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It has been a while since I have been active. I came back from massive burnout to anime seasonal because of the greatest animated show pilot episode of the 2020s. But we are not here to talk about the pilot episode of Lackadaisy (the episode is available on YouTube). We are here for Oshi No Ko.

Let’s try to temper expectations here because there is solid chance that you were marketed to in an unintentionally misleading way by several YouTube content creators as to the kind of story Oshi No Ko is. That is okay. I was too. I tried to go into this show blind ... but even with that, I still ran into video recommendations talking about Oshi No Ko, cases it draws from, and how it is an expose on the seedy underbelly of the idol industry. With those video essay titles and fan marketing, you can be forgiven for having a particular set of expectations, namely: that this will be an uncomfortable character-focused psychological storytelling. It is not that, not nearly enough that.

What it is is more a slice-of-life with some humorous beats mixed in when it is not trying to beat you over the head with its point about how dark the idol industry is (which is an open secret even a decade ago). It has a little bit of whodunnit mystery in the background that is unfortunately not being handled well. And for us adults in the audience watching, several enjoyable bits of talking shop (editor’s note: talking shop = to talk about your job with those you work with, even when not at work) in the show-within-a-show format of some of its arcs. And I am serious when I say the part where characters talk shop, with bits of humor mixed in, is the best part of the show for me. This is not a back-handed compliment. Look, the breakdown of the expenses you incur as an idol and your net salary are the more eye-opening parts of the show/the idol industry to anyone who has been on the internet for the last five years or more.

The show proper has a very clear linear break (some call it a tone switcharoo) that you should be wary of when deciding if this is a show for you. The first episode’s story attracts audiences that might be turned off by the story beats of episode two onwards. Meanwhile, the audiences that might enjoy the story of episode two onwards might have been turned off by episode one’s introduction and what they felt might be the direction of the series. (The kind of humor this show has stays consistent all throughout the season however so if it is the humor that caught you, you should be pleased to know that.)

Episode 1 is the most talked about part of the series and with a run time of almost an hour and a half it could have been a movie all on its own, centered around Ai as she tries to navigate the seedy underbelly of the entertainment industry while trying to keep her children a secret. The problem is that she must share screentime and development with her children. They need this setup for their eventual roles after the episode, but they eat into her story progression. Combined with the multiple mini time-skips, you eventually get the message that her story is not the important part of Oshi No Ko. She is the call to arms, the setup for the story of her children. They are the main characters. If you were here for her, it can feel like a switcharoo. I want to clear that up first with you, potential future viewer.

What can you expect? If you have a fascination with behind-the-scenes stories or show-within-a-show formats, this show has that. Do you want to see contractually obligated participants in a dating show talk about their “strategies” and real goals when the camera is not looking? How about a former child actress starring in a manga adaptation that she likes and is currently being butchered in the adaptation table to launch the careers of several up-and-coming male models with little acting experience?

I must admit that last part could have been more interesting if it had been given enough time to build it up. This is the second biggest weakness of the show, after marketing. It had multiple character arcs but it did a poor job managing its timetable.

But enough talk of spilled rice, this is more in line with what you should expect going into this show.

My DUD follows a simple yet effective three episode structure. The first episode of the show is set up to give us Gorou’s headspace. The second episode gives us a thorough preview of Marin and her headspace. These two episodes sets up their contrast and then episode 3 comes to give us more of their time together, how they interact without any one side being the dominant headspace -at least not glaringly-, and sets up a simple goal they have to achieve: a cosplay event. It’s an effective story structure used several times before and designed to make us want these two characters to end ... up in a relationship together because we can see how well they bring out the best in each other –or at the very least they make a cute healthy couple. Hell, episode 3 even manages to surprise me with its small moments of fast paced frame cuts (designed to strengthen comedic timing), sexual humor, things entering the screen in unexpected ways, things leaving the screen in comedic ways, and the general feel of comedy that I don’t often see in anime. Maybe it helps that I watched episode 3 in English dub because Gorou’s EN voice sounds a bit dissonant with respect to his character and the way he delivers his line adds to the humor. Also, I just want to say that that tired woman (you’ll know her because she is voiced) lining up for something and who sounds just so done with life right now, well she was a great background character.

So, it’s all good right? Well, episode 4 came along and reminded me that Gorou’s headspace sucks. Whenever Gorou is alone and his presence on the screen isn’t aided with comedic timings or jokes, he is just… ugh. A’ight, it’s one thing to be socially awkward. I can understand that. Gorou just feels painful to the point of parody. Judging whether you want to watch/continue watching this show requires you to weigh in how much you like/dislike the two main characters, and how much do you want to see them interact. And the one that could probably make that process complicated is Gorou. Each of the main characters in a romantic comedy need to be able to generate comedy at times where the other(s) aren’t around to bounce off of. Gorou is the main main character and he is hit or miss at that.

As for Marin, Marin is the explosive star of My DUD. Marin is a liberal… wait that’s not it. Lemme try again. Marin is a “liberated woman”, at least in how that phrase is popularly perceived. That’s often used to describe several Swedish, French, and American female characters in literature and television. You could say “wow, that sounds very Western, Eanki, just like how you described the humor in episode 3”… Okay, this has been a convoluted way of saying a simple point: Marin feels confident in her skin and in herself. She knows what she wants, she knows what she doesn’t want, and she isn’t shy in showing her off her body to Gorou. I think that’s a major part of her appeal. Plus it skips all the complicated steps of a guy walking in on a girl changing her clothes who then covers herself in a way which doesn’t actually cover her and just makes the scene more tittilating than if she were naked. Marin’s tendency to undress often is framed/shot in a way where it’s less being body positive around Gorou and more to give the viewers of the show some sexy fanservice however. So you can also perfectly just watch the show for Marin if the only thing you like about it is Marin and don’t care too much for the romance bit.

