Review Fantasista Doll

Uzume Uno is a pretty normal middle school girl who was into card games as an elementary school student. One day she had a strange looking cellphone put inside of her school bag and then she is confronted by a girl but manages to fight her of when a girl that comes from the cellphone defeats her. It turns out that she is only one of five girls, or dolls, that can be summoned from her cellphone and now refer to Uzume as their master. 

As I have stated before Fantasista Doll is a magical girl show which is aimed at a male audience even though it kind of pretends it is aimed at girls. It has an uneven amount of fan service that is slightly too much for something like Sailor Moon or Pretty Cure but inadequate for something labeled as an ecchi or fan service show. Other than it’s summoning and battling gimmicks this feels like a fairly bog standard magical girl show.

If this show can be said to have a philosophical leaning to it, it has an internal discussion on the meaning of friendship. In particular there is some thought placed on the relationship between Uzume and her dolls. It is made clear that even though they are called dolls, the girls summoned from Uzume’s phone are not poke-slaves (episode 4 makes this very clear) and it is very clear that they have abandonment issues. These give this show a small amount of intellectual weight.

 Let me make this clear, this is not a very serious show. This show interspersed with things such as whale punch, Uzume turning to half a tank and of course the team attack, the friendship cannon. This show is often stupid, but it is a fun kind of stupid.

Overall this is show you might want to watch if you like the magical girl genre but it isn’t one of my top picks in said genre.

Rating bronze The bronze Icchan (Angelic Layer) for pleasant diversion in the magical girl battling genre.

Review Daybreak Illusion aka Genei wo Kakeru Taiyou

Hanging out in a graveyard

Akari Taiyou is a generally normal girl who has fortune telling as a hobby, something that she has inherited from her dead mother. She lives with the rest of her family including her cousin Fuyuna who has a secret resentment towards Akari. One night Akari was attacked by a strange monster and a new power awakens in Akari which allows her to defeat the monster. This is not without consequence as when the dust settles Fuyuna is dead. It happens to be that Akari has inherited the powers of the elemental tarot and that she is fated to fight monsters called Daemonia, which appear from human negativity and consume their hosts just like the Daemonia that consumed Fuyuna. 

The technical staff of this show trying too hard to be Moe

Daybreak Illusion is a dark magical girl show that has just finished airing as of this writing. One of the first things that you hear is how it is compared with the acclaimed anime show Madoka Magica and how this show is just a knock off. I would say that this show goes in it’s own direction and that it can stand on it’s own. 

Like Seira I believe we must all fight a naked, insane, lesbian werewolf sometimes

What it is lacking is the show’s inability to handle tragedy properly. Very often characters will lose all common sense in order to facilitate drama. This is especially true starting in episode eight and from their on the plot starts to go off the rails and never get’s back on track so to speak. I know this is supposed to make the show feel like it’s building to a climax but it just feels messy and poorly thought out. Also while I don’t have a problem with a cute art style normally I found the art style of Daybreak Illusion to be a huge mismatch with the tone of the story and it is not in a way that attempts to be a juxtaposition. 

I end this review with a picture of hammering a screw

Overall I had some early hopes for this show although given the train wreck it that turned into it is something that I can not recommend.

Rating The tin pompadour for being the Red Line of magical girl shows.

Uchuten Kazoku audio review

the podcast file of this

I decided to do something a bit different with by Uchuten Kazoku review. I hope you like it.
the audio file

update 3/13/14
Also I now have a working youtube link here
As for the rating (I forgot to include in the audio review)
The silver Tanuki for surpassing Pon Poko to become the best anime with a large Tanuki presence

Review The World God Only Knows The Goddesses arc

The World God only knows is a franchise that I am rather fond of and I wasn’t expecting a third season of this show but I can tell you this, I am very glad that it came out and if you get into this show at all, so should you.

You can get my arc animated, right?

Keima Katsuragi has been capturing the hearts of girls in order to release the evil spirits that hide in their hearts for quite some time now. One day Kanon, the classmate of his who also a famous idol, confesses his feelings for him. This is quite odd as even though he captured her heart long ago, when a heart is captured the girl should forget all about Keima. What’s more she gets attacked by some strange demons from hell and put into a coma. It is the start of a great change in Keima’s normal routine.

