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Magical Girl Ore is one of the strangest anime I've seen in some time.

Not quite as strange as something like To Be Hero, but definitely up there. I'm not going to reiterate the synopsis of the show, but this is essentially a satire of the magical girl genre. You got cute girls turning into burly magical men and demons that look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. Already sounds odd and hilarious right?

But it goes deeper than that: enemies that disrupt animation, Godzilla(?), sauna competition, using the magical girl rod to literally beat enemies to a pulp, Yakuza fairies.... the list goes on.

For me the ... show was a mixed bag. Ya, it's funny with the gender bending magical girls, but the novelty got old for me about halfway through. The show in my opinion was best when it was completely random and off the wall (my favorite episode was the Godzilla episode). It was trying to make fun of a lot of magical girl and idol tropes, but it also felt like it didn't always succeed in its delivery. It felt pretty repetitive at times and in some ways it fell victim to some of the tropes it was trying to make fun of. It didn't take itself seriously, which is the point, but it also didn't take its comedy too seriously which left this show feeling dry.

Just because you're using overused tropes and showing how boring and stupid they can be doesn't mean it's any easier to watch if it's not executed well. I felt like this show should have really amped up the satire and comedy and make it even more crazy and out of nowhere. During the Godzilla episode I was wondering what the hell I was watching, but it was absolutely hilarious, I was dying during that episode. I wish there was more of that. Most of the time though the comedy felt flat and some times it was excruciating to watch because of how boring it'd get. But at random points in the show it'd throw a curve ball at you that'd keep me entertained just enough until the next curve ball came. But overall I didn't feel too satisfied once I reached the end.

In terms of satire, ludicrousness, and comedy, I was let down, this is definitely no Space Patrol Luluco.

For the characters, they're not much to write home about. They fulfill their roles fine for the show, nothing much more to say about them. The MC is about what you'd expect out of a magical girl MC, but it's different since she turns into a muscular man which makes it kind of funny (some of those camera angles though lmao, there's definitely manservice in this show). There's a complicated love triangle that's kind of assuming and some of the side characters are funny too, but are mainly pretty forgettable. The art and animation is pretty average, not much to say here. The episodes with the intentionally bad animation was pretty funny though.

To sum it up, I wouldn't really recommend this show to anyone unless you're just dying to watch some macho men in magical girl outfits with some crazy antics and a lot of pokes at the magical girl genre. In terms of comedy, there's not a lot of great material here and the delivery was hit and miss, even for some of the better episodes (Godzilla episode was great though). This was an interesting experiment that seemed like it was a lot of fun to make, but in a lot of ways I feel like it fell felt and didn't have much else to offer besides its main selling point: burly men in magical girl outfits. But maybe, that's all it ever wanted to be.

It's very rare when you get something that is so simple, but yet so powerful. Shelter really reminds me why I love anime. It gives us such unique and fantastic experiences that's hard to find anywhere else.

I'm a huge fan of EDM/dubstep and Porter Robinson is definitely one of my favorite artists in the genre. I've known for some time that he's an anime fan (for example, in his song Flicker you can hear Remon Yamano's infamous laugh), but I'm so glad that Crunchyroll and A-1 collaborated with him and made such an awesome project. We need more stuff like this.

Anyways, Porter and Madeon's ... recent co-production, Shelter, was used as the basis for this animation and it fit very well. The animation was colorful and fluid. The virtual world that Rin lives in really comes to life and is very pleasant to watch.

Over the course of 6 minutes, we watched our mysterious protagonist Rin, and learned about her circumstances and her past. There was barely any dialog and it had a huge reliance on visual storytelling and of course, the music. As each scene goes by, you try to figure out what's going on little by little, and the fragments of her past start to slowly but surely piece together. The truth of Rin and her virtual world really hit me hard, and the staff did a great job with the build up and the reveal. The animation worked so well with the music, and the cuts were really well done.

Shelter's message was very impactful. It shows us the power and weight of unconditional parental love and that our past, no matter how painful, gives us strength to move forward. Shelter is short, but hits deep. It is a great reminder why anime is such an amazing medium. Porter's vision and imagination made this work come to life, and I'm happy that I was able to experience it.

Please do yourself a favor and give this a watch.

Word Count: 1735 words (5 pages double spaced)

*Spoiler Free*

[Why should you watch this?] Because it’s the biggest breath of fresh air to the high school battle harem genre in quite some time.

