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I was really looking forward to an anime adaptation of Robotics;Notes, the third visual novel written by Hayashi Naotaka-shi for the collaboration of 5pb. and Nitroplus, because previous two series came from it were really neat with ChäoS;HEAd being a rather promising start and Steins;Gate being just stellar. So no wonder I have a lot of things to tell now.

Robotics;Notes begins with our protagonists, Yashio Kaito and Senomiya Akiho, the only members of school’s robotics club, trying to save the said club from shutting down. And that’s a huge step down from Steins;Gate in terms of a story. I mean, Steins;Gate had university students as ... main characters who invent and mess up with crazy gadgets, and all Robotics;Notes has to offer is yet another clichéd story about saving a school club. Ouch. But to be fair, one can still pull out a good plot from that, and Robotics;Notes has an interesting start despite me being biased against its premise.

The plot of the series starts off with Yashio and Senomiya entering some sort of Japanese Robot Wars tournament. It’s a great hook for the series and it made me change my initial opinion of the show. I’m pretty sure that the idea of crushing and smashing enemy robots with your own one is appealing to every geek, who is interested in technology. We are all children when it comes to this. If you liked playing around with screwdrivers and other instruments, disassembling stuff and building simple mechanisms when you were small, then you understand the overall feeling that Robotics;Notes is trying to show you — the technology is awesome, and through it you can make miracles come true like a bloody mage.

The first half of Robotics;Notes serves mainly as an introduction of the characters, just like in Steins;Gate.
Yashio is a good male protagonist to me. He has a lazy attitude but essentially is a nice and caring fellow who just doesn’t want to show it off. Sometimes he lacks character because of that but I think that’s fine in general.
Senomiya Akiho is a cheerful, merry girl. She is really important for this story because she is the key to the mood Robotics;Notes is trying to pull you in. Senomiya absolutely loves robots and never stops talking about how classy they are. Actually, it’s a double-edged sword, because, depending on a viewer, she can either be irritating or having a certain appeal to her.
Of all other characters I want to mention Furugōri Kona, resident computer fairy. I mentioned in my Steins;Gate review that I liked how Hashida Itaru was a pretty nice depiction of a geek. Furugōri is exact opposite, a walking stereotype: a shut-in, a fujoshi and speaks in slang full of memes. The thing is, she is probably my favourite character here, maybe because of her over-the-top behaviour and facial expressions or maybe because she has a certain drama to herself. Nevertheless, I think Furugōri’s antics are the funniest part of the series.

So, yeah… Enough praising here. You’ve probably seen my rating and are now wondering why it is so low after all I said. Well, both Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes have a good first half, but while Steins;Gate in its second half becomes one of the best anime series I’ve ever seen, Robotics;Notes follows the wrong way and starts to fall apart.

The plot becomes bloody nonsensical. A lot of threads are left forgotten and unresolved, and I think that I should put part of the blame for this on the blokes who wrote script for the series because it feels like they did a bad job in condensing several routes of the visual novel into one big story. But there are things I can’t see any excuse for. Some events of the past that the characters constantly mentioned in a vague way are never fully explained. What a tease. Other big events happened during the course of the series just don’t get enough attention in my eyes. Major things going in Tokyo? Yep, it looks totally important because all description I get is about thirty seconds of footage and a couple of posts in bland name Twitter. The world is in turmoil? Casually mentioned in the news and that’s it. I just can’t sense the scale they want me to feel. It’s like spending all day wasting time in your house, watching the telly and so on, and then some fellow suddenly shows up and tells you that boom, you saved the world by doing nothing. That is wonderful but just doesn’t feel like a major accomplishment, does it?

Most of the characters lost their appeal to me in the second half because they just stopped being relevant to the main plot. It’s just like they are written in for the sake of one single scene or for the pure purpose of exposition. The antagonist is also meh because he lacks any motivation or traits that could have made him a memorable villain. Just what is he going to do after he succeeds? Why is his plan so overly complex and relying heavily on rather small and obscure details? I guess I’ll never know.

And another thing. As I mentioned before, what defined Robotics;Notes and made it likeable to me in the first place is the sense of awe it gave to technology and constructing stuff. I loved that message, but then the creators completely screwed it up with inconsistency and technobabble. Sure, there is a lot of technobabble in ChäoS;HEAd and in Steins;Gate, but at least it is believable to some extent. And here we have magnetic monopoles — red glowing thingies that just fall from the sky for unexplained reason. There is a friendly neighbourhood PhD in physics, whom I went to the same school with. When I told her about this concept, well… I’ll never forget those cold eyes of a person with murderous intent so strong it can make you die of fear. No, seriously, you cannot write a love letter to science with plot devices like monopoles that come out from bloody nowhere. It sort of undermines the whole message that technology can make miracles in good hands and save the world in hopeless situations because it turns out that to create technology you need a really miraculous event to happen first. Ridiculous.