A couple of years ago, I watched a YouTube video about Isaac Asimov and sociological storytelling. That video links a blog from Scientific American, “The Real Reason Fans Hate The Last Season of Game of Thrones” by Zeynep Tufekci, which posits that it’s not just bad storytelling –its because the storytelling style shifted away from sociological storytelling to focus solely on psychological storytelling. I have never actually read the blog until I watched the first episode of Log Horizon Season 3 And that is when it struck me: I may have found one thing that helped in giving people the feeling that Season 1 and ... Season 2 hit differently. Season 1’s two starting arc focused heavily on the sociological side – or rather, the main cast, the adult cast as they say, are better suited to a more sociological framing. The youngling cast arc are more psychological in nature. Season 2 even at its best arcs was framed around the psychological storytelling side – yes, even the “adult cast”. Maybe it was not made to be told that way, but it was framed that way.

Before we dive into it, we should start with definitions first because this might be confusing since these are not exactly literary classifications, just some shorthand that has been used by some people.

Tufekci wrote: “In sociological storytelling, the characters have personal stories and agency, of course, but those are also greatly shaped by institutions and events around them. The incentives for characters’ behavior come noticeably from these external forces, too, and even strongly influence their inner life.”

In what he calls psychological storytelling, the story is primarily about the characters as individuals and their internal struggles, change, and development. In sociological stories, the incentives of a political or social system helps determine the choices a character make.

We can see an extremely basic example of “sociological storytelling” in the Player Killer group who ambushed Shiroe, Naotsugu, and Akatsuki in the forest way back in the first couple of episodes of the first season. That PK group settled down and even created their own merchant stall. Was there some character defining revelation on that night they got beaten that taught them PK is bad? Maybe. Maybe not. What did happen though is that after Shiroe’s food revolution and creation of the Round Table, there was little incentive to be rogue player killers and a lot of incentives to be peaceful and engage in trade to make oneself rich and also not bored out of their minds. That is “sociological storytelling”.

Now I don’t subscribe to such clear-cut divisions between two storytelling methods because stories aren’t just one or the other in my personal experience; it’s a little bit of both, with one side being the more dominant over the other, a fluctuation that varies from story to story. Often, even in the same story, there are characters whose stories are sociological storytelling dominant and characters whose stories are psychological storytelling dominant. What I just want to do is establish the shorthands I will be using: “sociological” and “psychological”.

Now on to the review. There are three major arcs to this season, one too much for a 12 episode season. The first arc of the third season was poised to be a sociological dominant storytelling. It promises the fracture of the current status quo and the collapse of the Round Table. This is not a spoiler; this is a tagline the whole third season runs with. It both achieve and did not achieve its goals. The first arc was so confusingly and infuriatingly half foot in, half foot out of the status quo fracture. Season 2 set up future plot threads to shake the status quo and one of them, this one, resulted in much ado over nothing. For an arc with a sociological setup, there was only one sociological status quo change involving the People of the Land. It is not so much under-delivering on the premise of the collapse of the Round Table, although it was under-delivering, as it was postponing a reckoning and just leaving a thread for a future plot thread to be revisited. This arc does leave some truly potentially big plot threads open for future use and two big game mechanics related shenanigans. Enjoyment of this arc may hinge crucially on whether you enjoy speculations and theories. If you just want a solid enjoyable arc, this arc is not it chief.

The worst part of the first arc was that it was rushed. It is okay to be just a setup arc. It is not okay to be a setup arc that was also rushed and not fully fleshed out. For a political game with potentially huge plot relevant stakes about the future of Akiba, there was so little intrigue and games. The “winning tactic” was a basic twist anybody could see coming with the wording of the rules of the major arc event. The real status quo change that affected this arc involves the Fairy Rings but the season does not explore it further. It is for the future seasons. And the collapse of the Round Table that could have been rooted in the sociological issues it failed to address was answered instead using a psychological factor: one character really taking on a firm stance on where she wants to be.

If your enjoyment of Log Horizon resonated with my intro, this may not be an enjoyable season for you. The second and third arc of the season are psychological dominant storytelling. However, if your enjoyment of Log Horizon predicates on the gaming aspect or the character development aspect, then the third arc may be the arc for you.

The second arc is nothing grand initially but it does introduce both the Moon in slightly more detail (well, glimpses more like) and a potentially game-changing mechanic with regards to the People of the Land. Knowing the author, it will be something that will come again in the future and it may not always be a helpful mechanic. For now, this mechanic and the Fairy Rings of the first arc serve only to positively help the characters we are rooting for. Hopefully, these setups pay off and the third arc gives me hope that it will.

In the third arc, Log Horizon seemingly returns to a semblance of form by introducing an arc that can stand on its own and exploits a game mechanic to turn the tables on the players/adventurers. Log Horizon revels in using a new interpretation of previously introduced game mechanics to expand the details of its world. This is worldbuilding by extrapolating the many ways how a mechanic affects the world and it is peak Log Horizon in many ways.

Log Horizon is back!

And I cannot wait where the setups in this season take us next.

Honestly, I am more curious of the implications of his healing magic than I am of his revenge, because, well, his revenge is stupidly paced. His healing does its job by undoing what has been done. It reverts the body back in time from before the body sustained injuries. You ever watched the Tangled movie? It works like that, sort of. But in the course of the healing, the injuries and mental anguish suffered at the point of injury and in the aftermath of sustaining it is channelled into the healer, causing him to suffer mentally as well as feel “physical” pain without any physical ... injuries happening to him. Already the author could have made a story around that premise. He didn’t. The power just ended up becoming whatever thing the author wanted to do to setup his story. If you are here for an in-depth exploration of that, you are likely not to get one. Find another show.

