best explained as a series of undiluted feelings on the part of its author. Those feelings include but are not limited to contempt, self-amusement, and raging id, smashed together onto a page without thinking about the results too much. This anime adaptation does its best to retain those feelings through an extremely jerky and grotesque animation style and art that is saturated and shaded so hard that everyone looks like they've been thinly coated in vaseline.
The """story""" of Prison School is that five comically overblown pervy virgin guys have found their way into an all-girls' school with aspirations to peep their first pair of panties. Unfortunately for them, the "shadow student council" of this school, made up of a G-cup dominatrix, a savage martial artist, and a woman with the power to control crows, has taken it upon themselves to torture the school's misbehaving male students. What follows is a series of hideous faces, hideous cleavage, and hideously poor taste as the guys receive their just desserts via physical/mental torture and actually start to, ya know, like it. Except for our protagonist (who might be slowly going insane.) Leading man Kiyoshi struggles against the torture to prove that he's not such a bad guy, pines after the school's resident sweet ditz, and dreams of exoneration.
There are some genuine laughs to be had through all this, mostly from the rogue's gallery of bizarre dudes and their unique quirks. Shingo is one of those nerds who always uses 20 words to express a 5 word idea, which results in some great lines like "He has the countenance of one touched by diarrhea." Andre is a giant dude prone to tears whose face seems to get smaller and smaller inside his corpulent head. Joe is a hooded figure who only speaks in violent coughing fits until he falls for the dominatrix and manages to rasp out an f-bomb. Even then, the show seems to be perpetually shaming you for finding anything in it funny. Its intent was never to make you happy in any way. It's just here to shock, to disturb, and to be whatever its embittered author felt like it should be in that moment. It's not commentative, but it's not cruel either, because even cruelty would be a kind of passion. (And it's definitely not titillating.) It just is, and you can either find some angle of appeal in its ramblings or run screaming in the other direction.
Anime is a market so heavily dominated by demographic appeal that it's hard to describe that four-leaf clover in the clover patch, "a show for nobody," without it feeling like an insult. I didn't hate Prison School. I felt no emotions toward the show whatsoever. It's a Rorschach test. Your brain pulls out of it what your brain pours into it, but it's an empty vessel of shock value without that human lens to attribute value to it. (This makes a lot more sense in the context of its publication history.) I think individual reactions to Prison School will be way more fascinating than the show itself. The show itself is just a guy streaking across the Super Bowl football field while they're setting up for halftime. You don't ask him why he did it or what he was trying to say by showing his junk to billions of viewers. You just put that shit on youtube and move along with your day.
Rating... ??
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Thanks for reading
Summer Anime 2015
Akagami no Shirayukihime:
Snow White with the Red Hair is based on a shoujo manga, and the effect that has on the story is evident throughout, if not necessarily in the artistry; those, like me, who are normally turned off by distinctive shoujoartistic style points have no need to worry here. While Shirayuki is clearly not going to become an action hero (that role will be left to one of Zen's companions, a woman who is apparently quite physically capable), she is nonetheless a woman of means and determination, one who is not going to merely let herself be swept off her feet by a prince and is looking for something much more than just being a concubine. That makes her instantly likable and respectable as a heroine. Definitely one of the good ones this season and easily my best so far.
Rating: 4.5
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Ranpo Kitan:
Rampo Kitan creates a very deliberate disconnect between Kobayashi's desaturated everyday life and his love of mystery. The show opens with him following a gold and violet butterfly through a faded-out world, and any characters that haven't been formally introduced are represented as gray outlines. The underlying backgrounds aren't particularly evocative, but the show twice jumps into a kind of stage-play “mystery-solving vision” style where the characters stand in spotlight as they attempt to figure out a mystery, and that helps add some visual dynamicism to the production. The music also works well, supplementing the show's slightly camp aesthetic with suitably campy horror tunes. There are a fair number of solid pieces here, and the show is based on works by a classic mystery author, so Ranpo Kitan seems like a show worth keeping an eye on. Also, the main character may put you off a little considering he's a boy but looks like a girl; reminds me of Nagisa from Assassination Classroom. I can feel a big myself coming on and I have a feeling we may have a final boss and I already have my suspect. Definitely going to keep this one.
