• Member Since 11th Oct, 2011
  • offline last seen 1 hour ago

Pascoite


I'm older than your average brony, but then I've always enjoyed cartoons. I'm an experienced reviewer, EqD pre-reader, and occasional author.

More Blog Posts165

  • 1 week
    Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 66

    Some winter shows will be ending in the next couple of weeks. It's been a good season, but still waiting to see if the ones I like are concluding or will get additional seasons. But the one and only featured item this week is... Sailor Moon, after the break, since the Crystal reboot just ended.

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    19 comments · 88 views
  • 4 weeks
    Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 65

    I don't typically like to have both featured items be movies, since that doesn't provide a lot of wall-clock time of entertainment, but such is my lot this week. Features are Nimona, from last year, and Penguin Highway, from 2018. Some other decent stuff as well, plus some more YouTube short films, after the break.

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    4 comments · 61 views
  • 5 weeks
    Time for an interview

    FiMFic user It Is All Hell asked me to do an interview, and I assume he's going to make a series out of these. In an interesting twist, he asked me to post it on my blog rather than have him post it on his. Assuming he does more interviews, I hope he'll post a compilation of links somewhere so that people who enjoyed reading one by

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    12 comments · 314 views
  • 7 weeks
    Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 64

    Still pleasantly surprised by most of the winter shows I opted to watch (but I'm gonna die waiting on the dub of The Dangers in My Heart). But hey, there are plenty of good shows from past seasons! To wit, features are both from 2018, a random comedy series, Asobi Asobase, and a drama movie whose title sounds nothing like that's what it will be, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas.

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    0 comments · 56 views
  • 10 weeks
    Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 63

    So far, I'm rather happy with this winter season's crop of shows. Hopefully they'll keep the quality up. Features this week are a movie from the end of this summer season, Alice and Therese's Illusory Factory, and a comedy series from almost a decade ago, Barakamon. Those and some recently finished fall shows, after the break.

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    7 comments · 107 views
Mar
31st
2021

Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 6 · 2:26am Mar 31st, 2021

Turned out to be less of a vacation week than I thought, but I still have more time than I would on a regular week, so why not? Featured items this week are Betterman and BNA, after the break.

I saw Betterman quite a while back, when there were still few anime showcase programs on, which is to say I may have been viewing it through rose-colored glasses. I rather liked it, but I'm curious if it'd hold up well if I watched it again now. This is another entry in the mecha subgenre of "only certain people have the properties needed to serve as pilots." I can't remember now whether I saw this first or Neon Genesis Evangelion (which I'll get to reviewing eventually), but the two have quite a bit in common. Hell, it's got a lot in common with several others of the type I've seen, like RahXephon and Pilot Candidate, but it ties in a lot of philosophy, too.

The main character is a high school boy named Keita, and he's surprised one day when a childhood friend he hadn't seen in years turns up in his class. The girl, Hinoki, is the only surviving member of her family, and as he soon discovers, she's secretly one of the few mech pilots. I don't even remember whether the public is aware of these mechs, but it turns out Keita is also a suitable pilot. They're battling the spread of a... plague, I guess I'll call it? It's named Algernon, and it leads to people becoming hostile to themselves and others, and very powerful. The mech teams are dispatched to battle outbreaks of it, and when they get in a really tight spot, a superpowered being named Betterman shows up to help. He can change into multiple forms by using special seeds, and he bears a striking resemblance to Hinoki's dead brother.

There are the inevitable twists and turns of who's actually loyal to which side, and it leads to a lot of philosophical discussion about the nature of this plague. And not made-up stuff, either. It's some legit (but admittedly strange and obscure, at least to me) metaphysical stuff. Being anime, this is inevitably done during expository dialogue and long speeches. But the action itself is good, as various important characters fall victim to Algernon, and a fair number of them die, too. Again, this may be rose-colored glasses, as it was one of the first animes I watched that wasn't afraid to kill off several major characters. (As a side note, I'd already watched Sailor Moon long before this, and while the English dub glosses over everyone's death at the end of season 1 to the point of plausible deniability as to whether that's even what happened, I still got the distinct impression they were implied to be dead.)

Good on both the action and philosophical navel-gazing (which I usually don't care about or may even find off-putting) fronts, this is one I have fond memories of. It's got a fairly unique art style, and a couple of comedy moments were well done (I loved the scent-manufacturing vending machine).

Rating: very good
26 episodes, relevant genres: sci-fi, action, horror, philosophical

BNA, as likely everyone knows, stands for Brand New Animal, and I'm kind of surprised the official title is just the initials. Anyway, this starts out strong, with the needed background of why there are anthropomorphic animals around and why they're increasingly treated by humans with disdain, and through the eyes of a human who's just suddenly turned into one of these animals. That's unheard of, except that she isn't exactly the only one; she even witnessed the transformation of the other such person. Method one to cope with it? Hide out at home where nobody can see, and cut off all contact. That doesn't work indefinitely, and Michiru is forced to take refuge in a city of beastmen. There, she finds that beastman culture has its own problems, but she finds her niche.

As a tangent, one way she fits in is by making friends with one of the worst baseball teams in the league. I'm a huge baseball fan, and I loved the episode that centered on it. It brought to mind other shows that had good baseball-themed episodes. FLCL, Samurai Champloo, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (in video game form, but eh...), and Jujutsu Kaisen (I haven't gotten to that episode yet), among others. This also led to me wondering if I could find an entire baseball-themed anime that was as good. I'd do a blog dedicated to my search, but it doesn't seem like there are that many baseball fans around these parts, so I'll just mix them in as I get to them in the alphabet. What unites all these one-off episodes is that they deal with a ridiculous, wacky version of the game, but they're well done. The blernsball episodes of Futurama were similar.

