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Jul 17, 2024
Ulysses 31 is a series that's going to be heavily freighted with nostalgia for some people (mostly Europeans), and none at all for others (such as myself and other Americans). The show was a French-Japanese co-production that aired around the world, but only caught on in a significant way in the UK and parts of Europe. In the US, it's largely unremembered among a glut of 80s cartoon properties. All of this is to say that some people are going to have very different reactions to this series based on their personal history with it, and specifically are likely to be more generous with it
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because of happy childhood memories if anything.
Looking at it with unclouded eyes in 2024, it's apparent that its reputation as a childhood favorite is largely a result of children being less discerning viewers. Some parts have not aged well, and others were never good to begin with.
To begin with the positive aspects, the show looks great. The animation is crisp (be sure to watch the restored versions), the art design is fantastical and imaginative, and the character designs are strong (with the exception of the Zotrians, who have the misfortune of looking like they are wearing full-body diapers at all times). The basic setup of the show is also intriguing, as it's largely a remix of Greek mythology in a far future space opera setting, though it incorporates biblical mythology as well as riffs on considerably more modern Western fiction like The Most Dangerous Game and No No Nanette as well. It ends up being a pretty refreshing twist on stories that most will be familiar with, like Sisyphus and the boulder. The OP is also a glorious slice of synthy 80s cheese that will probably be divisive for people that didn't grow up on it (a friend described the sound as "like throwing banjos in a washing machine"), but which I found irresistible.
Unfortunately, the list of negatives is longer and much more fundamentally problematic than the positives. The worst aspect by far is the absolutely wretched voice acting in the English dub (the only version that was readily accessible online). The acting is wooden and the script stubbornly refuses to use contractions, leading to painfully stilted line readings like "Telemachus, my son, you are alive!". The timing of the dubbing is also poorly done, with lines being compressed to the point that it sounds like they're not even taking a breath between sentences.
The format is quite dated as well. There really is not a consistent story that flows from episode to episode. It's purely episodic and can be watched out of order with the exceptions of the first and last episodes. It's also quite formulaic, with almost every episode featuring Yumi receiving some sort of telepathic intuition that they need to visit a nearby planet, the planet being a trap set for Ulysses by the gods and everything returning to status quo when Ulysses escapes the trap. Even the series finale is basically a continuation of this same formula, just with a short epilogue tacked onto the end. If you were inclined to be generous, you could say it resembles Star Trek, but Star Trek had multi-episode story arcs and character development across seasons to give it a bit more juice than "explore new planet, solve relevant problem, rinse, repeat".
There are also a host of other problems here that are less fundamental than the 2 mentioned above. I won't go through the entire list, but a few bear mentioning. One is that Nono, the robot mascot character, is incredibly annoying. He talks like a more nebbishy version of Porky Pig and it quickly gets very grating.
Another is a familiar problem from fiction from this era: misogyny. Most female characters, especially the only one in the main cast, are portrayed as hysterical, irrational and helpless. The ones that aren't are usually cruel ice queens instead. More than anything, it just feels like lazy writing that's bound to cliches about what female characters are allowed to be instead of embracing creativity.
Finally, there is an issue with the main villains of the series, the gods. They are barely present in the story and don't make for interesting opponents for the crew of the Odyssey. Only Zeus is ever seen or heard from, as a disembodied voice over a semi-opaque illustration of a stone statue. These are supposed to be the big bads of the series, and all the way until the very end, they are barely part of the story, except as a vague threat setting up various traps that others carry out.
Overall, despite some nice visuals, it's an easy choice to skip this one unless you're rewatching because it holds special childhood memories for you as an elder millennial.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 12, 2024
This is a very nice adventure film for all ages. While I think it's a bit too dark for very young kids (the last film of the trilogy in particular), it should be appropriate for most school age children, and it's plenty enjoyable for adults too. The story is pretty straightforward and easy enough for kids to understand. Sana, the princess of the sorcerer clan, is searching for her people, who went into exile after Sana's parents were overthrown by a treacherous advisor, with the help of Sinbad the sailor, who everyone is likely familiar with in one form or another. It's semi-episodic in nature,
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each of the 3 films involves a trip to a different island as Sana's search continues. They feel less like distinct films than 3 double length episodes of a short series. The plot is pleasant enough, and the story does wrap up conclusively, but there's nothing especially unique or innovative about it. It hits all the beats you'd expect it to hit, no more and no less. The one clear complaint I have with the substance of the film is with the character Ali, who is very annoying and didn't need to be that way. The films are also quite short, with each of the 3 clocking in at well under an hour in length. That makes them easily digestible for kids, but they might be a bit *too* short for older viewers.
