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Jan 1, 2022
Massively TL;DR of why this show will make your inner (potential) artist ache:
It's a shame. A huge shame. Simply put, the first 5-6 episodes are incredible--like, really incredible. You had amazing characterisation; you had amazing set pieces; you had amazing pacing; you had a soul-creaking 1min30 Intro; you had suspense, mystery, a unique palette for a landscape (American 50's), an amazing Hook to grab you in, and even the music or the passion behind at least being a pianist or a composer, was purely palpable. Heck, look, I gave Story/Art/Sound a score of 8+! SO HOW DID THIS GO SO DOWN-HILL?! (No seriously, how? gjhsgjdhgsd).
Takt.
...
Op: Destiny... Well: Inspiring, even. It was; up until a point.
But then we had the final 5'ish episodes (it's hard to pin-point where the tone-shift began) and it felt like their slow-burn of a deliberate & well-articulated atmosphere & musically-characterised plot, picked up the rocket fuel and blasted off into 'Here's A Template' territory.
Here. In my mind, this is the impression I have of how things began to go wrong:
It's kinda like someone gave the studio a plan - which was followed to the T - only for NASTY-BADGUY X to barge in mid season and tell everyone, "Wooow, wait, why are you only up to here in the plan! Don't tell me you're all so stupid you can't read a simple plan? You're going at 1/4th the speed you were meant to! Sigh, I understand, you're all new & incompetent [*palpable irony*]--but don't worry! Now that I'm here, we'll get this plan back on track! *cough, fuck I hate stake-holders, I can't believe they changed their minds mid season and don't want to fund a 2nd Cour [season], what am I even meant to fkin' do! ... *beep Email*... The CEO sent me a How To Write Shounen for Dummies.pdf... Fuck".
You get the gist? This show had tremendous potential. For a former musician, I found the first 5 episodes inspirational enough to want to take up piano again after 10 years. (Spoiler: I will be)
The beautiful selection of classical, jazz, and rag-time piano pieces, along with the Protagonist's smug attitude towards his craft & how he constantly taps his fingers on objects around him whilst envisioning music with every tap, I can confirm: pianists are EXACTLY like this!
...But things were brought to a boil midway through & served as a Shounen Template Buffet. Every evidence of shounen-contradition that'd happened till said point suggests that this wasn't the direction they initially set off towards, so it's confounding how things ended up this way (esp. whilst the animation remained nearly untouched, budget-wise).
What a distorted melody. A melancholic disappointment. Oh well. Once again, mobile game adaptations prove to be an insufferable waste of time. As someone who swooned over the first half of this show: I'm so mad.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 21, 2020
Kami-tachi is a bit of a difficult show for me to review. Overall, I was impressed with the show and, during the early stages, was even convinced it'd be one of my favourites in the last year. So then, "why is it difficult to review"? Well... You know that feeling you get when you really like a story and it's turning out way, waaay better than you could have ever predicted or imagined, but then after becoming disillusioned, it starts to resemble what you initially expected & seemingly drops the ball for inexplicable reasons?
You know that unreasonable spite you feel towards it, no matter
...
how self-aware you are that it's not the story's fault for any resentment you feel from the resulting emotions? Well yeah: Kami-tachi did this to me, so despite me being really happy that I got way more out of this show than I ever expected - especially after reading the source-material recently by coincidence - I'm still left this this bitterness & confusion over how exactly an 8/10 piddled down into a 5/10 in such a smooth and effortless manner.
Welp, let's break this down~
The show started off extremely strong - and I really mean that. By rephrasing the source content in an extremely-proficient manner, it managed to even out-do the manga by how it maximised the advantages of a medium with sound, colour, and flowing visuals at its disposal. The show started off so strong that, up until the 5th weekly release, every episode had me either shed some tears or just outright cry from how expertly and convincingly they delivered the backbone of our protagonist's hardships - including the caveat for the show's title. By this point, I was honestly giving the show an 8/10 and even defending its criticisms online (boy, did those memories age well...), thinking "this show was hand-moulded for adults like myself who have overwhelming sympathies for the regular & mundane stresses of a soft-hearted & well-adjusted (for better or 'worse') man's life". Wholeheartedly, I was singing praises for the entirety of the production through these episodes as they felt like not a single element had been overlooked nor neglected - be it the music, the sound effects, the simple gestures often overlooked in cheaper productions & the body language in even mundane scenes, the choreography, or even just 'ambient music' in the background. Of course, even if the production was making many subtle changes to the source material by this point, it didn't feel like there was cause-for-concern yet as it'd all worked out for an impressively-articulated story thus far--but ya know, there was a commonality between all the "artistic liberties" made thus far, and that was called 'Family Scenes', which brings us to the crux of both 'what this show did well' and, simultaneously, 'what this show really needn't have done at all'...
You see, the whole backstory of our MC, going by the 'source material'*** [NOTE FOR LATER], is that: here you have a guy who's pushed by society & those close to him (with the exception of his mum) to conform to a life that generally contradicts his nature as a person - often as a result of mistreatment from either the people around him that are meant to care for him, or from society itself misjudging him as a result of all the metaphorical "scars" that he's built up from the bombardment of [not-so-much "his"] life.
