Tag: Anime

Azur Lane: Slow Ahead (2021) [REVIEW] | Slice O’ Boat

Might as well, since that second season or second adaptation of the Kancolle anime is still nowhere to be seen, so once again Azur Lane will outright “eat its lunch”.

And i did already review the previous Azur Lane anime adaptation, so i feel kinda obliged to cover this one as well. Not that it shares a direct connection, as it adapts an on-going Azur Lane 4-koma slice of life manga, Slow Ahead, which omits the whole “kriegsmarine” (and annexed wave ruling) aspect of the franchise and just focuses on the daily lives of the shipgirls living in the Azur Lane base, taking as main characters the girls’ quartet of Laffey, Z23, Ayanami and Javelin.

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[EXPRESSO] Pacific Rim: The Black (Season One) (2021) | Netflix Kaijus

For whatever reason, Netflix perseveres in commissioning 3D CG anime based on popular franchises, despite them often not looking good and anime fans notorious knee-jerk reactions of disgust towards 3D CG anime.

So while we wait for Godzilla Singularity Point (which looks notably better), let’s give Pacific Rim: The Black a shot, because Legendary really wants to make this one a franchise. This specific entry (written by Greg Johnson and Craig Kyle but co-directed by Masayuki Uemoto, Susumu Sugai and Takeshi Iwata) follows a couple of siblings that find a Jaeger called Atlas Destroyer and go on a journey with it, after their parents never came back and kaijus destroyed Australia.

And you know what, an anime series spin-off is a shoe-in for Pacific Rim, but once i saw the PV, i realized why most people won’t bother… and yes, it’s animated by Polygon Pictures, which means the robots and monsters look fairly good, but the animation for the people – sporting nicely drawn character models – also has this stiff, uncanny, robotic feel to it. And this honestly doesn’t look much better than the Blame movie or the Godzilla anime trilogy Polygon Pictures also made for Netflix, while this style of “3D anime” has vastly improved in quality over the last few years.

Shame because the giant mecha battles against monsters look good and are fun, but the humans characters or the plot surrounding them aren’t that interesting, and sometimes their animation is just crap. The script, while unremarkable, tries to add something new to to the Pacific Rim universe, but it’s kinda of half baked attempt as it starts getting better only at the very end of this very short first season. Overall, it’s… alright.

A second season has already been greenlit… but i still wonder for whom exactly.

That Old Gray Mare: Pretty Derby

Remember Uma Musume? Yeah, ironically the anime version, which is usually used to prop up the main attraction of the media franchise… almost managed to have 2 entire seasons (and a chibiesque mini-anime) out before the game released just a few weeks ago (and today the PC version released via DMM, japan only of course), at least in Japan and i guess other asian countries.

I really should have covered the anime series (given i’ve already covered almost all Azur Lane anime iterations), but at the moment my schedule is full, so probably later this autumn. I would like to give the game itself a shot and make an EXPRESSO review eventually, but i can wait for an eventual western release of the app.

I wouldn’t expect an official western release anytime soon, considered the game was supposed to launch in 2018, but it’s Cygames and we did eventually get Princess Connect Re; Dive (which i didn’t like, but whatever), so it’s possible.

So that’s that, back to Giant Monster March!

Netflix’s Way of The Husband anime, with now marginally more animation than the manga

I just woke up today to clips of the Netflix anime adaptation of Way Of The Husband (set to release this 8th of April on the streaming service), that manga about a legendary yakuza conman who gives up the criminal world to be a full time husband and support his wife, cooking, cleaning, doing chores, but with the intensity and the untentional creepyness of settling grudges, cutting fingers, plotting murder, and all the comedic misunderstandings that such a premise can spun.

It has become a fan favourite and i gladly bought it when they brough the manga volumes here in Italy some months ago, it’s pretty funny….. but what the fuck is this adaptation? I couldn’t believe it, but yes, it was posted officially by the OnNetflix Twitter Account, i did more research just to rule out me hallucinating or something. I wasn’t.

Now i feel sorry for continuining to journal the disaster that still is the EX ARM Crunchyroll’s anime adaptation, at least it’s animated and not a motion comic of the manga panels. I can’t take that away of that dumpster fire.

I don’t plan in reviewing it, what’s the point of even watching since i can just read the manga again? But clearly i’m the fool, for expecting anime to be animated, despite the word meaning exactly that. Even worse, this is no accident, it’s the producer in the charge of the series…. well, not really liking 2D animation, to put it mildly, as he literally asked to make it look like the manga. In a way, this is worst than EX-ARM, here people knew what they were doing.

For the love of god, just read the manga, Way Of The Husband is frigging great and deserves WAY better (pun not intended) than a QueenBee’s style hack job. Or watch the short live-action TV drama series they made for it!

