Edited by The Davoo

Text version:

I’d like to invite you all to imagine yourselves in the following scenario:

Some guy you’ve never met before does something that really pisses you off, so you challenge him to a duel in the name of preserving your honor and punishing him. Nothing is really at stake or anything, and the guy doesn’t even seem like a terrible person, but you just gotta fight him for your own reasons. So the two of you trade blows for a couple minutes, and then all of a sudden the guy yells “get down!” and pushes you onto the ground, as an arrow whizzes through the spot where your head was just seconds prior. It takes a moment to process, but you realize that an attempt has just been made on your life, and that your opponent has just saved you. Now, given the situation, which of the following actions do you take?

1. Immediately jump to your feet and try to uncover the source of the previous attack; and, if possible, hunt down and put a stop to your assailant.
2. Call on the huge crowd of people who have gathered around your fight to identify and attempt to grab the attacker before they escape.
3. Immediately try to evacuate the area and to hide somewhere that won’t leave you prone to an incredibly likely second attack, or:
4. Realize that your opponent has accidentally groped you and immediately disregard the attack on your life in order to get flustered.

If you chose option number four, then it’s likely that your moral principles have been inverted.

So after Julis is targeted by some attacker off to the side, not a single person does a goddamn thing about it or even addresses it over the course of the entire episode. The crowd just stands around dumbfounded, and the student president comes walking out all nonchalant to cool the heads of the fighters instead of trying to pursue the assailant. The show manages to get away with introducing her this way because we don’t know who she is or what she can do yet, but if you come back to this scene knowing that she’s one of the most powerful fighters in the academy, extremely protective of the academy’s students, and more than capable of hunting down and capturing this very target in a later episode, then this scenario looks amazingly contrived.

It was around this point, when the yellow energy arrow thing hit the ground, that a lot of questions popped into my head about how these powers work exactly. In the opening scene, we saw a lot of dodging and blocking attacks, and we never really saw the attack that ended the battle, but we at least confirmed that these weapons can be used to kill someone. However, when Julis blows up her apartment and then creates a huge explosion right in front of Kirito, it doesn’t cause any harm to him whatsoever. As a genre-savvy anime watcher, I found myself assuming that this show follows some kind of logic where energy and projectile attacks aren’t really all that heavy on damage, whereas close-range bladed attacks are a lot more lethal; not that there’s really any logic behind this, but when you watch enough anime, your brain just kind of accepts it.

So this leads me to the question of whether or not the yellow arrow attack was meant to be lethal, or merely to do damage. After all, we just watched a bunch of projectiles and explosions be completely useless, and those were coming from the fifth most-powerful fighter in the entire school–so unless the assailant is even more powerful than Julis, then there’s no reason to assume that the attack would have done any damage–unless we’re meant to assume that the kind of attacks which Julis used were inherently non-lethal, whereas this type of attack is inherently lethal. See, this is why we need to have some sense of rules or limitations when it comes to random fantastical super powers, so that pedantic assholes like me don’t get hung up on trying to understand what those powers are capable of. Considering that Julis becomes more concerned about her accidental groping than she does about the attack, I can’t help feeling like maybe the attack wasn’t actually supposed to be a big deal in the first place.

So this scene is our first introduction to the girl with the big boobs that I mentioned in part one. Her personality type is Big Boob Girl Personality Type A: the Mysterious and Polite Big Sister. This character always talks in a very polite, yet somewhat airheaded manner, as a blatant way of concealing the fact that they know a lot more than they let on. They always seem to take control of any scene that they’re a part of, and feign ignorance over the fact that the other girls are jealous of their huge boobs. These characters usually have some kind of authoritative position in their school and are able to pull the strings and to create opportunities for the main character in the background. Sometimes this character is the same age as the others, as is the case with Claudia here, but other times they may be a bit older. Whereas Light Novel Girl’s personality is not necessarily beholden to the Main Girl Look, it is extremely rare for the Mysterious and Polite Big Sister to not also be a Big Boob Girl.

I’m not going to get too in-depth about anything here for now, but I’d like you to pay attention to the school badges and how they appear to be holograms which Claudia is able to restore using her own badge. At this point, all of this hologram technology is a bit outside of our comprehension, but later into the show we’ll be looking back on this when things get confusing.

We’ve finally made it to the second half of the first episode, as Claudia takes Ayato on a trip through the school to dump some much-needed exposition on him. In the course of voraciously flirting with him right from the get go, Claudia literally explains to him all of the stuff that I just said about the Mysterious and Polite Big Sister. She explains that she puts on an affable outward appearance in spite of the fact that her inner thoughts are dark and conniving, right after stating that she’s been the student council president for three years and displaying that she has all the power in this school. It’s like she’s reading her own TV Tropes entry, in a way that’s so spot on that I’m left to wonder if this is meant to be self-aware and tongue-in-cheek, or if they really thought that the best way to show us a character’s personality is to have them explain it.

Once the pair makes it into Claudia’s office, she activates what I like to call the Exposition Machine–a holographic projector that allows characters to stand in one place and dump exposition without constraining them to their current location, and allowing for relevant on-screen footage without taking the viewer out of the scene. I can’t help but wonder if the sequence of displays presented by this Exposition Machine are pre-scripted and used more than once, or if Claudia programmed all of this just to teach Ayato about the city, or if it has some kind of AI that reacts to her speech, or if she’s controlling it with a computer chip in her brain, or if it just doesn’t make any logical sense.

Claudia names off each of the six schools of Asterisk City, but a few of the images have been deliberately censored to hide the identities of their schoolmasters for dramatic effect. Now, if they had done this exact same scene without using an Exposition Machine, and were just showing these images to the audience, then this would be understandable–but thanks to the conceit that these images are being projected by a hologram machine, we have to assume that the images contained within that machine have, themselves, been deliberately censored, in-universe. This could conceivably be the case, but it seems both silly and unlikely.

As Claudia explains the concept of festas, a huge hexagon behind her shatters into a bunch of little hexagon displays, which all just have random pictures of swords clashing and other generic depictions of battle going on. Just as these things are meaningless to the viewer and moving around too much to really be taken in, they would probably be just as effective to Ayato; so once again, if the impetus here is to keep the audience engaged by having stuff move around the screen, then I have to wonder if the purpose is the same in the context of the narrative.

The next couple of sentences are where we finally get introduced to the closest things to what might be considered the point of this show. Claudia explains that Asterisk City is basically all about these giant inter-high battles called Festas, which are internationally-viewed events, and she hopes that Ayato will compete in them because their school’s track record has gone downhill.

Ayato, meanwhile, is not particularly interested in that, and asks about whether his sister has attended this school in the past. It’s actually unclear at this point whether Ayato is looking for her, or if he’s looking for information about her, or if he’s aware of the fact that she’s dead. Since we already know that she’s dead, we’re tempted to assume that he knows as well, though it later seems like this isn’t the case; and at the end of the conversation, he claims that he’s not even here to look for her, but just came to this school to search for a purpose. He doesn’t say anything about why he thought that coming here would lead to that purpose, so I guess he’s just following his sister’s footsteps? This also brings up the question of whether anyone else knows that she’s dead, and whether or not they’re hiding this information from him–but for now all of it is pretty unclear.

Processing all of that can wait for now, because shit is about to get stupid. After Ayato asks about his sister, Claudia gets him to look at this weird, glitchy image of what seems to be his sister’s student file. She says that this student entered into the school five years ago, but then she also says that all of the data about her was deleted, and that it’s questionable whether she ever actually did attend the school. Except… all of the data wasn’t deleted, because that right there is, in fact, data, which suggests that she did, in fact attend this school. Why the fuck else would this file exist, and why would it say that she was a student?

Moreover, what in the name of god is up with the file itself? Like, if all of the other data about her was deleted, then how come this one is just fucked up looking? Why does it seem like this image has some kind of glitch or virus, while the rest was totally deleted? Was this image left on purpose in order to create a trail or a clue for someone, or are we meant to assume that this was some kind of botched attempt at file deletion? If it’s the latter, then how in the world did the perpetrator fuck up so badly that they deleted all of the other files, but left the one with her face and name with just a glitchy, fucked-up look to it? Also, am I to believe that in this world where they can turn an entire room into a hologram projector, they don’t have the technology to try and reconstruct this file to look right? This just seems like such a poorly thought-out visual representation of his sister’s lost data that it raises way more questions than it seems like it was intended to.

Claudia goes on to explain that there’s an incredibly powerful sword at this school which, in spite of never having been officially checked out, has a bunch of recorded combat data from around the same time that his sister attended the school, meaning that there’s a possible connection between them. If you’re thinking right now that you didn’t actually realize that this is what Claudia was trying to say here, then don’t worry, because you’re not alone. The first couple of times I watched this scene, I got so lost amid all the made-up technical jargon that I just kind of zoned out until the conversation was over. It was only after realizing that I had no idea why the conversation went from the sister to the sword that I watched it again and fully processed the information. I mean, I got that she was basically saying that they have the sister’s sword, and therefore Ayato was probably going to end up using it, but I sort of lost the logical thread of the conversation.

Now, once again, it’s probably apparent that I’m not going to say a lot of good things about this show–why would you want me to, anyways?–but I will say that I think that the music is actually pretty good. It’s not enough to salvage the mind-numbing script, and I don’t know if I’d listen to it independently, but it would’ve been a fitting backdrop to a much better show. Weirdly enough, the soundtrack was composed by a Swedish electronic and jazz musician named Rasmus Faber, who leads a band called Platina Jazz that’s done five albums worth of anime theme song covers, and has a channel on youtube with them playing a lot of them live. This guy’s entire career is more interesting than anything that actually happens in this show, and he seems to have some pretty excellent taste in anime theme songs, so maybe go check out his channel.

Getting back to the show, Claudia hands Ayato a weapon that looks and sounds like a plastic toy. Seriously, I can’t be the only one who giggles a little every time someone grabs a weapon in this show and the sound effects are totally plasticky. I just can’t shake the impression that all the characters are swinging around Power Rangers toys.

Claudia wraps up the conversation by flirting some more and saying some mysterious stuff about how she’s glad they’ve finally met. Using my magical future-sight which has already watched seven episodes of this nonsense and still has no idea what the connection between these two actually is, I think it’s pretty safe to say that their history mostly exists as an excuse for this girl to come with a pre-packaged interest in the main character and to be on his side from the very beginning for the sake of narrative convenience.

Alright, it’s time for Inaho’s requisite classroom introduction. Those of you who don’t know a lot about anime or Japanese culture may be wondering why his teacher is carrying a baseball bat full of nails. This weapon is an old-school staple of the high school delinquent punk, and anyone who carries one most likely has a bad attitude. It’s not uncommon in shows like this for the main characters’ teacher to have some kind of quirky personality and to show up at random times in the story as a minor support character; but in the seven episodes of this show that are out so far, I don’t remember this teacher having more than four lines of dialog in total. I have to imagine that they gave her the baseball bat in her first appearance so that the viewer would know off the bat *caugh* that she’s supposed to be a yankee type character; but considering how totally irrelevant that is to the rest of the story, I’m not even sure why they bothered giving her any gimmick at all.

Gee, I wonder how many of these classmates are going to be relevant to the story–could it be the only two people in the room with brightly-colored hair?? Naturally, the only open seat just happens to be next to the girl that Ayato was fighting with this morning, so now their mutually flustered encounters may continue. You might be thinking, but wait! The window seat is open too, and isn’t that usually where the main character sits?? –but we’ll get back to that in episode two.

After class is over, Julis determines that she is currently in Kirito’s debt, and offers to do him one favor in exchange for him saving her life. I’m tempted to say that this is important, since the entire next couple of episodes are going to revolve around that favor, but I honestly can’t bring myself to say that any of this shit is important when nothing in this show fucking matters at all.

Julis exiting the scene activates Classmate Guy to make first contact with the main character. If you know anything at all about high school anime, then you’re probably familiar with Classmate Guy–every high school anime protagonist has at least one or two of them around. They usually exist for the sole purpose of providing exposition about the popular female characters, being the butt of comic relief, and/or declaring their jealousy over how much female attention the main character gets. They’ve usually got brown hair and barely stand out from the rest of their classmates, and are given some kind of dumb, unmemorable name that will never ever stick with you–and you’ll probably forget that they exist most of the time until they randomly show up. This particular Classmate Guy falls under the Newspaper Club archetype–a person who is obsessed with everything going on in the school and is therefore more informed than anyone else about what’s going on behind the scenes. This is one of the more powerful forms of Classmate Guy, and this particular one has some tricks up his sleeves, but we’ll get back to that when it’s more relevant in a later episode.

Classmate Guy basically explains all the shit that we already figured out about Light Novel Girl just from looking at the promo art. She’s very proud, very guarded with her emotions, beats a lot of people up, yeah we got it. This is also where we learn one of Ayato’s stupid personality quirks, which is that because he’s had it so drilled into his head that he needs to return anything which he borrows, he memorized the voice of the person who threw him a sword to battle Julis with, and is therefore able to return the weapon to Classmate Guy. Every Light Novel Guy has at least one trait of this nature–a predisposition to being a nice guy which reaches the level of superhuman capability, which is part of what makes them come off as such caring and kind-hearted people to all of the girls in the story. ‘Cause you know, the nice guys get all the action in these shows.

The conversation is interrupted by the shouts of Big Dumb Looking-Guy, who’s pissed off at Julis and demanding a rematch. You can tell this guy isn’t someone you wanna root for because he’s got a couple of ugly lackeys following him around and he looks like a muscle-headed brute–but you can also tell that he’s probably going to come back in future episodes and possibly end up joining the main character’s team because his character design is a little too unique to be just a one-off villain. Believe me, if the fact that only the important characters have any effort put into their designs has not been made apparent already, it will become so later on.

Classmate Guy excitedly describes this situation as a “big scoop,” and then materializes a holographic lens in front of his eyeball. Previously, during the buildup to the fight between Julis and Ayato, there was also a guy recording that fight in a holographic window–but in that case we could see the image on the display, whereas this time it seems to be a lens through which Classmate Guy is recording this.

What I’m trying to wrap my head around is the logic by which a hologram is needed for use as a lens. Again, the hologram technology in this show is never really explained, and it seems as though it mostly manifests itself by way of characters generating browser windows with their minds. Specific images can be conjured up instantly without any verbal or physical input, meaning that the students’ control over holograms is purely psychic. It still isn’t really clear if these holograms are controlled by the students’ Genestella powers, of if they’ve all go microchips in their brains and the entire world is full of projection materials or something; but the point is that whatever they’re using to manipulate these holograms is controlled by their brains.

If that’s the case, then the students should be able to record information just by using their eyeballs. I mean, not only would a hologram not be able to contain any technology, as the technology would be the thing projecting the hologram–nor would it be able to store any data, as the data would also be stored within the actual technology–but it doesn’t even make sense for the hologram to provide any augmentation. If the hologram is supposed to allow him to zoom in or something, and that technology comes from within his brain, then he should just be able to zoom in using his eyeballs. At least with the little holo-screen thing I could understand it being like a viewfinder or something for the student to confirm what their eyeball-recording looks like, but this whole hololens things comes off as totally pointless and ill-considered.

Classmate Guy sheds some light on the school’s battle ranking system, and how the strongest fighters are known as Page Ones, but we’ll talk more about that later on. After some back and forth with Big Dumb-Looking Guy, Julis makes her bold proclamation that she has a goal which she is dedicated to pursuing, and which she is going to win the Festa in order to accomplish, which seems to spark some interest in our protagonist. Well, at least we know that ONE of these characters has an actual motivation and some stake in the narrative… we just don’t know what it is yet or any of the consequences for failure.

We did it everyone! We finished watching the first episode of the Asterisk War! And it only took nearly three times the actual length of the episode to do so! I mean, technically I haven’t even talked about the opening video, which plays at the end of the episode, or the song that goes along with it, or the next episode previews…. so I guess our work is cut out for us.

Continued in part four.

Text version:

Over the course of the last three videos, I’ve complained a lot about how the characters in The Asterisk War seem like nothing more than walking cliches. Now I’d like to take this video to explain exactly what it means for a character to be a cliche, and why it bothers me so much to watch a show that’s full of them.

Almost every character in every story in existence can be slotted into some kind of archetype; which comes as a result of the limited number of thoughts and ideas which humanity is capable of experiencing. We write characters that make sense to us and who reflect our perception of reality; and as such, there tend to be a lot of commonalities among our expressions–because, as human beings, there are only so many things that set us apart from one-another.

Moreover, it’s almost impossible to be a creative person without being influenced by other creative people. Almost everyone who makes art is a big fan of art, whether their scope of influence is very broad, or very narrow. As such, any writer’s sense of characterization is most likely informed by the work of other writers–be that in the way of direct inspiration, or in the way of giving them ideas about what to avoid and subvert in their own writing.

When you look at the landscape of storytelling from a bird’s-eye perspective, by consuming as many works as you can and relating them to one-another in a complex web of influences, then the trends among those works become increasingly apparent. Once you understand that Hideaki Anno is a huge fan of Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Runaway Ideon, then you understand why he might construct a story about a young man being thrust against his will into piloting a giant robot for the sake of a cause that he doesn’t necessarily believe in–and why the film conclusion basically involves everyone dying and the nature of the universe being rewritten. Once you know that Attack on Titan author Hajime Iseyama is a big fan of Muvluv Alternative, then you understand why he’d construct a story about humanity making a desperate stand against an overwhelmingly monstrous force, in which major characters are regularly eaten by giants. It’s a chain of causality and influence that allows you to view culture as one big, grand metanarrative.

A cliche is what happens when a scenario is written not as an emergent result of being influenced by other work, or of the author translating their understanding of the world around them, but instead as a result of making an observation about the types of scenarios which can be found in the greater cultural consciousness, and then creating a scenario based around that idea.

Take, for example, the tsundere. The term “tsundere” began as an observation: people noticed that there was a tendency in visual novels for one of the main female characters to start off acting abrasive towards the male character, and then to eventually develop feelings for them and end up acting lovingly towards them. The moment when tsundere became a cliche is when authors started going out of their way to create characters which would fit into the tsundere archetype.

Now, I don’t think it’s impossible to write a good tsundere character while being aware that you are, in fact, writing one [Senjougahara]; it’s more a matter of your approach. To me, the biggest way to tell a good character from a cliche one, is to ask yourself the simple question: why does this character act the way that they do?

For example: Louise from Zero no Tsukaima starts off acting abrasive towards the main character, because she’s generally a prideful, insolent, angry, and sensitive rich girl who spends most of her time pissed off at everyone. Her personality gradually changes as a result of the main character’s influence, and she finds herself falling in love with him; but let’s take a step back and ask ourselves why she acted that way in the first place.

We understand from the beginning that even though she comes from a noble and important background, Louise is possibly the weakest magician at her school; and this disconnect between her prideful upbringing and the constant source of ridicule that is her powers causes her to understandably develop a complex about it. As the series continues, the more that we learn about her family and her past, the more her attitude just sort of makes sense as the result of her surroundings. Whether you find her personality to be tolerable or not, I think that Louise is a pretty well-done tsundere character for this reason.

Now, let’s take a look at Julis from The Asterisk War. Like Louise, she’s known for acting abrasive and insolent towards her classmates and getting into fights; and we see in the first episode that she’s very sensitive and prideful. Likewise, her personality is changed by the main character, and she very quickly begins to develop feelings for him. So let’s ask the big question: why did Julis act the way that she did in the first place?

In episode three, we learn that when Julis was a kid, living as a princess in another country, her life was saved by a bunch of kids from a local orphanage; and she spent a lot of her time hanging out with them afterwards. She decided to come to Asterisk City so that she could win money and put it back into the orphanage, and she seems to harbor a deep grudge against the world, and against this city in particular, for its callousness and reliance on money. However, while this explains her motivations, it doesn’t really tell us anything about how she became the kind of person that she is today. We don’t really get a sense of what she was like before or after meeting these orphaned kids, or if she might have changed after coming to the city. We really don’t know much of anything about her besides the surface-level details of her personality and the broad strokes of her endgame motive.

Now, I don’t think that every character needs to be given an extensive backstory in order to sell us on the idea that they are who they are for a reason; another method is simply to reinforce the character’s personality throughout the narrative. It isn’t until episode nine of Toradora that we learn some of the reasons for Taiga’s bad attitude and solitary, clumsy living experience; but we get a pretty firm grasp of her character by the end of episode two. We more or less understand who she is and what she’s going through and the difficulties created by her situation, so that even if we don’t know exactly how she became this way, we can appreciate how much she changes when she starts being influenced by her friends.

Meanwhile, our entire understanding of what kind of person Julis had been before the intervention of the main character comes from a couple of accidental pervert scenes, and one little explanation from Classmate Guy. In fact, we’re only informed of the idea that she’s known for being hard-nosed towards her classmates AFTER we’ve already seen her softening up towards the main character as early as their first interaction. Her dere is built directly into her tsun! We never once get to see what Julis was like before the beginning of her transition into the person that she is by the end of episode four–oh, and yeah, the transformation only takes like four episodes; but we’ll talk more about that later.

All of this gives the impression that Julis was written as a tsundere first, and as a character second. She was built from the ground up to be a girl who would start off with an antagonistic demeanor towards the main guy, and then to eventually soften up and fall in love with him. Any other aspects of her personality feel like window dressing to the core idea of her being a tsundere; and as a result, nothing about her character resonates with the audience. The only appreciation that you can have for her is on the database level–by recognizing her place within the tradition of the tsundere archetype, and possibly having a categorial attraction to that archetype as a whole.

This problem of recognizing the characters as cliches first and as characters second is pervasive throughout the entirety of the series, and is why it’s so baffling and hilarious that Claudia reads off her own TV Tropes entry during her first on-screen minute in episode one.

At the start of episode two we finally get our proper introduction to Ayato’s older sister, Haruka, in the form of a flashback to his childhood. This scene only manages to establish Haruka as yet another walking cliche: Dead Family Member Type A: The Maternal Guardian. This is a character whose only apparent trait is their nobility in protecting and educating the protagonist to become the kind of person that they are today. The best way to handle this kind of character is to show them as little as possible: to have them mostly exist in the form of the protagonist talking about how influential they were from time to time so that we know what they meant to said protagonist. As soon as you start actually showing this character dispensing lessons and declaring their desire to protect the protagonist, the character becomes too good to be true.

It’s understandable for Ayato’s memories of his older sister to pertain mostly to her influence over him and her desire to protect him; but the presentation of this scene does not suggest that this is from Ayato’s perspective. If it were, then lingering on the face that Haruka makes after Ayato says that he’s going to protect her would seem out of place, since he obviously doesn’t interpret any meaning out of her making this face. The delivery of this scene really makes it out like Haruka’s entire life was all about protecting and guiding her little brother; which, if true, makes her an incredibly boring character.

In Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, the mother of the main characters was dead from the beginning, and the brothers often remembered her as a caring and kind mother whose death, and their attempt at resurrecting her, were the inciting incident of the story. However, what eventually made Trisha Elric interesting was that she never quite got over the departure of her husband or was able to be completely happy with her life as a solo parent. It was in recognizing how hard her life had become and trying to maker her happy again that the brothers began developing their alchemy powers and learning to become stronger as individuals. Even though we barely knew anything about Trisha, we had some idea of the fact that she had a life and feelings outside of taking care of her children, and that realizing this was a huge part of those children coming into their own as responsible people.

In contrast, what Ayato remembers about his sister is that she was always trying to protect him; and what he takes away from that is that it’s his job to protect someone he cares about as well. Like the Elric brothers, Ayato wanted to protect his maternal figure; but unlike them, he doesn’t even know yet that he failed to do so. Whereas the Elric brothers had to confront the real meaning of being a protector and the sacrifices that come with caring for someone before the death of their parent and the beginning of their journey, Ayato only learns the basics–that protecting someone is the way to go–and doesn’t even know what his sister eventually sacrificed in order to protect him. He will never have the opportunity to see his sister in another light, and neither will we. Moreover, the narrative has no intent of punishing him for the shallowness of his ideals–Ayato is so fucking overpowered that protecting the people he cares about is the easiest thing in the world.

Like everyone else in The Asterisk War, Haruka’s existence seems like it was intended to fulfill a narrative purpose more so than anything else. She exists so that Ayato can have a guardian figure who was responsible for his sense of morality and even possibly for his combat abilities, as well as to facilitate a mysterious connection between Ayato and the school. Her personality is only revealed inasmuch as what is necessary in order to fulfill these narrative goals. It’s entirely possible that we may one day learn about Haruka’s personality and motivations in more depth, but given the overall dearth of creative ideas in this series so far, I would be absolutely fucking shocked if such a thing were to happen.

Episode two is also our introduction to Saya, and I don’t think it’s even remotely exaggerating to describe her entirely in TV Tropes terms. Deadpan Loli. Childhood Friend. Hammerspace. Done.

Why is Saya in love with Ayato? Because she is his childhood friend. We are literally given no other explanation–in fact, after it’s revealed that they were childhood friends, it seems like the show just figures that we assumed she was in love with him and doesn’t even bother building up to it or stating it outright–she just immediately starts fighting over him.

Why does Saya attend this school? Because her father is apparently a sort of mad scientist who constantly comes up with new and crazy weapons, and she wants to help promote those weapons by using them in combat. Why is this relevant to the show? Because it would be really adorable and funny if there’s this little girl who’s always pulling out gigantic guns.

Why does Saya have this personality? I’m not sure–in fact, her personality confuses me a little, because it kind of fails at being the cliche that it sets out to be. I know that’s a strange and pretentious-sounding statement, but hear me out. The deadpan loli is usually a very strict and specific character archetype. These characters very rarely speak or react to the things going on around them–and when they do, their reaction is always deadpan. They may have moments of determination and jump in to protect their friends, but it feels like they have to muster up all of their energy just to do so–or otherwise, their priorities and abilities are so alien that we can barely comprehend them. They’re usually tired and noncommittal; and if they’re a part of the main character’s harem, then they act like the guy belongs to them just because he does.

Saya has most of these elements, but her deadpan act isn’t very convincing. In spite of her having missed a day of class due to oversleeping and then regularly passing out, she ends up being a lot more talkative and proactive in the following episodes, and is a lot more clearly motivated then a typical character of her archetype. Now, if you wanted to, you could view this as breaking convention–maybe this is the type of character that they wanted to make. But I can’t shake the feeling like this was just a really awkwardly failed attempt at making a deadpan loli character. The proactive and fiery attitude that she takes towards her competitiveness with the other girls just kind of seems at odds with the sleepy and noncommittal nature that she’s presented with at the start.

Maybe I’m reading too deep into all this–particularly as someone who’s a fan of the deadpan loli archetype–but that’s just how it comes across to me; not that it matters because Saya is completely fucking extraneous and you could cut her from the show entirely and it would change absolutely nothing, because she exists exclusively for the sake of being able to shoehorn a deadpan loli childhood friend hammerspace character into the story.

Here is a list of other, better deadpan lolis, just in the name of providing examples: [Ruri Hoshino, Chino Caffuu Renge Miyauchi, Remon Yamano, Yotsugi Ononoki, Hiiragi from Hanamaru Kindergarten, Korone from Demon King Daimaou, Chiaki Minami, Hitoha Marui, Shiro from No Game No Life, Limone from Simoun, Noel Kannagi, Guu from Hare and Guu, Nozomu Ezomori]

Now, I don’t necessarily think that a viewer needs to be able to recognize these cliches, or to be able to provide examples of other characters who follow the same archetypes, in order to recognize that these are cliched characters. Even if you’ve only seen a handful of different anime series, you will probably suspect that these are not the most interesting or unique characters in the medium, because all of them have so little in the way of personality or motivations. They aren’t the kind of characters that you easily connect with or understand; and if you’ve even heard the word tsundere before, then you could probably figure out that Julis is one of them. However, I do think that the more familiar a viewer becomes with these cliches, the more annoying they become.

I think if you challenged me to try and name one hundred tsundere characters in less then twenty minutes, then I would be able to do so with time to spare. I have seen tsundere who were the main characters of some of my favorite anime, such as Taiga from Toradora. I heard the term for the first time in 2007 when I was being disappointed in characters like Shana and Nagi Sanzenin; and I’ve seen characters following this archetype from before the term even existed, like Akane from Ranma ½, or even, to an extent, Yukino Miyazawa from Kare Kano–one of my favorite anime characters. I’ve seen decent tsundere like Asuna and Misaka, and I’ve seen terrible cliche tsundere from–fuck, nearly everything this season!

Every single time I see a new tsundere, that tsundere is going to be compared to every other tsundere that I’ve ever seen before. Is she as complex and interesting as Asuka Langley? Is she as cool and likeable as Makise Kurisu? Is she as hot as Haruhi Suzumiya? Probably not.

This is why it bothers me so much to watch a show full of cliche characters. Not only have I seen it all done elsewhere, but I’ve seen it all done better. I liked Claudia more when she was Tomoe Mami, I liked Julis more when she was Kashiwazaki Sena, and I liked Saya more when she was the last remaining original[Saya from Blood]- I mean, when she was Ezomori Nozomu. It’s bad enough that the characters in this show are a bunch of one-note, boring pieces of cardboard that I can’t relate to, but when you throw in that I’ve seen a million other characters exactly like them but better, it just becomes insurmountably tiring. And I haven’t even really talked about the main character guy yet– but we can dig into him a little more when we get back to following the show in a chronological fashion. Because apparently I’m still watching this shit.

Continued in part five.

Every time I participate in the Anime Blogger Secret Santa project, I try to take on all three of the shows that I’m recommended at once and make a point to finish at least one of them. This year, I received three totally fascinating choices which had me anxious to check them out, but I also ended up with the least time that I’ve had in a while to afford to them and only ended up watching a little bit of each.

If you know much about me, then you probably know that I’m often a lot more interested in the meta side of anime consumption than I am in actually watching things. I like putting shows into a grand narrative or context and trying to uncover greater truths about anime via the things that I watch. The recommendations that I got this year were perfect in that only one of them was a show which I’d already been planning to watch because I thought I’d enjoy it, whereas the other two could lead to fascinating avenues of meta.

The first show on the list was Petite Princess Yucie–possibly the least-known of all the major GAINAX productions–which came out in 2002, and which is actually a spiritual adaptation of their Princess Maker series of PC games from the 90s. Learning about the history of this show was pretty interesting, and quickly led me into a huge project: to consume and eventually make a video about all of the lesser-known GAINAX productions, as well as the ones that aren’t usually associated with the studio’s style.

So, I only ended up watching two episodes of Yucie, and otherwise ended up watching like 5 OVAs, all of Oruchuban Ebichu, and four episodes of Mahoromatic. At that point I sort of got bored, and the writing I was doing about the history of these shows didn’t seem all that interesting, so I put the project on hold. From what little I watched of Yucie it seemed like a pretty cute show, but also like a very slow burn. It’ll be hard to tell for a long while if it’s the kind of show that feels like it pays off by the end, or if it’s just kind of middle of the road, but I’d for sure like to find out for myself.

