Final Thoughts – Dragon Pilot: Hisone to Masotan

I’M FINALLY DONE – no, Arcane, hold the victory lap, you’ve got one more write-up to do.

Okay. Game-face.

I got to watch the premiere episode of Dragon Pilot at Anime Central 2018, long before it would ever see the light of day on Netflix, and I was pretty much stunned by Mari Okada’s newest vision. I’ll say that Dragon Pilot ultimately didn’t materialize into the So Ra No Wo To-esque war story I was kind of hoping for, but it did still manage to turn in one of the most well-done animal bonding stories this side of How to Train Your Dragon.

I’m gonna start with the visuals, because they are not gonna be everyone’s cup of tea. Studio Bones took a big risk with the aesthetic of this show, but I think it paid off beautifully, trading detail for very expressive animation in a fashion not too far removed from Ping Pong, though not nearly as stylized or alienating. That being said, a lot of still shots come off very wonky, so if you’re not able to fully get into the visual experience of the show, it’s gonna be a little weird. That being said, the dragon designs are delightful, and the hybrid plane armor looks cool as heck even on the adorable rubbery dragons we’re here for.

I’m also kind of stunned at how very fetish-y this show is without ever becoming trashy – all the girls involved are grown adults, the only time we see them in any state of undress is when it would make sense for them to not be wearing much, and yet this will always be known as a fetish show for an entirely different reason. We’re not gonna get into the vore thing, mostly because I don’t know if Okada is fully aware of it and I’ll admit that piloting a dragon from the inside by having it eat you makes more sense than anything else I can come up with, not to mention that it gets mined for a lot of good comedy.

Basically the big gripe I had with Hisone to Masotan was that, in its final third, it gets a little bit too bogged down in its A-plot without giving the subplots room to resolve naturally, and some of the story decisions feel kind of arbitrary. A lot of it has to do with Shinto spirituality (on which I am not an expert), but the whole virgin-maiden trope is definitely here in full-force, despite the fact that there are romantic elements of the show – it has the effect of essentially declaring the two budding relationships in the show to be plot tumors without letting the audience decide for themselves, while introducing a love triangle that continues past the point where it’s narratively needed and just ends up as an actual (if minor) plot tumor.

All in all though, compared to something like Sirius, Dragon Pilot just has so much more thought and creativity put into it that I have to award it at least an 8/10, even if I don’t think it quite reaches the Hall of Fame.

Final Thoughts – Hinomaru Sumo

An earnest, if not mind-blowing, run at the genre with an oft-mocked subject.

Let’s face it, sumo is pretty inherently funny. It’s stereotypically done by big, sweaty fat guys who compete with almost no body coverage, and it takes a very dedicated effort to get non-Japanese audiences to take it seriously.

I’m glad to say that if there’s one thing Hinomaru does right, it’s selling sumo. The dignity instilled upon the sport by the cast is admirable, and it helps that even though the plot is pretty unbelievable, it has nothing but respect for its subject.

But let’s talk about that plot – firstly, I wanna bring up a specific callback to my Premiere write-up. I’m a little disappointed that the protagonist being literally too short to qualify for the pro league ends up totally not mattering, but that’s mostly because of the fact that this is an underdog show that over delivers in the end and strains suspension of disbelief.

That’s probably a spoiler, right there, but it’s kind of a let down that the show goes for both a “and the story continues” ending, and a definite end to the adaptation, at the same time. Indeed, after a strong, highly watchable, well-paced run, Hinomaru Sumo kind of rushes through its falling action in order to finish the plot, with the good intentions of concluding the story (the source manga of which is still going at over 200 chapters) but the bad side-effect of relegating what I’m sure was an entire arc of the manga into a few lines of expository dialogue.

The production on display is also not particularly awe-inspiring, though I would at least call it “wisely economical”. The days when Gonzo could make a good-looking show are long past, but aside from a few odd missteps, Hinomaru’s animation budget has been carefully kept for the few short moments that matter (which is good, considering it’s a two-cour show). It’s not even as good as Major 2nd, but it gets the job done for a sport whose matches can last a few seconds and are mostly made up of short bouts of very intense movement. That being said, in a show where a lot of time is spent on still shots of mostly-naked characters, a little more focus on realistic anatomy and less Liefeld-ing would have been nice.

All in all, the ending of Hinomaru isn’t bad enough to poison the well, but I do think that it would have made a decent ongoing adaptation if not for the Gonzo of it all. As it stands, it’s a competent, well-paced affair that will fill your sports fix, even if it doesn’t set the world on fire.

7/10.

Premiere Impressions – One Punch Man Season 2

I almost want to drop this one out of spite, but the reality is that the new look of the show isn’t awful, it’s just a noticeable downgrade from Madhouse’s insane passion for the property.

