Friday, January 31, 2014

[New][January 2014] Nisekoi


Summary: Raku Ichijo is an average high school student. He also happens to be the sole heir to the head of a Yakuza Family called the Shuei-gumi. 10 years ago, Raku made a secret promise with a girl he met. They promised one another that they will “get married when they reunite.” Since then, Raku never let go of the pendant the girl gave him. Now however, after getting a knee in the face by a transfer student, and spending the entire day squabbling with her to help him find his pendant she made him lose, Raku is told by his father that he's to be paired for three years with a rival gangs heir to make peace with a gang even if he has to fake it, right after he finally found the pendant.

First Impression: Comedy. Sometimes Brilliantly funny, sometimes way too thick on the Tropes.

First Opinion: I have no idea how to feel about this one. Sure, it's comedy, but I've been having my expectations fluctuate up and down non-stop the first episode, starting with the shows name and first impressions. The title, for those like me who have osmosis'd some japanese through extended exposure, is readily apparent as "False Love", so that opened a can of expectations that had me putting this off until just today. I thought it would be more drama heavy, instead of being a comedy, and I already am getting my drama fix elsewhere, so I moved it a bit down the priorities list.
So it started low and then moved up higher.
Then the show starts, and we're immediately introduced to the old promise through some very thick layering of the dramatic overtones on it, and since the artsy appeal of it went right over my head I was mostly rolling my eyes at it.
Lost a point.
Then we spend the next five minutes borrowing tropes from other genres of anime, culminating in the conclusive infernal girl running with toast in her mouth because she's late. UGH, GAG ME WITH A SPOON. I'm sorry, but the yakuza trope I can still get a laugh out of, and a few of the other things they did I found funny, but for the entirety of the late-toast-girl scenes I was just writhing inside my skull cringing and trying not to gag and immediately hate the show. It's a personal point of taste, so I try to control it shaping my opinions.
I'm glad I did, because after that the show shapes up beautifully for a comedy setting, it gets pretty well original, and gave me one of the fastest deliveries of my choice for the screenshot I've had to date. All told my concluding opinion of the show at the end of the first episode is:
If you like comedy, give this a solid place on your list for now.
The shows enjoying itself by running a balancing act of 'Dramatic Irony' with the Old Promise, and good ol' slapstick humor, and then occasionally spicing a scene or two with some touchy-feely or drama. It feels, as a whole, pretty original. I get the impression from it that it's trying to set up some standard genre patterns and expectations, and then kick them in the shins and laugh while they jump around the room crying.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

[Rant] A Notice for those who Care

Yo! Just taking a moment aside here to say something that needs to be said. I don't really like hi-jacking Evil Cats blog to do something like this, but you folks should know. So I apologize in advance, and warn you that I'm about to rant at you, and do something that I feel is not what this blog was meant to do. Feel free to pass this post by. I'm going to try and get at least 2 more posts done to help bury this.
One or Two of you may remember me saying something about how I make the summaries I attach on the first impression posts of new anime, by splicing together the summaries from a bunch of different websites, so that they not only are accurate but don't spoil anything, after I watch the first episode?
Well I just enjoyed having to jump into the HTML coding of the blog to remove advertising that had been inserted into the text I copied from a website.
Said website was Watchanimeon.com.

Now, I usually make a strong point of neither talking up, nor down, about other websites whenever I'm on a website of similar/equal interest. That is to say something like this: If I'm on one anime streaming website, I don't advertise for another, or talk bad about it or the one I'm on while I'm there. If I have something to say about a website, I take it someplace more fitting for it. I don't spew hate and anarchy all over someone else trying to have a good time, and I absolutely do not ever advertise for someone or something else, EVER. I may say a good word or drop a plug when it is earned  or asked for by the person(singular) I'm talking to, but I do not advertise.

