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Jan 7, 2022
I was all ready to defend this show. I really was. The first few episodes made it seem like it was going to be a pretty excellent, character driven coming out romance between two girls unsure of their sexuality but committed to their relationship. I was ready to go to bat for the eccentric Adachi and her somewhat troublesome behavior, but by episode four, one of our lead's personalities had changed from being mature, if self-doubting, to a stereotype. The other is presented as dense as platinum, but without the shine… more and more irrelevancies and contrivances kept cropping up, and episode 7 brought as
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a rival love interest, and I was done. So incredibly done. I never watched 8 and I never will.
I don’t like clichés very much when they’re taken seriously and used as genuine points of drama, and that’s all this show has after about episode three. I sure do like some shows that lean heavily on tropes, but those series by and large use them appropriately or at least with a soft enough touch for me to overlook them. A to S doesn’t do that. What had a chance to be a unique, fun show opted instead to follow the same, damn-tired pattern of so many before it. I’m not saying Ore Monogatari is a masterpiece, but at least it resolves its romantic tension early and gives its characters time and space to explore themselves and each other in the context of their relationship. Shows like Adachi to Shimamura, by contrast, use contrivance and cliché as a way of avoiding dealing with the actual relationship for as long as possible in order to string the audience along with drama. Screw that. It’s pure manipulation at the cost of good storytelling, and it’s both old as dirt and equally unappealing. Making your characters “conveniently” oblivious or altering their personalities in order to protract drama isn’t satisfying at all, and makes me resentful. If it played itself for laughs, I could forgive it a bit, but nah, Adachi to Shimamura plays itself straight all the while.
Let’s not get into the fanservice. I actually don’t mind fanservice if and when it fits the story, or honestly even if that’s just what the show is about, but it feels as thrown in as possible in this show. I must repeat, fanservice doesn’t offend me when it doesn’t feel like a blatant ploy to hide other flaws, but guess what it feels like here?
Anyway, I’m done with this. Serves me right for having a little faith in a yuri romance anime that takes itself seriously. They always end up like this, but I always take the bait. Clearly this contrived emotional torture porn has an audience, but I’m sure not part of it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 16, 2021
I don’t like Evangelion very much at all. I don’t care for most aspects of it, and yet, I have watched it in its entirety. It’s an incredible body of work. Its original run is strong enough to stand on its own, and the devastatingly beautiful, surreal, and repulsive End of Evangelion is one of the most viscerally upsetting things I’ve ever watched, and I say this as a fan of not only horror films but of the profoundly abstract, like “The Holy Mountain”. Many argue that Evangelion is a masterpiece, but I don’t think it is at all. Yet my own dislike of the
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series is a statement of preference, not of the quality of the series. I feel that the show is far too subjective to attempt an impartial analysis of its quality. I am not, but many I know are profoundly mentally unwell, and this series reminds me deeply of them. Less so as the iterations go on, but the original series and EoE are, to me, startlingly powerful examples of outsider art, though “outsider” here is an inappropriate term in itself. Evangelion is best viewed not as a show but as the journey of a profoundly broken man seeking wholeness, and eventually finding it. Shinji Ikari is a beautifully rendered mess of a human, an accurate depiction of loneliness, desperation, and unfulfilled need, surrounded by equally broken people, all of whom seemingly reflect some aspect of Hideaki Anno’s psyche. The series is subsumed by Hideaki’s own psychology. Whatever it was when it first began was completely overshadowed by the darkness that consumed him, and eventually, as in 3.0+1.0, by the light. As a portrait of mental unwellness, it is possibly unparalleled in this medium, as it is not so much a depiction of it but an experience in it. Then, you may ask, why is my score so incredibly low?
Well, you see, I hate it. I hate it for many reasons. I hate it because I despise its story, and its characters, and its refusal to conform to the strictures of storytelling. I hate it because I would, if I could, remove the experience from my memory. I hate it because it is a poorly paced, poorly realized, psychotic, sadistic, and masochistic parade of happenstances that fundamentally fail to tell a story, but succeed at telling us just how deep into depression and almost certainly more its guiding figurehead was at the time of its creation. And more fundamentally than any of this, I hate it because Hideaki Anno is, well, wrong. Escapism is not the reason why anyone is unhappy. Burying oneself in escapism is a symptom, not a cause, but Anno seemed convinced, without evidence, that striving to live in the “real world” without delusion is enough to overcome one’s own demons. It isn’t though. We are frail creatures, and all of us deluded. We believe ourselves rational when we are not. We believe ourselves kind when we are cruel. And we believe ourselves deep when we are pathetically shallow. Evangelion’s message is that it is infinitely better to participate in the so called “real world” than to escape into fantasy, but this ignores the fundamental fact that our own perception of reality is a fantasy formed by an interplay of our psyches and experiences. Our entire lives are an escape. No one has ever truly known another person, be they friend, foe, or lover. Each exists solely as constructs in our own heads. This is eventually brought home, intentionally or not, in “Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time”, but its solution, its “solving” of and “resolution” for Shinji/Anno is just another form of escape. And for all of his railing against it, Anno, the strange, anti-otaku otaku, has also found his refuge in a form that he finds acceptable. And that’s fine. In fact, I am happy for him. We all deserve a pleasant delusion. The very luckiest of us die swimming in the sea of a happy fantasy. What I am less receptive to is the notion that his own haven is somehow more acceptable than those of either others or of his own past self. It is not, it is merely different.
