Anime Fall Season 2013 Review, Part 3

Now, the penultimate post, part three of the review of this past anime season. So, let’s get started.

Valvrave the Liberator was the pick of the season at the end of spring. It was a classic giant robot anime with some keen quirks. The second season was highly anticipated. That puts two bull’s-eyes on the show right away. Split seasons don’t often go very well. They tend to be produced and viewed like two distinct seasons. This warps the expectations of the viewer and can sometimes warp the work of the show’s creators. Mixed with the high burden of expectations forged by success, any missteps can be seen under glaring spotlight. Often times this can lead to some being too harsh on a show for what are otherwise minor flaws.

For me this second season certainly was good, but was not quite the epic the first came off as. The pacing seemed off, as though they had too much to cover and just decided to throw caution to the wind and jam it all in. It also got that feeling of a Tomino “kill-em-all” Gundam series the longer it went. This wouldn’t be a major blow if not for the bit of sloppiness in telling the justification. The logical leap was there to be made that the depletion of Runes causes something more than just memory loss and is akin to whittling away a person’s very soul, killing them that way. Even so without stating that outright it came off like you had several characters suffer amnesia and were left for dead because of it. If you only saw this anime you’d be liable to think that people with real-life memory loss up and died.

Then the massacre scene was also not plotted as well as it could have been, though one could argue that it was a matter of not having time to cover it as well as need be – though that gets back to my original point of being in a rush. Then the series ended with so many unanswered questions about the aftermath and everything about that future they flashed forward to all the time.

Despite all this I was still very close to naming the show the best of the season. But as it stands now I can’t abide that. The thing I dislike most about any anime is ending unfinished. The Valvrave story needed only about a few more minutes to be completed properly. Alternatively, all those flash forwards were ultimately unnecessary for anything other than spoiling from early on the fact that certain characters survived whatever ending they were planning for the series (and stoking hopes we would actually spend some reasonable time there). All in all the show will have to settle for a top three spot and be content it didn’t fall further than that.

I Couldn’t Become A Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided To Get A Job came in second place in the long title running. It’s also somewhere in the top third of series this season, though I am somewhat hesitant to place it firmly as a top five. I feel it will get a bit of a bad rep because it has the same basic premise as Devil Is A Part Timer from the spring; the devil/devil’s kid has to get a job, and hijinks ensue. But honestly the stories are quite different aside from that one aspect. Devil Is A Part Timer was about the devil getting trapped in another world where magic doesn’t exist and having to get a job to survive and plan his way back home, until he begins to learn to like that new world and starts viewing his past actions as possibly being wrong. I Couldn’t Become A Hero is about a world where magic is part of the world infrastructure and economy. The M.C works at a magical electronics store. He was a hero until someone managed to kill the demon lord and no new demon lord appeared, thus leaving all heroes essentially unemployed. One day, the daughter of the felled demon lord comes with an application and gets hired.

The series is more a comedy on her ineptness at the world outside of the demon realm she lived in, the interplay between magic and technology, and the competition between major retail chains and their smaller counterparts. The humor is fairly crass in some regards, and very insider-ish in others. Almost every episode is littered with dirty jokes or fan-service shots. But there are also insider jokes like the perverted old man whose ship is Star Trek’s Enterprise, or the vague allusions to some of the VA’s other works. The show is entertaining, and the eventual story path was decent, if predictable given how the show was progressing. Not a must see, but it’s a decent comedy you can enjoy, provided you can bear the perverted humor.

Outbreak Company is similar in the way it blends perverted in your face gags with otaku level jokes. But that’s a given and necessary, as the show is itself all about otaku culture. The premise is that Japan found a rip in space-time that leads to another world with magic and all manner of mythical beings. To launch a takeover of that world without the publicity a war would cause, leading to other nations seeking access and involvement in securing the riches in said world, they decide to enslave the populace of that new world to the Japanese culture, and recruit our hero to teach them all about otaku culture.

This is itself an inside joke of sorts, at once insinuating otaku culture is detrimental enough to fell another world, but also acknowledging the reality that the spread of culture is indeed one of the ways war is waged, not just through bullets and bombs. However, as a male otaku, our M.C tends to think about a lot of perverted stuff, which he happens to blurt out at often inopportune times. Again, this is done both for its genuine comedic effect, but also to shine a spotlight on that particular trope of rom-coms. More than any other show this season it gets into the insider jokes, a lot with the V.As, but most plainly with the name-changed dropping of a number of other anime and manga series, which personally is usually quite fun seeing fourth walls falling. Overall the comedy is actually quite intelligently done, and the drama while nothing outstanding is pretty effective for what is actually a comedy. It’s hilarious and greatly deserves to be seen. Top five, easy.

Lastly for today, White Album 2. I actually had to play catchup with the original White Album because I expected there to be a little more continuity between the two series other than just the themes and the reference to the songs from the original series. I actually started to watch the original White Album a while back, but quit it after nearly halfway through season one because I fell behind and didn’t make time to catch up. Having caught up, I have to say that its story seemed shallow, or at the very least poorly executed. It felt like they wanted you to sympathize with or feel sorry for the male lead, but he was just an a**hole and an idiot. The whole memory loss thing made little difference to the story, and overall it seemed too much like NANA light. WA2, however, was better done, though still not particularly great either. The male lead was at least less of a complete moron, though a moron nonetheless. I don’t care how much harem leads are bashed for never just choosing a girl; a male lead who chooses a girl, then leaves her for no real reason for some other girl, is terrible as a person and as a character. The guy gave up on one girl, went with the other, and then decides he should confess to the first girl, sleeps with her, all without ever breaking up with the girl who is actually his girlfriend.

From a storytelling perspective it makes sense, and does reflect reality to an extent. But it’s not a show I’m particularly jazzed about watching, because all I keep thinking is how I wanna beat the crap outta the guy for being a gutless bastard. Girls chasing after guys they know are already in a relationship isn’t any better. That these people never seem to get any blowback is further infuriating. I’m not looking for a School Days ending here, but not seeing them suffer any real consequences makes the story all the more a pain. So, the music is good, though not fantastic. The animation is decent, but not great. The characters are semi-likeable. The story is a pain. Watch it or don’t. I really think you would be better off watching Golden Time, but since I’m not reviewing that because it’s still going, this might be your only choice for a current non comedy romance anime (seriously, just go with Golden Time).

Well, that does things for now. The climactic finale comes tomorrow. Only four reviews left. Check in to see who is number one.