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Apr 15, 2023
This review contains spoilers.
I didn’t expect much from Bocchi, but recognized it was a good show from before it was airing.
One of the primary components of Bocchi’s greatness is the relatability, which is interesting because of how specific her situation might seem on the surface yet it’s a path that many people suffering from the same conditions go through. Bocchi’s journey parallels my own in so many ways. We both have moderately successful Youtube channels which we use to show off and engage in our hobbies in a way that other people may see but isn’t overwhelmingly social. In my early Youtube days I actually
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did bring my friends at the time into it to help make some videos, but over time I naturally gravitated towards only making videos that I could do without any help.
I also feel like the way they handled Youtube in the series felt like a fairly realistic portrayal of it. I’ve seen so many anime use Youtube as a platform where you can instantly blow up as a quick way to make a lot of money, but that was never Bocchi’s intention. She has a passion for music that she wants to share with the world and she’s more comfortable using the internet as an outlet for it than playing in front of a live audience.
As a fellow (former) musician I also relate to Bocchi’s relationship to music and her struggles in performing in front of an audience. She’s a bit extreme in her approach to dealing with this.
One quote from Bocchi that stands out to me is “I want to become just famous enough playing music that I don’t have to work”, which is a sentiment a lot of creative people can empathize with, including myself, I wish I could make a living from Youtube, podcasting, writing novels, or whatever else. Someone else who had a quote along the same track is CGP Grey, the famous educational Youtuber, who said “It’s weird being an introvert working in a field where you make money based on how many people see your work”. CGP Grey, like Bocchi, never shows his face on camera, even in videos where his body is visible, and genuinely fears the possibility of someone recognizing him outside of conventions. He’s talked about times when he’s noticed someone who looks like they think they recognize his voice and he’s prayed to god that they don’t say anything to him about it. There’s a certain irony in the prevalence of social anxiety among entertainers, but with something like Youtube where you can do it alone it does make sense to be a field that would appeal to people who don’t like talking to people face to face, since introverts also tend to be better at dealing with others over another medium like text. I also think this tendency has a sort of selection bias of so many anime reviewers saying they strongly relate to Bocchi, since the kind of person who relates to Bocchi is also more likely to become a reviewer.
The art in Bocchi is really interesting. The character designs are cute, but not out of the ordinary. They feel very similar to basically anything else coming out of Manga Time Kirara, which isn’t a bad thing since I like that style and I’d enjoy the anime less if the girls weren’t as cute, but that aspect doesn’t make the show stand out. The background art is more unique, being very realistic, similar to K-On! or Yama no Susume where the backdrops match up to real world locations, and even in a more intense way than those series since there’s some landmarks in the show that are literally drawn as a work in progress meaning that if you don’t visit Japan right now then those locations will have changed dramatically. The construction fencing is an important part of certain shots. This doesn’t just give it an uncommon but welcome appearance but also helps add to the realism of the anime, and I felt like the moe art blended with the backgrounds a bit better than in Yama no Susume and much better than in shows like Double J and Inferno Cop that just slap animation on top of photographs and call it a day.
Another interesting art choice is the spontaneous art style changes that happen at various points in the show. They happen frequently enough for it to be a nice ongoing gag but not so frequently that it becomes annoying or expected. Every time it happened it caught me off guard. This is one of the things that the anime adaptation added, since this kind of visual humour wasn’t present in the manga, or at least wasn’t as prevalent. These changes were done to represent feelings in Bocchi’s mind that couldn’t be expressed in words, and I think it worked really well. They were more impactful than any alternative I can think of.
The characters in this show are an obvious highlight and not just the protagonist Bocchi. Bocchi herself is crazy relatable for all the things she does. I think a large percentage of anime fans can see themselves in her shoes. She is afraid of certain types of social interaction but also craves other types, but doesn't really know how to develop the kinds of intimate relationships that would allow her to have more comfortable conversations. Talking to strangers is difficult for her, but all potential friends are currently strangers. She tries using visual indicators like band shirts and trinkets to allow others interested in those things to start a conversation with her rather than having to figure out who else shares her hobbies manually, but it doesn't really work. Another relatable thing about Bocchi is that even after she gets friends that doesn't cure her social anxiety. She gets people she's comfortable talking to, but she's still just as awkward around others, although she does slowly get better at social interactions over the course of the series. Even when she's with her friends she doesn't want her own family members joining in because she finds the increased size of the group to make things more complicated.
I've heard some people online claim that all Bocchi needs is a boyfriend to cure her social anxiety, but in practice this doesn't actually work. There's lots of people out there who have a partner but still aren't good with talking to people. I've even heard some people say they have a girlfriend but no regular friends. There's no silver bullet to social anxiety.
Bocchi and Kita have an interesting chemistry together. They both fear rejection but handle it in different ways. Bocchi finds comfort in climbing into a trash can when things don’t go her way while Kita is more likely to deny it ever happened and simply hide the pain. Kita is much more energetic than Bocchi and Bocchi is more reserved, sometimes to a dangerous level, but their differences do make each other stronger. Kita wouldn’t have rejoined the band if Bocchi hadn’t pushed her. Kita is sometimes too outgoing for Bocchi’s taste, which is fine in a group context where you have more people to mellow her out. Even one on one they do get along and Kita respects Bocchi and her decisions. Bocchi seemed unfamiliar with the concept of lesbianism at the beginning of the show, but she is still young and could potentially warm up to it or discover something new about herself. Her colour scheme also matches up with the pan flag, which seems to fit with her not being too picky about gender and just wanting someone who cares about her and she can love back.
