Welcome to the Fantasy Zone
This Zone is dedicated to the lesser known elements of anime hosted by the cast of Victory Script.
What weapon is the best?
Who will win in this Death Battle?
Is this costume practical?
You name it, it's all covered here in the Fantasy Zone!
As a bonus I'll be adding my own hot take.
"Fanservice is there to hide the fact that writers can't make stories or characters that are fun or entertaining enough without showing lewd content"
If an anime is only showing lewd content, then that's a valid statement, but I can't exactly work with an anime that does have a good story but terrible characters, designs have to at least be appealing, whether it takes the form of lewds or not.
"Louie the Rune Soldier was funnier than Slayers"
The humour between the two are vastly different, Rune Soldier is funnier but the jokes out stay their welcome, Slayers is more light hearted but the jokes land more often.
"Bunny Girl Senpai is the worst anime ever. Forced story, bad science-fiction and hateable characters"
Just admit that you signed up to the series just to see bunny girls and feel cheated when this is the only time you see one.
Real talk, the story is convoluted and seems to make it up as it goes along as by nature the phenomenon the characters go through is so complex that the anime itself struggles, it's not a sci-fi, thriller and mystery drama would be more appropriate, I didn't mind the characters but I can easily see them as not being appealing, no where near worst anime though.
"Dot Hack Sign is better than Sword Art Online"
I disagree, Sword Art Online is what we wanted to see out of Dot Hack Sign but they instead made a concept like being stuck in a video game utterly boring, it does have a better soundtrack though.
"Spike and Faye would not make a good couple"
Spike barely works with Julia, he'd do even worse with Faye, you could remove both Julia and Faye from the anime and it wouldn't change the narrative, in some cases it would improve it.
"Symphogear is the dumbest anime, I've ever seen, even after two attempts to watch it"
Someone called me out on this hot take on YouTube yesterday but they've yet to tell me why I'm wrong. I don't hate Symphogear, it's just the concept of making a magical girl anime with an idol theme where girls fight with over the top weaponry wearing half a Gundam all the while singing to increase their power reeks of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, it's dumb but it's really entertaining at the same time, I don't need to know the intricacies of why they fight these beings called the Noize or the main character's struggle with the fact that she inherited her powers, no I just want to see awesome high powered battles set to a cheesy J-Pop soundtrack, it doesn't need any more thought than that, I'm allowed to watch an anime for entertainment purposes, I don't always need to wear review goggles.
Whether you like it or not, time is a constant and things change as does taste and needless to say these characters haven't aged well.
There's no set order either.
1. Gourry Gabriev from Slayers
Slayers is a fantastic series of very capable characters, pity Gourry isn't one of them, the sheer gap between Lina Inverse and Gourry in power and abilities make for grim reading for the blonde swordsman, not helping his case is trying to be chivalrous to a character that doesn't need help and spending way too much time being the butt monkey.
2. Chang Wufei from Gundam Wing
I was surprised how well Gundam Wing aged but then lose it when you see how much of a misogynist Chang Wufei is, while the franchise isn't short on dramatic fighting types and you can make a decent case for the G Gundam cast to appear on this list also, at least G Gundam wasn't belittling the female characters it did have.
3. Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière from Familiar of Zero
Flaunts her title as an excuse to abuse the lead character, need I say more.
4. Kagome Igarashi from Inuyasha
You could make a case for Akane Tendo but some of her tsundere outbursts are justified considering the company she's around, Kagome doesn't have that excuse, at first Inuyasha did need keeping on a leash but when Kagome practically abuses it for the whole run of Inuyasha it doesn't leave me with much to like.
5. Naru Narusegawa from Love Hina
Get used to the tsunderes, they're usually my first target for these lists.
Naru after a while was really only abusing Keitaro to hide her own insecurities, it's hard to watch at times.
6. Lynn Minmay from Macross
She is literally just eye candy and every sci-fi idol has surpassed her even within her own franchise.
7. Belldandy from Ah My Goddess
Has all the personality of a domestic doormat and easily one of the most beautiful female characters of her era, yet I hate every story that focuses on her.
8. Ryo Saeba from City Hunter
Bad ass or not, you can't get away with Johnny Bravo womanizer behaviour even in anime, Ryo is a frustrating character to watch at times.
9. Haruhi Suzumiya from Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
I haven't really forgiven her for some of the worst aspects of anime fandom, that will require it's own list in the future.
10. Hilary Tachibana from Beyblade
It's thanks to Hilary that Beyblade never really evolved beyond a boys club. It basically boils down to toy anime not being very inclusive, something that hasn't changed much even today.
I'm here today to give you a challenge, can you criticise your favourite anime?
This test is designed to see if you can accept flaws in your personal top 10 anime.
I'll attempt it with mine and we'll see how I get on.
10. Nisekoi
I often refer to Nisekoi as a better written Love Hina but still like Love Hina, Nisekoi's biggest sin is how crowded the cast gets and how pointless many of the late arrivals get.
9. Jing King of Bandits
There are a couple of stories that took more than one episode, Jing as a concept works better as a situation of the week show. Jing as a character is not suited to long stories, it's a similar problem found in Kino's Journey.
8. Fairy Tail
This one is easy, it gets away with far too much Power of Love and Friendship bullshit.
7. Cowboy Bebop
Within the last couple of years it's showing it's age more and more with less grace, Evangelion suffered the same thing.
6. Ranma 1/2
Is it the length? Nope, just Happosai. This anime would be so much higher if not for Happosai. That and you realise how terrible some of the supporting cast is.
5. Precure
Precure was clearly influenced by many of the Magical Girl shows that came before and during it's 16 years of broadcast to very different returns, Precure at it's worst looks like a pale imitation of a better show, it also has a habit of following it's best seasons with weak seasons. It's current problem is that it's running out of ideas.
4. Lupin the 3rd
Screw it, it's Lupin. That's the logic you need for Lupin the 3rd. It can't be anything else, it's design doesn't support it, so when it tried to do more art house style with practically no gags, it falls flat.
3. Dirty Pair
Dirty Pair has so many iterations that it's hard to keep consistent quality control, there's always going to be one you like and one you hate.
2. Slayers
Has the weakest dub of the top 10 and can easily have stories that do absolutely nothing for the franchise and that's not just the filler talking.
1. Black Lagoon
It's world building is compromised by it's inability to work with it's languages. When needing to use more than one language it can break the story. The Japanese sub draws attention to a character that is bad at English while speaking in Japanese, meanwhile some of Revy's best moments are when actress Megumi Toyoguchi uses English which ultimately gets lost in the dub. I'm also a little bitter about Roberta's ending.
That's my little list, now I challenge you to try and criticise your own top ten. I'm curious to know what you would say about them.
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