Season of Sequels, Black Lagoon and Much, Much more

By NomadOtto

Alright, I realize that I haven’t posted in two yonks, but…. eh, I really have no excuses, other than that Black Lagoon is a pain to read and I wanted to finally beat Rome: Total War (Which I did, mostly because by having sufficient cavalry you have hit the “win button” for every battle except sieges). In this post, I’ll talk about my picks for shows for the new season, but, first, Black Lagoon, well, to be more specific, the Black Lagoon manga. You see, I’d watched Black Lagoon a while ago, and really liked it, so I decided to pick up the manga, which turned out to be one of those things that sounds like a really good idea until you actually get into the meat of it. You see, anime adaptations of manga generally don’t have everything that happens in the manga, and so reading the manga usually gives you a bit of extra material, plus, if you’re familiar with the series from the anime, you can get into the swing of reading stuff easier. However, in other cases, pretty much the entire manga is covered in the anime, and so you’re probably going to be bored by reading it again. The problem with Black Lagoon is that it does have new stuff, it’s just that’s it’s spread throughout the manga, concentrated mostly at the tail end of the books that I got, and my tolerance for reading it is low, because the language is hard. Blah Blah Blah, you don’t care, this isn’t LJ, and you want the review, well, check below, oh my droogs.

Black Lagoon is awesome because it’s basically a hollywood action movie, except rather that having to stare at Steven Segal, I get Levy. That’s the basic idea that a lot of people have about the series, and, to an extent, it’s true: Levy is much hotter than Steven Segal. However, what I really like about Black Lagoon is the Russian Mob. Seriously, I’d read something just about Balalaika and Co. kicking ass, because they’re in the special category of intelligently brutal that is amazing to watch in action, but really scary to deal with. Also, at least before Dutch and Benny became side characters in the “Rock and Levy show,” they were pretty cool, especially Dutch. Finally, the relationship between Levy and Rock isn’t that badly handled and realistic (other than the fact that Levy is somehow a virgin…).

The problem with Black Lagoon is that the author is too good at making characters. Some throw-away chump like you’d see in other manga is sufficiently awesome to get recycled, so, by the time you’re on volume 7ish, you have a huge cast, all of whom keep showing up, making the “main four” have much, much less screen time. This is solved by turning the manga away from the lagoon company, and into the “Levy and Rock” show, which makes the story lose focus. I’m not even sure where the theme/plot is going now, and it’s feeling more and more like “new character of the week” with the introduction of another Colombian maid. Well, at least the omake are hilarious.

Enough of that shaz, it’s question time. How much did you guys like the last couple of anime seasons?

1) Eh, they were okay…

2)I liked them

3) I hated them

4) I loved the last couple of seasons to the extent that I would be willing to watch remakes/sequels of/to anything that made money, even if they were garbage.

If you answered 4, you’re in luck, because, to first order, that’s what you’re going to get! There’s also some new stuff, but it generally falls in the category that I like to refer to as: “Go cry, Emo kid.” In other words, I’m not going to watch True Tears, Shigofumi or “The one show with the blind kid” unless, for example, the show with the blind kid is like Zatoichi, in which he wanders around kicking ass with his blind-guy-fu. Alright, enough yaking, time for reviewing:

Gunslinger Girl II

I really like Gunslinger Girl, despite the fact that show is basically about how tragic it is for these girls to be turned into weapons for the state, and how they’re about 10 seconds away from a “Nice Boat.” (The NomadOtto super-amoral viewpoint is: they were gonna bite it/be crippled for life and suck all the joy out of their parent’s lives anyway, so why not? Also, why little girls? Someone in the social welfare agency is clearly in need of a good party-vanning) What I enjoy about the show is the fact that the weapon designs are nice and detailed, and how the firefights are vaguely believable. Anyway, we’re getting more of it. I didn’t bother to pull out my old GG dvds, but I’m pretty sure that the voice cast is different in this version, along with the fact that the animation quality dropped a notch. If you liked Gunslinger Girl and wanted to watch more, watch this show!

Kimi ga Arugi et. etc.

Imagine Hayate the Combat Butler, expect age the entire cast about 10 years (I’m talking “anime age” which means how old they look, rather than what age the writers put next to their names), make Tama an obnoxious egg-shaped robot (seriously, whenever this hunk of junk talks, I want to break it into tiny pieces), and add some additional characters (one of whom has a name that is easily confused with that of male genitalia) for cheap laughs and you have this show. In other words, it’s garbage (in fact, poorly animated garbage). However, because it made jokes vis-a-vis 2ch (Pedo-bear* and “Yararenaika” to be specific) I’m going to watch it for a while longer, provided I don’t injure myself trying to murder the little egg robot thing through the screen.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei Zoku

Whoa man, more despair. That’s all there really is to it. If you didn’t love the first show, you’re probably reading the wrong blog (well, it did get much more fan-service-y than I would have liked, but still). This gets a watch. Also of note are the facts that the OP and ED are extremely rockin’, even if the animation in the ED is done in the Shoujo heroin chic that I do so loathe.

Aria: Another One

Go ask the BigN.

Persona: Electric Boogaloo

Garbage, avoid. To be slightly longer:

Premise: Persona shows are worthless

Minor Premise: Persona 3 is a Persona show

Conclusion: Persona 3 is worthless

Precure: Beyond Thunderdone

If you like Precure, there’s a slight chance that you’ll like this. If you don’t, well, there’s a 100% chance that you’ll never have heard of this in the first place. On an unrelated note, precure cosplay seems to crop up everywhere. It’s amusing, but I don’t really get the reason for it.

Sisters of Welber: Insert sequal reference here

Apperently there’s some kind of wise-cracking tank…. I don’t know, I didn’t watch the first season, and so my chance of watching the second is vanishingly small.

Which brings us to the joy of the two shows that I have a non-zero chance of watching this season that are original

1) Moegaku

It’s designed to teach people English, as well as being a magical girl parody (at this point I think there are more magical girl parodies than actual magical girl shows). I already know English (feel free to dispute this due to grammar, spelling, etc.) but I may watch an episode or two of this for the lols.

2) Wolf and Spice

It’s a show about a merchant and a wolf-god-thing. It actually looks pretty good, (by this I mean I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen), even if the animation quality is… variable. The manga (what little exists) does a good job of making a fantasy story without the standard tropes of fantasy (no rag-tag band of heroes with unclear goals and hearts of gold here), which I appreciate. My only worry is that a show about a guy who wanders around selling stuff has been done before, and might not be sustainable over the long term. On the other hand, I played a lot of the merchant class in RBO, so viva Wolf and Spice!

As far as the “more” in concerned, I recently listened to one of the most terrifying tracks in human history, Jam Project, those heroes of Gar and Hot Blood, singing Motteke Sailor Fuku (the Lucky Star OP). If this isn’t a sign of the coming apocalypse , I don’t know what is.

* Yes, this is my first footnote for the Blog, I’ll try to use them sparingly after the orgy of footnotes that marked my articles for my college anime club newsletter. I feel it important to note that Kuma and Pedobear are very seperate characters, and that the character being referenced here is Kuma, not Pedobear. However, people are much more likely to recognize Pedo-bear than Kuma by name, at least state-side. Thus, I used Pedo-bear. Also, Kuma is pretty tame, whereas Pedo-bear is hilarious and “edgey,” increasing the chance that I’ll become an internet celebrity complete with cash money, fame, and women. That’s it, now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some worthless trash to watch in hopes of seeing more internet memes.