An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

AFGNCAAP – Arknights Animation: Prelude to Dawn Spoiler Review

Here I go opening up on another Gacha adaptation. That… shouldn’t mean as much as it’s seemed to. Personally, I don’t like the sentiment of dismissing video games as a storytelling medium. Even outside Visual Novels, which are built a little different, games can have and convey powerful, moving stories. Obviously, not all of them actually do, but neither does every single book or movie. Even phone app gacha games, which seem to have a reputation of the lowest of the low, are capable of telling good stories.

But compared to other source material, those stories seem to take to the screen shockingly poorly, rarely rising above mediocre competence. I speculated on what some reasons might be when I tried to pick up the pieces of MWZ , but even aside from anything inherent, there’s the distinct possibility that it’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since, with the partial exception of VNs, video game adaptations “aren’t good”, they get less time, effort, and money put into them, resulting in an inferior product.

If that’s the heart of the matter, then perhaps there’s hope for Arknights.

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The Bad to End All Bad – Ex-Arm Retrospective

Back when it was first coming out, I made the poor (in quality terms) decision to watch Ex-Arm for my seasonal write-ups. And in all honesty, I was expecting it to be bad. The show had gotten some amount of infamy even before it properly debuted. What I wasn’t expecting was just how bad.

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Otome Sentai Apocalypse – Scared Rider Xechs Spoiler Review

Ho, ho, ho. Well, it’s just about that time of year again. Last year I went easy on myself and had my holiday review of something that was good, wrapping the show up as a present for all of you. This year we’re back to old traditions, as ol’ Krampus has deposited one of the famed worst on my doorstep, and your reward is hearing how I fared with Scared Rider Xechs.

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SyntheThighs – Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout The Animation Spoiler Review

Ryza, Ryza, Ryza… there’s a reason I always have to mention when I bring it up that Atelier is a fairly venerable series with many editions and nearly as many protagonists, and that would be because it got a huge signal boost from the game (and later, games – plural) featuring Reisalin Stout, aka Ryza, as the main protagonist. It was darn near impossible for a long while to escape seeing or hearing anything about her, and even now that her trilogy is probably complete and Atelier looks to go on to new protagonists, she’s probably who folks are going to think about as synonymous with the series for a long while. Everybody loves Ryza… or at least, her thighs.

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Magical Deserts & Desserts – Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky Spoiler Review

So, back in the Fall 2022 season, I took a look at Managment of a Novice Alchemist as my seasonal anime of choice, and I opened up likening the pitch to the venerable Atelier series of games. In a sense, this was the elephant in the room: Atelier already had an anime outing back in 2014. The other elephant in the room, which I partially addressed, would be the massive popularity of Ryza. She got her own anime outing in Summer 2023, and we’ll talk about it in due time. For now, though, it’s Escha and Logy.

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School of Corporate Knocks – Classroom☆Crisis Spoiler Review

Ah, school anime: a topic so prolific that even though I typically run September as Back to School Month, I’ve got to look into it during the rest of the year as well if I’m to have any hope of addressing the sheer quantity of its offerings.

Classroom Crisis (I will be omitting the star at my discretion) at least tries to keep its academic scenario somewhat fresh by placing it on a future Mars colony. It’s also an anime original property, rather than one that initially came from its manga or light novel outings. But with bigger ambitions come bigger expectations, and a show needs to take care to not let its pitch write checks that its content can’t cash. How does Classroom Crisis hold up?

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