MetaFap: Fall ’14 – 12 [NSFW]
Another season of faps over.
Ore, Twintails ni Narimasu – 12
A story of the unshakable bond between a boy and his twin tails.
That was a serviceable finale to this series. I liked that it came down to having Souji gaining a deeper understanding of what his love for twin tails is by way of experiencing the hard work that goes into creating and maintaining twin tails, which fits well thematically. Not that I really followed his dream conversation with the voice of his twin tails or how it gave him the drive to power up at the end; but hey, at least they tried. As usual, the show was at its best when playing on the sentai parody, such as that insert song sequence. And we even got a pretty good fight scene between Tail Red and Arachne Guildy, at least by this show’s standards.
All that said, Gonna Be the Twin-Tail!! is a perfect example of an all-too-common pattern I see of anime shows that end without endings. There was no sense of completion with this finale; Arachne Guildy was a tough enemy but hardly the be-all-end-all, and the villain who could be such a figure was off on an all new mission to take down a traitor. There was a quick line from Aika about how Twoearle said that Ultimagil had retreated, but without any indications as to why or how, it was not satisfying. Same goes for the harem hinjinks, as Souji’s role as Erina’s fiancee became more of a recurring joke than an actual plot point. I wasn’t expecting a clean resolution here, but it seems a waste to have done so little with such a large plot point.
What a great mother who just wants her genes spread far and wide.
Overall, Gonna Be the Twin-Tail!! was a pleasant enough light novel adaptation that didn’t try to do too much. The show’s irreverence was its greatest strength that allowed for hilarious moments like Ultimagil’s internal debates about eroge, Erina’s first time discovering her inner masochist in front of Souji, or the Tails’ combined attack going off too early in Dark Grasper’s face. Unfortunately that irreverent style didn’t allow for any meaningful exploration of the story or the characters, with gags that may have been funny the first couple of times – such as Aika’s flat chest complex or Erina’s desire to be dominated – becoming tiresome due to over-repetition by the end. The animation, which ranged from merely passable to eye-gougingly ugly, did the show no favors, which is somewhat problematic for a sentai parody such as this. In the end, Gonna Be the Twin-Tail!! was a decent show with some good jokes, just not enough of them to make it through an entire season.
That “shocked” twin tails look actually works pretty well on you, Souji.
Mikoto’s style is just way too high level. (Click for stitch)
Such a cool finishing move, they just had to show it thrice.
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Madan no Ou to Vanadis – 13
I see Eleonora’s fashion sense predates her War Maidenhood.
I guess things worked out more or less as expected, with Tigre defeating Thenardier and Regin revealing her identity and inheriting the crown from the king. That showdown was really weak, though, with Thenardier just galloping straight at Tigre who proceeded to arrow him in the head. There was some mumbo jumbo about Tigre using the wind to his advantage and mastering his bow, but without having established Thenardier’s skills deflecting arrows, it just looked like an idiot rushing straight to his death. I’m also not sure I follow all the political goings on. Whatever happened to Duke Ganelon who was poisoning the king, and how was he found out? How did it suddenly become okay for Regin to inherit the crown? There’s just too much there that I couldn’t follow.
The incomprehensible politics was the main problem with this show. It had a likable enough cast of heroes, but it stopped being clear what they were fighting for and what motivated them once it got past the Tigre-saving-Alsace phase. I’m of the opinion that any story can be told in any number of episodes, but this is a clear example where the story was simply too big to fit into just 13 episodes. An excellent writer might have been able to make all the right cuts and modifications to make it fit while still being comprehensible, but that clearly didn’t happen here. Combine that with the generally lackluster and occasionally downright awful animation, along with a relative dearth of fanservice, and you’ve got a show that didn’t do anything particularly well. The character designs were quite good and was easily the most memorable part, but that is nowhere near enough to carry an entire show.
Map diagrams like this one stopped being all that useful very early on in the series. A simple explanation of the geography could have done wonders.
Really not sure what the point was of showing the portal-using War Maiden in cahoots with Ganelon there at the end. (Click for stitch)
The hard work for Tigre starts now, choosing between Eleonora and Ludmila. This shot of Ludmila walking above where that siege happened somehow felt so romantic.
Good to see that Brune’s royal armor fits right in with the style used by the War Maidens (why did they even have women’s royal armor around? They weren’t expecting to run into royalty, much less a female one).
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Grisaia no Kajitsu – 13
Kazuki’s treasure.
