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The music's good and the animation is good.
The complete lack of character and the complete go-nowhere ending is either a total trainwreck or a brilliant, nihilistic reflection on the lack of meaning in love, life and death.
Not long enough to elicit any negative reactions but the barebones storytelling doesn't exactly give any enjoyment either.


Everything below is fluff:
Why is there a minimum word limit? Brevity is king. I hate myself when I overwrite, it's a really simple, forty minute 80s OVA that is perfectly middling. I guess the music is cool. I said that already. "All in all this is an OVA that is worth ... a watch, if only to experience what a pure 5/10 is like." There, conclusion statement.

TL;DR:
Foregone conclusions and wasted time: the anime


Story:
This story is ham-fisted, all the conflict is senseless melodrama that utilize nothing but cliche and doesn't gel together. All evil is stupid cartoon evil and the rest is stupid misunderstanding bullshit. Everyone voluntarily loses all brain cells so that the plot can wring out that sweet sweet melodrama.
Filler is everywhere, mostly in the form of bargain bin humanizing a disposable character before killing them off in a torturously long and repetitive foregone conclusion.


Art:
The art is okay, but before every disposable character dies there's a long-ass fucking tracking shot that lasts up to 30 seconds. Again, to drag ... out the fucking runtime. Worthless.


Sound:
The Lilium theme is played so often in its base form and various reprises it becomes irritating. The rest of the soundtrack has all the subtlety of a Hallmark Original. Horrible music. Also there's exactly one sound effect used for the breaking of bodies, which usually isn't an issue, but this show thinks that if a guy's head flying shocked and aroused a few 13 year olds in the first three minutes it would surely work for another 800 times with the exact same water hose sound effect.


Character:
The characters are so pathetic it's insane. There are four good characters, Nana, Arakawa, Yuka (the only character to act like an idiot WITHIN REASON) and Mayu.
Arakawa is the only sympathetic minor character to survive the show and thus deserves a round of applause. Also delivers the best line of the show, a self-deprecating one-liner in the face of death.
Yuka is your dumb childhood friend and while nothing mind-blowing, is pretty much the only reasonably stereotypical character in this show.
Mayu is the precious child character and thus has absolutely zero agency bar a Rickert-tier slap to a seriously irritating character (this show has a lot of that).
In Nana, however:
everything wrong with the show is evident.
Lucy and Mariko, the two irritating pink-haired snots I'm supposed to feel bad for, are wholly unsympathetic. They are unreasonably sociopathic. It takes about three cuts for Lucy to go from sad bullied loner to gleefully massacring entire families, plotting the destruction of the human race, and toying with terrified law enforcement. There's character arcs and there are character cliffs. This is not development, this is castrating a character arc so the cute girl has a reason to rip people's heads off. Also, it's really cool that in your entire time of being conscious hidden within Nyu and clearly observing people not being dickheads you still have to kill every single non-malicious human being even though you're supposed to be undergoing character growth. Because melodraaaaaaaaaaaaama.
Mariko is Lucy but 10 times worse, always in an irritating as shit "I like playing XDXDXD but my playing is actually killing hahah" mode until the obligatory moment where I'm supposed to feel bad for her. I don't. She is a cartoon caricature of a sociopath through and through and there are no attempts to make her even remotely real.
I cannot stress this enough: nowhere are they actually childlike or even realistically sociopathic. It's all cartoonishly cliched.
The show seems to imply that this is due to some fundamental, genetic or upbringing reason that makes all of the diclonius cartoonishly gleeful and willing to commit violence (but only on humans! because sociopaths and traumatized victim-turned-aggressors are known to love animals). This is shot in the foot by the aforementioned Nana: a diclonius who is constantly subjected to torture similar to Lucy's and much more than Mariko's. She has a body count of precisely zero and acts like an actual kid her age (albeit much less traumatized than she should be). She is a pleasing character and delivers some surprisingly good comedic moments. Unfortunately, her mere existence casts Mariko and Lucy's struggles (which the former has the good sense to scream in your ear how she suffered at length) into doubt. It's rare that a show's good side characters actually sabotage the main characters, but Elfen Lied manages.


Enjoyment:
I wouldn't go through the effort of writing such a review for your everyday shit show. But 13 full length episodes of this drives me up a wall. I took a two month break and I dreaded every moment I returned to the show. If you can overlook the irritating music, the weak characters, the story's pathetically juvenile attempts to bludgeon empathy out of the viewer, the filler is still going to grate. The same old violence over and over and over and over and over again. Same sound effect, same instant gore splatters, and it keeps going on and on as if one wouldn't get tired of it. There is not a single episode where the gore felt satisfying, terrifying, shocking, or even arousing. It just exists to waste my time.


