Hello, one and all! This is definitely a post that I’ve been keeping under wraps for the last few months, but after all this time, I’ve managed to do the entire second round of my anime recommendation tournament without anyone knowing my progress on it. Keep them on their toes, they always say! For those who aren’t Kitsu users, seeing this on my blog, I’ll link the original post and first round to you all, but this is mostly for that community. Our site has a severe limitation when it comes to word counts in a post, so this was my alternative, and WordPress has yet to fail me. What started with 64 shows and 64 people is now 24 people and 24 new series fighting it out in groups of 3, or 8 matches total. There’s a lot more to the whole process, but the rules will be the following portion of the post after this intro, so you’ll see in due time. It’s a little bit of a shame I couldn’t get all 32 people to come back for this second round for their follow-up series, but that’s the nature of the game when you take 2 years to complete something in an online community. I accept those losses and am just happy I got the majority to return. I allowed two users from round 1 with good scores who didn’t win to come back, and 2 people who competed in a mini tournament of 10 people to fill in the remaining open slots. Outside of that, it’s the same crew as my first round, duking it out, all in the hopes of proving they are the ultimate recommender in our community! I’ll talk about my overall impressions of round 2 as an experience during the outro, but for now, enjoy the rules, set up of round 2, and just the overall journey through each and every series I embarked upon!
Round 1 Matches for those who want to read them!
DA Rulez
Submitters have 2 weeks to give their show on this post. If they do not make that deadline for their submission, then they forfeit their spot in the tournament, and it will be filled with a substitute.
1. The show must be 1 cour in length(between 8-16 eps with normal length eps of 20-25 mins) and has to be marked as completed in your library. The series must also have finished airing and be in a completed status.
2. The series must not be present in my library in any capacity(includes on-hold/ptw)
3. The series can’t be a sequel or any attached media to something I’ve already seen. Examples are no Part 2’s, Subsequent seasons, or directly connected works. Spins-offs may be allowed if they are loosely connected.
4. I have the right to deny any submission even if it doesn’t break the above rules. I will be open to nearly everything that is submitted, outside of rare exceptions. Any questions can be directed to me in the comments below.
Round 2 Format
1. Matches will be groups of 3 users battling it out. The former bracket order will be shuffled and reordered for a randomized grouping. At the end of the round, only 8 people will move on to the 3rd round. + The highest-scoring person who does not win will also secure a 9th spot.
2. Winners will be determined by the average score of their Round 1 & Round 2 choices.
Example: Show A in Round 1 got a 6 and Show B got an 8 in Round 2 = Final Score of 7. In cases of tiebreakers, refer to rule 3.
3. Tiebreakers Clause: Both competitors will give me a series of any length of their choosing, and I will watch the first episode of it. Neither will know they are competing in a tiebreaker, but the better episode will determine the winner. In cases where the shows are too close to call after just 1 episode, I will move to a 3-episode format, then 6, then the entire thing if necessary.
Users/Shows that won in round 1 that did not appear in round 2
acp567: Lord El-Melloi(Not a huge loss, but still sad)
TruLuv: SpyxFamily(One of my better shows of round 1, so very glum about no return)
tha_one_otaku: Yuru Yuri(Thank the gods!)
Homely Road: Akagami no Shirayuki-hime(another stellar series with no return? WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME!?)
Kirai: 86(I weep, you weep, we all weep.)
Samlifts2018: Kaiba(I think a really interesting follow-up was certain too)
Poury-Gin: Daily Lives of High School Boys(Fairly indifferent on this one)
Mokocchi: Nekopara(Now I owe the gods twice!)
Caio: Rascal does not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai(Maaaan, really bummed about this one not coming back)
Pillow: Hibike(As indifferent as I am to their catalog)
Errm_Edgar: Shadows House(Definitely a let down, not seeing what they had coming next)
ptchos: Kakushigoto(Coulda been something great too!)
ROUND 2 Matchups
Match 1
Futatsu vs TheCSW vs EDFREDTED
Futatsu: Current Tournament Score: 8.0(Sasaki to Miyano)
Insomniacs After School
Hi Boo boo! Fun test to see if you end up reading this 
I loooooooooooove you!
As an agreement with my lovely girlfriend, who is competing, I did in fact choose to make her show the premier series of the second round since she, by random luck, was the opening series for the entire event. This time around, we move away from her signature boys’ love genre to something else…Well, I mean, it is still romance but hetero! We’ve got cats, love, and the simplicity of adolescence at the core of Insomniacs After School. And yes, I know you are wondering in which order those things take importance, and my simple response to that inquiry would be…yes. For years, I’ve joked with her that this series was about a ghost who haunts the school, and all other manner of silly theories. You see, one of my favorite things to do is make up crackpot plots for shows just to see how wrong I am before watching them. I tend to avoid the synopsis of something unless I am going to watch it right away, so it often leads to me often not actually knowing the narrative setup, and this one is no different. I could have guessed it was two younguns growing close through their insomnia….and well, that they go to school, but outside of that, everything else would be a shot in the dark. I certainly wasn’t wrong about what it actually is, but as always, the series is home to much more than just that.
Well, ain’t this show just sweet as can be? If there is something most people know about me, it would be that I like a heartfelt coming-of-age tale. Of course, most anime fans have different interpretations of what that actually means, but thankfully, my sweet partner is fantastic at understanding what I like about those types of stories. First, she melts my heart with Skip and Loafer, and now we have this little gem. It’s really a story that is as mundane as can be, but shines through because of the human interactions and realism that is portrayed through their relationship’s evolution. Human stories that get to the heart of what makes us as individuals and how we connect are just impossible to not relate to. We’ve all been awkward teens in love, but we’ve all also dealt with insecurities that make it hard for us to tell if we are moving forward the way we envision ourselves to do. Insomniacs is another success in the anime medium at showcasing the beauty of growing close to someone else and how that can be the spark to light the fuse for changing and moving towards our next passion. While this show is a romance at the end of the day, the other part that is remarkably enjoyable is the discovery of a hobby and how that can redefine aspects of your life. Sometimes the most unassuming things in our life’s journey end up being the ones that make the largest splash.
If I had to nitpick any one thing with this show, it would be that it doesn’t have a ton of sweeping moments. I know that isn’t necessary persay, but the show isn’t a typical show with BIG scenes that floor you. It’s a consistent stream of the same type of quality and good feelings. This makes the entire watch a very breezy and enjoyable time, but it also holds it back from being an all-time favorite for me, either. I think most of my favorite stories ever find a way to capitalize on the building of emotions throughout to have these breakout scenes that etch their place in my memory as simply unforgettable. What I got was instead a very pleasing and steady execution of ideas and characters that were well worth my time of investment, even if they weren’t the most impactful I’ve ever witnessed. The chemistry between the two leads is infectiously blissful and the best part bar none. Being able to deliver such weighty and satisfying character interplay is a rarity, and I can’t commend it enough for making it work so well. I do wish the show had that little extra oomph to take it further beyond, but with the way the season ended, I could see that possibility in the following arcs if they are ever adapted or I actually make time to read it. Regardless of all of that, I found this show to be a downright fun experience and am very happy it was part of the tournament. If you like Slice of Life, romance, or CATS, you owe it to yourself to give this one a watch!
THECSW: Current Tournament Score: 6.5(Binchou-Tan)
The Bartender(2006)
Raise a glass to an anime that you would assume is getting slowly forgotten to time. Well, I would think that if it didn’t randomly get a follow-up in the last few years. Shocking turn of events is indeed shocking, my friends! This show is exactly as advertised on the glass. It’s a collection of short stories focused on patrons at a bar and the impact of crossing paths with the glass of the gods. It’s certainly embellished by reputation since he is just an ordinary man making ordinary drinks for ordinary people. That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? There is no such thing as mystical folk or experiences. We are all going through our own trials and tribulations, and many adults find solace or comfort in the world of a drink of alcohol. I can even name several of my own friends and fellow anime watchers who find a form of release in being able to pound back a few beers or whatever their cocktail of choice is after a very long work week or stressful moment in their life. It would be no exaggeration to say that the very relationship alcohol has with the general working class is instrumental to their lives. If you live, you drink.
That is, unless you are me! This is something I don’t discuss as a bragging point or anything, but I do not partake in alcoholic beverages, nor have I ever done so. Due to my own personal history, I made a personal choice not to do as such, and I maintain that for the remainder of my days. I want that to be very clear, as I critique this show because it may become instantly apparent that I am not the audience this show is reaching for. What Bartender attempts to achieve is to showcase the human parable in relation to the world of alcohol. There is a massive crossover between people’s day-to-day lives and the history of alcohol. It is made, brewed, mixed, shaken, stirred, and served by and for people. Every drink has a story behind its creation and, in turn, has a metaphorical bridge that closes the gap between us and our afflictions. That is the crux of what Bartender is focusing its lens upon. It’s something I no doubt believe many anime watchers would get a lot of due to the relatable nature of that connection. This is where I am an outlier and have zero interest in this topic, and don’t find even an inkling of myself in these stories or their resolutions. I just don’t have a positive relationship with alcohol, and it clouds my judgment and impairs my ability to find enjoyment in the stories shared here. I may enjoy history and finding out how things are made, but you can’t separate the fact that Bartender is not an anime targeted at my interests.
My true critique of this anime would be more about the little vignettes we do see. I just don’t find most of these stories all that compelling. As much as I appreciate the research and execution into the world of drinks that is done here, I can’t say it makes up for mostly dull stories. This is especially evident in the first half of the season when we know next to nothing about the bartender himself, and he seemingly functions as a problem solver with no actual personality or being. Mix that with repetitive conclusions, and you get a watered-down cocktail that just didn’t get prepared as carefully as it deserved. This gets a little better as we continue to receive more orders, and the personal history of the Bartender is given. It adds more content, depth of flavor, and altogether more intrigue. We also get a little extra variety with the direction and point of view, and it makes everything blend together in a much smoother and memorable nectar. The spirits are far greater this way, and it lifts a series up even so slightly from being completely flat for me. It is hard to fairly knock the show, as I could have also found the chronicles less appealing due to my indifference to the subject matter. I respect the craft, but wasn’t the right customer for it. I can live with that, but if you do really love the world of drinks or have a historical intrigue in what made them come to fruition, definitely give a few episodes a taste or two.
EDFREDTED: Current Tournament Score: 4.0(Devilman Crybaby)
Bungo Stray Dogs S1
Once you go Bungo, you don’t go back. Throughout the annals of history, few things have impacted the world quite like Bungo Stray Dogs has. We’ve got major events like the Great Flood, the World Wars, The Beatles, the Atom Bomb, the Black Plague, and now Bungo Stray Dogs. Truly, few things have changed us as a collective quite like it has. I knew of its glory and power before going into it, and I was intimidated to say the least. Would I have to redefine what anime means to me? Would anything ever be the same? Would I be a different man when all was said and done? Could a rating scale of 10 even capture the brilliance properly? Would I have to raise the scale, break the scale…what was I to do!??? All of these things came flooding into my mind before and during my watch of Bungo. Mamoru Miyano cooing in my ear like a pigeon made by God itself, I struggled to define what I would be at the conclusion of this journey. I make a lot of hyperbolic jokes when I write these intros, but not once have I ever considered that when explaining the scope of importance Bungo could bring to my entire future. So….what the hell did I think about Bungo Stray Dogs?
