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Apr 14, 2024
My favorite moment in the post Doga Kobo Yuru Yuri series is that part from San Hai where it's nothing but 5 minutes of silence starring Rise in a Straw Millionaire type segment where she exchanges various goods for other goods. It's not very funny, especially considering how zany the series can get, but I still do enjoy it for how relaxing and how it provides a nice break in the middle of a chaotic wacky series. In that sense, Oomuro-ke serves basically the same purpose. It's not very funny, it's not very crazy, and it lacks a lot of elements that makes Yuru Yuri
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what it is, but that's okay. What you get is just iyashikei, or a more relaxed slice of life with minimal comedy. And to that effect, Oomuro-ke is a great watch. Temper your expectations, dim the lights, and enjoy 40 minutes of relaxing slice of life starring the brat and her two sisters.
7/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 28, 2024
I love Cygames Original shows. They are the masters of the first episode twist and have a knack of keeping you hooked and engaged till the very end. Yuuki Bakuhatsu Bang Bravern is no different. Despite knowing Obari would be taking the helm for this, I too was shocked and thoroughly pleased that my real robot show gave way to a singing super robot show. A gay singing super robot show at that! (Whether or not it is yaoibait or genuine yaoi will be debated till the end of time).
However, as with most Cygames originals, you come to expect two things: A single-cour runtime, and
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a rushed ending. I do wish they still do originals like they used to where two cours gives the show enough room to breath and expand on the world, the characters, and so much more. The final episode of Bravern felt like watching 5 episodes straight in a row, despite the pacing of prior episodes being paced normally to the point you'd expect a surprise second cour announcement (there wasn't).
As a consequence of this I do feel a lot of the character development is rushed. I love Smith, Bravern, and Lulu, but I've never really warmed up to Isami. Again, I feel like having more episodes to flesh him out would have been better, since all you get in the show is him being stuck in a rut for the majority of it only to go through a whole season's worth of character development right at the very end. The side characters were cute (including the most "Literally Me" self insert I have ever seen in a show in the form of Miyu), but they do not amount to much apart from contributing to the comedic scenes in this.
That's one major strength of the show (and other Cygames Originals). The comedy is superb in this, from the timing, to the execution of the lines, to the direction, just everything is done as well as it can get. Even The Marginal Service, for how mediocre it was, had some stellar moments to it at times. However, this comes at a cost of having a paper thin plot to work around with. What starts out as a "Save The World" type deal just turns into some time travel plot with no warning, and the whole "Save the World" aspect is just dumped when you realize most of the show just takes place in Hawaii to begin with. That's not counting the final asspull of a finale.
I may sound a little harsh in this, but believe me when I say it is the most enjoyable show this season by a decent margin. Every episode just seems to one up each other and the twists and turns kept me on the edge of my seat. I'm not a fujo but the fujo-pandering is really good up until the very end. Honestly, what is it with shows like these having so much homoerotic undertones (in not only the show itself, but also the merch) only to not commit at the very end. I just personally hate stuff like that (*cough*Nanoha*cough*WfM*Alice Gear Aegis*), and so that's one point docked from my score.
But if you're looking for a good time, and want to relieve what it means to hold bravery in your own heart, and you've already rewatched TTGL for the 15th time, you can't go wrong with Bravern.
8/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 27, 2024
MahoAko is one of those manga I'd never thought would get adapted. Even if it did, they would censor the hell out of it to the point where it is barely recognizable from the original source material, or so I thought. And with a no name studio and a lousy PV out, all alarm bells rang lose inside me. But, even in this nightmare world that is the 20s, somehow, a show with zero animation budget managed to recapture the magic that many ecchi anime have lost in order to appeal to the overseas market/censorship bureaus. Indeed, I only needed to believe...
Perhaps I should have
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counted myself lucky that this landed in the hands of the To Love Ru Darkness director. The team somehow managed to deliver a show that is more risque than the actual source material, in a rare case not too dissimilar to Ishuzoku Reviewers from a few years back. The manga had been a favorite of mine for the past few years or so for not only its bold ecchi scenes, but also its striking visuals and expert paneling when it came to the action sequences. Of course, with such a limited budget and a relatively strapped team, something had to give. Unfortunately, that had to be the action scenes, which are barely animated manga panels in full color, sometimes with the direction and framing changed to make it easier to animate but more boring to watch.
