#? i guess? does this count as a gijinka

[mx-nada]

triangle man

[meepleech]

REDRAW!!!!!

ORIGINALS BELOW:

[kirbydaily]

.... does your kirby gijinka count as an oc? like its a design you made, but it's also kirby...

asking to know if I should tag it as your oc or not

i guess not, theyre supposed to be the same character. i just view gijinkas as a different way to draw a character (instead of designing a new oc entirely)

i dont mind if you tag it as an oc though if its easier to filter stuff that way

[manta-rain-art]

I can’t attach images on anon but does this count as a slimegirl https://dragonquest.fandom.com/wiki/Mother_Glooperior

OH, she's from Dragon Quest Rocket Slime, I love that game! On the front of if she counts as a Slime Girl. I guess? I could just draw a more traditional slime girl, but in her outfit. That would kinda just be me drawing a blue slime in a nun outfit, which I'm not against doing. Idk if that's what you are looking for tho? Or if you'd prefer I just draw what's on the tin with zero interpretation? It's probably the former if you've seen every other slime girl I've posted thus far. That would be more like a Gijinka at that point, but who cares, slime girl nun!

[palossssssand]

thinkin about.....nuclear throne mutants pre-mutation

[pachirixu]

Pachirisu is rly cute 

[fluorescencefuture]

Celestial Showdown - Khrysos and Enki

Going back to this hypothetical fighting game OC series of mine that I forgot about for a year

You can check the Celestial Showdown tag on my blog for the lore but in short: the Sun and Moon are wrangling up constellation gijinka to pit against each other in a tournament because the Earth said so

(does Enki count as mermay? i guess he counts as mermay)

[gamebunny-advance]

Hm...

Thinking about that time someone literally copied one of gijinka designs for social clout, then just flat out denied it when I called them out.

At the time, I had buckled under the belief that “I’m probably being paranoid. There’s so few notes on this thing, and it’s so old, there’s probably no way they would have seen it.” and I had deleted the call-out. 

Honestly, I still get really aggravated when I feel like someone is “stealing” from me (and it happens a little more than you’d probably think), but I just don’t feel justified in calling anyone out because it’s mostly with fanart, and neither of us are profiting from it, so neither of us have anything to lose or gain from it except a bigger number next to a little heart icon.

I guess what upsets me about it is them getting recognition for something that isn’t theirs. I put in the work to make the thing, but they get to knock it off and get even more recognition from it? That’s just unfair. But in a way, all fanart is like that, right? It just seems more okay to do it when it’s a character from a company or something, because they’re not really being *hurt* by fanworks but hurts when fanartists copy other fanartists because we occupy the same space and thus are in competition with each other.

Tangent aside, my feelings basically boil down to: “Am I really gonna start drama with someone for saying they stole the design of a character neither of us own”? At the time, I’d decided, “no,” so I just kinda let it go. There really wasn’t anything for either of us to lose or gain by pushing it further.

But I recently saw them getting called out for other shit, so I got reminded of that incident.

I 99% believe that they stole the design from me, but because they made their design more “woke” and maybe because I didn’t watermark my original one, that somehow made it “okay” for them to do.

I don’t really wanna start shit now because it’s been over 2 years since it happened, but I would just feel a little better if the “proof” was out there. I’m not gonna repost their art here, but if you go to my main blog, @gamebunny-color-sp​ and search “kirby character design”, I’m sure you’ll find what I’m talking about if you’re really that invested in this tale of mine.

That said, I am going to talk about the differences between the two like you’ve seen theirs already.

Now, I’ll concede that puffy sleeves/shorts is a kind of obvious thing to do for a Kirby gijinka. He’s a round ball made of smaller balls, and those very easily translate into “puffy” features. And big ol’rubber boots is another easy way to translate his feet. I’m not gonna be mad at every Kirby gijinka that has puffy sleeves and boots.

But why the cape? No Kirby forms really wear a cape unless you wanna count Meta Knight, but he wears his very differently. My reasoning was that, besides the hat, I wanted him to have something that would show his copy ability. It’s actually a carry-over from an even earlier version of the design I’d made where I actually played with that idea.

But you know, a cape still isn’t an *uncommon* design choice. It’s basically a staple of the hero archetype, so whatever. A cape doesn’t necessarily mean that they got the idea from me.

But what gets me, is the yellow stripe motif. I don’t think there’s *ANYWHERE* that Kirby is associated with yellow stripes, or stripes at all for that matter, and yet (un)coincidentally, both of our designs have them.

When I first started making gijinkas, I really just did whatever I wanted without too much concern for if it actually fit (arguably, I still do that *cough*bigtittyrob*cough*). You can see that in this old timeline I had made, chronicling my iterations of this design.

Why was my first thought to give him blue accents? Who knows. But it’s also where the yellow stripe on his cape started and had carried over to each new design, just because I liked it and thought that it still went with the yellow star motif that I’d added. So for me, it was just an evolution of my bad design choices getting better.

