An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

Killing Time – Assassination Classroom Spoiler Review

Assassination Classroom is one of the big ones, both in terms of popularity and in terms of length. The latter has made it something of a challenge to consider reviewing in the format to which I am accustomed, but for Back To School month, I decided to finally take a crack at it. For this case, I’ve decided to err on the side of giving a general overlay, rather than full detail

The setup for Assassination Classroom is this: a giant yellow octopus man who can fly at mach 20 just blew up the moon, leaving it a perpetual crescent. He threatens to do the same thing to the Earth in a year’s time, but has deal with the governments of the world: for the next year, he’ll be the homeroom teacher for a particular class of middle school students, who have that time in order to kill him (and score a huge bounty in the process). Of course, he has many superpowers, so this is far easier said than done. The octopus is shortly given the name Korosensei by his class, a portmanteau of korosenai (“unkillable”) and sensei (“teacher”), and both he and government forces are ready to teach the students in both ordinary academics and assassination techniques in the hope that they’ll be able to save the world.

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Welcome to Generica – Shironeko Project Zero Chronicle Spoiler Review

Alas, video games. This isn’t the first time I’ve picked on you and it won’t be the last. And let me make one thing perfectly clear: I love video games. I even like their stories; there are games I’ve played and replayed just for the story, like Planescape: Torment, and games where I think the story could gracefully make the transition to screen in some form, like Iji. Even when a game doesn’t reach the highest heights, it can have a good and memorable story with good and memorable characters. JRPGs like Skies of Arcadia are great at this – and, for all its stereotypical fantasy cheese, so is the Fire Emblem series.

For those who aren’t familiar, Fire Emblem is a series of tactical RPGs or Turn-based strategy games (depending on how you want to look at them) united by being set in fantasy worlds where a lot of familiar tropes tend to repeat themselves. Warring kingdoms, divine dragons, nobles, and retainers are the order of the day. Sometimes the setting can be a little tired, and sometimes the characters (who only have a few quotes to distinct themselves, unless you follow their support stories) can be a little basic, but by in large it tends to turn out moderately decent stuff.

Why do I bring that up? Because, at first, Shironeko Project Zero Chronicle feels like an off-brand Fire Emblem setup. It’s got noble pretense, clear fantasy tropes for everyone, sworn retainers with different character classes, and so on. They worship a shiny rock instead of a dragon, but that’s neither here nor there. What it turns into is an insult to storytelling and makes me feel kind of bad for ever thinking of this mess in terms of Fire Emblem. So let’s dive in.

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To Boldly Go Where No Catgirl Has Gone Before – Cat Planet Cuties Spoiler Review

When starting Cat Planet Cuties, I felt an odd sensation. It took me a moment to place it, but I soon realized that the feeling I was experiencing was a nervous concoction of creeping dread. Why feel fear when loading up something that seems as mindless yet harmless as Cat Planet Cuties? Well, let’s just say I’ve seen another show with a fairly similar pitch, DearS, and that the title “Cat Planet Cuties” inspired about as much confidence as “In Another World With My Smartphone”, so I was expecting this to hurt me.  Expectations, however, must be modified in the face of evidence.

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Unseen – Mushi-shi Review

For those who don’t know, Mushi-shi is an anthology-style show. It follows (roughly) the travels of Ginko (by trade, the titular Mushi-shi), a man who specializes in dealing with strange cases related to Mushi, spirit entities that most humans cannot see but that all can feel the effects of. He walks the length of ancient Japan, interacting with isolated villages and others that have Mushi problems whether they know that’s what they have or not. Part nature documentary, part medical drama, and part ghost story, Mushi-shi has a broad range of experiences to offer.

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Vacuous Vixens Vanquish Virulent Villains in a Vexatious Venture – Venus Versus Virus Spoiler Review

Sometimes, the first couple of seconds can tell you a lot about a show. With the extreme closeups of a gun being loaded, girl in a dress, general art style, ruined church setting, and shots fired at some swirly darkness, the first thirty seconds of Venus Versus Virus let you know you’re watching yet another of the crusty mid-2000s urban fantasy pieces. What it doesn’t tell you is whether you’re watching something into which actual effort was put, like Shakugan no Shana, or something that’s going to just bring you pain, like Omamori Himari.

