Reviews – Page 15 – Diabolical Plots

MOVIE REVIEW: Ferdinand

written by David Steffen

Ferdinand is a computer-animated children’s comedy/adventure distributed by 20th Century Fox. The title character Ferdinand (John Cena) grew up on a Mexican ranch that breeds bulls for bullfighting in the arena. The bulls compete with each other for the honor of being chosen for a bullfight, with the idea that they will defeat the matador and win eternal glory. But young Ferdinand doesn’t want to fight, and one day he runs away and is adopted by Nina (Julia Saldanha) and her family where he is raised as a beloved pet, and he lives happily there for a time. His favorite time of year is the flower festival, because he loves nothing more than smelling flowers. But when he is fully grown, they tell him he can’t come along because he is too scary at his full-grown size. He sneaks into town anyway, but is considered a threat to the populace and is sent back to the ranch where he meets the other bulls he knew as calves. The other bulls treat him poorly, but a nanny goat named Lupe (Kate McKinnon) decides to take him in and train him to be a fighter, but he’s no more interested in fighting than he was before, and the only way he might be able to avoid fighting is if he can escape.

I liked Ferdinand. He’s a sweet creature, and given the casual violence in a lot of cartoons and superhero shows and etc it was refreshing to have a pacifist protagonist who isn’t a coward, he just doesn’t want to fight. Although I liked Ferdinand himself, Lupe really stole the show–she had most of the best lines and Kate McKinnon’s delivery made them all the better. But, my goodness did I find this movie depressing. The characters were all fine, but the situation they’re in, where they’re all competing for the right to be in a bullfight where they will be baited and wounded for no better reason than to force them to be violent to fight harder in a fight that they cannot possibly win, and will be killed at the end of. The alternative is showing that they can’t fight at all and getting sent to the butcher to get turned into meat. The movie’s fine, though it’s nothing spectacular like Pixar film would be. But the background scenario is just so bleak, I had trouble getting over it when I was expecting this to be a light kid’s film.

Anime Review: Darling in the Franxx

written by Laurie Tom

darlinginthefranxx

Darling in the Franxx is a mess of good ideas marred by poor pacing and an unwillingness to make the most of its material. On the surface the premise is absurd. Teenagers who don’t know the first thing about sexual relationships due to never getting educated on the subject, are raised to pilot the Franxx mecha in male-female pairs. This involves the girl crouching bent on all fours over with a display on her back and handles attached to the butt of her uniform that the boy sitting behind her uses to pilot. Darling is not subtle with its imagery.

The series follows five pairs of pilots, but for the most part it’s Hiro and Zero’s show. For some reason Hiro fails at being a pilot for anyone other Zero, despite his high aptitude scores, and Zero is a hybrid that is both human and klaxosaur (the klaxosaurs being the kaiju the Franxx were created to fight).

At first their relationship is refreshing. Zero is worldly in a way Hiro and his friends are not, so she’s happy to introduce Hiro to this thing called kissing and she makes it pretty clear that she likes him in a setting where the characters don’t even have a word for romantic affection. Zero and Hiro become a couple before the first few episodes are over, which is incredibly fast for an anime, and their relationship is probably the biggest joy in the first half of the series.

Which is why it’s unfortunate that their relationship also becomes one of the worst things about it in the second half. It’s not just the feeling that the writers didn’t know how a relationship naturally progresses, but their behavior towards each other and the promises they make are inconsistent at best, head-banging at worst, to the point that in the final third they passed from my favorite characters to my least favorite.

And the series is constantly doing this. It sets up something really well in the first half, either through its plot or its worldbuilding, and then stumbles in the second. The real enemy of the series doesn’t even get revealed until the final five episodes, by which point there is so much to unpack that it’s not possible give the series the proper send-off it deserved.

Also worth noting is what the show does with its queer characters. Ikuno is a female pilot, and would love nothing more than to co-pilot with the girl she cares about, but the Franxx mecha literally will not work that way. They try, though the girl she likes, Ichigo, doesn’t read into the situation at all, and Ichigo is firmly heterosexual.

Mitsuru, who is implied to be bisexual, has a functioning co-pilot relationship with Ikuno (odd that the two queers start the series piloting together), but clearly doesn’t click with her, and it’s only with another female pilot that he eventually finds acceptance.

