An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

Cheerful Plunder – Bodacious Space Pirates Spoiler Review

Just saying the title of this one, “Bodacious Space Pirates”, puts you in a certain kind of mood, doesn’t it? High-flying adventures! Laser beams! Who gives a clipped penny about actual space physics? But sometimes you can’t entirely judge a book by its cover. Bodacious Space Pirates is a lot of fun, with the sort of positivity you would expect, but it does have its own themes and tone that’s a less manic chaos and more warm contentment. And I for one welcome that.

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In the Name of Fanservice – Isuca Spoiler Review

Back when I reviewed Omamori Himari, I may have mentioned that there was certainly room for a show that was similar to Shakugan no Shana, but significantly steamier, with a stronger lean towards the romance and possibly even a greater helping of ecchi fanservice to go along with it. Omamori Himari was a disgustingly incompetent show, failing any attempt it made to be just that. Isuca, on the other hand, at least comes a little bit closer.

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When the Wimpy Kid Joins the MIB – elDLIVE Spoiler Review

Last year, I reviewed DearS, a show with a premise that vaguely reminded me of a western film, in that case District 9. They ended up being pretty much nothing alike in tone, style, or content (more’s the pity), but it was an interesting comparison because it was, in some ways, like two students submitting different work for the same project.

When I started up elDLIVE, I was reminded of that experience because, once again, a 12-episode anime seemed to have the same setup as a pretty famous movie – in this case, Men In Black. For those who don’t know, Men In Black is a science fiction action-comedy about a relative normal who ends up recruited by a secret organization staffed by both exceptional humans and strange aliens, that polices the presence of aliens on Earth, handling crimes and cases related to the many extraterrestrial creatures that live secretly among us. And that is, basically, the idea behind elDLIVE as well.

If you’re one of the people who likes that I normally don’t curse in these reviews, you may want to skip this one. Sometimes, a bad word is the only way to describe something. That said, let’s dig in.

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Super Robot versus Real Robot – Aldnoah.Zero Spoiler Review

There are, on the whole, two major wings of the Mecha genre. The “Super Robot” subgenre consists of shows where the Mechas and their pilots have magical powers and capabilities that often seem to run more on rule of cool than on anything resembling reality. One example would be Gurren Lagann, which frequently tells sense and logic to sit down and shut up, because the robots are going to do something awesome. That’s not to say that Super Robot shows can’t be serious or even dark. Neon Genesis Evangelion is also very much in the “Super Robot” bracket.

Then you get the “Real Robot” shows where mechas, even if technically still made less impractical than in reality as we know it, are treated more like standard war machines. They’re made of metal and powered by engines and nothing’s going to sprout a new ability because the pilot believes in himself. The mechas probably don’t have unique names or anything like that, and the protagonist can at least in abstract theory get a new one if they total the one they’re driving, even if they’d have a lot of customizing work to do to get it back the way they like it. Full Metal Panic lives pretty comfortably in this space, as do several of the more classic Mecha entries.

So, what happens if you put these in the same setting, forcing a Real Robot protagonist to fight against a variety of Super Robot bosses with their named mechas and might-as-well-be-magic powers? As you might have surmised from the title of the review, you get Aldnoah.Zero.

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Growing Harem Chronicle – Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle Spoiler Review

So, Fantasy Mecha is a thing. It’s certainly less popular than SF or Cyberpunk Mecha, but it is at least an established mash-up. Battle School also has its own established place, one that I’ve talked about a good deal. And, of course, into any other genre a little harem may fall. Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle is the shameless mash-up of all of this, a melting pot of mediocrity onto which light must, at this juncture, be shone.

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Isekai & Invention – Knights & Magic Spoiler Review

Without correcting for overall quality or removing material from the context of its genre, I can safely say that, in some ways, Knights & Magic is the most fascinating fantasy isekai show I’ve seen. This is not because of any sort of deep story or well-rounded character like Rising of the Shield Hero nor clever comedy and a deconstruction of the normal expectations like KonoSuba. Rather, it’s because this show is a broad-scale biopic of a historical figure in a fantasy universe that wears the skin of a fantasy isekai while telling its story in a completely different way. Is it a good thing? That remains to be seen, but it is a thing worth remarking on, so here we are.

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Retry of Star Driver – Captain Earth Spoiler Review

So, anyone who’s followed this blog for a while probably knows that I was… not a fan of Star Driver. For those of you just joining us, the long story short is that I found it to be a very pretty show that was done no favors by its cardboard heroes, confused villains, and flashy but very poorly choreographed action scenes. It wasn’t all bad, but for a show about protecting a girl from an evil organization in possession of a host of alien mechas, it was surprisingly boring, and I’ve often brought it up as a model of what not to do in an action show, as all the visual spectacle in the world couldn’t polish the structure that was underneath.