But, if you didn’t already start with the stripe motif, why would your Kirby have stripes at all? And it’s not like stripes are uncommon. I realize that. But there’s just no logical progression to it unless you just happen to think in the same stupid ways that I do/did. If you wanted to accent the cape, wouldn’t you just add it like a border, like I did with my first 2 designs? Or add more star motifs to it? Why the stripes? And why add 2 except to make it seem more different than mine? There’s other little things, but I think my point is clear: there were just too many “coincidences” for this to not have been a case of plagiarism.

Like I mentioned earlier, I’m coming out with all this because the person in question got called out on a pretty vicious forum site, so they’re probably dealing with a lot right now. They’ve basically deleted/private all of their social media accounts, so whatever ‘clout’ they’ve gained from my design, and possibly others’, just up and disappeared, but I don’t feel any catharsis in that because that really has nothing to do with what happened to me. And you know, the person who did it is younger than me (I’m 23), and this happened literal years ago. They probably just didn’t know any better at the time and were still in the mindset of “stealing is fine if I add positive representation” like a lot of kids still have these days.

I don’t really wish ill will on anyone that does me wrong. I just want things to be set right, but given how long it’s been since the incident, I’m probably never gonna hear, “Yes, I stole your design. I’m sorry.” from them. My catharsis is in now standing my ground and saying, “Yes, my design was stolen, this is why I think so, and even if I’m the only one who cares, at least it’s out there.”

I gave in back then because I didn’t have much confidence in myself. I thought I was wrong because I know I can get over-emotional and that I was too small to be seen by anyone and thus couldn’t be stolen from. But I feel like I know my worth a little more now, and I’m not going to let this happen again if I see it. At the very least I’ll blog about it vaguely like I’ve done today to let off steam.

[ashagarusinquisition]

Wasn’t too satisfied with my previous gijinka picture, so I decided to make a new one, hehe

[fatal-blow]

I plan on drawing them but I wanna have notes somewhere about my eevees (does this count as gijinkas?  I guess for now haha) because I humanified them and now they have their own personalities and I love them.  Let’s uhhh go oldest to youngest

Mnya - Umbreon - 31

He/Him - Cis

80% done with his fucking family

Beneath a relatively stoic demeanor he’s real warm and friendly

The certified Mom Friend of the siblings

Calm, measured, definitely the leader of the bunch

A fucking connoisseur of tea

Name is pronounced min-yah

Rosanne - Espeon - 31

He/Him - Trans

Not Ro, not Ross, just Rosanne

If Mnya is 80% done then Rosanne is 100%, ESPECIALLY with Blix

Blix: “I know you slept with my girlfriend Rosanne don’t fucking lie.”  Rosanne: “Don’t involve me in your bullshit.”

Alternative answer: “Someone had to do it right.”

Did not, in fact, sleep with Blix’s gf

Sleep deprived, probably because he plays a lot of video games

Keldin - Vaporeon - 26

He/Him - Cis

A legitimate fucking dumbass

Is currently asleep getting his ass kicked by a Hoothoot

Clumsy af if he’s not near/using water

Graceful when he is

V happy and friendly, eager to please

Oliv - Flareon - 23

??? God what even is gender

Might be a girl they just haven’t figured it out

Quiet type of anxious, very insecure

Hates that they aren’t tall and skinny like the rest of the family, they really stick out

Can and will freak the fuck out on you if you push them too far

Too far, in a lot of cases, is not very far at all

Blix - Jolteon - 19

He/Him - Cis

Thinks he likes girls

Obnoxious, which makes him insecure, but also obnoxious because he’s insecure

Isn’t the youngest, but sure fucking acts like it

Mnya keeps trying to have a talk with him but he’s determined to go through his teenage angst NOW

Does not realize just how much of his family is queer because he never talks to them ffs

Isley - Leafeon - 18

She/her - Cis

Loves plants, makeup, leather jackets, and motorcycles

Gay and proud

Supported by her fam, but Blix is weird about it.  What are you hiding, Blix?

Very intelligent, but lacking in wisdom

Name is pronounced eyez-lee

Bonus: Vaash - Eevee

She/her - Cis

This is the siblings’ mom!

Definitely evil

But loves her kids!!!  Treats them like royalty and is endlessly understanding and wonderful!

Fluent in sarcasm

Definitely roped 6 different gods/angels/demons/idk yet into having kids with her and giving her 6 weird children

[steroidusr]

moemon firered (ver.1.95) part 1: an endless recursion of time

OKAY SO since steroidusr (i.e. here) is Gcio Plays Vidya but ~reborn~ or starting anew or something, the next pokemon game we do is gonna be a new one, like one we havent played yet

so you guys are gonna decide what that is, because i am incapable of making even the simplest of decisions

brown is a hack of red, 

dark energy is a hack of silver, 

moemon firered is... self-explanatory (and randomized),

and snakewood is a hack of ruby 

ok it took almost a fucking hour but i finally got everything patched and randomized and stuff

today we're playing "Moemon Revival Project 1.95", AKA moemon firered BUT AMERICAN in this version, half the characters are kneeling because drawing chibis is hard, and some of the designs are stolen borrowed from various gijinka artists, because designing chibis is hard too. also i randomized it. let's do this shit

also the thread shows a cute-looking title screen that isnt in the actual game. instead we get charizard. rip

KNEEL COUNT: 1

are we a boy or a girl? i have no idea what you guys will pick

alright finally we can--

ok nevermind

[tricky named him “djank”]

i just spent like 35 years searching for a right-facing animated shiny nidoking sprite from pkmn crystal with a transparent background in the end i had to fucking make one myself. i hate the internet

ANYWAY i think i was supposed to be livetweeting?