But, the animation was never gonna be good in the first place. If I wanted well animated action scenes from a show from recent times, I have plenty to choose from, even from this season alone. But well animated ecchi post-pandemic? Now there's a niche MahoAko perfectly fills. Even in a season where 4 other shows proudly showcases nipples, MahoAko is decidedly more classy than any of them, where in other shows they are clearly an afterthought and something to justify an ATX subscription, MahoAko instead does the ecchi scenes proper with the same class and finesse as something from the 2000s-early 2010s.
The anime adapts the manga well enough. You have some extra scenes here and there that help flesh out the characters even more, with the ecchi scenes especially being expanded upon. My favorite bit has got to be their rendition of Loco's shitty song. They've nailed the "tone deaf but trying their best" feel to the song, and I just can't get it out of my head. It's even better than the actual "good" rendition she sings later.
Utena's seiyuu did a bang up job despite being a relative newcomer, and I especially love it when her voice dips into her "serious disappointed" tone. Koga as Kiwi is also just perfect in her portrayal of a deranged-but-barely-holding-it-in yandere. In general, the voice cast and direction in general is really good, though Hikasa really did feel like she was phoning it in as Michiko.
I'm glad a show like this could exist. It's been a long time coming since the teases in Pop Team Epic S2 and Made in Abyss S2, but I'm happy Takeshobo is crazy enough to greenlight this to be shown onto the screens of every household in Japan. Now, where is my Hotel episode?
10/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Mar 26, 2024
I can't believe I was initially hesitant on watching this, thinking it'd be another repeat of what Dungeon Meshi is trying to do, and me not being a huge fan of food/gluttony shows. I'm glad to say that the food bits (which I still think are the weakest parts of each episode) aren't a major focus despite what the poster may lead you to think, and that Goumon is the most wholesome show across this whole season.
If anything, the main theme of the show is on appreciating the mundane luxuries in life. Things like walking at night to the convenience store with a friend, an
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amusement park date, popping bubbles on a bubble wrap, or even ordering the same food from the same place every day, are all incredibly mundane, but the show excels in making them super comfy and highlights the importance on appreciating your regular day to day life.
It also helps that the show is really funny. Surprisingly despite its main joke of "Princess giving in too easily to 'torture'", it does twist it in enough ways to make each occurrence of this joke feel fresh. Plus, I just love its nonsense setting of "medieval fantasy, but actually just Tokyo (they even flatout name dropped Tokyo) where Maou lives in an apartment". The characters are all immensely likable, but special shoutout to Maou who is the best boss/husband/father you will never have, and the MaoMao episodes are the closest thing to actual torture in the show because she is the perfect daughter you will never have.
As with all the best comedies out there, my favorite parts of the show are when the show just slows its pace and tones down the comedy to just have a super relaxing atmospheric episode where nothing is actually happening, but what's onscreen is just so comfy to watch. The oyakodon scene with Torture is peak comfy.
Goumon is a fantastic show, especially seeing as it airs on a Monday which does bring the usual Monday blues down for me. I'm glad the show is being renewed for a second season (or if it had been planned in the first place). I think the closest point of comparison would be the Sleepy Chino show from a few years back, but if Hime-sama was not a genocidal maniac (though the Hime in this show does kill a fair amount of demons in the backstory).
On a side note, I do like how all three of my favorite shows, this, Bravern, and MahoAko, have the same joke of having the Opening/Insert Song play and other characters commenting on the absurdity of it.
8/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 22, 2024
Sasaki to Pii-chan started out interesting enough: You have a first episode that looked like typical isekai slop only for it to shift gears completely into urban fantasy with espers in the second half. Count me sold I thought at the time. But no, alas, it's yet another case of "interesting premise, bad execution".
Actually no, it's worse than that. Bad execution can sometimes lead to amusing trainwrecks, this is just overly bland. I had just finished watching the last episode a few hours ago and already I'm forgetting plot details.
One of the main issues with this is how it lacks any sort of
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focus. Even within the Isekai stuff which takes up like half of the season, it jumps between slow life, business management, (boring) political intrigue, and there are some battles in there too. I could not give less of a shit for most of these, and Marc-san's Mild Ride taking up the bulk of the Isekai segments made me wonder why Sasaki is involved with any of this at all.
It's not like the other segments fare any better either. The Real World segments are even more messy. You have the show juggling between many plot threads with his supernatural spy agency and evil espers, then suddenly they throw in Mahou Shoujos who use a different magic system altogether. I wouldn't have minded any of this if the show have given proper buildup, development, and payoff to these sudden shifts in the narrative, but the original author seemingly just dumped them whenever he got bored of a particular plot thread.
