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Jan 4, 2019
It's always interesting when you poke your head into something that your own culture, even a subculture like anime enthusiasts, tends to go unregarded, but in its home culture is considered an essential masterwork. I've started dipping my toes into the "Lupin III" franchise, a hugely influential and fun thing that most anime fans barely know exists, and one of these days I know I'm going to have to try "Hajime no Ippo", but perhaps more obscure than either of those series is "Legend of the Galactic Heroes", an epicly long OVA series from the 1980's based on science fiction novel series. "Die Neue These"
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is a remake, trying to bring this classic into a new generation, so it seems like a perfect jumping on point...but is it?
I'm going to be up front with the fact that, while I love science fiction and especially space-opera, I've always leaned a lot more towards space pirates than space warfare. Military fiction has never been my cup of tea (no offense to those who adore it, it's just a personal preference thing), but the political conflicts in this series were able to catch my interest far more than the space strategy, which I found somewhat tedious. From the affairs of the nobles in the empire to the populist policies by desperate politicians in the republic, I found myself going from kind of bored to on-the-edge of my seat. The entire scene with the new politician giving her first speech to a crowd hit me hard, it's the exact kind of political discussion I like seeing in fiction.
Another big strength are the main leads, with Reinhart and his right hand man Siegfried working towards their own goals and playing off each other and the empire's nobles quite well, but the real star of the show for me is the brilliant strategist Yang Wen-Li. His motivations for joining the army are relatable, his demeanor is unique, and he's just such a cool guy, very different from all the Serious Stanley's around him. A few other supporting characters stuck out as well, such as the leader of the defected empire soldiers and the man with the robotic eyes.
Unfortunately, this cast is so large, with so many named characters with different designs, motivations, and minor plotlines, that after a while it feels overwhelming, and this is coming from someone who loves "Durarara!!". The issue comes not really from the number of characters so much as how the vast majority of them are just kind of boring. I appreciate how much effort they put into trying to make them distinct and memorable...but aside from the previously mentioned mains, most of the cast make me yawn just thinking about them.
That complaint out of the way, my only other issue is with how they're handling this: after one thirteen episode season, they're doing three films this year, each effectively another four episodes. It's a weird way to do things, and even with that extra twelve episodes of content we're still far-away from the full length of the original OVA's, so I have to wonder what will happen after that. More movies, another season? It doesn't feel planned out in full so much as assembled haphazardly. Those gripes out of the way, this is a good anime that has the potential to become something more down the line, and if that doesn't satisfy you or I, well I guess we can always go back and watch the OVA's, right?
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jan 4, 2019
Sometimes you watch an anime because the premise speaks to you, it just sounds like something you have to watch, something that matches your tastes or interests in some new way. Sometimes you watch an anime because you see an ad or a commercial for it, and maybe there's a cool character design or a funny line, and that's all it takes. Sometimes you watch an anime because someone who's opinion you respect singles it out as a great thing that is absolutely worth your time and attention.
I watched "Hinamatsuri" because of the latter, namely the good word of Scott, Ben, and Kirran from AnimeFMK.
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A series about young girls and psychic powers and yakuza is not something I would normally watch of my own browsing around, and the fun I got out of this show is testament to why keeping an ear out for recommendations is such a boon to your life.
Actually talking substantively about "Hinamatsuri" is a bit of a challenge for me, because it's just a solid series and those are sometimes the hardest to describe, but I'll do my best to elucidate my opinion. This is a series that works entirely in execution: the characters, the animation, the comedy, none of it is exactly ground breaking on paper. The series never even really delves much into the most unique thing about it, namely the psychic kids from a secret organization. Instead, the anime uses the budget it has as well as possible, making what only needs to be passable look good and what needs to look good look really good.
I mentioned in my review of "Toradora!" that comedy is a hard thing to translate, culturally, because Western society and Eastern society have very different comedy traditions, and that's even more true when specifically talking about the Japanese. This anime has timing that much better fits American sensibilities, with fast jokes that draw on absurd facial expressions and dialogue. Humor is subjective, of course, but as far as my taste goes this is one of the few anime that can regularly make me laugh my ass off even when I'm by myself.
