|
|
Post by Nachtkern on Feb 2, 2024 21:41:21 GMT 1
I started watching anime again (after a loooong break) so I decided to also start writing up reviews while I'm at it! My memory for stuff I've seen isn't great... which means I often forget about things I've seen before. I'm hoping writing down my thoughts about them will help with that a little! I'll be reviewing the things I'm watching this year - I'll see about after that, hehe. There will be some spoilers in this thread, but they'll be marked and every review will have a spoiler-free brief at the beginning. I'll be rating things on the Weeb Ass Shit scale; - Weeb: how familiar you should be with anime or Japan to be able to enjoy this show
- Ass: how much fanservice or general horniness this show contains
- Shit: the overall quality of the show, regardless of how enjoyable it is.
And also include an overall rating, based on how much I liked it!
So without further ado... here's my reviews!
Index: - The Daughter of 20 Faces
- Heart and Yummie
- SoniAni: Super Sonico the Animation
- A Whisker Away
- Yobi, the Five Tailed Fox
- Time of Eve
- Kemono Michi: Rise Up!
- Digimon Savers / Digimon Data Squad
- The Tatami Galaxy + The Tatami Time Machine Blues
TBA:- Pluto
- Night is Short, Walk on Girl
- Pale Cocoon (maybe)
|
|
|
|
Post by Nachtkern on Feb 2, 2024 23:51:45 GMT 1
The Daughter of 20 Faces Episodes: 22
So, to be clear: this wasn't what I thought it was, and I probably would have enjoyed it more overall if I hadn't gone in with wrong expectations. That's a little on me, and a little bit on how the show is set up:
The story follows 11-year-old Chizuko, who is rescued by a phantom thief, 20 Faces, from evil family members that are trying to kill her. She then joins the enigmatic thief's little gang, and they travel all over the world stealing treasures and returning them to museums or places they were stolen from. Based on that, I was expecting the show to be about episodical heists, I thought that maybe 20 Faces would mysteriously disappear, and that Chizuko would step in her adoptive father's shoes as a phantom thief, hoping to be reunited with him as she keeps carries on his legacy. I was pretty enamored with the idea of a phantom thief story with a little girl as protagonist. Unfortunately, it stops being a phantom thief story about 5 episodes in, and from there gradually turns into a middling sci-fi story. Just like the setup, the tone throughout is kind of inconsistent, and many of the characters don't really seem to fit the story or like their character arcs really come together. It's not terrible, but not particularly good either. It definitely didn't live up to my expectations, either way.
Weeb Score: 1/5
You don't really need to know anything about anime or Japan to watch this, but I imagine the sudden nosedive into sci-fi might be less jarring if you've seen a couple more anime and know that any show, no matter what genre, may suddenly pull out superpowers and death lasers just for the sake of action scenes and high stakes.
Ass Score: 1/5 As the protagonist is 11 - 13 throughout the series, there's no trace of fanservice involving her. Even during all the improbable action scenes and ladder climb chases, you'll at most see her knees below her skirt. A few jokes are made about the adult maid's sex appeal, and there is some barbie doll nudity (only of adult characters) in a couple scenes. This show contains some semi-graphic death scenes and mild cartoon gore/blood, which bump up the age rating sooner than the fanservice would.
Shit Score: 3/5
It's just not that good. The artstyle overall is charming, and the action scenes look decent, the animation quality is just okay. Because the story and tone are a bit all over the place, so are the characters. There's also quite a few weird inconsistencies or plot elements that were just kind of there with little explanation why. Which is fine in a middling sci-fi but awkward in a mystery detective/phantom thief story.
{Spoiler} The show really sets itself up as a detective/phantom thief story and contains all the elements of one - 20 Faces is a charismatic, mysterious thief with over-the-top flashy methods, like literally raising roofs, wearing disguises, disappearing into smoke and walking on air. He conducts himself as a gentleman, and leaves a calling card. He's even being pursued by a rival detective, Akechi, who makes his debut in episode 7, shortly after the show already stopped being a phantom thief story. The show emphasizes that 20 Faces doesn't kill or harm people - regardless of how improbable it is, anyone on his tail gets shaken off without being seriously hurt. Living with his gang, the protagonist, Chizuko, learns all sorts of useful skills like self-defense and swinging ropes and throwing knives - but her most important skill is how clever and attentive she is, being able to solve puzzles and mysteries better than any adult. Then... there is a somewhat sudden tonal shift, where 20 Faces' gang - Chizuko's newfound family - is abruptly and comparatively graphically killed on-screen by a rival band of criminals, and 20 Faces disappears (I got this part right). And those guys in turn are also never relevant again, because they all die. I thought maybe one of them would come back later - the other gang had a young girl as well, that Chizuko befriended without realizing she was being betrayed, and didn't explicitly die on-screen... but they're all just never relevant again and only served to kill off some of the cast and get 20 Faces out of the picture. Chizuko then returns home to her abusive family (for some reason), where her evil aunt is still set on killing her dead. Also the family butler that they had before is just never mentioned or seen again and now they have maids instead. She meets Akechi, a detective searching for 20 Faces, who suggests to her that 20 Faces is probably still alive, and she decides to start searching him out. Akechi dubs her a detective, (although from this point on she barely uses her brain and mostly relies on her brawn)... and he then never really plays a role again. He shows up a couple more times, but the only time he even makes it to the scene of the action, he turns out to be 20 Faces in a disguise. Aunt-trying-to-kill-her aside, Chizuko starts living a relatively normal life, starts going to school, makes some friends, and although she seizes every opportunity she comes across to learn more about 20 Faces or his potential whereabouts, she's not particularly actively searching for him. Rather, she starts getting attacked by people who have been artificially enhanced and gained super-strength, who are after her because she's 20 Faces' daughter. It will later turn out that 20 Faces was a genius scientist who invented a death laser in a recently-ended war, but experiments on humans resulting in these super-powered mutants don't really have anything directly to do with that... they're just kind of also there for the sake of the action scenes. All of them are after 20 Faces for various reasons - his genius as a scientist, unrecruited love, rivalry and vengeance - none of it has anything to do with Chizuko, the protagonist. Not even all bad guys have context - for example, two superpowered kids show up to accompany the big bad towards the end, but they don't have a backstory, nor is there any explanation why they're there, other than that they're the big bad's bodyguards.
