Weavile's Anime Reviews

The Future Diary

Synopsis

Yukiteru Amano (Yuki) is a loner who has never really interacted with people and prefers writing a diary on his cell phone with his only companion being an imaginary friend named Deus Ex Machina, the God of Time and Space. However, Yuki soon learns that Deus is not a figment of his imagination but real when Deus makes him a participant in a battle royale with eleven others. Within this "Diary Game", the contestants are given special diaries that can predict the future with each diary having unique features that gives them both advantages and disadvantages.

Review

I will come out and say this straight off the bat, I am a HUGE fan of this show's original manga. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to turn this review into an extended comparison of the story's two forms but it does colour my view of the show in certain ways that are inescapable. Firstly, I knew the story completely before hand and while there are differences in the two versions, they are largely cosmetic changes (such as extra fanservice or a change in scene layout). This means that any draw I might have received from a desire to know what is going to happen next was unavailable to me. Secondly, it is physically impossible for me not to make judgements on the show based on my prior knowledge and enjoyment of the manga. I can avoid it in writing and push myself towards objectivity but I can't simply forget that I already know the story in a different format.
In any case, Future Diary is a show I find very easy to enjoy. The main reason for this is the story is so damn entertaining! From the start, there is briskness in the narrative that washes you along at an exciting pace, the characters are stark, simple and interesting for the most part and everything seen and heard is geared towards being cool and fun. The main leads, Yuno and Yuki, are standard anime archetypes (the yandere and the whiny brat protagonist, respectively) but the show does a good job of developing them into characters worth caring about (at least by the end). In fact, the character development in this show is as well paced as its action and even a number of the minor characters get the development they deserve. Musically, the heavy faux-gothic rock of the OPs suits the tone of the show very well, capturing the show's bombastic and flamboyant narrative style with heavy drum line and lyrics filled with meaningless German and Latin. To be honest, if Future Diary knows what subtlety is, it certainly doesn't believe in it and that fact is both a positive and a negative. Everything that is great about loud, uninhibited storytelling is here for the taking. The violence is, for a lack of a better word, glorious; it is inventive, exciting and merrily gruesome for those who like that sort of thing. Nothing about Future Diary's set-piece events is small or unassuming. Do you want to see a school blown up? How about a hospital and a Tokyo landmark too? Is a house too dull a venue for a fight to the death? How about a house filled with poison gas and deadly booby traps? To Future Diary, to be boring seems to be the only sin and it consistently fails to commit it.
There is, of course, a problem with all this. The louder and crazier the proceedings get, the more and more the viewer is required to suspend disbelief to more and more ludicrous levels. If Future Diary has a core problem it is that, its plot cannot bear any degree of serious scrutiny. Anybody who has watched Death Note will understand this; the more a show ups the ante, the more it pushes itself to extremes for the sake of being cool, the more strain is put on a plot and the characterisation. It's a fact that the actions required to create the most awesome sequence of events possible will likely be counterintuitive to any even semi-sensible human beings and while Future Diary does not commit any unforgivable acts of narrative contrivance, it certainly shows the strain. It has been said by others that Future Diary does not make sense because of this but I firmly disagree. There are plot holes but none big enough to sink the story, it does not have the tightly woven masterpiece of a plot of a show like Monster but neither is it the mangled mess of a show like Another. There are other problems though. Obvious budgetary restraints become very apparent at points, there is some talking heads dialogue and some scenes have pieces of animation that would make South Park blush. Also, as well as they are characterised, Yuki can be annoyingly wimpy and whiny (before he grows up a bit) and Yuno can come across as psychotic to an alienating degree, making it hard to sympathise with her.
In the end, Future Diary does what it does and it does it well. It's not smart, it's not clever, but it gets the basic things like pacing and spectacle right and gives us a good show from that. It has flaws that are not easy to ignore, especially if you hate plot holes to an almost irrational level, but the show is irredeemably fun, exciting and satisfying. If you don't want to think too hard for a while then Future Diary might be just what you are looking for.
Even with all its flaws, I read the manga twice and still watched every episode of the show without a moment's hesitation. That has to count for something. Take away a star if you can't stand Yuki or Yuno and take away another if plot holes really bother you.
Recommended Audience: There is no doubt that this is for adults only. There is infrequent nudity, multiple cases of sexual assault and all this on top of frequent scenes of gore and violence ranging from the implied to the explicit. If that isn't enough, some might be disturbed at how morally ambiguous (or downright villainous) the show's protagonists can be.