But the biggest crime in all of this is how boring everything just ended up being. Even Sugita and Yuuki Aoi sound like they're phoning it in most of the time. But even if the voice acting was good it still wouldn't save the show from siphoning away your life energy the more you look at it. There is just way too much boring expository dialogue that don't contribute much to the mess of a plot and just serves to bore you even more.
In short, if this was like your very first show after watching nothing but Netflix, then yeah, maybe you'd find some kind of enjoyment from how different it is, but just don't bother with the show.
I guess the one saving grace is that the OP is unintentionally funny. Though that is immediately negated by its creepy ass ED.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 27, 2023
On the face of it, 16bit is a loose adaptation of a doujin manga from Wakaki of TWGOK that was originally about making bishoujo-ge in the 90s with the anime adaptation having a time travel element to I guess ease viewers into the world. In the middle of it all, suddenly you get aliens and the whole thing starts becoming fully anime original and pretty batshit crazy without much of a satisfying resolution.
Still, despite this, I still enjoyed the show quite a lot. I enjoy VNs a lot and have fond memories of Akiba from the past, and seeing that kind of passion translate so
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well is heartwarming in a sense, with some shade thrown around low effort AI art to boot, always a way to my heart. Mamoru-kun's infatuation with PC98 is hilarious and yet so empathetic at the same time. As someone with a niche and dying hobby (i.e. real VNs that aren't gated by gachashit mechanics), I can relate to his plight and obsession.
And it is a very bittersweet show when you think about it. We've seen quite a few nostalgic otaku-oriented shows this year, and I think 16bit hits the nail on the head when it comes to capturing that bittersweet feeling of a time long gone. Dejiko is no longer there welcoming people into Akiba, and the streets are all almost completely plastered with exploitative shallow gacha games with stories that have no end to them, an insult to the bishoujo-ge that inspired them in the first place.
We may never see a return to the era so cherished by Konoha, the economics and competition no longer make producing them on a scale circa the 90s and 00s any viable, but perhaps the real desire to create something truly remarkable is inside yourself, and that other people out there, wherever they are, alien or not, are still also passionate fans of bishoujo-ge too, and maybe someone somewhere will make another bishoujo-ge that will capture our hearts once more.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 25, 2023
This is what Koisuru Asteroid should have been. A sweet yet sometimes melodramatic show of Girl meets Girl, with equal focus given to its subject matter (model rockets in this), and the relationships between characters.
I suppose there's two things these hobbyist CGDCT shows need to get right:
- Making the hobby appealing to people who otherwise do not care about the hobby
- Make the characters interesting and fun to follow/easy to empathize with
Now, where a lot of hobbyist shows falter in, is to make the show appeal only to people who are already into the hobby, or to make it very boring to everyone
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else. Hoshikuzu Telepath on the other hand, made me care even just a little bit more on model rocket building. In fact, model rocket building itself is also integral to the plot as well as the characters' relationships with each other, with mttk's bitchiness arc book ended by model rocket competitions on the beach.
Speaking of characters, the archetypes presented are nothing new. The show isn't breaking new ground with its characters, but it's a case of doing existing characters well. Of note is Matataki, and I'm surprised the show went kinda far with her bitchiness and perfectionism. Usually characters like these mellow out within an episode or two, but Matataki's character flaws basically drive the plot for a majority of the season's runtime, and the melodrama is done well, showing how much she has pushed back building relationships with others for the sake of her goals.
Now, I do like the show and I do like Matataki a lot, but notice how I barely mentioned the other characters? Well, the show kind of does as well. The manga of course continues developing the rest of the characters further, but what you get in this season is just a sampler of how each character ticks. There is some decent development of Umika and Yuu's relationship, but it feels like a tease for a season 2 that will never come. Haruno is basically only defined by her connection to Matataki and can't stand out on her own.
In spite of this, Hoshikuzu Telepath is still a comfy and at times emotional watch. It's surprisingly rare to get CGDCT shows nowadays, but I'm glad the ones we do get are of a high quality.
8/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 23, 2023
Idolmaster's adaptations have always had an issue catching up to the greatness that is the 2011 anime. I've always been a firm believer in quality over quantity, and the 2011 anime manages to make the most of its runtime by giving each of its girls (and crucially, Producer) a dedicated spotlight episode as well as fleshing out their characters to make them appealing for people who don't play the games. The inability of its subsequent spinoffs to stand up to the 2011 show is evident in Cinderella Girls (lack of focus on both the core trio and the overall cast) and Side:M (too many idols,
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Producer is a non-entity). Then came U149, which had managed to capture the same magic as the 2011 anime, even blowing it out of the water at some points, despite its shorter runtime by having such a razor-sharp focus on its cast and by having a lot of its episodes dedicated to non-idol activities (this is important as I'll elaborate later on). I had thought the series had returned to good hands, and then the long awaited Million Live anime came out, and it blows alright.
