Wednesday, January 22, 2014

01/22/14 Odds & Ends: Are you a man enough dude to marry a loli?

This week, we give up on one of the shows. To be honest, it couldn't be helped.D-FRAG! EP. 3



EPISODE SUMMARY: Uh, I only watched like ten minutes of the episode. I think the Real Game Creation Club was still trying to recruit the main character, but he spurned their advances 'cause it would be more fun for the two clubs to compete against each other or something. Whatever, see below.




THOUGHTS: I just don't find this show funny, but there's also the fact that it lacks a plot. No, this didn't surprise me. I went in knowing fully well the show would pretty much be an aimless collection of jokes. I just didn't think I'd be this bored this quickly. I rather sit around and do nothing than watch another second of this anime. As a result, there's no point continuing this charade any longer than necessary. I don't think my giant audience of five or six readers were coming here to read my thoughts on D-FRAG! anyways.HAMATORA EP. 3



EPISODE SUMMARY: A lady approaches Hamatora and is willing to pay them quite a handsome amount if our duo can dig up any scandalous details regarding an academy for Minimum Holders. Not surprisingly, both the government and corporations desire Minimum Holders for their abilities. Those with top marks are given the cushiest jobs or something, not very much unlike how real world Japan currently operates. Since her own son is not a Minimum Holder, Hamatora's current client tries to fight the perceived inequality. Unfortunately, her methods are dirty, and karma comes back to bite her in the ass. The serial killer who has been targeting Minimum Holders got to the lady's son, and turned him into a monster. So it's up to our heroes to save the day once again. Meanwhile, the serial killer slips out from Inspector Art's grasp once again.



THOUGHTS: Our villain's reasoning is kind of different, I guess. You know that Ubermensch theory that is almost always the rage in anime? Our serial killer sort of has the same obsession here. He too believes that murderers are just people who have the ability to transcend society's laws and boundaries. But rather than seeing it as some sort of exceptionalism for the gifted, he wants to make everyone the same so that everyone can transcend society's laws and boundaries. In this case, being the "same" means turning everyone into Minimum Holders.



Since he's not about fighting economic inequality or any of that social justice stuff, what exactly is our villain's endgame anyway? An anarchist state of nature where society is no longer needed 'cause every Minimum Holder can fend for themselves? But even in this hypothetical world, we have people like Nice and Murasaki who are clearly heads and shoulders above the rest of their kind. In fact, they finished first and second respectively at that fancy academy for the gifted! Wow, such coincidence.



So anyway, my point is that the world wouldn't really change at all. You'd still need some sort of social contract to prevent the strong Minimum Holders from abusing the weaker ones. After all, not everyone's a shounen hero like Nice. Either the villain is smart enough to realize this so he's just lying to Art, or that there's no solid logic behind his motives whatsoever. Judging by the show's quality thus far, it's hard to tell which of these two possibilities is actually the case. If you're the cynical sort, probably the latter. Oh well, at least the show's not D-FRAG!NOBUNAGA THE FOOL EP. 3



EPISODE SUMMARY: Mitsuhide tries to persuade the War Council to employ Leonardo da Vinci (this will never stops sounding ridiculous in my head) as a military advisor, but he fails because the War Council is full of fuddy-duddies and they won't trust no dirty gaijin from the Star of the West. Meanwhile, the Takeda army is on the march, forcing Nobunaga, our manly man of action, to spring intoaction. Yeah . Unfortunately, his mecha lacks a Regalia -- what's it with this season and Regalias -- so Lord Shingen has our hero on the ropes. Thankfully, a creepy yandere midget queen is here to save the day. She actually has a Regalia to bestow upon our manly hero, but she'll only hand it over if he agrees to marry her. Oh ho ho, I wonder how his sister will react to this! Oh well, when in anime, do as the anime shounens do! Marry them all! Jeanne too!



THOUGHTS: NOBUNAGA THE FOOL is just too manly of a show for my pathetic eyes. First, our hero shows up to the battlefield and singlehandedly incapacitates a bunch of War Armors with nothing more than a bow and a quiver of arrows. 'Cause y'know, you might have the technology to create giant walking hunks of metal death, but some sort of protective glass-like barrier would've been too difficult or unrealistic to implement. Then again, had there been a barrier, he'd probably just penetrate it with ease like everything else in his life, hint hint.