While it’s fine that a bisexual character ends up in a heterosexual relationship, the series’ forced heteronormative pairings send a message by letting Mitsuru find happiness, while Ikuno is left irritable and single. And the thing is, the show could have not addressed this at all and just had all the characters be heterosexual without bringing up that some people would have a real problem in this setting. Instead it brings it up, but any possible social commentary shoots itself in the foot.

On the animation front though, the mecha designs are unique, featuring cartoon-faced robots on spindly legs that don’t quite look like anything that has come before, drawn in the signature style of the lead animation studio, Trigger. Though Trigger shares animation duties with A-1 Pictures’ CloverWorks, it’s possible to see that it handled a fair number of the combat scenes due to the animation style it established in previous series like Kill la Kill.

The klaxosaurs themselves are impressive. Though they aren’t distinct enough for the average viewer to start categorizing them on their own, each fight is unique and the series doesn’t recycle previous types so the fights don’t get stuck in a routine. I don’t quite buy the worldbuilding once the series gets around to explaining them, but early on they’re a satisfying menace and one that cannot be negotiated with.

I find Darling in the Franxx difficult to recommend because its downhill slide is so steep. It had a lot of promise in the beginning, and I think the failure to live to up that hurts more than if it had been a mediocre project to begin with. It’s not terrible, and there were still some parts of the ending that I liked, but it’s clear that the main plot took too long to get going and the writers really didn’t know where to take Zero and Hiro. The rest of the cast, though they don’t get as much focus, come out of the experience a lot better.

Number of Episodes: 24

Pluses: Interesting exploration of adolescence with no knowledge of human reproduction, unique mecha and monster designs, promising world building

Minuses: Plot falls apart at the end, Zero loses the agency that made her such an interesting character at the start, LGBT characters are not handled well

Darling in the Franxx is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Intergalactic Medicine Show.

BOOK REVIEW: From a Certain Point of View

written by David Steffen

From a Certain Point of View is a short story anthology media tie-in to the Star Wars universe, released in October 2017 by Del Rey. To celebrate 40 years of Star Wars, the anthology contains 40 stories that take place in or around the events of the original Star Wars film released in 1977, but from the point of view from a supporting character. All of the author’s proceeds for the book go to the charity First Book that provides books, teaching materials, and other essentials to educators and organizations serving children in need.

Most anthologies I’ve read contain stories that are either loosely connected by themes (an anthology of vampire stories, or alien love stories, or mad scientist stories, or stories of marginalized groups in history, etc…), or might be based in some kind of shared speculative world but which aren’t really part of same arc, or which are not really connected at all. This anthology felt very different to me in that the shape of the anthology as a whole has an arc, and it’s an arc most geeks are familiar with, the arc of the original Star Wars film. But it’s a story arc as told through negative space. Instead of following the story of Luke Skywalker meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi and hiring help from Han Solo and Chewbacca and rescuing Leia Organa and destroying the Death Star, this anthology read from start to finish tells that story, but through those affected by the actions of the heroes and villains we are most familiar with. This is a great use of the Star Wars mythology because an anthology like this can only reach its full effect if the audience is familiar with the original arc, so that they can understand the significance of how these secondary characters affect and are affected by the events shown in the movie itself. It’s a great idea, well executed, by some of the best contemporary short story authors.

Some of the stories are what you would expect from Star Wars stories: full of action and intrigue and that sort of thing, with rebels as heroes But the ones that really stood out to me were the oddball stories, the ones with an arc that didn’t follow the usual Star Wars arc, the ones that did something funny or unexpected. I’ll mention a few of my favorites of these with a brief teaser for each.

“The Sith of Datawork” by Ken Liu
From the point of view of an Imperial bureaucrat aboard the Star Destroyer Devestator. He is approached by a friend who was the gunner who chose not to shoot down the escape pod carrying R2-D2 and C3PO from the Tantive IV, afraid he will be punished for his choice he uses the power of bureaucracy to justify his friend’s choice.

“The Red One” by Rae Carson
From the point of view of the red astromech unit that Uncle Lars initially purchases from the Jawas, we find out more about went on in the sandcrawler, and between this droid and R2D2, and what preceded its fateful malfunction.

“Not For Nothing” by Mur Lafferty
Written in the form of a “Behind the Music” sort of feature that you might read in Rolling Stone or see on VH1, from the point of view of a member of the Modal Nodes band that is playing a the Mos Eisley cantina during the movie.

