comedy Archives - Page 4 of 9

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!

Kouya no Tenshidomo (Miriam) manga review

If you read enough shoujo, you might have come across a manga named “Miriam” by Kyoko Hikawa. If you do a little digging around, though, you will realize there is no such manga named Miriam in Japanese. The fan-translators took three series: Kouya no Tenshidomo, Jikan wo Tomete Matteite and Sorenari ni Romantic, wiped out their titles and renamed them all Miriam after the main character.

That’s why you’ll see some places list it as a 7-volume manga, even though it’s actually 3 for Kouya (or two if you buy the bigger Hakusensha edition), 3 for Jikan and 1 for Sorenari. MangaSync did a good job with the translation and editing otherwise, but this was a really unnecessary, unwise and uncalled for change on their part, so I hope other fan groups never followed suit.

Now that we’ve got that all cleared up, what is ~~Miriam~~ Kouya no Tenshidomo all about? It’s a shoujo manga set in the Wild West that follows the adventures of a plucky, precocious 8-year old named Miriam as she tries to protect her beautiful adoptive mother Grace from the attentions of the slimy, cowardly Mr. Harnbag.

At least that’s the manga Kyoko Hikawa set out to write, but then her mistake was introducing three young men first, Card, Joel and Douglas, and having them do the bulk of the work in getting things done. Hikawa set out to make a manga with a strong female character who was also a child, and I still think it could have been done, but she wrote the story in such a way that the guys had no choice but to take center stage with Miriam playing a mainly supporting role – or even getting in the way through her stubborn recklessness – and Grace being all but completely useless.

But that’s okay, as long as the manga is good. Is it? Well it has a lot of things going for it. The unusual setting for a shoujo is one. I haven’t read much manga set in the Wild West, much less shoujo, so that’s a start. The child heroine in the midst of adults is also quite rare. They usually tend to be paired with other children.

Kouya no Tenshidomo also has a fair amount of action without actually being violent. This is a bit of a spoiler, but deaths are extremely rare, even in situations where you would expect there to be a few deaths. Obviously the good guys want to avoid becoming murderers, but the bad guys seem to have inexplicably bad aim while also managing to avoid hitting any innocent passersby. Thanks to that the manga manages to have a very feel-good atmosphere to it, which I like.

The art is neat but nice-looking. Nothing too special, and I did think Hikawa could have done more with the backgrounds and signs and stuff to make the series seem more “Wild Westy” but it turns out she was sick for a while when she wrote it so I guess she did her best. Either way the action is easy to follow, the story is short and well-told – this is the bad guy, these are the good guys, here’s what we’re gonna do. It’s a short satisfying experience and well worth the read for people who like unusual shoujos.

Except! The fly in the ointment! Spoilers follow for romantic developments…

The relationship between Douglas and Miriam starts too soon! She’s only 8 years old, for goodness’ sake! I can buy an 8-year old having a crush on an older teen, but WHY ON EARTH is he falling in love with her at that tender age? She’s 8, and she’s drawn even younger!

But she’s 8 years old now!!

Stop that, you pedo! So there were a lot of really creepy scenes with Douglas thinking about how much he wanted to see Miriam and vice versa and on and on and on. It made the 2nd and 3rd volumes a little uncomfortable to read because I was just thinking “Help!! Police!!” all the time.

At least the two sequel series Jikan wo Tomete matteite and Sorenari ni Romantic deal with Miriam and Douglas’s relationship at a more sensible age. It’s not the age gap that’s the problem, after all. It’s that she’s only 8 years old!!! I think the author had been reading too much Thorn Birds when she wrote that subplot in. Please don’t write anything like this ever again, Kyoko Hikawa, kthxbye.

Long story short, Kouya no Tenshidomo is a short, light read as long as you don’t mind that the lead male is a pedophile. It’s still a nice change from the usual (the rest of the manga is a change from shoujo series I mean, not the pedo hero being a change from non-pedo heroes) so give it a try if you get the chance.

Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 2 manga review

Well, things are certainly moving quickly. By the end of Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 2 the brothers have already become the main battery of the Hirataka high school baseball team and Koshien preliminaries have already began. The team went it expecting an easy win against their first opponent, but Ichiya quickly falls prey to the opponent’s mind games. By the time he snaps out of it Hirataka is already down 3-0. Is the team doomed to fail in its very first official game?

That would be an interesting twist, certainly. I rather doubt it though, simply because the bulk of volume 2 was spent introducing the rival team and the rival batter, Shinoi of Chouzan High. Hirataka is very conveniently destined to meet Chouzan right before the preliminary finals, so it’s unlikely that they’ll be knocked out before then. Plus most of the Hirataka team is made up of third years so this is their last tournament. If the team fails in the first match then author Shinji Tonaka will have to start over with an almost entirely new cast from volume 4. I have yet to meet a mangaka with that kind of guts, but who knows?

Apart from the introduction of Shinoi and the start of the tournament, nothing too exciting happened in volume 2. We were introduced to their eccentric team coach, one of those types who only gives cryptic advice instead of coming out to say what he means. The Touma brothers have also started working on a new pitch, since all Ichiya can throw right now are fastballs and sliders. Having Shinoi hit his pitch so easily has lit a fire under both brothers, though the results have yet to be felt.

