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Jan 8, 2023
Battles without Moe and Humanity, a seemingly absurd retelling of the 1970s Yakuza Eiga classic with maids. The blend succeeds: nihilism x lighthearted, violence x feels, gritty tragedy x comedy yield one of the best mafia anime I've seen. Moe moe kyun.
To enjoy Maid War, one must understand it's roots. People describe it as a weirdly violent and odd show with maids, whereas it's one of the best Yakuza anime ever made. It's a genre parody which ultimately is more true to the subject matter and better than most yakuza anime which take themselves seriously.
More precisely it's a remake of and homage to 1970s Yakuza
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Eiga landmark Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1974-2003), one of the defining Asian movie series of all time. It's the first Yakuza show, if not mafia show in general, to not glorify and romanticize organized crime like The Godfather or any of Martin Scorsese's movies in existence does. It shows the poverty, nihilism, arbitrary abuse by their bosses and random deaths of low ranking yakuza "soldiers". Just that this show now replaces this gritty setting with moe maids, for maximum cognitive dissonance. And as somebody who watched both the 1970s live action and this show, let me say: brilliantly so.
BwHaH founds the Jitsuroku Eiga style, with shaky cam, extreme Dutch angles, hyper-realism, amateur actors and ultra-violence. All of those can be found in some of the best Western crime shows of the 1970s as well. E.g. That genre inspired Tarantino's Kill Bill and is the Asian version of American exploitation movies or Italian Giallo thrillers from the same era. I've tried to add a "recommended" anime, just to find that I can't really think of a similar show. It's innovative, one of a kind. Maybe Black Lagoon comes closest.
You'll find they copy full scenes and dialog fragments, story elements and much more in Maid Wars. Looking at the reviews and "related" sections, hardly anybody on MAL seems to get what this really is. They call it "90s feeling" when it really is 20 years older. This certainly is acquired taste, mentally I can only see yakuza thugs and not maids. To better understand the genius of the show's cognitive dissonance, I recommend to watch at least the trailer of it's role model at https://youtu.be/EXNaUDTLUak and https://youtu.be/f4-PgHmvPAM
It's a deeply Japanese show which can't be appreciated without some extended media knowledge. The ED is a powerful Enka song, both OP and ED also make my best of year short list. The Japanese otakudom know their stuff, and correctly rate this minor masterpiece into the top 5 of otaku community 5ch's best of 2022 list. To me it's certainly in the best of the year.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Nov 20, 2022
A pleasant surprise: Wonder Egg visuals, xxxHolic psychological episodes and a dark overarching story connecting things. Showcases Sunrise's S-tier CGI with content by freelance creatives. Amazing music, art direction, character and fashion design. Actually fashion design is a very strong suit of the show, thee pretty clearly were people from that area of expertise involved.
With only 6x8 minutes the show still manages to go trough classic story telling patterns. It introduces the world and main character, then it adds darkness (teen suicide) to her "business as usual" episodic format. At this point it's heavily influenced by xxxHolic, just that the darkness overcomes the witch and
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not her clients. Then we get crisis, catharsis, backstory and a closed ending. Not too shabby for the runtime, and even more so when the pacing manages to stay graceful.
This is a quick modern short, a technical presentation and test of Sunrise's world class CGI. The show is pure CGI of course. I think the company does projects like this to research animation of styles and objects not routinely in their mecha and sci-fi oriented code and library. And this experiment went beyond technical, yielding a little gem in the "short episodes" format. (6/10)
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Nov 20, 2022
Crazy guro hentai by Shinichi "Nabeshin" Watanabe of Excel Saga fame. The plot is like a parody version of Legend of the Overfiend (1987), with Apocalypse Zero (1996) visuals and 90s slapstick comedy gags. Episode 1 is seriously funny, self-aware and definitely worth watching. Even more so when one like myself is a fan of cosmic horror and end of the world scenarios brought on by sexualized grotesque demons. This show can go one step beyond Wicked City (1987) as it's actually Rx rated. The biggest asset of episode one is that it doesn't take itself seriously. Episode one is a little guro hentai comedy
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gem, the only other similar specimen I can think of is Yarima Queen (2000). Note: Nabeshin's trademark cameo is at the beginning of episode two.
Unfortunately then there came two more episodes. The second is still acceptable and continues the war between the "Demon Beasts" and the "Draculons". It does so by introducing the demon lord's daughter and with her comes plenty of femdom style kink. The third episode wasn't published in the West anymore and only recently dug out by one of the large pirate portals for hentai. Not only that suddenly the story takes itself seriously and becomes a pretentious and lesser version of the Overfiend finale. The animation budget basically ceased to exist. So while the story would require end of the world destruction and fighting action, we get re-used animation, mouth flaps and kindergarten quality drawings.
So this is a hard to rate show. Episode three clearly calls for a 1/10, whereas episode one comes quite close to a 7/10 (if one shares my taste for demon kink). This somehow then middles out and rounds down to an overall 3-4/10. Pro tip: watch episode 1, smile, and move on. (3.5/10)
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 5, 2021
13th century tragic epic about the fall of the house of Heike in the Genpei civil war (1180-85), marking the begin of Japan's middle ages and samurai rule. The jaw dropping beautiful images and cinematography focus on the period's flair and character emotions. Think: Shakespeare rather than detailed history lesson.
