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“this badminton anime has had like 6 or 7 different characters break down crying in the first episode. badminton must be absolutely miserable” -@shaun_jen

The protagonist of a sports anime will typically have some talent that makes them eligible to be the protagonist – Kuroko lacks presence, Hinata jumps high, Sawamura has flexible wrists, and the list goes on. This is an ability that they have, that no one else will be able to develop, no matter how hard they try, and it’s what gives them the edge over their competition. Hanasaki Ayano has every talent there could be when it comes to badminton – handedness, reflexes, etc – though it’s never quite that simple.

Ayano isn’t just talented; she’s also worked hard to hone her skills through a childhood of practicing against her mother Uchika, a champion at the sport. However, said mother’s love was conditional on whether she was able to beat her peers, which forced Ayano into a mindset of viewing the game only in terms of winning and losing, and destroyed her ability to simply enjoy the sport or have any respect for her opponents. Ayano plays not for a love of the game, but for her mother’s approval, and the only joy she seems to find in it is the sadistic glee of destroying those who dare believe that hard work will get them anywhere.

So, what about hard work? Luckily, Ayano isn’t really the protagonist of Hanebado – that honor goes to Ayano’s senior and rival, Aragaki Nagisa. Aragaki is definitely talented (though not on the same level as Ayano), but her true strengths lie in the effort that she puts into every match she plays and her love of the sport. That said, this effort often crosses the line into self-destruction, so her behavior isn’t to be emulated either, even if it is a step above Ayano’s. Still, she embodies the ideals that hard work and perseverance are able to overcome talent, and that winning isn't all that matters, and for that, the show roots for her.

In the end, Hanebado is a messy show. It challenges the quixotic foundation of the sports anime, and while it ultimately affirms it, it only is able to do so by being willfully ignorant of its own flaws. It can be repetitive in its ideas, and often borders on melodrama. But for all of its missteps, Hanebado also gets a lot right. The animation for the badminton matches is stunning, and it nails the catharsis factor that’s essential for any successful sports series. If you're looking for a sports series with more focus of the drama outside of the game, and you're willing to deal with tonal whiplash and other issues, then Hanebado might be the show for you.

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Honestly, I went into Revue Starlight expecting it to be another idolesque multimedia project trying to recapture Love Live’s success, and once the series actually began, it was swarmed with comparisons to Revolutionary Girl Utena. Unfortunately, these comparisons have been unavoidable in the discourse surrounding this anime, and few people are trying to appreciate the series for its own appeal. So, before going into what makes this series great, here’s a bit of background.

The idea that Revue Starlight is just another Utena-like is mainly based on the director of the anime being Tomohiro Furukawa, who worked under Ikuhara on Mawaru Penguindrum. However, rather than being inspired by works like Utena, it would be more accurate to say that they share the common inspiration of Takarazuka, a form of Japanese theater in which all roles are played by women. These women are sorted into pairs of Otokoyaku (women who play men) and Musumeyaku (women who play women). In each troupe, one Otokoyaku will hold the position of Top Star, and she and her Musumeyaku will play the leads in all of the troupe’s productions. This system is the foundation of Revue Starlight, but there’s one more thing I need to address before I can get into that.

To credit the direction of the franchise entirely to Tomohiro is to ignore all of the other voices that have had a hand in the formation of the Revue Starlight multimedia project. Though most western fans found out about the franchise through this anime, the stage musical actually preceded it by a year, so it’s worth looking at who was involved, especially since they’ve gone unrecognized by this site. The core trio is made up of Kodama Akiko, Miura Kaori, and Nakamura Kanata, who are the director, screenplay writer, and songwriter for the project, respectively. All three have a background in theater, with Kodama specifically having worked as a writer and director for Takarazuka productions. These women’s love of the stage is the foundation of this franchise, and none of it could have existed without them.

With that addressed, we can finally talk about the Top Star system. There are a lot of things that are unfair about this system, and Revue Starlight is an exploration and critique of its structure. As mentioned above, Takarazuka actresses are sorted into Otokoyaku and Musumeyaku, and only Otokoyaku can become Top Star. However, actresses cannot choose which role to play; it is decided for them based on factors outside of their control such as their height and voice. So a character like Futaba, despite her boyish looks and her being a natural leader, could never become an Otokoyaku, much less the Top Star, simply because of her height. Beyond this, the simple fact that there can only be one Top Star pits the members of the troupe into rivalries with each other, and while this can be good-natured and help both actresses grow (as is the case for Maya and Claudine), it can just as easily be harmful. It is for this reason that the protagonist of the series, Karen, wishes to abolish the system, so that she can simply stand beside her friends instead of fighting to stand above them.

