That's Rin. As you might imagine, her main job in the series is gainaxing.
This show is comedy edging towards farce. But it's mainly fan service. Lots of bike fan service as well as paraphenalia fan service. There are corporate logos all over the place, real ones, and lots of pictures of motorcycles. Plus the girls, all but one of whom are nicely built.
So let's introduce some characters.
Hane, on the left, seems to be the audience viewpoint character. She's a bit of a ditz. Onsa, with the black hair, is snide and flat chested. She seems to enjoy baiting Rin, whom you've already met. I think it's only a matter of time before Rin starts making fun of Onsa's chest in retaliation.
Lime is the Motorcycle Club president. She never speaks and never takes her helmet off, at least so far. The one time she had something substantive to say, she held up a sign. The series web site doesn't list a seiyuu for her.
Hijiri is a rich girl, as yet too young to get a driver's license.
So as to what they ride? Hane rides a Honda, Onsa rides a Yamaha trail bike, Lime has a Kawasaki, Rin rides Suzuki, and Hijiri has a Ducati. Her butler drives it and she rides in a side car.
There's a lot of silliness and quite a lot of mild fan service (of several kinds) and a ridiculous amount of product placement. I bet the show is already profitable due to corporate sponsorship payments from 50+ companies.
It will unquestionably be worth plundering when it's finished but I'm not sure I'll be able to watch it as its rolling out. Having said that, I did enjoy the first episode and I'll watch the next one.
Posted by: Mikeski at April 05, 2016 09:48 AM (BKBr8)
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I'm surprised that nobody here picked it up yet, but isn't Lime a Stig's highschool cousin? Supposedly, then Rin is Hammond, Onsa is Clarkson, and Hane is James May.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 05, 2016 12:50 PM (XOPVE)
That thought had passed through my mind, too. I wonder if anybody actually does that, seems like it ought to work. No, a search says it just results in the bra straps putting twice the pressure on the shoulders...
Doing a google search, it looks just like the airbag, so I guess that's it.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore at April 05, 2016 04:15 PM (l55xw)
12"a search says it just results in the bra straps putting twice the pressure on the shoulders..."
...and some very awkward looks. And confused drunken fondling. And hard-to-reach clasps. (Guess they'd be front-hooks.)
Nothing stopping the counterweight being a separate garment that sits on the hips, though, like a framed hiking backpack.
Wait, that's about where the biological counterweight sits... this "evolution" guy knows what he's doing. As soon as we're done learning how to walk on our hind legs...
Posted by: Mikeski at April 05, 2016 05:31 PM (BKBr8)
13
Pete, that'd work, except Top Gear was interesting and funny.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 05, 2016 07:11 PM (KiM/Y)
14
I liked the suggestion of having the old Top Gear crew do the dub.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 05, 2016 07:51 PM (PiXy!)
15
Even more than Top Gear, it's K-On! with motorcycles instead of music. The audience viewpoint character even has a more level-headed younger sister.
Posted by: muon at April 05, 2016 08:17 PM (IUHrD)
Turns out that "Bread of Peace" is 3 minute episodes. It's "cute girls doing cute things with bread dough", and as such a waste of time. The only worthwhile thing in the show was:
As nearly always, we have a "how do you romanize that name" issue with character names. In this series in some ways it's worse than usual. Often the problem is that the original name was a western word or phrase, converted to kata kana, and then we have to figure out what it was originally. It doesn't help that often the original western term was chosen as a joke.
That was nearly at its worst in "Dog Days", where almost all the female characters were named after European desserts. For instance, Gaul's bodyguard is made up of three girls who are known as Genoise. They are Vert Far Breton, Jaune Clafoutis, and Noir Vinocacao.
So just one from GATE: The red-haired princess of the Empire is Piña Colada. Most of us don't bother with the circumflex because it's a pain, so we write her name "Pina".
As to anti-Americanism, that peaks in episodes 9 and 10 of the first series.
There's a murder mystery by Rex Stout called "The League of Frightened Men" which contains a man who nurses murderous hatred of a number of other men. He turns out to be a successful novelist, and to gain revenge he puts those men in his novels as characters and kills those characters brutally.