It's a bit all over the place in terms of plot and tone in that regard, and because that's not really inconsistent, the characters also don't really go anywhere or fit in well in the narrative. For example, at school, she befriends a girl named Shunka... Shunka briefly plays the Mean Girl, before revealing she's got an arranged marriage coming up when she's 16, and is just trying to have as much fun (and get into as much trouble) as she can before then. Shunka is convinced Chizuko has a crush on 20 Faces, and I can't tell if that's supposed to be a gag or if it's played straight and Chizuko is supposed to have a puppy crush on 20 Faces that just... is never brought up elsewhere. She also fancies herself a detective, but only really gets in trouble and ends up being a damsel in distress for Chizuko to save, rather than detectiveing. She has a tragic backstory (her twin died), but it doesn't really add anything to her character or inform her actions at all. She acts the part of a troublemaker kid getting up to antics just fine, but with Chizuko being an overpowered multi-talented action girl occupied with fighting mutants, it feels like they're straight out of different genres. And, for all that screentime Shunka gets, it doesn't really feel like she gets character development. After a post-story timeskip, Shunka is 16, and she's totally happy and on board with the arranged marriage thing. She drops by Chizuko for an (awkward) surprise visit, where she's the same old - she walks headfirst into a dangerous situation by being reckless, and then Chizuko has to save her because Shunka still can't defend or protect herself. Other characters have a similar lack of development or resolution: for example, Akine, a bumbling detective, is revealed to have lost track of his little sister during the war and had repressed that memory, but it's not like remembering made him want to be a better detective or search for his sister again. Chizuko's evil aunt who kept trying to kill her eventually just kind of stops trying to kill her, but even after the timeskip, is still evil and still lives at Chizuko's dead parents' mansion, rather than ever being punished for her actions or anything.
And after all that... the ending was just kind of okay. It was a high-stakes sci-fi ending where they have to stop the big bad from killing everyone in Tokyo, and they just barely manage through the power of fighting a lot. 20 Faces' backstory and relationship to the big bad is revealed, and Chizuko is finally reunited with him for a little while. It's predictable and about what you'd expect, but only if you were expecting a middling sci-fi story with superpowers and death lasers, rather than a phantom thief story.
And finally... I did enjoy the story, and it was fun watching a little girl kick ass in a relatively "clean" anime. Many action shows with child protagonists are either also for younger audiences than me, which reflects on the action and tone (ex. Shugo Chara) - or they tend to lean rather gritty and brutal, which can be harder to enjoy (ex. Gunslinger Girl). And for all the tone was kind of all over the place, I liked that all of it did at least stick to following an 11 - 13 year old girl. There was no shoehorned romance in there (let alone a weird age gap romance with the protagonist), and Chizuko doesn't really act like an adult (although she is improbably unkillable and good at fighting for a 13-year-old). I still think it would have been a lot better if it had been what I thought it was - and what it was setting itself up for and didn't follow through on... an over-the-top heist anime with a little girl phantom thief. But like I've said, it was just okay at what it actually was, and I did enjoy myself. So for that reason, my overall score is... Final Score: 3/5
|
|
|
|
Post by Nachtkern on Feb 3, 2024 1:02:23 GMT 1
Heart and Yummie Movie (90 minutes)
This is a dinosaur movie based on, what I'm gathering, is a Japanese children's book series about dinosaurs. There's also a series of shorts with the same title, which have a different artstyle (I think closer to the one in the books), and seem more like the stories being read out to you... The movie is based on the same stories, but seems to have woven different short stories into one bigger story, with a single T-rex protagonist that all those things are happening to. As it's based on children's books, it's also definitely a children's movie, but as it's also about a T-rex and goes a little more in-depth about the logistics of that, and how dinosaurs eat and fight, it's not for as young of an audience as the books or shorts.
The story follows a T-rex named Heart, who is raised by a maiasaura, along with his maiasaura brother, Light. This gets a little complicated, as T-rexes are carnivores, and maiasauras are herbivores, and Heart has to eventually find out and come to terms with who he is, and find his own place in the world.
Weeb Score: 0/5 It's about dinosaurs and set in prehistoric times, so Japan and anime doesn't even exist yet.
