Anime Fall Season 2013 Review, Part 2

So, here we go with the exciting part two of four of the 2013 Fall Anime season review.

There are three shows this season that are likely to produce memes that will live on for quite some time.

The first of these is Arpeggio of Blue Steel. Its meme is referring to a harems as a “fleet”. Arpeggio is about a post semi-apocalyptic world after autonomous super-ships have effectively rendered air and sea travel impossible, making it all but impossible for communication or trade with any nations separated by the seas. Several years into this crisis, a young male student at a military academy comes in contact with a captured enemy sub. Several enemy ships have “mental models”, humanoid forms created from nanomaterial. Literally, as stated within the series, these mental models are all female because upon analyzing human records they found that ships are commonly referred to as being female.

So, along his journey to change the world and restore humanity’s ability to safely travel the seas, our M.C come to win the cooperation of several additional enemy ships. It’s a harem-like development path, but they’re all ships in this budding military revolution, hence it’s not a harem… it’s a fleet. Reality, however, is that of the “fleet” the only ones who seem to actually have any sort of feelings for the M.C are the first one, Iona, and Takao (who is heads over heels for the guy but a total tsundere).

That tidbit aside, it is a sound series. The concept is good and interesting. I gave points to Walkure Romanze for basing a story around the left-field idea of using jousting as a theme. Arpeggio similarly deserves points for basing a story around naval warfare and naval combat. Gargantia sort of teased the possibility of such a story in the spring, but that didn’t manifest. Arpeggio delivers an immersive experience in naval combat. It’s not exactly highly accurate, but it is compelling. The approach to the idea of a programmed AI developing independent thought, will, and emotions is obviously not new, but again they do a good job of delivering it. Plus the great job they did with the CGI… there isn’t much reason to skip this one. The source material is ongoing, so it would be surprising if a new season doesn’t come along at some point.

So Arpeggio will be the reason you might see a bunch of ship related dirty jokes or references to harems as fleets. My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering With My School Romantic Comedy will be the reason people will be talking about their mental choices making them do… whatever. Aside from being this season’s long title champion, it is also the best comedy of the season. It was close, because Non Non Biyori was great, but Mental Choices was just too hysterical. They threw caution to the wind and went nuts with the situations the M.C was tossed into, where he literally has to make himself look like a complete and total mental case on a daily basis. The “flippant god” who calls him on his cell phone is hilarious, and while the M.C struggles with his affliction, he has a harem around him of an amnesiac glutton who literally fell from the sky, an ultra-shy loli-type who hides her affection by making really harsh and dirty jokes, and a super-rich girl who is more than a little too free-spirited, another loli who is obsessed with the idea of being a little sister, and a mysterious student council president who just might be the previous god who placed the curse on him that forces him to answer the bizarre multiple choice questions that sometimes appear in his head. Best of all, each episode ends with a brief skit of what would happen if he went with the other choice.

Yes, this is another somewhat predictable school romantic comedy. And it knows it. That’s what helps make it such an amazing show. Your mental choices must have interfered with you having not already seen this comedy. It is definitely on the eechi side, so if you’re looking for a more “wholesome” comedy, N.N.B is your bet, but if that isn’t a real concern, and you want a little dose of romance, go with B and pick Mental Choices.

Third, this show was anything but unpleasant. The male lead has a thing for girls in glasses, at an almost unhealthy level. His best friend is a siscon. He also happens to be an immortal half demon housing the most powerful and destructive demon known to the world inside of him. Yes, this is Beyond the Boundary. Of course the most memorable line of the series comes from the female lead, the beauty in glasses whose blood is her weapon, with the tsundere repartee of, “how unpleasant” to anything embarrassing, good or bad. The animation is stunning, particularly during the battles, especially female lead Mirai’s, which are fast paced and involved a lot of graceful but very quick movements. The overall story is good. It’s mostly about the struggles of the various hunters battling the demons, those who try to use the demons, and those trying to live alongside demons. It develops into a romance, which I think is to its detriment. People tend to be suckers for a romance where either side is willing to bet their life for the other no matter the collateral cost. But to me these come off too cheesy when they literally stake the world on this – as in if ‘X’ isn’t killed then everyone dies. It’s a little cold, but seriously, I don’t give a crap how touching your relationship is if it might literally cause the world to end. You’ll have to get over it and find a new boyfriend/girlfriend. When the characters who look at this rationally get demonized for it, it becomes a bit of a turnoff. I get it from a storytelling perspective, but from an objective view it irks me. That said, Beyond the Boundary, if only for the visuals should not be missed. And the story isn’t that bad either.

Infinite Stratos 2 probably won’t have a dedicated meme. If it did, it’d probably be Charlotte’s nigh deadly cooking. That or the mad scientist with the robotic bunny ears completely trouncing a trio of IS. In last season’s reviews I mentioned how what could be a good show can be ruined by the creators feeling a need to go overboard with the fan service in the following season. IS2 suffered that fate. They just piled on too much. Every episode revolved around fan service, only a small portion of the time cut out for actual story or plot. There was hardly any attempt to blend the two together, which most other series actually try to do even if they might ultimately fail. An entire 12 episodes and the only thing we learn is that there is either another Orimura sibling or a clone of Chifuyu. The season is nothing but a dozen episodes of school romantic comedy of each member of Orimura’s harem fighting for his attention, the addition of two new girls to that harem – who happen to be sisters – and him being as oblivious as you can possibly imagine when it comes to their not at all subtle advances. It’s funny enough during the rom-com portions, and the action parts are done fairly nicely. You just wish they’d focus on the story. Hopefully that will be the case if they make it to season 3.

I would say Freezing Vibration suffered the same problem, except that the fan service introduced in the anime more or less replaced the fan service that filled the manga, so it was more of a tradeoff than an addition. As a series Freezing mostly has its predominantly female cast in various states of undress all the time, usually as a result of their clothes torn to shreds during a fight. They handled the season in a roundabout way. They shifted the timing of parts around quite a bit, the big one being the arc with Satelizer’s brother, which should have taken place before the trip to Alaska even began. They changed the way they handled that part of the story a bit, but I don’t really think it was to any real detriment in terms of conveying the point. They also changed a lot about the way the story went in terms of details, again not too much effect in terms of getting the same point across.

Which raises the question of why bother changing anything at all. Part of the reason surely has to do with the fact that the manga got fairly graphic in these two arcs, so some of it was purely for the sake of broadcasting it on television. Either way, if you liked the first season, the second is much the same; lots of censored full or partial nudity, violent Pandora on Pandora fighting, and a plot that seems to be trying too much to be like Evangelion. Like Eva, the story has its moments, but easily gets on your nerves too. I’m invested in seeing how it all ends, and I’m not gonna lie and say they don’t have some attractive women on the show, but at the same time I’m not terribly enthused enough to make it a reasonably high recommendation. Watch if you’re willing to sift the story from the rest of the useless parts.

That does it for today. Round three comes your way in 24 hours. See ya then.