Seasonal Summaries: Fall 2020

This is honestly a great season of anime, one of the best in recent memory, which is great since it looks like we might get more lockdowns coming soon. Either way I figured the laziest thing I could do, besides not write anything for yet another couple months, was put together a brief summary of all the shows I’m enjoying this season. I will not include sequels or the Higurashi reboot because I’m either not watching them or they are the exact same as prior seasons. Also not watching Noblesse, gave it a try and dropped it in 3 episodes, the warning bells were going off right from the get go and it sucks, don’t bother unless you have to. Without further ado let’s get to the good stuff, there will be spoilers, you’ve been warned.

Hanyou no Yashahime

Despite what I just said about the good stuff I’d be lying if I said this was really worthwhile for most people, it’s ok at best, it’s definitely the least interesting of the shows I’m sticking with. Which sucks, because I really wish this better. I mean I’m going to keep watching because Inuyasha was the first anime I ever watched and holds a special place in my heart but this is a pretty lackluster follow up. It looks great which is nice and the soundtrack is back to remind everyone that Inuyasha fucking nailed the soundtrack whatever its faults may be but the battles remind of D Gray Man Hallow – which was honest to God some of the maddest I’ve ever been at anime for wrecking a great IP. All the titular Half Demon Princesses all use massive, powerful attacks, the kind that you usually get after a training montage or because of special weapon or curse, constantly against trash mob level demons. Most hilarious was just how much they struggled with that centipede demon lady that was the first enemy in Inuyasha. I mean, it was a fun throwback but damn if they struggle with her they will be in trouble later.

The tension is very low and I feel like the show is already treading water, mainly because the characters are not developing very much and there’s barely a plot. Even more strangely none of the main cast has appeared except for the flashback episode which was extra awesome fanservice because we finally got to see the original gang using all their powers in the glory of modern animation. I don’t want to say there’s no potential here because there could be if this decides to pick up and stop treading water, but unless Inuyasha is a big nostalgia show for you, you’ll probably want to give this a pass.

Majo no Tabitabi

Majo no Tabitabi is also somewhat of a disappointment, that’s not because it’s bad it’s because the fight scene the main girl has against her teacher during episode 1 was so goddamn good it set the bar really high. The emotional twist of episode was made all the better because of just how brutal that lesson via fight was. Sadly the show is mostly fun and laid back, with episodic adventures that vary wildly in quality. The world is quite interesting with so many locations that are all so very different, but a lot of them are very iyashikei, with occasional standouts like the bit about Javalier and the ruined country up north or the fact our normally good main character just ignores a magic flower field that is ensnaring people from nearby countries and turning them into plant-zombies. Kinda thought she would burn the field down after watching a poor guardsman fall victim to the plants in a scene of somber justice or vengeance, but nope she just leaves as more and more people fall victim to the flowers.

I’m guessing there won’t be much else to this show, hopefully some more magic fights or more serious episodes but if nothing else this is mainly a feel good show with an interesting world and pretty lovable main character. It’s very solid for something in its genre, which I have to admit is generally not my thing. Trust your own judgement on this one, though everyone should at least try episode 1 as that’s where the show really makes a splash.

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear

Despite the nonsense name of this show and the cutesy thumbnail that might put off some viewers this is actually a very good isekai so far. It’s about a girl who appears to have almost no connection to her family and instead is a stock market genius with fat stacks of cash who lives alone by choice, using video games as an escape. She’s a great contrast to most isekai heroes because she’s not a hiki-neet or loser nerd or generic good guy who likes games, she’s super competent but awkward in her own way because she’s built up some serious walls around herself, walls which the people in this new world are much better at breaking because even the kids are hard at work to keep their families going.

And in case that sounds too boring keep in mind that when she was brought to this world she got a message from God telling her to enjoy the new world and her ludicrously op bear suit. The bear suit has stupid good stats and is constantly granting our leading lady new powers at the cost of her looking totally ridiculous and being stuck with a teddy bear motif because she’d actually be pretty weak without the bear suit. The episodes are fun and feature some good light-hearted adventures and violence, though any time it gets a bit too emotional it definitely takes a hit. Overall this has been a good time so far and unless it drastically changes it should be a good time for anyone who can get past the cutesy bear aesthetic.

Jujutsu Kaisen

Jujutsu Kaisen is the show I’m most nervous about this season. That’s not because it’s bad, in fact it’s been really good so far, with great animation some interesting if basic characters and a power system that looks like it has lots of potential. But at the same time there is not a lot to inspire confidence in the writing side of things. Visually it’s great, but we know so little about Curse Powers, the setting or much about how the plot will go. The search for the fingers is very Inuyasha-esque while the tone, brisk pace and appearance of the traitor guy give this more of a Bleach feel. Neither of these shows were very good at plot, at least not in the long term. Sure, Soul Society was great but Bleach rapidly drops in quality as each incoming group of characters gets less attention and care than the last.

So far the characters have not been given much development and they’re already gearing up for a tournament arc. I feel like we definitely need more to go on if this show ever wants to be great and it’s a bit odd how the show is just fine breezing past anything beyond some very basic archetypes, as far as characterization goes. I don’t want to be much of a downer though because the fights have been fan-fucking-tastic, visually very interesting with grotesque monsters, brutal violence and a power system that looks like it has all kinds of really unique and niche abilities that I want to learn more about. I am worried that this show has a lot of room to fail but I’d be happy to be proven wrong, and hope it keeps up, and even better, improves on the quality it has put out so far. Very solid so far, let’s hope it stays that way.

Maoujou de Oyasumi

Now we’re getting to the real hits of the season. I imagine some people passed this up because it’s a about a cutesy princess trying to get her sleep on in a generic Dragon Quest fantasy world. And it’s hilarious, easily the funniest show out now, and one of the best comedies I can think of off-hand since Konosuba. The princess is taken hostage by the Demon Lord right away but he has no plans to hurt her, he just wants the hero to come and fight him. So our bored and lazy princess fills all her spare time trying to improve her sleeping conditions, improving her bedding, getting nicer sheets, etc. That might sound boring but she does all of these things in the most heartless was possible, stealing and breaking all kinds of magic items for temporary convenience, butchering random demons for materials and generally abusing the shit of the nice and gullible creatures who are her jailors.

For example, one of my favorite bits was when she died. The first time that happens she falls into some lava with a slime, she and the slime are promptly resurrected by the Demon Lord’s top cleric. She revives in an open coffin and immediately decides she wants to sleep in it because the demons have been loud recently and she needs some peace and quiet. But the coffin is badly worn, the edges could easily give her splinters and the woodwork is rough. Her solution? She grabs the demon cleric by the horns and uses said horns to sand down the rough edges of the coffin, then she grabs the slime who was revived with her and uses it as lacquer, then she takes the remnants of a ghost she cut in half for sheets and crawls into her coffin for some well-deserved rest and relaxation. All to this a surprisingly energetic and memorable theme that makes all of the best scenes even better. Everyone should watch this, it’s so good, definitely worth your time.

Akudama Drive

Akudama Drive is fucking wild. I walked into it expecting nothing, because honestly the description made it sound kind of lame and I wasn’t sure this would be any good. Boy was I wrong, as this show just hits the ground running with a brief intro followed by a tons of violence, stylish character introductions and almost no information about the setting. Like what are Akudama and what the hell is going on in this cyberpunk setting? It blasts right past all of that giving every character a super basic name and a criminal sentence length. And it looks amazing the setting is full of all kinds of lights and tech, and the team behind this did not skimp on animation or detail either for the characters or in the backgrounds. The first episode is this frenetic burst of chaotic violence with almost no semblance of plot beyond a massive reward for freeing Cutthroat, a super serial killer scheduled to be executed that day. A lot the characters are just nuts too, with extreme personalities, quirks and the absolute clusterfuck mishmash of aesthetics common to cyberpunk settings.

The episodes have kept up the visual quality thus far and even have clever little info dumps in the form of propaganda shorts, giving us the info we need and a quick breather while preventing long boring scenes of characters standing around talking to progress the plot. Who needs that shit when you can fight policemen with lightsaber batons in rooms with holographic textures that react to the physical impacts of the fights in real time? And yes a story does seem to be shaping up though there’s still a lot of unanswered questions. And I’m really digging the fact that main girl is not a true Akudama but has no been roped into this scenario and has to work her way through it with her more normal talents and sense of morals. It’s been a ton of fun so far, a total feast for the eyes and I’m super interested to see where it goes from here.

Munou na Nana

But as with every season there can only be one best show, and right now Munou na Nana is king of that hill. But show of the season is a serious understatement, this is looking like show of the year territory and may even be the best thing I’ve seen in a couple years. The best part is how this show total misleads you, the first episode seems like a really generic superpowered kids high school show and then right at the end, after getting the Deku stand-in all pumped full of confidence, our titular leading lady pushes the motherfucker off a cliff with the coldest and most menacing gaze I’ve seen in quiet some time. I love it.

From then on we get more info, Talenteds – the kids with powers, arose naturally out of humanity but almost destroyed the world as they ran amok. Humanity eventually won but more Talenteds kept arising from the populace, usually as teens and their powers seemed to evolve when they were put under threat, with one kid’s minor power evolving to the release of a potentially world-ending virus, which led to the humans nuking the area he lived. Because of this the government has created a system where they isolate the Talented for training in island schools under the pretense that they need to get ready to fight some monstrous threat to humanity and send in infiltrators to kills the kids off. This is Nana’s job, and she’s all in because her parents were killed by a Talented. She transferred to the school pretending to be a mind reader with no social skills, but in reality she applies psychology and deductive reasoning to amazing effect to pass as a mind reader, putting on a nice and airheaded front while she schemes about how to kill her targets, whose powers she has to figure out along the way.

It has a ton of twists and turns already and is fast becoming the most intense game of Among Us ever played. Nana is an extremely impressive character in her ability to assess and gather information, plan and deceive as she is forced to react the complete nonsense laundry list of powers the Talented have. And she’s not flawless so it’s not like she’s just getting by with ease, it’s a total nail biter with each new Talented presenting so many problems and complications that she needs to really work hard to overcome them without revealing the truth. This show is amazing and I can’t wait for the next episode to come out as I write this. Try this, it is absolutely worth every second of time you put into it.

Unpopular Opinion – Re:Zero Season 2

I watched Re:Zero season 1 years ago but I remember it well. It was immensely popular after all, everyone was talking about it. I had to watch it to see what all the fuss was about. I even listened to several very long discussion about it. And um, how do I put this? I still don’t see what all the fuss was about. Like Re:Zero certainly wasn’t terrible, but it was not great either, shit it wasn’t even good. It was as painfully average as shows could get, with occasional high points and tidbits of interest marred by several weak elements – Subaru’s fucking insufferable dialogue chief amongst them. Initially I wasn’t even going to give season 2 a try but I kept hearing that it was even better. And true best girl Elsa the bowel hunter was back, hell yeah. So I gave it a spin and well… there will be spoilers.

Fuck me I wish hadn’t bothered. On the one hand there were more points of genuine interest. We finally met all the witches, Crusch and Rem get wrecked immediately and the stakes are high as ever with Crusch left without her memories and Rem in a super coma where no one but Subaru even knows who she is. We even got to see Subaru get horrifically eaten by rabbits Monty Python style in what is probably his most traumatic death to date. And we also had a lot of Subaru screaming, crying like a bitch and taking forever to figure things out and not noticing important details without being told them.

Like straight up when he was about to form a contract with Echidna he has the presence of mind to ask what that entails and she tells him the benefits – and he doesn’t think to ask what the cost would be? Are you kidding me? A being of great power and infamous for her evil has promised you power and you don’t think there will be a cost? Or you’re so dumb you don’t think to ask? Like I don’t want to be too hard on a character or brag about myself because I’m not very impressive but, as soon as I hear the word contract in this context I would immediately ask what the cost is and I expect any otaku who is at all genre savvy to do the same. Any teenagers who haven’t had everything handed to them on a silver platter should get this. Shit this dude has been taught over and over by the other candidates and their various associates that nothing good comes for free. Surely by now he should at least have the wherewithal to ask what price this contract will cost him. Especially after seeing Beatrice so screwed by a contract that she wants nothing more than to die – how the shit dude? One episode before you saw Beatrice beg for death and then a witch, who you even suspect is involved because you actually took the initiative to ask about that without help from anyone, offers you a contract and you don’t ask the price? Fuck me Subaru is just so damn stupid, it’s genuinely infuriating to watch him not put 2 and 2 together.

