#but the otome department seems to be still kinda lacking for me

[gifti3]

[sugarandspice-games]

I guess this is becoming a trend... I’m popping in before the actual intro to clarify-- if the text is in italic, it is me (Sugar) talking and regular is Spice. Alright? Cool. And so--

So, one night I’m going through youtube and I come upon this one shitposty video about some random anime that I’ve never even heard of. After doing some research, I discover that it’s actually based on a dating sim that I’ve also never heard of. As a joke I was like “Hey Sugar wanna watch this as a joke, it might be funny” and so we did. And uhm. Well.

Today we’re gonna be reviewing Brothers Conflict, aka Sweet Home Alabama 2: Electric Anime Boogaloo aka the anime that ruined our lives. [Again, disclaimer: neither Sugar nor I condone incest and/or pedophilia, two themes which are uh, very rampant in this anime which is why I cannot recommend it in good faith. It’s not good, don’t get me wrong. I can’t really say that I liked it even if watching it and ragging on it was kind of enjoyable, and I did get attached to some of the characters because that’s the kind of idiot I am. Also, we’re not shirking our duties to write I swear please don’t kill me--] Anyway, an obligatory SPOILER WARNING though this probably isn’t going in the main tag bc I do not want the fans to publicly stone me. Why are we reviewing this? Bc we need to talk about it somewhere. Though I say review lightly bc this... is really more of a critique.

ALSO we only watched the anime, idk if things are different in the game. There is no full english translation for the games and most of the LP channels have been copyright striked, so please don’t come at us for not knowing anything. I also know that otome games and dating sims don’t tend to translate well to anime, and I will be addressing this later.

So, dear god, where do I begin.

Where do we begin indeed? How about the fact that her name is Ema and I had to google to remember the heroine’s name? Also, she is seventeen.

Our plot, or well... what you COULD call a plot, I guess, if you REALLY wanted to give this anime that much credit, focuses on the aforementioned seventeen year old Hinata Ema, who has an absent father who apparently FOUND THE TIME TO FALL IN LOVE AND GET MARRIED BUT NEVER HAS A SECOND TO SPARE FOR HIS ONLY CHILD, RINTARO I SWEAR TO GOD I AM TAKING CUSTODY OF YOUR CHILD. HAND HER OVER-- Anyway. He’s getting married to a woman who has 13 sons (jesus christ ma’am have you ever heard of a condom?) and he decides to move her in with them because... I guess he has less braincells than I have balls, which is to say, zero. Hi, I’m trans.

So, Ema moves in with them... along with her talking grey squirrel, Juli. Juli is... interesting and by interesting, I mean-- ABSOLUTELY PUZZLING. He, apparently, has seen the majority of Ema’s life from babyhood to teenagerhood and can talk but is only understood by Ema (who he calls Chii) and Louis, the eighth son in the Asahina family. It is never explained why, or how Chii came across him or how in an episode, a single episode, he becomes human because why the hell not, I guess??? (Also, he is pretty. YES. I said it. Fight me.) [Quick Spice intervention, this squirrel can talk to people, transform into a human, enter dreams, and live way longer than a squirrel should since the average lifespan of a squirrel is like 6 years in the wild. Juli is apparently a god as none of this is EVER explained.]

And when she meets the Asahina family, it’s pretty much immediately chaos because these heterosexual (I guess? They look like a bunch of twinks to me but there goes anime trying to convince me that straight people are real and not a lie made up by Trump) men have NEVER and I mean NEVER known a woman in their entire lives, since they seem to want to bang their stepsister immediately. And most of them are GROWN ASS ADULTS. Only three of them are actually minors (though Iori is 18 and only one year older so I guess??? It’s okay??? But still weird) and one of them is a 13 year old who looks and acts like he’s 8.

