Archive for the English Anime Category


Ms. Vampire Who Lives in my Neighborhood Anime (English) Guest Review by Christian Le Blanc

April 10th, 2019

Welcome back to Guest Review Wednesday! Today we have a special Guest Review by Christian Le Blanc of 3DComics! Christian has kindly watched an anime so I don’t have to, freeing me to finish up Princess Principal instead. ^_^ (About which I quite probably will do a review one day. ) So let’s please welcome Christian back and  give him our full attention. The floor is yours, Chris!

Sophie Twilight is, let me assure ya,
An anime fangirl vampira.
At the end of each night
In her coffin sleeps tight
With a bishoujo dakimakura.

Ms. Vampire Who Lives in my Neighbourhood (Tonari no Kyūketsuki-san), which is streaming on Crunchyroll, is a 12-episode comedic slice-of-life anime series based on the 4koma manga by Amatou serialized in Comic Cune magazine. Ms. Vampire herself, Sophie Twilight, is a centuries-old vampire who is practically the poster-girl for “Non-Threatening Vampires” magazine – she doesn’t drink blood straight from humans (she orders bottles of it online instead), and she enjoys manga, anime, and ordering anime statues and body pillows off the web. When she first meets our other main character, Amano Akari, she tells her “Don’t be afraid. I’m just your run-of-the-mill vampire passing by. Nobody suspicious.”

Akari is a normal…well, human, anyway…high school student obsessed with dolls, and becomes infatuated with the doll-like Sophie Twilight at their first meeting – so much so that, by the end of the first episode, she’s moved herself into Sophie’s house, much to her parents’ puzzling beatific indifference. Akari’s friend Hinata starts hanging out with them, as does Sophie’s vampire friend Ellie. Most of the humour comes from the culture clash of vampires and humans as they all spend time together – Ellie prescribes treatments for the human cold based on outdated concepts of the four humours, Sophie tries feeding nails to Akari because she doesn’t understand ‘food’, Akari makes a cold, bloody treat for Sophie which results in her penguin-shaped shaved ice maker looking like something removed from Silent Hill for being too disturbing, etc. Our cast enjoys each other’s company at Sophie’s house, the mall, high school, the beach, Akihabara, etc. Obscure bits of vampire lore come into play, but always in a cute manner, of course.

This being a moe comedy, almost everything about this show is light. The faux-baroque score is very whimsical and cute; nothing you’ll likely remember (aside from the opening and ending songs), everything just seems to fit the scene, and nothing really stands out as distracting. The color scheme is light as well – bright, pastel colors that suit the tone of the show and make it pleasant to watch. Any quarrels that *do* appear get resolved by the end of each segment; the first episode makes it look like Akari is going to become a constant harasser to a Sophie who just wants to be left alone (see: Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles), but Sophie quickly realizes she misses Akari when she’s not around. Even the fact that it’s based on a 4koma means that the pacing is generally quick and light, jumping from beat to beat.

Naturally, any Yuri in this show is light, as well – the four main characters are all just friends, although Akari plainly crushes on / lusts after Sophie – just like in Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles, our pursuer pictures herself and the pursued together in wedding dresses. Ellie, for her part, crushes on / lusts after almost any young girl she sees. Hinata also has a mild crush on Akari, just to round things out.

All in all, it’s mostly just a cute show to relax with if you want some light comedy and pleasant, fun character interactions without angst or drama, and just a smidgen of the supernatural with Yuri elements.

That said – when I first approached Erica about writing this review, there were only 3 or 4 episodes up. I could choose to review whatever episodes were already released, or, wait for the series to end and report back. While the chances were pretty slim, I decided to hold back and wait just in case any problematic issues came up that I should address. As you’ve probably guessed, I did find a little something.