Next up, the most totally baffling recommendation was for the 2006 Fate/Stay Night adaptation. For the eight or so years I’ve been hearing about this show, all I’ve heard is people ragging on it for being a weak adaptation, and for its godawful animation. I once watched about half of episode 15 so I could see the CGI dragon sex scene (holy shit), and I remember thinking it was the worst-looking show I’d ever seen in terms of animation. Not to mention there’s been a recent adaptation of Unlimited Blade Works that was way more praised and which is beautiful to look at, and absent from my anime list.

At first, I actually thought that I might like the 2006 version better than what I’ve seen of UBW. I definitely prefer the character designs from this series over what they’ve become in every other anime adaptation of the Fate series, especially the ugly shovel-faces of the UBW anime. It was also interesting that, in spite of the low animation quality, the show actually does a lot of interesting things with shot composition and is, if nothing else, very interesting to look at. I’d attribute this to having crazy man Yuuji Yamaguchi as director, given his track record of madness.

As interesting as it was to look at, though, I could only make it eight episodes into this series before giving up. I honestly just do not understand the appeal of the Fate series outside the character designs of Saber and Rin. I get that people really dig the mythology of it and all, but I just find it stupid and boring, and I think it handles the death game idea very poorly. I find myself struggling to care about anything in most iterations of this series, with Zero being the exception just because it bothered to have characters with pretty interesting ideals and motivations. Anyways, whatever hopes I had at first of watching this leading to me dissecting the differences in the Fate adaptations has evaporated, as I realize that I don’t care about any of them.

The last recommendation was Kiniro Mosaic, which is less of a show that I’ve been interested in on a meta level, and more just one that I’ve been meaning to watch. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of a lot of cute-girls-doing-cute-things shows, and that blonde lolis are my favorite category of character design in the known universe, so I had to get to this at some point. I think my biggest fears with this series were that the design of Alice would inevitably be a lot cuter in the cover/promo art than she is in the actual animation, and that the show would be kind of middle of the road and not leave much of an impression.

After three episodes, the show is cute as hell without a doubt, and definitely a bit more ambitious than Wakaba Girl, which came from the same author. It very much takes an approach where things being cute and dumb are more important than them being logical or realistic–which is fine, though not my preferred kind of show of this type. The characters are just a bit too dumb for me to really get invested in them or see them as much more than walking vessels of cuteness. It also does that thing where it ends each episode on an explosively saccharine moment which can be a bit much at times.

Still, the show is cute enough that I think I can finish it, and the animation has been more consistently nice than it seemed like it would be at first. I can’t say that I like it nearly as much as Gochiusa for cute loli girls du jeor, but it’s still a fun show full of all the adorable blond loli I could ever ask for.

Even though I didn’t end up watching a whole lot of any of these shows, I’m pretty happy with what I was recommended this year. If nothing else, it felt like whoever my santa was had a pretty good grasp of what I’d find interesting–or otherwise it was a fluke and they just happened to pick stuff I’d find cool for weird reasons. Either way, it was fun participating once again, and I’ll probably finish Kinmoza and Yucie some day in the future.

Edited by The Davoo

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Episode two is really when it sinks in that The Asterisk War is fucking boring. Sure, the first episode was boring too, but for a lot of more technical reasons that have to do with pacing and craftsmanship. It tried and failed to lure the audience in with a bunch of fanservice and flashy action sequences, and then remembered that it had to actually explain the setting and dumped a shitton of exposition on us all at once. But episode two is where it starts to become apparent that even if we did have context into who all of these characters were and what they were trying to do from the beginning, then it wouldn’t have mattered cause they’re all fucking boring.

I’m not even gonna talk about this scene where Julis explains that she has no friends and then flirts with the main guy like a fucking idiot. Who cares? This entire three-minute scene only serves to clue us in that Julis and Ayato are going to end up becoming a pair when they go to the Festa. The setup is basically beating us over the head with it, yet somehow doesn’t call attention to it, as if anyone is going to wonder whom Julis could possibly end up having as a partner. This whole show is just a wink and a nod away from being a shitty parody of itself.

Not long after we see Julis laughing at Ayato, and he says how he’s surprised at her for laughing, she then responds to his greeting at school and everyone loses their shit. I explained this in the last video, but it’s really difficult to care about the idea that Julis is changing into a decent person when we didn’t really know shit about her in the first place and we never got to see what she was like in class outside of what we were told during the exposition. Then Saya wakes up.

So remember when Ayato didn’t sit in the window seat, and it was like, whoa! He’s not in the window seat! Well, that’s because they had a more insidious plan in mind–the whole “surrounded on all sides by relevant characters” plan. The window seat just happens to be occupied by the other character with candy-colored hair, and she just happens to be Ayato’s childhood friend for no adequately explained reason. How long ago was she his friend? What kind of friend? Where? Were either of them broken up about it when Saya moved away? Saya doesn’t seem to react all that much when she notices Ayato, but like five minutes later she’s apparently in love with him to the point that she fights over him. Again, it’s hard to believe that this show isn’t some kind of shitty meta-commentary like Saekano.

Saya says that she has her own motivations for coming to the school besides that her father asked her to; but they’re a secret, just like every other potentially interesting fact about any of the characters. You know, typically, when you want the audience to get interested in a character, you start by letting us understand their motivations and personality so that we get invested, and then when you put them into dangerous situations wherein their careers and lives are at stake; then we feel tense and excited. Teasing us that there’s a possibility that maybe one day the character will reveal themselves to be interesting only means that the show’s gonna be fucking boring until then.

When asked about her absence the previous day, Saya explains that she overslept. I guarantee you that we will never actually see her miss another day of class in the entire series. I say this because I’m less convinced that she missed class because she’s the kind of character that would sleep through class regularly, and more convinced that the writers didn’t want to introduce her during the first episode when they were busy setting up the other characters and needed an excuse for why she wasn’t there during the previous classroom scene. Yeah, that’s right–the writers are using the character’s excuse for why they missed school as their own excuse for why the character missed school. If that ain’t meta, I don’t know what is.

Y’know, I usually love these kinds of deadpan characters, and I appreciate Shiori Izawa’s vocal performance, but Saya just is not all that endearing. For a deadpan character, she’s not that deadpan, and for a memetic comedy character, she’s not that cute or funny. I can’t stand the way the gradients in her hair look, or the random mish-mash of colors in her accesories. So her hairpiece is yellow, but the cuffs and undershirt are pink; and she’s also got a tie? I feel like the pink or the yellow would’ve worked with her blue hair individually, but all together it’s kind of a clusterfuck, and the pink undershirt just looks terrible in general. Not to mention that all of it clashes with the bright green line in the middle of the uniform. I should’ve asked this back when Classmate Guy was introduced, but why the hell is the dress code so flexible in this school anyways? What’s the point of having uniforms if you can just change the uniform? Ever since Hibike Euphonium, my tolerance for this shit has been rapidly decreasing. [Use scene in Eupho ep 1 where teacher makes girls roll down their skirts.]

After class is over, Julis gets ready to take Ayato on a tour of the school and town that I didn’t talk about before because it was boring, and then everyone just stands around in the classroom forever while the girls act like a bunch of catty, flirty bitches. That’s not me being misogynistic, it’s just how the show treats its female characters–a bunch of catty, flirty bitches who’ve got nothing better to do in their life then fight over who gets to serve some shitty, boring guy. If this is supposed to be an escapist fantasy or something, then I really wanna know what guy’s fantasy is to constantly be fought over by a bunch of annoying, boring dumbasses.

So then Julis gives Ayato and Saya the tour of the school, and all I could think was: why the fuck do I have to see this? None of these locations seem like they’re going to be relevant at all in the future, and the way the scene is edited doesn’t give any sense of where they are in relation to one-another anyways. I get that this scene is mostly played up as a joke, since Saya ends up being the one who’s impressed with all of the faculties and the joke is that she would’ve made a really shitty tour guide to begin with; but imagine how easy it would’ve been to make this scene more interesting. This show takes place in a futuristic sci-fi world, and they decided to show us a fucking cafeteria. Why not have her show him the training facility which we’ll be seeing them use in episode five, or the room with all the scientists and the weapons and shit which comes up later in this very episode? Anything would’ve been more interesting than three boring-ass locations as the set up to some dumbass joke that means nothing for the plot of the episode. Ayato just fucks off afterwards to get drinks and none of it mattered at all.

While Ayato is away, Julis and Saya get back to arguing over who his dick belongs to, and Saya drops some hints that Ayato is supposed to be crazy strong, if we hadn’t realized already. Then the pair gets attacked by the yellow arrow assailant again, and this time we see that it’s… a guy in a fucking hood.

You wanna know what’s the number one fastest way to eliminate all tension during an action scene involving the main characters of a show? Have their opponent look as unthinkably generic as humanly possible, to the point that they don’t even register as a character. Julis tosses a couple of fire spears at him, and then Saya blows up the entire area with her giant gun, and the scene just ends. No seriously, the camera just never cuts back to the opponent. Did he die? Did he run away? It doesn’t seem to matter either way because Saya instantly challenges Julis to continue their spat from before. No one tries to figure out what just happened, or to maybe run away and tell someone about it or something–they just fucking stand there until Ayato gets back and they realize that their clothes are wet. Once again, the show uses fanservice as like one of those red lasers from Men In Black and everyone forgets what just happened.

Luckily, the following scene finally decides that they’ve gone way too long without addressing this whole assassination bullshit, and we learn that the school has indeed begun looking into it; however, Julis has stubbornly declared that there is no need for an investigation or for bodyguards. At this point, I think it’s safe to say that Julis is completely fucking retarded. When Ayato asks Claudia why Julis is so fucking retarded, Claudia gives some bullshit esoteric explanation about how she’s afraid that what she has might slip through her fingers.

Do these people not grasp that in a situation like this, Julis shouldn’t even be allowed to decide whether or not there’s an investigation? This is a series of criminal attacks threatening a member of their student body–the campus police force should be massively patrolling the entire campus and opening the biggest fucking investigation possible–because whether this selfish bitch likes it or not, there’s no way of knowing that she’s the only person being targeted, or that other students won’t be caught in the crossfire of the next attack. Even if it was just a matter of Julis vs. the attacker, the fact that their battles result in massive property damage to the school should be grounds for an investigation. And what about Saya? She was right there during the last attack, shouldn’t she get a say in whether there’s an investigation? Does she get a bodyguard? This show is starting to give me brain cancer.

The rest of the episode tells the story of how Kirito finally gets his real sword; by way of some kind of Evangelion-meets-the-sword-in-the-stone situation. Basically, every weapon has a percentage of compatibility with its user, and if that percentage is more than eighty, then they get to use the weapon. The muscle-headed guy tries to take the mystery sword that Ayato’s sister used, and while it’s obvious that he’s not going to be compatible with it, the cheese factor is turned up to maximum when his compatibility drops to a negative percentage and the sword tries to attack him.

Luckily, our hero is able to effortlessly take hold of the sword and achieve a 97% compatability with it. May I remind you that this is supposed to be like the strongest weapon that they have–so not only is Ayato supposedly a strong enough fighter that Saya thinks he would’ve mopped the floor with Julis no problem, but now he possesses the strongest weapon that we’ve even heard of so far. Because who needs narrative stakes, am I right? I’m half-expecting to find out later that his sister’s soul is actually inside of the sword somehow, and if that turns out to be the case, then I sincerely hope that this video gets released before then. I promise I wrote this when there were only seven episodes out, you just have to take my word for it.

The episode finally ends on some fanservice teasing where Ayato comes to Claudia’s room while she’s finishing up a shower; but we’ll have more to say about that next time. For now, we’ve finally made it to the end of this boring ass episode. And what have we learned?

That Julis is changing into a better person and falling for Ayato? We pretty much figured that out from the beginning. That Ayato is going to be using his sister’s sword from now on? We knew that would happen as soon as we heard about the sword. That Saya exists? Who cares, she’s completely irrelevant to the story and could’ve been introduced at any time and it wouldn’t have made a difference. We didn’t learn anything else about Julis’ attackers–and in fact Julis herself seems to be actively trying to prevent anyone from learning anything new. All that really happened for most of the episode is that characters stood around flirting and bickering. What a great show, totally earning that 7.3 MAL score.

Why did they waste a pretty decent ending theme on a show like this? Written by Rasmus Faber and sung by Maaya Sakamoto? These are people who you typically find working with fucking Yoko Kanno, generating some of the most legendary singles in anime song history. You really wanna slap that kind of thing on a generic shitpile like The Asterisk War? I mean, the opening theme wasn’t bad either, but at least it was every bit as generic and interchangeable as everything else in the show. You might as well be consistent with stuff like this.

Y’know, looking back on this episode, it really starts to sink in just how cynical and halfhearted this entire production feels. Like how it really does read like they’re just throwing action scenes in for the sake of having them, and then using fanservice to sweep under the rug how totally incomprehensible those scenes actually are. Maybe I’m so inclined to believe that Saya’s like some kind of weirdly botched attempt at making a deadpan character because everything else is so weirdly botched in the same kind of way.

It’s like the show just takes it for granted that you get where it’s coming from. Julis and Ayato are given exactly three encounters before the one in which Julis starts fighting over him–the accidental pervert scene resulting in a duel, the scene where they met in class, and then the scene where he talks to her after dealing with the muscle guy. In all of these encounters, Julis is continually abrasive and argumentative with him, but immediately won over by his kind demeanor. Then, one scene later, she’s doing her makeup in preparation for showing him around the school, and then gets into a territorial argument over him with her classmates–one of whom we learn is in love with him at that exact moment, and the other who started flirting the instant she met him.

Think about that. Julis is the only one with any kind of explicit moment in which she develops an attraction to the main character; and half of our understanding that she’s fallen from him comes from our genre-savvy awareness that she’s a tsundere. This show starts having its girls argue over the main guy before even bothering to explain the fact that any of them are in love with him, or why that might be the case. It’s just taken as a matter of fact–they’re girls, they have speaking lines, and they’re in a light novel adaptation, what else could they be there for?

Every scene feels like it’s just ticking off a box on a checklist. Introduce concept that Festa has to be done in pairs–check. Introduce love triangle–check. Action scene–check. Actually calling attention to the only apparent overarching plot thread–check. (Note: that’s calling attention to, not actually progressing). Getting the main character his weapon and proving he’s a badass–check. Tits–check.

Each sequence begins and ends either by just cutting in and out at random, or by Claudia telling Ayato where to go. Enemies just disappear when the fighting is over; Claudia walks Ayato to the sword room and then calls him to her room later that night; and the scene at the start of the episode is delivered as a flashback during Ayato’s morning jog, just so they’d be able to cut in and out of it without worrying about how to organically transition from the end of the last episode. This is why I tend to think of A-1 Pictures as the McDonald’s of anime studios–because a lot of their shows feel like they were put together on an assembly line.

I don’t know how bad the original light novels for this series were, and I don’t know how much the staff is to blame for failing to change it. Both of the directors have been involved in shows I kind of like, such as Saki and A-Channel–but one of them was also the guy who directed Dragonaut ~the resonance, which was the seasonal laughingstock of fall 2007–so make of that what you will.

Honestly, though, it’s hard for me to blame anyone when I look at something like this. It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone here didn’t know exactly what they were making. They just did it cause it’s their job. Because for some reason, this kind of shit has a market–and by god, they’re going to cater to it. I’m sure that some of the people working on this show are really passionately giving it their all; but I also like to think that for some of them, knowing that this monster they’ve created is actually pretty successful is as depressing to them as it is to me.

Continued in part six.

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2015 was a pretty lackluster year for me in terms of media consumption. Lots of things came out that I enjoyed, but there was little which I truly loved, at least among the media which I actually did consume over the course of the year. There’s plenty of nice-looking stuff which I haven’t gotten to yet, and if I make any proper best-of-the-year list for anime in particular, then it’ll be released months from now when I’ve had time to watch everything that I want to. While I can’t say that my loved list for this year is any competition for 2013 or 2014, I’d like to at least highlight the things which I did truly enjoy this year, and which I’d like to carry with me into the future. To start us off, I’d like to share some honorable mentions–stuff which I may not have loved deeply, but which I enjoyed enough for it to stick in my mind.

Undertale won the hearts of many through its fascinating premise and excellent writing. I adore what this game did artistically using the medium of gaming, though I ultimately didn’t enjoy the actual gameplay all that much, as I found the combat to be nothing short of infuriating. Still, I seem to be in the minority on that, and the narrative presentation was legitimately fascinating, so I’m very glad that I stuck it out and played all the way to the end of the pacifist run.

Hibike Euphonium reached a zenith with its date scene in episode six that I don’t think it was able to top afterwards, introducing subplots here and there which I found it difficult to care about; but the show was nonetheless a beautifully constructed and far more sobering than usual take on the show about a club full of high school girls, and I’m looking forward to seeing if the second season announced for next year can elevate it into true loving status for me.

To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar is an album which sits at the top of nearly everyone’s best of the year lists, and for damn good reason–it’s among the most deeply conceptual and hard-hitting narrative albums which I’ve ever listened to, and doesn’t stop short of having five of my favorite singles of the year on it. Still, I found it difficult to find time for this eighty-minute record, which requires some degree of  concentration to fully enjoy at times, and I could never get into it as deeply as I felt like I wanted to, or on the level that others did.

Crypt of the Necrodancer came out of early access this year, and is by far the most I’ve played of a game that I completely suck at to date. I’m not a fan of roguelikes and randomly generated levels because I’m garbage at them and I never feel like I’m making progress; but the entire concept of this game is so perfect that it’s impossible not to love. I danced through dungeons to a soundtrack of Japanese metalcore band Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and there aren’t a lot of experiences more enjoyable than that.

Gakkougurashi really managed to floor me with its constant sense of tension and uneasiness, which transformed the relaxing and comfortable feeling typical of a cute girls doing cute things show into a strangely moody and unsettling nightmare version of the same. I can’t pretend like this show reinvented the wheel or anything, but it was an experience I won’t soon forget.

Third Side of Tape by Lil Ugly Mane is perhaps the single most eclectic collection of music to ever have been produced by one person. Over two hours of random songs in all sorts of genres, cobbled together from Lil Ugly Mane’s countless unfinished projects over the years and put into six twenty-minute blocks of music, this album continually surprised and intrigued me, and became one of my go-tos for background music and something to put on while editing video.

Before I move on to my outright favorite stuff from this year, I’d like to give some shout-outs to stuff that I didn’t watch much of, but am already in love with. I’ve only seen two episode of One Punch Man so far, but they had more character and effort put into their animation than anything else that came out this year. The new season of Gintama was instantly amazing for the like two episodes that I watched, and what I’ve seen of the second season of Baby Steps was living up to the first season well. I also didn’t end up finishing the second half of Log Horizon 2 for some reason, so I’ll get to that eventually. Anyways, on to the top twelve!

I was very very drunk when I watched season two of Danna ga Nani, and I probably got pretty emotional at the site of a couple whom, for all intents and purposes, represents everything I’ve ever wanted out of a relationship. I’m literally using this show to vicariously experience the ideal romance. I might have some kind of problem.

Mad Max: Fury Road was the first movie in a very long time to actually yank my jaw off of my face and smash it against the ground with the sheer beauty of its visual presentation. This is probably the most impressive spectacle action film that I’ve ever seen, and the fact that it manages to back it up with great writing and some legitimately interesting worldbuilding is enough to make it a classic. I definitely look forward to getting to see this again.

Axiom Verge is the first Metroid clone I’ve played which I actually enjoyed nearly as much as I did Super Metroid–and I’ve played a fair number of them. This game gradually got me absorbed into its world and desperate to find all of its secrets before I was done with it, and I was already anticipating my future attempt at a 100% playthrough after beating the final boss. It’s exceedingly rare for me to get invested in a new game on that level, but this one absolutely delivered.

I Love You, Honeybear by Father John Misty is a folksy, bluesy, poppy album that crushed my heart into a fine powder. Between some of the most utterly depressing tracks that I managed to love this year, as well as some of the most heartbreakingly sweet ones, Father John Misty’s direct, yet poetic lyrics and versatile musical stylings made for one of the year’s most captivating albums.

Before I move onto my top five things of 2015, I’ve gotta give a shout out to the single best youtube video that I saw this year: Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling by Max Landis. A stunningly orchestrated combination of storytelling, analysis, and comedy, this video felt like what would happen if the entire concept of the youtube analysis video reached its final form. I might put together a full list of my favorite youtube videos of the year over on my Digibro After Dark channel, so be on the lookout for that as well.

Food Wars is a series which I actually haven’t finished yet, but that’s okay because I’ve been having a baller ass time with it. Combining my deep love of food with my deep love of hilariously ridiculous anime bullshit and kickass shounen sports tropes, Food Wars is absolutely delectable; and also received one of the funniest critical reviews which I’ve seen all year, and will put a link to down in the description below along with any other videos about this stuff that I want you to see.

Steven Universe was a really pleasant surprise this year, as a show that I got swept up in the hype for and was shocked by how much I actually loved it. The songs and atmosphere were awesome and got me listening to Aivi and Surasshu regularly, and Pearl was definitely best gem, even if Stronger Than You was one of the best moments of characterization I’ve ever seen. I’m still way behind on season 2 though, so don’t ask me about it.

The Martian was my kind of sci-fi movie–unendingly optimistic and feel-good, with a cast full of cool people who just want to solve the problems in front of them. Unlike some other disappointing sci-fi stories in recent years, this is one which actually decided that the main appeal of sci-fi is, in fact, the science fiction, and structured its plot thematically around human progress itself. I had a blast seeing it in theaters, and was very glad to once again have the chance to love a film from one of my favorite directors.

Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax technically came out last year in Japan, but it only saw North American release this October, and was by far the thing which I most hotly anticipated over the course of the year. Being as I’m a big fan of 2D anime fighters, the prospect of playing one where I get to beat the shit out of Kirito and all the other shitty light novel characters that I hate was everything I could possible ask for. The game really took off for me when I started maining Kirino and realized that she’s possibly the most fun character to play with in any game that I can think of, making this entire game an absolute joy for me to have around.

No Now by Clarence Clarity was by far my favorite album of the year; sounding like what would happen if the deep web was conceptualized into a pop album, and was played through a computer plagued with viruses which has just had acid poured over it, this album sounds like it’s dissolving before your ears, and loops back in on itself in such a way that you can just play it on repeat all day and stop questioning what the fuck is going on. It’s an album with a hell of a lot to chew on, and the only release from this year which will have a guaranteed spot among my top 100 favorite albums for at least a few years to come.

Season two of Rick and Morty was every bit as utterly perfect as the first season, and continues to be my favorite American TV show of all time. This series weaves together brilliant high-concept sci-fi adventures which would put serious science fiction stories to shame into a blisteringly fast-paced and consistently on-point comedy spectacular which knocked me on my ass laughing only as often as it punched me in the gut with its somber moments, and tore my heart out of my chest with its season finale. SUPER looking forward to season three.

And finally, the second half of Shirobako was by far my favorite anime to come out in 2015, and the only thing besides Rick and Morty which I’d consider a full-blown ten out of ten. Featuring an uber-dense narrative full of awesomely memorable characters and moments, this show effortlessly wove a pastiche of emotions into a story about life and art and passion and struggle; all on the frames of an anime about what it’s like to make anime. It’s not enough that I’m a fan of meta stuff anyways, but this series couldn’t have possibly been focused on something that I care about more–given that anime is my passion, and that learning about and getting into the heads of its creators is among my favorite aspects of interacting with the medium. Of all the things which came out this year, Shirobako felt the most like a piece of media built specifically for me, and which was excellent on a level that I might cherish it for the rest of my life.

That about does it for the stuff that came out in 2015, but while we’re on an end-of-the year roundup, I may as well talk about some things from other years which I either just got around to, or rewatched and rediscovered for the first time in a while.

I missed the boat on Humanity Has Declined when it first came out, and was very pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the show upon seeing it. I’m not ordinarily much for anthology series, but this one consistently surprised me with both the cleverness of its writing, and with the creative insanity of its ideas.

VVVVVV caught me at the tail end of the year while hammering my way through a bunch of 2D platformers in the latest steam sale, and of all the sub-two hour, hard as nails, instant respawn games I’ve played, this one may have been my favorite; thanks to its chipper attitude, awesome soundtrack, and addictive mechanics.

Yuu Yuu Hakusho was a total blast from the past that I only decided to watch because a friend had the dub on at his house one day, and I was shocked to realize that it was a dub which I actually enjoyed. Having adored Hunter X Hunter at the end of last year, I figured it was time to finally complete its older sibling show in its entirety some 13 years after seeing it last, and I found it shockingly enjoyable. Easily one of the best shounen action series out there, with probably the best tournament arc that we’re ever going to get.

I finally rewatched Neon Genesis Evangelion in its entirety after like nine years of partial rewatches, and while I found myself a little let-down on the realization that the show’s second half doesn’t anywhere near live up to the polish of the first half, and that I feel none of the affection for the last two episodes that I did as a teenager, I nonetheless appreciated the series deeply, and greatly enjoyed getting to write about its incredible first nine episodes over the course of this year.

Chantelise is legitimately one of my favorite video games, which I played through and made a video about towards the beginning of the year, and realized that there’s probably no one who cares as much about it as I do. Regardless, this little indie action-RPG had me deeply addicted to its simple but effective combat system and charging back and forth through its memorable low-poly levels. It inspired me to go nearly all the way to 100% completion, which is something I almost never do–so as far as I’m concerned, it’s a bona fide classic.

Lastly, I was hotly anticipating my rewatch of Kare Kano, after having been let down by its final eight-episode stretch back when I first watched it in 200;, and on the rewatch I was downright blown away. Last episodes be damned, this is far and away the best-written and most deeply engaging romantic comedy anime that I’ve ever seen, and I daresay my favorite thing which Hideaki Anno has ever directed. If you haven’t seen this series yet, then I advise you go in thinking of episode eighteen as the series finale, and everything afterwards as omake. Whatever distaste it might leave you with on your first viewing, it’s absolutely worth it to not miss out on this classic series; which, alongside Shirobako and Gurren Lagann, cracked its way into my top 10 this year.

That about wraps it up for stuff that I loved in 2015, but I’m sure there’s a whole ton of stuff that I missed out on, and which I’ll be happy to try and catch up on in the coming years. If there’s anything which you really think I’d enjoy and you can’t believe I didn’t get around to already, then tell me about it in the comments–or if you otherwise want to hear my thoughts on some of the things from this year that you thought for sure I would’ve liked but apparently didn’t, then feel free to ask me about those things as well. Now, let’s look to the future!

I’m not much for planning anything ahead of time, but I’ve got some ideas about where I think 2016 is going to go for my channel. I’ve just about wrapped up writing and recording all twelve parts of the Asterisk War Sucks series, which I’ve handed over to the Davoo to edit; so while those videos are coming out as fast as he can produce them, I’ll be working on other content on the side.

Over the course of 2015, I’ve really felt myself moving away from making smaller, individual videos, and more towards longer, more high-concept stuff; and I think that’s about how it’s going to stay. I’m not all that interested in doing small videos on individual shows anymore; I’m much more interested in either making hyper-detailed and super-long videos about individual shows, or otherwise making videos that cover a broad section of anime culture. That’s not to say that I won’t make any more small videos at all, but that I’m probably going to dedicate more time to larger videos in the future.

I’m also considering producing more content which isn’t related to anime over the course of the next year, because I’ve managed to create a pretty solid base of my ideas towards anime over the last year and a half. I’ve talked about a ton of my favorite stuff, as well as broken down some stuff that I hate, and shared my feelings on a lot of the shows which are most relevant to my interest. Moving forward, I feel like most of you have a pretty solid grasp on how I think about anime and what my tastes are like, and now I can dedicate myself to bigger and more involved projects dealing with the medium as a whole.

Meanwhile, I might branch into talking more about video games in the coming year, since I’ve been finding more time to play them and getting some ideas about how to talk about them. I struggled to find a way to cover video games over the course of 2015, on account of my relatively bizarre taste in games, and the fact that no one really has a firm sense of what I like about games yet; but in the future, I’d like to find a way to make my games content as interesting and involving as my anime content. One of these days I also want to get into manga in a big way, but I can’t see myself making too many videos about it until I seriously put some thought into how to present it in video form, and read a hell of a lot more of it than what I currently do.

Anyways everyone, that’s my year-end roundup–I hope you enjoyed it, and that you’ll stick with my channel and continue to enjoy my content in 2016. Thanks again for watching, and I’ll see you in the next year.

Edited by The Davoo

Text version:

Y’know, when I stop to think about it, The Asterisk War is basically just an incredibly shitty cyberpunk story. Aside from the fact that it’s missing a film noir aesthetic, it’s pretty much got all of the elements: advanced technology and science, information networks and cybernetics, a breakdown and radical shift in the social order of society, megacorporations, a near-future Earth, and being primarily focused on the marginalized members of its society… in a way. Given that cyberpunk is my favorite genre of fiction in general, it’s a little surprising that I didn’t realize it sooner; but then, cyberpunk is so heavily defined by its aesthetic that even with all of those elements, it’s still difficult to consider this show to be a part of the genre at all; and the funny thing is that I think that’s part of its problem.

Like every other aspect of its narrative, the setting of the Asterisk War seems like it was cobbled together from the ideas in a bunch of other, better stories, with no understanding of how or why the settings of those stories worked. To explain what I mean, I’m going to have to start with the broad strokes of the society described in the show’s narration and work my way down from there.

So, from the top, we’re told that the major event which put the Earth on course to become what it is at the time of the story was the Invertia–an unspecified catastrophe which apparently caused most of the world’s nations to rapidly decline in power, leading to the formation of one global superpower. It’s difficult to interpret exactly what kind of situation would lead to this, considering that this trope usually comes from all of the world’s nations uniting against a common foe more so than in the wake of a catastrophe; but whatever, it’s not a big deal–this is the kind of stuff I’m willing to suspend my disbelief over.

We next learn that the Invertia caused the birth of a new race of humans with superhuman capabilities called the Genestella. Whether this came about as some kind of genetic mutation or evolution is unclear–but that’s fine. The nature of these powers and their limitations are also unclear–which is lame, but not a deal breaker. Things start to get weird, though, once we get to the foundation of Asterisk City.

We are told in no uncertain terms that Asterisk City exists for the sole purpose of facilitating a yearly tournament of Genestella mortal combat known as the Festa. So if we’re thinking of comparisons, then I guess it’s kind of like an Olympic village that doesn’t move, and has an entire gigantic city built around it. You’d think that whatever goes on in all of those massive skyscrapers would’ve taken precedence by now–unless all of it is corporations tied into running these Festas, which honestly wouldn’t surprise me.

