“Akame ga Kill” Episode 15

Suddenly, it’s time for the main event!

What They Say:
Under the rule of a tyrannical empire, Tatsumi, a young swordsman, leaves his home to save his poverty stricken village. He meets a girl named Akame, an assassin who was bought, brainwashed and trained to kill by the Empire. Akame is a member of the secret assassin group called “Night Raid” who use special weapons called Teigu. Together, Tatsumi and the members of Night Raid confront the corrupt empire.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After having kept the same opening and ending for the first few episodes of its second half, Akame ga Kill! has moved on with completely new ones. That’s because, while the beginning of the second half did introduce a new plot, it was nothing compared to the significance of this episode. The fourteen episodes before this one didn’t necessarily comprise a singular plot thread that concluded in the previous episode to make way for the new one that would start with this episode. On the contrary, the series before this point was admittedly rather disjointed, especially in retrospect. And matters like the one introduced as a major plot point a few episodes ago have even gone to the wayside while other issues emerged anew. So what could be so important that it warrants this change a few weeks later than what would be the standard? Actually, it’s less of something new than a good number of the episodes before this point brought us. But it’s also the moment that the overarching plot has been clearly building toward, the one that is almost certain to become the focus for maybe even the rest of the series now, making the time spent with this new opening and ending much more consistent. It’s time for the full-scale showdown between the Jaegers and Night Raid, where everyone is out in the open and showing themselves off.

Okay, so it’s not like the two sides having clashed before, and it’s not like it’s guaranteed that this will be the big fight that annihilates one side. In fact, the plan even got a small chunk of the Jaegers alone, meaning the rest might not even participate. But it’s hard not to hype the situation, because the episode does it so well, and with such conviction. The first half of the episode is mostly setup, and it’s the best way you can execute setup to build the desired anticipation, even if the result may be more disappointing because of the inflated expectations. Maybe I’m completely wrong, but even without having looked at the manga, I can almost confidently say that a chapter ended at the same point as the first half of the episode, because it’s such a solid ending to this kind of buildup. As such it’s almost a shame that we get more content than that, but the point that the episode actually does end on is exciting enough that few are likely to lament that fact.

Fortunately this episode has a bit more valuable character material as well, notably from the token “good guy” of the Jaegers, Wave. He’s very much the audience-insert for the antagonistic half of the cast, and is only just now realizing exactly how disturbing a monster the cute girl named Seryu really is. He’s misguided so thoroughly precisely to have a moral compass even for the side so mired in villainy, and while that’s probably for the best, it really does seem like he should be acknowledging how ill-fit for this team he is ethically and psychologically. Likely to retain what little innocence he posses for as long as possible, he’s thrown right out of the battle that’s about to unfold before he can see the true darkness within his comrades he respects most.

In Summary:
Like much of Akame ga Kill!’s developments, the move to pit the teams against each other so directly seems a bit abrupt. But as setup pieces go, this one delivers on its goal wonderfully.

Grade: B+

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Custom-Built PC, 27” 1080p HDTV.

“World Trigger” Episode 2

>What They Say:
Osamu Mikumo is a member of Border, an organization designed to protect Mikado City from alien invaders knows as Neighbors. One day a mysterious new student named Yuma Kuga transfers to his school and turns out to be a humanoid neighbor himself. The two are supposed to be natural enemies, but could there be more to neighbors than Osamu has bargained for…

The Review:
Content(please note that portions of this review may contain spoilers):
So with the pilot episode having been decent in terms of the adaptation and poor in visual quality, the bar has been set pretty low coming into the second episode. Thankfully things don’t look as noticeably terrible this time around with the art not looking nearly as ridiculously off model and a bit more along the lines of actual animation. That said there’s still a lot of really obvious budget cuts and anything particularly involving someone getting struck is cut out most of the time, which is more than a little strange for an adaptation of a battle manga.

For the content involving the storyline this week, the pacing is slightly improved over the first episode and there’s a bit more worldbuilding involved. Things are mostly centered around Yuma as Osamu attempts to determine what kind of person he is and if he’s really a Neighbor or not. Osamu’s knowledge of Neighbors is limited to the hulking monsters that have been attacking the city for the last few years and so he has a bit of trouble buying into Yuma’s story. As Yuma explains to him though, what’s been attacking has actually been things called Trion Soilders, which are just weapons designed by Neighbors, with Neighbors themselves being as human as people from Earth. As things go on though and Osamu sees Yuma’s reactions to concepts like paper money and his approach to dealing with people antagonizing him it does come off as pretty strange…but it isn’t until Yuma’s hit by a car and his wounds insta-heal that Osamu finally accepts it.

Despite obviously being an enemy as Yuma points out himself, Osamu can’t bring himself to think of him as a bad person and decides to cover for him for the time being. In the meantime though, Osamu tries to help Yuma masquerade as a normal person a bit better and adjust to Japan’s customs, which works in some areas, and fails in others, mostly when it comes to war. One of the interesting bits from this is learning that part of the reason the residents of the city are mostly alright with living in what’s more or less a war zone is that the Trion Soliders have been limited to warping onto the planet from within a certain distance of Border HQ…which of course leads to the episode ending with the start of an attack well outside of that safe zone.

In Summary:
Visually things have taken a step up from last week(albeit not by much), which is much appreciated given how noticeably horrible things looked. Though, while the pacing for this week’s episode is a bit better than the previous episode, things are still a bit too slow for their own good. I suppose to be somewhat fair to Toei I wasn’t particular enamored with this portion of the story in the manga either, but hopefully things will take a bit of a step up next week (and please no more cutting corners with people getting hit by things).

Grade: C+

Loveless Vol. #12

Is there no one Seimei hasn’t manipulated, and can anyone stop him?

Creative Staff
Story/Art: Yun Kouga
Translation: Ray Yoshimoto
Adaptation: Lillian Diaz-Przybyl

What They Say
Seimei refuses to fight alongside Nisei against an enraged Moonless, further straining the manipulative ties that bind the dirtiest Fighter to his heartless Sacrifice. Meanwhile, while looking at his brother’s photo album, Ritsuka discovers new information that doesn’t match up with what he’s been told about his old self.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
When the two younger zeroes first showed up they were the most unlikeable kids you could ever meet.  They’re still not exactly great people, but as characters they are fascinating.  They have no boundaries and don’t care who they offend, and they’re the first people from the outside who have decided to get to the bottom of Ritsuka’s mysterious past.

Sure, they first show up at Ritsuka’s home to try to learn more about Seimei, and what they find is a blank slate.  Ritsuka, on the other hand, they learn a great deal about and discover that he hasn’t changed much from the pictures of his childhood.  That doesn’t match up with what his mother has been claiming about his personality changing.  That combined with the reactions the zeroes have to Ritsuka’s abusive mom point at a past which has been carefully constructed to be a broken mess.  Mind control perhaps?

The likely culprit of all of this loathing and abuse has brought two fighters to a battle against Moonless.  Yet Seimei decides to give Moonless a fair fight and lets them choose their opponent.  They choose Nisei, which only makes sense as they want to see him pay.  We learn a lot about Nisei during the battle, about how he met Seimei and what binds them together.  For Nisei, it adds yet another supernatural element to a story with telekinesis, which seems rather tame in a story that already features cat ears and mysterious wordplay magic.  It all paints an even uglier picture of Seimei, who appears to be nothing more than a manipulative psychopath.  Every time one of the characters might think he’s something more the story just seems to double down on him being nothing but abusive and controling.

Stuck in the middle of this volume is a bit of escapist fantasy focusing on a dream Ritsuka has.  I’m not a fan of how Loveless just sticks it’s side stories in mid narrative flow.  Combined with the unusual chapter breaks it makes for confusing reading sometimes.

Closing out this volume, Natsuo decides to split off from his partner and Ritsuka to go follow up on something that has been nagging him.  He ends up asking for help from the former, older zero pair who are no longer a fighter and sacrifice.  I wonder what Natsuo is up to?

In Summary
A solid volume of Loveless gives us a look into Nisei’s past with Seimei, adding yet another string to this frantic puppet show Seimei is playing.  It also begins to take a deeper look at Ritsuka’s past once again, with the zeroes playing detective and discovering that some things just don’t add up.  I can’t help but feel Seimei has rigged everything from the start, but to what end no one knows.  I just wish the story would stop getting sidetracked with asides which while cute don’t advance the plot in this slow moving series.

Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A -
Packaging Grade: B +
Text/Translation Grade: A

Age Rating:
Released By:
Release Date:
MSRP:

Orenchi no Furo Jijo Episode 2

What They Say:
A hot boy mermaid named Wakasa has taken over the bath of a teenage boy named Tatsumi! This cute but selfish freeloader is a perfect match for the cool but tender and caring Tatsumi. Let’s see how they get by together!

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the meager back story set up, Orenchi no Fuo Jijo can just have fun at this point with Tatsumi dealing with a merman named Wakasa living in his tub. Wakasa’s amusing in that he’s definitely enjoying the tub and the functions it offers, which comes at a bit of a cost for Tatsumi of course. Maintaining a residence for a merman isn’t cheap, especially for someone like Wakasa that’s almost childish about what he wants. Of course, some of it comes from what he’s lived through in the real world outside in the water, so it’s understandable to want to be decadent. Tatsumi does his best to find ways to try and get Wakasa to live a little more frugally in a way, though that just makes for more chaos and silliness since Wakasa very much likes what he likes, though he does at least try.

