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Class no Daikirai na Joshi to Kekkon Suru Koto ni Natta, or “the romcom anime that is 15 years late”... Characters, dialogues, tropes, animation style and character designs, absolutely everything in this anime is dated. So dated I’m starting to think I may actually have been run over by a truck and reincarnated in the year 2010. Jokes aside, let’s review this anime.

-- Boring premise
There’s a lot of anime out there that have an interesting base idea for a plot, but fail miserably in its execution. But as you can see from the synopsis, the plot of this anime doesn’t even sound good on ... paper. Basically, it’s a high school romcom where the protagonist is forced into a relationship with a girl he hates, but surprise surprise, actually they’re going to fall in love for real. Totally didn’t saw that coming. So yeah, the idea is nothing new. In a sense it’s sort of reminiscent of Nisekoi, but taken a step further, since here the fake couple is forced to get married and live under the same roof day one.

-- The comedy can be decent
Most of the time the comedy of this anime is the type of interactions that’s been seen again and again in the medium, and it’s gotten old, especially since it revolves around basically two things : the characters constantly yelling at each other, and the fact that they aren’t yet completely aware of their true feelings, so they will act like they hate each other but feel the contrary. You know the drill. With that being said, there is some novelty. Since the fake couple is forced to live under the same roof, the comedy usually place at home rather than at school, which I have to admit, is quite rare. Sometimes it is decent, and I thought the use of chibi / deformed faces made the jokes more effective. But these are pretty much the only qualities to be found in this anime.

-- Cardboard characters
Another thing that makes this anime very generic and dated is the characters. They are all stereotypical and overused archetype seen hundreds of times. And as such, they are completely uninteresting. The main girl, Akane, is nothing more than a basic tsundere. Then you have the clingy little sister who is supposed to be cute despite being expressionless and emotionless, which is again another cliche. Then you also have Himari, a forgettable and boring character who is also madly in love with the protagonist, and only exists as a plot device to force the tsundere to realize her true feelings. The rest of the cast was so good I completely forgot about them. The soulless art-style and generic character designs is just the cherry on top.

-- A romcom where NOTHING EVER HAPPENS
As I said earlier, the plot of this anime is very predictable. But that’s not the only major flaw in plot. Class no Daikirai na Joshi to Kekkon Suru Koto ni Natta is yet another romcom where the characters take YEARS to realize that they actually love each other, and to express it, even though it’s obvious from the few early episodes. Well, actually their relationship seems to evolve, and little by little they start showing affection, but in the end, despite a ridiculous cat fight between Akane and Himari, it feels like nothing has changed.

-- The problem with these romcoms
I’m going to use this review as an opportunity to criticize a tendency that we see in a lot of anime romcoms. This anime suffers from the same flaw as most anime romcoms. It’s the usual thing where the moral of the story is that you have to be honest with yourself, true to your feelings, not suppress your jealousy, and that these feelings must lead you to action. The anime tries to teach you to be more assertive, to let go of self-restraint, not care about what other people may think, and not give up on the person you love. If the moral sounds good on paper, it’s not the same in practice. The problem with these romcoms is that they constantly show characters chained by their own sense of self-restraint, characters who suppress their love, desires, sexual attraction, etc. As a result they end up normalizing this kind of self-destructive behavior rather than help or educate the viewer.

-- Low production value
I already mentioned that the art-style and character designs where generic and soulless. The same goes for the backgrounds and the animation in general. The animation is of little quality and there is a general lack of movement. Well, one could say in such an anime it’s not a big problem. After all, the chibi faces did serve their purpose quite well. And it’s not like every anime needs to be filled with sakuga. On the upside, while the art-style is overused, I can’t really call it ugly. When it comes to the sound though, the backgrounds music is for the most part unnoticeable, and both the opening and ending songs sounded like generic garbage.

-- Conclusion
I don’t think there’s much to add here. While this anime has one or two qualities, overall it’s just very bad on top of being dated. Unless you have a fetish for the tsundere character archetype, there’s no way you’re going to enjoy this.

Captain Herlock has become an anime classic that any anime fan of my beloved french country has to watch one day, for two main reasons. Reason 1: it’s adapted from Matsumoto Reiji’s work, whose influence in manga and Japanese animation cannot be overstated. Reason 2 : Captain Herlock, known here as “Albator”, used to be super popular in the 70’s and 80’s, and in a sense it’s a series that gave birth to a whole generation of french anime fans. For these two reasons I had to watch it.

Now, when I started watching this, since I knew it would be about space pirates, I ... expected a SF / adventure series which would also be an ode to freedom, since you know, pirates equals freedom, anarchy, libertarianism, etc etc etc. But I have to admit I was kind of surprised by the philosophy it upholds, which, actually, has little to do with freedom. In fact, the philosophical / political subtext of this anime is plagued with boomer rants about the young generation that’s become corrupt, lazy, doesn’t want to work, doesn’t want to go to war, doesn’t want to die in a heroic way on a battlefield, etc. So in this review I’ll be mainly discussing the philosophy and the plot of this anime, because that’s what struck me the most.

Set in a future where technology has reached such levels that work has practically been abolished, the story revolves around a group of space pirates who are trying to save the Earth from the Mazones, an alien race attempting to take over the planet and exterminate humanity. The group of space pirates led by Captain Herlock have become disgusted with humanity which they see as degenerated and corrupted by laziness, and they roam space aboard a mighty (and oddly designed) spaceship known as the Arcadia. They are the only ones aware that the Earth is in danger, and as the plot progresses they uncover the Mazones’ plan for domination, and start to combat them to save humanity from annihilation.

Coming back to the anime’s philosophy. The anime portrays humanity’s degeneracy as such : the quasi abolition of work allowed by technological progress has made humans lazy and cowardly. Humans don’t want to fight, and will use strong labor regulations as an excuse to be lazy. At the same time, a minority of Mazones hiding among humans, using their feminine beauty, have seized control of the state and the institutions in the shadows, all of this in order to maintain humanity unaware of the coming invasion of Earth, and to prepare the extermination of humanity. What drives the alien race is the desire to find a new homeland where they can migrate. So what we essentially have here is a story that makes race war and the “great replacement” theory a reality, on top of being anti-progress and jingoistic. One could easily think the subtext of this anime is borderline fascist, and that adding pirates and empty phrases about “freedom” is basically just a cover-up to hide its propaganda.

Some people could argue that I’m wrong because the anime doesn’t portray the alien race as cartoonishly evil, since they have feelings, a legitimate goal, and most of the time their evil stems from the fact they are led by a brutal military dictatorship. That is indeed true. The anime also does show that there is a difference between the Mazone military who are genocidal, tyrannical warmongers, and the civilians. There are also inner conflicts between the military and the civilians. Though they are aliens, Mazones are essentially identical to humans. They have emotions, they just want to live a normal life, but are driven towards war because their homeland is dying and they need to find a new one. Captain Herlock repeatedly shows empathy towards the Mazones, doesn’t want to kill civilians, and tries to spare the aliens whenever possible, even if it means putting his crew in danger. The final episodes also tends to show that coexistence and peace between humanity and Mazone is possible. So in that sense, one could say I’m exaggerating when I say that the subtext could be seen as fascist.