I am particularly unmotivated to talk about the Grisaia finale, so I hope to actually keep things short. Basically, Kazuki asks Amane to look after her brother as expected. It happened in a slightly different way than I thought it would, but I had a feeling the story wouldn’t be able to resist the cliche. We never do find out what happened to Kazuki in the end, but I stick with my belief that she’s really dead. If she loves Yuuji as much as we’re lead to believe, surely she wouldn’t stay separated from him for so long for any reason short of death. And then the arc closes with psycho dad holding the girls hostage before getting taken down through a joint effort between Yuuji, Makina, and Amane. That was such a disappointing way to end the arc, and overall such a disappointing arc to end the series with, that I am left with nothing but a bad taste in my mouth.
Welp
The news that apparently the other two VNs in the Grisaia series are being adapted into anime kind of amuses me. As far as I am aware, and please correct me if I am misinformed, the second VN will be a sequel that continues the different routes for each girl and provides more backstory to Yuuji. Then the third VN will conclude a “main route” and add a prequel of the girls entering Mihama Academy. So most of that ties in with the stories as told in the first VN, and the anime already deviates from that. Which leaves me wondering just how the heck the upcoming anime adaptation will reconcile the differences.
Shoot ’em up!
Since there wasn’t much of substance to talk about, I will instead spam images of the first BD special. Enjoy.
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Related
Tags: grisaia, grisaia_anime, madan_anime, ore_twi
About Tag Team
We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Vanadis: Along with the Royal Maiden Armor, Regin got a boob upgrade. That scene came on and I thought “Where’d she get THOSE?” I actually thought that the scene of Tigre shooting Thenardier in the head on the bounce after accounting for his slash to deflect the arrow was cool, although the “Let’s show the arrow shaft sticking out of his face for 30 seconds” part was a little much. I saw a lot of commentary on twitter about people (obviously) not understanding that Tigre had actually accounted for Thenardier’s block and had used his own blade to deflect the arrow up into his head. Pay attention people!
When Ludmila was looking down on the castle with her bow, I thought that Tigre was actually going to be there hunting with her.
I thought the show wasn’t bad overall. There were definitely lowlights and WTFery, and some really poor narrative choices like the CG horses and those chess-piece and terrible map battle explanations. But there were some good characters, I thought, in Tigre, Elen, Lim, Mila, even that general with the moustache. I didn’t even mind the big death scene with Bertrand, and found it a worthwhile use of time for the show. Even Titta got a little less annoying, although she’s still worse than most harem imouto characters.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Grisaia: I’m pretty sure that Kazuki’s not dead, but we saw a reason for her not to make that publicly known after what happened with Revenge Dad. The ending was all sorts of stupid and WTF. He’s gonna kill Amane, because she’s alive when his daughter isn’t, but let’s take a little side trip to rape her too. What? And boy the show bogged down with all of that maneuvering to get him to be able to make that shot. That was totally “We want to use this cool ending, so let’s write ourselves there” without regard to how contrived it ended up being. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but there’s NO way that falling into a urinal is going to break it. You might not have a chance of breaking it with a sledge hammer.
Overall a disappointing show because of expectations (even though I didn’t have much in the way of expectations). I don’t see the pull of the VN, it seems like you’d need to be a huge masochist to go through all of that downer crap. I wonder if the H-scenes are really that good, or if it’s one of those “I sunk this much into it, I’m going to self-justify it by saying how great they are.”
POWUH: 800-899 and Mad Scientist with 814 comments
I’d make a joke about Michiru being thickheaded enough to break the urinal, but the whole hostage/sniper scenario is still so stupidly contrived that it’s not funny.
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
I’m reading the VN right now, and it’s actually really really good so far. I haven’t gone down anyone’s route yet, still in the shared route at the beginning which is almost exclusively slice-of-life style segments. I’ve been very impressed with these segments, as they build up over time and give us a sense of each of the characters and how their relationships with each other work. Needless to say, the vast majority of these segments were cut entirely since the show dove very quickly into the girls’ routes.
I think Grisaia anime could’ve been good if it had made the majority of the episodes the shared route and gone down just one girl’s route for 2 or 3 episodes. Of course, this wouldn’t change the fact that the meat of the story – i.e. the actual drama of the girl’s route – seems to be weak-to-terrible for all of the girls, but I’m having so much fun with the shared route segments that I believe they could have supported the entire show.
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
The common route is definitely fun to read. It’s quite long but it’s pretty enjoyable. It drops hints here and there as well to the girls’ stories. The first branch-off to a route would be for Makina, which I haven’t finished yet and don’t have any more motivation to read.