“Born in the Storm” by Daniel José Older
Written from the point of view of one of the storm troopers sent to Tatooine to look for the droids, and written in the form of an incident report. The irreverent attitude of the storm trooper made this story a lot of fun, and though I was skeptical that he would take such an attitude, it all made sense in the end.

“An Incident Report” by Mallory Ortberg
I think this might be my favorite in the book. After Darth Vader Force-chokes Admiral Motti for insolent comments that the Death Star is all the Empire needs, this story is the incident report Admiral Motti writes up for the Imperial human resources department, a very peevishly toned note complaining about the incident, while trying to make it clear he’s not discriminating on the basis of religion.

The only thing that didn’t quite hit right in the book is that with the density of stories in the Mos Eisley cantina involving the same characters, several of them conflicted with each other, especially around the activities of Greedo and how good of a bounty hunter he actually was. I’m guessing the stories were largely written independently with general guidelines, so the authors didn’t have direct contact, but the only thing off about the book was the clear continuity conflicts revealed there.

This book was a lot of fun, and a unique take on short story collections that took a different angle than any other I’d read before (which is probably only possible with a well known franchise like this). I highly recommend it.

Anime Review: Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku

written by Laurie Tom

wotakoi

I loved the first episode of Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku. It was pitch perfect, and easily relatable. Narumi starts her new office job and wants to keep it on the down low that she’s an incredible otaku (nerd). The whole reason she changed jobs is that she used to date someone at her old work and he broke up with her after finding out how much of a geek she was. Narumi is not just a casual fan who happens to enjoy cosplayers and boys’ love manga. She’s pretty hardcore about her hobbies and she’s also an amateur comic artist; one that regularly goes to conventions and sells her own work.

Her attempts to fly under the radar go awry though, when she runs into her childhood friend, Hirotaka, who also works there. He’s well aware that she enjoys video games and loves manga because they used to play together, and being rather blunt, he all but outs her in front of her new coworkers until she interrupts that they really should catch up after work. (It later turns out that those two particular coworkers are otaku too, though the rest of the office is not.)

As they catch up, Narumi mourns over her terrible dating life and Hirotaka commersates. Being an otaku sucks when the other person doesn’t understand your hobbies, so Hirotaka suggests that they date each other, and sweetens the deal with geeky promises like being willing to help her when she needs another person for video games, and assisting her at conventions when she needs another person to hold down the booth. Narumi considers it a deal and they seal it with a handshake. (Which is not exactly the most romantic gesture, but points to the kind of relationship they end up having.)

From there the series proper begins.

There isn’t any easing into the dating process. Starting from the second episode, Narumi and Hirotaka are assumed to have been dating for a bit (which completely threw me off) and the series covers all the foibles of being an adult nerd who hangs out with other adult nerds, whether it’s late night gaming parties, group trips to the comic store, or hanging out at a convention.

What’s most refreshing though is that the four main characters are working adults with office jobs, so they show up to work, grab dinner and drinks when they’re done, and maybe slide in some gaming on weekends, which makes them extremely relatable compared to most anime protagonists. They get into arguments over their favorite characters, different aspects of their hobbies, and whether or not a particular move is fair in Mario Kart.

There are two primary couples in the show. Narumi and Hirotaka are the main one, and are going through the process of getting used to dating each other, but Koyanagi and Kabakura are refreshing because they’re both in their mid-to-late 20s and have been dating since high school, making them the older, more stable relationship (even as they snipe at each other over perceived or feigned slights). Since anime usually skips from early dating straight to marriage, it’s nice seeing a couple in a long term dating relationship, and it shows that despite the length of their relationship, they still have problems and insecurities despite the overwhelming familiarity they have with each other. (They also talk to each other and work out those problems, without the assistance of any magic band-aids like a single romantic gesture.)

Most of the time the show is a comedy, the situations are funny because we or someone we know has gone through something similar, so when it occasionally does get heavy, we’re not thrown out of it and the moments ring true to the character and to real life. Who hasn’t wondered if we’re settling for less, or panicked over what could happen on the first visit to a significant other’s home?

Wotakoi isn’t a series that needs to be watched in a single sitting, and the slice of life storytelling style doesn’t really lend itself to that either, but this is one of the few shows I’ve watched where I could say, “Yeah, this could be me and my friends. This could be people I know at work.” And that’s not true of most anime.