It was pretty good! After a decade+ of being curious about this series, I can finally say, I get it. It’s a creative action show with wacky dark humor, and while it isn’t 100% perfect, it is hard for me to not say I liked it in general. I thought the referential aspect of literature was deftly incorporated. The comedy was generally harmless or actually laugh-producing. Which, for me, can be rare with anime! The cast is likable and has fantastic chemistry between each other. It all lends to a world and story that feels constantly alive and delightful. I wouldn’t say Bungo changed my life like I assumed it was guaranteed to do, but it is a really solid example of what creativity in the medium is capable of. A writer who takes a concept, fleshes it out properly, and tries to weaponize it at all young women worldwide. I may not be a woman, but if I were one, I’d be simping for my boys too. They are devilishly charming and impossible to not like to some degree. Let’s all clap our hands at how the author literally uses nods to other pieces of writing to make a fantasy world with powered individuals in very unique ways. He could have copped out and did something really easy, but instead just rolled with a variety of creators and their masterworks and found ways to make the combat special. I love when we get something different than just pure powered punchy boys. At this point, I feel like I am getting a little lost in the sauce and getting redundant. Not even sure it is really comprehensible, so let’s just sum it up by saying: Bungo Stray Dogs is pretty cool.
Of course, it is not without faults either, though. Classic as it can be, Bungo ends the first season pretty much smack dab in the middle of a few reveals and storylines. It straight advertises what is to come with such reckless confidence. I’ve always found this to be a pet peeve of mine due to how many adaptations simply end after a single season. Bungo doesn’t fall prey to this fate, but it does feel quite noticeable irregardless. The other flaws are minor but still worth mentioning. We’ve got some low stakes with how everyone has survived every “deadly” interaction so far, and the show does have a fair share of comedy in poor taste. It’s not the worst demerits to play host to, yet I can’t escape that they are the factors that diminish this good series from being potentially greater. I suppose that is a solid positive trend if anything else. If your anime’s worst aspects are only minor at best, you are doing good work when you put all the cards on the table. Here’s hoping we get a little more drama based on stakes in the future seasons. If that happens and the cast builds upon itself nicely, I could see Bungo slowly climbing up in my overall rankings. Welp, it is official, Bungo is now a part of my life, and I am a changed man. I knew it was inevitable. Thanos, you called it, bud!
Final Scores(Current Rd + Rd 1)
Futatsu: 7.5 + 8 = 15.5 ~WINNER
TheCSW: 5.5 + 6.5 = 12.0
EDFREDTED: 7.0 + 4.0 = 11.0
Match 2
Shlomo vs Anime_General vs Goomb
Shlomothegrouch: Current Tournament Score: 4.5(DNA)
Those Who Hunt Elves
Old anime that are actually short enough for this format are certainly not a dime a dozen. It’s pretty rare to see, so salute to Shlomo for somehow having another one in his library. Those Who Hunt Elves is a wacky premise. Three people were magically summoned into a fantasy world by a spell gone wrong and helped defeat the greatest evil the land has ever seen. All they want in return is to be brought back to their homeland of Japan. That way, they can continue their lives and enjoy simple things like curry, movies, or school. During the incantation for the return spell, something goes awry, and the spell itself breaks into 5 parts. The catch: the broken spell fragments are on the bodies of elves spread throughout the entire world. Thus begins the quest to check every single elf over the various continents to regain the spell portions so they can finally go back to Japan! If this sounds as anime as you can imagine, you would be oh so correct. There is nothing subtle or deeper going on here. It’s a silly idea to help create the scenario, and it’s filled to the brim with all manner of fantasy culture references throughout. This IS A N I ME!
And with that comes all the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sadly, it’s significantly more of the latter two. To check the elves for the spells, the main cast of course, has to strip them naked. Never mind the process of merely asking people politely to save the trouble of going through becoming serial strippers. They literally become notorious for disrupting society because they violently seek out elves and strip them naked with no questions asked. There are zero rules that restrict them from just telling others what they need. That, and they have the most famous elf in the entire world with them, so they could literally have her ask on their behalf, and you know….explain the situation. I guess that would be too logical, though, so instead they rip and tear like the doom guy of clothes destruction. Truly, the 90s were a wild time. Anytime this show has a chance to just have people talk it out, it instead goes for attack first, question later. It’s a super odd and poor choice since it stands out in nearly every altercation from episode to episode. I also don’t quite understand why the main trio are so talented either. One is the god of fighting, one is the most convincing actress ever, and the other is a master of artillery. They aren’t just good at what they do either; they are like legendary skill level talented. Master Chief, eat your heart out. Now, I’m not asking for realism in a series about people magically summoned to a fantasy universe who are assaulting elves left and right; I’m just asking questions on how it’s even possible for them to be this impressive. I can suspend my disbelief a lot, and you sort of have to for media like this, but man, I don’t know about you, but I have to wonder why writers just don’t even bother to make a small justification for it at least. I guess I am asking too much.
This isn’t like the most offensive thing I’ve had to sit down and watch, but it really is a little mind-numbing for most of the run. I guess you are meant to find the conflicts humorous and see how the oddball team of heroes manages to overcome the obstacles before them, but I couldn’t be bothered to care with the lowbrow comedy and distasteful center stage stripping mechanic. It just makes you want to see, or at least if that’s me, the main characters fail more than they succeed. The premise feels drawn out, dull, and rather unnecessarily obscene. I know it was a different time, I can vibe with that ideology when it doesn’t straight up ruin the majority of the product. There are certainly moments of humor spread throughout, and the self-aware comedy route always lends well to a series that is rampant with ridiculous moments. All that being said, I can’t in good conscience say I enjoyed very much of this series, and it ended up being fairly muted to me by the end. I was in hate mode, but I wasn’t having fun either. I’d lump this show in the pile of very forgettable shows and a relic of the past that is perfectly okay with not being rediscovered by future generations. Sometimes there are things that are truly meant to die with the era they were released in, and that is Those Who Hunt Elves.
Anime_General: Current Tournament Score: 6.5(Paranoia Agent)
Mononoke
Out of all the anime chosen for the second round of this tournament, Mononoke was one of the only ones I have a full intention of already watching. Heck, I actually already had it lined up for another self-challenge, so it works out nicely that I was finally given an excuse to bite the bullet and watch it. This series is something that I would definitely define as artsy. It doesn’t use conventional storytelling mechanisms, has an eclectic visual style, and many of the parables it presents aren’t concluded in a straightforward manner. Mononoke is an anime that asks you to pay attention and draw your own conclusions about the events that proceed. It’s an adult anime with heavy topics, as it doesn’t wince at looking at those ideas. We follow a traveling peddler who just “happens” to get mixed up in all sorts of conflicts, and how he eventually plays a part in their dissolution/conclusion. This is a mystery anime through and through. Mix some classic detective play with some supernatural fables of Japanese folklore, and you get a hybrid not commonly seen in the anime landscape. A visually distinct series with mature themes and thought-provoking elements to stimulate those older audiences with the revelations to come.
Mononoke is split between a handful of multiepisode mysteries. Our medicine peddler always plays a part in finishing the tale, but is almost never the star of the show. It is normally something completely separate from him that he involves himself in. Sometimes deliberately and other times not. I will say the strongest point of Mononoke, outside the audio/visual flair, is the careful presentation of details to the audience. You are given a lot of information to work with, but not everything, so you can enjoy the ride fully when the answers come to light. This is a series where you are rarely going to solve the puzzle before it is cracked, but the cards flipped are not dull, thanks to the strange mysteries we get involved in. There is always some sort of mystical element playing a part, so the audience is put on the edge of their seat with the blend of horror and case-solving going on. I would certainly say there are points in almost every arc that I was briefly at a loss at what was happening or didn’t understand something in the slightest, but I think this is always by design as things become clearer. I wouldn’t say I fully meshed with or understood the lesson or theme being presented in each story, but I could at least make enough sense to respect the general concept being executed. This isn’t a series that dumbs anything down, nor does it explicitly tell you everything that happens. They want you to piece it all together, and I like that about the series, but I wouldn’t say I was wholeheartedly in love with it either.
Mononoke falls squarely in a category of respect more than pure enjoyment for me. It’s a well-constructed piece of art with lots of cool storylines, rich themes, and thought-provoking adult storylines with grey morality on display at every turn. It’s far more cerebral than the average anime is, and for that, I have a deep admiration for it. I also quite liked its unique presentation, and it made it feel like I was taking part in a recanted tale from a rakugo story or something. It was historical, with actually being remotely tied to actual events from real life. It gave that feel of old Japan with a flair that is unmatched by anything else. All of that is really good stuff, and I can eat it up, and I will certainly check out the sequel films at some point in the future when I am not drowning in these obligatory series for you all. All of that being said, I think Mononoke is solid entertainment with nifty things, but it doesn’t cross the threshold of being something I personally was moved by. It doesn’t hit any specific notes that appealed to me, and no single character is meaningful on a deeper level. They all function within the cogs of their own stories and matter to that end, but they don’t connect on an individual level, rather than having a purpose. I wouldn’t say that it is a flaw as much as a reason why the series doesn’t elevate beyond just being good to me. I like, but I do not love!
Goomb: Current Tournament Score: 6.5(Horimiya)
Kanata no Astra
You know, it’s always funny going into a series with lukewarm expectations and getting completely surprised with it as a full product. Sometimes, you just can’t expect a series to clearly be a passion project. You might not think that when you look at the obviously pandering character designs, very straightforward 90s-esque narrative setup, and just everything else about what the premise alludes to. It looks like a forgettable modern sci-fi anime that would have zero interesting ideas or lasting impact. Then, you notice the double-length pilot and finale, a complete story in the span of all the episodes, and how every single character is given a proper storyline, and you realize….oh shit, wait, someone actually cared about this?!! Kanata no Astra is a tale as old as time. The main cast of plucky young prodigies suddenly get lost in the depths of space and are expected to die. How can they string together their knowledge and resources to return to civilization, and can they figure out the mystery of how they got placed in this situation to begin with? So, the real question is….yeah, someone cared, but was it actually worth the time?
I would say so! While this show is not without faults, there is something to be said about the amount of charm and care that went into the project. While the cast is pretty archetypal in design, they mesh together well and help the pieces fall together. I don’t know, usually something like this would feel like it would fall flat to me, but I was consistently entertained and liked the overall cast dynamic a lot. Yes, there is a little suspension of disbelief in their ability to actually pull off this crazy survival mission, but hey, compared to some other stuff I’ve watched, it wasn’t completely bullshit at least. I think the overall good vibes and sense of family the characters built amongst each other, and all the wacky classic science fiction plot twists, won me over in the end. I ended up rooting for the cast in all the situations they got in, and by the end of the series, I would say I liked just about everyone to some extent. There are one or two characters that feel less developed than the rest noticeably, but in general, I think the series managed to deftly convince me of their interpersonal relationships, and I was down for it. They might fit squarely in their boxes, and you can predict a lot of their actions, but similar to a classic action movie, the charisma and fun were high enough to make me not care as much as I might normally would. I guess Yui was right, sometimes fun things are just fun.
While there are definitely flaws you can poke throughout this show, I was pleased with the complete product I was given. I mean, in an era of glorified advertisements for the source material, it is refreshing to see something be concise and feel complete. I grow tired of waiting for sequels or just getting the introduction to something grander without knowing when/if I will get to see what comes next. That, of course, doesn’t make it greater by default because it is complete. If your story and cast are shit, a complete version of that doesn’t really do anything but make me angrier. I will say, though, I liked it here. They create a mission, they follow through, we get all the answers to our questions, and even a semi-satisfying conclusion to what the cast is up to after the fact. Could it have been even deeper or more robust in what it did? Sure, I mean, you could say that about the general cast writing, but I think it was in line with what was established prior. It’s not one of the greatest pieces of fiction ever conceived, but it is a quality enough experience for me to warrant a very positive reception for it. This was probably the pleasant surprise of round 2 so far, and it could hold as the biggest surprise of the round by the end of it. I’m certainly not gonna be upset by that, please have more anime be better than my assumptions dare to presume.
