Scalpelexis

Deca-Dence is like a Kinder egg: tasty at first bite, with a surprise inside. Sometimes you get a cool Englishman, sometimes more of a less desirable puzzle, like here. The puzzle pieced together from Mortal Engines puzzle with The Matrix/Avatar initially lures and even kicks you a little with a very early, up until that point damn unexpected twist, which unfortunately never picks up steam and ends up feeling like you only got half of it put together, looking to see if they mistakenly forgot to supply the other half. Indeed, for an anime production, this relatively more original idea hasn't received any kind of higher subsidy to develop it. For me, the most interesting part, the exploration of the two worlds and their shared dynamic, ends up being too much of a backdrop to the overall plot, which ultimately revolves too much around the most classic shōnen elements and feelings. We operate with the theme of "flaws in the system" throughout, but it's developed minimally. The plot overall is very lobotomized and sadly simple for how good the build-up was. The main duo are fighting against something rather vague and for the superficial reason that they like each other, only for us to finally, uncomfortably realize towards the end that this is a fairy tale with a finale that even Steven Spielberg himself would be ashamed of. The characters are passable but unfinished (the show was clearly shying away from any attempt at romance, for obvious reasons) and in the end I was probably most taken with Jill, the nerdy girl next door, and the straightforward, rambunctious Donatello. I was pleased by the well-shot battle sequences and the mobile steampunk fortress (especially in action), by contrast I couldn't come to grips with the contrasting childish design of the robot world. I can't help but call it a mild disappointment, because this deserved so much more. 3 stars

Babylon is an unprecedented piece in anime history for its political/legal/psychological approach. While most of the time we're treated to intimate detective work from the perspective of special investigator and die-hard fighter Zen Seizaki, the series is pretty much a reflection on the controversially shaky subject of euthanasia. The intentions may be as pure as the proverbial lily, but Babylon is more concerned with the most catastrophic scenarios on a global scale, as the protagonist is literally pitted against a demon from the deepest hell. The direction of the first 7 episodes relentlessly whips the thriller genre into a frenzy, and the last of these episodes is an absolute treat in my eyes on an emotional level that had me absolutely shattered. The constant use of dark colors of dirty grey dealt hope one blow after another and it was beautifully pessimistic to have any hint of a win in sight. For me, unfortunately, after episode 7, the series downgrades from a furious five to a lethargic two and bites of a philosophical mouthful that it couldn't swallow in 24 episodes. Incomprehensibly, we are introduced to a plethora of new and fairly uninteresting characters who open up the script from the last few episodes of NGE and childishly ponder what is good and evil. The anime began to bore me madly, and I found myself stumbling desperately towards yet another adrenaline-fueled conclusion that admittedly closed a few doors, but left a lot of them open for nothing. The mild electric shock stings, but the unsympathetic discarding of any effort to resolve the bigger issues combined with the uninspired second half left me slightly deflated. Overall, though, I consider Babylon to be an unusually sweet attempt at political drama and a narrative about truths that are damn uncomfortable. Too bad about the slight derailment at the end, but I'll give it the weakest possible 4 stars.

[Season 1] For too long I've been determined to throw Beastars on my viewing menu. Not only was I gritting my teeth a little at what I’d heard and rolling my eyes at the thought of what roughly happens in it, but I'm also generally not a fan of CGI in anime. Some of these assumptions didn't fundamentally change after viewing it, but at least more insights were added; not necessarily bad, but not good either. The most interesting part of it all is what turning humans into anthropomorphic animals will do with all the obvious themes. If this were a story with ordinary human characters, it would have difficulty achieving the ethical, moral, and physical conflicts that this anime manages to outline. It would hardly be about half the population living in fear that the day may come at any moment when some abstinent predator decides to have you for lunch. Also, the issue of relationships is suddenly all over the place when a chicken and a crocodile can fall in love, and Beastars isn't afraid to go all the way to bed with both problems. I was therefore stiffly uncomfortable in places, which is a kind of audition on the part of the filmmakers to see if it will hold up, because at least in this series everything had a certain boundary it was pushing. The characters are frighteningly far from perfect and quite often artificially play at being sophisticated, generating a slight stuffiness and tension and injecting a serving of unpredictability into the plot. Questions over the workings of society are constantly in the air, forcing me to either ponder or vehemently continue watching. And while the romance in the Japanese version can be incredibly drawn out, awkward, and corny here and there, Beastars handles it sensitively without ever threatening to fall into soap opera waters. Production-wise, you have to bow down to the guys from Studio Orange: the computer animation is excellent, rarely getting in the way of anything unfinished or spastic, and I got used to it very quickly. If other CGI anime had looked like this, it might have diverted my prejudice and mild hatred of them. Beastars managed to adjust my anime self's acceptability of several variables that a nastier inner self would never have given a chance. I recognize that for a lot of these, it's an overly thorny path and it will soon turn around. What doesn't devour me, though, in this case entertains me. 4 stars