Here’s where things get weird: the combatants in these Festas are all students, who each attend one of the city’s six huge academies. These students consist of powerful Genestella from all over the world who are scouted for competition, or otherwise arrive in the city with the desire to compete. This is where they lost me.

Why students? Do I even need to ask? Is this not the obvious question? Why students? Why?

So, it’s kind of implied that the Genestella might be sort of a put-upon race of people in this world; but at the same time, it totally doesn’t seem like it. In fact, as far as I can tell, no one is actually being forced into these competitions. All of the main characters have very specific motivations for competing and seem to have arrived of their own accord. There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for why the Genestella have to fight one-another besides that they want to.

So, uh, why students? Why? Why students? Why? WHY?

Whenever Julis talks about Asterisk City and the Phoenix Festa, she’s always sure to make a bunch of snide and disgusted remarks about how the Festas are what the people want, and how the city is run on greed and darkness, and how the world is a terrible place. So, like, I get the sense that the Festa is some kind of hyper-popular bloodsport competition that represents the twisted morals of this new society; but, uh… why students? Why students?

Let’s ignore that when it comes to most sports, one of the most exciting aspects is getting to watch a great athlete’s entire career. People who don’t like sports usually don’t like them because they don’t know enough of the narrative–whereas people who are into them are usually as interested in them as a storytelling medium as they are in the impressiveness of the sportsman’s physical accomplishments. It’s not easy to form an interesting sports narrative if everyone’s career is over the second they’re out of high school.

Let’s also ignore that even if this is purely a bloodsport and people just want to watch Genestella ripping each-other to pieces, then surely, older competitors would be stronger, more vicious, and more experienced as warriors, making for a much better show. At this rate, I can only assume that this society has become so twisted that they can only enjoy a bloodsport wherein teenagers specifically are killing one-another–never mind that according to the Wiki, the fighters don’t even necessarily HAVE to kill one-another, but serious injuries can be expected. I mean, I find that to be kind of a stretch, but I’m pretty sure that was also the plot of those Hunger Game things I never saw, so maybe that’s what’s in vogue right now or something. But here’s the rub:

In the Hunger Games, the teenagers HAD to compete. Their society was built around forcing random kids to kill each-other for the amusement of the rich–and all of the kids had to fight so that their slum would be able to eat; or something like that; my only exposure to these things is through internet analysis videos–I have a problem.

The reality is that this entire story concept is completely implausible. The answer to the question of, “why students?” is simply, “because light novel.” Because this author decided to simultaneously write in the genre of a typical high school harem action series, while also attempting to write a dystopian sci-fi story–and they fucked it up.

I wish I could pull back the layers on this whole system of government and society, but it’s difficult to do so because the setting is so poorly defined. We’re constantly being told how greedy and twisted this city is, but we barely ever see how or why. Like, I get that all the schools are viciously competing and often using underhanded tactics, but fucking everyone signed up for this. It’s not like anyone comes to this island just to go to class–they’re here because they’re supposed to be exceptionally powerful Genestella hand-picked for competition, right?

Well, that brings me to another question: why are the students, students? As in, why are they just going to school at these schools? I know there’s a bunch of training facilities and shit, and that the school provides everyone with weapons, but why even keep up the facade of the school at all? Are these students not here to become career warriors? Aren’t the best of them expected to compete with their lives on the line? Maybe they should be spending more time learning how to fight so they can fucking survive. Fat lot of good all that math is gonna do them when their ass gets killed in the Festa. Plus, the winner is supposed to be able to basically ask for whatever they want, so it’s not like they’re gonna need that knowledge if they do win.

There’s a part in episode three when Julis explains that the city is full of stages everywhere, both big and small, for people to have random fights; but the animation staff didn’t even bother showing any of them. Real fucking nice, guys, way to nail the setting details and really make this place come to life with its own personality instead of looking like any fucking generic city.

But therein lies another question: why are people fighting at random? Julis says that most people don’t even bother taking their fights to the stages–but why? The way I understand it, each school has its own ranking system, wherein people challenge one-another to duels and whoever wins a lot of duels gets a higher rank; and then the highest-ranked kids get to compete in the Festas and potentially fulfill their wishes. So I kind of understand the incentive to fight people from your own school, at your own school–but why would you ever challenge anyone from any other school out in the open? What would be the benefit of that?

Throughout the first four episodes, Julis is hunted by one of her classmates who is being paid by a rival school to try and take her out. The fact that this guy comes from her school means that he’s probably a much lower rank than her, considering that she’s one of the strongest students in attendance; so she’s probably gonna wipe the floor with his a–oh. Well, it would’ve made sense. But here’s what also would’ve made sense: if the other schools just sent their strongest dudes to fucking beat the shit out of her.

Sure, the whole “inside man” thing makes sense on paper; and if Julis was like barricaded inside the school and the school was under high security, then all of that would be understandable; but Julis doesn’t just make regular trips out of the school–she makes a point of it. She outright states that she doesn’t intend to let these attackers alter her daily routine; because, I guess, she sees them as some sort of terrorists. What everyone fails to appreciate is that a top-level school could simply tell their best guy to walk up to her in the middle of the road and slit her fucking throat.

To tell you the truth, I could go on like this all day long–but I feel like I’ve made my point; that the setting details are played so fast and loose in this story that you could easily break every narrative concept in a million different ways with about ten seconds of thought. The setting is such a load of nonsense that it’s difficult to take anything seriously or to care about anything that goes on. And that’s just the social structure–I haven’t even started on the technology!

According to the opening narration, the Asterisk War is set at least one-hundred years into the future, since the Invertia is said to have occurred during the previous century. Setting the story so far into the future, and creating a world in which a major cataclysm has occurred that completely upended the fabric of society as we know it, gives a lot of leeway for what the author could’ve come up with in terms of technology, and in terms of the abilities which the new species of humanity are able to tap into with their powers. This opportunistic setting is completely squandered, and we are presented with something that could just have easily been set like thirty years in the future with the cataclysm having occurred yesterday.

In fact, Asterisk city is virtually indistinguishable from any average nice-looking modern city. Apparently, whatever technological advancements did happen weren’t enough to change the way that people go about their daily lives. It’s good to know that even if the world gets destroyed by meteors, causing all of its nations to weaken and reshape into a new mega-nation over the course of more than a hundred years, we’ll still have McDonald’s serving up their same old combo meals. I guess it’s called WcDonald’s now though because the society has been inverted.

What technological advancements we do get to see are all so vague and ill-conceived that I’m still not entirely sure what’s tech and what’s magic–and I don’t mean that in the “advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” sense… or maybe I do? I’d be able to tell you if I knew which shit was tech and which shit was magic!

It seems like holograms are able to be manifested at all times in all places by all people, and that these holograms are controlled through mind powers. As difficult as it is for me to conceive of a computer so advanced that it can be controlled via telepathy to do anything as advanced as what it does in the series, I’d be willing to suspend my disbelief for such a concept because it’s cool and I want to live in a world like that; but you’d have to really sell me on the idea that that’s what’s happening, or give some hints into how the mind actually interfaces with the machines at least, before I’d be able to fully buy into it.

What really stumps me more than anything though is the hologram stuff. Where the hell are they coming from? Why can holograms just show up from thin air and be moved around and manipulated like this? I don’t see any projectors anywhere, and I’m sure the characters aren’t just like projecting shit from their pores or something. It confuses me because it might kind of make sense if this was explained as something that the characters can do with their powers, but it just seems so weird and unlikely. Why are these hologram windows presented literally as browser tabs? Do we need browser controls for a computer that you operate with your MIND? And what’s more, if it really was all controlled with super-powers, then why does it seem to operate on a shared network, like the internet?

Believe it or not, I was able to come up with a couple of ideas that honestly would have justified some of these issues for me and gotten me to stop asking questions. Maybe the whole city is full of some kind of airborne particles which can be manipulated through technology, sort of like if the air itself was made up of pixels, and the computer system is able to wirelessly detect the pixels around them and project light onto them or something. It’s farfetched as fuck, but I came up with that idea in five seconds and it’s a better justification than nothing. Better yet, what if the superpower kids were able to just generate some kind of light using their powers, and the computer in their brain projects itself onto that light like a monitor, I don’t know. I’m trying so hard to justify this technology that I’m writing an entirely new story in my head–all because it hurts my brain to imagine that someone sat down and said “it’s the future and people can make computer windows with their mind,” and no one ever raised their hand and asked them, “how?”

I just can’t believe how totally uncreative this entire setting is. The story is set a hundred years in the future, and all that’s changed is that you can open google chrome on the go without having to bust out your phone? Why in the fuck does Ayato have to sign documents on PAPER?! Why are those kids who film the fight in the first episode HOLDING the HOLOGRAMS that you CONTROL WITH YOUR MIND?! Why do the characters sometimes sit in front of the screens like they’re computer monitors, when they can open and manipulate them anywhere?! THEY ONLY DID ONE THING WITH THE SETTING, AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN DO IT RIGHT!!

Then we’ve got the whole superpower thing, and I don’t even know what the fuck is going on with this. It seems like everyone’s basically got the super speed and super strength abilities, but the stuff they fight with is like some kind of energy material called prana. [Show a clip from Legend of Duo of someone saying “prana.”] The school has a bunch of prana-channeling weapons that they hand out on the basis of whether a student has a strong compatibility ratio with it, which seems like it was intended as a way for all of the characters to have different abilities. Make it so everyone’s got certain weapons that they’re compatible with, and–since it’s heavily suggested that the weapons have some kind of mind of their own–I won’t ask how that makes sense–we’ve basically got an Evangelion situation, where each user is intrinsically tied to their weapon. Nevermind that most of those weapons are just swords.

But then, there’s also apparently a market for weapons outside of the school, given that Saya’s father is a weapons developer. Saya even uses several of her father’s weapons, which seems reasonable–like, maybe he knows how to make weapons that would be compatible with her–but then what about the weapons that he’s trying to sell through her promotion? I’m not going to try to answer that because I’m already sure I’ve thought about this more than the writers. Moreover, certain characters seem to have their own unique abilities which aren’t related to their weapons, like Julis’ fireballs–so I guess you can also manipulate prana without the weapons?

I looked it up on the Asterisk War wiki, and apparently Julis is a Strega, which is a certain female-only kind of Genestella representing 1.8% of the race, which has an especially high ability to manipulate prana, and each of them has their own random unique abilities. I… I give up.

I’m just gonna state the obvious here: Asterisk City is just a really shitty version of Academy City from A Certain Magical Index. Academy City was the world’s most advanced city, consisting primarily of schools which were dedicated to developing the scientifically-enhanced super powers of its students. It had the same kind of power ranking systems, the same kind of pristinely beautiful city with a weirdly specific, teenager-based focus, and it featured a mixture of magic and technology. Specifically, it had certain characters whose powers were considered to be the result of science, living in a world of incredible technological advancements that usually made sense, and then an entire secretive and conflicting culture of magicians. The story and characters were a bunch of goofy light novel cliches, but the setting was actually kind of cool; because unlike the Asterisk War, Index actually managed to use its cyberpunk trappings for one of the purposes that makes the genre interesting: portraying a world of chaos.

One of the ideas behind many cyberpunk stories is that with the advancement of technology the differences between individuals and how they interact with one-another begin to lose coherence. People with power and technology at their disposal become increasingly alien, while the cultures below them bleed into one-another and get left behind by the shifting cultural tide. As information technology joins people on the conscious level, and the cultures of the physical world blend together, the entire world becomes a sort of chaotic, amorphous mess, where everyone’s sense of self and individuality is simultaneously pronounced, and made irrelevant. You can’t tell a robot from a human, but you can tell a rich man from a poor man–and so on and so forth.

Index doesn’t really comment on any of those things, but at least it gets the melting pot right. Every single character has some kind of totally unique set of powers and circumstances, and the series constantly goes out of its way to explain random pieces of technology and artifacts of magic in as much detail as it possibly can. It pushes together a seemingly infinite number of different ideas into this one location and forces them all to play off of one-another, while starring a main character whose own ability is seemingly unexplainable no matter which culture you ask. This setting is interesting because it’s cool to see all of these different ideas, and to imagine a world with such a chaotic kind of individuality between everyone inside of it. I also wrote a video about Durarara and how that show basically did the same thing.

Now, I’m not criticizing The Asterisk War for not being just like A Certain Magical Index, or for failing as a cyberpunk story. What I’m trying to show you is how all of the ideas which the series has for its setting–the dystopian society where everyone gets off on watching high-schoolers fight, the combination of magic and technology in a next-century world, the corporate cutthroat combat culture–all of these ideas are at ends with the actual presentation of the setting.

If you’re gonna make a show about a fucked-up, dystopic world, you don’t set it in a city that looks like a shining monument to positive human progress and fill it with characters who are all motivated by personal desires for achievement. It’s hard to believe that there’s anything wrong with this world when it looks like this, and when its characters act like this. The only reason it even registers with us as viewers that the Phoenix Festa is a bad thing is because in our culture, watching a bunch of teenagers kill each-other is wrong… well, when it’s happening in real life, anyways; and also because Julis keeps telling us that this city is driven by disgusting greed–even though she, herself, is driven by her own desire for money.

If you’re gonna set a series over one hundred years in the future, then its technological advancements need to make sense as the logical result of the human progress which has been going on for the previous three centuries. You can pretty easily do some research to learn what kind of technological advancements are expected to occur in the next hundred years–or even just copy the ideas from a bunch of other near-future sci-fi stories–with the goal creating a world that the audience could imagine being real one day. I don’t care how much the moral structure of society has changed, I don’t think anyone’s vision of the future is that everything will be exactly the same, except there’s illogical holographic monitors everywhere and the occasional android.

Lastly, if you’re going to make a story about kids with superpowers, then explain how those powers work in some depth, and make sure that the powers are interesting and individualized. As it stands, there was no reason to make it so everyone had superpowers in the first place–you could have just given everyone a different kind of sword and it would be exactly the same. Maybe come up with a better reasoning for why some kids can use different magic, other than that they’re the same as everyone else except stronger for no reason. And if you’re going out of your way to include both magic and technology into your story, then make some clear distinctions between them, so we feel like there’s a reason for the presence of both elements. As it stands, there was no reason to make it so everyone had weapons in the first place–you could have just given everyone a different kind of superpower and it would be exactly the same.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the Asterisk War has one of the most boring settings that I’ve ever seen in a sci-fi action series, as well as one of the least comprehensible. And it’s funny that I’m even talking about it, because I probably wouldn’t have noticed that much if I wasn’t writing this analysis. I was so busy being annoyed by all the cliched characters, the complete lack of relevant story content, and the baffling construction of scenes, that it took until I was on my second go-through of the series before I really considered how shitty the setting was. I haven’t even started to cover the stuff that REALLY bothers me. And you know what that means…

Continued in part seven.

Edited by The Davoo

It’s time that we address the elephant in the room–the elephant so large that none of us even realized it was standing over us at first; like that scene in that shitty Godzilla movie where the camera pans out and you realize they’re all standing in Godzilla’s footprint.

It’s time for us to look at Ayato Amagiri; yeah, that’s right, I actually learned his full name just for this. Ayato is quite possibly one of, if not THE single worst anime protagonist that I’ve ever seen.

I know, that sounds unbelievable. How, in a world with so many awful protagonists, can this guy be the worst? Well, to clarify, I’m not saying that he’s the most hateable or the worst fit for the story that he’s a part of–rather, I think that he is one of the most incoherently constructed anime characters that I’ve ever thought about. And worse yet, it’s not at all obvious.

At a glance, you could probably name a hundred characters whom Ayato reminds you of. He’s a ridiculously overpowered badass who solves everyone’s problems and gets all the girls, like Kirito and Onii-sama; and he’s a sexless virginal weirdo like 90% of all harem protagonists. But the thing about Ayato is that it’s not so much that he’s just like one of those other characters, as it is that he’s just like ALL of those other characters. Ayato Amagiri is a hideous frankenstein monster of anime protagonists so baffling in his construction that if the creators told me that he was meant to be a parody of the typical light novel protagonist, then I’d be inclined to believe them–and to congratulate them on a job well done. Allow me to examine the patchwork of this monstrosity.

Ayato’s baseline state of being is that he’s tired and bored. He sighs whenever he has to do anything or put up with anyone, and generally seems like he’d rather be taking a nap then doing whatever the show asks of him. This kind of attitude is pretty typical among Light Novel Guys, because it’s a part of the image that the viewer is supposed to project onto–this sort of hipster-y desire to not come off as a try-hard, so that whenever you do something badass, it looks like you did it with no effort and without even really giving a shit.

It’s possible to make a great character following this archetype–Yoshihiro Togashi seems to be a master of it. Yusuke Urameshi was a punk kid who just wanted to relax and take life at his own pace, but the world was constantly asking more of him; and what made him endearing was to watch him mature into someone who gave a shit about the world around him. He learned to become that guy by getting the shit kicked out of him constantly, even in the process of being a badass cool guy. Killua was a ludicrously powerful amoral assassin kid who couldn’t give a shit about anyone except for his friend Gon–but the push and pull of realizing what kind of hardships come with caring about someone brought all sorts of emotions out of him.

Of course, in both of these examples, Togashi came at the characters from the perspective of an older person who can see through all the bullshit that teenagers project about themselves, and both criticize that attitude as well as show how those kids can grow up. The Asterisk War feels like it was actually written by a teenager with no self-awareness, writing a character who somehow manages to be the nicest, most helpful, most powerful, best guy ever, while still maintaining that standoffish, too-cool-to-get-involved attitude most of the time.

Now, if you’ve been watching this show, then describing Ayato as I just have may seem like a mischaracterization. This is a guy whose primary motivation is that he’s searching for a purpose in life; and who finds that purpose in deciding to protect his friend. He leaps into battle for his friends without hesitation and is so dedicated to helping people that he jumped into a girl’s window just to return her dropped handkerchief. He doesn’t seem at all like the standoffish, too cool to care type of guy… right? Well, that’s the issue. He’s not.

For the most part, Ayato’s personality is more akin to a typical shounen protagonist. He’s the type of guy who’s spent most of his life having a strong sense of morality drilled into his head by his older sister. He can’t help himself but to step in and help people with their problems without a second thought, no matter how minor those problems may be. He’s driven by a quest for purpose, and is inspired by the purpose that he sees in the people around him. Everything about his upbringing and personality suggests a person who sees helping others as a part of who he is.

So why is he so bored all the time? Why does he seem to find people so hard to deal with? If he’s all about helping people, then why does helping people seem like such a hassle to him?

This kind of dichotomy is present in a lot of light novel protagonists. Touma from Index is always presented as someone who considers it a hassle to deal with people; but in the end he can’t stand to see them in trouble, so his morals end up tugging at him until he jumps in to help. Kirito was always presented as this sort of amoral misanthrope who didn’t want to help people because he can’t stand the pain of losing them; but for one reason or another he’d end up caring about people and fighting for them.

But with these characters, we at least understood that their morality is some kind of struggle which doesn’t come innately to them. Each of these characters would rather be doing something else, but they get dragged into these situations by circumstance. Ayato is presented as though the same thing is true for him as well, but his personality and goals are totally at ends with that. His main motivation literally is to protect people, and nothing about him would suggest that he’s anything less than a kindhearted, morally upstanding person–except for that fact that it also seems like doing anything is a huge pain in the ass to him.

That’s what I mean when I say that Ayato is a frankenstein monster of light novel characters. He is somehow at once the big, valiant hero who wants to fight for a purpose and protect the people he cares about, while also being the jaded asshole who’d rather do anything other than fight or care.

Another thing which Ayato has in common with his genre contemporaries is that he’s ludicrously overpowered in comparison to everyone else in the show. We’re not just talking about a guy who wins every fight that he gets into–we’re talking about a guy who completely overwhelms most of his opponents–many of whom are established as the most powerful fighters in the city–even with severe limitations holding him back.

In Ayato’s introductory scene, he makes the fifth-strongest fighter at his school look like a chump, by easily deflecting all of her attacks and then saving her from an assassin. In episode four, said fighter is pinned by another student whom, by the show’s logic, ought to have been much weaker than her, but nevermind that; Ayato shows up and defeats him without taking a scratch, and spends the entire battle carrying Julis in one of his arms. Yeah, that shit happens. In episode five, he loses to the most powerful fighter in the school because he gets distracted and forgets the rules of battle; so in episode seven he defeats her and takes her place as the number one. At least that fight seemed like it took a little bit of effort–but at this point, Ayato is proven both the strongest fighter at his school, and, by that logic, probably one of the top ten fighters in the city.

Bear in mind that all of this is Ayato’s baseline power level. This guy hasn’t spent any time beefing up or training or anything–no one at this school was competition for him in the first place. In episode two he tames the most powerful weapon that the school possesses without breaking a sweat. In preparation for the Festa, it seems more like he’s training Julis to try and catch up to him, more so than actually training himself to get better.

But Ayato’s power does come with a catch, as we learn in episode four. Apparently, his older sister has put some kind of curse on him that limits his supposedly uncontrollable powers; and when he goes too far beyond those limits, then it causes him to crash in a painful burst. Allow me to detail all of the reasons that this is the worst excuse for a power limitation I’ve ever heard.

1. Ayato doesn’t even lose control of his powers when unleashing them. It’s possible that maybe his sister had intended to remove these limitations once he was old enough to master his powers; but either way, there is currently no consequence for using them.
2. The problem that comes from using this power only appears after it’s already been used. Ayato can potentially defeat any opponent using this power, and it will only affect him once the battle is over, at an indeterminate time.
3. The very first time that we’re introduced to this limitation is after Ayato has already exceeded it. He says that he’s never been able to use the power for as long as he did in that first battle, meaning that the limitation is flexible and can be broken to fit the situation.
4. Likewise, the source of power is so ill-defined that it could potentially grow infinitely. We have no reason to believe that Ayato can’t just continually unleash more and more power to match the situation based on how motivated he is or whatever.

Ayato’s limitation barely even qualifies as a limitation; if anything, it seems to suggest that he can be as powerful as he needs to be at any given time, so he’ll always be able to turn the tide in any battle with the odds against him. Moreover, he barely even needs this power in the first place to conquer most of his opponents. It would be laughable to consider that Ayato may ever be in danger during any of his encounters unless he had to fight someone with the same powers that he has–and even then, it’s hard to imagine that anyone relevant will ever be in danger in this show.

Now, I don’t doubt that these limitations are going to come into play in future battles to try and add to the tension–in fact, I’ve read some spoilers, so I know that to be true–and by the time this video comes out, it will probably already be true in the anime. My point is more that this is how Ayato is established–as someone so much more powerful than everyone else that even his limitations are suggestive of even larger capabilities. And going by the spoilers I’ve read, his power level is only going to get even more utterly insane as the series continues. This character takes the wish-fulfillment aspects of the light novel protagonist to a far-away extreme–which is why he only gets weirder when we start looking at his sex life.

There seems to be a trend in light novels lately of filling the main character’s harem with girls who would otherwise be the strongest characters in the story, if not for the main guy. The wish fulfillment aspect of this is obvious–you get to date all of the hottest, coolest, most powerful women around, while still outdoing all of them and keeping your position as an alpha dude. At the end of the day, when the chips are down, you get to swoop in and save the girls like the big hero that you are, but you don’t have to feel bad about being attracted to a damsel in distress, because she could totally kick anyone’s ass on a good day. It’s all about striking that balance between having so-called “strong female characters,” while also promoting the male power fantasy that young guys who watch this stuff are looking for.

Naturally, all of the relevant female characters are attracted to Ayato–in this case, usually for no reason whatsoever. It’s almost creepy the way this show just takes for granted that any woman with a speaking role would have to be a part of the main character’s harem without even really convincing us of why any of them would care about him beforehand. Nevertheless, you could reasonably make the case for why these girls might fall for him–and given the type of show that this is, it would hardly be shocking that they do; but that’s not the part that makes him weird.

The weird part, rather, is how Ayato keeps his distance from these girls. Once again, it’s something that the show takes for granted because it’s a common trope in anime that the main characters remain virginal weirdos for the majority of the series; but the way that this show presents this aspect of the relationships is what makes it come across as strange. To explain what I mean, I present this scene from the start of episode three.

Claudia calls Ayato up to her room in the middle of the night, and deliberately times it so that she’s just gotten out of the shower when he enters. After several minutes of Claudia showing off her body and Ayato clearly checking her out, Claudia outright comes onto him, basically propositioning him for sex and placing his hand on her breast. Ayato… runs away.

Now, I am not going to deny the possibility that perhaps Ayato is uncomfortable with the idea of sex, or even that he’s just not ready for that kind of contact. I’m not necessarily saying that any of this behavior is unreasonable, or even that it’s out of character. I just don’t quite get it.

Ayato is an unstoppably badass fighter. He’s confident, somewhat outgoing, and has no trouble talking to people he’s never met, including women. He’s not awkward in the slightest for the most part, and he seems to get along with all of the girls just fine. He’s clearly attracted to all of them, and gets flustered when he sees them naked–but it seems like he gets that way out of something like a moral obligation; like, when he catches them undressed or soaking wet, he feels bad that he saw them in a compromising way without their permission.

But then we come to this scene, where Claudia is clearly coming onto him and basically asking him to do something. Even if Ayato wasn’t interested in doing anything with her, it would’ve been reasonable to at least say something or to talk about it–but instead he just runs away all flustered, like he saw something he shouldn’t have. If I were Claudia, I’d probably feel insulted after this guy just checked me out for three minutes and then took off without saying a word. I’ve thought long and hard about why the character would be written this way, and I think I kind of understand.

See, when I was thirteen–a time during which I probably would’ve enjoyed a show like this–I was old enough to know that I found women attractive, but I hadn’t quite yet gotten my head around the concept of sex. I still felt like it was some sort of adult thing that I wasn’t supposed to know about, even as I vaguely understood that it was something which I wanted. Since that was the age I was when I first got big into anime, I can actually remember things like how I was always afraid to buy anime with full frontal nudity in it because I was ashamed of it, even though I was always checking out the cute girls in the shows that I did watch. Around that time when I was acclimating to the idea of sexuality, I think I would’ve totally been into a show like this where the sexual content is evident, yet kind of immature and childish. I might not have been able to relate to a hero who actually had sex, but I could project myself onto one who was surrounded by it.

It’s because of that experience that I understand why Ayato ran away from Claudia’s sexual advancements. It really has nothing to do with what makes sense for the characters, and everything to do with what works for the audience. The kind of kid who looks for the sort of wish fulfillment that this show provides is probably pretty young, and probably a virgin. In spite of their desire to be an all-powerful badass and the object of affection for a bunch beautiful women, the idea of what they’d actually do in a moment of intimacy is still alien to them.

What makes this particular scene so weird, though, is that something like this even happened in this way in a show of this nature. Sure, harem characters find themselves in sexual situations all the time, but there’s usually some kind of reason–however stupid–for why the situation doesn’t amount to anything. Usually, it’s because the girl is embarrassed. Sometimes, it’s because the guy is outright not interested in the girl, or because her personality is really extreme and the situation has gotten out of hand. Sometimes, there’s like a rule in place that prohibits the characters from going any further. Sometimes, there’s one girl that the main character is most attracted to or otherwise has to answer to, or he likes all of the girls and is afraid of choosing one of them.

This scene with Ayato running from Claudia doesn’t have any logical thread to it. Ayato hasn’t shown any affection for any of the girls yet; and as far as we know, he’s not particularly interested in any one of them over the others. There isn’t any circumstance for why he wouldn’t be able to do anything with her, and it even seems like he’s attracted to her physically. Her personality isn’t very extreme, and she certainly isn’t embarrassed about it–so what is he running from?

Again, I’m not saying that it’s totally unreasonable to make this a part of his character; but what I got out of this scene was not that Amagiri Ayato is afraid of sex. What I got out of it is that this is what’s expected to happen in a harem show. It’s been so normalized that the fanservice scenes in a series like this won’t lead to anything that we’re not even expected to question it when the main character runs out on a sexual advance. It’s just how these things work.

Once again, this is what I mean when I say that Ayato is a frankenstein monster of generic anime protagonists. His character isn’t constructed in a way that logically fits together; he’s just a random combination of everything that these kinds of characters are known for. He’s a cosmic badass, but he’s also a shy virgin. He’s the nicest person in the world, but he’s too cool to care about anything. He’s all of the wish fulfillment tropes that every other character embodies, all rolled up into one guy that no one can actually relate to. Even Kirito–a character that I’ve been ragging on constantly for the past year and a half–was consistent enough to help out only when he felt like had to, and to have sex with the girl who climbed into his bed. This Ayato guy is so confusing that I can’t even imagine what he’d be like if I threw him into another situation. Would he run away from Julis if she came onto him like that? I honestly have no idea.

There’s a line in episode three where Julis says to Ayato, “you’re unfathomable, aren’t you?” –and I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I would honestly be willing to accept that to some extent, Ayato was designed to be that way. For being the main character of the story, the show tries its damndest to make him seem mysterious, and to disclose as little as it can about his past–though it kind of does that with everyone. Enough of the characters seem to regard him as something different that I can’t help wondering if he’s supposed to just be this huge weirdo. I’m a lot more inclined to believe that he’s meant to be someone for young guys who are both morally upright but also want to be seen as giant badasses to project themselves onto; but this is one character who’s managed to stump me so hard that I’m willing to listen to some creative intent if I can get it.

Of course, even if I did accept that Ayato’s weirdness was intentional, it wouldn’t stop him from being totally unlikable, or make this show any less of a slog to watch. I’ve still got plenty of little details to dissect about the coming episodes, so the videos must go on!

Continued in part eight.

Edited by The Davoo

Alrighty; at this point, I think we’ve all got a pretty firm grasp on the broad strokes of what’s wrong with this show, as well as a lot of its typical methods of fucking up. Generic and boring characters, a nonsensical setting and worthless storyline, badly directed fight scenes full of weak effects animation, and the worst versions of any tropes that it tosses into the mix; but I don’t think it’s fair for us to simply call it here, because The Asterisk War is kinda worse than that. Another way of putting it is that most of what we’ve covered so far were probably issues with the source material just as much as with its adaptation, and were things which could’ve been a problem with any number of shows.

What I’d like to get into now is more of the issues that I have with the way that this series was adapted, focusing most strongly on its lack of attention to detail. After all, this is a huge part of the problem I that have with this studio in particular–the way that so many of their shows seem to have so little thought put into their presentation, leaving us with a product that would probably have looked better in our imaginations while reading a book.

