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Dec 31, 2013
Happy New Years, everyone! To summarize this review, the first 80 minutes are flashbacks while the last 20 are a decent new bit. Also, People who take offense to stuff people say on the Internet are idiots.
If you are wondering whether you should watch this, ask yourself this question: Do you really want to relive this shit again? If your answer was a “Yes” in any way, shape or form, man, you are some serious masochist and really should be rethinking your life choices. It made me rethink my life choices, I mean like, why am I watching this and not Monster, Legend of the
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Galactic Heroes or Ghost in the Shell like all those pretentious hipster critics want me to? At any rate, this 100 minute special drowns you in 80 minutes of flashbacks to those terrible times, with special attention given to the deus ex machina moments and the horribly forced teen romance. They give you only short breaths of toxic, polluted air in between with new footage of Kirito’s harem in bathing suits talking about how much of a Gary Stu Kirito is or how good Asuna is at making sandwiches :)
You are better off skipping the flashbacks so I’ll summarize what happens during the first 80 minutes in this paragraph. If you really are a masochist and want to watch them for yourself or you don’t quite remember what happened in the show due to mental trauma, skip to the next paragraph. Basically, Kirito’s harem (Asuna, Silica, the blacksmith girl who’s name I don’t remember and Kirito’s sister) are at the pool teaching Kirito’s sister how to swim (how cute, the strong and athletic little sister needs help) while they discuss their experiences with Kirito. Meanwhile, Kirito is meeting Kikuoka Seijirou, the government official in charge of virtual reality incidents, and he's recounting what happened in SAO and ALO, covering everything that the girls don’t.
The last twenty minutes or so are decent for some light-hearted action and fun. There are some funny moments and they don’t try to take themselves *too* seriously. The plot is good... for an MMORPG, though anyone who’s played an MMORPG should know how terrible the average MMORPG quest storyline is. I was sorely disappointed that there was no final epic boss fight. Instead, they wasted their time with some crappy brother-sister drama (along with a random flashback to further emphasize how amazing Kirito was for being a hero even when he was a little kid), and, as always, they show that no one can do shit without our invincible protagonist. Nevertheless, one IS able to feel or imagine a bit of how amazing it would be to play a VRMMORPG and how incredibly huge ALO must be to find such incredible areas relatively untouched.
Characters, if this is even possible, were even worse than in Sword Art Online considering how they made all the girls just weak little damsels who fell heads over heels for our antisocial nerd of a chick magnet and all they do is talk about him. I really don’t get how they don’t give up and give Kirito and Asuna their space, all they are doing is pointlessly interfering into Kirito and Asuna’s relationship though I wouldn’t be surprised if the series ended in a sixsome (or sexsome, kukukuku, since a new girl is introduced in GGO). Kirito’s as much of a Gary Stu as ever, Klein just becomes your perverted comic relief best friend character rather than the strong caring man he was in SAO and Agil doesn’t really deserve a mention here since he didn’t really do anything or interact with the other characters.
The music score is excellent, obviously since it’s done by Yuki Kajiura, though some of it is reused from the original SAO (and of course, during the flashbacks they use the same soundtrack), while the theme song by Eir Aoi is great as well. The art is as good as ever with vibrant and colorful backdrops and sunsets that truly drop you into the beautiful world of ALfheim.
Overall, the OVA was fine, but I really wish I didn’t waste my time watching the flashbacks. The OVA ends with a hint of the upcoming Sword Art Online 2 and I will foolishly cling onto the non-existent hope that they will learn from their mistakes and present us with an at least decent anime. The next arc is probably the best so far in the light novel series, so let us all pray that they don’t utterly butcher it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 23, 2013
How would you like to go to a fantasy world with castles, knights, magic and, of course, half-elf maids and loli queens? How about a job to talk about and share what you love? To spread your cherished otaku culture to said fantasy world while appearing to be some high and mighty delegate from a culturally advanced world? Sounds fun, and Outbreak Company is exactly that. Episodic, light and comedic in nature, this anime follows our protagonist, a hikimori/shut-in, Shinichi Kanou, who is thoroughly enjoying his time spent in a magical other dimension, watching anime and reading manga, while being waited upon by his very
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own busty maid. Once just another nerd in our world, he became the director of Amutec and the man entrusted with the foreign relations between the Eldant Empire and Japan.