Oh, and did I mention that out of these boys, only the adult triplets and the abusive asshole 16 year old get any kind of characterization AND character development? I mean, Subaru gets an “arc” if you can call it that, but really, they don’t give him much... personality. You could replace him with a cardboard cutout and it’d be the same. I feel bad for him (but not really because dude you are 20 and she is your sister, what the fuck--)

But if there’s anything good about this anime, it is the characters themselves. Several of the boys have redeeming qualities and interesting personalities and quirks, as well as interesting relationships and dynamics with each other. Yes, some of them are lacking in the plotline department while others may have decent plotlines and lack personality, and then some of them are just given absolutely nothing (COUGH Masaomi COUGH Ukyo COUGHCOUGHCOUGH Iori, and by the way, what the fuck is that game plotline bc I read the wiki since I wanted to know more about him. We don’t have time to unpack the mento illness luv. But you’re telling me they had all this meat to work with and they threw it in the trash and gave him nothing? What the hell?) And if anything, I feel as if the characters themselves are crippled by the plotline. If given a different story, perhaps, they may have room to shine, because a lot of them are compelling if not lovable (though some may not be... lovable. COUGHFuuto, at least not for me.) If you want to see our review on the characters, we’ll put out another post.

Iori... Iori has a hell of a plot in the game, according to the Wiki but I can’t blame the writers for not exploring all of it because whoa. It is dark and not in a good way. But back to the subject at hand... I agree with Spice. I do/did like quite a lot of the characters... provided the entire romantic plot is taken away but we will go into more of why the plot is problematic below. All I can really add is: There is a baby in this dumpster and canon has been taken out back to be shot like a lame horse.

This brings me to a point in which I would like to pause the character discussion and bring up a glaring flaw with this anime in general (aside from the... plot. Look, I’m not a huge fan of weird stepsibling stuff but I think that if you want to do something like that, there are ways to do it and ways not to do it. This was the way not to do it, which I’m getting to). The biggest thing that made this anime so uncomfortable was the imbalance of power dynamics. Why is the protagonist 17 when most of the love interests are 18 and older, and I mean much, much older? And she’s not any 17 year old... she’s a lonely, neglected girl who is starved for the love of a family. This makes her easily manipulated by the brothers, who clearly desire her for less than wholesome reasons, and that makes it skeevy. I’m not sure why there’s such a fetishization of nonconsent in media, as if it’s fine for as many men to lust after female protagonists as the writer desires BUT the woman can’t want a single one of them in return. It’s creepy, and quite frankly, I am very much over it. I also get that the age thing is probably a product of the protagonist of a teenager oriented dating sim not translating well to an anime (because really, all otome game MCs are meant to be a neat little pair of shoes for the player to imagine themselves in), but why are we fetishizing a teenager being groomed by adults anyway? Especially adults who have this much power over her to begin with? The power dynamics bring this plot from “Oh, this might be kinda trashy but it could be entertaining” to “This is extremely creepy and rapey and kind of a dumpster fire.”

This is also true. If we were to take age into consideration, Fuuto, Yusuke, and Iori would be the three candidates left for Chii. This is taking out the youngest as well, who is... thirteen, I think? But anyway, (I know I am probably going to get some hate for this but go for it), I am into stories that explore the stepsibling thing and it can make a good narrative-- but before everyone gets uppity: There is a line between FICTION and REALITY and I do not condone real life incest but a story is a story and there are ways to frame it that make it clear that it is not a romantic thing, or acceptable. This anime does not do that in it’s dynamics because some of the brothers do start off in that very firm caregiving, family role and it is a sharp turn into romance that makes you go, “?” or in Fuuto case, a blending that does lean into fetishization.

All in all I think the plot maybe could have been okay? I’m not saying it isn’t problematic, because we all know it is, who are we kidding? But I don’t think it’s wrong per se to explore family dynamics with romance and to understand where the line should be drawn, and maybe exploring the definition of family itself. I have seen fanfictions with similar tropes ask those questions and explore the concept beautifully without romanticizing or fetishizing incest and unhealthy power dynamics. It could have been good, and I get that perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree by expecting mature themes in an anime based on an otome game, but it also could have been a lot less... creepy (I have used that word so much that it looks wrong now) even if it wasn’t the greatest thing ever. But again, what was I expecting? I watched this whole thing as a joke and ended up attached to the characters like a fool... That tends to be a trend here, and this is why we are so salty all the time. So anyway, stay tuned for our review of the characters! We may not cover all of them since some of them don’t really get anything, but we’ll cover what we found interesting.

