Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 7 · 4:06am Apr 14th, 2021
Getting a late start tonight, and unfortunately, there's a lot to cover before I hit two "excellent" or "very good" ratings. I might have to shove a few of these to next time. Anyway, featured items this week are Cromartie High School and Darker Than Black, after the break.
And I mean there are a crap ton of those rated "good" and under. I might even have to do a make-up blog of those next time.
Cromartie High is very funny. Now that that's out of the way, it's actually been quite a while since I saw it, but I still remember it very fondly. It's your typical high school class where all the delinquents have been lumped together, but the cast of characters here is great. The main character, Takashi, isn't really a tough guy at all, but everyone assumes he must be to wade into such a rogues' gallery, so they treat him with the utmost deference. There's also a guy who looks a lot like his mother (this is not a good thing, at least not for her), a guy who's dumber than a bag of hammers, a guy named Freddie who bears an uncanny resemblance to Freddie Mercury, an obvious robot who nobody seems to recognize as such... and it just gets more weird from there. I wish I could go into some depth here, but... there's nothing. It's just a wacky comedy with no plot. If you like that kind of thing, this is a good example of it.
Rating: very good
26 episodes, relevant genres: comedy
Darker Than Black is a rather good action/intrigue story. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, and I was left confused by a fair amount of the ending, but after discussing it with some friends, I think I got it now. Anyway, a lot of what's going on and how it got that way is doled out bit by bit throughout the whole thing, and in fact, I'll lump in the sequels, Darker Than Black: Gemini of the Meteor and Darker Than Black: Gaiden. I liked them all the same, and they're one continuous plot. Gaiden is an OVA series that was made last, but chronologically, it fits in between the other two. I'd actually recommend watching them in chronological order, because there's a big jump between the two main series in the cast and when they happen. Gaiden introduces a lot of characters that otherwise feel like you're getting a big in medias res when starting Gemini.
I can't really give the how and why of it all, since that reveal is the whole point of the show, but the premise is that Something Happened years ago that resulted in a huge accident, an area of Tokyo being evacuated and walled off as deadly, and certain people developing powers. The two main types are dolls (who generally have some sort of passive communication ability they can use constantly, but they're various degrees of catatonic most of the time) and contractors (who have to perform some action as payment to use their power and are otherwise perfectly functional, though they lack emotion). The payments started out being interesting. They were pretty random. Some contractors had one they actually liked, some were terrible. But as the series went on, too many of them skewed to the ironic that they started to become ubiquitous as such. The one who can't stand cigarettes but has to smoke one. The lesbian who has zero interest in men but has to give one a deep kiss. That kind of thing. The sky is no longer real, though it resembles the actual one. The stars are in the correct places, but each one is linked to a contractor, and when one dies, their star falls. The police track them that way and even refer to them by their star catalog numbers, since they don't often know the real names. There are a couple other types of people with powers, but they're pretty rare and don't figure into the plot much.
There are lots of factions in play, and the main characters are a small team working for one of them. A regular guy is in charge, then there are two contractors and a doll. They don't really know why they're given the assignments they are or what their employers' plans are, but they play along. Often under threat, but... whaddya gonna do?
The main character, Hei, is one of the contractors, and he has a pretty interesting relationship with the doll, Yin. A number of the enemies they encounter are blasts from the past for him. Plus one of the police detectives has taken a personal interest in capturing him, but in true intrigue story fashion, she realizes that the higher-ups haven't told her all of what's happening, either, so her loyalties waver at times, too. The fight scenes are well done, and one thing I've been lax about in these reviews is talking about the art and music, since I specifically mentioned those as part of a complete package a show has to present to get an "excellent" rating. The art's definitely good, and Yoko Kanno did the soundtrack, so of course that's top-notch. I listen to it regularly.
Things start to get even weirder when it jumps from the first series to Gemini. Yin's suddenly gone, and if you didn't see Gaiden beforehand, you'll be at a loss as to why. But she plays a very different role here that even after seeing Gaiden seemed to be an odd choice. She doesn't stand out above any of the other dolls really, but by the sequel, she's one of the most important people alive without any real transition. It just felt like tonal whiplash with her characterization. That's my only big complaint about the show.
