#I have to be strong and funny for cat girl akane

[oobi-oobi]

New abomination... I mean, new profile picture for @oobi-oobi-rambles

Goodbye Kermit 😔

[runimanio]

2024 Game Clear #18 Ranma ½: Treasure of the Red Cat Gang

I've been really getting into Ranma½ lately, and after learning that there was a RPG with an English fan translation I knew I had to play through it as it is my god given duty to play through every turn based RPG licensed after a property I like and .... it's just okay

The fan translation has two versions one for fans of the anime and one for the manga, I chose the anime version because at this time that is the version of Ranma I'm more familiar with, I'm don't know what all the changes are in the manga patch as their doesn't seem to be a place online that documents all the differences. The translation seems pretty good especially for a early 2000s fan translation, there's perhaps one grip I have with it and it that they chose to name an equippable armor for the girls as just "bitch" which I feel is unnecessary and unprofessional (and frankly a bit confusing like what exactly am I equipping here?) I do lack the knowledge to properly criticizes the translation here but the guide I was using did choose to translate it to "Angry Dress" instead so I felt it was worth bringing up.

Now for the actual game itself. The Jusenkyo guide accidently broke a seal releasing The Ghost King Cat Nekomaou upon the world who seeks strong men to rebuild his Red Cat Gang and wishes acquire the three sacred treasures that can grant any wish when brought together. The Red Cat Gang kidnaps Ranma father Genma, Mousse and the students of Furinkan High to use as muscle. Ranma, Akane & Shampoo (Ryoga too but of course he immediately gets lost and separated from the party) sets off to save everyone and to acquire the three treasures in hopes of using the wish to cure Ranma of his curse.

I think it's a pretty strong set up for a Ranma RPG honestly, but in practice alot of the writting feels like a reheated version of what you know, if you watched even a couple of episodes of Ranma, you've seen all the jokes before just now it's in a pretty static form which doesn't really lend much strength to all the running gags, even the ghost cat stuff isn't really that special since Maomolin exists but weirdly unless I missed something they never actually point that out.

The party also doesn't banter among themselves as much as you'd hope, only really speaking up when it's time to do their running gag. Akane suffers the most from this I think, as perhaps 95% of her dialogue is getting angry at Ranma which very little moments (if any) that explore her more tender side. It's a Akane completely removed of nuance and I think that's lame

That said there was gags that I did think translated well into the RPG format, Having a party member like Ryoga who will just... keep walking unaware that he's leaving the party is pretty funny joke for a RPG, Genma continues to be the world worst dad, and Cat Fu gets to be a mechanic in a boss fight (though Ranma fear of cats isn't really brought up as much as you might think it would be considering the plot)

On the the actual gameplay side...I like a fair bit about it! It's pretty simple but I appreciate that it doesn't waste your time, a lot of other licensed rpgs that i've played try to hide the fact that they likely made the game in 8 months by forcing a brutal grind or by splitting up the party to hid a lack of meaningful progression.(looking at you Sailor Moon Another Story) I only really had to grind once at the end and it was a pretty light grind, the party does split up a bunch but it never feels like a tactic to artificially increase difficulty and therefore extend the game length then more the product of the Ranma cast being chaotic, it's a miracle that a party of these characters can hold together for 5 minutes.

That said I do wonder if they purposely made your movement speed in the overworld slow to compensate, it not that bad and you get used to it but it's pretty noticeably slow when you first start playing but even with that it's a very short rpg, I got through half the game in like 4 hours unquestionable the shortest tradition rpg i've ever beaten but I actually think it's to the game strength that it doesn't overstay it's welcome.

