What if, randomly, you and your friends suddenly began to switch minds? One moment you were you, another moment you were in the body of your friend and they in yours. What if you and your friends had sudden flashes of no self-restraint, and your secret desires and urges suddenly came rushing forth without you able to stop yourself? How would all of this affect your lives, your psyches, your relationships?

Kokoro Connect is an ingenious little series that takes the above premise and cleverly uses it to tell a very dramatic and moving story of five friends. One day they are just normal pals in a little student club of their own making, the next they begin experiencing the mind swapping. A mysterious being, who can at any time inhabit their bodies or, more usually, that of their home room teacher, reveals itself as the one causing these strange phenomenon. It is this science fiction element that quite literally gives the story the creative license to pull off some amazingly dramatic highs.

Because think about it: suddenly your body at any time can be controlled by one of your friends. Trust becomes more valuable than gold, because any one of them could do something to ruin the reputation of another, beyond simple mistakes like entering the boy’s restroom out of habit despite being in a girl’s body at the time. Plus, secrets, home life, and one’s past are no longer kept passively hidden. Now at any time your privacy could be revealed to a friend. Everyone is already on edge dealing with this phenomenon, they aren’t mentally prepared for the rest.

It is genius, really. When critiquing works of fiction, it’s common to complain of contrived drama and circumstances. We want our stories to feel real and organic. The irony is, of course, that being works of fiction means they are 100% contrived by an author and we know it. But we don’t want to be reminded of that while experiencing it! Furthermore, most dramas struggle with this problem. How to make interesting and larger-than-life moments and situations feel plausible and real? They aren’t, because it is fiction, but they also aren’t because they are way more sensational and exciting than real life ever actually is. After all, we don’t read about or watch boring normal folks. There’s always something special and stupendous about it that makes it worth experiencing, right? That seems to directly conflict with our desire for it to be believable.

Kokoro Connect basically solves this problem by, ironically, contriving of the sci-fi element. By having a mysterious being cause these strange mind-swaps and uncontrollable urges, he is like an author pulling the strings and creating tension, drama, and pushing them to extremes. Why does he do this? Time and time again, his answer remains the same: to make things interesting.

Isn’t that exactly what we, the viewers, demand and desire, too? I did say this show was quite clever!

But a lot of that theorizing is not necessary to enjoy the show. In fact, the sci-fi element is underutilized, in my opinion. True, it is a sort of MacGuffin that drives the overarching plot, but the real core of it all is the characters. This is a drama, after all, and overwhelmingly they focus on them, their feelings, their relationships, and how they get through this crazy and tumultuous time together.

And it is a hell of a ride.

The screenplay and directing is extremely good, way beyond most anime and even a lot of live action stuff. In fact, it may be too good. Things are always so dramatic, so often, as each episode keeps trying to take things further, that reality starts to feel left behind. Nobody talks like this, has these kinds of amazing insightful epiphanies, discussions, or fights. It’s so perfect and well done and the lines are too good, it’s impossible to actually happen like this!

But, really, that’s about the worst I could say of this, that the writing and dialogue is so good it’s unbelievable at the same time. Perhaps the later episodes, too, aren’t quite as strong as the earlier stuff, but that may just be because it lacks the same sense of mystery and suspense now that the characters are more accustomed to the phenomenon. That and the mind-swapping is the more interesting of the three phenomenon that will occur.

Animation is pretty damn good, with nice use of color and contrast, really good cinematography and visual layout. Backgrounds are very crisp and detailed without being so good they are sterile like some of PA Works’ stuff. Characters have realistic hair colors and so on and aren’t overly cutesy, either. The actual quality of the character drawings can be dodgy at times, but the show more than makes up for it in all other aspects and it is never bad enough to pull you out of the moment. The music is also above average and the sound work is used to very good effect, especially the timing during the next-episode previews. And veteran voice actress Miyuki Sawashiro gives an incredible and moving performance as Inaba, who is by far the most interesting and standout of the bunch.

As a character-driven show, they’ve done a stupendous job to avoid archetypes and create real and nuanced people. Sure, they sort of seem to fit some stereotypes at first, but they quickly reveal a lot of distinction, which is important both for interesting characters but also important because they are so frequently swapping minds and bodies. I promise by the end you will feel incredibly attached to these well-fleshed out folks.

If there is another big complaint to be had it is the length. A half-season of thirteen episodes is just not enough. The story keeps good pacing and is broken into several mostly self-contained major arcs, no doubt based on distinct novels in the original series. But it didn’t surprise me to find out that the novels are still ongoing and that this barely covers the first few. Four more episodes, comprising of another separate major arc (and novel), are due next April or so with the home video releases. They will be quite a welcome addition though I doubt they will really be able to resolve much, given that another five novels follow and the author isn’t done yet.

Still, these are all barely nitpicks. This was the best little soap opera I’d seen in a long time. If you like character driven dramas, or hell you just like really good human stories, do give this a shot. It’s really good!

As of this writing, you can watch Kokoro Connectfor free on Crunchyroll.

To be great is to be bold. Charisma, a certain powerful presence, moves money, hearts, and nations. On the smaller scale, those charming folk, we all know one or two at least, have a certain knack for social interaction. It may manifest in many ways: perhaps they seamlessly transition from one conversation to the next, seem to just “hit it off” right with new people all the time, make contacts and friends easily, score dates and jobs, or just generally leave good impressions on people everywhere.

In college, for me, it was Nathan. Nate was a roommate. This was 2004 or so and he was your average emo-ish nerdcore fellow. He played lots of video games. A lot. He was quite versed in indie music and even sung (he was actually pretty good too). He ate like a pig, either Kid Cuisine or just a bucket of chicken from McDonald’s (he worked there so got to bring home left-overs). He was selfish and would sleep odd hours and through any noise. He was a lot of fun and aggravation to be around. And he never failed to hit on women at parties or shows. Successfully. Every damn time. He was so good at it. We’d even kinda make bets. I’ll never figure out how he did it.

Because that world, one where you are confident and charming, is foreign to me.

When describing said folk, these “extroverts”, we often attribute a lot of positive qualities:

• outgoing
• natural leaders
• comfortable in the spotlight
• works well with teams and groups

So, the antonym, the “introvert”, surely that has the opposite qualities?

• wallflower
• follower
• shy
• solitary

Our society puts a lot of pressure on people to be strong and assertive and sociable, and it is true this can often lead to good things. Woe be to any for whom these traits do not come naturally. Is it any wonder that most self-described introverts lament their state, consider it a burden and a handicap, to be so self-absorbed? Ah, there it is again: a negative quality attribute!

We introverts grow up in a world that constantly apologizes for our behavior. Our parents just tell everyone we are shy. Our teachers encourage us to come out of our shells. Constantly we are bombarded with incentives, whether explicit or implicit, to change. But it is likely impossible to truly change something that is so deeply ingrained in our core being.

I am an introvert. For the most part, I’m rather okay with that. But I will readily admit that it has been nothing but a constant obstacle to my social life, family, friends, and significant others. But also co-workers, interviews, parties, public speaking, or calling people on the phone. Little moments, when the receptionist greets me, when the hairdresser tries to strike up conversation as she cuts my hair, or when extended family ask me what I’ve been up to lately. Anything that involves interacting with other humans you can bet I must fight my introversion. And when I lose, when I stumble through awkward chit-chat and whatnot, the shame and embarrassment that lingers for hours and sometimes days after, as I replay the scene in my head and come up with a zillion better things to say, should have said.

In a lot of ways, I am the textbook introvert. I have few close friends and prefer to interact with one or two of them at a time. While they can still be fun from time to time, generally I don’t care much for big social get-togethers. My preferred method of relaxing is to be alone on the computer. I am good at focusing and concentrating on single tasks. I dislike small talk but love to rant about topics (or listen/read others’ rants). I communicate better in writing than off-the-cuff.

When around friends I know well, I am a totally different person. I talk a lot more, make far more ribald quips, and am much more active and engaging. Alcohol enhances this effect (I am far from an angry drunk, in fact more like an amorous one). The more strangers you add into the mix, the more I retreat socially. I lose confidence, somehow…

I also find that it feels draining. I have to work really hard to be friendly and personable and fight my introversion. And it is exhausting after awhile. Which is why after several hours I am usually ready to go home and be in my private comfort zone to recharge. I can only take so much.

And it isn’t that I truly dislike the social stuff. I like friends, I like spending time at other places, seeing new things, making memories and so on. These are important. But while a rock climber loves scaling mountains, it is a lot of exertion to do it. Same for me. It takes a lot of effort and it gets to wear me out, mentally at least.

Because none of these things come naturally. I have to spend a lot of mental energy thinking about what to say, how to stand, where my eyes are, how my mouth is contorted, is it a smile or a frown? I need to be friendly and positive so try not to look glum. It isn’t that I feel glum but I’m worried, see, that if I don’t keep mental tabs on my face I will accidentally let it rest into an indifferent or bored expression. Maybe it won’t but I’m worried that it will. Where are my hands? How is my posture? My tone of voice? Volume? What was their name again? Need to remember everyone’s name, else it would look really bad. Damn, I already forgot hers. So now, what do I say? What are they saying to me? How should I respond? A million things are going on at once and I feel I must stay on top of it to succeed, to beat the introversion. Remember how I said I was best at focusing on single tasks? Multi-threading is not my strong suit, and social gatherings or intense one-on-one stuff (like a job interview) are a struggle for me.

And yet, for all that effort sometimes, I still have to live with the complete and utter failures… at least the ones that I know about. More than once in my life I have made friends with someone only to later to hear them admit to me “For the longest time I thought you hated me”, or some variation of that. This comes as an utter shock to me because at no point was that ever the case. And then I find myself replaying moments, trying to figure out where I went wrong, what I said or did or how I must have looked or what, that gave them that impression. For me, few things are more frustrating than being misunderstood.

I used to be a lot worse when I was younger. I developed a pretty hard shyness problem and I am still recovering from it. But I’ve come a long way and I no longer feel the intense social anxiety I once did. Now, mostly, it just comes as a hassle and I avoid it not out of shyness but just laziness. I don’t like having to work so hard when it is something that seems so simple. It feels shameful. After all, it is just a phone call to schedule an appointment. What does the lady on the other end care really? But it feels like a lot of effort. And then I feel more guilty because it is just a phone call. This mixes with other procrastination and laziness problems, though.

This is a bit more personal entry than I usually write. Lately, though, I’ve been reading and watching things on introversion. It has always been a problem, but especially lately for the girlfriend and I. She is an extrovert, you see, so this difference causes frequent clashes. I love her dearly though and I think I am better with an extrovert. Sure, there is the clashing of styles, but really she does a lot to pull me out of it and to give me confidence. I always feel a lot better and more able in social situations if she is there. It is a wonderful reassurance. It’s probably also why she does most of the talking to waiters, store associates, and people behind the counter. I am guilty of almost always letting her take the social reins and just nodding silently in affirmation should they look my way, as if to say “What she said.”

I’ll end now with a few selected links on more, some of the stuff I’ve used as a basis for some of this essay, shall we call it that.

• The Power of Introverts– a really good look at introversion; this is the primary thing, posted about a week ago, that I saw that really sparked this post for me, and follow-up parts are being added (maybe I should read the book they are based on?)
• Party Survival Guide for Introverts– a cute and light-hearted take, but it actually does a good job of framing what it is like for us despite having a bit more of a comedy angle (and the actual steps/tips are only so-so)
• Your body language shapes who you are– somewhat related TED talk on confidence and presentation of self, something that introverts like me probably agonize over in bewilderment especially since the unnatural effort we make often leads to us feeling like social frauds
• How to stop being the guy that rarely says anything– just one of many Reddit convos that are often (perhaps given their typical user?) related to introvert problems

Much like before, another triple batch of mini-reviews for those few I watch for which I just have less to say about.

