For the last day of Advent let's tackle My Hero Academia.
The world is full of humans who develop super natural powers known as quirks, within a few generations 80% of the population have a quirk which creates a world of heroes and villains, but for Midoriya who has no quirk, he dreams of being like the legendary hero All Might but even All Might himself who is revealed to be losing his power admits you can't be a hero without a quirk, but after witnessing Midoriya's heroics, All Might decides to pass down his quirk to Midoriya.
With a quirk to use, Midoriya heads to UA to become a hero despite his quirk wrecking his body and his bully constantly pissed off that he's even there.
Taking the name Deku, he joins a host of colourful characters as a gathering storm of villains approaches the young heroes.
I'm just going to come out and say this, it's just Naruto part one, it has better world building and much better universal laws but the plot is strikingly similar to how Naruto started.
As an anime it's fine, the characters are a bit mediocre, Deku cries every five minutes, Bakugo has a permanent stick up his ass, most of the class are really forgettable and plenty of villains are trying way too hard.
Dub is at least competent, so I won't rag on it too much.
I'm open to the series improving over time as I'm still early in watching the seasons but I already suspect where it's leading to, looking at just Season 1 alone.
Final Verdict: It created a very solid world that is full of opportunities to tell great stories but lacks the characters to pull it off successfully.
You wouldn't believe this was made in 1996.
Made as a collaboration between Tatsunoko and the Italian Group Mondo TV, Cinderella Monogatari is one of many classics made as part of a long time partnership between Japan and Europe.
I won't bore you with the plot as it's still the downtrodden Cinderella forced to live under a cruel stepmother, so let's see how it differs.
Paulette the suddenly named Fairy Godmother manipulates things in the background to make it better for Cinderella also giving her the ability to talk to animals.
The prince, comically named Charles plays a more central role as a rebellious rogue and does meet Cinderella multiple times long before the more traditional Royal Ball story.
And while the Step mother and sisters are there, we have an actual villain named Duke Zaral who tries to take over the Kingdom multiple times.
While the pacing is slow as anything, this is probably the most well characterised story of Cinderella, time is spent focussing on developing Charles and Cinderella's relationship as they play off each other, it helps the narrative that the Prince is usually in disguise, even when we do get to the more familiar story elements with the Royal Ball, Cinderella's reason for going was to say goodbye to Charles thinking she would never see him again, which is where Paulette steps in to fix everything.
If we really have to sit through a 26 episode story of Cinderella, then this is one of the only ways to do it.
Dubbing is fine, especially as English wasn't the first choice for dubbing to begin with.
Final Verdict: It's hardly an exciting watch but it's at least competent in it's characters and story telling.
You'll find out today that not alot has changed since the 90s.
Mimu is an aspiring pop idol hoping to win the audition to join her idol Yuri's Excellent Idols, before she can perform, she and the rest of the idols are dragged to Planet Bali Hawaii for a contest, will Mimu ever get to audition?
The early joke is Mimu struggles to audition, the problem is, she's not that interesting of a character.
The six other idols more than make up for it consisting of.
Layla - Rock Star.
Extra - Pianist.
Corvette - Dancer.
Palpu - Action Actress.
Ruka - Child Actress.
Shion - She says Ninja but I'm going with Japanese Drama.
The Idol Project cast is more than just a group of colourful characters but each one has a big name voice actress attached to them who were all prominent musical talents of the mid 90s, think what Idol anime is now and even VTuber culture as this is where it really started.
Despite the high production values that included games and an extensive soundtrack, Idol Project as an anime is too weird to make any sense of it, with only four episodes and Mimu taking up 70% of the screentime, all these characters never really get to shine and the appeal of big name actresses cannot be used in the dub, it's a fairly decent dub with some recognisable voices you may have heard in Digimon.
Hardly a crowd pleaser.
Final Verdict: It's production and voice talent are really high quality but the plot makes no sense and much of the cast rallies behind Mimu. Story just needed more care.
We have a few reviews coming out, let's see how much we clear.
Hailing from Taiwan, Kocho and her sister along with Kosaku and Kocho's master Professor Kamo form the Astrological club as a front for chasing after spirits who haunt the school, using the powers of the four mystical beasts, Kamo's large wood, (real dub line) and Kocho's sexy body, the restless souls of the samurai may finally be exorcised.
This is a simple cash grab OVA, a very poorly animated one at that, it's pretty shameless in it's delivery of fan service, Kocho's sister making it way too obvious about how easy she is, Kocho herself actually liking the attention she gets from being naked half the time and the only adult Professor Kamo enabling the behaviour to begin with.
Being subtle is not this anime's strong point, but it did surprise me that the dub is several kinds of silly which is the only way to watch trash like this, although I will say that the acting is way too good for this but I guess Mike Pollock a.k.a Dr Robotnik had to start somewhere (First role).
Final Verdict: It's an easy dumpster fire to make fun of and only worth watching in dub form if only for Mike Pollock's performance.
That title is quite the mouthful.
Sistine and Rumia are best friends attending the Magic Academy when they are greeted by an unruly new teacher Glenn Radars. The "Bastard Magic Instructor" is lazy, incompetent and really good at bullying his class especially Sistine of whom he dubs White Cat.
But when Rumia becomes a target for an evil organisation, Glenn reveals that he's way more talented than the students realise as he's a former assassin of the Imperial Court Mage Corps.
Rumia being a lost princess with a forbidden power is the real reason Glenn is teaching at the academy, along with Re=L, a child built mage who uses large swords and the backing of other Mage Corps members, Glenn has his work cut out as a teacher.
The plot is kind of erratic at best and schizophrenic at worst.
It's a magic school anime trying desperately to be Full Metal Alchemist even with some pretty gruesome scenes to try and raise the stakes and play up the drama, yet try and make the typical love hate tsundere banter between Glenn and Sistine work, it feels like it can't be it's own anime, it has to cobble together successful formulas to even function but so much gets missed and so many characters are redundant, you just end up being left with nothing to take you into any future season.
The dub uses a predictable cast that may as well be typecast at this point.
Final Verdict: A frustrating anime to watch as it tries in vain to use formulas from better anime but fails to even properly utilise them leaving you with nothing to chew on for any new season.
