After a good start in ep 1, in this episode we almost went off the rails. It's all about building the harem, and they seem to be rushing through it. Maybe, if we're lucky, it's because they want to get it out of the way so as to concentrate on more important stuff. If we're unlucky, it'll be because they want to concentrate on harem hijinks.
In ep 1 we had this during the battle between Ikki and Stella:
The two girls in this image are both going to be in the harem. The one with the camera gets introduced in this episode:
She's an underclassman, and enough about her. I think her main reason for existing is to make Stella jealous. Because in this episode it's clear that Stella has fallen hard for Ikki. I'm pretty sure this girl isn't formally part of the harem, though; the ED shows four girls and she isn't one of them.
Here comes haremette #2:
That's Ikki's younger sister, and this was squicky because that kiss lasted an unreasonably long time. She has a big league brocon. This rang Stella's bell, too, and so on and so forth...
Well, we got some back story from Ikki which saved the episode. But it is his character that really continues to save things. If there was ever a character who was entitled to be angsty, he's it. But he isn't. He's upbeat and cheerful and dedicated and strong without being a Marty Stu, and in this episode we learn why.
In that picture from ep 1, the girl in the back ground with the braids and glasses is going to be a haremette, too; she's in the ED. And there's another one that I think hasn't shown up yet even as a cameo. I bet we get them both next episode.
I don't want this show to be harem hijinks! I want it to be "Ikki struggles against his family and wins anyway!" That's the interesting story they've been hinting at. I've seen harem hijinks dozens of times before and I don't need to see it again.
I also don't need to see "Stella gets angsty", please. Let's not go there, OK?
They did leave a few things out from the corresponding part of the story in the light novels (Namely, how capable Ikki is at fighting without any weapons.). However - and this is the important point about the story - every time you think they are going with the standard clichés you see in anime, the story does something that shows it is very different.
Posted by: cxt217 at October 10, 2015 03:32 PM (xm3KK)
2
So is silver haired sister's roommate a guy or a girl? My translation had "Alice" for a nickname and (her) saying "think of me as your big sister" but there's a lot of man vibe there.
Posted by: topmaker at October 10, 2015 06:15 PM (6stZH)
Aside from the obvious vibes...jumping ahead slightly:
The light novels confirms that he is a guy who thinks 'she' is a girl.
Something else they left-out from the light novels: when Shizuku first appeared, both Ikki, Stella, and their class were still in the classroom. When Stella and Shizuku finally were about to come to blows, Ikki just sighed and left the room along with everyone else, instead of just standing there between the two girls.
Posted by: cxt217 at October 10, 2015 06:41 PM (xm3KK)
Sigh. I just don't understand it. This is the worse story, but by far the best characters. If we could trade characters with Asterisk's storyline....
And yeah, Alice is the poster child for self-gender confusion. (I have to qualify it, thanks to "No way there can be a penis on this" Oto-Boku)
Posted by: ubu at October 12, 2015 06:19 AM (SlLGE)
5
Okay, I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought the harem stuff was a
bit much. I'm good with some relationship madness going on, but a lot of
what was happening here felt so forced.
Posted by: Tom Tjarks at October 13, 2015 01:27 AM (J0lM9)
They financed two movies this year in the DBZ franchise. They're placed after Majin Buu but before the last three episodes of DBZ.
In the first movie "Battle of Gods" Videl is pregnant. In the second one "Resurrection 'F'" Pan is a baby. Pan actually was a participant in the first movie but she's just a cameo in the second one, which just hit the torrents. (I mention those things because in the last three episodes of DBZ, Pan is about 4 years old.)
Anyway, about Frieza: Toriyama originally intended Frieza to be the ultimate bigbad of the canon. He intended to stop doing it after that arc. But the magazine wouldn't let him stop, so he did Androids/Cell (which IMHO is the best part of the canon) and then Majin Buu (which reeked).
