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Flower Guy is a horror one-shot by Yuka Yamada, published in 2016 when he was only 16 years old. If I made something like this at 16 I would be very proud of myself. Hell, I would be proud of myself if I made this now, and I'm in my 30s. At my age, I still found this to be a worthwhile read, which ought to say a lot. I didn't particularly seek this one out. I filtered for the horror genre on my favorite manga app and looked ... at the newest additions, and this one had been recently translated at the time. Threw caution to the wind and checked it out. Overall, I'm glad I did.

In the grand scheme of things, however, I can't help but find this most similar to a middling story by Junji Ito. The premise of the story feels like it ought to be a body horror tale, but the perspective is entirely from a person not affected by the body horror. The greater difficulty in empathizing with the person experiencing the trauma lowers that sense of creeping dread you would hope to get from the genre. The narrative is generally ambiguous, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it gets under the skin better and encourages retrospection. On the other hand, the uncertainty makes it questionable to what extent this work actually explores the psyche.

Nonetheless, there's an eerie, sterile coldness to this world that I think makes it an effective short story, so I would recommend taking the time to read it. It's only about 30 pages, and you ought to be able to easily find it from any search engine. I'm not sure if any of Yamada's other stories have been translated, but it appears he's being serialized to this day. If you choose to read Flower Guy, I would appreciate you reading my interpretation of the narrative below.

(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD)

I think this story has too many holes to work on a literal level. Nobody notices the seed embedded in Yuri despite characters being within eyeshot of it in multiple panels. More obviously, nobody notices her being consumed by a giant flower growing out of her in the middle of class, evident by the fact nobody reacts while it happens and everyone being confused as to her whereabouts in the ending.

With this in mind, I have to assume that the narrator's (Hanao's) perspective is unreliable and doesn't match up with reality. There's no obvious hint anywhere that the dialogue in any part of the story is imagined, so I'd like to think text coming from anyone other than Hanao is true. This would mean his attack on Shinya Makoto was real, as it was described by the teacher. At the very least, someone attacked Shinya. Hanao could be taking credit for it in his mind as a sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy. This would mess with the story's continuity, but technically the story confirms its partially non-linear with the flashbacks to Hanao and Lily's childhood, and there's no visual signifiers of when events are taking place like the typical black background pages in other manga.

I find the teacher's use of the word "assaulted" to be interesting here. He was perhaps speaking euphemistically, but wouldn't you still expect the teacher to tell the students the results of the assault? Shinya's attack might not have been fatal. If it was, what's the logic of this scene? If a teacher were to share this, the first thing a student would ask is, "are they okay?" The teacher could ignore those, but it implies the answer and makes one wonder why they would beg the question if they found the obvious follow-up uncomfortable. I wonder if there's room for interpretation on the translation here, because I think it's the weirdest part of the entire narrative and not in a positive way.

I choose to believe the dialogue was simply kept brief and we weren't meant to believe anything other than Shinya's actual death. Shinya dying by Hanao's hand is necessary corroboration for the rest of my theory. I believe Hanao murdered Yuri and that his narrative is him recontextualizing his actions into something he can accept. How he murdered Yuri isn't clear or particularly relevant. It could have been any kind of assault like what happened to Shinya, but I don't think any actual supernatural elements exist in the "reality" of these events. I believe Yuri's death took place sometime after her "transformation" and that we never witnessed it, and her corpse has yet to be discovered (it would be thematically appropriate for Hanao to bury her.) There is an entirely black panel following the transformation sequence suggesting the passage of time with which the murder could have been done.

So, why would Hanao intentionally kill Yuri? First of all, it's heavily implied that Yuri's life is of little concern to Hanao. Even if we're to consider her transformation to just be his own fantasy, he never reacts to her obvious distress or what appears to be the plant devouring her. His fantasy acknowledges her extreme suffering and apparent death, but in the final page he believes her to still be alive in the form of a flower. This contradiction could be explained by the need to cope with his own actions. Yuri died—not by his hand directly, mind—but she's still okay. No harm, no foul. If we consider that the idea of Yuri's pain and death doesn't bother Hanao in his fantasy (that he believes is real), it becomes plausible that he would be able to escalate into causing that pain and death himself. His empathy is shown to be extremely stunted in every interaction he has in the story—another possible sign of a sociopathic murderer.

Another point of evidence is Hanao's extreme reaction to Yuri and Shinya's conversation. Not his attack, but his actual discovery of them. He sees such a brief exchange, and Yamada draws particular attention to his eyes with a vacant stare. If we interpret this as a kind of silent shock and/or anger, it aligns with other possible motives. Yuri and Shinya barely interact. We have no idea if they're dating or were even friends. Yuri comes across as smitten with Shinya's desire to stand up for her, and Shinya doing so may imply interest on his part, but for Hanao to find it worthy of murder would only make sense if his personal obsession with Yuri caused him to read too much into her talking with Shinya. If Yuri just being friends with Shinya is enough for murder, then why doesn't Hanao murder Yuri's female friends? The implication is that there is something special about Shinya, and the only special trait he has is being of the opposite sex and showing a smidgen of romantic interest.

Additionally, Hanao doesn't seek out Shinya when killing him. Shinya has to come to Hanao in what could be interpreted as a provocation. Shinya might have triggered Hanao's intense negative emotions while seeing him talk to Yuri, and this may have resulted in a sudden crime of passion. The excuse of "killing pests" is just a post-hoc justification to rationalize Hanao's behavior. He's dehumanizing Shinya by comparing him to a bug, and he does the same to Yuri, seeing her as a flower. It may also be worth noting that flowers are a common literary symbol of virginity, and Hanao's insecurities over Shinya potentially having a sexual interest in Yuri may overlap with his own language. He remarks that the black lily (Yuri) is infested with bugs during summer and used as a source of nutrients. The "nutrients" would be the sexual pleasure provided by Yuri, the "bug" is obviously Shinya, and "summer" is yet another literary symbol for romance.

Lastly, there's the flower itself. This one's the easiest to justify, I think. There's obvious romantic tension between Hanao and Yuri as children. The flashback emphasizing the black lily being a symbol for love, as well as Yuri's friends having believed the two were romantically involved as children more or less confirms for me that you're meant to interpret some kind of love between them here. I don't know whether or not it's one-sided, or if it wasn't as children and is in the present, but I don't think that particularly matters. It's Hanao's motives that are dubious in the story. Everything Yuri does makes sense on its face, and any interpretation of her intents doesn't affect the outcome of the story (as far as I can tell.)

Of course, we also learn the black lily can mean "curse." I think it's significant that the "seed" is planted in Yuri right after she rebuffs Hanao. It's the beginning of his resentment towards her. Not able to understand the hurt Yuri has caused him, he subconsciously begins his revenge on her by planting a "curse", which ultimately provides the justification he needs to murder her. From Yuri's perspective, we can also see her as being "cursed" by "love" simply with Hanao's obsession with her. An obsessive, unrequited love would likely be characterized as a "curse" by many people. I also think it's extremely important that child Yuri says that she'll "do her best to support [Hanao]" in his goal of creating the most beautiful flower. This further provides another excuse for Hanao's actions. He interprets this as a kind of consent as he goes on to literally and figuratively violate Yuri's body.

