Don’t watch these animes — they’re trash (pt.6)
Welcome back to this ongoing series where I attempt to review all 619 animes on Hulu, from Akira to Zoids. Unfortunately, Zoids is not on Hulu, so we’re stuck with the cliche Zoids knock-off Mobile Suit Gundam. Today, we’re learning about animes that begin with the letter “D,” which include D-Frag and D. Gray Man, though, unfortunately, not Vampire Hunter D. I’ll also review Mikhail Gorbachev’s anime acting debut, rant about how the early 2000s were the golden age of anime, and try to convince myself that the ten minutes I spent watching Desert Punk were not terribly wasted.
Note: Life has caught up to me in the past two or three weeks. It’s been a while since I’ve watched some of these animes, so some reviews are more vague than they should be. Mea culpa.
D-Frag
“Kenji likes to think he’s the bad boy of his school. That is, until he meets the four insane girls of a gaming club.” Clearly this anime is utter fantasy; the words “gaming club” and “four girls” do not belong in the same sentence unless the verb “drive away” is present as well.
D. Gray Man
Another Bleach-knock-off. This time Buddy is an exorcist who fights against demons who possess the bodies of the dead. The end goal is to stop an evil clown who keeps making the demons to use as weapons. This was another theological grab-bag, although my Christian heart was warmed by a show where the exorcists are the good guys and the main villain openly despises God. Buddy also had some pretty cool powers, although I felt like the demons in the show were overpowered. I’m afraid that later episodes will involve the monsters and demons either being made less powerful or being defeated by gimmicks.
Rating: Toss-up
Excursus: 2000s-era anime.
I’ve noticed while watching through this series that I’ve tended to enjoy animes from the first decade of the new millenium. This includes Fullmetal Alchemist, Inuyasha, D. Gray Man, Code: Geass, Death Note, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Basilisk, Black Lagoon, and Corpse Princess. This is not due to any nostalgia on my part, since I didn’t watch any anime during that time. I’ve noticed, though, that animes from this time period tend to do better with me, even compared to similar newer animes. I have a few theories as to why, most of which relate to the art style. Note that when I say “older animes,” I mean animes from the 2000–2010 era.
- Newer animes often use lots of tricks to make it look like something is happening when it isn’t: Lens flares, bright colors, shaky cam, effects, CGI. Older animes tend to have less of this.
- Newer animes have a brighter color palette and younger looking characters. Everything looks bleached out, and everyone looks twelve. Older animes tend to have a darker palette and more mature looking characters.
3. Newer animes tend to be more fanservicey; however, this may be survivorship bias. It may be the case that the fanservicey animes of the 2000s didn’t get picked up by streaming services. It may also be the case that mainstream titles in the shonen and action-oriented seinen genres became more fanservicey during the ’10s.
4. It’s possible that only the best animes from the ’00s are on streaming platforms and all the crappy ones are completely forgotten. It’s also possible that fewer animes were being made in the ’00s than the ’10s. Perhaps the average anime of the ’00s had a bigger budget, a larger staff, or a more dedicated director.
5. Older animes had more distinctive character designs. Newer animes tend to have characters who all look the same from anime to anime. Again, this might be survivorship bias, but I think the art styles prevalent in the ’00s lent themselves to more distinctive characters. Many of the characters from this time period are instantly recognizable.
Dagashi Kashi
I skipped this one, as it did not look at all interesting to me.
Dance with Devils
Reverse harem. Skipped.
Daganronpa: The Animation
Harry Potter, except you have to kill someone to pass the class. I don’t like school-related animes (8 years of high school was enough for me), and I don’t like “you have to kill someone” stories. Skipped.
Darker than Black
This anime was actually pretty interesting. It felt more like an actual TV show than most animes, which is probably due to the fact that it was developed as a standalone anime rather than being adapted from a manga. It also gave me a strong Stranger Things vibe, despite it predating Stranger Things by several years. This story involves a young girl, her super-powered brother, her mad scientist father, and the secret agents who have to rescue her from some evil government forces. It had an interesting storyline and a fight scene that was actually memorable. Darker than Black also had teenage characters who actually acted like teenagers, rather than teenagers acting like a teenager’s weird idea of what adults act like. Some mild fanservice was the only blot on this otherwise interesting anime, which I will be coming back to.
Rating: Worth It.
DARLING in the FRANXX
I heard a lot of hype about this mecha anime on Reddit, but I was not impressed. The writing was overly dramatic and pretentious, there was egregious fanservice, the protagonist was wormy, spineless, and depressed, and the storyline was incoherent — definitely not the next Evangelion. On second thought, this actually sounds a whole lot like Evangelion. What’s different than Evangelion is the stupid-looking CGI mechas. For the love of Zoids, when will this end?