Some of it's fairly episodic, where they help out people they've encountered, but most of it is in service to the overarching plot. Gemini brings in another character named Suoh. She's pretty cool, and her power is that she can manifest a huge anti-tank rifle (I don't know why those things seemed to get pretty popular in anime around the 2010-2015 time frame), but... the way she creates it got uncomfortably fan-service-y to me. Her origin gets pretty convoluted, but it's cool to follow it, and then her ultimate fate seemed kinda vague? I had to guess at what the ending meant (turns out I actually got it right).
Rating for all three: very good
25 episodes + 1 OVA (original series), 12 episodes (Gemini), 4 episodes (Gaiden), relevant genres: action, thriller, mystery
Now to the rest, and I'll get through as many of this batch as I can before I get tired of writing.
Bleach (366 episodes)—I would have covered this last week, except there was one more part I wanted to watch first. This show is legendary for a few things: going off on seemingly interminable tangents, getting cancelled before the plot wrapped up, and being one of the worst examples ever of power creep. Seriously. Ichigo rises to the challenge of every season, only to find the next season's baddies make the previous ones look like child's play, so he just has to make another huge leap in ability. Which would seem to put him way ahead of all the Soul Society captains, yet they somehow manage to keep pace with him, even though they never actually improve. Yet I liked the show. The characters were cool, if too driven by fan service in many cases, and the fight scenes were good. The world building was good as well, at least the premise behind season 1. I didn't mind the Aizen arc too much either but the whole bounts one seemed pointless. Rating: good. Relevant genres: action, fantasy, adventure.
Bleach: Memories of Nobody (movie)—fairly generic plot of some lost souls caught between the real world and the soul society deciding they just need to destroy both. The friendtagonist Senna was a cool enough character, and she ends up saving this for me, even though her role is predictable. Rating: good. Relevant genres: action, fantasy, adventure.
Bleach: The Diamond Dust Rebellion (movie)—interesting concept of all the different sword personas manifesting and deciding they aren't going to serve their masters anymore. They're more or less being compelled to, but it still all seemed like a hand wave as to why the bad guy was doing this, and when that leaves all the good guys effectively unarmed, yet they still manage to fight... this just wasn't convincing. Rating: decent. Relevant genres: action, fantasy, adventure.
There are a couple of other Bleach movies, but at this point, I don't know if I'm going to bother watching them. But then we get to what held up my inclusion of Bleach...
Burn the Witch (alternately presented as 3 episodes or a single movie)—this supposedly takes place in the Bleach universe, but honestly, I don't see it. Besides the main characters belonging to a "Soul Society Western Branch," it bears no resemblance to what that entails in the original or what the members' function is. Whereas in Bleach, they fight demons and facilitate passage from life to death, here, they live in London, where there's an entire half of the city only certain people can see. Most bad things in life occur because of dragons, and the sorcerers try to keep them in check. It's a very interesting concept that was originally done as a one-shot manga. It eventually continued, but I've seen no indication the anime will. As such, it's not surprising that it felt incomplete, and that lots of the world-building elements ultimately went nowhere. In a longer series, they'd have space to use everything, but one movie just goes by too quickly for all that. I did like the characters and art, again aside from some of the more egregious fan service this manga series is known for. Rating: good. Relevant genres: action, adventure, fantasy
Boarding School Juliet (Kishuku Gakko no Jurietto, 12 episodes)—the title basically tells you all you need to know about this one, but it's one of the better examples of the setup. Two factions dominate a school, and they irrevocably hate each other, except two of the top people from each side fall in love and have to keep it a secret. It was appropriately sweet at times, and the comedy bits reliably landed for me, plus the few other characters who know and try to hinder/help them proved enjoyable. I'm probably rating this a bit higher than it actually deserves, but oh well. Rating: good. Relevant genres: romance, comedy.
Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo (76 episodes)—random comedy isn't for everyone, but if you like it, this one delivers. Like Cromartie High, there's not much to say about this, since there's no plot, and the only reason I didn't rate this one as high is that it's nearly triple the length, so it overstays its welcome a bit. Bobobo picks up an entourage of enemies-turned-friends to combat an evil tyrant who's trying to rob the world of its hair. My absolute favorite gag from the whole thing was a high-ranking guy's group of henchmen, called the Captain Battleship Five Quartet. There were six of them. If that's the kind of thing that gets you laughing, then you will enjoy this. Rating: good. Relevant genres: comedy, adventure.
