Winter 2014 Anime Season Review, 2 of 5

Here is the second batch of reviews for this past Winter anime season.

Strike the Blood is a show about a vampire. As is apparently necessary for all anime about vampires, there is a harem of one sort or another. Few, however, have a take quite like this one. The lead character wasn’t always a vampire, he was turned into one by the “4^th Progenitor” who he has now replaced. The title comes with various powers, including immortality, as well as a number of familiars. However, they don’t recognize him as a true vampire, so he has to drink someone’s blood to bring each one under control. He has 12 familiars.

The show is a bit of the standard affair for this type of show. The story is put together well enough, but isn’t terribly great. The fan-service element is high but not the outrageous or highly charged level of something like Recently My Sister Is Unusual. The comedy element can sometimes be good, but is mostly rather bland. Again, an entertaining show, but it’s not particularly outstanding or remarkable in any aspect.

Log Horizon started with many doubters. The premise of its story essentially mirrors that of the blockbuster hit series Sword Art Online; a large number of people find themselves trapped inside of a video game. Now, that premise wasn’t original to SAO; .//Hack was the first series I know of that explored the topic. The story in Log Horizon is pretty darn epic though. The character design is impressive, the dynamics of the characters are great. No character is themselves wholly original or fresh, but they are scripted amazingly, showing you how a dedicated and purpose driven story can trump all.

The best part of all is the way so many elements are blended together. It has all the marking of a rom-com, action adventure, and everything in between, all mixed together is a delicious smoothie. There is not really much you can see or say to make you not love this show. It will be agonizing to wait for the next season, which hopefully there will be. It deserves it, now if only there was enough source material to make it happen.

The Pilot’s Love Song is a subdued romantic drama framed in a more classical style. It has a bit of the feel of a Miyazaki film broken into a dozen 20-something-minute chunks. The potential of the show is fantastic. The world they establish is expansive and they touch on just enough to leave it a mystery while providing many branches to grow on. As a whole, however, the story is simply a love story about a prince whose parents were pulled from the throne and killed in a revolution and the woman he falls in love with not knowing she was the one to lead the revolution. The relationship progresses as expected. The story, thanks to the way in which it waves its flags the story will surprise you more by which ones aren’t followed through than which ones are. It’s a modestly good show. The story isn’t exactly one I can say is terribly good, and the animation is average. It’s an average show, thru and thru.

Soni-Ani Super Sonico the Animation is probably the sleeper hit of the season. Sonico is the mascot character of Nitroplus, a software company that makes a music program that competes with the other popular software in the sphere, Vocaloid. Sonico, unlike Vocaloid’s popular icons Hatsune Miku or even Megurine Luka, is highly curvaceous and buxom. It led to many people assuming that the series would be a pure fan-service romp devoid of anything but. After watching the first episode, there were many who gave up on the show, despite the first episode being relatively tame.

Soni-Ani, story wise, is less like a blatant fan-service romp and more like an entertaining slice-of-life whose M.C just happens to be fairly attractive. Each episode is loosely connected, telling the story of Sonico’s life more so than any larger story. Think of something like Aria the Animation, except instead of Akari and her pursuit of becoming a gondolier (undine), Sonico and her dual acts of being a gravure model and a member of a local band. The characters are fun, and the stories are very good at being funny and heartwarming at times.

D-Fragments is a very interesting show. It’s a show that kinda breaks the genre conventions in that it first appears to be a high school rom-com. You at first expect the series to be a lot like Boku wa Todomachi from a year or so ago, or perhaps more akin to Baka to Test. But it soon shows itself to be a bit more like Beelzebub in the sense that the show is full of battles. They’re not “real” battles. It’s a lot of gag battles. The game club aspect of the setup is all to set the stage for the fights that take place. The comedy can be fairly crude. They don’t mind go long for gags and jokes, or running a joke longer than it probably needs. It makes the show rather charming. The M.C, as a delinquent, somehow being the most rational is nothing new as a reversal, but it’s still entertaining. It’s a very funny show.

Hamatora is a supernatural action mystery, more or less. It’s more or less like any show that covers the ground of special people with special abilities that no one else knows about. It retreads the ground of what happens when the normal masses learn of the super-powered “others”. As usual, the coming out and ensuing chaos is instigated by one super-powered individual with some warped and twisted ideology. Quite honestly I don’t find it that great a show. The pacing is pretty good, and the animation quality is good, but the comedy element is rather blasé and the story overall is not that great. There are a few interesting parts like characters or their abilities, but overall the delivery is bland. It tried at the end to go for a dramatic twist to set up for a new season, but it just felt so forced to not be worth it. The animation at times can be very good, at others just average. It’s moderately entertaining, but a forgettable show for me. Whether or not it gets a new season holds little meaning for me at this point.

Seitokai Yakuindomo 2 is quite likely the most perverse show to make it onto airwaves (or streaming sites, as it were) in my memory of anime. It’s not so much of what they “do” but what they “say”. There aren’t a lot of fan-service shots or copious odd camera angle scenes (although they have a special “corner” that specifically features trying to identify what a suggestive blurred image really is). If there were this show likely would be classified hentai. It is technically a comedy. It’s just one with very raunchy dialogue. Seriously, kids shouldn’t watch this show. Any and every bit of dialogue is laced with references to sexual acts, situations, body parts, etc. If you’re into that kind of humor then you’ll probably find yourself hyperventilating with laughter. If not, it’s probably gonna strike you as one of the most disturbing and disgusting anime ever made. I’m not entirely sure, but I have heard there is enough material that a third season could be made. Don’t know yet.