Astarotte no Omocha (or Astarotte’s Toy) is yet another series that struggles with identity, juggling an actual story on the one hand and cringe-worthy underage sexual themes on the other. You see, the main character is ten and it is her duty as a young succubus princess to start “extracting life seed” from males in order to live (like vampires need blood, as the show puts it). How, you ask? Well, blow jobs of course.

Yes, it’s that kind of show. Plenty of panty-shots, lurid poses, and a general sexual haze around everything despite most of the characters being really too young (think 10-14) and the few adults all have comically-sized melons. It is more than a little facepalm-inducing, and I’ve only barely scratched the surface of what’s objectionable in here. And yet, honestly, it didn’t bother me as much as it normally does. Maybe I’m just getting desensitized lately, but actually I think it is because the show, despite spending a lot of dialogue time on it doesn’t ever do anything objectionable. It’s all bark and very little bite. In the end, the character designs and actual plot make for a fairly standard junior-high-ish romance albeit set in a fantasy world, even though they’d like you to believe otherwise.

Of course, that isn’t to say it is a diamond in the rough. Even if you can look past the god-awful premise, the actual story and show is only so-so. It’s a light-hearted comedy romance thing with a paper-thin cliché plot and some run-of-the-mill characters and a really dumb ending. It’s not a bad show, even ignoring the really egregious parts of the premise, but it’s just “okay”.

Which is all a shame because there are many good qualities about it, so the potential seems especially wasted. Despite having very nice animation, a surprisingly quite decent soundtrack (love the ending credits especially), and some good voice actors, nothing ever really seems to amount to much. The world of monsters, the style of buildings and flora and such, is actually kinda nice and both fits the light cutesy nature as well as showing actual effort in fashioning an interesting and distinctive atmosphere. That and all of the Norse mythology used liberally is amusing. It’s an entertaining, cute, and fun diversion and it’s not very long. I enjoyed it in the end, and it was much better than the premise suggested, but it was awfully forgettable.

Hanamaru Yōchien (or Hanamaru Kindergarten) is a surprisingly enjoyable little series that I decided to watch while away from home one weekend. I figured I’d save the big important stuff for when I had proper time to sit down and view it on the big TV, and this would just be a little something to pass the time. It’s about some young adult kindergarten teachers and several of their little students in a sort of light-hearted rom-com thing. You see, our male lead is instantly infatuated with one of his kindergarten teacher co-workers who is a bit clueless when it comes to men liking her. Then there’s one of his young toddler students who is instantly infatuated with him and runs around telling everyone how she’s going to marry her teacher when she grows up.

Thankfully, outside of a few mild boobie jokes, this is not really that perverted of a show (like, say, Kodomo no Jikan). In fact, it’s just generally a really good, solid, feel-good anime. There’s never anything objectionable really, it’s never all that frustrating, hardly any real drama, and mostly just light-hearted fun as we get introduced to lots of characters and so on. It is very well animated, well voiced, and is the first series in a long, long time that I found myself thinking I should look up the soundtrack. Plus, because it was made by Gainax, they get to put a lot of fun references to other series (particularly Evangelion). In fact, each episode sports a unique song and ending sequence that are almost always inventive and interesting and well executed, and usually parodying another series or style or something.

If I can say anything bad about it maybe that it is short and kinda pointless since nothing is ever really resolved. It’s semi-episodic and too light to really have a meaty plot. The characters are all incredibly cliché, all archetypes you’ve seen before a million times (heck the male lead is basically the same guy from Love Hina). Okay, so a few characters show glimmers of depth but the short length of the series combined with a fairly extensive cast leaves little time to explore any of them adequately. Additionally, over half the characters are supposed to be in kindergarten which becomes a double-edged sword: on the one hand the kids are often extremely sugary cute and adorable, but on the other it can sometimes suffer a bit from squeaky-voice syndrome. But, really, I just found the whole thing to just be thoroughly enjoyable and left me feeling content and happy. Most of the above nitpicks are really just reasons why this series is easy to pick up and watch, uncomplicated and easy to enjoy. Don’t underestimate it like I did!

Ghost Stories has an interesting little history to its existence. It was a fairly unsuccessful title (for reasons that quickly become obvious when you see it) but it made it to the States here anyway. ADV then proceeded, amidst a lot of hue and cry from certain pockets of the fandom, to rewrite the dialogue extensively, keeping the story and basic plot in tact but throwing in all sorts of ridiculous voice acting, one liners, sexual and racist humor, frequent fourth-wall breaking, and lots of US pop-culture references. Wait, what? Yes. It is basically an official abridged dub, and man is it funny.

It’s no wonder that the original did so poorly. It is an uninspired “supernatural horror” tale about some school kids who discover a book from the female lead’s dead mother that details various demons and ghosts around the school and how to seal them. They then go on your basic monster-of-the-week thing. The animation is pretty bad. A Y2K-era title means it is right around when digital animation was transitioning and still in the awkward stages, but also the show has an obviously low budget. The quality of the drawings, the inconsistencies, and the jerky movements would normally turn me off quickly.

Unlike almost all my anime, I watched this one dubbed. Honestly, why bother otherwise? The original is not particularly good and its only claim to fame is the ludicrous dialogue rewriting of the English release. And let me tell you it is quite worth it. What was probably attempting to be a semi-serious tale gets eviscerated into a giant goofy gag-fest. Normally the bad English voices (and they are mostly bad, still) would be like nails on a chalkboard, but due to the humor factor they end up (along with the bad animation) adding to the charm. It becomes a sort of low-budget self-aware B-movie sort of thing. It was lots of fun.

As of this writing, you can watch Astarotte no Omocha and Hanamaru Yōchien for free on Crunchyroll. For Ghost Stories, you can find a lot of clips on YouTube and other sites host the full episodes, or you could just buy the official DVDs.

Another batch of smaller reviews. Due to holidays and other things I held off on watching some of the more interesting/important series.

Sengoku Otome: Momoiro Paradox (retitled Battle Girls: Time Paradox here in the states, since it sounds better than the literal translation Warring States Maidens: Pink Paradox) is one of those shows with a silly premise and style that also tries to have some serious bits thrown in. It’s obviously pandering and niche and yet it wants to sort of be something substantial. Imagine Escaflowne mixed with Dynasty Warriors and lots more tits. Put simply: girl is transported to alternate history Sengoku period Japan during Oda Nobunaga’s infamous rise to power, except in this dimension all of the famous folks from history are women. In fact, everyone is a girl, which they actually humorously address outright (props for that, by the way). The answer? Because it’s an alternate dimension (explains everything). Then, where do babies come from? Storks. Cabbage patches. Bamboo shoots. Yes, seriously.

Anyway, the actual show plays out like a semi-comedic semi-dramatic action adventure. There’s a lot of shallow-yet-flashy shonen-style fighting (especially the last third of the series) mixed with lollerskates hijinks mostly from our bumbling lead girl. Set in historical Japan, replete with ridiculous armor and outfits and characters, lots of boobies and fanservice, and even the unavoidable yuri glaze on top of this cheesecake (since, yanno, everyone is a girl in this world).

Did I mention pandering?

Still, there’s some quite good animation, quality-wise, though it tends to be a bit by-the-numbers a lot of the time. Voice work is all pretty good, too, and the end of episode previews with live-action gag scenes with the seiyuu are amusing. All of this tends to reinforce the “doesn’t take itself too seriously” quality, which actually works in the series’ favor in my opinion. The obvious pandering and lack of any true originality hurts, but the to-hell-with-it-just-go-with-it attitude allows the show to be a bit silly and over-the-top to good [enough] effect. Still, this just means it manages to be a mildly enjoyable diversion without any real depth (hell, the thing was based on some pachinko game). It looks and sounds good, and it’s kinda fun and kinda funny at times, but woefully forgettable.

YuruYuri takes the lesbian thing a bit further by being completely upfront with its intended purpose right in the damn title. In case you somehow miss that fact, the first episode will make sure you don’t, tossing plenty of obvious girl-love in your face repeatedly. Much of the humor is based on this, too, whether it is Akari’s older sister and her weird sister-fetish, Chitose’s wild lesbian fantasies, or Chinatsu’s unhealthy adoration of Yui.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The show is basically just an excuse to have a bunch of school girls sit around and talk and interact. It’s K-On! but without the music and more overt yuri. Still, the basic idea kind of works because each episode simply involves sticking several of the many characters in some kind of situation and letting their various personalities bounce off each other for awhile. It is very dialogue driven, not a lot really happens, which means it is definitely very episodic and random and pointless as far as plot, the kind of show that could probably keep churning out episodes indefinitely like your average American sitcom.

This would all be okay if it had the writing chops to pull it off. The characters are mostly stock archetypes, all of them have the same basic body shape, all of them wear the same uniform, and all of them are purposefully designed to be various flavors of “cute”. A dozen or so get introduced by only two episodes in so it becomes a bit difficult to remember who is who for awhile. Fortunately the animation is very good quality, even though it doesn’t often have much opportunity to shine. Voice actors are also top notch here and really help.

By no means is the show outright bad. It’s very much slice-of-life, comedy, and cutesy and it knows its target audience very well. For those that aren’t harpooned by the cutesy lesbian angle, there’s just enough humor and such to make it worth watching one or two here and there, but the lack of a point or plot or truly engrossing characters will probably leave you feeling unsatisfied. That might not be so bad if not for the comedy being kind of hit-or-miss. It ranges from subtle slow situation comedy to slapstick mayhem, some episodes were chock full of laughs and others barely elicited a chuckle.

The second season is basically just a direct continuation with more of the same except not as good overall. The opening and ending are noticeably inferior and the jokes and deliveries just seem too limp too often, it has nothing new to offer in the way of characters or ideas so it just repeats a lot of the same stuff from the first season. Chitose is still fantasizing and getting nose bleeds, Chizuru is drooling, Kyoko is crraaaazy, Chinatsu has a weird evil streak and still skirt-chases Yui, Ayano is a tsundere, and nobody cares about Akari. It does seem to be even more self-aware of these running gags, but that too rarely equates to more laughs.

It’s an easy to watch show, always light and humorous, and has plenty of gags and cutesiness. But there are plenty of other slice-of-life shows, ones that are funnier, more meaningful, and so on. YuruYuri is enjoyable but when compared to the competition it’s hard to recommend it as it fails to really excel at anything. It’s never as funny as other pointless slice-of-life shows like Nichijou and Lucky Star. And if moe/cute is your bag there are far better crops out there that also tend to come with half-way decent (or better) plots as well. But you could certainly watch far worse.

Chitose Get You!! is one of those silly little throw-aways. Each episode is a mere three minutes and that includes time for the credits/theme song. It does sort of have an overarching basic plot and stuff but with so little time it obviously never really develops it. Put simply, eleven year-old Chitose is enamored of this office worker who’s building is across from her school. Hijinks ensue as she ditches school to go see him and other antics, mostly involving her teacher who has to play the irate disciplinarian most of the time. A handful of other colorful characters round out the cast, like the tomboy Misaki or the reticent and eccentric Hinako.

Does she ever get him? Nope, he mostly plays the tired, trod-upon, confused, hapless chap. It’s mostly just site gags and random weirdness. But it’s mildly amusing and what the hell, it’s only three minutes per episode. If you approach it as a quick time-waster then it’s not so bad. The animation is pretty basic, the voice work is fine but unremarkable, and the music is uninspired and functional. But, again, it is meant to be cheap fast laughs. And it certainly works as that.