Uniquely MiliLive has inherited both negatives from Cinderella Girls and SideM. You have a stupidly large cast of girls, none of whom get any real focus on to flesh out their individual characters, alienating anyone who isn't into the games, alongside with a total non-entity of a Producer. See, one of the core aspects of Idolmaster is that the Producer himself is not just some self-insert; he is as much of a main character as any of the girls, and his proactiveness in some episodes is what elevates him above the usual "token male character in an all-female show" compared to other shows. You can easily remove MiliLive's Producer and it would not make a single difference. Speaking of the girls, there's just too many of them to keep track of, and their core archetype/personalities just get forgotten the moment they're offscreen. It's really bad when I can't even remember the names of half of them even at episode 12. They've also brought in the original cast (albeit some alternate reality version of them more similar to Imas 1's universe than Imas 2's) as bait, since they don't amount to much in the end as well.
And, I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding for people making Idol shows, and not just a MiliLive problem, but the actual idol parts of the shows are actually the most boring parts. In any work related show, the work aspect is just set dressing at the end of the day, and what people want to see are activities that happen outside of work. The 2011 Imas and U149 got this right by having the idol aspect be secondary while the real focus shifts to the characters and their interactions, growth, and relationships outside of work. Most of Million Live is just about preparing for the big show, and doing the big show. It's just watching people work. It's honestly no different to coming to the office and having one of those shallow conversations with your colleagues: You pretend to talk about something exciting to mask the dread of monotony in the workplace. Most of Million Live's interactions rarely involve the personal relationships or developments around the characters, but instead are mostly work-related. Oh Shizuka's sad because her dad disapproves of her idol work? Come on that's boring. This is nothing like Risa's anxieties in U149 or Chihaya's dead brother in 2011. Why is it so difficult for the production committee to understand that we enjoy these kinds of shows because of the characters, not because of the work they do. At this point I'm even content with the melodrama from Mio in CG or Sakuraba in SideM, because at least those were focused on the characters themselves.
Honestly, maybe the adaptation was too little too late. After all, the heyday of MiliLive was around when the 2014 movie aired, and that was as good as an adaptation MiliLive was ever gonna get, even if it's only ever focused on Kana. But at least it was focused on someone and delivered a spectacular finale. I felt nothing after MiliLive's 2023 adaptation ended, and I dread to think how the Shinymas adaptation is gonna be like. At this point maybe giving the girls Mechas to fight asteroids may have been a better alternative.
5/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 21, 2023
Honestly I wasn't sure what I should have expected coming into this. Having read the original source material (which had ended a few years before the anime adaptation was announced), I should have known in hindsight that there was no way the anime would adapt the more interesting parts of the novel (the revolution, married life, or the controversial batshit insane finale which I actually liked), but I was still left disappointed at the end.
For what its worth, at least it was nice to hear the characters actually voiced in the show, though outside of Rei and Claire everyone felt like they were phoning it
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in, Hikasa especially. And the parts that were actually adapted were just fine if boring, if animated very mediocrely.
I suppose if you're already a fan of the series it's worth watching to envision how the characters would sound in your mind, but otherwise the animation just makes the show seem like yet another mediocre isekai akuyaku reijou show, which the LN most definitely isn't. Which I suppose is the greatest disservice the show could do.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 28, 2023
I literally picked this show up on a whim based on its stupid title and I must say I need to do this more often. Undead Girl is an unusual combination of supernatural action with the detective genre, with a little rakugo thrown in for good measure.
For a detective show it's written surprisingly sharply considering what constitutes a detective show nowadays (cough new Higurashi cough), and its mysteries can be solved with nothing more than the show's clues by the time Aya says she got the culprit. Although, being only 13 episodes long, the show can feel rather lacking, and by the end of
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episode 13 you're left wanting for more. Also, while I do appreciate some action as a change of pace, towards the later half of the show they feel more like distractions than anything, especially with Royce just jobbing here and there and not adding anything meaningful to the overall narrative.
The animation is fine, generally fluid well animated action although there are some strange instances where some green screen-like aliasing appears around the characters at times. I appreciate the director playing around with the shots during the more quiet moments, although several of them can feel very amateurish in a "My First Video Editor" sorta way.
Overall Undead Murder Face is a surprisingly compelling solvable mystery with likeable characters and mostly decent animation. Its short length is definitely to its detriment, and with how unpopular the show is, it's a shame it will forever fall to the wayside.
6/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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