Honestly... this may as well be hand-crafted to trigger male-adults as it's pretty hard not to empathise with one aspect or another of his tumultuous journeying (and thus why I found myself with a wet eye or two by the end of every early episode). The thing to note here, though, is: 'his Redemption journey' and 'his character growth' aren't strictly related to just the 'Family Scenes' in the source material, but more the product of everything he's meant to experience. Due to this somewhat "oversight", though his Redemption Arc starts off strong, we aren't yet to know that it'll run into some troubles down the line.
Still though, by this point, the production and staff had really shown off exactly how "well" they understood the source material and how invested they were in telling what should have, by all rights, been just a 'mediocre isekai'. The music, scoring, and sound effects were, as I said earlier, on-point and fit the scenes and themes perfectly, right down to even the ambient music that was only meant to function as a sort of "glaze" for binding visuals and dialogue to the 'fantasy-paradise theme'; the scenes that weren't meant to have much going on in them even had subtle embellishments like facial movements to indicate 'body-language', along with a certain-amount of attention even paid to sprucing up exposition or mundane dialogue; heck, I could even tell that a decent amount of work had gone into the pacing of the Story-Boarding as there were a lot of subtractions and additions from the source-material that didn't feel arbitrary in the slightest.
All of the aforementioned was certainly above-and-beyond what anyone could expect from what anyone was expecting--but, sadly, the part where I say "all good things must come to an end" unfortunately is occurring well-before the finale of this season...
What started as 'revisions of the source material for perfecting delivery' soon turned into something more likening to... "the departure of a muse"? Honestly, if I was told that their director and/or the majority of their scripting team was switched-out at around the mid-way point of the series, I'd buy it without question. Changes to the source material began to be detrimental to the story, the pacing of the show shifts from 'something akin to Redemption' into "Anime-Wholesomeness Incarnate", and the Story-Boarding very-obviously takes out much of the in-dispersed "Pallet-Cleansers" that the inherent story used to balance all of the themes in order to keep things fresh.
Here's some examples: one of the consequences of readjusting all the focal points to be on the "Kami-tachi ~Family Experience~" is that, our protagonist comes off almost-entirely as a 'reactive' person who's incapable of being proactive let-alone accomplishing anything on his own. See, even if the narrative phrases his past-life as an overall negative experience, it still uses it as a justification for why he's so "physically-capable" - something that was lost with the adaptation here. This omission doubles down on itself as a 'mistake' when most of episodes 6 through to 9 repeatedly shows an "awkward protagonist" who is shaped by the words of those around him without anything but exposition and awkward, deflective chuckles leaving his mouth. With all the 'cannon' action/adventure scenes relinquished from their significant roles of demonstrating both independent decision-making & consequences for such, it instead feels like a protagonist that's being led by the nose into wholesome environments rather than someone who's earned the life & connections they wanted--which normally would be a forgivable oversight in most stories if it wasn't for the fact that this entirely contradicts the essence of the core narrative, "to live your life the way you want to - being yourself, your best self". Even if this adaptation is more 'concise', it really suffers for it.
Another example: remember those *** I left earlier? Yeah, those were because the anime leaves out the entire latter-half of the MC's backstory, that which outlines a rather significant part of his relationship with his mum as well as how his life turned out the way it did in the long run--they entirely left out his dad. Even till this point, I'm wondering if I'm somehow just mistaken about the order of events in the source-material, because "suuureely they wouldn't just skip probably the most significant part of his life's tragedies"?
Like I said, just as how they omitted nearly-all of the 'combat-orientated' events and character-building of our MC, I got the impression that they swept the entirety of the source-material with a biased lens of "wholesomeness & family", as all of the material subtracted from the show all pertains to 'combat', 'emotions of aggression & healthily resolving such', & 'being an independent functioning member of a fantasy society who is capable of independent, proactive action'.
Vice versa, they pulled in later chapters that involved 'in-adverse socialising' and 'family'. Although I can see why they did this, the problem was that the original story never opted for this pathway because of how imbalanced it made the development of our MC--so even if I can "understand", I also "absolutely disagree" with the final concoction.
... Speaking of final results though, I might add: none of my critiques are really aided by the fact that the 'finale' of the season, the last 2 episodes, essentially feel like a single episode that's stretched over double the time. Especially regarding the final episode: the tone, humour, pacing & patterns of dialogue, even the fundamental story-boarding, it all feels completely unlike all 11 preceding entries. Heck, if I were to use one word to describe the final episode, it'd without-a-doubt be "ham-fisted" - be it the entire script, or just the sudden appearance of 'romantic humour' that hadn't been apparent anywhere else in the season. If I wasn't immersed in frustration during Ep 12, then I was cringing - there wasn't much between, unfortunately. Terrible way to conclude an-otherwise decent season...
All in all:
The changes that were made did lead to a tidy season that finalises our MC's Family Arc, but since it neglected so much of the "hand-in-hand" maturing-elements of our protagonist as well as a the alternating tonal themes that were meant to keep all of the narratives fresh & away from repetition, we instead got the metaphorical equivalent of a "circular sculpture that used to depict a detailed face, 'refined' merely to resemble a perfect sphere" - sure, things ended all nice-and-tidy, but boy did we lose a lot in the process...