The camera work is fantastic, Naoko Yamada didn't fall into the trap to give us more of the same such as her trademark leg shots. Her new shticks are asymmetric image composition, super-closeup into faces, and objects (pots, pillars, ...) between the camera and the scene. And the occasional leg shot nevertheless. This comes on top
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of her new employer's (Science SARU) sophisticated CG. Screw you, Mappa and ufotable, this is better. More impressive details include the art direction which resembles the ancient watercolor style (like in Takahata's Kaguya-hime) and highly detailed background images. The latter of course styled after traditional Japanese art from the early middle ages. All combined, this easily results in the visually most impressive show of the year.
The story itself takes place before the Japanese middle ages (before 1185) and was first written down in ca. 1330. Until very recently there was no translation usable for somebody who is not a scholar, and the text fills about 800-1000 pages in print. The social realities we see are as ancient as the language used to describe them, a modern Japanese couldn't read or understand either. This epic can be compared to the raw material of the Canterbury Tales, the Nibelungen Lied or the King Arthur legend. The show dares to cover all 1000 pages, i.e. the story is told from beginning to the bitter end.
Yamada's approach to the heavy lifting of telling this beast of a story works. She is historically correct in all details mentioned, but it's not important for the viewer to pick up everything. It certainly improves the experience to know the historical facts, yet not knowing them doesn't kill the fun. That's because she makes the emotions, internal drivers and characters of the (many) players visible. Just like Shakespeare focuses on that in his many tragedies about the Kings of England. It's drama, it's persons, it's tragedy - not a history lesson. This includes the courage to have time leaps and gaps, an episode may skip details and events of the more boring years of this decades spanning narrative.
What truly helps here is Yamada's ability of "show don't tell", working with body language, and proficiency with camera techniques. For example putting a pillar in front of the scene creates an emotion in the viewer as if they peeked from a hideout. So there is no need to explain that we are witnessing a secret meeting to conspire against the emperor anymore. We intuitively feel it. With compact visual story telling like that, she maxes out the short runtime of only 11 episodes.
Sound and music mix ancient and modern styles. A memorable trip hop ED meets traditional Japanese song accompanied by the biwa. The sound editing is in line with the high production values and supports the powerful images without stealing the show from them.
I consider Heike Monogatari a future classic, and the next step in Naoko Yamada's growth into Japan's most important and gifted anime director alive (RIP, Satoshi Kon). It's been a long way from K-On!'s moe blobs to this epic, and I hope she isn't resting on her fame any time soon.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Nov 19, 2019
LotGH is a sound piece of entertainment, but I hate to break the heretic news it isn't the mind blowing revelation it sometimes is sold as. Compared to other epics in commercial entertainment, it lacks the distinguishing magic a Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Dune has. It's more in the league of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or Starship Troopers. Unfortunately without the wit and self-awareness of the latter. That way, it's always at risk of being a thinly veiled praise of autocracy, disrespect for life, and the fascist concepts of might being right or the end justifying the means.
That's despite the fact Reinhard's
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totalitarian government is contrasted with what only on the surface is an opposite, the Free Planets Alliance (FPA). Even in the FPA, just like a duck takes to water the unelected, very young military commander in chief is sent to crucial negotiations with the Reich. The (somewhat more, yet not democratically) elected actual head of state and government stays home and attends an invitation for tea by a mid-ranked officer's wife. Gender roles and democracy, 1980s Nippon style. There are many, many more values the story casually rubs in which give a conscientious objector like myself almost physical pain. A general who just killed roughly two million of his own soldiers pretty much because his honor required it and he had a bad hair day is given a two episode glorified tragic hero’s death. At the same time, all democratic leaders are portrayed as weak, corrupt, idiots, or all of the above. And they usually die squealing and begging for their life. Granted, showing both authoritarian and a militaristic flavor of "democracy" is already an improvement over e.g. Crest of the Stars, which praises fascism without any contrast or attempt to hide it. Still, there is way to go even when you see they tried hard by 1980s standards.
The characters are numerous, about 30 of them could be called recurrent cast. Yet, I was able to connect emotionally with hardly anybody. The imperial admirals are mere shades of GAR, with lenient family man Mittermeier to Gung-Ho macho man Bittenfeld on the extreme points. Only Oberstein, also known as Machiavelli's second coming, stands out. Another standout is Hildegard von Mariendorf, who despite blonde hair is pretty much the perfect impersonation of the Japanese ideal women, a true Yamato Nadeshiko. Reinhard himself has no real characteristics other than impersonating 19th century values of honor, militarism, and GAR. Oh, and he may or may not be heterosexual and a siscon. Of course the cast is much, much larger, but 70% of them are military and most likely to die in a battle sooner of later, so why bother.
