Bad Acting Followed By Bad Animation – What Is This?

Posted on by Karandi
Dimension High School Post Title Image

Dimension High School Episode 1 Review

I’m kind of adding this one to my current watch list out of morbid curiosity. It kind of feels like a terrible Saturday morning cartoon from the early 80’s only we’ve got live actors exaggerating everything to the point where you have to wonder if they’ve ever seen a real human interaction or are basing their performance on having watched other people performing and then exaggerated it again.

Dimension High School Episode 1 Shiroyama finds a rock.

Needless to say, it isn’t the most nuanced of openings as the main character, Shiroyama finds a weird rock outside the school and naturally picks it up. In the tutorial of four students and one teacher (because five is always how many characters you end up with in this kind of show), the rock suddenly reveals it is some weird magical thing and the group are transported to another dimension where incredibly terrible animation takes hold. I mean, I though Knights of Sidonia was difficult to look at and the character designs were creepy. This one takes it to a whole new level.

Dimension high School Episode 1 Anime form

Once there and after the requisite freak out, is this a dream, kind of moment, the rock gives a non-explanation about the group being needed to save the world. It’s kind of surprised there are five as it was pretty sure they were four so I wonder if we’ll ever find out if that is significant. Anyway, before we learn anything of use a giant sphinx turns up and poses a puzzle for the group to solve.

Here is started feeling like Nazotokine in that the characters are given a riddle on the board and part of the fun in the first puzzle at least was figuring it out while the characters got totally stumped. Admittedly, the second puzzle relies on an actual knowledge of Japanese to solve so that one I had to wait for the characters to figure out.

Dimension High School Episode 1 Rock View

Then the characters are sent back to the real world and the teacher finds out that having failed the first puzzle, he’s lost what is most precious to him and we see the one reasonably composed character of the story lose it. I’m guessing this was supposed to be funny but mostly it falls into the category of ‘what was that’ and then the episode ends with the main character looking after his plants.

Honestly, there’s almost nothing outside of curiosity to recommend this particular title and part of me just wants to see if it will get worse than this. The other curiosity is that MAL lists the episode duration at 10 minutes and yet this first episode was definitely standard length. It will be interesting to see if the next episode is actually only ten minutes because that might make the whole thing more palatable.

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S.H.FIGUARTS DETECTIVE CONAN: CONAN EDOGAWA
S.H.FIGUARTS DETECTIVE CONAN: CONAN EDOGAWA

Nazotokine Series Review

Posted on by Karandi
nazotokine1

Overview:

This is a short anime that I picked up during the Autumn 2016 season. It follows Tokine who is an office worker who occasionally gets transported into a parallel dimension thing and generates energy by solving quizzes. I reviewed this week to week here.

Review:

There’s not a lot left to say about this snore worthy anime that I didn’t cover in my weekly impressions. I picked this up because I love quizzes and riddles and while week one gave us a ridiculously obvious puzzle I kind of hoped that each week I’d have something to try and solve. Unfortunately, after week 1 we either didn’t get a riddles because every second episode seemed to follow Tokine and her friends around the real world, or the riddle required massive leaps in logic in order to solve them so either way not exactly a show to play along at home to.

Even that would have been fine if the characters had occasionally risen above lackluster but tragically Tokine and friends are a vapid and personality devoid bunch and as a direct result their interactions are about as fascinating as watching paint dry.

Toward the end of the series we meet someone else who, like Tokine, is able to solve the riddles but other than one brief moment of rivalry she then disappears from the show to never be seen again which leaves you wondering why they even bothered to introduce her.

All and all, this is an incredibly dull anime.

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Nazotokine Episode 11

Posted on by Karandi
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Nazotokine Episode 11 Review:

The movie finishes in Nazotokine, they go to work, and then a light show. As usual, Tokine gets excited and we end with yet another riddle. Part of me has taken to wondering if this wondering if this whole show is some sort of travel advertisement with the quizzes thrown in to break up the random segments of scenery and discussions by the girls about various events.

Honestly though the show doesn’t change. Week after week we get the same tone and formula without any real variation and it is definitely getting dull.

Nazotokine is available on Crunchyroll.

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Nazotokine Episode 10

Posted on by Karandi
nazotokine10

Nazotokine Episode 10 Review:

Here’s a lesson I shouldn’t have needed to learn. Don’t watch Nazotokine after Yuri on Ice. I could have just stopped that sentence with ‘don’t watch Nazotokine’ but at this point I’m more or less committed.

However, after Yuri on Ice what was probably just another run of the mill episode from this series just felt so incredibly banal that I was actively checking my twitter feed while watching. And I didn’t miss anything. The former cabaret girl introduces herself, there’s some half-hearted rivalry and then they solve the riddle and return to the cinema. Case closed. This series hasn’t done anything new or upped the stakes and now I’m just waiting for the end.

Nazotokine is available on Crunchyroll.

