Reviews by Fernando Leonel Alba

Taisou Zamurai is definitely and oddball, it’s one of the most unique shows of the year and also one of the weirdest slice of life anime I’ve ever seen. The first two episodes are the divisive type that either hook you or alienate you to the point of dropping the show, which suffers from a serious identity crisis.

The premise make it seem like it’s just a sports anime but no, it’s also a drama about a man who has to take care of his daughter all alone by himself because his wife died, it’s also a comedy that keeps throwing random things at screen, from a fake ninja who is pursued by agents, to a weirdly drawn parrot, to a gyaru who changes her language at times, to an acupuncturist drag queen, to references to fictional action movies and the list goes on.

It’s also a coming of age story since there’s a noticeable time invested in developing the protagonist’s daughter and how she deals with her dead mother, her absent father, the kids at her school that makes fun of her dad, the ninja’s weirdness and all that stuff.

This weird blend of elements is what gives it an identity and makes it memorable but at the same time is what makes it hard to gain and define an audience. Everything gets its fair share of time but nothing gets enough time on screen before moving on to something completely different.

If you just want to chill and be moved by Rei’s character arc, you have to wait until some episode decides to focus on that because in the middle you’ll get weird comedy and basic training, yet if you stick with it, you’ll get the best and most moving episodes this anime has to offer.

She’s basically like Rin from Usagi Drop or Hime from Kakushigoto, only a lot more mature than them despite all of them sharing the death of at least one of their parents. Her character arc reminds me of some Simpson episodes dedicated to Marge or Lisa where they accept everything that happens around them concerning their families the best they can before they snap, then they deal with the consequences of their actions and grow because of those events, with the obvious difference being that her development is not undone because this is not an episodic comedy. She also gets to find what she wants to do with her life which is basically follow her mother’s footsteps.

If you want to see an inspirational sports series, Joe’s arc is pretty well done for you, not only he practices a sport which wasn’t covered much in anime (right now I can only think of Ganbarist Shun! as an alternative, and it was a completely different series), but the show spends a fair amount in building a fading star type of story around him. At first, it seems like it was all due to an injury but as later episodes reveal, it has to do with his own regrets and traumas he can’t leave behind, until he does because he needs to regain his former glory in order to take proper care of his daughter.

On top of that, Taisou Zamurai does the unthinkable thing of spending time in his training, showing concepts and rutines concerning his discipline and the ever present risk of not being able to perform ever again if he makes a wrong move or gets permanently injured because of excessive training, this is what other shows such as Iwa Kakeru lack and what I complained about in my review about it.

The downside is that the actual sport is not shown in a very inspirational way, the training is mostly skipped, the matches are shown quickly, and the CGI models used in them are poorly made and even more poorly animated, this definitely does not make the gymnastics to look exciting.

With that said, we see him recovering and training in order to make a new skill that will give him more points in his competitions and it’s partially thanks to his interactions with Leo, the fake ninja who’s actually a dancer. This guy is the weakest main character for me, he’s just clowning around for most of the time, and his own story is not that interesting nor explored much, but as his role of someone who has a positive influence on Joe, and at the same time gets influenced by him goes, he makes a good plot device.

I don’t have much to comment on the comedy, it’s the type of random comedy I just can’t bring myself to like, it’s not the type of over the top humor that I hate (Nichijou, Asobi Asobase, fucking Pop Team Epic, stuff like that) but for a slice of life anime, this just puts me off. Whether if this is a negative or not, it’s entirely up to each person. One thing that I have to give credit to the show is not mixing any of this silly stuff with the dramatic moments, I may not like these elements, but at least the show does not suffer from tonal whiplash.

As I hinted earlier, the first issue with Taisou Zamurai is that it’s poorly animated, leaving the sport aside, the artwork and the simplistic character designs are definitely lacking detail and the models get deformed from time to time, both the backgrounds and the effects are also simplistic and the motions, even outside the gymnastics, are rather poorly made.

As for the sound, the voice acting is ok when it’s serious and mature and kinda bad when it’s silly and comical (except for Kappei Yamaguchi as that parrot, what a guy), so it stands somewhere in the middle, the soundtrack is mostly absent or forgettable, the ending is alright, the opening is not. I don’t understand why they went with rap of all things and even having these three voice actors who are not really good at singing and one of the characters hate (or pretends that he hates) the other two so what is he even doing there. The sound effects are very good to the most part, in both the daily life moments and the sport competitions.

But down to it, Taisou Zamurai’s biggest problem is it’s biggest strenght, having this silly comedy thrown at screen and blend of different genres in just eleven episodes makes the pacing very uneven, constantly changing things and tones and dragging the plot down before forcing it to go really fast in the final episodes, thus making the show feel both fast and slow at the same time.

If you want something rather unique, here you have an aging sportsman, as he is trying to get over the death of her wife in order to improve himself and be a good father, a little girl realizing what she wants to do with her life, as well as what she does in her school and her home, a breath taking dancer who runs away from the pressure of being amazing and pretends to be a ninja while he’s chased around the world by other performers, I think? I didn’t really understand what the hell they are, they look like they belong in Men in Black rather than here. And you also get a look at a rather unique sport.

In the middle, try to deal with an acupuncturist drag queen, Kappei Yamaguchi destroying his lungs while voicing a south american parrot, a grandma who runs a bar and looks like she belongs in Gangsta or Black Lagoon that also drives the car of another person like Irisviel from Fate/Zero in a road full of traffic, from a stadium to an airport and back again to the stadium, mildly cringy and mildly inspirational monologues taken from fictional schlocky action movies, and an undeveloped romance between a guy who can’t speak normally and a gyaru whose words can’t be understood 95% of the time she talks, even when she’s not changing languages just because she feels like it.

If you don’t mind any of that as well as poor animation, you get a mostly decently made story with mostly decently written characters, that got completely overshadowed by Haikyuu! As for me, if the show had one or two more episodes, its events were paced a bit better, and it didn’t have these weird elements and comedy, I would have rated it a bit higher, but I won’t since that wasn’t the case, yet I can still say that it is among the best shows from this year, even if that doesn’t mean much.

As for some recommendations there are:

-Ganbarist Shun! the only other pure gymnastics anime that I know of, but beware for it’s a school comedy with some ecchi.

-Igano Kabamaru, horribly animated, among the craziest and weirdest school comedies anime ever put on screen, staring an actual ninja.

-Usagi Drop and Kakushigoto (the anime versions of both of them), slice of life anime about grown men taking care of a little girl by themselves, way more simple but also way more focused.

As I said in my Majo no Tabitabi review, there were only two shows I was expecting that began airing in fall, one was that show which turned out to be a disappointment and the other was this one which…was also a disappointment, but for different reasons.

To be honest, the only reason why I wanted to watch it is because I saw the poster and the release date being in early October thus I decided that it was what I wanted to watch after finishing September.

So the first episode begins, plays and finish and there’s no fanservice! Sure some may like certain camera angles but they hardly count and are excused for the subject matter thus I don't consider them to be fanservice. Compare this show to Keijo or Harukana Receive and you’ll agree with me. Although that was a letdown for me, I have to admit that it was better this way, is a weird case where I was pissed because the show wasn’t worse than it actually is.

Ok, so leaving my hornyness (does that exist?) aside, that was a positive surprise I received from the show, it wasn’t ecchi crap, it actually tried to be an actual sports show with the same motivational train hard, make friends, have fun with them and win competitions type of story.

The negative surprise I received from the show was the completely unexpected gamer pandering, as the protagonist used to be a shut in neet who used to play games 24/7 during her late childhood/early teens until her parents sent her to another school where she joins the wall climbing club and instantly becomes good at it because she’s a pro at puzzle games, well at least there are parents that actually do something for their neet child.

Sorry but no, this excuse just doesn’t work, first, how does changing schools automatically makes a neet to become a social person and change her lifestyle completely? Second, for a girl that used to do nothing but play videogames all day, she already has some muscle before she even begins climbing; and third, she just started in this sport and can already compete toe to toe with someone who has been training and practicing her whole life, completely naive and unrealistic.

And is not that I don’t like what the show was going for, it went for a inspirational message of leaving videogames behind, working out and starting practicing a sport while still retaining the good things you got from them and learned because of them. Is just that the way it was delivered was, again, just too positive and unrealistic.

This is a problem I have with sports anime in general, they try to inspire the audience with their stories but make their disciplines look like a walk in the park, easy to get in minutes and master in hours when the reality is completely different, they don’t show nowhere near as much training and possible consequences as they should. Sure, the protagonists may lose from time to time and cry enough tears to fill a river but that’s about it. Everyone does things wrong in ther daily lives and cry from time to time, that make the shows relatable but can hardly count as inspirational, they are too idealistic, toned down and manipulative instead of having actual exploration of their disciplines and themes.

I mean, having Konomi succeed in conquering the wall while playing videogames in her mind literally makes it look like a game. These segments become another rather minor issue present in the episode and throughout the whole show, I found them silly but not a big deal, but others may find it too stupid and cringy to the point of dropping the show. It becomes even more of a problem when an even better girl reveals that she’s so good at wall climbing because she plays rhythm games and that ultimately led Konomi to repeat PA-PAPAN-PAPAPAN-PA in her mind in the final episodes, ugh.

Other more important issue has to do with the other characters’ backgrounds, none of them is as bad as Konomi’s but they are way too simple, rushed and presented in inappropriate moments such as the middle of a competition thus stailling the plot, and they all come down to I’ve been doing this my whole life and there’s someone I want to surpass, that’s it.