[What should you expect?] Awesome fights, a romance that actually goes somewhere, a very likable and respectable MC, a fantastic red-hair tsundere, a great cast of characters, a straight forward story, some decent villains, and some good fanservice here and there.

[Where can you watch it?] You can watch it legally on Hulu (I wish they could have shared it with Crunchyroll or even Daisuki, but oh well!).

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Introduction (skip this section if you just want to get to the actual review): Honestly my feelings won’t be hurt if you stopped reading the review after the short intro above or if you saw the word count and was like, “No way in hell am I reading that much!” That is why I put it there, to give you context of what my review has in store and how long it actually is. It’s your decision if you want to truly want to commit to reading whole my review or just get the highlights. Either is fine.

Now my reviews aren’t going to be how you normally find reviews on MAL. I don’t score everything individually, my review talks about everything in unison with no specific structure and I sure as hell will not being doing a recap of the synopsis. The synopsis is right there at the top of the page, you don’t need me to regurgitate that for you (ha!). Now since you know what to expect, please, consider giving my review a chance! If I convince at least one person to check out this show because of my review, I’ll consider it a success.

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The Actual Review: Chivalry is special title for me this season. Looking at the surface, it has everything that western anime fans usually despise nowdays: a high school battle school setting, a redheaded tsundere, an underrated MC that’s actually really strong, and what looks like a stereotypical harem in the making. However, Chivalry uses all these tired and true tropes in such a way that is not only refreshing, but also bold.

Let’s start with our main heroine, Stella. Stella has got to be one of the best tsunderes to come out of a battle harem show in some time, actually I’d go as far to say, probably one of the best tsunderes out there. Definitely not as deep as tsunderes like Rin Tohaska (my personal favorite) and Asuka Soryu, but she is developed nonetheless. More so, it’s her personality that really draws you in. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tsundere that has balanced tsun and dere so well (Lucia from Rewrite would be a good contender however). Stella has a lot more dere than tsun and it will make your inner self squeal like a little girl at least more than once from the cuteness. Stella really grows a lot from the first episode and it’s great to see. Our stuck up, hotheaded princess learns to care for other people and opens her heart to our hero. Stella is never a helpless damsel, but an equal, and is treated with respect. She can stand on her own two feet and does not walk behind our MC, but with him, shoulder to shoulder.

Now onto our hero, Ikki. Ikki is not your average battle harem MC with “undeniable” morals who is cowardly to anything sexual and is annoyingly over-powered and is even modest to his strength acting like he’s some weakling when he’s the strongest there is. No, Ikki takes those horrid tropes and turns them into something that makes sense and maybe even relatable to some. Ikki is a true gentlemen: very honorable, respectful, and kind. In a way, he’s almost like a traditional samurai or knight. Though, in many ways he is still an average guy with the same urges any male would have and that’s what makes him stand out in a good way. Now let’s just get the elephant out of the room here, Ikki handles fanservice moments very well and has some good reactions to them that shouldn’t make you roll your eyes like so many other animes do. It boggled my mind that he was just so normal in his thinking and actions, and that he is also very upfront about his feelings. He is very genuine and true, he never once felt out of character, even in the fanservice moments. Ikki is also not the perfect gem that is just too good to be true. He is someone that is both extraordinary and ordinary, making a good balance without one overcoming the other. In terms of his power, well, I won’t go too deep into that but Ikki works hard for his victories. You learn plenty about his training and what he had to go through, and seeing him fight just makes you want to root him on. He is confident in his strength, but is aware of others’ strength. He doesn’t underestimate his opponents, but he also doesn’t underestimate himself. He is determined and treats each fight with care. Ikki’s goals are a bit complicated and what he’s fighting for is something most people can get on board with. Instead of a MC that seems to be portrayed as some weakling and yet seems to win his battles with added cheap suspense, when we all know he’s going to win, we are instead given a MC that we know is strong despite his title and has to give it his all each battle to win. Each win feels completely fair and deserved, I never once thought Ikki won because of a cheap plot device. Ikki earns his wins and he earns his respect. As I said before, Ikki is not a perfect butterfly and has a few demons of his own that get looked upon in an excellent way. Ikki has great development throughout, just as his female counterpart does, and it’s a great to watch it unfold.