- - - Post Merge - - -

Nagi no Asukara

Synopsis

After their school close down, four middle school kids are moved to another school nearby. They face a bit of a hard start of the school year, mostly because the four kids -- Chisaki Hiradaira, Kaname Isaki, Manaka Mukaido and Hikari Sakishima -- belong to a race of people who live under the sea, and the relationship between the sea dwellers and the land people aren't the best these days.

Review

It was the gorgeous scenery that initially drew me towards this show. I have an innate weakness towards scenery porn, and if there's one thing Nagi no Asukara delivers on, then this would definitely be it.

And almost immediately off the bat, the show very nearly sabotages the hell out of its premise. Our four main characters are a part of an undersea race. It actually took me a while to realize it, because the opening scene shows one of the main lead cooking breakfast and then bringing it into the family living room, where a TV can be seen playing the local news. The only clue that something was a bit out of the ordinary was the presence of a blue flame in a cage, which seems to double as a heat and light source. This didn't get any easier to digest once said main character headed outside to prepare for school, in which he runs outside to a fully functional city with schools of fish seemingly flying in the air.
Except it wasn't air. The kids are literally living in the nearby ocean, where they are able to breathe, talk and both run on the ground and swim through the water at will, part of that thanks to a special skin referred to as "ena". The "ena" is a gift from the sea god, long lost and now only represented by a character in the show, Uroko-sama. He's known as a scale from said sea god, whom controls the sacred fire (the aforementioned blue flame) and is a bit of a pervert and a layabout.
Said detachment of normalcy for land-dwellers and the somewhat chaotic sense of the opening episodes was thankfully easy enough to get used to, but mostly because they were replaced by another problem; the main characters, or at least what I assume is the main couple, Hikari and Manaka. Manaka is a relatively naive and innocent girl whose personality feels more manufactured to be adored than anything else, and a tool to drive the plot more than a character by herself. And Hikari is just a brat with some serious anger management problems, whose involvement in the love triangle does nothing to improve his mood. In fact, he's such a raging ******* during some of the opening episodes that his change of heart kind of feels unnatural and sort of scripted, but even beyond that, he's prone to attacking people based on his own absurdly biased (and often wrong) assumptions, and even beyond that, his scenes of shouting at the girls for just about anything aren't much fun to watch.
You could say that relationships are the core element in Nagi no Asukara. And not only the relationship between the characters themselves, but also the relationship between the people of the sea and the land dwellers, which, as I mentioned, isn't the best these days. This is mostly driven by a wall between the two races; the land dwellers does of course need equipment if they are to travel beneath the waves for any significant length of time, while sea people who spend too long on land are in danger of having their ena dry off and crumble. Because of this, relationships formed between land dwellers and the sea people are frowned upon, though mostly by the sea people, because children born between people of the sea and people of the land do not have ena, and therefor become a part of the people of the land.
One thing that's very nice about Nagi no Asukara is that it's a very complex show. Early on, a relationship between Hikari's sister Akari and a man from the land is cemented as undesired by the people of the sea. It might sound like an issue of racism at first, but the problem is that any relationship combination between sea and land people will lead to their children also being land dwellers, and the residents of Shioshishio faces the very real danger of depopulation. The problem with all this is that the solution; denying women the ability to choose, or to even talk with men living on land, is of course out of the question. There is more to this problem than that, but revealing it would be spoilerish, so I'll leave it to you whether you want to check it out for yourselves.