Anno Hidaeki is a friend and in some ways protégé of one of my favorite anime directors, Miyazaki Hayao. And like Miyazaki, perhaps because of Miyazaki, he thinks himself above anime itself. He is not the first or only director of cartoon drivel to think so, and like everyone who shares his opinion, he is somehow stuck in the mire of a genre which he seemingly dislikes, filled with fans whom he actively ridicules, despite being cut from the same cloth as them. Men in their sixties and eighties respectively who can’t stop working in anime are 1000% otaku, whatever their protestations might indicate. The hypocrisy of both Miyazaki and Anno is bizarre, when judged critically. Here are two men, old enough to be the average otaku’s father and grandfather, disapprovingly casting judgement on a medium that they should have, by their own standard, stopped caring about or participating in years if not decades ago. Yet here they are, razzing the culture upon which they have prospered in the name of god knows what.
Evangelion is not nearly as deep as its proponents claim, nor as shallow as its detractors would have you believe. It is the flawed product of a flawed man over decades of his life. Each iteration is a portrait of his own state at the time. It is to me a curio, but it is not a masterpiece. It is one of the most visually striking shows I’ve ever seen, but it is less an exploration of its themes than the result of a man opening his veins on celluloid. However beautiful the spray and splatter may be, I never asked to see it, and I resent having been subjected to it. I am, at least, glad that Hidaeki has seemingly found happiness now, but Evangelion should have ended with “The End of Evangelion”. Somehow, the image of the impotent, miserable, sexually dysfunctional Shinji trying to choke the object of his desire and hatred to death while his mother’s still smiling corpse looms large in the background is perfect. The two most miserable humans alive, seemingly the only two unwilling to join in the eternal, blissfully conjoined soup of human consciousness, stuck together, hating each other, for the rest of their miserable lives, seems to fit the series far better than anything that has followed it. But herein lies my dislike. For a series so hell bent on optimistic platitudes, it misses the mark of hope by not only miles, but parsecs.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Nov 9, 2021
This is a series I really enjoyed, but it's pretty silly. At a certain point, the mystery, which is a big part of the appeal, starts to unravel, and rather than turning out to be a more well thought out thriller, we kind of get a Stephen King-esque narrative that doesn't really conform to any sort of logic. With that said, I read the whole thing in a day so I was obviously compelled by it.
It's not the best story, but it's crazy enough to keep you engaged and it's a lot of fun. Hence, my enjoyment is at a 9 but my score
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for the story is only around a 5. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny, but I had fun with it. But I won't be reading it again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Nov 7, 2021
Nothing much happens in Hakumei to Mikochi. The aforementioned pair are a couple (though not a couple) of tiny women from a tiny race who live their tiny lives in the woods. Hakumei works as a craftsman and Mikochi is a well respected self-made woman who makes goods that she sells in town. These lilliputians go about their daily lives, working, eating, and drinking, and occasionally getting involved in (low-stakes) intrigue. Their fellows are animals, most larger than themselves, and other members of their tiny race, with whom they generally get along well. This is a slice of life series among slice of life
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series. The stakes are low, the characters cuter than all get out but still well realized, and nothing really happens. Some call this show "tiny wives living tiny lives" and that's just about perfect, though our protagonists aren't a couple, in that sense, at least. This is a peaceful show for peaceful viewers. It's not profound like Mushishi, but it isn't shallow either. It's an inviting show that welcomes you to take a load off and enjoy the sights and sounds and lore of the microcosm in which our characters live, eat, and drink (often too much).
There's not a lot of story to be had here, but as an iyashikei (so called "healing" anime) it is very apt and successful.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 22, 2021
Welp, that was a thing. Season one of Dragon Maid did it for me an this one doesn't, and there are a lot of reasons why. The pacing, the muuuuuch more sexualized relationships between the characters (many of whom are either children or childlike, not even teenagers), and the overall direction stand out for me.
I'll keep this brief. Kyoto Animation has been through hell, and yet their animation and composition remain some of the best in the industry, doubly so for slice of life series and the like. They are a studio comprised of incredibly talented artists and animators, and it shows. Let none
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accuse them of not knowing what they're doing in that department. And yet, I can only list a handful of their many series I like without qualification, and the first series of Dragon Maid was one of them. Somewhere this show lost its charm for me, and a big part of that is a matter of the way in which season 2 was directed. Season one did much more to "interpret" the manga, not exactly "adapt" it, but here we have more straight adaptation with the occasional rearrangement of chapters. This is not inherently bad, but for me, this approach, which puts greater emphasis on gags and gives less screen time to character development (NOT exposition dumps or internal monologues, moments on screen where characters express their emotions through actions and interactions), left me a bit cold. We have plenty of wonderful character moments towards the later part of the season, the second half of episode 10 and the first half of episode 12 are both brilliant, for instance, but it feels a bit buried in gags and so many uncomfortable boob jokes and even more uncomfortable shota.
