Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. the Anime-BAWklogger
This week in anime, we start looking at the long list of backlogged series that I had tacked onto my Anime Spotlight posts once upon a time.
86Eighty-Six--We begin with a series about silver-haired, albino racists who force the diverse, "inferior" masses into military servitude against an army of soul-stealing, artificially intelligent robot crab tanks.
Enter handler Millize, a platinum bombshell in a military uniform designed for the adult film industry because anime, and the quest for social equality begins. Unlike others of her race, Millize treats her "Eighty-Six" (the titular oppressed masses, so named for the number of the slum district they live in, and also diner lingo meaning to cancel or discard an order) as people, especially one codenamed "Undertaker" (after a near-death experience, he gained the ability to hear the hive mind of the Legion, and has taken it upon himself to kill any of his comrades who are near death, somehow preventing the Legion from assimilating them). Great, frantic, large-scale battles, engaging character dynamics, and suspense throughout the first season, making it a must-watch for
Attack On Titan fans. The second season follows our rogue band of ragtag heroes as they sever ties with Millize and forge their own path through the Legion's forces, only to find a suspiciously peaceful and well-guarded country on the other side. Dealing with PTSD, trust issues, and a lack of purpose, Undertaker and his crew head back to the front lines, where the series is bogged down with multiple episodes of contrived writing about Undertaker's heritage and a bunch of techno-spiritual surrealism and murderous chant-screaming. When the death metal drug show finally ended and I had just about stopped giving a shit,
Eighty-Six got good and heartfelt for its last two episodes.
Quintessential Quintuplets--this was another series that went in the toilet for its second season. After a noncommittal cop-out of a season finale, it fell prey to
Scream 4 Syndrome by introducing disguises so that, not only is the protagonist incapable of telling five identical women apart normally, now any of them can look like any of them at any given time, resulting in a complete lack of any given fux by this viewer. Yet somehow this is getting a film continuation. Why, Japan?
Why?
My Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom--keeping on a theme, this series had a strong first season, wherein a girl gets reincarnated as the unfortunate villainess of her favorite dating simulator, and has to work against the established plot to ensure her survival. However, this is resolved by season's end, which means she starts Season Two encumbered by (and oblivious to) the affections of every pseudo-relative, friend, and suitor of both genders, whom she encountered through the course of the first season, turning a unique series into just another by-the-numbers, tamely smutty harem comedy.
Yashahime: Half-Demon Princess--with this one, we go the complete opposite direction. I already tore apart the first season in
a previous article for its false advertising and terrible, derivative writing because I understand Japanese slightly better than would a Chinese infant, and also because it was derivative, badly written, and a struggle to watch. The second season has these problems, too, at first. But in short order, the Rainbow Pearls cease to be relevant, episodes feel more like self-contained fairy tales with
Yashaverse characters in them, the three leads (and some of the supporting cast) actually start to pursue their own character growth, the fights and special effects are grander in scale (if not always better animated), ongoing plot elements are more interesting, and Inuyasha and Kagome actually show up finally. It's still a nostalgia-pandering legacy sequel aimed at the PG-13 crowd, but it's a noticeably improved one of those.
Ranking Of Kings--from one fairy tale to another,
ROK is an anime drawn like a French cartoon from the 90s, where huge, geometric heads, triangular noses, and simple facial features were the order of the day, and everyone's body was designed like an inflatable tube man crossed with a Yoshi's Island boss. It tells the story of Prince Boji, the weak, small, infirm, hearing impaired son of Bosse, the Giant King. Admired for his pluck and kindness, but ridiculed for his shortcomings, Boji (along with Kage, a last-of-his-kind former assassin who looks like a burned pair of fried eggs with arms and a tentacle mouth) is exiled from his home on a hero's journey of self improvement. Meanwhile, a demon-besieged witch and her band of mercenaries attempt to take over the kingdom and save the love of her life from certain doom. Don't let the cute art style or line delivery fool you;
Ranking Of Kings boasts some deep storytelling, nightmarish imagery and subject matter, graphic violence, and several of the best choreographed and animated fights of the year so far.
