RELUCTANT ANIME REVIEWS: TENCHI MUYO

       Greetings friends, it’s been a while. I feel like I should apologize for my absence. Sorry.

When last I wrote, I teased about watching and reviewing Tenchi Muyo. I found that difficult to do. It wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t good. It just kind of… existed. Nothing made me angry, or left me so baffled I couldn’t speak. There would be nothing I could say in a review that would be funny or informative. I got about halfway through the original series, and dropped it. So, there’s that.

RELUCTANT ANIME REVIEWS: SWORD ART ONLINE

…In contrast, Sword Art Online DID make me feel things. In fact, it made me feel and think a whole lot of things. Bad things. Angry things. At first, I thought that Sword Art Online meant well, but was just incompetent. However, as the season progressed, I began to see the boils and sores of disgusting anime appear on its underbelly. What started as a dumb adventure turned into something truly terrifying: a dumb harem anime.

With some swordy-fighty stuff too.

Sword Art Online is the story of Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya: an avid online gamer who eagerly anticipates the release of the revolutionary Virtual Reality MMO: Sword Art Online. Ever since participating in the beta test, Kirito has looked forward to diving back into the game that enthralled him months ago. However, once he and 10,000 others have logged in, they find they can no longer log out. The creator of Sword Art Online, Akihiko Kayaba, informs the trapped players that they must beat the game in its entirety in order to escape. In addition to that, death in the game means you die in real life. Adventure begins now.

However, for the first seven or so episodes, you would think that isn’t the plot. After the second episode, Sword Art Online barely acknowledges the overall story or conflict. It adopts a “tell, not show” approach to informing the viewer on the progress made to clear the game. Instead, it focuses on several side stories where Kirito helps random strangers. While this gets characters and general mood of the universe established, it just comes across as weird and out of place. Kirito is described as being a fierce fighter on the front lines, but we hardly see him there.

Man, it would have been great to see more of this…

After the 7th episode, Sword Art Online finally gets back on track. Over the course of a few episodes, Kirito forms a friendship with another front line fighter, named Asuna. She is the second in command for one of the strongest guilds in the game, and sees every day spent in Sword Art Online as a day lost in the real world. Kirito slowly teaches her that even though they are in a game, as long as they take the time to enjoy and experience the things around them, the time cannot be lost. Soon, this friendship blossoms into a romance, and becomes the driving force behind the remainder of the plot.

LOOK AT AND APPRECIATE THE WUV. DO YOU FEEL IT?!?

Although, I was surprised with the turn Sword Art Online took around the 14th episode. Something happens to end the game, and Kirito is thrust back into the real world. To begin with, this intrigued me, as they were doing interesting things to illustrate Kirito’s reintegration to society. I was hoping to see a good drama about these characters meeting in real life, and almost having to relearn everything about living outside of fantasy.

But nah, they just go into another game. I won’t go into the reason why in the interest of spoilers, but while it does make some sort of sense in the story, it just comes across as a cheap excuse to add more swordfights. Kirito finds himself playing Alfheim Online, which is a reskinned version of Sword Art Online, but with flying, and no murder. Kirito meets up with a player named Leafa, and the two journey to the center of Alfheim Online: The World Tree. Some dumb stuff happens, more excuses for them to go into more virtual MMOs are created, and the season ends.

Also, they’re fairies.

One of my biggest gripes with the second half is that is feels so lazy, and lacks any real consequence. Aside from one detail, it’s just a game. Failure and death don’t really mean anything, and it no longer feels like a survival adventure. None of the characters have any weight: it just feels like a time filler, and an excuse to include more boobs into the plot.

Which brings me to my biggest criticism with the second half of Sword Art Online: It gets really creepy. The first red flag popped up when they made a big deal out of Kirito’s sister not actually being his sister, but his cousin. The second rose gradually, as I noticed that there was generally more cleavage and butt close-ups. The final alarm clicked to life when I began to notice that every female character was growing attracted to Kirito, and fighting for his affections. Sword Art Online turned into a harem anime before my very eyes.

The strong character of Asuna transformed into a damsel in distress, and was no longer portrayed as Kirito’s equal and partner. Every female around Kirito became a personality trait with a vagina, and mentions of any other male character dropped to zero.

“Nah, too strong. Time to show some cleavage.”

To add to the general sense of creepy, things get what I can only describe as “rapey.” Asuna basically gets reduced to being a rape target, and that is the primary conflict in the second season. The villain wants to rape her. Technicians in the form of slug beasts want to rape her with tentacles. It’s like the writers thought “Well, they can’t die anymore, so I guess we just need to throw rape in to add danger. Whatever.”

It’s sad to see Sword Art Online lose its path so badly. In the beginning, it was a mediocre story with terrible pacing and dialogue, but there were seeds for something truly interesting. While everything that came out of every characters’ mouth was dumb garbage, the animation portrayed body language perfectly, almost to the point where I thought it would be better as a silent film. The drama was gripping and truly heartbreaking at times, and the romance between Kirito and Asuna was really well done.

Pictured: decent things.

It’s like going on a couple of dates: The first was a bit shaky: There were some awkward silences, and some clumsy blunders, but there was still a kind of spark there. The second was a trainwreck: the date pooped their pants and went on a rant about how Hitler was just misunderstood. You got a free steak dinner though, so that’s something.

Apparently the second season of Sword Art Online has started, and this time they go into a gun MMO. I’m not watching it.

Sword Art Online, get out of my office.

To continue my theme of “MMO hijinks,” next time, I will review Log Horizon.