So, with regards to pacing (segue, because, see, my pacing and transition was also messed up), at the very least, the Episode 2 revenge should have been at Episode 4. This leaves us enough time for build up and allows his revenge plan to progress as a thriller, not a sloppy shitty voice over done in what, less than 10 minutes of Episode 2. Imagine if they at least had dedicated a full episode to his escape, how he outwits the guards, navigated the castle, etc, all while the spectre of discovery and punishment hangs over him, ready to punish a mistake. But it’s a voice over. His final escape of the castle is also a voiceover; not one scene is dedicated to the escape. So let’s just go to his initial revenge as this anime was wont to go; and just as a disclaimer, I watched the uncensored version just to not be accused of missing something that might shed new light on how I view this show.

How is it framed? Outside of maybe the music, it is not framed as horrifying or tragic that this kid has been abused to the point where he can see no recourse but to experience the abuse again on the way to getting revenge on her, instead of just stabbing her dead the first chance he gets. The way colors are used to highlight her naked body and the flagrant shot of her ass with careful contouring and angle while she was begging leads me to believe this is meant to titillate; not helping with that impression are the boob shots and cheesy hentai lines being spouted while she is being violated. This is at odds with how we are supposed to feel at this situation, pitying the MC for the mostly uncontrollable circumstances that led to this point of his life. And also questioning the decisions I have made during the day I wrote this draft that led me to analyzing what is supposedly a torture scene, pausing every bit in between the scenes to write my thoughts down. After that, I went 50/50 on the music because it could be that that piece meant to highlight her desperation -not his descent into darkness- and then frame that desperation as titillating.

So, this has the pacing of a hentai, the framing of a hentai, and if they had wanted to, they could have just made this straight up a hentai. If you want a revenge story, I’m not really sure this will hold up. It rushes towards payoffs, not realizing that build ups are equally important. That is the same way it handles its harem: rushing towards payoff. And yes, this is going to be a harem. The context points towards that outcome. Would it leave its audience feeling like the show pulled the old switcharoo trap of baiting them with edge and then pulling a harem and staying a harem away from the edge where they are now trapped in watching a harem show waiting for the edge to show up again? Let’s find out. I for one think he could use some pleasant stroll through the countryside after what happened to him but that was before Episode 2 happened and the also before the second girl joined him. Because this harem he is building is messed up as well and I would love to talk about it but I already spoiled something that happened in Episode 2. I will not do you the disservice of spoiling further. This prelim is just for the people on the fence about this show, to give them an impression of what they can expect.

[Spoiler Warning]

There are two things I noticed that are problematic with this show: 1.) it shoots its pacing and it ignores good storytelling methods to try to hurry up its narrative to the part it wants to tell and comes off as scared the calibre of its writing is not enough to keep its audience interested so it must rush as hard as it can to immediately show its gimmick; 2.) It’s trying to have its tanuki loli slave cake and eat it too. We’ll naturally go over that over the course of the review.

I want to tackle first its main potential, how it wastes ... it, and what it offers instead in lieu of said wasted potential.

Isekai, at its core, is a fish-out-of-water story taken to the extreme. You have an ordinary person from a decidedly un-magical locale and/or lead drab lives before they are whisked away to a fantastical new world where they live out interesting lives full of adventure and magic.

Most videogame-isekai authors, however, seem more interested in tailoring this brave new world in such a way that it’s the one world where their otaku excels at with his given skillset. They’re not dragging the fish out of water, so to speak. They’re dragging the fish into the water.

Now, to the show's credit, there’s a limitation attached to the main character: he can’t attack effectively. It forces him to pair up with someone who actually can. Then his situation becomes untenable when he’s falsely accused of rape and any chance of him getting a decent companion is out the window. In the end, he has to buy a slave. This is a genuinely nice setup. They now have to learn to work together and grow together if they are to survive, with an added dilemma: this is just some slave he bought. Who knows if she’ll even cooperate with him? And even if she does, is she competent enough when his life is on the line? And then there’s her side. For all she knows, her ownership just simply changed. The guy is nothing to her and he has to earn her trust little by little, as she has to earn his. It has the potential for a character story of both party slowly building the bridge between them brick by brick, replete with setbacks and drawbacks along the way. It’s a setup so rife with possibilities; except that story immediately nukes half of that equation of them having to meet halfway by making the girl basically fall for him. It rids itself of one-half of its character building potential. For what? So it could hurry its shipping along?

Alright, it can still work with just the main character half. Slightly less effective sure, but it’s doable. There’s still a character-building potential of the main character half: where he attempts to find it in him to trust again after the initial betrayal. Except that we have no proper measure of him as a character before the rape accusation so we don’t really know how much of him had changed after that beyond the basic demeanor; by ridding us of the ability to make a more in-depth comparison of the before and after of the main character, it lessens its already reduced impact even more. If we had that, we’d have a better idea of what was lost in him that day and can empathize and sympathize with him.

All we have now is a world dedicated on shitting on the main character and we’re supposed to root for him with full justice boner on just because he’s the main character. And there’s so much bullshit we have to put up with with the contrived way he is being put down. Yes, while I did praise the setup the show arrived at, the way they set that up is contrived. The series as a whole feels contrived.

