An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Seasonal Selection – Sabikui Bisco Episode 11

I would be so frustrated right now if this world had ever pretended to heed any sort of logic or reason beyond “It’s cool, therefore we’re going with it.” Mercifully, that was never the case, so I can enjoy this episode and the ending that will be coming from it with a resounding “OK, sure.”

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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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Seasonal Selection – Sabikui Bisco Episode 10

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is a masterpiece. The movie more or less launched Studio Ghibli (since that’s what most of the team involved with it went onto become), and while it is quite strong, the Manga is leaps and bounds above even that, standing as one of the fictions I most absolutely respect. What I’m saying, in context, is that if you’re going to flagrantly steal from somewhere, you could do a whole lot worse than Sabikui Bisco lifting from Nausicaa.

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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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