Another important issue is the very first scene of the show spoiling the ending…or is it? This was my second positive surprise from the show, it made it look like Konomi and Jun would be rivals competing against each other in the final episode but they actually become friends and that flash forward was actually showing the middle of the series, not the end of it, and it wasn’t what it looked like at first.

After that we follow the usual route of training, new characters introduced, character bonding, competitions and stuff and there are both good and bad things present in here.

The good part has to do with Konomi actually failing at climbing at first and even being afraid of it thus making it seem like she would grow organically as a better climber, while at the same time developing Jun a little, the only character who gets that in the series and the best because of it, even if her character arc is the typical cold tsundere who becomes more friendly throughout the episodes, before she fails horribly at something, gets traumatized, leaves, gets over it with the help of someone else and returns stronger with a better design (for me at least):

The bad part has to do with how much Konomi improved to the point of exaggeration, she moved from a rookie with potential to beating opponents who have trained and practiced climbling their whole lives and the whole scanning then conquering the walls in one second gets repetitive and unbelievable very fast, it was like seeing a battle shounen protagonist getting a huge sudden power up after just a few days of training, we’re talking about that level of overpowered.

The show tries to excuse it by saying she always had the potential because she used to do ballet but it’s not believable, she did ballet when she was a child before becoming a neet who plays videogames all day and night so no. At least she doesn’t really win, but in a way that feels cheap, and even then it was nowhere near as bad as what they did with Jun, holy crap was there really a need to treat her so miserably? At least it led to her character development and better design.

Speaking of which, truth be told, all the character designs in the show are…decent, they don’t really stand out from the lot that much, and some of them can become ridiculous when resembling animals, but there’s quite the variety in heights and proportions and all of them have their fare share of muscles for they have been training their whole lives. Oh and they are mostly dressed and are never sexualized, except for maybe a certain shower scene, but even then it’s short and you can’t really see much in it. Again, compare this show with examples such as Harukana Receive and Keijo and you will notice that this is the better show at least in both of these regards.

As for the rest of the visuals, they are also ok, simple artwork, good enough backgrounds, well made but kinda silly special effects, serviceable motions. The sound is also ok, voice acting is nothing much but sound effects and music, while not being anything to write about, are fine.

Eventually the biggest issue the show has is how rushed it feels in its second half, showing the outcomes while barely showing the matches, and having a very cheap finale, I mean come on how did they even win? They lost 2 out of 3 competitions, and then the show just…ends.

So in the end Sport Climbing Girls is a show full of both good and bad surprises leaning a little towards the negative: It doesn’t have fanservice (+) but it panders to gamers (-), it has a good inspirational message (+) but its crappy writing does not support it in the least (-), it seems like it spoiled its own ending (-) but in reality it doesn’t (+), a good chunk of its characters have their backgrounds revealed (+) but they are terribly rushed, simple, and even dumb (-), the main character is overpowered (-) but not really (+) but actually she is indeed overpowered (-), it makes her and her friends fail and not winning all the time (+) but does it in cheap and miserable ways before rushing the ending (-) and it has character development (+) but only for one of them, and it isn’t much (-).

Ultimately, for every step the show takes forward, something else was making it go backwards, essentially failing at what it was trying to do but not to the point of making it atrocious and it was still better than what I expected and is among the better really really bad sport anime with women released in recent years. Now, on to the moe hockey on ice anime that will be released next year.

When fall began, there were two anime that I wanted to watch. One was Iwa Kakeru and only because it aired on October thus it was what I wanted to watch once I passed September. The other was Majo no Tabitabi because it made me think that it would be like Little Witch Academia when I saw the trailer.

So, imagine my disappointment when the show was not at all like that show but on top of that was a poorly made episodic series about an unlikeable protagonist with a completely messy tone.

The show is promising in its first episode though, although nothing groundbreaking in neither its world, premise or characters, the exposition was very good, presenting this aspects organically through interactions among the characters and through the protagonist traveling to places.

It also establishes the character pretty well, she’s nothing like Akko and is instead one of a kind among the witches of this world, whose function and system is never explained by the way, there’s magic in this world and the witches are treated with the upmost respect, yet they don’t seem to have an organized way of doing things and the normal citizens act like these girls are a common thing.

Anyways Elaina is nothing like your common protagonist, she’s selfish, arrogant, sarcastic and self centered, which is why the whole first episode is about her being rejected for being at the top of the world and learning how to not be a jerk at the end of the episode by facing a way stronger and better witch.

It also sets the bar when it comes to its production, to put it simple, Majo no Tabitabi is straight up both gorgeous to look at and well animated. Although there’s some obvious CGI which clashes a little with the rest of the visuals, it’s never crude or ugly and is rendered pretty well and moves accordingly with the rest of the elements.

As far as the rest of the visual elements go, there are practically no quality drops, the backgrounds are detailed and beautiful, the lightning and shading are well done, and the motions are fluent most if not all the time. The directing is good too, there’s a clear effort done in the storyboard to make the show visually dynamic, with lots of zoom ins and zoom outs, and the camera following the movements of the brooms from both the front and the back while constantly changing the angles in an organic way and not in a way that gives you a headache as in famous american action films like Transporter, Taken or the Bourne trilogy (I didn’t watch the newer ones) where the camera goes crazy at times and don’t let you understand what the hell is going on.

All of the above applies to the action scenes as well, which although not that present throughout the show, they are done masterfully. By comparison, Burn the Witch aired in the same season and the only thing everybody praised about it was the action and animation, and Majo no Tabitabi humilliates it completely in both aspects, especially in its last episode with its epic fight where a whole town is involved, full of big spells, and whole houses being blown away, while not even once losing detail in the artwork or fluidity in the movements.

The only negative in the visual department, aside from the not so good CGI, is the character designs, they are not bad but are way too simple, forgettable and there are characters that are way too similar one another.

The first episode also let us know how the sound is going to be, there isn’t much to talk about it, is a serviceable sound design for a fantasy series, typical opening and ending, typical soundtrack, well made but not special voice acting, good but not amazing sound effects, that’s all.

Then the second episode begins and Elaina didn’t change one bit, thus killing the illusion that there will be character development and a sense of meaningful learning and growth throughout her journey. On top of that Saya appears to change the tone of the series from a mildly interesting adventure to a silly yuri comedy. The whole second episode was full of emotional manipulation, Saya lies to Elaina and forces her to do stuff she doesn’t want to while at the same time presenting us her drama about not being able to see her sister, making you think that it’s a somewhat serious thing, but as the show would prove in its final episodes, that’s not the case at all. I was hoping that she didn’t appear ever again, but sadly, she did.

The only good thing about this episode was establishing another thing about the witches, despise their seemingly high social status, they have to constantly work their asses (not literally, not in this season at least) in order to get money and stuff.

Then came the somewhat controversial third and fourth episodes which are easily the best for me. These two episodes felt like classical fairy tales with dark overtones, dealing with dark topics such as slavery, sexual abuse, forbidden loves and a war because of it, and whole kingdoms being affected in the middle, if not completely destroyed and the heart breaking message of how sometimes your good intentions can backfire at you, as you end up doing more harm than good when you try to change things, which is ever present in the whole show but never again treated with this quality.

And just like the first episode, they are subtle about it, everything is shown visually and through character interactions, such as Elaina pointing her wand at that asshole but not attacking him in the end because, well, he was the major of the town and doing so would bring serious consequences, while their endings are actually dark and implied, not fully shown not hammering you in the head with their themes and messages, and not in a way that feels vague and open to interpretation, as it’s still somewhat clear what might actually have happened.

As I said earlier, their endings felt like the dark endings of classical fairy tales and are thematically coherent within the show and are in-story excused, as a big part of Elaina’s character has to do with how she wants to be a magic because of the tales she read as a kid thus this way of treating these mini stories feel right for this show. For all I care, these two episodes were the peak of the series.

On the other hand this third episode was very divisive when it comes to Elaina’s behaviour. Some liked how she’s not like a typical protagonist who jumps in blindly to help any random person she encounters and others hated her for not showing the slightest sympathy for the people around her and acting like “yeah, whatever, shit happens” and treated her like a inhuman sociopath.

I don’t care about any of that, my only issue is how this episode made it clear that Elaina is not a proactive character that does things on her own, she’s just imitating the book she loved as a kid and reacting to whatever happens around her at best, or is just a passive observer who doesn’t care about the stuff she’s supposed to be excited about and learn from in her travels at worst.

After that there was nothing of interest, the stories became way sillier and didn’t have the same feel nor the thematic depth, and on top of that Elaina became more and more unlikeable with each episode. There were episodes with sociopolitical issues such as one where everybody in a kingdom wants to be able to lie again, one where the people from the same country are divided in two by a wall in the middle (Berlin anyone?) and one where two sides of the same town are rivals when it comes to economy but their conflicts are so silly, the tone of the episodes so light, the messages so preachy and directly told, thus no subtle at all, the theme exploration so vague and one sided and Saya appeared again that the series went to bottom of the garbage and lost my interest.

As for Elaina, although I was still tolerating her after the third episode, these episodes made me hate her completely, she did nothing to stop the serious issues she comes across in the third and fourth episode, but takes part on town, countries, kingdoms level issues when someone jokes about her being petite, not curvy and flat chested, or cuts her hair. Come on, you saw a girl, younger than you, being treated like a cum bucket in her work and a whole kingdom getting destroyed, and did nothing but you lose your shit with these petty reasons? Absolutely lame and despicable.

