Anime-BAWklog: Finished Series A-Z (Part IV)

A very happy #AniMonday to you all!

I am back on track to finish my Accounting degree by 2022 after taking several hard hits to soul over the past year, including COVID-19, self-imposed crippling debt, repeated academic failure, and a self-imposed, "complicated" (to put it in vague, euphemistic terms) personal life, all of which I am trying to simultaneously ignore and repair in the only, moderately ineffective way I know: by constantly telling jokes, making obscure cultural references that no one remembers or cares about, burying myself in work, obsession, and academia, and trying my hardest to not screw everything up while the world around me fixes itself.

And if anything screams obsession and escapism, it's twenty-six-ish letters worth of Anime-BAWklog. so let's dive back in, shall we?

Lord Of Vermillion: The Crimson King—Title included, this series has obvious Stephen King influences. I mean, it’s basically Cell: The Shonen Remix with recycled elements from Deadman Wonderland thrown in. After a mysterious signal puts Japan in a coma, people wake up with blood-based superpowers. Or they turn into demons. Or fairies and stuff. Or they just explode into blood vapor (hmm…city-wide vapor clouds and monsters from another dimension…sounds like Stephen King’s The Mist to me). Also, there are evil(?) scientists(?), a fairy queen who wants to use the heroes(?) to commit Thanocide and remake the world into a utopia, a nun trying to orchestrate a fight to the death between no less than three warring factions, magical royal blood that manifests with Hollow mask-like bone constructs in it for some reason, people with memories of past lives, a Romeo & Juliet romance, and people with portals to monster dimensions inside them. If that's even how that mechanic works. Seriously, there is so much derivative content—and so much seemingly random content in general—shoved into Lord Of Vermillion that the only reason I continued to watch it was to see how competently, and just plain how, the creators would put it all together. Oh, how cute…they expected to make more of this garbage….

Magical Girl Raising Project—reverse-isekai series where people (I say “people” here for reasons that will become clear shortly) who play the eponymous, fictional RPG get the one-in-a-thousand opportunity to become magical girls in real life. Character designs draw inspiration from established magical girl anime like Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, Senran Kagura, Little Witch Academia, and Magic Knight Rayearth, among others, which might come as a treat for fans of the genre. Unfortunately, no sooner does the protagonist find out that her childhood boy crush also won the lottery (he becomes the Rayearth-inspired magical girl character) than the RPG mascot (which looks like the DanganRonpa bear if it were turned into a baby-level Digimon) announces that a third of the city’s magical girl population must be “chopped down” (read: magical girl fight to the death plot). Highly derivative and the characters probably say “magical girl” every ten seconds or so, but it looked like I was going to be in for a fun watch after the first two or three episodes. However, I had no idea how dark the series would go. In the course of the “chopping down,” there are multiple stabbings, dismemberments, and decapitations, a mass shooting, a suicide, at least two partially depicted instances of child murder, people sacrificing their lifespans for magical weapons, and the actual, fully depicted murder of a pregnant woman. This series disturbed me, but I kept watching out of morbid curiosity to see what direction it would take nearer to its end, which was predictably unpredictable and satisfying enough that I would appreciate another arc but not be disappointed if there wasn’t one.

Maria the Virgin Witch—A mostly tasteful but innuendo-heavy fantasy anime about the titular village witch, whose penchant for disrupting military battles draws the attention of the archangel Michael. Michael curses Maria with the loss of her magic, should she also lose her virginity, and sends a subordinate angel to supervise her (and kill her, should she get out of line). The somewhat serialized storyline focuses on Maria’s subsequent acts of rebellion and how they affect the people and the world around her, as well as her developing romance with a local serf. The series (even in its title) frequently comments on societal progress, the absurdity of religion (especially of Western religion), the necessity—or not—of war, the nature of greed, etc. It basically hits all the same talking points as Spice and Wolf, but with myopic eyes and heavier hands (not to mention The Power Of Friendship) that sometimes work to the benefit—or the detriment—of their intended message.