FINALLY

you dont sound very sure of yourself there, mump

no

what is up with randomized kanto games and leaving in charmander? anyway choose one (the other two are pidgey i think? and mareep)

alright i didnt get a response on the starter choice but considering our legacy so far i think the answer is obvious

me after engreen: ok we've used pidgeot in two games so far, that's quite enough of that moemon firered: lol

this is a really cute pidgey though (pink hair! that hat!!) so i will accept her

crystal pidgeot: sparklball engreen pidgeot: sprkl (i call her "spurkle") i guess her name should be something like that?

he didnt take mareep (electric, supereffective against kirara)?? i cant believe djank isnt an asshole

i cant believe djank is still an asshole, just one who doesnt know about type matchups

kirara holy fuck

YES I HAVE IVE HAD MANY I DONT NEED THIS TUTORIAL

frlg was good but it's REALLY hand-holdy did anyone ever actually use the teachy tv or the help menu

OKAY THANK YOU OAK (im spamming sand attack) (...why is there sand indoors)

[link]

OAK IVE BEEN PLAYING THIS SHIT SINCE I WAS EIGHT AND I NEVER NEEDED TUTORIALS

there was an electric-type RIGHT THERE

aww :)

question: how does the clerk (no, not staryu) know youre from pallet town

...i accidentally talked to oak again after he gave me the pokedex and the event repeated itself and djank just walked through the wall

and offscreen

[god DAMN it tricky]

OKAY NOW THE EVENT IS JUST ON INFINITE LOOP??????

what the FUCK. hang on im gonna put the save on a clean firered rom so i can get through this

i know patching roms can cause weird glitches but this is ridiculous

also i have to do the rival battle again

kirara's true form...

[bluekitsune]

late NDRV3 Chapter 5 impressions

Ok So Momota is being a massive fucking prick right off the bat. Like “Oh well I guess we did survive because you revealed the truth but I’m still gonna give you the cold shoulder because you were supposed to be on my side not on Ouma’s even if looking away would’ve killed us all ANYWAY”

IS...... the school....... is this a rocket......... are you fucking kidding me? Please let me be wrong

Are they in space? Did I stumble into another 999 bullshit??????

They’re obviously going to turn out being the Golsomething plan people (or not) and they were there to make sure it succeeded. Now I’m thinking. If there’s some bullshit of Despair going on again, could the Mastermind have created the meteor shower?

Noooooooooooooo thay compressor is a complete and total death flag on Kibo NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Plot Twist: Kibo has a Naegi alter ego inside him??????? That’s what I’m leaning into believing at this point

I’m gonna be so sad when he dies :C I don’t even have hope anymore tbh

Ouma pulling some Komaeda bullshit. But TBH I’ll stick with Komaeda any time. Even his despair bullshit is a lot better than Ouma’s bullshit

Magical Girl Hammers huh

Oh my god. Ok so THAT’s what was in Amami’s BG.

Ouma is like a collage of all the Mastermind theories and Monokuma gijinkas I’ve laid my fucking eyes on,down to the black and white scheme. but somehow eGdiEr wow. Idk I just wanna rip that scarf off and choke him.  It’s so easy to fall on the hate or love with this kind of character. I mean, Shinguuji was very childishly delusional but I’d still stick with him. Or something. I’m very confused

How out of options where these guys? A Robot? Seriously? If you need to repopulate why would you count him as a human????? No healer in the crew? Are you guys fucking stupid? Send a sick half baked astronaut along? Fucking dicks. This is the worst “Seeds of Humanity” bullshit I’ve seen and I’ve read a lot of shitty things

Ok so does Kibo breathe? If Kibo didn’t breathe he could hypothetically scout the outside and come back with information. If there really is a way to revive the students, then they should be able to get everyone back and have Iruma make shit to help the outside, just like Towa city.

:C I hope the SDR2 crew is ok probably not . Just imagine Hajizuru and Ko and Gundam and Sonia fine aged like wine damn

Ok, this can’t be the entire twist; There’s no way they’re just handing it down so easily no matter how shitposty this is.  So Ouma could have either KILLED the mastermind and hijacked the whole thing, or he could be going along with another “suggestion”. Or the simplier option, he just found the remote control laying around the Mecha’s room.

He would be the obvious “traitor” and idrk where this is going

MMMMmmmm Is there going to be 6 chapters like the tradition? I don’T KNOW GOD

AH THERE IT GOES. I knew it couldn’t be separate from the other games >:C Is the voice insde Kibo Chiaki? I’m going nuts trying to resolve what is it

Lack of options is because of Space Aids aka Radical 6 huh. Wow... An assassin, an evil leader........ does Kibougamine ever do psychiatric checks before admitting students tho? C’mon Naegi you should’ve learned this far in

NGL I think Momota is gonna be dead, either in a pool of blood or something else. I really like how the group is going now. >C I don’t want anyone else to die goddingit

Really looking forwards to Spoiler-chan

Kibo maybe you shouldn’t be around the Electric bomb you DIPSHIT

SHIT MAN. Not even glanced at the crime scene and it’s already like one of those extreme bullshit cases from Ace Attorney. 