The final major turning point with Yuri is her full transformation into a flower. This happens the moment after the teacher reveals Shinya had been assaulted. I believe this happens because Hanao is having to grapple with the consequences of his fantasy intersecting with reality. What he convinced himself was a moral good to protect a beautiful flower from an insect was truly just a murder. When others characterize it as how it truly is, Hanao further retreats into his fantasy. His subconscious realizes there's no turning back for him, and he fully commits to the idea of killing Yuri as he visualizes her being consumed by the black lily. Upon killing her, he is able to fully replace Yuri with an object that he can impress only his own desires on. He replaced something he couldn't understand with something he could.

Basically, Hanao is in love with Yuri and can't find a way to comprehend his own feelings other than through his knowledge of flowers. He can't process his jealousy, so he murders Shinya. He can't process the pain from Yuri's rejection, so he murders her. Lastly, he can't process his own crimes, so he escapes into a fantasy. I think this interpretation ties everything together nicely and doesn't contradict itself anywhere, whereas a literal interpretation of the story does.

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This went the direction I hoped the series would after the first season. ONE wasn’t clever enough to keep the manga going as a gag manga, and quickly wrote Saitama out of a bunch of scenes to just play it as a straight shonen. Yeah, it’s over-the-top and the powers can be kooky, but neither of those traits are anything close to uncommon in shonen. There’s been self-aware shonen since JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, but I digress.

Saitama continues to be used as a sort of tension-relief, with the pattern being ... that powerful opponents are set up outside of his reach, and satisfaction is continuously derived by characters who think they’re hot shit inevitably running into Saitama and getting knocked down a few pegs. It’s simple and nothing outside of what Dragon Ball Z did constantly, but it’s amusing nonetheless. Saitama’s invincibility is essentially a fact at this point, and always knowing that a comeuppance is around the corner leads to the anime’s funnest moments.

This has the unfortunate side effect of making any scene without Saitama usually fail at any attempted drama. The results of every fight are known not to matter, as if the villain is to succeed and progress in fighting heroes he’ll inevitably be destroyed by Saitama, and if anything of permanence happens, either a villain will die simply before Saitama makes it happen, or a hero will die. Problem there is, OPM puts so much work solely into its character design that none of those heroes have any backstory that makes victory or failure have any meaning beyond its impact on the plot.

The bright side is that season 2 admitting it’s just another shonen series means that it has to fall back on more conventional storytelling to make the characters who aren’t Saitama compelling, as they necessarily need to pick up most of the slack as he’s usually never around. Both characters introduced in season 1 and new characters alike get more defined personalities, motivations, and weaknesses. This transition isn’t as effective as characters who have these things from the start, though (i.e. most shonen works), as ONE is forced to play catch-up with defining a huge cast he set up almost at the start of the series. The consequence is that a lot of these moving parts of the story still haven’t gotten additional characterization – there was simply too much to get to in this amount of time. So there’s still a bunch of people running around who are literally nothing more than their character design, which I find as dull as I did in season 1.

The new villain Garo is the star of the show here, a powerful man who fights nearly anyone he comes in contact with, overcoming them with sheer tenacity and brute force. His love for combat, his desperation to overcome his inadequacies, abrasive personality, and feeling like he’s fighting for underdogs makes him a stark contrast for Saitama. Though the two don’t end up establishing a relationship in this batch of episodes, the switching between of their opposite perspectives keeps the season’s pacing and tone, dynamic and gripping. Garo is a ton of fun to watch, but I find the emotional core of his story to be mostly ineffective. Garo fancies himself on the side of the monsters, emphasizing as a child the fact that they’re unpopular underdogs always destined to lose. It’s an interesting concept, but OPM’s world completely fails to ever make the monsters sympathetic.

One of Garo’s flashbacks has him claiming that an aquatic monster is just “trying to protect the ocean,” and he reacts with horror at the fact the heroes mercilessly destroyed the monster’s eggs. It certainly sounds awful if true, making the heroes out to be more bloodthirsty than the monsters, but this is never supported by literally anything else in the series. OPM had an opportunity to be morally ambiguous here depending on how it portrayed its monsters, but trapped itself by always wanting to characterize them as stock evil as possible in order to properly parody its genre’s melodrama. This season goes even further in committing to that one-sided portrayal of monsters with another subplot that very clearly demonstrates that becoming a monster turns you into a bloodthirsty psychopath with no instinct control. It needed to show the audience just a single time that monsters were capable of more complexity, but it completely neglects to do so. This results in Garo’s passion and motivation making him look like an idiot if examined with any scrutiny. When looking at his claims fairly, all we have are his perspective (demonstrated to be formed by bad logic) and a single anecdote from when he was a child that, if true, is so astronomically in the minority of monsters that it’s virtually irrelevant. Garo wants to be on the side of the underdogs who always lose, but fails to acknowledge that 99.9% of the time monsters are being slain because they mercilessly kill and devour powerless humans, who are objectively speaking the biggest underdogs in this entire equation, meaning by Garo’s own logic the heroes are more morally just than he is. It’s an incredibly simple conclusion to come to that goes completely unaddressed and it has the effect of making Garo look like a huge idiot, burning away goodwill towards the character that’s the primary focus of the entire season.

I’m sure there are people that argue this nonsensical backstory is another intentional gag, but I see zero reason to believe that. It seems to me that this is played straight in attempting to make Garo look like a sympathetic anti-hero, as there are additional scenes that go out of their way to establish Garo does believe in a moral code (his caring of kids) that would back up the belief that he takes his mission seriously. Not to mention that the basic idea of making the emotional core of your main character an intentional joke goes against all basic common sense ideas of writing. The tension of virtually any scene involving Garo relies on believing that both Garo and the heroes he fights are both victims who believe in justice, and you’re supposed to sympathize with both sides of the battle despite the idea that only one is supposed to come out victorious. Unless you’re willing to admit that these scenes are designed to be inconsequential, devoid of thrills, and pointless, you need to acknowledge that you’re meant to take Garo’s beliefs seriously in order for all of these scenes to have any meaning. And I find it impossible to believe that ONE didn’t want these scenes to be exciting, unpredictable, and having you root for both sides. If they weren’t, no one could possibly have any investment as to what happens in this series, as it would all amount to having the depth of just watching a laser light show. It’s one of the classic fatal flaws of trying to argue One Punch Man as above its genre, and yet if you humble it down to conventional storytelling you’re forced to admit how bafflingly underwritten certain aspects of it are. I had to take quite a skip and a hop to argue why Garo’s backstory is ineffective and stupid despite it being incredibly obvious, but I just know some sections of the fanbase will still attempt to argue in favor of it, so I felt like I had to. This is why I tend to dislike discussing OPM in any critical way, because I usually end up having to run a marathon of justifications for a mostly really basic show that’s just dumb fun.

