A revival

Fuck this noise.
It's been one and a half years by now, and I still don't entirely know where the time went. I've been doing a whole lot of nothing as always, and I just completely forgot that I had a blog. Of course, that's probably for the better, seeing as it's probably a waste of time to keep pushing out overly "lolrandumb" anime reviews that no one ever reads, but then again everything I do is a waste of time.

GATE:
I liked the manga, and I still kinda like it. I get very involved when things turn to Japanese nationalism, and I admire any series that can actually make a political statement with any real heft to it. GATE does that - it's gleefully unafraid to make as many political statements as can reasonably be crammed into a TV-size episode. It's a series with guts and a lot of passion on the author's side, as well as quite a bit of research and a few interesting angles of approaching the "portal to another world" fantasy subgenre.
That's where the good things end, however.
While GATE's passion and guts might make for an enjoyable experience, the series can be a complete mess on some points. The anime's animation quality is dubious at best, with a bit of dodgy CG spicing up the generally bland and wonky animation. That's not good for a first episode, unless the studio is planning on saving the budget for later. It does happen, so I'm allowed to hope. The series' glorification of the JSDF, too, as heartening and refreshingly daring it might be to have the JSDF in a role where they aren't gun-crazed loonies ineffectually shooting at an obviously invulnerable monster before getting horribly slaughtered, doesn't make for good plot. The very first episode has a good bit of tracting, something that you don't usually see in Japanese media at all - the police are depicted as useless, untrained cowards who couldn't shoot something to save their own life, and who're too pants-wettingly helpless to even try to help any civilians. Meanwhile, series self-insert main character Youji, even out of uniform and without equipment, is perfectly calm and able to become the hero of the whole Ginza incident.
This is not good storytelling.
This is letting one's own favoritism spill over into a work of fiction, one's personal opinions taking the place of logic and reality. The police are suddenly made utterly incompetent while the JSDF are suddenly superhumans, solely to affirm the author's love of the JSDF - and the sad thing about this is that it could have been done well. There's obviously attention to realism in other parts of the manga, so it wouldn't seem like too much to ask for the author to actually justify what happened, or at least play it down in such a way that it becomes less cringily tracty.
The setting is good. The storytelling is pretty good. The characters are solid. There's little to complain about - except for the JSDF recruitment-campaign shilling, and I actually support the JSDF (and Japan's remilitarization). It takes a lot for me to dismiss or insult something supporting Japanese nationalism, but GATE manages to do it in the obnoxiously worshipful way it portrays the JSDF. Now, I might be reviewing the manga rather than the anime, but it seems that the anime is pretty loyal to the manga - and as such, I'm expecting the same structure. An interesting slice-of-life series about cultural differences and mutual understanding, handled in a realistic way with solid characters and a good pace - and then it all gets broken up by the Divine Invulnerable JSDF and the Mary Sue protagonist (who only has informed flaws) bulldozing anything that was ever a threat, easily outsmarting everyone up to and including the greatest tacticians of whole empires, utterly destroying American and Russian special forces with their hands in their pockets, and in general completely shattering willing suspension of disbelief. Something like this is a massive, massive flaw in storytelling, as it removes any elements of tension or moral conflict - you already know that the JSDF is going to end up on the victorious side, both morally and martially, and this means that there's no actual conflict below the surface. There's nothing at stake, as the conflicts are all composed of a pompous buildup and then the JSDF completely wiping the floor with everyone else, obviously only prevented from saving both worlds and everyone in them by the Japanese politicians, who are all as one mind-controlled by the evil Americans and have no respect whatsoever for the well-being of their own country.
It could have been the greatest bloody series of the decade. It could have been a solid series backed up by political commentary and actual understanding of the factors that led to Japan being as screwed as it is now (hint: Korea) - but instead, it's a one-dimensional shootfest as long as the JSDF are faced with a political or military challenge, making a complete and utter mockery of the infinitely complex mechanisms behind international geopolitics by drawing it up as "US evil, JSDF good, good beats evil" like some demented game of moral rock-paper-scissors about as rigged as the SSK (and guess who's still bitter about #1). It's a crying fucking shame, because it could have been so much more - and whenever the JSDF isn't fighting against anyone else, it is. GATE can be thrilling, it can be moving, it can be interesting, it can be impressive research-wise - but it all goes to hell once the author needs to shoehorn in another outrageously unrealistic victory by the JSDF, completely disregarding how international politics work. It feels like the work of a self-proclaimed political pundit who considers pure gear and training the sole issue in international politics and warfare, and portrays an infuriatingly simplified parody of the international political arena where Japan's politicians play a zero-sum game because they're "evil", and where the author tries his hardest to preach that obviously, the only thing that ever matters in international politics is who has the best gear and the longest hours of the most grueling training. I've heard deeper insights into international political systems from a military-geek loony who earnestly thinks that the Russians are going to go straight for Denmark within the next decade, to secure the route to the Baltic Sea.