Ass Score: 0/5 All the characters in this movie are dinosaurs. There's also no sexual content: eggs and offspring just kind of appear without even the vaguest implication that there could have been dinosaur sex or dinosaur couples. A few dinosaurs are killed and eaten by carnivores, and while not bloody or gory, it is clear what happens, and meat is shown, which is the first thing that would bump up the age rating on this one I guess. It'd probably be a bit too scary for a 5-year-old, but you could show this to a 10-year-old.
Shit Score: 0/5
Honestly, this was a really good movie. The artstyle is colorful, expressive, and fun to look at, and it's easy to tell individual characters apart despite them all being dinosaurs. The animation is nice and smooth, and action scenes look good and convincing. It sticks to some things pretty realistically - like that the protagonist needs to kill and eat meat to survive - without leaning into the typical evil carnivore trope lots of children's movies have. At the same time it doesn't try too hard to be realistic either, so it's still a fun movie for kids. All the different dinosaur stories woven together translated into a coming-of-age sort of story with a little bit of family drama sprinkled in, and although those are admittedly genres that are normally kind of boring to me, it was still engaging and sweet.
I don't have a spoiler section for this review, mostly because there's not so much I could say that really spoils anything. It's still a children's movie, so it's not too deep, but it's a good exploration of what family means and what it's like to be a parent. It's got a lot of cool dinosaur action and fight scenes (it's a dinosaur movie). It was really cute and funny. The only critique I have is that not all different stories were adapted equally naturally - for example, Heart befriends an elasmosaurus, and the context for that is shown in a quick flashback right after she is introduced, and afterwards Heart immediately has to move on, making that part a little more disjointed than other stories that were adapted into the whole. That said, it doesn't really detract from it, either.
I'd recommend this movie if you like animal drama, like Warrior Cats. Or if you like children's dinosaur movies. And given I really liked it...
Final Score: 4.5/5
|
|
|
|
Post by Nachtkern on Feb 3, 2024 13:50:30 GMT 1
SoniAni: Super Sonico the Animation Episodes: 12 I don't really like slice-of-life, or ecchi, or watching doe-eyed moeblobs fumble about... all of which sums up this show, so, you know, it wasn't really for me. The show follows the day life of Super Sonico, a mascot belonging to the video game company Nitroplus. Sonico's a busy girl who juggles university with being a swimsuit model, helping out her grandmother with work, and pursuing her passion: making rock & roll music with her band. Throughout the show you get to learn more about her lifestyle, personality, and friends, and each episode features a different ending sequence with different music. Weeb Score: 4/5
Putting aside that I don't think this would be a particularly worthwhile watch even for a seasoned anime-watcher, it'd be a lot more confusing without prior knowledge of anime and anime tropes. Why does the main character look like that? What's the appeal of seeing her in swimsuits or maid outfits or cosplay? Why does she... talk like that...? Why is her work like that, and what's the point of watching her do all of that? Where's the story? Why does that supposedly adult character look like an 8 year old in a tube top and miniskirt? What's with all the ass and tits? The answer to all of that is obviously "shrug, it's anime," but even if this had anything going for it, I wouldn't show it to a normie whose respect I'd still like to have at some point in the future.
Ass Score: 3.5/5 Most of the "plot" of each episode really only exists to put Sonico in various skimpy outfits for her to embarrassedly bounce around in. As such, there is a considerable amount of ass and tits in there. And at the same time... it's actually kind of tame as far as ecchi goes? Sonico sure shows a lot of skin, and during photoshoots she's often shown from markedly horny angles, but she isn't typically put in any actual sexual or suggestive situations. It's definitely not for people who hate fanservice and ecchi, but if that actually *is* your kind of thing, you'd get just as much out of looking up "sexy anime girl" and looking at static images on your browser. I do at least appreciate that Sonico is a uni student, and not a middle schooler, I guess.
Shit Score: 4.5/5
Definitely not the worst show I've watched - there just also isn't really anything redeeming about it. The animation quality isn't great and relies at times on somewhat uncanny 3D CG, there's no plot, it's not even a particularly good ecchi *or* slice-of-life, and for a music-centric anime, the music is really just okay, and no more. The characters are written to be endearing, but without any conflict, action, or difficulties, end up just kind of being flat props with a collection of traits. Although some episodes were better or worse than others in that regard, many of the episodes had so little going on in them that I couldn't even say anything meaningful about them. The fatphobic zombie episode wasn't terrible in terms of a slice-of-life episode, but then others literally don't have more happening than Sonico going to work, where nothing out of the ordinary happens, and then afterwards her friends talk about how much they like her.
In fact, the only bit of the show worth noting was... {Spoiler} The Miku car cameo.
Since nothing really happens in the show, there's also nothing else really that could constitute a spoiler.