I mean if even Roswaal and others can observe that Subaru is not actually worried about dying, and he himself has the resolve to kill himself to reset the loop and he even sets goals for himself and experiments within the loops, surely he should understand by now that what he needs is to amass information, gather details and put the pieces together. He even says at much at one point. And yet he remains so unobservant, so thick-headed, and frankly he sucks. And sure that’s partly the point but, I guess he’s been through enough by now that I don’t think he should still suck this badly. And the whole ending with Roswaal is what really takes this up to 11.

Roswaal arranging the attack on his own manor has to be among the top 10 least surprising twists in anime history. Seriously the only bit about the whole scenario Roswaal sets up about making Subaru choose between who to save, which is at all surprising is that he’s causing the snow. The first time snow entered the equation my initial assumption was that Emilia was taking so long to pass the trials that it had become winter, because honestly the trial seemed traumatic enough for her that I legit thought there was a chance that she was never going to pass it and Subaru would have to complete the trials for her. Which at this point I would have preferred if only because it meant the damn season would have resolved that challenge. Possibly the worst part about season 2 is that Subaru still hasn’t even made it out of the Sanctuary and the trials. The situation is still ongoing after 13 painful episodes.

Granted part of the problem is that Roswaal is intentionally setting up a scenario where Subaru can’t save everyone, which is a concept that is so expected in a story like this that is practically necessary. But at least it could be cool, y’know if it moved along. I get that this is Subaru’s biggest challenge yet and it will take the most work to resolve but I’m genuinely annoyed that I wasted my time here and I feel like Season 2 is a great example of Re:Zero’s qualities as a whole.

It has a fantasy world with some real life in it, some lore that’s cool, political factions that behave fairly realistically and interesting monsters like the White Whale and the Great Rabbit. It has a lot of potential in its details and it is willing to go hard in the paint to build up character drama or go all in on gruesome deaths. It has some truly awesome high points – the rabbit feast, yandere Emilia, Garfiel savaging all the human villagers who tried to help Subaru, the Archbishops of the Witch Cult who kick this whole thing off, and the witches themselves. There were actually a lot of moments that made me keep going, that make want to love this. But then there’s just so much fucking Subaru in between it all. At least he’s mostly dropped his obnoxious otaku-style dialogue from season 1 but between his idiocy, his need to repeat himself all the fucking time when he talks and his astounding incompetence for someone who has worked through quite a few major challenges up to this point make this a frustrating and at times gratingly boring experience. And worst of all is that Subaru is stuck in Catch 22 where his dialogue with side characters is often painfully boring while his big important dialogue’s with major player is either ungodly autistic and messy or basic, ultra emotional and kinda cringe. Like how many times will you scream that the bad guys can’t keep getting away with it Subaru?

One of Re:Zero’s worst problems is that it is ultra-bloated. The writing, especially the dialogue, could be tightened up a hell of lot. I’m all for letting a good story take it’s time, getting all the buildup and so on, but Re:Zero just needs to be more concise both in the writing/dialogue and in Subaru’s actions. The dude takes forever to put shit together or take serious action. I just watched Steins;Gate again with a friend, right before I marathoned Re:Zero season 2. And Jesus the difference is staggering, despite the fact Okabe Rintaro/Okarin/Hououin Kyoma is in many ways even more incompetent than Subaru he’s way better at being a time looper. Like go watch Steins;Gate and compare Okarin’s frantic struggle to save Mayuri to Re:Zero season 2. Okarin tries everything he can with a fanatical zeal, constantly making moves, first with a desperate fervor to save Mayuri and then with an eye for pragmatic attention to details as he establishes what needs to be done to fix the problem. It puts Re:Zero to shame, because even though Steins;Gate spends so much less time on raw buildup and detail-hunting it gets across the emotional drain all this time looping has on Okarin far better and makes it seem like Okarin did way more failed loops than Subaru without ever showing each and every one. And throughout the entire set of episodes from when Mayuri is first killed to the end of Steins;Gate you simultaneously feel the incredible tension and frenetic energy that the character’s themselves must have felt. Re:Zero by comparison is a fucking slog that takes a long time to get where it’s going and it makes the experience boring except for when something really interesting is happening.

I’m getting very sick of Subaru, I get that his sheer level suckage is part of the hook. That he needs to carve himself into a better man from his lowest points. But God fucking dammit he’s been doing almost nothing but, jumping from one dangerous scenario to the next. When will he git gud – or at least get good enough that he isn’t taking so long or is as boring to watch as he figures things out? I get that to people who haven’t seen Steins;Gate or Groundhog Day or any story with this kind of setup, Re:Zero is probably really cool and unique. But as soon as you see a better version it makes this one very hard to sit through despite the distinct advantages of Re:Zero actually having a solidly good fantasy world with intriguing lore. Re:Zero has all the tools it needs to be a better story, but it’s sure taking its sweet fucking time getting there. Thanks for reading, see you in the next one.

Unpopular Opinion: God of High School

 

I debated putting this one down as a First Impression because I dropped this show after only four episodes but unless this show radically changes I can’t imagine it getting past some of the problems which plagued the early episodes.  There will be very limited spoilers since I didn’t make it very far.

I wanted to love this.  Really, I was all over the energy and fun showcased during the purse-snatcher chase.  And a show that gets right into a battle tournament with over-the-top abilities and martial arts, count me in.  But by the end of episode 3, I was feeling pretty much done with the show and episode 4 completely ended my interest.  How did this happen?  Well there are some incredibly petty reasons, chief amongst them that hideous blush applied to everyone’s noses and ears.  Or a total lack of interest in the more esoteric powers/summons that have been displayed thus far.  But that’s not the core of my problem with the show, it’s way too fast.

Now I can understand why people want the faster pace, there’s a ton of material to adapt and I’m sure fans of the webtoon want to see more of the source material brought to life in animation.  But for someone like me, who has no knowledge of the webtoon past the name?  The blistering pace of show makes it really dull.  How?  Mainly that when things are happening so fast I have a hard time getting invested.  This is especially true of the 1v1 fights.  There’s no buildup, no heat.  Each of the people who make it past the initial big brawl is supposed to be a great fighter with important reasons for fighting and potentially interesting philosophies and goals or at least some kickass techniques.  And yet the show blows past all of it so fast you either get none of these potentially great details, or they just kind of say it in an off-hand line and then the show moves on.  Where’s the tension?  Where’s the drama?  Sometimes there are sparks of it.  Like the Tai Chi guy and Jin vs the evil Taekwondo guy.  And I assume that the main fight of episode 5 is relying on such a spark since it will be Mira vs karate boy.

But all of the other fights were incredibly fucking boring.  They didn’t have to be.  But they didn’t have time to breathe.  Mai Miseong?  And the glasses boy?  Both had very distinct designs and were clearly competent opponents.  But their fights lasted what 5 minutes?  If  that?  Where’s the hype?  Where’s the buildup?  Where’s any information at all for me to get invested in?  And maybe if the fights themselves were so good to watch I could ignore that but again the only fights that were great to watch as fights were the battles against the evil Taekwondo guy.  Mira vs Mai?  It was clusterfuck, it actually made Mira look terrible at swordplay as she missed strike after strike, only to win by slashing the air with her hands.  Karate guy vs glasses boy?  That one had some cool effects on some attacks and a bit of tension in that it looked like karate guy was on the ropes but he ultimately won and his opponent had the emotion of a dead fish from beginning to end despite the fact he even said that karate guy blew away his entire fighting philosophy.  And all the bullshit during the wedding episode was the last straw.

Now I know this all personal preference, and maybe this will change.  But with 13 episodes in total and nothing but a blistering pace for four episodes?  I doubt it.  Watching this I’m inevitably reminded of the recent seasons of Baki, in particular the Raitai Tournament.  And comparing the two is a joke.  Baki 2020 was, at least until the Mohammed Ali Jr. bit at the end, was an amazing battle tournament.  And what Baki 2020 has that God of High School doesn’t is buildup.  Even the fight that Baki wins in 2 seconds flat has more dramatic buildup than any fight in God of High School up until I dropped it.  And more attention to detail as they not only show each stage of Baki’s attack slowed down but explain the bio-mechanics of why he is able to knock his opponent out cold so quickly.  There’s nothing like that in God of High School and it’s a shame because as much as I like action, there’s no appeal in most of the action it depicts.

A good fight only really needs a one of a few things.  If it looks cool enough and displays a high level of skill on the part of the combatants that’s a surefire path to success.  If it has enough emotional weight behind it or if the stakes are high enough then even a simple battle can become a great spectacle.  Or if you just make both people fighting people we can get invested in and support, the appeal of that fight writes itself.  God of High School fights do sometimes contain these elements but usually to such a weak and tepid degree that there’s honestly very little appeal.  And I have no interest in a battle show with such a dearth of interesting battles.  That’s all there is to it really.  I don’t care that the show is popular or that the webtoon it comes from might be great, because so little happened in God of High School that made we want to care about it.  I don’t want to be a downer or to drag the popular shows just for the fun of it.  But this was a serious letdown from a show I had some hopes for.  Oh well, at Deca-Dence has turned out to be great in it’s stead, seriously unless they really fuck something up in the last few episodes Deca-Dence will be the best show of the season, go watch it.

Updated Impressions: Kingdom 3

After giving Kingdom 3 a few episodes to really get in its full swing, I figured it was time to discuss my initial impressions and how closely they matched the episodes as they’ve come out. If you want to look at the first impressions before getting started, it’s linked here.

Ever since I was aware that Kingdom 3 was coming out, i.e. a few days before the new season started, I’ve been slowly re-watching the first two seasons. I’m currently in the early stages of season 2 and sadly it has already confirmed my biggest concern regarding Kingdom 3 – the audio. For starters the audio seems quieter across the board, I have no idea if this is a recording issue, a source rip issue or what but seasons 1 & 2 are significantly louder at the same computer volume, especially the soundtrack. Which leads me to major problem two, the audio balancing. The soundtrack of Kingdom 3 is so quiet that I keep forgetting it’s even there and have to re-watch episodes with extra attention given to listening for the music to even try and identify and remember it.

Because even when the tracks pick up a bit to reflect the intensity of the battles and such, they are frankly completely overpowered by the sounds of the action. A great example is the Qin charge at the start of episode 4/ end of episode 3. There is a decent, tense battle track playing during the charge but fuck me it so hard to hear over the noise generated by the damn charge.  The earlier seasons were not like this at all. The music was just as immense as the charging noises and you literally can’t miss the soundtrack regardless of what’s happening on screen. The only time Kingdom 1 & 2 are quiet is when there is no music and no action or dialogue. This is a gigantic failing because as I’ve detail over the course of multiple posts, the audio of Kingdom is what really makes the anime worth it. There is nothing in the anime you can’t get in the manga besides color (a nice touch but not essential), movement (let’s face it Kingdom’s animation is extremely inconsistent with large stretches where it looks great and equally large stretches where it some of the ugliest animation ever put to film) and sound.  And sound was where the anime shined the most. The voice-acting was amazing, the soundtrack sounded like a good approximation of period appropriate and it was epic enough to match a story with scale and scope of Kingdom – the unification of China with battles a hundred thousand strong.

Moving right along, though if you can find the focus to listen to the quite-ass soundtrack of Kingdom 3 it is in fact noticeably Sawano’ed. Now I like Sawano’s work but his predilection for electronic sound, especially for tension builds, just does not mesh with the setting and character of Kingdom at all. I’m hoping that when we get to the really big moments the music will improve somewhat but it’s honestly really disappointing that the soundtrack is so different from the earlier seasons. Kingdom 1 & 2 were so unique when it came to sound, I’ve never come across any anime that sounds like it and the music choices were so much better reflective of the story’s location and time period. Listening to the soundtrack of earlier seasons of Kingdom alternatively brings a big old smile to my face or makes my hair stand on end.  It’s iconic and gave Kingdom such a distinct character, and watching all the seasons of Kingdom simultaneously, I think that character came as a result of the love poured into Kingdom by the creative teams of the first two seasons, which had way more overlap than either team has with the new team.

