Attack on Titan

Shingeki no Kyojin: A*

So I was told to watch a show called "Attack on Titan," acontexually by good friends of mine who don't watch a ton of anime, about seven months ago.  Given the name, I assumed it was some kind of sci-fi thing, Titan being the moon of Saturn, and the fact that I hadn't seen the name anywhere else led me to dismiss it.  Completely unrelatedly, the anime blogs I follow were completely abuzz with images and praise for this show "Shingeki no Kyojin," but I didn't pick it up at the time.  Fast forward a month or two and due to clicking a link on Wikipedia about Shingeki no Kyojin, I learn that Attack on Titan is its english title, and that it's being nearly simultaneously released in the US.  Whoopsie me.  I downloaded what I could get of it (most of it had already broadcast at the time) and watched the first episode, which, not to spoil, involves our protagonist watching his mother get eaten alive.

At which point I put it back down and said to myself "Right, I'll watch that when I'm in the mood for something that horrific."  Fast forward seven months to two days ago when I think "You know, I should watch Attack on Titan sometime soon."  At which point I sat down and watched it practically in one sitting.

Attack on Titan is a very even-handed and mature series about fear, war and sacrifice in the face of annihilation.  As such, it actually shares many similarities with other apocalyptic scenarios, I personally saw a lot of parallels to Evangelion and 28 Days Later.  The artwork is a different style than 'standard' anime, one better suited to the dozens and hundreds of haunted, tortured and terrified eyes that populate a world living in fear.  The animation is very smooth, even in the exciting, absurdly high-velocity action sequences and expressive during the periods of intense emotion that I was usually sold on.

The concept is solid and the execution is excellent; the writing, while it has a body count that even George RR Martin might raise an eyebrow at, is overall very good.  I have a few points of criticism, though.  Pacing is good but entire episodes are often spent providing the background for a single decision, more than once an entire 20-minute episode takes place within 2 or 3 minutes of in-world time.  While something important happens every episode there are a couple points where it feels like things have slowed down before we go back to breakneck action.  I personally foresaw most of the twists (though I also called at least one twist which wasn't there), which is a pretty minor criticism, really, because it meant that there was enough complexity to the plot to be worth guessing, it just didn't make guessing very hard.

The big complaint though, and this is the reason for that ugly asterisk after Attack on Titan's otherwise perfect grade, is that it doesn't end.  It ends at a good pausing point, but if I didn't know that there's going to be a second season (sometime in 2015), I would probably give the series a B+, maybe even lower.  The show does an excellent job of engaging us, you really care, maybe not about the characters specifically, but about the very morally ambiguous situation and how it's going to resolve, and the show doesn't have that for you yet.

If you want to watch a show dealing with heavy, emotional and ambiguous themes, imaginatively constructed, laden with action, mystery and visceral horror, a story of a maimed and crippled humanity struggling forward toward the faintest sliver of hope, Attack on Titan is a your mind-blowing, gut-wrenching half-masterpiece.  If skinless people, gore, pointless deaths or haunted eyes bother you, I guess you can skip it.

BlazBlue Alter Memory

BlazBlue Alter Memory:  D++

So, normally when I get a really bad show I'm very excited to take it to task and tell you everything that's wrong with it, but this is a bit more melancholy a review, because it turns out that I love BlazBlue as a franchise.  The fighting games have been exhilarating to play and rewarding to practice with deep mechanics and colorful, interesting characters, both to play as and to view the story modes of.  Speaking of, BlazBlue's story mode goes much, much deeper than any other fighting game I've encountered and is indeed a full Visual Novel within the main game, giving it by far the most engrossing plot of any fighting game you'll ever play, fraught with emotion, sacrifice and tragedy.

What I'm saying is that it's really depressing that so little of what's awesome about BlazBlue made it into this anime.

The writing is functional.  It tells the story of Calamity Trigger (the first game) early and then tells Continuum Shift (the second game), which is fine, the plot of Calamity Trigger focuses on an repeating time loop, and so it doesn't need to be dwelt on extensively, where Continuum Shift is more linear and involving all of the characters.

Characters are fine because they were good in the fighting game, and the plot is told in a relatively coherent fashion, though, like any Visual Novel adaptation, quite a bit of detail is lost in the transition from ~20 hours of story in the VN, including multiple routes and multiple ends for 20ish characters to 12 20 minute episodes following something trying to be a linear plot.  Nevertheless they manage to hit all the touchstones, though judged on its own merits a number of characters appear so little as to be almost completely extraneous.

The part that ruins the entire thing and shoves it down from a C to a D is the animation.  C'mon, guys, this is a fighting game, and a pretty fighting game.  This was their opportunity to take things that we only saw in a controlled 2d sprite-based context and make them melt our eyes out of our skulls.  And the visuals are NEVER amazing.  They barely make "acceptable" half the time, and when you make a series based on a fighting game, your fights have to be awesome, not dry motions with all the impact of a handful of feathers.