Final Scores(Current Rd + Rd 1)
Shlomo: 4.5 + 4.5 = 9.0
Anime General: 7.0 + 6.5 = 13.5 ~TIEBREAKER
Goomb: 7.0 + 6.5 = 13.5 ~TIEBREAKER
Tiebreaker Results
Anime General Submits: Cybersix
Goomb Submits: Kaoru Hana Wa Rin to Saku
Anime General went with a completely forgotten series from the 90s vs Goomb choosing one of the more hyped releases in the past year. Interesting to see how their methodologies differed here. And General, sorry to say, friend, your show probably deserves to be lost to time. It’s dated even for the time, the pilot is a classic monster of the week thread + characters having the ability to recognize obvious disguises as well as they do in Superman. It’s just very by the numbers, but with a poor production quality and subpar writing and action. It just doesn’t even overcome that with charm or anything in particular. It’s not a great sampling of something that I wonder about as an entire product. I, for one, wouldn’t be intrigued to see more, though, after the initial viewing. As much as I love 90s cartoons, this would have been something I would have skipped over as well. Kaoru Hana, on the other hand, was quite adorable. By the numbers, as you can be for a classic meet-cute introduction for a blossoming romance, but still cute as a button either way. It’s lacking in individuality a little bit, but I would be willing to see more. Worst thing it can be is a pleasant way to spend a few hours, so sign me up for more. An easy slam dunk win for Goomb here!
~WINNER OF TIEBREAKER: Goomb
Match 3
ThomVD vs JoannetheRed vs Thundera
ThomVD: Current Tournament Score: 8.0(Yuzuki Brothers)
Makeine
Or better known as..Sloppy Seconds! No title is more fitting from a guy like Thom. I mean, what do we expect from a guy like that? Jokes aside, this anime was fairly high profile when it dropped, and being a guy who follows seasonal warriors like Shaz and King, it was virtually impossible for me to have zero exposure to this before being given it to watch. I didn’t fully know what to expect, and honestly figured it was like a straight comedy instead of the classic romcomdram slice of life hybrid it actually is. Joke’s on me, huh? I mean, how many anime are pure comedies these days? Actually….probably a lot of them! But you know what, I do stand by the idea that more anime are multigenre than not, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by this outcome. We follow a main lad who gets involved with many girls who weren’t the almighty chosen one of another, and how he aids them in sorting out their unrequited feelings and moving forward in their lives from it. Now, you might think, oh, that is mighty nice of him to look out for these girls like that, and I mean it is, but the thing is, he doesn’t intentionally get himself involved; he usually does by happenstance or by force. He is just a hapless bystander who happens to be the shoulder these women needed to lean on. It all starts from a random moment on any other day, and from that point forward, his life is forever changed as he becomes implicated in the failing romance of Anna. From that, he eventually meets Lemon and Komari as well, and all of their destinies become intertwined.
If you couldn’t guess, this show has 3 distinct arcs: Anna, Lemon, and Komari. This isn’t like some shows that toss the new characters to the side, though, when their arc is completed. It uses the classic method, similar to most VN adapts of adding them to the cast permanently and expanding the world from it. I would say for me, this series was a mixed bag. Similar to that girl you weren’t planning on dating, there are just some compatibility issues here. I don’t think the series is really funny all that often, and jokes are tossed around frequently. This is especially notable with Anna, who is a very annoying and selfish personality who likes to make chaos for others as long as she is having a good time. Her whole relationship with the main character is one of bullying/teasing, and she is just a manic disaster, and I, for the life of me, can’t figure out why people love characters like this, because I would say she is actively the element that hurts this series the most in the enjoyment department. The other two girls are both actually pretty cool to me, though. Lemon is a go-getter with a really fun attitude against adversity, and I really enjoy the mature follow-through for her failed love. Komari’s romantic angle isn’t as compelling, but as a character, she is certainly the one with the most growth and the most satisfying character arc from start to finish here. The main character is pretty plain, very Kyon-like, so he is sarcastic but still legitimately a decent guy. I wouldn’t say he stands out as much as the girls, but you can tell the girls are where the bulk of the ideas were invested.
Overall, this series is just alright. The storylines vary from complete indifference to just alright, but the two girls who are actually compelling characters make up for a lot of those weaknesses to raise the series above being completely average. There was certainly a lot of care put into the show as well, with the crisp animation, dedicated ending themes to the girls’ arcs, and just general use of motion and color. Makeine still has many hallmarks of feeling a little plain at times, though. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, nor does it make a version of the wheel so remarkable you can’t help but applaud it. It is pretty plain at times, only occasionally funny, but a well-produced series with some heartfelt characters that are slowly making friendships that shine brighter than the potential romances ever could have. It’s a second-tier show all around, which fits the second-tier waifu material it promotes so proudly. It doesn’t climb up to higher echelons, but it’s not a bad use of your time either. And of course, if it wasn’t completely evident, the series has plenty of elements to be relatable or moving to the right person. I’m a little too experienced with stories like this, and not the target audience for the style of comedy it uses to really get full mileage out of this vehicle. It’s acceptable fluff that isn’t completely forgettable, but doesn’t hoist a single element to be greater than the sum of those parts to leave a truly lasting effect on me. Kinda like the 3rd option of your custom half dozen Krispy Kreme box. You are gonna eat it, and it will be tasty enough, but you only ordered it for a little variety, and it’s unlikely you’d come back to get it a second time.
JoannetheRed: Current Tournament Score: 7.5(Design-Bu)
Elusive Samurai
Coming into the second round, I would say Elusive Samurai was one of the series I was most eager to watch. I have a pretty decent track record with Shonen Jump adaptations being something within my line of taste, and this rec was from the esteemed Joanne. It seemed to me to be a match made in heaven, and a clear path to victory for her going into her match against one series I was uncertain about, and another(coming soon :D) that I was all but sure would be a stinker. Elusive Samurai is a shonen adaptation of a notable moment in the grander Japanese history. It follows the story of a young prince who survives the fall of his kingdom and attempted assassination as he attempts to reseize his land from those who betrayed him and his people. Along the way, he will, of course, meet a colorful cabinet of cast members who will aid him with their specific toolsets, and together they will help him grow into the leader necessary to create this new world and kingdom. It, of course, sounds like a premise you have no doubt heard before in some other tale, and I mean it is based on real history, so you can’t fault the series for using that general outline for the larger narrative.
What I can fault is a lot of other things! This series, unfortunately, was not a roaring success or hit with me. The majority of it I found just sort of boring or unengaging. The rest of the series flip-flopped between cool, stylish animation cuts and comedy with very poor taste. And as we know, the animation part of the experience is secondary to the writing, characters, and overall experience of the parts coming together. I think, honestly, having the very childlike personalities at the center of this story is where a lot of the problematic issues arise. The characters lack depth or interest because they just act like happy-go-lucky children despite their situation. Despite all the horrid things that occur, the main characters really just sort of roll with the situation just fine, and the series regularly tries to make you laugh with some sort of joke instead. Sometimes they feel incredible age inappropriate, and others they just feel tonally deaf to the events that occurred prior. Like having a goofy, overly smiling positive monk after the slaughter of an entire village, or weird sexual libido comments about children, for example. I find that it all doesn’t mesh all that well. I quite often found myself rolling my eyes at the way a joke was presented, and it happens so often that I couldn’t tell what general tone this series was going for. I understand that shonen jump series rarely wallow and often try to find a balance between the drama and lighter levity, but normally they make these types of scenes completely separate, but they generally mix them quite interchangeably here to a complete detriment. I couldn’t get invested in the stakes because the very tasteless comedy was used far too often and at the wrong place and time.
Then we just have the historical epic time it is covering in general. As someone who isn’t directly familiar with this period, I am ready and willing to be taught and informed. I love history, and love when anime teaches me about times that happened in the past. However, if you are going to make a fictionalized story about it to make it more unique and fun, you do need to do the legwork of making it interesting. The children at the center plague us yet again with their inability to take on topics with nuance or even moments of thought. These characters lack the depth of thought and interest to bring out anything new to the audience outside the surface level moments we are witnessing, and when they are killing trained soldiers like it’s another Tuesday, I can’t help but not buy into what I am being sold. I don’t believe these kids have this skill. I don’t believe these kids understand the gravity of their actions. I just don’t believe making murder and conquest funny works here. I think contextualizing the weighty moments of maturity of growing into this role would have made a lot more sense. It would make things like a first kill of a young lord in a tense and scary situation more relatable and emotionally fascinating, rather than a notch in his growing belt of achievements. There are a lot of small things that just don’t work for me on the regular here, and I can’t help but say I felt rather muted to the whole world of Elusive Samurai. I didn’t particularly like or dislike the history, but the cool choreography and animation can’t make up for the juvenile writing and the cast members’ behavior. Either stop being so silly and tell a serious historical war drama with youth wrestling with their role through it all, or be completely fun and don’t bog down your story with murder, sex, and other adult thematics. When you try too hard to mix things that don’t go together, you get a confused, often bored, and occasionally angry seal instead! We don’t want that!!!!
Thundera: Current Tournament Score: 6.0(Rideback)
Saga of Tanya the Evil
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Most folks don’t know this, but I’ve been avoiding this series like the plague ever since it was first announced over 10 years ago. It was something that ended up being somewhat successful with the general anime community, and for all intents and purposes, I had a sneaking suspicion this anime was about as anti-me as you could get. Everything I could glean from images, PMVs, people’s reviews, all of it, it all seemed like such an antithesis to my existence. So, it goes without saying, I had a large groan when it was submitted. This is by far the anime I was least excited to watch in this round. Heck, that might even extend to the entire tournament. I was hoping to spend my life without ever having to directly interact with Tanya’s shit-eating grin. Lo and behold, that was not the case, and I have slain the beast and completed a series I never intended to try out to begin with. And you know what? It was not as bad as I feared! Don’t get me wrong, I still hated the series overall, but I was expecting one of my least favorite pieces of media in recent memory, but instead just got a series I found very poor in all aspects. I guess we count that as a win, huh?
So going into Tanya, I expected a devilish main character who reveled in the misery and pain of others in the guise of a young girl. Someone who enjoyed the suffering of others and had basically no redeeming qualities as a human being. And that is exactly what you get. A modern-day cutthroat businessman gets isekai’d into a young magical prodigy in another world because he tells god to fuck off when he gonna get killed by a train. So God decides to punish him, he is gonna put this prick in a world where he has to fight tooth and nail to enjoy anything. Instead, he gets reincarnated as a little girl with the most potent magical potential ever, joins the military at a young age, becomes the most dominant part of the army, and just spits on the face of anything or anyone who gets in his way. It’s a weird story setup, and frankly, I don’t get the purpose of it. Why does this need to be an alt magical history story? Is it so that modern tactics can easily solve the problems in front of the main character? Are we meant to support the German side of alt WW2 history because of this opposition and against all odds? I don’t know who this story is for, if I am being honest. It’s a very by-the-books historical war drama that also just happens to have magic and a reincarnation plot thread. Outside of that, everything else is like you would imagine a normal war story to be like.
