No doubt you will have already looked at the images below and discovered what B Gata H Kei is all about, but I shall warn you that this post isn’t really SFW. I’m sure your boss doesn’t want you to see ecchi whilst being paid.

The Story:

The anime itself is set around a 15 year old girl Yamada who is a virgin but is kinky as hell. Her goal is to reach 100 casual sex partners but alas that would turn this anime straight into a full on hentai anime, instead she gets caught up on some unremarkable boy named Kosuda. Kosuda is a soft spoken virgin (well…we don’t actually know…but we can assume) who is extremely nice but at the same time awkward as hell. So the story continues with a girl that is super model material against a guy who is too awkward to get any where with her – You can kinda guess the plot from there.

While talking to a friend ChatterboxZombie about the anime, we discussed whether or not it is as we expected. I honestly didn’t think I’d like this anime as it guarantees to leave a lot to be desired but was I increasingly surprised as the first episode played along, Chatter exclaimed: “i knew i would [like B Gata], even though its generic and paper-thin its fun and light” and that sentence right there almost sums up the anime completely. You know it isn’t there to be in depth so you expect the story to be pathetic else the overly cliche characters (explained next) simply would not fit into the series well.

15 year old 43 kg girl with that sorta cleavage?…lol.

The Characters:

Our protagonist Yamada is highly outspoken yet horribly confused about how to get men. She really wants to have sex but she only views the end goal instead of the path to get there which leaves her in some seriously awkward situations. She is voiced by Yukari Tamura who I only really know well from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (as Nanoha herself) and again to quote Chatter: “The voice for Yamada was for me rather unexpectedly high…kinda annoying at first but I got used to it”. Within the first 5 minutes this same thought hit me, initially it was just annoying to listen to but as time went along it became more natural, unfortunately however she does the singing for the OP and ED, neither of which I like:

Kosuda is how you would expect the typical mid-pubescent teenager to be around Yamada, highly awkward. Yamada is hopelessly inept at conveying the correct meaning in her thoughts and Yamada always misunderstands her meaning so is not sure if she is coming on to him or just being bi-polar. When he thinks there’s a chance to get closer he makes a move but each time is thwarted by Yamada as she realises how weird she is being…so he’s stuck in a rut and its funny.

Yamada has a few friends that are introduced in the first ep, notably her big breasted F-cup friend who is the typical sidekick to the struggling main character. There is also a few other girls (and guys for that matter)  that idolise Yamada but they aren’t worth mentioning.

Both Kosuda and Yamada have sisters, Kosuda’s is older than he and is protective of her spineless brother while Yamada has the moebomb loli imouto who, at one point, is reading her hentai magazines…

The Art:

Its awesome…as I have sadly come to expect these days which makes it infinitely harder to move back to older series. The style is well thought out and looks simple yet elegant, the characters themselves aren’t particularly amazing facially but their uniforms/bags/other shit (pantsu) is drawn well and it works. So nuff said there.

The Attraction:

Essentially the reason I look forward to this anime is its comedy, honestly its so cheesy its funny. Again, its light hearted and blunt and you can’t really predict anything because Yamada is a fucktard so it keeps the comedy flowing rather well.

So far I think I will watch this anime for the rest of the season, if it keeps up with its great style and comedy I could easily see this being a potential favourite comedy anime…but we shall see.

The other reason to watch it of course is the ecchi…which is always followed by comical moments.

OH GNOES! FORGOT THE CONDOMS!

What I expected was a romantic comedy slice-of-life anime that I enjoy so much…and it started out so well. The humour was on the mark and the characters were well portrayed but the novelty started running out by episode 10. Aisaka Taiga was portrayed as the typical moe tsundere girl and it worked well for a while…but as with all Slice-of-life anime, you expect to see change. Change that didn’t appear until around episode 20.

I’ll quickly summarise the story by saying that we follow the life of Takasu Ryuuji as he enters his second year of high school. Ryuuji is very kindhearted but his face and eyes make him look like an angry deliquent which earns him a fearsome reputation for no reason. He befriends many people throughout his high school life (most notably Aisaka Taiga) and his goal becomes to date Kushieda Minorin while Taiga’s is to date Kitamura Yuusaku. Other people get mixed in with the strange love scene and you can predict very quickly what is bound to happen.

Its essentially the daily life of a group of friends trying to find some love while learning from a teacher with bipolar or something.

Let me say quickly that while I enjoyed this anime, it was far from what I would have liked. It started out as a fantastic romantic comedy but turned into a serious drama from ep 10. By the time ep 20 rolls on by, the drama is so serious that there just isn’t any humour to be seen which in my eyes degraded the anime. I watched the first 15 episodes almost back to back but I struggled to watch anything from there on because I knew what was coming and I didn’t like it.

The last episode was almost completely world shattering (I expect only 1-2 people will get that joke) until the credits rolled on by and the season outro played…the last 10 seconds of the anime saved it…if they had not been there I would have eaten my own arms off. It was actually gut-wrenching waiting for it to happen not knowing if it would and I was starting to get seriously angry at the sudden turn of events in the second to last episode which simply made no sense at all and served only to create a “dramatic suspense” which turned out to be “a joke”.