The Master Of Ragnarok & Blesser Of Einherjar—isekai series with Nordic influences that plays sort of like an inferior gender flip on Lord Marksman. It’s refreshing to see a male lead without an overpowered magic skill, though. Instead, his smartphone still seems to work in the alternate world, giving him access to future knowledge and historically successful battle strategies. But it’s hinted that if he uses it too much, he might fade out of existence when his battery dies—which is never properly explored or even addressed. This “cheating,” as he often calls it, leads to many beneficial partnerships with the clan leaders he defeats (all cute girls and hot warrior women, of course), who are the real OP characters in the series. Also, I like that Master Of Ragnarok doesn’t take place entirely in the alternate world, as the hero is able to communicate with his literal lady-in-waiting on Earth for her advice and support. The introduction of doppelgangers in both timelines complicates matters for the hero and makes things mildly interesting for the viewer—but is never properly explored. Just ignore the cheap production value, the off-putting time-jump the series starts with, the pages of pertinent historical information that flash by at a frenetic pace during commercial breaks, the formulaic plot, the lack of interesting male characters, the lack of payoff to anything of positive or meaningful interest, the fact that the “hero” basically cheats on his modern-day love interest with her great-great-great-…-grandmother, and the glossing over of child slavery, sexual abuse, and underage fetishism as a means of fulfilling a single harem trope, and you have a decent anime on your hands. You’d just have to wash those hands with biosafety facility-grade soap and a pumice stone coated in diamond-tipped, laser-sharpened razor blade fragments afterwards.

My-HiME—A girl named Mai discovers that she is a HiME (titles!), one of twelve magical girl-like characters in the series with elemental powers and/or weapons who have the ability to summon techno-spiritual creatures (termed “Children”) because of a strong connection to a particular person in their lives (which, aside from the obligatory fanservice characters and yuri relationships, is the closest the series gets to a sexual reference at any given time). HiME use their powers and Children to fight similar creatures called “Orphans” (the magical girl monster of the week, created by the series villain but lacking a HiME/One Person bond to power them, hence the name), and later each other, for the fate of the world. Mai also befriends Mikoto, your basic wild child character with a giant sword, partial amnesia, a HiME birthmark, and a missing brother (though to solve Mikoto’s amnesia and figure out who her brother is, all you have to do is pick out the one male character who has the same hair color as her). The genre mechanics and subplot mysteries proved to be highly predictable, but I didn’t really feel cheated of my time for watching My-HiME because it was tasteful and had interesting characters, great action, comedy, intrigue, and drama, and was a fresh take on the magical girl genre.

My-Otome (Zwei)—Helped immensely by the familiarity of My-HiME, My-Otome takes the same characters (in appearance and name only, for the most part) and moves them to an alternate future where HiME power is a forgotten technology whose nanomachine successor allows female virgins to draw on the power of deceased “Otomes” through master/servant pacts with world leaders so that they can materialize magical girl armor and help perpetuate a cold war that has been underway for ten years. Human energy sources, a cold war, and virgin slaves…yay? The setup is your basic Moses rescue, followed by shonen high school drama, multi-level political intrigue, underage yuri romances, and a relationship involving the main character that boils down to statutory rape. While My-Otome does a good job of blending HiME’s cast and mythology with new characters, world-building, and a more involved, unconventional plot, it is considerably more mature and unflinchingly tasteless with its subject matter. It’s meatier as a series than HiME was, but said meat is spoiled.

Ticketmaster's Note: Thanks to other anime, and translations of move names in the King of Fighters video game series, I know that hime is the Japanese word for "princess," and otome means "maiden." The more you know? On with the Japanese depravity....

Prison School—Disgusting, profane, excessive fanservice vehicle that sees the only three male students at a recently gender-integrated school thrown into a sadistic, school-sanctioned correctional facility for peeping on their female classmates. The language is blatantly R-rated at the very least, the humor is borderline pornographic (including a “golden shower” revenge subplot, numerous edited scenes of chesticular and nether-regional female nudity, and a gag involving recorded diarrhea sounds and a male student shitting himself in public), and the animation is Ren & Stimpy dramatic with regard to the violent and vulgar alike (of which there is almost never a scene without). But the many escape attempt plots by the male “protagonists” were enough to keep me watching in spite of myself.

