Doctorkev’s Anime Review Digest: 4
It’s been a while since I last did this. As part of the AniTAY writing collective, I regularly contribute to seasonal collaboration articles. When we first moved AniTAY from Kinja to Medium back in late 2020, I collated a bunch of these smaller reviews from the collab articles into three longer digests. In the last three years, I’ve written lots more reviews for these collabs that some of my readers may not have known were available to read.
From the Fall 2020 sequel guide (original page deleted in the Kinjapocalypse):
Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 3
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Fantasy/Dungeon Crawling/Harem
About the series: Rarely has a series suffered such an off-putting and inaccurate English title as poor DanMachi. Granted, the direct English transliteration of the lengthy Japanese title is apparently more akin to “Is it Wrong to Have an Encounter in a Dungeon?”, but it isn’t a bawdy, trashy fantasy sex comedy as would inititially appear. Based on Fujino Omori’s long-running light novel series (up to 15 volumes for the main series and 12 for the spin-off), this is instead a straight fantasy heavily based on D&D RPG concepts, with a smattering of ancient Greek and Roman mythology for good measure.
Arising from the centre of Orario, the bustling town that serves as the series’ main setting, an enormous tower pierces the sky. Adventurers the world over flock to Orario to challenge the uncharted depths of the dungeon, and many engage the support of resident gods and goddesses to do so, joining their “familias”, akin to guilds, with each named god as figurehead.
White-haired protagonist Bell Cranel is a plucky young warrior with an optimistic heart and a strong work ethic. He becomes the first member of the down-at-heel goddess Hestia’s familia. Hestia is clearly besotted with Bell, though he has eyes only for the Loki Familia’s sword-princess wunderkind Ais Wallenstein. DanMachi follows Bell’s progress from inexperienced level 1 beginner to skilled warrior, and much of the fun comes from sharing in his triumphs over life-threatening situations. Bell has reserves of power and drive that even he barely understands, that the jealous Hestia wishes to keep to herself. Her thinly-veiled desire for his body and love causes her no end of aggravation because his apparently passive skill involves effortlessly adding other female characters to his loose “harem”.
Refreshingly for modern anime, this is not an isekai, and Bell — although growing in abilities — is by no means a self-insert power-fantasy protagonist. Bell’s world is complex and filled with fun and interesting characters all with their own backstories and motivations. Don’t be put off by the title — give it a try and catch up in time for the hotly-anticipated third season.
Time to Catch Up: 10 hours (+7 hours for spinoff/OVAs/Movie)
What You Need to Watch:
Essential: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 1: 13 episodes, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 2: 12 episodes
Highly recommended: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria: 12 episodes
Optional: Movie: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: Arrow of the Orion, Season 1 OVA: Is It Wrong to Expect a Hot Spring in a Dungeon?, Season 2 OVA: Is It Wrong to go Searching for Herbs on a Deserted Island?
Best Place to Catch Up: HIDIVE has everything in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, and everything but the original series in Canada, where you can find it on Crunchyroll or Netflix.
Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon
Studio: Sunrise
Genre: Fantasy/time travel/isekai/reverse isekai
About the series: A surprise sequel to the anime adaptation of beloved mangaka Rumiko Takahashi’s (Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Ranma ½, Rin-ne) 56-volume 1996 manga Inu-Yasha, Yashahime is to Inu-Yasha what Boruto is to Naruto but with girls, and demons rather than ninjas. Inu-Yasha followed the story of ordinary 15-year-old schoolgirl Kagome Higurashi who falls down a magical well into the past and pulls a cursed arrow from the chest of titular half-boy, half-dog demon (yokai) Inu-Yasha, releasing him from bondage. Tied together through mystical obligations, they travel Sengoku-period Japan on a quest for shards of the “Shikon Jewel”, in opposition to the evil Naraku who seeks the shards for his own twisted ends.
Yashahime is not written by Takahashi herself, though she does contribute main character designs. This sequel, set several years after the original’s conclusion, follows Moroha, the daughter of Kagome and Inu-Yasha (who must be quarter-demon, I guess?) and the twin daughters of Sesshomaru. The question on everyone’s lips, of course, is “who is Sesshomaru’s baby mama?” Eldest twin Towa somehow gets separated from younger sister Setsuna and ends up in the present where she is raised by Kagome’s family. After 10 years the twins are reunited but Setsuna has lost her memories and has trained as a demon slayer. Setsuna and Towa embark on a journey with their cousin Moroha to restore Setsuna’s memories. Rather than a boy-girl adventure story with constant romantic tension, this looks (at least initially) to be more of a girl-trio road-trip story through the demon-infested past.
