romance Archives - Page 7 of 12

In Another World with my Smartphone review – Oddly watchable

I might go beyond “oddly watchable” and term it “strangely enjoyable” actually. In Another World With My Smartphone (Isekai wa Smartphone to tomo ni) is a “hero in another world” show that plays the trope 100% by the book. The hero is smart, popular, rich, powerful and manages to solve everyone’s problems almost instantly without breaking a sweat.

Normally I would post a blurb from Wiki or something, but it’s even easier this time. When the show opens, Mochizuki Touya has been accidentally killed by “God.” As compensation “God” reincarnates him in a magical world with superpowered stats in every way imaginable. Plus he has his smartphone with Internet (but no e-mail) and mapping functions, which he eventually finds ways to use in increasingly broken ways. For example he can use the camera + magic to look through walls, he can use the map + magic to hit every enemy in an area and so on.

The fun of In Another World with my Smartphone comes from seeing just how much more broken Touya can get. Especially since he can use any spell in the world just by hearing about it – and can use it better and faster and longer than whoever he learned it from. It’s even more interesting once he starts to combine and stack various abilities.

And probably the best part is how he uses the simplest spells, especially Slip and Aports, when you would expect him to burst out something flashy. It’s like “I don’t even have to get serious any more.” Every week it’s like “Okay, what overwhelming challenge is Touya going to trivialize this week and how?”

As I mentioned back in my Konosuba review, the isekai genre became so common that focus turned to subversions of the idea. When it comes to anime adaptations now, it’s rare to find the trope being played straight without some kind of twist.

That’s nice and all, but what are the original lovers of the genre to do? What about those fans who want to see a hapless everyday dude get all the girls and kill all the enemies and have everyone fawn over him for no reason at all? Who thinks of their needs? So I think a show like In Another World with my Smartphone is important once in a while to remind anime watchers of what they’re missing/not missing depending on what side of the fence they’re on.

For my part I enjoyed this show a lot more than I thought I would. The complete lack of tension and threat made for a very easy watch. Around the same time I started In Another World with my Smartphone, I also tried the first episodes of Made in Abyss and Children of the Whales. I thought both animes were excellent, but heavy and stressful. You have to be ready to go in deep with shows like that. Meanwhile Smartphone is like popcorn, light meaningless fluff. You pop one into your mouth and then another and before you know it’s all gone. Simple stuff.

Not that it doesn’t have its flaws. The worst part is the growing cast of girls – though again this is what genre fans watch the show for. The girls are all generic, forgettable cute girls who immediately fall for Touya and are eternally in awe of his battle prowess. But they’re not above bossing him around either.

It’s all stuff you’ve seen in a million anime series before. You don’t need to watch this show just to get that fix. IMO every second wasted on the antics of these girls and their petty jealousies should have been spent showcasing the further superhuman antics of Touya-sama.

Furthermore, more girls invariably means more opportunities for fanservice. The show can’t decide whether to make Touya a pervert or not so sometimes he’s leering at naked bodies, sometimes he’s anxiously averting his gaze. But while he can look away, the viewer is still forced to watch stuff like a random groping of a randomly introduced character, a very boring and pointless beach episode and a supposed-to-be sexy encounter with some poor misused slimes. We won’t even get into the amount of innuendo, which admittedly isn’t as bad as it could have been.

On the plus side, at least the issue of who Touya will end up with is resolved by the end of the show, which is more than I can say for 90% of all animes, harem or otherwise.

Overall I would rate In Another World with my Smartphone a 6/10. It gets top marks for lightness and easy-of-watchability, a term I just made up but will probably use more often because it’s something I look out for in anime. It also gets high marks for the happy atmosphere and bright visuals. More high marks for the otaku wish fulfillment factor, and I suppose the girls are all cute if that’s your kind of thing. It gets a big fat zero for just about everything else though. If you want an overpowered fantasy protagonist with a harem, this is your show. If not, stay far away.

