Welcome to the Fantasy Zone
This Zone is dedicated to the lesser known elements of anime hosted by the cast of Victory Script.
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Who will win in this Death Battle?
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You name it, it's all covered here in the Fantasy Zone!
This season was a return to form for Precure after the previous one ended so poorly, so lets see how they all stack up.
Manatsu is a bundle of hyper, it suited her setting and played off Laura extremely well but as a leader, she really sucked at it.
Sango is a beautiful character to watch grow as her situations allow her to evolve as a character without being brought back to status quo.
Minori is very much a reserved bookworm, I wish they explored her background more as it felt like there was more to cover from her.
Asuka felt like a character from another anime and her sports drama was compelling but after it was resolved it felt like her character reached a dead end.
Laura was an absolute gremlin and I loved every minute of it, she carried the whole season on her back from start to finish, everything about her is perfect.
Natsuumi Manatsu - Cure Summer - 8.0/10
Suzumura Sango - Cure Coral - 8.4/10
Ichinose Minori - Cure Papaya - 7.4/10
Takizawa Asuka - Cure Flamingo - 7.1/10
Laura Apollodoros Hyginus La Mer - Cure La Mer - 10/10
Best Dressed Award - Cure Coral
I've already had to do several rewrites of this topic but I think this will be the final version, this is not in any order, this is just an analysis of bad anime as a subject.
A while ago, I asked the Minamicon British Facebook group what their worst anime was and got quite a selection of obvious candidates as well as some new ones added to the cesspool, big thank you to everyone in the group who contributed, just hope this article does it justice.
1. Bad Dubbing
I'll get the obvious one out the way first, bad dubbing is fairly common and it's not exclusive to English speaking regions, ask Finland what it thinks of Digimon and Portugal what it thinks of Dragonballz. But it's relevant for a totally different reason rather than just incompetence from the dubbing group or poor censorship and that's exposing how bad the anime is to begin with. Everyone knows the Ghost Stories anime dub when the crew of ADV were told, just go crazy with it and the result was becoming the most infamous dub in recent memory when in Japan it barely made any yen. Another example is Angel Cop whose notoriety made it utterly hilarious as a dub as it could only be scripted in such a way that swearing is considered a second language, yet Japan are probably embarrassed that it got made in the first place.
2. Excess Baggage
Picture a localisation company welcoming it's newest product from Japan, to use an example say Evangelion; it comes off the plane it's welcomed with open arms but then you look behind it at the wide eyed hyperactive anime that doesn't understand personal space, you ask Eva who it is and they respond. "That's Debutante Detective Corps, my boss told me I had to bring it with me"
A common practice in early localisation was that Japan wasn't ready to surrender it's biggest titles without it's commercial failures coming along with it and we in the west had to deal with it, while the odd 10% were hidden gems, the majority were pretty dire.
3. Japan's Love Affair with Western Sci-fi and Action Movies
Alot of the influences that shaped early anime came from western pop culture, the obvious one being Star Wars, the less obvious but more significant one being Thunderbirds, a British puppet series about an International Organisation devoted to rescue, you can probably throw Disney and early Superheroes into that as well, European literature, Japan's own literature, it's own love affair with Kaiju, Sentai and Robots and so on, so alot to pick from, but for the relevance of this piece we go to the 80s.
Around the height of the 80s economy boom in Japan and the early rise of Otaku, Japan accepted imports of a lot of Western action films, not just Star Wars but Terminator, Robocop, Mad Max and Streets of Fire to name a few, Japan's own attempts not only to cater to the phenomenal success of Akira overseas but to see if their new found obsession with the 80s would turn more profit in the west but there was one problem, by the time it reached our shores, it was already several years out of date, MD Geist, Odin, Garzey's Wing, I could name quite alot but I'll spare you the pain. Sadly we didn't do ourselves any favours.
4. Anime revived the Adult Animation Genre
Anyone interested in the history of animation will have heard of Ralph Bakshi. His contribution to the medium came in the form of adult orientated animation from Stoner titles like Fritz the Cat, the genre laid low for a while in the 80s when the Reagan administration decided that you can turn cartoons into 20 minute toy ads.
A decade later and someone in New York decided that they really loved MD Geist and brought all it's friends along for the ride, over in Britain we saw this as an opportunity to sell to the ultra edgy crowd, "violence, sex and swearing, this is not your normal cartoon" they all said.
Early Minamicon panels have talked about this subject better than me, I was still quite young when the first anime wave happened so I have no knowledge of the early British backlash from the media, nor do I look back at the era fondly which leads to the next one.
5. Old Anime Hasn't Aged Well
It's inevitable with any medium that's gone on longer than a generation that old anime will not age well, ask anyone who's watched a Go Nagai anime if they can still watch it today without cringing or anyone who watched early ecchi and harem anime can still convince themselves it's still good; another sub category of this is next on our list.
