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Can love between a man and a can bloom? Such profound questions like that will be asked to you as you watch Akikan, perhaps the single worst and most idiotic concept for a TV series ever, and the very moment that question becomes relevant within the series is the moment any drama or tension cannot possibly be taken seriously. Ironic then, that those parts actually end up becoming the most tolerable among these twelve, awful episodes.

Most of it is comedy of the lowest grade that is impossible to unironically enjoy with the occasional can racism that comes with some fighting between different types of cans, ... each with a different special power and attacks whose names show how little effort was put into wrapping this thing up toghether (just for reference, one of these cans is melon juice, is conveniently named Melon, and her attacks are surprisingly named "MELON, MELON, MELON!" or other variations of the word melon).

Production values, animation and overall graphic designs of the series are awful and undeserving of something released in 2009 and would probably be mediocre at best if released six or seven years earlier, while the soundtrack offers nothing of value except maybe a shitty but somehow catchy second opening (that conveniently recycles the patchwork of the first opening) and an ending song that isn't necessarily shitty but is sung by shitty vocalists and changes every episode.

The award for the most aggravating presence in the series though goes to our protagonist Daichi, easily worse than any main character you can name, whose lines are more or less all facedesk-worthy throughout the series and never come close to being remotely funny or quirky even among these types of perverted male character stereotypes. The supporting cast isn't much better as they all more or less sport an unfunny/cringeworthy quirk that defines them during comedy parts like our protagonist and react in the dumbest ways during drama parts (even for this type of series).

It's fairly safe to say Akikan is one of the worst anime TV series in existence and should only be watched as a joke or as a challenge, and even then it manages to disappoint by presenting awfully stupid situations that more often than not cannot be enjoyed ironically due to the sheer amount of cringe in the dialogue. Nothing of value is to be found in what could possibly be the lowest point of studio Brains Base and one of the lowest points of animation in general.

I remember watching a couple scenes out of context from Kill me baby on youtube months ago and to be fair, they were random enough to be funny. The characters were quirky and the situations were absurd, which is just what any comedy of this type needs to be succesful or at the very least enjoyable. It was immediately apparent as soon as I watched the very first episodes that I was wrong.

Kill me baby is the kind of series that sets a ridiculous premise and then never lives up to it, the kind of comedy that presents itself as completely demented and over-the-top but ... never leaves the comfort zone of character-based jokes, the kind of experience that hypes itself to stardom but settles for mediocrity instead - It simply doesn't have enough to push the show forward.


The ridiculous premise quickly degenerates into a mere gimmick due to sheer repetition of the same trite, formulaic jokes. They all play out the same way: Yasuna does something silly, she gets knocked out by the annoyed Sonya the assassin, while Agiri the ninja does something random, if she is around while that happens… you can generally predict how the joke plays out before it even starts, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds.

But beyond that, three characters are simply not enough to carry a comedy show for twelve full-length episodes. Any succesful comedy series I can think of – let's say Azumanga Daioh – had a diverse enough set of side characters that prevented the show from reaching the point of stalemate and kept the show relatively fresh despite the length.

At this point I wonder how Kill me Baby would have fared if it was a 3-minutes short series… as a friend of mine commented on the series: “it was tolerable back when I watched it weekly”, which is something I can honestly believe, as from my experience, the more often I watched an episode of Kill me Baby, the harder it was to pull through it and by applying that rule on a more abstract level, then you're better off not watching it at all. The opening track, "Kill Me Baby", arguably the worst opening song for a show of all time pretty much represents the show as a whole - weird at first, annoying and repetitive after you hear it once. Stay away.

Inou battle tries to blend the chuuni over-the-top comedy with the teenage drama commonly found in series like Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo. Do not be fooled by its title. While the series is named "Supernatural battles within daily life", the "Nichijou" part is far more prevalent than the "Inou battle" part, and what little plot or action concerning their powers there is gets confined to the very last episodes (and left with no closure) and its presence and relevance is marginal at best.

The "nichijou" part is not too succesful either, as the transitions from comedy to drama sections are often abrupt and do not ... fit the general tone of the series well. The fact that everyone is in love with the MC is eyebrow raising as well because they hardly show why the female cast develops feelings, and therefore all the romance and drama arising from it is not as effective as it should be. While the series would have benefited from a stronger comedy section, it's still generic enough to be enjoyable if you don't mind the style in the first place but it is no more than filler between better series.

