Anime Review: "Nakaimo"

 

Nakaimo is basically as average as you can get. So average in fact, I forgot everything about it, including having already seen it, and watched it again. I had this marked as completed on MAL for who-knows-how-long, but could recall literally nothing about it, including the answer to the titular question, “who’s the MC’s little sister?”

This is a PLOT heavy show that is heavy on actual plot. The premise is that the main character’s father has passed away, and he’s soon to become the head honcho at his dad’s company, so he’s going to attend a new, elite school, where he’ll become a refined, adult, and find a wife… but, the catch is that his little sister, the illegitimate child of his father, also goes to the school; so, he’s gotta find a wife, and not ALSO bang his sister by accident in the process.

This is a fan-service loaded, echi, rom-com anime that can’t decide if it’s for the incest, or against it. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of little sister incest plots. They have a bad tendency to come off as really weird, and fetishist most of the time. This time, it was even weirder when they’re passing around literal DNA tests trying to determine who the MC’s related to by blood.

So, honestly, I question why I continued the show. I found that there were three reasons why I didn’t drop it and give it a 2 or a 3.

1. I was perplexed that I’d seen this and didn’t remember it at all, and didn’t want to admit that I’d checked it as complete without seeing it at all.

2. Once I started watching it, the plot actually did leave me guessing, because it seemed to be wrapping each question inside another question and leaving so many different flags, and red herrings that I couldn’t make heads or tails of what’s what.

And the last reason is probably the most critical…

3. The voice cast of this show is perplexingly loaded with all-star seiyuu on the Japanese side (no idea about the dub, I watched the sub).

Keep in mind this series came out in 2012, so for some of these people this was fairly early on in their career, for others, not so much.

The main character is played by Takahiro Sakurai (Reigan Arataka, Oshino Meme, Suzaku Kururugi), a VA legend, who’s been been in the business for a LONG time. He’s surrounded with female actresses who’ve also played some huge roles:

Koshimizu Ami (Kallen Satdtfeld, Holo, Matoi Ryuuko)

 Ayane Sakura (Uraraka Ochako, Nakano Yotsuba, Gabi Braun)

Kaori Ishihara (Souta from Dragon Maid, Aladdin from Magi, Murayama from DxD)

Rina Hidaka (Milim Nava, Last Order, Filo)

Ayana Taketatsu (Nino Nakano, Kirino Kousaka, Azusa from K-ON!)

So in the end, what kept me from dropping this show was the voice cast for the most part. It was so crazy loaded with talent that I couldn’t pull myself away and forced myself to finish it, even though I didn’t really get any satisfaction out of the ending or the plot.

So, I don’t really recommend watching this, unless you want to witness some VA’s in roles they’re DEFINITELY not known for. If you’re kind of a seiyuu nut, like I am, than watching this, and listening to their performances will leave you scratching your head, but will prove to be a moderately pleasurable experience. Hopefully I’ll remember I watched this series better now that I’ve written a review about it.

Anime Review: "Farewell, My Dear Cramer"

TL;DR - Fantastic manga, with great story, fun characters, and typical sports plot is horridly undermined by flat art, and really bad animation quality making for an ultimately disappointing adapation. Recommendation: Skip the anime, BUY the manga. 

Full Review:

There are basically three ways you can get a bad anime.

1) The source material isn't any good to begin with, so you get a bad series when it's adapted. These are rare, but when they happen, the can produce some serious stinkers.

2) The source material is a masterpiece, but when they adapt it, they cut out far too many elements, making an original story, butchering what made the original great, and thus utterly gutting the series. This is the kind of anime that truly disappoints people the most - see "The Promised Neverland" season 2. 

3) The source material is great, and they remain faithful to it, but something went wrong on the way from the manga to the screen and as a result the art and animation turns out terribly. It could be that the adapation's budget was too low, the production was too rushed, or the studio didn't put their best people on the job. Regardless, these cases are pretty sad for fans of the original material.

"Farewell, My Dear Cramer" (Sayonara Watashi no Cramer) belongs in the third category.

At the time of writing this, only three episodes have aired, so this review might be a little premature. When I heard that the creator of Your Lie in April had made a soccer manga, I was initially worried about the subject matter; but, there's no need for any trigger warnings when watching this. It's just a generally good, wholesome series about high school girls trying (or not really caring) about putting women's soccer back in the public eye in Japan, after excitement surrounding the women's side of the sport has died down in recent years.

After the first episode of this, I was intrigued enough to pick up the manga, and I blazed through the whole thing and sincerely enjoyed it. I found the story to be simple, but entertaining (typical for a sports series). The character design is cute, fun, and some times funky. The characters themselves were varied and unique. Each has their own backstory and struggles.

To be blunt, my major complaint abou tthis series is that the animation quality is terrible. Although the art itself isn't that bad (it comes off flat at times), it's animation is done horribly. There are motion manga out there with better movement than this (looking at you Gokushufudou), which is really a shame. If they had put the same effort into animating this that they had done with YLIA, than I think we'd have been looking at one of the most popular series of the season, but as it is here, the animation quality is so awful that it does a huge disservice to the character design and action and pretty much ruins it.

My advice: unless the animation quality goes up drastically in the future (if it does I may come back and revise this review), I can't recommend this anime unless you're already a huge fan of the manga. If you're not familiar with the series, I'd just recommend going and picking up the source material, rather than bothering with this poorly animated adaptation.

Overall Score: 4/10