Final Thoughts – Holmes of Kyoto

The spell has been broken, and it did not take much longer than my last review.

Let me start with the most obvious problem here; the seventh episode is one of the ugliest messes I’ve seen in modern animation, with the episode being mostly comprised of off-model talking heads and panning shots, and the post-processing just can’t save it. Even the color palette has started to look completely dull as the tones on the screen just get closer and closer together, only making it more noticeable that the characters are being drawn incorrectly.

And while that is a problem that could, for all I know, be resolved by the next episode, I don’t see the plot recovering. We’ve gone from low-stakes art mysteries to a low-stakes, nearly parodic refitting of the Sherlockian characters into a story where nobody is likely to end up dead, and while that can work for a show with the childish excitement of something like Milky Holmes, it doesn’t work for something meant for adults, because it asks way too much in terms of investment for the quality of the show. I can’t possibly care about Moriarty when basically all he’s done thus far is act way too menacingly about his art forgery while the show tries to paint him and Holmes as bitter enemies. For this to have worked, Holmes of Kyoto needed far more dramatic stakes, and there just aren’t any.

3/10, dropped after seven episodes.

Manga Review – The Bride and the Exorcist Knight, Volume One

It’s rare that someone uses the phrase “rapey twelve year old”, but here we are.

The Bride and the Exorcist Knight is the story of Anne, who at birth was chosen by Mephisto to be his bride once she turned seventeen. However, on her seventeenth birthday, she is rescued by the young exorcist Haru, who declares that she will be his betrothed instead.

This is not the worst premise I’ve ever heard, but in most cases, Haru would be painted as cute, or precocious. Instead, the author settled on horny. Haru is constantly trying to get Anne to sleep in the same bed with him, to kiss her, and to make intimate contact with her (to the point of licking her every few pages) against her will, and I remind you, this character is twelve. He comes off as just incredibly creepy and intolerable, and his attitude is “I’m literally the best in the entire world and nobody should question this”, which is just excellent for a hero we’re meant to root for.

The pacing is also strange as hell, making me think that the first chapter is just the one-shot created to pitch the series and was not reworked at all, because half the time I felt like I had to be missing panels because of things that just abruptly happened. The flow might also be to blame, because this author does not know how to indicate the passage of time at all. The art isn’t terrible, but I only barely managed to pay attention to it at all.

The fact that the mangaka is female just makes me seriously question things, because honestly the worst part about this is that Anne seems to be coming around to liking it, and if this were a normal bodice ripper with a normal male lead, I would at least kind of get how some women could be into it. Not, however, when the cocky asshole in question is a shota boy trying to declare his ownership of a teenage girl (which he explicitly does, multiple times).

Needless to say, this one is dropped like a hot rock. 1/10.

Manga Review – Black Torch, Volume 1

It might be a little standard, but I’m down for the formula shake up.

Okay, so, take Bleach, subtract Tite Kubo’s terrible habits, change Rukia into a moody, male demon cat, and put it in a monthly magazine to give it time to polish, and you’ve pretty much got Black Torch. Volume one only has three chapters, so there’s not a great deal to talk about, but I really like where this is going so far. I like the modern idea of taking a shounen formula and giving it a monthly run to allow for more creativity and artistic quality (also see the Boruto manga), and Black Torch has taken that time to develop an earnestly edgy art style and more realized personality in its lead character. Jiro is what Ichigo is claimed to be; he’s a punk who doesn’t really give a shit about other people, but is highly protective of animals. He’s very brash and headstrong, and fights constantly with the demon, Rago, that currently is essentially reverse-possessing him of his own will. Rago is also very brash, but is cold to people primarily because his motivation is his death wish. He didn’t ask to be saved, but lends his power to Jiro out of a sense of obligation and a feeling that Jiro will use his power to protect people… Eventually.

The first chapter almost exactly resembles the opening of Bleach, as well, though from there it diverges quickly and goes in a very different direction. We see a few creepy demon fights, but there’s also a brutal, effective fight scene between Jiro and his grandfather, upset at his alliance with a demon, and I will say that these are some of the best fights I’ve seen in a first volume.

Overall, if you’re on the lookout for something a little edgier than My Hero Academia or Boruto, this will absolutely do you fine.

Score: 8/10

Manga Review – Hanger, Vol 1

I’m bored, so let’s get some manga reviews going!

Hanger is difficult for me to speak critically about, because it’s pretty objectively stupid and self-indulgent, and yet I loved it anyway, likely for purely nostalgic reasons.