GATE is a good series for the most part - 80/100. Then, the political strawmanning and the infuriating simplification of international geopolitics into "They should just let us at those Americans and we'll kill them all, and nothing bad will ever happen from it and Japan will rule the world" comes in, and I don't even want to rate it at those points. That would mean implying that those passages are actual story instead of just animated JSDF recruitment propaganda, and I don't consider them that.

Tigers-level Losing Streak Edition

So I noticed I have views on this blog.
They must be errors.

So, for once I'll attempt to review more than two series a season. Who knows, maybe that'll make me popular.
Enough with the jokes.

Wake Up, Girls
So normally, I'm not a big fan of idol series. They tend to catch my attention, and I watch the first two episodes, and then I realize that I think they suck. It's usually due to a combination of a poorly prioritized cast too big for the time allocation, a cliché plot and a predictable "quota" of things that need to happen - a member has family problems, another member thinks about leaving, there's a beach episode, a member gets sick. It just gets too bleeding predictable and hackneyed in the long run.
Wake Up, Girls doesn't follow that formula as much as many other shows, but I'm still not sure it's going to save it.
The series tries very hard to be a more realistic take on the idol genre, and as such holds off on many of the clichés and has rather more sober character designs. However, both these choices have their drawbacks. The characters are introduced slowly, and the audience is allowed to get a feel for them instead of having them showcased. However, this coupled with the simple and down-to-earth character designs means that it can be hard to get a feel for each individual character, especially with such a large cast - the intent is noble, but it isn't pulled off entirely right.
For two, the series is very aggressive in attempting to avoid clichés. In normal human language, that means that the plot is basically the idol series equivalent of Warhammer 40k compared to other fare. Catastrophes and letdowns are slung in the group's face with robotic precision, and it's not always handled equally well. Character responses to such crises are often noticeably wooden, while the whole "members thinking of leaving" gimmick gets fired off so often it rarely makes sense anymore.
The company president ran away with the money and the future of the bureau is up in the air? The characters act like everything's fine, with one or two doubtful comments sprinkled in. Everything actually going fine? Time to bring out the major membership crises - and then forget it a little bit later. As can be seen, the pacing is also quite funky, more specifically in the sense that the general mood seems to lag a bit behind the actual events of the show, and character responses feel anywhere from wooden to overacted.
Wake Up, Girls has a good concept.
It's promising, sure.
But right now, it's definitely unsteady, suffering from bland characters, implausible and forced plotting, wooden acting, strange character responses and an utterly bozotic sense of pacing.
55/100 - and how I hope it becomes better. It has the material for a 80/100 - if it succeeds in what it's trying, it might well be able to revolutionize a stale and gimmick-plagued genre historically aimed squarely towards wota and creepy neckbeards. I'm not sure it will, however. Let's hope it's a problem that'll go away as the series settles in, and not a pervasive problem with the staff and direction.

I Told You So

I done went and jinxed myself, really. I should know better than to actually post proper content - that'll just get the universe to bite me in the arse.
Not that it has ever done otherwise.
So well, a new season is upon us, and it's characterized by a lot of series with clever concepts that will almost all turn out to be shit. Trust my hideously bloated gallbladder.