This week, on Cells At Works: BLACK…

Yeah, the latter episode of Cells At Work darker, edgier spin-off series, Code BLACK, shows what happens when you have trombosis.

Which means big ass katamari of red blood cells cadavers, of course. Which almost kills the body of this poor unhealthy, overworked bastard. You know, the same that got gonorrhea from 10 seconds of coitus some episodes earlier.

So, this week’s lesson is don’t get trombosis, or the King Of The Cosmos will make huge rolling spheres with your literal “dead blood” and stuff your inner holes with it. I guess.

EX-ARM, the oddly shaped Manos of fate, and the invisible off-screen truck of doom

I didn’t expect to write another one of these posts, because the novelty of the EX-Arm anime being unbelievable crap wore off and i just got accostumed to its foul, robotic and uncanny fare. Oh well, it will avoid me having to note down another batch of odd fuck up, animation errors, bad camera angles and stuff.

Or so i thought.

(Gif taken from Twitter, from a fellow stunned viewer)

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Princess Connect RE: Dive iOS [EXPRESSO] | Idle Moe Mediocrity

Now that “Priconne” has gone global, let’s give it a look.

Ok, story. You start in the usual “media res battle you lose”, then wake up as your generic male fantasy anime protagonist, now amnesiac but apparently a prince-knight known by everyone else in the world, so alongside your girl retainer and various battle princesses you go on a quest to scale Sol Tower and get a wish granted.

At least it’s not an isekai (?).

Combat is automated with interaction restricted to activate special skills when charged up… that’s it. There’s no complicated system to power up characters, so it’s not confusing but it’s also lacking any real depth, it just a matter of upgrading enough the characters and choosing the party composition, especially the latter i can see being important when you’re in deep with the harder levels.

Not that i will be reaching that point, but still, i don’t consider “the game really playing itself” a plus, even in a game like this where gameplay is vestigial to the “idle waifu collecting” activities.

One filled with lots of just….incredibly generic fantasy anime moe designs. There are some exceptions like the Alpaca Princess, but not many interesting or good designs. This is to make the rarer characters more desirable and con you into buying premium currency for the gacha.

While the F2P elements aren’t abrasive, the game is relatively generous in giving out gems/crystals and doesn’t gate features with insane grinding… it’s manipulative generousity, there’s always a catch.

The games uses clips from the anime series (which look good), production values are high, it’s harmless, inoffensive, but i just find Priconne to be very disposable and uninteresting, if i didn’t force myself to do some decent progress before writing this review i would have dropped it on day 2.

So, that EX-ARM anime wasn’t a practical joke

And yet you still wanted to make an EX-ARM anime.

I will have a review of this turd when the series finishes, but this first episode it’s so unbelievably bad it doesn’t matter if the story improves or gets worse as it goes along, with this embarassing animation it’s all for naught. I would like to apologize to the Berserk 2016 anime, this is even worse, it’s unbelievable. But also the logical outcome to have a studio that never did nor understands animation… do anime.

And no, that horrendous screenshot seen above it’s not a one-off, in the first episode alone there are like 3 occasions where a horridly made 3D CG anime character is framed alongside a clearly 2D animated character. To say nothing of the horrible, uncanny way they movie (with the jaw unhinging like a creepy ventriloquist doll), making Polygon Pictures produced anime series look like Redline.

How the hell did these people manage to have this signed up as a Crunchyroll Original i can’t even fathom. The manga isn’t that bad to deserve an adaptation so abysmal.

And yes, the manga also had better animation.

Heya Camp/Room Camp (2020) [REVIEW] Stamp Camp

Quite likely devised as a stop-gag to hold fans of the series over until the second season, Heya Camp/Room Camp is basically more Yuru Camp…. without the camping, and conceived as a short anime series, as in 12 episodes, but 3 minutes episodes.

The animation is curated by C-Station with most of the same staff, it looks and feels exactly like the first season, but given how short it is, you could easily consider it Yuru Camp Season 1.5.

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Yuru Camp/Laid Back Camp (2018) (Series + OVA) [REVIEW] Chillax Deluxe

Since it “only” took 3 years to see another season of Yuru Camp, i feel a bit compelled to cover the first season, as it is one of the my favorite slice of life series of all time.

I frigging love Yuru Camp, so i’m here to spead the gospel and critique the series, complete with the 3 OVAs. Yeah, since there are only three, i feel there’s no point tackling them in another post.

I will cover the Heya Camp spin-off as its own thing, though! But also, i will confess i’m not in the mood nor i have the time to cover the live-action series (with a second one coming) as well, sorry.

But first things first. So, what is Yuru Camp (localized as Laid-Back Camp)?

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