Spring Streaming Season Part Three: Boys Will Be Boys

The Spring Season also brings us a healthy batch (or heaping pile, depending on your tastes) of new anime blockbusters from the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump and the fattening wallets of Toei Animation. In the first installment of these reviews, I talked about potentially "unforgettable" anime, but these are the ones we'll REALLY remember for years. Why is that? Because they'll be running for years and years and decades, until the cash cow milk runs dry.

SKET Dance
Just about any frequent Shonen Jump reader will agree with the following statement: to be successful, a Jump series needs to have either an interesting setting or interesting characters. While SKET Dance is plenty watchable and good fun, it is blazingly obvious that it features neither qualities.

SJ franchises in the past have had diverse and fascinating settings, such as a "Grand Line" inhabited by pirates, or maybe a "Soul Society" where shinigami lurk. Not for SKET Dance though, which settles for a normal high school home to (mostly) normal students. This unnamed mystery school is home to the SKET Dan, a small club (Okay, trio) dedicated to helping people (SKET is short for Support Kindness Encouragement Troubleshoot) with problems, a la after school special, though they will occasionally do odd jobs like taking care of monkeys (?). Only one of these members of SKET Dan is at all interesting, the brainiac Switch, who is shy enough to only talk out of a simulated computer voice, but egotistical enough to declare one moment the "Switch, you're Awesome!" Segment. However, Switch is given less attention than the remaining two thirds of the group, Himeko, a boring example of the "tough chick" cliche, and the protagonist, Bossun, your typical SJ funny guy with a secret power (in this case, goggles that make him more focused [?] ). In short, though the show can still get better, the horribly straightforward concept bars it from greatness.
SKET Dance is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Blue Exorcist
When the Blue Exorcist manga made its North American debut from Viz a few months back, it was received a generally warm welcome from the blogging community at large, though often noting that the first chapter was... not so great. I can't really say how accurate these opinions are, as I have yet to get to reading the manga. 10 bucks is a lot of money to plunk down on a new manga that will likely take me 10 minutes to read (What can I say? I'm quick with shonen), so I decided I would sample the series through the anime, and I am glad to report that if the manga is at all as enjoyable as the anime (save the apparently bland first manga chapter), then Blue Exorcist has a good chance of joining the ranks of the best shonen manga.

The plot of these first two episodes (which cover the aforementioned bland first chapter) is rather cliched: Trash-talking badass Rin and his brother Yukio have been raised by the kindly (but also badass) priest Father Fujimoto. However, Fujimoto is not really Rin's father in any way other than his title, as Rin is actually the spawn of Satan! After a violent encounter with Satan and some other demons, Father Fujimoto is dead and Rin vows to become an exorcist and "Beat the shit out of Satan." This is story is kind of silly (And when in the christian bible were there ever demons at all like the ones in this show?), the series makes the creaky cliches feel new again with impeccable pacing and snappy dialogue. The mix of familiar tropes and bold storytelling is comparable to Fullmetal Alchemist, another shonen series by a female author. Overall, Blue Exorcist is a fun, exciting new series that deserves attention for the outfits alone, not to mention all the other great stuff.
Blue Exorcist is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Toriko
Of all the current (by which I mean less than 10 years old) series running in the Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump magazine (not counting Jump Square, V Jump, Jump X, etc.), the second best would probably be Toriko, second only to the fantastic unlicensed comedy Beelzebub. Though I have yet to getting to reading past the first volume, it impressed me enough that I was actually moderately excited about Toei's hotly anticipated new anime adaption. The anime was good enough, but as an adaption, the show is sorely disappointing.

The anime, just like the manga, is set in a Gourmet era where mutated animals are as delicious as they are deadly. Meet Toriko, the most badass gourmet hunter ever, and his milquetoast assistant Komatsu. Together they defeat and devour the most terrifying and tasty animals ever! GRAAAH! Not exactly the most substance-heavy, but unless you're a devout member of PETA, it's good fun nonetheless. Even so, the anime version is neigh-unwatchable, for just one simple reason: the color scheme. Toriko was not a particularly pretty series in the first place, but this just destroys it. Bright colors are a good choice for saturday-morning type cartoons like this, but this just goes too far! Pink gators? Green apes? Ugh! The adaption's one saving grace is the inexplicable casting of Rumi Park (Fullmetal Alchemist's Ed, Nana's Nana Osaki) as Komatsu. Even though this can be very distracting, it's weirdly entertaining to hear the voice of an alchemist and a punk rocker reduced to a complete and utter wimp.
Toriko is streaming on Funimation.


