Cells At Work – BLACK (2021) [REVIEW] | Defective Form

I planned to review this TV adaptation of the Cell At Work spin-off series Black Code, as i heard the second season was delayed to summer 2021…. but clearly i was wrong, as both the oddly short second season of the main series AND the spin-off series started airing back to back in early January… so that threw me a curveball, as i was planning to revisit the first season of Cells At Work before the second one hit, but still, i’m reviewing this in detail, i’ll get to the main series eventually.

Regardless, it’s even better, since using anime to guilt-trip people into having a more healthy lifestyle is a proper “thing”, and it’s beautiful.

I loved the first season, it was absurd but also a very fun way to combine the old french edutaiment series “Once Upon A Life…Time” (or Micro Patrol, if you lived in an European country in the 90s you mostly likely have seen or heard of it at some point, it’s quite famous even in Italy) into a shonen manga format, so your body is basically a city-temple where every cell exists for a purpose, be it carrying packages of oxygen to the lungs, keeping track of information, and each episode it faces a new treat, usually viruses that are quite stabbable by the white blood cells, as they lunge with knives at the bacteria like a fuckin Hellsing villain. Gotta love how the violence is basically pardoned by the educational facts about cells, how the body deals with extraneous material, etc.

And how you basically have plenty of antrophormic Amazon delivery people taking drinks from the vending machines that are inside of you. Lucky bastards?

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[EXPRESSO] Alice In Borderland (Season 1) (2020) | Through The Killing Glass

A live-action Netflix series based on the manga of the same name by Haro Aso (Hyde & Closer; Zombie 100: Bucket List Of The Dead), Alice In Borderland is about a young guy called Arisu, as he and his best friends find themselves mysteriously lost in an alternative version of Tokyo, and forced to play dangerous games of various nature in order to survive and hopefully discover a way out. All with a fairly gratitous & superficial Alice In Wonderland theme: a character called Mad Hatter, Arisu being the japanese pronunciation of “Alice”, the importance of game cards, etc.

It’s entertaining and you can tell it’s made for modern audiences, as it mostly throws the viewer into the action and events without explaining much, but i really can’t fault it for that because direction by Shinsuke Sato (Princess Blade, Death Note: Light Up The New World), it’s fairly tight, and the public…. is most likely already QUITE familiar with this type of stories: death games, the alternative Tokyo, elaborate trap scenarios with time limits, etc. The series does a decent job with these elements, even if it may feel a touch too derivative and overly familiare at times.

It doesn’t help the lead character, Arisu is presented as this cautious genius with a gamer past, but he inconsistently goes from being smarter than Light Yagami… to not noticing downright obvious traps, depending on that episode’s script. And don’t expect too much from the other characters.

Even so, it’s still quite fun to see these grisly scenarios unfold, the production values are good, and while the middle part kinda drags itself along, it picks up a lot after that, so overall it makes for a fun watch, leading to a cliffhanger ending… and thankfully a confirmed renewal for a second season.

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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Iwa Kakeru – Sports Climbing Girls [FIRST EPISODE IMPRESSIONS] | Rock Climbing, Joel

Lippert can even direct anime girls from the grave, how amazing!

I usually wait for the first three episodes of an anime series to do a first impressions, but due to time costraints i won’t this time (by the time i wrote and edited this, the second episode is out already, but i can’t afford to delay the post), just talking about the first episode and how it presents the series.

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One Piece: Romance Dawn Story OVA (2008) [REVIEW]

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Director: Katsumi Tokoro
Writer: Tsuyoshi Sakurai

Here’s another quite nostalgic OVA, as in 2008, for its 40th Anniversary Shonen Jump held the Super Anime Tour, and Toei was commissioned a recreation not of One Piece, but of Romance Dawn, the one-shot story (the first version, in this specific case) Eiichiro Oda created and that eventually served as a base for One Piece, not only in premise but also character designs, and became a naming convention, so much that the first One Piece chapter is titled “Romance Dawn” as well. Continua a leggere “One Piece: Romance Dawn Story OVA (2008) [REVIEW]”

Japan Sinks 2020 (2020) [REVIEW] | ooh the eastern sea’s so blue

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I knew this series was coming, but the surprising lack of hype, coverage and buzz on social media sites made me think either people forgot about this, or didn’t bother since most of the feedback from the dedicated sites was, with most of the comments expressing disappointement, criticizing excessive nationalism for the sake of it or just baffling stating stuff that – somehow – happens, like a grandpa “360° sniping” with a bow and arrows, etc.

This made me a bit sad, as i loved Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken (which i highly recommend, just go watch if you haven’t), and i don’t dislike Masaaki Yuasa’s work in general, quite the opposite, for example i love Kick-Heart, good stuff, Ping Pong The Animation is incredible, and his screenplay for the extra-surreal Cat Soup (another one i highly recommend) is quite good.

After pondering on it, i wrote a small blog post about the same apprehensions, and decided to watch the series since it’s a Netflix exclusive, and i do have Netflix, despite barely using most of the time. Continua a leggere “Japan Sinks 2020 (2020) [REVIEW] | ooh the eastern sea’s so blue”

Hentatsu (2020) [REVIEW] | A Cat And Oni Walk Into A Bar

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This late june, i was on a kick to discover/watch what else director TATSUKI made after the first season of Kemono Friends, and among them Hentatsu felt in that category of “i’ve seen some images time ago of this, but i have zero idea of what it’s about”.

And after watching the whole series, i still don’t fully know how to answer the implied question, it sure wasn’t what i expected from studio Iroiro and TATSUKI – as you can tell immediately they made it – but it isn’t the usual ensemble of weird animal people or “humans” fighting against weird misterious enemy in the backdrop of a vague post-apocalyptic setting. Continua a leggere “Hentatsu (2020) [REVIEW] | A Cat And Oni Walk Into A Bar”

Azur Lane The Animation 2019-20 [REVIEW] | The Bone Of My Boat

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Ah yes, one more for the evergrowing subgenre of “shipgirls military slice of life”, less Arpeggio of Blue Steel, and more Kancolle/Kantai Collection, which is obvious as hell as Azur Lane (by chinese companies Manju and Yongshi) came out to fight Kadokawa’s browser game, but actually bothered to give it more actual gameplay, implement less taxing gacha elements (which is akin to say “less rusty gambling hooks piercing my flesh”), and actually made it easier to access worlwide without any need to know japanese, use google translate constantly or set a VPN, just released an app for smarthphones.

And given it performed quite well (even in Japan), it was just a matter of time to see an anime adaptation of sorts, which came out in late 2019…not fully, as two last episodes were postponed to march 2020 after concerns on animation quality. I thought it was due to fans expressing criticisms on social media, but it seems it was mostly the staff itself’s decision in order to deliver a better and satisfying ending to the series instead of rushing it, which is commendable, and gave me time to catch up. Continua a leggere “Azur Lane The Animation 2019-20 [REVIEW] | The Bone Of My Boat”