All posts by draggle

Moshidora Review — B

Reviews,

Long title: What If a Female Manager of a High School Baseball Team Read Drucker’s Management. The premise doesn’t seem very promising, but the show did manage to come together nicely. It’s quite corny, there’s no getting around that, but the show has a certain earnestness and straightforwardness which makes me forgiving of the cheesy drama and predictable events. It’s like the creators know the show is corny, but instead of trying to gloss over it they just face it head on. I found it kind of refreshing.

The highlight for me was the segments involving Drucker’s book. We learn about marketing, the customers, and innobetion. It’s hilarious how all of the baseball team managers end up getting their own copy and quote from it like it’s the Gospel. All with their curious pronunciation of key words. 🙂

The characters are interesting, but don’t all get enough time to develop in the short length of the show. I don’t think that much could have been done about this. The characters do tend to be rather corny again, but I find that part of the charm. Yuki is is the stereotypical kind sickly girl, Minami is mostly average all around and hates baseball for the corniest reason imaginable, freckle boy is a nervous wreck,  etc. My personal favorite is Ayano, whose main line is “Um. Ah. Hai”.

The corniness did cross the line on the second to last episode, though, when the whole cast spent the entire episode wailing. Minami’s ranting also made no sense whatsoever. I felt that this was by far the weakest point of the entire show and completely out of place in a show which was otherwise entirely upbeat. Fortunately in the final episode it managed to recover its mood, but the damage was already done. The creators seemed to also entirely forget about Drucker for the last few episodes, which made for some of the best segments originally.

  • Plot / Script – 9 / 10 – Corny but overall solid.
  • Characters – 8 / 10 – Again, solid, but not too much depth.
  • Production – 8 / 10 – Not spectacular, but decent and consistent.
  • Overall – B

Recommendations – Giant Killing, Kamichu

Steins; Gate 06 — D-Mail

Steins; Gate,

Christina has some terrible naming sense. They had a list of pretty decent names— Nostalgia Mail, the Mail that Leapt through Time, DeLorean mail— and she decides to go with D-mail. Shorter is not necessarily better. But naming sense aside, the dialogue in this show continues to be top notch. It just flows really smoothly, in spite / because of Okarin’s ridiculous comments.

We get another beautiful evil laugh from Okarin as well. His voice actor deserves an award for this. I still can’t believe it’s the same guy who did Setsuna F. Seiei, my least favorite character of all time. I guess it goes to show that voice acting isn’t everything.

Now for the conspiracy theories. I’m wondering if Moeka Kiryuu (cellphone girl) is John Titor. She is looking for the IBN 5100 after all, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she posted on message boards. Seems a bit too obvious but you never know. Suzuha (CRT girl) also seems to be from the future, but I can’t really see her as being John Titor. She doesn’t appear to care about the IBN 5100 and seems too genuinely horrified about Christina. Perhaps Okarin actually succeeds at time travel and Christina does something using it, and Suzuha was sent to prevent it.

Moeka gives me a bad feeling though, since she appears to know more than they do about time travel, asking about the FB. It kind of makes you wonder if she is with CERN (or has some other evil intentions). Although I doubt CERN would need to look for an IBN 5100… perhaps she wants to stop CERN but to go to some other extreme in controlling the future. Overall the conspiracy is continuing to develop nicely, but is being set on the backburner to the great dialogue and character development.

Hanasaku Iroha 06 — Cosplay

Hanasaku Iroha,

This episode brings some light on Ohana’s uncle as he brings in an outside consultant to inspire some innobetion in marketing at the inn (I should have a review of Moshidora up soon). This consists of making the waiting staff dress up in revealing outfits. When their china dresses do not go over well with the young family visiting the inn, Ohana tries to convince her grandmother that the reason is because the slits weren’t long enough. Fortunately, the manager understands what the customers want better than Ohana.

The development of Ohana’s uncle was good— I was wondering what he did at the inn, and kind of felt bad for him for staying there at his age. At least he still has dreams for improvement. His friend from college was annoying, but fortunately she didn’t stick around for long. We also see that the grandmother had similar ideas for improvements when she was young. I’m guessing they won’t really get into the relationship between the grandmother and Ohana’s mother until the second half, but when they do we should be in for a treat.

We have switched though from the excellent drama in the first few episodes into cute girls acting cute / fanservice mode. Not to say the creators aren’t doing well at having cute girls acting cute: the show is doing an excellent job at this. But I personally prefer the drama. I’m guessing they’ll probably get back to it eventually.

Dog Days 06 — A Head Pat

Dog Days,

The highlight of this episode was the Princess patting Eclair’s head. That’s not a good sign. This episode was just boring. The first five minutes of head patting and training with Eclair were decent but nothing special. Then Shinku goes on a random camping and fishing trip with the ninjas, Shinku and the princess have a long tea party, and we have a budding romance between Eclair’s brother and the older ninja.

This show needs to focus on what it does well: stupid funny stupid, like the battles. They will not be able to do a decent romance between any of these characters. I don’t think anyone will feel bad for Shinku over his tragic loss at all. And no one believes that Shinku and the princess are going to die. Just work on trying to make people laugh; there’s no need for a “serious” plot. Trying to include one is just a waste of time.

Koi Sento OVA — Fighting Deer

OVA,

This is the kind of thing they would only make in Japan. We have a genetically engineered damsel in distress and a desperate young high school male on a field trip who are united and fall in love due to the efforts of a white buck and a herd of deer who fight against giant robotic oni. Koi Sento actually aired almost half a year ago, but it slipped past my radar.

Unfortunately, this OVA isn’t quite as awesome as it sounds. The characters are your stereotypical damsel in distress and loser teenage boy, and the plot is 25 minutes of teenage wish fulfillment. Quite literally, in fact: the boy spends the first few minutes of the show wishing he could meet and fall in love with the female, who is a celebrity (I didn’t follow why). The deer were entertaining, certainly, but not enough to make it worth sitting through the rest of this OVA.