Whenever a multimedia project is involved, there’s always the worry that the anime is made purely as a commercial for the other elements of the project, without any ambitions of its own. This is not the case for Revue Starlight. These characters are believable and relatable, the animation is stunning in both its presentation of the girl’s grand stage duels and their mundane everyday life, and the music is unlike any other anime I’ve seen. Perhaps these theatrics aren’t for everyone, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice to not at least give this series a chance.

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“whyd they call it darling in the franxx and not eureka sixty nine” -@burgeroise

Gainax had been one of the most influential studios in the formative years of the anime industry, being responsible for projects such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and FLCL. However, it has fallen from those heights in recent years, partially due to departures of key staff in two major waves – one headed by Nishigori Atsushi who left to go produce The iDOLM@STER at A-1 Pictures, and another headed by Imaishi Hiroyuki who left to create Studio Trigger. Gainax technically isn’t involved with DarliFra – it’s a collaboration between A-1 and Trigger – but with Nishigori as Director and Imaishi as Action Supervisor, it feels like a reunion project.

And that’s definitely the vibe they were going for, since this series is loaded with callbacks to those past works, particularly in the first quarter and in the endgame twists. At the beginning, this serves the purpose of establishing what type of story this is going to be, but as the series goes on, these allusions become superficial. Instead of being there to contribute to the narrative, they’re there just for the sake of evoking nostalgia, and they’ve been stripped of any meaning that they originally carried. This disregard for anything below the surface level often has the series at odds with itself – for example, while Evangelion and Gurren Lagann are both coming of age stories with mechs, they are radically different tonally, and trying to reference them back-to-back feels jarring. It would take a careful balance to combine all of these allusions harmoniously, and this series just isn’t up to the task.

So with DarliFra’s handling of its inspirations covered, it’s time to move on to the new ideas that it has to contribute. The main focuses of this series are the concepts of sexuality and gender, though its messages about those subjects are either vague and noncommittal or actively regressive. The mechs in this show – the franxxes – require a male and female pair to pilot, and are a metaphor for a viable family unit. With that in mind, the constantly repeated idea that those who can’t pilot a franxx might as well not exist takes on new meaning. When Ikuno, the one lesbian character in the show, tries to pilot with another girl, of course it doesn’t work; in the eyes of society, she and her love aren’t valid.

The thing is, having problematic messages also weakens the characters by having them be mouthpieces for those ideas. I was rooting for Ikuno when she tried to confess to the girl she liked, but it was harder to support her when she was trash-talking the nonbinary members of the cast. Rather than behaving like actual people, these characters would change to whoever they needed to be for the show to deliver its message. This absence of consistency made character drama one of this series’ greatest weaknesses; with personalities and relationships being different every week, it was exceedingly difficult to continue to follow them and be invested in the outcome.

With that said, I actually really liked the designs of the characters. They’re fairly simple, which allowed for lots of expressive animation. It was easy to like the characters when they were in motion instead of standing around talking about gender issues, and this expressiveness also carries over to the designs of the mechs. The female pilot’s face is projected onto the face of the mech, which is a really nice touch. Honestly, the mech fight scenes in the first third of the series were spectacular, but they unfortunately weren't sustainable. These fights were rather sparse in the middle, and by the end of the series, just like everything else, they had fallen apart.

I can’t think of any other anime series I’ve seen that has been so specifically targeted at the Japanese audience. Sure, that’s always the intended audience, but most anime tells stories that can still be appreciated by people in other parts of the world. But the issues that DarliFra deals with are almost exclusively Japanese. Japan has an aging population, and young people aren’t getting married and having kids, mainly because they just don’t have the time to raise a family. The future of the country is in jeopardy, so I can understand why a show would get made touting the importance of traditional family values. It’s just, while I’m not really informed enough or in any position to tell Japan how to fix its issues, I somehow don’t think demonizing everyone who doesn’t adhere to standard gender and sexuality is the way to do it.