Boogiepop Phantom (12 episodes)—this is more of an anthology series, but there is a loose overall arc. Some years ago, a mysterious pillar of light appeared in the sky after a number of serial killings. When young people start disappearing again, urban legend attributes it to the titular phantom. It creates a Twilight Zone-type atmosphere, though as the series progresses, it gels into more of a coherent plot and explanation for why everything is happening. The episode that struck me the most was the one about the girl who played piano. Her fate was quite sudden and stark. Though it's hard to gain a full grasp of that from the show alone—there's also a series of novels. Rating: good. Relevant genres: mystery, supernatural, thriller, horror.
Cardcaptor Sakura (I don't know how many episodes)—I started watching when this first came out, but it became quickly apparent that it would be something like Pokemon where ostensibly there's a finite number of things to collect, but the show will keep appending more and more as long as the producers want it to keep going. Sakura inadvertently sets loose a bunch of supernatural beings from a set of arcane cards, so she is charged with recovering them. As she captures them and puts them back in their cards, she can use their powers to collect more. Alright idea, but I lost interest after a dozen episodes or so. Rating: decent. Relevant genres: adventure, fantasy.
Case Closed (I don't know how many episodes on this one either)—a series legendary for the massive number of episodes. Toonami played it for a few months many years ago, so I've seen one or two seasons of it, and it was pleasant enough. It reminds me of the old Encyclopedia Brown books in that it's a fairly contrived mystery that the viewer is invited to solve before Conan reveals the solution. It's cute and fun enough, but I don't think it'd hold my interest long enough to see the entire run. Rating: decent. Relevant genres: mystery.
Casshern Sins (24 episodes)—the title character is a robotic warrior who doesn't remember much about his past or how the world got the way it is. There are lots of other robots running around, and humans as well, but the environment is very hostile to both, and they all seem to be fighting a losing battle against it. His search draws him to a human named Luna, whose past is intertwined with his, but whatever destroyed the world also changed her fundamentally. I liked the idea behind this setup, but for me, the characterizations were all shallow and bland, and I never cared about any of them enough to have a stake in the plot. Rating: meh. Relevant genres: action, sci-fi, adventure.
Children Who Chase Lost Voices (Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo, movie)—a very highly rated film, but one that I found it a little hard to get into. I liked the visuals and the characters, but it felt too slow-paced to me a fair amount of the time, which strikes me as odd, because there's a lot going on. A girl named Asuna lost her father some time ago. She encounters a strange boy, who saves her from a supernatural creature. They spend some time together, and she hopes to see him again. But the next day, she learns that a body found in the area was his. When she goes to school, the substitute teacher is giving a lesson about a mythical land of the dead, but a lot of the detail rings true to her with regards to the boy she encountered, so she talks to him about it. It gets her thinking that if such a place exists, maybe she could get her father back. Upon finding another strange boy who looks very much like the first one, she wanders into the underworld, and yes, the oddly knowledgeable teacher turns up there as well, seeking his dead wife. It's a weak alliance, and several other factions come into play. Of course there will be deceit and betrayal, but what I did appreciate is the way the story treats its theme of death. Each major player has a different relationship with it and is down there looking for a different remedy to ease their pain. It's no surprise then that they will make different decisions and have different things they're willing to give up to achieve their goals. Of course it would be spoilers to give all that away, but what didn't really sink in until well after I'd seen it is the sort of reversal in the final outcome. You'd think the teacher is the most mature character and Asuna would be the least, but the way it ends, it could be argued that she displays the most wisdom in the denouement, while the teacher is still trapped in a childish escapism. Ultimately, I found the teacher's behavior largely opaque, and the pacing was uneven, but other than that, I enjoyed it. Rating: good. Relevant genres: adventure, supernatural.
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
vol. 6 here
I have a love/hate relationship with Bleach. I simply LOVE the first arc and, then, everything that came after i hate with the force of a thousand black suns. And since my OCD don´t lemme forget the dammed thing, I´ve punished me through the whole series, and ova´s, and then I was finally free...but, then, again, they are making new episodes, or, maybe, it is a reboot, really don´t care wich one....ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHH !!!
Cardacptor Sakura was one of my fisrt experiences with anime and I just LOVE it. Yeah, I know, gota cath them all vibe...but just for a while. Things change, a lot. The cards are more then simples collectibles, and Sakura is not only getting then together...she is being tested and trained.
It have a slow pace, very, VERY sweet and innocent characters, can be a little childish sometimes, but it is very worth. I´ll watch the show again in the next week with my daughter,
Cardcaptor was a much better read than it was to watch really.