GATE contains a number of fictional paybacks like that, mostly in the first series: against the Diet, against Americans, and against gutless politicians in the government. In the second series he gets revenge against the Press too. All of these things relieve grudges the author has apparently been nursing since he was in the army decades ago. It's the biggest flaw in the series. Fortunately, it doesn't pollute the entire thing, just three episodes in the first series and one in the second.
But that's still too many. And even if the director had wanted to remove that, it would have left a monstrous hole in the plot and reduced the entire story to incoherence.
UPDATE: By the way, there's going to be a GATE phone game:
I didn't watch last week's episode at the time. If the series was going to end the way the first book did, frankly I didn't want to see it. So I waited until today, dipped into ep 13 enough to see that it had an entirely different ending, and then watched the two episodes back-to-back. I definitely like the way the anime ended a lot better. It wasn't a FUCK-YOU ending directed to the audience.
Kurumi-chan wins the episode. A lot of good performances by a lot of people (Ruru is the runner up) but Kurumi was genuinely awesome.
Our team (they're called "Team E") has the highest score in the school, and they are no longer looked down upon or laughed at by the other students. They've figured out how to combine their attacks in interesting ways. For instance, if Koito and Reina attack a powerful phantom from opposite sides and don't outright destroy it, they can pin it in place, which gives Haruhiko time to draw it and seal it.
Kurumi continues to be a significant asset. Ordinarily a kid that age wouldn't be expected to fight, but she's so good and is such an asset to the team that an exception has been made for her.
And, of course, no one teases her about carrying around a teddy bear because everyone knows about Albrecht.
Seeing now how they had decided to end the series, I can look back and see how they have been laying groundwork for it all along. A lot of episodes I thought were just girl-of-the-week and filler actually did help set things up for this ending two-parter.
And it was very satisfying. Lots of fireworks, and Haruhiko got a huge powerup at a critical moment. Plus we finally found out the truth about Ruru, and it was really neat. It could easily have come off as a deus ex machina, but it was handled so well that it didn't.
The way it ended, it is still possible for it all to go to hell the way it did in the books, but only in the sense that they didn't foreclose that possibility. It's a completely happy ending as presented in the anime.
And the best thing of all? It isn't a harem show. Not even slightly. It's one guy and a lot of girls, at least two of which are very desireable, and there isn't any romance going on. None.
They even tossed in a sight-gag about that.
And that represented discipline on the part of the director. Tossing in romance and accidental-compromising-positions and similar cliches would have damaged the story they really were telling, and it's definitely to the director's credit that he knew it. So the girls are close to Haruhiko, but as close friends.
Thumbs up, and another success for KyoAni.
UPDATE: Oh, and Marchosias and Cthulhu were awesome, too.
Another thing that was very surprising is the relative lack of fan service. With a character like Mai, obviously deliberately designed to attract audience members, it would have been really easy for the director to start pandering. But although they did do the "limbo" scene, and the hot springs episode, they generally steered clear of outright pandering. For instance, despite all the flying kicks and other acrobatics that Mai does in the series when she's fighting while wearing a miniskirt, I don't remember a single panty shot.
2
Two of which are very desirable? You've been watching too many re-runs of Love Hina. I'd take the asocial redhead with the headphones before going after the domestic abuser sempai. I might even wait on the loli to grow up. (Apologies if either is who you meant in the first place...)
Mai being seriously abusive is something that only happens in the early episodes. It was pretty much in there because the director knew some viewers were expecting it, like the fan service. After he had his audience hooked (he hoped) he could fade it out.
Mai's attitude towards Haruhiko changes somewhat in ep 3 and changes a lot in ep 11. It isn't really tsundere (because they never become cuddly or romantic) but it's similar.
But yeah, if I myself was choosing one it would be Reina.
6
Tsunderes aren't really that bad. Not the original (Lum) concept. They're just "Large print for the reading impaired" emotion girls. Unless you're a total moron or cad, (Ataru, IOW.) it's much easier to stay on the good side of a tsundere than an average girl, because she'll let you know when she's mad, instead of doing a slow burn. And she'll let you know when she's happy with you, too.
I ought to know, I married one.
Tsunderes got the bad rep when later writers perverted the concept, perhaps not understanding it, or maybe just finding a guy getting beat up by a pretty girl funny. Lum only electrocutes Ataru when he's earned it. Naru sends Keitaro to the moon at the least excuse, and never gives him a chance to explain.