Robotics;Notes is major disappointment for me. Akin to ChäoS;HEAd and Steins;Gate, it was rather promising in the beginning, with Robot Wars, urban legends and augmented reality quest bits, but unlike those two, its story had too much build-up leading out to literally nothing, so it just collapsed by its own weight.

Honestly, before watching Blood-C: The Last Dark I had no familiarity with the franchise. Sure, I saw a couple of episodes of Blood+ on TV, but that’s all, so the only reason for me to watch this film was that my friends invited me to a convention, and it was shown there. And this film turned out to be crap. I decided to write this review but delayed submitting it for two months before I finally got a chance to marathon the Blood-C television series to get a better grasp of the plot. And guess what, now I think that the film is even more ... of crap than I initially assumed, therefore, I’m submitting this review mostly unchanged.

The setting of the film is undetailed and lazy. The creators are trying to bring a dystopian feel to it: Japan is ruled by a corrupted government, the Internet is heavily censored, and underage people are not allowed to stay late on the streets without any adults accompanying them. However, it is never stated why the things are this way. How did the political situation change and why is the government trying to restrict the freedom? Y’see, censorship is like outright speaking “We have stuff we don't want you to know”, and there are a lot of much better ways to hide the truth. Like spreading rumours, gossips and crazy theories that will make actual facts look like yet another lunatic fantasy, for example. The only reason we have this setting clumsily established is that the writers wanted to introduce the good guys as a resistance, freedom fighters trying to overthrow oppressive and unjust regime, and it hurts how uncreative and forced this is.

And yeah, those freedom fighters… Here, have a look at this roster: a crippled mentor type of a guy in a wheelchair; his secretary; a tough-acting guy and his geeky friend, our comedic relief duo; and a token loli, who is a also a hacker. They’re clichéd as much as most secondary characters are, so they’re neither really interesting nor irritating. Excluding the loli one, and let me explain why. She is a hacker so good that she actually uses two keyboards simultaneously and types on the second one with her feet. Y’know, there is an anime called Battle Programmer Shirase, the protagonist of which is, well, a programmer and he can move his fingers so fast that he has to use six keyboards to keep up with his speed. This is stupid, but in insanely awesome kind of way. And loli typing with her feet? No, that’s just dumb. There can be a thin line between these two examples of ridiculous anime stuff, but I stand my ground here.

So, the plot. Meet our protagonist, Saya. If you haven’t watched the Blood-C television series, all you’re going to know about her is that she wants revenge for some unclear reason. She wants to kill Nanahara Fumito, a powerful man who has big influence in Japan. Saya accidentally runs into Hiiragi Mana, a resistance member I haven’t mentioned earlier, during the attack of a vampire monster kind of thingie in an underground train. Saya saves Hiiragi from the monster and escapes from the police with the help of Hiiragi’s resistance friends. Then Saya meets up with Mogari Kuroto (mentor guy in a wheelchair) and learns that they have a common goal as resistance wants to end Nanahara’s oppressive rule. Also, Mogari has some personal feud with Nanahara, so he is just as fuelled up with revenge as Saya.

As you can see, the opening of the story is pretty generic. However, it’s packed with action scenes and I have to admit that those are pretty good. They are well animated (putting aside my personal hate for CG vehicles), exciting and thrill inducing. The beginning of the film is really fun to watch on the big screen. But when the story slows down a bit… Oh, boy.

First of all, Saya and Hiiragi. As I have already mentioned, Saya wants revenge. That’s her whole character and it’s uninteresting. On the other hand, Hiiragi is her opposite. While Saya is cold and introverted, Hiiragi is cheerful and friendly. While Saya wants to kill the antagonist, Hiiragi wants to find her father (a plot thread that ends in a rather pathetic but nevertheless amusing way). When these two are talking, it’s painful to listen to because it always follows “Hiiragi is trying to make friends, Saya doesn’t give a thing” formula. This routine gets old very fast and eats up a big chunk of the film.

Secondly, the plot. It quickly deteriorates and stops making sense. I can turn a blind eye on some things because there is always a possibility that I don’t understand them due to my unfamiliarity with the franchise, but there are still a lot of moments when the stuff happening on screen is illogical, confusing or just pure bosh. I especially like how the film treats hackers as if it’s still the Nineties, when people believed that if one smashes buttons hard enough, he will break a card reader lock wirelessly with his mobile phone. Also, there is a cameo appearance by a character from another CLAMP work, but needless to say, this cameo is utterly pointless.

The last fight is disappointing, to say the least. And the ending of the story is… I have no words to describe it. When the film ended, I found myself sitting in the middle of a cinema driven to a nonplus and feeling irritated and angry. A lot of plot threads are unresolved, and after watching the TV series I can say that the writers didn’t even bother to explain or address any loose ends left hanging in it.