In Summary:
The living habits of these two people are definitely cute and fun to watch as we get the straight man for the gags with Tatsumi while Wakasa basically acts out most of his emotions quickly and easily. The attempts to get Wakasa to live within Tatsumi’s means is important, but Wakasa is just intent on sticking to what makes his staying in the tub feel good, so both sides struggle with things in a rather fun way. There’s naturally no real resolution here, but seeing the attempts makes for a lot of enjoyable moments.

Grade: B-

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Hidamari Sketch Season 3 Blu-ray

Seasons change and new girls arrive but the heart of the series is beating in full.

What They Say:
Some say that life is like an unfolding tapestry, but living at the Hidamari Apartments is more like being part of a patchwork quilt; one that constantly changes as bits and pieces of the lives and dreams of the young artists who make this extraordinary residence their home are added to the ever-expanding pattern.

When we first met Yuno, she’d just been accepted to the prestigious Yamabuki Art School and it was up to her new neighbors at Hidamari to help her find her way in the big scary world. Now a seasoned vet of the Hidamari Apartments herself, Yuno’s newest challenge is to help the latest arrivals, Nazuna and Nori, acclimate to life on their own. Of course, since it is Hidamari, there are still lots of trials and tribulations ahead, and nothing will ever go quite as expected. But with friends like Miyako, Hiro and Sae ready to lend a hand, there will always be a ray of sunshine at the end of every storm.

Contains episodes 1-14.

The Review:
Audio:
Similar to the DVD release, Hidamari Sketch has only the original Japanese language in stereo using the DTS-HD MA lossless codec. A series like this isn’t one that will give your speakers any kind of workout as it’s about ninety-nine percent dialogue outside of the opening and closing sequences but there is a greater sense of warmth and closeness that you get from it that it is noticeable enough. There are a few music cues that work out well in terms of providing a full feeling but they’re few and far between overall. Dialogue placement is solid when required and there are times with some noticeable depth to it. Everything comes across well and dialogue is strong as we had no problems with dropouts or distortions while listening to it.

Video:
Originally airing in 2010, this TV and OVA combo release is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. The series is spread across two discs with nine episodes of the TV series on the first and five on the second while the two OVAs are here as well. The high definition presentation here definitely steps things up a lot – and with a variable bit rate that goes very high regularly because of the ziptone usage – and the colors are very solid compared to what we had on the DVD format. In fact, this season feels like there’s an even bigger bump than the first two seasons just in color quality. There’s a greater solidity to things here and the colors, while generally working a lighter and softer color palette, has a lot of pop to it that definitely breathes new life into it. I wasn’t sure how much of an upgrade this show could have considering what we had seen before, but there’s a whole lot to like here.

Packaging:
The release uses the same kind of artwork as the DVD releases and while the colors still don’t sell me completely with its soft pinks, it does fit well with the general theme that it’s trying to get across here as a sketchbook. The characters have a bit of that cutout feel to them that does work as well as the doodles that are behind them on the notebook itself. The logo looks cute and fits well with it as does mentioning that this is season three with the full episode count for it, including OVAs. The back cover does something I don’t like and that’s to put all the text inside a circle with it being so uneven as it gets wider and then smaller. Surrounding the lengthy summary piece is a bunch of other circles with shots from the show along with a few doodles as the back cover fleshes out more of what the front cover did with the notebook angle. Add in the production credits with a few little cute character pieces along the bottom and a smooth clean technical grid and it’s a decent piece overall but misses the mark in one or two areas. No show related inserts are included nor is there a reversible cover.

Menu:
The menu design for this release is simple but decent with what it does as we get a static menu design where it uses the theme from the cover and a good upbeat feeling to the whole thing. The right side has the navigation menu which is done up as a notebook with the episodes broken down by number and name with a lot of color that also looks great as the pop-up menu. The rest of it uses the kind of bright, mishmash of colors that fits the art school design while bringing on different character artwork that has the various main girls together in different configurations while wearing their normal clothes. It’s clean in its own way and certainly sets the mood well by showing off the style of the show. Submenus are quick and easy to load, which is essentially just the extras on the second disc, since there’s no language selection here.

Extras:
The only extras available for this release are fairly typical ones with the clean versions of the opening and closing sequences on the second disc.

The third season doesn’t break what works, but it tries to enhance it by doing something naturally. With the new school year upon the kids, Yuno and Miyako are now second years and are excited by what promise it holds, though Yuno is concerned about finding what her real talent is and what she should focus on for the couple of paths she has. Miyako is carrying on as she usually does since she doesn’t let things get to her and pretty much is the type of person that lives to the beat of her own drum. Hiro and Sae are getting into their third year roles pretty well, though it’s largely focusing on Sae when it comes to the two as she wants to decide whether to focus on her art or her writing since she can’t do both.

What does change things up in this season is the arrival of two new first years who move into the apartment complex, signifying the first time all six have been rented at once in recent memory and within the show itself, which makes their landlord quite happy. So happy that she saves a few more bucks by having the existing residents help clean out the rooms and get them in ship shape form. The girls being who they are, they’re actually interested in helping out and doing something for the new incoming students so they can bond with them before they even arrive. There’s already some changes in store as one of them has had internet access setup, which is seemingly a first for the group. But when you factor in that most people of this age group do their internet time through their phones, it makes a certain amount of sense.

The two new students are pretty fun overall and add a little more flavor to the show. Nori is the one with the computer access and has fun showing everyone things like how to order pizza online and the like and is a solid art student while Nauna is a quieter girl, not exactly timid, but a bit unsure of herself. What she brings to the series is the first non-art student to be dealt with in a significant way and the first to live at Hidamari. She’s drawn to artists but is in the schools basic courses rather than the art program. She has a feeling similar to Yuno when she first arrived in a lot of ways while Nori feels like a variant of Sae but with a more outgoing approach to her. Each of the girls create new interactions because of their presence and it helps to add something to the series in a natural way without actually dominating the series. It doesn’t turn into a show about just them and neither does it let them became background characters. Instead, it allows the show to simply expand its focus while still keeping on pace with those we’ve spent two seasons with and their issues.

Beyond the introduction of new characters, the third season of Hidamari Sketch essentially does more of the same, both story wise and visually. It has a lot of light moments to it and lets the characters get a little frantic at times and spend plenty of time being friendly and good natured about what’s going on, whether it’s cooking together, ordering food online or visiting a new restaurant that’s opened. Some of the fun continues to come from the teacher side with Yoshinoya still causing problems with her flighty nature which in turn has the principal somewhat frustrated with her. But even there we have some good material, especially when she whips up a new suit for him for the warmer months that’s priceless, especially with how he shivers nervously all the time.

In Summary:
This is definitely one of those shows where you can say if you saw and liked the first two seasons, this is more of the same, albeit in high definition now to really make all the detail and design pop in a really great way. And I do like those seasons as they have a kind of simple, mellow and likable approach to them that makes me smile and just enjoy it. The series continues to avoid anything really sexual as even the bath scenes don’t really come across that way and there aren’t any panty shots, long lingering pans over their bodies or anything else. It’s a show that is for all intent and purpose, a nice show. And those can feel rare these days. This season works well in expanding the cast in a way that’s right and natural and the new additions fit in well while not creating any new artificial drama or problems. It all feels properly Japanese in its own way and that’s a big part of the shows appeal. While I would like to see them experience a little more of life other than just each other and school, what is presented here builds on what came before and advances it just a touch in order to keep it somewhat realistic while not breaking what works.

Features:
Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Clean Opening, Clean Closing

Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-

Released By: Sentai Filmworks
Release Date: November 4th, 2014
MSRP: $59.98
Running Time: 350 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Renai Sample

Creative Staff
Story/Art: Homunculus
Translation/Adaptation: FAKKU

What They Say
No description available.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Renai Sample is a collection of short stories and artwork that Homunculus produced over a span of two years. Presented completely uncensored, it features fantastic artwork and stories that mostly focus around women bedding the man they love despite his reluctance.

“Summer’s Beast” stands out as one of the better stories. It starts with Arata finally proclaiming his lust for his cousin Chitose and taking her virginity. Once he has finished, he believes he has crossed a line and that Chitose despises him. He spends the next few years avoiding her until he receives word that she is getting married. He visits her and soon finds their roles reversed with Chitose forcing herself onto Arata. Once she is finished, Arata heads to her parents to take responsibility and have the marriage called off only to find out it was a ploy to get him to marry her. Chitose loved him all along and tricked him to get her way. It was a humorous reversal of fortune and an unexpected twist in what could have been an otherwise straightforward plot.

The other stories are similar in theme; the woman loves the man but needs to use sex to break him down and make him her love, or at least lover, forever. The sex is mostly vanilla but steamy; the only off putting part were the few “X-ray” scenes where you see the penis despite it being completely embedded. Took me out of the moment and didn’t really seem to serve to make the scenes more erotic.

The artwork is solid and features believable anatomical proportions. Color pages bookend the volume and are so gorgeous it makes you wish they made the effort to color everything. Having never seen any of Homunculus’ work, this sample has made me an instant fan.

In Summary
Looking for some uncensored, mostly vanilla hentai? Renai Sample has you covered with fifteen stories that often have a romantic aspect to them. The anatomy is reasonably proportioned, and a few of the stories have a humorous twist at the end. The color artwork is a nice bonus, though it makes you wish the entire book was in color. As an introduction to Homunculus’ work, it certainly makes you want to see more.

Content Grade: A-
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: N/A
Text/Translation Grade: A

Age Rating: 18+
Released By: FAKKU
Release Date: October/November 2014
MSRP: $19.95

Laughing Under the Clouds Episode #2

The first challenger appears, place your bets.

What They Say:
Episode #2:  “Cutthroat, Sneering at the Clouds”
The day after the incident with the escaped criminal, Tenka heads to the clinic where he finds out that a murderer is heading toward Kumoh Shrine.

