Bulk Lot Anime Reviews: Amagi Brilliant Park, Gunslinger Stratos & Seiyu’s Life

The anime world tends to move very quickly these days. While the Japanese anime seasons change up every three months or more, the English releases tend to go all year long. It’s in that vein that the Bulk Lot Anime Reviews have been born. Through this hopefully short series, I’ll be going over the releases from Madman Entertainment that I’ve lost track of thanks to the busy seasons and life in general. That being said, all of these shows have been watched in full during the 4 weeks that I’m given to view them, it’s just that getting a full review has been a bit hard to do due to outside forces playing me for a fool.

This month sees three releases being done in a quick review format from the month of May 2017: Amagi Brillient Park, Seiyu’s Life and Gunslinger Stratos.

Title: Amagi Brilliant Park Complete Series
Genre: Comedy, Magic, Light Novel
Series Details: 13 Episodes + OVA
Release Date: May 24, 2017 (Australia)
Languages: English, Japanese
Subtitles: English subtitles
Number of Discs: 3 (DVD) / 2 (Bluray)
Runtime: 350.0 mins (23mins per episode)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Widescreen Full Height Anamorphic
Distributor: Madman Entertainment (DVD) (Bluray)
Special Features: Textless Opening and Closing Songs, “Extra Magic” Opening
Rating: M: Animated violence and sexual references

Kanie Seiya, a smart and extremely narcissistic high school student, believes that the beautiful but reserved Sento Isuzu has invited him on a date at an amusement park called Amagi Brilliant Park. Much to his chagrin, not only is the location a run-down facility, the supposed date is merely a recruitment tour where Sento and Princess Latifa Fleuranza, the owner of the theme park, ask him to become the park’s new manager. Their cause for desperation? As stipulated in a land-use contract, Amagi has less than three months to meet a quota of 500,000 guests, or the park will be closed for good and the land redeveloped by a greedy real-estate company. Seiya is won over by the revelation that Amagi is no ordinary amusement park; many of its employees are Maple Landers—mysterious magical beings who live in the human world and are nourished by the energy created by people having fun. Entrusted with the hopes and dreams of this far-off enchanted land, Seiya must now use his many skills to bring Amagi back on its feet, or watch it crumble before his eyes.

Amgi Brillient Park is one of those shows that comes right out and looks to have a lot of promise. The story seems solid and interesting, the premise is unique, the characters are diverse and creative, and there’s fanservice. All of this should give you a top tier anime experience; but what we got was a bit of a slow moving mess that ends up throwing all of the main plot out with the first episode only to pick up back up in the last two in order to build some tension and hopefully a second season.

Amagi Brillient Park is meant to be all about a bunch of fantasy people from a fantasy land who need people’s enjoyment to survive or else they die. While this would give the whole crux of the plot a nice ticking clock and our protagonist a reason to do his best, instead we see that dropped in order to doa lot of wacky gags and a love plot that is completely not needed. Then just to add insult to injury, all of a suddenly the amount of people through the park gates becomes all important again as things come to a close. This is just terrible writing from the get go.

The characters are just a bit underdeveloped, even though most of them get their own episode with a problem to solve and all that. However their personalities are so out there and different to what you would think they should be that you do get lost in them instead. I personally don’t really think that this is something that needed to be done in a 13 episode series where time and episodes are of the essence. Less time introducing the million odd characters and more focus on the main mission would have been a lot better use of the time than what we got.

The animation too seems to suffer. Now while this is from the same writer and animation studio as the great Full Metal Panic series, the animation quality dips into Shin-Chan territory at times which really drags you out of the overall enjoyment of the product. However the audio is more than worth the listen no matter what language you prefer. I just feel that at the end of the day having 13 episodes was just not enough and the overall product suffers because of it.

Amagi Brillient Park is a good anime, it’s actually my pick of this bunch to be honest. However I think that there were too many limitations put onto the production from the studio and we got something that is only half as good as it should be. With some funny looks at the behinds the scenes of a theme park mixed with characters who really should not be doing such a job and doing it well is a good enjoyable weekend watch or one day binge.

Title: Seiyu’s Life Complete Series
Genre: text
Series Details: 13 Episodes
Release Date: May 24, 2017 (Australia)
Languages: English, Japanese
Subtitles: English subtitles
Number of Discs: 2
Runtime: 340.0 mins (23mins per episode)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Widescreen Full Height Anamorphic
Distributor: Madman Entertainment (DVD)
Special Features: Textless Opening and Closing Songs
Rating: PG: Mild horror themes, animated violence and coarse language

Dreaming of becoming a top-tier professional in the fast-paced, competitive world of voice acting, rookie Futaba Ichinose frantically scurries around, searching for auditions and performance sessions. Rubbing elbows with some of the biggest names in the industry, she tries to find her own unique voice and style. Along the way, she befriends two important allies: Ichigo Moesaki, an aspiring idol who claims to be a princess from another planet, and Rin Kohana, a cheerful child actress who tries her best to balance her career and school at the same time. Together, the girls brave the ups and downs of the entertainment industry—but as for Futaba, whose performance assessment at her agency is just around the corner, her career might be over sooner than expected! Seiyu’s Life! is a humorous and sincere celebration of the industry that gives anime its voice.