Queen’s Blade (Rebellion)—Poorly acted, inconsistently animated, annoyingly voiced, adult-themed anime series based on a Japanese D&D-style game about female warriors of varying ethnicity, combat skill, technique, morality, motives, and bust size who fight each other in a Heaven-sanctioned tournament for the right to challenge the current "Queen of the World" for her throne. The fight scenes can range from brief, anti-climactic, and clumsy-looking to extremely personal, bloody, sensational, and spectacular, with the usual fanservice tropes and bikini-armor battle damage thrown in en masse because that’s the kind of series it is. The Rebellion season picks up after a four-plus-year time jump with better animation and new characters. But it lacks the tournament-based plotting of the previous two seasons. Instead, we get an unfocused, uncomfortable, anticlimactic harem anime that reduces the previous main protagonist to a jokey anti-type who constantly falls asleep, and turns the previous antagonist into a timid elf-cat-girl-maid housewife with demonic stuffed animals and a giant spoon. The new heroine is an elf-knight with demon powers who (less for foreshadowing purposes than catering to incest fetishists) acquires a harem of “little sisters,” including an underage elf-alchemist who thinks she’s a boy, a biracial, potentially hermaphroditic tentacle monster with two personalities, a pair of stereotypically designed kung-fu girls, an underage samurai girl who looks like she stumbled out of a Senran Kagura game, and an underage elf-knight with vibrating armor and a chainsaw-sword. Some previous characters make welcome returns or get honorable mentions, but they are poorly utilized under the new genre. The transitions between Rebellion’s later episodes are littered with victory-based plot inconsistencies, interesting plot directions are either dropped entirely or played for laughs and fanservice, and the underage lesbian incest harem concept is reprehensible at best. If you’re a normal human being or you’re not a critical voice on the internet, don’t watch the Rebellion season.

ReRIDeD: Derrida Who Leaps Through Time—A generic-looking anime protagonist (who boils down to a Doc Brown/Marty McFly amalgamation in a Sam Winchester coat) unwittingly causes Judgement Day on the set of I, Robot, then Sleeping Beauty’s his way ten years into the future, and teams up with Lois Lane as portrayed by Misty from Pokemon, Shirley Temple as played by a young, innocent plot device who is also a literal red-headed stepchild, KITT the talking DeLorean, and Michael Knight as played by Lieutenant Riker from Star Trek: TNG to stop the amalgamated casts of Robocop, Terminator, Battlestar Galactica, and Blade Runner from making the set of I, Robot look even more like the set of Terminator: Salvation than it already does. Along the way, the titular protagonist discovers he can use the plots of Inception, Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind, and The Butterfly Effect to time-travel through his memories with the quantum ghost of Snow White and change the present/future to whatever minor benefit or major detriment best nudges the plot forward that episode. Suddenly, he figures out the correct "Bippity-Boppity-Boop" to say to Snow White that will somehow make the world perfect, then learns that he was Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense the whole time, but somehow gets to live happily ever after in a timeline where Judgement Day never happened because OCP got arrested, Clarice never got turned into a badass Cylon Replicant by robot Hannibal Lecter, Misty Lane is a famous journalist with cross-temporal nostalgia pains, Little Curly Top gets to meet Michael Knight’s actual wife and daughter, KITT is a server droid at a restaurant, and no one knows how to time travel because the two actual time-travelers in the show agreed to help a time travel researcher figure out how time travel works. There is decent action and a select few character-building moments tugged where they needed to, but the direction of the overall story is scattershot, derivative nonsense.

