Detective's Profile - Reviews

Last OnlineJul 28, 2022 4:37 AM
GenderMale
BirthdayAug 31
LocationTokyo
JoinedJul 13, 2009

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Dec 3, 2017

Kubikiri Cycle: Aoiro Savant to Zaregotozukai (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Superimposition and retrospect ultimately lead to this abomination. This is an amateur work by NisioIsin developed, marketed, packaged, and sold in a post-Bakemonogatari world. This is the greatest undoing of this work, but to understand why this project failed beyond direct content we have to tackle a series of other shortcomings first.

1. Closed room murder mystery featuring a cast of geniuses.
2. The ever tired and tiring fantasy that is the coming of age narrative.
3. The once-iconic now-generic SHAFT direction style.

1. Vagueness is not profundity
The story is set on an isolated island where an assorted group has been assembled by a quirky patron of ... the arts. There are around ten characters in the story. Only two are men, including the protagonist. Most of the other characters are famous in their universe for their ability, not much unlike the setting of Danganronpa fused with the backdrop of Umineko. They are blandly introduced with a title card to signify their importance. There is the adorable chef, the hotheaded fortune teller, and the disabled artist among others. This is the first sin of Zaregoto, as it uses this introduction as a heavy crutch to get it's weird premise off the ground. The rule of "show, don't tell" is a simple filmmaker principle that if you want someone to relate to something on film, do not haphazardly state "that character is smart." Show the audience through visual work the aforementioned character is capable of being smart.

Our protagonist, a high school age male, is visiting this island with a "genius engineer" whose abilities are never really explained as she is almost completely absent in this story. He is quickly entrenched in a murder mystery, and instead of the homeowner calling the police, she insists they solve the mystery themselves. The stage is set for the sleuthing to begin, but... it never really does. The completely tone devoid foray into motives make this first a whodunnit which then rapidly develops into a coming of age story. The deaths are played off as inconsequential compared to the ravings of young adult self-deprecation. Our protagonist is unsure of himself and of his intellect and spends all eight episodes frustrated about his severe normalcy. After being foisted into an unbelievable and at least interesting scenario it is very disappointing that most of the work is spent soliloquizing about "being average." This lead me to believe the goal of Zaregoto was never actually to be a story of intrigue but a story of growth. So if Zaregoto isn't a mystery it must be something else?

2. Zaregoto doesn't know what it is.
The word zaregoto is used in japanese to mean "nonsense" and it's supposed to be tongue in cheek but it's also supposed to be extremely serious. Irony, which worked more easily in NisioIsin's other works perhaps because they are partly comedy, is frustratingly used in this work to hide shortcomings. Where a character development should happen a platitude in the form of irony rests. The script drones on and on about vague notions of "sense of self" and "knowledge" to wind up at a head-tilt and smirking quip. This would be fine if Zaregoto didn't do this in every interaction. What once was novel is now textbook. Most scenes feel redundant, and the dialogue between any two characters feels alien. Each character is so weirdly inhuman that eventually you become desensitized to the weird interactions and just shrug them off. When every character is a suspect, every interaction trumped up as hugely important, and every thing that happens supposedly integral to solving "the mystery" you begin to doubt how honest this work really is.

3. SHAFT no longer innovates
SHAFT's work in Bakemonogatari is monumental for editing in anime. Since 2009, SHAFT has begun to use the same wide lens shots, cut-to's, framing, and jump cuts in every work. The fact that shots and even color pallet in works like Nisekoi are almost identical to Bakemonogatari is alarming. Tonally those two works don't have a thing in common. Sadly, Zaregoto is no exception. Where this style worked in Bakemonogatari, where the literal and metaphoric often became visual gag or symbolic, the script of Zaregoto cannot hold. Tracking shots or wide lens shots feel lazy and often lead to a sense of disconnect. The close-ups are held too long, the backdrops feel empty and surrealistic, and the characters are framed jarringly. The true visual irony of the work is that while this work boasts a strange direction style, it would actually benefit with less "creative" shots. This "auteur SHAFT style" has become a crutch, and Zaregoto is the sloppiest offender yet.

