Attention to detail on the subject matter of alcoholic drinks.
Negatives:
Dull unless you love alcoholic drinks’ history.
No mystery or intrigue with a slow pace.
Uninteresting characters.
Almost no animation.
With little to say about Bartender, this will be a short review. As the name implies, this anime is about a bartender who can mix drinks like no other. By observing behaviour and attire, he can discern which drink is best for the individual. He remembers every drink he has served to any given person, while being a well of knowledge on all alcohol.
Entry to a land of wonder and cocktails.
That’s really it. Each episode focuses on a few drinks, gives you their history, tells you the recipe, and wraps it in a light story of the bartender helping someone, possibly depressed, or in a search for the perfect drink, or someone in need of help. In every case, there is little conflict, if any, and most of the time passes with the facts. The lack of mystery had me dying to move on to another show.
A quiet place to have a break.
Needless to say, this is a boring show to any but the most interested fans of alcoholic drinks and related history. It overestimates what alcohol does for people as if such drinks create miracles for your soul. While it is charming to see such passion and attention to detail for the subject matter, we all know that it’s far from reality – this isn’t the place for that debate, though.
Looks like a celery sundae to me.
Bartender is an alcohol history program swirling in a glass of anime with a taste of jazz and a slice of plot on the side.
Each credit sequence shows the mixing and serving of a drink.
Art – Medium
The environments are quite good, suiting the look of a bar. However, with no variety, get used to seeing the same compositions throughout. They shouldn’t have used CG for the drinks, as to stand out from the surroundings.
Sound – High
Music is Bartender’s strongest aspect. The jazz and piano tunes are fitting to the bar environment – it is exactly what you would expect from a quiet drinks lounge. Opening sequence is a mismatch, while the ending is perfect, using live-action footage of a bartender showing you how to mix a new drink each episode as musicians perform. It may be worth getting this soundtrack.
Story – Low
Not much one can do with a story whose focus is on alcoholic drinks in a bar.
Overall Quality – Medium
Recommendation: For fans of alcoholic drinks and their history; boring to everyone else.
Good pacing that details the manga creation process.
Real characters with ordinary problems.
Negatives:
Low tension reduces engagement over long sessions.
Doesn’t hit the needed emotional peak.
Romance lacks conflict.
Poor antagonist that never feels threatening.
For fans of manga, which I assume would be most anime fans, Bakuman is a dramatized behind-the-scenes look at the process of publication and serialisation of your favourite works.
One day, Saiko, a depressed and unambitious teen, returns to class after school’s end to retrieve a forgotten notebook, only to find it in the hands of classmate Takagi. He panics, his mind jumping to the sketches of his secret crush contained within the notebook. Takagi tells him not to look so worried; after all, it’s not as though it is a Death Note. In exchange for Takagi’s silence about the unrequited love, Saiko must join him in becoming full-fledged manga creators – Takagi as the writer, Saiko the artist. And so begins their journey on the road to publication.
That expression encapsulates what it’s like to confess to your crush.
This is an anime for those who read manga, preferably Shounen Jump, where Bakuman was first serialised. For anyone unfamiliar, Shounen Jump (also known as ‘Jack’) is a weekly publication in Japan with a variety of manga including Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, and many other popular works. Having your work serialised in such a magazine, and for it to be a hit with fans, is a big deal. In Bakuman, you will spot many manga – unfortunately, it all seems to be work published in Jump, which makes Bakuman look like an advertisement reel.
That’s a whole lot of manga.
Following the new partnership, Takagi drags Saiko to the house of his crush, Azuki, who reveals she wants to be a voice actor and agrees to play the heroine of their series when turned into anime. Things don’t go as expected when Saiko yells out that he wants to marry her once they achieve their goals (remember, they are only fourteen at this point) and what do you know, she agrees. While this is a ridiculous setup to the relationship, it doesn’t continue in such a manner, instead walking a more subdued path for the show’s remainder; so subdued in fact, that there really is little conflict in this romance. The secondary relationship of Takagi and his girlfriend has far more screen time. In a way, you get the feeling that the romance was an afterthought to increase the number of plotlines from one to…two.
