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Comments
Well, so I've finished watching That One Series That's Not SAO That People Seem To Keep Flaming. In other words, The Asterisk War. Technically I've only seen half of it, but since the two cours are listed as separate series, I think it's fair to ask what I think of it at this point. After all, one of the reasons I watched this was because I was curious what all the fuss was about.
It's not perfect, though I don't find myself hating it.
I don't like the harem aspects, which seem really shoehorned in -- honestly this story would have worked just fine and probably better had it built the main cast through heroic-alliance-building than harem-building. The former actually makes perfect sense in context -- and besides they could have even given McPhail a bigger, more interesting role, for example.
The characterization was best when the show had heartfelt moments presenting the characters' backstories, as that showed the most personal insight into their characterization, but the "in the present" character moments were somewhat lackluster, in that it often showed just one or two sides of the character (and one of those sides was generally their infatuation with Ayato, which is a theme that could have been repeated less). Julis, awesome as she is, sadly doesn't get much focused screentime after the first few episodes, and that was disappointing. On the other hand, the most interesting character might be Irene.
The variety of abilities and the various tactics used by different characters in battle was certainly interesting. In this way this series reminded me a bit of RWBY (which, incidentally, also has somewhat weak characterization, at least early on). And as with RWBY, I continue to be interested to watch more, in order to find out more about the setting and "how things work" in this world.
I don't see any inherent problem with Ayato being overpowered. I understand that he's somewhat used as a wish-fulfillment character for audience appeal, but that's a metatextual element I neither feel personally nor find relevant to my opinion of the show. Meanwhile, his overpoweredness is actually presented pretty consistently -- something that could be said in general of the show's portrayal of the characters' abilities and how they match up.
The show presents a reasonably interesting setting with reasonably appealing visual aesthetics. The music that accompanies this storytelling is also decent, though in my opinion the real gem is the harmonically-brilliant ending theme, "Waiting for the Rain", written by Rasmus Faber. (I greatly enjoyed his OP for Lagrange: the Flower of Rin-ne as well.) Rather, the main trouble with this story is the storytelling itself.
I think it would be improved if the "harem scenes" -- i.e. where various characters seem to (often unfittingly and without nuance) express their infatuation with Ayato -- were replaced by lighthearted heartwarming scenes or more serious, dramatic scenes. Such scenes could be used to give greater depth to the characters, which is would be a much better use of the time. In general, the fanservice (even in the character designs) could be toned down and the characters could be taken a bit more seriously; that would have appealed to me more.
Literally all harems. Ever.
See above.
Don't hold your breath, the number of light novel adaptations that really delve into the world (ie the focus of the books after all the girls in the harem are introduced) are few and far between since most anime only adapt the first lot of books. You might get lucky but that's a long shot.
Probably because I hung around people who kept talking about Digibro and his series of videos criticizing The Asterisk War.
who is this Digibro personno i'm good not knowing
Disappointing in that it didn't tell a complete story. 24 minutes hardly enough time to tell a complete story in a novel setting of this complexity. On the other hand, that's exactly what they promised to deliver, and they delivered it, and likely the whole idea was to attract industry funders to make a whole series in the first place. (Even the $5.1M stretch goal was to make a feature film, not to make an entire series.)
I can't say whether I like or dislike it yet. Because it's just a part of a story.
(Also my name is in the leftmost column of the list of Attendants in the Kickstarter section.)
"twintails" and then "real life twintails", is that real-life twintails
tend to come off the bottom of the sides of the head while anime
twintails tend to be tied off at the top of the sides of the head in
addition to sometimes at the bottom of the sides.
Now I'm stuck between watching things I want to watch and UtaPri + MajiKyun.
Currently Watching is now what I've actually been recently thinking about seriously.
On-Hold is stuff that I expect to finish because I've already committed myself to finishing it.
Plan-to-Watch is a catch-all for stuff that I've gotten interested in to varying degrees but I haven't actually committed to watching all of it yet.
Currently Watching + On-Hold is now basically an Active+Bench shortlist.
A lot of stuff got Dropped, and some stuff got outright deleted. But in general stuff got shifted downwards on the commitment ladder described above.
Currently Watching for me has always been something that I'm watching like, right this second. If I haven't seen an episode in two weeks or so I feel the need to move it. On-Hold is for shows with irregular release/sub schedules (that's three entire shows and out of those I moved PriPara to "dropped" and don't feel like moving it back yet). I cleared my dropped list because it was ridiculously inflated, but kept Bleach for sentimental value.
None of the sixteen shows on my PTW have aired or been subbed, which is the entire reason I haven't watched them :P
I really hate to put stuff on there that *has* been subbed because I start feeling guilty about not getting on with it really quickly. As of right now, that's probably a short list of just KING of PRISM by PrettyRhythm.