6. Anime who out stay their Welcome
This is usually the argument aimed at longer anime who are still around after a good decade, the criticism usually aimed at seasonal rot usually revolving around running out of ideas but from a franchise perspective you won't get anyone saying their favourite season of Tenchi Muyo was GXP, War on Geminar or Ai Tenchi Muyo, nor do Gundam fans say that they enjoyed Gundam X or Gundam Reconguista in G, the former someone actually asked me what Gundam X was; sometimes a flash in the pan idea doesn't need expanding on, looking at you Death Note.
7. Being too Accepting of Mediocrity
This might be disputed but I believe the 00s to be the worst period of anime.
The anime boom in the era was massive but it came at a heavy cost when quite a few distributors went under in the west, this bolstered by the world economy nosediving as well and the fact most of the mega hits of the 90s had finished or were passed their best. If I listed every anime released in that decade, 20% were good, 60% were okay or never saw, the rest were terrible and to back it up Mars of Destruction, Skelter Heaven and Abunai Sisters were all made in this decade, three of the worst anime in recent history, the final straw was Haruhi Suzumiya thinking it's okay to release the same episode 8 times; we learned in the 2010s not to just accept crap with only occasional let downs from cheap fanservice shows like Kampfer but we are slipping into some bad habits in the 2020s with too many isekai and cheap ecchi series, hopefully that's just a covid thing and not a sign of things to come. Ex-Arm is a warning of history repeating itself.
8. Japan's Skeletons in the Closet
I wouldn't even know half the legendary terrible titles if not for curious anime Youtubers looking into the Skeleton closet. I usually watch Anime Abandon by former Channel Awesome reviwer Bennett the Sage but I have already seen or read about most of the stuff he covers, then there's Kenny Lauderdale who I discovered information about new legendary terrible anime like Twinkle Nora Rock Me and Chargeman Ken; anything else is usually lost media of dubs that were made for mail order anime or something we didn't even know got licensed at all.
9. The OVA bid to sell anything
Original Video Anime is best described as an extended pilot of an anime hoping to be green lit for a series or more often than not sold alongside a video game property that no one outside Japan cares for; I doubt anyone from Pro Gaming Fighter League Evo is wishing for Psychic Force to be added to the Game List nor is anyone on Twitch going to do a playthrough of Skelter Heaven on the PlayStation 2 but even popular video games don't look on their anime fondly, ask Tekken, Fire Emblem and Sonic the Hedgehog how that went for them.
10. Just because you can copy something, doesn't mean you should
It's inevitable that any trend in the anime spectrum is going to generate copy cats and while I already brushed on Isekai and Ultra Violence it's not as notoriously copied as Evangelion; the angsty teenage robot pilot genre generated tons of copy cats from the likes of Jinki Extend and De:Vadasy, the latter I consider the worst anime ever made, it got so bad that Gainax themselves had to rewrite the rules of the giant robot genre when they released Gurren Lagann.
So that's a look at the subject of bad anime, let me know what you think and if I should expand on anything on the subject.
Before I switch to the currently airing season, lets rank the bonus cures. These are allied Cure only. No evil cures they will be in the villains ranking later this year. No goddess cures either, they don't really serve the same purpose.
Cure Echo really only had one movie where she was relevant and she was quickly left behind.
Cure Tender serves as the driving force for Cure Fortune and probably would've been a better choice for Cure Fortune.
International Precures is a neat idea, I wish they tried harder to give them more personality beyond the Hawaiian Cures.
Cure Infini is the first ever male Cure and well rounded on both the dark and light alignments and comes with some inspirational quotes.
Cure Flower I find amazing as she acts as the perfect old master of precures opening the doors to potential plot points in the canon.
Cure Mofurun is what happens when your teddy bear starts talking, the missing ingredient to argubly the best precure team
Cure Pekorin I hate, it really cheapens the show to shoe horn her in as a cure.
Kiryuu Sisters there isn't much to them, they look like evil cures but even without transformations they fight as well as the Splash Stars
Cure Tomorrow is basically Chibi Usa from Sailor Moon, only a toddler and more adorable and the least annoying toddler character in fiction.
Cure Oasis served her purpose as the legendary Precure but never caught on too much, her design is based on the fake leaks that plagued the lead up to Tropical Rouge Precure's release which is unintentionally hilarious.
Sakagami Ayumi - Cure Echo - 5.5/10
Hikawa Maria - Cure Tender - 6.0/10
International Cures - Cure World - 6.4/10
Wakamiya Henri - Cure Infini - 8.4/10
Hanasaki Kaoruko - Cure Flower - 9.5/10
Mofurun - Cure Mofurun - 9.2/10
Pekorin - Cure Pekorin - 2.3/10
Kiryuu Sisters - Cure Wind/Moon - 6.9/10
Hugtan - Cure Tomorrow - 9.0/10
Aunete - Cure Oasis - 6.9/10
I promise this will be the last time I talk about this show.
