romance Archives - Page 7 of 12

Knights of Sidonia quick anime and manga review

Still easing myself back into watching and blogging about anime regularly. Gundam 00 really did a number on me. From now on I will know better than to marathon a drama-heavy show, and if the fandom says to stay away from a movie I will consider their responses more carefully. Today, let’s talk about Knights of Sidonia. I watched both seasons of the anime and finished up by reading the manga, which was only 78 chapters long and thus a quick affair. The ending was… umm… Well, we’ll talk about that in a bit. First the summary:

Knights of Sidonia (シドニアの騎士) is a mecha manga series by Tsutomu Nihei. After destroying Earth many years ago, the alien race Gauna has been pursuing the remnants of humanity—which, having narrowly escaped, fled across the galaxy in a number of giant seed ships. In the year 3394, Nagate Tanikaze surfaces from his lifelong seclusion deep beneath the seed ship Sidonia in search of food on the upper levels, only to find himself dragged into events unfolding without his knowledge.
When the Gauna begin their assault on Sidonia, it’s up to Tanikaze to defend humanity’s last hope for survival, and defeat their alien foes.

What I liked about Knights of Sidonia

It’s short. You can marathon both seasons of the anime.
The enemies are truly threatening. Although Tanikaze starts out overpowered, he can’t keep up with the Gauna’s speed of adaptation so he’s almost always in danger. This isn’t one of those “Boring Invincible Hero” shows.
That said, Tanikaze is a pretty boring typical shonen hero who tries to save everyone all the time. But he’s a nice, earnest guy and easy to root for, which is more than I can say for many protagonists.
There’s plenty of action in every episode. Sometimes it gets a bit much.
The ending is happier than I would have expected, given the overwhelming odds they face.
It seems to be a love-hate kind of thing, but I rather like the CG art style. It’s different from the other stuff I’ve been watching.
She takes some getting used to, but Tsumugi-chan is kind of cute. Best girl ftw!

What I didn’t like about Knights of Sidonia

Some of the gauna are kind of gross.
Some of the scenes are kind of gross, like the living catheter (ick) and the romantic piss-drinking (double ick).
A little too much time is wasted on romantic hijinks halfway through the show/manga. It brings everything to a screeching halt to have girls fighting over the hero when the world is collapsing around them.
I don’t approve of certain relationships in the ending (to explain would be to spoil, but it is an abomination).
Some of the characters look a little too similar, which makes it hard to tell people apart at first.
Certain characters get away with murder, literally, and are quickly and easily forgiven. Like it’s not even an issue.

To watch or not to watch?

It’s probably faster to read the Knights of Sidonia manga, since it’s only 78 chapters. But the anime isn’t bad at all, plenty of action and tense moments and the body count of a small civil war. There are many unanswered questions at the end concerning the origins and intentions of the gauna and the history of the world, so this probably isn’t for anyone who likes complete closure. For anybody else, y

Alderamin on the Sky quick anime review

It took some time for me to get back into anime-watching after the disaster that was the Gundam 00 movie, but I made it back somehow. I’ve watched some other series before Alderamin on the Sky (Nejimaki Seirei Senki: Tenkyou no Alderamin), but this is the most recent one I tried so I thought I’d dash off a few notes before I got too lazy. You have to ease yourself back into blogging with baby steps.

Blurb: The world is thrown into chaos when the Katjvarna empire takes arms against the Republic of Kioka. Our hero, Ikta, detests war but ultimately has no choice but to become a High Grade Military Officer to defend his land. No one could have ever imagined that this lazy womanizer would eventually become the hero everyone needed (from MAL).

What I liked about Alderamin on the Sky

The sprites were cute.
Unlike many anime about wars or invasions, named characters do die – and frequently too. Even though some of them were obviously created just so the show could kill them off to make us sad.
The show does a good job of showing the brutality and unfairness of war and the negative consequences of bad leadership.
Ikta comes up with some interesting strategies, 90% of which work because the opposing side is filled with dum-dums.
At the same time he’s not perfect. He can’t and doesn’t save everyone, and he doesn’t necessarily try when the cost would outweigh the benefit. He’s not the typical shounen hero, that’s for sure.
Ikta has the brains, but the other characters get plenty of moments to shine. Most of them can outfight him in a heartbeat, especially the main girl Yatorishino.
The show has a lot of bright and vivid colors so it’s fun to watch.
It’s only 13 episodes long and wraps up the arc it’s dealing with fairly well. Good for a Sunday afternoon marathon.