Loooots of spoilers so yeah:
I feel like I haven't written up a long post about an anime in quite a while, but after episode 11 of Sca-red Rider XechS I feel like I need to put what I feel about the series together.
The beginning, as it always is, was quite here-and-there. I wasn't sure if this was going to turn into one of those "I WILL PROTECT YOU" things and just screw me out of 6 hours of my life or actually go somewhere. Strangely enough, it really started to improve once the lecherous member of the harem showed up, mostly because he wasn't really lecherous, just trying to hide from his past and abate some of the PTSD he felt (especially since the girl he was protecting was a girl who had died right in front of his eyes a few years prior).
The show very early on decided not to bog us down with the romances of one girl and six guys, and cut that number down to half by having three just sit on the sidelines. Even so, I'm really happy that we did get Hiro and Kazuki episodes that were fun and light, whilst also touching on the serious issues they faced as soldiers.
So this was a show that really made it's way out of the harem trappings, having the plot come first and the main character, Akira, be the most interesting character of the bunch, aside from her clone Hako, who ended up quickly becoming my favorite character.
It all came to a really satisfying ending in episode 9, with just enough implied backstory to make events work, we had two entire meaningful character deaths and a sort of ending to the main plot, but of course that was just episode 9.
I can't fault episode 10 at all either, it was a brilliantly handled episode about moving on from everything.
But then, it turns out that the more meaningful character death (harem member Takt's) has been reversed, and he is now working for the Red World (the enemy of the Blue World), and that just feels sort of disingenuous, though I should have expected it. There's a lot to say about the conflict between the Blue World and the Red World; neither is evil exactly, they are having a legitimate war obviously. But the Blue World has had a lot more of a chance to show off it's ugly sides in the form of General Okazaki,who created Hako in the first place and has tried to reset Akira/the Dirigent before she dies.
Yet I know we're supposed to be in support of the Blue World, and aside from Akira and the boys we haven't seen much in terms of likable humans that haven't died already. We also get set-up for the prequel novel, involving the first Akira and a lot of wobbly lore about the first Rider and his relationship with her. I'd like to read that sometime, but nobody cares but me ;-;
I feel like Akira should be given a more active role as we come into the final episode, but these are the limitations of the genre, and I'm sad to see them be applied so stringently. NORN9 managed to step away from these boundaries though, and I wish XechS could have too.
Finally, I should say I am enjoying it a lot and that it really shows a lot of hope for the reverse harem genre going forward (or not since the XechS game came out in the mid-2000s and all we get now is Otomate prepackaged idol, Victorian or Edo projects).
Aikatsu Stars! - Not ending, but we're going into the "possibly big arc followed by what must be an epic day off episode", unless this is Stars! and they don't do that. I'll like it anyways.
Tales of Zestiria the X - Again, not over yet, but still. Probably a genuine contender for AOTY, can't wait for the second half.
Bouei-bu LOVE! LOVE! - Ended, I really liked it and it was worth watching. Characters were once again insanely solid, and the plot actually got better weirdly enough.
Sca-red Rider ZechS - Ended, it was not the worst ending, but it lacked thematic balance as a whole and also forgot who the main character was multiple times. Didn't love it, but didn't mind it too much either.
Qualidea Code - Not over yet, but oh how I wish it was, LiSA will never perform an OP for a good show ever again. Probably SAO's fault.
I'm watching:
As for shorts:
It's 11 episodes of action-oriented CGI, each about 11 minutes long. Imagine RWBY but with even better and more stylish animation. Also with just one girl as protagonist.
I'm 8 episodes in and enjoying it. The story is about a dystopian future where robots have taken over the world, but there are people with superpowers who are fighting back against them.
I don't know what exactly happened with me and the final episode, but I feel like my judgement at it's themes was clouded over by my anger-goggles (don't get me wrong, it is a legitimately bad show). In the end, I still felt as if there was something really well done going on.
Plus, the character development (for everone except Canaria, who managed to get out of this whole thing with zero characterization) in the first nine episodes was brilliant. Add that to the way it handled juggling characters and it's a nice little experience if you're looking for some loveable protagonists on every end of the scale.
I feel like the final episode converged on a final theme that I really can't discern at the moment (it involved families though) but that's what ended up convincing me.
The other thing is that even though the plot exploded and one character from later on ended up being the exact thing I could trace to ruining it, the writing never dropped in quality.
@GMH: I just think you would be able to make sense of this all since you're much more patient and forgiving than I am when it comes to anime, since I'm not super-willing to rewatch it ever.
I've made no progress on anything these past few days because I've been sick.