If there is one thing that I was disappointed by though, is that the new character Ko is introduced on the second to last episode and we don’t really get to know her before the series simply ends (since it’s not something that requires an ongoing plot). While the main cast consists of high functioning geeks who can pass for non-nerds around other non-nerds, Ko is incredibly introverted and unable to handle talking face to face with other people. She’s lonely, but human interaction is hard. I would have loved to see more of Ko, especially as someone who was very much like her at an earlier age, but it looks like I’ll have to read the manga for more of her.

Aside from that, I really enjoyed it, and I think it’ll speak to people from all avenues of geekdom. It might be an anime, but it’s not only about anime.

Number of Episodes: 11

Pluses: Hilarious and relatable takes on otaku life, all main characters are working adults with office jobs

Minuses: No overarching storyline, Ko comes in so late the series isn’t able to do much with her

Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku is currently streaming at Amazon (subtitled, subscription required).

MOVIE REVIEW: The Lego Ninjago Movie

written by David Steffen

The Lego Ninjago movie is a computer animated children’s movie from Warner Bros, released in September 2017. It is in the loosely connected series of Lego movies that include The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie. Similar to those movies, pretty much everything in the movie is made as though it were built out of Lego blocks, and though the movies generally don’t often acknowledge that they are actually toys, it occasionally does (usually for comic effect).

Ninjago Island has, for decades, been terrorized by the monstrous villain Garmadon (Justin Thoreau), who builds fanciful mechs and leads armies of fighters to take over the island. The island’s only defense is a group of ninja heroes who pilot elemental-themed mechs to thwart Garmadon at every turn: Water Ninja (Abbi Jacobson), Ice Ninja (Zach Woods), Earth Ninja (Fred Armisen), Lightning Ninja (Kumail Nanjiani), Fire Ninja (Michael Peña), and their leader: Green Ninja (Dave Franco). The ninja team is secretly a group of high school students trained by Master Wu (Jackie Chan), and the Green Ninja is the second-most despised person in all of Ninjago–Lloyd Garmadon, son of the villain himself. Garmadon wins one of their battles and takes over Ninjago, and the ninja team heads off with Master Wu to begin their training to come back and finish the job.

This is a fun, action-packed movie, but I didn’t think it was as funny as the previous two, which was my main appeal to the series. Garmadon was the highlight of most of the movie for me, had a lot of good lines. With one exception. There is a scene. Where the use of Master Wu’s super secret Ultimate Weapon is revealed. And that alone is worth seeing the movie for. I laughed until I cried. Great moment, perfectly executed, and I am super happy I saw the movie for that scene alone. But, you can’t go wrong with it if you’re looking for an action movie with some comedy.

Anime Review: Caligula

written by Laurie Tom

caligula

What if your reality isn’t real? It should be, but you start to notice things that don’t make sense and you can’t ignore it.

That’s the situation that Ritsu Shikishima finds himself in when he hears an odd voice through his phone, and discovers the class representative for the graduating third year students is the exact same person as the class representative for the incoming first years. And he’s not the only one to find something amiss. His classmate Mifue comes home and discovers her mom has become a literally different person overnight, with a different appearance and personality.

As reality breaks down for a number of students, they quickly discover that the world they live in isn’t real. It was supposed to be a virtual utopia for people who were in pain in the real world, but now they’re trapped with no idea how they got there or who they were before.

Caligula is based on the JRPG The Caligula Effect, so there’s an expectation that lot of story would be condensed to fit a 20-30 hour game into 6 hours of TV runtime. I haven’t played the game myself so I can’t speak to how well the condensation was executed, but it’s clear that the script writers made significant changes, which is unusual for an RPG adaptation. They’re extensive enough that if you didn’t know it was based off a game, you probably wouldn’t realize it due to how much of the focus is taken off of Ritsu and how late he and most of the cast come into their powers.

When you compare this to something like the currently running Persona 5 adaptation, it’s quite a difference. In games, the main protagonist needs to awaken to their power early, usually within the first few minutes, maybe the first hour if the game is particularly exposition heavy. This is so the player can start playing.