As a result, The Last Dark is a bad film. It’s bad if you haven’t watched the TV series because the film’s plot is confusing and makes no sense. And it’s even worse if you did watch the series because the film still makes no god damn sense and doesn’t fill the gaps in its prequel. There is only one redeeming quality in it: action scenes. The director, Shiotani Naoyoshi-shi, is quite good and knows his deal (you can check out currently airing Psycho-Pass series to see what he is capable of, when a competent writer is aboard). Thus, if you want a mindless eye candy kind of a film, The Last Dark can pass as your choice; otherwise, well, excuse me.

Roughly eight years have passed since the final episode of Last Exile. We all remember how it concluded: after defeating the antagonist and ending a war that was raging for eternity, good guys laid their hands on a sleeper ship and went to another world to live in peace and harmony. But what they actually arrived at turned out to be the twisted, corrupted world of unnecessary sequels.

Truly, Gonzo was having a tough time and needed a strong comeback that will allow it to stay in business, so they chose to milk one of their old successful and popular titles. Was it a wise decision? ... Probably, it was. Does the new show turn out to be good? Well, let’s find out.

The story is pretty simple. A young sky pirate girl named Fam Fan Fan is accidentally caught in a war unleashed by bad, bad Ades Empi— I mean, Federation. (But hell, it is ruled by an empress!) Fam along with her friend, Giselle Collette, saves life of a Turanian princess named Millia who asks the sky pirates for help in the noble quest of liberating her country.

And here we come across the most obvious and fatal flaw of Gin’yoku no Fam — the protagonist and title character, Fam herself. Firstly, she is the worst kind of a pacifist who honestly believes that all people in the world can easily throw away their differences, lay down weapons and then just fly in the vast blue sky, full of joy and happiness. Fam never questions her ideals while on war where, big surprise, people are dying because somebody isn’t able to just give up on his goals, be it revenge, greed, survival of relatives, or anything else. To be fair, this naïve faith is not a bad trait, but the fact that she always holds to it no matter what is really stupid and irritating. Well, Fam receives some character development near the end of the series but it was too damn late for me to like her. Secondly, the way plot revolves around her is unbearable. Her Noble Phantasm is Deus Ex Machina: The Slayer of Suspension of Disbelief. Fam can fly in the middle of the battle and never be harmed, she can infiltrate enemy’s flagship with ease, hell, she can probably go back in time and save John Lennon or something. I get that she is a genius pilot but there are limits to how far the writer can stretch it. Thirdly, she is voiced by Toyosaki Aki-shi. It’s just personal and very subjective but I can’t stand Toyosaki-shi as a seiyū of protagonist in this kind of show. Her voice is hammered into my mind with air-headed clumsy girls, so no way I can take her as a world saviour seriously.

That’s it with Fam, now I want to say two words about other characters. Giselle seems like a pretty generic sidekick to me, but that’s okay because she rarely steals the spotlight. On the other hand we have Millia and she is one of the better parts of the series. Millia receives a lot of character development from start to finish, she can be irritating at first but she gets better little by little and progresses a lot throughout the show becoming one of the small number of Gin’yoku no Fam characters I feel little sympathy for. Another interesting character is the main antagonist, Luscinia Hāfez, the Premier of Ades Federation. Yes, his actions seem unreasonable and more I think of them less sense they make, but most of the time watching the series I spent on figuring out how far he can and will go, how much of him believe that his way is the only possible solution for the crisis. That was some kind of pleasure.

One thing people complained a lot about Gin’yoku no Fam was fanservice. Their point was this series seems like a sequel to Strike Witches not to Last Exile. To be fair, there is not much fanservice here and what is present is not really annoying. The only thing got on my nerves was Millia trying to take over the ship with her maid uniform. Yeah, it was played for laughs but this scene stood out too much and was too damn stupid, so I just cannot let it slip by. On the other hand, cameos of Last Exile’s characters (kinda fanservice too) were utterly pointless. They were lazily written into the new series for appearance’s sake only. For example, Dio’s overall impact on the plot is exactly zero, so I get this sticky feeling that Gonzo here is just trying to draw attention of the original series fan base.

And one more thing before I call it a day. Let me bring up the philosophy, the basic idea of both series. It’s pretty simple: the war is bad. We can see it through both the original series and Gin’yoku no Fam. The problem with the latter is how that idea was integrated into the plot. In Last Exile we have the Guild. It enforces strict rules of combat resulting in a lot of casualties, casualties that can be avoided if you break the rules. But if you do it, you will be punished by the Guild because it has superior technology and can easily crush you. And even if you follow the rules, a member of the Guild can call off the engine of your ship on a whim, just because he thinks it’s fun. So you’re screwed no matter what you do. This is unfair and cruel. This is war, guys, and this is why it’s bad. And what can Gin’yoku no Fam offer? We have our protagonists flying here and there and talking about friendship. We have loli Empress crying because fighting is making her sad. Oversimplification and child’s play. The war is bad. The oranges are orange. Care to explain why Gin’yoku no Fam is about war and not about oranges, Gonzo?

