Category: Anime

Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody anime review

Just when I was starting to get back in the saddle of anime-watching, I had the misfortune to come across trash like Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody. I watched the whole thing expecting it to get interesting at some point, or at least to take full advantage of its schlockiness like In Another World with my Smartphone did. But no, it was just a mediocre waste of time that has severely dented my desire to read or watch any more isekai series.

Summary, for what its worth

Ichiro Suzuki is a programmer who was tasked with fixing several bugs in two MMORPGs his company is preparing . While taking a nap, he somehow wakes up in another world as Satoo Pendragon. Suddenly, a group of high-level lizardmen attack him, and in order to survive, Satoo desperately uses a special mass attack. As a result, his level jumps to 310 and he becomes extremely wealthy.

Satoo decides to hide his level, and plans to live peacefully and meet new people. However, developments in the game’s story may cause a nuisance to Satoo’s plans. [adapted from Wikipedia]

Why I call it trash

On the face of it,  Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody doesn’t do anything too different from the masses of isekai manga I’ve been reading recently. Satoo suddenly becomes overpowered, he goes around saving girls left and right, all the girls fall madly in love with him and he solves every problem the show can throw at him without suffering too much.

Problem 1 – Unnecessary sexual content. I’m not interested in a show where the hero has sex with prostitutes just to convince viewers that he’s a man. Or just to set itself apart from other shows. Death March is really just a slice of life show so maybe they included such scenes to show that they’re not so wholesome after all. Like how teenybopper stars go after risque roles to distance themselves from their former images. Whatever I don’t care.

Problem 2 – The bigger problem. Satoo is level 310. He should act like he’s level 310! But he doesn’t. He always looks like he’s struggling against even the weakest of enemies when he should be clearing them out with a single yawn. Part of that is understandable, like when he’s trying to level up his party members so they can defend themselves. Or when he’s trying to stay under the radar in the city. But even in far off places with no other witnesses he’s still struggling against weakling homunculi or a level 75 wizard. I hate to bring this up again but… HE’S LEVEL 310. So the show should give us the catharsis that comes from the hero being hundreds of levels above everyone else.

He’s so terrible at playing the game it’s hard to believe he’s really a programmer. He doesn’t learn skills when he should, he doesn’t explore the limits of his abilities, he doesn’t try to learn useful resistances in advance, nothing. Like there’s a part where he’s hit by Dark Magic. He gets a Dark Magic resistance skill. Instead of maxing it out, he just kind of leaves it there. In fact he just kind of leaves a lot of stuff in his menu to look at “Later” when the viewer is screaming “No! Look at it now!” It’s just a very annoying show all around.

Problem 3 – Boring characters and world. Death March is so short we didn’t get to see much of the world. The little we see is just one generic fantasy city, nothing interesting or exciting about it at all. The food doesn’t even look good despite their best efforts. The harem characters are so many that they all blur into one. Couple of lolis, couple of older girls, either way Satoo ignores them in favor of prostititues – plus he’s level 310 and doesn’t really need hangers on. I don’t even know what they’re doing in this how. What were their names again?

TL;DR

Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody is an isekai show with very little isekai-ness, just one tiny city. It’s a harem show with no appealing girls. It’s a game-world show with a hero who evidently doesn’t care much for video games. Long story short, it has very little to offer fans of any of these genres. There are so many other isekai shows out there that you don’t need to waste time with this one. Avoid.

Knights of Sidonia quick anime and manga review

Still easing myself back into watching and blogging about anime regularly. Gundam 00 really did a number on me. From now on I will know better than to marathon a drama-heavy show, and if the fandom says to stay away from a movie I will consider their responses more carefully. Today, let’s talk about Knights of Sidonia. I watched both seasons of the anime and finished up by reading the manga, which was only 78 chapters long and thus a quick affair. The ending was… umm… Well, we’ll talk about that in a bit. First the summary:

Knights of Sidonia (シドニアの騎士) is a mecha manga series by Tsutomu Nihei. After destroying Earth many years ago, the alien race Gauna has been pursuing the remnants of humanity—which, having narrowly escaped, fled across the galaxy in a number of giant seed ships. In the year 3394, Nagate Tanikaze surfaces from his lifelong seclusion deep beneath the seed ship Sidonia in search of food on the upper levels, only to find himself dragged into events unfolding without his knowledge.
When the Gauna begin their assault on Sidonia, it’s up to Tanikaze to defend humanity’s last hope for survival, and defeat their alien foes.

