An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

Imitation, um, Sure is Something – RahXephon Spoiler Review

Welcome back to Mecha March! Today I’m reviewing RahXephon, aka Xerox of Evangelion. Yeah, I’m just going to come out and mention the biggest issue with this show right at the start, because it is in everything and better to just get it out of the way: RahXephon is a show that lives almost entirely in the shadow of Neon Genesis Evangelion and really, really wants to simply be its famous predecessor. Characters, themes, images… a lot of them are lifted straight from Evangelion, serial numbers filed off and remixed just enough to claim to not be just Evangelion all over again.

But does it work? Drawing influence, even strong influence, from a predecessor can be alright. Being a mimeographed copy of your predecessor, slowly degrading from replication, however, is not. There isn’t an exceptionally sharp line dividing one for the other, the “too similar” failure state from the “more of the same, but ultimately OK” pass. Even though RahXephon strives to become Evangelion, if it puts in enough of its own work, it could be fine. Evangelion had a lot of good material, after all, and didn’t always implement it perfectly, so there might be room in the shell for something else.

The task set, let’s start digging in to RahXephon.

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Tackling a Classic – Neon Genesis Evangelion Spoiler Review.

Welcome, one and all, to Mecha March! Every week this month I’ll be looking at a different Mecha show, and what better way to start things off than with the one I’m going to have to spend a ton of time referencing, Evangelion?

That is, I admit, mostly why I’m doing this. I feel like most people who read this blog already know what NGE is and have their own opinions about it, but if I’m going to talk about some of its successors, I need to put down my own thoughts. I also think it’s quite valid to look at old shows with new eyes now and again, which is part of why I spend more time outside the most recent seasons. In either case, Neon Genesis Evangelion

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No Sharp Line – The Ancient Magus’ Bride Spoiler Review

There isn’t a sharp line dividing what some can find beautiful and what others might find troublesome, even sick. This goes double when it comes to romance, since different people approach the topic with different hangups, expectations, and auto-failure situations that won’t be shared universally. Some things will usually get a pass, and other things will usually be found disturbing. Sat right in the middle of the gray area between the two is the core romance of The Ancient Magus’ Bride.

Here’s the basic summary of the setup: Chise, a teenage girl, is bought at auction, as a slave, by an ancient and powerful inhuman sorcerer named Elias, who intends for her to marry him. Full stop. If you think that sounds like thirty-one flavors of wrong, I don’t blame you. If that sentence (run-on though it may be) is enough that you think you could never like this show… you might be right. For me, there are mitigating factors, but I blame no one for being unable to make it through episode 1 of this.

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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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