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Dec 24, 2022
What makes a good adaptation has always been a point of contention in anime discussion online, especially when it comes to a manga source material. There have always been people who post side by side comparisons between an anime and its manga counterpart, complaining about how they don't look exactly the same, how by adding, removing, or changing anything makes an adaptation worthless. This line of thinking has never seemed as meaningless as when watching Bocchi the Rock.
BTR is, on the surface, an adaptation of a slice of life four panel manga which usually means that you can expect Cute Girls Doing Cute Things™, a
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relaxing pace, and some comedy in between. While the foundation for that kind of show is definitely present, the way in which it has been adapted elevates every aspect of its source material. This isn't just a run-of-the-mill adaptation, the crew behind this show understand how to translate every part of the story into the animated medium while being creative enough so that they raise every aspect to near perfection.
One of the strongest aspects of the manga is how particular its cast is, especially the main character, Bocchi. She suffers from extreme social anxiety but still has a desire to communicate with other people, especially through her guitar playing. The rest of the cast, especially the other 3 main band members, play off Bocchi really well mainly during the humorous scenes. Although normally, a show of this kind would be making fun of Bocchi's inability to communicate, the rest of the cast aren't actually mean or make fun of her. They simply understand what she's going through while still maintaining the comedy going and never getting overly depressing. The way the show stays funny without ever poking fun at the main character's shortcomings makes the show enjoyable to watch whether you identify with her or not.
The visuals are where the creativity of this show is most apparent. The showrunners aren't afraid of changing the characters' expressions in many different ways, especially the titular Bocchi, just to punctuate or finish a joke. This is something the manga also does; however, here it's taken to the extreme. When expressing Bocchi's anxiety or delusions her face or entire body can distort in many different ways, but it doesn't just stop there. To really get the audience into her state of mind and to accentuate the punchlines to jokes, there are scenes that go into various styles including: live-action footage, clay dolls, paper puppetry, stop motion, zoetropes, basically everything the animators could think of; there was no stifling to their imagination. Had they simply sticked to copying the source material religiously, one of the main aspects of what makes this show so compelling would have no chance to exist.
BTR being based around a rock band makes the inclusion of music an obvious improvement over its manga counterpart. If you like JRock and the kind of rock music you'd find in other shows such as K-on! then you'll probably enjoy the soundtrack to this show. These songs are mostly accompanied by animated sequences that while largely being in a more traditional and realistic style than the comedic scenes, have some outstanding animation. These musical presentations are mostly reminiscent of how a real band would look on stage, they also normally are pivotal moments that serve as the payoff to the great character interaction found in the rest of the story.
The general attitude of not only looking at a manga like a sacred text, but more like a blueprint of what they can do with a story, while still seeing how it's best transformed into a different medium, and expressing the creator's creativity is what really elevates this show to greatness, and to being the best show of 2022. You can tell the staff were having fun while making this anime, and that makes it so it never becomes dull or uninteresting, it stays fun, hilarious and refreshing the whole way through. The one complaint I have towards it is that it's entirely too short and I'd like to have continued watching it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Dec 22, 2022
Before you continue reading this review, I'd advise that you simply go and watch the first episode without reading anything about it, as I believe it is the best way to experience it. This review doesn't contain significative spoilers.
There are plenty of anime series that have strange or wacky premises. You could say that they are the main draw of the medium itself. However, more often than not, it's difficult to really build upon that foundation to deliver a story that is engaging all the way through, and you end up with many shows that despite having a promising or fun start, become dull, or
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too silly, or simply don't end up being as good as they could have been. Akiba Maid War definitely has an incredibly wacky premise: What if a typical 90's Yakuza/Crime story had café maids instead of gangsters? A premise which this show actually maganages to pull off incredibly well all the way through.