Be it for the dorky humour or the sporadic bouts of humanity in the individual routes, Grisaia no Kajitsu enstablished itself as a force in the otaku world strongly enough to pique my curiosity and get enough funds for anime projects.
The first adaptation covers the story of the first game and all five routes, but it is immediately evident that the series is cheaply made for a quick cash grab. Recycled backgrounds, vital parts of the story missing to fit screen time, rushed pacing and incomplete characterization aren't going to be noticed by VN readers exclusively, but casual watchers as well.

Fundamentally, it's the same ... thing as the novel: Yuuji is still a one man army when he needs to be, and the cast is still a relatively standard set of girls (tsundere, loli, onee-san, kuudere and maid), but it doesn't really work because of the reduced screen time, and if the novel was nothing special itself, the adaptation is even less competent at being a harem with touches of drama and shares the fate of many incomplete VN adaptations. Watch only if you have at least a passing interest in girls with dark pasts or if you care about the latest popular franchise.

Girlfriend is the adaptation of a dating simulation game for mobile phones in which you date the girls of Seiou academy. This might trick you into believing this series is about romance and structured a la Amagami, but in reality Girlfriend is a school comedy composed of individual episodes featuring different main characters (and often side characters) that have daily life, friendship or reaching your own goals as central themes.

While there's nothing particularly wrong with it on a surface level, I found Girlfriend to be an exceptionally bland rendition of the school-set slice of life category. The issues lie in its structure, as standalone ... episodes with generally no recurring characters are unable to enstablish the necessary emphatic link with the viewer, with the characters theirselves being no more than one-dimensional tropes and the individual stories often being a mere display of said tropes. It's harmless and not particularly horrible, and it will likely please the moe enthusiast, but it will hardly leave an impression on anyone else.

Have you ever wondered about how your daily life would be if your choices were to be dominated by some supreme random choice-generating entity? I haven’t thought about it all that much myself, but apparently somebody else did, and, upon obtaining enlightment, wrote a novel based this profound reflection, and thought that publishing it would be a good idea…

Kasukabe Takeru is the man, and Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Love Comedy wo Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru (NouCome for short) is the result of his introspection.

There is not much to say about the designs and animation, as they range from mediocre to subpar for the ... year 2013 and never excel compared to countless other series. There is slight censorship in the TV anime version so you might want to check out the BDs for more exposed nipples and pantsu, but the fanservice is hardly ever that explicit anyway.

Ostensively, NouCome is a comedy. As such, it presents itself by employing quirky characters, some light ecchi and build-up scenes that lead to absurd conclusions. There is a story as well: MC has to clear ridiculous “missions” so that he won’t be the target of the random choice thing again, but you will realize it is all irrelevant very early in the series anyway. There is no real beginning to the random choice thing, as neither the time and circumstances in which it started, nor are the reasons are ever explained/specified, and there is no real conclusion either, as it simply never happens, and the random choices continue after the series ends. Maybe the OVA will fix this, but I have my doubts, and it’s not like a real conclusion would bump up my opinion of the series that much, to be honest.

The comedy itself is mostly a miss as well. For something with such a ridiculous premise, the jokes are pretty bland and uncreative, and get repetitive after a while. The whole series could be summarized in one sentence:

“ERABE

Boobs or do something dumb.” *

And really, that’s all NouCome is about. The premise is just a pretext for mindless fanservice, the comedy is an excuse for either more mindless fanservice, or bad and unfunny jokes, the characters are all generic and unimportant: an excuse for even more mindless fanservice. The concept becomes a gimmick after a while since the conclusion is very predictable (afterall, you know he’s going to clear the missions without fail in the end), and for that reason the series is not able to build any tension around jokes. The build-ups are very long (usually lasting one entire episode) and very diluted with random “moe” and mindless fanservice, the jokes are really random without being weird, quirky or well thought-out and always end on the dumbest note… there is just so much that is wrong with this series that what actually HAPPENS in the series cannot be described with just a few paragraphs.

