Category Archives: Season Reviews

Bakacast Briefs: The Death of Anime

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Will moe be the death of anime?

Last week, Dai Sato claimed that anime will disappear within the next thirty years, due to a lack of creativity in the industry. On this week’s Bakacast, we address that controversial issue. Is the over-saturation of moe to blame for the anime studios’ financial woes? Or is this just another genre craze that has overstayed its welcome? Does too much focus on merchandising limit quality storytelling? We debate these difficult questions and more.

After that serious business, we move on to lighter fare with this week’s anime reviews.

That’s it for this week. We’d love to hear your feedback, so let us know what you think in the comments below! [Opening music is “Invaders Must Die” by ChipDudeRoss]

Review: K-ON!! 17

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Use the Force, Yui!

After last week’s slight disappointment, I was hoping that this week’s episode of K-ON!! would be an improvement. Thankfully, it did succeed to some extent, but there were some noticeable problems in it. This episode felt like a giant tease, making us think the girls would stop procrastinating and actually practice for once. How foolish of me to get my hopes up; they spend the whole episode goofing off yet again, not getting a damn thing accomplished. But despite that, I somehow still ended up not hating this. The inherent moeblob charm that kept me sane throughout the more aggravating scenes. It’s one of those,”not bad but not good either.” episodes, in my opinion.

Read more after the jump. Continue reading →

OVA Review: Black Rock Shooter

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Flaming eyeballs? There's a Visine for that.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Black Rock Shooter was originally a character designed by the Japanese artist Huke, which the band Supercell adapted into a wildly popular Hatsune Miku music video. The video itself doesn’t feature much plot; it’s just the titular protagonist travelling around a post-apocalyptic world, looking all emo and angsty. That means when Yutaka Yamamoto and Studio Ordet decided to make a full-length original video animation from this concept for their first independent project, they had their work cut out for them. Not only did they have to prove their little startup studio could produce quality anime, they had to create an entire universe and mythology for Black Rock Shooter from scratch.

So, did they succeed? Did Studio Ordet prove it could hold its own against the older, larger and better-funded anime studios? Sadly, no. This OVA was a disappointment on nearly every level. It’s a pity, since there’s a really interesting concept here. Unfortunately, it was dragged down by poor animation, badly paced storytelling and low production values.

Read more after the break.

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Bakacast Briefs – OneManga’s Doom

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First off, sorry for the lateness of this Bakacast episode. Since Dustin is on vacation this week, I got to try my hand at editing the podcast, and it took friggin’ FOREVER. On the plus side, I did get to pick the theme music this time around…

Anyways, this episode features a greatly expanded cast. Although Dustin is absent, I brought in Konata (aka Jeagle) and Shamisen (aka Larry) to fill his place. That means you’re getting twice as many bakas for the same low price!

As always, you can download it directly, subscribe to our RSS feed, or let iTunes do all the work for you.

We start off with a discussion about the demise of One Manga, as well as the new Seven Seas licenses. Then, after drooling over recently-announced sequel series to Avatar: The Last Airbender, we get into reviewing this week’s new anime.

And that’s pretty much it. See y’all next week!

Review: Seitokai Yakuindomo 4

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HOORAY FOR ANOTHER DISAPPOINTMENT!

After last week’s episode of Seitokai Yauindomo showed signs of improvement, I was hoping the next one would continue this trend. Unfortunately, like a sick twist of fate, this week’s episode reverted back to the subpar quality of the first two–rife with overused innuendos, juvinile humor, abominably bad storytelling and nonexistant character development. It was a huge punch in the stomach to watch this disaster after I was so impressed with last week’s episode. It pains me to do this, but it’s time for me to pull out my good ol’ ranting stick of nerd rage.

See my rage unleashed after the jump.

Continue reading →

Review: K-ON!! 16

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Who wants a sticker?

I’ve been quite enthusiastic about K-ON!! lately. Every episode since 13 has been good, and I was especially hyped after last week’s enjoyable offering. Sadly, this week I was in for a disappointment. While the latest episode wasn’t necessarily bad, I didn’t enjoy it all that much. Sure, it had some really cute moments in it, but I feel that the plot was far too repetitive. It relied all too much on the cuteness, eschewing any meaningful plot or character development.  The end result was an episode that was a bit disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t exactly bad… but it wasn’t very good either.

Read more after the jump. Continue reading →

Review: Occult Academy 3

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Show us those pearly whites!

After the first two episodes of Occult Academy blew me away, I was expecting big things from the third. In hindsight, perhaps this was foolish; many anime have great introductions, but falter a few episodes in. Was I setting my expectations too high? Or was I merely so confident in the creative talent behind Anime no Chikara that I thought they could do no wrong?

Perhaps I’m being a bit drastic; the third episode of Occult Academy certainly wasn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination. It rounded out Fumiaki’s character wonderfully, and delivered more laughs than Seitokai Yakuindomo will ever manage. However, it barely added anything to the series’ mythos or storyline, other than the rather bland new character Mikaze. In fact, this Mary Sue romantic interest and her date with Fumiaki took up far too much of this episode’s runtime, and slowed the pacing to a crawl. The end result was an episode that, while still enjoyable, was nowhere near as good as the previous two.

Find out more after the break.

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Review: Seitokai Yakuindomo 3

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Fanservice shot! Literally.

So, this is it. You’re probably expecting me to completely and utterly trash this episode of Seitokai Yakuindomo, based on my rather low opinion of the show thus far. You’re ready to see me go completely insane with anger and nerd rage from the bombardment of overused sex jokes, bad pacing, bland characters, and various other kinds of crap. Unbelievably, that is not the case. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. This week’s episode was actually… good. Don’t believe me? Well, keep reading to find out more…

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Review: K-ON!! 15

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So thirsty... need milk tea...

After a rather awesome episode of K-ON!! last week, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect this time. Would I be bored out of my skull with some more eye candy filler similar to episode 13, or would this show manage to maintain it’s wit and humor? Thankfully, this week’s episode wasn’t a disappointment; it was just as good–if not better–than last week’s. The comedy was entertaining, the story solid and the characters as enjoyable as ever.

Read more after the jump! Continue reading →

Bakacast Briefs – Zombies Suck

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The second episode of Bakacast Briefs is here, proving we can keep a schedule as long as we set realistic goals.

You can download it directly, subscribe to our RSS feed, or let iTunes do all the work for you.

Chris is back from being a responsible adult, so he joins us for this episode. We talk about:

Jon’s going to give Seitokai one more episode, but in the future we’ll probably narrow our focus to more detailed discussions of just three shows: Highschool of the Dead, Occult Academy and Sengoku Basara 2.

The music used in this episode is “Cloud Caller” by rhodo4.

Also, the first Bakacast Briefs post was updated to include the music credit for that episode, so check that post again if you were wondering what I used.