Girls und Panzer

Girls und Panzer: D+

So it's about pretty much exactly what you'd expect from the title.

In a parallel world where Japan has entire girls' schools on floating aircraft-carrier-like cities for no adequately explained reason, there is some sort of martial art or practice called "sensha-do" literally "the way of the tank" that young women engage in which basically means they drive WW2-era tanks into battles with each other.  Despite the fact that they use live rounds and take place in real terrain and sometimes real urban areas, these battles are considered completely safe and nobody ever gets hurt.  Nishizumi Miho transfers to a school without a sensha-do club to get away from her attachment to the sport but is promptly convinced that she should take it up despite her direct desire not to because her only friends thus far think it sounds fun and because the student council says she should.

Really, I can't help but draw parallels to Saki, in that the entire thing is haphazardly thrown together to create a world in which high school girls are totally obsessed with the same thing that the manga author is totally obsessed with.  And, while I'm not a big fan of historical tanks (though I do like to read WW2 history on wikipedia sometimes), y'know, the show kind of makes me want to go download World of Tanks and give it a whirl.  So I guess that's a point in its favor.  Tanks are cool, girls piloting tanks is cute and cool.  Right?

The real problem is that G und P is badly written and poorly executed.  The characters are flat, the story is transparent, the pacing is a mess.  There is no verisimilitude, the cast is too big for anyone to really have an arc or a personality, and the major plot twist is the most blatant, weak attempt to raise stakes I've ever seen.  The real tragedy is that in the action sequences, the visual tension of just sharing the girls point of view as they look down the barrel of a tank gun while speeding through empty cities is tense enough that we don't need the arbitrary stake-raising.

There's also some bizarre cultural stereotyping where the other schools that we spend the majority of the story fighting against in the tournament are all inexplicably themed after foreign nations, despite being Japanese, so we have the British school, the Russian school, the German schol and the American school... even though the main characters aren't particularly Japanese-flavored, they're just regular girls.

But I can't hate Girls und Panzer, it's just so derpy and utterly lacking in anything worth praising that it's almost cute.  (Also it has Kana Ueda in it, <3.)  And it's not offensively bad like Sekirei or Infinite Stratos 2, and there's no single glaring error like Utawarerumono, Alter Memory or Mondaiji, it's just overall a weak show with weak characters and a weak, predictable plot and... actually pretty competent animation.

If you want to watch some animated tank battles interspersed with girls, sure, go ahead, I guess.  I won't make fun of you for watching Girls und Panzer unless you try to tell me that it was objectively good.

Hataraku Maou-sama!

Hataraku Maou-sama!:  B+

The title is a little hard to translate due to Japanese constructions, the official translation is "The Devil is a Part-Timer!" which I think pretty bad, but whatever.  This is the story of the Dark Lord Satan (not the actual biblical Adversary, just a demon lord that shares his name) losing the ultimate battle between good and evil on his home plane and like any good villain fleeing to another dimension so that the brave Hero has to pursue him for all eternity.

He comes out on Earth, finds out that his evil sorcery works a little different here and has to work at McDonalds to pay his rent.  The Hero follows him and she winds up working in a call center.  Since she's constantly keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn't try anything really evil, everyone keeps mistaking her for his ex.  Neither of them is amused, nor is the cute high school girl who works the same shift as the Dark Lord, now going by "Maou Sadao".

The show does an excellent job of balancing the humor of the premise with genuine drama when people from the Dark Lord and the Hero's home plane come to try to finish things.  The characters are flavorful and engaging, the pacing is good and the series does a good job of maintaining a proper level of tension.  I particularly love the Hero, Emi, as a character, she really does give a sense of genuine heroism, while also being an interesting character in her own right.  She's even well-contrasted with the Inquisitor who has made so many sacrifices in the name of "good" that she doesn't really know what's right any more.  While I wouldn't say that the show is a brilliant discussion of 'real' good and evil, it certainly brings the arbitrariness of the words into question.

If I have to criticize it: the ending could be better.  The final battle is a little anticlimactic and comes at the end of the 12th, not 13th, episode, so Ep 13 is just kind of... there.  Hopefully it's setting itself up for a second season, which I feel like it could use to really make some statements, but it loses some points for that.

