Oreimo Anime review

Ok so not the greatest idea to start my blog with this kind of review, but I'll explain myself first. This review has gotten a lot of flak. This is especially true from casual anime fans/ people who haven't delved into the weirder stuff. That being said this anime is pretty mainstream, meaning a lot of people have seen it. So the point of this review is not to try to increase the show's popularity, but merely to make it less creepy than it actually is...er that came out wrong. To judge the anime for what it actually is regardless of what kind of themes it carries. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Oreimo, at first glance it’s a creepy otaku incest slice of life. At second glance however, it still is an incest slice of life. Yet as much as I hate to admit it, it is a pretty good show certainly for the first two seasons. Now my first reaction to this anime went along the lines of—this show is only for people who have a sister complex, but I decided to watch because A: it had gained enough popularity that I could no longer convince myself that it was just a show for people who had incest fetishes and B: I wanted to see what people liked about the show . In other words just got curious. Now imagine my surprise when twelve episodes had gone by and I was still being entertained. Why? well I’m hoping to answer that in the next few minutes.

Story- I’ll get to the point, it’s slice of life—Next! No seriously there isn’t much of a plot here. The basics are as follows. Brother and sister have a bad relationship Brother finds out sister is an otaku, adventure!

Animation-Let me just say that the animation isn’t going to blow you away. The art style isn’t anything spectacular, especially on the environments, but it doesn’t need to be. The character art style is good and the animations on characters are good when they need to be. A nice little touch is that since this is an otaku based anime, there sometimes are sometimes anime playing in the background. They don’t even emphasize them. It’s a little touch, but a nice one.

Soundtrack-solid openings and endings, If you like electronic, synthesized stuff you’re going to enjoy it. The soundtrack accurately matches what’s going on onscreen, and it certainly is different. It’s a weird soundtrack. I mean of course it has the typical piano in the sad parts, but overall it’s weird, but really good. I mean it strikes a good balance between being distinguishable and unique while also not being distracting. Voice actors are very good, with standouts being Saori Hayami as Ayase and Kana Hanazawa as Kuroneko. The voice actor for Kyosuke was good, but didn’t get the heart wrenching scenes that both the actress had the opportunity for. The only annoying voice actress was Manami, who sounded like a barbie doll.

Characters-Characters are where this anime is supposed to shine, and for the most part it does. Each of the characters was fleshed out to the extent that they were likeable and understandable, yet none of the characters feel like they are the center, save for Kyosuke for obvious reasons. In this way none of the characters vying for Kyosuke’s affection are fiends who you would wish would get the the hell out of the anime *cough* Siesta *cough*. I found the only character that falls through in this amazing cast is Kirino. Now sting me up for this one, but of all the characters, I simply couldn’t like her. She comes across as your typical tsundere and doesn’t have much development until the end of the series. I found myself getting tired of her crazy mood swings and snappy insults. Not many of her lines were very witty, and I think her scenes could have been made a lot more enjoyable by throwing some slapstick in the mix. As I said she does get fleshed out towards the end, but before that she doesn’t hold a candle to other characters.

I don't think I even need a caption here

Romance-Since this is in fact a Romance comedy, the real question is whether or not the Romance is any good. Well the answer is yes and nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! I am going to give no word on the matter of the incestual themes this anime has and instead focus on the Romance itself. Kyosuke goes through hell for his sister, from getting her to make otaku friends, to standing up for her hobbies to her father, to helping resolve a conflict between Kirino and her best friend. Other hints of pairings pop up in the form of Kuroneko or Ruri, Ayase and to a lesser extent Manami. Each character gets a few episodes to have their moments with Kyosuke and none of them are annoying, my personal favorite being Ayase, whose Psychopathic tendencies can be hilarious, plus slapstick. Now excuse me as I get a little serious here and a little spoilerific, though it’s a spoiler you should see coming a mile away. At the climax of the anime Kyosuke defends his love for Kirino. Now don’t take this the wrong way, I Do not support incest, however the arguments that Kyosuke presents are thought provoking and begs the question: how much can society limit us? How important is our societal standings compared to our emotions and core beliefs. I will not spoil the ending for those of you who are going to watch the series from start to finish, but in my opinion it is the worst ending to a romance anime I have seen thus far. It doesn’t make sense and makes the events of the last five or so episodes utterly pointless.

Overall I enjoyed my time with Oreimo. There! I said it! It was a fun comedy romance and I think that if only it had a better ending it would be one of my favorites. I recommend this anime for the excellent characters, fantastic soundtrack, and some good comedic moments scattered throughout. I say give this a try. I mean, if you can ignore the incest stuff then I’m sure you’ll love it. If you can’t get by that, then I think that you should at least give it a try. It’s not for everybody, and as I said, the ending ruined the anime for me, but it’s a fun ride for most of it. So a decent recommendation from me this anime gets.  

Thank you for reading this review!