But it IS fun, I’ve never not admitted that, even if I don’t think it’s genius-level fun. Garo may not be used to his full effectiveness, but he’s still a joy to watch. The jokes may often be obvious and repetitive, but they still evoke smiles. The fights are emotionally and strategically nothing special, but fast-paced and exciting in their scale. All of this amounted to a series I burned through in almost a day once I got into it, and I was disappointed there wasn’t more (especially since it ends on a horrifically unsatisfying cliffhanger in a way the first season didn’t). To OPM’s credit, I thought the character King was maybe the best joke the series has come up with thus far. The idea of a character who’s incredibly weak just coasting by off intimidation via a fake reputation is nothing short of brilliant. Shonen works absolutely love establishing a future character’s power by having those in-the-know immediately respond to them with immense fear, and the result is often not getting to see this character’s power until far into the series’ future, building hype that can carry a serialized work for a long time. It’s a typical trick, but OPM’s parody of it is a million times more clever than acknowledging that the main character always wins. Alas, I still have some issues with execution. I think OPM brings this joke to a conclusion far too quickly, when it could’ve had much more use. King is immediately established as being a phony both to the audience and Saitama. It could’ve been hysterically funny if Saitama was desperate to see a display of King’s power, but King always denies him by posturing and saying something like fighting is always a waste of time for someone as powerful as him. It would’ve given Saitama a character relationship he didn’t have, and the dramatic irony between the audience knowing King is weak yet the invincible Saitama taking him seriously would’ve probably worked well. It also could’ve been a lot of fun to have King fully take advantage of his reputation. King doesn’t deny his false victories, but he doesn’t deliberately make use of it either. King always wants to avoid fights because he’s actually a coward, which is funny, but you could still have that be his internal character while also having him be vain and greedy enough to attempt to scare off people far stronger than him just by posturing. A new villain shows up that’s completely unstoppable, King makes a rare appearance and stares him down with his intimidating face, the villain is aware of King’s reputation for being one of the most powerful heroes and believes it when seeing his demeanor in person, the villain runs away or surrenders without even a fight and King’s fearful reputation grows even further. I think that would’ve been an amazing character, but as he is now King is one joke that’s resolved in no time. He’s a coward that only is famous by accident, and he’d rather just be left alone and play video games. King’s an immensely likable character nonetheless, but it bothers me that such a genius concept goes underutilized. Again, I’m forced to conclude that ONE is just limited as a writer.

Season 2 also introduces Fubuki, who is given a decent enough backstory to start with, but then basically never does anything again for the rest of the season. Boy, she sure is hot, though, right?

I’d be remiss to end this review without talking about the series’ change of studio. The first season was well-regarded for its high quality animation relative to other contemporary anime, and in that regard I’d say the critical consensus was right on the money. For reasons that I’m sure aren’t good ones, the second season shifted creative hands. Many people were worried that one of the first season’s best traits would be lost by this transition. And they were right! Season 2 doesn’t look anywhere near as good as the first. In-betweens are absent all over the place in action scenes and characters outside of center frame are often hideously off-model, for starters. The sad thing is, season 2 probably still looks better than most anime these days, but unlike season 1 that’s more indicative of how dire the quality of animation is in modern anime rather than any sense of accomplishment. If season 1 looked like this it probably would’ve gotten away with it, but now that season 2 invites direct comparison the whole attempt just comes across as kind of pathetic. Something season 2 revels in that I fucking hate (and don’t remember happening in 1) is the recently popular technique of applying a dimming effect to the entire frame to make action scenes look more dramatic. It essentially looks like someone turned the brightness down on their screen for a few frames. It looks like fucking dogshit, and I cannot believe anyone in the industry or fandom thinks this looks better than no additional editing at all. It’s an utter joke any professional can think this is effective. Lighting is supposed to enunciate certain parts of the frame, and that requires that other parts of the frame are lit differently in order to create contrast. You wouldn’t think the purpose of contrast would go unknown by professional artists, but here we are.

It’s at least obvious why studios want to use this technique: it’s way easier to turn a slider down in a video editor than it is to color individual frames in a way that simulates natural lighting. But not being capable of putting in the second of thought to realize highlighting only works when not everything is highlighted is nothing short of amazing to me. It’s like someone hands you a long document and for the sake of organization they used a yellow highlighting marker to show someone the most important parts at a glance. In this case, you’d be getting that document with every line of text drawn over with bright yellow. It would be useless in its intent to focus you on certain parts, and it would look like shit. And thus is the same result of this animation “technique.” Lastly, the audio mixing in some action scenes can be downright trashy. For some reason there are a lot of impact sound effects that seem as though they’re mixed super low in comparison to the music. This muffled sound takes away all the power of punches, etc., and I have no idea why it was done seemingly at random. There are multiple fight scenes where the screen dims, a powerful character throws multiple punches with the force of cannonballs, and yet each hit sounds like the person on the defensive is being hit with wet sponges. Exhilarating!

It’s bizarre to finish a One Punch Man season enjoying its story more than its animation, which was the exact opposite reaction I had from season 1, yet here we are. It’s a shame, because this season could’ve had both and have been an easy improvement over the first, but the staff just weren’t ready to go that extra mile. We can only hope a possible season 3 will turn things around, but I know I at least will be paying attention should it happen. At this point I’m always ready for some more dumb fun. Because that’s what One Punch Man is. And more power to it now, I say.

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Great Mazinger Vs. Getter Robo G: The Great Space Encounter is a movie that reimagines the ending of the Getter Robo TV series. Musashi dies during an enemy attack, Benkei joins the team, and Getter Robo G is launched. However, Great Maziner also aids the fight with the help of its new Great Booster. With so much going on you may figure this to be one of the better crossover movies, but it lacks in drama and suspense. Musashi dies, but this isn't dwelled on much at a personal ... level among the crew, and Benkei is given no introduction whatsoever. He just pops in to replace Musashi and that's the extent of his role here. Getter Robo G should be exciting, but it doesn't get to show off its enhancements compared to the original Getter Robo and uses almost all of the same attacks. Great Mazinger's Great Booster is just a bigger version of an old attack.

The enemy here is Pikadron, a mechanical monster protected by light rays that surround its entire body. It deflects every attack, which leads to the bad habit of a bunch of pointless footage of the two heroes attacking an enemy and making no progress. This is largely the reason why Getter Robo G's power level is indistinguishable from the original's. To make matters worse, Tetsuya immediately notices Pikadron is receiving orders from the leading spaceship but only decides to attack the spaceship first way later. And when he does destroy the leading enemy, it actually affects Pikadron in no way. He then tries Great Typhoon for the first time which blows off Pikadron's light protection (wtf, how?) and exposes it to easily be destroyed. Hooray. The main villain's identity pretty much doesn't exist, and I don't think he's even named. He's barely shown and you just see his bland small spaceship flying around. Also, if they knew Great Mazinger wasn't ready to deploy and chose to attack Getter Robo first for that reason like Tetsuya thought, then wouldn't it have made far more sense to attack Great Mazinger while it was vulnerable? Stupid aliens. Stupid Tetsuya. Oh yeah, the theme music isn't original either. Just the standard Great Mazinger and Getter Robo themes. A disappointment overall.

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Spoiler alert: it sucks. Prince of Darkness sucks hard. It's become such a punchline that it doesn't even feel worth a professional stripping-down of how it fails on nearly every level. This is particularly saying something coming from me, as I consider the original Nadesico TV series one of the best mecha anime.

First things first, it's widely circulated that Prince of Darkness turns so many people off because it relies on information only presented in a Japanese-only Sega Saturn visual novel. However, "The Blank of Three Years" has had ... its story shared and revealed that this is hyperbolic apologism for Prince of Darkness. According to the most detailed explanation I've found (https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/junk_guild/martian-successor-nadeisco-the-blank-of-3-years-t383.html), the Sega Saturn game's details are largely superfluous and explain only everything we don't need. It explains how the cast generally ends up where they are, but we don't need to see how Ruri Hoshino became a captain before the events of Prince of Darkness. You would logically assume that due to her accomplishments in the TV series that she would reach a higher position in the military in three years. Minor details like these were never the question. However, the entire central plot to Prince of Darkness? Akito and Yurika's tragic accident and the explanation of the Hokushin Six and the Jovian Federation's maneuvers since the end of the TV series? Strap in, because the visual novel doesn't explain shit and your only narrator is the Prince of Darkness film.