Totally different concept, IMO, but the both get called tusundere.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore at March 31, 2016 01:04 PM (l55xw)
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Thus the obvious breakdown into "tsundere:default=tsun" and "tsundere:default=dere", as seen on TVTropes and elsewhere.
Posted by: Mikeski at March 31, 2016 01:56 PM (BKBr8)
Which is to say, the rest of the series was awful and the final episode stunk. I got really sick of hearing the word "logic" being used for something, hard to say what but it didn't have anything whatever to do with what I think the word means. My college philosophy professor must be turning over in his grave.
The only fun character was the girl who partnered with Quetzacoatl; she was awesome. But Olga was a prick, and Our Hero was an empty suit, and there just wasn't anything worthwhile about it at all.
About the only mistake they didn't make was to make Athena a ball of angst, say like Beldandy. They resisted that urge until the last couple of minutes of this episode. But that's not enough to redeem the show. (You need positive attributes, not just lack of negative attributes.)
I consider this a total waste of time and heartily recommend that no one bother watching it.
I gave up on this show after you mentioned Olga's partnership with Lucifer. I had difficulty with this to begin with, but I tried about 8 episodes because you found something serviceable at the outset. You were wrong, and therefore you are a terrible person.
On the other hand, I would never have tried Galko had it not been mentioned by a wonderful commenter. You are super, and should be lauded as such.
Because this is the internet, there is no in-between emotional state. There's a German word for this, I suspect.
SchadenPutzenScwhartzWeissenPanzerFaust?
Posted by: wahsatchmo at March 27, 2016 05:55 PM (VFkGH)
The last LN in the series is titled "The Gate Closes", and based on what we learned from Mimoza, that is apparently the historic pattern: every once in a while the gate opens onto another world with a tool-using species, and some of them come through. Then the gate closes, stranding the newbies, who settle and adapt (or all die, and are forgotten by history).
And presumably that will happen this time, too. But...
The gate has never so far as we know opened into a high tech world before. They've all been stone age or at best bronze-age, not silicon-age.
There can be no doubt that there is a huge effort in Japan to study the gate. So here's my preferred ending:
The actual gate closes, but Japanese scientists and engineers have by that point figured out how it works, and they open their own connection to Arnus or somewhere near it. Contact between the two worlds continues.
1
Quibble: the Romans, at least, were iron-age (though pre-industrial.) Based on their military tactics they were probably early medieval, post-Gothic-invasion.
Posted by: Jonathan Tappan at March 26, 2016 12:16 PM (Bkf8Y)
My assumption is that they were bronze age when they came through the gate and learned about iron and steel afterwards.
Otherwise I can't explain why, after maybe a thousand years, they haven't advanced more. Mimoza told us that humans were the most recent arrivals, and we know that now there are millions of them. Enough so that 120,000 men were killed fighting the JSDF at Arnus.
Those were all regular army from the Empire and surrounding kingdoms. If collectively they could maintain an army that large, the population behind it that furnishes the men and money and supplies must be vastly larger.
3
I'd expect a variation on that, where the Japanese scientists are cooperating with the mages. I mean, let's face it, your average physicist, given incontrovertible evidence of magic, would sacrifice any random body part to learn how it works.
Meanwhile the mages are faced with evidence that knowledge of Japanese physics enables to to do much more powerful magic.
They'd both crawl across broken glass to keep in contact...
Posted by: Brett Bellmore at March 26, 2016 01:50 PM (l55xw)
4
It's pretty easy to understand why they didn't advance more - magic exists.
Take a society where only a fraction of the population is even exposed to reading and education. From those, take a significant percentage and tell them "you should study magic, which will let you throw fireballs and call lightning and fly". The result: damned few people with the smarts to do engineering and the inclination to bother.
There's plenty of research going on, but mages do magic research and get solutions for mages. Most of them aren't going to spend time on the kind of things that would benefit mundane society. (For example, no guns, not even the concept of guns, though even a fairly crappy mage could design one...)
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at March 26, 2016 06:12 PM (h+ox1)
In the Roman Empire there were two kinds of engineers. Military engineers worked for the Army and built field works and fortresses and siege engines of various kinds.
And Civil Engineers built buildings, roads, sewer systems, bridges, and aquaducts. That's where the name "civil engineer" comes from; it's a translation of the Latin term.