This is one of the biggest issues with this series. It’s just dull as hell. The war stuff is as plain as a loaf of bread and lacks anything for the audience to care about. You have a protag who is just a jerk doing jerk things and never really hitting a wall to change or grow as a person. So we are rooting for shitty people to do shitty things? Again, who is this for? Tanya is a terribly unlikable person who has almost zero roadblocks between them and their successes. The war story isn’t doing anything narrative-wise or thematically that hasn’t been done before, nor is it inviting us to emotionally invest in the troubling times of it either. Tanya, as a series, is just boring most of the time rather than offensively annoying. It does have its moments of pure debotchry but 80% of the time, it is just doing a very slow war series with lots of meetings and talking that means very little to the viewer. I just don’t care about anything they are showing, or I am rooting against the main character since I hate her so much. I really don’t get why these types of deviant series appeal to many anime fans, but I will continue not getting it, I guess. There are far more politically diverse and rich war stories, and morally grey main characters than Tanya presents. Anything and everything you have here, we already have at home, and better, so I say skipping this for the rest of your life is a worthwhile endeavor that I missed out on that you could have!
Final Scores(Current Rd + Rd 1)
ThomVD: 6.0 + 8.0 = 14.0 ~WINNER
JoannetheRed: 5.0 + 7.5 = 12.5
Thundera: 2.5 + 6.0 = 8.5
Match 4
Star6Wars1 vs Blank vs Ridik
Star6Wars1: Current Tournament Score: 6.5(Tomo-chan)
Amanchu
Our second of the two mini tournament competitors decided to toss out Amanchu as his choice. Now, I’m unsure why I never knew this going into the series, but apparently, it was written by the same original author as the Aria series. I wonder if that is why Star Wars chose it, or it was just a happenstance, but I did enjoy that show well enough, so that did bode well for the potential of Amachu as far as I am concerned. Instead of a fantastical version of a real-world place with new ideas injected into it, this series is far more real to life when it comes to the where. It’s a typical port town in Japan, about a new student transferring in and awkwardly living her life until she crosses paths with the person who changes everything. From that point forward, so many new experiences and the like happen all the time, and the world that is oh so scary turns into one of adventure and color. Pretty classic anime synopsis, right? So, Amanchu might not hold the most originality for the general setup, but maybe the execution far exceeds that with brilliant character moments and drama. Only one way to find out!
Amanchu is now the second aquatic-themed anime I’ve seen in this tournament that features diving as a plot point, and also uses it less than it does the slice of life bonding material. Unlike Grand Blue, though, Amachu isn’t incessantly sophomoric in all the content it gives the audience. It’s a lot more wholesome, and I will say, even though diving isn’t nearly focused on as much as I wanted it to be, it definitely plays a bigger part here. We get to see the importance of safety and the difference between amateur vs experienced divers, all the while seeing the main duo get closer and closer. I would say the two main characters and the general atmosphere of the series are the highlights of it. Similar to Aria, this series uses music to highly elevate the most mundane scenes into something far more calming, beautiful, and serene. It’s a powerful aspect that I think a lot of anime don’t quite capture, but Amachu regularly envelops its audience with these deep emotional currents that make the small stuff feel so much grander. That’s the power of the best SOL content out there, and Amachu finds moments of greatness by using that atmosphere to the maximum. It’s a shame that it isn’t the majority of the experience, though. Many small cracks in the armor present throughout hold this series back from being truly great.
I would say there are 3 key elements that take away from the best this show has to offer. The side cast, the comedy, and the storytelling. The cast outside of the main duo is fairly weak in general and often used for comedic effect, which I also found to be generally on the weaker side. Similar to this author’s other work, I just don’t think they are very consistent at telling humorous storylines or jokes. Their running gags are more dull than amusing, and there is a lot of that, sadly. It just doesn’t do much for the series, and with the storytelling feeling aimless at times, the day-to-day scenes have far more comedy focus than thoughtfulness. Instead of getting semi-regular diving experiences or genuinely heartfelt friendship moments, you get a lot of forgettable friends hanging out, making jokes that don’t land for much. It becomes more of a problem the more they do it, and the frequency increases during the second half of the season. Every episode has a moment or two of pure bliss baked in, and moments I could see myself really being in awe, but the weaker infrastructure around that notably dilutes that overall experience. Amanchu is cute, sometimes resonant, but often routine in design. There’s potential here, but it isn’t being realized, and that disheartens me ever so much. It wasn’t a bad time, though, so I shan’t complain too much. I just am like Ariel from The Little Mermaid for the atmosphere. I want mooooooore.
Blank: Current Tournament Score: 6.5(Squid Girl)
Do it yourself!
Here we are, the type of anime I loathe. From the fiery pits of Mordor to the center of Skeletor’s heart, you’ve never seen as much hatred as you have seen from me with cute girls doing…..dare I say it….cute things. Or at least, I would say that, if it were actually true. It’s kind of funny that I have many people who just assume I hate everything, with a cast of cuter girls leading the cast because I don’t like stuff like K-on or Yuru Yuri, or other mediocre anime like those. Guys, it’s not my fault I have standards, even as an American, it is actually possible to have some, just not most of the time! Do it Yourself is a series set in the not-so-distant future about…well, a DIY club and their adventures building stuff together. It’s what you see on the label, ladies and gents. I mean, I wasn’t really expecting anything too different than that anyway. The idea was a hopefully cozy show with some fun insight on the production side of everyday objects, with a distinct lack of cringey comedy and not pushing aside the main idea for just chatting about nothing but everyday life. It’s the little things, alright!
And you know what….it sort of accomplished what it was going for. This isn’t like Yuru Camp levels of charism or comfort, but there is an appeal here. The unique presentation adds a lot as well. It gives the entire series a handmade quality that matches the DIY vibes fantastically. And you know, for all the shows that don’t do anything with their topical titles, this one actually does! Now, I do have some critiques on how they do it, but at least I get into some of the process of making stuff from scratch. The visual/audio part of the series was certainly my favorite part of DIY. It’s relaxing, stimulating, and a little different than everything else on the market. Almost makes it feel like something only made by this team alone. I like that, it brings a broader appeal to me, even when some other aspects of the series are lesser. The comedy was acceptable, the friendships were cute, and the end result is hard to not be a little happy with all that considered. A lot of the little things here have charm, they just miss the mark overall to be even grander.
I think what really softens some of the delight was the DIY process itself here. I can take the by-the-numbers assembly of our schooltime construction avengers plotlines, but I am deeply saddened by the amount of montage this series uses. Having a super genius character with insane tech + skipping most of the learning process took away a lot of the charm of the self-made aspects of the story. I like these girls; they are pleasant, albeit a little simple, but their DIY projects boil down to us getting a tiny speech on the how-to process, and then only seeing parts of it overall. I didn’t feel as part of the process as I wanted, and I felt like I was missing something in each creation they debuted. They were either too perfectly made or just finished before I even got a grasp on the whole blueprint behind them. It’s a real shame, too, because I adore the concept. One of my favorite gifts I see people do are handmade crafts for others. Or learning that someone built this house or sewed this purse by hand. It makes you want to hear about the entire step-by-step journey, and here we skip to the end almost every time. I ended up having the same longing because of this, and it made me feel wanting. Like when I see Camilla Cabello dancing in a tiny dress. Don’t tease me, just let me enjoy everything about it! While the overall cute and pleasant factors are high here, and the creative ideas/presentation were as well, the general average cast and lackluster approach to showcasing DIY made me feel like I was given scalped tickets to my Camilla concert. No one wants those loft tickets, man!
Ridik: Current Tournament Score: 7.0(Deaimon)
Sakamoto Days Pt 1
STRIIIIIIIIIIIKE TWO!!!! Another shonen series with a highly praised love for years, and another person giving it to me for what would seem like an easy way to win their match in the tourney. And you know, it has worked for some series, but Sakamoto Days is not one of those examples. I won’t even write a whole paragraph preface just to build up the anticipation. I didn’t enjoy this series very much. I found its comedy to be very one-note; there are several ideas that feel like they were ripped off straight from Spy x Family, and in general, its entire structure and narrative presentation are just weak. This is a prime example of a shonen series that has a lot of action that feels like pure fluff and lacks any excitement or stakes. It lives and dies on the cast and comedy in that case, and well…..I can’t say I particularly like anyone in this series in specific. I’ve been burned by a lot of modern shonen series, and Sakamoto now joins the ranks of Elusive Samurai, Tokyo Revengers, and Jujutsu Kaisen as a series that I truly don’t get the massive amount of positive reception for.
Sakamoto is a story of a retired assassin, who you would think is like 50+ or something, but he’s only like 27 and fat because he got married. Yep, he ate a lot, and now he lives a chill life with no issues. Except the entire underground knows where he lives and easily finds him, like you do with that hair stuck in your eyelash. The running comedy around this is that he looks unassuming but is still as dangerous as ever, but can’t kill anymore because his wife will leave him if he does. She plainly exists to be a plot device and less of a person. So I mentioned some SpyFam rip-offs, yeah? Let’s get into that real quick before I delve into my lack of interest in the comedy or action. Sakamoto is essentially Yor. He looks unassuming, but his strength and skill are beyond normal human comprehension,ension and he can do pretty much anything if he puts his mind to it. Shin can read minds like Anya can, and uses that to have the upper hand on people all the time in any situation. They also like to use this to avoid making Sakamoto talk even more and only hear through Shin’s thoughts. Nagumo is like Loid and can look like literally anyone and can easily infiltrate anywhere because of it. If one of these traits were present, I wouldn’t mind, but all 3 main characters’ main aspects showing up in the first 4 episodes of this anime, and this story coming out like a year after SpyFam in serialization, gives me some pretty large raised eyebrows. This is one of the more egregious examples I’ve seen in recent memory of taking inspiration from another creator in your mind.
More importantly, though, this series is just boring, sadly. The fights are either over immediately because Sakamoto ends them, or not until he goes full power. A lot of buffer time is put in just to show off how busted Sakamoto is, and it’s really just not very interesting to sit through. These characters are fairly one-dimensional and lack extra layers or motivations to make their fights more emoitonal investing, and Sakamoto is the most plain of them all. Barely any personality to speak of. I also personally hate his slimmed-down form. Just can’t commit to the fat guy, huh? Gotta make him young and hot and remove the funny mustache to make him more appealing. You disgust me, creator, and should live on welfare for 3 and a half days for that mistake alone! The general flat cast makes the comedy of recycled one-liners and jokes also repetitively yawn-inducing. It’s not like this series is the worst thing ever or anything, but it’s derivative, uninspired, and altogether lacking anything of value to make it anything else but subpar. I, for one, was genuinely having trouble from zoning out during this, and I’m a guy who grew up on Dragon Ball and Pokémon, I am used to flawed products with slow, choppy aspects. This just ain’t it, chief. I want my money back….even if I didn’t spend any, I am owed this debt!
Final Scores(Current Rd + Rd 1)
Star6Wars1: 6.5 + 6.5 = 13.0 ~TIEBREAKER
Blank: 6.5 + 6.5 = 13.0 ~TIEBREAKER
Ridik: 7.0 + 5.0 = 12.0
Tiebreaker #2 Results
Star6Wars1 Submits: His & Her Circumstances
Blank Submits: School Live!
