A Certain Scientific Badly Written Story

Caught up on Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S, the second season of Railgun.

Was once again struck at how outstandingly bad the scenario design of this series is, despite how much fun it is to watch.

Made this to try to get across the story in brief:

Kamen no Maid Guy

Kamen no Maid Guy:  C

MM! inspired me to watch more series that I love but don't think are very good.  Also I've been playing League of Legends again and working on a major project, so I apologize for the two week hiatus.

Kamen no Maid Guy (Mask of the Maid Guy) is a show that is basically about boobs.  Not in a sexy, turn-you-on kind of way, more in a 'man, these things sure get a lot of attention from both genders, and isn't that weird?' sort of way.

Kamen no Maid Guy is also about a monster of a man named Kogarashi who is a Maid Guy (the dude with the shark teeth and the mask above), and has all the superpowers and wears the most terrifying maid outfit in the history of ever.  Fujiwara Naeka, the 17-year old 'normal girl heiress' whose grandfather paid some exorbitant but unmentioned sum for Kogarashi's serving and protecting his granddaughter is technically our protagonist, but really, the Maid Guy is who we're here to see.  Naeka is most often in her underwear, and usually inflicting some sort of illogically violent revenge for that.

The series is extremely screwball and very weird, and watching it will make you feel bad for watching it fairly regularly.  It will also make you laugh if you enjoy childish humor.  It's not a good series, but it is a funny series.

If you want to watch something truly absurd and ridiculous and have a strong tolerance for borderline sexism (whether it crosses that line depends on the episode and the viewer), you will laugh and ask 'what the hell' a lot at Kamen no Maid Guy.  If you want... really anything 'good' besides gags, this show is not for you.

MM

MM!: C+

Oh, hey, a C+.  I give those out more than I give C's.  It really is a problem, but unfortunately, I feel like I have to say it's about as good as all the other C+'s, even though really, they've all kind of standardized into the overall 'C' category, but I'd feel weird going back and editing all my previous reviews to make my C+'s into C's.  Anyway, the show.

MM! is a romcom with harem elements built around comedic masochism: our main character, Sado Tarou, goes into a state of perverse ecstasy when he is hurt by pretty girls.  Naturally, this plays well with traditional Tsundere tendencies (represented here in Isurugi Mio, the blonde), who, out of the goodness of her heart, offers to cure him, but can't really think of any better ways to do it other than coming up with more and more extreme tortures, which Tarou of course enjoys.  She is assisted by Tarou's classmate Yuuno Arashiko (purple hair), who has violent androphobia (very similar to Mahiru from Working!!), who at least feels bad about hitting Tarou... though he enjoys that too.  These two both develop romantic attractions to the main character, the real eye-rolling harem-y bits come from the supporting cast.

And really that's all there is to the series.  Here's these girls, they're cute, here's this boy, he's a sweet guy despite his perversion, they're gonna beat him up and he's gonna enjoy it.  If it sounds like a giggle (and it's good for giggles), you'll probably like it.  If you want an intelligent discussion of being a member of The Lifestyle, joining it or an honest look at what living life thinking you're fucked up, MM! has very, very little for you.  If you're looking for outstandingly well-written characters or storylines, MM! has nothing for you.  At a couple points, though, I found myself thinking "That's nice, a reminder that even freaks just want to be happy."  The series doesn't come to any sort of real conclusion, but manages a satisfying enough ending anyway.

Overall, MM! is a predictable romcom with a slightly off-beat premise that handles itself adequately.  If you're curious what Japanese dominatrixes sound like, you might get a kick out of it, and if you want something to put on in the background at a party; it's not particularly fan servicey (except for the 'specials', but if you don't know that 'special' means 'excuse for us to show these girls inappropriately' you're behind the anime times).  If you're looking for series that are genuinely 'good' though, this is not where you want to spend your time.

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka of the Dead

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka Of the Dead:  C

There really is no other picture that gets this series across.

It's kind of a relief when a series is painful enough that I can't give it anything other than a C, but that I can praise for being exactly what it is and absolutely nothing more.  More so than its first season, KoreZombie Of The Dead (as the Second Season is titled) is a shameless parade of fan service, schadenfreude, embarrassing situations and dirty jokes.  Maybe it's because I came into the second season with that expectation that I find myself appreciating it more than the first season.

