As of late, I have seen a lot of shows based on or associated with on-line gaming, like “Sword Art Online” or “Accel World”. Even “Tower of Druaga” felt like a videogame, although that kind of took the mickey out of itself.

“BTOOOM!” is another such show. Now, the online game of “BTOOOM!” is like Halo, except the only weapons you have are bombs. You have to figure out ways how to blow up the enemy team. Your overall scores are rated, but individual effort counts as well.

Ryōta Sakamoto (the one in black to the right) is an unemployed 22-year-old, potential hikikimori or NEET, who lives with his mother. In the real world, there is nothing special about him, but online, he’s one of the world’s top players and the only Japanese to be in the Top Ten of Btooom! One day, he awakens in what appears to be a tropical island, though he has no memory of how or why he has come to be there.

It is dusk or night or dark and in trying to find out what’s going on, comes across another person….who starts flinging bombs at him. It doesn’t take too long for Ryota to realize that it’s time to kill or be killed, but as to what it overall going on, he is still playing a lot of catch-up.

He encounters a couple of other people: Himiko, that blonde number up there, who suffers from a real man-hatred and Kiyoshi Taira (the older guy to Himiko’s right). We then learn the double dilemma here:

In order for you to leave the island, you need eight chips (those green crystals in each person’s left hand). But the only way to get the chips is to kill people. Man, “Survivor” was never like this. You are also given eight bombs (those ridiculous fanny packs everyone has). You are given one of six different styles of bombs. You can use another person’s bombs, but only if they are dead; otherwise, they will not work.

So, how did these people get here? They were sent here by ‘friends’ who hated them enough to sell them out. Every person here has transgressed something in society and earned the enmity of others. Your punishment is to die. You may learn, too late, what it means to be a real person and not just someone taking up space on the bus.

The biggest drawback in the show is that they broke the series in half, so when you get to Episode 13, we take a commercial break (“Throw away that truss!”), but we have not reached any real conclusion in the events, but there are no new shows on the horizon. Like Ryota, we are playing catch-up with what is going on and have to confront the notion that I have to kill real people. Others must die so that I may live. I have to trust you enough, but I will be called upon to betray you and if I hesitate, you’ll be taking MY chip.

Another problem I had was with the almost indestructible nature of the people here. The bombs, for the most part, are of a tight proximity (the bombs themselves are about the size of a Cutie) so you can avoid most of the damage they dispense if you stay out of range (that will not help with the gas bomb and the fire bomb). We also get to see the incidents that set up our characters to be sent here, and we are talking some major moral meltdowns here. Sheesh, if they did that to me, I certainly would send them to Purgatory Island.

Overall, it is an interesting show, but it sometimes gets a bit too prolix for its own good and with a rather large cast of characters, we haven’t seen the last of them…..unless production has shut down. I have a real problem with Himiko, as she is really the obligatory fan service, with her tight blouse and her feminine bombs thrusting out at me. Can she learn to love again? Can Taira stop being a work hound and get back to his family? Will Ryota decide to get a job at the local WacDonalds? Isn’t kidnapping illegal, even in Japan?

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork            8 (Interesting character design)
Plot                   6 (Different approach to the Survivor Syndrome)
Pacing               7 (Good for the show, but sluggish on flashbacks)
Effectiveness    6 (Too many port convolutions)
Conclusion       4 (It gets to a coupler point)
Fan Service      4 (A similar show would be “Gurren Lagaan”)

Overall            7 (The fight continues)

And remember, it’s first run until you see it. Haters gonna hate.

Now as we left off in the defeat of Pain in the “pain ark” way back in storm 2 and with the confusion on Storm Generations that left most of us in a wave of confusion and disappointment, Storm 3 makes up for it all.

The game starts off with the hidden leaf village being attacked by the pugnacious nine-tailed fox while being controlled by a “Masked Man” using the sharingan. Action flowing left to right as you are first controlling the 3rd hokage in this blazing epic boss battle with the nine tails that leaves you in a wave of excitement, wanting to play more of it with every minute of gameplay and honestly that’s a game totally worth playing.

Well, this is an interesting series about an Arms Dealer who is a genuine contradiction with a title that initially does not make any sense, “Jormungand”.

