There is 4 times a year that the Japanese release new Anime, correlating with the seasons. Of the 4 seasons, Summer and Winter are typically filled with filler anime, titles that are cheep, easy, and not very important, in order to fill the timeslots with so-called "new material", until the important big-named titles can be released in the Spring and Fall seasons. Within that pretext, the Winter season (released in January), the season of Transition where kids graduate school and people get new jobs, is the season that collects some of the worst Anime's of the year. Not counting a few gems that persisted, this last winter season managed to live up to that image with overused concepts and poorly executed ideas and terrible production budgets.
On the other side of that coin is the Spring season. Spring, the season of new beginnings (April, when the School year starts) is typically the season that gets the very best titles to be expected throughout the year. With that in mind, it is with high hopes that I dive into the budding premier season of new Anime. In the previews, there were quite a number of big titles to look forward to, and the others had interesting premises, but a preview never does the title justice one way or another.
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Battle Girls - Time Paradox
2 out of 5
Gurk! It's bad! That has to be some kind of a fluke! Well, it's not the worst anime I've seen yet, but so far I can only hope that this one was made intentionally bad to help prop up the majesty of the titles to follow.
A high school girl named Hideyoshi (after the famous general from the warring states period of 16th century Japan) accidentally gets sucked back in time to the very same period by her Teacher, who in turn tried to go back in order to change history in another warlords favor. While in the past, Hideyoshi meets and teams up with all the famous lords of the period (who are all sexy young women) and ends up changing history anyway as she is swept along by the creation of it.
The purpose of this anime seems to be to teach Japanese History to its' viewers, and in that regard it is a success. Names, dates, places, and events are all kept historically accurate, except where the anime deviates, however they take the time to properly explain what "really" happened in order to add to the tension of that event having been changed. The characters, too, are all very colorful and memorable and pleasing to the eye.
This is where the show falls apart. The modern girl falling into the past idea has been used too many times before (Inuyasha, Escaflowne, Magic Knight Rayearth to name a few), and Hideyoshi is the worst of the bunch in how she seems to not even notice. You'd think that the lack of electricity, paved roads, cars, or buildings made of anything but rice would tip her off, or that maybe she'd be a little understanding when everyone around is wearing armor and wielding swords and killing each other but doesn't seem to understand what a "cell phone" is. The historical badasses being represented by sexy ladies thing was done before, too (Ikkitousen in this case), but the presentation is another failure. All the characters are sexy women, but their looks are never exploited. Not a single panty shot, no attention given to busts, no bath scenes, but plenty of bulky armor and baggy clothing around to protect their modesty.
The action scenes were almost nonexistent, consisting of an old movie trick to make a character look badass (appearing through a fire) and nothing else. The rest of the time was spent in dialogue or an expose about how terrible Hideyoshi thinks her life is. Katanagatari proved that Dialogue can be the winning formula of a ragingly successful title, but Battle Girls proved that it can be quite the opposite, too. Dialogue was simple, repetitive, poorly acted, and many times so out of character that I began to wonder if this wasn't in fact written by a lousy fanfic author?
The character designs are appealing enough, and I like the history lesson involved, so I can only hope that the rest of it can catch up. 2 out of 5.
SKET Dance
1 out of 5
FOWL!! I Cry FOWL! SKET Dance is such a blatant and unrepentant rip-off of PCP (Perfect Crime Party) From the manga Bakuman. If you haven't read that far into Bakuman, first of all: Shame on you. Second: let me break it down. PCP is about these three kids (two guys and a girl, one of the guys wears glasses and has cell-phone accessories) who perform amateur crimes (and gets away with it). SKET Dance is about these three kids (two guys and a girl, one of the guys wears glasses and has a computer) who perform amateur anti-crimes (helping people...and gets away with it).
A major difference is the protagonist of SKET dance, who is this plain, ordinary, shy, and nerdy Transfer student who get's sucked into the SKET clubs antics. This guy is so plain and ordinary that I nearly blanched the very first moment I saw him, and did blanch on the second and subsequent moments. It's like they took the nerdiest dweebs to ever be bullied and blended them into a nearsighted twerp so pathetic that *I* want to bully him, and I abhor bullying.
The first episode consists of this one expose into the thoughts of the protagonist: "I'm a nervous shy kid who transferred into a new school and doesn't know anyone. On the first day however, the cool kids came up to me and invited me to be cool with them in the volunteer club! :-)" Need I say more? I shall. The art is ordinary and plain. The acting is half-assed like the Seiyu (voice actors) just didn't give a damn and weren't being paid enough. The character designs are overused and blend into the background (not to mention the sheer blaspheme of copying PCP so directly). The girl was rather pretty I'll admit, and she talked so openly and invitingly with the nerd (Shock!) but everything else just falls into the pits of failed plagiarism.
I rarely give a title 1 out of 5, but this one really deserves it, even if you discount the "ripoffness". The only reason I didn't give it a 0 out of 5 is because the characters spend a lot of time doing random acts of insanity out of boredom, which I wholeheartedly approve of.