My first time through Captain Earth, I was eerily reminded of Star Driver. They used some shared conceits, had some similar elements of their story and episode structure, and a couple characters who at least looked the part of outright clones. And, it turns out, there’s a reason for that; Star Driver and Captain Earth were made by, essentially, the exact same people. The studio, the director, the guy on the script… all the same. Four years had passed (Star Driver releasing in 2010 to Captain Earth in 2014) but it seems like the band got back together to tell basically the same show all over again. The question is, then, did they learn from their mistakes or did they just reprocess their old work and slap a new name on the masticated remains of what already didn’t work?

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The Teen Romantic Drama with Mechas and Kaiju In It – SSSS Dynazenon Spoiler Review

SSSS Gridman was an… interesting affair. It was an outright tribute to all things Tokusatsu while also being a bizarre ride of metafiction and divinity. It could grab fans of cheesy action and fans of philosophical science-fantasy material alike. And while it was ultimately fairly self contained, it did hint at a much larger multiverse that left the door open for some sort of continuation.

However, it should have been clear from the first outing that just doing the same thing again wasn’t going to fly. The wonder of discovering new layers was a big part of why Gridman worked as more than just a beat-em-up sort of show, and while it certainly had rewatch value from its strong characters and interesting scenarios, watching a setup play out that was “the same but different” would kind of suck. So, when I heard that there was to be a sequel show, SSSS Dynazenon, I was somewhat apprehensive. Trigger didn’t seem like the kind of studio to just repeat itself, but Trigger is only partially responsible for the property and it is such an easy trap for sequels to fall into. Fortunately, Dynazenon did not suffer such an issue. What we got instead was… still a fairly divergent take on the genre, but one of a different stripe to what was done in Gridman.

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The Case of the High School Mystery – Hyouka Spoiler Review

The basic premise of Hyouka is this: the main character is Houtarou Oreki, a high-school freshman who fancies himself an “Energy conversationalist”, which is to say he hates doing anything he sees as “unnecessary”. After a letter from his globe-trotting sister convinces him to join the school’s Classic Lit Club, which would otherwise be empty and fold in all likelihood, he runs into Eru Chitanda, an overwhelmingly cute and overwhelmingly curious girl who will be his first fellow in the Classic Lit Club. Despite his predilection towards sloth, he finds Chitanda impossible to ignore and thus uses his intellect and deductive skill to produce satisfying answers to her baffling questions. The two of them are joined by Oreki’s friend and self-described “database” Satoshi Fukube and Fukube’s tsundere love interest Mayaka Ibara, who provide some help solving whatever mysteries occur to Chitanda and otherwise often introduce more.

This probably sounds like it’s going to be something not unlike Kaguya-sama: Love is War, but Hyouka’s treatment of the mystery genre is much less comedic than you might expect from that. Its characters are complex, its pacing is excellent if deliberate, and its mysteries, while more everyday occurrences and school conundrums rather than the “always murder” fare you get used to in detective fiction, are quite engaging. Those of you who want more spoilers than that, read on, warned of the genre we’re dealing with this week and the fact that I’m going to go into all the solutions.

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Schlock Enough At Last – Infinite Stratos Spoiler Review

When it comes to anime, we all have our own junk food that we enjoy – shows laden with fanservice and sometimes lacking in plot. Comforting shows, where you can predict most turns before they happen and take solace in your relative prescience because that’s what you were looking to see.

All the same, there’s a degree to which we can still draw distinction between these shows, the Isekai and Battle School affairs that are a dime a dozen in any day. Some, like the Academy City shows dare to rise above their station, at least to a degree. Others, like Unbreakable Machine Doll can comfortably inhabit their genre while still providing something of substance and quality. On the other end of the spectrum there are also the shows that are just plain lazy like Yuna and the Haunted Hot Springs and on down from there until you get to the truly horrible outings like Omamori Himari or In Another World With My Smartphone.

As you might tell, while you could, depending on how you feel about them, call any of those shows “Junk food” in one sense or another, as a matter of acknowledging their appeal to visceral enjoyments, discerning between them remains relevant and, for a reviewer such as myself, important. So I want to be clear, when I’m looking at Infinite Stratos, that I’m not looking at an anime that’s trying to be great; I’m looking at as an anime that wants to entertain you, that’s deliberate in its staleness, that doesn’t go quite as big and crazy as an Exploitation show but that has the same habit of feeding you what it thinks you want first and what’s good for you at best second. So, without further adieu, let us dive in.

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