After some recap footage at the start of episode three, which they hope you won’t mind as long as there’s a couple new angles on Claudia’s naked body, Claudia explains to Ayato how Seidoukan academy basically follows Kill la Kill rules; the higher a fighter’s rank, the more spacious their accommodations. It doesn’t seem like this counts for much, though, because it’s not like the weaker students are living in the slums–the entire city is pristine and beautiful. We never get more than a glimpse of what Ayato’s room looks like as a new student anyways, and at worst it seems like he just shares a college dorm-style room with Classmate Guy. Big deal.

Claudia launches into some boring exposition about how the dumbass student council is only just now realizing that the four students who have already been attacked and had to bow out of the Festa were probably connected. I guess I can’t blame them for failing to realize the importance of these events, considering that they happened to four perfectly generic students. If I were picturing this scene in my head, I’d probably have gone with some people who actually look like they could compete in the Festa; but what do I know about character design?

Funnily enough, this scene actually does try to use its details to set us up for guessing who the assailant is. We find out that Big Dumb Guy and one of his lackeys are suspected in the case, but the other lackey is conspicuously not implicated. The only reason it doesn’t work is that who the fuck cares? These dudes have been on screen like once so far and left no impact whatsoever. You could hardly be expected to have remembered that these characters existed if you were watching this show weekly and this scene came up. Besides, this is the first time that we’ve spent more than twenty seconds even addressing the whole assault subplot–so you may as well have forgotten about that, too. The first time I watched these four episodes, I would never have imagined that this was actually the central plot of the entire arc.

So after Ayato pussies out on getting some pussy, we finally cut to the start of his date with Julis to show him around the town. I feel I should mention right now that Saya will not make any appearance in this episode or the next; so it was super necessary to spend the majority of the last episode on her introduction instead of fleshing out this whole assassination plot more.

Julis shows up in this white gown with a yellow trim, which I actually think is pretty damn cute–but what the hell is up with the parasol? Does Julis really seem like the kind of girl who’d carry a thing like that around all day just to match her outfit? I know they’re trying to do that thing where she’s actually got a secret girly side in contrast with her confrontational nature, but I can’t help finding this a little bit excessive.

I’m also wondering what season it’s supposed to be here. Julis has on long sleeves and stockings, which would make it seem maybe a bit chilly; but the bright sunlight and the parasol would imply that it’s pretty hot outside. Ayato is wearing a short-sleeve button-up over a baseball-cut shirt, which could pretty much mean any weather; and all of the pedestrians are dressed at random. I know this sounds like a particularly pedantic complaint, but if there’s one thing that most anime do exceptionally well, even in less-detailed productions, it’s making sure to dress their characters for the season. It’s almost weirdly prevalent.

It’s kind of depressing how little effort the anime staff put into making Asterisk City feel like a unique location. I’ve mentioned before how after showing the main stage where all the Festas take place, Julis talks about how the city is full of little stages; but we never see any of them. If people are constantly fighting in the streets like Julis says they are, then it seems like the obvious way to handle this tour would’ve been to have fights breaking out all over the place as they walked around town–or at least to show some in the background. Hell, I’d accept a little montage of panning shots of some of the other stages; anything other than mentioning the only thing that sets this city apart and then failing to show it.

The one pervasive detail throughout this scene is the use of holographic billboards, which were shown in the cityscape shots of the first episode as well; and which feature a hodgepodge of text in different languages. I get that this is supposed to evoke how all of the world’s countries have fused into one, but it’s such an uncreative representation of that concept. Apparently, none of the world’s cultures or languages have been changed at all in the past hundred years of cataclysm and restructuring, nor has the way that they advertise in the big city. Having spent a month in the Manila metropolitan area, I can tell you that a lot of big cities have billboards in many different languages already anyways–and a hell of a lot more of them then what’s present here.

I noticed in one shot there’s like a holographic stop sign that says “stop” in both Japanese and in English, but the way it’s laid out is weird as hell. The Japanese characters say “to ma re” in hiragana, which means “stop,” but then at the bottom is also the kanji for “to.” I looked up what Japanese stop signs look like, and they’ve all got that kanji as the “to” in “tomare,” so I’m not sure why this sign includes both the hiragana at the top and the kanji at the bottom. I know this doesn’t really matter, but the point I’m making is that even the details which they did include don’t seem to make a lot of sense or add anything to the setting. I don’t even want to imagine how this complicated-ass stoplight is supposed to make more sense than the ones we already have.

Our duo stops for a bite at WcDonald’s and orders a WcDouble Dose of Cliches. First of all, WcDonald’s is one of the most commonly-used parody names for a major business in anime, and it barely even makes sense in this context where McDonald’s should probably either be out of business, or changed into something radically different by this point. Secondly, the whole joke about how rich girls are fascinated with fast food has gotten old. It was funny when K-On did it six years ago, but the returns have rapidly diminished. I’m willing to give the show some credit for this not being Julis’ first time at a fast food place, and for her criticizing Ayato’s assumption that princesses wouldn’t be into fast food, but I don’t think being a little tongue in cheek about it alleviates the fact that I’ve been here a number of times by now.

Ayato broaches the topic of the attacks on Juils’ life, and she responds essentially that she will not allow herself to give in to terrorism. She then starts prattling on about how she’s going to forge her own path and about how her will belongs to her alone, and it’s at this point that I feel the need to dive into this show’s confusing politics.

Looking at the broad strokes of what Asterisk City stands for, it seems to operate under a sort of hardcore capitalist mindset. The idea is that your quality of life will be determined by your functionality in society. The strongest fighters get the biggest houses and the chance at untold wealth, and they’re handed this power by the corporations that run the place. Any semblance of government that exists on this island seems to be operated by those corporations; and everyone who lives there does so by deciding to work within this system to achieve their goals.

Julis seems to be intended to function as the viewer’s moral compass through which to navigate this city’s way of life–but trying to follow her line of thinking has gotten me lost.

Near as I can tell, Julis has a pretty capitalist mindset herself, with a hard dose of libertarian ideals sprinkled on for good measure. She doesn’t want the government–i.e. the school–interfering with her business, and she holds her own autonomy in very high regard. She comes to this island in the hopes of fulfilling her personal goal, which is to make a lot of money and put it into the orphanage that her friends come from; and to accomplish this, she’s fought in countless battles and maintained a stubborn pride about her status.

And yet, in spite of the fact that Julis has chosen to operate within this capitalist system and to harbor a capitalist mindset, she apparently hates this city and considers it a greedy hive of scum and villainy. She criticizes the fact that money is what drives society, and seems upset that the greedy people of this world aren’t, say, putting money into that orphanage; even though she herself seems to have a libertarian, fight-my-own-battles-myself mindset.

It’s a little confusing when a character denounces money in one sentence, and then says that she’s fighting for money in the next; and talks about how she’s the master of her own destiny, while also lamenting that the world doesn’t seem to care about impoverished people. If this show were smart enough to recognize this duality and to paint to her as like a hardcore socialist who feels that she has no other way to fight but then to do so within this capitalist system, then maybe she could be made interesting; but honestly, it would take a lot of effort.

Luckily, there was another show that put in such an effort, and it was called Kill la Kill. In that show, one of the main characters created a hardcore Randian objectivist society wherein the living conditions of the populace were REALLY determined by the fighting capabilities of teenagers; and where she was trying to raise a team of elite fighters using the same system as the force which she was attempting to rebel against. In the end she realized the flaws in her ideology, and how you can’t be anti-something while also embodying that something, and joins the side of a sort of a non-partisan coalition of the people. It’s a good show, go watch it.

So anyways, there’s a really poorly animated scene where they argue with the big dude–his name is Lester, by the way–and then some flirting, Julis calls Ayato unfathomable, and then they stumble upon this fight in the woods. Apparently the idea here is that these guys are pretending to fight so that they can surround their target and then attack, but it doesn’t look like that’s what happens at all. This is one of those things that probably made sense in the light novels where you could try to imagine how it works in your head, but the adaptation does such a shitty job of presenting it that the entire idea looks stupid; not that it matters, because Julis destroys them all in one second off-screen. Again, I’m left to wonder why these rival schools keep hiring assassins with such comparatively pathetic power levels.

After Julis interrogates this mohawk guy for a second, the guy spots the person who hired him sulking around in the woods, and Julis recklessly runs in after him. For someone who was able to identify that she was being lead into a trap mere moments earlier, you’d think she’d give some pause to consider why the enemy might lead her into a dark, wooded area–but nope, she goes off Naruto-running into the woods without a second thought.

So Julis invites Ayato into her room later that night, and she tells him very matter-of-factly to remove his clothes. It takes her a moment to realize why he’s flustered at this, and she tells him to get his head out of the gutter. Apparently in her mind it’s totally reasonable that if someone invited you into their room at night and told you to take your clothes off without any given reason as to their intent, you would assume that they wanted to stitch up the holes in your shirt and not that they wanted to see you naked. This is a conversation between characters whom we are meant to believe are human beings.

It turns out that Julis is adept at sewing, which is yet another attempt to show off her secret girly side–a trope which seems to be coming into common practice, thinking back to how Asuna turned out to be a great cook in Sword Art Online. I must admit I’m a little… torn over this type of characterization. On the one hand, I’m all for the idea of girl characters who can be tough and cool and not have to fit into feminine stereotypes, yet also don’t have to reject the idea of femininity altogether and can have decidedly effeminate hobbies. On the other hand, I know that the real intention here is to make her seem like better wife material. It’s a “defrosting the ice queen” scenario, where the main character’s reward for being such a good guy and getting past the girl’s thorny outer layer is that he gets to see the cute, girly side that she reserves for those closest to her. This is one of those weird scenarios where I feel like I could enjoy the character and their personality on their own; but in the context of being a character in a show of this nature and knowing why they’ve been written this way, it only comes off as annoying.

So while Julis is sewing up, Ayato looks around and spots this picture of her with her friends. Now, tell me: was I the only one who immediately thought the instant I saw this picture for the first time that the girl who’s on her left is obviously going to show up later and be a major character? You know, on account of her being the only one who doesn’t have one of the generic hair colors? Now in fairness, at this point I didn’t know about Kirin yet, so I thought that this girl was probably going to be the purple-haired girl from the ending theme–but nonetheless, I’ve seen it labelled as a spoiler somewhere that one of her childhood friends was going to show up later in the series; guys, it’s not hard to tell that anyone with a second’s worth of thought put into their design is going to be important later.

I’ve already talked about Julis’ motivations, backstory, and confusing ideals, so we’ll just skip over all that stuff and head for the end of the episode. Julis gets a letter of challenge from her assailant and Naruto-runs directly into an obvious death-trap, and Ayato jumps off a building; the end.

So episode four starts with Julis arriving at the worst-looking building in the city, and, plot twist, the henchman guy was actually the bad guy. Revealing his true face causes his entire head to transform and grow larger, somehow making him even more generic than before. It turns out that Julis had discovered who the attacker was based on his dialog from episode three; but since her conjecture was based on information that we didn’t have, we probably would’ve never figured this out ourselves. They could’ve probably set this up in such a way that we really end up suspecting this dude if they’d given him like one minute of screen time by now, but as it stands his reveal is greeted with a sort of ineffectual, “oh. really now.”

So this suddenly over-the-top evil guy reveals that his plan is to have Julis back out of the Festa by targeting Ayato. Hearing this, I would’ve assumed that he meant that he had like a sniper with a bead on Ayato right now; but Julis responds that, “all I have to do is stop you right here.” And, uh… I guess she’s right? Like, what was his plan exactly if it came to this–just to fight her and win? In that case, couldn’t he have just done that any time? He seems to think he could beat Ayato too, so back there in the forest, why didn’t he just wipe them both out?

Oh, and Lester is here somehow. Where did he come from? Apparently he was told that Julis had accepted his duel; so was the plan here to have Lester and Julis fight? Then why did Silas reveal himself? If he planned to reveal himself, why did he invite Lester? Apparently it was because he intends to frame Lester for taking out Julis. So why did he invite him to come before Julis would be dead? Is he confident he can take out both of them? This is getting weird.

So it turns out that the perfectly generic cloaked dudes who attacked Julis were actually some robot things that Silas controls. I guess their, uh, skin was attached to those robes or something.

A big dumb fight scene breaks out, and Silas summons 128 robots. I only counted around eighty at most, but who cares. Lester gets shitcanned by a bunch of robots, and then Julis blows them all away with a big fire dragon. She then fights some off with her sword, but gets caught by one and trapped by a bunch of gunners–so she brings her dragon back around and tries to use it as a shield. So this dragon attack is still active, but instead of using it to just mow down all of the attacking robots like she did five seconds ago, she tries to use it as a shield, which doesn’t even slightly work. Surely she ought to know better.

Because of a tiny flesh wound on her thigh, Julis is then easily immobilized by way of a couple of the robots which she was just taking out with attacks such as a kick to the face, grabbing her by the arms and pinning her against a pillar. In another reveal that means nothing to the audience, Julis figures out which school this guy is working for, which sets up that we’ll need to look out for that school’s name from now on. Just, you know, not for the entire next arc.

Ayato finally makes his showstopping entrance, easily laying waste to the robots which grabbed Julis and then carrying her up through a hole in the ceiling. Please keep in mind that not only did all of the robots descend from this hole in the first place, but that we’re going to see them all jump back up through it in a bit–and yet, for some reason, Julis and Ayato are able to carry out an entire minute of conversation in the time that it takes for Silas to pursue them up through the hole. He even asks, “are you done talking?” as if he was giving them breathing room on purpose.

Ayato releases his savage force, and then another big stupid fight breaks out. At some random point amid all the chaos, Ayato determines that there’s apparently 6 types of robots which can be active at once, and that only 16 units out of those are able to move at a time; which apparently is Silas attempting to evoke chess; like, in literally no fashion whatsoever besides how many types of pieces there are and how many of them can move. Is Silas even evoking chess deliberately, because that seems like it’s more of a limitation than an intentional pattern of attack.

And of course, absolutely none of what Ayato says is communicated visually at all. If they wanted to clue the viewer into the idea that there were six different robot types, they probably shouldn’t have segmented them distinctly into eight platoons. After all, the rules of chess are not that there’s eight types of pieces, but you can only move six of them at a time. There’s also nothing about moving all sixteen pieces at once. And, you know, nothing about it resembles this at all.

Let’s just pretend we slept through the rest of this fight–oh hey! It’s the orange wings from the cover art that we talked about in part one! Except, totally different-looking! Cool! Ayato gets a big headache, and him and julis hook up on the backdrop of pretty colors, and Claudia turns out to have heterochromia and says some mysterious stuff, and Classmate Guy is there, and that’s it! That’s the end! I’m done! The first arc is over! I can move on and talk about new things! Like… the second arc! Or the third arc! Hell, the whole first season is done already! Did you know they’re making a second one? Yeah man, we’ve still got all kinds of work to do! I can talk about that other show that’s just like this one; or we can look at some other A1 shows. The Perfect Insider just wrapped up and I haven’t even watched that yet. The future is full of so much potential!

Continued in part nine.

OH WAIT I FORGOT ABOUT THE NEXT EPISODE PREVIEWS, OH MY GOD THEY’RE SO WEIRD, WHY WOULD THEY MAKE HER LOOK LIKE THAT, JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING, WHY WOULD ANYONE THINK THIS WAS OKAY?!

Lately, the subject of my feelings towards A-1 Pictures has been coming up constantly in response to my videos, and has been the subject of a lot of argument and misinterpretation. The upcoming 9th part of the Asterisk War Sucks series is almost entirely about my problems with the studio in general–but it doesn’t really dive into how I came to the conclusions that I did about the studio. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that I hate A-1 shows just because they’re A-1 shows, which is weird and ridiculous–why the hell would I just decide I don’t like a studio? My hatred for A-1 comes as a result of not liking their output, and my feelings towards them have come from the long and winding process of watching them develop over the last eight years or so. As such, I think it’ll help for the sake of argument, and for the sake of people not asking me the same questions over and over again, if I just detail my history with the studio in full.

I first heard about A-1 Pictures in 2008, around the time that the first season of Birdy the Mighty Decode came out. I enjoyed that show well enough and watched it all the way through, though I never got around to season 2 in 2009 (but I still want to, and I’ve seen tons of gifs from its fight scenes). I never got around to Big Windup, tho from what I’ve heard/seen of ep 2, it’s really good; and Kuroshitsuji didn’t seem like my thing.

When I started taking interest in the studio was around the time Kannagi came out. I didn’t actually watch more than 1 ep of it, but there was a lot of hoopla over the fact that it was directed by Yutaka Yamamoto (Yamakan) after he’d been fired from Kyoto Animation after directing the first 4 episodes of Lucky Star. A lot of ado was made over how Kannagi looked like a KyoAni show in it’s designs, at a time when those kind of designs were just coming into prominence and becoming controversial. Somewhere around this time is also when Yamakan founded his studio Ordet, and Ordet and A-1 were often collaborating together, so there was a lot of intrigue around what kind of stuff they’d produce.

I skipped out on Valkyria Chronicles and Fairy Tail, but I actually came to be a *fan* of A-1 Pictures in 2010 when they ran their Power of Anime block. Sora no Woto was my favorite show of the year–one of my favorites of all time–and was a really cool original series. They then put out Occult Academy, which was a show that was totally all over the place but ultimately interesting, and Night Raid 1931, which started strong, got really boring, and ended pretty poorly; and I think Night Raid is probably the most representative of what my problems with this studio would eventually be. 2010 also saw the first A-1 and Ordet collaboration on the movie Welcome to the Space Show, which I really loved.

In-between those shows, they started Working!!, which had intrigued me with its premise and characters, but I felt like the comedic timing was always a bit off, and the jokes got stale very, very quickly. I actually picked up the manga and enjoyed it a lot more than the anime, and was reading it along with its scanslations; and I ended up watching the rest of the anime with my brother and not really liking it. We watched all of season 2 together as well, and I didn’t really like that either. By the way, if you want documentation of my feelings on ALL of these shows at the times that they were airing, I blogged about all of them on this very site. The search bar is your friend; the writing probably sucks, tho.

Where things started going downhill with A-1 for me was on their next collab with Ordet on the Yamakan-directed Fractale. Fractale was yet another show with a very strong start and some really flashy visuals, which very quickly became a roller coaster of quality that took a nose dive by the end into complete shit. At this point, all of the A-1 original series had been inconsistent in this way. Even Sora no Woto, which I loved, was kind of all over the place and a little rough around the edges; but between Occult Academy, Night Raid, and Fractale, it felt like everything the studio did was a huge mess.

Right after that, they put out Anohana, which eventually would become crazy popular, but wasn’t really all that hyped at the time. I’d seen the first episode and loved it, and I was already a fan of Tatsuyuki Nagai and Mari Okada (the duo that did Toradora and is now doing Iron-Blooded Orphans), but I never got around to continuing. A few of my friends who had also been excited at the start told me that it really fell apart and got lame in the end, and from what they described of the plot, it seemed like something I’d really hate, so I decided not to bother finishing it.

Blue Exorcist was a case where I’d been really into the manga, and had read the first three volumes, but I absolutely hated the way that the anime handled it when I watched the first episode. It was totally visually unappealing, and didn’t match the great style of the manga, which I’d really wanted to get an adaptation from BONES. I didn’t really attribute the failure to A-1 in particular, as I still didn’t have a total ire for the studio yet, but in retrospect it’s one more thing that pissed me off.

The Idolmaster was the next A-1 thing that made a big splash, and to me was the thing that was most indicative of the style the studio was going for–putting lots of flashy, very modern-looking animation into shows about cute girls (which until this point, were typically not very well-produced if they weren’t from KyoAni) and marketing the fuck out of them. I watched like seven eps of Idolmaster and it seemed like it was always middling between “okay” and “not very good” so I lost interest. Again, I heard from people who did finish it that it kind of fell apart in the long run.

Space Brothers was one where I only watched 1 ep, and it seemed like it was a bit too slow and a bit too ugly for me to take interest–and like something where the manga was probably better (which fans of it seemed to be saying). My brother watched like 25 eps of it and got tired of it for reasons that sounded like they’d annoy me, so I didn’t bother.

Tsuritama, which I actually never finished, was the last A-1 show that I was pretty into and excited about. I’m generally a big fan of the director and I was really into the feel-good tone of the series. I did think that the visuals were kind of wonky, and not as interesting and experimental as the director’s other work, but it was nonetheless a fun and unique series.

So then we have Sword Art Online. At the time the first 2 eps came out, me and my brother had pretty high expectations for it as an MMO anime that actually had action scenes and drama in it; but after 7 episodes I totally lost interest and stopped watching.

Meanwhile, I hated the first episode of Shin Sekai Yori and dropped it immediately–and since this was around the time that I stopped watching a lot of anime for about a year and a half and focused on other things, I didn’t really hear about the hype for the series until long after it was over. Keep in mind, though, that at this point, I still considered A-1 to be a pretty decent anime studio in general.

I never got around to Magi, Servant X Service, Vividread Operation, or any of their other 2013 output, since I wasn’t watching anime at the time, and I’ve never heard any strong recommendations for them from people whom I generally trust. I wouldn’t see any more A-1 shows while they were airing until Nanana’s Buried Treasure in 2014.

Now, keep in mind that Nanana’s Buried Treasure was coming out right when I was getting back into anime, and started making anime videos on my channel. At the time, I had become aware of a massive amount of hype surrounding Sword Art Online, and people started asking for my opinion of the series constantly. Now, at the time it had been airing, my brother had made it 18 eps into the series and thought it was a complete piece of garbage, and had been complaining about it ever since. Early in 2014, my girlfriend T the time had discovered the series and totally loved it, and when I tried to explain to her why I’d dropped it years earlier, she didn’t really get it. Ergo, a few months later, after we’d broken up and a million people had asked my thoughts on the show, I thought fuck it, I’m gonna watch the damn thing and figure out how to put what I feel into words. I ended up hating it way, way, way more than I expected to, and then made a bunch of videos about iT that got really popular and sort of put me on the map. You’ll notice, though, that even in my SAO videos, I don’t really spend a lot of time talking about the studio behind it–I mostly rag on the original writer. It’s only soon after that I really started growing in ire for A-1.

I tried out Silver Spoon around this time, but I wasn’t really into it–in part cause I don’t care for the subject matter or the ethos of the show, and in part cause it was pretty boring. I’m sure this show is probably not all that bad, but it’s really not my thing.

Nanana’s Buried Treasure was the show that finally made me realize I had a problem with the studio, because once again, it was a show that started out really strong, and I was into it, but then I thought it turned to complete shit by the end. You can see my vlogs chronicling this on Digi Does Anime, and in the last one I think I even state how I’ve realized that every A-1 show seems to start off promising, and turn to shit by the end.

Up next was Aldnoah.Zero, which I was pretty disgusted with by the end of ep 2 and dropped. It was all flash and no substance, with a terrible script and plot holes right out of the gate. When the hype train for that show very quickly became a hate train as it went along, with guys like Demolition D and Anime Addicts ripping it apart, I wasn’t surprised, and I started to feel like A-1 was just a studio that made really flashy, tacky shows without any kind of writing chops to back them up.

I sampled an ep and a half of World Conquest Zvezda Plot and wasn’t into it, though I’ve heard good things and still want to give it another try. I sampled an ep of Galileo Donna and wasn’t into it, and everyone seems to agree it’s a pile of shit, so I didn’t bother.

Your Lie In April was one where my friends and I were sampling opening episodes of shows that season, and I found the first episode infuriatingly trite and boring. I really am not into the whole genre of mopey teen drama, and I felt like the visuals were actually pretty mediocre, but had been covered in tons of flashy colors and filters to make them look appealing. A lot of the reviews I saw for the series later corroborated this, and nothing I heard of the show’s praise sounded like anything I’d enjoy, so I didn’t go back to it.

Around this time is also when I started making a lot of videos about Psycho-Pass, and I was getting tons of people in my comments telling me to watch Shin Sekai Yori because of its similar themes. There seemed to be a ton of positive talk about the series, so I gave it a shot, but I struggled through the first four episodes and absolutely hated every single aspect of it. I hate the visuals, directing, pacing, writing, characters, and setting completely. I asked a friend who kind of liked the show whether it was likely something I’d get into in the long run, and they said no, so I stopped there.

When episode 0 of Saekano came out, it completely pissed me off and I hated it. I hate the particular brand of meta where a show just embodies a bunch of tropes, and then calls attention to them like that’s somehow clever, and I hated all the characters. Later on I was convinced to give the show another shot, so I watched three episodes when I was marathoning romcoms in October 2015. I conceded that the show was not badly made, but that I still hate that brand of comedy and all of the characters besides the boring girl.

By this point, I had a pretty full-blown hatred of A-1, since everything they put out was either immediately infuriating, or disappointing by the end. The studio was pumping out like four shows a season, and not one of them was grabbing my attention. I’d heard that the second season of Oreimo was complete bullshit and everyone hated it, so I didn’t bother watching it. Nanoha Vivid was pretty okay if nothing to write home about, and the manga was ultimately a better time anyways.

I didn’t bother with Cinderella Girls since I don’t like idol shows anyways, and I couldn’t even finish the first episodes of Gunslinger Stratos or Ultimate Otaku Teacher (which no one seems to care about anyways). I watched the first episode of Gate and thought it was total garbage–the visual direction and pacing were appalling, and that’s pretty much the point where I realized that, yeah, my problems are really with the studio as a whole.

So then, finally, it was with the first episode of The Asterisk War–seeing this studio hit rock bottom and produce a flat-line 1/10 series with no redeeming qualities–that I decided it was time for me to be “that guy” and start cutting promos on the studio left and right. I liked the first episode of Perfect Insider well enough and I still want to finish it, but I wasn’t surprised when a lot of people told me it fell apart in the long run. I hated Grimgar and I wasn’t into Boku Machi, and if the latter turns out to suck in the end, don’t fucking dare say that I didn’t warn you.

Edited by The Davoo

Text version:

This video is an opinion piece and not a journalistic article. Nothing here should be taken as fact at face value, and I encourage you to research these subjects further before forming your own opinion.

Now that we’ve spent eight long videos thoroughly answering the deep questions of what the hell is wrong with the Asterisk War and other shows of its ilk, it’s time for us to try and tackle the far more difficult and complicated question: why is The Asterisk War popular anyways?

Back in part one, that seasonal chart I was looking at was organized by how many people have each series listed on their My Anime List accounts; meaning that by the site’s metric, The Asterisk War is the fifth most-popular anime series of the Fall 2015 season. Appearing on over 66,000 lists, it is more watched than the second season of excellent and popular sports anime, Haikyuu; the latest season of the very popular Monogatari franchise; A-1 Picture’s own far less awful series, The Perfect Insider; other less-terrible light novel adaptations like Heavy Object; excellent or otherwise interesting original series like Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans and Concrete Revolutio; infinitely more engaging fanservice vehicles like Valkyrie Drive Mermaid; and great sequels such as the new seasons of Gochiusa, Yuru Yuri, and Utawarerumono. The Asterisk War has also been the most popular show on Crunchyroll from pretty much the start of the season–to the point that they sent me a fucking email letting me know that I was missing out on it.

So what’s going on here? If this show is so obviously bad, to the point that I’ve been getting criticized for picking a “low-hanging fruit” by ragging on it, then why do people like it? Well, there’s a very easy answer to that, but I’m sure by now you’re aware that I’m not going to be satisfied with it, so get ready for fifteen minutes of follow-up. The short answer is: because cute girls and swords. The corollary to that being: because no one cares.

And that sounds glib, and I hate when people say it like that, but it’s basically true. You don’t even have to take my word for it–read some of the show’s positive reviews on the sites I mentioned.

“This anime has plenty of action and is fun to watch. The graphics of this anime is really good. The swords look real, and sometimes it makes you forget that this is an anime. Also, if you are looking for an anime with kawaii girls, this is your anime to watch.”

“If you are looking for a very unique anime, this is probably not for you, but I would suggest this to anyone looking for a cool dudes or hot chicks. Looks like the male is basically Kirito and the girl is basically Asuna and I guess that is pretty much all you need to know.”

“An anime with swords is what I like the most and the whole competition and school setting gives me in my opinion a good anime for me.”

“A1 Pictures is known to produce some aesthetically pleasing art, so if you enjoyed Sword Art Online, Gate, or Aldnoah Zero, expect something similar.”

“I find this art style very enjoyable and easy on the eyes.”

“In my opinion, I was pretty interested in it. The art isn’t bad i like the swords. The boobs makes me want to suck on them but yeah. What I’m trying to say is I love this show it makes me wanna find the porno manga version for it and just read it.”

“It’s a truly amazing anime with great and interesting characters. A great plot and story I’m glad I found this! Signed, the amazing 9 year old.”

Most of the positive reviews that I found either outright admitted to the series being generic, or were very defensive about pointing out the minor differences between it and other, similar shows. Even the guy who gave it an 8/10 only gave the story a six. With the exception of the amazing nine year-old, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone watching this series is seriously invested in the characters, or gives half of a flying fuck about the story. People like this show because it fulfills a basic craving that some of us have for cute girls and swords; and I get that! I like cute girls and swords as much as the next guy, believe me; but I still don’t think that this answers the question.

After all, virtually every single anime in existence is inundated with as many cute girls as can be feasibly crammed inside of them; and I’m pretty sure that 95% of Japanese creatives are physically incapable of creating an action-centric piece of media which doesn’t contain a single sword. If these were the only criteria, then every anime ever would be equally popular.

Obviously, something else is going on here; and it’s clear to me that it’s not simply an accident, or that The Asterisk War just got lucky. Sure, luck plays a part in any show getting popular, but you only need to take a look at A1’s track record of success with this kind of show to see that clearly there’s some element of strategy at work here. Like it or not, this studio seems to have their fingers on the pulse of the modern anime fan’s buying habits–and they’re going out of their way to milk that advantage for all that it’s worth. To get to the heart of what this studio is doing right, we need only start with the most common design element among all their works: that damn face.

A1 Pictures have boiled the anime face down to a fucking science. The mouth is a line with a break in the middle that becomes really weird when you stare at it, but otherwise is meant to basically suggest lips. The nose is a miniscule triangle. The eyes come in about six different shapes depending on the character type.

All of the emotions which the face can perform basically come pre-packaged–angry Kirito looks just like angry Ayato, etc. It’s like the design team at this studio just sat down one day and came up with a basic template for a face and then a specific optimal way of portraying each of that face’s emotions; and since then, the entire studio has been working from that template in animating each of their shows. Obviously some shows are exceptions–and we’ll talk more in a bit about A1’s paradoxically broad range of attempted styles–but the point I’m trying to make here is that this studio has created a standard for what an anime face is.

Likewise, the body types featured in most of their shows are what I’d call normal, standard, and sleek. In the last ten years, popular anime has very clearly gravitated towards a style which I would say was most firmly set in stone by The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. In terms of proportions and height, these characters tend to have pretty realistic bodies, even if their busts and the size of their facial features dive into the realm of fantasy. They’ve got these very soft, realistic skin tones, which, with simple two-tone shading, can make the characters look more real than they ever did back in the cel art days; and the use of lots of subtle gradients which are made easy by digital coloring does a ton to make these characters pop off of the backgrounds. Everyone has a pencil-thin outline, too, which makes them come off as less cartoony.