Conclusion: Safety, Redundancy, and Resignation
NisioIsin wrote this as his first published work. Re-contextualizing Zaregoto for a post-bakemonogatari audience only hurt whatever this work originally intended. It became muddled in the mixed tone, the "tried and true" direction, and finishes feeling like a diminutive version of other works. Zaregoto is in actuality a generic coming of age story about a boring Japanese highschooler dressed in extremely elaborate lace. It is done up as a mystery, where the mystery is unsolvable and trite. It has these wacky characters with titles like "Genius Artist" that really don't feel any different from any other anime. It is even occasionally shot as a harem with needless sexual shots of characters that the script can barely justify for existing. All these come together and ultimately just feel insulting. It's too much yet it's trying too hard to look like it doesn't care. It intends to wow, but never executes. Forced restraint simply gives this poorly written hodgepodge an air of superiority it can't justify. I don't know if Zaregoto can ever be done well given the content, but I am certain that this anime was the worst way to handle it.

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May 26, 2017

Koe no Katachi (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Koe no Katachi is dangerous because it is exploitative. I'm not going to pretend to know anything about deaf people. I don't. This movie certainly does not allow any greater understanding into the mind of deaf people is the point I want to iterate. It uses a serious problem as a plot device constantly and reduces Nishimiya to one-dimension. She is the textbook definition of a mary-sue as well as a damsel in distress. This is clearly troublesome when trying to explain deafness to an able-bodied audience.

Nishimiya's entire character is her illness. She is paper thin with her sole character trait being she likes ... to feed fish. She is so inhuman it is gross. Moe being used in this way is offensive. Including deafness or any other handicap into anime is an exciting idea, and I laud the attempt. Sadly, the execution is simply sickening. A personality-less self-insert male character who wants to repent for mistakes he made when he was a child falls in love with the object of his errs. It's inherently questionable to approach this topic from a romantic perspective because it's hard to sympathize with an object. And that is what Nishimiya is, an object. To be affected on, for us to pity, for us to see illness in a "new light," to justify against bullying, to see the indomitable human spirit. A show like Monster works this concept excellently because it uses the object of interest (Johan) as more of a symbol. This work tries to make Nishimiya a character as deeply developed as Shouya but they foist too many roles on an underdeveloped symbol, not even mentioning her role as a character.

Shouya, Ueno, and Ishida are all flat. Their motives are drawn to plot points not to logic. Ueno shows up when things finally start moving in a direction the audience would be satisfied with in tacky KyoAni fashion. Drama in this work is so over-the-top and predictable it's borderline cringe-worthy. Even if you could swallow the unbelievable developments that lead to the saccharine mid-section of the film the way it dissolves is so inauthentic. Shouya shows no signs of development and no effort to change throughout the work and then magically obtains a group of friends.

As for the abstract? The art? If you polish it up enough and use a voice technique the audience is unfamiliar with you have the safest ticket to visual and audio praise you can muster. Are there creative shots in this work? Impressive blocking of characters? Fresh setting or new takes on animation/style? No. This is a typical KyoAni work. They stuck with what sells.

What the point is thematically I can't tell you. I can tell you that this film is successfully doing what it wanted to do. Capitalize on disease using moe with the highest budget in the industry. This work is not even average, it is bad. Please stop and think about why you feel the way you do when you watch this work. If you're crying is it because Nishimiya is a person you have become endeared by or are you crying because she's like an injured puppy? Affection for things like this a wonderful human trait, but this work is dubious.

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May 12, 2017

Brave Witches (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Ten years ago "moe anthropomorphism" was a bit of a new thing. The shock that you could turn WWII fighter jets into small Japanese and British girls and pit them against literal space-nazis in a weird U.N. coalition alternate timeline that also featured superpowers granted only to the aforementioned pubescent girls was new. The final item in the mix? None of them are ever wearing pants. It was an ecchi-military-action-moe-comedy that catered to such an incredibly niche audience you couldn't help but be endeared. The question of who would watch this was overshadowed by how was this made. Of course, Strike Witches became a cult ... classic.