Now far be it from me to claim Kingdom 3 is a cynical cash-grab, it’s nowhere near bad enough to merit that label, but I do think it’s safe to assume Sawano was chosen to do the soundtrack for Season 3 because it was seen as a “safe” move from the corporate end of productions.  That because the man is individually very popular and has a good track record, putting him on the job would make the show more marketable to people in the know.  And not to knock Sawano too much, again I love his work on other shows, but I think he made a significant mistake to let his usual style dominate the composition rather than leaning on the soundtracks of the earlier seasons – like at least use them as an inspiration or something. Maybe the soundtracks will improve as things go on but I do not have high hopes on this front.

Last but not least the voice-acting is, well I want to say abysmal but I mean abysmal compared to Kingdom 1 & 2, overall it’s more like passable.  Minor characters being voiced by different people is annoying if inevitable but far more jarring is the drop in quality by the major players – all of whom have the same voice actors.  Again no idea if this is a recording issues, source rip issue or a directing issue, but almost everyone sounds worse than before.

The calmer strategist types tend to be minimally affected if they even sound worse at all but any character with a louder, more extreme personality and character is basically fucked.  Even Xin has taken a big hit here, with his yelling sounding somehow quieter and yet more grating than it was in earlier seasons.  Huan Yi, Wan Ji, Biao Gong, Lu Buwei and newcomer Ordo all have been it very bad.  I feel like this has to at least partially come from an audio recording/balancing problem because these characters in particular sound quieter and less full than they should.  Go back to the earlier seasons and listen to Huan Yi, Wan Ji, Biao Gong or Lu Buwei for a bit and see what I mean, as for Ordo I would use Lian Po as a point of reference for what Ordo should sound like. And listening to the banter between the two main harem girls is very eye-opening, it’s like night and day between Kingdom 2 and Kingdom 3, with the new season sounding seriously inferior.  I think the director is at least partially at fault here because, looking at both the anime and the manga many of these characters have the most personality in their dialogue and mannerisms and it may just be that the new director doesn’t have the experience or vision to bring that aspect of their characters to life or recognize its value.

Luckily it’s not all doom and gloom.  Now that battles are underway and characters have cuts and sweat over their faces and arms, the characters no longer look even vaguely plastic.  Unfortunately I still think Kingdom 2 with it’s thicker outlines and more emphasis on shading and linework looks better – but Kingdom 3 is now looking very solid.  Kingdom 3’s art has its quirks, particularly how it seems to fade out lighter colors while overemphasizing darker colors but it’s at least been very consistently solid so far and there’s no sign of Kingdom 3 dropping back into the horrible CG of Kingdom 1.

And of course the story is as good as ever, dropping us right into one of the biggest events in the story without any kind of rehash of the earlier seasons was a great idea. Kingdom 3 cuts any waiting time and drops right into the big time, the largest battle in the story where the stakes are as high as they can be and the odds of victory are as slim as we’ve ever seen them.  I do somewhat miss the more frequent narration and directing tricks that slowed earlier seasons of Kingdom down for dramatic effect and build-up, but I can’t really complain with how the story has progressed thus far because this is arguably the most complex arc of the manga in terms of the sheer number of characters, soldiers, number of battles and so forth that need to happen.

Overall Kingdom 3 is looking fairly good and I will be along for the ride, it only really stumbles when you compare it to Kingdom 2.  And that is a shame but nothing about Kingdom 3 indicates that will fall apart or end up being a shit sequel like some other high-profile sequels to old properties.  Thanks for reading, see you in the next one.

Peaks & Valleys: Boku no Hero Academia

This is exactly the kind of post that would get me a ton of backlash if not for the fact I run an obscure blog.  Not only has Boku no Hero already peaked, as someone up to date on both the anime and the manga, my interest in this IP is severely waning.  There will be spoilers ahead.

Boku no Hero has a couple serious problems which I imagine many fans have either not noticed or have overlooked because they like the show.  Fair enough I like it too, but I have to say with the battle against Gentle Criminal and La Brava over, there is basically nothing left that I find interesting in Boku no Hero.  How is this?  How did a story which was at one point so captivating become so dull so quickly?  Well there are a couple of reasons but let’s start with maybe the biggest one – Deku.  Now I like Deku, he’s a hard-working boy with a heart of gold and he wants to be the best there ever was.  But well, he’s kinda boring.  One of the inspirations for this post was NuxTaku’s video “Deku Officially Sucks” which while obviously intended to rile the fanbase of Boku no Hero, did contain some very good arguments.  Chief amongst them were the following: Deku is a character without intrigue and he’s narratively and thematically dwarfed by someone who honestly would have made a much better main character – Lemillion.

Long before I came across NuxTaku’s video I have to say one of Deku’s very first lines bugged the shit out of me – “this is the story of how I became the number 1 hero.”  It comes up before the story really even starts.  Personally I think dropping that line was a bad move because it takes away one of the biggest achievements Deku could make as character.  When I look at Deku my best point of comparison is Naruto and one of things Naruto gets on Deku by default is that it’s never framed like Naruto ever has a chance at becoming Hokage – until he beats Pain.  Sure Naruto constantly says he wants to be Hokage, but wanting something and getting it are two very different things.  For a huge chunk of Naruto, Naruto’s big talk is laughed at.  It’s considered absurd.  But once he proves himself against the worst enemy Konoha had ever faced, suddenly his claims sound a lot less stupid.

By contrast Deku outright saying he became the best before we’ve really even seen anything is a giant buzzkill.  I mean it’s not a deal-breaker or anything but it really rubbed me the wrong way and it makes Boku no Hero all about the journey, because the we already know the destination.  Now that works plenty well in other shows and it could in theory work for Boku no Hero, but Boku no Hero shoots itself in the foot yet again because we know the means by which Deku will achieve this by the end of the first episode – he has one of the world’s greatest powers handed to him on a platter.  Sure he has to train and master One for All but there really no narrative hook here.  A perfectly generic good guy is given an immense power right out the gate and the only negatives are that he isn’t ready for this power so using it beats the shit out of him.  The problem with Deku is that he already has the perfect heroic mindset so all he needs to do is gain experience and master One for All – and while this makes sense as the reason All Might gave Deku this power is because of his mindset and attitude it’s also narratively boring.  Like how many interesting fights can Deku have where his main concern is hurting himself too badly to fight on or fight another day?

As it turns out not very many.  You’ll notice in season 4 none of his big fights revolved around this problem.  And yes this is in part due to Deku creating or developing workarounds but it also shows the limits of his constricting narrative.  I’m once more reminded of Naruto.  Naruto was a kid who worked his ass off developing techniques and was given great power.  However where Deku’s power is gifted to him by his idol and it earns him nothing but respect in wider society, Naruto’s power is given to him as a desperate measure and he is widely ostracized for bearing Kurama within him.  There also a another couple of layers here.  Deku’s worst outcome in any given fight is failing to save someone or doing too much damage to himself to continue fighting.  Naruto’s worst case scenario is losing control of his power and hurting everyone around him without meaning to.  Moreover because Naruto’s power source is Kurama, he has to walk the tightrope path between drawing out Kurama’s power to master his full potential while not being overwhelmed by Kurama’s chakra and giving in to bestial rage.  Deku has no such set of consequences, his only backlash in using All for One is that he hurts himself and he has the selflessness to let that happen for the sake of saving people.

I’m sure I can take this comparison deeper but I think I got the point across.  Deku is boring.  He’s nice, he’s got a good head on his shoulders and he has an immense power he has yet to master.  And that’s basically it.  Deku doesn’t have inner demons, his worst mental setback is doubting himself on occasion.  Deku’s power and lack of mastery over it has no interesting consequences, nor can the story really go all in on those consequences more a couple of times or else Deku would never be able to fight again.  There is no mystery, depth or intrigue in Deku – we know his destination and we know the means by which he reaches it, it’s just a matter of watching that story play out.  This isn’t to say Boku no Hero or even Deku himself can’t be great but Deku’s story is one with a short shelf life and I think after Gentle Criminal that shelf life has all but expired.  Deku was at his very best during his match with Todoroki during the Sports Festival.  Because that was a match wherein winning for Deku meant tearing his body apart and ultimately losing the big match that he wanted to win for the sake of getting through to Todoroki and saving Todoroki from his inner demons.  Since then Deku has been significantly less impressive with the Stain battle being the second best Deku moment in my opinion.  It’s a shame because he could have been made a lot more interesting if he was allowed to fail more often – but because almost all of Deku’s battles outside of the Sports Festival are matters of life and death, he can’t afford to lose them.  It would also help if maybe he had a different power that allowed for more narrative flexibility.

Which is were Lemillion comes in.  Lemillion and Deku have the same basic dream, attitude and story arc.  The difference is that Lemillion’s is much more compelling and he ends up in a much more interesting position.  Lemillion was a guy born with a pretty crappy powers who struggled to be more than a joke in the eyes of his peers.  But through an ultra positive attitude, dedication and a tutor that helped him master his bizarre power he rose through the ranks and was very nearly at the pinnacle.  Then when he has Overhaul on the ropes, Overhaul puts him in an impossible dilemma, save Eri and take a bullet that erases his powers for good or dodge the bullet and let Eri die.  Obviously he takes the bullet and this is by far the biggest emotional moment in his arc.  He’s inches away from achieving his goal and yet he’s forced to lose everything for the sake of his ideals, because this is a bullet he can’t afford to dodge.  And yet he doesn’t give up, he keeps fighting, he keeps smiling and he doesn’t lose hope.  Lemillion is Deku but a vastly superior version of Deku, his struggles are far greater, the sacrifices he makes significantly more costly and yet he doesn’t bend, he doesn’t break, he takes it all in stride and has hope for the future.

I’m begrudgingly reminded of Bleach’s Fullbringer arc here.  After Ichigo stopped Aizen he ended losing all of his spirit power for a time and he goes on living a normal life until a group of people show him a way that he might be able to get his power back.  Now the Fullbringer arc is to the best of my knowledge fairly widely panned and I didn’t think it wasn’t very good.  But it did attempt something extremely difficult and with tons of potential, a soft reset where someone who rises to the top suddenly crashes back down to rock bottom because they sacrificed all of their future potential for victory now (see HunterxHunter for reference).  But where Bleach didn’t really have the staying power for that I think Lemillion might have had he been the main the character of Boku no Hero.  In any event Deku could not go through this very arc, because losing his power is too great a loss to the wider world.  Another limitation on Deku’s story, and a reason why Lemillion is more interesting.

Getting away from Deku there are two other problems with Boku no Hero Academia that have crippled my interest in the story.  The size of the cast and the loss of All Might.  Now large casts aren’t inherently a problem but Boku no Hero has lost a lot of steam because many beloved or otherwise interesting characters either haven’t gotten much development or have been developed some and then sidelined to make room for more characters.  Ochako is probably the best example.  During the Sports Festival her battle with Bakugo was, and excuse the pun, the tits.  In a tournament arc with tons of interesting battles her’s was solidly in second place behind the even more phenomenal Deku versus Todoroki.  And since then what have we seen from her?  Basically nothing.  Sure she learned some martial arts and she was even present for the raid on Overhaul.  But what did she do during the raid?  Did she fight any interesting enemies?  Did she suffer serious injuries?  Did she bust out a crazy new technique she’d been working on and make an impact?  None of the above.  She’s barely in the raid.  Kirishima had a bigger part to play, and don’t get me wrong Kirishima is great, his fight was awesome and his Unbreakable form looks rad as hell but I wanted Ochako to shine too.  Worse if you read ahead the manga mostly gets away from the kids and focuses mostly on the adult heroes.

