Welcome to the Fantasy Zone
This Zone is dedicated to the lesser known elements of anime hosted by the cast of Victory Script.
What weapon is the best?
Who will win in this Death Battle?
Is this costume practical?
You name it, it's all covered here in the Fantasy Zone!
Before I switch to the currently airing season, lets rank the bonus cures. These are allied Cure only. No evil cures they will be in the villains ranking later this year. No goddess cures either, they don't really serve the same purpose.
Cure Echo really only had one movie where she was relevant and she was quickly left behind.
Cure Tender serves as the driving force for Cure Fortune and probably would've been a better choice for Cure Fortune.
International Precures is a neat idea, I wish they tried harder to give them more personality beyond the Hawaiian Cures.
Cure Infini is the first ever male Cure and well rounded on both the dark and light alignments and comes with some inspirational quotes.
Cure Flower I find amazing as she acts as the perfect old master of precures opening the doors to potential plot points in the canon.
Cure Mofurun is what happens when your teddy bear starts talking, the missing ingredient to argubly the best precure team
Cure Pekorin I hate, it really cheapens the show to shoe horn her in as a cure.
Kiryuu Sisters there isn't much to them, they look like evil cures but even without transformations they fight as well as the Splash Stars
Cure Tomorrow is basically Chibi Usa from Sailor Moon, only a toddler and more adorable and the least annoying toddler character in fiction.
Cure Oasis served her purpose as the legendary Precure but never caught on too much, her design is based on the fake leaks that plagued the lead up to Tropical Rouge Precure's release which is unintentionally hilarious.
Sakagami Ayumi - Cure Echo - 5.5/10
Hikawa Maria - Cure Tender - 6.0/10
International Cures - Cure World - 6.4/10
Wakamiya Henri - Cure Infini - 8.4/10
Hanasaki Kaoruko - Cure Flower - 9.5/10
Mofurun - Cure Mofurun - 9.2/10
Pekorin - Cure Pekorin - 2.3/10
Kiryuu Sisters - Cure Wind/Moon - 6.9/10
Hugtan - Cure Tomorrow - 9.0/10
Aunete - Cure Oasis - 6.9/10
I promise this will be the last time I talk about this show.
Needless to say, the hype this show generated from how utterly terrible it was going to be was reaching fever pitch, from the hypocrisy of Crunchyroll saying they'll help fund the anime industry and immediately make their own series, the trailer that really told us nothing about the actual show but instead tick the diversity and LGBT markers in the marketing with it's inclusive team of animators, which is poor and quite suicidal to do so, looking at you Disney, and finally the images we were getting was from a Cal Arts style popular when the trailer came out but not so much now as most of the good shows that did use that style have since ended and most people agree that the Cal Arts style needs to go from Western Animation to evolve and the fact that the shows it was clearly taking ideas from have long since left the public eye in favour of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen and most recently Komi Can't Communicate, it had all the setup for an epic train wreck.
Only when it did finally get released, it barely passed for a fender bender.
While everyone on YouTube believes High Guardian Spice to be a total disaster, I'm sat here thinking, "it's actually okay" mediocre and very amateurish in design but hardly a disaster.
Let's break it down.
The Good
1. Not that complicated to follow.
2. Parsley should've been the main character and is easily the most unique female character I've seen in ages.
3. Sage has potential to be as good as Parsley.
4. The side characters are also really good, the teachers and the lesbian couple are solid characters.
5. The LGBT content is natural and never comes across as preachy or written to tick a corporate box.
6. The lore was carefully written not to give too much away.
The Bad
1. Rosemary suffers with Shonen Protagonist syndrome, I find her really intolerable.
2. Thyme has no personality and always look bored.
3. Script needs several edits and revisions.
4. Animation is awkward, the Cal Arts style makes them seem like they never blink.
5. The 1st episode was actually badly written filler.
6. Student side characters are terrible.
7. I'm convinced the creators have never watched the shows this series was inspired by.
8. Some voice actors need extra lessons, looking at you Rosemary.
Improvements
1. Lose the Cal Arts style in favour for your own more contemporary anime art style.
2. Make Parsley the lead and have Thyme play off her more.
3. Scrap most of the student characters bar the redeemable bully characters.
4. Rewrite the 1st episode.
5. Hire a goddamn script writer who knows how to write a good script.
I think overall, don't believe what YouTube says, many reviewers would deliberately say it's bad for a good algorithm, bad publicity is still paying attention to your product and will only aid in giving it more money.
It's basically boycotting 3D Sonic games and buying classic Sonic games in protest, yet it still gives money to Sega to make more Sonic.
As for Crunchyroll, the hypocrisy is an issue and so are allegations of them banning people for daring to bad mouth their show on Twitter, it only really adds gasoline to the burning torches out to get them.
In my review I did mention that there are shows that do all these themes better.
Precure, Little Witch Academia, RWBY, Steven Universe, She-Ra, Slayers, Konosuba, Log Horizon, Sailor Moon and even something I hate, Sword Art Online is a better option.
If anyone from Crunchyroll is reading this, make sure your next original is drama free, this is too exhausting to deal with.
For this character ranking I'm doing something completely different, I'll be using tier grades for each score S-D rank.
