Final Thoughts – Dimension High School

Oh my god, it’s the best worst thing ever.

Dimension High School isn’t just bad, it’s transcendentally bad, the kind of bad that comes back around to being completely mystifying. It’s not often that I come across something this awful that doesn’t actively offend me!

Every element of this show is completely awful. All of the characters are insufferable, the live action segments are cringe-inducingly shot and the animated portion appears to have literally been made in Miku Miku Dance. All of the dialogue is hilarious, and the plot is stupid beyond belief.

I love it.

There is objectively not a single redeeming factor to this show aside from how marvelous it is to watch something that manages to be this bad without being completely offensive.

3/10, and my highest recommendation for a good Bad Anime Night.

Final Thoughts – Kemurikusa

This show wants to be interesting, it’s got plenty of interesting building blocks, but it’s like a toddler crashed through and scattered them all over the room.

Starting with the obvious, just because bad CG worked for Kemono Friends doesn’t mean that the director doesn’t have to try any harder than that, or not try and invest more. That was fine for Friends because it wasn’t trying to be anything especially ambitious – it was a show based on a kids game with an interesting metanarrative but not too much in the way of unique components, and Kemurikusa is going for something much more original, but even if it were good, the animation leads the concept to be totally wasted in and of itself.

Not that the execution of the story is working, either – at no point in this episode did I have any clue what was supposed to be happening, particularly when I thought the show was going for a heroic sacrifice scene only to reveal minutes later that the character who died has four clones ready to go, and the cast was aware of this the whole time.

What the fuck?

Look, this is so difficult to parse that I would recommend just passing it over entirely instead – director Tatsuki very clearly has no idea what made his own previous work appealing to a surprisingly broad audience, and is just throwing stuff at the wall to see what works. The Punch Line formula doesn’t work without a masterful writer on board, and Tatsuki is very much not that.

2/10, dropped after one episode.

Final Thoughts – Meiji Tokyo Renka

It’s not terrible, but we’ve been here before.

Watching Meiji Tokyo Renka wound up giving me strong flashbacks to Phantom in the Twilight, if only because it was the most recent show of this kind that I saw promise in before dropping halfway through, and while it at least looks more interesting, I just can’t shake the feeling of deja vu and I’m not gonna waste my time giving this one the benefit of the doubt.

We have a reverse harem story about a girl transported back in time to meet famous historical figures who are all very handsome men, and if that doesn’t raise flags for you, you might be turned off by the fact that the main guy – who brings our heroine to a fancy dress party before he’s even given her his name, just to save that reveal until the end of the episode – is very creepy and wastes no time getting in her personal space. While she takes it pretty well, the fact that he gives her an unwanted and cringy nickname – Little Squirrel – before even properly introducing himself just makes it worse.

The other twist involved here is that our heroine can see ghosts, which is why she has no friends in the present day, though how related this is to the story is anyone’s guess, since thus far it seems like it’s just an excuse for her to be a loner who is drawn out of her shell by this cabal of pretty boys who will inevitably fight for her affection.

Look, if this is your bag, more power to you, but I’ve been here before and this show would be much more interesting if it didn’t have the main girl around.

5/10, dropped after one episode.

Premiere Impressions – The Promised Neverland

After the disaster that was Darling, CloverWorks appears to have finally hit a stride, even if the surprise hit source material was pretty much a guaranteed smash.

That being said, it’s certainly being used to its full potential – this episode just flew right by because the pacing on display is already excellent and the atmosphere is engaging as hell, drawing you in but keeping you ready for the shoe to really drop. I went in blind (knowing that the manga would eventually get an adaptation) and do not regret it at all, even if I do feel that the story has shown its hand a little early, with this first episode being loaded with early twists to really get you set up for where the story is going. I won’t spoil anything here for the two or three people who have waited as long as I did to get started on this, but Pastel Memories needs to take some fucking notes here.

Can I also say that this looks phenomenal? The strong art style of the manga helps for sure, but Neverland looks gorgeous in motion and even when the true nature of the story rears its head, it’s shown in fluid, horrifying, highly unsettling detail. The one thing we see in this episode makes any monster from Junji Ito Collection look lazy in comparison, and speaks to how much you need the right team to really bring out potential in source material.

Watching this may have actually lowered my opinion on Boogiepop and Others, because this is how you make a horror show slap as hard as possible.

Premiere Impressions – Dororo

Finally, we’re getting a streak going of Good Stuff, though I should expect nothing less from a Tezuka adaptation.

And in one episode it managed to thoroughly capture the darker side of the master of manga’s storytelling, carefully balancing out what would, in most hands, be an edge overload, and turning it into an incredibly compelling Warring Period action drama that has one of the coolest fight scenes I’ve ever seen in just the first episode – guys, MAPPA has pulled all the stops out for this one.

Honestly the most noteworthy thing about this is how it’s managed to not get overlooked despite the mountain of obstacles against it – it’s licensed by Amazon, meaning they won’t promote it at all and the only way to find it will be to specifically search for it, it’s based on a manga from the sixties that Americans likely will never have heard of, and that brings with it the problem of being a trope codifier for ideas that have been played to death since it came out originally, and yet MAL lists it as the fourth most popular show of the season, and the third most popular good show at that, so impressively, this one might have a shot at lasting popularity. I can dream, can’t I?

Premiere Impressions – Mob Psycho 100 II

I’m still kind of disappointed that this season wasn’t called “Mob Psycho 101″ but I’ll take a completely clean win when I can get one this season.