[teddystrap]

[神なる君と] Spirit duo - Rei

なんかちょっとラストスパートな感じですけど…

Rei is the friendly spirit that Sakuya and co. met when they were investigating rumours about hauntings in the old school building. He’s arguably the most ‘mysterious’ character, since nothing is known about his former life, and I was super curious what his deal is. Not to mention he’s the final obstacle standing between me and Mikoto!! Ψ(￣∀￣)Ψケケケ

Truth be told he’s not really my type, though - since I’m not 15 anymore. I mean he’s a ghost but looks more like a forest elf / Mori Boy circa. 2001, and his voice sounds like it’s breaking. Compared to the other characters also he has a personality (or lack thereof) that is blander than konnyaku. In fact I found myself opening all the Yuzuru options in his common route first before going back and redoing them for Rei, because senpai saranghae I only wanna be wit u <3... 

Aaanyway.

-Mizuniwa Rei-

Rei-kun’s common route was actually quite revealing and interesting - in two of his ema, Mikoto actually asked to tag along, so it seemed like there might be some important information there idk. 

In his second ema, Mikoto tells Sakuya that she has the power to push people who are on the brink between Life and Death into one world or another, depending on what kind of guidance she gives.

Which in retrospect seemed like heavy foreshadowing for what’s about to come.

Fuu-san’s backstory was also revealed here:

Around 10 years ago, Fuu-san and his bff, a boy named Kawashina Yuuya, were students at Mikagurayama High School. One day they found a hidden basement storage room in the old school building, and turned it into their hang-out spot.

The basement used to be a bomb shelter, and had some books left over on occult spells and curses, that were used during the war to protect the townspeople. Fuu-san found a book with a spell to summon the powers of the Great Demon, and wanted to try it out of fun/boredom, but Yuuya was against it.

So Fuu-san did it by himself anyway. He got the sealed cursed box from the magical cave and took it back to the basement to perform the spell. Halfway through he passed out... and when he came to, he realised that Yuuya saved him by transferring the spell onto himself. 

Yuuya never woke up again, despite a lot of medical attention and whatnot. After half a year, Fuu-san decided to quit school and skip town to learn exorcism so that he can save his friend. But when he finally returned a few years later, Yuuya had already died...

Fuu-san lived with guilt all these years and thought that Yuuya died hating him. But when he went down to the basement with Sakuya to liberate his spirit, Yuuya’s spirit communicated through Sakuya that he doesn’t ever regret saving Fuu-san, and he hopes Fuu-san can stop blaming himself and go forward in life, smiling... By this point I was pretty much crying like a baby... ｡･ﾟ･(ﾉД｀)･ﾟ･｡

Oh how I wish there was a Su-sa-no-o in my neighbourhood, with a sexy store-owner like Fuu-san... 

But we’re not here to court Fuu-san (I wish we could, mang. I wish we could), so let’s get back to Rei. In his route Sakuya tries to help him to find out about his family and his past. She asks Aki for help ofc, and Aki reports back that she couldn’t find anyone matching Rei’s description in the database of deaths, nor the missing persons list...

And the mystery deepens dun-dun-DUN. This would’ve made for an interesting story development,... except the writers totally abandon it and instead opt for Rei and Sakuya frolicking around in the forest, true to his Mori Boy style (wholesomely tho, since they are both underage XD). Then Rei realises that he’s not long for this world, and he tries to put some distance between them - but Sakuya eventually convinces him that they should spend his last remaining time on earth together and make lots of beautiful (wholesome) memories.

There were a lot of group events in his route, which was nice since I got to see Yuzuru-senpai mucho. (Although he’s not an option here obvsly T_T)

You know I will happily choke on a fish bone for you, senpai <3.

So hoshimatsuri night, Rei undergoes the ceremony to pass into the other world. Sakuya stays home, because she’s not strong enough to go and say goodbye to him. Is this like deja vu from the Yorihito/Nisei story arc or what?? ...After that, Sakuya goes to the old school building one day after school, and finds a note from Rei. SURPRISE - he’s still here.