Rating: 3.5
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Gate:
The combination of modern military might and high fantasy imagery is definitely a point in its favor, making this at least an interesting premise. Itami is an affable hero, a mix of insecurities and prowess that holds potential for this type of story. It's different enough that even if it trades in tropes it should still work fairly well. While this wasn't the most enthralling this season , it definitely has potential, and I'm certainly curious to see how it is going to develop. Plus that one scene where Itami jumps over a barrier is just impressive enough that I'm hopeful for some good visuals...
Rating: 3
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Aoharu x Machinegun:
If you're really into survival game shows and find mistaken gender hilarious, there might be more here for you than I found, but I'm also sure that there are better versions of both stories to be found elsewhere. While the idea of a host club where they have random BB gun duels is pretty amusing, it doesn't quite pull it off, which is really how I would sum up this show. It may have some promise, but basically it shoots itself in the foot with its execution.
Rating 1.5
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Charlotte :
Unrepentant self-impressed dickhead teen Yu has a secret – he has a very limited special ability that allows him to possess the body of another for 5 seconds. At first he just uses it in all the ways you might expect a teenager to use an ability like that – he possesses girls to see their boobs, possesses bullies to fight one another, that sort of thing. It's only when he gets too ambitious and starts cheating his way up the academic ranks (and manipulating events so the school's most beautiful girl falls for him) that people start taking notice. Unfortunately for Yu, the folks who noticed were Takajo and Tomori, two teenagers with similarly limited superpowers, who give Yu a choice: join them at a Hoshinoumi Academy, a Magic School for Magic Teens™, or they'll expose him. He has to move and leave his old life behind, bringing along only his genki little sister (who he lives with alone, as their parents are nowhere to be found).
The show has enough interesting plot threads going on to hold my interest for now, and it's nicely animated. They're already seemingly dismantling Yu's godawful selfish personality, so that's a plus - when a show presents a character like this and opts to wallow around in his thinly-veiled self-hatred masquerading as righteous anger toward the world, it gets stale quickly, but they're immediately softening it. The next episode will be make-or-break; if it immediately dives into the Anime Hogwarts clichés we've all seen in show after show then it's a writeoff, but given this is Jun Maeda, he of Angel Beats! fame, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that it'll be more than just your average magic high school show.
Rating: 3
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Shimoneta:
In the world of Shimoneta, all sexual words have been banned, along with porn and anything else that might contribute to “unhealthy public morals.” As a result, Japan has become the country with the healthiest public morals in the world. Tanukichi Okuma is a new student at Tokioka Academy, the most prestigious public morals high school, a school he is attending in the hopes of getting closer to his beloved Anna Nishikinomiya, the student council president. But when he's conscripted by the student council to allegedly fight decency-terrorism, he learns the vice president Ayame Kajo is secretly Blue Snow, the terrorist tossing out pornos and double entendres to terrify the student body. Dragged by Ayame into her anti-decency campaign, Tanukichi's life is about to get a whole lot more interesting.
It's a sex comedy, and as a sex comedy, it fails - it's really simplistic and juvenile and just not funny. The visual execution is solid enough, but execution matters more in some genres than others, and in a comedy, if you can't bring the jokes, you're not offering much. This first episode unfortunately comes off as more tedious than subversive.
Rating: 1.5
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Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers
Unrevealed by the first episode, but part of the core premise of the series, is that seven Braves are going to show up instead of the expected six, meaning that one has to be an imposter. That throws a very interesting twist onto what otherwise sounds like a very conventional fantasy premise. Director Takeo Takahashi is the man who has successfully brought both MAOYU and Spice and Wolf into anime form, so he knows very well how to handle fantasy, and that gives me confidence in the direction that this series may go and its execution. Here it bogs down a bit in taking a little too long to relate the myths behind the story, but both Adlet and Nashetenia seem like fun and capable characters (and the princess certainly seems more like she just needs companions rather than protectors) and the spirit of the show and its technical merits are certainly up to par.
