Tag Archives: aho-girl

12 Days of Anime 2017

12 Days of Anime #5: Top 5 Best Shows I Watched in 2017

8 Comments

2017 ended up being a much slower year when it came to watching anime for me. I ended up stopping and starting new shows a lot more than usual, and that was mostly because of my school year. The second half of Junior year and the first half of my senior year were pretty rough, all things considered. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t watch some good shows.

5. Jormungand

Jormungand

If I were to ever do a What Else Should You Watch on Black Lagoon, Jormungund would be the first show on the list. It comes off as a more modern version of Black Lagoon, exploring the black market of weapon sales.

Indeed, Jormungand has a lot of high points. Its cast is large, but the show makes them feel fleshed out even when we do not know a whole lot about them as people. To be fair to Jormungund though, it does try to establish a backstory for the characters using some well-done flashbacks. Its animation, specifically when it comes to the show’s action, is extremely well done. Truly, its a show worth watching.

4. AHO-Girl

AHO-Girl 2

AHO-Girl is one of the best things I saw this year because it was honestly just a really good break from the stress at the beginning of the semester. Almost none of the classes that I selected were on my schedule, and turning my brain off to some really dumb humor was therapeutic.

This show has just the right balance of running jokes and new gags that keep things fresh. And yes, the low brow humor is obvious and dumb, but if its something you can appreciate even a little bit, then you’ll love it.

3. A Silent Voice

Koe no Katachi

A movie that needs no introduction, this year’s critical darling was a breathtaking experience that I would gladly watch over and over again. I can’t say that I have a personal connection to the show’s material, but it does feel like a fairly accurate portrayal of the life of a deaf person.

The bullying in the movie was a bit more relatable. Middle school me was a bit more on the shy side, and it was definitely hard trying to talk to people I don’t know. It’s become a lot easier now but still stings just a bit.

2. No Game No Life Zero

NO game no life zero.png

Unpopular Opinion: The No Game No Life movie was better than A Silent Voice. I haven’t read the light novel volume that No Game No Life Zero is based on, but it feels like a really good adaptation, and as a prequel to the original story, it does a great job at setting up the world and how Disboard came to be.

If you liked No Game No Life, you’ll like this.

1. March Comes in Like a Lion

March comes in like a lion 3

I watched the first season of March Comes in Like a Lion before I started this blog, and boy am I glad I did. This has easily become one of my favorite series of all time and will likely remain so for a while. Everything about the show just feels so relatable even when the events in the story seem so far off. I’m honestly not sure I can justify doing a full-on review because it will likely just turn into me gushing about the show for over a thousand words.

What were your favorite shows this year? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for reading and bye for now, Friendos!

Advertisement
Anime/Manga, This Week in Anime

This Week in Anime: 10-9-17

Leave a comment

Welcome back, everyone, to another installment of This Week in Anime. I’ll be honest, I thought this week was going to be a bit boring. Not really sure why, but that changed very quickly with some events that happened earlier in the week. Anyway, Let’s get into it.

Crunchyroll Gets Hacked by Outside Operators

Crunchyroll
Source: Crunchyroll.com

It’s fair to say that the team at Crunchyroll had a bit of a hectic day on Saturday. Around 9:00 A.M., Crunchyroll’s Twitter account tweeted that the website was unsafe to access at the time, saying “we are aware of the issues and are working on it.”

The “issues” they were referring to was a hack that downloaded malware onto users systems. This hack reportedly disguised itself as an update to Crunchyroll’s video player that featured Goku in the promotion. After downloading the file, users got ransomware that encrypted the data on their hard drive so that they could not access their files. It was later confirmed by Crunchyroll that users had been redirected from Crunchyroll.com by outside attackers to a different server that prompted the Malware download.

Crunchyroll later tweeted that the problem had been fixed, around 11:30 A.M. It is unclear how many were affected by the attack.

AHO-Girl Manga will be Ending in December.