Mahou Sensou
No, I'm not calling it "Magical Warfare". Why? Because I want to set fire to simulcasters all over the world. Preferably balefire.
So, Mahou Sensou is a rather typical series. Bland main character, generic tsundere love interest who's probably voiced by Kugimiya Rie or one of her half-dozen clones, cheesy plot and generally lackluster characterization. Yet it has one thing going for it - its raging fucking chuunibyou. It's an entertaining watch solely because it takes itself so bloody seriously and has all the trappings of a typical chuunibyou show - lame everyman protagonist, many attempts to be edgy, love interest, magical eyes, gratuitous fanservice, magic circles, gratuitous English spells, video game character knockoffs and -
Lemme just rest on that one for a moment. Look at Mui's brother and tell me that is not Jin Kisaragi. The female main character's brainwashed antagonist brother with a fringe, wielding a sword and having ice-based powers. Replace Mui with Noel and the knockoff is complete. What's worse is that the studio seems to be aware of this, since his hangaround thug is basically wielding Ragna's sword. Not only that, Mui's name can be parsed as a pun on Mu-13 (which can be read "mu-i-san").
Okay, now we can continue.
- some kind of excuse for characters to fight in ruined cities. That basically checks every bleeding box on the chuunibyou checklist, assuming there is such a thing. While this would normally turn any series into a steaming crock of drek, Mahou Sensou has its pure shamelessness going for it. It's rather akin to a retarded child making crayon drawings of its fantasy world on the bathroom walls - unaware that what it's doing seems unfathomably idiotic to the outside world, but still inspiring a sense of baffled wonder in the viewer. Mahou Sensou has its head buried so far up its own ass that it makes you stop laughing at the retardation and start marveling at the amazing feat of contortion that it is to ram your own head up your own DC-80 orifice and continue until a dimensional singularity occurs.
Sure, the characters are cheesy, the fanservice shamelessly pandering, the plot head-up-ass, the English dreadful, the powers toe-curlingly cliché and the mood as a whole incredibly pretentious in a middle-schooler way, but it's all kind of charming in the end. Mahou Sensou is positioned on that hair-thin line that separates "pitiful" from "entertainingly retarded", and the antics it pulls in its desperate attempts to seem mature and edgy are worth a few laughs. In addition, the series' complete lack of anything resembling shame about its content allows it to rely on weathered clichés that have become surprisingly fresh after a decade of no one using them seriously anymore.
75/100 - reduce this to a 30/100 if you aren't the type to laugh with retards instead of just laughing at them.

Mumble

So, it looks like I've been updating this thing semi-regularly in the last month or so.
That's probably not gonna last, but I can try to extend the winning streak as much as I can. Seeing as I am the Haru Urara of anime bloggers, that probably means that I'll vanish for half a year after this one entry.
So well, there's a new season beginning, and it looks kind of dubious. This season's series all seem to have some kind of a gimmick, and sometimes it works. However, quite a few of them (Strike the Blood and Nagi no Asukara, among others) are overextending said gimmick and becoming shit beyond shit.

So.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel - Ars Nova
I don't know why I'm even bothering to write this out. Ah well, it'll only be two or three lines - there really isn't much to say about the series.
Generic wish-fulfillment pseudo-harem series.
Moe anthropomorphisms.
A transparent attempt to cash in on Kantai Collection.
Wonky CGI animation that seems to be the product of a strained budget and a studio that wants to maximize profits.
Cliché plot filled with plot devices and obviously leading up to a "reveal" that'll become completely obvious in later episodes.
40/100. Worth my time, but only barely.

BlazBlue - Alter Memory
What's with this season and hyphenated titles? Ah well.
Alter Memory is a faithful rendition of the game, for better or worse. Colorful animation, a blistering pace, a story that seems determined to start out with as many questions and loose ends as it can so that they can be tied together later in a "surprising reveal" - so all in all, it's a fighting game anime. In the end, that's what it is - everything else is reasonably average. The plot is interesting, though a little bit cluttered, the characters are colorful, albeit a tad forced, the pace is interesting, albeit a bit too hurried, the music fits the series, though it's recycled from the game's butt-rock soundtrack - so it's a fighting game anime.
You've probably seen it all before, really. It's good and all, but it's a fighting game anime.
65/100.

