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Sep 26, 2018
An episodic sports anime with frankly C-grade animation shouldn't have gotten a second look from me, but I actually found myself enjoying it well enough as a once a week diversion.
STORY
There is no glory in being a middle relief pitcher in professional baseball. These guys are the sports equivalent of a plumber, necessary but nobody would call it glamorous work. They're typically called into bail out starting pitchers when the situation starts going south, deal with one specific batter, or simply eat up innings in lopsided games. Main character Bonda Natsunoske is a middle reliever for the Tokyo Spiders (a thinly disguised version of the
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real life Tokyo Swallows) and this series is episodes in his life as he tries to claw his way up from an expendable middle reliever making $180,000 a year to a much more glamorous (and well-paying) job in the starting rotation. There isn't much continuity, few other characters stick around for more than one episode and there aren't many plot threads that affect things over the long haul. But the more self-contained nature of each episode makes it easier to put down and pick back up again.
ART & SOUND
There's no delicate way to put this: the animation just scrapes its way over the passing bar in most shots and Gurazeni loves to switch to a CGI model that nobody would confuse for the original 2D animation every time Bonda is pitching. There just isn't anything remarkable in this department at the best of times. Except perhaps for the character designs, which go outside tropey looks to give the cast some identity. Sound is also unmemorable too.
CHARACTER
As the only character who gets significant screentime across the entire series, Bonda is clearly the glue that holds everything together. And he's not a bad character: he's keenly aware of the incredibly tenuous nature of the job of a professional athlete and keenly tries to both save his money and bump up his stats so he can earn more next season. His keen awareness of where his salary ranks in comparison to other players reinforces this trait- it's a running gag that he can bulldoze batters who make less than him but tends to become intimidated when pitching to players who make more. It makes him relatable since when you strip away the baseball elements he's basically a 20-something guy trying to turn his (relatively) low paying job into a more permanent gig. Other cast members usually get one episode in the spotlight then may make one or two cameos in the rest, so there isn't much to talk about beyond their one gimmick.
ENJOYMENT
I enjoyed this as a weekly diversion, but I don't see this as a very binge-able show or the kind of series where you get hooked and just HAVE to keep up.
OVERALL
It's basic, and just OK at best. But for some reason I didn't get bored or start to hate it and actually want to see the upcoming season.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 26, 2018
"Tada-Kun Never Falls In Love" has no business being good. It borrows some of the oldest tropes in the book, its 'plot twists' can be seen a mile away, and calling much of anything about it original would lead me to think you REALLY don't watch much romance in any medium. And yet... you end up enjoying it. It can be strangely charming, perhaps simply because it has no pretensions of being anything other than what it is and plays it straight.
She's a bubbly, naive princess trying to get outside of her sheltered royal life, he's a jaded, more mature guy, they meet and both
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their lives change. Stop me if you've heard this one before. OK, you probably have- Tada-Kun has some striking resemblances to a famous old black-and-white American romantic film called 'Roman Holiday'. The OP even includes a brief clip of Tada and Teresa on a Vespa scooter that directly references the most iconic scene of the film. Maybe that's what let me let my guard down with this show, it quietly acknowledged what it was going for and didn't put on any airs. Now granted, if you don't accept this series for what it is you probably won't be following along for very long. There isn't much comedy that goes beyond getting a chuckle (except for a brilliant gag involving a Golgo 13 reference of all things), and towards the end it can be plenty melodramatic.
Now while animation is fairly standard, the aesthetic is quite nice. It has a vaguely pastel look that can be quite soothing and the character designs, while they follow well-worn archetypes are nice enough. Sound is a flat 5 here, I don't remember any of it for good or bad. The characters are also nothing you haven't seen before. For example, Tada's two best friends are the comic relief guy and the girl-crazed horndog senpai, two archetypes who are practically obligated to appear in every anime love story until Japan sinks back into the Pacific Ocean. Also, Hinako must be ordering her eye glass from the same place Superman gets his...