Let’s talk about her. The potential albino (or perhaps she doesn’t get enough sun; hard to tell), white on white, is Koko Hekmatyar, a young arms dealer who sells weapons under HCLI, an international shipping corporation that secretly deals in the arms trade. As one of the company’s unofficial weapon dealers, she carefully sells weapons in many countries while avoiding the local authorities and law enforcement agencies as most of her work is actually illegal under international law. But money is where you find it and she has no reluctance to sell to anyone, but has a caliber of conscience.

Most of the people up there are her bodyguards and have extensive military experience, so let’s run them down (it is a rather capacious cast, both on this side, plus those forces that wish to do her harm):

William Nelson, known as Wiley, explosive expert.
Lehm Brick, second in command and former Delta Force member.
Mao, former artillery office. Discharged after a military accident and grabbed up by Koko.
Sofia Valmet, former Finnish soldier and an expert with knives. In love with Koko.
Koko
Lutz, former sniper from a SWAT unit.
Akihiko Tojo, former member of Japan’s SR unit. When dismissed by them, Koko hired him within 20 minutes.
R (Renato Socci), a former Italian Army intelligence officer who served in the Bosnian Wars as a UN peacekeeper.
Ugo, former mafia driver, he survived a shootout between his group and Koko as he was disgusted by drugs.
Jonah (Jonathan Mar), newest member, he has a vendetta to kill Koko’s brother, Kaspar.

The series is actually two parts. The first season of twelve tell the tales of Koko and her dealings with selling arms, avoiding the CIA, handling rival arms dealers and trying to make Jonah less of a boy soldier and more of a person. The ‘second season’ tells the story of what Jormungand is all about and how to get it to do what Koko wants.

For a show that has a lot of shooting and killing in it, the bloodshed is really kept to a minimum. It’s just the matter-of-fact way they approach what they do. The stories are compelling, even when they bring in the totally off-her-rocker Minami “Miami” Amada, a robotics expert who is easily distracted by butterflies and smokes too much (yes, there is a huge amount of smoking by everyone).

I liked this show, owing to the different plot. No squealing school girls, no giant fighting robots, no harems (although one could argue it is a reverse harem, but like “Ghost in the Shell” is a reverse harem with no real meaning). There is a little skin shown and Valmet is certainly one ‘healthy’ girl, but this is also kept to a minimum. The identity of Jormungand is kept pretty well hidden until Koko tells all what it is about, but she is also an odd fish. Nothing is as it seems and no one can really be trusted…..just like real life.

This is not a bridge series, as you lurch from one show to the next and need something in-between to watch. This is one well worth putting on your “need to see” list.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork           7 (Functional)
Plot                  8 (Second half gets compelling)
Pacing              8 (Can turn frenetic fast)
Effectiveness    8 (It does work, even with red herrings)
Conclusion       7 (It doesn’t end, more of ‘you guess’ of a conclusion)
Fan Service      4 (A similar show would be “Gurren Lagaan”)

Overall            8 (Sometimes gets too ‘bulletproof’)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. Always have a plan.

This is another of those series that has a monstropatious title, but gets reduced to something more manageable. Some know it as “Onii-chan dakedo Ai sae Areba Kankeinai yo ne!” (which comes out to “As Long as There’s Love, It Doesn’t Matter If He is My Brother, Right!”), or “Oniai” for short. This is another brother-sister anime, but with more screwball situations. Our femme fatales are:

Ginbe Haruomi Sawatari
Akiko Himenokoji (the sister half of the brother-sister team)
Arashi Nikaido
Anastasia Nasuhara

The brother in question, Akito Himenokoji, isn’t shown and he really is used more as a foil for the misplaced desires of the ladies than anything else.

The story tells of how Akito and Akiko were separated for six years and have come back together, with both attending Saint Liliana High School. Suddenly the student council (which consists of all five of them) moves into this rather grand house and they all have to live together. It seems each and every lady has a fixation upon Akito and, adding to the mayhem, are Alisa Takanomiya, who was Akito’s adoptive family at to whom he is her fiancée (much to the shock and chagrin of everyone) plus Kaoruko Jinno, who is an editor at the publishing house where Akito has his book published.

This is an endless tale of misunderstandings, misinterpretations, misrepresentations and mistaken assumptions. Each of the ladies are flirty in their own way, trying very hard to win Akito’s heart, whereas Akiko feels that, having an inside track, is the one best configure to be with Akito.