It's not a bad show, still, but exposition dumps do not good a good story make, and neither do introspective music played over cliche situations. Takemoto Yasuhiro did it better, and that is a hill I'm willing to die on.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 14, 2021
I want to open by saying that I do not dislike this show, but it isn't very good, and when I say it isn't very good, I don't mean in a "this turd sandwich isn't very good" kind of way, I mean in the way movie theater popcorn isn't very good. It is not very exciting, or creative, or well characterized. but it's good for a chuckle or two and passes half an hour inoffensively. And that is, seemingly, all it wants to be, in which case, mission accomplished. But it'll join a whole host of barely-descript shows in the dustbin of anime history.
The animation
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isn't great, serviceable, but bland and stiff. The music is odd, with lots of nods to more famous music but in downgraded form. The OP and ED are pretty rough, the ED in particular which is astonishingly bad. I don't get the hate for the hololive Vtubers who performed it though, it's the production and composition that suck, not the singing, per se.
Anyway, for a shounen CGDCT show it's not terrible, but way behind something like Gabriel Dropout, for example. The term "paint by numbers" applies, but it's not the worst example of that.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 9, 2021
I once read a review of this describing it as "anime for people who hate anime". I have no idea what that means, but I do know that this underappreciated gem is odd, and not for everyone. I love it though. I love the LNs it's based on, too, which are possibly even weirder, if that's possible.
In this odd little show, our protagonists are the last remnants of the human race, eking out an existence in an apocalyptic world where technology exists, but the world is run down and untamed once more. Our heroine is a bit of a nice, if self-serving young woman who
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is ambivalent about her job and life in general. She's an ambassador to the "fairies", tiny hominids with magic powers who now seemingly exist as the dominant life form on earth.
The show satirizes a lot of things, doujinshi culture, consumer culture, NASA's Voyager program (seriously) and even human civilization itself. It's an incredibly unique anime with strange but lovable characters and, no word of a lie, my favorite ED of any anime ever made. It's not a show for everyone, but I love it. The LNs are great too, and have a considerably "out of left field" twist, but it fits with the series and its strangeness. I've never seen a show like it before and likely never will again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 9, 2021
I'm actually, yes, ACTUALLY a professional musician. This show infuriates me. I've never hated an anime before, but I hate this show. I hate it's characters, I hate the way it depicts the world of music, just everything. I went in with really high hopes but good grief. I've read that it's easier to suspend your disbelief the more removed you are from a topic, and I think that's at play here. I've actually lived the journey from rookie to pro, and this ain't it. I will say, the sound design and music in this show is great, but everything else did worse than fall
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flat for me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jun 4, 2021
If my score for this show seems low, that's because I think, objectively, it's not amazing. That said, it's something I enjoy quite a lot. I don't think there's a ton of rewatch value in it, but it's a fun, silly romp through a silly, off-kilter version of a JRPG universe that's entertaining beginning to end. Our protagonist is a destructive, if resourceful, little shit, who thinks nothing of property destruction or even murder, all in the name of a good night's sleep. As an insomniac, I can empathize. Our heroine, if she indeed is one, is a princess from the human kingdom, kidnapped by
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hapless demons who really don't know what to do with her and are too nice for their own good. Rather than play prisoner, princess Aurora Suya Rhys Kaymin spends her time finding ways to improve her sleeping situation, almost always at the expense of her "captors". The princess and the demons are having a grand old time, whatever the circumstances are meant to be, and everything is fun and cute and funny. There are much, much better shows, but this was a really fun one for me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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May 3, 2021
Had to revise my review because I dropped this show. It's not bad, it's just dull to me. There aren't really any characters. They exist, but they have no actual character, our protagonist is about as interesting as wood, and the fact that the show is just product placement is wearying after a while.
Even in SoL and CGDCT shows, I think it's important to have, at the very least, characters whose personalities can interact with each other in an interesting way. These types of shows usually have stock characters, but they can often get away with it by being charming in the scenarios it
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creates for the characters to interact within, or the gags, if it's comedic. This show doesn't do either of those things, it has characters say things at each other instead of having conversations, and the scenarios are bland. For example, a significant plot point of episode 4 involves our main character, Koguma, figuring out that she won't get wet riding her bike in the rain if she wears rain gear. That's it, that's the plot.
People compare this to Yuru Camp, but I don't think it's very similar. Yuru Camp is very cartoony, and doesn't take itself very seriously. The way to deal with problems or camping tips in that show are displayed fairly quickly with humorous narration and on-screen reactions from characters, in a fourth wall breaking bit of fun. In super cub, Koguma teachers herself to overcome problems, or someone tells her, and it takes about five minutes, or roughly 1/4th of the episode excluding OPs and EDs. It's presented dryly, in the stodgy manner of an employee training video. I can't help but wonder how much this show suffered in the "fun" department because it is a product ad, and Honda itself was involved.
I'd still watch this over most shonen anime about the super hero du jour, but I'm not a fan. I won't finish it and I wouldn't recommend.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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