jesterthomas's Profile - Reviews

Last OnlineMay 27, 2018 9:47 PM
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BirthdayFeb 14, 1993
LocationPhiladelphia, PA
JoinedSep 18, 2014

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Feb 24, 2015

Angel Beats! (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

Angel Beats! is what happens when you build a bridge rated at 2 tons and then try to drive a 4 ton truck over it. You might be okay for the first half of the bridge but somewhere around the middle the structure begins to give way and eventually the whole thing falls apart. Many other reviewers before me have said that this series deserved to be twice the length it was, and I solidly agree. However, we were given a 13-episode series, and as such I will review it without speculating what various aspects of the show could have been improved with a longer ... runtime.

Story and Setting: 3

Our MC Otonashi wakes up dead in a world seemingly only consisting of a large high school, and is promptly thrown into the fray in a conflict between the SSS guerilla faction of students who refuse to be assimilated into the afterlife and mysterious girl named Tenshi. By itself, the premise is tantalizing if not entirely original, and shows promise for the first few episodes as our main gang undergoes numerous "operations" to combat Tenshi and introduce Otonashi to his new home. However, the story takes a turn for the non-sequitur right around episode 5. New enemies arise then give way rather quickly to a resurgence of old conflicts, then the world quite literally starts to fall apart. The problem I had when experiencing this story was that little to none of it after the first initial episodes made sense. "Why are the characters doing any of this?" was the question that frequently ran through my mind throughout the show. One central tenet I maintain with any anime that attempts to tell any degree of a serious story is that it is fully responsible for enabling my suspension of disbelief, regardless of setting or characters. I consider myself to have a high tolerance level for fantastical situations, so I mainly look for a believable and understandable story progression. Angel Beats! failed at delivering on this. Things just seemed to happen for the sake of moving forward, character motivations were handwaved away and a romance subplot appeared basically out of nowhere that left me more confused than happy. Ultimately, I appreciate that the story has a good introduction and a definitive conclusion, but I could not turn my brain off and accept the sequence of events that connected the two.

One particular issue with storytelling I want to highlight is Angel Beats' reliance upon exposition to tell large chunks of the story. I realize that this is likely a product of the series' short length but the majority of it could have been left out or highly abridged and I would have felt smarter as a viewer for understanding the characters or plot progression better. ESPECIALLY because anime as a medium is about showing and not telling, I am very disappointed with how the writers chose to convey parts of the story like this.

Characters: 3

Even with detailed backstories given to a portion of the main cast, I simply did not care for any of the characters. None of them had, in my opinion, any real surface depth beyond superficial character traits like "the glasses guy", "the genki girl", "the Rei Ayanami expy", "the male Winry Rockbell who speaks English", and so on. Character backstories only seem to reinforce outward traits rather than add complexity. Even for characters like Otonashi and Yurippe, I didn't sense any significant change or progression over the course of the show. When characters changed their opinions of each other by the end of the show, it felt forced rather than as a logical outcome of their motivations and beliefs. Lastly, and this is mainly a complaint from the perspective of being a Western viewer, I was frustrated that everyone was a stereotypical Japanese anime high school student. There were no original or innovative character archetypes to freshen the usual formula. Good characters can sometime salvage a shaky plot, but unfortunately this was not the case here.

Art: 8

I would be lying if I said I was unimpressed with the animation and artwork. My only quibble is with the individual character designs - Angel Beats! was adapted from a Key visual novel and I am not a huge fan of their art style. However, P.A. Works knocked it out of the park with everything else. Backgrounds and lighting are beautiful, HUDs looked crisp and character movement was fluid and intuitive. Angel Beats! goes the extra mile in many spots, like fully animating GirlsDeMo with the guitarists' hands forming actual chords. It is not the most impressively animated show I have ever seen, but it certainly surpasses the norm for the type of show it is and deserves my appreciation.

Sound: 10

This show's saving grace. Angel Beats! has seriously one of the best soundtracks of all the anime I have seen. The opening grabbed me from the first piano chords and ushered in an OST full of amazing songs. GirlsDeMo was a particular highlight, providing great rock songs that influenced the overall atmosphere of the show. Background tracks that played during action scenes or even moments of dialogue were great to listen to, one of which in particular reminded me of the music from Zelda: Twilight Princess. The OST overall gave a certain vibe of both enthusiasm and vigor with hints of eerie otherworldliness to perfectly complement the show's setting. I'll be listening to it for a while.

Enjoyment: 5

In the end, I can't say I regretted watching Angel Beats!. However, I don't feel any happier for having watched it either, except for having good new music to listen to. The show was a jumbled mess of poorly composited story progression and shallow characters that didn't earn my emotional investment.