Teekyu is similar, in that it is also a silly throw-away show. It ups the ante though by being only two minutes per episode, including the credits. They accomplish this by having all the dialog and actions occur at breakneck speed (almost like it is being fast-forwarded). Blink and you’ll miss another dumb pun or some bizarre reference.

Four girls are in the tennis club but only sometimes do they ever actually hold racquets let alone play or practice the game. It’s mostly just extremely fast-paced weirdness, as they go on episodic ventures to all sorts of things. It doesn’t take itself seriously or realistically in the slightest but manages to pull a lot of fairly humorous punches and in record time no less. It’s fun but can be difficult to follow and, yes, obviously largely pointless. But I laughed and enjoyed its brief presence.

As of this writing, you can watch Battle Girls, YuruYuri, Chitose Get You!!, and Teekyu for free on Crunchyroll.

Many decades ago, a young girl died tragically down in a now forgotten room of the old wing of the school. No one remembers exactly why or what really happened, but rumors persist to this day of her death and how she haunts the school. That is, until a young boy chances upon said room and her still wandering ghost…

You see, as a premise, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is genuinely pretty good. The ghost, Yuuko, is actually a normal school-aged girl, but she doesn’t remember anything of her death or past. The amnesia element provides a really solid plot destination and the show even doles out clues and twists every so often in just the right frequency. It’s an intriguing and well told story of tragedy and love. And the ending, while tarnished a bit with an unfortunate but unsurprising cop-out at the last minute, is fairly convincing and impassioned.

But, apparently unsatisfied with simply being merely that, the creators decided to throw in a lot of other elements to mix things up, perhaps to increase its appeal, but in so doing undermine its very core strength. Rom-com elements, occasional school hijinks, and cutesy moe moments, not to mention the always aggravating and unnecessary boobie/cleavage fanservice, all get peppered throughout the more serious plot parts and generally these tend to be below average. This is due both to their awkward juxtaposition with the primary mystery/horror genre but also for technical problems, which I’ll get to later.

Our protagonist boy sets up a Paranormal Investigation Club to gather rumors and research them in the hopes of figuring out whether they have some nugget of truth to them which will get them closer to uncovering the real history behind Yuuko’s death. Meanwhile, Yuuko herself acts like a typical type B personality, glomping on poor Teiichi at every opportunity, acting selfish and overly forward, and generally way too affectionate. This is also compounded with the fact that only he and one other girl can actually see Yuuko, everyone else just sees Teiichi acting weirdly embarrassed and agitated all the time. This might be funnier if the show didn’t generally ignore every other background character (even giving them mostly black, detail-less bodies) so never does anyone really question his odd behavior.

Eventually we get a mild harem of sorts. The other two members, both girls (a semi-tsundere and an effervescent type, respectively), find themselves attracted to him, admittedly for different and believable reasons. This ends up being not as important as it could have been, especially given the really good lingering question: can a human and ghost really have a lasting, meaningful relationship? Unfortunately, the show seems determined to pair the two anyway and ignore that more interesting problem. Too bad, especially for the other two and their never-resolved unrequited loves.

But I mentioned the mystery and horror are really good. And they are. The series does a fantastic job with setting up surreal scenes of twisted emotions, supernatural events, and other darker psychological phenomenon. When it deals with serious, spooky, or surreal, it tends to shine. When it tries to back up and try other things like cute embarrassment or summer break swimsuits, it tends to fall flat on its face.

A lot of the trouble, outside of the jarring genre mixing, is technical, as I previously mentioned. Fortunately, music and voice work all tend to be quite decent, even with the somewhat harsh hard rock intro and the all-too-cliché organ-heavy gothic ending song. Silver Link does a really good job with contrast, color, and backgrounds, weaving a vivid and striking tapestry most of the time. Their creative command of camera angles and scene composition are also frequently fantastic and phenomenal. If only their ability to draw faces and animate bodies were as good… Characters aren’t terribly drawn or anything but there is a definite and bothersome “off” feeling a lot of the time and it really hurts the immersion and emotion, particularly in the more dramatic sequences. It also doesn’t help that the general style of their females is to have a very haunting and fantastic look to them, which really does not work at all when trying to make them coy, cute, or coquettish.

Despite the glaring problems, the show manages to still be pretty good. It drags a bit here and there, especially near the beginning half, but by the last third it really picks up and manages to ditch a lot of the more problematic elements in favor of focusing primarily on plot. It might be a tad rushed as a result, but their creative and inventive methods of story-telling, especially visually, tend to make up for it. It never quite has the skillful execution I’d hope but it certainly tries and it still mostly succeeds. It has its cliché bits but overall it is a refreshingly different and bold enough take that, while never truly excellent, manages to be enjoyable and memorable.

As of this writing, you can watch Dusk Maiden of Amnesiafor free on Crunchyroll.

I don’t really have a linking theme this time around. Just mini-review triplets!

GJ-bu is pointlessly cute and yet strangely appealing to me. I’m almost embarrassed how effective it was at roping me in. Based on a yonkoma (and it shows), the story is non-existent. You’ll get gradually introduced to characters but that’s about the extent of things. They’re ostensibly in a school club but from what is shown it seems like they never are actually in class. Other than a few brief times the scenes rarely leave the club room. Speaking of which, what the hell is their club and why is it called GJ-bu? (Aside from the obvious play on words: if you say it out loud it sounds like “good job” in engrish and yet also means “GJ Club” which could also mean “Good Job Club” perhaps). Why does Kirara eat cartoon meat all the time and no one questions it, etc. Very little is ever explained despite the show having more loose threads than a homeless man’s sweatshirt. And yet it really doesn’t matter because the true appeal is in the characters, both visually and comically. (For an excellent break-down of slice-of-life shows and how GJ-bu in particular excels, see this other review that is far better than my short blurb here.)

Above all the show is just moe eye-candy and disturbingly good at that. Everything is so archetypical, colorful, bright, and a lot of fluid moe-ments to keep you melting in your weeaboo pants. Like I said, it’s almost embarrassing how effective it is. If K-On! is at all like this then maybe I’ll have to reconsider my knee-jerk irritation at that series. Here we’ve got just about every base covered: there’s a tomboy, a short, spunky fang one, a tall and smart one that lacks common sense, a nice-to-a-fault angel, a cat-like girl, a dark lolita, lots of little sisters, a maid, and even a foreign girl (who they try to have speak English all the time which, while kudos for attempting some kind of realism, the actress is obviously terrible at English). All of them are trope-styles you’ve seen before but pleasingly simple ones. The show is very careful never to take things too far so as to be annoying, which is actually a difficult and fine line to walk.

Comically, the show does a surprisingly good job at cultivating atmosphere and timing, having scenes, awkward pauses, and hesitations linger just long enough, or just enough weirdness or fourth-wall-breaking. The dialogue is often witty and silly, if subtle and pointless. A lot of the show is just watching the various girls verbally screw with the hapless harem-ish-lead boy’s head. They are like lionesses with prey and it’s amusing to say the least.

GJ-bu never really ventures into any sort of romance, drama, or action. It is squarely in the slice-of-life genre but even more firmly in the “nothing really happens” category. There’s no moral of the story, no climax, and no real point, with lots of skipping of time (only a total of 12 episodes and we manage to see Valentine’s Day come around twice) despite no real progression elsewhere. And yet the show has just enough variety and amusing tangents to keep things fun, plus it likes to build on the gags over time with callbacks and so on. For me the show never really dragged (unlike, say, YuruYuri every now and then), though it keeps a languid pace for sure. The various girls fit the usual clichés but show a lot of thought and skill into their designs: they have distinct, recognizable silhouettes, color schemes, movement and mannerisms, as well as just being a pure and excellent distillation of their respective archetype. Their interactions, too, (especially with the male lead) tend to have a bit more nuance and subtlety than you’d expect. Making a stock character is easy, but making a good stock character is hard, and it is here where GJ-bu succeeds, pulling off a show with no attempt at originality but doing it so well that it stands above a lot of the rest for that alone.

I had a lot of fun absorbing the cuteness and mild humor with this one, but I have to say that with it’s very short length it was somewhat forgettable. A real shame too, because it impresses every step of the way seemingly in spite of its pedigree/genre. It’s really good at what it does but that tends to be very narrow. Great animation, some excellent endings, so-so theme songs, fun boopy 8-bit soundtrack, and good voice acting. If it sounds like your type of show, don’t miss this one.

Poyopoyo Kansatsu Nikki (lit. Poyopoyo Observation Diary) is an incredibly cute, fun, and just plain good little series of 3-min shorts (though there are 52 of them to keep you occupied for awhile). It concerns a rather round, ball-shaped yellow cat (named Poyo) and the family that finds him as a stray one day. Each episode tends to follow a theme and explore all sorts of random hijinks and silliness.

The style is very super-deformed and yet the animation quality is quite good. The timing, pacing, and structure of the episodes is also noticeably excellent, and the content tends to be just the right mix of weird, silly, cute, and fun. It’s a joy to listen to as much as it is watch. I’m afraid I haven’t got much else to say other than I really liked it and was wistful when it ended.

Ai Mai Mi is another set of 3-min shorts, though an incredibly brief 13 of them. It concerns three girls (named Ai, Mai, and Mi if you haven’t guessed yet) who purportedly are in a manga club or something. Not that it really matters because most of the time is spent on random weirdness. Yeah, it’s another one of those bizarre little things that is a lot of Japanese humor that if you don’t like you won’t like this series at all.

The animation is simple and mostly super-deformed and cheap, though it shifts around styles a lot and tends to be a bit erratic for effect (though not nearly as fast or erratic as Teekyu). It is pointless and hallow but lots of bizarre fun. I liked the 8-bit ending sequence, the wackiness, and the style. It’s probably an acquired taste and with its brevity and pointlessness it’s even more difficult to really recommend. But you know what? Who cares! I liked it just fine and it’s so short how much of a waste could it really be?

As of this writing, you can watch GJ-bu, Poyopoyo, and Ai Mai Mi for free on Crunchyroll.

She is an introverted loner who cares only for her studies and grades. He is rambunctious, random, naïve, honest, and dangerous when he's mad. It is a clashing of two totally opposite personalities as they form hijinks and love.

Rom-com is a difficult genre to be original in. And to be honest, pitting total opposites together is an easy and frequently used tactic. It takes almost no effort to then craft humorous juxtapositions, to force your protagonists to react, decide, and change due to their world being mixed up by this alien personality. And, well, contrived or convenient or not, it does work…

Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun (sometimes titled My Little Monster, though a more direct translation would be The Monster Next Door) works well enough as a rom-com. It's fun, it's touching at times, and it's interesting seeing our little ice queen girl open up to this crazy boy. The dynamic feels contrived but still manages to be fresh, if only perhaps because the two leads are unusual archetype choices despite still being pigeon-holed personality-wise. There’s little that you’ll discover along the way that will surprise you about them and after the first episode introduction you’ll have them both mostly figured out. And yet even so, the fact that our female lead is cold but not just another tsundere makes a huge difference it seems. She’s not denying her love or herself in that cliché “it’s not like I like you or anything” way so much as she genuinely has had her mind elsewhere her entire life. She’s been obsessed with exceling academically and romance and personal relationships have just been ignored as useless towards her goals. If you’re thinking of Kare Kano (aka His and Her Circumstances) right now, well… kudos to you for at least knowing of that great series! Yes, the similarities here in the premise are there, but really the tone and the direction end up being much different. Especially when it comes to the male lead; Souichirou in Kare Kano wasn’t a total opposite like Haru is here. Furthermore, Shizuku isn’t cultivating an elaborate lie with which to build her life around all in the pursuit of adoration and praise. Her motives are far more pure: she merely wishes to focus on being really good at something, in this case school studies.