On the republican side, Yang Wenli stars as a crossover of Jesus-kun and Buddha-sama. He is enjoyable and loveable, yet that is what he is written for: larger than life. The cult of personality made out of this towards the end almost has late Soviet Union characteristics. Then there is Wesley Crusher, err, Julian Minci - no further comment needed. The comic relief bantering couple Dusty Attemborough (doubles as Yang cosplayer) and Olivier Poplinis, mildly funny. Some token people of color, a watered down Hildegard von Mariendorf (named Frederica Greenhill), and red head hotty Katerose von Kreuzer. And a lot more shades of GAR within the military ranks. None of them triggered lasting emotions in me. And don't even ask for the villains, they are all ugly, all insane, and all dead in the end.
So is LotGH a trash series? No, far from. Despite many flaws, it is entertaining and has nail-biting tension in some arcs. In it’s universe, decisions have consequences, while plot armor exists it is not fully reliable, and there are gray characters - albeit within limits, it never comes close to e.g. Game of Thrones standard. I'm not the biggest fan of the 2D space battles, but I see how people can like them. Breaking it down into seasons, I'd rate the world and character buildup in season 1 with 7/10, and the bread and butter seasons 2 and 3 with 9-10/10 each. And then comes season 4, in which I didn't like a single arc. Without the ordeal of almost all of the last 25 episodes, the overall rating would have been a 9/10. Obviously a 10/10 is completely impossible, because despite solid plot and cast, there isn't true love for the series in my heart. There is a lot of respect for the epic scale, the immersion, consistently good writing trough most of the 110 episodes, and historical value in anime evolution.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Oct 3, 2019
I loved the show. If it wasn't for the abrupt ending in the middle of the flight, it would have gotten a 10/10. This is one of the few anime where I really wished it would keep going, despite the fact it's 50 episodes (incl. recaps/special episodes) already. This is the highest rated Shoujo on MAL if you discount the Natsume Yuujinchou francise (Hotarubi no Mori e is by the same team). It's the Queen of purebred Shoujo, no less, and deserves it.
A young adult melodrama about two small town girls in Tokyo and their musician friends, told as a tale of heartbreak, love, lust,
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music, and friendship. I'd characterize the genre as soap opera, love polygon romance with an underlying musician's career drama and a good dose of tragedy. Meanwhile it's known I'm a sucker for anime about emotions, and this one turns exploring those up to eleven, without becoming cringy and over the top. Quite on the contrary, the level of realism is at eye height with shows like Monster, Omoide Poroporo, Usagi Drop, or Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu. People smoke, they get drunk and have hangovers, they don't understand their own feelings and blunder along with that, hurting those they love. Deeply and credibly human, with all flaws. And it narrates it all far from the pretentious and forced kitsch of other romantic music dramas such as Your Lie in April.
The animation is average at best for even a 2006 show. At least it never gets in the way of the story with particularily bad sequences. What’s most saddening is the slide show level the stage performances are animated as. If there is one thing you could call action savy in this type of slice-of-life romance show, it would be them. Look at K-On what can be done with instruments and music animation. A wasted opportunity. The music, on the other hand, is really great. Both OP1 and ED1 are true earworms. Their musical themes (and those of the other OP/Eds) return in many variations, orchestrations, and arrangements as background music, almost to a Leitmotif degree. Stylistically, it’s pop-rock and ballads, not punk. But I guess that would go to far for a Japanese anime, even if it would be quite cool.
The emotion explored is mainly love, in many flavors. First let's exclude stuff. There is no yuri baiting in Nana, and there isn't one-and-only teenage yearning as in the typical high school romance. We talk about adult love here: they have one night stands and pity sex just as well. But straight romantic love isn't the only flavor of love explored. There is also love for friends, for ideas, for a convenience you don't want to lose, for family and so on. Don't let the words "soap opera" fool you and prepare for rose tinted, silly love. Nana covers the full range and some episodes toss you into bottomless pits of despair and loneliness of Evangelion proportion. Only to have a credible tonal change and be lighthearted silly fun just moments later. It's quite a ride.
The characters are fleshed out to a "Monster" degree of quality and numerous. Much too my surprise my favorite is not the tenacious goth high priestess of style, Nana Osaki. It's the passive, unassertive, fickle, promiscuous, and starry-eyed Nana "Hachi" Komatsu. That's maybe because her character design hits closer to home. I only wish I was as cute and genki to make up for those flaws. There are some characters I consider to be over the top at high risk to become soap-opera caricatures, looking at you Shin and Layla. But nothing in the world is perfect, is it. And the cast is rich and colorful enough that one or two bad apples don’t really hurt much. Another strong point are the dialogs, which feel natural to a degree hardly found in anime and even visual media in general.
Is Nana a girly show? Well, yes, but actually no. The landmarks along the story line are very female (not girly!), and the protagonist couldn't be male. The ambient details the show pays attention to, fashion being the most striking, aren't exactly for lads either. But the emotions and the way they are presented know no gender. Even when a good share of the love explored is about romantic relationships, both sides are fleshed out - but of course through female eyes. Which frankly is more interesting to behold than the umpteenth self-insert romance story through the eyes of another hopelessly enamored teenage boy. It's a one of a kind show, and it should be added to your short list of iconic landmark anime others can be compared to. Because it has that quality level.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jun 26, 2019
"My Little Furry Loli Can't Be This Cute!", the animation. And an entertaining one if you buy into it's premise: a divine loli-waifu becomes your personal therapist, cleaning woman and love interest. While the show fails to achieve the full quality of it’s obvious role model “Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid”, it solidly entertains with feel-good slice-of-life comedy centered around the titular kemonomimi girl's vibrant personality.
