Kaijuu Girls: Ultra Kaijuu Gijinka Keikaku

Ever wished Godzilla was a cute girl? No, neither have I, but someone clearly did...

STORY
As you'd imagine from an ONA, plot and story development are pretty light in Kaiju Girls. That's not to say there's none, but what is here is fairly shallow. Characters are generally pretty one dimensional, but that's fine. The main three girls have enough personality that each episode is interesting enough just seeing them interact with each other. Nothing's all that serious but the show is aware of that, even the climactic finale is little more than an "Oh no maybe this is a little trouble" moment, but it's cute and that's kinda what matters in this series.

ART
Do you like chibi? If you answered no then turn away now (though you could probably tell that by the image above). This series is very, very chibi. And I think that's actually kinda to it's detriment. One of the main points of Kaiju Girls is that each girl transforms into wearing a costume that looks like a Kaiju (most are vague references to popular Kaiju but nothing specific enough that it's obvious). My issue with this is that the characters have such small bodies in comparison to their heads, and their costumes are so detailed and intricate, that overall most of the girls seem to be wearing costumes that look way too busy and over-designed. This is a personal gripe, and obviously it's true for all chibi anime, but I found it a shame that this is the format they chose. However everything is very bright and colourful, kinda making up for some of this.
Animation is also standard. There are a few kinda neat scenes but for the most part it's what you'd expect from an average Flash animation. It's passable.

SOUND
The music, for the most part, is fairly standard. There are light, twinkly tracks for the light hearted scenes and more intense tracks for the action scenes, though none really stick out. The opening theme and closing theme are both, as you'd expect, very upbeat and cute and, honestly, both were pretty catchy (the ending song Kaiju Heart in particular) though just generic enough that you'll probably forget them within a month.
The voice acting was pretty standard. No role really stood out, though Pigmon's VA did a great job of being very cute so I guess props to her.

CHARACTER
As stated above, the whole point of this is to be cute and occasionally referential to Kaiju movies, with a hint of idol anime thrown in. The cute part it delivers in spades, the Kaiju part vaguely now and then and the idol parts is where it oddly shines. If you like seeing girls striving to be better at something and achieving it with hard work and spirit then you'll probably appreciate this anime.

ENJOYMENT
Looking back on the series while writing this I realise that I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I did once I'd finished watching it. There were a couple funny moments, and a few cute ones, but to say I enjoyed it may be a little much. I liked it, but that's about it.

OVERALL
Overall it was an okay ONA, and at 5 minutes per episode it's not like it wasted my time or anything, but I'd be hard pressed to recommend it really. It wasn't bad by any means, but it did nothing to stand out either. For that reason I find that 6 is the right score. If you're interested I guess give the first episode a try but don't expect anything too memorable.

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Art/Animation
First of all, I have never hated an anime this much. I saw the art style of this show and was interested as to how they could fit it in to an anime that seems to be about fighting. They did it horribly. The animation is horrific in its best moments, and they seem to reuse the exact same stock image of each character. The background seems to be made of cardboard and was drawn by a 5 year old, and is quite inconsistent. The animation seems like they spent none of the budget on it whatsoever, as if it were leading up to some intense sakuga or something, and then it doesn't have anything special, just the same sprites moving around with a little movement of eyes and mouths here and there. (Maybe even legs if we're lucky!) However, even after all this, I'm saying that the animation was the best part of this. Not to give it praise, but because they at least drew something. I can't say they actually did much anywhere else.

Sound
Nothing much to say here, except the fact that they have few and far between sound effects, no ambient sounds, the music is trash but they at least recorded the voices on a good microphone and I didn't feel like someone was pouring bleach down my ears (for the majority of the time anyway)

Character
Every person lacks motivation, there is no reason for anything to happen other than "Oh, that just happened I guess. Let's be friends and punch things!" the animators and script writers put no sort of effort whatsoever into this, and it really shows.

Something else
why is every episode 5 minutes long? This includes the OP and the ED. They have a 12 episode anime with every episode being 5 minutes. This means they only have to make about half an hour of stuff at most, most of which is just animation that looks like it was done in microsoft powerpoint.

Story
This is the most appalling story I've ever seen. It consists of 3 people going to a building because "I must be special" and then they just become best of friends. No buildup, no tension, just "hey we're friends now." Every character arc is completed in the span of one 5 minute episode each, where they spend no time going through the person, just going about showing their idols and then saying "Woops you found your power now! Hooray!" No one shows any normal human emotion, I just watched the entire show in the span of yesterday and I still can't remember the story. I'm pretty sure there was something about monsters from the shadow realm, and that's it.

Conclusion
I hated this show, I wouldn't recommend anybody watch it, even though the whole season will waste no more than an hour of your time. The art and sound hit the bare minimum, of being recorded on an alright microphone, and having actual characters drawn. Although nothing else looks good, and they mostly look too busy EVEN THOUGH THEY BARELY MOVE. I hate it. 0/10. I'm now changing the meaning of "Kaijuu" in my vocabulary to "pile of shit"

SPOILERS FROM HERE, IF YOU PLAN ON WATCHING THE SHOW, AVOID READING HERE.
I just want to talk about the last fight scene. I believe it is absolutely appalling. It begins with them fighting a couple of shadow monsters, then decide they need to take out the hive, when they recieve a text because their friend already did it off camera, to save time, effort, and money so they didn't have to make arguably the only important scene that could be in this show. Then comes a bug thing, which apparently regenerates after they defeat it the first time, but after that we NEVER SEE IT AGAIN. WE NEVER SEE THE THING THAT REGENERATED. Everyone gets caught up in fighting a dinosaur all of a sudden, then they jump off a building to hit its eye, which makes a crack, then they just shoot a laser at it and it dies. Magically nobody gets hurt in this, and after the dinosaur dies, everything is just magically fixed. EVEN THE BLOODY GIANT BUG THAT APPARENTLY CAN'T DIE JUST DISAPPEARS.

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