Also Streaming
Aria the Scarlet Ammo, Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi, Tiger and Bunny, Tono to Issho, Battle Girls - Time Paradox

AND THAT IS ALL

Spring Streaming Season Part Two: Revenge of the Little Sister

Ucch, Moe. On this blog, I have previously defended the style/genre/cult/whatever at a time when no-one seemed to see any good in it, but that's besides the point. 90% of Moe, like everything else, is crud, and TV anime seems to be one of the main creators of that percentage. With last season's drop in moe shows, not to mention the whole Bill 156 thing, I thought to my self, "Well, that's the end of petty syndicated moe blobs," and breathed an innocent sigh of relief. I even speculated which ugly, perverted trend was next. Oy vey, how did I not see this coming. This season sees a resurgence in the cult of cuteness' vice-like grip on the tellie, with at least 5 shows (not even counting what's not streaming) beaming to your screen for 20 minutes you will never get back. Here's my take on four of these titles, My Odinary Life, A Bridge to the Starry Skies, We Without Wings, and Astarotte's Toy.

My Ordinary Life
One of the more interesting (or at least less offensive) sides of the moe symptom is 4-koma. 4 koma are four-panel comic strips, but unlike their western cousins, are often serialized in magazines dedicated to them, rather than newspapers.And with magazines means demographics, so there are countless moe 4-koma mags. And these moe 4-koma are perhaps the purest example of moe. Sexuality is completely absent from these series, and instead places strong emphasis on kawaii cuteness, witch is perfectly fine. The one notable problem with these comics is that, like our comic strips, these 4-koma are so decidedly innocent that very little happens and it's boring and not funny. The key difference is that instead of this dullness pleasing kindly grandmas, it is intended to sucker LFB (a term coined by Erica "Okazu" Friedman, short for "Loser Fan Boy"), slash fiction reading, slobbering Otaku. I expected My Ordinary Life, an anime adaption of a manga of the same name, to be another one of these droll experiences, and even though I was right to the extent that this is another friggin' show about cute girls in high school who look about 6 years old, the series does have one trick up its sleeve: it's actually funny.

My Ordinary Life follows a couple of girl's, well, ordinary lives, while casually undermining said ordinariness. One girl is actually a robot. One boy commutes to school by goat. Bumping into a random passerby creates an explosion taken right out of Akira. The brilliance of the show is that it balances the ordinary and the not without ever devoting itself entirely to either extreme. If all a moe series needs to be good is to go well with a cup of tea, then My Ordinary Life is perfect for those who like their tea with a bit of sugar.
My Ordinary Life is streaming on Crunchyroll.

A Bridge to the Starry Skies
If you are reading this, as I'm sure the more sensible of you have already stopped reading, do know that this anime sickened me. It sickened me to the very core of my moral fibers. To give the show credit, I did have a very strong emotional response: Those poor voice actresses! Doesn't it hurt to talk in a high pitch voice like that? I feel sorry for everyone who worked on this turkey. The animators who are only allowed to put care in to the depiction of panty shots, and must otherwise resort to bad CGI busses and cardboard-cutout motion. The director(s) and screenwriter(s), who for all I know are truly creative people, forced to cull from the Database. What do I mean by Database? Let's take a look at the plot:

We begin with a childhood memory. AWWW! Now cut to bad CGI bus. Self-insert-fantasy character H of earlier childhood memory is on bus with his shota-moe brother. Take it from me, younger brothers are never that nice around an older sibling. Some creaky exposition reveals that they have gone to the place of CHILDHOOD MEMORY AWWW! They get lost. Then, a monkey steals Shota-boy's hat, reminding us that we are supposed to this what we are watching is "wacky."  H chases monkey, falls off a tree, and realizes... he's at the lake from his childhood memory! AWWW! Meanwhile, shota-boy wonders where his oniichan is. Then, cute girl! She is most certainly the one from the childhood memory (AWWW!), and gives us the show's first panty shot, also reminding us the show is supposed to be "wacky," but in a different way. Then, it's the "Oh no I fell and kissed you!" scene. I could go on for longer, but I think you get the idea. Anyway, skip this.
A Bridge to the Starry Skies is streaming on Crunchyroll.