Now after two seasons, a film, and some spin-off OVAs the second iteration of Strike Witches called Brave Witches is here. With the exception of cameos, none of the original cast of characters return. The original series seemed to be pretty concluded, so the existence of this third season is already a bit confounding. You could honestly watch this series as a standalone work and I'm pretty sure that was why this work involved a name change instead of a sequential numbering. It's formulaic to the original work down to the final battle, and Brave Witches greatest problem is that the shock value has completely worn off.

The reason why Strike Witches worked was because it was so bombastic and so unapologetic. There were episodes dedicated to dumb ecchi shenanigans in ways that made your jaw drop. These were never overtly sexual, they were just really really ridiculous. Episodes dedicated to one of the girls refusing to put on underwear to attend an award ceremony and another one involving how to pick up brooms with your ass. These thinly veiled attempts at keeping the viewer involved worked because they were so outrageous. The creators had come up with an insane and nonsensical setting, story line, and character backgrounds all for what? To show you panty shots. It sounds stupid and it is. But it's that overly-complex dedication that wooed me and others to this series.

The reason why Brave Witches doesn't work is because it is safe and repetitive. The characters still don't wear pants but it feels natural at this point. The shock of the new is gone, and the dedication to create insane new scenarios to perplex the viewer seems to have left the creators' minds. The narrative from episode one to twelve is an atypical shounen series. The main character decides to join the Brave Witches despite not having any talent for magic and then ends up attempting to save the world. The characters are more muted than they were in the previous series, with most of them barely receiving any characterization or memorable lines. The worst part is that each character seems to be a carbon copy of a character from Strike Witches. Even the visuals don't look like they have been updated since 2007. For a 2017 anime, Brave Witches feels like it's just punching the clock.

My parting words on this series is that I really didn't expect much from it and I was still let down. As a fan of Strike Witches the last thing I expected from Brave Witches was wholesome family content and that's what I got. If Brave Witches wanted to lecture me about camaraderie and familial bonds I genuinely wished these girls were wearing pants. And that is the saddest part of Brave Witches. I walked into a series that had a very unique feel to it and left feeling betrayed because that special spark the creators imbued into this universe was gone. What's left is a generic mess riding on the coattails of it's parent series former glory.

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Jun 29, 2015

Punch Line (Anime) add

Recommended

I have lusted after a good ecchi for years. My friends at MAPPA and Uchikoshi, the author of the Zero Escape video games series collaborated together to bring us just that. Like it's spiritual predecessor Kill la Kill, which virtually allowed the market for shows like this to be created once again, it is ecchi parody. The whole concept of the show is ecchi, the gag of reflexively destroying the world when chancing on panties immediately feels too obtuse. Why the hell would anyone ever watch something so blatantly dumb? Probably because if the narrative wasn't daringly original it would have been definitively the worst ... show to be made in quite some time.

With that said, the ecchi portions of the show are absurdly flashy and basically so in-your-face jokes that there is no ecchi at all. Punch Line is not an arousing show. It was not created with the purpose of being arousing. It was a slice-of-life mystery from episode one. It's a riotous comedy that inverts all sorts of terribleness from the known-to-all loved-by-none (or degenerate) genre of ecchi. It has everything; a zany premise, harem situation, super powers, nose bleeds, the promise of sex jokes, robots, time travel, ninjas, mascot characters, archetypal cast, forgettable lead, low-budget setting, and the list goes on. We are given the direct dose of horrible ecchi setting, but Punch Line just wants to shake you up a little bit. What if the ecchi setting was used for something other than... vapid and lustful entertainment?

We are dealt a handful of hilariously offbeat slice-of-life episodes and then as audience, MAPPA knocks in the head a few times. Were you paying attention? If you haven't seen Punch Line yet, look out - There's no men in the main cast.