The twist comes in that Haru, a care-free dervish of a fellow who seems to run solely on instinct and emotions, happens to be just as good (if not better when he gives an ounce of effort) at school as she does. Naturally this infuriates her, but in expected fashion he has a lot to teach her about letting go sometimes, opening up, and living a little. Like I said, it’s the unusual choice of personalities that go a long way to helping this series be a lot better than it might have been otherwise. Plus, the lack of any egregious fanservice helps, too.

While the plot is predictable it’s not your usual formulaic shoujo material either. A lot of the usual staples are skipped or twisted in favor of a more unusual sequence of events. Usually, this is due to Haru being a “wild and crazy guy!” so of course he wouldn’t follow the social norms of courtship. Like I said, it all feels contrived but nevertheless fresh enough. The characters don’t ever surprise much but they certainly feel like solid characters, which coupled with the non-standard narrative makes for a delightful little diversion. It’s just too bad that Shizuku tends to be a bit too dull and Haru’s antics somewhat fill that void but the show focuses far more on her than him.

TnK has a somewhat interesting paper-texture style to its backgrounds, with very clean and sharply drawn characters over it. It looks quite decent, animates just fine, but it isn't ever all that impressive when compared to modern fare (mind you, it is still light-years ahead of a lot of older stuff). Music is not too bad and the voices are all just fine. Mostly it is a perfectly adequate show, production wise.

Unfortunately, the series is hamstrung by being way too short with clumsy pacing. There is a slow burn as the romance develops. It’s usually a good thing to not rush into a relationship and to let the characters grow and develop, but when you consider they have a measly thirteen episodes to work with this becomes nothing short of frustrating. Not only do we get a mostly unsatisfying ending, we also get several major threads left dangling. What's the deal with his family and why does he hate his brother so much? What will become of her friend and the store owner? And will she and this monster ever, like, get together for real? I get that there’s probably a lot more (ongoing) manga source material but that doesn’t excuse the clumsy pacing and lack of a complete story (or story arc even). I’m not saying they had to try to rush it or fit everything in but at least find a decent stopping point.

I wanted to like TnK a lot more. It has so many little quirks and things that I actually rather liked but mostly they go underutilized. Some of the side-characters were promising, like the odd Natsume or the decently nuanced bad-boy-but-is-he Yamaken or even the shy class-president girl. The peculiar leads and the much more mature take on relationships without sacrificing fun or resorting to a lot of melodrama… oh well. In the end you’ll get yet another high-school romance with a mix of pretty good and pretty meh. A lot of its problems could be solved by a second season, but as far as I could find out there isn’t even so much as an official hint one will be made. You could certainly do a lot worse in the romance genre and hell, it’s different enough that it’s worth checking out for that alone. You might even be able to better ignore the frustrating aspects than I. Still, maybe this is one that (even without having read it myself) maybe it’s better to check out the manga instead.

As of this writing, you can watch Tonari no Kaibutsu-kunfor free on Crunchyroll.

Thus cometh the invader, the fearsome Squid Girl! Oh wait, actually she looks twelve and keeps getting distracted from her invasion goal with other random tangents with the family that runs a cafe on the beach. She has tentacles for hair, she spits ink, and her hat seems to be actually part of her head. It's Squid Girl!

The premise of Shinryaku! Ika Musume (literally Invade! Squid Girl) is fairly simple: she is a squid girl from the ocean who arrives on a beach in Japan with the intention of invading the human world. Of course, she’s nearly as naïve as she is confident. For all her bravado and scheming she happens to be quite a typical young girl with a good heart. This is, actually, an important point as it allows the show to (occasionally) manage some more serious and heartfelt moments. Underneath the zany antics is a story about acceptance and family as the titular character becomes a part of the family running the beach café she initially attempts to “invade". But, even so, a lot of that falls to the wayside in favor of silliness.

Each episode is typically split into three separate self-contained stories. Other than characters and some other brief progression of relationships and time, very little carries over from story to story. On the whole, it is quite random and aimless, but that's okay since the point is to just find excuses for weirdness and comedy. On the other hand, though, it does make for some rather rushed endings as it attempts to cleanup in time for the commercial break to start the next mini-story. On the plus side, this keeps the pacing usually pretty steady, with rarely much idle time.

As far as style and production, it follows probably the most pure and typical anime style there is. While it only occasionally has opportunities to shine, it is very well animated and effects are all quite good. Sound work is good, voices are good, it's very well done. There’s lots of little polishes here and there, like the slight changes to the ending sequence usually incorporating some aspect of what happened in that episode. But while it seems to have had quite a good budget, it is incredibly generic and typical. It is safe. While it is nice to see interesting art sometimes, I suppose I can't knock this show too much since it really isn't trying to be different. It's just trying to be funny and amusing and easy to watch. And as far as that goes, it certainly succeeds.

But as much as I enjoyed it, laughed, and generally had a swell time, it was fleeting and insubstantial. The lack of an engrossing plot or anything made it difficult for me to watch more than an episode or two at a time. Sometimes that kind of simplicity is okay but still… it felt like a lot of effort for what would basically only ever aim for simple laughs, predictable characters, and little to no concrete development even after two dozen-episode seasons.

Especially troubling because there were some glimmers of potent storytelling. The second season finale, some of the lessons on family and friends, but most of all a first season episode (number six I believe) where Eiko has a dream where she finds a miniature Squid Girl and keeps it as a pet. This short is told entirely without dialogue, with the visuals choreographed to a lovely piano piece that is part curious, hopeful, content, and sad. We watch her as she is timid and fearful, growing to trust her new owner, as they spend time playing or just being there when she gets home. We see Eiko’s life unfold through the ups and downs, but there’s little pet Squid Girl to cheer her up through the rough times and cheer and squii during the good. We see time roll on until the day Eiko passes away in bed, old and gray, leaving her lifelong friend behind. It’s the kind of beautiful, sentimental little audio-visual piece you don’t expect a show like Ika Musume to do.

In the end, as much as I enjoyed the ride, there weren’t enough really good mini-stories like the pet Squid Girl one to make the show anything more than a passing fancy. You’ll laugh, you’ll admire the solid visuals and competent production, and you’ll probably say it was pretty good. But you’ll probably also wholly forget it after a month or two. A big factor, too, is the surprisingly weak cast outside of Squid Girl herself. The show is at its best when it’s exploiting her various squid qualities (spits ink, tentacles, that sort of thing) or her lack of common sense about the human world. But as amusing and cute as she can be a lot of the time, she is surrounded by boring uninspired co-stars.

While the two shows have little in common as far as tone and target audience, I feel like Yuru Yuri is in much the same camp as this show: it’s easy to watch laughs with occasional glimmers of excellence, but mostly just well-produced and enjoyable sit-com fluff. Once you’ve met the various characters they basically just have them do their thing each episode: Squid Girl is always headstrong and naïve, Eiko is always the straight-man, Chizuru is always kind-yet-frightening, Sanae is always getting nosebleeds — Hell’s bells, it really is just like Yuru Yuri…

As of this writing, you can watch both seasons of Ika Musume for free on Crunchyroll.

Now a mostly-cured human after briefly becoming a vampire, our high school senior hero Araragi finds himself mixed up, primarily due to his meddlesome nature, with a number girls each of whom is involved with various sorts of ghosts, gods, and spirits.

Impossibly surreal and artsy.Bakemonogatari is sharp, clever, and rhythmic. It is a love it or hate it series, though. Either you dig its eclectic style of backgrounds and architecture, symbolism, character dynamics, and dialogue, or… you find it grating, pretentious, and pointless.

The title is a portmanteau of “ghost” (bakemono) and “story” (monogatari) and so it sort of translates to “ghostory”. The second series, called Nisemonogatari executes a similar language trick, combining “impostor” (nisemono) and “story” into something like “impostory”. This titular word play is the first clue that the show likes to play with language, imagery, and style. Sometimes breathtaking, often confusing, and occasionally lucid, the story is broken into several major arcs centered around one of the female characters and her supernatural situation. Refreshingly, it never really becomes a harem per se, as the girls, while often reeking of common archetypes at first, are distinct and maintained throughout the rest of the series. Helpfully, this avoids that too common disconnected problem with characters disappearing after their story bit is over. Not so here! Each one manages to find a place in the story and become contributors in their own way to the weird tale. Mostly, this is through one-on-one interactions with our male lead Araragi. In fact, dialogue is a major component of the storytelling, although the visuals provide the sub-textual sugar and spice.

So often episodes will spend ten plus minutes with nothing but two characters talking in the same room or place. And yet, somehow, it manages to make it incredibly engaging through a combination of wit and movement: scenes will flit about as they talk with sharp jump-cuts littered profusely, highlighting a slight movement or showing a different (and often odd) angle, all usually in frequently symbolic time with the words being said. This keeps things fresh, dynamic, and lively, despite the fact that often they are doing nothing more than standing or sitting in the same area for several minutes talking. So much more is said by the camera, it becomes a third voice in these scenes, especially since a lot of characters are given to unclear motives and whimsy as per their assorted personalities. Everything feels clever and revealing, smart and humorous, and carries a sort of cadence and rhythm to the back-and-forth.

But, then again, that is often all it is: talking. Only occasionally are there interesting "action" scenes. When they happen, they are highly competent and engaging and fantastically animated. Hell even the more “static” scenes tend to be a feast, not just due to the interesting and engaging movement of the camera, but also just the style of presentation. Often backgrounds and environments are heavily stylized, with lots of contrast, monochromatic elements, and surreal symbolism.

But this all comes at a heavy cost, as the show can and does collapse under its own stylistic weight sometimes. Whole episodes can go by where you feel like it was being really savvy and sexy but can hardly recall what’s going on. What I mean to say is that it can be a bit confusing, to say the least. On the plus side, I suppose it does reward re-watching, as you’ll get a second chance at following along as well as seeing all of that lovely animation budget put to such good use (especially during Nisemonogatari, where it seems they got a significant boost in budget even over the first series).

Honestly, I cannot recommend the series enough. Each of the characters manages to be as memorable as they are enjoyable and varied, especially the stand-out Hitagi, although some of them do require waiting till the second series to find their groove (or in some cases, like the Araragi “Fire Sisters”, some actual screen time). Even though it has some problems with pacing (particularly the second series, which manages to cover only two girls compared to five from the first series despite having the same number of episodes), it is sometimes too clever for its own good, and the fact that it is a divisive love-it-or-hate-it show, it is different and stands far out from the rest. That alone is reason enough to give it a shot to at least experience something peculiar, something that has a lot of effort of thought and skill. Even if you find it annoying or stupid, you’ll not likely be able to compare it to much else.

If you’re still unsure, well… spend 2 minutes of your time watching this and tell me you aren’t at least a little curious (and, while you’re at it, go buy all of she’s music).

As of this writing, you can watch both Bakemonogatari and its sequel Nisemonogatari for free on Crunchyroll.

An idiot savant girl, the namesake of the series, transfers to an art-centric high school to pursue a career as a manga artist despite already being a child prodigy in the painting fine arts. But while genius in the arts she lacks everyday common sense, right down even to basic functions like dressing herself. Yes, that sound is everybody letting out a vexed sigh at the doinky and unbelievable premise I just laid out.

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo (or The Pet Girl of Sakurasou) is one of those series that I cannot help but still like and enjoy despite the many obvious problems and irritations I have with it. For every cliché character they have their cute moments; despite its predictable plot it can be funny and charming; and there’s an eye-roll for every teary eye.

Our lead boy, Sorata, finds himself living in the “weird people” dorm of his school because he cannot help taking in stray cats, which are against the normal dorms’ policies. Oh! How appropriate indeed that he immediately does the same when Mashiro arrives, a girl who excels at anything her pencil or paintbrush touches but who can barely understand basic social etiquette much less laundry. You can almost picture every embarrassing bath scene, dressing scene, and misunderstanding to come. Thank the gods, these egregious bits of fanservice mostly only litter the initial few episodes.

