Threads of Fate

There are no masterpiece shows in anime. There are shows that come close, kiss the moon, or are noteworthy contenders, but to call something a true masterpiece is really a matter of personal opinion. Even Miyazaki films, which most regard to be the creme fraiche of animated film, aren’t probably hailed by someone as the best. We accept certain things in our heads as being common-knowledge winners because we side with the majority stake. That majority stake, no doubt, has chosen Kill la Kill to be their flagship show this year. Unlike Chuunibiyou, which set the landspeed record for “Longest Something About Nothing” or Golden Time achieving its award for “Shittiest Ending in the Friend Zone of This Time”, KLK actually delivered what it promised by the end, even if it didn’t have any idea of what it was doing in the beginning.

Kill la Kill
“THE CLOTHES THAT PIERCED THE HEAVENS”
So at the halfway point, after a rather lackluster first half, I said:

The first half of Kill la Kill predictably ended with the mid boss wrecking Ryuuko’s shit and Satsuki’s master plans revealed to conquer the remaining schools. But now that her mother and their CONGLOM-O has revealed the whole story, that a global war is waged on clothing, the second half is bound to be less exciting than the first when it was just simple revenge for her father.

I am delightfully wrong for once, and if Gurren Lagann taught me anything, it’s that second-halves are for crazy action shows, and every football team but the Denver Broncos. But the problem still stands, that the first half was largely forgettable when considering the show as a whole. In fact, you could have started the show from the halfway mark and still probably had a complete show. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say they were making up a bunch of shit as they went along, and when the writers figured out they could just make Ragyo the FINAL BOSS and flip Satsuki around to a good girl while linking her to Ryuuko, they proceeded to ratchet up the action to make you believe it was JUST AS PLANNED all along.

Despite all the technical shortcomings, it was a hell of a final third of the show, and something I actually wanted to watch, enough to download Underwater, and I never download Underwater.

Plus, Mankanshoku Mako. That is all.

Title: Kill la Kill
Sub Group I Watched: Horrible
Episodes: 24
Rating (1-10): 8

Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai Ren
“One and done.”
There is really only one word for this season. Disappointing. No one should really ever reasonably expect a KyoAni show to be anything more than the sum of its parts, yet we always watch in the hopes that something might be different. It really makes us no worse than Democrats, or whatever party of socialist fucks you have in your non-American country.

httpss://twitter.com/nyarth/status/449702053112057856

I’m thankful I don’t go to /a/ or listen to them about anime, because I am sure they thought this should would be A++++++ WILL DELUSION AGAIN and probably cried themselves to sleep listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. You can’t have any quality anime if you don’t watch your KyoAni!

Chu2Koi had a real, genuine chance to take the momentum from the first show and actually do something interesting, but it was just twelve episodes of the same slop. Like, literally the same slop, almost every episode began, ran, and ended the same. But the real nail in this coffin was this fuck:

Shichimiya Fucking Satone. All she did was interfere, set everything back, and fuck everything forward. I get her purpose, but it was so half-assed and shallow. She came at him with half-hearted feelings and wondered why he rejected her. She could have been the character to push Rikka’s development, but pretty much tried to steal the show and was worse than Shinn Asuka at it. At least he tried to fuck up Jesus Yamato, Shichimiya failed on all accounts, and shrank back to her delusional ending. But of course, Yuuta really deserves fury scorned. He has had two seasons to sort his shit out, and instead of trying to pull her away from her delusion, he plays into it, and creates his pseudo-harem around it, all under this thin guise of “love”. What love? Their relationship was little more than a sixth-grade play that returned for an encore performance, or decided that in a world of “reboots” it needed a fresh coat of paint before the last coat finished drying.

I imagine another season will come from this, or a movie. I’ll probably exercise the better part of skipping it. Fool me twice.

Title: Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai Ren
Sub Group I Watched: Commie, Horrible
Episodes: 12
Rating (1-10): 6

Golden Time
“Bronze Friend Zone.”
Unlike Chu2Koi, Golden Time actually held a lot of promise over its run, demonstrating that even broken people can deal with adult relationship issues without having to resort to DARK FLAME MAGICKS. But I was really let down by the quality of that ending, it was criminal in how we had all this raw emotion and drama build over the episodes between Banri and Linda, Banri and Koko, and the others, only to just tie the whole thing up in a neat bow in the final episode, discard Linda, and just SHIP the two together. I literally just closed the video before the credits even rolled. Just like I am going to just end this review now. Fuck you, Golden Time.

Title: Golden Time
Sub Group I Watched: Horrible
Episodes: 24
Rating (1-10): 7

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More coming this weekend, after I ride a bike for charity. Yeah, occasionally I do things. Sometimes.