Amnesia
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Amnesia
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Episode 177 – Public Schools in Japan
Mitsugi and Kram have first-hand experience working in public schools in Japan. They have seen the children, taught the classes, and mingled with the teachers so they offer invaluable insight into the “real world” of the Japanese school system. Is it anything like anime? Or does anime just sell us lies? Listen to this episode to find out!
Reviews: Amnesia and Senyuu
Impressions: Ginga Kikōtai Majestic Prince and Valverave the Liberator
Magi
Plot Summary:
In a lose “retelling” of stories from the classic Arabian Knights tales the story is set in a fantasy desert land filled with many peoples and countries. In this land magic and the fantastic are still very much alive as the world is filled with Rukah, the magical life source in every person. Only a couple people in the world are known as Magi, those with the power to draw endlessly from the Rukah and use their powers to suppose their chosen King candidates. A young Magi, Aladdin, has begun to discover what it means to be a Magi as he explores the world with his new friends the brave and kind Alibaba and the strong and mysterious Morgiana.
Technical:
Magi is based off a maga which started in 2009 and is currently still running with 16 volumes.
Staff~
The director Koji Masunari has little other notable credits other than the Read or Die OVA. Which speaks well for the action sequences in Magi and the attention to detail in that respect shows.
Otherwise this series has a mac-truck metric ton of episode directors, story boarders and key animators. Most notable is the art director Ayu Kawamoto who worked on No.6, Kodomo no Jikan as the art director.
Studio~
The animation was done by A-1 Studios which is a subsidiary of Sony Music’s Aniplex. They’ve worked on other shows such as Black Butler, Big Windup, and Fairy Tail.
Animation~
The fight scenes are really well animated and the animation, especially in the beginning of the series is fairly good by current standards. Not amazing, but good. The fight scenes remain consistent throughout but other animation gets really sloppy toward toward the end.
Music~
Music is catchy, diverse, and well done. It’s not going to win separate awards for music but it’s above average in my book for a shonen show. The man who did the music, Shiro Sagisu, also did music for many other shows including Bleach, Evangellion – including the reboots, and His and Her Circumstances to name a few.
Review:
This review will be developing as I review later seasons. The fact remains that the series will be more than one season and at the end of the first it has a literal “to be continued” type ending. Since I know it will be getting more I won’t entirely fault it for this.
I’d also like to say that I haven’t read the manga, and being a good girl and doing my homework I have discovered many people lamenting about the pacing of the adaptation relative to the Manga. I’ll touch on this more in-depth in a bit if I think not reading the manga is a pro… or con…
So, the first season…
The series starts out with a bang. Right off the bat we’re meeting the main characters, being introduced to an engaging world, and getting involved in back-stories involving poverty, purpose in life, and slavery, to name a few. We meet Aladdin first who you know off the bat has a greater purpose but you don’t really know why yet. Aladdin meets Alibaba who wants to be a dungeon capturer. Dungeons are these large tower places with treasure rooms, inside are djins who will lend their power to the capturer and massive wealth.
Within the first five episodes they capture a dungeon, seeming like the series has already completed its purpose of what it set out to do. But one amazing thing the series has going for it is progression. By the end of the first season capturing a dungeon doesn’t even seem like it’s that big of a deal anymore because the characters have moved so far past that.
But after these awesome first few episodes where we meet our main cast they end up splitting apart in a second arc that seems relatively slow, and comparatively pointless. The whole time you’re wondering if the characters you thought were the important ones actually are… spoiler, they are, despite this arc. Yes the arc ends up doing some things for character personal evolution and ends up being necessary, but the adaptation from the manga here I think is weak and lacking. I’m sure in the manga this part is much better. Or maybe, the anime is better because it blows through a “boring” part of the manga when they’re split… I don’t really know.
After the characters come back together, unsurprisingly, things pick up and get really interesting again. There are two more arcs following this, the third was my favorite and felt the most developed. The fourth was so-so. It felt like the progress that was made in the third arc was removed as characters just moved on from their achievements rather than building upon them in some way. Beyond that it felt like aspects of the fourth arc existed as simply a way to introduce more of the world that we won’t see till the second season. I read the ending is actually not a “manga ending” but an anime adaptation, I can’t confirm or not, but if they did make up an ending for the show it really wasn’t much of one.
But I’m not complaining, I want more of the series. It had great action, good humor, and really good characters. It does have flaws, obviously in the fact that I’m not able to sing a lot of praises with regards to the depth of story and at times it felt like it moved way too fast to have any more depth. But the series is entertaining and has everything you need to be a good shonen show. Action, characters, and battles that seem to get more and more impressive as time goes on.
