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arlingtonpark · 4 years

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Winter 2020 Anime Round-Up

I decided to do a round-up of all the anime I’m watching this season because, turns out, most of the shows I was interested in were bad!

I.D. Invaded.

This is a psychological thriller sci-fi mystery type show. It’s about a police unit who uses this sci-fi technology to detect a killer’s murderous intent and create a sort of virtual reality projection of the killer’s mind.

They then take a special agent and insert him into the projection to hunt down clues and find the killer’s identity and whereabouts.

Enjoying this show is not cheap. It asks a lot of you.

1. Don’t laugh at how ham-fisted the exploration of how a killer’s mind works is.

2. Don’t laugh at the special agent’s official designation being “The Brilliant Detective.”

3. Don’t question the ridiculous premise of the show; they use a killer’s particles to create the projection of their mind to hunt for clues, but are later shown using those same particles to pinpoint the killer’s location.

4. Don’t laugh at one of the police unit’s agents being a teenage girl.

5. And, of course, don’t notice all the expository monologuing for the audience’s sake.

The show is silly, but there’s some intriguing stuff in it. The conflict between the unit’s field squad and the desk workers can be good, though the locus of that conflict being about what seems to be a bureaucratic oversight is pretty weak.

The teenage girl is the most bald-facedly ridiculous thing about this show, but she is unironically the best character. She does some daring, crazy shit in this show and I was legitimately shocked by it.

Oh, yeah, I forgot.

6. Don’t laugh at the OP using recycled production materials and footage from the first episode.

Signs of a quality production right there.

Plunderer.

>.<

This. Show.

I feel bad for Sarah Wiedenheft. She voices the main heroine in the dub. The in-over-her-head, naïve, helpless heroine, Hina.

God, help us!

Hina is a woman with a mission. She is bubbly and naïve, but stubborn and she gets in over her head by the end of the first episode. Why?

You know why, fool! So she can be rescued by the hero.

This show puts a creative spin on the typical shonen formula. Many shonen shows are designed to be wish fulfillment for teenage boys, with Mary Sue main characters for them to project onto.

The crazy spin on the formula here is that it’s wish fulfillment for sexual predators.

That’s not a joke.

The show takes place in a magical world where everyone is branded with a “count,” a number that increases whenever they complete a task specific to them.

Hina’s count goes up whenever she walks 100 km. Another’s count goes up whenever her food is complimented.

The count is denoted by a number that’s branded somewhere on their bodies. Hina’s count is located on her inner thigh, just below her crotch.

Meanwhile, this is what the hero does to Hina the first time they meet:

This is them at the end of the episode after he rescues her.

You know how in Dragon Ball, Master Roshi was this old pervert? The hero here is like that, except he’s young, not old, and a predator rather than just a pervert.

Licht is the hero; his count goes up whenever he dates someone, I guess, but the thing about him is that he’s a predator, so his count is actually -999. If your count reaches zero, you’re Kylo Ren-ed off into an abyss never to be seen again, so negative counts shouldn’t even be possible.

The reason the hero isn’t dead is because he’s actually.

Wait for it.

The Legendary Ace!

A badass fighter spoken of only in legends!

Who is this show even for?

It’s clearly supposed to be a wish fulfillment kind of show, but the only people I can see projecting onto the hero are, like, really, really pathetic people who fantasize about sexual assault.

(Another female character’s count is located on her left breast.)

The heroine is looking for this legendary ace, but even though she’s lived in this world her whole life, and has traveled throughout it her whole life, she knows nothing about how the count system works.

That was necessary, you see, for two reasons: so the system can be explained to us in monologue, and so the heroine can be made helpless and in need of rescue.

Those with a higher count have a high social status. This could have been a cool exploration of how luck is underappreciated as a factor in one’s social status, since how counts are determined is completely arbitrary and some are easier to increase than others, but no, we don’t get that.

People with a lower count must obey people with a higher count. But you’re in the military, there is an appeals process: if you have a lower count and are ordered by someone with a higher count to do something, you can challenge the high count to a duel and if you win, you can ignore their order.

You can then take the loser’s count and add it to your own.

These duels are called “star stakes.” >.<

Hina, naturally, is suckered into one of these duels and is about to lose everything when Licht saves her by agreeing to duel Hina’s opponent on her behalf.

And just to emphasize how infantilized Hina is in this show, Licht not only saves her physically, he even provides her with some emotional support, but phrased in a way that totally talks down to her.

Asteroid in Love.

I’ve already seen the first episode three times, and I have no shame!

Doga Kobo is the Kyoto Animation of the past few years. Just as KyoAni made a name for themselves with a string of shows about cute girls doing cute things, Doga Kobo have sort of taken on that mantle.