Caligula the anime up-ends that with Ritsu being one of the last to come into his own and removing virtually anything that might be construed as running a dungeon. The process of gradually recruiting each party member one by one is gone in favor of characters coming together in smaller, separate groups first, before everyone finally bands together halfway through the series.

Perhaps because Caligula is not one of the more visible JRPG properties, the anime staff was allowed the freedom to attempt an adaptation that is better for the medium of a TV show rather than a blow by blow recreation of the game. Unfortunately, while that does a lot to transport the concept of the game into a weekly TV series, it doesn’t quite make the series itself a good one.

Caligula does a fair enough job laying out the majority of the ensemble cast in the early episodes, but there isn’t the time to delve into everybody’s backstories let alone those of the series’ antagonists. While our heroes are people who want to know who they were even if it means reopening old wounds, there are a number of people who have no desire to return to their own painful histories. With nine protagonists, six antagonists, and twelve half hour episodes there just isn’t time to give more than the slightest brush to anyone aside from Ritsu, and only because as the lead protagonist he is the key to everything.

There is one episode unfortunately late in the series that is literally a “sit down and let’s introduce ourselves” episode because the characters realize they barely know each other.

There are things Caligula does really well though, like the initial mystery of what’s going on, and I like that the characters’ virtual selves aren’t always a one-to-one match with who they are in the real world. The virtual world of Mobius was designed to make people happy, so things that they found unsatisfying about themselves or the world around them could be changed. Someone who was the butt end of jokes could be the most popular guy around. Someone who hated being short could be tall. Someone who wasn’t talented would find themselves incredibly skilled.

These changes also extend to appearances, with at least one character choosing a different gender, though it’s unfortunate that the revelation is compounded with disgust due to everything else going on in that scene, and it’s not clear whether the character’s choice was out of gender dysphoria or a less complicated desire to look different.

But for a series where people unlock special powers within themselves when they determine they are willing to escape their fake reality, the powers themselves are given short shrift. Presumably there is a reason why the Catharsis Effect manifests differently in each character (probably tied to their individual hang-ups), but we don’t know for sure, and there aren’t many opportunities for the team to show off how they work in combat. Those that do exist aren’t exciting to look at either.

The ending almost pulls the whole mess back together again with a pretty nifty revelation about Ritsu, but given how much the series had tanked in the second half leading up to the finale, it’s not enough to save it and the epilogue moments didn’t feel entirely earned, though they were otherwise effective.

If anything comes out of this mess, it’s that the anime was released in time to promote the Japanese release of The Caligula Effect remake, The Caligula Effect: Overdose, which is supposed to fix a lot of the gameplay issues as well as provide the ability to play as a female protagonist. Overdose has been picked up for a Western release in 2019, and thanks to the anime, I’m interested in picking it up now. And in that sense, the anime did its job.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: Interesting premise, wide variation between who a person was in real life versus the virtual world (not everyone is actually a teenager), not afraid to deviate from the game

Minuses: Pacing is terrible, no one gets enough character development, for an anime involving special combat abilities they’re rarely exercised

Caligula is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled).

MOVIE REVIEW: The Boss Baby

written by David Steffen

The Boss Baby is a 2017 computer animated comedy/action film produced by Dreamworks Animation, released in March 2017.

Where do babies come from? Nope, not where you think. They come from a factory, (shown in the opening credits of the movie), an assembly line producing seemingly endless babies. Most of them fit all of the standard characteristics expected of babies, and those babies are all shipped off to live with familes. But occasionally one comes down the line that just doesn’t fit the mold, doesn’t do what’s expected of babies such as laughing when tickled, and those babies… are management material.

Seven-year-old Tim Templeton (Miles Bakshi, with adult version narrator as Toby Maguire) is the only kid of two busy but loving parents, and he doesn’t want anything to change. But one day he sees a baby wearing a business suit exiting a taxi outside the house, and when he runs downstairs to see what’s going on, his parents announce he has a new baby brother. Something weird is going on here, at first it seems like a normal baby, as disrupting as that can be on its own, but when other babies visit for a playdate Tim catches the baby leading a business meeting and the jig is up. The baby is known only as Boss Baby (Alec Baldwin) and he works for a company called Baby Corp who give their employees a special formula that keeps that in the shape of a baby but with the mind of a human as long as they keep drinking it regularly. Boss Baby has been assigned to the Templeton family because Mr. (Jimmy Kimmel) and Mrs. Templeton (Lisa Kudrow) work for Puppy Co, Boss Corp’s biggest competitor (with “love” being the currency the two companies run on, apparently?). If Tim wants to get his house back to normal, he’s got to help Boss Baby complete his mission so that he can be called back to the corporation.

