Summer 2012 Anime Review - Part 6 Phi Brain and Knight in the Area

Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle

Plot Summary: Not too long after the events of Daimon Kaito's last battle with the POG organization, he must now face the Orpheus Order, a group that views the Armband of Orpheus as a necessary step for human evolution. Since Kaito ended up discarding his armband, he is targeted as a primary enemy of the mysterious faction.

The first season was entertaining because it was something new and puzzle-y and fun. This season used that exact same formula all over again, except with the addition of the typical shonen fights (like naming attacks, which translated to naming puzzle start phrases, overdramatizing everything, and other such bullshit).

This season tried to do too much with what they had. What they had was pretty one dimensional characters, some interesting backstories, and a seeming unwillingness to do anything exceptional with any of it.

The few high points of the season were really just last season. And there’s apparently going to be a third season. God knows that they’re going to do with it, but I suspect it’ll be largely be the same affairs with a new just as one dimensional cast.

Rating: 5/10

Knight in the Area

Plot Summary: Believing himself to be useless at soccer, Aizawa Kakeru instead becomes the manager of his school's soccer team, while his brother Suguru is its ace, and is even good enough to represent Japan in the championships. However, Kakeru may have a yet unknown strong talent within himself that only his brother Suguru can see, and they often get into arguments over Kakeru's denial of his skills. Things are made more complicated with the return of Nana, an old friend of theirs that Kakeru has a crush on.

The show went through a lot to get where it got to. Awkward music cues, unnecessary drama, and outright stupid filler episodes abound, the show was still entertaining, to say the least.

Knight in the Area falls into a pretty formulaic shonen sports show format with the girl, the ace, and the struggling protagonist with potential. Having not seen many sports shows (Bamboo Blade probably being my favorite, at least that I can think of having seen at the moment and I know that isn’t the best the genre has to offer), this was welcoming to me. But also having known the formula, it was redone at the same time.

It definitely has the potential to be something better, but we get caught up a lot in the matches and not what they’re doing for the characters. We get a bit of reveal at what the matches do to the characters after the fact (like Araki’s miss in the shoot-out), but it should be evident sooner. More so than Kakeru is trying to get to the world cup to discover the dream of the brothers.

My knowledge of the manga is that it’s going and the anime hasn’t caught up to it yet (based solely on episode and chapter count). Alas, the show has ended. It’s something that I enjoyed watching every week, but not something I looked forward to. It’s fun, albeit sometimes awkward and stupidly humorous, but not really thought provoking. And the cast seemed to try to focus on too many things at once when they should make Kakeru, Seven, Araki, and a few other characters the focus. Instead, all the characters were left relatively bland and forgettable.

Rating: 6/10

Summer 2012 Anime Review - Part 5 Hakuoki Reimeiroku

Hakuoki Reimeiroku

Plot Summary: The beginning of Hakuouki Series. Foretells the story Ryunosuke Ibuki, a boy who is a son of a samurai, yet hates a samurai. He was pick up by Roshigumi (later Shinsengumi) other leader Kamo Serizawa, when he was robbed and left to die on his way to the Capital (Kyoto). After being rescued, he was forced to become Serizawa's dog, and slowly, the mystery of "Water of Life" is starting to unfold.

I had no idea this was part of a franchise. It probably isn’t any better than its predecessors, but I suppose that’s an unfair assumption to make. Anyway, this was an overall mediocre affair that I thought had promise because it was placed in 1850s Japan, and I love me some period pieces.

There were far too many characters for 12 episodes (though since a lot of them are historical caricatures and the others are part of the franchise, it now makes sense), so you don’t get any clear focus on any of them beyond Ryunosuke. Otherwise, they were tropes of the characteristics of themselves.

What kept me through was the only slightly interesting furies aspect (though it was quickly thrown on the backburner for, I suspect, the more franchise relevant Serizawa plot) and so I could see Hajime Saito be amazing (he’s amazing by the way). Don’t watch it unless you like the Hakuoki franchise, and I can’t say I would want to check that out based on this series alone.

