Reviews - Animefangirl!

Ikkyuu-san volume 5 manga review

What, you thought I’d dropped Ikkyuu-san, did you? I very nearly have, but I decided to see through the end of the inter-team game first, just for closure. I’m probably going to skim volume 6 really quickly, but the manga isn’t good enough to finish so I’m not going to bother.

The results of the game – Team B managed to reverse Team A’s 10-run lead and beat them, making Coach Iwakaze the new coach, but he’s recruited the other coach to help him groom Ikkyuu. Turns out the other coach has realized Ikkyuu’s potential as well. Yeah, yeah.

Meanwhile Team A pitcher Ootomo has gone missing, and the rest of Team A is pissed off because they blame him for the loss. They’re waiting for him outside his crush Reiko’s birthday party, but Ikkyuu tries to persuade them that ganging up on one guy is not the manly way to do things. Just then several members of Team B challenge Ikkyuu to a one-on-one battle, but then Ikkyuu’s friend Kurou says he wants to fight them, so now he starts fighting Ikkyuu and it’s just a total mess. What a terrible manga.

I’m pretty disappointed with the way Ikkyuu-san has turned out. Normally I love sports stories about characters who don’t know they have a certain skill and then they’re discovered by someone who trains them into a prodigy and then everyone is like WOW, THEY’RE SO GOOD! and stuff. Wish fulfillment, of course, but enjoyable stuff nevertheless. So that’s the kind of stuff I was expecting when I picked this manga up, but it really fails at that.

First off, it skips straight to the WOW, THEY’RE SO GOOD! part without actually showing what makes Ikkyuu so good. He makes rookie mistakes all the time and doesn’t play particularly well until the latest volume, but from the start most side characters have been fawning over him. The people who aren’t crazy about him are his own team mates, and they’re portrayed as dumb and jealous for not realizing how wonderful Ikkyuu is. It’s really annoying because the reader is being painted the same way by association. I gave the Ikkyuu-san manga 5 volumes to impress me and pull me in and it has’t done so, so I think now’s a good time to call it quits. Verdict: Not particularly recommended, even if you’re really bored.

Little Witch Academia anime movie review

Another short anime movie from the Young Animator Training Program I mentioned in my last post. For various reasons I’m too lazy to analyze (the Western-cartoonish designs, the Harry Potter-inspired plot, the Disney-like plot), Little Witch Academia was a smash hit with Western fans while making only minor waves at best in Japan. Western anime fans liked it so much that they contributed a boatload of cash towards the making of a sequel, due out whenever it’s ready, though it seems to be coming along quite well. Still, just because it’s popular doesn’t mean I’ll like it. But to get the question out of the way early, yeah it wasn’t half bad.

Honestly, as a non-Potter non-Disney fan I don’t entirely see what all the fuss was about, but it’s a nice little (predictable) but fun show. The stubborn, lazy “I want to be a witch because witches are cool, but I don’t actually want to work at it” main character Akko takes a bit of getting used to, but the rest of the cast is reasonably down-to-earth and everyone can see her for the idiot that she is, so that helps. Besides, the cast spends half the movie running from a hungry dragon. It’s easy to overlook the small stuff when you have bigger fish to fry – or be fried by, as the case may be.

However I did have a little problem with the moral of the show, which seems to be that if you keep your head in the clouds and keep idolizing your heroes instead of actually working hard, fate will someday favor you with just the tools you need to shoot to success ahead of your more disciplined peers. It’s the kind of message self-improvement seminars are made of. Oh sure, they dress it up all nicely as “Believe in magic/yourself/whatever”, but in practice Akko whined and slept in class and acted recklessly half the time and basically just got lucky to stumble on a magic staff which worked through her ‘power of belief’ to destroy the dragon. How convenient, but hardly the kind of thing a young witch can bank on, is it?

But, as I said, it wasn’t bad at all. Short, cute, brightly-drawn, action-packed, happy ending, we’re all friends tra-la-la. I don’t think I’d watch it again, but I will watch Little Witch Academia 2 when it comes out to see how Akko grows and develops, if at all. And if the sequel does really well and they make a TV series? Yeah, I’d watch that too. But I’m not holding my breath.

Aki no Kanade anime movie review

Aki no Kanade is a short 25-minute anime that was produced in 2015 as part of Japan’s Young Animator Training Project program. It’s a government-sponsored program that does exactly what it says on the tin, but I can’t help feeling that the anime industry wouldn’t need to resort to such programs if they only paid animators a living wage and let them keep reasonable work hours. Make it like a regular job, in other words. But instead of doing that, they’re doing quick patches like this project either. Well we got a nice anime short out of it, so that’s good enough.