The thing is, at the same time the anime shows that the Mazone are not purely evil, and that peace between races could maybe be possible, it destroys that possibility right after. Every time we see some sort of empathy and mutual understanding budding between a human and a Mazone, the Mazone is either killed by the plot, or revealed to be a spy, or something similar. Indeed, the Mazones are constantly lying and toying with the hearts of men, using their beauty to deceive them like mermaids.

On top of that, the anime teaches you to always be wary of civilians, because they might actually be soldiers trying to deceive you, or spies trying to get inside the Arcadia. And It will be the case 90% of the time. As a consequence the anime indirectly supports the killing of civilians and war crimes as a security measure. The death of innocent Mazone civilians is shown as something that can’t be avoided, because the Mazone military uses them as a shield. This is the kind of rhetoric that in our world, is constantly used by state propaganda to justify war crimes, or even ethnic cleansing. There are also scenes where the crew of the Arcadia goes on a rampage to kill Mazones hiding among humans. You have scenes where the viewer is told that it’s okay to kill your wife, because she’s from an evil race trying to deceive you. Watching these scenes made me feel very uncomfortable.

That’s not the only thing that makes the subtext of this anime ambiguous. Indeed, when humanity is degenerate and lazy, and doesn’t want to fight against the coming alien invasion, the only person that is shown to be aware of the situation is a military commander, while the bad guy is the cowardly prime minister who doesn’t want to mobilize for war because he is worried about upcoming elections. Here the anime shows both militaristic and anti-democracy sentiment. But that’s not all. On several occasions, useless military sacrifice is encouraged and shown in a positive light. We even have one guy doing a kamikaze while singing Japanese folk songs. Another way to make the viewer uncomfortable.

One could also say that I’m overthinking, that this show is for kids and that it can’t have this kind of subtext. But given its serious themes (death, race war, genocide...), Captain Herlock isn’t really what I would call a kids’ show. And even if it was, even kids’ shows tries to teach children some kind of moral. During wartime we literally make propaganda aimed at kids to indoctrinate them. This argument simply isn’t valid. So regarding the philosophical / political subtext of this anime, I would say that it is at best ambiguous.

The plot of Captain Herlock has other important shortcomings. It has a tendency to be episodic, and as such it is plagued with episodes that feel like fillers. Some of them tried to develop the members of the crew, but I found them uninteresting for the most part. The two exceptions were the two episodes that developed Maji’s and Miime’s background stories, which where actually pretty touching and didn’t feel irrelevant to the main plot-line. But sadly, those episodes were the exception. The story also progresses at a slow pace and can get very repetitive. Indeed, an important part of the anime consists of Captain Herlock coming back and forth to Earth to save Mayu, the daughter of his late friend.

Mayu is truly the second major flaw of this anime. Watching the anime feels like every god dang episode, the Earth’s government abducts her and mistreats her in order to lure Captain Herlock. Herlock is a terrible human being for allowing Mayu to get mistreated this much when he could just bring her on the ship. The promise he made to his friend doesn’t change anything. Mayu shouldn’t even exist to begin with. She wasn’t in the manga. She was only added to justify Herlock’s attachment to the planet he thinks has no future. And also to underline the fact that he is the good guy in the story, which is not always very obvious given the fact he spends most of his time slaughtering pretty women. Another thing that makes me think Herlock is a terrible person is the fact that he would rather sacrifice the whole of humanity than let Mayu die, as it is shown in episodes 30 to 34 or so.

Being a space opera, the anime includes a lot of space battles. Sadly, I found most of them to be lackluster. The main reason is that the Arcadia is invincible. It practically never gets damaged despite going in the middle of the enemy fleet. Even when we see it taking a hit, we don’t see any damage. We don’t see any crew members dying. There are no cool ideas (the Arcadia’s space ram is the only notable exception) or clever strategies for space battles. The best strategy usually consists in going towards the enemy fleet at full speed like a kamikaze, and somehow the Mazones can’t win against that despite having thousands and thousands of ships and over a million soldiers. Even in land battles, you will see hundreds if not thousands of Mazone soldiers running towards the good guys and get slaughtered without being able to kill any of the crew members. So much for an army that is supposed to have subjugated or exterminated dozens of other alien races !

Space battles also aren’t that well animated. They lack detail and movement, and many still images are used. And while the Arcadia’s design is pretty cool and original, Mazone spaceships are essentially just flying saucers. Most of the land vehicles and space fighters also tend to look like toys.

When I see this, I can’t help but compare Captain Herlock to another space opera anime, the classic and masterpiece Space Battleship Yamato, which aired four years prior. In Yamato too, the good guys’ ship is practically invincible. But we do see it getting damaged several times, we see crew members dying in battle, and there are actual strategies and interesting ideas to make the space battles entertaining to watch.

With that being said, the art in general does look good. I really enjoyed the Reiji-style character designs, which look very cool and detailed for the most part. The characters design of Harlock is iconic, one that strucks the viewer and can never be forgetten. I also liked how Reiji portrays feminine beauty, though it’s true that all women characters designed by Reiji look pretty much the same. The soundtrack is also of quality. The Japanese opening is a certified banger. There are many good tracks in the BGM, the a-capella songs in particular contributed to the atmosphere, making it sometimes bad-ass, sometimes solemn. So it’s not like this anime has no redeeming qualities. Some episodes were worth watching. The ones I enjoyed the most where the first several episodes, those who are mostly centered around Daiba Tadashi, the newest crew member, and the final showdown with the Mazone queen.

So yeah, despite it being a classic, I didn’t enjoyed Captain Herlock that much. While it has some good moments and cool ideas, cool Reiji-style character designs, nice BGM, etc, the plot has several major flaws which made it a bit hard to watch until the end. Its ambiguous political subtext is one such major flaw. On the other hand, this anime’s historical value is huge, especially if you’re a french anime fan like me. So I’ll recommend you to give it a go, but to keep in mind that most of the episodes may bore you to death.

Hosoda Mamoru is one of these anime movie directors of these last 10-15 years that, together with Shinkai Makoto, has been hailed as the “new Miyazaki”. On this website also you can find a lot of people comparing his movies to the ones made by Studio Ghibli. But while you can find some similarities between Hosoda’s films and Miyazaki’s masterpieces, I believe that they are only similar on a surface level. That is the case with Bakemono no ko (or “The Boy and the Beast” in the language of yankees). Indeed, the movie deals with themes like facing hardships, growing up, and overcoming family difficulties, ... themes which we have seen in some of Miyazaki’s movies, and the basic premise is slightly reminiscent of Spirited Away. However the quality of this movie is, in my opinion, nowhere near a Miyazaki movie. Let me explain.