Cell is the best bigbad of the series, and Frieza is second. But we killed him off a long time ago and I thought he was gone forever. (Gohan was something like 6 years old when Trunks offed Frieza, and at the edge of the canon Gohan is grown, married, and has a kid.)
Guess not; Frieza's last few remaining minions managed to collect Earth's dragonballs and wish him back to life. (Which itself violates canon; the dragonballs were never able to bring back evil people.) That's this movie.
Anyway, the problem now with Frieza as an antagonist is that the Saiyajin have left him totally behind in terms of power long since. It was bad enough at the end of DBZ when Goku revealed Super Saiyajin 3, but with Battle of Gods it became even worse when Goku accessed the level "Super Saiyajin God". The opposition that time was Beerus/Bills, the God of Destruction, ostensibly the most powerful being in the universe who spends most of his time sleeping.
Every few years he wakes up and goes out to destroy something, then he returns to his HQ and goes back to sleep. His companion/caretaker/teacher is a strange guy named Whis, who is even faster and more powerful but has no ambition to speak of.
Anyway, Beerus decides not to destroy the Earth, and goes back home for a quick (just a few months) nap. The reason was that he liked Earth cooking. Whis does too, and in Resurrection "F" he's been keeping himself busy training Goku and Vegita in exchange for more Earth cooking.
So Frieza gets resurrected, and spends a few months training and then decides to attack Earth to get revenge on Goku. He brings all his remaining soldiers, about a thousand.
Since Goku and Vegita are away, most of the rest of the Z fighters collect. Krillin, Roshi, Gohan, Piccolo, and Tenshinhan, plus a galactic cop named Jaco.
The soldiers turn out to be wusses, and our five people wipe them all out. The only reason it takes a long time is that there are so many of them.
So then Frieza decides to take a hand, and after one-shotting Gohan, who gets better with a senzu, Goku and Vegita show up. (It's always like that; it's part of the canon.)
And even though Frieza has found a new form and powerup level, Goku and Vegita don't have any trouble with him. It's kind of underwhelming, really.
The big change this time was that Goku has found yet another powerup transformation:
When he achieved "Super Saiyajin God" in Battle of Gods it made his hair crimson. But he had trouble with that, accessing it and maintaining it.
Now he can reach it routinely, but his hair is blue, as is his energy. Frankly, I think it looks awesome.
What's even more cool is that Vegita got it too.
The animation is gorgeous; with a movie budget they spent a lot of money on it, and it shows. But ultimately the idea wasn't a good one, simply because Frieza is completely outclassed as this point of the canon.
It's a shame.
UPDATE: Actually, the single coolest thing in this movie is to see what was done to Frieza in Hell. That was genuinely awesome; extreme punishment indeed.
Ore ga Ojou-sama GakkÅ ni "Shomin Sample" Toshite Gets-rareta Ken -- ep 1
I can't believe how vile this is. What's most astounding is that someone out there thinks this is funny.
There's a secret high class school where the elite and the rich send their daughters. Everyone there is female, including the teachers and all the maids (of which there are many). Their problem is that when the girls graduate and head out into the real world, it's too much of a shock and they can't fit in.
So they decided to bring in one commoner for the girls to interact with, a boy. Our Hero Kimito was chosen because they think he's gay. (Because he likes looking at magazines with pictures of body builders.)
That was the point where I gave up. I have no idea whether he actually is gay and I don't care.
This doesn't just need to be dropped. It needs to be buried and then the site nuked.
1
However, I do like the idea that cutting off all contact with male "commoners" renders girls incompetent in the outside world, regardless of education.
According to one description, the boy has to pretend to be gay in order to avoid castration. Gah. How long before he has to start cross dressing? In the immortal words of one ancient sage, "I refuse to believe that that has a penis." Something like this seems to be happening in our own world; the rotting effect of a female-dominated academy is not limited to girls.
Well-handled, this could have been brilliant social satire. (Although probably more suited for a movie than a series.)
