S-MAC’s Anime Review: Rosario+Vampire

You know what? I actually had a lot of fun writing a review for a bad anime. So, I’ll try it again. And just to let you know, this is probably the only fanservice bomb I will ever watch/review. So, here we go!

Genres: Romantic Comedy, Ecchi, Harem, School life, Slice-of-life
Synopsis: Tsukune Aono accidentaly enrolls in a school for monsters, isolated from the human world. He'a about to leave when he meets a sweet girl named Moka, who happens to be a split personality vampire. Pretty soon, he's got monster girls going after him left and right. How's he supposed to hide his human identity now?

Story and Characters:

After being a part of the anime community for about a year and a half, I have come to a safe conclusion that Japan will come up with ANYTHING to ensure a harem situation (One guy, several female romantic interests). And this is the case with Rosario+Vampire. While this doesn’t have the most obscure premise, I didn’t think a harem was necessary, honestly. The story is set at Yokai Academy, a place secluded from the human world to educate all different kinds of young monsters to coexist with humans. Now, one such unlucky (or rather, lucky) high school student named Tsukune, happens to enroll, without knowing what he’s in for. He ends up “saving” in a sense, many young female monsters, who all end up vying for his attention and romantic interests.  The anime does include some ridiculous lovey-dovey scenes, 30 second action scenes, and essentially, an episodic presentation (until, like, the last 2 episodes of both seasons). What I’m saying is that there is no coherent plot, and that this show is a romantic comedy with (not so extreme) fanservice.

As for the characters, well, I really didn’t like many of them at all. Pretty much all of the characters were annoying or a jerk. For a main character, Tsukune is rather bland, but he’s at least got a good heart. He’s also NOT a pervert, unlike many fanservice harem animes out there. Outer Moka, in my opinion, was the best character in the entire series. She treated Tsukune nicely, tried to “share” him, and was very kind and sweet overall. But for the other characters, I kind of hated. Kurumu: Loud, annoying chick with big boobs. Yukari: The loli-shojo with an annoying, shrill, high pitched voice (Good job, Monica Rial) Mizore: The weird, creepy, annoying stalker girl. Ruby: The wonder-struck, somewhat annoying who is probably at least 10 years older than Tsukune (I might be wrong, here). And, OH MY GOSH, KOKOA WAS THE WORST. So was her annoying bat. To top it all off, there needed to be one other male character (so Tsukune doesn’t get all the action) who happens to be a pervert. At least Gin was kind of good looking.

Art and Animation:

Rosario+Vampire was produced by studio GONZO, which, from my previous experience with anime, have a very generic style of art for anime. (My previous experience was from the anime Kaze no Stigma. I’ll write a review for that later.) And when I say generic, I don’t necessarily mean in a bad way, just that it doesn’t add or take anything away from the anime itself. Nothing in particular stood out to me art-or-animation wise.  But, it’s just the way it is. Animation wasn’t sloppy, either.

Voice and Music:

I only watched the dub for this show (I’m more of a dub fan than a sub fan). And after watching many titles from the dubbers at Funimation, I think I’ve safely come up with an idea of what their usual treatment for a dub looks like. I’m going to call it SFF, or Standard Funimation Fare. And that’s pretty much exactly what this show has. But, trust me, the dub IS NOT BAD. I think it worked out pretty great, actually. Everyone’s voice suited the characters almost perfectly. There was no over or under-acting, and the script isn’t shabby, either. High points for this dub.

The music, however, is a bit of a different story. None of the OST tracks that play during the anime were terribly memorable (It’s a fanservice romantic comedy, what do you expect?). I will say differently about the 2 opening and ending themes. All sung by Nana Mizuki (Popular Japanese voice actress and singer), they really did resonate with me, and matched the two sides of this anime quite well. The opening themes are peppy and colorful (song and animation), while the ending themes are dark, dramatic, and rich (Again, song and animation). Now if only the anime could’ve done that nice 50/50 with the actual show. 

My enjoyment:

I will be honest, here. I actually enjoyed this anime somewhat. I know, even though I’m a girl, and there was no purposeful plot, this show was mildly interesting. And I think it was this that made me watch this whole series. But I don’t really have an idea what that “force” was. Now that I look back, most of the “annoying” characters weren’t so annoying when I was watching this show. They were irritating, instead of “I-want-to-punch-them-in-the-face” kind of way. But I had to bash them for review purposes.

The Score:

Averaging all four values of the categories listed above, I give Rosario+Vampire a 6.0875 and would recommend this to anyone who wants a lighthearted romance/harem with fanservice. For similar anime, I suggest (Keep in mind I have only read the descriptions for these online and haven’t seen them) To Love Ru and Is This A Zombie. Sorry if these are bad suggestions.

UPDATE 3 MARCH 2014 Scores
Story: 4.0     Characters: 4.0
Art: 5.5     Animation: 6.3
Voice: 8.0     Music: 6.2
Execution: 7.9     My Enjoyment: 6.8

There is a manga review to come (All 18 volumes of Ouran), one (or two) rants, a few fandom posts, and more anime reviews. I hope I am getting better at reviewing anime!

