What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2014

[Dr. Nick]

Every creation is like a child screaming "Look at me for me, not as my father's child!" and that's how I want to view it.

I agree to an extent, and I try to approach everything with an open mind, but when the child turns out to be malformed, I get curious about what happened during the gestation and what sort of genetic baggage it might be carrying. For example, let's consider KissDum, which is far worse show than Valvrave by orders of magnitude. It's boring and depressingly unwatchable, but you get a tantalizing sense that a massive trainwreck must have happened behind the scenes, because why else would an otherwise competent studio like Satelight end up creating something so dreadful? And in Valvrave's case, it is one of the more heavily autopsied shows this side of Gundam Seed Destiny, so just making yet another bullet point list detailing its particular failings in the writing department didn't seem like a worthwhile effort.

"Omnipandering" is a term I first encountered in a Code Geass thread on 4chan, and even there a lot of anons were taken aback by how pretentiouss it was. It's merely an overtly fancy way of referring to an attempt to appeal to multiple different audience groups by cramming various flavors of fanservice together to create a sort of Neapolitan mix. However, this can very easily lead to narratively unfocused bumbling, and it didn't particularly help Geass (or any other modern Sunrise show for that matter) that the studio has heavily specialized in bombastic, plot convenience driven ridiculousness. Valvrave tries to be Geass with only half of the episode count, so the results are fairly predictable. Superficially, everything is extremely sleek and (over)designed with great care, but the focus is on the flashy bits and the underlying framework is all wonky. We get to admire the Dorssian military uniforms and mechs in great detail, but actually plot-relevant details about the Dorssian revolution and the role of the royalist faction are scarcely given a token mention. The plot is so narratively wasteful that it introduces huge scifi ideas like artificial suns and mini Dyson sphreres and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing with them. This wastefulness even extends to character interactions. To give just a couple of examples:

SPOILER: Show

- L-Elf and A-Drei get to yell at each others names a lot, but their earlier camaraderie is reduced to a briefest of flashbacks, even though it is what motivates them to yell each others names.
- After all of the really sweet development they got, there's not even a single scene of Akira grieving over Marie.

Sometimes less is more, and the problem with this modern Sunrise attitude of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the viewer is both loss of plot focus and loss of emotional focus.

[Fireball]

Cross Ange 16

well that episode had bite

[Stan]

Durarara x2 (Season 2) is sooo good. I only realized how much I missed the show once season 2 started. Now I'm addicted and can't wait each week for the next episode. My only "problem" is the kinda crappy animation. It's not bad, but it's the same as season 1 (which was 2010)...they should have made it a little smoother. But overall who cares, it's the content that makes the show what it is!!

[pwhodges]

OK, I finished Ping Pong. I'm really not interested in sports in general, so it was already to its credit that the story, or rather the characters, kept me watching. None the less, I was expecting some over-the-top sports-glorifying ending, and was surprised and pleased to find it ending with a depiction of two main characters who have passed beyond their obsession with the sport. The art is fascinating, though I found it hard to ignore the sheer ugliness that it brought to many of the faces.

I went on to a couple of shorts.

Voices of a Distant Star. OVA or manga? What to say? The OVA came first, and the manga tells a more complete story, with a much more spelt-out ending. I read the manga first, and absolutely loved it, so that watching the much more sparely written OVA felt like a disappointment at the time. But on reflection, that simplicity and the difficulty in defining how it ends are also attractive story-telling. So, I have no hesitation in recommending both, but I suspect you will end up carrying a flag for whichever you visit first.

Elf Princess Rane. Completely bat-crazy. Plot? No, what made you think that... Energy? FLCL levels of crazy, and then some. Turn your brain off and enjoy the ride. The dub and the subs (different - how fast can you read words printed backwards?) are both of the highest standard - try them both!

[Gus Hanson]

Cross Ange episode 16

Is wearing swimsuits a custom of the Japanese when playing Twister competitively? Vivian's mom cheating death at a stage in the series where death would be welcomed to keep the drama levels up was anticlimactic. Aside from the Twister game, the rest of the competition between Ange and Sala didn't sit well with me because I felt like I was supposed to laugh when it didn't come off as funny.

[Dr. Nick]

If you've ever bought any Pioneer/Geneon's R1 anime releases, you might remember how their extra features often included a really fabulous-looking trailer for a show called L/R: Licensed by Royalty. It looked a little different from your usual anime fare, as it seemed to be about two British spies doing awesome spy things. Having now seen the show, I can report that the trailer is a lie, as none of its big scenes like the jet take-off never happen in the anime proper, not even in its opening sequence.