Ellie (Sophie’s vampire friend), as I mentioned above, is the thirstiest character on the show. She’s also the youngest-looking character on the show – in fact, they spend time addressing the fact that she was turned into a vampire right around the onset of puberty, so she laments that she never got to grow more mature-looking. Akari’s human friend Hinata even mistakes her for a child at first, prompting Ellie to grope Hinata’s chest in anger before storming off, which makes poor Hinata depart in tears (wait, wasn’t this a comedy?). Ellie’s portrayed as a sex-positive 400-year-old vampire, who looks and acts like a child most of the time…which makes it ultra-gross when she gropes Akari’s butt at the hot springs, wears a revealing succubus costume for Halloween, suggests Sophie buy Akari a thong for Christmas, etc. It’s not that the characters are being flirty and suggestive from time to time that bugs me, it’s that they’re doing this while looking and acting like little kids who are drawn, and written, much younger than they are. It’s creepy enough seeing the camera pan slowly across Akari’s butt dimples at the beach, but watching her play with her dolls later in the same episode encreepens it that much more.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 4 (not necessarily bad, just nothing really eventful happens)
Characters – 4
Yuri – 3
Service – yes, unfortunately.

Overall – 5

If you’ve read all this and it still mostly sounds like something you’d enjoy if it didn’t have the problematic bits, then give it a try and, depending on your tolerance, you may want to just skip past the first halves of episodes 5 & 7, the post-credits scene of episode 9, and episode 10 in general. You might even watch this and feel that I’m overreacting, and, that’s ok; I’m not out to spoil your fun, but I definitely want you to understand why this show might not be someone else’s idea of fun.

Erica here: Comic Cune is, of course, the home of moe, creepy characters, creepy not-quite Yuri and cake. If the service of the anime irks, but you like the premise, take a look at the magazine. The fan service tends more towards what cake are we eating today?

I also want to shoot a stern look at Disney for forcing this absurd title on the anime when clearly “My Neighbor the Vampire” should have been the translation. This translation absolutely ruins the flow.

Thanks Christian for taking a look at this for us!





Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka Anime Guest Review by Mariko S. (English)

April 3rd, 2019

Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu. Always one of my favorite days, as you know.  Today I am so very pleased to welcome back Guest Reviewer Mariko S. with a terrific perspective on an anime I wouldn’t touch with a 10 meter disinfected pole. ^_^ So let’s get right to it, please give Mariko a warm welcome back and praise in the comments!

Years ago on the Onion AVClub site, Nathan Rabin wrote a column called “My Year of Flops,” where he revisited and reviewed movies that failed at the box office for one reason or another. At the end of each review he categorized the movie he’d just talked about as one of three things: Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success. I’m sure that the “Secret Successes” brought some pleasure to unearth, and the “Failures” were easy enough to talk about. But you always got the impression that the “Fiascos” were the ones he really relished the chance to dissect. It’s easy but boring to trash a truly terrible work of entertainment; it’s much more fun to try to figure out what happened with a hot mess of good and bad ideas mashed together in ways that don’t really work, but are nevertheless fascinating.

Today I want to tell you a little bit about the utter fiasco that is Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka.

The latest in the post-Madoka trend of “gritty,” “grim” magical girl series, MGSOA begins with an interesting setup: the war is already over. A few years ago, an invading army from an evil parallel universe called the Disas attempted to destroy the earth with magical power, against which humanity had no defense. However, a friendly spirit realm reached out to aid us, and provided the mechanism to allow the creation of magical girls – teenage girls with a special affinity for magic who could be imbued with it to battle the Disas. In the end, they defeated the enemy leader and won the war, but at terrible cost to both humanity and the ranks of the girls drafted into the fight – of the 11 who began the battle, only the lauded Final 5 returned. But of course, in reality, beating the bad guy doesn’t create world peace – so now the girls and the world are adjusting to the new normal of dealing with magical problems in addition to more mundane types of crime and war.

