AnimeLog: Kekkai Sensen 2, Girls’ Last Tour, Just Because

Kekkai Sensen and Beyond

Probably the main disappointment of the fall season. The first Kekkai Sensen was meaningless but fun. Not because of its characters but more because of the city the anime was taking place in. It looked relatively fresh — former New York City, now full of aliens, vampires and other suspicious creatures. The second season was virtually on the same level in terms of plot (plot? haha) but fun mostly evaporated — all tricks were familiar, all characters had been seen and Kekkai Sensen’s great ending was replaced with something totally generic.

Girls’ Last Tour

I’m really glad we didn’t drop this anime. The very first episode made me feel as if it was one hour long — our two girls were moving (touring?) from one indistinguishable point to another, talking about typical things girls in a post-apocalyptic world would talk. Usually, in such series the world plays a very important role but the world Chito and Yuuri live in is pretty empty and bland (buildings, weapons, old tanks, robots, two fish, gods). But two or three episodes later the main duo managed to grab my attention and then didn’t release it until the final titles. Fearless and slightly aho Yuu is the main star here (in my opinion, of course, as Asuka is the main star… hold on, there can’t be two opinions who the main star of Evangelion is!) but unlikely she would shine so brightly if she was without Chi, who is shy, likes reading and regularly tries to stop Yuu’s attempts to eat all edible and inedible objects around her. What happened with this world? How many people have survived? Probably I should’ve asked these questions and demanded answers but, frankly, I didn’t care about such things as long as I had the next portion of Yuu’s legendary “Let’s eat this fish!”

Just Because

What I can say about this one… Tsuki Ga Kirei handed over the baton of good romance anime accompanied by awful animation (this anime is almost ready to receive the Jiggly Jiggly Heaven award) to this show. I liked Just Because, honestly. I don’t even want to start complaining about characters — yeah, the main hero is a typical Ordinary Japanese School Student (but with parents), therefore it’s obvious that there should be at least two girls who are in love with him (and Komiya is kind of cute). I sincerely rooted for Morikawa and Souma and I’m really happy that they figured out at least some solution that might allow them to be together. Souma, trying to overcome his fear of dogs or Morikawa, hoping that someone would say something about her new hair style — it was super-cute. There were weird moments, I mean, c’mon — am I the only one who thinks that swinging an imaginary bat and then running around the field during an imaginary match (while Morikawa were playing her trumpet) looked slightly insane?

Talking about insanity… unfortunately a romance anime implies that characters will be running. After they’ve been rejected; because they don’t want to see the one whom they’re not ready to confess to yet; to cram school… And animation of run in Just Because is insanely horrible. It were the worst runs I’ve seen. And trust me — all those high school students run a lot here.

Animelog: Kino No Tabi, Blend S, A Sister’s All You Need

Kino No Tabi

I had high expectations of this show, mostly based on vague but pretty warm memories left but the original Kino No Tabi. Unfortunately, this remake/sequel didn’t live up to my hopes. Too bright, too dull, too simple — I mean, the first season wasn’t the most complicated anime in the world but the second one lowered the simplicity bar much more. It requires some efforts to remember even three or four good stories we saw this time: the country where murder isn’t a crime, the remake of the episode dedicated to Kino’s childhood and… that’s mostly it?

Blend S

A surprisingly good “Working!” clone. It’s not even a clone but more like “inspired by”. I didn’t enjoy Working! much, not even sure that I finished it, but Blend S didn’t cause any troubles and didn’t make me shake my fists and exclaim in Itoshiki-sensei style that “anime leaves me in despair!”

5 “girls” types, two otaku chefs (one of them is the manager of the, um, establishment) and a dog — everything you need to make up harmless jokes and funny moments. This definitely isn’t a must-watch show but something that can be devoured when you want an anime on the background.

A Sister’s All You Need

Life of a novelist is full of troubles and upsetting moments. No one knows this better than Itsuki, who’s devotion to little sisters have no boundaries and who writes novels dedicated to (you’re not going to believe me) little sisters. Talented rivals, shitty anime adaptations, deadlines — everything can get in the way. However, Itsuki and his friends are fearlessly move forward! (I feel absolutely pathetic writing that)

This anime delivers a fairly good amount of vulgar but funny jokes and turned out to be one of the most pleasant surprises of this season.

P.S. Nayuta Kani is a great (though pervy) character and I really liked her straight-out and positive attitude towards everything.

Fall season observations

“Recovery of an MMO Junkie” is a surprisingly non-irritating series. Despite having all that MMO stuff and love pentagrams it’s very cute and easy to watch. And luckily there’s going to be just 10 episodes – so probably I won’t get tired of it (inner voice is suggesting that I shouldn’t be too optimistic though).

“Just because” and Tsukigakirei look suspiciously similar (including even animation going askew here and there) but I couldn’t find any connections between them. Authors are different, productions studios are different, so apparently that’s just a coincidence (?).  Nevertheless, so far so good – not the best show of the season (we have “March comes in like a lion” after all) but it’s worth time we’re spending on it.

About best shows – unfortunately, “Kino no Tabi”‘s remake is not as wonderful as I thought it would be. No, it’s good, even very good and I look forward to every new episode – but the atmosphere is not as charming as I remember. And this new series is too colorful. *shakes his fists yelling that youngsters know nothing about good anime*

 

Anime Fall 2017: Dropped

Black Clover

I was pretty sure that “Black Clover” would end up in the “dropped” list, the only question was how soon. Turned out that one episode was enough. A character without super-powers in a world where all people have them, his incredibly talented friend – mysterious and rare ability the main hero is presented with… visually nice but absolutely bland show. Should I also mention that the main character is very, very irritating?

Juuni Taisen

Again, it was expected. If the original manga (or ranobe, not sure) was great I’m sure that Shinbou would’ve clung into the idea of making the anime and wouldn’t have allowed it to be made by someone else. Juuni Taisen probably is a good action show and has some catching moments (Rabbit, for example) but everything what’s going on there is kind of meaningless. Dog’s stupid behaviour in the second episode just made the decision much faster.

Umaru-chan R

Even second half of the original Umaru-chan was a little boring, the second season couldn’t improve the situation. Constantly complaining Umaru, who played a soccer match and realized that maybe the had to do the first step to find friends… Ugh – for a first episode of a comedy show this is way too much.

Urahara

It’s very difficult to make such anime – very colorful, animated and absurd. And it has to have aliens. Trigger can do that, Gainax can (or could, at least)… other attempts are typically not very impressive. Urahara is another unsuccessful one.

Robomasters

One more shounen, this one about a student who’s only passion is robots. First of all – this is Gonzo. If this reason is not convincing enough – Robomasters is full of cliches.

P.S. Looks like a decent season, eh? Just five dropped shows so far. (Six actually, too lazy to look up the name of the anime about vicious relationships between a teacher and her student).

 

The season started with a bunch of pretty average shows and basically there haven’t been any eye-catching moments yet, though this one from Anime-Gataris was kind of nice =)