Coppelion
Coppelion is one of the series this season that actually manages to use its gimmick well.
While the emotional content can seem a bit forced and the symbolism is simply beyond gratuitous, Coppelion does its job. It's a (pseudo-) post-apocalyptic survival horror series, and it carries with it many of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of its genre. Its bent towards tragedy is pretty much an obligatory survival series mainstay, as is the at times quite forced random-events plot and the mysterious plot-device backing agency which I am willing to bet a gallon of Red Bull will somehow be destroyed during the series.
However, Coppelion is one of the few survival-horror series out there and does provide a breath of fresh air, and of course the visuals are fantastic. Studio GoHands seems to be in demand this year, and I'm not complaining - they single-handedly turn Coppelion from a mediocre show to a good one. The visuals manage to give life to the world and make it feel genuinely desolate and tragic, which is the lifeblood of any post-apocalyptic series. The plot might not be Pulitzer material, sure, and the characters might not be very deep - Aoi is the naïve go-getter, Taeko the brains of the group and Ibara the walking death flag - but the visuals and ambience tie together the other admittedly quite lacking elements and turn Coppelion into an engaging, interesting series most remarkable for the "survival" part of survival horror. The environments are lovingly portrayed, and the ruins of Tokyo feel like so much more than just a stage for shoot-outs and forced drama. The animation is crisp, and the show's pace follows it quite well, leading to an experience that's quite enjoyable in spite of its flaws - forced drama, shallow characters and random-events plot.
75/100.

Everything is Shit

Jesus Nega-Christ, pretty much all the series this season ended in a horrible cliché-fuckfest. Kaminai and Gen'ei both bombed miserably in a way that makes me deeply zaad. To explain further:
Kaminai didn't fix up its meandering ways and ended with tying up the Alis/Alice subplot, which is fine and all, but it's really not a fitting ending for a series that showed so much potential. To the end, Kaminai carried its main flaw of unexplored potential - and I'm still of the conviction that if Hampnie had survived, the series would have gone off in a more satisfying direction. Hampnie was a pivotal character who gave the show drive and initiative, pushing it to do something greater than be a glorified anime road-movie. When he died, and his subplot with him, the series lost momentum and was forced into countless pointless, inconclusive side stories. Ortus was promising, but after that, with the Academy arc, the series finally seemed to give up. It introduced countless new characters and then threw them away, and the arc itself was a rushed hack job that came out of nowhere, driven by that mysterious, universe-bending force known as "The Studio's Deadline". The hurried pace, inconclusive storyline, indecisive mood and theme, character jumblefuck, irregular momentum and overall inconsistency, topped off with a half-assed ending that makes you wonder where the first two episodes and their fascinating mood went all boil together in one huge clusterfuck, one that gets a 60/100 from my side. The concept, mood and animation put it just above average - an interesting experience, but one that turned out to be a disappointing waste of potential.
Gen'ei, meanwhile, got better and better during the series' run, going from an irregularly paced Madoka ripoff to a frantic, crushingly dark series not afraid to hurt its characters. In the end, however, it falls flat in an inconclusive cop-out ending that makes you wonder what the point of it all really was. Everything was ready for a fantastic ending in tune with the series' mood - the show had built up an interesting, flawed main cast with genuine internal schisms, the show had found direction and pace, Cerebrum was a truly fantastic villain - everything was perfect. Instead, the series ends with a cheap, cheesy happy ending, an unsatisfying cheesefest that makes me wonder why I even bothered watching the show. The whole plot and all the character development is scrapped in the end for a neat cop-out that leaves us where we started, without any real feeling of payoff. Cerebrum, the series' most interesting character and a villain who manages to accomplish goals through manipulation alone, is fought seemingly "because the final boss has to be defeated", the Leguzario plot is pissed away, Ginka comes back from the dead for no reason but plot convenience, and the ending scene is a cliché, vomit-inducing scene of the girls on their way to their new magical-girl-love-in-adventures. The ending is cheap, forced, hackneyed and most of all unsatisfying. All the progress achieved through the show, all the promise the show built up in plot and character development, is thrown away in a way that makes you wonder what the purpose of it all even was. It makes me feel hollow, zaad and in the mood to fire a good old Excelion Breaker at the studio staff.
The series itself is a 75/100. The ending can die in a pool of AIDS.