Time to catch up: 77 hours (+optional movies: 6.5 hours)
What you need to watch:
Essential: Inu-Yasha: 167 episodes, Inu-Yasha: The Final Act: 26 episodes
Optional: Inuyasha the Movie: Affections Touching Across Time, Inuyasha the Movie: The Castle Beyond the Looking Glass, Inuyasha the Movie: Swords of an Honorable Ruler, Inuyasha the Movie: Fire on the Mystic Island
Best Place to Catch Up: Crunchyroll or Netflix in the U.S. and Canada, Crunchyroll in the U.K. and Australia.
From the 2020 AniTAY Deca-Dence review (also lost to the Kinjapocalypse)
Doctorkev’s Deca-dence review
What do you get if you mix the kinetic aerial combat of Attack on Titan and The Saga of Tanya the Evil with the bonkers creativity of Mob Psycho 100 and a weird amalgam of the design sensibilities of Studio Ghibli’s movies and Bandai’s Heybot? Surely an ungodly mess, right? And with a groan-inducingly terrible title like Deca-Dence, it has to be awful. Thankfully not — this deeply strange hot-pot of disparate influences is distilled into a perfectly-constructed 12-episode moonshine shot of pure fun. The last anime that was as economical and propulsive with its convulsing plot was 2018’s Planet With, and Deca-Dence surpasses even that.
It’s really hard to explain what makes Deca-Dence so good without spoiling the show’s basic premise. That first episode arranges all the pieces for what looks like a great sci-fi/fantasy anime about a mobile post-apocalyptic city and its embattled denizens who fight massive monsters. That alone is a promising start for a short anime series. But Deca-Dence has so much more up its sleeve with a massive, early, head-spinning twist that upends every viewer’s expectation. Although it does remain the show it initially purports to be, it adds several extra dimensions — truly becoming Peak Anime: Hypercube Edition. This plot unspools into hyperdimensional space, baby. (Imagine that line read by Space Dandy for maximum impact.)
Protagonist Natsume is a typical anime lead — plucky, full of energy and ambition, and willing to stand against opposition and indifference to pursue her goals of using weird anti-gravity tech to smash squishy enemies and drain them of their lifeblood using massive hypodermic syringe weapons. She’s a great focal point for audience sympathy as she’s curious about her world and motivated to progress within it.
Natsume’s natural counterpoint is mentor figure Kaburagi — a man of multiple faces, all of them tired. His world-weariness (to the point of terminal resignation) is challenged by his chipper apprentice, and their relationship is the plot’s strong central pivot — always helping to drive the action, even when they spend entire episodes — and seemingly worlds — apart. Natsume overcomes horrors like the loss of her father and the mutilation of her arm with a sunny smile and solemn determination. Kaburagi is inspired to finally transcend his self-imposed restrictions to help them both break free from the metaphorical and physical chains that bind both them and their comrades to a meaningless, demeaning and degrading system that literally churns up the bodies of those who refuse to conform to the authorities and their soulless society.
Deca-Dence is a timely and creative reminder that in these days of late-stage capitalism, digital demagoguery and fake-news-filled media, “sticking it to the man” is as important an ambition as ever.
From: The 10 Anime of Fall 2020 You Should Be Watching:
Akudama Drive
Spoiler-free Synopsis: In the post-apocalyptic Japanese Kansai district, the very worst criminals — Akudama — are sentenced to live-streamed public execution. A group of six Akudama escape the authorities and, with one normal citizen in tow, embark on a high-speed, high-stakes heist across their dangerous, neon-lit future city with a pair of dangerous “executioners” in close pursuit.
Why You Should Be Watching: Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Danganronpa franchise will recognise the character designs and concepts in this breathless, nonstop action spectacle from those games’ Kazutaka Kodaka (writer) and Rui Komatsuzaki (designer). Although this isn’t strictly a “death game” story like Danganronpa, it does share its love of excess and absurd drama. With a cast of colourful characters, each with their own improbably hyper-developed talent, it’s certainly never boring.
