Quick Final Thoughts – Anime-gataris

Well, that came out of nowhere in the best way.

For most of its run, the show I can most easily compare Anime-gataris to is Shirobako. While that was a fairly realistic show about what it’s like to make anime, this one is about what it’s like to be a fan of anime. All kinds of hilarious discussions of concepts like the three-episode rule or kitchen sink plots come up over the course of ten episodes, followed by the most joyous shark jump I’ve ever seen. Basically, with its fourth-wall breaking humor and tongue-in-cheek jabs at itself (poking fun at the plot and artwork, among other things), you could basically consider this a better version of Chronicles of the Going Home Club.

What holds it back from really being great, though, are two problems. First, the animation really isn’t as fluid as it should be, and if a character is more than a few feet from the camera, they tend to go off model in a slightly distracting way. Second, some tonal issues occur in the last arc of the show where it gets more serious and dramatic than it can really pull off, and it would have done better to focus on the sheer comic potential of what’s happening. It intentionally jumps the shark, but there’s a less deliberate dolphin that it accidentally trips on and prevents it from really sticking the landing.

Still, it had me well in stitches throughout, and if you consider yourself an otaku, you owe it to yourself to give this a watch, because you won’t be disappointed.

Oh, and special credit to whichever of the writing staff was in charge of coming up with parody show names. Give him an award.

8/10

Quick Final Thoughts – Love Live! Sunshine!!

I want to emphasize something here, something that I think is important to consider given just how impressed I was by Love Live!’s second outing, and particularly this conclusion to it.

This show did not have to be good.

The studio could so easily have just shoved out something totally lacking in substance or personality, like Touken Ranbu Hanamaru or Kantai Collection the Animation, and called it a day, because despite lackluster tie-in shows, both of those mobile free to play gacha games are still doing just fine.

But Love Live has always lived up to a different standard. The show has always been good, even without the Western audience it really deserves. It’s always been bursting with heart and emotion, always had fantastic performances, and always had characters with an impressive range of emotion and great newbie voice actresses behind many of them.

But the stakes have never been quite this high before. The original conflict of the first series was solved midway through the first season, and it had to rely on the convictions of its cast to keep us interested as they aimed for the top. It wasn’t always butterflies and rainbows, but the series maintained a very idealistic tone nonetheless. Sunshine goes along, especially in its first season, like it’s going to be more of the same, the show more or less repeating its formula…

And then it pulls the rug out from under you with real, heart-wrenching emotion, with actual reality.

All the girls of Aquors want is to save their school just like μ’s did, and the important distinction is that they fail. They try their absolute hardest, do everything in their power, and they fail, and the series takes a turn for the gut punching as we watch our team find their motivation to pick themselves back up, go out, and perform with every ounce of their being, so that they can win the Love Live, be known forever as champions, and leave behind proof that their school existed, and it mattered.

The closing of the school is rather brilliantly framed as these characters having to leave their childhoods behind and choose to strive for something important, not just to themselves, but to all of the other students who won’t let their school be a forgotten footnote.

And all of this is supported by the greatest performances and production work the series has ever had, with much-improved CG on the level of Land of the Lustrous, completely amazing costume design and choreography, and songs that will be in your head for weeks, overflowing with the passion of the characters.

If the newly-announced third iteration of the franchise never comes to be animated, I think I’ll be okay with that.

Oh, and it was all capped off with one of the best final episodes I’ve ever seen, and that is a long list.

10/10. The absolute best the genre has to offer. The recently announced movie has a lot to live up to.

Quick Final Thoughts – THE IDOLM@STER Side M

So happy to have IM@S back, even for a brief time.

This iteration was kind of interesting because I could tell that it was going to have an issue from early on, and the issue in question is fairly obvious – while the show does a great job with the time it has, it is still a thirteen-episode show with more than twenty main characters. Each grouping of guys gets at least one spotlight episode (and one of them got a prequel OVA) that does a pretty fair job of developing them as characters and idols, but it was clear from the beginning that we weren’t going to get enough time with them.

That being said, the lead trio carries a lot by themselves, and nearly all of our cast are just inherently likeable. My personal favorites were hyper-energized fanboy Shiki and our Main Character Tendou (I have a thing for earnestness), but even with such a massive cast, IM@S remains a production tour de force.

For an A-1 show with their usual same-face direction, the character designs on display here (which, to be fair, come from the mobile game) are phenomenal, and the costume design is fantastic on- and offstage. We get our regularly scheduled sakuga with IM@S’ amazing hand-drawn dance sequences (with really minimal CGI, but it’s not so intrusive that I’d consider that a complaint) and they’re just mesmerizing to look at, in a similar way to the first few skate scenes from Yuri On Ice!.

The other thing that holds this show back, however, is that there really isn’t much new here. We get a couple of funny character stories but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and while there is something to be said for good execution, I felt like the fact that most of our cast were adults with professional backgrounds wasn’t as relevant as it should have been (Tendou literally goes around with “Lawyer” on his shirt, but not once does he ever have to use his knowledge, for example).

Overall, though, it remained a really enjoyable ride and a strong 7/10. This is a show that I really hope gets a second season so we can get to know these guys more, though since there’s no currently licensed merch in the US I unfortunately don’t have a way of helping that happen. Still, if this is all we get, I’m happy to have gotten what’s here.