Three Leaves, Three Colors; Gabriel Dropout; New Game; Senko-san; and now Asteroid in Love are all shows with good characters with good design work and animation better than they had any right to have.

This show is about a girl named Mira who meets a boy named Ao during a camping trip. He has a thing for astronomy and Mira is completely won over by it. They promise to discover and name an asteroid together.

Tragically, that one camping trip was the last they saw of each other.

Comically, they happen upon each other at the start of high school and wouldn’t you know it? Ao was a girl the whole time!

She was very tomboyish at that time in her life, so Mira mistook her for a boy.

But whatever, Mira’s friend still ships them.

They’re both passionate about astronomy, so they reconnect and become good friends real quick.

The friendship between Mira and Ao is by far the best part about this show; unfortunately, everything else is very generic.

High school club? Check.

Club member who’s boisterous and excitable? Check.

Club member who’s serious and down to earth? Check.

But in spite of all that, I could watch this show all day.

The presentation is excellent. The character designs are lovely and the direction and animation are amazing.

Magia Record.

A spin-off of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Magia Record takes place before Rebellion, but in an alternate universe where the events of Madoka Magica haven’t happened yet. There’s a new cast, but the main cast of Madoka Magica will be back as major characters.

InuCurry, who did the artwork for the witches’ labyrinths are back, this time as series co-directors and co-writers.

The Magica Quartet, the brain trust of people who created Madoka Magica, Gen Urobuchi, Akiyuki Shinbo, Ume Aoki, and Atsuhiro Iwakami, are back too. The four are collectively credited with coming up with the story.

Shinbo, who co-directed Madoka Magica, is back as an animation supervisor. Aoki is back in her role as character designer. Iwakami is co-credited with series planning.

Yukihiro Miyamoto, who co-directed the original series alongside Shinbo, is back as assistant director.

This show…it’s just good to see it all back. The character designs are a bit different from the original series, but they nailed the aesthetic otherwise.

Magia Record draws heavily from plot elements first used in Madoka Magica, but it’s not what I would call uninspired. Anyone who’s seen Madoka Magica will notice the callbacks, but they’re fun, not cringeworthy.

It reminds me of how The Force Awakens brought people back in to the Star Wars universe by heavily echoing A New Hope, but Magia Record is much more creative in its echoing than Force Awakens was.

Everyone who likes the OG series should check this out.

There’s already much intrigue in the story. A magical girl whose wish was granted, but also apparently simultaneously erased from existence, rumors of a city where magical girls can be “saved,” and a Kyubey who is a separate entity from the others.

The show is an adaptation of a mobile rpg. This is from a cutscene.

Iroha Tamaki, the main character of Magia Record, and Homura Akemi.

Get excited.

Bofuri.

This show is like Asteroid in Love, in that it would be totally boring if it weren’t totally charming.

This is the type of show that takes a silly phenomenon in the real world and makes it the premise of the whole show. Maple is a girl who’s just gotten into video games. Because she’s a newb, she puts all of her points into defense at the expense of even basic stuff like speed and strength.

Thus ensues hilarity.

There’s not much to talk about here. Maple is endearing as a video game noob. The artwork is great. The writing is legitimately funny in a subdued way.

A+

Darwin’s Game.

I watched this show because the premise reminded me of King’s Game.

For those who don’t know, King’s Game is widely considered to be the worst anime ever made. It sucks.

King’s Game is about a death game administered over the phone and it the point is that everyone dies. It tries hard to do horror and it fails hard. I watch it every Halloween. :D

Darwin’s Game is about a mobile app game that pits players against each other in death matches. You win by killing all the other players.

With some shows it’s clear the writer can’t decide what they want to do. This show can’t decide if it wants to be trash or legit good.

Immediately you can tell this show is going to suck because the artwork is terrible. This is an ugly show to look at.

The show opens with a cold open clearly made to make the audience ask questions. It succeeds too well.

The opening depicts a random person being chased through the streets and then killed by an invisible furry.

Seriously.

By God, the fanservice in this show…

This doesn’t even fully capture the shamelessness of it. If you watch the episode, you’ll notice her dress has frills from the waist down.

Except for when we see her kneeling down, when her dress is suddenly a single piece of cloth. So we can better see her ass outlined through it.

Things temporarily get good when the main character has to fend off the furry from the opening. It really is thrilling, but everything goes back to crap when the mc has to fight the dress woman in the above picture.

He doesn’t kill her though. Oh, no, he doesn’t.

She becomes smitten by how strong he is and the episode ends with her asking him to bed her.

-barf-

#anime #winter 2020

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