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Sep 30, 2016
My Romantic Comedy Snafu is basically a better version of Watamote. Both follow painfully socially-awkward protagonists, who find themselves in a variety of relatively ordinary Japanese Highschool situations. However, while Watamote's only draw is just how cringey it is, Snafu has some substance beneath its cringe.
The story of Snafu is an easy one to summarize: Its an average Slice-of-Life, but the two main characters are cynical to the point of parady. To say that there's anything particularly original in this concept would be a gross exaggeration; Haruhi Suzumiya did the Cynic Protagonist years ago when it practically codified the Slice-of-Life genre, and in my own
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opinion it still did it best. That said, the story and writing are fairly good. There's a kernel of a meaningful message deep in there, desperately trying to break out and be insightful, but the show never quite commits to it. Instead it bogs itself down in the typical episodic format that is to be expected of these shows.
That isn't to say Snafu's plot is bad or unenjoyable. On the contrary, there are parts of this show that manage to be very entertaining, but the more i consider it, the lower I have to go on the story. Is it as dramatic as Kokoro Connect? Is it as romantic as Toradora? Is it as interesting as Haruhi? Is it as subversive as Monogatari? Is it as hilarious as Baka-Test? The more I ask myself this and the more I compare it the the stand-out members of its genre, the more I have to say "No, it isn't." As a Romantic Comedy, Snafu isn't very romantic nor is it very comedic.
On to better news: The art is fantastic. As a big fan of Durarara, I'm glad to see that Brain's Base didn't switch away from that general art style. While there are some difference, such as the brighter palette or more pronounced and sharper eyes, its safe to say that if you like the way Durarara looks, you will like the way Snafu looks.
The sound does just barely better than break even. While the voice acting is pretty damn good, great is some places, the music is honestly pretty bad. With the exception of the OP, which is ok, most of the music in this show is pretty grating to the ears. While its certainly not on the level of Himouto (A show with music so bad I dropped it halfway through the first episode solely because its soundtrack was so terrible), The music in the show is certainly not a positive. Luckily, the voice acting and art do make up for this.
The characters in the show are the high point, as well they should be in slice-of-life show. They have fun and enjoyable personalities, even if they aren't exactly likable. While Protagonist's Hachiman and Yukino's cynicism does seem grating at first, their philosophizing and justifications for their actions are interesting enough to keep them from become contemptible, as was the case with Watamote's Protagonist, Tomoko. Next to them you have Yui, an easily peer-pressured cinnamon roll of a person who inexplicably has a crush on Hachiman, Saika, who is in no way just a reskin of Hideyoshi or other trap characters, Shizuka, a shockingly hilarious and blunt teacher who is by far my favorite character, and Hayama, a would be light-novel protagonist who is too nice and optimistic to realize that his methods don't work.
My only problem with these characters is that we've seen some of them before. Saika suffers the most from this, and seems like someone just decided to draw the TVTropes page for Dude Looks Like a Lady. While other side characters certainly have this problem, Saika is the most noticable because of how often he is dragged into the main cast's antics.
Aside from that, it makes me wish the plot had bigger balls and was willing to put these characters into more wild and interesting situations.
Overall, while this show is certainly fun, I don't think its going to change anyone's life. I've yet to start the second season, but as far as season 1 goes, I don't see it getting a rewatch in the foreseeable future.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 15, 2016
Story N/A, its just an animation reel
Trigger-chan is a short animation of trigger Studios of Trigger Studios was a character in one of their shows. Its damn good, flashy, perfectly animated, has some great audio and bass-bumping music to go with it, the character designs are pretty great and interesting looking.
But its just a 30 second video. Uts trigger patting themselves on the back and having a nice wank. Its got a lot of style, but no substance.
At the same time, its just a 30 second video. In terms of a pure enjoyment:time spent ratio, this is amazing.