The music arrangement in Punch Line is standard issue for the most part. It's electronic and it's ambient and retains some of the doujin and sugar coated feel that the opening brings. The opening theme is really an anthem though, a real stupid, a real catchy, and really bizarre anthem. An ecchi show is all about the assets. It does everything to get your attention. Yet where ecchi shows usually begin to shy away from sexualizing after a certain point, resigning that the audience either gets it or won't watch, they throw together a sloppily and hastily made opening and ending theme. Punch Line does the opposite. Since the show itself is barely about seeing panties or having perverted moments linger, the opening does that in a 90 seconds full salvo. The ending is the opposite, an innocent and childlike fantasy. This ending theme is often at odds with the shows rather dark themes of imminent destruction and isolation.

And that's actually what Punch Line is about. It's about a group of people with actually very little in common, living in the suburbs of Japan, in small rooms all right next door to each other. What do a bullied hikkikimori, annoying land-owner, a drunk floozy, and an ordinary school girl all have in common? Is it possible to live in such proximity to people and have no connection with them? The story of Punch Line is absurd and starts and ends promising, quite literally, the destruction of the world. And we get the destruction of the world. A couple times actually. But what Punch Line is a good flex of narrative muscle, bringing together originally stereotypical characters into a community that gives them just a little more innovation than the rest of the industry can do right now. Ecchi is a whole genre built on absurdism - how far can the label be pushed until the audience doesn't want to watch anymore and how far can the program go before the government axes production clean off the air for indecency. It is a totally unconventional place to actually enjoy a cast of characters, but Punch Line does it. Punch Line ends up being a believable story of unlikely friendships.

This completely absurd show with no boundaries and just an handful of troupes that the scriptwriter wanted to toy with actually manages to make you care. That is Punch Lines charm.

When you get down and dirty with Punch Line you end up with a more riveting and somehow believable conclusion than the finale of Steins;Gate. The finesse it takes to bring such a lurid and stupid premise and breathe life into a genre devoid of any human dignity makes for a grand display, one you can't believe. I have to seriously congratulate Punch Line for managing to show that Kill la Kill wasn't just a one and done thing. It takes a lot of lace to tie together a show this buoyant.

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Jun 28, 2015

Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka (Anime) add

Not Recommended

"Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon" is a goddamn abomination. JC Staff capitalizing on the video game anime craze was already a flag, but to go this far... is pathetic. This is every anime you have ever seen. This is everything wrong with anime. This anime is the exact reason why anime is ostracized at face value. This is what anime viewers should be trying to stop.

There is a story. It is hyper-simplistic. So stupid that anyone could understand it. Yet the plot points make little to no sense. The main character Bell Cranel starts his adventures with his well-endowed companion, ... the goddess Hestia. Why this girl is supposed to be Hestia I have no clue. She does nothing Hestia-esque. Her character design has nothing to do with Hestia. She's blatantly an oversexualized little girl with a bra made out of string. A quick aside - bras made out of string do not exist. They do not exist because they do not work.

So Bell Cranel and his representative goddess have to go into a dungeon to, like, do adventures or something (unexplained). But Bell Cranel is very weak so every episode an unforeshadowed deus ex machina pops out of nowhere and saves him. There is no character progression and no power scaling boundaries set. Then things get really crazy, because the bad guy gives Bell Cranel a very strong power for no reason at all.

The bad guy gives the main character super powers for an unexplained reason. All of the main characters powers are given to him for an unexplained reason. The villain, the evil character, the bad guy gives the protagonist, the good guy, the hero, his super powers. The rest of the anime is spent on everyone being impressed that the main character has super powers. Please note that it is completely unexplained why the bad guy gives the good guy his super powers. And why he can just have super powers.

And of course there is a harem. Of course the camera angles settle on poorly animated breasts whenever a girl is on the screen. Of course the fight scenes are embarrassing and the main character has to use his unexplained super power to kill the bad guy. I have no clue if this is supposed to be an underdog story or not because Bell Cranel is so overpowered yet everyone in the world wants to help him. Everything is contradictory.