I’ll sum up the plot rapidly. The movie is about Ren, a young boy who ran away from home after loosing both of his parents due to various reasons. While wandering in the streets of Shibuya, he encounters Kumatetsu, a beast warrior from another world. Ren follows the beast into a parallel world inhabited by beast people only, and there he starts a new life as Kumatetsu’s only apprentice, and his relationship with Kumatetsu quickly evolves to one of a son with his adoptive father. The first half of the movie is mostly focused on the comedy elements. Kumatetsu, as he is a self-taught warrior, and on top of that has an irresponsible and short tempered personality, is a disaster of a master / foster father, and is in constant conflict – or should I say, is constantly bickering - with his apprentice / adopted son. That is the source of the most of the comedy. But here we already have one major shortcoming : the comedy is basically limited to the characters always yelling at each other. As such, it gets a bit repetitive, and a lot of the humor falls flat. This first part felt quite slow and uneventful, but it was at least entertaining thanks to Kumatetsu and the comedy elements.

Then in the second half, as we see Ren growing up to become a young adult and regularly going back and forth his world and the beast world, the plot gets more dramatic. From this moment the story more or less stops focusing on Ren’s relationship with Kumatetsu. That is another major shortcoming of the movie, since Kumatetsu is quite the only decent character in the story. In general, I found it hard to connect with the characters, especially Ren. All of them felt forgettable and too simple. Look at Kaede, for example. Kumatetsu, with his irresponsible and violent personality, along with his character design, is the only character that sticks out and is enjoyable. Towards the end of the movie there’s also some sort of plot twist which is my opinion a complete failure. First, because it was 100% expected. Second, because the character who turns out to be the true antagonist of the story wasn’t developed at all and barely got any screen time or relevance to the plot before that. As a result, this “plot twist” felt both uninteresting and out of place, almost as if the director needed a makeshift solution to make the movie longer, which was already too long by this point.

Another thing that I found infuriating in the story was the moment where Kumatetsu and Ren go on an adventure to learn what strength is, or something like that. One could have expected an actual adventure, discovering unknown regions, seeing great landscapes and the like, but instead of this, the trip is rushed and wrapped up in like... 5 minutes ? While I understand that Hosoda’s aim was definitely not to make an adventure movie, this was quite a disappointment to me.

The world building is pretty much non-existent, as all of the story takes place in the same limited places : Shibuya in the human world, and Kumatetsu’s house in the parallel world. The movie doesn’t try to develop the parallel world at all, we know that it’s a world similar to ours but with medieval-ish technology, and some supernatural elements like reincarnation, and that’s about it. Indeed the movie doesn’t even attempt to make its universe interesting, as its main focus is the characters and their relationships.

So the plot and the characters aren’t great. But what about the animation ? Well, in that department also, I was disappointed : the visuals are lackluster. As I said earlier, some people compare this movie to Studio Ghibli movies. But in practically every Ghibli movies there are outstanding, breath-taking visuals. Ghibli movies make you discover dream-like, or sometimes nightmare-like new worlds. That is not the case with Bakemono no ko. The landscape, the architecture, the scenery and the backgrounds that are shown are uniform and unoriginal, though they don’t look bad and are pretty detailed. The depiction of Shibuya is overly photorealistic, and as such, gray and soulless. Juntengai, the town in the parallel world, has more color, but its architecture is very monotonous. The art style in general feels pretty generic, especially the character designs which give a feeling of déjà-vu. The designs of Ren, Kaede and other humans lack character and look very lazy. The same could be said about the beast characters, with the exception of Kumatetsu. Let me clarify: the animation doesn’t look bad. It is fluid and dynamic. There is detail in the backgrounds and such. But overall it just doesn’t have character. On top of that, CGI is often used for crowds and vehicles.

Lastly, let’s quickly talk about the sound. I don’t have much to say about it. I believe the voice acting was decent. The music was unnoticeable, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it means the music serves its purpose, fits the situations and doesn’t feel out of place. Bad because it doesn’t leave a strong impression and is quickly forgotten once the movie ends. It definitely didn’t sound like an OST you would re-listen to on YouTube later. Overall it doesn’t really add value to the movie.

Here’s my verdict: Bakemono no ko is not what I would call a bad movie, but it definitely is not worth being compared to even the worst of Miyazaki’s movies. Its uninteresting characters and story made it boring from start to finish, and its visuals, while decent for a movie, aren’t good enough to make it enjoyable. I believe fans of Hosoda Mamoru’s other films can find it entertaining, but I couldn’t.

Short review. Most of what I said about the first season also applies to this second season so I’d recommend reading my review of the first season before this one.


--- Animation & sound: identical to the first season

The animation is still of high quality. It is clean and smooth, there are very few inconsistencies, and the fight scenes look very good. The backgrounds are well drawn and detailed. Some buildings look very cool, for example the Hartgen castle and the Emperor’s floating fortresses.

Sound-wise, however, it means that the opening and the ending sound as shit as in the first season. Nomizu Iori still ... doesn’t know how to sing. The background music is still very meh and forgettable, though it is not bad enough to hinder the show.


--- The end is rushed and disappointing

There are too many things happening in a short time, especially in the three last episodes. In episode 8 the black Chaikas organize a series of fights in Hartgen castle, red Chaika’s team vs white Chaika’s team and Tooru vs his former master Shin, among others. You would have expected these fights to be somewhat epic but they’re not, they’re wrapped up in 30 seconds each. It is even more apparent in the fight against the reincarnated Emperor Gaz. I expected him to be a charismatic, extremely powerful and clever wizard, but instead what we have here is a boring villain who says lame pseudo-philosophical lines about war (“humans crave for war”… no they don’t you goddamn imbecile), has less screen-time than the blue Chaika in season one, and is defeated in a matter of dozens of minutes thanks to some unexplained event. Everything was part of his plan, except the betrayal of his human weapon, apparently.


--- Other flaws in the story

There are probably others, but here a few notable ones:

– In this second season we get the confirmation that magic does everything: magic circles can be used as elevators and ship engines, while magic guns (“gundos”) can replace GPS and be used to start a fire. We’re getting closer to magic coffee machines, I tell you.

– The characters get the Emperor’s remains too easily. One of the eight heroes gives Tooru and his team the remains after a fight that isn’t even a fight to the death but rather a game, while the other heroes are so weak they get bullied into giving the remains to whoever attacks them first.

– With all the Chaikas, Fredrika and the introduction of Niva, the girl who is also a magic gun, there are moments where this series reaches a point of loli overdose. There are so many children on the screen it looks like a field trip rather than a quest.


--- Verdict

This second season is on par with the first one, that is to say it is slightly entertaining but there’s nothing new or incredible about it. If you enjoyed the first season you will most likely also enjoy this sequel. If you didn’t, skip it, as it doesn’t get better than the first one.

What a cursed period Winter 2021 was! In the same season, three awful anime series with horrible animation quality started airing. The worst was Ex-Arm, with a CGI animation so bad nobody could actually watch it. There was also Redo of Healer, a very badly animated rape fantasy targeted at incels. And lastly, there was Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?, or “So I'm a Spider, So What?” in Shakespeare’s language, the train wreck of an anime that I’m reviewing today.