I general I don't look the look of this game but I do like how battles look, the special moves are flashy and I love that characters fly out of the arena when K.O, battle are pretty easy though you can pretty much get through everything by just spamming attacks, start doing basic rpg stratagems like using stat boosting abilities and your pretty much invincible, being too easy might seem like a detriment but i vastly prefer that to the likely alternate of a grindfest so it's fine

Last note on the gameplay is the UI isn't the best, visually it looks fine but it lacks a lot of information that would be useful to know, items & abilities don't have descriptions which can makes it hard to parse what something actually does even after using it if the effect isn't visually obvious which is why I kept a guide open to reference. you can also only see your ki amount in battles which isn't a big deal but a little annoying when you want to check if your ready before a boss fight

Ultimately though I think a RPG is just kinda a weird choice for a Ranma game, turning the chaotic gender swapping martial arts romance gag manga™ into a slow turn based rpg isn't the most natural match, there's probably way to make it work really well but It probably would take a longer timetable then the dev team probably had. There are Ranma fighting games and visual novels which seem like a better fit but i'm surprised out of all the IP in the 90's that got beat em ups Ranma wasn't one of them, somewhere out there there's a world with a banging Konami or River City style Ranma beat em up and im sad I don't live in that world lol.

With all that said and all my criticism aside... I do still recommend it for Ranma fans, it more time in this world and with these characters and it's a short painless experience so it's not a huge time sink, it's just whenever you merge a property I like with this genre I'm always gonna come in with higher expectations then I probably should have lol

[ranma-rewatch]

Episode 17: I Love You, Ranma! Please Don’t Say Goodbye

Howdy dowdy, everyone! We are getting so close! So close to finishing the first season of Ranma 1/2! Last episode ended with Akane still having no clue who Ranma is, so this time they’ll resolve that? I think? I am fairly sure she remembered him throughout the rest of the series. I guess I’ll see how after I rewatch the episode, which for you will be with the next paragraph.

There we have it! The end to Shampoo’s introductory arc! How did I feel about it?

That’ll be more clear later on, let’s start by going over what happens in it. Ranma and Akane head back to her house, with her still unaware of who he is. Her family is only now starting to understand that this is actually happening, that Akane has somehow actually forgotten Ranma.

Shampoo shows up, when she glomps onto Ranma out of pure instinct Akane attacks him. Realizing that there is some part of her memory left unaffected, Shampoo goes to do the attack again, but Ranma intercepts it and steals the shampoo. He immediately tries using it on Akane, but it just knocks her out, it doesn’t regain the lost memories. Dr. Tofu shows up and reveals that’s because the formula he stole only takes memories, it can’t give them back.

Luckily, he has a book that has the recipe they need. Unluckily, Kasumi shows up and in his lovestruck silliness he rips the book into tiny pieces without realizing it. With no other choice, Ranma decides to head to China, since they’ll have the shampoo formula needed there. Everyone asks for personal souvenirs (though I don’t know how he’d buy any Ranma is usually broke) and Akane wonders why this stranger is doing so much for her.

Speaking of that very question, Ranma quickly runs into Shampoo, who wants to know why Ranma is trying to get Akane’s memories back so much. All he says to that is that he doesn’t like the idea of being forgotten by someone. Clearly, that is all it is, there is no other context to the situation.

She messes with Ranma a bunch, faking him out with a bunch of other kinds of shampoo, but eventually after a lot of hijinks Ranma is able to strike a deal with her: all it will take to get the memory-restoring shampoo is killing the ‘girl Ranma’. Well, half-kill, Ranma could at least negotiate to that.

And if you need someone to half-kill Ranma, of course there’s no one else to go see except Ryoga Hibiki. Only problem is, for once he doesn’t want to beat Ranma up, no matter how nicely Ranma asks. After all, if Akane’s memory is never restored, it gives him a chance to be with Akane instead. Still, Ryoga does have a temper, and Ranma eventually goads him into a fight...that Ranma quickly wins, unscathed.

Mr. Tendo and Mr. Saotome step up for the job, but Akane sees them attacking this poor defenseless (and as she sees it, weak) teenage boy and tries to stop them. That annoys Ranma, since he’s going through all this pain for her, but when he insults her in annoyance, she reacts to it. So, Ranma insults her a bunch and her memory comes back.

The only problem there is, now that Akane remembers Ranma, Shampoo is back to wanting to kill her for being an obstacle to getting with Ranma. This leaves Ranma with what he feels like is no choice, and he shows Shampoo that he’s both the man she loves and the person she was trying to kill. (Without mentioning the curse, mind you, instead telling her that he has just been ‘pretending to be a guy’) As he seemed to expect, she jumps to wanting to kill him, but it quickly becomes clear she’s crying, and she runs away, telling Ranma they’ll never see each other again. Then there is a short scene of Ranma and Akane having a spat. The end.