And what a narrator it is. I wish I could say PoD's only narrative problem was the lack of explanation for critical character-altering events, but it pales in comparison to the movie's absolutely dreadful pacing. It feels appropriate that watching this movie corresponded with me beginning medication for my ADD. This is one of the most cramped storylines I have ever borne witness to. The scenes cut at a breakneck pace, everyone speaks a mile a minute, and the exact second any information is finished presenting in this blitzkrieg format another scene assaults you with a bevy of new visual and expository information. Keep in mind that all of this ecstatic presentation is dressed by the TV series' particular irreverence and you find this tidal wave takes on a practically psychedelic hue as fourth-wall breaks, bizarre framing and camera angles that don't logically connect, non-sequiturs, slapstick and absurdist comedy, and an assault of colorful visuals tint what's already an obscured and flimsy narrative into something hideous and amorphous.

With regards to unpleasant surprises, I was pleased to see that the movie's tone wasn't quite as bad as I'd been led to believe. I was expecting a ton of contrived darkness that contrasted heavily with the TV series' parodical light-hearted nature, and while that absolutely exists here, it's confined within certain aspects of the plot. If anything, this is worse. Maybe you'd adjust to the movie over time if it initially started out with a darker tone and kept it consistent the entire way through, but instead the atmosphere is largely ridiculous and carefree. This becomes a problem when the entire emotional thrust of your plot is built around the tragic kidnapping and torture of Akito and Yurika. You're supposed to sympathize with how these innocent characters were brutally broken down off-screen, but you only have Akito's anecdotes about the experience to share (because the visual novel was worthless, remember) and every single time they're surrounded by bright, bouncy, silly anime characters. It completely undermines the choice to take the characters in a darker direction, taking what was already an insult to the original series' spirit and then reaping none of the possible dramatic benefit from it. Akito's new vengeance-fueled, silent and mysterious persona is a personality 180 and cliche to the point of seeming like an utter joke. And a joke it may very well could be, considering how much of the series was, but here's the difference: it's a bad joke. By not fully committing to the tonal change it’s impossible to parody the whole “grimdark” shtick.

Any implication of irony with regards to Akito’s characterization and plot is only gathered from good faith based on the TV series and not within the context of the movie itself. The light-hearted tone of the rest of the movie doesn’t feel like it’s meant to highlight Akito’s newfound cynicism because it never directly interacts with him. The tone of Akito’s plot and Ruri’s plot are switched between constantly but never mixed. Sure, everyone’s still completely in love and obsessed with Akito for no reason as usual and desires to help him throughout the movie, but in the extremely rare instances Akito gets to interact with the rest of the cast, the surrounding cast always adjusts themselves to his tone and get super serious. By doing this there’s never any implicit criticism of the way Akito’s behaving, it’s accepted as is and there’s no punchline or payoff as a result. Something I might expect the original show to do is that Akito is eventually broken down by the Nadesico crew’s indominatable irreverent spirit that he’d forgotten and reverts back to his old self in the final moments, thus the movie acknowledges the ridiculousness of Akito’s new persona and therefore the trope itself. Instead, nothing happens. Akito accomplishes his revenge and flies off to nowhere, showing us no signs of further change as he abandons Yurika and undoes all character development from the series by doing so, never to be seen again. In other words, even if we give the writing staff all the good faith we can and assume the awkward tonal shifts are a gag, they’re still pulled off in an ineffective way that gives no commentary to what they might be parodying. They’re simply doing it and leaving it at that. And at that point, what’s the difference between parody and a genuine presentation that’s just handled poorly?

Well, Prince of Darkness looks great, I’ll give it that. The TV series is probably one of the nicest looking shows of its decade, showing off vibrantly colorful painted animation at its peak, right before the industry made a hard swing towards more digital techniques. It’s almost worth seeing for that alone and experiencing that visual warmth of the series one more time. On the other hand, the on-screen action is so utterly chaotic as described earlier that you’d better keep the pause button constantly on the ready if you want to gawk at any frame’s level of quality. It almost feels like a waste in that regard. The whole movie has the feel of being an OVA chopped to pieces to fit into a film with no new transition scenes added to facilitate the cuts. Likewise, if this sequel was an OVA it would probably improve dramatically. Not only would it strengthen the impact of its visuals, but it would at least make the storyline itself go down smoother. It wouldn’t necessarily fix the mishandling of Akito’s storyline, but the whiplash would diminish, and viewers would have more breathing room and time for the contextual reconstructing of the events that happened before the movie instead of constantly being bombarded with new distractions. I can’t think of a good way to end this review, but Xebec couldn’t think of a good way to end the series, so there. Fans of the TV series, you’re not missing anything. Just assume everything worked out in the end and everyone lived happily ever after. We’re all better off that way, and not simply because it’s a happier ending.

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AD Police is a spin-off OVA of the Bubblegum Crisis OVA. Though Bubblegum Crisis was ostensibly a cyberpunk work it stayed true to the first half of its name by always wearing a smile that still showed joy in a dystopian future. That balance of playfulness with grit is all but gone in AD Police, a prequel chronicle of the Neo Tokyo Metropolitan Police force before Bubblegum Crisis's Knight Sabers hit the scene.

This is perhaps a suitable tonal shift, as the Knight Sabers were shown to be just about ... the only force that could surpass Boomers, cyborgs that can occasionally go berserk and threaten the human populace. The AD Police are fighting the newest evolution in combat technology with outdated means, and this means a lot more gore is shed, the death count goes up, and pessimism is palpable in the environment.

By all means, this is a sensible spin-off. It's extremely loosely connected to the events of Bubblegum Crisis because of some returning names, and the only name of those belonging to a human is Leon McNichol. Leon's professional inexperience and new character design make him nigh unrecognizable compared to what he'd become (or was) in Bubblegum Crisis. That this OVA doesn't introduce anything that contradicts the world of characters of Bubblegum Crisis is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness. By taking almost no risk in mixing these OVAs, AD Police sets up no expectations of it being the same as Bubblegum Crisis, and its tonal shift doesn't conflict with Bubblegum Crisis because the two are so easily compartmentalized when seen side by side. In other words, AD Police clearly doesn't possess the same appeal as Bubblegum Crisis and doesn't try to. The two OVAs are so aesthetically far apart and unrelated in story and characters that neither weaken or strengthen each other.

Even the potential insight into Bubblegum Crisis's setting has little to offer here. This isn't to say AD Police's world is dull, but that it once again focuses on highly specific elements of that world that go further to make it unique while also not filling in anything Bubblegum Crisis put forth. For instance, though both possess Boomers as primary antagonists they're utilized very differently. Bubblegum Crisis practically treated the Boomers as monsters; not the merging of humans and machines they're meant to be, but rather machines only built to visually resemble humans. Bubblegum Crisis deals with the morality of the people taking advantage of Boomer technology and not the Boomers themselves. They are essentially automatons in the skin of humans despite being called cyborgs.

AD Police focuses entirely on the characters within the Boomers themselves. Here they have individuality and every episode posits what separates a machine from a human being, this being the source of the Boomers' new emotional struggle. It's an ancient science fiction topic and AD Police doesn't add anything striking or fresh to the discussion, but you can see that while both OVAs share cyborgs with the same name, you are immediately taught to see them differently. The contrast with Bubblegum Crisis isn’t off-putting to either precisely because they’re just so hard to see in the same world, but that also means this spin-off doesn’t really feel like it adds anything.

