Rate the Last Anime You Watched Out of 10

Vlad Love

Ostensibly billed as a slapstick romcom with a queer theme, Mamoru Oshii's unexpected return to episodic anime quickly becomes something much more esoteric; it's less interested in developing its protagonists' relationship than it is in providing an excuse for Oshii to tell you about stuff that he likes or was influenced by, in ways that will likely alienate the unprepared or casual viewer.

While it does flirt with the sweetish, slightly bland story on its surface for a while (the main plot is based on a visual novel from 2013 that Oshii was involved with), the show mostly stops pursuing that beyond the half-way point, and instead skews closer to Oshii's earlier Gozensosama Banbanzai, with its emphasis on the sort of capricious, whimsical approach to narrative I'd associate more with avant garde theatre. It never breaks with the sitcom format altogether, but within that, the characters will frequently lie, skip over seemingly relevant detail or just flat out ignore the story because they've found something more interesting to talk about instead. Most notably mid-century arthouse cinema and cult manga, but also Castlevania and Brad Pitt, because hey why not.

This doesn't always make for the most endearing viewing experience. Despite often visually referencing classic '80s comedy anime, the show tends to set up jokes that go nowhere, apparently teasing a return to Oshii's much loved stint on Urusei Yatsura, but never actually making good on that. It's tempting to say the series is like a 12 episode experiment in how far you can gradually push something away from a standard premise and still get away with it, but I don't think it has as much blatant disregard for the audience as the likes of Pop Team Epic. When Vlad Love is talking about something the creators obviously care about, it does so with genuine enthusiasm and sincerity. It also seems unafraid to poke fun at Oshii's own career tropes, with gratuitous live-action inserts, characters rambling on about military hardware in intense detail and a cameo appearance for what I'm sure is just Oshii's own dog.

With its awkward comedy and conscious refusal to deliver what it apparently promised, Vlad Love is a show that I don't think many people will enjoy and, honestly, I don't blame anyone who doesn't. It does, however, seem to set up the most personal dialogue between a director and their audience that I've seen in anime since The Wind Rises, and I think that is quite special, even if I'm not quite sure how we got here.
 
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Professor Irony said:
the characters will frequently lie, skip over seemingly relevant detail or just flat out ignore the story because they've found something more interesting to talk about instead. Most notably mid-century arthouse cinema and cult manga, but also Castlevania and Brad Pitt, because hey why not.
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Sounds like Oshii went full Tarantino in the most self-indulgent way. His post-UY work has always been full of rambling monologues, but it's usually on-topic rambling. Well, maybe this is on-topic if we accept that the plot of the show was never the point in the first place, but I don't know if that's something to encourage. I lost interest in this show after the weak pilot, but I might give it another go based on this, out of curiosity more than any expectation that I'll like it.
 
The series doesn't really show its hand until the second half, so I think you could probably just skim over the first few episodes until something catches your eye, if you wanted to go back to it. It's just a shame CR's player doesn't have a 1.5x speed option the way Netflix's does.
 
Combatants Will Be Dispatched
I almost dropped this one after the first episode. I was expecting a spy comedy, and while the main character endlessly tells us he's a spy on a mission, he does very little towards that end. Instead he spends the whole series in a stock isekai fantasy land, being sent on standard RPG quests, with the only twist being that he has to commit evil acts in order to earn weapons and equipment from his employer. Since he's scum and surrounded by beautiful women in skimpy clothing, it won't take you two seconds to guess what form these evil acts take.

All that said, the show is pretty funny if you're not bothered by most of the humour being based around sexual harrassment. I can't give it a particularly high mark though because it is so relentlessly trashy, derivative, and predictable.

6/10
 
Happy-Go-Lucky Days
Quite a misleading title; these three short stories are neither particularly cheerful nor breezy. They're also not concerned with plot arcs, so you'll be disappointed if you want straightforward stories with definite end points. Instead this is more of a mood piece that's mainly interested in evoking the melancholy feeling of lingering, unfulfilled desire. The first segment is a decent yuri story about two women who connect over their feelings for their mutual ex. The other two segments aim for controversy, and may push some people's buttons, with the first being about a teacher who fantasises about a student who confessed his feelings to him, and the latter being about the sexual frustration of ten-year-olds. All of these stories leave an unsatisfying, unresolved aftertaste, but that's clearly the point.

6/10
 
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Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki
I didn't like the first episode of this. Socially inept Tomozaki defines his entire existence around how good he is at Smash Bros--sorry, Attack Families. When he meets up with his gaming nemesis in real life, by pure plot contrivance she turns out to be a girl from his school called Aoi. She's disgusted that this slob is the only person who can beat her at the game, and brow-beats him into sorting his life out. Since gaming is the only language he understands, she formats this as a series of 'missions' that he needs to clear.