*** Story ***
Let's start right with the elephant in the room. "Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san" stars a furry harem, and it’s best loli Senko and the MC Nakano have a lot of intimate physical contact situations. This includes bathing and
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back scrubbing, ear cleaning, back massage with bare feet, hair cutting, and they share a bed of course. This intimacy and it's depression-breaking effect on MC are not only central to the story, they are the story. Then there is that tail touching trope, and the orgasmic sounds it triggers in Senko. It's not even a hidden metaphor for sex, it's just a metaphor for it. Like Nakano himself concludes the bathing episode: "I did a lot of fluffy-fluffing that night. Thank you, Senko!". You are welcome, this fantasy is a little weird but probably PG-13.
So undercurrent sexual tension is present in spades, and the resulting sitcom is at the heart of the show's comedy. The genius of the narrative is that this is never defiled by mundane sexualized fan service. The story teases the audience along a fine line without ever crossing it, even in the bare skin episodes. Probably much to the delight of doujinshi artists, who get a pure A-tier loli to build on in Senko. Studio Doga Kobo is very aware of the situation. Self-parody scenes of a police raid (E01, 6:35m) and multiple pedo-bear references (E03, 9:02m and 11:12m) make this abundantly clear.
The complete story could be seen as a well executed wish-fulfillment fantasy with moe and fetish elements. Many males, not only in Japan, will consider the titular cute loli elder with her magic powers, housewifiness, perfect traditional manners, a sprinkle of innocent sexual attraction, and foremost a planet-sized positive vibrancy the apex of womanhood. The evil genius is to accept and never question the fact MC is exploited and burnt-out in his job. Rather than changing this, as it happens in Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, he's sent a peak-kawaii foxy lady from heaven to sooth the pain. Why remove causes when you can deal with the symptoms in such an adorable way?
Overall Senko-san is a one kitsune personality show, the remaining cast, even the MC, are accessories to produce slice-of-life plot for her. And to be honest, I could watch her doing cute things for hours. In this aspect, the show completely succeeds. Excursions into slapstick comedy, like in the vacuum cleaner episode, and the submissive routine pampering are less entertaining in my book. The penultimate episode deserves a special place in my heart, because of the amazing change in tone and direction quality. Senko's party, her misunderstood good-bye speech, and the lone walk into the rain hit poetic melancholy notes beyond simple tearjerking. (6/10)
*** Animation ***
The center of gravity in "Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san" animation are the fox-goddess' ears. The further apart an object is from them, the lower the animation quality. Even alleged mains like Nakano are no exception from this rule. Senkos elaborate design with big, expressive golden eyes, her detailed shrine maiden's hakama outfit, and most importantly the fluffy head and tail get the extra pen-stroke, and that's fine with me. The overall animation excluding her is just average, if not slightly below. Cost-saving techniques such as low-detail still backgrounds, zooms into stills, simplified faces, mouth moving only dialog animation and structure-less clothing are highly visible. The animation is not fully fluent all the time, often falling back to extended still montages.
Despite all that, the artwork's style resonates with a “made with love and passion” feeling in me. Summing this mixed results up, there is an overall average quality (4/10).
*** Sound ***
The show has a really catchy OP and an above average ED. Sound effects such as the clapping of Senko's wooden shoes or effects such as a chime when she perks her ears are appropriately used. There are recurring mini-themes of functional music for moods, persons and situations, many of them done using traditional Japanese instruments. This of course supports Senko-san's told-fashioned Japanese themes very well. Overall, the sound is solidly average, (5/10).
*** Characters ***
There are five characters in the cast. Beside the titular kitsune Senko, the second main (in name only) is self-insert MC Nakano, a burnt-out software engineer. Then there is the harem consisting of spoiled brat kitsune loli Shiro, her and Senko's voluptuous boss and femme fatale Sora, and the slightly maniac manga-drawing neighbor Yasuko Kouenji.
Senko is an very well designed character combining traditional Japanese values, unlimited vibrancy, and a smart polite humbleness. With up to eleven cuteness features such as fang, cat mouth, light clumsiness, and the sweetest pouting of the season you just can't avoid falling in love. There's some but not much character development with her, e.g. towards the end she develops jealousy towards other harem members approaching the MC. She's in full control of the events, without ever dropping her friendly to the point of submissiveness, humble and vibrant facade. This character carries the weight of nearly all of the show on her small shoulders, and makes it look easy.