I don't know how they did it, but 'Tada-Kun' on paper did everything wrong... but still came out alright.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 26, 2018
Golden Kamuy is the first time I've ever seen a Western anime. No, not an animated work from the Western world with distinct Japanese influences, an honest-to-goodness Clint Eastwood Western. Just one that happens to take place in northern Japan rather than the western USA. What's that? Your weeaboo blood is boiling than I would dare to compare the glorious animation of Nippon to some old American genre films? (or perhaps you simply don't 100% buy the comparison and would like further clarification) Well, I'll explain...
Stop me if you've heard this one before: a man battle-scarred by a terrible war is out on the frontier
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looking to strike it rich quick when he finds a native girl who knows the location of a vast fortune and ends up being chased all over the ragged edge of civilization by criminals, killers, and corrupt army officers in a race to be the first to the loot. Come on, don't tell me that doesn't sound like a Spaghetti Western (but since it's Japanese, why don't we call it a Soba Western?). Make Sugimoto an American Civil War veteran, Ashirpa an Apache, and move the location from Hokkaido to Arizona and you could basically keep everything else intact. Golden Kamuy borrows tropes from films like 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" like Sergio Leone borrowed from Akira Kurosawa. Maybe 'borrowed' is too polite a term in the Leone-Kurosawa case, but we're getting off track...
It doesn't just borrow from the conventions of other works, however, Golden Kamuy executes them very well. The pace moves steadily, balancing out gritty violence and moments of comedy (and food). It's a plot driven story, so the characters don't change much over the course of the first season, but the cast is still well characterized and interesting. Ashirpa in particular is one of the best female leads in an action series I've seen in a while. A fiercely tomboyish girl who deeply loves and respects her native Ainu culture, but is also striving to change it so it can adapt and survive the oncoming modern age. She's has enough character depth to be funny, vulnerable, or deadly as fits the situation without losing consistency, doesn't fit into any obvious, basic anime trope and isn't there for ship-teasing.
Speaking of the Ainu people, this is the first time I've ever seen a real exploration of their culture in anime- and I'm a historical anime junkie. The last time I saw any Ainu character at all was in "Princess Mononoke" and that film was as fantastical as it was fantastic (no, the Ainu do not ride red elk into battle). You really get a sense the original mangaka did serious research into the subject matter, something I appreciate as a history buff.
Moving on to least great part of Golden Kamuy: the animation. CGI bears and green-screen camp fires may be the obvious offenders here, but for a 2017 anime the production values on this show are about as low as you can go and still get away with it. The 2D animation avoids slipping into 'Bad' territory, but it never goes above OK either. The music is strong though, with the OP and especially the ED being first rate. "Man With A Mission" hits another home-run OP song and I swear the ED "Hibana" sounds like something Anberlin would write, but once again we're getting off topic.
In short, Golden Kamuy is an enjoyable action series that will be very easily consumable for American audiences, and you may even end up learning something too.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 25, 2018
File this show under 'pleasant surprises'. An anime drama I tried out mostly tried on a lark turned out to an unexpectedly interesting look at one of Japan's major domestic issues, carried by good production values and decent writing.
STORY
A cutesy anime girl takes a job in a small Japanese farm town due to mistaken identity, finds four other anime girls to be her teammates at the local Tourism Department, and... has to contend with Japan's growing problem of rural depopulation as the combination of the country's infamously low birthrate and increasing urbanization leaves many areas with uncertain futures? OK, I didn't see that coming.
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Not to say this show is a dry social studies thesis trying to disguise itself as an anime- 'Sakura Quest' does function perfectly well as a drama about early adulthood. I've seen other anime that tried to address contemporary social and political issues, such as C-Control's commentary on the financial crisis of the late 2000's, but that show ultimately fell apart as its attempts to get THE POINT across caused the rest of the writing to suffer. Meanwhile, SQ is able to avoid those pitfalls and works as a drama even if you don't understand the context. There's an interesting little narrative trick to this show: it starts off largely episodic as the main 5 girls simply bounce from one tourism gimmick idea to another, but begins to develop more long-running plot threads as the cast begins to form more solid and coherent plans. I won't say SQ is the drama to end all dramas, but it is solidly written.