Finished Gamers! The second half sucked

This is why I try to finish a whole season before commenting. The first half of a show might be promising, but that doesn’t mean the whole thing won’t fall apart once they’ve successfully reeled in the viewers. Gamers! didn’t exactly fall apart, but it lost direction and humor and just meandered around for the last few episodes. The last good episode was episode 8, everything after that was all downhill.

To its credit stuff did happen in Gamers! The main character, despite his wishy-washy initial appearance, is able to convey his feelings to those who matter to him and they’re able to respond the same way. Unlike most “everyday-protagonist with a harem of ladies who like him” shows, concrete progress is made in key relationships and that progress actually sticks and doesn’t revert at the end of the episode/show. It’s very satisfying in that sense.

The problem is, that satisfaction happens about 60% of the way through the show. After that the writers couldn’t figure out how to keep the show entertaining. It’s a show built around wacky misunderstandings but when those misunderstandings are cleared up, what’s a writer to do? Why, make more misunderstandings, no matter how far-fetched or contrived! And when those run out? Do nothing! The last three episodes were particularly meaningless. I am told episode 11 is almost entirely filler, which really shouldn’t happen in a 12-episode show based on a light novel.

Summary of the good points and bad points of Gamers!

Good

The bait-and-switch premise grabs your interest. I thought it would be about a gaming club but…
The first half is quite unpredictable. The development at the end of episode 6 was especially surprising.
The misunderstandings are entertaining at first. Some of the internal monologues and the way characters interpret innocent comments in the craziest of ways are pretty funny.
The many video game references are a cool bonus if you are into video games. But it’s not so video game heavy that non-gamers can’t understand it.

Bad

The characters go up and down in likeability and may annoy you in one episode and delight you the next.
A new character was introduced around episode 8 just keep keep the misunderstandings going. She serves no purpose otherwise and is actively annoying.
Uehara is a jerk.
Chiaki was cuter with the seaweed hair.
Sometimes the characters act hypocritically. E.g. character A hangs out with character B and his girlfriend even though she mistakenly thinks B has the hots for her. Or character B is all buddy-buddy with character C even though he’s planning to ruin her relationship and hook her boyfriend up with character A.
Even though the show is called Gamers! the bulk of the last episode is devoted to having the only non-gamer character (Aguri) bash video games for 20 minutes straight. Why would you go on a Gamers’ Meetup trip if you think they’re such a waste of time? And why would you keep harping on it? We call that trolling in real life, miss. All the goodwill I had built up for her went out the window.
The show avoided fanservice for 11 episodes then let loose in the last episode. What for??? Anyone who came to Gamers! for the fanservice must have left by then.
You can quit after episode 8 and be perfectly fine. In fact you should quit after episode 8.
Some threads are left hanging at the end. Like the implications of Uehara’s “I choose you!” statement. And the lie between Chiaki, Konoha and Amano. I got flack for calling the show an advert for the light novel, but the results speak for themselves.

Do I recommend it?

Eh. Sure. It’s one of the more rewarding romance shows I’ve seen in a while. By which I mean the main romance actually goes somewhere, and quickly too. Those who followed Hayate no Gotoku for years only to get Butler End know my pain. The show peaks too early and loses focus for the last few episodes, but if you watch it in one go instead of weekly you won’t mind too much. It’s worth a watch if you have time to kill and don’t mind high-school romance hijinks and people who just can’t communicate.

Sword Art Online II – Second half and overall impressions

I did another marathon session of the Excaliber arc of Sword Art Online II and a third session for the dreadfully boring Mother’s Rosario arc.

Excaliber arc: Short and sweet and everyone got a chance to shine. Klein used to be somewhat cool when he was the leader of his own guild in Aincrad, now he’s largely reduced to a ronery joke character. But his chivalry (or horniness) in the face of all common sense was the only thing that let them beat the boss so all’s well that ends well. Kirito was being Kirito as well, but characters like Tonkii, Sinon and Freyja all played their part to save the world of ALO from the evil frost giants.

