comedy Archives - Page 6 of 9

Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love! offers nothing new

The concept of teenagers with special powers fighting to save the earth is at least as old as the X-Men comics, possibly more. I thought Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love! was supposed to be a parody of not only that kind of series but also of magical girl shows, complete with transformation sequences, but like many parodies it failed to go far enough and instead become exactly what it’s trying to parody.

Bunch of high school boys, weird mascot from outer space, turns them into heroes, they get into the role pretty quickly, they fight against some kind of hotpot monster in episode 1, end of show. I’m not sure what was decided by the end of ep. 1 because I was already skipping through at that point.

Even though ‘Binan’ is a synonym for handsome guys (with different kanji), the guys don’t look special at all. Even your low-budget smartphone otome ‘game’ has better-looking characters, and that’s saying a lot. I’m not interested in fanservice, male or female, so the naked butt shots in the transformations were actually a disservice. Cover up, luvs.

If I’m supposed to stick around for the comedy, it’s not funny in the least. There’s nothing remotely amusing about it. There’s a wombat and it’s pink and it keeps talking about love. ???? Come on, my toddler nephew tells funnier stories than that, and he’s 2. As for action there isn’t much of that, just boys flying around waving wands at people, pew pew pew! My toddler nephew and his friends play more exciting games than that, and they’re all two.

tl;dr there’s nothing lovely about Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love! and even 3/4ths of an episode was a waste of my time. Moving on!

Gyakkyou Nine volumes 3 & 4 manga review

AwwwRIGHT! Things are getting better and better! Gyakkyou Nine is only 6 volumes long, so that means Shimamoto has to pack a lot into those pages, which means a lot of hot-blooded action in every chapter. I always pick it up intending to read just a few pages and end up reading half the book.

I’m not going to give a blow by blow of each volume. I’m too lazy for that. All you have to know is that after the fiasco where Toshi ditched his baseball team for a girl, they were really, really mad at him but eventually forgave him when Hagiwara (replacement pitcher with the blond hair) goes through almost exactly the same thing but busts his arm and is forced to rely on Toshi’s pitches.

All good right? Nope. It’s clear that Toshi is wavering between his love for the girl and his love of baseball. Meanwhile the Zenryoku team is scheduled to go up against Hinodeshou High for real this time, and Hinode just blew out their opponents by a ridiculous score. The whole Zenryoku team is down and only Toshi can inspire them… but only if he can sort out his own feelings once and for all!

Volume 3 is a good one just because I like romance and drama, plus it’s fun seeing Toshi deal with adversity that isn’t directly related to baseball. That and it’s funny how his family sticks their nose into everything. Anyway, once that whole crisis is over, the Koshien qualifier finals take place, starting from the first chapter of Volume 4. Toshi gets on the mound full of pep and vim… and is knocked out like a light by a liner from the very first batter. It knocks him out so hard that he lies where he fell in the right field until the 9th inning. Then he wakes up and takes a look at the score. 112-3. Could any team possibly bounce back from such a deficit?

Hoo boy. Now I have to read volumes 5 and 6 to find out. If the Gyakkyou Nine were any longer I would be worried about how much longer it would take to get through it all, but one of the nice things about short series is that it’s easy to keep the fire going and your enthusiasm up because everything happens quickly. Win or lose, it won’t take long to find out!

Minami-ke Tadaima anime review

This story is a simple depiction of the ordinary lives of the three Minami sisters. Please do not expect too much.

That’s the disclaimer in every episode of Minami-ke Tadaima, and the show is exactly what it says on the tin. Haruka, Kana and Chiaki wake up, eat, go to school, come home, eat, sleep and on and on through the episodes. It’s a great series for anyone who likes slice-of-life with relatively normal characters, but after four seasons maybe enough is enough?

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the show thoroughly, but the nature of most slice-of-life shows is that things will (almost) always reset to the status quo, so there’s rarely any development of note. Normally this isn’t a problem because such shows usually last only 13 to 26 episodes and end before you can get fed up, but Minami-ke is at double that number and counting. That means after 4 seasons things that were funny or interesting in the beginning now prompt a “That’s enough already!” reaction out of me. In particular:

– Hosaka is still fantasizing about Haruka yet still hasn’t managed to even talk to her properly yet.

– Fujioka is still failing to confess his love to Kana.

– Riko is still failing to confess her love to Fujioka.

– That annoying girl who is in love with Natsuki is still in love with him but can’t confess. Though we have learned that Natsuki has a bit of a crush on Haruka.

– Fujioka still doesn’t know that Touma is a girl.

– Makoto is still cross-dressing as Mako-chan… though I suppose Chiaki is slightly more friendly to boy Makoto now.

– Uncle Takeru is still coming over to mope… though he’s less of a mooch now.

So there have been slight developments, but for the most part everything is still the same as ever. That means fans of the series will get exactly what they were hoping for when they picked it up but it also means people like me who were getting just a bit tired of the formula last time will be a little disappointed. And even more so when they tease developments then take them away, like when they made it seem Haruka was into Natsuki, or that Fujioka and annoying-girl-who-likes-Natsuki would get together.

At least the show only added one new member to the cast (Miyuki. Or was she there all along?) but the cast is already plenty large, so I had to slog through a lot of skits that dealt with people I either don’t care for (the annoying girl that likes Natsuki, Atsuko and Maki), used to like but am now tired of (Hosaka, Makoto) or people I actively dislike (Natsuki, Hayami-sempai). I felt a little sad when the past three seasons ended but with Minami-ke Tadaima it’s just like, huh. Okay.

Of course I will still watch season 5 if and when it comes out, but the series is really stagnating now. If nothing changes after this then the next season will be my last.

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.

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.