MetaFap: Fall ’13 – 12 [NSFW]

The “monster” sacrifices herself after pulling a Gandalf by turning white

I wish I could remember what emotion(s) I felt while reading the events of episode 12 in the manwha, because watching it in anime form for me, it lacked in feeling. I think what made me feel that way the most was that it was Chiffon’s “fight” the whole episode and that Chiffon is a character that just isn’t focused on enough to have had me develop a strong feeling toward her character, or even Amelia to be honest. It’s not that the anime faulted in not giving her more and better scenes, just more that it felt like two monsters fighting and that all the other girls were helpless to do anything. Now that the series is over, I recommend reading the First Chronicle spin-off manga featuring Chiffon and Ticy.

From sad to fierce went Ticy. She is not to be trifled with.

Season 2 ends in similar fashion to S1, with a tease that can make one hope that a season 3 is to eventually be made. You may remember Ticy from brief appearances in S1 showing off how strong she was, and now the strongest in the academy and president is Ticy’s for the taking. The manwha is currently entrenched in an arc even crazier than Alaska and has been going on for about 45-50 chapters now. If Media Factory waits two years like they did between Freezing and Vibration, then they’ll surely have a full arc’s worth of content to adapt to their own desire.

Seems like they were trying to go for something with the inverted? art, not sure it went quite as planned

I’ll excuse Andre, but where are most of the Limiters for these girls?

Amelia with her hair completely red now… I like it

So Freezing Vibration is over, and I thought it was a pretty decent season, certainly an improvement over season 1. The music was a surprise to me in how good it was, the story covered in Vibration certainly had more oomph than season 1 ever did, and I thought the action got a nice uptick in both animation and entertainment value. While Bridget’s rehab episodes with Lucas were a little tough to get through subject matter considering, I felt ep. 6 was actually one of the better done episodes of the season.

Freezing’s first BD special is about hooking things up to Bridget’s nipples. Oh, the fun these specials will have…

Well, it wasn’t quite the sakuga-fest I was hoping for, but this was about as good a finale as I could have expected from this show. Except the whole reusing-clips-from-episode-one bit. WTF, Asread? Seriously, what. The. Fuck. I know animation like that isn’t cheap, but I would have much rather had the typical anime freeze frame filled action scene than that. Or just skipped over it altogether, since that battle served almost no purpose to the plot other than giving the side characters an excuse to be useful. Maybe I should have seen it coming with that suspiciously familiar animation of the overweight guy coming in an asking about disaster supplies/video cassette tapes early on in the episode.

Most of the action was actually pretty run of the mill. Not bad, but not spectacular as one would hope from this show. The one part that still impressed was the final showdown between Raul and Phino. It was even shorter than Raul vs. All A last episode and it wasn’t quite as well directed with too much motion blur at times, but it kept enough of the nice touches that it was still noticeably better than most anime. Using those phrases from episode 2, then that more recent order slip to bring Phino back was cute in an utterly cliche way. I’m still confused at All A coming to work for Leon when she clearly has the talent to start her own business in the security industry, which she has said in no uncertain terms she wants to get into. But what the hey, she’s supposed to be part of Raul’s workplace harem.

In the end, I didn’t end up regretting watching Yuushibu, which is mighty high praise given the reasonable expectations one might have going into this show. The animation prowess on display at times was genuinely impressive and is something other shows should learn from. However, there wasn’t enough of it, and the meat of the show was about as bad or even worse than what one could expect from a something with such a title. It wasn’t very funny, the characters were all dumb, the character designs felt amateur and unrefined, the fanservice rarely involved more than the constant and obtrusive zoom ins to thighs, panties, and bouncing boobs, and the story was absurd but in a too-predictable way. If not for those brief action sequences, I would call this a horrible show, but thanks to them, I push it up to an actually good show that’s worth recommending to those who can tolerate characters even stupider than in average anime.

Wait a minute, I’ve seen that before. I’d recognize those abs anywhere!

I’m honestly puzzled as to how he could have fallen on her like this considering they were sitting next to each other and facing the same direction moments before.

You do NOT want to be anywhere near Lam’s hair on a dry day.

At the very least, this show deserves recognition for worst, most obtrusive use of censorship ever.

Bertille is definitely best supporting character

Sad Celia doesn’t realize everyone likes her

Noels fly

Celia and Noel battle to the end, and the end is that Noel is knocked off her horse, and Celia heads to the final against Mio. Given the choice between the two of them, Takahiro of course picks Mio to be begleiter for, and we didn’t need Reina bringing it up again. And that must have been the longest hour ever between the semi-final and the final: Takahiro went back to the stable, everyone changed out of their armor into their school uniforms, and then changed back into their armor, had a nice chat at the student council office, and then got ready to fight.

Miracle Mirielle

Something good did come out of Noel’s loss, with Mirielle regaining the ability to walk in the excitement, and her father accepting her and expressing his pride in her. And now for the final, Mio has a new nickname: Kiseki (miracle) Mio, a nice play on her name of Kisaki Mio. And instead of a run-by run jousting match like we’ve seen so far, we get a montage of the battle with the OP song playing. I thought it was a really good change-up from the battles we’ve seen, keeping the pace and the excitement high. This was a good way to finish, and the final blow was a Feathers Fly with just a little tension over who got it. But in the end it was Celia claiming her third championship, and then, more importantly, becoming a more full member of the group of friends that these characters have formed.

The final moment: Mio even got a hit but it wasn’t enough

So in the end, this wasn’t that bad a series. It had some pretty good moments of fanservice, especially the episode with Akane and Celia naked in the windmill, but that’s not what the majority of the show was about. More than that, I think this was a very positive show as far as harem adaptations of eroge go. The only problem from that point of view was that chasing Takahiro doesn’t make a lot of sense, because the guy’s a block of wood. But at least he’s a nice block of wood. And overall production of the show was good, with nice CG for the jousting battles, attractive character designs and good animation, and competent work by all the voice actors, none of them big names, but all doing a good job. Great? Nah, can’t say that, but it was good, and fun to watch.

Farewell everyone!