One key thing about Akiba Maid War that is very noticeable from the moment the first episode gets going, is that everything about it is absolutely ludicrous. The setting of Akiba, being home to murderous gangs of cute maids, how casually they handle said murder, and just how for everyone involved this is just how the world works. Balancing both the crazy aspects of the narrative, and it being based on serious, gritty Yakuza stories is what this series does best. It uses the ridiculousness of its location for both jokes and serious moments, sometimes within minutes. This is mostly accomplished by playing both seemingly incompatible aspects of the story completely straight. It's silly and fun when it needs to be, and it doesn't shy away from getting darker and even dramatic during important plot moments, but it never goes so far in either direction where it feels unnatural. The way the show is written is really remarkable.
The cast really compliments the way the story is told, both for the humorous situations, and for the more serious dramatic parts. On the one hand, we have the characters that would normally be part of a cute girls show about maids: a 90's gyaru, a more straightforward "cute" maid, and a person wearing a panda costume (for whatever reason). On the other hand, there are the characters that came from a Crime story: We have a scummy but lovable manager, and the "big bro" (big sis in this case) character, Ranko. The writers do a very good job at integrating both kind of characters into the dramatic and the comedic sections nearly all the time, which is actually much more difficult than what AMW makes it seem. Without spoiling anything, Ranko is the character that floats between the two most often, and ends up being the most compelling character of the show by far. The only bad aspect about her character is that during the fight scenes (of which there are a surprising amount in the show) she can feel like Get Out of Jail Free card, but that mostly happens in the beginning of the story, and is not a problem later on.
As far as the presentation of the series is concerned, when there is character acting, it's similar to the other "workplace" shows in PA Works' catalogue; though comparing with those shows, seeing how this one is more comedic in tone, most characters are very expressive, and can have a wide variety of fun expressions. As a matter of fact, the action scenes are mostly also handled really well, and are surprisingly well animated, which is something you wouldn't expect in a show about maid cafés. The overall aesthetic is fine, even if when watching the (crazy) Opening of the show, you can see they could have probably gone with a more unique style which I would have personally appreciated.
Finally, the soundtrack is another thing that helps the tone of the story flow along better. There are relaxing or upbeat tracks for the scenes in the café, as with any slice of life show, and there is music that seems taken straight out of a Yakuza film for the action and dramatic scenes. There are even idol pop performances during some episodes. They all mostly fit into the show in a way that most of the time feels natural, especially both the OP and the ED songs.
All in all, AMW was incredibly surprising. I went into it expecting a trainwreck, and came out with one of the best shows of 2022, which is impressive if you check out what other shows it is competing with only in the same season. This is an anime that is at a first glance, not for everyone, but I believe once you get used to its ridiculous premise, you can find that it's an incredibly fun, exciting, funny, and even emotional ride.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Sep 30, 2021
This review contains a few spoilers.
What's the point of Higurashi Sotsu/Gou?
Since the very moment the first season of the new Higurashi was announced I had to ask myself the question: Why does this exist? The original two seasons of Higurashi weren't perfect for sure, but they told a complete story with a mostly satisfying end. If the new Higurashi was going to have 2 seasons of content, then it better be for a good reason.
After watching 39 episodes of the new show, I'm still having trouble understanding what the point of this show is, so I'm going to analyze a few theories of mine I
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have regarding this question.
- It's an advertisement for the gacha:
When I started watching the first season, I wasn't aware that there was a Higurashi gacha game, but looking back at the way the show is structured, it made sense. We know how these things work, Gacha games are very profitable nowadays, and making it so the franchise stays on people's minds is important. I believe this is why the pacing of the show is so incredibly incompetent.
The arcs feel very very long, and basically nothing happens in them. The first half of Sotsu has arcs which are rethreads of old arcs in the original Higurashi, except this time they have slightly different endings! Now, seeing how this is a sequel, I expect most people who watch this series to have already seen the first series or read the original VN. If people are already familiar with the story then there is no mystery in these arcs; The reason why these arcs worked in the first Higurashi was that you didn't know what was actually happening, and the story revealed itself slowly. So what is the point of having essentially the same arcs with the same pacing if there is basically no mystery? The only possible question the audience might have is why Rika is trapped in the loops again, but nothing that happens in this first half helps you at all to solve that. Everything just feels like a way to make the show artificially longer; and I haven't even mentioned the second season.