My major problem with this is that I saw it at a time when I was watching ANOTHER brother-sister love show. Yes, I did get certain plot points confused, but it was still the same results, in that…oh, that might tip my hand. Well, don’t worry; you could probably guess the ending.

It just got a little tiresome in that none of these ladies were going to give an inch to the others and that there was really no character development. This one is the man-eater, that one is the quiet and demure the one in the corner is passive-aggressive and all we do is reinforce this. Don’t misunderstand; this is not a terrible series, but I felt that they could have done a lot more with it. But, as it stands, it’s along the lines of “Sekerei”, but they did this same caliber of idea (the harem romantic comedy) a lot better than you see here.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork   7 (Good artwork, but it feels they are trying too hard)
Plot    6 (Runs dry)
Pacing    8 (Runs wild at times)
Effectiveness    6 (Never goes anywhere)
Conclusion    7 (It reaches a series end, but it has a coupler)
Fan Service    5 (A similar show would be “Maburaho”)

Overall     6 (Light on laughs and lotsa boobs)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. I’m the best!

“Joshiraku” (or “Rakuga Girls”) tells the story of these five rakuga performers. Oh, what is rakuga? It is a Japanese verbal entertainment. The lone storyteller sits on stage. Using only a paper fan and a small cloth as props (although none of the girls use props), and without standing up from the seiza sitting position, the rakugo artist depicts a long and complicated comical story. The story always involves the dialogue of two or more characters, the difference between the characters depicted only through change in pitch, tone, and a slight turn of the head.

However, the art form has fallen of desperate times and the girls play to rather light houses. Although we do see them in action, doing their stage bits (mostly at the end of the story; kind of like hearing only the punch line), the bulk of the action takes place back stage, in the dressing room, as they have long discourses on…..nothing. And let’s not ask the question that if they are all back stage, who’s performing on stage?

They are Kukuru Anrakutei, Gankyō Kūrubiyūtei, Marii Buratei, Tetora Bōhatei and Kigurumi Harōkitei and we see their actions and interactions together. Kukuru is the newest member, so she is more of a protégé, learning how to do this performance properly. The rest have been around for a while, with Marii being the kind of leader in all of this. Even the show makes the statement “This anime is full of ordinary dialogue so that viewers can fully enjoy how cute the girls are.”

They talk about which is better, cats or dogs or what they would do if they won the lottery or tales and folklore about the full moon. They are not always in the dressing room, as they do take several outside trips, but the dialogue always dissolves into these massive missives on nothing substantial. But do not dismiss this as a nothing show about nothing.

I enjoyed the circuitous perambulations they made, whether it be that Marii is really a cross-dressing boy or why Tetora has such great luck or talking about the different animals at the zoo. Now, the show is not without randomness. There is a sixth character, called “Mask”, who just shows up and sometimes, the other girls do not even acknowledge that it is someone different…except the person who Mask is replacing.

The girls break the fourth wall a lot, especially in the ‘climatic’ 13^th episode (yes, I use the term loosely), but it really is a goofy show, along the lines of “Azumanga Daioh” or “Daily Lives of High School Boys”. Yes, sometimes you want a little action, but if you enjoy verbal sparring, this is a good choice for you. And they recently came out with an OVA that continues the ‘nothingness’ of the show, but it is a good watch as well.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork              8 (The girls are cute)
Plot                     2 (Not even close)
Pacing                 8 (They do quite a lot with so little)
Effectiveness       8 (For what it wants to do, it works quite well)
Conclusion          2 (Nope, it just hits a point)
Fan Service         2 (A similar show would “Okamisan”)

Overall               7 (Nothing too demanding)

And remember, it’s first run until you see it. Don’t ask a trifling question.

It’s the past. (The past? How did that happen? Anime is about the future!) The year is 1931 and we find ourselves in Shanghai. There is a great build-up of forces from Japan, which threatens to engulf the area in war, as the need for conquest and land acquisition looms. Into this volatile mix is flung a group of people, collectively known as the Sakurai Agency, but they really are a spy ring. But they are more than they seem. They are, from left to right:

Aoi Miyoshi, Kazura Iha, Yukina Sonogi and Natsumi Kayiga. Not pictured is their boss, Shin’ichirou Sakurai. But these people are no ordinary spies; they have special abilities that aid them in their investigations. Their powers are, respectively, telekinesis, teleportation, telepathy and tele-clairvoyance. (OK, I couldn’t help myself). He is also an excellent sniper.