The writing is abysmal. It is the worst writing I have seen in anime in a while. Every single character is an archetypal character with an archetypal backstory. There are three episodes spent on the lolita character they introduce in the middle of the season that are obvious and cringe worthy in terms of direction. You knew exactly what was going to happen. Every single scene was predictable, yet the script was just rehashed lines. The script is the nail in the coffin with gems like "I'll save you because you're a woman." They took garbage, put garbage on top of it, threw in a couple of minotaurs and little girls and sold it for 76 bucks per blu-ray after the current Yen to US Conversion rate. If you buy this anime, it's associated manga or light novels, figurines, buttons, pins, moist towelettes, and so on... you will hurt my feelings. I'll consider it a personal attack.

DanMachi is so terrible and so idiotic. Nothing is ever explained and the most random drama ensues at the most opportune times. The final episode is just one huge monster battle for, once again, a completely unexplained reason. Every episode something crazy happens and it simply does not get explained. Like Hestia's Divine Powers, or why Hermes is a jerk, or what Hephaestus and Crozzeo's relationship is... and... and... everything. But don't worry because I'm sure everything will be explained in season two! Even sarcastically that hurts to type.

Only watch this anime ironically. If you watch this anime ironically I'll still be upset with you. Take my advice like a doting mother or teacher who said you can redo a paper. I really care about you, anonymous, I really do. I want you to love anime. I want people to respect your great taste. I want you to succeed in life. Watching this anime won't help you get any of those things.

Please select one of the other of thousands of anime that exist. May I recommend Urawa no Usagi-Chan? That's probably better because there's only one level of irony. One level of irony is better than the many you're going to have to explain with this one. This is so bad it's bad bad and then a couple layers past that. It's so bad it's bad that it's still bad and that means that even if you think it's bad and know it's bad it can get worse because you knowingly fear it's badness as you watch it and understand completely that you are subjecting yourself to something that is just bad without any way to escape the badness because under no circumstances can you figure out how someone would think it's good so you resign yourself to just watching something that is bad. In simple terms, anonymous, this is very bad please don't watch it. Even if you do watch this anime to watch something bad and feel bad watching something bad I'll probably still be disappointed in you though, anonymous. Just don't do it please!!

And lastly, can someone please tell me why if they are descending the dungeon why the dungeon stretches into the sky? Does that even make any sense? And why can gods and goddesses just sneak into the dungeon like it's no big deal? And why is this world's entire economy based around some sort of video game spawn thing? Why is the elf so powerful? And do we really not care she murdered a bunch of people in cold blood? Is there no jail in this world? And just goddamn why? Why does this anime exist?!

All these questions and more - completely unanswered in season two of "Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon!"

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Jun 10, 2015

Omoide no Marnie (Anime) add

Not Recommended

With Studio Ghibli it's hard to separate the monoliths previous works from it's new ones. Even just last year Isao Takahata released his swan song "Kaguya Hime no Monogatari" which broke ground on an animation level, added narrative depth to a tenth century folk tale, and was certainly Ghibli's most ravishing work since Sen to Chihiro. Yet despite the narrative currently surrounding Studio Ghibli (a subsidiary of Disney no less) going under, Kageyabashi manages to weave an extremely simplistic and rather flat tale similar in pace to his previous effort Arietty.

Although based off of a novel, the story manages to be paced rather poorly and ... often tends to wander into pretentious ground. What starts as an awkward encounter laden with romantic undertones between two girls in the countryside ends up meandering into purely sentimental fog. The "twist" conclusion while not totally overplayed felt exhausting and tired, and the short duration of only 102 minutes flares frequently due to the unfeeling main heroine. Anna's character while understandably young, shows very little development throughout the narrative and instead simply does an about-face right after the conveniently written Hisako simply explains the entire story of Marnie. The mystery of the girl vanishes into thin air along with the girl herself, as Marnie's character too, is highly contradicting. As a child she was frequently bullied and harassed by the maids who took care of her, yet Marnie still holds "a great fondness" for the mansion in which she lived in. The inconsistency of Marnie's character which changes from a mentor-like friend towards Anna into a tormented coward seems all too confusing, and ultimately dissatisfying especially when comparing this films character study to other animated films in the same genre such as Flanders no Inu.