One scene I find interesting related to Bocchi’s personality is the first time they play as a band together and how aware she is of her bandmates' shortcomings. Bocchi doesn't play nearly as good in a band as she does on her own but even her more neurotypical bandmates also made some mistakes in front of an audience that they didn't in practice and she was able to identify these mistakes while they were playing. This could be due to how experienced she is as a guitarist. I don't think I would have noticed things like that if I was in that situation because I'd be too focused on my own part that I'd just hope everyone else is doing their best.
Kita is another interesting character. On the surface she appears to be a confident, pretty, and popular girl, but she has her own insecurities deep down. She is an open lesbian. I think it is a good thing that she is open about it because Manga Time Kirara as well as Comic Cune are notorious for having girls with ambiguous sexual orientations so it's refreshing to see a character who knows exactly what they want without it having to be a yuri anime.
Kita initially runs away from the band lying that she isn't able to play guitar like she claimed, but in reality she likes playing guitar but feels like her skill is lacking and would drag the band down. Despite being on the opposite side of the social spectrum as Bocchi, they share the same tactic of running and hiding from their problems rather than confronting them properly.
Kita is very social and in addition to being a Kessoku Band member she has other groups of friends. She also assumes the best out of other's intentions, like when Bocchi makes a selfish decision to make things easier for her, Kita will think Bocchi is doing it for others instead.
Ryou is also fairly reserved like Bocchi, but as Bocchi noted "she enjoys being alone". She hasn't been seen with any friends outside of Kessoku Band. Kita has a big crush on her, but Ryou doesn’t seem to want to entertain the idea of them being together. She speaks in a way that Kita could accidentally interpret as affirmation, though.
Ryou is the bassist, which fits with her personality. Being as quiet as she is she seems like she could be studious, but she doesn't get that good of grades.
Ryou has one somewhat negative quality of having an expensive hobby that depletes her preported high family income. Nijika mentions one time that she comes from a wealthy family, but despite this she still often doesn’t even have money for food because of all the money she spends on instruments. She'll often borrow money from Bocchi and others and promise to pay it back despite the fact that she won’t reserve money to pay her back in the future, at least at the time they might expect being paid back, and she's fine being in debt to others.
There’s another anime character with this quality, Hinata Miyakawa from Lucky Star, who is impoverished but is very unwise with her spending decisions, generally wasting away her paycheque on anime, manga, and video games leaving very little for food. Ryou instead has the bass guitar and other instruments as her obsession and money sink, which is equally unhealthy since she doesn’t set aside enough money for food.
Ryou does have positive attributes as well. I like her stoicism and aesthetic. She has expressed some generosity, like the time that she gives Kita a high end guitar in exchange for Kita’s much less valuable six string bass. Ryou’s relationship with money is weird since clearly her parents earn enough to fund this passion of hers but don’t have so much money that she would never need to worry about money. Her inability to pay her own way or pay people back doesn’t stem from selfishness but more from poor finance management, which her parents should have taught her.
Nijika is the final member of Kessoku Band and she feels like the most normal member of the group. Her older sister runs the venue they perform at. She's the one who brought the band together and she's the drummer, which is an interesting combination. She is a good drummer, but drummers are a less visible part of the band than the singer and lead guitar, so it's interesting for her to want that role when she's in charge.
She watched Bocchi’s Youtube videos before they met and it took her a while to realize they were the same person, since Bocchi was too shy to confess that GuitarHero was her. From Bocchi’s perspective, finding out that Nijika watches her made her happy to know that good people watched her videos. The fact that Nijika was watching a fairly small Youtuber is also a neat part of her personality. She might watch other small creators either to get inspiration on how to make their band better or just to admire what others have made and she's willing to dive deeper than just the most popular channels and give her attention to talented musicians who haven't gotten much yet. She even recommended the channel to Bocchi.
Hiroi Kikuri doesn't show up until a bit later, and despite being an alcoholic is able to give Bocchi some good advice and mentorship. Kukuri genuinely scared Bocchi in the show, especially after learning how much they had in common, being a successful musician, and using alcohol to self medicate her own social anxiety. It's not an unreasonable fear, either. If alcoholism is one path to success, even if it is an undesirable method, it could end up being the one Bocchi goes down if she isn't careful. Despite Kikuri’s obvious flaws, I really like her as a character. She manages to play well in spite of the alcohol, and partly because of it, and she does want the best for Bocchi even though her own problems prevent her from being able to help out as much as she might otherwise be able to. I also think she’s quite pretty.
HitoriBocchi no ○○ Seikatsu is also about a girl with social anxiety and the two anime have a lot of similarities, but I think Bocchi the Rock is a significantly stronger show. They both contain a protagonist with the names of Hitori and Bocchi, which together mean “all alone”. Both of them have a mature yet comedic approach to social anxiety that doesn’t use the protagonist as just a thing to laugh at.
The audio of this anime is also fantastic. I unfortunately don't understand enough Japanese to be able to properly appreciate the songs in their original form, but I know that they are meaningful songs. Bocchi was given the task of writing an original song and initially wanted to just do a generic pop song, which she isn't good at, but was convinced by her bandmates to write a more depressing song which she was better at because of her own experiences.
My first original song was also pretty depressing, being about a soldier with the curse of reincarnation after each time he died and rarely going a day without dying, singing about his wish to be relieved of this constant cycle and allowed to die permanently. When I submitted this song to sing at my high school talent show they were worried that I was suicidal and forced me to write a disclaimer to say before the song, that in the heat of the moment I forgot to say, but the students didn't make that same assumption anyway, or at least didn’t comment about it.
