Anime-BAW #5: Video Game Promos

Hi, everybody. These are the facts, Anime-niacs: Sometimes, anime are just shallow, breast-filled, limited series cranked out by a small group of people locked in a basement somewhere because some Japanese guy who likes money more than he likes the company that makes it for him wanted them to make a six hour commercial for a generic, below-average video game directed at perverts and obsessive-compulsive recluses with giant vacancies in their souls. And sometimes, by which I mean a one-in-a-million rarity, promotional anime can actually have compelling stories and be worth watching. Here, as usual, are three examples that run the spectrum from Best to Worst and something in between.

Best: King Of Fighters: Destiny--Does it try to force the Fatal Fury Motion Picture plot into the Rugal Saga? Yes. Does the King Of Fighters Tournament blatantly rip off the World Martial Arts Tournament from Dragon Ball Z’s Buu Saga? Yes. Is the CG animation goofy as hell sometimes? Yes, but endearingly so. Is this just a promotional web series for yet another generic cash-grab JRPG that may only get one season to its credit? Yes and probably, yes. Was it amazing to watch anyway? Absolutely yes. The short, twenty-four episode series shells out many iconic moments from Fatal Fury and King Of Fighters, creates some brand new ones that stand on par with their canonical predecessors, provides cohesion between the cast that I found lacking in most of the fighting games themselves, is full of witty, (pardon the pun) punchy dialogue, and ends with an impactful promise of more to come. If there isn’t a second season of KOF: Destiny, it will be a sorely missed opportunity.

I don't usually do this, but here are some YouTube links that you can use to watch the Fatal Fury movie trilogy and KOF: Destiny.

Fatal Fury: Legend Of the Hungry Wolf

Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle

Fatal Fury 3: The Motion Picture

I looked for a decent English dub or sub of this movie, but couldn't find one on YouTube.
It's not canon beyond the main characters, and after watching the first two, I was kinda burned out, but the fighting is as epic as before, if not more so, so check it out anyway if you're hooked.
Here's the link:Fatal Fury 3 (English Dub on veoh.com)
And finally, The King Of Fighters: Destiny Season One with English subtitles

We now interrupt these ultra-long video game commercials to bring you your regularly scheduled dose of abysmal mediocrity. Enjoy!

Average: Hyperdimension Neptunia--not exactly an isekai series because the characters all inhabit a video game world to begin with--they are in fact sentient video game characters who also serve as the moderators and guild leaders in their world that they are aware is a video game world (kind of like the original Reboot, I guess, but with less intelligent meta-humor)--not exactly a magical girl series because the group of girls who transform into superheroines are more technology-based than magical, and not exactly a series because it’s mostly filler and fanservice episodes designed as promotional material for the game it’s based on. The main cast spend the anime willingly getting into a variety of typical self-exploitative shenanigans with no male character (or strong yuri female character) to bounce said shenanigans off of, and have two or three out-of-nowhere boss battle episodes that are meant to fool the casual anime viewer into believing there are stakes and a plot somewhere behind the characters' skin-tight neon "battle armor." Oh, and the key to victory is the Power Of Friendship, so there's that little demerit to consider as well. That being said, the writing of said friendship is probably the best thing about the show (aside from the few epic fights, that is). But the overall writing sometimes comes off as too basic and frivolous (like when Pluto, my favorite character in the series, was suddenly sent back to her alternate dimension because reasons) when compared to the maturity level of some of Neptunia's fanservice content (such as when they have to visit the 18+ region of the internet because writing for masturbating audiences). It doesn't exactly have a definable genre, but it has charms and flaws in almost equal measure.

Worst: Senran Kagura--I was struggling with how to rank this in comparison to Hyperdimension Neptunia, and ultimately decided to put Senran Kagura here because it’s based on a video game series about underage ninja girls with revealing magical girl transformations and improbably large breasts. Child fetishism is pedophilia, and pedophilia is never acceptable. Add to that the predictable mechanics of the series and you have the imperfect recipe for a Worst class anime. In a halfway successful attempt to bury the wrongness of the series with a story of some kind, there are secret schools, evil, slightly older ninja girls with improbably large breasts who stay in their magical girl ninja uniforms most of the time because evil identifiers, and all-powerful magical ninja MacGuffins for the two groups of ninja girls to fight and eventually bond over in the name of cosmic balance and magical girl friendship nonsense. What little story there is progresses like a mix of just about any magical girl series you’ve ever watched, and the many fight scenes are cool enough because ninjas, but Senran Kagura is otherwise just a string of fanservice episodes meant to sell a fanservice-heavy game to Japanese perverts and clueless Let’s Play YouTubers.

Have I said fanservice enough yet? Well, fans and Anime-niacs, prepare to get served some of the most off-the-wall, awful, and so-bad-I-couldn't-finish-it anime next time as I bat clean-up in Haremville for my first issue of Anime-WTF. Also, I'm using too many hyphens again, so:

Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice-Fanservice!

Anime-master,

Fanservice-out. (Wow! That was forced...)