...

It turns out that Sakuya’s, uhh, clinginess is keeping him from successfully departing. At this rate he’s going to grow weaker and weaker and become trapped in the interstitial space between two worlds - forever. They keep communicating through notes, and through voice chatting over radio, while Sakuya grows enough balls to finally let him go.

Eventually she does. Because let’s face it - Otomate can’t afford to pay their seiyuu to carry on a story for like two gajillion chapters.

In his final moment of departure, he appears to Sakuya in a dream, but they can’t hear each other’s voice. Just as Sakuya is freaking out, he pulls her in and kisses her, then disappears into the ether. (*ฅ́˘ฅ̀*)♡

...I guess Yuzuru and Rei’s routes don’t work the same way as Narumi and Yakumo’s, bc you don’t get the alternative ending by choosing the ‘wrong’ option for the last couple of choices. I wasn’t strong enough for senpai’s bad end, but I was actually pretty curious about Rei’s, although all the same I wasn’t able to unlock it. Either way I hope he didn’t get stuck in between worlds forever, poor kid has been through enough.

1. Good end: Fast forward 10 years, Sakuya becomes a teacher at Mikagurayama High School, just as Rei had hoped. She still goes to the garden every day to take care of Rei’s flowers. The old school building is about to be torn down because it’s too old and might be a safety hazard. She’s on her way there one last time... when she gets a call from Aki, who finally found out what happened with Rei’s past-life investigation 10 years ago. Unfortunately Aki trips on something and the line cuts off before we get to hear it. _(:3」∠)_

So Sakuya is there happily watering her flowers, when guess who appears - ahem *Rei*, now all grown up. He tells her that this time he’s not a spirit anymore... and the scene just ends there. I’ve seen a lot of abrupt endings but this has gotta take the cake. Although I’ll admit adult Rei is kinda sorta smoking hot, so less talk more making out!

[Thoughts] What can I say? This route really didn’t explain as much as I thought it would, although there were some good bits. For one, the Fuu-san backstory really got to me. Fuu-san was always the side character that I was most curious about, since he seems kind of... shady, and like he might’ve had a colourful past. His arc really delivered, and it’s my favourite out of all the four side stories, although I loved them all in their own way.

I was expecting to find out about Rei’s past here, but I guess the writers are saving it for Mikoto’s route / wrap-up, which almost certainly means there’s going to be a surprise revelation. So I am looking forward to that and I hope they don’t fuck it up.

The route itself actually felt like it was mostly stuff that belongs in a fandisk, rather than an individual character route. All the group hangouts, and scenarios that reveal idiosyncrasies about the other characters (e.g. everyone’s drawings in the Fuu-san arc. I finally got to see Yuzuru-senpai’s kawaii creations! :3).

Senpai’s art totally unleashes his inner otome...

As expected, Rei failed to give me any doki-doki feels... except at the end, where we saw grown-up Rei and got to hear Iguchi Yuuichi’s normal voice for like 2 seconds. (I wish this game had a fandisk bc I *definitely* need more of that!!) From the other character routes I got the sense that he’s an iyashi-kei type of guy, and he’s probably the most consistent out of all of them, because he continues being selfless and caring about Sakuya before himself throughout - e.g. helping her to find her future path despite not having one himself. 

Still I gotta admit, when he confessed that he liked Sakuya, I did a silent fist-pump in the air, because FINALLY here’s a guy who said it first. I’m so tired of always having to make the first move >;(

Also the thing that Narumi said really touched me here: that Rei would rather choose a lonely existence as a spirit trapped between two worlds for the rest of eternity, than force Sakuya to let him go. Even when he was weakening, he never said anything to Sakuya. In a way he was perhaps the most adult-like one out of all of them. Admittedly I didn’t like Sakuya very much in this route. She seemed very self-absorbed and immature, refusing to face the truth. But eventually Narumi kind of slapped some sense into her (figuratively ofc, I mean Narumi would never actually slap her XD) and she did choose to do the right thing.

...I guess Narumi is determined to be the guy that has a crush on her and ‘saves her’ one way or another in every route. Kudos to him but he’s still only, like, my third or fourth favourite lols.

Lastly, I felt that this route was actually the most poetic + metaphorical one so far. (Maybe the other ones were, too, and I just wasn’t paying attention?) ...The metaphor of flowers bearing seeds that blossom into new flowers, bearing witness to their relationship and carrying on their legacy. When they first met the flowers were newly planted, and when they said goodbye they were just about to wither. 

Also Sakuya and Rei always met after class at sunset, the time between day and night - like the space between Life and Death. Idk mang but that’s, like, really beautiful or sumshit.

But this is the most poetic thing of them all~!

[deltaengineering]

spring anime 2017 part 3: comfy and easy to wear

So this is where all the shorts went. Guess I finally get to use that headline pun.

See also:

• spring anime 2017 part 1: woke up late

• spring anime 2017 part 2: girlfriendship is magic

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

100% Pascal-sensei

This is a half-length show about some kids whose teacher has been replaced with Persona 4′s Teddy. It’s funny because the penguin piloting a bear-robot-thing is not acting like a teacher at all, quite to the contrary in fact! To be honest, for a mascot comedy for preteen audiences it doesn’t seem too bad, but “I can’t believe this outrageous thing actually took place” is still not my kind of punchline. Only Nichijou can get away with that and this is no Nichijou.

Fukumenkei Noise

There’s a girl who can only express herself through PUNC RAWK singing and whose affection wavers between a hunky PUNC RAWK singer and the tiny guitarist from another PUNC RAWK band, who are both her childhood friends. It’s a shoujo as fuck romance with no particularly distinguishing features and the upcoming drama seems very predictable. Apparently it’s based on a bad manga but fans of said manga are also calling this adaptation bad, so I don’t know what to believe. It looks pretty janky on top of everything so I don’t think this is for me. The only thing it has going for it is that the girl actually does a pretty decent angry PUNC RAWK singing performance (I think?), but even if that was my jam I’d rather get the OST instead.

ID-0

I’ve been looking forward to ID-0 somewhat, since I quite liked Sanzigen’s last CG robot show BBK/BRNK. However, the first thing you notice is that ID-0 looks very different, and not in a good way – there’s a lot more robots in this, which means that all the animation effort went to them and the humans actually look significantly worse than average for a CG show. The second thing you notice is that this is a Goro Taniguchi joint, because it’s distinctly reminiscent of Active Raid. Instead of Kamen Rider Police, it’s Real Robot Sentai in Space, but the tone’s the same and so is the (lack of) coherency: A small girl researcher in the space future of space falls in with some hammy color-coded rogues in mechas that go around stealing deposits of the magic plot particle. The gimmick here seems to be that the mechas aren’t really piloted as such, but the pilot transfers their consciousness over to the machine for the duration of the mission, and in the first episode this already opens so many plotholes that it’s hard to even start picking them apart. So it’s real robots that don’t make much sense combined with only moderately engaging character comedy (which I assume will not ever pay off because the same thing happened in Active Raid) combined with subpar looks for everything that isn’t action, and the action itself isn’t glorious either - it’s just garish and hard to follow. The mecha designs are pretty good, which will undoubtedly make the /m/ faction happy, but I look for additional qualities so I think I’ll stay away.

Kenka Banchou Otome - Girl Beats Boys

In concept, Kenka Banchou Otome seems like it has potential: A girl enters (under obvious false premises) a school full of ridiculous delinquent thugs that only want to fight all day. This would have potential for a pretty cool comedy, but KBO is based on one of them PSP PS Vita otome dating sims, and it totally plays out like one too. Obviously I prefer it if something absurd like this is played straight instead for laffos 100% of the time, but this is played straight to a degree where it just isn’t much different from all the other otome dating sim adaptations any more, and that makes the premise fade into the background and the whole show not very compelling. It’s 1/3-length too, which seems to not leave much room to develop it legitimately. Oh well.

Makeruna!! Aku no Gundan!

