Trapped in a Wish

I finally finished the backlog, or at least up to whatever has released this weekend, which I’ll get to, but there is enough here to soldier on from the last post, tonight covering No Game No Life, Seikoku no Dragonar, Soul Eater Not, and WIXOSS.

No Game No Life
“THERE CAN BE.. ONLY BLANK!”
So way earlier I minced words, and a bar joke, about NGNL’s close relation to Mondaji and how Mondaji can still beat it blindfolded with a two-by-four effortlessly. That still holds true to the most current episode, because unfortunately, NGNL’s universe is pretty much the same damn thing with minor retooling to add more unnecessary strife. The show effortlessly panders to its main characters and pins its hopes that you, the dimwit viewer, show nothing but praise for them and their cleverness as they win another impossible game towards the quest to become IBM Watson and land a spot on Jeopardy or something. I’ll take The Penis Mightier for 400, Alex.

httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/475456517446307840

Yet somehow, I continue to be slightly intrigued by this show. Where I probably thought it was just some watered down Mondaji or even Dog Days to the extreme, it began to branch away in places in the middle of the series that I found enjoyable, right around when they started adding cast that were relevant, or at least had slightly better things to look at than Peabody and Sherman. Stephanie Tits of course continues to be the main reason I still watch this show, because comic relief is still funny. But the awful truth hurts, this show suffers from so many internal problems that not even a grand war with Warbeasts is going to fix it. Even if you remove Sora and Shiro from it right now, there isn’t anything to really fix that shit at this point. Mondaji worked because it had a strong outsider trio backed by a versatile insider character supported by variable extras. NGNL just has two WoW-tier losers supported by a dimwit with tits and a bookworm with magical powers. Even the cunning dimwit and her Elf-girl ain’t gonna save that. Our only hope now is that Tiny Dog will save the show with her cute tsundere approach.

Every season has to have a trainwreck though.

Seikoku no Dragonar
“Bit funnels? Really? Are we in space now?”
I’m going to flat-out say Dragonar appeals to me already for tits and shameless pandering of larger tits. We’re still not approaching Highschool DxD levels of greatness here, let’s be real, Ash Blake is no Issei, but full-on tentacle rape from dead dragons? That’s a pretty far stretch, and they even show a couple guys with torn clothes towards the end. Did they get violated too, or is that just from fighting? I mean, however you swing, I ain’t the judge. Tentacles can be gay too. Then there is the somehow not-dead prince, Kuroyanagi Ryo Julius. Who is not dead. Also Star Wars arm.

httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/475464457510866944
httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/475464598997323776

If you’ve never seen Yakitate!! Japan, you really should. I don’t really follow voice actors or actresses, or JPOP singers, or anything relevant to that realm of Japanese entertainment. I just watch anime. I don’t particularly care for the rest. But I recognize voices pretty well, and Koyasu Takehito is unmistakable. Problem is, I always know him from that one specific role. It’s not like Wakamoto where he is famous for so many roles that he is just Legendary, though Charles was one of his best. There exists a point where VAs have so many roles, you really can’t define them by a single role anymore. Minami Omi, on the other hand, will always be known by me for playing Hoshino Ruri in Nadesico. She is sort of a rarity compared to many others. But then she does appear once and awhile.

Also, seriously, 38 favorites on MAL? Proof that the average user there is twelve.

Soul Eater Not
“GET ON WITH IT!”
Monty Python reference aside, what bothers me about this show is that it does break away from the standard-school-life to actually remind us what was great about Soul Eater six years ago, that it was still a pretty great show involving weapons and users, set atop a world where witches existed and did pretty shifty shit to people, like trying to off a girl. But then the show goes back to the absent-minded drivel that it started with, robbing us of any tension that episode might’ve built up, but continuing to imply that we’re gonna see some shit go down. Now I know this is a side-story, and it’s before the events of the main seasons, but my theory of what Soul Eater might’ve looked like if it were animated today versus six years ago is holding pretty true. They could not resist pulling out some of the most interesting visual and character elements of what made the main show great out of this show to make it sort of dull and simplistic for the moe viewer. God help us if XEBEC ever actually tries to bring Stellvia back. Instead of getting a terrific space opera, we’ll get a reverse-harem in space followed by Yayoi’s tits.

Selector Infected WIXOSS
“I am, the gathering!”
I very nearly dropped WIXOSS, in fact I sort of skimmed a few of the episodes in the middle. But then Jinx stepped in and noted a plot point I hadn’t reached and I was interested enough to slog through the rest. I was not disappointed here.

For those of you who remember the game Myst, and the books, you’ve essentially come to the same ending that befalls a selector in WIXOSS. In Myst, you spend hours exploring these worlds linked by the books and gathering pages, only to either be fucked by the two bastard kids in the red and blue books, or end up finding their father trapped in jail in the green book, only to be brought back to the start. When you realize you could finish the game in the first fifteen minutes, it just stole the wind out of you. So WIXOSS players battle each other for the right to be a “Eternal Girl”, but to win means you become a fighter in the card, and to lose means you eat a fate that can include dying, depending on your wish. I’m pretty sure the tagline here is “The only winning move is not to play at all”.

Now it’s not like any of the awful characters that inhabit this show knew about this bullshit from the get-go, but that doesn’t help with the fact that this revelation makes everything that happens on the show seem completely pointless, and there’s no effort made to convince us otherwise. Ruuko already knows participating in WIXOSS is a fucking shitty deal, but we keep being hammered about how she can’t just quit because that battles are so intoxicating and amazing – and yet, they are portrayed as abridged and vapid slinging of words and some low-effort fighting animation with almost no explanation on how the game actually works. With the latest twist WIXOSS goes “Hey guys, isn’t this amazingly dramatic?! Everything that the girls did was actually in vain and their naïve hopes are never granted! Forget about Madoka, we can do this stuff too! Why aren’t you hyped yet? C’mon! See how grim this shit is? See it? Not even Urobuchi could do this! In stores now!”

Yeah, I think Ruuko was more interesting when she had no wish. She claims to enjoy the battles, but she sure as hell doesn’t show it. Tama is the only one who cares, and if I had to guess, she has no fucking clue what she is doing there. So if she swapped places with someone, it sounds like she was six or something and just accidentally a WIXOSS. Every other character is either shallow and dim, or batshit insane like Aki-lucky, who demonstrates her batshit insane after losing quite well.

I’m not sure what WIXOSS is trying to be. I quoted Angelic Layer, but for fucksake, even a grimdark Angelic Layer where Misaki’s mother dies in a lab accident while Hatoko tries to seduce her brother while vowing to beat the shit out of any Deus who moves, at the same time Iccchan tries to off himself Belushi-style over the guilt of Misaki’s mother would be a better story than WIXOSS. Nothing is constructed here with any sense that allows us to even comprehend what is going on. But it’s JCSTAFF, so you get second season whether you like it or not. At this point, they’re going to make sure you like it like you did the first Railgun, and worst case scenario, they come back two years later with a WIXOSS reboot or side-story that actually works, because they’re JCSTAFF and they give negative three fucks what you think.

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Coming up this week, a preview of the summer season, and eventually the wrapup of this season. And no, I am not watching Space Dandy S2. I learned my lesson.