Then there was an episode that was even advertised as too dark and violent for tv screening and was nothing but shock factor, gore porn, emotional manipulation up to the max, crappy writing and bad plot devices such as pointless time travelling and amnesia to negate any mental permanent effect and consequences. Also how is a little girl even able to do these things? And Elaina? She tries to stop someone from killing an actual sociopath serial murderer, right after the episode where we see her using spells left and right because someone cut her hair, which she can AND did grew back, get out of here.

Also for such a big fuss it caused because of its content, for someone like me, who watched anime and movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s, this episode felt like I was watching Fairy Tail in comparison. I had to read people praising this dumpster fire of an episode because they still were under the illusion that this would lead to Elaina’s character development, AND IT NEVER HAPPENED, the next time we see her again she’s still unaffected by any of this.

There were more stories but they are not worth mentioning in details, one took up two episodes and it was easily the most stupid of the bunch with the laziest resolution and it had Saya appearing AGAIN and this time with her sister who is ten times worse and made it clear that they being apart was never a big deal. Also, incest jokes, because that was what the show needed at this point as its final nail in the coffin.

Outside of the amazing action, the last episode had nothing of value, it was just self validation from the autor, having different Elainas in a sorry excuse of introspection while talking to each other and seemingly themselves at the same time, and the show itself openly praising Elaina for not having personality. Oh, and they publish their super amazing book titled like the show. Also, they end up sleeping together in the same bed because the yuri bait can never be absent and now it expands to even selfcest, great.

Thus Majo no Tabitabi went from being my only truly anticipated show of the season to being my biggest disappointment in it. It’s beautiful to look at and starts strongly, but looses steam fast and only goes downhill from there while at the same time it becomes a complete joke of itself and makes you hate her main character more with each episode. The only thing I’m grateful for when it comes to this show is how it helped me to sleep, as I was always watching its episodes right before falling asleep on my bed, if you plan to watch it, I advise you to do the same, as it’s the biggest benefit you will get out of it.


RECOMMENDATIONS

-Flying Witch for feel good type of shows/slice of life fans
-Kiki’s Delivery Service, similar premise, more focused story
-Kino’s Journey, similar premise although the main character is not a witch
-Little Witch Academia, similar beginning, way better outcome

Tonikaku Kawaii is a series that uses a catchy premise in order to hook the audience but soon turns into something generic. Normally I would consider that to be a negative but in this case it works in its favor because to me said hook is unnecessary.

There is a supernatural element in the series which is barely present, not really adressed much and on top of that it has no real purpose in the otherwise generic plot so why is it even there? I don’t know. Thus said element is so underplayed that even the english name of the show hints to it more than the series itself.

Aside from fooling the audience into thinking there’s more with a 0.1% of mystery bait, Tonikawa definitely grabs the attention of the audience with its first episode because it begins where at least four decades of its genre usually ends. Even a romcom from not so many years ago like Ore Monogatari! seemed to move fast at first, only to slow down right after the main couple is established.

Tonikawa begins estabilishing a couple, having them holding hands and even getting married and starting to live together! Is a series that understands that in this time and age, not even a generic romcom can attach itself to the way things used to be. If your series starts slowly and does not hook the audience pretty fast nowadays, you might as well give up.

It also knows how to play with expectations because it indirectly mocks the isekai genre in the way the characters get to know each other, weird but effective use of trolling and comedy.

So it knows how to get an audience and it avoids the usual slow set up in order to get to the most interesting bits of its genre but at the same time the first episode makes the couple to feel completely unbelievable. I mean come on, would any of this really happen? No, this sudden girlfriend/wife appearance can only happen in anime and it has since at least three decades, especially in the harem genre. You know, My Goddess, Monogatari, Sekirei, Campione, Rec, heck even Monster Musume, and above all High School DxD which even has a bigger similarity with this show by having the protagonist being saved by the main girl in its first episode.

Another catch is the main protagonist who is far more direct than any other protagonist of its kind yet I have to point out how Nasa is really obnoxious in the beginning with his embarrassment towards his actual wife, and his referential comedy is easily among the worst I’ve ever seen. At least later on he becomes a little more direct and is shown as a capable guy able to manage just about every situation.

From there, the series unfolds in a close to what would happen manner, the daily routines of this couple has to do with living together, getting more stuff, buying rings, getting another better house, getting to know their families and friends, all that stuff.
Yet the tone is to the most part very light, there’s no conflict between the couple and their interactions stop at being cute. Also for a series with this fast beginning they sure don’t get any further than perhaps two or three kisses per episode with never getting to the juicy parts.

All of the paragraph above is still questionable because a valid criticism which I’ve seen made about the show is how it plays out almost like a kid pretending to have a wife while playing with a doll. That has to do with Tsukasa being so... submissive. This is a thing which makes sense in an anime because it comes from Japan but man would it cause an uproar if it ever becomes mainstream in the west. I don’t mind that much but I would definitely like a little more proactive character.

Her character stops at doing everything Nasa wants her to do, which makes him feel obsessive and possessive half the times. She’s also idolize beyond belief because she has all the traits otaku want in their perfect waifu. Tsukasa is cute, obliging, don’t want to spend much money, likes Nasa for the most generic reason that he’s kind and on top of that she’s a gamer, and that’s pretty much it. At least the references she makes are way better than Nasa’s.

She sometimes let out some lines in the likes of “your tongue will be completely mine” or “I’ll let you see me on my underwear whenever you want to” that makes you think that something juicy will finally happen but nah, both get embarrassed and the show keeps being cute and wholesome.

But since the tone of the show is very light and not serious at all, and Nasa don’t come off as too pervy or desperate to me, I give it a pass, however, if it tried to be dramatic or a serious romance, instead of a comical silly version of one, I would complain about it too.

Their interactions alone would make the series boring very fast and that’s why more female characters keep appearing and thankfully none of them makes the show feel like a harem, except perhaps for the 11th episode, which was easily the worst because of that and because of the way too obvious Capcom publicity. Other than that all of the other girls are funny in their own way except maybe for Chitose who’s really annoying at first but thankfully Nasa is a capable main character who knows how to deal with her and it has nothing to with romance nor misogyny.

As far as production goes, the show is nothing espectacular, it plays it very safely with ok visuals and ok sound, there’s people who don’t like Chitose’s voice and say her voice actress don’t fit the character, I personally don’t know her and her job at portraying an annoying little sister was properly done to me. What I don’t like is Nasa’s voice, he looks too moe for me and yet he has quite the deep voice which sounds older than he is and looks, with each passing episode he raises his voice a little so my issue with this disappeared as I got accostumed to his voice.

Down to it, despite a forced and unbelievable but otherwise weird and somewhat interesting premise with a quick set up, Tonikawa is still a basic romcom trying to be either funny or fluffly, it has nothing offending nor insulting, it can be funny at times and is to the most part just a watchable time passer, it got lucky to come out in 2020 where there wasn’t much hype, and not having any competition in its season. Is just a romcom which you watch and enjoy with your brain disconnected or hate because you don’t like the characters, then you forget in a week after it’s over and you move on to the next of its kind.

What I liked about Ajimu: Beach Story back when I watched it is how, despite being a romcom, it doesn’t feel like a typical entry in its genre, no overreactions, no too much melodrama, no fanservice despite taking place on a beach, no cast made up of teenagers with moe designs but rather ones that look like actual teenagers, and they were also far more sensible and mature than what I’m used to see in romance stories within this medium.

Hikari no Densetsu has pretty much the same positives, plus far better animation, a slightly more sophisticated soundtrack, and a far more original premise, as it mixes slice of life moments, with drama about a love polygon and a sport which isn’t portrayed much in anime, or entertainment in general honestly.

But maybe that has to do with how boring it becomes to watch it. Don’t get me wrong, the gymnastic performances in Hikari no Densetsu is one of its best aspects, as they are well animated, are accompanied by sweet piano pieces, which they dance to, thus making them part of the plot and not just background melodies, and the girls can mess everything up from one moment to another and even hurt their bodies, while there’s also some emphasis on how their emotional state can affect their results.

It also does the unthinkable of not having a protagonist who is either op or a complete underdog, while at the same time does not let her win all the time, quite the contrary in fact. But the problems lies in how repetitive it is, during most of the series you see the same performances and listen to the same music again and again and it gets tiresome after a while. Thankfully, they begin with balls and ribbons and add a little more stuff later on but still, the performances don’t change much, if at all. This becomes an issue when, after all the training, there's seemingly no change in them, for better or worse, and since the sport is never discussed on a technical level, I don't think many people watching it will realize how better the characters have become or how the scoring system works, outside of the very obvious mistakes everyone can notice.

But ultimately the best thing in the show are its characters and their interactions, they are not that memorable nor have the most unique personalities, but as I said they are pretty sensible and mature by anime standards. Despite the main two girls being rivals in both gymnastics and love, they support and admire each other as they have positive influences on one another, encouraging each other to make advances on the guy both of them love and making each other notice the best and weakest points in their performances on the carpet, thus serving as the inspiration for the other to try new figures and improve ther performances and scores.

And all of that is done without melodrama, no crying, no screaming, no fighting, no insulting each other, no keeping distances without talking for days or weeks. Just two girls who have a friendly competition on seeing who gets to the be on top of the tournaments they take part of and who gets to be with the guy at the end.

