Tag: high school

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.

Ikkyuu-san volume 5 manga review

What, you thought I’d dropped Ikkyuu-san, did you? I very nearly have, but I decided to see through the end of the inter-team game first, just for closure. I’m probably going to skim volume 6 really quickly, but the manga isn’t good enough to finish so I’m not going to bother.

The results of the game – Team B managed to reverse Team A’s 10-run lead and beat them, making Coach Iwakaze the new coach, but he’s recruited the other coach to help him groom Ikkyuu. Turns out the other coach has realized Ikkyuu’s potential as well. Yeah, yeah.

Meanwhile Team A pitcher Ootomo has gone missing, and the rest of Team A is pissed off because they blame him for the loss. They’re waiting for him outside his crush Reiko’s birthday party, but Ikkyuu tries to persuade them that ganging up on one guy is not the manly way to do things. Just then several members of Team B challenge Ikkyuu to a one-on-one battle, but then Ikkyuu’s friend Kurou says he wants to fight them, so now he starts fighting Ikkyuu and it’s just a total mess. What a terrible manga.

I’m pretty disappointed with the way Ikkyuu-san has turned out. Normally I love sports stories about characters who don’t know they have a certain skill and then they’re discovered by someone who trains them into a prodigy and then everyone is like WOW, THEY’RE SO GOOD! and stuff. Wish fulfillment, of course, but enjoyable stuff nevertheless. So that’s the kind of stuff I was expecting when I picked this manga up, but it really fails at that.

First off, it skips straight to the WOW, THEY’RE SO GOOD! part without actually showing what makes Ikkyuu so good. He makes rookie mistakes all the time and doesn’t play particularly well until the latest volume, but from the start most side characters have been fawning over him. The people who aren’t crazy about him are his own team mates, and they’re portrayed as dumb and jealous for not realizing how wonderful Ikkyuu is. It’s really annoying because the reader is being painted the same way by association. I gave the Ikkyuu-san manga 5 volumes to impress me and pull me in and it has’t done so, so I think now’s a good time to call it quits. Verdict: Not particularly recommended, even if you’re really bored.

7 Billion Needles vol 1 manga review

I don’t really like horror manga. Not that crazy about sci-fi either. That’s why even though volume 1 of 7 Billion Needles wasn’t that bad and even though it’s only 4 volumes long, I’m still going to drop it. Oh right, the blurb:

7 Billion Needles follows the life of a teenage girl whose quiet boring days are dramatically changed when her body is possessed by an alien life form caught up in an intergalactic manhunt. 

It’s apparently loosely based on a novel called Needle by Hal Clement, whoever he was. The story has been “mangafied” quite a bit so that although Hikaru starts out a typical “leave me alone!” kind of teenage girl, thanks to the alien within her she quickly makes friends with other girls. And in typical manga fashion she’s immediately willing to sacrifice her life to save one of her new-found friends.

Volume 1 ends with her allowing the alien to take over Hikaru body completely in order to stop the gross-looking alien bad guy. If this super-attack had worked and the story had ended there, that would be one thing, but I don’t want to see any more nasty pulsing veins and alien serial killers for three more volumes, so I’m quitting here.

On the plus side the story is very fast-paced and the story is easy to follow unlike many sci-fi stories that go overboard with new technology and technobabble. The art won’t win any awards, but it’s functional and the action is easy to follow as it flows from panel to panel. If you happen to like intergalactic manhunts, don’t mind a bit of blood and gore and won’t roll your eyes at the usual “Power of Friendship!” Japanese cliches, you might just enjoy 7 Billion Needles.

Gyakkyou Nine volumes 5 & 6 manga review (ending spoilers)

It’s been a while since I finished a series that was longer than 1 volume long ^.^ And it’s probably been even longer since that ending was an actual good one. Of course given the nature and message of the series, the ending of Gyakkyou Nine was a given from the start, but the whole point was to see them overcoming all kinds of challenges and adverse conditions on their way to victory.

It seems like the author had to overcome some sort of adversity himself around the volume 5 point, because both the art and the story took a sudden nosedive in quality. It’s pretty obvious he’s cutting corners in a lot of places, and a lot of the characters – Fukutsu Toshi in particular – look seriously off-model half the time. Things improved somewhat in volume 6 (or my eyes got used to it). Note that Toshi cuts his trademark hair at the start of the volume!! It’s really weird seeing him without the hair, but like all other things I adjusted.

0003Story – volume 5 can pretty much be skipped IMO. Naturally Toshi fights back against all odds to take the team through to Koshien. The only thing worth noting is that Sakakibara-sensei leaves, since he was originally a substitute teacher to begin with, and the original useless club adviser comes back. The only reason to note this is so you don’t get confused when you see some blonde bimbo in volume 6.

Most of volume 6 has the Zenryoku 9 blowing away all their opponents thanks to Fukutsu’s unhittable ‘otokodama’ pitch. But it isn’t Gyakkyou Nine without a final challenge, is it? And so disaster strikes! Right before the finals! Fukutsu fends off a final approach from Kuwabara-chan only to run into the opposing pitcher Muteki, who is like him in every way, but better. And he has an ‘otokodama’ too! And they’re being coached by Sakakibara-sensei, who has told them all the weaknesses of the Zenryoku Nine!

But it gets even worse when the taxi Fukutsu is riding in collides with a truck and is totaled right before the game. I was afraid Shimamoto might pull an Adachi and kill off his hero for the tearz, but luckily Fukutsu survives… with amnesia! Can any team possibly pull a win out of these impossible odds?!!!

gyakkyou nine movieHaha, if you’re still wondering at this point then you haven’t been reading the same series I have. It’s pretty cool how at the very, very end, the final adversary Fukutsu and the team have to conquer is ‘Adversity’ itself. Fight on, team! Makeru na!

Now it’s done my final thoughts on Gyakkyou Nine are highly positive, the slowdown in volume 5 notwithstanding. The earlier volumes are the best because the team faces the greatest challenge then – their sucky selves. Once they become a team that’s actually good, the problems they face become ever more far-fetched and the hot-blooded speeches ever more long-winded. It’s still fun to root for them and see how they resolve situations, and the series is pretty good from start to finish.

As a baseball series… well, this isn’t really a baseball series. It would work almost as well with just about any other team sport, so there isn’t much focus on the actual play-by-play aspect of the game. But it’s plain to see what the point of the series is from the very first chapter, so no complaints here. Gyakkyou Nine is a good series. If you can’t find the manga, there’s a 2005 movie which is supposed to be very funny. Either way I recommend the series.

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!