So, overall, is this series a powerful comeback? Hell no. I won’t cry if Gonzo returns to animation studio asylum. Gin’yoku no Fam is certainly a nice try but its shell is sadly empty. The setting is cool, but the plot while having a good build-up is too much of a cliché and the characters are either annoying or just simply not memorable. To be fair, this series has some good scenes and nice background music but that’s not enough. I rate it 7 points. Too high, maybe, but at least it’s not as bad as war.

After watching a couple of episodes of Dantalian no Shoka, I thought this series has a lot of potential as it is an anime with philosophic story-lines and fairy tale feeling in it. But even with more and more episodes coming out, Shoka couldn’t win my praise and sympathy for some reason; I still thought of it as a show with unopened potential. And now it is over. It could be good, but failed. And in my review I will try to understand why this happened.

So, the plot. Hugh Anthony Disward, the protagonist of the story, inherits a mansion from his suddenly deceased bibliophile grandfather. ... In this mansion he meets a girl named Dalian, who is the custodian of the Mystical Tomes. These magical books have varying powers: some can bring people back from the dead, others can turn the person who reads them insane, and so on. Lord Disward, understanding the danger the Mystical Tomes hold, joins up with Dalian in a quest to find and seal the Tomes away.

Dalian is a typical tsundere character, who is lovingly done with all reference to ISO 15129 Female Leads of the Anime Shows. She sips her tea, enjoys various sweets and cakes (oh man, excuse me for thinking about K-ON for a second) and scolds Lord Disward to work off her tsundere position. Nothing really new or inventive here. On the other hand, Lord Disward seems to be a lot more interesting character. He participated in war (not a soldier, merely a pilot, as he claims himself), and that’s actually a really attracting trait. When one think about a military pilot and books, the associations are quickly led to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Or maybe Richard Bach. That kind of people. Nevertheless, Lord Disward gets a certain romantic aureole right from the start with just one phrase.

Whole nature of Dantalian no Shoka is episodic. All episodes are standalone stories, and most of the secondary characters appear only in one episode, so the cast is pretty much limited to Lord Disward and Dalian. The stories are usually very metaphorical and deal with a number of philosophical questions. The common themes are what can happen if the Mystical Tome falls into wrong hands, and the drawbacks of the magical books’ powers.

And now pieces are set. As you can see, all those things make Shoka a promising anime. What can possibly go wrong, huh? Firstly, the pacing of the series is terrible. Shoka goes strictly with “one story — one episode” formula, so most episodes seem too rushed and messy with their stories being crumpled and not detailed. I can see this series tries to make the viewer think, but it just doesn’t give him time to reflect upon what happened, and it limits the plot to just “fancy things go around in Victorian England”.

Secondly, the character development. Dalian, as ISO 15129 recommends us, is never affected by any events. Her character remains static during the whole run of the show, but that’s not an issue, since I never expected anything from her. The problem lies with Lord Disward. He is a capable protagonist at first glance, shooting enemies and all that, but he turns out to be really plain and undeveloped, usually just saying something trivial about episode’s outcome and not getting impressed with anything happened in it. Remember that stuff I said about military pilots and romantic aureole? It kicked only in one of the last episodes, and because of pacing problems even that episode failed to show the development of Lord Disward’s character.

Let’s take Kino no Tabi for comparison. (I know it’s bad to compare anything with one of my favourite anime of all time, but please, bear with it for a second.) Kino no Tabi is episodic, was based on ranobe and has a lot of philosophy too. However, Kino no Tabi’s stories are wonderful and well-balanced. Its protagonist, Kino, seems to be emotionless, but one still can feel how various events have an impact on her character. Oh, and I think I got an idea why Shoka failed. The person in charge of Kino no Tabi was Nakamura Ryūtarō-shi, one of the most talented and distinctive anime directors. And the director of Dantalian no Shoka was Uemura Yutaka-shi, a newbie. I’m not saying he is a bad director. He was trying to tell us a good story, but he is just not experienced enough to do so. Probably, this project was too much for him to handle in right way.

Okay, now I’m done with this review. Dantalian no Shoka could offer a lot but has too many issues to do it. I rate it 7 points, because the director actually tried and because it has beautiful violins in its soundtrack.

Let me start with some back story and then the actual review will follow.