Together, they battle the Kwangtung army and its mysterious leader, Isao Takachiho, who is bent on the idea of Pan-Asianism, and will use any and all means to achieve it.

Now, if you put aside the special abilities folks seem to have, this is a series with loads of intrigue, from the era of pulp novels and detective work. It is a very good-looking series, as you really get a feel for Shanghai of the 30s. The fact that we know the eventual outcome for all of this does not detract from the agency’s attempt to prevent it. Oh, and don’t let that little piece of female flirtiness distract you; this is the 30s and women were not allowed to have breasts (that came after WWII). This is a show that has, really, zero fan service. And this is good, for it would pull your attention away from both the plotting and the rivalry between the characters.

Now, if you want to watch this on Hulu (which I did), make certain that you see “The Shipboard Shoot’s Conclusion” first. Hulu has it lined up that you see Episode 1 first, when you should see episode 00 first. The reason is the episode is a kind of prologue, so you see these folks in action before they knew of one another. Otherwise, you get a backtrack problem and worry that it might be the Haruhi Syndrome (what IS the order of this show?)

Although things got a little bit hard to take near the latter part of the show in how Japan hopes to obtain this super might (I can’t really explain it, as it is a critical plot point), one gets a good feel for the politics of the time, even if it is not wholly historically accurate, but we are taking a bit of liberties with things. Also, it really is a 16-episode run, as you have three shows that were not included in the original run, but you get when you go after the DVD (or catch it all on Hulu – this is not a plug for them, just a statement of fact). Aside from the aforementioned prologue, you also have an epilogue and an odd one in the middle.

I would recommend this show, more as a real change of pace from either squealing school girls or giant fighting robots, even though there is a good story line behind it. It does get a little deus ex machina at the end, but I was willing to let that slide for some robust story telling. If you like spies or pulp or anything from the 30s, you will have a good time.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork           8 (Good character design)
Plot                  8 (Does go a bit zig-zag)
Pacing              8 (Action sequences are handled well)
Effectiveness    9 (Despite the historical presumptiveness)
Conclusion       8 (It ends, but it gets to a coupler point, should they wish to go on)
Fan Service      0 (A similar show would be “Honey and Clover”)

Overall            7 (The experiment continues)

And remember, it’s first run until you see it. Here, have a free baozi.

This started off as a rather odd show. It is “La Storia Della Arcana Famiglia”, (Italian for “The Story of the Arcane Family“) and it tells the tales of this group of people above me who have made contracts with Tarot cards to gain special abilities, which allow them to protect the Island of Regalo from the true forces of evil. It’s a pretty capacious cast, so left’s run them down from left to right:

• Luca is the personal butler to Felicita. His contract is with Temperance (harmony, balance and health).
• Debito (Mr Eyepatch) runs the casino and he is with the Hermit, which means he can make himself invisible.
• Pace (Specs) eats way too much lasagna. He is aligned with Strength (discipline and stability).
• Felicita is the only girl of the group. She is the Lovers and this allows her to reads people’s heart and feelings.
• The guy with his back to us is Jolly and he certainly is not. Second-highest ranking member, he signed on with the Moon, which allows him to draw out memories, forcibly if he must.
• Nova is the Captain of the Holy Grail. Assigned to Death, he carries with him a dark secret.
• Green eyes is Liberta. He is The Fool, a spirit in search of experience, but certainly brave.
• Dante is the Head Captain and the Emperor, with the ability to remove and/or manipulate memories.

The series tells about how they protect the island, but also how they came to be, as they are not related by blood, only circumstance. Two additional people you do not see are Mondo and Sumire, the father and mother of this clan. We see everyone put through their paces, as they learn to control and focus their abilities, but the Big Thing comes when Mondo decides it is time to retire and wants to select the next head of the family, through a Battle Royal. Whomsoever wins will also get to wed Felicita. Needless to say, Felicita, being a modern woman, rankles at being treated as a prize and not a person, so she decides she will command her own fate.

It certainly is a good series, even when they dissolve into filler tropes and the back stories make up for a lot of thin individual plot lines, but it asks a lot of questions that it either can’t answer or chooses not to. They all seem to revolve around Jolly and his ‘experiments’. I mean, this guy is really dangerous, but it all seems to be OK in their little world, even though he could potentially kill them all without much provocation.