It makes sense with the worldbuilding for the kids to play a smaller role as the war against the villains ramps up but there’s a ton of moving parts and Boku no Hero Academia is all too willing to jump around and develop a ton of different characters, while leaving some of the core characters to essentially stagnate.  It makes the story less engaging because the worldbuilding is not that great.  I mean it’s not terrible and it raises some interesting questions but I’ve seen better versions elsewhere.  I even wrote about it before – here’s the link– I already argued that Tiger and Bunny and Gatchaman Crowds were better at this.  That the strength of Boku no Hero is that it has polished the basics of shounen storytelling to a mirror sheen and delivers on the fundamentals so well.  Now that it’s moving into a more complex narrative it’s starting to fall apart and become boring.

Last but not least is the question of All Might.  All Might is one of the greatest shounen characters ever written.  He’s powerful, a national symbol, a man with big dreams and equally huge responsibilities with an unflinching will and all kinds of natural charisma.  To me the ultimate peak of Boku no Hero is All Might versus All for One.  These two titanic figures with larger than life powers, archenemies who have wounded each other so badly they never returned to their top form, duking it out one last time.  The fight was one of the most simplistic I can think of and yet it was also incredibly emotional.  All for One doing everything he can to break All Might’s will and reveal the secrets he didn’t want to world to know, against All Might’s implacable spirit and his willingness to throw away the last dregs of his power in one final Smash to put his nemesis down once and for all was incredible.  And the bit at the end where All Might, a battered husk of his former self points at the camera and says “You’re next” is so fucking good.  It is not just the peak of Boku no Hero but a remarkable high point in the shouen genre, sure to go down with some of the other biggest moments in shounen storytelling.  I always tear up when I start writing about this fight because it was that good, it had that much impact.  And with All Might mostly out of the story, Boku no Hero has lost one of it’s biggest narrative hooks.  All Might was really the glue that held so much of this story together and he’s gone.

With all of that in mind I hope any Boku no Hero fans reading understand why I will not really be hype for any future seasons of Boku no Hero.  All Might is a footnote, Lemillion is out of the picture.  The interesting criminals of season 4 are behind bars.  All that’s left is to explore the League of Villains and have more showdowns, with a little bit of training here and there along the way.  Boku no Hero has gotten rid of its most interesting characters and thrown much of its strong points out the window as it moves on to the next big arc.  I’m not saying it will suck necessarily, but I would be floored if any future seasons were as good as season 4, let alone the true high points of the show seasons 2 & 3.  Thanks for reading, see you in the next one.

Peaks and Valleys: Shield Hero

I’m normally a complete package kind of guy when it comes to reviews and shows but seeing as we’re all stuck at home for a few more weeks at least I thought it would be fun to instead focus on when any particular show is at it’s best and worst and why these particular parts are the best and worst.  There will be spoilers.

I kind of already spelled this out for Shield Hero in a different review but I figured it was worth rehashing and using as the start of a new series of posts.  Shield Hero is probably one of the best examples of this because frankly it hits its peak so damn fast, it never really recovers and I can basically talk about the whole package anyway as it’s broad trends rather than individual moments which make up the peaks and valleys.  Shield Hero is at it’s absolute best in the early parts of story starting from the false rape charge laid on Naofumi and his immense struggle to make anything out of himself due to the limitations of being a Shield Hero.  Naofumi is great in these early parts for a number of reasons but chief among would be his inner struggle.  Despite the fact he buys Raphtalia as a slave and forces her into combat, many of their early scenes together show hints of the good, caring guy Naofumi is at heart – but he’s been so badly screwed by this world out the gate that he can’t fully open himself up even to her.  This is also accompanied by some of my favorite scenes, where Naofumi essentially embraces the villain label and goes full asshole towards the world that fucked him.  The early chapters (I vastly prefer the manga to the anime), were what really captivated me when I took a look at Shield Hero.

The premise was interesting enough but it was the contrasts between the kind of person Naofumi wanted to be versus the attitudes and behaviors that we needed to thrive in a hostile world were great.  And his black-pilled rage was incredibly cathartic.  Watching Naofumi make a mockery of the people and world that fucked him out the gate was so fun to indulge in.  Now these chapters are not the only narrative highs, I think both of the first 2 waves of calamity were good as well.  I do wish Naofumi had the let the guards who had rained down magic on his position when he was saving the town near the first wave get killed because it would not only be what they deserved but also a lot more moral ambiguity to a character who was already well on his way to returning to the tried and true normal hero.  And the introduction of Glass really spiced up a story that was in decline with Naofumi outshining the other Heroes so much.

Sadly it was no to be.  I’m still reading chapters of Shield Hero as they come out but I have lost most of my interest in the series.  I don’t know if the aspects of the show that lead it its valleys came from author or the publisher – but either way they are a massive missed opportunity.  The early portions of Shield Hero were some of the most high profile examples of morally ambiguous heroes since Killua from HunterxHunter.  They absolutely should have capitalized on that.  Because the aspects of Shield Hero that bring it down are many.  For starters the world is boring as fuck, a basic bitch fantasy RPG world with minimal intrigue.  The politics of that world are hamfisted as fuck, and while the some dialogue points to a world which could be large and nuanced and interesting, the politics we actually see never go beyond “Shield Hero bad or good” and betrayals for the sake of power grabbing.  The bad guys are neatly defined as are the good guys and there’s no overlap between the two, no double agents, no actors working with or between the two sides, etc.  The world is boring.  The waves are boring.  Most of the characters are boring because frankly only Naofumi and people directly around him get any development.

The only saving grace of Shield Hero early on was that it had the balls to go straight for the jugular, screwing the main character instantly and putting him a terrible position.  And then it delivered by giving us a hero who had hints of nice guy he was deep down buried beneath a mountain of justifiable distrust and rage.  Naofumi was stuck in a loop where it looked like he could never get strong, until he did something super questionable like buying a slave, a little girl, and forcing her to kill for him.  And during the first two waves, even though Naofumi has gotten strong he’s not overpowering.  The other Heroes waste the boss of the first wave while Naofumi struggles to save the nearby village, and in the second wave when the story was going downhill as Naofumi made all the other Heroes look like fools, they suddenly dropped Glass on us and showed that even at the recent height of his power, Naofumi still had a long way to go.

This is not to say there were no good parts between the waves or after the second wave.  A lot of the early emotional development between Naofumi and Raphtalia was great, though I thought the anime kind of botched it by making Raphtalia much thirstier for Naofumi as soon as Filo enters the party.  And the bits with Raphtalia getting to confront the noble who enslaved her and killed her best friend was good too.  However the story suffers from two major problems after the first wave.  Naofumi becomes the good guy too fast.  Both in his own behavior and in how the people of the kingdom come around to him, his reputation is practically already redeemed before the second wave, it just takes one last push in proving that the Church, the king and Malty are corrupt – but for all intents and purposes Naofumi has stopped being an outcast shortly after the first wave.  And because he isn’t ostracized he doesn’t really need to rage or be an asshole, he can be a generic good guy whose behavior never gets worse than making people pay him for rendering his services.  He mas no moral ambiguity whatsoever and is basically as good as the story needs him to be, he genuinely gets pretty boring and the investment and goodwill bought by the earlier chapters was all that carried me forward.

Even more egregious though is the other main factor in Shield Hero’s decline, the utter lack of competency in anyone who doesn’t like Naofumi.  By the second wave Naofumi is head and shoulders above the other heroes, and basically anyone besides boss monsters and Glass.  His party members are also quite competent and loyal and he’s more or less the ideal leader of the Heroes, he just needs have his name cleared.  Now if Shield Hero had any good sense they still could have made this work, what should have happened was that the second wave should have been a wake up call.  The other Heroes should have been smart enough to understand they had been lazy and put their noses to the grindstone so that they could attempt to surpass him.  And the persecution against Naofumi should have ramped up – not to kill him as the story actually goes, but to try and keep him down and prevent him from gaining strength.  Maybe recognize his achievements by giving him a specific task that looks like a reward but is actually a punishment.  Then if Naofumi ignores or forfeits this task the king has justification to put him in prison or something.  Like there are any number of ways to cripple Naofumi’s growth and prominence without actually trying to kill him.

But no Shield Hero’s idea of making Naofumi look good, is half Naofumi’s hard work (the good shit) and half making all of Naofumi’s enemies or even potential enemies into completely uncharismatic, unlikable, and unskilled morons (the bad shit).  In that regard scythe boy and Glass are welcome additions because they are competent foes, but both of them actually like/respect Naofumi – and it looks like they will end up working with him in the end (I would bet money on it).  By contrast the other Heroes, the king, the Church, Malty – all of them are completely nonthreatening.  They had some potential early on but they are all bark and no bite as Naofumi clowns on all of them in every conceivable way.  Naofumi is smarter, more mature, stronger.  He beats them in figuring out the plots against the kingdom, he beats the enemies they can’t and he even beats them in races where they cheat.  Again this didn’t need to spell the end of Shield Hero, if the other Heroes took these lessons to heart and made serious efforts to surpass Naofumi while still mostly being his enemy that would be good, and if any of the schemers working against Naofumi had a lick of subtlety them that would help.

I think Shield Hero peaked quite a while ago.  There will be some hype moments and maybe some good plots and character moments to come but I’m basically done with it.  The introduction of Scythe boy was good, and some of the latest plot points have potential.  But seeing how quickly the creatirs abandoned what made they great and how  they’ve made no efforts whatsoever to address its biggest problems, I have a hard time seeing how what comes next won’t just be more of the same.  I have no interest in that.  I have no interest in basic bitch fantasy RPG worlds, with basic bitch plots, factions and politics.  I have no interest in struggles where all of the antagonists go from threatening foes to total jokes.  I have no interest in watching the one competent Hero and his team swell in number to fight the threats the other Heroes obviously suck too much to fight.  I have no interest in a story whose characters have been all but milked dry of there most important character moments and haven’t meaningfully developed for like two entire arcs.  And that’s a shame because once upon a time I thought Shield Hero was one of the most interest manga I was reading, not enough to be one of the greats, not a true classic, but something that had the potential to aim for those heights.  And that manga is long gone now.  Thanks for reading, I’ll see you in the next one.

First Impressions: Kingdom 3

Man is this about to get messy.  On the one hand as soon as I bothered to check the season charts and saw Kingdom 3 I raised my fists to the sky and cried out in manly victorious joy.   And on the other I found some things about first episode of the new season somewhat off-putting and a casual glance into the comment sections revealed that not only was hardly anyone being critical but the few who were not getting a great reception.  Fuck it, here we go.

Just to appease any naysayers and set the groundwork for anyone who hasn’t read my prior reviews of Kingdom, let me start with this: I love Kingdom.  It’s probably my favorite manga with Berserk being the only real competition and even the anime, maligned as it so often is for the so-ugly-it-hurts CG of season 1 is still in my top 5.  Any criticisms that follow do not come from a place of hate, they come from a place of passionate love for this series balanced against the cautious cynic in me who had nothing but hope for the similarly long-awaited D Gray -Man sequel only to be brutally disappointed, so much so that I’d honestly rather D Gray Man never got a sequel than get D Gray-Man Hallow.  As of episode 1, Kingdom 3 does not have any serious indicators that it will be bad or will fail, but there are some noticeable changes from Kingdom 2 – and while many in the comments sections seem to see this as a pure upgrade I am not among them.  To me Kingdom 2 was the high-water mark for the anime adaptation, and seeing how it held that position for 6 years a lot of the stylistic choices of Kingdom 2 are what I mostly strongly identify Kingdom with.  And while I’m not against change per se, I am wary whenever a long-awaited sequel comes around and starts changing things that I didn’t have a problem with or even loved.  With that in mind let’s address the most noticeable change fight off the bat shall we?

The visuals of Kingdom have long been a contentious issue.  The first season is rightly mocked for being pretty hideous, Kingdom 2 saw massive visual improvements and now Kingdom 3 is bringing a new visual style into the mix.  It’s immediately and very noticeably different from Kingdom 2 but it’s not necessarily a major downgrade – in fact many commenters think it’s an upgrade.  However the new artstyle has some bizarre quirks.  Certain colors, most noticeably the armor and clothes colors are more vivid than in earlier seasons but other colors seem faded by comparison.  For example Li Mu’s hair looks dull light brown in season 3 despite being golden-brown blonde in earlier seasons.  However it’s the skin and facial expressions which have taken the biggest hit.