So, if this likely isn’t of particular interest to someone looking for more of the Bubblegum Crisis world, does AD Police hold up on its own? That debate is probably less ambiguous. As a science fiction and cyberpunk fan, nothing about AD Police stands out to me. It’s not completely brainless but it’s hardly high concept either. The atmosphere and animation quality could freshen up its worn ideas with striking presentation, but those run cold as well, and not for the good reasons you’d hope from a dystopian work. While it’s not easy to completely judge this compared to Bubblegum Crisis as that had a Blu-ray release while AD Police is stuck on DVD, this series in general just feels a hell of a lot cheaper. Maybe it’s a difference of talent, but character designs are frequently off-model, shortcuts are taken during action scenes like painted stills, and there’s even the rare flub like completely inaccurate lip syncing. The painted backgrounds are quite nice, but you get repetitive glances of the always green-toned city that quickly cease to impress. When the characters are drawn on-model they possess a simple digital coloring job that has little on the detailed textures of Bubblegum Crisis that popped out at you.

As for the writing, well, AD Police is greatly disadvantaged there. Because this was based on the Bubblegum Crisis IP, the same copyright dispute that ended that OVA prematurely did the same thing here. AD Police wasn’t meant to end at three episodes, and with that in mind it makes its weaknesses more forgivable, but they don’t go away. Even the main characters Leon and Gina don’t get enough attention to flourish as the episodic stories feature new supporting casts each time that are used intensively to set up an entirely new storyline based on nothing before it. Leon has no character arc – he even barely gets to use any of his signature humor. We don’t get to see him grow into one of the most respected policemen in his force, and we hardly even get to see him so much as struggle. His superior, Gina, is meant to contrast with his inexperience and lack of confidence, but she’s only slightly better. Gina at least has a conflict with how she feels her artificial arm makes her less human, something brought up multiple times. But this conflict is difficult to feel the drama of, as she’s dramatizing over what essentially, to the audience, is just a movable prosthetic arm. She never has to consider the ramifications of becoming more of a cyborg since she’s never injured again, and a single replaced arm is hardly robbing you of entire human sensations. Hell, it doesn’t even rob you of having an arm – she has another one. Naturally, it’s possible this was intended to go somewhere but this is as far as it’s taken, so conflating this conflict with full cyberization is hyperbolic at best.

Like I mentioned earlier, the individual stories largely deal with Boomers struggling with their emotions and going berserk. For the first two episodes the structure is largely procedural, with the antagonist’s background story and motivations only becoming clear after the problem’s already been dealt with. This robs the development of the stories of a lot of tension, especially since we aren’t set up to really care about Leon or Gina as we watch them put their lives on the line during the investigations. By far the best episode of the lot is the final one, “The Man Who Bites His Tongue”, turning Robocop into a horror story as a police member loses his body in a fight and has his brain planted in a robotic body. The first minute or two sets up more empathy for this character than anything else in the entire OVA, showing pictures of his time as a human on the force to get a view of the amount of life he had to give when he was still able to. The preceding themes of humanity persisting in machines via the senses and emotions are a more constant focus because the lens is constantly on the character having to deal with them rather than tossing it all on us in the last three minutes. In other words, this character, Billy Fanword, is the only one in the OVA with a complete character development arc where you can understand all of his motivations and ways of thinking, which garners enough empathy to actually motivate the ambiguous philosophical discussions the OVA is always going for. It’s still not too nuanced, but it’s something. The OVA also has a bit of a misogynistic streak. Nothing too awful, but eyerolling nonetheless. Every single female character is very willing to throw themselves at a male and I wouldn’t be surprised if I went back and saw that not a single female character didn’t get nude at some point for no reason. Even if it’s trying to appear more adult, it’s doing so in a biased way. And even if I were to give it the benefit of the doubt for the objectification of women being common in cyberpunk and noir (though usually as the result of other characters or their environment), that still means it’s indulging in a stock trope for the benefit of nothing other than tits since there's no subtext about women as a minority in this setting.

So, I’m at a loss. I don’t feel like this is a “proper” expansion of Bubblegum Crisis since it succeeds (or fails) entirely by its unique metrics, so I can’t recommend this to someone based on them loving that setting. For sci-fi fans this can’t hold an electronic candle to Ghost in the Shell’s pontificating, and as far as I can tell it fails to present ideas that aren’t done elsewhere better. As a gluttonous OVA consumer myself, this is a bit lacking in the things I’ve come to love from that generation. The animation quality doesn’t stand out and the cheesy synth score is too bland to have the kitschy charm of other contemporaries. It does have that attitude though. You can see it done with more panache in many other OVAs, but if you can’t get enough of that gutsy unrestrained spirit of the era then AD Police should offer enough guts, sex, and general pulp to mildly satisfy you.

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While reading Shuuzou Oshimi's popular Flowers of Evil manga, I took a look at the rest of his works and noticed recurring themes of adolescent sexuality. Some premises had more of a... questionable nature than others, and after sharing a few with a friend we each decided to read a different one volume work from the author. Curious if the rest of his works would have the same nuance and tact as Flowers of Evil, I decided to give the most absurd premise a shot: Sweet Poolside, a manga ... about a hairless boy shaving a hairy girl. And thus, my life sank further into the abyss.

The manga's largest issue is not its controversial subject matter, but rather its lack of focus on the motivation behind it. In stark contrast to the Flowers of Evil, Sweet Poolside doesn't use its premise as a means to share philosophy with any depth. For the most part, this is an atypical framework for a typical romance plot. It's organically cute in how embarrassed the two main characters are of their bodily problems and how they learn to support each other in the way that only they empathetically can. This relationship and also the characters' contemplation of their own self-consciousness are the highlights of this coming-of-age story, but what could be further detailed is covered with an overgrowth of hairy exposition. The shaving scenes are given far too much attention to the point where they almost seem fetishized, and as a story element they rarely serve any point other than to demonstrate the boy's nervousness and the girl's shyness. The only point of this is beaten over your head as these scenes are dragged out for far too long. The initial shaving scene was the only thing that needed to be shown in full, and after this the manga should've focused solely on the characters growing up now that they've found someone else to trust. This element is there, but buried under this worn, dull razor blade of storytelling. Seeing multiple pages of shaving and only one of the main female character reflecting on what that meant to her is kind of lousy and a waste of a possibly pure-hearted intent by the author.

Beyond that, the art is decent but frequently cartoonish in a gag manga-esque way rather than the detailed realism of Flowers of Evil. There's also a one-shot manga chapter included in this release entry, but I can't find it anywhere. Fine enough, I suppose, as MAL grouping unrelated stories is stupid anyway. If that bonus chapter exists, please let me know.

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At the end of my review for the original printing of Shaman King, I wrote that it was perhaps a blessing that Takei wasn’t able to give the series a proper ending under the assumption that it would only lead to further disappointment in the manga’s declining quality. Four years later, Takei resurrects the series and proves me right. Shaman King’s downward spiral picks up right where it left off – or if anything, it accelerated. This makes the rushed, evolving train wreck of the second half of the ... manga look like a brilliant masterpiece. There’s so much to go over here in the broad strokes, but to avoid laying down the same bricks just apply absolutely everything I said negatively about the original series to this one and add the following.

