Unbreakable Machine-Doll – 11-12 [END]
I’m a benevolent and tolerant guy. However, there are three things I simply cannot stand. People who order me around, people who oppose me, and how Unbreakable Machine-Doll turned out.
Facing “Machine-Doll Review” I
Irori: We were important, right? Komurasaki: I had like one episode of screen time! Shouko: Just give me more alcohol.
I may be a first-class Metanorn writer, but even I am not without flaws. If I were to name a defect of mine, it would be the fact that I decided to pick up this show. I’m a benevolent and tolerant guy. However, there are three things I simply cannot stand. People who order me around, people who oppose me, and the way the characters keep repeating the same lines over and over as if it’ll eventually start sounding cool or somehow witty. It does not. Unbreakable Machine-Doll may be the first adaptation by Lerche, but even it is not without flaws. If I were to name a defect of it, it would be the disappointing lack of coherent and interesting story in all three arcs presented. The show seemed to believe that it could pull off repeatedly introducing some sort of political intrigue, with each arc not even being connected to the next. And that it would be OK for Raishin to play the role of righteous justice swooping in to save the damsel of the day from the evil clutches of unscrupulous villains at the near-death expense of breaking his bones each time. But in unsuccessfully pursuing these various plots thanks to a lack of investment from the audience and repetitious developments, the show unfortunately let go of the one interesting bit of story telling it ever had. Precious little progress was made on the front of Raishin’s drive for vengeance and his relationship with Shouko. What should have been a straight shot of him making his way to the top of the Evening Party to fight his brother while Shouko and the Setsugetsuka are elaborated upon on the side is instead bogged down with the unecessary baggage of said political scandals, which didn’t even help immerse us in the Machine-Doll universe that much.
Facing “Machine-Doll Review” II
Yaya reveals her second stage!
I’m a benevolent and tolderant guy. However, there are three things I simply cannot stand. People who order me around, people who oppose me, and Machine-Doll’s horribly lacking story telling and bland characters. Sorry, that was actually four things. But then I wouldn’t be able to repeat myself. I may be a first-class Metanorn writer, but even I am not without flaws. If I were to name a defect of mine, it would be my inability to keep up this satirical farce poking fun at said flat characters. What the show should have done was give them real depth and meaning beyond spouting cheesy lines repeatedly repetitiously as if repeating the repeated would repeat peat eat. But at least by the end we find out Raishin is actually a man-whore who sold his body to Shouko so that maybe she can make her own perfect Machine-Doll for reasons still unexplained. And we do also learn a little sliver of his past, which can be summed up in this one sentence as follows: there once was a loser named Raishin whose brother killed his entire family including their cute little sister so that he might make a perfect being known as a Machine-Doll. If you can sum up the driving plot of the show (again the entire rest of Machine-Doll might as well be excess filler) in one sentence give or take proper grammar, you know something is wrong with said show. Also note that half of that sentence was only just revealed in the last episode. I may be a first-class Metanorn writer, but even I am not without flaws. If I were to name a defect of mine, it would be making this post longer than it needs to be for a show of this quality. So I will stop now.
Phew. That was quite the rant. If you couldn’t tell, Unbreakable Machine-Doll left nothing but a bitter taste in my mouth beyond the first arc. Not a very good sign for Lerche as this is their first formal work, but perhaps the blame lies upon the source material and there is hope for the studio yet. But in any case, all I can say is thank you for sticking with me through what turned out to be a rather lame and unentertaining ride. If nothing else, let us look fondly back upon the show by recalling its only redeeming factor: the catchy ED. Oh, and don’t forget those shockingly creative episode titles.
5/10
About Sumairii
POWUH: iLurker with 7 comments
^This.
No one should able to deny this. This is probably one of the bad example of how a dialogue should go. They are so predictable to the extend that it’s pretty much sums up to what they will be saying in the whole series.