MC Nakano is so self-insert that there literally is a first person view bonus scene after the ED in which he/you is given the pampering of the week. Nakano's genericness is emphasized by expressionless eyes, rudimentary drawing style, plain clothing, and mostly reactive dialog. He enjoys the kitsune show, but never is in control of it. Of course he recovers from his burn-out courtesy of Senko's influence, but neither is he ever fully cured, nor does he tackle the causes of his condition. In that sense, he is not developing at all. A typical plot point example for him is to teach Senko about some feature of the modern world, such as electricity. This earns him admiration for the miracle she just learnt about, cleverly assigned to the messenger. But in the end knowing how a vacuum cleaner works is nothing special.
The two other kitsunes are hardly more than fanservice girls and significantly more sexualized than Senko. Ironically it’s Nakano's neighbour Yasuko who seems to get the most character development of all the cast. She picks up cooking, gets her life organized, and starts to get out of her shell. (4/10)
*** Enjoyment ***
Yes, the show is quite enjoyable, just don't think too much about it's premise to avoid waking up. Despite average production values, flat cast beside best girl, and borderline-submissive plot for Senko she simply makes you smile and calm down. Moe design at it's best. Senko-san is heroin-grade escapism at highest degree of perfection. Just don't confuse that with real iyashikei (healing anime). One for the story, and six for the fox. (7/10)
*** Overall ***
(6+4+5+4+7)/26=5.1, which means average mainstream. "Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san" is an enjoyable, average show with a strong and cute female main. You will not regret watching it, but forget it the moment the next cute waifu is washed on the seasonal shores. For fans of lolis and furries, the show will surely become part of their "special list". Senko’s character makes up most of the fun, so I can understand perfectly well if people rate the show higher than 5/10. In the end, they rate the waifu, not the show - which is fine. I would defend my rating as a base line, just add extra points for fluffyness as needed. (5/10)
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jun 26, 2019
Shield Hero is "hard isekai" bordering on high fantasy. It sets out for ambitious goals but fails to deliver on some of them. The plot is a classic hero's journey story, and it isn’t shy to touch hot-button topics such as slavery and racism, politics, and the power of hatred as a driver. The anime has innovative story telling and gray characters above the isekai genre’s average. It isn’t fully satisfying regarding execution details, character depth for some of the cast, and animation quality. Overall, Shield Hero is a flawed yet important advancement of the isekai genre and enjoyable not only for isekai and fantasy
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fans.
*** Genre ***
Isekai tropes are present throughout Shield Hero, but are they relevant for it’s story? Not for much of it. Both Shield Hero's world and characters work well without the Isekai version of a heads-up displays for the heroes, or the TV-style projectors Melromarc's government uses to spread news to commoners. These are just ugly plot devices to allow for convenient narration shortcuts, without significantly influencing the plot itself. The story is closer to epic fantasy worlds than to vanilla SAO-type Isekai. Shield Hero relates to shows such as "Danmachi", "Made in Abyss", "The Twelve Kingdoms", or "Spice and Wolf" equally well.
Other premises are more typical of the isekai genre, These include leveling and grinding mechanics, and of course the waves of catastrophe and the related dragon clocks. A wave, timed with second precision by the dragon clocks, is a periodic, world scale attack coming literally out of blue sky. The heroes have to be prepared to this heartbeat of increasingly difficult opponents, which feels like a forced way to create a feeling of emergency. It’s only consequent that wave fights are shown, but the world’s overall strategy to deal with the wave phenomenon is given more attention.
*** Story ***
Shield Hero is typical high fantasy regarding the size of it's narrative, cast and world . The plot details touch many hot-button issues in a way driving away parts of the audience very early on. They miss out on the quite decent saga this debatable shock-value kick-start evolves into. The cast is diverse regarding to races, stereotypes, social level, and age. The world building is done in nuanced detail, with each location having a distinct history, population, and political interest.
The story briefly introduces the main cast and rudimentary isekai mechanics first, and then for a long arc turns into a road movie of the titular hero's adventurer party. His journey becomes increasingly influenced by political intrigue which culminates in a stand-off of opposing political camps near the capital. The season ends on a cliff-hanger related to the multiverse structure of it's world.
Like a classic Bildungsroman, Shield Hero builds it’s characters trough training montages, fights, contact with players more powerful than themselves, and some individual's dark past. In particular I enjoyed some smaller arcs from genres rarely covered elsewhere, such as a trading arc similar to "Spice and Wolf" and a healer arc reminiscent of "Mushishi" plots. The protagonists and antagonists only think they understand this worlds' nature, but while unraveling it new mysteries keep appearing. This unreliable narrator trope is used a lot, e.g. news in this world spreads at proper medieval speed and rumor grade distortion only.
The single most polarizing accusation the show faced is that Naofumi is a self-insert incel (“involuntary celibate”, a derogative term for single males) protagonist with despicable morals and obnoxious methods. Some viewers see large parts of the story's premises as mere vindication to allow Naofumi to do questionable things in good faith. In their judgement, Naofumi mind-breaks Raphtalia to transform her into a child soldier, and by this slavery and child abuse are glorified and the Stockholm Syndrome and trauma are exploited. Superficially this makes sense. To make things worse, there is cognitive dissonance in the upbeat montage that's visually narrating Raphtalia's training arc. Is it delivering or deconstructing a slave owner's mentality excuse plot? The sequence remains ambiguous, if it is deconstruction, it’s success gets stuck half way between School Days' and Madoka Magica. However, consider similar arcs in Game of Thrones, such as Arya Stark and the Hound. The Shield Hero's versions are wooden in comparison, but in GoT we accept medieval moral standards and logic because they're just consistent within their world and era. Why not in anime?