It's not deep, it's not brilliant, but it's fun and it's funny and it's good.  I actually can pretty broad-strokes recommend it to anyone who the premise appeals to, though if you're looking for depth you won't really get it here.

Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko

Henneko: C+

The Pervert Prince and the Stony Cat (the word 'Warawanai' literally translates as 'unlaughing' but the official translation is 'Stony') was a show that grabbed me in the first episode, I watched two episodes and I was stunned at how good the core concept was.  A fairly standard 16 year old boy with only slightly less control over his libido than is healthy realizes that he's made a habit of lying, putting on a facade ("tatemae" is the Japanese word, a complex term that is usually read "face" but doesn't translate well).  A friend of his informs him that there's a cat statue that, if you offer something you don't need, will grant you a wish.  So the boy goes to ask the statue help him be more honest.  When he gets there, he meets a young girl who has also come to make a wish, to help her act more grown-up.  Wishes being what they are in every form of fiction ever, things don't quite go as planned: the boy loses his ability lie or even internal monologue, and the girl becomes unable to express emotions.  To add further confusion: another girl gains the boy's facade, but becomes incapable of telling the truth, much like he had been.

This set up is a) very funny, and b) absolutely ripe for a fascinating discussion of the concept of deliberate deception for the sake of social graces, the idea of privacy, the benefits of being unable to lie and the difficulty of living when you are completely unable to show expressions with your face.  The main character comments during the second episode, "We're all broken... none of us are really able to be ourselves."  I thought that was a genius place to start a story, there was a lot of room to work there.  The first two episodes really got my hopes up.

Tragically, the flaws don't remain throughout the series, some of them get fixed, and so the series goes on to have the cat statue (and the god that grants its power) basically rain havoc on the characters' lives whenever they so much as dare to make a wish.  Later, we even bring in another character to make wishes to confuse the issue further.  The execution and animation are functional but the real damning factor is the noncommittal writing.

Henneko is not bad.  The first three episodes are pure genius and I will watch them several times, very likely, and the ending is actually heartful and sweet.  The entire middle section, like 7 episodes, is a mess.  If you want to see a half-hearted twist on the Emotionless Girl, or just want to watch a cute romantic comedy with a couple handfuls of substance, go ahead, Henneko is pretty fun.  But it doesn't live up to the genius of its initial arc, nor does it really have much to offer the diligent viewer.

Yuyushiki

Yuyushiki:  C+

It happens a lot, right?  One show comes out about something and six months later the world is aflame in copies.  In this case, Yuyushiki is copying another show that starts with Y-U and is as slice of life show about middle school girls.

And really, I don't have a problem with the copying, if you're going to copy something copy something good, and Yuru Yuri was good.  Yuyushiki (literally 'yu yu style', or maybe 'yu yu ceremony'; all three main characters' names start with 'Yu' and the 'shiki' character has a lot of definitions) is also good, but less brilliant.  Like most slice of life series, I don't have a lot to say about the plot, though the fact that the girls are the computer research club (seriously the Japanese can have whatever clubs they want) means that occasionally you get to listen to them do wiki walks, which is pretty entertaining as someone who is kind of addicted to them every so often.

The yuri elements are present as well, though are not the focus of this series the way they were Yuru Yuri, and they are couched more in the 'vaguely romantic friendship/skinship' style, which has always felt a little noncommittal to me.  The characters are believable, though, and there is definitely humor and d'awws to be had.

I actually first watched this during that four-month break and I still just don't have anything to say about it, really.  It's an example of why imitations aren't inherently bad, but it also shows the problem with them: it's actually very hard to be better than an idea which was new and fresh and well-executed.

If you need more slice of life to fill your time with cuteness, go ahead and pick up Yuyushiki... after you've seen Yuru Yuri, Working, Hidamari Sketch, Minami-ke, Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou and Lucky Star.

Several Sequels

Symphogear G:  C+
Toaru Railgun S:  C
Infinite Stratos 2:  F

So I gave Chuunibyou Ren a full post, though it's very relevant to what I'm talking about, as is Haganai Next.  The three shows I'm actually reviewing all came out last year but none of them were good or bad enough to justify their own posts (though I did make a funny gif about Railgun S), and all of them are different kinds of bad sequels.