Overall watch it, you have no reason
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not to. Its on youtube, and vimeo, and probably twenty other places. Go watch it, its good.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 10, 2016
Steins;Gate: The IBM Ad is a series of four four-ish minute long OVAs created as a collaboration with IBM to explain the impact their Cognitive Computing (AKA advanced weak AI) could have on daily life. The shorts follow the Gadget Lab some time after the OVA episode as they relax and live normal lives together. Mayuri brings in a Upa she brought that have Cognitive Computing on board and they proceed to use it for a variety of mundane yet entertaining things.
The story is weak, but it doesn't do anything to hurt Steins;Gate's great plot. Its place in the timeline is clear, but its
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canonicity, or lack-there-of, is also clear. Each of the stories are perfectly coherent slice of life fair. The writing is funny and there's even one touching Okabe-Kurise moment that gets pulled off perfectly.
Art is fine, the great art style of Steins;Gate returns, but the budget is clearly a few pegs down. Expect cross-eyed Kurisu, off-model Mayuri, and rapidly expanding & deflating Daru, but don't expect outright ugly.
Sound is... okay. The voice actors all come back and do a fantastic job, but as far as music goes... I legitimately can't remember. As of writing this, a mere ten minutes after watching the shorts, I cannot describe what the music was like. I just pulled up an episode, and it seems to be mostly stereotypical background bleep-bloops. Nothing offensive to the ears, but it it instantly forgettable.
Characters are spot on. After watching the movie and seeing how badly White Fox's writers can butcher the characters, they are absolutely spot on with them this time. The OkabexKurisu moments play out exactly like they should, Mayuri is as adorably spacey as she should be, Daru is an unrepentant pervert, and all is well.
Overall this is a perfectly acceptable little OVA series. Don't expect it to rock your world or anything, but if you want some bite-sized Steins;Gate, there's a lot worse ways to burn fifteen minutes.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 8, 2016
Looks can be very deceiving, because this show looks every bit as good as the original series its "derived" from. Unfortunately this movie is a joyless mess, a head-in-the-clouds follow up to a fantastic sci-fi anime, a husk that leans on tired cliches and worn out tropes where the original went out of its way to break down and rebuild those same cliches and tropes. Where Steins;Gate was clever, creative, consistent and subversive, Burden of Deja Vu is just that: a burden.
The story is based around a contrivance: A year after the events of the OVA episode, Okabe is disappearing for some reason, and when
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he does so the entire world line shifts to make it seem as though he was never there. This is never explained. At no point does the movie make even passing mention as to why this is happening and why its happening now. Kurisu, with the help of Suzuha, is the only one with even a passing shard of knowledge that Okabe ever existed. Once this is established (Which takes thirty minutes for some reason), the movie spins its wheels for the better part of an hours, with kurisu going through the same "I love you, Okabe"->"Ill do whatever it takes to save Okabe"->"But Okabe doesn't want me too..."->"We have to forget about okabe." four times. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Rinse. And. Repeat.
Never mind the fact that the Kurisu from Steins;Gate (The real one) would never spend this long on this. The real Kurisu, the take-charge no-nonsense caring loving awesome Kurisu, would've wrapped up this nonsensical plot in ten minutes flat and then gotten a bottle of Doctor Pepper to celebrate. Instead, Kurisu is reduced to a sniveling shadow of her true self, all the prop up a tsundere arc on her for no goddamn reason. The real Kurisu had tsundere elements, yes, but that was more a case of some of her personality traits lining up with the trope, not being written to purposefully fill a tsundere checkbox. Burden's Kurisu is the most basic stereotype of a tsundere character possible, to the point that she's barely recognizable as the same character.
Sound is fine, the sub actors do a fine job. Music is leaned way too heavily upon, which just makes the fact that this movie's soundtrack is sub-par all the more noticable.
Then the movie ends with some esoteric, nonsensical reflection upon okabe's principles, before capping off with an admittedly pretty cute line: "Hey Assistant, how's about you give me my first kiss back?" This line and, surprisingly, Moeka are the only rays of hope in this travesty of a movie.
TL;DR: This movie is garbage and has actually soured my opinion of the series and its creators, and makes me sincerely worried for Steins;Gate 0. Avoid at all costs.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Sep 8, 2016
Steins;Gate is an excellent show that I have tried no less than four times to watch over the years, but have never found myself able to get past the 3-episode mark. Now, having finally decided to watch the Dub instead of the Sub (More on this blasphemy later) I can honestly say its a near perfect anime marred only by its extremely slowly paced first five episodes.