In many ways it's more of the same that the first season brought, but, (to make a comparison), the first season is rock crack, season two is premium purified cocaine.  Neither of them is good for you, and they both leave you with self-loathing but the second season is at least classy.

If the above image offends you in any way, don't watch this series.  But if it still makes you giggle after reading all of this, you'd actually probably like KoreZombie of the Dead.  You sick bastard.

Haiyore! Nyaruko-san

Haiyore! Nyaruko-san:  C

So my first description of this series to my friends is as "The least dignified possible series about the Cthulhu mythos possible" and I still hold to that description.

In short, Nyarlothotep takes a form as an attractive silver-haired girl with an extreme ahoge (idiot hair) who (depending on how you interpret the series) either falls in love with a human boy or decides to screw with said boy in an extraordinarily invasive and creepy way.  But not creepy like Lovecraft creepy, creepy in that 'girl trying to get herself pregnant by you without your consent' sort of way.  Nyarlothotep is interfered with by Cthugha and Hastur (or possibly Hastur's son, it's not well explained), which could either be a good thing or a bad thing.

It's pretty funny, but it's not really good.  The series has a lot of references, to the Call of Cthulhu tabletop game, the Lovecraft mythos and anime of all flavors.  It's a High School Fantasy with all that implies, it just also has a lot of references to the Lovecraft Mythos and some moments of genuinely hilarious comedy.  Being a High School Fantasy isn't actually a bad thing, but it does establish a quality ceiling.  There's only so good one can be, and Haiyore! (which means, about "Creeping!") Nyaruko-san starts strong and trails off, like so many of its type do.

Give it a watch if you want to see a handful of awesome bits of animated Cthulhu mythos and get some laughs out of clever references, wordplay and Lovecraft-based humor, but don't go expecting anything brilliant or moving out of it.

Toaru Majutsu no Index

Toaru Majutsu no Index (Both Seasons):  C+

I give out a lot of C+s, because I feel a lot of shows are slightly better than 'just okay.'

A Certain Magical Index (to use its English title) is a mishmash of a whole lot of Anime tropes put into a blender and served with a hefty spritz of fan service (which I mostly don't mind, aside from the cloth-physics defying properties that breasts of a certain size and above seem to display).

The story takes place in Academy City, a center of research into psychic ability (which in this setting is commonplace and understood enough to justify an entire city devoted to its research).  "Ability-users" to awkwardly translate the japanese word, are classified from the powerless or extremely weak "Level 0s" to the obscenely potent Level 5s.  Our hero is a very unfortunate man named Kamijou Touma, a Level 0, who does have a power, a power that anyone with an ounce of sense would call a high level five power (don't worry, this is hardly most nonsensical thing that happens in this series, it's just the most consistently repeated): Touma's right hand has the ability to nullify and cancel any other supernatural ability it comes into contact with completely.

Touma meets the eponymous Index, a young Anglican nun when she is hanging off his balcony being 'pursued by magicians,' of which Touma is initially skeptical, but he accepts quickly when he meets a gentleman who summons a fire elemental outside his home.  Touma, being the typical protagonist, isn't particularly smart but he's always willing to risk his neck to save someone, usually one or more young women, which he will do by punching the problem with his super anti-magic/psi/divinity/whatever right hand.

The cast very quickly gets absolutely massive, but the characters are alive and interesting, if predictable.  The stories begin differently and take place in different locales with different focuses, but tend to follow a certain pattern, established early on.  The second season escalates to the point where Academy City is badly damaged, the entire Roman Catholic Church (who have a lot of mages, Magic and Religion are mostly inextricable in this series) has declared war on Science and the shadowy figures controlling the Scientific Conspiracy are beginning to come out.