Another thing the trailer doesn't tell you is that the "British" agents aren't actually British at all. While L/R's world seems to be largely the same as ours, in its universe the British Isles are occupied by a totally made-up nation of Ishtar. Made-up nations can be useful in fiction, often to establish a quick and easy power base for a big villain, but if you're going to set your entire story in such a nation, it's going to take a lot of worldbuilding to make it feel like a believable place. And L/R absolutely fails in this, even though it's an agent series with practically no globe-trotting at all. Almost the entire series takes place in Ishtar's London expy, but even after 13 episodes it's still not clear to me whether Ishtar is meant to be a constitutional or an absolute monarchy. It boggles the mind how information like that is just left out, considering the plot is all about the Royal Houseguard trying to protect the life of a teenage princess.

The two main characters, Jack and Rowe, are boring overpowered blank slates, with their only interesting feature being their wildly fluctuating moral alignment. I know James Bond's level of amoral ruthlessness depends on the film he's in, but L/R doesn't have the excuse of being a 50-year-old movie franchise. In some episodes Jack and Rowe apprehend the evildoers like they're glorified cops, whereas in others they gleefully gun down other Ishtarian intelligence operatives when the big villain manipulates them to try and take out the princess. This actually leads to Rambo III levels of carnage in not-Ireland, when our two "heroes" first blast their way through what I assume are SAS special forces and then proceed to shoot down a good chunk of the RAF, blanketing the tiny village of not-Dublin with flaming debris. And then they spend an entire episode rescuing a diabetic from a broken down cable car. For king and country.

And yes, there's a fucked-up fantasy version of the IRA in this anime. Apparently the Ishtarians have fancy future tech like laser satellites, but maintaining this technological lead requires unobtanium that is only found in not-Ireland ("Ivory Island"). This means the not-Irish have been borderline enslaved, reduced to toiling away at the unobtanium mines and living in 19th century hovels. And I assure you this sounds far more entertaining in writing than how it actually plays out in the anime.

So, can L/R at least be watched as nonsensical action fluff? Not really, because it's a low budget show, and especially its car chases look like ass. All the action scenes are set to the same handful of easygoing imitation British rock songs, which further helps to kill the tension because the music clearly signals that the situation is a piece of cake for the heroes to overcome. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the show largely exists only because both the director and the producer wanted to create something with a lot of references to British rock of 1960s and 1970s. In this light it is rather ironic that the director seems to have no grasp of how the music affects the mood and feel of a given scene. If only he had just kept the easygoing songs in easygoing scenes, a lot more could have been salvaged. As it is now, it should definitely be avoided. Just watch Johnny English instead.

[Guy Nacks]

Voices of a Distant Star is made most impressive for the fact that it was all done by only one dude. That is pretty awesome.

[IronEvangelion]

Currently on episode 8 of Queen's Blade. It's strange, I never expected such a popular ecchi series would be so... boring. I mean I'm trying to get into it, but everything that happens just seems so completely random. I attribute most of the randomness to the plot trying to follow three different parties in a series that's only 12 episodes long. This results in massive and frequent timeskips throughout the show. For instance, at the end of one episode the main heroine Leina falls off a cliff while in a European-style forest and drops into the river below. At the beginning of the next one she's in fucking Egypt- oh, excuse me, 'Amara.'

The characters are pretty hard to get attached to as well. They have little or no personalities and it seems like the creators just threw a bunch of cookie-cutter archetypes together and called it an anime. They seem to be trying to add depth to Leina and her siblings Elena and Claudette, but their whole subplot comes off as very soap opera-ish. Even the battles are beginning to bore me. The first few episodes had some great action, but everything since then is usually the women slicing off each other's clothing and then the match gets thrown for (insert reason).

I'll definitely keep watching 'til the end, but I really hope it gets better soon.

[Mr. Tines]

OK, I finished Ping Pong. I'm really not interested in sports in general, so it was already to its credit that the story, or rather the characters, kept me watching.

It's never the genre, it's always the story -- I have essentially no interest in sport either, but 2010's Giant Killing was one of the better series from that year. I'd never expected to be eagerly waiting for the next episode of a football series.

And then there are the titles that get classified as sport for including a traditional game like mahjong (Akagi) or karuta (Chihayafuru) as the ostensible conflict.