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There was a lot of hype leading up to the Ancient Magus Bride. Its first three episodes were shown in theaters months before it began to air, and critics and the masses alike were declaring it the best thing ever. In a lot of ways, it lived up to all of that hype. However, I think all of that glowing praise is overshadowing some actual issues with this adaptation.

Before going into the story, I’d like to quickly run down the structure of the narrative. Magus Bride is a slow-paced and contemplative journey, and that’s not for everyone. Several friends of mine dropped it about a third of the way through simply because they didn’t feel any drive to see it through, which was exacerbated by a reliance on cheap cliffhangers. But if you’re willing to give the story time to unfold, it does have interesting ideas to explore. Now, into the story:

Magus Bride invites its audience to a world of magic in which dragons and fairies are commonplace. But despite its grand fantastic setting, the focus of its narrative is on the grounded and personal story of its protagonist Chise. To put it lightly, Chise begins the series in a dark place, and believes that she is worthless and no one would care if she died. Much of the show is dedicated to characters exploring their attitudes towards death; every person Chise meets helps to shape her perspective towards life, and these encounters change her as a person.

Chise develops a lot over the course of the series, and it’s not always for the better. Something that’s often ignored in fiction is that change isn’t always exclusively positive or negative, and Magus Bride handles this well. At one point, Chise decides that her life only has value on the condition that she can be useful to others, which leads to her becoming the needlessly self-sacrificing protagonist that we often see in anime. This particular plot point was kind of a weak point for me – most often the results of her self-martyring were that she would just be unconscious for a few days and then have no lasting damage. Still, it was interesting to see how Chise changes over time, and how this affected her interactions with those around her.

Chise’s growth is best shown through the evolution of her dynamic with the other lead Elias. At the onset of the story, the two of them are teacher and student, but over the course of events, Chise comes to realize that Elias isn’t the all-knowing figure she had taken him for, and that he has at least as much to learn from her as she has to learn from him. They spend a period of codependency, though Chise’s emotional growth leads to her trying to form meaningful relationships with other people, while Elias becomes increasingly dependent and obsessive. Chise’s relationship with Elias may be what starts her on her path at the beginning, but it’s also an unhealthy relationship that needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. This was another shortcoming – Elias does some genuinely terrible things which are downplayed by the narrative. Chise tries to see the best in everyone she encounters over her journey, including its villains, but it would have been nice if this nuance had extended a bit further into exploring the dark sides of its heroes.

But while the story itself is interesting, the visual presentation of it is lacking. The character designs are elaborate, but the models decline over the run of the show. There are also comedic aside scenes where the characters are chibified, and these detract from the narrative and disrupt its tone. One of the most disappointing things is that the second opening is composed almost entirely out of big scenes from the first half. None of the visuals are terribly bad, but they don’t really live up to the rest of the show. Everything is fine, but the attempts at spectacle don’t always land. Animation could have been used to accomplish things that wouldn’t have been possible in the manga, but instead this adaptation plays it safe and doesn’t add anything new to the story.

The audio makes more of an effort to go beyond the source material. Some sound effects are exaggerated for emphasis, which is a small but effective detail. On the larger scale, there are insert songs added to climactic scenes, which are sometimes effective but more often feel forceful and try to imbue drama into a scene that isn’t there. They’ll make scenes feel too drawn out, or they’ll go into the territory of melodrama. Other than that, the audio is unremarkable. The voice work and opening and ending themes are perfectly fine, though nothing exceptional.

What is the purpose of adaptation? If it is simply to increase awareness of the source material, then this anime was a resounding success. But I believe that an adaptation should try to elevate itself above its inspiration; it’s a different medium, and it should play to its unique strengths. In this regard, the anime adaptation is a failure. Everything that I enjoyed about this would still be present in the manga, and a lot of the things I disliked would then be absent. I think Magus Bride is a really interesting story, but I don’t think that this anime is the way to enjoy it.