Neither concerned themselves much with metallurgy, but they both needed good metals, for tools (for instance). Plus the Military engineers (and the Army in general) needed metals for weapons.
Among other advances, Civil engineers discovered and perfected concrete. They also learned a lot about mathematics (despite the horrible impediment of Roman Numerals) and were able to design structures which still stand, 1800 or more years later.
One of the most amazing is Pont du Gard, which was part of an aquaduct which supplied water to Nemausus (modern Nimes). 20 or 30 years ago I saw an article about it in Scientific American, where some modern civil engineers analyzed the design using modern tools and knowledge. The fact that it still stood more than 1900 years after it was built was remarkable, and the usual assumption until then was that the Roman Civil Engineers had massively overdesigned it.
But the modern analysis found that in fact it had about the same kind of overdesign that modern Civil Engineers tend to use.
The Empire has a very advanced civil engineering technology; we can tell that from some of the scene shots of the Capital and from indoor images at various points of one or another palace. They had glass windows, which was a very advanced technology. And their metals were generally excellent. Armor for horses is not a primitive technology.
None of these things are affected by magic one way or another. Magic can be of use during construction, for instance to clear away brush and rubble, but the actually design and building would have to be done the old fashioned way, by strong hands and backs.
I don't think magic is the answer to why they hadn't advanced further. I think the answer is "gods". Science in our timeline finally begins to bloom and expand once a mechanistic view of the universe becomes more common and acceptable (i.e. doesn't get you burned at the stake). With the assumption that the universe is findamentally mechanistic, ruled by immutable laws, you begin to make progress.
That isn't possible in the Empire's universe because there really are gods; they're not mythical. And they select small number of humans and give them super powers and amazing weapons and task them with maintaining control and preventing things from going out of control. Rory talks about this in the manga and hints that one thing the Apostles have been doing is to stamp out technologies which the Gods think might be disruptive. Get too creative and Rory or someone like her shows up and slaughters you.
6
So, basically this world is the gods' play room. They bring in some new toys once in a while to mix it up, and even let the occasional toy ascend to their status, but you don't let the leggos advance to the point where they might challenge you.
The Romans did some amazing things, but there's a certain degree of survivor bias here; Any shoddy work they did is long gone. You'll see the same thing when house hunting; If you see a 50 year old house, or better a 100 year old one, you'll be impressed with how well built it is. It's easy to forget that it being well built is the only reason you got to see it, and think they built them all that way back then.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore at March 27, 2016 02:29 AM (l55xw)
The biggest problem with immortality is boredom. You might be right that the Gods open the GATE and introduce new races every once in a while just for novelty value.
8
Only problem I have with that is, well... if you've been trying to repress progress and disruption for millennia, then opening a portal to -Japan- ain't consistent with prior policy. (Of course that policy doesn't have to be universal. You can have gods trying to stimulate progress, or simple amusement, and other gods running around trying to stamp it out...)
Which is also interesting, because Rory emphatically doesn't stamp it out. On the other hand, she does not characterize Emroy as a "good" god and emphatically not as a "nice" one...
Also, I'm not sure that I buy the "there are gods so they don't believe in science". That's not consistent with the mages that we see, who DO believe in science! They're aware that there are "true principles" by which the world operates, and specifically generate magical effects by warping those principles via magic, right? Lelei immediately recognizes that by refining her understanding of the "true principles", i.e. physics, she can make her magic more effective. That's not the obvious conclusion if you don't already have at least the concept of science; if you chalk it all up to understanding the will of god(s) then how does physics help with that?
At the same time, I can see the mages believing this (because it's fundamental to their magic) but not sharing that with the general population (hey, mysteries of the art.)
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at March 27, 2016 11:13 AM (v29Tn)
It may be that when the gods decide to open the gate again, they don't know what they'll get, what they'll connect to.
And just to clear things up a bit, here's the part of the manga that talks about this:
It isn't so much that the gods are trying to stop progress; it's more like bonsai where they're trying to control the growth so as to maintain a pleasing result.
Of course, "pleasing" is in the eye of the beholder and it's entirely possible that the gods themselves disagree with one another about what is pleasing.
It's also provable that "pleasing" doesn't necessarily mean "peaceful". Emroy, in particular, is pleased by battles since he is the god of war, death, crime, and insanity.