Final Results
Story: 4
Art: 7
Sound: 8
Characters: 4
Enjoyment: 6
Overall: 5.5
By Isekai standards, this show is decent and it's still worth a watch, especially if you're not familiar with the source material--but certainly, even if I remember this show fondly, I'm still going to be upset in imagining exactly how great of an Isekai Masterpiece this could have been.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Apr 24, 2020
*WARNING: Minor Spoilers for the overall tone of the series, but kept as vague as possible!*
When I first noticed that this show was being adapted for this season, it was already 3 episodes in. Half the reason for that was: despite [me] having read the LN many volumes in, and having reread the manga twice (1-2 years between, 2nd time coincidentally being only 2 months ago’ish), the story and title were so unmemorable that it was really only because I had time to kill and wanted “something brain-dead” that I reread it at all.
So when I realised that someone had adapted this, my only
...
thoughts were, “wow, what are you even thinking?!! There’s better brainless Isekais for the picking that are way more novel!”...
So, I decided that: if I was going to somehow get through THIS particular story, I’d have to do it ‘as it airs’—else I’d absolutely drop it by around the 7th episode (by my estimations at the time) which, whereabouts, the character-relations and the “obligatory Harem” are all at their peak with nowhere to go - as the “authentic experience” of this series is a typical case of an author writing themselves into a corner real-hard and fast...
You see: in the original, the MC gets handed everything on a platter, and I mean everything. As a result: no matter where you looked, there was no tension, no challenges, no mystery or foreboding, no politics even, and just generally nowhere to progress to—and since that leaves only “down” - for our MC to fall from graces per se - that would only be an option if everything wasn’t so ubiquitously sublime and, ... frankly, inhuman. (There, I said it). So, the author only had 1 option left:
An Adventure/Slice of Life (like Death March where they travel to new places and eat “DELICIOUS FOODS”*x^666) mixed with Comedy & gags that all danced to the tune of, “Oh! Woe is me! How HARD it is to have suuuch a perfect LIFE! *queue laughter from his 2million+ waifus who have 1-mode of emotions and that’s Smile*”.
... Sorry about that. *Ahem*.
As you can see, I was terribly worried of just how much this adaptation would be a flop—until I started watching the first episode and spotted ALL the liberties the Studio adapting this had taken. Changes, changes, changes!
•A rewritten 1st introduction that delivers the premise of our MC’s personal AND family predicament (and the POINT OF THE DAMNED TITLE!!!)
•An OP [which, by the way, is way more fitting than any VA knockoff-pop song with 0 longevity] that’s timed perfectly to tidy the presentation of the storyline and accentuate the development of our MC into his new world
•A fast-track to the most important meeting of our MC’s new life, not wasting any time to “get to what matters”
•An absolutely beautiful ED song that’s, once again, an original by real musicians! (WUT, BOTH ARE!?! Dye me impressed, Shin-Ei Animation or whoever was mostly in-charge...)
If ‘The Good’ ended here, I wouldn’t be writing this review—and frankly, even after all that I’d seen, my head was NOW saying, “Oh no... This studio is really competent... I feel even worse for them now...”, because I was now thinking that ‘no matter how good an adaptation is, if the source-material is contemptible garbage, it’s still unsalvageable’.
Ohhh, how wrong I was! Not only did they rewrite the first chapters of the ‘collective source-material’, but they bloody went and rewrote the next 3 episodes as well!... “HOOWW?! WHY DON’T MORE STUDIOS DO THIS???”, is what the excited voice in my head was NOW saying after witnessing what, before now, I’d just written off as ‘impossible’ and ‘wishful thinking’, etc.
Remember how I vaguely recapped all the issues that the Manga & Light Novels had? They all revolves around every character, relation, achievement, event, and so on, ALL collectively feeling “ubiquitously inhuman or monotonous”. In this Anime-Adaptation, ... *breathes deeply*... this has, so far, been rectified (at least, as much as possible). That’s right. The characters have motives and emotions that ‘come into conflict’ with our MC, AND he’s no longer a “smiling doll” without ‘worries or care or actual troubles’. Above that, the side characters aren’t just there to inhabit the background either and have genuine effects on the main cast.
Now: I’ve been singing praises for this adaptation for “humanising the inhuman” and for their use of ‘creative liberties’, but it’d be unfair to ignore the glaring fault that this series still faces no matter how many Creative Liberties the studio and staff in charge of this mess-of-an-Isekai take, and that’s the very first scene. The very first scene acts to show the personal woes that stick with our MC all throughout this show (for now, at least) - and that’s that he was reborn from being a “White-Collared Office Worker” - but it also gives us a preview of ‘things to come’—and they look identical to the problems of the source material. Remember how I talked about “the author boxing themselves in”? This ‘preview’ shows a future where that fate is inevitable, sadly, and I don’t know how the studio/adaptation will get around or revitalise that.
In fact, when episode 4 rolled along, I began to see signs of 1) budget issues (at least, I saw a huge drop in the sound effects, the CGI, and especially the animation quality), and 2) scene upon scene that neglects everyone but our protagonist as he makes extremely boring and artistically-repugnant facial expressions along with flat jokes [I mentioned the Slice of Life “woe is me!” gags being overused in the source] that at one point, even for an easy, well-known gag, it was so poorly timed that I had to check that my video player hadn’t glitched and skipped a good 20-40 frames...
I don’t know if these changes in quality are just a coincidence, or if they have to do with tighter schedules and potential ‘correspondence’ project-management due to COVID messing everything up, but I just hope I’m the only one who felt these ways with the latest episode and that this isn’t going to become the new standard after 3 initial excellent episodes to this series.