The music itself aesthetically is good enough. I don't think the music stands out as much as the music in something like Full Moon wo Sagashite or Aikatsu!, but it's still definitely good music. I don't think every song needs to be a masterpiece, though. Canonically they are amateurs and with that in mind it's actually really good music. Bocchi’s guitar solos are great. The animation during the performance scenes is also incredible, focusing on what each band member adds to the song.
All of the voice acting in the show is really well done. I especially like Bocchi’s voice. Her somewhat deep voice I find kind of sexy, and her voice actress is crazy talented, being able to make inhuman sound effects. All of the seiyuus do a great job at portraying who their character is.
The maid cafe is a very memorable scene and I was already aware of it before I saw the anime because of memes. They reduced the size of Bocchi’s breasts compared to the manga, which does make it slightly less impactful, but I think she looks cuter with smaller breasts anyway so I prefer that representation of her. I felt bad for Bocchi in that scene knowing what she was going through to dress like that in front of her classmates. At least it wasn't a bunny girl cafe that they had to do, because she would have reacted even more poorly to that.
Another anime that it's worth comparing to is K-On!, which also happens to be a substantially additive adaptation. The characters in Bocchi I think are a lot better than the ones in K-On!. Obviously Bocchi is more relatable, having deep social anxiety, having a more average intelligence, having to actually work hard at learning guitar rather than magically gaining the skill, etc, but the other bandmates also feel like stronger characters. They also focus a lot more on actually playing music in Bocchi. They all have a genuine passion for it rather than just consuming snacks and abusing the club's resources, in fact in Bocchi they do their music outside of school time and have to work to provide funds for the band's activities.
Overall I think Bocchi the Rock is a great show. Everything it tries to do it excels at. I can't think of anything it could have done to be a better show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jul 11, 2021
This review was originally written with my eyes closed. The first version shown is the review with the spelling mistakes corrected and the second is the original review.
As an anime about being bad at speaking English I shall be typing this review without looking at the keyboard. I personally found this anime to be enjoyable, but then again I do like lolis which are a main draw to this show.
The story is about Ink-chan or whatever her civilian name was and her goal to make her love interest her boyfriend. She does this by becoming a magical girl and teaching him Engrish. As Western viewers
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it sounds funny to hear this. This was adapted from a book trying to teach people how to speak English the otaku way, but it had a lot of problems so it had to be revised. This anime similarly has a lot of problems. The whole concept of the show doesn’t make sense and the two mentor character are pedophiles.
The animation is done fairly well for this kind of show. The characters look really cute and their transformation scenes were done well. I liked the modern touch that they use cell phones to transform. The lolis look adorable in both of their forms and the males don’t look too shabby either. Don’t question why they look like that when they’re 17.
The voice acting is obviously cute considering what this show is. The opening theme is quite catchy. The glaring problem with the sound is the fact that the English doesn’t sound like English. The examples they use don’t make sense in the West and the way they pronounce them is way off as well. It is very much an Engrish anime.
The characters themselves have logical aspirations, although not the most logical ways of getting them. The two animal characters aren’t very likeable. The two lolis have more of cute personalities than anything and they could be more developed.
Despite all of the flaws I really enjoyed this anime. I find Engrish to be cute so having an entire anime about it is great. I also really liked Ink’s design when transformed.
Overall this is a pretty average anime, but if you like stupid anime or want something to watch with a friend to make fun of this could be a good choice.
Original review:
As an anime oabout being bad at speeaking English I shall be typing this review without looking at the keyboard. I personally found this anime to be enjoyable, but then again I do like lolies which oare a main draw to this show.
The story is about Ink-hcan or whatever her civilian name was and he goald to make her lover interesti her boyfriend. She does this by becoming a magical girl and teaching him EnEngrish. As Western viewers it sounds funny to therear this. This was adapted from a book trying to teach people how to speak English the otaku way, but it had a lot of problems so it had to be revised. This anime simlarly has a lot of problems. The whole concept of the show doesn’t make sense and the two mentor character are pedophiles.
The animation is done fairly well for this kind of hshow. The characters look really cute and their transformation scenes were done well. I liked the modern touch that they use cell phones to transform. The lolies look adorable in both of their forms and the males don’t look too shabby either. Don’t quention why they look like that when they’re 145.
The voice acting is obviously cute considering what this show is. The opening theme is quite catchy. The glaring problem with the sound is the fact that the English doesn’t sound like English. The examples they use don’t make sense in the West andthe way they pronouce them is way off as well. It is very much an Engrish anime.
The characters themselves have logical aspirations, although not the most logical ways of tgetting them. The two anime characters aren’t very likable. The two lolis have more of cute personalies than anything and they could be more developed.
Despite all of the flaws I really enjoyed this anime. I find Engrish to be cute so having an entire anime about it is great. I also really liked Ink’s design when transformed.
Overall this is a pretty average anime, but if you like stupid anime or want something to watch with a friend to make fun of this could be a good choice.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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May 9, 2020
Takunomi is the only anime I’ve seen that focuses primarily around casual drinking of low alcohol beverages like beer, wine, and cider, which I personally enjoy and drank some of prior to writing this review. Bartender was also a great show, but it has a very different atmosphere and focuses on a bartender providing the perfect drink for each of his customers.
Takunomi shows us various girls in this collge dorm who have different experiences with alcohol. Some parts of it are honestly kind of nostalgic to when I first started drinking and was still getting used to this strange world of alcohol. The story follows
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Amatsuki Michiru as she learns more about alcohol and her roommates’ dependence on it.