I’m sorry, but if you intend to take this series seriously -- do not. The premise itself should scream at you that it is typically light-hearted, silly and fun, if you are looking for an engaging tale with moral complications, deep characters and philosophies... shoo, begone, ye do not belong here. The series does teeter between seriousness and light-hearted, but it is better to treat it as the latter. I will not elaborate more on the story here as you can read it on the MAL page, I’ll reveal as little of it as I can in this review as it is much more fun to discover things by yourself just as Shinichi does coming into this whole new unfamiliar world. In fact, Outbreak Company starts off humorously going into Shinichi’s surprise and reactions to the new developments. If I didn’t imply it heavily or clearly enough in the first paragraph, this is a largely wish-fulfilment anime as I’m sure it would be a dream come true for anyone, especially otakus like Shinichi, to be able to visit another world with all sorts of things you can only dream about while staying at your very own mansion, complete with a servant and a hot but innocent maid.
At any rate, Shinichi gathers his surroundings and learns about the world before setting his grand plans in motion to bring moe culture to the Eldant Empire. Things do get serious when complications arise, we are faced with the social issues and values of this medieval society, including racism and equality, and Shinichi must also at one point question himself and his place in this foreign world. After the first few episodes, however, the series ditches all “seriousness” and just becomes “the daily life of Shinichi Kanou”. There are no new developments actually shown in his quest to spread moe culture, I actually thought for half the series he was doing almost nothing while apparently in the background, manga and anime caught and became very widespread. We do not see this, instead, we play soccer, we go to the beach, we make movies and etc., before one of the issues brought up in the first episodes is very hastily wrapped up in the very last.
That is why I say to not treat this show seriously. For most of the show, we simply are met with pure, simple entertainment with the antics of the characters, the fun that they are having engaging various otaku activities and the many, many pop culture references that pop up throughout. Any problems that come up are not particularly meaningful or severe and do not have any lasting consequences, a lot of the time, the “tension” just comes from very heated debates over which anime or character is better. Outbreak Company can be basically considered an episodic comedy set in a fantasy world rather than your traditional high school setting. It did make me laugh, which cannot be said for many other shows, and the references to other anime really did amuse me, however there was nothing that they did that really stood out or set this show apart.
The characters are not deep in the loosest sense of the word, they are meant to fit snugly into their tropes and roles and let you rejoice in the anime-ness of this anime. There were no characters I particularly liked, none of them were actually all that interesting, but there were none that I particularly disliked either or found too bland. Shinichi is your typical perverted otaku whose meant to reflect the audience, he gets overexcited about his animu and what he does can be cringeworthy to say the least. Nevertheless, he’s actually decently intelligent and was the one who thought up the solutions to many of the problems that came up. Like 99% of anime protagonists, he is a good guy who will risk his life for his friends... and his super rare anime collectables. Moving on, Miusel Foaran is an innocent maid... with a very, very nice rack and elf ears as well as a maid uniform to top it off. She’s the pure maiden who falls in love with the main character, though the series doesn’t actually delve into romance, the perfect wife who can cater to your every need who even shares your love of anime. She is earnest, hardworking and strong, willing to sacrifice herself to save her friends if need be. Serving as the polar opposite to the well-endowed half-elf maid and catering to the other crowd is Petralka, the almighty ruler of the Eldant Empire, apparently sixteen, she looks twelve. Some might find her annoying as she is a bratty, arrogant and spoilt tsundere, but it makes sense since she has nearly no problems in her life. Other characters include a yaoi fangirl, an excitable busty wolf girl and a gay bishounen. One thing I loved was how they showed a character profile with their favorite anime and anime character at the commercial break points.
The art is very good quality that seems to be the standard these days. It does not stand out or dazzle the spectator but it never detracts from the show and stays consistent throughout unlike some older shows. The castle architecture and the fantasy clothing designs are very nice, though one might have to get used to the way they drew eyes, with their slightly strange, noticeable and solid eyelashes. It isn’t bad, simply slightly different from the norm. The opening isn’t anything impressive, but it suits the anime well and the ending is a good way to conclude each episode. The voice actors suited the characters, bringing out their happy moments and embarrassing ones as well. I really do like the funny sound they play at comedic or awkward moments.
Shows like this ultimately fall down to personal enjoyment. Did I like it? Certainly - it was funny, it was amusing and I don’t regret watching it. It wasn’t engaging or enthralling, but it let me sit back and enjoy myself a little seeing them do nerdy things, while trying to catch as many references as I can. Overall, Outbreak Company is a nice show, it was definitely one of the better titles of this Fall 2013 season. Final verdict is a 7/10 or “Good”.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 27, 2013
Before you hate on me, I'd like to tell you that I actually go by the description of the rating and unlike many people, my rating system doesn't go from 7 to 10. This show is "Fair".
Gatchaman Crowds is more of a fun kind of series with bright and pretty colors to catch your eye, but otherwise it has few good traits. The story was mish-mashed though sometimes interesting, the characters were mostly shallow and unoriginal (with one of them blatantly ripped off) but made to appeal and it had a little bit of your usual humor that no longer makes me laugh put in.