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I don’t think highly of A-1 Pictures. There aren’t any particular people there who I think are at fault, but rather how the studio itself is managed has led to some rather lackluster projects. The typical A-1 anime isn’t particularly ambitious, and while it will be enough to entertain you while you’re watching it, it’s unlikely to leave a lasting impression. That said, I think A-1 has had some more interesting projects over the course of 2017, such as Demi-chan, Saekano Flat, and Fate Apocrypha. But sadly here we are at the end of the year, with a few projects that are the quality I’ve come to expect from this studio.

The iDOLM@STER SideM is the latest entry in the iM@S franchise, though this time, the idols are all male to cater to a female audience. There isn’t much of an overarching story present in this season, and it instead serves mainly just to introduce the characters. That said, every entry in the series prior to this point has continued for two cours, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see another season down the line, that would potentially bring up a greater conflict. But until then, I hope you like character introductions….

…because you’ll be seeing a lot of them. SideM has an expansive cast of 20 characters, and it takes the first 7 episodes to even introduce all of them. Similar to Cinderella Girls, SideM manages this cast by dividing it up into units, so that audiences can meet the cast a few members at a time and not be overwhelmed. However, it quickly becomes apparent that the same character archetypes are being recycled in each unit (I particularly dislike “Guy who can’t go two sentences without injecting broken English into his speech”), and little is done to characterize the cast beyond their most surface traits. It’s not like it would have been impossible to distinguish a bit more between characters in the same archetype. One detail that had the potential to be interesting was that most of the characters were adults that had had careers prior to debuting as idols – including a doctor, two soccer players, three teachers, and even a prince – and it would have been neat if that factored into their characterization instead of just being lipservice backstory. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the producer, who, despite appearing the most since he serves as a mentor to all of the units, ends up being the least developed member of the cast. While it’s true that his development is secondary to that of the actual idols, previous entries in the franchise have demonstrated that it’s possible for the producer to have a compelling character arc in the background, and it’s a shame that this one ended up staying a blank slate.

Equally disappointing is the performance scenes, or rather, the absence of them. Almost every time that a performance is about to begin, the camera cuts away to focus in on another scene somewhere else. While this is an understandable move to lighten the load on the animators, it seems strange to have an idol show where the performances aren’t used for spectacle. And when the audience does get to see these performances, the camera either lingers close enough so that there’s never many characters in the shot at once, or far enough away so that the use of CG can be disguised. The choreography is unimpressive and the camerawork is uninspired, and the performances all end up feeling like missed opportunities.

And with so little focus on the performances, it’s only natural that the songs would suffer as well. When the camera isn’t even on the stage where a performance is happening, it’s not uncommon for the focus to instead be on a conversation in a separate scene, reducing the song to just background noise. In addition, the official subs also don’t bother to translate the lyrics, which seems to be standard practice at this point. It wouldn’t even have been hard; many of the songs weren’t original and were just taken from the SideM mobile game, so the translation team could have used the English lyrics that already existed courtesy of Project iM@S. It seems strange to say this about an idol anime, but the music basically feels like an afterthought.

With all of these issues, I had originally written SideM off as another cash-in about which no one on the production team actually cared. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. After finishing the show, I learned that much of the staff has been involved with iM@S since the beginning, and care about the franchise a lot. For example, there’s Kuroki Miyuki, one of the directors for SideM, who was a key animator for the original 2011 iM@S, and has been vocal about her love of the Jupiter boys. It was heartbreaking to learn that so much love had gone into this production, and that the end product had still turned out so lackluster. This team had been passionate about the project, but they weren’t given adequate time or resources to create their vision. Going back to the first paragraph, this is my problem with A-1 – that they view anime as a business more than as an artistic medium. There are definitely exceptions to this, but in general the studio seems to strive for acceptable rather than exceptional – projects that are just good enough that people will buy the physical releases. I hope to see more bold and interesting originals in the future, but A-1 Pictures simply isn’t the studio from which I expect them to come. There’s talent in the anime industry, and it needs to be given a chance.

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Love Live has come a long way. It’s difficult to imagine now, but when the first season of School Idol Project started back in 2013, idol anime as we know it today didn’t really exist. Just as µ's was the guiding light for the world of school idols, the franchise led the way for the genre, and by the time of the School Idol Movie, it really had become a global phenomenon. So when µ's retired and Aqours stepped forward to take its place, fans were understandably upset and worried that this new iteration would tarnish or override the franchise’s legacy. But it was never the goal for Aqours to replace its predecessor, and instead it told its own story about trying to live up to that legacy, and instead accomplishing far more.