--- The premise

This is yet again another “isekai” (or should I say, “shitsekai”), that is to say, an anime where the protagonist is transported to ... a parallel world. In that case it’s the whole classroom – teacher included – that are reincarnated as newborns, and the parallel world is a RPG-like fantasy world featuring elves, demons, monsters, and also tons of video games mechanics. Our protagonist is a girl who is reincarnated as a spider in a cave full of atrocious CGI creatures, and must fight them to survive and get experience, levels and skills. That’s the spider arc. Then you have the generic isekai arc which follows the boring adventures of the rest of the classroom, who got the chance not to be reincarnated as ugly monsters.


--- One of the ugliest shows

The spider arc is mostly animated in CGI, and oh boy does the CGI of this anime sucks ass. It is ugly, badly animated, and the movements are very jerky. Most of the spider arc happens in a cave, so the backgrounds you get to see are boring 3D backgrounds that look less detailed than the caves in The Battle for Middle-earth, a real time strategy video game that was released in… 2004. The spider looks very ugly, too. With her human eyes and her spider body, she looks like one of those abominations I used to make in the video game Spore when I was 10. The other CGI monsters look even uglier than the spider, and when these cursed creatures fight it is hard to understand what the heck is happening on the screen.

The animation of the generic isekai arc isn’t better. In the first half of the series or so it consists mostly of 2D animation, but as the series progresses there is more and more CGI. Just as in the spider arc, the CGI is very ugly. It is not an overstatement to say that the 3D hentai game Koikatsu Party looks better than the CGI of this anime. Some characters such as Sophia or the demon lord are made out exclusively of CGI, and you often see 2D characters and CGI characters on the same image. CGI is also used for monsters and armies, not just for background crowds. Towards the end of the series CGI is used in all fight scenes, making them look like utter shit. This is supposed to be the climax for god’s sake! Oh and did I also mention that the ground looks uglier than old video games’ textures?

The 2D animation is also very bad. Character designs are comparable to those in The Irregular at Magic High School – they are generic and soulless. 2D backgrounds look like they come from a low budget visual novel from the 2000’s. There is little actual animation, and most of the time it is jerky. 2D fight scenes don’t look good and consist for the most part of static images with movement lines. Not only this, but as the series progresses, the animation gets even worse! There are more and more face inconsistencies, with ugly faces and characters’ eyes looking in two different directions. In the second half of the series or so, there are entire scenes with absolutely no goddamn animation. Characters leave or appear on the screen with no actual animation as if it was a shitty PowerPoint presentation! There are some episodes where the animators tried very hard to spare effort by hiding the characters’ mouths when they’re talking, for example by putting a character in front of them, or by showing static images of silent characters.

In short, the animation of this show is so ugly it’s near impossible to take the story seriously.


--- The most insufferable protagonist ever created

There are three things that make the spider insufferable. First, as I mentioned earlier, she looks ugly. Second, her voice acting is extremely annoying. Third, she can’t help complaining and yelling all the time with her irritating voice. Since for most of the series she is alone in caves, she is always talking to herself, describing what’s happening to her, reading stats and skills’ description, talking to the AI, making cringe-worthy jokes and references, and so on. And this is what makes her insufferable: she is always talking. When the spider appears on the screen you should have your Paracetamol ready because her high-pitched voice is going to give you a goddamn headache. And if her dialogues aren’t enough to make your ears bleed, do not worry: she also sings the ending song!


--- The rest of the cast sucks ass

The rest of the cast on the generic isekai arc’s side is a bunch of stereotypical and soulless characters. There are too many of them to remember about and I will not waste my time describing why they suck. In a nutshell: there’s the generic anime main character who is kind, brave and whatnot, and the bad guy who is mean and pretentious. Oh, and the demon lord is a little girl with a cuteness fang, how original. With the former teacher there’s a failed attempt at character development which can be summed up in this: “I wanted my students to like me so I studied video games and light novels”… absolutely ridiculous. The only thing that’s good with these people is that they are less annoying than the spider.


--- The story is nonsense

The first thing that’s wrong in the story is that it follows two arcs – which are actually two different timelines – at the same time, making the show confusing. To my knowledge, it wasn’t the case in the light novel or the manga adaptation.

The spider arc is about accumulating experience, leveling up, getting new skills and evolving. It has everything a MMORPG has, including skill points, MP, HP and SP. There’s tons of talk about skills and other video game mechanics, lots of annoying terminology, and walls of text that are unreadable. Video-game skills play a huge role in the story, but they also make the fights unfathomable. Stuff happens on the screen (stuff meaning orgies of bad CGI), that’s all. There’s no real tension because you know that the spider is going to win any fight thanks to some skill she pulled from her ass.

The generic isekai arc is about generic isekai stuff. In the beginning of the series the characters are in a generic magic academy where they do nothing relevant to the plot. Then there is a conspiracy and they are forced to leave the academy to fight the demons in atrocious CGI battles.

As the series progresses the story gets more random and ridiculous. There is an “administrator” who talks to the spider with a smartphone and gives her overpowered skills, there are elves with mechas, there are clones, there are computers, there is future technology… And in the last episodes, which is supposed to be the climax of the series, we get to see disgusting fight scenes between ugly CGI models and mechas that have nothing to do in a medieval fantasy universe.


--- Sound

Perhaps the least failed aspect of the show, but it’s still horrible. The quality of the background music ranges from meh to alright. The voice-acting is meh, as the lip-sync is sometimes badly done, and as I said earlier, the spider’s voice is insufferable. The openings and endings are also very bad and skippable.


--- Verdict

One of the worst anime series I have seen in my life, both in terms of story / characters and technical value. The only reason I give it a 2 instead of a 1 is because Ex-Arm exists. It is absolutely not enjoyable. Avoid it at all costs, it is not worth your time or the money spent on Paracetamol.

Gankutsuou is an anime adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, a book written by famous French writer Alexandre Dumas. The story revolves around the Count’s revenge against three people who betrayed him. In this adaptation, however, the story takes place in the future instead of 19th century France, and it is told from the point of view of Albert de Morcerf, the son of one of the people the Count is trying to get revenge on. I have not read the book and my only knowledge of the original story comes from a french television movie with bad acting, therefore I will try to ... avoid comparing this adaptation with the original.


--- The good part: the Count and his revenge

The main theme of this anime is the Count’s revenge. The Count of Monte Cristo is first introduced as a mysterious and incredibly rich man. After befriending the protagonist Albert de Morcerf on the moon, he comes to France. The Count uses Albert to meet the three people who had betrayed him and to prepare his revenge against them. Of course, the Count having changed his appearance and identity, they don’t know what’s about to happen. As the series progresses, he brings division among them and takes them down one by one. The preparation and the execution of the Count’s revenge is satisfying to watch, and constitutes the interesting part of the anime.

The Count is also a great character. A very charismatic and bad-ass man who does whatever he wants to do, has cool clothes, and a fantastic voice-acting. Everything is part of his plan, including his encounter with Albert on the moon, and he doesn’t hesitate to use amoral tactics to achieve his revenge.


--- The bad part: anime cliches and other infuriating things

Sadly, this adaptation added lots of ridiculous anime cliches – you know that it’s an anime when one of the characters is a cross-dressing femboy – to the original story, hindering it greatly.