Now, in this particular instance this is nothing new. Websites have had these code insertions for a while now, that's not what bugs me. It's to help prevent plagiarism, so I don't mind and encourage it. Another website I visited for my splicing also had the copy paste insertions.
No, what bugs me about watchanimeon, and why they can go piss off, is that they double inserted their website and an ad for it. Not only did I have to delete a 'see more at watchanime.com!' from the end of the literal one sentence I copied from them, that I damn well bet they copied from someone else, since it was the exact same as a piece from another tab with a summary I had open, (which is why I was using it), but when I came onto the website today to check for comments, to lay out templates for a few more anime's first episodes, and to see if I missed any editing or grammar/spellcheck that I needed to fix in recent posts, I got to see a lovely line of text running right through the middle of three different posts, advertising for watchanimeon.
Here's the part that really pisses me off. I had to go remove it, from the HTML. The only reason I even knew to do that, was because I have had a college class on web programming, and I knew that was where it had to be to cause this. What if someone else had this problem? They wouldn't know how to get the text off, and they would have a massive headache trying to google a fix.

*Stops to breath and calm down*
Okay. Here's the thing. I had to do this after I cut the ad out of the text I copied. AND I had to do it four more times here for, and I counted, 4 more copy pastes that each contained, in this order: 5 words, 3 words, 2 words (a name), and 8 words (a full sentence). That's four separate places, in one post, that I had to cut it out of the HTML, and then double check to make sure I hadn't damaged the formatting of the post (which I did the first time). This is never minding that I had to also cut this lovely little parasite out of 2 other posts, thankfully only once for each of them.
I literally had to remove not only a Text ad insert, but an HTML ad insert, for TWO and THREE words. I understand that their website simply does this for everything copied from it, I understand that, what pisses me off is how much of an arse you have to be to hide a second ad in the HTML.
A second ad.
My point? Watchanimeon is a free anime streaming website, with associate forum and inter-website links and so on. They provide a free service that costs them money. I cut a bit of slack for people that do something like that. However! They are doing so, intentionally or otherwise, at a partial expense to the people that produce the anime we all love so much. They provide, for free, permanently, something you would have to otherwise pay money to purchase after the shows stop airing on TV. This is why you'll occasionally run into an episode of an anime that has been taken down on whatever website they use to embed the stream. The website that hosts the video stream they embed takes it down for legal reasons. They have probably a hundred other competitor websites doing the exact same thing, catering to us, the anime community fanbase. What's more, there are even websites like Crunchyroll that are trying to establish systems that bring profit back to the producers as well, with their simulcasting system (which they pay money for in a deal with some part of the anime industry, I'm sure).
My very long winded conclusion is that when there are probably a hundred other places we could go, some a lot more moral (some less), that don't use an aggravatingly poor practice, I see no reason to put up with it. Now, I give credit to watchanimeon for being one of the few streaming websites that don't drown you in banner ads and popups. I got real sick of that real fast way back when. Whenever crunchyroll doesn't have something, I usually fall back on watchanimeon. I probably still will. But this isn't the first time I've ran face-first into a problem because of some poor practice on their website. I'm not going to say what other problems I've had, that's poor taste. I'm not going to tell you to stop using their website.
At the end of this post, I have officially concluded my business, which was to inform you that I have been aggravated in my attempts to continue providing the service that The Evil Cat started by an aggravatingly stupid and, in my opinion, immoral, practice of another website. Do what you will with this information.

I really, really, wish I could collapse all of this ranting into a spoiler-style button so not everyone had to put up with this when they were just coming here to read a post on anime. I still haven't figured out how to get it to work, despite trying three different tutorials on making them. So I apologize, again, for ranting at you all. I apologize for, basically, stealing The Evil Cat's blog for this. I hope you all have a great day, because I haven't for the last half hour of double checking my last 7 posts.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

[New][January 2014] Minna Atsumare! Falcom Gakuen



Summary: The warriors who have been warped by the rampaging power of 'justice' have been summoned into the world of Xanadu. It's up to Dark Fakt, a former villain, and principal Lappi to reeducate these students.
The warriors who have been warped by the rampaging power of \"justice\" have been summoned into the world of Xanadu. It\'s up to Dark Fakt, a former villain, and principal Lappi to reeducate these students.

Rating:
0 votes
- See more at: http://www.waoanime.tv/anime/minna-atsumare-falcom-gakuen/#sthash.Vo0B0Ir7.dpuf
The warriors who have been warped by the rampaging power of \"justice\" have been summoned into the world of Xanadu. It\'s up to Dark Fakt, a former villain, and principal Lappi to reeducate these students.