What really makes it worth a watch though isn't the plot, but the sense of wonder brought by the visuals. If the character designs look familiarly warm, it's because they come courtesy of veteran Studio Ghibli artist Yoshiharu Satou, who also did the character designs for My Neighbor Totoro. The art direction from Minoru Nishida is equally impressive, with gorgeously drawn backgrounds and evocative settings that make the world of these films like no other (not even that of the original text the story is based on). The animation is consistently good, though not terribly ambitious aside from a few action scenes in the first film, and is closer to "good for TV anime" than "good for an anime film".
Overall, these are fun films that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. They are a delight to look at, and the plot keeps itself focused on the simple pleasures of adventure rather than complex plot machinations. Well worth a watch, especially for those that typically enjoy the vibe of Studio Ghibli's films.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 2, 2024
Scarlet Nexus is a flawed but decent sci-fi action series. How much you enjoy the series is largely going to come down to how meaningful those specific flaws are to you personally. My review is going to largely focus on those flaws, but I want to make clear that the series is good enough to merit a breakdown of the things about it that don't work rather than simply dismissing it, as I would have done for a lesser series.
A key point in favor of the series is that this is one of the most legible video game adaptations you'll ever come across. I have
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not played the Scarlet Nexus game, but I was able to easily understand the story and setting in short order. It's not the type of series that presumes familiarity with the video game, and it works just fine as a standalone story. It's also never boring. The plot moves forward at an unrelenting pace and keeps dropping new twists and revelations on you at regular intervals. For better or worse, there is no slack in this story at all, and that means there is always *something* happening to upset the status quo and drive things forward. There is also something to be said for the fact that this is a complete story with a definitive ending, not a "the journey continues... on all major video game platforms!" type of thing.
Unfortunately, I think that can also be one of the significant weak points of the series. There is so, so much happening here that it feels extremely rushed even with 26 episodes that don't have an ounce of fat on them. It launches into its main plot so quickly that it doesn't even have time to establish a status quo to later upset, because it's already multiple steps beyond that point by the 2nd episode. While this series does a respectable job of managing its cast size compared to other video game adaptations, there are still a lot of people in this show and few get explored in any meaningful way. While it's fine to leave secondary characters like Hanabi or Kagero as thinly-sketched, it's less forgivable that we know almost nothing about the leads, Yuito and Kasane. There is just no time for character development of any kind when the plot has this many moving pieces. And that deserves some criticism in and of itself. The plot can also sometimes feel like a grab bag of sci fi plot elements. There's time travel and brain hacking and dystopian population control and alien invasions and psychic powers and on and on. While it does ultimately home in on a theme around grief and living with loss in the latter half, it often feels like a mishmash of concepts that don't have a particular storytelling goal in mind, they're just in there because it's science fiction and science fiction often has those things. This would have been a better series if it had dialed back some of these plot elements and put more time into establishing the personalities and motivations of the cast members.
Visually, it's also a mixed bag. The hand-drawn parts look mostly fine, but the soulless and angular digital backgrounds are unfortunate. And while the CGI has come in for heavy criticism, it's really only the CGI models for the Others that look bad. Those are ugly, low res, and poorly composited, and they stick out like sore thumbs because they look like video game graphics. However, the CGI for the OSF members and the action animation actually looks quite good and is well-integrated into the overall visual identity of the show, which allows for more fluid and exciting action scenes than would otherwise be possible.
Overall, there's a fair amount to like in this series, particularly the rollercoaster-like quality of trying to keep up with its plot. While there are undoubtedly parts of this series that don't work, I would still give it a qualified recommendation. If you can overlook some of the problems that are brought along as a side effect of the relentless pace of the story, it's a fun ride.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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May 19, 2024
Realist Hero primarily sets itself apart from the unwashed isekai masses by focusing on international diplomacy and politics over adventuring and slaying demon lords. Does it work at making the series comparatively interesting? Well, it's complicated.
