Reviews - Animefangirl!

GATE and Hello Kiniro Mosaic dropped

It would be nice if I’d had something cheerier and more meaningful for my 300th post, but I’m so lazy these days it’s surprising enough that I actually posted anything. I’m still working my way through my massive ever-growing anime backlog. I’ve found some pretty good stuff lately, which I’ll talk about once I finish them. Since there’s still good stuff out there, that only makes me all the more merciless when I come across shows I don’t really like. Most recent victims:

Hello Kiniro Mosaic – I’ve already mentioned it before, I forget where, but since “cute girls doing cute stuff” series are a dime a dozen these days, a show has to really stand out to get my attention these days. Hello Kiniro Mosaic is so boring I dropped it about 10 minutes in. Every skit is slow and pointless, the ‘jokes’ aren’t funny at all, the schoolgirls obsessing over each other (and the teachers obsessing over them) is a little creepy and while the character designs are cute, they aren’t especially unique or memorable. There’s bound to be better stuff out there. Dropped.

GATE: Two strikes against this, first the realistic armor and weapons. I don’t like anything resembling realistic war in books, anime, manga, you name it. I can watch 100 episodes of space-fighting Gundam beam spam or magical sparks going flying through the air, but you ground it in reality and my interest fades faster than you can say “Self-Defence Force.”

The second strike was the protagonist. Honestly he’s just gross. 33, otaku, ugly as sin, nothing on his mind except games and anime. He’s just yucky. People talk about how it would be interesting to have more anime protagonists who aren’t wide-eyed teenagers, and to an extent I agree, but someone who hasn’t made anything of their life at 33 is just too disgusting to watch. Did I already mention he’s really ugly? He’s ugly. I don’t feel like rooting for him throughout whatever adventures he has beyond the gate, so I didn’t even make it to the end of episode 1. GATE is dropped, good riddance.

Kyousougiga episodes 1-2, dropped

Too weird and disjointed for me, I guess. I was following along with the weirdness in the early parts of episode 1 of Kyousougiga, or so I thought, then they lost me in Kyoto when the kid turned into an adult and started fooling around with some random floozy in an apartment etc etc.

Still I thought I’d try one more episode to see if they would at least explain what’s going on. Okay, I get that there are several worlds out there and there’s an organization that takes care of those worlds and the girl Koto that showed up is part of that group and is looking for her sensei at the same time. But. I don’t like Koto at all, especially at her bratty kid stage, which is all episode two focuses on.

I watched up to the part where she was brawling with some kid at a shrine and then dropped it, though I did skip forward a bit to see that some mysterious people think she’s special somehow and want to get their hands on her, I think. Which means there’s going to be even more focus on Koto for the rest of the series, which means I’m better off dropping it while I’m ahead.

Annoying main character, adult situations that don’t fit the rest of the show, lots of weirdness that isn’t explained in a straightforward fashion (I hate weird series), all equals a recipe for a series I’m going to hate. I’m not even interested enough in what Kyousougiga is about to read summaries online. The whole thing just left me feeling frustrated and mildly irritated. Pass, on to the next show!

Dropped Danchigai, Kuusen Madoushi and Madan no Ou to Vanadis

Danchigai – I usually like anime with short episodes but in this case 3 minutes felt like 3 hours. Nothing significant happened – guy woke up, bickered with siblings, went to school, but they still had to throw in unnecessary tsundereness and suggestive content. There were no compelling situations, no story or even background (who are these people and why are they all living together?) so nothing made me want to watch any more after an episode.

Kuusen Madoushi Kouhosei No Kyoukan – Started out somewhat interesting with all those bug monsters. The little combat I saw didn’t look too interesting, but I figured it would get better as stuff was explained later. Unfortunately before that we had to deal with the usual “funny” misunderstandings with the main character walking around with jam on his crotch and walking into the women’s bathroom and all those other situations I haven’t found funny in about 10 years.

The idea of an elite fighter taking charge of a bunch of weaklings and whipping them into shape is a good one, but it was clear from episode 1 that the show is going to be more about perverted incidents and harem-type occurrences instead of just normal fighting and training like I was hoping for. Not my cup of tea. Next.

Madan no Ou to Vanadis – I was looking for more shows with overpowered MCs after finishing Mahouka, and someone recommended this. Well, the hero isn’t quite as overpowered as Tatsuya. He’s just really, really good with a bow and then he gets a super magic bow and well, you can take it from there.

I watched about 3 or 4 episodes, up to the point where he kills the dragon with the magic bow. I dropped it because it was boring. The skimpily-dressed ladies falling all over the main guy didn’t help the show’s case, but if the political intrigue and the battles had been any good there could have been hope. But really, there’s only so much you can do with a bow and an arrow. Point, and shoot. Point, and shoot. Booorriiing. After watching a long, supposedly strategic battle I couldn’t bring myself to root for any of the sides and didn’t see the point of continuing.

Yay, my backlog is shrinking! I’ll post about another reject next time – the only reason I didn’t add it today is because it comes highly recommended so I want to give it one more episode to get its act together. See you next time!

