Mekaku City Actors Anime Review

Spring season was a weird one this year. J.C. Staff broke their track record of great romance anime that made me squeal like a schoolgirl with Dai Shogun. An anime so bad, that despite the giant target it painted on its head I couldn't drag myself through the rest of its 12 episodes to pull the trigger. While on the other hand Studio Brain's Base came out that with an anime that I am so biased about, the review might very well be featured on Fox.

How is this in anyway related to Mekaku City Actors? It's not, why do you ask?

Mekaku actors is anime about Shintaro. A shut in, who unlike most of us, has a reason for shutting the world out behind layers of anime and forum posts about how 'the manga was so much better.' He is the main charac--- actually I lied. This anime is about an idol named Momo. She has a problem that most of us can only dream of--that being that everyone likes her too much. Which I would say on the scale of things would exist only slightly on the first world problems side of—this anime is about a monster and her kids who—okay if you haven't gotten that this anime is confusing as all hell allow me to bludgeon you over the head with it; THIS ANIME IS CONFUSING AS ALL HELL.

See there's a little problem this anime has. It tries to take a massive amount of source material and cram it all into the span of 12, 20 minute, episodes. Which, in terms of telling a coherent story, is about as small small as the mental issues of people claiming that Obama is a socialist terrorist trying to overthrow the 'murican dream.

If you're going to have a cast large enough to make up a small nation, you need to the screen time to, I don't know, develop them. It doesn't matter how well it does in developing the characters if the time it has to do so is as much as a play-through of Half Minute Hero. But if the fight for character equality is what they were trying to win, let me just say that they lost so horribly they Brazil look like Napoleon Bonaparte. 

See aside from splitting the already small measure of time among a large group of time, the anime really likes to play favorites. Like seeing Mary compete with Momo over the Ms. Moe award? Great, not like it matters because Mary is voiced by Kana Hanazawa! You like Seto? 

  Not to mention that the anime is constantly playing catch-up. Characters are constantly having dream sequences, flashbacks or otherwise complaining. It's almost as though Shaft didn't give it enough time for full character development.

Now that's not to say that the anime has nothing going for it in the character department. That being this guy. That being Hibiya, the little boy who started out as an annoying brat, but slowly became my favorite character of the whole lot (Ironically is voiced by Misuzu Togashi, who seems to be the queen of such characters). Who's only distinguishing characteristic from the other wimpy character who goes for a girl for reasons that no-one else can comprehend, is that instead of said girl stalking him and killing everyone he cares about, she ignores him like yesterday's trash. See he gets a whole episode devoted to him and benefits because of it. Not to mention his development happens in real time.
 


Now, while I'm certainly no Einstein , I don't consider myself stupid and am generally able to follow complex plots in things like Game of Thrones or the Wire, but hand me a fiddle and call me psyduck because I was confused. 

Then again, what can you expect when your show is produced by anime's equivalent of Picasso on  an acid trip, with a plot-line with the consistency of the political climate in Israel being set hundreds of years in the future.

Even the aforementioned episode with good character development left me dazed and confused.  To give an example one episode involved a girl repeatedly getting run over by a truck, with
 the protagonist  trying and failing to save her,until finally taking her place. Without giving away any more, this never seemed to have much impact on the real world as a physical manifestation ended up having the real consequences. 

Whoah sorry had a bit of Déjà vu

Like I said when talking about Captain Earth, I have absolutely no problem with an anime treating me like someone with a higher IQ than your average George Bush, but there is a balance between expositional dialogue and completely isolating anyone who hasn't received a P.H.D in bullshit.
 
Like the characters the plot of the anime had potential. I love the idea of time looping, with anime like Higurashi and All you need is kill proving that this can work. It's an original structure of storytelling that unlike the traditional time travel concept has not been recycled to stage where if not for the amount of car chases, I'd think that Hollywood was going green.

Problem is Mekaku wants to have its cake and eat it too. Let's compare; Higurashi, 50 episodes. Mekaku, 12. Hmmm, y'know for an anime about repeating the same series of events like a washing machine stuck on spin, that seems like a pretty damn short time. 

Yeah, remember the pain you felt as your favorite characters died horrible, horrible deaths while the anime dangled the words 'happy ending' in front of you face like a carrot on a string? See, Shaft knows that that gave so much more meaning to the ending and so development to the characters, that they decided to skip to the end. 

All the tragedy and character development happened, but do you ever get to see any of it? Silly, Shaft can't spend that much time on this, they have more important things to Bioshock and actually playing it yourself. No matter how well they tell it, it will never match up to experiencing do. Like procrastinating on releasing Kizumonogatari.

This results in the anime having so much of the potential stripped away from the show. It's the difference between having someone tell you how much fun they had playing something like it yourself. 

Since I've already wasted enough of your time, I'll keep this next part short; 

Overall the experience is best described as a roller-coaster, with the peaks of animation being higher than Colorado on the twentieth of April and the low points hitting rock bottom so hard you'd think that the whole thing was set in a quarry (don't worry that joke hurt me just as much as it did you). Special shout-out goes to the ninth episode for ruining good impressions of 3d animation leftover from Ars Nova. 

That Tree...

Now you might think from what I've said here, that my overall impression of the show was negative. Yet...hmm. I liked it...sorta.

The anime was fun, and as anyone who has seen any Shaft anime can testify to, even at its lowest points the anime was nice to look at. The plot and characters, if given enough time and a bit more exposition, had enough potential to become at least above-average if not becoming genuinely unique and interesting. Not to say that their bad here, but due to time constraints and an over-reliance on flashbacks as a means of development, they never manage to break out of the 'average' category. The plot, while confusing and riddled with enough plot holes to make it a 'holy grail' if you will, was entertaining and tried to keep things interesting. The sound design is great, with an all-star cast and some fantastic ost and insert songs. 

