An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Month: November 2020

Would you like Sadism with that? – Blend-S “Spoiler” Review

Here I go, reviewing another Slice of Life show that doesn’t really have much of a plot to spoil. The idea of Blend-S is that a girl, Maika, wants to get a part-time job so she can save up the money to study abroad because she loves everything foreign. However, her employment chances are hurt by her meek demeanor and intense resting death glare. Despondent, she visits Cafe Stile where the manager, an eccentric foreign goofball, at once falls head over heels for Maika. Even once his other employees knock a little sense into him, an offer of employment still stands, because Cafe Stile is a character cafe, where the waitresses act out particular types, and Maika’s absolutely withering unintentional glare makes her the perfect call to become the cafe’s new character: a vicious sadist! Which is, of course, about the farthest thing from what she really is.

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From Sigil with Love – Chaos;Head Spoiler Review

Chaos;Head is another entry in the vaunted Science Adventure series. These shows aren’t always strictly the best (though they do contain some excellent entries), but in my experience they are typically very fun. These shows delve into concepts grounded in urban legend, psuedoscience, or light science fiction and typically do their best to spin them into emotional character-driven dramas. In the case of Chaos;Head the concept on offer is Subjective Reality – that is, the idea that what’s “real” is not an absolute fact but rather a fact that can be determined by the will of the observer or the consensus of conscious thought.

And with that, some of you will get the review title. Hats off to the ones who know that reference.

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Bad End? – In Search of the Lost Future Spoiler Review

If, by chance, you find yourself in Anime High School and don’t want to go on an adventure, apparently in addition to not sitting in the window-side seat second from the back, avoiding mysterious transfer students, and keeping out of any sort of Paranormal or Occult interest group, you should also stay well away from the Astronomy Club, if this show and Brynhildr in the Darkness have anything to say about it.

And that might be the biggest takeaway from the whole show. So, this show… It’s a show. It has episodes and everything. But it’s not exactly memorable or engaging, and in some ways it’s actually strange that it’s not. We’ve got an imperfect time loop, a Sword of Damocles hanging over a lovable character, riddles and mysteries, slow-burn development of the rest of the cast… so why doesn’t this work?

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How do I hate the main character? Let me count the ways – Revisions Spoiler Review

Oh boy, this show sure is… something. So the basic idea is actually one that sounds different and engaging: Shibuya (a city that’s normally a rather busy and famous ward of Tokyo) is transported to a post-apocalyptic future where the people must learn to survive both cut off from the rest of the world and against the new threats that have emerged: giant biomechanical horrors known as the Revisions. Helping them is a contact from human civilization of this time who grants a small group of special young people a set of mechas that only they can use, placing them on the front line of Shibuya’s defense.

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Controversial (?) Gateway Cyberpunk – Beatless Spoiler Review

It happens every now and then that I sit down to watch an anime expecting it to be bad. It’s not often; Like most people, I like to watch good shows when I can. But now and then something can be “So bad it’s good” or mediocre Junk Food, and sometimes that’s what you need. As a reviewer, every so often I need to dive into the world of the terrible so I can analyze how and where it doesn’t work, and as a writer it’s sometimes inspiring to consume bad media because you can look at it and say “Wow. I could do better.” I can stumble on shows I find to be bad without going looking, but when you’re looking for trouble like this, you’re very likely to find it. The masses usually seem kind of easily pleased, so when the consensus isn’t happy you probably won’t be either.

But now and again, there’s a show that seems to have slipped through the cracks, that has a general consensus as to its lack of quality but then on watching it you (or at least I) ultimately enjoy. Most of the time there is some glaring flaw that you can look at and say “Okay, I wasn’t totally put off by this, but I can see why people in general were.” It’s scarce as hens’ teeth to look at something with a poor overall rating and say “Why didn’t people like this?”.

Enter Beatless, an intelligent and accessible Cyberpunk anime with a lousy reputation that I don’t think it deserves in the least. I’m going to take a look at it today, and try to figure out why so many people seemed to hate this show so much.

Strap yourselves in, this is going to be a long one.

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