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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Fate / Zero 02 — A Girl in the Snow

Fate / Zero,

This is the first show I’m picking up to blog this season. I love everything Type Moon and can’t resist.

This episode picked up the pace significantly from the first episode. We’re still introducing the characters, but they’ve begun with the action.

Wanker and the Orangutan

The servant is even more idiotic than the master. But at least he has some ambition. He doesn’t even care about the holy grail war, just wants to conquer the world. Such a straightforward hero isn’t bad once in a while. And he agrees with me that his master is pathetic.

But still, Alexander the great must be rolling over in his grave.

Bluebeard

Bluebeard and his partner, however, more than made up for Wanker and the Orangutan. We have a team of two serial killers! This should be fun. In Fate / Stay Night, we didn’t have any masters this downright evil. (Shinji’s murder spree was more pathetic than evil, as was Caster’s once her rationale was revealed.)

I liked the way they introduced these two characters. We already have this guy in a middle of a murder, and then this other guy who looks like a monster out of a horror book appears from a circle of blood. The serial killer tells him to eat the kid. Bluebeard approaches the child, bends down, unties his ropes, and tells him how to leave. Wait, maybe he isn’t so bad after all. He could be a character like Shinji’s Rider. Just a kindly old man.

“Sshhh, watch closely,” Bluebeard tells his master. The child looks towards the exit of the house filled with light, and hope lights up his face. Then he’s grabbed by some tentacles and swallowed whole. A great scene, the way it toys with your emotions.

Breaking and Entering

It’s not that surprising that Kirei betrayed Tohsaka, but his Assassin sure was defeated quickly. I doubt it’s dead yet though. The scene where he broke into the house was very well animated.

I’m curious how Kirei is going to get out of this. He must have a backup plan, since he’s got to stick around to the end to fight it out with Emiya. Maybe he’ll take Rin hostage or something.

The Einzberns

Ilya’s mother is pretty dull at the moment. Too passive. I hope she has some dark secret or something. At least we know she’s going to die.

And little Ilya is cute. I love the snow, we need more anime that includes snow. If they replaced every beach episode with a snow episode I would be a happy camper. Snow is so alluring. And it looks so beautiful.

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Dantalian no Shoka Review — B-

Reviews, ,

Huey’s grandfather, an avid book collector, has passed away, and Huey returns to his grandfather’s home to inherit the library. He finds a young girl, Dalian, who is a mystical library holding 900,666 phantom books. Huey becomes her keykeeper, and they travel together finding and dealing with phantom books in a sequence of short stories.

Dantalian takes an interesting approach to the traveling detectives setup— our heroes are completely impotent. Everything they do is futile. In an absurd twist, the conflict resolves itself without their intervention. This twist is new and fresh at first, but after eight episodes of the same thing it begins to get stale.

The other problem this approach entails is that our protagonists are not central to the story. So the show must rely on episodic bit-characters to carry it. Since these characters are underdeveloped, the viewers feel little attachment to the unfolding stories. This may be the intention: our protagonists also feel little involvement with what’s happening on screen. They watch as their friends are tortured and murdered without so much as batting an eye. This is unique, to say the least, but hard to believe and somewhat unsettling.

Fortunately, the show manages to have an ending which ties everything together. But they should have done this earlier, and spent less time on the highly similar episodic stories. Dantalian was enjoyable but not great. I did have fun blogging this though, becoming a bibliomaniac myself and tracking down all the phantom books, becoming an art connoisseur, and even writing poetry.

  • Plot / Script – B – The short stories are interesting and surprising (until they become repetitive).
  • Characters – C – Dalian is a sweet eating moeblob.
  • Production – B – It looked nice.
  • Overall – B-

Recommendations – Gosick, Rozen Maiden, Book of Bantorra

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Shakugan no Shana III — First Impression

Impressions,

For the amount I complain about Rie Kugimiya and Shana clones, I often forget— the first season of Shakugan no Shana was actually pretty good. The second series was not, particularly the first half. But the third season looks like it’s off to a good start.

Most of the episode was recap. But that’s probably a good thing, considering how little of the second season I remember. The episode brought the audience back into the story by looking at how the characters have reacted to Yuuji’s departure. So we got the recap, but without it feeling like a straight-up retelling. New things happen, and we see the characters’ reactions to the events being retold.

So Yuuji is the leader of Bal Masque now? I must not have been paying attention to the last season’s ending at all. But I like where this is going. With that said, this is Shana. If you’re thinking about watching this, you should already know what you’re getting into.

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