review Rail wars

Okay I admit the fan service does get in the way sometimes

In an alternate world where the railways of Japan were never privatized Naoto is a young man with the dream of becoming a train engineer. He ends up as a trainee in the security program for the national railways. He is partnered with three other trainees and together they have railroad adventures.

getting fresh with the harem aren't you, minor character?

Rail Wars is a twelve episode long television show that has a bit of action as well as quite a bit of fan service. While there is a couple of multiple episode arcs later in the series it is a generally episodic show. The main cast consists of the main character as well as his two primary love interests (this show is a bit of a harem show with minor characters filling out the cast) and a poorly characterized wing man.

Childhood friend Maid but not a ninja, passable I guess.

While I am not universally dismissive of fan service shows I found that the fan service in Rail Wars is used to Spackle over often shoddy plots and other weaker aspects of the show. Other than the fan service it is not to say that the show is entirely without merit but it doesn't have enough merit to be considered even average.

Overall I find Rail Wars to be a weak action show that is disguised with panty shots.

Rating the Tin

Love live school idol project

I have not yet begun to look ridiculous

When Honoka Kosaka learned that Otonokizaka was going to close it's doors in three years she was almost beside herself. She then learned about how school idols are becoming popular she decided to form a school idol group in order to drum up some popularity in an effort to save the school. But with no previous musical experience can Honoka and her friends become a successful school idol group?

I have you now my pretties.

One of the more popular trends in anime today is to make shows about idols and Love Live School idol project is one of the most popular shows of this wave. I think that is not entirely happenstance, Love Live does a good job of creating memorable and likable characters, especially given that there are nine main characters in the cast. Another thing about this show is that idol shows are about music and this show delivers quite a few catchy tunes.

A picture like this is pretty much required for a review like this.

However this is not say that Love Live is some artistic masterpiece. While the characters may be fun there is little time to develop them beyond a basic personality for each of them. However how much of this matters is up to the individual. Idol shows might be nothing more than artistic junk food but I can say with some assurance that Love Live is perhaps one of the best bags of potato chips in this aisle.

Overall I think that Love Live tries to be nothing more than simple idol entertainment and succeeds well at being that.

Rating the Bronze Minmay (Macross) for being a nice show that is all about the music.

Review Sola

this cake better not be a lie

Yorito is a young man who loves the sky and taking pictures of it. One night he runs across a mysterious girl named Matsuri who has never seen the blue sky before. As she has nowhere to go Yorito takes her in. As it turns out Matsuri has ties to both Yorito and his bedridden sister that could only be guessed at.

Loli in a box

Sola is a thirteen episode long romantic drama about a boy and a magical love interest. It is also a bit of a tragedy in the vein of the adaptations of KEY visual novels or EF. It also contains a bit of fighting in it but not enough that it would be considered an action series.

dude this guy is like a sky Otaku

I consider Sola to be servicable but generally unremarkable anime show. It has a decent enough premise but had some problems knowing what to do with it's characters. This is mostly because they are defined by their inherent nature rather than a goal and there isn't much to propel the plot forward. The animation is also only decent and any comparison to something like Clannad or EF really cast Sola in the role of looking like a cheap knock off.

Overall I consider Sola something that is worth watching if you are looking for a romantic drama that is more of a tearjerker than a panty shot fest but I will admit this show isn't for everyone.

Rating the bronze Dango (Clannad) for being a decent but forgettable romantic drama.  

review Nanoha the movie 2nd

Hammer time!

It is about six months since Nanoha had her first adventure and finally she gets the chance to meet Fate again. Quickly enough a new threat appears in the form of four warriors hunting the magic of other mages. Their motives are unknown at first but they connect to their relationship with a young paraplegic girl named Hayate.

Don't worry he only mauls some of the children

The Nanoha 2nd movie is the movie adaptation of Nanoha A's. As you can't break a thirteen episode series down to less than half it's length without some cuts the movie can feel slightly disjointed at times, even more so if you haven't seen either the first movie or the original Nanoha series.

Never mess with a nine year old devil

However what this movie wants to deliver to the audience is high intensity battles with lots of energy beams, explosions and little girls and it does it very well. There is also a decent amount of character development in the movie, particularly the antagonists, who have one of the more memorable motive deconstructions in anime. However this is sandwiched in between the four extended fight sequences in the movie.

Overall Nanoha the movie 2nd is a nice action packed magical girl movie that has a bunch of bright imagery and good characters.

Rating the bronze

review Magical Warfare

This show has to resort to threats to get viewers

Takeshi was a boy who lived in a broken home and longed to get away from where he was. His wish was granted by a girl named Mui who introduced him to the world of magic and enabled to not only use magic of his own but study magic in a magic school in a magic world. As luck would have it his two best friends also gain magic and are able to study alongside him. However this is a dangerous world with two factions of wizards battling and Takeshi could easily get caught up in the conflict.

Not so badass, are you?

Light novels adaptations are pretty much a staple in anime these days and just from looking at it Magical Warfare is clearly one of those shows. Even the main girl feels like she was she is just Shana from Shakugan no Shana just aged a bit and given a gun instead of a sword. This also has the problem a lot of speculative fiction suffers from; front loading a lot of world information in the first few episodes.

This is not to say that this show is entirely without merit. However most of this comes in the form of crazy magic fights that become increasingly common as the show wears on. Also I found the side characters to be a bit more compelling than the group of four main characters but no real stand outs.

However in the end there are only little bits of the show that are good and this overstuffed genre has many sweeter fruits so to speak.

Overall I found Magical Warfare to be a very generic modern fantasy show that can work if you are looking for a brainless action show

Rating the tin Melon bread (Shakugan no Shana) for being the bare minimum of an urban fantasy light novel adaptation

Personal metrics 2 the good and bad of ninja scroll

It has been some time but I have felt that it has been to long since I posted a personal metrics post. It is partially because I think these posts make my usual reviews more worthwhile and partially because it gives me something else to post about other than reviews and the seasonal preview.

A long time ago there was a time called the nineties and everything was extreme to the max. Anime was new and one of the few anime movies we could get from a mystical place called a video rental store (it was like a redbox you could walk into) was a movie called Ninja scroll. It was a movie with a bunch of sex and violence and a bare-bones plot. It was the beloved classic of everyone's inner teenage boy. Then years later there was a thirteen episode television show done about ninja scroll and that tv show wasn't so well beloved. The question is why.

My belief is that ninja scroll was never really anything significant in terms of plot or character and was never intended to be. The difference in a movie is only about an hour and a half long and it only needs enough plot to string fights together. The pacing of a television show simply can't work with the simple diet of adrenaline the way a movie can as television has the natural cool down point that an end of an episode is. However as fun as a movie that is mostly only battles with a little plot for glue might be I tend to only give out bronze awards to them.