The second tie breaker! Can’t believe that we still have more than one of these. Really crazy to consider. Star Wars gave me an oldie from Gainax, and Blank gave me a cult classic from the past decade. So first off….Connor….da hell man!? Why on earth did you think I was gonna like this show? KareKano was a miserable 20 minutes of my life, maybe the worst of my entire year so far. Absolutely torturous. Watching a vain, selfish, lying, bratty POS being jealous over the most stupid shit ever? Yeah, I think I am good. She didn’t take long to become one of the more insufferable people I’ve seen on screen in recent memory. Everything about her personality is nasty, so I don’t even care if she gets a happy end or grows from her future romance with the guy she wants so bad to prove her dominance over. I hope she ends up alone and miserable because that is how she made me feel for those 20 mins. School Live, on the other hand, was alright. I will admit I knew the twist going in since I was around when the internet lost its minds, and even knowing that, I could see it coming all throughout the episode. It’s an alright premise, but the cast is very ordinary and mismatched for the content, and I just don’t believe in their survivability in this new world, but I’ma just be a doubter and stop here. Either way, an average pilot with a twist is certainly a better use of my time than contemplating drinking gasoline to avoid finishing more Karekano.
~WINNER OF TIEBREAKER: Blank
Match 5
Madao vs Velacroix vs Tim
Madao: Current Tournament Score: 6.5(Mushoku Tensei)
Nanbaka
The king has returned! Or at least, I like to imagine Madao self proclaims himself to be as prostrigieious as one who rules the lands. He certainly has the manga world on lockdown as a duke or something, so we might as well elevate his status ever so slightly to predict his future place. This time around, Madao tossed me Nanbaka, a comedy action series set in a prison. It follows the hijinks of a crew of prisoners who all share the same room and are all famous for escaping prisons for one reason or another. Usually, the reason is quite silly…you know, with it being a comedy and all. Instead of them being someone seeking to do nasty and terrible things to, it’s like, I left prison because I don’t like needles and they administer medicine to me that way, but I like it here because it’s all orally ingested! So, you can see where the idea is just to establish the why, but the reasons are very silly, and meant to give a laugh, and a little context, but not much else. You are here to see them try to escape the most secure prison and competent prisoner guard in humorous ways, and lots of comedic things in between. It’s all very light-hearted, and the crazy color palettes for a little pizazz to go on top.
And you know what, I think if the series had committed to just this flavor execution, it would have been better for it. I will say, this series is pretty amusing when it wants to be. It’s got a fun and varied cast and plenty of good gags to support their antics, and when it’s a straight comedy, it is at its best. I don’t think all the jokes landed for me, but I can think of very few anime that are able to have a ratio of 80-90% or higher success rate with their jokes. That’s sort of the exclusive club of my all-time favorites in the genre, but hey, if I say something is pretty funny, that means it is doing something right. I can forgive series for not being fully consistent in comedy quality or just meeting my tastes. I have long understood my comedy taste profile doesn’t have massive or full overlap with most anime fans or creators, and that is okay; I can live with that. As long as it doesn’t outright anger me or ruin the mood of the series, we just let it pass by until the funny moments do land successfully. The bang for your buck here is pretty good in that regard, though. I found the cast chemistry solid, and it made for a long line of genuinely wacky good times.
That’s why it is a damn shame the series takes itself way way WAY too seriously in the back half of the season. We start having serious revenge storylines, trauma, wanting to get back at those who ruined their life, supernatural equipment…yada yada yada. It bogs the series down a ton. The tonal shift makes the comedy disappear in favor of drama, and this cast doesn’t have enough depth to make that work on the level being asked upon by the writer. Weak drama and an absence of your strongest element equals a series that hits the ground hard and has a heck of a time getting back on its feet. That footing gets found ever so slightly in the last portion of the show, but there are still a lot of questions in the air about the serious plot threads, and I think it is all for the worse of the greater enjoyment Nanbaka produces. This is a series that didn’t need to juggle the ideas it went for, and should have committed fully to one type of genre and not much else. Sometimes, you just gotta know when to laugh, and to let that be all you do. There isn’t much value in bringing up traumadumps and pure revenge storylines in a series like this, and in the end, it hurt a fair bit. While I complain about comedy a ton in anime, it’s not because I don’t like it. In fact, I just want better quality control in the writing process. BE BETTER…NOT LIKE MADAO…..YOU KNOW HE IS A DEGENERATE!
Velacroix: Current Tournament Score: 7.5(Vivy)
Given
You know, when a boy’s love is shared or thrust upon me, like a fierce shaft, I normally expect it from one of the ladies in my life. My gf, Kuro, Joanne, good hearted women who just loves man-on-man action to the maximum. Not this time, though! This is a series I’ve heard a great deal about since it first came out, and I know it’s a favorite of the fujo legions. It’s a sad gay story, so you know it’s targeted at their emotional depths. Sad musical focused romance? Oh shit, say no more, they are looting homes just to get a chance to steal a device to see even a few moments of this glory. Given is the story of a band of gents, and some romance to follow with those guys. Thankfully, it’s not a polypterodactylromance, or whatever they call it; it’s just two separate groups with love potential. Although one of them doesn’t hit full fruition before the end of the season, so I imagine the movies cover some of that content more. This is about the two main characters, their relationship, and how it is showcased through their musical relationship. I won’t go into spoilers about much in the following paragraphs, but I will mention that this series is more about the journey of love, versus seeing dates and the like. So temper your expectations if you are somehow the target group and have not yet made time for this bad boy.
Is it so hard for musical anime to make the music actually the best part of their series? I swear, so many shows I watch, the music hits a bare minimum of quality or builds up to the grand performance, and it’s……just fine? I did like the music in the first part of the series, and the journey of showing the difference between someone’s experience and not. It’s a lot of fun to see the rough edges, and I always like seeing that in stories like this. It’s just a shame that the actual performance that crescendos the emotional backstory that is weighing down our young man to overcome his demons….is just alright. The guitar itself is not very distinctive, the animation is a lot of CGI or still shots, and the lyrics are solid if a little on the nose. It’s just not to the point of being excellent. The ideas are there, but not the overall production of it all. Music being such a huge part of the series, I feel, it is necessary for this moment to be like the biggest payoff, and it just isn’t, sadly. It’s right at the point of being a little above average.
The romance is also sort of neither here nor there in terms of quality. Like, I enjoy their friendship and teacher/student relationship to music. And the bleed-in of their budding relationship, creating bonds in the band as well. This series has some fun dialogue and witty moments, and believable friendships. What it doesn’t really have is excellent romantic chemistry. The characters just don’t have that spark and are missing that aspect, just like the delivery of the big music moment, which stops the show from hitting a higher note of excellence. Given is a series that has a framework in place to be an all-time great in the boys’ love genre and music genre, but it doesn’t find a way to lift the most important notes that create its overall symphony. I like Given, it’s enjoyable, but I felt a little let down by both the love and music, and I love music and love, so you know how that goes. It’s an acceptable series in the medium, but ultimately, I find it missing something special. It won’t lead the charge, but it will be a filler band before the closing act comes out to crush it.
Tim: Current Tournament Score: 8.0(Dorohedoro)
Heike Monogatari
Tim always finds a way to pick series that aren’t getting enough love and see if he can get a few bites on them. His excellence at giving hidden gems a chance to shine is not to be underestimated either. I think he genuinely puts a lot of thought into his choices, so he was one of the people going into this round, I was most curious to see what he would share with me. Heike Monogatari is a very artsy series that is far more muted than standard anime. It’s not loud, it’s not showy, it’s subdued, and very much about smaller moments. This is a very Tim pick. This series is also another in a round that happens to be historic. It’s based on the story that the series shares its name with. It’s a very long epic with lots of content, and for those who aren’t brushed up on their Japanese history will probably be mostly new content for them. I just happen to be one of those people, so I knew basically nothing of the historical events that took place, the people involved, or the outcomes that were to come. Even with a young girl who could see the future of others, I was as blind as her eyes when she would cover it in fear of the scary possibilities to come.
Considering I knew nothing going into this, I was indeed a little lost at times! This series doesn’t really relegate a lot of extra time to spoon-feed you information. Yes, there is plenty of discussion that takes place to keep you up to date, but if you are like me and can’t keep all the names straight without a face, you will probably be perplexed more often than not. I really couldn’t keep up with most of the worldly politics or what was happening, so I had very little emotional investment in most of it. I wasn’t like…ohh yes that is awesome, or that is fucking horrible! I was like…okay? I guess that will make more sense when I see someone I know directly involved. This is sort of an issue with adapting a story like this. It’s so content-heavy and culture-associated that not having an in beforehand makes a lot of homework during the watch, and I couldn’t be bothered to take time to stop episodes to read up on things, or use the in-between time to educate myself. I wanted the series to get me in, and it just didn’t. What I did understand was the fateful demise of her adopted family, and her future sight being worth jack shit. It almost functionally existed in this adaptation to just make the audience be on edge more for eventual deaths to happen. I wasn’t a really big fan of that since it felt cheap, and it never really aided in anything outside of creating that cheap tension with the occasional vision. If there was some impact to messing with outcomes, or more often usages of the ability, then maybe I would have liked it more, but the way the writer decided to incorporate it into a very historical plot just didn’t work for me.
While I didn’t really care for the series in terms of story or characters or just general framework, I did like the artistic parts. This series has a ton of really neat shots, and the overall art style is really unique and the highlight of the series, bar none. Similar to Mononoke, the visual flair and the way it adds to even the most simple scenes is really the most powerful element of Heike hands down. I know it’s funny to say this, but most anime do a very poor or lazy job with actually using the medium to its full effect. You know how it’s a series that is being watched because it is animated, but they don’t actually use that fact to showcase what makes anime special? Series like Heike Monogatari, in fact, do use their visual canvas to the best, and despite not being the biggest critic when it comes to animation quality or requiring sakuga, I do care about creative expression and making use of the medium as much as creators can. This is something you only notice more when you watch series with super fantastic direction, lighting, shot composition, visual motifs, etc. It’s one of the reasons that no matter how much you like or dislike certain successful series, you can’t watch some of them and not at least tip your cap to them using the visual parts more robustly. So yeah…..uh thanks for doing something that should be a constant competition but is instead a rare golden SSS trait that would even make Lvl 2 Cheat jealous….or at least Caps.
Final Scores(Current Rd + Rd 1)
Madao: 6.0 + 6.5 = 12.5
Velacroix: 7.5 + 6.5 = 14.0 ~TIEBREAKER
Tim: 8.0 + 6.0 = 14.0 ~TIEBREAKER
Tiebreaker #3 Results
Velacroix Submits: Re:zero
Tim Submits: Sonny Boy
Well, that was the tightest match we’ve had in general. First, the two of these gents tied, then it took not 1 episode but 3 for both for me to make a final choice here. The first episode was entertaining and a little mysterious for both series, and I couldn’t really decide which I liked more. Re:zero had some comedy and charm to it, even though you can easily see where the whole thing would start working towards with the Groundhog Day repeating. Sonny Boy, on the other hand, didn’t have the same amount of charm, but the general mystery and world-building was so alluring I couldn’t not see any appeal there. As I went into a few more episodes, Re:Zero lost a little steam with the timeline resets, and big questions not being asked by Subaru that he should have. It made for small frustrations and acts of patience that I had to embark on, and obviously, I wasn’t getting any true clarity this early on. Sonny Boy didn’t answer literally any of my big questions either, but you know, the way it started building off the initial premise and using those ideas to get the cast more involved became rather interesting, and I just thought its next two episodes were just as consistent as the pilot versus Re:zero being slightly weaker in episode 2/3. So, by the finest of margins, Sonny Boy takes the win, and Tim moves on, but don’t count Velacroix out just yet, everyone!