The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
I’m not enamored with the opening of Laughing Under the Clouds.  It still feels cheap and the music is…. ugh, let’s move on.  The events of the first episode aren’t forgotten as we rejoin the Kumoh brothers.  Soramaru is at the doctor’s getting looked at after the fight with the escaped cons.  He’s pretty beat up, and doesn’t let the doctor tend to the wound on his neck.  When his younger brother, who sounds older than he looks and acts, touches him there as a joke Soramaru has a post-traumatic panic attack.  The idiot younger brother for some reason thinks his brother now hates him and runs off.  Soramaru can’t even correct him in time.

A warning comes from the bumbling police that another killer is on the loose and is heading for the shrine.  Tenka is off getting drunk and it’s the younger brother who runs into the killer before he can learn of the danger.  Shockingly, the killer has a calm discussion with the boy and doesn’t attack right away.  This is especially surprising considering the way the guy fights.

At this point the show is showing it’s Rouroni Kenshin inspiration, so much so that I’m having deja-vu.  Kagami is jilted former loyalist who feels betrayed by his country and is hunting down officials.  The weapon he wields is a chain sword that seems to have a mind of it’s own.  He wants to get to the island prison to start a coup of his own by freeing the criminals there.  Soramaru shows up and lies to the killer, telling him he’s the older brother and a duel starts.

If you guessed that Soramaru wouldn’t be able to take on an even more powerful enemy in just one episode and win you’d be right.  The house guest has to save him, and we discover Shirasu is a former Fuma ninja.  He owes Tenka for saving his life and can hold his own against Kagami.

Eventually the calvary arrives in the form of a pack of government soldiers, the Yamainu squad.  They look like thugs, and most of them don’t even look like they belong in the same show.  (For a good look at how they were portrayed in the manga, stick around to the end of the credits and weep at the level of detail lost in converting this series to animation.)  Silly designs aside, they prove to be quite the badasses.  The leader has a problem with Tenka, whom he considers a traitor for leaving the service to take over the family shrine.

For such a packed episode full of action and information, the most interesting part of everything that’s happened so far comes in the last few moments of the episode after the credits begin.  We discover that Tenka has a secret goal to find the vessel sealing orochi, a mythological serpent of Japan.  I’m guessing it’s not lore in this story.  The government squad has the same goal, but they want to destroy the vessel.  It’s strongly implied the vessel is a person, and not an object.  Now…. who is the vessel?

In Summary:
After the extremely light first episode of Laughing Under the Clouds the show steps it up a notch in the action.  We now know what it is the two main forces of the show are after, and some of the background of the characters.  It does look like the criminals headed for prison aren’t the main antagonists of the series, but the jilted government soldiers still employed.  Unfortunately this added information isn’t making me much more interested in the brothers, who remain annoying.  I’d rather learn more about their ninja houseguest.

Episode Grade:  C +

Streamed by: Funimation

Review Equipment:  27” iMac running OS 10.9.4, via Safari 7.0.6, FIOS 15/5 Mbps connection.  Your milage may vary.

Some of the many faces and characters of Summer 2014

Summer 2014 Streaming Season in Review

Yes, you thought we were gone, but we’re back to give you the regular rundown of the highs and lows of the Summer 2014 season of anime streaming from Japan. With me this time in the commentary booth are Brian Threlkeld and Kate O’Neil as we look upon the debris of last season being cleared off the field to make way for the shiny new shows of Autumn 2014.

So, as we normally do, let’s start with everyone’s general impressions of the season just ended.

A Season of…Everything for Everyone
Greg Smith: As seasons go, Summer 2014 was not bad at all. While I ended up dropping a good number of the ones I started, there was a solid core of shows which I did pick up and enjoyed watching to the end. I know that some of the shows I dropped were more appreciated by others and likely vice versa. Perhaps what marks out this season especially is how it felt like there was a fairly wide range of different genres and audience hooks represented in the new shows that debuted as well as those continuing from last season. While perhaps not every single tiny niche was catered to with this season’s shows, it seems like there was more breadth than last season.

Brian Threlkeld: There was wider variety, but I think also a looser one, with some of the best shows catering to broader tastes than I felt the past couple seasons had done. Comedy, especially, had a smart variety to work with, satirical to absurd, cute to silly to tender. My own slate in that department is my main takeaway from the season: Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun, Survival Games Club, Locodol, Invaders of the Rokujyoma!?, and the second part of Space Dandy were great to just kick back with and enjoy. Only a couple other shows (Aldnoah.Zero, Terror in Resonance) I had to take more seriously…which did and did not turn out so well.

GBS: That said, it seems that it was the Season of Square Enix’s Gangan Online. The two best shows of the season for me, hands down, were Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun and Barakamon, both of which are serialized in that web magazine.

Kate O’Neil: Going into the season I was interested in checking out a several of the shows airing, and in the end I watched few. Not like my computer gave me much of a choice when it decided to die at the beginning of August. That was about four episodes in for most series and that’s usually the point where many people start dropping shows to begin with. By the time my computer returned from the shop I was struggling to get back on track with my review series and completely forgot about the other shows I was watching or wanted to watch. Luckily I ended up picking one of the widely regarded best shows of the season in reviewing Barakamon.

Nurse’s Sweet Naked Truth

Creative Staff
Story/Art: Masato Yamasaki/Shinobu
Translation/Adaptation: Sai Higashi

What They Say
Nakamura can’t believe his rotten luck! He’s holed up in the hospital, and it looks like nothing but afternoon naps and magazines ‘til he’s completely healed. But will a sweet, sexy nurse give him the kind of heavenly hands-on therapy he’s only dreamed of? Nurse’s Sweet Naked Truth treats every patient with passionate, playful tenderness! Can a raring-to-go invalid find a way to make his beautiful caretaker go the extra mile for his comfort…and carnal delight?

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Nurse’s Sweet Naked Truth is the story of the Morinaga sisters, Miyuki and Chiyoko. Both women work in the same hospital but have two completely different outlooks on life and their profession. As a nurse, Miyuki is responsible for seeing to the needs of patients as they heal from various maladies. Blessed with a warm and innocent sensibility, she is the sweet angel of mercy that brings comfort to the invalid. Chiyoko, on the other hand, couldn’t be more different. As one the hospital’s top doctors, she maintains a cold, but profession, demeanor towards patients and staff that stems from her no nonsense attitude of medicine. Whereas Miyuki is friendly and outgoing, Chiyoko appears to have difficulty carrying on pleasant conversations with most men, leaving some to speculate that she is a misandrist. Chiyoko’s cold front will soon melt, largely in part by the flagrant, immoral behavior of her older sister.

That’s not to suggest that Miyuki is some sort of sex crazed harlot who will drop her panties at the first sight of a manly bulge. Innocence is what makes Miyuki such a cute and endearing woman, as she honestly believes the often begrudging sexual stimulation she provides is a form of treatment. Take, for example, Mr. Nakamura. Admitted to the hospital after sustaining unknown injuries to his hands and leaving them completely bandaged, he can’t help but get aroused when Miyuki gets in close to tend his bed and help change his clothes. Nakamura takes advantage of the young woman, convincing her that a blowjob will help relieve his stress. One thing leads to another and Miyuki ends up fulling Nakamura’s fantasy of having sex with a nurse. Her sexual escapades go beyond servicing patients, as she also helps out an intern named Koike. Having grown up in an male environment all his life, he faints at the sight of a nude woman. To help overcome this fear so that he may do his job, Miyuki offers herself as practice, which leads Koike breaking out of his shell with extreme gusto.

Miyuki’s demeanor is what makes Nurse’s Sweet Naked Truth so incredibly sexy. She plays into the fetishization of nurses, but not in a way to paint her as a nympho. She doesn’t go out of her way to fondle, suck, thrust and swallow her way to for the sheer joy of sex. She is convinced (or lets herself be convinced) that doing so will make people feel better, though one could argue that by the end of the story that Miyuki has gotten a bit loose. She does land herself in trouble when Chiyoko finds out her older sister’s activities from the chief physician. Despondent over the fact that Miyuki’s actions have gotten them both fired, Chiyoko begs for a resolution and is put in the unfortunate position to perform sexual favors to keep her job. However, the incident doesn’t go as planned and circumstances pair Koike with the younger doctor. Their moment of intimacy causes a change in Chiyoko who begins to warm up to the idea of a sexual relationship.

The two women go about their daily and illicit sexual activities until Chiyoko accidentally stumbles on Miyuki servicing on of her patients. After being shamed by her younger sister, Miyuki finds out that Chiyoko has been dating Koike. Left with an erection after being denied sex, Miyuki takes it upon herself to “take responsiblity” for her sister’s denial (also so that Koike won’t have to see patients while pitching a tent). Their sex couldn’t have ended more badly, as a remorseful Chiyoko visits Koike’s office and not only sees her older sister bent over by her lover, but his cum has landed on her face. It’s an absolutely hilarious situation for the characters to be in, and the look on Chiyoko’s face is thoroughly priceless. I was a little disappointed that the resolution of the story fell back on the “sex competition” ending, but to be completely honest, seeing both Miyuki and Chiyoko having same sex at the same time was most welcome.