What it isn’t is even remotely subtle. Each main character is named only for their skill — ie “Doctor” — a criminal surgeon with the ability to reattach severed limbs, or “Brawler” — a dreadlocked man-mountain unbeatable in a fist-fight. Their personality traits are dialed up to 11 in a Spinal Tap-baiting rock orgy of loud music, fast cuts, and spectacular action.
Akudama Drive wears its Hollywood action movie influences proudly on its sleeve, with on-the-nose episode titles like “Speed”, “Reservoir Dogs” and “Mission Impossible” hinting at that intallment’s contents.
Audience point-of-view character “Ordinary Person” is mistakenly identified as an Akudama, given the title “Swindler”, and the show follows her initially bewildered stumbling through insane set piece after set piece. Soon she demonstrates the cool-headedness and empathy essential to the completion of the group’s task. It remains to be seen whether the show will pull a Danganronpa-style insane plot twist in regards to her identity.
Although the rest of the characters act very much according to their respective stereotypes, the show is so stylish, so well constructed, directed, and animated that they fit right in with the hyper-stylised setting. I doubt that Akudama Drive will have anything profound to say by the time it reaches its presumably bombastic, explosive ending, but this isn’t the kind of show where that matters. The anime equivalent of a funfair ride, if it can leave you dizzy, disoriented, grinning and begging for more at the end, it will have done its job.
From the Crunchyroll Golden Slaine Awards:
Tower of God
In order to populate its new “Originals” lineup, Crunchyroll chose to draw deep from the dark, deep Webtoon well. “All the great manga are already tied up in licensing deals, right? So let’s go where Japanese companies fear to tread… South Korea.” In truth, this doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, however Webtoon as a service does not utilize the same editorial oversight or professional standards as Japanese manga publishers. Sometimes it seems like anyone can vomit up the insane ramblings of their unrestrained id and have someone read it on the Webtoon platform. With Tower of God, their first full season Webtoon adaptation, Crunchyroll began to reap the shitstorm of their ill-conceived plans.
Let’s talk about perhaps the blandest nonentity of a central character in the history of Shonen anime. Bam’s (Oh god, is that really his name? Bam is an offensive Scottish term used for a feckless, brainless idiot that seems oddly fitting here) main character trait is an obsessive simping over Worst Female Character Ever: Rachel. She who emits throbbing, luminescent “Dude, I’m just not that into you” vibes, visible even from space. Bam is too inexplicably besotted and stupid to realize that she is Bad News who’ll probably throw him under the bus/out of an underwater bubble to his certain death. (Oops. Spoilers, we suppose.)
So vacuous is Bam’s non-character that we have no idea why any of the other characters flock around him. He has no skills. No abilities. No charisma. His very presence sucks time away from the other, more interesting characters. Characters of whom there are too many, very few developed in enough detail for us to care if they die or leave inexplicably. Otherwise-interesting boob-tube girl Serena just ups and leaves one episode: “Welp, the author ran out of plot for me, so I guess I’m just gonna split. Laters.”
Next to the weak characterization, oblique worldbuilding is Tower of God’s second most egregious offence. Acting like an extended prologue (despite the fact that all 13 episodes cover 80 chapters of the original source Webtoon), it deigns to explain very little about the world the characters exist within. Not only does this make the stakes maddeningly unclear, but it fails to explain fundamental concepts central to the characters’ interactions and plot progression. Even at the end we are left wondering just what in the ever-living hell a “Wave Controller” even is. We understand that to cram so much material into such a ridiculously small space requires judicious pruning — but did coherence and clarity need to be the casualties?
Some parts of Tower of God, such as the action scenes, were fun, but were overshadowed by poor characters and vague plot. If only Crunchyroll had learned their lesson that cramming almost one hundred chapters of Webtoon content into a single cour of anime was a bad idea — we wouldn’t have had to experience the excruciating follow-ups: God of High School and Noblesse. Well done Crunchyroll, for ensuring that we studiously avoid anything Webtoon-related in future. We can’t imagine that was your goal, but you succeeded.
Thanks for reading this collection of blasts from the (relatively recent) past, some of which were no longer available to read online until now. I’m taking a little break from writing new articles in order to recharge my batteries (and read through some very lengthy visual novels!), so I have a few more of these lined up. Keep an eye out for them!