Overall:
I'm pretty fucking jaded to this shit. There's nothing deep about this. There's no substance underneath. I had a break, read Thomas Bernhard, Kafka, Dazai and Akutagawa. This show is obviously not to the level of literature greats; however, it can't even conjure up the angst of an obligatory drama episode in a slice of life series. If you like gore, just watch something adapted from an Uziga comic or something -- it'll be arousing, it won't pretend to be deeper than it is, and it would actually have some organs and meat underneath the ketchup splatters. For everyone else: there's no value to the story here. There's nothing to be discovered underneath the middling and dated art. You'll even be sick of the Lillium theme by episode 3.
Avoid at all costs.

I started watching Pupa under the impression that two things were going to be present: an attempt at drama and an attempt at gore.
Well, I was right. So I guess I did get what I came for. Let's talk about Pupa, a hilarious piece of incest ecchi with enough hilariously stupid drama to fill an entire high school and then some.

Story:
The story is that Yume, the sister gets infected by the Pupa virus that forces her to eat flesh, lest she become a huge-ass demon. Her brother gains regenerative powers from exposure to the virus as well, and so he offers himself to be eaten ... by her voluntarily. Meanwhile, a woman named Maria seems to be orchestrating events. Angst and unintentional comedy ensue.

Does that sound simple enough? Good, because the story never evolves beyond that premise. Everything mentioned above happens, but they never happen in a way that makes sense. Yume is genre blind and stupid so she got infected by the virus and never notices the creepy-ass woman who obviously caused her to have the infection. Utsutsu, the brother, acts weak and weepy when he has regenerative powers. Yume and Utsutsu get bullied by a fucking switchblade. By a dude who knows both of them have superpowers. Also, they portray domestic abuse so bad it actually becomes comedic. Yeah.
Everything that isn't part of the premise's logline is pure idiocy. This show has no worth outside of its premise.


Art:
The art is barely passable. The animations have no major gaping holes.
However, what goodwill the artists deserve for making a passable artstyle gets nuked into oblivion by the terrible, terrible censoring and terrible, terrible choreography. Even if you get your hands on a decensored version it won't help much. I know it's part of the aesthetics, but every time those fucking teddy bear segments come on I have the urge to stamp something into the ground. Terrible, terrible visual direction and presentation.


Sound:
Apparently, human flesh makes squishy noises whenever you bite them. Eating human also surprisingly sounds like sex noises (more on that later).

Characters:
Utsutsu has a hero complex yet cannot fight against a bully despite having Wolverine powers. Yume never once thinks about ripping Maria or the bully's head off and feasting on their delicious, juicy intestines even though she does that with armed soldiers. Maria has enough edge and pretentiousness to calculate π to 20000 decimals. Everyone else is mostly irrelevant, and the most sympathizable character is Maria's assistance who seemingly wants her in the sack.
Every character here is butchered beyond belief. Cardboard cut-outs would be better -- at least they don't reek of formaldehyde-smelling stale angst.

Overall:
Remember how I said there would be attempts at drama and attempts at gore?
Well, the only reason there is drama is that there are no people with the sufficient mental capacity to actually solve the fucking problem. Child services don't exist, the fucking demon can't rip off a puny little head (or even attempt to do it), and the decision to let Yume eat his body is treated by Utsutsu with all the gravity of giving your sister a drink out of your milk tea.
The gore? It's just them having sex with a bit of red. No, I'm serious, when Yume is eating him, it either looks like she's giving him a blowjob or they're copulating and she just likes biting while doing so.
Good gore potential wasted on PG13 sex. Miserable.


Enjoyment:
But hey, it does almost everything wrong. So you know what that means: it's one of those stupid-ass anime that's perfect for generating a quick laugh via its sheer stupidity during a night's out with your so-called friends.

If all else fails, at least the teddy bear sections can be used as a litmus test for acceptance of cringe comedy.

"Dances with the Dragons" is a show that shows moderate potential but fails to deliver fully on that potential, resulting in a thoroughly mediocre show. The plot introduces threads out of nowhere, and there's more loose threads at the end than a ball of yarn that went through twenty cats.


