An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Back to School

Cry Me a River – True Tears Spoiler Review

We’ve had a lot of craziness in this Back to School month, haven’t we? Insane clubs, ninjas, time travel, and giant warships aside, it’s time for something relatable in the school experience, curses! I’m sure everyone either cast or endured a curse or two back in… um… just me then?

Anyway, True Tears. Technically, this is another School Love Polygon Visual Novel based anime, except if literally any source on the matter is correct, True Tears the anime has absolutely nothing to do with True Tears the VN beyond licensing the name, so there are no excuses. Does it manage to soar with the freedom of being an original property masquerading as a tie-in, or does it fall into one of those two pits you’re supposed to dig when messing with black magic? Let’s find out!

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Hello, Sailor – High School Fleet Spoiler Review

The Sailor Uniform is easily one of the most recognizable variants of Japanese schoolgirl uniform. Though it has many variants and of course only superficially resembles actual naval dress, it certainly is iconic. There are entire anime shows dedicated to the relative prop, and its appearance easily marks a character as what she is supposed to be. I guess it was only a matter of time until somebody decided the schoolgirls should earn their outfits.

Enter High School Fleet, a show that takes cute girls in sailor uniforms and has them… actually sail.

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Back to School, and Back Again – Sakurada Reset Spoiler Review

Time Travel anime. Much like Video Game Anime (aside from the Visual Novel set) have a bad habit of coming out mediocre at best, Time Travel shows have an odd habit of turning out really well. That isn’t to say there aren’t exceptions: RErideD was a notable flop, and not everything else is uniformly great, so despite the topic garnering at least a little interest on its own, the piece does still have to deliver.

This is especially true when you start to get into the genre soup category. Time travel show? Sounds fun, let’s see if that’s right. Schoolkids, mysteries, superpowers for everyone and time regression is involved? It sounds like Sakurada Reset.

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Yer a Ninja, Ittoki – Shinobi no Ittoki Spoiler Review

Ninjas are cool. School settings are cool. Therefore, school ninjas should be perfectly doable! Sure, Senran Kagura made a poor anime, but the game was fine. Surely this concept can be used elsewhere.

Enter Shinobi no Ittoki, the story of a normal overworked schoolboy who finds out he’s a ninja about as abruptly as Harry Potter learns he’s a wizard. And like Potter, he’s got to go to school to live up to that powerful proclamation.

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5 Girls, 1 Brain Cell; or, Who To Bill for Fourth Wall Repairs – Chronicles of the Going Home Club Spoiler (?) Review

Unlike many of my peers, I didn’t find High School to be a hellish experience. It certainly had its downs as well as its ups, but on the whole I’d consider those years to have left a positive mark on my life. Even with that perspective, though, Anime High School seems like an idealized dream. Even when the students aren’t learning to be super-powered fighters of some sort, they’ve got busy social calendars and, of course, the charm of club activities.

Not every character, however, fills out some after-school time meeting with like-minded friends, however. Some are members of the “Going Home Club”, and are thus cheerfully inclined to depart at the closing bell and return to their residence posthaste. This is what main character Natsuki Andou thought she was getting into when she said she intended to join the Going Home Club…

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Comfort Harem Buffet – Date a Live (Seasons 1-4) Spoiler Review

Oh, Date a Live, how have I gone this far without reviewing you? This is a show with a majestic four seasons, an iconic design in the form of one of its leading ladies (Kurumi Tokisaki) getting mountains of attention and her own spinoff, and a legendarily goofy premise: a seemingly normal high school boy must date apocalypticly powerful supernatural girls, because the only way to seal their powers rather than killing them or letting them wreak further destruction is with a kiss.

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No, Senpai, This is Our Review – Strike the Blood Spoiler Review

There are some shows that I find somewhat difficult to talk about, and oddly enough it tends to be the ones that I would generally regard as more standard that are difficult to review. This is because there are only so many times you can trot out the same formula and show how it is applied before it gets repetitive. Strike the Blood is all about that.

It’s not as though this is a carbon copy of another show. It does have its own characters (stock though many of them may be) and its own plots (predictable though they may be) and its own world (thinly sketched though it may be). But it sticks very close to the formula for arc-driven Urban Fantasy with Harem elements. It’s the same formula that underlines shows like A Certain Magical Index or to a lesser extent Trinity Seven, but Strike the Blood wears it more openly. I’ll try to give it a fair shake anyway, but there’s only so far generosity can be allowed.

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