Quick Final Thoughts – Just Because!

This was a little disappointing. It wasn’t bad enough for me to drop it, but it didn’t live up to one of the most promising premieres of the season.

Let’s start with the production, the most easily identifiable issue. Based on the design and direction, I think that this show really wanted to be Sound! Euphonium, but didn’t have the KyoAni talent and passion required to really pull it off. The background work is gorgeous throughout, often to the point that if you told me they were pulled from a Shinkai movie, I’d probably believe you, but no other aspect of the artwork or direction comes close to matching it, as the often poorly-drawn characters very rarely look like part of their environment. Frequent animation issues lead to walk cycles not syncing properly to the background so it ends up looking like characters are walking on top of paintings, and attempts at rapid movement fall apart because of a lack of in-between animation. The art design tries for realism but mostly comes across as boring, with the color palette being dull and desaturated, like none of these characters own clothing in primary colors.

The story fares a little better but isn’t quite the dramatic tale I was hoping for. It’s certainly trying for that route but ends up going in too many directions. The main romance isn’t as understandable as it should be and it’s just not satisfying that the two main characters refuse to communicate with each other properly even though they definitely know that their feelings are mutual. The last episode has a few really powerful moments and a great echo of the premiere, but it just doesn’t go anywhere at all.

I will admit that a few sakuga cuts are peppered throughout, but overall the show is just really uneven, and the ending was a total cop out.

5/10, the bad side of average.

Quick Final Thoughts – Girls’ Last Tour

I was impressed from beginning to weird, weird end.

This quiet little show just kept me hooked from episode one, with an incredibly well-executed slow burn and a complete lack of infodumps or inorganic exposition, and the strength of its production courtesy of studio White Fox.

I’m gonna do a full review of this one sooner or later, but for now…

10/10. Instant classic.

Quick Final Thoughts – UQ Holder!

I was so excited for this, too…

For a while it actually seemed like this might work. The first two thirds managed to be a tightly plotted, brutally violent shonen spectacle with a few fun references to its predecessor, but a little too much of Negima’s more forced elements. For those who don’t know, Ken Akamatsu really wanted Negima to be a shonen action series, and it eventually got there, but his publisher wouldn’t serialize it unless he added elements from his previous work, Love Hina. So, we got a fanservice-filled harem comedy that slowly morphed into an action story… If you read the manga, that is, as even though the first part of the story received two anime adaptations, neither of them were particularly faithful to the story or tone of the original work, and at only two cours apiece, they don’t even cover a quarter of the story.

So in the first few episodes, we start to see some of those unnecessary elements brought back, but thankfully for the most part it remains in the background.

Until the last third of the show, where they try desperately to rush to a finale that wasn’t in the manga at this point in the story and as a result the plot jumps directly off a cliff in favor of very desperate references to Negima, which would all be totally incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t read the original series and the manga of this one. While I found it enjoyable as a long term fan of the franchise, I can’t help but feel bad for newcomers.

So, if you still love Negima and read the whole thing, this gets a 7/10… But if you didn’t, then it crashes down to a 4.

Quick Final Thoughts – Land of the Lustrous

Dang, that cinematography!

Let’s start with the obvious – this is the best-looking all-CG TV production in Japanese history, and it’s gorgeous from start to finish. They take full advantage of the medium for really, really good action shots, with lots of dynamic camera movement, and it just looks so damn good.

The story is no slouch, either, as we learn more and more about the rocks and how they came to be, and the secrets that some of them are hiding. It’s a pretty good coming of age story when you consider that the protagonist is over 200 years old. And I really appreciated some of the finer details, like the rocks being genderless, since applying sex to them would distract from the point and be really confusing.

That being said… It’s definitely not over yet. We have at best half of a story here, and I ended up taking away a point due to the fact that the finale is spent setting up for a sequel that might not come, a la Log Horizon.

So, for now, 7/10. I’d like to have learned a little more about things like where the school came from, and what Cinnabar’s deal is, but in the event of a second season, I’ll bump it up to an 8.

Quick Final Thoughts – Recovery of an MMO Junkie

Oh my gosh, what a breath of fresh air this was.

We’ve gotten plenty of good romantic comedies this year, from Masamune-kun’s Revenge in winter, Saekano Flat in spring, Gamers last season and now Recovery. I was really happy with so many elements of this show that I don’t really mind that they don’t come together all the time. I genuinely can’t remember a show that took MMO playing and played it totally normally, where it wasn’t dramatic and boring (like in .Hack), part of a downward spiral (like in Welcome to the NHK), or some kind of stupid death game (like in SAO).

This is a simple story about two normal-ass people that meet while playing an MMORPG, so all of the drama has to come right from the characters. The cast have great chemistry together, and seeing how they’re all connected offline is pretty neat, even if a little implausible.

But ultimately, our main destined couple sells the show really well. They’re played very realistically, right down to the fact that even once they know who the other person really is, the show illustrates that it’s way easier for them to interact through the game than it is AFK, because that’s how a lot of MMO players are.

Basically, it’s a NEET love story played more or less the way it would actually happen, and that’s something to be appreciated.

8/10!