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Dec 29, 2024
It's like, how much more mid could this be? And the answer is none. None more mid.
While the Urusei Yatsura remake largely hit it out of the park, this is so okay I don't even know how to describe it. In this form it certainly has no reason to exist. The 2008 special showed how awesome Ranma could be in an era of faster and cheaper CG production, making it all the more disappointing.
In order to get through enough of the story to get to a point where Shampoo shows up within 12 episodes about 35-40% of everything had to be cut.
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In some cases this is a lateral move, in others it sucks the humor or the story out of the scene. OTOH, the fights don't get cut, and actually feel longer than do in the original, which means you're losing more story content than the shorter runtime would imply. If you have to cut time, you cut the fights. Takahashi has said they're only there to advance the story for more than 30 years. No one is watching a proto-harem ecchi comedy for the 40 minute fight sequences.
Hayashibara Megumi remains the GOAT and is doing Ranma's voice like it's 1993 within a minute, but the new voices are adequate at best. The subtlety of Kuno's narcissism and upper class arrogance are gone. Kodachi is still out of her mind, but in a way that makes you reach for pepper spray instead of making you think "Yeah, but I'm sure she'd be a ton of fun in the sack." There is something off with Soun and Genma, and the figure skaters. When Aeka was replaced in the Tenchi Muyo anime I immediately felt the new voice was Aeka when I heard it. That isn't the case here. They got Sakuma Rei to come back as Shampoo, but she never gets it quite right and sounds more like someone in seiyuu school trying to do Shampoo than she does Shampoo. Shampoo is a stereotype built on top of another stereotype. This is not the kind of role that calls for realism or subtlety. If it's not absurd, it's not funny or sexy.
An attempt is made at some nostalgia bait by recreating the opening bumper and freestyling new ones, with one channeling the Super Famicom games. That popped me, but the rest fell flat. Some of the effects and styling from Takahashi's color illustrations that would have been difficult to paint are here as they were in the UY remake. And unlike the abortion that was the second season of Maou-sama, Retry!, everyone here looks exactly right, proving that college geometry is not that hard.
The cuts made for time make Akane come off as being as much of a bitch as she did in the old Viz dub. You may like Ucchan, Shampoo and/or Kodachi more, but she's supposed to be likeable enough so you could understand why Ranma might come like her. There was a time when her name was almost as much of a slur as Minmei, and this is bringing me back. Most of the online community was dedicated to hating her in the 90s and early 00s because she was misportrayed the way she is here.
Bottom line: With hindsight from mistakes made in later seasons of the original and having the whole story finished long before production began, this should crush the original. But it doesn't. Old fans miss nothing by skipping it and new fans would be better served with the manga or the original anime.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 29, 2024
This is an all-time bed shitting of an established franchise on the level of Shin Tenchi Muyo and High School DxD Hero. That is not an insult I make lightly. I hope the author got a good payday for it, because it's the last fat anime check he's ever going to see.
The Bad:
-EVERYONE looks wrong. Hakuto looks like's aged 10 years, most of the women look like completely different people. How hard is it to copy/paste a character design in the age of digital animation? This is college geometry, hire one math geek for quality control. No one looks like they did in the
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first season or the LN. The director must be a woke asshole because none of the women are permitted to have any sex appeal either while Zero looks like gay fapbait out of Jojo.
-Season 1 ends on a cliffhanger, so how does this open? With TWO useless episodes focusing on Hakuto's old life and shitty recaps. I was completely confused, wondering if this was supposed to be a similar, but different, timeline from the first season. At least that would be a storyline reason for everyone to look like different people.
-The entire series was put together by someone with no understanding of comedic timing. There are germs of some funny slapstick gags in here, yet every one seems to be done in a way to ensure it produces groans instead of chuckles.
-The BGM is horribly out of place. Everything is bombastic and over-the-top, in a bad way. It's the kind of crazy music that would work in a 16-bit RPG where sight gags are done with a few simple sprite changes, text and your imagination. It's actually distracting.
-Everyone breaks out super high level super moves and you are not given the context to understand how powerful they are supposed to be or how abnormal it is for someone to be able to use them.
-These are just the most egregious things off the top of my head. This doesn't deserve dedicating 2 or 3 hours of my life to its other failings.
The "Good":
-Akane was not removed for being physically attractive and fun. Like potato chips, she's great comfort food for me in small doses, but I can see why low T guys wouldn't like her.
-The voice cast came back and really fucking tried.
-Tahara thinking everything that lines up for Hakuto by coincidence is part of a master plan he can't see is a running gag I enjoy.
-It's over and it can't hurt me anymore.
-It's not AS bad as FLCL, if I'm really reaching for a positive.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jul 5, 2024
Is it as good as part 1? No. And given the story written in the novels, it couldn't be. Mushoku Tensei II Part 1 is as good as the novels get. Likewise, it's probably going to be as good as the anime gets.
A lot of supporting details are cut in the anime, but most of the cuts are good for the anime format. They give more detail on how Rudy got from A to B, and while I liked a lot of them when reading the books, I can't say their exclusion would ruin the story for casual fans that will only watch the anime.
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If everything had been animated Rudy's house shopping could have easily been 3 episodes, and MT II would end without the plot moving very much.
While nothing is really bad, nothing is really great either. The emotional highs and comedic moments that made earlier entries stand out aren't here. Because of that it doesn't have the same feeling as everything that came before it. It has a consistent serious tone, and it's consistently decent. There aren't good episodes and bad episodes; the quality is pretty much the same from beginning to end.
The upside is that the story is always moving and there is no dead time. Everything that made the anime absolutely needs to be there.
Should you watch it even though it's the low point of the anime? Absolutely. You'll be completely lost at the start of MT III without it, and if the novels are any indication, MT III is going to be pretty good.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jul 5, 2024
It's not terrible, but it's not up to par with everything you've come to expect from Konosuba. Temper expectations to avoid massive disappointment.
When I finished the series my first thought was "It's almost like this was done by someone that has no clue on how to make Konosuba." And you know what? That's exactly what happened. The entire season is carried by the seiyuu and your existing emotional connection with the characters.
Drive just doesn't get the nuances that JC Staff nailed perfectly. Meticulous attention to detail made many of the gags that were only fine in the LNs absolute gutbusters in the anime. Until
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now. There isn't one gigantic blunder, it's mediocrity of 1000 "good enough for contract work" failings that don't deliver what you expect when you see the Konosuba name. If someone claimed the whole season was AI generated, I couldn't instantly dismiss it.
But when you see the art, you know this wasn't the work of AI. The art is unacceptable. There are too many places to count where faces of main characters don't look right. It's all the more jarring when the seiyuu nail the characters perfectly, as if season 3 had been recorded right after the movie, and the characters just look wrong. I don't think it's wrong to expect a real anime studio to get the faces right when solo doujin eroge developers can do it. In a world of digital art that's simple college geometry.
Joke timings are a little off. Some things need time to breathe and don't get it. Some comedic still shots last too long. Fan service that was in the novels isn't here, and what is here is watered-down enough that it's not on brand. Everything pedestrian with season 3 demonstrates just how much JC Staff understood what made the web novel a hit.
Fortunately, a lot of the familiar BGM tracks have been used. They actually help make it feel more like Konosuba anime than S3 probably should.
Conclusion: The fault lies with the anime, not the source material. The novels covering this are fine. JC Staff managed to take the source material and make it better at every turn. This is the first time that the Konosuba books are better than the anime. Drive has botched Konosuba almost as badly as Passione botched High School DxD. If you're a fan, you're going to watch it anyway. Just don't expect too much to avoid disappointment.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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