Now I know what you're thinking, which is, "Night, why the hell did you watch that?" I don't like the genre, and even within its genre it just wasn't all that enjoyable... I try to alternate watching good shows and movies with ones I think are sort of middling or just okay. My philosophy is that it's important to watch a variety of genres, for different audiences, and of varying quality - so you for example don't end up thinking children's animation is the height of storytelling, just because you've never watched anything else... And because seeing how some things don't really pull things off, informs what makes a good show good. It's a way of developing your own tastes, sense of critical analysis, and ultimately your appreciation of the shows that really do land it. That said, I try and aim for middling, or just-not-for-me, not whatever this was. Sonico talks really slowly, so I watched the whole show at 1.5x speed, which makes her almost sound normal and made everything marginally less excruciating, but also meant I realized only in retrospect that I accidentally nightcored all the music. It was a lighthearted show without much of conflict or hardships, but because so little happened in each episode, I often ended up getting distracted doing something on the side instead of actually watching the screen... despite my better efforts. I actually started writing this review before the last episode even ended, since you miss nothing by looking away every couple of seconds or taking a bathroom break without pausing. I'm kind of surprised I made it through the show at all, but it makes me think I could give Azumanga another shot. I originally dropped that because I'm not a slice-of-life guy, but I remember thinking the 4komas were funny, which is already more than this show has going for it, haha. Final Score: 0/5
|
|
|
|
Post by Nachtkern on Feb 3, 2024 15:19:45 GMT 1
A Whisker Away Movie (100 minutes) A Netflix movie following a middle schooler who gains the ability to turn into a cat. Because she struggles with her home situation, and has a hard time catching the attention of her crush as a human girl, being able to turn into a cat is like an escapist fantasy come true! However, the cost turns out to be steeper than she imagined... Weeb Score: 2/5 You could watch this movie just fine if you aren't at all familiar with Japan or anime. However, given the nature of the story and its setting, it helps to be a little familiar with things like yokai, festivals with fireworks and kimono, altars for deceased family members, high pressure on kids to perform well academically... It's mostly all really self-explanatory and this movie isn't full of anime-isms or anything like that either, though.
Ass Score: 0/5 This is a completely family-friendly movie without any sexual content. The protagonist, Miyo, makes a few jokes about how "sexy" her crush is, but in an over-the-top silly middle schooler way. Even during scenes where characters are physical or affectionate with each other, it's not framed with um, weird sexual tension a la Miraculous Ladybug style or anything like that.
Shit score: 0.5/5 This was a well-made movie with high quality animation. The visuals and environments were stunning, the story overall was good, fun, and comprehensible, but just a little bit shallow imo. The main character is *incredibly* annoying, but honestly, that's the part that elevates this movie over other middle schooler romance-dramas for me. It's no fun (if not jarring) to watch a child act and talk like an adult, while pursuing a serious and super meaningful romance, now that I'm an adult, so seeing a kid just act like a kid and be occupied with things only a kid could be occupied with was kind of like a fresh breath. This movie's story couldn't have worked if the protagonist wasn't as immature as she was, or she wouldn't turn herself into a cat to escape from her problems in the first place. It would have been weird (and maybe creepy) for her to be so obsessed with her crush if she wasn't just an overly enthusiastic middle schooler. So I liked that they really leaned into it and also made her super annoying and loud and the kind of kid that tries to jump attack her crush as a gesture of affection. {Spoiler} As for the actual story, besides Miyo attempting to gain the attention of her crush and the drama following him being upset with her for being so annoying, it's a fantasy story about her trying to avoid her fate of permanently turning into a cat after being tricked by the mask seller, a mysterious cat merchant who gave her the ability to turn into a cat. There's a large focus on emotional scenes in this movie: for example, Miyo eventually blows up at her dad's new girlfriend because she's not really happy about having a stepmom, and feels like she and her dad don't appreciate just how hard she tries to not be a little bitch about it. Her classmates make fun of how weird and over the top she can be, and her long-time friend Yoriko gets really defensive of her, revealing Miyo was bullied in primary school because of her absent mom. Miyo attempts to confess to her crush in a letter, but a classmate reads it out in front of the class, and her crush gets so upset about it that he yells at her and she starts to cry. Eventually the action kicks in, and her crush, Hinode, has to go save her from permanently turning into a cat... mostly just by showing up and showing he cares about her so that she stops being turbo depressed and genuinely wants to be a human again, or the magic won't work.
Things obviously work out in the end, and both Hinode and Miyo experience some character growth, but I wish some things were just a little more show than tell. Miyo by the end explains that she thought of the people around her (save for Hinode) as extras or props, rather than complete and important people in her life, and that realization makes sense for her character arc... but because it comes all the way at the end, she doesn't really get to show her newfound appreciation for others. She spends a lot of time kind of ignoring or ditching her long-time bestie who's always had her back, which fits in with her character flaw of projecting everything on her crush - but then that girl just doesn't really end up playing a role anymore once the action starts, either, meaning Miyo also never gets to really express any newfound gratitude for her. The finale of the story is just about Miyo, her crush... and her dad's girlfriend's cat, which kind of counters that character development of caring about others. I think it's fine for the story to be a bit shallow in that regard because the whole is a really fun movie - and it *is* still a kid's movie for kids, but when everything else feels really well-executed and its emotional scenes are mostly very strong and convicing, it makes it more underwhelming in contrast. As a sidenote, the dad's girlfriend's cat, Kinako, is my favorite character from the movie. She's an older cat who attempts to steal Miyo's identity, so she can spend longer with her owner, and then changes her mind shortly in after realizing her owner is really sad to have lost her cat and that a boyfriend's daughter can't replace her cat. I obviously can't speak from a cat's perspective, but that seems like such a cat motive to have. She also really has that snobby older cat personality, which I love. So, all in all... I really enjoyed it. I don't typically really care for middle schooler romance-dramas... or really stories about middle schoolers in the first place, since I've well out-aged the target audience, but I liked this one because it really felt like it went all-in on making the characters true to their age, and fit the stakes and the story to that. And I do really enjoy fantasy elements of this kind, so that helped too. Final Score: 4/5
|
|
|
|
Post by Nachtkern on Feb 3, 2024 16:43:22 GMT 1
Yobi, the Five Tailed Fox Movie (90 minutes)
A Korean movie about a five-tailed fox named Yobi, a magical creature who lives in the forest and can change her appearance to look like a human. Through circumstances, she gets mingled up with a class of human kids and befriends a boy named Geum-yee... but things go wrong when a fox hunter after her life shows up, she gets tangled up with a mysterious shadow man, and it seems that the legend that foxes turn into real humans by stealing a human spirit may be about to come true. Also, there's aliens for some reason.