???, aka Amami’s talent, was finally murdered after he fleed his owner. RIP, Amami’s talent, Anon-kun

Maki is already jumping into concluding the body is Momota without a shred of grief? I don’t buy it. She knows something. Also, is this going to be a death caused by illness at last?????? Cuz the compressor wouldn’t trigger if it detected living organic matter amirite

Hmm So Yumeno sneaked Momota the crossbow and the bottles? Was Momota trying to question Ouma to find out if he’s really the Mastermind? The translator is a little unsure of the bottle title so I’m not sure what it actually is

Is it poison or some truth serum? HM the clothes are really weird. Kibo shoving his hand on toilets just like James huuhhhhhhh

Maki used her hammer early to let Monokuma go from the Mechas that were stopping him but why? Is the Mastermind going to be knotted into this mess again? That’s a load of crap man

I really don’t know what to expect

OK SO STOP with the voices WHICH ONE IS IT. This mecha bullshit needs to stop Why is Momota pretending to be Ouma? They can’t be riding on the same thing. But caught off guard the voice goes back to Momota’s

How can he mimic Ouma’s speech like that? This is some grade A bullshit (it’s probably the Mecha but IDK still pointless bullshit)

It’s wayyyy too early in the trial for Yumeno to be the real culprit. It’s more likely she had handed the crossbow to Momota. Also everyone is overlooking Ouma’s clothes had a shot right on the back, if you survive that shit you’re gonna be paralised;   Eguisu Ouma hasn’t laughed “nishishi” even once. That’s a stupid reason but it’s what leads me to believe its not him hah.......

Also how far into the trial is someone gonna be like WELL The arrow hole just magically appeared into the video. You kids suck. YOU SUCK. Hinata was much smarter than you detective wtf. so much bullshit. If you PAUSE. YOU PAUSE. DONT NEED EDITING BITCHES?????

If they wanna shitpost to the extreme it’s gonna turn out both Momota AND Ouma are alive Lmao

Both the injuries with the arrows could be fabricated later. If Momota died of sickness that could be post mortem. 

I’m so tired of this switching bullshit just get it straight out omg

Wait, with Maki’s addition we still don’t know where the third arrow hit. First was on Ouma’s arm shot by Momota, second was her trying to kill him ???? And Momota jumped in front of it. Unless I’m confused. The cutscene didn’t have Ouma with the second shot on his back 

So I’m holding back on my bets

The Remote is such an unfair advantage. Couldn’t he have cheated on practically everything? Unloick the shit out of the entire school’s cardkey or not and so on

If they were going for maximum tearjerker, they’d have Ouma let Kaito die with her poison and her be executed. If they’re going for lawful good, they’d have Ouma kill Kaito and be executed. But these are too obvious. There’s also the possibility Kaito drank more poison himself so he’d die by his own hand, like Sakura

NOT THE CORPSE BULLSHIT AGAIN.

Oh man ok so Ouma was scheming for this goal? That’s way nuttier than Ko. Turn himself into a symbol for them all to hate to draw them into his goal. Then kidnap and get Momota away to force him to cooperate...........?

Idk how to feel. Purple boy was the ultimate twink (also he and Kato sharing some colors was probably intentional?)

I see what they’re aiming for, Momota to be the “true” counterpart of the “Lie” ouma, but it’s early to know how I feel about it.I’m glad Ouma wasn’t the Mastermind. He was truly a great, complex character. Not one of my favorites, but still very hard to like, and hard to read. 

:C So all of Momota’s similarities with Jin were for this paralel huh. It’s sad but it’s better than dying through the execution. He looked so peaceful. Also the first time someone frustrates the plan to the end.

Junko????? Again wow who’s surprised amirite. At this point I’m not gonna be surprised if they have clones of everyone statched away somewhere. That’s why they keep fretting on “having fun again” and “lives with real (unique) meaning)?”

OH NO KIBO NO Is he berserk? HE WAS TRANSMITTING TO NAEGI WASNT HE

NO.......... NO...................... LET THE ROBOT BE........... LEAVE THE ROBOT ALONE......... (he looks so cool BUT LEAVE HIM ALONE LET HIM LIVE)

Where is my Spoiler-chan??????? 

I keep thinking about Jabberwock Island. I keep thinking about them building a shelter.. If they get past the Meteors, Tsumiki can create vaccines. Souda can make air purifiers. Hajizuru can do pretty much fuckall. :C I want to see them live through armagedon >CCCCCCC 

[deltaengineering]

spring anime 2017 part 2: girlfriendship is magic

I can’t believe Maidragon was so powerful it brought the entire 90s back.

