An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Seasonal Selection – Sabikui Bisco Episode 7

We found the Rust Eater! And, predictably, that’s far from the end of our woes. Getting it starts with an action scene, fighting the Pipe Snake (Giant human-teeth-having finger-and-limb-fringed flying amphisbaena) with Pawoo once she gets the picture that Bisco isn’t trying to decieve or hurt Milo. The monster is brought down, and the mushroom that is supposed to be the Rust Eater is discovered growing on its body.

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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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Multi-Route Drifting? – Fruit of Grisaia Spoiler Review

Fruit of Grisaia is an oddball of a Visual Novel adaptation. It’s unclear who the proper heroine of the show is supposed to be, probably because if anything I’ve been lead to believe is true, it’s actually a hybrid adaptation, incorporating every major route into one Frankenstein’s Monster of a route that lets us see the personal stories of all the girls involved. What is clear, though, is that it really likes making its characters suffer, so strap yourselves in.

The story starts with the arrival of a boy called Yuji Kazami at, by his request, his new school. Sounds basic? Well, there are a few issues. For one, Yuji’s school has a student body of six including himself. The other five are all girls, which makes things a little more awkward. And, lastly, there’s the fact that while all the students of the school have special circumstances in one way or another, Yuji circumstance is that he’s a former black-ops agent, having spent most of his youth as an assassin for a shadowy government agency. He sincerely wants a normal life at this point, being bored and tired with his former paramilitary hitman existence, but of course if he got that we wouldn’t have a story, so we find ourselves here.

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Seasonal Selection – Sabikui Bisco Episode 4

Ah, here’s the fun road trip the pitch kind of promises. The episode is mostly concerned with getting Milo to bond with Akutagawa (the giant crab). The pacing is tuned down, which is a welcome breather even if we do get into some solid madness later.

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Adapted Epic – Muv Luv Alternative Anime Spoiler Review

Welcome to something of the “Main Feature” for the month I’ve spent reviewing Muv Luv properties – Muv Luv Alternative, Anime Version. Technically, this is only season 1, which is something of a shame but the decision to do January as Muv Luv Month was made before the fact this show was getting a Season 2 was announced.

So, a couple things to make clear right at the start. For one, I am going to be a little more sparse on the plot summary here than I usually am because I already went into great detail on Muv Luv Alternative earlier this month.  It should still be more than enough to follow the story if you don’t already know it, but I will try to keep more to significant events. Second, since this is a review of Season 1 with Season 2 announced, it should be clear that this show doesn’t cover the entire running time of Muv Luv Alternative, so there’s a degree to which I can’t say how well it does justice to certain elements. I can speculate, and will try to do so where a logical guess can be made, but certain things just haven’t gotten to the screen.

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The Alien Invasion Story About Human Cold War Politics – Schwarzesmarken Spoiler Review

The entire Muv Luv BETAverse is, in some ways, a love letter to cold war science fiction. I don’t even know if this was intentional, but between the Soviet chicanery, CIA spooks, national pride, mad science, “Like the atomic bomb but bigger and badder” new weapons, and general theme of mankind on the brink, it does recall quite a lot of that period’s media and color. There was a time not so long ago when actual, legitimate government authorities sank time and money into researching psychic powers and messing around with plots that would make most spy thrillers look tame, and Muv Luv seems to adore that and the storytelling possibilities that come from it, at least enough to keep the blocs around even in a world where everything behind the iron curtain has pretty much been gobbled up by alien monsters. So, I suppose, it only makes sense that Muv Luv would eventually generate a spinoff actually set closer to the heart of the Cold War.

That spin-off is Schwarzesmarken. Set in 1983 East Germany, this is the Muv Luv sidestory anime that really does its own thing, and that thing is largely going all the way with Muv Luv’s infatuation with rebels, coups, and morally gray political backstabbing by engaging with its world.

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