TBH I wish the author would have delayed the start of the Koshien prelims by at least another volume. I haven’t got a good feel for the characters and their personalities just yet, and most of the Hirataka team is still just so much ink on paper. I don’t even know who bats when (Yoshi 3rd, Takaoka 4th, that’s it) or who defends what position. A little time spent developing the team by maybe focusing on training or the Touma brothers’ home life would have come in handy.

I can’t say I’m impressed by the baseball action I’ve seen so far either. It’s very boringly depicted. All pitchers adopt the same pose and then somehow the ball hits the bat/mitt and goes flying somewhere and it’s like whatever. Rather hard to follow and really hard to get into because you don’t know the main characters well enough to root for them to hit/strike someone out.

But it’s only volume 2 of Oto-Ore (the official abbreviation and much easier on the tongue than Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de!) so let’s keep reading and see how things develop, shall we?

Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 1 manga review

Mais oui, of course I’m still reading Japanese baseball manga. Ikkyuu-san was a bit of a failure, so I’m reading something more recent now. Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! by Shinji Tonaka started running 2008 and up to 18 volumes and counting. I usually avoid ongoing series because then you get to the end and you’re like WHERE’S VOLUME 19?!! but every rule is meant to be broken once in a while.

The main characters are Ichiya Touma and his younger brother Yoshi. They were a feared pitcher-catcher combo in middle school, but their parents’ divorce forced them to split up. Two years later Ichiya returns from Mongolia to try and reform the Touma battery only to find out his brother Yoshi has turned into a fierce delinquent who absolutely hates baseball! Whatever happened to Yoshi? Will they ever play together again?

Uh, the series has 18 volumes so it’s safe to say the answer is “Yes.” I’ll avoid spoiling what happened to turn Yoshi bad, but by the end of volume 1 he’s slowly (very slowly) rediscovering his love for baseball and starting to (slightly) open up to his team mates.

Not much happens in the first volume since it’s mainly an introduction to the team as well as a chance to get the obligatory “Main character’s team takes on the strongest team in the prefecture” match out of the way. Almost all baseball manga series have at least one such battle, usually in the first 5 volumes or so. I won’t tell you the outcome of this one either. I can’t spoil everything all the time.

My impressions on Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! after one volume? I’m not exactly raring to read the rest, but it’s a definite diamond in the rough. The chief attraction is the cheerful, silly, irrepressible personality of Ichiya, who regularly takes a licking from his brother Yoshi and comes back for more. His love for baseball and desire to keep pitching is also rather infectious. I hope they don’t turn him into the serious, angsty type before too long. There are too many such pitchers in baseball manga.

Apart from Ichiya, the other characters didn’t make much of an impression. To be honest I couldn’t even tell most of them apart, they all looked so similar. Most sports manga at least make an effort to give the main characters unique designs, but Ichiya and Yoshi look just like everyone else. I usually have to read their lines to try and figure out who said what. By the end of vol 1 I think I can recognize the Touma siblings on sight. The team captain has dark skin so I can tell him apart too. Everyone else is just so much ink on paper.

I don’t think too much of the baseball action so far. It hasn’t really been about the baseball anyway. More focus is on getting Yoshi to be the catcher so Ichiya can use his full strength pitching. Yoshi isn’t a particularly good catcher and Ichiya isn’t that good a pitcher, but both of them have been out of practice for 2 years so we can look forward to better things from them in later volumes.

I’ll be reading this slowly on and off and giving my thoughts here and there from time to time. Will I make it all the way to volume 18 or will Shinji Tonaka ruin the series long before that? Stay tuned to find out!

Tonari no Seki-kun anime review

Tonari no Seki-kun is an episodic 24-episode anime about a girl named Yokoi and the inventive boy named Seki who sits by her in class and constantly distracts her with his games. And I don’t mean Nintendo games either, this is far more interesting than that. In episode one he builds an intricate domino setup using more erasers than any schoolboy should normally possess. In several other episodes he plays his own unique versions of chess, shogi and go.

In the early episodes Yokoi always trying to stay aloof from his games and focus on her lessons, only to find herself drawn in against herself. By the end of the show she is an active participant more often than not and seems to get into the games more than Seki himself does. It’s a convincing little bit of character development, where Yokoi learns to be a little less uptight and more playful and imaginative. Or you could look at it negatively and say she has been infected with Seki’s lack of seriousness and has lost sight of what she really goes to school for etc etc but I’m going to look at the bright side for once.

Because the games Seki plays vary with the episode, episode quality tends to go up and down as well. Some of them, like the robot family and the shogi pieces, show up a couple of times so they stick in the mind easily. Others are pretty forgettable and are a yawn to sit through even though each episode is only about 13 minutes long. I’d list some examples, but I’ve forgotten them. The funny episodes are funny, the heartwarming episodes are heartwarming and the boring ones are just meh. At least they’re over soon.

The ending theme is funky, the opening theme is catchy and the background music doesn’t get in the way. The art is rather simplistic compared to other contemporary shows and there isn’t much animation to speak of, but it’s not a very ‘action’ kind of show so it isn’t that noticeable. There’s almost no objectionable content in this show except in the feverish imaginings of one side character who only shows up once or twice. It never made me laugh or cry, but it was an above-average show in general. The endless inventiveness of Seki always kept me on my toes, at least.

I recommend you do like I did and watch just an episode or two a day to keep things fresh. Otherwise Yokoi can get a bit annoying as she just keeps panicking and won’t shut up. A good but not great show.