My lecturer mentioned that writing dialogues are hard especially you have thousands of them, but never so bad I ever heard/ seen.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Since I just finished this series off I have to agree with you Sumairii! The flow of the story is all over the place and with our MC spending so much time helping all the girls he hardly gets to follow is revenge story! I mean seriously it was like after one arc ended he was back fighting another badguy…
The only fun part of this series was the ED and that is kind of sad and there were some funny character moments but damn did it ever get annoying with Yaya always trying to get into the MCs pants! It just got really old fast.
If there is another season I will probably pass on it LOL
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
If another season has an new director I might give it a shot. This was some good investments spent poorly.
But yeah, we can DAT ED all day long, right?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Boy, that was a terrible ending even for this show. This show just went steadily downhill from the first episode, never getting better, never hitting any sort of stride, just rolling down into badness.
Really, the end of every arc was worse than the last one, and the end of each arc was the worst part of each arc. I think there were some not-too-bad setups, but ending every single arc with a fight in the dark against someone who’s kicking Raishin’s ass got old the second time, and trying to introduce intrigue with school politics was just lame. And enough with the magic disguises! It was ok once when it was the doll that was made to look like a person. But then after that everyone had a disguise for no reason at all!
I’ll disagree with Fosh, tho: the only part I thought was consistently acceptable was Yaya’s pursuit of Raishin. Silly? Definitely, but at least it was something straightforward and sense-making.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Isn’t your statement after the benevolence and tolerance quote contradictory? 😛
The lesson is that do not judge a show by its moeness. I have seen shows with premise and sampled it to find that it was like flat Coca-Cola. For me it was non-Biyori this season. Looked so cute and lolicious(tm). 3 minutes put an end to it…
POWUH: 800-899 and Mad Scientist with 814 comments
The point of Loki’s quote is to stress that the three things (really only one) are therefore extremely intolerable as even he is supposedly a highly benevolent person. In other words, irony.
Also, I don’t think “moeness” was a factor for most people who decided to pick up Machine-Doll. Though the same might not be said for Non Non Biyori, there are many greater things about that show than cute little girls.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
I will take that advice if I have difficulty sleeping.
POWUH: Metanorn Lover with 163 comments
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting anything else having read the manga to a point.
Like I said earlier, the entire show is an excuse for Raishin to strut around and posture and be an object of interest to a variety of female flavors while being “simply too macho-cool” to fall for any of them.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
As a whole, Machine Doll was below average. It would have been better if Raishin wasn’t so full of himself thinking he can save absolutely everyone when he, himself, has been put at death’s door countless times.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
You mean you weren’t turned on by Loki’s and Sin’s manner of speech? What? Blasphemy!
I have to say this was a show I was highly anticipating going in, the first episode or two did not disappoint… and then my illusion crumbled. I’ll admit that it was still fun to watch and I never had any intention of dropping it, but looking back, boy did this show just dial it in.
I wanted more of Char’s back-story (and resolution) as well as well as Raishin’s back story, but for the former all we got was the sister and the latter was nothing.
Maybe it’s only me, but I was reading some blogs and they were like, “conclusive evidence that Magnus was Raishin’s older kin-slaying brother”. I just don’t see it. Besides Raishin’s conviction and the similarity (don’t really see it though) of one of Magnus’ ban-dolls to his now-deceased sister, what other evidence was there?
Overall I found everything was done half-hardheartedly. Maybe it was the director’s fault, since the backdrop and characters had a lot of potential, imho. If there’s a sequel I’ll definitely watch, but my expectations have definitely been lowered from a must-watch to average harem/action show.
POWUH: iLurker with 3 comments
Well I do not agree with almost anything the review and rating given overall but respect your opinion about the show liked the gif: D, the more would give an 8/10 for me it was one of the best anime of the Fall (2013) season alongside Tokyo Ravens and the Strike The Blood (despite that Kojou ficou inútil no 2 cour).