You can find me on MyAnimeList! My username is: GeekFangirl99

Last Updated: 8 April 2014
Originally Posted: 23 December 2013

What a fandom does to you...

Due to my enthusiastic watching of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the "mini-fandom" took it's hold on me. And evidence of this can be seen with my Engineering and Design project. We had to model a train exactly to specifications, then we had to modify it. So, here's mine:

So, what do you think?

I will be doing a review of the original series FMA OR brotherhood. It is plausible that I will do both. 

Right now, I am currently drafting my first anime rant. NO I WILL NOT TELL YOU WHAT THE TOPIC IS. 

All the best, 

~Selena

Something interesting to check out!

Hi there, Selena here with something quick for you. The website Anime News Network runs something called "The List" and it's pretty interesting. It's updated about every week. Here's the link: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-list/ 

ANN is a really great place, with a lot of interesting and insightful posts! It's also a great anime community!

~Selena

Last Updated: 5 December 2013

Originally published: 5 December 2013

S-MAC's Manga Volume Views: Special A (S.A)

Okay, another thing I will be doing on this blog is "volume views". These are my first looks at the first manga volume in a series, though I may do other volumes if I feel like it. 

Story:

Very similar to another shojo manga series Ouran High School Host Club, S.A has a poor girl at a rich kid's school. Our main female character, Hikari, is in the Special A class, or the top 7 students in the whole academy. Ever since childhood, she has wanted to beat a boy named Kei Takishima, in every "contest" possible. Now the catch is, Kei is almost perfect, resulting in Hikari being No. 2 in school placement. And that Kei is in love with Hikari. Now, I like the idea of an academic-centered shojo manga. The starting romance isn't implied too heavily, but rather a bit more realistic (but Kei doesn't have to yell at Hikari all the time for making him worry. Seriously...) The manga uses each chapter to form a separate small plot, instead of having one continuous flow. 

Characters: So here are my thoughts.

Hikari: Here, we've got a gutsy female lead determined to succeed over a "rival" (Kind of reminds me of Kyoko from Skip Beat) She also lets her temper loose whenever Kei calls her "second place". 

Kei: He's basically supposed to be perfect. Seriously, who has a photographic memory???

Megumi: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU??? Hope they explain why she doesn't talk.

Akira: Is she lesbo?

Nagi: Reminds me of Kagura from Fruits Basket.

Artwork: 

The art didn't leave an impression on me, really. It's not super-"flowery", like Ayuko's art (It's beautiful, by the way), but it isn't "shonen" style either. I hope this turns out like the manga of Ouran did, with art I didn't really like at first, but it either gets better or I get used to it. The one thing I noticed about the cover, is that Hikari's face looks more like a guy's, and Kei's bishi face looks kind of feminine. But the artwork inside isn't like that. Maki Minami probably put more effort into the cover art. 

Overall:

Well, I think I may enjoy this series. Aside from having the common plot that almost all shojo manga (the exception is Fruits Basket) have of the lead female or male character in the story being completely oblivious to their romantic feelings, I think this will be interesting. I loved Ouran, so this sounds pretty similar. There is an anime, but it's dubbed by Sentai Filmworks, and the dub just doesn't sound right. Plus, the manga is the complete story, while the anime is only 26 episodes. So, try this series if you like shojo school life romantic comedies. 

Have fun reading!

~Selena

Follow me for more volume views to come!

Last Updated: 4 December 2013

Originally Published: 4 December 2013

Netflix's streaming trend with anime!

If you are a subscriber to Netflix’s streaming service, you may or may not know that Netflix has a selection of instant anime titles subbed and dubbed. You may have also noticed that some titles disappear, and new ones come in. Well, I have noticed this, and I have seen a pattern. Here is what I have found out:

1) New titles (almost) every Monday!
That’s right, as of a few months ago, (around July of this year) almost every Monday, there is 1 or 2 new titles up for streaming. However, this means that some titles may be taken off. I have noticed over the past year, the selection is very different, with only the “best” staying there.

2) If one title suddenly disappears, and it had no sub option, Netflix will (most likely) put it back up in a few days with the option, and even English closed captioning.

3) Funimation titles only.
I know, other licensing companies have their stuff for streaming. But I’d say the vast majority of the instant titles are licensed by Funimation. There used to be stuff from other companies, but those have all been taken down. So if you’re hoping for an anime to reach streaming and it’s licensed by a different company, chances are, it’s not coming to streaming anytime soon,

That’s about it for now. I’ll update this list if I notice anything new. Just keep your eyes open for any title says, “Available until…” That means it will be taken off instant.

I do not have the DVD service, so I think I’ll check that out later.

Cheers,

~Selena

UPDATE 20 FEB 2014: This trend has stopped for now, sorry. 

Last Updated: 20 February 2014
Originally Published: 29 November 2013