Likewise, the same coloring techniques can easily be used to make background art appear more detailed than it might otherwise. It’s a lot easier to throw some gradients and lighting effects onto the screen and make something look fancy and bright, than it is to actually hand-draw a detailed background and bring it to life.

A1 has figured out how to simulate the feeling of something being well-animated by making things very flashy and having stuff move around a lot. It’s easy to convince an audience that something is cool if it’s moving very fast and if there’s a lot of flashing lights. To prove what I mean, locate a nearby flashlight, then close your eyes and strobe the light back and forth in front of your eyelids. You’ll immediately become disoriented and have no idea what’s going on, but it’s kind of exciting for no particular reason.

None of these things are necessarily bad design elements; they’re just foundational blocks upon which the design of a series can be built. After all, I could say most of the same things about the shows made by Kyoto Animation, which I consider to be the studio producing the highest-quality TV anime of the current decade; but the difference between Kyoto Animation and A1 Pictures, is that KyoAni actually takes those foundational blocks and, you know, BUILDS on them; whereas A1 puts in the bare minimum acceptable amount effort.

But that doesn’t matter–because it works; and it works because it has become standard. I mean that both in the derogatory way that someone might call something “standard at best;” but I also mean it in the congratulatory way that someone might say that something has “set the standard.”

A1 Pictures have basically created what is now considered to be the standard look of modern anime. By flooding the market with a million shows that look exactly the same, they have set the tone of what anime IS in the current decade; and I can’t shake the feeling that everyone else is slowly migrating in their direction. Maybe that’s unfair, since it’s hardly like this studio was the first to do any of what it does; but it certainly feels like A1 Pictures are the most singular driving force behind shaping the cultural understanding of what a 2010s anime looks like.

And I’m not even necessarily begrudging the studio for that, because I totally get the appeal. It’s not like I looked at The Asterisk War and thought, “this show looks ugly;” it’s characters are plenty attractive, and its color design is really appealing. If it’d had some other studio’s name above it on that chart, then I probably would’ve walked in with some pretty high hopes for it in terms of visuals.

It’s not the individual design elements which bother me, though–it’s a combination of the lack of effort in turning those elements into a cohesive overall design, and the homogyny which has resulted from constantly making shows that look exactly the same.

In the process of watching this show like a million times in order to write about it, I have inescapably reached the conclusion that the girls are cute. There are no shortage of adorable little expressions, or tiny memetic animations, or finely-detailed fanservice shots whose appeal I can completely understand. I don’t doubt that a big part of The Asterisk War achieving popularity as both a light novel and as an anime series is because the original illustrations were by okiura, who designed for another, similarly popular series, called Infinite Stratos, which people enjoyed for exactly the same reasons. I’ve hung out in the Asterisk War threads on 4chan, and it’s almost nothing but people posting the cutest faces from whichever girl they like the most and then stating that said girl is, in fact, “best girl.”

There’s something incredibly base and bestial about the way that this series is consumed. It is watched because it is there. Because no number of cute girls is too many cute girls. Because even in a world where there are forty-five new anime shows debuting every three months, a lot of people just really have nothing better to do. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I can’t help but harbor a deeply-driven cynicism towards A1 Pictures. The A in their name is in reference to the fact that they are a subsidiary of Aniplex–which is Sony’s production firm that has had its hand in planning no shortage of hugely popular and fantastic anime with other studios– from Madoka Magica and Monogatari to Fate/Zero and Fullmetal Alchemist, and half of everything else you’ve ever heard of. A1 Pictures is kind of like a factory for producing new shows for Aniplex; and their methodology seems to be just pumping out anything and everything.

Ironically, in spite of how all of their shows look the same, the studio has no sense of identity at all. Most of their shows have totally different main creative staff pulled from all over the place; and when they make something good, it’s almost always because they managed to pull in some good people to work on it. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of main staff who just straight-up work for the studio, the way you’ll find a core team of directors somewhere like old Gainax, or Kyoani, or Bones, or SHAFT–studios with extremely distinct identities.

From what I understand, A1 Pictures isn’t even any bigger than Kyoto Animation in terms of personnel count; they’re able to produce so many shows because they hire a constant revolving door of contractors. That’s why you get so many random animation cuts that look kind of cool, but totally different from the rest of the show–because they hire these animators from other studios to do work for them.

But what does any of it get you? There’s a part in episode five where a character is introduced via several animation cuts by Masayuki Nonaka, and it’s immediately evident that the entire style and tone of the animation has changed for these cuts. Besides being really weird in-context, I was immediately wondering why the hell they got this person to animate these random segments in particular. Most of Masayuki Nonaka’s work has been on Doga Kobo shows like Engaged to the Unidentified, GJ-bu, and Plastic Memories. She pretty clearly specializes in animating cute girls doing cute things–usually in lighthearted, cutesy scenarios. She can do dramatic and she can do fanservice, but in general, almost all of her animation cuts in all of the shows she’s worked on have a very distinct character to them and bring their scenes to life. But this stuff… this is just weird. It doesn’t seem like it was really necessary to go so far overboard with these particular cuts, or like Nonaka was necessarily the person for the job. It just seems like they hired her because they wanted to have some flashy animation happen when they introduced this character, and it wouldn’t have really mattered who it was.

I feel like I’m talking in circles here, but it’s hard to get this point across when this feeling is so personal and difficult to describe–but, if I can go on a tangent here, then maybe I can sort of drag you into the narrative with me. In October 2010, an animator working for A-1 Pictures committed suicide. The medical facility caring for him had recorded that he’d been working 600 hours a month. I don’t even know if I can completely trust that figure, if only because that would leave just 4 hours a day to have not been working–which doesn’t seem physically possible to me. Director Daiki Nishimura said in response to this that if it’s true, then it’s not a fault of A-1 Pictures, but a fault of the state of the industry as a whole, and of the poor working conditions for animators in general; and I’m sure he’s not wrong.

When people talk about Kyoto Animation and UFOTable and why these studios are able to produce so much higher-quality TV animation than any other studio, someone always brings up the working conditions. Both studios are known for having in-house cafes where the staff can relax, and for having better pay and benefits than many other studios of their size. These are studios which typically only take on one or two project per year, and who dedicate a lot of time to planning out each series carefully and managing their schedules exceptionally well. Kyoto Animation and UfoTable have neither more budget nor more staff than other typical studios–they are simply run better. In fact, this seems to be at the root of most high-quality anime productions– see the comments from One Punch Man’s director about how the show’s budget is completely normal, and the quality of the animation is entirely the result of having passionate staff work on it.

I’ve made the remark before that to me, A-1 Pictures is like the McDonald’s of anime–and I mean that in every possible sense. It doesn’t seem to me like a place where anyone really wants to work–or indeed where anyone who can afford to would take up residence. Sometimes I can’t tell if the studio is pulling in noteworthy directors just in the name of having them turn out something potentially good with the studio behind it, or if directors go there with stuff that they can’t get approved otherwise because the studio can just crank it out. Their willingness to vacuum up sequels to shows from other studios like Ore no Imouto, Nanoha Vivid, and Persona 4: The Golden certainly gives me that impression.

Everything about their work just comes off so assembly-line to me. By the end of the year, the studio will have cranked out eleven TV anime and one film–none of which are even remotely similar to one-another, yet all of which feel eerily the same. It’s like being in a village where everyone has different bodies but the exact same face: fucking creepy.

It wasn’t even like this from the start, and it’s also not as though A1 isn’t still trying to do interesting things. Back in the studio’s early days, they ran a set of original shows in a block called the Power of Anime, where they generated their best TV series ever, Sora no Woto, along with some lovably strange flops in the form of the watchable Occult Academy and the less watchable Night Raid 1931. Then they put out Fractale and Anohana back to back, and it was like the complete failure of the former and the gigantic success of the latter somehow caused the studio to develop schizophrenia. Around the time that both Sword Art Online and Shin Sekai Yori were both on television at the same time, I think the future of this studio became abundantly clear; from now on it was going to be this weird gumbo of talent and ideas circling the saucepan with an endless supply of terrible scripts and hollow attempts at making shit look modern for the casual viewer.

At the end of the day, even after hundreds and thousands of articles and studies about how McDonald’s is bad for you, and about how poorly their business is run, and about how much it sucks to work there; and after decades of being the punchline in jokes about having a shitty job and being dirt-ass poor; and after one of the most infamous documentary smear campaigns of the 2000s; tons of people around the world still eat at McDonald’s.

Because it’s convenient. Because it’s familiar. Because it’s there. Because it’s pervasive. Because sometimes, no where else is open and it’s 4AM and I’m starving. Because when I’m in a new town and I don’t know where to eat, I can see the golden arches on the hill and at least be aware that food is consumable there. Because sometimes, I don’t want to pay for a nice restaurant. Because sometimes, I don’t want to think that hard about what’s for dinner. Because sometimes, it’s all that I can afford and all that’s nearby. Because sometimes, against my better judgement, I just want it.

The Asterisk War is successful because it looks like anime. It has what you vaguely understand to be decent, up-to-date visuals. It’s got cute girls, and it’s got swords. No one is operating under the illusion that it’s a good show, or that they shouldn’t probably be watching something else. They watch it because it’s there.

Continued in part ten.

Text version:

In Hidetaka Miyazaki’s 2011 masterpiece, Dark Souls, the character who is controlled by the player is an undead warrior, who starts the game rotting away in a prison cell; and who is awakened one day by a key being dropped in beside them. From that point onward, the character is entirely defined by the actions of the player. If they desire to do so, the player will take that key and step out into the world, find the man who saved them and learn of a grand destiny which this man hopes for them to fulfill, and embark upon the land of Lordran, where everyone is undead, time is convoluted, and the fire of life is on the brink of extinction unless someone can restore it to the land. That someone can be you, the player–or, you can, like, do whatever the hell you want.

While Oskar, your savior, hopes that you will try and fulfill the prophesy of the chosen undead and link this dying age of fire into a new one; the next NPC whom you run into–the Crestfallen Warrior–expects far less of you. He’s watched dozens of other so-called chosen undead make the same pilgrimage, only to give up and go hollow along the way. All of the undead are at risk of going hollow–of losing their humanity–as soon as they give up on their journey. Undead cannot die, you see, and will continue to be resurrected until they eventually lose the will to go on.

As a player, you can avoid going hollow as long as you don’t stop playing the game. For as long as you remain determined, your character will fight on towards whichever goal you may choose. You can follow Oskar’s wishes and link the fire–or, having learned of the potential dangers of linking the fire along the course of your journey, you can chose to let it burn out, and become the ruler of a world of darkness. Or maybe you come into contact with an ancient dragon and decide that you’re going to spend your days collecting scales to give to that dragon until you eventually turn into a dragon yourself. Or maybe you meet a giant skeleton man and decide to use his powers to place curses on the worlds of other undead players at the risk of being invaded. You could even take up the mantle of a non-player character who goes hollow, by wearing all of their armor and finishing whatever they were trying to do. The world is your oyster.

Whatever it is that becomes your character’s lot in life, their existence in Lordran is continued only by the player’s interest in playing the game; and the only way to effect a change in Lordran is by beating that game. This isn’t a story which you can pause–seriously, there’s no pause button–it’s a story which just continues on forever until the day you find the ending. If you never get to the ending, then Lordran simply remains in its atemporal stasis forever; and, assumably, your character goes hollow.

Dark Souls goes out of its way to paint the actions of its characters as a struggle. For most of them, going hollow is just around the corner–and, in fact, if you play far enough into the game, then just about everyone you meet in your adventure will go hollow right before your eyes. The player character is someone who fails and is killed again and again, yet continues to rise up and go into battle once more, raging against the dying of the light.

The player strikes at their enemies with desperation, carefully managing their meager endurance as they brave an onslaught of enemy attacks. Each time the player is damaged, they stagger away from the opponent, looking for just the right moment to take one of a few precious drinks of healing elixir, before running back in for another attack. They learn a careful dance of managing distance, memorizing attacks, and knowing how to play to their strengths. When they finally bring the boss to its knees, they gain back a little bit of their humanity–putting the hollowing at bay for a day longer, and perhaps even returning to their human form.

That feeling of struggle even permeates the character’s attack animations. Players reel back with their weapons, putting all of their weight into every strike, like their life depends on it. Some play tactically and poke away at their enemies while carefully dodging and rolling around attacks; while others outfit themselves in massive armor, so that they can take a hit while in the middle of heaving up their ridiculously enormous weapons for an aimless strike. No matter the fighting style, the player always looks like David against a hulking goliath–either frantically running around; hiding behind a wall of magic or defense; or brazenly running in naked like an absolute madman.

Therein lies much of the satisfaction in conquering the challenges of Dark Souls. In the beginning, your character is just another undead warrior–one of many who have come before, and who can barely even wield their weapons against the myriad hordes of deadly enemies inhabiting their world. However, by sheer force of determination and constant struggle, that undead proves victorious against beings of godly power; ones who have shaped the very world which they are trying to save.

But if Dark Souls is a game about keeping your flame alight and striking out against the insurmountable darkness surrounding you, then its spiritual successor, Bloodborne, is all about conquering the unknowable darkness which exists inside of humans themselves.

The character controlled by the player in Bloodborne is a newly indoctrinated Hunter, who starts the game after receiving a transfusion of what the blood minister refers to as “Yharnam Blood.” The city of Yharnam, which the player will be exploring throughout the game, has been built and broken on the back of blood transfusion–a practice which had grown popular for its ability to cure any ailment, but has the unfortunate side-effect of turning men into beasts.

As a method of curbing the city’s beast population, a group of powerful fighters was organized called the Hunters–but in the time between the establishment of this group, and the time in which the player becomes a part of it, all kinds of other crazy shit has gone down in the city, giving rise to many different factions and practices which are carried out by the other characters, and causing the nosedive into the chaotic maelstrom by which the city is now defined.

To make a complex story simple, the downfall of Yharnam’s populace can be attributed to humanity’s insatiable thirst for two dangerous forms of progress: power, and knowledge. The thirst for power is symbolized by blood–a resource with which the city has become drunk, and which has regressed the evolution of man into beast. Whereas the undead in Dark Souls would lose themselves and go hollow when they couldn’t find the will to continue, the populace of Bloodborne loses themselves to over-indulgence and an incurable lust for more blood.

Knowledge, meanwhile, is sought by those who wish to transcend their human nature and to enter into the realm of gods; but their thirst for knowledge leads them into destructive and amoral research–only to reach an answer which the human mind was never capable of understanding. The madmen fly too close to the sun and are burned to cinders, becoming creatures which no longer resemble their former human selves.

Like the player character in Dark Souls, the player of Bloodborne is unable to die–but unlike in Dark Souls, this power only seems to be granted to one hunter at a time. The player cannot die because they’ve been trapped inside of the Hunter’s Dream by the first hunter, Gherman, who won’t let the player go until they fulfill the goal of the one pulling Gherman’s strings, by killing one of the Great Ones. However, the player is not necessarily privy to their ambitions in this game in the way that they are in Dark Souls. This time, many of the characters are trying to hide the truth of the situation from the player, and to guide them along a path which benefits themselves. It is up to the player to uncover the truth of their situation, and to decide whether they will go along with what Gherman asks of them to the very end.

The singular focus on the player character in Bloodborne is very important to defining the key difference between this game and Dark Souls–because in Bloodborne, you are NOT just some random undead who happens to be more determined than anyone else. It is still true that, should your character fail in their journey because the player stops playing, then the hunt will go on forever, and no one will ever escape from the hunter’s dream–but the biggest difference here is that this time, the player character is the ONLY one who can possibly change the world and bring an end to this dream for good.

Whereas the undead warrior of Dark Souls was no different from any other random undead wandering its landscape, the player character of Bloodborne is already in a position above all of the beasts; because they are, in fact, a Hunter–someone who is explicitly trained in the art of dispatching said beasts.

Unlike the undead, the Hunters are powerful and vicious. The weapons that they wield are specially crafted for the task of slaying beasts, and are wicked gruesome and totally rad. Each of them transforms between a light and heavy form with a powerfully cathartic clang, and they wield these weapons with ease and confidence. Many of their weapons are capable of combo attacks, and can be charged up for an ultra-powerful strike. A hunter never seems to struggle to use their weapon–instead, they seem all too eager to rip their opponent to shreds.

Hunters never wear heavy armor–they dress in light, flowing cloths, which appear to be intended more to strike an imposing figure than to offer actual protection. Most of their attire has pieces of flowing fabric that makes them look extra-cool while artfully sidestepping around opponents and making a mockery of their attacks. Using weapons and dodges doesn’t cut nearly as far into a Hunter’s stamina, and their tactics are almost always to get in close to the enemy and to attack them with as much ferocity as possible.

When the Hunter is hit, they don’t back away to heal–instead, they strike back even more viscerally, as they can regain their health by taking it from the enemy. So blinded will the Hunter become with bloodlust, that they will keep attacking and regaining health even for a few seconds after the enemy is already dead. When the hunter does inject themselves with a vial of their blood–which is hardly in any short supply–they continue moving, positioning themselves to be ready for the next attack.

Remember, the fate of the hunter is not to lose themselves to the hollow by giving up–it is to lose themselves to the lust for the hunt, and to forget their desire to escape it. The hunters who can never stop searching for more blood become sucked into the hunter’s nightmare, where the hunt continues on eternally. A hunter doesn’t struggle against the world around them–they struggle against their own inner lust for blood.

The vital difference between the player characters of Dark Souls and Bloodborne can perhaps most prominently be observed when conquering a boss. In Dark Souls, you are granted the message, “Victory Achieved”–formerly, “You Defeated”–indicating your triumph over impossible odds, for which you regain some humanity. In Bloodborne, you are granted the message, “Prey Slaughtered”–indicating that you were the one whom the boss should have feared all along–the true overdog in the battle from the beginning. Moreover, the closest equivalent to gaining humanity from a boss fight in Dark Souls is actually gained from encountering a boss in Bloodborne. In this case, the player gains one insight–a metric of eldritch knowledge which brings the player one step closer to a truth so maddening that it could send them into a killer frenzy if they aren’t careful.

Bloodborne’s player character is someone special–a paleblooded warrior who somehow manages to fight off the beastly influence of the Yharnam blood, and is chosen by the messengers of the dream because of it; and who can potentially consume the eldritch knowledge of the great ones and devour their umbilical cords in order to transcend the hunt once and for all, and be reborn as a great one themselves; or else, find themselves escaping the dream as a human if they decide to let the dream go on, or even hosting the dream if they decide to martyr themselves after freeing the former host.

Both Dark Souls and Bloodborne are absolute masterpieces in the way that they weave the themes of their narratives so beautifully into the mechanics of their games; and in how they can use the same basic gameplay elements in such radically different ways, creating two games which feel almost opposite from one-another in tone and meaning. While Dark Souls was a lot more up-front about the way that its narrative was supposed to make the player feel, I always felt that Bloodborne treated the player like more of a badass, and was meant to convey a sense of bloodthirsty catharsis–which I felt was corroborated once I finally began to understand the narrative; and as a result, I came to love the game that much more.

I’m curious as to which of these power fantasies you find more appealing–the feeling of being an underdog who persists against all odds to conquer the gods, or the feeling of being an unstoppable killing machine who becomes drunk with the lust for more knowledge and power until they surpass even the eldritch great ones. Let me know how you feel in the comments, and stick around on my channel, as I might have more to say about these games in the future. If you want to help me in making more content like this, then consider supporting me via patreon, or simply by sharing this video to whomever you think will appreciate it. Thanks again for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.

Edited by The Davoo

Text version:

Throughout the next three-episode arc, it rapidly becomes apparent that nothing is going to happen in the Asterisk War. Not to say that I necessarily require a moving and complex plot from my anime, given that I’ve enjoyed other, similar light novel adaptations in the past; but considering the dearth of likable characters and interesting ideas in this one, it’s here that I truly understood that I was watching a flatline 1/10 TV series. I even bumped my score for SAO up to a 1.5, because at least that show could imaginably be salvaged. This one just has nothing going for it.

I could easily break these three episodes down in the same detail that I did the first four, but I’d honestly just be treading water. It’s all the same logical fallacies, overly convenient plot setups, bland characterization, godawful fight choreography, forced fanservice, and general bullshit that you’ve gotten used to by now. With all the materials I’ve given you so far, you could probably watch these episodes and write my analysis in your own head. We don’t need five more minutes of me pointing out how the badge that Claudia gives Ayato in episode six is apparently a physical object, even though they were holograms that she could restore with her own badge in episode one–but I had to at least mention that since I set it up in part three.

Instead of going in on every little thing that this arc fucks up, I’m just gonna focus on tackling the big central issue of the show’s new character: Toudou Kirin. And in fairness, I’m not even necessarily going to complain about the character herself, because compared to everyone else in the story she’s a hell of a lot more coherent–and pretty goddamn adorable to boot. Rather, my qualm in this case is about how the show handles and presents this character in just about the most sexist way imaginable. Yep, we’re going there.

Obviously sexism is a pretty fucking controversial topic, especially here on youtube; and I’d like to make it clear that I don’t associate myself with or take kindly to being labelled as a part of any side in the greater cultural debate on the subject. I will also argue that providing an analysis via the lens of feminist theory is not the same thing as being a member of an unbelievably poorly defined group known as feminists. A feminist analysis of something does not mean a feminist analyzing something, but rather analyzing something via the lens of feminist theory. If you wanna know more, just do your fucking research; my point is that you could write a textbook chapter on feminist theory using this arc; so I’m about to go balls-deep into this bitch.

As is the case for most of the important characters in this show, our first encounter with Kirin primarily serves to establish that she is indeed a Cute Girl. Ayato bumps into her in a hallway and knocks her over, and it’s kind of suggested that he sees her panties, though it’s confusing because we don’t actually see them. I wonder if this might’ve been a censored cut which would originally have panned up, but we won’t know until the DVDs come out and I don’t care that much. The camera makes sure that in case we didn’t already notice, she also has really huge tits; and then we listen to her high-pitched, breathy, squeaky voice, and the fact that she childishly ends all of her sentences with “desu.” She seems to be very clumsy and has a twig stuck in her hair–which Ayato points out, sending her into a little cuteness frenzy before some old guy calls her away.

The next time that we see Kirin is right after said old guy has just slapped the living shit out of her; and he’s about to go in for round two before Ayato swoops in and stops his hand, stating that he doesn’t approve of raising a hand to a girl. Turns out the old guy is Kirin’s uncle, and he tries to justify his girl-beating under the logic that this kind of abuse wouldn’t mean anything to the powerful Genestella children. Ayato continues on the defensive, barring his hand in front of Kirin in an odd gesture that both seems to be guarding her while also telling her to stay back while he takes care of this. After some back and forth, the uncle forces Kirin to challenge Ayato, on the basis that if Ayato wins then he will stop abusing Kirin. Kirin herself claims that she doesn’t care what happens to her and asks Ayato to back out, but he refuses. So they get into a big dumb fight, and Ayato just barely loses–though it’s sort of suggested that his loss was partly attributed to underestimating his opponent, and to forgetting that his goal in the match is to protect his badge.

At the start of episode six, we learn that Kirin seems to have some kind of goal which requires her to become the number one fighter at the school, and that her uncle has convinced her that she can only reach this goal by following his strict instruction. Later, Julis expresses her pride in Ayato for his decision to help Kirin, and how she would’ve done the same, and we learn that Kirin is only thirteen years old–which is probably two years younger than the main characters. This comes as a surprise to Ayato on account of her huge tits.

Claudia later explains that Kirin’s uncle is apparently trying to use Kirin as a way of advancing through the school’s parent company and becoming an executive. We’ll just ignore the complete lack of a logical thread connecting those two things. She goes on to say that he probably won’t be able to make it far anyways, because those driven by self-interest can never make it to the higher ranks of the company, which are populated by people who’ve undergone several layers of psychological reprogramming to remove their personal desires. I’m not totally sure how that makes sense for this kind of hyper-capitalist system, but we’ll leave that where it lies.

That night, Kirin shows up at the boys’ dorm to visit Ayato and to thank him for what he did before in defending her. In response to this, Ayato walks over and pats her on the head like a child. The duo goes out for a walk, whereupon Kirin talks a bit about her strict father and his training. Then, in one of the only flashes of actually decent characterization in the entire series, Kirin and Ayato spend a moment fanboying over one-another’s fighting styles. This is the first time that I ever actually felt like Ayato fights out of some modicum of interest in the technique; and Kirin’s passionate analysis of Ayato’s fighting style is probably the outright best dialog in the show. She goes on to describe that her interest in kenjitsu comes from seeing herself as a clutz and a coward, but also as someone who can be of some use to others with a sword in her hand.

While the camera fixates on her bouncing breasts, Kirin describes how her ultimate goal is to save her father, and how her uncle has shown her the path towards achieving this goal; therefore she is willing to put up with his racism and abuse in order to further her own advancement. She then asks Ayato about his training, and the two of them become training buddies–and at this moment, it’s suggested with some definitiveness that Kirin has already fallen in love with him.

Ayato and Kirin begin training regularly, with some flirty moments interspersed in there, and then one morning they get attacked by some tech from a rival school. Kirin figures out how to kill the monsters, but then they destroy the ground and she tries to catch Ayato from falling, only to get dragged into the abyss along with him.

Down in the water, Kirin clings to Ayato’s torso as she is apparently unable to swim. Once again, Ayato finds himself fighting with a girl in one arm, and then moments later creates a platform for her to stand on while he takes care of the bad guy. By making his sword longer. So the duo ends up in their underwear, and Kirin explains her backstory, with her father having killed a guy who was mugging them in self-defence, and being sent to prison anyways because of the racism against Genestella. Seems unreasonable, given that they actually knew for a fact that he was acting to save lives against a criminal, but whatever. Kirin blames herself because she knows that even as an eight year-old she could’ve beaten the criminal, and now she’s fighting to try and buy her father’s way out of a decades-long prison sentence. She also reveals that she enjoys the way Ayato pats her on the head because her father used to do so in the same way.

Kirin explains that her uncle came and showed her the way to save her father, and that this brought her to Asterisk city–but then Ayato tells her that she’s wrong, and that this isn’t the path that she chose on her own; and that if she keeps following this path, then she’s going to hit a brick wall. For now, we’ll leave aside how none of that actually means anything. Kirin cries that she can’t do anything on her own, so Ayato pats her head, and tells her that she’s not alone because she at least has him–so long as it’s a path that she’s chosen herself. Then he sees her naked.

After they get rescued, Kirin’s uncle demands that she not talk to Ayato anymore and slaps her around a bit, but then she decides she’s not interested in doing things his way anymore, parrots what Ayato told her before, and walks away. Kirin challenges Ayato to another big stupid duel as a way of taking her “first true step” or whatever, and this time Ayato changes up his tactics and handily beats her. And when I say, “handily,” I mean he palm-slaps her titty for the victory.

Afterwards, Kirin joins what is rapidly starting to look like a spurned women’s club in the making, and then her uncle comes in to get all pissy with her. She deflects his hand once, but then seems ready to take his next punch for some reason before Ayato jumps in to stop it and to talk about how Kirin is already taking her first steps. After her uncle shouts that he’ll blackmail her by uncovering her father’s deeds, Claudia exerts her influence over him to basically tell him not to fuck with her school’s assets. I’m not sure why she couldn’t have exerted this authority in the first place to stop his abuse, but I guess she had to catch him in a trap or… something; I’m not sure. Kirin expresses her gratitude to her uncle for getting her this far, and then Ayato pats her on the head again and they flirt some more, bringing her arc to a close.

What bothers me about the entire presentation of character that I just described is the disconnect between what the series is actually showing us, and what the rhetoric of the series is trying to suggest–as well as the only reasons which I can imagine for writing the story this way.

Despite all of Ayato’s preaching about the importance of choosing your own path, Kirin doesn’t really make any decisions for herself in this story. All she does is go from doing what one older guy tells her to, to doing what another older guy tells her to. When Kirin claims that she can’t do anything on her own, it’s not like Ayato tells her to find strength in herself–in fact, he pretty much just tells her to rely on him instead of on her uncle. I don’t think we can really call it a meaningful choice that she decided to follow the guy who doesn’t treat her like shit instead of the guy who regularly beats her. She only joined Ayato at the point when she realized that she could rely on him just as easily as she could rely on her uncle–and she even admitted that she only reached this position by way of her uncle’s influence.

Kirin clings to Ayato because he reminds her of her father, whom she clearly admires deeply given that her entire life is dedicated to practicing his brand of swordplay and to eventually rescuing him from his wrongful imprisonment. And you know, if Kirin was really just supposed to be this younger, more childish character who was looking for the guidance of a parental figure and found it in Ayato, then I don’t think this would bother me so much; but the fact is that the story also tries to present her as a sexually mature adult who is capable of making her own decisions. It pushes her as a viable candidate for Ayato’s affection, showcasing a mutual physical attraction between them, while sexually objectifying her for the sake of the audience.

It doesn’t so much bother me that Kirin is only thirteen years old; because, for one thing, this is a cartoon; and, for another thing, different cultures have their own ideas about what it means to be mature, and at what age maturity can be achieved. Regardless of what number is tacked onto her, it’s clear that Kirin has reached sexual maturity on a physical level, and that most of the characters in this story, despite being around fifteen years old, are given the agency and decision-making powers of adults.

However, this isn’t really the case with Kirin. She didn’t come to Asterisk to find herself like Ayato did, or completely of her own accord like Julis did; she came here because her uncle told her to–and she only left her uncle’s guidance because Ayato told her to. I know that the narrative is trying to suggest that her decision to challenge Ayato was her first step towards becoming her own person; but all she’s really doing is clinging to his coattails and following along with his group of friends. What exactly was she going to do if these other characters weren’t there to guide her? What if Saya hadn’t taken interest in her and decided to team up with her for the Festa? By episode eight, she’s pretty much made it all the way to just following Saya’s lead now.

The reason that Kirin’s arc is written the way that it is, is so that Ayato–and, by extension, the audience–can have it both ways. We get to play the role of the paternal guardian to our daughter, slash little sister, slash underclassman, while also being able to look at her sexually under the assurance that she’s totally an adult who’s making her own decisions. Nevermind that we’re the ones making her decisions and fighting her battles for her, and that we completely treat her as though she were a child. We just want to have our cake and eat it too.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking right now: why does any of this matter? Who cares?! It’s just a cartoon! The whole point of it is to act as wish-fulfillment for thirteen year-old boys who don’t know any better. It’s an escapist fantasy. It’s not supposed to be realistic. It’s just meant to appeal to a fetish. And I agree: you are absolutely, one-hundred percent correct.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t even really care. The fact of the matter is that I shouldn’t even be watching this show. I saw the writing on the wall as early as the seasonal chart that this show was clearly not meant for me. I’m not supposed to be here. But I am here. Why?