We have a twenty-minutes-into-the-future, mild cyberpunk setting where people use nanomachines for medicine and the incredibly dangerous, highly addictive “high-drug” getting abused all over the place. High-drug apparently gives people superpowers forever once they’ve started using it, at the expense of extreme withdrawal symptoms (including, for one character, irresistible lust for his partner or whomever is closest, and for the only named female character, the apparent inability to ever have sex, for some reason). Offenders who are arrested are able to partner up with certain officers to bring in other offenders in order to reduce their ludicrously long sentences, with the caveat that leaving the presence of their officer will basically fry their brains, thus creating a situation where the main guys end up moving in together.

Literally everything about this setting seems designed just to get our main couple together, and it’s really dumb, but inexplicably I found myself enjoying it earnestly. Maybe I’m just reminded of reading terrible lemon stories on deviant art as a teenager, but to anyone that hasn’t had that experience, I probably wouldn’t recommend this unless you’re desperate for trashy BL.

The art is decent, though, if not playing it safe for the fujoshi demographic. I’m not a fan of the unrealistic costume design for practical officers, but nothing else about this setting is realistic or logical anyway, so that’s basically a nitpick.

The characters are enjoyable but not particularly deep – like I said, this reads like a work of fiction written by a teenager – most of them are pretty easily identified archetypes that don’t break the mold, but I didn’t necessarily end up hating any of them.

I want to comment on the pacing here, though, because the author seems to be sprinting a little through the story. The first chapter alone covers enough story for at least half a normal tankobon, and by the end of this first book, we’ve already seen a sexual encounter (though not between the main two), which might be what kept me hooked – while there’s certainly melodrama, I appreciate a romantic story that doesn’t take forever to get to the point, and even though our main couple hasn’t admitted their attraction to each other yet, I get the feeling that plot point isn’t far off.

Overall, this book isn’t particularly good. If you can’t ironically enjoy things, you probably won’t like this, but if you’re down to either really stretch your suspension of disbelief, or laugh your way through a clumsy mess, you’ll probably like this. I fell somewhere between the two.

Score: 6/10

Updated Impressions – Lupin III Part 5

Lupin continues to be just the best damn thing on the air.

And it doesn’t even really have to try that hard, because the updated visuals and setting have done so much of the heavy lifting for it that the Adventure in France just seems effortlessly good; like all it has to do is continue to be exactly what it is. I can’t understate how good this show looks; the animation is smooth as a just-opened can of peanut butter and the character designs are classic and timeless. The stories alternate between expertly-crafted thrillers to rival Cowboy Bebop (the soundtrack included), and incredibly entertaining throwbacks to previous eras of the show. The pacing here is great, with each present-day arc lasting four or five episodes and getting satisfying conclusions before taking a break and then moving on to whole new capers, so you never feel bored because something cool is pretty much always bound to happen soon. Twelve episodes in, I think it’s safe to say that even after fifty years, Lupin has absolutely still got the moves.

Score so far: 9/10

(to clarify; I don’t give perfect scores until the show is concluded)

Updated Impressions – Revue Starlight

It’s getting better…slowly.

Six episodes in, Revue Starlight has managed to lean a little harder on its melodrama and focus up on its spotlight characters rather than trying to include everyone in every episode even when they aren’t relevant to the conflict. At the moment, it’s working, but it’s not quite far enough to elevate it yet.

I’m really hoping there’s a big twist coming regarding the Auditions, as they’ve become more or less a formula plot staple at this point, a device used to resolve character drama, which makes it seem a little lazy when we still don’t even really know what’s going on, and boy is Revue Starlight just relishing in its big secret.

At this point, it seems pretty clear that I’m not quite going to get the melodramatic angst I was looking for here (that’s pretty much just coming from HANEBADO!), so I don’t know how much Revue Starlight can do to pull itself up further. I’m still enjoying it for sure, but unless it makes a pretty sizeable tonal shift, I can’t see it being memorable enough to stand with its Bushiroad counterparts.

Score so far: 7/10

Updated Impressions – Happy Sugar Life

This show creeps me out in the best way.

I genuinely cannot think of a single show to properly compare to Happy Sugar Life. The atmosphere of this show is kind of masterful in how uncomfortable a viewing experience it very intentionally is. It balances moments that look cute on the outside but are desperately terrible in the subtext, and does so like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

I wrote a really long initial write-up for this during my first impression round, and my feelings are still more or less the same. As of right now, Happy Sugar Life has elicited more of a response from me than anything else this season, and it’s still walking an incredibly thin tightrope. It’s a show full of crazy, awful people and the audience is not meant to root for them. Yet you still might find yourself at least empathizing with some of their plight, because they’re all tormented by their problems in ways they may or may not be aware of.