About four years ago two Japanese video game companies, Nitroplus and 5pb., started a collaboration to make the world a better place with some neat visual novels. The first project came out of it was ChäoS;HEAd with its scenario written by Hayashi Naotaka-shi, a guy who worked on Remember11 and Memories Off series, if this means anything to you. In general ChäoS;HEAd turned out to be rather average novel and it lost most of its good parts in its anime adaptation; however, ChäoS;HEAd still has enough impressive ideas and nice concepts to ... be memorable. And thanks to it I took my interest in Steins;Gate anime adaptation, when the word about it got out.

So, Steins;Gate, the second fruit of Nitroplus & 5pb. collaboration’s labour, is again written by Hayashi-shi. (I haven’t read the original novel, so I won’t reference it in my review.) The story revolves around a group of people who remodel their microwave into a device capable of sending text messages to the past. The first part of the series is dedicated to introduction of various characters and showing them fooling around with the microwave — standard stuff. The enjoyment here mostly depends on how much sympathy do you have for the characters, so let’s take a quick look on the roster.

Hashida Itaru, a fat geek, otaku and “super haker”. Calm, lazy and perverted, but won’t go as far as stealing woman’s pants to wear them on his head, which in fact makes him one of the most well-written geek characters in modern anime.
Shiina Mayuri, a moe girl, cheerful, merry and voiced by Hanazawa Kana-shi. Since I hear her a lot nowadays, her voice doesn’t sound as cute as it used to be a year ago, but still she does a nice work singing “tutturū” on this role.
Makise Kurisu, a science genius and tsundere. She can be a bit cliché because of her character definition, but becomes more complex and deep character as the series progresses, so I find her rather likeable and interesting sort of person.

There are, of course, more characters in the series and these three are not all of the important ones, but I can’t spend all my review listing them like some Wikipedia, so let’s proceed.
“But hey, wait, Tsunekicchi!” Some of you can interrupt me. “That’s okay to skip some of the characters, but you said nothing about the protagonist!”
Yep, right. That’s because I consider him so important that I’m going to give him a whole paragraph.

So, Hōōin Kyōma, or Okabe Rintarō as some humie humans tend to call him, a lab-coat-wearing self-proclaimed mad scientist and, as I already mentioned, the protagonist of the series. Very original and distinctive, one can call him “a parody of parody mad scientist characters” with all his feigned paranoid behaviour and maniacal laughter. For me most of the fun in the show was delivered by Okabe’s interaction with other characters, his exaggerated reactions and fanatical devotion to the chosen stereotype. Of course, he is not there just for comic relief since he’s the protagonist, so you’ll see another, serious and caring, side of his person. Personally I think that at least one third of its success Steins;Gate owes to this guy. (He shares my fondness for Dr Pepper, an intellectual drink for the chosen ones, so I can probably be a little partial while describing him. Just saying.)

Another great share of success is obtained by the second part of the show, where the pace of storytelling speeds up and most of plot twists happen and where the characters you probably grew to like face the problems their invention caused. And allow me to tell you, Steins;Gate is really good at drama. It’s been a long time since I last felt that way while watching anime, as this series is capable of triggering a lot of complex emotions, especially if you empathize with the characters.

Overall the stylistics of Steins;Gate leaves a nice feeling with all its culture references ranged from Back to the Future films to Large Hadron Collider, and with all its “make-believe science” and technobabble. Well, there are some things hard to swallow (compress 3.24 terabytes of data into 36 bytes using a black hole… no, seriously, what the hell, Makise?), but as I always thought, the moment you’ll start taking all fiction seriously your life is ruined.

Animation is rather nice and good looking. And regarding the soundtrack, it’s wonderful. Both the opening theme by Itō Kanako-shi (who appears in pretty much every Nitroplus-affiliated project) and the ending theme by Sakakibara Yui-shi (who I remember as seiyū of Kishimoto Ayase, my favourite character from ChäoS;HEAd) sound magnificent and it was a pleasure to listen to them.

Okay, Steins;Gate is definitely worth watching, if you still hesitating. I will really miss this series (and looking forward to the film, of course). Steins;Gate is an impressive and influential piece of fiction, and one more thing I appreciate in it is that it brings back one of the classical sci-fi themes — the rules and problems of time travel — which is not common in modern anime. Plus Steins;Gate made me remember my favourite novel by Mr Isaac Asimov, as it has similar dénouement and triggers similar thoughts. Their plot is much different, however, but I still don’t want to mention the title of the novel for spoiler reasons just in case.

Phew, guys, I like a way too many aspects of Steins;Gate to rate it anything lower than 10 points, so nothing can be done here. Well-earned 10 points. El… Psy… Congroo.

P.S. Looks like Robotics;Notes, the upcoming third visual novel by Nitroplus & 5pb., deserves to be looked forward to. And it has story that deals with something like fighting games and robots. Ah, Japan, the Motherland of Ridiculous Plots!