Also, whenever they lose or do poorly, they do not treat that as the end of the world, they see each instance as a new one with newer possibilities and chances to improve, get to know better competitors around the world and they are happy for the one who wins at the end, even if it’s not themselves.
This is a truly inspirational sport series, not one of those manipulative ones that feature people yelling and crying and being depressed for weeks over losing where the main characters always win at the end. But I also how to point that, towards the end, several performances are skipped almost completely.

The quality in visuals is not amazing but still pretty good for 1986 standards. There are definitely quaility drops in general shots, there are still images and there aren’t many impresive effects, but up close the characters look great despite Hikari having a generic 80s design while Hazuki looks like a generic bishoujo from the 70s, and the backgrounds are really well drawn. The motions are ok to the most part and well done during performances. As for the boys, Oishi also has a generic bishounen design for its time while Mao looks like a generic punk from that time, he almost looks like he belongs in Aishite Knight instead of here.

Speaking of Mao, he is the hardest character to like because, although his relationship with Oishi is similar to the one shared by the girls (although not as influential), he always seem to be pissed and angry and getting in random fights all the time. It gets particularly hard to root for him at all when he gets agressive with Hikari towards the final episodes. Well, at least he accepts things as they are without much bitching either.

He also brings the so much needed variety to the soundtrack, as he and his rock band have their own side story of becoming a little more famous, while the series also show how shady music records can be, but it’s all shown in a very shallow way, there’s just no way to believe someone would go that far to take a starting minor band out of the picture like this, especially when their songs are so mediocre. Seriously, I don’t know who Mao’s voice actor is but he is not very good at singing and is even worse an acting, not convincing at all, well atleast every song of them is somewhat part of the plot.

The rest of the cast do their job just fine, but the sound effects are definitely weak, aside from the bouncing ball, everything else just doesn’t sound right.

The sport part has a proper closure without the typical ending by episode 17 but this is when you notice the issues regarding the other genres, as Hazuki seemed to have a very serious ilness which is otherwise forgotten, every character has their own conflicts within their families but that is hardly shown, or explore, and is usually resolved in easy ways, even partially out of screen, several performances gets skipped almost completely and Oishi’s own side story is entirely disregarded.

And finally, when it comes to romance, there’s just not much in here, is the typical thing of the characters not confessing their love for a big amount of episodes, right before the series ends and leaves this aspect without a satisfactory closure. This partially has to do with the series not doing well and probably catching up with the manga before the it got finished several episodes earlier than the initial plan, but still, the last two episodes were by far the weakest, the romance had a very disappointing resolution and the series made a big time skip and had the characters saying how every one of them did afterwards by themselves, with still images.

Thus the series looks fine, sounds…alright, does a good job with its sport even when its presentation gets boring, and has lovable characters, but the slice of life bit is frankly uninteresting and the romance does not get much attention before being rushed and skipped completely towards the end, making it hard to openly recommend to anyone outside of people looking for something different, as it leaves the audience completely dissatisfied with its finale.

Some years ago I made a review about A Kite where I tackled all of its issues and ultimately stated that is an overrated title. I also said that Kite Liberator was even worse, much worse, and gave it a rating in there, but I didn’t explain why, so here I am talking about this entry now. Expect a lot of comparisons with the original to prove my points.

The first issue Kite Liberator has is being completely unrelated to the original, sure there’s the same gun but that’s not enough to call it a sequel, there’s also a Sawa lookalike but that’s about it, she appears shortly and does nothing of importance. Plus, having no connection with the previous entry leaves the cliffhanger still unresolved.

Other than that, it is completely different in story and aesthetics. What made the original shocking and popular was its crazy mix between porn, psychological drama and neo noir action and this sequel has none of that thus it looses a big part of the appeal.

The only thing which resembles the original is having a young girl as an assassin, but even then is nowhere near as captivating or well made as there’s barely any action up until the last twelve minutes or so. Also her motives are not explained at all here, I may have complained about it in Kite, but at least there was an explanation there of why Sawa has this work, there’s nothing like that here.

Not that innovating is inherently a bad thing, the second Patlabor movie barely resembles the original by keeping the core elements but it is otherwise very different from the original, and is still the best entry in its franchise.

That is not the case with this title, where Monaka’s targets does not pose a challenge, unlike in the original, and the plot scalates to a space horror where people get infected by food in space and comes down to Earth as monsters and starts breaking everything in the streets, what the heck is going on and what does it have to do with Kite? Nothing at all.

It’s even worse when the movie tries to explain everything and takes itself so seriously, is a very dumb action flick and these bits just makes it duller than it already is. The pacing is the exact opposite as it was in the original, if it was very fast there, it is very slow here, because it doesn’t have nearly as much content.

On top of that, the protagonist is just not fleshed out, it’s the same issue as Sawa in the original, whatever her background is, is vaguely shown because the focus is not on her despite being the main character and it’s in the boring space horror and nonsensical action instead. She’s more consistent than Sawa because she does not change her personality every 5 minutes, but her clumsiness, which seemed to be a facade in the beginning, gives her a moe side which clashes too much with her cold behaviour as a hitwoman (is that term right?). The rest of the cast is just there as cannon fodder and constantly breaks the serious tone the movie tries to have with their reactions.

The action scenes are even more ridiculous and over the top than they were in the original. If having two people falling high from a building over a car and making it destroy a bridge, which in turn falls over a truck was an exaggeration, imagine having a monster chasing a girl in the city, being shot with different weapons and barely receiving damage, impaling the girl, then falling off in a similar fashion of the original, having a car exploding right under him and still not getting killed. It’s even worse when Monaka remains unharmed regardless of what happens to and around her.

This movie ends with another cliffhanger and it’s even worse than the one in Kite.

It’s also not as well animated, the character designs are fine is just that they are way too similar as the ones from the previous works of this guy, quality drops are abundant and the motions are jerky, plus the camera jumps around like crazy during action scenes and it often makes it hard to focus on what’s going on. The backgrounds are well made to the most part, especially when it takes place in space, even if they have lots of CGI, the special effects are the weakest part of the visuals.

I don’t have much to say about the sound, the music is fine at times but ultimately forgettable most of the time, the sound effects are weak, voice acting is nothing remarkable and can become very silly at times. Also, I don’t know if it’s just the version I watched or something, but the volume in general is just really low.

Lastly, there’s the issue of timing, A Kite was a success partially because of the time it came out, this movie came out 10 years after and by that time there were hentai with designs by Sei Shoujo which blew Kite out of the water in that department, and there were lots of girls with guns series in the 00s as well, such as Noir, El Cazador de la Bruja, Madlax and Gunslinger Girl, which made the Kite legacy obsolete once this sequel aired.

And there’s even Mezzo Forte which combines both aspects in one, and it even came out shortly afterwards A Kite, acting as a sort of spiritual successor to it, even having Sawa as a cameo, which makes Kite Liberator’s existence even more pointless.

I usually don’t make early reviews of stuff that is still airing but seeing the poor reception this title gets I just wanted to do it, it also serves as a sort of follow up to my Dragon’s Dogma review. I will of course update this one once the show is over.

Note: There's an update at the end of the review

King’s Raid is a more than typical AJRPG with the most generic fantasy set up and characters archetypes and the gameplay is not really innovating, it’s easy to mix it with a hundred more similar games, I did it when I watched gameplay of it on YouTube, it does have beautiful artwork and great opening songs that’s for sure, and I liked how the game has its own version of the Google dinosaur so you can play it while you wait until it finishes its download.

I wish I could say I did but I don’t have enough space on my cellphone for that and thus I couldn’t even begin to play it after I heard the opening about 20 times so that’s it, this is the end of this.

Wait am I talking about the game here? No this is an anime review. Well I already mentioned the problems that videogames anime adaptations tend to have in my Dragon’s Dogma review thus I won’t repeat myself here and I’ll just point out which ones appear here.

The first and most noticeable thing which made people drop the show is how heavy it is on exposition. The first three episodes tell you a lot about the protagonist, the main girl, the setting, the lore, the background story, the conflict, the political struggles, the racism present in the show, the main objective of the dark elves and how they are treated by the humans.

Absolutely everything here is told instead of shown and it’s really boring to see people talk about these things, especially with the average or slightly above average visuals, King’s Raid is a weird case in this department as it looks like it is not doing anything wrong here yet at the same time is not doing anything right either. The character designs are beyond generic but there is not something really bad about them and there’s one good thing it has over the game and that’s how the female characters have more clothes here, especially Frey. Thanks, we don’t need fanservice to ruin the image of already bland characters.

The artwork does not look bad either, as there are no significant quality drops, but it also has a weird filter, it makes you think that someone set up the brigthness of your screen almost to the max when you are watching it. The backgrounds are also well done but they are as typical as they get. This is a problem I have with most fantasy anime these days but King’s Raid is just in another level, typical jrpg backgrounds as typical as they get, I can’t even say something particularly negative or positive about them. The motions are good when it comes to battles, which in turn have decent choreography but it’s hard to appreciate that when most of the time you see people standing and talking or sitting and talking and even when they do something, said action is shown with lots of still images. Is a weird case where a show is rarely animated but when it does, is well animated.

As for the special effects, well, for once I have to give it to a fantasy anime, it does not have crappy looking CGI attacks nor monsters, a rare thing nowadays, but they are not impressive either, in fact it is the second weakest visual aspect after the character designs.

