An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

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They say the past is a different country, with an outdated military and huge oil reserves (okay, only Randall Munroe says that last part) but usually that’s not to be taken literally.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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FrankenMech – Jinki: Extend Spoiler Review

Jinki: Extend is one of those situations where I’m going to go ahead and spoil the tone of the review right at the start: it’s a deeply flawed show, where we’re mostly going to be looking at the storytelling problems in its construction.

To put it plainly, and get the biggest problem out at the start, Jinki: Extend suffers from cobbling together material that shouldn’t have been assembled the way that the show assembled it. This is a twelve-episode anime, but it follows a convoluted, multi-line story insultingly by jumping between scenarios and points in time with really no rhyme or reason, and in so doing it ends up squandering what good will it did manage to build.

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Advert in C Major – Takt Op. Destiny Spoiler Review

So, this one has a kind of odd pitch – we follow a sour musician, the superpowered human incarnation of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, and said human incarnation’s ordinary older sister as they take a road trip across the United States. Complicating everything is the fact that in this retro-futuristic world, which looks vaguely like the 1950s in its automobiles, architecture, and general style but is more like the 2050s in terms of its actuality and in some senses technology, everything has gone to hell thanks to the arrival of of squiggly black monsters who hate and hunt down music and can only be fought off by the magic music people and the conductors who guide them. Oh, and the whole thing is basically a prequel to a mobile game.

This probably sounds both patently insane and like it’s cruising for disaster, but give it time.

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Saving the Day with Food Tourism – LBX Girls Spoiler Review

The best way to describe LBX Girls in brief is to imagine that Muv Luv Unlimited and Yuki Yuna is a Hero were somehow hybridized – you have an every day normal person suddenly transported into a world under siege by horrible aliens, but granted the ability to fight. Most of the time, though, we spend with cute girls doing cute things, in a show that tries to be more about the slice of life than the war for the survival of mankind.

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Colorful Life – Iroduku: the World in Colors Spoiler Review

Several times in the past I’ve talked about shows I’ve termed “Slice of Nothing”. Typically, these are Slice of Life shows (and thus they don’t present an overarching plot) without another genre to contribute direction. It says nothing about their quality, they can still be good or bad in their own rights, but they tend to be meandering and low-key, and not stories in which much if anything is accomplished or achieved.

But it is possible to have a show that’s basically pure Slice of Life that doesn’t become Slice of Nothing. For example, we have Iroduku: the World in Colors (aka Irozuku, depending on who you ask).

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The Cardcaptor Returns – Cardcaptor Sakura Movie Spoiler Review Double Feature

If you’ve been following the blog, particularly the Magical Girl reviews, the idea may have gotten across that I have a great deal of respect for Cardcaptor Sakura. The original show may not have been quite as spectacular as some others, but it came together amazingly well given everything. As such, it was a topic that I was more than willing to revisit. While there is a sequel season, Clear Card, for now I’ll be addressing Sakura’s two feature-length outings, called simply Cardcaptor Sakura: the Movie and Cardcaptur Sakura Movie 2: The Sealed Card.

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Sacrifice, Despair, Slice of Life, and Two Stories for the Price of One – Yuki Yuna is a Hero Season 2 (Washio Sumi & Hero Chapters) Spoiler Review

It’s been a while since the first time I talked about Yuki Yuna is a Hero. The basic takeaway was that it was very much a Magical Girl show that existed in the shadow of Madoka Magica in terms of its world and story structure, but that carved an admirable niche for itself, in large part with good use of lighter elements and slice of life to counterpoint the magical darkness of existence in the setting.

Apparently, Yuki Yuna did pretty well for herself, because that show ended up being the start of a fairly significant franchise, which returned to anime in the form of a second season split between two half-season long stories: the Washio Sumi Chapter, which tells the tragic tale of the first run that Mimori Togo (then known as Sumi Washio) and Sonoko Nogi had as heroes; and the Hero Chapter, which functions as a direct sequel to Season 1 of Yuki Yuna.

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