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| Artist's rendition of how being forced to watch this show makes me feel. Not pictured: My screaming visage. |
Which is exactly why this show confuses and aggravates me so much. Because they must have either been crazy or smoking a very special kind of crack in order to think trying to push this show was ever a good idea in the first place.
It had a ridiculous premise, and then it tried to play itself straight. And failed miserably.
This is my final review for this show. Spoiler alert: It ain't pretty.
I have said a lot of horrible, terrible things about this show during my watching of it this season. And I promise you, every single one of them was entirely justified. You know how sometimes comedians have to go out of their way to take something out of context to make it hilarious? Yeah well I hardly had to do that for this show at all. There's a difference between hyperbole and straight up distortion, and it's kind of sad how much of the former I wound up doing over the latter.
Like with some comic skits, some jokes just write themselves. Unfortunately in this case, this show is a joke that never gets funny, no matter how many times you repeat yourself.
There's a joke in there, I think.
Art & Animation
I Wanna Be the Strongest in the World! is an animated manga adaption. Meaning there was an original source material to work from. Upon review of the ever-extensive wikipedia entry on this series, I discovered something that must have been added recently, much to my horror, because I would've picked up on that little tidbit before: While there are only four volumes of the manga out there, it is now listed as an ongoing series.
So what does this teach us, class? It teaches us that this was, in fact, most likely 80% filler material. But I'll have to go into that in another section, because here's the thing: They didn't have to come up with a single original thing for this entire show. I'd try to figure out more, but there's only so much I can learn because I cannot find anything beyond the first two volumes anywhere on the internet.
However, a very, very, brief look through suggests that there was not very much to work with, as I suspected to begin with - considering that the second volume has Rio beating the ever-living hell out of Sakura during their debut match.
So let's just make this absolutely clear. You managed to tell the first half of all of the available material... in the first two episodes.
With that said? The artwork in this show is atrocious. Utterly atrocious. The manga actually looks a HELL of a lot better. And yes, it is pretty fanservicey, but christ almighty at least there is a limit to the number of times they can do that - these guys literally couldn't come up with anything else because they didn't have enough panels to trace over and turn into animation.
Yes. You read that correctly. The panels in the manga are basically the exact same in the show. Except even crappier, if that was even possible to begin with.
Plus? MOTHER F***ING SEIZURE WARNINGS. Jesus christ the number of times they assault your eyes with that hypnotic f***ing kaleidoscope of colors should literally be a prosecutable offense. Bright colors? Check. Quickly moving in erratic motions? Double check. Filling the entire screen? CHECKITY CHECK CHECK. They even have the balls to do it more than once per episode.
Don't even get me started on the animation itself. There's hardly any animation to begin with, and what little there is happens to be reserved for the very last episode, which is still comprised almost 95% of the same stock footage we've seen through the entire goddamn series.
When you start using stock footage in your anime opening you have a HUGE problem on your hands. A good opening should be made up of original footage that never gets recycled. Not hodge-podges of shit that will be shown at least once during the course of your show!!!
F-. This is literally the laziest goddamn showing I have EVER seen in any anime I have ever watched. And I've watched a LOT. I won't even touch the shittastic travesty that is their piss-poor attempt at 3D animation because quite frankly, the repeated attempts to induce epilepsy in its viewers was reason enough to fail it - having an opening that consisted entirely of stock footage? That literally is the laziest goddamn thing EVER.
While I'm on that note? For the ending of the last episode, they decided to just rip the dancing animations from their ED and use that during the final chorus scene. WHICH IS EVEN GODDAMN LAZIER.
F- - -. THIS SHOW GETS A PERFECT GODDAMN ZERO FOR ART AND ANIMATION.
Story & Plot
This show has an utterly ridiculous premise. An idol decides to become a pro wrestler to avenge not just her teammate, but also to defend her own honor as a person. I've already mentioned that there are only four issues of the manga, which means they had a grand total of about 80 pages worth of material to work with. Which begs the question: What could have possibly possessed them to make an entire season's worth of anime when they only had about four or five episodes worth of material to make from it?!
