A review of the Hitsugi no Chaika: Avenging Battle anime series
The second season of Hitsugi no Chaika (Chaika the Coffin Princess), subtitled Avenging Battle, may become a bullet point in the argument against the practice of a splitting a broadcast in two. The first season didn’t exactly shake the earth but was supremely enjoyable and didn’t have any disagreeable sharp edges to it. The second season continues Chaika’s story of collecting the remains of her father, the infamous Emperor Gaz, along with her saboteur companions Toru and Akari.
For a while at least it seems to be business as usual: locate hero, procure gruesomely severed body parts, find out more about Gaz and the history behind Chaika. Then suspicion creeps in that this story train is heading full speed for a finale, and it’s not stopping at any stations.
There’s a principle in writing drama coined by Anton Chekhov called simply “Chekhov’s Gun”. It’s a straightforward idea with the spirit of it being “don’t include anything unnecessary”; a lot of anime do it anyway as either a hangover from their manga or light novel source material, as a way to entice viewers further than the first episode, or as a misguided attempt to construct a foundation for additional instalments. If that’s Chekhov’s gun, then Seikoku no Dragonar (Dragonar Academy) is Chekhov’s arsenal. It’s frankly staggering how such a multitude of bits of back story and character development are shown but then never utilised again.
evil schemes so laughably ineffective that all they achieved were minor property damage
Daughter of Avalon? Nope. Silvia and Ash’s history together? Nope. Arranged marriage? Nope. Morally ambiguous teacher? Nope. The list goes on and on until by the end you could make a doily out of all of the plot threads that are left hanging. What you do get in Dragonar then is a whole lot of things you’ve seen before but forced together like ill fitting jigsaw pieces. You’ve got the precocious and pink-haired loli from Zero no Tsukaima, the improbable harem of Infinite Stratos and the throw-away fantasy leanings of too many series to name.
Stepping back into Moonphase territory while simultaneously riding the resurgent interest in vampires, SHAFT and director Akiyuki Shinbo take on the adaptation of a manga infamous for its racy content and violent overtures. The first three episodes of Dance in the Vampire Bund demonstrate little of the latter and a lot of the former, sparing no expense in keyframing the vacuous male lead slathering neon green liquid onto the diminutive protagonist's naked body. It's uncomfortable for all the wrong reasons and coupled with the blindingly over-animated opening, the series projects itself as yet another tiresome indulgence by a studio producing more misses than hits as of late.
animation is [...] wholly imbalanced lavishing detail on the frequently disrobed Mina and remaining unspectacular elsewhere
Mina Tepes is a vampire of some repute who, after introducing herself to Japan via the high-veracity medium of a late-night talk show, throws herself at schoolboy Akira before attending the school itself. It transpires that she and Akira have a history together and - what else - made a pinky-promise that despite his untimely memory loss, remains important to the confusingly twee vampire princess. When her life is threatened on the outskirts of the under construction vampire island, Akira comes to her rescue and regains some of his fractured memories, however his ordeal is not over when a school council plot to evict Mina from their school turns into a competition to detain the unwilling Akira.
