Anime Review: Log Horizon

Sure, everyone out there who reads or hears of the plot of Log Horizon will go "But that's just the same as Sword Art Online" but this is quite a different show. For starters people don't die on Log Horizon. Something distressing does happen to them when they are reborn but you can watch the show to see what. What this means is that Log Horizon is a little less depressing and dark since people (and the show) is not always concerned about death. Instead what we have is a glimpse of how people will react if they are trapped inside a game with no way (not even death) of getting out. How one adapts and in fact creates a world of their own choice is the focus of the show. It shows that even in a fictional game world with basic rules and laws, unless someone actively creates order, things can soon descend into chaos. While SAO was all about characters, Log Horizon is all about strategy, with the protagonist Shiroe being the master of strategy. Perhaps it is a personal trait with me, but I prefer shows with mysteries and problems that need to be solved with strategy and intelligence rather than the "I win because I so so want to" plot point of many shonen anime out there. Log Horizon definitely has the crisp pacing and cliff-hangers necessary for a brain-stimulating show and I am definitely going to continue watching it. I would definitely recommend it to someone who likes a good mix of action and intelligence. The character representations, are however, a bit disproportionately exaggerated in some aspects - the super short Akatsuki for example. In most cases the characters can all be summed up in single words and if you are a character-oriented anime lover, give this a miss. Otherwise, it is certainly worth the 30 minutes-a-week fun that it delivers.

TV Series Review: Mentalist now that Red John has been revealed (Spoilers)

Yes, every fan who has religiously followed Mentalist for 5 seasons on CBS and on reruns ( as I have) must be talking about this - the final reveal of Red John. While this last episode once again reminded me of certain similarities between Mentalist and that other show with a not-so-normal detective trying to find the guy who killed his wife - Monk. However, the tone of Monk is rather light as compared to Mentalist which borders on the dark mainly because of the darkness in the character of Patrick Jane - a trickster who uses his all too brilliant mind to cheat people for money or used to, now he just uses it to trick criminals into revealing themselves while trying to track and kill the guy who killed his wife and child. Mentalist never had a moral foundation while Monk never went against what was right and what was legal. Very few of the other police procedurals on TV ever allowed law enforcement officials to kill with the level of justification that the people at Mentalist had. None of the CBI agents and Red John's minions too, for that matter, ever flinch at shooting to kill. Sure, Red John and his organization demands that kind of loyalty but does CBI or FBI? It seems a waste in many cases to have criminals die on you instead of going through the more excruciating legal process and ending up in jail for the rest of their life or giving some vital information about their bosses. "Bad people are bad and deserve to die" is no longer an accepted trope on TV at least not for any of the good shows. Mentalist perhaps never aimed for such greatness and is pretty comfortable with its moral standing or lack of it.  It is a TV series that runs in seasons, so killing people off is a great way to get closure on many plots. Hence the logical end of the Red John arc is also (no surprise) his death. And the fact that Jane doesn't waver in killing Red John reflects the morality of the show.
What doesn't satisfy me and most certainly many viewers of the series as well is the identity of Red John. He is literally a superhuman magician for most of the series, even two episodes ago when three people with three dots turned up instead of one Red John.  At the end of Season 3, Patrick Jane kills a person who claims to be Red John and to ensure Jane gets convicted for this, the gun mysteriously vanishes among other tricks. At the end of Season 5 Red John magically lists all the names on Jane's list of suspects. There are no two ways about it, this guy is a magician. Hence, what we need is tricks of the level of The Prestige to boggle our minds in the big reveal. Instead what we get is a lame "fake my death with a bomb" trick. I did expect better from the writers of this show. Plus, there wasn't any of the cat-and-mouse game that was promised with the finale of last season. After 5 seasons of at the most one clue per season, we suddenly have so many clues fall literally into Jane's lap this season. And while people on Jane's list dying one by one seems to be the only way to cross them off the list in the first few episodes, suddenly we get a big clue about the three-dot tattoo. None of these was anywhere near the level of magic trick that we expected from Red John, Perhaps the writers made a mistake by making Red John someone that Jane knew. If they had allowed it to be a stranger, then they could have created a whole new persona keeping with everything we had come to imagine about Red John. But now they had to work with who we know Sheriff McAllister to be and how Jane missed this guy all this while.
Perhaps if in one shot all people on Jane's list had died and the trick became figuring out who was actually dead and who was faking it plus again which one of the three tattooed fellows was Red John that might have been more interesting. Personally, I feel that if from the beginning the creators had made Red John an organization and not a single person, that would have made for a more entertaining show. If Jane or someone else indeed kills the actual guy who killed Jane's family followed by Jane vowing to root out the entire organization.. but I get carried away. That was not the show that we got and it is too late to go "what if?". Perhaps when I have my own show....Till then we shall make do with surrogates such as Mentalist. Perhaps some of the tricks of Jane are still left to be seen in the episodes to come before the end of the season.

Anime Review: Watamote

At first, a really intriguing concept. Very few anime out there that deal with an unpopular girl as the protagonist who stays unpopular. But being inside the head of Kuroki gets tiresome very quickly. Apart from scant moments that are funny, the rest of the anime is either bizarre or depressing. Perhaps some people out there can relate to the character of Kuroki but the question is does one really want to do that? Did not watch past episode 7.  

Anime Review: Devil is a Part-Timer

If you want to copy the storyline of Noblesse at least do a good job of it. It takes less than ten minutes of the anime for a magic-yielding devil from another world to get used to our world, and learn the language, and get a job, and become good at it. The whole charm of Noblesse was the idea of a powerful mythical being step-by-step getting used  to our world and the comical situations that arise as a result which is entirely lacking in Devil is a Part-Timer. Hearing the devil and his subordinate converse in their own language grates on one's ears and sounds exactly like someone speaking a foreign language - affected and artificial instead of what it should be - grandiose and smooth befitting a magical place. Decided to definitely not watch past the first episode. 

Anime Review: Red Data Girl

Fantastic music especially when Suzuhara dances but her character is not really believable. Can someone be that shy? Good storyline but a little less background story than ideal. It could do with another season.

Anime Review: Gatchaman Crowds

Alright but for the really loud and discordant background music. The ending was also unsatisfactory and not keeping with the pace of the rest of series.