Posted by: 50srefugee at October 08, 2015 08:56 PM (OoOF7)
I'm rewatching Yozakura Quartet Hana no Uta looking for top rotation candidates. It has a swimsuit episode.
But aside from that all the fan service is panty shots. Which is fine with me, but I can't use them in the top rotation.
Occasionally the panty shots approached the distraction/derail level of the fan service in Divergence Eve. This was probably the most egregious case:
There's a critical scene in episode 9 where Akina confronts the big-bad and there's a fight. And right in the middle of it, Juri shows up and attacks the bad guy, and this was included for no reason which is obvious besides simple pandering to the audience. I guess we can thank God for small favors: they didn't include cameltoe. Which would have been nice, too, but would also have been world-class pandering and would have left me feeling a little bit soiled.
Anyway, as of ep 7 I have 57 candidates. Between this and ISUCA I bet I can top 6000 images. (I need 79 total.)
UPDATE: In the mean time, tsun tsun dere tsun dere tsun tsun...
1
The wackier part of Yozakura's fanservice is that just so much of it happens in the natural progression of the animation. Obviously, it's designed to be there, but a good portion of it rarely feels forced. Mostly as it's the utterly logical result of short skirts and a lot of moving/running/jumping around.
Which is sort of brilliant. If you want to enjoy the fanservice, there is a lot of it. But it's happening at the same time as most of the really good animation, which means you can just as easily focus on that. I honestly think it's kind of brilliant on a bunch of levels.
Posted by: sqa at October 09, 2015 10:50 AM (qzPcg)
2
I'm up to Ep 8, and I concur this is one of the best anime I've seen in a long while. Good animation, good humor, good story, fascinating and original characters--and plenty of natural, unabashed fan service.
Plus, strong male characters. I'm getting to be extremely picky about that.
I'll be very sad when I run out of episodes.
Thanks, Steven, for bringing this to my attention.
Posted by: 50srefugee at October 09, 2015 12:57 PM (OoOF7)
3
What you don't get is a girl saying "OMG I just flashed my panties! Where's a guy I can beat up?"
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 09, 2015 04:10 PM (+rSRq)
4
They give you the tsundere song, instead of the tsundere reaction punch. Quite nice of them.
Posted by: Mikeski at October 09, 2015 09:27 PM (TuMIP)
Heavy Object - In the dystopian future, Alaska’s hope rests on the shoulders of a princess who operates a giant mecha testicle.
Posted by: wahsatchmo at October 07, 2015 02:36 PM (VFkGH)
3
IIRC, Alaska comes out somewhat worse for the wear. But it does better than Australia or Antarctica. And no, that wasn't meant to be an alliterative joke.
Posted by: ubu at October 07, 2015 04:21 PM (GfCSm)
The memory is a bit foggy, but there are repeated references to the Australia of the series being a site of frequent battles in the Heavy Object light novels.
Then again, Kazuma Kamachi seems prefer using the West as a punching bag - of which Australia is merely a closer to home version as far as many Japanese seem to believe.
Posted by: cxt217 at October 07, 2015 05:07 PM (y6GqJ)
This should could have ended up being really dark, even outright horror. But they are tossing in just enough fan service and sight gags to keep it somewhat light.
Now this is what I call a "railgun"!
And... what is she shooting?
The Tokyo Tower, of course!
There's a lot of exposition and backstory here, but they're doing a really good job of revealing it slowly without bogging down the story. As of ep 7, we've passed a crisis but there's another, larger one looming.
This story has been told several times in several series. In this particular one, "quartet" is inherited but makes no sense. There are six major characters involved in fighting for the town, and at least another four doing close support, two of whom are gods. (This is the second series where I've heard the word tochigami.)
Of the main six, only one is a human male. Nominally he would be expected to be a harem lead, but this isn't a harem show -- which is fine with me.
This was a point where I thought the show was about to get really dark:
Touka, the one with dark hair, is an ogre. She was trying to save those kids from a run-away car but when she gets excited or scared she can lose control of her strength, and she ended up crushing them with one arm while stopping, and trashing, the car with her other.