I can see why this would be a hit with kids. I realize I’m not the demographic this was aimed at, but, well, if you don’t enjoy overexamining children’s entertainment, you may as well stop reading now. For what it’s worth, I love a lot of kid’s movies, and when it comes to movies in general I am not generally a very harsh judge; there are many kids movies I love to itty-bitty pieces. This was an interesting idea, if rather convoluted and based on patchy worldbuilding (where does Baby Corp’s money come from?). I found Boss Baby more than a little bit annoying, in large part because he is exactly the model of an irritating stereotypical middle management type that doesn’t care about people and just wants to elevate his status in the company. This made him very hard to relate to. Not that the viewer was supposedly to relate to Boss Baby, but while it is a bit funny to have a baby spouting middle management aphorisms, I didn’t think it was enough to build a feature length film from.

Tim was much more relatable (purposefully so) but his entire fight just seemed futile to me, perhaps because I saw the inciting incident as largely metaphorical–it seems like he’s making up an elaborate fantasy world in order to justify the new disruption to his life, but, I hate to break it to you kid, if your parents have a baby brother you can’t just make him go away by completing a quest. The movie was about halfway over before I was reasonably convinced that any of this was actually happening and not metaphorical. This was confused more by some of the ways the movie showed briefly the parent’s point of view, especially in a dangerous high speed toy car chase scene in the back yard where when we see it from Tim’s point of view, but from the parents the baby is barely moving in his pedal car–if that was apparently incredibly exaggerated, then what else was too?

I love a lot

Anime Review: The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These

written by Laurie Tom

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The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These is based on the epic 10-volume novel series by Yoshiki Tanaka (which, by the way, is being released in English at a pace of 2-3 books a year, so we’ll eventually have the whole thing in a couple years).

In the far future, humanity has colonized the stars and formed the Galactic Federation. But eventually a politician seized control of the government and declared himself emperor. Some of his subjects rebelled and escaped to form the Free Planets Alliance, a new republic that is not recognized by the Galactic Empire, and the two factions have waged war for over a hundred years.

This is where The Legend of the Galactic Heroes properly begins. It’s the story of two brilliant military leaders, but also the story of the two nations they belong to. We meet both Admiral Reinhard von Lohengramm of the Empire and Commodore Yang Wen-li of the Alliance in the opening Battle of Astarte, where Reinhard nearly secures victory against a numerically superior Alliance fleet by disregarding common wartime protocols and using sensible strategy that a layperson can follow once broken down. However, before he can finish the job, Yang Wen-li’s admiral is incapacitated, putting him in command of the remainder of the Alliance fleet, which allows him to implement a tactic that forces the battle into a stalemate.

Thanks to Yang, the Empire decides to withdraw, and Yang and Reinhart become well aware of the talented tactician on the other side.

The series feels as though it’s built to see the war through the eyes of these two men. We learn their histories, their motivations, and though they are both excellent strategists, they’re cut from entirely different cloth. Reinhard is a noble, and though originally an impoverished one, his nobility gives him level of acceptance more common citizens of the Empire will never have. His privilege allows him to be daring and manipulative, and he dreams of a world he would like to make safe for the sake of those he cares about, no matter who he has to step over in order to do it.

On the other hand, Yang comes from a blue collar life and entered military school to pay for his college tuition, which he otherwise could not afford. He never wanted to be a combat officer (in fact he’d rather be a historian), but his talent resulted in deployment rather than desk work. Yang is not interested in glory so much as minimizing loss of life, and his intentions are criticized even on his own side for being overly cautious or even cowardly. Given the opportunity, he’d love to resign and live a civilian life, but circumstances won’t let him.

Ideally it seems the series should spend equal time between the Empire and the Alliance, so the audience can get to know Reinhard, Yang, and their cohorts in similarly sympathetic lights (especially since Reinhard is our opening POV for an entire episode), but after the first few episodes the series focuses primarily on the Alliance side of affairs, which feels a little odd. While this makes it clear to the audience the Alliance is no sweet-smelling bed of roses (its politicians embody the worst of election season mania), this also robs us of getting to know more of the Empire’s side of the cast other than Reinhard and his childhood friend Kircheis.

