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If ever there was a need to reit­er­ate it: suc­cess­ful com­edy hinges on the deliv­ery. Sei­tokai Yak­uin­domo some­how doesn’t under­stand this and after cram­ming joke after staid joke into an epis­ode, it still comes across as bland and unin­spired. All the con­stitu­ent parts are there: the all-girls school recently turned co-ed, the straight-man prot­ag­on­ist, the over­com­pens­at­ing short girl; but none of them gel together. The first three epis­odes never break that threshold that turns a smirk into a laugh into a guf­faw. Instead, pre­dict­ab­il­ity and tedium set in and what could have been a ster­ling com­edy, preg­nant with pos­sib­il­it­ies, falls flat and doesn’t find the spark to dif­fer­en­ti­ate it.

“pixelated shots of sex toys and gen­italia dur­ing the open­ing demon­strate the taw­dri­ness the jokes aim for”

Takatoshi joined Ousai Academy because it was close to his house. It is no ordin­ary school how­ever, up until recently it was an all-girls school mean­ing the ratio of females to males is high and though Takatoshi didn’t join to build a harem, other male stu­dents cer­tainly have. On his first day he is accos­ted by the stu­dent coun­cil pres­id­ent, Shino, and forced to join the coun­cil as vice pres­id­ent and rep­res­ent­at­ive for the male stu­dent body. As well as the filthy mind of the pres­id­ent, he is joined by the ultra-rich Aria and the genius trapped in a child’s body, Suzu in his daily duties involving an inor­din­ate amount of paper­work as well as loaf­ing around the coun­cil room dur­ing breaks. Read the rest of this entry

Where have all the young men gone? Sure there are the mil­it­ary men, barely old enough to hold a mean­ing­ful rank, but the Strike Witches 2 uni­verse is entirely bereft of any young boys. Per­haps ages six through six­teen are spent in secret train­ing to reduce the num­ber of assaults due to the girls’ com­plete lack of cloth­ing below the waist. Or per­haps the Neuroi, the opaque alien aggressors, are an ana­logy of male puberty. Regard­less, the open­ing three epis­odes of this second sea­son start out much as the first and it isn’t until the cringe­worthy third epis­ode that the uncom­fort­able­ness of watch­ing young girls with no lower cloth­ing on suf­fer­ing through com­prom­ising situ­ations sets in. The change of stu­dio from the belea­guered GONZO to AIC Spir­its hasn’t changed the aes­thet­ics, but it has reduced the crotch shots and increased the pier­cing light of cen­sor­ship. Oth­er­wise, for bet­ter or worse, the premise and exe­cu­tion are left entirely in tact.

“a zero-sum series, each shred of devel­op­ment evap­or­ates as soon as the char­ac­ters visit a bath”

After the events of the first sea­son, the Neuroi were pushed out of Brit­an­nia and into Romagna, how­ever as a com­mu­nic­a­tion chan­nel was about to be opened with the now humanoid enemy, another force des­cen­ded to Earth, con­sum­ing the all in their path. City after city is razed in this new offens­ive and entire squad­rons of Strike Witches are decim­ated with the fero­city and volume of attacks. Yoshika mean­while has gradu­ated from school and is con­sid­er­ing what to do next when word of an attack involving her com­rade Lynne comes over the radio. The desire to pro­tect her friends is too great, so it is that the 501^st reforms to com­bat this renewed threat. Read the rest of this entry

Because the world needs another URL shortener: http://n.adesi.co/

Not as short as many oth­ers but anime related. At the moment it’s very lo-fi and doesn’t have an API or any integ­ra­tion points so it isn’t cur­rently com­pat­ible with your favour­ite Twit­ter cli­ent — this will come soon enough along with stats and other paraphernalia. Built from scratch in less than a couple of hours so any bugs drop me a line, like­wise with fea­ture requests, oth­er­wise enjoy.

Edit: For­got to say, it is cur­rently gath­er­ing data, so once a fron­tend is built exist­ing links will reveal their stats. ¶

It comes as quite a sur­prise that Shuku­fuku no Cam­pan­ella is in based on a visual novel rather than an RPG; the hints are remark­ably strong with quests, line-dancing com­bat and job-classes, even the open­ing scen­ario seems ripped straight from Chrono Trig­ger or Legend of Zelda: The Min­ish Cap. What lies bey­ond this super­fi­cial resemb­lance how­ever is a cutesy, pas­tel col­oured romp through a fluffy, high-fantasy world that keeps the con­flicts light and the humour inof­fens­ive but with a dash of eye-rolling raci­ness that remains the only hint of its adult game her­it­age. Without a stronger nar­rat­ive to sup­port it, the series relies on its cast which for the first three epis­odes are enter­tain­ing enough, but whether the series can last for twelve epis­odes on twee inten­tions is another matter.

“the whim­sical life­styles of unin­ter­est­ing char­ac­ters in a fas­cin­at­ing world”

Tak­ing place in the city of Ert’ Aria, the Oasis clan is a loose col­lec­tion of char­ac­ters lead by Carina, daugh­ter of the grand duke of the city, and con­sist­ing of her child­hood friend Leicester, maid Nina and res­id­ent burly man Nick, as well as recent addi­tions such as the pup­pet­eer Agnes and tem­plar knight Chelsea. On the night of a met­eor storm, eth­er­eal energy awakens a highly soph­ist­ic­ated auto­maton which, for bet­ter or worse, latches on to Leicester and joins the Oasis group. Together they take on dif­fer­ent quests at the behest of often face­less cli­ents and can include activ­it­ies ran­ging from quelling a raging crys­tal dragon to pick­ing a rare black rain­bow flowers. A mys­ter­i­ous power how­ever dwells within the recently awakened mech­an­ical girl, Minette, and her very nature as well as her abil­it­ies may attract unwanted atten­tion. Read the rest of this entry