Rozen Maiden Zurückspulen

Rozen Maiden (2013):  C+

A third season which doesn't directly continue from the second season.  Overall it's a decent story if you're familiar with Rozen Maiden as a franchise but a weird one if you're not.  I personally felt a little shortchanged because I liked the villain and she didn't get a very satisfying ending, and the finale implying additional seasons based off this series' weird timeline.  But I guess with my warning you that's goign to happen you might not have the problem I did.

This story takes place in a parallel universe, except it also doesn't, because the parallel universe is sort of distantly connected to the original universe, and that connection is very important to the plot.  I found myself relating to the Unwound Jun much more than the Wound Jun in the original series, but overall this one was less slice-of-life comedy and more weirdly-paced drama with less payoff.  I did enjoy it and I felt it came together, but it wasn't as good as the high points of the original series, though it wasn't far below it, either.

If you want more Rozen Maiden and won't mind them screwing with pre-established events fromt he anime then knock yourself out, but if you either didn't like the original Rozen Maiden or don't know it, this isn't where you want to start.

Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo

The Problem Children Seem to Have Come From Another World:  D+

I really want to say that if it weren't for the one problem with this series that it would be a C, but the more I think about it the more it's not true.

So Mondaiji is about three teenagers ('problem children') with truly ridiculous BS superpowers who get transported to a magical world where power is determined by victory in games and where you can wager anything from favors to lives to your very superpowers to the ownership of fantastic creatures to lifetimes of servitude.  They are met by a bunny-eared girl who explains the nature of the world and tries to get them to help her and her community, who have fallen on hard times.  Due to varying reasons, the problem children accept, and embark on a relatively disjointed journey to conquer the world.

That, on its own, is at least competent.  Not genius, but you could make something out of that that wasn't just sighingly bad.  And Mondaiji isn't offensively, facepalmingly, turn-it-off-ew bad, it's just completely lacking in particularly impressive qualities.

Of the three problem children, two are girls (the two on the left), and their powers are fairly clear: one has a supreme geas ability (it's implied though not demonstrated that with practice she'd be able to issue commands that the laws of physics would have to obey) and one can both talk to animals and receive the skills of animals she's befriended as gifts.  In practical terms she's a kung fu ninja with supersenses who can fly.  They both have personalities, flaws, are friendly if childish and troublesome and are set back at various times in the story.  Then there's the male problem child.  His superpower is classified 'Unknown' and appears to just be super-everything (but mostly speed and strength).  He is a jerk, he's a delinquent, he orders people around based entirely on the fact that they need him and he's just that good, and people, while they aren't totally happy with it, suck it up.  Even all that could be forgiven if he suffered a setback at some point, had to grow as a person, or needed help.  But unfortunately he's extraordinarily educated about even obscure topics and so he seems to know the answer to every major mystery (despite being a delinquent).  So he basically waltzes through the entire story undefeated and barely challenged.  Certainly never threatened.

Now, if the story were otherwise good and just had that, I could probably have given it a C, but the story is otherwise meh.  There's the occasional mythological reference, which is cool, but it all gets spelled out by Super Protagonist when he solves it needing only an occasional bright idea which someone else spouts out by accident, so it's not like my personal experience with mythology made me feel involved.

So what is good?  Um, the art's pretty good all around.  I liked the opening sequence.  And there's a great moment of meta-discussion of fan service and why panty shots are inelegant.  Seriously, that was the best moment in the series, when one of the characters explains how showing off underwear ruins the mystery, it's far better to make the viewer use their imagination.

So, if that's what you want to see, by all means watch Mondaiji-tachi.  Personally, I'd steer clear, though.

Houkago no Pleiades

Afterschool Pleiades:  A

This is a bit of a weird 'series'.  It's about 25 minutes long, in four 'episodes'.

It is excellent.  It is about the shortest magical girl story you could possibly have.  It has everything a magical girl anime needs: a transformation sequence, a cute mascot, a mysterious pretty boy, and a normal, clumsy girl who risks everything to protect her friends and try to tell him that he's not alone.