Nagi no Asukara is also in possession of one of the most complicated love maps I've ever seen in anything, even breathing down School Rumble's neck. Most of the characters are in love with someone else, and the whole thing doesn't just form a conga line as seen in shows like Waiting for Summer and Please Teacher; it actually spreads out like a fishing net, appropriately enough, and I'm not even going to try to make sense of it here.
The main problem I have with this show's exploits in the field of romance, however, is that it wants to drama it up as much as it can get away with, and then some more. The characters in the show seems mostly unwilling to actually sit down and talk until after at least one temper has flared or one of the people in the show has martyred themselves to kingdom come, and this happens every single time romance is brought up in any shape or form, even with the relationship I liked the best in the whole show; Akari's and that other guy's. Also, I recommend NOT making a drinking game out of the whole "you're running away" thing, because I don't think 911 will appreciate all the alcohol poisoning-related phone calls. I'm not saying Nagi no Asukara's exploits into the world of romance are immature, but they do seem a bit too scripted for me to take this seriously as slice-of-life.
Now, I mentioned scenery porn earlier, and let me just repeat that; SCENERY PORN! The show is goddamned gorgeous, both on land and in the sea. The damnedest part is that the animation is pretty good too; I may be one of the worst swimmers in the world, but aside from the curious way the people below the sea can just run around underwater as if underwater friction wasn't a thing, everything looks great. The water looks both realistic and well-made, if maybe a bit unnaturally clear at all times. The undersea area is teeming with life, and there are also some interesting and gorgeous natural phenomenons showing up a couple of times at key points. The character designs are following the whole MOE aspect a bit too much -- I think this is one case where I would have preferred a more natural character design, like the one you see in Samurai Flamenco -- but it doesn't hurt the show too much either way.

As frustrating as it is to watch this thing unfold on a romantic level, Nagi no Asukara is a fairly interesting show to watch. Its list of topics, while mostly centered between the relationship of two kinds of people, is diverse enough to remain interesting, even throwing in a time skip during the middle to shuffle the character progress around some. Normally, I'd balk at stuff like this, because there's nothing more frustrating than watching a romance being artificially lengthened by people who are unable to sit down and talk, but I can deal with it here because of the bigger picture; the people involved. Not characters, but people. Shows tend to forget too often that lives often involve more people than whoever is listed among the main cast. And as such, I will recommend this show.
The romantic drama may or may not drive you up the walls, but the rest is worth staying for.
Recommended Audience: There isn't really a whole lot in the ways of violence or fanservice in this show, so it's perfectly safe for most young-uns, but story elements can and will fly straight over the heads of children. It's best suited for teenagers and above.

Nisekoi

Synopsis

Raku Ichijou is a supposedly "average" high school student with a secret: he happens to be the sole heir to the head of a dangerous Yakuza Family called the Shuei-gumi. Raku also has another secret he had made a promise ten years ago...a secret pact with a girl he had met while playing in the countryside. They told one another that they would "get married when they reunite," and since then, Raku has never let go of the pendant the girl gave him, though he has yet to figure out who the girl actually was.
Then one day, a beautiful but hot-headed girl named Chitoge Kirisaki transfers into Raku's class, and the two immediately don't get along. Worse, it turns out that Chitoge is the only heiress to a rival Yakuza Family, whom the Shuei-gumi is trying to make peace with; Raku and Chitoge are forced to pretend to be lovers, much to their chagrin. Raku, in reality, is far more interested in his demure classmate Kosaki Onodera (and oblivious to her own affections towards him), while also still being in love with the girl from his past....he'll have to suppress his feelings while he and Chitoge bear with each other as best they can. And of course, with this being a harem, there are more girls in the mix...

