Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 11 · 2:18am Jun 16th, 2021

In two weeks, I'll be getting into town late Tuesday and going away again Thursday, so... not sure whether I'll try to squeeze in a blog entry then on its usual schedule or just take the week off. Featured items this week are Durarara!! and Gunbuster, plus bonus plug for Green Legend Ran and the usual shorter reviews of other stuff, after the break.

Durarara!! is a great series that started out strong then tried to do too much. In previous entries, I've lumped all the material together at times or considered it separately, and I'm going to break this one up.

This only works well in certain series, and I've already cited Assassination Classroom and Baccano! as good examples of it: tossing you into the middle of a fast-paced show with a ton of characters representing a large number of factions, and still being something that's not hard to follow and which has immediately memorable characters. Within a few episodes, there's some intrigue about rival street gangs, one of which kind of gives off the vibe that their purpose is nonviolent; an incredibly strong bartender who flies into a rage if you get on his bad side; an information broker who pisses everyone off but has just enough leverage to ensure his own relative safety; a girl possessed by a demon sword who feels resigned to her fate; a dullahan (think headless horseman) who's been searching for her lost head for ages... and that's maybe just half of what's going on.

The action somewhat centers around a guy named Mikado who's moved to the Ikebukuro area of Tokyo and reconnected with an old friend there, though it takes tangents to deal with all those other plot threads. And I use the term loosely, as aside from Celtie's (the dullahan) quest to find her head, there isn't that much of a coherent plot, just madcap action and humor. This series is at its best when you're just laughing at the insanity on screen. So many of the side characters are equally enjoyable, and I particularly liked the foursome of the van crew (Erika and Walker's constant discussions of actual or obvious references to anime are fun). I found it curious that in the English dub, the blonde lady has a thick Russian accent, while in the sub, she doesn't seem to have an accent at all. I only watched a little of the sub, so I'm not sure if she's even supposed to be Russian in that one.

It's kind of like Seinfeld in that it's a show about nothing, and the few things it is about tend to go on the disturbing side, usually revolving around Celtie's head. Like how an Irish spirit's head would have even gotten to Japan, her lackadaisical attitude about it when she discovers the truth, and some other side plot about another head thought to be hers. They were... well, I'll just say they didn't make for believable character arcs, but believability isn't exactly this show's strong suit anyway.

This is an easy recommendation to make for high-energy random fun, humor, and action. The art and music were good for the whole series, and I've got a couple things off the OST saved.

Rating: very good.
24 episodes + 2 OVAs, relevant genres: action, mystery, comedy.

Then there are the sequels, Durarara!! x2 Shou, Durarara!! x2 Ten, and Durarara!! x2 Ketsu. At first, Shou starts off on the same note as the original, and it maintains it long enough that I liked it the same, but toward the end, and into the other two sequels, it tried to have much more of a defined plot about there being a lot more to Mikado then he'd let on and the gang warfare all coming to a head. Not that it was done poorly, but that just kind of went against what had made the early material so great. The further I went in, the less I liked it, until I was pushing through the later half of Ketsu somewhat just for the sake of completeness.

Rating: very good (Shou), good (Ten and Ketsu).
36 episodes (12 each), relevant genres: action, mystery, comedy.

Then there were some OVAs to Durarara!! x2, one per season, that sometimes get classified as movies, though they're still only as long as a standard episode. Sometimes they get called that just by virtue of having been played in theaters, as an intermission between two other films, though I don't know if that's the case here. Anyway, I've only seen one of them, Durarara!! x2 Ketsu Dufufufu!!, and it is hilarious. Someone gets mistaken for Shizuo (the abnormally strong bartender) and decides he's going to parlay that into making him a big man about town. He can intimidate and extort whoever he wants, and nobody dares resist, until he starts encountering people who know the real Shizuo and decide to have a bit of fun with him. Then of course the two Shizuos inevitably meet. A nice return to what made the original show great.

Rating: very good.
Movie, relevant genres: action, comedy.

Gunbuster is a fairly old movie; I saw it in college when two of my high school friends decided to organize an anime movie night, and aside from knowing Japanese animation had a distinctive look to it, I had no idea it was so widespread. It's not a very complex plot, so there's not a lot to discuss here. Some alien race is threatening Earth, and we send out a fleet of ships to try and stop them. These ships have their own weapons, but they also deploy mechs piloted by specially trained people. Most of the fleet gets destroyed, leaving one main ship where the protagonist Noriko serves. The female uniforms are... fan-service-y and dumb, to be blunt, but whatever.

The devil is in the details though. I've talked before about how getting something right can really add the punch that makes something good, as in my review of Whisper of the Heart back in volume 2. Here, it's about physics. It's a bit of a spoiler to spill this, but only a little—you find out pretty early on that such things happen, so it's not a surprise that it does again later. They have to travel at near light speed to intercept the enemy far from Earth, and obviously the first encounter won't end the war or there wouldn't be any plot left to cover, so they make multiple such trips. And what happens when you travel at near light speed? Time dilation. When they return from each battle, years have passed on Earth, and it's interesting to see how the age gaps that have opened up change how she relates to her childhood friend. That was a great subplot to introduce, and it worked wonderfully, except at the end, which I'll get to in a moment.