In terms of her plot function, Aoi could almost be mistaken for a Manic Pixie Dream-Girl, since so much of her time and energy is devoted to showing the hapless protagonist The Light (TM). MPDGs are normally flawless and endearing though, and this definitely isn't Aoi. Normally, anything stopping a character from being a MPDG would be a good thing, but Aoi is so arrogant and manipulative that she becomes insufferable. It's sometimes hard to tell if she's meant to be a mentor, love interest, antagonist, or all three.

Most of the show follows a decent trajectory, with Tomozaki levelling up his social skills under Aoi's Orwellian control. What's interesting is that as the story progresses, Tomozaki starts to pick holes in Aoi's mechanical way of attacking the Game of Life (not the boardgame).
There's a moment where the story threatens to become really compelling by having him reject her way of thinking and forge his own path. Unfortunately, that would require the story to drop its main structural gimmick, and it chickens out at the last minute, leaving Tomozaki frantically back-pedalling into the series' comfort zone by spouting some unconvincing gibberish intended to make us think that some progress has been made. And that's all we get from the anime adaptation. The two OAVs that finish out the series are inconsequential side-stories.

It's unfortunate that the story ends up lacking the courage to meaningfully break out of its formula and allow Tomozaki to take the reins of his own character arc. Since this is a typical one-cour adaptation of a longer work, we're left with no idea whether he ever will, making for an underwhelming ending that resolves nothing in any meaningful way.

6/10
 
I quite enjoyed the original Berserk anime, although I did laugh at just how much Guts loved his sword.

Shame the manga never ended, I wonder even if it had, how many seasons would need to be made to fully adapt it. I think anime adaptations of mid-length material can work if the commitment is there to do it, but really long running things need to be really popular or they'll just run out of Steam and never finish the anime of it.
 
Horimiya
While it doesn't do anything out of the ordinary, this rom-com works by having a mostly endearing cast of characters and a lot of good humour. Its initial gimmick of Miyamura having a radically different look and personality outside of school gets dropped within a few episodes, as his two aspects blend into a more conventional one. This theme of people having two faces gets mirrored across several other characters throughout the series, usually in the pattern of someone apparently tough or reliable turning out to be emotionally fragile. The counterpoint to this is Hori, who looks calm and unassuming on the outside, but can be short-tempered and violent outside of school. In the show's most awkward aspect, she also gets off on Miyamura treating her like trash, which is completely against his wishes and she goads him into doing, and those scenes make for uncomfortable viewing.

We spend time with a pretty large cast of characters, considering this is only 13 episodes. Each episode has three or four vignettes that other shows might have expanded for each to be an episode in itself, so it can feel like it's motoring along at a fast pace at times. This is both a plus and a minus. Some segments need more breathing room, but also nothing feels stretched or outstays its welcome, making for a breezy viewing experience. The one real problem from this is that the relationship of the titular couple (Hori and Miyamura) doesn't get as much screen time as perhaps it should, and the milestones of their relationship feel rushed in places. There's a major one towards the end of the series that's done in such a blink-and-you-miss-it fashion that for a moment I was left wondering if it actually happened or if it was just Miyamura thinking about something he intended to say (I'm pretty sure he did say it).

The show manages to work well despite all of these quirks, almost entirely on the shoulders of the characters, their growing relationships, and how funny most of it is. I also can't really fault it for making the decision to accelerate the pace and give us a fairly complete story, since this lets it avoid the usual anime adaptation flaw of being a story fragment.

8/10
 
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Dai said:
Horimiya
While it doesn't do anything out of the ordinary, this rom-com works by having a mostly endearing cast of characters and a lot of good humour. Its initial gimmick of Miyamura having a radically different look and personality outside of school gets dropped within a few episodes, as his two aspects blend into a more conventional one. This theme of people having two faces gets mirrored across several other characters throughout the series, usually in the pattern of someone apparently tough or reliable turning out to be emotionally fragile. The counterpoint to this is Hori, who looks calm and unassuming on the outside, but can be short-tempered and violent outside of school. In the show's most awkward aspect, she also gets off on Miyamura treating her like trash, which is completely against his wishes and she goads him into doing, and those scenes make for uncomfortable viewing.