But the comedy isn't just "Haha, let's move on." The characters, even down to some who only appear for an episode or two, have such well-defined personalities, ones that really help drive the comedy, that the jokes make you invest more and more into their characters as time goes on. Then, when the show starts really pulling at your heart string by putting these characters through genuine drama, it actually works and doesn't hurt the tone like it can in other comedies that try to pull towards more serious emotions. If you're the kind of person who loves a good comedy, especially ones that can hit you in the feels while they're at it, then I really recommend this show, with the caveat that it has a non-ending, with the possible hope of a season two.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 4, 2019
For a while now, I've been alternating between watching newer and older anime. While I do think it's important to keep up with the great stuff that's coming out more recently, something I failed to do for quite a while, I also think checking out stuff from the past, especially ones a lot of people haven't seen, is a worthwhile exercise too. I'd heard decently good buzz from other critics on "Romeo x Juliet", and I like the Bard alright, so I gave it a watch.
My highest praise for this series, oddly enough, has to go to the dubbing stuff, most especially the writers. They
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easily could have just translated the dialogue into English and be done with it, but instead they not only used Shakespeare-appropriate dialogue wherever they could, they also fit it into iambic pentameter, the rhythm of dialogue consistent throughout much of his work. It genuinely elevates the work, not only connecting it better to the source material but also giving the words that some poetic quality that makes a good Shakespeare performance worthwhile. It also goes without saying that the cast is good as well, with Brina Palencia as Juliet herself doing a great job, she really captures both the gravitas and the humanity of the character.
I'm also one-hundred percent behind their alterations to the story. Pulling in other Shakespeare plot elements, such as cross-dressing women and corrupt monarchs who must be overthrown, feels natural, and the way it recasts their romance by changing the power dynamic is interesting. Both leads are also made more compelling characters: Juliet's vigilantism and idealism makes her likable; Romeo's astonishing levels of compassion makes him a cute love interest for her. The very fact that it is Juliet, not Romeo, who leads much of the story is a great way to tell the story. The romance between the two, while still playing heavily on "Love at First Sight", develops at a reasonable pace, and I'm happy they spend more than half the series actively in love with the other, and not just pining. The whole plot to overthrow the tyrannical regime also worked well for me, at least in concept.
Where this series fell flat for me the most was how it handled the conclusion. Rather than develop the strong ideas it had at the start, it instead skipped past much of the intrigue or warcraft to instead tie everything to the science-fiction/fantasy roots of the setting, which I was never a huge fan of in the first place. Neo Verona was okay, but I feel like the story would have worked just as well in something more mundane, the fantasy was never a huge sell for me. By the end, the story gets so far into the minutia of its world that the plot and characters suffer, and with it my interest plummeted. It isn't like this was the prettiest show on the planet (in fact it was fairly middling work from an already lower-rate studio), and while it has a fantastic OP (it took me quite a while to figure out it was a cover of a famous English song) and ED the music isn't something that blew me away either. The ending soured me on the entire experience so much that a series I'd hoped would end up a favorite of mine instead equaled out to just be sort of okay. If you're someone who thinks the premise sounds neat, than I'd recommend giving it a few episodes and seeing if it sticks in your brain, but otherwise it really isn't worth going out of your way to see. It's a fine show, but not a very remarkable one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 4, 2019
Sometimes an anime slips through your radar after it comes out, and for years afterwards you catch references to it, hear it mentioned as someone's favorite, and something someone says will finally make you say, "Okay, I guess I'l finally watch this." It doesn't come out of anything negative, but there are just so many anime to watch and you can't watch everything. That's why I'm only now watched "Toradora!", an anime that made a huge splash in the American Anime community that is now over a decade old.
From the first several episodes, this anime caught my interest with its use of comedy. Japanese humor
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can often waffle in translation, but the timing, writing, and facial expressions here were great, hitting my funny bone far more often than it missed. The characters quickly endeared themselves to me as well, their quirkiness coming off more charming than forced as it can be seen elsewhere. Ryuuji's cleaning obsession, Kitamura's ridiculous thought process, Minori's seemingly random outbursts, they all blended together to make amazing interactions. But they all have more depth to them as well, insecurities that drive the plot.
However, it's the plot where I had quite a few issues. As invested and excited as I was early on, the middle-to-end of the series hit me hard with tedium. Unlike a lot of other slice-of-life series, which are usually paced with one-off episodes and/or larger arcs, "Toradora!" instead is mostly two or three episode story arcs that center all the characters on one event or issue. I'm aware this is most likely due to each arc being an adaptation of a light novel, but it seriously hurt the pacing for me. Short arcs like these didn't give the main cast time to breathe, time to just relax and play off each other. For most of the series, because there's some larger issue in the works, that either drives or underlies every scene with them, which didn't give me the space I felt the characters needed to really shine. It also hurt the larger plot elements that lasted beyond the plot arcs, as each felt like it was trying to resolve the pressing issues but can't because the series wasn't ready to get there yet. It was supposed to feel like each resolved arc developed the characters a little bit in certain directions, but I rarely felt that progress in-scene, and more often than not the show felt like it was dragging its feet.