In season 2, which I think was when Kingdom looked the best, there’s not a lot of shadows cast on characters’ faces.  Instead they give more definition by adding extra line work, usually in form of dirt smudges and cuts.  Same goes for the bodies, you tend to see the muscles lines in Xin’s arms whereas Season 3 doesn’t have that thus far.  Season 3’s artstyle seems to be replacing linework with shadows and it’s not quite as good.  Perhaps the best example of the problems with this style are faces of Changwenjun and Changping in throne room.  Their faces are brightly lit as though they are outside or as if there’s a big torch flickering in a dark room – but neither is the case, and there are shadows all over everyone’s faces which present the suggestion of not only lighting where there isn’t any but also the of lines and shading to give the facial expressions more definition, structure and character.  However it makes them look kind of plastic when compared to the artwork of season 2, where there were fewer shadows used but colors tend to be less vivid.  Maybe this will end up working out since it seemed like less of an issue when characters were outdoors and thus would have more natural lighting but frankly I just preferred the duller and more grounded colors of Kingdom 2 and I seriously hope they bring back more line work to add detail to the faces during the course of battles and so on.  Moving on.

The pacing seems faster than before.  Maybe this will only apply to episode 1 because it needs to get so much information across so quickly but the 3rd person narration was minimal and it felt like the episode flew by.  That may continue in the long run or it may just be a quirk of this episode but earlier seasons of kingdom definitely slowed themselves down with lots of narration.  And while I can certainly see some people preferring this faster pace, I kind of liked the slow methodical rhythm of earlier seasons because it gave the show a lot of character and helped to add to the weightiness of conflicts and characters, which is frankly one of the strongest selling points of Kingdom – its ability to imbue individual characters with so much weight and history as to make them feel overwhelming.  No other anime I’ve come across has been able to generate such palpably powerful living legend type characters as Wang Yi and Lian Po.   Maybe I’m being paranoid but it could also mean this will be a much shorter season and so they have to cut down on narration and speed things up, which would be a real shame.  Sadly the issues of episode 1 only get more serious from here.

The music is barely noticeable, seriously when I was gathering my initial thoughts I realized I had no recollection of the soundtrack at all and re-watched the episode with special focus on the music, and let me tell you it was unimpressive and forgettable, so much so I actually did totally forget to pay attention to it for a few minutes in the middle which I had to go over that part again.  This is a huge issue because the massive swelling tracks from the earlier seasons were one of the main attractions of the anime over the manga.  Despite the terrible visuals of earliest episodes of Kingdom the soundtrack was immense and overpowering – it truly helped to sell the sheer scale and scope of the action taking place.  Now I like Sawano and his work but episode 1 is severely lacking on the music front and it needs attention.

It would be much better for the soundtrack to be loud, omni-present and possibly overshadowing the events on screen than for it to be quite and easily lost in the episode.  Because Kingdom is about a colossal conflict with hugely important figures of history – if anything the music needs to be so grand and epic that it would feel out of place or overdramatic in any other series, that’s the level of sound that made the Kingdom anime worth coming back to.  And frankly my biggest concern here is not that Sawano can’t perform, but that the new director and the creative staff do not see or understand the vision and design that made the prior seasons so good.  Because while all 3 seasons have different directors, seasons 1 and 2 had a lot more overlap in the creative staff – at least for the people who are listed so far.  And after the immense letdown that was D Gray Man Hallow, I’m painfully aware of how badly a new staff with a different vision can botch a great IP.

Even more off-putting to me though is the voice-acting.  While the main cast is still voiced by the same people some of there performances felt a lot weaker.  Meng Tian, Teng and Lu Buwei are most noticeable in this regard.  They all come off as much more serious than before.  Part of this was no doubt to do with the seriousness of the crisis at hand, and is therefore defensible – but the paranoid part of me is worried that this a bad call on the part of the new director.  Meng Tian and Lu Buwei both had a great deal more playfulness in their delivery in prior seasons and that is sorely missed here, especially from Meng Tian since his only lines in this episode come before the crisis unfolds.  Teng is also a huge disappointment.  Part of the charm of his character was how he sounded and behaved a kinda goofy, contrasted by his unstoppable power when he goes beast-mode.  There was none of that prior goofiness in his delivery in episode 1 and having read the manga, he will need it for future scenes and conversations.  They also switched out the voice actors of some relatively minor but frequently recurring characters, which is understandable given the time-gap and the ludicrous size of Kingdom’s cast but it’s also a disappointment because we see a lot of these characters later down the line.  Shi Shi is a good example as are Lu Wuwei and Gan Yang.

Now despite the doom and gloom predictions, I don’t think this is a massive downgrade or anything, nor is it enough to make me stop watching – I sat through season 1 so I can handle worse animation in the name of a good story.  But rather than lose myself to the hype I want to be cautiously optimistic.  The last time I was this hyped for a sequel was when D Gray-Man Hallow came out and that was a fucking tragedy, a massive downgrade on every possible front made watchable only because of the good plot.  Now Kingdom has not shit the bed already the way D Gray-Man Hallow did in its first episode but I’d rather worry and be proven wrong than charge into this uncritically and end up disappointed.

The biggest worry for me is the audio.  If all I cared about were visuals and story then I would just read the manga where Kingdom is concerned.  But the music and voice-acting in seasons 1 and 2 were so strong that I felt it was worth watching the anime as well as reading the manga – the sounds of Kingdom were the most crucial component of the anime experience and right now they are not looking so hot.  That may yet change as we get to the actual battles and hype moments but probably my biggest concern with Sawano’s music is that I don’t know if it’s the right fit for Kingdom.  I mean don’t get me wrong the man is amazing but I think his music shines the most when it’s going for the big hype moments or big emotional moments but is relatively unimpressive in between these moments.  Kingdom’s soundtrack should be powerful all the time, because frankly most of what’s going on is hype.  Sure the big duels between important characters are especially important but underselling the drama of the clashes between armies a hundred thousand strong would be a massive mistake.

That’s about all I’ve to say on the subject for now.  Hopefully I didn’t kill too much fanboy hype for Kingdom 3 and truth be told I sincerely hope future episodes prove all my concerns to be unfounded.  I’m so glad Kingdom is back, especially now that it’s tackling possibly the biggest arc of the manga.  I want this to be the best, 10/10 show of the season that beats the fuck out of me for ever doubting it.  But for now, I’ll be holding on to those doubts until I’m proven wrong.  Thanks for reading.  See you in the next one.

Seasonal Summaries: Winter 2020

Now that everyone’s stuck at home due to coronavirus, I figure it’s a good a time as to start pumping out more posts since you should all have the time to read them.  With that in mind I wanted to touch on some the great shows of the previous season that I was too lazy to write a proper review for.  There will be spoilers.

 

I know every season chart now is gigantic and full of shit shows but Winter 2020 had 8 shows that I had a great time with, which makes it a pretty strong season.  Because it’s easy, I’ll start with the one that’s still going – To Aru Kagaku no Railgun 3.  Ever since I first discovered To Aru Majutsu no Index like 8 years ago I continue to love this balls-to-the-walls scifi-fantasy mashup.  But where I basically gave up on the Accelerator spin-off because he’s only great in small doses, the Misaka spin-offs have been a ton of fun and explored the world from someone more strongly rooted in the science end of this bizarre world than Touma, who is more involved with magical side.  It’s also nice to get away from some of the running gags of Index by mostly cutting Touma out of the story, and following a different close-knit group of friends.  This season of Railgun has been one of the most tense and action-packed of the 3 so far and I’m looking forward to where it will go with its 25 episodes.  All of the seasons have been consistently quality experiences and this one looks to maybe be the best of the bunch.  I especially recommend it now, since you presumably have more time to binge the 7(?) related seasons of Index, Railgun and Accelerator spin-offs.

 

Moving right along probably the biggest disappointment among my 8 shows was Jibaku Shounen Hanako-San.  I love the artsyle and the color choices but I think it is unnecessarily slow by trying to be cryptic rather than address the main antagonist.  And while I enjoyed myself and was willing to let the show drag its heels, I do wish a little more had happened with regards to the inevitable Hanako vs Tsukasa clash.  The boundaries of the various School Wonders were especially interesting and I do like that show could be so playful before suddenly crashing headfirst into really dark shit but ultimately I do think putting off the main confrontation like Hanako-san did hurt the show a bit.  Still if you like the supernatural and ghost stories or are looking for an anime with especially striking/unique visuals Hanako-san might be worth your while.

 

Kyokou Suiri was probably ranked 7th out of the eight shows I truly enjoyed this season.  One the one hand I like the supernatural elements, the bizarre characters and Iwanaga’s energetic dialogue and powerful deductive reasoning.  One the other hand, this show was really slow and basically centered around one small scale conflict.  It’s a shame because I really wanted to see these characters in a variety of settings and conflicts – maybe a contrast between scenarios where Kuro’s immortality or Iwanaga’s intellect was more useful.  But I did enjoy the ride, especially since this was a conflict where Iwanaga, who was by far the most interesting character, was at her best – using Bakemonogatari-esque logic to weave compelling a mesh of truth and lies that would undo the rumors that birthed a vicious ghost into rumors where the ghost wouldn’t exist for the purpose of erasing the ghost.  I think Kyoko Suiri is a bit guilty of trying to show off how smart it is being while not as being maybe as smart as it thinks it is but Iwanaga was a really fun character and she dominated the show especially as we went through her strategies in-depth one strategy per episode.  It’s a fun time and well worth it for anybody who likes the Monogatari franchise.

 

Every season there is at least one anime you desperately hopes no one walks in on you watching and in Winter 2020 that show was Ishuzoku Reviewers.  And it was basically perfect.  It’s about a mostly consistent group of 4 guys going to whatever fantasy whorehouse strikes their fancy and reviewing their unfettered sexual deviancy for all the world to see.  You kind of have to love shows which are so unabashedly and unashamedly trashy and just give the audience what they know we want.  What really makes Ishuzoku Reviewers stand apart from other trashy fan service shows though is the detail.  The writer clearly sat down and thought about how different species would interact, what kinds of constraints or preferences they would have, etc.  The beastman guy was an especially good example since he often brought things like smell because his sense of smell was stronger than a human’s.  Honestly this show is exactly what it says on the tin and I’d be amazed if anyone reading this who would enjoy it hasn’t already seen it.  Moving on.

 

Eizouken was my sleeper hit of the season.  I initially overlooked it because while other critics I watch/read praised it, I’ve never really felt the need to delve into anime about making anime.  Then I saw Kamamori scenes and I marathoned half the show in an afternoon.  This show has a ton of heart and character, with a strong central cast who really capture the different aspects of creatives very well.  There Asakusa the director and concept artist, Mizusaki the key animator and Kanamori the best character who represents the production staff with her cutthroat, money-focused attitude.  Her backstory episode was one of the favorite parts of the show, where gives the store she’s working at a massive boost with her marketing schemes.  But Asakusa really carries the show with her detail-oriented, and highly creative brain and a passionate love the medium that makes anime seem almost magical as it brings her various visions to life.  Definitely a great time for any creative and/or anime fan.  Seriously if you love anime you owe it to yourself to give this show a watch.

 

I don’t know if I would rate this next show 4th out the eight but the so-cute-it-hurts adventure of Somali to Mori no Kami-sama was one of the most heartwarming shows I’ve seen in a long time, despite the fact one of the core points of the plot is that Somali was a slave and humanity has been nearly genocided by the other creatures which inhabit this world.  That said most of the show follows the travels and father-daughter relationship of a Golem who’s reaching the end of his lifespan and the human child Somali.  It’s mostly cute and fun and despite being  a heartwarming tale of family and adventure it has the most unique and vibrant fantasy setting I’ve seen in ages.  No RPG game-based bullshit here, this is a bonafide fantasy world and my god is it a joy for a fantasy fan to see.  The world is strange and colorful, full of beastfolk and other mythical creatures of every imaginable stripe living in bizarre and exotic locations.  The artwork is absolutely stunning, especially when it comes to the fantasy backgrounds and cities.  Truly this is a must watch for fantasy fans.

