Hourai NEETwork

Well the reasons are different, let’s start the worse one called GONZO, this studio I’ve come to dislike (not as much as Sunrise but that’s another story), and their last series: Strike Witches or the infamous no pants anime -even Touhou has more female characters wearing pants-.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy shamelessly fanservice shows like To Love-RU or Sekirei for the recent ones, I watched Kanokon because it starred the lovely Mamiko Noto as a shota, as long as it’s clearly a fanservice series I don’t mind it but something like this Sunrise mecha show that create flamewars almost everywhere you talk about animes which features A LOT of fanservice, that would make me rant a lot -although that being a Sunrise show is already enough to make me rant-

I remember reading somewhere that Gonzo was going some financial troubles but I didn’t think it was this serious, it must be really bad for them to not be able to afford draw pants anymore. Sometimes it would be wise to ignore some “recommendations” from some people, Strikes Witches is no exception, I only got curious because I haven’t seen any screenshots from it (because I don’t like to spoil myself, even more when it’s the first episode of a new series) I really didn’t know what it was about except for taking place in an alternative pre-WWII like world with girls being anthropomorphizations of WWII planes fighting aliens, well I wasn’t really expecting this:

or

(Screenshots taken from Hearts of Iron II, great game if you like strategy games… and for references Warcraft III is *not* one of them).

But clearly, yeah it’s my fault for not checking what that shit was about, I didn’t expect to see THAT:

Loli girls, only wearing underwears or bloomers, growing kemonomimis when using their magical powers -did I told you that I hate animal ears on girls? Well except for bunny ears when it’s from a Touhou character or a Bunny Girl-… I must say I never thought that the first five minutes of an episode would have made my expectations drop into abyss and it wasn’t already that high for being a Gonzo show, now I wonder if that is worse than Blassreiter.

I really don’t feel like writing about this crap, call me biased because I hate Gonzo but there’s a reason why people criticize them for dropping the budget after 3 episodes and rape their material source. The very thing that makes me cringe is obviously the lack of pants (or even skirts) without explanations, maybe it’s because of their mecha and magic propellers but it seems that they can keep their shoes, obviously extremely cheap fanservice “hey guys let’s make a lot of crotch and butt shots, they’ll love it and it’ll be less expensive”. I don’t remember being pissed that much by an anime recently, even by the Code Geass Kallen/C.C. cheap fanservice.

As for the story, well I thought that Toshokan Sensou had a pretty hard-to-believe setting but this goes beyond that (some may say that it elevates the series beyond my comprehension, *winks @ SWR players*), we have some weird alien aircrafts suddenly invading Earth which defenses are lead by a group of lolis using mechanics stuff propelled by magic (convenient use of magic isn’t it?), that already sounds just ridiculous but it just seems like a lame excuse to shove crotch shots in the watchers face.

There is obviously something very wrong with the creators of this series, oh wait Gonzo I forgot…

Now the Gipsy outfit from Ragnarok Online doesn’t seem as much provoking.

Hmmm can someone tell me what we’re watching right now?

That’s me after about what… 4 minutes? (And yes I rename by hand the pics name)

At least the realisation is quite good but hey it’s something to expect for this kind of show.

Lolicons and fetishists rejoice Gonzo delivered something for you to fapped over each week, the others called “elitists” by their friends like me -well I don’t care being called like that, especially by people who thinks that mechas shows are the pinnacle of Japanese animation, I’ve yet to find more than five persons who would have recommended twenty faces over kanokon this spring- you can wait for this Fall to have something decent.

Now let’s talk about something good…

Okay not that good but at least it didn’t piss me off: Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, doesn’t seem to be something really extraodinary but at least it delivers its load of fun and the best part of it: one of the best vocal performance of Mamiko Noto, it reminds of much I loved Matsuri Shihou because of her voice (and Zettai Ryouki, although Sola was only so-so).

It’s a must see if you’re a Mamiko Noto fan like me, I think I was killed by moe overload about twenty times during the first ep, if you’re not just try it you may find it enjoyable. Globally this summer disappoints me I can’t wait for this Fall:

Fuck yeah Hokuto no Ken, bonus video (+ Touhou Hijack):

(I really have lame excuses to throw a random Touhou video in, I should be ashamed but I’m not)

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Anime, Japanese Culture.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.