We, Without Wings - under the innocent sky
Many moe and harem anime in the past have what I like to call "the Self-Insert Male Protagonist" (or SIMP, for short). Normally the only prominent male, the SIMP has essentially no personality, and is surrounded by cute girls. The reason for this is that the SIMP is really the LFB, who fantasizes about being the chick-magnet SIMP, or more to the point, replacing the SIMP. The SIMP may be meek, and even be hated by most of the girls, but this only adds to the LFB's fantasy, creating tantalizing thoughts, such as If I were him, I'd do that different! However, We, Without (Chicken) Wings (Sorry, couldn't help it) does not feature a single SIMP, even though the characters are possibly based on that very same LFB demographic. This is because the two (Two!) main characters are complete and utter arses. The arses in question are Shusuke and Hayato, backstabbing, lecherous money-grubbers who happen to frequent the same bar (maid cafe?). Watch as they try, fail, and try, and fail (etc) to pick up women! Fun!

It's nice to see that the folks at work on this series are actually putting some effort into their job, because it made the show significantly better than I would have expected. The humor is funny, the pacing is sharp, and the characters are interesting. That does not save the show, though. The anime is crammed with over the top, distracting fanservice, some of which is literally pedophillic. I simply cannot imagine continuing to watch a series in which a girl who cannot be older than 15 asks one of the protagonist about his "monster." It's really a shame though, because the show seems to be brimming with promise. Oh, well.
We, Without Wings - under the innocent sky is streaming on Crunchyroll.

five minutes of Astarotte's Toy 
*Repeatedly bangs head against wall* Excuse me. Sorry. OK. No matter how hard I try, I can't really seem to get past the first five minutes or so of Astarotte's Toy. So, let me give you a review of those five mintues. Here we go. We begin in random bright colors magical land where a girl who looks five-years old gets chased by a cute dragon while being told to do her homework. Then the girl, Astarotte, screams "I HATE... MEN!" Still with me? Then in an absurdly sparkly bath scene we find out that Astarotte is a Ten-year old Succubus, which apparently means she has to start "sucking the life-seed" out of men. That was when I started banging my head against the wall.
Astarotte's Toy is streaming on Crunchyroll, but I'm not giving you a link. Think of it as a favor.


BILL 156
I wonder how, in a post-Bill 156 world, that a show like Astarotte's Toy gets on TV. In fact, how did ANY of these shows get on TV? Rather than a decrease in shockingly awful moe, we have gotten more. The problem is, even though Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo (and also a homophobic, misogynist, nationalist pig), believe the bill is anti-child pornography, it's not! The bill prevents "offencive" material portraying sexuality from being sold to minors, and whether you're for or against that, it doesn't change a hell of a lot. The really bad stuff is already 18+, and the Bill is vague enough that subtexts will generally not be much of a problem. AND MOE IS BUILT ON SUBTEXT. Mind-numbingly obvious subtext, but it's still subtext. So, nothing has changed. Nothing Will change. We are doomed.

IN PART THREE: JUMP For Joy

Spring Streaming Season Part One: Say it Four Times Fast

The winter season was disappointing. Few shows were especially good to begin with, and two of the best, Level E and Fractale, never found their footing and floundered their great potential. Even so, the year may bring us a great new anime yet, as we see in the spring season. Here are four new shows with promise to be remembered for years to come: [C], Hanasaku Iroha, Deadman Wonderland, and Steins;Gate.

[C] - Control: The Money and Soul of Possibility
Fuji TV's Noitamina programing block has consistently produced engaging contemporary anime, some failures (Fractale), others successes (Eden of the East), but all ambitious and stylish exercises in pushing the limits of TV anime. [C] may be Noitamina's most ambitious production to date, a thinking man's Yu Gi Oh where entrepreneurs duke it out in a fantasy world for financial success. Kimimaro Yoga is a second year economics student who aspires to live a normal, stable life. All this changes when he meets Masakaki, a strange, jester-like figure who gives him a credit card granting him access to the Financial District, a simulated reality where entrepreneurs, or entres for short, duel weekly for access to vast fortunes. Win a duel, and you're set till next time. Lose, and you go bankrupt and are doomed to spend the rest of your life penniless.