The art is pretty standard, which I can’t complain about. It presents a group of young adult women as being rather cute, which I appreciate. Cute women in anime are honestly underrated.
The anime is set in college and our protagonist is a short haired girl who doesn’t dress super feminine, also doesn’t exactly represent herself as a tomboy. She and her roommates will drink alcohol together in the common area, sharing it with each other, and chatting. Some of the characters are bigger fans of alcohol than others, but overall the personalities of the girls aren’t explored as deeply as they could be in an anime about drinking, which is something typically done while chatting casually and generally exposing what you’re like as a person.
I thought this was a rather enjoyable anime. It wasn’t amazing, and as far as the cute women doing cute things genre goes it was far from the best, but I liked the drinking theme and even learned a few things from it. I would suggest it if you like cute anime women or have already seen Bartender and want another anime about alcohol (although this is definitely inferior).
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Oct 26, 2017
This anime has gotten a lot of strong opinions from a lot of different people and despite having aired over five years ago it’s still one of the most talked about anime. Some say the widespread hate for it is just because of all the negative reviews of it on the internet and others say it’s so bad that having it in your favourites is proof that you have bad taste, but although it’s one of the most common gateway anime that doesn’t mean liking it makes you unknowledgeable about anime automatically.
The story is definitely not generic in any way, but it also wasn’t the
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first of its time like some people think. Tron was the first type of any media to have the concept of getting stuck in a videogame and .hack was the first anime to do this. This can be credited as being the anime that made the genre popular or even the one that turned it into a genre at all, so that is something it can be credited with. Although it terms of concept the story was good the execution leaves much to be desired. The main character is already at the top of his game, which many know to be the boring part of their game. Just like how most romances are about two characters falling in love rather than just showing their daily lives being in love the same is for any story. The story you would expect in a fantasy anime where the protagonist gets better over time doesn’t happen since he’s already so much better than anyone else that he doesn’t need to get better and is basically just showing off for most of the anime. The story of clearing the floors to get to the top one to beat the game seems like a good enough idea, but clearly showing all of the unique rooms and the characters who beat each one would be boring and tedious, but it felt a bit forced the way they dealt with making this process faster.
The Princess Asuna arc was a lot worse than the Aincrad arc. I guess this is a bit of a spoiler to mention even the existence of this arc, but I would guess you’ve probably already seen the show anyway. Asuna was a well developed character in the first arc and unlike most of the female characters showed some actual character development that wasn’t cringy, but in this arc she became a princess who needed rescuing, which is really a waste of a good character. It’s only 11 episodes which is shorter than the first arc, but I feel like the show would be better as a whole if the second arc didn’t exist. The average quality was dragged down a lot by this.
The art in this anime is fairly decent. The character designs are fairly generic and we have a regular spiky black haired protagonist, but the rest of the art is done well. The layout of the world is done well and the backgrounds are well drawn. It’s a fairly small world they live on, but they do show a lot of good things around it even though they often don’t give enough context to show exactly where everything is in relation to each other, especially since a lot of their world is vertical which makes accurate maps hard to draw. The weapons and outfits look cool, just as they’re supposed to, but the whole concept of an MMORPG that has warrior as the only class is kind of flawed and there could be a lot more cool weapons and outfits if it was set up like a proper RPG. The fight scenes were animated well and the icons and screens in the game were made well. They did a lot to show us that they really were in a videogame as opposed to some anime where they go to the world but when they get there it isn’t a videogame anymore.
The theme songs were good and the background music was great. Swordland has a real feeling of epicness and even though I don’t consider the anime as a whole to be all that great that song still gives me nostalgia. I watched the series in dub so I can’t comment on the original voice acting, but the dub was done fairly well. The sound effects are pretty good, but they do mess up sometimes and they don’t always enhance the scene but occasionally make it worse.
The characters, just like in any anime, are probably the most important part to talk about. Kirito, the main character, has far too much power, as I’ve already mentioned. He doesn’t have much of a personality other than being overpowered and being arrogant about it, despite originally trying to cover it up. He’s able to escape a situation where the game would have expected any normal person to have died where the nervegear doesn’t manage to kill him, but according to my calculations the nervegear would take around two hours to kill an adult by frying the brain like an extremely low current microwave so his recovery just means he has a stronger will to live than the others. To be honest, it’s less odd that he survived that and more odd that no one else did. Even if it uses electric shock to make the victim unconscious to give the microwaves enough time to kill them you’d think other people would have been immune rather than the protagonist being the only person to overcome it while thousands of others died from it and not a single one of them did what he did.
Aside from Asuna pretty much all of the girls have very little personality. We basically just have them introduced as “harem girl #X” and have a few pieces of basic information to remember them by. Silica’s only personality trait is her affinity to animals, which isn’t much. I liked Lisbeth when I watched the show because of her short pink hair and how her blacksmithing gave off a tomboy aura, but in terms of personality she really doesn’t have much going for her. It’s interesting that she would go into that career path and even the fact that there are career paths in the game considering the fact that everyone is a warrior class character so things like magic aren’t something you could use to your advantage, but we never really get an explanation for it and she seems to just fall in love with Kirito at first sight despite the fact that their first encounter isn’t all that positive. Asuna is the only character in the series who really has a decent personality. She does play hard to get at first, like a regular tsundere, but quickly it turns into actual love which is something we rarely see in anime.