See also:

• spring anime 2017 part 1: woke up late

• spring anime 2017 part 3: comfy and easy to wear

• spring anime 2017 bonus round: things you already knew were good

Clockwork Planet

Yes, forecasts this season predict heavy showers of magical girlfriends.This time the dude afflicted by this sudden precipitation is a clockwork nerd, who gets a clockwork gothloli dropped on him. This may be less of a coincidence than it sounds because for spurious reasons the entire planet has been replaced by clockwork – if you thought this show was mentally capable of having a metaphorical title, I have bad news. So basically this is teen schmuck + robot superweapon having fights in a city that looks like a lazy steampunk cosplayer’s top hat, in between erotic misunderstandings. I’m regretting that I called Macchiavellism’s fights bad because a couple good action cuts are already a lot to ask for, as evidenced here: It looks just terrible, and obviously the content itself is even worse. Nuh-uh.

Eromanga-sensei

I love Hiro Kanzaki’s character designs. There, I said it. I just wish they weren’t attached to bullshit like OreImo or Eromanga-sensei, which, being by the same author and all, is more or less the same thing. It’s pretty bad when the implied incest fantasy is the least revolting thing about your celebration of otaku shittery: So a schlubby light novel protagonist who also writes light novels (and who happens to be surrounded by hot bitches that just love people who write light novels because that’s so cool) finds out that the mysterious porn artist he’s collaborating with over the internet is actually his hikkikomori little sister, who reacts to this revelation like any girl would: being tsundere. This means it’s full of mildly self-deprecating nerd humor, the infuriating kind that makes it abundantly clear that if the author meant any of it, he wouldn’t write this crap. Even worse is that the sibling relationship is played for sappy family feels, which I would be more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to if this wasn’t OreImo 2: The Sequel To OreImo. And the main guy can’t keep his eyes from wandering anyway, so it’s not like there’s a mystery here. I’ll say it looks real good, obviously there’s money in the OreImo market and it’s well made as a result, plus the aforementioned character designs. But if I want more Hiro Kanzaki I’d rather watch Go! Go! 575 again.

Hinako Note

There’s actually no Manga Time Kirara adaptation this season, but worry not, Hinako Note is indistinguishable from one of those (that one being GochiUsa). So it’s Kirara at it’s most basic too: 5 girls with mild, generic quirks hang out and cute things take place. You get your shy one, you get your hungry one, you get your tiny maid one, etc. Ostensibly this is theater-themed, but as of episode 1 it’s less about theater than K-ON is about music, and that’s saying something. Now, these shows are always extremely inoffensive by design, and if they do nothing fundamentally wrong they just come across as dull. Since this does nothing fundamentally wrong, it just comes across as dull. Congratulations, Hinako Note, you pulled it off even while being born in the wrong magazine.

Kabukibu!

The easy hook when writing about Kabukibu is that it’s another DEEN show about a classic Japanese performance artform, but it’s blindingly obvious right away that Kabukibu is no Rakugo Shinjuu – it being about a school club is right in the title after all, and it has the requisite spurious punctuation too, so everything else falls into place from there. The main innovation is that this is about cute guys doing cute kabuki. As always, our main dude has to gather the five members to bring the school club back to life first. So it’s unimaginative and honestly rather bad, but I still like it. For starters there’s the bit where our lead is such a nerd that he spends every conversation clearing up common misconceptions about kabuki, which is hilarious, since it resembles weeaboo Richard Stallman wanting to interject for a second over and over again. Secondly, the comical cast of misfits does seem to have potential, with a rock singer that can’t sing, an obvious woman that is actually a woman, and so on. Overall it reminds me of Cheer Danshi, an obvious C-list production that gets by by being earnest. If I can learn to not be annoyed at the yodelling kabuki inflection, I might actually watch this for a lark.

The King’s Avatar

This may be completely outside the “Japanese cartoon” purview of this post since it’s 100% Chinese and doesn’t even have a Japanese dub like the Haoliners productions, but it’s on MAL so it counts I suppose. Also, it’s rather... good? The King’s Avatar is about a legendary MMO pro gamer who gets kicked off his team and has to give up his account, which afflicts him with a multitude of sads. After a bit of soul-searching he starts playing the game again on a new server, starting from level 1. What makes this not as bad as it sounds is that it’s not an isekai bonanza, but a sports show where the sport happens to be visually interesting, and it’s a slow and contemplative sports show at that. The whole “starting from level 1" thing is a topical twist on the sports comeback story, and it looks fairly nice too, a few bits of unfortunate CG aside (but that’s common, so whatever). Yeah, I like this, and if fansubs turn out to not be a huge hassle to get hold of I’ll give it a try.

Love Kome - We Love Rice

Back in Japan, please enjoy this short comedy about rice crop gijinka, boyband edition. It has atrocious character designs and is painfully unfunny. So nothing new there.

Re:Creators

Girlfriends keep falling in my lap, and that might mean my eyes will soon be turning red. Hey, this is the old “reverse isekai”, where some nerd gets to live with a bunch of characters from his favorite anime that inexplicably became real. Brace for domestic hijinks and fish-out-of-water comedy - and a lot of action, because this is Ei Aoki working with offbrand Fate material. He may be this show’s saving grace, because I’m willing to forgive dumb action anime a lot if it at least manages to have some actual fucking action in it. The idea that these anime characters think they’re in the “realm of the gods” (i.e., their creators, you see) also has some storytelling potential, if it doesn’t get buried under stuff blowing up and comedic trips to the konbini. And it doesn’t have a “walking in on the girl naked” scene, which probably counts as “classy” in this field. I don’t know, it sure is stupid as hell but it might be a good time. We’ll see.