What I liked about Knights of Sidonia
  • It’s short. You can marathon both seasons of the anime.
  • The enemies are truly threatening. Although Tanikaze starts out overpowered, he can’t keep up with the Gauna’s speed of adaptation so he’s almost always in danger. This isn’t one of those “Boring Invincible Hero” shows.
  • That said, Tanikaze is a pretty boring typical shonen hero who tries to save everyone all the time. But he’s a nice, earnest guy and easy to root for, which is more than I can say for many protagonists.
  • There’s plenty of action in every episode. Sometimes it gets a bit much.
  • The ending is happier than I would have expected, given the overwhelming odds they face.
  • It seems to be a love-hate kind of thing, but I rather like the CG art style. It’s different from the other stuff I’ve been watching.
  • She takes some getting used to, but Tsumugi-chan is kind of cute. Best girl ftw!
What I didn’t like about Knights of Sidonia
  • Some of the gauna are kind of gross.
  • Some of the scenes are kind of gross, like the living catheter (ick) and the romantic piss-drinking (double ick).
  • A little too much time is wasted on romantic hijinks halfway through the show/manga. It brings everything to a screeching halt to have girls fighting over the hero when the world is collapsing around them.
  • I don’t approve of certain relationships in the ending (to explain would be to spoil, but it is an abomination).
  • Some of the characters look a little too similar, which makes it hard to tell people apart at first.
  • Certain characters get away with murder, literally, and are quickly and easily forgiven. Like it’s not even an issue.
To watch or not to watch?

It’s probably faster to read the Knights of Sidonia manga, since it’s only 78 chapters. But the anime isn’t bad at all, plenty of action and tense moments and the body count of a small civil war. There are many unanswered questions at the end concerning the origins and intentions of the gauna and the history of the world, so this probably isn’t for anyone who likes complete closure. For anybody else, y

Alderamin on the Sky quick anime review

It took some time for me to get back into anime-watching after the disaster that was the Gundam 00 movie, but I made it back somehow. I’ve watched some other series before Alderamin on the Sky (Nejimaki Seirei Senki: Tenkyou no Alderamin), but this is the most recent one I tried so I thought I’d dash off a few notes before I got too lazy. You have to ease yourself back into blogging with baby steps.

Blurb: The world is thrown into chaos when the Katjvarna empire takes arms against the Republic of Kioka. Our hero, Ikta, detests war but ultimately has no choice but to become a High Grade Military Officer to defend his land. No one could have ever imagined that this lazy womanizer would eventually become the hero everyone needed (from MAL).

What I liked about Alderamin on the Sky

  • The sprites were cute.
  • Unlike many anime about wars or invasions, named characters do die – and frequently too. Even though some of them were obviously created just so the show could kill them off to make us sad.
  • The show does a good job of showing the brutality and unfairness of war and the negative consequences of bad leadership.
  • Ikta comes up with some interesting strategies, 90% of which work because the opposing side is filled with dum-dums.
  • At the same time he’s not perfect. He can’t and doesn’t save everyone, and he doesn’t necessarily try when the cost would outweigh the benefit. He’s not the typical shounen hero, that’s for sure.
  • Ikta has the brains, but the other characters get plenty of moments to shine. Most of them can outfight him in a heartbeat, especially the main girl Yatorishino.
  • The show has a lot of bright and vivid colors so it’s fun to watch.
  • It’s only 13 episodes long and wraps up the arc it’s dealing with fairly well. Good for a Sunday afternoon marathon.

What I didn’t like about Alderamin on the Sky

  • The “hero” is a lazy, complaining womanizer. He hits on everything in a skirt and it’s neither cute nor funny.
  • The hero and his army are forgiven for all kinds of crimes mostly because he just happened to be childhood pals with the leader of the other side. And she of course is madly in love with him so genocide is totally forgivable when you’re in love.
  • His counterpart on the other side who was supposed to be the smartest strategist on the opposite side turned out to be a disappointment.
  • The setting shows some promise but the world, religion and culture of the countries are not explored in depth at all. An antagonistic country just shows up 10 episodes in when we had no idea that they even existed before.
  • The ending is pretty much “Please read the light novel to find out what happens next, okay?”

Summary

Alderamin on the Sky is a quick watch and a fairly good show that should please lovers of action anime and romance shows alike. The lack of a conclusive ending and the unpleasantness of the main character are the show’s main drawbacks. I still think it’s worth a watch. I enjoyed it for what it was worth and would probably watch a second season if they made one. But at the same time I’m not interested enough to follow up with the light novel so… yeah. That’s it for me.

Watched Gundam 00 Season 2 + the movie

Yes, I said I would watch it and I did… and it almost killed this blog. Was it bad? No, honestly I enjoyed most of  Gundam 00 Season 2 more than the first season. The ending was highly implausible and a little overly optimistic given the nature of human beings, but it was… serviceable. Acceptable, even. The movie, I shouldn’t have watched. It was exhausting, pointless, aliens? in my Gundam? It’s more likely than you think! And by the end I was all Gundammed out. Not just Gundammed out but anime-d out, it took me two weeks to touch any episode of any other show.

