Anime – Page 57 – Wis[s]e Words

Germany is boring in its anime tastes too

Published on August 22, 2017Leave a comment

How else to explain that the most watched show on Crunchyroll there is the utterly boring Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni?

At least The Netherlands goes for the idiosyncratically spelled Knight’s & Magic, which also a trapped in fantasyland story, but has giant robots and a Gundam model building salaryman as the protagonist, rather than just a boring teenage dude with a smartphone. Still disappointing though, as while it’s an okay show, it’s not a great show. Then again, that goes for most of the popular anime across Europe, with New Game!! being the best of the lot. It might just be that all the better series are not on Crunchyroll…

Who knew the key to me enjoying Nickelback

Published on August 10, 2017Leave a comment

Would be cute anime girls? Yes, I’m disappointed too.

Kirakira 25 is the gayest Precure ever

Published on July 31, 2017Leave a comment

Episode twentyfive of KiraKira Precure À La Mode is the gayest I’ve seen Precure get.

Kirakira: Akira and Yukari sparkle

Precure is a magical girl series that has run continuously since 2004, each series featuring a new team of friends fighting against evil. From the start there has been a strong lesbian undertone to the series, with even the original Precure clearly being slightly more than just friends. But most of this has been subtext, not entirely spelled out or made completely explicit. KiraKira Precure À La Mode has had the same thing going on ever since Akira (left) and Yukari were introduced, both high schoolers when the rest of the cast was in middle school (as was always the case with Precure), prince and princess of their school, naturally attracted to each other. There had been enough hints given that you could consider it canon that those two are a couple, even if neither had yet admitted it. But in episode twentyfive Yukari and Akira moved beyond this unspoken love and into a proper romance.

Kirakira: real subtle Ichika

And it was all thanks to Yukari’s jealousy and insecurity, so strong she had to use a rival for her hand showing up as an excuse to test Akira. Which in turn got her hoisted on her petard when Akira didn’t respond as expected and all her anxieties she usually kept hidding came out. To which Akira responded in the right way, professing her love while escaping from the villain of the week that showed up just in time for the inevitable transformation scene. It’s a very strong episode, arguably the best episode of the series so far, which makes full use of the characters as they’ve been built up over the past twentyfour episodes. This is clearly something the series has been working towards from the start, not something read into the episode by fans; it’s way too blatant for that and it’s a clear milestone for Precure as a whole, to allow this explicit, queer relationship that needs only a kiss to be completely on a par with a straight relationship as shown in this sort of anime. I actually have a sneaky suspicion that Akira and Yukari were made high schoolers, rather than middle school students, explicitly to make it easier to tell this story, as the age difference probably make it somewhat easier to tell a queer story in what’s still nominally a children’s series.

I may be wrong though, but it hardly matters. What matters is Precure finally moving beyond subtext with its lesbian relationships. As long as they don’t botch it up.

Tenshi no 3p! — First Impression

Published on July 21, 2017Leave a comment

A teenage hikkimori is saved through the power of cute lolis.

Tenshi no 3P!: pedobait?

I don’t trust this series. I just don’t trust this series. Alarm bells started ringing the moment I read the description on Anichart:

Kyou Mekui is a high school student who tends to skip school due to a trauma in his past. Kyou secretly creates songs using vocal song synthesis software as his hobby. Three girls who just entered fifth grade — the crybaby Jun “Jun-tan” Gotou, the strong-willed Nozomi “Zomi” Momijidani, and the somewhat sleepy Sora “Kuu” Kaneshiro who takes life at her own pace — email Kyou. These three girls, who were raised together like sisters since childhood, want Kyou to help them break into music.

There’s no real reason those girls needing his help should be fifth graders, rather than high school girls his own age, but there has been a minor wave of heartwarming stories starring little children rehabilitating much older people like Usagi Drop or Amaama to Inazuma, so I tried it out to see if it was one of those, or whether it would be something more problematic. The first episode was actually decent, starting off showing Kyou’s daily life and how his nominal class mates think about him, before he’s introduced to the three girls. Even when there are a few dodgy camera close ups of the girls, there are at least no panty shots, but then this shit happens. They ask him to help them plan a concert and in order to entice him, each of the girls says that he can have their way with them and then the episode ends.

Tenshi no 3P!: psyche!

And then in episode two we get the same scene again, but then ha ha it turns out they’re actually talking about their instruments, isn’t that hilarious? So you not only get a pedo joke, but a copout pedo joke, as the show has its cake and eats it too. It doesn’t look like it wants to go the route of oh la la sexy grade school girls harem, but it is clearly comfortable of toying with that route, only to swerve at the last moment. And what with the dress up scene, where each of the girls dresses up as a different kink — gym uniform, school swimsuit, naked apron — most of my trust is gone. Doesn’t help that they’re walking stereotypes either: the shy, cute one, the energetic standoffish one, the sleepy emotionless one. I actually like the central plot setup and it could be decent, but not with all this pedo bait.

Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni — First Impression

Published on July 18, 2017Leave a comment

Quick, who ordered the season of utterly generic trapped in fantasyland anime?

Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni: bland

Look at this dude, just look at him. Black hair, bland face, even more bland personality. Is there a more generic protagonist imaginable? Even his clothing, freshly bought in the fantasy world he reincarnated in, looks like a school uniform. Anime viewers may complain about all the Isekai/Trapped in Fantasyland series we’ve gotten the past few years, but the reality is that series like Grimgar, KonoSuba, Re:Zero and even much maligned Swords Arts Online are the cream of the crop. The other ninety percent as covered by Sturgeon’s Law, the series that don’t make it out of the light novel or manga series it started in, is much more like this. Bland, generic and lacking even the bite that SAO did deliver.

Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni: no challenge

I’ve read so many of these series and they’re all exactly like this one. Some hapless fool (always a dude, almost never a girl) gets killed in some sort of accident, God or a reasonable fascimile takes pity on him and reincarnates him in some fantasy world, complete with some god level crack cheat to make up for his troubles. Sometimes he gets to redo his life the hard way, starting from scratch as a baby (as in this season’s Knight’s & Magic (sic)), but usually he’s dumped straight into the world as he was. At any rate, we then get to spent some chapters with him exploring just exactly what his cheat power is, as well as figuring out the inevitable game like status menu, while our protagonist also rescues or encounters the first of what will turn out to be a long line of damsels in distress who end up falling for him. In the process legions of low level fantasy monster scrubs are wasted, as well as the occassional human bully. Once the hero and the damsel reach civilisation, the next step is for him to register with the adventurers guild, so he can spent the rest of the story doing quests for which he is once again ridiculously overpowered. There may or may not be some demon lord lurking in the background, but even if there is, there’ll be dozens of chapters of protagonist-kun just puttering around having not particularly interesting adventures and gathering a harem of various archetypical fantasy girls. Important is that the hero is never actually challenged or in any real danger.

And that’s what you’re getting here. Combined with less than stellar animation, there’s literally nothing here that’s interesting or not generic. It’s so generic that it becomes interesting agai– naah, not really.