momentum, fall 2015 finale edition
One. More. Punch.
One Punch Man
Saitama is the hero we need not the hero we deserve. Every episode of One Punch Man puts a smile on my face. Just a fun series to watch… but Gurren Lagann fun? KILL la KILL fun? I don’t know. The whole Hero Association is fucked. It is a political and dick-measuring organization rather than an actual people-helping organization, which is super depressing because of how realistic depiction of bureaucracy it is. Should be very obvious that the two strongest heroes are Tornado and Saitama, and everyone serves as a prop to show how powerful those two are. Everyone else is a tier behind. Okay maybe Mumen Rider…
I do have two issues. One, the last has as much diversity as the original Force Awakens cast. Besides Tornado and the Mosquito villain. One Punch Man is as much of a sausage fest as the Justice League. Also, every attempt by the story to introduce diversity just introduces bad stereotypes. Can Japan write a story about real gay people? Either not totally stereotyped like the Prison Guy here or the pirate pilot in Iron Blooded Orphans? Or typical Maria-sama type lesbians? Two, where is my second season?!
Underwater Ray Romano
The first few episodes were great, and then it turned into a low-calorie, low-rent slice-of-life harem show. There was a period of six episodes where a new haremette were introduced every episode just to be forgotten the next. There is no build up for caring about any of the characters. Even worse, there are two whole episodes that are devoted to fanservice (as in pleasing and pandering to the original game fans not sexy time fanservice) of the original series’ haremettes. Do we need to bring back haremettes of days of old when the current crop is so badly underutilized?
Both Utawarerumono and Tears to Tiara featured an overarching plot plus slowly intruded haremettes. This show has no such plot with Haku still cleaning out gutters. We are at the halfway point, and the story has progressed with the speed of K1’s and Belldandy’s relationship. Very disappointing.
Yuki Yuna Is a Hero
A show from Fall 2014 that I missed. It’s yet another grim dark magical girl show with a pink-colored heroine. I kinda of wish Yuna’s power was to defeat horrors with one punch… because… winning fights with one punch is fun. I think now the time is ripe for a magical girl series that is really a slice-of-life shoujo series (think Tamako Market or Sailor Moon filler episodes) where the heroine magical girl is so powerful, she is able to defeat all opposition with one punch. This proposed show then features the monsters becoming increasing afraid to fight while the main heroine is too busy with her baking club to notice that a boy has taken a fancy to her. We will swing the plot narrative as far away from the grim dark self-sacrifice messages to happy slice-of-life. We will also swing the overly complicated fighting systems of these recent magical girl shows into girl punches bad guy, bad guy explodes into a bloody pulp simplicity. Happy, slice-of-life magical girl shows are now the new market inefficiency waiting to be exploited.
The ending to Yuki Yuna is very unsatisfying. The ending feels very much contrived, and everything ends too neatly. I think I would have liked the ending more if Yuki punched the world, the world exploded, and a new world was born out of her love.
(The plot twist of how the magical girls were just tools is fantastic in Madoka, so seeing it again feels a bit recycled, but that is literally anime. Giant titans attacking a city? Why not have titans attack a train station next? What else could Wit Studio do? Show about titans playing basketball? Kind of like Space Jam where five titans square off against the girls of Ro-Kyu-Bu!? Maybe a show about the warring states era generals transformed into titans? Or how about a dating sim scenario involving titans? Or an anime where magical girls one punch titans?)
Haikyuu!!
Fashion Czar wanted to go out for Korean BBQ after watching the end of the training camp BBQ. BBQ was delicious.
Iron Blooded Orphans
Purple explosions! We’re not a modern Gundam series if we don’t have mobile suit limbs being destroyed in purple explosions!
The plot feels like it is meandering with uninteresting character stories. I totally do not care for Akihiro’s story nor his very Gundam-esque encounter with his little brother. I feel like the past few episodes should have focused more on Kudelia and Mikazuki, as they are supposed to be key characters yet totally regulated to background characters at this point. Then again, I remember Gundam usually takes a while to ramp up– it is one of the few franchises left that can command a multi-cours commitment at the beginning. Still, the plot is a bit too simplistic and slow at this point. Needs more Barbatos Gundam SMASH.
Owarimonogatari
I just want all of Monogatari to be re-arranged chronologically, and I will watch it all through again. Though I will skip every monologue by Gaen and Ougi. And maybe fast forward every one by Yotsugi, Sodachi, and the Fire Sisters. I think at this point, Gaen and Ougi has more dialogue combined than Hanekawa and Senjougahara combined. How is this acceptable? Did we get any fanservice outside of poor Sodachi fanservice this season? Nishi Ishin really needs an editor who can tell him, “No man, edit your shit. Cut out like 80,000 words.”
I wonder if the staff at Shaft is sick of Monogatari now. I imagine they are all locked in a cell with Shinbo whipping them, “More text! More head tilt! More Gaen!” like a twisted version of Shirobako.
Everything Becomes F: The Perfect Insider
I am disappointed that the “F” stood for the hexadecimal value for 15 instead of “Fucked.” Because that is how I describe the characters in this show: fucked. My main issue is that the central premise is so fucked and unbelievable, it diminishes the mystery. The author invented a very complicated scenario that makes zero sense in real life. A girl kills her parents? She doesn’t get sent to Japan’s notorious death row? Instead she gets locked into a room for 15 years? And she spends 7 years plotting a magnificent escape? And she single-handedly invents this brilliant new OS that uses only a 16-bit field for date yet a whole company of programming geniuses never noticed how bad of an idea a 16-bit date field is?
The story does not pay off. The scenario is too contrived to create the result the author wants. It is almost as if the author wrote the ah-ha moment he wanted the reader to have and then spent 15 minutes coming up with how to get at the moment. The final episode felt like an old episode of Monogatari, which would have been good except Sensei and Nishinosono spent the time playing around their feelings of each rather than
Sakurako’s Lovely Bones
I have not watched the final episode yet, as my Mac Mini that I used for my HTPC had a hard drive failure. I enjoyed the last few episodes as they interconnect some seemingly throwaway points for earlier episodes. As Sakurako would say, the bones are connecting. While there has been both good and bad mysteries (ugh the funeral ring one) in this show, it has overall been a higher quality mystery than The Perfect Insider. There is a huge human component, fewer contrived scenarios, and a better antagonist.
Happy Holidays!
I hope you are enjoying your holiday season. I wish everyone Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Let’s hope for some great anime next year and fewer magic high school shows.
3 Responses to “momentum, fall 2015 finale edition”
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Merry Christmas Jason! I’m certainly hoping for a season better than than the last.
What did you think about last season’s Shokugeki no Souma in the end?
Thanks again for this. I have moved from watching series in real-time to watching the BD versions three to six months later, so having these in archive will help me tremendously.
Haven’t watched Owarimonogatari yet at all, but from what you wrote about it, I can’t help but still sort of understand where you’re coming from with it in a roundabout way – in the sense that the Second Season series felt like such a huge and daring jump for the series that I legit feel that going back to a solely Araragi-focused approach would be more like a downgrade than anything else (more so with how Hanekawa and Kaiki were much more interesting and compelling MCs than him IMO). Not to say I expect Owari to be a total letdown, or to say that Ougi and Gaen need to dial out (I liked how the first two were pitched in S2, but I assume Owari puts them more on the storefront), but even so, the franchise sort of “defeated” itself for me when both Neko Shiro and Koi were AAA examples of how fresh and bold S2 dared to be, in ways that were allowed precisely because Araragi took a backseat from the spotlight. Again, not to say I expect Owari to be trash, but yeah, I get your opinion of it in a roundabout way.