Keima being Keima

As one could probably expect given that this is the third season of a said anime series this anime season is something you need prior experience to understand this anime. There is some consternation that the material adapted skips a lot of manga material. However as someone who has seen the anime but not the manga I can say that you don’t need to see the manga to understand this season, even during the episodes that Yui and Tsukiyo (the characters whom have arcs in the manga material that was skipped) appear.

obligatory Haqua

What this makes this anime season really good is how it upsets the status quo for the anime. While the first half of the season is something of a greatest hits of the show; the second deals more with the consequences of Keima having to convince multiple girls to fall in love with him, namely a love triangle between Keima and two previous girls.  While the manga story goes onward I found the conclusion to this season to be something really special and well worth watching.

So many feels

As for my recommendation If you managed to make it through the second season (or even the first season, just watch episodes 3 through 7 and the Tenri Oav for the necessary information) you should watch this season. 

Rating  The silver Alabasta (One Piece) for being that really awesome arc of an anime that takes things to a whole new level.

Review Silver Spoon

Hachiken Yugo is new High school student who has chosen to go to a agricultural high school even though he went to a rather prestigious middle school in the big city. Hachiken is unused to living the lifestyle of a farmer even though almost all of the students there know of little else. The reason for his joining this school is a bit vague although he says he wants to stay there because it is a boarding school.

Bambi is going to be good eatin

Silver Spoon is a interesting show when you try to classify it in terms of genre. It is a drama although it is quite a bit of humor in the show. The two elements of the show work well together and complement each other.

That's some moe pig

In fact if there is one phrase that I can use to describe the positive quality of Silver Spoon is that it manages to find a good middle ground between two extremes. In essence this is a stranger in strange land type of story although it manages to respect both Hachiken’s experience and views and experience and viewers of the other characters who are more familiar with farm life.

Buddha teacher is part of your well balanced cast

This since of balance pervades other facets of the show as well. There is a good deal of character development but it never feels forced or heavy handed. Similarly there is a good amount of philosophical meat (and a good deal of this is about meat) thrown at the audience but it rarely if ever tells the audience what to think or feel.

Overall This is a thoughtful drama that is not only a well done piece of anime but it is something that I feel is very approachable as well which is a rarity for more thought provoking shows. I know this show is only halfway done (given that there is a second half to be shown in winter 2014) and there is still the fall season but I am seriously thinking about this show as show of the year.

Rating Gold spoon, I know what the show’s title is but it is so good I am bumping it up to a gold rating. 

Review King of Thorn

The main character and her sister

A long time ago I read the King of Thorne manga and thought that this would be a pretty decent movie it made into one.  Turns out my expectations were not entirely met when I actually saw the movie adaptation.

Things don't turn out so well for him. 

In the year 2012 the world is ravaged by a strange virus which turns people into stone. It is called the Medusa virus. Amid the panic a shadowy corporation called Venus gate has a plan to place 160 people into cryostasis in an old castle that has been converted into a laboratory until the disease can be cured. One of the people picked is a teenage Japanese girl by the name of Kasumi Ishiki. When they went to sleep they expected to wake up to a peaceful world where they would be toward not a strange version of the castle covered in vines and inhabited by monsters.

The best and the worst of the animation, side by side

King of thorn is a straight up action movie with monster horror elements. Even though the main character is a teenage girl with no combat ability most of the movie centers around either fighting or running away from monsters. The finding this mostly facilitated by Owen one of her fellow patients who appears to be a convicted criminal but has an interesting past. Even though the main character is definitely over her head I find her still somewhat compelling as she gives the movie  the chance to be something other than a brainless monster bashing flick.

The guy that does most of the action stuff in this movie

Even though this is an action movie and one does not generally watch such movies looking for deep characterization I found the character serviceable. The pacing of the movie is decent as well although the first 20 minutes is mostly set up. Animation is a bit iffy at times as it seems so fluctuate between being very good at doing still shots and backgrounds but often degrading into jarring CG animation for action scenes.

Overall I find this to be decent movie best suited for rental like many action movies but not thing really more than that.

Rating The bronze Tetsuo cape (Akira) or being a decent action scifi movie adaptation of manga. 

I am on Taskforce MOE

  This is the first of what I can only hope is several appearances on other blogs, podcasts and websites. Yay for me. What you will hear in this link is me having a conversation with the dashing and dapper Timeenforceranubis about the topic of moe. You can listen to the conversation here

You can also hear and read more of Timeenforceranubis thoughts on the SLC anime tab on the blog roll.