Rating:
0 votes
- See more at: http://www.waoanime.tv/anime/minna-atsumare-falcom-gakuen/#sthash.Vo0B0Ir7.dpuf


First Impression: Parody central, more 2 minute humor.

First Opinion: I suppose this means that the five minute short has some sort of trend over in Japan right now? There's certainly alot of them all of a sudden. I'm not going to keep this one on the roster, I only recognize one of the games names, Ys, in passing. It's something I've heard of before and I think watched a video of the gameplay. The end of the short goes out of its way to text dump that the anime characters are not reflective of the originals. So, Parodies. I'd say that if you have a favorite game that originated in Japan, watch the first, maybe second episode, see if it's there and you'd enjoy the parody comedy. Otherwise, you'd have to get your fun out of the fact that the characters aren't actually based on the original, and try to just enjoy the gag humor of the plot.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

[New][January 2014] Mahou Sensou

Right. Soo... Does my insurance cover that?

Summary: In this modern magic action story, Takeshi Nanase is an ordinary high school boy who has a somewhat dark past. Due to certain circumstances, he forms a "fake" couple with his childhood friend Kurumi Isoshima, but otherwise lives a normal life. However, one day a girl named Mui Aiba, in a uniform he has never seen before, collapses in front of him on the school campus. Mui tells Takeshi that she is a magician, and apologizes for turning Takeshi into a magician, too.

First Impression: This should be average at worst, good to great at best. Action driven drama so far. They're taking a bit too long to stop and explain things, but that's a good sign, usually.

First Opinion: Gonna bump this one up a few notches on the priorities list since Pupa kind of disappointed me by being a five minute show. I'm also indirectly grateful to it for one of its summaries I harvested to make mine containing that phrase "Modern Magic Story", as I now have the perfect term to use when I'm trying to explain why Magic is unique in a Terry Goodkind novel, with it's rules, upon rules, within rules, that borders on science-fiction science and physics.
More to the point, they make a few calls that I think are in good taste, such as hinting that magicians were always about, but just retreated away from the normal world. That always starts stronger than trying to convince the audience that they've just always been around and still are, when you're using a modern setting. For those of us who frequently watch anime, we have a higher level of 'Suspension of Disbelief' to allow ourselves to be immersed in the story, world, and characters. A lot of people don't find it so easy, so whenever a show makes good choices like this, they earn points in my book because it helps increase the chances that I'll be able to share this with others who aren't as big on anime as I am.
On a less positive note, the show needed to make a recovery midway in of me not liking Mui. At the end of the show, she's sitting on a nice equalized scale, but at the beginning she was beginning to look a bit too comfortable in the 'Damsel in Distress' role, which didn't mix well with them trying to make her a fighter with a gun. You are not a good damsel in distress with a gun, and you are not a good fighter when you're playing weak that much. Nevertheless: Recovered, she earns some points for fast solid reasoning and keeping cool in a situation spiraling out of scale.

Gonna give this show some moderately high hopes, and as always, level off my expectations at a nice comfortably low position.

[New][January 2014] Pupa

dude, your face. it's only 30 seconds and you're the weirdest one here


Summary: The story follows Utsutsu and Yume Hasegawa One day, Yume sees a mysterious red butterfly and her body undergoes a strange metamorphosis - into a creature that eats humans. Utsutsu struggles to find a way to restore his sister.
story follows Utsutsu and Yume Hasegawa, a boy and his little sister who find themselves all alone. One day, Yume sees a mysterious red butterfly and her body undergoes a strange metamorphosis—into a creature that eats humans. Utsutsu struggles to find a way to restore his sister.


First Impression: 5 min...horror? I'm skeptical, but hopeful

First Opinion: This is...odd, to say the least. The whole core of horror usually hinges...wait, let me step back and correct myself. The whole core of good horror hinges on the viewer/audiences connection to the central character(s), on them being a good representation that can be connected to, even in surreal circumstances. A role model, or figure of reasonable effort dashed by the horrors. The idea of a series of 5 minute segments seems counter intuitive to the ability to connect to the core characters, and the first few seconds are especially off putting. I read summaries before I watch any anime (these days). As soon as, what I presume, is our main protagonist turned around, my first thought was "DUDE! What the Hell is wrong with your face?! I thought your sister was the one with the infection problem!" Really, I understand that maybe they wanted to have him with a scar and a story to match the scar, but their time limit means that they just kinda slap you with it, and then rush forward.
Truthfully, I have low expectations for this show right out of the gate, but I'm keeping it in my bag. If they do it right, it could set off a series of innovations down this line of show design. That would be nice. But it will probably just flop horribly.