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OCCULT ACADEMY

There are few times in someone’s life when can say they witnessed a proverbial train wreck. My friends, this is one of those times. What started as an entertaining viewing experience turned into one of the most infuriatingly stupid things I’ve ever seen -within a matter of minutes.  Much like the myth of Icarus, Occult Academy flew too close to the sun on wings of wax, and plummeted to the ground, leaving only the sticky red paste of disappointment on impact.

Maya Kumashiro’s father was obsessed with all things occult. So obsessed, in fact, he neglected his daughter, and abandoned her to build Waldstein Academy: A school dedicated to the study of all things paranormal. In 1999, Maya’s father dies, and she assumes the role of principal in order to ruin the school from the inside-out- because child abuse and neglect isn’t likely to develop the most mentally stable or forgiving individuals.

This is average behavior for Maya.

Soon after Maya’s arrival, however, a mysterious man calling himself “Abe Minoru” descends from the sky, claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2012 sent to destroy an artifact known only as Nostradamus’ Key. Abe tells Maya that in the summer of 1999, Nostradamus’ Key will open a wormhole above Waldstein Academy, unleashing a horde of hostile aliens that will nearly drive humanity to extinction. After some convincing, Maya agrees to help Abe find the key and destroy it, preventing the apocalypse.

Hijinks Ensue.

What follows is 10 episodes of wonderful nonsense. The supporting cast is interesting- although clichéd, the jokes hit hard, and the plotlines are fun. Occult Academy seems to revel in the world it has built, but seems reluctant to actually touch the main plot.

90% of the show is literally spent “yukking it up.”

For a majority of show, the entire Nostradamus’ Key plotline is ignored- only mentioned when it gives Maya and the gang an excuse to on onto the next paranormal sillybollocks. And I’m fine with that, for the most part. But when the characters are given a vague time limit, it becomes difficult to imagine that they would spend days on end doing things completely unrelated to saving the world.

That being said, these asides are really well written, and provide important character development for Maya and Abe. In fact, one of these side plots- a story about putting the ghost of a little girl to rest- nearly made me cry, it was so touching.

That is why the last 3 episodes of Occult Academy infuriate me to no end.  After so many episodes of solid writing, the climax gets botched so hard, I’m actually impressed.

It takes skill to mess up this badly.

In order to describe just how incredibly dumb this finale is, I must walk through it step-by-step in a mostly spoiler free manner. In episode 11, a shadowy force seems to have enthralled the city to its bidding, and it doesn’t want Maya to find Nostradamus’ Key. Maya appears to be murdered by this secret puppet master, and Abe has a feeling he knows who it is.  As the gang grieves for their loss, Maya suddenly appears in Abe’s apartment, alive.

Turns out she faked her death with the help of a good white witch assigned to protect the Kumashiro family. …Ok. And it turns out that the force that has enslaved the city was an evil black witch.  Who has the power to summon Chupacabras and Mothmen.  Ok…

The Good Witch is a person you thought was evil, and the Evil Witch is a person you thought was good. These twists take place within 5 minutes of each other, and you don’t particularly care about either one.  Episode 11 ends.

Doesn’t this seem appropriate?!?

Episode 12 begins with Maya and the White Witch fleeing from the Black Witch. After an elaborate and completely out-of-place transformation scene, the witches do battle. The White Witch’s bodyguard transforms into a panther, and continues to flee with Maya on his back. The Witches have an aerial battle a la Dragon Ball Z, complete with energy balls and grandstanding. The White Witch loses, but is able to make it to Abe in order to tell him that Maya’s dad is still alive, and he has hid a spell to seal the evil witch away somewhere in the academy.  With the help of some deus ex machina, Abe and Maya manage to identify the Evil Witch as Nostradamus’ Key, and seal her away. End of Episode 12.

“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”

When Episode 13 begins, we learn that the witch was not the Key. So all the witch stuff was pointless, and only served as an excuse to show cleavage and explosions.  After some help from the future brain trust, they realize what causes the dimensional rift. Despite their best efforts, the rift still opens, but a pointless character sacrifice closes it. This sacrifice literally has no consequences, so it doesn’t matter. The series ends with Maya’s father- who was the leader of the team who sent Abe back in time- leaving the bunker to find the world alive and well. Maya calls him, and tells him to come home. End of show.

Occult Academy has maybe the most poorly executed finale I’ve ever seen. The plot twists come out of nowhere, and the show takes a tone completely different from everything before it. The ideas aren’t even that bad, but with how haphazardly they are implemented, it becomes hilariously bad. It seems that in their bland attempt to have an action-packed climax (despite this being a comedy,) they forgot to actually think about what they were writing in context with everything before it.

The finale, in a single image.

If they had just stopped for a moment, and thought about what they were doing, they could have included the twists and character arcs they wanted. Make the witches less over-the-top and ridiculous, keep the dad dead, and instead of shoehorning in a dumb sacrifice at the end, write a touching goodbye for Maya and Abe when he returns to the future. This would still have ended the show in the same way, but less stupid and jarring.

My suggestion is to watch up till episode 10, then stop. By episode 10, every character’s arc has been resolved, and it seems like they only wrote the last 3 episodes to tie up the plot they neglected through the rest of the series.

If they didn’t include all this dumb schlock that feels completely out of place, I would have adored this show. The animation is beautiful, and the writing is solid. But like a sprinter tripping on their own feet just before the finish line, Occult Academy falls short.

It’s like they knew.

Next Time: KILL LA KILL

(Spoiler Alert: I love it.)