All posts by draggle

Mayo Chiki Review — F

Reviews,

A classy screen shot for a classy show.

This is the harem adaptation of the season. The main twist is that we have a cross-dressing butler. Except it’s completely obvious that she’s a girl. How can anyone be fooled by this? Besides, she isn’t nearly as cute as Hayate.

The other characters include a monstrous little sister, a girl obsessed with glasses, a tsundere, and an ojou-sama. The male protagonist is a spineless wuss.

The main reason I managed to finish this show is Kanade. She’s quite the ojou-sama, and at least managed to spice things up a bit. Still, it wasn’t enough to save Mayo Chiki from its own bland premise.

  • Plot / Script – F – Your usual harem setup.
  • Characters – D – Kanade redeems things slightly. And Usagi wasn’t bad as far as tsunderes go.
  • Production – C – Nothing special.
  • Overall – F

Recommendations – Hayate no Gotoku, Love Hina

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Mirai Nikki — First Impression

Impressions,

Mirai Nikki is one of my favorite manga. So I was eagerly anticipating the anime adaptation, and probably would have enjoyed it no matter what. But how did it turn out?

Pretty well. Yukiteru’s portrayal went great: he’s pathetic but can be pretty cool when push comes to shove. Yuno (who is really the star of the manga, at least for me) went less well though. Much of her charm comes from how two-faced she is. She can be sweet and innocent, or a crazy bitch. I felt that they neglected the sweet and innocent part, and jumped the gun on the crazy bitch part, making it less effective. Look at this face:

This is a sex-crazed Yuno that I don’t recall seeing until much later in the manga. It’s the contrasts that make Yuno such an effective character, and I’m concerned that the animators are neglecting that. They’re only focusing on the crazy part. But much of her appeal comes from how she lulls the reader and Yukiteru into a false sense of trust and security, only to leap to an even higher echelon of insanity.

I must say: excellent casting for the voice actors. Yukiteru, Yuki and Merumeru sound just like I imagined them. Deus sounds even better than I imagined him.

I’ll definitely be blogging this. It’s gonna be awesome. This whole season is looking great for lovers of crazy characters such as myself. We have the murderous Caster pair from Fate / zero, the entire cast of C^3 (the second episode was amazing, by the way, although I’m not going to blog it) and we also have Gasai Yuno, the crown princess of the crazies.

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Mobile Suit Gundam AGE — First Impression

Impressions,

As expected, this is a kid’s show, so it’s not your typical Gundam. This means that it’s straightforward and the plot is predictable. “The UE will never attack our colony!” “Yes they will!” Boom. The little kid being smarter than all the adults is kind of annoying as well.

But still, this kind of thing is nice once in a while. The animation is great, and the characters are adorable. Emily is too cute. Even the old engineer is cute.

Despite being a kid’s show, it manages to bring back the love for the older Gundams. I liked how the boy kicked around Haro like a soccer ball. And the Gundams are objects of legend in this timeline. In this way it’s a bit reminiscent of Turn A Gundam. Turn A also took the Gundam universe and created something new out of it, and ended up being my favorite show in the series. Hopefully Gundam AGE will follow in its footsteps, as Gundam for a younger audience.

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Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu Ni! Review — C-

Reviews,

The adventures of chibi fighters with powers derived from test scores return.

Ok, so the jokes are definitely starting to get old. How many Minami flat chest jokes have we heard at this point? How many times has Himeji cooked poison? How often has Shouko blackmailed Yuuji? (ok, I still enjoy that last one) The first season was enjoyable: they should have stopped while they were ahead.

There were a few good episodes, particularly the peeking in the bath arc, the Minami episodes and that one episode on Shouko. But then everything just gets reset.

I don’t have much else to say. The strongest part of the first season was in its fights and wacky humor (e.g., Shouko and Yuuji, Hideyoshi as a girl, and Akihisa getting the crap beaten out of him). In this season, we got much less of this than I would have liked. Instead, they decided to focus on beach episodes, festivals and Himeji’s cooking.

  • Plot / Script – C – Reuse of jokes.
  • Characters – C – I always liked the characters in this series (except Himeji). But this season didn’t add much to them.
  • Production – B – It has a unique visual style.
  • Overall – C-

Recommendations – School Rumble, Seto no Hanayome, Full Metal Panic Fumoffu

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Ben-to — First Impression

Impressions,

The supermarket has become a battleground. Every day, when leftover bento are reduced to half price, an epic battle takes place to determine who will save the most money.

This was dumb. But it was also pretty funny, in a ridiculous way.

The characters are nice and crazy. The male lead gets beaten half to death but keeps coming back for half price bento. Same with girl he meets in the store, who seems to enjoy watching people beat each other up over bento. Her stalker, the class president, is also entertaining (and violent). Finally we have the blue haired girl, who is not too talkative but seemingly dedicated to half price bento (and even more violent).

It was an introductory episode, though, so it’s hard to say how the rest of the series will turn out. I’m predicting it will become a harem and go downhill, but hopefully I’m wrong. I’m not sure how they’ll base an entire series on this premise, but it seems crazy enough that it just might work.

Just please don’t let this turn into a repeat of Onii-chan no Koto’s stocking fetish.

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