While the first season of Sunshine adhered closely to the formula set by School Idol Project, the second season focused on the ways that Aqours was different. The new generation was never going to measure up against the audience’s nostalgia for µ's, and that was reflected in the story. Aqours struggles with challenges that µ's overcame easily, and there are times when they actually fail. These aren’t just failure by circumstance; they will have tried their best and it still wasn’t enough to succeed. We see these characters when they’re at their lowest points, and when they get back up and try again, it makes their victories all the sweeter. The writing is about as subtle as a brick, but it gets the emotions across.

Although, those feelings wouldn’t resonate so strongly if we weren’t so deeply invested the cast and their success. Sunshine relies more heavily on personal drama than its predecessor, and it works because their problems aren’t abstract and artificial walls, but genuine fears and worries to which we can relate. And instead of having to overcome these problems on their own, the other members of the group will reach out to provide support, which sells you on the idea that these characters are actually friends who care about each other’s well-being. It’s true that some members of the ensemble get better treatment than others, with one or two being reduced mainly to one-note gags, but overall the cast is so earnest that you can’t help but root for them.

The growth of the characters is also reflected in the performance scenes, which see the characters becoming gradually more comfortable with complex choreography and each other. For better or worse, CGI has always been a staple of the Love Live franchise, and it’s been getting better with every entry. Early performances looked garish and were plagued by unimaginative camerawork, but both technology and direction have improved vastly, and it’s finally reaching the point that CGI can compete with traditional animation. Performances now come alive with dancing in 3D spaces, and varied shot composition and camera effects make for a real spectacle. It also helps that the songs being performed are really good. Aqours has a diverse discography, ranging from traditional Japanese odori to Broadway show tunes. The soundtrack outside of the performances is excellent as well, effectively matching the tonal shifts over the course of the season. On its technical merits, Sunshine soars.

If I were to look at the anime alone, Sunshine is far from perfect. There’s a lot of valid criticisms that can and should be made, but since that’s not my focus, I’d recommend checking out Yuni’s review, which addresses a lot of them. But for this, rather than just looking at the show itself, I’m also including my own experience watching it, and I find that my enjoyment greatly outweighs any criticisms. For the past 13 weeks, it hasn’t just been the show that I’ve enjoyed, but also being a part of the community that surrounds it. That’s just my personal experience, so it will differ from person to person, but all I can say is that all of the tweets, fanart, and fanfiction that I saw definitely added to my enjoyment.

I’m going to miss this generation. It’s not quite over yet – there’s still the movie – but the end is rapidly approaching. I’ve always appreciated that the Love Live franchise ends stories conclusively; the dream of being a school idol is fleeting, but the lessons learned will last forever. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to love the next generation the same way I loved this one, but the future looks bright, and I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

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Gambling is a fairly common topic in manga, though it is seldom adapted into an anime. There is good reason for this: there is little in the way of action that would benefit from adaptation, and exposition really drags on when it needs to be voiced rather than just read. And alongside these conceptual problems, there's the moral repugnancy that Kakegurui revels in, which should serve to further alienate any potential audience. But despite all of this, Kakegurui has somehow won against a stacked deck, and in this review, I'll take a look at how this oddball became a mainstream success.

This anime covers the first 27 chapters of the manga, and then adds on an anime exclusive ending. These chapters essentially serve as an introduction to the world of Kakegurui, establishing the characters and the rules that the world follows. It’s really just setup for the much more interesting second arc, though considering the events of the new ending, I wouldn’t hold my breath for a second season.

In gambling, there are always two games going on. There’s the game that the characters are playing on the table, but there’s also all of the mind games and cheating that are going on surrounding it. Pretty much all of the games played in Kakegurui are original, though simple and straightforward enough that the audience can quickly understand them. On the other hand, some of the tricks employed are poorly explained, which can be frustrating. But despite the occasional misstep, the gambles generally succeed in remaining tense throughout.