The most immediate assault of this manga on your senses is of course directed at your eyes. Takei’s initial graffiti-inspired art style of the original manga deteriorated over the course of its run into something blander, but it was still always pleasant to look at and distinct. In these additional chapters, it’s as if Takei’s hands have gotten amnesia. It’s one thing to lose your tempo a bit after not drawing these characters for a few years, but this art looks like it was drawn by an entirely different person. It’s practically sketchbook quality, like something you’d find on storyboards rather than a final publication. The shading, if it can be called such, is truly horrendous. Nearly every page is illustrated in only pitch black or the pure white of the background. The old images of Shaman King look like “bootleg” variations now and seeing the fights we missed is actually a curse considering their incomprehensible ink blot choreography.

If one thing hasn’t changed, it’s that describing these action sequences as “fights” is still very generous. Takei gets the great opportunity to not have to rush the finale of his popular manga, and he takes full advantage of that opportunity by rushing it harder than ever before. It’s downright comical at this point how rote this series has become for its author, with foreshadowed conflicts being settled in a single chapter or skipped in their entirety. The payoff in this revised climax is every bit as unsatisfying as it was originally, only far longer in its delivery. Numerous supporting cast characters never get their motivations or previous actions properly explained if at all, and bearing special mention is the main villain of all possible people. Hao’s entire motivation being explained in a side chapter is an absolute joke, and his actions in the final chapters of this series contradict a hundred things he said or did prior. His subtle guidance or support of Yoh and any possible nuance to his morality is thrown out the window in order to indulge in a stock maniacal evil antagonist. The final battle between him and Yoh’s group after he has literally become God and the justification for how everything is resolved doesn’t even deserve to be called “nonsense”. You have plenty of time to realize how absurdly forced it all is as you get to see Takei draw every single character in the entire series again looking uglier than ever and spouting platitudes about the power of love defeating actual omnipotence. It’s a real family reunion.

This is truly awful. If I can’t persuade someone to not read the entirety of the Shaman King manga, hopefully I can’t at least persuade them not to read this. It’s not worth it. This fails to live up to any standards of the original series. It’s ugly, stupid, meandering, redundant, and a complete waste of an opportunity to set things right. It’s impossible for me to believe Takei put the passion behind this he claims in the afterword, as it fails and cuts corners in every way conceivable. Any good will I had towards the original manga for its likable cast and good moments is utterly sapped from this addendum. Don’t spend your valuable time on this one. After all, the author sure didn’t.

Despite my borderline hatred for this entry, props to Mankin-Trad for picking up Viz’s slack and translating the remainder of the franchise. It’s a fine translation, though far from ideal. It was frustrating going from Viz’s high quality localization to this. After 32 officially translated volumes, it was somehow found fit to throw readers a curveball by using completely different terminology, name spellings, and untranslated bits like honorifics. Sound effects are left untranslated, which makes following the hideous action scenes even more difficult. But above all else, the most egregious thing was the embarrassing addition of harsh swearing to all of the characters. And with all that goddamn shit, I’m fucking out.

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I, like many others, first encountered Shaman King in the western version of the manga magazine Shonen Jump. The series had the prestigious honor of being one of the first titles to premier in the anthology. While not in the very first issue, Shaman King started publication in the magazine's first year alongside established heavyweights such as Dragon Ball Z and Naruto. Quite an honor to be one of the first Japanese-only shonen series Viz was willing to take a chance on. It ended up being one of my ... more well-liked titles, and evidently this sentiment was matched by enough others to ensure all 32 volumes of the original series received an official publication. Shaman King had a charisma fitting to this warm reception with an unusually lackadaisical post-Gen X main character, a distinct graffiti-influenced art style, and focus on super powers in the form of hovering "spirit allies" (which would ironically be America's first widespread taste of its origin concept, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's "Stands").

When I eventually stopped following Shonen Jump monthly I made a note to myself to one day get back into Shaman King. What I thought would be a pleasant task ended up taking almost exactly an entire year to get through, a result of frustration at its length and missed potential only saved by goodwill towards that aforementioned initial charisma. To say Shaman King is inconsistent is both an understatement on its own and also the most accurate single word you could choose to describe it. To be more accurate, it’s even inconsistently inconsistent. The manga’s overall quality, focus, tone, and style jumps around like a child with ADD. Or probably more precise, an author who’s trying to shovel the next cliffhanger out the door in order to make the next paycheck. I sympathize with the pressure of weekly serializations, I truly do, and I bear no ill will towards author Hiroyuki Takei for my perceived failure to deliver or giving a neglectful performance, but it just ceased to be enjoyable for me at a certain point. That’s a fact, and I suspect it’s also a fact that not all of that decrease in quality was out of Takei’s hands.

It’s not necessarily a shame that Shaman King is structurally derivative. That is, despite its unique framework in its subject matter of shamans, it’s still by-and-large a typical battle shonen format. For various reasons, main character Yoh Asakura and allies are constantly being pushed towards the next one-on-one fight. You have the typical tournament arc, power ups, friends becoming allies, ki, the whole shebang. But just when it seems the manga has enough of its own voice to overcome its tropes, it falls apart by committing the same genre “sins” so many shonen works do with such reckless abandon that it has to be assumed Takei was merely considering getting readers to the next chapter rather than setting up and delivering cohesive concepts and stories. Evidently, even your average reader can pick up on what seems like cynicism and lack of author interest – Shaman King was cancelled right before its apparent conclusion after a devastating last third of failing to grip the reader despite every desperate attempt to do so.

The broad strokes of why Shaman King ended up being a flop are obvious and combine to imply that Takei’s writing just caused the bulk of his audience to lose faith in the story. The drama of the story falls completely flat over time because of amateurish mistakes and shortcuts in crafting a story. These errors are countless and not unique to Shaman King, but combined and in such frequency are incredibly disappointing. For starters, Shaman King is fairly quick to make death of characters a complete triviality. Several characters eventually get the power to resurrect the dead for virtually no cost. The cast even make a joke of this later on, claiming that they can kill anyone they want because they can just be resurrected afterwards. When a major character dies at the end of a chapter and is almost immediately resuscitated it’s a cheap shot at drama only mitigated by relief at the popular character’s return, but Takei fully indulges in this lame tactic of page-turning to get readers asking for what happens next with little thought or effort. After dozens of chapters ending in deaths and the story asking for us to feel a reaction about it, the idea that nothing really matters starts to sink in. You don’t need to see what happens in that next chapter – you already know. There will be no consequences. Sure, you might assume in a typical hero story that they’ll always make it out alive, but when even the “why” starts to be insignificant empathizing with the characters’ plight becomes extraordinarily difficult.

This problem goes deeper than just being lazy, predictable writing. The idea of the series treating death so frivolously makes an absolute joke out of the central Taoist-esque themes of pacifism and respecting all life. The series’ tendency to turn enemies into allies so quickly is often sudden and not really believable, but Yoh Asakura’s sacrifices to maintain his no-death policy eventually end up not mattering and he rightfully gives up not batting an eyelash when any of his friends kill someone right in front of him.