But it turns out OK.
The kids are both vampires and they regenerate. Half an hour later they're both fine.
I have no idea whether the other series in this canon are any good, but I'm really enjoying this one.
UPDATE: Ep 13 and done.
THEY DIDN'T FINISH THE STORY!!!
What they gave us was pretty good, and a lot of stories did get resolved, but the most important story was left dangling! And I don't mean like this!
That's the last scene in the show, by the way, not counting the final ED.
There had better be an OVA that follows this, damn it!
UPDATE: And no, there isn't. There are two OVAs but they tell side stories that land in the middle of this continuity. (Or the middle of the continuity in the original series.)
There apparently is a manga, and I bet it isn't finished, which is why they couldn't tell us in anime about
what happens when the seven giant trees finally bloom.
UPDATE: Yes, there is a manga. And this show ended with episode 49. The manga runs through chapter 85, so now for some reading.
By the way, a bit of frig logic:
Juri describes Dr. Frankenstein as her ancestor, but he's also described as having died without issue. WTF?
A different point: She says that the original Dr. Frankenstein made his own sister immortal. I bet that's Miriabelle, the girl who works with/for Juhi.
UPDATE: The reason the anime didn't finish the story is that it isn't finished in the manga. And at the rate he's going it won't be finished for years.
1
Now I remember! You had a post years ago that centered around the glasses girl who could conjure with words. That post turned me onto this series.
You used the many machine guns image, I think. I mean the ones she conjured, not her personal - never mind.
I really liked this series. The remake was very different, but good in its own right. So even if you don't remember, thank you for posting on it.
Posted by: topmaker at October 06, 2015 03:08 PM (6stZH)
2
I don't remember ever seeing, or writing, about anything like that. I think you must be remembering someone else's blog post.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 06, 2015 05:33 PM (+rSRq)
3
Yeah, it's pretty straight forward in its implication that the immortal Sister is Mariabelle. Which also explained why there was land in his name in the city.
The second OVA series should follow right after the main anime series, but it's really more of a side-light. Though the Inugami hitting on Kyousuke was pretty dang funny.
Posted by: sqa at October 06, 2015 08:02 PM (suEDm)
4I think you must be remembering someone else's blog post.
I know I had something like that over at The Pond once upon a time, but I can't find it now. On the plus side, though, I did enjoy the scroll through my entire anime category.
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 06, 2015 08:31 PM (a12rG)
(I remembered the post since I knew I commented on it... and found it by searching for my name & yozakura quartet. Which found posts around the aniblogosphere titled "a note on spam", "are there any serious anime nurses", "if you watch this anime backwards...", and "I can show you some boobs." Ah the magic of google bing.)
Posted by: Mikeski at October 07, 2015 06:24 PM (TuMIP)
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 07, 2015 07:41 PM (a12rG)
7
Oops! I apologize, Steven and Wonderduck. That looks like the image I remember.
Posted by: topmaker at October 08, 2015 01:45 PM (6stZH)
8
That's from one of the other series; it never happens in this one. The most sustained series of summons by her in this series is a whole load of metal dinner trays she's using as barriers to stop incoming projectiles. And she says "Tray" so many times (each summons just one tray) that her tangue start getting toungled.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 08, 2015 05:47 PM (+rSRq)
The machinepistol shot first appears in the first episode of the first series, but that particular screenshot (and the one with the 88) is from the second OVA ("Hoshi no Yumi"?).
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 08, 2015 09:10 PM (a12rG)
I decided to dig out a few old series to see what I thought of them.
First was K-On. It's hugely popular with fan artists, needless to say, and its been a meme ever since it came out, so I decided I should find out what it really is.
I managed to finish the first episode, with large amounts of skipping, but migod it ain't for me. Jeeze; I was cursing at the end.
