Anime/Manga Anime Contract Challenge 4

[Megan]

Finished season one of Log Horizon yesterday and am taking a little break and sorting my thoughts about it. I'll see when I get around finishing my little review.

I'm also considering starting season two, though, if I do, I'll probably not include it.

 

[donavannj]

I've not touched mine yet. Forgot to bring a DVD/BluRay player to the convention with me and haven't had time to sit down and watch it yet.

 

[Desinishon]

Same as Don, haven't touched it yet but I'll start today :p

 

[Florges]

I haven't touched my show yet. My work load increased significantly this week so it will have to wait until Thursday.

 

[pkmin3033]

*awkwardly revives thread*

I had Love Live School Idol Project - which I've had on my to-do list for a while anyway - which I have just finished, soooooooooo...yeah. Awkward mini review time.

The first and most important thing about all of this is that Kotori is best girl and if you ship her with Umi I will rip your still-beating heart from your chest and feed it to you and this is an undisputable scientific fact proved by real scientists somewhere who study best anime girls, and if you argue with them you are objectively wrong in every conceivable fashion and you will burn in the fires of Non-Idol Purgatory until your soul is charred black like your heart was to ever disagree in the first place.

...or something.

Yeaaah. I really adore Kotori. She had her own hobbies and quirks that weren't sacrificed in the name of the Great Goddess Honoka (I'll get back to that) and she developed a surprising amount for a 13 episode series which she shared with eight other characters. I felt it was kinda fitting that the last two episodes would be trigged by Kotori actually wanting to have a life and a future...and I was so pissed when Honoka pulled her out of it. Selfish bitch ruining everyone else's future. Hrgh. As an aside, Kotori has the best outfits, the best songs, and the best facial expressions. I watched the show for her when I wanted to stop watching it.

...and the rest of the girls...well, I frequently forget Nozomi's name, for starters. The thing is, I liked a lot of the girls when they made their debut, and I wanted to like them more than I did. Nico was eccentric and amusing, Hanayo was adorable in glasses, Maki was a strong solo artist, Nozomi thought she was in Yu-Gi-Oh! for some reason, Eli at least stuck to her principles initially, and Rin was...uh, Rin. Then they all joined μ's and their individual personalities were just swallowed whole by Honoka.

Gone. Poof. The only ones who seemed immune to that were Kotori - who was the best girl - and Umi, who turned into an Elitist Bitch Queen. Umi was everything wrong with this show. I don't want to talk about Umi, because everything she did was wrong. She was completely out of place, out of line, and I only wish she was out of mind, because everything she said or did irritated the hell out of me.

Go away, Umi. Nobody likes you.

So I don't have as much to say about the characters as I would like, but I'm not surprised...13 episodes isn't very much when you have 9 characters. I didn't expect much in the way of development - which is perhaps why I'm very taken with Kotori, who got tons proportionately - but I AM annoyed that their individual personalities were just...wiped clean, after the episodes it took to introduce them were actually pretty good. That'd be my biggest complaint.

Pacing was pretty good, but this show suffered from a rushed ending, like most short shows these days do...and it was another mood whiplash. God almighty, I don't see WHY we have to have drama at the end of a light-hearted fluff show. Things were going fine without it! I'm not too irked, as Kotori had been building up to it, but I AM annoyed it focused more on Honoka and Umi than it did her. Like Honoka, I didn't know what Kotori was feeling, because Umi wouldn't shut up and let the show focus on someone else.

Animation and stuff was fine. I only noticed the transition to CGI every now and then; it wasn't super disruptive like certain magical girl series I could name (mostly the later Precure seasons after Dokidoki) that have been obnoxious with it. It was OK. I'm not an animation expert and I wasn't watching in super HQ anyway, so I didn't much care. It was fine. Fine.

The music wasn't really my thing. Honestly I think my favourite song was the one A-RISE was singing at the beginning on the TV screen. I'll attribute the mediocre songs to μ's being a beginner group, I guess. I've been reassured there are better songs and that they're not featured in the anime. Not that this helps the anime in any way, but even so. Some of Kotori's solo songs are nice.

So...yeah. I'm going to watch season 2 next - although I won't be watching Sunshine for a while - to see if their personalities decide to resurface from whatever hell dimension Honoka put them in, and I'm going to watch the dub later in the year, because Awesomesauce. If I have to give this a score - and I do, because MAL demands it - I'd go with a 7. It was better than average - and 5/6 is my average - but not so good it's going to be something I'll remember for years to come. But good enough to keep me invested for another season. Cute girls doing cute idol things.

Thanks for the rec, don :3

 

[Megan]

I'll just leave my small review here, as well.

Spoiler:

There are a couple things I like when watching anime. I like characters that are smart and I like it when wits count more than packing a punch, etc. That being said, I didn't know too much about Log Horizon. The only thing I knew was that it's a story about people being trapped in an MMORPG.

When I started watching it, it didn't take long for me to enjoy the series. The cast was fun, the protagonist Shiroe was an interesting character. The music is pretty great, I really liked the opening (didn't care much about the ending theme, though). Overall I found the story pretty entertaining, though it got a little stale after a while due to the focus shifting to politics in the middle of the first season. In general I felt like the pacing was a little off, but ultimately it didn't take away too much of my enjoyment.
The battles/action were pretty well done, though I have to admit, I'm not a fan of CGI and the series didn't do anything to change my attitude on that. Those CGI moments just felt awkward, and didn't fit all too well to the rest of the scenery, to be honest. Another thing that I'm not too much a fan of what this whole love triangle thing that mostly served as some sort of comic relief. It got boring quickly.

When I finished season one, I was arguing back and forth whether or not to continue with season two, but ultimately decided to give it a try, as I don't have a reason not to continue. I think 8/10 a good score for the series so far.