The Empire as a whole is a little too easy to frame as the villain, but to the characters who belong to it, it’s not. Reinhart is well aware of the damage a person at the top of the system can inflict, but being a product of the system itself, his solution isn’t to make a democracy, but to replace the man in charge. We don’t know enough of the other imperial officers to know how many feel the same way or if they believe the imperial dynasty is absolute.

There is also a lot of political posturing going on. I was drawn to the series on the promise of seeing two genius tacticians clash, and the opening two episodes delivered wonderfully, but the middle episodes move on to problems on the homefront, one of Yang’s solo undertakings (which is an excellent two-parter), and to a lesser degree one of Kircheis’s (which had significantly less tension). Both Yang and Kircheis’s missions have heavy political ramifications the audience is made aware of. The source novels were originally written in the 1980s, but it’s almost chilly to see how much of the political turmoil in the Free Planet Alliance still rings true today.

This results in a lot of talking heads when the show is not on the battlefront, many times by politicians or nobles that the primary cast never interacts with. This works out fine in prose, giving context to the conflict and some of the more bone-headed moves, but not so much on TV where names and offices are subtitled for a few seconds and then are largely forgotten.

Probably the worst thing about it is that the series falls short of the Yang vs. Reinhard rematch that we’d expect. Though the finale builds towards that, the final battle of the series is a protracted one and does not fully resolve by the end of the last episode. What we get is a temporary end to combat while people regroup. The battle itself is clearly not over and there is no sort of epilogue to decompress.

Readers of the books might find this particularly odd since this means the TV series does not completely adapt the first book, which covers the remainder of the battle and the political fallout in the aftermath (and ends on a much better stopping point).

The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These is expected to continue as three feature length movies, so the Japanese audience will surely see them, but there’s no guarantee that those movies will readily be available in the US and even so, they might not run on a similarly accessible streaming service.

You won’t be able to get a satisfactory experience from the TV series alone, but the space battles are fun and it’s definitely a more thought-provoking series than most in its genre. If you’re willing to dive into the novels after, I think this is worth watching. Otherwise it might be better to wait and see if the movies make it over, especially if needing a resolution is a must.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: Gorgeous fleet-level space battles, Reinhard and Yang both feel savvy in their own unique way, Yang’s pacifistic outlook is unique for the genre

Minuses: Some of the antagonistic officers on both sides of the war are complete idiots, the Empire does not get as much focus as the Alliance, lacks a good ending even from the perspective of a story arc

The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

Anime Review: Real Girl

realgirl

Real Girl has what is likely a cringe-inducing premise for most women. High school boy Hikari Tsutsui is a introverted anime/gaming nerd who can barely stand being around “normal” people because they make fun of him for never outgrowing his hobbies. It doesn’t help that his all time favorite series features an elementary school aged girl. Then one day he gets stuck doing pool duty with a conventionally “hot” girl who eventually becomes his girlfriend.

When I heard about the series the first thing I thought of was that it was male nerd wish fulfillment, but then I looked closer and realized it was based on a manga that ran in Japan’s Dessert magazine, which is aimed at teenage girls and young women. I decided to give it a chance.

Tsutsui (who is almost always called by his family name) is initially unlikeable. He gets stuck with pool cleaning duty because he comes late to school for the first time he can remember, which is the same for Iroha Igarashi, who is the kind of girl who looks incredibly well put-together. Her hair is styled, she’s pretty, the other girls hate her, and she has a reputation for being easy. Tsutsui immediately doesn’t like her, figuring that she’ll flake out on pool cleaning and leave it all up to him, because she sees him as beneath her just like everybody else does.

But Igarashi does show up, and they bump into each other a few more times in and out of school. He comes to realize that despite being a frequent victim of preconceptions himself, he’s also guilty of his own preconceptions about her, and once he realizes this, he tries to be a better person towards her, which results in her asking him if they’d like to date, keeping in mind that they only have six months until she has to move away.

Though Real Girl follows the story of a nerd and his non-nerdie girlfriend, it’s largely a story about communication. Tsutsui and Iragashi have a lot relationship problems. It’s never that they stop liking each other, or that they come to decide they have little in common, but there is a lot of self-sabotage, especially on Tsutsui’s part, that comes with the territory of this being the first major relationship for both of them.