I think this time I'm going to start with the stuff I liked. I appreciate the structure of the narrative here, as Ranma tries one thing after another, any way he can, to solve the problem. It moved fairly quickly and was a good fodder for some jokes.

The bigger reason I liked the episode, of course, just comes from how far Ranma is willing to go to help Akane. He plans to swim to China, by himself, if it means getting her memories back. He can say whatever he wants, but I do feel like this episode was great at showing just how much he really does care about her.

It also made fairly good use of Ryoga, though it’s something they’ve done with him a few times now. By this point, it seems his love for Akane and how he sees Ranma as the thorn in his side have become his primary character traits, rather than his original driving hatred. That’s not necessarily bad, but I’m glad that, as far as I remember, it won’t be his main focus forever.

That last scene with Shampoo is also fairly strong, though I’ll get more into my thoughts on her in a second. All of the things I liked aside, there was definitely one part of this episode I really didn’t care for.

It probably sounds dumb, but I just really didn’t like the solution to the memory loss. To put it more specifically, I like the idea that they’re able to break through what’s been done to her through her connection to Ranma. I just don’t like that it involved Ranma insulting her over and over again. Like, I get it, he’s a dick to her sometimes, that reminds her of him more than all the nice things he’s been doing.

But it’s also just rough to watch, at least for me? I didn’t find it funny. In a way, the whole thing casts a strange shadow on the entire Ranma/Akane dynamic. Arguing a lot is one thing, but the sheer level to which Ranma was insulting her felt closer to negging then anything else. Especially because it’s all focused on how Akane looks, things that are clearly a big insecurity for her.

Enough worrying about those two, let’s talk about who this arc was more properly about, Shampoo (no last name)! This is our first Character Spotlight in a while, so let’s make sure it’s done well!

Let’s talk about her voice actresses, shall we? Her original Japanese voice was provided by Rei Sakuma, who was also the cat Jiji in Kiki’s Delivery Service (which is kind of funny considering something happening to Shampoo next season). Like some of the other voice actresses we’ve talked about thus far, she was in the idol group DoCo. For English, she’s portrayed by Cathy Weseluck. Some of her more well-known roles are as Near in Death Note and Spike in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. (Both of which are not roles I’d expect from Shampoo’s voice actress.)

They both play Shampoo very similarly, I’d say. Shampoo has a very high-pitched voice, and at least so far her vocabulary in ‘Japanese’ isn’t very large, so half the time she sticks with Chinese instead. This gives her an almost baby-like quality to her voice, which is contrasted by how cold it is when she starts talking about how Ranma or Akane have to die. What I would say as a point of delineation, at least so far, is that Sakuma’s performance feels more genuine, while Weseluck makes it seem like the childishness is just a front, it doesn’t sound sincere.

That kind of voice, genuine or not, is pretty emblematic of what we’ve seen of Shampoo thus far. Namely, that she’s fairly simple. Shampoo is chasing after Ranma, to kill or to marry, because of ancient traditions of her people, not because of what she really wants. Yet she pursues him relentlessly anyway. She’s eager to fight, eager to love, and absolutely willing to use underhanded methods to remove anyone from the picture if they get in her way.

I will say that, in terms of fighting ability, it’s pretty vague thus far how good Shampoo is. Ranma is capable of beating her with no problem over and over again, but she never gets to really fight Akane, all she does is give her hair the works.

Speaking of Akane, I will say that Shampoo’s presence does highlight certain aspects of her character. They’re both rather jealous, and prone to violence over it. But where Akane and Ranma are still trying to work through their baggage, Shampoo is down to cuddle from second one. Shampoo is also the first other fiance of Ranma’s, though that’s less something planned out for him and more something he made happen by accident.

