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My Little Monster anime review (eps 1-5)

I’m not sure how exactly I came to start watching My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun). I think I may have downloaded an episode by accident when looking for Tonari no Seki-kun episodes, or maybe I got it back when it was first airing and forgot about it. Either way before I knew it I had the first episode on my laptop, so I proceeded to watch it a few days ago.

Story: Shizuku Mizutani only has one thing in mind: getting good grades. To accomplish this goal, she has little interest in anything else. However, after delivering lesson notes to her resident delinquent classmate Haru Yoshida, the latter is convinced that they are friends. Initially, Shizuku is intimidated by such a troublesome person, but she gradually notices that Haru is actually a kind person. When Haru confesses to Shizuku, an unlikely romance begins to blossom between them.

I liked: The blunt honesty of the main characters. Haru is a very silly guy, but he’s very open about his feelings for Shizuku. Shizuku is also a nice change from the usual cowardly, simpering, brainless shoujo main character. She actually has a spine and an agenda outside “Get guy X to like me”, at least at first. I also found it unusual but intriguing to have the main guy confess to the main girl so early in the show and then have her return his feelings just an episode or two later.

I didn’t like: Unfortunately we can’t have anything so refreshing in a shoujo series, so instead of building up the relationship from there, the two confessions somehow cancel each other out. Huh? Only in anime, eh? Thus instead of the different take on shoujo romance I was hoping for, we end up with the same old “He loves me, he loves me not, maybe he loves this other girl, maybe I don’t love him” merry-go-round that we’ve seen 20,000 times before. My Little Monster, I am disappoint.

What’s worse than that is the downfall of Haru’s character. He started out a little wild but basically a good guy… for all of 10 minutes in the first episode. Then he turns into the kind of guy who smacks Shizuku in the face and never apologizes and regularly seizes her by the collar but somehow he’s still her love interest anyway. “He hits me but it’s okay because he loves me?” Not only is it not okay, but he doesn’t even love you!

Every other episode she’s like “Haru’s such a kind person.” What kind of kind person would punch a girl and not even say he was sorry? Even your garden-variety domestic abuser can muster up a few crocodile tears of apology every time. Up to the end of episode 5 it still wasn’t clear what exactly Shizuku saw in Haru. It seems like she would have felt the same way about any other guy with a nice smile who confessed his love and kissed her within a few days of meeting her.

The other issue with Haru’s personality is probably less his fault and more my problem for being sick and tired of every single shoujo manga love interest having some kind of family issue and some kind of dark history and some kind of trauma somewhere. It’s like an edict was passed around 1995 stating that no sensible, decent, well-adjusted guy was allowed to be the main guy in shoujo manga ever again. They all have to be messed up somehow, no exceptions. Well 1995 was 20 years ago, can we go back to ordinary, likeable, relateable male characters now? Please?

That way Haru could have stayed the funny, naive, happy-go-lucky guy (with a violent streak) that he started out as instead of having to deal with all this drama with his dad and his brother and who knows what else in his family. I don’t want to watch all that, it’s boring. I’m sure Shizuku will later turn out to have issues of her own, equal opportunity and all that. She’s already lost the focus on grades that made her interesting and become the usual “Squee, he smiled at me *blush blush*” kind of heroine. *sigh*

Long story short, I don’t want to see anything more from this show. My Little Monster is just the same old shoujo tropes dolled up slightly differently but ultimately working out the same way. If you like shoujo manga, you’ll probably love it since it’s more of the same with a slight twist. If you’re not a fan of the old “going round in circles for 10 volumes rigamarole, avoid. For me it’s dropped after 5 episodes. On to the next show!

Saekano after 6 episodes (dropped)

You can refer to my first post on Saenai Kanojo no Sodatekata here. Basically I thought the show had a bit of promise but didn’t want to wait every week for new episodes so I shelved it until it was complete and then some. 9 months later I finally settled down to watch the show, but…

As I said back then, I wanted to see what would happen when you added a third, ordinary character to a generic anime love triangle. The answer seems to be absolutely nothing. After episode 3 it seemed like best girl Megumi had won (or rather lost, since the hero Tomoya is so annoying), which was all good and nice, but then episode 6 rolls around and it’s all about Tomoya’s past, angsty non-relationship with Utaha-sempai? Where’d that come from? And who cares? It doesn’t matter any more. I thought best girl had won!