All is not lost though. The adaptation has managed to do so much good thus far that I’m actually thoroughly enjoying this series, so they may just be able to cleverly use storyboarding or their “omnipotent Creative Liberties” (lel) to write-out or skip/fast-track all the problems out of a season of this show. Who knows?
They’ve done beyond “incredible” so far, all things considered—so I’ll harbour faith!
(Fingers crossed I don’t come to eat my words - massively - later, ahaha).
Note: this is ‘so far’
Story: 8.5
Sound: 7.5
Characters: 7.5
Art: 5 (biggest weakness if the show doesn’t pick-up back to the quality of the first episodes)
Enjoyment: 8
Overall: 8
Still a good start. Let’s keep it up, Hachinan tte!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 17, 2020
Both a great and slow series - kinda. It has a lot of potential in its concept, but it’s having trouble pacing its content, thus far.
I do love this genre - so I’m a bit biased - but it’s very easy to either overdo the exposition, or to overdo the Lore of such a world. In this case: loads of lore with poorly-paced exposition (not “awful” in the sense that it’s overwhelming or confusing, but just prioritised at only 50%’ish decency), and a lot of “Shounen-moments” that lose their ‘Epic’ touch because the “odds” just don’t feel ‘calibrated’ with the lore...
Regardless: this is a
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moderately fun show, and the imagination that went into the storyline and the Main Character(s) (and his partner - and those like her who are part of the core system’s-conspiracy) make for a fairly unique combination of ideas that aren’t just ‘hoping to catch a-hook of a popular trend’—for any of this show’s forthcomings, I’d sooner blame the production-team of this show - especially those doing the Storyboard’ing - than the underlying author (or whomever came up with this Sword Art Online V2 schematic) who, for the record, has done a brilliant job of crafting such a multifaceted concept that has both a ‘taste of the “future of Virtual Reality”’ whilst managing to work in a conspiracy that somehow doubles as a very real ‘metaphorical Moral-Dilemma’ of high-end/futuristic AI. With the contextual justification of a potential ‘Real World’ that the “privileged citizens” (ie: the participants, as in: us gamers) have to personally rationalise as either ‘some kind of prepaid-service (for your gaming entertainment)’ or ‘as a second life [to your own] that’s so complicated in ethics, your own morality, and an AI that is so identical to us humans that the only difference between our existences are the ‘Rules of the World’ (as in: game mechanics - or, by this point, “Laws of Nature”...), that it’s hard to differentiate this world - as being “a game” - from reality—making it almost indiscernible from a world of its own’.
An amazing concept that has its flaws but compensates through both imagination and inherent complex-congruity. Really can’t help but be drawn to this show every week - no matter its shortcomings!
Art: 6/10
Sound: 5-6/10
Characters: 8-9/10
Story: 9/10!
Enjoyment: 7-9/10 (hard to call before the season’s end)
Overall: 8/10. Would love to go higher because of the concept(s), but too much has been left out or even rewritten such that the ‘charm’ of the writing has partially been compromised.
Having said that: I’ll definitely be looking for both the Light Novel and the Manga to see how much they scrapped from the original script! :3
Still a great show though. Check it out—and enjoy!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 6, 2020
I never thought I’d like a “cooking show”—but the balance between ‘the fantasy world and the stories of either “Epics” (so to speak - though they are ‘mostly gaslighting’ for future plots) and Socio-Politically Oppressed “various-customers” (it’s a ‘restaurant’, ya know. Everyone is equal here) - each with their own tale, and each invariably having some kind of “connection of meaning” to the other customers (sometimes as a result of their “history”, but often simply due to sharing a ‘common sense of reality [zeitgeist]’ together that isn’t shared with ~our world~) - is so well-planned that each character doesn’t just get their own segment, but
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are tangibly connected both through ‘not only their “authentic-fantasy of Magic” Isekai-world’ but, also, through their interactions in the restaurant.
Though the show is seemingly about food, the food is but a mere medium for expressing the characters, their relations, and where they come from. Each food scene... it isn’t so much about the food as it is ‘the unadulterated exposure of the true character of each customer and their various tastes and, as a result of their detailed environment(s) (as always depicted in the show) and their values’.
A show with the facade of a ‘food show’, but is actually an interpersonal show of he various kinds of people of this “Isekai World” that’s full of much history (that we learn of) and many extremely different circumstantial characters.
10/10. Amazing show of story-telling (“food” only being the catalyst).
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Feb 13, 2020
Right now, Plunderer seems to be suffering from its own design—and it’s doing itself no favours in how it decided to do a “pre-release” covering parts of the story, the ‘early story’, which is both ‘the most Mysterious’ and (though intentionally) but, unfortunately, is part of a construction extremely ‘well thought-out’ to such a degree where, be it the first few episodes or the following finale of this first cour, the speed in which the World of Plunderer “falls into place” is so extraordinarily ‘methodical’ to its ‘desired narrative’ that it’s very easy to get the impression that it doesn’t know what it’s doing...