I guess it’s time to talk about it, no use putting it off any longer. Shampoo has never really been a character I liked in the franchise, and part of the fun of this Rewatch is seeing how my thoughts have grown on her. I used to just kind of find her annoying, but now there’s more there too. Namely, racism. Yeah, the broken English/Japanese she speaks, combined with how she’s written in general, give Shampoo a kind of ‘dumb’ quality that never sat well with me, especially now that I know that it’s emblematic of the kind of stereotypes Japanese people tend to have about people from China. I still hope to have my opinion changed on Shampoo, but it hasn’t really happened yet.

It hasn’t been made clear yet, so I will say now that I do like this episode. It has some good comedy, I enjoy the hints of Ranma’s burgeoning devotion to Akane, and it closes out Shampoo’s initial storyline pretty well. But I’m also mixed on it, mostly just because of that insulting scene. It’s strange, having a story that I liked about 80% of, because it’s difficult knowing how to weigh that 20% that I didn’t care for. (Also, can I just say I hate that the title feels like a lie?) In the end, I’m placing this just one spot above the last episode, which means the current standing is thus:

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 15: Enter Shampoo, the Gung-Ho Girl! I Put My Life in Your Hands

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 17: I Love You, Ranma! Please Don’t Say Goodbye

Episode 16: Shampoo's Revenge! The Shiatsu Technique That Steals Heart and Soul

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

Episode 14: Pelvic Fortune-Telling? Ranma is the No. One Bride in Japan

Next time, we are closing out the season! It’s kind of strange to consider that, I’m actually almost done with the first season of the series, known here in the States as “Digital Dojo” and in Japan as the only season of Ranma 1/2. (The next season to the end was all Ranma 1/2 Nettōhen) Will I like I Am a Man! Ranma's Going Back to China!? That’s the big question, and I’m eager to see. Ta ta for now!

[rockmiyabideusexmachina]

2019 Megaman Summer Fanart Contest Results! [Part 2 - K/DA Akane]

In part deux of this year’s summer contest results, I threw Akane in the title due to the inspiration for the theme, and as I fully expected, nobody actually drew a K/DA-styled Akane. Yet that didn’t stop entrants in this category from trying to bribe me by including Mrs. Stelar in their submissions. Such an artistic temptation didn’t work on my strong will, despite entrants best attempts, in the previous category. Will it for this one? Find out after the break!

Thank you again to all who participated! This set of entries certainly was varied in scope, and definitely had me reconsidering placements over and over in my head, before I finally settled on them. I will be contacting all winners today, after these posts go live.

For the (mostly) full gallery with images at their actual resolution, in case you have issues viewing on tumblr, head here: http://imgbox.com/g/2sbxl6nX4C

I will also include a direct link after each entrant’s name, if the images won’t load for you.

Category 2 - K/DA Akane (this category focused on Mega Man characters in a pop group music scene, with a minimum of 3 members in their group. Scenes could range from stage performance to day-in-the-life to album covers, etc.)  1.) @inanehipsterslang: [ENTRY...is seriously 33 pages! I will avoid uploading every page into this post, so the rest of the entries don’t get buried. This one gets it’s own separate full gallery link instead.]

Every year, someone gets more and more ambitious with massive comics for these contests, and it truly is hard for me to not reward those who put in that time and effort for my silly little contests, as I try to objectively judge everything. And in so many ways, this entry from inane is so different from the rest, as well. It focuses on the lyrics of an actual song that you’ll see on most pages, while telling it’s own separate story in a very different way, to create a pop group.  And once again, your tale does such a beautiful job mixing a deeply serious mood with humor interjected; with moving dialogue from the heart, that feels personal, and hits home in a lot of ways. You certainly thought outside the box with the theme, and can craft a great story! 

2.) @iandimas: [ENTRY]

As always, Ian’s crisp colors draw my eye in, but I think one of these mama’s slightly more revealing stage outfits was intentionally designed to do the same thing...Akane missed the memo about ties being required for this gig. 

It was definitely a surprise to see characters who rarely ever get drawn by anyone (Misora’s mom, Veil, and Emilia) in your piece. It certainly gives off the pop idol vibe with the flashy stage lights, video board and excessive fog machine use, that Veil could use less of. Cute, and well done!

