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.
Mar 22, 2013
Robotics;Notes
(Anime)
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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 ... Mar 6, 2013
Blood-C: The Last Dark
(Anime)
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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
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Dec 20, 2012
Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!
(Anime)
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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 ... |