~WINNER OF TIEBREAKER: Tim
Match 6
Starless vs Shimizu vs Zangril
Starless: Current Tournament Score: 6.5(Princess Jellyfish)
Id: Invaded
MURDER. MYSTERY. MYUDAH MYSTARRY! Anime does love killing people, and it does love having genius detectives solve those killings. In comes Id: Invaded, a futuristic take on detective work. Certainly that won’t go wrong….right!? This show follows a brilliant detective, self-proclaimed at that, and his mystery-cracking inside the ID. If you aren’t a psychology major or someone who has taken at least high school psych, you will have no idea what that is, but no fears, the anime tells you all about it anyway. It’s basically your subconscious desires you want to hide from the world, so of course, the darkest and most messed-up things reside there. In this series, they use the ID of a victim to try to find and locate some connection to a killer. In this series, every killer that is showcased is also a serial killer, because serial killers are as common in Japan as school-aged thugs who jump young women to assault them. Basically, they live in every town, and it’s not that big of a deal, just take it as it is. The overall setup is pretty unique, and as someone who has taken sociology, criminology, and psych classes, and also studied law growing up, many of these ideas directly appeal to my interests. Mix that with a creative new approach to the murder mystery genre, and you’ve got my attention.
That’s why I am saddened to confirm to all who read this that they botch it. Like a bad circumcision, you call the doctor a master of mutilation afterwards. This series has this really neat idea, and a complex “hero” to go with it, but man, they suck at writing mysteries. The amount of random ass pulls or crazy associations they are able to make based on the information given is just crazy to me. The mystery isn’t even fun to watch unfold when they can somehow see the reflection of a table in someone’s eye and pinpoint that exact table to a building 2 blocks away. All of this in the blink of an eye. I get that they have a full team of analysts on hand, but environmental information does not give you this much power or knowledge. It’s too coincidental and too perfect, and the way the detectives solve most of their toughest challenges with conjectures that have no realistic basis to go on, it just frustrates me. It leans hard into the rule of cool logic more than proper detective work. There is no cerebral approach to finding the missing thread that leads them to the answer. They just figure out things based on things no detective or officer would ever consider. It feels lazy to me, and I just found myself very tired of it. It’s like those anime with gambling like Kaiji or NGNL, where they can’t actually lose because the anime wouldn’t work without them, so instead you have to watch them win in scenarios that wouldn’t be possible unless you are Yugi Mutoh levels of lucky. These detectives just wing it, and it works so well that I’m personally offended.
You know what grinds my gears even more, though? Even more than the silly code names for the killers? Even more than the legality, they shove aside to do whatever they want in people’s minds to solve crime? The absolute stupidity of the reasoning behind the main antagonist of the entire series. I won’t spoil who or what his reasons were, but I can assure you that it makes zero sense. Nor does his plan at the end, since you know, a machine can’t work on your unconscious or subconscious if you are literally brain dead. But sure, let’s ignore that, the crazy sci-fi girl, and all the nonsensical deductions along the way. It’s okay, I’m not mad, you are….Never mind, I am a little mad. Sometimes I wish anime would make more of an effort to actually write something with complete competence and complexity rather than just throwing stuff at a wall with twists galore and acting like it is brilliant. It’s just not guys, and it makes what could have been a genre-bending creative milestone into just another series that couldn’t rise to the challenge. Similar to a magic 8 ball, this anime will tell you something only so useful, and then in the end, you will just want to shake it one more time, just to tell it to try again later.
Shimizu: Current Tournament Score: 8.5(Link Click)
Shoushimin Series S1
For whatever reason, I thought this was just a slice of life or romance series; I had no inclination to believe it was a mystery series first and foremost. Unlike Id: Invaded, which went grandiose with the biggest type of mystery you could ask for, Shoushimin is more focused on the mundane. The whodunnit/howdunnit on simple things like a love letter, or the production of hot cocoa with limited tools used. We follow two youngins who want to be separated from their middle school days. We aren’t sure why, or for what reason, but they desire to move on and be “normal” kids now. Yet, despite all of that, they keep getting roped into helping people solve all sorts of conundrums, and all sorts of non-standard things keep finding a way to impact their day-to-day. Can they truly be “normal” if all these mysteries keep happening!? It’s very much what you would expect from the immaturity of youth and their rejection of their existence. Instead of just leaning into who they are at nature, they must find a way to be a contrarian against it and see if they can defy the odds. As you can imagine, that doesn’t really work out, and instead, we get a lot of small narrative stories that eventually all tie into one big one at the end of the season.
I think I liked this series the most during the first 2/3rds. While yes, the mysteries were fairly rudimentary, and when I was given all the information possible to make a deduction, I was able to solve several of them before the eventual reveal, I did still enjoy the solving process. This series takes a lot of screentime to talk out the solution to the deduction. The exact opposite of Id, where it just jumped from point A to point F without a logical bridge to connect those ideas. Shoushimin always takes the time to make it very clear how and why something would be possible, and it also presents several alternative possibilities to rule out as many things as they can. This is how someone actually solves a mystery, and it kind of made me amused watching this directly after Id, considering these kids felt like better detectives than professionals with super tech. It makes a massive difference when you actually write something in a way that logically gives the audience a reason to believe the conclusion or theory presented, and it gives them time to draw their own hypothesis as well. It’s delightfully simple but effective, and I think that’s the way to go about writing this type of genre personally. I like the fair shot to solve it myself, but also still finding ways to subvert my expectations with clever writing and reveals. It’s a good mixture that works quite well.
I don’t think all the mini mysteries are equal in quality, but they were interesting enough for the majority of the episodes. What I didn’t care for was the last big storyline. That tanked the overall impressions of this show a good deal for me. Not only was it largely more dramatic, but the way the fallout plays made me genuinely annoyed. It felt so emotionally mean and purposefully manipulative. I assume that is the point, but it truly colored the way I viewed the main girl throughout the entire series. I already didn’t especially care for her due to her nonchalant, apathetic nature and sole reliance on being a walking joke who lives for sweets. But this cruel aspect they added to her just made me completely wish the worst for her, but she doesn’t really get anything but what she wants in the end. This was K-drama levels of bitchdom, and despite me not especially caring about the main gent as well, due to his very plain one-note personality as a detective solver, I felt bad for him! It’s hard to resolve my feelings for this series after being left with that bomb, and then a new storyline just starts, and the season ends in the middle of it. How do I reconcile those emotions? Will I ever recover? What if I need therapy after this? WHO DO I TALK TO!? SEAN MAGUIRE ISN’T IN MY LIFE TO LEAD ME FROM BEING ASTRAY!
Zangril: Current Tournament Score: 7.0(Acca 13)
Nobunaga Concerto
We’ve made it, ladies and gents, the 3rd historical anime of the second round! It’s funny how many of these I got in all honesty. This time, I was more than familiar with the main person being focused on. Well, I would have been, but we don’t really follow the real Nobunaga, but a young man from Japan who gets randomly teleported to ancient history and happens to cross paths with the famous warlord. This is slightly before his greatest conquests, so the sickly, soon-to-be great Nobunaga asks his body double to take up his mantle while he recovers from his illness. It’s an odd setup, and meant to be comedic in nature. This random kid, who is a terrible student, knows almost no history, and has zero decorum, takes up the role of one of the most prolific people in all of Japanese history. And to no one’s surprise, anime viewers, that is, he is uber successful despite his odd methods. He succeeds in making history progress mostly normally, makes Nobunaga’s wife feel super love, and is a friend to the lowly poor people of society. He is a better Nobunaga than the real deal, and this is his concerto!
I wish I liked this more than I do. It seems most people bet on me liking this a great deal, but I didn’t especially like anything about it in particular. It has a very dry sense of humor, and most of the delivery of those jokes just didn’t land with me. I can count on one hand the number of times I got a genuine laugh out of this series. This also shares a notable issue with Heike, in that I don’t know the actual historical timeline of the major events, so all these people and big things happening meant nothing to me, thanks to the breakneck pace of the narrative. Which unsurprisingly is also unfinished, so it’s a lot of meaty moments with little context, and you don’t even really get a stopping point that feels complete in nature. I’m not really sure who this anime is for, but I found it immensely dull for most of the runtime. I almost fell asleep a few times, and that is pretty rare for me, so I knew the show was doing something wrong for my entertainment value. I think the very offbeat nature of the protagonist and humor just didn’t aid the writing all that much. It never really found a flow, and it made the majority of the narrative feel very plain. I don’t know, it’s hard to fully describe, but I couldn’t seem to care about anything being shown to me, and it wasn’t amusing either, so I just was flat out bored most of the time. That’s 3 historical shows in a row I found lackluster, which isn’t boding well for my proclamation for enjoying the genre, but I swear I do!
What else is there to say here….? Ah yes! Let’s talk about the other two elephants in the room. The middling quality of CGI animation, and the complete lack of explanation of the teleporting to the past mechanic of the story. The show looks….kinda bad. I don’t hate CGI like most folks do, and I’ve actually warmed up to it in recent years thanks to stuff like Beastars and Houseki no Kuni. That being said, this series is definitely a prime example of the awkward years of CGI, and it shows how they hadn’t figured out the stiffness of body motion and facial expression. It makes a lot of things that happen in the series either look really poorly animated, or you get these vacant expressions that aren’t able to fully show the nuance of the person’s emotions. It’s not bottom-of-the-barrel quality, but it certainly is a problem for the overall experience. Now, the even bigger issue is the lack of questioning or exploration into the pivotal teleportation aspect of the story. The main character is one of 3 confirmed people to be hoisted from their timeline into the past, and everyone who has been taken like this just rolls with the punches and lives going forward with this as their new reality. Now I understand, they have zero ways of exactly explaining how this happened to them or why, but they could at least take the time to make a conjecture or something. It causes a story that has the potential to use the alternate history concept in unique ways, and instead, it just follows the flow of history, basically beat for beat, but with the anime twists in the background unbeknownst to the normal person. Feels kind of lame if you ask me, but maybe that is a me thing only? Nah, can’t be, just like Heisenberg, I’ve never made a decision that will surely lead to regret down the road.
Final Scores(Current Rd + Rd 1)
Starless: 4.0 + 6.5 = 12.5
Shimizu: 6.0 + 8.5 = 14.5 ~WINNER
Zangirl: 4.0 + 7.0 = 11.0
Match 7
Eviathan vs Notsocoolio vs Go_Bananas
Eviathan: Current Tournament Score: 5.5(AKB0048)
Gakuen Babysitters
Adorable…simply adorable. I’ve talked over the years with my partner that while I appreciate babies enough, I always found kids more cute once they start to really develop into proper human beings instead of morphous blobs of mushy flesh. Gakuen Babysitters follows a young kid who has taken the task of being the babysitter for a group of kids at his school/dorm. The idea is that he will be given free room and board if he does this. Why take this deal? He and his brother recently lost their own parents, and this is a chance to have security with their living situations. Mix that with the older brother having taken up the role of a surrogate parent for his little brother, and this is a natural extension to his daily life as it is. So, this series shows how he balances his school life, his babysitting life, and his family life. It’s all the same, really, for him, but it’s not really something the media covers in depth very often. Children are often seen as the forgotten characters in stories because of their lack of life experience or complex thoughts, but I think that is a grave mistake and a missed opportunity. This is the essential developmental phase of nurturing that many of us look back on as our very first memories. They are precious and important…kinda like the kids themselves!
