Akatsuki no Yona Ramble Review
Like all pieces of media that we use to distract ourselves before the inevitable, there are always some genres you try to steer clear of, like you would social responsibility or German scat porn. One genre that gets this abusive treatment from me is the shoujo genre. But before we continue, the shoujo genre is kinda garbage. Hopefully my negative propensity towards the genre isn’t showing. But in all seriousness, it’s a genre targeted towards teenage girls. The real reason I hold such distaste to this particular genre is due to it consisting of characters that are written by people that
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haven’t had sex in a very long time. Meaning, the heroin is apparently so perfect and attractive that the entire male cast gets on their hands and knees and starts to fawn over her (and also the fact most of them are rom coms, but that is for a different time).
So when my friend through her gags and burbles of her mentally damaged brain would suggest a show for me, I would always reply with “is it one of horrible shoujo anime, that whenever I try to watch it I feels like I’m shitting out a hedgehog that has barbed wires instead of spines?”, which would just lead to more gags and burbles as she rolls on the carpet, trying to improve her noodle impression. But I finally took pity on my poor, retarded, idiot, stupid (maybe I should stop being friends with them) friend and listened to her suggestion and began to watch Akatsuki no Yona. And I will say I was mildly surprised.
Akastsuki no Yona is an anime about a princess Yona, who has the ability of being genetically superior to everyone because she has red hair, and she has the emperor dragons blood. But like every princess story, a great tragedy strikes. The king is killed by her crush, the original “boy toy”, Soo Won. So she escapes with her trusty side “boy toy”, Hak. These two companions have great chemistry and travel the land to collect four more “boy toys”( I’m going to keep calling them boy toys until I get a laugh, you bastard), to build her harem and fill her empty heart. and other orifices. Opps, I mean to take back her kingdom. But these four “boy toys” aren’t just anyone, no no no, they are special with dragon blood running through their veins with amazing abilities, and just so happen to be a list of character tropes and fetishes for the fujoshi community to argue which would make for the best “husbandu”.
The series seems to be set in an “ancient” China inspired kingdom. Sadly I can’t be certain if it is actually china because it is never clearly stated, probably because the producers were having a little giggle to see how many racists they can catch by calling it Chinese. But in all seriousness, this simple fact was its biggest pull for me towards the series. In the world of anime, with its overabundant high school slice of life and the countless generic light novel adaptation that gets hacked every year by the uncoordinated hands of a butcher who just stopped giving a fuck, uniqueness is a quality hard to find. So for a shoujo to not have a highschool setting certainly did make me raise an eyebrow and investigate. And regardless of what you think, that is certainly a plus.
But after my eyebrow reached the top my un-arguably handsome face, my senses slammed on the breaks and came back to me, which lead to the thought “Is it a horrible reverse harem that is so bad it’ll make my throat want to fill out divorce proceedings with my stomach as I vomit a litre of stomach acid?" "Um...Kinda."
I’ve seen many reviews on people’s thoughts on Akatsuki’s characters, and every god damn single one of the cum gurgling twats that praises this series all seem to say the exact same thing, “The characters are amazing with intricate back stories and amazing development through the series”. This statement I whole heartedly agree to… Oh wait scratch that last part. The characters do have an interesting and unique back story, and Yona’s transformation from a scared, timid princess to a strong female heroin is interesting. But as soon as the “boy toys” have joined the harem bandwagon, they devolve into body pillow number 6745 and just become another member of the reverse harem bullshit. This is what I hate and loath about this series and the shoujo genre as a whole. Develop apparently means a character becoming infatuated with the main heroin, until there are enough handsome men to perform their very own bukkake shoot.
What the writer of the series should have done was throw out the love hexagon and make entire series focus on Hak and Yona, and make the rest of the cast just loyal to Yona. But that isn’t going to happen because like I said in my introduction, the characters are written by people that haven’t had sex since they played doctor with Uncle Tom. When I think about it, the characters as a whole, excluding best boy blonde, aren’t that great either. And the other villains the company faces aren't great either. It's like the script writer binged watched a bunch of Disney movies, then she hastily began to write a villain, until I don't know an ice cream truck passed.
To add to that, the tone of the series swings like a convulsive Gibbon on crack. One minute the heroes will be fighting kidnappers who sell woman and children as slaves, and the next minute it'll change art style to adorable chibi characters, as they tell a joke that falls flat so hard it tunnels into the earth and burns up in its core. It’s just so bad it made me want to pull my teeth out and jam them in my eye sockets so I don’t see that shit ever again. Who thought that was a good idea to implement comedy with murder, other then Punch and Judy? No matter how hard you try it’s like me and relationships, they just don’t seem to work out.
I have other complaints about the series such as the music, animation,the ending and Yona’s sun glare, but this is already getting to long, so I’m will wrap this up. As I wrote this review I realised the mountains of problems the leaked out of the shows pores, like yellow puss from a wound. And every single one them stem from the Shoujo heritage, from the reverse harem, the lack of character development of the male characters, the erratic tonal shifts, and many other complaints and nitpicks I have. But I still found the show mildly entertaining (even if it was for the wrong reasons), from the unique setting, Yona’s development as a character, or just pointing out everything bad about the series. This “enabled” me to claw through the story, in the same way someone “enables” a crippling drug habit. So in conclusion, Akatsuki no Yona turned out to be a slightly above average Shoujo series that surprised me. But keep in mind, for me personally an average Shoujo is about as good as putrefied shit left on black tarmac to cook. So you can gauge my opinion of the series from there. But for a Shoujo fan sure go watch it. But for everyone else, just go watch Arslan Senki.
Score: 4.4
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This Ramble Review was a new idea that I wanted to take a shot at to challenge myself. Hope you enjoyed.
And also, I am doing a blog so head on over there for more stuff, including just my thoughts and opinions on anime related stuff.
And please, any and all feedback for this review is appreciated. So shoot me a message and tell me any problems you had with the review and ways to fix it.
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May 4, 2016
Akatsuki no Yona
(Anime)
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Akatsuki no Yona Ramble Review
Like all pieces of media that we use to distract ourselves before the inevitable, there are always some genres you try to steer clear of, like you would social responsibility or German scat porn. One genre that gets this abusive treatment from me is the shoujo genre. But before we continue, the shoujo genre is kinda garbage. Hopefully my negative propensity towards the genre isn’t showing. But in all seriousness, it’s a genre targeted towards teenage girls. The real reason I hold such distaste to this particular genre is due to it consisting of characters that are written by people that ... |