Soul Eater—High school students with magical powers and goals that amount to “be the best.” People who transform into weapons. Supernatural villains of the week. Ancient, all-powerful villain buried under the school. Teachers with mysterious pasts. Heroes struggling with their dark side. Channel friendship and punch really hard for a guaranteed win. If you’ve seen one show like this, you’ve seen this show before dozens of times. However, in the face of often-tread territory, Soul Eater does a good job at carving out its own identity. The characters are interesting and memorable, there are some decent character development episodes and arcs that lead to progression down that character’s path to “be the best whatever,” and the animation style is innovative once you get used to it. Altogether, Soul Eater isn’t a Bad anime. But if you strip away what makes it unique, the bones of the series are just Average.
Ticketmaster's Note: Everyone I've looked into who reviewed Soul Eater has criticized the anime's ending for "just being an ass-pull, friendship punch" that was tacked on because the manga hadn't been finished yet. In retrospect, I was too ambivalent and harsh when it came to the anime's predictability and tropes. Not to give anything away, if you consider the main character's lineage and the mechanics of the series, the "ass-pull, friendship punch" has established reasoning behind it that has nothing to do with friendship. And if not for Soul Eater, I never would have thought to check out Fire Force. It's an innovative, shonen anime from the same animation team who worked on Soul Eater, and with two seasons of engaging storytelling under its belt, I highly recommend it.

Sword Art Online (II/Alicization)—A typical-looking anime protagonist who beta-tested a (in reality) financially unsustainable Virtual Reality MMO gets trapped in the launch version by the game’s creator, along with every other player, and everyone is threatened with brain death if they lose or try to log out. The only way to escape and/or free everyone else from the game is to beat the Tower Challenge and defeat the boss of the hundredth floor dungeon, which would have been a cool setup for a shonen-length anime full of cool monster designs, training sequences, and increasingly epic boss fights. But that's what we have DanMachi (a.k.a. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon?) for. Instead, the launch version of Sword Art Online is so broken (aside from the virtual reality brain bomb plot device, that is) and Kirito (the aforementioned dark-haired Gary Sue) is so stubborn, perceptive, and good at leveling up that he is able to spot the season villain almost immediately, pull an overpowered skill out of his ass for no good reason, and hack his way out of death through sheer willpower, also for no good reason. His love interest, Asuna, is a far more interesting and better designed character who gives the series and its protagonist more spark than they have any right to, until the "Fairy Dance Arc." In this second half of the SAO season, she is comatose following the events of the "SAO Arc" and becomes trapped in another broken VRMMO called "ALfheim Online," giving Kirito a reason to log back in (porting his generic stats and skills over from SAO because who needs to learn stuff and progress as a human being when you can just be good at everything all the time, right? Right?) so he can surpass another hastily conceived Tower Challenge and rescue her. Many things are wrong here, including the idea of competing, rather than cooperating, character classes (which goes against every established RPG mechanic ever), the reduction of Yui from a cute, moe plot device to the “Hey! Listen!” fairy from Zelda (which goes against the good natures of everyone who likes things), the use of unrequited pseudo-incestuous infidelity as the means to a romantic subplot (which goes against numerous laws and societal norms in multiple states and countries), missed opportunities at character development and implementation of the new villain’s evil technology (which goes against competent writing and usage of symbolism), and the reduction of Asuna (badass swordswoman, waifu, and series Best Girl) to a nearly helpless "rape damsel" (which goes against all things good, moral, sensible, literary, visual, societal, legal, and otherwise humanly positive or non-deviant). At least the villain got the real-world comeuppance he deserved. Season II begins with "GunGale Online," wherein Kirito is called upon to become Japanese Tom Cruise and unmask a serial killer who can seemingly kill real people by shooting their GGO avatars. Because people still shouldn’t try hard to be good at things they aren’t good at, Kirito ports his avatar (which now looks like a girl for some reason) from ALO over to GGO and buys a royalty-free lightsaber so he doesn’t have to learn how to use guns in a shooting game. And because a happily coupled isekai protagonist apparently still needs a harem, he attracts the attention of a scantily clad female sniper to join his girlfriend, his cute tutorial fairy’s AI program, and his jealous stepsister as window dressing. Though she is almost as developed of a character as Asuna, Sinon the sniper loses all dimension once the "Gun Gale Arc" is over and her problems are “solved.” The second half of SAO II is the best of the series thus far because it leaves a good portion of the isekai formula behind and (almost) forgets about Kirito. After Kirito enlists his harem to help him retrieve Excalibur from the ALO Quest Generator in a short arc that doesn’t feature a human villain at all, Asuna befriends a fellow swordswoman with attachment issues and helps her and her party complete “one, final quest.” The reveal behind this is a heartbreaker, but serves as a powerful, positive, motivational finale for SAO. Until…