And it's good enough that it makes me tear up a little bit at the climax.

I love it, for being a story that is able to tell itself so quickly and so elegantly.  If you've ever wanted a reminder that you are not alone in the world, that someone else has seen what you've seen, take a half hour and watch Afterschool Pleiades.

Stella Girl's Academy High School Division C³ Club

Etc etc C³ Club: C+

So this is apparently what Gainax has been up to: a show about cute girls doing cute airsoft things.  While it falls into the trap of superpowered sports skill and AIRSOFT IS SERIOUS BUSINESS in a couple places, it's ultimately a show, much like Free!, about competition and the purpose of competitive activities, with a bit about personal development and finding a place thrown in.

Also lots of cute girls.  And guns.  Seriously, if you don't at least kind of want to buy an airsoft gun after this show something is probably wrong with you.

This show falls a little bit on the side of 'boobs' in the continuum of 'genius' to 'boobs' that makes up the shows that Gainax creates, and there's not a whole lot more to say about it than that it's another sports anime that manages a discussion of a deeper topic.  It doesn't come out as clearly about it as Free! did (and the final episode, which could have done so was instead just a fan service parade), so I have a tough time calling it 'good', but it's also definitely not bad.  It's not presumptive, it's not pretending to be deeper than it is.

So if you want to watch a bunch of cute girls shooting airsoft guns at each other and maybe getting a little serious about it in places, this show's fun.  But if that sounds kind of shallow or uninteresting then you can probably skip it and not feel like you're missing out.

Love Lab

Love Lab:  A

Love Lab is a comedy series about middle school girls who have mostly no idea how romance and dating and boys work.  This sounds like it would be vapid and terrible.  It's actually the most intelligent and clever anime comedy I've seen in a long time.

I could tell you about the five main cast members and how they're all recognizable, but have unique quirks and characterizations that endear them to you, or how the humor isn't afraid to use double-entendres, misunderstandings and genuinely clever situational awkwardness without resorting to predictable bit gags (characters do have their 'bits' but they remain creative about them), or I could even talk about how the series manages to avert a number of major tropes: there are male characters who are important to the plot, there are at least four teachers with distinct names and personalities and we meet multiple characters' parents and families.  But instead I'll say that the main story's plot is actually really heartfelt and well-executed, maintaining a sense of tension while remaining believable and having an adorable but still humorous resolution.

Overall, Love Lab is an extremely well-crafted shojo (I think it's shojo?  It doesn't have the fan service or all-female cast to be seinen) comedy that doesn't fall into the normal slice of life trap of no plot and no progress.  Basically, anyone who wants a laugh and was ever a junior high school student would probably enjoy Love Lab.

Free!

Free!:  B+

Kyoto Animation doing their thing, only this time rather than adorable girls we have lovingly animated young men swimming.  You will rarely see so many muscles animated quite this realistically, and Kyoto Animation's stunning animation is in full force.  They also clearly wanted practice drawing a lot of water.

The story itself doesn't slouch either.  While it isn't truly inspired, it is a solid story about motivation, competition, teamwork and loving what you do, I was actually surprised at how well it comes together.

I feel like I should say more about the series, but there really isn't a lot more to say.  It's gorgeous, full of tasteful manservice, but a good, heartful story about sports, in the way where you don't have to love sports to get into it.

Oh, I guess I could talk about the yaoi.  Which isn't really there.  I mean, you don't really have to stretch to say that there's homoerotic undertones, but it feels unfair to the actual good story there to say that it's a major element.

If you want to watch a show with either a lot of really well-drawn muscular young men or a good story that'll make you want to go for a swim sometime, Free! is a good watch.  It is thoroughly grounded in realism and all the tension is emotional, so you won't get much out of it if you're interested in magic or sci-fi or explosions.

Minami-ke

Seasons 1 and 2 (2007 and 'Okawari'):  C
Seasons 3 and 4 ('Okaeri' and 'Tadaima'):  B

Minami-ke ('the Minami family' or 'the Minami household') is a sitcom anime about three sisters and their friends, it's been around for a while and keeps getting more seasons, which is good, because the first couple were kinda weak.