Visually Omoide Marnie displays some of the industries finest hand-drawn work. A great attention to detail can be seen in the creation of the Oiwa's home the animation detail of characters in the background such as the festival sequence or the opening scene in the playground. A few notable good cuts also help elevate the narrative and even provide some interesting take on foreshadowing. An excellent example is a cut from Anna's sketch of Marnie into Anna's face itself in the same position on screen. Other than this though, very few liberties were taken in terms of originality, and the score is by all means simply average.

With that said I must conclude that while Omoide Marnie is a very pretty film, it is not well-paced. The lead characters are irritating and trite, and the conclusion feels rushed and a bit shallow. The ultimate issue is that for a film that does not have much action, there is also not a lot to be said about it. The movie passes through like a haze, leaving little to chew on. For an animated supernatural film it lacks whimsy and it's overt serious tone is simply too ham-handed for how it addresses it's subject matter. It is hard for me to recommend this film therefore only watch if you are very interested in the sasuga animation of Studio Ghibli.

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May 23, 2015

Akame ga Kill! (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Akame ga Kill is not the worst anime ever made, but it sure is one of the least genuine. The writing pieces together mismatched elements of shonen adventure and gives them a screwball seriousness about death until the word ‘death’ has lost all meaning. The script is oversaturated with character introductions and sensationalized death scenes that feel simply slimy. The grubbiness that Akame ga Kill exhibits come right from the very bottom of the medium complete with unexplained power ups, an impossibly simplistic corrupt fantasy setting, and hundreds upon hundreds of flat characters.

The amount of fried chicken consumed in this anime is painful. The Prime ... Minister’s beloved son dies? It’s time for fried chicken. Akame is on stakeout? It’s time for fried chicken. Wallowing in sadness about the death of a main character? It’s time for fried chicken. The fried chicken gag is indicative of the narrative depth here. It doesn’t go deeper than visual indulgence. There are no subtleties in Akame ga Kill. The good guys simply move on without meditation on death, and the bad guys are simply bad without any logical reason. The protagonists are protagonists because the show needed them scripted like that, and the antagonists are the same way. Even with the introduction of the Jaegers (why a German name?) and Tatsumi’s foil (more like clone) the show simply ramps up the stakes. The bad guys get bigger as the good guys get stronger and they keep introducing new characters that are “stronger” and occasionally an old face is replaced with a new face (Bulat becomes Susanoo).

Akame ga Kill manages to create a cast of both heroes and villains with no positive traits. Seryuu Ubiquitious as an example, is a character that exists solely to be an antagonist. She has catchphrases, she has special moves, and she has “moral values” that contradict our protagonists. Except none of the characters ever make any sense. Why does she want to Kill Tatsumi? It’s her job to eradicate all evil no matter what it is? It doesn’t make any sense on a literal level and it doesn’t make any sense on a realistic level. I’m not saying anime characters moral codes should be realistic, but then shouldn’t they serve a greater thematic purpose? Having to hear about why Akame needs to be the one to kill her sister makes for some of the stupidest monologues not because it’s a flawed idea at its base but because there is no basis for her needing to kill her sister to begin with. And when the show moves towards characters like Esdeath and her talk about love it feels as if the largest and most blunt plot device starts pressing harder and harder on the script. Akame ga Kill is serious about a whole lot of nothing other than reaching its embarrassing (near direct Madoka rip-off) anime original ending.

How did someone come up with the character designs and fantasy setting for Akame ga Kill? Just like Shingeki no Kyojin, it is some sort of walled city with a corrupt government. Except our protagonists are a pink haired goth-loli, a schoolgirl with a sword that instantly causes death, a generic guy, a green haired steam punk dude, a gay guy, a Japanese god-turned-golem and a buxom cyborg-like leader. The bad guys are a dog that turns into a full arsenal, another generic guy, another schoolgirl, another gay guy, another buxom leader, and a man in a gas mask with a flamethrower. None of these things even follow a design scheme! It’s like a party with the most interesting people in the world who all leave before you can ask them how they managed to get to there. Where Shingeki no Kyojin can get by with flat and often ridiculous characters sadly Akame ga Kill does not have the production value. Visually it’s bland and static, with very few dynamic camera angles and often whole fight scenes skipped or scratched for reasons beyond explanation. My favorite was a scene where a series of “danger beasts” – almost forgot about these - approach Tatsumi out of nowhere and he announces that it’s going to be a tough fight. Immediately the scene cuts and he is sheathing his sword, and announces that it was indeed a tough fight. For an action and adventure show, how could you have the brass to write that? There are show’s that are plucky enough to get away with it, like the entirety of episode 4 of Katanagatari, but Akame ga Kill is not that smart. You wouldn’t realize how stupid Akame ga Kill is if it wasn’t this loud.