Weeb Score: ?/5 It's a little hard to rate this one accurately because like... it's Korean animation. Being familiar with some Japanese concepts like yokai, or having watched My Neighbour Totoro once might help give some context to what's going on in here, but you can't initiate yourself for Korean fiction with Japanese fiction. On that note, it's also *very* Korean. The humor didn't really land for me and I didn't really enjoy the character interactions much, but I don't think they were odd for Korean children's animation.
Ass Score: 0/5 There's no fanservice or sexual content in this movie. The protagonist is a young girl (100+ years old) who has just barely started puberty.
Shit Score: 4/5
It's not *terrible*... But it's still kind of a disjointed mess. The animation and artstyle wasn't particularly good, although the background artwork and environments were very pretty. It feels like the movie took a lot of inspiration from Ghibli movies like My Neighbour Totoro, but not in a way that really did it any favors - it really did not need fuzzy aliens. Those actively detracted from the cohesiveness of the world and also contributed nothing to the story that actually needed to be there. I guess maybe they were meant as comic relief? But the movie also wasn't very funny. Also they kept passing back and forth a dreamcatcher throughout the story, which I'm sure was meant to be important and symbolic, but they pass it back and forth so much that it becomes kind of silly, and also it was a dreamcatcher. So now we've got Korean folklore and spirits, aliens, and also native American appropriation, haha.
{Spoiler} The movie starts out on explaining the myth that foxes can become human by stealing a human soul, and also introducing aliens. The aliens crash-land their ship and start living with Yobi as family (although other spirits also live in the mountain forest with Yobi. It didn't particularly need to be aliens.) The aliens have an argument, and one of them runs off and is caught by a human child at a school for special needs children... so Yobi disguises herself as a human to infiltrate the school and get her alien back. She ends up playing with the other kids, making friends with a boy, and kind of losing sight of her original goal because she's having so much fun, though. Then one day a fox hunter, out to kill Yobi, shows up. Yobi is saved by a shady shadow man, who gives her a soul-stealing device. She's not really interested in stealing souls or becoming human at this point, though. Some time later her hideout is discovered, and she and her alien family have to move out... but her new friend, Guem-yee, goes searching for her and ends up falling into a portal to the spirit world. She goes after him to save him, and steal back his soul both from the guardian of soul limbo, and the shady shadow man that shows up once again, revealing he wanted Yobi to steal the soul for himself, actually. She manages to release Guem-yee's spirit so he can come back to life, but has to sacrifice her own life in exchange. Some time later, she's reincarnated as a human girl, making the soul-stealing thing kind of come full circle. The story at its core is fine - maybe a little predictable, but fine for a children's movie - but it was soooooo much longer than it needed to be. This could easily have been half an hour shorter, and gotten to the point of things more quickly. The aliens really didn't need to be there. A lot of scenes in the movie felt like they didn't contribute anything to the whole other than making it longer, but that could also be in part because the humor wasn't for me, so a lot of comedy may have gone over my head. It overdid it on some elements so they kind of lost meaning, like the dreamcatcher. It was supposedly an important item to Guem-yee, but Yobi steals it at the beginning of the movie. Then gives it back to him later. Then he gives it back to her later. Then she throws it out. Then he picks it up again. Then she has it again at the end of the movie, and picks it up off of the ground. Like, the longer you guys play hot potato with that thing, the less it seems like either of you care about it. What was the point of all of that?
But even with all that said, I did enjoy it just fine. It just wasn't, you know, a good movie in terms of quality. There's a lot of other movies you could be watching instead, and even in the genre "children's movies that are trying really hard to be a Ghibli movie" there are better movies, so I wouldn't really recommend it... but it didn't feel like a wasted watch, even if I thought it was a little too long.
