Summer 2013 Anime Season Review - Part Three of Three
Back again, and today is
the final installment of the reviews of the summer 2013 anime season. I’ve
saved some of the bigger heavyweights going into the season for last. So, let’s
just jump right into it.
I have always thought Scientific Railgun (To Aru Kagaku no
Railgun) was a difficult series to set in a genre. Do you put it in magical
girl genre? It’s got a cast of predominantly women doing somewhat magical
stuff. Is it moe? It would seem to fall into that scheme of “cute girls doing
cute things” though I personally don’t think one should really apply that
comparison to this show. Action-adventure seems most appropriate, but the level
of slice-of-life stuff given how short a series it actually is kind of
interferes with that, and vice versa.
Whatever label you choose
to place on the show, it’s still a very good show. It’s always a treat to see
Railgun trying to run the thin line between her childish whimsy and her place
as a cool idol in the city of espers. I generally like Scientific Railgun over
Magical Index because Toma, despite having an awesome power, is a nuisance of a
character. I hate to hear him speak, so I was plenty glad to see his part in
this series as limited as it is. Accelerator as a villain wasn’t too bad in the
first half of the season, but his “justification” was very poorly stated and
seemed extremely weak. I know they left a lot of stuff unsaid, only suggested,
but it could have been done a little better I think.
The villains of the second
half were worse. They generally came off very poorly, as a relatively minor
threat compared to the likes of Accelerator. I’d still put Railgun in my top
five, but it was easy to not place it at number one or two. Don’t know if it
was just not that great or one and two were just that good, but I was a little
disappointed with Railgun this season. But, the fact that a show can be both somewhat
disappointing and one of the best of its contemporaries, at the same time, is a
statement of its overall quality.
Gatchaman Crowds was pretty good. I didn’t ever see the original
series, and to be honest watching this one didn’t really make me feel like
seeing it either. There are some bits through the series that initially made me
think I needed to, but that is more for the whole inside joke aspect I think.
More or less you can easily get through the series without much knowledge
beforehand.
In general it plays out
like most super hero shows. It’s sort of like an animated Kamen Rider/Power
Rangers series, if the rangers got inventive super powers to go with their
costumes. The show is entertaining. It is almost entirely driven by Newbie’s
extremely eccentric personality. I think this is a double-edged sword for the
show. It is apparent the goal is to present her as a free thinker who isn’t
just following the crowd (wink, wink). But at the same time it’s too easy to
see how almost all her actions could have easily backfired if for anything but
the fact that the story demands that they not. The fact Hajime never fails, is
never made to pre-justify her actions or that there is ever a readily presented
rationale to her actions, it can easily seem she acts wildly for the sake of
making her an interesting character, and that she is wrapped in plot armor to
protect her and the story from suffering any reprisals or setbacks.
The internal dynamics of
the show are good in terms of the struggles the other Gatchaman members have
with their own convictions, weaknesses, and ideals, but you don’t really get a
particularly strong connection to any of them. You do care, but not quite as
much as you would in some other shows. Not sure I’d rate this one in my top
five of the season, but it is close.
Monogatari Series Second Season was always liable to be a tossup.
In the preview of the summer season I did, I noted that the entire series is
heavily dialogue driven (like almost entirely). At times the dialogue can be
professorial, or preachy, or comedic, or scientific, or pseudo-scientific, or a
number of other things. In short, the series at times can be either a real
entertaining gem, or boring drudge of a show that gets too wrapped up in its
own mythology or sense of self-importance.
This season of Monogatari
is longer than the standard 12; it’s 15. As such at the moment the last
episodes aren’t out yet. That being said, I don’t see anything changing enough
in these last episodes to change my view – for better or worse. Not that good.
As I noted in the pre-season preview, you can easily find those who will swear
to this show as the most amazing, epic piece of anime that they can’t
understand why it’s not beloved, and those who can’t understand why this show
is even on the air. Both camps are wrong. The show is grating on the senses if
you’re not prepared for it, and once you are it is merely an average show,
presented in a unique way, trying hard to ensnare you and convince you of its
greatness through its use of prose. If you are captivated then it makes for a
riveting show. If not then it’s of slightly above-average entertainment value
at best. The good news is that the show is consistent across the season. Its
quality will neither jump nor drop, so you can give a few episodes a spin and
know that even if the specific story will change (the season essentially has
three arcs) the way it is presented will not change.
If this was back in 2010
before Madoka Magica came out, then Day
Break Illusion would probably receive similar acclaim to that which Madoka
did as a revolutionary iteration of the magical girl genre that is celebrated
for its darker, less bubblegum tone. But it’s not 2010, so despite being
similar in tone and delivery to Madoka, it is viewed as little more than a
crude attempt to capitalize on the former’s success. And that may all very well
be true, but that does not lessen the fact that Day Break Illusion is a very
worthy series when held up on its own merits. Would such a show been dared made
if not for the success of Madoka? Perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean this one
doesn’t deserve its due.
Day Break Illusion only
somewhat superficially touches on the subject on which it is affixed – tarot
cards. The concept is applied well and there is some detail given, but it is
just the framework the story is told around. I think there is a case to be made
that the story is darker than Madoka, but I don’t ultimately think that
question is all that important.