Maybe it’s just me but I find arcs set in ALO disappointing because there’s no threat of permadeath. SAO and GGO have spoiled me. Still the light, fluffy mood and the fact that even if the frost giants do win and destroy ALO they can just move to another game makes Excaliber a nice sandwich arc between two heavier ones. And of course Kirito would end up with the most powerful sword in the game…

Mother’s Rosario: Long and bitter and too much about Asuna. When the show turned to focus on her I realized I don’t like her as much as I thought I did. Sinon for best girl again! I’m still all for the Kirito x Asuna pairing (like I have a choice) but as an individual Asuna is kinda of boring.

My problems with the arc: first, it could have been done in half the time. A lot of time was wasted just sitting around crying and moping and beating around the bush instead of talking about stuff. How many times did we have to see Asuna climbing down the stairs or staring at her mom? Or watch Siune and Yuuki covering things up instead of sharing their little secret? By the time they finally got round to the reveal I honestly didn’t care any more.

Furthermore the whole “guild of dying kids” thing was way too overwrought. It was trying way too hard to draw out tears by hook and by crook. “Oh look how sad it is, poor Yuuki, don’t you feel sorry for her? Hmm? Don’t you?” That’s why it wasn’t enough for them to just give her AIDS, they had to kill her mother and her father and her twin sister and have her house scheduled to be torn down juuuust for that extra little bit of tragedy.

I must have a heart of stone but I really didn’t care. Episode upon episode of “poor little Yuuki” was annoying to watch because I didn’t care about her in the first place. It’s one thing if an existing cast member gets stricken with something, or at least someone we’ve known in the show for a while, but introducing new characters so you can kill them off to develop other characters isn’t going to wring any tears or feels from me. Ho hum, was my general feeling throughout the arc.

The most excitement I got was from imagining at first that Asuna’s “fiance” Yuuya might be Yuuki in disguise, but that went out the window when she called Asuna “nee-chan.” Not to mention Asuna’s name and avatar look exactly like her so there’s no way her “fiance” wouldn’t recognize her in-game. So instead it’s just some random character brought into the game to teach Asuna that it’s important to talk to your mother by making her play a video game…? Or something like that was the moral. Anyway it worked and Asuna’s mother agrees to let her stay in her current school instead of transferring.

Honestly I thought Asuna’s mom was on the right track with a lot of things, especially with how much time Asuna spends in the virtual world versus the real world and the importance of studying hard and getting in a good college. Even the tightest group of online friends won’t last forever. In the end you still have to come back to real life. That’s why it’s good that they didn’t make Asuna-mama out to be an out-and-out monster. Just a little stubborn and quick to turn away from what she doesn’t want to see, just like her daughter. And in the end she doesn’t make a 100% sudden turnaround but is just a little bit softer towards Asuna. That’s nice. We really could have gotten to that point in 4 episodes instead of 7 but still nice Bad arc with a good end, more or less.

Overall: Just like the first season, Sword Art Online II had a cracking good first arc and then the second half of the season was just meh. Gun Gale Online is probably my favorite game in the show. As a bonus it introduced best girl Sinon. Good drama, action, even a bit of tragedy (poor Pale Rider) and a set up for future arcs. The second half was meh but had some character development for Asuna. And those of us who were disappointed at how chickified she had become since SAO got to see her actually do some stuff for a change. It was a good watch, an above-average show, more or less. I don’t know if I want to watch any more or not – I’m certainly not interested in the reading the light novels – but we’ll see.

Haikara-san ga Tooru manga volume 1 review

I enjoy older shoujo series, but there are so many of them my backlog just grows and grows. Still Haikara-san ga Tooru is one of the more famous and popular old shoujos, so I was going to read it sooner rather than later. The recent announcement of the remake of the anime gave me the impetus to finally get off my butt and actually read it. Or read volume 1 anyway, I’m not sure if I’m going to read much more than that.