The story of Nurse’s Sweet Naked Truth may not change your life, but it is still rightly enjoyable and pushes the characters towards their sexual partners in a competent way. The characters are entertaining and by the end of the story, they will have come to terms with their sexuality and in the case of Chiyoko, she becomes a much different person at the end of the story than when she started. One detail worth pointing out is that Yamasaki writes in a running gag where each character breaks the fourth wall in their attempt to earn sex from their partners. It’s a fun little joke that doesn’t get old and the facial reactions to incoming sexual activity is a great payoff. What propels the manga into the hallowed halls of exceptional visual pornography is Shinobu’s fantastically erotic artwork. The artist obviously enjoys big breasted women (or at the very least, knows his audience) and Miyuki and Chiyoko’s designs leave little to the imagination. In fact, Miyuki’s breasts are so large, too few panels can contain them. The comic is uncensored which allows for plenty of close up shots of genitalia. Sex is often clean and doesn’t fall in line with most comics that feature men blasting out ejaculate like some out of control fire hose. As a lovely bonus, chapter breaks are filled with various sketches of Miyuki and Chiyoko along with a full color illustration gallery featuring the girls in various poses and outfits. A fabulous addition to an already beautifully drawn book.

In Summary
Shinobu’s erotic artwork is what brings this delightful story of hospital sex to life. I’ve never really been into the nurse genre of hentai, but if there are others like Nurse’s Sweet Naked Truth, than I might just have to go exploring. The manga has a great sense of humor and Miyuki is a breakout star for her personality and loose interpretation of the Florence Nightingale Pledge.

Content Grade: A+
Art Grade: A+
Packaging Grade: A+
Text/Translation Grade: A

Age Rating: 18+
Released By: Project-H
Release Date: June 10, 2014
MSRP: $17.95

Rage Of Bahamut Episode 2

What They Say: 
Favarro is a rogue bounty hunter by trade and is relentlessly pursued by his rival Kaisar. One day after completing a job he encounters a mysterious girl who is seeking out a location called Helheim. Favvaro claims to know where it is and after she ends up saving him, Favarro finds his life changed forever.

The Review:
Content(please note that portions of this review may contain spoilers):
So the opener last week proved itself to be one of the strongest for the season, and while things weren’t too likely to fall apart that quickly, there was still the question of whether or not the show could actually hold that level of momentum. Thankfully the answer to that question is pretty much a resounding yes, and it’s still standing strong. Visually speaking, the show still looks incredibly sharp for a TV production, and the opening and ending songs that both premiered for this episode sound great, though the ending song seems a bit more fitting for this kind of show that the opening one does(even if it sounds better).

On to the meat of the episode itself, things kick off with some of the gods being distressed over something known as the “God Key” having been stolen by a demon(of whom we’re pretty familiar with already). They decide to send out some of their holy knights to track down the thief, and we’re briefly introduced to Jeanne D’Arc who’ll likely end up being important later. Back on the Bahamut of the Caribbean side of things, Favvaro is still…reacting to his new found tail before the girl from before shows up to explain his situation. Turns out he did indeed get his kiss…but in exchange he’s been made into her servant (hence the tail) and can’t get the curse removed until he tells her where Helheim is. Of course since he doesn’t actually know where it is, he tries to find a way to get out of it, but he has to flee the scene when the locals assume he’s a demon and call for Kaiser to take care of him.

Meanwhile, the knights are still on the search for the girl and end up encountering Kaiser who offers assistance, but reject him since he just appears to be a “common” bounty hunter. It seems bounty hunters aren’t too well respected in this universe (though if most of them are anything like Favvaro , I wouldn’t trust them either) and Kaiser claims to be a former knight, though they don’t really buy into his story. It does offer a brief look into his past though and adds a bit more to his grudge against Favvaro, suggesting their history together may be more than the comic relief it looked to be.

After his initial escape, Favvaro decides the best way to get rid of the curse is to just kill the girl and he offers to guide her to Helheim while he waits for his opportunity to take her out. He does briefly rethink the decision though when he sees her powers again during another bounty hunting job and the two sort of bond for a little bit afterwards as Favvaro shows her a good time. She identifies herself as Amara and she’s apparently on the search for her lost mother…but of course Favvaro isn’t really interested in her story and sees what he thinks is his chance to kill her before Kaiser shows up again. He thinks that Favvaro’s kidnapped Amara and ends up falling for her on sight though Favvaro uses the distraction to knock him out and make another hasty retreat.

Favvaro laments that he still can’t seem to get rid of Amara, but thinks he’s finally found his chance when he finds out the knights are looking for and decides to sell her out. He does show one brief moment of regret over it  but since she’s just a demon as far as he’s concerned, he just thinks her whole story was a hoax. However his plan ultimately backfires when he ends up inadvertently saving her, which while mostly not his own doing does suggest that much like his homage, Jack Sparrow, he may not all bad(though at least bad enough to make Amara leery of how honest he is). In the meantime Kaiser still plans to “rescue” Amara from Favvaro’s clutches, and some of the demons seem to have plans for them.

In Summary:
Bahamut’s second episode isn’t quite as high as the first but still fires all the right cylinders and proves that the show will still be plenty of fun. Favvaro’s underhandedness is on full display here, but it’ll be interesting to see how much he changes (if at all) and it’s good to have a bit more motivation for Kaiser’s pursuit of him, along with what’ll likely make the two team up. Looking forward to getting as much of this as possible, and with the kind of Hollywood inspired western sensibilities the show has, it has the potential to be a hit.

Grade: A-

Streamed By: Funimation, Hulu

The resonance of love in life and death.

What They Say:
Hazuki may be near-sighted, but he knows true beauty when he sees it. The delicate form of flower shop owner Rokka draws him in like a bee to honey. Hoping to cultivate a relationship between them, Hazuki takes a part-time job at her shop only to discover two huge thorns preventing the nurturing of any romance. The first, the fact that Rokka is still grieving for her late husband Shimao, would be enough to snip most men’s ardor short, but it’s the second that really threatens to make Hazuki’s forlorn hopes wilt. While Shimao is most definitely deceased, he hasn’t yet departed, and his spirit is still living in Rokka’s apartment!

Only Hazuki can see him, which leads to a very strange romantic triangle indeed. Are Hazuki’s chances with Rokka as dead as the man who still lives in her house? Or can he somehow make love blossom even though there’s an interloper pushing up the daisies between them? One way or another, the ground’s going to be rocky and someone or something’s likely to get nipped in the bud!

Contains episodes 1-11.

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release is a straightforward stereo mix where we only get the original Japanese language track encoded using the DTS-HD MA lossless codec. The series revolves around dialogue in general with little beyond that, but there are times where the dialogue is nicely handled as it deals with placement related to how Shimao floats about. That gives it some nice touches from time to time, but the bulk of the show is your standard center channel based work that gives off a full feeling. The opening and closing songs give us a little bit more warmth and use out of the left and right channels though, which is nice. As a whole, the series handles its audio mix well with it being very dialogue driven that comes through cleanly and clearly during playback.

Video:
Originally airing in 2012, the transfer for this TV series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. The eleven episode show is on just one disc, which works well enough as there’s only one language track and little in the way of extras. Animated by Dogakobo, the show has a look that was very appealing when I first saw it in simulcast form because of the pop and vibrancy with all the flowers and the green of the leaves. That carries through well here and the show as a whole has a great color palette to it in the real world and a good one in the otherworld that it’s easy to just sit back and enjoy the experiences. Colors are largely solid throughout with just a few areas of minor noise in some of the blue sky backgrounds, line noise is pretty immaterial here and the show simply has the kind of pop it needs to stand out and look alive and vibrantin an engaging way.

Packaging:
The packaging for this release mirrors the previous DVD release as we get the great shot inside the front of the flower shop where Rokka is in the center as Hazuki is kneeling to her right working and Shimao is floating up a bit to her left. This sets the dynamic clear about what’s going on, the supernatural aspect of it that you might not catch right away and the appealing background with all the earthy colors of the shop and the plants within. The back cover has a pretty dense summary of the premise in a small font and a decent selection of small shots from the show as well so you can get a feel for things well enough between the two. The borders bring us a lot of appealing flowers while the bottom has the standard production credits and a solid technical grid. No show related inserts are included nor is there a reversible cover.

Menu:
The menu design for this release is certainly a mood setter in just being something that’s a little mellow and relaxed rather than something creepy or oppressive, which it could be. The bulk of it is given over to the artwork piece on the right that has an illustration of Rokka tending to the flowers, which means a lot of color – though no greens. The soft beige background works well enough with all the empty space since part of it is filled up with the simple but effective logo. The left side has the navigation strip, which doubles as the pop-up strip, has the episode going down from the top by number with the word episode next to it. It also uses some of what we see on the other part of the menu with a line of flowers coming down it in illustrated form, so it’s colorful but subdued. This looks good when used during playback as the pop-up menu as it adds a little extra life and appeal to the menu design.

Extras:
The only extras included here are the clean versions of the opening and closing sequences.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the josei manga series by Haruka Kawach which ran for three years in Feel Young magazine, Natsuyuki is a new eleven episode series from studio Dogakobo that we saw back when it was simulcast on a weekly basis. Josei series are few and far between overall but they tend to have strong, cult followings that can sometimes break out into something a bit more mainstream as well, such as Princess Jellyfish. Natsuyuki Rendezvous caught my eye early on for its character designs but also the fact that it takes place around a flower shop, leading to some very appealing promotional artwork that sold itself well enough for me to want to see what it’s all going to be about.

The series revolves around a primary pair of characters along with an intriguing third. The show starts off well enough, introducing us to Rokka, a young woman who owns a flower shop that does good business and certainly is an attractive, but not overdone, place. She doesn’t have a lot of help there, but she’s ably assisted by Hazuki, a young man who is definitely good at his job but has a slightly dour look to him at times that feels a little off. He comes across as a decent guy, but there’s something really intriguing about him. While his eyesight is not what it should be, he also has an extra special perception. When Rokka invites him over to her place to get together for some shopping, he’s surprised and hurt that she has a half dressed man there with her. While he’s interested in her, he’s not about to really compete for her if she’s playing like this.

