jgzinv

Furthermore, my personal preference comes into play here. I’m very anti-cop out and “ridiculous ending for the sake of crushing ending into 3 eps” or the “kill everything!” type motif. Not too keen on fanservice either. Those are some of my criteria for a poor show. Your criteria may be different. To each their own. I can’t write 300 paragraphs like I used to, so these will be coming out as I can get to them…

Sword Art Online

This was a widely renowned anime (and prior to that a novel series) back actually from a couple years ago, which is finally gaining ground thanks to Aniplex picking it up and promoting it very heavily in the US. The main plot is that a new combat-centric game has been released that is based on total VR (virtual reality) immersion, that game being Sword Art Online. On the inaugural launch day 10K people log in and the creator of the game cuts off everyone’s ability to log out. Any attempt on the outside to tamper with the headgear used for the game, or death in the game world, means actual death in the real world via your brain getting microwaved. Players are told to fight to the 100th floor of the game world tower they inhabit, as if the game is cleared, then they can return to real life.

The story itself mainly focuses on the hero, or anti-hero in some ways of Kirito, a beta tester that starts out trying to work through the game to stay alive and return home, but ends up taking on himself the hate of the player community by being branded a “beater” (beta + cheater) so he becomes a solo player. Along the way he meets and separates from other players, some involving more tragic events than others.

Zinv’s Take:

I’m a pretty big VR / alternate reality / virtual world fan, so this hits a pretty solid sweet spot for me. The animation of the game world and all it’s various seasons and locations is excellent, the battles are excellent, the music is fairly decent.

The story progression and layout is at least done chronologically, which helps, as the novel chapters were originaly all over the place over a period of years on the author’s website.

As far as characters go, if you’re a guy you probably relate in some fashion to Kirito, as he’s designed to be the loaner, the super powered hero, the chick magnet. The other main character is Asuna, the female lead. Due to the nature of the game world, there’s very few female players – so naturally we see her to begin with as a cloak huddled player with little social interaction. Time skip ahead, and she is one of the top players in the game and essentially vice captain of one of the largest guilds. While her character is likable, after a lot of review, I can see where there was a “tsunundre-shift” that took her back to a more meek and home-y personality too. In both cases, there are justifiable reasons why the characters are the way they are, so it gets a free pass. In general the side characters don’t annoy, nor are their inclusion pointless, so everything meshes pretty well.

The series is split as well into two arcs. Essentially Aincrad (the 1st game world), and Alfheim (2nd – recovery arc). More on this below…

Alternative Take:

Out of everything, I have to say my biggest disappointment is that with this coming from a novel series, and a large one at that…. having read everything translated to date… a lot was left out of the anime. A handful of scenes or events in the anime are very or totally different in the novels. As a result, character motivation or reasoning-wise they gave off a totally different impression. We’re also brought to believe that Kirito and Asuna have next to no contact with each other over the period after the first boss fight up until the later floor raids. This couldn’t be any farther from the truth. In the novels they literally talk at the second floor exit, and bump into each other and party up or butt heads anywhere from every couple of days, to weeks. Kirito is less brooding, more vulnerable, and more of an jerk, Asuna less thinly developed, and the game world at large is far more intricately developed at every level.

The anime yes gave it life, but the novels had it’s depth. The anime made it more of a sit back and enjoy, turn off your brain kind of vibe going for it. The animation also as I mentioned before, ordered the various side stories, fit in the Yui chapters correctly, and made it as a tight package. Really with the novels extending from Aincrad, to Alfheim, to Gun Gale Online, then the current Fluctlight arc, there’s enough there to justify saying they can be treated as two separate entities.

While she did get to show she still had teeth in the Yui arc, Asuna’s character really seemed to get… “domesticated” for lack of a better word, and I wish to some extent they’d kept her with a stronger personality. We do get a lot better look at her character in the Mother’s Rosario novel (pretty much Asuna’s book), and it also features a beautiful display of gamer/friend/human comradere, caring, and sportsmanship at the end of that novel. I actually had tears reading it and wondered if we’d ever get to that high a level of honor and respect in out real life games. In the current chapters Asuna has a role to play, but once again she’s chained down by the author to playing 3rd fiddle when she’s got so much more potential. I’m waiting for her to drop the maiden act and beat down a room of armed guards with a broom handle or something in order to reach her partner. Enough woe is me, you’re the sub commander of the Knights of the Blood for peats sake!

Lastly in the “cons” category, Kirito’s sister… in the classic “not really his sister / cousin / et cetera” love interest theme, comes around in the Alfheim arc and plays that angle fairly hard. This was totally not necessary. She’s a weird distraction / excuse to have her virtual form in the game world lead Kirito around a new environment. While she’s a bit more subdued in the novels, she does continue the trend of wanting her “brother’s” attention over Asuna. All it really does is attempt to sully a good thing… so she’s unnecessary, and really replaced with stronger more interesting characters in time via the novels anyway.