Saiko now has something to achieve. However, things aren’t as easy as imagined since voice actors become successful at a younger age than mangaka, meaning she may be gone by the time he amounts to anything. He must succeed before completion of high school. These are solid, well-rounded characters with goals like everyone else, and I appreciated that. For the most part, this show keeps the character development and interactions within the realm of realism.
A look at their art.
Bakuman is more of a feel-good show than one that explores the emotional intensity of aiming for stardom. While, yes, it does have moments of failure, setbacks, and disappointment, it never portrays the turmoil quite as it could have and should have. Anyone who has had to go through that journey of trying to become a successful artist of any medium on talent alone – no help, no family inheritance, no connections – will tell you that it isn’t easy, that emotions run high, and at the best of times, you feel like the best you can do is tread water. I would go so far as to say that they should have included the emotional intensity of a show like Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien to capture that internal struggle. With that, Bakuman could have been one of my favourite anime.
The main antagonist offers little in the form of adversity. He is a manga prodigy, set for serialisation in his mid-teens and in competition for the same publication spots as them. My problem with this character is that we’re told he is great, never shown a reason why. He’s weird in your stereotypical young genius way, making constant sound effect noises with the behaviour of a two-year-old. Bakuman plays things too nice.
Being “weird” is his only trait.
The best aspect of the show is the detail they put into the manga creation process from idea to print, the writers disguising it within an anime to prevent it feeling documentary-like. To top it off, you also get a taste of the manga they design. You aren’t just told about their work without ever seeing the results, as most career shows will do. One even hopes that some of their stories become real manga. Money & Intelligence, a one-shot set in a world where people can sell their intelligence directly into another’s mind, sounds great. I want to read it!
Concept for their manga ‘Money & Intelligence.’
Bakuman is a worthwhile anime, particularly if you are a fan of manga. It doesn’t suffer from anything inherently awful, and yet never hits that greatness it could have. Still, I do recommend Bakuman to anyone who wants an enjoyable viewing experience.
Taken down by his girlfriend. Tap out!
Art – High
The art style is nothing special, but is neat and varied from your typical anime. Seeing them draw a variety of manga styles in one show is a treat.
Sound – Medium
Sound falls into much the same area as art: good, though not remarkable. None of the voice work is poor or irritating, except the antagonist, and the music is pleasant enough. The good opening song sounds like Japan’s version of the Backstreet Boys with that one song you thought was decent, but would never ever admit to.
Story – Medium
Better than most journey-to-career-success anime. Lacks emotional intensity.
Overall Quality – High
Recommendation: Bakuman is more enjoyable than its individual qualities let on, in particular for those who want to see the manga creation process.
Length: 13 episodes (12 is the finale; 13 is a bonus)
Positives:
Fantastic art style and animation to create a vibrant, yet haunting world.
Well-suited music to the dialogue heavy plot.
Strong male and female protagonists.
Solid voice work to accompany the varied dialogue.
Dark humour from lead female is a pleasant change of pace.
Negatives:
Incoherent story overall marred by throwaway side characters.
Random screens of text flashing every few seconds.
Sexually creepy at times.
Too little character development, even from the protagonists.
No world building despite the incredible visual design.
Bakemonogatari is one weird anime. You don’t get many as weird as this one. This anime has people with spaghetti for brains and staplers as weapons. Probably the most normal thing here, as far as anime goes, is starting with a pantie-shot. From then on, it goes to a whole different dimension. The question we ask ourselves: Is this weirdness good? It does create greatness, but unfortunately, it brings several poor decisions along for the ride.
Immediately, I was struck by the vivid art of Bakemonogatari. Its brilliant use of light, shade, and colour is gorgeous. There is style here, plenty of it. Gradients give backgrounds depth on top of the multi-layering. All colour choice is deliberate, intended to match the mood and atmosphere of the characters and their situations, even at the cost of continuity – a room could be bright one moment and change to dark if the situation called for it, regardless of realism.
Bakemonogatari, one of the most gorgeous shows out there.
