AidanAK47's Profile - Reviews

Last OnlineJan 9, 3:44 PM
GenderMale
BirthdayDec 16, 1988
LocationIreland
JoinedJun 14, 2009

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Mar 22, 2013

Robotics;Notes (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Robotics;Notes, the latest work of Naotaka Hayashi who is also the writer for Steins;Gate and Chaos;Head. If you didn't know that just by seeing the colon in each of the titles then the four lines of pointless philosophy he puts under the titles is bound to tip you off. As someone who has read both his first two works and watched the animes, I can say I have a fairly good grasp of his writing style. Don't worry about any fanboyish interfering with this review. As you can tell, I don't have a high opinion of him.

Robotics;Notes is about robots...or that what it's ... supposed to be about. Wouldn't be the first of this guys works to have false advertising. The first half of the show involves Aki gathering the members of the robotics club and slice of life antics. This is a common thing in this mans works. A section of the story which is held up mostly by the characters and slice of life. It's slow and sadly unlike Steins;Gate the characters are not interesting enough to carry the show. So our only incentive to watch on deals with the mystery of Kimijima Reports. Unfortunately his mystery is slow moving and the significance of these reports only becomes apparent in the second half of the series.
Speaking of which, the second half could be considered the crash and burn point. If you pay attention you begin to notice that the story in it's efforts to become more dramatic has instead become sillier. Plot holes rear their heads and you come to the conclusion that despite the impression of the first episodes, this show isn't going for something remotely realistic. We enter into a series of character arcs which are not related to the main plot and anything that takes place here is forgotten and discarded. However when the final episodes come and our main plot returns. This is the point were the writers main weakness comes up and exposes itself. You see the writer has a problem with jumping the shark. He can create a setting with the potential to be something great but he also has the talent of reducing it to garbage if left unchecked. With Chaos;Head he turned an intriguing murder mystery into a shounen battle anime. With Steins;Gate he polluted it with developments which created plot holes. The result wasn't garbage but he was getting close by the end. (You people better be thankful to White fox for adapting the visual novel cleverly into anime and removing the flaws in the original materiel. For example, in the visual novel black holes can not only compress matter, but also data.) But Robotics;Notes takes the cake. I am sure I am not alone in saying that the revelations in those episodes were stupid beyond belief. And my friends if your sense of disbelief isn't shot to shreds, placed in a trashcan and set on fire by this point then a mind numbingly bad deus ex machina involving a parrot is sure to finish the job. In the end we are left with a barrel of plot holes, story developments which make no sense, characters we have long since stopped caring about and a ending which in one of the characters terms, lacks IMPACT0!

Animation is to the degrees I have come to expect from Production IG lately. While not visually stunning they still are above the standards of decent animation. Sound is fairly decent with two openings of J-pop. The second one I am actually fond of. The BGM manages to highlight scenes and do it's job. Not outstanding but I can't complain.

The characters of Robotic;Notes consist of a optimistic mecha anime fan main heroine called Aki, the gamer Kai who's currently only interested in playing a robot fighting game called Kill Ballad, an overly eccentric computer genius called Frau, a virtual weather girl program called Airi, galactic bishounen wannabe straight man glasses guy and some girl who's only traits are karate and being cute...apparently. I would like to give more info on those last two but that's all I got. Many of these grow tiresome after their one note gimmick loses amusement. The saving grace is Frau. Frau is a depiction of the girl genius which isn't common and her lack of social etiquette and quirkiness make her rather lovable. It's a pity that after her episode arc she is pushed into a support role and her screen time is drastically reduced.

Overall Robotics;Notes is not something I would recommend to others. Specifically if they are looking for something on the same level as Steins;Gate, avoid it like the plague. Really it's just a good example of how going too far for dramatic effect can come back to bite you in the ass. If you plan to watch it no matter what I say I give you this piece of advice. Keep your expectations rock bottom, no matter how promising something looks.

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Mar 6, 2013

Blood-C: The Last Dark (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Ah, Blood. To put it basically it was animes equivalent of Buffy the vampire slayer. Starting off from the fairly decent Blood: The Last Vampire movie and then moving on to the mediocre but well received Blood+ series. And then our dear old Clamp decided to try a hand at giving the blood series a new look. Enter Blood-c, a name which gave me a bad feeling from the get go. A series which suffered from abysmal storytelling, over-exaggerated gore which looked more comical than disturbing, characters with little likability and it says a lot when you can say that half the series can be ... skipped without anything significant being lost.

Now we have Blood-c The Last Dark, a title which still makes no sense even after having seen the film. So let me answer the first question you have. Is it better than the tv anime series? Honestly, yes it is. But considering the quality of the tv series that isn't really something hard to accomplish. Despite that it still remains a poor film. Starting with story. Much like the tv series, a large amount of the film feels like padding. We are treated to a familiar vampire fight on a train which in turn causes Saya to meet the members of a a group called "Surat" which happen to be teenagers.(Naturally) From this moment on the plot progression comes to a complete halt. For well over forty minutes we are shown mainly the overly out of place comical characters of Surat. But then plot kicks in gear again and remembers what it's supposed to be focusing on and we are treated to an action scene and really that's about it. This supposedly inspires one of the members of Surat to get their ass in gear and direct Saya to the end boss. (Which apparently is a building that nobody can find despite it being clearly viewable from the coast of the city.) From that point on all the characters of Surat are rendered completely worthless. They don't appear again except for the epilogue and they don't effect the plot in any way. The finale is rather disappointing and anti-climatic. I had hoped that the writer would have learned from the tv series that twists that come out of nowhere for shock value is not good storytelling. Apparently they didn't. It really says a lot when they take the time to create a giant monster which in turn is defeated in a single strike within moments. Overall a large amount of the story feels unnecessary and plot points such as the curfew placed on minors are dropped with little explanation or exploration.