Final Score:
2.5/5
|
|
|
|
Post by Nachtkern on Feb 6, 2024 22:08:54 GMT 1
Time of Eve Episodes: 6 A short anime set in a not-so-distant future where household androids have become commonplace. Can be watched either as six 15 minute episodes, or one 100 minute movie - there's not a lot of difference between them so pick whichever, really. This is actually my third time watching Time of Eve! The story is about a cafe called Time of Eve, where robots and people are treated the same and encouraged to mingle, and follows two highschoolers as they start to visit the cafe and learn more about its various patrons. There's a developing narrative and worldbuilding throughout the episodes, but each episode shines some light on a different character, while the "overall story" is left somewhat open-ended. I liked it mainly because of the worldbuilding - it's very immersive and thoughtful (even if a little hammy about some things like the... robot xenophobia TV ads LOL), and because it does what it does well. It explores a little character story in each episode in a funny, and sometimes a little bittersweet way, without saying too much, or too little... and left me thinking about them for a long time afterwards. Part of the reason why I'd still rewatch it after all this time, hehe. That said, while I'd say it's a good, and very solid story, don't go into it expecting it to be a super deep masterpiece or very critical analysis, because it's not that. It's thoughtful, but doesn't get into the nitty gritty too deeply in favor of exploring its characters... And I also kind of rewatched this right after Pluto which completely blows it out of the water in terms of actually exploring the logistics of humanoid robots. But it's fun, and one of my favorite shows for sure. Weeb Score: 1/5
A solid 1 on account of it being an anime in all respects - it's got a somewhat generic anime artstyle and animation, and the protagonists are highschoolers, in futuristic Japan. You could definitely show this to anyone not very familiar with anime, but I'd pass on showing it to someone who doesn't like anime in general, if that makes sense.
Ass Score: 1/5
There's no real fanservice or odd jiggling in this show, but it lightly touches on some sexual themes, without getting into it. Two characters are implied to be in a (kinda hilarious) adult relationship with each other, and there is one scene where the protagonist gets a little embarrassed noticing a woman wearing a very low-cut dress. {NSFW} There's also a brief conversation about relationships between robots and humans, mentioning a "rumor" that robots designed for sex may exist and...
That's just a real thing in real life. :') That already exists. Shit Score: 1.5/5 It's qualitatively pretty decent, especially in terms of storytelling and worldbuilding. The animation quality and art is just alright imo, and a lot of scenes have a sort of deliberate motion blur to the animation, but this naturally gets SUPER crunchy unless you're watching it in HD. The characters are definitely one of the strengths of the show, but they're not perfect, either. Not all characters are equally relevant, to the point some just kinda show up without much clarification what for. At some points, the characters can also be a little annoying, being cartoonishly rude or stubborn at times and sticking to it for very long, despite the narrative showing they're clearly in the wrong for it from the start.
{Spoiler} The show feels a little bit like a thought piece, but not an especially good one. Like it's an interesting, and often-explored concept: what makes humans different from a very advanced robot? In what ways are we the same, and at what point would you treat a robot like a person? Is it possible to have genuine relationships (of all sorts) between humans and robots? Lots of fiction asks those questions, and Time of Eve brings them up, but also already answers it for you. The robots in this show are all capable of individual thought and choices, growth and learning, have feelings - and just keep all of this a secret from their human owners. The narrative leans strongly towards treating the robots as humans, regardless of what they look like, and even older robots with much less-advanced AI are barely different from the very advanced robots that look exactly like humans. In that sense it's not a very deep exploration of the topic - it's about as deep as "what if all stuffed animals were actually sentient and capable of speech and were basically humans made of plush? Wouldn't it be fucked up then if we treated them as lesser than us?" Some things were also conceptually a little funny: for example, (a variation of) Asimov's laws were brought up throughout the story a couple of times. At some point a robot starts causing a ruckus in the cafe, and they call up one of the highschoolers like "please come and help, you know all those robot laws," - you know, the three of them. Also half the patrons of the cafe are robots and would also know Asimov's laws. Or for example, there's a rule in the cafe to treat all patrons of the cafe the same, regardless of if they are a robot or human... To every single character in this show, that translates to treating everyone as though they were human, and the robots mimicking human behavior, like drinking coffee - even if they weren't made for this and don't necessarily get anything out of that kind of roleplay. The highschoolers get scolded for pointing out ways in which some of the robots are robots or asking about their robotly lives - but the inverse never happens. There's nobody, not even a robot, that interprets the rule as treating humans as though they were also a robots, and inviting them to partake in things that robots would uniquely do or enjoy. Which again, contributes to the robots reading as though they're basically human people who also think of themselves as humans and choose to act like that given the freedom to - but also ironically implies something about robots being inherently a lesser or insulting thing to be.
That said, it's still thoughtful in what it's got going, and I like how it had some very diverse robot designs in it, and that every character had unique motivations and different relationships to each other. It was fun seeing characters romantically involved (in a deeply convoluted way), familial relationships, and friendships. I also think the show really benefited from being left somewhat open-ended - the stuff that's built up in the background eventually comes together to get into the relationship of the two highschoolers and their robot companions, and it would detract from the focus on relationships overall if they followed up more on the overarching "plot" I think.
Like I mentioned before, I really like this show. It's a combination of a few things: I like character-driven stories, I like robots a lot, and I like things that aren't super long... and It's all of that. I think it's overall got pretty good humor too, which is something I'm picky about. Robot stories don't need to be all that deep for me, but I do appreciate when it's clear a lot of thought went into the logistics of the world and the robots. I'll probably watch it again at some point, knowing me. Final Score: 4.5/5
|
|
|
|
Post by Nachtkern on Feb 8, 2024 16:38:29 GMT 1
Kemono Michi: Rise Up! Episodes: 12 While I technically finished watching this this year (and while it was the first anime of 2024 that I finished), I actually started watching this all the way at the beginning of 2023 and just... didn't get around to finishing it until now. It's an okay comedy parody about a professional wrestler who gets isekai'd into a fantasy world. An animal enthusiast at heart, he has no interest in playing hero and slaying beasts, and instead focuses his efforts into attempting to open up a pet store with his newfound companions. The premise is a little better than the execution, but overall I had fun watching it. Weeb Score: 4/5 This show is a parody on the isekai genre, where a person from the modern world is transported into a fantasy world, often with a traditional RPG-like setting. Like all parodies, it makes more sense if you're familiar with the reference material, and in this case, the reference material is truly some anime bullshit. It's not going to be unenjoyable or super confusing if you're not an anime veteran or something like that, but a lot of the humor rides on it.