Part of Pet Girl’s strength and weakness is that it spreads itself over several genres. We have the mild fanservicey stuff at first, the clueless robot-like cute girl, a longtime friend of Sorata who has an obvious crush on him (which, naturally he is oblivious) to which we get our eventual love triangle (because of course clueless girl will discover love for the first time thanks to her hapless helper), and we even get a wild and crazy glomping girl with giant tits along with a suave and girl-in-every-port guy. There’s comedy, antics, fanservice, hilarious misunderstandings, and so much more I’m leaving out. A motley crew of characters you’ve all seen before.

Not that any one of these problems are really ever truly awful. That’s the frustrating thing, the show is not bad at all despite all of the annoying facets. It has a pretty good budget and some quite nice visuals that have a kind of rainbowy palette, some fine voice acting, solid opening and ending themes, you name it. As doinky as it can be it grows on you quickly and the characters and such are fun, plus the rollercoaster of comedy and drama keeps things varied and interesting.

Mashiro certainly has her moments (mostly the later half of the series) but I admit to being a vocal Nanami sympathizer, partly because I am usually deep-down a sucker for the osananajimi trope but mostly in this case due to her delicious voice actress and accent. Still, it’s just a shame both of them dig Sorata so much since he spends so much time being a moody killjoy. Sure, he usually means well and he’s not a bad guy but he’s also not a great lead. Worse, too, because the real stand out story tends to be the oft ignored complicated situation between two of the side characters, the aforementioned glomper and playboy.

Pet Girl has some good drama but it never really manages to capture any poignancy. Most of the tension spawns from a lot of awkward goals and self-created angst, and the resolutions tend to be too tepid and clumsy. It tries, it really does, but like so much it never quite seems to make it, but it also never really spectacularly fails. Things still manage to never annoy too much, not more than the good parts at least, and so you sort of just try to look past its semi-limp delivery. Easy to do, mostly, given the number of decent to good moments.

But, even so, it is predictable to a fault. Not much should surprise you over the course of its 24 episodes. You’ll already know how the love triangle will play out even before it comes up, you’ll know how the two star-crossed secondary characters will resolve their relationship, and you’ll know how everything will work out in the end neatly. But you’ll get a solid production and a mostly enjoyable ride out of it. So, well… it may be nothing all that new or different but it’s more than well done enough that it’s still enjoyable.

As of this writing, you can watch Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo for free on Crunchyroll.

Years and years ago I remember being an extremely hardcore Tenchi Muyo! fan, specifically the original OVA. At the time, I was busy admiring the suave Kagato, digging the funky trees-in-space sci-fi, or feeling so badass because I saw the uncut version where you could see their titties (hey, man, I was pretty young). The fact that it was a harem anime went mostly over my head — I mean, it had so much else to focus on.

These days, your typical eroge-turned-harem-anime are a dime a dozen and, in most cases, predictable, unoriginal, and above all bland. Some clueless d-bag, usually in high school, who over the course of several episodes manages to snag several wildly different cliché girls all without noticing or trying. Beyond the fact that the writers aren’t even usually trying to come up with anything new, the whole charade is just silly and embarrassing. The harem genre is obvious wish-fulfillment and its knee-jerk doinkiness leaves me feeling ashamed to be an anime fan.

But every now and then you get a show that, while exhibiting harem qualities, manages to go beyond the tropes. It offers an actual story, likable characters, or other things like action and mystery. Like Tenchi Muyo!, the harem part becomes so much a minor quality next to all the rest it has to offer. These shows prove to me that harem animes aren’t inherently dumb or despicable, that they can be good, great even, rising above the rubbish.

OreShura is not that show.

Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru (lit. My Girlfriend and Childhood Friend Fight Too Much) should clue you in that it isn’t a great harem by the name. It’s much too long and it’s inane. Here’s the premise: plain high school boy Eita is blackmailed by the school’s most beautiful girl, Masuzu, to be her boyfriend. That’s right, the poor guy is forced! To be a fake boyfriend! To the school hottie! Meanwhile, his female childhood friend dotes on him constantly, saying everything but the words “I want to be your girlfriend, not her!” but of course he sees her as basically a sister. Later, we get a girl who’s convinced she and him were lovers in a past life… you know, when he was a dragon knight and she was a princess. Lastly, we get a girl who is brash and constantly hot/cold to him (so, yeah, your average tsundere), but hey why not have four girls fawning on him? Actually, that last girl I kinda liked… until she turned into an insane creepy stalker.

A pastel feast of syrupy visuals with quite a good budget makes for a delightful sight, and it does just enough with the cinematography to be competent and enjoyable despite never straying far from “tried-and-true”. It’s certainly good looking and it sounds okay, too. Honestly, this helps the enjoyability immensely.

It’s too bad, then, that the characters are a mix of dumb and despicable for the most part (as I’ve already basically covered). Thankfully, there is enough above average humor to hold this show together, and I have to admit the cliché childhood friend thing hooked me like the sappy sea bass I am (that makes me a Chiwa-bro, I guess). Plus, those nice visuals I mentioned do make for a healthy amount of moe-pandering which is still deliciously cute a lot of the time even if it’s ordinary and uninspired.

For all of the really exasperating harem bullshit, the show is actually quite funny. The brazen bitch Masuzu is ruthless and scheming, using a notebook she found of our boy Eita’s old delusional journal entries as leverage. His embarrassing stories prove to be full of cringe and win, with lots of nods to other anime and general boyish fantasy. Himeka, the girl who believes they dated in a past life, exists purely for comedy as her delusions go far beyond his, coupled with her generally quiet eccentricity. And Ai, the tsundere-turned-stalker, is wild and random and lots of fun.

Additionally, the show really seems to be winking at times, almost overtly by the end. It knows it’s a token harem, and while it never uses this to really break out of the genre it exists within at all, it does use this for a lot of meta-humor late into the series (courtesy mostly of Eita’s aunt and guardian). There are attempts to introduce a bit of sweetness and drama here and there, which might have worked if it were more serious about it. But the constant silliness and fighting over him prevents these not-awful attempts from ever amounting to much. Too bad, too, because the ending shows that they could have told a better character drama if they wanted to.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that OreShura isn’t all bad. If you want a fun diversion and won’t blow your brains out over the facepalming stupidity of the plot and characters and so on, well… you just might have a chucklin’ good time like I did. That said though, even with solid comedy chops and a pretty good animation budget, it’s still a dumb harem show. For me, the pros only sort of outweighed the cons.

As of this writing, you can watch OreShurafor free on Crunchyroll.

And, because I’m such a dweeb, here’s some bonus Chiwa:

A quadruple batch of mini-reviews of odds and ends.

Mangirl! maintains a frenzied pace and is mostly silly and cartoony but still amusing. There’s a lot of focus on the manga biz, which ends up being rather curious and interesting at times. Unfortunately, being three-minute episodes this means that the fast and short delivery leaves little time to develop any sort of memorable characters. All but the tsukkomi and boke main pair of bespectacled Aki and editor-in-chief Hana fade into obscurity and even then they aren't much to remember. Still, animation is more than capable and the colorful, silly delivery, while using all of the common tricks, makes for a somewhat amusing brief adventure into the world of manga publishing. If it were any longer it would certainly drag. The final episode was actually semi-clever, too.

Yurumates 3D (and the immediate follow-up sequel, Yurumates 3D Plus) is cute and mildly amusing. That’s really the most that can be said about it. It has a strange super-deformed style despite its main cast being in their twenties (a refreshing change from the myriad high school settings, I suppose). But it mainly concerns itself with the random and mundane lives of its cast, all of whom live in an old apartment building and are in various stages of trying to get into college or kill time between trips to work and the store. It’s often amusing and kinda cute, like I said, but in two seasons it never really manages to excel at anything or develop anything meaningful plot/character-wise. Still, you could do far worse, and I certainly had a few good laughs and chuckles out of it. Like all of the shows I’m reviewing today, you can burn through this one in a single sitting most likely.

Encouragement of Climb, aside from being clumsily named, is a slice-of-life series mixed with amateur mountaineering 101 lessons. It’s cute and surprisingly well animated, with some really nice vistas, detailed backgrounds, and very competent animation. It tends towards the overly cutesy side on the characters, they skewing quite young and all. It’s so short it’s over before you know it, disappointingly right when things start to get rolling. Oh well. Still, cute and eye-pleasing and generally feel-good. It could certainly benefit from a continuation season. (Considering it just recently aired, maybe that will happen?)

As a bit of a walk down memory lane (for me, anyway), I was surprised to see Cosplay Complex offered by Crunchyroll. I saw this one years and years ago but never got to see the last episode. It’s a three-part OVA from the early aughts and it shows… boy does it show its age. I sometimes forget just how amazingly better even ho-hum anime looks these days. Still, the show, while kinda budget-limited in design, has a lot of fun moments and spends most of it pandering to otaku. Expect lots and lots of references to other anime via outfits and so on, plus a large helping of fanservice and ecchi humor. It also features an early Rie Kugimiya role, though an absolutely terrible one. She normally has a fairly baby-ish voice already but this time she seems have turned it up to 10, added even more of a lisp, and is too often using weird alien nonsense words (because she plays a strange miniature action-figure-sized person from space I guess? An explanation is never even hinted at.)

The real star of the show, for me, is the bald club president dude, whose over-the-top antics and dramatic deliveries please me to no end. He’s worth the price of entry to put up with the brainless cleavage shots, limp slapstick, and trite-as-all-hell romance subplot. If you’ve got nothing better to do, I can’t say this one is really awful. The humor is there, but be aware of what you’re getting in to and remind yourself of how long ago this one was made.

As of this writing, you can watch Mangirl!, Yurumates 3D, Encouragement of Climb, and Cosplay Complex for free on Crunchyroll.

Looking too much like the creepy girl from The Ring movies, our heroine Sawako is timid and shy and naïve to say the least. But after starting a new semester of school a gregarious and kind popular boy befriends her and starts a ripple effect of positive changes in her life. Yes, it is another one of those typical shoujo stories again, but for all of its cliché bits (and there are many) it has a good heart behind it all.

I admit, I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for shoujo garbage. Sure, I’ve seen and enjoyed my fair share of other things too, but sometimes I just want to sit back and watch a cute couple fall in love. Is that so wrong? Will my testicles really fall off if I keep doing it?

And yet, every time, it’s more or less the same story and the same characters with slight differences. It’s not so bad that it’s like I’m watching the same movie over and over again but… it’s true that the genre is probably the most stable and unchanging of any other genre. Even outside of anime, think about all of the same-y romantic comedies you see Hollywood churn out every year.

But, perhaps that’s because in the end there isn’t a whole lot of differences to be found in the way we humans interact. Relationships are complicated but not complex.

Which brings me to Kimi ni Todoke (usually titled From Me to You), the little shoujo story that could. While having a somewhat limited budget, as is too often the case for laidback shoujo genre material like this, KnT still manages to do what it can. The opening and ending animations have a pleasant sort of colored pencil look, with easy going tunes and some simple but cute ideas. But while it does well to set the tone and all, and be kinda charming, it mostly isn't that impressive. The actual art and scenes tend to be a bit by-the-numbers and bland a lot, relying on cheaper-to-animate super-deformed moments and a lot of white background close-ups. The rest has a sort of water-color-ish cartoony effect that allows frequently fading details to white. While fitting the simple, soft feel of the show, it’s still making a virtue out of necessity. Which is unfortunate, too, because while it mostly has a tried-and-true generic shoujo look, it occasionally has flashes of attractiveness. I admit to being particularly partial to our poor trod-on protagonist Sawako's creepy-blank-stare-SD face. Still, rarely does the quality ever really exceed decent, with far too many off-model goofs. The girls are rarely ever that cute (well, okay, Sawako on New Year’s Eve was pretty awesome) and the boys are all stock shoujo boyfriend archetypes, by far most of all the lead boy-prince Kazehaya (I’ll come back to this). Expect tears, lots of blushing, and a ton of shimmering sparkles and colorful bubbles.