Trust me
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though: as someone who’s read the manga, if the show continues at the same quality of animation whilst continuing to be extremely faithful to the source material, ... we are really in for a treat. Plunderer shines entirely-because of how intense its Mystery, Pseudo-Romcom Drama, Seinen-like Action, and World-Building are - and I listed ‘Mystery’ first for a reason. It’s hard to call Plunderer a ‘Thriller’ - mostly due to how a Thriller combines a tonne of varying narratives ‘that are clearly understood only to the viewer (aka “beyond the 4th wall”) to converge on a single point - as Plunderer does the opposite wherein, whilst there’s many varying narratives that you can clearly grasp ‘are converging on a single point’, it’s ‘the cast of characters and the world they inhabit’ that understand what’s going on (and not “you”)—but, due to how extraordinary the vast-world of charming and unique characters - with their own motives that all feel like a complicated product of the World-Building of ‘Plunderer’ - are slowly & methodically [I used that phrase earlier for a reason] etched out to the viewer, it’s also hard to call it a Mystery. Honestly: it’s a bit of both for varying reasons.
Stick with Plunderer. The first few episodes are a ruse in many ways. They act all silly, and the hints they drop (towards ’a grand mystery’ that, supposedly, they entail) easily have us fooled as “nothing more than a false promise or just a coincidence or accident in the Writing” due to the nature of Plunderer’s core elements—but don’t be mistaken or fooled. Every single aspect of this story/show is an act of subversion for the sake of heightening its Mystery, and for the sake of veiling just how “forsaken” the world of Plunderer is.
Stick with it. Once you get a taste for the ’true blend’ of Action and Mystery that Plunderer expands into [and rather soon, too], you’ll be happy that you didn’t pay attention to all of these ”misguided” ratings and reviews.
Enjoy. 9/10 - but easily a 10/10 if the source material and production quality continues to follow faithfully as it has for the 6 episodes I’ve watched. [Will leave it at ‘9/10’ till the Real Deal kicks off~]
(PS: dub is amazing! 2 main MCs are incredible, and all other casts have been exactly how I thought they’d sound from source material. Dub is absolutely viable! Just sayin’ la~)
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 24, 2020
Honestly, I’ve been looking over quite a few reviews - ya know, expecting to find something that aligns with what I thought & experienced - and, although I understand the “bandwagon” that’s going on here (a mix between what we’ll call “Isekai’itis” - a cultural mob-like vexation and/or loathing of the Isekai genre for the ‘milk-cow’ that it is, currently - and ‘anime-elitism’ that stems from a shared desire for “just another taste from the fruit-garden of the gods”, which is rather understandable as most of us have our fair share of incredible narratives or spectacular or state-of-the-art abstract animation and art styles, or even
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just ‘something that moved us’), it’s extremely unreasonable to project such high standards unto a show that, from the very start, was only trying to be “fun”.
‘High School Prodigies blah blah blah’ is a show about 7 supposed-geniuses that get “carted to another world” (aka “Isekai’d”) and, basically, put all of their expertise to work in... well... starting a bloody (figuratively and literally) revolution unto the “oppressive empire and their sovereign liege, His Majesty, The Emperor” - a being so impressive that, it’s said, the world and all its inhabitants exist purely to be sacrifices for “his majesty” (punctuation intended).
...I’m just gonna refer to the show as ‘ProdigiesXL’ from here.
Anyways: ProdigiesXL is a show that aims to be ‘an adventure with tons of ridiculous feats going on, but with as little exposition as possible’—and it accomplishes just that. Even though ‘just about everything’ that the Group of 7 and Co. do happen to be absolutely super-human, you don’t really find yourself “sweating the small stuff” cos the show, itself, never takes itself seriously in this regard either. It’s just about ‘sounding awesome’ and ‘tying itself together (despite the “zero-exposition” policy it holds) perfectly enough that none of its “very obvious flaws” actually matter’. I think this is where many people really miss the point about this show: it’s a bit of a ‘super heroes/super humans’ vs ‘high school Isekai’ cross that wants to blend Magic/Fantasy with Modern-Day Realistic Tech (be it medicine, physics, or, lel, capitalism) - and I happen to think that it does an amazing job of doing so ‘as a Shounen’.
That’s the thing: this is a Shounen Isekai that pits a bunch of Mary Sues against Magical Forces of Nature - and it does so in a super fun AND methodical way! Throughout the 12 episodes of ProdigiesXL, every one of the 7 main characters gets an arc mostly-dedicated to “them strutting their stuff”, and it never gets confusing nor ‘feel convoluted’, ya know? It’s interesting because: here you have a show that’s trying to do an enormous amount of things in an extremely-short span of time, yet it’s simultaneously trying to be balanced, episode by episode, in being both ‘digestible’ AND ‘simple-fun’. ... THAT’S NOT EASY, YO. The pacing of ProdigiesXL is insanely good—making the ‘enjoyment-factor’ an easy 10/10.
Having said all of that: yes, the art and sound aren’t high-value. 7&5/10, respectively. The art was never ‘garbage’ or ‘inconsistent’, it just was never planned to budget for more than what it produced; and the sound was never a problem, and even the fight-scene folly was pretty good, but just like the art, they intentionally limited themselves to fit the budget - and they did so without damaging any of the ‘viewing-experience’.