Ass Score: 3.5/5 The show is *relatively* tame on the horny, but that is *relative* to the genre it plays on. A recurring joke is that the protagonist has no interest in human women (although he is bisexually enthusiastic about anthropomorphic beasts) which somewhat curbs sexual scenes involving him. There are however a lot of panty shots in this show (also a recurring joke), some furry ogling and sexual harrassment (also a recurring joke), and other things in similar vein. As this is a comedy, there isn't any sexual content that isn't played off as a joke - but it's there all the same.
Although presented as a joke (like all else), one of the characters, a vampire named Carmilla, serves as a retainer for a little dragon girl and is a little weird about it. She regularly attempts to do things like sniff her clothes or ask for weird favors, though she is almost always stopped or declined. One thing in its favor, is that while the show wasn't great about female outfits or female armor, the male protagonist probably by far still shows the most skin out of anyone else.
Shit Score: 2.5/5 It was an okay comedy - a lot of the humor was a bit miss for me because I for example don't really care about panty shots, whether as a joke or not, but there were some solid bits in there, like the one with the kobold neighbours. The plot was surprisingly interesting and engaging, but the show didn't have a very big focus on story. Character designs weren't great, nor terrible, though I did like that a lot of characters were muscleguys with different proportions. Action kinda varied and many action scenes very very short, but they were fun to watch. Animation quality was okay, but not really noteworthy in any way. It's just kind of perfectly middling in all aspects. {Spoiler} The premise was actually really fun - a professional wrestler is summoned into a fantasy realm where everything kind of abides by RPG rules... except for the protagonist. So people fight with swords or magic, but nobody really hones their body or knows fighting technique, giving the protagonist an upper hand in combat. He refuses to slay monsters because he thinks they're cute animals, sticking a wrench in that chosen one destiny of his. His wrestling rival is devestated by the protagonist's disappearance, and eventually is summoned into the realm as well, this time as a champion meant to fight on behalf of the demon king - something he has no interest in either, beyond being able to rechallenge the protagonist. It deals away with everything that I often don't really like about the genre - power fantasies of some generic everyman being isekai'd and becoming the chosen one that's better and stronger than everyone else just isn't really my kinda thing. The protagonist there is meant to be projected on by anime nerds in need of escapism, meaning he's often world's dullest blank slate, let alone much of a character. Kemoni Michi doesn't suffer from that: the main character is definitely a character of his own, and it's not exactly a power fantasy if the reason he's so much stronger than everyone else is that he also was that in his world. The concept of totally ditching your chosen one storyline is also a pretty fun concept. That's also about all it is, though. There's a bit of plot at the beginning, and a bit of plot at the end, and a bunch of wrestling inbetween, but the remainder is just (okay) comedy. The characters really only exist for the bit, and mostly don't really have much depth to them - which is okay in a comedy, but it would have been fun if there was a bit more to them. I took nearly a year-long break in the middle of the show, and it doesn't really feel like it mattered at all for experiencing the story because there just wasn't that much of it, even if it wasn't an episodic kind of show, either. It's more like almost every episode (in this 12 episode show) felt like watching a filler episode. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to anyone because it just doesn't have that much going for it, and especially in terms of comedy, there are much better comedies... but I definitely enjoyed watching it enough. And it was better than a good bunch of other parodies I've watched! Which means the bar is pretty much in hell, but it passes.
Final Score: 3/5
|
|
|
|
Post by Nachtkern on Apr 21, 2024 15:32:43 GMT 1
 Digimon Savers / Digimon Data SquadEpisodes: 48 Digimon Savers is... I think the 5th season of Digimon, and by far not the best one. For those of you unfamiliar with the Digimon series: the general premise is that a group of kids finds themselves in a strange world called the "digital world", that they must traverse with their digimon partners, fighting battles, and usually having to get home and save the world along the way. Aside from Digimon Adventure 1 and 2, and several reboots that I haven't seen (yet), each season of Digimon typically has its own canon, own universe, and it's own rules. You don't have to worry about continuity or anything like that if you decide not to watch them all, or in no particular order - Digimon doesn't either. In this particular season, the protagonist is a hotheaded teen who joins a mysterious secret organization that investigates and deals with digimon incidents in the real world - until things escalate and he and his friends are tasked with going into and exploring the digital world.
Weeb Score: 0.5/5 Honestly, you don't have to be familiar with Japan or anime at all - if you watched some sort of kids' network on TV back in the day, you'll have seen plenty of shows like this... if not possibly this exact one, I suppose. That said, the specific flavor of drama in Savers is a bit more stereotypically "middling shounen" than "kids' show", even if it's pretty tame by Digimon standards. There's war, tragic backstory deaths, and on-screen deaths of several characters, although no one dies in a visually graphic way. I would say this about any Digimon season, but it can be jarring to watch Digimon if you're used to the height of the stakes in Pokémon and similar kid's shows.
