Let's get it straight: This is a pure slice of life starring moeblobs. I could just post this screencap here and be done because it sums up the show really well http://i.imgur.com/4lQrV8u.jpg.
I was slightly pissed that Shaft is just doing a girls-eating-food-and-making-orgasmic-faces-show but with tuned back expectations I was okey with the turnout... it's just not something forgettable.
This show starts out as a slice of life + girl in a wheel chair and then suddenly turns into a magical girls show... Being penned by Akame ga Kill's writer and heavily inspired by Madoka you can expect some suffering for these girls even though they complete their apparent goal with by Episode 5. The rushed approach is however not one I would consider good. After that episode the pacing is rather slow and there is little progression. The final episode (who doesn't have a writing credit by the original author) manages to invalidate all that has come before it and is worthy of the title "asspull".
If it wasn't for the suffering I would have dropped the show by Episode 6 and I would certainly not recommend the show to anyone. There are however people who champion this as an underdog so who knows ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
"Gugure! Kokkuri-san" is a bit of a mixed bag for me. The comedy style isn't exactly consistent and heavy on the reaction faces but it's still fun most of the time. The colorful cast has a certain charm to them and the show can be cute too. There is a certain Japanese weirdness to it which you just have to put up with.
I honestly thought this show is going to be terrible. The designs are odd and well... everyone is always blushing?! While it remains totally skipable it has it's moments. If you're looking for something with a lot of jokes about the lewd part of the industry and some shipping it would fit the bill. Would have enjoyed it more if the character focus has been more balanced though (half of them were about Sensei).
Harmless and generic fantasy harem. The execution is mediocre at best. The ever looming antagonists unfortunately only serve as an advertisement for the light novels as the anime does not get to them. The only thing that surprised me was that the occasional BGM piece was actually good and a more unique choice.
Should you have any expectations of this show? Nahhh. They make their true intentions very clear whenever the ED song comes up... starting all the character pans at skirt height https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km4m23ogcYE.
It wouldn't be a lie to say this show heavily inspired by X-Men but way worse. Weak characters, bad story telling (starting in the future and then working it's way back there but throwing in tons of "will they survive it?" moments anyways), inadequate animation and random music choices. I didn't flat out hate the show but it had weird moments from the get go however they earned it with bad antagonists, stalling and then loosing any kind of pace. I was seriously blown away by it's final episode which is a horribly rushed piece of paint-by-numbers... it was too funny.
There is little war among these rails... except for all the girls fighting for the beloved MC. Unlike other shows this season I can't call this one disappointing because it did what they set out to do: Deliver pantyhose and ass service with a bit of trains on the side. The little plot there is it's all basic with few minor missteps. I doubt anyone wants to seek this out. If anything it can serve as a promo for JR but they don't really need that anyways.
As far as this show is concerned I expected it to be rather ridiculous and that it was. It's a mindless ecchi but still a better mecha than Captain Earth anyways. The animation and designs are all rather bad but what can you expect from a show were penguins with front tails are the enemies. Just have a look at the official site and you will know what you get into here http://penguin-empire.com/.
Utopia to be remade by HBO, David Fincher will direct
The Channel 4 conspiracy thriller will be remade for the US by HBO, with House of Cards’ David Fincher at the helm, while Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn will write
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/feb/13/utopia-hbo-remake-david-fincher-gillian-flynn
Oh well... should be solid. I just hope it's different enough to warrant the whole thing.
That was a fun watch with a rather original story (especially for TV). I really loved the saturaded colors and the playful direction in general.
Despite my initial low expectations for the show it turned out to be my favorite of the 1-cours this season. It's just really comfy to watch. There is hardly any drama in the show and the cast including the various spirits were great. Too bad nobody is translating the manga because I would totally continue. If you're going to give it a try I recommend watching past the first two episodes because they weren't the best.
