#menchi is the best excel saga character

[ultraericthered]

Anime Update 4

CLANNAD - Oh boy. I’m gonna piss off a lot of people by saying this....I didn’t really enjoy this one, and whereas last time I noted the series’ biggest strength, this time I was made more aware of some of it’s most crippling weaknesses and why, sacrilegious to say, I’m not enjoying it as much as Angel Beats! right now. The first weakness is the comedy: without good comedic direction from someone like Seiji Kishi, the gags just tend to miss with me more than they hit. The second is how much the narrative is treading water. Just because you have 24 episodes in which to tell this tale doesn’t mean that you can spend entire episodes with barely anything fucking happening or any character or plot point truly advancing. And thirdly, there was a lot of Youhei Sunohara here and did I mention that I just loathe this kid? Apparently fans of the series find him funny but I really don’t - his wimpy, whiny, skeevy, gullible, misogynistic pseudo-delinquent antics do not endear me to him, and while I’ve loved Greg Ayres in other roles (one in particular I’ll be mentioning later), he’s just a backwards squealing pig in this role, making his scenes excruciating to get through (I still need to locate the subbed version, don’t I?). When a character’s only decent quality is that he gets beaten up a lot as consequence of his actions, it’s not a good character to devote that much time to.

Dragon Ball -  This was pretty odd. With the Pilaf Gang gone, Colonel Silver is pretty much carrying this by himself, which isn’t bad as he is an awesome, intimidating, and actually really intriguing antagonist. Otherwise, this episode was a filler spent on a bunch of literal monkeys hoarding a Dragon Ball and Master Roshi telling Krillin and Launch about the legend of the Dragon Balls’ creation, which he knows full well is JUST a legend, and as it turns out later sure enough it’s not how the Dragon Balls were created at all, so it makes me wonder what the point of sharing that legend even was. It got exciting at the end when the Red Ribbon army just started torching the whole jungle and Goku finally came face-to-face with Silver, but the cliffhanger of the Dragon Ball going under is something I know will be easily resolved.

Toradora - OH YEAH, AMI KAWASHIMA TIME! The series’ best character had one hell of an introduction that makes her immediately interesting in how two-faced, bitchy and manipulative she is. She’s so fake to an irritating degree one moment but then diabolical to an awesome and entertaining degree the next. I’m enjoying watching her and Taiga’s dynamic at play, and I loved how the ending set up that there’s still even more to Ami than what meets the eye.

Oh yeah, and there was also THIS part. Keep being a fucking legend, Kushieda.

Excel Saga - Had a hard time comprehending this: some weird occurrence happened where Ilpalazzo and Watanabe’s lives got connected, and so choices made and things that popped up in Ilpalazzo’s dating sim game somehow influenced reality for what was going on with Watanabe and Hyatt, but the game bugged up and broke a little so the reverse started happening - reality started influencing the game, right up to the fucking bomb appearing in it! Oh, and an even less comprehensible Nabeshin subplot was happening on the side, and poor Pedro learned his wife had been cheating on him well before his death! In typical Excel Saga fashion, it was so strange but so hilarious. I’m also digging the continuity they’re putting in, like how Nabeshin references Tetsuko’s death, Menchi is still thinking about those guerrilla soldiers who were so nice to her, and there are still some Puchuu hanging around Earth.

Danganronpa - For whatever reason, I decided to watch episode 1 of this anime instead of immediately continuing with Ace Attorney, but after watching it, I think I’m not watching any more ‘til October. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s too good at presenting a mystery-horror combo setup, making it ideal for that time of year. I can definitely feel Seiji Kishi’s influence on the direction, with the dark comedic beats set against the setting of a very peculiar high school attended by 15 zany characters, not all of whom will make it out alright. The show stealer here was Greg Ayres as Monokuma. He’s done great in a lot of other roles, but this one really stands out, as he simply IS the character, doing with Monokuma what Bill Skarsgard does with Pennywise the Clown in how child-friendly yet also unsettling his voice sounds. It’ll take a while to get back to this, but I definitely anticipate watching more of it.

Nadja of Tomorrow - Wasn’t really feeling this one much until after the Troupe left London behind. I kind of felt bad for the Mummy Professor guy, but he wasn’t particularly interesting to me either, and the exposition for his background was laughably clunky. Where the episode shined was the beautiful art on the wide countryside shots as the Troupe traveled along to where the Halcourt manor is. I’m certainly more interested to see what happens now.

Mobile Fighter G Gundam - This was probably the funniest episode to date, even if some of it was for unintended reasons. The Neo French princess faking her own abduction due to feeling friendzoned by Sir George, the princess’ whiny voice, the terrible dubbing of both the butler and the waiter, Domon deciding he was totally going along with being a fake kidnapper and locking Rain up in a nearby room, George fighting out of toxic masculinity rather than for the princess’ sake, and the match ending after George has to have his Gundam hold up the fucking Eiffel Tower to keep it from falling! But the funniest part was the next episode preview, where the video started to buffer after “It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for! As soon as he arrives safely in Neo Russia to fight Bolt Gundam, Domon is sent to prison!” Hilarious!

