Series Review: Maoyuu Maou Yuusha (4/10)

Instant Summary: The most powerful human being unexpectedly works with the most powerful demon for a chance to end the endless conflict between the two species.

Right at the beginning, we have an attractive and comical heroine paired up with a gung-ho, insanely powerful but likable male lead. The mood is light, fun, there's huge potential for character development and relationship between the two. We're off to a really good start.

A little too good, in fact. So much that I wasn't prepared for the mess that followed soon after. It was disappointing that the two things I always look out for, character and relationship development, are painfully absent from the show.

Instead, they focus heavily on "macroeconomics", whatever the fuck that means. I'm not exactly opposed to that; I'm big on slice-of-life, and I can digest Spice and Wolf quite well. Sadly, they forgot to tie that into the things that we actually cared about: the characters. No one reminded them that this is an anime, not a freaking economics class. Their idea of a mini-climax was something like: we were selling wheat at $20 in the morning, but demand has suddenly gone up, and now we're selling at $30. HOLY SHIT!

And, their supposed theme is pretty darn confusing as well. It's easy to see what's going on, but it's hard to see why. It feels like they're constantly throw new stuff into the mix and hope it fits itself together. Without seeing the why, it doesn't give me a reason to care.

By the midway point, it became clear that the show is going nowhere. I began to expect less and less from the show, but the big surprise is that it still delivered less that what I expected in the end. Because there was no end. What's going to happen to the war? What's going to happen to the Gate City? What is going to happen to the human world and demon world? What is going to happen between the two? I don't know. There are no answers.

The bigger problem is that I don't even care anymore.

Plot/Concept: It has the potential to be something pretty darn amazing, but we'll never know now.
Story Style: They lost control.
Audio/Visual: Good
Value: 4

P.S. Seriously, why the stupid maternity dress.

Da Capo 7: Lulu-nee has a twin? (glitch)

That's Lulu-nee walking towards him...

And... she's back in line?

...with a different Lulu-nee in front of the guy?

Well... the second pic is a reused frame. It's such a glaring error, but I guess this show how much they cared about quality control. I bet they had all their attention on the jiggle of Aoi's breasts while the guy (whatisname) strips her naked... Not that I can really blame them...

And also, this is the very first time I see a completely normal, sane teenage girl that will actually don on the naked apron without even explicitly declaring her love for the protagonist. Is this epic win or epic fail? Hmm...

Intense Debate, you failed me for the last time...

First it was the ccTLD error that prevented people from other countries from posting on the site (fixed after a long time). Then it was the missing post counter (which still hasn't been fixed for a couple of months). Now it was a persistent timed out error that prevented me from posting on my own blog.

I've had enough. I've never liked the blogger's default commenting system, but it least it works perfectly. Guess this means I'll be losing all of my past comments.

Dropping Titles and Raising Standards

After struggling through 21 episodes of the first season of Hayate no Gotoku, I finally convinced myself that it isn't worth wasting all that time just so that I can fairly review a title. It's just one of the habits I've kept in my first years of reviewing anime for Anime-Source.com, where this is actually a rule (and because I wanted to be fair). But there's also one thing for certain: there are more anime titles out there than I have time for, and Japan is certainly producing anime faster than I can watch them. No matter how much I hate to leave things halfway done, I gotta make room for the bigger fishes in the sea; especially now that my free time are getting lesser and lesser.

Usually at the change of seasons that occurs 4 times a year, the blogosphere is filled with large amounts of reviews of ending titles, previews of upcoming ones, first impressions, etc. And I've noticed that shows that receive a negative remark always outnumbers the shows that receive a positive one. Yet if most of the titles released every season are crap, how does the studios still produce so many? I don't doubt that there's definitely a market for the "crap" shows, but I hardly see members of this market appear on the blogosphere to defend the highlights of those "crap". It's not like that particular market consist entirely of old lonely otaku men with a fetish for such stuff, and couldn't be bothered with the normal standards, right?

Amaenaideyo!!

I remember when I really got into this hobby around 6 years back, every anime I watched seems to be awesome, even stuff like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Amaenaideyo!!. Well, I did scour the net for the best stuff to watch first, like Elfen Lied, Suzumiya Haruhi and Shuffle!, but I still have fond memories of the titles that I know now that are obviously bad now. It feels like I've been opened up into a new world of anime, and any title, as long it's anime, would have entertainment value.

Thing are now completely different from back then, and the ending season is the worst so far. I've previewed 11, completed 5 and find myself only really liking 2 of them. I know that the "me" 6 years back would definitely love stuff like Hayate no Gotoku! and Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, no doubts about that. I'm not sure if I'm tired of stuff like this already, or has just been steadily increasing my standards over the years.

If raising standards is the cause, then I think that might be the reason why the blogosphere is so hard on most of the anime titles that are released every season. Commenters are influenced by bloggers; and bloggers, me included, are usually seasoned anime watchers that has at least a hundred titles in their MAL. And I won't be surprised if half of them would be in the ~350 range like me. Except for a few exceptional titles every now and then, the anime industry isn't very good at reinventing themselves. Once they've picked up on traits and tropes like "tsundere", "clothes that accentuate breasts", "cute girls doing cute things", "blushing for god knows why", "huge eyes", "striped panties", "cat ears", they'll keep it running frigging forever until people got sick of it.

But, unfortunately, these are the same traits that got people, -most people-, like you and me into the world of anime in the first place. And we still cling on to some of these traits, as long as it's given in modest servings, because that's what makes it an anime to us. When a particular "crap" title tries to overload itself with a certain trait or trope, they were just trying too hard to sell "anime" to us. Maybe if we could learn to appreciate their less-than-fruitful efforts, we may be able to go back to where we were at the very beginning; where every anime appears to be awesome.

