The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant
Short Synopsis: An admitted war criminal and a part time worker face off…and fall in love.
Lenlo: On the surface, this seems like a pretty standard magical girl show. Transformation sequence was alright, effects are good enough, girl is sort of cute. The issue with standard magical girl shows though is that you always have to recon with the Precure series, because if you can’t do something better than them, or sufficiently different, there’s no reason to watch your show. That’s just the reality of Precure. So what does this one do to set itself apart? Well surprisingly, a rather cute romance. I’m always down for that Romeo and Juliet “Opposing Sides” formula, and Evil Lieutenant puts enough care into the small moments like eating cake together that it was rather cute. The big issue for me is that the lead girl is an emotionless doll with no personality beyond what you project onto her. She’s a blank slate to be loved and lusted after while appearing pitiful and incompetent in her daily life. Hell, her relationship with her mascot almost feels like she’s being pimped out. All for our male lead, the Evil Lieutenant, to “save” and “care” for her while hiding it from his bosses. If Evil Lieutenant can give the female lead an actual personality, and grow their relationship, it could be fun. But I don’t have faith in them to do that. I might give this another episode to see where it goes, but I’m not keeping my hopes up.
Potential: 10%
Amun: Eh, I think Lenlo’s being a little harsh here. Evil Lieutenant was a perfectly fine take on this emerging sub-genre of enemy lovers (I wouldn’t call it Romeo and Juliet, since the anime approach is much more of a slow burn and doesn’t usually end up with so many dead people). While the main girl is a bit of a blank canvas, she does show some spunk about her convictions of being a magical girl (her magical sidekick being a yakuza shakedown is pretty funny). I expect to see more of her personality develop as the show continues – if it doesn’t, then this ship is sunk.
Potential: 50%
Too Many Losing Heroines!
Short Synopsis: A high school loner befriends his female classmate after eavesdropping on her doomed romantic confession.
Lenlo: Heroines feels… Manufactured. Which is an odd complaint I know, all anime are, it’s a team effort to make. But watching Heroines, I never once felt any sort of… authenticity from it? It’s like everything was exaggerated, the melodrama, the comedy, the personalities, the situations. Everything feels fake and unnatural, synthetic, making it impossible for me to connect or click with anything that happens. A single 20 minute episode felt like an hour as I waited for anything interesting to happen. It’s a shame, because the show looks good. That’s A-1 Pictures for you. Clean lines, nice colors, good designs and such. But I feel like I’ve seen all of it before, nothing stands out as unique to this show. I guess what I’m saying is that Heroines feels like it should be a good show, like it should be on the same level as Shoushimin, but it lacks any sort of character or personality to make it interesting.
Potential: 5%
Mario: Welcome to my domain! I always have a soft spot for LN adaptations about a narcissistic loner who can’t help but attract young girls along the way. Heck, my all-time favorites are Monogatari Series and (to a lesser degree) OreGairu. Even second tier shows like How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend or Bunny Senpai are still great joys to watch, and “Too Many Losing Heroines” could be a worthy addition to this second tier list (with an added bonus for having a know-it-all imouto). First, our down-to-earth MC’s snarky remarks work best when they parody the romance tropes of other light novels. His reaction to a girl who’s just been rejected is, “Please pay me the money back.” It helps that the girl in question here is very expressive and vocal in her struggles. Adding to that, the visuals look great in this episode, and the script offers some sort of sincerity at the end. With many other losing heroines to come (two more have been hinted already), hopefully this show can balance the humor and romance without becoming the very thing that it pokes fun at.
Potential: 50%
Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World?
Short Synopsis: A soldier is transported to an alternate reality where humans lost a cataclysmic war against various supernatural races.
Wooper: Were I to take this anime’s title as a genuine question about itself, my answer would be, “Because your first episode was so forgettable.” I could tell within seconds of starting this premiere that I’d need to take a ton of screencaps to remember anything about it, so my desktop is currently littered with JPEGs, which I’ve pieced together to determine just what this show is all about. I won’t bore you with the details, though, especially since there are way, way too many of them; if I remember anything about the experience of watching this episode, it’s the swift mental checkout I performed upon realizing how much lore-dumping I was about to witness. Obviously, series like this one, which drone on and on about ancient prophets and supernatural heroes and shining swords and heavenly gifts, are largely written and directed by hacks. But I do wonder if closer communication between those two sides of an anime’s production wouldn’t result in a more watchable sort of hackery. Several times during this premiere, you see something happen (for example, a training dummy’s holographic overlay disappearing), then there’s a line confirming that it happened (“Mythical beast dragon type hologram deactivated”). If only the people working on these C-tier shows cared to cooperate, some of their issues could be solved, from little redundancies like that one to bigger, dirtier habits (like stuffing your characters’ mouths with backstory right upfront instead of building their personalities).
Potential: 0%
Lenlo: Tolkien would be proud of the amount of lore dumping this show did. It wasn’t good lore dumping, as it was neither interesting nor novel, but there was a lot of it! Now if only there was anything else. Actual characters, a decent fight, maybe a plot beyond our Kirito knockoff doing “cool” shit. Cool is in quotes because it was, in fact, not actually cool. Anyways, Wooper goes into a lot more detail and I don’t care enough to repeat everything he says, so just know he’s right. There are better shows this season.
Potential: 0%
The post Summer 2024 Impressions: The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant, Too Many Losing Heroines!, Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World? appeared first on Star Crossed Anime.
