Digital: A Love Story is a visual novel type game made by one single person. Impressive enough, at first glance. But given the travesty that was the last indie game I encountered in the course of these reviews, I understandably went into this one with a bit of caution. Nicely enough, it wasn’t needed at all.
Okay readers I have a few ideas for what I want to review next, but I cannot make up my mind at all. So I decided it is time again for you guys to pick what I should review next. Below are the choices for stuff I would like to review. I have done this numerous times before but I am making a slight change with this. Along with the choices below I am also going to include an area for write in answer there. This is not going to be a free choice to put anything down there are a few rules with this. First it cannot be a show that I have already reviewed. Two, no rare OOP titles (I do not have that kind of money to track down those titles). Third, streaming titles are allowed HOWEVER they must be shows that appear on a legal streaming site (TAN, CR, Hulu, Funimation, Crackle, etc). Fourth, no super long shows*. If you want to make a suggestion for what I should watch next you can either put the answer in the choice other or you can add it to the comments section of this post in a format similar to this:
Show: XYZ, it is currently streaming on DEF.
*Disclaimer: I do have the right to reject the majority vote if there is no realistic way for me to review the title in question (for example the sequel to a show that I have no watched, or something that would take too long for me to review like One Piece or Naruto)
The poll will run for one week starting tonight and will end May 19th at 6:00 PM EST.
Update: So it is a little late for the update but the polls are closed. Since it was a tie between Blue Drop and Escaflowne I will review both titles.
Time of Eve, aka Eve no Jikan. Honestly, this review this week was almost the newest Final Fantasy game, but with all the time spent on the demo and still not managing to achieve everything, as well as some other events that ended up with me reading through the archives of another blog and stunbmling across a mention of Eve no Jikan, this reiew ended up being Eve no Jikan. If that confused you, you understand how my entire week has been. Consider yourself welcome.
Eve no Jikan is a show released by a rather small animation studio, hence the two month and above release times between episodes. If yu don’t recall having seen the show on tv, that would be because it was apparently netcast. I can better explain that by saying it was shown for free online instead of broadcast, which gives you an idea how big the budget of the show was.
The main story revolves at first around a boy and what seems to be his robot. To be more accurate, as it has a human form it would be an android. To be pedantic, as it has a female form, it would by a gynoid. It is never really clear if the robot is his directly, or a possession of his family.
This is going to be a really interesting movie to review, in part because of the high regards almost every person places on it.
Plot: I can spoil as much as I want, because the movie starts with the ending, and the rest is a flashback to explain how the ending came about. In short, the main character and his sister are sent to live with their aunt, due to the fact that their mother died in a firebombing. They cannot stand living with their aunt, so they run away. Unlike every other series and movie where the power of love and friendship would save them, reality intervenes and the rest of the movie is spent watching two children starve to death.
This isn’t just a dose or a shot of reality, it’s drinking the whole bottle and drowning yourself in the brewery of reality. This movie is emotionally like a dominatrix who ‘forgot’ the safeword. It’s several other amusing metaphors and similes that I forgot to write down and thus cannot tell you.
Imouto Wa Shishunki is a basic slice of school life comedy 4 panel manga. The series centers around a boy with a younger sister. he has a perverted friend, she has a couple friends, later three primary friends. One of them is the classic straight man from comedy, and cuts down the jokes of the other girls.
The plot is so basic as to be non-existent. Actually, I would like to say that is true, but the plot simply is not there. There isn’t even a Lucky Star or K-on! type of plot where there are jokes and such, bu they at least age as the story progresses. K-on was mostly 4 panel format (better known as 4-koma) and the characters went through the years of high school. Imouto Wa Shishunki has none of that. I could settle for no changes and progressions in the characters so that they remain 2 dimensional, but they don’t even age. Nothing at all changes about them.
Given that the plot isn’t there, along with the parents of all these high school kids, One would expect then that the adults in the story would be reasonable, responsible people. Luckily for me, that doesn’t happen. the adults are more perverted than the students, to the extent of making jokes at the students that I am sure would be harassment at the very least. They do lampshade this with a single strip where the straight man girl asks if she should sue, and the teacher says they’d prefer not.