Verdict:

Overall – Solid 7.85 out of 10

Anime – 6.90

Novels – 8.0

Zinv Says: “Watch the anime for the entertaining ride, but the real (virtual?) meat & potatoes here is in the novel series, which can be found at baka-tsuki.”

Accel World

From the same author of Sword Art Online, we have a series set 20 years into the future from SAO’s timeline. Here now augmented reality and virtual reality devices have become normal, particularly for young adults and children.

At high school the most socially lacking, fat, slow, awkward, tormented kid is Haruyuki. After getting his typical run in with bullies, Haru is approached by the famous upperclassmen Kuroyukihime (black snow princess) who offers him a chance to install a program in his VR gear that will change his life. The program can accelerate the person 1000 times faster, drop them into a VR realm based off real life structures, and even in limited cases impart special abilities at great risk to the user. The main purpose is a 3D world battle game based on burst points. Every acceleration uses points. Fighting battles uses points. You run out of points and the program is removed and your memories wiped along with it. Kuroyukihime takes Haru as her apprentice, then begins forming her once mighty guild again after years of hiding from other powerful players looking to take her head.

Zinv’s Take:

Accel World by the author’s own admission, was an experiment of sorts to use a unattractive character with real problems, rather that SAO’s Kirito who’s more of a superman type. As a result, the anime here comes off not as widely liked as SAO. Partially too I think due to the animation style, which differs and lends itself much more towards making supposedly 14 year olds look more like 8.

One thing going for this though, is the anime covers a lot of novel territory, and is nearly a verbatim copy of the novel material. While there are nearly as many novels as SAO (the releases alternate now) the ending of the anime in the Dusk Taker arc is a good ways in an you can transition from one to the other without having to catch up much.

AW shouldn’t really be compared to SAO, but they do share a detailed game world and user system. Here you have a tighter focus on a group of about 5 characters around Haru all the time, where SAO is more so Kirito and Asuna. It yields itself to more of a high school anime with a high stakes game and a coming of age story rolled into one. Relationships are pretty well established in the first 4 episodes and develop in those boundaries. Just add about 12 pounds of rosy cheeks and cutesy style animation… and you’d pretty much have it.

This isn’t to say AW doesn’t have it’s serious moments, as there are some twisted characters, but it doesn’t quite get to that level of “you’ll actually die here” drama hanging overhead in SAO. For some that might be a turn off, some a turn on. Your mileage may vary.

Alternative Take:

Probably the thing hurting AW the most is Haru himself. The character was designed to have no self esteem or back bone. He’s designed essentially to be unappealing in an age where we are hyper sexualized and supposedly required to conform to standards. We’re also looking at an art style that just simply makes everything too young. It works fine for doing a stark contrast between the game world and real world, but it just doesn’t help it’s ratings.

Novel wise, I think AW is actually more complex and consistent on almost every level, than the SAO novels. It does more, with less. SAO uses the past history of the death game as a crutch and keeps putting it’s characters in similar situations and changes how they will get out of it. AW tends to change the situation, and then try to have the players bring something new to the table to compete or dig up more history in the game universe to compensate. Unfortunately, this doesn’t translate as well in detail to the anime. Most of the content is there, but you do miss some finer details like Haru or the Hime’s thoughts on matters, or how something intricate works. You don’t get some of the gems like Mother’s Rosario, but it is more consistent with an entertaining story.

The animation and lack of advertising promoting AW as the long term successor to SAO, really hurt it. This is to be expected though, as it was produced and licensed by totally different studios.

Verdict:

Overall – Solid 7.5 out of 10

Anime – 6.0

Novels – 8.4

Zinv Says: “Faster to watch the anime, then start the novels, but there’s still enough to get into here whether you’re a SAO fan or not.”

Infinite Stratos

Pretty much this is the cliche’d “all girls school for flying battle armors, add one male pilot in existence” story. Amazing scientist creates battle armors that can fly around and protect the pilot, gives out only so many to every country to keep the peace. Scientist has a sister at the academy she likes to pamper. Male pilot shows up, his sister is the abusive teacher, seems to know half the school as some kind of childhood friend. Females fall out of the sky for his attention. Trap character appears. Etc etc etc.

Zinv’s Take:

Oh, I could probably stop with the opening sentence, that pretty much explains what there is in the way of a plot.

I’d like to say there’s something unique or good here.. but um… drawing a blank.

The psychotic German pilot calling her squad mates back home for extraordinarily weird and creepy dating advice was slightly funny.