The biggest thing I have to give this show credit for is, I never knew what was going to happen next. With its frankly astounding mashup of tropes, fetishes, and screeching plot turns, even up to the last episode I could have equally seen it ending with the brutal murder of half the characters we know, or with a healing miracle and a love confession. It definitely wasn’t generally a comfortable feeling, but it is a rare one with how formulaic anime can be. The show also devotes a surprising amount of screen time to interesting exploration of ideas like dealing with PTSD, the warping effects of bullying, the ways that being caught in the crossfire of a magical girl battle would actually affect people, and the crushing burden of being The Only One Who Can Save Us at such a vulnerable age. I also really liked the juxtaposition of the stereotypical cutesy MOTD baddies and cuddly animal sidekicks (each replete with its own unique sentence-ending affect) and the more realistic imagining of strategizing against them and the consequences of the fights.

Oh, but the bad is there. And it’s so, so bad. I guess they thought that the violence and genre twist weren’t enough to entice potential viewers, so they decided to throw in the kitchen sink of anime fetishes, too. Are all of the magical girls improbably busty, even though they’re technically supposed to have been in middle school when they started fighting? Yep! Does the magical combat division of the JSDF run a maid cafe as their cover for some reason? Of course! Can we somehow shoehorn in trips to the pool and the beach for the flimsiest reasons? You betcha! Add to that the occasional torture and domestic violence, and there was often a whiplash inducing effect as the show swung from slice-of-life cheesecake to affecting emotional drama to exploitative violence from scene to scene. Thankfully, the show never pushed things into outright nihilism, as many of the vogue grimdark series are so guilty of. The biggest problem I had with the show was its overreliance on the villains basically being omniscient – no matter what the heroes planned or did, the villains basically deadpanned that this is exactly what they expected and it played right into their hands. It got old to have so little nuance and no back and forth – the villains basically just always won until it was time for them not to.

As for Yuri, it’s present but not a major focus. Many of the female characters show attraction to Asuka, but in particular her best friend and fellow magical girl (War Nurse) Kurumi is deeply infatuated with her. Kurumi’s in many ways unhealthy attachment to Asuka as the one who saved her from her life as a doormat for bullies is played throughout the show for both pathos and laughs. Toward the end of the series, we find out that the former leader of the magical girl team made a lot of sex jokes about the other members, if you want to count that. Also, the General of the good spirit world, taking the form of (of course) a beautiful, busty woman, is apparently *really* fond of her magical girls and tries to cajole them into lewd things when they reunite. And in a very brief scene we find out that the illegal magical girl, Abigail, who so lovingly spoke of the series’ masked antagonist as her “Queen,” has a physical relationship with said queen.

On the technical side, in general this is not a particularly well-animated show. Characters are rarely on model and the animation tends to be stiff and focused on moving as few parts as possible (ideally just mouths). They clearly were trying to save as much money as possible for the action scenes, which in general were pretty well done. The opening and ending songs were nice, and the eyecatch military staccato felt appropriate, but otherwise the soundtrack was fairly forgettable/unobtrusive (depending on your perspective).

So, back to that fiasco thing – sometimes the show takes its characters seriously, and explores their emotions in ways beyond what most shows would. Other times it turns them into an eroge caricature. Sometimes it gets meditative about war and violence and the consequences of thrusting tremendous fighting power onto someone so immature, then banks into a boob joke. It’s fitting, then, that the show ends on a question mark instead of an exclamation point. I can’t really recommend it, but I also can’t really dissuade you either. It’s compelling in its own way – if you can abide the fetishes and find the smart things it wants to talk about interesting, give it a shot. If you take a pass, I also think that’s a perfectly reasonable choice. Truly, YMMV.