It is a shame then that poor choices mar these visuals. Bakemonogatari use a mix of live-action, stop-motion, collage pages, and text for metaphors and similes. At times, the change in art is both hilarious and clever, the rest, tedious and forced. The worst offenders are the screens of text; they flash at random intervals for no purpose. Every instance broke my immersion. Get used to seeing a flat colour with Japanese lettering and the subtitle ‘unidentified cut’ underneath. A dozen times. Per episode. Every episode. Unbelievably stupid decision to kill the atmosphere. It feels as though they had a great idea to use live-action, collages, and so on, and found them to work so well that they thought, ‘why not add more?!’ only to kill it all by going too far. Such a shame.
Tasty?
The plot swims in much the same ocean as the alternative art styles: greatness weighed by poor decisions. We start with protagonist, Araragi, running up a grand spiral staircase in what you can assume is his high-school (most expensive high-school I have ever seen, especially considering no one goes there – more later). He looks up to see a girl falling down the hundred-meter tower. He catches her (don’t question how she drifts twenty meters from the central axis into the stairs) only to find she weighs five kilos (still enough that it should have broken his arms from that height, however). With Senjougahara’s secret revealed, she cannot let him go; she attacks armed with a box cutter and a stapler. After she staples the inside of his cheek for the fun of it, he pulls open his mouth to show no wound. Turns out Araragi recently reverted to human after a stint as a vampire. They become tenuous allies to return Senjougahara’s stolen weight (from a giant ghost crab that also took her memories) with the help of his acquaintance who cured his vampirism.
They had a sale on at Office Works.
This initial premise captured my interest; unfortunate then that it lasted but a few episodes before it took a tangent about a little girl with another supernatural problem. The tangent itself wasn’t poor, but lacked development of the main plot and romance. When yet another girl with a paranormal issue enters afterwards, one realises this show is on a formulaic cycle and has little to do with the initial promise. His former life as a vampire has no bearing on the plot. Senjougahara’s backstory seems forgotten, and the relationship development stalls until episode twelve – a fantastic episode, admittedly.
Bakemonogatari’s two protagonists.
In all, five girls partake, including the lead female, which is why you see Bakemonogatari categorised as a harem anime, yet this isn’t one. Yes, creepy sexualisation exists with a side character or two, but nothing that constitutes a relationship or even a crush required by harem anime. At least they made the correct decision in that aspect.
A fall from the tower of glass.
One of the strangest factors is how the entire world’s population is nine: protagonist, five girls, mystic, minor vampire girl, and Senjougahara’s father. That’s it. No background characters at all, not even in a school big enough to have a glass tower of no purpose, and parking for a thousand bicycles. Is this a problem though? Not really, but it did reduce world depth. This brings me to another negative: no world building. Why is this ghost crab after her? Where do all these supernatural elements come from? Where is the lore, the backstory? You get nothing. The world feels empty despite the visual depth.
Bakemonogatari is heavily dialogue driven. You have to pay attention, as it moves at a brisk pace while you extrapolate what is relevant from the random junk littered throughout. Episodes tend to diverge halfway through into some long-winded tangent before they return on track – medium success rate. The camera likes to cut away to different angles during dialogue. Focus on someone’s feet, then their hands, the corner of the table, the wall, a badly framed shot of the face. Prepare for irrelevance as well. The side of a building, some grass, a window, dirt, more grass…
Hmm, interesting…yes, most interesting…
Allow me to stress that this isn’t for children, and not because of the nudity. Topics of discussion range from Araragi’s virginity to Senjougahara’s choice of clothing and even to some specific types of incest-like fetishes. Honestly, I didn’t even know those were actual fetishes… Anyway, they deal with deep psychological issues caused by broken families and assault on loved ones. Dialogues are largely between the two lead characters, where Bakemonogatari is at its best. The dynamic between these two is a pleasure to watch. I find it hilarious how her attempts to help him with problems (she’s the more mature of the two), end up abusing him instead, making things worse, except, she honestly believes she’s helping. The humour is along those lines: serious in delivery, ironic in reception. His stray lock of hair being a symbol for his arousal level is clever too.
