Contrary to the title, quarantine is no longer in effect, it's just this post took me more than 2 months to finish. In the meantime I've abandoned my four-week marathons, partly because I lost interest in anime. But at the end of May I realized that summer is just around the corner and I have three months to get my shit together and complete everything I started, or I will probably end up procrastinating everything till I graduate two years later. So I got my shit together and worked on jpdream like there's no tomorrow. I will explain the details in a separate post.

Ishuzoku Reviewers

I heard about this anime from a friend and it occasionally popped up when I was discussing weebshit with my weeb coworkers. As the picture suggests, Ishuzoku Reviewers doesn't hide the fact that the main topic is pure pr0n, in fact it is quite open about sexuality: the "job" of the main characters is to rate and review brothels belonging to different species, such as orcs, elves or fairies.

To say that Ishuzoku Reviewers is a great anime is an understatement - it is in fact revolutionary, like its "predecessor" Monster Musume was. I don't think many people realize this, but we got an anime that features more than half of the fetishes one can count in the /d/ catalog. Having a futa as a main character is also unheard of. I wouldn't have thought such an anime would ever be produced, but it seems more and more people are getting exposed to these niche fetishes through Twatter and Discord, so a studio took the risk and made this anime as a proof of concept. On the other side, this also implies the featured fetishes are about to enter mainstream, which is always a bad omen - normies ruin everything.

 

Azur lane

[  OK  ] Started basic fanservice
[  OK  ] Started Add big tiddy boatgirls
[  OK  ] Started Add Fallout taglines
[  OK  ] Started Add cat ears and maid costumes
[  OK  ] Started Add moeshit
         Starting Create something watchable
[FAILED] Failed to start Create something watchable

The reason why I watched this obviously shitty anime is, well, curiosity. I wanted to know what is this anime that spawns shitload of high-quality fanart that floods the internet. I sat down to watch it assuming it's basically a KanColle ripoff with better girls - I was not surprised when things turned out to be the same as I imagined. The base story is a bit different from KanColle, the creators decided that making 2D girls from Japanese fleet wasn't enough, so they threw in the English, the US and German navy, too. And instead of fighting the common enemy, the abyssals sirens, they follow the WWII scenario by forming alliances and fighting each other (spoiler: the nuke in the last episode goes to the wrong country). The storyline follows a cycle that looks like this:

  1. Moefaggotry: eating, drinking tea, shopping
  2. Attack! The girls put on their boat cosplay and go fighting
  3. Enterprise-chan's existential crisis kicks in
  4. GOTO step 1

The actual order may be different, but you get the idea. The most hilarious thing about Azur Lane is that unlike in KanColle, where we at least have the admiral (who's incidentally never shown) men are totally extinct in this universe; they have been replaced with retarded ducks instead. The amount of fanservice was ridiculous too, as if the creators were paid by the amount of fanservice they can squeeze into Azur Lane. Just a few examples: every Japanese girl had cat ears; Kaga and Akagi had nine foxtails (according to Lafcadio Hearn, the nine-tailed foxes are the most cunning ones); lolis, maids and moeshit everywhere.

Months before I was watching my coworker scroll through the seasonal animes and saw Azur Lane among them. I asked the guy whether he has seen it. He said: "I turned it off after five minutes". Wish I'd listened to him. The only reason to watch this is Takao (lit. tall male - what an unfortunate name for such a sexy shipgirl) and Atago.

 

Nourin

This has been sitting on my HDD for quite a while; I wanted to continue my animu month with this, because it's short (12 episodes). From the AniDB profile I expected the usual boring teen drama, but what I got is an absolutely fucking hilarious comedy anime that parodizes usual anime tropes and a number of titles, some of which weren't even released at that time[1]. The anime tells the story of a group of friends studying in a rural agricultural school; they are joined by a burnt-out/retired idol, who is incidentally the crush of the main character.

This was the first anime I started paying more attention to the voicelines, because they were somewhat easily understandable. The parody nature of the anime means it included a lot of references, puns and jokes; it required a lot of creativity to make them understandable for the English-speaking audience, all of which the Doki fansub team handled splendidly. The subs were pretty based, dare I say. I highly recommend this if your Japanese level is at least N3, you might enjoy it.

1. 胸の中にパンツがある - Replace pantsu with ken and this would make a great reference to Bakemono no Ko had it been released a year earlier.

 

Other

I also watched at least 10 episodes of Beck - Mongolian Chop Squad. I have seen people on the internet comparing it with Nana, since both are about rock music, however the story progression is radically different. In Nana, our heroine Nana (who else?) moves to Tokyo and becomes a cumdumpster for the other Nana's bandmembers. As if it wasn't enough, she manages to cuck every guy in Black Stones by getting pregnant from a member of the rival band. It quickly becomes evident that this show is more about drama than music, sadly.

On the other hand, Beck is about an average shy guy whose life is about to change when he meets a guitar prodigy. It's a coming-of-age story showing that miracles can happen if people actually believe in you. The whole anime feels like as if it has been done on a tight budget: the animation is, eh, okay, but they could've written more songs for a 40+ episode show.

I have not given up on this show; I indend to watch it before september kicks in.