Something they had at the beginning of the series that they abandoned later on is a kind of round-table discussion at the end, when one of the members of the family has to be ‘punished’ for a transgression. It gets a little silly, but I didn’t realize how much I liked this throw-away segment until it was gone. Oh, well……….

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork 8 (A good art design)
Plot 6 (Rather standard)
Pacing 8 (Keeps a balance well)
Effectiveness 6 (The lack of real headway can frustrate)
Conclusion 7 (It reaches a ‘coupler’, but doesn’t really end)
Fan Service 3 (A similar show would be “Okamisan”)

Overall 8 (A lot of that ‘sameness’ feel)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. I am here to serve you.

What is it about romantic comedies which bring out the berserk fan service? Now, it’s ‘bad’ enough that “To Love-Ru” is pretty berserk as it is (as evidenced by the still from one of the episodes above), but someone felt that the show didn’t go far enough (and how much farther could it go? Further? Man, I always get those two mixed up), and they decided to put together the strangest set of OVAs ever. Now, it kind of serves an odd purpose, as we meet Lala’s younger twin sisters (oh, man, my fornix is getting quickly overheated at that potential scenario) Nana and Momo, who will bring even more mayhem to Rito in the next installment of the series “Motto To Love-Ru”.

Do you really need to know what the plot is? I mean, almost all the OVAs I have seen put together have a plot that isn’t much more that a wire frame from which you can show boobs. In fact, the first episode of the OVA is a discussion about boobs and somehow….No, I can’t tell you, as it is so deliciously ridiculous at to what happens. You really have to watch them all, as they bring out every leftover thing that they felt they couldn’t put into the show, as they hardly left anything out of the shows to begin with.

I am reluctant to tell the onion-skin thin plots, but rest assured that you see a lot of the girls that you came for in the first place. A whole episode at the beach? Ten girls in bikinis at the beach? Ten luscious ladies, changing out of suits and flaunting their bodies and playing silly beach games and….ten girls? Count them!

If you liked the screwball antics of To Love-Ru, then you will enjoy the OVA and the lead in to the next season (which is only a 12-episode run).

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork           9 (Oh, yeah!)
Plot                  3 (More reasons to get naked)
Pacing              8 (Works for what they want to do)
Effectiveness   9 (Since all you want is babes in bikinis)
Conclusion      7 (This was always a bridge session)
Fan Service     8 (A similar show would be “Sekirei”)

Overall            8 (New characters enter)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. Yes, all men ARE interested in breasts.

“Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero” is a rather odd submission in the swords-and-sorcery genre. Whereas most of them have our erstwhile hero taken from his warm bed and friendly confines and getting  plunked into a situation where he has to catch up pretty damn quickly or become worm food (“The Familiar of Zero” is one like that), this one starts at the end.

Akatsuki Ousawa, the hunky hero up there, has come back from the land of Alayzard, having defeated the demon lord of that land. As his dying wish, that lord wanted Akatsuki to take his daughter Myuu (can you find her up there? Hmmmmmmm?) back to his land so she could live a normal life. They both enroll in Babel, which is a training school to help harness these magical people and their powers, so that they can be used for good.

Now here’s the funny thing: Akatsuki has no magical powers. Everything he does is both sheer will and his experience. Myuu has some degree of powers, but they are unfocused. Now, they all wear wristbands that help harness their natural powers to conform to their abilities. As you can see, our hero has to wear six to eight to raise things up high enough so he can bring forth a sword that even the God of War would be jealous over. Yeah, fit that in your scabbard, dude!

The show follows the two of them, as they try to fit into a society that doesn’t really like them, while battling external forces that want to take Myuu back to Alayzard for her ‘crimes’.

So, the first half of the series is really taken up with endless boob jokes. I mean, she can’t find anything to wear and the sequence when they go looking for foundation garments for her is fan service to the extreme. Then, we go to the beach (oh, is that a surprise? Only that it took SEVEN episodes to get there!) and that level of hilarity ensues.

Akatsuki reminds one of the Tony Stark character from “Iron Man”: someone who is rather arrogant, but has the chops to back up everything that he says he can do. This is put to the test in the latter half of the run, when a simple training exercise turns into a life and death struggle and he has to protect everyone from the evil forces that come forth.

