Anime Wrap-Up #7

Hello hello! Anime Wrap-Up is a new section of this blog, directed to anime I've consumed in any way during the previous week/month. 

March was a good month for me! While I finished the wrap-up (both parts!) I am still watching more, I just know I won't finish until the new month. Which means, April's number is cooking!

But for now - Let's take a look at more shows:

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citrus

First off, I want to start with Citrus. This was... an experience for sure.

Citrus is a show I dropped ages ago. My ex watched it, and liked it and I thought it was a good way to explore something new in life.

This time, I went back to it.

Our main characters are Yuzu (gyaru, whose mom found a new husband). They moved and Yuzu changed schools - where she met not only the best girl and her best friend Harumi, but also her new sister Mei. Mei is a student council president, a cold ice queen and Yuzu catches her making out with a teacher.

One logical flaw - Mei says she hasn't seen her father in 5 years, so how could Yuzu's mom date him?

Anway. Mei basically forces herself at Yuzu, stealing her first kiss DESPITE YUZU PROTESTING.

That girl is stupid and dense as a rock - she keeps making trouble for herself and Mei, and she does try to kiss Mei in her sleep few times, so she's not so innocent herself.

We have the usual gay cliché - Mei's best friend is in love with her and she makes a move on he.

The whole anime I had just one question = WHY IS EVERYONE ASSAULTING THE OTHER GIRLS?

This anime is nothing but a dirty fanservice - what mother buys their two adult daughters to share? I have NEVER shared my bed with any of my siblings. If they stayed around Mei needing to find her purpose in life, it would be great. But they immediately made her resort to sex as dealing with her feelings. (Which, sure it is happening, but in this case it was just lazy.)

This is such an unhealthy look on WLW - girls wanting to experiment to enjoy their love, so everyone is dating someone implying that those relationships are just for the girls to have any relationship.

It's total opposite from Sakura Trick but somehow worse. Anyone who tries to sell this as a "deep love story between the girls with bits of psychological points of views to how pressure messes with person" is just ridiculously promoting this mistake.

Mei's best friend was not enough. Yuzu has a pink haired friend who is "into her" as well. Matsuri is jealous, so she kisses Yuzu just to make Mei jealous - and Mei frowns so she probably feels something too = she takes it out on Yuzu in her own way. Isn't it totally lazy? B-class rom-com, I say.

And they kept it on to the end - how else should they make them get together for real? Ofc by throwing a girl between them. Yuzu met Sarah - who fell for Mei. They started dating but in the end Yuzu managed to confess to Mei and the two got together... Of course Sarah's heart is broken, but she goes and says "I am just happy I could help them realize they're in love." God everything in this universe is just so convenient. 😑

And finally it's over.

I hated it, I think it's bad and I judge everyone who thinks this is a good show. 4/10 never mention it to me again.

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Yoru wa Neko to Issho Season 2 (Nights with a Cat Season 2)

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Yoru wa Neko to Issho × GAMERA: Rebirth

There really isn't much to this. Just like the last season, it's just short stories about how cats are and I related to all of it. As a cat owner, I can say that all of them are true - just not for every cat.

The special was like a cross between the anime and videogame or Godzilla.

All in all, it was pretty fun, I think it's still worth your time if you love cats and it kept the score of 7/10. By the way, Season 3 is coming out soon...

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Koukyuu no Karasu (Raven of the Inner Palace)

To put it simply - this one was tricky. It wasn't bad - but it just wasn't good enough. The art was very pretty, the animation was mostly great and the story itself was interesting. But still, combined together it made up for an average piece.

The thing about Raven is, that if you won't love it after the first episode, you will not love it... you will not like it more either. It's one of the shows you just have to get into immediately.

Few people pointed out that it's missing the "Romance" genre, and I agree with them. It was subtle, but it was there and it messed with the story a bit.