Ratings:

Art – 5 I liked the character designs but the animation itself was sub-par.
Story – 7 A nice twist on the familiar with some trenchant takes on interesting topics that gets bogged down by the fetish elements.
Characters – 6 Asuka and Kurumi are given some nice layers, but most everyone else is a little underwritten. +1 for Sacchu, the heroes’ mascot, who is pretty awesome.
Yuri – 3
Service – 7

Overall – 5

Erica here: Well, thank you very much , Mariko for another fab review! Sometimes, I think my Guest Reviewers ought to get hazard pay as you all take on the stuff I don’t want to. ^_^





Boogiepop and Others Anime (English)

March 12th, 2019

2019 dawned with me being the proud subscriber to more streaming services than I could imagine. Or need. Or want, really. As media goes, visual media is my least favorite, as it takes more time and concentration than I care to give to staring at a screen. Which is why I end up watching movies on airplanes, where I’m a captive audience. ^_^

Because I’m paying these services for access to anime, among other things, I thought I’d better, y’know, use them to watch stuff I didn’t want to buy. I’m all for buying the 20th anniversary Blu-Ray box set of Revolutionary Girl Utena – and watching it again. ^_^ Crunchyroll has been a staple for me for years, Hidive has been pretty good in providing access to Sentai Filmworks‘ titles, which I tend to enjoy watching once, but don’t really want to own (although there have been exceptions,) with Netflix coming in a distant third in anime for me, but it turns out to have Master of the 36th Chamber of Shaolin, so I forgive it all its failings.  Amazon Prime has been sort of interesting too, although I keep it around more for the free shipping than the anime. Nonetheless there are titles I’ve watched on that service. And of course, I’m trying to stay current on Yuri and Yuri-friendly series like Bloom Into You– but sometimes you gotta watch something new!

In an attempt to watch something out of the usual for me and something new, I turned to Boogiepop and Others, streaming on Crunchyroll.  This series looks at the light novels that precede the Boogiepop Phantom (this link goes to the Nozomi Entertainment Official Youtube channel dub) light novel.

Boogiepop and Others is not a Yuri series. Just to be very clear. There are, however, elements that may appeal to Okazu readers.

The opening credits include a same-sex kiss between the main character and herself, but I am not convinced that that has relevance to the story. The fact that it exists at all is merely indicative of the kind of Yuri one gets in this series.

The story centers on a supernatural being, a Shinagami known as Boogiepop who appears periodically to combat evil. Boogiepop, who refers to itself as “he/him,” manifests in the body of a high school girl, Miyashita Touka, who has no idea that she even becomes Boogiepop, although in a later arc, her mother does recognize that Touka is being possessed by a “strange man.”

In the first arc, there have been disappearances and murders, someone is killing high school girls (a repeated theme within the story.) Again there is some same-sex kissing. These kisses lack affection and are more a means of transmission of a compulsion than anything else.

Most interesting to me is the character of Kirima Nagi, whose backstory takes up the the bulk of the “Boogiepop at Dawn” anime arc (and, presumably, the light novel it is based upon.) When we first encounter her in the “Boogiepop and Others” arc, she has exceptional skills and fights Manticore, just as Boogiepop does…but they are not on the same side. They will encounter each other over and over throughout the series.

Miyashita, Kirima, and a third girl, Suema Kazuko, who has a strong interest in criminal psychology, form a triumvirate of main characters, around which the plots swirl. With the addition of a criminal organization, supernatural and alien influence, there’s always a lot going on in any given arc.

The animation is both good and not moe, with a number of adult characters. It’s been, frankly, a pleasure to watch, even with all the deaths.

I quite like that the series is always low-key horror even when what’s going on is actual horror. ^_^ Gruesome murders are presented with layers of narrative and artistic rendering to give us the thrill without too much of the grotesque. There’s a lot of pretension to psychological horror, but just as the tension rises, the arc comes to an end. This makes most of the arcs seem rushed, but if we spent any more time in the arc, the endings  – which mostly consist of Boogiepop talking the bad guy to death, then killing them – would be even less impressive than they are.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 8
Story – 8 Every arc is a lot of story crammed into a little space
Service – Yeah, there is some egregious undressing and the Yuri is clearly meant as service
Yuri – 2? It’s nothing more than window dressing and not why you should watch this series
Overall- 8

As I said, this is not a Yuri series, Yuri is merely a feature of some of the story arcs and is presented as a throwaway fetish. If you’re looking for well-developed Yuri relationships, this is not a place to look. However, if you are interested in a horror series with intriguing characters, decent people and terrible people, both male and female, adult and teens, strong female leads and a teeny dash of gender switching, this might appeal to you.