The narration techniques Shield Hero uses are fairly modern, which is a huge advancement for the Isekai genre on it’s way to catch up with contemporary hard high fantasy story telling. In it’s execution, and when own inventions come into play, Shield Hero’s narration sometimes fails to deliver on it's ambitious goals. Complexities of the best-selling light novel plot are sacrified too easily on the altar of PG-13 approval.
There’s too much cognitive dissonance between an epic, mature at heart base story, and the at times heavy-handed, oversimplified and forced way it is told. It's almost like two parallel narrations. One is the adult, nuanced plot contrasting the two main power couples, Raphtalia/Naofumi and the Queen and King of Melromarc. The other is the over the top, cartoonish plot told trough the third power couple, which is Malty and Motoyasu, with the help of comic relief and chicken-ex-machina Filo. This coarse team easily annoys adult viewers like myself with it's cliche overuse, and the clumsy ways Malty begs for our hatred and the other heroes for our schadenfreude. Unfortunately these sub-stories are too important to the overall arc to be ignored.
Shield Hero’s story telling approach is ambitious, but fails to fully meet all of it's goals. There are rough edges which include decency of plot devices and heavy handed character designs with forced plot, but equally many innovative and entertaining aspects as well. Because Shield Hero points into a direction I like to see more of in future anime, innovates the isekai genre, and has the courage to touch hot irons, I still rate it (6/10), despite visible flaws.
*** Animation ***
The animation in Shield hero is average at best, the art style uninteresting. The detail level changes far too often and static montages are overused. One can literally see how producers decided to save money on scenes selectively. This hurts the fight scenes in particular, which have little fluidity, are using a lot of bad CGI and have PowerPoint grade frame rates. Despite some visible effort to increase the detail level of faces during emotional scenes and big plot changing decisions, the protagonist's faces often weren't drawn expressive enough to give their dialog visual credibility. This often leads to uncanny valley situations where you hear them talking about about big emotions, but can't see those and by this have empathy. Animation is by far the biggest shortcoming of the series, rating as low as (3/10).
*** Sound ***
When looking at the low animation quality, you would’t expect the outstanding sound and music in Shield Hero. This is largely owed to Kinema Citrus’ Australian prodigy collaborator Kevin Penkin of "Made in Abyss" fame. He delivered very strong OPs and EDs, where the dramatic K-pop anthem OP1 and the enka influenced ED1 are particularly memorable. ED1 pretty much made it into my personal top 20 of anime songs, and certainly is a contender for best ending of the year. The sound effects for the environment and fight noises are nothing you will notice much but they are always present and well done. The background music and character themes cover multiple styles and support the plot very well, just as you would expect from the A-tier movie composer Kevin Penkin is. The score is recorded using a full orchestra. An easy (8/10).
*** Characters ***
Arguably some flatness here, but it could be worse. Not all characters develop equally credibly. This is owed not the least to a really large cast, less may have been more. Naofumi's development is titular, continuous, and visible: an interesting, gray character who was discussed in the story section already.
The second member of the leading couple, Raphtalia, is oddly uneven. She has rapid development in the early episodes, then stalls, only to speed up again significantly towards the end. She's not a flat character at all, and her rags-to-riches growth is sufficiently made visible. She is given two full episodes and several long scenes to develop, but some of it in my taste is too forced. Her overall goodness and Rem-grade level of unconditional love for Naofumi-sama make her waifu-bait. But she had deserved a little more Holo-style banter and self-will, to better show her growing maturity, individuality and undeniable wit.
The supporting cast remains underdeveloped, owed largely to anime's run-time. The development and stupidity of Sword and Bow hero is not very credible, and antagonist leading couple Malty and Motoyasu are outright cartoonish. The friendship of the side-kicks Melty and Filo has very little and predictable development only. There are a few cardboard villains with frontal lobotomy such as Idol and the Pope you forget about ten minutes after the episode.
There are some interesting antagonists, such as the Royal couple of Melromarc's and other members of the social elite. They have shades of gray, individual morals and motives. However, their face and woman every fan loves to hate, Malty, is spoiling it. There is an interestingly gray character in Fitoria, but her appearance remains without consequences, as is the team of heroes from another world introduced late in the show. All four certainly will be revisited in a second season, if it comes to pass.
Most players in Shield Hero’s world are neither good nor evil, have individual moral compass and drivers, and are in conflict with themselves over hard decisions they have to make. This may confuse some viewers more used to stark good vs. evil contrasts. Very importantly, there is sum of the parts magic at work. While some characters have issues, the show works amazingly well as an ensemble piece. Cartoonish characters as Motoyasu, Firo and Malty for my taste do more harm to that than good. The rest of the cast too often remains decoration, e.g. using POV story telling for them could have worked miracles.