Nichijou (My Ordinary Life)
5 out of 5
My Ordinary Life is exactly what the title says. The daily ordinary common occurrences around the life of some high school students, and some people in the neighborhood. Kinda like Lucky☆Star, Azumanga Daioh, and Minami-ke. That is to say, if accidently bumping into someone on the street causes 25 megaton nuclear explosions and Marching on Washington in violent protest because someone voiced disapproval at riding a goat to school is normal.
Nichijou could very well be a skit from Who's Line is it Anyway brought to anime life. Certain every day logics like Going to School Every Morning and Eating a Variety of Foods to be Healthy are maintained, but everything else is taken to the very extremes of exaggeration, and then treated seriously. The aforementioned nuclear explosion literally threw the two bumpers to the other sides of the city, and debris managed to land in a suitably comical way on the head of yet someone else.
The art style is simple, which sometimes slips into grainy as the tension of the moment calls for it. For a comical title, the art is perfect. Breezy enough that nothing absurd would necessarily be considered out of place, but solid enough that the absurdities in the art itself can be treated as intentional, such as the wooden blocks used to tie up that one girls hair. The voice acting as well lends itself to the casual air of the style. Most characters sound like the extremes of the "moe" archetype, but pull off real emotion and shock as the scene calls for it. The Background music is probably one of the best features. Light and flimsy, like the comical orchestration behind a Loony Toons cartoon, but performed with the sheer quality of a Disney product. It does wonders to noticeably enhance the mood without synching up to the action like a musical.
The only problem I've had with this anime so far is the pacing of the gags. The gags are great and somewhat unexpected, but they concentrate on only one gag at a time. The show has the potential to literally flood us with absurdities, but they seem to want to pace themselves, and that lends to the feeling of the episode being somewhat short and unfulfilling.
All in all, considering the amount of real effort and time that went into the production, as well as the exploitation of what is such an open potential for any kind of gag, I give Nichijou a 5 out of 5. Seriously, I haven't laughed that hard since Family Guy.
Doronron Enma-kun Meramera
6.5 out of 5
Go Nagai! Go Nagai! Go Nagai! From the mind of Go Nagai, the man responsible for such cult classics as Devil Man, Cutey Honey, and Mazinger.
Monsters are coming to the human world from the Hell in order to get human spirits. As people's minds are getting dirty, being attracted by the dirty spirits, the monsters break the rule to go to the human world. Tsutomu, a boy who goes to Yokai Elementary School, is suddenly assaulted by monsters. Those who save him from the monsters are Enma-kun, the son of Enma, Yukiko, a snow woman, and Kappaeru. They are members of Monster Patrol that are sent to the human world to arrest monsters.
It is hard to pin down the target demographic for this title, other than "fans of Go Nagai". The overall feel is "for kids", if you didn't mind your children watching a show with penis fencing and bared breasts being stretched across the room. The visual gags (risque stuff not withstanding) are too simple to target an adult audience, yet the jokes would fly over the heads of someone who hasn't graduated college yet. Ultimately, I may have to say that the show is designed to target specifically "Fans of Go Nagai", but fear not. It will make fans as surely as his other works did.
The animation quality is something astounding! We're talking about a high budget production movie level of graphics and quality! I have never seen anything longer than a 6 episode OVA boast of such quality of picture, and most of them tend to pale in comparison! The art style may take a little bit to get used to for the uninitiated, but everything from the motion of the characters to the shine emerging from the windows in the background screams *Expensive*! Much like Akira Toryama, Go Nagai is one who stubbornly sticks to his style like a belligerent child no matter how much it may detract from the story, but unlike Toryama his style manages to somehow fit the radical change in genre.
The story felt a little rushed. A cursory mention of a ghost in the school is given, a quick introduction of recurring extras going to the school, then BAM! Everyone has their face's stolen and the surviving girl begins the madness associated with meeting, being introduced to, then following along with the actions of the Monster Patrol. A little more time spent fleshing out the other extras might have been nice, but Go Nagai has never been one to take his time, no matter how much we might have sometimes wanted him to. That aside, the main characters had more than enough time to show off themselves and introduce their personalities and quirks.
For the guts to make a title however the hell he wanted to hell with the target audiences, and to fund the work himself (since there's no way any animation studio would devote that much capitol towards a single title) I give this show a 6.5 out of 5. They say that there is power in names, and Go Nagai proves this by having an entire 2 points added to the score on the power of his.
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4 titles so far. 2 of them really really bad, and 2 of them uncharacteristically good. It's hard to say how the rest of the season will pan out with such a radical shift in quality to be among the first seen, but if that's the trend then I give my stamp of approval! Admittedly, I can be biased when it comes to titles associated with certain famous members of the industry (Masami Obari, Go Nagai, Rumiko Takahashi, and CLAMP to name a few).
Stay tuned for introduction reviews to other spring titles.
'Ben