The hands of the gods are the twelve apostles who roam the planet doing whatever they do, presumably things that satisfy their respective patron gods. And it would seem that each patron god can communicate to their own apostle. So Rory has hooked up with the JSDF, and I assume that if Emroy didn't approve of that Rory would know it soon enough. Clearly Emroy doesn't disapprove of what Rory has been doing with Itami.
I get the impression that Emroy and Hardy are not... shall we say... in sync. Hardy's apostle Giselle woke the dragon and bred it to create two more, whereas Emroy's apostle Rory helped kill all three of them.
So the situation with the deities is obviously complex.
But we can't discount simple boredom as a motivating factor. The arrival of the Japanese is the single most interesting and complicating event of the last thousand years, possibly even longer. Irrespective of the consequences their technology may bring in the long run, for gods who are bored out of their minds the arrival of the Japanese has been great stuff.
11
Russian rule of thumb was that a population of 1,000,000 is necessary to raise a wartime division. Squeezing anything beyond that is and the rear line supply will nosedive.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at March 27, 2016 02:37 PM (XOPVE)
I believe that number, though that's for a 20th Century division including hundreds of trucks at at least dozens of tanks and hundreds of tons of munitions and fuel and other supplies. For Roman-era legions, the ratio is probably a bit lower; the limiting factors are going to be tax revenue and just coming up with that many men without bleeding the entire population dry and causing a reproductive collapse. (I'm thinking of something like what nearly happened in the UK following WWI.)
In the case of the Special Territory, it's even more than the 120,000 that were killed in two battles at Arnus. There's also all the guy the Empire lost in Tokyo, killed or captured, and even with that, the Empire has been able to reconstitute its army since the battles at Arnus. So the human population alone must be upwards of twenty million. Possibly way beyond that.
13
By way of comparison, the US in WWII had a population of 170 million and put 8 million men under arms in all branches. This was with (almost) full mechanization, however. There were 100 Army divisions (plus six Marine--and a few numbers were skipped); however some of those were training or cadre divisions.
Of course, divisions weren't exactly 10,000 men either; old "square" divisions had about 12-13,000, whereas tank divisions were smaller.
Rory has dropped a snide comment that suggests that she thinks it was Hardy who did it. But she might be wrong. There's really too much we don't know about it for us to be speculating at that level. (Of course, we can speculate about anything, but our chance of being right is no better than random.)
Also, Hardy is female. That was definitely confirmed in the encounter with Giselle.
And... it was a satisfying ending. Very satisfying. It doesn't wrap up the whole story, by any means, but it wraps up a lot of sub-stories, and there was some wonderful combat, and it ended on an upbeat note.
Tyuule seems to have Stockholm Syndrome, and it couldn't happen to a nicer bitch. I was hoping she'd get shot, but I guess the author needed her for some other mischief later. (Perhaps
Delilah will eventually find her and have a showdown.)
Rory and Lelei make a great combat team; it's a perfect match up of skills and powers. They complement each other beautifully. It was awesome watching both of them going all out against a worthy opponent. (Not all that worthy, though; they wiped him out in about 45 seconds.)
I hope Italica has a red-light district, so that Mizari and Tyuwaru have somewhere to go. They sure can't go to Arnus and there is probably a warrant out for Mizari in the capital after the previous episode.
Anyway, the second series had a slow center section, with too much politics and intrigue and not enough Lelei. But the last two episodes made that good. It leaves us feeling good and looking forward to an announcement of a third series, when and if.
As long as there's plenty of money around, I would guess that one city is about as good as another for prostitutes like Mizari and Tyuwaru. And Italica is very prosperous recently, and any city that size is probably going to have a red light district. Besides which, the JSDF owes them both. So I suspect Mizari and Tyuwaru probably won't have any difficulty in Italica.
Princess Pina
has a lot of debts to pay, eventually. She isn't in a position to do anything about it yet, but she isn't going to forget. (It isn't in character for her; she's quite honorable.)
I can't really think of anything she could do for Rory except maybe make a huge contribution to Emroy's temple, or to decide that henceforth Emroy will be the official god of the empire. Or maybe pledge that Rory herself will be the official god once she ascends 40 years hence.
As for the JSDF, what they want is peace and prosperity, which is about what she wants too. So that part's fine.
But she's got a huge debt to Lelei, Tuka, and Yao. I wonder what she'll do for them come the day.
