First round of departing shows this season, including Kantai Collection, Log Horizon, Aldnoah Zero, Shinmai Maou no Testament, and Dog Days. Overall impressions were mixed, considering these were the top shows I kept up on each week. Dog Days probably edges out over the others in overall performance, but I quite liked KanColle.
“Once again, the day, is saved.”
It doesn’t terribly surprise me that the dedicated and faithful to the original game probably didn’t particularly enjoy the show as much as the rest of the general populace.
httpss://twitter.com/CirNobar/status/581188634000392192
Had I not been a fan of shows like Strike Witches and Sky Girls, I’d probably have little interest in the show apart from the game. One only has to watch an Uwe Boil movie to understand why most people do not appreciate games being turned into anything but games. Unlike Saki, which lost track of its active roster so much the games were made up and the points didn’t matter, KanColle went for a genuine attempt at using a limited set of characters and forming a mostly-coherent plot. The consequence was that somebody’s waifu wasn’t in the show. I feel that pain, but haters gonna hate, what they had worked for me. I’m not sure I got behind Fubuki as the main character, considering how many other seemingly good characters there were, but they never really let anyone else step into that role throughout the run, so by the end you just accepted her as the main heroine. One line of Nova’s take struck me though, “We didn’t even get to see the bitching launch scene more than once.”. That was honestly kind of my favorite part of the first episode, that whole launch sequence, and that is me the super robot nerd talking, because I love mecha launch sequences in that sort of anime, even if shit animators like for SEED kept using stock footage and getting the wrong Strike pack.
Overall though, I’ll take my head into the wall for this one and bat for KanColle’s animation, because it was pretty good, and at the very least didn’t offer janky CGI like Arpeggio and made me want to rewatch my waifu. Besides, that OP is seriously addictive.
httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/580704075114663936
Title: Kantai Collection
Sub Group I Watched: Horrible
Episodes: 12
Rating (1-10): 8
“We hunted the Kataphrakt.”
httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/576552879584075776
Honestly, Aldnoah was kind of exciting at first because it was just slightly different enough from the normal fare to be worth watching. Supers versus Reals in robots always ends up troping the typical DESPAIR in the Reals getting their asses handed to them left and right because they lack the superpowers to defend against it. Then comes your deadpan protag in a different-color suit who figures everything out in minutes and defeats Big Bad, leading the counterattack against The Evil Empire.
Oh, right, this was Code Geass.
Sadly, where Geass at least made Lelouch accountable for himself and his friends, Jesus Inaho pretty much went through this season blowing away everything in his way, while Judas Slaine lied, cheated, and manipulated his way into power just so he could play Monolouging Badguy in the end. Don’t get me wrong, the final mech fight was pretty good, but in the end, Slaine ends up a prison bitch once again, in what I probably found to be the most hillarious part of the show.
I guess I am a bit disappointed with how this season turned out, and how Slaine pretty much just dropped every ball he had to Inaho. I honestly thought there was going to be a little more of a struggle there considering he pretty much had complete control over everything. It was just too easy for Seylum to step in and tear his shit down, so really, that ending pretty much took shit and rubbed it in his face. My verdict? Satisfactory, because I hated the stupid cock anyway.
Title: Aldnoah Zero Season 2
Sub Group I Watched: Horrible
Episodes: 12
Rating (1-10): 7
“National Flognoon’s Celestial Vacation”
Dog Days is Dog Days, it’s a formula they’ve gotten down to a science now, with each season being a vacation affair. This season was new places, new characters, and more Yuki. I am okay with all of those. I profess, for a fourth season, I kinda want to see them cross over into the real world. I think that would be interesting for that franchise to do considering they’ve covered a lot of places in their own land. But hey, I am okay with any and all Nanoha Lite they give me.
Title: Dos Days”
Sub Group I Watched: Horrible
Episodes: 12
Rating (1-10): 8
“Don’t fear the glasses. Or the reaper.”
I admit, I was puzzled where they would go with this season, considering the first established where they were and how they would function within it. The second opened up with more of the first, with them sustaining their stay in the database, but then the middle kind of fragmented, with the kids’ training, random events with various characters, before the big reveal that they weren’t stuck in a game so much as they were stuck in another world made to look and feel like the game, possibly of alien design. In the finale, they’re able to speak to the “China server” and form their next plan, to somehow unite both the game world and the real world so they can go back and forth in-between them.
The good news is, we’ll probably get a third season. The bad news is, this season was really just not where the first season was in terms of plot relevance and characters. It’s a show that relies a lot on both to drive the universe, or at least characters to do interesting things. Any time they put the kids up there it’s this six-episode affair of them walking around and re-learning how the world works again. It’s just not that entertaining, versus anything that involves the veterans, especially Akatsuki, who I feel was snubbed this season save for a few episodes. At least we got some interesting additions this season, such as Tetra, the living example of every male MMO player ever, and probably most Twitter accounts with anime avatars. Like mine.
Case in point, you are still getting a better MMO-style show than SAO, RO, or anything else since .hack. So bring on a third season.
Title: Log Horizon Season 2
Sub Group I Watched: Horrible
Episodes: 25
Rating (1-10): 8
“Banishing Shift. Nullifies all magic, but leaves the harem.”
Of all of the PROTECT THE DEMON LORD DAUGHTER shows in the last few years, this one probably was a cut above the rest, rising to DxD levels of lewd, but not airing in a preferred timeslot, not going the required distance to call itself an Agent of Hell. Despite that, it held up pretty well to a story that emulates Kamisama Dolls with some pretty decent characters. The whole thing felt like one of the Disgaea games though, and I kept having flashbacks of Black Bullet which terrified me. The plot was rather weakly executed, where I felt they sort of rushed the last few episodes to make sure nothing was hanging for what looks to be a Fall 2015 second season. Again, if you know you have a second season, connect the fucking seasons together, or at minimum, go for any season finale of House M.D. At least that had suspense.
Title: Shinmai Maou no Testament
Sub Group I Watched: Horrible, FFFyuu
Episodes: 12
Rating (1-10): 7
I’ll have more reviews coming out this week as I finish up on shows. Then we’re onto next season, and my god damn Nanoha.
