Anime-WTF #3: Revenge Of the Shith

Happy AniMonday, fellow weebotaks!
In this third issue of Anime-WTF? (a monetization-friendly, shit-based take on the title of the third Star Wars prequel, Revenge Of the Sith), I have decided to try once again to come up with a clever form of address for my readers. For those of you who are wondering why you've never seen a weebotak in a Star Wars movie, it's a portmanteau of the words "weeaboo" and "otaku," not a member of some cute, alien species from your favorite medieval spaghetti western space opera franchise.
I must comment here that I am not a true weeb or otaku. I don't randomly spout Japanese buzzwords, the only manga I've ever read are Codename: Sailor V and maybe half an issue of Sailor Moon, I own exactly zero pieces of non-DVD anime merchandise (what I do own amounts to the one season of One Punch Man and an incomplete set of Dragon Ball Z/Super/GT seasons, all dubbed), I am deeply annoyed by Japanese voice actresses and take a TL;DR approach to subbed anime, and I either have not seen or hold a low opinion of most anime that rabid fans of the medium view as classics. That being said, I do have opinions, and I know what I like when I see it.

Speaking of low opinions, let's take a look at some anime series that had me saying

Citrus--This series could have been fan service done right. But in light of the recent socio-sexual climate in Hollywood and the world at large (and given the direction Citrus takes with its subject matter), it's all kinds of wrong. Citrus is a slice of life romance series that features yuri (girl-on-girl) relationships (which no anime fan or progressive human being of any gender should have a problem with), pseudo-incest (the classic step-sibling loophole in anime that seems at once justified and totally wrong), and at least one soft-core rape scene per episode. If it isn’t obvious, this last item is the part that I and most sensible human beings should and hopefully do take issue with. Not only is rape morally and categorically wrong, it turns the series into a predictable and socially questionable loop of the main character being obsessively attracted to her (surprise!) new step-sister, who is also (surprise!) the principal’s granddaughter, who then responds with overly romanticized and tastefully presented aggressive sexual behavior (read: rape, but it’s pretty! But it’s not! Because it’s rape!), which the main character backs away from so she can spend half of the next two episodes wondering what she did wrong and figure it out in overly simplified, bone-headed anime protagonist fashion just in time for the next episode’s rape scene. Love triangles and overprotective “notice me, senpai!” characters attempt to make things interesting along the way, and the series ultimately resolves itself as you might expect it to. Replace the rape aspect of the characters’ relationship with…anything else, and this could have been an average or great anime. But no, it’s just a really good Worst anime because, again, rape is wrong no matter how artfully you present it.

FLCL (Progressive/Alternative)--A young boy with a perverted father gets run over and bludgeoned by an alien girl on a scooter, and suddenly giant robots start growing out of his head that the alien girl then has to beat to death with her arsenal of chainsaw guitars. Also, his older brother’s horny girlfriend (who might also be a robot-worshipping pyromaniac, but who the hell knows?) hits on him constantly, one of the robots is living with him and has the ability to eat him, shoot him like a bullet at other robots, eat him again, and then shit him out, and there’s a secret government agency that’s using giant, iron-shaped factories to imprison an ancient, intergalactic supervillain that the alien girl is in love with. Or something. The animation in season one is smooth for its time, but psychedelically, seizure-inducingly awful, the voice work is annoying and frantic, the series is too short (six episodes per season) and bizarre for any character development or sense to come out of it (other than the last-minute reveal that it was supposed to be a surreal depiction of the young boy’s coming-of-age story), and according to pervo-dad, the title (read as “Fooly Cooly”) is apparently some Japanese slang term for fucking. The second season, subtitled Progressive, introduces bland, unnecessary, duplicate and legacy characters and focuses so little on those characters’ relationships that the show’s dialogue often references events that never happened and were never otherwise hinted at happening offscreen. Progressive attempts to capture the coming-of-age aspect of the original season, but there’s too much focus placed on the psychedelic sci-fi bullshit, and even the returning characters are so flat by comparison that it lacks the impact of FLCL’s last-minute revelation. And yet, a third season (Alternative) is soon to come. So, yeah. I don’t advocate watching this anime or doing drugs. But if you’re going to watch FLCL, let alone force yourself to appreciate something about it, you should probably take something first.

Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu--This is the second season of a long-running series about a former child soldier who must go undercover at a Japanese high school to protect a girl with technopathic abilities (the other seasons will get their own Best turn in the spotlight later on). Fumoffu proves that Full Metal Panic! is at its best when focused on its globetrotting action aspects...by being an entirely comedic season set at the high school, and being inappropriate and horrible. At any given time, Fumoffu features the male protagonist dealing with common high school problems by setting off bombs and electrocuting, poisoning, or pulling guns on the other students, all actions for which he suffers no consequences beyond the female lead going tsundere and delivering him a literal punchline. That he was revealed in the original season to have been an Arabic child soldier only makes the Fumoffu season that much more insensitive and unfunny.

Lady Death: The Movie--A choppily animated, feature-length film adaptation of the Coffin Comics/Chaos Comics/Avatar Press series about a sorcerer’s daughter who gets burned at the stake and sent to Hell, where she transforms into a scantily-clad albino warrior-goddess and seeks vengeance against her father. The movie takes liberties with the lore of its original material, and wrongly seeks to cram as much of the comic book series into ninety minutes as possible, rather than serving up a coherent origin story. The pacing is odd, the writing is nonsensical, the animation is as rough as a 1980’s anime drawn on sandpaper, and although I watched the film in its entirety, it bored me and I was glad when it was over.

Seven Mortal Sins--Meant to capitalize on the success of Seven Deadly Sins, this series asks what would happen if Lucifer’s fall from Heaven happened in modern times and everyone in Heaven and Hell was a woman with big breasts. Well, you get a very short-lived anime “series” where Lucifer is the heroine. Between fan service tropes, the “story” stumbles inanely toward a final showdown between Lucifer and Michael that gets resolved by the power of friendship between demon-ladies. It could have been more than it was, but apparently not even its archangel-centric spin-off was any good. And yet, there was a spin-off…. So…, I’m…wrong?

UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie--Of every bad series I’ve watched so far, I have watched the least amount of this one. The art style is too cute for the subject matter promised (presumably one Japanese bath episode after another, according to the “plot” description), and the explanation of its setup makes no sense. Apparently, there’s an extradimensional warrior lady (because isn’t there always?) who’s a valkyrie, but also maybe a god or a demon, but also an alien, and she’s a teacher but also a student, and her UFO crashes into the roof of the school clock tower even though it’s apparently always been hidden there since before it crashed, and her UFO is also her office, but also her house, and the students know she’s an alien or whatever else, but at the same time, they don’t know for some reason. As soon as my thinking headache got noticeably painful, I deleted the first episode from my phone and took the series off of my Watch list.

Stay tuned for the next installment of TicketVerse Trades on Wednesday, and check back on Monday as the Anime-WTF? trilogy grows to four. I am also working on a new New Piece Offerings that ties into my recent Star Wars theme. When it will be ready and when I post it is still uncertain, but it is coming.

Sean Wilkinson,
Opinionated Animeister,
Signing Out.