So next on the list was rewatching Macademi Wasshoi. It's been years since I last watched it, and I had forgotten how good it is. It doesn't really have a series-level plotline, but it does have a theme:
It's about a lot of lonely confused people looking for a place to belong.
Next on the list is Yozakura Quarter. This is a show I keep meaning to watch but never got around to it, so today I found a round tuit and downloaded this series. Episode 1, coming up.
UPDATE: ...And... it isn't bad. It isn't bad at all. Several kids with super powers who are also interesting characters and don't come off as tropes, a relatively light-hearted story (so far) with a lot of action. I really enjoyed it. I wonder if it will stay like this?
1
Which of the Yozakura Quartet versions are you watching?
There's the first series from 2008 is considered a fairly By-The-Book adaptation, that goes into anime-original territory.
The 2013 series is actually closer to the original manga and follows through more closely, with little adjustments here and there. But the bigger thing is that it keeps the art closer. They also got one of the best animators in the business to director. (I also really, REALLY like this series)
The one difficulty is that there is two OVA series that go with the 2013 series (Called "Hana no Uta", i.e. Flower Song). The first, "Hoshi no Umi", was actually the proof of concept for redoing the anime series. If you're watching the series, watch that OVA series after ep 8. They recap the whole thing at the start of ep 9, but it is a little jarring.
The second OVA series, "Tsuki ni Naku", takes place after the main anime series.
Even if you don't like the series, Juri and Lila (ep 10+), are very much great screen cap material. Also, some of the animation they have for Ao and Kotoha are great. It's a wonderfully animated series.
Posted by: sqa at October 06, 2015 12:50 AM (dySw6)
2
Yeah, that's the thing with K-On! The moment I saw Yui, I knew I was going to love the show. If you don't click with the characters right away, it's not for you. It's entirely a character-driven show; the story is more-or-less accidental.
Coincidentally, I have two computers named from K-On! (Mio and Azu-nyan) and one from Macademi Wasshoi (Tanarotte, of course).
But then, I have one from Dirty Pair, one from Slayers, two from Hidamari Sketch, six virtual servers named after the Bottle Fairies (plus their winged cat thingy), and all my Android devices have anime names starting with A (Arale, Akane, Aria, and so on).
Which was probably not the best idea, because I can never remember which is which.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 06, 2015 02:16 AM (PiXy!)
3
It's not as simple. I am no fan of the "retard moe" that Yui exemplifies, but I liked K-ON well enough overall. It was during the golden age of animeblogging at Ani-nouto and is well documented, too. Without that written record I'd think the most interesting character was Mio, but actually it was Mugi, at the time.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 06, 2015 07:51 AM (RqRa5)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 06, 2015 07:57 AM (+rSRq)
6
The image of Steven cursing at K-On! makes me think of the guy from Grand Torino yelling at poor Mio and company as they cower on his lawn. Hating K-On! is like hating puppies or ice cream. Or, in the case of K-On!, hating tea time.
Not that I'm a fan or anything; I only watched both seasons, the OVA, the movie, and two of the seiyuu concerts. (the prettiest seiyuu is the one who plays Mugi; the seiyuu that plays Yui looks like a giant compared to the rest, but in real life she's only 5'6").
Yozakura Quartet was very good, I liked both the series and the OVAs. It's one of those worlds of anime that you can see the authors continually exploring, with infinite possibilities for stories.
Posted by: wahsatchmo at October 06, 2015 09:08 AM (VFkGH)
7
I watched the first K-on! Series but couldn't finish the second. I was surprised when I went to re-watch the first series that I couldn't watch it anymore, either. Had no patience for it.
Posted by: Ben at October 06, 2015 09:55 AM (YTvcG)
It's another 3:30 short. And I'm sure it was done in Flash. It's some of the worst animation I've ever seen out of Japan; it probably took one guy about two days to create all the animation. As to the characters, and the writing, and the voice acting, it's all at the same low quality as the art. Everyone involved in this ought to feel ashamed.
