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Jose Cruz wrote:

Cam0 wrote:

Funnily enough I thought Bocchi the Rock didn't really live up to the hype. I thought that show treated social anxiety as a cutesy character quirk. I felt like its cutesy and light tone sucked all the tension out of its narrative making the narrative feel unimportant and making the cute-girls-doing-cute-things be the focus. It had interesting direction though and much more effective comedy than K-ON! so I would agree that it was better.

I though Bocchi the Rock was excellent show, I rated it as 9/10. It can be seem basically as a show that makes Bocchi's social anxiety disorder a cute character trait.

While I liked the show, I am in the Bocchi the Rock is overrated camp. Both Girls Band Cry (I rated Masterpiece) and BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!! (I rated Excellent) had more and better character development, higher stakes, more intensity, more chaos, more emotional trauma (think of Anon coming to school looking like she has been up crying all night after she thinks Tomori and Soyorin will dump her for a CRYCHIC reunion), and (IMO since this is subjective) better music.

Jose Cruz wrote:

Now, in regards to K-On!, I consider it one of my top 10 anime ever....

I certainly understand why people love K-On! (and K-On!!), but also think comparing iyashikei to drama is a fool's errand.

I've spent the last 9 days watching 1990s fanservice titles.

Yuri & Kei (Dirty Pair Flash) & Honey (New Cutie Honey)

Dirty Pair Flash OAVS. After a 4 year absence (Affair on Nolandia came out in 1990; the first Flash OAV was released in 1994), Yuri and Kei return with plots as silly as ever, the action more consistent than previously, the Trouble Consultants officially known as the Lovely Angels (but better known as the Dirty Pair) destroying things as comprehensively as always, their ragging of each other variable in its effectiveness, and with character designs that are... well, different. I get why the producers would change them - the designs I'd come to know so well were 1980s anachronisms. So, instead, we get 1990s anachronisms. I've never been a fan of the 1990s comic character style but, after a couple of episodes I wasn't bothered by it - their behaviour was pretty much in character anyway.

The are 3 Flash OAVs. Only the first (at 6 episodes) has a coherent connecting plot. It's also has the weakest writing - their banter isn't witty, so comes across as simple nagging - along with the poorest reproduction onto DVD of the three. Yuri and Kei must stop a powerful businessman with an end-of-days fixation, all the while fending off a former Trouble Consultant with a chip on her shoulder. Rating: so-so.

The second (at 5 episodes) gives us 5 different tales, but all set within a theme park reproduction of mid-1990s Tokyo. Given the franchise is normally set some 200 years in the future, this scenario explores the thought bubble - what if the Dirty Pair got up to their antics in the current day. We even get a high school episode where Kei and Yuri go undercover. Have they no shame? Well... no actually. That's part of their appeal. We have a new director in Tomomi Mochizuki and writers who give us wittier railing between the two leads. Rating: decent.

The third gives us 5 more unrelated episodes but without any connecting premise. Tomomi Mochizuki continues as director and the higher writing standard of the second OAV also continues. It also takes advantage of its OAV format to provide regular exposure of of the Lovely Angels' nipples, whatever you might think of that. Rating; decent. Overall for the Flash OAVs: decent.

I've now seen all of the Dirty Pair franchise, so here's my rankings.

Very good : Project Eden - the wittiest, the best paced and with the best visuals and animation.
Good: Dirty Pair OAV - follows the lead of Project Eden with clever ideas and fun execution but with somewhat lower production values and a little less success. It's slightly ahead of Flight 005 Conspiracy OAV, the most fun of the stand alone OAVs. Any of these 1st 3 titles make a good representative entry into the franchise.
Decent: the Dirty Pair TV has a small number of screamingly funny episodes but most are fairly dull. The series was cut short with 2 episodes still in production. From Lovely Angels with Love OAV contains those last 2 episodes and can be seen as a continuation. Dirty Pair Flash OAV series is better than its reputation suggests but nor is it a stand out.
So-so: Affair on Nolandia OAV is dull, whichever lens you see it through.

*****

1994's New Cutie Honey is more of a sequel than a remake of the original 1973 magical girl TV series. While the newer version is very faithful to the premise, the tropes and character designs of the original, the plot is new. One of the most interesting things about the original is how indebted Sailor Moon is to it, copying its villains, magical weapons, and the trope of calling out the attack names (which Go Nagai had adapted from his giant robot series of the time, such as Mazinger Z). Both franchises were produced by Toei, so they weren't about to sue themselves for plagiarism. Given the enormous success of Sailor Moon, I'm not surprised Toei and Go Nagai resurrected the franchise.

Tonally, they are quite different. Don't watch Cutie Honey to get a Sailor Moon fix. Cutie Honey was always intended to be an ecchi shonen anime. New Cutie Honey takes this a step further with more nudity and more nipples (the trope of the week for me, it seems*). Japanese prudery dictates that genitals mustn't be displayed, so the frequent full-frontal shots are disturbingly strange and hardly titillating.

The production levels are much higher than the original, the eight episodes have better pacing, and aren't quite as formulaic. On the other side of the ledger, by 1994 in-your-face anime was par for the course, so NCH lacks the astonishing impact of the original, even it's otherwise slightly better.

In relation to Sailor Moon, according to Wikipedia:

Quote:

Takeuchi (ie, the mangaka - Errinundra) later said because Toei's production staff were mostly male, she feels the anime has "a slight male perspective."

I think the influence of Cutie Honey is also a factor.

Rating: so-so. I'm not an ecchi fan and the characters and plot are still boring.

And, appropriately, I'm about to start watching Sailor Moon Super S. At 39 episodes, it may be 2-3 weeks until my next update.

*****

*I initially typed, "tit seems". What's going on?