Rating: 5/10

Summer 2012 Anime Review - Part 4 Utakoi and Tari Tari

Utakoi

Plot Summary: The "Hyakunin Isshu" are an anthology of one hundred poems found in a trational Japanese card game called Karuta. The show is introduced by the person who selected the writings, Fujiwara no Teika. This is a glimpse into the origin of some of them. Since the majority of them are love compositions, the focus remains on romance in ancient Japan.

First, I picked up Utakoi because of Chihayafuru, which is another anime based on the game of karuta. I didn’t quite know what to expect out of Utakoi, but I was pleasantly surprised.

The show itself works in arcs and I believe it has three major arcs. The first one I remember being interesting, but it kept my interest week-to-week and didn’t really do anything else for me (though if that story of Munesada visiting Yoshiko 100 nights in a row was good). That lasted five episodes and it was interesting enough to a history buff like me, especially one so interested in Japanese history, which I am. The best part about this was the first episode, which explained the history behind the “Chihaya card” from Chihayafuru.

[For those of you who don’t know what this is, here’s several translations. “千早ぶる神代もきかず龍田川 からくれなゐに水くくるとは” “Chihayaburu/Kamiyo mo kikazu/Tatsuta-gawa/Kara-kurenai ni/Mizu kukuru towa” “Impassionate gods have never seen the red that is the Tatsuta River.” The impact from the poem itself comes from watching Chihayafuru.]

The second arc was preceded by a pointless filler episode and then it really got into it. Again, it was episodic with no real connecting factor until a few episodes in. It kept me interested through because Japanese history and the 100 Poems. Fellow literary contemporaries may recognize the Pillow Book the Sei Shonagon, which was mentioned and even had its own episode. It’s not until later when you start to get to know everyone that it has real impact.

The third arc is Fujiwara no Teika’s own arc and lasted the final episode. Since this one was about the guy who collected the 100 Poems (and has been pointlessly narrating the show throughout), it had more immediate impact and it was a nice wrap up to the entire show.

Though the show was of very episodic nature, it kept me hooked through its history of Japanese culture, especially the juxtaposition now of how women were treated and were expected to act then and how much that’s changed since…well around the 10^th century.

Rating: 6.5/10

Tari Tari

Plot Summary: Konatsu Miyamoto was rejected to sing with the other members of her chorus club by the teacher because she was missing "something special". Being her last year in high school, she felt like doing something crazy: She quit. In the place of her former club, Konatsu comes up with the idea to make a new chorus club, inviting the people around her to join. With dreams in each of the member's hearts, they live out their high school lives.

This was a show that took a while to find its footing. But if you stuck with it, it’d be a lot greater than it started out as. It kept me hooked with music and I’m a sucker for shows with lots of music.

But you get some superficial backgrounds to the five main characters and the Vice Principal, who only seems to be the antagonist to be the antagonist. You get further and further into their lives and find out that they actually do have more to them and it isn’t just cute girls singing for the pleasure of the fanboys.

Particularly striking are the stories of Wakana and Sawa, who both have not extremely troubled, but certainly very sad pasts. Once these stories were told, I was hooked to the show like a fish to water (or some better simile).

This is just one of those shows where you get hooked to the characters and just want to watch more of them and see them succeed in whatever they’re trying to succeed in. It struggled in the early going, but it got its footing and never looked back. It’s a simplistic show where Konatsu (the main character) is driving everyone toward her endgoal (just to sing and have people enjoy it) and by way of that, pushing everyone else toward their own endgoals. And you have to love it for that, or probably not at all.

Rating: 8.5/10

Summer 2012 Anime Review - Part 3 YuruYuri

YuruYuri

Plot Summary: Right after starting middle school, Akari Akaza joins the Amusement Club which is composed solely of her two childhood friends, Kyouko Toshinou and Yui Funami. Chinatsu Yoshikawa, Akaza's classmate, becomes a member after finding out about the dissolution of the Tea Club. The Amusement Club, situated at the tea room facility since the Tea Club disbanded, has no clear purpose, being free for the girls to do whatever they want.

That’s right. It’s a show called YuruYuri and it’s about…well, we’ll get to that.

No, I’m kidding. It’s a completely innocent show that’s basically K-ON! without music and less good animation (I didn’t want to say worse, since YuruYuri’s animation isn’t bad, it’s just…well…KyoAni).