So I'd say that if you've really got your heart set on the latest Shaftien mystery wrapped up in an enigma, or if you've still got Edge of Tomorrow withdrawal, give it a shot. 

For the rest of you, my friend strongly recommends checking out the manga or light novels, which he says are much, much better.

Thanks for reading, and as always likes, follows and spreading the word is always appreciated! 
 

The Anime that you should be watching this season!

 Some anime will be mentioned that aren't in the tags! You can thank Blogger and its stupid character limit for that!

With Spring season rolling around and a flush of new anime sweeping away winter's favorites, many of us are lost. So many anime this season, whatever shall you do? That's what you asked three weeks ago when the season started, and now that I'm sure you have found the answers I'm here to tell you if you were wrong or right. Whether you think you picked the right anime to watch this season, you know that you can trust me, because this is the internet after all, well with that said, let's go!

Mekaku City Actors--- In it's current state, I think this anime is not only more confusing than End of Evangelion and trying to figure out how the hell J.C. staff produced Dai Shogun, it's also freaking enjoyable. You see for the past four weeks a friend of mine has been doing nothing but telling me how excited he is about this anime. So by the time it released on April 12th (I was force fed the information), I was more or less as hyped as he was. I'd love to give you a quick synopsis, but really your guess is as good as mine. I would say it is worth a shot, if not because my friend described it as a modern day Higurashi, if not because it has a Hatsune Miku ripoff in it, then because it's made by Shaft.

Gokukoku no Brynhildr---While the meaning behind the title makes as much sense as Kill La Kill, here's the anime I was really hyped for this season. Does the title Elfin Lied ring a bell? Described as 'gore porn' the anime remains one of the more...interesting anime I've ever seen. I'd also read the first chapter of the manga, so I was pretty damn interested. The basic concept is that a boy is met face to face with a person almost identical to the childhood friend that he is convinced he killed ten years before. Aside from an interesting concept, the anime features a solid history, being behind Elfin Lied, Wizard barristers,Maoyū Maō Yūsha and ...that's about it. When I said solid, I meant like pudding solid. They're also behind some of the worst anime I've ever seen (more accurately, tried to see) Queens Blade, Ikkitousen and I wanna be the strongest. From what I've seen voice acting is pretty damn good, animation is fantastic, haven't paid much attention to sound, but I do like the opening. The strongest thing this anime has going for it is its concept and atmosphere. Both of which are excellent and give me high hopes for the rest of the series.

Captain Earth----No, no, no, it's not what you think! This isn't Captain Planet, no matter how much Google images tells you different. This is the latest original work by Studio Bones, which in my opinion is the best studio that produces original work (non-adaptations) on a regular basis. Yep even better than Sunrise, come at me bro. To boil it down to the basics, then anime is about a boy named...Daichi? Who is the son of a pilot who sacrificed his life fighting of aliens...or something. Yes, in typical Bones fashion, you will not know what is going on until halfway through. One of the best and worst things about Bones, is it's accessibility. They're for the idea of showing rather than telling. All of the terms that they use will become clear after enough characters have used them. Until then, the anime is more confusing experience than watching Inception with a hookah (No, all you of you who just thought of what I know you thought of, look it up) Overall, however it is worth seeing if only for the amazing production values. Seriously, the entire nation of Japan could be eating filet Mignon for breakfast, lunch and dinner, if they had that kind of money. 

Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou---This was the surprise hit for me. I had no idea that this was coming out, and it's become my favorite anime this season. Due to a number of things, due in no small part to it's interesting characters, super artistic animation, nice score and Kana Hanazawa, Bokura wa Minna Kawai has really stood out to me. We have a serious lack of straight up romance anime these days. Before you take me away to the place with the soft pillow walls and nice people dressed in white again, allow me to explain. We have a severe lack of romance anime that are purely focused on a singular relationship. Sure plenty of anime come out every season tagged with the word 'romance', but usually they're also paired with the word 'harem'. I will fight you on this; I do not believe that a harem anime can ever beat out a straight up Romance anime in that category. I'm not counting love triangles here, by the way. Especially with the third episode, this anime has had me both laughing, and on the verge of tears (slight exaggeration). The basic idea behind the anime is that a boy wants to live on his own while his parents are away. They ship him off to the Kawai Complex, an apartment filled with people stranger than those you see on bad touch warning ads. Humor is a seriously subjective subject, but check it out—at the very least, you'll only be wasting time.

Ryuugajou Nanana no Maizoukin---I'd give this a recommendation because of its interesting concept, but I haven't watched enough to say differently, I'm sad to say.

There are a good amount of other series that have me excited, but none of them have wowed me enough to give a solid recommendation. Things I think have potential are; Black Bullet, Atelier Escha & Logy ~Tasogare no Sora no Renkinjutsushi~, Hitsugi No Chaika, No Game, No Life, Knights of Sidonia, Akuma no Riddle and Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii. I'm still trying to figure out whether Irregular at the Magic School (or whatever it's called) is going to turn into a harem or not. If you're wondering why Jo Jo isn't here, it's because I'm talking about new anime—not sequels.

As always, Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read this.  It does mean a lot to me. Obviously these views are subject to change—this being a first impressions of sorts. For all i know, Captain Earth could become a crock of Sh*t and Dai shogun could...not in a million years.  As a way of making up for the eight days of absence, I'm going to upload the Golden Time review this week, even if it kills me. Hope to see you next time!