 

ID:Invaded is great.  The way it just hits the ground running, going all in on it’s special tech and giving you the details you need to understand what’s going without stopping for exposition dumps was quite impressive.  Moreover this was the first high concept show in a while to really stay consistently good.  I know a lot of people were hyped about Babylon and Kado the Right Answer before it, but while those shows started strong they both failed miserably as the story went along.  ID:Invaded makes no such errors, rather than trying to be really, extra intelligent it keeps itself more simple and more grounded and delivers on one of the best shows of the season.  This is first time since Psycho-Pass that I felt anime really nailed something in the near-future scifi genre.  It strongly reminded me of the Minority Report though with much stronger characters.  Narihisago in particular was a great lead, especially when we get the contrast between Narihisago and his brilliant detective counterpart Sakaido – though Hondomachi was quite good as well.  It’s a great show with the same kind of mainstream appeal as a Psycho-Pass, thoroughly worth the time it takes to watch it.

 

 

Dorohedoro was another surprise this season.  See when it was first announced I was hearing rumblings about how good the manga was and “oh no are they gonna fuck this up?” so I binged the manga.  And when episode 1 and its CG rolled around I was skeptical to say the least.  But the sheer insanity that is Dorohedoro could not be held back even by CG.  The team behind this did a great job making the backgrounds highly-detailed and lived in like the manga and the vocal performances were amazing.  Seriously if the visual style is enough to give you some pause before watching the vocal performances make it absolutely worth watching.  Noi and Ebisu in particular are amazing and the baseball episode halfway through the show was the best baseball episode in anime history and I will fucking fight anyone who says otherwise.  The creative staff really knocked this one out of the park, powering through this strange story to keep us on our toes.  To quote one Youtube comment that I thought captured the appeal of Dorohedoro “how did they make this show manage to be so brutal and so wholesome at the same time?”  I was once a doubter back in episodes 1 and 2 but I have seen the light and I’m really glad I did because this turned out to be a ton of fun.  Shocking!

 

However, as there is in every season, there can only be one best show.  And in Winter 2020 that was Bofuri aka Maple’s Bizarre Video Game Adventure.  As sick to death of RPG worlds and OP gamers as I am, nothing could have prepared for much fun I was going to have with the chaos and cuteness of Bofuri.  Maple is basically a perfect character.  Her strength comes from her being such a colossal airhead and such a noob gamer that she has no common sense when it comes to video games and therefore is free to throw convention out the window.  Like in the character creation, rather than make a balanced character build, she throws everything into health and defense.  Or when she loses her weapons in the hydra fight but gains immunity to its damage and then proceeds to nom the hydra to death.  It’s incredible because her character is given the freedom to be both innocently devious in a way the hardcore types consider cheap or to be as happy go lucky as she wants only have things randomly work out in her favor.  For example she had no idea if the Psychokinesis skill would in fact allow her to fly her giant turtle pet and thus make up for her naturally slow movement speed.  Or when she soaks the giant wool covering she gets from Wooly in poison to prevent people from hurting her because she’s immune to poison – and most damage – and hardly anyone else is.  Because Maple’s a happy-go-lucky airhead and the game she’s playing is so reactive to the player experience, she is essentially free to gather an ungodly messy and powerful set of skills.  Which is why by shows end she can summon a poison hydra, turn into an angel, equip a Gundam armor set and last but not least summon Xenomorphs and become Xenomorph queen.  It’s hilarious, cute and fun and there’s a bit during the first major game event where someone runs up and tries to bash her heap open with a mace and it just bounces off with Bonk noise while Maple just turns her head with an innocent little “Huh?” noise and it perfectly encapsulates the appeal of this utterly ridiculous show.  I mean I do like the other characters too but Maple carries this one big time and that’s ok because she’s amazing.  This is a must watch, some of the most fun I’ve had in quite some time.

 

Unpopular Opinion: RWBY Volume 7

Volume 7 is among the best RWBY has to offer, while it personally takes third place in my ranking of the Volumes, it has to be said it’s a definite improvement over the last couple of Volumes.  There will be spoilers.

Despite what I just said Volume 7 has a couple problems, not least of which was the ending.  It kind of made me want to tear my hair out.  You end an episode on a giant cliffhanger like the reveal of massive enemy army, not a season.  Could you imagine if the Two Towers ended with Saruman’s army just starting to besiege Helm’s Deep but not actually showing the battle?  It would be so shit.  I actually compared it live with a friend of mine to what Avatar the Last Airbender would have been like if Book 2 ended when the drill reached the wall of Ba Sing Sei, and he laughed at how bad that would be.  Ending where Volume 7 did is a terrible idea.  Big cliffhanger moments only really work on a short wait.  I’ve got tons of shit to watch, play and do between now and Volume 8, do you think I’ll still be hype by then?  Maybe a little, but if it came out next week I’d be hype as fuck.  Terrible plan, marring what was otherwise a mostly solid Volume.

Probably the biggest selling point of Volume 7 is the setting and the locals that in habit it.  There’s a massive wealth divide between the twin cities of Atlas and Mantle, and Atlas is by far the most tech & science focused of all the major cities in Remnant.  General Ironwood, the de facto ruler of Atlas, is probably one of the best things about Volume 7 as well.  I know a lot of people are pissed that he made of some of the decisions he did but I thought they did a great job with his character.  He’s a guy who is mostly trying to do the right thing, but because of his failures at Beacon he has to work in total secrecy and it’s putting even more strain on the tenuous relationship between Atlas and Mantle, as well as turning most of the civilian authorities and populace against him.  I’ve seen many people angry that he wasn’t more open from the outset or that he didn’t work with Robin earlier but frankly anyone who says that is being naive.  Robin did not strike me as a good guy until after Yang & Blake convinced her Ironwood was trying to help, in fact I was somewhat stoked for the idea that she might incite a rebellion or attack a vital supply caravan and invite further retribution, and that the chaos she creates would be how Salem’s forces infiltrate the city.  For a project of Amity’s importance secrecy is paramount, especially considering how Salem & Co. favor infiltration before bringing out massive Grimm attacks.

Moreover I personally love the way Ironwood falls apart at the end, how after a whole season of the man clearly struggling with his own doubts, he gets a couple episodes worth of hope and then it all comes crashing down.  He sees a single calling card from Beacon’s destruction, timed with a Grimm attack, and his paranoia kicks into overdrive.  He goes full “if you aren’t with me, you’re against me” and shatters the alliance between his loyal troops and Ruby’s teams/allies.  He makes the worst possible calls with his best intentions and you can see the full effect his failures at Beacon and his grip on power has on him and his subordinates.  They have convinced themselves following Ironwood and his tough calls is the right thing to do even when they don’t want to do it, deep down.  And I think one of the best parts of all of this is that Ironwood is convinced he can’t win.  He’s defined victory as saving Atlas no matter the cost and he assumes they can’t stop Salem’s invasion, that’s the whole reason he abandons Mantle – he’s convinced he’ll lose so his best move is to reduce his losses, no matter how heartless that proposition is.

And look where it leaves him, Salem and her army are at his doorstep and he’s lost critical assets, let alone gotten the city to safety.  He was so sure his way was the only way forward he didn’t consider just how badly it could fail, because not everyone involved would agree.  A classic mistake among authoritarians, they fall into “if only everyone agreed with me” mindsets and their plans come to ruin because there’s nothing which everyone agrees on.  Though in Ironwood’s defense I do think this reaction is exacerbated by Ruby making the single biggest mistake in the entire Volume, telling Ironwood that Salem is immortal.  That news almost destroyed the unity and fighting spirit of Ruby and her friends, and they are much more tightly knit than Ironwood’s forces, let alone the civilians of Atlas and Mantle.  Telling Ironwood that Salem was a foe he literally couldn’t kill may have helped convince him that escaping Salem was the only victory he could achieve.  Pro-tip:  Never tell your allies or armies they can’t win before the battle begins or that tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The inner struggles of the Ace-OPs, Penny and Winter are also good.  Winter is perhaps in the worst position of all and shows one of the best balances between emotion and disciplined devotion to Ironwood.  Her loyalty to Ironwood is absolute and thus she goes along with his worst decisions – but she is consistently shown as not necessarily agreeing with his course of action.  Penny of course occupies a special position as well since she’s sort of Winter’s inverse.  Despite the fact Penny is a literal robot she ultimately sides with her emotions over her orders.  The Ace-Ops also have a decent variance on this balance, with Harriet being the most extreme in her devotion to Ironwood and therefore struggling the least in confronting Team RWBY, Marrow being the most reluctant to engage Team RWBY and Vine and Elm sitting somewhere in the middle, though with great difference in their emotional reactions.  The only Ace-OP who is poorly done in this regard is Clover.  At the very least Clover should have worked with Qrow to recapture Tyrian before fighting Qrow, instead the moron almost exclusively attacks Qrow when the fight is a free for all and thus forces Qrow to work with Tyrian when they decide to go 2v1.

That being said I don’t see why the good guys even bothered capturing Tyrian and Arthur.  They should have just killed them.  At best they could be tortured for information and be used as proof to the public of Salem’s conspiracy – but they already announced the conspiracy and suspects publicly so why bother?  Better to kill them and remove the threat they pose than to capture them and risk losing them.  I mean shit Ironwood captured and lost Torchwick, surely if anyone would be in the “kill them now just to be sure they aren’t a problem again” camp it would be him.

All of this inevitably brings me to the real thrust of this Volume, which would be a critique of order/authority.  I think Rooster Teeth did a great job portraying the problems of order going too far, what happens when the troops hunker down and follow orders no matter how wrong those orders are.  That being said I think this message is weakened by the fact their is no real commentary on the weaknesses of a lack of order/authority.  If not for the power and unity of the Atlas military Salem wouldn’t even need to infiltrate and subvert it, she’d just steamroll it.  I feel like a lot of the complaints I saw directed towards Ironwood’s side came from an idealistic view of unity without a strong central authority – and those people are wrong.  Ironwood’s faction is a massive bulwark protecting Atlas that Salem has to divide before she even attempts to overwhelm it.  Without his tight grip on power, security and military preparedness would be down.  Even if we assume Salem’s forces couldn’t just crush a weaker Atlas outright, we do see hints of what would happen without Ironwood’s grip on power.  Corruption, like we see from Jacques Schnee, would be all too easy to exploit.  And sadly one of the weaknesses of more democratic government is that it tends to be slow, since that’s what checks and balances are for, you need a strong central authority when you’re at war.  Even in the US the President is called the Commander in Chief for a reason, if a dire situation arises he has to have special political powers to address it rapidly.

All that being said, I do think the presentation of order gone too far was quite good, and well thought out in it’s overall construction.  The loud and frequent calls against Ironwood and the military, see the military close rank so to speak.  They trust each other more than they trust the rest of Atlas and Mantle so when push comes to shove and they have to follow Ironwood and their friends at the expense of Atlas and Mantle, they do it.  Likewise Salem’s agents actively trying to foment civil unrest and capitalizing on Ironwood’s authoritarian grip on power was a great touch.

My real disappointment here was Robin and her faction.  I think this Volume could have done a much better study of order/authority, i.e. they could have showcased the problems of a lack of it as well, if Robin and her faction had been given room to inadvertently become pawns of the bad guys.  I think an intense period of civil unrest and violent rebellion led by Robin would have been a great story and actually set a better stage for a similar ending to the Volume.  What if after episodes of hard fighting against the Robin, her faction and the violent rebels of Mantle – news comes in from military outposts of an unthinkably large Grimm invasion, bearing down towards Atlas and Mantle, and the exhausted fighters on both side look at each other with shock and all the major players think “oh shit” as they realize they will have to scramble like mad if they want to mount any serious defense, or that maybe, shooting Atlas into the atmosphere is the only option for the city’s survival.  That’s the story I would’ve written given given the setting and characters, I mean shit, that way you can still have the RWBY vs Ace-Ops bit too, it just gets far more bitter as that option looks more and more like the only way forward.