It could be a great supernatural ghost-themed piece, but I guess it was okay either way. 5/10

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11-nin Iru! (They Were Eleven)

Heavily underrated, much recommended. I loved it so much I immediately wrote a Review you can check out. I poured my immediate feelings into it, and now that some time passed, I thought I would be able to give a less biased opnion.
But that's not true. I love that movie more than I can put into words. Ya'll better watch it!😂

If you want to hear me rant more, you're always welcomed to reach out! 10/10

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Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Thought at first this anime was a bit confusing for me, I enjoyed it more than half the others in this post.Right away I could name three qualities - great character depiction of the main character, interesting visuals and well-presented dystopian setting.

Though it started out a little messed up, in the end, it was like watching a whole another show. (Said with love and admiration).

In episode two, Lucy said "Don't trust anyone in the city." and while it looks like it helped us, it still comes back later, bitting evryone in the ass. It was a wonderful twist.

I didn't take a lot of screenshots, but that's because I would have to insert the whole show. It looked soooo well.

Once we meet "the cyberpunks" the real drama (& comedy) begin. One of my all time favorites jokes is "What in the fast forward fuck was that?" as a reaction to David.

The soundtrack too was amazing, I encourage you to give it a listen.

Despite learning what the show was like, the romance, the losses and the conclusion were absolutely killing me and the final scene on the moon left me traumatized.

You might say that Edgerunners is an overrated show. I dare to say even with it's popularity it's underrated and needs and deserves more attention. (I think I am going to rewatch it in the future). God, it was so goooood! 9/10.

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Jigoku Shoujo (Hell Girl)

The premise is simple - if someone is making your life harder, put their name on a Hell website, asking the "hell girl" to take vengeance on them and send them straight to hell. However, there is always a price. The price is entering a covenant, never knowing the pleasures of heaven.

I heard those lines 26 times.... It was repeated every. single. episode.

Anyway.

At first it started as sob stories - being bullied, being unhappy, their pets dying and stuff. But then two more characters were introduced - Hajime and Tsugimi. A former journalist with strong sense of justice and his daughter that sees what Hell Girl (Ai Enma) is up to.

Together, the two set out to catch and stop Ai from dragging souls to hell. 

I loved a lot of the episodes - but not all of them. It was very repetitive and some were plain boring. Most of them has the same plot, episode 10 was a little different because the girl didn't want to pull the string, but her friend made her - it send them both to hell :(

We also did get a better look at who Ai Enma and her colleagues were, and the girl's backstory was really sad. It was interesting, but at the same time... I wish those things weren't happening.

Still, it wasn't bad at all. I actually enjoyed it very much. And I am excited for the sequel. 7/10.

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Eden

Took me 10 minutes to recognize David Tennant's voice, and then I couldn't stop cackling. I loved him in Good Omens, I admired him in Richard II, I never finished Broadchurch... and I had no idea he was a voice actor!

I do wish Eden did the story a visual justice. The voice acting was great, the story was very deep and sad... but the visuals didn't look great.

Eden is a story about humans and how strong sense of humanity translates in us. It really did give me a lot of tropes I love - robots being humans, humans having hope, humans getting corrupted because life is not fair...

I do hope you will give it a chance. I admit - I listened to the story more than I watched it, which probably helped me to love it more. But still, Eden tells a story that will grab your heart, if you let it.

If you won't... you'll probably hate it. 7/10.

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Satsujin Kippu wa Heart-iro

Must have been a great novel but did not translate well into an animated story. Not back then. The voice acting was horrendous and it sometimes made it hard to focus.

The story itself was fine - not predictable. I was surprised by who was the culprit in the end. I wish I could say something good about it - but the main male character was awful, the main suspect was almost invisible, the logic had holes... I felt like the cat did not have to be in the story (despite loving cats) and overall, it killed any chances of me wanting to read the story.

It's not awful, it just isn't good.  6/10.

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Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai

(Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai)

I wish I had more to say about this anime... but I began watching it during november last year and I fear I forgot a lot about it. 

What I can tell you is that our main character Sakuta has a little female harem of girls that suffer from "Puberty Syndrome" which does weird things to them.