Story-wise, Stein;Gate is fantastic. Its a very internally consistent universe, important for any hard sci-fi series such as this, and once the ball gets rolling it is very, very hard to peel your eyes away. Tense mysteries and conspiracies
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build up to a nearly seven-episode long payoff that then proceeds to out-do itself. After hitting episode twelve, the intrigue hits a fever pitch and doesn't settle back down until the finale. Okabe's romance sub-plot is done so subtlely and manages to work into one of the show's biggest hype moments so well that I'm hard-pressed to find any problems with it. Where most shows buckle under the pressure of balancing both a science fiction adventure with a romance, Steins;Gate makes it an integral part of the plot. The only problem then, is the five episodes before anything actually happens. Episodes one through five are all character building and light-hearted comedy, with only the barest of hints at whats to come. This is common in Visual Novels, as its important to build up a player's attachment to the characters before forcing them to choose routes, but in an anime its hardly needed. While the five episode build up is funny and entertaining, it is most certainly the weakest link here, and would've been a welcomed cut.
The art is gorgeous. At once realistic and otherworldly, Steins;Gate makes excellent use of lighting to portray an otherwise normal portrayal of Akihabara as somewhere between a desert paradise and a purgatorial nightmare. All of the characters look distinct to one another, avoiding the same-face dilemma that even great shows run into from time to time. In addition to this, the character's appearances say a lot about who they are as a person. From the endearing naivety of Mayuri to the porcelain grace of Kurisu, to the withdrawn beauty of Ruka, each of the character's designs do wonders to establish who these characters are before they've even said a word. Its worth noting that while some of this comes from the original visual novel, and due credit should be paid to it, some of the mystique does come from the production studio. The best example is Kurisu; in the visual novel, she and Okabe have a fairly similar skin tone, while in the anime Kurisu is considerably paler than every other character in the show. Changes like these are for the better, and add a lot to already wonderful designs.
The soundtrack for this series is great, even though that rarely weighs into my opinion of the show. In particular, both the OP and ED do a excellent job of setting the tone and being extremely enjoyable to listen to on their own. Its just a shame that when you marathon the series, you're most likely going to skip right past them. In all other cases, the soundtrack is used extremely sparingly. Most of the time, the most startling and excellently used track is pure silence, adding once again to the sense of realism this show manages to convey.
Alright, now to justify my choice of Dub vs. Sub. Yes, the Sub has several absolutely hilarious scenes of Okabe making an ass of himself. Yes, the Engrish is very funny. Yes, the Japanese voice cast is great. So why dub? Well the choice is easy due to the first five episodes: Hououin Kyouma. In the English dub, "Kyouma" manages to come across as eccentric but obviously false, adding to depth of Okabe's character from the very first episode. In the original Japanese, however, "Kyouma" manages to sound like a recent lobotomy patient with marbles in his mouth. Considering how often the Kyouma voice is used in the first five episodes (Read, all the motherfucking time) the Kyouma act gets real old real fast, and I can't blame anyone for dropping the show during the first five episodes, and if you have done so in the past I implore you: Watch the Dub. The Dub's cast is amazing too, not a wrongly cast character in the bunch, every line delivered with rich coarseness that betrays the characters inner thoughts, and Trina Nishimura is an amazing voice actress who has a criminally small list of roles considering how fantastic she is.
Characters are great. I'm not gonna spoil it, watch it yourself if you really want to know. Ruka and Kurisu tie for best girl. Most of the fun of the show is unraveling how these characters think and watching them grow. Watching Kurisu and Okabe's relationship change and grow closer even across world lines that Kurisu shouldn't remember is fantastic and my favorite part of the show.
All in all, if the show were to abridge the first five episodes down to one and a half, this would be a perfect show. If you can make it past the slow as hell first five episodes, Steins;Gate is one of the all time greats.