Just some food for thought. I'm not going to give Hayate no Gotoku a second chance.

Moretsu Pirates dropped (8 episodes)

I wished the anime itself was this good.

Well, it took me long enough to finally admit that this isn't worth my time. I got to give it to Marika; if not for her appealing character design coupled with a promising new voice, I probably won't last half of it. It's just too bad that her character is as shallow as a bird bath, and her dialogues are mostly monotone and meaningless.

Other than the fairly decent character designs and animation quality, I really don't know what else Morestsu Pirates has to offer. I've always divided "story" into "concept" and "storytelling" (story style), and I'll have you know that it fails at both.

Correction, they're all first-rate side show entertainers.

First of all in concept, while it's probably cool to feature space-age pirates that are actually the good guys, this concept erased everything the term "pirates" has going for it. It's unlike One Piece, where it's clearly been stated that the main cast aren't actually "good guys". In Moretsu Pirates, they're simply cute individuals with a spaceship who like to show off their big guns. Their victims treat the "robberies" no different from a side show, and most of their activities involve taking odd jobs from various quasi-legal parties who simply asks to do more of these "robberies". The "letter of marque" is simply one of the show's many poor excuses for them to adventure under the guise of being a "pirate". The letter actually forces you to pirate? There's insurance to cover your losses you're legally robbed from? Pretty convenient, huh?.

And secondly, there has been few traces of clever storytelling. Marika is one-dimensional, but she is unfortunately still the most interesting person out of the huge number of people we have seen so far. The only other character worth a look, Chiaki, is simply a tsundere rival-friend under a thin cold image. In the battles, most of it happened on a computer screen. No, not yours. 50% of all the action features flashy and futuristic diagrams and arrows filling up flying across their ship's monitors. 49% features the characters talking really fast about stuff that's really complicated and apparently really brilliant. The final 1% shows the ship firing its guns maybe once or twice. I guess they wanted the audience to imagine all the excitement happening on the deck but dude...

Bleach (manga) is now a combination of Dragonball and Negima (and Chad is going OVER 9000!!!!)

I've followed the Bleach manga for almost 400 chapters only because I've followed the Bleach manga for 400 chapters. And because it's something new every week, I'm familiar with the characters, I understand what's going on so far... etc. You know, not because I actually liked it. I'm one of those who thinks that the story should have ended with Rukia's rescue, or at least Inoue's rescue. It was when I read that Tite Kubo's gonna continue this for another decade that I went "ok... I see where you're going with this" and from that point on, Bleach is like an off-an-on thing for me. Well, it's not really about the length. It's that I don't feel that Bleach, or Tite Kubo himself is able to bringing anything new into the story, and anime as a whole anymore. It's endlessly repetitive, it became like Dragonball, and I'm sick of it.

In my most recent attempt to catch up with the story (for old time's sake) I see that Bleach is in yet another training arc. While I loved Inoue's fresher, more mature (ahem) look and an upgrade to her powers, Chad went for a training style pulled straight out of Dragonball. Pretty soon he's gonna train in 50Gs and eat ancient pills like it's protein powder and someone's gonna measure his power level using a scouter and scream IT'S OVER NINE THOU-

...And Ichigo went for a time-compression excuse for his next remarkable power-up.

Kore wa Zombie desu ka Ep9 IN ONE MINUTE

I never really wanted to blog about this series because the randomness of it isn't really a subject for a good debate. It's still.. good, but not good enough for me to sing praises about it on the blog, and also not interesting enough for me to dedicate a post for it.

Until this one where... Like how Infinite Stratos screwed its previous episode with too much fanservice, they tried too hard to inject action and screentime for each characters and eventually killed it.

Let's see if you can follow what's going on:

Summary:
Eu disappears to meet up with random antagonist A and tries to kill him but fails. Sera receives orders from someone to kill Eu but Ayumu changes her mind with a MANLY SPEECH (Pic #1). Random antagonist A gets pissed and tries to kill Ayumu with a Ferris wheel (#2) but Ayumu takes no damage cuz he's a fucking ZOMBIE but Eu shit her pants and unintentionally summons this huge jelly thing that sits on Haruna (#3). Dai-sensei appears (#4) and shoots a giant HADOUKEN that sends the huge jelly flying but it crushes Yuki instead (#5). Yuki, on the brink of death, in turn summons this... huge flaming thing that look really fucking stupid (#6) as a Last Stand so Dai-sensei summons the magical chainsaw (whatisname) (#7) for Ayumu to transform instead of using her HADOUKEN. After shooting a couple of energy beams the Flamazoid want to self-destruct (#8) for no apparent reason which prompt Ayumu to use his MANLY SPEECH to save Yuki and after a dramatic exchange and a hug the Flamazoid fizzles out (#9 and #10). Eu returns, injuries magically disappears, everything goes back to normal (#11) but Eu gave a sudden goodbye because she doesn't want to cause anymore unintentional trouble (#12).

Reaction:
...wtf is going on?





Episode 10 Summary
Everyone gets melancholic and gets the resolve to get Eu back.

Episode 11 Summary
The gang finds Eu, but unable to convince her to come back. Random antagonist A appears. Fight ensues.

Episode 12 Summany
Battle. Eu gets convinced to come back. Eu uses IMBA cannon/ undo zombie spell to kill random antagonist A. Happy end.