Posts Tagged “Review”
[ azumi ichiju@tsuitta ]
Angel Beats! was a lot of things. It had an ambitious goal, striving to present the many aspects of life within the short span of thirteen episodes. It tried to be deep and philosophical, yet couldn’t put forth the time and focus. It attempted to be logically consistent, even though the setting had little of it to begin with. I could literally pick it apart from its storywriting flaws. But… Maeda Jun had set out to bring us life in under five hours of screentime, and his work gave us joy, laughter, and tears from so many perspectives. It brought such an enjoyable time while presenting one beautifully touching scene after another, all of them cumulating towards a breathtaking climatic conclusion… whatever its flaws are; I loved this show. Read the rest of this entry »
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The shoujo comedy genre is mostly known for its flowers, sparkles, and sugary bubbles, so for the longest time I couldn’t understand the use of organized crime as a premise within shoujo comedy (shoujo smut is a different story). Outside the whole ‘bad boy’ image, what’s so great about getting deeply involved with a pack of uncouth and rough-looking thugs, especially given the social stigma and the possibility of getting involved in their gang wars?
Well, Bancho politicks aside, Arakure (or Wild Ones as Viz Media calls it; no clue) sure taught me that I’ve never paid attention to the Japanese Romanticization of Yakuza. While Arakure mostly avoids the ‘crime’ part, it really highlights the beautiful idealism surrounding them, from the brotherly love to their version of chivalry; plus, the Yakuza humor is just hilarious. Read the rest of this entry »
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I can’t remember why I dropped the show during its first airing, because it contains everything I love…

Simoun is an underappreciated title that has much to be praised for: a well-executed exposition that fully outlines one of the most creative fantasy-scifi settings in just two episodes; a diverse cast that makes leaps and bounds in character and relationship development with skillfully-written melodrama; a war story that is deep and engaging, propelled by the themes of love (in its many forms), possibilities, and becoming an adult; not to mention one of the best anime soundtracks of the decade with its awe-inspiring classicals. There’s also the matter that it’s powered, literally, by the divine power of yuri~
But to me, Simoun’s brilliance shines the most in how everything cascaded from the creativity of its premise, its use of sharp contrast between beauty and catastrophe to drive ideological themes… Read the rest of this entry »
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Tales of saving the world usually involves adventuring and confronting difficult adversaries right? Well, what about saving the world by befriending a little girl and savoring cakes, stars, and the joy of everyday life? Momo is rather unique in this, and despite being a shoujo slice-of-life which usually falls to extremely slow pacing, the series quickly sucked me in with its plot hooks, rapid character development, and some light drama that touches the common insecurities and issues in real life.
It’s also nice to read a shoujo manga where fawning over guys is the last thing on the heroine’s mind, where she is not only independent and strong, but also very level-minded. Combining a lack of unnecessary angst and no perfect bishies stealing spotlights goes a long way to adding realism to the characters and their actions.
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My first impression was that this game is just outright ridiculous: premise of steam-powered transforming mechs launching from a secret base beneath a Broadway theater, stereotypical characters as flat as their cardboard cutout presentation, plenty of super-shounen tropes in the story… It’s even got weeaboo culture all over — especially when the opening scenes involve a half-Japanese half-Texan cowboy samurai featured as the main heroine… Wat? ( ̄~ ̄;)
But you know, I love not grinding, or worrying about experience distribution, or maximizing experience gain from every battle. Because in Sakura Wars V, you level up by talking and forging inter-party bonds, visual novel style; kind of like Persona social links, except better since it actually levels you up. So take all of that frustration out and add some fresh inventiveness to each battle (Valkyria Chronicles style, this is by the same dev team) and you have some real Tactical RPG gaming, like hopping between skyscraper roofs destroying artillery or an aerial battles in the New York City subway — yes really.
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Yes, it’s done! We finished our work on it! The legendary web novel that accrued over 6.5 million views on a personal site has now been brought to English!

