Also dropped: Soul Eater, Rokka no Yuusha, Ping Pong

Continuing from the last post, some more things I dropped recently:

Soul Eater: Not my cup of tea. I think I’ve outgrown shounen action shows or something, because the violent action in the first few minutes didn’t thrill me in the least, and then the attempts at… humor? with Maka’s dad or whoever just made me roll my eyes. I turned it off before the halfway mark. I’m not going to bother reading the manga or any summaries either. Tsugi!

Rokka no Yuusha: Meh. Not interested. I made through the whole of episode 1, which is more than I can say for the other two shows in this post, but that’s about it. The fast pace of the first episode was good – demon revives instantly, party starts to come together, all good, but the dense rash main character and the coy (but really strong, honest!) princess didn’t interest me enough to make me want to continue. One episode is enough.

ping-pong-episode-1Ping Pong: The main character’s voice and attitude turned me off completely. I know he’s supposed to sound bored and lifeless, and I’m sure hundred of voice actors were auditioned and several takes were made in order to get him to sound like a dead fish, but he just rubs me the wrong way 100%. I’ve heard good things about Ping Pong so I might read the manga where I don’t have to deal with any annoying voices and the super slow pacing. The anime, though, is not for me.

Dropped: Giant Killing, Joukamachi no Dandelion, Non non Biyori

Regular readers of the AnimeFangirl blog should be used to the system where I try one episode of a series and then drop it like a hot potato. Being an avid anime watcher for almost 20 years ensures you develop a nose for shows that won’t work out and can quit without wasting too much time. As a bonus this also frees you up to cope with your ever-growing backlog -_-;; The latest shows on the chopping block:

Giant Killing: I like sports shows/manga about the sport at the professional level, but something about this lazy rogue ‘unconventional’ coach rubbed me the wrong way. The art and the voices were low-tier as well, but I am vaguely interested in this rags-to-riches story so I might read the manga sometime. Things take so long to develop in the anime and so much time is spent just talking and arguing that I’m bailing out now.

non-non-biyori-screenshot2Non non Biyori: Cute show. Lovely environments. Really makes you want to up and move to a village in the Japanese countryside, it’s so beautiful. So much so in fact that it actually feels like pro-countryside propaganda, to be honest. But the bigger problem is that there are tons of “cute girls doing cute stuff” slice of life shows out there and Non non Biyori doesn’t have anything special going for it besides the gorgeous scenery gimmick. It’s also really, really slow even by slice of life show standards. It was a nice watch, but one episode is enough.

Joukamachi no Dandelion: Too many characters. Too much going on. Too many ‘wacky’ incidents. The main character is annoying. The premise is all kinds of messed up and yet not very interesting at the same time. The royal family lives in a normal neighborhood? There’s nothing normal about their lives with all those cameras and magical powers and flying! So why not just let them live in a palace already? And the whole ‘game to decide the next king’ gimmick is stupid. In fact it’s just a dumb show all around. I don’t think I even finished the first episode. Next!

Yowamushi Pedal episodes 1-4 (dropped)

Happy New Year! Now the Christmas season is well and truly over, I can get back to posting about anime and manga. I didn’t try as many new series as I thought I would over the holiday season, but a few is better than none. First up, Yowamushi Pedal, a series I liked a lot after episode 1 then liked less and less with each subsequent episode until I dropped it after episode 4.

What I liked about the first episode is the slight twist on the staple “naive character doesn’t know he’s talented in a sport” trope many sports anime have. Sure Sakamichi is naive and doesn’t know he’s a cycling prodigy, but he’s wholly devoted to another interest (anime) and is determined to pursue it in high school. I wanted to find out how he would reconcile the two interests or whether he would end up dropping anime together because 3D friends and physical exercise are so much better.

yowamushi pedal episode 1-3I also rather liked the snobby rival character who was shown up so easily (sort of) by an oblivious Sakamachi. That interest stayed with me in episode 2 during the race, but then the technical terms started flowing. Cadence. The height of the seat blah blah. Rotations. Pedaling this, pedaling that. It was too much technicality too soon for me. Plus the gallery and their commentary were seriously annoying, especially the stalker manager girl with the huge eyes. Ick.

yowamushi pedal episode 1-2Then episodes 3 and 4 just lost me completely with the introduction of the Osakan character with the bad voice-acting. I can’t even remember his name now, but the whole episode was just so boring. Some guy threw a cigarette butt at a bike so they pedal and pedal and pedal and pedal (repeat for 15 minutes) and that’s supposed to be interesting? That’s when I realized a show about cycling just wasn’t for me. The better kind of sports show at least makes an effort to show you what’s so exciting about that sport in particular, but Yowamushi Pedal just takes it for granted that everybody likes cycling already. If you don’t, well, it’s got nothing to offer you.