His girlfriend is invisible to others, his friend Rio Futaba splits into two, his sister Kanade has lost all her memories and suffers physical injuries "out of thin air", his childhood friend was a high-school girl years ago but now she appears to be in middle school... and much more.

The anime could be confusing at times and it wasn't making much sense to me. It could be boring but that's because it heavily leans on dialogue. Each episode focused mainly on the Puberty Syndrome rather than their relationships (which is a read, but it's not a bad thing).

Still, I enjoyed this anime - it was interesting and I am glad I could continue watching it and I will be watching the sequel.

Now, bad things - The characters have a same face syndrome - they all look the same, have the same hair color... So no originality there.

It reminds me of Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions and ORESUKI but for all the right reasons. It does everything those two did, but much much better.

Honorable mention goes to Rio Futaba - a smart girl I love and treasure - whose syndrome made it that she has a clone. Her problem is a unhealthy relationship to her body. I related to her too much during her scenes.. 8/10 and excited to continue.

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Itsudatte My Santa!

This was a short 2-part OVA that pretended to have a plot. It relied on the same few jokes both episodes, we saw boobies and ass as a fanservice.

Santa is the name of our male MC but also a profession of our female MC. Those two meet because male Santa is very unhappy - not celebrating his birthday or Christmas because he feels like there is no one in the world who cares for him. 

The female Santa falls for him and shows him reasons to be happy, explains to him why he can't see the love his classmates have for him and gives him a closure with his parents that are working hard in a foreign country.

(I never got that. Take your child with you, wtf.)

Second episode is a beach episode. Besides swimsuit and two girls fighting, we get a bit emotional - female Santa supposedly has to leave male Santa to go train in Santa school - after a love confessions and her leaving... she comes back because it was all a misunderstanding

This show was a joke. (Yet it wasn't bad. Christ, did I loose my sense and taste to divide the good from the bad?!) 6/10

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Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Love Comedy
wo Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru
(My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering With My School Romantic Comedy)

My Mental Choices... is another anime I picked out when I was starting with anime. But I dropped it because I had shows that seemed more interesting. I was very happy I could get back to this, because it was just incredible. 

For something that was so stupid, this anime had plot, interesting characters, great jokes, it was breaking the 4th wall and the subtitles were the best experience ever.

The visuals were fun, the art was interesting (it looks better than some anime that are airing now) and even the band singing the opening theme Afilia Saga had their little gags!

The subtitles showed that Afilia was changing it's name to "P*dofilia Saga" or "Zo*philia Saga" and I thought that was funny because the anime set such unserious tone.

This show is not that old - it's from 2013. Yet it had those fun subtitles where they refuse to translate "imouto", "itadakimasu" and so on.

What I appreciated and loved was that at the end of each episode, the creators would show us how it would look like, if Kanade made a different choice.

I didn't love it enough to pick up the Light Novel, but I still think it's worth giving a try. 9/10 because I really shamelessly liked it.

Now here, bonus pictures:

[He looks like a character from Gakuen Heaven]

[He covered his eyes with paint roller xD]

    

    

    

[They don't make subtitles like this nowadays]

[They were sliding along the screen!]

    

    

And now this guy. This ice-cream seller at an aqua park went through a whole spiritual crisis in span of seconds.

(I had to crop the screenshots so it's kind of all over the place :/ ).

    

    

    

    

    

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This time around, I want to talk about more than just anime. I want to talk about few animations I've seen and would like to recommend them to you.

Kyouhakuteki na Chijo ni Tsuite Kaeru - is a little animation about a frog general that is trying to put the other frogs in place. However they get fed up with his rules and get rid of him. While enjoying life without the frog general, they start killing each other. The end I'll keep to myself... but if you want to have a crisis, go for it. These few minutes were weirdly scary.

Hong Lingjin Xia THE RED - Chinese animation, that I will just recommend without explaining.

Ai wo Komete - an adorable story about tomato. God I loved it, God it was so fun!

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That's it!

What anime do you want to watch from these? And if you've already seen any - did you agree with my opinion?