3.) @ask-the-half-enlightened-one: [ENTRY]

A private concert for the Servbot army, featuring Miss Tron, Marino and Meddy. I really liked the subtle purple glow from the lights in this one, that even without full color, gave off a great vibe to fit the scene. Unique outfits for all of the ladies, that still fit their personalities well. 

And did you all catch the little subtle W-I-L on Tron’s belt? Or notice how each of the ladies are flashing a specific hand gesture? Or how the second Servbot from the left sure does seem to be throwing up his hands in the air like he doesn’t care, in a Y...MCA...pose. Even the Bonne speaker machine sort of forms a giant W with a skull on it. Hmmm...I think there’s a hidden message in this pic.. XD

_______

Just came up a little short, but here are the other great entries for this category, in alphabetical order by alias -

@bracedshark​: [ENTRY]

Oh no, the hunter trio have finally become Maver-X!! I bet it’s the fault of their producer, $igma. Bracedshark bring us the timeless tradition of boy bands fleeing the paparazzi and adoring fans. Some want the attention, others just want to haul it out of there! It might not quite be Neon Tiger Beat Magazine, but I love the Beat on the mag cover! ;D Their relaxed, sporty outfits retain a lot of the basic design of their normal armor, and honestly, I’d kinda love to see/wear in real life. 

@dahlia-the-nurd​: [ENTRY] [Solo Tundra] [Solo Jewel] [Solo Star] [Solo Gemini]

Dahlia based her entry off of actual group Fifth Harmony, but even not knowing that, you have to love the flair of the clothing design for each of the Robot Masters here. While I am refraining from directly adding each individual pic in this post to keep it shorter, you can see each one linked above. 

I certainly love Gemini’s popped collar and glam rock attitude the most, but it’s also neat seeing Tundra’s ice crystal braid all done up like that. That was some nice creative thinking. Certainly a great group shot!

@hyperbole1729​: [ENTRY]

Hyperbole’s entry was a very clever parody on the Elite Beat Agents game, using Commander Beef and his Net Agents in the titular role. Their singing and cheering on people in need is meant to help, even if they seem to show up in situations that, you know, don’t really seem to be the most appropriate time for singing and dancing. 

Like, say, when Navi babies are sleeping, or a woman finds out her husband is likely dead in space and her son doesn’t get why daddy’s not coming home. XD It’s one of those things that shouldn’t be so funny, but I loved where you were going with it, as a parody!

@janitorbot: [ENTRY] (*RAFFLE PRIZE WINNER - Archie Issue 33 Pg. 19*)

Prancing dads who think it’s hip to be square. Well, to everyone but Bass, they look cool. Janitorbot’s pic has the doctor trinity working together again to achieve their Ph.D in synchronized pop dance moves and finger *pew pew pew*-ing. I’m only imagining them singing Kaze yo Tsutaete, and you can’t tell me otherwise. The facial expressions for each character here makes this pic so wonderful! 

@larytello​: [ENTRY]

Reploids of the world, spice up your life! Lary’s pic reimagines the Spice Girls with a single representative from 5 different series. Nice job getting them to fit each Spice Girl’s unique look. Although I would have figured Misora the better option for Ginger Spice, rather than Baby, with her hair color. XD But I’d assume she is the youngest of the group here, too. 

I’m sure the glittery background was partially created by the battlechip obtained from a Mushy virus. The sparkles and your shading all turned out really well here!

@prar-draws​: [ENTRY]

Prar’s beautiful piece features Ciel, X and Zero as Kpop idols, with a glamorous angelic vibe. Gosh, those feather adornments around each of their heads turned out so pretty, and unique for each character. I mean, just in general, each of their outfits are really gorgeous. The definition and texture you create with your brushstrokes will always wow me!

roninapprentice: [ENTRY]

Ronin’s pop group is known as Claw, based off of the cat-like appearance of Cinnamon’s strongest weapon, and Axl’s helmet, giving him that pointy, cat ear look. With those connections, why not have an album cover where they all adopt cat-like looks? Their eyes even glow within the dark scene! Certainly a cute idea, with a background that even almost feels like a cat tower playground for the trio, even though you mentioned it was a laser tag arena. I can only imagine how distracted these 3 would be, pawing at the lasers all around! XD

[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.