In general, the cast of Kakegurui are terrible. And by that, I don’t mean that they’re terrible characters, but that they’re terrible people. They’re manipulative and sadistic, and with few redeeming traits. But while their actions are regularly cartoonishly evil, there is actually a bit of humanity behind them. For example, there’s a scene in episode eight where one of the villains talks about her ambitions of becoming an actress, and while it in no way justifies any of her behavior, it begins to make her understandable. This pays off when once-villains return as allies, which happens twice in the territory covered by the anime, and a lot more in the next arc. These are easily my favorite games in the series, because Yumeko isn’t actually a very interesting gambler. She can fix dice rolls and memorize things to an insane degree; she’s too good for there ever to be any worry of her losing, and she lacks motivations that the viewer can get behind. Luckily, the show seems to understand this, and often adopts the perspective of her opponents, which keeps tensions high.

But while I may not particularly like Yumeko, her portrayal by Hayami Saori is easily the highlight of the series. She seamlessly transitions between ladylike calm, playful teasing, and manic edge, and I could not imagine any other seiyu being as perfect a fit for the character. Besides that, the rest of the cast also delivers nicely, but Yumeko is a step above. In regards to the music, it does an excellent job of setting the mood, both through its fantastic opening and the almost constant jazzy background music, and the only place it really stumbles is in the ending theme, which falls behind the standard set by the rest of the soundtrack.

There’s been a lot of praise given to this anime for its faithfulness in recreating the wild facial expressions from the manga, and I’m not sure that I agree. These faces worked great as single frames, but when they need to be put into motion, they lose the sharpness that made them so iconic. In addition, by focusing so much on faces, other details can suffer. In particular, hands are regularly animated with 3dcg, which is really off-putting once you begin to notice it. But credit where it's due, the opening theme, directed by Yamamoto Sayo, is a real spectacle. Kakegurui is always visually ambitious, and when it works, it can be fantastic, but more often than not, it’s more than Studio MAPPA can handle.

In the end, Kakegurui has its faults, but it has also demonstrated that it’s possible to make a gambling adaptation work. I would love to see more gambling shows in the future, and hopefully Kakegurui's success will pave the road for that to happen.

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It's become a common trend in recent years for an anime project to spawn an idol group - it boosts the popularity of the franchise, and provides another avenue for profit. However, according to Takaaki Kidani, founder and president of Bushiroad, the company responsible for the BanG Dream! multimedia project, the era of idol anime is coming to an end, and band shows will be the next big thing. Which is interesting, because despite technically being a band anime, BanG Dream adheres incredibly close to the idol formula. You can buy albums and character songs for BanG Dream. (Shouldn't the focus be on the instruments?) You can go to a concert and see the voice actors perform live. And it's not just concert tickets and CDs that BanG Dream is trying to sell you; the multimedia project also includes card games, headphones, several manga series, and a mobile game. BanG Dream is an extremely commercial project, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. However, it becomes a problem when the pursuit of financial interest comes at the expense of creativity.

Everything about this anime is designed to be safe and inoffensive. There's nothing new or risky here that could potentially alienate consumers; just trends and tropes that have proven themselves to be successful thrown together into an amalgamation that's sure to sell. It's something that nobody is going to hate, but that nobody is going to love either. Rather than creating something that's only okay for everyone, it would have been better if they had created something that will be at least one person's favorite. Sadly, making a good show seems to be secondary to making good money.

There's not much that's more generic in anime than a story of a high school student trying to start a club for one of their interests. With that premise alone, you already have a fair sense of the events that will go on over the course of the series: In the first two thirds of the series, it'll be necessary to recruit more members, and of course they'll all have some issue that needs to be worked out before they can join, and once the group is finally completed in the final third, there will be some last challenge to overcome. But genericness aside, there's also the issue that the series is loaded down with fluff. There are so many scenes that don't accomplish anything, when there's so much that needs to be accomplished. It would have been possible to tell a much better story in much less time if the staff actually cared enough to write something interesting, but as it is, the story is generic and insubstantial.

Scenes that don't accomplish anything doesn't refer only to the half-developed plot; character growth was only sorely lacking. The characters start the series well within the lines of clearly defined archetypes, and over the course of 13 episodes, they never really go beyond that. There's the occasional scene that will hint that maybe some growth is going on, but it'll never result in lasting change. This results in a tragic absence of sincerity. No matter how absurd a situation characters are placed in, it's still possible to relate to and care about them if their actions and emotions feel genuine. Here, the situation isn't all that detached from ordinary life, but these characters are so flat that it's near impossible to connect with or be invested in them.

