Animisery – A Blog About Living Miserably with Anime (Among Other Things)

It’s the end of the month so I’m reviewing and discussing all the anime I watched in the second part of July! The first blog post was fun to type plus it didn’t go on FOREVER so I definitely think I’ll keep to this kind of format for my own enjoyment and possibly yours if you do so enjoy this blog.

GRAND BLUE DREAMING
⭐ ( 9.5 / 10 ) ⭐

I’d like to think that I’m a funny enough guy. I’m probably not but it doesn’t hurt to believe it. I think I know funny well enough and that’s how I can confidently proclaim that Grand Blue Dreaming is probably one of the funniest anime out there for your consuming pleasure. It follows the story of a young man joining a diving club but this is not a diving anime and don’t forget it. Grand Blue Dreaming is an anime about the youthful college life of partying, hanging out with your friends, and finding your zest for life as you live among chaos and chaotic individuals. This was an anime that I had long since left waste away on my Plan to Watch list and I wish I had given it a chance sooner. The anime is rooted in the ridiculous and the absurd as characters are often overreacting to hilariously wacky shenanigans such as buff macho men bros constantly stripping down nude or a hyperactive sister loving cousin who destroys those who would impede her siscon ways. The characters are all there for jokes yet underneath it all Grand Blue Dreaming has a reputable message: do what you love and find people who love it too and you’ll find happiness. Our main character Iori is not a diver but he begins to fall for the hobby and finds true comrades as he does start to enjoy the hobby more and more. His cousin Chisa adores diving above all other things and only really appreciates him as Iori invests himself in the hobby showing how our hobbies and passions grow us to each other and can develop our relationships mutually.

It’s not a world changing message or view (hang out with people who like the same things as you and you’ll be friends) but it’s sincere enough between the rampant stripping and drinking. Grand Blue Dreaming was an unrelenting fun time and I hated to see it end but was relieved to see season two is already underway. The only thing that prevents this from being sheer perfection to me is an exhausting and mean spirited episode where Iori and gang get a friend’s girlfriend to break up with him in some comedic sequences and the nonstop yelling that can be grating at times. I’m only so proficient at Japanese but even I can’t handle that much screaming. The animation is also very highly lacking and bland at times which was distracting. It’s still a certified Matt classic so check it out!

MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM: GQUUUUUUX
⭐ ( 5 / 10 ) ⭐

I like mecha! It’s fun to see giant robots tussle and for the political intrigue that can occur when we debate when these giant robots can tussle and if it’ll affect our space credit score. What I do not like is when we smash our mecha stories together with three stories that go absolutely nowhere at a breakneck speed to culminate in a finale that says “ISN’T THIS COOL” when it isn’t cool at all and is absolutely banking that you love the franchise enough to care. Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuux is an anime that takes place in an alternate timeline of what can be considered the main Gundam time line called Universal Century or UC and if this is your baseline knowledge then you will not be enjoying GQuuuuuux to its fullest. GQuuuuuux masquerades as a new entry point and it could certainly serve as that but the end result proves that there is a threshold and you better be ready because this quiz will be graded. The core story about our protagonists three, Machu, Nyaan, and Shuuji, could have been serviceable enough as we see them participate in Clan Battles which are two on two mech fights. GQuuuuuux, however, is a greedy little guy also has this story be about an alternate Universal Century timeline where Zeon, the kind of space fascists but kind of not, wins the One Year War for their independence and are allowed to exist as a free entity and all the drama that entails. This is your conscripted political intrigue and it could be doable for fans of Gundam and the newbies but GQuuuuuux only has twelve episodes and rushes through these two plots (and a secret third one for later) in such a way that when they finally collide it feels poorly executed.

I say feel but it IS poorly executed. We go so fast that everything feels as if the plot just HAPPENS with little fanfare using characters we barely even know or care about. Our main female leads Machu and Nyaan just decide they both want Shuuji to almost incite drama for the sake of it only for that plot thread to be torn off to a new one where suddenly the Space Fascists are attacking each other at full force. I can see how the story of Zeon and the surviving characters would be delightful for UC purists but I’m only so familiar with the timeline (I watched all the compilations films and ONLY the compilation films) and I wonder would someone new to this world care? My cohost Earthworm seemingly didn’t and my best friend Audrey only felt so connected in this new timeline. GQuuuuuux is just all over the place story wise but I can profess the animation and character designs are honestly doing all they can to put up a front of an exciting enough anime. I love the design of the main Gundam the GQuuuuuux and think the characters all have iconic features that make them exciting to see. Each character exudes style and wonder but they’re all unfortunately stuck in an anime where they’re misused for rushed plots and middling fights that jump between an extreme rush to “boring cutscene from a PlayStation 3 game” level of mediocrity. The anime has such much to offer if it had more time and that common complaint has never been so much more true. More time could’ve built this concept to completion with an ending that feels “earned” and not just “given”. As it stands, GQuuuuuux just shows that the road to bad anime is paved with cool concepts.

