All posts by draggle

Morita-san wa Makuchi OVA — Taciturn Yuri

OVA,

This came out a couple months ago, but if you haven’t seen it yet, don’t worry, because you haven’t missed anything. I’ll summarize the entire thing. We start with an exciting two minute intro of copy-pasted pages from the manga. Then:

  1. Someone interacts with Morita.
  2. Morita thinks for several minutes about what to say next.
  3. She doesn’t say anything.
  4. Misunderstandings and lesbian hijinks occur.
  5. Two boys comment about how jealous they are.
  6. Repeat ad nauseum for twenty minutes.

The only times I even cracked a smile were when Morita’s mother appeared.

This OVA was a teaser episode for a show that’s airing this summer. If the jokes have gotten old before the first episode has even aired, then we’re in for some trouble. I won’t even bother going into how terrible the animation was or how faceless the supporting cast was since, well, if a comedy isn’t even funny, what’s the point?

Hanasaku Iroha 12 — Kidnappings and Guilt Trips

Hanasaku Iroha,

This was pretty much my reaction to Ohana’s announcement.

The show really picked up steam with Ohana’s trip to Tokyo. Her mother, Ko and the girl at the bookstore, and even a new setting for Tooru and Minchi have made things more interesting again. I still can’t believe Ohana decided to kidnap her mother, she’s such an idiot (in a good way).

Tooru was hilarious this episode. He agreed to the kidnapping plan, nearly slept together with Minchi thanks to Ohana, told Minchi to throw up so that she could eat more food, started playing crane games, and instead of yelling at Ohana’s mother started hitting on her. Not to mention his cool pose while drinking soda and his smooth talk about being a chef. Poor Minchi though, I feel like she is definitely losing to Ohana and her mother.

I enjoyed everything involving Tooru and Ohana’s mother this episode. As for Ko’s segments, the confrontation between Ohana and bookstore girl was nice. I laughed at Ohana realizing that she was the villain. Ohana’s guilt trip was fine as well, but I felt that it could have been just a bit shorter. Yes, we realize everyone is trying to fest it up. I feel like they might have put that in just to make Ohana use bonboru more – it’s like the new balut.

Now for a little bit of site news: I now have a twitter account, @draggle_kun, so feel free to follow me. I also added some Facebook / Twitter / Google like buttons to the bottom of each post. This is an experiment of sorts, and if no one uses them I’ll take them out in a month or so. Also, we have a new banner thanks to my 1337 GIMP skills. It’s slightly less FABULOUS than my last one, but I think it looks nicer. If you look closely you can see some artifacts around Tsurumi and Eclair’s hair, but it’s an improvement over the green glow around Volken in the old banner. Now I just need to figure out a nice background for the site…

Dog Days 12 — Petting and Learning New Tricks

Dog Days,

Not much happened in this episode, it was mostly Shinku going around to spend a few last moments with everyone. I still enjoyed the episode though, since they interspersed all the goodbyes with random stupid crap like petting, teaching tricks and torture scenes. Still, the goodbyes were a chore to sit through. I hope that the final episode isn’t more of this. I’m guessing it won’t be, since we haven’t seen Becky for a while or even met Shinku’s teacher, but I wouldn’t be surprised either way.

It turns out that Rico’s discovery from the previous episode is that Shinku can’t come back to Biscotti after he returns, and will lose all his memories as well. He decides to keep it a secret. Rico is a wreck, but continues looking for a way to allow Shinku to return. Shinku also discovers that Yuki is a god, but decides against worshiping her.

The jokes in Dog Days just aren’t fresh anymore. This is the second time Shinku walked in on Milhi in the bath, the second time they played catch, the nth time they had petting, the nth time Eclair went “hmph!” All of these things are still amusing, but they’re really starting to get old and need to be balanced with some new jokes as well. Pretty much all of the humor revolves around people acting like dogs. It’s still funny (especially Leo’s petting and the Princess learning tricks in this episode), but they could sure use some other jokes at this point. Recurring jokes are fine, but they can’t be your only jokes.

Anyway, have your weekly Eclair fix. She didn’t show up too much in this episode but we still got a few good faces.

Welcome to the Space Show Review — B

Reviews,

Welcome to the Space Show is about a group of children who meet an alien dog while at summer camp and travel across the universe, smuggling wasabi to fund their travels.

If that sounds silly, it’s because it is: still, the movie comes together surprisingly well. It’s action-packed and doesn’t leave time to be bored. There’s something for everyone: action scenes, some light comedy, creative new worlds and some drama. This movie is targeted for families and children, so it’s not my usual cup of tea, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

The movie’s strongest points are its fantastic setting and gorgeous animation. The setting here is very creative: there’s a huge variety of interesting kinds of aliens. Many of these only show up in the background, and it looks like the creators put effort even into them. The children travel to multiple planets, and each has its own idiosyncrasies. They have to go through customs and acquire a passport to travel in space. They travel on a faster than light caterpillar train where furniture grows out of the walls. In general, there’s just a tremendous attention to detail in the setting.

And this attention to detail is brought out by the animation. The backgrounds are beautiful, drawn in tremendous detail, whether they’re showing Earth, another planet, the inside of a ship or the dark side of the moon. But the strongest point is that there’s a fluidity to the animation: everything is in motion. Exotic aliens walk past in the background, lights flash, vehicles drive by. There’s just so much going on in every scene, that the world feels full and chaotic. It isn’t just the main characters out there. I wasn’t surprised to discover that the production team was also responsible for Kamichu, and this is the movie budget version of that same style, which was great even in a TV show.

Welcome to the Space Show’s biggest weakness is its villains. Their motivations never make much sense. At the end (spoiler alert) their goal turns out to be to acquire the wasabi as fuel for the “Pet King” to combine the little sister and the bunny rabbit into a new artificial being. But this is wrong because only the strong should survive. I’m not sure this is the best message to be teaching kids.

On a side note, this movie motivated me to look up wasabi on wikipedia. I didn’t know this, but apparently it’s really hard to grow, so much so that in the West what we call wasabi is usually a mixture of horseradish, mustard and green food coloring. I love the fake wasabi, so now I really want to try the actual thing. I guess the difficulty of growing wasabi is why it became extinct in the rest of the universe.

  • Plot / Script – 8  / 10 – A fun adventure story, with an excellent setting.
  • Characters – 8 / 10 – The main characters are solid, but the villains are weak.
  • Production – 10 / 10 – Great visuals and attention to detail.
  • Overall – B

Recommendations – Kamichu, Summer Wars, Spirited Away

C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control 10 — Overheated Economy!

C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control,

Now economic trends can be reflected by the power of clowns and North American super entrepreneurs.

C still has its issues— mainly, that the economic mumbo-jumbo, the entire setting and the fighting for the future / present debate make no sense whatsoever— but this episode was a turn for the better with a focus on the battles again. Even if the battles don’t make any sense either, at least they’re entertaining. “Overheated economy!” “Mergers and acquisitions!” “Cannibalization!” The attack names are one part where the economics mumbo jumbo actually kind of works. It’s certainly preferable to the usual attack names. And yes, I realize that one of those three attack names doesn’t fit.

I don't know, you definitely should have.

Still, I can’t follow the story. The greedy guy who sells information betrays Mikuni for some reason, but I couldn’t figure out why. IMF girl’s plan is to save the future by destroying the Japanese currency so they can stop losing their future and get wiped off the map by the [C] waves (which still don’t make any sense either). Kimimaro fights a side kick from the guild who I’m not even sure had a name. The clown gives a black card to Kimimaro because he heard voices from the clouds telling him to. Now Kimimaro and Mikuni are prepped to fight the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny.

Tree of life cameo - even less relevant here than it was in Evangelion.

On a more positive note, I did enjoy the part where the information broker robbed the guild and started tossing money out of helicopters, even if little motivation was given for him to do so. And Mikuni’s asset, Q, is pretty awesome. She looks like a gentler version of Mashu but eats people and assets instead of ramen. Definitely my kind of girl. Wish they’d made more use of her.