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Posts tagged Series Review
Series Review: School Days
Sep 29th
“Just as I thought. There’s no one inside.”
School Days is unquestionably the most blogged-about anime of the summer season, perhaps even eclipsing the king from spring, Lucky Star. Whether the hype is proportional to the quality of the show is the major question here.
This story of the three people who met in the school and got turned into three “love” stories has been getting reviews all over the spectrum; and it’s not just anti-votes that are killing the show’s rating.
Aside from the seasoned SD vets claiming that the story doesn’t stay true to one plot – which is likely true, although unverifiable by me – the wide range of review scores and feelings about the show stem to the fact that School Days, above anything else, is unquestionably different from any show of the genre.
It sets itself up as a simple, happy romance show, a bit of a love triangle, something that a lot of anime viewers should be familiar with.
Where it goes from there is what’s interesting, perhaps shocking.
Most of the viewers of School Days are well familiar with its darker-than-expected roots, and quite morally and/or sanity challenged characters. But adaptations tend to change a lot and with only 3 true “bad” endings out of a possible 20 (summing up possibilities from harem endings to ending up with any main character or side character) there are plenty of ways to clean up School Days’s ways.
And for the first few episodes, School Days led you on like a criminal out of prison, claiming that it had changed. There was a happy, bright OP called “Innocent Blue.” The character’s crushes on each other seemed innocent enough. What could go wrong?
Plenty, in fact.
To say any more would be to spoil the show, but rest assured that if you like pleasant, upbeat, heartwarming romances you’re going to be running screaming from School Days.
Rather, what you get is a dark, almost soap-opera-like concoction packed with twists, turns, and drama. This polarized the crowd, which generally fell into three groups:
1) Loved the drama, and the show.
2) Hated the drama, and the show.
3) Found the drama, and thus the show, hilarious.
Your ability to survive characters specifically set up to be detestable will say a lot about your enjoyment of School Days. If you can handle hating characters, if you can handle not making any assumptions that any character is “good”, School Days is an excellent anime.
But not a top-notch one.
School Days is still a flawed anime, despite what one could possibly call quite enrapturing (when it’s not ridiculous, or perhaps because it is) drama. The focus is arguably too thin, as while the main characters will have their stories resolved in a nice manner, the side characters simply disappear by story’s end.
And it’s not by any means a show everybody could find something to like in.
If you don’t mind a walk on the dark side, School Days is still a show very worth watching, as what it does, it does very well. It’s just what it doesn’t do that keeps it from top status…
(Huge spoilers are huge, after the jump.)
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Series Review: Lunar Legend Tsukihime
Sep 20th
Visual novel conversions are quite common in the anime world. It makes sense, a lot of the time; the content’s already there, without much need for original work. And the characters typically already pander to the mostly male anime audience; whether it be improbable body shapes, lolicons, or just straight-up moe characters. And there’s already a proven audience; the people who bought the original visual novel and are dying to see it in animated form.
But, for those animation studios who decide to make an anime out of a mostly serious or emotional visual novel, it’s hell on earth. While playing to the lowest common demographic in more ecchi/lighthearted conversions (like, say, the first halves of Shuffle or D.C.) may be easy, making a visual novel with an actual story “work” is very hard.
Why? It’s the simple concept of most visual novels; one guy, many girls. While it’s not always as dirty as it sounds, the framework goes as such and as a result there’s not one canon storyline to work off of.
There may be a main storyline, one heroine who is placed above the others, but still one obviously cannot ignore the other harem members and their stories entirely. And such resides the complexity of visual novel conversions in that a studio has to work to flesh out and unify the story as much as possible without straying too far from the original work, lest the fans be forced to take up their arms (although that seems to happen about anything, eh?).
And that is why Tsukihime is simply one of those visual novels that Does Not Compute into anime form.
Certainly I appreciate the efforts to make an excellent story into an excellent show, but in the end, Lunar Legend Tsukihime falls far short of the mark…even when you give it credit for trying to make a workable story out of things.
(Spoilers for Tsukihime anime and visual novel post-jump.)
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Series Review: Tokimeki Memorial ~only love~
Sep 10th
“It’s said that if on the day of the Graduation Ceremony, if a couple declares their love for each other under that tree, they will always be happy.”
It’s so cheesy; it’s so Tokimeki Memorial.
The surprisingly long-running “dating sim” Tokimeki Memorial has always had at least in some form a reference to this trademark of the series, a tree which the protagonist’s goal is to get a confession under.