I’ll be looking forward to future seasons. But since I have to review what is out right now I’m going to be forced to give it 3.5 flying turbans out of five. The reason why this score is low for all the good I’ve said about it is because of the ending and overall pacing that didn’t seem to allow for anything deeper. It’s not finished and so it just can’t get an amazing score. But on an entertainment level it falls pretty high for me. I think if you like shonen shows and enjoy this brand of fantasy then get on the show now because it may be a long running one…
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Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman
Studio: TMS Entertainment (Lupin III, Detective Conan, Baccano, Panda! Go, Panda!)
Dir. Hirofumi Ogura (Gintama, Inuyasha, Black Butler II, Samurai 7)
-BGR is his first head director gig
Wri. Tatsuto Higuchi + 3 others (AKB0048 Next Stage, Inazuma Eleven, Phi-Brain)
-Wrote six of twelve episodes, the most of the four writers
Music: Hiroshi Takaki (AKB0048, AKB0048 next stage, Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock [sequel to Bardock – Father of Goku])
SYNOPSIS
Taking place in Kyoto during the late 1800s, Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman tells the story of Manjiro, an nigh impoverished ne’er-do-well gambler who lives with his younger sister in her decorative chopsticks shop. But when night falls, he becomes the masked superhero Roman, an analogue of Robin Hood, taking and returning things that were unrightfully stolen from the lowly citizens of Edo-period Japan.
REVIEW
It’s so nice to see Monkey Punch’s work on the screen again. There’s so much personality conveyed in these character’s faces and body designs that it’s impossible to deny the artist’s influence on the audience’s connection to them. It’s a shame the animation couldn’t live up to the fantastic design. This show is ugly. Like, embarrassingly ugly. TMS Entertainment cut every conceivable corner to get this thing produced, saving a little scratch for some slightly nicer sequences toward the end of the season.
The characters aren’t anything we haven’t seen before. Besides the goofball hero Manjiro, there’s his cute little sister, a busty prostitute, a pervy old inventor, and a stoic badass. There’s also a foreign mad scientist of sorts who I believe is supposed to be German. He speaks Japanese very strangely and incorrectly writes the Japanese characters on the sign outside his clinic. He’s a pretty fun character, but I’m not sure if I should be offended by his depiction or not. He also slaps a woman in the last episode for basically no reason, and the show plays it for laughs. The main villain turns out to be a defected American Civil War general who has gone completely bonkers, wears an eye patch, and constantly sings “My Old Kentucky Home” in a crippling Japanese accent (all due respect to the voice actor; the poor guy is really doing his best). With the aforementioned exceptions, all the voice actors bring something nice to the table, especially Kazuya Nakai with Manjiro, a performer probably best known for his work on One Piece as Roronoa Zoro.
The story is light and fun, but not surprisingly it’s all a little formulaic. The series spends about half its runtime giving you very little backstory and showing you how Manjiro and his crew of “get-backers” operate in largely episodic installments. The last half is a combination info-dumpy conversations, flashbacks, and some pretty cool and coherent action scenes that build up the larger conflict.
The music is great. The bygone big band style reminds one of the great Yuji Ouno and his incredible work on Lupin the 3rd. Some flourishes of traditional Japanese instruments make it its own, but it’s the swing music of Monkey Punch’s flagship franchise that truly sells it.
If the music were the only anachronistic thing about the show, I’d be a lot happier with it, but the show’s pervasive goofiness gets the best of it at times. The show starts dipping into genres it has no business being in and clearly has no idea how to handle them with any sort of finesse. I can say with confidence that this is the first historical fiction I’ve ever seen with super sentai rangers, fusing mech suits, zombies, a giant laser cannon, and a one-eyed, gun-armed cyborg mounted on a mini-tank at the waist. Some of this stuff can be fun while watching it unfold, but there is no rhyme or reason for its existence.
The show took a little while to get off the ground. It wasn’t until the last five or six episodes that I started enjoying it. It doesn’t have very much to say beyond the rote good vs. evil, dealing with regret, and a little bit of family-doesn’t-always-mean-blood, but what it does it does pretty well.
3 Lupins out of 5.
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Girls Und Panzer
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Episode 176 – Circles of Anime Hell
Do you know about the Church of Mitsugi? Are you a subscriber to the manliness? Do you dream of ways sausage fits, in buns? Then this is the episode for you! It’s a Church of Mitsugi special telling you all you need to know about the Church, specifically, the circles of Anime Hell!
“A Chuch of Mitsugi special” – like the rules and cast outs that they hate.” – dino-anima-sorus
“A show just centered on the Holy Church of Mitsugi where you give us the 10 sins of anime.” – sh8keaspear
· 7 Circles of Anime Hell – The Circles of Anime Hell test your anime fandom and your existence as a man by visually feeding you some hellish anime content. All of the trials and tests that the Church strives to break down that one must undergo if they wish to exist as an anime fan.
o Circle 1 – “The Gate” – beach and hot springs episodes.