It’s a show that I went in not expecting much and got 30 minutes of quality entertainment out of every Monday. With the exception of one really good episode, it doesn’t provoke any thoughts like Natsuyuki Rendezvous, Kokoro Connect, or Tari Tari might, but it’s good, clean fun. If you’re looking for a comedy to relax yourself with, check it out.

Rating: 6/10

If only because it was purely entertainment.

Summer 2012 Anime Review - Part 2 Humanity Has Declined

Humanity Has Declined

Plot Summary: It has been several centuries since human population has declined. Food has become harder to find and what little sources the humans have are considered highly valuable. The most prosperous species on the Earth are "Fairies", 10 cm tall creatures with high intelligence and a great love for sweets. A nameless girl, the main character, became a UN arbitrator between the humans and the fairies and had returned to her hometown to help her grandfather. One day, the village is sent some strange products made by a company called FairyCo. Since the villagers are wary of using the products, the girl, her grandfather, and a nameless boy decide to go to the factory to find out about the mysterious products and who is behind making them.

This is a weird combination of dystopia, utopia, science fiction, fantasy, and reality. I wouldn’t call it bad, but it’s very interesting to call it good. Very easy to call it good, but very interesting to do so as well. Since that’s ridiculously vague, let me explain.

It starts off with a sentient robot piece of bread killing itself so that it can be eaten. And that’s just the first episode. It was a ridiculous moment of dystopia in a seemingly utopia, but it’s also a dystopia.

This is a hard show to explain.

But I suppose a big flaw in this show is that it’s kind of just a cool story and there are no big character revelations (until the very end, which is a flashback of telling how the Mediator went through school and met Y).

Those cool stories, though, are absolutely brilliant. In one, you get that piece of bread. In another, you get sentient uncooked chickens trying to take over the world. In another, you get thrown into a manga world. In another, you get a time loop. I’ve seen these stories done before, and I’ve seen them done better, but damn if there isn’t something unique and cynical about these stories that you just have to love. I mean, the fairies constant smile that creeps you out more than anything else in the show and at the same time they represent the cutest thing the show has to offer is just brilliant.

What was so great about the show was its stories and its utopian cynicism about, literally, the decline of humanity. The show has its dull moments, but it also had its brilliant ones. The great thing about it is that you can skip the two episode arcs you don’t like and get straight to the ones you do, because nothing is lost in between.

Rating: 8/10

Summer 2012 Anime Review - Part 1 Natsuyuki Rendezvous

Natsuyuki Rendezvous

Plot Summary: Ryosuke works part-time as a florist. He has bad eyesight, a pure heart, and a secret crush on the store manager, Rokka. Unfortunately for him, Rokka swore off love 8 years ago. But when Ryosuke goes up to her apartment on the second floor, he runs into a good-looking half-naked man. At first upset, he learns that this isn't Rokka's live-in boyfriend; he's the ghost of her late husband, Atsushi. She can't see him, and Ryosuke decides not to give up on her, even with a dead husband standing in the way.

Natsuyuki Rendezvous was the show that convinced me the summer season wasn’t going to be a waste. At the time, I hadn’t started Sword Art Online yet and both standouts this season, arguably Kokoro Connect and Tari Tari, hadn’t yet hit their peak. But then this came rolling along from Noitamina and I fell in love.

The character relation between Hazuki and Rokka was timid, but great at the beginning. And this isn’t a high school drama anime where you piddle around for episode upon episode waiting for someone to confess. No, Hazuki came right out and said it on day one. The comedy aspect of waiting around episode after episode can work sometimes (but not all time time), but it definitely would not have worked here and I’m glad that it got out of the way quickly.

Besides that, the realism of a woman who’s lost her husband and still mourning over him eight years later is a little out there, but I’m willing to suspect disbelief and give it a chance. I honestly didn’t realize this wasn’t very believable until after the fact (though I suppose it isn’t out of the question; it’s just that Rokka is 30 now).