The show is a mistake from beginning to end, but it’s not without entertainment. And that’s the whole hook of it. You’ve seen this show hundreds of times before but maybe never this simple. It really is the mindless violence action anime of 2014, whatever that title means to you. I do not recommend it over anything but if you want mindlessness you have it's essence distilled right here. I look at Akame ga Kill as a failed version of Shingeki no Kyojin because it is even more indulgent in terms of gore and has less of a mystery element. This anime is mighty popular, but you are not missing anything by not watching it. The ancient relics have no boundaries in terms of power scope, and the bad guy is named Prime Minister Honest. I can’t believe someone wrote this.

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Nov 1, 2014

Watashitachi no Shiawase na Jikan (Manga) add

Not Recommended

Some may consider this review to contain spoilers, but please read on.

Our Happy Time is not just a mediocre manga, it's plenty pretentious too. This pure cheese story starts off with some grim subject matter and continues to vomit more grim subject matter at you until you are beaten and bored. It's a cliche narrative about an inmate on death row who finds a reason to live again through love. With no exceptional visuals and no original characters, this manga reads like the pulpiest young adult fiction imaginable. There's no nuance, there's no subtlety, and the self-righteousness of the main character is suffocating.

If this ...

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Aug 20, 2014

Gokukoku no Brynhildr (Anime) add

Not Recommended

"Elfen Lied comparison complaint, grumble grumble, fanservice, grumble grumble, I'd pardon this if it was cool like Shingeki no Kyojin but it's not, grumble, I'm so much smarter than the Sci-Fi genre."

Gokukoku no Brynhildr is exactly what you expected it was; An action-based thriller prematurely adapted from a manga by the same person who wrote Elfen Lied. So why are you so upset? The characters are static and flat, plot threads that should have been wrapped up quickly continue onto the last few episodes, and the art seems almost barbaric when comparing it to more visually stunning shows that aired simultaneously. It has the trope ... of harem where it doesn't necessarily need one, there's a significant amount of ecchi scenes that seem awkwardly jumbled into the rest of the series, and all the women are literally helpless without the main character. Yes, the show is sexist and strives to enthuse the male audience. The only person I have to blame for this one is you. This is exactly what you asked for.

Without all the sex and violence that sells Blu-Rays and DVDs, this anime wouldn't be a blip on any consumer's radar. There's nothing to separate Shingeki no Kyojin and this anime. The writing is about the same, leading the viewer on with very obvious plot threads only to confirm them true after 12 episodes of meandering. There's intense gore at the expense of our poorly-fleshed out cast, and the hyperviolence depicted in this series only continues to prove Elfen Lied's point that it so desperately tried to make ten years ago. People want to be shocked. They want to watch something that leaves them agape. This show lets people watch something dark and primal. It's the closest thing to sweet sweet revenge like Lucy got in response to her dog "prank" in Elfen Lied. And it's just winking enough to let the viewers be okay with it. The only thing Brynhildr is missing is the top notch visuals. If Brynhildr had the budget Shingeki no Kyojin did, it could be what SnK is right now - unquestioningly popular.

Gokukoku no Brynhildr is endlessly entertaining. It's edgy and brooding in all the comical senses of the words. People don't just die in Brynhildr, their bodies bleed to death, then melt to oblivion, and then an alien carcass crawls out of them only to be squashed like a pesky bug. It's absurd! The show borrows all sorts of Sci-Fi concepts for it's main heroines, from predicting the future, to body swaps, to cybernetic transformation and secret underground facility conspiracies, and never ever apologizes about it. That might be why I'm so partial to Brynhildr. It's swaggering and confident. It's never pretentious and always is self-aware. In fact, when explaining to the main character why the main female lead has superhuman strength she simply tells him, because of "surgery and drugs." That's all I really needed. The script is justifiably quip.