On top of that: with 7 characters and 3 rather-significant extras AND a good 4-8 bonus characters, between the 12 episodes provided... although I have no idea what/how the manga goes (or... is there a Light Novel for this? Nfi - but probably) and how much it [they?] elaborate on each character for the volumes covered, it’s fair to say that Tsukasa (the ‘politician prodigy’ dude with different-coloured eyes) is the main character for this season/show. The show advertises itself as “7 kids go Isekai’ing”, but it’s fair to complain about the fact that a large amount of the story revolves around him as the protagonist - which, to be fair, isn’t unreasonable as he’s both the ‘least’ and ‘most’ talented of them all, as far as the story thus-far goes, and he’s also the (what you could call) “sheep-herder” of all the main cast.
These two points on the sound/art and the character-building are fair complaints—but I’d like to remind you all that ‘most Shounens are like this’ and you’re missing the point if you focus on ‘glass a bit empty’ rather than ‘glass pretty full’. ProdigiesXL is a really fun and light experience that manages to cram a ton of progression, characters, non-confrontational politics, and a fun blend of ‘magic meets science’ into an incredibly-digestible production.
Action, mind-games, pseudo-morality that’s hard to object to or be challenged by but isn’t mindless either (“a story of the people, by the people!”-kind of thing), armies and heroes, fun fanservice & light-hearted and inoffensive comedy, and... most of all, I mean, even if the title says “Isekai prodigies have it easy etc”, ...for once they actually don’t. The balance in this show between ‘our overpowered protagonists’ and, what would normally be “the human steppingstones”, is more of a Back and Forth of power-escalation that is almost-always seen in Shounens yet very rarely seen in Isekais—that’s what makes ProdigiesXL a fun and good show!
Yes, this isn’t “the next Fate; Zero” or “Re: Zero”, but it never intended nor was meant to be—quite the opposite in fact, as it simply had a goal of “an experience” that it knew (and budgeted) to deliver and, quite frankly, I believe it did - for me, at least.
If I were judging on facts, comparisons, objective analysis, etc, I’d probably give it a 7/10—but I’m not, I’m judging on ‘what I think it wanted to achieve’, and ‘how well I think it achieved “exactly that”’.
9/10. Bravo, you ‘humble show that’s only desire was to immerse its viewers in the “escapist-equivalent” of junk food’. ... (Second season, please)...
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 21, 2020
Woooot, finally an English dub! Sakamoto (our fluffy but “cat-like” (aka douchebag) kittykat) is a vocal champ, and all of our cast sound spot-on! Such an amazing Dub! Frankly though: even though I’m rewatching, there’s a gag about a voodoo doll that does my head in... This time around, I knew I needed Wikipedia to solve it - as opposed to ‘doing nothing’ like I did the first time around when this show was only subbed. This time around, I understood enough to do the minimum research in order to appreciate (and, thus, laugh at) this joke - you know, as opposed to “derrr, this
...
show is garbage. Why does everyone say that it’s funny? ... So bored”.
...This show is such a masterpiece in comedy that I’m soooo very fracking happy that they’ve done a dub that I can watch when I just want to chillax. Voice acting is A+, and there’s no probs with rewatching this show once every half a decade (after I’ve forgotten the actual gags, ...mostly..., but am dying for the nostalgia!). Such a comfort show for me... :3
Well, this ‘Dubbed Nichijou’ is a work of art, so even if it’s one of those “super slow slice of life comedies”, I don’t even care. The gags are perfectly timed and artfully setup (so much so that I find myself dutifully noting how Nichijou times and arranges their jokes for the sake of my own), so I grow every time I watch this show. Besides: you can tell that Nichijou was a work of passion/project of love, so even if the alternative is a ‘modern anime’, Nichijou kicks the shit out of just about everything in terms of comedy (... though I loved that Highschool Boys show), so I can’t even blame “nostalgia” for wanting to rewatch this!
Regardless though: Nichijou really is a journey, huh. So many moments I wouldn’t normally sit through, that I happily endure for the guaranteed payoff - like that arm wrestling gag that’s soooo very-close to being awkward but genius’ly pulls it off! The whole show ends up pulling through every time, which is what differentiates itself from ‘the status quo’ for me. Man... an English Dub... I’m soooo happy, ahaha.
Great times, and classic hits - namely, Nichijou! ’Rejoice!’ for, more excuses to rewatch this golden, unique gift! I mean, it’s not like we have many options. Anime-comedy might make me smile, but nothing makes me pray to the Lords of Fawn like Nichijou does. :D
Anyway. I know when I first watched the first 5 episodes, I dropped this show. With the English Dub now available, things have changed (... I think...); so, this show is way more accessible to English audiences now! After all: I think one of the major issues with Japanese Anime Comedy is their ‘flow’. The ‘flow’ (or ‘pacing’) of comedy is extremely important—but equally so is “how they feel”. Nichijou grew on me when I finally stopped dropping it and forced myself to watch the whole thing (... admittedly, I was in a “mood” that day (lol, “day”? Nice confession la... “A day well-spent” though, right? ...right?)...) ... ... -_- , Anyway... After a certain point, everything ‘fell into place’, and I began loving the show instead of finding it ‘inwardly’ exacerbatingly-boring. I didn’t know why, at the time, that I couldn’t appreciate such a widely loved series—but I get it now. Even for someone like me who’s watched/read over a good 400-600+ series [dont double-check that fact, I don’t record everything since I’m a spazz xP], I still had problems “translating the jokes”... Yes, at a certain point, it no longer mattered—but!, that wasn’t how I felt when watching the dub of the first several episodes (ya know, up ‘till it eventually fixes itself through ‘accumulation of xxx - be it ‘how much we’ve sunk into the show’, or ‘how they utilise ongoing gags to amplify later gags’, or, unbelievably for an episodic comedy-slice of life, ‘significance of context built through storytelling and/or world-building, aka “context & setting payoff”’), and I really put that down to ‘the feeling’.
