Something something excuse, something something update

Right, so the whole one review a week things is ridiculous, can't do it. It means finishing a review a week, which makes me rush through series, which colors my opinion somewhat. I'll shoot for two weeks, but I'm doing ACT prep all this month so who knows.

Also, why do I keep getting massive influxes of Russian viewers? Is someone teaching a class over there labeled 'how not to do a blog?' 

Is Subaru wor—I mean Is Houkago no Pleiades Worth Watching?

Product placement and subtlety get along like Tibetan Maque in a Spain shop or however than goes. Personally, therefore, I feel that if, for example, Gainax made a deal with the Subaru to make a magical girl anime where the main character is literally named Subaru, the girls fly on broom like 'drive shafts' complete with Subaru hood ornaments, grilles, and engine noises, and the title of the anime is either Wish Upon the Subaru or Afterschool Subaru—at least I can say they're being upfront about it.

Subaru is a young girl whom, after stumbling into an extra-dimensional club room and subsequently, an extra dimensional botanical garden, becomes part of an effort to gather engine fragments to restore a space octopus' ship while foiling a mysterious young boy from the same fragments for some unknown reason. So in all honesty not only did massive amounts of product placement fail to hinder my experience—it enhanced it.

Houkago no Pleiades feels less like a car ad that Gainax wrote a script around and more like an idea that Gainax tailored to fit a car ad. See if there was one thing that surprised me coming out of this it was that this show was good. The characters fit into familiar archetypes without feeling like cut and paste jobs, they aren't defined by singular character traits and development occurs internally rather than as a result of an external force. As a result any character development feels natural, not forced down our throats. No characters change fundamentally, but important internal conflicts are resolved as the plot progresses. 

While the blend of CG and 2-D artwork can be jarring (especially earlier on, where there are a lot more closeups of characters in their CG form), in general the animation looks stellar and plays well with the over-the-top style Gainax is going for. Make no mistake, while the plot may seem simple on paper (and to an extent is in practice) the anime really builds to a satisfying climax. I don't wish to say more because to over-hype leads to insurmountable expectations, which always ruins a series for me. 

The other thing I found refreshing about the series was a lack of fight scenes. There is action, but it's kind of more like watching that one game with the flying balls from Harry Potter (except a hundred times larger in scale) than a traditional fight scene. It's more like a series of races; where the opponent takes the form of the aforementioned mysterious boy and some natural obstacle. It allows the anime to succeed at keeping a lighthearted tone throughout the series without ever breaking immersion. 

Lastly the characters are all well acted, despite having little to no star power present. The soundtrack, while not having that one track, managed to keep me engaged, and after listening to it a bit more I'd be lying if I said it wasn't damn good. 

So is Houkago no Pleiades worth watching? Yeah I'd say so. If you've made it all the way through this, I doubt you can be as pleasantly surprised as I was, but I do think that it does enough to separate it from the crowd and make for one hell of a ride—pun intended. 

Thanks for reading, favorite, share, I'll be you best friend, g'night.

You should read Double Arts!

Not gonna lie, I'm really only doing this because I don't have an anime to review this week. Houkago no Pleiades was supposed to be my Friday night, but then I fell asleep and the cycle repeated itself with Saturday. Right now I'm about twenty minutes—my being awake fueled only by a pint of coffee and Six Times The Passion Of An Ordinary Flamenco. Though I am serious when I say you should read Double Arts.

Written by Naoshi Komi, or the guy who does Nisekoi, Double Arts ran for around 25 chapters before ending prematurely presumably due to lack of sales. The series is premised on a land where an unknown disease is running rampant. People called sisters are able to absorb the disease for a limited time at the cost of running down their lives. After a healing, a sister named Elle is about to succumb to the infection when a young man grabs her hand, halting her death. From there, the manga takes on a swashbuckling adventure tone, as the two try to make their way to church headquarters. In order to overcome the ridiculously overpowered enemy that i coming after them, the two will have to learn how to fight while staying in contact constantly.

I'd love to go further, but to emphasize how last-minute this was: I read this manga like two years ago. It is really good though, with some good world building, an intriguing premise and heaps of unrealized potential. Maybe after Komi's done with Nisekoi he'll come back to this, but if wishes were horses the second season of Zvezda would've been announced by now.

The Problem I have with Daybreak Illusion (or is Daybreak Illusion worth watching)

The problem I have with Daybreak Illusion (or its infinity harder to remember title—il sole penetra le illusioni) is that the best thing I can say about it is simultaneously the worst thing I can say about it: it's okay. There's no iceberg ready to drag it to its watery grave, but then there's nothing to elevate it to be a titanic title in the first place.