The results of the fights could be forgiven if the methodology of getting there were interesting, but Takei finds similar ways to defuse the promise of any interesting battle. There gets to be a point where the bulk of conflicts aren’t in the details of their action, but in everything surrounding them. It becomes all set up with no payoff. An early mistake Takei makes is quantifying mana, the power levels of the characters. This is a common trope since Dragon Ball Z’s energy scouters, and Takei quickly writes himself into a corner after quantifying the main villain’s power as hundreds of thousands of times greater than the heroes’. This immediately means that the main characters will eventually have to get sudden boosts in power rather than gradually growing over time in order for them to stand a believable chance against the opposing threat. Takei, instead of simply showing us the difference of power in characters by their actions or skills prefers to have characters stand around rattling off numbers. “You can’t possibly win because X is a greater number than Y!” is a favorite paraphrased line of Takei’s. This cold, mathematical view of spirit energy is also in direct conflict with the central theme of spirituality. In Shaman King’s universe, it is said countless times that a character’s mana is the strength of their spirit. This implies that personal character growth is tied to power, a fine concept, but one that’s not compatible with the number crunching necessary to push the characters forward against stronger opponents. Quantifying a power that’s supposedly tied to mentality makes no sense and is a nihilistic philosophy tied to a spiritual one. This contradiction always cheapens the other element, with characters going through sudden huge boosts of power that are tied to basic character development. It’s a lot of repetition over the same themes of strength of will and maturity, and when you start trying to tie both together to each character’s power with how they’re portrayed mentally it constantly doesn’t match up. A more confident, righteous character is weaker than one with hesitation because the story demands it, and vice-versa. The number system is a lazy way to establish the threat of conflict and its connection to the personal themes of the series with its character development cheapens the outcome of those conflicts as well.
While you start off with decent action scenes, the bulk of the series ends up hyping up big battles that rarely ever deliver. The formula usually consists of characters standing, facing each other while rattling off numbers until one has some spiritual epiphany and decides everything in a huge never-before-seen attack that compromises the direction of future action scenes. A particularly bad example of what I’m talking about is Yoh’s team facing the Ice Men team in the tournament arc. The Ice Men have a synergy among their Nordic powers of nature that sound potentially interesting and a capable threat to Yoh. End chapter. The fight begins, and the Ice Men’s assault is effortlessly shot down by one of the most embarrassing cases of “special snowflake” shonen main character grandstanding I’ve seen in a while. For whatever poorly explained reason, Yoh’s team is now capable of summoning absolutely enormous versions of their spirit allies. The following material is his team rattling off how inexperienced the Ice Men are compared to Yoh and friends, and how their goals are worthless compared to their own loft ambitions while showing off their huge dick spirits used for multi-page spreads and impressive looking stills that are used for extremely little narratively. The chapter ends after each character summons their giant spirit, basically stand still, and intimidate the Ice Men.

Immediately any promise of an interesting fight is betrayed by establishing who can only be the possible victors, and Takei has lazily set up a way where he can make a battle seem epic without it actually being one. Before, you may have expected dynamic action scenes, characters moving around a lot, exchanging blows, that sort of thing. But it takes a lot of effort to choreograph that, and it’s far easier to just draw a bunch of stills and find reasons the fight ends quickly and painlessly. This ends up characterizing the vast majority of Shaman King’s fights. Characters talk about numbers, summon gigantic page-filling spirits, and then the bigger one wins. That’s not a fight, it’s the equivalent of a Looney Tunes skit where each character keeps bringing out a bigger cannon until the comically large one wins. The fact that Takei has now set up our main characters’ abilities as being enormous will now also kill any interest he has in having to draw those monstrosities multiple times in the case of a long fight. More assurance that such a thing will never happen.

It's an efficient way to move through the plot. After all, what if readers lose interest during the middle of a long fight? If that was Takei’s concern rather than just taking the easy way out, then that issue is solved as well. Finishing fights quickly lets you hype and set up the next cliffhanger you won’t deliver on and (hopefully) keeps readers buying those magazines. Oh no! The chapter ends with our hero up against the entire enemy army! What will happen!? Nothing, the fight won’t happen because there’s no contrivable way it could be made a fair fight. This entire scene only happened to draw imposing stills to get people to read the next chapter. It’s almost like a scam. This never-ending betrayal of expectations and taking the easiest way out of any situation in the plot is the precise reason why Shaman King failed. You can’t endlessly set-up cliffhangers without payoff. That trick only works a few times in succession, but Takei rides on it all the way to the end. Once you lose faith in what’s going to happen, the set-up hardly matters anymore, doesn’t it?

Shaman King is marred by additional issues that suggest its inconsistency is the result of pure indulgence by the author. It’s very evident multiple times throughout the manga that Takei is just absolutely sick of writing it and is wishing he could be doing anything else. So in addition to rushing through the plot while also insuring it never ends, he throws in any concept he wants regardless of consideration of the reader’s own interest. In one spot of the manga it becomes painfully obvious Takei has cars on the brain. Another conflict instantly ends as Takei suddenly decides he wants to draw cars. The fighting spirits are revealed to actually be transformable cars and what follows are multiple detailed shots of real cars and their engines. Later in the same volume is an unrelated one-shot manga about street racing. Instead of entertaining the reader, Takei shoved that thought away and used his manga for practice drawing cars. After all, you already bought that month’s issue, and surely you’ll buy the next one when the final page reveals a new villain is just about to enter the scene (certainly to have no permanent effect on anything).

Shaman King quickly devolves into endless running around circles with conflicts made as uninteresting as possible and having absolutely no consequences. Additional characters are piled on instead of using established ones well, and people randomly disappear and reappear volumes apart. It’s a ton of large, seemingly impressive cardboard stands with nothing behind the flat, hollow drama. Even the presentation, the basic rendering of those big pages and empty promises isn’t enough to imply substance where the story fails. Takei’s initial stylized artwork takes a big hit around the same time the rest of the manga does, and the heavily stylized graffiti look barely exists any longer. Shaman King ended with a whimper after a pathetic cancellation, and although this may seem like the final nail in the coffin, it’s a blessing that we were saved further disappointment.

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Unsurprisingly, one of the weaker Zelda worlds results in one of the weaker Zelda manga. The Wind Waker's retro cartoonish visual style may sound like an ideal fit for a manga, but ironically it ends up ensuring this manga has nothing substantial to add to its game. Manga adaptations of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask were the story's first opportunities to tell themselves using the more mature and detailed tone of the official art that was excluded by the Nintendo 64's limited capabilities. Those manga enrich the experience, ... while this aesthetic which relies heavily on actual animation and moving expressions suffers in manga format.

Furthermore, needing to render graphics for a game and what you can realistically portray in a still 2D image are concepts that can be extremely far apart, and certain Zeldas are as distant from these as possible. The basic style of the Wind Waker-esque games aims to transmit the simplicity of a flat art style in a world with depth. There's a great disparity when it comes to technical issues such as quality of cel-shading, but at its basic needs Wind Waker's character designs don't require a ton of effort to convey. The quality of that conveyance can very greatly, but the original character design itself is barely altered by any transition, as seen by the few differences between the same Wind Waker and Minish Cap NPCs despite them being in entirely different graphic styles. It's a style not as limited as more traditional games like Ocarina of Time, whose more realistic basic art style pushes the demands of the games to a goal that wasn't reachable in the first place. Bringing out that realism on a 2D image is much less demanding than rendering all that detail in a 3D game. Thus, Ocarina of Time in manga format can realistically be expected to actually be a more accurate rendition of the game's original concept designs, while a manga like Minish Cap is replicating something that was already achieved and far less compromised. The Minish Cap adaptation only had something to lose when it came to aesthetic, while Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, etc., had everything to gain.

The original content added to the Minish Cap manga in order to bridge events or move things along faster all fits in well and usually its versions of events have a bit more gravitas to them. Back stories of death, tragedy, and such things. Nothing inappropriate for a kids' fairy tale, though. Contrivances needed to shove the plot along can be forgiven by the author's presumably imposed number of chapters. Himekawa's vastly diverse art styles continues to amaze, and she adapts Minish Cap every bit as well as she has previous Zelda worlds. Ezlo in particular is much more appealing in the manga than he is in the game, aided by a bevy of endearingly pitiful expressions. One issue I found irritating is that it's often difficult to tell whether Link or Ezlo is talking in a panel, as several word balloons don't have arrows and Ezlo has his mouth open in nearly every panel by his default pose.

