Tag: horror

Quick thoughts on the two Touken Ranbu animes

Touken Ranbu is a popular Japanese smartphone game about swords that come to life in the form of handsome young men who then protect the world as we know it from the evil Time Retrograde Army. That’s the premise, anyway, but the whole game is just a gender-flipped version of the usual “collect pretty girls” kind of smartphone game, pandering to female customers instead of male ones.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s never really seemed like my kind of thing. Still doesn’t, but it came to my attention recently when I heard there was going to be a collaboration between Touken Ranbu and Granblue Fantasy, a browser/smartphone game I dabble in occasionally. On one hand you don’t need to be familiar with the source material to play a Granblue collab, but in the case of Samurai Shodown and Shadowverse, I found myself not enjoying the story because I didn’t know the characters or their backgrounds. So this time, and seeing as Touken Ranbu has two animes out, I thought I’d check them out and see if they were any good.

 

That was the plan. The reality was a little different. First I tried Katsugeki! Touken Ranbu, which is currently airing and up to episode 10 or so right now. I made it through two episodes. That’s enough for me. The animation is nice and I don’t mind history shows but

  • Yagen is dull, Kunihiro is extremely annoying with his constant squealing of “Kane-san! Kane-san!” Kanesada is kinda ordinary, Tonbokiri is boring, Mutsunokami’s lively act is also annoying.
  • Those kinds of stories where the heroes are always one step behind the enemy are frustrating to watch.
  • The action is all just running around slashing at stuff.
  • Animation is nice but the CG really clashes with the ancient setting.

Based on that, I think two episodes of the show is enough. Maybe I will google around and find out what the Time Retrograde Army is really after, but TBH I don’t really care. At least now I’m familiar with the main characters in the show, which should be enough for me to understand the GBF collab.

Once I was done with Katsugeki! Touken Ranbu, I checked out the first 5 minutes of the other anime, Touken Ranbu Hanamaru. The former aspires to be a standalone series, the latter is pure fanservice for players of the game. Those first 5 minutes alone introduced at least 10 different characters, all vaguely good-looking bishies without much to distinguish them. It looked like a slice of life show, but with that many characters introduced at once without introduction I didn’t feel like watching any further. Might be fun for people who are fans already, but not for me.

Welp, that’s enough experimentation for one day. While I was at it I also downloaded some episodes from other shows airing this season, but it will take a while for me to get round to watching them. I have so many other things I want to watch instead, mostly TV shows and Cantonese dramas. I’ll squeeze in some anime here and there as I get the chance.

Update: I ended up Skipping every bit of text in the Touken Ranbu collab, just like I’ve done with all the other events for the past year. I don’t know why I bothered, really. ^^;;

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.

isucaISUCA – 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.

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.