Thanks to the light novel and web novel readers, I’ve been spoiled to hell and back on the major plot points of how the rape accusation ends and why the main character was singled out (seriously, if you don’t like spoilers, stay away from the episode discussions because a lot of readers there seem incapable of using the BB code for the spoiler tag). And all I can say is that the characters who are not the MC did the absolute stupidest things they can do just to make this plot-point happen. Expect a lot of idiot balls handed to the casts to simply move the story along the lines the author wants it to move without necessarily making logical sense. In fact, the anime seems more intent on telling us what things are and how they work even when things explicitly running counter to what was said runs in the background.

Again, it rushes its narrative to get to what it thinks is the good part: the shipping of the main character and the raccoon girl.

[Insert Street Fighter 1994 M. Bison soundbyte here: “OF COURSE!”]

Sure, why not. Let’s get to the meat of the show then. It’s about a cute raccoon slave loli falling in love with the first guy to ever show her kindness in quite a while. Two words come to mind: Stockholm syndrome. It’s not exactly accurate but you get the idea of how imbalanced the power dynamics in the relationship is. He buys her from an abusive slave owner. He’s kind to her. Boom! Love.

The story even takes care to make sure that there’s no male character that can outshine the male protagonist because then it might be hard to justify her settling for him when there are better options. Other male characters of significant note to the story tend to be written in such a way that they’re usually evil, incompetent, obnoxious, or old enough that the otaku cannot see them viably as a threat. Because when all the otaku has to offer is kindness, a decent respectable male is kinda a step up. Can’t have them buzzing around M’lady.

Oh, and they un-lolify the loli. Not really sure if she is mentally an adult or a child, but you know, she’s not physically loli anymore. Yay~! She's legal. /s

It’s a change I’m guessing was hand-waved in to avoid controversy of having a child-looking humanoid who, we would be given to assume, has underdeveloped mental faculties to make correct decisions fall for her slave owner for the trivial reason that he’s kind to her and no one showed her kindness in a long time (or if ever at all).

*sigh*

If you’re here for the adorable raccoon girl, have at it. If you’re here expecting something better, sorry man. But hey, it has a RACCOON GIRL. And she’s cute. I think. I mean, they keep talking about her in episode discussions.

Goblin Slayer is in hot waters right now and I feel I must address that. I also have my own personal problem with the show unrelated to the controversy: namely its action scenes. But before I undress and nail this series’ fight scenes hard, I want to set a couple of things straight first. Let’s not jump into the nailing part without context, because that’s just… stupid.

First thing’s first. Grimdark, in and of itself, is not a criticism. At best, grimdark is a style, a poorly defined one, even by the lowered standards of classification in the field of Literature. Others would contend that ... it is a simplified catchall term that has been used to unfairly dismiss certain fantasy works that do not conform to what a certain pompous writer calls the “Spirit of Tolkien”, whatever that means.

For the purpose of this discourse, we take grimdark as a style, one that focuses on grit and gray non-Manichean morality. Like all styles, there's going to be generally bad and good examples.

This show is looking like it’s going to be one of the bad examples. But I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, in the minute chance that the anime diverges a bit and grows the pair that the manga and the LN can’t. I’m not hopeful though. Neither should you.

Let’s talk about good and bad grimdark though so that you, the audience, can judge for yourself, because I see a lot of people jumping into this bandwagon with phrases like “so realistic” and “if you don’t want realism, go back to your Hello Kitty stuff and STFU”.

There are two main recurring problems I’ve observed in bad serious grimdark works.

The first one, one that this show is exhibiting worrying signs already, is that bad grimdark, like most bad writing, is in a massive hurry to get to the good stuff of the story to the exclusion of all else and shot their pacing to bits along the way. They’re so scared of losing their audience because they have nothing else going on except shock and brutality. The moment they slow down for an introspective look, their rank garbage writing shows. They can rarely give a moment the clarity, hilarity, or gravity it deserves.

The second and most crucial sign of bad grimdark is that it absolutely refuses to hurt any of its main casts beyond backstory fluff and trauma that appears and/or disappears quickly and conveniently when the author has no need of it.

That is in direct betrayal to one of the core appeals of the style.

Grimdark fantasy allows its characters greater agency and with it comes consequences. Simply put, a character doesn’t have black and white choices but varying shades of gray. Each choice has consequences, the number, scale, and execution of which depends on the skill of the author. The concept of greater agency and corresponding consequences helps grimdark works build up the tension, because if you consume enough stories, you generally know which characters are going to survive until the end or at least until the final act. But in grimdark works a lot could still happen even if they survive. Not only are they’re open to grow and develop through their choices but they also face possible negative consequences up to and including personal harm through say mutilation. They could lose a hand, a tongue, or a penis, and their narrative then towards how it affects them from here onward.

People say that they tend to gravitate towards grimdark because they’re tired of the fluffy bunny shows. But that’s exactly what bad grimdark is, a fluffy bunny show wearing black paint. "Wolololo this is a dark gritty world and people get hurt, except out main characters because they're main characters ".

Plain old violence can and still do elicit powerful impact when done right, with proper build-up and context. But bad grimdark’s hesitance to hurt its main casts pushes the brunt of the violence into the unimportant background characters. And background characters dying or suffering rarely elicit anything, so bad grimdark has to escalate.

And Goblin Slayer escalates. Into rape.

Now we segue on to the rape scene, because you must be curious about my take on it.

Eh. I have lived for a tad more than two decades on this Earth. I have seen far worse. At least it’s not the manga which has a tendency to fetishize the rape scenes.

What I want to do here is attempt to give you an idea of how Goblin Slayer incorporates rape in its narrative.
Rape, in Goblin Slayer, seems to be deliberately conceived and written to add elements of shock factor. The author made the goblins a male-only species. There's no reason for them to be a male-only species but the author made them one and pushed rape as their only means of reproduction. Ergo the author wrote the story precisely in such a way that it has to include rape.