I can say a lot of negative things about it (and I already have) but I should also note that I wouldn't have given it a C+ if it weren't fun.  The character designs and implementations are good, the magical system retains a solid feeling of mysticism and strangeness despite being commonplace, and the plot holds together, despite several places where you simply need to take the story's word for it, and accept that Scientists in this setting really want to be performing unethical experiments.  This is the kind of series that, if you are able to go "Okay, watching two girls who can both teleport fighting is totally awesome," you will appreciate, but if you start going, "Wait, why do Science and Magic need some sort of 'balance' in order to make the world better?  And if they need that, why does everyone seem so intent on destroying it?" the flaws in the series show up fairly readily.

There's a spinoff series, Toaru Kagaku no Railgun (A Certain Scientific Railgun) which follows one of the main protagonists and is mostly more of the same, though is less world-wrecking, a bit more personal and slightly more slice-of-life rather than Index' consistent if progressively apocalyptic plot.

Overall, if you can throw the horns and enjoy beating the tar out of over-the-top bad guys with your fists and pretty girls randomly being in various states of distress and undress, you'll love Index.  If you need a lot of internal consistency, deep emotions or any sense of restraint in your anime, Index isn't the right show for you.

Kore wa Zombie desu ka?

Kore wa Zombie desu ka?: C++

I picked this series up quite a while ago (it was a first-quarter 2011 series), but the sub group that I'd been following for it only got up to about episode 6.  I rewatched a bit and decided I really liked the opening theme, and came to want to see the ending, so I did.

KoreZombie (as I often abbreviate it) is certainly not for everyone.  It's fan-service heavy, rooted in bizarre mythology jokes and the plot is pretty weak.  It's a comedic harem anime, of the sort where the protagonist is a bit of a lech, or at least enjoying the fan service as much as the target audience is, and therefore he (and by extension, we, the viewer) must be punished.  KoreZombie takes this idea and runs with it.

The main character is a zombie (though their zombies are different) and, mostly because of the necromancer who resurrected him, he begins acquiring an ever-larger collection of girls who live with or near him, or are accidentally engaged to him, or just like having him around.  Hijinks and costume damage ensue: the plot isn't exactly twisted but deals with the fact that our necromancer girl is a genuinely good necromancer, and what that entails, ethically.

Now all that sounds fairly normal with the extra bit of "oh, he's a zombie," but that's really not all the show has going for it.  It is out-and-out bizarre and over the top, and it will make you laugh from the sheer absurdity of the situations, and it will embarrass you with what it puts poor Ayumu through to take care of his girls, starting with the end of the very first episode and only going up from there.

It's a good fan servicey comedy series, and if you're the sort of person who enjoys that, check it out.  If panty shots or clothing damage sound like they might get on your nerves, stay away.

Koihime Musou

Koihime Musou (Season 1):  C

So, as a palette-cleansing anime after the extremely SRS Gundam SEED, I went back to watch a season of my favorite palette-cleansing series to date: Koihime Musou, which I most briefly described as "The unholy love child of Dynasty Warriors and the Touhou Project."

For those of you who don't know what either of those means, I shall elaborate.  Koihime Musou is, at its core, a retelling of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a piece of literature which is the East Asian equivalent of the Iliad, both in terms of its historical accuracy and its general heroic flavor.  It covers the end of the Han dynasty and the conflict leading up to the foundation of the Jin dynasty, the "Three Kingdoms" period, and deals with a number of characters who are archetypes whose very names carry deep meaning in the East due to their treatment in the fictionalized Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a historical novel written almost 800 years after the fact.

Koihime Musou takes these legendary warriors, tacticians and generals and makes them into cute anime girls, and has them do various silly, fan servicey things together in the name of fan service and comedy.

Due to the incredibly tongue-in-cheek nature of both the comedy and the fan service, along with the overall high-quality animation and how much of a loving rip-off of the classic from which it is derived make it genuinely fun to watch, if you're the sort of person who can forgive the lengths to which the series will go to get the protagonists to flash their underwear, take their clothes off and get into compromising positions, mostly either protesting or commenting on the fact that they're doing it.

Is it good?  I could not say that with anything like a straight face.  But it is funny, and the girls are fan servicey in their personalities as well as their outfits, and the series will often jump directly from barely-justified panty shots to extremely classy, clever wit and wordplay.  For me, it is a guilty pleasure.

For anyone who can bring themselves to appreciate fan service with a knowing grin and humor on top of it, you might find yourself really enjoying it.