This series is heartwarming, simply put. It’s really about family, caring about others, and seeing the world through the lens of a child. Every single kid is given as much equal importance to the main character and his classmates, who gradually become more crucial. In a way, they are the true main characters of the series. The plot and most of the events circle around their emotional well-being and how they deal with obstacles in front of them. Many times, they are very small things, but to them, they are huge, which, given the context, makes a whole lotta sense. This is the type of anime that makes the micro feel macro. It’s a big world for a small little one. I would say overall, it is one of the best anime in terms of realism to the children’s behavior and intelligence. Many anime far exceed the extremes when putting kids in. Either they are dumb as bricks or super bot hackers; there is no in between, so seeing depictions of child behavior genuinely was refreshing and enjoyable. I love kids personally, so it was nice to see a series focused on the relationship between children and their caretakers and why it is so very important to have a place of kindness and care for them. This anime might not tell the most bombastic storylines, but it doesn’t need to for it to be emotionally investing and satisfying. It’s that same feeling you get from series like Sweetness and Lightning or Usagi Drop’s anime. It’s precious and feels like a tight hug to the heart with how much love is on display.
I don’t have a lot of criticism if I am being honest. What I wanted was a cute slice of life about kids being treated nicely, and that is what I got. There were even a few moments of strong dramatic motivation and remembrance that pushed the general vibe through the roof ever so slightly. It’s a good series with a warm palette and authentic compassion throughout. I’m a simple guy at the end of the day. With all of my hard-to-please paragraphs I throw out during these massive projects, I just want to feel happy and be reminded that the world has something I can hold onto for that. Gakuen Babysitters might not reinvent the wheel, but it makes it very pleasing to watch, and sometimes that’s all I need to have a nice time. A little more depth and a little fewer tropes in certain parts would have been for the better, but in general, this is a very cheerful series that brings joy to my little heart. I’d gladly toss this in my list of series that don’t need a follow-up, but I would be first in line to watch more if they did. They’ve hit the beats they need to, but I wouldn’t say no to more if given the chance. Who would deny themselves the opportunity to just feel good for a little while? I guess Maga supporters, but they reap what they sow, as they say.
Notsocoolio: Current Tournament Score: 6.0(Now and Then, Here and There)
Midori Days
Everybody, give a hand to……the guy missing his hand! Midori Days is a classic anime, alright. It has a really odd premise and simple character personalities, and that is all it needs to get the ball rolling. We’ve got a delinquent boy, who is known for his demon right hand, that he beats the hell outta people all the time. Then we’ve got girl A, who sees boy A go to school and loves him…because reasons. Suddenly, one day, he wakes up, and his demonic force of a weapon has been replaced by this longing waifu to be. Now, the two have never properly ever talked before this; this is their first real chance to get to know one another, and that is just what happens. This is the sort of thing that feels like it would be an isekai title these days, but nah, in the mid 2000s, this was all about what ifs. There isn’t a real reason established for this connection between the two, nor do they ever explain why she becomes his right hand specifically. You are meant to just roll with it and see how this unlikely duo becomes a budding romantic couple over the course of the series. Sometimes writers don’t want to spend all that time with likely ways for people to meet and grow closer. You gotta force them together in something they can’t avoid or predict, and BOOM ROMANCE IS BORN!
This series kind of blows sweaty chunks. I guess there are people who see this as a prime example of love in the industry, but I am not one of those people. These two have nothing in common, zero chemistry, and that’s ignoring all the other problematic writing issues. First off, let’s just talk about the distasteful nudity used in the first people episodes. It’s entirely off-putting and inappropriate, but it’s merely there to make fanservice exist for the audience, even if it’s at the expense of the main heroine. Then we have the bigger and prolonged issue that lasts the entire series. This show is clearly written by a man for men. The main girl loves the main guy for no reason at all, admires him even more despite his abrasive personality, porn addiction, and complete lack of care about her. He openly flirts with other women, treats her like a nuisance, and doesn’t even really apologize for seeing her naked on multiple occasions. She is still a toxically jealous girl who loves him to the moon and back, and just because he is marginally better than the filth of the world, he is a top-tier man. It just blows my mind how obvious this setup is. Make men who watch this feel seen. No matter their flaws or issues, there will be a perfect waifu who will love them unconditionally until they feel the same about you. It’s unbelievably fake and lazy and isn’t at all how organic relationships evolve into romance. The only other female character in the series also loves him despite all his shitty faults, just because he saves her from rapists, who were there to beat him up, mind you, one time. It’s an easy misdirection to glorify the main guy in a story when you compare him to awful petty criminals. This is not how love or flawed but relatable main characters are born. This is how delusion is spread, and I won’t support it. I already live in the bible belt for goodness sake!
I guess the other aspect I want to talk about is how poorly done the main girl’s storyline is dealt with. They try to bring her home right away to explain the situation since her main body is in a coma, while she resides with the main guy. Instead, they make a weird nudity scene, and he is banished from ever being able to see her again. So does she come from a restrictive or abusive home? Not even a little. She is just lonely and wants some sweet cock, and since she is so longing, she refuses her life and somehow magically becomes his hand. Her mother adores her, her friends and servants adore her, and her life is peaceful and cozy. I don’t get why on earth she doesn’t want to be there and why being the right hand of a schmuck is her wet dream realized. It doesn’t make sense even a little, and her waking up is an obvious coming to terms with going back to her normal life. It’s very underwhelming, and it makes the whole concept feel like an afterthought just to make the romance between two people who would never fall in love happen. This show is weak sauce. Like whataburger weak. Give me the good stuff, guys. I want a damn juicy burger of an experience, not this overpriced slop! If I wanted that, I would go to a ball game or the airport!
GoBananas: Current Tournament Score: 6.0(Space Patrol Luluco)
Fuujin Monogatari
WIND TUNNEL! I wonder if Miroku was a wind user? Fuugen Monogatari follows the adventures of a few girls who discover the world of airbenders. This is in a time before the fire nation attacked, so you have everything from old folk to cats who take advantage of these sweet wind veins. It’s a series I thought would be very focused on something bigger, with how the first episode set up the mystery behind it all, but it actually ended up being a very episodic series that always uses wind as some sort of accompaniment to the main episode’s story. A lot more mundane and down to earth than I was expecting, but I wouldn’t call that a complaint, really. The overall anime feels like more of a coming-of-age narrative that uses wind as a vehicle to tell the stories it wants. It’s certainly different than anything else on the market because of that. There is also a funky art style that supports the director’s former stylistic choices to further separate it from the pack. I was a little shocked by how many of my friends have actually seen this, too. I’m not sure if it’s the famous name behind the work, or if it became trending because of something else in recent years, but I wouldn’t peg something so anti-marketable as a series that many people personally sought out to watch without something else provoking that. Maybe one of you can enlighten me to that, because I am rather curious what made something that seems like it would be more obscure than it actually is.
So there series itself! It was alright! I didn’t outright love it or anything, but it was at least entertaining. Not every episode is as engrossing as the next, but this series is definitely one that shines with the artistic expression on display. I like the impassioned audio/visual design even if it’s not like my favorite style or anything. I don’t know how to say this, but even if shows like this and Kaiba aren’t exactly speaking to me, I respect that they are made this way. I want more individual works with the artist’s imprint stamped on them. It’s something I find more memorable in itself than a lot of other things. This series will never be forgotten to me with the way its characters are shaped or move. They are almost ugly but also almost real too. Just like our world in a way. It’s a mixture of beauty and ugliness into a fervid melting pot. I feel like there aren’t many anime that exist that really have the DNA of the directive team behind it in every frame, but for Fuugen, it is very apparent where it does.
For the cast and stories themselves, I thought the anime was just alright. Most of them don’t have a last impact or a huge sweeping moment. I think the series is possibly a little too understated with its approach. It ended up being a detriment because most of the moments of the series just don’t stand out enough. The very muted personalities and straightforward/simple storylines didn’t provide much intrigue or emotional payoff for me. They aren’t bad by any means, and I would say for the most part, they are competent if anything else. That isn’t really enough for me to really laud the product as a whole, though. An anime not being average as can be doesn’t equal prime quality or experience. I would have loved more exploration into the wind people, their histories, or even the connection between them and cats specifically. There are lots of subtle hints on the impact that wind has had on these people and creatures, but instead, we just see the everyday relationship things share with it already in our world. I guess this anime exists to showcase how multifaceted and metaphorical wind can be to our lives, and I can appreciate that enough, but wouldn’t say it is something that speaks to me directly. If you are going to present a possibility of something new to me, that’s what I want to see, otherwise it’s just a writer exploring a topic in a mostly basic way with a cool art style poured on top of it all. Kinda like when you have frozen pancakes with real maple syrup. There’s some tasty value there, but I want freshly made pancakes
Final Scores(Current Rd + Rd 1)
Eviathan: 7.0 + 5.5 = 12.5 ~WINNER
Notsocoolio: 3.0 + 6.0 = 9.0
Go_Bananas: 6.0 + 6.0 = 12.0
Match 8
Dxrksxul vs Shauna vs CAPS!
Dxrksxul: Current Tournament Score: 6.0(Moriarty the Patriot)
Bocchi the Rock!
Every time I have a challenge, there are anime I’ve been particularly curious about thanks to their overall fan reception, and Bocchi definitely leads the pack for this round in that regard. I remember the anime world exploding in a frenzy when Bocchi released. The mixture of the untraditional expressiveness in the animation and the “this is so me frfr” dominated the conversation for weeks on end. In the past decade, I can think of only a handful of anime that caused such a stir among the general masses of the medium. It’s a rare sight to see, so of course, my curiosity is there in droves as well. Is this anime as uniquely presented as people claim? Will I feel like I am Bocchi!? IS THIS WHAT SAVED ANIME!? MOVE OVER, TRIGGER. IT IS TIME TO KNEEL TO YOUR PINK-HAIRED OVERLORD! Or at least something along those lines is where my mind was going into Bocchi the Rock. I don’t get the chance very often to see if I agree with most folk or have once again disappointed them as they start to sharpen their pitchforks with every new word their eyes fall upon. It’s a fun tightrope to walk, and well, as I always say, let’s hope for a good old-fashioned time!
So…..where to begin? I did like the expressive humor! Bocchi herself is pretty funny with her audio reactions and breaking of normal conventions with her transformations. This anime gets a lot of mileage out of coming up with new ways to display Bocchi in all her anxiety. It definitely plays up the joke to 11 most of the time, too. If you are wanting a down-to-earth exploration of anxiety, this ain’t it. They throw out the nuance between mental disabilities and introverts vs. extroverts, and make clear lines in the sand for them all. This isn’t true to reality at all, but neither is someone becoming completely 2D when they are unable to react to something how they wanted to. You roll with the over-the-top presentation, and either love it or you don’t. That’s just a style thing, and I can respect it. It’s an anime, for goodness sake, it doesn’t have to be a true 1-to-1 depiction of those things. You can certainly critique it a little more if you relate and feel like it misinforms people, but I think it’s more meant as a launch pad to let those who relate feel seen and laugh a lot. It’s simple and effective, and becomes the most running gag of the entire series. How can Bocchi cope with outside life when she has accepted that it is so scary for a person like her!? So, to be expected, this anime is a trove of comedy moments, and not all land the same, but in general, the quality is consistent and enjoyable. I laughed more with this series than most in this round, so that either says something about the comedy writing here, or how poor the rest were! I will let Caps decide, he is my boss when it comes to funny things.