Why it has to be included? Well, I think it's simply a by-product of the escalation-of-violence/violence-arms-race in the entertainment media ever eager to snatch the attention of a viewing public that's becoming increasingly desensitized to violence. Escalation to one rung higher in the ladder into sexual violence is simply inevitable. If the author so chooses, the goblins could have had female specimens and not be purely male that relies on rape to multiply. And the fact that goblins raid and pillage villages of their crops while burning the villagers' homes and fields is reason enough to hunt them down without resorting to overly relying on rape to emphasize why they must be kept down. But it's what snatches attention nowadays because violence is already mainstream enough.

The second thing is that rape is used as a call to action. Not of the victim, but of the protagonists. The eponymous character is waging goblin genocide because goblins raided his village and raped and kidnapped/killed his elder sister. The priestess witnessed to the rape of one of her party member and sticks to her saviour the Goblin Slayer in the aftermath.

It’s not an exploration of rape and its aftermath here but rather a cheap gimmick. And so we come to the controversy that sparked. This is mainly what fans the flames of the detractors of the rape scene in Goblin Slayer: because it’s just another one of those gimmicky works they’ve read already from amateur grimdark authors in the West. Goblin Slayer is not the first or the ten thousandth to do this and earn ire. It may be the first anime you’re familiar with that got into this mess, if you only care about anime.

The controversy is ridiculous actually. Basically, what happened was that Twitter has a little outrage, especially since Goblin Slayer’s rating used to be PG-13. Who cares? Twitter does that every other hour, perhaps (I’ve never been active on Twitter). Apparently the fans did and they went into full defense mode in preparation for the massive “SJW attack”, catching even more attention and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Now we’re in this mess. Allow me to take this moment to clarify this controversy for both sides.

The detractors are simply asking for authors to treat it with proper respect and gravity.

The fans need to understand that that’s the message. They’re generally not calling for censorship of rape in fiction but a better handling of a perennially badly handled topic.

The detractors also need to understand that most of the fanbase are honestly disturbed by it too but they’re treating their disturbed reactions as a triumph of the Goblin Slayer’s storytelling rather than a failure in handling a sensitive topic.

The last point about rape I want to make is that rape IS a sensitive topic. Not only because it is continuously mishandled by amateur authors in a way that seems to imply that worth of their female characters are inherently tied to their sexuality and sense of purity (especially since it’s curious to note that a large part of rape victims in fiction are pretty and nubile, and even virgins). It’s also because of how rape is. Several people have come forward in defense of Goblin Slayer by saying “Why do we have to tread lightly when it comes to rape but not about murder?”

Here’s the thing: there are a multitude of reasons for why one person murders another. How many reasons can you name for why a person rapes another? A murder can be framed as a good act, or a lesser of two evils. A rape can’t. It’s an inherently evil act that can’t be framed any other way which then usually causes it to take center point in the ensuing discussions.

Now let’s go to my main problem with this show.

I came into Goblin Slayer with 25 chapters of the manga under my belt. I know what to expect. I just came here for the action. Goblin Slayer is a story about a guy killing goblins, mostly. Its story is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to connect one fighting scene to another. It’s a dumb action series, is what I’m expecting. And I’m okay with what. I love the occasional dumb action flicks. Who doesn’t?

But I do have standards.

I like realistic takes on fighting because 1.) they’re rare, 2.) I highly appreciate their research and dedication, and 3.) as someone pursuing a career in the field of biology, I want to see the human body pushed to its absolute limits.

I also like unrealistic fighting with jaw-dropping choreography. I love Boyka: Undisputed (2016) even though I also watch MMA and the kind of blows that would cause at the very least dizziness in a real MMA match is just basically shrugged off in the movie and there’s little to none of the awkward grappling. That’s fine. Frankly, I just want to see awesome tightly choreographed fights and Boyka: Undisputed absolutely delivered.

Goblin Slayer doesn’t deliver. A good action series lives or dies with its fight scenes. The one other thing that could elevate a fight scene is the story behind the fight and the fighters. Given Goblin Slayer’s setup, there’s none of that. It’s a guy mowing goblins left and right. So it has to bank on its fight scenes to actually be good in order for it to be considered good. And its fight scenes so far are garbage.

It refuses to use wide angle shots to properly convey the entirety of a fight. As I’ve said again and again, a fight is a synthesis: thesis and anti-thesis, action and reaction. Here, there’s still the tendency to have action occur in one frame, showing only one character, then the reaction in the next frame, showing the target. Refusing to show both action and reaction in one frame rids the viewer of a frame of reference to ground the action which ends up limiting the impact of a fight.

The action scenes are the easiest angle for the series to improve itself. And I hope they do. Because right now, Goblin Slayer is just insultingly mediocre. It’s not the worst anime of the year, or even of the season. It’s simply a very forgettable one that’s going to be remembered more for the rape and the controversy than anything else.