Summary: Aki Miyagawa moved to Tokyo to pursue her dream to be a taiko drummer, but had a hard time balancing her strict training regimen with her part-time job. Now, after 15 years, she’s returning to coach others for a taiko festival.

It’s a good little show. The good thing about short-shorts is that they don’t waste too much time setting things up characters and stories, they just jump into things straight away. So it starts off with Aki unlucky in life and in love, quickly takes her back to her hometown, quickly covers her backstory and how she came to love taiko drums so much, then poof, on with the show!

The music was good, especially the drum performances. The animation was nothing remarkable. Not QUALITY, but not “Wooow so fluid!” either. The background art and buildings and environments were all very nicely done. Those young animators are pretty talented.

Aki’s passion for the drums came through very clearly, as did the fun the entire club had working together to make music. It made me wish I’d joined some student orchestra or amateur music group or something in my youth. Her frustration with her life and her strained relationship with her father also come through quite well in what little time is given. Other characters besides Aki don’t get much attention and are mainly generic anime cliches (girly friends, boring mother, guy who has a crush on her that she totally doesn’t notice, etc) but the title says it’s Aki no Kanade, so what do you expect?

For better or worse, Aki no Kanade tells a complete story in only 25 minutes, so I’m willing to let everything else slide. Someone I spoke to was unhappy because we don’t find out what happens to Aki next – does she success as a pro? Does she give up? Does she date Yoshioka-sensei (I didn’t see no ring), Naoto or the Civil Engineer guy in the beginning? Does she ever reconcile with her father? It’s open ended enough to give you room to imagine the future, but not so much so that I was unhappy with the ended. I thought it was a great little show. Highly recommended to anyone with 25 minutes to spare.

No Game No Life anime review

File this one under “Stuff I watched and now I’m sorry I did.” In theory No Game No Life contains a lot of elements I like in an anime, including a fantasy world, invincible protagonists, and the whole “thrown into another world” trope.

The problem is, this time it comes mixed with main characters I don’t like and can’t root for, plus a whole lot of over the top fanservice, plus an inconclusive final ending because the light novel series is still going. This is why I normally stay away from light novel adaptations. It’s just getting harder and harder to do so because there’s just so many of them these days.

The story according to Wikipedia:

Sora and Shiro are two hikikomori step-siblings who are known in the online gaming world as Blank, an undefeated group of gamers. One day, they are challenged to a game of chess by Tet, a god from another reality. The two are victorious and are offered to live in a world called Disboard that centers around games. There, a spell known as the Ten Pledges prevents violence and enforces the rules and outcomes of games. The two travel to Elkia, the nation inhabited by humans. They participate in a tournament to determine the next ruler; after winning the crown, their next goal is to conquer all sixteen species in order to challenge Tet to a game.

But by the time the anime ends, they’ve only conquered one other species in addition to the humans. It was okay when they were fighting to help the people of Elkia, but the whole “beat everyone so we can play with Tet” thing is kind of hard to get behind. Okay you’re bored with life, we get that. Okay you think you’re smarter than everyone, we get that too. But that doesn’t mean we have to like you.

Apart from the sketchy motivations of the protagonists, No Game No Life also suffers from the problem that tends to plague most Overpowered Protagonist anime shows – a complete lack of competent opponents. Sure the show states right away that Blank never loses, but no one even gives them a hard time – except maybe the living chess game, but even that was very brief and possibly feigned.

Slightly higher-res than the featured image

Even when they seem to be in trouble like in the last game, they’ve actually thought 200 steps ahead. “Haha! I went behind you going behind me going behind you!” It was pretty obvious too, since butt monkey Steph had completely disappeared even though we knew she was going to play a part in how things worked out, etc. That’s a bad thing, because the fun of Overpowered Protagonist shows is figuring out how they’re going to win, so when the enemies are far below their level and you know how things are going to play out then, welp, what are you watching for? Thank goodness it was only 12 episodes, that’s all I’ve got to say.

So to recap my opinion of No Game No Life, I liked the setting and the premise, disliked the protagonists, was disappointed by the low level of the opponents faced and absolutely abhorred the over-the-top fanservice. I’m sorry I pushed through the vulgarity in the hopes of getting a good show and ended up with just an average one. At this point I don’t even care how it ends, I’m just glad to be done with it. Next time I’ll note the early warning signs and avoid, avoid, avoid.

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.