ART & SOUND
PA Works has a reputation for making well animated shows and SQ is no exception. It doesn't quite ever reach Kyoto Animation heights and the art style is as 'anime standard' as it gets, but it is aesthetically pleasing and consistent. Look, I know I'm a 'writing' reviewer, not an 'art and music' kind of reviewer, so I don't have much say on this topic other than both topics are solidly done although not mind-blowing.
CHARACTERS
Call me crazy, but this anime reminded me of 'The Andy Griffith Show'. Yes, an anime from 2017 made me think of a 1960's American sitcom. Hear me out, both center around small rural towns with large casts of quirky characters who bounce around relatively normal 'straight man'. Sakura Quest manages to build a large cast with strong characterization. These cast members may not all undergo large-scale character arcs, but we do quickly get a sense of what a character's 'schtick' is and how they interact with the other cast members. It helps the viewer keep track of everything in a story that's as much about the town as it is about any one character. Points are also in order for making a cast with a clear majority of adult characters actually act and sound like adults. They deal with issues like career burnout, parental conflicts, and long-term grudges in ways that seem plausible for grown human beings. And how many anime can you think of where one of the central long-running conflicts is the small town politics between the Tourism Department and Board of Merchants, and the cast makes it both believable and interesting? The character arcs are relatively straightforward and don't throw any truly unpredictable curveballs, but they do have good drama writing behind them.
ENJOYMENT
I personally appreciated that Sakura Quest was able to combine commentary on significant Japanese social concerns with solid entertainment. Other folks with less interest in issues with sexy names like "increasing urbanization" will still appreciate it as a good drama about a young adult woman trying to find her place in the world and understand what she truly wants in life.
OVERALL
All-time classic? I doubt it. But I will be using 'Sakura Quest' as a solid benchmark for what is and what isn't a good drama anime.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Feb 10, 2018
I'm a sucker for all things related to the samurai, but this manga left me with a decidedly "meh" impression.
You may have read that the samurai came to an end in the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, but in truth they many 'deaths' and 'rebirths' before that. The samurai class served many different roles throughout Japanese history, ranging from tax collectors, to bureaucrats, to soldiers, to military aristocrats. These two stories deal with samurai caught in the culture shift as the Sengoku period became the Edo period.
The first 'Snow Ridge' is the more interesting of the two. It deals with a clan forced to relocate
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and build a new castle after losing the Battle of Sekigahara. The debate over the castle's location turns into an internal political struggle divided on generational lines. The older samurai raised in an age of constant warfare want to build the castle in a highly defensible but remote and impoverished location, while the younger samurai with more skill as civilian administrators than soldiers want to put it where there will be the most political and economic benefit. There is some interesting political maneuvering and a decent conclusion.
The second story is rather generic samurai fare. A teenage girl seeks revenge against the samurai thugs who raped her and murdered her family, so she finds a famous swordsmanship instructor to teach her how to fight. The instructor uses a new type of training sword that will become important to the sport of kendo, which allows her to train effectively despite her more fragile body. This story is supposed to symbolize how samurai battlefield skills began to transition to ritualized martial arts, but it ends up being a mediocre samurai story anyone who's seen a few Kurosawa movies could have written.
The art for both of these stories is decent but nothing special, and the characters are basic archetypes. It's an OK read for fans of samurai stories.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 27, 2018
This is only a preliminary review, as just two volumes have been released in English at the time of writing, but 'Drifting Dragons' is my favorite new manga released in 2017.