The most problematic thing for me is Albert de Morcerf, who is nothing more than your generic anime protagonist. He is shy but brave. He protects women. He is kind and very naive, maybe even dumb. The fact that the story is told from his point of view and not from the Count’s makes the story so lame in comparison with what it could have been, and I haven’t counted the number of times I wanted to slap Albert’s face.

This adaptation is also plagued with unnecessary romance stories, with things like a bad guy trying to steal Albert’s girl, and the usual stuff about forbidden love between commoners and aristocrats. Why combine the revenge part, which is actually interesting, with boring romance stories already seen hundreds of times in the medium? It also tries so hard to be emotional it’s irritating and as a result, the last episodes aren’t interesting at all: duel with CGI mechas, intervention of the “power of friendship”, slow and boring conclusion with the characters’ reunion and whatnot… ugh!

I could also mention how incredibly stupid most of the characters are, Albert in particular. It quickly becomes obvious that the Count is responsible for all the bad shit happening around them, yet they do nothing.

Lastly, there’s no explanation as to why the Count is so rich. In the original story, it was thanks to the hidden treasure he found on the island of Monte Cristo (hence his name). In this story there’s no island, no treasure, and no place named Monte Cristo. We just have to assume that the Count has unlimited money because… magic? Oh right, I forgot to mention that the plot-writers also added supernatural elements. It wouldn’t be an anime otherwise, huh?


--- The art-style is a weird mix of 2D, 3D and photographic images

Judging the animation is going to be a bit difficult for me since I did not watch the series in the best conditions (streaming site with mediocre image quality) and because I am probably unconsciously comparing it to modern standards, but I will do it anyway because it wouldn’t be a complete review without talking about the animation.

A thing a lot of people praise this anime for is the uniqueness of the animation. While I do think the animation is original and very colorful, I wouldn’t call it good either. It is a mix of 2D and 3D that doesn’t blend well at all. The characters and some of the backgrounds are 2D while vehicles, some props and most of the buildings are 3D. The 3D buildings are ugly, blocky, repetitive, and often look ridiculous. There are some scenes where it is hard to understand what the heck is happening on the screen because of the ugly 3D. Some horses and cars are made up of 3D polygons, which also look bad. The floors are sometimes uglier than PS1 video games’ textures. There is also an excessive use of photographic backgrounds as if it was a goddamn visual novel. Regarding the 2D animation, it isn’t particularly better. While most character designs are good, the hair and the clothes look really weird. There are also a few episodes where the characters’ faces often look ugly. In short, the animation of this anime greatly hinders it.


--- Sound: nice music and good voice-acting

The voice-acting is pretty good, the Count’s voice in particular. The background music fulfills its purpose fairly well, though it is not something I would re-listen to on YouTube. The opening and endings are pretty bad, however. The singer doesn’t know how to sing. For some reason, both songs are sung in English.


--- Verdict

This series has an interesting revenge story and a cool character but all of its potential is ruined by a generic protagonist, anime cliches, unnecessary romance stories and a disappointing end. Some episodes and scenes are well done so it’s not a complete waste of time, but it’s not a good show either.

Although the first scene of Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate makes it look like a serious anime, it quickly reveals to be nothing more than your typical garbage anime adaptation of a visual novel that is most likely also garbage. Generic protagonist with a generic character design who somehow manages to make all of the girls horny for him, stereotypical female characters with childish personalities, dumb excuses for fan-service, failed attempts at comedy… And despite that, I’m still going to write a review to explain in detail why this anime is terrible.


--- The premise

The protagonist and his friends are all members of the “food research ... club”, a useless club where they do nothing but eat food at the expense of their high school’s budget. Enters a girl whom I will refer to as “serious girl”, because who cares about the names of stereotypes. Serious girl is a candidate in the election for the next student council presidency, and she wants to reform the high school and disband all of the useless clubs including the “food research club”. To save his club, the protagonist has no choice but to run as a candidate for the election and win it. But as it turns out, the electoral campaign is just a bad excuse for the usual visual novel crap of learning about various girls’ backgrounds and traumas.


--- High school politics

The whole high school politics thing is completely ridiculous and unbelievable. After a few episodes we are told that the high school is actually its own little nation composed exclusively of students, with the student council being its government, and as such there are elections, electoral campaigns, budgets, manifestos, reforms, bribes, conspiracies and even spies… Goddamn it, this is high school, a place where people aren’t older than 18. On top of that most of the characters don’t act mature at all, they act like children rather than people who are supposed to participate in politics. In such conditions, how can you take this seriously? And yes, it is supposed to be serious, at least most of the time. There are even murder attempts and abductions for political motives. There are some moments where it tries to be satirical, but it just ends up being unfunny.

In their electoral campaign, the “food research club” gets advice from the current student council president. He explains them how campaigning works, which could have been interesting. But it turns out that to win an election you just need pretty girls politely asking guys to vote for you, along with cosplaying and yaoi role-playing in front of horny girls. Media apparatus? Why would we need that?


--- Standard visual novel stuff

This is what the show is actually about. After a few episodes the show starts diving into the girls’ personal problems and traumas, one girl at the time. The vast majority of adaptations of visual novels do that, as they try to glue together all the character-specific arcs (“routes”) in one story. Every character-specific arc finishes when said character’s personal problems have been fixed by the intervention of the protagonist, after some boring flashback involving childhood traumas, childhood promises and the like. But the problem is that since the series is only 12 episodes long, character-specific arcs are rushed. Hard to care about characters when their character arcs are wrapped up in less than two episodes. Hard to care about characters who barely even appear on the screen before the time for their character arc has come.

As in any visual novel, the “comedy” is childish. It is irritating rather than funny. There are also dumb excuses for fan-service like showing panties and thighs (le funny camera angle has arrived), groping boobs and... sniffing armpits.


--- The characters are all stereotypes

… stereotypes such as the “kuudere”, the “tsundere” childhood friend, the serious girl, the not very serious teacher who drinks a lot of beer (how uncharacteristic!), the energetic (energetic meaning annoying) short girl, the gay dude who is constantly sexually harassing the protagonist, et cetera. Yes, the only gay character is a sexual harasser who can’t help but remind that he’s gay (“yaoi sticks”, “I’ll take the bottom” [emphasis on “bottom”, in case you didn’t get the allusion]) and wants to have sexual intercourse with the protagonist every five minutes: “You were so cool I almost came”, “his body already belongs to me”… bruv calm down your hormones. Seriously, there are “jokes” like these in almost every episode, sometimes several times. It’s not fucking funny. It’s just sexual harassment on top of being homophobic since it’s picturing gay people as harassers.

The characters’ motivations? They are dumb. The whole anime is about preventing a useless club from disbandment, so that the club members can keep hanging out and eating food in the club room, when they could be hanging out in the cafeteria or after school like everyone else! How is the viewer supposed to root for them when they have such stupid motives? And why would the teacher help them?

By the way there are also too many characters to remember about. There are eight members in the “food research club” and two of them are clones of each other. Not only this, most characters all look the same, with hair color and haircut being the only way to tell them apart.

The serious girl may be the only decent female character – by decent I mean not utter shit – since she has a reasonable objective, and is not childish or overly cute. But she alone can’t save the show.


