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.
Now for my next review who this week is celebrating his 75th Birthday, he's cartoon royalty it's Bugs Bunny!
Bugs Bunny as a concept started in 1938 where a rabbit outwits Porky Pig in the cartoon short Porky's Hare Hunt. The concept was played around a bit until they came to the short Elmer's Candid Camera in 1940, which starred Elmer Fudd who was previously known as Egghead before hand and still going through several designs. From that short they settled on Bugs Bunny as a character with Tex Avery changing many characteristics to the ones we know today, with a voice a mix of a Brooklyn and Bronx accent along with trademark white gloves and personality of a Karmic Trickster. The cartoon was so successful that Bugs would not only become Warner Bros most successful show but also become the company mascot, in 1943 Bob Clampert would alter the design to the most recognized version that would last a whopping 67 years before a modern simpler design was used but the official Warner Bros mascot is still the iconic version. So how has he managed to remain such a great character?
Well Bugs Bunny says it best himself with this quote from Bob Clampert written in first person.
"Some people call me cocky and brash, but actually I am just self-assured. I'm nonchalant, imperturbable, contemplative. I play it cool, but I can get hot under the collar. And above all I'm a very 'aware' character. I'm well aware that I am appearing in an animated cartoon....And sometimes I chomp on my carrot for the same reason that a stand-up comic chomps on his cigar. It saves me from rushing from the last joke to the next one too fast. And I sometimes don't act, I react. And I always treat the contest with my pursuers as 'fun and games.' When momentarily I appear to be cornered or in dire danger and I scream, don't be consoined – it's actually a big put-on. Let's face it, Doc. I've read the script and I already know how it turns out."
That pretty much sums up Bugs Bunny, when minding his own business he's harmless, when he's dragged into a situation he fights back using the funniest way possible making a fool out of the ones who pursue him for food or simply get rid of him. Even now you can play a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon and you wouldn't believe it was from the 1940s. That's how you do timeless.
I have returned from hiatus after an incredible holiday and there is loads of stuff to upload and starting this run is Super Sonico!
First a lesson, Super Sonico is the official mascot of Nitroplus, a video game and software company specializing in visual novels; she was introduced at a music festival that Nitroplus sponsors, however Sonico is better seen as a fanservice idol whose figures, body pillows and well endowed mousepads make her a more mature alternative to Hatsune Miku, especially when you consider that Sonico is 18 years old and her music is more geared to J-Rock rather than synth pop, so what is this mascot doing in her own anime? Being herself in her day to day life.
Yeah that's pretty much 12 episodes of Super Sonico, a slice of life look at this busty idol.
Sonico is a University Student in Marine Biology, a part time Waitress in her Grandmother's restaurant, a part time Super Model with a demon masked manager and a Guitarist for her rock band First Astronomical Velocity; she's also slightly klutzy, seems to end up in fanservice clothes by force of nature, always wears headphones even in bed and showers, is a narcoleptic that needs four alarm clocks and five cats to wake up and the fact that she owns five cats qualifies her as a crazy cat lady, so why is she so much better than Hatsune Miku or even all the other idols Japan has animated over the past couple of decades?
Well Sonico is the most believable; the classic magical idol variation is nice and pure but is horribly boring and the reason why I don't review them much, while Hatsune Miku types are fun but seem too perfect and needs a good story to make said character interesting while the current idol shows have lots of idols in sparkly costumes but not much variation in personality; Sonico is better than all of those and is well backed up by a good dub voice as well. Everything she does is innocent, not always perfect, a lot of her faults are usually down to her busy lifestyle especially her sleeping problems, something I can relate heavily to and you can't help but love her for it.
The episodes are a mixed bag going from exceptional to down right terrible with no consistency, the best episodes are Sonico focused, the outright best episode is just Sonico traveling across Japan yet the worst ones tend to be the ones that go off genre with the weird zombie ship episode along with the stray cat episode with the downright worst episode being an annoying fake murder case.
There isn't much story to follow as even the last episode is just a 25 minute concert so you can take the episodes that are good and just watch them instead of the whole thing, but one thing that does shine the most is the 3D music videos at the end of each episode which are incredibly well made and as good as Vocaloid videos, which serves as Super Sonico's biggest selling point and going back to the best episode just being a tour of Japan, if Sonico just did those kinds of episodes it would be one of the best anime on TV, so there is room for a lot of great things in Super Sonico, you just need to look past the fan service to get there.
Final Verdict: Super Sonico is a great character to watch and the majority of the show is reliant on it making anything that takes away from that bad, stick to the Sonico focus episodes for best viewing, you won't lose much ignoring the bad episodes.