Final thoughts: I marathoned both seasons so fast that they’re a blur now. I want to forget I ever watched any of this stuff. It was such a cheerless, joyless, tedious show. At least I did learn that I prefer the Gundam Seed/Wing-type BOOM POW KAPOW overpowered Gundams to these useless weaklings with their ridiculous ideas and incompetent leadership. So from an anime watcher’s point of view it’s good to know what you like and what you don’t like.

Apart from that, I’ve got nothing left to say about Gundam 00. It’s good to get it off my backlog. It doesn’t mean I won’t watch any more Gundam. And it got me pretty involved when I was watching. But… now that it’s all over… what did I watch it for? It was so crappy, so unsatisfying, such a waste of time… *sigh* I want those 2000 minutes of my life back… <— That’s how I felt when I finished the whole show + the movie.

Oh. I supposed I’d better comment on my wishlist from last time:

The overall story needs to make sense – It did, more or less. I won’t spoil. I don’t care enough to spoil

Better planning, strategy and reconnaissance from all parties but especially the Gundams – NOPE. There were flashes of brilliance here and there, but everything always fizzled to naught. Nobody ever had a backup plan in case the first one didn’t work, it was just ridiculous. And I lost count of the number of battles that turned into skirmishes – you hit me, I hit you, we kill a few grunt pilots, everyone retreat!

More Tieria back story – This we got. Pretty straightforward stuff, and Tieria becomes much less of a jerk and much more of a useful, sympathetic character as the show progresses. This part I enjoyed.

Less Saji and Louise – Ha. No.

Less Setsuna, less Mari-whatshername – Ha. Of course not, Setsuna is the main character. But there was less focus on Marina and she didn’t turn into the second coming of Lacus Clyne, so we should be grateful for that much.

Enough talking about Gundam 00. It wasn’t bad but it made me feel bad. It’s that kind of show. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to hunt for something light and fluffy and actually interesting to clean the bad taste from my mouth.

Classroom of the Elite anime review

Hmm, this is bizarre. I enjoyed it when I was watching it, but Classroom of the Elite (Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e) is rapidly fading from my memory now. That’s bad, isn’t it? Or rather it’s a testament to how badly the show dropped the ball in its second half.

Blurb: In the not too distant future, the Japanese government has established the Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing School, dedicated to instructing and fostering the generation of people that will support the country in the future. The story follows the perspective of Kiyotaka Ayanokōji, a quiet and unassuming boy who is not good at making friends and would rather keep his distance. He is a student of D-class, which is where the school dumps its inferior students in order to ridicule them. After meeting Suzune Horikita and Kikyō Kushida, two other students in his class, Kiyotaka’s situation begins to change.(wikipedia as usual)

Or, to summarize even further, “Emotionless, overpowered main character solves trivial problems on school campus.” Your enjoyment of the show will depend a lot on how much you like stoic, clever characters and how cute you think the girls are.

Where Classroom of the Elite first goes wrong is in not showing what’s so bad about being in Class D. When you’re in Yale, you’re in Yale. It shouldn’t matter whether you’re in class A or B or C. The whole premise of the show is about Kiyotaka teaming up with Horikita to make it to class A, but apart from a matter of personal pride it just seems like a hollow, pointless achievement.

Fan speculation has it that the entire Class D will be kicked out before graduation, but there is nothing in the show to support it – unless it’s one of those “Read the light novel” deals. So that being the case, the obsession of certain students with getting to Class A and the lengths their teacher will go through to get them there all seem pretty weird. You have all the privileges and facilities available to you whether you’re in class A or class D so why struggle so hard to rise higher?

If you can’t get behind or understand the motivations of the key characters then from the start the anime is in trouble And yet I still enjoyed Classroom of the Elite for what it was worth. Which wasn’t too much, but it wasn’t bad. The characters were interesting. I like pseudo-harems where the girls aren’t actively competing and have lives and objectives outside being the main character’s girlfriend. The inventive methods used to get around obstacles were interesting as well. I hope to see more uses of points to get around problems in the future.

But still, the element of “What am I fighting for!” runs strong in this one. It feels very pointless at times. And what’s worse, sometimes the show itself loses sight of that supposed goal. Episode 6 was a horrendously boring farce dedicated to stopping a peeping plot. Couldn’t they have cut that out? Halfway through the final arc there’s a panty-stealing crime as well, like, is that really necessary? Does anyone care? The studio must be really confident of getting a season two if they’re willing to waste two episodes out of twelves on breasts and panties.

Classroom of the Elite makes for a fun binge watch, but it’s a little too unfocused to make a lasting impression. As I said, they need to explain what’s so good about class A and what’s so bad about class D. The rest of the show is fine, but without that fundamental basis established it’s hard to care. Failing that, they could explain more about Kiyotaka’s history and motivations. Anything to make us invested in the story.

As it is, it’s not that good a show. Great premise, nice character designs, cute characters, no lasting impact. Watch or watch not, you’re not missing anything either way.