Perhaps another aspect of this is that the characters aren't visually appealing. BanG Dream relies heavily on CG for its performance scenes, and this causes the characters to look really unnatural, especially their faces. And even when the show isn't relying on CG, the use of stills and pans is abundant. Over the course of its run, there were two occasions on which episodes were delayed by a week, and it also started two to three weeks into its season. It's not unreasonable to expect that this extra time would be put to good use for making sure that everything actually looked good, but apparently CG was passable, and the staff couldn't be bothered to go beyond that.

After watching a certain amount of anime, you begin to pick up a few words and phrases: youth, dreams, bonds, excitement, you get the idea. These are the types of words that make up the songs from BanG Dream - no real depth, just a barrage of platitudes and banalities. At least, that's how the lyrics are for the opening and ending themes. As for all of the other songs that are sung over the course of the show (like five?), they're left untranslated. It's probably no great loss, though official releases ought to get into the habit of translating song lyrics. Despite being a band show, it seems that the music really wasn't all that important.

None of these factors on their own would necessarily ruin an anime. A solid cast could compensate for a lousy story, and some people won't care how a show looks or sounds as long as it has something interesting to say. The problem is, BanG Dream doesn't have any strong suits; everything about it is derivative and half-baked. It doesn't have anything new to say, and exists only to make a profit off of an existing trend. It projects a future for the industry where creativity is shunned, and the only thing that matters is marketability. This is everything that is wrong with the industry. Good riddance.

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The iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls is a follow-up to the 2011 iDOLM@STER anime that is set in the same universe, though with no returning characters. That said, I make frequent comparisons between the two. If you have no interest in seeing how Cinderella Girls measures up to its parent story, and want a review of it as a standalone work, read elsewhere.

Story
Cinderella Girls tells the story of the girls at 346 Productions, and the hurdles that they overcome on their paths to becoming professional idols. Every episode, some hurdle will appear, and one of the characters will have to grow as a person to overcome it. It goes a bit beyond that for the main trio, but for the most part, that's about as deep as the story gets. This is a character-driven show, and any plot that exists is just an excuse to put the characters into interesting situations. It accomplishes that just fine, but don't have any lofty narrative ambitions, because even with the introduction of an antagonist in the second season, the story remains largely inconsequential.

Art & Animation
The original iDOLM@STER anime had character designs drawn by Nishigori Atsushi, who also did character designs for Gainax shows like Gurren Lagann and Panty & Stocking. It's not easy to follow that up, but Cinderella Girls does a pretty good job. While definitely not on Nishigori's level, every design is distinct and appealing, which is impressive considering the massive size of the cast. Outfits are silly at times, but at this point, that comes with the territory. My gripe in this category is actually with regards to the animation. Coming back to Nishigori, the performance scenes in the original series were traditionally animated, and served as spectacles that still hold up today. In a few cases, Cinderella Girls captures this, but more often than not, these performances are reduced to series of stills. These scenes can be cathartic, and offer the characters a chance to really express themselves, so cutting out the animation was a huge disservice.

Sound
Cinderella Girls is an idol show, so there’s plenty of music, but none of it is particularly good. To rephrase that more objectively, I’ll say that none of it is memorable. Some of the songs from the original, such as Yakusoku and Nemurihime, were unforgettable moments, but for Cinderella Girls, these scenes are few and far between. Part of the problem is that song lyrics were mostly left untranslated by the official subs. They were covered when it was most important, such as Uzuki’s song during the penultimate episode (which is excellent), but for the most part, viewers were left in the dark. Some scenes had the potential to be memorable if the audience actually knew what they were singing about, but as most of the songs weren’t translated, the musical aspect of Cinderella Girls was largely a forgettable experience.