Review

As I write this review in Summer 2015, I reflect on the fact that the topic of this piece, Nisekoi, is one of the most insanely popular anime series that I know of. During its initial airing in 2014, it seemed to me that every other story on Anime News Network was related to either the show, its promotional materials, or its merchandise, to an extent that only Attack on Titan has rivaled of late. Both the anime and its parent manga series command a sizable fanbase, and as of the time of writing a second season is preparing to air in several weeks.
It may seem strange for me to bring this up, because I've tried hard throughout my short tenure as an anime reviewer to not let perceptions of a show's popularity skew my reviews negatively or positively. And yet, I must admit up front that the unbelievable popularity of Nisekoi has sometimes affected my view of it, in that it is a series I rather dislike, and that over the course of many conversations regarding the show, I've had its merits pointed out to me many times and yet have been unable to comprehend what precisely these people, many of whom I strongly respect in regards to their opinions, are seeing in the show.
To be sure, Nisekoi is a beautiful-looking series. Akiyuki Shinbo of SHAFT clearly knew that he had a blockbuster on his hands and spared no expense in regards to the design and cinematography of this show: it's colorful, vibrant-looking, and full of small visual details that will make any fan of Madoka Magica happy on that front. Indeed, when compared to SHAFT's Mekakucity Actors from the same season, it's obvious that a majority of the studio's resources went to making girls blush, sparkles fly, and clothing twirl in this series; its rather drab-looking counterpart, in contrast, screams of having been done on a low budget, a situation which also plagued Madoka Magica and the far superior Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl when they were airing. Nisekoi is chock full of SHAFTisms, from their trademarked headtilt to close (sometimes creepily so) shots of moving bodyparts to the use of unusual flowered and checkered textures, and it's really quite astounding-looking, even if it doesn't really add up for much of a thematic purpose: the second ED sequence's use of quilted patterns reminds me strongly of the use of such patterns to define the appearance of the witches in Madoka. Speaking of the music, it's also a good effort, with the soundtrack being pleasant and the duo CLARIS contributing several nice opening themes.

And indeed, for those who are, in general, fans of the harem genre, I can understand the appeal of this series: the female characters are indeed very cute. This is the point, however, at which I feel my understanding of the series diverges from the narrative I've encountered. In general, I'm not much of a fan of harem series, given that they often feel like exercises in wish fulfillment to me (if not downright creepy or sexist in some cases), but while Nisekoi certainly has admirers who are harem fans in general, there's a large contingent that has referred to it as transcending the genre. I don't see Nisekoi as breaking the bounds of harem, however; rather, I see it as exaggerating some of its key traits, in what feels to me a highly self-conscious self parody that coexists with the series' still wanting to be treated as a harem series. It is for this reason that I think the series just doesn't work.
To be perfectly honest, Nisekoi was very, very difficult for me to get through. On a basic level, I found it near-impossible to like any of its characters, in particular Raku, who's as big an idiot as your standard harem lead and as big a cocky jackass as your average MC from a shounen action series. He manages to simultaneously be completely oblivious to several characters' affections (a point I'll get to) and absolutely unpleasant to the vast majority of the characters, calling Chitoge "gorilla face" as one long-running example; he even gives her an apparently custom-made doll in the form of her, as a gorilla, as a beyond passive-aggressive birthday present. That's not to say that I don't bemoan his situation at least to some extent, nor that Chitoge is innocent; she's foul-mouthed and quick to anger, and also will happily punch anybody who crosses her. Rather, it's that it's the act of watching these two, overall, that's extremely unpleasant to me. Simply, to watch these two bicker is to be witness to the bratty and self-centered behavior of immature high schoolers, which at this point in my life I'd like to forget about, and whatever brief hints there are that these two might mature in any way feel tacked-on. I don't generally like "forced engagement" stories, but these two handle it especially poorly, with something that's apparently supposed to be "funny" simply being horrifying to me.