When Togainu no Chi was announced, I was put before a tricky choice either to watch it or not. On the one hand, this anime is based on a visual novel created by Nitroplus, the company I mostly like. But on the other hand, it is BL. Well, I considered this issue carefully and finally thought: “Bah, I bore with relationship between von Lohengramm and Kircheis from Legend of the Galactic Heroes, so I have some ‘just do not give a thing’ skill. Let’s roll this party!” Yep, I decided to cross the border and take a light step to the dangerous territory of fujoshi. ... I’m telling you all this just because I want you to understand, that I don’t belong to the target audience of this anime, so my review can be a bit out of place. It’s probably more like a random passer-by telling other random passers-by what to expect here.

And with that matter cleared up, let me start with technical aspect. The soundtrack is done splendidly, with rocky and upbeat background music during action scenes becomes atmospheric and heartfelt when the pace slows down. Each episode has its own ending song, which is great, because this way sorrowful episode cannot be ended with some out-of-place jolly music.

On the other hand, visual part is dreadful. This is not how you do things in 2010, A-1. Distorted faces and bodies, cheapo choppy animation… Togainu no Chi has a lot of this stuff. The show is only 12-episode long, so such amount of *quality* is not excusable.

The plot leaves much to be desired too. It just goes in circles, with their radii changed by dei ex machina: random events happen, characters suddenly go nuts and all other things, which make you wonder, what the hell the script writer was doing instead of his job. (Light spoiler follows here; proceed to next paragraph, if you don’t want to hear it.) For example, one character barely avoids death in one episode only to turn into the furniture, to have no plot significance and screen time and then to be killed in one of the dumbest and meaningless scenes ever. That’s just fascinating.

Another thing I want to say is that Togainu no Chi has a nice cast of seiyū, but still utterly fails in voice acting. Firstly, Shiki voiced by Midorikawa Hikaru-shi. His typical role of bad-ass anti-hero at the first glance, but then it turns out that Shiki has no personality. He just wants power. Why? Because power is cool, dammit, are you dumb or what? And thus Midorikawa-shi had nothing to use his skill for, so it was disappointing. Secondly, Rin voiced by Fukuyama Jun-shi, who has an awesome voice range, which is completely not utilized here. I don’t get what was the point of hiring Fukuyama-shi to speak with high pitch — that could be done and probably done better by a lot of other seiyū. And lastly, Keisuke voiced by Sugita Tomokazu-shi. Well, at least he has his good moments, but his character still prevents him from using his talent to utmost. Concerning other characters, I especially want to mention Nano, the mysterious person who speaks in cryptic lines, which quite possibly are not intended to contain any sense at all. Plus his seiyū uses really weird intonations, so Nano was driving me mad every time he showed on screen. I just hate him.

And two words about BL part. No, really, is Togainu no Chi really based on a BL game? I think it has as many BL scenes as, for example, Code Geass. I mean, there is some tension sometimes, but nothing more. So the whole point of my hesitation about watching it or not was meaningless. Togainu no Chi is definitely safe for work for male audience, and I feel sorry for all fujoshi who were looking forward to this anime. Really, girls, I heard that the original novel is highly regarded in your circles, and I know what the mental anguish dealt by a poor adaptation is, so hold on there, okay?

Sigh. Putting aside the music, the best part of Togainu no Chi were Mahō Shōjo Madoka★Magica advertisements aired within it. And when actual show is outrun by commercials, you know immediately: this is a bad show. It is terrible, disgusting, detestable, repulsive and every other synonym one can come up with. And that is what Togainu no Chi is. The worst thing I’ve seen for a long time, and even 4 points I gave it were probably too much.

Initially I wanted to review Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works disregarding the visual novel it was based on. But that is not wise, because Deen made an adaptation targeted at the fans of the original. If you haven’t read the novel, you probably won’t understand half of the things on screen. So in my review I’m assuming that you’re familiar with the source as I’ll keep in touch with it. Just be warned.

Fate is probably the most successful franchise created by Type-Moon, Japanese game company, and its author Nasu Kinoko-shi. For most people Fate/stay night anime acted as introduction to bizarre magical realm of Nasuverse, ... the world of Nasu-shi’s writings, and it laid the foundation of Type-Moon’s international fame as well as other works by Nasu-shi became widely known beyond Japan. Thereby the UBW film was highly awaited here.

Personally I think that UBW is the best route of the original novel. It has strong plot, which deals with the mystery of Archer’s identity and contains nice turnarounds and memorable scenes. The first route, Fate, which became the basis for TV series, was predictable and pretty much boring, and Heaven’s Feel, while having some advantages, was just… twisted, so having film based solely on UBW is surely tasty.