Renai Boukun

Renai Boukun is a comedy’s comedy about a very silly cupid that ships people, and herself. As a real anime comedy, it is of course chock full of people acting wacky followed by reaction faces, which is my kryptonite. I do have to admit that this show at least goes all out with it, it’s fast and furious and never lets up. Some of the jokes are even okay (mostly the more absurd ones like the unsettlingly bizarre cat with a human face), though most are just repetitive, like the yandere girl being constantly jealous. Yeah, this is just totally not my thing, but if I give it any amount of praise that probably means it’s a good one?

Seikaisuru Kado

Never say that bureaucrats don’t get no respect, because this is the second season in a row where we get an anime about pencilpushers being totally awesome. The main difference between this and ACCA is that ACCA was roughly 80% style, and Seikaisuru Kado has no style. It makes up for it with conviction, because this is a show where some desk jockey assigned to wind down an electroplating business spends a night googling, with the result being him developing a new electroplating procedure that saves the company and impresses physics professors – and that is the intro before the science fiction aspect comes into play. Oh yeah, there’s a science fiction aspect. So after a job well done, Super Bureaucrat Man is taking a flight from Haneda airport when a Borg cube unceremoniously drops on the plane. The rest of the episode is spent with scientists trying to figure out what happened, mostly by shooting tank shells at the cube and so on. Guess they just aren’t bureaucratic enough, because by the end our hero emerges from the cube, having apparently come to an agreement with the proprietor. Uh. Yes, this is an extreme amount of nonsense, and I have no idea where this is supposed to be going. With the amount of military hardware on display, it makes me think “GATE, but not for total assholes”, but who knows. It looks very weird too, it’s a CG show that cuts a lot of corners by using 2D animation (I know, right?). Usually CG characters are good when you have a lot of action because it enables a fluid camera, but this has no action and they still could have done their special effects in CG like everyone else. So it ends up as an anime where the important characters look worse than the unimportant ones they couldn’t be bothered to build a CG model for. The whole thing is bizarre enough to be intriguing, but I don’t have high hopes for it, especially since the slots for shows I actually want to watch are now filling up.

Tsuki ga Kirei

Case in point: Tsuki ga Kirei is a romance about a bookish nerd dude who loves to quote Dazai at his most morose, and a neurotic girl. Needless to say, it is very awkward, but also kind of cute. This may seem like a slim synopsis, but that’s pretty much it: Tsuki ga Kirei is the sort of show that has the potential to be great if it pays off, but just becomes boring to infuriating Mari Okada clone #3879435 if it doesn’t. So it’s a risky proposition, and not one you can call based on the first episode. On the execution level it seems to do it right so far, it’s well directed, sticks to its slow, sensitive tone and looks pleasant and detailed – the only distracting thing are regrettable and robotic CG background characters all over the place. Overall, this is a show that demands at least three episodes, which it will get from me. Ask again later.

Twin Angel BREAK

Finally, if you’re looking for some basic-ass mahou shoujo shit, here’s the new Twin Angel spinoff. It’s indeed some basic-ass mahou shoujo shit (two-girl team aka PreCure version). The genki red one and the reserved blue one go around fighting evil by the moonlight or whatever, while being cheered on by their one-gimmick-each friends. I somehow doubt this thing is setting itself up for a subversion of any kind, so yeah. What you see is what you get. The only memorable thing is that the action is more than merely bad here, it’s comically bad. Seriously, it’s somewhere between Astro Fighter Sunred and Ninja Slayer. Too bad the rest of the show is just unambitiously competent, so watching it for production pratfalls seems like it’s not worth it either.

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2017 Part 3: The one where I get lazy

It’s that time of the season where I didn’t get around to doing these posts for a couple of days, which at least gives me an excuse to go through a lot of shows very quickly. I’ll start with the especially worthless shorts.

Nyanko Days

Nyanko Days is 2 minutes of a friendless highschooler cat-lady-in-training hanging out with her moe archetype cats. Can’t say it isn’t cute, but... yeaaah.

One Room

It’s pretty incredible that One Room is apparently an original, since it’s essentially the final boss Dark Souls Male Gaze Simulator 2017 of VN adaptations: Four minutes of your moeblob neighbor asking the viewer to study with her, presented in first person. And man, that guy just can’t keep his eyes from wandering. I’m not going to lie, compared to the usual dumb comedy short this is at least something else, even though it’s obviously terrible. The funniest thing is that the already have Female Gaze Simulator 2017 lined up for next season.

Piace - Watashi no Italian

Back to things you’ve seen before, this is Working in an Italian restaurant. It being so short prevents any character stuff from occurring so it’s just manzai comedy, moeblobs and boobs with a slightly weird character design. Unlike the last few seasons bishoujo shows are not rare in this one, so I don’t see why you’d take this over any of the others.

