Okay so Shojo week hasn't developed a single good show so far, but don't feel that I hate the genre entirely, let me dig up something which I watched as a kid and found not so bad. It's My Little Pony the Movie.
Were going back to Generation 1 My Little Pony with this film, back during the whimsical days of the 1980s.
Baby Lickety-Split is practicing her dance moves with Spike on piano but her performance upsets the other ponies when she messes up which ends in her running away, elsewhere Hydia and her two daughters plot to unleash a purple sludge creature called the Smooze which predates the Pokemon Grimer and Muk by a good ten years.
Anyway, Hydia succeeds in unleashing the Smooze which engulfs all of the land including Dream Castle, even the Rainbow of Light controlled by gaudy dressed human Megan is no match for the Smooze.
In a desperate bid to stop the Smooze, a group of Ponies along with Megan and her Siblings go and seek the Flutter Ponies who have the powers to stop the Smooze, along the way they meet some well spirited trolls called Grundles in one of Danny Devito's most forgettable moments in acting along with some perils and meeting the eccentric wizard Moochick. When they find the Flutter Ponies they initially decline to help until Baby Lickety-Split changes their mind after helping one of their kind. The Flutter Ponies make quick work of the Smooze and save the Pony lands.
This film is not that bad, compared to other cartoon films around the same time including Care Bears it's probably one of the better ones but only because you actually have decent acting in it and that makes a lot of it worth while, sure it has it's faults namely the lack of development in the human characters and why the Grundles needed to be in it at all but because of it's nostalgic feel and a story that encourages cheesiness and fun over complexity it actually comes across as good and even though the latest My Little Pony trounces anything the other generations ever did, those who remembered the first generation still feel like Squeeing when the old theme song starts up.
See, something I like that's girly. You'll get another in a couple of hours to make up for missing Friday's post.
Since I brought it up briefly in the last review lets look at Gravitation.
Shuichi Shindou, and his band, Bad Luck aim to be Japan's next big music sensation but during the writing of the band's next song, Shuichi encounters a stranger with blonde hair who dismisses his lyrics as garbage; upset yet intrigued by this man, Shuichi stalks the stranger as it turns out to be Eiri Yuki a famous romance novelist, the rest is history as he tries to gain help from Eiri to be as good as his idol Ryuichi Sakuma while of course falling in love with him.
This will not be a big review I'm afraid, and again I don't like this one and again not because of the subject matter but at least this Anime isn't as bad as Fake. My issue with this one is Shuichi himself, so utterly annoying and childish that it makes the dub unwatchable and that's a shame because the foundations set in place are great, really well done characters, great comedy moments, music so good that I bought the soundtrack and just the general feel of the animation and atmosphere create one of the best looking and sounding Anime for a long time; pity it's ruined by an annoying brat who throws himself on people for attention.
Final Verdict: There's a great series hidden in this Anime it just needs to either tone down Shuichi or get rid of him completely to achieve that.
Not all Shojo is about pretty sparkles and copious amounts of pink, the Japanese make a genre known as Yaoi or Boy Love which is aimed at women who want to read smut without making it look like that they want sex and for my first ever Yaoi review we look at Fake.
Fake is about two gay detectives named Dee and Ryo who solve mysteries using the buddy cop formula but that's the manga, the story the anime chose is Dee and Ryo taking a vacation in England only to discover that a string of murders is taking place, during this trip Dee is trying to bed Ryo in as many hilarious ways as possible since they insist on throwing in jokes about the situation with increasing amounts of confused looks from the audience and a few angry fangirls demanding more smut. Anyway the victims are all Japanese and it takes a few uninvited guests turning up until they figure out who the murderer is and stop him from killing Ryo.