UMA MUSUME: PRETTY DERBY
SEASON ONE
⭐ ( 6 / 10 ) ⭐

We are absolutely horse pilled here and we haven’t run out of equestrian medicine quite yet. With more and more hunger for horse girl, I absolutely HAD to watch the original series which takes more from the mobile game, Uma Musume: Pretty Derby. It’s an alright show that could easily stand on its own as we are presented the core concept openly and with simple terms: horse girls exist and they go to school to race which they then do. It might be seen as putting this girls as objects as they seemingly exist solely to race but I think that’s taking a cynical eye to it. Our main character is flagship horse girl Special Week who has just started her first semester of horse girl high school and is driven to be the best in Japan for her living adoptive mother and her deceased birth mother. Her dad is not involved obviously because that is a question we don’t want to ask or be involved with. She is eventually recruited into a team and the team works their way to being the best in their school even as it feels like they lose far more than they win. There’s mild drama between the characters but it almost always feels like it’s not comfortable leaving the realm of Cute Girls Doing Cute Things Cutely if not to such an extreme degree. The girls do cute things and engage in shenanigans but it’s not the core we’re here for: it’s horse racing. That’s unfortunate because it’s honestly as bland as it comes especially after having come off of the sister series Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray where races felt like they were hanging on the tip of a knife’s edge and victory and loss were always a mistake away.

Pretty Derby, being the older entry, does not have the weight of CyGames Animation to prop it up and its very apparent. Running sequences struggled to hold my interest barring select events and I always felt as if they were not what the anime wanted to do anyways. The anime felt like it wanted to show you all the marketable ponies that you could be training so download the game already, would ya??? Granted, the characters were fun enough (and my beloved Daiwa Scarlet was featured!!!) but it’s not like you’re seeing anything new here by any stretch. I don’t think I could watch this if I wasn’t a fan of the mobile game so I think it’s impressive that some viewers legitimately became attached off of so bland an adaptation. I’ve read and heard that the second season is the pinnacle so maybe that has a hand in it but this first season leaves a lot to be desired. It’ll placate the fans hungry to see the characters animated but I don’t know what much else there can be. I might give season two a chance but I think I’m more content just reading the Cinderella Gray manga for an amazing adaptation of what the mobile game is striving for.

JUNGLE DE IKOU!
( 2 / 10 )

Sometimes you just hunger for the darker side of your hobby. You search out for sheer slop to pile on your plate and consume just for the sake of knowing what truly despicable drudgery lie underneath all your gilded darlings of Dandadan and Frieren. Jungle de Ikou, a three episode slop OVA from the year 1997, may be the salvo for all the excellent anime that you’ve seen thus far in your life. Jungle de Ikou is an unapologetic bad time that thinks it can subsist on horny alone as the main character (who is actually dangerously young) transforms into what could only be described as a Japanese citizen’s very skewed perspective on what someone who hails from a fictional jungle land may look like. Think a scantily clad and disastrously well endowed woman with tan skin and blonde hair who looks as if she should be on a first name basis with Conan the Barbarian or anyone of that ilk and you will get Mii the alter ego of our very forgettable protagonist. There are many things this anime can be called like trash, garbage, or even crap if the other two words don’t suffice but at the bare minimum Jungle de Ikou can be reluctantly considered a mahou shoujo or magical girl anime. This is in part to how the main character is a girl and she (and another highly forgettable character who could haphazardly be called her friend) transforms into her alter ego after performing a highly sexually suggestive dance that involves groping her own boobs. I don’t think I expected a Tubi exclusively 16+ late 90’s OVA to have much tact but I did expect it to at least have some and Jungle de Ikou failed in that regard. It’s not like I can claim to know much about what could be considered “positive” representation but her learning this technique from a dark skinned man wearing a massive horn right over his crotch is not what I would immediately think is a shining beacon of what the people of any jungle area would consider pleasant.

Each of the three episodes basically start off with some face of Mii’s power becoming an issue (her partner Ongo, her mahou shoujo friend) and eventually culminate into a final sequence where Mii is brought out and beats the bad guy of the weak usually causing more collateral damage that would make the Marvel Cinematic Universe characters squeal with glee. The final episodes lays host to a very questionable fan service event where Mii unlocks her TRUE POWER to grow big and has perverted camera men take up skirt photos and another man is subject to crashing into her massive mammary mahous and proclaims this is the best day of his life. It’s a very 90’s level of low brow anime writing but that doesn’t excuse just how downright terrible it all is as we all just really just have to sit down and profess that this was the inevitable horny sesh we were all waiting for. It’s an absolute waste of a show that proves how much of anime will be inevitably forgotten to time with no greater loss to our minds or the collective anime culture. Mii and her design was absolutely the only facet of the show that got me in the door to watch this show and this is a shame I’ll have to carry with me to my dying breath. Jungle de Ikou is nothing more than fan service garbage that didn’t even succeed in bringing enough to the party to warrant a hate watch. At least it has the classic 90’s animation charm but you can find that in plenty of other shows that are, you know, actually good.

That’s another month down! I think splitting the reviews and discussions works well as I’m not drowning in typing a massive post for no one to read and it’s a better experience when I get to reflect on fewer shows like this. July was a busy month for my anime watching as I try to enjoy more and more of the shows that pique my interest and summer has been an absolute hell for good anime. It’s a literal “suffering from success” kind of situation as 10+ seasonal anime have caught my interest and I don’t feel any urge to drop them or hold off for later. September’s anime recap posts will probably be my War and Peace of blog posts as I pour over all these shows but hopefully you’ll be there to discuss said shows with me, dearest reader!

As always feel free to go check out my podcast, the Anime Brothers Podcast (episodes 201 and beyond), and talk with me about the anime you enjoyed in July! I’d love to hear from you!