The characters, being the same old guys from Fate, are shown from other angles, which is interesting for some of them. The core cast of UBW consists of three characters. Emiya Shirō, the protagonist, whose wish to protect the weak is balancing on the edge of dementia, actually has to do something with it here. He directly faces the consequences of his behaviour and has to fight to protect his ideals. In UBW Emiya is still not as reasonable and level-headed as in HF, but more interesting character, then in Fate. The second one is Archer, and it is the most curious case. The whole thing we know about him from Fate is that he is some cynical mysterious anti-hero, so it is attractive to uncover his past, his motives for joining the Holy Grail War and his real identity. The last, but not the least central character is Tōsaka Rin. That’s subjective, but she is just my favourite female character of Fate/stay night, so it is nice for her to be in the highlight. Another little thing to point out about the characters is the presence of Lancer. This guy is sarcastic, but noble warrior, who sadly doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but most of the scenes with him are hilarious. His interaction with Emiya and Tōsaka and that event with Kotomine easily made Lancer one of my favourite characters ever.

With all advantages of the original plot the film got a problem: it is rushed, and many of the background things not important for the story are left behind. But that is understandable, because it’s impossible to cram the whole UBW route into two hours film, and I think Deen has done all it can. Scenarists could try to adopt the plot by removing some of the main events, but obviously nothing good can came out of this. In fact, simplification is common problem for adaptations of Nasu-shi’s works. He has an amazing fantasy, and his stories have a lot of unique weird concepts, which are left unmentioned or unexplained in the anime adaptations. Tsukihime suffered greatly from it, and Fate/stay night TV series wasn’t untainted too. (I cannot say for sure about Kara no Kyōkai, because I still cannot find enough time to read the original, but I think it has its moments either.)

So, in this film we got perfectly animated key events of UBW route. Regarding it as an addition for the visual novel, this film is a great thing to remind about good old time spent on reading the original, and there is nothing new or unexpected came out of the viewing, therefore I think it is 8 points worth.

So, K-ON! This musical band centred anime, which is not a *musical* comedy, has now finished its second round. What can I tell you about it, huh?

First of all, K-ON!! is still not about music. It drifted even more away from that direction, and I found that hardly surprising. This show is character-driven, therefore the setting doesn’t play first fiddle here. But that is a little disappointing, because I expected more insert songs, since the second season received twice the length of the first one and it was an awaited project. However, the featured music takes not by number, but by quality, with my favourite ... being Love and the second ending theme. Oh, and that background melody, which is reminiscent of Hot Butter’s Popcorn, is a really catchy tune because of that resemblance.

The visual part of K-ON!! is done well: detailed backgrounds and fluid animation, as expected from KyoAni. These guys once again prove that they have one of the best drawing teams among the animation studios.

And now to the plot. The girls are spending another year at school. Full stop. Seriously, series like Azumanga Daiō, Minami-ke and K-ON! don’t need such thing like plot. Whether they successful or not, depends solely on characters’ appeal to the audience and situation humour, and K-ON!! definitely has attractive traits. Being just a moe blob anime in whole, it goes without any patsu shots or jiggling breasts, which differs it straight away from such series like Strike Witches, another famous show of the same type. In general, K-ON!! is pure and blithe plus it has more detailed character development than your average moe anime.

The role of the central character is shifted from Hirasawa Yui to Nakano. She becomes the first fiddle of K-ON!! (or the first guitar, so to say… no, wait, she is a rhythm guitarist, therefore… damn, forget it, I screwed up this metaphor) and develops most from the cast throughout the course of the story. The creators try to show up her feelings about all sempai graduating and her becoming the sole member of light music club, and I think that goes better than the first season’s theme of Hirasawa Yui’s growing as person. Also there are some episodes dedicated not to four original members of Hōkago Teatime to the “alternate trio”, as I call them: Nakano, Hirasawa Ui and Whatshername from the jazz club. Looks like KyoAni was conducting experiments to figure out what to do next with K-ON! franchise, but that actually brought up some pleasant variety for the show.

Thus the second season has some positive changes with stronger characterization comparing it to the first one, and it has some negative changes with most of the show musical themes disappearing. They already were thin in the first season, but in K-ON!! we lost them almost completely. However, K-ON! nicely maintained its position of one of the best shows surfing the moe tsunami, so my overall score for it is 8 points. Now I’m interested in what the film will bring to us.

Here they come again, the Pantsu Witches.

So, this is the anime about an alternative history world, which alternative historicity consists in the fact that nobody ever developed something like skirts or women’s trousers there. Alas, poor Scotsmen, they never got their trademark clothes. (Actually I know that it is not skirt but kilt, so don’t throw your bagpipes at me, please. I’m just playing on stereotypes here.)