Now onto the actual romantic relationship. Ikki and Stella are my favorite couple of the year without a doubt. It’s so rare to see such a normally depicted teenage relationship in any anime these days that you tend to treasure the animes that do get it right every now and then; Chivalry is definitely one of those rare few. Despite Ikki and Stella having such different backgrounds and personalities, they complement in each other in so many different ways and find the best out of each other. I don’t want to give away too much, but this is a romantic relationship that goes places. It doesn’t have a kiss at the end of the series, and it doesn’t have a kiss and then suddenly all development beforehand is disregarded. No, this show goes far beyond the first kiss and develops the relationship in such a manner that is both realistic and respectable. I’m the type of guy that almost demands sexual contact in a relationship and it drives me nuts when I see so many relationships in animes disregard it completely. Ikki and Stella develop as a couple and the two of them learn from each other how exactly to convey their love. They’re teens that are interested in all the sexual things that every young couple are interested in and worry about the same things young couples would worry about. The fact that they are able to open up to each other and discuss matters that wouldn’t as far as be alluded in other animes is a triumph, considering how rarely it happens. I couldn’t believe how many things the relationship did right, I feel like someone was going to pop up on screen and be like, “Nah, we’re fucking with you! It’s all fake!” No, this show, despite having harem aspects, focuses on one couple and that said couple actually becomes a couple and acts like a couple (I know, weird isn’t it?). It is so simple, but yet so compelling. I can only hope to dear god that more battle harems in the future follow Chivalry’s lead because at the end of the day, most of us just want to see a solid romance without the endless gimmicks.

The fanservice I believe is also used quite well. Fanservice isn’t a sensitive topic for me like it is for so many others it seems. I usually enjoy it, but because I tend to like it, I can also tell the quality of fanservice as well. Yes, there is different qualities of fanservice: good fanservice, semi-good fanservice, average fanservice, bad fanservice, etc. Some people don’t want to believe this and just think all fanservice is bad, but that’s not the case! Anyways, there was some good sexy moments and they never felt overdone, it felt just right and I believe it fit the context of the moment/scene. The character reactions also makes it a lot more bearable. You should like it and find it assuming, there is especially one scene a little later in the series that was just such a damn good and sexy. It’s hard to explain it without actually saying it, but when you get there, YOU’LL KNOW.

As far as the other characters go, I’ll try to be brief as to not completely ruin it for you. They are all very good characters that you’ll care about. Alice is great secondary male, and the other three girls that get major focus all have their different motives and are interesting. They all have their quirks and are quite entertaining. I liked them all very much and thought they were nice additions to the cast. Shizuku cock blocks every now and then, but even those moments can fairly funny. For the most part, I think you’ll enjoy these characters.

The villains can be quite despicable. I wouldn’t say they’re cardboard cutouts that we’re used to in so many other harem shows, but they are quite nasty. But some of them actually get development and we see another side to them that will make you think twice about their characters. This show has decent villains, not phenomenal, but definitely above average I’d say. You’ll hate many of them, but you won’t hate them so much because they’re annoyingly evil but because some of them are just true scumbags.

As for the story, honestly, it’s pretty straight forward. There’s definitely some family conflicts on the side, but the story is very focused on its one setting and that may be for the best. This is character driven show, the story is gives it direction and that’s all it needs to do at the moment.
The art and animation are amazing. They’re so crisp and fluid, Sliver Link didn’t hold back on this one. It’s clear which anime got the better budget this season between the two Silver Link shows (sorry 35th Platoon!). The fight scenes are especially well crafted with such intensity in the animation. Legit, this show had some of the best fights I’ve seen all year. The choreography is fantastic and the animation never falls behind. The character designs are also very high quality and I think they look great.

All and all, Chivalry is a great show and a fresh installment in a genre that is extremely stagnate. It’s so rare do we get such likable main characters in a show such as this and it’s even rarer that said characters actually progress into a developed romantic relationship. Some of you may think I’m giving this show too much credit, but I believe this show deserves my admiration. It didn’t blow minds with being incredibly unique in its setting, story, or characters. Rather, it excelled in its familiar, yet very different approach. Showing us that this genre still has some potential hidden deep inside if writers truly wished to look for it. Chivalry simply takes the tropes we know and loath, and uses them in a way that is both recognizable and new. It doesn’t strive for the extraordinary, but rather using the ordinary in a better way. That my friends, I believe is worth praising.