Daybreak Illusion starts out by introducing us to our main character Akari, whom works as a tarot card fortune teller. Not wishing to spoil, Akari is thrust into a battle between the forces of the Tarot Card association and the Daemonia; the former being a magical girl organization and the latter being a group of humans-turned demons through trickery and deceit. From there she is paired up with an ice-wielding stoic, a genki-girl magical girl whom wields money as a weapon and kenomimi who can manipulate plants.

While the premise is standard at best and generic at worst, effort it put into trying to create a world that isn't as black and white as it seems on paper. The unfortunate part is that it fails. The problem is that there is no moral dilemma where the anime wants you to think there is. Regardless of the situations that drove humans into becoming Daemonia, they have no control of their actions anymore and are, in effect, the same as rabid dogs.

The characters likewise feel so very samey. We have the stoic girl who has a dark past and eventually opens up the main character. We have the kenomimi whose sole character trait is that she loves the main character and is jealous, but won't speak up about it. Then there's the genki girl—an archetype I still haven't gotten tired of. Finally Akari, who is a mary-sue, but not so much that she's fun. Tatsuya Shiba, for me, was a fun Mary Sue because there was nothing that even came close to being a credible threat to him. The anime was less creating situations where he was in real trouble but would prevail through sheer deus ex machina, and more creating situations to convince us as the audience that he was in danger when he was nothing of the sort.

Akari: saves all her friends, earns their undying respect, gains massive inexplicable power-ups, is unconditionally loved by everyone but one or two, and has boundless generosity. She feels like one of those blank slates that the audience can project themselves onto, but the dark nature of the show really prevents me from doing that.

The plot is alright. It's fairly straightforward and the twists are either weak or predictable. Half of the series is spent doing monster of the week, mini character arcs. The rest I won't spoil for those interested, but suffice it to say it's nothing new.

The two things the show does well are the soundtrack, courtesy of Tatsuya Kato (Mirai Nikki, Free!, Shokugeki no Soma) and the animation.  The soundtrack does well to provide a dramatic flair to the fights and the animation has a surprising amount of frames and color. The problem is that neither of the two these are so good that I could recommend watching it for them alone. Kato's soundtrack here is great, but it's been better and the animation, while stylized, isn't near the quality of other grade A studios. 

Is Daybreak Illusion worth watching? I don't know. It depends on how okay you are with watching archetypes you've seen before perform similar roles. Like I said it does nothing wrong, but it doesn't do much right either. 

Thanks for reading, sorry for the delay last week. For some reason I had a serious case of writer's block when it came to this particular anime, but with any luck I'll be back on track next week. 

Dealy^2

Not that you didn't see this coming. I'm going to delay this review until next weekend, because otherwise I'm going to be publishing an underdeveloped review that would really just waste a reader's time. Please forgive me.

Jyu-Oh-Sei and Potential

 Jyu-Oh-Sei is a mess. I've been sitting here trying to think of a catchy hook, but an hour's lollygagging and a pot of a coffee have net me that monolith of a statement. That's what it is though...boom.

Adapted from the 1993 anime of the same name Jyu-Oh-Sei, follows twin brothers, Thor and the other one, who are jettisoned to a prison planet called Chimaera after their parents are killed by the government. Filled to the brim with all sorts of flora and fauna united under the banner of human devouring horrors. Thor must figure out a way to rise to the top of the gladiatorial society and become the Beast King. Only then will Thor gain answers, closure and vengeance.

This anime is all about the peaks and troughs. At its highest, Jyu-Oh-Sei is utterly captivating; BONES quality animation and choreography gives way to action scenes that are made all the better when coupled with a fantastic soundtrack from Hajime Mizoguchi (Vision of Escaflowne, Jin-Roh) and meaningful stakes. Throughout the first half of the series, effort is put into making the world feel alive and dangerous—a kind of back to roots world where humanity doesn't toss wine at the masses from the top of the food chain. This is emphasized by a main character who feels genuinely helpless.

Thor doesn't feel so much like someone who shapes the world around him as he does someone caught in the current of something much greater. For some he matters as much as a grain of sand, and is treated as such, for others he represents a pawn used for some grand ambition, and still others genuinely care about him with an ulterior motive. Even with all his ambitions, Thor is constantly barely eking out victories without some assistance.

All of this meshes together to create a cohesive package that acts as the perfect setup to a grand sci-fi adventure. One filled with warring factions, political intrigue and the gradual acclimation of power...but then it kinda stops. One time-skip later and everything's gone sour.