Comedy relies on “connection” and/or “friendship” - that is, a joke relies on garnering your “good side” when it’s the type of joke you’d call ‘friendly’ (that is, as there’s cynical jokes and many others that either don’t need this prerequisite or, conversely, want the opposite) - and, unfortunately (for the Jap version), Nichijou is to be considered a “loving jokester”... :/ . As a result, being in another language demands another set of “cultural utensils” for ‘Joking Around’ to be understood at a “1:1 ratio”, so to speak; there is genuinely a ‘language barrier’ with Nichijou (or so I am inclined to exclaim)! [...And exclaim I shall!] {Hail! The Lord of Fawn!}
... In other words: be you a ‘first-timer’ with Nichijou, or be you someone who dropped it because it “felt like hard work”, I promise you it won’t feel like “hard work” now that it’s in our native tongue! See, that’s the difference. Nichijou was meant to be ‘light humour with a genius punch&timing’, but it couldn’t ‘be that’ when we’re working hard to make sense of a constant stream of subtitles, fast-moving images with complicated gestures aligned with the punchlines, etc (whilst paying attention to the subtitles + grammatical implications + (intentional yet unofficial, thus ‘subjective’) significance of the Translator in/at their wording, whilst watching the ‘moving images’ onscreen and whatnot - aka TONS of either superfluous or potentially-significant information that we can only GUESS AT in the moment.... THIS IS ~NOT~ HOW NICHIJOU IS ~MEANT~ TO BE APPRECIATED! No, in fact, it’s the opposite—thus therein lies the problem). ...
[breathes deeply]
...Just try Nichijou when it’s a relaxing, light-hearted show that... that...
...that BLOODY-WELL FEELS LIKE A LIGHT-HEARTED SHOW - instead of all the ‘hard work’ that neeeeeedlessly goes into ’interpreting’ it! Seriously, we’ve been doing this wrong this ENTIRE TIME! Like you hope you never hear a date say to you: “it’s not you - I really mean it - it’s... it’s... me...”. Look, we never had many alternatives, right? How were we to know better? But look here: by now most of us understand the difference between ‘entertainment that makes you think (and maybe even learn/enlighten)’ and ‘junkfood entertainment, aka brain-autopilot’. Then, what if you’re constantly juggling the act of ‘reading subtitles’ with ‘also trying to interpret scenes/gestures/human reactions’ AND ‘the audio/vocal significance of another Language AND Culture’? That’s right: it becomes ‘entertainment that makes you think’. Beyond that too, I’ve already said this, but for the sake of my case: Comedy is about ‘timing’ and ‘emotion’ as well as ‘connection to audience (like becoming or being our friend, even) and relatability/personal-understanding’. ... With all due respect, I can’t do that with another language EVEN AFTER all the time I’ve spent with anime, manga, and light-novels. It’s just not... natural to me. I can do the translation bit, but I won’t know the “nuances” unless I can speak it myself. ...This.Is.A.Big.Deal. From a light-hearted show that just “rolls off the tongue” to the equivalent of an ”art-expose of high-society” - we are... just.simply.doing.this.wrong. Well, this was at least a revelation to me and it’s changed how I see and view ‘Dubbed Anime’ altogether - well, but suit yourself of course.
PS: I was intoxicated during my review of Nichijou - that is, the entirety of Nichijou. It.... was amazing. I loved every second, every scene. .... Err, well, I was intoxicated here too. Frankly, thus this started as a response to ‘the discussion on MAL for episode 3’, ahaha. It just became too passionate as I realised how different Nichijou felt when it was Dubbed, and that there’s not enough people discussing the significant change of Nichijou with this God-Send Dub! Please, I know how boring and cr@p the first, ...well, potentially the first 10 episodes can be, but I genuinely believe that this is an issue of native tongue vs interpretation vs ”sync with language”. This show speaks for itself, and there’s nothing I can say besides celebrating how hilarious, relaxing, and enjoyable this show is as nothing else is really significant - genuinely. Watch this show in Dub after work or before sleep - you’ll thank and love me for this tidbit later, I guarantee you!!! :3
Hint: If the score system is “retentive-bs” to you, skip this enclosed space.
——————
[Oh, in case you’re annoying, ‘Story=6’ is because, “well derrr”, there’s hardy one in an episodic comedy! Sigh, why don’t you know that la? What? “Just set it to 10 then”? Gosh, take your idiosyncrasies over to an episode of Nichijou and relax a little - honestly, now we both need it. :3 (... I’m still not changing a ‘technicality’ though - ~“episodic shows” deserve a punch to the ’nerve-central’ for betraying the !TRUST! and !EXPECTATIONS! of The Great MAL-senpai!!!~)
{Hail Fawn-sama For Forgiveness}
...takeahint.exe]
———
— {Bless the Lords of Fawn, and bless whomever is responsible for the Dub of Nichijou} —
Enjoy this gift, cos we damn-well never get animation quality or retrospective, goofy comedy that you can fall asleep to, ever - as in, fracking ever! It might be a long time till the next “Nichijou” too. ... Don’t let this gift perpetually be misplaced as anything but ‘the greatest anime comedy to relax thoughtlessly or fall asleep to’—seriously, if you (now) watch this properly, ie the way it would have been for native audiences, you’ll absolutely (spiritually) thank me later.