Well, mostly because way back in the summer season, I made a video about how I dropped like a million summer shows that a lot of people enjoyed, and I got a ton of responses asking why I didn’t like those shows, or why I didn’t give them a chance, or telling me that I should make more videos about why I drop the shows that I do. In response to this, I thought it might be interesting if I took a few shows that I would’ve immediately dropped, and decided to give them that mythical chance. I decided to see what would happen if I actually kept going to see what I’ve been missing by dropping these shows so early on, and then to present to my audience what my experience was in doing so, and sort of allow them to experience the show like I do.

And this is where it’s taken us. We’ve made it seven episodes into the Asterisk War, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I kind of hated the second arc because I was kind of bothered by how the entire appeal of it was meant to be its hilariously sexist portrayal of its new character.

You know, I actually really like Kirin’s character design. I even kind of like her voice. If you made a show with this exact same character, but instead made her into a strong-willed, twenty-something year-old firebrand with the personality of a leader, then I’d probably be sitting here making a video about how Kirin is mai waifu. It’s just a matter of personal taste, really. I’m just not into this whole clingy little girl with no personality or initiative thing.

Can you imagine actually dating Kirin, and how incredibly boring she would probably turn out to be once the sex got old? I guess maybe if you got into swords with her you’d have enough to talk about–maybe get some decent sparring in while you’re still young; could be a fling for a couple of years. Once you save her father though, I wonder if she’s gonna go back to school and learn how to do something more useful, or if she’s gonna try and milk that swordfighting skill for all it’s worth. She’s gotta get old some day. I’m certainly getting there.

But that’s what this anime is about. It’s about immortalizing this idea; this girl who will only ever be thirteen, and only ever be your little sister slash daughteru slash kouhai, who will only ever look up to you and secretly want to ride your crotch, and who you’ll only ever get to actually make it with once the inevitable doujins come out. This is the fantasy that they’re selling–and it just doesn’t really resonate with me. I’m just not buying it. I’m just not interested.

Continued in part eleven.

Also on google drive.

Edited by The Davoo

Text Version:

Ass War episode nine kicks off the last arc of the season by finally launching us into the much-awaited Phoenix Festa! In other words, it’s time for a good old-fashioned tournament arc!

Tournament arcs are essentially cruise control for an action series. All you gotta do is dump a bunch of colorful characters with wacky super powers into a stadium, match them up in combinations that maximize the dramatic tension of their battles, and then hit the go button. It’s an opportunity for the writer to flex their creative muscles by coming up with a bunch of unique super powers, while the audience is satisfied getting to watch a bunch of cool ass fight scenes in a row. It’s not the most unique or exciting brand of storytelling, and it often runs the risk of getting boring if the characters stay in one stadium for too long; but if you take the time to pace out one of these arcs just right, then it’s probably the easiest way to keep an action series running for a long time without having to come up with a more complex and involving storyline.

I’m sure you will not be shocked to learn that The Asterisk War flubs the first stretch of its tournament arc so spectacularly that I’m left wondering if the author had ever actually watched one before. I refuse to believe that anyone could have read or watched Yuu Yuu Hakusho or Hunter X Hunter and failed to pick up on the basics of how to make an effective tournament arc; but then, comparing this series against either of those classic battle manga would probably seem pretty unfair. Instead, I’m going to put a lens to Ass War’s failures by comparing it against one of the few recent A-1 Pictures shows that I actually didn’t hate: Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha Vivid; which launched into its tournament arc at around the same point in the series, and only made it about as deep into that arc as this show did before the end of the first season.

There’s really only a handful of basic elements that you need in order to make a tournament arc fun. Firstly, all of the characters need to have clearly defined reasons for their involvement in the tournament–which, if nothing else, this show actually has covered. Secondly, there have to be some strong dramatic rivalries among the characters–especially between the main character and whoever is set to be their final opponent. Lastly, every fighter needs to have some kind of unique super power and aesthetic, and every matchup has to be about showcasing how the two fighters’ powers play off of one-another.

There’s three different basic types of rivalries which can be used to keep a tournament arc feeling dramatic throughout its run. First off is the young hero versus the big bad strong dude. This is your Yusuke vs. Toguro–your larger-than-life opponent whose power level is so incredible that at the start of the tournament it seems like there’s no possible way that the main character could beat them. This dude will be lurking in the background throughout the entire arc, beating the shit out of lesser opponents left and right and leading us to wonder if the main character can build up their skills enough throughout the early matches to be ready to take them on in the end. In Nanoha Vivid, this character is Jeremiah Sieglinde.

The best way to handle this character is to introduce them either before the tournament begins, or immediately after it starts, and to firmly establish that they’re basically the strongest dude in the whole competition. This works dramatically on two levels: firstly, it keeps us on the edge of our seat knowing that there’s a chance the hero won’t even be able to beat this dude; and secondly, it keeps us wondering just what’s going to happen to our hero for them to be able to get strong enough that they could actually pose a threat to this dude when the time comes. The Asterisk War does not have a rival of this nature.

But the hilarious part is that the character who should fit that role has secretly been there all along. At the Phoenix Festa’s big commencement ceremony, who should be standing right there at the podium but the big bad guy of the entire series! You… surely know who I’m talking about, right? I’m not the only one who recognized that weird ass cheek hair, am I? Well, if you’re confused, then that’s forgivable–you probably didn’t watch that stupid ass opening fight scene as many times as I did, but that’s totally the guy who supposedly killed Ayato’s sister.

The fact that this guy still exists in any capacity at all makes it obvious that he’s going to be important later–and at the very end of the season, we see him mysteriously pick up Haruka’s glasses and say some cryptic shit like how it’s about that time; but if you’re guessing that he’s totally not going to show up at any other point in the arc, and that no one is going to draw any attention to him or point out that he’s the guy from episode one, then you’re starting to get the hang of this by now. As the series is want to do with all of its characters, it just tosses this guy out there and gives him a vague air of mystery so you’ll wonder what his deal is, and then stashes him away for a big reveal to come at some point in season two. Riveting.

So neither Ayato nor Julis ends up with any kind of big bad rival looming overhead during the tournament; and additionally, in one of the single most baffling lines of dialog that I’ve ever witnessed in any anime ever, it is remarked that Ayato is legitimately THE ONLY NUMBER-ONE RANKED FIGHTER COMPETING IN THE CURRENT FESTA.

This is an entirely new level of diminishing narrative stakes the likes of which I’ve never seen before. It actually would’ve been the easiest thing in the world to flip the whole impression of Ayato being an unstoppably overpowered badass on its head, just by reminding us that Seidoukan Academy is supposed to be the weakest school in the city, and that the number one fighters at other schools are probably a hell of a lot tougher than Kirin, who did give Ayato a rough time at least once. Instead, the show seems to go out of its way to suggest that there is not a single combatant in this tournament who is likely to be stronger than Ayato. There’s an after-credits scene in episode eight where Claudia looks over the tournament roster and says that it’s pretty much anyone’s game; hinting that even the opponents that she’s worried about aren’t strong enough for her to lose confidence in Ayato’s victory. I seriously, honestly and truly cannot believe that it’s possible to fuck up a tournament arc this badly this fast.

So the second type of tournament rivalry is the hero versus their best friend. This is your Yugi Mutou vs Joey Wheeler; and the drama writes itself in this match-up–both opponents want to win, but they also want their friend to win; so they decide that the only way to do right by both of them is to give it their all, and to compete even harder than they would have before. Sometimes this match is saved for later in the tournament, and other times it’s subverted by having one of the characters booted from the tournament before they get teh chance to fight one-another. In Nanoha Vivid terms, this would be the rivalry between Vivio and Einhart Stratos–a couple of best friends who are comparable in power level and desperate to prove themselves to one-another in an official capacity. This rivalry is once again absent from the Asterisk War, in spite of having the characters for it right there.

Episode eight was a pseudo-filler episode mostly dedicated to establishing the new partnership of Kirin and Saya before their entry into the Festa. At the start of this episode, it’s established that the pair basically pales in comparison to Ayato and Julis due to their lack of chemistry–but after hanging out and sharing a heart-to-heart moment together, they up their game and start putting out training scores comparable to their friends.

However, in spite of this gesture, it’s simply impossible to take Kirin and Saya seriously as any kind of meaningful rivals to Ayato and Julis. Besides the fact that they’re already playing catch-up in the first place, their role in the overall narrative is so flaccid, and their characters are so dedicated to playing second-fiddle to Julis that a battle between them would almost come across as pathetic. We already know that Ayato can beat Kirin one-on-one, and while Saya has been mysteriously left unranked according to her dialog in episode eight, it’s hard to imagine that she’s any kind of threat to this team either. Kirin and Saya feel like a complete joke across this entire arc, and practically don’t do anything besides get naked at random anyways.

Lastly, we have the most common type of tournament rivalry, which is the grudge match between the main characters and their foils. The bulk of any tournament arc is going to consist of fights between the main characters and opponents of comparable power levels who’ve got some kind of problem with them. Often these grudge matches develop out of the characters realizing that their powers, personalities, and/or backgrounds either clash with or compliment one-another. Nanoha Vivid has a lot of these, such as the battle between Vivio and Rinaldi Miura, in which they become friends by way of fighting because of their complementary techniques; or the grudge match between Victoria Dahlgrun and Harry Tribeca, whose personalities and fighting styles are polar opposites. Episodes nine through twelve of the Asterisk War are focused on one of these grudge matches, while setting up another one in the background.

Outside of all the time they waste on characters flirting and seeing one-another naked, episodes nine and ten are entirely dedicated to establishing the four main teams that we’ll be following in this arc, by way of five quick little battles. A typical tournament arc will often start off with the main characters blowing away some of the lesser opponents in the early matches, in order to establish how those characters compare to their competition. For instance, in Nanoha Vivid, we don’t really have any context into how powerful Vivio and her friends are in comparison to the other fighters in their age group, until we see them plowing their way through the preliminaries.

The Asterisk War gives two of these types of matches to Ayato and Julis and one to Kirin and Saya–but in this case they were largely unnecessary. We were already aware that these characters were some of the strongest fighters in the city because of their ranks–and, thanks to the announcement that Ayato is the only top-ranked fighter in the tournament, we can imagine that most of the other fighters won’t be at his level. At this stage in the game, it would be far more important to establish which fighters might actually pose a threat to our main characters, and to start them all off with some heavy-hitting opponents, giving the impression that the REALLY strong guys are going to be on a whole different level from the ones at the bottom.

Instead, Ayato wins his first match against two randies in a single attack, with Julis watching from the sidelines. Julis herself then duplicates this success against a pair of random cute girls in the next episode. When the press comes to talk to them, Julis tells Ayato that she wants to keep everyone in the dark about their strategies until the end of the tournament–meaning she’s already completely confident that they’re going to steamroll it. Likewise, Kirin and Saya make quick and easy work of their first opponents in-between dicking around for most episode ten. There is no tension in this entire arc whatsoever

Meanwhile, we’re introduced to our first pair of rivals in episode nine–a couple of robots built by the hyperactive girl who showed up in the previous arc, and for whom the tournament‘s rules were changed to allow them to compete. Forgive me for going on a tangent here, but these robot dudes could not more obviously have been based on the robot characters from Phantasy Star Online. I’ve been mentioning here and there all along that this show’s design sense seems to borrow from that game, especially in the look of some of its weapons [the yellow axe], but these things are just outright ripped off from it.

It actually wouldn’t surprise me if these homages to PSO were the direct result of A1 Pictures’ involvement in the series. After all, the studio seems to have a pretty friendly relationship with SEGA; 2014’s Nanana’s Buried Treasure, for instance, featured the titular character actually playing Phantasy Star Online 2 in some of the episodes, and the game itself has featured advertisements for A-1 Pictures shows in the past. Not to mention that SEGA were the ones who made Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax–a game which features characters from tons of Dengeki Bunko light novels, including Sword Art Online and Ore no Imouto, which A1 Pictures did the anime for. It also featured stuff from SEGA’s Valkyria Chronicles, for which A1 once again handled the anime adaptation. Oddly enough, The Asterisk War doesn’t come from Dengeki Bunko at all, so whatever connection to SEGA there might be here would probably be from A1. Anyways, that’s enough flexing my databrain for now.

The Asterisk War attempts to establish these robot characters as sort of unique and quirky in comparison to what’s typical of the show, but everything about them weirdly falls flat. All that we learn from watching their battle against yet another pair of complete nobodies, is that they’ve got really good defense and they’re also pretty strong. After their match, Saya’s dad calls her up to shout some technical jargon about how they can control more parameters or whatever than any typical human can, but since we don’t know shit about that shit, it doesn’t really tell us anything. The robots also have some kind of comedy duo gimmick going on, where the guy robot is loud and boisterous, while the girl is a deadpan tsukkomi, but all of their dialog completely fails to entertain. Actually, the most memorable moment with these characters is when the guy robot asks his creator why the girl robot is always able to beat him even though he should be stronger; and the creator, not wanting to let him in on the fact that the girl robot is his limiter, lies to him that she literally programmed sexism into their code. It’s a really bizarre sequence of dialog.

That’s all we get out of these robots for now, though it’s pretty clear that the show is setting them up to turn into big rivals further down the line. There’s even a bit of an actual grudge to their matchup with Saya, since she’s kind of pissed off that their creators were dissing her father’s weapons in an earlier episode–though the show forgets to actually tell us whether the robots are in the same bracket as Saya, which might’ve lent some kind of drama to the proceeding episodes. Instead, given that we’ve only seen these robots fighting against random dudes whom, for all we know, could’ve been just as pathetic if they went up against any of the main characters, the robots don’t leave much of an impression, and just seem to be hogging up screen time compared to the rival characters who actually matter in this part of the arc.

So then we’ve got Irene–and yes, that’s how I’m going to pronounce her name–who is the central rival for this part of the arc leading up to the season one climax. Our first encounter with her at the start of episode nine is when this fat guy whom I can’t believe they wasted Tomokazu Sugita’s voice acting talent on, lets her out of some kind of prison and puts her on a mission to kill Ayato. Aside from her sort of outlandish character design, we aren’t given any kind of impression of what she’s like until the following episode, when Ayato and Julis find her in the middle of a street fight, settling an old score with the very same guys that Julis beat the shit out of back in episode three.

Irene has a bit of an attitude and seems to be pretty keen on fighting, but she’s reigned in by her perfectly milquetoast little sister Priscilla–who also happens to be her tournament partner. Compared to everyone else in the show, Irene actually has some decently unique super powers. She wields an enormous weapon called the Gravi-Scythe, which has the power to intensify gravity for her opponents, and also turns her into a vampire. Literally. She’s literally a vampire

Irene’s first tournament match against Lester and his lackey is one of the most poorly-considered attempts at jobbing which I’ve ever seen. For those who aren’t familiar with this concept, jobbing is when you take an established character–usually one whom we’ve seen fighting a few times, and  typically a former rival of the main character who has since become one of their friends, who is supposed to at some point have been roughly equivalent to the main character in power–and then have them get utterly stomped by the new adversary in order to show us just how strong that new adversary is.

If this show had actually made any sense up until this point, then Lester would’ve been a perfect candidate for jobbing. He’s a guy who started off hating the main characters and fighting against them; and then, after fighting with them against a mutual foe, eventually sort of started hanging out with them–or at least, for some reason, Ayato seems to be intent on befriending him. He’s the kind of character who’s just relevant enough to the show’s history that we know who he is, but who’s just inconsequential enough that you’d expect him to lose at some point to a stronger opponent anyways.

The only problem here is that Lester has already been established as a total pushover. He was introduced as some dude who Julis beat three times in a row because he kept pathetically challenging her, and then he got royally stomped by his own lackey, before Ayato showed up and utterly laid waste to that very same lackey. Never once have we been given the impression that Lester could actually hold his own in this tournament, or that beating him could be considered a show of power. And even in spite of that, he manages to put up enough of a fight against Irene that she decides to “get serious” and to show off some of her more advanced abilities against him; which logically puts her closer to Lester’s power level than it does to the absurdly high level of Ayato. But I guess it does make sense for a vampire to try and avoid any narrative stakes.

The last two episodes of season one are the only time that the Asterisk War actually manages to come close to being competent about its structure. Using the hilariously dumb setup that Ayato has to go looking for Saya because she’s gotten lost, Ayato ends up running into Priscilla and rescuing her from a bunch of random thugs–which apparently puts Irene in his debt; so she invites him over to dinner and explains that she’s working for Le Wolfe Academy, and that she’s been hired to take him out; and we also learn from Priscilla that the Gravi-scythe may be slowly turning Irene into a bloodthirsty monster. That’s fifteen agonizing minutes I saved you in one sentence.

This kind of setup is the most simple and effective way to handle a grudge match rivalry in a tournament arc. Simply give the character some kind of sob story which explains why they’re fighting, and then maybe create some tension by getting the main character to empathize with them right before going into battle. While you’re at it, come up with some reason that this battle could make or break this character’s entire life by way of what they would have to do in order to win, and you’ve got drama. The Asterisk War manages to follow this template to the letter–but unfortunately, it only goes as far as literally having the characters explain this shit to the audience, and then wrapping it up with an overly long, sleep-inducing battle scene in the following episode.

Irene and Priscilla’s backstory is the kind of trite garbage that a hack writer could churn out by falling asleep on the keyboard. They come from a war-torn country, their parents tried to sell them off so they ran away, and then the dude from Le Wolfe (who I guess must be a lot older than the other characters) showed up and offered Irene to protect her sister as long as she’d fight for him using the gravi-scythe. This information is presented at nearly the same speed that I just rattled it off, and without any dramatic fanfare or emotional depth to get us invested in these characters.

In fairness, the most interesting thing to come out of this arc is when Ayato pays a visit to Claudia’s apartment and conveniently receives a rude introduction to her secret powers. Claudia explains that her weapon torments her by showing her nightly dreams of different ways that she might die, and that it typically drives its users insane. While this explanation is a little bit out of nowhere, and I don’t think it really adds much of anything to Claudia’s character, the idea that the most powerful weapons in this world come with different bizarre physical and psychological side-effects is probably the closest thing the show has to an interesting idea. I mean, it’s not exactly original, but at least it could be used to develop the characters in interesting ways if we saw their minds and bodies deteriorating over the course of their battles. Of course, what this amounts to in the fight against Irene is simply that after getting hit with a really big attack, she goes into high power mode and won’t listen to reason anymore, so Ayato screams a lot and turns into a Ping Pong character, and then breaks her gravi-scythe. Riveting.

There’s really not much else to say about this arc, given that so much of it is consumed by characters just standing around flirting and wasting time. The scene where Ayato breaks the gravi-scythe tries to be all epic and dramatic by playing the show’s opening theme in the background, but it’s obvious that they didn’t have enough planned for the end of the fight to match the length of the song, so they just dragged out every shot for as long as possible. Our grasp of the characters’ powers is so lacking that the battle comes off as nothing more than a light show–yet it goes on and on for what feels like half the episode just dragging its feet.

Afterwards there’s a little bit of resolution between the sisters, and then we see glimpses of a bunch of people who are going to show up in season two, and that’s about it. If you were to cut out all the stupid bullshit from these episodes and use that time to flesh out Irene and Priscilla’s characters and make them possible to care about, then they could’ve been decent enough adversaries–but instead, their entire story just comes off as a flaccid waste of time.

Funnily enough, I don’t even think that pointing out how badly this arc fucked up handling the most basic formula for a decent shounen action series is the most damning thing that I can say about it; even worse than that is how badly it shits on the overall series narrative. Remember how this was supposed to be a dark and conniving city where everything revolves around these deadly fighting contests called Festas? Well, in the entire course of this arc, not a single person actually dies. In fact, no one even gets critically injured! At one point, one of the commentators mentions that the badges will automatically break if they register you as unconscious, meaning that there isn’t any reason to kill anyone in the first place. I don’t know if this was mentioned in the show itself, but I remember reading on the wiki that this was supposed to be a contest where even the audience wasn’t safe–yet we clearly see in the final battle that there’s an invisible barrier around the stage. At this point, it’s hard to imagine that this competition is any more deadly than, say, an MMA fight.

It wouldn’t even have been hard to preserve the idea of this being a dark and deadly bloodsport without killing anyone, just by having the audience react with disappointment when the main characters refuse to finish someone off. Instead, the crowd never does anything besides cheer for whatever’s going on, even when Ayato ends a match in one move and you don’t get to see anything. And come to think of it, if the city completely revolves around the festas, and all of the schools exist to fight in the festas, and all of the students on this island are here because they have some wish that they want to fulfill by winning in the festas, then why the fuck is Ayato the only number one ranked student competing in the festa? Did none of the other highly-ranked students care enough to give it a shot? Were none of the other schools really trying to win? It seems like nothing that we’ve ever been told about the festas is relevant at all at this point.

It’s kind of astounding to watch the way that this series just keeps on trucking along with complete abandon–never stopping to sort itself out, or to maintain any degree of internal consistency. We’re at the end of the first season now, and the setting has been left in shambles, the dramatic tension has yet to come into existence, and Claudia‘s already asking Ayato compete with her in the NEXT festa before this one is even over; a truckload of new characters have been hinted at, and the second season is already planned for this spring. This story holds up with about as much logic as the fanfiction that I was writing when I was eleven years old–and if this was indeed a middle schooler’s fanfiction, then it wouldn’t be worth criticizing; but considering that this is a published series of light novels which have already been licensed for translation and North American release–and that they’ve been adapted into more episodes of anime than what some of the most popular and high-quality manga adaptations have been able to acquire in recent years, which has also been translated to a worldwide audience and adapted into a Vita game, I can only view this as the absolute pinnacle of cynicism in storytelling.

At this point, I’ve covered pretty much everything worth saying about the Asterisk War in itself; however, I’ve yet to touch on what is by far the most interesting aspect of the context in which the series was released. Namely, that there was a nearly identical series which ran on the exact same day at the exact same time, for the exact same number of episodes. In the grand finale of this epic video book, I’ll be putting that series against The Asterisk War to see if it’s possible to make the exact same show, without managing to fuck it up.

Continued in part twelve.

1988’s Akira is among the most revered and influential anime films of all time, and is today regarded almost as a symbol of a certain time and place in anime history, both stylistically and in terms of overall quality. To this day, it remains one of the most impressive animation showcases to ever come out of Japan, and a lot of its animation staff went on to have long and illustrious careers within the industry.

Given Akira’s iconic status when talking about classic anime, I thought it might be interesting to find out what the animators who worked on that film have been up to over the past decade. I got the idea for this after discovering that some of the most iconic scenes from the first season of K-On–a series which is often used to represnt the modern age of anime in the same way that Akira represents late 80s–were animated by someone who also drew some very memorable cuts from Akira.

From there, I had a look at all of the animators listed for Akira on sakugabooru and compiled all of their work from the past decade into a thirty-three-minute sakuga AMV. It was pretty fascinating to see how many of these staff would continue to find themselves working together over the years, with a lot of them having done work for Ghibli through the 90s and 2000s, and many also contributing to the films of Satoshi Kon, Mamoru Oshii, Hiroyuki Okiura, and Mamoru Hosoda, and also going on to contribute to various parts of the Animator Expo. At some point, it almost became more interesting to find out which stuff these animators had worked on outside of those films, and the random places in which some of them turned up.

In the video, the animators are mostly organized by their level of cotnribution to the film Akira itself, in terms of how much of their work on the film was listed on sakugabooru. Besides that, each individual animator’s work is ordered chronologically. If you’re down to check out this behemoth-sized sakuga AMV, then head on down below and follow the links to all the places where the video is currently being hosted. This video is completely non-profit and was made just for the sake of its own existence, so if you want to download it and upload it to other streaming sites, then feel free to do so, and link them to me so I can put them in my list. Enjoy!

(Note: Maybe don’t watch this at work. There’s some tits.)

On google drive.

On Free Playing.

On Zippcast.

Check out this interview with him that Toco Toco TV posted last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tiKOsCz2M

Text version:

You might not know his name, but you may be familiar with the work of art director Shichiro Kobayashi. He’s been in charge of the background art for popular and classic anime series like Berserk, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Detroit Metal City, and Nodame Cantabile. If you do already know his name, then it might be for his beautiful work on the dark and striking Angel’s Egg; or the soft and soothing Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou; or maybe for his work with Hayao Miyazaki on films like Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro.

Shichiro Kobayashi has been working with anime since the dawn of time–or at least since the early 70s, with his first widely-recognized work having been on the Osamu Dezaki-directed Nobody’s Boy Remi. It must have been from Dezaki that Kobayashi picked up the technique called Harmonies–high-detail paintings which Dezaki would often use to punctuate the dramatic moments in a show, and which Kobayashi would go on to use in more of his work over the next three decades.

Kobayashi’s style is instantly recognizable, whether it’s in the background of a gritty 90s high-fantasy series like Orphen; or in a goofy moe slapstick comedy from the 2010s like Tantei Opera Milky Holmes. His hand-painted backgrounds always bear the mark of his handiwork very clearly; with their inky, unclean, and almost unfinished look to them. He tends to leave a lot of white space in his backgrounds, and his very distinct ways of drawing trees, bushes, towns, and rocky roads, are easy to pinpoint as visual signatures.

If you’re watching a series that Kobayashi is involved with, you’re almost guaranteed some sweeping cityscape shots, regardless of their level of detail. Lots of his shows take place in small, rustic villages, which he brings to life immediately in his art. Others are set in more contemporary cities, which are always shown in a few super wide-angle shots. Also, this might be a coincidence, but I found that towers and steeples kept popping up in his shows, often in close relationship to a lake. Something almost sexual about that.
By nature of working in anime, he also ends up drawing a lot of schools. Most of them are very old-school, individual three-story buildings; but occassionally you get something crazy like the school from Utena.

Very ocassionally, but more commonly in his older work, Kobayashi would use these parallax background layers to create some really dramatic shots. Nobody’s Boy Remi in particular used so many of these that it became kind of hilarious.

Looking into the works of an art director like Kobayashi was fascinating, because he was so unbeholden to any genre across his career. He could pop up in a high-concept, high-budget film, or in a low-tier early-2000s harem comedy, and still be totally recognizable.

The closest thing to a connective thread in his work is that most of what he did from the late 90s onward was with studio JC Staff; tho he didn’t work with them exclusively.
If I have one criticism of the way that Kobayashi has been used, especially on a lot of those JC Staff shows, it would be that the character designs don’t always look at home in his backgrounds. Sometimes, seeing clean and colorful designs set against these sort of washed-out and soft backdrops could get a little weird, though I wouldn’t necessarily blame Kobayashi for this.

Around five years ago, I remember listening to the commentary on the Simoun DVDs wherein director Junji Nishimura briefly talked about working with Kobayashi. He described him as being so old school that he still did a lot of work on cels, and would even walk into the office with cels in hand and submit them for the show. I always wondered about what kind of person Kobayashi might be after hearing that, and I finally got a little insight into his personality from this interview that Toco Toco TV posed with him on youtube last year.

Having retired from the industry three years prior at age 79, Kobayashi still continues to work on his art and to strive for improvement at home in his incredible home studio. From the way that he talks, Kobayashi seems like a true dyed-in-the-wool artist through and through, who will probably keep going with his art for the rest of his life, and has a lot of deep thoughts about the nature of his craft. I’ll put a link to this interview in the description for anyone who’s interested in it.

Kobayashi’s contribution to anime history on more than 100 shows is staggering, and it’s always fun to be watching an old show and to instantly realize that he must’ve been the art director on it as soon as you see a few trees. If you want to see his work at its best, I’d highly recommend checking out Nobody’s Boy Remi from the 70s, Angel’s Egg and Venus Wars from the 80s, Berserk and Utena from the 90s, and Windy Tales and Tokyo Marble Chocolate from the 2000s. All of them are great shows where Kobayashi’s work really shines.

Stick around on my channel if you’d like to see more videos like this; and if you’d like to support those videos, then consider donating via Patreon, or sharing this video to anyone whom you think will enjoy it. Thanks again for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.

Edited by The Davoo

Text version

At the beginning of the Fall 2015 anime season, a pair of light novel adaptations became the subject of ridicule based on the alarming extent of their similarities: The Asterisk War by A-1 Pictures, and Chivalry of a Failed Knight by Silver Link. Both shows happened to air on the same day, at the same time, and for the same number of episodes. Both stories take place at an illustrious academy which is home to students with special powers, who are put into tournament fighting scenarios and ranked according to their power levels. Each of them features a generic Light Novel Guy protagonist, who happens to walk in on a pink-haired princess in a state of undress at the start of the first episode. Each of these princesses has a tsundere personality and ends up challenging the main character to a fight–with the pretense that the princess is one of the stronger fighters in the school, whereas the main character is a yet-unproven newbie. In both cases, the characters get into a bombastic sword fight–with both princesses utilizing fire magic in addition to their swordplay, but ultimately being defeated by their respective light novel guys and showing some affection towards them by the end of the episode.

The similarities between these shows don’t even come close to ending there–in fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the story beats of each series are almost exactly the same, and even occur during the exact same episodes. However, over the course of this video, I’m going to show you how the many subtle and meaningful differences between these shows have dramatically affected their overall quality; and resulted in the seemingly impossible fact that Chivalry of a Failed Knight actually does not suck.

That’s not to say that the series is necessarily good; it’s still a pretty generic, middle-of-the-road high school action series that employs a majority of the same tired-ass tropes as The Asterisk War without adding much of anything new or interesting to the anime landscape. The animation quality is less-than-stellar, and the character designs feel even more generic and dated than those of The Asterisk War–though there is a bit more variety and personality behind each of them individually. Almost nothing about this show is anything that you haven’t seen a hundred times before, and I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone who wasn’t predisposed to watching it anyways. However, I can honestly say that I think that this show ultimately succeeds at handling its subject matter with an acceptable level of competence. It does not insult the viewer’s intelligence to watch it, nor does it have very many faults which I would find outright distasteful. It’s a strong five to a light six–the bare minimum of what I think could be considered a worthwhile viewing experience; and in being that, it is sooooo much better than the Asterisk War.

The important differences begin as early as the opening scene of the first episode. As discussed in part one, The Asterisk War opens on a very poorly constructed and ultimately pointless action scene that sucks tons of ass and means nothing whatsoever. Chivalry opens on a news report which plays in the background of the main character getting dressed, and which explains the basic facts about our resident princess, Stella Vermillion. This shot follows a trend throughout the show of utilizing weirdly ambitious animation techniques that the team isn’t quite talented enough to make impressive, but nonetheless add a lot of character to the animation.