Ticketmaster's Note: Just kidding. There are at least two more seasons of SAO under the Alicization subtitle, but I've seen enough of this rancid bubblegum to last me a lifetime, especially with far better anime to devote my time to. Like the next entry in the BAWklog alphabet...

Toradora—adapted to anime by J.C.Staff, Toradora is a high school-set romance series focusing on obsessive-compulsive male tsundere Ryuji Takasu and hopeless, antisocial female tsundere Taiga Aisaka, who team up to make it through home and school life. Many episodes center around some scheme the two enact to attract the attentions of their respective love interests. Said schemes generally fall apart due to the main characters’ tendency to turn into awkward, frightened, stuttering piles of goo whenever said love interests (Taiga has a crush on the straight-laced Yusaku Kitamura, and Ryuji has a crush on the suspiciously optimistic Minori Kushieda) enter the scene. Despite the later inclusion of the two-faced supermodel transfer student Ami Kawashima (whose shift of both character and purpose seem sudden and nonsensical beyond the need for a particular personality type at a given point in the story), the series stays firmly away from being a harem show, which I appreciated. It may seem tropishly obvious to anyone who watches as much (or more) anime as I do what track Toradora is going to take as soon as the main characters appear on screen together, but the journey is entertaining to watch, has enough diversions to keep many a shipper occupied for hours on end, and hits every emotional button it needs to at all the right times.

TriGun—An obviously 90’s anime that combines the old West with a post-apocalyptic future, TriGun follows Vash the Stampede, a supposedly evil and monstrous gunfighter with a ludicrous bounty on his head, and the two female insurance agents who track his progress from town to town seeking compensation for the crippling damage left in his wake. What the two don’t know is that said damage was not caused by Vash himself (who despises using guns for some reason we only vaguely figure out later on), but by whatever boneheaded gunfighter or outlaw gang was trying to capture him that episode. In the TriGun universe, everyone seemingly has an ordinary object that can transform into a gun or hide multiple guns, or a gun that can either transform into a bigger gun or grow a hundred extra barrels at the click of a button. The resulting gunfights can range from ludicrous to badass, and the characters are colorful, diverse, and fleshed out despite their dusty surroundings and the often episodic storytelling. The world building was equally interesting, but not overly explained, which I liked. Also, there is a black cat that shows up in every episode for some reason. I found myself spotting it every time and going, “hahaha! That damned cat…!” Only the finale really had any punch, though, and even with the little build-up moments in the final few episodes, everything about it felt sudden and incongruous to what I had been watching. There is an OVA called Badlands Rumble that I haven’t watched yet, but the series itself was above Average.

Twin-Star Exorcists—A skilled, powerful female exorcist (Benio Adashino) and a retired, ridiculously more powerful exorcist (Rokuro Enmado) cross paths unexpectedly, reflexively hate each other for their differing personalities and world views…, and then learn that they are destined to sire a legendary super-exorcist. Benio’s familiar, Kinako (whom I just call un-Happy, in reference to the little blue dragon-cat from Fairy Tail) is supposed to be the cute mascot character of the series, but is instead a screechy, annoying little asshole that needs to burn to death in the fiery depths of Anime Hell. Aside from Kinako being willing hate-bait, the fourteenth episode being a boring, dialogue-heavy clip show that takes place on Japanese Christmas, and the shonen tropes being as predictable as a clock moving forward in time, I enjoyed myself while watching this series. The exorcism fights are as flashy as anything a Gainax offshoot could put together, the developing dynamic between Benio and Rokuro is a joy to watch, and their superiors’ efforts to interfere and fast-track their prophesied relationship lead to some hilarious, if overly familiar, anime gags. Further into the series, existential and societal issues get their due attention as well, as the heroes learn to question fate, good, evil, cosmic balance, humanity as a quality versus as a race or a species, the natural order, and (because you can’t stop the anime unstoppable without them) love and friendship. Normally, I’d rail against Twin-Star for falling back on this trope, but it doesn’t have to fall back on the trope as an ass-pull of last resort because the mechanism behind it is merely an extension of an ability the two main characters already have and know how to use, which is actual, intelligently written plot resolution. And speaking of plot resolution, the series wraps up in a way that embraces the ongoing, long-form nature of shonen anime, letting the audience know that there is more story to tell without leaving them with a sense of unfulfillment. If a sequel or spin-off is in the works, I’m game for it, but I feel satisfied if a fifty-episode series is all I get.