10/10, easily. If 11 was possible, it’d be my privilege to see Nichijou detonate MAL too - its overall perfection deserves no less!
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 15, 2020
For what it was and what it wanted to be - budget & “western-influences” included - it was an incredible show, and quite hilarious (and... somehow endearing, too...).
Can’t give it a 10 cos, I’m sure even the studio agrees but, it was never meant to be a production on that level, nor did it want it to be; and giving it ‘only an 8’ would be to disregard the “heart&soul” - with how well it composed and synergised itself in & with every department of the show - that went into this endearing and memorable project. Be it the music (both the front stage and
...
the back stage), but it the animation (which matches every tone and implementation of the show), be it the voice acting (only watched the dub—and it was incredible!...), be it the directing (which was completely unified with the scripting and sound design), or the ‘story boarding’, or even just the fact that every facet of Africa Salaryman feels like it ‘wasn’t just a creation of many smaller components with fantastic direction and then, eventually, combined together, but rather... as if there were an ‘overall cohesion - a dream of a goal, or even “an inspired labour of love” - from every member of (what I assume was) a small team & budget’. Honestly, this kind of production, albeit ‘never intending to be a Blockbuster’, is something that can only come to exist through “an office of entirely Unified and Motivated corporate slaves” (as turtle would put it), which only makes the ironic juxtaposition to our African Salarymen more meaningfully poetic and bittersweet - a message that, I’m sure, the team that put together this lighthearted work of art, thought was a beautifully-satirical final touch on their studio’s child.
9/10 is what they aimed for, and 9/10 is what they accomplished. Bravo. (...And pleeeaaase do a sequel!!! Don’t slack off, Toucan!)
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Dec 29, 2019
I know there won’t be a second season... but I honestly really enjoyed this show. Ecchi, genuine magic tricks, some pretty amusing ‘inversions of expectations’ for the sake of comedy... it was all really quite fun; and, unlike most 12 minute/“half-time” shows, the whole ‘4-coma’ pseudo-presentation really suited the show.
I honestly didn’t regret watching a single episode. Amazing show. ... Hard to rate, though. ... I mean, ‘for what it is, it’s beyond my expectations’—but I didn’t expect much from it to begin with, ya know? Well... I think that kind of “Expectation-Setup” is part of a show’s foundation, so even if “less effort” was
...
put into the whole Product, the delivery of ‘that expectation’ was easily a 7/10, if I’m being objective (I’m giving it 8/10 because it delivered on exactly what it suggested from the very start, and it never diverged from that or “under delivered” - I mean, even if the ‘complete package’ isn’t any kind of Masterpiece, Tejina-Senpai was VERY CLEAR about what it was “gunning for” from the very start—in that sense, it went well and beyond what it was prefacing and expecting itself to be. Honestly, that doesn’t happen often, does it?...
Our standards may usually be higher for most ‘general’ shows in anime, but... we are often disappointed, right? So then, if a show gives us a ‘projection’ of exactly what it intends to deliver, ... does it matter that the standard is ‘lower than the norm’? I mean, be realistic with me for a second: most projects don’t have the cash or sponsorship (or, heck, the time... sadly) to make a Masterpiece; and most that try just fail due to time-restraints or Politics (just look at this season’s Assassins Pride...), or just ‘underestimating the work involved to synergies multiple teams of people together unto a single project involving many unaffiliated parties’, etc. It’s a big focal point for the community every season, because we all so-desperately want the best for our “Holy Medium” that we are emotionally invested in the outcomes of each and every show that “we believe in” every season.
Tejina-Senpai isn’t a masterpiece. Tejina-Senpai isn’t even a ‘classic’—however, Tejina-Senpai perfectly delivers on exactly:
-What the studio proclaimed
-What the script-writing suggested
-What the animation delivered
-What the “magic tricks and procedures” delivers
-and, (what the voice actors delivered, plus) What the sponsors and investors, as well as directors and other politically-significant staff (cough Assassins Pride project-disaster) manages to ‘mutually negotiate’.
Many things went exceptionally well with the production of Tejina-Senpai, and it’s incredible that everything went soooo perfectly! (Just think about how easily this show could have been an utter waste of time with ‘magic tricks/arts’ just being a pretext to ‘Ecchi’ stuffs or asking all jokes completely unrelated to ‘magic tricks’ and “just using them as a means to ‘recycle jokes’).
Tejina-Senpai has integrity. It cares about the subject it pursues. It is dedicated to spreading its knowledge, and educating anyone who takes even the slightest of interests in its ‘endeavours’ (heck, even without being a “fanatic of magic-tricks”, I’m interested in investigating it after seeing so many awesome tricks in Tejina-Senpai!). This show appeals to just about everyone without even being a “blockbuster”; even without having any prior interest in Magic Tricks, Tejina-Senpai just had a perfect chemistry between every element displayed within the show. ... With that observed, I only wish there was a “full series of Tejina-Senpai”, aka another 12 episodes... Q_Q
(Plz gif 12 mooarrr magically-inclined episodes.... plllzzz... “half-episodes” is juuust cruuueeell). ;o;
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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