 

AHO-Girl 2
Source: AnimeforWorld.com

 

Mangaka Hiroyuki announced on his website Saturday that his popular Manga AHO-Girl will be ending in December. The Bessatsu Shonen Magazine will announce the Manga’s ending in their December edition, which will come out on November 9th. The Manga will conclude with the 12th volume.

P.A. Works Revealed to be Paying Workers 22% less than McDonald’s Employees

 

P
Source: Crunchyroll.com

The debate about animator pay has been a hot-button issue in the anime industry for a while. Many starting animators get paid less than minimum wage, and there have even been projects aimed at helping struggling animators with affording living costs. Studios have argued that they simply cannot afford to pay anymore because of the competition from studios in other countries like China.

It was recently revealed that Progressive Animation Works(P.A. Works), the studio behind popular shows like Angel Beats and Charlotte, but out a request for work with pay starting at just 770 Yen/hour, roughly 6.75 an hour in U.S. dollars. Many people criticised the studio’s behavior because the McDonalds in the area pays 980 Yen/hour, about 8.60 U.S.

Shinichiro Watanabe Reportedly Working on a New Project.

 

1200px-Shinichiro_Watanabe_20090703_Japan_Expo_01
Source: Wikipedia.com

 

Fans have theorized about what could possibly be happening after Director Shinichiro Watanabe announced a new project. Last weekend while the director was attending a panel at Madman Anime Festival in Melbourne, Austrailia he teased a new project. It has been reported that he is working on music already with Studio Bones, but other details have not been revealed.

 

 

Anime/Manga

Review- AHO-Girl: Fast-Paced and Fun

2 Comments

AHO-Girl, man what a rush.

If there is one show I really enjoyed from the summer 2017 anime season, it’s this show. It uses a very fast-paced variety of humor to set up a great joke that doesn’t overstay its welcome. As I have mentioned before, AHO-girl is the best thing I’ve watched this season, and there are a couple of different reasons why.

The 12 episode series, produced by Diomedia, uses the same setup as a show like Nichijou or Azumanga Daioh and provides its own unique set of characters to play off of. Yoshiko, the resident Aho-girl herself, has a very one-track mind but often does not have much of an attention span. Her willingness to just about anything to get what she wants while ignoring any and all social cues is the show’s driving force of comedy, and it works well. Akutsu, aka A-kun, is Yoshiko’s childhood friend who, as we learn in the last episode, has a weird history with Yoshiko, to say the least. His unwillingness to let Yoshiko’s stupidity go unchecked manifests in him getting verbally or physically violent, to the misfortune of Yoshiko. There are times when he seems like a one-joke pony, but he does come off as hilarious in more ways in one, like when he is being harassed by the student council president, who just happens to fall in love with him. Sayaka, who becomes Yoshiko and A-kun’s friend, becomes an innocent bystander in their daily antics and suffers some of the consequences as well.

There are a few other side characters, like A-kun’s sister and Yoshiko’s mom, that are also fantastic and hilarious. A special shoutout goes to Yoshiko’s dog who is especially great and has some of the best moments in the show, like when he watches a movie with A-kun and the two immediately become friends

The animation, in the case of comedy anime, is less so dependent on overall quality than it is on being able to help in the delivery, and in that case, it does well. The animation keeps up well with the show’s variety of fast-paced and low-brow humor and is able to enhance the jokes in a way that brings them to life, as animation should. It’s overall above average.

The Music is nothing special but also isn’t bad. It is used to help with jokes like in any other comedy and does well to enhance the joke, but really doesn’t go beyond a typical comedy soundtrack. Considering how funny the rest of the show is, I had hoped this wouldn’t be the case, but sadly it was.

Overall, aside from a few aspects that are a bit lacking, AHO-girl is a great comedy. Its characters are its heart and soul, and on that front, it uses them well. The comedic situations that Yoshiko and the other are put in is enough to get anyone laughing. With just 12 minutes per episode, there’s no reason not to watch it.

 

 

Anime/Manga

Update: AHO-Girl is the best thing I’ve watched this season. Here’s why.

1 Comment

Unfortunately, the shows I’ve chosen to watch this season have ranged from ok, to mediocre, to outright awful. I can’t really tell if this is because I did little to no research on the shows that I picked up, or if I just have really terrible luck, but I seemed to have gotten the worst of the bunch.