What I didn’t like about Alderamin on the Sky

The “hero” is a lazy, complaining womanizer. He hits on everything in a skirt and it’s neither cute nor funny.
The hero and his army are forgiven for all kinds of crimes mostly because he just happened to be childhood pals with the leader of the other side. And she of course is madly in love with him so genocide is totally forgivable when you’re in love.
His counterpart on the other side who was supposed to be the smartest strategist on the opposite side turned out to be a disappointment.
The setting shows some promise but the world, religion and culture of the countries are not explored in depth at all. An antagonistic country just shows up 10 episodes in when we had no idea that they even existed before.
The ending is pretty much “Please read the light novel to find out what happens next, okay?”

Summary

Alderamin on the Sky is a quick watch and a fairly good show that should please lovers of action anime and romance shows alike. The lack of a conclusive ending and the unpleasantness of the main character are the show’s main drawbacks. I still think it’s worth a watch. I enjoyed it for what it was worth and would probably watch a second season if they made one. But at the same time I’m not interested enough to follow up with the light novel so… yeah. That’s it for me.

Hyouka anime – dropped after 5 episodes but it’s decent

Hyouka is one of the recommendations I got from AnimeSuki when I asked for recent, decent and complete shows. I still haven’t worked through the entire list. I use it as a fallback when I can’t think of anything to watch at all, which happens less and less often as my backlog keeps growing.

Blurb: At the request of his older sister, student Hōtarō Oreki joins Kamiyama High School’s Classic Literature Club to stop it from being abolished, joined by fellow members Eru Chitanda, Satoshi Fukube and Mayaka Ibara. They begin to solve various mysteries, both to help with their club and at Eru’s requests.

I watched four episodes and read summaries of the fifth and that was enough for me. But it’s not that Hyouka is a bad show or anything. For one thing the art is gorgeous and extremely detailed. That’s the one thing even the fiercest haters of the show will agree on. For another thing the laidback slice of life mood of the show is very relaxing. I’ve been watching a lot of action-packed fantasy stuff lately, so the 100% reality-based Hyouka was a nice change.

Despite the high-school romance setting, it is also refreshingly free of the usual melodramatic love triangle do-they-don’t-they time wasting you often get in shows like that. And lastly, it’s nice to have a mystery show that doesn’t involve murders or other gory crimes. The “mysteries” solved in the first five episodes were relatively banal but sometimes it’s nice to have a whodunnit without the blood splatters.

Having said all that, Hyouka just wasn’t compelling enough to get me to watch the whole show. Oreki is your typical “bored with everything” anime genius with a voice like a 40-year old man. His friend Satoshi is an insufferably perky know-it-all. Mutual friend Ibara is just kind of there when she’s not being caustic. Chitanda is the most annoying of all. Whether you like the show or not will depend on how much you can stomach her pushiness and endless nosiness.

But I’ve watched many a show with an even less appealing cast. The real reason why I dropped Hyouka is that five episodes were enough. It’s enough, I get it. They like each other and they hang out and they solve minor mysteries. Okay, that’s fine. It’s fine for 5 episodes but do I really want to watch another 18 or 19 episodes on the same theme?Not really. I’ve seen what it has to offer, it’s decent enough but there’s nothing that makes me want to watch any more. The mysteries aren’t that gripping, the characters aren’t that likeable, the art is beautiful but not interesting enough to stare at all day.

In the end I used Hyouka as a kind of palate cleanser between more active and more involving shows. If you like slice of life, light-hearted mysteries or high school romance you might enjoy it. Even if you don’t, it’s a nice change to try a few episodes just to get a different experience. Whether it’s good enough to watch the whole thing or not depends on you.

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.