Characters
Cinderella Girls has an expansive cast of 14 girls, though with 25 episodes, you’d think there’d be plenty of time to develop all of them thoroughly. Unfortunately, the unit system makes this task near impossible. The group is broken down into six units, each with one to three members, and since episodes tend to put the spotlight on a unit as a whole, rather than its individual members, there’s less focus on each character’s personal growth. To make matters worse, the second season often tries to showcase several units in the same episode, further reducing the amount of screen time each character receives. In the original iM@S series, every idol got their own devoted character episode, which served to clearly establish their personality. Additionally, each girl acted differently depending on with whom they were interacting, so the diverse cast helped to further develop different sides of their characters. But in Cinderella Girls, characters are mostly restricted to interactions within their units. This means that the unit dynamics are well built, but any dynamics outside of them are largely unexplored. Lastly, there was a tendency to bring in other idols from the games as a sort of fanservice for fans of the series, and while they were intended to aid in the development of a member of the main cast, they would usually just end up taking up precious screen time.

Enjoyment
In case it wasn't made clear over the course of this review, I'm a huge fan of the original iDOLM@STER series. It's easily one of the best animes I've seen, and I still regularly revisit some of its scenes/episodes. I went in to Cinderella Girls hoping for a worthwhile successor, and it unfortunately fell short. As a standalone, Cinderella Girls is fine, but it's never anything more than that.

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I had actually read a little bit of the Denpa Kyoushi manga before the anime was announced. I had only finished the first two volumes, but I was excited for the adaptation none the less. So, was my excitement well placed? Let's break it down and find out:

Story - 6
Kagami Junichirou is an otaku NEET with a bad case of YD, meaning that he can only do that which he Yearns to Do. His younger sister isn’t satisfied with that, so she forces him to take a job as a teacher. Unsurprisingly, Kagami is unenthusiastic about teaching, but if any of his students have an issue that he finds amusing, then he decides to help them out. That's the basic premise, and unfortunately, the show doesn't really go beyond it. For the most part, each episode introduces a new student, and then Kagami fixes whatever problems they had with some wacky solution. Every episode follows this same formula, so it doesn’t take long for watching the show to become tedious, especially since an overarching story is near-nonexistent.

Art - 6
A-1 Pictures is one of the bigger animation studios. They animate several shows each season, and for both halves of Denpa Kyoushi, they were working on three other animes besides it. However, it looks like they couldn’t quite handle that many at once, since they clearly cut costs for this show’s art, which just does not look good. It lacks a distinctive style, and most colors lack any gradients, so everything just looks flat and lifeless.

Sound - 7
Sound quality is one of the few things that improved as Denpa Kyoushi went on. The opening and ending themes for the first half weren’t that memorable, but the themes for the second half better fit the vibe of the show, and were all around better. The voice acting also improved. It’s not that it was bad at first, but it was initially dragged down by Matsui Rena, who voiced Kagami’s sister. This was her first role, and she terrible at first, but she became more experienced over the course of the series, and was fine by the end.

Characters - 5
Denpa Kyoushi’s cast can be broken up into two sections: Kagami and everyone else. I honestly don’t know which is worse. In the beginning, Kagami seemed interesting despite his flaws, but as time went on, he began to fall apart. He’s unbelievably good at various skills for no particular reason, and often acts overly smug and obnoxious. But when he’s not donning his plot armor, he’s complaining about how he doesn’t want to do anything, and his rants about YD quickly grow tiresome. His personality is awful in just about every way, but at least he has one. On the other hand, the rest of the cast is completely lifeless. Each student only plays a major role in the episode where they’re introduced, so there’s really no time to have any sort of depth established. Then, once their moment in the spotlight is over, they’re either whisked off to the sidelines, or off the stage altogether. It’s true that most of them do stick around after their initial appearance, but usually they’ll be left with only a shred of their personality, and be used for plot convenience more than anything else. So, between a lead with a terrible personality and a supporting cast with no personality, characters were easily Denpa Kyoushi’s weakest area.

Enjoyment - 5
At first, the series really was fun to watch. Kagami’s solutions to problems were fairly creative, and there was still the possibility of an overarching plot. But as the series dragged on, it only got worse. There was no greater story to be found, and Kagami’s plans began to lose their appeal. They became less unique and more contrived, especially when gaming is involved. Honestly, the enjoyment value of this series would have been higher if the series were only 12 episodes, because the length of the show really killed it.

Overall - 5
In conclusion, I can’t recommend watching Denpa Kyoushi. If the concept interests you, you should instead watch Great Teacher Onizuka or Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai, which have similar premises but better execution. But if you absolutely insist on watching this, I’d say jump out at the halfway point. That’s essentially where the series peaks, and everything after that is really nothing new.

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