I cannot say the art was bad. However I can say I was underwhelmed by it. If you were keeping an eye on anime news then you would know that this movie received a grant from the government so there was no reason they couldn't go all out with the animation. Still I didn't see anything truly impressive. Honestly the quality was similar to that our the currently ongoing psycho pass in my opinion. This is just speculation but either all that cash went into the characters exaggerated reactions and cg or it might be the reason Production I.G has seen a sudden increase of productivity with anime series.

Sounds is something I can't comment on as I didn't take much notice of it. Though if I had to derive an opinion based on my watch I would deem it forgettable.

Characters are something of an oddity. Saya has traded her annoying bubbly carefree personality from the tv series for a more stereotypical broody cold type. There really is not much to say about it. Our main antagonist is a jumbled mess. Mainly because he has little to no focus in the film at all. He appears briefly at the beginning, briefly at the middle and then at the end. So his motivations remain confusing and nonsensical. The rest of our characters is where the movie spends most of it's time with which to me is rather odd way of using your limited time. This is because of the pointlessness of these characters to the main story. The members of Surat hold no purpose in the story besides two instances of telling her "Go here to find Fumito" and justifying a silly twist at the end. In retrospect that time spent developing them could have been better used to develop our two main characters seeing as they are the ones effecting the actual story and most need fleshing out. Also I really need to point out again just how out of place these Surat members are. They act much like characters in a sitcom and clash greatly with the atmosphere of the story itself. You can't exactly show us Saya killing a monster brutally and expect us to brush that off and enjoy comic relief. On that note, a loli learning to type on a keyboard with her feet is the most ridiculous thing I have seen. I mean even someone who isn't that into computers can tell you that not many computers allow you to use two keyboards at the same time, also no computer lets you type into two windows simultaneously. So that really makes typing with your feet a pointless skill.

Really I feel sad for the blood series. If only a competent writer was hired then maybe something great or at least fairly enjoyable could have came out of Blood-C. But here I am watching an hour and forty minute film with a bored look on my face

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Dec 20, 2012

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! (Anime) add

Recommended

Considering many may only skim the first paragraph of this review I may as well put my main impression here. Is Chuunibyou a bad show? No, it's quite enjoyable. On the other hand is Chuunibyou the greatest thing since sliced bread and Chuck Norris combined with a man fist-fighting a dragon? Don't be ridiculous. Many fans will attempt to fool you into thinking that Chuunibyou is deeper than it actually is. What it really is just simple mindless entertainment and on that regard it works well.

First off some words about KyoAni. To those of you who have seen their work you will find familiar territory ... here. Much like all there other words this piece lies within there safe zone and truly is a foreboding sign. Chuunibyou gives us a small example of what KyoAni could do if they used their powers for good instead of evil with some well animated fight scenes. However I am afraid this studio shall always be one sorely lacking in ambition. What is worse it seems KyoAni has found a formula which means most if not all further KyoAni features will have a similar vibe till the day comes that it stops making them money. A day not coming anytime soon.

Alright enough on this. Chuunibyou hits everyone hard with a concept anyone can relate to, an embarrassing childhood. For those who have not read the description it's about a syndrome which a person who pretends to believe that he is a being with special powers and tries to summon creatures, fight and other things one can expect from a fantasy anime character. Our main who previously suffered from this meets Rikka, a girl who is currently going through the same phase. A club is made, others join who have similar experiences and hijinks ensue. This is the plot of the first half. The second half delves into a more serious storyline involving a trauma from the heroines past. This is were the show weakens. A romance is pulled out of nowhere, drama and angst appear over some truly small matters and the ultimate moral we all saw coming appears.

The art is to KyoAni standards. Though much like their other works the soundtrack is minimal. I can honestly say I enjoyed this more than their previous work Hyouka which I found to be a massive waste of excellent production values. The comedy was impressive considering it managed to get a smile out of me, a person who rarely laughs at anime comedy. The character quirks are likable however their shallowness is exposed in the second half as the drama is dialed up. Really I say what really knocked down the score was that attempt to emulate Key writing which on the whole is not writing which should be copied. Cheap manipulative writing may be effective but on the whole if the emotional impact is not achieved it is contrived and insulting.

The final episode attempted to compare Chuunibyouism with general ambition to prove yourself special. However this was quite preachy and not true as it was similar to comparing a cosplayer to a writer. Both may be passionate but what they do is entirely different.
So I leave with this, Chuunibyou is a nice time waster. Nothing more than that. When it attempts to try to become something of a more serious nature it loses value but if that manages to appeal to you then you could find it a rewarding experience. Me on the other hand will sit back and wait till KyoAni takes a real risk.

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