I hate those series where the author spends a little time building a relationship between A and B, then no, no, C has a chance too, no wait, D too, and round and round and round it goes. When I sign up for a harem I know it’s a harem, so I’m ready for that whole rigamarole (that’s why I avoid harems these days actually) but I was hoping for something a little less stale and hackneyed with Saekano. More fool me, I guess. Basically I dropped Saekano because it turned out to be a harem when I wasn’t looking for a harem.

There’s a second reason, though, which is the visual novel Tomoya and his group are going to be making. The story was revealed around episode 5 and TBH it’s bad. Really bad. It starts well but then turns into a yandere incestuous reincarnation romance with giant monsters? If it’s supposed to be a parody of something famous (Eva? Titan?) then sorry, it flew clean over my head. And hopefully landed in the garbage dump, there to stay forever. And the characters are just falling over themselves gushing with praise about how moving it is. Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t even let my dog poop on a story like that. No thanks.

To recap, I can’t support the romance because it’s not going the way I wanted it to. And just btw, Tomoya is a lot more annoying than I remember. That ‘noisy passionate otaku’ gimmick was funny the first few times I saw it, but now it’s played out. His brief moments of seriousness only making the yelling more obnoxious, because then his whole otaku persona just seems put-on and fake. Just be a normal guy, okay? There’s only one good character in the whole show and I think Megumi would be better off walking away from this whole stupid circle.

Right, so to recap the romance sucks and the game they’re making sucks, so there’s nothing for me root for in Saekano. If I had nothing else to watch I might finish it out of sheer inertia, but my backlog is HUGE and growing larger all the time. If an anime isn’t really knocking my socks off after 6 episodes I think I’m better off just reading summaries online and moving on to something else. Saekano is best left to people who like otaku romances that probably won’t ever go anywhere, the end.

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!

Dropped Shokugeki no Soma and ISUCA after 5 minutes

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things. (Philippians 4:8)

I am far behind in my anime-watching and I don’t want to fall behind even further, so I like to at least try the first episode of each anime in each season so I know what to come back to later and what to drop. The season before the last was a bit of a wash, since I only found Saekano worth pursuing (even though I didn’t actually pursue it and it’s still on my “to watch” list). The last season I didn’t try that many shows, and of those I tried only Dungeon de Deai wo Motomeru showed much promise, and even that was nothing special.

This weekend I started grabbing episodes of both this and last season, and I’ve come up with some promising series to try a little more of later. I came up with others that I wasn’t too hot on, but might check out another episode of in the near future. And then there were the disappointments, Shokugeki no Soma and ISUCA.

Shokugeki no Soma – I like hot-blooded shounen comedy series as much as the next person, so I was rather looking forward to this one. First the scene where the girl had a “foodgasm” or whatever they call it after eating the fried rice was like Umm… seriously? =_= Then after that there’s a scene that shows her being sexually violated by peanut butter-covered squid tentacles, I was like DELETE! DELETE! DELETE! Disgusting and unfunny. I don’t watch anime to have my mind and eyeballs polluted.

ISUCA – Dropped even faster than Shokugeki no Soma. If you’ve watched it, you probably know why. The first 5 seconds show a naked woman latching on to a young man on the street. Then I dunno, some ribs come out of her and she turns into a monster or something bizarre like that DELETE! DELETE! The nudity is bad enough, but I really hate horror series. Really, really. If I’d bothered to read the description I probably wouldn’t have bothered to try it in the first place.

So those two shows are definitely out of the running. I’ll watch a second episode of the shows that seemed interesting and then line up those I want to watch later on. Obviously I’m going to wait till they’re complete because I hate following shows on a weekly basis, but at least I’ll have some good things to look forward to in the near future.