Anime

First impression: Gabriel DropOut

Published on January 18, 2017Leave a comment

Your parents were right to warn you about the evils of videogaming.

Gabriel Dropout: angel trash

Meet Gabriel. A honour student in heaven, she got hooked on MMOs during her placement in a high school on Earth and turned into trash. She’s like a worse version of Umaru, as she doesn’t even try and keep up a facade outside her room. She doesn’t care and she doesn’t even pretend to care. Fortunately for her though her best friend is a demon who does. A considerate demon as straight woman and a trashy angel: a simple role reversal that leads to some good jokes, but this series needs something more.

Gabriel Dropout: truly evil

And gets it in the form of the truly evil Satanichia Kurumizawa McDowell, Future Queen of Hell, who is the delusional sort of character who wants to be evil, but is too dumb and good natured to actually be evil. She’s also the butt of most of the show’s better jokes whenever her need to impress her “rival” overwhelms her common sense. It’s always satisfying to see a character suffer through their own flaws and she delivers in spades. Though she does get the upper hand at times, as episode two showed.

HanaKana's a sadist here… and I'm perfectly fine with it for some reason >.> #GabrielDropOut pic.twitter.com/t3l6otMWm1

— Nao★Mi (@Naobi_Milos) January 9, 2017

The last major character is another angel, this time a sadistic one and to be honest the least interesting one, seeing how cliched she is. At best she’s a plot device to get Satania in trouble. She is the most “anime” of them all and you’ve seen her type before in a dozen other shows. Sadistic, pervy and with no real debt to her.

Gabriel Dropout: dumb comedy

That minor issue set aside, Gabriel DropOut surprised me with how funny it was. I’d tried the original manga but found it boring, so had few expectations, but I laughed at both episodes out so far. Not always the case with anime comedies.

First impression: Seiren

Published on January 16, 2017Leave a comment

Depending on what seemingly irrelevant choices he makes, a high school boy finds his one true love with one of three different girls.

Seiren: by the same character designer as Amagami

This is pretty much the spiritual successor to Amagami, with the same character designer working on it, as well as being set in the same school and town. Not to mention the protagonist’s best friend being the younger brother of one of Amagami‘s heroines. it also shares the omnibus format, having the protagonist fall in love with and woo each girl in separate arcs resetting the timeline each time, rather than as a harem with multiple heroines. In some ways it’s a more cynical approach: true love exists, but who cares which girl you end up with.

Seiren: Kamita is a bit of a dweeb

Kamita Shōichi, the protagonist is somewhat less developed than Amagami‘s Tachibana Junichi, who at least had good reasons to be an indecisive dweeb. Kamita on the other hand is your usual meandering harem lead, nice enough but without much personality so far. To be honest, his best friend Nanasaki Ikuo is much more interesting, considering he’s the little brother of Amagami Nanasaki Ai and has some of her sarkiness. Also, so far they make a better pair than Kamita with any of the possible love interests introduced so far.

Seiren: Tsuneki Hikari is cheeky

The first heroine is Tsuneki Hikari, whose flirting through teasing Kamita interprets as bullying. I like her, she isn’t a cookie cutter tsundere or pointlessly mean to Kamita (though there is a bit of homophobia slung around in one scene). She actually feels like a real person. The same goes for Kamita’s sister, who Tsuneki has a rivalry with, the former having won the Santa contest the year before. Popular and refined in school, somewhat crude in front of her little brother, she feels like a real sibling — though she’s of course no patch on Miya.

Seiren: butt cheek imprints

One last thing Seiren seems to have inherited from Amagami: weird fetishes. In case it isn’t clear, that’s the camera focusing on the butt print Tsuneki left on Kamita’s desk having sat on it chatting to her friends.

First impression: Fuuka

Published on January 13, 2017Leave a comment

A blue haired violent girl runs into a boy idly checking Twitter on his mobile, accuses him of taking a pantyshot and breaks his phone.

Fuuka: crash into hallo

A romance story then, with Yuu, our self absorbed Twitterer chasing after the titular blue haired girl, Fuuka. This is one of three manga based thrashy romance series this season, the others being Masamune-kun no Revenge and Kuzu no Honkai. Fuuka is the most conventional of the lot, with its useless male protagonist being shaken out of his funk by an energetic , cheerful if somewhat violent girl.

Fuuka: high impact

You do have to wonder what Yuu exactly sees in Fuuka at first, seeing as she breaks his phone not once, but twice in the first two times they meet. Not to mention that he seems barely interested in anything but updating his Twitter. Nevertheless, by the end of the first episode they’re on a date together and even h-h-holding hands.

Fuuka: the rival

What she sees in him isn’t quite clear either, but she isn’t the only one. His childhood friend turned idol still loves him too. in fact, she wrote most of her songs about him. Ironically, Fuuka herself is a big fan of her. Now while this looks to become your baisc love triangle story, i have actually read the original manga and know there’s a twist coming, which will put the other theme of the series in the foreground: music. Fuuka is a huge music fan but no drive to do anything until Yuu triggers her, while he also encouraged his childhood friend way back on her way to being an idol. The first couple of episodes therefore are somewhat atypical and blander than the rest of the series will hopefully be.

First impr^wrant: Little Witch Academia TV

Published on January 12, 2017Leave a comment

It’s pointless to talk about Little Witch Academia too much because it’s awesome as expected and everybody reading this will watch it anyway, so let me rant about the horrible way the academy treats its non-witch new students. Leaving aside the fact that Akko has clearly not been prepared for what the school is like, making the school reachable only by broom seems a bit hard on new students not coming from a witching background. You’d expect a slightly more accommodating attitude at Luna Nova if it’s really serious about attracting new students from non-traditional backgrounds, especially if it really is hard up for cash. Of course it may just be an impopular policy that the people actually running the school are actively sabotaging, that’s not uncommon in real life either. in any case, it makes Hogwards seem positively progressive.

First impression: Akiba’s Trip

Published on January 12, 2017Leave a comment

A NEET goes to Akihabara with his little sister for a little shopping, gets involved with a strange girl and learns he has to strip people to free them from demonic possession.

Akiba Strip: quick on the uptake

It’s about as idiotic a premise as last season’s Kejio!!!!!!!! with its butt and breast based wrestling and this is very likely to end up as just a fanservice show, but the first two episodes had a touch of humour to it that promised a little bit more than just that. Your milage may vary, but I don’t mind this sort of fanservice too much if it stays on the level of what’s been shown so far, especially if it’s equal opportunity stripping as seen in episode two.

Akiba Strip: a weak excuse

This girl here turns out to be the latest in a long line of people protecting Akihabara from the Bugged Ones, people possessed by low level demons in service of the real enemy, the Hazoku, of which she is one, there apparantly having been a split in th Hazoku about whether to invade or protect Akiba. Our NEET was turned into one as well as a consequence of getting involved and now cannot leave the town. Not too bad a fate for somebody like him.

Akiba Strip: stripped

If there is a problem with fanservice in this show, it’s less things like the above, but more one particular character: the blonde, Finnish weeaboo who’s just a little bit too quick to strip herself. She was interesting in the first episode, with unexplained superhero strength that got her suspected as a Bugged One, but in the second seemed to be reduced to fanservice girl.

Akiba Strip: defeated

Nevertheless, this looks interesting enough to continue with. Light entertainment, perhaps not as zany as Keijo!!!!!!!!, but decent enough to keep following for now in a so far not very good season.