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.