The story is a little pretty damn slow and Sawako is frustratingly naïve. She is the source for a lot of the early drama and conflict mostly as a result of her misunderstanding or being incredibly dense. Granted, her "story" is that she is used to being alone, friendless, and even made fun of. It is also more than a bit irritating how incredibly oblivious she is about Kazehaya and his obvious more-than-friends attraction to her. But if you’re the type to like the “innocently pure” sort, well… boy are you in for a treat.

I know, I've sounded pretty negative so far. And while the show is a bit on the cheap side, feels too often cliché and unoriginal, and has some frustrating characters… I dunno. I still mostly liked it. For all of its glaring problems it still has its moments of worth-the-wait sweetness. The arc early on exploring friendship amidst destructive rumors is particularly sincere. And some of the later winter stuff is delightfully gooey sweet. And then there’s the last third of season two…

The second season picks up after the first and is noticeably better in animation quality. Unfortunately, where as the first season (which is twice the length of the second season, mind you) drags its feet a lot, the second season will have you pounding the couch arms yelling “OH FOR GOD SAKES GET ON WITH IT!” The frustration factor seems to go up with the budget increase. But, I have to say it was mostly worth it in the end, as you’re in for a much deserved cathartic treat when things finally resolve.

KnT isn’t bad, in fact it’s actually fairly good as far as shoujo shows go. There are a lot of funny little moments, sight gags, and sweetness and these all tend to mostly overshadow the problems. The whispery and nervous lead, Sawako, is, while dumber than a box of nails, a lot of fun to watch. It is particularly refreshing that, despite all of the shit that has been piled on to her at school over the years, she maintains an almost oblivious optimistic-to-a-fault attitude. She has many facets to her and her voice actress really brings her to life. It’s just too bad the side characters don’t get explored more since the show spends more time lollygagging with the two leads.

Which, I gotta say, highlights probably the main problem with KnT: the lead boy, Kazehaya. If the side characters are in need of more fleshing out then Kazehaya is a two-dimensional blank sheet of paper. Okay, okay, I know we do eventually get some development with Chizu and Ryu but Yano is left as the ever sensible but single one. Still, Kazehaya, boy wonder, is just so… bland. He’s such a stock shoujo boyfriend and it really hurts things. He has mild instances of having a personality but so often is just a typical all-smiles perfect guy. Popular with the girls but mostly shies away from them, good at sports, respected by the guys, and does well in everything. If only we got to follow him around for a bit and get in his head it might have improved his character immensely. Instead we stay almost entirely in the introverted Sawako’s head as far as narrative. Stories like His and Her Circumstances spend a lot of time swapping focuses on the leads and this really goes a long way to building more believable characters.

But, even so, Sawako is still a frustrating delight. Now, if they’d only do a third season… preferably with Kazehaya as the primary focus, maybe?

As of this writing, you can watch the first six episodes of Kimi ni Todoke for free on Crunchyroll (premium members get the full two seasons).

One thing is for sure, horror anime are few and far between but can be some of the best uses of the medium if done correctly. My interest was instantly piqued upon seeing the synopsis and studio (the always talented, if sometimes mechanically so, P.A. Works) behind Another.

A good horror show has lots of ambiance and mood building. A great one can maintain it, too. Keeping a consistent and balanced feeling of intrigue, suspense, and eerie isn't easy to do but boy is it exhilarating when they pull it off. When most shows are resorting to slapstick and fanservice to break up the drama due to a lack of ability or confidence to stay on target, well… it's refreshing to get a show that can ignore a lot of the usual dumb tropes in favor of sticking with the plot and dark themes.

It's too bad then that Another falls short on pretty much everything else. For all of its great atmosphere, its general refusal to fall back on doinkiness in favor of never breaking its poker face, and its striking visual flair thanks to the skilled studio, Another is not a great horror anime. If anything, it is merely an okay anime in general.

Things begin quite well, though, with an excellently executed bit of exposition from two classmates whispering about an old story of a girl who died spoken over a montage of deliciously detailed and ominous scenes. And then… the opening theme starts. Most anime have okay or so-so intros, that I may or may not skip when marathoning episodes, and the rare few have openings that I watch every single time. I actively avoided Another's opening, something I practically never have to do. It was so bad I wondered how anyone could have let that pass. Sure, the animation during the intro was good but the music was so unfittingly bad it would have been laughable had it not been mood destroying and worrisome.

These poor decisions (mind you, mixed in with better stuff at times just adding to the frustration of the bad stuff) continue and the opening I feel is really endemic to the larger issues with Another. The main character is a bit of a vanilla type who barely keeps things moving, or rather it is more like he passively flows with things. He isn't so much a protagonist as he is a point of view. Since we spend so much time with him it sucks to have him so boring and unlikable. You probably won't hate him or anything but you'd be hard-pressed to give a good, concise description of his character to someone unfamiliar with the show. The problems with the lackluster lead trickle down into other areas, ruining any opportunity for an interesting relationship dynamic with the lead girl and a host of other family related issues. But let me back up a moment.

Our flimsy fellow Kouichi moves from the big city into this sleepy town with his aunt and grandparents while his father is out of the country. Meanwhile, his classmates seem to be on edge and withholding around him. There's a definitely good sense of mystery here but once again the execution is clumsy as it tends to be a bit too heavy handed. Characters are too often making nervous side-remarks under their breath or catching each other and stopping trains of thought in an obviously paranoid manner.  I get that it is meant to be mysterious and all but it tends to come off wooden more than anything, like their all just playing parts in some weird new-kid initiation game. Like at any moment one of them will jump out and say "PSYCHE! Just kidding, we're all normal kids really... let's have lunch together!"

Plus, there's the matter of the strange girl with the eye-patch whom everyone seems to ignore. Coupled with the stories of the girl who died many years ago and a curse that followed, the plot gets very juicy quickly, especially once people start dying. But she of course plays up the stilted robotic thing to a fault and never grows even an inkling of a personality, worse even than the lead Kouichi. Most of the rest aren't much better: there's a class leader who's got a stick up her ass all the time, a token soft-spoken nice one, and a MILF teacher who is about as personable as a bag of rocks. There are like a dozen or so more classmates that sort of get introduced and named but none of them ever get very fleshed out enough to care about before folks start dropping like flies. Even Battle Royale managed to have a huge cast of characters with far more depth and memorability despite the similar challenge of frequent character deaths.

Which is all a big shame because when the show is in the groove it's pretty good. The eerie feeling most of the supporting cast give off, the town's somber and passionless attitude as a whole, and the weird curse story all make for a good bit of drama. Most of the mysteries will have you guessing up to the end (I admit I was unable to figure it out) and it's a powerful, if contrived, way to keep the plot moving.

The show also isn't afraid of sudden and surprisingly graphic violence which helps with the horror angle. Unfortunately, the version I saw had frequent and noticeable censoring which while I won't hold it against it I do think it's probably better to get your hands on the home release version instead if at all possible. But for all of its shock and satisfying violence (censoring or not) it does tend to get rather ridiculous after awhile, especially by the last couple of episodes. By then the shock has worn off and it becomes almost comical, like your typical b-movie schlockfest approaches things with it being so over-the-top as to be silly. Too bad, since early on things manage to be surprising yet plausible. If that weren’t bad enough, the death frequency becomes so high that it can start to become of a game of “who will die next”, which undermines the story it attempts to tell.

Even with all of the problems, the show is still far from truly terrible. Helpfully, the animation quality is good enough to keep things going even when it’s at its worst. The high-contrasting style, with lots of late evening brilliant orange-red tones, is reminiscent of another show I saw and reviewed awhile back, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia. The character designs aren’t too flashy or memorable, though mostly this is to keep things semi-realistic I suppose, and while robot-girl is interesting on the surface she is disappointingly never really given much to do. Oh well. I’ll still take a frustrating mishmash of good and bad horror anime over not seeing any of them. As long as you don’t let the shiny cover it presents spoil you into expecting too much you can still easily enjoy this one. Mostly my overly-critical sounding review is a result of missed potential. It’s still not a bad series but you get the feeling it could have been so much better with a bit more rewriting.

As of this writing, you can watch Anotherfor free on Crunchyroll.

For a show that garners such universal acclaim, I had perhaps worked up a bit too much hope for Angel Beats! before finally sitting down to watch it. I try very hard to resist even looking at much marketing/hype stuff because I genuinely want to give shows a fair shot — at least, as much as I am able. I don’t think I was particularly all that enthused, though; rather, it was simply that the constant praise and gushing accolades heaped upon the show since its airing had not gone unnoticed to me over the months. Countless people had chimed in to say it was their favorite show, on their top 5 or top 10 lists, or “I didn’t really care about anime until I saw Angel Beats!”

Clearly, Angel Beats! must possess that rare quality, right? I figured I should, eventually, see what all the commotion was about.

The concept is actually not that bad. Guy wakes up and doesn’t remember much (I know, typical lazy amnesia gimmick) but is told he is in a sort of afterlife and he must have died with lingering regret. In this world, a rag-tag resistance faction battles angels for survival as well as revenge against God for the various cruel fates the rebel fighters each died from. So: afterlife, angels, and revenge. Not a bad mix so far!

So it is especially distressing when the execution is riddled with clichés, clumsiness, and missed opportunities. The amnesia thing, which is usually a writing cop-out anyway, ends up being the best part. (But seriously, Key? We need to talk. It’s time to stop relying on the amnesia crutch for every single one of your damn stories. Please?) Even though it is an afterlife, everyone is around 16 and of high school age (of course!), in a world that exists only at a school that cannot be left. So, basically it’s your standard high school setting. Not like there are a zillion of those already, so the “afterlife” angle becomes something spoken about a lot but doesn’t really manifest itself in any meaningful way. You’d be hard-pressed to guess if they hadn’t said so multiple times. Save for one single difference, the afterlife world they exist in is indistinguishable from normal life: no halos, no transparent ghostly appearance, no flying, no spirits of any kind, no odd clothing, nothing of the sort. Instead, we have a generic looking cast in your typical jacket-and-tie for the guys and blue-and-white sailor outfits for the girls. Squandered potential, indeed.

Now, because it is the supposed afterlife, the solitary difference I mentioned is that injuries are felt but not actually fatal. Everyone sort of returns to normal after maybe fifteen minutes despite whatever gruesome injuries they succumb to. The show likes to remind us of this frequently, as I guess it feels like this is a “cool” aspect. Really, though, it only serves to eliminate any possible tension or risk during any of the handful of gun fights, hand-to-hand battles, or trap-invested adventures. All of the “missions” the resistance engages lose any sense of danger when it doesn’t really matter if anyone is killed because they won’t actually die, more they are just temporarily disabled. Despite this, the show is determined to treat all of this as if it were serious and high-stakes. It would be laughable if it weren’t just plain dumb.