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Nazotokine Episode 8

Posted on by Karandi
nazotokine

Review:

Tokine solves the dragon’s quiz and asks yet another unanswered question. Nazotokine has really become predictable and dull at this point and time. The riddles aren’t really solvable from an outsiders perspective particularly as you can only see the parts of them Tokine is focusing on and there just isn’t enough of anything else happening in this show. predictability would be fine if Tokine herself was more than just a one note character but she isn’t and none of the other characters have any discernible personality. All and all you can probably save yourself some trouble and if you haven’t already been watching this, don’t start it.

Nazotokine is available on Crunchyroll.

Nazotokine Episode 6

Posted on by Karandi
nazotokine6

Review:

Nazotokine has Tokine solving another riddle with the movers and once again the answer was either obvious or indecipherable depending on your view point. It actually kind of seems like there was a lot of unnecessary clutter this time around which made the solution seems just a bit lame. Then of course we have the girls talking over Korean BBQ and next we are clearly headed to the hot springs. But in case you were falling asleep by the ho-hum nature of the episode we’ll introduce some weird characters right at the end who may or may not have any significance. Nazotokine was underwhelming once again but its hard to really be too annoyed at it.

Nazotokine is available on Crunchyroll.

Nazotokine Episode 5

Posted on by Karandi
nazotokine5

Review:

Tokine goes to help her friend move. They gush about the apartment and then the movers and then both of her friends and the movers leave to go downstairs for plot convenient reasons. Two of the movers return just in time for Tokine to transport them all into Quizum (?) and then we see the puzzle before the episode ends.

Really not certain what the point of this show is at this point. It repeats the same formula over and over and we are learning nothing about the main character that we couldn’t have figured out in episode 1. She’s not growing or developing at all. There are no other characters that we know enough about to care and Hacchin (or whatever his name really is) isn’t interesting enough as an antagonist/villain/whatever he’s supposed to be. That would all be fine if the puzzles gave us something to think about but they just don’t.

Nazotokine is available on Crunchyroll.

Nazotokine Episode 4

Posted on by Karandi
nazotokine4

Nazotokine Episode 4 Review:

Nazotokine continues to be watchably ho-hum. At least the riddle was sort of riddle like this time, though without actual context knowledge it isn’t as though the audience could have tried to unravel that one so mostly its just watching her strain her brain until she gets to her eureka moment.

Plus, it is becoming increasingly clear that they are hoping the girl herself will be the draw as she goes from that ridiculous outfit inside Quizin (Quizun?) to wearing fairly revealing sleep wear while texting her friend. I’m starting to wonder if there is any bigger story here or if she really is just going to keep repeating the process of getting drawn into the other dimension, solve a riddle and get thrown out. This one is definitely not a high priority to pick up if you haven’t started it.

Nazotokine is available on Crunchyroll.

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Nazotokine Episode 3

Posted on by Karandi
nazotokine3

Nazotokine Episode 3 Review:

Well, at least I don’t know the answer to the riddle yet. That’s a plus. Mostly this episode follows Tokine around her normal day as she gets herself fired up for a late night of work before rushing for the last train. It was interesting seeing what happens to other people when they are taken into the game, though I guess we aren’t getting any explanation about why Tokine is an exception other than that ‘chosen one’ rubbish the magic pig thing keeps throwing around.

All and all, seven minutes for an episode doesn’t seem like much and yet they are still managing to waste minutes and the story is progressing at glacial speed. Oh well. I guess I’ll find out the answer to the riddle next week (or if anyone else watched the episode they could just tell me).

Nazotokine is available on Crunchyroll.

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Nazotokine Episodes 1 + 2

Posted on by Karandi
nazotokine1

Nazotokine Episodes 1 and 2 Overview:

In Nazotokine, a perfectly ordinary secretary (except that she’s secretly an otaku) gets trapped in another dimension and is told she has to solve some riddles to get out.

Review Episode 1:

This I didn’t mind. At only 7 minutes we barely got the introduction of the story and it’s all about as generic as it comes but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The presentation wasn’t bad and it didn’t seem to be trying to aspire to anything more than what it was. I guess the real question becomes, can it make the riddles that supposedly need solving interesting?

Given we didn’t get to see any examples of the riddles that is definitely still in doubt and could really make or break a show with this premise. That said, it certainly made me want to watch what happens next to find out (at least for now). We did however get a totally unnecessary transformation sequence because I guess allowing the main character to stay dressed as a secretary was just too much to ask for.

nazotokine2

Review Episode 2:

You would think a show about riddles would present one you couldn’t answer instantaneously and the fact that she has a near orgasmic experience from solving it (similar to the effect of food in Food Wars) seems just a little over the top for a basic letter rearrangement. We also, of course, waste most of the first part of the episode arguing about the outfit.

That said, the short run time is definitely in this show’s favour as it manages to hold my attention for the duration. And I was surprised that after one riddle she returned though they’ve clearly indicated that this is a temporary situation. Definitely a case where being the chosen one is not a good thing.

Nazotokine is available on Crunchyroll.

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