--- Average visual novel protagonist

The protagonist has a generic character design seen hundreds of times in recent anime and visual novels. Take any visual novel made in the last ten years, there’s a 90% chance that it’s the same character design. What about his personality then? He’s a visual novel protagonist, what do you expect? He has no charisma, no personality, he is lazy and passive. He does practically nothing on his own, most of the time he is forced by other people to do things. Despite that, all of the girls around him – his teacher included – want his dong, but of course he doesn’t do anything about it. He helps cute girls because he wants to bang them and says that he likes bumping into pretty girls, but he doesn’t notice his childhood friend who is basically throwing herself at him. In short, he is a terrible protagonist that you can only hate.


--- The romance

This anime is an adaptation of a visual novel of the dating simulator type and as such, its main purpose is romance (and the H-scenes, of course!). Since the characters are utter garbage, it comes as no surprise that the romance between these characters is also of low quality. The worst thing is that the plot-writers didn’t even pick the best – or should I say “least worst” – girl and went for the psychologically deranged one instead.


--- Not saved by the production value

Though there aren’t any big face inconsistencies or things like that, the animation isn’t great. I have already mentioned how generic the character designs are. The art-style is not ugly but pretty unoriginal. It reminds me of Katawa Shoujo, you know, that visual novel where you bang disabled girls. The backgrounds look like your typical soulless visual novel backgrounds, but less detailed. Some don’t look good and are very basic. Ugly CGI is also used for cars, machines and moving objects.

On the sound department, it’s even worse. The background music is standard visual novel stuff. It is not very well placed, and doesn’t always fit the situation. The voice-acting is exaggerated. Most female characters have irritating high-pitched voices, making them even more annoying. The opening is generic and deserves to be skipped.


--- Verdict

This is a very bad anime series. The story is standard dating simulator bull-crap mixed with high school politics that you can’t possibly take seriously. The characters are stereotypical and annoying, the protagonist in particular. The romance, which is supposed to be the main purpose of this type of anime, is also of low quality. The sound and animation are very meh. This series is not even entertaining. It belongs to the trash can.

Hitsugi no Chaika is a medieval fantasy anime focusing on Chaika’s quest to gather the remains of her deceased father, Arthur Gaz, in order to give him a proper funeral. Emperor Gaz was a powerful and evil wizard who ruled the Gaz Empire for five centuries until he was defeated by eight heroes, bringing an end to a three hundred years long war. The world is now at peace, and our protagonist is a former saboteur who is jobless in peacetime. Chaika encounters him in a forest and decides to hire him and his sister to help her in her quest.


--- At first glance ... it looks like your generic stuff

The few early episodes make it look like it’s a garbage show. Every characteristic of the generic fantasy anime is there, from the very unoriginal art-style with the character designs that don’t fit the universe (weird haircuts, colored hair, clothing that is impractical for fighting…), to the excessive use of magic circles that all look the same and can do about everything modern technology can do including fuel, rifle cartridges, projectors, microphones and even fixed telephone. You can only be thankful that there are no magic cellphones or magic espresso machines. But you can’t be very thankful either since one of the main characters is a goddamn sniper loli with a Victorian dress.

The genericness applies to the backgrounds which, even though they are well-drawn, look pretty dull in the few early episodes. It also applies to the characters designs, which are for the most part generic and forgettable. The best examples are Fredrika and Vivi: their character designs are very similar; you will have a hard time telling them apart in the beginning of the series.

The opening, the ending and the background music are also unoriginal. The opening is generic and bad; the female singer doesn’t know how to sing. The ending is pretty much the same, but with Chaika naked. Great.


--- But surprisingly, it’s not that bad

I would even say it’s an okay anime. Firstly, thanks to the animation, which is actually of high quality overall. It is clean and smooth, there are few to no inconsistencies, and few static images. The fight scenes look very good. Even if the backgrounds in the few early episodes are pretty unoriginal they are well drawn and well detailed, and as the series progresses we get to see some more original ones. There are a few cool buildings and vehicles, for example the steampunk-looking floating fortresses that we see in the three last episodes. Even the CGI is alright, with cool looking vehicles made out of wood and iron.

Secondly, the story and characters are somewhat decent or at least, not utter shit. You have a clear objective for the main characters which is gathering the late emperor’s remains, and it is implied that the completion of this objective will have important and harmful consequences, as it could potentially revive the evil emperor. There are also some secrets, like who was actually the emperor, what happened to the eight heroes who killed him, was he really as bad as people say, among others. Some of them are unraveled in this first season. For once, the protagonist doesn’t have morally good intentions. He and his sister actually want the world to be at war again since as former soldiers they have no purpose in a world of peace.

Lastly, there is at some moments decent comedy – I am not talking about the incest jokes – which makes the anime more entertaining to watch. Nothing incredible, but it made me chuckle more than most “comedy” anime series I’ve watched.


--- Still, it’s nothing great

I have already mentioned some of the flaws in the first paragraph, but there is more. Even if the characters are somewhat better than average – and in the wonderful world of anime, average means garbage – they aren’t all that great either. Chaika is made slightly annoying by the fact that she is a naive, clumsy child who easily gets scared, shocked or happy. Sure she is cute and all, but that isn’t enough to make her a likable character. Then you have the protagonist’s violent sister with big boobs, Akari. Oh sorry, did I say sister? Actually they aren’t related by blood. Totally didn’t saw that coming. But it doesn’t matter since she will still call Tooru “ani-sama” (TL note: ani-sama means “big brother”), and make predictable, unfunny incest “jokes” by attempting to murder him each time he gets too close to another female. By the way, despite the fact that they are very poor (they live in an old run-down house and eat bugs), Tooru and Akari still manage to be clean and well-clothed. Not very coherent.

During their quest, the main characters are chased by a group of people sent by the government (the Kliemman organization or something like that) because gathering all of the emperor’s remains would have grave consequences on the world. The characters of this group aren’t good. You have a boring romance where one of them, Vivi, is in love with the leader Alberic but doesn’t have the courage to confess her feelings, and will do everything she can to be noticed by him. For some reason there’s also a goddamn cat-boy in the team. These guys are bad at their job. The best example of their incompetence is when after a fight between Tooru’s group and some other guys, one of them asks “you think a magic battle took place here recently?”, when they were literally 20 meters behind and should have seen everything. In an episode you also see them doing shopping, because that’s relevant to the plot, apparently.

Other problems include cheesy lines about finding a goal or following your convictions, and some fan-service (suspicious camera angles showing the loli’s thighs, bath scene…).


--- Bad naming syndrome

People seem to think that characters’ names is a minor detail, it isn’t. The characters’ names are said in practically every dialogue. If the names are bad it will automatically hinder the dialogues. In this anime the names sound European, with the exception of Tooru and Akari (because saboteur = ninja = Japanese), so you have random and ridiculous names such as Gillette (like the razor brand), Trabant (like the East German car) or Vivi (like… nothing). For the love of god plot writers, choose better names. If you have to give your characters European names, pick names that are actually used by people, not brand names or European-sounding syllables soups!