After the brief introduction of the princess, the show then immediately launches into Ikki, the main character, narrating about the driving themes of the series. Yeah, this one actually has themes! Ikki talks about how there’s a natural hierarchy between those who are born with talent, and those who are born without, and wonders whether the untalented should give up on striving towards what they want to become. We then get a flashback to a strange moment with Ikki in the snow being given words of advice about not giving up even though he’s the weakest one–which we will later learn was the moment that turned Ikki into the man that he is today. Ikki’s voice-over continues as he explains the concept of magic-using fighters called Blazers, and how the Blazers who are approved by the international organization–whatever that is–are known as Magical Knights; and that he is an aspiring magical knight himself. The narration is delivered over footage of him training with his sword, before thrusting it to the heavens, and cutting to the title.

This introduction is pretty barebones, and doesn’t exactly inspire much hype towards what’s to come–but the important thing is that it doesn’t suck. It doesn’t pull us out of the world entirely in order to show us some stupid, disconnected space computer monitors, nor bore us to death with a terrible-looking action scene. It immediately establishes its two main characters in the very first shot; then explains the main character’s ideology as well as how he acquired that ideology; then showcases and explains his powers; and, finally, clues us into his motivations. Less than two minutes in, we already understand who and what this show is about–and what kind of message it will ultimately try to send.

Just like in the Asterisk War, the very next moment involves the main character walking in on the princess naked. This scene is still completely stupid, tasteless, and a major turn-off–however, it is nonetheless far superior to the similar scene from The Asterisk War. For starters, the logic behind it is, if typical, far more sound–Ikki has been assigned to this room and has no idea that Stella lives there, and vice-versa. The actual fanservice shot is more detailed and enticing than Julis’ lack of ass–and in fact, while Stella is even less of my type than Julis, it’s interesting how the series presents her as unquestionably the hot one; she’s even got the biggest boobs! But I digress. Before Stella and the audience have time to get annoyed, Ikki immediately says, “hold on. I know what you want to say, and I won’t make any excuses,” and then attempts to atone for his wrongdoing by immediately removing his own clothes to make it even.

Does this make any sense? Not really. Does Ikki even seem like the kind of guy who’d do this sort of dumb shit in the long run? Not really. In terms of the audience experience, does this incredibly brief glimpse of Ikki’s chiseled body make it an “even” exchange of manservice for fanservice? Not really. But you know… it’s a hell of a lot better than what I’m used to. If nothing else, it caught me by surprise, having come off the heels of another, similar scene in the show I was watching right before, and I think that’s probably the main thing it was intended to do.

From that mercifully brief fanservice scene, Chivalry launches directly into a nearly identical exposition sequence to the one from the Asterisk War–but, as usual, with some key differences. The biggest and most noteworthy change is that this show does not have a Claudia character, but instead replaces her with the director of the school. This alteration is vital, because it speaks to the biggest difference in the thought processes behind each of these shows. The Asterisk War is willing to strain the audience’s suspension of disbelief by having Ayato’s only contact with any authority figure in the school limited to a girl his own age who seems to basically run place–all in the name of keeping every relevant character in the show as a part of Ayato’s harem. Chivalry, on the other hand, introduces the idea that there’s some adult supervision in this society from the get-go–assuring us that the morals of this society haven’t quite been inverted yet, and that we may in fact find ourselves capable of relating to the characters.

The story behind the school is exactly the same as in Ass War–there’s a big inter-high competition which they used to always win at, but in recent years they’ve started going downhill. That’s about all we learn before the scene returns to addressing the whole room-entering fiasco, so let’s take a moment to consider what’s happening here. Obviously Stella gave Ikki the slap; but while it’s not all that clear what went down between then and this office visit, it seems as though the characters’ response to a confrontational situation was, honest to god, to go and alert an adult authority figure. As opposed to setting her apartment on fire like a fucking idiot, Stella actually took Ikki to the principal’s office to have her work them through their spat. I’m honestly a little bit shocked.

Of course, Stella then pulls some similar bullshit to what Julis did, where she frames a sentence in a way that seems rational at first, before revealing that she actually wants Ikki to make amends by killing himself. It’s not quite as jarring and ridiculous as the Julis scene, and doesn’t have the stupid weird dere moments, but it’s the same kind of dialog. Here’s the fun part though–Ikki’s response to her demand for suicide is to deride her for thinking that he’d offer his life for something so stupid. He’s just like, “Jesus dude, all I did was see you in your underwear!” Which is, like, a rational response that an actual human would have! And then, when Stella gets all pissed off and ready to blow the roof, Ikki disarms her by telling her that she’s beautiful, causing her to set off the sprinklers. If you can’t read the symbolism here: she literally gets wet.

So, in the midst of learning the dumbass reason that they have to share a room and watching them argue like the kids they are, we are told that Ikki is, in fact, the lowest-ranked magic user in this academy–and has thereby earned the nickname of the Worst One. However, when the principal suggests that they have a sparring match as a way of settling their argument over Stella’s overbearing demands, Ikki seems rather confident in his abilities, and states that he’s working very hard. This comment strikes a chord with Stella, who reflects before the match about why she decided to become a magical knight–(to be able to protect her fledgling nation)–and on her vow to learn how to control her powers no matter how hard she has to work.

In the lead-up to the fight, we watch a flashback and listen to kids talking in the halls to inform us of how Stella is regarded by her peers. Everyone thinks that her life must be easy because of her natural talent and her status as royalty–which pisses her off because no one appreciates the hard work that she puts into perfecting her craft. What this is all building up to is a fight scene which takes on a bit more meaning than a simple spat over some dumb fanservice; now it’s turning into an ideological battle. Both characters have something to prove: Ikki that he can compete with the best fighters in the school despite his incredibly low ranking; and Stella that her hard work, in addition to her natural talent, has gotten her into the position that she has today.

Just like in Ass War, we then launch into a big dumb fight scene with some pretty lackluster choreography–however, there’s a lot more going on this time. For starters, the color design changes to reflect the tension of the fight, and to put more emphasis on the characters. In spite of both fighters using swords, their weapons actually look pretty different, with Ikki carrying a katana, and Stella carrying a golden, flaming broadsword. After taking her first swing, Stella explains one of the unique aspects of her attack–that it burns at 3000 degrees celsius–and that Ikki would be in trouble if he took it straight on. While this method of communicating the sword’s power to us is kind of lazy, it at least allows us to understand the circumstances of the battle, and whether or not getting hit would actually mean anything [in contrast to the fight from Ass War].

After Ikki spends a while dodging and blocking Stella’s attacks, he compliments her on the training that she must have undergone to master these techniques, and then states that he’s already seen through her attack patterns. He then retaliates and, for a brief flash, we see an image of Stella overlaid onto him as he makes his attack. This ingenious visual cue immediately communicates to us that Ikki is copying Stella’s techniques. Consider that we otherwise wouldn’t have known what Ikki’s regular sword style looked like in comparison to hers to begin with. We now instantly have a strong grasp of Ikki’s technique–that he copies the abilities of his opponents by studying their moves. He even sort of esoterically explains his methodology, by stating that you can understand the root of anything if you trace it back through the branches and leaves.

Ikki then turns the tide after Stella tries to change up her strategy by using a move which is uncharacteristic of her. Again, we only really understand this because Ikki explains it, but at least we do, in fact, understand it. Ikki’s turn-around doesn’t work out, though, as his sword is unable to cut through Stella’s magical force field. This is kind of an interesting moment for each character idealistically: whereas Stella was hoping to use this match to prove the reach of her strength beyond her magical abilities, she ends up in a position to cease victory only because of the strength of those abilities; whereas Ikki, who wanted to prove that he could win against a powerful opponent regardless of his lack of magical strength, is primed to take home the moral victory while losing the match. From this position, both characters have failed at what they set out to do–but then Ikki pulls his magical power out of his ass and manages a victory. His fighting style, it turns out, is all about studying his opponent until the moment that he knows how to beat them, and then unleashing all of the magical ability that he has in a single minute and striking them down.

Later on in the hospital room, Stella demands an explanation for Ikki’s bottomed-out ranking in comparison to his obvious skill. As it turns out, the school’s ranking system is based solely on a student’s level of magical ability–but not on their overall fighting capability; meaning that Ikki’s secret to success is being so physically powerful and mentally skilled that he can compensate for his lack of magical talent. So yeah, he’s an overpowered super-badass who’s already taken out one of the strongest fighters at school–but at least the reasoning is kind of interesting.

Chivalry of a Failed Knight is using what I like to call the “overdog posing as underdog” trope, which seems to have grown in popularity lately, with shows like Food Wars using it to excellent effect. Basically, the idea is to feature a main character who is obviously more skilled than most of the people surrounding them, but is unrecognized within the broken standards of the system. Rather than being on a mission to improve their skills and rise to the top, their battle is really against the structure of their society–and their ultimate goal is to shove the hypocrisy of the system back in its face and make it realize the value of the powers which it fails to recognize.

After the director causes Stella to realize the similarities in hers and Ikki’s goals, she begins to take an interest in him; and then, upon finding him asleep in the room, starts totally checking out his body. It’s kind of an interesting scene for reasons that we’ll get into later; but then, after some bickering that turns into flirting, the kids seem to find mutual camaraderie with one-another and share a totally radical fist-bump before the episode ends.

When the first episodes of Chivalry and Ass War first came out, I put up a tweet that the difference between these episodes was like that between a three-out-of-ten and a one-out-of-ten; and while I’d probably bump Chivalry’s opener up to a four upon analysis, I still think that this sentiment is an important one. So many people would look at the similarities between these episodes and immediately classify both shows as equally generic, uninteresting, and trite. However, I think that there’s a danger in failing to recognize just how much worse the first episode of Ass War is in comparison to that of Chivalry. If we simply group all of these things together as meeting the same bar, then I think it drags the overall standard of what can be considered acceptable downwards. I think it’s important that when something is really THAT terrible, then we can parse just how much worse it is than something comparable but better.

If the difference in quality hasn’t been made clear enough already, it rapidly becomes increasingly apparent as each series continues. Similarly to the same episode of the Asterisk War, episode two of Chivalry mostly serves as an introduction to Stella’s love rival–yet another frigid loli with a childhood connection to the main character and a cool-toned hair color who immediately starts fighting over which girl gets to ride the dick. But whereas my complaints with Saya being introduced in episode two were that she was irrelevant to the plot and had a completely unexplained connection with and interest in the main character, Shizuku suffers from none of the same problems.

From the very beginning, she narrates about her attitude towards Ikki–whom, as it happens, is actually her brother. Having been attached to him all of her life, she witnessed the way that their family and the society that they were a part of had treated him as a lesser being–and she gradually grew to hate those people, while becoming more and more enamored with her brother. Her motivation to shower Ikki with affection is pretty much the entire basis of her character–and while this makes her come off as fairly shallow, especially in the beginning, she plays an important role at this stage in helping us to learn about Ikki’s backstory; and she will continue to play an important role in the long run as a support character.

One of the things that never made sense to me about Saya was the way that she’d act so possessive of Ayato–fighting over him in front of his face and demanding his affection–yet would never just come out and confess her feelings or take a more provocative approach in her flirting. Shizuku cuts right through all that bullshit by instantly shoving Ikki to the ground and making out with him the moment she sees him, before ringing out all kinds of justifications for why it’s okay for her to do this with her brother, and outright stating her attraction to him publicly.

Understandably, I could see a lot of viewers getting annoyed with the fact that a little sister character exists in this series at all, given the ridiculous proliferation of the little sister who’s in love with her brother trope. However, I personally can’t help but respect the fact that this show doesn’t try to have its cake and eat it too in the way that so many other anime try to. When Ikki first mentions that his sister is coming to this school, Stella asks him if she’s related by blood, and then says that she approves of her arrival as long as that is the case–which is the show’s way of being self-aware about the nature of its tropes. The twist, then, is how in spite of Shizuku actually being Ikki’s honest-to-god sister, she turns out to be one of the most forwardly sexual characters to ever belong to this archetype. It’s a fun little bit of playing around with tropes, while both giving us a more obvious reason for Ikki to not be attracted to or seek out a relationship with this member of his would-be harem; and, in the long run, paying off in a decently handled character arc.

Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to say that I wasn’t annoyed with the scene that introduces Shizuku in the first place. I still can’t stand these unfunny, minutes-long scenes where the main girls just stand around bickering like idiots over who the dick belongs to. However, I think it’s important to call attention to just how much more effort was put into keeping this scene interesting than what we got out of Ass War. Aside from the fact that straight-up making out with Ikki is more provocative and arresting than any of the flirting from that show, we also get moments of expressive animation–like when Shizuku is anticipating Stella’s statement about her relationship with Ikki, and her entire body becomes dark and shrouded with ice; as well as moments where they actually attempt some comedic timing, like when Shizuku and Stella both make snappy insults at one-another, and then we pan out to see their contesting powers explode from the space. Plus, there’s a little bit of extra spice thrown into their rivalry, since Shizuku’s elemental power is to manipulate water–which, as she phrases it, can put Stella out. Sure, the fire and water dynamic is about as generic as they come–but it is, in fact, a dynamic.

Shizuku isn’t the only character introduced in this episode with an obvious parallel in the Ass War–we’ve also got a homeroom teacher with an immediately identifiable quirk; though this one is a lot more bizarre. The gimmick of a teacher who tries to come off as young and cute in spite of her age is one I’ve seen a few times [Hidamari Sketch and Nourin], but in this case, the schtick is that she tries to act cutesy and energetic in spite her sickly appearance and voice, and the fact that she’s constantly puking up geysers of blood. O… kay. Unlike the teacher from Ass War, who only gets like five speaking lines in the entire series, Yuri-chan here is actually relevant to the story, in that she’s the one who helped Ikki to get into this school and to be able to take classes in the first place; and we’ll be seeing a lot more of her as one of the few adult characters who’s actually looking out for him.

This show also has its own newspaper club member, which is about as close as it gets to a parallel to Ass War’s classmate guy–but in this case, she’s an incredibly cute girl, which makes her automatically superior to that asshole with the hoodie. She’s honestly not any more relevant to the story though, and is there mostly as a representative of the student body existing outside of the important characters.

This episode also briefly introduces us to one of the more interesting characters, who actually doesn’t have any immediate parallel in the Asterisk War–an honest to god trans woman named Alice who turns out to be Shizuku’s roommate. Alice doesn’t get much exposure in this episode, but she’ll be around to play a supporting role as the one who often listens to the problems of the other characters and gives them advice, and eventually guides the development of Shizuku.

Aside from introducing all of these new characters, the real point of this episode, and what makes it so much better than episode two of Ass War, is that it fills in more of the details of Ikki’s backstory and motivations and solidifies the tone of his narrative. We learn that Ikki comes from a very distinguished family with a long history of producing top-tier magic users, of which he is the weakest offspring. As such, the family has made an effort to sweep his existence under the rug, and has tried its hardest in coalition with the former school director to keep him out of this prestigious academy. However, thanks to the new director changing the rules and deciding that the school’s ranking system will be based on overall ability as determined through tournament fighting from now on, Ikki finally has a chance to prove himself; with the ultimate goal of hoping to one day be strong enough to inspire hope in a weakling such as himself in the same way that his grandfather did when he told Ikki never to give up when he was a kid.

Learning of Ikki’s motivations and the nature of his isolated upbringing makes him even more relatable to Stella, and she quickly finds herself wanting to support him, and falling deeper in love with him by the second. The episode then rounds off on a surprisingly forward fanservice scene, with Stella getting very blatant in her flirtation and sexual interest in Ikki. Once again, I actually find this aspect of her character interesting, but I’m still not quite ready to talk about why–so once again we’ll push that aside for now and talk about it later.

Episode three of Chivalry is probably the worst in the series, but for pretty different reasons compared to the Ass War episode that it parallels. Like that episode, it revolves around Stella going on a date with Ikki; but in this case, they end up with Shizuku tagging along as well, making it sort of like a portmanteau of the similar scenes from episodes two and three of Ass War. All of the characters in this series have exponentially better fashion sense than Julis or Ayato, with Ikki and Stella looking smart and far less out-of-place than Julis’ weird gown, while Alice outfits herself and Shizuku in some decently trendy fashions.

The first part of this episode consists mostly of obnoxious flirting–but at least it bothers to drop some lines into the mix which flesh out the characters. Towards the start, Ikki and Stella actually have a conversation about something which is neither directly relevant to the plot, nor sexually charged–making the connection between them began to sink in a little better. Ikki later talks about how surprised he is to see Shizuku opening up to someone in the way she does with Alice, and we get a lot of basic insight into the kind of person that Alice is.

The second half involves an action scenario in which the people in the mall are held hostage by a bunch of dudes with guns, led by some asshole magic user. This whole scene ends up being kind of ridiculous and out of nowhere, but it beats the hell out of chasing hooded dudes through the forest; since this hooded dude not only has a much more decorated hood, but also reveals his face and his unique powers as the scene continues. Unfortunately, this scene also involves the bad guy forcing Stella to take off all her clothes, in a sequence which is way too obviously meant to be titillating for the viewer in spite of the disgusting circumstances of the situation. At the very least, Stella herself seems to give less of a shit about this treatment than Ikki does, and stands with bravery throughout the scene, never becoming just a victim; but still, kinda gross.

If there’s any reason for this scenario to happen around these characters, it’s mostly to show us the dynamics of their fighting techniques, and to establish their moral compass as a group. Alice and Shizuku are both very careful with their planning and timing, to the point that Alice prevents Ikki from moving when Stella is in trouble so that he doesn’t interrupt the plan. Shizuku’s power is used for a defensive trap, whereas Ikki and Stella are more about rushing in and getting the damage done. Stella’s fire is even completely impervious to bullets–which makes her objectively better than Julis.

We also learn about the ridiculous but kind of awesome way that Ikki’s magical technique works. Apparently, he can pretty much reroute the synapses in his own brain to focus all of his concentration on a single point, by blocking out things like color and detail in order to hone his reactions and speed. It’s worth mentioning as well that Ikki doesn’t hesitate to sever his opponent’s arm, which is more brutal than anything that happened in the supposedly deadly tournament held in Ass War’s dark and violent city.

More importantly, though, the end of this scene introduces us to the asshole who’s going to be Ikki’s first opponent in the school-sanctioned tournament battles. This guy is introduced by having him easily take out the remaining bad guys whom the main characters had just been struggling against, suggesting that he might’ve been able to resolve the situation by himself from the beginning; and characters who were just established as powerful remark on how they couldn’t even sense his presence. He then mocks Ikki for apparently having run away from a fight they were supposed to have a year ago, and generally comes off as a massive cunt.

Right away, this dude is already a better antagonist than anything we got out of the first season of Ass War. Not only do we have reason to believe that he might be even stronger than any of the main characters, in spite of how powerful they’ve proven themselves to be already, but we also know that Ikki ran away from him in the past, suggesting that he fears this opponent. Not to mention the guy’s a total dickbag, so we’ve already got plenty of reason to hate him–and the grudge between him and the other characters is clearly running strong. This dude might not even remotely resemble a unique or interesting antagonist, but the fact that he comes off as threatening at all makes him a hell of a lot better than what we’ve had before.

So episode four rolls around, and just like before, it’s mostly centered around a big fight scene with our first primary antagonist–being as it is the end of the first volume of the light novels; but it’s the differences in the buildup to and payoff from this fight which sell this one as actual drama, instead of whatever the hell was going on with that fake chess metaphor bullshit. It starts off with Stella steamrolling her first fight in the knockout matches by sheer intimidation; followed by Alice and Shizuku talking about the quick work they made of their own opponents; while Ikki is cooped up in his room, watching a video of the bad guy’s last fight over and over again, and losing his shit.

There’s an important setup going on in the background here that you could easily miss if you aren’t paying attention. Back at the start of episode three, when Ikki and Stella were talking about their battle tactics, Stella remarked on how she prefers not to look into her opponents too much, but to consider her options in the heat of battle; whereas Ikki does extensive research on his opponents as a means of trying to decode their fighting styles. As a result of their differences in mindset, Stella doesn’t recognize how Ikki is actually getting really paranoid and shaken up about this fight, because she thinks he’s just doing his research as usual. For the next ten minutes, we see Ikki trying to match his determination against his fear, as Shizuku points out his untied shoelaces, while the mysterious and hilariously named teacher side-character Saikyou Nene is impressed with his lack of hesitation in confirming his intent for battle.

All of these things exist exclusively for the purpose of building tension–a concept of which the Asterisk War is woefully unaware. Even though everything we’ve known about Ikki so far suggests that he’s monstrously powerful–and even in spite of the fact that he only ran away from this guy a year ago because he would’ve gotten into trouble for fighting back, Ikki is nonetheless terrified of this opponent; and that’s more than enough to create some drama for the upcoming fight, whether we really believe that he has any chance of losing or not.

So the fight breaks out, and right away the opponent has some pretty interesting powers. He somehow spawns like a whole forest out of the stage, and his schtick is that he can turn invisible and fire arrows from a distance. There’s obvious symbolism here–even though this guy has been given the nickname of “the hunter” for his lack of knighthood in combat, and even though his technique is indeed terrifying and deadly, it is also cowardly. His tactics revolve around hiding and attacking from a distance, and he clearly gets off on picking on a defenseless opponent. This guy is a piece of shit right down to his powers, which makes him someone that we really want to see get his ass kicked–and that desire is compounded by the fact that he beats the living shit out of our main character.

For minutes, Ikki is just getting brutalized, while this guy laughs it up and plays to the crowd, who still sees Ikki as a powerless nobody. He whips the entire stadium up into a frenzied chant, and Ikki is more and more demoralized, giving in to his fear and failing to react to his opponent’s moves on time. All the while, Stella’s up there in the stands, realizing that she didn’t even notice how distraught Ikki was before, or just how painful his situation of being labelled as the worst one really is. She gets up and silences the crowd with an impassioned cry, and demands that Ikki get up and be a man, stating that he’s not allowed to be anything less than a badass in front of her. In this moment, both Ikki and Stella pretty clearly realize something–that they are totally in love.

Ikki is filled with determination. He gets up, recognizes what he’s been doing wrong, and finally solves his opponent’s moveset. He hulks out, puts the fear of god into the hunter, and soundly kicks his ass, to the astonishment of a newly turncoated crowd. Then he passes out.

Later on in the hospital room, Stella’s fallen asleep at his bedside. Outside the room, Shizuku is already realizing that she’s going to be the loser in this love triangle, and Alice gives her a shoulder to cry on over it. Ikki wakes up and he and Stella have some flirty dialog, before Ikki drops the bombshell that finally puts this show over into the realm of being actually pretty okay. He confesses his love for Stella, she reciprocates, and they kiss. Ladies and gentlemen, we are four episodes into a light novel adaptation, and light novel guy and light novel girl are officially a couple.

This was the moment when the conversation online surrounding Chivalry of a Failed Knight and the Asterisk War took a very subtle turn. This was when both the popularity ranking and overall score of Chivalry quickly started outpacing those of The Asterisk War. This was when people started talking about how Chivalry was kind of refreshing by comparison, and when the conversation about the similarities between the shows turned into the conversation about why Chivalry of a Failed Knight was better.

What happened in this scene wasn’t just a breath of fresh air for a light novel adaptations–it was a breath of fresh air for anime, period. I can probably count on one hand the number of anime with romantic elements in them, in which the main characters hook up by the end of the fourth episode. It doesn’t even really matter who these characters are, or what their relationship is like–this is such a big change from what I’m used to that it’s immediately interesting.

What this scene makes apparent is that the goal of Chivalry of a Failed Knight is not simply to be a generic light novel. It is not to follow the trends as closely as possible, play everything safe, and never try to do anything different. Instead, the series has goals of its own. Yes, it is operating very comfortably within the conventions of its genre–but it also has intentions of making a name for itself, and feeling like there might be some reason for it to exist–some niche for it to fill. And for that reason, this was the moment when it became apparent to everyone paying attention that yeah–this show is definitely better than that other one.

I’ve still got a lot more to say about the comparisons between these shows, but this video is already long as fuck, so we’re going to have to split it in half, youth novel movie adaptation style. Stick around for the grand finale of this monstrous series in The Asterisk War Sucks Part 12B. See you then!

Edited by The Davoo

Text version:

Back when I was talking about the last two arcs of The Asterisk War, I kind of just glossed over episode eight. Funnily enough, episode eight is probably the least offensively terrible episode of the series, in spite of also being an anime-original filler episode. It follows the new partnership of Kirin and Saya as they realize that their teamwork is rather lackluster due to their lack of personal chemistry. After talking to Ayato and Julis about it, they decide to hang out for the rest of the weekend and get in some good old-fashioned bonding. It’s worth mentioning that in this cafeteria scene, we learn that Ayato has developed a sort of fan following as a result of becoming the number-one fighter at school after beating Kirin.

The first half of the episode follows Kirin and Saya on a little shopping excursion, as Saya seeks an illegal weapon to purchase for her father. The second half has the girls visit a pool so that Saya can teach Kirin how to swim, and get into a dumb fanservice battle with some rich girl in a g-string. After all that, the girls have a moment together wherein they briefly share the most meaningful conversation in the entire show, with Saya offering Kirin some reassurance and guidance on how to have more respect for herself. They then talk about Ayato and how cool he is for a little bit before the episode rounds off on showing how their bonding has made them better team fighters.

It’s not difficult to imagine how this episode came about. There probably wasn’t quite enough material to turn the second volume of the novels into a four-episode arc, so they came up with an excuse to make a pool episode and to get Kirin and Saya into swimsuits. Considering the pretty lackluster animation and artwork throughout most of this episode, it was probably made as a way of saving money, as it’s common practice in the industry to save on budget by making an episode out of panning shots of girls in bikinis at the beach or pool.

Chivalry of a Failed Knight contains a similar filler episode–but in a different part of the show, and with a very different function. It is still very much a pool episode, largely existing in the name of getting its main characters naked–and the dip in art and animation quality reflects this. It is also set in-between major arcs, just like the Ass War episode–with the biggest difference being that it’s in episode five, between the first and second arcs, as opposed to the second and third.

Whereas Ass War’s filler episode focused on fleshing out the relationship between its largely irrelevant side characters, Chivalry’s is dedicated to fleshing out the newly-minted official relationship between its main characters; the focus here being on how, in spite of having hooked up more than a week ago, the couple hasn’t actually done anything romantic together yet.

Just like in Ass War, the early part of the episode establishes that Ikki has taken on a bit of a fan following after his previous victory–but the significance of this is vastly different. Considering the way that Ikki was treated by his classmates up till this point, this radical shift in his reputation is pretty important to his character arc. This fanclub becomes an entire subplot wherein Ikki starts training his classmates on how to become better physical fighters–which is what leads the characters to the pool scene in the first place, as he ends up holding a training class there.

All throughout the episode, Ikki and Stella continually fail at communicating with one-another, and we mostly follow along with Stella as the strain of the situation really starts to put a damper on her perspective of their relationship. At the episode’s midpoint, both Stella and Shizuku are paired off with other girls to talk about their feelings towards Ikki. Shizuku’s is possibly the more interesting conversation, as she asks Alice whether she thinks it’s wrong for her to feel attracted to her brother, and Alice provides some surprising reassurance about how she should pursue whatever feelings she finds to be genuine. Meanwhile, Stella, lamenting over the lack of physicality in her relationship, is convinced to confront Ikki about it–and eventually, their paths converge as the director cleverly hides them under a waterfall fountain together.

The conversation which follows is better than The Asterisk War in its entirety. Ikki and Stella continue to misunderstand one-another in ways that only a couple of dumbass teenagers could, and then get into a bit of a spat which almost leads to breaking off their relationship. They argue and argue and get more and more confused, as it becomes apparent that what’s really bothering each of them is that the other’s lack of making a move has caused them to think that they don’t really love them. After a moment’s contemplation, they both agree to just state their true feelings outright–and of course, what both of them really wants is to kiss the other. And they do–twice–as the director brilliantly turns the waterfall into a place not just for cutting the main characters off from the rest of their classmates, but also for brilliantly lighting their first romantic scene together.

Watching the main characters of a light novel adaptation hook up by the end of episode four was pretty satisfying in itself, but this scene is really what clinches it for the experienced viewer. If you’ve been through something like, say, watching Shana confess her feelings before the final battle of the first season of Shakugan no Shana, and then starting off season two with Yuuji not having actually heard what she said, and Shana being too afraid to repeat it, setting their entire relationship back to square one–then you may have been skeptical of just how meaningful it was for the characters to hook up before. After all, episode four of Ass War was pretty suggestive of the main characters hooking up, but the rest of the show never budged an inch on making them a real couple, since it wanted to preserve its harem.

Chivalry of a Failed Knight makes it very clear in this episode that this is a proper otp relationship; and that this is NOT a harem series; but is, indeed, a romance story. And while the characters and their feelings are rather juvenile, they nonetheless come off as genuine–and resolve in a way that, for a kid watching a show like this as a wish-fulfillment fantasy, would probably be incredibly heartwarming. This scene lets us rest assured that the bullshit and misunderstandings are out of the way for now; and instead of having to run the usual gamut of annoying cliche scenarios where the main characters’ relationship doesn’t seem any more significant than the flirtations of the other girls around them, we might actually get to watch this relationship continue to make progress over the course of the show, and to see the romance take on some depth.

All of that out of the way, it’s here that we launch into our second major arc, during which the parallels to The Asterisk War somehow manage to become even more staggeringly evident than ever before. Once again, we are introduced to a shy swordsman girl from a different grade level of the school, who quickly strikes up a bond with the main character over their mutual interest in sword techniques. Said sword girl has found herself in a situation wherein she is regularly being abused by someone as a result of something which happened to her father, and wherein she is trying to fight in the name of absolving her father’s past deeds. Both daughters have learned how to fight from their fathers, and are largely copying their father’s sword techniques. Both girls are at some point touched by the main character, and later compare the feel of his hands to those of her father. Both end up training regularly with the main character, and eventually end up getting him wrapped up in their business. Both shows have scenes wherein the girl ends up fighting the main character in a stadium, and both end with the main character causing the girl to change the way that she lives her life. As usual, though, it’s the details which make all the difference when stacking these shows up against one-another.

In spite of all the similarities which I just mentioned, Ayatsuji Ayase is treated very differently by the narrative in comparison to Kirin. For starters, Ayase is actually an upperclassman in this case, and doesn’t carry any of the little sister/daughteru baggage that Kirin did. She is consistently treated as someone who stands on equal footing with Ikki as a human being; and while Ikki does end up changing the way she thinks in the end and resolving her situation, this never comes as a result of Ayase being a victim, or incapable of making her own decisions.