The world itself is a major character in any isekai, this one in particular because it leans so much towards high fantasy. Just 24 episodes, however, are too short for both world building and detailed character development for everybody, while still having some plot. A second season is needed to build on the groundwork this season laid. Most mains are having credible development arcs, and the world is immersive and despite the usual fantasy caveats pretty consistent. This can't completely make up for some annoying and undeveloped secondary cast roaming in it. (5/10)
*** Enjoyment ***
I've been fantasy trash for all my life outside anime, with fandom for the usual suspects such as Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. I’m also a big fan of adult, morally ambiguous stories in which each character has an individual moral compass and motive and there is no need for “the good side” to win. And Shield Hero caters both preferences.
When I recently started to explore the world of anime, I immediately binged genre classics such as Re:Zero, Konosuba, Youjo Senki, No game No life, Danmachi, on top of the more fantasy and adventure themed Made in Abyss or Spice and Wolf. Verdict: Shield Hero isn't any worse than Re:Zero and most other isekai classics. It's definitely better than Danmachi, even with disadvantage it gets from animation quality.
Crunchyroll has both co-funded and co-produced this show, and it feels like they tryed out many things in the first season, leaving an uneven aftertaste. A huge problem of the show is that it can't make up it's mind regarding target audience. It's appealing to younger isekai fandom, but misses out on genre tropes such as good fighting scenes and almost completely lacks sexualized fan service (which is not a bad thing, just an uncommon decision for the genre). It appeals to a mature audience with world building and gray characters, but annoys them with the caricatures Malty and Motoyasu are. I keep my fingers crossed that Crunchyroll's data-mining department concludes that shifting the series towards mature viewers (down with PG-13!) and adding more animation budget for a second season is the way forward. The characters' background stories and the world itself have all it takes for a satisfying franchise, this season’s implementation doesn't.
The show has many easy attack surfaces if you apply SJW and red flag standards. It actively seeks them. It temporarily has a loli slave, it has a misogynist world view, it has rape, it has some flat and cartoonish antagonists. Those issues are all real, but I love the genre and despise SJW-ish down-voting. Fortunately Shield Hero is not another morally solidifying piece of edification literature - within it's PG 13 and 24 episode anime format limits. Shield Hero is still a (6/10) for me, because I definitely want to see next week's episode – even with some tears in my eyes.
*** Overall ***
(7+3+8+5+6)/5=5.8, rounded to 6 with no corrections needed. People passionately hate or love this show. It touches them in one way or another, so there must be something about it. It sets itself high goals, but fails to deliver on too many of them. The animation quality isn't fun, but Shield Hero is a genre contribution that matters, and this means: above average, (6/10).
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 23, 2019
TL;DR Multi-fetish, very explicit ecchi with short episodes, each split into two spicy male fantasy excuse plots for showing impressive tits and ass. The production values are very high, the look moe-ish, the comedy ok - and yes, it's sexy. The show doesn’t try to hide what's offered - comedic soft-hentai of high quality, take it or leave it.
*** Story ***
What story? This is a soft-hentai ecchi about four age-gap "female teacher loves underage student" relations. The four teachers represent classic male fantasy types. We have two Innocent Fanservice Girls ("Emotionless Girl" and "Childhood Friend"), one tsundere Waifu ("She's good to children and wants
...
a family!"), and a shy Moe-blob. You'll see their tits twice per episode, each of which is split into two 6-minute fantasies. Subtract 1 minute excuse plot per fantasy and 3 mins OP/ED and you get 7 minutes of "plot" per episode.
The fetishes presented by far exceed the usual groping and pantyshots, we talk about for example golden showers, nurses, and bondage fantasies. Definitely beyond Prison School standard. A highly voyeuristic camera makes sure we don't miss any part of the four teacher's voluptuous bodies. There's hard censorship in the TV version, both with overlays and completely blanked screens. An uncensored OVA is announced to become available in time for the Christmas 2019 season. In one uncensored shot from the OP you can clearly see that the pantyshot type used is the one with the camel toe visible trough the fabric.
One problem I had is the fact that I'm pretty much watching reverse pedophilia, because all boys are underage. Abusing a teacher-student relation would lead to a tough sentence in the real world. One of the four boys is drawn overly young, basically a male loli equivalent. In an attempt at self-aware humor, in one of his episodes (#9) the school is haunted by his teacher in a bear (sic!) custome. But yea, it's just anime.
