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Sep 25, 2016
So for the past three months or so, I have been watching Orange every Sunday. At first, it was an enjoyable experience- bittersweet- like the plot intends for it to be. After Episode 5 or 6, however, things begin to take a weird turn. You see, I read the manga a few months before the anime started airing because I wanted to see the story unfold in its original creative form and enjoy the characters, plot, etc, just in case the anime adaptation ruined it.
Did it?
In a way, yes.
~~ Story (8/10): ~~
As far as the story goes, it stays the same as the
...
manga. Five high schoolers: Naho Takamiya, Hiroto Suwa, Azusa Murasaka, Takako Chino and Saku Hagita receive letters from addressed to them and it turns out that they come from themselves ten years in the future. They are told to save their new friend Kakeru Naruse who is, in fact, no longer with them in ten years time.
The anime followed the manga very closely and I saw hardly any original content which I can really appreciate when adaptations are made. If you like romance that's kind of similar to Ao Haru Ride then look no further, this one is for you. Orange also has supernatural elements to it, dealing with parallel universes and such. This kind of genre has been done to death so far in 2016, but it's a bit of a fresh perspective.
~~ Art (7/10): ~~
The quality of art and animation throughout all 13 episodes is quite consistent. In a few episodes, the detail can be quite poor due to the show's budget and whatnot, but apart from that, there's nothing too noticeable. The art is very nice to look at.
BUT.
Half-way through the series, there are one or two episodes that serve as comedy relief in a way. In these two episodes, there are facial expressions drawn onto the characters that you DO NOT see in the manga. These faces are the kind of over-exaggerated faces you'd see in a comedy anime or something. Orange is not a comedy, although there are comedic moments here and there (mostly involving Suwa and Hagita), the facial expressions made in these episodes can be very offputting. That is the only warning I can possibly give you.
~~ Sound (9/10): ~~
The voice acting is brilliant and there are some top-quality seiyuu's involved in this show. Kana Hanazawa voices Naho and does a brilliant job, Makoto Furukawa voices Suwa and consistently pulls off his masculine, upbeat voice and as for Kakeru, well, he sounded like your average male MC so I can't comment much. I'll cut his seiyuu some slack though as he hasn't been in the industry for very long. The soundtrack, composed by Hiroaki Tsutsumi, is beautiful. The sad tracks are a delight to listen to and all the other tracks are excellent too. He also worked on Ao Haru Ride, which is probably why I relate the two shows so much.
~~ Characters (6/10): ~~
If there's one thing the anime adaptation does wrong, it's the character development. In one group, all six characters shine in one way or another. However, if you separate them and make them individuals then they have no interesting qualities whatsoever. Kakeru is the bland male MC who has depression, Naho is dense, even more, bland female MC who has a crush on Kakeru but won't ever say anything about it, Azusa is a happy-go-lucky gal who goes as a double act with Takako. Takako? She gets no attention whatsoever. Hagita is the low-key otaku nerd of the group who is often teased about something. The only character I can give praise for is Suwa because of his undying dedication to the instructions in the letters, his genuine friendship towards the others and his general, all-around likeableness.
But yeah, this adaptation does a good job of making Naho even more romantically retarded than she is in the manga, and they take Kakeru's jerkiness a step too far.
~~ Enjoyment (7/10): ~~
I had fun watching this show. At times, the build-up of tension and feels works to more effect than the manga did, but most of the time it didn't. If you really want to enjoy the story for what it is then I highly recommend you go and read the manga, penned by Takano Ichigo. I didn't love it, I didn't hate it, and I'll probably forget most of it in a year's time.
I'll never forget Suwa though.
#suwabestgrill #neverforgetti
~~ OVERALL (7/10) ~~
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 18, 2016
Like the majority of people, I had decent expectations when I started Mayoiga. Did these expectations follow through? They most certainly did not.
Plot/Story (3/10):
The interesting premise as a ghost story/mystery was eye-catching, but this premise was quickly discarded and turned into a confusing, boring monster story formed from psychological scars.
You could tell throughout watching this anime that the team behind Mayoiga couldn't make up their minds about what they wanted it to be. If they had stuck to the idea about Nanaki Village being a mysterious ghost town, then perhaps this anime would have been slightly better, although there were many things wrong
...
with it other than the plot.
Anyway, I stuck with Mayoiga until the end with a few shreds of hope left. I really hoped that the ending would save it. Did it?
No. And what's worse, the ending stole elements from Angel Beats!, but it did it badly. I think it was supposed to be emotional, but I ended up laughing at it.
Characters (2/10):
It's never good if the viewer would rather see all the characters dead rather than alive. This is true in my case, as I quickly came to dislike the majority of the characters. Their archetypal personalities were unfitting in some situations, for example, Lovepon's obsession with execution and torture was unnecessary in their situation, and even though this obsession was present from Episode 1 - 11, it seemingly disappeared in Episode 12 despite her psychological scar not being cured or accepted.
Mitsumune was a pathetic excuse of a main character from the start, taking on a personality trait of that likening to Makoto Itou from School Days, the very first memorable thing he does in this anime is decide which girls he's attracted to and openly talk about it. This gets the attention of a tsundere I can't even remember the name of and Masaki. In the first few episodes there's an unstable love triangle between Mitsumune, the tsundere and Masaki, but it's quickly dropped when other situations arise.
The only characters I liked in this anime were Nanko, Lion and Valkana. That's it. So, your anime has only three likable characters, you have a problem.
Art (5/10):
The art is mediocre at best, but 5/10 is the highest number anything in this anime is gonna get. The animation is nothing to admire, and the CG monsters are absolutely grotesque. No, not in their appearance, but just their designs and quality. I wouldn't expect very highly of CG in anime, but my god the monsters were probably the worst CG creations I've ever seen.
The character designs are nice, I'll admit that. They were all pretty creative, especially Nyanta and Lion with their cat-like appearances.
Sound/Music (4/10):
Meh. The soundtrack was definitely extremely repetitive, with the same guitar track playing over and over again in any mysterious moments or in moments where the characters come to some sort of realisation. Is this one guitar track any good? No. No it's not. I could tell from the start that the budget in the music department of this anime was low. When I discovered that Masaru Yokoyama was in charge of the music, I got very excited because he has a history of producing beautiful anime soundtracks, such as Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso. However, he definitely fell flat here, because the music was definitely lacking.
Enjoyment (3/10):
I was bored and it's a damn shame too. I had pretty good expectations at the start that sunk after Episode 3, and by the time Episode 5 came around, I was continuously asking myself "Why did I even bother?"
I constantly debated with myself whether or not I should drop Mayoiga during it's run, but I stuck around to see if it would become more enjoyable. The episodes featuring the characters' backstories were one of the best, and by the end of them I was hoping Mayoiga was getting better, but after the backstories came the appearance of the CG monsters, and from there Mayoiga sunk into another pit of disappointment.
Overall (3/10):
Mayoiga is a show that will disappoint just about anyone watching it. If you're thinking about starting it, tread carefully and go in with the lowest expectations possible. It's a bad show, to put simply.
I'm just glad that most of the other Spring 2016 anime are good, or else it would be a very disappointing season indeed. Mayoiga can be thrown on the pile of boring and bland anime and can be quickly forgotten about the anime community in the coming months.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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