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It also lacked the flash that something intending on simply being fun and amazing would have thus the series simply failed to deliver anything. The end was seriously unsatisfactory and anticlimactic.
Let's look at the art and animation first, the good part of the series. Like many others nowadays, the colors are bright and vibrant, the art is well-done and the animation is clean, smooth and up to standard. The jewels of the series are the showy Gatchaman themselves, their designs are amazing with Paiman's being especially cool in my opinion, though they are actually seldom shown off and when they are, their fight choreography is quite mediocre. The CROWDS and the MESS, both supernatural creature type of things, are weird in design and don’t look very appealing despite that the CROWDS are a very big part of the show. The human character designs are rather decent and suit their characters, I quite liked the effect of having stripes going through everyone's hair.
Next is the story, it takes several turns which can make it seem quite disconnected, but it did do a well-rounded presentation of people in general and the power of social media (shoot me for sounding like one of those boring activists). It started off like every single other shounen out there with the secret organization randomly recruiting our main character to fight bad guys, but, they spin off on a different route after the second episode, completely abandoning the original premise after the main character solving the problem the organization is trying to solve on her first outing. The MESS, the enemy they are supposed to be fighting, are completely removed from the show until the last episode where they make a random useless cameo appearance for a single scene. I don't actually mind the turn considering how generic the original plot was, but changing the focus of the story like this isn’t great for pacing. The story turns to our other main character, Rui, the crossdressing genius creator of the super-popular social networking site GALAX which promotes random acts of kindness and organises people (Though the AI that controls GALAX is extremely unrealistically powerful, I personally liked the idea of an app like GALAX), and our main villain, Katze, an alien with the motivation of having fun screwing around with people and making them destroy each other and the planet itself, a nice contrast as each tries to bring out polar opposite parts of human nature. We see a few episodes of GALAX and CROWDS, a power that the alien granted Rui, do good deeds and then it turns and focuses more on the main villain. I won’t spoil anything, but Katze causes serious havoc by manipulating people and the Gatchaman have to stop him. The story comes to an anticlimactic end as they simply rely on humanity being good and believing in humanity to solve the problems rather than any of the characters really doing anything.
The characters can be fun, but are quite shallow with unoriginal personalities and stories. Our main character, Hajime, can really get on the nerves of some people, like her or hate her, especially with her notebook fetish the moment you meet her, her jumping around as well as the typical protagonist “bad guys aren’t actually evil” moment in Episode 2, however for those who can somewhat stand her, her character becomes a bit more endearing as the series progresses when you familiarize yourself with her eccentricities and see her bright and carefree outlook on life. Another good point is that she isn’t completely stupid like her type of character usually are and the other characters end up looking up to her indomitable spirit. I cannot say I agree with a character that never shows fear and always sees the bright side of things, not even needing any sort of support, but Hajime was a fun character and even pulled off her silly poses quite well. Rui, our other main character, wasn’t too bad, he was a cross-dressing genius with no backstory, who was actually actively going out there to change the world, but the point is that he isn’t flawless despite his original outward impression, he’s naive but confident and thinks he can do things on her own, then actually fails and shows weakness, fortunately for the Gatchaman as they would’ve otherwise lost relevance. The rest of the Gatchaman or G-Team are disappointing, Sugane was there solely for contrasting with Hajime by being serious and making a fuss over her antics, Utsutsu is your fanservice character who is an emotionless loli meant to make you like her with a backstory that didn't really connect - it appeared that she felt alienated for having a special power that has no bad points and is very useful in helping people, Paiman was comedic relief and mascot who was comically put in the position of leader, Joe is a naive cool guy (think Mustang) who hopes to achieve world peace by never getting a promotion when working for the government and OD is an utter shameless rip off of Leeron from TTGL down to the make-up and hairstyle, though he is slightly more serious and less sexual. Though he is played off as being the Gatchaman's secret weapon who will destroy the world if he were to use his powers, it turns out that nothing really happens when he does and it was all talk to make things more dramatic and to keep him from instantly owning the antagonist, they simply needed a way to take care of the overpowered villain at the finale. Part of the dialogue gets somewhat annoying as OD, Hajime and the villain, Katze, speak in that happy-go-lucky tone all the time, but it really depends on your taste here.
Enjoyment-wise, the series didn’t have any impact and didn’t really have much going for it. Hajime can be sweet to those who don’t mind her, but otherwise, you may very well hate the characters. The show’s art is a big plus for it, but many shows nowadays can match that quality. Overall, Gatchaman Crowds really failed to anything amazing and is a mediocre show that can be used to kill time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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