An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Seasonal Selection – Tower of God Episode 2


Welcome to exposition, and something of a meaningful change in tone. The episode starts with the stare-down between Khun (the blue-haired dude), Rak (the giant lizard man), Bam, and the strange multi-eyed creature that Bam was prepared to fight. Rak intends to hunt strong prey to make himself stronger, and has figured Bam for his mark since he’s recognized Bam’s sword. Khun also recognizes it, and takes an interest in Bam because he’s curious. Khun’s interest is very different; he’s taking a pacifistic approach to the number-reduction trial, preferring to make allies and wait out other people killing each other down to 200.

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The Semicolon Seal of Fun – Robotics;Notes Spoiler Review

I imagine this was fairly expected given the April Fools’ Day “review” of Gunvarrel, but we’re going to take a look at Robotics;Notes this week. And I know March is over and my arbitrary Mecha theme with it, but while Robotics;Notes is at least tangentially related to mecha I don’t exactly see it as a Mecha show in the same vein as the ones I reviewed. As seen through Gunvarrel, that sort of stuff is still fictional in-universe. Instead, Robotics;Notes functions more as near-future science fiction story that just happens to include some giant robots.

It’s also one of the members of the “Science Adventure Series”, or “Semicolon Series” based on the idiosyncratic style of the titles (note, this one is “Robotics;Notes”, with a semicolon and no space. They are all like that.), the most famous of which would have to be Steins;Gate. The main entries, including Robotics;Notes, are adapted from Visual Novels and feature a shared universe. What’s more, they also share some general traits when it comes to storytelling. The members of the Semicolon series start off with a general sense that we’re feeling strange people in an essentially real world. Some have darker or lighter baselines than others, but they tend to have a turn somewhere in there that catapults the story from personal drama to the world or at least regional scale in terms of what’s at stake. They tend to be a solid blend of Science Fiction, Mystery, and occasionally Thriller in terms of their genre, but are seldom short on funny (or at least fun) moments, thanks to fairly colorful casts. They overall try to be pretty grounded, and while the science fiction that they present isn’t exactly hard the presentation is extremely artful when it comes to convincing the audience that this is something that could happen. Part of this comes from the tendency of the series to lift elements of its plot and science fiction components from the murkier corners of the real world, including psuedoscience, conspiracy theories, unexplained mysteries, and scientific wishful thinking about unproven properties of the universe. The audience is likely to be passing-familiar with some of the topics, or at least to have heard of them, possibly even in terms that lend credence to the show’s take.

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Seasonal Selection – Tower of God Episode 1

A new day, a new season of anime! This time, rather than going with something on which I have preexisting information, I’ve decided to take a look at something totally sight unseen. In this case, that means Tower of God.

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What Last Episode? – Gunvarrel Spoiler Review (April Fools Review)

APRIL FOOLS! Gunvarrel doesn’t actually exist – it’s a fictional show referred to in Robotics;Notes, and I used the references in the actual anime to create that “review”, which should be accurate to what’s known or believed by the masses in-universe. Interestingly enough, Robotics;Notes is set in 2019-2020, so the following review of Gunvarrel can also be seen as me working “in character” as though we were living on that World Line. I’ve added this disclaimer to the start and the one in the title now that the day has passed, but otherwise the review below remains unedited for your reading amusement.

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Good Animation Does Not Equal Good Action – Star Driver Spoiler Review

Star Driver is a mecha show that presents itself as passionate and stylish. It certainly looks the part; it’s brightly colored with a fairly particular style lending flair to good standard animation, including some particularly gorgeous environments. The character movements are graceful, which extends to the show’s Mechas usually moving more like dancers than lumbering multi-ton machines. The costumes range from the colorful end of ‘normal’ to the garishly absurd, and at first the plot and setting seem to follow suit with a conflict between our chronic hero and a fun, loony group of ‘villains’ who, like Team Rocket, are more amusing in their capering than legitimately threatening. Perhaps it’s a little heavier, but this still seems like it’s going to be a fun and engaging show with some kickass action.

If you, like I, watched the first episode or two of Star Driver and thought that, then the show tricked you. The presentation stays the course, but almost everything you would have guessed about the content is pretty far from the truth. And in this case, at least, that’s not a good thing.

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An Epic About Robots, Love, and Surfing – Eureka Seven Spoiler Review

Eureka Seven is, in my opinion, a rarity in that it’s a show that gets the long, escalating epic journey just about right. Because this show is no doubt a marathon. At 50 episodes it’s not the longest anime I’ve watched start to finish, but it is in a high tier that most shows don’t go for, and you do feel the weight that time investment can bring to bear. So I suppose the question is if Eureka Seven uses its time well, and if it’s worthwhile.

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Seasonal Selection – In/Spectre Episode 11

Here we get it, Iwanaga’s fourth solution and the big climax of In/Spectre. In episode eleven. It’s well-done and at least takes advantage of some of the benefits of being an anime rather than a manga. In Episode eleven. This is the big one – the final push against Steel Lady Nanase and the last shot to foil Rikka’s scheme. This is episode eleven.

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Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 12 (Final)

This was the final episode I expected, but not the one I might have hoped for.

All in all, what happens this episode? Exactly what you would you expect would happen. Orochi fires off its doom rocket (I can’t really call it anything else since it’s kind of nuke-like but not exactly and not given any particular name) and the first act of the episode is the struggle to intercept it before the Azur Lane home port is annihilated. We get, admittedly, a decent action sequence for this show between Purifier and Enterprise on the chase. You know Enty is going to intercept, but it at least tries to sow some doubt the way a good action scene should, and the fighters are a little less static than a lot of the fighting in this episode in particular. Purifier still has a fun personality, too. I’d comment that it’s one hell of a slow rocket but frankly if you watched episode 1 you know to not expect anything to be logically consistent with the real world.

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Ia Fhtagn – Demonbane Spoiler Review

In the spirit of Mecha March, this week we’re going to take a look at another deep, symbolic, long, twisted, psychological… ha! Just kidding, it’s time for Demonbane.

Demonbane (or, if you prefer, Kishin Houkou Demonbane or Roar of the Machine God Demonbane) is a property that I can only assume is the result of a series of drunken dares culminating in “I bet you can’t write and market something with panty shots of the Necronomicon as a selling point”. Needless to say, they did it, and the anime form of the slice of insanity that resulted is what we’re looking at today.

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