This draws me to the rest of the cast and the show's incredibly tedious drawing out of the "will he or won't he?" question central to any harem's existence. Raku, being your standard harem lead, is obviously smitten with the more traditional and demure girl, in this case Kosaki; he is, however, completely oblivious to her own affections, an infuriating fact given how blatant they actually are. Now, I know that teenage obliviousness is real, but to me, this series' stretching of it goes too far and makes it impossible for me to care. In one particularly frustrating scene, Kosaki and Raku essentially prove to each other that the former was, in fact, the girl from his childhood memories from the countryside (a stunningly original plot thread on the show's part). This scene, done in the course of the couple running into each other accidentally and getting ice cream together, seems so self-consciously set up for a confession, and yet it culminates in the two actively denying that this is the case on the basis of....absolutely nothing. Now, I won't accuse Nisekoi of incompetence, for its handling of this scene is clearly intentional. It delays the usual act of another character coming in and ruining the moment (which happens thirty seconds later) and deliberately removes any emotional cues (e.g. that Raku actually is too nervous to admit it to her) in order to be able to pull the joke of them literally outright denying this obvious fact, for nothing besides sake of the harem continuing. And lo and behold, another girl, the insufferable yandere Marika, arrives an episode later, only to present her own version of the story in which she and Raku were so-called childhood friends and restart the cycle.
To me, this makes the show unbearably tedious to sit through, and distinctly Sysyphean in its progression. I won't say that I hated every second of Nisekoi, since Chitoge (alone of the characters) does get less unpleasant as the series progresses, Kosaki's snarky friend Ruri is fun to watch, and there are rare moments where the characters' idiocy finally appears ready to dry up. But it's the purpose of this show to stymie each and every one of those moments: as soon as Nisekoi looks like it might finally have the characters stop behaving like oblivious jackasses, we're either introduced to a new girl, or the characters' development is blatantly and self-consciously wound back for comic purposes. And it's this self-consciousness on the show's part that annoys me: it isn't trying to transcend the boundaries of harem, it's trying to exaggerate its traits to a painful degree. The final episode, in which the various female characters literally push each other out of the way during a school performance of Romeo and Juliet (of course), just seemed to scream to me, "this is a harem! And did I mention that we're watching a harem!?!??" I'll concede that this could be amusing, and perhaps it is to those who do enjoy this genre as a whole, but it just wasn't enjoyable for me to watch.

I am trying hard to be fair towards Nisekoi in spite of my immense dislike of it; I know almost without a doubt that at some point, I will get flack for this review. Nisekoi is absolutely gorgeous looking, and like even SHAFT's weaker efforts, it's clever, to an extent, at what it does. SHAFT is a studio that I've always had a love-hate relationship with: for every interesting work they adapt, such as Arakawa Under the Bridge or Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, there's a show like Bakemonogatari whose cleverness comes hand-in-hand with shallowness and a downright creepy attitude. Nisekoi isn't especially creepy, even though its view towards gender roles is beyond regressive (the "forced-to-be-masculine girl who wants to be seen as feminine" trope seriously needs to die); it is, however, ultimately a pretty shallow harem series at heart. Aspects of that genre will be amplified, but they won't be played with in a meaningful way, and the characters just won't ever get any more mature. If you're okay with that, then by all means, watch Nisekoi, but I was told that it was a show that would make me rethink the harem genre, and it simply isn't, in my opinion.
Beautiful-looking, but tedious and home to a cast of frankly awful people. Probably a four-star rating (at least) for fans of the genre and for diehard SHAFT aficionados.
Recommended Audience: Generally tame in regards to sexuality (in comparison to some of SHAFT's works), but there are of course the requisite "you pervert!" jokes and Raku's token horny best friend (who isn't worth any other mention in this review). A lot of slapstick violence, also.

Sword Art Online

Synopsis

In the year 2022, the virtual reality game Sword Art Online is released. Using a Nerve Gear, players can control their characters using their own minds, and experience the world of Aincrad as if it were real. Unfortunately, it becomes all too real when the creator of the game locks everyone out of the real world by hijacking all the Nerve Gear devices so that if you die in the game, you will die in real life. Only by clearing the 100th floor and defeating the final boss can the players win their freedom.

