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deltaengineering · 5 years

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Spring Anime 2019 Part 1: git gud

I was trying to wait until something really good came along. This ran into a problem. Yes this is a day behind but not because of... that.

Amazing Stranger

What: Otaku dipshit buys a figurine that turns out to be an alien robot girl from an anime.

❌❌ Otaku dipshit nonsense about perving on a figurine-sized robot girl. It’s bad, yo.

❌ Execution is as questionable as the content. I’ll give it a star for using 3DCG and 2D animation where they respectively make sense.

♎ Only ⅓ runtime so it ended before I could get mad.

Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai

What: Overachiever gets conned into tutoring a bunch of girls with specialized talents and general uselessness. The twist is that they don’t look identical.

♎ Basic ass harem setup with little to distinguish itself. And if it’s not a real harem it’s just a lacklaughter comedy.

♎ Characters aren’t terrible but sort of just there. Their talents are also too cartoonish to take seriously but not outlandish enough to be funny.

♎ You guessed it, production is workmanlike/undistinguished as well.

❌ Didn’t I just watch this? In any case, this lacks Quintuplet’s trademark sass so it’s just painfully mediocre.

Fruits Basket

What: Poor but optimistic high school girl gets involved with a harem of supernatural critters.

♎ This seems incredibly derivative and unoriginal. Seems of course, because Fruits Basket is the OG so all the others ripped it off in the first place. Doesn’t change the fact that I’ve sampled and discarded dozens of otome harems exactly like this.

✅ The production is aware that they’re adapting a classic over here, so the production values are high. It looks nice.

✅ It’s directed quite competently as well, especially the comic bits have the right timing.

❌ I don’t like the characters much. Tohru is a little annoying and the boyz are a big nothing. That’s not good for a romantic comedy. Side characters fare much better but hey, side characters in a show like this don’t matter.

♎ I have no attachment to Fruits Basket so this will have to stand on its own. So far it looks watchable, but very middle of the road.

Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu

What: Kiraralike about a class of middle school girls that are all named after their personality. The main character (Bocchi Hitori, natch) is lonely and made of social anxiety.

❌ Dealing with #relatable topics is always sketchy, but Bocchi talking to herself for the majority of the episode just gets really old no matter what.

✅ However, once she starts actually talking to other people it gets better. Slightly above average for a show like this, which means inoffensively cute and very mildly comedic.

♎ This is a Kiraralike where all the characters are named after their personality, so I wouldn’t expect any depth. Not that that’s unusual for the genre.

♎ I’ll probably give this 3 episodes because these shows live and die by the cast, which we haven’t seen much of so far. If Bocchi’s character development sticks and we get a few good support characters, it might be fun.

Joshikausei

What: the sound of one thigh slapping

❌ but

✅✅ though

Kimetsu no Yaiba / DEMON SLAYER

What: Edgy shounen about a dude whose family gets KILL BY DEMONS (no, he isn’t the demons (his sister is the demons)).

✅ Actually better than that sounds, it’s pretty serious with its approach to the whole revenge thing. The edginess is also only apparent on the margins, so tonally it’s more or less fine.

✅ The main guy isn’t terrible and his superpower (a superlative sense of smell) is fairly subdued for the genre. You could tell a story with this.

✅✅ This is ufotable and it looks REALLY good. ufotable shows are always very elaborate, but their aesthetics can be questionable. This, however, keeps the postprocessing to a minimum and uses CG only where appropriate. I’d say it rivals Emiya-san for the best looking thing they’ve ever done.

❌ The OP shows a bunch of supercool superdudes fighting like they're in a shounen anime, just in case you’re wondering.

❌❌ Three words: Weekly Shounen Jump. This is an instant death sentence for the long run, since it will be stretched until nobody cares anymore, then get swiftly killed - with some lipservice to closure, if you’re lucky.

❌❌ In case you’re willing to take your chances, WSJ is still a magazine for babies and imbeciles, so get ready for its “distinctive” writing style. Here it isn’t quite as bad as in Promised Neverland, but you’re still getting 100% wall-to-wall voiceover coverage explaining things that you either don’t need to know or are blindingly obvious.

Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO

What: 90s eroge protagonist starts hopping dimensions to look for his dad or something.