The trick here is that the other man, Atsushi, is actually Rokka’s dead husband that only Hazuki can see. While Hazuki has an interest in her, she’s still focused just on her feelings for her husband. Hazuki doesn’t have a clue about this for awhile though and it just regretting taking the part time job here based solely on his attraction to Rokka. When he does learn of the truth about Atsushi, there’s a disbelief about it he has deal with before finally accepting it. It could be done for laughs or great humor, but there’s a laid back kind of approach to it, especially since Hazuki is the first person that has ever seen Atsushi. So Atsushi takes to hanging out with him since he sees the potential that’s going on as well. This leads to some amusing visuals, especially when Atsushi’s feet are the only thing visible, just hanging in the air above Hazuki, but it also has a sad feeling to it as Hazuki learns more about the Shimao family past, which in turn draws him more towards Rokka.

The series is one that works a pretty good angle here overall as it focuses on the idea of loss, how it can slow you down in the present with your future and impact other relationships. The early part of the series focuses a lot on the way that Hazuki has to deal with Atsushi floating about and trying to get in the way of things so as to throw off Hazuki. Which he does, from time to time, which makes for some very amusing moments for the viewer and often confusing moments for Rokka. But we also see though pieces of events just how intent Hazuki is on getting closer to Rokka since he has a lot to deal with. He does get a little help from Rokka’s sister in law, Atsushi’s younger sister who helps out in the shop from time to time, as she nudges Hazuki in the right direction on how to try and make progress with Rokka.

Rokka herself is in a difficult place and we get the exploration of how she’s committed much of her life to Atsushi since there’s time spent with how his life went with his illness and just the kinds of things she’s done to carry on his memory, from the shop itself in a lot of ways to keeping his effects and room in ideal shape. She’s at that phase of starting to let go though as Hazuki’s persistence is definitely making inroads with her, but the biggest complication comes into play when, in a moment of drunkenness, Hazuki agrees to Atsushi’s request to let him use his body to try and find closure in his life. That leads to where the series, in its simulcast form for me, didn’t work as well. The main arc does work as we see how Atsushi changes Hazuki’s appearance a touch to feel more like himself, and he manages to get weirdly close to Rokka as she senses something different and familiar about him, and the two of them have a real up and down experience over this since Atsushi is truly intent on never giving up on her or on the body he’s now acquired.

The less interesting arc is what happens to Hazuki himself through all of this. When he gives up control of his body to Atsushi, he ends up in a dream-like world with a variation on Rokka in her younger days there. This does have some interesting material to it as we see how far back Hazuki’s interest in her goes and the lengths he went to in order to get to know her more. But with it being a dream world of sorts with its own agenda that’s revealed towards the end as his own existence is obviously threatened, it really hampers Hazuki’s story overall. Understanding him a bit more helps, but a lot of it just feels like it’s spinning its wheels overall rather than really telling an engaging story. It does manage the dreamlike quality well, but as we see more of the truths of this world, the less meaning a lot of it has.

In Summary:
Natsuyuki Rendezvous has its moments where you can’t be sure of where it’s going to go, but largely it is somewhat predictable in terms of its ending. What it does really well throughout though is the journey itself. Giving us a story about adults in complicated stages of life and relationships, lingering love that was lost and the oppressive feeling of a spirit hanging around that’s going to go to any length to get what he wants, well, it all comes together in a pretty good way. There’s no “great” character here as everyone is flawed in some way and struggling with existence (or lack of existence in Atsushi’s case), but I love that it’s a story that really does deal with loss, trying to get past barriers that have been built and the intensity of love that can span across death. While some aspects are less than ideal for me in how it’s presented, the show as a whole is a really good one that’s beautifully animated and has a good sense of pacing as it reveals itself.

Features:
Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Clean Opening, Clean Closing

Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-

Released By: Sentai Filmworks
Release Date: November 4th, 2014
MSRP: $59.98
Running Time: 275 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Andou receives some unwanted attention after he deliberately twists words around.

What they Say:
Episode 2 – “Misconception.” A group of five boys and girls suddenly acquire supernatural powers. Ready to fight in galactic battles to defend human cause… they are struck by the realization that there are no wars, no conspiracies, no evils empires, no nothing in their high school life. They instead decide to idly have fun by wasting their powers away.

The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers).
Andou leads the rest of the literature club in coming up with proper nicknames for themselves. As wielders of special power, it’s his opinion that they should all have intensely confusing power names derived from archaic and unused readings of kanji. This becomes confusing as the very meanings of the names they’ve chosen become completely muddled. The situation becomes even more dire when Kudou arrives, mistaking Andou’s letter of admiration and his bestowing of a nickname upon her for an expression of his love for her. She won’t hear any explanation to the contrary, and thus Andou awkwardly and unwillingly becomes her “darling.”

The ruse lasts for a couple of days and the other young ladies of the literature club soon grown irritated with Andou’s behavior. Faced with the prospect of being shunned from the club, he chooses the road of truthfulness and explains the misunderstanding to Kudou. The reality is difficult and Andou has a lot of trouble hurting Kudou’s feelings. As he explains to Tomoyo afterwards, the misunderstanding arose from the readings he chose for each person’s power. In order to maintain unity with the group, he chose readings that used the same number of Katakana characters. He admits that some restraint may have been in order, but Kudou emails later to tell him that she’s taken a liking to his naming system and adopts the nickname he wrote to her in his letter (albeit with the incorrect meaning she originally misinterpreted).

Last week’s episode introduced the characters by featuring the powers they’d developed. This week’s episode puts those mysterious abilities on the back-burner to tell a tale that is familiar to anyone who’s watched a romantic comedy in recent memory. As Andou lets his imagination run wild again, indulging in his chuunibyou fantasies while pulling the others into them, he’s taught a vivid lesson about how his escapism has the potential to affect others.

The episode is maybe half-successful at what it’s trying to accomplish, and I’m a bit torn in my reaction to it. On the one hand I want to congratulate it for subverting a lot of the expected cliches – as annoying as it is to see one character mindlessly fawning over another for what we can only accurately say is no good reason (neither character has been developed enough at this point to indicate any realistic romantic tension and thus the situation feels completely arbitrary), it seems to have avoided the trap of maintaining the deception for too long, as Andou becomes straightforward when pressed and things are defused within a half an episode. As tired as I am of jokes about breast size (one of my many pet peeves), it’s nice to hear a character say to another that she shouldn’t judge her self-worth on how she measures up against her female peers (a snidely-delivered line to be sure, but also good advice). And as typical as it is to have one character be a monotone loli, I find her just so gosh-darned cute that I really can’t be too mad about it. The juxtaposition of these many pros and cons has left me feeling ambivalent in the aftermath; I want to enjoy the episode for what it is, but its flaws are just a bit too apparent for me to overlook.

Another thing I realized after the episode was finished was how interested I was after last week to see how the reality of having super powers played into the everyday lives of the characters. This episode was a let-down in that respect since it dealt quite a bit with the characters’ daily lives but their powers in this situation were a complete non-issue. It’s not so much that I’m looking for flashy animation or huge battles between the characters, since I think that misses the point of what the story has set out to tell. But at the same time, these kids have abilities that most people could only dream of, and almost every human being on the planet would instantly find some way to use their abilities to some sort of self advantage. I find it difficult to believe that a group of high school students could be so restrained in the use of their abilities, especially in a TV anime that is supposedly built around their existence.

I think one of the continuing questions that will crop up from week-to-week has to do with the visual quality of the series. Does it hold to some (probably imagined) standard we’ve already come to demand from Studio Trigger? I think expecting the type of visual flair we were dealt every week from Kill la Kill is unrealistic; an original production comes with all sorts of freedoms that an adaptation can’t hope to match, and Hiroyuki Imaishi is a director with a particular sense of style to boot. But this episode was pleasant to look at and there were plenty of opportunities for the animators to pencil in some fun little visual embellishments in many of the characters’ reaction shots. Compared to similar anime series that deal with teenage interactions as a primary subject, this show is more interesting to look at. As other reviewers have stated elsewhere, there’s a lot of characterization that occurs just via the way the characters are drawn and animated, which is not something that can be said about many anime.

In Summary:
Even tired tropes can find new life when used in new ways. The type of “love misunderstanding” featured in this episode is possibly one of the more annoying of those that haunt anime that take place in high school settings, but the fact that the resolution of the situation was focused so much on the straightforward resolution of the situation and the implicit fact of Andou’s sometimes inconvenient chuuni tendencies turned a really obnoxious episode into one with some redeeming qualities. The humor featured in this series thus far has been very standard and unremarkable, but it’s that edge of sweetness and the fact that the characters are often so much themselves that makes it more fun than it normally would be. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, to learn more about that guy hanging upside-down from the tree in episode 1, but I’m also not unwilling to have fun with the characters as they work out their relationships with one-another, powers or not.

Episode Grade: C

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment: Acer P235H 1080p LCD Monitor connected via DVI input, Logitech S220 2.1 Speakers, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560

An excessively poor ending to an awful series.

Creative Staff
Story: Shinichi Kimura
Art: Sacchi
Translation: Christine Dashiell

What They Say
Cursed by the teeny tiny Queen of Villiers, Ayumu is shocked to discover that no one seems to remember him, not even Eu! (Onii-chan is crying in the corner all by himself, Eu. Haruna-emon, doooo something!)

Then, when Sera mistakes Ayumu for her lover, the two end up in close quarters… in the bath?!