During 13 out of 15 episodes of Gou, almost nothing of importance happens. The "answer" arcs do nothing to actually advance the story, they are just vehicles to one, show some more violence/gore; and two, make this series even more unnecessarily slow. I suppose now that you have all these arcs in the actual show, they can put more content related to it in the gacha, and simply looking at the gacha's Twitter account seems to support this theory.
- It's a scam:
Now, this is just my personal opinion, but a feeling I got when watching both of these seasons was that of being scammed. This feeling comes, not only from me not liking the story, but from many small things that usually would amount to nitpicks, but together make the show feel "cheaper".
Firstly, it's an unnecesary sequel. The original had a perfectly conclusive ending, and it definitely didn't need a continuation. Just the fact that it's another part that adds almost nothing new to an existing series starts to give the sensation of being creatively bankrupt, of just occurring to get more money off of an existing IP's fans.
Additionally, the visuals are a bit off at times. I mostly like the character designs by Akio Watanabe, but sometimes the characters can look a bit plasticky because of either the coloring or them going off model. Speaking of animation, aside from some very specific episodes that are more action-oriented, it's nothing to write home about, and at times it can be underwhelming. The old Studio Deen adaptation usually got flak for not being so great visually, but their style fit the tone of the story better in my opinion.
Finally, the biggest way Sotsu/Gou are lazy are with just how much content is recycled during Sotsu. There are episodes where almost 15 minutes amount to nothing but recycled animation or recaps. There is no justification for making the answer arcs as long as the arcs they are recontextualizing, when the information they add to them is both minimal and inconsequential to the overall story. The one scene that is very well animated during the first 37 episodes of the show (Rika's dance) is repeated completely or partially several times during both seasons to the point it became a joke. I'd say if you took a shot every time Satoko looked with red eyes at the camera and smiled evilly, or Eua started laughing for no real reason, you'd be dead very quickly, but the show is so protracted that the alcohol would probably wear off before you could get drunk at all. Being generous, this show has about 20 episodes of real content stretched to 39; in fact, this story could probably be told in a single movie or OVA series.
The real kicker is that the entire plot of these three cours of anime happened because of an extremely mundane problem that two teenage girls could have solved by talking to eachother; and in fact they do exactly that in the very final episode, making everything that happened up to that point seem pointless.
- It's the author(s) messing with the audience:
"Ryukishi07 is trolling you, it will all be worth it at the end" and similar takes were arguments I saw people make online when discussing how dull both seasons had been. I thought if an author makes something that is this bad on purpose then they must seriously hate their audience, and dismissed this opinion. Even though there was some trolling when the show was first announced when it was advertised as a remake, but turned out to be a sequel I thought it was only that, and nothing else. However, I hadn't watched episode 13 of Sotsu.
Kagurashi-hen part 3 is most likely the funniest thing I've watched in quite a while out of an anime series, and that is including comedy series. After some of the most boring 13 episodes I've had to endure of any anime, the show finally caught up with a cliffhanger at the end of Gou. I was honestly not expecting anything to happen, and them to include a recap of everything that had happened up to that point or something similarly infuriating. Yet, the episode was an absolutely comical display of cartoonish slapstick violence, hilarious dialogue, and ridiculous developments that culminated in a Dragon Ball Z style fight scene.
There are many times during this episode where so many things that were clearly intended to be comedic happened, and the whole thing even felt very cathartic after such a long stretch of nothing; I just didn't sense that this episode could be this entertaining and amusing by accident. I believe this has to be the author saying "fuck it" and just shitting all over the show in the most spectacular way possible. This episode cares so little about what the show has been until then, that it even breaks the internal logic of the story and introduces some plotholes that I could honestly sit here and describe all day long (e.g. the looper killing sword), but I think I've made my point clear enough. At least the final 2 episodes of the whole thing appear like the author is just messing with you.