The anime version is no exception, and probably like the games that predated it, it builds it’s show using these basic building blocks. Tokimeki Memorial ~only love~ is a very no-frills, straight-forward, one might say obvious harem/romance school life anime, and if you’ve seen any of these before, and if you see the first 5 minutes or so of the first episode, you’ll know what to expect here.
To that sense, Tokimeki Memorial is the bread and butter show of a bread and butter genre. Harem/romance anime are one of the more popular types, appealing to a large and largely male audience. Tokimeki Memorial features many of the popular types of harem characters. The school idol. The energetic girl. The shy girl. And the mostly gutless male lead urged on by his companions who in no order are 1) womanizers, 2) unnecessarily masculine, and 3) soft-hearted delinquents. You see it once, you’ve seen it all.
So, the question is: why why why shouldn’t you hate TokiMemo a lot, forever?
As predictable as it is, as cookie-cutter as it is, TokiMemo has sort of a charm to it, something that makes it stand out a bit from the crowd.
It boasts strong points where many other anime lack – the side characters go above and beyond and go very far towards carrying a show with somewhat predictable main characters. The mood never strays too far into overblown drama, always keeping somewhat of a light side and never shying away from devolving into sanity. The main characters do break their stereotypes at times – some might say in stereotypical ways – but certainly you can’t pigeonhole the main three entirely into one block.
And, on a less objective sense, it’s really a very good looking show.
Tokimeki Memorial ~only love~ isn’t groundbreaking. If you hate harem shows, school life shows, romance shows in general, you’re going to get bored of this faster than Makoto Itou does with whoever the hell he’s with now. (If you’re from the future where people have finally talked about School Days, substitute “very fast”.)
Even if you do have a fondness for shows like this, TokiMemo is really day-to-day. You might think it’s too predictable in the face of shows like Shuffle!. You might think the lead character is too cowardly in the face of guys like Yuuichi. You might think that this show doesn’t maintain enough of a down-to-earth aura like – well, what has accomplished that? Honey & Clover (which I really need to see)?
But TokiMemo is one of shows that defies comparison; it’s one that may not have a huge draw, fanbase, or, even a large blog presence, but if you like this show, you’ll really like this show.
Certainly I have it to thank for drawing me back into anime, and so perhaps my view is colored by the 6-month-long journey this show has taken me on. But I really have a lot of praise for a show that, among harem shows, could be surprising good despite all the ground it retreads.
(Do I really need to say “Spoilers after the jump”?)
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Visual Novel Review: Kagetsu Tohya
Sep 4th
Kagetsu Tohya is a visual novel by Type-Moon. It essentially is the “sequel”, in all intention, to its popular predecessor Tsukihime, one of the most gripping and emotional stories I’ve seen this side of, well, actual books. (Which I admit I do lack in.)
This, as has been addressed and joked about in my two earlier posts about KT, should be all you really need to read in this post, because either you will be:
1) Completely lost and ignore this post
2) Proudly crossing this game off your Completed Type-Moon Works list
3) Dashing to get your hands on the patch.
To be honest Kagetsu Tohya isn’t one of those things where you can simply go “Heh, CCY’s raving about it, let’s go play it,” because while the story is for all purposes separate from that of Tsukihime’s, both some of the minor aspects and many of the in-jokes will fly far, far over your head if you have not played the original. There’s a reason it’s called the Tsukihime Fun Disc, and not Tsukihime II.
So if you don’t know who Ciel-sensei is (or if you answer Ciel), why Sacchin is sad, or why Hisui is so moe you’re going to die I would highly suggest you play Tsukihime first. The patch can be
found over at Mirror Moon.
That advice applies even if you’ve watched the anime and think you have a grasp on what Tsukihime is, because to be honest…you don’t. There’s four full paths you’re missing out on. And they’re all the good ones.
That said, if you’re bored and curious what exactly Kagetsu Tohya has to offer – perhaps, if you need a reason to get into Tsukihime, or if you still live in the land of the 56K modem, or maybe if you just want to hear me rant about Sacchin – then read on. Spoilers will be kept to a minimum.
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Series "Review": Azumanga Daioh
Aug 27th
Azumanga Daioh is a show about everything and nothing. It’s so unfunny at times it’s funny and sometimes it tries to be so funny that it’s not. Whatever it may be, it’s certainly one of the bigger-name shows, being the benchmark to which many slice-of-life/4-koma anime have been compared to. Rightfully?
Probably. I can certainly say that I enjoyed the anime very much, but coming from Mr. Likes Everything that may not be saying much.
The most balanced way to evaluate Azumanga is probably to say that it’s appeal and downfall stem from the same aspect of it, in that it’s a very simple show.
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