And now seriously. The first season was pretty nice. So nice that Japanese Ministry of Culture considered it as one of the best anime shows of the year. With all that success and cliffhanger at the end of the ... last episode it was evident for the second Strike Witches to arrive. However, the title was transferred from Gonzo to AIC, but that didn’t change anything important.

Once again Witches 2 has poor excuse for a plot. Alien bad guys are still fighting the Earth just because; the 501st Joint Fighter Wing is repelling their attacks thanks to cool invention made by professor to be missing; and even the cliffhanger from the end of the first season has very, very little significance. This is the same old story which became a cliché around 80s or so. To be fair, thanks to it Witches has some nostalgic flavour, because I watched a lot of shows of this type back when I was a kid. Well, the plot in Witches 2 isn’t bad or something, it’s just a decoration for the strongest point of the series: the characters.

We have moe girls here. They eat, take a bath, fight enemies, talk about friendship and save each other’s lives. Yep, that is simple, cute and sounds stupid, but that is the thing which made this show attractive. No, I don’t mean interesting — “attractive” is the most suitable word here. It’s just simple, relaxing and funny anime, which is not even pretending to have deep philosophy, cunning plot twists and other mind fare — direct hit for recreation. Some character development here, some humorous moments there, then sprinkle it with fanservice — and here you are, enjoyable series presented on a silver plate.

And concerning the fanservice. It maybe irritating at first, but since it’s the second season we’re talking about, I assume that you, guys, are got used to it already. Yeah, there is a bloody overdose of pantsu shots, enough to send the whole legion of those basement-dwelling otaku into the sea of ecstasy, but it’s too much for anime neophyte’s inexperienced eye to stand. Tastes differ though.

On a technical level all is okay. Art is detailed and well-drawn. The ships can look plastic, but making all that guns, ropes and fancy gadgets is very serious business, so I don’t have a right to complain about it. As for music, it sounds as cheerful and upbeat as it should be, so it suits Witches 2 well.

The overall score is seven points, one point lower than I gave to the first season. The reason for it is that Witches stagnated. No major changes were done by AIC, they simply used the channel created by Gonzo in the first season. The plus for it is that they didn’t screw up this anime, but reverse effect is that the show which doesn’t change will eventually become boring. If there will be any third season, I don’t want it to be done that way.

And yeah, that little creature who was with Miyafuji in the OVA, but not in first Witches… It didn’t showed up here either, so I found myself tricked. Hmph.

“Anime about zombie apocalypse? Awesome!” That’s what I thought when I heard about Highschool of the Dead. Indeed, the idea felt like a piece of tasty cake. If you watched Mr George Romero’s classic horror films, played first Biohazard games or something like that, you probably waited hard for this anime and now you got it.

I have mixed feelings here. Highschool is definitely enjoyable only when it is enjoyable. Action scenes are nice, thrilling and overall well done. Music is catchy and exciting. But when it comes to writing and character development… Just screw that. I mean, even the children from kindergarten can come up ... with those scenarios. Oh wait, no, back in kindergarten the children are still pure and innocent, so Highschool’s writing is probably on the level of elementary school. For example, the creators came up with idea that zombies are blind, so they can only react to sound. That’s okay, no complains, but why is it recalled only when the script writer needs it? The inner logic must always work, even when you cannot come up with a good idea of what to do next. Well, it is evident that plot and character development are playing the second role here. The main scene belongs entirely to the fanservice. (Yeah, zombie slashing qualifies as fanservice too.) Like, what do you need to do when a girl you know is driven by suicidal thoughts? Just grab her breast and squeeze it as hard as you can, duh. I know that good action doesn’t require good storytelling and all, but give me a break, guys. When somebody from the cast was going angsty or trying to speak seriously, I really wanted him to cut the crap and go kill some zombies already. And I think I’ll use this moment to cut my own crap and move on.

Okay, I will say no more about bad scripts. I even won’t mention that there is a recap in fourth damn episode. Let’s better take a look on technical plane. I already praised the music, so the only thing needs to be mentioned here is animation. No major complains there, the show was good-drawn and has a nice art style. Hypersonic jelly boobies are the part I don’t like about it but okay. Fanservice is fanservice, and nothing can be done here.

And do you know what is the best thing about this show? It goes great with beer and pizza, so you can just turn off your brain and watch Highschool without any issues. Senseless dialogues are watering down, action becomes even more enjoyable… Seriously, I’d give Highschool my Beer and Pizza Special Award, if I had any stuff like that. Watching the series in that relaxing atmosphere is certainly boosting its score high.

Ah, time to make final conclusions. Highschool was a zippy drippy creepy trap, and overall score for it is 6 points. Yep, so low one. But if you plan to watch it with alcohol (take care of your liver, guys), maybe in good company, or if you have a natural ability to keep your thoughts off, than you can safely increase the score to 8 or even 9 points. And that should do it, I think.