Needless to say, the hype this show generated from how utterly terrible it was going to be was reaching fever pitch, from the hypocrisy of Crunchyroll saying they'll help fund the anime industry and immediately make their own series, the trailer that really told us nothing about the actual show but instead tick the diversity and LGBT markers in the marketing with it's inclusive team of animators, which is poor and quite suicidal to do so, looking at you Disney, and finally the images we were getting was from a Cal Arts style popular when the trailer came out but not so much now as most of the good shows that did use that style have since ended and most people agree that the Cal Arts style needs to go from Western Animation to evolve and the fact that the shows it was clearly taking ideas from have long since left the public eye in favour of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen and most recently Komi Can't Communicate, it had all the setup for an epic train wreck.
Only when it did finally get released, it barely passed for a fender bender.
While everyone on YouTube believes High Guardian Spice to be a total disaster, I'm sat here thinking, "it's actually okay" mediocre and very amateurish in design but hardly a disaster.
Let's break it down.
The Good
1. Not that complicated to follow.
2. Parsley should've been the main character and is easily the most unique female character I've seen in ages.
3. Sage has potential to be as good as Parsley.
4. The side characters are also really good, the teachers and the lesbian couple are solid characters.
5. The LGBT content is natural and never comes across as preachy or written to tick a corporate box.
6. The lore was carefully written not to give too much away.
The Bad
1. Rosemary suffers with Shonen Protagonist syndrome, I find her really intolerable.
2. Thyme has no personality and always look bored.
3. Script needs several edits and revisions.
4. Animation is awkward, the Cal Arts style makes them seem like they never blink.
5. The 1st episode was actually badly written filler.
6. Student side characters are terrible.
7. I'm convinced the creators have never watched the shows this series was inspired by.
8. Some voice actors need extra lessons, looking at you Rosemary.
Improvements
1. Lose the Cal Arts style in favour for your own more contemporary anime art style.
2. Make Parsley the lead and have Thyme play off her more.
3. Scrap most of the student characters bar the redeemable bully characters.
4. Rewrite the 1st episode.
5. Hire a goddamn script writer who knows how to write a good script.
I think overall, don't believe what YouTube says, many reviewers would deliberately say it's bad for a good algorithm, bad publicity is still paying attention to your product and will only aid in giving it more money.
It's basically boycotting 3D Sonic games and buying classic Sonic games in protest, yet it still gives money to Sega to make more Sonic.
As for Crunchyroll, the hypocrisy is an issue and so are allegations of them banning people for daring to bad mouth their show on Twitter, it only really adds gasoline to the burning torches out to get them.
In my review I did mention that there are shows that do all these themes better.
Precure, Little Witch Academia, RWBY, Steven Universe, She-Ra, Slayers, Konosuba, Log Horizon, Sailor Moon and even something I hate, Sword Art Online is a better option.
If anyone from Crunchyroll is reading this, make sure your next original is drama free, this is too exhausting to deal with.
For this character ranking I'm doing something completely different, I'll be using tier grades for each score S-D rank.
I'll be marking in four different criteria due to the unique nature of the anime, I'll be marking on their Personality, Talent, Compatibility with the other cast members and Design.
Aine Yuki
Personality - A
Talent - C
Compatibility - A
Design - B
Being the lead in an Anime like this is easy for Aine as she adapts so well with other characters and slips into roles with ease but needs carrying alot as she's argubly the least talented of the cast.
Mio Minato
Personality - C
Talent - S
Compatibility - D
Design - B
Mio is the most enterprising character in the show but it comes at the cost of not only having the weakest personality but being compatible with no one, not even Aine.
Maika Chono
Personality - A
Talent - A
Compatibility - C
Design - B
Maika's ability to pick herself up from the worst situations is an admirable trait but is wholly dependent on Ema to actually show off her best traits.
Ema Hinata
Personality - A
Talent - B
Compatibility - B
Design - C
Sporty characters don't get enough credit in idol anime and I'm glad to see it get more coverage, Ema fairs better with other cast members but is let down by a design that easily makes her forgettable.
Karen Kamishiro
Personality - A
Talent - S
Compatibility - C
Design - B
Karen is the type of character the word princess was made for, she holds a presence only equalled by a few but is only compatible with Mirai, she'd be out of place with the others.
Mirai Asuka
Personality - S
Talent - S
Compatibility - S
Design - A
Mirai has every great trait you can ask for, she matches up well with every cast member, acts the big sister and the fun character and pretty much commands respect from everyone.
Sakuya Shirayuri
Personality - B
Talent - S
Compatibility - C
Design - A
Goth characters are seriously OP in Aikatsu, as the bulk of her talent comes from just the songs alone but her personality traits make her a poor match up with everyone except her sister Kaguya.
Kaguya Shirayuri
Personality - B
Talent - A
Compatibility - B
Design - A
It would be too easy for her to act the same as her sister, while not as talented as Sakuya, she makes up for it by being more compatible with the rest of the cast.
Hibiki Tensho
Personality - S
Talent - S
Compatibility - C
Design - S
Hibiki just oozes charisma, it's hard not to get sucked in by her character but maybe she's too strong a character as so far only Mirai can compete with her on equal footing.
More to come.