What on paper sounds just plain terrible turned out to be a fun little LN adaptation. It wears it's intentions on the sleeve and has it's fun with all the possible tropes and references in the medium. I can't say that I was always eager to watch the next episode but I had my fun with them. Unfortunatley the last two episode were a bit overly dramatic for nothing really which was a bit of a bummer. If you're looking for a comedy that is celebrating "Otaku" culture this one fits the bill.
Feels like a gamble whenever I vote for something recently but a "Meh" seems "Fair"...
Let me start by saying that technically the show is good. The cold look goes well with the theme, the animation is good and the music (when it's not overdone) too.
Unfortunately this all means nothing when the script doesn't hold up. For a show with "Terror" in the title... this isn't seen here. Yes, buildings get blown up but that's about it. The already short season spends it's time with solving riddles for clues about the next bomb's location instead of anything meaningful. The master plan the 'terrorists' have come up with is really one of the worst ways to go about it and they're supposed to be exceptionally smart.. Lisa, a girl who gets involved with the group, is one of the worst characters I've ever seen. She hardly has a personality and serves no purpose except to bringing trouble for the protagonists. Seriously, just by removing her they would have had already more time for characterization or backstory. Heck, removing the 80% that is spent on riddles would have allowed a much different direction and actually doing something with the premise.
As much as I was looking forward to it I didn't care for most of the episodes and given it's conclusion I wouldn't recommend it.
At first I was a bit sceptical since it's Karl playing Karl but if you liked "An Idiot Abroad" you will enjoy this aswell.
The show is a collection of three short stories. Unfortunatley they're not very good except for the last one and are plagued by a low budget.
#1 Yotsuya Kaidan: The first one is a retelling of a classic kabuki play through the eyes of the author. It's a bit slow for my taste but adds some live action towards the end to etablish the curse around it.
#2 Tenshu Monogatari: This one is not really horror but a fantastical love story of a human falling in love with a god. It suffers even more from the low budget than #1 but has the better story.
#3 Bake Neko: The predecessor for the show "Mononoke". It's about a cat that turned into a Mononoke and haunts a certain Clan on a wedding day. It's miles above the previous two and told in a wonderful ricepaper artstyle.
Since you have to get through some supbar outputs for the good one I can't praise this as a whole.
DDD turned out to be quite a compelling show to watch, too bad that it's focus on ballet greatly reduces it's potential audience.
While only being 11 episodes long and not entirely sticking the landing the Goudai family drama is a bit too psychotic/animeish (season 2 never) it still felt like there was quite some progress in our main character's journey and explores some interesting themes along the way and certainly tackles preconceptions people have about ballet dancers or how that relates to masculinity. In addition to that the show is also refreshingly realistic in it's portrayal of adolescence.
MAPPA did an amazing job at packaging this up in fantastic visuals, animation and score.
Certainly recommended!
To no one's surprise Jun Maeda has a formula he sticks to but that I don't think it translates well to single cour shows. I didn't get very invested in this but I can see why it solicited quite a few harsh criticisms. Frankly the show to me had just a few too many weird elements to take it seriously and the conclusion leaves me a bit uneasy, especially given Youta's general narcissistic narration.
This turned out to be a lot better than expected. Forte and Olson work great with each other and while the home remodeling stuff is a bit goofy at times it somehow works in the cartel setting.
Run off the mill chunibyo show that starts out high-energy but is overall quite uneven in entertainment.
This show is a big fat reminder that most anime is created to promote their source material. While the synopsis and first episode promised fun adventures, they didn't deliver at all. Instead we get a directionless mess that doesn't even scratch at the main promise/mystery the show sets early on. The "finale" is SAO tier and ends with a huge load of teasers of what's happening in the novels if you're ever going to read them.
The characters are also extremely flat and boring and the one this show is named after is among it's worst offenders. The only redeeming thing is the deus ex machina device in form of Tensai and maybe seeing what video games Nanana is playing.
As someone who actually stuck with the show I can confirm aswell that this is what you call a train-wreck.