[ultraericthered]

Anime Update 10

CLANNAD - Well...so that next episode preview from last week certainly lied about this one - it made it seem as though Kotomi’s irrational fear of potential bullying was her pretty much asking to be bullied and other characters obliging her, which turned out to be manipulative editing done for comedy’s sake. In the actual episode, Kotomi has gotten initiated into the attempted revival of the drama club, but her passion seems to lie more in books and music. Now, if only she was actually any good at that second one! Was also good to see the girl and junk doll in the illusionary world again at the start, and not so good to also be given a sad reminder about how Okazaki and Nagisa still can’t remember Fuko. I also like how the sister pair is now getting more involved (though to be honest, I’m not sure Shelley Calene-Black was the right casting decision for Kyou in the English dub; I’d expect a rougher voice from her yet I keep just hearing a more subdued Luviagelita Edelfelt. Birttney Karbowski is spot-on as Ryou, though - it’s hard for me to even recognize her as the same VA who did Yurippe!)

Dragon Ball - Thank God it’s finally over! Muscle Tower is DONE! The best thing in the later episodes of this mini-arc was definitely having Eighter around - I just love how he was built up as this scary, super threatening monster that the army had as their trump card but in actuality turns out to be the purest cinnamon roll who wouldn’t hurt a soul. That said, his belief in nonviolent conflict resolution proved to sometimes not have a place in certain dangerous situations when a bad person needs to be stopped from hurting others, a reality he was made to confront. Speaking of, the part where General White takes the Village Leader hostage with a gun is one notable instance where I could just feel the anime slowing down and dragging it’s feet - in the manga, I’m sure this part went by at a much more reasonable pace, yet in the anime it felt like it was going on over-long and it was driving me up the wall!  But thankfully the payoff made the wait well worth it. Seeing Eighter finally let his righteous fury out and slug White into oblivion was so, sooo immensely satisfying, as was seeing him totally demolish Muscle Tower afterwards. Good riddance, I say.

Toradora - Here more than ever, I’m grateful this series provides so many moments of levity and nice character interaction ‘cause the main story action at this point is actually kind of hard to watch. Taiga’s dad is the biggest piece of irredeemable shit in the whole series, and I’m finding myself hating Ryuji in how he’s handling the whole situation, clearly projecting his own Disappeared Dad issues onto Taiga’s dad moving into the life of his daughter that he’s got no right or obligation to be in after how irresponsible a parent he’d been before. The scene towards the end has Ryuji pretty much manhandling Taiga and trying to force her to reconcile with her dad because “it’s for your own good!” OK, WHAT THE HELL, RYUJI? I don’t care what your reasons that you think are so well meaning are, that is a horrible, HORRIBLE thing to do to a friend who’s in a tough spot emotionally and wants nothing to do with this man you’re insisting she welcome back into her life where he can and will only ever hurt her again! So yeah, fuck Ryuji right now - look forward to seeing him learn his lesson the hard way.

Excel Saga - Remember last week where I said how fun the episode was for taking such a mundane set-up and playing it up for so much zany, madcap hilarity? This one gave us a more unusual setting - Menchi traveling with a bunch of better domesticated, talking dogs in search of her old human friend - and played it so fucking seriously! The humor this time came from how dramatic this story about talking dogs was being played, what with evil, cigar-chomping, anthropomorphic canines with weapons, all the sacrificial deaths, and even last minute shocking betrayals! Like, that one evil dog saying to the main heroic dog (voiced, uncomfortably enough, by Vic Mignogna) that Mechi was “about the same age as your little sister when I killed her!”? Shit like that just cracked me up, it was so melodramatic! Loved that we got to see Menchi embrace a darker side and supposedly shoot a man dead, too!

Ace Attorney - Got to see the dreaded Manfred Von Karma in action and wow, he is...certainly something. You’d have to be an absurdly powerful and absurdly ruthless prosecutor in order to pretty much lead a trial yourself and intimidate the freaking judge into letting you conduct things your way. He’s easily the most menacing character and the toughest villain to beat by far, with even details like his voice sounding all John Noble-esque or Tony Jay-ish helping to make him stand out as a really scary individual. I was so relieved that Maya came through for Phoenix when she did so that he was able to find the right way around debunking Lotta’s testimony as irrefutable evidence of Edgeworth’s guilt and even get one over on Von Karma by citing the contradiction in Detective Gumshoe’s initial statement VS the enlarged photograph, and calling for courtroom regulation that Von Karma can’t work his way around. Enjoyed finding out the truth about “Gourdy” too, and I can’t wait to see where this goes now.

Nadja of Tomorrow - I was delighted to see that Harvey and TJ were tagging along for this one, and the story with the shop owner and his late wife’s prized clock was quite interesting, even if it led to the contrivance of him also being in possession of Cossette’s old jeweled music box, but that at least is something to advance the story. Fernando Gonzales is such a rotten little twit, though - I hope he gets sent packing back to Spain after this and isn’t seen around Paris or London again. Another character I’d like to see go away but I unfortunately know won’t would be Granny. Among the series’ regulars, she’s easily my least favorite because her character design just flat out doesn’t fit in this show, so I’m taken out of it every time she plays a big part in a scene. At least next episode, we’re getting a welcome return...

Mobile Fighter G Gundam - This show, for all it’s camp factor, has gone to some bleak places already, but this one was super disturbing! The seemingly noble, charming Gentle Chapman (who’s got an almost Donald Sutherland-esque voice) becoming an evil, cold-blooded cheater was bad already, but then they threw in the stimulant drug angle, and then they revealed that his wife was actually the true linchpin behind how Chapman was cheating in his matches without his knowing all because she’s like a dark reflection of what Rain is to Domon, and then to top it off, Chapman becomes the second after Chico first Gundam Fighter to actually DIE. And that’s where it ends! Damn. The only issue I had here was that the dub voice actress for Manon was painfully wooden, which neutered the episode’s ending.