Summary: Benio Hanamura lost her mother when she was very young and has been raised by her father, a high-ranking official in the Japanese army. As a result, she has grown into a tomboy — contrary to traditional Japanese notions of femininity, she studies kendo, drinks sake, dresses in often outlandish-looking Western fashions instead of the traditional kimono, and isn’t as interested in housework as she is in literature. She also rejects the idea of arranged marriages and believes in a woman’s right to a career and to marry for love. Benio’s best friends are the beautiful Tamaki, who is much more feminine than Benio but equally interested in women’s rights, and Ranmaru, a young man who was raised to play female roles in the kabuki theater and as a result has acquired very effeminate mannerisms.

The tomboy Benio is forced to marry the lieutenant Shinobu, who is from a wealthy family. At first Benio doesn’t get along with the distinguished way of life at all. When Shinobu is sent to fight in Russia, Benio makes her own way… as an emancipated woman in Tokyo of the 1920s!

Well first off, most summaries claim that Benio marries Shinobu, but actually she just moves into his house as his fiancee to undergo training so that she becomes a more suitable bride. So they’re merely engaged as of volume 1 anyway.

Furthermore, Benio isn’t as much of a feminist icon as people make her out to be. Again, at least in volume 1 anyway she’s not particularly interested in doing girly stuff like sewing, but neither is she all that into pursuits like kendo (also the sake drinking incident was just a one-off). It’s just the only thing she knows how to do because of the way she was brought up, and she’s painfully self-conscious of her lack of femininity, especially compared to her friends.

Additionally it’s her friend Tamaki who has the strong convictions about only marrying for love (but surely the fact that Tamaki is in love with Shinobu has nooothing to do with it, oh no sirree). Benio is more confused and conflicted about it than adamantly opposed.

That’s why she doesn’t run away and try to make it on her own when the topic of marriage comes up but rather goes along with it in the silly hope of being so difficult to work with that Shinobu’s family will cancel the engagement from their end. Instead she ends up winning everyone over and being won over in turn by Shinobu (even though she’s supposed to be trying to get him together with Tamaki. It’s complicated) and everything goes on as normal for a shoujo manga.

In short, Benio comes across as a regular teenage girl who just wants to have fun and do her own thing and isn’t quite ready to grow up yet. I thought I’d like her more than I ended up doing, but she’s so immature, naive and impulsive that I got annoyed at her more often than not. Going to Shinobu’s house and being difficult was a bad, childish idea to begin with, and she doesn’t go ahead with it anyway because deep down she really does want to be cultured and feminine so what’s the point of the childish rebellion? Teenagers!

And she insists she doesn’t like Shinobu one little bit (me neither) and yet her heart pains her at the thought of being parted from him… urgghhh, typical shoujo heroine, urrghhh. She’s cute, but nothing extraordinary. I was hoping for something more unusual from Haikara-san ga Tooru, but it’s just the usual “tomboy falls in love and softens up” story. At least in volume 1.

Will I continue to read the other volumes? I don’t know. It’s not as interesting as I was hoping for. I’m not that interested in Benio or her wacky hijinks. And I hate smug, suave leads like Shinobu. He’s basically Mr. Perfect so of course all the ladies can’t help falling in love with him but he’s slowly gaining feelings for wild, unconventional Benio (who as I’ve said is not that wild or that unconventional) blah blah blah.

I dunno… Okay, most likely volume 2 is where things will get more interesting when Shinobu is conveniently removed from the scene and Benio is free to “make her own way as an emancipated woman” as the blurbs say. Let’s give it one more volume and see.

Sword Art Online Season 1 anime review (spoilers)

Sword Art Online is one of those anime shows you watch just to see if it lives up to the hype. And there is a LOT of hype about SAO, both positive and negative. The bad seems to outweigh the good, but having watched it for myself I can say it’s neither as bad or as good as fans and haters try to make it out to be. The first arc of the show is pretty good, the second half is pretty bad and together you get a decent show that is worth a watch, at least.