The only other real problem I had with this Volume was the hamfisted, almost gay Qrow and Clover duo.  Setting aside the potential homosexual nature of the relationship I though their relationship was badly done from the word go.  Qrow is older, bitter and cynical and even with all his doubts I can’t for the life of me find it believable that he would be inspired or uplifted by a younger guy who just happens to have the opposite semblance.  It was cringey to see.  Especially since we know Qrow has a tendency to like to be alone, but now he’s all happy to hang out with Clover.  It was just bad writing and I’m think it’s safe to pin this one on Rooster Teeth and the political bent of the people who work there.  I think they were able to mostly leave their politics behind them but if anything this Volume screams progressive pandering it’s the Qrow and Clover bits – well until the last fight when Clover dies anyway.  I’m not bothered by the idea that Qrow could be gay, even if nothing until this point suggests that, I’m bothered by the shit writing that has him looking meek and lacking in confidence while working with a younger guy.  Nothing in Qrow’s character until this point depicts anything that would suggest this behavior.  If anything he’s got a strong lone wolf streak and a cynical confidence from years of experience and a bitter realistic world view that prevents him from usually being shocked.

The last two things really worth mentioning are the changes to combat and power training.  Thank god, Volume 7 finally returned to some training.  I’m all for characters gaining skill by doing real combat, but training is a great way to explore their powers and skillsets in depth, because you don’t have to worry about enemies trying to kill them.  Ruby’s power in particular just went from difficult to beat to nigh-unstoppable.  Seriously, if Ruby mastered a shorter weapon or hand-to-hand combat I think she could beat just about anyone, since her super speed lets her pass through objects.  Adding new tech like Yang’s sticky bomb rounds and Crescent Rose’s reversible blade was also a nice touch, finally expanding an arsenal that has stayed pretty static since Volume 1 or 2.

The real glory though was the combat itself and oh boy was this a return to form.  The Ace-Ops fight against the Gheist was great show of their powers and the tactics they use to make the most of their skillsets.  Of particular note here is how the relatively humble powers of Clover, Elm and Vine are just as valuable to the flow of combat as the much stronger, individually exceptionally powers of Harriet and Marrow.  That fight was nice expo of sorts on the Ace-Ops and a return to tactics but it really set the stage for the real crown jewel, the Ace-Ops vs Team RWBY.

The fight is very dynamic with strong use of environment, tactics and emotional turmoil.  And to anyone saying that the Ace-Ops should have won, well you weren’t paying attention.  Not only does ever member of Team RWBY have a strong semblance, compared to just half to the Ace-Ops, but when the order comes down and emotional tensions are high, the Ace-Ops are all over the place, while team RWBY is unified.  Important to this is all the work that came before, the little details show the how much less unified the Ace-Ops were and how some of them got closer to Team RWBY than others, etc.  Also take into consideration the differences in how much they’ve been through.  The Ace-Ops spend most of their time hunting down low level Grimm and criminals, with all the resources and authority they could possibly need at their disposal.  Team RWBY meanwhile has faced treason, temporary dissolution of the group, lots of time fighting against greater forces on their own and much stronger Grimm over the course of their journeys.  They’ve gone through the fires and really forged themselves into a much stronger group.  The Ace-Ops never had that level of testing and when they got their first true test they crumpled before their opposition did.  Also Marrow held back big time, if he had had Harriet’s conviction and aggression the Ace-Ops probably would have won, it’s that the Ace-Ops lacked the same strength of emotion and conviction that leads to their downfall.  Personally I think the main selling point of that fight was the Yang & Blake vs Elm & Vine portion because that was much more tactically rich – which is a shame because I really want to see Ruby personally start kicking more ass again, but she did have the most difficult and dedicated opponent so oh well.

That being said one minor complaint I have is with the auras.  In past Volumes everyone seem like could take a lot more punishment and the time their aura broke was arbitrary, now it seems like 1 or 2 good hits is all it takes to break them.  I’m glad the team at Rooster Teeth is working on dealing with aura as a defense mechanism, but frankly it still feels like they are just having the aura break at convenient times rather than with any kind of tactics or consistency, and the brevity of some fights compared to other fights being much longer and drawn out is a bit of a disappointment.

Overall Volume 7 is a very strong volume.  It has great battles, a strong emotional thru line, solid thematic grounding and strong execution on most fronts.  It has some hiccups in the writing and the overall construction, and it did not capitalize on the full potential of some characters or aspects of the setting, but it did a good job.  Definitely stronger than Volumes 5 & 6.  I would personally rate it lower than Volumes 3 & 4, but it’s the first Volume since those two to reach the same general caliber of quality.  Hopefully Volume 8 follows in 7’s footsteps and proves itself worth the wait.

Unpopular Opinion: Overlord vs Log Horizon – The Final Reckoning

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After many, many complaints from Overlord fans I have decided to write a more balanced and formalized version of what began as an off the cuff, first ever blog post before evolving into a second much more antagonistic blog post.  There will be spoilers for both shows but at this point they’ve been out for plenty of time so I don’t care.

I will specifically be comparing just the anime versions of both Log Horizon and Overlord, which was my default premise but needs to be spelled out for some people.  As a result my knowledge of Overlord will be limited to the following: Anime season 1, a smattering of later clips, some plot descriptions of the events of season 2 which I believe to be fair and accurate if broad and general.  If I get something wrong about Overlord please consider whether or not my mistake is based information I should have, given the parameters I just laid out.  I’m happy to admit honest mistakes and welcome fair criticism, but I can only speak about what I know and any faults that come from things I don’t know are – for the purposes of this post anyway – essentially invalid.  For Log Horizon my knowledge is limited to both seasons of anime but I’ll mostly stick to season 1 both in the interests of fairness and because of the real heart of my positions on these two shows are based in their foundational building blocks.

Both Overlord and Log Horizon take place in fantasy worlds which are not-exact copies of a video game the main character plays, and both protagonists now inhabit their in-game avatars.  One notable difference is that Elder Tale, the game Log Horizon’s world is based on, is a modern MMORPG played on a computer – not a super immersive VR game like SAO, and Yggdrasil – which is the game Overlord’s world is based on.  Overlord’s game and tech is also 100+ years in the future.  Also noteworthy is that at the start of each story, Elder Tale is releasing a new expansion 20 years after the open beta was made available.  Yggdrasil meanwhile is shutting down after 12 years of popularity.  However these are relatively minor differences.

The main differences are as follows, in Log Horizon everyone currently playing the game appears to have be trapped in the fantasy world based on Elder Tale, in Overlord’s case Ainz is the only such character we see though there are some vague hints that he may not be here alone or is not the first player to be trapped here.  The other main difference is the difficulty of the fantasy world counterparts.  Log Horizon’s world is very difficult at first, because the old input style for commands and skills is hard to do while you have fight enemies with some limitations you would have if you were fighting irl, such as first person view.  Because of the new expansion and new level cap that comes with it there are also new ultra difficult encounters and enemies – but the main source of difficulty is in the beginning when players have to adapt and relearn how to fight now that they inhabit their avatars.  After that the world is mostly business as usual with difficulty more reflective of the game it’s based on.  Overlord’s world on the other hand seems like a remarkable downgrade from the game Yggdrasil.  Ainz is extremely powerful, so much so he stops an elite invasion unit which can summon angelic monsters, considered dangerous by the people of the fantasy world, by himself and without taking damage.  There are other marked downgrades, because all the other characters that we meet are NPCs huge amounts of knowledge has been lost and skills and spells, basic abilities in Yggdrasil, are now rare and usually restricted to lower tier levels.  For example, late in Season 1 of Overlord a necromancer summons a pair of Bone Dragons and declares them to be immune to magic.  He’s wrong though, they are only immune to magic below a certain level – and no humans of this world can use magic of that level – and then Ainz’s companion Narberal Gamma one-shots them with higher level lightning magic.  Likewise potions have downgraded somehow, with the NPCs using blue potions vastly inferior to the “original” red potions Ainz possesses.

The differences between these worlds give the two stories vastly different tones right from the get go.  Overlord is a power fantasy with some mystery elements, where the protagonist interacts with the setting and NPCs mostly in search of answers to his questions.  Log Horizon is about building a society and this is by necessity, now that thousands of gamers have been trapped in this world they not only have to interact with the NPCs, who are given much more depth with regards to their social and political organization than their Overlord counterparts (by season 1’s end anyway), they have to interact with each other and make something of themselves or be lost in a downward spiral that begins almost as soon as it is discovered that players respawn instead of dying in the game.  In Overlord it is unknown if players die and respawn or just stay dead but this is hardly a concern as Ainz steamrolls almost everything he fights.  In Log Horizon, the lack of death immediately causes a chain reaction of problems in multiple cities and thus the creation of functional, civil societies becomes a priority.

The tonal differences are also made apparent by the differences in shows’ respective protagonists.  Ainz is a total powerhouse on his own and he has a number of powerful servants he can command.  His main obstacle is in hiding his identity, since he’s a lich, as he gathers information.  He also generally hides his power level by using his warrior form, but again this hardly seems to matter to since he is one-shotting most monsters he fights that way and still takes no damage.  Shiroe meanwhile is not a powerhouse, despite the fact he’s a max level player (not accounting for the new level cap anyway) he’s a support mage whose abilities shine through because of Shiroe’s prodigious skill as a tactician, not because of his raw spellpower.  Though both are spellcasters, they are very different kinds of spellcasters, and Ainz has a great deal of flexibility because of the relative weakness of the setting while Shiroe is more tightly constrained by support role and comparatively higher setting difficulty.

Moreover, the two have very different personalities and resultant personal issues.  Ainz’s human self seems like a bit of weak bitch based on his internal thoughts and dialogue at the very start of Overlord before the game shut down.  Also because of the fact he said he would “run away” from one of his early battles if he couldn’t use his favorite heart crushing spell.  He also seems to get over that mindset very quickly because he’s in charge of cadre of loyal followers and seemingly the strongest guy in town.  Shiroe meanwhile is a deeply introspective character who only seems to lack confidence when making decisions of enormous magnitude, like building a thriving and free society out of a might makes right society.  His main issue is his reluctance to trust people and reluctance to take action as he endlessly analyzes the situation.  When he’s with people he can trust and in combat scenarios he displays no lack of confidence whatsoever and he only needs a push when making world-altering decisions.

However because Shiroe is in fact making such big sweeping decisions, we see a lot more of a character struggle from his side and a clear arc where he is forced to overcome his personal flaws.  Ainz has no such arc, at least not in season 1, at most he has to put up a tough front for his subordinates while he struggles a bit more with what to do internally.  Shiroe’s growth as a person is also much more important to the story as he not only starts out with fewer, and less blindly loyal, followers than Ainz, he has persuade other powerful figures that not only does he have the best plan, but that he can be trusted to carry it out.  Ainz has no such difficulties, the Demons of Nazareck are almost fanatically loyal to him and some outright lust for him.  He can command them to do just about anything and they’ll gladly do it.  Based on some clips it looks like Ainz may eventually have some problems with his demons, and theoretically because he can’t be with them all the time or has to spend more time with certain members this could cause problems later down the road, but none of this appears in season 1.  In season 1 the only problem he has on this front is that Shalltear is turned into a hostile creature by some legendary item that we know very little about by season 1’s end.

Speaking of the protagonists’ companions, they also have a strong effect on the overall tone of the two shows.  Ainz has a bunch of followers, Shalltear, Demiurge, Cocytus, Albedo, the twin elves with hetero-chromea, Pandora’s Actor, Sebas, all of the Pleiades battle maids and anyone else I can’t remember off the top of my head.  He also recruits some villagers later in the season 1.  Setting aside the villagers who mostly don’t factor into the story in season 1, all of the Demons of Nazareck are unflinchingly loyal to Ainz and stronger than any monster or NPC we encounter in season 1 to boot.  Shiroe has a much more complicated role in the world of Log Horizon.  He is famous if not infamous, with many powerful guild leaders waiting to see what he’ll do, and he has a number of powerful friends he calls to his banner over the course of the story – but in the beginning he only has 2 companions, Naotsugu and Akatsuki.  While both are happy to follow Shiroe they have different depths of relationship with him as Naotsugu and Shiroe both belonged to a legendary group (not a guild) called the Debauchery Tea Party which conquered the game’s greatest challenges but has since disbanded.