I love the opening music though. Very catchy.

[New][January 2014] Strange+

Too much crazy for a good screenshot highlight


Summary: Kou comes to a slum neighborhood in search of his elder brother Takumi and finds him to have become the head of a private detective firm. Kou is drafted by Takumi to do errands and chores in the detective firm, and they come to meet various interesting people...
Kou comes to a slum neighborhood in search of his elder brother Takumi and finds him to have become the head of a private detective firm. Kou is drafted by Takumi to do errands and chores in the detective firm, and they come to meet various interesting people...


First Impression: Solid-state pure gag anime. Breaks the fourth wall like it was water. 

First Opinion: The summary literally has more story than the first episode, and the first episode even comments about itself at the end of it. I remember bumping into a few other animes like this recently, these 3-5 min short-short episodes. I kinda liked the hero/demon lord one, it made me laugh. I can't say this one is to my tastes, but that's not really saying its good or bad. These kinds of pure comedy shows boil down to personal taste, so give it a shot. It's literally only 3 minutes, 30 seconds of it are an opening song.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

[New][January 2014] Hamatora



Summary: The story is centered on 'Minimum Holders', people with super human abilities, and the activities of a Private Investigations group of Minimum Holders.

First Impression: Shounen. Very Shounen. Interesting world principles on the front step, though. This ones action oriented, and maybe they'll spice it with mystery, but so far they solve the *air quotes* "Mysteries" literally 5 seconds after they present them.

First Opinion: I like how they stage the principles for how the abilities work. It's very original, in my opinion. It seems to be a simple case of effect amplification, but what stands out is that while a few other animes have done something similar, if not quite this strongly one-dimensional, the refreshing part is that when they play the 'Big Reveal' for the, potential, main protagonist, (the person who at the start of the show they tease us by showing the after effects of his ability, but not the ability), it isn't some landscape reforming overpowered nonsense, or that he has 2 or 3 abilities, it's just a equally scaled ability, that is simply more powerful through utility rather than raw power. To me, that was very refreshing and I gave a couple'a figurative points to the show for it. So far, things are very tasteful, if a bit "I've seen this before".

[New][January 2014] Noragami


Summary: At the boundary between this realm, 'The Near Shore' and the afterlife, 'The Far Shore', there live eight million gods, souls of the dead who serve the gods, and other assorted spirits who help and meddle in the affairs of humans. Yato(gami) is a low tier god, aspiring to be the greatest god of Japan. While searching for a lost cat, he passes by Hiyori Iki, who sees him, and tries to save him when he runs in front of a bus after the cat. Hiyori is hit by the bus, and her soul is knocked loose from her body, now stuck in the divide between the Near and Far shore. While trying to figure out what has happened to her, she pieces together her memories of seeing Yato, and ultimately makes a wish to him.


First Impression: Action-oriented, Comedy Spice, a good quality Shounen'y feel so far.

First Opinion: Right out of the gate, they open with a flashy set of animations and a fight. I'm not too fond of that particular way to open a show, but there's nothing wrong with it. The first episode was very .. mm, Refreshing? .. to watch. I enjoyed it, even if there wasn't anything that really blew me away or seemed especially original. The opening credits featured a name and logo I've never seen before, or at least don't recall seeing, Shochiku. Perhaps this is one of their first works? Honestly not the kind of thing I care enough about to go looking for.


Out of the gate, my standing is that as long as you're open to things with a Shounen'y feel, and even if you're slightly opposed to Shounen, this has a nice balanced tempo currently, nothing especially radical but good fun to watch. I rather like Yato so far, his daydream of becoming the greatest god in Japan was hilarious.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

[New][December 2013] Zetsumetsu Kigu Shoujo: Amazing Twins

Lookit that, Gaia in a bottle!