 

[Kana]

so, i've actually finished my anime about a week ago already, and i suppose it's about time i shared my thoughts on Serial Experiments Lain.

Spoiler:

i'd heard of this anime before, but was always a bit offput by it - being such an old anime, the art style and the title made me assume it was an eerie story on a group of kids being used as guinea pigs in some kind of research facility, with them subsequently going insane and killing each other Higurashi-style. especially considering that's one of GP's favourite anime, i thought i was in for something...

but as it turns out, it wasn't like that at all. to be sure, Serial Experiments Lain contains a good deal of mind****ery, and the bulk of episodes excel at raising more and more questions, bringing up more and more (seemingly random) characters and plot points that made me wonder continually 'where the heck are they going with this'. and i really have GP to thank for letting me talk to him about it so much to arrange what was happening for my mind to comprehend, ahah. that being said, without actually giving anything away, it was definitely an interesting watch, and despite not all threads being neatly tied up, i enjoyed the progression visible, and final conclusion the series reached.
i like how the series provoked me to think, and me being the overthinking type... having an anime created so many years ago commenting on today's 'online' society i think is very intriguing. i liked seeing the image the internet had in the minds of these creators, and what it could grow out to be, albeit dramatized of course. some of the parallels drawn with the bible were interesting to say the least as well.

on to some more technical matters; the old-timey animation added to the image of a dystopian future - or rather, an alternate present, and fed the somewhat twisted atmosphere in my experience. i also really enjoyed the OP, to my surprise. the ED didn't leave as much of an impression, but eh. the voice acting i thought wasn't the strongest either, but perhaps this was usual for the period... and at some points it may have had an effect similar to the animation style for the good of the atmosphere.
all in all, i guess i'll give it an 8/10 because it was good, but not ground-breaking. if i'm honest i might let it sink to a 7 when the hype dies down... but then i might not, since it takes a lot more for anime to hold my attention nowadays than it used to, haha. thanks for the suggestion, GP! <3

 

[donavannj]

So I just started Mawaru Penguindrum last night, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to marathon this. I definitely don't hate it, I'm just not sure i can handle all 24 episodes in such a short time span. I keep pausing because it keeps bringing up predictable comedy cliches that I've seen too damn many times, which is always an obstacle for me in completing things. The other parts are perfectly watchable, though.

 

[Selena Fluorspar]

I watched the first episode of Trigun, and I really liked it, but.... well, the thing is that I kind of don't watch anime anymore, and don't seem to work up the interest to watch a new episode. That makes me sad because I feel like I'd really like this one.

 

[gimmepie]

Spoiler:

Count me in for this one. I seem incapable of picking worthwhile series for myself as of late >.>

In/

In again. Maybe I can get my contracted series soon enough and subject my convention going group to it while we're actually at the convention next weekend.

In.

In \o

I think I'll give it a try.

I'll give it a shot

Hello darkness, my old friend.

In for the first time.

me too please o/

You're local thread terrorist is here to pollute your thread with toxic opinions

Sign me up boss

Time is very nearly up for those of you yet to post their review :)

 

[Desinishon]

I watched first season, well I can only sum up this in one word: Awesome xD

I totally didn't watched the Gurren laggan movie

haha but I'm thinking of watching 2nd movie instead of season 2

 

[pkmin3033]

Will there be an Anime Contract Challenge 5? :o

 

[gimmepie]

Will there be an Anime Contract Challenge 5? :o

If Don gives the okay, yes.

 

[Florges]

School Live was okay. I'm not too big into more blob shows, but I really do appreciate what it tried to do. Overall, I will give it a 7/10.

 

[Lipstick Vogue]

Not going to do a lengthy review because I can't be bothered. Really liked Eden of the East even though I still have no idea who Johnny is.

Really cool show.

 

[machomuu]

Speaking of lengthy reviews, I

...'m not gonna do one either. Mainly because I don't really think there's much to say. I got My Hero Academia for my contract and I absolutely loved it (about as much as I thought I would prior to the anime's release. It's an underdog story with a likeable main character that you want to see succeed, and it sells on its moments of triumph with very bombastic animation, music, and sound design. Which feels rarer than it probably should be. I need to finish Luluco.

Probably my biggest concern once I found out that the main character, Izuku, got his quirk (superpower, essentially) was that I thought that that was going to be what the show was about. That Izuku, the quirkless hero fanboy, would be a springboard for the show to do whatever the hell it wanted to just so that it could get into the rest of the show, and that Izuku would indeed still be an underdog, just an underdog that has a power.

And technically speaking, yeah, he is an underdog that has a power. And it's a strong power. A flawed one, but a strong one still. But it works. The "flaw" in his quirk makes his original character setup as the quirkless hero work out. Mainly because for 90% of the show, he doesn't use his powers. In fact, for the majority of the show most of the people he comes across don't even know what his power is- that's how little he uses it. But he's not a coward, he still manages to be heroic even when his quirk doesn't come into play, and that's what I wanted way back when I read the back of the manga. That's what had me interested in the series: a quirkless hero. A quirkless hero.

...And I'm suddenly realizing that I have a lot to say about this, but to keep it brief, the cast was a lot of fun, my concerns when I heard about the pacing were alleviated because it doesn't seem rushed or spaced out. In fact, the length of the show and what transpired during it seemed pretty damn comfy, and I never really found myself hoping that they would get on with it. And the concept, while different than I was hoping and thankfully not what I was expecting, really was executed in a way that complimented it being an underdog story without feeling contrived or glorifying Izuku as much as it certainly could.

So yeah, it was a fun time. Currently enjoying Season 2 as we speak.