On the one hand, there is an undeniable novelty to treating statecraft as more than an afterthought in a fantasy series like this. It's a largely untapped vein of storytelling that only Tensura has really explored in a satisfying way to this point. The plot moves along nicely rather than being mired in generic dungeon adventuring, and the focus of the story necessitates a more built-out and interesting setting than
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you get from almost any other isekai.
The downside though, is that if you're going to make a series about diplomacy, you need to actually know something about diplomacy, and it's apparent that the original writer doesn't. Instead, it's clear that he thumbed through a copy of The Prince to reference a few quotes and called it a day. What he calls "realism" is actually just politics, not the Realist philosophy of international relations. Souma, the "Realist Hero" of the title, is not a Realist but an idealist who believes in keeping everyone safe and minimizing casualties as an end unto itself, an emphatically non-Realist idea. I realize this seems like nitpicking, but when the selling point of the series is its comparatively serious treatment of politics and diplomacy, it matters that the writer is flubbing all of the references to political philosophy. The use of Realist in the title and the constant references to Machiavelli would probably prime you to believe this is a brutal series where an amoral protagonist has to make a lot of hard choices, but in fact he's not like that at all and almost never encounters serious problems or resistance. One of the worst things about the writing is that when you get right down to it, it's just a different flavor of isekai power fantasy about a guy that has everything go his way while he amasses a large roster of girlfriends.
More than the writing though, the key problem with Realist Hero is the production by JC Staff. Watching isekai anime generally comes with the implicit promise of bad animation, but this is on a different level. Characters are off model far more than they're on, and not in a charming way. The simplest cuts of animation melt like a chocolate bar in the desert. The few action scenes in the series are simply not animated at all and are presented PowerPoint-style instead. The CGI and digital backgrounds look like puke and the compositing is incompetent at the most basic levels, like not lining up people's feet correctly with the surface they're walking on. It almost feels insulting to watch, that they thought this was an acceptable final product to put out into the world.
Overall, I do think this is better than most isekai anime, but I can't fully recommend it. The plot has a certain propulsiveness that makes it pretty binge-able, and the political gimmick makes it feel comparatively fresh and distinct in an ever-more-formulaic genre, even when it indulges too much in those formulas itself. On the other hand, the treatment of politics and diplomacy is pretty shallow and uninformed, which makes it maddening if you're actually passionate about those topics. The dreadful standard of animation tips it into "don't recommend" territory for me, but you may feel more positively about it if that doesn't matter as much to you
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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May 13, 2024
Muteki Kanban Musume is a punchy (no pun intended) gag comedy about a girl working in a ramen shop that keeps getting into fights. It's an extremely simple, no-frills comedy series. There are probably no more than a dozen named characters in the entire series, and most are defined by a single gimmick or character trait. That's not to say it isn't an enjoyable series to watch though. The jokes are solid and pretty unique, not the kinds you'll probably be used to seeing in anime. The comedy style feels more in line with what you'd see from Looney Tunes or a classic Hanna Barbera
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series. The animation is also quite good, and makes good use of the strong character designs as a source of gags in and of itself (the reaction faces are especially good).
However, this series has a key flaw, and it's that it's so threadbare. While it still has moments of inspiration throughout, it's at its best in the first 3-5 episodes, when the jokes and characters are still fresh. After that point, it noticeably starts to slow down, chafing against the lack of new material. It's best enjoyed in small doses - I strongly recommend watching 1 episode a week like it's a currently airing seasonal rather than binging it - and it probably should have been a short rather than a full length TV anime to preserve some of the novelty.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Apr 15, 2024
MAR is a series that embodies a lot of the worst qualities of shounen anime and brings nothing new to the table. Almost immediately, the story steers itself into a ditch with an interminable Tournament Arc that lasts well over half the run of the series. While there are a handful of decent moments in the 70 or so "X vs Y" episodes that follow, most of it is an agonizing waiting game, slogging through one utterly predictable fight after the next, with no sign of plot progression for dozens of episodes at a time. When the end of the Tournament Arc blessedly arrives though,
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the story fully goes off the rails into an extended denouement that is totally confused, full of questionable narrative choices and other decisions that make it apparent that they had no real plan for where to take this story beyond the Tournament Arc. The ending is heavily telegraphed and feels unsatisfying when it arrives, both because of the middling story content and the sense that it probably should have wrapped up about 20 episodes earlier than it did.