Whereas Kirin was fighting because of her father’s wrongful imprisonment, and was following the guidance of an abusive figure, Ayase is fighting for revenge on her father’s honor against the guy who put him into a coma and took over his dojo. The biggest difference in how these goals are portrayed, is that Kirin and her father were both presented as victims of circumstance, whereas Ayase and her father are both in their situations because of their own decisions. Ayase’s father lost a battle that he agreed to and, as Ikki causes her to realize, actually enjoyed–and ended up in his coma as a result of his hubris as a fighter. Ayase herself takes to her quest for vengeance in spite of the fact that her father was always telling her to be a protector of the weak, and not not let herself fight in the name of hate, and all kinds of Yoda shit like that.

By far the biggest difference between the arcs of these characters is the fact that Ayase actually betrays Ikki in an effort to beat him during their tournament match. In spite of everything that Ikki did to help her in improving her sword technique, Ayase cheats him by forcing him to use his Ittou Shura power–which he can only use once every three days–on the night before their match, by throwing herself off of a building, knowing that he’d try to catch her. She even cheats during their match by activating invisible traps which she’d set around the stadium the night before using her special abilities. All of this serves to enhance the drama of their match threefold: not only is Ikki fighting against a friend who betrayed him, but he’s been severely hamstrung by the limitation of his powers–something which actually exists in this show. And yeah, of course he wins anyways, because he’s an unstoppable fighting machine–but he does it purely through tactics and his ridiculously superior instincts and reflexes; not pulling a random surplus of power out of his ass.

Back in Ass War episode seven, the whole conceit that fighting against Ayato was Kirin’s way of taking her “first steps” never made much sense to me. I guess the idea was that she was choosing this fight without her uncle’s permission, but I didn’t really understand the significance of the fight itself. It just seemed like an excuse for Ayato to prove that he would’ve won if he’d taken a more tactical approach to their match-up, and for him to take her spot as number one in the school.

Ayase’s take-away from her match with Ikki is a hell of a lot more relevant to her character arc. In spite of all the shit that she does to betray him, Ikki forgives her for everything, and even goes out of his way to allow her to cheat by convincing his teacher to turn a blind eye to it. By beating her without using underhanded tactics and at a huge disadvantage, he makes her realize the gravity of what a shitty person she’s allowed herself to become, and convinces her that it’s time for her to change, and to remember what her father tried to teach her. It’s certainly a more meaningful way to inspire change in his opponent’s mindset than just by telling her that she’s wrong, and being a lot more convincing than the guy who regularly slaps her in the face.

The last episode of the arc revolves around a big fight between Ikki, and the guy who took over Ayase’s family dojo, and who bashed a bottle over Ikki’s head during his introduction a couple of episodes ago. This guy has a pretty stand-out character design that makes a quick impact, and his personality is a bit more unique than that of the last bad guy. He’s a dojo-hunting swordsman who takes sadistic pleasure in getting the chance to bring prideful swordsmen to their knees, but he actually uses more legitimate tactics even than Ayase herself, and is as passionate about the heat of battle as any of the main characters.

There’s a lot of dialog throughout this fight, wherein Ikki realizes how much fun Ayase’s father must have been having while fighting this guy, and how much fun he’s having himself. By the end of it, even the bad guy seems like he might’ve had a slight change of heart towards Ikki, and we’ll be seeing little hints later that he might be relevant again in the long run. More importantly, this fight scene is actually pretty entertaining in its own right, with the enemy once again having a very unique weapon and set of powers, and the animation team kicking things up a notch with their creatively dramatic coloring. All things considered, it’s a pretty okay fight scene.

And that’s the end of the arc. Ayase’s father wakes up, with them now mutually understanding one-another, and her role in the show is over. She doesn’t tag along with the main characters, clinging to light novel guy’s coattails and joining an inevitable spurned women’s club–she’s just done with her part in the show. Both Ayase and Ikki actually made it through this entire three-episode arc without showing any physical attraction to one-another, or flirting at random, or suggesting that Ayase is in love with him. They simply maintain a mutual respect for one-another and develop a normal friendship.

Even though there’s a fanservice-y scene wherein Ikki feels up her legs while teaching her a sword technique, during which she is understandably embarrassed, he apologizes over it afterwards, and neither one seems to take it sexually. That night, Stella even asks Ikki about it, and he reassures her that his affection is for her exclusively, and they have a little romantic moment over it. So yes, the show actually, in complete self-awareness, decided to center an entire arc around a female character with no romantic subtext whatsoever. I’m impressed!

Moving on to the show’s final arc, the parallels between Chivalry of a Failed Knight and The Asterisk War become a bit less intense. A lot of that is because the Asterisk War moves into its big tournament in this arc, whereas Chivalry is still building up towards its own big interhigh battle; and only lets us know which students will be participating in it at the very end of the season. There are still a number of similarities in the way that these arcs are structured, and those similarities are still an excellent lens into how this show does all of the same things better, but a lot of the noteworthy parts of these episodes are pretty unique to this series.

Episode nine is mostly just a bunch of setup for things to come, sprinkled within a lighthearted slice-of-life plot that’s meant to cool us off after the last two episodes of fighting. Ikki and Stella go off to a training camp with the school’s student council, and at some point Stella gets sick, so Ikki has to take care of her. This eventually leads to an amazingly lengthy and detailed fanservice sequence–but one which I honestly don’t have any problems with. I mean, if you’re not into this kind of shit in the first place, then I’m sure it doesn’t have a lot to offer, but I can’t really bemoan too much a kind-of-intimate scene between a pair of lovers who are actually capable of admitting to and talking about their sexual interest in one-another.

And, in fact, that’s actually how this scene progresses. Ikki pops a boner after seeing Stella in her underwear, and Stella asks him if he wants to have sex with her. After giving it some thought, Ikki says that he feels like he can’t have sex with her before getting married, because that’s just what he’s comfortable with. Stella feels a little bit guilty over the fact that she didn’t feel the same level of restraint–and while, in the context of my own beliefs versus those of the show, I do find it kind of upsetting that Stella is made to feel guilty over her own sexuality, I still think that this is an interesting bit of characterization. All throughout the series, Stella has always been pretty forwardly sexual towards Ikki; and in this scene, the show actually admits and addresses it. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel like Stella’s actions all this time have just been the show’s way of forcing fanservice into its character interactions–Stella’s sexuality is actually an important aspect of her character, and the cause of one of her inner conflicts.

Now, I’d be really hard-pressed to say that this show doesn’t use fanservice in some pretty disagreeable ways. There’s plenty of panty shots, that opening scene, the part where Stella was forced to undress, and a scene in episode ten wherein Saikyou Nene grabs Stella’s tits at random. I also think that the show itself promotes a pretty traditionalist mindset when it comes to sex, as one of its main characters wants to wait for marriage, and the other one feels guilty over the fact that she doesn’t–and while I’m going to address the resolution of this conflict at the end of a later episode, I’ll just say for now that traditionalism wins out in the end.

Nevertheless, I think that in this scene, Chivalry of a Failed Knight at least starts to ride the line between being a show which features sexuality, and being a show which comments on sexuality. In this scene, the sexuality becomes more than a way to entice the audience, and becomes a way for the audience to connect with the characters on sexuailty as a topic. And you know, considering how this show is clearly meant for teenagers and is loaded to the brim with moralizing, it’s hardly surprising that its characters are going to have a fairly milquetoast and juvenile relationship. The stuff that I said about how Ayato’s sexuality was governed by what works for the audience could still be applied here; but at least in this case, they made it work for the characters as well.

So while this is all happening, the b-part of this episode has Shizuku taking a trip back to her family’s house, which mostly seems like it was meant to jog our memories about what a bunch of assholes they all are, since one of their underlings is going to be the villain of this arc. The episode ends with Ikki and company getting attacked by a bunch of golem puppets, and the introduction of the student body president–a lightning user so powerful that she can break the show’s aspect ratio. (Y’know, I really can’t decide if that effect is goofy and terrible, or totally kickass.) We also get a quick hint as to who sent these puppets after them, but that won’t be relevant till later.

Episode ten focuses almost entirely on Shizuku–and the way that this episode is structured to fit in with the rest of the arc is actually kind of brilliant. From the beginning, the biggest role of Shizuku in this story has always been to provide insight into Ikki’s home situation. This episode opens with some flashbacks into the siblings’ past, wherein Shizuku recounts how she fell in love with her brother, and became determined to reimburse him with all of the care that her family never gave.

The whole first part of this episode is all about building up Shizuku’s emotions, and having her stake those emotions on this huge battle against the student council president–whom, as we’ve seen in the previous episode, is a total badass. Over the course of this very long and explosive fight scene, filled with all kinds of creative interplay between the characters’ powers, the focus remains on Shizuku almost exclusively. The president barely says a word and mostly just keeps unleashing attacks, while more and more emotions are piled onto Shizuku, and her part in this fight takes on more and more meaning. It turns into this big, long, protracted struggle with everything riding on the line; and at the end of it, Shizuku–loses.

Remember all that shit I said back in part eleven about how The Asterisk War doesn’t understand the concept of jobbing? Well, this is how you do it right. We already knew that the student council president was strong–we were shown as much in the previous episode. Likewise, we’ve been given evidence to the fact that Shizuku is a badass both in the past, and over the course of this incredibly long battle. The match really could’ve gone either way–we had no reason to think that Shizuku was more likely to lose, especially when the whole episode was making it look like this was to be her big moment in the spotlight. Even at the end of the fight, we don’t necessarily yet understand what the purpose of this match was in the context of the arc as a whole. Near as we can tell, this was just a very tragic turnout for a character who wanted to prove herself. It’s only at the end of the arc, when the class president is revealed as the final opponent whom Ikki must overcome to make it to the inter-high battles, that we realize how Shizuku was totally jobbing.

So the setup for the last two episodes is pretty similar to the last two of Ass War. In both cases, there’s a fat businessman trying to get the main character taken out of the running by a trump card fighter, while the fighter herself has a little sob story in episode eleven, befriends the main character, and then fights him in the climax in episode twelve. However, the biggest difference in this case is that Chivalry doesn’t really put any focus on the student council president beyond assuring us that she’s a good person who will totally be friends with the main character in the long run, but for now needs to stand as his big final opponent. Instead, the focus here is pretty squarely on Ikki, as the fat businessman is his father’s second-in-command, who is willing to go to any lengths to get him kicked from this tournament.

The bulk of episode eleven takes a very sudden and dramatic turn, as the business guy manages to snap a photo of Ikki and Stella sharing a kiss, and runs with it to the media, publicizing it as a princess being corrupted into a relationship with some lowly powerless nobody. Through some pretzel logic, he manages to get Ikki incarcerated for weeks on end in a crazy-looking prison cell, wherein they treat him like garbage, but still force him to participate in all of his school battles, leading up to his big final match against the student council president.

This entire scene is presented as a trippy, fucked up fever dream, with really striking and unique color design that many fans referred to as, “pulling a SHAFT;” which is a pretty accurate way of putting it, and leads me to a subject that I feel the need to address: studio Silver Link.

I’ve developed a bit of a reputation over time as a guy with a serious bone to pick against studio A1 Pictures–and I certainly am that guy; but you know, there are some A1 shows that I really like, such as Sora no Woto, Tsuritama, and Welcome to the Space Show. But funnily enough, for a very long time, Silver Link was a studio that just never managed to connect with me. It’s not that I’ve ever really hated any of their shows–they made a lot of stuff that I like about as much as Chivalry of a Failed Knight–acceptable, strong five to light six shows like Baka to Test, Nourin, and Non Non Biyori (which I know everyone else loves, but whatever). I liked Watamote, and, while I haven’t finished it, I’ve liked what I’ve seen of Yuri Kuma Arashi (which is kind of a given since it’s an Ikuhara show), but this studio has never really made anything that I loved.

Silver Link has always come off to me as a little studio that could. They take on pretty middle-of-the-road adaptations that aren’t likely to impress from the get-go, and while they’ve never really had the level of quality or polish in their animation to put them on par with any of the more recognized studios, it always feels like they at least try to make their shows stand out a little.

Almost everything which Silver Link puts out is directed by Shin Oonuma–a director who used to work for SHAFT as an assistant on a ton of Akiyuki Shinbo’s shows, and who made his full directing debut with ef ~a tale of memories in 2007–a show that I loved. Studio SHAFT has always been known for the fact that they make up for their tiny personnel count and animation budget by making their shows as visually striking as possible, with Shinbo’s personal stylistic trappings pervading all of the studio’s output.

In a lot of ways, Shin Oonuma is like Akiyuki Shinbo-lite. Whereas Shinbo’s directing style doesn’t allow for a single frame of normalcy in his shows, and it can take a lot of concentration to parse the dense wall of visual stimuli, Oonuma takes a more reserved approach, and only busts out the insanity when it’s time to make a visual statement. In the same way that Shinbo’s influence is ever-present on the works of SHAFT, Oonuma’s seems to be the same on Silver Link–and while I personally am a much bigger fan of Shinbo and SHAFT’s style of visuals, it’s in moments like these where I really appreciate that Oonuma has continued in the studio’s tradition, and knows how to use this kind of trippy, artful coloring to really make a scene stand out.

Ikki’s incarceration is a hard sell. It comes out of nowhere like halfway through episode eleven, and only lasts up through the start of episode twelve–so for it to have any dramatic impact at all, it had to be portrayed in a way that really makes the drama sink in. And oh man, does it ever sink in. Yes, the hyper-dramatic coloring makes this whole thing come off as heavy-handed; but it had to. If it didn’t, then all of this would’ve come off as a pointless diversion, instead of the grueling, intense trial that it’s intended to be. And it kinda pays off–because even with this relatively mediocre material, and the relatively mediocre talents of the animation staff working on it, the tension which this sequence is meant to convey is easily felt by the viewer–and that’s exactly what it needed to be.

Episode twelve is basically just one gigantic build-up to a few minutes of payoff. Ikki turns the emotional tide after receiving his girlfriend’s encouragement, and, against his father who doesn’t believe in him, the society that’s trying to hold him down, and the weakness which has seeped into his bones from weeks of malnutrition, he stands among the cheers of his allies, and emerges onto the field of battle with his head held high. Just like in Ass War, the opening theme plays over a slow montage of characters powering up and preparing to strike–but in this case, it is coupled with artful visuals in line with the tone of the series, and the entire match is boiled down to just one attack. All of the tension of the last episode and a half is offloaded with needlepoint precision into a single moment–and the victory goes to Ikki. And here’s the payoff–Ikki and Stella legitimately get engaged. Yep, that’s what I meant that tradition would win out in the end; but since we’ve already established marriage as the winstate of this relationship, I’m okay with this as the finale.

Whenever I think about the positive aspects of Chivalry of a Failed Knight, I end up remembering  myself at age thirteen–the age when I first got really, seriously into anime and was watching everything I could get my hands on. Thirteen year-old Digi was not a very critical viewer–he would watch just about anything as long as it had cool action scenes–especially if it involved swords. But while young Digi wouldn’t have been able to explain what made certain shows his favorites, outside of how cool the fights were, he nonetheless did have favorite shows. Out of all the things that he watched and thought that he liked, there were certain ones that stood out in his mind, and which he continually remembered for years to come–whereas other stuff that he read and watched and had no complaints about very quickly disappeared from his mind over the years.

I try to imagine my thirteen year-old self watching both The Asterisk War and Chivalry of a Failed Knight. I’m certain that he would’ve said that he liked them both. I’m sure he’d remember all of the places where there were fights in the Asterisk War, and that he would’ve thought that the swords were pretty cool–but I’m willing to bet he would’ve forgotten the names and faces of all of the characters a week after finishing the show, and resold all his DVDs by the time he was fifteen.

But when I picture my younger self watching Chivalry of a Failed Knight, I think he really would’ve loved it. I think he would’ve loved how all of the characters had really unique and interesting weapons and powers, and he would’ve spent all of his time in math class drawing pictures of swords for the characters to use and coming up with all of their abilities. I think he really would’ve looked up to Ikki for his intelligent strategies and for researching his enemies; and that he would’ve had a huge crush on Stella, and hoped to one day have a relationship just like that of his own; maybe he even would’ve learned something about sexuality from listening to them talk about it. He would’ve thought that the fifteen-minute fight between Shizuku and the student council president was the coolest fucking thing that ever happened; and the trippy visuals of Ikki’s incarceration scene would have blown his mind to shit and convinced him that the series was a masterpiece–at least until he was eighteen and finally sold the DVDs.

The appeal of shows like The Asterisk War and Chivalry of a Failed Knight is not difficult for me to understand. When I was growing up, my favorite characters were always the ones who reminded me of myself. I idolized child geniuses and anyone who was kicking ass while they were still a kid, because that’s the way I saw myself. I thought swords were the coolest thing in the universe, and I wanted to own a katana so badly that it was tearing me apart. By the time I was fourteen and ready to admit to myself that I was into girls, I’d be reading shit like Negima and Chobits and drooling over all the fanservice scenes. I get it. I was a fourteen year-old boy once, and I still remember what it was like to be one, and I can still find it in me to connect with those emotions even now.

The reason that I’ve chosen to break The Asterisk War down in such ridiculously extensive detail, is because I want you to understand that being a show for fourteen year-olds; being a dumb light novel adaptation; being a harem show; none of these are what makes this show bad. You can make a show with all of the same basic elements as this, without insulting the viewer’s intelligence in the process. You can pander to a demographic of preteen boys, while still giving them a show that they’ll actually give a shit about for ten seconds after foolishly dropping all their money on it.

I think that most of the people who watched both The Asterisk War and Chivalry of a Failed Knight would agree that the latter is the better series (as no shortage of comments on my videos can corroborate); and I’m glad to see that the show’s MyAnimeList score was able to pull up pretty far ahead of that of The Asterisk War. But the fact that these shows are still thought of as being around the same caliber, or even that their opening episodes were compared so heavily without many people pointing out Chivalry’s superiority, was a little bit worrying to me.

I don’t think that every anime needs to be a masterpiece, or even that they necessarily need to be good. I understand that every series has its own purpose which it’s intended to fulfill–and that sometimes that purpose is just to kick out some shit that might get a few kids to buy a few books and keep some adults at their jobs. But I don’t want to live in a world where we’re lumping in something cheap that came as a result of being made in a sweatshop with something cheap that came as a result of being made by a small, local business–if that metaphor makes sense.

If shows like the Asterisk War continue to be successful, then it will continue to perpetuate the cycle whereby churning out a constant barrage of cheap, shitty, heartless adaptations of low-tier light novels is a viable business decision. What I hope that I can inspire in people is that they might ask a little bit more from their entertainment. I hope that people start asking for shows to be made with a little bit of care, by staff that actually seems to give a shit and to be good at their jobs; and that we can support companies who do good business and, maybe even take care of their employees. There’s not a lot of money in the anime industry right now–but if we can keep it going to the right places, and into the hands of the right people, then maybe the industry can transform into something better. But that’s all pretty heavy-handed and idealistic.

At the very least, I hope that in watching this series of videos, you’ve started to think about what the lower five numbers of your ten scale really mean. To seriously consider whether all of those kinda generic harem shows are really all just mediocre, or if, on closer inspection, some of them are actually gigantic pieces of shit. If I can convince someone that there’s a meaningful difference between a one-out-of-ten and a two-out-of-ten, then I think I’ve done my job.

Thanks again for watching everyone, and I really hope that you enjoyed this obscenely massive video series. I started writing this under the idea that it was going to be a video which is the size of a book; and at just over fifty-thousand words, I was right on the money. Thank you for all the wonderful support in keeping these videos and my channel running, and for everyone who started donating to my patreon or increased their pledges as a direct result of this video series. One last thanks for watching; and I’ll see you in the next one.

Text version:

When I was growing up, there was this show called Yuu Yuu Hakusho, where the main character saved a little kid from getting hit by a car, and then died–so when the Winter 2016 anime season started off with someone almost getting hit by a truck in Erased, and then someone actually getting hit by a truck in A-Jin, and then the main character getting hit by a truck trying to save a girl in Konosuba, I started to feel like maybe this set piece was getting old. But then it turned out that the guy from Konosuba had actually died of shock in front of a slow-moving tractor, and then the doctors and his family laughed at him in the hospital for being such an idiot–and I decided that maybe I had to reassess my opinion.

Konosuba had a lot of surprises in store for me in that first episode. It introduced this like bitchy goddess character who I thought was just there for domination fetishists at first; but then the main character basically tricked her into being his partner, and she fucking straight-up cried like a baby for like thirty seconds. I was so ready for her to act like one of those arrogant tsundere types that I just couldn’t stop laughing the whole time while she was crying; and then I realized that I am a truly sick and twisted individual.

But the moment that really sold me on Konosuba was this nearly two-minute montage of the main characters working as menial laborers. The joke here is that after joining an adventurer’s guild and thinking that their journey through this video game-like fantasy world was about to begin, the characters instead end up doing basic handyman work to repair a part of the town wall. Where the scene becomes special, though, is in the fact that it just keeps going. The characters get locked into this job for weeks on end. They find themselves getting good at it, making themselves comfortable, getting drunk with their work buddies, and even throwing up in an alleyway.

It’s one thing to have a simple little joke about how doing guild work turns out to be hilariously unglamorous; but the way that this scene takes that ball and runs so far with it goes full circle from parody, into becoming something which feels strangely genuine. There’s a real sensation of the passage of time here, and it feels like of the both characters actually undergo an entire arc. By the end of that one scene, they’ve already gone from basically hating each-other, to some level of genuine camaraderie; and it’s completely believable thanks to a combination of the facial expressions, the amount of subtle detail in the backgrounds and in how the characters act, and because of the sheer amount of time which seems to pass over the course of the montage.

The driving theme behind all of Konosuba’s comedy is to lampoon the tropes of role-playing games via this goofy, uncool fantasy world, wherein it turns out that being an adventurer kind of sucks when you remove the abstraction of video games. But while the parodical elements of the series are funny on their own, what really sells it for me, is how it doesn’t skimp out on bringing its derpy fantasy world to life. For instance, in episode two, the main characters take on a quest to kill a bunch of giant frogs, which is already pretty funny–but then Kazuma starts narrating all these facts about what the frogs eat, and why they have to be eliminated, and even that they supposedly taste pretty good; and now, suddenly the giant frogs aren’t just a gag, but an actual part of this world where the story takes place. The joke then pays off even further when we actually see them eating one of the frogs in the pub later; and then again when their new party member remarks that, while the frogs are very smelly on the inside, they are also strangely warm and comforting.

In spite of the show’s overall tone of irreverent silliness, Konosuba is rarely content to just throw out a random joke and then move on. Instead, every stupid thing that happens continues to be relevant to the story going forward, snowballing into even more ridiculous hi-jinks as the series continues. For instance, right after the aforementioned remark about the inside of a frog’s stomach, Megumin cons Kazuma into letting her join his party by complaining loudly that he’d gotten her covered in goo and then abandoned her, causing the nearby townspeople to look on in disgust. Then, in the next episode, a masochistic knight approaches Kazuma about joining the party, having heard the rumors about his sadistic treatment of the other girls. It’s this nonstop chain of cause-and-effect humor that just gets funnier and funnier the more it builds on itself.

Another thing that I love about Konosuba is that the characters are all just kinda dumb. None of them are ever built up to be cool or intelligent beyond an average level at best; and at worst, they’re all completely useless and not even all that good-natured. Their few moments of success only barely offset their constant failures; and they mostly grow to like each-other just out of happening to be in close proximity to one-another for so much time–just like real friendships!

It helps as well that all of them are backed by stellar vocal performances. Most of the cast is comprised of up-and-coming actors, who all sound like they’re having an absolute blast giving their all to these roles–and the chemistry between both the characters and their actors makes all of the dialog a blast to enjoy.

I even kind of love just how derpy and unclean the animation tends to be. I love that all the girls’ boobs are always flapping around at random, even though they aren’t really drawn to be all that cute most of the time–almost like the show is making fun of its own sleaziness. I have no idea if any of that was intentional, but there’s something really down-to-earth and funny about a show full of dumb characters who all look kind of wonky and terrible. Whether it’s off-model or goofy looking or whatever, there’s no denying that the show oozes with character in its aesthetic, and that the team behind it seems at least to be having a lot of fun with their work.

Konosuba is one of the most genuinely hilarious anime series that I’ve seen in the last few seasons, and probably the most fun that you can have with a currently-airing show if you’re still a half-decade behind on Gintama. The show is available on crunchyroll, and if you don’t have an account there, then I encourage signing up with this link that has my name on it–because if you do then I get five dollars, with which I can continue to pay for my own crunchyroll subscription. In all seriousness, though, it’s always nice when a show like Konosuba comes around to make me feel like whatever I pay for that subscription is totally justified.

Text version:

If you’ve watched enough different anime shows to count them on one of your hands, then you’ve probably noticed that a lot of them are pretty derivative. Guys are always walking in on girls while they’re in the bathroom, or falling all over their titties; girls are always acting like they hate the guy and beating the shit out of them, even though they secretly wanna suck his dick–you know this shit. It doesn’t even matter what decade of anime you’re watching; you could be on Urusei Yatsura from 1981, and realizing that nothing has ever changed.

These jokes are so old, that the joke of calling attention to how stupid the jokes are, is almost as old as the jokes themselves. The other day I was watching a fuckin’ shoujo manga adaptation from the year 2000 and a girl gets walked in on in the bath and yells, “what is this, an anime?!” –you get the picture: shit is ancient. But the weird part, is that you get this scene in Phantom World where the dude tries to avoid accidentally groping a girl, and ends up with his face in her panties instead, and I’ve seen people with the nerve to call this subversive. What the fuck?

See, I know what it looks like when this trope gets subverted, cause I watched this 21 year-old cartoon called Gundam Wing, where the main character falls on his girlfriend’s boobs, and she just stares at him for like half an hour before asking him to get the fuck off of her. The tables are turned on the viewer here because anime has taught you that this scene is supposed to be funny, and that the girl is supposed to slap the guy in the face; but instead, they treat the scene like it’s really happening to these characters in real life; and it’s just kind of awkward and quiet, before the girl has a perfectly reasonable response. Then, just to make sure you got that they did it on purpose, they throw in this whole scene in the last episode where you get to see what Gundam would be like if it was just like every other stupid ass harem show; and it fucking sucks! Then the creators realized that even though they solved anime forever back in episode five, everyone was still making the same bullshit tired-ass cliches, so they released two entire godawful comic books about life in the Harem Gundam universe, and made a gazillion dollars off of their dumbass fans.

About a decade after that, a whole bunch of people who watched Gundam when they were little kids, but didn’t want to work for slave wages drawing cartoons when they grew up, invented a new kind of anime book called a light novel; and they were super excited to prove both how smart they were, and how much anime they had watched, by exploring the medium through its meta.

The first light novel that anybody read was the The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya; and Kyoto Animation was so excited after reading it that he immediately made an anime out of it, which everybody loved. Haruhi Suzumiya was about this girl named The Melancholy, who was desperately trying to convince herself that she was living inside of an anime, and that she was secretly god; without realizing that she was living inside of an anime, and that she was secretly god. Trust me, it make sense in context. Most of the jokes were about how even though all of the characters were supposed to represent anime cliches, and The Melancholy was convinced that they were anime cliches, the truth is that they were actually more complex and multi-dimensional characters who were putting on the facade of being dumbass teenagers in order to appease their autistic god. Trust me, it makes sense in context. Just like Grandpa Gundam, Haruhi also had a whole part where it showed what the world would be like if it was just some lame-ass slice-of-life anime; which also got turned into its own comic book and another anime series–cause fuck the entire concept of irony.

A couple of years later, this psychopathic sentient logo that reads NISIOISIN decided that it had to one-up Haruhi Suzumiya and create the most self-indulgent, asinine, up-it’s-own-ass monument to the concept of meta in human history; and therefore wrote the Monogatari series. In the first chapter of Monogatari, this weightless crab girl staples the main character’s cheeks together and calls herself a “tsundere,” which is a word that people had heard before, and therefore it made them laugh. However, the joke which NISIOISIN was trying to tell was apparently lost in the admittedly rather difficult translation–because the entire point is that crab girl isn’t just some copy and paste anime cliche. She’s actually a fully fleshed out character with serious trust issues stemming from her realistically troubled childhood, who acts aggressively towards the main character out of legitimate defensiveness; and then warms up to him after he proves himself to be trustworthy, before forming an official (if questionably functional) relationship with him early into the story. While bits and pieces of her personality do correlate with the tsundere cliche, the purpose of writing this line into the script was to draw attention to just how shallow and unhelpful that term can be when describing an actually realized character.

So Haruhi and Monogatari made a hundred million billion dollars, and pretty soon there was a huge tidal wave of light novel authors crashing over Japan, with everyone hoping to cash in on the success of this whole “meta” thing. Somewhere in midst of that maelstrom emerged the Little Sister show–one of the four horsemen of the anime apocalypse. At first, the Little Sister show was also about taking an anime cliche and making it realistic, by reminding everyone that in real life, your little sister hates you, and complains if you don’t constantly do shit for her; and that the only way to get back at her is by shacking up with her hot goth friend. The Little Sister show had a lot of fun things in it, but there’s this moment in episode three where the main guy falls on his little sister’s boobs, and it started sinking in that maybe this show wasn’t quite as self-aware as first thought. Then you fast-forward to season two and WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE BROKE UP WITH KURONEKO AND FUCKED HIS SISTER–I’M DONE, I’M FUCKIN’ DONE!

So now meta anime is suddenly fuckin’ everywhere, and all of it completely misses the point. You’ve got this scene in Saekano where the girl says to the other girl, “hey, stop practicing your tsundere act and get over here;” except that the girl is actually, literally a tsundere. They’re just pointing out that they did the thing that everyone else does, except they also want you to know that they did it. Give ‘em a gold star, A for effort, team, we did it!

That’s why there’s nothing subversive about this guy trying not to grab this girl’s boobs–because his face still ends up in her panties anyways. They didn’t change the basic meaning of the scene, they just called attention to the fact that they were doing it. It’s like if someone was pissing in the middle of the street and everyone was staring at him, and then he yelled out, “I’m pissing in the street!” And everyone was just like, “oh, well, at least he knows what he’s doing,” and went back to shittweeting. Just because that guy admits that he’s pissing in the street doesn’t make him a functional individual; and calling attention to the fact that you’ve put a bunch of stupid bullshit in your anime series doesn’t stop it from being stupid bullshit.

Now, this isn’t to say that it’s all bad. Last season we had this wacky, farcical version of a light novel about being trapped in a light novel about being trapped in a video game called Konosuba, and it was fucking hilarious; even if it wasn’t necessarily making some deep commentary on the laziness of anime writing. But I’m still sick and tired of all these goddamn light novel adaptations that people treat like they’re so fucking clever just because the author watched a bunch of anime and said, “hey guys! Isn’t anime totally like THIS!” And then literally did the exact same thing that every other anime does. Stop it.