9/10 (Excellent)

DISCLAIMER: This is my first review ever, so bare with me here. I hope you read it and all feedback is appreciated.

This show was definitely one of the biggest disappointments of the season for me.

The fact that this was a story from the author of Steins;Gate, Naotaka Hayashi, it got me very curious and excited for it. Though, I now understand that this must have been a story that the author wrote and was like, "wow, this isn't that good, I'll never put this in one of my visual novels" and then put it in some random folder on his computer to forget about ... it.

Plastic Memories had the foundation to be something great, something really special. Looking back, even the first episode showed a lot of its problems but I was blinded by the tear-jerking moments and thought it could be something more. Though, it never went much further than it did in the first episode. I was expecting this anime to explore the androids further: the conflict between them and humans, their struggle to comprehend emotions, the government's regulations on them, etc etc. I expecting something like Time of Eve (which was an excellent anime for all of those who never watched it), but this anime was nothing more than a painfully average romcom.

The androids were basically humans except with shorter lifespans, their was no real big conflict between the androids and humans, the retrieval system was absolutely moronic (I'll talk about this more in a bit), barely any governmental problems, and the characters were all boring and they're exactly what you'd expect from a romcom with no real major traits to make them stand out. I'm not even going to spend any more time on the characters because there's not much to say about them. This anime didn't explore its setting to the fullest and it only did the bare minimum. The retrieval cases they had to do didn't really carry that much weight after the first one in the first episode, they eventually became repetitive and it felt like a distraction from the main point of the story which was the romance. Eventually the cases did take a backseat and I wondered what the hell was the point of them in the first place?

This leads me to my next point: The retrieval system was laughable on how badly it was managed. When I sat and thought about this, I realized just how stupid the retrieval is and made me just loath the anime even more. Society manages to make androids, but for some reason they didn't put a system in the androids to turn them off when they run out of time. What happens instead is that they go berserk after a certain time and it's the job of somebody to go retrieve them before they go out of control and potentially harm the people around them.... Are you fucking kidding me? All they had to do was have a shut off option after the timer goes down and problem solved! If they have the power to make advance androids, then why couldn't they implement this system. There's no need for going to someone's place and try to convince them to sign a paper to shut off the android. Whoever were the engineers to these androids didn't realize one simple solution. So basically, the retrieval system is an unnecessary mess, making the whole job of the characters rather ridiculous. It's simply there just to force emotions out of us and I believe that is extremely poor writing.

Again, the androids are basically humans. There is nothing different about them and this made me raise an eyebrow. I love movies like I-Robot, Machina, or even Terminator where it explores that concept of the "ghost in the machine". There's something wonderful about me seeing robots/machines start to development more emotion and start to become more than just machines. I love seeing the clash between the robots and humans, and how they interact with each other. Animes that did this well was Time of Eve and Casshern Sins, Gargantina even did it well. Ghost in the Shell is also obviously an anime that portrays machines in society in an amazing way and it brings in a lot of different questions and morality issues to the table. However, this anime failed at it because it never once explored it. The androids were just like humans and they acted no different. Coming from such a talented author, I thought Hayashi would have brought a lot more interesting and well developed concepts to the table. For all I know, Doga Kobo's higher staff could have just taken his original idea and warped it to how it turned out, but seeing how he was in charge of the screenplay and created the original concept, I think this mainly falls back on him. Anyways, I expected a lot more from the setting, story, and characters.

The romance in the anime is probably its strongest point, but even then it's not too special. The problem for me is that the romance is completely normal. This is a human falling in love with a robot and vice versa, but why does it feel like two humans going through a stereotypical anime-love process? Well, it's because that's exactly what it is. They could have replaced the whole concepts of robots and made Isla an ill patient with cancer and this anime probably would have been exactly the same. This goes to show just how underdeveloped the androids were in this anime, and that they were nothing more than humans with shorter lifespans. Complete waste of a setting with a lot of potential.

In the end, this anime is just an average romcom. Nothing more, nothing less. I would not recommend this anime to anyone unless you have a soft spot for simple tearjerkers. If you're a veteran to romcoms, then it's not worth your time. If you're not a veteran, then look elsewhere because there's much better options. Do yourself a favor and watch Time of Eve, Ghost in the Shell, and/or Casshern Sins if you really want an anime that's going to handle robots in an interesting and compelling way.

Overall I'd give it a 5/10. It's an average romcom with tons of wasted potential.