OddTaxi--this is part two of "Deceptive Art Style, Surprising Maturity." It's a cute-looking, animal-people anime with chill theme music, and it's about a grumpy walrus who drives a taxi around Japan, and the unusual characters he gets as passengers. But what starts as just a slice of life show in a richly interesting but logistically unfathomable world (for example, animal-people have animals as pets and there is a boar/horse comedy duo called Homosapiens) soon turns into
Durarara! by way of
Zootopia. A jilted gacha player goes on a masked killing spree, a girl goes missing and our lead is the prime suspect, gangsters threaten his life, his girlfriend turns out to be a drug dealer, there's a porcupine who delivers all his lines as spoken word freestyle, there are twin crooked cops who look like meerkats (as drawn by someone who doesn't know what meerkats look like), there's a girl idol group composed of a dog and two cats and managed by a fox, and none of what I just said is the most mind-blowingly twisted part. In an effort to not spoil the ending, I will now recommend you go watch it for yourselves.
Mieruko-chan--I love intelligent comedies, and I love supernatural mystery shows, and though I can't consistently remember how to spell the title correctly,
Mieruko-chan falls nicely into both categories. Our heroine, Miko, can see the spirits of the dead (walking exhibits of the most disgusting and terrifying body horror ever drawn), and if they find out she can see them, they will kill her. So through increasingly hilarious feats of acting, willpower, and denial, Miko must navigate the spiritual minefield that her world has become, while also keeping her happy-go-lucky, amply-chested, best friend, Hana, and ghost-hunting "rival," Yulia, safe from the same fate. It's less episodic than your average comedy, the horror and suspense elements are solid, and the jokes (especially the fear/respect/ignorance dynamic between Miko and Yulia) never failed to make me laugh. Give it a look, but don't let it know you're watching.
Trapped In A Dating Sim: The World Of Otome Games Is Tough For Mobs--I don't know how a second season of this would fare, but like
Villainess above, it makes an intriguing first impression. After doing a completionist marathon of a dating simulator that his sister dumped on him as a sick joke, our protagonist dies falling down the stairs and wakes up as an NPC in said game world. Using gamer knowledge, luck, and his unfiltered, dickish personality, he sets about humiliating the pretty boy love interests (one voiced by dub icon Ian Sinclair), drawing the affections of the heroine and villainess alike, and thwarting the schemes of various political and military figures, including an unforeseen new heroine who may or may not be the protagonist's
isekai'd sister. The world is bonkers and the story is clearly meant to be a comedy, but
Dating Sim pulls off a unique trope subversion and is smarter than it looks at first. The real kicker for me, though, came with the dub voice actors behind the hero's fantasy world parents. His father is voiced by Chris Sabat, and his stepmother is voiced by Linda Young. So for the
Dragon Ball fans out there, this means that because of the English dub of
Dating Sim, Piccolo and Vegeta are in an arranged marriage with Freiza, which is the funniest thing I have ever heard or written to this point. Enjoy with whatever degree of mindlessness or mindfulness you choose, and let the
Dragon Ball thruple fanfics come forth!
A quick note: in my absence, something finally came of the Crunchyroll/Funimation buyout. VRV is basically dead, and Funimation's anime library is now available on
Crunchyroll. Crunchy is working on subscriber integration to get their customers' watch lists and bookmarks ported over, and there is support for those who had both subscriptions to move exclusively to Crunchyroll without double-paying or losing service. This is cool, but compared to what VRV offered in terms of stability and interface, Crunchyroll's implementation is garbage, so I pursue other options for my anime viewing.
👀
Next week, Anime Spotlight returns with a look at the works of Atsushi Ohkubo.
Animeister,
Back From BurnOut.
Comments
Post a Comment