Chiruran - Nibun no Ichi

I have no idea what this is supposed to be, since it’s apparently a spinoff of something else? In any case it’s some vaguely Touken Ranbu-ish thing where chibi boys with swords are cute. Whatever.

Kemono Friends

We’re done with the shorts now, but this is the one show that I can’t believe isn’t one. Not only is it classic short material (cheap and badly animated CG, gijinka hangout concept, based on a mobile game), it also has about enough content to fill 2 minutes. But it’s not two minutes. This isn’t the worst show I’ve watched this season, but it has to be the most boring: a girl who is a girl and a girl who is a serval walk around for 24 minutes and talk about... well, nothing, unless you count dropping properly capitalized jargon words like “Friend” a lot. Oh, and there’s a few instances of completely laughable “action”. Suffice it to say that the barebones personalities on display here can’t sustain this, and the only other Friend who shows up briefly is a hippo who doesn’t manage to add much variety. So it doesn’t even do a good job of showing off the game’s character designs, which was clearly the intention here. The studio must have been very surprised that Nexon paid for 12x24m of this, and their struggle to fill that may be amusing to think about but doesn’t make this any more watchable.

ACCA - 13-ku Kansatsu-ka

Someone sure likes their handsome guys in uniforms. ACCA is shameless styleservice: Apart from the pretty boys (and girls) in broad-shouldered suits and ties, this features great art direction, a very pretty setting and cool jazz music. It’s just that the content is almost gleefully anti-interesting: What we have here is basically Rolling Girls, but about a guy with bedroom eyes who travels around looking cool while smoking, eating cake and... auditing. Yes, looking at spreadsheets has never been this stylish. Somehow this entire thing seems like the result of a dare, but I can’t help being intrigued nonetheless. The style can carry it for a bit, and maybe the plot will pick up. And if it doesn’t, it’s still possible that I can get used to it being mainly about its own presentation - Non Non Biyori for hepcats and male tailoring afficionados, essentially. Gonna keep an eye on this.

Chain Chronicle - Haecceitas no Hikari

It turns out that Chain Chronicle had some movies previously, and while I can’t say if those help with understanding it, it’s never a good idea to drop the viewer right into a huge brawl involving about 30 characters with no introduction whatsoever. I get the appeal of opening your series with everyone getting spanked by the final boss right at the start, but come on. After that’s over, Chain Chronicle turns out to be, well.. a serious mobile fantasy game adaptation. Which means all your favorite rare cards show up for a second and then some generic plot about saving the world from the Dark Lord starts. It seems to have quite a bit of money behind it, but if it has any amount of originality or ambition, I'm not seeing it in the first episode and that’s where it needs to be for me to give this a second thought.

elDLIVE

eIDLIVE is a Weekly Shounen Jump manga by Akira Amano, whose main work is Hitman Reborn, but is mainly known to the more discerning crowd for the Psycho-Pass character designs; my first impression is that the main character looks a whole lot like Akane. But unlike Butcher-brand grimdarkness, eIDLIVE is a silly action comedy that seems to trend young even for the Jump crowd - read, it’s a bunch of random nonsense with outrageous faces. It splits the difference between juvenile humor ala Heybot and a standard shounen superhero plot, and that’s pretty painful both ways. The only thing it has going for it is that it has a colorful, stylized presentation, but looking like a more stylish HeroAca doesn’t sufficiently endear it to me either, especially since a Jump adaptation by Pierrot is likely to be rather... long, both in runtime and in slow plot bullshit.

Gabriel DropOut

Guess what, Dogakobo is adapting an ostensibly funny manga about cute girls again. And of course it looks pretty nice as usual; so let’s talk about the source material. Gabriel DropOut is about angels (and demons) that visit a regular high school for some reason. Its one joke is that the angels range from lazy slobs to outright rotten, and the demons range from responsible and nice to being too stupid to be evil. What a twist! The astute watcher may notice that this is essentially Sansha Sanyou with the conceit much more clearly pushed to the forefront, and this doesn’t even have the occasional crazy sakuga outbursts of Sansha Sanyou while not being any more interesting. In a season where this type of show is making a strong comeback, I see no reason to bother with it unless you need to watch all of the bishoujo anime.

Hand Shakers

If you told me that Hand Shakers is a subversive art piece from the fringes of the superflat movement, I would be inclined to believe you. Of course, that’s probably not the intention here: this is GoHands, and making eye-searingly ugly and garish anime is just what they do. And they’ve outdone themselves this time, their trademark Instagram color gradient filter is only the start here. An out-of-control camera that highlights the Google Sketchup-tier 3D backgrounds (with the added benefit of the 2D foregrounds often not quite matching up, to nauseating effect), the CG “special” effects that Gonzo did better in 2004, the outright use of photo cutouts for anything too complicated to model, the bizarre character work that resembles a cheap mid-2000s eroge, the random wandering highlights on shiny objects; if this was Takashi Murakami or Inu Curry, we’d all be scrambling to see the hidden meaning in this dumpster fire that could easily double as a scathing parody of KyoAni’s recent love of postprocessing. And ironically that meaning wouldn’t even be hard to find, since the story (as far as I was able to follow it, reading the subs is hard when your eyes are bleeding) could also double as a satire of shitty shounen plots: A guy gets superpowers by holding hands with his waifu and has to fight other pairs in ridiculous relationships; clearly someone thought this was very meaningful indeed, especially when the enemy pair is an asshole and his BDSM sub (incidentally a plot point last seen in none other than Valkyrie Drive). On top of this, the script does the impressive double whammy of only blatantly expositing via lots of jargon without actually explaining anything.

