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Dec 23, 2015
One Punch Man , after hyping up viewers for months before its first episode and wowing them through the next twelve weeks, seems to have effectively stolen the attention of the community at-large. Most have crowned it as one of the best anime ever, with few dissenters attempting to trudge their way through the massive, raving fanbase.
Before anyone can even begin to search for the merits of One Punch Man as an action-parody, the stellar animation and sound immediately grab the viewer's attention. For one, the art and animation stand to impress the viewers at every turn and during every fight.
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Easily standing out as the strongest overall aspect of One Punch Man, the animation rarely has a subpar moment, allowing the viewers to focus on the anime's storytelling aspects as opposed to becoming distracted by poorly-flowing cuts. Likewise, the sound, although not nearly as stellar as the animation of One Punch Man, does more than enough to hold up under the massive scrutiny that a mediocre soundtrack would receive. The production aspects of One Punch Man, at the very least, make it well-deserving of high praise throughout the fandom.
However, once one moves past the excellent art and sound of One Punch Man, they can begin to focus in on its other story-telling aspects. And, unfortunately, its inability to properly maintain the role of an action-parody detracts significantly from OPM's potential to be the 'greatest anime of all time'.
As a self-proclaimed action-parody of the action genre itself, One Punch Man sets itself up to the standards that any parody must obtain. Mainly, these include poking fun at the standard tropes of the subject, making them comical, and keeping it interesting. And, for a time, One Punch Man did just that. The opening episodes clearly stuck true to its word, in that they were a very passable, somewhat funny, parody of all those standard action/shonen anime that we've all probably seen dozens of times. Saitama's mundane desires to shop at the local supermarket to obtain the sales starkly contrasted the standard villainy of the early-episode antagonists, and his actions as a 'hero just for fun' wiped out all the expectations that one normally comes to expect out of a hero's ambitions.
However, as the series progressed, more and more it left that standard nature of parodies behind. Saitama's mundane wishes flew out the window, and in through the very same window came all the seriousness of any other standard action anime. One Punch Man had, essentially, dumped all of its efforts to become a great action-comedy and had simply morphed into a just an action anime. The villains remained stereotypical caricatures as they had been since the very beginning, but Saitama and his contrast to the norms of standard action tropes had changed. By the last episodes of its run, One Punch Man had ceased being a parody at all, and in fact seemed to have practically given up all attempts to remain a parody. In the course of its runtime, viewers saw One Punch Man change from the good-to-great action-parody that it had started as to a straight-action anime which played all the action tropes as straight as a line. Over time, it fell into the trap of all the action shows that it was a parody of, essentially transforming into the standard hype-fueled action anime that it itself had been conceived to poke fun at.
One Punch Man had the ability to become a great action-parody series. It had all the pieces in place during the first few episodes (even despite a blatant repetition of its main jokes). But then it squandered them.
The hype may have been with One Punch Man, but unfortunately the hype cannot hold up its blatant failures as a parody.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Nov 9, 2015
Comet Lucifer, at the time of this review still an ongoing anime with six of its twelve episodes previously aired, is in one word, disappointing. And unfortunately, it is disappointing on nearly every level of critique.
To begin, Comet Lucifer starts with a somewhat interesting, even if cliché, set-up to its plot. Our MC, Sogo, travels into a mine in search of a rare crystal that his mother once mentioned and stumbles upon one of particular interest. Thus he meets Felia, the girl who the anime has clearly set up as the main love interest. And there you have a basic
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summary. So we’ve got an alright but cliché boy-meets-mysterious-girl scenario, a childhood friend who is not-so-secretly interested in the MC, and the makings of what could be an interesting plot to come. An additional note of praise for the rest of the series, the Mechs themselves are interesting and the fights (mostly) well done.
So where does it go so wrong?
At the simplest level, Comet Lucifer fails because, in essence, it hasn’t really developed anything in regards to its characters or plot and is content to sit around shoving low-context mech battles in between sub-mediocre Slice of Life scenes. The tonal whiplash one receives while attempting to watch Comet Lucifer is enough to cause major fractures in all seven of your neck’s vertebrae.
Likewise, the characters are a massive failing point for the misguided Comet Lucifer. Mainly in the sense that their actions don’t make a whole lot of sense. From actively parading around the mysterious mystery girl with telekinetic powers around town (despite the fact that there are clearly people trying to track her down) to not trying to figure out why she has any powers at all (or pressing for any sort of backstory), MC and his childhood friend(zone) companion simply don’t cut it as rational actors. Additionally, the characters don’t really have much personality (other than basic tropes and stereotypes) so as a result watching them is dreadfully boring.
Unfortunately, the character actions and personalities don’t get any better as the episode count increases. This itself magnifies the previous problem of the Slice of Life scenes; with characters being an essential ingredient to a good Slice of Life, the lack of any character building hurts Comet Lucifer in multiple aspects. These scenes only serve as a boring intermission between the passable mech scenes, which unfortunately are too few and far between to make up for the rest of Comet Lucifer’s failings.
So what can we conclude about Comet Lucifer thus far? Well, it is bad, and not worth the watch. Truly, Comet Lucifer lives up to its name, for it may very well be the spawn of the Dark Lord, sent upon anime viewers to drive us to tears of boredom and torture them with false assurances of promise.
