[Review] Guilty Crown

The arrangement of seats on this train looks strange.

Guilty Crown (ギルティクラウン) is somewhat like a mixed bag to me: artwork seems to be at par with anime like Hanasaku Iroha (Spring 2011) with attention to detail and fantastic OP, but, storyline-wise, it's as bad as anime like To Aru Majutsu no Index (Autumn 2008/2010) where I rage at how slow things progress, or how much of an idiot the protagonist is.

Well, at the beginning, this showed promise of how this would be, but it later unexpectedly took a turn in a direction different. I was expecting a more diplomatic and peaceful approach, not a mad scientist with his own government and spreading a virus. Having war with a group of students on top of that. (Speaking of which, where are the teachers of the school? They seem oddly missing the whole time.)

If you're just picking this up, I would recommend just starting from the special that comes after episode 11. You are likely to be glad that I mention it because it sums up the major plots of the earlier episodes, which has a lot of filters.

Pretty much sums up of Shuu's character throughout the anime.

Starting form the second half, the atmosphere has become completely different. It's as if it has gone in a different direction from the first half and has become irrelevant.

In the last few episodes, I somewhat gave up try to understand what is going on. It has become a big mess that is difficult to untangle. That's the problem with introducing too many characters: there's no room to have character development given the number of episodes.

Guilty Crown does have the factors to be a good anime like character design, detail to background, opening/ending songs and so on, but the major flaw is that the storyline is a mess.

Based on other anime that I watched, it's always those that have male protagonist (who is usually not knowledgeable, is perverted, and/or being ordered by others) that gets featured. Besides anime where the females are the only ones, or primarily focused on, girls/women seem to always to have a role that is no higher than being the main supporting character of the (male) protagonist: never as the main character.

P.S. Speaking of which, Shuu Oma's cowardly behavior would be more tolerable if he was a girl, with the personality unchanged.

[Review] Black Rock Shooter review

An emotional one BRS (ブラック★ロックシューター) is, it's about the two worlds: one is about two girls in the normal world, and another in a completely different one where they fight each other with weapons. The fights in that world represents the hidden frustration and anger with their counterparts in the other ("real") world. I don't really understand the concept that forms the backbone of this anime. Visual-wise, it's what I had wanted Nisemonogatari to be like initially, but you know how that turned out.

From what I understand, having something to happen with that alternate world can cause an effect with the real world too, and forget who their friends are. Some people in the real world, they could see what's happening in the other world, but don't exactly have control over their other selves and helplessly stay in the background.

Unlike other anime, the first episode aired 4 weeks after all the other Winter 2012 anime (early-February) and has 8 episodes instead of the average of 11 or 12. However, it already has an OVA and it does not waste it with filter episodes and actually fills it up with actual story development. I don't see a way on how to improve on this anime than it already is.

BTW, have you noticed that there are absolutely no lines for any male characters in the entire anime, not even side characters? Also, they made episode 6 (I think) looked like the last episode with how it ended.

[Review] Nisemonogatari (偽物語)

Nisemonogatari was the second season of Bakemonogatari (化物語), with the latter being a 12-episode Summer 2009 anime. With two and a quarter years between the two (didn't know it was that long ago myself until I calculated), I expected something completely different in terms of visual style. Something like K-On.

But then, it's by Shaft... the same who did Bakemonogatari. Read my earlier posts and you would see about my disappointment with Shaft.

This actually appeared in the anime.

Unlike Bakemonogatari where there are 5 arches, Nisemonogatari seemed to only have 2 story arches. However, it focuses on Araragi's sisters (who were shown only briefly in Bakemonogatari) than to other characters. Senjougahara Hitagi had the opposite amount of airtime in Nisemonogatari. Shinobu had slightly more time and have a voice.

Still, there are moments that would give me a big question mark, like this scene:

I don't get this scene.

Overall, I like the storyline, but there is too much visual distraction. One example are the rapid flashes of images, or a wall of text that were displayed that is too quick to read without pausing. On top of that, text that is usually in hiragana is in katakana or some obscure kanji that is not used today. Also, the traditional version is used instead of simplified (eg. 體 instead of 体) and horizontal text is from right to left. It's fried my head trying to figure out what I was looking at.

Oh the other hand, I like the ending song.