Next to Gravitation which I find annoying, this was my first experience with Yaoi and I'm not that impressed, not because of the subject matter but because it's really poorly made, I can't get invested in the romance since Ryo is such a wuss, the original Japanese actually makes the plot unworkable and you need to watch the dub for it to make sense and even then it's poorly dubbed, they throw in supernatural elements with no reason to even use it in the first place, and the annoying tag-a-long characters are so irritating, in fact the only thing I can take away from this anime which I found insanely awesome is Dee's Dynamic Entry on the Motorcycle to save Ryo.
Don't get me wrong, Fake isn't a bad series, but the story they chose for the Anime is terrible and to be honest, I demand more smut especially when the art style welcomes it.
Final Verdict: Wasted a perfectly good series by picking one of their worst stories to animate, I'd just buy the manga and only watch the Anime for something to take the piss out of on an Anime night with friends.
Next on Shojo Week is Italy's most successful cartoon franchise Winx Club. *Puts on Sunglasses*
TOO MANY SPARKLES!!!!
The story revolves around Bloom who one day discovers she's a fairy as well as a lost princess, upon this discovery she ends up in Fairy School and befriends other fairies forming a friendship group called the Winx Club. From there Bloom starts piecing together her past while fighting off evil witches, dark wizards and various other assorted enemies.
Remember yesterday that I mentioned that Italians loved shojo? Well this is what they call a Magical Girl show over in Italy, and for a series that is so obsessed with super thin waist girls wearing gaudy super colorful sparkly fairy costumes with about as much personal development as Barbie liking a color other than pink, it somehow managed to click with a world audience and is played in as many countries as more well known cartoons like the Simpsons and Tom & Jerry. In fact Winx Club is easily accessible here in the UK yet a number of popular Magical Girl shows aren't, it's actually quite baffling that this is easier to find than Sailor Moon.
I think the secret to Winx's success is being able to grab the audience with color and fashion, a technique well used by the Japanese in all their current shojo series, not to mention every season adds different transformations to keep the show fresh.
I still don't like it, considering that I usually let a lot of this stuff pass, Winx doesn't offer anything new other than style, the substance is the same thing every season and nothing really evolves, at least Pretty Cure had new characters every season, Winx Club just drowns you in sparkles until you vomit glitter and rainbows.
Well two shows in and it's not looking promising. *Still blinded by the sparkles*
Writer's block has been annoying me lately so lets dig up a theme to use this week as I bring you Shojo Week; every show reviewed this week is aimed at a female audience with a mixture of pink, fluffy and more grown up works. Not all of the shows will be anime and not all of them will be good so sit back and enjoy as we start off with Magical Angel Creamy Mami.
Ten year old Yu Morisawa was just an ordinary girl until she discovers a spaceship, after helping the friendly alien, she is granted a magical wand which allows her to transform into a sixteen year old at any time for one year.
However when she enters the public eye in her sixteen year old form she gets scouted to become an idol singer, now Yu under the stage name Creamy Mami must endure the ups and downs of being an idol while trying to keep her magic a secret from her suspicious friends.
The premise of this show sounds exciting, Akemi Takada's designs along with her art books are beautiful and really bring to life the maturity and grace hidden inside Mami and this was well before Barbie dolls covered the entire girls spectrum of interests and well before Disney Princess was a franchise. So why is this 32 year old franchise so boring?
Well the industry itself is boring, as exciting as being an idol singer is, the so called ups and downs get swept up in all the politics with all the secondary characters within the show often leaving Mami as a plot device rather than a lead character as her actions move the story but aren't always centered around her, this is why Idol Densetsu Eriko is even worst than this and why this show isn't more celebrated today, it didn't help that Studio Pierrot made so many of these shows in the 80s that there wasn't even an alternative to choose from. It's a shame it had to be this way, especially with such a good artist on board but nothing about this show other than the concept is memorable as it's been done by better anime.
There's no dub, in fact the only American release quickly finished and discontinued without a trace; there's a wide release in several European countries especially Italy who love Shojo shows.
Final Verdict: A well designed anime that's too boring to be remembered in the modern age.