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Thanks to the curse, Ayumu finds himself in a world where nobody recognizes him (though they do seem to have bit of recollection left somewhere deep down, at least towards his posterior). To his horror this extends back to the girls staying at his house, and it’s apparently constantly refreshing whenever they aren’t around him. Just when he’s at his wits end, he learns that Haruna hasn’t been affected at all. Though there are still some misunderstandings, he’s able to use this as a springboard towards getting his group back in order.

After some expected antics, the group sets up a plan to take the Queen to the Amusement Park and investigate her. Then… we shift to the girls in a bath house rather abruptly. Though we gain a few tidbits from the conversation, it of course takes a turn towards the raunchy in absolutely no time. A tiny dog Megalo with the power to make things transparent also appears and makes a mess of things. It turns out this Chihuahua Saitou is the strongest Megalo (because why not) and the only one Dai-sensei couldn’t defeat. It also turns out that he apparently set up a bomb (which is weird since he was just peeping, but whatever), which leads Haruna to pull out Excalibur Masamune, the Magikewl Weapon that she made.

After a quick detour through a museum/haunted house, the group catches up to the Megalo and Sera ends up transforming with Haruna’s weapon because why not. Our heroes then win a stupid fight, and Ayumu and Haruna share a moment underwater while dealing with the bomb. In the aftermath Haruna kisses Ayumu which breaks the curse because, again, why not. With things in order and Haruna even getting her powers back for the heck of it, the series is able to finally come to an abrupt close.

In Summary
It says a lot about the quality of the climax to this story that I didn’t even realize it was ending until the absolute tail end of the book (admittedly I hadn’t checked the covers too closely). Like the rest of the series, it was more of a random mess of clichés and fan service than a powerful climax to the tale. Even if it was a purposefully goofy ending, you would think the book could at least be bothered to smoothly move from place to place. Instead we find the characters jumping around locations with nary a logical transition, and the goofy final villain even just kind of wanders in and apparently dumps a plot point bomb off screen for no good reason. Add in a generic bonding moment that kind of comes out of nowhere between Haruna and Ayumi, and you have a mess of a book that brings this series to the fantastically crappy ending that it deserves. It’s shocking that the climax somehow ended up one of the worst books in an already poor series, and it should go without saying that this book absolutely isn’t worth anyone’s money.

Content Grade: C-
Art Grade: B
Package Rating: A-
Text/Translation Rating: A-

Age Rating: Mature
Released by: Yen Press
Release Date: July 22nd, 2014
MSRP: $12.99

Jewel BEM Hunter Lime

What They Say:
The Magic Spheres are incredibly dangerous and powerful magical artifacts, capable of absorbing negative emotions and transforming everyday objects into monstrous BEMs (bug eyed monsters). So when a demon manages to scatter six of them through the gate between the World of Magic and Earth, someone’s got to get them back. Unfortunately, that job falls to master of disguise (and fan-servicey costumes) Lime, the sometimes monstrous and generally lecherous monster hunter Bass, and their ooey-gooey shape-shifting slime companion Poogie, none of whom are probably the best choices for a task of such monumental importance and urgency.

On the other hand, the whole situation is sort of their fault to begin with, and while their decision to infiltrate a Japanese high school may seem a bit oddly timed, at least it gets them a new friend in the form of cute but clueless schoolgirl Miyuki! Will this motley band of would be BEM hunters be up to the task of fingering panty stealing pocket purses, pinning down living syringes with nastily pointed agendas and turning up the heat on malevolent candles intent on snuffing out entire cities?

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release is about as one would expect as we get the original Japanese language track and the previously created English language dub in stereo, both of which are encoded at 224kbps. The series is one that certainly shows its age a bit here as it’s largely a center channel based mix with a bit of loudness to it that carries things through in a decent enough way to serve the material. There’s plenty of magic, action and silliness here but it has a very basic design about it that doesn’t flex much outside of the warmer opening and closing sequence pieces. And even then there’s not all that much. That said, it does fit the material well and it comes across clean and problem free during regular playback, which is about all you can really ask for here.

Video:
Originally released in 1996, the transfer for this three part OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The show has its original opening and closing sequences intact here and all the translation credits occur at the end of the third episode since this is a rescue release. Animated by Aishi Production, the OVAs are pretty much the epitome of what 90’s OVA series were about. It takes some of the good styling of the 80’s material and bumps it up a bit, but without going into a full slick mode during the start of the transitional period of how anime was changing in terms of color and depth. Traditionally animated, there’s a lot of detail to take in here with the backgrounds and the character designs and it’s well handled for the most part with this standard definition transfer. It’s not a hugely rich work but it’s not a paint by the numbers piece either. The transfer captures the colors well with a largely solid feeling about them, some good black levels when needed and it’s free of any noticeable cross coloration, though there’s a few moments of line noise here and there during a couple of panning sequences that’s representative of the age of the materials.

Packaging:
The packaging for this release comes in a standard sized DVD case to hold the single disc inside. The front cover definitely shows its time origin pretty well, but it’s a bright, colorful and busy piece that works nicely in showing off the designs and the overall style of the series. The logo is certainly cute as it updates slightly with stronger color tones but keeps to the bouncy aspect of the original design in a good way. The back cover is traditionally laid out as we get a nice shot of Lime along the left below the Pokemon reference tagline and there’s two lines of shots from the show, though they feature mostly dark backgrounds which may not be the way to go. The premise is rather dense for such a simple show, but it all works well. Add in the production credits and technical grid and you’ve got a solid looking release with no inserts nor a reversible cover.

Menu:
THe menu design for this release certainly does what it can to bring things up to date a bit while still keeping to the tone of the original. The color design is pretty good with the pinks, whites and blues used through the left side with the navigation, which is obviously simple with just the episode selection and languages as there’s no real special features to be had here. The right side gives us a very clean close-up of Lime that’s not used on the cover artwork, which is also really appreciated. It’s bright, colorful and engaging. Submenus when used are quick to load and easy to use and we had no problems in moving about to set things up or go through them after viewing the series.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the 1993 Japanese PC game of the same name, Jewel BEM Hunter Lime was animated by Aishi Production and ran for three episodes in 1996 through 1997. The show got a rather early pickup at the time from Media Blasters, who grabbed it in 2000 and brought it out in bilingual form before it eventually went out of print and the license expired. Now, after all these years, the show has been picked up again by Sentai Filmworks. It may seem like an odd title to grab, but realistically all the hard work has been done prior. It’s dubbed, it just needs a clean-up of the subtitles and it has a background bit of knowledge from fans that makes it a curiosity title to pick up, especially since it’s short and cheap. And since we’re always glad to see out of print titles come back, I can’t really complain about it in that sense because there are always new fans to be discovered for a show.

It’s been well over a decade since I last saw it and it’s certainly not changed much over the years. Some shows you can find new meaning in as you get older and your experiences change you. With Jewel BEM Hunter Lime, what you see is what you get. And there is a nice bit of simple nostalgia to be had here without all the weight of a larger series or something that’s considered more well known and important in a way. With its traditional animation, fun designs that are nicely detailed and a sense of old school pervertedness that really does seem quaint compared to other series (but still against the rules of society today), Jewel BEM Hunter Lime delivers us a straightforward action piece that’s fun without requiring a lot of thought or effort on the viewers part. It’s charming in its simple little way.

The series revolves around Lime and Bass, two people from the magical world that are in pursuit right at the start of a demon that has stolen six magical spheres and has escaped through a portal that opens once a month to the human world. The two have to manage to stop the demon, but not before the six spheres scatter into Japan. That forces them to head into the human world to retrieve them before they cause too much trouble. Lime is a straightforward type with a bit of bounce to her personality as she’s intent on completing the mission and doing what’s needed, though at the same time trying to force a lot of the hard work on Bass. Bass is your standard worker grunt type, who also doubles as the muscle as he can transform his body into something a little more demonic looking that’s strong, but the two work well together while also having Poogie along with them, a little yellow ball that serves multiple functions.

You can see where the show goes easily enough as each episode has them dealing with one of the spheres that has locked onto something in the human world and is now causing trouble. The first episode has it getting stuck inside a candle that wants revenge as the world turned to electricity and it got cast aside while the second episode has a change purse that takes on a life as it tries to figure out its purpose in life, thinking it needs to be a criminal for most of it. That has the trio trying to actually help it so it can move on to the next life with fulfilment, thereby getting the sphere back. The third one involves a syringe that has come to life as C. Ringe who wants vengeance for the way they’re viewed as the bad guys that cause pain when their real function is to help people by getting the medicine in them. Each of the spheres give the things they take over a really cartoonish look and personality that works surprisingly well as it’s just plain goofy and silly. Particularly Moneybags as he doesn’t know what his mission in life should be and we see how Bass and Lime try to help him commit crimes but each instance ends up helping someone out instead, making it impossible for him to cross over. He’s so child-like through a lot of it, so innocent in a way, that you can’t help but to laugh at it.

In Summary:
And really, that’s all there is to this show. Simple, basic, laughs. It’s an easy show to vilify because there’s not a lot there and it is a monster of the week kind of thing, just in OVA form. And not high quality OVA form. You almost get the sense that this was a trial to bring it to TV and make an extended show there, which would have probably followed the same pattern and gotten really tired after awhile. It has a curious mix of simple cartoon kind of stories to it while also adding in a lot of little pervy moments as well, making it less than clear what the real target audience is. The show didn’t really find one in the end though, in Japan or abroad, but it’s a light and fluffy piece that certainly reminds me why I like animation from this time period and wish we were getting more of it. There’s a simplicity about it that’s just charming and enjoyable.

Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: C+
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Sentai Filmworks
Release Date: November 4th, 2014
MSRP: $19.98
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Gundam Build Fighters Try Episode 02

Gundam Battle Club v. Plamo Club. Ready…GO!

What They Say:
“Team Up, Try Fighters!”

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Characterization is something that’s often looked over when talking about Gundam Build Fighters. What we go at first is the easy to like action scenes and the focus on gunpla. I mean, the show is a 20 minute ad for gunpla, after all. But the first season featured a lot of very realistic and legitimate growth from its characters. This second season is no different.

When Kousaka is first introduced, he’s mysterious. It’s the absolute indicator that he’s not going to be around for long or he’s going to have a big reveal and change in some way. That’s simplifying things, but he does have a change. He goes from a quitter to a winner in the most important way, by joining the main characters in beating on the Plamo Club’s president, who is the worst (at one point, he makes allusions to what appear to be rape, which was really off-putting in Gundam Build Fighters, of all things).

Hoshino is working great as a lead character. Her and Sekai provide a different kind of enthusiasm for gunpla than Sei and Reiji ever did and it’s refreshing. Reiji, like Sekai, always thirsted for the battle, but Sekai seems more genuine somehow. Reiji was introduced as someone literally not of this world and Sekai’s background grounds us in the story rather than distracts from it. Meanwhile, there’s no one as enthusiastic about building gunpla as Sei was. Of course, both Hoshino and Kousaka love doing it, but they haven’t shown the gusto of Sei quite yet. That’ll come later, I’m sure.

In Summary:
It feels like the same old song and dance of the first season, but Gundam Build Fighters Try is just different enough to really work for me. Hoshino, Sekai, and Kousaka’s interactions are going to be vastly different from the ones that Sei, Reiji, and the elder Kousaka had in the first season. While similar, they’re being driven by different things. Reiji wanted to fight alongside Sei with his gunpla; Sekai just wants to have a good battle. That’s just different enough to work and that’s fine with me.

Grade: B

Streamed By: YouTube

Equipment: PS3, LG 47LB5800 47” 1080p LED TV, LG NB3530A Sound Bar

Akatsuki no Yona Episode #2

What They Say:
Episode #2:  “Torn Bonds”

The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Something exciting happened between the first episode and second of Akatsuki no Yona.  Funimation swooped in and picked up streaming and home video rights to the series.  So with that news out of the way, we rejoin Yona and Hak as they confront the traitorous Soo-won.

If you thought the ending of the first episode was abrupt you’d be right.  We step back a bit to shed some more light on the coup and how Hak knew where to find Yona and what Soo-won told the princess.

Yona managed to ask Soo-won why he did what he did, and he says that King Il had killed his father, and that he’d been waiting to take revenge.  Yona has a hard time believing that her pacifist father would kill his own brother, and a harder time believing her loving cousin would betray her like that.  When a stranger named Kye-sook enters the chambers and tells Soo-Won to kill Yona, the princess flees.

That’s when Hak arrived to stop the guards from executing her.  Hak is a force of nature, having earned the nickname of ‘beast of thunder.’  When he too questions Soo-won and discovers the betrayal a duel begins.

The fight choreography in this show is actually quite good.  There’s a nice weight behind the strikes, and when they land they’re bloody and powerful.  Hak manages to land a slash on Soo-won, and Soo-won manages to parry almost every halberd strike from Hak.  However during the fight he forgets Yona is surrounded and it takes an arrow from the servant Min-soo to provide a distraction so the three can make their escape.

The palace is swarming with turncoat soldiers and there’s only one way for Yona and Hak to escape, and that’s for Min-soo to create a distraction.  Adding even more weight to an already dramatic situation we see that this show isn’t messing around and witness yet more deaths in the bloody coup.

By the time Hak and Yona reach the forest the castle realizes that the two have escaped.  It buys the escaped princess and general some time to take a much needed rest.  Yona is in shock, and having to hike through the forest at night isn’t easy on a princess.  Hak stands watch as Yona passes out, fugitives from their own home. Meanwhile back at the castle Soo-won and his advisor are plotting how to spin this coup to the unknowing populace.

We cut back to the present to see the rest of that opening scene from episode one.  I’m guessing the series will be told mostly in flashback leading up to the point where Yona has her own personal army to fight back with.  The Yona standing boldly on the cliff top armed with a bow is a far cry from the shocked princess of this episode.  It should be entertaining watching her get to that point and meeting her cast of colorful protectors.

In Summary:
The first episode of Akatsuki no Yona didn’t grab me, but this second episode was far more enticing.  Shedding all humor, which will probably return at a later date, we focus in on the tragedy unfolding around the princess and her protector.  Clearly Yona’s father was keeping some state secrets from his daughter, but I can’t help but wonder if Soo-won is being used by his advisors.  With some nice fight scenes and the promise of more to come, I’m looking forward to Yona becoming a more capable young leader.

Episode Grade:  B +

Streamed by: Crunchyroll, and soon Funimation!

Review Equipment:  27” iMac running OS 10.9.4, via Safari 7.0.6, FIOS 15/5 Mbps connection.  Your milage may vary.

Parasyte -the maxim- Episode #02

What They Say:
They arrived in silence and darkness, descending from the skies with a hunger for human flesh. Parasites – alien creatures who must invade and take control of a human host to survive – have come to Earth. No one knows their secret except high school student, Shinichi Izumi, who’s right hand has been invaded by an alien parasite. Shinichi and Migi, the parasite in his hand, begrudgingly form a friendship and find themselves caught in the middle of a war between humans and parasites.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
There are a lot of things to discuss in this second Parasyte episode, but none may be as important to its internet fanbase as the appearance of the “dick arm,” which has apparently become an iconic image of the series itself. In the manga, while sharing a meal with Murano’s at a WcDonald’s, Migi, sensing Shinichi’s attraction to the girl, transforms himself into a giant phallus. Shinichi is shocked and horrified and rushes to hide it. In the original Mixx/Tokyopop editions, the arm was edited into a snake, so aside from its original effectiveness as a gag image, it also has the allure of forbidden fruit from the era when manga and anime were routinely edited. A quick image search for Parasyte returns the image many, many times, so its enduring popularity cannot be doubted.

Fans wondered: Would the dick arm remain in a broadcast TV version of the anime? Other, more crazed, fans, wondered if the Parasyte adaptation would be worthwhile at all were the indelible image to be removed?

I will say worry not: The dick arm remains. Only briefly, and out of focus (perhaps to be corrected in a future BD release) but it remains, firm and unyielding.

Ahem. That out of the way, we can move on to other aspects of the adaptation.

The episode begins with a young woman threatened by some hoodlums on her way home. She’s rescued by a mysterious man who dispatches the thugs with some well-placed punches, and offers to escort her home. While his back is turned, however, a thug decides to bash his head in with an iron pipe… instead merely leaving his skull and neck bent. The cat being out of the bag, the Parasyte decides to kill the attackers and the woman as well, before changing his face to avoid detection.

These murders just add to the pandemic of strange killings horrifying the world, nicknamed the “mincemeat murders” by the tabloid press. Normal people suspect some kind of wild animal or cult, but Shinichi and Migi know the truth. Having seen the canine Parasyte eating another dog, Migi realizes that its kind is a type of adaptive cannibal, and other Parasytes are preying upon humans. Shinichi is horrified, but Migi can’t understand his reaction, considering that he himself has not been harmed, and considering that Shinichi eats other animals’ meat with no hesitation. Shinichi suggests going to the authorities to report what he knows, telling Migi that the alien must keep its host alive or put its own survival at risk.

Migi concedes the point, but adds that Shinichi doesn’t need to be able to speak, or see, or hear in order for Migi to live. And that quickly ends the debate.

After some amusing antics involving genitalia (as described above), Migi and Shinichi run across another Parasyte. This time it’s one who’s successfully taken over a human, and Shinichi decides he wants to meet it face to face. He imagines it won’t be unlike the previous encounter with the dog: Migi should quite easily be able to dispatch the foe. But this Parasyte offers Migi the chance to move over to its host body. It chops off its own arm and threatens to behead Shinichi in order to force Migi’s hand, as it were. Migi declines by murdering the other Parasyte and stabbing its head. Shinichi is grateful, but Migi coldly responds that it merely wasn’t certain if the body transfer would really have worked.

The animation isn’t as spectacular for this second episode, as might be expected. The fight animation is still well done, with some incredible details, such as the explosion of down feathers when the enemy Parasyte’s coat is shredded, but it’s nowhere near the liveliness of the premiere episode. Hopefully, time and money are being budgeted instead to more spectacular sequences in episodes to come.

Of more concern is the sound. The dubstep battle music is back, but worse is the tune that plays when the dick arm appears. It’s a tacky sounding comic soundtrack that would be more at home in a third rate anime harem. The man handling the music, Ken Arai, is usually a background artist, and this is his first score. I hate to say “and it shows,” but it does. Some pieces of music are very effective, and others just take me out of the scene entirely. More troubling is the realization that Migi sounds very, well, flatulent, when he bends and morphs around. I can’t help but worry that’s going to become more dangerously silly sounding later on as the drama ramps up.

In Summary:
Parasyte delivers what people want, dick arms and otherwise. Misgivings about the sound aside (the OP and ED are still pretty garbage, as well), things only get better from here. Especially with the introduction of Tamiya-sensei next episode. I’m very excited to see how this continues.

Grade: B+

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Sony VAIO 20″

Now that Issei is a devil, can he turn his back on his first girlfriend when she begs for her life?

Creative Staff
Comic: Hiroji Mishima
Original Story: Ichiei Ishibumi
Character Design: Zero Miyama
Translation/Adaptation: Caleb D. Cook

What They Say
Is forbidden love in the air for the lowly servant Issei and the beautiful Sister Asia?!