With the announcement of the sequel of the anime, it seems like they rushed through Kajitsu with the purpose of wanting to animate Meikyuu and Rakuen.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
It’s kind of weird that the common route is well-liked by you guys, and the individual routes seem to be meh at best, painful at worst, and yet they chose to spend most time on the individual routes in the show. I realize they probably couldn’t spend more time on the common route without taking it away from what they did show, but there were some decisions there that were dubious, like a whole episode about how awful it is to be trapped in the wilderness.
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
Well, Yuuji saving all of them seems to be the central plot for the sequel VNs or so I heard. That’s why they crammed every route in here. Like I said, they seem to be aiming to adapt everything so they rushed Kajitsu to hell.
And I like the individual routes as much as the common route. Just that the common route has a lot of comedy hijinks and Yuuji messing around with the girls that it was amusing all throughout. You wouldn’t get how fun the common route is unless you get to read it.
The individual routes themselves do vary in quality. My favorite routes are Sachi’s and Yumiko’s. I felt like Yuuji had connected better to the both of them and his attraction to them was more natural. Amane’s route is the favorite of most people because of the final moments of Angelic Howl but I thought the buildup wasn’t worth taking up more than half of her route, while the other half was them fucking like rabbits and fighting this deranged father. Michiru’s condition was hard to believe so I wasn’t too invested in her. Not to mention her relationship with Yuuji didn’t build up well and was rather forced from one side only. No comment on Makina since I haven’t finished her route.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
In the end, Souji went all GARout and used: Unlimited Twintail Works! (I wait to see GARcher in TwinTails…)
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
It was hard not facepalming at that scene.
POWUH: Novice (36-50) with 43 comments
Well, Vanadis was a total disappointment for me. Apart from the War Maidens’ powers being reduced to next to nothing (anyone can face up to them now, apparently), the thing with the mastery of the bow and the goddess that granted it its power was left unexplained and the Scythe/Portal War Maiden who, together with Ganelorn, seemed to be conspiring in the shadows toward a much bigger thing was merely dropped like it was nothing. In the end, all the interesting things about the series were just abandoned and, just like almost all one-cour series, its ending is a mess of loose threads, which is one of the things I really hate about anime nowadays. Oh, give me the good old days of Eva, Rayearth, Chobits and Code Geass! Oh, for series that actually tie up the loose ends and explain what is going on!
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
See, they explained why the War Maidens were matched in a fight by people such as Thenardier and Roland: the dragon powers of the War Maidens are not supposed to be used against other people without serious consideration. That’s why it was such a big deal, and potentially a moral failing for Elen to plan to use Ley Admos against Roland. I thought that was a fine development in the morality and limitations of the world. Elen and Mila and the others are still really powerful, and it takes the best fighters of the other side (Roland, Thenardier, etc) to come up against them without getting massacred (even if the bad guys didn’t just stand 10 feet away waving their swords…).
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
@Alexandre:
Vanadis’ major plot points are still ongoing in the LNs, so the anime can’t really give a conclusive ending to the whole story here.
Blame MF Bunko, Vanadis’ publisher; they set the episode count.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 140 comments
In the end, of the shows meta-ed and fapped, objectively I would say vanadis was the best show. I had fun with grisia, but acknowledge it’s faults. Trying to adapt over 30 hours of game (and H scenes) into a 6 hour show was always going to have pacing issues. But I rather a slightly messy show like grisia to a show that aims low and stays meh like twin tails
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Agreed on Vanadis being the best of the three. Though shaky, the plot was constructed enough to be taken seriously to an extent. Twin-Tails was pretty much an outlet for fetishes and Grisaia would’ve been great if it had breathing room in additional episodes.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
The reason being is that Vanadis has more structured world building than the other two. Grisaia is completely unsuited for a 12/13 episode run if you want the whole story.
Twintails is just pure guilty enjoyment.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
No argument on any of the counts. It’s easily clear to see what one series had that the others didn’t.
POWUH: iLurker with 2 comments
Is a anime that is rushed to reach a good stopping point and is bad/boring as a result or an adaptation that makes the concession to stop at a unsatisfying point as to insure that it not only provides a proper representation of the sources quality up to that point but is also exciting and enjoyable up to then better.
