Reviews - Animefangirl!

Ikkyuu-san volume 3 manga review

Ikkyuu-san is starting to lose steam a bit for me, but most likely volume 3 was the problem and subsequent volumes should be better. Going into the volume I wanted to learn more about Ikkyuu’s background and personality and I also wanted him to get some basic training and learn more about baseball. None of these things have happened. Instead:

– Instead of training with the team, Ikkyuu and his very annoying friend Kurou and some very annoying kids have been doing some very unorthodox training by the riverbank.

– When Ikkyuu and Kurou do show up for regular training, coach Iwakaze just shuffles off and tells everyone to do their own thing.

– We still know nothing about Ikkyuu except his dad sent him to Tokyo with just enough money for a one-way trip. We also learn that he idolizes real-life star Shigeo Nagashima, which is like huh? You know enough about Nagashima to want to be like him and yet you don’t know the first thing about baseball? What, you saw a poster and developed a crush or what?

– Even though Ikkyuu did manage to get some simple training it, it seems he still hasn’t learned the basic rules of baseball. At the end of the volume he doesn’t even know/remember that three outs = a change of sides.

– The love triangle is getting well under way. Pitcher Ootomo likes Reiko, Reiko likes Ikkyuu and Ikkyuu is oblivious to everything except baseball.

The volume ends with the first-string team (with star pitcher Ootomo) facing off against the second-string team. The purpose is supposedly to prove whether coach Iwakaze’s methods were right or not, but most likely the winning coach will take control of both teams since only one can go to Koshien. It will be interesting to see how Ikkyuu’s training has changed him, so I haven’t given up on the manga yet!

Koufuku Graffiti – Didn’t even finish episode 1 before I dropped it

I thought for sure Koufuku Graffiti would be my favorite show of the season, but I couldn’t even get through episode 1. I’m not that crazy about Japanese food, but I like food (that’s why I’m still alive) and I enjoy cooking and cooking shows, so a food show should have been right up my alley. I also like slice-of-life and cute girls doing cute stuff shows so this should have been the perfect show.

And yet… this is the most boring thing I’ve watched all year! (Shh, I know it’s only February) Maybe the show just came on too heavy for a first episode, but it just wasn’t fun at all. First off, the whole ‘sexualized reactions to eating good food’ was completely off-putting. The minute the episode opened with the main character moaning and blushing over a bit of rice (complete with ‘sexy’ closeups of her lips) the show’s days were numbered. It was in dire straits, but then they made it worse with the main character’s boring voice. And her annoying introspection, boo hoo hoo, I’m all alone, I wish I had a boyfriend. Just shut up and eat your rice, you whiner!

After that her distant cousin (?) comes over to stay and she cooks her some stuff. I like nabe, but it’s just nabe, stop trying to make it sound like it’s anything special. That might be the problem with the show’s food – it’s hard to convey that everyday foods suddenly taste super-wonderful just because the some anime characters say so. “No, no, it’s really really good!” Uhhh… yeah. I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.

And then there was a long stretch without food, just with the cousin Kirin showing off her childishness and selfishness. Spoiled brats like her give only children a bad name. How old are these girls supposed to be again? Probably 3rd year of high school? Pssh, kids. Anyway there was a lot of talking about regular udon (it’s just udon, sheesh) and then another (!) scene of the main character slavering over inarizushi (it’s just rice and fried tofu, sheesh) and then blah blah my mom and blah blah my grandma… I think? I skipped around towards the end.

Same problem with other slice of life shows: I couldn’t find a character I liked and wanted to follow. And while life does involve just sitting around talking about our families, Koufuku Graffiti was trying way too hard to elicit certain emotions from the viewer instead of just letting them flow naturally. And a simple ‘getting to know each other’ show doesn’t need unnecessary blushing or sexualized images. And finally the food just wasn’t that special. Verdict: dropped like a hot bowl of kitsune udon.

Saekano episodes 1-2 impressions. Kept for later.

At last! I found a Winter 2015 anime that I actually plan to pick up when it’s complete. I tried to avoid reading up on Saekano beyond what the title said (Saekano = short for ‘Saenai Kanojo/Heroine no Sodatekata’ = ‘How to turn a boring girl into a heroine’), so I almost quit when I accidentally started watching Episode 00 and it opened up with naked girls at an onsen. So not my kind of show at all. But the title intrigued me so I closed that episode and tried episode 01 instead.

A game-loving boy whose name I can’t remember picks up a girl’s hat and is struck by how magical the moment is (uh… he’s a teenager, I guess). He decides to make a romantic visual novel based on that moment and tries to recruit his generic tsundere childhood friend and his generic tall and snarky beauty friend to help him, but they turn him down. Then it turns out his dream girl with the beret is actually his dull unremarkable classmate whose name I also can’t remember, but I really like her. His goal now is to turn her into a heroine that will move hearts, or something bizarre like that.

All I need to motivate me to follow a show is to find one character I like and can latch on to, and that has come in the form of Heroine X (really can’t remember her name, can’t be bothered to look it up… Megumi?). She may seem boring at first, as per the title, but that’s because she’s the only normal person in a cast full of anime otaku/otaku stereotypes. The other girls’ personalities have been seen a thousand times before, same with main guy, so it’s interesting to throw a relatively normal person into the mix and see what happens.

Come to think of it, this series reminds me a lot of Bokutachi wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, especially the sniping and bickering dynamic between the two lead girls. They even look similar, and the black-haired one keeps getting the better of the blonde one, who has a secret passion for pornographic material, and so on and so forth. I wouldn’t be surprised if Saekano started out as a “What if” scenario for that kind of series and took off from there. Let’s hope this doesn’t degenerate into a harem show and that it actually ends well.

It helps that I like video games and dating sims like Tokimeki Memorial so I don’t mind seeing the effort that goes into creating one of them. I enjoy video game parody anime too. If they could wrap this up in 12 episodes, maximum 24, that would be great. When the series ends I’ll watch episode 3 and 4 and marathon the rest if I still think it’s good at the point.

Kantai Collection episode 1 impressions. Dropped due to meh-ness

If I recall correctly the story behind Kantai Collection is that monsters from the sea, known as Abyssals, have appeared out of nowhere and they can only be fought by cute teenaged girls possessed by the spirits of ancient Japanese battleships. Or maybe they’re reincarnations of the ships? Anyway, a bunch of girls named after ships take on a bunch of monsters because they’re the only ones who can.

Truth be told I’m actually rather fond of the “cute girls doing cute things” trend in recent anime. And I don’t have anything against the ‘only this very specific group of people can fight this threat’ premise several action shows have. And at least Kancolle has less fanservice than trashy shows like Strike Witches. So the odds were somewhat in Kancolle’s favor, at least at first. Having watched an episode though, I don’t think I’ll continue. My reasons are simply:

– Too many characters introduced all at once.

– None of the characters immediately grabbed my attention. Having characters the viewer wants to see more of is the key to a moe show.

– The ship gimmick is wasted on me because I know diddly and squat about the Japanese navy, historical or otherwise.

– Were the big-boobed commanders really necessary?

– Do they really have to fight in easily-ripped school uniforms instead of sensible battle clothing?

– Fubuki’s schoolgirl crush on Akagi-sempai is annoying. If she wanted to be strong for her own sake or to save the world I could get behind that, but ‘I want to be with my crush’ isn’t something I feel like rooting for.

– The action was boring. They skate around for a while, fire a few bombs and then the enemy crumbles to dust. If Fubuki wasn’t such an amateur she wouldn’t have been in any danger at all. None of them would have been. If the enemy isn’t threatening then the characters just look like bullies. I was almost feeling sorry for the Abyssals by the end.

Since there are so many moe girl shows out there, I don’t feel compelled to stick to anything that doesn’t immediately grab my attention. Kantai Collection is dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Ikkyuu-san volume 2 manga review

Ikkyuu-san is still going strong as of volume 2, but whether this will last till the end of the series or not remains to be seen. I said last time that Ikkyuu’s ‘innocent country boy’ gimmick was getting old, and it most definitely is. The rest of the cast is strong enough that watching their actions and reactions is enjoyment enough, so as long as the focus of the manga stays broad enough we won’t have much of a problem.

The other option would be for Ikkyuu’s personality to gain some much-needed depth. All we know right now is that he’s from the boonies, he somehow managed to grow up as a boy in Japan without even knowing the most basic rules of baseball (?) and he has a sense of justice that comes out as anger when crossed. That’s enough for two volumes, but it’s about time we got to see more to him since the whole series revolves around him.

There’s hope that this might happen though, since volume 2 ended with Ikkyuu’s friend Kurou coming to the ballpark to see him. Ikkyuu is also going to get to meet Reiko, the pretty lady from the last volume who seems to have some sort of relationship with team pitcher Ootomo…? This isn’t an Adachi manga so the non-pitcher actually stands a chance, especially when the manga is named after him. Reiko is as good as ours. So that should help reveal a little more about his background and personality.

With any luck Ikkyuu will also get some basic training in baseball so we don’t have to deal with this “wat is a homerun i dunno duhh’ nonsense any more. It reminds me a bit of Ganbarist Shun where Shun was thrown into a contest without knowing a thing but later became a force to reckon with in the gymnastic world. The parts where he was ignorant were funny, but the show was even better once he did know. I’m hoping that’s what will happen with Ikkyuu-san as well.