Anyway, good anime but can be a little tedious when the drama gets real heavy…but I enjoyed it.

Also, forgot to mention…the OPs and EDs were very cool…loved the soundtrack.

First and most importantly, the OP to the anime is fucking awesome. I have the song on my playlist because of the songs from Stepmania but I never knew where it was from until I fired up episode 1…and I came. Hard:

Anyway, let me point out quickly here that if you have not played Star Ocean: The second story and dont know that Celine loves Baby Rabbit Risotto, then don’t…I repeat, DONT, get this anime…It is very slow and tries to pad out 5 minute scenes in the game over 2 episodes BUT in being its downfall, the fact that it remains true to the games story makes it very fun to watch for Star Ocean fans. The first 3 episodes revolve around Claude getting owned by a teleporting machine then meeting Rena who is portrayed as a moebomb with an annoying voice…so…exactly the same as the game.

Some things in the story are over embellished and some are completely skipped. For example Mayor Regis is a ninja and tries to smash Claude in his sleep to see if he really is the warrior of light…but then he suddenly goes back to being a frail old man…which of course makes perfect sense. Then there’s Claudes raygun…get this:

Talk about extreme…just to kill that oversized gorrilla thing that attacks Rena in the forest.

The anime itself makes use of a hell of a lot of still frames…the animation is somewhat shoddy and in the still frame shots (obviously) completely missing, which is kinda annoying. In certain scenes, like when Claude chases after Alen once he steals Rena, the animation is very smooth but then straight away its back to still frames with voices thrown over top…Which not only downtrails any semblance of good animation pants, it also slows the anime down further.

Recognise this place?

Although this sounds like I’m just complaining about the anime, I still kinda like it. I’m not sure why but I can only think that its simply because I found an anime based on a game that tries to stay EXACTLY on the story instead of making some arbitrary side stories. I seriously doubt I’ll ever finish this anime though unless something changes by episode 9 (which is the last episode I have on my HDD) because when I get to this point, I then have to go find a torrent containing the next 15 episodes of an anime that no one really cares about.

So yea my final words are: Only get this anime if you liked Star Ocean…otherwise don’t, it’s too slow to warrant watching frequently.

Time to go watch Durarara!! Ep 3 methinks.

EDIT: The anime is now going off track and losing focus from the main story…Celine is a bitch and Rena is stupid…also:

Beware, this short review thing is a bit spoilerish…but kinda not really…who really cares…its K-ON!

Anyway I picked it up because I’m bored and cbf watching Moetan like I should be doing and I watched ep 15 of Railgun earlier (dont watch it…srsly its rubbish…I must be masochistic or something). I expected this episode of K-ON! to be just another episode with nothing spectacular which follows the life and times of 5 girls as they tear apart the world of music.

What I got however was completely the opposite.

Alright I lied, it was exactly the same…nothing changed, not even the theme songs.

Basically our crew has got themselves invited to a small live gig by Ritsu’s drummer friend from another local band “Love Crisis”. We follow them as they completely muff everything up then end up putting on a half decent gig. Sawako turns up with a leather outfit on and meets up with some old friend and they all fall asleep waiting for the start of the new year.

Let me point this out loud and clear…if you liked the way K-ON! was, then this episode is for you…I nostalgia’d a little when the theme tunes came on which sorta got me a little pumped for the episode…but yea…its the same ol’ same ol’ which I can appreciate and I know others will…but in the same sense it will add to peoples scorn of me for finding this show watchable.

Duarararaarararara comes across as a semi-slice of life anime following this bloke Mikado Ryugamine (what a mouthful) who is sort of…well…weird. He spent most of his life indoors and has never left his local town…so naturally he thinks it will be a wonderful idea to go park up at Tokyo and study there.

Because y’know…that makes a hell of a lot of sense.

He meets up with his childhood friend Masaomi Kida and for the first episode, he follows him around and meets Kida’s friends and learns about the local populace.

In this world, there is a headless Biker with neko-mimi slapped on the helmet…inorite? Headless with a helmet? Yea…I don’t get it either, but that’s the point. People relate this anime very kindly to Baccano! Which was amazingly entertaining however Durarara!! does not quite promise as much as Baccano did, but then again I am basing this on the first episode.

So far our hero has met a guy who throws vending machines at people, a giant black Russian sushi chef, an assortment of Kida’s odd friends and watched an overly moe girl get dragged off to be raped…or tickled…or who knows, only for the girl to be saved by our headless mystery hero…who has a giant scythe that cuts through people…but doesn’t.

Yea, that’s about as much as we are allowed to know after the first episode…however it was entertaining enough an episode for me to at least try out the series and see how it pans out, however it is a 24 episode series which leads me to believe at some point there’s going to be some horrid fillers, however in saying that I realise that they have introduced a LOT of interesting and unique characters that might allow the series to flow well.

So yea, I’m going to give this a go as a comedy/almost slice-of-life anime and as with Sora no Woto…I’ll let you know if I ditch it/love it.