Doreiku The Animation Episode 12: All Those Slaves And No Ambition

Posted on by Karandi

Having finally enslaved almost everyone in the game, we realise that neither the writers, nor the characters, have really considered the implications of having total control of another human being. Instead, we have hormonal moron who just wants to satisfy whatever impulse comes his way. Not much of a grand scheme really.

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So apparently getting involved in a game where a device is used that can enslave you is a bad idea that can lead to bad things. That is apparently the sum total of the story that this anime wants to tell given any of the other considerations have just been completely ignored at this point. However Eia has a plan… Wait, no she’s just going to listen to Ryuou and then they are going to burn a building down. And the yellow haired guy is involved because… I’m not actually sure. Was Eia a closet pyromaniac because she also set ten million yen on fire earlier in this season.

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Basically though after all the foreshadowing of horror to come, we get the single worst character as the final bad guy to overcome. Mostly because it isn’t the scientist guy with a masterplan for enslaving humans, it isn’t the kid who seemed to gather massive numbers of slaves early in the game, it isn’t even the split personality Zero, but rather it is the whiny idiot who really just thinks about what he wants right now. I want to shoot someone. I want to hit them. I want to have sex. Really, he has no plan here. None at all. Was he just going to hide out in his school house for the rest of his life sleeping with his enslaved harem and hunting them down when he got bored?

But hey, we’re done and I’ll get to do a final review soon.

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Karandi James

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Doreiku The Animation Episode 11: This Anime Just Needed More Psycho

Posted on by Karandi

The higher they rise the harder the fall I guess is the message here. Though I am kind of stretching to assume this has any underlying significance other than people still being horrible.

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After another round of “Look how smart I am” we get yet another shift in the power balance of who owns the most slaves. The fact that Eia still hasn’t actually lost is kind of surprising and to be honest I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to see her as an actual player in this game or an observer. The bad guy revealed his plot, gloated about how clever he was, and then got taken down a peg by someone even less emotionally stable, meanwhile Eia is nowhere to be seen.

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Speaking of, the new guy actually was present way back at the start and I guess that’s kind of foreshadowing, but the fact that they have to do a whole flashback to remind us that the scene in question even existed kind of makes me feel like it might have missed its mark. Whichever way, I’m not overly concerned with how this plays out as long as it ends at this point.

Maybe the message should be, don’t stick random devices in your mouth that could lead to mind control.

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Karandi James

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Doreiku The Animation Episode 10: Ten Minutes Retell, Ten Minutes Of Confusing Story

Posted on by Karandi

I genuinely don’t get what the point of the first ten minutes of this episode is supposed to be given we’ve already seen this story from Julia’s view and the Ryuuou’s view adds nothing. But that’s this show in a nutshell, really.

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Dumb characters continue to make dumb choices once the story finally gets over retelling the story of how Julia became a slave and that Ryuuou is trying to free his mum (given we already knew all of that). Essentially, all of Ryuuou’s slaves decide to face down the guy they know nothing about with the weird star icon on the map and dutifully get stolen as his slaves. It is too stupid for words and it is a plot development that makes little sense at this stage of the game.

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Meanwhile, the new characters we met last week are apparently important and get a section here, though why on earth we care at this point about their story I can’t begin to figure out. And unless something tragic is happening to Eia in the next two episodes, I don’t understand her opening monologue where she said that she was going to regret things. Because so far Eia has walked through most of this series more or less unscathed.

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Karandi James

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Doreiku The Animation Episode 9: Introducing A New Cast of Characters

Posted on by Karandi

I always thought episode 9 seemed like an excellent time to introduce two entirely new characters plus a split personality in an existing character. Makes perfect sense in terms of narrative pacing.

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So this week we get a flashback to see how Crazy Girl lost her dual to the sleazy scientist guy and it turns out she didn’t. His custom SCM just lets him enslave people who are wearing an SCM. Great. That’s just what this story needed, a god-mode style cheat to the game.