(Don't forget to watch the OVA follow up if you want closure to the main romance. Also don't watch the movie, it blows.)
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Sep 6, 2016
An extremely strong first three episodes give way to a slog of a show as Trigger finals starts to show that they aren't infallible. While Kiznaiver has dazzling visuals (Though we should expect nothing less from Trigger at this point), an amazing OP and soundtrack, weak characters and a predictable twist, as well as a sudden shift away from drama towards shipping in the last few episodes make this show very unenjoyable. While the fantastic quality of the art and music might've dragged me through the unenjoyable ending to this series, i don't imagine that will be the case for everyone.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 6, 2016
An absolutely phenomenal show from start to finish. Never has a show been able to go so effortlessly from comedy to drama, back to comedy and then to pulse-pounding tension and terror with such ease and grace. The pacing throughout this series is absolutely golden, never too fast and never too slow.
The characters are all beyond likable, by the end of the series you'll feel like a part of their inner circle, knowing them as well as they know each other. In addition, (the spoilerific character) is a fantastic commentary on the nature of viewership, fandom, and creator intent.
The art is far from
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usual Silver Link fair. While most of their other shows (Baka-Test, Watamote, No-Rin) have a fairly similar style that featuring unique shading, bright color choices, and dramatic cut-aways, Kokoro Connect opts for a style more reminiscent of Kyoto Animation circa 2009. Facial features are very soft, gradients are used very carefully, and color palettes are kept consistent while saturation is used to convey tone. While the first few episodes feature bright colors, this is just a ruse; Most of this show features color choices that are quite dreary, setting the tone for the show perfectly. While this show can certainly be enjoyable and fun, none of the characters are enjoying what happens, and the somber visuals serve as a reminder of that.
The voice acting (For the original Japanese release) is fantastic. Its particularly refreshing to see a series that doesn’t opt to make every character sound like Mikuru Asahina for the sake of moe. All of the characters are shockingly well acted, and even as someone who doesn’t understand a single word of Japanese, their performances are frightfully impactful and is downright coarse with method and depth. Of particular note is Miyuki Sawashiro, voice of Inaba, who’s slightly husky voice and absolutely fantastic range and skill don’t simply fit the character, they elevate her to a whole new level.
The English dub is terrible, and no one should ever watch it.
If I had to pick out one flaw, it would be the soundtrack, but even that is a stretch. At no point do any of the songs on the soundtrack leap out and grab your attention the way that something like Lay Your Hands On Me (Kiznaiver) or God Knows (Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya), but the soundtrack is by no means grating either. Its background noise. It serves its purpose of setting the tone for a scene, but nothing more.
At once gut-bustingly hilarious, tear-jerkingly tragic, existentially terrifying, and moe as all hell, Kokoro Connect is many things, but it is not comfortable. Watching this show is a rollercoaster and tackles some very tense, very heavy topics. Yet Kokoro Connect handles almost all of these situations with grace and tact.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Mar 26, 2016
Stardust Crusaders's OVA is, lets be perfectly honest here, pretty bad overall. It removes a lot of the more entertaining fights in favor of streamlining the series for a 6 episode run.
The visuals range from outdated to just plain bad, the characters look strange, even compared to Araki's art style, the colors are faded and washed out compared to Araki's more bright and flamboyant style, which is a damn shame.
The sound design is bad in most places, until you get to the very last episode, which I will cover later. The voice acting is flat and lifeless, sound effects have no impact, and the
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score is just background noise.
Characters and stories are what faired the best. Even gimped by a small budget and a short episode count, Araki's writing is wonderfully tense and eccentric. Things feel rushed and a few major plot points are skipped, but its Jojo through and through.
Everything I just said can be completely ignored for the last episode. The fight with Dio is absolutely stellar. Unbelievably good. The colors are still washed out, and Dio's voice actor doesn't bring the right energy, but it's wonderfully directed and animated, tense the whole way through. The sound effects for The World are amazing, and I love the choice to make Dio moving in stopped time just a simple disappear and reappear. No need for flashy lights or sound effects.
The entirety of the last episode is a much watch for any Jojo fan. The rest is kinda meh.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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