As anime fantasy series go, this one looks pretty promising.
Rating: 4
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Ushio to Tora:
Ushio and Tora really does feel like an old-school production. From the premise to the character designs to the storytelling, “early '90s” is written all over this one, which in this day and age actually gives it a pretty unique flavor. Ushio feels more confident and full of bluster than your average protagonist, and the animation-rich production arms him with all manner of fun gestures and cool poses. Tora seems like a product of latter-day hair metal character design (hair = power seems kinda big here), but his general menacing design is nicely undercut by the show's constant divergence into silly bickering between the two leads.Parasyte's rapid descent from beautifully animated action into deeply inconsistent drama leaves me hesitant to trust the strong animation and unique style of this premier, but as a standalone work, the execution here is definitely solid.
Rating: 3
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Gangsta.:
Back when the announcement was made that the manga Gangsta.would get an anime adaptation, I was of two minds. One part of me was thrilled that the series was popular enough to merit such attention, but the rest of me was not entirely convinced that it was possible to do the series justice in anime format. This episode laid those fears largely to rest, and in fact I rather think that the addition of color helps to convey the down-and-out grit of the city of Ergastulum.
While Gangsta.'s chief appeal may simply be in being different from everything else, it also is interesting in its own right. Set in a city that has more than its fair share of problems and peopled with a group of characters we don't normally see in the “protagonist” role, as well as claiming good source material, this is worth checking out. The episode may start out feeling all over the place, but by the end it proves that it can tell a story we don't always get to see.
Rating: 4
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Durarara! X2 Shou:
We're back to the wacky world of Ryohgo Narita's Ikebukuro, rife with gang wars, sympathetic psychopaths, and heaping helpings of the supernatural. Durarara!! fans, poor stockholmed saps that we are, just keep coming back as the show bait-and-switches us with constant anticlimax and new webs of intrigue, when the story is already packed to the brim with conspiracies. After the rocky ride of last winter's premiere cour, I was skeptical about the show continuing for two more 12-episode packs. While I've learned to love the show's obsession with shaggy dog plotting, the passionless direction and sometimes embarrassing production values had me struggling to summon enthusiasm for the rest ofDRRR x2's race to the finale. Then I watched this episode. It was intriguing, well-directed, well-paced, consistently on-model, and despite being about 50% recap content by volume, it was a genuinely enjoyable return to form for the series. Never leave again, Durarara!! I do want you around after all, I just wish you wouldn't do me wrong no more. Is that so much to ask?
Mostly, this episode just reminded me of how poorly this second season handled its premiere episode back in Winter. The hodgepodge montage of "Well the status quo is quo!" that started Winter's cour—focusing heavily on Celty even when Celty had nothing to do, and filling the space in between with characters no one cared about that had some part to play in the Hollywood arc—was a mistake, and it seems like the production staff has learned from it. This episode frames recap material around the fallout from Izaya's sudden stabbing, as the scummy little troll waits around in his hospital room for someone to try and kill him while he's weak. As he wonders to himself who would be most likely to try and assassinate him, we see the many people whose lives he influenced reacting to the news (or missing it entirely) and the episode does a fantastic job of framing the events from their recent past against the conflicts they face in the present. It was a great refresher for all the big events from the first cour without ever dragging or feeling redundant, and the snippets of new content we did get were juicy.
Rating: 3.5
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Monster Masume:
Monster Musume starts out like many harem shows—the male protagonist wakes up in bed, only to find himself staring at a woman, her breasts smashed against his body. She moans something in her sleep and tightens her grip around him.