Oh yeah, I mentioned angels right? Well, sorry to spoil it a bit, though it won’t be much of a spoiler since they tell you the answer to this outright in the very first episode: there aren’t actually any angels. They just call the soft-spoken deadpan girl an angel because… well, we’re never really told. Anyway, the resistance fighters? They’re basically just a bunch of school kids, a mix of loud, obnoxious, and forgettable. There are so many characters introduced (just watch the intro, they attempt to name everyone) that it gets really hard to tell some of them apart and remember who they are. Likely, you won’t care about anyone but the protagonist Otonashi and the girl-called-an-angel, and only then because the story puts them center stage a lot. Most of the back-stories are revealed as straight flashbacks, mostly feeling like the exposition dumps they are but much too late. By the time you get them, you’ve either stopped watching or, like me, stopped caring much about the specific character they finally decide to flesh out (I’m looking at you, Yuri, the resistance leader girl). After that, it’s just a bunch of random episodic antagonists and outings for the most part. Occasionally, it remembers it was trying to resolve plot stuff.

Lastly, there’s the revenge aspect. I mentioned that. I know I did. It’s too bad the show forgets about it most of the time, preferring to focus on episodic tangents and filler. Most of the twists and reveals are confusing or simply not very compelling. If that weren’t enough, the writers throw in a lot of other things they must think people will like, to the point that it becomes a jumbled mess. Did I mention there’s a band and several musical numbers? Yeah. I’m not sure why, either, other than they are loud, flashy, and “cool”. Also, despite the fights, deaths, weirdness, and all that, it frequently attempts humor… and by humor I mean tired slapstick routines, mostly, or characters yelling at each other. Hilarious! Don’t even get me started on the lolwut that is the character TK. The last few episodes are more than a little confusing and rushed and the finale wants to be so much more heartfelt than it can be or is. Shame, too, because they really seem to think they had a very neat twist at the end, and maybe it would have been in the hands of a more skilled team. Instead, it manages to be limp and distracting due to all of the questions it creates and questions it doesn’t answer. That, and there’s the incredibly cloying cop-out “reveal” in the last moments of the final credits that you won’t be surprised by at all if you were paying attention to the preceding “tear-jerker” scenes.

All of this is so frustrating because it isn’t like there’s nothing good or promising here. The animation is top notch, courtesy once more by P.A. Works, but while it has technical quality it lacks something… that personal touch or style, skilled cinematography, or truly artistic talent (like, say, what Trigger was able to produce). It manages to look really good in still frame but feel kinda soulless (ha ha, I know) when in motion. While a lot of incidental and insert songs are so-so, the intro and ending are pretty damn good, the voice acting is fine, and the sound work is very good too. It’s a big budget show, and it, well, shows. Even if it is missing that extra something, it is still a frequently gorgeous and eye-candy filled experience, no doubt about that.

And it isn’t like you can’t have a good series filled with unoriginal stock school kid designs. Plenty of other shows manage to do this by falling back on something else, be it romance, comedy, character development, drama, you name it. Angel Beats! seems like it wants to be flashy and different, what with the guns, medieval weapons, non-permanent-but-frequent deaths, sci-fi mental blades (guard skill: hand sonic!), and other exciting stuff. Hey, angels! It’s the afterlife, too! And yet it shackles itself within a school, with school-aged kids as its entire cast (I don’t think any person over the age of 17 has a speaking role, ever). It’s like they wanted to do something cool but then reeled it back in to the tried-and-true territory that so many anime occupy and seem afraid to tread beyond. As an original story, not an adaptation, it’s not like they had any source material to be faithful to as an excuse.

I wanted to like this show a lot more than I did. It isn’t terrible but it’s more frustrating than good. There are so many interesting ideas behind it that it left me constantly wishing they had executed things differently, because the promise of a really cool story is there… somewhere… an afterlife for kids who had horrible luck in life to either fade into obscurity of the purgatory they inhabit or to overcome their regret with an epiphany and move on into true spiritual rest. Of angels, cruel gods, and emotions. There’s a really great story in there somewhere. Instead, we’re stuck with Angel Beats!, with its lack of cohesive direction, themes, or substance. It is a fancy looking shell of a show that appears to be really good and might even fool the casual observer (and indeed has), but this angel has a hollow center devoid of any soul.

As of this writing, you can watch Angel Beats!for free on Crunchyroll.

As much as I am disgusted with the increasing regularity of vapid and masturbatory male-fantasy fanservice employed in more and more anime these days (especially those that spawn from visual/light novel adaptations), I don’t think it is automatically bad. Rather, it has the potential to be sexy, fun, and exciting. Rarely is that ever the case. Indeed, what you usually get is dumb, unrealistic, and demeaning to women, replacing any hope of true eroticism with face-palming juvenile indulgences*. As it turns out, that is precisely what plagues We, Without Wings, another victim of the can’t-make-up-its-mind club.

Unfortunately, the show wants to be the conductor on the Fanservice Express, even at one point venturing into an outright hentai sex scene, none of which helps or adds anything useful to the show. It’s all a vapid distraction from the better story it also wants to tell. You wouldn’t ever know it from the promotional images, previews, or hell even the first few episodes, but the story behind We, Without Wings is not merely fluff to prop up the main focus (re: boobs and panties). It displays a real attempt at a threaded narrative about identity between seemingly disparate characters and places and even throws in some swords-and-sorcery-style fantasy for good measure. That last bit, especially, could have easily been a transparent appeal to a wider audience without really serving the plot, but instead manages, in the end, to weave itself in even if it feels out of place for quite awhile — hell, damn near till the last few episodes.

Our story involves several wildly different male characters and places as they interact with friends and girls and so on. Each seems to overlap not at all except at some very peculiar junctures, which serves to set up the primary mystery. Everything else feels kind of episodic, almost pointless slice-of-life vignettes, but I assure you things do eventually coalesce in a not-so-terribly executed way. I’ll say now that if you’ve ever played the game Killer 7, you will probably have a huge advantage in figuring out what’s going on over everybody else, especially with the “channel changing” thing that is almost certainly an homage to the game.

But you’ll be forgiven if you never make it that far or you fail to appreciate what it is attempting to do with the plot, because the whole ensemble is coated in a thick, pungent layer of the dumbest fanservice I’ve seen in ages (okay, the one episode I sat through of Girls High just might have been dumber). There’s maids, tripping, cat costumes, and a whole host of other random choices from the grab-bag of moé/ecchi clichés. At one point they even “accidentally” squirt condiments on each other. At one point they for no apparent reason play Twister in their underwear. And in another they wear skimpy bunny costumes for the purposes of breaking the fourth wall. In fact, that wall gets broken a lot, with nary a wink even. It’s like they don’t even care. But then in another minute they’ll go back to having a mostly serious story, with the relationship of one of the guys and a young female writer whom he is reviewing her work for a magazine, or the grizzled yet deep-down kindhearted guy helping the obnoxious little sister of an acquaintance find her lost bicycle despite getting mixed up in a gang war.

I admit, it’s difficult to muster up any sympathy for anything, the characters or the proceedings, when the show is so inconsistent in theme. It seems like it wants you to be okay with one minute slapstick-silly fanservice and another minute heartfelt budding romance or tense gun shootout. But, no, it doesn’t really work. The goofy and retarded parts undermine the story it does have. By the end, there are a ton of loose ends that don’t get answered or resolved but it does address the primary intrigue of the overlapping threaded stories in a good enough way. I actually applaud its ability to at least finish what it started, and as I said before the story underneath wasn’t too bad, clever even at times… a little. But it’s so hard to focus on it with all of the atrocious distractions that purport to be, one has to assume, part of the appeal. Well, they aren’t; they ruin what could have been a pretty decent little story with some not-terrible characters. Instead, we get a mix of pretty good buried underneath pandering puerile garbage and worn-out weak attempts at moé-ness. To say that I was disappointed is an understatement. You can find a lot better uses of your anime watching time, but if you’re willing to put up with all of the annoying parts there is some genuine good to be found. I’m just not sure it’s worth the trouble.

As of this writing, you can watch We, Without Wingsfor free on Crunchyroll.

* I’m not saying one cannot or should not like such juvenile indulgences, so long as we’re honest about what it is. Don’t try to tell me it is sexy or erotic, because it’s not. You may like it, even so, and that’s fine. There’s a lot of difficult to describe aspects to moé and yet I find myself to generally regard it as a guilty pleasure. But I try to be forthright about what it is, even if I say I liked it. My goal in these reviews is to be extremely biased but fair.

It's the “Mane Six”, only in… human form? Early leaks and promotional info was met with great suspicion and doubt within the MLP community — and still is, since many in the fandom are waiting until it premiers on The Hub in September. Equestria Girls is perhaps the black sheep (black pony? is that too racist?) of the series so far in that while it purports to exist within the same continuity (in fact, it picks up right where season three ends), it remains to be seen if the humanized stuff will be used again, incorporated into later seasons, or if this really was just a one-trick pony of a spin-off. Either way, it is the theatrical debut of the latest generation and that comes with a certain amount of extra scrutiny, regardless of any humanoid gimmicks. Does it hold up on its own? Is the humanoid stuff too weird? Is it, well… good?

The short answer is yes. It's not the big cinematic experience a lot of fans were probably hoping for (and so will continue hoping) but it's far from the disaster some thought it might be after first hearing that it was going to take place in a high school with humanized teen versions the cast. It looks good, mostly, and it sounds good, mostly, and it's funny and enjoyable enough. It is good. Not great, not terrible, just good.

The entire crux of the plot is that Twilight Sparkle's super special “princess crown” that she got at the end of season three is stolen by Sunset Shimmer (oh ho ho, that naming symbolism!), a pony that has previously only been seen in toy form and some box/promotional art (presumably she will show up in season four but that has yet to be seen). She takes the crown through a mirror-portal-thing to an alternate dimension where, yep, everyone is a human. Sorta. Their skin is still white, yellow, purple, etc., just like their respective pony coats. Hilarity ensues as Twilight must go after Sunset in a fish-out-of-water first act. Second act involves her plan to become the school's crowned princess at some homecoming-like event and the finale is her getting it back and saving the day (surprise!).

The humor is pretty good, though easy, in that it's mostly just watching Twilight and Spike have no idea what they're doing as a human and dog, respectively. The rest of the cast don't follow her, though, but are still “in the movie” because this alternate world has human versions of them all. So a lot of time is spent getting to know the cast all over again, which I suppose is not a terrible choice considering some may be coming at this movie in the theaters without having seen the TV series. In fact, the movie, by taking place in an alternate world, manages to dodge all of the problems of necessitating three seasons worth of foreknowledge required of the viewer.

But while it is true you don’t have to have seen the series already, longtime fans won’t be stuck twiddling their thumbs while the movie gets everyone else up to speed. The high school and humans setting means that fans get to spend most of the time noticing all of the references, usually in the form humanized secondary/background characters like Lyra, Big Macintosh, or the ever spunky Cutie Mark Crusaders three.

The problems of the movie are mostly to do with its existence both in the show and out of it. Within the world, the whole endeavor ends up feeling like a huge diversion for nothing. There’s no big moral, Twilight and the others don’t learn anything new, and the end merely manages to get the status quo back to where it was at the beginning of the movie (i.e., she has her crown back). I suppose you could argue that Sunset is now primed for a still-kind-of-a-bitch-but-now-not-evil comeback in time for season four, or that Twilight is now more comfortable being a princess than she was at first, but these are not really highlighted all that strongly by the dialogue.

And if the whole ordeal feels a bit unnecessary within the series, it definitely does outside of it in the real world. I mentioned this was the theatrical debut of the series and it’s kind of a big question mark really. And while it isn’t as bad as some thought it might be, that just means they barely avoided being panned by the fandom. Why was this made? Who was asking for it? The whole thing seems to have come out of nowhere. Humanized ponies exists as a minor niche within the larger bronydom. This first official venture is, like the first season, a bit rough in places (Celestia and Luna look a little too Daria for me) but overall it is easy to get used to and can even occasionally look pretty good.