- It's a loving continuation of the original series:
No.
Maybe the only thing I could see was a nice addition to the original series was Satoko's uncle's redemption arc. Yes, it happened during a horribly protracted arc, but during the original series I got the impression that it could be considered a loose end; so, I welcomed it. Aside from this, I don't think there's anything that could be considered as a worthy continuation of the first series.
So in the end, what was the point of Higurashi Sotsu/Gou? Was it money? Was it the author trolling everyone? Was it a sincere attempt at making a sequel? I will let you decide. But I do know that Higurashi Sotsu/Gou was one thing, a waste of time for everyone involved in it.
3/10
Thank you for reading.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 10, 2020
Black Fox feels like a recap movie for a full series. The story, the characters, and especially the pacing didn't really help to make that sensation go away. Even though that is a problem, the series that was seemingly being recapped was actually not necessarily bad.
The part that suffered the most from that "recap" feeling were the characters. Some character interaction is missing, especially among the three main caracters. Their relationships develop in just a few scenes, they could have definitely have been given more time seeing how it's a very important part of the film. Furthermore, it felt like some character-driven moments had been
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omitted, and because of that some of the revelations and the surprises that happen later in the movie, feel like they lack buildup, or like they don't have the emotional impact they could have had if they had the proper setup like it could have probably happened in a full series.
There are some points during Black Fox where it feels like they had cut some scenes that would probably be too slow for a movie, but are okay in a full series. For instance, the members of a detective agency are introduced halfway through the film, and their character designs seem like they're memorable enough to show up again later, but aside from one of them briefly showing up later, they never really do.
The story was quite straightforward, and a bit predictable, seeing how it's a typical revenge/superhero plot. The music and the visuals sometimes add to it feeling like a superhero movie. Just a couple of examples are some of the costume designs, and the final credits which feel like the end of a Marvel movie. This movie won't be something that makes you think very hard or tries to do anything too revolutionary, but it's definitely not boring if watched without many expectations. If you have seen a modern western superhero movie, the story will probably be very familiar, though that doesn't mean it can't be entertaining. Even if as mentioned earlier the film feels like a recap movie, the basic structure of the main plot itself doesn't feel too rushed, since they don't hurry to have a conclusive ending, and leave room for a sequel, though if there doesn't turn out to be one, the story didn't have an entirely satisfying ending either.
The action scenes in general were well set up and executed. The animation is good, though it's not something that might blow your mind, especially seeing how you usually expect movies to look better than a TV series. Compared to other films, the animation is average. There are some uses of CGI that stick out here and there, but overall the traditionally animated fight scenes are nice looking and consistent.
It would be nice to see Black fox remade as a series, or maybe just a sequel in the form of one, that would probably fix some of its problems, though the former is not very likely to happen and as of this writing there's no sign of a sequel.
6.5/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 21, 2017
This review contains some spoilers.
Inuyashiki is a bad show, maybe even a terrible show. However, I would be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy watching this series to some extent, though probably not for the reasons the author intended. The story relies on too many coincidences and things that are never explained properly if at all, the animation is dreadful, the way the characters act and the decisions they make are incredibly inconsistent, unrelateable, devoid of all logic, and even hilariously incompetent.
This show's story can be described as just a string of coincidences and bad decisions. It begins when the two main
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characters, Inuyashiki and Hiro, receive magical powers from space aliens. They aren't actually canonically magical powers since their bodies are replaced by indestructible robot bodies with an innumerable amount of weapons and hacking technology at their disposal, but seeing how the show never makes any effort to actually explain how the weapons or the bodies actually work (aside from just saying water is the only fuel they need), the main characters' abilities can be assumed to be magical or simply anything that the writer needs in order to advance the story. You would also expect the aliens that give the main characters their new abilities to have at least something to do with the story, or at least to show up again at some point. Well,the very reason why the story even happens at all are never mentioned again, and never have anything else to do in the entire series.
