Luck and Logic: Review
Title: Luck & Logic Format: Anime (12 …
Title: Luck & Logic Format: Anime (12 …
Kino’s Journey episode 2: A Tale of Feeding Others. Everything comes at a cost. Whether it’s a cost of money, …
This should be the first time I’m putting one of these on The Artifice, so I should probably explain what …
Lately this anime blog has been flood with Higurashi content, perhaps even a little too much. So I decided it was time to take a moment and look at something completely different; review an anime that I’d never even watched before! And it was that thought that has brought us here, because indeed today on The Anime Harvest, a review of Ookami Kakushi.
Ookami Kakushi takes place in a small village where our protagonist, Hiroshi Kuzumi has just moved. Things get weird when he starts attending school, and one of his classmates mysteriously vanishes but everyone says he moved away- Oh come on, this is just Higurashi! It’s even got a mysterious purple-haired chick! I guess that’s what I get for picking my anime from Ryukishi07’s MAL page.
I’m not sure what to make of Prison School. After three episodes I certainly know what it is and what to expect. I just don’t know if it’s good, or bad, or comedy, or one of those Studio Arms torture-porn things. Well, okay, I know it’s not the last one because a) it’s done by J.C. Staff and looks way better than any Arms show, and b) I don’t love it way more than I think I should.
I often make fun of Studio Arms, not out of hate, but out of love. As much as I find the studio itself to be an amusing reference point for how depraved anime can get while still being as close to the mainstream as any show not named Dragon Ball Z or Attack on Titan gets, I also genuinely like their stuff. And we sometimes forget that, between Queen’s Blade, Ikkitousen and Elfen Lied, Arms did actually make Genshiken. So, out of respect for the studio I love to rag on, I’m going to review an OVA that can’t just be summed up with “It’s an Arms torture porn.” Today on The Anime Harvest, Mezzo Forte.
How has Android Girls with Predetermined Short Lifespans become a genre? I blame Mahoromatic. Anyway, Plastic Memories.
Plastic Memories takes place in a future where human-like androids, called Giftia, have become a household utility. Some peoples use them for labour or assistance, but they go a lot deeper than simple machines. They at least seem to have personalities and emotions, and as such, many people purchase them as children, as a form of emotional support. But Giftia only live for about nine years, after that they can malfunction, so it is the job of SAI employees to contact the owners and shut their Giftia down before they malfunction.
Death Parade started as a twenty-five minute short film, written and directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa, under the name Death Billiards. It was made with the support of Studio Madhouse for Anime Mirai 2013, and gained a lot of clout. The film was about two men, Otoko and Rojin, who died at the same time, and arrive at the Quindecim bar. They have no memories of their deaths, and are told by the bartender Decim that they are to play a game of billiards with their lives at stake.
Now, obviously, as they are already dead their lives are not actually at stake, but their souls are. Decim is what is referred to as an arbiter. It is his job to push the dead to their limits, see the darkest corners of their hearts, and then pass judgement. The games he has visitors play have no stakes, but their reactions under stress do. After the game is over, typically the players will have realized that they are dead, and Decim will chose one to be reincarnated, and one to drop into “the void”.
Tachikawa reprises his roles as writer and director for a full anime series based on this concept, Death Parade. And given that Death Billiards plays out almost exactly like a standard Death Parade episode and introduces the core concepts of the show’s world, I like to consider it as an unofficial episode zero, and thus part of the series. If you do decide to watch Death Parade, or at least check it out, I strongly suggest starting there.
As for the rest of the series, it’s largely episodic and follows the same structure as the short film. Most episode introduce two characters confused about where they are or how they got there, they agree to play a game, and throughout the game they regain snippets of memory and are push into extreme situations which test their character. By the end they leave, and the afterworld goes on. What links these together into a series rather than a bunch of standalones is the recurring cast, Decim, other arbiters, and other strange people.
There are few anime that actually get to me. To say I’m properly cynical might be an exaggeration, but I …
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