Except this time, that grip is a snake wrapping itself tighter around its prey. And the girl is a lamia, a half-snake half-human named Miia who's been assigned to live with him, now that humans are allowed to interact with demi-humans. When he tickles the tip of her tail, hoping to find a "weak spot," she moans again, leading to one of the episode's most bizarre and memorable (but perhaps not in a good way?) scenes. As he basically jerks off her tail, she cries out in ecstasy, and announces that she's orgasming.
It's a hell of a way to start off a series, especially in a genre that's usually so saturated with similar setups (minus, of course, the manual snake stimulation). But unlike your usual harem, there's something delightful and laugh-out-loud humorous about Monster Musume. Feel what you want about "sexy monster girls," but there's a playful absurdity in having the source of lustful energy be a snake-woman. Her breasts may be voluptuous, and her face may be beautiful, but as her serpentine body writhes around a bathtub or skitters down a sidewalk (jean skirt and all), there's a disconnect with reality that helps place the scenario firmly in the comedy camp. Another typical harem scene, the "date" that almost always involves lingerie (or swimsuit) shopping, gets a humorous twist when the main character learns that Miia's panties are an adhesive triangle that stick to who-knows-where.
That's not to say that Miia exists only as a joke, though. In fact, the episode is quick to address that, while the setup may be absurd and fantastical (surely humans can't have intercourse with snakes… right?), Miia is a respectable character with very human emotions. Her feelings are hurt when two strangers make fun of their relationship, and rightfully so. We may chuckle at the thought of a snake coiling coquettishly around a hapless man, but to scoff at a non-traditional relationship in a world where humans and demi-humans are supposedly equal strikes too close to parallels in reality.
This delicate balance between absurdist comedy and thoughtful character romance goes a long way in making the first episode enjoyable. It helps push the show beyond "just another harem anime," all while giving it the leeway to use the premise as a playground for tawdry hijinks. If the rest of the series is anything like the first episode, I think it'll be a fun ride.
Rating: 3.5
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Overlord:
If only this were my first time to the VRMMO rodeo. (Or D-MMO as it's called in Overlord.) Sadly, it is not, and as an entry in the rapidly expanding "trapped in a video game" anime genre, Overlord is mostly a snooze.
You've all heard the story before. Our misbegotten gamer hero has become trapped in a whole new massively multiplayer online world. In Sword Art Online, this was a brand new launch title, and in Log Horizon, it was an active worldwide hit game, but in Overlord, our protagonist finds himself living in a game world that only flickers to life after its host servers have all shut down. Yup, "Lord Momonga" was the last avatar logged into passé MMO Yggdrasil when the game finally went dark from inactivity. Instead of just getting booted from the game, however, "Lord Momonga" finds himself in the literal body of the giant skeleton-man guild master he once controlled through VR. The NPCs he had guarding the floors of his guild are now flesh-and-blood servants at his beck and call. The only question now is what kind of "overlord" this once-timid nerd will become.
There's just one problem. Someone forgot to give this skeleton story a heart and soul.
I say this because it's just way too easy to compare this show to Log Horizon, which infused a similar premise with a far stronger human element right from the get-go. Now yes, Log Horizon had multiple players "trapped in the game" to bounce off one another and Overlord only has one, but Log Horizon also turned its former NPCs into fully realized human characters very quickly, so that still doesn't seem like an excuse to me. The emotion in Log Horizon was palpable. "How did this happen? Are we immortal now? What about our families? How do we govern ourselves? I miss food." Overlord starts and ends with its confused Accidental Skeletor musing to himself about the logistics of his new situation in noncommital confusion. It's just his uninteresting skull-head soliloquizing in a void, with minimal animation and completely uninteresting production design, and while I'm sure his NPC servants will be humanized over time, his interactions with them largely consist of figuring out their new "specs" from their ability to use skills to whether or not he can touch the female floor boss' boobs. (Sigh.)
Overlord might deal in brainier or more playful concepts down the line, but this first episode was mostly boring and emotionless, too similar to the conceits of other hit anime without improving on anything from them or indulging in the excitement or fear that comes so easily to the premise and makes it interesting in the first place. I'm not impressed, Lord Momonga.