Thank you for reading. Have a free pitchfork, on me:

~~~~~~E

Copy and paste it on my profile page if you disagree. It’s better than harassing me on my profile page because that would not be helpful to Goblin Slayer’s reputation at all.

The New Thesis will have to stand or fall on its own merits. The fact that the series takes great pains to introduce and endear its main characters tells us the series is intended to be enjoyed on its own without previous knowledge of the source material and the OVA.

One of the things I ask myself with every time I encounter a remake/reboot/reimagining is “Why? What does it offer that wasn’t done before?”

Admittedly, I haven’t finished watching the OVA, nor have I read the source material. So I can’t in good conscience tackle the issue about what the story offers more than what was told ... before. Here’s what I do know though: The New Thesis will have updated visuals. It is only expected. A New Thesis and a generation to entice; and it went okay. I guess.

For one, despite criticisms of its character designs, exemplified by the mocking fan title “Legend of the Generation of Miracles”, the characters feel a little more varied than what we usually get in anime, some with distinct facial features and enough variety in hairstyles and facial hairs to easily identify them if you’re that much of a hardcore fan, at least for the more visible characters.

The rest of the show’s aesthetics is nothing too surprising. It is par for the course of what I would expect from a modern day depiction of the future environment and technology. There’s the usual drill of holograms, although it’s far more toned down, far less intrusive, and far more useful than some movies I can name. Other than that, there’s also the same old cinematic technique of having a contrast between the spaceships of both factions: the Alliance’s ship designs and ship interiors is austere while the Empire’s is steeped in grandeur.

In terms of battle, it puts priority on spectacle as is expected. It evokes the same technique of fleet-wide battles Star Trek and Star Wars employ: cinematic first and foremost. Think DS9's Sacrifice of Angels. And it is as illogical and inefficient. In fact, LoGH has often been described as a series that views warfare in only two dimensions. And it retains that aspect. Fleet tactics doesn’t seem to be more advance than the line-of-battle approach of the 1600s.

This approach is probably the most pleasing visually and the most workable one in fleet-wide battles, cinematically speaking. I can understand. I'm okay with that. It’s simply the one that gives you plenty of frames of reference for the action occurring on the screen. It’s for the same reason fighter aircraft engagements in movies are set to occur within visual range. It gives you visual cues that are easy to understand and process. You can easily pinpoint who is winning and who is losing. The problem with this series in particular is that it doesn’t make full use of the visuals. The battles feel like set piece engagements instead of dynamic and ever-shifting. It’s just two sides exchanging a volley of fire, with no meaningful information given. It doesn’t help the viewer(s) understand what is happening. It just gives them something to look at. Given the space battle style used, I feel like that’s missing half the purpose. Heck, the visual cues (holograms) inside the spaceships' bridge areas are more informative and helpful in informing us of the state of battle. This is a series that banks on improved visuals as one of its perks. Its visuals should be more useful and informative. That or they utilize the holograms more and create more focus and depth on the commanding officers as they give the orders that decides the fates of entire planets.

Because, ultimately, I consider this to be the main draw of the series: two legends in the making, their choices, and their intertwined story that spans the galaxies and affects the entire course of humanity.

I feel that the series has taken solid steps in that direction. Episode 1 begins in the Battle of Astarte and wastes no time in introducing and establishing one of its main characters while Episode 2 shows us the same battle, this time through the perspective of the other main character. It then utilizes Episodes 3 & 4 to individually introduce each character, where they’re coming from, and how they got to where they were in the Battle of Astarte. This setup allows us to appreciate and understand where both characters are coming from without fighting for our attention over the course of a single episode -a far, far stronger approach than the first episode of the 110 episode OVA where both characters are fighting for screentime, resulting in a far more fragmented introduction. Here, we are allowed to focus on one character for one episode, and then the other in the next.

It could have done more though. It wasted some prime opportunities to delve even deeper.

Case in point: the simulation in Episode 4 flashback. Episode 4 tries to paint Yang, still a cadet, as someone worthy of the title magician, through a simulation against the top student of the class. Demonstrating a character’s capability and, well, measure of his character, using a simulations program is not a new concept. It’s the futuristic space exploration stories’ shorthand/equivalent to demonstrating a character’s intellect using chess. It has been used for example, to paint a picture of James T. Kirk, in what is commonly known as the Kobayashi Maru scenario.

The series did not use its simulations effectively. It could have been used far more effectively to tell us what kind of commander he is by putting him in a situation where he has to make difficult choices or emphasizing clearly how he pursues his mission. Perhaps it tried to tell us what kind of commander/tactician Yang is (one that values the objective much more than anything else, according to his actions in this test at least) but it was vague and inconclusive because we don’t understand what that test entails. Was his move really a gambit, sacrificing the bulk of his fleet in an outnumbered fight of attrition while a detachment the opponent blatantly ignored accomplished the objective? We don’t know. All we know is that it was supposed to be the test that gets him noticed and set him on his path, and he won over the top student of the class because the top student of the class simply forgot Yang’s win condition.

But still, all in all, it could be a decent space opera. Viewers who came here for political intrigue or military strategems would be disappointed however.

The series attempts to tackle the political sphere and sets up its narrative in part to cater to that. But it strikes me more as a space opera than a debate, a space age set drama about the follies and triumphs of humans. With that, it attempts to put its characters to the forefront at first, and the political sphere is secondary; which is nice, because its politics and arguments are basic and simple. It lacks nuance and detail, and relies on simplified versions and preconceived notions of concepts such as liberty, the social contract, and government. How they view political systems may not be as black or white as is the norm but it also still boils down to the basic identities of what constitutes a democratic and an authoritarian government. That it is different from the way political viewpoints are normally tackled in the entertainment industry is not a testament to its genius but a reminder of how low that particular bar is set.

