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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2019 First Impressions – The Rising of the Shield Hero

Naofumi Iwatani, an uncharismatic otaku who spends his days on games and manga, suddenly finds himself summoned to a parallel universe. He discovers he is one of four heroes equipped with legendary weapons and tasked with saving the world from its prophesied destruction. As the Shield Hero, the weakest of the heroes, all is not as it seems. Naofumi is soon alone, penniless, and betrayed. With no one to turn to, and nowhere to run, he is left with only his shield. Now, Naofumi must rise to become the legendary Shield Hero and save the world. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll and Funimation

Episodes: 2-cour (22-26 episodes)

Source: Light Novel

Episode Summary: Note – the first episode is double-length (45 minutes).

Naofumi leads a relatively comfortable life, which he lives while indulging his otaku habits. One of his favorite activities (after spending all his money, that is) is checking out light novels from the library. On a particular day he discovers a book he’s never seen before, which describes 4 legendary weapon-wielding heroes. As he’s paging through it, a glowing light envelopes him and he finds himself drawn into another world. He’s joined by three other young men and discovers that they have taken on the mantle of the 4 Cardinal Heroes described in the novel. They learn from the local king that they were summoned to stop the prophesied “waves” of malevolent attacks that have already begun.

The four Cardinal Heroes enter the picture. Screencap from Crunchyroll.

Naofumi’s three companions seem to have familiarity with this scenario whereas he does not, and he soon discovers that they hail from alternate versions of Japan in which this story is part of a video game environment. Another bit of bad news is that the shield hero, which Naofumi represents, is generally reserved for poor and inexperienced players, since all the character class is good for is defense. Worse yet, word of Naofumi’s naivete has quickly spread, and no experienced adventurers want to join with him to form a party. After some protests he’s eventually joined by Myne, an attractive young woman. She shows him the ropes, helps him kill some low-level monsters, and even eats dinner with him. But the relationship turns out to be a set-up; Myne uses Naofumi’s trusting nature to rob him blind and frame him for a terrible crime.

Left without resources and essentially exiled without aid, Naofumi begins to learn more about the specific power of his legendary shield while contemplating his revenge. The experience has hardened him and he stops trying to make nice with anyone, including vendors to whom he sells his meager earnings. Without a partner on the offensive, leveling-up his powers is essentially out-of-the-question. Learning of his plight, a mysterious man offers him a way to gain a party companion, though it’s a particularly distasteful method of doing so.

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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2019 First Impressions – W’z

Yukiya is about 14 years old. He spends his time DJ-ing alone. Due to his father’s influence, he’s listened to house music since he was young, and he uploads videos online. He wants to convey something to someone. He wants to be recognized, and become important. But getting hurt is scary. One day, while trying to get more views, he does something that can’t be undone. And he sees a live broadcast from “that world.” Yukiya believes he can’t do anything alone, but that he could accomplish something if he were doing it together with someone else. – ANN

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 13

Source: Original

Episode Summary: Yukiya is a middle school student with a modest amount of e-fame as a masked DJ “W’z” (pronounced “wise”). He wants to attend a music-focused high school next year, but his father is deeply opposed to the idea. His father has always told him never to hold hands with others. This may be because, when he does so, Yukiya has the ability to enter into an alternate, mysterious dimension; a dimension that could very well hold danger for him and others.

Yukiya confesses to his friend Haruka that he feels stuck, languishing without the kind of online views and fame he’s seeking. Haruka’s positive attitude encourages him, and he invites her to embark on a potentially game-changing move with him. As night falls, Yukiya sets up his DJ equipment in the middle of the city, then asks for Haruka to hold his hand; this transports them into a dimension of color and beauty. Yukiya’s stream starts to light up and things are going well, but then the couple is joined by several other duos who are after a particular goal.

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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2019 First Impressions – The Price of Smiles

On a planet far from Earth, there is a kingdom full of smiling faces. Princess Yūki is 12 years old, and about to enter a sensitive age in a person’s life. Everyday, she cries, laughs, and sometimes, her heart throbs with excitement. All the while, she lives merrily in the royal palace. Filling her days with color are her loyal vassals: her tutor Reira, Izana who assists in political affairs, the leader of the chivalry Harold and then, there is her childhood friend and aide Joshua. Stella is 17 years old and a capable, reserved soldier. However, she is always smiling for smiling is essential to living. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Original

Episode Summary: Princess Yuki, at the age of 12, has come of age and can now take a more active role in running her country in the place of her late parents. She’s a kind-hearted person and the new, expanded workload is taxing, but she seems to have a knack for decision-making that relies on her kindness and fondness for the people around her. One day she’s challenged by a member of the military order named Yuni. Though the questioning turns out to be a set-up and Princess Yuki impresses with her answer, her aide and childhood friend Joshua steps in and asks Yuni for a duel.