Instead of focusing on something a bit more interesting like say, aliens with technology so advanced they can recreate a human using indestructible technology, most of the rest of the show is centered around the main villain(?) Hiro. Yes, the story isn't even mostly about the titular character who has a more interesting backstory and is more relateable, but it's about the most stupid character in the entire series. Hiro is, simply put, a horribly written character. He starts as a "normal" high school student who after receiving his new powers discovers that the only way he can feel alive is by killing people. Except that after a while he feels like he should stop killing people, but wait, not a scene later he's killing more people, and... no wait, now he doesn't want to kill people anymore and... Oops, I guess now he's killing even more people and... oh he just saved the earth, oh well. These changes in a character's motivation wouldn't seem so misguided in a much longer series, but with only 11 episodes, and seeing how they can be avoided by Hiro simply moving away, or you know, by him not being a mass murderer, it feels like the author is just trying to make a "complex" character who I believe you are supposed to either identify with or feel sorry for, but failing miserably.
The art direction in this show is so bad it actually comes around and coupled with the terrible writing, makes the series nearly unintentionally become a comedy. The series uses a mix between traditional and CGI 3D animation, but aside from the very few action scenes and when machinery is shown, both kinds of animation are used interchangeably. The problem with the art direction doesn't come from the usual QUALITY poorly drawn scenes, but from the very awful CGI that is used throughout the series. Since they seem to randomly swap from 2D to 3D regardless of the type of scene, character movement looks very unnatural most of the time. When you are getting used to one kind of animation, they change it and it feels unnatural again. The quality of the 3D animation in general is well, terrible. In fact, the most noticeably bad animation sequence in the series is what is supposed to be the decisive battle between the two main characters and what you would expect to be where the most effort is put; the quality of the building textures, the explosions, and the characters in that sequence makes it look like a cutscene from a very bad videogame.
Even the incidental music sometimes feels either out of place, or in the case of a "sad" piano piece that plays in serious moments, melodramatic. Another piece that sounds like something you would hear during a Bugs Bunny cartoon plays during various supposedly serious scenes, for example when Inuyashiki has to save a plane from crashing, since the situation is already ridiculous, it makes taking the show seriously even harder. But well, at least the song that plays during the OP is catchy as hell.
If you look at the MAL genre tags for this show (Action, Drama, Psychological, Sci-Fi), this show fails to make a good show for all of those genres.
The action scenes happen too sporadically, and when they do happen they are not exciting because the main characters are literally indestructible by; the only time when a fight is interesting is when the two robots fight each other, but that sequence is affected greatly by how terrible the animation in it is.
The dramatic scenes only work when they happen to Inuyashiki, but unfortunately by having most of them happen to Hiro, the most unlikable character in the show, you end up feeling he deserves everything bad that happens to him instead of feeling sorry or sad.
In order to call it a good psychological show, we would need to understand why Hiro does everything he does, but his characterization is so inconsistent that he ends up contradicting himself many times during the show's measly 11 episode run.
Finally, it's not even a decent Sci-Fi story; the technology behind the robots is never actually explained nor do they say how they pull some of the things they do off (e.g. How do you kill people with a magical "handgun" through computer and phone screens), good Sci-Fi is not just saying "it's magical alien technology, just roll with it". The biggest Sci-Fi plot elements that happen during the show feel like both an excuse to set everything in motion, and an excuse to have a rushed half-assed "emotional" ending.
I mentioned at the beginning of this review that I had enjoyed the show to some extent, and that is because it feels more like a comedy at times than what it really is supposed to be . The amount of ridiculous things that happen during some parts of the show might be enough to make you keep watching just to see how much dumber it can get, and in fact I believe that by not taking it seriously you can actually enjoy this show by laughing at how incompetent it is and because of the amount of ridiculous things that happen in it. If this show is supposed to be some sort of comedy or satire then I would probably say it was effective at what it was trying to do. However, there's no indication that was the case so I can just say this is a very clumsy and messy trainwreck.
3/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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