Rating: 2
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Jitsu wa Watshi wa:
It's really difficult to get away from the show's moldy aesthetic and threadbare execution, but trying to judge it in a void as a comedy, it's perfectly sweet and competent. The romantic leads have complementary gimmicks that give them solid potential chemistry, and the future side characters previewed in the opening theme look like they'll be providing the extra raunch and spice the show needs to be more memorable. It's a nice little show that's cruelly hampered by its hideous appearance. (Even the aforementioned opening song is pretty ear-poisony.) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, so if you're on the lookout for a charming harem-style romantic comedy, there's some warmth and joy to be had from this one. There's not much bite in it, but it certainly doesn't bite in the bad way either.
Rating: 2.5
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God Eater:
Nothing much really. The art style looks unique, that's actually one of the things I was looking forwards to. Unfortunately, the plot is cliché and it has lost my hopes in it. Maybe episode 2 will be different, but I don't know.
Rating: 1.5
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Prison School:
This is not a fanservice show.
This is not a sex comedy.
This is not a seinen drama or romance.
And most baffling of all, this is not a satire of any of the above genres.
It's just "Prison School," and Prison School belongs to some genre I'm not sure I've ever seen before. It's best explained as a series of undiluted feelings on the part of its author. Those feelings include but are not limited to contempt, self-amusement, and raging id, smashed together onto a page without thinking about the results too much. This anime adaptation does its best to retain those feelings through an extremely jerky and grotesque animation style and art that is saturated and shaded so hard that everyone looks like they've been thinly coated in vaseline.
The """story""" of Prison School is that five comically overblown pervy virgin guys have found their way into an all-girls' school with aspirations to peep their first pair of panties. Unfortunately for them, the "shadow student council" of this school, made up of a G-cup dominatrix, a savage martial artist, and a woman with the power to control crows, has taken it upon themselves to torture the school's misbehaving male students. What follows is a series of hideous faces, hideous cleavage, and hideously poor taste as the guys receive their just desserts via physical/mental torture and actually start to, ya know, like it. Except for our protagonist (who might be slowly going insane.) Leading man Kiyoshi struggles against the torture to prove that he's not such a bad guy, pines after the school's resident sweet ditz, and dreams of exoneration.
There are some genuine laughs to be had through all this, mostly from the rogue's gallery of bizarre dudes and their unique quirks. Shingo is one of those nerds who always uses 20 words to express a 5 word idea, which results in some great lines like "He has the countenance of one touched by diarrhea." Andre is a giant dude prone to tears whose face seems to get smaller and smaller inside his corpulent head. Joe is a hooded figure who only speaks in violent coughing fits until he falls for the dominatrix and manages to rasp out an f-bomb. Even then, the show seems to be perpetually shaming you for finding anything in it funny. Its intent was never to make you happy in any way. It's just here to shock, to disturb, and to be whatever its embittered author felt like it should be in that moment. It's not commentative, but it's not cruel either, because even cruelty would be a kind of passion. (And it's definitely not titillating.) It just is, and you can either find some angle of appeal in its ramblings or run screaming in the other direction.
Anime is a market so heavily dominated by demographic appeal that it's hard to describe that four-leaf clover in the clover patch, "a show for nobody," without it feeling like an insult. I didn't hate Prison School. I felt no emotions toward the show whatsoever. It's a Rorschach test. Your brain pulls out of it what your brain pours into it, but it's an empty vessel of shock value without that human lens to attribute value to it. (This makes a lot more sense in the context of its publication history.) I think individual reactions to Prison School will be way more fascinating than the show itself. The show itself is just a guy streaking across the Super Bowl football field while they're setting up for halftime. You don't ask him why he did it or what he was trying to say by showing his junk to billions of viewers. You just put that shit on youtube and move along with your day.
Rating... ??
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Thanks for reading