In even shorter short news, this is 5 minutes of an ogre alien buying a franchise to conquer earth for business purposes. This is about as funny as it sounds (for those paying attention, this means “more funny than not at all” for me, which is more than I expect), and it looks pretty alright too. So yeah, I kinda like this. Problem is just that these shorts have to be outstandingly good for me to bother, and Aku no Gundan is still just decent overall. People who habitually watch comedy shorts may want to check it out, the rest of us will just laugh at the mad dyslexic Gundam fans who watch it on accident.

PriPri Chii-chan!!

Since this comes out on the same day, is also half-length, is by the same studio and for the same age bracket as Pascal-sensei, I’ll just assume the two make up a programming block. My impression of it is roughly the same as well. PriPri seems more girly, since it’s about a girl who finds a cutesy offbrand Kirby creature with a terrible speech quirk that likes human food, but apart from that it’s also a mascot comedy that’s decidedly Not For Me. One thing that’s notable is that it’s noticeably well animated for a thing like this, but I’m just adding that because there’s not much else to say.

Room Mate

Room Mate is technically a sequel to last season’s (involuntary) comedy short One Room, only instead of cute girl neighbours talking at a dork, it’s a cute boy harem talking at a dorkette. This iteration of it doesn’t stick to the first-person POV nearly as strictly as the original and seems generally more formulaic, but since the audiences kinda don’t overlap by definition I doubt anyone will notice (note: please don’t get mad at me if you’re a bisexual with a fetish for bad anime shorts, your existence is hereby acknowledged). For the connoisseur of weirdness I’d recommend One Room over this, since Room Mate is significantly watered down in the presentation department. And nobody else should watch either of them.

Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasuka Isogashii Desuka Sukutte Moratte Ii Desuka

Yay, finally some light novel ass light novel titles. Apparently people call this SukaSuka but since I’m a dick I’ll call it DesuDesu instead. So, DesuDesu is about a fairly nondescript guy in a fantasy universe that runs on racism who gets roped into taking care of a gaggle of cute fantasy children, an ogre maid and some other cute girl. Said fantasy children are also superweapons... somehow. So this may be the most contemporary anime concept of the season, since it is a harem and is full of dadfeels. Apart from being some hot tropes of the day jammed together, it’s pretty okay though - it thankfully doesn’t have isekai or RPG stat bullshit, the cute children are actually cute, and it looks alright (especially on the design side). It might be worth keeping an eye on DesuDesu if it keeps delivering on its strengths.

Sin - Nanatsu no Taizai

For those disappointed in Tsugumomo not living up to its manga’s reputations, here’s some real softcore porn. The story seems kind of incidental to the nipples but here it is anyway: Hot chick angel Lucifer somehow screws up in heaven and is cast into hell for it, where she meets the equally hot chick rulers of the place (the seven mortal sins) who specialize in being evil and not wearing much clothes. Some fighting ensues and results in clothing damage, then Lucifer takes off towards the mortal plane to erotically bother some schoolgirls. It’s basically a Christian-themed Valkyrie Drive, i.e. lesbian porn for dudes with some fights tacked on. The Crunchyroll version is predictably censored to hell and back (pun intended), but this is an AT-X show so the uncensored version is readily available for people immoral enough to watch and pirate it. Personally, I think I learned my lesson with Valkyrie Drive.

Zero kara Hajimeru Mahou no Sho

So after DesuDesu was just a straight up fantasy LN without any of the standard bullshit concepts, Zero does the same thing. You have to put up with it starring someone’s fursona instead of a reincarnated otaku douchebag, but I’d take that deal. Zero is even more unusual in that it even seems to be neither a harem nor otaku midlife crisis compensation, at least for now: It’s just about a burly cat dude teaming up with a snarky loli witch and them going on adventures. So it’s reminiscent of a genderswapped Spice&Wolf, only about fantasy racism instead of economics. Like DesuDesu, it’s pretty decent but I don’t know if it not being shit is enough of a selling point for me; On its own merits it seems to mainly be a competent but somewhat bland fantasy story. I might give it a try but I don’t expect much.