Reviews - Animefangirl!

One episode of Nagi no Asukara is enough

Actually I didn’t even finish episode 1 of Nagi no Asukara, so maybe 3/4ths is enough? You might be wondering why I tend to drop so many shows after just one episode, but I’ve been watching anime for almost 20 years now and I’ve learned a few things first about my own tastes and secondly about anime itself.

The first episode is basically an advert for the rest of the show – it’s usually the studio putting their best foot forward: this is what we have to offer and this is why you should spent 20 minutes every week for the next 3-6 months on this particular show. Episode one doesn’t necessarily have to get me chomping at the bit for the next episode. It’s enough for it to make me go “Hmm, that wasn’t bad. I think I’ll watch just one more.”

I can’t count the number of shows where I went “I think I’ll watch one more” 26 times and ended up finishing the whole series. On the other hand I also can’t count the number of times where I thought the first episode was crap but forced myself to continue and ended up regretting it, usually after quitting later anyway. Couple that with the fact that I have a large anime backlog that is getting bigger with every passing season and you have my One Episode policy in full bloom.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, what was wrong with Nagi no Asukara in particular? Nothing much, really. It didn’t have much against it, but it didn’t have much going for it either. In quick point form, the good things about it were:

+ Unique setting under the sea
+ I don’t mind love triangles, in theory
+ Art looks bright and gorgeous.

Everything else was against it

– I hated all the characters, especially the whiny, abusive male lead and the whiny, cringing female lead
– Love triangles are one thing, but this seems set to become a love decahedron.
– The undersea setting is wasted since people walk everywhere and eat carrots and chicken just like surface-dwellers do. You wouldn’t even know it was set under the water if not for some fish swimming by from time to time.
– Fart humor? No.
– Grown-up issues about ceremonies and modernization and a declining birthrate and speciesism and blah blah… so boring. Either focus on that or focus on the kids, it just get distracting when there’s all this stuff going on at once.

tl;dr – It looks nice but it’s not that interesting. The main characters really let the show down and nothing else picks up the slack. Even if I had nothing else to watch I probably wouldn’t watch this but luckily I do have other stuff on my list so *dropped*.

Kaoru Mori Anything and Something manga review

Kaoru Mori: Anything and Something is a collection of short stories and illustrations by Kaoru Mori, author of popular period pieces like Shirley (haven’t read), Emma (read and loved) and Otoyomegatari/A Bride’s Story (haven’t read).

At time hilarious, at others heartwarming, this collection of short stories penned by one of Japan’s most talented artists is a perfect addition to any library! A young girl discovers that new glasses give her a whole new perspective on the world, a bunny-girl waitress learns to cope with her male customers with dignity, an introverted art student inspires her fellow club members even as she takes inspiration from them, and more! Fans of Mori will enjoy seeing concept designs and historical notes from her award-winning series, as well as Mori’s own brand of enthusiastic commentary throughout.

I really enjoyed reading Emma, but I don’t particularly consider myself a Mori fan. I haven’t bothered to check out her other stuff, though part of it is just me waiting for A Bride’s Story to complete (waiting for Emma every month was torture).

Fans of Mori’s work will definitely be satisfied with over 200 pages of art, stories and commentary, including plenty from her most popular works, but does Anything and Something have anything to offer part-time fans like me? In other words, how well do the art and stories stand up if you’re not looking at them through fan-colored glasses?

Honestly? Not that well. Out of the 11 short stories included in the compilation, only three of them: To Come to See, Baggy-Chan and the two Claire stories were any good, in my opinion. Welcome to the Mansion, Master! was not bad, but the premise (ordinary guy in extraordinary situation) is played out and she didn’t add anything new to the mix.

Kaoru Mori fireplaces — Everything you never wanted to know about fireplaces.

The other stories were mainly blatant excuses for fanservice, and Mori is quite honest about that in her comments on the stories. She wanted to draw bunny girls, hence Burrow Gentleman’s Club. She wanted to draw a woman in a sexy swimsuit on a tatami, hence The Swimsuit Bought Long Ago. And I’m not sure what all those pages with a girl sticking her butt in the reader’s face were about, but I’m sure she wanted to draw that too.

For fans the bigger point of interest will be first the collection of detailed sketches and artwork in the second half of the book and also her in-depth articles on the history and evolution of corsets and fireplaces… yes, corsets and fireplaces. She also includes comments on all her illustrations as well as plenty of her signature zany foreword/middleword/afterwords.