--- Pedophilia

Yet another anime that portrays a romance between an adult and a child as something normal. How am I not surprised? According to the synopsis, Tooru is 20 and Chaika is 14. By the way, it would still be pedophilia even if she wasn’t 14, as her body, her behavior and her character are that of a child. Seriously. As of today, I have reviewed 25 anime (not including this one). 5 of them had some form of pedophilia. In all of them it was portrayed either as acceptable, either as “funny”. Disgusting.


--- Verdict

Hitsugi no Chaika starts out as generic garbage and ends up as an okay show. The plot and the characters are slightly better than average (average meaning bad), and the animation is of high quality. There are a few cool things here and there, a few good comedy moments, and good fight scenes. It is a somewhat entertaining show that is easy to watch. I would recommend it to fans of the genre, but it has nothing new or incredible.

The premise of Himegoto is that of a porn. Our protagonist, Arikawa Hime, is a male high school student with very feminine looks. His parents who are always traveling abroad left behind huge debts and he is being chased by debt collectors. The debt collectors attempt to rape him but he is saved by the student council, which is made up of three sadistic girls. He is then forced to become their pet dog and wear girls’ clothes for his entire school year. From then on it’s just all sexual abuse, sexual harassment and humiliation for poor boy Hime.


--- “Sexual abuse is wholesome 100!!!”

In ... every episode Hime is forced to do humiliating things, like cheer-leading, cosplay, wearing skimpy clothing, and even nude modeling. Even if it is stated that he was already into cross-dressing before that, it doesn’t justify him being constantly humiliated and abused. Everybody around him, boys and girls, are constantly sexually abusing him, including his brother and his “friend”. People are constantly lifting his skirt, groping him, touching his d*ck and his nipples. Boys attempt to rape him at several occasions. What’s worse is that all of it is portrayed as cute and funny, when what he is going through should be enough to drive him to suicide!


--- Rape = comedy

The situations where the protagonist is sexually abused by everybody around him are apparently supposed to be the “comedy” of this anime. There’s absolutely nothing else. In other terms, the comedy is non-existent.


--- Rape, but inclusive

There’s nothing wrong with cross-dressing and femboys. The problem is that it is through being forced to wear skimpy clothing in front of horny males attempting to rape him that Hime accepts that he wants to wear feminine clothes and a wig. In this anime, sexual abuse is a way to “awaken your true self” and accept your feminine side. How progressive!


--- And everything is forgiven at the end!

Yep. Towards the end of the anime (ep.12 and 13), two boys attempt to rape him, but the student council just stands there and watches until he is saved by some other group. The three girls of the student council are scolded and then everything is forgiven. Yes, all of the sexual abuse and humiliation he went through. “Isn’t it great you made up with them?”, says one character. Yeah right! Isn’t it great he made up with his former abusers? “Thank you”, Hime says to the student council. Yeah thank them for abusing and humiliating you all this time, you absolute fucking buffoon!


--- The production value is decent

Since it’s adapted from a 4-koma manga and the episodes are very short, the animation doesn’t have to be of high quality. The background music is forgettable and generic. Same for the opening and ending, they’re the generic shit that you should skip. They’re also surprisingly cheerful for a show about sexual abuse. But it is decent enough for this type of show. Most of the character designs are well done. They fulfill their purpose of looking cute, most particularly for Hime. The voice-acting is also decent, I believe.


--- Verdict

Is there really anything else to say? This show belongs to the trash can. Even if it is only 40 minutes long it isn’t worth your time.

Due to its nature of OVA and remake of a really old (but legendary) series, on top of being a space opera, that is to say a genre that is long forgotten, Space Battleship Yamato 2199 was either avoided or went unnoticed by most anime fans. In 2012-2013 the anime community was apparently too busy watching soft-core porn series such as High School DxD and its sequels. Or perhaps were they repelled by the stench of nationalism coming from this OVA, which would be a better reason than wasting their time w*nking to demon teenage girls. But I highly doubt that anime fans are this ... politically aware. So what’s worse? Porn addiction, which slowly destroys your brain and makes you see people as objects? Or nationalism, which encourages you to sacrifice yourself and others for the glory of a mystic entity while your ruling class is profiting off arms sales? The answer is obvious; today I will be teaching you about the wonders of nationalism!


--- The story and why it is good

Ignore the joke in the intro. Let’s forget about the nationalistic undertones of the series for a moment – I will talk about them in a later paragraph – this is an excellent OVA.

The story is set in a future where Earth is being bombed into eradication by an alien Empire known as the Gamilas, who are some sort of space Nazis led by a space Hitler named Desler. The bombings have covered the surface of the Earth with toxic contamination and people are forced to live in underground cities. Humanity is on the verge of extinction. To remove the contamination and to fight with the aliens on equal footing, Earth turns a WW2 Japanese battleship, the Yamato, into a powerful spaceship and sends it on a quest to retrieve a technology that can restore Earth to its former state from the alien planet Iskandar. The OVA follows the Yamato's journey to Iskandar, and the many challenges faced by the crew as they travel through enemy territory, and fight the Gamilas Empire in space battles or on other planets. While this does not sound like a very original premise nowadays, the story is well-executed. There are cool weapons such as the Yamato’s Wave Motion Gun, which can destroy entire continents, or the drill missile (yep, it wasn’t invented by the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies). There is cool technology such as the Warp, which creates artificial wormholes to move faster than light. There are good and likable characters on both sides, such as the charismatic and brave Domel on the Empire’s side, and Okita as captain of the Yamato. Okita Juuzou, another man of honor who respects his enemy. An old captain who wants to save his people and homeland, and whose body was made weaker due to toxic contamination, but doesn’t seek revenge or extermination of his enemy. How could someone dislike that grandpa? The characters’ motivations are easy to understand on both sides of the war, without them being one-dimensional. Some want to get revenge, some want to protect their families, and some others want glory and recognition. There are epic space battles where both sides actually establish strategies to kill each other. And there is tension and situations where it gets desperate for the Yamato and its crew, the battle against Domel is the best example.


--- Improved story and characters

This remake improved already existing characters and added new ones. In the 1974 series there was only one female in the crew, and her only purpose in existence was to fall in love with the protagonist almost immediately along with being sexually assaulted by the robot Analyzer on several occasions. In this remake not only did Analyzer stop being a sexual assaulter, a few relevant female characters were also added, such as Yamamoto Akira. The romance between the protagonist Kodai Susumu and Mori Yuki is also more developed than in the 1974 series. The relationship between the characters are a bit more complex. Characters are developed throughout the whole series rather than getting their own dedicated episode, as it was the case in the 1974 series. In the original series, the characters on the Gamilas Empire’s side were all cartoonishly evil and had mischievous faces, except from Domel. In this remake they are more developed and made more human, as they have families and better motivations. Schultz and his men, for example, are second class citizens who seek to become first-class citizens through success in the military. Domel also has a wife and family.