We’re gonna have to face the fact that OPM just looks like a normal show now, and that the direction (by near-rookie Chikara Sakurai) is just going to be “passable” instead of “ingenious”. This all results in an okay premiere that demonstrates that this followup is just going to rely entirely on its source material to keep the audience interesting, and luckily ONE happens to be one of the best mangaka working today, so this won’t be bad, it’ll just be a lot less special than it used to be.

But, I mean, who cares? The majority of the audience for a show pushed this far into the mainstream wouldn’t know what J.C. Staff even is, this is still gonna end up on Toonami and Netflix, and its already-high score on MAL isn’t gonna drop, so just sucking it up is probably the best option.

Final Thoughts – RobiHachi

Man, this season is just gonna drag, huh?

Okay, next on the firing squad is RobiHachi,
which is, ostensibly, about a guy named Robby travelling the stars with
his much smarter new friend Hatchi in search of the promised land of
Isekandar, so that it can grant his wish of a care- and work-free life.
But, in reality, it’s a show that wants very badly to be one thing – Space Dandy
– and it steals the bright sci-fi aesthetic and clowny tone pretty much
right out of the gate. The problems are that a) this doesn’t look
nearly as good as Space Dandy, b) doesn’t have the backing of
Shingo Natsume or Shinichiro Watanabe, and c) Robby is an unlikeable,
dumb shitheel that seems to be Peter Quill without the charm or drive.

Are there things that work for it? Oh, sure, the look of the show is pretty nice (note: I said look, not animation), and some
of the jokes manage to land, but otherwise, this show is just not
really sure how comedic timing is supposed to work, to the point where
several of the jokes don’t even seem like jokes.

Yeah, skip this one.

Premiere Impressions – Sarazanmai

Alright, here we go…

From the mind that brought you Penguindrum and Utena comes…possibly the most insane thing I’ve seen since Punch Line, and I say that with the most possible love.

Sarazanmai
is very, very difficult to explain because it’s the kind of thing that
must be seen to be believed. It’s over-the-top, visually dense,
incredibly lewd, and yet makes those elements work flawlessly for it to
create a glorious, incomprehensible mess that I wanted to watch again
the moment the episode was over.

And I want to give massive
props to studio Mappa, continuing to take on heavily ambitious projects
like this one and trust that they will find an audience. This studio
has, for a while now, almost been characterized by very risky projects
that pretty much always pay dividends for them, whether they’re
worldwide sensations like Yuri On Ice!, critical darlings like Banana Fish or Punch Line, or something as completely unsellable to most people as Sarazanmai, which gives movie-quality animation to a scene involving the plot everyone thinks should be happening in Avengers: Endgame. You know the one I’m talking about.

I don’t have a ton to tell you here, but if you’re ready for the truly weird side of anime, Sarazanmai is going to be your best bet this season, and given that it’s so close to the bottom of the seasonal charts, it needs a lot of love to get the audience it deserves.

Final Thoughts – Namuamidabutsu! -UTENA-

So, ufotable took a few years off of making weekly shows, came back, and brought us Demon Slayer. Asahi Productions took a few years off, too, came back, and brought us their best impression of ufotable…but with a slice of life show?

That question mark is genuine – I have no idea what this show is about after the first episode, but the closest I can get is that it seems like a smash-up of the two different Touken Ranbu shows. It’s the story of a bunch of ~~gorgeous men~~ Buddhist spirits coming to the human world for the first time in centuries and trying to relax after fighting against evil and entropy, but they can see the vices that the humans carry around. The vices take the form of black blobs stuck to their humans, which is at least more creative than demons or rot or something, but not by much.

Also, the thing about trying to ape ufotable is that that studio has a very strong sense of how to make things look cohesive, not just well-lit and drowned in color gradients. Basically, none of the characters look like they’re occupying the space they’re in, and while I could pretend to think that was intentional (since they’re not from the same plane as the humans), the effect is incredibly jarring.

Also, this show pulled the same trick as Butlers x Battlers and only remembered that it was supposed to have a plot in the last two minutes or so, after a very jarring transition away from a calm scene that makes it seem like it’s coming from literally nowhere. The guys may be mostly hot, but I can’t survive on eye candy alone, so I’m gonna pass on this one.

Final Thoughts – YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world. (sic)

I could have sworn I made a post about this, but evidently Tumblr ate it, so we’re gonna do this one again!

YU-NO was pretty immediately going to fall into the “dumb and boring” subgenre of modern sci-fi (which, hey, AFTERLOST is too), and that’s kind of surprising. It’s based on a visual novel, yeah, but it’s one that came out two decades ago (hence the reminders that the show is set in the nineties), and you’d think that they could fix some stuff or take their time making adaptational changes, but nope, we dive right into nonsense!