Gundam 00 1st season Anime review

First off thanks for visiting my blog thing. The intent of this blog is pretty simple. To get as many people into shows I think are really cool and deserve more attention than they actually get. So what that means is that, unless i am voicing an unpopular opinion about a popular show, nothing like Attack On Titan gets in. Without further ado.

Gundam. How this name plucks at my sixteen year old heart strings. Basically the Gundam series and I have a little bit of history. Gundam seed was the first series I ever watched period. From there I have watched Gundam Wing, G Gundam, The original Gundam, 08th ms team, all that’s out from Unicorn. After watching all these, a pattern emerged. Space colony has super mecha called gundam, reluctant hero fights, blonde guy appears donning a mask, blows colony up, embark on special ship, and flee. This happens in Gundam, Gundam Seed, Gundam Age, and Gundam Unicorn. I am I the only one who doesn’t like this? Anyway when Gundam 00 popped up I kinda figured it would be the same as all the rest, well simply put i was wrong. I’ll just say it so you hardcore Gundam fans can flog me now with dislikes rather than at the end of the thing. This is my favorite Gundam series. Hell it might be my favorite mecha series.

The plot-Well it’s sorta like gundam wing. Four gundams wage a war with Earth. They do so in the name of a private armed organization called celestial being. This organization is dedicated to ending war. That’s it for the first season. I can’t talk about the second season, because spoilers and stuff, but the second season is a much more linear straight forward plot than the first and is a whole lot more cheery. The first season, is probably one of the darker incarnations of gundam I have seen thus far. Yes it has the same themes of war and stuff we’ve all come to know and love about the gundam series, but it also has political intrigue. Many of the early episodes are about Celestial being intervening in conflicts and the political consequences that come out of their actions. Since their mission statement is to eradicate war, they are required to intervene in every single conflict. This means that they in many instances they are used for political gain. The plot therefore consists mainly of 1 to 2 part episodes until around episode 14. It’s a very good storyline, in the sense that it’s really unclear where the series is actually going. It doesn’t have a predictable plot line, seeing as there are no real ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’ everyone is colored in grey.

Visuals-The visuals are stunning. I cannot put this in any other way. There are two reasons for this, one is simply that most of the plot occurs on Earth, making for a much more colorful and dynamic background during fight scenes. Now this is just speculation, but consider this. Gundam seed had fifty episodes airing in a single year. Gundam 00 has 25 episodes in the first season. Logically if each of the series had the same budget, then each episode of gundam 00 has twice the budget of a seed episode. It shows. There aren’t a lot of repeating frames, in fact I had a hard time finding them. Another thing that helps is the GN particles. More of this please! I don’t have the scientific knowledge to verify that these things actually could exist, but they make the fight scenes look fantastic! If you’re looking for cool action scenes, then you won’t be disappointed. The fact that there are now four gundams also means that you don’t have the ‘gundam’ syndrome I hear so many people complaining about. While the suits are powerful, there is no longer one suit capable of taking out an entire army, looking at you strike freedom. 

Among the best Gundam designs I have seen

Audio- Sound assets are great, with a solid soundtrack that can stay epic in the good scenes and not distract you from the battle or talking scenes. Speaking of dialogue, there is a lot of it. For this the voice actors have to be up to par, and I’m glad to report that they most certainly are. In both Japanese and English the voice actors are fantastic, though I would have to lean slightly towards the japanese dub, seeing as the voice actor for Setsuna, in my humble opinion is slightly better than his english counterpart. Even with my biased opinion, it is definitely one of the better english dubs I’ve heard.

Characters- The characters in this anime are generally good. Each of the meisters have their own motivation for joining celestial being, and each are revealed slowly, so that each has some mystery about them. Every character is interesting and entertaining with only a few exceptions. The series tries to introduce the civilian perspective by having the lot unfold through the eyes of two civilians. It does this well especially toward the end, where the paths of the two plotlines collide. I can’t complain about the characters seeing as they are supposed to have certain views in order to entertain a certain kind of viewpoint, but they were straight up annoying in the beginning. The character whom I cannot stand is Marina freakin Ismail. She provides the ‘oh why do we have to fight, war is terrible’ perspective. She is the Relena of the series. I have nothing against a character of this archetype, except for two things. One she gets in the way of my shippings! and more importantly no matter what she is always advocating peace, peace, peace, and can’t get it through that thick skull of hers that yes, peace is the ideal way of solving a conflict, but we don’t live in an ideal world. Look I love peace as much as the next guy, but everything in moderation. For instance, while it is completely true that Gandhi's revolution worked very well, in a situation like say, the Cuban revolution, things might not have turned out so well.  She is my one complaint with the series. From what I’ve seen on forums no-one has many complaints about this, but I really hate her. She’s so wimpy, hell even Relena picked up a gun once in the series! Even Saji, who is a whiny bastard with equally pacifist views, fights in the second season! I hate her so much! 

Don't let her looks deceive you, she is evil! Well not really...but you get the point!

Wrapping up, I love this series, and even though it has two really annoying characters, the rest of the cast is spot on, with great action, a dark complicated storyline, and an ending that still sends chills up my spine.

Highly reccomended.