Hidan no Aria Review — D

Reviews,

Kinji is a Butei, a student attending a school for mercenaries. On the way to school one day, he is attacked by a team of robotic Segways. He is cornered, and a transfer student, Aria, comes to his aid. She loses some of her clothes, and when Kinji is aroused, he enters Hysteria mode, where he becomes a powerful player (in every sense of the word). The rest of the show follows their adventures in their attempts to help their friends and to free Aria’s mother from prison by clearing the false charges against her.

Ok, so this is variations on Shakugan no Shana #10. The main difference from the previous versions being that, in addition to swords, Rie Kugimiya also has guns now. She’s still an annoying tsundere loli with all the other usual baggage though. In terms of annoyingness, I would loosely rank things, from least annoying to most annoying, Shana << Lotte << Louise << Aria << Rose.

JC Staff didn’t seem to know what to do with only a single cour for Aria. The light novels clearly span much more material than can fit in a single season, and they didn’t do too well at picking and choosing parts to make a solid story. We have a bunch of characters who only show up in one or two episodes: Jeanne d’Arc, Reki and the final bad guy are all pretty much single use characters. Reki has a half episode where she tames a wolf, but aside from that her importance is nearly moot. Shirayuki gets an arc of a few episodes, but otherwise isn’t much important. And we’re introduced to Kinji’s ex-girlfriend (?) in the last episode, but she never even speaks. All in all, they failed at creating a continuous narrative.

Another issue is that the creators appear to pull a lot of crap out of their rears. Characters are made descendants of random historical figures for no apparent reason, and everyone acts as if this makes sense. The final bad guy is a teacher that has done nothing whatsoever  up to that point. Girls strip their clothes off in mid-air and their uniforms double as rocket parachutes. The final boss is a gurgling vampiric minotaur. Guns are used to precisely shoot mid-air wolves’ spines to temporarily paralyze them. And the list goes on.

With all that said, there were some good points to the show. Mainly that, aside from Aria, the characters were likeable. Kinji, the male lead, is not your typical loser protagonist, at least when he goes into Hysteria mode. Shirayuki and Riko, two of the major side characters, are downright insane, Shirayuki in a protective / obsessive way and Riko in a more traditional way. I always love the crazy people. As far as fanservice goes, Riko is a pretty good source (except for her parachute- that’s only good in the so bad it’s funny sense), but Aria is unfortunately both a terrible and more common source of fanservice.

I would say that overall I despised Aria the character, but found the rest of Hidan no Aria decent. Unfortunately Aria is the star of the show.

  • Plot / Script – 6 / 10 – Lots of things came out of nowhere, and it didn’t come together well.
  • Characters – 5 / 10 – Hated Aria, liked most everyone else (esp. Riko).
  • Production – 7 / 10 – About average.
  • Overall – D

Recommendations – Shakugan no Shana, Zero no Tsukaima, Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari

Note: I’m still away on a trip, and will be back to a semi-regular schedule next Wednesday.

Kamisama no Memochou — First Impression

Impressions,

A boy transfers to a school in Tokyo, and meets a group of NEETs led by the NEET detective, Alice.

This was mostly a setup episode, so not much happened aside from an introduction to the characters. It seems like the show could have some potential, but there are a bunch of problems.

First of all, the protagonist is your stereotypical transfer student, someone who isn’t special at all thrown into a world of weirdos. It’ll be tough to make the main character somewhat interesting. The first episode was all about him transferring schools and making a friend of sorts, and these were all scenes that have been done to death. Second, there’s way too much talking and not enough doing. Very little actually happened, and instead we were stuck listening to explanation after explanation for the second half of the episode. Third, I’m worried this will descend into a showcase of how cute Alice is and make the actual story of secondary importance. We’ll see how well-founded this fear is.

The setting and the cast (aside from the main character) do seem interesting though, so I’m planning to keep watching.

In case you didn’t see my previous post, I’ll be travelling and this will be the last post I make on a new show until I get back home in a week and a half. There will be sporadic updates until then.

Blood C — First Impression

Impressions,

In this episode, Saya goes to school, fawns over her father, and kills a flying statue in the middle of a puddle.

Everything about this show screams Clamp. Yukiko runs a cafe next door, Doumeki, Maru and Moro are in Saya’s class, everyone has skinny wobbly legs, and the main character is a goody-two-shoes with a daddy complex. I kind of wish  Clamp would try something new, especially in regards to the characters.

I haven’t watched anything else from the Blood franchise, so that may be part of the reason, but I had no idea why Saya was fighting that crustacean statue. I’m sure we’ll find out eventually. Still, this battle scene was the best part of the episode. The animation was excellent, and the statue thing actually used its claws in interesting ways. It felt like a battle against a lobster instead of a battle against a human in a lobster suit. The battle might not have made the most sense: Saya’s head definitely should have come off, and at first her sword just bounced off the statue’s shell, but later it cut right through it. But all in all an entertaining fight.

My biggest problem with this show (aside from my aversion to Clamp) is Saya. She helps old ladies, picks up trash in the street, is clumsy, and in love with her dad (and probably with Doumeki too). The most popular guy in the school is hitting on her. She’s just… boring. Ok, she goes and kills monsters with a katana in the middle of the night, but her day life is going to need some more spice if it’s going to keep my interest.

Now for some blog news: I’m going to be out of the country for the next week and a half. Unfortunately, this coincides with the start of the new season, and I won’t have a good enough internet connection (or the time) to download and watch any new shows. So there won’t be any of these first impressions posts while I’m gone. I’m planning to do an aggregate first impressions post of everything when I get back. I’ve also queued up a few reviews and other posts to publish while I’m away, so the site won’t be completely empty during this time.

Ro-Kyu-Bu! — First Impressions

Impressions,

The above shot pretty much sums it all up. A high school boy is blackmailed into coaching an elementary school girl’s basketball team after his own team is suspended for a year following the team captain’s elopement with an elementary schooler. This doesn’t seem like the best plan to recover the team’s good standing.

The coach’s new team tries to win him over by dressing up as maids, calling him onii-chan, and showing him their undergarments. There are long shower scenes. The girls all conspire to raise their coach’s “affection level”.

The story actually looks like it might have some potential. The girls seem to have some sort of conflict with the boys at their school, and need to win the prefectural tournament in a month for some reason. The short basketball segments weren’t bad. And the coach’s family and classmates seem interesting. Of course, this is all assuming you can get past the rampant pedophilia. I wasn’t able to, and don’t plan on continuing with Ro-Kyu-Bu.

Hidan no Aria 11 + 12 — Gurgling Vampiric Minotaur

Hidan no Aria,

Seriously, what was up with that final boss? Was that supposed to be a laugh or a roar? It sounded like he was gurgling water, although I’m fairly certain that wasn’t the intention…

The eleventh episode consisted of Kinji and Aria infiltrating a mansion and stealing Riko’s rosary. It was mainly an excuse for meido fanservice.

In the final episode, after receiving the rosary on the top of a skyscraper, Riko reveals that she will betray Kinji and Aria and kill them. Then Riko gets stabbed in the back and stomped on by her teacher. Who proceeds to transform into a gurgling vampiric minotaur. Kinji falls off the roof, and Riko jumps off as well to save him with her strip-parachute. Everyone combines their powers to shoot all of the monster’s four weak points at once. Kinji pulls a William Tell and bounces his bullet off Aria’s in midair to hit the right points. Riko jumps off the roof in her underwear and flies off with her parachute. Aria beats up Kinji some more. The End.

This episode was so bad it was funny. I’ve already mentioned the final boss, which was the “best” part. We also have Kinji’s miraculous marksmanship: he can bounce bullets off of each other in mid-flight, and he has already mastered Reki’s wolf-paralysis technique after seeing it once (and he can even do two wolves simultaneously!).  Then we have Riko’s strip-parachute, which either has some hidden rocket boosters or defies all laws of physics by carrying her from near ground level to well above a skyscraper. And Aria knows that the gurgling vampiric minotaur is Count Dracula because… well, it’s obvious, right?

So clearly, this show didn’t cover all of the original source material… but they still didn’t do too well at making it all come together in the end. There was no Shirayuki in the final arc. Reki and Jean d’Arc never mattered at all. The last episode introduced Kinji’s ex-girlfriend (?) for no apparent reason. The final bad guy was their teacher, but I’m not even sure we ever knew his name. All in all, it seemed like the creators were just making stuff up as they went along.