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Sep 27, 2014

Kokoro Connect (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

Kokoro Connect is exceedingly mediocre. It is not bad by any definition of the term - the artwork, voice acting, and one particular character (you know who) are great and deserve commendation in an artistic medium saturated with high school romantic dramas. Additionally, the concept of body switching introduced for the first few episodes had a lot of promise and led to a lot of well-executed plot developments. The show never strayed into what could have easily been an ecchi bait premise and culminated in what was, to me, the climax of the show's story in Episode 5 with a (no spoilers) heart-wrenching decision to ... be made by the cast members that actually made me pause and think what I would do in a similar situation.

However, the story and remaining characters of the show are mundane, unrealistic and at times even cringeworthy. I will preface this by saying that I am not Japanese - I am an American university student and a relative newcomer to anime. However, I have been around the block and have seen a few extremely well-done romance anime in the same vein as Kokoro Connect (Toradora!, Clannad, Monogatari), so I feel like I have a solid foundation upon which to base my opinion.

Let's start with the story. As I mentioned earlier, the concept of body switching is actually a great idea and works very well in the high school drama setting. It is a mystery to me, then, why Kokoro Connect decides to just scrap it less than a third of the way through the show and change the supernatural events afflicting our main characters. There is so much untapped potential with the body switching premise that I would have loved to see. For example, much of the drama in the second half of the show could have been either avoided or played out much better if an extended body switch had happened between two characters that forced them to interact with the other's family, learning firsthand what their true daily life is like and further clarifying their root sources of trauma. Really, that's almost the entire point of body switching in a non-erotic setting - you are forced to spend a while in someone else's shoes and learn about them by living their lives. Instead we get mental thought transmissions and "acting on your inner desires". The first one is sort of interesting, but nowhere near as deep as body switching. The second one isn't even a supernatural phenomenon - it's called teenage hormones. I personally think this show could have done a lot more with 8-11 episodes of body switching only instead of dragging on for 17.

As for the main plot, it's mostly your typical Japanese high school romantic love-triangle borderline harem drama. There's supposed to be a main villain with Balloon Vine (Heartseed?), but there is really no point to his existence other to hand-wave away the phenomena as some kind of alien experiment. The point of this show is not explaining why these phenomena are happening, it's how the characters react to and deal with them together. You know at the end of the show you're going to get an official couple and that most of the character's problems will have been sorted out to some degree. I only wish that it didn't take so long to get there.

Moving onto the characters, we come to what I think is this show's largest pitfall. The vast majority of the anime's cast are either as bland as raw pasta or act so unrealistically that trying to relate to them becomes nearly impossible. You've got Yaegashi, the stereotypical "boku"-using protagonist that espouses Japanese ideals of modesty, uprightness and chivalry while having practically no standout qualities whatsoever; Iori, a girl whose angst over her identity issues make for a very inconsistent and erratic character over the show; Aoki, the secondary male character and the only person preventing this from being a harem; Kiriyama, a girl with androphobia but whose solution to this problem is to be saved by others rather than confronting it herself; and Inaban, a strong female lead who is brutally honest, playfully violent and a breath of fresh air in an otherwise weak cast. Seriously, if you watch this show for anything, watch it for Inaban. She's great.

The only other person worth mentioning in the show is Balloon Vine, the main "villain" whose stated purpose for causing the supernatural phenomena to happen to our main group of five is literally just to fuck with them. Does this story really need a villain? The show does no legwork in explaining who he is or what motivates him to choose a group of Japanese high school students to experiment on, or why there is apparently a second, rival alien also involved with our main group. Kokoro Connect could have had effectively the same plot by just introducing the phenomena without any explained source and exploring how the characters react to it.

The ultimate reason why I did not enjoy this show was because these characters' dialogue and reactions to the phenomena felt incredibly unrealistic. Yes, this is an anime with body switching. Yes, there exist harem anime that I like, and the concept of a harem is constructed from male fantasy and is as far from real life relationships as possible. However, I feel that Kokoro Konnekt tries to pass itself as a somewhat true-to-life look at how a bunch of teenagers would act in supernatural situations but fails because it can't even master the portrayal of regular character interaction. Yaegashi is such a white knight that I wonder how anyone could have a healthy relationship with him; Iori is irrational even by teenage girl standards to the point where I can't even see why she does what she does from her point of view; and Kiriyama feels hypocritical in that she wants to become stronger and gain self confidence but instead relies almost entirely on Yaegashi for emotional support throughout the show. Even Inaban can act a little unrealistically sometimes.

In summary, Kokoro Connect is mediocre. Its higher than average production values, good voice casting and pretty good character in Inaban prevent it from being a failure, but so many other aspects of the show drag it down from being at least a decent watch. I cringed and interrogated my computer screen out loud multiple times while watching the show because I could not believe why certain characters acted the way they did or why certain parts of the show were just never explained. At the end I was left with a feeling of dissatisfaction and that my time should have been spent doing other things.

By the way, I propose a drinking game whereby for every episode of Kokoro Kardashian you watch, take a shot every time you hear the word "Tasukete!", "Mamoru!", "Suki!", "Daisuki!", or "Baka!. If you make it out alive, I will personally reward you with a medal.

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