Alternative Take:

The characters are cliche’d and stereotypical to a T. The combat animation camera tracks like a cat chasing a pack of flies. The animation is clean 3D and computer aided, but nothing special. The main male character is air brained. There is a sub plot about some greater evil organization out there that’s creating unlicensed high powered drone suits, but it’s never explored. Male character’s strategy consists of “get shot and get protected,” “I ran out of power,” and “I’ll chop it with my awesome unique giant sword really hard!” Trap character is just another excuse brought out to extend series 4 episodes. Ending and choice of love interest was thin or vapid at best, pointless and developed nothing at worst. Fanservice was loaded into a salt shaker and sprinkled till dish lost it’s flavor.

Verdict:

Overall – 1.2

(It somehow got published as an anime 1, .2 cause it has samurai ladies in flying robots)

Zinv Says: “I’d spend less time and learn more from reading a phone book, without getting as dizzy.”

Toradora!

Ryuji is entering the new school year worried about wasting his youth since he doesn’t have a girlfriend. However thanks to his delinquient eyes, the school body avoids him like the mob. Somehow he’ll have to work up the courage to ask out the most athletic and eccentric girl in school. After running head-on into the “Palm-top Tiger” Taiga, Ryuji gets a thrashing and discovers he’s got a new neighbor. The Tiger’s interested in Ryuji’s best friend, and Ryuji in Taiga’s – they aim to confess to their loves and help each other get the chance. But with the tiger always at his place planning and eating, won’t everyone get the wrong idea?

Zinv’s Take:

I think the most redeeming thing about this series is frankly it’s main element. It takes most every high school love anime trope/cliche out there, and instead of doing the same old typical thing… takes it into more realistic territory or down the “right” path. I’m not sure original is the right word, but compared to the mountains of high school unrequited love stories in anime, this is something unique.

High School Rumble is probably the closest reference for it, but it’s not meant to a comedy at it’s core or have a hundred and one otaku references to find. Ryuji’s a student that takes care of his mother who works at a bar. He cooks, cleans, and has a complex about mold and his father that abandoned them. Taiga’s run away from her own split home, has a complex about her size (short, child like, etc), can’t take of herself, and spews cut downs or explodes at most any moment. Each character has their faults and has to deal with rejection, on a few occasions on a very large and public scale. You get to see them work through that.

If I were to count the common school anime “events” that were used, but turned on their heads, not made into an excuse for pandering to the viewer, or took the easy route out, it’d probably be up around the 70’s.

How about the classic “let’s elope” or run away together schtick? Well there’s consequences there, how would you live, would your friends help you out, what about those you leave behind, what about school credits, how do you travel?

Instead of the parents “of course” showing up to cheer on their child at event X, what if they just texted something came up and won’t make it, and you’re on stage waiting for an answer from the crowd?

What if instead of brushing it off that you tried to scare your love interest in a remote beach cave, she got angry and pushed the issue as to why you did it? What would result then?

It doesn’t pull punches, which is a refreshing change of pace.

Ultimately it’s not any one thing that makes it great, it’s the sum of many well crafted parts. For it’s core material, it doesn’t really do anything original, it’s that it takes overused tropes and spins every one of them differently. The pacing is very good too, just when you’re bored of where the story is at, you get a major game changing twist to go off on another little story arc. It doesn’t lose the “main thing” being the central focus though either.

Alternative Take:

I guess if anything it has as a fault, Toradora isn’t cheap. It only saw 2 releases, a regular and deluxe pair of sets in the USA in 2010 and 2011. In Japan they have a giant Blu-Ray rerelease box set that’s $700. The US publisher was NIS America, which sounds small, because it was never dubbed and released sub only. Doesn’t hurt it any however…

Taiga doesn’t get to use her wooden sword on people more often…

Also if you don’t watch past the credits for the real conclusion of the final episode, your heart may stop out of sheer amazement that the production staff just pulled a complete and utter 180 in the last 2 minutes of the show.

Verdict:

Anime – Solid 8.2

Zinv Says: “I’ve got my vote on the Palm-Top Tiger of Happiness.”

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Well my good boy, then I’ll do my best to send you off to a DUAL PARALLEL WORLD!!!!

*cackles randomly*

(going as Commander S.)

TenchiCast: No Need for Mirror Universes!

We talk about the potential or theoretical evil / good twins of our favorite characters.

What if Tenchi were evil? What if Yosho attacked Jurai and the royal family was protected by Ryoko?

Things are topsy turvey in the mirror megaverse…

From Chuck:

Jurai’s runaways gone rouge; ayeka/sasami and the GP forced to fight on the defensive

Dr. S detects cosmic errors in a neighboring universe, sends the core robots to right the imbalance

Kagato grudgingly fights on the side of good in order to return things to their natural order