The universe in general is more complex and more coherent. There are a lot of cool additions, such as the fact that the Gamilas Empire has its own language which, for once, doesn’t sound too ridiculous. They have their own names for technologies and planets, for example Pluto is called Plat. In the original series the Nazi aspect of the Empire was mostly about aesthetics, with the German-sounding names and such. In this remake, the Empire has racial discrimination and a secret police that suppresses any opposition (yes, there is an opposition now). The Nazi character of the empire is also made more obvious with other additions such as a Nazi-like salute and a Swastika-like symbol. There are also other alien races, and some of them are under the domination of the Empire.

Contrary to the 1974 series, it doesn’t have filler episodes (or episodes that feel like fillers), meaning that the entire series is good to re-watch, except maybe from one or two episodes where not much interesting stuff happens, such as ep.9 and ep.14.


--- There are a few problems, however

The first flaw is fairly obvious, it’s the fact that an entire galactic empire and its space armada is unable to destroy a single spaceship sent by a dying civilization. It doesn’t matter that the Yamato has powerful weapons like the Wave Motion Gun. It shouldn’t be capable of breaking through entire armies, taking heavy damage and still manage to repair while in space, and resupplying only once or twice on an uninhabited (and hostile) planet in an entire year.

The second flaw is that the end of the series is too long. Without spoiling anything, towards the end of the series, when the quest of the Yamato is basically completed, some unnecessary events happen and this justifies the existence of two episodes which could have been used differently. Note that this is also a problem of the 1974 series and not just this remake. This remake could have removed or replaced this two episodes just as it did for the filler episodes in the 1974 series (such as the one taking place on a planet inhabited by tribal ants, which was absolutely ridiculous). It could have used them to develop the Gamilas Empire a bit more. It could also have used them to explain certain things that are left unexplained even at the end of the series.

Even if characters were improved, some of them are still pretty bad. The best example being Desler, (aka space Hitler) who is the same as in the original series: nothing more than your typical cartoonish bad guy that wants the whole universe under his boot, always has an evil plan (that fails, of course), makes bad decisions and kills his own subordinates for fun. He doesn’t have enough charisma to compensate.


--- The stench of nationalism

Perhaps the major flaw of both this remake and the original is its nationalistic undertones. For some reason, most reviews and comments about the series completely ignore this aspect, while some others give little attention to it. Yet this isn’t something trivial. The fact that few people are pointing it out, and even fewer people are actually denouncing it is somewhat alarming. If the show had been a German cartoon or live-action series about the Bismarck fighting against fascist aliens, it would have caused a controversy and the show would have been canceled almost immediately. But when it comes to Japanese involvement in WW2, people get strangely forgetful.

Firstly, the fact that in this series, the Earth is saved by the Japanese, and only by them. In ep.2 of the 1974 series there is a scene that shows how the historical Yamato was sunk by the USA at the end of WW2, scene in which the Japanese navy is portrayed in an almost positive light. This scene should make uncomfortable anyone who knows about the atrocities committed by Japan and its armed forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War and WW2. Fortunately, this scene is absent in this remake. However, the ambient nationalism didn’t vanish, as the Earth is saved by the Yamato – a symbol of Japanese military supremacy – and an all-Japanese crew. The space fighters are also named after WW2 Japanese fighters, such as the Zero. Why are the crew members all Japanese? Other countries were not eradicated yet, and Japan is not supposed to be the most advanced country in space exploration or space technology, so it doesn’t make sense. This remake added new characters, including relevant female characters to get rid of the sexism, so there was an opportunity to add American, European, Russian or Chinese characters, but they didn’t do it. Instead, Martians and Iskandarians get more representation in the crew than non-Japanese earthlings!

But there’s more. Let us look at the premise of this series again. The Gamilas Empire bombs Earth with weapons of mass destruction, and humanity sends a single space battleship, the Yamato, to fight back against the entire Empire and save their homeland from eradication. This situation looks awfully similar to how the historical Yamato was sunk: it was sent to fight an uneven battle against an overwhelmingly stronger enemy, at the time where Japan was being bombed to hell (the bombing of Tokyo is one example) by said enemy. In short, this series is yet another attempt for Japanese nationalists to play the victim, when it was Japan that started the war and killed (directly or indirectly) dozens of millions of people, mostly Chinese. It is yet another attempt for Japanese nationalists to portray themselves as the good guys, in a fantasy where their heaviest ship bravely faces a Nazi-like empire and saves the people whom they oppress. Who contributed the most to the defeat of the Nazis, again? It was the USSR, with the help of the US and the UK. It was certainly not Japan, which was allied with Nazi Germany. So perhaps the series should have been called Space Tank T-34 instead?

This doesn’t prevent the series from being excellent nevertheless. It is good that this OVA removed the scene mentioned earlier, and that some plot points were added to make it less nationalistic, but the nationalistic undertones remain. They will surely make a lot of people uncomfortable, myself included, and for good reasons.


--- The animation is still very good

Despite its old age, the animation of the 1974 series is very good and one of its strong points. Is the animation of this remake on par with the original? It definitely is! The animation is clean and smooth, the space battles look particularly awesome. The backgrounds look very good and are very detailed. The Gamilas cities and buildings are well done and original, they really look like alien cities. Their design is mostly the same as in the 1974 series, but with much more detail. Iskandar also has very cool Utopian-looking buildings. The somewhat archaic art-style is replaced by a more familiar one, making it easier for today’s anime fans to watch the series. The downside is that it looks generic. Despite that, the character designs are well done and easy to recognize, without using extravagant hairstyles that would feel out of place in a series like this. Vehicles and spaceships are CGI, including the Yamato. I will always say this: good 2D animation looks better than good CGI. I would have preferred to see the Yamato in 2D again, but the CGI in this anime is of high quality, and the Yamato is still so goddamn sexy. There are however a few things that look ugly, for example the rare CGI crowds, a huge CGI bug on some planet, and also some special effects like explosions and smoke which sometimes don’t look very good.


--- Great music

The sound is another strong point of both the 1974 series and this remake. The soundtrack is awesome. It definitely fits the series as it sounds military, with drums, trumpets and such. Most of it is the same as the 1974 series, but there are also a few new tracks in the same style, which are made by Miyagawa Akira, the son of Miyagawa Hiroshi, who composed the music of the 1974 series. The opening is an updated version of the original opening with modern animation and sound, which is good since it is such an incredible and memorable opening. The sound in general is very good. The sound effects, like the alarms or the sound the Wave Motion Gun makes before firing are just so cool. It is sad however, that the sound effects for the laser fires were not updated. The voice-acting is also very good, with well-known seiyus such as Ono Daisuke (Erwin in Attack on Titan, Jotaro in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure) voicing Kodai Susumu, or Ootsuka Akio (Rider in Fate/Zero, Wham in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Batou in Ghost in the Shell) voicing Elk Domel.


--- Verdict

Overall Space Battleship Yamato 2199 is an excellent OVA, and a good remake of the original series. Many things were improved and made more up-to-date to modern day standards, which makes it more accessible to modern audiences, while keeping the elements that made it a legendary series. Though I would have loved to see the Yamato animated in 2D again, the animation is top-notch, and so is the soundtrack. So I would strongly recommend it to most anime fans, but you have to be aware of its nationalistic undertones.