Honestly, the entire movie feels like a giant fanfic. I mean, come on… humanized, high school, and with a little minor romance thrown in, all firsts for MLP, but all mainstays of a lot of fimfiction. The movie is absolutely riddled with little nods to the older fans that must have been intentional, but also are the sort of things the fans typically explore in fan art and stories. Let’s look at some glaring examples I noticed off the top of my head (minor spoilers):

• The fact that they are exploring humanoid forms at all
• Twilight Sparkle and Flash Sentry shipping, both in the human and pony worlds
• DJ Pon3 singled out during a song and has her shades pulled off
• Pinkie’s “Pinkamina” hair during her dressing up montage
• Spike trying on fake moustaches during that same montage
• No joke: extended anthro-pony “magical girl” transformations during final fight with Sunset Shimmer's demon form
• Rainbow Dash lifting up and saddling Scootaloo during finale dance party
• Derpy with muffin during credits

I mean, come on.Come the fuck on. It’s not that any of these are bad. Some can be a little confusing to non-fans but most go by without notice unless you get the reference. Even if they are kinda funny or pleasing in different ways they feel like such deliberate pandering. To the point that the whole movie feels like it was a fanfic that someone at DHX Media did some minor rewrites on and green-lit for release. Which, I mean, I guess that’s fine, but… yeah.

Anyway, I liked it just fine, especially considering I was in the “this might end up being pretty bad” camp several months ago. I’d even re-watch it, too (already did, in fact).

Though I’m usually a Twilight Sparkle fan (Rarity is a very close second these days), I gotta say Fluttershy ended up making the best pony-to-human transfer.

Eeyup.

Slice-of-life shows like this are always difficult to review. They tend to attract statements like “funny, really enjoyable, and surprisingly earnest”; but rarely anything specific because it isn’t easy to put your finger on exactly what’s clicking with a show, yet you know it nonetheless. Certainly it is the great cast, the witty dialogue, excellent delivery and timing, and the rhyme and recall of jokes and themes. And yet, it’s more than that even, because behind all of that is a show that manages to have small, but real, progression. When it would be too easy to keep things static, characters and their relationships do show changes over the course of two seasons’ worth. This is important, as, like shows in the US such as The Office, it manages to give a solid core, or “heart”, to an already delicious outer casing.

Our setting is that of a family restaurant, very obviously a parody of Denny’s, where it focuses on the day-to-day antics and events of the staff. While the show rarely ventures outside of this, never really glimpsing into the young part-timers’ schools and only occasionally their home life, the lack of adventure in locale is balanced with a sense of familiarity and stability. The focus, after all, isn’t the restaurant or working at all, but the characters themselves. Thus, the setting can and should be static and incidental, allowing it to recede while the characters, actions, and dialogue come to the front. Like Seinfeld, where Jerry’s apartment or Monk’s Café were never really all that important in of themselves, just frequently seen and thus familiar, allowing the show to focus on the best part: Jerry and George’s conversations about nothing.

Animation tends to be quite good, never flashy or truly eye-catching, but pleasing and well animated. This serves the show well, as it allows it to take the occasional splurge to have smoothly animated bits or interesting angles interspersed throughout episodes instead of blowing all of their budget on big action sequences like your typical series. The second season gets quite a noticeable bump though, mostly with the backgrounds and settings. It isn’t a different restaurant but it feels like it got a significant face-lift and the characters seem to be a bit sharper and more detailed.

The true production strength, though, is definitely in the voice actors. Music tends to be serviceable and such but not very noteworthy. Characters, however, are helpfully brought to life with some great seiyuu. A show like this relies a lot on timing and delivery as much as wit and humor in the text itself. Thankfully, the show shines here. Poplar is bubbly and irresistibly adorable without being cloying or obnoxious (for me, she steals every scene she’s in); Sato is intimidating and of few words but still manages to be easy to read (well, for the viewer, not so much Yachiyo); speaking of, Yachiyo is kind and big-sister-like yet a bit of an eccentric airhead; Takanashi, our protagonist if there is one, is mostly normal save for his bizarre fetish with small things that overwhelms his otherwise normalness when it comes out; Inami, despite being a “violent-girl” cliché at first, manages to be sympathetic and sweet; and Yamada, not introduced until partway through the first season, is initially a bit annoying but becomes quite likable and amusing by the second season. All of them, immediately (Poplar) or eventually (Yamada), grew on me, so by the last episode I didn’t want it to end.

A lot of reviewers like to describe the cast as “wild and weird” but I prefer to focus on the latter. It’s not so much that they are really all that rowdy or wild, with the slight exception of the androphobic girl, but rather that they all have… quirks. Specific ones. Some that get slowly exposed and developed over time, some that are unmistakable, and some that only manifest in certain situations. After the establishing phase, the episodes follow a very episodic trend of setting up scenes and such to let the various personalities bounce off each other. This, obviously, requires some fairly heavy-lifting in the dialogue department, as it cannot fall back on sweeping visual scenes, action, or other set pieces. Nor can it rely on plot much. Oh sure, it is there, in the form of a vague sense of the passage of time, but it is rarely leaned upon. The only real evidence of a plot is in the form of lasting relationships. That is, the characters do develop, get to know one another, and find their groove both with their job and with each other. Mostly, it does not forget the events of past episodes and attempts to incorporate them into the characters, building them up over time until you have many running gags and interesting dynamics.

If there is a problem to be had with Working!!, it is that it can be a little slow and “pointless”. If you aren’t totally invested in the characters and enjoying their many whimsical interactions then you’re going to be fairly bored. The little plot that does exist moves at a glacial pace and isn’t enough to hold ones attention alone. Put simply, you must come for the characters… otherwise, move along. Of course, this is typical for slice-of-life shows as they must, as a matter of convention, rely primarily and overwhelmingly on strong characters or possibly, in rare circumstances, ambiance/atmosphere/mood to maintain viewers’ attention (or maybe just the cute factor). So, unless you are new to the genre, you already know to bail on things if it just isn’t tickling your fancy.

But I do think Working!! is one of the better examples of the slice-of-life genre. Few others manage to mix so many usually annoying clichés into likable characters and events and maintain that hold for two seasons. Really, it is one of those shows that if you like it you will probably really like it, even though it won’t ever blow you away with awesomeness. For me, it was more like Hanamaru Yōchien, in that there wasn’t any single amazingly good part to point to, only that the sum of the parts were put together excellently and left me feeling satisfied and content.

So… where’s my third season already?!

As of this writing, you can watch both seasons of Working!!for free on Crunchyroll.

I frequently bemoan the over-saturated and generic “high school setting” in anime, especially because it seems like easily half if not more of all shows tend to fall into this category. I understand that partly it is an audience identity thing, target demographics, and familiarity. But I don’t mind if things otherwise work well despite the lack of an original setting. Oregairu has just enough skill and style that it manages to be a lot better than it seems on the surface. It is far from perfect, and suffers from a short broadcast of one cour, but what’s there is enjoyable and just refreshing enough to overcome a lot of its problems. Excellent writing and a good, tight cast of characters help make this one stand out from the myriad other high-school rom-coms.

Things start off strongly, though, with our male lead, in the form of Hachiman (called Hikki by most of the rest of the cast), waxing eloquent on the deceitful and ultimately futile game youth play over various idealized scenes of his school. You see, he’s a loner sort with a huge chip on his shoulder about human relationships, bred from a long history of rejection and awkward encounters, especially with the opposite sex. (“Can we just stay friends?” as one early flashback recalls.) As such, he has developed into a loner-by-choice who has given up on trying, with a very negative view of the whole ordeal to the point of cynicism. While he is no Kyon, Hikki manages to be an excellent lead in a lot of ways, providing a lot of good internal commentary and reactions with his peculiar slant, as well as some very well written monologues on his opinions of things usually of the human relationship sort. The clear bias makes for an interesting perspective that is as frequently familiar as it is unfortunate, especially to those of us who share even a passing acquaintance with that sort of behavior and experience — we are the obvious target audience, to be sure.

The real crux of the plot starts quickly, as his sardonic and cynical view of things bleeds pretentiously into more than just his anti-social behavior but his writing, which brings him to the forefront attention of his teacher after he turns in a rather harshly worded essay (which, as we discover, we just heard in that beginning montage). Determined to cure him, his teacher forces him to join the Volunteer Service club, which just so happens to have only one member: Yukino, a girl whose perspective is perhaps as damaged as his though in her own way and not in as obvious a manner. Very early on, they involve themselves with a third girl, Yui, and the three sort of de facto become a working club. Forced by the same teacher to engage in volunteer service within the school, she hopes that it will force them into situations and people that will open their eyes in time to the truth. Kind of a nice twist, as she never really lectures them on things and instead puts her confidence into them directly, that they will, on their own, come to the realization themselves (which, perhaps, she correctly assumes will be far more lasting and impacting of a lesson than any verbal barrage she could hurl at them). She remains the antagonist, still, by forcing them into the club directly and thus into the various situations indirectly, but a good-natured antagonist all the same. It’s refreshing to have an example of a non-evil, non-villain antagonist— after all, the antagonist opposes the protagonist but that does not have to be in a literal fighting kind of way.

Helpfully, while employing a lot of familiar tropes and situations and so on, the series remains fairly well consistent in focusing on the anti-social thing and the relationship of the three main characters. Lots of quick flashbacks, internal monologues, and long discussions punctuate the more normal seeming activities they are forced to be a part of. All the while their variously strong and nuanced personalities coat every proceeding in a more than satisfying way. Even though a lot of other things feel cliché, such as the love triangle that emerges or the fact that the three represent very distinct archetypes, their nuances and subtle development is usually enough to look past the weaker aspects of the story and characters. The series’ strongest area is definitely in the writing, as the dialogue is frequently smart, witty, and insightful.

It helps that the series has a mostly nicely done animation style, a little rough at times, but often fluid, often pleasant, and it strikes a good balance between colorful and cartoonish. Individual drawings are often a bit iffy and crude, but the animation itself flows well and the backgrounds and other effects are well done. It’s kind of charming, too, in its imperfections (like Kokoro Connect’s similarly occasionally dodgy animation). There are a lot of little details, too, that serve little purpose but were to me rather endearing, such as the progression of stickers that appear on their club room sign, or the fact that many of the characters who get fully named have nearly repeating first and last names. Yuigahama Yui, Yukinoshita Yukino, Hayama Hayato, Kawasaki Saki, Tsurumi Rumi, and so on. It’s such an obviously contrived detail, but I like that it almost calls attention to the fact that they are made up (and, let’s face it, unimportant) names that need only exist to identify characters.

Unfortunately, the short length leads to the series just sort of stopping, kind of like Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun. It’s not that nothing at all happens or gets resolved, but so much more could be, and it left me a bit unsatisfied. A second season isn’t so much desired out of more time with a good story, but rather to simply properly finish up some threads with an actual ending. While no episode feels outright wasted (not like the final episode to A Dark Rabbit Has Sever Lives), they do sort of just meander a bit and then just stop, which is more than a little frustrating since it has enough good things going on.

Furthermore, the lack of a proper wrap-up to the story is a big problem when you consider that the peculiar characters and dynamics are the primary appeal of the show amidst the rest. Not resolving that leaves a giant hole in the enjoyment factor. Considering that the show can be a bit slow, sometimes subtle, and occasionally not original enough, it really hurts the big good point it does have by not giving it the resolution it desperately needs. With that said, can I recommend this? Well… difficult to say. There was, for me, a lot to like, but also a lot of just okay stuff, and the lack of a good ending makes me hesitate to call the series, overall, good. It’s definitely not bad, and it has a lot that make it worth watching, but it isn’t without some serious flaws. Enter at your own risk, I suppose.

As of this writing, you can watch My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (as they translated the title) for free on Crunchyroll.