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And were you still wondering what the deal with Zero was way back when he first got enslaved and there was that whole five minutes where it was a big deal that he resisted an order before no-one ever mentioned it again? Turns out, even though this anime hasn’t addressed the point in any episode since, Zero now has a split personality with his dead mother taking over at times and she has her very own SCM (how) and is now making her very own slaves (why). Does this noticeably improve the story? Not really, but it does create yet another faction in this mess of a plot and eats up screen time so we don’t get to notice how shallow Eia’s characterisation has been despite her technically being the narrator during early episodes. Incidentally, she doesn’t show up at all this episode.

Onward to more fun with human slaves and poor plots next week.

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Doreiku The Animation Episode 8: Protagonist Resorts To Singing Own Theme Song

Posted on by Karandi

If the goal is to make Eia look smart, her challenge this week certainly did not work. Doreiku continues to push some fairly poorly thought out character interactions even as it tries to escalate the tension.

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This episode really had two parts. The first has Ryuuou and his group of slaves looking into an unusual symbol on the SCM map and their actions land Julia in pretty hot water. But again, what else could be expected. And why on earth would they even take their SCM’s with them. If they didn’t have them, they couldn’t be challenged to duels and they couldn’t be stolen as slaves. It all just makes little sense. I guess the drama of Julia’s predicament is supposed to be the payoff as we wait to see how she’s either rescued, gives in or goes crazy, but I’m really indifferent to her plight.

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Meanwhile, Eia and her newly formed band are trying to gain more slaves. All for freedom of course. And yet there was a lot left to chance here. Eia had to rely on one of her slaves collecting enough in donations that she would be beat what the guy could take from his stores. And there was no way to know what the store take would be. While the whole trick with the 10 million yen kind of seems superficially clever, it really serves zero purpose. If they’d never offered it, the guy might have worked a bit harder to gather money, but if he’s had a brain he’s have collected everything he could regardless. So basically, Eia just burned 10 million yen for nothing. The outcome of the game wouldn’t have changed either way. Unless she really just wanted to have Outa beaten up. And I guess maybe that is motive enough.

I think what really annoyed me was how smug she looked while holding up her bank book and showing that it really was 10 million. Seriously? That’s even stupider. At the least, only put the money on top if you are going to burn it.

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This show really frustrates me because it’s like the writers keep trying to be clever but it all ends up really dumb or pointless.

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Doreiku The Animation Episode 7: Battle

Posted on by Karandi

This week Eia takes a break as we see the showdown between Ryuuou and the Crazy Person and their slaves.

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This week we get to see Julia’s story and how she went from being Seiya’s girlfriend, to a freeloader, to a slave. What this story tells us is Julia was pretty messed up even before becoming a slave and that’s about it. We already knew Ryuuou wanted money the only thing this segment adds is the reason why and as normal for this show it is just horrible people being horrible.

The showdown between the two groups of slaves had the potential to be interesting but mostly just came down to a series of encounters and one person getting knocked down by some underhanded means or another before Ryuuou, who is being set up as being so much smarter and more prepared than anyone else, basically just walks through the battlefield and wins the day.

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It isn’t overly exciting and while it means Ryuuou essentially owns all the slaves we’ve met up to this point, there isn’t a lot going on in this episode. This anime still hasn’t really delivered anything other than a fairly poor series of encounters between horrible characters.

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Doreiku The Animation Episode 6: The Dog’s Perspective

Posted on by Karandi

When Tada Doesn’t Fall in Love gave us an episode narrated by Nyanko Big, it fit the tone and style of the show and was just kind of amusing. When this anime puts words in the mouth of a dog the end result is pretty lame.

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With the first half of this episode a retelling of events through the eyes of Zushimaru (the dog) and only adding in that the SCM was originally developed to train pets but the research was stolen, this actually feels like a good point for people to drop the anime altogether. It hasn’t really delivered much of anything with vaguely fleshed out characters and a plot that is pretty ordinary. Thematically there are a lot of possibilities in the concept but none of these have actually been delivered upon and so basically we’re just watching horrible characters go through the motions of being horrible to one another. But even then, the anime isn’t actually ready to push that factor so despite enslaving people and a couple of pointed horrific moments, most of the slaves end up just kind of standing around as set pieces.