At times it can even get more comically, unintentionally or not. Those patriot patrol guys or something should have been a far more insidious symptom of the cracks in the Alliance’s façade. The reaction of the kid especially should have been the creepier option: thinking this was all perfectly normal and acceptable in this society rather than being self-aware, extremely so. The scene felt like it wasn’t given gravity it needed. It could have felt as fucked up as a child continuing to love the parents who neglect and hurt him because he thinks that it’s one of their ways of showing love or that because it’s his fault he misbehaved that they beat him severely.

Its views and understanding of warfare roughly falls under the same pattern. The first episode attempts to demonstrate to us the cranial capacity of one of its main characters, Reinhard, by having him prevail while outnumbered two to one. Reinhard pulls this “amazing and unprecedented victory” off in a rather straightforward manner, through a concept we call Force Concentration. Look it up in Wikipedia. The problem with this is that it’s such a basic and commonly accepted concept in war that it’s hardly daring or revolutionary. And yet for the admirals and commodores of both sides that are not the main characters, this was baffling and overwhelming. The factions these characters are in have been at war for over 150 years and yet this is a revolutionary and daring plan, one that helps justify him getting promoted to one of the highest echelons of the Imperial Military? This doesn’t paint Reinhard as a genius. This paints him as a slightly competent man in a war fought by insufferable idiots. He’s not necessarily smart. He’s just fighting with and against dumbasses.

And frankly, that last couple of sentences sums up this series. This one stands out because it is different from the score of repetitive mediocrity.

The first season has had growing pains and, fortunately, the lessons learned have been incorporated. The first episode of the ONA is a confident, competent stride with all-around better animation and direction. It now uses creative ways and shot angles to help express the emotions of a moment and that presents one of the biggest leaps of the franchise coming from Season 1’s piss-poor direction and a tendency to telegraph everything to the viewer, sometimes in the most obnoxious slapstick way possible, reinforced by the janky animation of that season. Here, however, the motions are more fluid and subdued. And it’s a much better product ... as it gives its important scenes weight, power, and reverence.

Although it seems like they blew almost their entire budget on episode one and episode three, preferring to can episode two to a fate of having less-fluid animation and leaning on still frames slightly being moved to give the illusion of action. An understandable compromise, but it's worth a mention nonetheless because it could symptomatic of technical inconsistency, especially if this was a longer series.

Set in a LAN tournament, the All-Star, the ONA has done a pretty competent job at evoking the atmosphere of a LAN. It has maintained a higher standard of storytelling, touching on the themes of the shifting of generations and the passing of the torch, as the new bloods challenge the old guards of the game. The old has to give way to the new, as they say; and yet the old guard also still have so much left to impart. A further exploration of this dynamic, this nebulous era of the old and the new coexisting before one moves on and the other takes over, would hopefully be the direction the series takes as it moves forward.

Fittingly for the theme, the main character has been sidelined to a mentor and spectator role in this story and he belongs there, in the mentor seat. As per my thesis way back in season one, if you’re going to make your main character a perfect/complete/faultless character instead of a still-flawed person trying to figure out what went wrong and how he can be a better player, then make him be the enabler of character growth in the people around him, his future teammates especially. Of course, the main goal would still be to setup his return to the competitive scene, but it’s certainly better that he’s never the primary focus even then. Rather, his return is and should be treated more as a celebration of the hearts he touched in all the years he played GLORY.

The main drawback of the ONA is its spectacle. Ostensibly, it is a setup of both his return to the competitive scene and the participating teams that will oppose him but the limited runtime means that it is going to be primarily a spectacle. And, for a spectacle, it fails to be truly spectacular because of the way it conducts its fight scenes. The “dynamic” still frames aside, it still refuses to use wide angle shots to properly convey the entirety of a fight. As I’ve said before, a fight is a synthesis: thesis and anti-thesis, action and reaction. Here, there’s still the tendency to have action occur in one frame, showing only one character, then the reaction in the next frame, showing the target. Refusing to show both action and reaction in one frame rids the viewer of a frame of reference to ground the action which ends up limiting the impact of a fight. We’re merely following pretty colors flying around, at times even the DBZ-style of two thick colored lines colliding, instead of truly appreciating the choreography and flow of the fight. It has to resort to the same old dust eruption and flashy lights that just obscures and makes the scene messier in order to illustrate the impact of the attacks which is a piss-poor substitute to actually seeing the entire sequence of one person starting his attack and then hitting his target and seeing the target react to that, all in one frame.

At least Episode 3 is doing better in that regard and there’s cause to hope for a much much better season 2.

Have a happy MDL Changsha.

TNC! TNC! TNC!

The greatest allure and strength of the Overlord narrative has always been Ainz’s delicate dance between the ordinary dime-a-dozen salary man of Earth and his Overlord status in this other world. His utterly devoted fanatical underlings treat him like that of a god who can do no wrong. He can’t afford to make mistakes because his servants cannot imagine him making one. To make one is to not be a god. And he intends to keep that image because anything else might disrupt the equilibrium of Nazarick and, more importantly, jeopardize his safety and base of operations. In the strange world he finds himself in, ... the most powerful known beings who can threaten his safety are those under him. On and on, his everyman impulses struggles with what he thinks a supreme ruler should act. He must pretend to be prescient when he knows next to nothing and carefully delegate his subordinates in a way that gets his wishes done without revealing that he knows less than them on how to carry it out.

He’s a man trapped in a situation that already slipped out of his control, propelled by his ever-faithful minions’ tendency misconstrue his words as gospel, his musings as genius, and his luck as omniscience, as well as their fear that he would leave them as his guildmates already have. He’s all they have left of the great beings they worship, and by jove they will raze the world to the ground in his name if that’s what it takes to keep him by their side.

Everything else about Overlord is just barely decent. The problem with the anime series is that it fails so hard to translate and convey the strongest core selling point of Overlord.