The second issue of the show is how simple and generic is it, when I read people talking about it, the few who have positive things to say about the show are either people who like fantasy stories so much to the point of accepting every cliché within the genre without a problem, or people who played the game and keeps telling others about the potential it has, and the twist that are yet to come once the adaptation reaches the 9th out of 10 chapters of the game.

Yeah, I don’t think anyone besides Detective Conan, One Piece, Gintama or Pokemon fans can wait that long before the series “gets good” but whatever, this seems to be the main excuse for every show that comes out these days, it gets good once there’s only half the series left, or in its nth season, stuff like that.

Until that happens, if at all, all you are left with is the basic premise of an evil demon emperor which is going to revive in this world and bring doom with him so its time to go on a travel and get a macguffing in form of a holy sword to stop him and his whole army of typical monsters, which are referred as demons in here but they otherwise encapsulates about every monster you encounter in an rpg, from undeads to giant worm things which comes out from under the grounds.

And this premise just can’t avoid having a cast consisting of a noble knight destined to save the world, the kind female healer who is also his childhood friend and possible love interest, a cheerful female wizard who uses fire, wears a red dress (it’s not really a dress but w/e, I don’t know about clothes in english, or in general to be honest), a big purple hat, constantly jokes about the protagonist being and looking completely normal (which is true, but the same can be said about the whole cast), and is just clumsy and sometimes sets up stuff on fire by accident and she also wastes all the money of the party, do you like Aqua and Megumin from KonoSuba? Rejoice for they are combined into one here! If she had only a fraction of their memorability and funny quirks, sadly she doesn’t and is still the funniest character in the show.

There’s also a rogue like assassin but aside from his not really funny interactions with Cleo, the wizard, nothing else is known about this character.

There are some other characters but they don’t appear much, such as two female elves, one who doesn’t trust humans and a member of the party who defeated the demon lord 100 years before the beginning of the story, they are not bad but they appear for two episodes and are not seen again.

Ultimately the most interesting characters are the dark elves, as they plan to take over the kingdom by slowly taking over the royal army for all the discrimination they received in the past, as well as all the crap they get even in the present. This is also the most interesting part of the show, waiting for the moment they will strike…when and if that happens is still unknown. Sadly, this is filler according to the people that played the game, as they don’t appear there, too bad. With that said, whenever they are not angry and just talking among themselves, they have a very relaxed behaviour and typical personalities, the naive kid, the calm and mostly quiet girl, a whole bunch of those WHEN ARE WE GONNA KILL ALL OF THOSE HUMANS type of guys, and the leader, the one who plans and does all stuff and is usually calm until someone try to do something to one of his friends, that’s when he snaps and becomes enraged, nothing to see here either.

Besides the no surprises, there’s also the problem of how poorly writen everything is, a weak protagonist who can’t do anything sets up to kill the demons when a whole veteran squad got killed off, demons appear in the middle of the sacred forest of the elves when it’s supossed to to stop everyone that isn’t an elf, they kill a creature in the same episode it appears and I am supossed to feel sorry for this little creature. Look, I don’t know about you, but I can’t feel sorry for the death of someone I knew for about 10 minutes, even less if it’s a creature that only says one word. When this happens, the hero, up until now useless, goes berserk and kill this demon with ease, what happened there?

Also he is giving one third of the power of this holy sword shortly after that, being considered kind and worthy right after that, but I will recognize how that was pointed out in the show, as for the little creature, is a plant, thus he begins to grow again in the very next episode, so much for the drama. A thing I didn’t like here i show the protagonist got that sudden power up.

A sort of witch appears and almost kill the protagonist while his whole party just stand there, she also hints that the goddess of light or whatever is not what she seems to be but for now that remains unclear. Oh, and she’s also told about the connection of the protagonist and the former hero about 4 or 5 minutes after the party agreed to hide that fact, and no one pointed that out. Afterwards we see her with a one dimensional villain by the way.

And the leader of the dark elves, always telling the rest to don’t succumb to the racism they get on a daily basis when he almost killed a noble and blew eveything up, and this somehow didn’t have any repercussion of any kind. The theme of racism is also portrayed very poorly, very onesided in order to try and justify and victimize the dark elves. Although there are good humans that don’t treat them like shit, most of them act that way only because the dark elves are seemingly helping them fight the demons. The rest of the humans? The worst incompetent scum ot the world.

But the real issue here is how this began, which is shown on the third episode, I won’t spoil what that was but come on, a whole race being exiled because of something only one of them did? And it wasn’t even that big of a deal, is not believable and feels like too much, the only interesting thing in that is the possible connection to the shady sign of the goddess of light which can or not be revealed later in the story.

Side content from the game is also added here, in the form of relaxing moments and slice of life moments, usually ruined by minus encounters with minor enemies. This is supossed to give time to know more about the setting and the characters but the episodes are wasted on silly comedy than fleshing out the main cast. The minor characters who only appear for one episode don’t have anything interesting about them either. The backgrounds can be summed up as being traumatized because of being previously attacked by the demons or in the middle of a fight, common and expected within the setting, not atrocious but not interesting, these episodes just drag the plot and turn the tone very lighthearted for the supossed world crisis that is around the corner, an issue I have with this video game genre in general.

Well, at least the series is not an isekai with otaku pandering, fanservice or harem vibes, and the main party does travel to each important place instead of just teleporting themselves to them or flying towards them, that is something good I can say about it.

A typical series obviously has a typical soundtrack, the kind of which you listen in just about every fantasy work regardless of its medium, but to be fair these tend to be good and is the same case in here. The opening and ending songs are typical jrock/pop but I don’t have a problem with them, they are nothing special or amazing but I like how they lean more towards the rock side, especially the ending song which focuses on the dark elves.

Other than that, King’s Raid is not exactly atrocious, it’s just slow, boring, and has the type of bad writing you usually get in videogames but don’t pay too much attention to, if at all. Is just that, as I said with Dragon’s Dogma, it is easier to notice those things in a medium where plot and characters are the main focus and there’s no fancy looking gameplay to make up for it. At least the protagonist wasn’t kill and revived in the very same first episode or gets a new party member wherever he goes, as it happened in Granblue Fantasy and again, no isekai, no harem, no fapservice.

That aside, the series does not offer something which didn’t happen earlier in about thousand fantasy stories and is thus not worth watching. I rather rewatch The Lord of the Rings, or replay arcade videogames from the 90s such as Golden Axe, Dark Seal or Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara, the first one is obviously way better and the videogames are way more fun, the D&D game even has a better plot with better characters, believe or not, and you have to play with different characters in different runs, going to different places and fighting different monsters in order to get that, which adds to the replay value.

There’s also the fact that the Dragon Quest remake is airing at the same time and features a typical jrpg plot as well, but unlike this one, it has a huge fanbase behind to back it up. So it even has direct competition favored from the get go, because of its long line of videogames, anime, manga and Toriyama art style, such a bad timing.

Will I keep watching it? Yes, because is not an isekai and because I want to see if the dark elves and the possible twists make up for the rough start, after all Warhammer and Warcraft began as the most typical fantasy stuff and evolved into something much crazier later on, for better or worse.

Update: After eight episodes the series got better, but not by much. In terms of visuals, the odd brightness is still there but not as prominent, and the special effects get improved. The second cour has different opening and endings, and I’d say they are better than the first ones.

As for the story and characters, Kasel still goes to meet the different people that can remove the Holy Sword’s seals from him, someone attacks, he fights them and looses himself in the process, gets tired for days and is lectured about the way he fights, again, but this time there’s some time spent on his mentality and background, even if it’s nothing special.

There’s still side content that doesn’t matter much and episodes that feel pointless and drag the plot, plus not one but two recap episodes…in a two cour series. And the take over the kingdom subplot is pretty much forgotten.

Well at least Roy’s backstory is shown, even if it’s nothing special, and the whole thing with the dark elves gets a resolution, it felt rushed and lacked impact but it served in terms of fleshing out Riheet, by far the best character in the show.

Anyways the main story keeps being boring and the dark elves’ subplot is rushed, thus the only thing left to pay attention to is the backstory and lore, which is pretty cool, again, nothing mindblowing nor atypical, is the kind of stuff you have already seen in different fantasy stories, including Record of Lodoss War, but it’s serviceable. It has to do with different dieties at war, characters being corrupted by dark powers, the truth about the dark elves’ backstory, and all tied with what happened between the former King and the Demon Lord, thus connecting the two storylines from the beginning. The problem is, between the recaps, the pointless or repetitive episodes and the backstory, the actual main plot is reduced to just the final two episodes, where everyone arrives at the same time (despite the villains having the ability to teleport) and somehow before the main party to a final battle, which is short, doesn’t have much of a choreography, ends in a rather disappointing way and leads to a typical finale that has nothing to do with the supposedly mind blowing dark twist from the ninth chapter of the game.

Thus it’s another complete failure of a videogame adaptation that won’t even get a continuation since it was a big flop in terms of audience, I mean even the blu ray sells were cancelled before the series even reached its mid cour, that’s just…sad.

Netflix just can’t have a rest can they? They air or license good (Little Witch Academia, Great Pretender) or at least popular (Nanatsu no Taizai, Naruto) anime from time to time but when it comes to their originals, it looks like they are cursed to make crude CGI snorefests that almost nobody bothers to watch, and when they do, they usually don’t like them because of very good reasons.

One of them being that their products are based on popular and cherished IPs and leave a bad mark on them, it happened before with Saint Seiya, which almost nobody liked, it also happened with Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex 2045 which had a better reception because apparently the GitS’ fandom is not as critical as I thought, and it happens again with Dragon’s Dogma.