I was sure that the protagonist was voiced by Jay Baruchel, who voiced Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon. The Social Justice Warriors at Wikipedia have declared that this is not so. Also, I will make note that the fanservice in this show was not entirely egregious, as it was part of a coming-of-age narrative, and in fact was noted as such by the narrator. However, the scene in question was asinine — a naked chick with a fish in her mouth jumping out of a lake, complete with Garden of Eden-esque hair to make the scene PG-13.
Date a Live
This title sounds more like an ad you’d see on KissAnime than an actual anime. I did not watch because it was either a harem, stupid, or both.
Death Note
Buddy gets a special notebook. Every time he writes someone’s name in it, that person dies. Buddy tries to make the world a better place with the notebook. I’ll give you one guess as to how that works out.
If you’ve watched any anime, you’ve probably watched Death Note, and if you haven’t watched any anime, you should watch Death Note right now. I would say that the three essential anime for non-anime fans are Death Note, Evangelion, and Black Lagoon. The genius of Death Note has no doubt inspired many sophomore-year bull sessions, and I won’t take the time to write another essay on its brilliance. I will, however, list a few unrelated points about the series. [Mild spoilers ahead]
- The worst part about the series is the pacing; there are several episodes where almost nothing happens. It could have been at least three-to-four episodes shorter.
- Many people online hated the second story arc (with Near instead of L). I personally didn’t mind this arc at all. I also found the ending very satisfying, which is rare with a TV series. Oftentimes a storyline will balloon to such epic proportions that any attempt to end the series feels cheap and anticlimactic. Death Note’s ending ratcheted up the stakes just enough to provide tension, but also managed to provide a logical and satisfying conclusion to the story.
- The Shinigami are gods of death, but they are morally neutral agents in the story. It is the humans who are the real villains.
- [Big spoiler] Death Note is a series with a low-key conservative theme. (When I say “conservative” I don’t mean right-wing or Republican). Light’s goal is to create a perfect world, without criminals or evildoers. He is explicitly trying to “immanentize the eschaton.” However, as he tries to achieve this goal, he manipulates others, kills innocent people, alienates his family, and overall makes the world a worse place. As Ryuk points out, the Death Note brings unhappiness to all humans that use it. Light’s attempt to break this “unalterable law” of human nature leads to misery. This is also the theme of Greek tragedy — hubris leads to nemesis.
Death Parade
Saw, but with a jaunty jazz theme song. In each episode, some new sap finds himself at a mysterious bar, where he must play a game and win, or die. If he chooses not to play the game, he dies as well. I can’t stand stuff like this, so I did not make it past the first fifteen minutes of the pilot.
Demon Lord, Retry!
Hulu, retry.
Demon Slayer Kimetsu No Yaiba
This anime features Mikhael Gorbachev’s acting debut. Old Splotchface’s family is killed by demons, but his sister survives. Unfortunately, she becomes a demon too, but Gorbachev is attached to her the way that Marx was attached to the Labor Theory of Value. He defends her against a professional demon-slayer, who is impressed and decides to enact a new policy of glasnost towards demons with brothers who care about them. From what I could gather from the end credits, this series quickly devolves into a team fighting anime, like Akame ga Kill or Blood Blockade Battlefront.
Not since Evangelion have I watched an anime that was so emotionally gripping. Major caveat: Demon Slayer Kimetsu No Yaiba was far more melodramatic than Evangelion (and not as good); the drama in the pilot felt very forced, but it was carried by good performances from the voiceactors. There was also lots of snow in this anime.
Rating: Toss-up. I don’t have good feelings about where this is headed, but it was an interesting start.
Desert Punk
Id: This show looks interesting.
Superego: No, it doesn’t.
Id: Well, at least the intro theme is interesting?
Superego: This looks like a drunk guy did a Jawa cosplay down at the dunes and filmed it on an 8mm camera.
Id: It has an interesting setting and storyline.
Superego: It’s the same bad mash-up of Mad Max and Fist of the North Star that you’ve seen in animes hundreds of times. This is the dollar tree version Afro Samurai or Trigun.
Id: It might have good fight scenes.
Superego: The fight scenes are worse than Fist of the North Star.
Id: It —
Superego: This show is mainly about breasts and poor animation. Admit it: you only wanted to watch it because it had the word “punk” in the title. This is not the Minor Threat of the anime world. Face the consequences of your actions.
Id: Yes! You are correct! I have wasted fifteen minutes of my life! I live in shame! How could I ever forgive myself!
Ego: When do we eat?