Ulysses: Jeanne D’Arc and the Alchemist Knight—Even though we all know how Joan of Arc’s story ends (badly and with fire), this series attempts to Mandela together French history, Fullmetal Alchemist, and an uncomfortable harem mechanic to fool us into anticipating a happy ending. Basically, Arthur III of Richemont, Phillip III of Burgundy, King Charles VII (who are all gender-swapped into cute harem girls because Japanese depravity) and convicted serial killer and pedophile Gilles de Rais, a.k.a. Bluebeard (who is reimagined here as Montmorency, aspiring teenage alchemist and generic-looking anime protagonist because Japanese depravity) all go to the same school and make a vow to remain friends no matter what happens (except, you know, history). In his efforts to find a way to make his countrymen immortal, Montmorency stumbles upon a Philosopher’s Stone in his basement (because they had to rip off Attack On Titan, too) and awakens Astaroth, a cute but indignant and overly designed fairy queen based off of one of the demons in the Satanic Trinity, who announces herself as the guardian of the Stone. As Montmorency unknowingly succumbs to alchemy and spends seven years in his basement studying the Stone, history and narrow-minded political dick-measuring stomp their childhood pact into nothingness. After learning that his saliva is the key to activating the Philosopher’s Stone and saving Jeanne, who is an annoyingly-voiced, underage girl because Japanese depravity, from near death by feeding her half of the Stone and kissing her. This turns Jeanne into a mature, bloodthirsty, overpowered anime warrior chick because anime, and technicality-based deception, more Japanese depravity, and lots of war soon follow for most of the series. If making a homicidal pedophile and a fairy-demon the main characters, using statutory rape as a trigger for anime superpowers, dressing every female character in the most overdesigned lack of clothing ever conceptualized, and shitting all over historical accuracy didn’t turn you off to Ulysses, things really go off the rails when Montmorency gets possessed by a giant CGIthulhu tentacle monster, turns into an angel-demon, and starts killing everyone with extradimensional space lasers. Tack on a Villain Sacrifice/Friendship Punch happy ending that seems to forget that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake (apparently for consorting with a pedophiliac serial killer alchemist and a Greek goddess/fairy-demon—yeah, Astaroth is supposed to also be Aphrodite because of course this garbage needs fandom discourse, sequel bait, and “read the manga” advertising so Kevin Spacey and Bill Cosby have something to jack off to in prison) and France and England would still be at war with one another for at least another fifty years. So to recap, I’ve spoiled everything for you and told you how wrong everything about it is, so now you don’t have to watch it. You’re welcome.

Recent online news claims that Funimation bought Crunchyroll this week. Nothing yet to indicate how this will affect the VRV app, but I'm cautiously optimistic about seeing Funimation return to the bundle after a two-plus year hiatus.

This will be the final installment of Anime-BAWklog, but I plan on spotlighting a few franchises in the near future, including Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Isekai Quartet, A Certain Magical/Scientific Anime Universe, and the three Crunchyroll Original/Webtoon series that have released so far. I also intend to review new anime series as they finish, and (time permitting), begin covering series by episode as they air.

Be safe,

Be smart,

Be ambitious,

Be good to one another.

Good things will come to those who wait.

Ticketmaster,

Out.