As usual, this feels like a genuine work of passion rather than an advertisement for the Zelda game it adapts. It only ever appears to advocate the appeal of the game when Link is showing awe at the many fantastical locations or having joy playing with the game's numerous items, but those are still natural responses and acknowledgement to mechanics necessary to properly adapt the game's story. Again, this is another well-done Zelda manga, mostly limited by the source material. Minish Cap's tone and aesthetic ensured its world was better realized by a moving medium, whereas other games in the series have some more potential drawn out of them. The Minish Cap manga ends up feeling redundant by comparison, and the few bits where it builds on the game's narrative are spread out and slight. Even for hardcore Minish Cap fans there might not be much to get too excited about here. This is almost entirely the world of Minish Cap as you know it, just with less luster.

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This was actually pretty all right. I'm a big fan of the original Dancouga series and at some point swore to never watch Dancouga Nova out of principle. I made a snap judgment assuming it'd be some moe fanservice sell-out, but the reality is that it's a standard mecha series that doesn't go so far as to insult the original series. That being said, it IS still very standard, and while not an embarrassment it struggles to find a reason to be watched by both mecha and Dancouga fans. ... I decided to shovel down this one cour series since Dancouga Nova seems to have replaced the original in the Super Robot Wars games, and how many mecha series are there that aren't a billion episodes long?

Given its episode count, Dancouga Nova is able to pace itself at a decent clip without dragging scenes or rushing the storyline too much. It's a simple series that isn't difficult to watch but isn't inspiringly creative or well-executed either. The team can't compare to the original but are all likable enough. Much of the dynamic that made the original cast so endearing was their abrasive qualities and inter-conflicts. They were a team with little to no connections culled and forced to work together and they naturally clashed and bonded over time. The increasing friendship of the Dancouga Nova pilots is still an observable thing, but it happens quicker and understandably so considering how soft the pilots are in comparison. It was hard for me not to be disappointed in lead character Aoi Hidaka's comparison to Shinobu Fujiwara. Fujiwara is a vainglorious asshole in some ways that would normally be associated with a generic shonen protagonist, but the writers were aware of his personality flaws and wrote them into his character development and interaction with others. Fujiwara is routinely criticized and denied his superiority complex by his teammates, and watching both his successes and failures at proving himself is a huge draw of the show and the biggest example of how the characters drove the original series. By comparison, Aoi is introduced as a tough daredevil similar to Shinobu, but entirely lacks his extremes and the flaws that come with them, meaning she loses both of those appeals mentioned earlier. It's actually her that comes across as generic, which is a shame considering the rarity of female mecha leads. She's universally soft and reasonably aggressive at any time, and she becomes bland, indistinct, and predictable in her reactions and her team's reactions to her.

The other team members fare better and worse. Kurara makes a positive impression in the beginning of the series as she's more of an extreme of Aoi's archetype, being a serious and highly professional policewoman. But the flaws of her personality, mainly her suspicious nature and coldness, aren't woven into her to make her more interesting past the beginning. She quickly becomes an Aoi clone rather than standing out, hotblooded in battle and neutral in demeanor. Johnny is the worst teammate of anyone, having absolutely zero conflicts with his character at any time and being the constant deliverer of a run-on gag where he mentions reading the latest men's magazines. His milquetoast personality is the least forgivable because it's never paired with anything endearing at any point in the show. He feels like team filler, and the run-on gags are a cheap way to force lines by him when his personality itself wouldn't make anything he delivers worth hearing. He also has an interest in a minor idol character, which I only mention because it's possibly a reference to the voice actress/pop star Rie Fujiwara from the original series. Last on the team is Sakuya, a deliberately homeless teenager who's chosen (for a reason we never learn) to be another of Dancouga's pilots. Despite his flimsy motivations, the overly zealous jokester of the group remains the most consistently entertaining since he never loses his distinguishable personality traits. Still, he lacks his own conflict.

Together the Dancouga pilots have little difficulty agreeing to a secret organization's plan. Their job is to travel the globe, interfering with conflicts to assist whatever the losing side is at the time regardless of motives or morals. I like this premise. It bears a similarity to Mobile Suit Gundam 00's premise, which Dancouga Nova actually predates by a few months. While I don't think the Dancouga Nova team's mission of leveling conflicts to draw them out and prevent them from escalating is very justifiable, it at least raises a moral and philosophical question for the show and characters to work with. In the beginning, the team is meant with some resistance of this ideology and questions it themselves, but alas, in the most disappointing part of the show this concept is nothing short of abandoned in the face of a more generic "fight against evil" plot that drives the remainder of the series. The questions this premise raises never amount to any substantial debate, let alone resolution. It ends up being intriguing and a proof of concept that doesn't deliver on any potential.

In a rare twist, my biggest problem with a show ends up being its animation quality. Dancouga Nova makes the original 80s series look like Studio Ghibli. I've seen people theorize that this was intentional to nod to the original series's animation problems, but that's a nonsense theory because the two's issues often manifest in different ways and it's evident Dancouga Nova's struggling with a budget as its animation gets consistently worse every single episode. Even still, a hand-painted Blu-ray release will almost always look better than a sloppy, low resolution, digitally-colored DVD release. Even putting aside the release format bias the original series would look better just from the techniques used, while Nova struggles with similar framerate issues that its averagely directed action scenes wouldn't make much use of anyway. The final three episodes introduce this absolutely obnoxious technique where, instead of "camera" angles shifting to show new characters talking or a different focus, a section of the frame (such as a standing character) will have their outline filled in with another character's talking face or some other scene. It makes the frame composition look like fragmented chaos, and if it's a "style" then it's definitely not one that benefits the series. Also introduced at this point are tacky screen wipes used with character faces like it's straight out of some 70s superhero cartoon. It's so cheap. As for the new Dancouga design, it doesn't beat the original, but I like it overall. The biggest issue are the weird vertical stereo-looking boxes on the side of its head. In conclusion, both series' visuals are littered with warts, but at least the original series had the decency to wear makeup.

As for the music, there's no comparison. I struggle to remember any song from the soundtrack other than the repeatedly used battle theme, which sounds like pop rap recorded on a cassette tape. It's barely audible and the same verse from the song is used constantly until the final battle. The original series could've used music variety as well, but tracks like Burning Rage are lovably distinct both in their archaic 80s synth composition and stronger melody.

Much of the series revolves around those two earlier mentioned halves of the political conflicts and fight against evil, with the Dancouga pilots learning to work together while facing military resistance and investigating the secrets behind the organization that's picked them up. The series maintains enough intrigue and momentum from these basic ingredients to be an entertaining enough watch that isn't boring but lacks any impressive moments. It all ends up being lightly likable in all aspects, but in the saturation of anime that just isn't enough of an endorsement - even for mecha fans. And if mecha fans are so desperate as to be looking for niche series like Dancouga Nova, then any recommendations probably don't matter. They'll take whatever has the genre attached. Still, if Dancouga Nova is a sequel that needed to be made, then at least it didn't do the original team any shame. According to MyAnimeList, over twice the amount of people have watched Dancouga Nova over the original series. Those who enjoyed this show enough or are considering watching it, do yourself a favor, buckle down, and watch something "old" - and better.