And she owes Countess Myui big time. I wonder if she'll exempt Italica from imperial taxes eventually.
2
About Lelei:
I wonder if those were the new attacks she developed after studying Earth science? About which she wrote her thesis? If so, that explains why they were so effective.
Good, but not great. You're quite correct about that fight scene... would like to have seen more of Lelei's 'Gates of Babylon.'
There was a moment at the end, when
back in Tokyo, Itami mentioned "...one year ago...." I thought that was the hint the Gate was going to close I expected the rug to be pulled out from under me, but it didn't happen.
Lots still to wrap up; the looming 3-way Imperial civil war (recall the other brother skedaddled some eps back), no hard data on when the Gate will close - what if it unexpectedly did when some combination of Pina, the Emperor, and Rory were in Japan? - and both the Pied Piper and Tyuule's teleports-in-the-shadow's orc still at large.
First season was a '10.' Putting a third of second season on rails was annoying, so an '8'. Much re-watch potential, esp the fights. My wife has become a HUGE Kuribayashi fan. Thanks for covering this one, Steven.
Posted by: Clayton Barnett at March 25, 2016 03:15 PM (lU4ZJ)
In the most recently translated manga issue, her sister spills some funnels out of her bag--she had brought them along as a simple way to demonstrate the Munroe Effect. Clearly, she was inspired by the Panzerfaust 3s that the squad used against the Flame Dragon.
Posted by: BigD at March 25, 2016 11:40 PM (VKO9N)
This came out a while ago and I didn't watch it then, due mainly to a feeling of "been there done that". But a couple of days ago I got curious and downloaded it, and now I've watched two episodes.
Anyway I'm always a sucker for shows about super-powered girls, and not usually too bothered by harem shows. And as of the first two episodes the harem is forming nicely. We got the stacked student body president who seems too good to be true; I think there's something sinister about her. We have a red headed princess who is a tsundere and can't make friends. We have Our Hero's childhood friend, Saya, and she's already my favorite.
The art is good and the story telling isn't bogged down with "As you know, Jim" exposition, at least so far. And we have a suspected bad guy who almost certain isn't really a bad guy.
And we've already had one girl die. Probably. She might still be alive.
Anyway, Our Hero isn't a potato; he's got character and Saya seems to think he's extraordinarly powerful. Since they trained together as kids she is in a good position to know. It's nice if the hero isn't a nebbish, and equally nice if he isn't an arrogant SOB. And so far he isn't either. He's nice and he's pleasant and he isn't trying to impress anyone. But I'm sure he will; it's obvious that the Princess is the chosen one, if there is a chosen one.
What got me interested is that there's going to be a sequel in the next season. That doesn't always mean a show is any good (see for instance, Queen's Blade) but it does mean it was popular enough so that the studio thinks it can make more money off it. So we'll see how it goes.
UPDATE: Ep 5: One thing I don't really like is harem shows where the harem keeps growing. We're up to 4 now and depending on how things develop, maybe 6.
And "Our Hero can become ridiculously strong but only for a short time" is getting dusty and moldy. At least it's 5 minutes this time instead of 1 minute. I don't know whether either of these shows is imitating the other, but there's an uncanny resemblance between this show and Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry.
For the life of me, I can't keep the two straight for more than a day at a time.
And that president isn't totally trustworthy. Some of the weapons are cursed, and hers is dangerously so. Plus, as is usual with these shows, she's effectively operating on a level equal to a government minister, so she's got other things to worry about than the school budget. Remember, the corporation controlling the magic/technology is the world's government now, and Claudia is the daughter of a high executive. "Absurdly powerful student council" indeed.
It's not totally obvious yet, but this world is considerably dystopic. Notice that there's no major enemy that they're being trained to fight...
I debated putting more under spoiler tags but decided against it. It gets into the world-building, and the anime didn't go that deeply into it. Though if I recall accurately, there will be a hint given by Claudia. It's the major reason I call the world a dystopia.
4
The comparisons with Calvary were unavoidable, what with the limited but powerful hero and the equally powerful pink haired main female character.
I went back and forth about which sow I liked better, but it was under the umbrella of "good enough is the new good". Both stories were worth the time, at least.
Posted by: topmaker at March 24, 2016 04:01 PM (6stZH)
5
I've lost interest and I'm not going to watch any more of it.