If you’re not a Kaoru Mori fan, though, then like me it’s something you might read once and think “Well, that wasn’t bad. I wish the ladies wore more clothes, though” and promptly put it out of your mind. There’s nothing too wrong with it, but it’s mostly recommended for: people who like Kaoru Mori / people who like fanservice / people who like very detailed art / people who are interested in Victorian England. That’s about it.

Gyakkyou Nine volumes 1 & 2 manga review

Yuup, you guessed it! Another baseball manga! I haven’t dropped Ikkyuu-san entirely, but volume 4 was rather boring, so I started something else on my list. I meant to just read a chapter or two for a change of pace, but before I knew it I’d finished the first two volumes of Gyakkyou Nine.

Gyakkyou = adversity. Nine = the nine members of the baseball team. This super hotblooded shounen manga is all about a baseball captain named Fukutsu Toshi (i.e. Indomitable Fighting Spirit) overcoming all kinds of far-fetched trials to keep his team intact and get them to Koshien. First he has to keep his team from disaster long enough so they can face the best team in the prefecture, then later on he has to study hard enough to avoid remedial classes… only to find out that most of his team didn’t pass the exams either… so now he needs to recruit a new team… and then he injures his arm… It just never ends.

Is it good? So far, it’s definitely amusing. In a trainwreck kind of “Just how bad can it get?!” situation. Everyone reacts in a completely over the top way to the least little problem, and it’s pretty funny somehow. That’s how exaggeration has to be – waaaay beyond the realm of reason, otherwise the reader starts trying to insert some logic into the situation, and then the whole thing falls apart. Kazuhiko Shimamoto avoids that by keeping the manga constantly moving along and making the problems flow thick and fast. At the end of volume 2 Toshi is in yet another pinch: his dream girl asked him out on a date… on the day of his match… and he accepted and ditched the game! How is he going to face his team now? Heh heh, this should be interesting to see.

Despite being a manga about a baseball team captain, Gyakkyou Nine isn’t really a baseball manga, so there isn’t much focus on the game itself. The team does some cursory practice once in a while, and we’ve been shown fragments of a game once or twice, but it’s a manga about a guy who just happens to play baseball, so the sport is just a way to introduce more drama into his life, nothing more. It could be a baseball or a boxing manga without losing much. Which is not to say I hold that against it. It’s a pretty fun and silly manga, and I’ll be taking a break from Ikkyuu-san to finish this off first since it’s only 6 volumes.

Why I dropped Kotoura-san after 3 episodes

Another item knocked off my anime backlog, at least. First Barakamon, now Kotoura-san. If I keep dropping them this quickly, I’ll be done with the list in no time. But I don’t just drop series for the sake of dropping them. I am actively looking for new things to watch and enjoy, and it pains me, not least because of wasted time and bandwidth, when I have to drop things. However as with Barakamon I had my reasons, which I will now proceed to explain.

Reason 1 – One episode was enough. The premise is cute: Girl with power to read minds finds herself alienated from friends and family until she meets one boy who swears to stick by her no matter what. A budding romance begins. It was sweet, it was interesting, but it didn’t need to go beyond episode one because it’s a foregone conclusion how things are going to work out – assuming the opening theme didn’t spoil the romantic developments for you.

Reason 2 – It can’t decide what kind of show it wants to be. Does it want to be a high school romance? A tragic drama? A slapstick high school comedy? No, it wants to be all of the above, but it’s not particularly good at any of them. The romance would have been okay if Manabe didn’t blurt out his love for Kotoura right in episode 2. It was like, you what now? Because it’s easy to understand what Kotoura might see in him, but since when did he start liking her in a special way? What does he see in her? Isn’t he just falling in love with her because the plot demands it?!

The tragic drama part might have been okay as well if it wasn’t sandwiched between the romance slice-of-life and the stupid comedy. As it is, those scenes always seems to come out of nowhere and completely disrupt whatever mood you’ve got going on. You can’t relax and enjoy the show when there’s always some CRAAAAWLLLING IIIIN MY SKIIIIN waiting around the next corner. Especially since with the exception of Kotoura everyone else’s problems seem self-manufactured. Heck, even Kotoura should be old enough and wise enough to keep her mouth shut and hide her powers. Dummy.

