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Oct 28, 2023
Otona Precure is an interesting show in that it takes a formula normally geared at kids and performs minimal modifications to direct it at adults. Specifically, if you look at a decent amount of child-oriented daytime TV (original Precure included) many of a show's episodes are set up around addressing casual life experiences during the downtime, and personal struggles during the focus, using the action/fantasy element as a catalyst to get the discussion about the personal struggle moving. For kids and teens this means that you see them at school or in clubs, or going out and getting a snack or something with friends, before
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pivoting to a worry about teen romance, or grades, or family pressures, which play into how they handle some kind of monster attack. Otona is dealing with adult characters, so instead of school or clubs, they're at work. Instead of snacks, it's drinks. Instead of the list of things that worry a child, it's things like long-term romantic status, work/life satisfaction, comparison of how you're "doing" to others in your peer group, and so on. There are still monsters to fight, and the monsters still work as a catalyst for self-reevaluation, but Otona realizes that the adult audience knows this and places more of its time on exploring the adult experience than on the fights.
In that sense, if you've seen any Precure, you've already seen this Precure. Granted, this one is helped by a tighter, more focused writing due to having only 12 episodes to tell its story instead of 48 to make its point, but it's still vanilla Precure, so if you liked the original Yes 5, you'll probably also like this one too. If you're here for characters, you'll like this. If you're here only for fights, you won't--more on that in the art section below.
As a result, in an odd way, the question of whether this show will land is less to do with what the show is doing, and more to do with where in life you are. Younger anime fans may struggle to relate to the adult concerns being discussed, while older fans, especially those in their mid-late 20s, would experience a greater impact.
Outside of the writing, the art is visually competent but nothing spectacular. Some clips are recycled from the 2008 Yes 5 sequel, while others go further back to 2006's Splash Star, but the majority is modern animation and looks reasonably smooth and well-composited. The only bad animation that stands out are the CG low-tier baddies, but these are insignificant enough to character events that I never really found myself caring...but as a result the combat isn't really up to snuff compared to the hand-drawn prequels. This may change as the cast engages the final boss (who is hand-drawn) later in the story. Otherwise early combat, when it occurs, is clunky and goofy due to the very simple and manually rigged CG models.
Overall it's a decent, honest character drama about continued growth as an adult, and while as of E4 it hasn't done anything to leave me gobsmacked, it does well for what it does, and is a solid show I feel satisfied coming back to each week.
As of E4 - 7/10. Will update this review if something significant changes things in the second half of the show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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May 27, 2023
As a fantasy anime, Chaos Dragon is mediocre at best, and if you're watching it for the sake of watching a fantasy action show, you are wasting your time. MC is whiny, the world is confusing, and the CGI is laughable.
If you're watching it because you have watched enough Urobuchi, Nasu, Narita, and Shoujo anime, then you're in for a treat.
Chaos Dragon is what happens when you take four really strong writers in the Japanese Anime/Manga/LN industry and let them go complete ham on their favorite tropes. Kogyoku writes a shoujo protag that's endlessly bittersweet, demure, and loyal towards the MC to almost a fault.
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Narita does his typical schtick of a supernatural yet goofy character that's on-the-ball, skilled and kinda flashy, but there to have fun during downtime. Nasu has his Fate protagonist that's a hero of justice, even if a bit of an idealist and not very bright. Urobuchi writes a disturbed assassin that manipulates or murder-hobos their way through everyone and everything. If you read the other works by these people, you know which of their prior characters they're lovingly ripping off to create these new ones, so while their actions may be strange, uninspiring, or unimpressive in isolation, they're great fun in their author contexts.
Basically, if you've been watching anime for a while and like this particular circle of writers, then by all means, go watch it. Otherwise, go watch some classics and come back later.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jan 30, 2022
If you saw Interstellar or 2001 A Space Odyssey and liked them, you'll probably find this amusing. Not great, but amusing.
If you saw Interstellar or 2001 A Space Odyssey and either disliked it, got bored, or hated the ending, you will not like this anime.
The Orbital Children is a Hard Sci-fi in the same tradition as a lot of space stories from the 60s/70s (see also, 2001, Rama, Ringworld, etc.), and is all about navigating a Big Dumb Object (it's a trope, look it up!) until they encounter and enter discourse with some kind of higher intelligence in the third act.
Most of the fun is
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derived from seeing the anime's take on near-future technical accuracy. The characters arrive in space on a rocket that's under development at the time of writing, discuss concepts any Kerbal Space gamer is quite familiar with, and reference parts of space history that any well-read geek would know about. The philosophy is derived, however, from a discussion about AI, which is less technical in its portrayal.
Where Orbital Children struggles is in its character writing. The characters remain tonally consistent in their dialogue throughout, but the author didn't seem to know how to make the majority of them properly grow or change with events, or had them on for set decoration. This means that when the show switches from Science-Adventure mode in Eps 1-3/4 to Science-Philosophy mode in the last two episodes, many characters are left without something to do, or perform actions inconsistent with how they've been acting up until that point.