Though the ending is
mostly positive, it isn’t the common “save the world” ending where all problems
are solved and everyone lives happily ever after. In fact, only two people end
up “saved” and the central issue remains a looming problem of people turning
into monsters to be killed and erased from existence. This one is a certain top
five pick. You should watch it.
Servant x Service is less the office comedy I was thinking and more
the slice-of-life romantic comedy I sort of thought it might end up being. It
sort of starts the way of an office comedy, but very soon it gets heavily
focused on the select small group of the four new hires, their “supervisor” and
the small network of family and friends associated with them.
Like with most comedies
nowadays, one of the greatest parts is the feathering, if not outright
destruction, of the fourth wall, by characters referencing or engaging with
other anime. Having one of the characters being a cosplayer was a nice touch,
and her regularly stoic expression completely offsets her zealous obsession
with her craft. The show in its entirety is painfully funny. All of the
characters play off each other very well. It is the best of the comedy set this
season, if only by a small margin.
Going Home Club is probably the more pure comedy this season. It is
almost entirely about the shenanigans of the group of five girls in a club that
truly has no purpose. Even though it is ostensibly compared to similar
formatted comedies such as Yuru Yuri, it doesn’t get even the relatively tame
yuri tones sometimes reached in those shows. Whether they are great or fall
flat, the show is almost exclusively focused on delivering jokes. It almost
always hits. The breaking the fourth wall, the passive supernatural elements,
the way some jokes are stretched out so far that the extent to which they will
go for the joke itself becomes funny; this show will find a way to make you
laugh at it. My only regret is how often it was delayed throughout its run. I
think there were three maybe four times when it got delayed for a week. As a
result by the end of the season it ended up three episodes back of other shows
that started the same week.
The Rozen Maiden series then and now is a slow tempo series. It’s not
the fast-paced series that has become all too common lately. But the story
doesn’t stop. It is always moving in a very visible way, it’s just not an
action series. As always the fun will come from Shinku beating on her
manservant and lecturing him over his failures at serving her properly, or her
vicious spats with her sister Suigintou that end up trashing the room.
Either way, I personally
like the series and I’m glad to have seen it. I do think it is worth watching,
especially as a fan of the series as a whole. But for those who aren’t fans it
could easily be a dull and inconsequential show, and even for fans it might
have been the best choice in that is does not offer much in terms of expanding
or continuing on the story from where it left off before (might have been
better to not leave that insanely huge cliffhanger). Hopefully, however, we
will get more Rozen Maiden soon. I will be fairly bitter if there isn’t at
least mention of a plan for continuation.
What can I say about Majestic Prince? The second half of the
first season was every bit as amazing as the first half. It is an amazing show.
I very nearly named it the number one series for the spring season of this year,
which leaves me in a very awkward spot. You see, it is my number two show from
the spring, it continued into the summer uninterrupted, was as good if not
better, and yet I still put it in second.
Do not let its second
place standing fool you. It’s really just a second number one. Yet it’s hard to
say exactly why it’s number two. I loved the show, and anxiously waited for
Thursday to roll around each week so I could watch it. It had amazing
animation, especially the mecha battles between Jiart and Izuru. The comedic
parts of the show were spot on.
MJP is not Gundam, way
away from Geass, not Super Robot Wars or even last season’s Valvrave or
Gargantia. Yet it has elements from all of those series, perhaps being what
helps to make it so amazing. It never takes itself too seriously, yet you can
easily feel the weight of every heavy moment of the show. It is an exquisite
series. Best yet, they ended it in the perfect way any fan could hope for –
wrapping up most of the season’s story while leaving enough stray ends to fill
another season. Cross your fingers, knock on wood, or whatever it takes and
hope season two happens and lives up the bar set by the first season.
Top honors for the season
as far as I’m concerned should go to Sunday
Without God. There is no show this season that hits as many marks as this
one did. On September 23, I talked a little about perspective on anime while
they are running in-season and how that plays into the view of the presence, or
lack thereof, of masterpieces. This show is quite possibly a genuine
masterpiece. It is that great. Not a ton of shounen-style action but enough I
think to satisfy many appetites, nice bits of love stories throughout, great
mystery, and the lead character, grave keeper Ai, is about as moe as you can
get. The animation is exquisite, and though the soundtrack is not quite as
superlative as Attack on Titan, it is still something amazing, and the story is
absolutely fantastic. I didn’t know what to expect of this show going in, but
it is an absolute gem that has perhaps not received its due. You will not
regret watching this one. If you do, then I’m afraid I can’t help you. There
really, REALLY, needs to be another season for this show. My fear, however, is
that the somewhat eclectic nature of its non-exact genre, the way many things
happen without a hit-you-over-the-head feeling of moving towards any “great
truth” tends to sink shows like these in terms of appealing to large audiences.
Sadly, too few people have enough patience for this type of show. I don’t
generally commit to buying a show once it’s released to Blu-Ray, but this is on
my short list of such shows, alongside Valvrave and MJP.
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