I'm of the opinion that nothing much has changed from the first season, at least that I vaguely recall. Everything carried over from the opening probe and the same song played on repeat. Touma only and constantly dishes it out with his right hand (if his opponent had a helmet, hopefully he wouldn’t choke) with the ultimate intention of saving absolutely everyone, "Touma, Touma!!!". The Index must've eaten all his supplies and hair, flat-out sadistic wretches randomly appear on stage because, well, it's all Academy City's fault for existing, priests are always the biggest bastards, and speeches about higher values during (decent-looking) fights are not to be missed under any circumstances, even if coins and lightning are flying. The multiple-arc story is plot-unbalanced and haphazard, everything is precipitated by coincidences or decisions too inappropriately convenient for any progress, and it doesn't forget to add a constant dose of fan service. It doesn't do anything new, exceptional, different, creative within the established shōnen genre and Toaru Majutsu tracks. The music and visuals are more of the better barrel, and Mikoto Misaka is still the likable enough tomboy to carry a lot of weight on his shoulders and generally keep the bar average. If you liked number one, you'll like number two. And the same vice versa. A weak 3 stars

Catastrophe. Jun Maeda, known for more solid works like Kanon and Angel Beats, has vowed to make this series the saddest anime ever. He succeeded, but perhaps not in the way he intended. Not a single tear was shed, but lamenting and mourning the tragic handling of one self-proclaimed divine girl's story was on my agenda week after week. The outright mistakes and perpetual bad habits that "adorn" Maeda's work are present here, too, with an extra de-luxe helping. The contrived catastrophic scenario from the opening episode looms over the audience's heads like a sword of Damocles... only to find out that this sword is nothing but rubber, so we end up spending the first two-thirds of the running time digesting stretched out cotton candy with zero subtext over and over again! The light-hearted part not only gives us no character depth, explains nothing, and establishes no solid value or connection between us and the characters, but also evokes no (negatively sad or positively funny) emotions: zero, null, nothing, nada, zilch. One would expect to witness at least a minimal effort to build a complete picture, where each piece is at least a tiny part of a designed puzzle, but the authors said "NO!". Darling, why do we have to watch 100% irrelevant episodes about the parents of an extremely minor character? Or how we played a tournament inside out? Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to occupy the stage so often with a sleazy lawyer whose importance and presence among a bunch of kids is as appropriate as a snow cannon on the beach? There's supposedly a romantic storyline in there somewhere, but it takes a microscope and an explanation from a distant dimension called "Cowpoke" for it to make any sense. The return to a more serious part of the anime shouldn't surprise anyone, but the slightly more naive must be at least a little dismayed that even this passage is pitifully empty. Nothing, I mean nothing works: the attempts to heighten the emotion by inserting the theme music with each successive repetition were an undercurrent throughout this entire tragicomedy, the stupidity and non-existent nature of the vast majority of the characters was almost unbelievable, and it was at this point that I began to realize that this was indeed the end, the end of the ghost anime world. I didn't really care how it all ended, I just wanted it to be over already. I was in fact happy with the format, but I hadn't seen such a threadbare misery and demonstration of ineptitude in a long time. You should be ashamed of yourself, Maeda. A better 1 star