The result of all of this is that, like its predecessors in the genre, Orbital children is an interesting show with a weird ending, which is fun for die-hard sci-fi fans, but off-putting to general audiences. I liked it and would watch it again if asked by someone else, but I don't see myself returning to it of my own accord or advertising it to other people.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Nov 22, 2020
If I was asked to compare this to the original Higurashi, I'd smack the person asking across the face. The show to compare this to is not Higurashi, but Higurashi Kai.
Higurashi Gou at first looks like a remake, but it becomes apparent by the end of the first episode that something's off, and by the second that it's a sequel to the events of Kai. As a result, this affects not just the content of the story, but the tone. For those of you who have forgotten or have not seen the original, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is largely a Horror/Suspense show with a
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mystery brewing in the background that doesn't really come to the forefront until the end. Kai, on the other hand, is a Mystery/Thriller story that uses the original as an argument for WHY you should be worried for the characters--the horror is largely abandoned in favor of identifying the culprit and surviving the scenario.
While Gou does attempt to capture some of the horror of its first season, the structure and characterization clearly leans more towards the Mystery/Thriller tone of the second season. More of the run time is dedicated to asking questions than exploring or exploiting the paranoia of its characters. This is fine if you go into it expecting a mystery, but I feel like many people, newcomers especially, went into the show expecting horror. That said, as a mystery, Gou still has the excellent levels of polish and intrigue that I've come to expect from the author.
Of course, if you saw and enjoyed Higurashi and Higurashi Kai, this show is a must for you.
8/10 so far. May upgrade to a 9 if it sticks the landing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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May 8, 2020
Question: How do you stop a charging tsundere?
Answer: You shout, "You're super cute and I like you just the way you are!" And then you kiss them.
Two Japanese students, Endo and Kobayashi, have decided that the villainess of an otome game is just a big, misunderstood tsundere, and are going to have fun doing 'sports-like play-by-play commentary' to a Let's Play of said game. To their surprise and confusion, the prince of the game can hear them.
Armed with foreknowledge of the game's mechanics, Endo and Kobayashi teach the prince the art of managing a Tsundere, and together they plot to see if there's a way
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to achieve a happy end for all the characters involved.
E&K is mostly a cute romance, with lots of fluffy scenes between the Prince and Villainess, but also some nice parts between the Heroine and another guy, and Endo and Kobayashi themselves. It's also where I derived the most amusement and entertainment from this story; watching Liselotte being forced into a flustered sputter never stops being enjoyable, as does the prince's reactions to a world and tropes that he doesn't understand.
As the story goes on, it evolves from being more than just comedy fluff to also a wonderful healing drama of characters, both 'real' and fictional, learning to accept love into their lives and be with others in a healthy way.
If you get a kick out of romance stories, give this one a shot!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Apr 7, 2020
Have you ever sat down for a moment and thought about what 'grinding' in a game actually entails? Your character goes into a dangerous place, fights until they're beaten to a pulp, comes back out for a refresh, then does it all again. If you're an average gamer, you're probably shrugging and saying, "So what?" but take a moment and consider this from a very different perspective:
What must the NPCs be thinking of all of this? If you're laughing or have a grin on your face, you'll probably find this manga funny.
Save & Load is about a novice female adventurer named Loretta who needs to
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clear a high-rank dungeon for personal reasons. She seeks advice from a man named Alec, who claims to be reincarnated from another world, and who has a wonderful skill that let's you raise your stats rapidly by regenerating from a 'save point", even if you get killed.
What follows is a chronicle of Loretta's "training". With death changed from permanent to an inconvenience, Alec constructs a torturous training program which he delivers in a delighted, nonchalant manner as Loretta suffers and dies, over and over and over again, but rapidly gains stats.
To clarify, Save and Load is not torture porn, but rather a dark comedy about how fantasy characters would view the save/load experience that gamers take for granted. Designs are cute and moe, gore is minimized, and for a series filled with death, the atmosphere and message stays light and hopeful.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 26, 2020
This is a manga about a cute girl doing not-so-cute things cutely. Specifically, it follows Olivia, an orphan adopted by Death (yes, the one with the scythe), taught to be a powerful fighter, and then let lose on the world. Olivia doesn't fully understand human social interactions, but she makes up for it with her childlike wonder and glee at mundane things... and by carrying out her soldier duties with the same childlike wonder and glee, which, while effective, is off-putting to many of her peers.
