Spring 2018 Anime First Impressions: Part Two

Akkun to Kannojo:  Another short with a dumb premise.  Why did I even bother?  Fail.

Mahou Shoujo Site:  I have no sympathy for victims who do nothing to save themselves except cry and plead for mercy.  Why not call the police?  Or, you know, go to the police directly and demand you be removed from your dangerous environment?  That's what the police are there for, you know.  To prevent crimes and lock up criminals.  When you're being continuously assaulted by crimes, all you have to do is tell them and it would all immediately end.  Likewise, if she had just told her teacher that her desk and chair had been ruined and shown it to him, she could have recruited the school to help her and take out the bullies.  But she said nothing.  She did nothing.  She just cried and begged and prayed and sniveled like a worthless cur.

I'm not even asking her to take vengeance into her own hands and just kill everyone who ever messed with her.  This is what a man should do, but let's give her a little leniency as a woman.  When she gained the power to kill people without a trace, though, why didn't she kill everyone?  She had the means, the motive, and the opportunity.  There's no evidence trail that can lead back to her since she's using magic.  Why didn't she kill them all then?  Even though a man should have killed them all before with his own strength, you'd think even a girl could kill people with the power of magic.

With such a worthless, weak willed woman, it's no wonder a bunch of sadists gathered around her like ants to sugar.  Who wouldn't beat up such an inviting target?  She offers no resistance and there's never any punishment because she never even tells anyone about it.  At this rate it's hard to tell whether she's even an unwilling victim or not.  She's 90% responsible for all the problems, the sadists are only 10% to blame, because she's 90% of the cause of all the suffering due to her own worthlessness.  The sadists wouldn't dare to act like that around any halfway decent person who stood up for themselves, so in the end who's really the bad guy here?

Announcement to all victims of the world -- do something yourself, don't expect us to care.  Fail.

Gurazeni:  This is a surprisingly good show.  The affable demeanor of our middle aged gentleman protagonist makes you feel like a longtime family friend as he narrates his stream of consciousness directly into our brains.  His down to Earth view on life feels like it came straight out of a Charles Dickens novel.  Best of all, he was willing to stand up for himself and showed no mercy to his enemies.  It's a dog eat dog world out there, and he's a survivor.  He makes no apologies for it.  The story is set within a baseball field, but it's not really about baseball.  It could've been about anything, because what it's really about is our hero's character.  I feel like I've seen all the baseball anime I'll ever need to see, but Gurazeni isn't really a baseball anime now is it?  Like Moshidora, baseball is just a metaphor for life.  Pass.

Hinamatsuri:  A terrible show with a strangely high budget.  Yet again we have a pushover loser guy as our protagonist, who is trampled all over by a girl but lacks the courage to do anything about it.  Yet again the girl is a retard.  What's with this trope?  Loser guy + Retard girl is like the hot ticket item these days.  But I'm not interested in either type.  Who is?  Why are they making so many anime about these wonderful loser retard romances?  Why?????  Fail.

Caligula:  I hate psycho-babble.  It's all so pseudo-scientific.  I hate things happening randomly without any explanation.  I hate stories that present hopeless situations where there's nothing the protagonist can do and all their choices are predetermined by necessity.  I also hate fatsos and losers in general.  If Caligula were all the world was composed of, I'd hate everything.  Luckily I can just drop Caligula and move on.  Fail.

Piano no Mori:  I like music, heck, I even like piano music.  I'm not very fond of magic pianos, bullying, red light district mothers, or white knighting on behalf of red light district mothers, but I guess all of that can be overlooked for the sake of the piano music?  Maybe?  Pass.

Fumikiri Jikan:  Another short, and an episodic series at that.  Basically a bunch of comedy routines?  Anyway, this can hardly be classified as anime.  Fail.

Last Period:  Terrible production value, no attempt at rational plot development and zero characterization.  Completely sloppy.  You can tell that even the makers of this anime didn't feel it was worth making.  Fail.

Alice or Alice:  The second episode was worthless.  Dropped.  Fail.

Wotaku ni koi wa Muzukashi:  A girl who initially calls someone disgusting would not, two weeks later, agree to date said guy.  Especially when absolutely nothing had changed between then and now.  Also, a girl who's only attracted to jerks and bad boys would not suddenly fall for a nice guy her tenth time around, so the whole premise of the show is impossible.  Plus, both the characters are losers because they smoke/drink/slut around.  It's like watching two retards mating, or animals in the wild or something.  What is there to be excited about?  Fail.

Isekai Izakaya:  What do you know, modern cooking has better ingredients, sauces, variety and techniques than the food of ancient days.  It's great to lord over the peasants about this fact, but modern food culture isn't as rosy as depicted.  2/3 of Americans are overweight.  The packaging of ingredients at restaurants creates hormonal imbalances that are especially bad for men.  Peasants didn't have to worry about pesticides, packaging, preservatives, etc, because they ate everything fresh.  Restaurant food is extremely expensive, a luxury really only the rich can afford.  And even if you can afford the food monetarily, no one can afford to eat it because they'd just gain more weight the tastier the food is prepared.

In the past people could eat and drink hearty because they were engaged in physical labor all day.  Now most people sit around all day, which is great in terms of comfort, but horrendous when it comes to food.  We have to scale back on our diet to match our new environment, which means even if you go to a place with great cooking, all you can really afford to do is take a couple bites and then you're done.  Medieval food that you can actually eat heaping plates of doesn't sound so bad in comparison anymore, now does it?

In the end a series like this is mere fantasy.  It's a fantasy that we can enjoy the culinary expertise we've acquired in modern times.  It's a myth that we can eat all we want of scrumptiously prepared meals.  It's a myth that we could go to places like this and not gain weight.  Food is just another deadly sin like tobacco or alcohol, which we need to learn to resist, not indulge in.  A series indulging in how great food tastes is missing the larger point.  Everything feels good at first, but then the consequences start piling in afterwards, just like with heroin.

There's also another problem with all these gaudy displays of great food.  In the end if you're hungry virtually anything tastes good, even without any effort cooking.  The hungrier you are, the finer the meal becomes.  So a hungry peasant from the middle ages eating a loaf of black bread with some butter spread on top and maybe some chicken eggs is going to feel just as good as our exquisite dining facilities can make far less hungry people feel today.  We aren't nearly as better off than the ancients as we think.  Fail.