The writing is juvenile and character motivations are thin and riddled with cliches (oh, you want to become stronger so you can protect everyone's smiles? I've never heard that line before). Action scenes are often boring due to the lackluster animation - likely a necessary sacrifice to produce weekly TV for 2 years straight, but that's hardly an excuse when it cuts into the core appeal of an action anime. More unforgivably, the CGI used to animate the summoned Guardians is absolutely hideous and badly composited to boot. These are supposed to be the most powerful weapons a person can wield, but they have all the visual majesty of a guy summoning some stray PS2 assets. The character designs are also uninspired and feel like a conscious attempt to mimic Dragon Ball. See if you can count how many boys with similarly spiky hair are in this series.
So what was actually good about this show? Well there isn't much, to be frank. Dorothy is a pretty fun side character, though her obsession with the main character can be overbearing. The relationship between Dorothy and Diana (left vague to stay spoiler free) is one of the few compelling plot threads on offer here. Every once in a while, you'll get an interesting battle when 2 people have special abilities that combine in a unique way, though the obviousness of the outcome of every fight dampens any thrill you might get from that.
Overall, I can't say my time was well spent watching this thing to its conclusion. I recommend simply skipping it, but if you are at all curious and inclined to give it a chance, watch until the first fight of the War Game and you'll know by then if this series is going to do anything for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Mar 8, 2024
This one is lots of fun. The complete lack of a plot or narrative other than "girls are friends" doesn't become a problem because of the short runtime (all 12 episodes in total are about as long as 2 regular episodes of TV anime), and the show is funny and densely packed with jokes since it doesn't have a moment to spare. It even makes the punchlines land better in some cases ("brevity is the soul of wit", and all that).
The show is also gorgeous. Without the intense schedule demands of a full series, director Ryosuke Nakamura (Grimgar) directs and storyboards the entire series himself,
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which lends an added cohesiveness to the visuals from episode to episode. There's nothing flashy to animate in this series, so it doesn't always jump out at you, but the character animation is consistently excellent. Small moments like someone putting on their shoes are animated with a film-like attention to detail. Legendary art director Hidetoshi Kaneko (Trigun, Hajime no Ippo, Texhnolyze) also puts in strong work here. If the watercolor-like background art evokes Studio Ghibli for you, it's in large part because Kaneko got his start painting backgrounds on My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service. It's not an exaggeration to say the artwork is on par with those classics.
The main 3 characters in the series are lovable and their personalities mesh well together. Unfortunately, in such a short series, there are basically no side characters of note, with the exception of the teacher (it's nearly a guarantee that she will be your favorite).
The one significant complaint I have with the series is that the OP is annoying as hell, and that's a bigger issue than it sounds like when it takes up a full 1/4th of each episode's runtime. I recommend skipping it, but don't skip the ED since there is always a post-credits scene. Overall, this series is easy to recommend as a short burst of fun that you can watch start to finish in under an hour.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Feb 15, 2024
I love a good mystery, and Kubikiri Cycle does at least somewhat deliver on that, so it's hard to entirely dislike it. While it does get a little too convoluted at the end, the actual murder mystery portion of the series is the most sound and enjoyable part of it. It's the other parts of the series that are a letdown.
In particular, there are two elements that stand out above the others as critical issues: the characters and the dialogue writing. These problems are distinct, but related of course. The characters are insufferable virtually without exception, and a big part of that is the pretentious
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dialogue. Conversations feel about as authentic here as they do in an Ayn Rand novel. Characters talk in grand philosophical statements and go on endless, preachy monologues about their personal outlooks on life, most of which tend to be miserable and nihilistic. Even characters that are meant to be viewed positively tend to be gratingly wacky and quirky instead (I'm thinking of Tomo, the "blue savant" from the series' subtitle here). When the murders begin to happen, you feel nothing because the victims feel more like bundles of college undergrad philosophy essays that have been clumsily arranged into the outline of a human than real characters that you can identify and empathize with.