The entire series bears the scars of being underfunded: their opening animation isn't finalized until something like episode 6, there is essentially no original music, and while the music from the game is good, that leaves the score somewhat lacking in places.  The pacing of the show could have been improved with better animation being able to make fight scenes impressive in less time.

I can't even recommend it as a primer to the BlazBlue universe and story, which is what I was hoping I'd be able to say: "Oh, well if you can get past the shitty animation it's actually a good introduction to a great game series," but it's just not.  If you want to get in on a good story, play the games.  The anime is not the worst anime I've ever seen, probably not even making my bottom 5, but it has essentially nothing to recommend it to anyone who does not already love BlazBlue, and to them it will be a disappointment.

Kill La Kill

Kill La Kill:  A

Okay apparently it was time for another of my patented 3-month breaks.  Not sure that I'm back to full speed, but I finished this series so here we are.

Kill La Kill is the first full-length series by Studio Trigger, formed by a number of Gainax employees who apparently felt that their former company's direction wasn't awesome enough.  Most notably its writer did Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt and its director did Gurren Lagann.

It's a show about clothes.  It is the most actiony, explosive show about clothes that you could ever possibly imagine.  The title is built off the pun that 'kill' in japanese is pronounced 'kiru', which is homophonic with the verb 'to wear'.

For how good a show it is, I find myself wanting to criticize it a lot, mostly because I reflexively compare it to Gurren Lagann, which I will go ahead and say I feel is the best-crafted anime of all time.  And while Kill La Kill is very good, it has some modest pacing and commitment issues, there are numerous episodes that, while they don't exactly accomplish nothing, don't advance the plot as much as they could, and places in the series where it could have been written for greater impact.  Perhaps my biggest complaint is that the series never delivers on a concise message about what clothing should represent or be used for, a failure to commit to a message.

All that said, it is well-animated, funny and full of over-the-top action while having a varied cast of flavorful, interesting characters.  The use of revealing costuming and nudity is quite deliberate (rather than just kind of being there for the ride), and in my opinion doesn't feel like fan service, especially since characters of both sexes are extensively naked.

If Gurren Lagann's slightly underclothed, slightly confused (but still very clever and fun and exciting) little sister sounds like a show you would like, Kill La Kill delivers that same kind of 'what the really' action and laughter, with music that makes you feel like you should go out and cut a truck in half.  If seeing a girl wear something that would wedge the hell out of any person with nerves on their lower body will break your suspension of disbelief, or if you really want a show that uses animation to discuss the difficult topics that it might bring to mind in a mature audience, Kill La Kill will feel inappropriate.

Kyoukai no Kanata

Kyoukai no Kanata:  B

This image doubles as a useful 'shut up and take my money' image macro.

So, series for this season are ending and that means I have opinions about them and I write them here.  This particular series is Kyoto Animation's offering for this season.

Unlike practically everything else Kyoto Animation has done in recent memory, it's a series with a lot of supernatural elements and a lot of action.  The cute girl above is actually a demon exterminator who uses her blood as a weapon (thus the bandages on her hand), and several of the other characters are as well, in addition to a number of demon characters (the japanese word being used is 'youmu', which doesn't translate particularly well into english, they're creatures made from the negative emotions of humanity, though they don't seem to be intrinsically evil).

And not to spoil anything, but the male protagonist is an immortal half-demon.  Kyoukai no Kanata (which translates as "Beyond the Boundary") earned points with me early on for, despite him being an immortal half-demon, he is demonstrably not a badass, he's pretty much just a dude with a thing for girls in glasses.  Except it turns out there's a bit more to it than that and his circle of friends is a bit more messed up than that.  And all in all, it's pretty good.  The ending is competent and doesn't bother explaining itself, but whatever, it's at least an ending.

Also there's a random basically OVA-style heavy fan service episode in the middle of the series, but it doesn't ruin anything it's just kind of weird and acontextual.

Kyoukai no Kanata is beautifully animated, but its writing is merely competent.  It's not genius, though it's is fun to watch.  I don't have a lot bad to say about it other than that it's just not amazing.  If you want some good supernatural romance comedy drama action, go ahead and watch Kyoukai no Kanata.  Really, the only people I wouldn't recommend it to are people who dislike anime tropes, because they're pretty present, but if you don't like anime, why are you reading my opinions on it?

Just Walk Away, Internet

Sorry I haven't posted anything here lately, I haven't finished any new series lately.

Also it's the holidays, so I'm kinda busy, and the Kickstarter I'm doing for my job has launched so that's eating up attention.

Anyway, I wanted to share the internet giving me the following random ad:

Walk away Internet, you're entering a world of pain.

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?!

Though I have to admit, I haven't actually seen... any of those.

Lucky Star

Lucky Star: B

Really hard to give a rating to this show, since it's about nothing.  Lucky Star is a slice of life show by Kyoto Animation with a number of notable qualities: it was one of the first major discussions of otaku culture that gained significant popularity in the west, the art style is highly recognizable and the series was wildly successful.  Personally, it was the series that taught me the words 'moe', 'lolicon' and 'fujoshi', as well as introducing me to tsurime.  It still remains the only series I have seen with a character who is an American otaku.  If you're familiar with the 'X is mai waifu' meme, Lucky Star fans originated that during the show's first airing, proclaiming otaku loli Konata to be their waifu.

