Barely Reviews - Volume 1
Welcome to a new thing I’ll do every so often that’s technically been in the works for like 2 months now but I’ve just been too lazy to post it. Since I like reviewing anime, but some things I don’t have enough to say about to warrant deserving their own review, I’ve decided that quantity over quality isn’t necessarily a bad thing. None of these reviews are especially in depth and most of what they’ll cover is just OVAs or some movies, and I don’t even have the decency to put in pictures like I do for my Season in Reviews or anything else where I review multiple products at once, but hey content is content. And hey maybe you can expect some bonus editions in the future??? But that’s the future, and this is now. So uh, let’s just get started.
OVA bundled with Maverick Hunter X to serve as a prequel for the new lore that that game would introduce, and I watched it dubbed thanks to its inclusion in the Mega Man X Legacy Collection. Nice art usually with good animation, though the 3D model giant mechaniloids look iffy. Voice acting is pretty good for X, Zero and Sigma, though everyone else is either meh or annoying in the case of Chill Penguin. Kind of exposits information a little unnaturally and often repeats dialogue, and for what its run time is we really don’t learn much, Zero particularly feels very much just there. I’ve never played X for the story but I can say that the backstories introduced in previous games were better than what we got here, though had Maverick Hunter X sold well enough to where the whole series got PSP remakes as originally intended, I do wonder how the story as a whole would have changed. Still, a decent enough experience on the audiovisual side, and I feel like X and Zero’s personalities were captured pretty well, so if you’re a fan of the X series, I can recommend this one.
An adorable hour-long yuri OVA with beautiful visuals, pleasant direction, and crazy amounts of nice touches thanks to the almost oil-painting look of the backgrounds and some really simple yet pleasant special effects and consistent visual gags, such as Yamada’s little flower stalks on her head in comedic moments. The two characters who make up our little yuri couple are both adorable and really fun to watch and have very nice chemistry together, yet you can also feel the awkwardness that comes with the fact that neither of them have dated before. At least I don’t think Kase has? They made a nice play in starting with the two already dating and taking an almost slice of life approach to portraying their relationship, and there’s basically no external drama – we have very few conflicts and they all feel natural enough to not be annoying and their resolutions are always satisfying. It’s maybe a touch melodramatic towards the end, but again, it was still enjoyable. Also some solid voice acting and the performances of the ED song from Yamada and Kase’s seiyuus were really nice on the ears. Closest thing to a problem is that with only an hour of run time, the thing feels undercooked in a sense, like there’s the potential for something much greater because as it stands now neither character is strongly developed in a particularly unique way. They’re both fine enough characters for what this is though, if a touch generic - I just hope to see more in the future. Where’s my TV anime? Or hell maybe even more OVAs if it means we can keep the production so lavished.
Balls to the walls Trigger insanity that takes until episode 7 to really be interesting in any capacity, and that episode is only interesting because of Kill la Kill references. Next episode is Little Witch Academia. Next episode is some Trigger work I’ve never seen. And then episodes 10-13 are, in typical Trigger fashion, a really fun and epic finale with some plot twists, cool sakuga, and a really positive and uplifting message. Visuals are really nice and I love the character designs, plus some hella good seiyuus, and the soundtrack is something fun. At only 7 minutes per episode and 13 episodes in total, it doesn’t take very long to watch, so I’m not that bummed about the uninteresting start it got off to, though even with the fun stuff after that, I still felt kinda underwhelmed for most of this show. ED is super weird and unfitting but I love it.
I want to eat your pancreas.
Titles are weird in that literally the only reason I, and I presume many others, even decided to check this out or knew about it in the first place is because of its rather unique title. Moving on from that, this is one of those annoying movies where I honest to god genuinely think it’s good and that there’s a lot of nice things I can say about it. It looks and sounds really nice, our two characters are pretty well developed and the lessons they learn from each other about living and what that actually means for them are really well executed, there’s a lot of cool reincorporation that conveys development well and rarely does it feel forced in its drama. However, as much positive as I’m able to say about this film, for one reason or another, I was just kinda bored when watching it. I don’t necessarily think it’s because of predictability or anything like that – while the film may open on Sakura’s funeral and do literally everything in its power to make you think she’ll die of her pancreas illness, they manage to surprise you by having her die in a stabbing – one that was still foreshadowed by the way but it’s so throwaway that you’d never think it was foreshadowing. I don’t think it’s Haruki - while I didn’t really care for him at first I did actually enjoy his development both as an individual and as Sakura’s friend. I mean his internal narration was occasionally annoying but that’s honestly the only negative I can comfortably give this film. There’s a weird scene somewhere around the middle of the film where Haruki gets a little rough on the bed that I guess didn’t really fit in, I think? I guess the movie’s also super long? At one point I thought it was about to end because it had been going on forever but no I’d just barely passed the one hour mark. I don’t know that’s not even a criticism because while yeah it felt hella long, I don’t actually think that was a negative on the film or anything – in fact I think the pacing’s pretty solid all around. Maybe it’s because the last thing I watched where generically uninteresting dude meets generically perfect girl and learns how to enjoy life from her but then she dies was Your lie in April which I fucking hated, but then other than that base synopsis these two anime have nothing in common and unlike Your lie in April, the two main characters in this are like, pretty well developed. I dunno man this was a pretty good movie but it didn’t really click with me and I was kinda just bored for a lot of it for whatever reason. It’s possible that I’m just not in the right mindset for watching this so chances are I’ll revisit it someday, maybe alongside a friend idk. For that reason, please assume that the following score isn’t final.