Story:
The story is the worst link in the show. I'm not sure if this is handled with the same amount of grace in the original light novel, but the story has approximately four major plotlines that converge together at two separate points awkwardly like the wreckage from a two-car collision ramming into two other cars creating ... a flaming storytelling four-car pileup. The serial murder and "peace talk" arcs that take place in the first five episodes are barely related, and due to there being no apparent link between the Urmun and Maga-something-Japanese-I-forgot arcs at the beginning, I'm confused at what location they even are at sometimes when it shows them going through border control and then back at their agency in one simple cut.
Also, episode 11 and 12 are the textbook definition of "awkward pacing".
There's also a bunch of convenient things that happen to Gigina and Gaius that go completely unshown before showing up. Characters appear and disappear without prior warning.
I still don't know where that huge fireball Gaius shot out in episode 10 came from.
Here's a nice idea: instead of four plotlines and focusing on none of them -- it'd be easier to focus on one plotline and commit to it.



Setting:
The original light novel obviously has a very complicated and delicate setting -- it's the only way I can justify all the incredible facts about the world I'm supposed to know. Eridana is split into half between the Dragon Empire and Seven-Cities-Alliance? Oh, they never mention it in the show as far as I can recall. Nidvolk's orb? The poison? The other damn countries that are offhandedly mentioned? Good luck finding exposition.
The setting normally won't be such big of a deal, but when sociopolitical-maneuvering seems to be your only constant thread within the show, it would be nice to get some exposition on the world.


Art and character design:
I like the character designs, and the art is serviceable. However, the fight scenes lack motion (dragon fights don't actually show the characters with sword swinging and excess movement much), and when it gets dark, it gets really dark. Like some others mentioned, I had to turn up my screen's brightness just to see what was going on.


Sound:
The music in this show sound closer to a JRPG soundtrack -- noticable and a bit obtrusive. It's good enough though, and the vocal flourish at the end of the opening theme is a nice little moment to get your blood pumping.


Characters:
Characters are given time to develop, but not enough to make them stand out as good characters. Gigina and Gaius have almost no chemistry apparent at first, but instead of showing why they butt heads, it just tells you to accept that they do. Their relation improves of course, and they actually share one or two quite funny moments at the last few episodes of the show.
Of the support characters, Jivanya is probably the only constant one throughout the series as Gaius's girlfriend. Her character is never given enough time to develop as well. Moldeen could count as well, but his goals and motivations are so illusory it's hard to grasp his character at the end.


Enjoyment:
There aren't many enjoyable or despicable moments in this show. Things happen, and the viewer is swept along. It's not bad enough to make you unable to watch, but there isn't much of anything that actively engaged or interested me. No well-developed characters, a plot with horrible pacing and a bit of mediocre comedy -- it's not exactly a recipe for maximum fun.

Oh, I guess Norio Wakamoto is here, so if he's your thing (he should be) he'll provide some fine entertainment.


Conclusion:
The plot is confusing, the characters only barely there. What's there to like? The art is a resounding "meh", the sound and music passable. Nothing here's bad enough or crazy enough to be interesting, and the only thing that seemed like it had potential -- the setting -- was laid to waste by a lack of exposition and a lack of screen time.
Meh. It wasn't that bad. I guess. "Decent" works.
Recommended to no one but fans of the original light novel or its manga adaptation. Maybe if you are one, you'll get more mileage out of this than me.


Edit: Apparently Norio Wakamoto isn't in here. I swear I heard his voice, but I guess not. At any rate, I don't feel any urge to go back and rewatch to make sure.

When is emotiveness too cheap?

There's a threshold most people have. We sympathize with things we feel are relatable. When somebody's misery goes off the deep end and they get pulverized via the power of *the plot*, some people decry it as "cheap".

That is a common criticism I've seen pop up with works like "Grave of the Fireflies", and the anime in question, "Now and Then, Here and There".
Personally, I think that this is a matter of taste. People like misery in certain dosages -- too much and it just becomes painful and it loses its potency. So I'm gonna analyze this without going into the ... darker aspects of the story, as I feel that they're not central to the plot.