Nobunaga is careless though, so he didn't bring enough arrows to get the job done. Thankfully, Jeanne is there to support him! She tells him to think ahead next time. To me, that sounds like a smart idea. Think ahead! Yeah, so you don't caught without adequate ammo! So how does Nobunaga react? "Men fight with all their might in the present," he says. "This is no place for a woman like you." Butbut she helped you. What are you even talking about? What even brought this on? Oh well, surely Jeanne won't just stand there and let the guy insult her entire gender just because she wisely told him to think ahead. Surely, she'll have a witty retort. Right?right? Jeanne replies, "I am not a woman!" Uh . okay ? No, wait, waitit gets better: "That's what you, yourself, said. That my name is Ranmaru! Then treat me as a man on the battlefield!"



Then later on, Jeanne-I mean, Ranmaru, the man who can understand how other men fight in the present , gets "himself" paralyzed by a vision. As a result, true beefcake Nobunaga, with an understanding of the battlefield big enough to match his manhood, had to interrupt his duel of pure masculinity with Lord Shingen to rescue the damseluh, bachelor in distress. Like I said, this is all just too manly for me. Way too manly. That's why midget loli queens throw themselves at Nobunaga's dick and not mine. C'est la vie! To cap off the episode, Jeanne clutches at her pendant, looks up at her studly rescuer and breathlessly mutters, "I cannot possibly fathom "actually, I'll let the following screenshot do this scene justice:



Tsk tsk, hardly a surprise, I'd say. Another anime already taught me this valuable .NOBUNAGUN EP. 3



EPISODE SUMMARY: Shio flies to an isolated jungle island to undergo a special training regimen designed by no other than . He's a bit of a dick (and a pervert) though, so Shio begins to feel a little homesick. Her inability to use any sort of social media to contact her family and friends certainly doesn't help. She then befriends a few of the troops stationed on the island, but this friendship seems short-lived as it looks as though one of them got shot down at the end of this week's episode.



THOUGHTS: It's a training episode, so what can I honestly say about it? I guess Robert Capa can create visual copies of his students to aid in their training, but clearly, the screenshot above would show that this is not all he does. Eh, god only knows what else he did with Shio's clones. How long is this series supposed to be anyway? The plot really feels like it's dragging its feet now, so I really hope this doesn't turn out to be a series with over 100 episodes or something. I don't think I'd have the stomach for that.WITCH CRAFT WORKS EP. 3



EPISODE SUMMARY: I watched enough to see Kagari encourage Takamiya to study hard. Also, they play tennis a bit. I had to stop there.



THOUGHTS: Surprise (not really), I'm dropping this show too! She's basically his mom. Some of you might even wonder why I tried to follow this anime in the first place. Honestly, I thought that watching an episode a week then writing a couple paragraphs on it wouldn't kill me. I was wrong. This show is neither funny nor romantic. It's just a dude being babied by his surrogate mother. Frankly, it's pathetic. Hell, it's nauseating even.WIZARD BARRISTERS EP. 2



EPISODE SUMMARY: Cecil and gang can't exactly prove that Kohinata isn't affiliated with the No Face gang, and unfortunately in the world of WIZARD BARRISTERS, the burden of proof seems to lie with the defendant. The defense quickly realizes that the easiest way to get their client off the hook is to get the No Face gang to testify in court, but the the detectives on the case aren't exactly willing to help on this front. So to ensure that Cecil wins her first case, Ageha bends a few rules to locate said gang. Naturally, a fight breaks out so the audience doesn't lose all interest in the story, and luckily, Cecil gets to the magic courtroom just in time to save Kohinata from the death penalty.



THOUGHTS: The case itself isn't really important. It's just filler to deliver a few key bits of information: Cecil's striving to one day save her mother through a retrial, Supreme Court Chief Justice Makusu Shimon has taken a special interest in our heroine, and last but not least, normal people really, really hate wizards. Hell, even one of Cecil's own colleagues is practically staring daggers at her at every chance, and she's a wizard herself!



It has only been two episodes, but I still think the show's merely okay. There's nothing particularly bad about it, but there's also nothing particularly great about it either. Thematically, it's just not really working with anything conceptually intriguing or challenging. To be fair, this could always change, but anime has long conditioned me to keep my optimism in check lest it be shat on with remorseless impunity. Having said that, the show's lack of scope isn't exactly damning; it's not like there are a lot of shows this season doing much better than WIZARD BARRISTERS. Actually, the anime could've honestly been a whole lot worse. For instance, the show's full of hot babes, and we totally could've been skeeving on each and every single one of them the entire time. Luckily, a frog familiar molesting the main character is pretty much the extent of this.



Still, I'm just sayin'this is not an ambitious show so I'm not excited; I don't feel the urge to tune in every week. Take some cute girls, give them magic, then mix in some T&A and voila! At least the animation is technically well done for a TV series. That's kind of an important quality for an anime to have.

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