Bakemonogatari is a dialogue heavy anime, highlighted with a variety of viewing angles.
Despite the negatives, Bakemonogatari is still an anime worth watching. For maximum enjoyment, I recommend you watch no more than three episodes at a time to avoid overload and to maintain your focus throughout. Marvel at the art, focus on the lead characters, and you will end with a positive opinion.
Art – Very High
Truly spectacular. From the light to the shade, marvellous work here. However, it is brought down by some obnoxious screen flashes that occur far too often.
Sound – High
The right actors to match the great dialogue. Music is enjoyable too, outside of the opening and closing sequences.
Story – High
Moments of greatness distracted by random elements thrown in for the sake of being random. Three of the five story arcs fall flat.
Overall Quality – High
Recommendation: Watch this for what it does right. Take Bakemonogatari in small doses to stave off what it does wrong.
Clichéd characters (how are they still so lifeless?) meandering through an empty plot with no conflict.
Forced cuteness.
Waste of time.
Azumanga Daioh is one of those shows that I heard about when I first got in anime. I would hear how funny of a show it was and how it was so cute, and all that. At the time, I was in my early teens, so based on the character art alone, I knew it wasn’t my sort of thing. Now, over a decade later, when every show can be ‘my sort of thing,’ I decided to give it a go and write the review I couldn’t as a teenager.
The most overused “joke” in anime.
My opinion of Azumanga is worse now than all those years ago. Truly, this is one of the worst shows I have ever seen. I have spent more time thinking of what to write about this anime than actually watching it. There is nothing to write when nothing happens! I will paste the notes I made during the viewing and see where we go from there. For other shows, I usually have pages of compressed speed notes, but here I couldn’t even manage a page.
Forced cuteness. Not really cute.
Nothing happens.
Not really funny.
Really, what is this show about?
It’s just random crap with no conflict or tension of any kind.
This is rubbish.
Every joke falls flat. Are these even meant to be jokes?
Paedophilic humour(? – not sure if joking)
Every character is stupid.
Episodes are about someone buying lunch, or cleaning a classroom, or other such rubbish.
Really, NOTHING HAPPENS!
This show is terrible.
Such a waste of time.
High school setting.
Bunch of one-dimensional schoolgirls.
Can’t remember any of their names.
And that’s it. All of it after 26 episodes. I could just leave it that, but it would be lazy. (I am being forced to pad content – I never do that!)
Some characters in Azumanga Daioh.
I understand that the genre doesn’t demand much in terms of depth and plot, but really, this is pushing the limits of shallow. Nothing happens in this story; there is no continuity and a distinct lack of character development. Even a day in the life of Earth’s most boring person would hold more intrigue than this. Each episode consists of the stupidest characters you have ever seen doing the most mundane of things: buying lunch, cleaning the floor, sitting in class, jumping in the pool, talking about how cool the tall girl is…
This must all be a mere jest, right? There has to be more, no? There isn’t. The characters start and end the same. No conflict is overcome, no tension is experienced. There is literally no drive or reason to keep watching. Now, if it was mind-blowingly hilarious, I could understand (yet, all the funniest shows have conflict). However, Azumanga doesn’t even accomplish that. I may have laughed once in this twenty-six episode run. The jokes are so bad that they aren’t even lame. I spent most of my time trying to find the jokes, questioning if that scene I just watched was intended to be funny or not. I assume the cuteness was to add charm and humour, but is so forced, so overdone that it becomes tiresome before first episode’s end.
Paedophiles are more than welcome in that school.
In the end, I have nothing more to say than don’t waste your time with this show. Which, ironically enough, is more than Azumanga Daioh has to say. Characters and plot are empty, audio and video you have experienced before, and overall stupidity give no reason to try this anime.
My reaction exactly.
Art – Low
The visuals are unremarkable. Generic. In the animation department, unsurprisingly it disappoints again with little motion and a low frame rate.
Sound – Low
Sound follows the footsteps of art like a shadow – unremarkable and forgettable. What music? These characters are so stereotypical that even the voice work sounds too familiar. There is the overly cute one, the quiet tall one, the annoying hyperactive one, the immature teacher, and the supposedly wise one. This entire genre seems to be a copy paste of the above, voice actors and all.