I also enjoyed Hazuki’s gall in going after the much older Rokka. It’s a nice change of pace from the timid, unsure, and often scared high school love stories. Hazuki is an absolutely believable character that’s only flaw is the woman he fell in love with. Ok, he’s a little timid as well in that he’s been buying things from this shop for quite a while. But we don’t have to watch that and by the beginning of the series, he’s sick of his own timidity.

That’s saying nothing of the ghost of Rokka’s husband is watching over her to make sure she’s happy. But more on that later. What really bugged me about the series was the extended dream sequence of Hazuki’s after he lent Shimao (Rokka’s husband) his body. Shimao went from loving husband to almost crazed lunatic after this and it wasn’t a character change that I very much appreciated. On top of that, Hazuki was left in some weird storybook land where nothing really interesting was happening. For me, it was alright for two or three episodes, but became nigh on unbearable after that. I only kept watching because the interrelation between Rokka and Shimao, now in Hazuki’s body but Rokka doesn’t know, was very interesting.

I wouldn’t immediately call this show great as a result. It’s really good, but not much more than that. If you’re looking for a cute love story with a storybook ending, check it out.

Rating: 7.5/10

A Rise of Fanservice?

Something that’s happened recently (and by recently, I’m referring to about the last ten years or so) in anime fandom is the rise of fanservice shows and the relative drop off of high concept shows. Out of the shows I only picked up nine new shows this season and out of those nine, five have shades of fanservice (two moreso than the others).

In spring 2012, I watched seven new shows (one of which I picked up after it aired). Two were high concept and four had shades of fanservice (three moreso than the other). In winter 2012, I picked up seven new shows. All seven had shades of fanservice (one was way worse than the others and the rest varied from cutesy moe to general character design of the girls). In fall 2011, I had perhaps my busiest season where I watched 14 new shows (one of which I picked up after it aired). 10 of those had shades of fanservice (three of which were particularly bad).

That’s as far back as my records go back of labels for season, but the ratio has been 9:5, 7:4, 7:7, and 14:10. Those aren’t great odds for the good shows like Chihayafuru, Fate/Zero, Bodacious Space Pirates, Kids on the Slope, tsuritama, Space Brothers, Kokoro Connect, and Humanity Has Declined. The connecting trend between all those series? They don’t rely on fanservice. Nope. Not even the unfortunately titled Bodacious Space Pirates (though I suppose it’s better than the light novel counterpart of Miniskirt Pirates).

I’m not going to try to justify fanservice. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn’t. I guess everything does follow Sturgeon’s Law. K-ON! is probably the big example where fanservice can produce a show that people love for the cute characters and not because the characters are cute (if that makes sense; though the divide in K-ON! fans and non-K-ON! fans is very, very large).

What fanservice does mean, at least for Japanese production companies, is that they can make figures with their cute characters and sell them for $80 a pop. The production company gets some royalties (or maybe one lump sum that allows the toy company to produce the likeness of the character, I’m honestly not sure which) and the toy company makes money. Lots of money. Because anime figurines are all the rage. I know my nedroid-ish but maybe not really nedroid Rei and Asuka are adorable. And at home. Note to sell, get those.

But it’s just what’s popular right now. I’ve been told that in the late 80’s and early 90’s, science fiction shows were all the rage and shitty science fiction show after shitty science fiction show premiered in Japan (with their own action figure and model tie-ins). Now, it’s fanservice. Making a fanservice show to stay afloat (like making a science fiction show for the same reason) doesn’t make it any better. The market has changed and hopefully it’ll change out of this into something better.

My guess? It won’t and the fan community will continue to remember one or two shows each season and throw all the rest into the “forgettable” pile.

Brief V

So I’ve been busy with other writing projects recently and haven’t had much time to think of ideas for this column, much less write them. I think I’m going away from weekly Thursday columns and moving more into about twice a month when I have an idea. Possibly more if there are more ideas.

Anyway, today in the Anime Dropbox is Humanity Has Declined. It’s a brilliant blend of comedy, utopia, and dystopia. You read that right. It’s a weird show where humanity has been taken over by a race of creepy and cute fairies and neither side really interferes with the other. The main character is known only as “Watashi” or “Mediator” and, while it has some poorer episodes, the good ones say to me that this really is a show to check out, especially in a sparse summer season.