Almost literally, because the show begins with the protagonist’s birth (pretty much always a dumb decision unless you have the gravitas of Assassin’s Creed II), and quickly demonstrates just how trashy it is by presenting us with a teacher wearing a lacy corset under her open work shirt, and a protagonist whose reaction to the news of a new transfer student is “I’m gonna flash my dick in front of everyone when she comes in”. We also get the setup for the “stepmom who isn’t related to me by blood” route, and the “naked chick who showed up, kissed me, and then disappeared” route, and I just don’t have the patience for 26 episodes of this.

You know, between This Art Club Has a Problem!, Tsukigakirei, and Hinamatsuri, Studio feel. was coming pretty close to a hit streak, but between Island last fall and this for the next two seasons, I’m afraid it may have been a fluke. (For the record, Tsukigakirei’s 10/10 still stands.)

Final Thoughts – Cinderella Nine

Look, if TMS Entertainment was going to make two shows this season, and the first looked as amazing as Fruits Basket, it’s kind of inevitable that the other one couldn’t possibly look good, but still…

I want to preface this review by saying that I have no problem with the idea of shows about girls playing sports. Cinderella Nine pretty immediately sets itself up as a League of Their Own-style demonstration of the difficulty of being a girls’ team playing a sport dominated by the men’s league, and if it seemed like it could manage to pull that off, I’d be totally behind it, but it’s just so clear from this first episode that this show can’t make it work.

I’m gonna get the smaller complaint out of the way; the setup for the characters is as generic as they come. Not a single one out of the four girls set up in the premiere seem like they would be even remotely capable of handling baseball, particularly the one who wears a kigurumi hood everywhere she goes, including school, and upon someone pulling it away from her face, is genuinely surprised for a moment that she can suddenly see better. There are underdogs, and then there’s this cast of boring nobodies.

But then there’s the much bigger problem – this is one of the worst-looking sports shows I’ve ever seen. It’s maybe one step above My Sister, My Writer. The first half of the episode features almost no motion at all, lots of animation shortcuts, and a lot of wide shots that pull out so that the characters don’t have to be animated. I spent a generous portion of this premiere wondering if something had happened to the inbetweens, because there are so few that it looks like a flipbook that someone ripped every second page out of.

So, with no effort towards making the cast interesting, and no effort towards making the show look good…This one’s a very easy skip. As weird as I found Mix, I’d rather watch that, or give Ace of Diamond a second chance (if I had time to watch the massive backlog of episodes, anyway.)

Premiere Impressions – Fairy gone (sic)

A highly impressive and aesthetically interesting fantasy story.

In the Victorian era, a destructive war was fought using “fairies” – rather terrifying, Persona-esque magical creatures – bonded to soldiers through possession. A decade later, the very use of fairies or magic is completely illegal, making anyone still able to use a fairy a valuable target for mob recruitment…or for a secret government task force.

It’s easy to contrast this one with Midnight occult civil servants, and Fairy gone would be the pretty clear winner in that regard. P.A. Works can simply create a much better-looking product than LIDENFILMS can, and while it’s not ufotable shiny or anything, Fairy gone is still a good-looking show that gave us some well-choreographed action scenes in this premiere. I’m a little iffy on the CGI used for the fairies – the moment when one of them vanishes to return to its owner was pretty unconvincing – but it does help to distinguish them in shots with normal characters, since the show overall is running a pretty dark color palette.

I’m a little worried about the story devolving, though. We’ve seen the childhood friends on opposite sides story over and over again, and I would really hate to see this devolve into asinine nonsense like

Sirius

did. Given that the scriptwriter’s only previous credit is creating

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash

, that could go either way.

Final Thoughts – AFTERLOST

I’m sorry, Madhouse made this? This trainwreck of the medium?

Backing up a bit, AFTERLOST is based on what is apparently a very popular mobile game, which I would not have guessed based on this premiere, and I’ll give it credit for that…but that’s about it. I learned my lesson last year from ReRideD, and I’m not gonna give the next sci-fi thriller a shot just because of my own optimism, particularly when this looks several orders of magnitude worse.

AFTERLOST is attempting to tell the story about a universe where a city has up and vanished along with several hundred people, leaving just a crater in its place, but apparently life around the crater goes on as usual. The plot – a girl is rescued from her government captivity by a man who has taken on the job of escorting her into ground zero, where her father, who was supposed to have died in the LOST event, is apparently waiting – makes no sense whatsoever. If anything, it sounds like a really unimaginative take on Made in Abyss, except with none of the worldbuilding or atmosphere or effort.

Seriously, I’m shocked that Madhouse could make something that looked this awful, and the sheer gall of airing it in the same season as One Punch Man’s long-awaited followup (a project the studio was originally working on) is just…This studio’s got some nerve.