Without spoiling anything, I knew where this series was going to end up early on, because it was playing with the right bag of tropes that inevitably lead to that conclusion. That's not a bad thing, but what was irritating was how slowly it got there. This is a twenty-five episode series, and I was begging for it to just reach the end of the main arc already halfway through. This is a serious issue a lot of anime have in regards to romance: it's all about the chase, but the actual romantic relationship is very rarely seen, which is what makes series like "My Love Story" all the more special. If this was really just going to be about the prologue and not go into the actual meat, which is what it ended up doing, I would have much rather it be 13 or 14 episodes, to tighten that arc up and cut the fat. Do not tell me that can't be done, because there are anime that do that and more in less than that time, see "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" for reference. With the length this anime did end up using I would have been a lot happier if it had actually gone more into the main romance as a couple, because instead it's more teasing of what it will be like, hints at what some of us really wanted.
I don't want to be all doom and gloom about this anime, I really don't. For all the negative things I have to say about it, for all its untapped potential, the ending still pulled me around a lot, giving me a lot of fantastic scenes that really made me feel the feels and laugh the laughs. What little we did get to see of the main couple as a couple was absolutely wonderful, and if you couldn't tell it really left me wanting for more. I was actually considering giving it a 7/10, but the finale left me with enough warm fuzzies to bump that up a number, though if we were using decimal points I'd probably score it more as a 7.8/10 or so. If you enjoy Slice of Life anime, especially funny ones that get serious on occasion, than if you haven't seen this already you absolutely should. I don't really consider it a masterpiece or a classic, but Very Good is definitely an adjective I would use.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 30, 2013
I find the Love It or Hate It debate over this anime hilarious, but I also REALLY get it. On the one hand, this anime is beautiful. The art and sound production is fantastic, especially from a smaller studio. The action is (overall) very well done. They have a really good pace, and they feel frenetic and exciting. It doesn't just excel at action either, there are many genuinely touching moments in this series.
Of course, I can also see the hate. While they do a lot of little design things with the MMO concept, they don't do much in the overall story. The first season
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is full of time skips that make you go, "Wait what! All of that intervening time!" The second season has excessive fanservice, and a change to the game makes it much less dramatic or intense. The show is very mixed, character-wise. On one end there's Suguha, who is easily the most developed character in the show, while still managing to be sympathetic, likable, and engaging. (Even if her subplot does give me the oogies.) Near the middle is Asuna, who starts off interesting, disappears for a while, reappears and is kinda meh, before growing into something better. But then, there are the problem characters. First off is the protagonist, Kirito. He feels REALLY inconsistent. Early on there's his loner thing, there's the people dying complex he develops, and there's his romance. Besides that...his personality seems to completely change depending on the episode, or sometimes scene, he's in. And the season two villain! My friend who got me into this show used to rave to me about how evil he was, and how much I'd hate him. He's half right. Dude's definitely evil, but after a while I gave up hating him. He's a cartoon. He's a silly caricature of what "evil" is. His motivations are weak, and he has absolutely no redeeming qualities. In other settings with different styles, that could work, but this show's tone clashes with that. You can only add so many Villain tropes to one character before they stop being empathetic, and once you can't even empathize with a character, your ability to like or dislike them is sorely diminished.
Overall, I liked Sword Ass (I mean Art) Online. I'm glad I saw it. It's pretty flawed, but the emotion and drive it presents combined with the fantastic action makes me enjoy it regardless. To me it feels like Gurren Lagann wearing a really shiny .hack/sign suit. That leads to the problem, however, that Gurren Lagann works as well as it does because it doesn't give a rat's ass about how it looks, or the believability of it's story. SAO lacks that quality to make up for it. What it really needs is to be dubbed and put on Toonami. Put it in with that crowd, and it's going to stick out, and in a good way. If you know you're someone who can't get over logical or character problems in a show, this isn't for you. But if you can dip yourself into this world and enjoy the emotional roller-coaster, it comes recommended.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 11, 2012
Where to begin? This film is an adaptation of the light novel of the same name. The animation here is completely and utterly beautiful. They not only managed to adapt the entire book without cutting anything, they added in a few places. In a good way. They turn a certain character's existential argument that lasted 1-2 pages in the book into a 5 minute 'battle in the mind' scene. And I loved it. The voice work here is top notch, and the range some of the actors show is far beyond what they did in the show. This movie, for me, is the pinnacle of
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the franchise. Not only is it the best thing in the anime, it might be one of my favorite animated movies ever. A small warning though: this movie is 2 hours and 44 minutes long. If you do not like long movie, don't watch this. Personally, I like longer movies more than shorter ones. This movie is great, and it comes highly recommended from yours truly.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Sep 11, 2012
Now, first off, I am not going to claim that Naruto is bad. I know a lot of people who would, but I won't. I also will not explain the plot, because once I start it gets hard to stop. What I am going to talk about is how Naruto lost me. It used to hold a very special place in my heart, because it was the anime that got me to look it up on the web, and finally discover what anime was and where to find it. I don't know how long it would have taken
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for that to happen otherwise, but it was the catalyst. Back in the day I was a diehard Naruto fan. Now, I'm going to start with what is good about the anime.
The action is very good, and while I generally prefer One Piece and a couple other anime in that department, it's still well done. The music is very good, and gets you ready for a good time. The best thing, easily, are the characters. The cast is large and there are quite a few stand outs. Rock Lee is a personal favorite, but almost all of the main cast are very well done. Naruto himself is a great protagonist. When they delve into his childhood, it really works. The Zabuza storyline is probably the peak in quality, but the Chunin Exams/Gaara arc is my favorite. The ending fight works very well, though I've seen the same idea done better elsewhere. (Keep that in mind, I'll bring it up again in a couple of days.)
Now for the bad. To start off, the problem with the great cast is that the writer has no clue how to focus. As time goes on, he spends less and less time with the initial cast that drew us in, and keeps throwing in new characters, only about one in ten of which are a fifth as good as the original characters. I don't want to spend more time with Sai, I want Hinata! For the anime the filler is atrocious, between Naruto and Shippuden literally a year and a half of filler. Some of it was good, but most was really bad, and because it was filler it was a year and a half where nothing of real importance could happen. Then there's the Sasuke problem. I didn't like Sasuke at first, but by the end of the Zabuza arc he had grown on me. But then the Sasuke retrieval arc reared it's ugly head, and now I can't stand the guy. And it got worse! Every time he's shown up since then he's made me more and more pissed. At one point it started to feel like Sasuke was supposed to be the protagonist, but luckily it switched perspectives again soon after. Plus, after the initial success of Zabuza and Gaara, I haven't liked the villains much. Orochimaru started off cool, but degraded fast. The Akatsuki didn't really impress me.
The thing that gets me the worst though is the story. Over time, the plot has become more and more sidetracked and convoluted. It keeps going off-course, and not resolving what it's set up. Off everything that has happened so far, I think only the tailed beasts and Naruto's parents were things the writer knew when he started. Like I said earlier, the Gaara fight felt satisfying because it felt like it was built up to, and everything fit just right. I haven't felt that since, and that is a shame. Let me compare this with the anime I talked about yesterday, One Piece. One Piece set up huge plot points years in advance, in one case decades, and did so where it usually wasn't obvious that Oda was leading us there.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 11, 2012
I love One Piece. Let me start by summarizing the show for the 8 of you on the internet who has no idea what I'm talking about. One Piece is set in a Constructed World (A setting with no connection of any kind to ours in geography or history), where the world is one giant ocean, with some barriers separating it into four seas. It is the Age of Pirates, set off by the death of Gold Roger, and Monkey D. Luffy wants to find the legendary treasure One Piece, therefore becoming the next King of
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the Pirates. Because he ate one of the Devil Fruits, cursed produce that grant mystical powers to those who consume them, he is made of rubber. He gathers a crew, gets a ship, and fights other pirates.
Let me start with what is bad, the reason many do not like the show. The animation ranges, but it starts off on the closer end of bad. The dialogue is often cheesy and over the top. The characters, at first glance, are very 2-dimensional and annoying. It constantly breaks science and reason in every way you can possibly imagine. There are several filler arcs, many of which are bad. The original dub by 4kids Entertainment is probably the worst dub of all time, with a lot of unnecessary censorship and terrible casting and writing. It is, I think, the biggest reason for those who do not like it.
Now for me to gush about what I love. The action is amazing, honestly my favorite from any anime I've seen. The dialogue is over the top, but that's the point. Everything in this show is over-the-top, because that's how it is. The drama, sadness, awesomeness, comedy, and heartwarmingness are all purposely turned up to eleven. That's part of the point. The music, both in show and the openings, are fantastic. And my favorite part is the characters. I said earlier that they can appear 2-dimensional and that's true, from a certain point of view. But once you start paying more attention, the characters have far more depth than you would have though from the silly shonen anime you heard about. Luffy is that "I'm gonna follow my dreams, eat a lot of food, and get stronger" kind of protagonist, but then he says stuff that is kinda amazing. "If I die while trying to reach my dream, then I die." And he's not blowing smoke out his ass either, at one point when he thinks he will die, he accepts it with a huge grin on his face. The whole cast is like this, and several backstories will make you cry.
One Piece feels like it was made with a passion, and a message I agree with to a T. It is my shonen anime, and one I shall defend to the grave. Now if only Funimation would catch up on the collections and get back to dubbing the damn thing already!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 11, 2012
Clannad is an anime made by Kyoto Animation, and it is based of a visual novel game by Key. Those are the same people who made the visual novels turned anime Kanon, Air, and Angel Beats (Yes, the last one isn't visual novel, but it was made by Key then made into an anime.) My record with these adaptations is mixed. Kanon was one of the first anime I saw, and still holds a special place in my heart as, "that incredibly sad one about high school girls in the snow." Air is
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odd for me: I didn't finish it because it simply failed to grab me any longer. the characters hadn't grown on me, and the only thing I enjoyed was Vic Mignogna's performance. Angel Beats start off a little slow, but ends up one of my favorite series from recent years, especially because of the frankly amazing soundtrack. So how does Clannad fair?
Let's start with the opening. It works well, and while I wouldn't have it high up on my list of favorite openings, it's still very good and sets the mood well for the show itself. The plot is about a delinquent high school student and his best friend, who end up befriending several girls each of whom has their own story arch. (Except Ryou for some reason.) Each arc's ending is sad, though how sad depends on the viewer. The characters are pretty good, my favorites being the best friend Youhei for being a hilarious spaz (seriously, he's the Xander of the show), and one of the girl's dad Akio for being awesome.
I'll quickly mention the animation before I move on: it works. It tells the story, and that's good. Not much to talk about really. So how did I like it? Well, I'm proud to say that unlike Kanon or Angel Beats, I did not cry once. The first character arc's ending came pretty damn close though. Seriously, in my opinion that is the best arc of them all, it is so freaking sad, but completely heartwarming at the same time. The final character arc almost got me too, there was literally a part halfway though the episode where I was completely confused, because somehow I'm such a terrible visual novel player that I got the bad ending on an anime adaptation!
Overall I would definitely recommend the series, it is very funny, sad, and it fills you with warm fuzzies for a little while. And really, isn't that good enough?
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 11, 2012
Let me start with the bad: some gags really don't work with me, but they managed to find solid footing pretty fast. It suffers from the same problem as the original Fullmetal Alchemist anime, but instead of a whole season of filler we get a third a season. You'd think that's be a good thing, but the whole season FMA had allowed them to set up stuff so it kinda became it's own, complete, separate show from the manga. Soul Eater didn't, and the filler ending they cobbled together seems very patchwork. The worst has to
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be the ending, which makes no fucking sense, and does to nothing but leaving me staring at the screen in bewilderment. It really let me down, but with the advent of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and the two doing the same thing and being made by the same animation company, maybe we can get a similar show here.
So what's good about Soul Eater? So freaking much. First off, the action is gorgeous. And it don't mean in an animation or frame-rate sense, I mean it is just freaking amazing. I'd honestly have to say that Soul Eater has my favorite action scenes from anime. Also? The music. Both openings to the show are fantastic, and while I prefer the second one, both are up there in my favorite openings in anime. Also, I really like the cast. Mako and Soul are good protagonists; Kid and the Thompson Sisters are fun; and Black Star and Tsubaki are great. Plus, the side characters are great too. Krona is my favorite shonen rival, not counting Ryoga. His story is really well done, and I like the ending the filler bits actually gave him. (As opposed to the manga where his story tears my heart apart.) Dr. Stein is a great mentor character, and Maka's Dad is cool as well. Medusa is one of my favorite villains in recent anime. So, while it has a few flaws, Soul Eater ends up being one of my favorite anime to come out in recent yearsish. I'd heavily recommend it, and it isn't hard to find. The whole thing's one Netflix.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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