Brynhildr is the hyperviolent, misanthropic, edgy grimdark show you want to hate yet the writing works in such a way that you feel slightly optimistic for the cast, for the show, and for the world. Brynhildr isn't new, and as many critics have ingeniously surmised, it's incredibly close to Elfen Lied. Yet there's an X factor in Brynhildr, and that X factor is that small bit of hope, that at the end of the tunnel there's happiness for these characters that seem to repeatedly have the deck stacked up against them. You can tell this show is unforgiving walking into it and characters will suffer. You just want to know which ones. You hope and hope that something happens so that they're ALL spared, and can have a normal school life. Your favorite parts of the episode are probably when the ecchi things happen, giving you a moment of relief - an aside from all the death talk and inevitable decay of the cute girls on screen.

And that is what this show is about. It dangles it's serene and oversexed nymphs in front of you like a worm to a fish, and you're on the hook. It pulls the misanthropic bait away and you're left in the dark ocean again to witness the murder, the decaying flesh, the real teen angst of it all. And you're mad again. You hate the ecchi scenes! You hate the dark edginess! You hate the whole goddamn thing and there's nothing to like about this show at all! But there is and you keep coming back. You just hope that these misfits on screen achieve some sort of rational happiness. And whether they do or not doesn't matter in the end, I guess, but as long as you're watching think about that. Think about why you're appalled or entertained and how this show treads that thin line.

If you hated it all, good. You're a good person. If you liked it all, why? Are you a bad person?

And, ahem, did you like Shingeki no Kyojin?

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Mar 31, 2014

Samurai Flamenco (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Deconstruction is a word that has become as frequent as genre tags since Madoka finished airing. And with it has come miscommunication and ultimately disassociation. Deconstruction is to recreate cliches in meaningful and innovative ways, as opposed to be aware of one's own genre. The latter is usually what people mistake deconstruction for nowadays, and with Samurai Flamenco this couldn't be proven more rightly so.

Samurai Flamenco is a failure on all fronts. It is not a parody but is aware of it's own genre. With it comes this misunderstanding by it's audience. Simply because a work is self-aware does not mean it is a ... deconstruction. To be a deconstruction Samurai Flamenco would have had to do something new. Something that would innovate the many genres it was all too often burdened with.

Between it's goal to create a serious and inspiring vigilante-filled universe and it's majorly flawed execution, the most mediocre result is achieved. We have neither an entertaining superhero series nor a psychological exploration of vigilantism. Was Samurai Flamenco a buddy-cop series in the light of Tiger & Bunny? Was it an action-thriller like Darker Than Black? What was it and what is it? It's an unique work, but unique only because of how poorly the tone of the series shifts throughout. There's a difference between uniqueness and quality that Samurai Flamenco can't seem to separate.

Samurai Flamenco is illogical. It creates and sets characters for a few episodes at a time to later remove all traits from them in a jolt of narrative-based absurdity. Full of "plot-twists" that are not properly foreshadowed or explained and then quickly disposed of, Samurai Flamenco comes across as extremely disingenuous. The series wants you to be shocked at how many curveballs it can throw you before landing on a classical Hollywood ending every time. Yes, Samurai Flamenco, "Hero will never give up, never hide, never be defeated" but sometimes it just doesn't make sense for him not to. When the writing collapses on top of it's flimsy groundwork the most unremarkable deus ex machinas occur ad nauseum. The characters are used merely as avatars to deliver uninspiring tripe about justice and mankind. The level of depth found in Samurai Flamenco's exploration rivals that of children's programming. All characters succumb to this boring dialogue and really just begs the question "what could have been?"

Do not watch Samurai Flamenco. Despite it's offbeat premise and charmingly realistic character designs, Samurai Flamenco is an overindulgent children's series bereft of plot-development and bereft of a good idea.

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