Repeated and Forceful Genuflecting

Once again, I have pissed away months doing absolutely nothing constructive. The only things I have accomplished are brewing up a few roleplaying settings (braving GURPS and thus hex-grids and cross-referenced headings along the way) and waking up every roughly fifth day with a patchy memory of last evening and a harrowing sense of dread hanging over my head, telling me that the secrets that transpired are best unknown to even the oldest of squirming, mephitic abominations from beyond existence.
Thus, almost a whole cour has passed by, and still I haven't written shit on the blog that it's my responsibility to update. As can be inferred, my groveling technique has been honed to a razor's edge in the last few months.
However, now is the time for me to write with the force of a thousand Final Sparks.

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi:
(Disclaimer: Commercial subs can't romanize for shit. It's Gora, Rex and Yuri.)
I had great expectations for Kaminai when I first learned of its existence. Now, I tend to be the kind of guy whose expectations are always a bit off, and Kaminai is no exception. As always, let me start with the bad parts: The character designs are wonky and hackneyed, Ai is annoying and the story can't decide what it wants to be. Two- and three-episode arcs, especially the Gora Academy arc, make the story flit around erratically between myriads of settings and genres, and the series seems to be so preoccupied with covering as many bases as possible that the main story is extremely thin. As of episode 9, there's only a vague hint of an overarching metaplot, and characters are introduced and then thrown away before they can be explored. Again, the horribly stunted Academy arc is a perfect example - the genre and setting shifts in an instant, several hackneyed characters are introduced, then everything is resolved and the cast moves on its merry way. As of Episode 9, the characters that have been pissed away include, but are not limited to Hampnie, Pox/Rex, Ulla, Kiriko, Katya, Volrath (who wins the prize for Most Unfitting Name) and Dee, not to mention the rest of the Academy crew. The series is horribly indecisive, stretched way too thin and trying to do too many things at once, which results in an inconclusive and fuzzy plot.
However, the backgrounds and locations show a sharp sense of design and ambience, and every location (except the fucking Academy) is interesting and evocative. The soundtrack is strong too, applied intelligently and sparingly, and some of the character designs (Yuri, Hampnie, Scar, Volrath) are wholly interesting. Now all the series needs is to break out of its indecisive rut and stop being a meandering anime road-movie.
60/100, but with the potential to be a 85/100 if it gets its ass in gear, and it can't be soon enough.
Also, Volrath is love.

Stella Jogakuin Koutouka C3-bu:
Oh ye Gods.
What I expected of Stella was K-On with guns. More precisely, a clusterfuck of K-On with Upotte!.
The worst thing is that it was what I got for all of the first episode. However, Stella slowly unhinges during its run - starting out completely realistically, it starts going around the bend with Karira's almost supernatural antics, and goes completely off its rocker in episode 4. The supernatural gets into the show, as does a nonsensical backstory about Sonora being raised by an American hardball master who got killed in combat and practiced Hardball Zen, and both lapse in and out of the story as needed. Surreal elements slowly creep into the series, as do outrageous and only marginally comprehensible plot twists, and even the humor starts to go unglued (the sudden cake-drifting in episode 9). Characterization alternates between flanderization and stone-cold drama, and in general, the surreal inconsistency of the show is enough to give me a headache. The show is quite honestly starting to look like its creators were horribly intoxicated on something 80% alcoholic and 20% extradimensional madness.
In short: I don't even know what I'm watching anymore.
wat/100