Story:

The plot is probably the biggest obstacle for people who try to get into the misery of the setting.
A brief note about the setting: it has dictators, child soldiers, rape (of children) abduction and other fun stuff involved. The setting seems like it's going to be an examination of these great dinnertime activities, but instead it's just a backdrop -- the story is about the MC, Shuu, using his force of will to try and help those around him. A good story, but some will say a wasted premise -- a waste that doesn't help with making the audience sympathize with the characters. It also doesn't wrap up nicely -- the story just ends, leaving many questions unanswered. The story crumbles under its own weight, writing some characters (read: Sara and Shuu) into holes where their character arcs can't resolve in a bittersweet ending. The aforementioned characters either don't get to complete their arc (Shuu, who suffers from more symptoms than this) or are forced into a bittersweet ending when their problems shouldn't have been resolved (Sara).
The story also decreases in impact as the show goes on and becomes more character-driven and the premise falls to the wayside. This makes for a generally unsatisfying watch if you're in for the premise of a brutal dictatorship.

A good time as any to mention: If you're watching because it's inspired by the Rwandan Genocide and you're hoping for a dissertation and reflection on the horrors of war, tribalism, colonial pasts or the use of children as weapons -- this isn't it. At the heart of this anime is drama. The brutal themes are only a seasoning.


Characters:

The side characters are the most well-developed and interesting ones.
The stereotypical psycho soldier, Tabool, is given a bit more focus and depth (although not as much as I liked) than what constitutes a flat character.
Nabuca and Boo, more tertiary protagonists than support characters, undergo a relatively engaging arc focused on making difficult decisions, culminating in a climax that is genuinely ballsy to do on TV. Their arc is the best one written in this show.
The main antagonists are less interesting. Abelia and Hamdo are completely unsympathetic. Hamdo's insane antics are entertaining to watch for some time but they get tiring in about five episodes. Abelia, on the other hand, has no sympathetic qualities to her whatsoever. The tits factor wears off in less than five minutes and I started wishing for her death (which never came).
Sara is the most interesting character out of the bunch. I feel that if the anime focused on her, the story would be able to utilize its premise more. She's a flawed character who breaks down throughout the story, but still remains relatable (to me, at least) due to the knowledge that the shit that happens to her happens to people in real life. Her hatred for Lala-Ru gets a bit overblown during the end, but it's tolerable, and I wished the anime ditched Shuu and focused on her instead. Her arc starts out very promising, but as aforementioned, gets nuked into oblivion when her issues can't be resolved before the time's up and she is forced into a happy ending.
Lala-Ru is less of a character than a walking, talking and molest-able plot device (which she also is in a literal sense of sorts), and while it is nice to see her develop some basic human emotion, she isn't a major character by any means and more major plot device.

And then we have Shuu. The protagonist of the show is probably some people's most major sticking point. He's a Mary Sue, no way around it. He uses his incorruptible purity to change everyone around him for the better. While he is powerless as to not go full Mary Sue, he is still ridiculously positive and devoid of almost all negative traits. It's jarring when other characters undergo change due to all the horror they witness (Sara, Lala-Ru, Sis, Soon) and Shuu still remains optimistic and happy. It literally feels like isekai -- he's from another world. He has no character development and he's tiring to follow as a protagonist.


Art & Sound:
I really like the ED. The sound is serviceable; nothing notable.
The art is good. Clean, fresh, good. Nothing to complain but nothing striking. There is a general air of"*good* to the animation, but there's not much eye candy in the designs and shots. It's pretty.


Enjoyment:
As stated in the intro, your enjoyment of this show will vary depending on how much drama you can take before you accuse the show of being too cheap. Personally, the side characters held my interest until the very end, where the tacked on bittersweet anticlimax destroyed Sara (my favorite character)'s arc and just ended. Shuu doesn't even get one or two final thoughts in, and the ending is so abrupt I end up with an expression as confused as Shuu's. That decreased my enjoyment a lot, but I still had fun with the process. Special props are given to the first three episodes which held my interest with a leash and forced my attention to call it "master" on threat of a whipping.


In conclusion:
This is a tough show to rate. Disappointing ending, a bit of false advertising, and a lot of drama will make plenty of people give this show a low rating. However, the topic is quite unique for anime, and there is effort and passion behind the series. In the end, the bad protagonist torpedoes the show for me. A mixed effort, but worth watching.

I'm on a quest to watch the shittiest anime known to man -- that's how I stumbled across this peculiar little OVA. Low ratings? Action anime? I was preparing myself for a hyper-violent cheesefest akin to M.D. Geist, but it seems I got something different instead.

This is not a great anime. But what separates this from the bad? This anime has effort and passion behind it.