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The second half has Eia saving Outa after he is enslaved, as per their agreement, and her sudden decision that she wants to enslave everyone in order to free them from being slaves. And again, this might have been an interesting direction for the story to go in, except Doreiku has little to no credibility at this point in time at being able to explore things in an interesting manner. I guess we’ll see what next week brings. Given Eia’s on top of the world, I wouldn’t doubt that she might end up getting enslaved herself real soon.

On that note, surely the safest course of action would be to free the people she’s enslaved and simply ask for their help. As her slave, if she get’s captured, their ownership transfers so they can’t save her. If they are free, they might return the favour of helping free her. But that’s the kind of logic this anime refuses to consider and so let the poorly constructed games continue.

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Doreiku The Animation Episode 5: Too Late, Eia.

Posted on by Karandi

Are we supposed to like Eia now because she realised its stupid to play a game that enslaves people? This anime continues to astound with its ongoing lack of logical thought by the characters.

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Finally, Eia has realised that Ohta is kind of crazy and never really had any intention of letting slaves go. Though his treatment of Ayaka this episode was just disgusting to watch. What really astounds though is that this anime made such a big deal about Eia being a good judge of character and yet somehow she partnered up with this psycho and has only just realised he’s crazy.

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There’s some more introductions and expansions on the characters enslave by Ryuuou this week, though so far other than clearly being after their savings’ accounts the young psycho hasn’t really tipped his hand as to what he’s after by playing the game. So other than a third party being kind of introduced, this episode really just made us dislike all the existing characters. I guess if you like watching what amounts to torture during an eating contest, there might be something interesting here, but for me this was a low point in an already pretty poor series.

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Doreiku The Animation Episode 4: Credibility Gone

Posted on by Karandi

Further random developments and while this anime is definitely a fun train wreck in the making, it isn’t a great story. With poor visuals and fairly weak characterisation, unless you just happen to like watching things fall apart in slow motion there’s not a lot going on here.

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The dog wearing an SCM was a silly enough plot development and one that the characters ask the question of but don’t find an answer to in this episode. Though, it turns out the dog was previously owned by Eia so let the loop of interconnections and coincidences coil tighter despite the fact that we don’t really have a clue about what is really going on or why any of these characters need a connection other than the idiocy of putting the SCM in their mouth in the first place.

But that plot development could have possibly have been moved past until this episode decided to break its own established rules. So the thug guy beat Shiori and became her master and then the dog beat him becoming his master. Which means technically, Shiroi, as his slave, should have transferred over to become the dog’s slave (as absurd as that sounds). But instead, at the end of the sequence, Shiori and the cross-dressing guy go with Julia and her partner slave to meet their master, who of course turns out to be a kid who seems to be getting a kick out of tricking people and manipulating them. So this is going to go well.

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As I mentioned in my review of episode one of Magical Girl Site, I don’t mind a bit of pain and misery in a story but I need to feel there is a point. This kind of just feels like they are going through the motions and each plot development feels more forced than the last. What do you think so far?

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Doreiku The Animation Episode 3: Credibility Falling

Posted on by Karandi

You know how you can suspend disbelief for an out-there premise as long as what follows on is logical? Well Doreiku is kind of pushing the limits of what my rational mind will allow to disregard for the sake of narrative. How did you find this episode?

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This week our main pair of player kind of fade into a footnote with a minor set-up following on from the ending of last week’s episode before we are introduced to a new pair of short-sighted thrill seekers playing with a slave making device. Really, no one in this anime actually considers the consequences of their own actions so it really is impossible to feel sorry for any of them, even as their world literally gets torn apart after they lose a duel.

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However, that’s business as usual. What makes this episode a potential world breaking moment for me and possibly the point at which my ability to buy into the premise of this anime (as flawed as it is) was the dog wearing the SCM and apparently duelling the man. Seriously? How did it even establish the parameters of the duel and as a master how does it give commands? More importantly – It’s a dog! Sorry, my ability to accept a premise as flaky as the master-slave system in this world kind of fell apart at that point. Honestly, this kind of spells disaster for ongoing enjoyment of this anime as realistically, unless they get me back on-board with the premise I’m unlikely to care about any future events.

But that’s just me. How did the rest of you see this episode?

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Karandi James

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