Chou Henshin Cosprayers

When I first watched Cosprayers, I hated it. The characters were vapid, the plot was incoherent, and above all, it was remarkably uninteresting. It's no wonder why this show has such a low score.

Then, I watched Love Love and Smash Hit, and everything made sense. I no longer hate Cosprayers, but instead, respect it with what it had to offer.

Cosprayers is one-third of the m.o.e. trilogy, along with the aforementioned Love Love and Smash Hit. These three shows aim to tell a coherent story about an animation studio creating a mahou shoujo anime against all odds, with Love Love and Smash Hit following the show's ... writer and producer, respectively. Cosprayers, in this case, is the titular mahou shoujo anime and follows several cute heroines as they try to free the sun goddess Amaterasu by taking down black towers that keep her from being free. I recommend watching all of these shows together, one episode from each show to the next, in order to get the full experience.

Now truth be told, if you only watch Cosprayers without watching the other two shows, you will hate it. The shows makes no attempt making sense and the characters in the show, from Koto Hoshino to the rest of the colored Rayers, are not particularly fleshed out in the slightest. It's only when you know the whole meta-story is when you can appreciate the ambitions of Cosprayers. As the other two shows flesh out the actresses by letting us see how they act on-screen as well as off-screen, Cosprayers will show you all of the shortcomings of the finished product. From the sloppy acting, the messy story, and the unnecessary ecchi scenes, it's a one-of-a-kind case to watch something intentionally made to be bad. Furthermore, it also shows the struggles of making an anime and the drama that might occur during production.

What I like about the m.o.e. trilogy is how determined and experimental the actual studio is willing to take. The whole premise of making three completely different shows that's somehow connected is exceptionally unique and not done often as it should be. Think of it like this, as Shirobako gets released every week, we also get Exodus as its own show, how cool would that have been? While it's nowhere near Shirobako's level of meta or profoundness, the entire trilogy is still enjoyable to watch knowing that one show is merely a small part of the whole picture.

As I said before, there are a lot of issues with Cosprayers and if you watch this show alone, you'll probably won't like it. But if you're really into shows with an unconventional premise and concept, then Cosprayers, as well as the rest of the m.o.e. trilogy, might be for you.

I went into Cosprayers with pretty low expectations. Looking at the stupid pun for the title, and the moe artstyle as the cover image, I didn't think there was any way it could be even somewhat good. Well, I was proven wrong. The show manages to be pretty entertaining, despite it's shortcomings, and by the end leaves you feeling pretty satisfied. Let's go over all of it's different parts.


Story: 4/10

The story here is very average. Over the course of the first four episodes, the writing is really poor, and it does a genuinely bad job of introducing the viewer to anything that is going on. ... All they really have for the first four episodes are random action scenes that all focus on introducing new characters. In-between all of that, they simply have a bunch of nonsense mumbo jumbo being spouted about magical powers and transformations. Now, I'm not a fan of the maho shoujo genre to begin with, but even if I was the introduction to this show ends up feeling like an unfocused mess. However, by the time we get to episode 5, it starts to focus more on an actual plotline, and everything becomes a bit easier to follow. The story that they tell between episodes 5-8 isn't new or surprising, and there's a handful of cheap plot twists that add nothing to it whatsoever; however, it still ends up being mildly interesting, and kept me pretty entertained throughout the final moments.


Art: 6/10 (Art Style 3/10, Animation 8/10)

The art in the show isn't the best. I didn't very much like any of the characters' visual designs, and the backgrounds, while fine, failed to impress very much. That being said, I really liked the monster designs. Some of them looked like they were inspired by Evangelion, while others looked wholly original and had some macabre elements to them.

I thought the animation worked wonderfully. While it wasn't the most breathtaking thing I've ever seen, it looked good, especially during the action scenes.


Sound: 9/10 (Music: 9/10, SFX: 10/10, Voice: 7/10)

The soundtrack of the show was absolutely fantastic! Reminiscent of classic mecha shows from the 80's and 90's, it has some exciting, heart-pumping, trumpet-filled songs in it. One of these tracks was super catchy and fun to whistle along to. The ending theme is also pretty fun, and I found myself drumming on my desk whenever it came on. The major fault of the soundtrack is how small it is, though. All of the songs repeat throughout every episode, and it would have been nice to have a bit more variety. Still, for an 8-episode series, it doesn't get too repetitive.

The sound effects are also very heavily inspired by classic 80's mecha anime. lots of loud, crisp sounding plasma-cutting sounds, and things that sound like they could have been ripped directly out of Gundam or Eva. This was one of the high points of the show for me, and it makes the action scenes just that much better than they otherwise would be.

The voice acting, while passable, also doesn't deviate very much from your standard shonen fare. For the record, I watched it in Japanese, and the voices are exaggerated, and kind of silly, but they tend to fit the characters.


Characters: 2/10

Speaking of the characters, they're not very good at all. They are all pretty standard, boring archetypes without any major differing traits. None of them stood out to me, and their motivations within the story tend to drag the whole thing down a bit. If you're looking for solid characters, I'd look elsewhere.


Overall, I'm quite surprised at how much I actually enjoyed this show. Despite all of it's weak elements, it still came together in a pretty impressive way. The sad part is, if just a few things were different, this could have been something kind of special. However, as it is, it ends up being a flawed, middling show... yet still an enjoyable one.
I would recommend it to fans of the genre, as well as those who don't care about a solid story or characters and just want to see some decent action.

I only watched it to see if it was really that bad. And it was.

Art: 7

It was OK … I guess

Sound: 7

Also average

... Story: 1

Went by way to fast. All the plot twists made no sense at all. The whole thing like your average cliché magical girl/fantasy anime, only worse.

Character: 3

All characters were flat. The ones that actually had some development, like the main character, were extremely annoying.

Enjoyment: 5
In a so bad it’s good way … And even then, not a lot.

Overall:

It’s just flat out terrible.