I'll be marking in four different criteria due to the unique nature of the anime, I'll be marking on their Personality, Talent, Compatibility with the other cast members and Design.
Aine Yuki
Personality - A
Talent - C
Compatibility - A
Design - B
Being the lead in an Anime like this is easy for Aine as she adapts so well with other characters and slips into roles with ease but needs carrying alot as she's argubly the least talented of the cast.
Mio Minato
Personality - C
Talent - S
Compatibility - D
Design - B
Mio is the most enterprising character in the show but it comes at the cost of not only having the weakest personality but being compatible with no one, not even Aine.
Maika Chono
Personality - A
Talent - A
Compatibility - C
Design - B
Maika's ability to pick herself up from the worst situations is an admirable trait but is wholly dependent on Ema to actually show off her best traits.
Ema Hinata
Personality - A
Talent - B
Compatibility - B
Design - C
Sporty characters don't get enough credit in idol anime and I'm glad to see it get more coverage, Ema fairs better with other cast members but is let down by a design that easily makes her forgettable.
Karen Kamishiro
Personality - A
Talent - S
Compatibility - C
Design - B
Karen is the type of character the word princess was made for, she holds a presence only equalled by a few but is only compatible with Mirai, she'd be out of place with the others.
Mirai Asuka
Personality - S
Talent - S
Compatibility - S
Design - A
Mirai has every great trait you can ask for, she matches up well with every cast member, acts the big sister and the fun character and pretty much commands respect from everyone.
Sakuya Shirayuri
Personality - B
Talent - S
Compatibility - C
Design - A
Goth characters are seriously OP in Aikatsu, as the bulk of her talent comes from just the songs alone but her personality traits make her a poor match up with everyone except her sister Kaguya.
Kaguya Shirayuri
Personality - B
Talent - A
Compatibility - B
Design - A
It would be too easy for her to act the same as her sister, while not as talented as Sakuya, she makes up for it by being more compatible with the rest of the cast.
Hibiki Tensho
Personality - S
Talent - S
Compatibility - C
Design - S
Hibiki just oozes charisma, it's hard not to get sucked in by her character but maybe she's too strong a character as so far only Mirai can compete with her on equal footing.
More to come.
The final scores are in, honestly there isn't really anything to add to the scores, it wasn't exactly a stellar season.
Nodoka does make for an adorable character and somehow avoids being labelled the sick girl, my best hope for her is that she confronts her past head on which thankfully she did.
Chiyu I feel like we've covered before and that would be compelling if her choices weren't so boring, I'm open to a surprise but don't expect anything.
Hinata has so much weeb energy it's impossible not to love her, yet she has very well designed emotions that make her multi dimensional, she gets better writing than most Precures.
Asumi.....who? I'm sorry she's so one note I forgot she was even in the cast.
Hanadera Nodoka - Cure Grace - 8.4/10
Sawaizumi Chiyu - Cure Fontaine - 6.8/10
Hiramitsu Hinata - Cure Sparkle - 9.0/10
Fuurin Asumi - Cure Earth - 4.0/10
Best Dressed Award - All Look Amazing but I'd have to give it to Grace.
I'm here today to give you a challenge, can you criticise your favourite anime?
This test is designed to see if you can accept flaws in your personal top 10 anime.
I'll attempt it with mine and we'll see how I get on.
10. Nisekoi
I often refer to Nisekoi as a better written Love Hina but still like Love Hina, Nisekoi's biggest sin is how crowded the cast gets and how pointless many of the late arrivals get.
9. Jing King of Bandits
There are a couple of stories that took more than one episode, Jing as a concept works better as a situation of the week show. Jing as a character is not suited to long stories, it's a similar problem found in Kino's Journey.
8. Fairy Tail
This one is easy, it gets away with far too much Power of Love and Friendship bullshit.
7. Cowboy Bebop
Within the last couple of years it's showing it's age more and more with less grace, Evangelion suffered the same thing.
6. Ranma 1/2
Is it the length? Nope, just Happosai. This anime would be so much higher if not for Happosai. That and you realise how terrible some of the supporting cast is.
5. Precure
Precure was clearly influenced by many of the Magical Girl shows that came before and during it's 16 years of broadcast to very different returns, Precure at it's worst looks like a pale imitation of a better show, it also has a habit of following it's best seasons with weak seasons. It's current problem is that it's running out of ideas.
4. Lupin the 3rd
Screw it, it's Lupin. That's the logic you need for Lupin the 3rd. It can't be anything else, it's design doesn't support it, so when it tried to do more art house style with practically no gags, it falls flat.
3. Dirty Pair
Dirty Pair has so many iterations that it's hard to keep consistent quality control, there's always going to be one you like and one you hate.
2. Slayers
Has the weakest dub of the top 10 and can easily have stories that do absolutely nothing for the franchise and that's not just the filler talking.
1. Black Lagoon
It's world building is compromised by it's inability to work with it's languages. When needing to use more than one language it can break the story. The Japanese sub draws attention to a character that is bad at English while speaking in Japanese, meanwhile some of Revy's best moments are when actress Megumi Toyoguchi uses English which ultimately gets lost in the dub. I'm also a little bitter about Roberta's ending.
That's my little list, now I challenge you to try and criticise your own top ten. I'm curious to know what you would say about them.