We spend time with a pretty large cast of characters, considering this is only 13 episodes. Each episode has three or four vignettes that other shows might have expanded for each to be an episode in itself, so it can feel like it's motoring along at a fast pace at times. This is both a plus and a minus. Some segments need more breathing room, but also nothing feels stretched or outstays its welcome, making for a breezy viewing experience. The one real problem from this is that the relationship of the titular couple (Hori and Miyamura) doesn't get as much screen time as perhaps it should, and the milestones of their relationship feel rushed in places. There's a major one towards the end of the series that's done in such a blink-and-you-miss-it fashion that for a moment I was left wondering if it actually happened or if it was just Miyamura thinking about something he intended to say (I'm pretty sure he did say it).

The show manages to work well despite all of these quirks, almost entirely on the shoulders of the characters, their growing relationships, and how funny most of it is. I also can't really fault it for making the decision to accelerate the pace and give us a fairly complete story, since this lets it avoid the usual anime adaptation flaw of being a story fragment.

8/10
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I loved Horimiya, music was unsurprisingly on point given the composer involved, the opening sequence was arguably the best I've seen, characters well realised in the short runtime and very relatable, with a nice balance between comedy alongside moments of soul-searching throughout, all whilst keeping it light-hearted and generally positive without particularly treading in depression territory (though I do wish there was a bit more of that heh). Pacing was indeed too rapid but likely down to the source manga (which is also very good) & time allocated. I do wish they had been able to flesh it out better over a couple of cours but not a bad effort at all. Now I'll just patiently wait for an English language release and watch some paint dry anime in the meantime
 
Bokurano

Who doesn't enjoy watching children getting tortured?

This heavily reminded me of EVA, but they dialled it up to fit 15 kids into one robot instead of just 1! 🤣

Continuing the EVA comparison, this wasn't as good as it, but it was certainly more consistent, this never felt like it got lost in itself like EVA did to me when I watched it.

Considering I don't often get on that well with old anime, this was actually pretty good on the whole. Not perfect, sure, doesn't really get to a lot of answers to questions that I asked myself whilst watching it, but I quite liked seeing all of the back stories and the reasons for the kids to take the pilot chair.

Oh I can't finish this without saying the opening song Uninstall was good too! 🎵 Uninstall, Uninstall 🎵


7/10
 
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Just a FYI: the Bokurano anime goes fully anime only towards the end, starting with a... Yakuza subplot? Don't really remember but do recall it soured my opinion on it. The manga meanwhile I finished many years after and ended quite strongly, iirc. Also Kitoh's a messed up guy that likes kids experiencing verrrrry adult things, so the TV ver changed/censored bits. Bokurano not quite as extreme as Narutaru, thankfully, though: no worms force swallowed, or finger nail penetration. Nasty, that: had to be censored even in Dark Horse's manga release.

Your mini-review quite accurate: Boku is like Eva if there were 15 Shinjis that took turns dying. If you ever think old skool Eva depressing, Boku is suicide fuel. Very entertaining, mind. Especially if you have/hate/typo children. I hate children. To be fair though, I hate people, dogs and cats as well. Hamsters are okay. Squirrels pretty cool--the bushy tails always swayed me.


As for my own input, much like Ayase, I dun really watch anime anymore. I'm just here, watching. Always. Huhehehe. That aside, I did watch a few Netflix only moviefilms a few months ago, tho: Hathaway and Words Bubble Up Like Soda. Mainly for the music: Sawano and Ushio. How could one not for free*?

Gundamu Hathaway I hadn't watched Char Kunta but could follow it: Hathaway as a character torn between Amuro and Char. Had two cool set-pieces, intro hijacking and in middle of film running thru streets at night as robots fought and plasma burned stuff. It was aesthetically impressive; immersive accompanied by lovely 2D character animation/Gigi's fingers during hug. Plus the soundtrack, ofc. Pacing a bit eh and more a set-up for sequels that could be even more ehhhhh, but was decent. 7/10

As for Words Bubble Up Like Soda, more of an okayish rom-com. Gaudy CG bgs, not bad 2D charas. Modern anime for you. Had a nice wordless montage sequence in middle and improved towards end when felt it actually had a plot. Self-conscious over teeth extrovert and expressive via haikus introvert mildly amused. End rather forced naff, tho. 6/10
 
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AironicallyHuman said:
Just a FYI: the Bokurano anime goes fully anime only towards the end
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Yes I read up a little after as the anime ended but left some plot points hanging, so I read that the anime changed quite a bit towards the end. As you said I also read they toned down certain points.

It's quite rare for me to get into an old anime at all though, not just the art style but the way people are characterised has changed so much, in some of the older ones there is a lot more slapstick humour and people overacting, I'm glad more modern ones are more grounded, for the most part.

Things like Eva and this were fine though, so glad I gave it a watch :)
 
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