So yeah, Hand Shakers is absolutely, stupefyingly horrible, to the point where I’m totally down to watch it. It’s probably not meant to be a genre sendup like Mayoiga was, but with a bit of Death of the Author it can easily double as one. And hey, it’s still easier to digest than Occultic;Nine.

Idol Jihen

You know, an anime about a version of Japan where politics are run via idol competitions really has no business being this fucking boring. With that setup, you’d at least expect it to be a comedy (or better yet a satire - just read the above sentence again, it basically writes itself), but somehow it only manages to be a slightly above-average regular idol show, with as little as you can say about those as usual. Usual characters, usual music, usual ganbaru. Seriously, it’s pretty amazing how little the politics aspect ends up mattering, that must have taken some effort. I didn’t really feel Macross Delta, but that at least did a better job making its “idols where they don’t belong” subject matter work. It’s possible that this show discovers its potential somewhere along the way, but if the beginning was a fakeout intended to show that this is run-of-the-mill idol shenanigans, it may have done a little too well at that; my takeaway was mainly that silly universe aside, yes, I’ve seen this before, and no, I don’t need to see more of it.

Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon

So after years of “Dogakobo is the new KyoAni while KyoAni is off doing their own thing”, KyoAni is back in the game of adapting ostensibly funny manga about cute girls. I’m not shocked that the results are pretty much identical, this is what happens if you adapt 4koma humor in a flat, colorful style and put some effort in it. Maidragon (the manga) is, if nothing else, better than Gabriel DropOut, but not decidedly so. Production values aside (and while nice, Maidragon is no Nichijou and not even a Sansha Sanyou), it’s just the standard magical girlfriend shit of yore; that the main character lucking into a magical maid is female here makes very little difference in practice. Kobayashi as a character is at least a bigger draw than the usual nothings in something like this (and definitely bigger than zany boob dragon maid Tohru); she’s moody, somewhat acerbic and a maid fundamentalist - i.e., anti-fanservice/cosplay maids. If I’m going to watch one of these shows, it might as well be the one that has me as the main character... but it’s entirely possible that I get tired of this very quickly.

Kuzu no Honkai

Kuzu no Honkai (aka Scum’s Wish) is based on a hyped drama manga, so I expected to see the next 3-gatsu, and I’m still not convinced by 3-gatsu a whole season in. But where 3-gatsu is overall still mostly a warm iyashikei blanket where even Rei’s depression due to hilariously tragic backstory seems mostly intended to elicit wanting to give him a hug, Scum’s Wish is, for better or for worse, the real deal: A sexually charged story about awful, not even remotely likeable characters, most closely related to something like Aku no Hana. As of episode one it pulls no punches with the horny kisses and it’s noitaminA, so it’s a looker too - it’s cool how everything is in shoujo sparklevision except when it comes to the making out, which comes across as pretty grimy. In theory I’m all for something like this, but well... watching a girl fuck some other guy because she can’t fuck her brother, who is fucking some other girl, who is the one that the guy fucking the first girl can’t fuck, is just not what I’m into, especially if I’m not even supposed to like the characters. Pity Fuck: The Animation is something that I feel like I shouldn’t disregard on its first episode alone, but I felt the same way about Aku no Hana and didn’t end up finishing that either.

Little Witch Academia

So here we go, the other big name of the season. Unsurprisingly, the LWA TV reboot is still LWA, so it’s pretty good. The animation remains pleasantly cartoony and expressive and it’s generally made with a lot of care. I still can’t help feeling slightly let down by it though: The basic concept of LWA already got threadbare halfway through the second movie, and since this just starts from the beginning again, there definitely isn’t anything new. The best I can come up with is that it’s even more of a Harry Potter clone than it was before (yes, that is actually possible), but that’s not winning it any points. Another weird thing is that the action, while hard to criticize on a technical level, comes across as strangely unengaging - I usually blame the editing in these cases. In any case, LWA is entertaining to watch for now but it has to go somewhere with its story and characters really soon if it wants to fill 24 episodes of TV anime. I can only forgive it treading water again for so long, no matter how well it’s put together.

Marginal#4 - Kiss kara Tsukuru Big Bang

And finally, here’s the idol boyband anime of the season. The only one, if I’m counting correctly. We used to get more even half a year ago, and to be quite honest I can’t really tell the difference anymore. It’s like all of those with all the characters one of those always has and comes in the variety without the self-insert main girl, if you want the finer details ask your local UtaPri specialist. Really the only thing that raises an eyebrow is that this is about four guys who try to start a school club while already being in an idol group, which seems slightly backwards? Having your cake and eating it too, maybe? Apart from that incredible innovation, possibly the most forgettable show in a forgettable genre.