Ass Score: 1.5/5 So while there isn't really a lot of like... female characters being put in compromising situations or fanservice shots or something like that - some of the digimon just have atrociously horny designs. And they really lean into it with like all their moves and abilities being essentially shit like "seduction love beam" or whatever. That said, fortunately, Digimon Savers favors its male characters, so you barely get to see these characters, even though one of them belongs to the female lead of the show. Haha.
{Spoiler} And hey, it could always be worse - in the previous season, Digimon Frontier, the characters turned into their respective digimon instead of being partnered with them, and the main girl (a tween) kept turning into a lingerie fairy. And also there was tickling and a swimsuit episode in that one.
4/5 There's no two ways about this one - it was pretty shit. I watch Digimon with my housemate so it's not all bad, but honestly, even as far as watching shitty shows goes, there's ones that are more entertaining to watch with someone else. Savers was just so perfectly mediocre in all aspects that it was a bit of a slog to get through, part of why it took us maybe like a year to finish it. It had some very funny moments (whether intentional or not), and I think I liked it more than Frontier (I really missed them having digimon partners in that one), but it didn't have much else going for it. The story had a lot of... not even loose threads, but more like plotlines that felt like they were dropped halfway through or were never followed up on... the main girl, one out of three leads, was barely relevant to the story at all... the animation and designs were just fine... the characters weren't very likeable... and so on and so forth. I'm not too picky with what I watch and I generally enjoy a good shit show, but Savers is just a bit too long to really be an entertaining watch. 6 - 12 episodes of something that's not really my thing or poorly made can still be really fun, but at almost 50 it just keeps going and going, without ever really picking up or getting better.
Final Score: 1/5
|
|
|
|
Post by Nachtkern on Apr 21, 2024 19:32:32 GMT 1
  The Tatami Galaxy + The Tatami Time Machine BluesEpisodes: 11 + 6 The Tatami Galaxy is a comedy which follows a college student, optimistically excited for his new campus life... only to realize two years in, that nothing went the way he wanted it to, and that he's achieved nothing in that timespan. He puts blame with everyone but himself, and can't help wondering what would have happened if he'd made different decisions about the people he surrounded himself with... so we're taken two years into the past, and he tries again. And again. And again. The Tatami Galaxy is something of a time loop story... and its sequel, the Tatami Time Machine Blues, is a singular "loop" in which the characters discover a time machine, and accidentally mess with the continuity of their own timeline by trying to repair the AC unit that broke the day before. You could watch the sequel standalone since it's a contained story, but it would make more sense to watch it after the Tatami Galaxy because it has the same characters.
Weeb Score: 3.5/5 It's not some turbo weeaboo shit that you couldn't show to someone who's totally unfamiliar with anime or how dire it gets out there, and while it helps that it's about college students and not highschoolers - it's very much a school life comedy sort of situation, which I think probably just isn't that appealing to someone who doesn't like "anime" in general sense. References to Japan and Japanese culture are quite present, with stuff like summer festivals, references to youkai, and I suppose the namesake tatami mats in the protagonist's dorm.
Ass Score: 2.5/5 Both shows are relatively tame in terms of stuff like fanservice or sexual content - a recurring plotline is that the protagonist is deeply in love with the idea of a beautiful "raven-haired maiden" to be his girlfriend, but has no success finding a girl that fits that description; while there's definitely a romcom element in the shows, it doesn't have that weird will-they-or-won't-they sexual tension or anything like that. That said, there are allegories to the protagonist being sexually frustrated, and a couple scenes that border on sexual - though no actual sex or implications thereof. The main reason I rate the show so high despite lack of fanservice is that one of the recurring characters in the show is a (life-like) sex doll.
Shit Score: 0.5/5
It was honestly a qualitatively really good show. The animation was good, many things wrapped up nicely and came together cohesively by the end, and the story was enjoyable enough, even if school life isn't much of my preferred genre, either. The characters were all likeable in their own ways, and it was fun seeing them return in each setting, each time playing slightly different roles, but retaining what made them unique characters. I've seen people complain they didn't like it much because they felt it was repetitive (as is a risk with time loop stories), but as the show goes on, each "loop" diverges more from the original trend, making them interesting and different enough, I feel like.
My main complaints about it would be that while it's at least partially a romcom story, the emphasis is definitely a lot more on the comedy than the romance. For most of the show, the protagonist barely even notices the girl that's supposed to be his love interest... which given the premise I think makes sense, but even after all that they don't really follow up on it and just ask the viewer to imagine how things end, essentially, which feels a little underwhelming for a romcom. As for the sequel, the Tatami Time Machine Blues - I enjoyed the story in it a lot and thought it was a fun loop, but it felt like it could easily have been half as long. Each "loop" in the prequel only takes one episode, so having a "loop" expanded on for 6 episodes feels like an eternity in contrast, even if it's a fun isolated story about time travel.
I originally started watching the shows because I liked the art style, and saw they had some connection to a movie I watched earlier and liked: the Night is Short, Walk On Girl (they have some overlapping background characters, but are totally seperate stories)... I didn't look at the premise very closely going in and didn't really know what to expect, but it was a really fun watch!
Final Score: 3.5/5
|
|
