An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

Matchmakers Beware – Toradora! Spoiler Review

Toradora! (the title is excited) is the story of two high school students, Taiga Aisaka and Ryuuji Takasu, who encounter each other and learn that they each have an unrequited (for the time being at least) crush: Taiga on Ryuuji’s best friend Yuusaky Kitamura and Ryuuji on Taiga’s best friend Minori (“Minorin”) Kushieda. The two agree to attempt to play mutual matchmaker, but end up getting closer with and falling for each other in the process.

That really doesn’t sound like it would fill 25 episodes, does it? Mercifully, though, the slow-burn romance actually manages to work, and stay engaging for the show’s run. How does Toradora! do it?

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The Fuzzy (Funny?) Line Between Genius and Idiot – Kaguya-sama: Love is War Spoiler Review

Back when I was in High School myself, a certain gym teacher presented what he called the “Circle of Intelligence” or, depending on when he was talking, “Bad Synapse Theory” The idea was that instead of the spectrum between the genius gifted kids on one side and the complete morons on the other being a straight line, it was an almost-complete circle, with only a small gap between the poles. Someone who was average would be average basically all the time, but the kids on the extremes (mostly framed as the geniuses) could have one synapse fire wrong and momentarily leap across the little gap to the other pole.

It’s a silly little picture born, no doubt, of observing kids with perfect grades and limited practical skills, but that does happen now and again, especially when someone who is legitimately smart gets a little arrogant about it and trips themselves up with their own brilliant plan. And, having seen “The Geniuses’ War of Love and Brains” in Kaguya-sama, I’ve got to say that gym teacher must have had fun watching it happen, because that’s pretty much the premise that keeps the comedy going here.

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We Have Cute Redheads. Are you not entertained? Is that not why you are here? – Quintessential Quintuplets Spoiler Review

Some day I’m going to stop using that Gladiator reference, but that day is not today. Not when it so accurately expresses the nature of unpretentious mediocrity like Quintessential Quintuplets. This is a show that most certainly isn’t high art… but it’s not trying to be high art, it’s trying to be somewhat entertaining, to make half an hour of your time a little better. As such, it seems kind of silly to hold the show accountable for not being something it never tried to be. In cases like this, the end product will, admittedly, never make an A-rank grade… but it can still be judged between the lower brackets based on how well it accomplishes what little ambition it has. And since its February, a month the West dedicates to romance thanks to Geoffrey Chaucer writing a few lines about birds, we’re going to take a look at this one.

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Avant Garde or Weird for Weird’s Sake? – Mekakucity Actors Spoiler Review

Mekakucity Actors is the anime adaptation of the Kagerou Project (though it may be novelized and there may be other anime outings in the future.), a topic that I’ve been covering in the Wednesday “random” reviews including the songs (Part 1 | Part 2), the Novel series and, upcoming, the manga. I’ll likely refer to the other KagePro elements a good deal, but since this is a Monday Anime Spoiler Review, I’ll do my best to keep it largely self-contained.

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Epic Scope, Daring Choices (Budding writers, don’t try this at home!) – Shakugan no Shana Final Spoiler Review

Last time, we looked at Shakugan no Shana Second and I talked a little about what it means to make a sequel. I contended that, with an episodic premise (like Shakugan no Shana kind of had, infinitely extendable through encountering and battling a stream of new Denizens) you could pretty much make an acceptable sequel by continuing to do the same thing you’d been doing so far. I also contended that it could be stronger if you went above and beyond, but at least in some cases it wouldn’t be strictly necessary. Shakugan no Shana Second fell flat (well, flatter) because it didn’t manage to do that much, largely scaling back and taking away from the ante compared to season one of Shakugan no Shana.

Shakugan no Shana Final doesn’t fall for that trap. Nor does Shana Final just content itself extruding more editions of the Shakugan no Shana material we already liked. Shana Final goes above and beyond, transforming the narrative and becoming its own thing that’s grand and new. And it kicks ass.

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How to Not Make a Sequel – Shakugan no Shana Second Spoiler Review

Sequels are simultaneously some of the easiest and hardest things to write. On one hand, it’s hard to live up to ‘the original’ in a lot of ways. People will look at the new sequel and automatically compare it to what came before, so there’s a higher than average bar set for the sequel. On the other hand, a lot of the legwork you’d normally have to do is already done, and if you’re continuing on with a story the first one was clearly good enough that you have a strong backbone to build off of. Sometimes you can even make an acceptable if not good sequel by just doing more of the same (particularly if you have an episodic premise that can be arbitrarily extended… much like Shana, in theory). It’s usually better to innovate and expand, but some properties can just get away with giving us more of what we liked to begin with.

Shakugan no Shana Second… does not do that. And it suffers for it as a sequel. It falls into that firsthand trap where, aside from its own merits, it just doesn’t hit the same high notes its predecessor did, and presents to us a degraded product, lesser in just about every way. How much lesser? Let’s take a look.

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How To Urban Fantasy – Shakugan no Shana (Season 1) Spoiler Review

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a world of magic and monsters exists alongside our every-day world, but most people are unaware of it. The Magic World is full of both dangers and wonders. One day, our main character, an average person, is introduced to the supernatural truth that was hidden from them, encounters a magical figure who will act as a mentor and/or guide to the new world, and ends up getting embroiled in life and death affairs to which others are ignorant. Often, the main character will quickly or slowly come into some special power of their own that makes them highly significant in the magical world when they were a nobody in the human world.

If you wanted to stop me at any point in that, you might have encountered Urban Fantasy at some point.

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On Wax Wings – Guilty Crown Spoiler Review

So, this is a bit of a weird one – I’ve already done a whole Audio Commentary series on Guilty Crown, what more could I possibly have to say?

Well, really, what I want to do is break down Guilty Crown in a more controlled manner, having the ability now to look back on the whole thing. Perspective is a big deal, and with it I’ve found that my opinion is somewhat different than it was in the middle. In addition to that, not everybody wants to sit through an Audio Commentary, and unlike Hundred I think Guilty Crown is worth a closer look.

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It’s Some Wonderful Madness – The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya Spoiler Review

You know, I’ve never enjoyed watching It’s A Wonderful Life. Not that it’s a bad film – far from it! It’s amazingly well acted, with brilliant cinematography and everything else people say about it. If anything, its problem might be that in a sense it’s too good. I end up feeling so much of the pain and misery through the middle of the film that even though I totally recognize its quality, I don’t have a good time with it. It just isn’t that kind of film for me.

Most of its imitators, though, are hard to watch for the usual reasons. The original, despite my personal aversion to viewing it again, had a subtle touch and a lot of skill behind it. As is often (but not always) true of great works, attempting to imitate what a master was able to do without being a master is a recipe for disaster. So, you can imagine my trepidation when I learned that the cinematic followup to the Haruhi Suzumiya series was supposed to be cut from the cloth of It’s a Wonderful Life. That film’s what we’re looking at today – I know I usually do a series for Monday, but it’s Christmas week, you’ll excuse me a little diversion from the usual in order to stay on theme.

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Trying Hard and Falling Flat – AnoHana Spoiler Review

So, before launching into the review, it’s worth noting that the site has been updated. The “About” page now contains actual content, there’s a brand new “Novels” page for advertising my current and future novels, an “Index” page that collects reviewed shows by letter grade, and a “Contact” page ready for all the hate mail folks will probably want to send me because it’s time to look into AnoHana and I’m going to come out and say… I didn’t care for it.

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