And... that's about it, for now. The story hints at larger plots in the form of an international war and
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the rationale for why Death saw fit to let Olivia back into the world of humans, but Olivia herself isn't actively pursuing any particular motive, nor did I connect strongly enough with the other characters to really care about their perspectives. The humor is nice when Olivia's Slice of Life gets mixed up with her Life of Slicing, but if you're looking for more than that, I've had trouble finding it. Perhaps later volumes will change this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 22, 2020
Imagine the following sequence of events:
We have four girls. We'll call them A-chan, B-chan, C-chan, and Bear Grylls. All four are stranded on an island.
1) A, B, or C wants something that isn't on the island.
2) BG claims that it can be obtained.
3) A/B/C rejoice
4) BG points out a caveat - something that makes the task off-putting
5) A/B/C make >.< faces
6) They do it anyway.
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7) More >.< faces
8) They either decide that it wasn't that bad, or swear that they will never do that thing again.
And that's pretty much Sounan desu Ka. The manga is generally episodic and uses each chapter to explore some kind of survival technique. The focus here is on the tricks, not the characters, and the girls rarely rise beyond simple archetypes and the random ecchi shots meant to distract from the fact that you are reading a survival guide.
Does it have redeeming factors? Certainly. Buried beneath all the other stuff is the slow humanization of the story's survivalist, Homare, as the other girls improve her ability to socialize with others. The comedy was occasionally enough to draw a chuckle out of me. Periodically, the story will acknowledge how dire their situation is for some good drama (though these momenta are rare) which got a grin or a tear out of me.
Ultimately, Sounan desu ka is not high literature, but it's just amusing and interesting enough to keep up with.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 26, 2019
Granbelm is a visually spectacular "serious magical girl" show that falls on its face due to flat characters and clunky story progression.
When characters are done well in anime, you can usually describe what they're like even without much dialogue. You can picture Haruhi Suzumiya or Okabe Rinarou or Shinji Ikari in your head and imagine how they react to an event because there's a layer of quirks and an aspect of multidimensionality to the way they act. The perception of these parts are the product of a bunch of little scenes, often where the characters aren't saying much at all, where a combination of scene
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blocking and body language tells us something that runs contrary to the things they say aloud. Okabe and Haruhi may be loud and obnoxious, but these are balanced out by little moments where they work to make peace with the people around them, or display touches of vulnerability and kindness when people are looking in the other direction.
Granbelm... isn't capable of doing this, and the serious nature of the story was reliant on having characters we could connect to this way. Instead, whenever characters aren't showering us with technical exposition (there's a lot, and most of it isn't used) they're telling us their life story, and bashing us over the head with why X character has had a pathetic life. Even during its best attempt in Episode 11, the effect is ruined by lengthy Voice Overs and monologues. Characters are often one-note, and present us little variety beyond being neutral-genki or stoic or streaming mad, and then never really deviating from that. Mangetsu gets some deviation--two modes instead of just one--but in a cast of seven this isn't enough, particularly given the number of scenes where she is absent.
This makes it even more frustrating when we hit the action sequences. From an animation standpoint, these sequences are PHENOMENAL, and you can see the excellent hand-drawn detail and effort that went into this show. Unfortunately, the resulting battles ring hollow because without strong characters to form a proper foundation, I never felt like cheering for anyone, and the victories and defeats do not carry the weightiness of other 'serious magical girl' shows like Madoka Magica or Yuuki Yuuna.
In all, I'm happy that I finished this to get the full picture of what my problem with it was, but I don't see myself watching it again if offered, nor suggesting it to anyone else.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jul 9, 2019
Most Isekai protagonists max out in Strength, Inteligence, or Wisdom, and overpower their enemies with powerful fighting abilities and magic. Destruction Flag Otome's protagonist did none of these, instead placing all of her skill points into Charisma, and the result is Katarina Claes.
Katarina, a noble, hits her head one day and remembers her past life as a Japanese high school girl in which she played a dating sim which was identical to the world where she now resides. Unfortunately, she seems to be the villainess, and any route that involves her character results in her death or exile. Deciding that this is unacceptable, Katarina decides
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to evade disaster early by protecting herself from all possible outcomes. The end result is both comedic and wholesome as she locates 'capture targets' from the game and resolves their personal traumas before the game can even begin. Unfortunately, with all those points in Charisma and nothing in Intelligence, Katarina is too dense to realize that EVERYONE she comes into contact with sees her as a saint for her empathetic actions, and she remains blissfully unaware of the growing romantic rivalry between her newfound friends.
And I'll be honest, it worked on me too. I like happy, wholesome stories, and watching Katarina muddle her way through making people's lives better is both funny and uplifting, and I found myself grinning like an idiot from cover to cover. While characters see limited use after their respective arcs end, they make for great jokes and help move the plot along or brighten things on the rare occasion that the subject matter gets serious.
If you are reading this review and wondering how much of this story is going into the anime, my expectation is the equivalent of LN volumes 1 and 2 or up to Volume 4 Chapter 2 of the manga, with the story ending where the Otome Game itself is supposed to end.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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