Based on an action rpg game by Capcom which I never played, I normally wouldn’t watch it because videogames anime adaptations are never a good sing, yet this time I did for the next three reasons:

1-Is so rare to get a dark fantasy anime set in a classical medieval setting instead of an edgy magical girls show these days and that alone is a reason to check it out for me.

2-It’s very short meaning that even if it’s crap it can be finished in just one day.

3-THE OPENING THEME IS AWESOME, it was probably taken from the videogame for all I know but it was enough to get my attention, especially after the pleasant surprise I got from Magatsu Wahrheit: Zuerst, another rpg based anime with an amazing opening.

The series suffers from the exact same issue as almost all the other videogame anime adaptations that I watched suffer from, the transition from one medium to another is not well done. Although videogames can have a good story, they ultimately rely mostly on gameplay thus their writing is rarely that good and when it comes to rpgs it’s almost a necessity for them to have lots of sidequests (good sidequests that is) to justify their duration and prices.

When you translate that to a series or a movie, where the focus is in the plot, it doesn’t work either because:

-The story was never good such as the case with every 90s fighting game which had anime adaptations and they were mediocre at best;

-Reading exposition at your own pace when playing a videogame is not the same than having to sit and watch people talk on a series and it gets tiresome and boring very fast as it happened many times before but lets use the currently airing King’s Raid as an example, the first three episodes were abysmal because of all the talking and for how generic it is to the point of making people drop the show after rating in low.

-A single cour series or a single movie is just not enough time to adapt properly the whole plot of a videogame which lasts for at least thrice the duration and thus contains a lot more lore, twists and characterization, that was the case with Xenosaga, which was also badly animated and thus it didn’t do justice to its supossed epic space war premise;

-Is just boring when you have to follow a series where the makers clearly took an avatar protagonist and slapped him in the adaptation without giving him a proper characterization, as was the case with Granblue Fantasy or Princess Connect: Re Dive! and we can use King’s Raid as an example in here as well.

-Or finally, throwing too much content from the sidequests in the adaptation drags the pacing and makes it a chore to watch, while at the same time forces the makers to rush the ending in order to finish the series.

In the case of Dragon’s Dogma, almost all of these points are present, the story is very simple, is just a guy trying to get revenge on a single dragon, which hardly excuses the duration of a full series.

Yet it plays out in an almost completely episodic manner exactly because it includes side monsters placed randomly in order to have epic battles and makes the protagonist look dumb for jumping to help any random person he encounters instead of focusing on his own objective. And calling these fights epic is a stretch as the CGI does not do them justice. Honestly, is not that bad because the models look alright, but the backgrounds and the special effects are simple, and the motions are just sloppy, whether on times of relaxing or in the middle of a battle.

To be fair, Dragon’s Dogma tries, as there is a little plot continuity and there is potential for good dark fantasy material in these stories, not for the sex, drugs and violence which are hardly impactful thanks to the poor CG, is the rushed pacing of every episode what prevents the dark themes to be explored properly.

Every episode is named after a deadly sin (that is the reason why they are seven) but the representation of them is questionable. The first is “Wrath” because it shows the protagonist losing everything he loves and setting on a journey to get a personal vendetta on the dragon…because the latter told him to. How is it sinful when you didn’t do anything wrong, someone takes everything from you and you set on getting revenge on him because he baits you into doing so?

Also, I don’t know about you but for me, a villain who keeps alive someone who wants to kill him and encourages him to do so is just a bad antagonist, even more if he’s absent for most of the story and lets the hero become stronger, which is exactly what happens here.

Now that I mentioned that, how is this protagonist supposed to kill the dragon? He is not even a soldier and he got owned completely by the dragon, yet he expects to kill him without even training? What?

Anyways, the second episode is “Gluttony” and is thematically the most interesting of the bunch, as it shows a village where the food is taken from the people by their governors, sacrifices are made to a ciclop, which for some reason is controlled with a single whip and at the end of the story, once all the villains are defeated, the whole starving village goes out of control and everyone becomes an enemy of each other. It was a great dark turn of events because the protagonist ended up doing more harm than good helping these people but sadly it comes off as rushed because it happens at the very end of the episode.

The next ones are not as interesting, I don’t know why “Envy” is called as such when it features rapist goblins, a clear attempt to cash in Goblin Slayer’s infamy and a woman who married a guy just because of his money and tries to seduce the protagonist. The only relevant thing in this episode are the two soldiers that appear on “Greed” and gives the series a continuity.

Only to have them with their personalities changed completely from one moment to another due to the spell of a lich, again, how is someone a greedy sinner when is not acting like himself because he’s under the control of another being? He’s not doing horrible things on his own and suffering the consequences of his own actions, he’s being used.

In the middle of these stories there is sloth, an episode dedicated to an abandoned village full of drug addicts who cheat on their wives in front of their very own eyes in order to escape from the gritty reality they live on. Thus they don’t work and do nothing when a freaking hydra comes in and destroys their village and kills some women. Another episode full of interesting ideas that are not treated properly because the guys of the village have zero characterization besides cheating on ther wives, before they snap and are able to help kill a hydra when they could barely stand on their feet 5 minutes before because they were under the effects of a strong drug.

Lust was easily the best episode for me, as it deals with the internal struggle of the main protagonist, tempted by a succubus that adopts the form of his dead wife, and he does not let her fool him, the finale of the episode was the highlight of the series for me.

Up until this point, the protagonist was boring, he had a simple personality and a simple past, not very different than a kindhearted shounen or a harem protagonist who helps everyone he encounters just because, but in these last episodes he becomes obsessed with revenge and becomes colder and ultimately, what he sought to destroy. Always an interesting idea, but there was no build up to it because he changed completely out of screen.

The most interesting character in the series is Hannah, his sidekick and, if you notice, the only character whose name I remember, simply because is the most memorable of the bunch. She begins as a “pawn” as they call her in the show, which I assume are artificial beings created to assist the Arisen, people who have their hearts taken by the dragon, this is all stuff that I assume as someone who had not played the game, as the series does not bother to explain all of this stuff and barely implies it.

As a pawn, Hannah is basically heartless and soulless, she doesn’t have emotions, only thinks about how to do things in the most logical course of action, does not know how to speak without hurting others with her direct approach, and at times throws some lines of dialogue about how foolish and emotional creatures are we, the humans. She’s also the real powerful character in the main duo, while the protagonist can only fight thanks to a some sort of dark power gave to him by the dragon, his enemy.

By the end of the series she becomes a lot more human than any other character to the point of being unable of helping the protagonist and put an end to a tragic cicle at the very end, but unfortunately this also happens without build up and out of screen.

And finally there’s the last episode, “Pride”, which is the heaviest on themes, monologues, plot twists and character regressions, but it all feels rushed, preachy, and it devoids all the characters of any free will while also leaves you thinking that almost all of the episodes thus far were unfocused, which they were.

So, you are not watching this series for the setting which is vaguely explored, nor the themes which are bombarded to you in the last episode, nor the plot which is very simple, episodic and unfocused, nor the characters which are as bland as they get, nor the action because, although the fights have some choreography, the weak cg makes them look junky and they always come down to the protagonist becoming enraged and letting his dark powers control him to kill a threat he could barely do anything against up until that moment.

Good ideas here and there, a mostly serious tone (although saying this is kind of a stretch), and a good sound department thanks to the epic score and the acceptable sound effects and voice acting, in particular the dragon who may not sound frightening nor imposing but he sounds old and wise, partially thanks to the way he speaks, incorporating old japanese words which are in turned subtitled with early modern english, but other than that, there isn’t much to see here, especially when there’s so much better options out there such as:

-1997 Berserk, easily the best dark fantasy anime of all times and I’m also one of those who thinks that the cgi movies are decent as well. I would like to say the same about the manga but I didn’t read it yet.

-Vinland Saga, which has a similar character arc for its main protagonist, done a hundred times better, along with a lot more interesting themes and characters, at least in its anime and first arc of the manga.

-The Hobbit movie trilogy which has some similarities with this title, especially the third one (and I guess this also applies to the book).

-Shadow of the Collosus has some similarities in its protagonist as well as an amazing atmosphere and innovating gameplay for its time, and I hope it never gets an adaptation because the result would come off like this.

-There is also the Castlevania 2d cartoon series, also a Netflix original, also a dark fantasy, with an almost anime art style, japanese voices, and Belmont and Sylpha even have somewhat similar designs to this main duo. A lot cooler.

-Blue Gender is completely different but has similar character arcs for its main duo, only a lot better.

-As for the few anime based on videogames that I watched which cracked the code for making a proper product there are Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, because it tells its own what if story and focuses on the spectacle while still providing enough context to understand the plot of the game on a basic level thanks to its first scene. Now I know that fans of the game usually hate the movie for the way the main characters are portrayed, but they fit well with their roles in the movie, but that’s not something to talk about here.

-The other one is Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis, which uses its source material only in concept and tells an otherwise completely different story. Now, its writing is garbage and is barely worth watching only because of its characters, production values, and focus on the cool and fun aspect. So, as you see even these ones are nothing special.

-I would like to include Magatsu Wahrheit: Zuerts as well because is doing the same as Bahamut in the sense that it only uses the concept of its source material to tell its own story, with better writing and characterization than that series but it is still airing and thus it can still mess everything up.

