Having a grand old time with the good, the wish-it-were-better, and the hilariously ugly.
Skip and Loafer
I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised by Skip and Loafer. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting it to be bad per se, but I wasn’t expecting much of anything else, either. After all, once you’ve seen a certain number of slice-of-life high school romance/drama anime set in modern-day Japan, you’ve sort of seen them all, simply because even with the best and biggest talent in the industry, there’s only so many directions you can possibly take. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this premiere – in fact, it’s probably been my favourite so far this season. That’s mostly down to Skip and Loafer’s excellent sense of comedic timing. It doesn’t just know how to tell a joke, it knows when to, and I can’t overstate the importance of that. So yeah, while this story might not be the most original, what it does, it does impressively well. Combined with a genuinely likeable cast thus far, some very solid voice acting, and a fresh, breezy-feeling art style, I’d say we’re off to a great start here.
Score: 8/10
Mahoutsukai no Yome (The Ancient Magus’ Bride) Season 2
Thinking back to the first season of this show, I’ve been in two minds about it for a while, and the same is true now that I’ve started on season 2. On the one hand, there’s plenty to like here, much of it seemingly tailor-made for me. The problem is that it all seems somehow incohesive. For example, I like the artwork, the music, at least some of the characters, and the general premise. When done well, dark fantasies/supernatural dramas are my jam, and Mahoutsukai strikes me as, overall, being a fairly high-quality series. However, I’ve never quite been able to shake the sense that a lot of these elements don’t work well with each other, or that the timing is in some way just a bit off for things to properly meld in a way that feels natural and consistent. This might be weird to say for an anime that, on paper, is so very me, but the individual pieces, as much as I’m inherently drawn to them, don’t really fit together as a unified whole. I’m sticking with it for now, but Mahoutsukai will need to strike a better balance if I’m going to commit to another 11 episodes of it.
Score: 6/10
April 07: Opus.COLORs
It’s been a long time since I’ve watched anything this unintentionally hilarious. To be clear, this show is bad. Not, you know, morally or anything, I mean it’s just plain awful from a technical standpoint. The “future” is that everyone is basically wearing Google Glass, but it’s also an idol anime minus the idols – by which I mean everyone’s an ‘artist’ instead, but bewilderingly, there are still intensely random musical bits here and there. Really terrible music bits. And then there’s also all the “as we all know, Bob” style of exposition, to the point where one of the guys quite literally brings out a panorama model of the school to explain its exact layout like he’s about to plot a damn siege of the place. Also, everyone’s a bishounen (other than someone’s mom in a backstory, the female characters are non-existent in this show) and you can practically cut the sexual tension with a paper knife. Objectively, I can’t in good conscience give Opus.COLORs anything but a pretty low score, but if you’re looking for a good time watching something bad, I can’t recommend it enough.
Score: 3/10
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I loved Skip to Loafer. I hadn’t expected much of it either, until I heard it’s being directed by Kotomi Deai (Rolling Girls, Natsume Yuujinchou – the later seasons?) at PA Works. PA Works certainly doesn’t guarantee that I like a show, but if it’s a source material with good reputation and a director I always wanted to see more of, I was going to get excited. I was worried, I’d be let down, but I wasn’t. I’m curious what they’ll make of the country side dynamic, too. The folks back home featured pretty prominently, and felt quite well drawn, too.
I was really into this epiosde of Mahoutsukai no Yome, but I do have a different problem. The 3D-CGI rotating and rushing camera could become a real problem if they do too much of it. It was just in the opening sequence this time, but it was bad enough for me to be slightly queasy for a while. I really want to watch this, but I mightn’t be able to. Or I might have to look away for certain scenes?
For a show called Opus.COLORs I really didn’t like the colours. They look so dull. Nothing here’s convincing. My bigger problem, though, is that I don’t like a single character. Our two mains are standoffish and pushy respectively, and the whole lot have character designs that make it hard to remember who is who. My biggest problem, though, is that I’m really not in the mood for a tiered class system. I doubt I’ll be back for more. (Interestingly, it reminds me of a show I moderately enjoyed – and it’s killing me that I can’t remember what show.)
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P.A.Works can be very hit-or-miss for me. I know they’re pretty much always competent at what they do, especially from a technical standpoint, but that doesn’t always translate into what I’d consider a good show storytelling-wise (last year’s Kongming and last season’s Buddy Daddies being great examples of that). But yeah, this one started out real strong, and I hope things stay that way.
No surprises there – I think I knew more or less what to expect of Opus.COLORs going in as far as budget and basic artwork/animation was concerned. The characters are, of course, basically just a bunch of cliches and stock types tossed together – the eager stubborn newbie with a lot of untapped raw potential, the dark and brooding one with TRAUMA, etc. etc. If it reminds me of any show in particular, it’d probably be Dance With Devils – not plot similarities, but same kind of “so bad it’s funny” vibes going on for me.
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I had lots of fun with Dance With Devils. They certainly did the musical numbers right. Also the character designs were distinctive. In Opus I can’t tell them apart if they don’t stand next to each other. There was this montage of people who are going to work together, and it was supposed to be a short introduction, but they all looked roughly the same to me (character-design-wise) – well, there’s two to three types, but really… The show I have in the back of my mind for comparison is far less memorable than Dance with Devils. When it comes to silly reverse harems, Dance With Devils is near the top for me, though definitely below he fab Kamigami no Asobi.
And, yeah, PA Works really isn’t a guarantee for good shows. I tend to say, PA Works is a studio I like much more than I like their shows on avarage. But when they succeed… The Eccentric Family is among my favourites.
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Yeah, both Dance With Devils and Kamigami no Asobi were amazing, top-tier great-bad watches right there.
I’d almost forgotten that Eccentric Family was a P.A.Works show. Definitely their best anime to date – nothing I’ve seen from that studio can probably top that for me.
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Yes! Skip and Loafer was surprisingly good! I watched it after reading another blogger’s recommendation and I’m so glad I did, it was nicely funny and really cute. Hopefully the quality will last for the whole season. One thing I noticed from Skip and Loafer is that the character design for Sousuke looked really familiar. Like I had definitely seen that character somewhere before in a different series. Then it hit me! He looks like a blond version of Hinata Asahi, from Clamp’s manga Suki: A like story. Same floofy messy hair, same laid back expression on their face. Considering that Clamp has some really great character designs, I thoroughly approve of the similarities!
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I was thinking a cross between Kimi ni Todoke and O Maidens in Your Savage Season for general art style, but honestly, that might just be because it’s one of those coming-of-age romances that we’ve seen plenty of before and I have a foggy memory of what those shows actually looked like, haha.
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