My Little Monster anime review (eps 1-5)

I’m not sure how exactly I came to start watching My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun). I think I may have downloaded an episode by accident when looking for Tonari no Seki-kun episodes, or maybe I got it back when it was first airing and forgot about it. Either way before I knew it I had the first episode on my laptop, so I proceeded to watch it a few days ago.

Story: Shizuku Mizutani only has one thing in mind: getting good grades. To accomplish this goal, she has little interest in anything else. However, after delivering lesson notes to her resident delinquent classmate Haru Yoshida, the latter is convinced that they are friends. Initially, Shizuku is intimidated by such a troublesome person, but she gradually notices that Haru is actually a kind person. When Haru confesses to Shizuku, an unlikely romance begins to blossom between them.

I liked: The blunt honesty of the main characters. Haru is a very silly guy, but he’s very open about his feelings for Shizuku. Shizuku is also a nice change from the usual cowardly, simpering, brainless shoujo main character. She actually has a spine and an agenda outside “Get guy X to like me”, at least at first. I also found it unusual but intriguing to have the main guy confess to the main girl so early in the show and then have her return his feelings just an episode or two later.

I didn’t like: Unfortunately we can’t have anything so refreshing in a shoujo series, so instead of building up the relationship from there, the two confessions somehow cancel each other out. Huh? Only in anime, eh? Thus instead of the different take on shoujo romance I was hoping for, we end up with the same old “He loves me, he loves me not, maybe he loves this other girl, maybe I don’t love him” merry-go-round that we’ve seen 20,000 times before. My Little Monster, I am disappoint.

What’s worse than that is the downfall of Haru’s character. He started out a little wild but basically a good guy… for all of 10 minutes in the first episode. Then he turns into the kind of guy who smacks Shizuku in the face and never apologizes and regularly seizes her by the collar but somehow he’s still her love interest anyway. “He hits me but it’s okay because he loves me?” Not only is it not okay, but he doesn’t even love you!

Every other episode she’s like “Haru’s such a kind person.” What kind of kind person would punch a girl and not even say he was sorry? Even your garden-variety domestic abuser can muster up a few crocodile tears of apology every time. Up to the end of episode 5 it still wasn’t clear what exactly Shizuku saw in Haru. It seems like she would have felt the same way about any other guy with a nice smile who confessed his love and kissed her within a few days of meeting her.

The other issue with Haru’s personality is probably less his fault and more my problem for being sick and tired of every single shoujo manga love interest having some kind of family issue and some kind of dark history and some kind of trauma somewhere. It’s like an edict was passed around 1995 stating that no sensible, decent, well-adjusted guy was allowed to be the main guy in shoujo manga ever again. They all have to be messed up somehow, no exceptions. Well 1995 was 20 years ago, can we go back to ordinary, likeable, relateable male characters now? Please?

That way Haru could have stayed the funny, naive, happy-go-lucky guy (with a violent streak) that he started out as instead of having to deal with all this drama with his dad and his brother and who knows what else in his family. I don’t want to watch all that, it’s boring. I’m sure Shizuku will later turn out to have issues of her own, equal opportunity and all that. She’s already lost the focus on grades that made her interesting and become the usual “Squee, he smiled at me *blush blush*” kind of heroine. *sigh*

Long story short, I don’t want to see anything more from this show. My Little Monster is just the same old shoujo tropes dolled up slightly differently but ultimately working out the same way. If you like shoujo manga, you’ll probably love it since it’s more of the same with a slight twist. If you’re not a fan of the old “going round in circles for 10 volumes rigamarole, avoid. For me it’s dropped after 5 episodes. On to the next show!

Hanayamata dropped for being too whiny

It’s bad of me, I know, but I didn’t even finish episode 1 of Hanayamata. I was feeling quite favorably inclined towards a series about Japanese dance because I enjoyed Aki no Kanade so much, but this isn’t quite what I was looking for. For one thing it takes Hanayamata forever to get round to the actual dancing part. It hasn’t even happened yet in episode 1 and who knows when it will take place. Instead all the time is taken up by the heroine Naru whining on about how not-special she is and how much she wants to be a fairy princess and on and on. I know she’s 14 and that’s pretty much par for the course at that age, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying to watch.

There aren’t any other likeable characters to root for either. Based on the preview of episode 2 her friend Yaya-chan is probably going to turn jealous and clingy before being rehabilitated. The American Hana is just your stereotypical blonde, hyper Western otaku that you come across from time to time in anime these days. It would have been pretty interesting if she had indeed turned out to be something otherworldly like in Naru’s imagination, but no she’s just another weeaboo.

And what’s with all that blushing? It should be possible to set an anime in a girls’ school without having them always blushing at each other and idolizing the other girls and on and on with the yuri overtones. Long story short, halfway through episode 1 of Hanayamata I realized there was no dancing, there was a lot of whining and blushing and there were no likeable characters, so I’m going to bail while the getting is good. Scratch another item off my backlog!