Akatsuki meanwhile is a trusted friend but was not a member of the Debauchery Tea Party, and as she evolves as a character this degree of separation plays an important role in her character arc.  But I’m getting ahead of myself, Akatsuki’s arc, though it begins to form in season 1, is mainly addressed in season 2 – but the fact that she not only develops romantic feelings for Shiroe over the course of their interactions but undergoes her own lengthy, messy character arc is a massive step up from anything the Demons of Nazareck undergo at least in season 1.  I mean Ainz even edits Albedo’s flavor text so she is unbelievably thirsty for his D right from the start.  Based on some plot developments I’ve heard, I believe some of the Demons may eventually develop as characters and may even have interesting arcs – but nothing in season 1 of Overlord suggests such a thing.  The only interesting character concept in Overlord season 1 is that Shalltear retains her memories even while she is hostile and this gives her a persona something akin to a cocky fighter where she respects Ainz’s power but isn’t afraid to trash-talk him during their fight either.  This is instantly erased after Ainz defeats and resurrects her, and she returns to being servile and loyal to Ainz.

The last major contributor to the tones of each show is their humor and seriousness.  Log Horizon has a bunch of terrible, unfunny repetitive jokes which is mostly uses to break up long chunks of exposition or periods of tension.  This doesn’t make the jokes any better but it does give them an important purpose in breaking up the dense flows of information common in Log Horizon.  One of the hallmarks of Log Horizon is that it does lots and lots of buildup and this is mostly accomplished through careful exploration and investigation of the world, and in serious negotiations.  Log Horizon doesn’t have that much action nor much edginess – and it gets through most of both of these in the first arc where the characters go and fight Demikas.  Overlord on the other hand has a fair amount of action and a lot of edginess.  The main villains of season 1, the Necromancer and the assassin chick are comically evil edgelords who revel in their own wickedness and the pain they inflict on others.  Even the invasive force guy was fairly bombastic and arrogant in his power since he could summon Angels.  And I’ve seen clips of the edgy princess from season 2.  Ainz himself isn’t that edgy though, best clear that up in case anyone wants to complain.  The comedy in Overlord isn’t especially good and primarily revolves around light perversion, like Albedo’s displays of affection for Ainz, the trap-looking elf sorcerer and his weak persona and I’ve seen the clip where Ainz accidentally spies on the lizardman champion having sex with the lizardman princess.  Or it’s total cringe in the case of Pandora’s Actor, enough so that Ainz is embarrassed for creating him.

Visually both shows favor detail-heavy designs over especially fluid and dynamic animation.  Both also use CG for some monsters though this is more prevalent in Overlord than in Log Horizon.  General consensus is that, Overlord generally looks better and I would agree that Ainz looks better than anyone in Log Horizon – overall though I don’t really like designs of most of the Demons of Nazareck so I lean towards Log Horizon as looking better overall.  And I vastly prefer the environments in Log Horizon, Overlord’s backgrounds look fine but generic outside of the Tomb of Nazareck, whereas Log Horizon has many distinct environs and towns which blend fantasy wilderness with post apocalyptic ruins of modern cities.

I have thus far tried to be fair and balanced, describing the various elements of Log Horizon and Overlord (season 1) with as few personal value judgements as possible.  In doing so I hope I have presented my case as to what the two shows’ differences are in a mostly objective sense and prepared anyone reading this for what remains – how I personally feel about each show based on the various elements of their construction as well as discussing some elements which are so strongly colored by my personal feelings that I couldn’t really discuss them above while maintaining even a pretense of fairness.

I fucking hate Overlord.  Like “1/10 – Jesus Fucking Christ, how in the hell does anyone think this show is even remotely good?” hate Overlord.  The nicest way I can express my feelings toward this show is that is a prime example of heavy-handed writing, so hamfisted and unsubtle that it feels like it was written with 12 year olds in mind.  It is embarrassingly bad, I actually skimmed through some of season 1 to confirm a few details and remember how the show looked and felt and holy shit was this way blatantly worse than I remember.  The edgy villains are a fucking joke, and not a funny one either.  At best they are bemusing but in a critical sense they are pure garbage, caricatures of stereotypical bad guys with no nuance or redeeming qualities whatsoever.  The Demons of Nazareck are equally bland and boring, their personalities are almost nonexistent beyond their devotion to Ainz and their declarations of loyalty are obnoxious at best.  Having sat down to re-examine the writing of Overlord as portrayed in the anime has made me facepalm harder than I even thought possible.  I genuinely did not expect it to be so unbearably bad on a re-watch.  The dialogue was utter garbage, the CG was uglier than I remeber it being and holy shit did Overlord take it’s fucking time doing anything.  Like the fact Ainz didn’t even leave the Tomb of Nazareck until episode 3, Christ on a bike how did I sit through those first two episodes the first time?

Ironically episode 3 of Log Horizon one of it’s worst episodes because it functions mostly as a transition as the characters begin their first quest, after 2 episodes full of information about the world and the forming society of players.  It’s the episode you have to sit through to get back to more interesting stuff, in Overlord nothing interesting happens until episode 3 – and even that’s just a big smack down against a bunch of helpless knights and an edgy feudal lord screaming about how he’ll pay for someone, anyone to shield him from the undead monster Ainz summoned before he gets stabbed over and over.  I sincerely can’t believe that even just five years ago I was willing to sit through the early parts of Overlord, if it had come out in the last year or two I’d probably have dropped it right away.

Getting away from episode specific details though, what I hoped to present with the earlier analysis is that Overlord is really just a basic bitch story and there is literally nothing in season 1 that suggests it will ever get better.  The only noteworthy thing about season 1 of Overlord is that we still have a lot of mystery to solve.  Overlord has nothing to latch onto, unless you like the basics of what it already gives you.  Do you like having a lich for a protagonist?  I think that’s cool, and I’m sure many others love it.  Do you like lots of loyal demon followers, some of whom definitely want to ride your dick?  Not my cup of tea but I can see the appeal.  Like a power fantasy where the protagonist crushes everyone with no effort until he’s forced to fight his own servant?  No.  Like I’m all for the occasional beat down or steamroll but every fight but one?  Maybe if we were talking about a show like One Punch Man or Mob Psycho 100 where the protagonist’s sheer power is causing them problems then maybe, but otherwise nah that sounds boring as shit.

There’s literally nothing else.  There is no character development at fucking all in season 1 of Overlord.  Save for the final battle there is no suggestion that Ainz or any of his Demons are ever in any danger.  Does Ainz ever seem likely to fail?  No, not only does he never fail, he makes everything look easy and he’s given bullshit gatcha items to make his final battle easier.  Put simply, I’m bored.  The mystery of how Ainz got taken to this fantasy world that is nothing more than a downgraded version of his favorite VR game is not appealing enough for me to want to sit through a season of hamfisted writing, terrible dialogue and characters, simple plots and a total lack of challenge.  There is nothing at all appealing beyond the mere idea of a guy getting stuck in a fantasy world as a lich.  The previous sentence is, to me, the entirety of Overlord’s potential appeal.  And that does not make up for it’s appalling execution in every conceivable facet of storytelling.  Overlord is all premise and no execution, and I know that works for some people but I’m not one of them.  Premise means a lot less to me than execution, I’d rather watch a fucking idol show with good execution than watch Overlord – and I fucking hate idol shows and idol culture.

And don’t even get me started on the combat.  Ainz almost never takes any damage because of a passive skill that nullifies damage from low level weapons and spells – and since Overlord’s setting is set on even-babies-could-beat-this easy mode almost everything he fights is too weak to even hurt him.  Ainz’s only noteworthy opponent is Shalltear and once again, not only is she his servant under normal circumstances, he is given gatcha items which allow him to use the best gear from warrior classes regardless of the fact he’s a fucking magician.  It was bad enough that his basic warrior form could kill all of his enemies without any skills, but getting to use the best gear for warrior classes makes me wonder why anyone bothers to play warriors.  If anything Ainz reminds me of a high level multi-class Fighter/Mage from Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale – which can solo the the entire fucking game if you build it right.  The versatility is less of an issue than the sheer power though, I wouldn’t mind if Ainz was versatile if he was also weaker or more vulnerable, it would justify the versatility.  Instead Ainz has it all and that just gives me one less aspect of the story to get invested in.  Ainz never struggles, he faces no adversity and is a weaker character for it.  And when I don’t give a shit about the protagonist, the show is probably fucked.

By comparison not only is Shiroe himself weak in combat due to his support role, his strength comes from his game knowledge and tactical skills – which benefit him most when he’s working with other skilled players.  Shiroe is not a one man army, but he can make a party of 4 or 5 able to take on a small army because he can direct their power and skill to make them that good.  Action is not one of Log Horizon’s particular strong points but it’s a million times better than anything in Overlord, where Ainz kills everything besides Shalltear in one hit.

Because Shiroe has to work with other people, both in combat and in building a society that benefits everyone after their world has been turned upside down, Log Horizon goes to great lengths to feature a ton of characters and to make many of them interesting, with significant arcs in their own right.  Shiroe is obviously no exception and Log Horizon frontloads much of his development into the early arcs so you’re already invested in him as a person before he makes his big powerplays.  Overlord has nothing like this in season 1 and since I actively hate all of Overlord’s characters I don’t care about how they develop.

Then there’s world-building, one of my favorite elements of fantasy, and I’m going to have to laugh in every Overlord fan’s face for a second here.  There is almost no world building in all of season 1, or at least no world building I found engaging.  Sure the Tomb of Nazareck is in a different location and yes we are made aware at least 2 political entities.  Does any of that matter?  Fuck no.  In season 1 the main thing to take away by the end was that we still knew fuck all about the world, beyond the general idea that it was downgraded form of Yggdrasil.  Is that enough to make me stick around for a second season?  No it is not.  Log Horizon went way more in-depth, with dungeons that actively degenerated due to monster effects, several distinct adventurer cities, detailed NPC nations with multiple cities and political intrigue directed toward the adventurers and the goblin invasion, and fantasy elements with fantasy explanations which logically correlate with video game mechanics’ to explain how resurrection functions or like the Goblin King.  And of course it had Shiroe go ahead and build a goddamn society from the ground up and shows us what progress that brings over the course of the story.  That alone is 10x more interesting and 100x more complex than anything Ainz does in season 1 of Overlord.

To put it mildly, the biggest difference between Log Horizon and Overlord, is that the latter bet everything on premise and used action, shock value and edginess to keep the viewer from noticing just how bad the writing was – while the former focused on ideas and kept the viewer’s attention by revealing carefully considered details and developing characters to make the most of said ideas.  Overlord is a show for teens first making their forays into fiction, like Elfen Lied or Mirai Nikki.  Log Horizon is a show made to challenge teens and adults who want something with more depth and nuance out of their fiction.  And while everyone has their phase of liking the edgy, simple stories – God knows I used to like Elfen Lied and Mirai Nikki once upon a time – Log Horizon is the kind of story you really learn to appreciate once you’ve moved beyond comparatively simple and trashy works like Overlord.

I’m basically done here.  Thanks everyone for reading.  I could go into more depth and bring up more specific examples from both shows, but honestly I think I’ve made my case.  The difference in quality and character between the foundations of Overlord and Log Horizon practically makes my case for me.  Even if Overlord eventually develops a more detailed and interesting world, more intricate plots or makes its central mystery interesting – it will inevitably be chained to the flaws of Overlord season 1.  That’s why I would guess, though I could be wrong, that Ainz never really comes across an opponent who’s a match for him, because part of the core of Overlord’s appeal is the overwhelming power fantasy Ainz presents.  I have no interest in that not as a feature which spans an entire story, and no amount of new plot twists and lore will address this problem.  By the same token, Log Horizon will only get more nuanced and more complex because so much attention was given to the themes the show is going for and carefully planning out the details to make sure those themes hit home.  You can learn a lot about the general quality of a story if you carefully study the early parts.  Log Horizon had my interest by episode 1.  Overlord didn’t get my interest after 12 episodes and after re-watching most of episode 1 of Overlord I’m frankly embarrassed I didn’t see how bad it was on my first viewing.  See you in the next one.