Which segues nicely into noting that I finally finished Saki : the Nationals, which was the weakest of the three series to date, being the shortest, but still trying to rush through so many other opposing teams; so it ended up being front-loaded with fanservice, and when play started, both the character stories and, especially, the magical girl antics were fairly perfunctory. And we're still waiting for Teru time (but that will probably only appear in the manga some time after Akagi's game in the Washizu mansion finishes).

[IronEvangelion]

I finished Queen's Blade... or at least I thought I had. It turns out I have only finished season 1. I was wondering why it ended before the actual tournament even started. Apparently the Queen's Blade tournament is so massive it takes up an entire 12-episode season just by itself. I'm looking forward to this, especially if the second season is as good as the last 3 episodes of the first.

[Fireball]

Kancolle 4


expected great depression

got

BURNING LOVE

[AR-99]

^Kongou-class antics the most ridiculous ones so far. What's next?

[Gus Hanson]

Anyone else think that the whole shtick of Ange and Tusk falling into each other's privates is getting a little dated? It was funny the first few times but now, it's just getting repetitive. I want their relationship to go to the next level already instead of all this bantering back and forth from Ange not getting over what an apparent "pervert" Tusk is for landing in those compromising positions.

[Dr. Nick]

Geneshaft, episodes 1&2:

Yes, the name of the series probably sounds dirtier than it should, so let's get this out of the way first.

This show is actually a lot of fun to watch in tandem with Cross Ange because of the genre similarities (Geneshaft's cool ship being named Bilkis is just an amusing bonus). Both series share the same basic conceit of a badass all-female mech pilot team, but instead of going all sleazy with this material, Geneshaft seems to have some actual sci-fi ambitions, and based on the second episode it might be going for a more realistic take on super robots, a little in the same vein as Stellvia perhaps, except with more ace pilot lady-machismo instead of space high school awkwardness. Another key difference is that instead of Norma, in Geneshaft's world it's men who are treated with suspicion. They're not imprisoned or anything, but they're always accompanied by a female chaperone in order to ensure they don't go all man-bonkers and frothingly aggressive during space missions. This concern seems somewhat founded, considering that Embryo-sama has already made his appearance, aggravated the Halo aliens and BTFO'd California, causing the main character much suffering.

[Fireball]

^Kongou-class antics the most ridiculous ones so far. What's next?

Kongou was captured 100%! I think she said every single line from the game in this episode. I did not expect the others to be that silly though. Hihei is mostly portrayed as crazy for her Kongou-neesama, Kirishima is the aloof brain of the team and Haruna is all DAIJOUBU Nadeshiko.

next episode sounds like about Kaga.

[pwhodges]

Kemono no Sou-ja Erin (Beast Player Erin). It takes a very strong recommendation to get me to start on a four-cour show, and Erin comes with such a recommendation. Superficially it looks like a children's show, and indeed it is suitable for children. The appearance is very simple - think pastels and watercolours - but the issues it covers are mature, and are handled with great skill. As part of the child-friendly manner it starts very slow, with meticulous world-building, and admittedly slightly irritating explanations given as a voice-over at the end of each episode. But just when you wonder if any actual action is ever going to happen, there is disaster, and Erin's life is turned upside-down. If Erin's reaction to what happened, spread over the next two whole episodes, doesn't move you to tears, you are harder-hearted than I, for sure. But now her world has changed, the pace is clearly starting to pick up and I am thoroughly engrossed.

[Squigsquasher]

Super Dimension Fortress Macross Episode 18:

SDF Macross episode 18  SPOILER: Show

RIP Roy Focker

[Ornette]

Speaking of ugly characters, finally got to check out the first Initial D - Legend movie. It's sort of a retelling of the beginning of the series. So it's all new and redone, but what's funny is I couldn't even recognize Takumi because none of the faces were pig ugly, but the best thing to come out of a remake is the ugly CG cars from the original have all been reanimated and with a nice like "manga"-like feel (especially how the dirt gets kicked up).

Old Takumi


New Takumi:

[Gus Hanson]

Anyone else think that the whole shtick of Ange and Tusk falling into each other's privates is getting a little dated? It was funny the first few times but now, it's just getting repetitive. I want their relationship to go to the next level already instead of all this bantering back and forth from Ange not getting over what an apparent "pervert" Tusk is for landing in those compromising positions.

Not to come off as desperate or anything but I would really appreciate at least one reply to this since I also posted this question at MAHQ but i'm not getting anything there as well.

[robersora]

What do you expect from a show that kinda opens with this?

SPOILER: Show

I mean this show is so hideous it screams harem-shiftfest from the first frame onwards. Did you really expect the next Nana?