Summary: The story takes place in a world where certain individuals possess a power called ISH (Incomprehensible Skill of Humans), giving them super powers. One of these individuals is Amane Todoroki, who works as an idol magician for a performance team called Nought. Amane has a twin sister named Lilianne who was born without a body. Unlike Amane, whose ISH is fairly weak, Lilianne is extremity powerful and she is able to lend her power to Amane, who uses it in her Nought peformances. Amane and Lilianne try to spread the joy of ISH powers via magic shows, but everything changes when Amane is approached by someone from IAM.
The story takes place in a world where certain individuals possess a power called - See more at: http://www.waoanime.tv/anime/zetsumetsu-kigu-shoujo-amazing-twins/#sthash.zeKMr0SG.dpuf


First Impression: Very hope heavy, probably going to be very "Believe!" heavy as well, but interesting to watch. Probably a Human Interest core with Fantasy world staging.

First Opinion: Nothing especially unusual or unheard of right out of the gate, but pleasant, all the same. Personally, I'm never fond of 'The Airhead' being the protagonist, or having a role other than comical relief side character, but I've seen it work out just fine before, so I won't allocate interest away from it for that. To make the Airheaded main character work, in my experience, they need to make sure that Amane has a proper 'personality/character Arc', which basically means that she has to evolve somewhat outside of just being an airhead. She has to become more grounded/sensible while either maintaining the heart of her naivete, or casting it off for a better cause, or some other such nonsense. Basically she can't just be stupid all the time. From just the first episode, I would say they have plenty of potential to move that way in the future, and the ride will be fantastical fun to watch along the way. A little unoriginal, but why fix what ain't broke?

[New][December 2013] Witch Craft Works


Summary: Takamiya Honoka is a regular student whose only problem seems to be that he sits next to Kagari Ayaka, the school's #1 beauty. They have never spoken to each other and any small interaction between them immediately results in her fanclub beating him. Yet when a falling part of the school's building is about to kill him, it's Kagari that comes to his rescue, .. dressed as a witch?
Takamiya Honoka is a regular student whose only problem seems to be that he sits next to Kagari Ayaka, the school\'s #1 beauty. They have never spoken to each other before and any small interaction between them immediately results in her fanclub beating him. Yet when a falling part of the school\'s building is about to send him to the afterlife, it\'s Kagari that comes to his rescue.
Takamiya Honoka is a regular student whose only problem seems to be that he sits next to Kagari Ayaka, the school\'s #1 beauty. They have never spoken to each other before and any small interaction between them immediately results in her fanclub beating him. Yet when a falling part of the school\'s building is about to send him to the afterlife, it\'s Kagari that comes to his rescue.
Takamiya Honoka is a regular student whose only problem seems to be that he sits next to Kagari Ayaka, the school\'s #1 beauty. They have never spoken to each other before and any small interaction between them immediately results in her fanclub beating him. Yet when a falling part of the school\'s building is about to send him to the afterlife, it\'s Kagari that comes to his rescue.
Takamiya Honoka is a regular student whose only problem seems to be that he sits next to Kagari Ayaka, the school\'s #1 beauty. They have never spoken to each other before and any small interaction between them immediately results in her fanclub beating him. Yet when a falling part of the school\'s building is about to send him to the afterlife, it\'s Kagari that comes to his rescue.


First Impression: Solid base, Nothing tasteless yet, good prospects for a Fantasy story.

First Opinion: I like how this looks so far. While I was reading the summaries on websites for upcoming shows, I picked this one first out of the first 4 that I could find and read as having some good prospects. The first things I theorized would be wrong with it from the chosen display art, were that they were going to make Kagari's bust a running theme, and that Takamiya would be as air-headed as most protagonists paired with a more powerful alternate protagonist that saves them a lot. So far, not only have they avoided being tastelessly base and shooting for the, now-a-days, rather common troupe of fawning over the heroines large bust, but Takamiya has sensible enough reactions to the world turning upside down on his doorstep, and they don't fawn over the cat-eared girl that shows up either.
So they get points in my book for having Class, and they show us just enough of the magic of this new world in the first episode to make us curious, but not to make it completely unapproachable. When the first question of the new worlds rules shows up, it's offhandedly given a dismissive answer by our first antagonist, which is precisely how it should be. You don't monologue world principles, you don't spend half a show explaining whys, you give an answer in the heat of the moment, and then later you explain a little bit more, and then a little bit more, as each bit becomes more relevant. In my opinion, that's the best way to handle 'New World Rules' delivery.