But really, it's about nothing.  The characters talk about whatever's on their minds.  Though doing so they reveal quite a bit about their personalities and what they think various things and each other, and that's kind of fun.  But there is no drama, no plot, no progress and no development.  If it weren't so deliberate I would criticize this, as it is it's more a factor that prevents the series from being 'genius' and leaves it as simply 'entertaining'.  It features dozens upon dozens of references to other anime, most especially the Haruhi Suzumiya series, which it aired shortly after, and shares a number of voice actors with (not to mention being made by the same studio).

Lucky Star is the sort of show that so long as you know what to expect (and are interested in that) you'll probably enjoy.  The writing is clever, the characters are entertaining and even a westerner will have a lot of moments of thinking 'yeah, that totally happens, heh'.  If the idea of just watching girls talking about whatever doesn't appeal to you then you shouldn't watch it.

Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou

Everyday Lives of High School Boys: B

Man, between this and what'll be my next review I'm kind of left without much to say.

It kinda does what it says on the tin.  There's these three high school dudes and they talk about stuff and make each other do stupid stuff and get involved in weird situations.  It stands out among slice-of-life series for having a primarily male cast and its humor being wacky without quite crossing into inappropriate, at least most of the time.

It's pretty darn funny, but really, what do you say about everyday lives anime?  There's no plot to speak of, though there's a lot of wackiness and backstory and a fairly large cast that you won't get tired of.  The jokes and situations are often embarrassing as hell.  The girls (who are fairly present, despite the high school in question being all-boys) are variations on terrifying, rude or crazy, but in a way that feels honest (these particular girls are crazy) rather than derisive (this is what girls are like).

I should also admit that I'm a fan of the voice actors involved, who are probably best known as Sora from Kingdom Hearts, Zack from Final Fantasy 7 and Kyon from the Haruhi Suzumiya series.  They've all done lots of other work but those are the ones most likely to be recognized to a broader western audience, and they're all clearly enjoying themselves in this piece.

If you want something really random and silly that isn't trying to appeal to anything except your humor, the Everyday Lives of High School Boys is pretty much the perfect slice of life series for you.  If you want romance, plot, development, or emotions other than laughter then find something else.

My Cred

Due to having made the list, I decided I'd publish it for posterity.  This is every anime series that I've finished.  If I only name a franchise without specifying particular series, I've seen all of it that I'm aware of.  Obviously I haven't reviewed all of these, and a lot of them I watched before I started this blog, but maybe I'll get back to them so they can all have letters someday.

This Season!

So while I figure out how I'm going to even try to describe Everyday Lives of High School Boys, I figured I'd do a quick post on the shows I'm watching and not watching this season.

Infinite Stratos Season 2:  I know I said I'd watch a second season if they made it, but oh my god is it bad.  Provisional D.

BlazBlue Alter Memory:  As a fan of the franchise I appreciate the new medium and perspective the anime provides, but the animation quality is positively embarrassing.  Provisional C.

Kyoukai no Kanata:  Kyoto Animation's work is as usual gorgeous, and now that we're about halfway through the season we're coming up to what the story is about, and it's working for me.  Not a piece of staggering genius, but certainly fun to watch.  Provisional B.

Kyousou Giga:  I have to admit, the ONA confused the crap out of me, but the actual series proper is proving to be a really awesome eastern fairy tale, a story about magic and family.  Kind of hard to follow, but definitely fun to watch.  Provisional A.

Kill la Kill:  Being the spiritual sequel to Gurren Lagann and containing a lot of girls in skimpy clothing, it's an extremely divisive series.  Some interesting hypotheses on its meaning here, and I hope that this person is right.  It's definitely starting to pick up now that we're about a quarter of the way through, and I think it definitely has the potential to be A or even S rank.  Even if it doesn't live up to that, I'm still enjoying it.

Unbreakable Machine-Doll:  I haven't been able to get into it yet, much as I like the idea of cute steamagic robot girls, I was kinda turned off by them going to a high school for arcanotech.  Maybe I'll give it another try later.

Strike the Blood:  Tried to watch the first episode, couldn't get through it, the premise felt hackneyed as hell.

Sekirei

Sekirei (Both Seasons):  F

This is actually the most clothing I could find a picture of them wearing.

I am a firm believer that people are free to like whatever they like, and that not everything is for everyone.

Sekirei is bad and if you like Sekirei you are bad.

I watched one episode and I knew it was pretty bad, but I had to watch three to make sure.  And at that point, I had to watch all 26, because once I'd committed that much time, I might as well do the world a service and explain exactly what about it is so terrible.

So, Sekirei is a harem/panty fighter with superpowers.  I will be spoiling some things, but trust me you're better off this way.