Do yourself a favor, dear reader. Don’t waste your time on Comet Lucifer.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Oct 6, 2015
What can one expect out of a pure action/sci-fi, such as we have here in Cystal Blaze? Good fights, interesting technologies, and the same things we've come to expect out of basically any anime: good characters, plot, and in some cases, a great soundtrack. With these as our guidelines, how effective is Crystal Blaze at presenting its story and themes? Well, like attempting to use Earthquake on a Flying-type Pokemon, its not effective at all, except under very specific circumstances.
Let's start off with the basics in what Crystal Blaze does well. Its not all that much, but if you're looking for something with
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action, you can probably enjoy this series. Don't misunderstand me though, for this is not the pinnacle of Action Mountain. For a huge fan of such a series, Crystal Blaze is an adequate anime. Its one that you'd be able to spend your time on without thinking afterwards that you'd have been better off throwing your time down the garbage disposal. Its soundtrack isn't exactly stellar, but it gets the job done without actively detracting from the events that are unfolding. While not commendable, it does what its supposed to do and doesn't get in the way, so it's impossible to fault it there. The story with the animation is much of the same.
This, however, is where the praises must end, for Crystal Blaze does not warrant any more positive feedback than its already received. Other than its okay action sequences and passable soundtrack and animation, Crystal Blaze doesn't have much else going for it. Primary amongst these faults is, unfortunately, the plot. In regards to both its Sci-Fi aspect and its general storytelling aspect, Crystal Blaze falls flatter than the paper the storyboards were written on. Folks looking for a decent Sci-Fi should look further, as even this primary building block of the series fell into poor management. The secrets that the viewer wonders about since the beginning of the series are never properly answered, save a few vague "explanations" that only really serve to add more questions to the blazing fire that is the viewer's curiosity.
The characters are, somehow, even more mismanaged than these facets. Here, we have "Rags Town", a place where people go to forget their pasts. One expecting well-developed characters with strong backstories should turn away and run now, or otherwise attempt to tackle this monstrosity. With such a setting in "Rags Town", Crystal Blaze is perfectly set up to give not one, but all of its characters wonderfully moving or tragic backstories--and can be, in a way, expected to do so. What motivates these people? Why are the here, and why do they stay? In the end...we never know. Any such backstory is shoved into one montage at the end of a middle episode, and even then, it only really gives a basic, barebones backstory for one character. Even with such a setting, Crystal Blaze proceeds to completely abandon any promise for developing its characters, leaving them as action-character stereotypes to further along its weak, cliche-filled plotline.
So in the end, is it worth watching Crystal Blaze? The hard truth is...probably not. If you're a fan of action series in general, you could give this a shot and you may find it entertaining. Its not a gem, but you may enjoy it. If you're just looking for a quality, well-made anime with strong core elements, I'm afraid you'll need to keep looking. Overall, its not a complete loss if its got exactly what you're looking for...but don't expect to be blown away.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Feb 16, 2015
Every once in a while, you receive a recommendation from an anime you really enjoyed, and in the end wind up disappointed in the result. For those like me, this is one of those times.
Lovely★Complex is an anime that, by all means, I expected to enjoy. To start out, we're shown the main two characters of the story, Risa and Ootani. The two are seen as a comedy duo y their classmates and teacher, as the tall Risa and short Ootani commonly quarrel for all to see. Throughout the series, romance develops, but an unexpected outcome occurs.
Unfortunately, for Lovely★Complex, this development is not
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nearly enough to save it from its flaws. While the premise of the situation is interesting, the rest of LoveCom's aspects fail to keep this same interest or actively detract from it. To start with, the comedy scenes, while occasionally worth a chuckle, are far from enough to keep my enjoyment of LoveCom afloat. Some moments of bickering between our two main characters seem repetitive, in a "I've seen this exact scene before" kind of way, and other jokes are stretched out for more than they're worth.
Likewise, the characters fail to fuel one's enjoyment of Lovely★Complex, and at times can serve to actively detract from any enjoyment that may occur. For example, our main male lead, Ootani, often moves the term 'dense' into a whole new realm. Where the normal male lead may be comparable to your average lead brick in density, Ootani ups the ante to Osmium-levels. His voice could also be rather grating or annoying at times, which of course doesn't help to improve the image one would have of Ootani. The other characters only occasionally bring something to the table--they are in supporting roles, after all--and fail to make up for the main cast's ineptitude.
Lovely★Complex also has a major problem with setting the mood for its more 'emotional' scenes, which often hit the viewer like being blindsided by an bag of bricks. Soon after a scene of comical interactions, the scenes meant to make you feel empathy or sympathy towards the lead character Risa appear...although without the music to cue the viewer in on the development, one may miss it. As such, these scenes never really instill the feeling they are, presumably, meant to, further degrading LovCom's marks.
--Final Thoughts--
With all that being said, I can say with certainty that Lovely★Complex did not live up to the expectations the users of this site have presented it with. Even with its occasionally fun moment or two, LovCom was immensely disappointing ,and I can't say I'd recommend it...but to each their own, I suppose.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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