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deltaengineering · 4 months

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Fall Anime 2023: A Fallful of Fail

you will be shocked at what happens at the end

horse_ebooks S3

Umamusume S3 is bad. Not that that should be a surprise to anyone – the anime was never beyond decent and even then mostly just the price of admission to a galaxy of fanart. And looked at from the outside it is simply shaped liked itself: nothing more (or given the context, rather nothing less) than a fat and lazy gacha franchise advert.

The question is why S1 and S2 apparently were not when they were materially barely any different, and the answer to that is simple: S1 had the novelty and S2 apparently brought the best material Umamusume can realistically offer – which already wasn't that much. If you just want the quick take, S3 is very much like the boring first half of S2, and then just keeps rolling like that until episode 12. However, since it drops all the distractions and embellishments and just presents itself naked and at the most basic level, S3 works as exactly one thing: A case study why Umamusume was never good, will never be good, can never be good and is fundamentally just a bad idea.

It's a confluence of things that are each on their own questionable, but each of them boosts each other's shortcomings in such a profound way that it's hard to say what the "core issue" even is: It is obsessed with a "sport" that is so simple that all events are short and indistinguishable, and winning just comes down to whether you decide to go fast that day. It values gambling results from decades ago over having a structured story. It wants to pick protagonists that are popular, and horses are popular when they win. It needs to have a vast yet simplistic character roster where having two personality traits makes you Rice Shower, the deepest character in the franchise. It plays it so safe that there shall be no villains or even adversity – having injuries in S2 was apparently already too spicy so we just don't do that anymore. It despises continuity, which means that Gold Ship can get a random episode about ending her career and this making no difference whatsoever to her presence, which remains exactly the same as it has been since the first episode of season one. And yet, it thinks it can have all of these and tell a character-focused underdog sports story, because that's what you do when you hear "racing".

The end result of this is that we have a two-episode loop that is intensely centered on one unbelievably shallow protagonist with the personality of "everyone loves her", who constantly keeps winning unless she gets sad, and then people tell her she is popular to cheer her up, and then she wins again, and then we do this 5 times in a row, and this being framed as some epic triumph over adversity. And none of this is new, it's just really apparent when your protagonist is "Teio, but worse", your sidekick is "McQueen, but worse", and your supporting cast is "you liked these characters last season and they like Kita-chan, maybe you should too". Intellectually, it's astonishingly awful and yes, I'm mad.

But with high production values and a bunch of cute hors doing cute things, it's still nothing more (or given the context, rather nothing less) than a fat and lazy gacha franchise advert. Just don't ever consider turning on your brain while watching it because that shit hurts. 4/10

Tearmoon Empire

I'm probably only putting this one over Umamusume out of spite, because while Umamusume did pretty much everything wrong on a high level for interesting(?) reasons, Tearmoon is just a bottom-shelf product and that's the the long and short of it. To be fair, it starts out as a pretty good one of those, with a decent twist on the "I read the script" style of story that these always are, and watching trash princess Mia stumble around trying to save her head from getting lopped off with inexplicably positive results for everyone involved is a decent, if easy, laugh. This already doesn't ever reach its full potential, because it's ultimately bland and one-note and there's nothing else (apart from a very funny OP). Tearmoon was cursed by amateurish light novel writing from the start, but what really does it in is Volume One syndrome: That plot is resolved about two thirds in, and what follows is just staggeringly uninteresting political machinations in a thoroughly dull universe. The beginning was weak, yes, but it was followed up by stuff I could not possibly care any less about. In a way it's a positive that nothing comes together, because then the show's single biggest lategame misstep by far (guess what, nothing was Mia's fault after all!) would total the show's thematic core. If it had managed to establish it. Which it didn't. 4/10

Bullbuster

I'll give Bullbuster one thing: It at least feels like a show anyone wanted to make. And while "robots, but realistic and working class" is not a new angle, doing a mecha show through the lens of workplace laws and corporate policies instead of technology is a pretty good starting point. It's just that things went wrong when developing this into an actual story – something with this grounded a concept should not stumble around for weeks until it eventually ends up with the "twist" that the local Umbrella Corp experimental biotech plant is the source of these weird mutations, for example. The characters also just aren't strong enough to keep this weird mess of a plot together on their own either. It also notably has some of the worst monster CG in recent memory, and as an action show (something it isn't, to be clear) it would have been a laughable failure. This is not at all surprising coming from the Deca-Dence studio, but everyone somehow gave that show a pass while I don't think this one will be on anyone's hidden gem list in a hurry. In any case, "could have been good, but isn't" is all that really needs to be said about Bullbuster. Sometimes an anime isn't good for no other reason than simply lacking in quality. 5/10