Akame ga Kill! meets Cyberbunk. This relatively entertaining ride through a futuristic world with elements of dictatorship literally almost shattered into pieces halfway through. What at first appears to be a more ordinary gangster adventure of one extraordinary group of criminals eventually unfolds into a Matrix-like plane and starts waxing poetic about horizons farther afield, whereas they can only touch on them in an annoyingly fleeting manner because there's no time for more! To its immense detriment, it's not just the potentially rich worldbuilding that's being skimmed over, but also the characters, where you can strongly feel the colorful handwriting of the creator of Danganronpa. As it grinds on and on and on in a rather nonsensical manner, the protagonists only manage to fulfill their basic justifications and only minimally do we get to see their roots, leaving them boringly parked in the black-and-white and tired templates of familiar archetypes. I wanted desperately to know more about Kant, more about the social structure, propaganda, connections to other worlds and what the local "Big Bang" was/caused by, whereupon we get our answer in a fast-paced penultimate episode full of deus ex machina, which I would figuratively liken to spitting in the face, in an already over-the-top conclusion. It’s made up to us in the lavishly colored and stylized audiovisual design of Studio Pierrot, which is easy on the eye. The detail of the action scenes is fantastic, with explosions that would make even Michael Bay jealous, all culminating in a supercharged epic final act of battle royale format. Akudama Drive could relatively easily have been a masterpiece, it just lacked the desire to grow and go deeper. It hurts, it hurts, because the excellent passages in the opening half were entertaining. This way, it's a kind of undercooked one-off that will soon be forgotten. A better 3 stars

[1st half of season 1] Ha. I have to chuckle at how right q66 was. There are countless stories and overall works dedicated to Doyle's famous novels, and here after the first episode I was already expecting the anime to get stuck in the mud and absolutely embarrass itself with its concept. The design of the main characters in a purely bishōnen style set in industrial Britain fit me like a Borat swimsuit at the Nobel Prize and the plot just dragged on and on. Only, with each successive episode, skillful direction and a very solid script managed to build up a really clever spectacle. For the first time in a long time I found the use of flashbacks meaningful and the minor, sometimes not very distinctive, characters helped pave the way for the development of Moriarty's ingenious anti-heroic character with refined precision. Nothing seemed careless, just like all of Moriarty's plans and diabolical plotting. The reasons for his actions are compelling, and I was flattered by the complexity of his decision-making, which was not crudely plotted but instead flexible – the intent and the goal are clearly stated, but often Moriarty bounced off for a minor "sidequest" when he heard a call for justice that couldn't be resolved in a purely legal and clean way. You'd expect that with Sherlock at his back, we might be more interested in the quirky detective, but Moriarty was everywhere and when he happened to be missing from the screen, I wished he was back. My enthusiasm was supported by the successfully depicted European setting (the characters get a touch of the creaky Engrish here and there), the music, which included elements of classical music, and the overall form exceeded expectations given the knowledge that this was not the only anime Production I.G. was working on. As I alluded to at the beginning, yes, I am one of those for whom this anime is the best of this fall season. No, it’s no eighth wonder of the world, but I was touched and entertained more than enough by this intelligent venture. 4 stars

Ugh, this wasn't a blast or a rush, but a literal bump! It's not exactly anime for princesses with kid gloves, as the tale of one curmudgeonly schoolboy's transformation into a demon of metal hell is not for the squeamish. Parodying people who love or hate either Scandinavian pop or totally ripped-from-the-chains death metal bands, it rides the most absurd verses of death or rape, whether it's a competitor, a masochistic capitalist pig, or a straight-up TV tower. The scissors between these worlds are stretched over and over like Krauser's legs during "GO TO DMC!" and the main character acts as an unrealistic link, who never quite has things under control. Most of the time, we're watching satirical escapades full of convenient coincidences, and if you get used to the unbridled swearing and desecration of everything on the wound, you'll get metaphorically wet. It gets a little tiresome eventually, because we're kind of expecting Krauser to run over or fuck everything and it'll work out somehow, but it doesn't matter at all. The problem I had was more with the form, where I witnessed perhaps for the first time the absolute irregularity of the shooting format (at least the running time was stable at a quick 12 minutes). One minute it's slanted, then standing, then a tiny square (we get a slanted one too) and the drawing is plainer than Negishi's Bracoid tearjerkers. And as mentioned, the speed of speech didn't impress me twice either. I thought long and hard about what rating I'm going to kill this with, but masochistically I'm going to stuff it with a weaker 4 stars.

A relative disappointment. The script was weak, the action was by no means exceptional or original. Above all, the reported 35-minute running time is a cheat, because if you subtract the opening recap and end credits, we're barely at 25 minutes. It drives toward an action-packed climax, which calms me some.

An episode for Star Wars fans with all the trimmings. It got me on a cheap nostalgia kick, but the hunger for it was immeasurable.