Okay, I’m out. The whole Battia-Geobaldi casual sex thing was my turning point. Yeah, it is a fanservice kind of manga, but there’s fanservice and there’s promiscuity and this has crossed the border. Besides, volume 3 wasn’t particularly interesting, and the appeal of the unusual warship design has long since worn off and the ‘romance’ between Kahm and Tetsuya has gotten tedious. I get bored easily, which is why I usually read only shorter series and watch shorter anime, so most likely Outlanders never stood a chance to begin with. I was going to skip to the last chapter of volume 8 to see how things ended, but maybe I’ll just read spoilers instead. I’m done here.
Category: Impressions
Hetalia: Axis Powers volume 1 impressions
I’m calling it ‘impressions’ because I only read about half of Hetalia: Axis Powers volume 1 before dropping it. Cute art I like, whitewashed history not so much, and series where a doofus makes a nuisance of himself I just can’t stand.
The gimmick behind Hetalia is anthropomorphized world powers like Germany, Italy and Japan all hanging out together and totally not fighting a war in which millions died (same with USA, England, France, etc). Since the author is not interested in depicting the war with any semblance of reality, it follows that the characters don’t have much to do except sit around and bicker all day, showing off stereotypical traits of their respective nations (e.g. France and Italy are ladies men, Germany is strict, etc) and making unfunny jokes… wait, were there any jokes at all? It’s supposed to be a comedy so I’m assuming there were jokes, but I don’t actually remember any, or any amusing situations either. It’s just the same pattern over and over again: Italy does something stupid and Germany or someone else reacts in exasperation. Rinse and repeat until the reader runs out of patience.
If you like bokke-tsukkomi/Straight Man & Funny Man kind of humor, maybe Hetalia might be your cup of tea, I dunno. Personally I suspect the series’ popularity is just because it came along at a time when the whole yaoi fangirl boom was taking off and yaoi fangirls were looking for something to yaoi fangirl over, Right series at the right time, kind of thing. Even then I dunno, what with the chicken-scratch art and the identical-looking characters, what’s so special about this? Fangirls gonna fangirl, I guess. Apart from that I don’t know what anyone sees in this manga. Insta-dropped.
Caught up to Hajime no Ippo manga (chapter 1099)
I went on a mega-binge in the past couple of days and caught up in time at all, even though I’d dropped the Hajime no Ippo manga yeeaaars ago. I dropped it when Miyata was about to fight Randy Boy, so I had a lot of catching up to do. Actually I went all the way back to Sendo-Ippo II (Lalapalooza) because that’s really the best fight in the series, and then I continued from there. I skipped some of the more boring fights along the way, like… pretty much anything didn’t feature Ippo. Definitely skipped anything featuring Miyata except the very final page of his fight with Randy Boy. It’s about time he moved up two or three classes already.
But enough about that and more about the latest chapter, 1099 (raw spoilers follow from here on). The first round of the unification match between Bison and Takamura is over and Bison has a point lead. Since he’s a Thomas Hearns copy, Bison has a flicker jab that is giving Takamura a hard time.
Flicker jabs are portrayed as being dangerous and tricky to deal with every time they show up, but… why doesn’t Takamura have a strategy to deal with it? Why is the Coach asking him when it’s the coach’s job to come up with strategies like this? Why hasn’t this whole matter been discussed in advance?
I mean, I could buy the “I didn’t know he could do that!” excuse for foreign opponents like Woli, though even then in this day of Youtube and the internet it’s hard to believe there’s no video footage or Google Translateable newspaper article about them at all. But Richard Bison is a World Champion. From the USA, no less. There are bound to be hundreds of videos of his matches available if Team Kamogawa cares to find out, but they don’t. That’s just DUMB.
Then the two of them bicker about Taka not having a sparring partners on Bison’s level. Taka, with all due respect this is your fault for refusing to go to America. In fact Kamogawa should have sent him there to Dankichi along with Volg, that way Taka could have moved to up the heavyweights faster. Lots of selfishness, stupidity and clinging to each other from both men. I know I’m alone among Ippo fans for thinking this, but I think Kamogawa is a really bad coach, Anyway, none of them have any ideas. Bison’s busy steaming about Takamura stealing a treasure he wanted, most likely the other belt, so he won’t be much help either.
Chapter ends with the start of the second round. This might be a long match, maybe 10-12 rounds, so even if Morikawa writes one round per chapter we still won’t get anywhere for the next 3-4 months. Looks like it’s time for another lengthy hiatus from Hajime no Ippo. I’ll check back in once Ippo’s next match ends, whenever that is.
Shingeki Bahamut Genesis + Kamisama Hajimemashita + Akatsuki no Yona, all dropped
Dropped for various reasons, but dropped all the same. I’ll explain why.
Shingeki Bahamut Genesis – Had the makings of a good show. In fact I suspect it is a good show. I watched the first episode and thought it had great potential, but then I dun goofed and waited about 2-3 months to watch the second. Somehow the magic had faded away, leaving me to make a (-_-“) face as I watched a naked redhead prance across the screen with a demon tail. Needless to say I didn’t make it through episode 2. This is one show I should have just marathoned, but it’s too late and I don’t feel like going back now.
Kamisama Hajimemashita – I wouldn’t necessarily not watch a show about the protagonist becoming the ‘god’ of a false religion, but everything else about the show would have to be really, really good and this was just meh. Ever since I watched Hayate no Gotoku, all deadbeat parent stories have paled in comparison. Besides, there’s so much crappy shoujo out there that my favorite way of weeding out the dross is to ask “Does the main guy treat the main girl like trash?” Here the answer is clearly yes, so dropping Kamisama Hajimemashita was a piece of cake.
Akatsuki no Yona – Twelve Kingdoms meets Harukanaru Toki no Naka de, except without the travelling from another world gimmick. Female character starts out naive and weak but gradually grows stronger but still needs the protection of various bishies to get anything done, blah blah. People who say it’s unique or unusual haven’t played enough otome games. I only watched one episode and didn’t really feel like watching more. If it had been a 12-episode series, or if the 24 episodes covered the full manga then I might have considered it, but 24 eps for only half the story? Eh, I’ll pass.
Ah, it feels good to whittle my backlog down like this. Now, what to tackle next.
Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love! offers nothing new
The concept of teenagers with special powers fighting to save the earth is at least as old as the X-Men comics, possibly more. I thought Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love! was supposed to be a parody of not only that kind of series but also of magical girl shows, complete with transformation sequences, but like many parodies it failed to go far enough and instead become exactly what it’s trying to parody.
Bunch of high school boys, weird mascot from outer space, turns them into heroes, they get into the role pretty quickly, they fight against some kind of hotpot monster in episode 1, end of show. I’m not sure what was decided by the end of ep. 1 because I was already skipping through at that point.
Even though ‘Binan’ is a synonym for handsome guys (with different kanji), the guys don’t look special at all. Even your low-budget smartphone otome ‘game’ has better-looking characters, and that’s saying a lot. I’m not interested in fanservice, male or female, so the naked butt shots in the transformations were actually a disservice. Cover up, luvs.
If I’m supposed to stick around for the comedy, it’s not funny in the least. There’s nothing remotely amusing about it. There’s a wombat and it’s pink and it keeps talking about love. ???? Come on, my toddler nephew tells funnier stories than that, and he’s 2. As for action there isn’t much of that, just boys flying around waving wands at people, pew pew pew! My toddler nephew and his friends play more exciting games than that, and they’re all two.
tl;dr there’s nothing lovely about Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love! and even 3/4ths of an episode was a waste of my time. Moving on!