The duel takes place within a VR simulation, so nothing tangible is at stake; still, Joshua and Yuki prove that their close relationship is worth more than the number of soldiers on their side. After this, Joshua and company leave on a diplomatic mission to the border with Yuki’s message of friendship. But what Yuki doesn’t realize (and what the delegation hopes to keep from her) is that there’s a violent conflict raging. Can the delegation protect the Princess’s precious smile?

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Opinion Personal

My Favorite Anime of the Year Part 3.5 – The Also-Also-Rans

I tell myself that I never intended for my “favorites” lists to get this out of hand, but I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m 4 posts in and only now winding down. There’s a lot of good anime every year, as I always say, but the past year has been exceedingly fruitful in terms of great, unique, or just entertaining anime series. It’s difficult to stop talking about them all!

Aside from a couple in this group which were listed here due to space restrictions on the previous post, these are series that I didn’t have a chance to finish, either due to timing or other factors, but which I wanted to talk about anyway. In some cases I will likely get back to them later and close the loop; in at least one case that’s questionable, for reasons that I hope are clear. In all cases, though, there was something about these series that caught my eye and excited my imagination, so I felt it would be a failure on my part to ignore them.

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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2019 First Impressions – Boogiepop and Others

There is an urban legend that children tell one another about a shinigami that can release people from the pain they may be suffering. This “Angel of Death” has a name: Boogiepop. And the legends are true. Boogiepop is real. When a rash of disappearances involving female students breaks out at Shinyo Academy, the police and faculty assume they just have a bunch of runaways on their hands. But Nagi Kirima knows better. Something mysterious and foul is afoot. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: TBA

Source: Light Novel

Episode Summary: Keiji Takeda is in the city, waiting for his date, Touka Miyashita to arrive. She does, in fact, drop in, though dressed in black robes, ignoring Takeda completely, and aiding a disheveled, crying man while scolding the rest of the crowd for their insensitivity toward him. The next day, Takeda can’t get a hold of Miyashita at all, and with word of several runaways from their school, Takeda’s mind starts traveling to dark places. As the sun begins to set, he notices a figure up on the roof.

This rooftop presence has Miyashita’s face, but speaks with an awareness that feels otherworldly. They call themselves “Boogiepop,” an entity that only appears when needed and when the world is in danger. They warn Takeda of a monster, a “man-eater,” that poses a threat to humanity; it’s coincidental that Miyashita is the conduit through which Boogiepop was able to manifest. As Takeda wrestles with his ability to accept Boogiepop’s presence and Miyashita’s absence, he also becomes concerned that another student at the school may be the embodiment of the horror that Boogiepop has arrived to oppose.

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Opinion Personal

My Favorite Anime of the Year Part 3 – The Also-Rans

While I had a lot of top favorites last year (see Part 1 and Part 2), I also watched a lot of anime that I’d classify as good or even great, but which didn’t break through and affect me the way some of the others did. This doesn’t mean that these series weren’t worth talking about, so I’d like to give a little bit of the spotlight to some of the “also-rans,” the series that I think are worth watching from the past year.

I limited this list to series that I’ve either completed, or in the case of multi-cour series, ones where I’d watched at least half. This isn’t an exhaustive list of every series I completed last year, just ones I wanted to talk about and signal boost. As a reminder, my “year” runs from Autumn 2017 through Summer 2018.

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First Impressions Reviews

Netflix First Impressions – Hi Score Girl

It’s 1991 and the heyday of the 2D fighting game boom. Sixth-grader Haruo spends practically his entire day at an arcade in the seedy part of town, oblivious to the world around him. However, one day at his usual arcade, he encounters Akira, his female classmate with good grades and money. She may look out of place at the arcade, but she is actually a top-class gamer. Akira completely outmatches Haruo in one Street Fighter II round after another, and their relationship develops from this unlikely encounter. – ANN

Streaming: Netflix

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: Haruo considers himself a pretty avid gamer. His current favorite is Street Fighter II, which he plays endlessly at the local arcade. Though he typically dominates the standings, one afternoon he suddenly starts suffering one defeat after another. Who could his new opponent be? Surprisingly, it’s his classmate Akira Ono – a quiet, refined classmate of his whose grades outshine Haruo’s by a mile. Haruo simply can’t stand being outclassed by someone who’s so clearly not the gamer “type.”

