Anime Reviews: Mangirl!, Yurumates 3D, Encouragement of Climb, Cosplay Complex

A quadruple batch of mini-reviews of odds and ends.

Anime Review: Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru

Years and years ago I remember being an extremely hardcore Tenchi Muyo! fan, specifically the original OVA. At the time, I was busy admiring the suave Kagato, digging the funky trees-in-space sci-fi, or feeling so badass because I saw the uncut version where you could see their titties (hey, man, I was pretty young). The fact that it was a harem anime went mostly over my head — I mean, it had so much else to focus on.

These days, your typical eroge-turned-harem-anime are a dime a dozen and, in most cases, predictable, unoriginal, and above all bland. Some clueless d-bag, usually in high school, who over the course of several episodes manages to snag several wildly different cliché girls all without noticing or trying. Beyond the fact that the writers aren’t even usually trying to come up with anything new, the whole charade is just silly and embarrassing. The harem genre is obvious wish-fulfillment and its knee-jerk doinkiness leaves me feeling ashamed to be an anime fan.

But every now and then you get a show that, while exhibiting harem qualities, manages to go beyond the tropes. It offers an actual story, likable characters, or other things like action and mystery. Like Tenchi Muyo!, the harem part becomes so much a minor quality next to all the rest it has to offer. These shows prove to me that harem animes aren’t inherently dumb or despicable, that they can be good, great even, rising above the rubbish.

Anime Review: Sword Art Online

A new MMO that uses virtual reality headsets to play garners a lot of buzz in the gamer community after a successful private beta. The public release is marked by a lot hype, especially when it is limited to only 10,000 copies sold. The first day it opens for play, the lucky few who manage to get a copy log in for the first time, only to quickly discover the logout button that was there during the beta is missing. The lead creator and designer reveals himself and announces the situation. Everyone is stuck playing his masterpiece game, Sword Art Online, until the final boss is cleared; everyone’s character has been altered to match their real life appearance; and most sinister of all: death in the game means death in real life, too.

Anime Review: Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

An idiot savant girl, the namesake of the series, transfers to an art-centric high school to pursue a career as a manga artist despite already being a child prodigy in the painting fine arts. But while genius in the arts she lacks everyday common sense, right down even to basic functions like dressing herself. Yes, that sound is everybody letting out a vexed sigh at the doinky and unbelievable premise I just laid out.

Anime Review: Bakemonogatari & Nisemonogatari

Now a mostly-cured human after briefly becoming a vampire, our high school senior hero Araragi finds himself mixed up, primarily due to his meddlesome nature, with a number girls each of whom is involved with various sorts of ghosts, gods, and spirits.

Impossibly surreal and artsy. Bakemonogatari is sharp, clever, and rhythmic. It is a love it or hate it series, though. Either you dig its eclectic style of backgrounds and architecture, symbolism, character dynamics, and dialogue, or… you find it grating, pretentious, and pointless.