The responses to last week’s questions were pretty standard, I guess. Lots of you guys wished that Rin would have been the star of Fate/stay night – UBW instead of Shirou. I can’t disagree too much with that. After all, Shirou hasn’t exactly managed to charm me either. Personally, however, I would have liked to have seen Reconguista in G more from Mask’s perspective. I’m not a big fan of the chosen ubermensch who always ends up fighting for love and peace. There still plenty of story left to tell, but up until now, Mask has had a far more interesting life than Bellri. I’d rather see how a soldier from an underprivileged class manages to rise through the ranks to become a flawed and reluctant villain rather than yet another anime shounen who gets everything handed to him on a silver platter. Even the fact that Bellri can pilot the G-Self is unearned. He’s just simply able to do it. Anyway…

Week 10’s Rankings

27. Trinity Seven

75% of every episode is spent in talking in a room.

26. Akame ga Kill!

A final battle that was both anticlimactic and unimaginative, and an epilogue that went on and on forever. Yo, I don’t want to see the characters pay their respects to evil people. They’re evil. Anyway, the only good thing about this adaptation was that you could unironically say, “Well, at least we didn’t see a clown raping any children….”

25. Terra Formars

Yeah, I’m just going to leave this screenshot right here, and move right along with the rest of the post…

24. Grisaia no Kajitsu

If the story had been a boys’ basketball team, I wonder if we would’ve seen one kid lick another kid’s neck. I wonder if we would’ve seen some shota stripped down to his briefs. Probably not, huh?

23. Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso

Last week’s episode epitomizes the laziness plaguing anime adaptations. Studios will simply lift the dialogue straight from the source material and do nothing else with it.

22. Ushinawareta Mirai wo Motomete

Well, kudos for having the harem lead actually pick one of the girls. This isn’t exactly revolutionary, but hey, it’s something, right? Unfortunately, the rest of the story is nothing.

21. Ookami Shoujo to Kuro Ouji

It’s amazing how the characters in this show can overlook shitty behaviors from their family and friends.

20. Inou Battle Within Everyday Life

Welp, it was just a stupid harem anime after all. Tomoyo headbutting Jurai isn’t even romantic. That’s what my cat does when her food bowl is empty. Anyway, I remember people saying how Trigger has to make shows like this one in between their more ambitious efforts in order to make money, but there’s no way something this unremarkable can sell very well, right? This isn’t exactly OreImo or even Haganai.

19. Log Horizon 2

The raid mechanics were too rudimentary to draw me in, but this wasn’t even the episode’s biggest offense. When Shiroe managed to stumble upon the final room of the entire raid with such ease, it just rendered everything we had seen before it completely moot.

18. Hitsugi no Chaika: Avenging Battle

Terribly pointless ending, and the sequel in general was a disaster. When put together, the complete story is completely useless, and has absolutely nothing worthwhile to say about anything, especially not war.

17. Gundam Build Fighters Try

Gundam and fashion, huh? As if the story wasn’t already lame enough… I don’t have anything else to say. I don’t care about Mirai, and the episode felt like filler.

16. Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai

Could’ve been worse, I guess. Could’ve been any of the preceding shows.

15. Sword Art Online II

How to convince your mother not to marry you off to some rich guy:

1. Befriend a girl with AIDS
2. Tell your mom that you want to be a devoted waifu and make people happy
3. ???
4. Profit! That is, Kirito profits. Asuna’s just a haremette, so her happiness only matters within that context.

14. Madan no Ou to Vanadis

The bad animation was kind of funny. Nothing else about last week’s episode was remarkable, though.

