Reviews - Animefangirl!

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.

7 Billion Needles vol 1 manga review

I don’t really like horror manga. Not that crazy about sci-fi either. That’s why even though volume 1 of 7 Billion Needles wasn’t that bad and even though it’s only 4 volumes long, I’m still going to drop it. Oh right, the blurb:

7 Billion Needles follows the life of a teenage girl whose quiet boring days are dramatically changed when her body is possessed by an alien life form caught up in an intergalactic manhunt.

It’s apparently loosely based on a novel called Needle by Hal Clement, whoever he was. The story has been “mangafied” quite a bit so that although Hikaru starts out a typical “leave me alone!” kind of teenage girl, thanks to the alien within her she quickly makes friends with other girls. And in typical manga fashion she’s immediately willing to sacrifice her life to save one of her new-found friends.

Volume 1 ends with her allowing the alien to take over Hikaru body completely in order to stop the gross-looking alien bad guy. If this super-attack had worked and the story had ended there, that would be one thing, but I don’t want to see any more nasty pulsing veins and alien serial killers for three more volumes, so I’m quitting here.

On the plus side the story is very fast-paced and the story is easy to follow unlike many sci-fi stories that go overboard with new technology and technobabble. The art won’t win any awards, but it’s functional and the action is easy to follow as it flows from panel to panel. If you happen to like intergalactic manhunts, don’t mind a bit of blood and gore and won’t roll your eyes at the usual “Power of Friendship!” Japanese cliches, you might just enjoy 7 Billion Needles.

Appleseed (2004) anime movie review

Well, well, what do we have here? A love story disguised as an action movie, eh? We’ll just see about tha– hmm… It’s not so bad… I guess. My Google-fu tells me there are at least 5 Appleseed movies or anime series out there, all loosely based on Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed manga wot I haven’t read and don’t plan to. This particular one I watched came out in 2004. I quite like the art style, which blends regular anime art with CG. It’s not a flawless mix, but it’s a very interesting effect that works well for a faux-gritty movie like Appleseed.

Story blurb: Plucked from the last battlefields of the final war, mercenary Deunan Knute finds herself pressed into duty with the ESWAT, defenders of the Utopian city of Olympus. But serpents beneath the peaceful surface of this apparent Garden of Eden, and new seeds of destruction have already been planted! Now it s up to Deunan and her former lover, the now-cyborg Briareos, to unravel a deadly web of plots that threaten to bring down Olympus from within!

Pros

– I was worried when they started off with all the technobabble and stuff, but the story is very easy to follow. It could honestly have been set in any kind of world, not necessarily this one.

– Everyone gets a happy ending and the bad guys get what they deserve.

– Apart from Hitomi, all the other voices in the English dub were very well done, so much so that I forgot I was watching a dub after a while, only to be smacked back into reality every time Hitomi opened her little mouth.

– As I said, I liked the art style. The music was good too.

Cons

– At almost 2 hours long, it’s a little on the lengthy side. It’s still very interesting, but some parts could have been shortened – like the ultimately pointless war scenes at the very beginning.

– Part of the story seems kinda stupid, like why would humans have a giant tank full of a killer virus just floating above the city? You’d think it would at least occur to someone that hey, maybe we should develop an antidote to this thing just in case, you know?

– Appleseed is a story of love lost and regained and the hope that humanity carries within them, etc etc that sort of thing, so honestly the action felt out of place much of the time. It almost felt like the writers/director had one story they wanted to tell, but then every 15 minutes it would be like “Quick! The audience is falling asleep!” and they would throw in some lengthy action sequence out of desperation.

– Speaking of action scenes, the last one was entirely too long. Once the bad guys had been rumbled and it was obvious that Appleseed is an idealistic kind of movie, the fortresses obviously had no chance of taking down humanity while Deunan was around, so why spend 15 minutes pretending they do? IMO they should have had Deunan face off against the giant robots first, THEN had the showdown with the bad guys, but that’s just me.

Final thoughts

Appleseed will probably disappoint anyone looking for a gritty, futuristic, hardcore kind of action movie. It only pretends to be one, but inside it’s a mushy-wushy I Love You, You Love Me, We’re a Happy Family kind of movie. I liked it, myself, even though the story is rather below-average and contains a number of unexplained points (like if Deunan was there when Dr. Gilliam was killed, why didn’t the killers take her into custody and confiscate everything she possessed, etc). Did I like it enough to watch the sequel (Ex Machina)? Not really, no. But still, it’s a decent enough movie and worth at least a watch if you like romantic action movies.

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.