From my point of view while madans adaptation did give the anime only watchers some sense of closure by doing so it robbed them of characters ,setting , excitement, depth, complexity and continuity by getting to a “proper” ending point we lost all sense of what made that ending in the first place so I find it hard to justify their decision of covering the first 5 volumes rather than the first 3 especially when you consider that the only reason madan stands out at all is because of its execution, as its full of tropes that if not play off correctly in an adaption make it look very generic.
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
Twintails: There’s one thing I’ll praise for this show. It’s that they have quite an assortment of seiyuus for the Guildys. Who would have thought they’d get Ikeda Shuuichi of all people to voice Souji’s inner twintails. No wonder Tailred went 3 times faster with his powerup.
Overall it was a fun show. It got repetitive at times and it had those episodes with terrible animation but it still provided some entertainment. It’s self-aware of its stupidity and ridiculousness. A second season is pretty much impossible but I’ll watch it if there will be a miracle.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
I’ll say on the repetition. Interesting it would’ve been to see a Guildy last more than maybe two episodes. Arriving then exiting just minutes after hardly makes an impact. Based on perspective, they’re as disposable as the lackeys hauled in to get crushed by the Twin-Tails.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Ore, Twintails ni Narimasu – 12: Aahh!! A Guildy with an abominable fetish. If I were there seeing such mayhem unfold before my eyes, I’d kick his ass a thousand times over. For the absurdity, all efforts were made to go out with a bang. Souji becoming one with his inner twintails… I couldn’t help rolling my eyes.
As a whole, the series gets a “B” passing grade. A little too much episodic repetition (enemy arrives to be taken out in a matter of minutes), the levels of ridiculousness were high with no intention to deny such but it was more or less entertaining despite a slight decline towards the end. An open-ended finale indicates a possible second season but I honestly don’t see this to be the kind of series that will generate enough word of mouth to conceive one. Not putting any hopes in the sales department unless something progresses to prove me wrong. The odds of such would be slim to none.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Grisaia no Kajitsu – 13: It’s one thing to feel grief over the loss of a loved and seem unfair that someone other than them survived but I don’t see how that could lead to the kind of depravity exhibited here. How the hell does trying to get back at someone involved imminent sexual assault? As if that was necessary.
Well, there’s not much to say. The series was inconsistent with a bunch of ups and downs and some arcs rushed more than others. If any of the arcs had a significant impact, I’d say that would be Amane’s route while surviving in the wilderness. The others are lackluster. So it seems the story is not over with not one but two sequels from Grisaia. I wonder how those will fare.
Side note: What is Michiru’s head made of that it could easily damage a urinal? Even if it happened by accident.
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
This was actually anime original. In the VN, he tailed them and attacked them in the forest. Yuuji got partially shot in the shoulder and he played a game to hunt them after they get away a bit. There wasn’t any sexual assault at all. He wanted to make Amane suffer by killing Yuuji.
Of course Amane’s would have more impact since she had 4 episodes dedicated to her unlike the others that only got 1 or 2 episodes only.
And it’s not two sequels but only one. They’re going to adapt both Meikyuu and Rakuen in a single cour. I heard both are shorter than Kajitsu.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Madan no Ou to Vanadis – 13: An ending that sits well enough by me with everyone more or less getting what they want provided no corruption arises during the treaty. The politics aspect became messy it became hard to follow so to make it easier on my mind, I just went with the assumption of all wanting to protect what’s theirs no matter the means. The characters themselves did well enough in their interactions that it posed no problem to simply focus on them and overlook most of the battles. If there should be any shipping, the top choice would be Tigre x Ludmila. Tigre x Eleonora gets second place even though Ellen has grown a bit.
So, overall, as sketchy as Vanadis may be throughout, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Easily placing it above Twin-Tails and Grisaia.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
Madan no Ou to Vanadis was an enjoyable watch for me, although it was rough around the edges. I felt like it couldn’t decide what genre it wanted to be in and just dipped its toes into each pot available to it.
It has ecchi, strategy, politics, large scale battles, superpower weapons, interesting characters, but none of them were done particularly well – it could have turned out bad but the concoction ended up being decent. They kind of dabbled in each before deciding to switch gears just when the appetite was whet.
Regin’s armor is pretty awesome. I would so wear something like that if I was in her position. Gotta look awesome if I’m the supreme commander.
Overall, a fun watch, although it could have been so much better. I do agree with Highway that Titta was a useless annoying side character however.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
Oh, and the Madan specials were a lot of fun to watch (Tigre-kun to Vanadi-chu). Short snippets bringing out enjoyable interactions between the characters ^^
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Then I’ll have to check those out.