Story & Characters:
The story and characters are this anime's weakest link. Imagine the over-the-top and convoluted sci-fi/political thriller of Metal Gear Solid crossed with the stock characters of an Indiana Jones film minus the originality. That's basically all this anime ... is. The characters are extremely underwritten and are only there to serve the plot.
The plot, on the other hand, is an extremely convoluted and ridiculous plot involving the Soviet Union, the US military, a shadowy cabal that controls the Japanese government, and a conspiracy by an ancient alien race disguised as Buddhist monks.
So what's good and bad about the plot? Well, everything is bad about the plot. But the best thing is how much the show believes in its own plot and takes itself seriously.

Art & sound:
Maybe it's because I've been looking at too much shit anime, but Crystal Triangle is a feast for my eyes. The animation has plenty of effort put into it -- the bouncy animation of the jeep in the opening, the detailed interior of the BMW that the secret agent drives, and the stunning colors of the life-support chamber that looks ripped right out of Evangelion (Anno worked on animation in this show) -- there are details to be found in plenty of places here.
Sound is alright. Serviceable. Of special note is that they actually got Russian and English VAs in the Japanese original -- accented, but still, the effort is admirable.

Enjoyment:
Anime is an audiovisual storytelling medium. The story of Crystal Triangle creaks under its own weight, but man, is there passion in the visuals and even the story itself. The story is the best kind of bad story -- the kind that takes itself seriously, and the visuals do their best to make that bad story seem as cool as possible. The visual details, the effort put into the voice acting and the grandiose story add up to a very enjoyable effort (at least in my opinion).


In conclusion:
Some bad anime are charming because of how bad they feel.
Crystal Triangle is charming because it does its level best to make itself good -- and it almost succeeds.

This review is actually quite hard to write; quite strange for a five-episode show that total under ten minutes.
How do you judge something that doesn't aim high? When your anime is one big shitpost, how do you judge it?








...

Well, I lied.
It's actually quite simple, actually. It's one big shitpost, and it doesn't aim to be anything but that. And it's a good stinkin' time.

Story:
There is no story.

Art:
The artwork is quite good flat animation paired with passable CGI. They fit the aesthetic well, and the lacking parts of the CGI are actually used to the advantage of the comedy.

Sound:
The sound's passable. Not much to say. The use of the main theme would get old after a while if this wasn't so short.

Character:
The designs are cool, in a "what the hell, man" kind of way.

Enjoyment & overall score:
Yes, this anime gets a 10 for enjoyment. Everything in this anime is stupid, and intentionally. The concept is stupid, and the producers know it. The transformation sequences are laughably bad. The transformations are abrupt as hell. This gag would get old fast -- But this entire anime is less than ten minutes. So cut down and distilled, this is a fun collection of bad jokes. It's that friend who cracks stupid puns constantly. The joke's stupid but you laugh at it, with him and at him simultaneously.
But in the end, it's just a stupid joke. It's fun as hell, and you have to admire how well it's done, but...
It aims to be a stupid little joke. And that's all it is. Is it a fun hell of a time? You bet. But is it anything higher than the low bar it aims at? Not really.

Decent is the right word here.

Lolicon being socially accepted (relatively. In comparison to the West, anyway) in the East is a puzzling thing to me. Logically speaking, it is completely understandable if it is taboo. But it is not.


Being raised in China and exposed to Japanese popular culture, I don't see lolicon as this incredibly malicious thing. The innocence of children can be a potential gag for comedy. The sexualization of children can lead to some cheap shock humor too.


Now ditch those entire two paragraphs. Instead of a kindergartener making a dirty joke (which may garner some laughs amidst a sea of shaking heads), imagine that kindergartener pleasuring ... herself in front of you, having rape fantasies and giving birth.


Does that repulse you? Are you judging me because of my use of such disgusting imagery? Does that seem cheap? What about those opening paragraphs? Done in bad taste? Generalizing?


If the answer is any of the above, well...
That feeling of repulsion and disgust will be all you feel during the show.
Sure, I could say that the art and sound engineering is good. But honestly, why care when the entire show is absurdly sexual? Who cares about the characters? Who cares about the sound? Who cares about the art?


If there was any enjoyment at all to be found in this anime, it has been brutally maced to death by the realization that this was made and sold commercially, with a full voice acting team and decent art.


No matter the intention -- parody, satire or (I hope not) played straight, it's all irrelevant. Any point that could be made through the idea is mercilessly shattered by the sheer bad taste and vulgarity that this leaves in your mouth. Shock has a point where it feels cheap. And this is the best demonstration of that.


Pathetic is not a good enough score for this. Worthless/10.