Review

This is hardly the first virtual reality MMO based series to come out - one only has to look at the very beginning of the main review list here to spot what many cite to be an obvious spiritual predecessor (.hack//SIGN). That series ultimately succumbed to numerous internal issues, worst of all the perception of being a "talking heads" series with few action scenes and mildly interesting characters, and plot twists that often rarely made sense. If anything, the whole idea of VR seems to have sunk without trace in the real world, making .hack seem quaint and antiquated within a decade. And besides, who wants to watch other people play a video game?
Sword Art Online is categorically not .hack - after all, instead of one person stuck permanently in-game, we've got thousands, and if you die in-game, you die, period, never mind the psychological effects on you if you actually make it through. Reki Kawahara deserves some plaudits for being smart enough to think this whole initial scenario through - omitted from the TV series for several episodes but noted in the novel is the minor but very important detail that all of the players have been hooked up to life-support equipment, though I imagine the strain on the Japanese health care system must have been insane. And if anything, instead of the glacial pace of .hack, Sword Art Online often comes at you like a raging torrent, with a few episodes devoted to multiple action scenes. It's clear they actually threw something of a budget at this, and it shows, but it's a shame the writing doesn't always keep up (clearly an artifact of compressing four light novel volumes into 25 episodes). The inclusion of side-stories in early chronological order explains Kirito's behavior, but they are particularly compressed and rather poorly integrated into what is otherwise a serviceable first-half narrative.
That being said, the idea of this being a "death-game" is really secondary after the initial setup episodes, as most of what we really get is the budding romance between Kirito and Asuna, both of whom discover that while the world they are trapped in may be virtual, the experiences, friendships, and, ultimately, love that they experience are all very real. There's nothing wrong with this - Kirito and Asuna are my favorite anime couple in the last few years because there's refreshingly very little indecision or ambiguity to how they feel about one another, especially when you see the fine details of body language. Once established, there's nothing that will break these two apart, which is a huge disappointment to the various and sundry other girls who fall for way-too-nice-guy Kirito during the course of this series (which sort of turns into a bit of a running gag).
Oh, and yes - the whole "fake girls in MMOs" thing is completely deconstructed in the very first episode, so Kirito won't be in for a rude surprise if/when they get out of Aincrad. Phew!
Folks here for the action will not entirely be disappointed - it seems like Sword Art Online is constantly in the process of trying to do itself in ridiculously awesome fantasy action sequences. While the backdrops look gorgeous (Aincrad looks great), and the setups are great, the actual character animation doesn't always keep up 100% with flash frames and quick pans here and there (thanks to A-1 being more of a character-series studio). It's almost a shame that there aren't Nerve Gears available to play this game yourself (minus, of course, the obvious peril of getting your brain fried if you die in-game). In another seeming callback to .hack, we have Yuki Kajiura for the soundtrack - nowhere near as distinctive as before, but still solid.
So clearly we are not looking at a five star rating here: there's a few things that strongly detract from the show - never enough for it to approach average, but certainly enough to keep it from being one of the all time greats. For starters, the pacing is often WAY too fast, leaving out important details from the novels or only mentioning them far later than relevant (like the one I mentioned above about the hospitalization of the players). Some of the conflict resolutions do come off as being arbitrary and contrived ... and then there's the whole matter of the second arc, which almost amounts to a second season, but one that is unfortunately far less psychological and therefore less interesting, and also shoves in what is undoubtedly the stupidest attempt at a love triangle that I've seen in years. (Even if I liked the third wheel as a character otherwise.) There's also some really unwanted fan service with damsel-in-distress Asuna (ARGH!) in the second half that pretty much hammers home how stupid and frankly inferior the Big Bad is in that arc. Sadly, the best way to sidestep the seeming logic flaws of the anime is to read the novels which better explain what's going on (and they cannot and should not be taken as part of the show), which is what makes this a potentially polarizing experience, especially given the heated discussions undoubtedly occurring on the Internet about this show.
That being said, Sword Art Online remains an often fascinating, highly entertaining experience for fans of sci-fi-fantasy action, and Kirito and Asuna are utterly adorable together. It's doesn't quite live up to its initial premise, and it's hardly an evolutionary leap for anime as a whole, but it's nevertheless solid, likable, and enjoyable.
Smart concept with a flawed but still enjoyable execution. If one were to take Sword Art Online as two seasons, the first might have almost skirted five-star territory, and the second might be more of a three-star.
Recommended Audience: While several characters die, the deaths are shown in the context of the video game. That being said, the real-world ramifications of the video-game character deaths lend more psychological impact to the action. There is one act of real-life violence in the second half of the series, with some blood. There is also a somewhat high amount of fan service, somewhat less tastefully done in the second arc. There is also one implied (offscreen) adult scene between teenaged characters, though there is no actual nudity during the course of the series. Teens and above.

- - - Post Merge - - -

Reviews on Fushigi Yuugi and Steins Gate tomorrow

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