Short Takes

A post in which I chose to snark or not at the offerings this fall.

Railgun: Well, we had an episode of lesbian fixation, mixed with intro’s to various girls, followed by an episode of lesbian fixation mixed with LESBIAN FIXATION AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!!! followed by an episode of an invisible girl running around tasering girls and then drawing comical eyebrows on them. Oh, mixed with lesbian fixation. But at least it was someone else’s. There isn’t enough fanservice to support this much lesbonianism. But hey, the OP is electric. (Ow. I sprained my punnybone.)

Kampfer: Fails to stay abreast of Queen’s blade, either in fanservice or stupid. (The sprain gains complications.) But it tries on the stupid, it really does. Almost gets a point for smart-ass disemboweled stuffed animals. Almost gets another for the shy, repressed librarian girl turning into a foul-mouthed violent bitch. Almost gets yet another point for hawt school president. Loses all the points it doesn’t have because the protagonist (who changes from boy to girl) goes to a coed school where they separate the sexes with a tight security system. Toldja it was stupid.

Heaven’s Lost Propriety: No, it’s not a misspelling, it’s what must have happened for this piece of crap to have made it on TV. The protagonist is such a schlep that he runs around naked and invisible, groping girls, reading porn, and then killing everyone in the world. No, really, this is what happens when stupid people brave raining architecture to pick up discarded super-robots with all of Aya Hirano’s powers. I mean Haruhi’s. Before she trapped herself in an endless loop and killed all her fandom. Come to think of it, I’d rather watch 8 episodes of the same events in Melancholy than watch the second episode of this show. (It’s close, I admit. I mean, we don’t know what’s going to happen in HLP.)

Book of Bantorra: Bad CG, bad people, bad librarian, bad suicide bomber. Bad premise too.

Natsu no Arashi: Bad Americans! Always bombing Japan during WWII, every time Arashi & co. time-jump into the past to save civilians. Jun, you’re meant for better things.

Nyan Koi!: I don’t know what the hell a “mamba girl” is, but I don’t want one after seeing episode 2. My god, she was frightening. Am I expected to believe that such a reject would be allowed in school?

Not even in an American school! Well, most of them…

Sacred Blacksmith: Cursed director-smith. Cool-factor of magical sword-smithing and (finally) the mystery showing up is offset by the fact that the idiot in charge of this production has no fucking clue what pacing is. Episode 1. Start a desperate battle. Then flashback half a day to introduce the characters. Then end with a minute-long “OMG we’re going to die, so you hold off that beast” during which said holder spends the entire minute watching the Really Cool Spell instead of the beast. Then start episode two with THREE MINUTES of exposition during which nothing important happens in the battle, followed by FIVE more minutes of crappy fight animation and unexciting back and forth, followed by the monster being dispatched quickly at around the eight minute mark. Then cue the disintegrating breastplate–sans padding, lining, bra, tit-sling, or even paint. Also sans ecchi shot, since said blacksmith just happened to be in the viewer’s way. Gives a whole new meaning to “bustier.” When it’s sad that a show didn’t reach for the lowest common denominator, ala’ Queen’s Blade, you know it doesn’t have much going for it.

Asura’s Cryin’: And so am I, after two episodes of this crap. No one will tell Misao that she’s in danger of oblivion. The writers keep throwing in random mystery characters, random weird characters, and just plain randomness. This is definitely a series of rule by cool, never mind making any sense whatsoever. The last time I was this disappointed in an incoherent background, I was watching Simoun. At least Rahxephon gave the viewer something — a framework — to work with, even when it was really just making up stuff. Asura is just tossing random ingredients into the stew and raising it to a boil. Never mind what genre, background, concept, or food group it’s from. Mecha, time travel, harem, steampunk (more of a “mecha-punk” really), alternate realities, necromancy, science-fiction, magic, science-magic, school romance, horror, and don’t forget the vegetables.

Student Council Activities: This strictly B-grade effort doesn’t seek to achieve much, and yet it is the season’s best, so far. This is not a complement to the season.

11 Eyes: Second-rate animation and a plot that reeks of game adaptation. An odd protagonist that it seems hard to identify with, and stranger girls surrounding him. Seriously, Chaos; Head did it better. That show dropped the main character into the soup immediately, and in a way we could kind of see happening to ourselves. Then it kept the viewer on hooks, wondering what was real, and what was delusional. In that way, it was unpredictable; it didn’t telegraph its moves. But 11 Eyes is moving lethargically from one terribly unoriginal trope to the next. I might give it a third episode, but it’s iffy. (Bad sign that I spent half the paragraph complimenting a show it reminds me of.)

Downloading now: Kiddy Girl and Inuyasha Sigh. I could do worse. And probably will, this season.