Reason 3 – Too much too soon. I already mentioned above how quickly Manabe fell in love with Kotoura and how weird that was. I wonder if things were rushed because it’s a 13-episode series. No idea how long the original manga is. But apart from the confession there’s also this drama with some guys beating up Manabe and Kotoura deciding “It’s all my fault, I have to disappear forever!” and stuff. And it’s only episode 3! Like, already? The characters have barely been established, the ESP club has barely started to know each other and you’re already dropping all this shoujo manga drama on my head? I couldn’t even bring myself to watch episode 4, I was just like ENOUGH.

Reason 4 – It’s rather vulgar. A large part of the so-called comedy in Kotoura-san consists of the male lead fantasizing about her in compromising positions, knowing that she can read his mind. So he’s always thinking stuff like this just to tease her:

First off, I don’t see anything comical about sexual harassment. It’s not like Kotoura welcomes those thoughts, since he specifically does it to discomfit her. I don’t see anything loving or romantic about it either. It’s just crude, vulgar and unwelcome. It made me dread every scene where Manabe showed up, because in addition to his thoughts, he just wouldn’t shut up about perverted stuff. 3 episodes of that was more than enough.

Roundup – Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life (Proverbs 4:23).

The further I get in my Christian walk, the stricter I am about the things I will and will not allow into my life. This especially applies to media and entertainment, which is mainly made by unbelievers for unbelievers. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2), so even if the world says it’s perfectly okay to have a vulgar, foul-mouth, perverted protagonist or says that mentally undressing someone you claim to love is fine, I know better. That’s why Jesus said “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28)

Even if everything else about Kotoura-san was above reproach I would probably have dropped it anyway because of Reason 4. The other reasons just made it easier to do so. Dropped without regrets, unless you count wishing I had just stopped after episode one.

Namiuchigawa no Muromi-san anime review

Also known as ‘Muromi on the Shore’, Namiuchigawa no Muromi-san is a 13-minute 13-episode comedy series about a boy named Taku who fishes up a mermaid named Muromi one day only to find that mermaids once caught aren’t so easily gotten rid of.

There isn’t much story to speak of. Most episodes consist of Tak bravely trying to fish at the same spot while Muromi and an increasingly crazy cast of friends show up and get in his way. It turns out Muromi has been alive for millions of years and knows all kinds of mythical creatures like the (stupidly adorable) Yeti and (spacey fanservicey) Levia-san. So every episode has the gang saying and doing crazy things like they were the most natural thing in the world, like Muromi going out drinking with the Kraken or Levia-san casually blowing a hole in an ice floe to threaten a bunch of penguins.

Is it funny? Sometimes. Especially in the beginning when you don’t know what Muromi is going to pull next. “Oh yeah, the mythical sea palace? It went out of business a couple of years ago.” “Atlantis? Went up in flames. Best fireworks show ever.” Unlike most other such shows, Muromi and co. don’t particularly try to hide their existence from human beings. In fact they’re so used to being among people that they ride around on skateboards saying hi to everyone and the only one to bat an eyelash is Takkun, though he gives up pretty quickly.

Is it a good show? Umm, well… Almost. The best thing about it is that each episode is short, so it’s over before you know it and you’re left wanting more. And in the early episodes it’s full of surprises and you’re always looking forward to the next revelation about mermaid society. Also some of the characters like Yeti and Harpy are completely adorable both in terms of design and behavior. Yeti especially is really, really cute. Is this what they call… moe?!

Buuut… some of the jokes fell a bit flat sometimes. Like Muromi and her buddies washing up on a shore drunk is just …huhhh… And all the episodes revolving around the kappa were just depressing and offputting. Don’t put such ugly characters in my cute series! The worst part of the show was the fanservice, the sheer tastelessness of some of it, especially the scenes where the characters pretend to fellate cucumbers just because… what? I have no idea. I had to skip a couple of episodes and end the OAV early because of that.

So I started out very enthusiastic about Muromi on the Shore, but the longer the show went on the older the jokes got and the more disgusting the show itself grew. I’d give a 7/10 to the first half and a 3/10 to the second half. Overall though, since it’s only about half the length of most anime shows, it’s a good show to check out if you’re looking for a slapstick comedy and don’t mind crude fanservice as much as I do.