STORY
It's too early to make a judgement call on the story, as so far it's been largely episodic and it's a bit early to tell if Drifting Dragons will stay on that path or it's just setting up the story world before diving into a major, central narrative. The story world itself is quite creative, a fantastical version of the 19th century where airship crews hunt dragons in the same way Nantucket sailors used to
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hunt whales. Although, I can't understand why the manga seems intent on going into so much detail on 'How To Cook Your Dragon'- cooking directions in something realistic like 'Sweetness & Lightning' I can understand, but what's the point of a recipe whose main ingredient is a fictional creature?
ART
This has been the top selling point for 'Drifting Dragons'. The illustrations seem like something out of a Ghibili film: incredibly detailed fantasy settings and outfits with characters just 'cartoony' enough to make it fun. It gives this series a distinct visual identity and sometimes I'm left simply looking at the page, soaking it all in and thoroughly impressed. I'd put 'Drifting Dragons' up there with 'Vinland Saga' and 'A Bride's Story' in terms of sheer aesthetic appeal.
CHARACTERS
Like Story, it's a bit early to give a definitive score on this section. This manga has a ensemble cast, although junior crew member Takita has gotten the most time in the spotlight so far (as the newbie she makes a good point of view character, since as the veteran 'Drakers' explain the trade to her we the audience also learn). Thus far the other major characters haven't had time to expand beyond their initial characterization, but I'm willing to wait a bit longer since they're entertaining and it looks like the story is still in its set-up phase.
OVERALL
Beautiful art and an intriguing world make this series something fans of fantasy adventure should definitely look into, and if a good solid story develops we could have something special here for the whole manga community.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 5, 2017
STORY
NHK is a story centering around various social dysfunctions and anxieties and how people cope with them. It handles these issues with surprising delicacy, walking a narrow line between fanboy pandering ("This is totally OK behavior!") and knee-jerk condemnation ("You must be a freak!"), trying to get to the heart of why a person might go to unhealthy extremes of behavior.
To get an idea of the show's writing, in an early episode Sato and Misaki are having a conversation where Misaki implies she thinks Sato has no clue of who Sigmund Freud was, so he trolls her by playing dumb and asking her to
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psychoanalyze a dream loaded with extremely sexual Freudian imagery- she blushes and quickly switches to discussing Carl Jung instead. The script isn't always operating at such an abstract intellectual level, but it does display how NHK can be a bit smarter than the average anime.
ART & SOUND
GONZO did a poor job of quality control on this one, the characters don't stay consistently on-model. It's almost so consistently inconsistent that you begin to not notice. Backgrounds are decent and animation is OK, but I can't say the art in NHK is a textbook example of aging gracefully.
Sound is pretty good. The English voice acting isn't perfect across the board, but the major characters are well done. The highlight of the music is the first ED "Baby Human" which is set to a demented Japanese rock song paired with wacky animation.
CHARACTERS
If I had to sum the cast up with one line, it would be "We're all a bit of a mess". Every character has their own set of personal problems to deal with: Sato's an extreme recluse, Yamazaki is a often a spaz, Hitomi is emotionally fragile, Misaki has... well that's spoiler territory but there's more to her past than she lets on. As much as the show doesn't compromise on the fact that there are things about these people that are unhealthy and need to change, NHK still treats them like people, not runaways from a freak show. That respect makes it easier to deal with when the show starts dealing with some heavy issues that might hit a little close to home.
OVERALL
I knew about this show by reputation before I watched it. I can see that reputation is well deserved.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 5, 2017
It can be a bit trope-y, but Kids On The Slope is a well animated and scored anime drama.
STORY
The story is nice, but at times it feels like it's trying too hard to be a drama. Certain key events don't feel entirely natural. The last couple episodes suffer from this issue in particular, where the cast makes a series of emotionally charged but not completely believable choices to keep the tension up. The ending is still nice, but a part of me is left wondering "there had to have been better ways for these people to go about this".