As far as the characters are concerned, they all exist for comedic relief, mindless fanservice and are unimportant to the course of events. The main character doesn’t contribute to the story in any way, he is just a victim of it and, in the end, a tool with no personality existing only for self-insert. The rest of the cast is all female, and is composed of tropes that couldn’t be any more generic, bland, and poorly portrayed. Furano is the (tsundere + emotionless) /2 girl with personality disorder (not actual illness, of course, just sudden changes in personality to maximize the “moe” effect...) , Ouka is the genki childhood friend that secretly has feelings for MC, Yuragi is the loli that wants to be everyone’s imouto (yeah let’s not talk about it), Seira is the student council president, Ayame is the rich ojou-sama (am I the only one who finds her “secret” slightly disturbing, considering she’s in high school?), but the biggest offender of this sack of crap is the main girl Chocolat, which pretty much acts like a puppy animal whenever she is provided with kibble (sweets in her case). There is one episode (the 7th) in which she regains the memories of her past after hitting her head and starts acting “normally” and explaining unimportant shit to MC to help him with his problem. I guess you could call this “character development”, albeit contrived and poorly placed, if only she didn’t hit her head at the end of the episode, lose all her memories one more time, and ultimately go back to her dog-like personality.
I guess that if there was one character I enjoyed, it would be Yawakaze Konagi… she’s still useless and her jokes unoriginal but at least her design is pretty cute and her moments are among the “best” in the series.

NouCome is among the worst Japanimation has ever produced. There is really no content here… just ten episodes of void over average computer art 2D designs. It’s not the first time anime has produced something like this, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why this is more insulting, more cancerous, and more impossibly worthless than countless other series that have been made in this vein, but it is. Avoid at all costs.

* (this quote is courtesy of a wise friend of mine.)

Looking at the MAL page for Tenshi no Drop (Angel's Drop) and by reading the synopsis, one may believe this is just a short special about Loli-angels being cute, eating sweets, and fondling each other, and although some screen time is indeed spent in showing such activities, the bulk of this special will inevitably, more or less, blow your mind away, and forcibly pull the incredulous viewer through a sequence of baffling gags that may leave a sane individual either wondering about the mind which created this piece of animation, or cuddling up under his/her bed in paranoia.

There is not much to say about Angel's ... Drop, partly because it clocks at under five minutes total of screen time (if you exclude the ending credits), and partly because honestly, spoiling anything about what happens would hurt the overall experience - and in any case, there is no actual depth to its components that needs critical analysis. Experience this at your risk, as I cannot assure you are going to enjoy this special, as it contains some of the weirdest and creepiest humour I've ever witnessed.

Aria the Animation is the first of three anime series adapted from the Aria manga and focuses mainly on introducing the main characters - Akari, Aika and Alice - and the world of Aqua and Neo-Venezia, without going into much depth and while keeping an extremely relaxing and soothing atmosphere.

For that reason the pacing of the first series can be a little off-putting to some viewers, as the new elements each episode adds are developed only to a limited scope (the introduction) and it might feel as though the whole series is nothing more than cute characters, chilly backgrounds, and relaxing BGM, especially to those ... viewers who aren't used to the slice of life genre - The Animation is more about taking it easy than actually developing the characters.

Technically, the animation is quite good for a slice of life show, and the amount of effort put by the creators can easily be seen in the backgrounds, water motion, coloring, and the detail of the buildings and scenery. The beautiful art, together with the soundtrack, which is the most memorable out of the three seasons, really creates atmosphere and attempts to draw the viewer in without much effort.

Aria accomplishes the hard task of keeping characters simple while maintaining a degree of originality that allows them to always look fresh; the interactions between characters feel natural and both the comedy and dialogue are presented as though they are part of normal conversations, rather than a crafted script beforehand.

Although I enjoyed the series immensely and would highly recommend it, I must admit the series might not suit everyone's tastes, especially if the viewers are expecting realistic characters and situations because NOTHING is realistic in Aria.

The utopian setting and the unrealistic character portrayal are instruments the series makes use to achieve its main goal: healing. Aqua is a world where everyone is nice, and the dialogues are often sappy (to the point of making recurring jokes about it).

Aria the Animation slowly invites you to join the characters in their discovery of that beautiful world, almost as if Akari invited you for a ride on her gondola.