Today, November 16th 2020 I came to know about Abunai Sisters and being the way I am I just had to watch it, add it to my list and write about it. What I’m doing here is completely pointless because nobody in their right mind would bother to watch it or talk about it and thus nobody will read this. Newer viewers wouldn’t bother with it mainly because they wouldn’t know about it and also because it’s old by now.

As for the rest, they wouldn’t bother with it because a look at the poster, the score and the synopsis is enough to tell you that it’s not worth watching, even those like me who ocassionaly like to torture themselves and check out some of the worst anime of all times wouldn’t normally bother with it because it’s not as infamous as other titles such as Mars of Destruction, Skelter Heaven, MD Geist, Pupa and the likes.

But even if it’s pointless I’m writing this because I can and because I wanted to write a review for quite some time. And hey, if at least one person read this, then it was worth it.

With that said, there’s really nothing much to say about it, one look at the poster and the synopsis and you get the deal, two female agents who somehow are also celebrities protect some crystal from the villain from Spirited Away and her companion, a pervy version of Mr. Incredible’s boss. No really, the bad guys look like them.

Here’s where the first problem arise, how can secret agents be celebrities at the same time? Shouldn’t they be discrete? Well I guess being famous could be a facade, who would suspect of two famous women to be secret agents? Even then they sure don’t seem to be secret agents, as all they do in the show has more to do with their celebrity life rather than their work as secret agents. The series don’t tell you anything about what is this agency their work for, which is their rank there and what do they do there, heck, it doesn’t even appear.

You won’t even know who their enemies are and why do they want the “booby stone” as they call it, ok it is mentioned in the show that said stone brings eternal beauty or something but it sure doesn’t look like it when you watch the series.

You won’t even know why are these sisters celebrities, as all they do is goof around in their big mansion, located in some private tropical island with the worst security of all times as it allows the bad guys to appear and reappear every single time. They never sing, or dance, or do anything really. No personality nor backgrounds at all.

And of course, nothing in the series makes sense as the sisters have booby powers which allows them to increase their sizes and attack with them, while also have a booby alarm as they call it, which usually works, warning them about danger, but sometimes it doesn’t for plot convenience. Not story at all either.

But look at me, talking seriously about a show which clearly does not require to do so as is just a silly comedy, I am just as ridiculous as the series itself. Well, even if I am to judge the show that way, it is also terrible on that level, as the jokes consist in repeating the exact same formula in each one of the 10 episodes, the sisters are just chilling around, the bad guys appear with bad disguises and try to take the stone, the booby alarm sounds and make the sisters’ breasts bounce like crazy and they stop the bad guys with their own gadgets, the end.

There was an instance where, although the formula and the result were the same, they did it by playing volleyball which was fine for a change, until they ruined even this by doing the exact same thing in the exact next episode, only with ping pong, thank you so much show, for ruining even the tiniest variety you had.

If I am to compare this with episodic cartoons which repeat the same formula from…just about any era, even them have more variety with how their formulas play out in each episode. Heck, there’s not even a reason to compare it to cartoons, there’s Pucca, which began as a 2 minute per episode webseries, meaning, it has shorter episodes than this, and even that one has more variety than this.

The jokes themselves, apart from the nonsensical situations, have to do with an attemtp to make fun of celebrities’ life and first world problems, but it’s so explicit about it to the point of telling you the joke directly while the character saying it looks at the screen, it’s not subtle at all, thus is not funny at all, thus it fails as a parody.

I can’t even recognize the ecchi in the show as unique or creative, as we’ve seen boobs making crazier things and being even more deformed in anime, both before and after, even the likes of Valkyirie Drive: Mermaid, Manyuu Kikenchou, Seikon no Qwaser, Queen’s Blade, Eiken and just about any ecchi you either know or don’t know about is way better than this at least on that level and you are more excused to watch them than Abunai Sisters.

The sisters themselves are based after two real japanese sisters who are apparently models by the way, and thankfully they don’t look anything like their counterparts in the show. I don’t know what’s the deal with those sisters and if they were at the peak of their popularity in 2009 when this came out to excuse its existence but this show surely doesn’t work even as a promotional material, it makes them look stupid, superficial, and just plain ugly. We’re talking about Charlie’s Angel videogame for PSX levels of bad publicity here, if not even worse.

As for the production values, what’s there to say? They are atrocious on every aspect but if you are cursed enough to be reading this, don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is the worst CGI of all time. There are worse looking cartoons and videogames as well as there are worse looking anime, such as Urda and Digimon X-Evolution. Even then, those products are excused for coming out way earlier than this series and Urda was even made by a bunch of unprofessional noobs, while Abunai Sisters came out in freaking 2009 and was made by such a big studio like Production I.G, which made visual masterpieces both before and after this monstruosity. There just isn’t any show by them that looks as bad as this.

The sound is even worse, as there is barely music which is forgettable at best, and the sound effects are old and weak by 2009 standards. But the worst aspect is the voices, apparently there is a version with normal voices, but no, in the only one avalaible online they sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks, the fact that is english dub only makes it even worse because there are no subtitles to help you understand what is it that they are supposed to be saying.

Ultimately, being a Production I.G work is the definitive factor that makes Abunai Sisters so bad and so disappointing, if it was made earlier and by a worse studio, I would give it even a 2 out of 10. No really, once you watched so much bad stuff as I did you appreciate that, as a parodical comedy, this atrocity at least does not try to take itself seriously in the slightest, unlike things like Mars of Destruction, Skelter Heaven, Roots Search X, MD Geist, Midori, Pupa, Ousama Game, Evil or Live, Dies Irae, Hand Shakers or the most recent Kyouchuu Rettou or Gibiate (among lots of other examples), which try to be either serious, or dramatic, or deep, or epic, or horror and they all fail terribly at it. Nor does it insult a good and popular IP, as Souten no Ken does with Hokuto no Ken.

Even if I am to compare it with another “comedy” is at least better than Twinkle Nora Rock me for making slightly more sense and for having actual animation.

Thus Abunai Sisters is better than all of them for not even trying, but even then it does not deserve more than the lowest score from me for how badly made it is and for how much better stuff there is, it makes even the Charlie’s Angels PSX game look bad (and not terrible), it makes the Charlie’s Angels movies seem passable because the action has more stakes, way better battle choreography and gorgeous women, it makes the Totally Spies! cartoon series seem passable for having better comedy and more explored characters, then there are the ecchi shows which I already mentioned that are simply far more appealing than this.

Heck, even if I try to think in the people with the craziest and the weirdest of fetishes, there is a lot of stuff such as inflation in certain websites which makes this look tame, thus Abunai Sisters does not have any value even for them and excuses my score. (If you are not one of them and you don’t know what that is then good for you, now pay attention to a warning like this for once in your life and don’t google it, seriously, I wish I was as lucky).

Hey! It’s 2020 and although pretty much a thing from the past, within just its first three days, people worldwide were afraid of the possibility of a Third World War. By the end of the past month the threat of a possible pandemic disease appeared and some places in Brazil were submerged under the water. Also the Olympic Games will take place between july and august. Meaning, it’s the perfect time to read and review Akira, and since there aren’t many different things to say about its two formats, this review will cover both of them.

Nowadays many people don’t see the appeal of the title because it’s pretty much a product of its time, and I’m not saying that the movie is obsolete or that it didn’t age very well, but its aesthetics and themes were reflecting the time when it came out and thus, when people watch it nowadays they don’t see its appeal, all they see is a well animated movie with weird mouth motions, mediocre voice acting, and a clearly fragmented plot which is also hard to follow.

That does not take away its historical importance though, which is why even if a new adaptation comes out and turns out to be a longer and closer adaptation of the manga, it won’t take away the value of this movie. It is safe to say that, back when it came out, Akira was the best animated movie ever produced in Japan, it was dealing with issues from its time that resonated with the people from that period, it had a very focused atmosphere, it served as a great summary of the manga, it was the title that showed the west what kind of animation Japan was able to produced and it even started the dark sci-fi era of anime.

The thing is, said impact wasn’t instantaneous, it took some years for Akira to become such a point of reference when it comes to anime, since not many people watched it when it came out and with how expensive it was to be made, it ended up causing the bankruptcy of its studio, which ended up becoming part of another bigger one.

As a sci-fi piece made between the ‘60s and the late 80s, Akira has all the themes you could expect from it, a gang of bikers become allies of a revolutionary army which opposes an oppressive government which abuses its authority through its military forces which in turn makes experiments on people in order to turn them into super soldiers with psychic powers to use against other countries in a post-World War III scenario, with some ideas about trans humanism as basis.

The post-apocalyptic setting is well presented, is a rotten and decadent society were morals seem to not matter, violence, drugs, profanity, gang wars and more are things present in everyday life in front of anyone in the streets, politicians spends a lot of time discussing what to do and how to take action in order to not affect its public image instead of actually doing something while the police and military forces submit people and do whatever they want with them, making them desperate. Since they can’t trust the authorities nor the political party which serves as an opposition, they result in becoming part of a religious cult in seek of a possible savior, which supposedly will appear in the form of Akira, the character who gives the movie its title, despite being a plot device who only appears for a couple of minutes, before everything blows to pieces and the whole place falls under unprecedented chaos.

This is the major issue of the film, as interesting as the themes are and as well as the setting is presented, the same can’t be said about both of what should be its most important aspects, plot and characters. This is the result of cramming a whole seinen manga composed of chapters which has 40 to 80 pages each, the pacing is a complete mess. And it’s not as if the duration of the movie is too short, quite the opposite actually, with two hours of total screen time, it should have been a proper adaptation, and although lots of important scenes from the manga are present, even the finale which at the time wasn’t even made, the events depicted in the movie takes place one after another with seemingly no connection whatsoever and too fast to the point nothing feels believable. Heck, there’s even a coup d’état which happens in an instant, that’s just dumb.