ART & SOUND
The highlight of this show
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has to be the music sessions, which display not only the incredible jazz soundtrack but also some stunning character animation. Body animation gets amazingly fluid and realistic, they must have rotoscoped the image over film of actual musicians. Jazz predominates the soundtrack, but classical music and 1960's Rock-And-Roll also make appearances, and this has to be the first time I've ever heard traditional Christian hymns in an anime. On the voice acting front, this show features some of the most impressive English I've ever heard in a Japanese dub- I've heard some MANGLED Engrish in subbed anime before, some of the English here could almost pass for natural.
CHARACTERS
I know this show was made earlier so it may not be a fair criticism, but I still couldn't help thinking "I've seen these characters in Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju". The skinny, socially proper, somewhat effeminate male lead, his big, manly, rowdy, goofball of a best friend, the beautiful older woman with sometimes dubious romantic judgement, they all fit rather neatly into archetypes I've seen before. Still, K.O.T.S. does a decent of making them an interesting cast to follow.
OVERALL
Kids On The Slope is a decent drama, and I'd definitely recommend it for those who love top quality music in their anime, but ultimately it's too formulaic to make the jump from 'good' to 'great'.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 5, 2017
STORY
The subtitle may be A Worker's Graphic Account of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, but they meant 'graphic' in the graphic novel sense, not graphic in the violent or shocking sense. The biggest surprise to the story may actually be how low key it is. There are undoubtedly dangers to working at the Fukushima reactor site, but the place is hardly a nuclear hellscape and rigorous safety standards mean only the most flagrantly careless will be affected by radiation. If mangaka Kazuto Tatsuta has any beef with anyone in his memoir, it's with media outlets who constantly sensationalize the Fukushima clean-up to push their agenda
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or simply sell newspapers. He admits others might want a more politically adamant manga, but all he felt confident offering were his own observations to counter shoddy journalism.
ART
The art is quite detailed when drawing locations and facilities, although people are a little more basic. Layouts are simple, straightforward, and easy to follow. Kazuto Tatsuta may be a worker with the Fukushima clean-up operation, but he's also had a number of professional manga gigs so Ichi-F doesn't look amateur.
CHARACTERS
Kazuto Tatsuta isn't actually the author's real name, in fact the names of all the characters involved are changed to protect privacy. Otherwise, it seems pointless to analyze characters in an autobiographical manga.
OVERALL
Ichi-F will be interesting to anyone with an interest in the Fukushima disaster.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 5, 2017
Boredom can do some interesting things, like make a derivative piece of candy colored fluff like this palatable.
STORY
The story is largely episodic, but it does follow a basic plot of a fictional game studio working to release the next installment of a popular franchise. The real point of the plot is simply to set up various scenarios for the cast members to bounce off each other for comedy (and occasionally fan service). There's a limit to how serious a series can be when half the plot of one episode centers around one character accidentally eating another's pudding.
ART & SOUND
The art and sound are
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perfectly nice, but nothing special. The Japanese voice actors hit these really high pitched octaves that are murder on English voice actors- dubbing some of these characters would be a major pain. The soundtrack is OK but fairly generic J-Pop stuff. The art is bright and colorful. I used the term candy colored earlier, but perhaps Jello colored would be more appropriate since that what what most of the ladies' breasts seem to be made of. It's all just very... OK.
CHARACTERS
I'll admit I don't have the demographic statistics of the Japanese video game industry just rolling around in my head, but I'm skeptical that many companies are staffed entirely by cutesy waifus who may or may not want to yuri each other. The cast all fit into some pretty common archetypes: the shy one, the earnest new girl, the athletic one, the fancily dressed lolita. They all play the ir tropes perfectly straight too. The airsoft gun-loving Okinawan who picked up the hobby from all the US military personnel on her home island is a new one for me at least.
OVERALL
I'm filing this series under 'fast food anime' that I consume with no delusions about its quality. I can't say I was disappointed because I went in with low expectations. That said, I usually only watched New Game! in a side window while getting some writing done on the other side of the screen.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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