Modular Living

The spring season starts this weekend, and out of the gate we have some promising flowers in Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou, Akuma no Riddle, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, and Seikoku no Dragonar. I’m also tentatively adding Selector Infected WIXOSS to the lineup, as it was worth seeing more. I also previewed the first episode of Majin Bone, but I am less impressed.

Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou
“Bookworm tsundere. Haven’t done that in awhile.”
The one thing I never understood about a lot of anime shows, is the male lead protag’s insistence on wanting to live a “quiet and peaceful” high school life. Nevermind the fact that such a concept is impossible in America because you’re socially obligated to get drunk and plow your car into a bridge, it’s not even a practical concept in Japan where you’re cramming your brains out just to get into a decent university. But since this trope is actually codeword for “I want a girlfriend” I guess that fits in line with Japan’s goal of subtly reminding their young adult population that girls do exist and you might want to figure that shit out before the country’s aging population dies out and there is no one left to support you.

So here is a show that largely reminds me of Mahoraba: Heartful Days in the respect that Usa stumbles in to a diverse living arrangement with a bunch of strange people, but also containing the girl he saw in a library and now likes. Of course, being far more modern than Mahoraba, it might have more in common with late-2012’s Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo instead, but that seemed more like a halfway house for idiots of the same age. Rather, this boat contains all of the best anime tropes needed to construct the “Under One Roof Sitcom” Usa plays the straightman, Kawai the shy girl, Shirosaki the pervert, Mayumi the beautiful and sexy, but always drinking and partying girl, and the landlord Sumiko, who is caring but adventurous, sort of like older women who shed that aura of conservative values long ago, cut their hair short, and embraced things like gay rights without starting a Tumblr account or buying bracelets.

It’s honestly what I thought Golden Time was going to be in a way before I found it was just going to be a trainwreck of adult values. Instead, we get something that is closer to Love Hina in execution without being so incredibly shitty it might actually be watchable in ten years. Unlike Love Hina. Based Brain’s Based, but really, can I get another season of Kamisama Dolls or Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun instead?

First Rating: 8
Sub Group: Commie

Akuma no Riddle
“If you were listening to Foreigner: Cold as Ice, you win.”
They say women make the best assassins for a variety of reasons, mostly including seducing their targets. So when your show features a mostly-female cast trying to assassinate each other, it’s hard to believe that you could get past the first episode without them all being dead already. Hell, I don’t understand how my wife and her co-workers haven’t killed themselves yet based on some of the drama and banter I hear often. But in this case, it sounds like our main female assassin here, Tokaku Azuma, ends up developing a crush for our non-assassin main character here, Haru Ichinose. So coming off of last season’s Sakura Trick, instead of getting a lovey-dovey homosexual party, you’re strapped in for a battle royale fight-to-the-death to eliminate a single target. Seems overkill.

As far as battle royale style shows go, I find it’s pretty much useless to put very much stock in any of the characters besides the main characters, especially if they’re going to die. I think they know this, so they deliberately make them eye-candy, sexy, or anime-tropic to keep your attention on them before they get reduced to a pile of mush, if that’s where this show is going. It’s hard to tell at this point, and I guess there is a manga to read, so maybe I should try that out and see where it goes.

httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/452478566815387650

Oh you so crazy~

First Rating: 7
Sub Group: SSS

Seikoku no Dragonar
“He wanted a dragon. Life gave him a different mount.”
What do you get when you mash Zero no Tsukaima, Machine-Doll wa Kizutsukanai, and everything from fantasy novels like Harry Potter into an anime? You get Seikoku no Dragonar, a painful reminder that the anime industry is about as bad as Hollywood when it comes to latching on to something and running with it. This show pretty much took Charlotte Belew and her dragon and expanded it its own universe, retaining her character in Silvia Lautreamont. But they didn’t stop there, they also pulled Rashin’s character in and gave it to Ash Blake. But to be fair, Ash has more in common with Louise than with Rashin even though the same temperament is there.

But standing on its own, Dragonar does carry some promise to it, and that depends mostly on how his familiar, who is a girl and not a dragon, functions among the other characters. It’s implied that there are some other girls like her, which might make for an interesting plot, but with the series script writer being the same as Nyaruko-san, I’m a bit hesitant to place my hopes on an LN adaptation.

httpss://twitter.com/woxxy/status/452477699525967872

Eh. Maybe. But I’d rather mount Rebecca Randall’s dragon, if you catch my drift.

First Rating: 7
Sub Group: Horrible

Selector Infected WIXOSS
“Magic: The Moe Gathering”
Card-game anime isn’t new. We all know what spawned from Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and a number of other shows. But it’s a little unusual for JCSTAFF to get in the ring with this sort of thing, not because they’re unfamiliar with crazy alternate universes and fighting, but more because it’s usually based in some sort of special reality and not cards. Though from the premise, it might end up being less about cards as time goes on.

So here we have a show that sort of fuses Angelic Layer against Magic: the Gathering in the respect that there are both players and avatars that move and react like players do. It also folds a little Accel World in with the notion that this special battle universe doesn’t exist within the normal game. Its cast list is pretty small for an opening episode, only Ruuko and Saten Yuzuki really to start, but I expect that will go up as more players come into the fold. I had it on the maybe list because I was curious to see what JCSTAFF was going to put into it. After one episode, it’s still up in the air, but it was enough to warrant a second-look from me, versus Majin Bone which didn’t quite hit the mark.

First Rating: 7
Sub Group: Horrible

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders
“STAND UP!”
If you’ve been watching the new version of Jojo, you know this is some seriously weird, but awesome shit. Almost every 4channer knows who Dio Brando is, and many more know what ZA WARUDO means. Barring that, you can always go over to Salty Bet and watch some of the show characters fight whenever they come up. Some crazy upsets have occurred with Dio in the past. As for the show, Stardust Crusaders covers that part of the manga that most people are familiar with, the saga of Jotaro and Co. fighting Dio who has possessed Jonathan Joestar’s body from forever ago. It’s Dragonball Z without the hopelessly pretentious bullshit, and recommended for anyone who enjoys the very notion of being a bona-fide hipster.

First Rating: 8
Sub Group: Horrible

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Plenty more coming this week, and Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san whenever I can find some subs for it.

httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/452238390025416704