Thor is suddenly calm, collected, has become an accomplished swordsman,  and used his education to improve the quality of life in his clan drastically. All of this he did off-screen. Thus instead of seeing a young brash ambitious Thor turn into this calm stoic badass, we get the beginnings of that before being spring-boarded into a completely different character. The new Thor looks and sounds to be in his twenties (although officially sixteen) and is perfectly equipped to handle any situation with nary a trace of fear or panic.

                                  Damn good OST though.
It's not just Thor that gets shafted, the plot suddenly takes a dive into the romantic as we are introduced to a character I can only describe as the love vertex. After three episodes of characterization, here's what I got; she likes Thor and Zagi and wants to have her own reverse harem. Of course Thor falls in love with her at first sight and of course she really only exists to create the story more tragic. The anime then makes a suicidal charge back to the plot as though it were Gallipoli. The final two episodes create more questions than they answer and provide a kill 'em all ending without the development to make me care all that much.

Jyu-Oh-Sei is one of those anime/manga that would've benefited from a longer run-time. If the time-skip had been filled and some of the ending re-worked we could've had a hell of a story. As it stands Jyu-Oh-Sei is a story with great potential, but which ultimately never lives up to it.

Thanks for reading, would love a like, favorite etc. Goodnight.

Is Bokurano Worth Watching/Reading?

Bokurano:Ours really is a 'the manga is better' snob's wet dream; not in the least because the director dislikes the series himself. We're talking rewritten characters, reworked plots, and an ending leaves me about one dead character short of satisfaction. Complete with a tone that is 4kids level of lighter and you have quite the conundrum. Yet different doesn't necessarily mean bad, and thus the question is posed—is Bokurano worth watching? 

Bokurano is 2003 manga by Mohiro Kitoh which was latter adapted into a 2007 anime with about four out of the total eleven volumes left unpublished. It follows the tale of a group of fifteen teens who after stumbling into a typical Konami workplace, are instructed to sign a contract in order to play a new experimental game. A game where you and your friends pilot a giant robot and fight aliens. 

 
The twist is that if you lose you die in real life...because this is real life. No worries though since a clean victory also nets you a one way trip to the grave. Realistically, you're less a pilot and more a living battery. A loss means that your entire universe goes tumbling down the drain, so at least there's that. Also not getting in the fucking robot isn't an option; either you're teleported back to the machine or you stall for forty-eight hours and the universe still ends. On the bright side, there's no always-on DRM, but day-one dlc is present—so if you end up with a crapshoot giant mech, you only have yourself to blame.

As well as serving as fuel for the Ferrari F12berlinetta of the giant mech world, the characters are what drive the story. Each has their own reasons to fight in the machine; some do it to protect the ones they love, others use it as a tool of revenge and one doesn't do anything at all. What's so refreshing about the approach is that both you and the characters are completely certain of their inevitable fate. Unlike many other dark series, the work is not about trying to survive in a world where the chances of you not dying a grisly death are right up there with hitting it big with Mega Millions and more about confronting certain death.

When I say that the plot is formulaic I want to stress that I don't mean to a attach a negative connotation to the phrase. Like Eva or Raxephon (to a much lesser extent) the anime is a dark twist on the monster-of-the-week style super robot shows of days past. A typical arc usually begins with the death of the previous pilot after which a voice is heard by the next pilot. Most of the remaining time will be spent letting the viewer/reader get acquainted with the pilot, as well as giving us insight into how this person deals with their fate. While not all of the arcs got me totally invested in the pilot, enough did that I would've cried a river if I wasn't so jaded by Ideon. 

So is Bokurano worth reading/watching? Without a doubt. The real question is which one to go with. There are a number of factors, but most of them come from my heavy manga-leaning bias (seriously if you are going with the anime, go back and read ch 46-48 for the best fight in the series) That basically boils down to one question; how dark do you want it? On the scale of things, the anime is more of a light roast moccaccino while the manga is more a black dark roast. Some characters are rewritten to make them more sympathetic or lighten things up a little. While the general consensus is that the manga is better, I will say that the fights in the anime are a sight to behold and personally I found them easier to follow. 

Whatever the case, thanks for reading! Here's your reward.Unlike aforementioned mech, I don't run on your lives, but favorites, likes and follows all help stave off the hunger.

Is Strike the Blood Worth Watching?

 Okay let's not bat around the bush; Strike The Blood is stupid. Better than your average stupid, but stupid nonetheless. Don't come here for any kind of philosophical game of badminton, or to see Akatsuki-kun's journey of self discovery and life-changing epiphanies. It's an action harem in almost every sense of the word. However I think that there are a few key distinctions that set it apart from its counterparts.

Okay, honestly I could not spice the premise up with anything less than a ghost pepper. So anything on my part is going to be a reiteration of the wiki article on the thing...here's the link though...

