At least it can’t get any worse than this, right?
Impression
What a waste of an episode.
It really was chock-full of fanservice from beginning to end. Did we really need more of Usagi’s boobs, or Mari’s lack thereof? Isn’t the first episode of each arc (a grand total of two episodes each) already essentially a fanservice episode? I know it would be like beating a dead horse, so I won’t say much more about how much of a major fuck-up the very existence of this episode has been. I already did enough of that last week. I was only really interested in two things: (i) the possibility of a Kyouya scene, and (ii) next week’s episode title. I wasn’t surprised to learn that there was no Kyouya. It was a pipe dream from the start, but this was the very last chance for any sort of foreshadowing to be included before Volume 5 began – and of course, because boobs and tentacle monsters are oh-so-clearly more important than moving the story forward, they chose to go with prioritizing fanservice. I mean, it’s probably true that the living embodiment of revenge has no place in this episode full of youth and happiness, but when has a mood whiplash ever stopped AntiMagic before? This isn’t even meant to be a happy series.
Also, Ouka was laughing this episode. That’s just… wrong. Ouka doesn’t laugh, ever.
Mari was kind of fun, I guess. Her complaints about her (lack of a) chest reminded me of a novel scene where Takeru bumps into something and mutters that he’d hit a wall. It turns out to be Mari’s chest, and she angrily forces him to feel her boobs and confirm that there really is something there, and that it’s not a wall. What was slightly confusing was that how they were even able to take a bus to the beach – do they even have beaches in their world? Is this something the side-story novel covers that they skipped out in the anime? In AntiMagic, the entire world is basically uninhabitable because of what are basically these insta-killing magic fumes left over from the war. It’s like radiation after a nuclear explosion – anything that gets exposed to it pretty much dies instantly. There are descriptions of plants or greenery mutating to monstrous sizes in a matter of seconds before immediately dying, and repeating that cycle over and over for as long as they’re exposed. So the question really should be whether the sunlight should even be that bright, or the sky that blue – let alone whether there are inhabitable beaches left.
All I wanted was Volume 5 today. Is that really so much to ask? I could have seen my adorable Kiseki-chan today, but now I have to wait until next Wednesday. At least it’s confirmed that we will actually be getting the start to Volume 5 next week, and that it’s not more filler – although the translation error in the title was like the cherry on top of a vast sea of fuck-ups. I mean, really? Kusanagi Miracle? For fuck’s sake, ‘Kiseki’ was even in katakana and not kanji! It literally could not have been spelled out any clearer that this was a name and not a noun. At any rate, if you’re just watching the anime (if there are even any of you brave souls left) please note that Crunchyroll has translated that title wrong. It should be ‘Kusanagi Kiseki’, which is what Volume 5 is about – a cute girl named Kiseki-chan, who does her best!
They’re probably going to have to fit Kyouya’s moments in a really rushed flashback too. 4 episodes for Volume 5 would have been ideal but hell, there’s a lot of ground to cover.
[spoiler] Will it have to be next episode? Kyouya’s appearance is supposed to be a shock moment filled with tension – it’s precisely because of all the stuff in Vol 3 and 4 that the readers know that shit’s about to happen. For Takeru, the last he saw of Kyouya was that he had no legs and was in a wheelchair. But from the anime point of view, the guy and his entire platoon (plus his waifu) just disappeared into thin air after Haunted arrived. We have no fucking clue what’s happened to him in the anime ever since Episode 4. How are they even going to do this?
As for covering lots of ground, I wouldn’t pin many hopes on Kanata, Kana, Hayato and Orochi. That list goes from most to least expendable in terms of how likely they’ll skip things. I’m hoping they’ve saved some budget for this, but I’m fully expecting QUALITY CG for Hyakki. [/spoiler]
This episode was such a pain to watch. The only really interesting thing would be probably to count how many anime cliches were not in there.. stuffing everything from drunk scenes over beaches, protagonist have stomach ache til gigantic cute thing and tentacle porn.. like what the heck. this is even too much for anime which focus solely on ecchi.
not that its unusual nowadays that they put fanservice over plot (to safe anime industries lol)
lets see and hope how next week turns out with that much time left as we already saw the bottom of qualities.. can only get better.. i hope.. please ?
That’s the thing. For something which was an author-written side story (I suspect he did it very early during the lifespan of the novels, there’s absolutely no way he wrote this recently – it was just compiled and published recently) it was horribly cliched. The worst is that it’s not supposed to be an anime focusing solely on ecchi. The second episode of each arc (2, 4, 6, 8) is supposed to be the bulk of the story, and Silver Link have fucking skewed it and cut out plot development to fit in more boobs and fanservice.
I actually think it’s really weird they do this – does it sell at all? If you’re enough of a fan to buy the ridiculously overpriced BDs in Japan, surely you won’t get shitty fanservice stuff and only buy genuinely exciting shows? Saying you want it uncensored is not as good an excuse any more – the internet and Comiket are stuffed full of doujins.
Of course next week will be better. It’s the start of Volume 5, one of the best novels in the series. Assuming there are no more major fuck-ups, that is.
This episode adapted 2 of the side stories from the latest Antimagic book, a side story collection called Another Mission. Although it hasn’t been translated yet, the chapter titles indicate the stories are of a funny/fanservice nature.
I’ve learned 3 things so far:
1) This anime has cute eyecatches.
2) Never sit next to Drunk Ikaruga. 😉
3) Takeru’s ultimate weakness is explosive diarrhea.
I’m curious on what the author currently thinks of the anime; his afterwords show he was so happy and proud his work was going to be animated! Now he’s tweeted this emoji showing his thoughts:
(´д｀)━( ´д )━( ´)━( )━(ﾟ )━(Дﾟ )━ ｾｯ!( ﾟдﾟ )
I’m not sure what it means though, especially the katakana.
In LN news, apparently Rakudai has now become the 29th highest selling light novel series in a latest survey.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-11-29/top-selling-light-novels-in-japan-by-series-2015/.95914
Pay attention to who #1,2,3 of that list are. Who knew Hestia’s blue ribbon and Shiba Tatsuya’s OPness still had so much power?
“I’m so, so sorry” is what I want to say to the author. I have no idea what the emojis mean either, but I can’t imagine how heartbreaking it must feel to be so excited at seeing your precious work alive and moving, before having to stand by and watch it being butchered mercilessly. The only reason I haven’t scorned this episode entirely is because the filler came from Another Mission. For a side story novel with a cover as godly as it has, the stories in it seem rather generic (I seem to recall they were published separately in some form, and this is just a compilation). Still, it’s rather OOC. Ouka is laughing. That’s an instant trigger for anyone who’s reached Volume 7.
I think that list is fairly indicative of what light novel adaptations are supposed to do (i.e. advertise the original work). Almost all of everything in that list are only there because of their recent anime – even stuff which is pretty sub-par as an anime (especially World Break) got boosts in sales and thus did their job. The only exceptions I can see there are Kokuhaku Yoko Renshu (which I’ve never heard of) and Okitegami Kyouko (which has had a lot of supporting promotion from Monogatari and due to Nisioisin).
Meanwhile, we have other light novels which have no sign of getting an anime or doing so well in sales, and yet are way better. Stuff like Tate no Yuusha, Hakomari, Mushoku Tensei, Kuro no Maou, Legendary Moonlight Sculptor – maybe they’re just popular in the Western LN community, but I can guarantee they’re all way better than a shit-fest like World Break. The conclusion being that getting an anime is a key checkpoint for LN series – once you get people interested in it, they’re staying for the entire ride (and buying everything). Look at Index New Testament or Spice and Wolf sales, and neither of those have gotten an S3 yet.
To be honest, I found the scene with Ouka laughing while drunk a bit creepy in hindsight, but overall it was a nice episode. Still would have preferred for them to use the time for Vol 5 but what can we do. The lack of Kyouya just breaks my heart, but we all knew that he had a small chance to appear from the start. Well next week we start Vol 5 and I am honestly not sure how it will do. A part of me hopes they somehow do it right, but at this point I don’t have faith in Silver Link.
It’s very creepy. Even seeing Ouka smile is creepy. She just… isn’t supposed to do that. As of the latest novel, she may have softened enough to justify this sort of thing, but they’re not exactly in a position to visit the beach. Canonically these side stories probably fit in between Volumes 4-5 (as you know it’s a one-way road after Vol 5, no going back) and back then there’s no way she would have done something like this.
Kyouya would not have fitted in with the atmosphere of this episode at all, but it would have been better now than later. Silver Link really fucked up after missing their chance at the end of Usagi and Ikaruga’s arcs. I’m just praying they don’t sub in a happy anime-original ending (there’s always ‘that’ alternate ending, but I wonder if that counts as ‘happy’ or not).
The only happy ending they could go for would be a Mother Goose ending, and yeah, ‘that’ alternative ending will never count as a ‘happy’ one, but it’s the best way they could end the story right there.
I hate to call it a ‘happy’ ending, but… that’s really what it is considering how much less shit they’d all be in if Takeru had just done ‘that’. I used to not agree with the Mother Goose method, but as of the end of Volume 11 I’m starting to think it’s the only real way of salvation. If Kiseki achieves her ‘goals’ (that scene where she solemnly listed them all one by one was super adorable though) then Takeru is fucked with or without Mother – so he might as well go with her and save the rest of humanity along the way. If only they’d actually introduced Mother when they were supposed to, in Volume 3 in a prologue with Mephisto. It would also have demonstrated that Valhalla is a much bigger organization than just ‘Haunted forever alone’.