I feel like there are some shows/books/movies/whatever where the worldbuilding and fanworks opportunities are better than the actual story itself, and Bleach definitely falls into that category. A large afterlife institution of samurai reapers with personality-based powers who deal with (among other things) cleaning out malevolent spirits and other supernatural entities in the "real" world? It's not exactly an original premise, but there's plenty of opportunity there for interesting plots, characters and stories a-plenty to be told. And it's certainly likely that some schmuck on the internet could honestly do a better job than Tite Kubo did, which - as you mentioned - was basically an exercise in power creep and massive knockers. Still, I'm thankful Bleach exists, because otherwise said fanworks wouldn't exist - and because, for all of its faults, Bleach is a very stylish shonen with good characters and fight sequences.
It really wouldn't have killed him to draw smaller breasts though, I swear to god
I remember liking DTB, though I don't know if I saw more than one season. :B
Getting out of Bleach after Aizen is defeated is the best
gamermove I ever made. I really liked the series, but I quickly realized it was going DBZ on us, and that point seemed like the right time to stop, since the 'main' plotline was finished. I liked the Bount arc, though. I recognize that it's basically a huge diversion from the 'main', 'actual' plot, which is probably why it's not highly regarded. But if it had come after the other two arcs instead of between them, I think it would have been better received.I tried watching Bobobo once upon a time and I just could not take it. Even I have limits to how much randomness I can accept.
Ah, I remember Card Captors. Mostly because my sister was obsessed with it for, say, three months. It was alright. I certainly enjoyed the aesthetic, and I always thought Tomoyo was friggen adorable (the fact I can recall her name after two decades says something, I think). But yeah,it failed to maintain my attention for very long.
I should watch anime again. I should also go back and see if there are any others you've rated I know.
Bleach, while far from perfect, was the show that cemented my lifelong appreciation of anime as an artform. Shiro Sagisu's excellent score really set the tone, and the dub is one of the few great enough that I'd pick it over the subbed original.
However, I agree with Petrichord 5497509 in that the setting is ripe for reinterpretation. Case in point:
- Equestria Girls
- Bleach
- Adventure
When dangerous supernatural creatures start to stalk the streets of Canterlot City, Sunset Shimmer and the gang become involved in events that will irrevocably change their lives. A crossover series with the Bleach anime/mangaThis is my favorite crossover on the site, by far. If you've got time to read one and a half million words, Vex is really making something special here, an excellent, multifaceted, epic adventure.
Dude, Cromartie is fantastic. My fav joke still has to be the dominos just because it's so... petty?
Boogiepop Phantom is on my watch list, I love the design and the premise seems interesting, so I just need to make time for it.
re: Darker than Black.... I really liked the series but I feel like the more you get into it, the more they try to cram world-building wise that hints at a big reveal but never really gets you there. I do enjoy listening to the ending theme tho.
5497462
I'm with you there on Bleach. Season 1 was a great plot, but then the power creep got ridiculous, and only the Aizen arc came close in keeping me interested. Also with you on OCD. I'm the kind of person who reads all the comics in the Sunday paper, even the ones I don't like because otherwise it's incomplete, and that drives me nuts. So it's rare for me to start watching an anime and not finish it. At least I tend to find most animes at least decent, so I'm not usually torturing myself, though there are times I hit on one I just plain don't like but still push through it for the sake of completeness.
5497509
Some of the characters are rather flat-chested! But of course those characters are either shamed for it or portrayed with it as a fetishized thing.
5497539
Yes, it's definitely fair to say that Darker Than Black love to keep doing world building round the edges without ever really solidly defining anything. I mean... they spend two whole series hinting at something that happened in Brazil, and by the end, you still only have bits and pieces to hint at the whole of what happened. Just about everything in the show is like that. But the art, music, characterization, and action were enough to pull it up for me.
Darker Than Black is a great example of worldbuilding disease I think. Just had a cool idea, but not really a plot or even any coherent way to tell the audience about the world. Though I say that with love because I really enjoyed the first season. Tried like one episode of the sequel and the time jump pushed me away. Might try again sometime with the connecting bits you mentioned.
Wow. Reading these anime reviews has been a blast from the past. I mostly watch currently running series, so it's been forever since I've thought about some of these classics.
5499640
I watch a mix of older and current stuff, but the newer things don't appear in these blogs until they're complete, so they're under-represented for now. There are a few series that had an intention to continue but haven't for years now, so I may give up on them ever doing so. I think the only series from the last couple years I've covered so far are Arte and BNA. The rest I'm watching are still ongoing.