Haruo and Akira start to encounter one-another around town more often, where Akira continues to impress with her unusually good gaming skills, as well as her ability to shut down naysayers with her fists. After the kids find themselves sharing a Final Fight gaming cabinet after escaping a sudden rainstorm, Haruo begins to realize the extent of Akira’s gaming knowledge, as well as her inability to suffer fools during a heated co-op session. Though Haruo is still sore about his many fighting game losses, he begins to think he may be gaining a new friend in Akira.

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First Impressions Reviews

Netflix First Impressions – Forest of Piano

Kai was born as the son of a prostitute and he’s been playing the abandoned piano in the forest near his home ever since he was young. Shūhei, on the other hand, was practically breast-fed by the piano as the son of a family of prestigious pianists. Yet it is their common bond with the piano that eventually intertwines their paths in life. – ANN

Streaming: Netflix

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: Shuhei transfers into his new elementary school class. Almost immediately the class bullies begin to pick on him because he plays the piano – something seen as effeminate. Kai, one of Shuhei’s classmates, is also a frequent target of the bullies, due to his family situation; his mother works in the sex industry and Kai’s father is not in the picture. He does have an interest in the piano, and offers to show Shuhei his piano; a piano sitting in the forest that’s rumored to be both broken and haunted.

Only Kai seems to have the ability to produce sound from the mysterious piano, which puzzles Shuhei, who’s been taking piano lessons since he was a small child. The bullies don’t believe Shuhei’s far-fetched story about Kai’s talent and continue to pick on him. Ajino-Sensei, the school music teacher, catches wind of the tale and wonders if it might have some truth to it. He used to be a famous pianist until he injured himself in a car accident, and got rid of his special piano when he realized he’d no longer be able to play it. But perhaps now the piano has chosen a new master.

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Anime Reviews Film Reviews Reviews

Anime Review – Mirai

A family is living in a small house in an obscure corner of a certain city—in that house lives the family’s spoiled four-year-old boy Kun-chan. When Kun-chan gets a little sister named Mirai, he feels that his new sister stole his parents’ love from him, and is overwhelmed by many experiences he undergoes for the first time in his life. In the midst of it all, he meets an older version of Mirai, who has come from the future. – ANN

Release: Limited Theatrical Release. Available to pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD.

Source: Original

Review: Please be aware that this review contains some plot and thematic spoilers for the film.

Change is difficult for us all, but as adults its inevitability is already mostly a known quantity even if its specific form almost never is. For young children, though, each change, no matter how small, can seem like a drastic upheaval. Just when they’re starting to learn their world’s rules, that world might change and transform into some new state of existence. As we grow older we begin to forget how unfamiliar and drastic these feelings are, and this is something that I think about quite a bit. Though we might grumble at the toddler throwing a tantrum in Target, we ought to consider the tools we’ve developed to handle the negative emotional waves that crash over our psyche, and understand that we didn’t always have access to those when we were their age.

Mirai is a film that demonstrates deep compassion and empathy towards children who are beginning to embark on the exhilarating and terrifying “firsts” that many of us encounter early in our lives. Kun-chan, the little boy at the center of the movie’s story, undergoes a very strenuous emotional journey during which he comes to realize the importance of the role he plays in his family, as well as the connections he has with its various other members, some of whom he never had the chance to meet.

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First Impressions Reviews

Netflix First Impressions – Back Street Girls: Gokudols

Three young yakuza members screwed up really big, causing their boss losing millions. Contrary to yakuza traditions, their boss did not want their little fingers chopped off, for doing so would not bring his money back anyway. Instead he sent them to Thailand for extensive plastic surgery (transgender included) and then promoted them as an idol group. Their careers become so successful that most of their fans know absolutely nothing about their true identities. On the other hand, the three often feel frustrated for having to live two lives on and off stage. – ANN

Streaming: Netflix

Episodes: 10

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: A conflict between two rival factions of the Yakuza goes very wrong, and three young members of the organization are to blame. Rather than demand a more traditional demonstration of atonement, their boss gives them one option that doesn’t involve death or dismemberment: travel immediately to Thailand, undergo sex reassignment surgery, and make back the organization’s lost funds by forming an idol group.

Though the three turn out to have the right “look” upon their return, their inner attitudes still need some fine-tuning before making prime-time strides. They undergo brainwashing by watching hour upon hour of idol performance videos, and their boss hires a famous manager to whip them into shape. Considering their origins, the manager’s typical tricks don’t work to inspire his new charges. Once he identifies their rough origins, though, a few choice words and they’re able to get into character. Still, their former lives manifest from time-to-time; perhaps this is just the fate of the Gokudols.

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