Story – Very Low
There is none. The characters have the same depth as the plot.
Overall Quality – Very Low
Recommendation: Don’t put yourself through this. After watching Azumanga Daioh, I can see why the original manga author refuses to allow his current and excellent series Yotsuba to receive an anime adaptation. 4-panel comic stories don’t convert well to full episodes.
Length: Season one – 13 episodes; Season two – 26 episodes; 1 OVA; Season three – 13 episodes.
Positives:
Nice Venetian architecture.
Beautiful water effects and reflections.
Negatives:
No tension, excitement, or danger.
Little plot to speak of with no progression.
Poor twists.
Too long and slow all the way.
With three seasons and a special, you would expect Aria the Animation to be something good, if not great, to garner so much support. It didn’t deserve such patronage. Now, it isn’t bad, I just can’t fathom how this got renewed after the first season. This story has no substance. It is difficult to place the genre. There is no relationship conflict to be a drama, not enough humour to be comedy, no action, not enough fantasy or science fiction, and no romance. I had to check the genre online, the first time I’ve ever needed to.
The ladies of the Aria Gondola Company.
The story takes place on Aqua, formerly known as Mars until they filled it with water one-hundred and fifty years ago, in the city of Neo-Venice, a replica of Earth Venice. The recreation of Venice is one of the things I do like about Aria. They took care to include famous Venetian landmarks such as the St Mark’s Basilica, the island of Burano, and Plaza San Marco. The architecture and feel of the place is accurate, although it is much cleaner than real-Venice – if you have been there you’ll know the water is more green than blue. However, you have to suspend disbelief since filling Mars with water won’t make it function exactly like Earth.
Inspired by the Burano island district of Venice.
Akari, the young resident of Neo-Venice dreams of being a professional gondolier (pilot of the boats Venice is famous for) under the tuition of Alicia, the blond-haired lady of the Aria Gondola Company who says ‘my, my,’ a lot. She becomes fast friends with other gondolier women: Aika, the apprentice with blue hair, her bossy teacher Akira, and the studious Alice – far too many similar names. The best character is the cat/teddy creature they have as the company mascot. He is fun to watch when he’s trying to charm the cat mascot of another company.
The white mascot and his lady friend.
Each episode follows some unimaginative plot with no excitement, danger, drama, or tension. They are small adventures everyone has seen in one form or another. It would be like making an anime about someone going to the store to buy some milk before returning, and the largest conflict is the lack of exact change, therefore having to break a tenner. Nothing to hold your interest, essentially. No more needs to be said in regards to the story other than it’s pleasant but without substance. The only outright bad things are the twists that happen at random. Let’s time travel! No foreshadowing, no clues, no explanations, they just…happen.
Season 2 is a slight improvement to the first. The adventures they go on each episode actually have an unknown element that drives them to the end – don’t get excited, as it still isn’t anything interesting. On the negative, it’s twenty-six episodes long so you have to sit through twice as much. I guess if you’ve bothered with continuing after the first season, you must like it anyway. Finally, the OVA and season three have another small increment in quality with more shading and layers in the art, but the story is more of the same.
Beautiful Venetian architecture.
Plaza San Marco
Unfortunately, little good can be said about Aria, and yet, little that is outright bad. It’s just…eh. I simply don’t understand what prompted so many seasons. I can only recommend it if you want to watch something that takes no thought or analysis on your part as you glide over the pleasant waters of Venice.
Art – High
The architecture and water carry the visuals. The wavering reflections of Neo-Venice look nice. Characters have the standard anime look, other than the elegant designs of their gondolier outfits, interspersed with morphs into the adult chibi.
Sound – Medium
Solid guitar tunes take up the majority of the compositions, an apt choice for a gondola ride.
Story – Low
A slow gondola ride through Venice with no conflict, no drama to experience. Sit back, and sleep.
Overall Quality – Low
Recommendation: Meh. Watch it if you just want to give your mind a rest. How did Aria receive so many seasons?
Nefarious Reviews 