❌❌ Those 90s eroge protagonists sure were hilarious, what with their lechery etc. Rest of the cast fills the genre template nicely as well, which is to say they suck.

❌ Doesn’t look outright terrible so far, but it already shows signs of slight jankiness that would lead me to suspect this is a candidate for a production collapse in the future.

❌ Story? Surely you jest. All that happens in the first episode is vague exposition and naked girls falling from the sky. I hear the game gets real good 100 hours in, btw.

❌ This isn’t just some 90s eroge, it is the 90s eroge. You know, before KEY came along and made them all respectable (ostensibly). In any case, YU-NO is regarded as some stone cold classic of epic feels. I have experience with those, and they usually are only great for as long as you can’t read them.

Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai

What: High school girls hates men because her father happens to be one. Understandable, since he’s also a tiny dirty old man caricature from the 60s. Can love bloom on the ecchifield?

♎ This is mostly inoffensive...

❌ ...except when it isn’t, of course. Which isn’t that often but still too often.

❌ It would also be appreciated if it could be less offensive in those instances because hot damn.

❌ Even if it removed the main source of irritation it would still be nothing much. Something like Hitoribocchi or Benkyou ga Dekinai has at least some potential, this doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.

❌❌ My man Kenjiro Tsuda is wasting his time on this goblin’s comedy voice.

Mix - Meisei Story

What: Some kids play baseball, very slowly. You’re supposed to care because you presumably cared about Touch (which Mix is a very far removed sequel to).

❌ I did not in fact care about Touch. Nor about baseball, for that matter.

❌ Seriously, the entire selling point for this is “Sequel. To. Touch.” It cares not for your indifference towards Touch and would rather you go away.

❌❌ The languid pace is a killer. I know baseball is a boring sport but Mix doesn’t even attempt to make it interesting. This could work as an iyashikei-type show but in that case it would need different hooks, such as characters whose personality goes beyond “good at THIS aspect of baseball”. Maybe they’ll get to that but with this pace it’ll take a few seasons.

✅ I think the 80s design with a few contemporary animation frills looks quite nice. They’re probably doing their job right over there.

Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma

What: One “Oda Nobunaga” is an otaku and somehow also a teacher. Girls looking for his better known ancestor approach him with marriage plans, and since they’re looking for a Sengoku warlord, they come with era appropriate sensibilities.

❌ Do not care much for anime about 14 year old time travellers falling onto some dork’s dick, sorry. Unless they’re real good. Which this isn’t.

❌ I suppose i should be thankful this isn’t an all-out ecchi show, but unlike the characters, “lmao they can’t fuck” gets old.

❌ Besides the obvious, this fails at pacing, comedy, heartwarming, production, etc. I’m getting tired of spelling it all out again, this season definitely has an overabundance of not-quite-terrible-but-subpar-in-every-way romantic comedies.

Senryuu Shoujo

What: Senryuu is poetry that’s pretty much a haiku, but not hella deep. A quiet weirdo girl and a delinquent type write some of those.

✅ This has low ambitions, but manages to meet them. It’s chill and cute and the characters are likeable.

✅ Half length, which is the correct runtime for something as slight as this.

♎ It’s cheap but not to the degree that it detracts from the experience.

✅ It’s the second coming of Go Go 575 and I’m all about that. Check it out!

ULTRAMAN

What: uLtRaMaN is an ultrasequel to UlTrAmAn in which Ultraman is now Ultradad and has to take care of his Ultrason.

♎ Decent looking by CG TV anime standards, though the amount of action is so low that it raises the question why it isn’t just live action, especially since it’s partially mocapped already. I would have expected more pizzazz, especially with Kenji Kamiyama AND Shinji Aramaki directing.

♎ Old man superhero has some charm, but the show suggests and Wikipedia confirms: He’s about to get his ass kicked and his much more standard progeny takes over. There goes your selling point.

♎ Apart from that, this appears to be a competent but not especially engaging sequel to Ultraman (i.e., it’s most definitely not SSSS.Gridman). I have no special affinity for Ultraman.

#anime #Fruits Basket #Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu #Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO #Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai #Senryuu Shoujo #Ultraman #Amazing Stranger #Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai #Joshikausei #Kimetsu no Yaiba #Mix - Meisei Story #Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma #impressions #spring2019

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