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Mine Transfer – ID-0 Spoiler Review

It should come as no surprise, but I tend to enjoy science fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good fantasy setting or even a hybrid with both magic and technology, but there’s just something about visions of the future, dealing with such topics as robotics, AI, and transhumansim that tends to hit a different way. And while there are some good examples in anime, it’s generally something that sparks hope to see another. Enter ID-0

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Shooting Blanks – Girls’ Frontline Spoiler Review

Despite this not being the first one I’ve reviewed, I’m always kind of impressed when I hear a gacha phone game got an anime, especially once it’s been out a bit rather than as a launch or pre-launch outing like Takt Op Destiny. Perhaps I shouldn’t be – I know that an anime outing can be more of an advert than a culmination, and I know that even a phone gacha game can be used as a storytelling medium, potentially creating something at least decent to work off. But games in general are a source that has struggled to find success in adaption and phone games are a particularly troubled subset. So when I see there’s an anime of Girls’ Frontline (also called Dolls’ Frontline), I both feel some appreciation for the fact that something with such an inauspicious beginning managed to go the distance, and deeply worried that the final product is going to hurt.

Unlike Azur Lane, I haven’t played GFL, so I’ve gone into this completely blind as a new viewer, arguably the kind of person that the show wants to attract and be appealing and memorable to. Why? Because I’m a glutton for punishment and people like it when I review something I should have dreaded watching. Is it really all that bad, though? Let’s take a look.

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The (Frustrating) Show about Passion and Mechas – Rumble Garanndoll Spoiler Review

They say the past is a different country, with an outdated military and huge oil reserves (okay, only Randall Munroe says that last part) but usually that’s not to be taken literally. In the case of Rumble Garanndoll, someone took that idea a little bit literally. The general concept is that the show takes place in a world where Modern Japan was invaded by a parallel universe Japan that still follows the no-nonsense militaristic culture that was dominant during the Showa era (particularly before the end of World War II, for obvious reasons). The invaders, armed with future tech weaponry such as mechas, quickly turned into occupiers and aimed to force modern Japan to follow their principles. This involved, among other things, persecuting art and culture that didn’t fit with their vision, particularly Otaku media.

This leads to our show, where a resistance group made up of weird nerds engages in a rebellion plot that’s almost as much of a pastiche of genre conventions as they think it ought to be.

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Strip Shinobi – Senran Kagura: Ninja Flash! Spoiler Review

A little while back, I was breadcrumbed to a certain beat-em-up video game: Senran Kagura (specifically Burst Re:Newal, the re-remake of the first game of the series). It was aggressively fanservicey, but the button-mashing gameplay was fun enough and, like many before me, I found that the writing in the visual novel segments between missions was… better than it had any right to be. Don’t misunderstand, the game is not high art or anything like that, but for something that could have gotten away with the barest minimum excuse plot to get busty ninja girls taking clothing damage while beating up hordes of generic enemies? It went several steps above and beyond the call of duty to actually develop characters and a scenario that were likable and effective, so that most of the cast had more than one dimension and the conflict had at least a little meat to it.

And, as is the case with more than one dubious and fanservice-laden series, there was an anime of Senran Kagura. Actually, there are two seasons, but this time around I’ll be focused on the first season (Subtitled Ninja Flash!) since that covers the first game’s main storyline in terms of adapting the story.

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The Harem Reloaded – If Her Flag Breaks Spoiler Review

If Her Flag Breaks is a show that you think you have figured out in Episode 1. The introduction is somewhat interesting, but ultimately very basic. The Main Character, Souta Hatate, has an ability that allows him to see “Flags” (literal tiny flags on people’s heads, representing the gaming concept of an event flag that determines something will happen) and, with an instinctual ability, manipulate them. We see this with him breaking a man’s death flag (causing the infamous death-by-truck to swerve the other way) and later, when he joins his new school, by striking down a lot of friendly or romantic overtures with precision, breaking the related flags. This is the interesting part.

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