What Overlord S2 is trying to sell now is the idea of a world bigger than its protagonist and that one fails too on two fronts: the core idea itself and the execution of that idea.

Overlord, due to the nature of the LN, is a series that adds and adds, but rarely expands. You might wonder how can adding more and more detracts from a narrative. It does when you keep adding without expanding on what is already established. Overlord has multiple plot points and threads hanging in the air, the energy and time establishing them being wasted away. We’re not going to tackle the source materials here though because it is a review of the anime adaptation so let’s keep it to the anime adaptation.

Suffice is it to say that the way Overlord is setup forces a quandary on the series. The first season does not easily expand into this second season and the first arc of this season does not expand into the second arc. You could say that they are merely individual build-ups sections – badly done build-ups at that, not because there is no immediate pay-off but because they feel like (and probably are) build-up to different things. It’s risking the fact that you may not get invested in the flow of the story because there is really no smooth flow of the story yet. Again, this isn’t a fault of the adaptation and it can very easily be rectified by solid execution. It starts off with a little bit of disadvantage but just really needs to present itself right and everything will fall into place.

Does it?

Season 2 is an adaptation of Volumes 4, 5, and 6 of the light novel. Volumes 5 and 6 are two continuous stories, a mega-arc if you will. Volume 4, however, connects to Volume 5 with only the barest, thinnest of threads. These are two very different arcs with vastly different locales, (massive) set of characters, and conflicts that need to be established all under 13 episodes. That’s simply not enough time for two different stories (with at least two different storylines running in parallel.) in two different types of settings. That is insane.

The characters could have been the saving grace in the transition but here’s the thing: Overlord S2 sidelines the Season 1 characters with significant screentime to side character status. That’s not a bad thing. Heck, done well it could have been a good thing. The problem is that the new season starts with a new set of characters you don’t really care about and then the show botched its attempt at making you care about them and then uses them for only five episodes before they are then discarded to introduce yet another fresh batch of characters. The problem here isn’t even in you losing track of who they all are. The problem here is if you even care at all who they are. It’s a large mess that frankly is easier to follow than to care about.

Madhouse forgot one simple Ron Swanson principle: never half-ass two things; whole-ass one thing. You can feel the oozing, overpowering, rank mediocrity as the studio rushes through the Lizardman Arc to get to the next arc. Rather than skip the first arc to focus on the next or give the first arc justice, they decide to do the first arc but do it in such a way that they get to the next arc faster, a decision that they didn’t even do justice come the next arc. This decision gives us a lot of hastened info dumps, uninspired character designs, insipid backdrops, and budget fight scenes.

What few genuinely strong moments it could have had, it squanders for lack of pacing. A painful example of this is Zaryusu's rather interesting and compelling argument (on why they should fight) that lost every sense of impact possible due to the fact that it was said immediately with nary a proper establishment of the Lizardmen economy and culture or Zaryusu's place in all that. It was pulled out of the hat and we're supposed to just accept it because it was said so without planting the seeds of ideas first in the viewers (sadly this isn’t an isolated case or adaptation specific failure even). It didn't even need to go to great lengths for its setting. It just needs to establish the setting enough to ground the arc's main character in it. It failed. It simply did not have the luxury of time for the size of the story it attempted to tell.

Imagine if it developed that. Imagine a tribal setting, a rarity in anime, with Lizardmen instead of humans as the main characters, which is even rarer. Imagine how much it could have had expanded on what little the LN established. Imagine the different tribal colors and patterns depending on the locale of a specific tribe: say solid, blocky lines for the mountainous, flowing curves for the lake-bound. Paint a picture in your mind’s eyes, a cacophony of colors and patterns anime never tackled before. Imagine the new-ness, the fresh-ness of it all. Can you see it? It’s only a simple scenario of how they could have gone with the series if they focused on one arc and did it justice.

To be frank, Overlord S2 is boring. Not because it’s too slow but because it’s too fast. The entire season feels like it’s just a pure un-distilled fan-service for the LN readers. It’s a chance for them to see their favourite scenes and characters animated and acted out. If you’re an anime-only watcher, expect not to care about anything because this show is the equivalent of you in a tour through a safari/wildlife preserve and your tour vehicle is moving at 100km/h. There’s something out there, you just can’t savour it.

In fact, the second season seemed like it was made just to keep the Overlord flame going. The studio realized they have a popular IP and they need to keep what little hype was left from the first season two+ years ago so that they can revisit the idea of another season down the road if they need to. And it shows. This is as cheap, as rushed, and as unimaginative as they can make it. Frankly you should ask yourself this: if Madhouse couldn’t be arsed enough to care, why should you?

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san is a rather episodic format series divided into multiple skits per episode that relies overly on one formula. Once you saw the first episode you can predict how most interactions down the line would go. This is made even more glaring by the fact that the show attempts to preserve the status quo for the majority of its run. You will be stuck mostly watching the male MC repeatedly attempt to pull a shenanigan against the female MC and she is of course one step ahead of him. Much of the show’s attempt at humor is centered on how she flips ... the table on him and his reactions to that. That’s pretty much it. The skits are not punctuated by overly strong punch-lines that will leave you gasping for air. What it instead does is leave you with a big wide knowing smile looking at one skilled teaser, who obviously has a crush on the guy, try to tease him day in and day out into quasi-dates with her because it’s the one sure excuse she has to stay near him without freaking him out with the idea of dating.

Much of the appeal of the series therefore lies on the delivery of the main characters and it is here that I must recommend the English dub. Aaron Dimsuke performs admirably in a series that puts a lot of weight on the male lead’s reactions to being playfully teased. And, of course, the star of show, Sarah Weidenheft’s Takagi, brings out a performance that is equal parts childish, playful, devious, and endearing all at once, while still selling the idea that she longs for him to notice her feelings.