Liz and the Blue Bird Movie (English)

March 10th, 2019

I haven’t seen so much symbolic bird flight since Oniisama E. ^_^

Liz and the Blue Bird is a complicated and fascinating look at the habit of loneliness, obsession, affection and human relationships. If you were paying attention last summer to Japanese theatrical releases for animation, along with Asagao to Kase-san, you’d have come across Rizu to Aoi Tori (リズと青い鳥 ), which often shared a theater with Kase-san. Liz and the Blue Bird is the official release of this movie from Eleven Arts.

The movie follows two young women who play woodwind in their concert band as the band competition nears. Nozomi is popular, easy-going and wears her position as sempai to the flute section comfortably. On oboe, Mizore is a loner who avoids any connection with the other double-reed players, leaving the undergrads wondering what they are doing wrong. They are doing nothing wrong, Mizore simply has no room in her existence for anyone but Nozomi. As pressure is put upon them to play the key movement in a competition piece called “Liz and the Blue Bird,” based on a children’s book of the same name, Nozomi’s and Mizore’s relationship starts to buckle.

The movie’s structure is complex, with two stories-within-a-story, three separate animation styles and acting parts for the voice actors, the foley and the music.

I said in yesterday’s news report that you could, if you were so inclined, see Mizore’s relationship with Nozomi as Yuri. In fact, its hard not to, as Mizore declares that Nozomi is everything to her. That said, this is not a romance and this obsession Mizore has with Nozomi is not the end goal, but an obstacle that must be set aside for them both to thrive. To do so, Mizore is required to break out of the habit of loneliness that she has developed for herself as an identity.

The characters outside Nozomi and Mizore are excellent. We don’t spend much time with them, but we get to know a fair number in that short time. I liked them all, from Yuuko, the band leader and Natsuki, another third year, to the first-years, especially Kenzaki Ririka, the only other oboe in the band, and the amusingly bad-tempered library club member.

Nothing in this movie is simplistic. The children’s story of “Liz and the Blue Bird”, it’s relationship to Mizore and Nozomi, their relationship to one another and to the people around them are all fully developed and realistically complex. In fact, after watching this movie through once, I went back and watched it again to pay attention to details I knew I had missed the first time, especially in the animation and soundtrack.

I had gone into this movie cold, with absolutely no knowledge that it was part of the Sound! Euphonium franchise. Once I did, my sole complaint about the movie was instantly given context. So many people I know and trust have told me I would enjoy Sound! Euphonium, but I was unable to get through the first episode, as we spent almost the entire time watching the girls’ legs. In Liz and the Blue Bird, the one thing I found distracting and, ultimately exhausting, was the way the camera dissected the characters, separating out body parts endlessly, so we watched legs, then arms, then an eyeball so close we could see the curve of it, then feet, a lap, rinse, repeat almost as a non-stop compulsion, which if we weren’t also moving back and forth through the fairy tale would have been as intolerable as I found the Sound! Euphonium anime. It was so much of a problem that the few times the “camera” backed up in order to show us a whole person, it was a physical relief. This is not an animation style I enjoy and I will be very glad when it falls out of favor.

The three animation styles are, as I mentioned, wholly unique. The main story is the kind of thing Kyoto Animation is best known for, with higher production values than a TV series, and faces and bodies that are mostly similar, with realistic backgrounds (although thankfully not hyper-realistic which would be out of sync with the character designs.) “Liz and the Blue Bird” is told in an animation style that is strongly reflective of a children’s picture book come to life. Any frame of that animation could have been used as is in a picture book. It was very fitting to the tale and fun to watch. The third animation style comes in later in the narrative and is abstract, colorful and modern, and wholly suited to the scenes in which it is used.