Reincarnated as a demon by Rias, the school beauty, Issei finds himself in servitude to his devilish mistress. But when Issei befriends Sister Asia, a nun from the Church, which is widely known to be hostile to demon-kind, he’s practically asking for a a target on his back – as Rias is quick to inform him! Worse yet, when the good Sister is kidnapped by a fallen angel, Issei rushes to her aid! But little does he know that Heaven plays dirty…!

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Contains partial nudity.

Issei is skilled at getting hurt in his altercations with Fallen Angels, and somehow avoiding getting killed, again. But at least he picks his battles to protect his friends and not for some silly reason. Although Issei’s budding friendship with Sister Asia may very well be the death of him. Even Rias tells him he needs to back off and stay away from Asia.

Issei is a glutton for punishment, so he doesn’t hesitate at the chance to spend a day out on the town with Asia. The scene drifts into a familiar one between a young couple; lunch, playing arcades, shopping, and pictures at a photo booth. Of course, all this is shattered when the Fallen Angel that killed Issei arrives and takes control of Asia. The Fallen Angel may let Issei go this time, but she quickly warns him that next time he won’t be so lucky.

I love Rias, so seeing how weak and seemingly useless Issei is, makes me wonder if she wasted her pawn pieces resurrecting him after the Fallen Angel killed him the first time. Seems like his only talents are being a pervert and getting his ass kicked. Then to make matters worse, he wants to bring his fellow devils into ruin in the hopes of saving Sister Asia. Asia is a vassal of the church and he’s a devil! Maybe opposites really do attract?

Surprisingly, after Rias warns Issei to avoid Asia (again), the other devils actually agree to help Issei save Asia. They either really like Issei or know that he is a dead devil if he attacks the Fallen Angels tormenting Asia on his own. But, even with the help of Rias’ Knight and Rook servants, does Issei have the slightest chance of saving Asia from a certain death?

In Summary
It has been a while since I watched the anime, but it seems like this second volume of the manga did a better job of explaining the chess system the devils use. Everything makes more sense to me now that Rias has explained that Issei used all eight of her available pawn pieces because his Sacred Gear needed that massive amount of power. However, it is surprising to see the first two volumes of this manga rip through the same material that required the first five and a half episodes of the anime.

Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A-

Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: August 26th, 2014
MSRP: $13.00

Naruto Shippuden Episode 382

What They Say:
The Ten Tails morphs into its final form, “The Divine Tree,” and attacks the shinobi, absorbing their chakra one after another.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Though we’ve had some drawn out circumstances going on in the series with the arc recently, which have helped to flesh certain areas out, it’s managed to largely stay compelling because it is dealing with such large issues. With the fights going on in so many different ways and a lot of your rank and file shinobi feeling seriously outclassed, we’ve seen the impact of that while Naruto and Minato do their best to fight together and sync with the two versions of Nine-Tails that they can bring together. At the same time, we’ve seen how the carnage has flown from what Madara and Obito are doing and so many of the shinobi are now taken down in a seriously hard way, practically on death’s door with how it all unfolded. Though you know that there won’t be any significant losses, or losses in general, the tension is nicely ramped up here.

The first half of this episode deals with attempts to get everyone to recover and help them, but there’s also a focus on trying to get things moving for what needs to be done as the other Kage are arriving in the area and seeing the scale of destruction and evil that’s walking about here. That’s mixed in with seeing some of what Madara is up to while adding a touch or two from Hashirama as well that helps to fill things in. And, of course, in the middle of that is Obito as he acquires more chakra from the various shinobi that are as yet unaffected by what he’s doing. His feeding is definitely amusing in a way, but the fear he puts into the shinobi is real. Watching that balance out as others help to reinforce their wills, to try and make them truly take control of their chakra, is a good kind of tension that makes the situation feel even more intense. It doesn’t help that their rallying point though is a reanimated hokage from the past, which in a weird way doesn’t really inspire them with confidence, particularly as Obito is sucking chakra out of Naruto as well.

The show build to events is a part of how this series works, and with so many characters involved at this stage and at this area, doing a quick catch up on a lot of them as events move forward is fun, especially when you see Orochimaru commenting on the way Sasuke is stepping up to the plate and trying to get Naruto to really take control of the situation. With so many elder shinobi here as well, their perspective is fun to watch since they have a lot more experience and ideas of what they’re seeing. The younger shinobi are just freaking out over the idea that Sasuke and Naruto are able to go off and actually fight Obito. There’s a lot to like with it, though the final part of the episode’s focus on what happened in the past with the first kage’s and how they worked together at the first Kage summit. It’s a painting of the hopes and dreams of the earlier generation and their issues, though it doesn’t offer up too much new overall.

In Summary:
Naruto: Shippuden has had a lot of big moments recently and I keep expecting another turn towards a filler subplot or something else to shift us away from this moment for a few weeks – if not longer. This episode is bringing some of the characters together a bit more, including bringing in the five kage in one place so they can get a handle on the situation, and there are some decent bits to be had with it. The interactions are what sells it as we see the low level shinobi panicking, the higher ones realizing the scale of events going on here and attempts by others to try and lessen the fear. It’s not a bad episode, but it’s one that could have been done in a few minutes to convey the same material rather than a whole episode.

Grade: B-

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

SHIROBAKO Episode 2 Anime Review

The schedule is already tight on the anime that Musashino Animation is working on, but things look to get worse when the director decides to remake the characters on the fly.

What They Say:
Episode 2: “Arupin is Here!”

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, we see that Segawa the animator is not entirely well, but not in deep danger while Aoi gets a call from one of her high school friends, Shizuka the aspiring seiyuu. After helping Segawa into bed, Aoi reassures her that she need not worry about episode 4 of Exodus, since the studio will figure something out. Segawa doesn’t quite have much faith in Aoi’s reassurances. And it is a big problem, since Segawa is the animation supervisor for episode 4. The only option left is for Aoi to beg Endou, the animation supervisor for episode 3 to take up the role for episode 4, since Segawa was key in getting episode 3 over its hurdle, which helped Endou greatly.

Sounding off

Crisis solved, we move on to have a look at the lives of the other girls a bit, as Ema and Shizuka talk. Then we see a recording session for Exodus, which should be of interest to those who know something about the recording process for the Japanese dub. We see it at various stages, from the laying of vocal tracks to the mix involving sound effects and background music. The sound director and the director of the entire show work together to get the sound of the words, effects, and music just right. Unfortunately, the Director, Kinoshita, starts going a bit off the deep end with a complete re-imagining of one of the main characters of Exodus, Arupin, while they still making the show. This leads to a showdown with the other production staff as well as the raising of a potentially contentious issue: Kinoshita apparently was involved in wrecking a previous production by engaging in just this sort of behavior. (The fake title for this previous failure is legendary).

Aoi tries to help things by calling a general staff meeting where Kinoshita can lay out his vision of Arupin and Yamada, Iguchi and the other senior staffers can try to bring things back to earth. In the end though, Kinoshita and Aoi just manage to delude everyone else to ride along on his fantasy. This…is not looking good for the production schedule, despite the angelic chorus. It appears the animation design staff, Iguchi and Ogasawara, are going to have to work overtime, with Iguchi doing key animation and Ogasawara supervising the new direction Kinoshita wants to take them in. These are the little disasters were are often blissfully unaware of—for the better.

While the other high school girls we met at the very beginning of the series look to make regular appearance, it seems clear now that Aoi will indeed be our main focal point into the world of anime production. A production assistant is probably a good window to use, since those higher up the chain or in more specialized roles will likely not see all aspects of the work other than the director, who is much too senior and much too busy to be a good focus for our attention. Here we got to have a look at the audio side of the anime, nothing in depth, but a decent little whirlwind tour of the basics involved. In many respects, it’s becoming clear that Shirobako is really a show aimed more at knowledgeable or semi-knowledgeable fans, those who have some idea of the basics involved so that many production scenes need only provide a minimum of information, with the missing gaps filled with knowledge acquired elsewhere.

Mass chuunibyou delusion hits the staff of Musashino Animation

One aspect that might not be to everyone tastes, one which does grate on my nerves slightly, is the constant creation of artificial crises to drive along the show. As there really isn’t much of a plot beyond “here are a group of professional animation production people making an anime,” it is clear that the writing staff is dependent on these very artificial-feeling crises to provide the drive to move events forward. It’s not that incidents such as the ones we’ve seen are impossible or have never happened in the past (they have and those who are even more knowledgeable might be able to figure out which specific events and incidents are being used in this show). It’s just that it seems slightly beyond belief to imagine that Murphy’s Law would come into full and unrelenting force for the entire run of Exodus following episode 2. At some point, the crises, including the latest completely man-made one of the director going off script, have to stop. If they do, that might be good. If this just becomes a crisis of the week show, that may spell trouble later in the run, as the natural tendency is to escalate the level of crises, which eventually may bring us to one that breaks all notions of suspending disbelief.

In Summary:
We continue with the havoc-filled and crisis-prone production of Exodus by Musashino Animation. As if unavoidable problems are not enough, the director, Kinoshita, suddenly decides to completely rewrite the personality and nature of one of the main characters…when they’re already delivering episodes to the broadcasters barely before they are supposed to air. It’s becoming clear that this inside look at the industry really is meant more for knowledgeable fans than those who are learning for the first time. It’s not closed off to this latter group, but many of the in-jokes and humor derived from the situations being encountered by the characters probably resonate more with those who’ve been around the anime block once or twice.

Episode Grade: B+

Streamed by: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard