The premise of 30-sai no Hoken Taiiku is that a god comes down from heaven to help a thirty year old man graduate from virginity. Given the questionable premise, the half length episodes and the animation that looked like it was done in Flash, I initially skipped over this show, but decided to give it a shot after hearing good things.

From the description, I expected this show to have its head in the gutter the entire time, but it surprisingly didn’t. It does have some jokes of that nature, but most of the more explicit content is bleeped out in some amusing applications of censorship. I am saying that it wasn’t too bad in the same season that I watched Hen Zemi though, so your mileage may vary.

The show is quite funny, and a great deal of the humor is of the absurdist variety: epic battles against the dorm master and Virgin King, love confessions piercing a robot’s barrier shield, traps, and random cosplay. The shorter episode length prevents the show from losing its punch or focus.

Don’t mistake 30-sai for anything other than a comedy, because you will be disappointed. The romance, characters and story are mostly just a plot device to bring out the laughs. Not to say there’s anything wrong with that. Definitely do NOT take anything this show says as some form of “advice”.

In conclusion, 30-sai was funny, but not hilarious, and it probably won’t be remembered well a year from now. Still, it’s worth a watch if you’re in the mood for some quick laughs.

• Plot / Script – 7 / 10 – Has its funny moments.
• Characters – 6 / 10 – Not really the focus of the show.
• Production – 5 / 10 – Serviceable animation, but you have to be able to look past that if you’re going to enjoy this show.
• Overall – C-

Recommendations – B Gata H Kei, Hen Zemi

Note: I’m still away and not posting on new shows, I’ll be back on Wednseday.

Kazuma and his brother, Ayumu, move from the countryside to the big city. With his urbane cultured ways, Kazuma is popular among the hicks in the countryside and becomes a pimp. He adds the Clumsy Glutton, the Childhood Friend, the Tsundere, the Onee-Sama, the Girly Tomboy, the Spunky Girl, the Reporter Girl, and the Trap to his harem. Gotta catch ’em all.

This was as generic as generic galge adaptations come. The protagonist is a boring loser, who just happens to trip over and accidentally kiss the lead female when he meets her. The first episode was almost funny because of how closely they stuck to the book. I already said all there is to say about the female characters in the last paragraph. To top it all off, the protagonist ends up choosing the most generic of a generic lot.

We have a beach episode, hot springs, shrine maidens, crane games, the whole shebang. The only variation on the usual theme is that the the protagonist’s little brother is hotter than all of the girls.

I’m not really sure why I bothered watching this, since I knew I would hate it from the get-go. Too much time on my hands, I guess. If you’re as sick of bad galge game adaptations as I am, then stay well clear of Hoshizora. I would place it on the lower end of the spectrum in comparison to other shows of its very selective genre.

• Plot / Script – 4 / 10 – Completely generic.
• Characters – 3 / 10 – Copy-pasted stereotypes.
• Production – 6 / 10 – Not the weakest part.
• Overall – F

Recommendations (if you didn’t like Hoshizora) – Sola, True Tears, Kimikiss

Note: I’m still away, and I should be back a week from today.

Hen Zemi follows a university seminar “studying” abnormal physiology. To pass the class, they need to do abnormal activities and write reports on them. It uses an arc format, where they explore a few activities at a time. As some examples, we have using a naked person as a table, earwax and sweat fetishes, secret recordings, 11-dimensional chess with second hand kisses, and plenty of sadism and masochism. I have no idea why their professor has a job.

Be warned before watching: Hen Zemi is disgusting. It goes past every social taboo, and then barrels through several more you didn’t even realize existed. It is not a show for the faint of heart.

Hen Zemi has its funny moments, but it mostly keeps your attention by being so disgusting you want to look away but can’t. It certainly does manage to keep your attention though. No one could accuse the characters of being boring, and the topics of each episode are certainly… creative.

I didn’t enjoy the TV show as much as the OVA, mainly because it was longer and less tightly scripted. Still, the episodes are half length, so there isn’t even much time to waste. Twelve half-length episodes was probably the perfect length for a show like this- full episodes would have been too much to handle at a time, and it ended right when the shock value was beginning to wear off. Another issue is that the animation is downright terrible, although honestly, I would prefer not to see most of this with better quality.

Hen Zemi isn’t a masterpiece, but it isn’t all that bad either. Take my rating with a grain of salt, though, because how much you enjoy watching Hen Zemi will largely depend on your tolerance for sexual deviance. Hen Zemi will be able to keep your attention— the main question is whether you want it to or not.

• Plot / Script – 7 / 10 – Relies on shock value more than anything.
• Characters – 7 / 10 – No one could accuse them of being boring, but they aren’t deep or anything and  there isn’t anyone you’d want to know in real life.
• Production – 4 / 10 – Atrocious animation, but that may be a blessing in disguise.
• Overall – D+

Recommendations – Koe de Oshigoto, Seitokai Yakuindomo

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

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.

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