So having realized I wouldn’t be able to sit through any of the other races/matches the show had to offer because cycling is just too boring, I decided to call it a day and quit while I was ahead. I still like sports anime (I think?) and Yowamushi Pedal probably isn’t bad if you like cycling or racing shows. It’s just too boring for me so I’m out.

Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 3 manga review

On on we go. Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 3 concludes the first match of Hirataka High School’s attempts to qualify for the Koshien summer tournament. They’ve been down by 3 runs since the first inning, and while Touma is pitching well, the Hirataka batters just can’t get a good hit off their opponent’s excellent defense. What’s more, the opponents are deliberately doing their best to burn through Touma’s stamina to make him easier to hit – and it’s working! Is Hirataka’s campaign doomed to fail right at the very outset?

While it would be awesome if that happened, you and I have both seen enough sports anime/read enough manga to know that something that anti-climatic would never happen. That’s why it’s a little irritating how writer Shinji Tonaka spends so much time pretending the other team actually has a chance. It would be one thing if he’d gone the usual route of having Hirataka face last year’s champions or some elite team, but the opponents are just some low-ranked team without much of a background. No purpose would be served by having them win, so of course they don’t.

What is achieved in this volume, then, is to show some bonding between the Touma brothers, to expose the flaws in Touma Ichiya’s pitching, namely his lack of stamina and his easy distractability, to show Yoshi’s intelligence and prove that he’s softening up a bit and, most importantly, to set up the inevitable showdown between Hirataka and their soon-to-be rivals, a showdown that Hirataka will inevitably lose.

Why am I still reading Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de? Mainly because there’s no reason for me to stop. It’s one of those things you continue out of inertia unless something better shows up or they mess up royally. Things won’t get interesting until Hirataka High is dropped from the tournament. A lot of mangaka lose focus once there’s no Koshien to keep things interesting (see: Ookiku Furikabutte) so I want to see how Shinji Tonaka handles the team’s future development. Of course I can’t guarantee I’ll read the manga long enough to find that out, but I’m still here for now.

Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 2 manga review

Well, things are certainly moving quickly. By the end of Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 2 the brothers have already become the main battery of the Hirataka high school baseball team and Koshien preliminaries have already began. The team went it expecting an easy win against their first opponent, but Ichiya quickly falls prey to the opponent’s mind games. By the time he snaps out of it Hirataka is already down 3-0. Is the team doomed to fail in its very first official game?

That would be an interesting twist, certainly. I rather doubt it though, simply because the bulk of volume 2 was spent introducing the rival team and the rival batter, Shinoi of Chouzan High. Hirataka is very conveniently destined to meet Chouzan right before the preliminary finals, so it’s unlikely that they’ll be knocked out before then. Plus most of the Hirataka team is made up of third years so this is their last tournament. If the team fails in the first match then author Shinji Tonaka will have to start over with an almost entirely new cast from volume 4. I have yet to meet a mangaka with that kind of guts, but who knows?

041Apart from the introduction of Shinoi and the start of the tournament, nothing too exciting happened in volume 2. We were introduced to their eccentric team coach, one of those types who only gives cryptic advice instead of coming out to say what he means. The Touma brothers have also started working on a new pitch, since all Ichiya can throw right now are fastballs and sliders. Having Shinoi hit his pitch so easily has lit a fire under both brothers, though the results have yet to be felt.

TBH I wish the author would have delayed the start of the Koshien prelims by at least another volume. I haven’t got a good feel for the characters and their personalities just yet, and most of the Hirataka team is still just so much ink on paper. I don’t even know who bats when (Yoshi 3rd, Takaoka 4th, that’s it) or who defends what position. A little time spent developing the team by maybe focusing on training or the Touma brothers’ home life would have come in handy.

I can’t say I’m impressed by the baseball action I’ve seen so far either. It’s very boringly depicted. All pitchers adopt the same pose and then somehow the ball hits the bat/mitt and goes flying somewhere and it’s like whatever. Rather hard to follow and really hard to get into because you don’t know the main characters well enough to root for them to hit/strike someone out.

But it’s only volume 2 of Oto-Ore (the official abbreviation and much easier on the tongue than Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de!) so let’s keep reading and see how things develop, shall we?