Visually, Shaft brings its B game to this series. On the positive side, get plenty of Shaft-isms here - the head tilts, the dramatic use of blacks and reds, and so forth - the animation looks good and occasionally great, and there are some strong storyboards late in the series. On the negative side, the 3D backgrounds look comparatively chintzy and there is too much use of camera rotation, almost as though the director decided he may as well take advantage of those 3D environments and spin the camera all over inside of them, whether or not it was appropriate for the scene. It still looks better than the average anime TV series, but probably will not rank among Shaft's best in that regard.
If you're really into mysteries (or a huge fan of the source author's better-known Monogatari series), you may give this one a try and find that you like it. I find it hard to recommend because of the unlikeable characters and a style of dialogue that I find deeply annoying, but if you can get past those issues, you may get more out of it than I did.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Feb 13, 2024
At the risk of being overly dismissive, this is a blatant attempt to capitalize on the success of the original Space Battleship Yamato, without any understanding of what made it work. The story and the central conflict between humans and an alien race called "the gods" is paper thin and unengaging. The aliens are a faceless menace, you only ever see their UFOs or humans being mind controlled by them, and it makes them seem unthreatening. The film makes no attempt to explain their goals or why this war is being fought, other than a vague sense that humanity became too technologically advanced. The setting
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is so vague and poorly thought out that it feels like being dropped into episode 8 or 9 of a 12 episode TV series, like you've missed tons of important setup and context.
The characters are boring and largely unlikable, and big plot twists involving characters being killed or turned into spies by the aliens fall flat because of how uninvested the viewer is in what's going on. Nudity and gore are used gratuitously for shock value, as opposed to being used sensibly and realistically for the setting.
Aside from some pretty good action animation, there's nothing to recommend here. Even the occasionally cool action is just empty calories, spectacle for a story that was never going to go anywhere.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Feb 3, 2024
This is a series that I desperately wanted to like, and it does have the occasional good moment, but generally speaking, this is a story with interesting ideas that is constantly failed by poor writing.
The core ideas here - a story about a group of boys that bond while being abused at a reformatory school in 1950s Japan, and which follows them after their release and into adulthood - are loaded with potential, and that brotherly bond between the characters is easily the strongest part of the series. The storytelling ambition to progress through its story and the lives of its characters rather than muddling
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through a status quo of its own making is commendable as well. Unfortunately, all the other elements are far weaker. From unnuanced villains that do the worst possible things simply because they are Evil to gross writing that has a lurid fascination with sexual exploitation, there is very little to recommend here in the way of storylines or drama. All the emotion in the story is drained away by the ridiculous overacting of the villains and the extreme, edgy nature of how things tend to play out.
Edginess is, unfortunately, the name of the game here. There's a tendency to frame this sort of thing as "adult" or "mature", and indeed it's even listed as such on Crunchyroll, where I watched it. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. The defining characteristic of the writing in Rainbow is really a sort of childishness, with a fixation on sex, suffering and unfair persecution that screams adolescence. Virtually every named female character in the series is either a prostitute or a family member of a character that is introduced into the story so they can be raped by a villain. Virtually every adult is an unhinged, tyrannical fascist or a huckster. While the series begs for understanding of its protagonists, misunderstood boys branded criminals by society for justified acts of self defense or revenge, it does not extend that understanding to any of its other characters, which are largely 1 dimensional and defined by their villainy. It even leads to more significant writing problems, where the logic of the story begins to break down unless you look at it through the lens of "this is a story written by an author that was just trying to write about people doing the worst things he could think of at the time", most unforgivably in the climax of the Anchan vs Ishihara story arc at the end of the 1st cours that I will keep vague for spoiler reasons. Suffice to say that the intended emotion of the scene lands more on the "so idiotic that it made me laugh" side of things than was intended.
These issues start to improve in the 2nd cours, but never fully go away. It does have some nice moments though, Turtle and Lily's story arc late in the 2nd cours is a rare high point in the series. Sadly, this only heightens the pervasive sense throughout the series that it could have been excellent if only it was written by someone without a sledgehammer sense of subtlety and a creepy fixation on prostitution and rape. I simply can't recommend it as it exists in reality though.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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