From merely the description, Sword Art Online is a novel that’s easy to pass and ignore. Its premise is ridiculous yet hardly original. Its characters are very cliche. Its plot and character development are relatively simple and utilize some very common tropes. Its art and character designs remind one of Ragnarok Online. Everything about it screams generic scifi/fantasy written for gamers by a gamer. Yet despite all that, Reki Kawahara’s work is a piece of art that leaves any reader with the slighest MMO experience doubtless of SAO’s popularity and why he is the grand prize winner of the 2008 Dengeki Novel Prize. The truth is a simple one, easily discernible once you flip past the first few pages:
His storytelling style is simply intoxicating
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 Zenryoku Zenkai!!!
“Mad Scientists + Raging Lesbian Superheroes”, that’s what I call To Aru Kagaku no Railgun in five words. Frankly, I enjoyed this show immensely, highlighted by the fact its one of the few series I kept up to date with despite having my attention consumed by the release of FF13; yet on the other hand, I had a great deal of trouble pinning down just what I liked about it. For starters, this show is all over the place, and “inconsistent” hardly begins to describe it. Most of the episodes are dominated by slice-of-life comedy and seinen yuri/moe shenanigans. Yes, Railgun does an excellent job of tying filler episodes together and weaving a main storyline out of them, building up the suspense while still tasting the sweet crepes. But while it does a good job at chaining together details, it also has one of the most inconsistent mood and logic pacing ever. The atmosphere routinely changes with completely abruptness, ruining what otherwise could have been a dramatic buildup. Author Kazuma Kamachi also shows that he’s too obviously a very amateurish fantasy/scifi writer: despite having the name of A Certain Scientific Railgun, anyone who took basic electromagnetic physics can easily pinpoint all the farfetched BS in the series’ mechanics that completely contradict scientific laws.
But despite its many flaws and overused cliches, Railgun never tried to be over-dramatic or deep. Instead it presented its amateur baking skills with a glittering layer of icing, ranging from action-packed eye-candy to Kuroko’s hilarious antics and expressions. It may not pass the test of any cake anime connoisseur looking for the next gem, but it sure tasted good for something you just want to enjoy on a shallow, surface level.
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George Lucas can take his franchise and call it something else, because this is the true Star Wars, and not one of those super-cliched eye-candy. For one, Legend of the Galactic Heroes (LOGH) is anything but the story of the gallant hero versus the evil empire, even if those pilot suits look remarkably similar.

There are no antagonists within the main cast, only protagonists with different motivations, taking different paths to become legends in their own right. There are no stock worlds, only Star Systems carefully molded to the Author’s needs. Yet just when you think you know what is going to happen next thanks to the detailed foreshadowing, the plot tosses a wench at you to spin it in a somewhat different yet completely logical direction that you should have seen coming episodes ago. Character, setting, and story, this is when you know the series succeeded.
But that’s not where Yoshiki Tanaka, author of the original novels, truly shines. No, it’s the themes of the show, the unbiased side-by-side comparisons of ideals and morals between the Democratic Alliance and the Autocratic Empire, that allows LOGH is shine brightly even from amongst the best. This is where the series’ originality and profound depth comes from: the conflict of ideals that is not only given balance in presentation but also expanded to epic proportions by exemplifying almost every kind of mistake made by man to date.
If any anime truly deserves a permanent spot on the MAL top 10 list, LOGH is it, even if it has a few critical flaws (which I might get to later in another post). I think anyone who has a taste for exploration of the intellectual, philosophical, and especially in tickling morality, would greatly appreciate this epic story and pile lavish praises upon it, as many have done so like here, here, and here. It may have been my biggest undertaking as an anime fan with its 110 OVA episodes of 28 minutes each (as opposed to the normal 21 minute TV episodes), but many of its 3–6 episode subarcs had given me more to thoroughly savor and enjoy than entire full-season series. Don’t be fooled by the length either, cause this show has virtually no filler, and even a single episode skipped can leave one bewildered on a later event.
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