Where Bocchi falters a little is the actual character writing and music department. Yet again, we get lackluster musical performances that don’t really make use of memorable scenes or animation to make the performance truly blow you away. You know, stuff like the God Knows in Haruhi or the Jazz Medley jam in Kids on the Slope? I want the performance that defines the episode or season to be an all-timer and just be something special. That isn’t the case here, and it just falls in the line of being acceptable but forgettable at the end of the day. The girls themselves, too, are all fairly one-note caricatures for the most part. They do have some slightly small aspects to define them a little more, but in general, I felt the girls usually relied on one type of behavior or reaction for the majority of all scenes they shared on screen and while most of that time that isn’t that big of a deal, it does make the series sort of blend together from episode to episode. I think they lack personality to the degree that makes the series truly feel excellent. The comedy is pretty good here for me, but these girls become very obvious in design as you go on. Bocchi will freak out with a visual gag, Ryo will make a one-liner sarcastic joke, Nijika will be the straight but friendly man to their humor, and Kita is there to be the polar opposite of Bocchi in all things. They don’t do much else outside this, and it made the show lose a little steam for me as we eventually hit that generalized musical band performance we get at the end of the series. I guess to sum it up, comedy good, girls indifferent, animation fun, music needs more bam bam shoobydoobop.
Shauna: Current Tournament Score: 6.0(Bloom into You)
New Game!
Cute girls doing things is the bane of man’s existence. No one single person in our history has ever enjoyed them. We equally raise our crystal goblets and bite our thumbs at their very attempt at being meaningful or likable. Glory to us and our hate for the tarnished ones! I wonder if that is what people think I do as I watch series like this? Many users pegged this as instant hate, with a side of broken monitors. You know how I am, if it’s attempting to be cute, and it’s an anime girl, then I must bring fury upon it and shout WITNESS ME! New Game follows a new recruit into the gaming industry as she works for the company that inspired her to get into design in the first place. As luck would have it, not only does she get this perfect job, she also gets to work under the very artist that has always been her all-time favorite. It might be a stressful new world, but she is ready to show her gumption and make the best damn video game possible with her colleagues! This definitely falls into a genre of anime that has existed for around 10 years now. Pick a topic, and build a cast of varied personality types, make them all have distinct cute designs, and let the girls mingling carry the rest of the load. Do it yourself definitely fell into that same area of thought, and New Game is one of the bigger pioneers of helping legitimize the interest of this subgenre. The lovely Shauna shared this with me, and historically, we have horrendous crossover in tastes, but she did an alright job in round 1, so maybe all of that was a fluke beforehand. I mean, Thom and I are having our bromance arc, maybe me and Shauna are having our poutine and an anime smile arc as well!
I guess we can have a rain check on the poutine and Simon being too handsome for both of us, Shauna. I did, in fact, not enjoy this series very much. It’s mostly harmless fun, but the thing is, it’s keying in on a type of anime I just usually don’t get a lot of mileage out of. Where I complained a little about DIY skipping parts of the building process, this show barely shows off game design at all. We get the mildest look into the art side of things, but nothing substantial, and I feel it glosses over a ton of stuff in favor of just making a mini narrative arc for the main character. I’m growing a little tired of watching anime that use a title and marketing to seem like they are about a topic that is interesting and never properly explored in anime. You know how stuff like Shirobako exists? Man, it is a freaking anomaly or something, because almost everything else just uses the idea to sell the product with a bunch of waifu. It ends up being more hanging out and chatting about the desire to do a good job rather than making the best at teaching the audience about an industry in an informative but still entertaining way. I weep, I sob, I sorrow. It’s just a shame because you always have a foot in the door, but then it’s so basic and surface-level that you can tell no research went into making a story using this topic. They just use the topic because it is trendy and want to make it as marketable as possible with the cute gals plastered everywhere. This is probably why all the girls also don’t dress like business adults working on a serious entertainment product, but different variations of men’s preferred outfits on women.
Which leads me to one of my other huge critiques of this series. We’ve been graced with another show that has a fair amount of tasteless fan service. Ass shots, boob bounces, pantless girls, bathing scenes, you name it, it’s here. They aren’t like super ecchi style, but it’s deliberate and takes away from any semblance of respect the director is trying to convey with the audience and their work ethic. We just need a cute loli dressed in a school outfit, a tomboy in tight clothes, a lolita who is flat, a quiet girl who is STACKED, a boss who is half naked all the time, a responsible yuri bait best friend of that same boss, and of course a director who hits all the hallmarks of flirty comments and librarian fantasies. This series is filled to the brim with stereotypes for men to have a favorite, and cute enough with the colors and girls for gals to just vibe with the whole aesthetic, regardless. It’s a girl’s anime made for men, which typically does well with both crowds because of this. This and the lazy, trite comedy and plain personalities of the main cast equal an anime that just misses the mark regularly for me. It’s a typical workplace comedy anime with no real passion for the topic or writing deeper characters. It’s a fluff piece, and those just don’t do it for me, ladies and gents. On a side note, the cat is the best character, and their game kinda looks like a mid-tier forgotten PS3 game like Time and Eternity. That means you all were right, so you can celebrate all you like, throw a fiesta or whatever it is you do when you are on the money about my opinions!
Caps: Current Tournament Score: 5.0(Shigomotherfuckingfumi)
Puppets Aka Thunderbolt Fantasy Aka Caps trying to not give me an anime aka it is funnier this way Aka at least it isn’t Lvl 2 Cheat or a Dinosaur Game from the 90s
I never imagined in all my years of watching anime for someone that they would manage to do something that no one else ever had. Caps has done it, though, as to be expected from a German. Their innovation knows no bounds, and then they uncompromisingly never falter or change from that point forward! Thunderbolt Fantasy is the sole “anime” experience in the industry that is a biography about a user on Kitsu, and would you believe it if I told you it was about Caps himself!?? It follows the younger years of Caps, a few years separated from his high school graduation. He was merely traveling a little before getting settled into his adult life, and figured it would be an enriching experience to see the world as much as possible. Little did he know that he would get caught up in something that would make Dateline impressed. As he went on his ventures, during one rainy day, he realized he didn’t bring any way to shield himself from the rain. He decided to take a nearby umbrella that was seemingly abandoned. To his surprise, shortly afterward, a con artist pops up and puts Caps in a very sticky bind. He has to agree to whatever this surprise man tells him to do, lest he be cursed by bad luck, and for those who don’t know, Caps is very superstitious. He accepts the deal and is told to aid the first person he comes across. I’m sure no one who have guessed the first random person he crossed paths with would be a girl who was escaping her kidnappers. She came from a wealthy family, and there is this devilish scheme of extortion and corruption that even got her brother slaughtered by these mobsters, and Caps somehow got caught up in the whole affair.
From that point, Caps goes back to the Con Artist to aid him. He can’t imagine all this scary black market and underworld stuff crossing his path being a good idea. He was merely traveling to enjoy the sights, for goodness sake! The Con Artist then proposes a crazy idea to try and save the girl from the mob, and end this once and for all. Bad luck strikes again, though, as they form this plan in discussion, the mob sees Caps and identifies him, and has now put him as enemy #1. This causes Caps to have to join the plan to his own disgust and fear. Then they form a team of other neantherthals to make this operation go smoothly. It’s like Oceans Elven, but you aren’t a criminal are forced to help someone who is just trying to return to their normal life. It’s a very classic setup when you present it plainly. Guy meets a stranger and is now their savior out of pure luck. In this case, though, what is largely unique is how Caps got the studio to make a fully animated puppetry production after they requested to adapt his story based on his short story thesis from his second year in college. They were nice enough to ask if he had any other requests, and as a joke, he said, I want the Butcher to direct it, and can you believe it…..THEY ACTUALLY GOT HIM! It’s a once-in-a-lifetime production and once-in-a-lifetime experience to have been made, and I, for one, was impressed at the lengths Caps went to make sure his fictionalized account of his life would get the most respect possible. I would say to, that was my favorite part of the whole thing too. Not only learning more about my dear friend and his younger years, but also getting to see such a detailed puppet production. As a fan of things like Dark Crystal, this is something I truly appreciate because of the amount of effort that goes into the whole thing.
Let’s talk about the story itself, as the Ooga Booga master himself likes to embellish when he regales people with his tales. It’s pretty solid overall. It ends up playing out like a traditional fantasy epic with twists and turns, and combat is a mixture between fantastical and martial arts. I would assume making it more mystical and magical was the Butcher’s idea, so I won’t hold that against Caps at all. I think the main cast of rogues are fine enough as characters, and the story is a little brisk in pacing, but it’s never dull at least. I don’t think I was enthralled with all of it, but stories like these tend to have a lot of travel time and meeting new people, so lots of time to expand personalities gets shoved to the side in favor of keeping the events as fresh as possible. It’s a double-edged sword if you ask me, because then the cast lacks a little flavor, despite having such strong personalities and designs. They just don’t get very complex backstories or personalities because they are meant to function to make plot points work effectively. Heck, the most dangerous person in the story and the final twist it brings alongside it, ends sort of anticlimatically. It’s a shame because I think the production and care for the story is there, but the actual content itself isn’t all that spectacular. Maybe it’s because this is a college student’s take on a small part of their lives, or maybe this series of events was just not expansive enough to tell such a grand tale. It’s a fun story with flashy action and cool design, but I don’t think it excels quite enough to be one of the most memorable things I’ve seen either. Very much like Caps to hype me up just to let me down. I will not be selling him any discount curtains now, that is for certain!
Final Scores(Current Rd + Rd 1)
Dxrksxul: 6.5 + 6.0 = 12.5~WINNER
Shauna: 4.5 + 6.0 = 10.5
Caps: 6.5 + 5.0 = 11.5
Results/Rankings into Round 3
- Futatsu : 15.5 points
- Shimizu: 14.5 points ~Round 1, Highest scorer
- Tim: 14.0 points
- Velacroix: 14.0 points ~Highest score Non-winner
- ThomVD: 14.0 points ~Sole Substitute Mini Tourney
- Goomb: 13.5 points
- Blank: 13.0 points
- Eviathan: 12.5 points
- DxrkSxul : 12.5 points
WRAP UP
Wooooh! That was a lot to write! I always feel like I retread a lot of stuff when writing like this, but it’s hard to constantly find new descriptors as well. Round 2 ended up having a higher base average score than round 1 when you look at it, but the highs and lows weren’t as extreme as well. I think that means it was a significantly better round despite not having as many big hits with me. There were a lot of very competitive matches here, too. I never would have imagined I would have to do 3 tiebreakers out of 8 matches total. Also, Velacroix is like the most exciting person we’ve had out of the 9 remaining so far. Both his matches were so close to call, and he won one and lost one of those 50/50 toss-ups. It’s only fair he gets a final shot to prove himself again. I really enjoyed this round overall, though, and was glad to finally get perspective on series like Bungo, some of the newer shonens, and Bocchi. It’s a shame the legendary final predicted at the start between Futatsu and Caps is no longer possible, though. He just wasn’t trying hard enough, I suppose. I love the guy, but apparently Futatsu truly knows my heart better than he does. Outside of that, we’ve got a nice mix of winners going on as well. Having good friends like Tim, Eviathan, and Thom is fun as well. Interested to see if people like Goomb, Blank, Shimizu, DxrkSxul, or Velacroix can prove their might over people who’ve known me for years or not. Either way, we are getting closer and closer to the end of the massive project, and I, for one, am excited to see what round 3 brings. I won’t post that announcement/ruleset post until at least 48 hours after this one, but it will be coming soon! And just like classic me, it will have some new rules and twists to shake up the formula more. Either way, thank you all for taking the time to read this big chunky post, taking part in it if you were a round 2 competitor, and for being a good sport with all my vile opinions on display. We might not agree all the time, but I appreciate you all tremendously and am thankful you support my projects like this with so much engagement. I couldn’t and wouldn’t do it without you all. Here’s to round 3, my little wanderers!