The soundtrack was my favorite part of the movie. As a former woodwind, it’s nice to hear them get some love in the music. ^_^ But more importantly, the climax of the movie is not only centered around the music , it is a moment in which this viewer suddenly realized that the best acting of the movie had come from the musicians playing the piece, as they had throughout the movie played it wrong every time. Not, badly, not broken, they’d hit all the notes…it was just wrong. It was a masterful performance and one that I hope you will appreciate when you watch it.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 10
Characters – 9
Yuri – 3
Service – 6 That whole bodypart-staring is a form of service which I do not care for. It feels dehumanizing to me.

Overall – 9

In the end, I think the thing that best captures my feelings about this movie is that it was worth watching a second time and that second time made me appreciate it more.





Revue Starlight Anime (English)

February 4th, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the moment it began, Revue Starlight (which is streaming on HIDIVE) reminded me of something.

Centered on a group of young women at a Takarazuka-like performing arts school, in which they vie to be cast in one of three successive performances of a muscial called “Starlight,” they find themselves called upon to literally fight for the Top Star position in battles set in the surreal landscapes of their own desires and fears.

And wow, did it remind me of something.

Duels, surreal landscapes, hrm. Uniforms created by impossible machinery…

Now what did that remind me of…?

Oh, yes, I got it! It reminded me, almost immediately, of…Melody of Oblivion. 

Yes, of course, it also reminded me of Revolutionary Girl Utena, but there was something specific about the tone that pinged Melody of Oblivion in my head in a very immediate way, which shared some staff and a lot of theatrical elements with Utena. As it turns out, Revue Starlight shares some staff with Melody, so I’m probably not that far off.

In any case, there was a similar sense of grimness that pervaded the plot of Revue Starlight so, despite the apparent desire to excel, the play the young women are working on is depressing as fuck. We watch them shine, in order to star in a play in which they must fail. And yet, despite that, Revue Starlight was a pretty good anime with a lot of emotion and a soupçon of WTF, in between shiny fight scenes and earworm music, capped off by utterly likable characters.

Yuri here lies primarily in intensely emotional relationships between various pairs of the girls. Futaba and her charge, imperious Kauruko, Mahiru’s overt crush on Karen, the late breaking, but immensely satisfying relationship between Nana and Junna and the even more satisfying rivalry of Maya and Claudine. If the story had been about Maya and Claudine, I would have loved it even more. Maya gets very close to making the series about them a few times and even goes so far as to refer to her rival as “my Claudine.” ^_^ 

By now, if you’ve seen this anime, you’re wondering if I’m going to mention the giraffe in the room. If the role had been an adult man, everything he said would be bizarre and creepy. So it’s a giraffe instead, and comes off as inexplicable and surreal instead of a creeptastic old dude in a series about young women in a school that has no men. So, giraffe.

Of course music plays an important role. The duels are soundtracked by image songs for the character whose arc it is, sung by the voice actress. These are themed to fit both character and the tension that rules the duel. I’ve got the opening theme stuck firmly in my head, but what I ended up liking best was the repetition of the end theme, by the pairs whose story was highlighted in that particular episode. Again, I like Maya and Claudine’s iteration best, but they were all good. And damned earmwormy. I fear I’ll be singing this stuff for days unless I do something to stop it. 

Did I enjoy Revue Starlight? Yeah, I think I did. It was shiniy and singy and fighty and asked for very little commitment from me as a viewer. I mean, I never cared about the main plot tension between the leads, which is not all that surprising, I often find my self preferring supporting characters. But it was definitely worth a watch.

Ratings:

Service – Knees, not thighs. Is that an improvement, when it’s so clearly meant to be a stand-in?

Couple Ranking:

1. Maya and Claudine 
2. Banana and Junna
3. Futaba with someone who appreciates her, not Kaoruko
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282726. Mahiru and Karen
282727. Karen and Hikari