Take Satou, for example. By this point, we understand that she has an incredibly childish view of love, despite having a reputation for having gotten around the block. She has abducted a child and is keeping her prisoner in an apartment she got by murdering the owners, and literally any threat to this situation is enough to drive her insane and bring out an incredibly unnerving, cold attitude that will do anything to keep what she’s put together. It seems pretty clear that she’s not even sexually attracted to Shio; her childish ideas extend to this relationship where the most explicit thing they do is a very chaste kiss. The show very wisely does not eroticize their activities in any way, to contrast the way she tends to act outside of the apartment.

Satou is absolutely insane, and there is no way this situation will end well for her, which is absolutely the right way to play this kind of story. Eventually, her awful actions will catch up with her as the rest of the cast begins to catch on to what’s going on. It’s all a matter of waiting for the other shoe to fully drop.

I also don’t know that I’ve mentioned this show’s direction yet, which seems very inspired by Akiyuki Shinbo (which makes sense, as this director worked with him on the original Lyrical Nanoha and was behind A’s and Strikers) with the stark color work on a lot of the more dramatic shots. Visually, it’s one of the most interesting of the summer.

So, yeah, basically, this is the show I’m currently most impressed by this season…but boy, oh, boy, is it walking an incredibly thin line.

Score so far: 9/10

Updated Impressions – HANEBADO!

It’s exactly as drama-heavy as the premiere implied it would be.

HANEBADO is technically a sports show, but in this case, the sport in question is mostly a means to an end, that end being really angsty drama. I have no problem with that at all, particularly because a) the drama in question is believable, and b) we still actually see the characters playing a lot of badminton. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from Battery the Animation a few years ago, which presented itself as a baseball-themed show but in which baseball was played exactly once in the first five episodes, instead giving us a really limp drama that I dropped after five episodes after the main character was stripped naked by the other boys on his team and practically raped and he just brushed it off and didn’t report it to an adult, not because he didn’t want people to know, but because it was apparently just that meaningless.

The story in HANEBADO is a lot more palatable, and relatable, as the main character’s primary motivations stem from her desire for parental approval – her mother’s pursuit of the sport led her to essentially abandon her daughter to live with her grandparents and move to Europe to raise a prodigy, and while that in particular isn’t terribly relatable, her quest to compete and force her mom to acknowledge her again absolutely is, particularly if, like me, you weren’t the favorite child in your family.

The production is also holding up splendidly, and while the CG-cheating is noticeable in some places, it’s used to good, clever effect here. LIDENFILMS is doing really impressive work here, though occasionally it comes out rough around the edges.

Score so far 8/10

Final Thoughts – The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar

Yeah, I bailed on this idea pretty quickly.

I was expecting Master of Ragnarok to be ridiculous, as its first episode presents, but what I get instead is boring. Like, there’s a plot happening here and everything, but I could not possibly be bothered to care.

I gave up early, too. I only made it through the second episode before deciding that this endeavor was just not worth my time when I’m already basically obligated to watch Sword Art Online Alicization next season (because the community discourse will inevitably focus heavily on it), and I already knew I was gonna give this a bad score.

That being said, I would like to explain my score in slightly more detail here. I’m giving The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar a 2/10. By all rights, it’s unwatchable, and that might lead people to wonder why I didn’t give it the same 1/10 I gave shows like How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord or In Another World With My Smartphone, and that’s because that score is reserved for shows that I consider not just bad, but offensive. At some point I’ll be talking more in detail about the Hall of Shame, but I don’t consider Ragnarok to be on that level of awfulness because the concept could have been saved by just making different decisions over the course of its creation.

Basically, what I mean is, there is a timeline somewhere where The Master of Ragnarok exists and is at least decent. I cannot imagine such a possibility for Angel’s 3Piece!, so it’s a 1 instead of a 2.

2/10, dropped after two episodes.

Updated Impressions – Holmes of Kyoto

I’m honestly surprised how much I’m enjoying this show.

It’s one of the less impressive productions of the season, with most shots being talking heads, and the post-processing effects being…questionable (see episode 2 in the forest), but the low-stakes mystery stories are pretty relaxing, even if most of them are solved very quickly.

The rest of the runtime is filled with little character-building moments that slowly build on continuity, as the people helped by the title character often go on to be friends of the main cast in a way that actually feels pretty organic. It’s soothing in sort of the same way as Laid-Back Camp, though it’s not quite as unique.

Six episodes into its run, I’m not really sure what it can do to improve, because the production clearly isn’t going to get any better, but I’d be fine with just sticking it out at this exact level of quality.

Score so far: 7/10