At first, Noriko isn't a good pilot at all, so when she's selected as one of the few to go on the mission, there are a lot of sour grapes and accusations of nepotism. She ends up having to defend herself in a mech fight, and in an interesting development, her poor performance to date had mostly been a result of information overload. If she turns off most of her equipment and just goes by feel, she's very effective. It's an old enough film that I doubt it's meant to be a portrayal of how some forms of autism can be, but it ended up being cool to think about it in those terms. It may well be nostalgia speaking, but I have good memories of this. There's a bit of a referential eye-roll in a character being named Jung Freud.

Except the end. It's meant to be a big dramatic moment, but honestly, it just felt like a cruel planet-wide prank to me. That's a rather mean-spirited thing to do to someone who just saved everyone's asses. (And now that I type that, I wonder why Old MacDonald didn't have any asses on his farm, and if he did, what sound they'd make. This is my brain.)

Rating: very good.
Movie (original title Toppu o Nerae! or Aim for the Top!), relevant genres: action, sci-fi.

Little plug here to Green Legend Ran, which isn't in this series of blogs, but I already reviewed it here, and I've rated it as very good.

To the cannon fodder!

Okay, let's deal with all the Gundam stuff in one shot. These are alphabetical, not chronological, since I can't be bothered to care that much about it. G Gundam (49 episodes), Gundam SEED (50 episodes), Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz (3 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam (43 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (50 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (6 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory (13 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam the Origin: Advent of the Red Comet (13 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn Re: 0096 (22 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (49 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam: 08th MS Team (12 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack (movie), Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans (50 episodes), SD Gundam Force (52 episodes)—why, in the name of all that is holy, have I watched that much Gundam stuff? Because Toonami keeps airing them between other shows I want to watch. >:V Honestly, it's not that they're terrible, but they do that same "drop you into tons of characters and factions" thing but in an ineffective way, imo, such that I don't find all the factions and people immediately memorable, so it's too easy to get lost. That gets exacerbated by the plot and shifting loyalties being intricate enough that if you don't pay close attention, it's easy to hopelessly lose track of what's happening. Iron-Blooded Orphans was the only one where the characters engaged me even a little, and the plot was stable enough that I could easily keep up. Rating: decent (Iron-Blooded Orphans), meh (the rest), relevant genres: action, sci-fi.

I also put Ghost in the Shell in volume 1 as a no brainer everyone's aware of. I haven't finished watching everything related to it, but it's already started as piecemeal anyway, so why not.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (26 episodes), Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society (movie), Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig (26 episodes)—there's nothing surprising here, as these deal with the same characters and themes as the movie did, but they do a good job of it, so they're worth watching if you liked that. Rating: good, relevant genres: action, mystery, sci-fi.

Girls' Last Tour (Shojo Shumatsu Ryoko, 12 episodes)—this was a weird beast. It's wonderfully atmospheric, and I loved the music. It's kind of a study in dissonance. You have this oppressively post-apocalyptic setting, but the titular girls, Yuuri and Chito, are so matter-of-fact about it. They were together when a war started, and one of their grandfathers told them to run away and be safe, and it seems like they'd have some memory of what happened in between to result in the human race basically being exterminated (and, I guess, all other animals, for that matter), but that's never touched on—just a few flashbacks of that initial escape sprinkled around these two girls slowly making their way through huge empty city and industrial landscapes. They do eventually encounter a couple of other humans, yet oddly later wonder if they're the only two left alive. The animation style is one usually used for cuter shows, so that and the girls' own attitude are set at such a tonal difference from the setting and premise. The show really is mostly pure slice of life, and the heartbreaking bit is more the realization of what situation they're in, even if they don't realize it and aren't particularly bothered by it. This would have easily been a "very good," maybe even an "excellent," but toward the end, it took such a WTF direction that I'm left shaking my head at who thought that would be a good idea. I'll just say the girls start finding some strange, mostly identical statues everywhere, and there ends up being a purpose to them, which just kind of puts a deus ex machina to it, except the deus doesn't help them in the least. Excellent beginning, but seriously does not stick the landing. Rating: good, relevant genres: slice of life, sci-fi.

Glitch Techs (19 episodes)—I may have the wrong story behind this, but as I understand it, Nickelodeon had originally made this show, but left it unfinished and decided not to air it. Eventually, they managed to sell it to Netflix, who were going to air what was there without adding any, except they did end up airing a second season, so... I don't know whether they made those or if Nickelodeon already had. I've even heard inklings there will be a third season, but that's looking more improbable to me. In any case, the plot centers around two gamers who are recruited to hunt down and capture the glitches that escape from an inherently flawed gaming concept into the real world in order to keep them from harming anyone. They're more or less secret agents and get to use all kinds of fancy tech. It's typical of the kinds of things you'd expect from Disney or Nickelodeon in terms of being aimed at younger kids more than traditional anime is, but still appealing to adults. It was a fun series, and the girl lead, Miko, is an especially cool character. She's kind of like a slightly more grounded Pinkie Pie. Rating: good, relevant genres: sci-fi, action, games/sports.

Gungrave (26 episodes)—I saw this long ago, and my impression was that only a few episodes of it aired, so I doubt I saw the whole thing. Something about a person who's been turned into a zombie so he can get revenge on criminals, and maybe the police were actually the ones using him to do so? It's based on a game, and I think you really would have had to play that in order to have enough context to understand the series. Without that, it's pretty inaccessible, and it just didn't interest me at all. Rating: yuck, relevant genres: action, thriller.

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
vol. 7 here
vol. 8 here
vol. 9 here
vol. 10 here

alphabetical index of reviews

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