While from the production side of view it's alright... the plot is simply horrendous (and so are most of the characters). Keep in mind the show has only elven episodes but even with that it doesn't manage to tell a straight story and frankly has at least three episodes I would call mostly boring filler. It isn't just the occasional plot-hole but it had me constantly scratching my head or my face greeting the palms of my hands. The pacing was awful and no one was acting remotely realistic. What's even worse is that the last episode is the worst of the bunch.
The manga (which I've read) started in 2006..:
Future Diary (未来日記 Mirai Nikki?) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Sakae Esuno. The manga was serialized in the Kadokawa Shoten's Shōnen Ace between January 2006 and December 2010.
I was looking forward to watching this but it's been a big let down. Perfect example of a concept that sounded good on paper but the execution failed big time. Not that it is that innovative.. it's basically a Future Diary rip-off.
At first I was impressed they didn't fail with Engrish and I enjoyed the Taxi Driver reference but from there on there on not much happend to build some kind of suspense. The story goes nowhere and it only runs for 11 episodes (and two movies later on). The writing is unsatisfactory and lazy including tons of things that make no sense AT ALL (!!). It doesn't help that I could have cared less about the "characters". I get the feeling that the target audience is the lower end of teenagers despite having enough things in there to not warrant that (has somebody counted how often the word "Johnnys" falls?). The art itself was nice but I hated the sporadic use of the "gag-style" which ruined the mood and some of the character designs are somehow weird aswell.
Not sure if I'm going to watch the movies.. looks like the first one is set in NYC? Does not seem like these are going to be much better :I?
I think Mike Flanagan is quite competent in most of what he does, but nothing of his ever blew me away. This show is no different as he certainly is aware of today's tropes and crafts an unusually slow paced horror story more focused on the psychological impact of the haunting than scares, but after so many scene transitions between the story's timelines it gets quite tedious. It is really the later half of the series that tainted my enjoyment with more focus on melodramatic elements, monologues and a conclusion that had me feeling like I just wasted quite a lot of time...
An innocent kids show about a little Diva from space revolving around croquettes and friendship. I picked it up on a whim because it just aired over 10 days back to back and the art is wonderfully bright. Hopefully Cyclone Graphics gets another project at some point with a different demographic in mind.
In hindsight this show masks the Netflix formula quite well and made me feel quite duped for watching all of it with it's non-conclusion... As indicated by the main cast this is more of a young adult type of show but it's OK for what is is in earlier episodes. As the show progresses it starts to loose the balance between the "mysteries" they've setup and the drama and sometimes quite pointless and lame stories the club tells themselves (which brings pretty much all progression to halt).
This is one of the shows I'm not quite sure why I even bothered. It starts out quite harmless with a rergular setup for either a coming of age or drama with bishis... some episodes later we're however quite deep in yaoi territory which I was not expecting considering the age of the boy involved. This just feels wrong... Season 2 coming this Winter.
If you are looking for a gay anime, this is probably it. While it's not terrible and mixes in some humor but the yaoi still prevails (including pseudo rape). The last episodes are rushed and almost had me believing I was watching a recap and that is with only 10 episodes based on a still ongoing manga...
This show is medicore as hell. I already didn't like the first episode's tone but the further ones were at least interesting. Needless to say 10 episodes are too few and the overall finale to the show is not only stretched to two episodes but boring aswell (repeats of "KON" ˣ "See-no - HNNN"). The unneeded yuri subplot, weak characterization and an overloard of melo-drama don't help either.
There are better shows to watch really.
I wasn't aware of many of those supposed "curses" surrounding the movies so while that info was somewhat interesting there wasn't enough for it there to fill a streaming services desire for multiple episodes - so what do you do? Pad them with often times irrelevant stuff to make them longer...
The Twilight Zone Movie episode also highlighted the more exploitative side of the subject mater but it's also the first time a horror doc actually did not idolize John Landis as an icon which was unexpected to see on Shudder of all places.
Edit: Updated my overall rating to a 6 since the second season is actually a lot better with less focus on "cursed" aspects and instead more interviews about the filming itself.