Overall, story and presentation are way more explicit than vanilla ecchi, but also much softer than real hentai. It's definitely a guilty pleasure if you are into heterosexual voyeurism, big-boobed active girls, and arguably spicy excuse fantasy plot with a sprinkle of comedy. If that's what you want, you found a near perfect product. Just don't expect anything you didn't see before in porn. (2/10)
*** Animation: ***
Animation quality is very high for the genre, with interesting and varying backgrounds, smooth movement, and detailed expressive faces. The eyes are not plate sized, giving it all a relatively "realistic" feel. It isn't ufotable, but nevertheless two ticks above average. (7/10)
*** Sound ***
The show has a very catchy OP (with pretty explicit lyrics), make sure to also watch the live action MV which doubles the anime by presenting three very young boys watching a half-naked singer (Kana's voice actress) in lewd poses. Sound effects are pretty average, and the ED is ok-ish but not memorable. Overall very average. (5/10)
*** Character ***
This was already covered under "Story", because the stereotype females and their fetishes are all you get. No development, they are hopelessly in love from day one and stay in that mode. The males are all forgettable and do little more than to play the passive counterpart to the teacher's not-so-subtle seduction attempts, which all eventually succeed. (2/10)
*** Enjoyment ***
Hell yea, I enjoyed this. This is one of these shows you have to admire for production values and no-nonsense fap appeal, but you wouldn't watch with your girlfriend. Given the age-gap and dependency situation of the protagonist couples, some bad taste I'm familiar with from Eromanga-sensei remains. I'm not sure how this type of sexual fantasy works for women, I wouldn't exclude the possibility some are attracted by the age-gap setting.
The show delivers exactly what's on the tin in high quality, and it makes no attempt to be anything but soft-hentai with comedic elements. That's an honest offer, take it or leave it. (4/10)
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 23, 2019
Dark psychological crime thriller about morals, decisions, and consequences. With 74 episodes it's a bit of a challenge to watch, but if you invest in it, you'll find the show is completely worth the widespread praise it receives. The real star in this show is the huge, well developed cast, with 120 (sic!) speaking roles listed in credits. And even the smallest of them is given a highly individual, recognizable face (both visually, behaviorally, and often even a history) and a background. The show spends time on everybody, up to a few episodes, even if somebody is just introduced to support some plot progress and
...
then be killed off. The characters are all gray, there is no Jesus-kun or Satan, even if Dr. Tenma and Johann come fairly close to this archetypes. For the recurring, 2nd row supporting cast, there is no visible plot armor. You feel they could die any moment - damn the torpedoes and the 20 episodes of character building invested into them.
I'm German and roughly of the same age as Johann/Nina are in the show, and while growing up in Western Germany, I'm familiar with the former GDR trough a lot of visits to relatives on the other side of the wall (before the end of the cold war, too). Which means the show's main era shown are my college years, and the peaceful world of the German middle class. Please take it from somebody so close to the period piece I see Monster as: the degree they hit the spot and the dilligent details woven into the show are breathtaking. I could write multiple pages to just cover everything, but let me give just two examples. A Graffiti seen on the wall of Kinderheim 511 during a camera movement is that of German avant-garde band "Einstürzende Neubauten", who were extremely popular in the independent music scene from the mid 80s to mid 90s. Another is the whiskey brand "Racke Rauchzart" used as a plot device at some point, which is as German as Sauerkraut and I expected to be unknown outside Germany. And it doesn't stop there, from the design of the landline telephones of the era up to the sound of a 1990s' hard disk during boot - they get it right. I had never considered that this level of detail would be possible for anything made in Japan. Nothing is perfect, though, there are two flaws I found, which isn't much for the total run-time. The first is a weather map shown on TV, which has Germany in the 1937 borders pretty much. Ouchy, we don't do that here anymore. The second is the mix of German and English when they show newspaper clips. When German is used in the show, it's proper (except for the phonetic J-butchering, of course), but at times it just isn't German.
Here is a speculative dig into the rabbit hole the Neubauten reference may actually be. Einstürzende Neubauten toured Japan in 1985 and even made a concert film with director Sogo Ishii there. So it's not unlikely some staff member of the "Monster" team was aware of their work. An association I had is a song on their 2nd studio album "Zeichnungen des Patienten O. T." (1983, "Drawings of Patient O.T.), which is based on artwork by real-world asylum inmate O.T. pubished by his psychatrist. In particular, there is that song "Hospitalische Kinder / Engel Der Vernichtung" (Hospitalized Child / Angel of Annihilation), which has lyrics with stunning parallels to Monster's plot.
Maybe that was the monster
Yes, that could be
But perhaps not
Next please!
(...)
Locked in dormitory dreams
praying to a new angel
(...)
...and I will wait no longer
until God's infinite testicles
at last go up in flames
Angel of annihilation
Angel of annihilation
Maybe I'm overinterpreting here. Surely Monster wasn't made because of this song, but the band's logo sprayed on Kinderheim 511's wall may be more than just an accident.
The plot kept me at the edge of my seat, and I won't summarize it here. If you are interested you'll find many reviews doing it. The story telling uses many modern techniques, such as POV narration, unreliable narration, cliffhangers, and a lot of cuts right before a reveal. The latter is somehwat overdone, but hey, this is a 23 minute episode thriller. Guess it comes with the business.
Just let me give the elevator version: Death Note for adults. Production values for art, animation fluidity, and sound are high and consistent over the full run-time. From a perfect rating I deduct 2 for sound and animation each, because while both are high quality, they do not stand out and are not the focus. I substract another point for enjoyment, as some arcs, especially in the first third, are just a bit too slow sometimes. Still, this is one of the best anime shows I've seen so far, an easy overall (10/10).
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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