16bit Sensation

I was always going to watch 16bit Sensation due to personal interest in the subject matter, and honestly the best I can say about it is that "it gets better". Not that that means much because it starts out badly, with just a bunch of uninspired 90s vndev references and anecdotes that the people who were there probably find very relatable. That said, the show notably improves once it starts going down some weirder parallel timelines & moefag aliens paths – but it has so far to go that that really isn't enough either. Unlike its simpatico Animegataris, 16bit Sensation doesn't go to really weird places and also completely lacks bite because eventually it just wants to be like, about the power of creativity, maaaan, which drives it more into "Eizouken without the production value" territory, and logically very little of it makes sense. Admittedly it doesn't strictly have to, but it's not very funny or insightful either. In any case, the real loadbearing part of this show is the character of Konoha anyway, and she's a mixed bag. Her goofiness is endearing, but it's also hard to deny that her character mostly consists of Aoi Koga's voice performance, and that is in turn mostly just consists of "the wacky bits from Kaguya-sama but extra hard and all the time". It's certainly something, but whether it's a selling point is a deeply personal decision for every viewer. Unlike the undisputably crappy opening song performance by Shokotan of all people, what the hell. 5/10

Under Ninja

Under Ninja has one thing going for it, and that is that it's unlike anything else (well, I hear that all the other mangas by this author are exactly like it, but in animated from at least). It's a weird mess of an absurd Metal Gear plot presented with all the ambiance of a 4chan greentext story, which gives it an unusually deadpan sense of humor similar to something like Burn After Reading. If nothing else, it's an experience... but I still don't like it very much. For starters, this show looks like absolute butt, and only half of that can be attributed to intentionally grimy stylistic suck. No-budget James Bond might be a joke, but at the end of the day you still have to watch it, and there is far too much action in the show for it to look this crappy. Characterwise, it starts with exploring the more sympathetic sides of unlikeable losers, towards the end it just keeps spamming more unlikeable losers because... funny? Also, the story is wilfully obtuse but appears to take itself increasingly seriously as it goes on, which makes it eventually cross over from "shaggy dog" to outright "just a prank bro". Now, I will say that this is more than just random nonsense. I think that it does try to say something about Japanese society – I'm just not sure what that actually is. Instead the intense cynicism gets the better of the the show and it just disappears up its own ass, and I don't think that is particularly hilarious. 5/10

Otona Precure

I can't hate Otona Precure. It's just exactly what it says on the tin, a basic-ass Precure show with mildly adult topics while everything else remains as generic as it it gets, production included. This was never going to be extraordinary or subversive (and if it attempted that, it would probably have gone badly), so I'll just take things like razor thin characters, baby-level takes on environmentalism and egregious reuse of 20 year old stock footage as a charming part of the package. In fact, if it was less rudimentary it would not be watchable for someone like me who doesn't care to explore the 100+ episodes of old assembly line magical girl anime that this ostensibly a sequel to – I get it just fine from context clues, thank you very much. It's very much a slim novelty, but enough of a novelty that it can just about sustain 12 episodes and that is it. 6/10

Overtake!

Overtake is, to put it simply, thoroughly competent, as expected from Ei Aoki – a small-scale, vaguely bromantic character drama with a moderately novel setting that can take full advantage of its traditional underdog sports story trappings. It certainly won't blow anyone's socks off but compared to all the questionable jank above it does feel like a breath of fresh air when something just works, and I really can't stress this enough – I did not particularly care about Overtake and its characters at first but godammit if it didn't put in the work and skill to make me care. The characters are fleshed out and fun, the plot is well paced and goes to some less predictable places, and it looks really appealing without coming across as living above its means. I had a genuinely good time all the way through but ultimately wasn't invested enough to consider it a classic, and that's fine. It's an "exceptional midcard" type of show, and I wish there was more of this tier between the cheap trash and the ultra-premium crowdpleaser.

And I cannot keep myself from saying this, but this tangentially-about-racing character drama just so happens to utterly clown on Umamusume in regards to making racing exciting, without even trying very hard (Redline it is not), via groundbreaking additions such as left turns and actual strategy. And that is before it's actually a good show with characters and a story worth caring about. Imagine that. 7/10

but consider the following:

In all honesty, this was a pretty good season and almost all the reasons for that are not on the above list. Yes, the premium material on top of the rankings did actually deliver hard this season, which is to say that both Frieren and Apothecary Diaries would be easy AOTY contenders had I not learned my lesson regarding continuing shows with Ranking of Kings. Both were great but face some rough road ahead – Frieren is heading into a Shounen Exam Arc™ while Apothecary Diaries is starting to show signs of classic shoujo romance pitfalls, so I'll hope for the best and give them their due once they end. And there's also Undead Unluck, which is simply the Fire Force that Weekly Jump has at home, and by that I mean that it's two thirds delightfully unhinged psychedelia and one third Jump brand "I should really drop this" pablum, a ratio that is highly unlikely to improve. Besides that, I'm quite a ways into Pluto but haven't finished it yet because it is indeed Naoki Urasawa's Award-Winning Masterpiece Pluto – expertly made and decently meaningful but also bloated with self-importance past the point of flatulence. We'll see.

#anime #review #fall2023 #uma musume #tearmoon empire #bullbuster #16bit sensation #under ninja #otona precure #overtake

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