So we have Haruka, the eldest, who's responsible, beautiful and competent but occasionally snaps and gets furious with her sisters or slips into self-indulgent laziness.  Then there's Kana, the hyperactive, impulsive and thoughtless middle sister, who despite her mountain of faults is friendly, silly, forgiving and likes everybody, so long as they're entertaining.  Finally we have Chiaki, the youngest, intelligent, diligent and serious, though clumsy, and absolutely adoring of Haruka and intolerant of Kana.

The series doesn't bother explaining where the girls' absent parents are, or where they get the money to finance their existence, or why they're time-locked at the ages they're at, which they also don't explain.  Also, every so often characters are able to have conversations about people sitting next to them without them noticing.

There's also a fair amount of gender confusion among the younger members of the cast, with one elementary school boy crossdressing so he can hang out with Haruka and a boyish girl who Chiaki adopts as her 'little brother'.

The first season starts with some kind of poor introductions, and the depth of the characters doesn't reach the fullness of things until well into the second season.  The first two seasons also suffer from poor animation and a bit too much fan service respectively.  The third and fourth seasons (and the OVAs) both very much come into their own, but even then, the series is never uproariously funny, just good for some giggles.

Overall, if you need a sitcom that actually has male characters and don't actually want or need a story, Minami-ke is the closest I've actually found to a true Simpsons-style timelocked family-type comedy (aside from Sazae-san, but that's another topic for another time).  If you want a show with action (beyond snowball fights), anything supernatural (besides tying up your little sister to use her as a talking good-weather charm) or drama (besides panicking that you broke your big sister's jewelry) Minami-ke doesn't have it.

The Japanese School System for Anime Viewers

So, schools in Japan are an extraordinarily common element in anime, and there are enough differences from Western schools and have a number of visual conventions associated with them that I decided to write a short informational essay about them.  Since I just watched Minami-ke (which I will review forthwith), which has multiple characters across most of the main levels of primary school, this is on my mind as something that a viewer should be familiar with to make discussing schools a little easier.

Rebuild of Evangelion: 3.0 - You can (not) redo

You don't get a letter grade on it, because while it is a movie and a coherent unit, it is also part of a greater series and that series is important to its context.  So this is a bit of a different review.

Let's start by talking about Rebuild of Evangelion 1 (You are (not) alone) and 2 (You can (not) advance) real quick.

Rebuild 1 was essentially a retelling of the first six episodes of the anime with dramatically improved animation and a few minor changes.  In all, it was great.  It was what people wanted.

Rebuild 2 moved away from the original anime plotline, introducing a new pilot (Mari) and rearranging events so that certain characters were more and less important and events occurred in different order with different characters.  Relationships progressed faster, and practically every character was much more emotionally open.  Rebuild 2 was beautiful and made a number of intentionally complex and flawed characters relatable, then ended on a point of extreme shock and tension.  The end of Rebuild 2 is a total curveball for viewers of the anime.

In short, Rebuild 2 was excellent and put us in a place where we had no idea what to expect.  Rebuild 3 had a lot to do: these characters we knew very well and this situation that was completely foreign to us, and build a story we could understand out of them.  It's a tall order.  I think it succeeds, but at the cost of its non-metaphorical narrative.

Rebuild 3, for me, felt like, while it wasn't the direct expositional version of Instrumentality that the original anime had, it definitely was encouraging you to think about what each of the characters and situations represented in a symbolic framework.

And honestly, I think a lot of people won't like that, and the actual movie itself doesn't feel quite as awesome as Rebuild 2 was, though the symbolism and metaphor, a necessary part of the Evangelion franchise, were back, and strong.

Finally, Rebuild 3 ends in a very similar way to how Rebuild 2 did: a situation we, the viewers, recognize as parallel to the end of End of Evangelion, which leaves us absolutely no frame of reference for what to expect from the final installment.

I'm quite curious what the critical reception for 3 will be, I enjoyed it, but I really wonder if other people will.

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: