Anime & Manga Teh CX Anime Review Thread

[Terthna]

When the Seagulls Cry (Umineko no Naku Koro ni)
(26 episode series)

When I first decided to check this out, I was actually thinking that this was Higurashi because I'd misremembered the title. It turns out the two are related, going back to their roots as murder mystery games. As far as the two series go, they just have a somewhat similar premise and tone. Oh, and a couple of characters who look and act like characters from Higurashi show up, and in the background at a couple points when we see the creepy 9 year old girl watching the cheerier moé parts of Higurashi on TV. They were somewhat amusing nods to Higurashi, along with the title page they used for commercial breaks.

Anyway, since I'd seen Haruhi before I watched this, I couldn't help but be reminded of the episode where they all go to some rich guy's private island to solve a murder mystery, because that's exactly how this series started out. Well, that and by getting the fact that the protagonist, Battler Ushiromiya, was a perv who was obsessed with big breasts right out in the open as soon as possible. I may share his fascination that way, but I'm not into my cousins like he is. But then it's pretty obvious whoever made this series was a perv themselves since every female character except the three loli characters has at least D-cups and dresses like a slut. Kind of makes me think of Eiken, actually...

Moving on, the creepy 9 year old, Maria, just happens to be obsessed with witches and the supernatural and the like, which is handy. After all, she single-handedly moves the plot along at points, and to an extent actually got it moving to begin with. Up until she sees Beatrice the witch and reads the creepy letter she gave her after dinner, the show pretty much consisted of rich people being boring rich people while they set up this incredibly stereotypical scenario right out of the game Clue. For the most part, though, Maria is just there to be creepy and to simultaneously fill the moé quotient of the series.

So the murders start happening, and there's supposed to be a supernatural element to it that makes it creeper or something, and it kind of sort of was, except for the fact that I also found it kind of boring at the same time. The idea is that they're supposed to be figuring out this riddle so they can not only be spared their lives and get ten tons of gold, but they're all convinced that someone who is just a regular old human being like themselves is just killing them and trying to scare them into finding this gold for them, like probably any sane person would. So they spend all their time trying to figure out who the culprit is just so they can all die in the process, as Beatrice finally reveals herself and her magic for the audience and kills them. Why? Because she's a witch, and that's how she gets her jollies, apparently. Or something. Let's just say she isn't entirely consistent with how she's written.

As I mentioned before, this shares the whole time loop premise with Higurashi. The difference here is that instead of the characters just getting a new chance to avoid their fates, it's about Beatrice trying to convince Battler, one last skeptic among the family, that she's really a witch and that she's really using magic to kill people. Apparently it's really important that he believe in her or something so she can kill him and own his soul or something, I don't know. This could have been kind of interesting if it hadn't been basically an excuse to have Beatrice kill off everyone in different gruesome ways using magic, with the deck stacked completely in her favor, at least up until she basically gives up. Also, it's not like any sane person, having just heard that their skepticism is basically all that's keeping them alive is going to admit that they believe in magic so they can be killed. But then, there are a lot of missed opportunities in this series. Like at one point Beatrice puts on a little cannibal feast for the last rich Ushiromiya sibling made out of parts of her family, including her own daughter. This could have been disturbing as hell and actually live up to being a horror like it's supposed to be, but instead it was so over the top theatrically that it just comes off as funny. But I will say that the series did actually manage to have a few moments.

Like this:
View attachment 671
That's right. Witch? More like, "Bitch! Make me a sandwich!" (From the cannibal scene, FYI)

Unfortunately these doses of humor are somewhat sparse, and much of it is unintentional. Like say the opening and closing themes, which aren't bad, they're just completely over the top and disproportionate to the "drama" in the actual show. It's not for lack of trying either; it's just that I found the attempts at drama and horror to be much more amusing than any of the humor that was written into the series. Add to that the few interesting moments where it seemed like Beatrice might have lost, even with her completely stacked, messed up game, only to have her suddenly come out of it using some contrived countermeasure, and you could definitely say that I was disappointed by pretty much the entirety of what I saw. Then Battler's sister came along and it looked like he might succeed again, only she died and the series ends with an unresolved sequel hook instead.

There's also the matter of the conflict that takes place in the series. There's the main one with Kinzo, the paterfamilias, being a complete ass who actually seems to want the majority of his family dead, along with all of his loyal servants and even his good friend and personal doctor, for reasons that are never really rationally explained. Also not really explained is the conflict between Beatrice and the two other witches who look like Higurashi characters. They are established to not like each other and to be engaging in a kind of competition over this matter with Battler verbally sparring with Beatrice about whether witches and magic exist or not, but the reasons for this are left very vague. Basically it comes down to me asking myself why I should care.

I think, aside from being boring, the next biggest problem with this series is that it never really solves anything. There are plenty of questions raised, but none really answered. I suppose I could be wrong, and maybe there's some upcoming season which will explain everything as with Higurashi, but I'm not seeing anything about a continuation on Wikipedia or Anime News Network. The next biggest thing is the slew of other characters we never really learn anything about, which makes it difficult to care about them as anything other than the tools Beatrice and the other witches use them as. The funny (and annoying) thing is, a lot of them actually seem to have constant heel-face-turns that are never really explained and are simply a plot convenience. Like say how the same seven demon sisters who helped to slaughter the Ushiromiya family in the main 1986 storyline suddenly care about Angie, Battler's sister who they orphaned to begin with, and basically help her to grow up to be a witch herself in 1998. All so she can go back to 1986 (means never explained) and help her brother defeat Beatrice. Beatrice herself tends to bounce back and forth from being sympathetic and kind(er) to being just a monster.

These major weaknesses added to the often slow pacing (especially in the first half), and lead me to suggest that even if you liked Higurashi, you might want to skip this one. I'll throw it a bone for trying, though. 3/10.

To be fair, the original visual novel is even more disjointed, from what I've been able to dig up on it. There's so many layers to the plot, but the further down you dig into it, the less interesting and more convoluted it all becomes. For example, big spoiler for anyone interested in checking out Umineko for themselves, but;

Spoiler

Beatrice does not actually exist. Neither does Shannon or Kanon; all three are merely alternate personalities of a character that isn't even mentioned until the seventh game, Sayo Yasuda. Sayo is a MTF transsexual servant to and illegitimate child of Ushiromiya family head, Kinzo, and his daughter, and is the one who is mostly responsible for the massacre central to the plot.

 

[Captain X]

Ga-Rei: Zero
(12 episode series)

This was an okay-ish series. If I had to describe it, it's kind of like Ghostbusters, but with a Japanese twist. It's actually pretty much what you would expect from an action anime, and they even have it revolve around a couple of school-girls just for fun and fan service. So it isn't really bad, but it doesn't do a whole lot to impress me either. Then there's also the fact that this is apparently a prequel story to a manga rather than an adaptation or a story which would otherwise stand on its own. The frustrating part about that is that the anime then makes the assumption that you know who people are and what's going on. Since I didn't, the first episode almost turned me off entirely.

This series really got off to a bad start with me, because it did two things that really annoy me. The first thing it did was to start off at what is basically the end of the story, and this is made all the more clumsy by the fact that this flash-forward isn't even entirely contained in one episode. The other thing it did, which actually was a lot worse in my opinion, was to kick everything off with a set of characters those of us who haven't read the manga might think are the main characters. While their introductions are rushed in order to keep up the absurd pacing a lot of action anime like this tends to take, everything still seemed to be revolving around this group of characters. And then they all die at the end of the first episode.

The second episode continues on from this point, introducing us to the real main characters of the story while still showing us about the 3/4 point of the story. Meanwhile, I still had no idea what was going on, and while it was apparent that the main characters knew who the big bad with the sword and the giant lion monster was, I still had no freakin' clue. If not for the fact that this series was only 12 episodes long, I honestly probably would have given up at this point, but I decided to give it another episode before I passed judgment. Fortunately, the story goes back to the beginning of itself and properly introduces us to the characters and the setting.

Basically, the world is under threat from paranormal threats that range from headcrab zombies (not kidding), to ghosts, to ghost monsters, to seemingly demon possessed humans who can transform into blue butterflies. There is apparently a rich history of exorcist families fighting these things, and they still do it in modern times, though there are also two secretive government-based organizations which are competing with each other to do the same. One is military-based and relies on technology, while the other is civilian-based and uses people from these old exorcist families who can actually see the supernatural beasties. The really fun part is how despite all the massive damage occurring to the city and all the people who end up victims, everything is supposedly kept secret. Now, I could rant about how this doesn't make any sense, and how both "secret" organizations seem to do everything they can to not go unnoticed, but whatever.

Why did I want to watch this again?

Oh yeah, lesbians (supposedly).

The two main characters are both school girls, though Yomi Isayama is older than Kagura Tsuchimiya, the real protagonist of the series. Yomi has lost both of her parents, but was adopted by the head of another exorcist family and has become his heir apparent. The actual story starts with Kagura's mother having died in action during a demon attack. Since Kagura's father is super into his exorcist job, he decides he can't be arsed to raise his own daughter and instead asks Yomi's adoptive father to do it for him, who in turn asks Yomi to look after her. This proves difficult as right away, Yomi is repeatedly called away by the secretive civilian organization I mentioned earlier to fight the supernatural with her sword and magic lion beast who lives in the sword's scabbard. Since Kagura is kind of hurt by being repeatedly left to fend for herself by the otherwise kind Yomi, Yomi brings her with on one of the jobs. She gets chewed out for doing so, but not long afterwards Kagura becomes part of the team anyway. The two become very closely bonded and really it's more of a sisterly thing, but that doesn't stop the series from teasing us with some lesbian fan service. It actually might've been more interesting if they'd really been lovers, but that would have given it something of an incestuous overtone unless they'd had a different backstory. Of course they were both still in school and therefore are jailbait anyway, so if you liked the fan service from them you should feel bad (I mostly do). Damn it, Japan! Give me some grown-up lesbians to drool over!

Anyway, something good the story does is to carefully set up the characters relationships with each other, so we actually kind of feel something when a lot of them wind up dead. We're introduced to a number of them, and there's even some humor to be had from some of their antics. Like the guy who makes their weapons going around in nothing but a loincloth, and his introduction being that he gets sprayed in the face by Kagura because she thinks he's some pervert who's snuck into the place. I wasn't really taken in all that much, but it was still fairly good. It also helped to understand Yomi's eventual betrayal that we already saw before being properly introduced to her to even know she had become a turncoat. The drama resulting from that kind of even works a little, though a lot of it is lost in the hyper action of the series. Still, the fact that Yomi kills basically all of her friends, coworkers, and even Kagura's doche father and still comes off as somewhat sympathetic is something.

This isn't what I'd consider a favorite by far, but this series does have some good-ish qualities to it once the major hurdles it trips the audience up with in the beginning are past. If you like hack n' slash action with secretive organizations fighting for the good of humanity, this would probably be worth seeing. Other than that, all I can really say is that while interesting at times, I did have some trouble getting into it. 6/10.

 

[Captain X]

High School of the Dead
(12 episode series)

Ever wonder what it'd be like if Japan did its own version of a zombie movie? Well, this is pretty much it. Like most modern zombie shows, it constantly refers to zombie movies and has fun with the fourth wall. But then, it never really does seem to take itself all that seriously, and a lot of that has to do with the massive amount of fan service the show has. Not only do all of the women who end up surviving have large breasts, but at least once every few minutes we see them bounce around in an exaggerated fashion and/or a panty shot of some kind. So shots like this are very common, right from the first few minutes of the show.



Even the occasional zombie gets this treatment.

Other than that, the only real difference from most zombie shows is the flashy way in which zombies are dealt with, and how quickly people who are bitten die and become zombies themselves. There also seems to be a mix between the classic shamblers and the more modern sprinting variety. There's also the way the world apparently isn't satisfied with how quickly the world is ending, so a bunch of world powers decide to nuke each other. Other than that, it's a fairly typical story about how our main characters have to balance hardening themselves so they can survive without becoming completely inhuman themselves, contrasting this with other survivors. Believe it or not, that story was actually somewhat interesting, enough so that I actually marathonned this overnight when I had only intended to watch an episode or two before turning in for the night. The only real disappointment there was that the story didn't really end, and it's doubtful it ever will get an ending, at least in anime form from what I hear.

It takes getting past all the blatant fan service and the harem aspect of this series to really enjoy it, but the show doesn't make that easy. In the first few episodes, it goes as far as to use silly cartoon sound effects for the busty nurse's various parts as they bounce around. The opening titles also let you know what the show's real focus is, so it's easy to tell that the show isn't really taking itself seriously the way most other zombie shows do. At first it made me laugh, but after a while it just made me roll my eyes, and this is coming from someone who actually kind of likes fan service. Still, I couldn't help but be reminded of Divergence Eve, which had a sci-fi plot that might have otherwise been taken somewhat seriously, but instead focuses on fan service.

As for the characters, there isn't a whole lot to say about them. The leader of the group and the protagonist of the show is Takashi Komuro. He's the "average" high school student with the typical drama issues when the zombie apocalypse first arrives at his school. He's also the apparent romantic interest of pretty much every female survivor in his group, except for the token loli they rescue along the way. In fact, the only other dude in the group is a gun nerd, who's there to make gun nerds feel good about how useful their knowledge would be during a situation like this, and to help the show pander its other form of fan service – guns. Other than that, there isn't much interesting about the characters specifically, aside from the one who apparently gets turned on by violence. Yes, at one point while slaughtering zombies, they actually have her inform the audience that she's wet. At some points the characters are somewhat sympathetic because of everything that's going on, but at others the characters, in particular the female characters, are just bitchy and annoying.

If you like fan service and you like zombie movies, you'll probably like this series. If not, you'll probably just find this show every bit as obnoxious as it is. 5/10.

 

[prinCZess]

High School of the Dead

I have seen a grand-total of one episode of this and one scene from further on (anyone who has seen it will know. It involves a bullet's very bizarre and physically-impossible path of travel), and from that much knew it wasn't really my scene. Because...I dunnow, there's tasteful cheesecake-shots, which this show doesn't bother with, and then there's the kind of hammy, 'my god, they actually did that' cheesecake-shots which I find amusing to endearing...And then there's this show where they take the hammy ridiculous style, dress it in a feather boa and a tutu, turn it up to 11, mount it on a rocket-powered supercar, and then spice with zombies. Because bewbs-and-thighs.

If that's someone's scene...More power to 'em, I 'spose. I can see the very edge and outline of why it might be funny/interesting peeking out like a nipple from a too-low top...But at a certain point wouldn't just watching hentai for your bewbshots and insane bullshit be easier?
Iunnow.

One thing I will give it credit for, because it's a scene that has stuck with me for years is one of the opening tragic zombie-killings that gets a, like, fifteen-second spot. Pair of schoolgirls that are talking about how they'll escape together and be fine and friendship and etcetera, then a zombie grabs one--and the other immediately starts kicking at the face of the girl whose been grabbed trying to get her to let go and calling her a bitch (then gets grabbed and bitten herself).
It's a really brief scene, and has somewhat of an utter ridiculous feel to it and might even be borderline dark-humor, but...was also really creepy to me? Like, it is just bludgeoning the usual zombie-movie theme bullshit 'we are also monsters' yadda yadda but that presentation worked and I didn't like it in the way it was meant to not be liked (I...think/hope).

 

[Bear Ribs]

I remember watching a couple episodes of this but I was a bit put off by the relentless... bounce.

I will say it's possibly the only anime I've seen where the fat guy wasn't lazy, perverted, or useless, or a background character. It was almost startling to me to see that he instead was treated as a normal member of the team, with his own hobbies, dreams, and skills that kept him handy in the apocalypse.

 

[Captain X]

Not going to lie - my friends and I love to make fun of this one, in part because of how much other otaku seem to love it so much. I seem to recall making an omake lampooning the scene @prinCZess is talking about, but it was put on one of the other guys' accounts instead of the main MaxiumWeeaboo account and I can't remember what either the name of the account or the video was right now. Will probably have to ask him about it later. :/

Incidentally, we kind of liked to make fun of the fat guy specifically because his obsession was suddenly useful in the zombie apocalypse and we felt like he was meant to be a bit of a self-insert for the expected audience. That and because he was a bit of a doormat for one of the tsunderes. Also incidentally, one of our friends is super into guns the way this kid was, and totally dug all the gun fan service, and we had some fun with that, too.

 

[Terthna]

I only ever read the manga, but Highschool of the Dead was a favorite of mine back in the day. Shame what happened to the writer; though at least the artist, Shōji Satō (who used to be an assistant to Kōshi Rikudō, the guy who made Excel Saga, strangely enough), is still around and has been working on his own manga, Triage X.

Personally, I don't really get people's aversion to fanservice and harems; because in my opinion? They're not something you have to get past to enjoy an anime; they're a draw in and of themselves.

 

[Captain X]

As HotD and its fandom attest to.

I have no aversion to fan service, it's just that at a certain point, you just as well have made a hentai, and I kind of feel like HotD passed that point. I know a lot of its fans think it was just having fun, but I felt like it was having it both ways, and that all the fan service undermined pretty much anything else it might have had going for it. Like that scene prinCZess was talking about with the two girls supposedly being BFFs only to immediately turn on each other as soon as one was grabbed - one of them got a lovely upskirt as she was getting eaten by zombies. And yes, I totally cracked a joke about "I've heard about eating a woman out, but this is ridiculous."

 

[Bear Ribs]

Personally, I don't really get people's aversion to fanservice and harems; because in my opinion? They're not something you have to get past to enjoy an anime; they're a draw in and of themselves.

For me, mostly that they don't fit the tone of the piece and mess up the ambiance, so to speak.

It's fine in Tenchi Muyo where it's central to the plot and works. It's fantastic in Ranma 1/2 where the harem is the entire point and it frames the ludicrous comedic martial arts battles. It doesn't work where the story is in the middle of a serious, bloody battle where I just saw somebody die and then suddenly boobs swinging around like wrecking balls as the female character swings a sword, followed by a panty shot. It just wrecked the flow of the story and spoiled the epic bloody battle feel.

I could make a comparison to a fart joke. I might well chuckle at a fart joke in a juvenile grossout comedy story or high school slice of life where it's appropriate. I will not be amused by the same joke if the director inserts it during Boromir's last stand against the Uruk-Hai, or a serious biographical story about Martin Luther King Jr.

There's a place for panty shots and bouncy boobs and it's not just after we saw a zombie child rip its own crying mother's face off.

 

[ATP]

HotD was funny and creeping both - becouse we have very low opinion about human nature in small scale /people following perverted teacher,for example/ and in big scale,too - nuking after zombie started arriving.It would have sense only if one country really made zombie virus,but nuking becouse otherwise somebody nuke us when we could not retaliate ? nobody,i hope,would be that stupid.
Also - american destroyer taken by zombies.Bullshit,again - they have marines,and captain could isolate part of ship where zombies start attacking.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Well, that's the issue with all zombie flicks, you have to leave out how the zombies took over the world because there's no reasonable way the zombies both curb stomped all the world's militaries and can be defeated by your rag-tag team of survivors armed with farming tools. I don't blame HotD for it, the entire genre has that problem.

 

[Terthna]

Well, that's the issue with all zombie flicks, you have to leave out how the zombies took over the world because there's no reasonable way the zombies both curb stomped all the world's militaries and can be defeated by your rag-tag team of survivors armed with farming tools. I don't blame HotD for it, the entire genre has that problem.

Thing is, you'll notice that they only ever defeat relatively small groups of zombies, and run away from any group of significant size; whereas the military have to contend with the populations of entire cities in zombies at the same time.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Thing is, you'll notice that they only ever defeat relatively small groups of zombies, and run away from any group of significant size; whereas the military have to contend with the populations of entire cities in zombies at the same time.

This is true, and HotD does have the advantage of being one of the fastest-spreading and most virulent zombie viruses* in fiction, going from "one infected bite" to "the entire school is overrun" in the space of what looks to be less than an hour. People go from "bitten" to "zombified and biting others" in the space of a few minutes, sometimes significantly less.

*Generic term, we don't know it was a virus of course, and I've heard some of the author's notes indicated he planned to make it a supernatural curse but I haven't seen it myself.

 

[Captain X]

Again, I have no problem with fan service. Not only is Golden Boy one of my favorite shows, I'm guessing I'm one of the few people you'll find who didn't mind that decon scene in the first episode of Enterprise.

The reason I give HOtD so much grief is that it seems to also want to be taken seriously. Actually it could even have some interesting points to it, like that bit with the school teacher who kicks all the male students off of the bus so he can form a little cult/harem out of high school girls with some commentary there about corrupt government officials. The problem is, it jumps right from that to just randomly shoving some fan service into your face with all the panty shots and ridiculous boob physics. If it was all ridiculous, and never took itself seriously at all, then if I gave it any crap it would just be a matter of how good it was as a comedy. It doesn't help that zombies have kind of been overdone as a genre, so it would mainly just have the novelty factor of being set in Japan going for it.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Yeah, pretty much. I have no issue with boobs but interspersing the deadly serious scene where Takashi's group is trapped against a wire net and surrounded by zombies with him using Rei's chest as a gunrest, with massive amounts of boob bounce each time he fired his gun, yeah that basically ruined both for me. I couldn't take the zombie threat seriously due to the ridiculous use of boobs as gunrest and couldn't appreciate the boobs due to zombie threat.

 

[Captain X]

Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance
(2009 movie)

This movie marks the beginning of what are some much more obvious deviations from the series. It starts things off by introducing us to a new character, Mari Illustrious Makinami, a red-headed teenaged girl who seems older than the other Eva pilots. There's also the implication that she's using her masters as much as they are using her, whatever that means. There are a few other changes that I'll get into later, but the most positive one has to be Shinji. He still acts like a loser when it comes to Asuka (now with a different last name), but overall he's definitely a lot less whiny and useless. But I'm actually still kind of neutral in how I feel about this movie, and to be frank a lot of that has to do with the somewhat lighter tone the movie seems to take at times. It also doesn't help that the soundtrack went from the more dramatic instrumental/choir music to light J-Pop music that honestly felt inappropriately happy at points in the movie that should have been serious and dramatic.

The plot was also kind of "meh." I mean, it was okay, but not a lot happened overall. Mainly we got introduced to Mari and Asuka, and learned that Asuka was a self-important bitch all over again. Asuka showed up with Unit 02, bragged about it, and got to fight some more attacking angels that showed up. One of the highlights there was that all three of the children had to work together to kill one of the angels. Then one of the really major changes happened, because the Eva unit that turns into an angel isn't piloted by Shinji's friend from school, it's piloted by Asuka, so it makes it that much more dramatic, I think, when Shinji is made to attack her Eva and nearly kill her in the process. Actually, even the "dummy plug" auto-pilot from the series is different, too, and is a mechanical device inside the pilot's capsule, and it clamped down on his hands along with the controls in order to take out the possessed Eva, so Gendo literally had it use Shinji's hands to almost kill Asuka, though at the time he'd thought that it had succeeded. That kind of made it a little better, in my opinion, and I really felt for Shinji as he went ape-shit and actually attacked NERV headquarters.

This marks the beginning of Shinji really standing up for himself, and the great thing is that he kept on doing it. Another great character change was Rei, who actually showed some emotion and actually was somewhat proactive in trying to get Shinji and Gendo to get along as father and son, or at least she tried until the business with the possessed Eva. It actually made it a bit more poignant when it looked like she was going to sacrifice herself again and we'd lose all that character development, just like in the series. Fortunately, this is where Shinji standing up for himself comes into play, and he actually goes pretty far to save her after she was literally absorbed by the last angel attack of the movie. And by "absorbed", I mean the thing ate her along with the top part of her Eva, and then turned into something that looked an awful lot like the Lilith/Rei from the End of Evangelion movie. As for Mari, well, I'm not sure what to make of her yet. Basically she showed up all covert like (and Shinji even played along) and hijacked Unit 2 (Asuka's Eva).

I guess something seemingly new to me and worth mentioning is that there seems to be a lot more danger with using the Eva units, since dropping down to the bottom of the pilot's capsule will turn the kids into angels, apparently, as will taking some kind of safeties off of the Eva units themselves that look kind of like control rods from a nuclear reactor. Apparently in rescuing Rei, Shinji damn near started off the end of the world, and while I vaguely remember that this happened in the series, I don't remember how they resolved it. As far as I can remember it was just resolved off screen somehow. This time, it's resolved by the appearance of that creepy kid, Kaworu Nagisa, you know, the one that made Shinji a slashfic writer's dream. Apparently he came from the moon, where Seele, the evil organization from the series, seems to have a secret base, where Gendo and his buddy both saw him out on the surface with no suit. So there's no subtlety this time around, and it kind of leaves me wondering what's going to happen next.

At least there was only one damn train scene this time.

This was an okay movie, though I would say that I feel slightly let down from the first movie. I'm still kind of looking forward to what might happen in the next movie, so hopefully that won't let me down by making Shinji go back to being a whiny, useless bitch. 7/10.

 

[Terthna]

Again, I have no problem with fan service. Not only is Golden Boy one of my favorite shows, I'm guessing I'm one of the few people you'll find who didn't mind that decon scene in the first episode of Enterprise.

The reason I give HOtD so much grief is that it seems to also want to be taken seriously. Actually it could even have some interesting points to it, like that bit with the school teacher who kicks all the male students off of the bus so he can form a little cult/harem out of high school girls with some commentary there about corrupt government officials. The problem is, it jumps right from that to just randomly shoving some fan service into your face with all the panty shots and ridiculous boob physics. If it was all ridiculous, and never took itself seriously at all, then if I gave it any crap it would just be a matter of how good it was as a comedy. It doesn't help that zombies have kind of been overdone as a genre, so it would mainly just have the novelty factor of being set in Japan going for it.

Why does being sexy and serious have to be mutually exclusive? I just don't understand that perspective; in the manga at least, none of that stuff took me out of the experience.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Could just be me, it's not as if it doesn't take all kinds and clearly plenty of people liked HotD. I personally can be nitpicky about structure and framing in my entertainment where some people don't care.

For myself, it was more about how it disrupted the mood. F'rex, the scenes when they reached the Nurse's friend's house and were finally safe for the first time in days, all the sexy stuff in there, the baths, The nurse getting drunk and handsy, Saeko in a naked apron, those didn't wreck the mood any. The mood was about then unwinding and coming to grips with a lot of horrors they'd been through and the characters getting frisky is both a natural reaction in normal humans and contributes to the sense that they were, temporarily, safe and thus were able to take baths and get drunk and handsy.

Using Rei's boobs as a gunrest for the lovingly rendered and realistic guns wrecked the sense of realism invoked by the accurately-depicted guns because that's stupid, and wrecked the mood of desperation invoked by the wire net trapping them by shoving something as silly as a boob gunrest in my face.

 

[Captain X]

Why does being sexy and serious have to be mutually exclusive? I just don't understand that perspective; in the manga at least, none of that stuff took me out of the experience.

They don't have to be mutually exclusive if the fan service is done properly and doesn't ruin the mood that the show is trying to go for in that particular scene. The example @Bear Ribs gave is a great example of a way the fan service still could have been there if the show wanted to be serious. But constantly flashing panties when people are getting attacked by zombies is going to spoil anything remotely serious that might be going on. I mean, right at the start of the show, for example, the main love interest has just lost her boyfriend and now has to fight off his zombified corpse, so while very stereotypical of this genre, this would still count as serious drama, at least until her panties get flashed. Or later on when some very scared people kill a little girl's father and leave the two of them to the zombies, so the crew rides to the rescue, only on the way the show just had to have a drawn out sequence of cutting between all the women's boobs bouncing every time the Humvee hit a bump and their asses, so the show basically whiplashed from serious drama to essentially slapstick comedy/fan service. I also gave another example with ENT, though to be fair I never really took that show all that seriously to begin with, even if I did like the concept of it. Incidentally I wrote my own version of ENT and I still kept a version of that decon scene.

 

[Terthna]

slapstick comedy/fan service.

See that? That's what I can't accept; the automatic association of fanservice with comedy. It honestly kinda annoys me. I get what the both of you are tying to say; I just don't agree. At all.