Even years later, the team behind Mob Psycho hasn’t lost an ounce of its touch, as the show still looks and feels gorgeous and dynamic, even while keeping the stylistic sucky look trademark of its source material. Honestly, I’m not really sure what to say about this show that hasn’t been said already, aside from the fact that it’s setting a high bar for the second season of One Punch Man (which, unlike this show, is completely changing creative teams, for reasons I don’t think I’ll ever understand).

Premiere Impressions – Endro~!

From the makers of Yuki Yuna is a Hero comes…a much lighter version of that story, I guess?

Well, it would be more accurate to say that Endro’s world is closer to that of DanMachi, but very lighthearted and fun. Everyone has an RPG class and there are schools to teach kids how to be adventurers and fight monsters, with the biggest kicker being that there isn’t a major villain in this world because said villain was defeated in the first five minutes of the show, after which the credits rolled, hence the title (short for “endroll”) and then the actual show began. The villainous Demon Lord is defeated and then reincarnates into the body of a cute monster girl who travels back in time and becomes the main character’s teacher before she rose up to become a Hero, and I know I’m losing you, but honestly it’s so cute that I can’t fault it for this concept. One of the keys to making a worthwhile Cute Girls show is earnestness, and that’s something Endro certainly carries.

I’m also pleased to report that Studio Gakumi hasn’t lost their production touch – it’s not going to wow anyone, but the look of this show is very solid and it presents us with pastel, color-coded characters without being so overwhelmingly bright that it hurts to look at (like Bloom Into You was). The animation itself is exactly enough to carry the show along despite clearly not having a tremendous budget (as this is an original story) and it’s got just enough polish to really stand out next to crap like Saintia Sho and Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka.

Look, I need something to tide me over until the return of Laid-Back Camp, and this will do just fine.

Final Thoughts – Pastel Memories

It really goes for a big fake-out at the end but fails to do anything memorable up until that point.

Okay, so this is one of Those Shows where the first episode is made to hide the real point of the show and it pulls a big Gotcha at the end to indicate that there’s gonna be a genre shift, but the problem is that the episode preceding that moment is so boring that it falls flat on its face. To wit:

School-Live! peppered its first episode with background details and a strangely unsettling atmosphere before pulling the rug out from under the viewer and explaining itself, Puella Magi Madoka Magica had some very dark things happen even while trying to present itself as a normal kids’ magical girl show, and even KADO The Right Answer had an incredibly engaging first episode demonstrating how useful the talent of negotiation was long before it was necessary (or, uh, wasn’t) to save the world. Pastel Memories’ first episode is twenty minutes of girls in the same outfit searching Akihabara for a specific manga, meaning that it all looks kind of the same and the most interesting artistic decision is the choice to rip off Is the Order a Rabbit? and saturate the hell out of the main characters’ candy-colored hair. The main cast are also annoyingly peppy and asinine, and I can’t remember the name of a single one of them.

The reveal at the end of the episode that this is going to be a universe-hopping show gives me less confidence that it can pull it off than Girl in the Twilight gave me last season, and that one I dropped halfway through, so this is a big ol’ skip for me. 3/10.

Final Thoughts – Rising of the Shield Hero

Wow, I was pretty okay with this one for like a good half hour before it became The Worst.

It’s interesting that three different high-profile and long-form isekai shows are airing at the same time this season, and this is definitely the one that goes for the edgy suffering angle most, though it’s doing so in a very poorly conscious manner. (It’s literally mentioned in this first double-length episode that the highest crime in the fantasy world is rape, though this is unfortunately explained in a situation in which the woman coming forward is very maliciously lying about it, so what a perfect show to air at the height of scandals like #KickVic!)

Which is a shame, because the straightforward concept was going alright for at least the first half of this premiere. I like the idea of an isekai hero who has a lot to overcome to even be at a baseline of power, without it being because of some stupid contrivance where his power cancels out everyone else’s or something dumb like that, but unfortunately after The Worst Thing That Could Happen, he rather immediately goes from Nice Guy Seeking Girlfriend to Edgy Antihero Threatening Merchants, which carries so much awful social connotation that I can’t see straight, but let me just say that the Red Pill crowd is really gonna embrace this one.

The more I think about this one, the angrier I get, and the fact that it is the single most popular show of the season (above even Mob Psycho 100 II) with an 8.5 rating on MAL and utterly wasting the talents of Kevin Penkin only motivates me more to give it my very first 1/10 of the year.

Premiere Impressions – The Morose Mononokean II

Yay! Mononokean is back! I mean it’s not exactly Mob Psycho but I was still definitely looking forward to this one.

Luckily, The Morose Mononokean understands that it’s been gone for three years and we might need a little catch up, but all of the recap is done so organically that you might not even notice it other than going “oh, right!”. It’s actually really nice that they managed to work in who our main characters are (a high school student, a caretaker to the spirits, and a Little Yokai Friend) and what their motivations are without explicitly cutting away to explain anything. While I would still recommend watching the original first since it won’t be enough for anyone jumping in here, it’s ideal for those of us who just need a quick refresher.

We begin with a trip back to the Underworld because the Legislator has an important job for our heroes, ~~filling his tobacco pipe because his arm is broken~~ completing an assignment he can’t do in time due to his injury. Apparently he has a habit of crying wolf when it comes to the phrase “SOS”, but he does genuinely have a good reason and is more than willing to pay, instantly causing Ashiya’s eyes to light up (because he’s got a debt to pay off, see, little refresher details!) and leading him and Designated Mascot Fuzzy to sprint off through the woods while Itsuki stays behind to help with paperwork. While this story is only half over by the end of the episode, Morose Mononokean has already drawn me back in with its light, charming atmosphere and strong story foundation, as well as our endearing leading men. I’m excited to see the continuing adventures!