My enjoyment of this anime was somewhat skewed since I watched it after being recommended it by my cousin who really liked it and so I was convinced this was something I was supposed to like, but even then there were still some things I didn’t really like about it. Overall I did enjoy it, but partly just because I felt like it was the right thing to do. There wasn’t really much of any reasons I had to argue for the reasons I liked it at the time so soon after I disregarded by enjoyment of it as being fake so I’m not really sure what to think about it. If I were to watch it again now I’ve already had my opinion poisoned by everyone saying bad things about it so it’s hard to say if I would enjoy it genuinely or if it would just be laughing at it for all of the problems that have been brought to my view. The cafe scenes didn’t bother me when I watched it, but now they seem like such a blatant flaw like the author had no way of explaining things naturally and just relied on exposition scenes which he thought would best take place in cafes.
Overall it’s a fairly average anime. It does a lot of things right, but it does so many things wrong that it cancels out. The concept is interesting and the music is amazing, but the poor characterization and bad execution of the story turns everything back to average. Would I recommend this anime? It’s an anime that’s considered an important one to watch despite the fact that the quality isn’t that high, but it’s also not one I personally think you need to feel obliged to watch if it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you would enjoy.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 21, 2017
At only three seconds long, the shortest anime ever made, this was intended to be short and sweet, but not because the story didn’t need to be long. This was created around the year 1910 when the concept of animation had only been recently introduced to Japan and so as a still experimental storytelling style they hadn’t developed a cheap enough way to create more animation than this. With 50 frames in total this was as much as they could muster and the end of it doesn’t even look like it’s complete, but considering its age this is acceptable. After all, this wasn’t intended to
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be treated as an anime since anime didn’t exist at the time, this was just meant as both a project and a feat; a mark that animation was possible and a feasible way to show stories.
This doesn’t have so much of a story as just a thing that happens. A boy writes 活動写真 meaning “moving picture” on an unknown background, likely a wall but seeing the way he’s dressed I assumed it could have been a boat, and then bows towards the audience, lifting his hat. Even calling this slice of life would be a stretch since it’s such a small slice. We aren’t told anything about this boy’s backstory or why he’s writing it, nor why he’s wearing a sailor uniform, which has now come to be associated with the female school uniform in Japan. At the very least there certainly isn’t any filler since there isn’t any room for it, but there also isn’t anything that would need filling anyway. Any kind of real story you could get out of this would be more speculation than what’s actually presented in the film.
The art style is unique to say the least. They definitely didn’t have much of a way to even save an animation like this and although it’s understandable that it would be made with a camera as computers were decades away from even existing, let alone being advanced enough to make animations on, but I still do consider camerawork to be shoddy. What was found in 2005 as a celluloid strip so we can assume the camerawork was done then, but it could also be that the strip was intended to be used with a projector or otherwise not be recorded and shown in real time at a festival of some sort making it hard to turn into a recording, which is understandable yet unfortunate. After all, how were they to know that over a century later caucasian neckbeards would be watching this on computers and smartphones? The art is more than merely dated, it really doesn’t have much going on and was clearly made as cheaply as possible, which plays more into the fact that they only managed to make 50 frames. The art isn’t entirely awful, but it’s certainly simple and not very pretty. It’s as good as they could make at the time, though.
The sound is sort of non-existent, which is reasonable since there isn’t really any need for sound. It is a celluloid strip, after all, and so there wasn’t sound recorded with it. When it aired it would be safe to assume they had a band playing as silent films usually do, but since it’s only three seconds long they either might not have or would have repeated the clip several times in order to give people appropriate time to properly enjoy and appreciate it. I’m over a century too late to hear whatever would have played with it, if anything, so I can’t comment on how good the music was, but live music tends to be good. This is a part of the score that will remain a mystery as lost media simply due to the fact that it was intended to be watched live rather than recorded.
Just as any other story or animation would this does have a character, but we aren’t shown what his personality is. He writes “moving picture” on an unknown surface while wearing a sailor uniform and then bows to the audience as if this was some sort of performance. He could have been told to do this and this was all just some act where his uniform only serves as a costume he was forced into, but it could also be that he is a stand-in for the creators and he bowing to the audience who have come to see this moving picture. The second one would be breaking the fourth wall, which doesn’t happen too much in anime, but we’re also given no concrete evidence that this is the intention. This theory doesn’t explain the sailor uniform, though, but when you look at it closely it seems to be the most logical explanation. Another interpretation would be that it is a schoolboy who wears that as his school uniform and he wrote it not to tell the audience what they’re watching but rather just as a demonstration of his Japanese skills. All of these would lead to different personalities for our protagonist and there isn’t enough information in the anime to know which one is the most true. This isn’t a problem with the anime so much as it is a problem with its length. They could only afford to make 50 frames and they chose to draw them close enough together that it presents relatively fluid animation rather than showing a more in depth story with a lower frame rate which would end up being more like a manga than an anime.
I enjoyed watching this mostly for the historical value in knowing where anime came from. It is the first anime, after all. I would have to say that I found more enjoyment in writing this review than I had in watching the anime itself, but that’s mostly due to its short screen time and how old it is. I respect it greatly for the path it paved for all the anime that came after it, but I wouldn’t consider it to be a good anime itself. It certainly wasn’t painful to watch, though, and so I can honestly say I enjoyed every second of it.
I’d have to say that it belongs in an art gallery more than anywhere else, but it’s still a great mark of Japanese achievement and I would consider this to be a must watch for all anime fans.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 16, 2017
If you haven’t been living under a rock you’ve probably heard of Love Live!. It’s one of the most popular anime in Japan and for good reason: it has idols and yuri, a great art style, and a story that perfectly caters to the otaku fandom. It’s not quite as popular among a younger female audience as it is among an older male audience, but Sunrise already has Aikatsu for young girls so Love Live! is essentially the late night version of that. This anime has a lot of mixed opinions which is reasonable since anyone outside of the targeted audience isn’t going to see
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the appeal, but there are enough people in the targeted audience that it’s a perfect anime for a lot of people. The very fact that it is so popular can also be a draw for some people since it has a lot of good memes, fan art, and other media that is all translated for the most part. I will talk about the story first. This is a show about girls who become idols to save their school. It’s really quite similar to Girls und Panzer in that regard, but with the opposite reaction from the teachers. Honoka is confident that becoming idols would save their school while everyone else is skeptical, and rightfully so. After all, not only is not reasonable to expect to become popular simply from trying something you see other people getting popular from, as anyone who has tried created any kind of entertainment would know, but even if they did become popular that doesn’t exactly guarantee that their school would be along for the ride as well. Despite how improbable that would be, these are our protagonists and Sunrise isn’t going to show us some random idol group who failed to do what they sought to do. That would be boring. Naturally this is a success story and considering the way it’s set up this isn’t even really a spoiler. What is a spoiler is the opening theme song animation since it shows all nine of them dancing together which is the entire plot of the first season. It’s a cast building so it starts with an incomplete cast and collects them as they go along so it’s a spoiler which girls end up in the group. My next topic will be the art. The art looks very shiny and sort of 3D like which makes it perfect to make accurate anime figures of but it isn’t so 3D that it would give the cringy 3D CGI effect. There was certainly a lot of CGI used in this anime, especially in the dance scenes, but while the dance scenes themselves don’t look the best the rest of it looks very pretty. It’s too detailed to be drawn by hand but they clearly didn’t just leave everything up to the computers. When you ignore the hair and eye colours as well as the hair styles their faces are all very similar, but they do have some things to make them distinct. One important part of the character arcs of two characters who I won’t name for sake of avoiding spoilers is gaining weight and then having to lose that weight, which wouldn’t have been as nice to watch if the character designs weren’t so good. The problem with their weight was the fact that they wouldn’t be as mobile on stage so the fact that they still looked attractive in their overweight forms wasn’t a problem in my eyes. Not completely art related, but they have a lot of great moments they designed like Nico Nico Nii which this whole review is designed to look like, if you hadn’t noticed. The clothing designs were really well done. The skirts were very much on the short side and Sunrise didn’t have the “idol school” excuse like they did with Aikatsu, but this isn’t exactly unrealistic since most Japanese girls do tend to roll their skirts up. The outfits they use for their performances always fit the song and dance well and are always always very pretty. The music videos that serve to be part of the franchise are also very well drawn and designed, especially the later ones. The next section is the sound, which was definitely one of the anime’s strong points. They hired Pile to play Maki for a reason, as she is a professional singer and has barely done any other voice acting. The songs are catchy and the singing is beautiful. In addition to the theme songs and insert songs being good the background music is also great. The voices are all good. They all fully embody their characters from Rin’s nekomimi tomboy persona to Nico’s eccentric fake cutey personality. The dub’s voice actors are not as good to say the least, but if you actually care about watching this anime to get out of it what you should be coming for then I’ll assume you’re not watching the dub. While the voice acting is obviously not masterpiece quality and the music is fairly standard for the idol genre, it is all above average for slice of life anime. I will be talking about the characters next. As an idol anime it naturally has a large cast and since it introduces them one at a time it does give them all appropriate development despite not being super long. This does a lot better of a job characterizing all of its characters than The iDOLM@STER does despite being the same length and having around as big of a cast. All of the characters have distinct and interesting personalities and it doesn’t feel like they’re just exposition dumping their personalities on the viewers. They’re shown in natural situations and are given the time to develop properly. Despite the fact that the anime wasn’t that long, by the end of it you do get to really feel for the characters, provided you have the correct taste to enjoy it. Obviously as idols they aren’t allowed to have hetero love, but we still do see some of the other kind which is beautiful. A lot of the characters have good chemistry together. Even less important characters like Honoka’s younger sister and her friend are good characters despite not getting enough screen time to be as interesting as the main characters. The characters each cater to their own fans which both part of the reason why it’s so popular and also part of the reason why people argue so much about who the best one is. Best girl is subjective in any series, but in this anime they are all equally well developed characters but are made for different people so it’s even more subjective than usual. I’m sure you’ll find at least one character who you really like from the main characters, which is one of the benefits of there being nine of them and them all being very different. As much as everything sort of contributes to enjoyment, it can come from sources other than the previous four so it gets its own category. I got a lot of enjoyment from everything the show had to offer. I watched it on Crunchyroll without a membership so having watch through two minutes of commercials every episode slightly hindered my enjoyment of it in that way, but that isn’t the anime’s fault. Thankfully I saw this anime earlier on and didn’t have the well poisoned for me. A lot of people say bad things about this anime, which is allowed under free speech, but it still is something that can ruin anime for people since you might go in looking for things to hate. I thoroughly enjoyed this anime when I watched it and nothing about it bored me in any way. A lot of my enjoyment of the franchise doesn’t come from the anime itself and instead from the manga, the songs, and the fanart, but those I all enjoyed a lot more because I saw the anime. Fanbases can affect how much I like an anime and although some of the fans of this do go a bit too far overall they’re good people and it feels nice to be part of something bigger. I’m glad at least one anime about cute girls doing cute things has this devoted of a fanbase. In conclusion I thought this was a really good anime. It certainly deserves its popularity and even if the biggest mark of success for the creators was making it making it very accessible for the otaku community to latch onto I’d consider that to be good enough. Objectively or subjectively it’s obviously doing its job well and for that I congratulate it. I wouldn’t consider it to be the best anime I’ve seen or close to it, but it was certainly one of the most enjoyable. Whether if you like music anime, if you’re already into the idol genre, or just like to argue with other people about who the best girl in an anime is this is a great choice.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 4, 2017
This anime lives, eats, and breaths GAR. The main characters are criminals, which completely sets it up well, and the screens fills with blood frequently, but not in poor taste.
The story is about criminals who are given shorter sentences if they take care of other dangerous criminals, an offer they gladly accept yet wish they didn’t have to. I personally think it’s a good premise and although it doesn’t do too much with it considering the anime’s short length I still consider it to be a good story.
The art is very 90s and you can take that how you will. They know how to use
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the colour red a lot as well as using a fairly dark colour palette. The characters all look unique enough and the place they live is set up well enough considering how little time it needs to be used for.
The sound was one of the weaker aspects of the anime. The music wasn’t very memorable and the voice actors didn’t even do their jobs all that well. The sound effects aren’t good either. Whoever did the hiring did not prioritize good sound out of all of the things to pay for.
The characters do indeed have personalities, but in terms of both realism and likability they aren’t that great. Although they are acting as stand-in police officers they don’t give off that impression. Obviously Japan barely has any black people so they wouldn’t have that stereotype there, but it’s clear that to get into prison they broke the law so they’re not going to be the best at enforcing it.
Despite the problems that this did have, the plot was very clear and easy to follow. It’s one of the few bloody anime that didn’t feel childish to me. It was a really fun anime to watch. You could call it a guilty pleasure, but since not many have seen it and I don’t know many people’s opinions of it I don’t really feel any guilt from liking it.
Overall I thought this was a good anime. There is a lot of really solid things about it. If you’re looking for 90s OVAs I would recommend that you give this one a shot. You will not regret it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jul 16, 2017
Despite the subpar animation, this is definitely one of the most interesting anime I've seen. I would be spoiling if I talked about what the story actually is since it isn't apparent from the beginning, but the whole way it plays out is very well written. It's hard to tell what direction it's going in based on the first episode. The story is clearly the most important part of the series. It's one of those kinds of anime where "as long as you can put up with the animation you'll be able to enjoy a great story". It's a genre that you see a lot
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of in American film and television and not much in anime, which is part of what makes it so great. It also adds a great bit of spice to the genre that I haven't seen before. It also tries to be cute, which may turn some people off but also lulls you into a false sense of security, which really works for its whole concept. Once you realize what where it's going it's interesting to see the story unravel and you'll be glad it didn't look dark at the beginning.
The art really gives that "poor quality computer graphics animation" feel. It's like it was animated in the early 2000s. For a typical anime this might seem like a deal breaker or might make you think about dropping your score a few points as studios who can't even afford decent animation generally don't have a good writing team either, but I don't think this is the case here. In fact, although at first the animation may strike you as being awfully produced, after some time you might not mind it or may even begin to like it. When all of the animation looks bad it also has the benefit of minor animation errors not looking out of place, which I consider to be a good thing. If you're watching for enjoyment it can be better for animation to be uniformly awful than to be mostly good with random spikes of bad animation. Nonetheless, although the animation itself looks eccentric, the characters are all well designed and are fairly representative of the animals they're meant to be, with a few exceptions. The machinery, the park, and the antagonists are also well designed. Even if it isn't a world you would want to live in if you could it's still an interesting place and enough attractions to keep you engaged for its 12 episodes. Some adventure anime have repetetive set designs, so it's a good thing they did their best to keep the world fresh so there was always more to look forward to.
In addition to all looking cute and different, the characters' personalities were all different and well written. Even if with the handful of characters introduced every episode you don't find yourself a new favourite character I doubt any of them will disappoint you. Each of them is based on a different animal species and they have characteristics of that species along with their own characteristics. There are many different species of cat and penguin which all look and act distinct. They act exactly how you expect an animal human hybrid to act in real life, which is rare for anime. In most anime kemonomimi just do some gestures and add a word related to their animal at the end of their sentences, but in Kemono Friends all of the characters actually feel like they're meant to be the animal they're meant to be, but this doesn't mean they don't have any personality outside of their "spirit animal". Most of what we're shown to know what animal they are is their clothing, which isn't the best way as the giraffe character is actually below average height, but it works to introduce them and tell them apart easily and isn't hard to get used to. All of the characters, even the robot who might not want to have a personality, are easy to get attached to even though most of them have minimal screen time.
Along with the theme, the characters’ voices are also meant to reflect the anime they are, which I think is well done. The alpaca character sounds very soft and cute, just like real alpaca are. The opening theme song sounds beautiful yet simplistic, which perfectly represents what the show is. It gives the sense that the show is just a childish cartoon, which is a perfect light to show it in. The ending theme is fairly boring, but no anime can be perfect. The background music is surprisingly well done. There’s dubstep during some of the fights against the cerubelum, which makes them feel a bit more epic and is just a good song in general. You don’t hear much dubstep in anime, so I appreciate hearing it here. Even if it was just what the sound guy happened to be able to mix up I think it adds a nice touch to the series. Some of the other background tunes are also stick out rather than just being there to fill in the silence.
This received some very mixed reviews when it was airing, but when watching it after it aired and hearing it was a masterpiece I did enjoy it a lot. I’m not sure if I would have enjoyed it any less if I had watched it more slowly, but as one whole story it is a very enjoyable anime. I know some people get a lot of their enjoyment from how an anime is animated and although this does have cute girls and fights they aren’t animated as well as most anime are, but this doesn’t actually matter that much to me. After all, most cuteness comes from personality and most of the impact from a fight comes from how the characters react to it so I feel the need to put much weight on the animation itself. Being one of the best stories I’ve seen in any anime I can’t help but enjoy it. Unlike other short anime with large casts like The iDOLM@STER that gives each main cast member an episode to themselves and them leaves in the background for the rest of it and Girlfriend (Kari) that has an even larger cast and doesn’t bother expending the energy to develop any of them, Kemono Friends works like a cast building anime such as Love Live or Nanatsu no Taizai, but characters don’t stick around any longer than they need to. In a way you could call this style an “introductory anime”, although some of the characters they meet along the way do show up later or are at least talked about. There are also some multiple episode arcs, which are interesting. The whole way the anime is set up makes the show very enjoyable for me. At no point did I find myself bored, which is something not too many anime are able to pull off.
Overall the entire experience was very postive for me. Although on the surface it might not seem like it would be anything special or might even appear to be below average, but the longer you watch for the more you get attached to the characters and the world the live in. It’s a very unique anime and should not be looked down on just because of the CGI. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes cute anime, adventure anime, or anime about animal girls. It has an odd combination of elements and like Gakkougurashi it does a really good job at combining them and makes it feel very natural.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jul 3, 2017
This is an anime based off a video game. It likely isn’t as good, but I still enjoyed it as an anime only viewer.
Although the story isn’t the best, it is clear and somewhat interesting. It’s about an angel who has a task to reform the demons who live in hell, but it’s clear from the start that they aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be. The story around the Prinnies, why they exist, and why they work so willingly for something the demon characters seem to have so much of is also interesting.
Like most video game adaptations the character designs
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in this anime are really well done. The main character is a blonde girl, but unlike most anime blondes she isn’t a Westerner, although she technically still is a foreigner. Although the series is set in hell and is about reforming demons the pace of it feels more slice of life so there isn’t much fighting. This isn’t to say the animation isn’t good, but the place where good animation really shines is missing. All of the characters are well animated and the area they live in is well designed for what it’s meant to be, although seeing as it is hell there really isn’t too much going on and everything looks very samey. Although it is sort of an adventure anime the scenery looks fairly boring. The waddle that the Prinnies do is kind of fun to watch and adds a little something to the show.
I watched it dubbed so I can’t really comment on the seiyuu performance, although the dub wasn’t bad so I’ll give it that. As for the theme songs the opening was very unmemorable and although the ending is better it still isn’t very good. I saw this anime a long time ago so I don’t know what say about the soundtrack other than the fact that I can’t remember anything about it.
The personalities of the characters was surprisingly good for this otherwise underwhelming anime. The heroine was given an understandable task to complete and the others have good reasons to not cooperate. The Prinnies which are originally seen as some sort of worthless slave race are later shown a much more interesting reason for existence. I actually found their tale to be more interesting than that of the protagonists.
I watched it on a bus so this was more or less just an easy way to pass the time, but it does a good job with that. It might not be too good of an anime objectively, but it made for a really fun watch. It has a lot of unique attributes.
If you’re looking for a fun way to pass the time this would be a good choice. However, if you care about depth or don’t want a cheesy story about how people who look evil aren’t that bad then you might to give this show a pass.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jun 3, 2017
Unlike some other movies that are just meant to be a fun time this one touched me deeply in a way I haven't felt before. Although I went into it expecting it to be overrated it ended up being one of the most enjoyable anime I've ever seen.
The story is about our protagonist Shouya who starts out as being a bully and later becomes the victim. The themes of bullying, suicide, and physical and mental issues aren't touched on too frequently so it's nice to see how they decided to portray them in this anime. Both of the main characters have very well written
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stories to their lives. Not only is the story unique I can't remember there being any blatant flaws in it. As a non-fantasy drama anime the things that they could have done wrong they didn't so it was pretty solid.
The art looks about as spectacular as you would expect from a high budget animated movie while also having the cuteness Kyoto Animation is known for. The backgrounds were all well drawn and the setting was well designed with all of the locations falling logically into place. All of the characters look distinct and they're all nice to look at. The motif with the Xs on people faces was done well and with how it was used you could tell at least somewhat about what they represent even if they never outright said it. The camera angles were handled well to show what kind of a character Shouya is.
Being an anime about deafness logically the sound is very important to the story. The music isn’t the most notable, but other parts of the sound are done very well. Nishimiya’s voice actress does a wonderful at playing the role of a character who can’t hear. They also played a bit with messing with the audio to imitate very poor hearing, which I think was a nice touch.
For being only a bit over 2 hours the characters are all well developed. Not all of the characters are likeable, at least not at first, but all of their personalities are well written. It’s also nice to see the natural change in their personalities before and after the timeskip. For a high school drama set in the real world it’s nice to see antagonists and how the main character deals with them. It’s hard to make an anti-hero a likeable character, but they did a good job with it.
With my own mental issues I feel like I can relate to how the characters in the film struggle. This is the first anime I’ve seen that actually made me cry. During the anime I very seldom found myself being bored which is rare for me even with anime I really like. I feel like it didn’t waste any time and was enjoyable throughout. Funimation may claim that Your Name is the best anime film of 2016 but I personally believe A Silent Voice is far better.
With everything considered this is a very solid film. Whether if you like it or not depends a lot on personal taste, but everything production wise was done far above average even for anime films and the story is very unique so even if it isn’t a masterpiece for you you’re bound to find some value in watching it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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