Stuff happens for the sake of happening and makes you question how can everything happens with such ease, how are the antagonist forces so incompetent, and how is any of this stuff even possible to begin with. And it’s not like the movie have that much happening all the time, there’s quite the downtime where it could explain properly what is happening, why is it happening, and how is it happening, but instead wastes time in dialogues which don’t flesh out the characters nor do they give dynamic and interesting character interactions, thus they don’t serve a purpose in the film.

Even the metaphysical aspect of the movie is not properly explained, Kei gives a very pretentious monologue to Kaneda full of information about it, but when she finally was about to wrap up things and make a point, a freaking flying vehicle comes out of nowhere and chases them until its pilot is knocked out, whenever the movie is about to explain itself, an action scene happens and takes the whole screen time thus making it seem like senseless violence, very graphic violence, I must point out, which does not bother me but can turn off some viewers.

And I just have to point out the plot armor present throughout the whole thing, every random officer gets blown up to pieces in a matter of seconds but Kaneda survives whatever happens with so much ease to the point it becomes ridiculous.

The inconsistent pacing affects even the characters, there’s not much time invested in them thus they are not properly characterized nor explored, they are closer to plot devices than actual people, they have a specific objective (but not a clear goal), and they are proactive and constantly do stuff in order to make them happen, but that’s pretty much it, you know nothing about them and will even have a hard time remembering about them or their names.

The only character who is somewhat explore is Tetsuo, the main antagonist of the flick, he has some sort of inferiority complex, he’s a victim of his rotten society, and there’s a decent attempt at showing the psychological pressure he’s under during the whole thing, result of being manipulated by other psychic kids at first, and of him being consumed by his own powers later on, while his design and attitude change a lot during the movie, making him easily the most memorable character of the bunch. Even so, all of that is presented in a rather rushed way, thus is not very convincing nor does it make much sense. Also is very hard to feel sympathetic for a guy who’s killing people left and right in gory ways while laughing about it before turning into a grotesque monster.

There’s also Akira, the character title, but as I said before, there’s nothing to write about this child, he appears for just a bunch of minutes, makes a giant ball of energy, says something incomprehensible and then disappears while taking away consequences, leaving the spectators confused of what even happened.

Thus, the themes are deep and important, the setting is well presented, the characters are proactive and move the story forward, but when it comes to proper writing and characterization, this flick is mostly a complete mess and all of that ends up being just background decoration for all the very well animated spectacular action and very graphic violence, which is why some people, myself included, refers to this adaptation as just a “cool” summary and not much more.

Speaking of that, if there’s something about the movie that still holds up even today is the visual department, multiple layers of animation, extremely detailed drawings, especially when it comes to backgrounds and machinery, as well as all the graphic content, high frame rate, and even the unprecedented lip sync in japanese animation, which I’m not even sure if it even happened again ever since. All of which being completely hand drawn. It’s still not a flawless aspect since the mouth motions seems weird by now and the characters look all so similar to the point it even becomes confusing and makes you think certain characters are doing the exact opposite of what they want because you mixed them up in your head due to how similar they look to another completely different character. Gender or age don’t matter, every character has the exact same face, although with noticeable differences such as wrinkles and such.

As for the sound department, is also polarizing, the sound effects are superb for its time, and the soundtrack is unique and haunting even to this day, it really sets the mood, fits the setting, gives an eerie atmosphere and get stuck in your head for how unorthodox it is, while also not being weird just for the sake of it, the complete pieces (not fully used in the movie) are complex pieces of work worth listening outside of the flick in which they are used. Unlike other soundtracks which loses appeal when you take them out of its source, this one remains mind blowing and becomes even better when you do that.

The problem with the sound is the voice acting, which is decent at times and plain terrible at others, and I’m talking about the original japanese dub by the way, not the often criticized english dub made at a time when voice acting was kind of a joke of a work no one really cared about. Even in the original dub, the actors sound weird half the time, it kind of fits the atmosphere but that does not take away that it’s still weak as a whole.

So the movie is a well animated summary which remains impactful and very important but only on a superficial level and not so much on a critical level, but what about its source material?

First of all, unlike the movie, every character has a distinctive look which sets them apart from the rest, and the backgrounds and graphic violence are even better than in the anime adaptation, is actually impressive how, with how good the movie looks, the manga manages to be even better, when it comes to drawings, Akira still remains a landmark in the medium.

As for the rest, the pacing is much more appropriate which instantly makes both plot and characters to be way better than they are in the anime. Here you have a clear idea of the context of everything, it is clear what’s happening, why is it happening, and how is happening, everyone’s objective is much more clearer, and their train of thoughts and action makes much more sense, also the downtime serves to expand the scenario and introduce a few more characters that will reappear and have a somewhat important role later on.

Also, Akira appears much sooner in the story, and although he still remains nothing but a plot device with no personality, his apparition and the big event concerning him at the medium of the story makes a big change in the plot, which leads to the conflict expanding in scale to the whole world, more politicians and military forces from the whole world taking part of it, with interesting events happening as a result. Also this leads to more, longer and more epic and brutal confrontations which are also way better shown than in the movie and despite being chaotic on a superficial level, it never feels random or hard to understand, while always depicting the horrors of the whole thing and the casualties it causes.

Another positive thing is having an actual backstory of when, why, and how everything began, as well as a much clearer approach to its metaphysical aspects and ideas about transhumanism and the search for a higher level of human evolution. Also, there are better pseudo-scientific explanations with more properly explained somewhat complicated terminology when talking about weapons, machinery and the energy used in the story, as well as the effects it causes and the scale it has.

As for the characters, they begin as the same archetypes they are in the movie, although with a stronger presence and more personality, and they actually develop throughout the whole manga, due to the major crisis which happens in the middle of the story, their ideals are challenged, they change sides or mix their objectives with new points of view while they form new alliances and they develop different interactions with different characters. In particular, the romantic aspect of the piece, which was very rushed and unconvincing in the movie, has much more time to actually develop in a better way here.

Also, lots of side characters which barely appear in the movie, if they even do, have far more presence and personality while are also proactive and have a personal goal, with a clear conclusion for each one. They also has at least a couple of interesting scenes, dialogues, courses of action, or interactions with the main characters and are not just background decoration or inexistent like in the movie.

With that said, they are not that great either since they still are closer to plot devices with not that much information about them being shown that actual people, with the obvious exception being Tetsuo, the main antagonist. He was the best character in the movie so here he shines even more, his inferiority complex is better explained, he has an actual sad background which left mental scars on him, he goes through a much bigger and way better shown psychological pressure and transformation, as well as a physical deformation much more anticipated than in the movie, it is also even more grotesque, and even more shown. His design also changes during the whole manga, just like in the movie, and he also has much more looked into interactions with both Kaneda and Kaori. He’s still a total threat who does horrible things and pays for them, but now you can feel some sympathy towards him.

But, despite being definitely better than the movie, the manga is not a masterpiece either since it still has some issues, such as:

-There’s still a lot of plot armor in it, Kaneda still survives a lot of things he totally should not. In fact it’s even worse than the movie in this aspect.

-Action scenes are still very unbelievable at times. How are Kaneda and Kei able to take out military soldiers with such ease at their young age is still beyond my comprehension, they also seem to always be able to infiltrate military facilities with relative ease and escape from them without much problem.

-Power scaling. As explained as the energy may be, it still feels like magic most of the time. Also Tetsuo escalates in power to the point it becomes just too much, and Akira is even way stronger because he does not even suffers mentally from using his powers, as Tetsuo does. It becomes quite ridiculous how they are unable to kill the main characters despite how ridiculously powerful they are. Yes, Tetsuo usually goes through a mental breakdown when facing Kaneda, while the latter tends to take him by surprise, and although all that is properly explained, it still feels very convenient for the good guys at times, which means, it worsens the plot armor.

-The previous point leads to another problem which is the finale, although also much better explained than the movie’s (although that isn’t saying much), it still feels kind of like a lazy copout, and although the story reach a satisfactory ending, you feel like there is still room for stuff to happen and things to be covered and shown.

Those issues are still not enough to stain the manga that much, and is still a more polished version of the movie, and a must read piece within the medium to the most part. As for the movie, despite being just a rushed summary, it is still worth watching despite being a product of its time, because it is not outdated nor obsolete. Even if a new anime is produced, covers the whole manga to the end and somehow manages to have a production half as memorable as the one in the movie, it won’t take away its historical importance and cultural impact.

Movie 6/10
Manga 8/10

Recommendations

-Terra e…, the first Choujin Locke, the first Gall Force, Windaria, anime movies from the ‘80s which were also focusing on some aspects present in this movie such as psychic powers, post-apocalyptic settings, military forces confronted, the search for a higher step in human evolution, young ones being affected by the war caused by the governments and its effects, and usually tragic finales.

-Tetsuo the Iron Man, a live action japanese film which also shows a man going crazy due to a physical transformation caused by his contact with technology.

-Shin Godzilla, a live action japanese film which also shows a big threat in the middle of a city and people suffering for it while politicians and militaries take a long time in take action due to bureaucracy and protocols.

-Galerians, a PS1 survival horror game very similar to Akira in themes and aesthetics.