13. Shirobako

This scene was kind of funny in a bad way. But like always, there isn’t enough story for me to chew on. I can enjoy slice-of-life. It just needs to have a story. And what I mean by story isn’t just a sequence of plot events. Those same plot events still have to be arranged in a way that tells me something interesting about these characters, their lives, or the world around them. Well, I can’t tease any interesting message out of Shirobako, and try as I might, other people’s blog posts have done little to convince me that this show has anything worthwhile to say. If the draw lies in learning how an anime gets made, I’d rather watch a documentary that gets right to the heart of the matter without all the cute anime babes to make everything more palatable to the anime-viewing audience. And yeah, I haven’t taken a look around the joint…

12. Cross Ange

The latest plot developments are all over the place, which is both a good and a bad thing. I’m not a fan of the story dragging out old subplots, though. Hopefully, Salia will stop whining about the Villkiss for good.

11. Psycho-Pass 2

Last week’s episode was full of exposition to help expedite the storytelling process, which just shows you that even the sequel has had enough of its own bullshit.

10. Donten ni Warau

Oh, you don’t want to say that… Anyway, the episode was pretty predictable. Pretty much everything I expected to happen, well, happened. All that’s left to wonder is who will live and who will die. Will Sora and Nishiki actually be a thing? Honestly, I can’t help but laugh at the way she looks. It’s like she’s a little kid playing with make-up for the first time. Anyway, even if Tenka has now returned to save his brothers once more, he can’t be long for this world, right? Nah, not in that condition. The two younger brothers will eventually have to accept that they must grow up without him. They need to become independent at some point. Thematically, it seems that he’s only returned to properly say goodbye, but we’ll see. Also, what of Botan and Hirari? Hirari’s kind of a minor character in my mind, but they deserve some sort of resolution too, I guess. And how’s everyone going to resolve the whole artificial Orochi business? You can’t exactly leave that “technology” lying around. Oh well, we can only hope that next week’s twenty-ish minutes can deliver a conclusion that can address all of these questions.

9. Amagi Brilliant Park

Well, if you enjoy montages, this was the episode for you.

8. Fate/stay night – Unlimited Blade Works

Unlike some of my readers, I don’t mind the fact that Kuzuki can fight. I just wish there was more fighting in general. The duel between the guy and Saber was way too short. It might have looked cool, but there was barely any of it. It’s like getting a tiny amuse bouche and nothing more. And that’s the primary problem in general. When these characters are not fighting, all they do is drone on and on about the rules of the game or whatever. If your dialogue isn’t going to add thematic significance to the story, then you may as well just fight.

7. Akatsuki no Yona

Light-hearted nonsense might be fun the same way that cotton candy is fun, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t challenge me. It doesn’t engage me. It doesn’t make me think. And a show like that is, well, ultimately forgettable.

6. Shirogane no Ishi: Argevollen

Kind of a slow build-up to the finale, which will hopefully deliver because this episode didn’t. Kind of disappointed by its pacing. The main characters didn’t really get to do anything, but watch from the sidelines. The animation was also kind of consistent at times. Tokimune looks downright bored in this scene.

5. Gundam: Reconguista in G

I don’t really have any other place to put this anime. It’s not great, but it’s not bad either. In any case, our heroes will finally encounter the threat from space in next week’s episode. Let’s hope the story doesn’t screw this up.

4. Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis

I’ll just repeat (with some minor tweaks) what I had said at the end of my most recent post on the show:

I think the show was a whole lot more compelling before it suddenly had to go on hiatus for a week. It’s still enjoyable at the moment, but it has also devolved into standard fantasy fare. Honestly, I greatly prefer the more episodic nature of the first half of the series. There was a lot more swashbuckling and a lot more subtle character development. More importantly, the first half had more of an adventure feel to the story. I guess that’s what it really comes down to. I was hoping for more adventure and less fantasy. Right now, I’m still interested to see how Amira’s fate will turn out, but the show’s no longer in contention for the best series of the season. Oh well.

3. Mushishi Zoku Shou

2. Parasyte

Shinichi’s character development in the past few weeks have been… alright. Better than what you’d find in the average anime.

1. Garo: The Carved Seal

Like I’ve said before, the show doesn’t short-change its villains, and that’s really mature of the story.

Week 11’s Question

Take a show from the past year and change its genre completely. Which show did you pick, what is its new genre, and how would this sudden change dramatically improve the story?