§ As you watch anime, prepare to endure tremendous amounts of garbage shit that is injected into anime where it both does and does not seem out of place.
§ Countless beach and hot springs episodes, even in horror anime (e.g. Another) and sci-fi space anime (e.g. Outlaw Star).
· Why did we have to awkwardly watch the most lifeless, completely unlikeable cast of characters of Another trying to have fun at the beach? (Like watching a guy have a tea party with love dolls) So strange and quite frankly dangerous old men could fill their eyes with pre-pubescent, middle school T&A.
· Why did Gene Starwind have to be dragged through the shit pile that was the hot spring episode of Outlaw Star? Why did the shows’ creators feel the need to find a Japanese Onsen in the middle of space? To see Aisha’s furry tits. That’s why.
o Circle 2 – “PVC Pedophiles” – Nasty people who buy a lot of PVC figures of very young girls.
§ It’s not a healthy world where grown men buy perverse manikin figures of little girls to put on their walls like trophies.
§ These are the primary market for Satan’s kiddy porn manufacturing ring.
§ The church encourages these people to cease the purchase of such figures as it may help to change the type of anime we are forced to watch. If the industry can’t make money off the naked girls, maybe they’ll stop putting them in anime.
· We as fans are partially responsible for the decay known as fan service and moe that has proliferated in the anime industry over the last 10 years.
· If we as fans don’t demand a higher level of quality from our anime content, the industry will just continue to keep us crap. So stop buying figures of moe, stop watching moe anime, stock buying DVDs, and maybe we can salvage what few brain cells we all have left.
o Circle 3 – “Elementary School Succubus” – Random ass and fan service where it doesn’t belong.
§ You decide that you can withstand the beach and hot springs episodes. So you continue deeper into the moe stench filled pit that is Anime Hell’s second circle.
§ In the second circle, you witness a great battle. It tempts and intrigues you with its serious plotlines and subject matter. SUDDENLY, you are distracted by the sight of 9 year old ass and enormous tits that sometimes move on their own as if they were alive. Welcome to the second circle; home of the elementary school succubus.
§ Welcome to a place where a story about war and the slaughter of 10s of thousands can be filled with random injects of ecchi and moe.
· A story about economics? Sure! Giant tits.
· A story about Japan’s greatest historical warriors? Let’s make them 8 year olds with giant tits!
· Should be transfixed on a tense moment in the story? Sorry! Couldn’t stop staring at those giant tits and little girl asses to realize the tension.
o Circle 4 – “Hetalia cosplayer hell” – a nightmarish mixture of bad and obnoxious cosplay combined with the rampant popularity of a series destined to pollute the world’s skies and oceans with its fluffy bs.
§ You enter the third circle, a hellish, nightmarish scene that sometimes appears outside of hell at events known as anime conventions. 400 anime fans, dressed like hetalia characters, all screaming Pasta and Italy like infants who just learned theirs first words.
§ Their psychotic, caffeine and sugar induced excitement generates the smelly heat that we know as con-funk but Satan himself uses to heat his bath water.
· Why do the Hetalia cosplayers generate such a terrible smell? Some say it’s shame, but the real reason is that Satan feeds them My Little Ponies for dinner each night.
§ The Hetalia cosplayers, after being sent to hell by the likes of Jojo, Kenshiro, Golgo 13, Onizuka and others, are subjected to their greatest hell of all; being forced to shower. Satan special orders special Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure body wash because the sight of Jojo’s abs is just too much. Too manly for the likes of Hetalia.
· Water and soap burn like acid on the skin of those that have watched Hetalia.
o Circle 5 – “Moe blob cavern” – Somewhere in the pits of hell are the moe blobs: monstrous beasts that pollute our anime with cake eating, cat ears, culture festival episodes and stupidity.
§ The moe blobs were invented by Satan primarily to satisfy the interests of perverted men in their 30’s and 40’s. Normal people don’t buy half naked figures of 12 year old girls (or just normal girls) AND proudly display them.
· Moe figures are made the parts of the My Little Ponies the Hetalia cosplayers won’t eat.
· PVC figure sales account for 60% of the budget of hell, which is used to fund half of the anime conventions in Florida (which is where there are about 20 of them).
§ Take solace the in fact that Satan created a safety net when he created the moe blobs. In the event that the world should face a near extinction of the human race (e.g. Zombie apocalypse), the moe characters will be the first to be killed due to their stupidity, non-athleticism and clumsiness. Thus, preventing their ability to repopulate the earth.
