First Impressions: Winter 2014 – Buddy Complex & Recently, My Sister is Unusual

Okay new year, new season – time to do the same thing I do every season and spam the blog with poorly reasoned knee-jerk reactions to new cartoons!  We’re not really starting all that strongly, as first up is Yet-Another-Stupid-Sunrise-Mecha-Show and Yet-Another-Shitty-LN-Imouto-Show; Buddy Complex and Recently, My Sister is Unusual.

Buddy Complex

Buddy Complex is Sunrise Mecha by numbers – my immediate thoughts upon watching the OP was “sure is Gundam SEED up in here”, as it just has AU Gundam written all over it.  The actual episode was okay – watchable without any real stand out moments of brilliance.  BuddyCon is middle of the road decent as far as Sunrise Mecha shows go – which is a shame since I kinda enjoy when Sunrise go a bit nuts with their shows – so far this is no Valvrave.  Although thinking back on it, there were plenty of elements that the writing team could have gone mad with – hello sudden time-travel – but they kept things rather restrained…..at least for this episode, it could go all sorts of crazy next week.

The main character is rather bland, but at least he seems to have a backbone and doesn’t flip out like a massive, whiny, pansy like a lot of bland male leads.  Beyond the fact he seems like a pretty nice guy who likes basketball, Aoba really doesn’t have much of a personality – hopefully the other guy, Dio, is a bit more interesting when he’s introduced next week.  The girl only exists to be a plot device and some of her dialogue was cringe-worthy…..but since time-travel is involved I’m sure she’ll pop up again in some capacity unfortunately.

On the production front, again it’s all very serviceable, but hardly striking.  Characters designs feel a bit flat and boring, mecha is okay nothing unique….and I kinda hate how Sunrise keep giving female pilots powder pink mecha – it is not an attractive colour for a giant robot!  Voice acting is average, OP was rubbish, ED marginally better but still generic as feck.  Overall Buddy Complex is pretty vanilla, I’m going to be watching it regardless, but don’t think it will be overly memorable.

Recently, My Sister is Unusual (ImoCho – Saikin, Imouto no Youro ga Chotto Okashiin da ga)

It actually took me two attempts to finish this fecking episode.  First time I ragequit midway through when the ghost girl started molesting the imouto character.  Watching some Kuroko’s Basketball restored my good humour long enough to attempt to finish the episode……and once I finish writing this I’m going to sponge out the memory with some One Piece.  ImaCho is awful.  Just awful.  I was all “lol Imouto Chastity-belt anime!” in the season preview, but didn’t really think that this show would be so utterly repellant that I’d struggle to watch a single episode of it.

The brother is bland incarnate just as we’ve come to expect from LN male leads, but the way the imouto is treated by the series is actually shocking.  Here we have a newly formed family were everyone is still trying to get used to one another, and yet the parents are buggering off to India and leaving their kids, who don’t really know each other that well yet, all on their own…..great parenting guys.  So this girl is faced with living with this older guy she isn’t completely comfortable with yet, in a new house she isn’t completely settled into yet.  And then she has to deal moments where she blanks out, a perverted ghost girl trying to possess her and molest her, all on top of the appearance of a chastity belt that can only be removed for 3mins per hour – all out of nowhere!  That poor, poor girl – I was traumatised for her.  And yet I think we’re supposed to be finding this show funny and/or erotic……what??  What an awful show.

Production isn’t even all that good, character designs are bland and generic, animation unexciting and the voice acting is boring.  Even the censoring is lazy with large logos, black bars and moment where it just cuts away to a still frame……if you’re going to have a pervy show what is the point to censoring the bits your intended audience is going to be most interested in?

Urgh, this show really put me in a bad mood, really can’t imagine anyone enjoying this disturbing crap.