Yeah, it’s been awhile since I posted. This season hasn’t done much for me, but really it’s been the summer days, the hot don’t-want-to-go-outside days, combined with work, Firefall, and being generally lazy. Add the start of the new Doctor Who season and it’s a recipe for disaster. But we’ll try to forge ahead here in the closing weeks.
“Mars Against Humanity”
httpss://twitter.com/Kherubim2k/status/510855975838818304
As far as super robot shows go, Aldnoah is doing it for me both in the robot action and robot action music department. I know I spent most of Valvrave comparing it to Gundam SEED, but I am trying to sort of keep a clear mind on watching this, because I have been enjoying it. That said, we’re unfortunately getting to the part where we have to explain MARTIAN POLITICS, and then everything goes sour. Just like Nadesico, just like Gundam AGE. A series of screenshots might help paint the picture.
Avoiding the sinkhole that is war, politics, and American flags, Aldnoah is one-half robots fighting robots, one-quarter PTSD, and one-quarter Disney princess story, with Inaho playing Eeyore. In fact, the whole thing could easily be Frozen, with robots and Orbital Knights.
But then Rayet stepped in and took full control of this show, trying to strangle and shoot the princess, CRAWLING IN HER SKIN, and really putting the polish on. I was genuinely impressed. No one ever tried to strangle Lacus Clyne in SEED, that would have really made things more interesting. Even if this all we get from her all season, those scenes were worth it.
“Harem Wars: Japan”
What disappoints me about Rail Wars is that it could keep all of its harem-life, and still be better about it’s story. The sort of show we got in the last couple episodes, on the rails, worked far better than the middle of the show, which so far, has been the Takayama Harem Show, as he bumbles about trying to be a TRAIN DRIVER, failing that, a LADY DRIVER, which seems much more up his alley at this point.
I know we’ve beaten the light novel schtick to death, but this show exemplifies the kind of lackluster writing we’ve come to expect from these sort of shows. Now, I could be wrong, maybe the novels are also equally tepid, but I am betting they at least have substantially more heft to them that the animation writers thought “Why bother with all of this important stuff about trains and the nationalization of infrastructure? Our viewers want to see suggestive poses and nip-slips.” I think I would have less gripes though if the harem was toned down. If it were just four friends working for JNR, each with their own dream, and just slogging through the everyday adventures together, then we’d have Working!! or Servant x Service, two prime examples of how to do occupational comedy without making it an obvious tits circling the cock festival.
I mean, what is next for occupational comedy and circle-jerking, garbage collection? Convenience store clerks? Salarymen? It’s like American reality television, picking some random profession, and racing straight to the bottom. Don’t forget to include RuPaul Charles in there somewhere.
“But not a real Magical Girl, that’s cruel.”
I’ve come to enjoy Rokujouma, and that is probably because it’s the everycomedy that doesn’t go down the harem route easily. I mean, you know all the girls are after his cock and not his room, but they play coy and go along with the premise anyway. Tulip easily steals the show with her short, princessey goodness, but Yurika made a comeback in the last couple episode as she tries to prove to everyone she isn’t a cosplayer, but an actual Magical Girl. I actually enjoyed how they angled that way, because everyone else is obvious in their otherworldly presence, but Yurika just looks like a poor, freeloading girl, never really pushing her magic to the forefront of the show.
Only problem now is, I am not sure if I am buying the fact that Satomi is gaining the ability to use magic or abilities similar to the others. I imagine the writers are trying to pitch the Tenchi Muyo angle here, a normal boy who gets tangled up with abnormal girls and ends up having to become abnormal to defend them, but it worked better in Tenchi Muyo because there was a universe away from Earth he wasn’t aware of. The most Satomi isn’t aware of is the crazy evil magical girls, and I don’t think we’re going to see a Mihoshi here that Yurika isn’t already covering that part of the persona on.
“Bad, bad, Urushiba Rinka. Baddest girl in the whole damn town.”
I’ve stated this before, and I will state it again. Tokyo ESP is the proper answer to Railgun. It is XEBEC doing things right, and that is fucking awful to say with a straight face. But the fact is, you really have to dig into the same themes American comic book and superhero comics and media have been doing to pull out the sort of show you want to achieve when dealing with humans wielding superpowers. But besides Railgun, it is also what Heroes should have been on real television, but we all know how terrible NBC was, and is, with doing anything right.
I’ll save the most of what I want to write for a full post, to which I plan to compare to the manga, but suffice to say, the anime took some interesting twists that sort of led to the same place in the end, and that end is what I am most interested in, because Rinka’s real development in this story happens shortly before the events seen in the first episode.
“Absurd advice for a modern age.”
I don’t really need to write paragraphs about this show, it’s