Gatchaman Crowds:
Okay, granted, I have only watched two episodes of this, and rumor is that it gets better over time.
What I saw, however, was not inconsistent like the two above series, but rather a skull-burstingly colorful toku show seemingly instructed by The Skinless One. Crowds is a sanity-eroding ride through 80's toku shows, social media awareness and alien geometry, as experienced from atop an eldritch 1d10/1d4-Sanity damage pull-cart captained by Daoloth. The pace, color and sheer flesh-ripping intensity of the series is championed in Hajime, the Elder God of headaches. I've always hated righteously idealistic characters with a passion, feeling that they remove moral conflict from the series by giving a clear "right" answer, and Hajime is that and more. She's abrasively energetic, dumb as a box of rocks and with the worldview of a Big Four shonen protagonist, three things that make me hate her. Such a shallow and hackneyed character not only removes any actual moral conflict from the series, but also grates on the viewers' patience by being such an intolerable Mary Sue. I found myself enjoying much of the two episodes I watched, but only the segments where Hajime wasn't there to instantly solve everyone else's problems through the Power of Heart, and thus where her bone-snapping pace didn't take focus away from the other characters.
I want to irrevocably damage the bitch. Hajime has made me reach that rare and dangerous state, the Super-Cheetobeard, where my innermost desire is to see the offending character broken, crippled for life or just plain killed. I want to destroy Ichinose Hajime and everything she stands for. I want to burn her purpose of existence to a crisp with a balefire flamethrower, Wyrm-taint be damned. I want to use the whole bloody Daemonia Tarot deck to annihilate everything Hajime-related. I want the Tree of Exodus to grow right under her. I want her to get Radical-6 and Tief Blau. I want to use California King Bed against her. Actually, I also want to use Star Platinum and The World against her. I want to sic all the world's Melos Warriors against her. I want her to land in the Gamma Timeline. I want her to pilot Zearth. I want to put her on the receiving end on the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception and all the Reality Marble users I can possibly gather.
DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH

I Am A Lazy Arse

Please forgive me, Internet, for I have been playing Fire Emblem: Awakening until my fingers bled. On that note, I will now morph this blog into a handheld gaming blog for one post to rant.
FE:A is still FE. That, of course, means that it is made of pure genius. Okay, okay, it's still a heroic-fantasy cheesefest, but no one plays FE for the moral conflicts. It's a solidly built, engaging game with pleasing graphics, a smooth flow, great characterization, challenging gameplay and huge amounts of gameplay. Everything is close to perfect, and the multitude of nods and outright jokes about the older games warms this old cheetobeard's shrunken, bitter little heart. It doesn't hurt that NoE has seemingly loosened up on its censorship policies (no, shut up about the Tharja/Nowi debacle - the line was blatant and misplaced fanservice in the first place) and now actually refers to sex, alcohol and homosexuality.
Well, back to the nostalgia issue. Sure, we old players are being drowned in nostalgic content, with the characters from older games being obtainable through DLC and SpotPass, but the general dilution of the difficulty for the normalfags still rubs me the wrong way. Fire Emblem has always been a demanding and often straight-out sadistic series, and the permadeath element has always been essential for the games. Now, though, Nintendo seems intent on rebranding it for the wider riajuu audience, and it's hurting the game. It doesn't make much of a difference in the final product, as it's sturdy enough to take a few flaws, but I sense a disturbance in the Ripple when it comes to future installments. Nintendo is opening up the game to Facebook and letting the pampered normies into the decision progress with popularity polls and other despicable tools of mass marketing. These are the people who've never played a game on Hard or higher, who have never played a game with permadeath, who desire instant gratification and blatant pandering, and who are going to wreck the series if taken further. These people are weeaboos and gaming hipsters who have no respect for the traditions of a long-standing game series and are letting Nintendo whore out characters like Cordelia and Tharja to their immature crotch areas.
FE:A is a great game, but the pandering to newer players dilutes the challenge of the game, and the "reboot" of the series lets Facebook normalfags in on the decision progress. In the long term, this will harm everyone involved - the pandering will dilute the series and turn long-term fans off it, and normie attention spans last for about two weeks past the latest flashing ads and reveal videos. They will always want something new and sparkly, and it's impossible to hold their attention for longer than a few months at most. The ones who tend to keep awareness of an upcoming game up to date are the devoted fans - and guess what, if Nintendo keeps on whoring out the game like this, they'll disappear. I'll be the first to ditch the sinking ship if this continues, and I will be very angry when I do so - I've been on said vessel for half of my life and an engaged part of the fandom for years and years, and I'll be sad to see it go.
Also, just because I'd hate to waste the opportunity, let me emit the sacred call of the old crew of 5143, just to see if any of you are still out there.
Franzerk.
May the Erkfranz be with you all.