Now, I can't fault them for having very little material to work with. What I can blame them for, however, is for basically managing to tell the exact same story for ten episodes straight, without even bothering to change a single. Goddamn. Thing.
I'm giving this show a solid D for Story and Plot. Why? Because it had a ridiculous premise, and not a lot of source material to work from, which gives it some points, but the fact of the matter is that it is executed so poorly it reeks of just last minute ass-wiping to push a product through the door.
Music & SFX
80% of this show is Sakura screaming, or someone saying "do you give up?", "no!", "It hurts!" "Ow!" or "Give uppu!" There's basically no music to speak of, outside of the two songs that make up the OP and the ED, which just wind up getting used in the show again anyways because guess who sings them? Sweet Diva does.
You'd think that a show about SINGING POP IDOLS would have a lot more musical variety. Or just music in general.
Grade F. I've watched shitty 80's anime with more soul than this shit.
Character Design & Theming
.... okay. I have to fill out this category. Because it is a thing that I do. So it has to be here.
*sighs* From what I can tell, the character designs are pretty faithful to the manga. While not entirely original, and not exactly inspiring, the characters have the most basic characteristics of being visually identifiable. Meaning they have different hair and slightly different body types. By which I mean some are taller, some are skinnier. The only one that was actually interesting as a character design was that fat one who never really showed up more than twice despite being a prominent figure during the goddamn opening sequence.
I don't even know her name. It may have only been mentioned once, I don't remember. While they may have stayed faithful to the manga, that doesn't necessarily make it any easier for me to remember character names. And pretty much there's no real character growth for anyone outside of 'oh no I got beat now I am mad and must turn around and beat that person back'.
Plus the theme of never giving up, while present through the whole show, was so horribly executed, and pretty much rammed down our throats. At the end of the show, the main character doesn't even choose to pursue both at once - she is straight up ordered to do it, which completely destroyed any potential growth she might have supposedly been making through the entire show.
This show gets an F+ for their efforts. It was a ridiculous premise with not a lot of material, but it was handled so horribly that their efforts are largely wasted, and border on simply not caring to begin with.
Final Grade: F-
If someone gave me an episode of this show and presented it to me as a student project in an animation school, I would be a little more lenient and give them a D-. I would then point out everything they did wrong, but tell them that their efforts would not go unrewarded, and as such would allow them to pass the class simply because, well, clearly they put a lot of effort into it. I would then tell them if they wanted to go back and fix all of the shit they f***ed up that I would consider giving them a higher grade as a result.
This show would make Harmony Gold blush. It makes Saban's treatment of the Power Rangers look good. This show literally has so little, and uses it so much, it's like a one trick pony that only learned half of a trick, and doesn't know that there's actually more to the whole thing. That makes it a half-trick pony, I guess.
What I am saying is that this is the laziest thing I have ever seen shit out. And I spend a lot of time on the internet.
The only reason someone would want to watch this show is because girls wrestling is hot, and hearing those screams is so incredibly arousing. But you can only watch the same thing so many times before it makes you want to start eating broken glass and washing it down with a gallon of bleach.
I have literally watched better hentai than this. I've even watched it from the same company that produced this crime against humanity.
I've said it once before, and I will say it again. This show is a complete waste of your time. It's a waste of the animator's time. It's a waste of the studio's time to have even produced.
Yet somehow they are still attempting to host a live event for this crap?! How is this even possible? For that matter, how is this even justifiable?? There is no possible way that this show can be popular enough to warrant their own live events. It's literally not possible.
If this is the kind of thing which can actually manage to succeed in Japan, then we clearly have a lot to learn from Japan. Because companies like Electronic Arts? You are clearly doing it wrong.
Do not watch this show. EVER. Do not recommend it to anyone. Do not make anyone watch it.
Not unless you really, really hate that person.
But that would be incredibly cruel.
Watching this show is making me wonder some very, very bad things. Like, do I now have to re-think what is considered the worst anime ever? Because I'm starting to ask myself: What Kodomo no Jikan really this bad?
And I am not liking the answer.
NOT. AT. ALL.
Avoid this show like the plague. I warned you.
I WARNED YOU.
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