Although I found this an entertaining series, it still hit the old tropes of testing the outsiders and the smugness of those elites who feel that Akatsuki is rude and crass and unrefined. Also, all the boob jokes got terribly tiresome, done more as a diversion to prevent you from seeing the thinness of the plot for that episode. At times, it felt like “Chrome-Shelled Regios” in the teams of competitors and the line-in-the-sand competitions were important and that all those smaller stories merely got in the way of the larger tale.

Still, if you like this kind of story, you could do far worse. More closer allied with “Freezing” and “Maken-Ki”, it does make a nice companion set.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork              8 (The girls are REALLY cute)
Plot                     7 (There is something there, but barely)
Pacing                 7 (The action sequences really work)
Effectiveness       8 (It does what it needs to do well)
Conclusion          7 (Done, but not over, as the coupler is really obvious)
Fan Service         6 (A similar show would “Mahoromatic”)

Overall               7 (Could have been better)

And remember, it’s first run until you see it. Fear my demonic sword.

When the first season of “Medaka Box” came out, I really like the tales of this rather extraordinary girl believing that she could help all people, despite how craven or churlish or selfish they were to begin with. I got a bit concerned regarding the season-ending arc with Unzen (he’s the runty white-haired guy with the evil grin at the far right), but the promise of the second season seemed bright. Promises, I guess, are meant to be broken, and “Medaka Box: Abnormal” makes sure there aren’t any pieces to pick up.

At the Sandbox Academy, there is the mysterious Class 13, which is filled with Abnormals: people with very special abilities. With Unzen in hospital for a while, there is a vacancy in the class (man, what a tough school) and Abnormals who haven’t attended class since the Hiroshima Carp last won the World Series decide to show up and help push forth the Flask Plan. This is a plan to create the perfect human being (yeah, we all know where that ends up. Hasn’t succeeded before, won’t succeed now. PS, the Carp went 61-71 last season).

In order to put a stop to this, (uh, the Flask Plan, not the Carp) Medaka and Crew (the three in the lower left) seek out advice from Meguro Kurakami, Medaka’s…..older brother? Why hasn’t he made an appearance before this? (Blue hair, upper left). Aside from learning of the existence of an older brother (who is a major pervert and has a sister fixation), we also learn that he was an early administrator of the Flask Plan, but no longer believes in it, so left it all behind.

They will have to penetrate the building at the center of the campus, go down to the 13^th level and defeat the person there to stop the plan. So, everything that made the first season charming and funny and amusing has been completely jettisoned for the Dragonball Z Syndrome (endless fighting, when there isn’t endless fighting). And the fights are both endless and rather tepid as they have to deal with a person who moves at supersonic speed or another who can pull weaponry from anywhere on his body or a girl who can beat the snot out of you and can heal quickly (the last one is our inverted miss in the center bottom).

We also learn that Medaka has a sister as well. And who else will be coming to this soiree? And how inter-related is everyone to everyone? Is it too late to transfer out to another school? Oh, the sister is Kujira and she is that heavily wrapped person to the right of Medaka…and the unwrapped person next to the wrapped one. And, yes, that is a Rambo-style knife sticking out of her head. She is also just as buxom as her sister, but colder than a penguin’s rear in winter.

Yup, we learn more about what makes Medaka Medaka, but we are no closer to shutting down the Flask Plan, even when Medaka defeats everyone (no, not a spoiler alert; we ALL saw that coming.) The big shock came when the close of the second season actually sets up the third season and a showdown with her most vicious foe ever…whom I cannot reveal as that is the kicker. This is really an 11-episode run, with the 12th episode as a bridge piece to take us up into Season Three and explain a bit of this particular character, so we understand where that person is coming from, more or less.

All of these feints and fake-outs and posturing made for a very tiresome series and I have an incredible reluctance to attempt the next go-around. And if I see one more extreme close-up of angry eyes, I’m gonna lose it, if I haven’t already. This would be a great day to play hooky.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork            8 (Interesting character design)
Plot                   6 (Gets overworked quickly)
Pacing               8 (Good pacing but it goes nowhere)
Effectiveness    4 (Too many port convolutions)
Conclusion       4 (It gets to a coupler point)
Fan Service      3 (A similar show would be “Wedding Peach”)

Overall            5 (The fight continues)

And remember, it’s first run until you see it. What is normal, anyway?