Tsutsui honestly can’t believe that someone would ever be interested in him, especially someone who looks like her, so there’s an extended period where he is continually doubting that she can honestly be in a relationship with him. While he’s grateful for her, it’s possible to see how this wears on Igarashi because his repeated need to pinch himself feels like a dismissal of the fact that she does like him.

Usually this gets hammered out by the two of them eventually realizing that they have to talk, but this is high school, and nerves strike a lot.

If there’s a fault to Real Girl it’s that the human obstacles to Tsutsui and Igarashi’s relationship are largely non-threatening. When Ayado is introduced as another girl who would like a relationship with Tsutsui it’s nice to see how he reacts to the possibility that there might be one girl who will ever be interested in him, but at the same time we know she’s not a real threat. The only way her presence can sabotage anything is by Tsutsui putting his own foot in his mouth.

The same goes for the male rivals, who are similarly toothless, and Igarashi is unwavering in the fate that she likes Tsutsui despite all his hang-ups.

Probably the most dangerous character to the relationship is only introduced in the last couple of episodes, which makes for a bumpy ending to the series, as the new character and their circumstances aren’t fully fleshed out. But even so, I would still recommend this series. It’s a lot more realistic about first time relationships than most shows are, and especially for the self-doubters among us, watching Tsutsui struggle is highly relatable.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: The show is about working through a relationship rather than towards one, Tsutsui is highly relatable, depiction of relationship problems is realistic

Minuses: Rival characters aren’t much of a threat, we don’t see enough of Igarashi’s POV to understand why she likes Tsutsui so much, last minute new character not handled well

Real Girl is currently streaming at HIDIVE (subtitled, subscription required). Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

MOVIE REVIEW: Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

written by David Steffen

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is a computer animated film produced by DreamWorks Animation that was released in June 2017 in the US, based on the long-running book children’s book humor superhero series.

George (Kevin Hart) and Harold (Thomas Middleditch) are the 4th-grade comic book authors who created Captain Underpants, who is pretty much Superman except all of his powers are toilet-related and instead of wearing a cape and underwear on top of his clothes, he wears a cape and underwear on top of nothing. They’re known for being the class clowns, always pulling pranks on the teachers, and the principal Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms) is always looking for a way to bring them down a notch. Mr. Krupp decides to pull the ultimate power move and split them into separate fourth grade class with the intention of destroying their friendship. Desperate, the boys sneak into his office to try to prevent this, and when they’re caught in the act George uses a toy hypno-ring which (surprising them both), actually hypnotizes Mr. Krupp. They plant a suggestion that Mr. Krupp is actually Captain Underpants. They discover that whenever he is touched by water he becomes Mr. Krupp, and whenever he hears a finger snap he turns into Captain Underpants, and so to keep their friendship intact they keep him as Captain Underpants pretending to be Mr. Krupp.

But Captain Underpants keeps trying to cause problems, always tending to lose his pants, and trying to rush off into danger, and his happy demeanor is so different from the grumpy Mr. Krupp. Before the boys can stop him, he hires mad scientist Professor P (Nick Kroll) to the faculty, who soon makes his evil intentions clear.

Keeping in mind that I am in my mid-thirties and thus quite a ways away from the target demographic, I thought this movie was pretty fun, and I’m sure it’s a hit with the kids with all the poop and underwear. I’m not at all familiar with the source material, but we picked it up as a rental to watch with a four year old, and he loved it.

So keeping all that in mind, I found the protagonists honestly pretty terrible, terrorizing the teachers and then acting surprised when the principal wants to do something about it. When they realize that they’ve hypnotized the teacher I can understand them being excited at succeeding at stalling the principal’s plan, and at the immediate sense of control, but they apparently have no remorse over completely stealing this man’s life and replacing his mind with a comic book character, only getting upset at Captain Underpants’s behavior when they are afraid of being caught in the act. And the entire crisis was based on the premise that splitting them into two different fourth-grade classrooms would destroy their friendship. But their biggest point of bonding was making comics, which they did in their treehouse after school. I don’t think that every kid’s movie has to have an overexplained moralistic story, but I do think that the themes and ethics involved in the story should be considered, because kids pick that stuff up. So I guess I’ll file this one with Trolls under “problematic themes that no one else seems that worried about”.