Anyway, getting back to BNA, there's a good amount of intrigue as to how Michiru could possibly have become a beastman the way she did, and because of the place she finds to live, she's conveniently paired with Shirou, an investigator. Crime organizations, government cover-ups, political intrigue, and religious zeal all come into play before the totality of her past gets revealed, and... honestly, I found that part underwhelming. The first half, where Michiru is just trying to figure life out and make do in her new world, are interesting and endearing. The tension ratchets up well as she starts to discover the whys behind her past and reconnect with an old friend, but the details behind it all and the final battle just kind of fizzled out for me. Too predictable, not that interesting, a lack of real tension in the last battle... and this may well be more of a personal reaction on my part, but the heavy supernatural note that comes in with Shirou's back story made the whole thing far less relatable.

Strong opening, didn't stick the landing, but still kept up my interest long enough that I'd give it a high recommendation.

Rating: very good
12 episodes, relevant genres: fantasy, action.


And the rest from this region of the alphabet:
Beyblade Burst—I don't know how many episodes there were. I only watched a dozen or so, as my son was really into the Beyblade toys about 5 years ago. He started watching the show but soon lost interest, and I never found it enjoyable. Rating: meh. Relevant genres: games/sports, action.

Blade of the Immortal (Mugen no Junin)—there was a 13-episode anime of this from back in 2008, but I saw the more recent 24-episode version from 2020. Standard setup of someone who has to kill bad guys to atone for his past deeds (Manji), combined with the standard setup of a girl seeking revenge against the people who slaughtered her family (Rin). The animation is nice though gorier than I normally care to see. The draw here is the side characters who get brought in and the constantly wavering loyalties. Rin even ends up working with the object of her revenge and realizing he's not such a bad guy at times. I was a little disappointed in the ending, just because I would have thought Manji would have settled his debt by then, but it was still a nice callback to see the particular characters he encountered one last time. Rating: good. Relevant genres: action, fantasy.

Blood+ (50 episodes)—I'm not sure, but I don't think I ever saw the movie this was a continuation of. Anyway, this is a vampire show and hits most tropes of the genre. Saya was an enjoyable enough character, and some of the lore behind her, the others of her kind, and the chevaliers who attend them were pretty cool. She's the only one on the side of the good guys, and as such is the only way they have of fighting the evil demon creatures, but yet again, loyalties can sway here, depending on the character. I found her chief rival spooky enough, with real tension between them. As vampire and combat shows go, not a bad one. Rating: good. Relevant genres: horror, action, fantasy.

Blue Exorcist (Ao no Ekusoshisuto, 25 episodes + 1 OVA)—there's also a sequel series (Kyoto Saga) with an additional 12 episodes and 1 OVA, but I'm only covering the original here. Toonami showed it some years ago, but they so far have never picked up the sequel, and I wasn't interested enough to pursue it on my own, so I'll go ahead and cover it. Twins Rin and Yukio have an innate talent for battling demons, so they get sent off to a school to refine those abilities. However, Rin is a bit of a late bloomer, and on top of that, he's regarded with suspicion by practically everyone, as he's reputed to be the literal son of Satan (somehow Yukio's not treated with quite the same level of stigma about it). The action's alright, and his mental struggle to succeed as the opposition continually either tries to kill him or tempt him to join his father's side seem like an engrossing enough premise, but it never really drew me in that much, and I'm at a bit of a loss to say why. Probably just because it's not very different from a large number of other shows, and it doesn't stand out to me as one of the better ones. Rating: decent. Relevant genres: action, fantasy, adventure.

Blue Gender (26 episodes)—This always struck me as a lackluster effort. It felt way behind its time in the quality of the art and voice acting, and I never cared for the plot that much. The main character is such a whiny bitch that I never cared about him either. The Earth is overrun by numerous monstrous creatures, and humanity (at least those considered the most deserving) have sought refuge in orbit, leaving behind the surface to the monsters and whatever humans didn't measure up. Certain humans share a connection to the monsters, though, and can be used to pinpoint and combat them whenever the humans in orbit send raiding teams. They do hope to reclaim the surface someday, and there are hints that these monster-sensitive people are evidence that genetic engineering or some such may have been what caused the monsters in the first place. I don't even remember if this came to a proper conclusion, but I don't think it did. Rating: meh. Relevant genres: action, adventure, horror, sci-fi.

Blue Submarine No. 6 (Ao no Roku-go, 4 episodes)—I honestly don't remember the first thing about this, even after rereading the synopsis of it, so it couldn't have been that good... Rating: meh. Relevant genres: sci-fi, action.

There were a couple other series I was expecting to include in this stretch, but on researching them, I found there was a small amount of additional material I hadn't seen and wasn't even aware of, so I'll come back to them later.

Seen any of these? Did I convince you to try any of them? I'd like to hear about it in the comments.


vol. 1 here
vol. 2 here
vol. 3 here
vol. 4 here
vol. 5 here

alphabetical index of reviews

Report Pascoite · 382 views · #anime #review
Comments ( 6 )

You clearly didn't get to the best part of Beyblade:

5486696
That is pretty epic.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

It just looks like you've forgotten 25% of BNHA. XD

I tell ya, I've seen Blue Sub 6 too, and I can't remember it either. :B

5486696
Oh my god XD

5486816
I don't even know what that is. :unsuresweetie:

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

5487389
Japanese for MHA. :B

5487430
Ah. It'll be a long time until I review that, since I won't until it ends.

As a side note, we often get a week of free premium movie stations around holidays, and when that happened around Christmas, one of the stations was playing the MHA movie just hours after the free preview ended. >:|

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