Steins; Gate 13 — Time’s Up

Steins; Gate,

Wow. In my eyes, this episode managed to even surpass the previous one. Okabe kept going back in time to save Mayushii, and failed a total of three times. For the first time, she was shot by Moeka, as we saw in the previous episode. The second time she is run over by Moeka’s car after Okabe forgets the bomb threats. The final time, she is pushed into the path of the subway train by Mr. Braun’s daughter.

Okabe needs to slow down and think. For all the time he spent telling everyone to trust him, he could have just told them what was actually happening and gotten some help. And for goodness sake, why doesn’t he talk to part-time warrior? Especially since he now knows that she’s actually a warrior. She probably knows more about what’s going on than he does. I think he’ll probably gain his sense soon enough though.

I mentioned a while ago that Mayushii seemed to be one of the weakest characters, but this is no longer the case. The relationship between her and Okabe is excellent, seeing how she’s willing to follow Okabe around with no idea of what’s happening. The flashback about how Okabe took Mayushii hostage was very well done.

This episode seemed to lend credence to my theory that there’s something special about Mayushii. She mentioned earlier to Okabe that he didn’t needed her anymore, and something certainly seems determined to keep her away from him. Okabe seeing her in the alleyway reaching towards the star was suggestive as well.

I still think that CERN may be more interested in killing Mayushii than in capturing the others— when Mayushii was killed, Moeka placed a call to tell someone of her death. Also, Moeka shot Christina. If CERN’s goal was to get information about the time machine from them, this wouldn’t be a very smart move. Although given the situation, they might have had to prioritize preventing Okabe from switching timelines.

But my biggest question is why Mayushii died the final time in the subway. Her death that time didn’t seem to have anything to do with CERN. There’s the possibility it’s merely a coincidence, but I doubt it. There may be a deeper reason that Mayushii keeps dying than CERN’s involvement. Something to do with her watch stopping, perhaps, unless that’s only some overly obvious symbolism. It could be fate, but I’m hoping for a more interesting reason.

One thing doesn’t fit for me in this whole ordeal: why does Okabe even need Christina’s new memory transfer invention? Didn’t he keep all his memories from the old parallel universes when they sent the cellphone messages because of his seeing Steiner ability? He even mentioned that it felt different since he didn’t get a cellphone message. But didn’t he keep his memories before too? So why doesn’t he send a message to more than three hours in the past to have more time to escape?

The World God Only Knows II Review — 6.5 / 10.0

Reviews,

I really like The World God Only Knows’ manga, but the animated adaptation has fallen flat for me. One of the reasons, I feel, is that a lot of the humor has been lost in the transition to television. The creators of the TV show seem to think that capturing the girls is actually important: in the manga, it comes across more as simply a device (and a stupid one at that) to make fun of Keima and galges, at least until the latter chapters which this series hasn’t gotten to. I don’t care about the girls Keima is capturing, I want to see what idiotic things Keima will do. How is it even possible to take luring out loose souls to stuff it into a giant vacuum bottle seriously? The only part of this season that I found funny was the last episode, especially the Gundam parody.

The second issue I see with the anime is the pacing. It just feels like they could tell the entire story in half the time. Do they really need three episodes for every single girl, especially when they aren’t using the time to make me laugh about Katsuragi? They seem to feel the need to dedicate at least one episode to each girl’s internal monologue about her problems. This is said so often I’ll risk sounding trite, but “show, don’t tell.”

Lastly, the characterizations of Keima and Elsie seem off to me. Particularly Elsie: in the manga she is a complete joke whose only valuable functions are holding the capturing bottle and drooling over fire trucks. Here, again, the creators seem to want to take her seriously. Part of the problem is that she’s even more annoying when she actually has a voice. For Keima, again, they try to take him too seriously, but another issue is his casting. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but his voice just doesn’t fit my image of him.

Whining about how the manga is better aside, the biggest problems are that the show just isn’t all that funny, drags on and on, and in terms of a plot, nothing really happens that isn’t reset within three episodes. There are some good points to the series, just don’t set your expectations too high. The second season was better than the first, if only for the addition of Haqua. If it’s an option, I’d recommend reading the manga over watching the anime.

  • Plot / Script – 6 / 10 – Too slow and not funny enough.
  • Characters – 7 / 10 – God is not extreme enough, Elsie is annoying, all the supporting characters get a few episodes and get ditched.
  • Production – 6 / 10 – Very underwhelming.
  • Overall – 6.5 / 10

Recommendations – Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu, Welcome to the NHK

Hanasaku Iroha 13 — Family Reunion

Hanasaku Iroha,

This ended up being one of my favorite episodes of Hanasaku Iroha so far. Ohana’s mother certainly managed to stir things up. The highlight of the episode was seeing Ohana’s mother interact with the staff, especially her mother and brother. Seeing the grandmother become all agitated and slapping her son silly was great. Although yeah, he definitely deserved it for inviting his college friend. *shudder* Even the head chef is afraid of Ohana’s mother. The only one who isn’t cowed, surprisingly, is Nako, who loves her.

The drinking scene in particular was very well done, although becoming drunk on soda… well, whatever. A drinking party spanning three generations of the family. It’s rare that we get a chance to see something like this, since so many anime characters don’t have parents at all, much less grandparents. Old people just aren’t cool, I guess, but I think it’s a shame. They can really add a lot to a show. Take Summer Wars, for example, where the grandmother stole the show.

I’m not sure why Ohana thinks she was dumped by Ko. From my perspective, that seems like the exact opposite of what actually happened. Ohana has decided to not give up and try again, but it’s more like she decided to try for the first time. Oh well, at least she seems to have realized that she does like him.

Next week looks like it’ll be a Yuina episode, so I’m looking forward to it. Yuina seems like a very interesting character, but she’s gotten the least screen time so far. I’m guessing she’ll have a heavier role to play in the second half.

Dog Days Review — D-

Reviews,

Let’s be honest: Dog Days had one of the most downright retarded premises of any anime in recent memory. Shinku, a Parkour master and winning contestant in ninja game shows, is summoned to be a hero in a parallel universe where he fights in a war between cats and dogs. No one gets hurt in the wars, and it is fought like the game shows he’s so skilled at.

Somehow, though, this dumb premise ended up being one of the show’s strong points. In the first episodes at least, the setting made for lots of hilarity. We had humongous explosions, evil chocobos, exploding clothes, transformations into puffballs, and tail wagging galore. It was more of a “this is so dumb it’s funny” but it was funny nonetheless.

But then everything fell to pieces. The creators tried to stuff some conflict about prophecies and demons in, and they tried to make the viewer actually take it seriously. Not going to happen. They forgot that the setting was insurmountably stupid. As a consequence, the show lost its sense of humor.

The other problem is that the creators wasted an unbelievable amount of time. I think that three quarters of the characters’ lines were exchanging pleasantries. Everyone is too polite, dog nab it! (sorry) This is made by Japanese people, sure, but there should be a limit to how polite you can be. Even if the characters don’t do anything, they always have to greet each other and say farewell. The worst part of all was the last two episodes, which were entirely devoted to Shinku saying goodbye to everyone.

The characters aren’t too well developed, since most of their screen time is spent exchanging pleasantries. A majority of them don’t do anything of significance at all (most of the Galette army, everyone from Earth except Becky, the maids, and more). The princess and Shinku’s main love interest pet, Milfie, has the personality of a sponge. I’m a fanboy of Eclair (the green haired girl) if you haven’t noticed yet, but I wouldn’t say she was well-developed, just entertaining. And she has great facial expressions.

Dog Days started out looking promising, but forgot that it was supposed to be funny and tapered off into oblivion.

  • Plot / Script – 6 / 10 – An interesting setting, and funny initial episodes, but then it tries to be serious. Wastes too much time.
  • Characters – 6 / 10 – +10 Eclair, -4 everyone else
  • Production – 7 / 10 – Some sloppy animation.
  • Overall – D-

Recommendations – Isekai Seikishi Monogatari, Zero no Tsukaima

Dog Days 13 — Long Goodbyes

Dog Days,
"I'm taking this back now."
"It's not you, it's me."
"Now is my chance!"

These past two episodes felt like a complete waste of time. How long do you need to draw out saying goodbye, Seven Arcs? I think the entire thing could have been done better in five minutes. The past two episodes haven’t been funny at all. Or interesting, or sad (which I assume is what they were going for?) for that matter. It’s just been pure tedium. Not to mention that they just decided to make all the tearful farewells pointless by letting Shinku come back after all after having meticulously fulfilled the requirements of some unknown ritual.

When Shinku comes back to Earth, he meets up with Becky and his rival in the ninja game show. They play with each other. What was the point of keeping his rival’s face hidden for the entire show? I kept expecting her to appear in Galette as their hero. Instead, they did absolutely nothing with her. She was one of many useless characters.

We also get the princess end, although Eclair makes a strong showing as well. Eclair is too good for Shinku anyways. Idiots go well with idiots. Anyways, have some more Eclair pictures. She’s pretty much the only reason I got through this show.