To start with the show really de-emphasizes the school-life aspect of the main characters lives. Instead the anime creates a series of stories that strike a balance between the more episodic style one commonly finds in western series and the more arc based style that many shonnen are based around. The result is a series that has a feeling more akin to the likes of A Certain Magical Index than to other school-based action harems.

Unlike A Certain Magical Index, though, the anime initially makes us think that, as the Fourth Progenitor (Super-vampire of sorts?), Akatsuki is the vampirical paper-weight that will tip the supernatural scale of power, no-one really gives a shit. Therefore there are a grab bag of different arcs included. These can range from battle with ancient mech spider tanks to time traveling dragons.

Honestly it really is the plot arcs that drive the show, the animation is fine, but never jaw-dropping—likewise for the music. Everything has this really weird multi-colored outline around it during fight scenes, which either adds or detracts from the visuals. Y'know honestly I was leaning more towards this show being worth watching than not, but it really is a bog-standard show. The only thing it really has going for is its plot structure. Even then, something like Raildex does the same, but with better characters and fight sequences. It does have a nice OP though.

                                      
 Is Strike The Blood worth watching? I'm going to leave this on a maybe because it is better than a lot of other action harem shows and its attempt to focus on plot-lines rather than harem hijinks is admirable. Admittedly it does follow the beaten path readily on the fan-service side of things... On the whole there are better ways to spend your time with this. Thanks for reading! Likes, favs and follows are nice. Hope to see you next week! 

Note--Sorry for this not going up on time. I'm away on vacation and thought I had scheduled this to be published automatically last Saturday.   

Is Garo The Animation Worth Watching?

The Animation is a phrase that a would've granted the anime coupled with it a trip to the firing squad, a couple of years ago. Of course that was before Ping Pong: The Animation not only escaped the orbit of the phrase but managed to make Ping Pong the most exciting thing since sliced bread. And that's not nothing. But while the advent of Ping Pong left me in a state of pleasure bordering on orgasmic, it was unable to quell my fears completely. So the question remains; does GARO escape from break free from the toxic grasp of its subtitle or will it pull a colony drop? 

With his mother burned at the stake as he was born and being the heir of a set off golden wolf armor that compels him to hunt monsters that feed on humanity's penchant for greed, a lust for power, and the other kind of lust, Leon would be the ideal poster boy for a hug donation drive. Coupled with a father that feels it his solemn duty to produce an heir to his own magical set of wolf armor, Leon should have more than enough reason to be that angstiest teen to have ever angst. Thankfully Leon substitutes than angst with anger and vengeance, and instantly becomes smoldering stare incarnate. Together with his father and allies he will gain in the future Leon will battle the sinister puppet-master of a totalitarian regime while struggling with his inner turmoil and 90's anime haircut.

GARO is kind of a like a fine wine; one that takes approximately 12 episodes to taste like heaven in a bottle. Pretty much everything is improved by the end; be it characters, pacing, stakes or fight scenes. To put this in perspective—it took me half a season to finish the first twelve episodes and half a day to finish the rest. 

Special attention is given to making Leon the most unlikeable dick in the first half, only so they can make the contrast in his character all the more stark by the end. Even his relation with his father, which seems like a vehicle for some needed comic relief is developed to a point where it felt real. The second half brings in a cast of characters that stay around for more than an episode and are able to be developed to the point where they matter both to the viewer and other characters. Which makes it all the more heartbreaking when they die. 

Animated by MAPPA the anime isn't a bad looker, although opinions may vary as to how well the copious amounts of CGI work during the fight scenes. At worst it's tolerable; at best it's this 

With both openings performed by JAM Project, the anime is no slouch in the sound department either with an OST that does its job well. 

So is GARO worth watching? If you can get through the first cour then definitely. With a great cast of characters, some damn good fights, and a world that grows darker with every passing episode, GARO makes me all the more anxious for second season coming this fall.

So thanks for reading! Likes follows and the likes are appreciated and with about fifteen minutes to midnight I've barely made good on my weekly update thing. Hope to see you again!

Update sorta thing

Hello! So I'm going to try to do something of a reboot of this blog, hopefully making this a weekly thing. Of course, I'm not so productive that I'd hammer out an actual schedule, but I'm hoping to do a review a week. Perhaps some weeks I'll do more discussion like things a la Gundam Seed Destiny and the Military Industrial Complex.  My marathon of Hunter X Hunter has kind of left me with a short stock of anime to review, but expect a review of GARO:Honoo no Kokuin or GARO: The Animation either Saturday or Sunday. Thank you for reading this, and I hope to see you on Saturday or Sunday!