I know this because many of the of the other shows that I happened to not see, either because of lack of legal means to watch or because I just wasn’t aware of it at the time, like Princess Principle, Kakegurui, and Made in Abyss have all had their praises sung from the time they started airing.

Somehow, aside from AHO-girl and Tsuredure Children, I picked up three of the most terrible shows from this season. AHO-girl is the only show I could consider among these to be legitimately good. As I’ve discussed before here, it’s low brow humor is still very widely appealing, and in recent episodes, the jokes have expanded and only gotten funnier.

Meanwhile, the other shows that I’ve watched all suffer from an illness known as terrible. As I’ve discussed before on my blog, Classroom of the Elite and GAMERS! both lack a compelling direction for their narrative. Classroom of the Elite has more recently gotten wrapped in a somewhat unnecessary side plot that focuses on a secret idol named Sakura. She gives a testimony to help the Sudo, the classes’ drop out, avoid being expelled for beating up three upper classmen. This really felt like a departure from what started out as a really interesting and exciting premise.Classroom of the Elite

GAMERS!, which did a complete one eighty in terms of the direction in the first episode, turned into nothing but a somewhat funny, but ultimately mediocre ROM-COM. More recently, it has become a relationship Pentagon that is only as confusing as it is because apparently nobody in the show knows how to deal relationships in a serious way.GAMERS

I also recently have watched parts of In Another World with My Smartphone. While I may do a full review in the future, I can tell you right now that I am not a fan. In an anime landscape that is currently full of Isekai shows, this one really had to do something different to impress. Isekai Wa Smartphone

Not only did it not do something different, but it might possibly have inadvertently created the strongest characters of all time. Touya can use all of the worlds magic, has infinite mana, and can use his phone to increase the power of his magic. It’s like they took Kirito from Sword Art Online and said: “No, this guy needs to be more unbeatable!” I started a running joke between a friend of mine and me that Touya is pretty much the new god of this world and should be treated as such.

AHO-Girl, therefore, stands at the top of the shows I’ve watched during the summer 2017 season. It is a really good comedy and should be praised as such, but most of my picks this season were honestly just garbage, and I’ll probably be dropping most of them soon.

 

 

Anime/Manga, Initial Results

First Impressions: Aho-Girl, Super Smart Comedy? No, but Still Hilarious

2 Comments

Aho-girl is by no means an anime great, even when compared to just other comedy anime. Its premise is a little basic, and leaves a lot to be desired, but for whatever reason I just can’t stop laughing when I watch it.

Aho-girl centers around Yoshiko, most likely one of the stupidest people to ever live. The title seems to fit, considering how much of an idiot she is, failing all of her tests and being obsessed with bananas. She’s constantly irritating both her friend A-kun and her mom with her sheer lack of common sense. She goes to school with A-kun and everyday there is something new she is hung up on.

I’ll start up front by saying that if you like your comedy to be thoughtful and sophisticated with well thought out jokes that go a couple levels deep then this show is not for you. Aho-girl relies on mostly low brow humor and fast paced, often violent jokes to get you to laugh. Now, if you are like me and can appreciate many different types of humor, including boob grabbing and dick jokes, then you will probably love this show, as I have so far.

The show seems to know comedic timing very well, as many of the jokes land, and there are quite a few good one liners already. As of right now at least, it looks like the show understands its comedic formula well enough to not only perfect it,  but to experiment in future episodes.

Of course, the show would be nothing without its characters. All of them are very well voice acted and are very emotive, enhancing the comedy even more. I would like to give a special shout out to Yoshiko’s voice actor Aoi Yuuki who does an amazing job portraying her character’s stupidity. Admittedly, I’m not to familiar with to many Japanese voice actors, but you can now officially call me a fan.

I don’t think its very likely that the show will end up going downhill, as the consistent level of quality leads me to believe the show is being handled well. As of right now though, I definitely recommend you watch it. The short twelve minute episodes are bound to brighten up your day.