Reviews: Magi, Girls Und Panzer, and Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman
Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko
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Read or Die OAV
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[C] The Money of the Soul and the Possibility of Control
Alternate Titles: [C], Control
Original Japanese Release Date: 2011
Episode Length/Run-time: 11 Episodes
Summary:
Japan’s economy is struggling, however unbeknown to most the public it’s been kept afloat with money from a mysterious other plane of existence known as the financial district. Kimimaro, an economics major in college who struggles to make ends meet is approached to be an Entrepreneur for the financial district, offering his future as collateral for a large sum of money. Now, he must figure out what he’s fighting for, or if he has any place in the struggle at all.
Review:
[C], or Control, is a great anime that really suffers from one thing – it’s just not long enough. I know, I know, in an anime world where we are constantly criticizing anime for going too slowly, or doing too little, in a minefield of filler and pointlessness Control remains the exception.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Control is a Tasunoko Production and an original story by Noboru Takagi. Meaning yes, amazingly this is a fresh, original story, with no light novel or manga behind it. Takagi has done series compositions for Baccano and Durarara, though both were based off light novels.
Control wastes no time, in the first episode you are introduced to the Financial District, a mysterious plane of existence controlled by the even more unknown Mitas Bank. However, the existence of this bank is unknown to people who are not entrepreneurs or Entre for short.
Outside the financial district, Japan has hit hard times, in a rough economy and rising national debt scraping together a living is something less and less people are finding themselves able to do. So when Masakaki, the banker and “Willy-Wonka meets the Mad Hatter” ring leader of the Financial District, approaches someone, at random, to be an Entre most are hard-pressed to say no. But of course, there are very few freebies. In exchange for the chance to make money in the financial district as well as a hefty sum of money to start out with you cash in your “future.” Now there is a purposeful ambiguousness at the start of the series of what “future” actually means. In the beginning you see a man committing suicide because he went bankrupt in the financial district (causing him to lose his “future”) so you think “future” means years on life. Later on a man loses his children as a result of bankruptcy and everyone who had memory of them. So “future” clearly translates very differently depending on the person’s circumstance.
The Financial District functions like a large, metaphorical, stock market. Two Entres enter into what’s known as deals by leveraging their assets against each other in a timed battle. What ensues is basically a pokemon battle with money, each attack above basic ones cost money, when you are hit you lose money. You win a deal by ending with the higher total. The higher the margin of victory the greater the effect the battle has on the real world. This is also how Entres can go bankrupt in the Financial district. Non-involved Entres can watch the Deal and bet on the outcome. Therefore, money flows through the financial district, crossing hands, and enters the real world through the Entres.
Now, getting to our main character Kimimaro. He’s an economics student at a local university, though you wouldn’t believe it with how clueless he is when it comes to money matters. His cluelessness does serve as a purpose for explaining the financial district though, so it helps the viewer. He is parent-less and hard working. Determined to make his own living his entry into the Financial district is hesitant at best. But as the story unfolds he realizes he has more significant ties to the district than he thought, as his father was a previous Entre who went bankrupt. He’s an uncertain character and doesn’t know where he stands in the Financial District until he meets Mikuni.
Mikuni is like the ringleader of the financial district. The most powerful person he amassed a huge amount of wealth which he invests into Japan to keep the economy afloat by investing in Japanese companies and buying up unbought bonds from the government. In the Financial District he runs a guild designed to minimize the effects of the financial district upon the real world. Stressing they win only by the smallest margin possible.
The series takes a sharp turn and the pace increases as the Singapore financial district collapses, taking the country of Singapore with it. This solidifies the integration of the financial district with the real world and it sends a shockwave known as C across the financial districts of the world. Mikuni takes matters into his own hands to try to save Japan at present and Kimimaro is forced to choose his side.
C, if you can’t tell, is a very deep and involved anime for only 11 episodes. They introduce great characters that you wish could have more development but such things are sacrificed to the length of the series. There are a lot of themes in this that many anime triple its length don’t even see. Such as present versus future, what people will do for money, and how money plays a role into people’s lives. I see a lot of people criticizing the show’s execution, but I think differently. There was a lot of terminology that as a business student I really appreciated. Just looking at the assets each Entre was handled like a small company. And sure, there was a lot of metaphor and it wasn’t a picture-perfect example of real business it still was great to see in an anime representation.
Two other criticisms I see of the show are awkward CG, and yes, there is awkward CG but it’s not nearly as bad as some I’ve seen. And the use of bad “Engrish.” Yes, the “Engrish” wasn’t really necessary but it was used for characters who wouldn’t speak Japanese.
Overall, what really dragged the show down was not having enough time to flush things out and explain them for viewers who may not catch on as quickly to the clever use of business terms and principles. The ending was conclusive and satisfactory, though I did not personally like it. This anime comes in at a solid 4. While I simply adored watching it the lack of time and what it forced the series to do really brought it down from masterpiece level to simply excellent. This is one I strongly recommend to any anime fan or business student out there.
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My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute!
Alternate Titles:
Oreimo
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