Premise (taken from Amazon): In the year 2022, a next-generation game known as “Nerve Gear” has been developed, making Full Dives into a virtual dimension possible. “Nerve Gear” The world’s first true VRMMORPG. “Sword Art Online (SAO)” has generated worldwide buzz, and on its official launch day, one player, Kirito, immerses himself in its virtual world. But Akihiko Kayaba, the developer of SAO, proclaims the following to all players. This game is inescapable unless all levels are cleared. And in this world, “Game Over” is equivalent to death in the real world.

That’s a description of the first ‘Aincrad’ arc, the best part of the show simply because of the tension created by the “death is final” condition in the game. As time passes in the game you get genuinely worried for the bodies of the players in real life, and many of them do indeed die from starvation or because a well-meaning parent takes their VR equipment off without knowing it will fry their brain. It’s actually surprising more of them weren’t lost to carelessness, but we’ll let some things slide for the sake of fiction.

People say Kirito is a boring Gary Stu, which I do see later on in the show, but in the beginning he doesn’t come across all that badly. In a game where the weak die for real, of course your main character has to get strong in a hurry. He’s bit colorless, yes, but a good sort just trying to do his best in a bad situation. I was rooting for him to make it out alive.

The problem began, as it always does, when he got involved with a girl. Asuna. For the record I like Asuna too. It’s just their “romance” that was hard to stomach, both from a moral and a regular viewer point of view. It’s not that surprising to see teenagers jumping into relationships with each other, and in a world where you might die at any second it’s not that strange that they’d jump for a little human companionship, but still! The more SAO tried to portray the Kirito-Asuna lustfest as “sweet” and “romantic” the more I cringed within.

I still finished the show, though, because the ‘romance’ aside it wasn’t that bad. I was especially pleased by the unexpected ending to the Aincrad arc, which I suppose I won’t spoil for you even though I’ve already spoiled everything else. I heard people complain that it came out of nowhere, but that’s precisely why it’s so good! It’s an RPG world so you expect things to go the RPG way, then boom, something out of left field. Really cool.

After that the Elfheim arc where Asuna is a damsel in distress needing to be rescued was a bit of a letdown. More than a bit, it was just bad. That’s where I started to see the Kirito as Gary Stu thing in full force, because even though he was in a new world, somehow he had all his skills and all his abilities and he was so cool and he was saving everybody and everybody thought he was so awesome etc etc blah di blah. Yeah, that was boring. The villain was also so comically evil and incompetent that I thought for sure someone more capable was pulling the strings behind him. But no, it was just poor writing made worse by one of Takehito Koyasu’s hammier performances. And the awkward “romantic tension” between Kirito and his cousin only made things worse.

In a nutshell, Sword Art Online is good when it’s portraying online RPGs and their battles, tensions and mechanics. The action sequences are fairly exciting in the Aincrad arc where one wrong move spells death, and battles are still quite interesting later on even when we know there’s no chance Kirito will lose. When it comes to any kind of human relationships, though, the writing just sucks and is flat-out painful to watch. It’s still a decent show which wraps everything up well enough that I feel no need to watch Season 2. I’d give it 7/10 for the first half and 4/10 for the second arc. That’s 11/20, just slightly above average, which is about what the show deserves.

It would have gotten a higher score if they had spent more time exploring the world and thereby exciting my imagination about how things actually work and what it would really feel like to being in that virtual world, but the months and years just pass away at a blistering pace and before you know it Kirito is level 99 or whatever, before you know it he’s in love with Asuna (or thinks he is anyway) then this, then that, it’s all kind of sudden. A watchable show nonetheless, but not quite worthy of all the fuss it’s gotten. Or worthy of all the hate, as I said earlier. You won’t go wrong watching it, just don’t expect too much and you’ll be fine.