The Rolling Girls Debut Episode Opinions

The Rolling Girls is set in a post-apocalyptic future of sorts, and it starts with the best introduction to an anime I've seen in a while. To summarize the opening summary of events: Stuff happened and now Japan is split into their old prefectures again, which develop into individual nations.This promotes a sense of individuality and freedom of expression , and the new nations grow to be exclusive. They begin to war with each other, like a future Sengoku Jidai. Instead of large-scale wars like those during that era, future Japan's split nations fight with Super-powered vigilantes.

Honestly, I'm far more interested in seeing the anime about those years of change rather than the aftermath, which is where the actual story picks up.

Enter the main character: A normal girl who is just old enough to join the military/police/civil servants of this world, a ragtag group of people who help their defending super-hero through civil duties. She joins out of admiration for Matcha Green, the hero of her prefecture's nation. She is supposed to stay in town to help with the running of the city, but she is drawn to the battlefield to be closer to her hero. Upon the insistence of the protagonist being normal throughout the episode, I began to think of many protagonists from many mech anime who are introduced with the same insistence.Through one superficial watch of the first episode I have crafted a baseless theory about the entire show: This is a mech anime, just without the mechs.
Directed by the virtually unknown Kotomi Deai, this anime has a unique style. The animation flows very well, the girls are drawn cute, the backgrounds and effects are full of vibrant colors, and each character seems alive with a unique disposition.

Both Matcha Green, and the invading nation's super hero are seen wearing similar-looking stones, each conspicuously saying that it's their "good luck charm". If this is the key to their powers, I could realistically see the protagonist obtaining her own heart crystal at some point, giving her super-powers. This would conform to my idea of this anime being a mech anime in disguise, the heart crystal being parallel to the mech.
The online description of the anime seems to reveal that Matcha Green eventually sends the protagonist with other girls to travel Japan to mediate battles between rivaling clans. The way I see it, the anime could go one of two ways from here. Either the protagonist and the girls she travels with each obtains their own heart crystal somehow, to stop battles and fight on their own as a sort of Japan-traveling Sentai, or the girls just enter into normal, fun hijinks on their travels that eventually leads them to save the world. The latter scenario seems much more plausible because all the promotions for the anime are intent on suggesting that the main characters are entirely normal girls. I will be extremely let down if my trust is betrayed with a super-powered protagonist, or if the show falls into mech anime conventions.

In any case, I have high hopes for this series. The music is charming, the animation's interesting, and the plot seems fun. It's lighthearted and fast-paced, and I'm happy to be watching it. Mech anime or not, I'm excited for episode 2.

It's a dummy.

Yuri Kuma Arashi Debut Episode Opinions

A few days ago, I began to dive into the bounties of the new anime season, and I had the pleasure of viewing the first episode of YuriKuma. Directed by the illustrious Kunihiko Ikuhara, this anime looks like it's going to grow into something big.
There's an interesting wordplay going on with the constant use of the word "Yuri". This translates directly to "Lily", and the flower appears throughout the show as a symbol of purity. Girls are introduced as "Yuri" themselves, which denotes a sense of purity among them, while also pointing at the fact that these girls seem to be lesbian. The director, Ikuhara, has stated that he likes to make yuri relationships in his anime because it's fairly unassuming, and a relationship between male and female always seem to overpower and over-complicate other aspects of the show.

The only instance of characters with a male-like appearance show up in a dream-like court session towards the end of the episode.

Unless it's something I'm really excited about, I usually go into the new season's anime without looking them up, save for short descriptions. So, when I first turned on Yuri Kuma Arashi, I had not known anything about the show, and I marveled at the cute girls and interesting direction. The romantic imagery coupled with a constant focus on yuri made Ikuhara's previous anime, Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997), spring into my mind.
At first, I had thought it was this season's SHAFT anime because of the minimalistic but romantic art direction. The director seemed to me to be trying to make this anime into a moe Utena, and I didn't mind it at all. When I discovered that Ikuhara himself was behind YuriKuma, I was not in the least bit surprised, but I was infinitely excited.
Somehow, I had not known that Ikuhara would be directing something this season, which is a momentous occasion: After he finished Utena, he stopped directing anime until Mawaru-Penguindrum (2011), 14 years later. As a fan of his work, I'm relieved he decided to continue.

After Junichi Sato left the project, Kunihiko Ikuhara  became the series director for Sailor Moon. Later, he also left the position to pursue a career with more creative freedom, which is when he put together Utena.

The story is silly fun. It opens on a high school filled with seemingly lesbian girls, and we meet the love interests of the show. Bears are then suddenly introduced as a species from another plane of existence who eat girls because "That's just what they do." Two bears appear to pose as High School transfer students in order to get close to the girls and eat them. At least one of the bears seem very interested in the main girl, who was shown to be in love with another girl in a previous scene.