6
You know what's ironic, I do not share any of your complaints. The harems seems fine, it a sacred cow type like in Ai yori Aoshi. But the whole setting seems too much of an unpleasant re-enactment of Railgun, only with a romantic element this time. So, I don't think I'm going to watch any more after the first arc.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at March 25, 2016 03:44 PM (XOPVE)
7
I would add in the 35th Test Platoon and (especially) Bladedance of Elementalers to the list--harem mahou shojou sports stories with deeper conspiracies lurking behind the curtains. Most of the harems contain exactly the same elements, just shuffled into different combinations across each set of girls.
I really enjoy the concept; it's like Nanoha/A's with a decent (usually) male lead, with the "fetch quest eipsodes" replaced by "training/match/each girl's individual crisis" episodes. 35th kinda blew it on that end; each girl had exactly a 2-ep arc, often involving them saving the city (or more) yet never earning any points for it, to the point where it became boringly predictable.
I hesitate to mention it (for the obvious reasons below), but a similar series that *doesn't* get caught in the template is Devil Sister New Testament; despite the embarrassingly-needless, gratuitous, blatantly-censored (buy the BDs!) fanservice scenes, it managed to have a solid plot both seasons, and even the late additions to the harem didn't feel forced. The only gripe I had (other than the ridiculous fanservice) was that it clearly was based on a LN or something, and clearly must have cut out or crammed in awkwardly some of the key plot points in the source material for time.
Posted by: BigD at March 25, 2016 09:29 PM (VKO9N)
8
Sorry if I spoiled it for you. They do a good job of not messing with the mood -- most of the time -- but the hints are there. And, I forget his name, but the grossly obese president of the other school is a total ass. I dislike any of his appearances.
I finally found a spoiler online explaining what's coming in Musaigen no Phantom World, and it's about what I expected. Or at least what it described was how the first light novel ended and how the story proceeded in the second light novel.
If that's what's going to happen at the end of the anime (and I believe it will be), it's going to be a great big FUCK YOU from Kyoani to the audience, even worse than Endless Eight. It'll put the ending of Mahoromatic to shame in terms of pissing off the audience. It's going to rival the ending of the Venus Versus Virus anime. (Which didn't have the same ending as the manga.) I expect to see fan art of Mai abusing a KyoAni logo (if there is such a thing).
UPDATE: If that is really where the novels went, then the real mystery is, why would anyone want to make an anime out of that novel series?
UPDATE: So ep 12 is out, and it isn't the end of the series. But, it looks like KyoAni decided to do something else entirely. I think we're going to get a happy ending after all, but it'll be next week.
Maybe. A "FUCK YOU" ending is still possible.
UPDATE: I should make clear that I didn't watch this episode. I just dipped into it a few places for a few seconds, and watched about the last 30 seconds. I'm not going to watch it until the next (and last?) episode comes out.
There's a different answer that occurred to me:
Maybe KyoAni liked the story concept but decided to change the ending.
Ruru isn't in the books. Kyoani added her. She comes and goes. Maybe she comes in from outside, and maybe she'll turn out to be a deus ex machina that permits a happy ending. In other words, they'll do something like Petite Princess Yucie. In that one, after I watched the second to last episode I was ready to travel to Japan to shoot all the writers, but after the last episode I forgave everything.
Well, we probably find out today. (Unless this is a 13 ep series, or 2 cour.)
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On PPY:
You could actually read the ending of PPY as a restoration of Asuka. The design similarities are WAY too striking to miss. Though what was more amazing was that it was a very watchable series.
This series is another of the KyoAni owned ones, and all of those, so far, have gone very differently from the base LN. So, while I knew about some of the 2nd LN and beyond, I highly doubt they'd go that way. Their LN division exists to give them wholly owned properties to exploit, but not fans of the LN to appease. Fairly sizable difference in approach.
Posted by: sqa at March 23, 2016 04:51 PM (KzmmE)
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Which Asuka do you mean? It surely has nothing to do with NGE!
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In reply:
NGE's Asuka. The magic user from the other dimension that was destroyed and her friends lost in the process. I didn't say it was a hard relationship, but a lot of people commented, at the time, that there was a lot of both look & theme to her story that they used.
One of the funny fan things, but a lot of the staff was from NGE still, so some of the themes peculating up wouldn't be too surprising.