I like me some behind the scenes style shows and in some part, Seiyu’s Life is just that. But what I didn’t expect was to see more about a couple of characters that have their own issues when it came to doing the whole voice acting thing. Futaba is constantly under pressure from her Agency to make something of her dream of being a voice actor or she is out the door, which is the basic set up to shows like this. but giving the character that pressure seems to be what holds the whole show together. Also having the experienced member of the group being a High School student who has been doing voice work since the age of 5 was a very nice touch that I enjoyed only because it wasn’t the grizzled old veteran trope that we get in just about every show like this. Not to say that there isn’t a veteran or two popping up in Seiyu’s Life at all; in fact, some pretty legendary voice actors pop in as guests in Seiyu’s Life. Hearing Masako Nozawa (the voice of Dragon Ball’s Goku) in the opening of the first episode gave me goosebumps and really got me in the mood to watch this series from beginning to end.

On the technical side, the animation is a decent high quality even on DVD. Though there is a lot of sight gag style character look changes and the addition of some narrator style doll thing in the beginning, the overall look and feel works well for what you are to expect from a more lighthearted version of the usual behind the scenes anime. On a personal note, I’m disappointed slightly that Seiyu’s Life was only in Japanese for the audio, but then again it would lose a lot with the actual voice actors playing themselves in the show if this was redubbed into English, even if they used their English counterparts.

Seiyu’s Life was one of those anime that I picked only because I wanted to add a fourth title to my monthly request list, and it turned out to be one of the better anime series I have watched in a long time. The comedy in the show works well for the characters and the situations, the addition of real people into the world instead of just characters makes you more invested in the outcomes of the mains and overall Seiyu’s life is just a good surprise that I’m glad I picked up in the end. I highly recommend this show if you want something a little different yet enjoyable at the same time.

Title: Gunslinger Stratos Complete Series
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi
Series Details: 12 Episodes
Release Date: May 24, 2017 (Australia)
Languages: Japanese
Subtitles: English subtitles
Number of Discs: 2
Runtime: 300.0 mins (23mins per episode)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Widescreen Full Height Anamorphic
Distributor: Madman Entertainment (DVD)
Special Features: Textless Opening and Closing Songs, Episode 12 Alternate Ending
Rating: MA15+: Strong animated violence

A.D. 2115 – the island nation once called Japan is now known as the “17th Far East Imperial City Management District.” The citizens were promised a life of peace in exchange for some of the comfort they were used to having. People believed their lives would never change and tomorrow will be the same as today. No one suspected the impending doom which their society was about to face… “Degradation” – a rare disease which led to the total disintegration of the human body to a mere pile of sand was slowly but surely spreading throughout the world. Tohru Kazasumi, an ordinary student becomes embroiled in a multi universal battle between his world and the parallel world of “Frontier S (Stratos).” This meant that Tohru must fight himself from an alternate world.

I don’t know what it is but there was something that just didn’t seem right to me about Gunslinger Stratos. I thought it would be something akin to Gundam or maybe even a straight version of Martian Successor Nadesico, but what I got was a political and philosophical version of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Sure there was some good action to be had, but there was just too much techno babble and other “we’re trying to be thoughtful and deep” style stuff in here that for the first time since getting these review shows from Madman Entertainment, I actually stopped watching after about 4 episodes. (For disclosure, I did go back afterwards and watch the remaining 8 episodes just to make sure I knew what I was talking about.)

The animation deserves a special thumbs down as it just looks cheap. Some of the backgrounds have a nice almost painted picture like look to them, but the character animation at times looks like it took queues from South Park when it came to doing walking animations and other things. They did try to make the action scenes look as exciting as  possible, but everything else just doesn’t look like anyone cared enough to put any real effort into it.

I don’t know what to say about Gunslinger Stratos. I know of it’s video game roots and all that, and maybe that’s what has caused me to not like it. When adapting a video game into a more narrative based medium, you need to find a way to make the story drive the show, not the action as a video game does. I’ll give them credit as doing such an adaption is pretty hard to do, and this was a solid attempt. I just don’t think this is a show that I would bother with again.

So there we go. Three anime reviewed in easy to digest bite sized chunks. Amagi Brillient Park and Seiyu’s Life are the big stand outs this month with them both being a good mix of enjoyable characters and a bit of a different plot while Gunslinger Stratos just is nothing more than a mess of tropes and underdeveloped plot and characters. As always, these releases can be found at the Madman Entertainment Store for Australians, with their US counterparts probably being available via Amazon or something.

Till next time, jaa ne! *^_^*