It's not clear as of yet if the bears actually eat girls, or just eat them out. Here, they lick the honey off a main character's lily. I assume they eat out the ones they care about, and actually consume the others.

Something called the "The Invisible Storm" is exposited by the characters to "Destroy pure and gentle things", and it starts with the character's favorite bed of lilies. It seems the bears are a part of this Storm, who eat girls in order to theoretically destroy the purity of their yuri love. I have no idea what all this is building up to, but I'm very excited to experience what Ikuhara has lying in wait for episode 2. The second episode aired last night on Tokyo MX, just after midnight, so I'm eagerly waiting for [Asenshi]'s subtitles.

Aldnoah Zero Season 1: Thoughts on Urobuchi's Mecha

It's been a few weeks since I saw the end of the first season of Aldnoah Zero, and I decided that it's an anime worth talking about. At least, it's an anime people should be talking about, regardless of how they feel about it. Personally, I find it's characters bland and altogether non-unique. The romance is not cared for, there are story elements that fall flat, and the characters even make uncharacteristic choices. The mechs are 3DCGI, something that is happening more and more frequently much to the disdain of many, and it falls apart toward the end into a silly, obvious set-up for season 2. However, at the same time, I feel like Aldnoah Zero is almost everything a modern mecha anime should be.
The setup is simple. It's classic, and fits perfectly in the genre it represents. Martian seperatists who feel as if they are a class above normal Earthlings start to war with Earth. It really feels like Zeon vs Federation a la Gundam all over again - and the similarities don't stop there, of course. We have two main heroes to this story, which the show divides a majority of it's time between: The teenage Earthling student, Inaho Kaizuka, who is a genius at piloting mechs at a level far above anyone else, including all of Earth's military, for no explicable reason. And the blonde short-haired teenager from Earth, Slaine "Not Char" Troyard, who resides with the Martians. Both are the main focus in the midst of opposite sides, and they both fawn over the same girl. However, these are all things that have been presented in uninspiring ways in most mecha anime made after Yoshiyuki Tomino's original masterpiece; This is all nothing new. What elevates what should be just another amorphous blob of everything that has been done several times before is the work of Gen Urobuchi added to the Mecha formula.
Some call Urobuchi a hack, others praise him. Personally, I hold that he is a talented writer who unfortunately holds tightly to his own tired cliches and stylizations. Play Butcher Bingo sometime to see what I mean, it's a hoot.

Though, in all honesty, I find his Mecha to be a fascinating remodel of the genre that feels like it was made to work. You see, in most Mecha, our heroes fight overwhelming odds with the super-secret Mech project weapon that is, for one reason or another, extremely powerful. However, in true Urobuchi fashion, Aldnoah Zero cranks the "suffering" lever to maximum and portrays the invading Martian faction as supremely powerful beings, able to wipe out the entirety of Earth's population without losing a single unit. Earth has no reserved alien technology, no super robot project of any kind, and simply no hope of survival. Yet, a select ragtag group of civilian earthlings fight back (Another hearken back to Mobile Suit Gundam) - with logical deduction and tactics.
Every Martian robot has it's invulnerability and destructive capabilities far beyond anything present in Earth's arsenal, and the teenager hero's mech is only his school's training robot. The thrill of watching the battles between these two opposing forces is amazing, and I'd recommend the show for only that - and still there is more to it: Politics, death, betrayal, conspiracy, peacemongering, warmongering, tragedy, and all things to which a Mecha fan is no stranger fills the stage, and in ways any Urobuchi fan would be proud of.
This is the first time since the acclaimed Fate/Zero that Gen Urobuchi worked with director Ei Aoki, and although I have yet to experience their first collaboration, I wasn't disappointed with the pairing. Urobuchi stated in an interview that he likes working with Aoki on storyboard because with him, "The vision of these animations will be perfect." and I've got to agree with the sentiment.  They really put together an engaging show that holds tight to it's vision, until the aforementioned set-up at the end.
Aldnoah Zero is far from the best of anything, however. Urobuchi is, of course, exempted from my gripe with the characters, as he didn't write them, but that doesn't excuse anything: Inaho is a Gary Stu. Yuki "Not Misato" Kaizuka, Inaho's onee-chan, is a boring mush of a cliche, and does nothing of use except to draw attention to Inaho's character - something that he is thoroughly incapable of showing himself. Inaho's school friends are completely useless, unless you think taking space and drawing contrast to Inaho's Gary Stu powers is a a major part of storytelling. There are only a few characters written with any amount of intrigue, but they are given comparatively little screen time, and their arcs go nowhere by the end of the season with the exception of Rayet's and Slaine's.
But I'm done complaining: Aldnoah Zero was a fun ride, and it proves that there is still more left to tap in the genre. I'm glad it exists, and we even got a Season 2 out of it, airing next year, which will hopefully bring satisfaction to the character arcs left unfinished, or at least make use of some people. In any case, I'd like to end this article with the aside: Kalafina always works great with Urobuchi anime. Keep it up.