First of all, this anime is a total mind f@#k. Kudos to Kenji Nakamura for creating what may be the most bizarre otaku-inclined creation since FLCL. The show is consistently flashy, stylized, interesting, mysterious, and most of all involving. We have yet to see if [C] can achieve anything deeper than that, but appears to hint at rich layers beneath the surface. [C] may not be the best anime you'll see all year, but it will definitely be worth your time. After all, time is money.
[C] - Control: The Money and Soul of Possibility is streaming on Funimation

Hanasaku Iroha (The ABCs of Blooming)
Have you ever seen a TV show that made you feel smarter? If you have not, Hanasaku Iroha could very well be your first. Iroha is a fun little anime about love, life, growing up, and a little inn in the country. The inn in question is Kissuiso, a hot springs run by the stern grandmother of the series' protagonist, Ohana Matsumae. Ohana is a resourceful girl (and I mean really resourceful, not just shojo heroine resourceful) who practically raised herself due to her single mom's negligence. Said negligent mom is also the reason Ohana has gone to Kissuiso, as she has run off to elope with her boyfriend. Ohana takes the trip to the country well, after some romantic complications and other problems at home, and dreams of a storybook adventure in the country, rife with beautiful landscapes and kindly elderly women who give kids candy. Her dream is immediately crushed upon arrival at Kissuiso. To put it in Ohana's words, "Yes, it really was a fairy tale. A pretty girl reached out her hand to me... and told me to die!" Despite this, Ohana works diligently, and learns to love her new surroundings.

I cannot put into words how lovely this show is. Free of pandering exploitation (save one bizarre yet clever sequence in the third episode), Iroha is easily the most genuine and heart warming thing you will see all year. Not only that, but the show is aesthetically beautiful too; Look at the detail in the background art, the softness of the character designs, the subtle ebb and flow of the animation. This is easily the best anime of the season, if not the whole year. If the show is about blooming, there's no way series director  Masahiro Ando is a bud. I look forward to seeing where this show will go, and how Ohana will blossom.
Hanasaku Iroha (The ABCs of Blooming) is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Deadman Wonderland
I organized this reviews to only spotlight the shows that looked like they had Classic potential, or at least some staying power, but I'm sad to report that Deadman Wonderland is nothing but what you would call a "Genre Show." However, it is still a good show, and worth the 60 minutes that watching the first three episodes took up. Based on the manga of the same name by Jinsei Kataoka and Kazuma Kondou (published *partially* in english by the now defunct Tokyopop ^_^), Deadman Wonderland is a pulse-pounding, prison-break-grindhouse-thriller-whatsit about and emo dude named Ganta whose classmates all get murdered and stuff and gets sent to prison even though he's obviously innocent. And of course, this being anime, it's not a normal penitentiary but an !EVIL MOTHER****ING HEVY METAL PSYCHO DEATH KILLER MONSTER JAIL FROM HELL! - Deadman Wonderland, a privately owned prison built on the ruins of Tokyo (Shades of Akira?) that doubles as an amusement park where prisoners must star in potentially deadly performances. Throw in lots o' bad@$$, and you've got an anime.

The premise may just be plain exploitation, but you have to give the show credit: it's friggin' gripping. I knew this anime was not merely grindhouse after only the first few miniutes of exposition, a seemingly bland scene with some soon-to-be-dead high schoolers chatting about how cool the field trip to Deadman Wonderland will be. These opening moments are infused with a palpable sense of dread, a mood which carries through the whole series and has yet to fail to impress me. The story is trashy pulp brilliance, but the viewer is forced to take it seriously. The action is tense and lavishly animated, possibly improving on the manga (can't say for sure, as I haven't read it). That's not to say the show's THAT good. I Often wished the show would stop taking itself so dang seriously, eliminate all self-pity, and just focus on the pulp. And no matter how you slice it, supporting characters like Shiro are as one dimensional as a straight line drawn with a pencil. Ganta is a far from a unique protagonist, a shallow imitation of Shinji Ikari with some instability and McFarlene-esque super powers thrown in for fun. I'm not loving this anime, but I think I'll keep watching for now.
Deadman Wonderland is streaming on Crunchyroll

STEINS;GATE
And so, we begin with a mind f@#k, and end with a mind f@#k. In fact, mind f@#k is the only word I can think of to explain Steins;Gate, a show that cannot be described, only experienced. I cannot really say what the plot is, but I do think it has one. Mad scientists and conspiracy theories, I guess. Anyway, the main problem with the show at the moment is that there isn't really anything more to it than that. I guess the idea of a mindf@#k anime with neither GAINAX, Mamoru Oshii, or Noitamina attached to the project isn't a good idea. So far, I'm a tad indifferent to Steins;Gate, but I'd like to see where it goes.

( a quick minor aside: the fat dude on the far left looks a bit like me, which is the main motivation for my continued viewing of this show)
Steins;Gate is streaming on Crunchyroll

IN PART TWO: The Good, The Bad, The Moe