President Dog Takes On... Zenkaikon 2014!

Hey everyone, welcome to a President Dog Takes On... special feature covering the 2014 edition of Zenkaikon from Lancaster, PA!

This was a rare opportunity for me to get out and take a trip to visit an anime convention on my own as just an attendee, which I value highly in multiple respects. In the interest of full disclosure, the only major anime convention I get to participate in is Baltimore's Otakon convention, the second-largest of its kind in the U.S., but as a staff member. Needless to say, this limits what I can and see on my own as my priority is to help the actual paying attendees have the most amazing convention experience possible, though I get rewarded with other perks that am not at liberty to divulge. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything, but it's nice to witness the convention experience from the other viewpoint every so often.

Due to other obligations I could only attend the Saturday portion of Zenkaikon, but was still an absolute blast and I'd like to share with all of you my journey, some highlights and great memories I'll be taking away from this excursion.

First of all, the location for this convention, in my opinion, is excellent in both travel time relevant to where I live (basically a 1 hour, straight shot ride from northeastern Maryland that barely required GPS assistance) and the actual building, surrounding area and parking. The organizers of this convention selected the Lancaster County Convention Center and the adjoining Marriott hotel and it could not have been more suitable for a convention of its size. Unlike Otakon, which has to able to accommodate nearly 35,000 people over its weekend plus cram as many video rooms, panels rooms and other activities as possible into nearly every available space in the Baltimore Convention Center (even having to utilize the Baltimore Arena for its masquerade), Zenkaikon is a much more intimate, small-scale convention (approximately 4,000 attendees this year) which means a significantly larger amount of breathing room. Lines were never too long for any major event (except for maybe an autograph or two) and unless you were at the very tail end of a line, you could easily get a decent seat for a panel. To go along with that, props definitely go out to whoever set up the seating for the panel rooms. There was never a lack of seating for anything, even major events like the big voice actor's panel; I wasn't anywhere near the front of any given line throughout the day, but still managed to get a seat roughly 5-6 rows away from the stage at worst to any given panel. Granted, the one event that may have flown in the face of this would've been the masquerade, but I typically don't attend those and didn't in this case either. Another big plus came in the form of discounted parking for the local parking garages, which I was quite pleasantly surprised to see. I always approve of anything that keeps extra money in our wallets and parking is always a racket in normal cases, so big time thanks for cutting my parking expenses by more than half. One last location-related positive was the abundance of quality food options in the immediate area of the convention center. Beyond a random Subway sandwich shop, all the restaurants I saw in surrounding area of the con were local non-chain eateries, from a little hole-in-the-wall pizzeria (where I got an excellent, well-filled calzone for dinner), to a smoothie shop to an an actual Japanese restaurant, not more than a couple minutes walk away from the con at most. Not even Baltimore can boast that relevant to the BCC's location. Let's also not forget that in the same adjacent area, there is the oldest continually operating farmer's market IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY in the Lancaster Central Market. Regardless of what you personally go to Lancaster for initially, if you are ever there on a Tuesday, Friday or Saturday morning or afternoon, go to that market. You will not regret it.

Anyway, on to the events themselves and I'll be going step by step throughout my journey through Zenkaikon, starting from registration to the end. I started my day by easing my way into things, heading to a video room and watching, of all things, Super GALS! Yes, I know I just reviewed it and I own the whole thing already, but I wanted to see if anyone else knew about the show. Sadly, most people seemed to peek in, saw what was being shown and promptly left. Granted, I think the showing had a couple of strikes against it: 1) they were showing the dub and 2) they were showing the first four episodes, which to the untrained eye aren't all that exciting (except for maybe the moment where Ran slaps Aya in the face in episode 1). Oh well, their loss. 

After watching a few episodes, I headed over to the vendor/artist's alley hall to do some exploring and not too far along into my journey I had my first big awesome moment. I ran right into one of the big guests of the convention, Doug Walker. For those of you who don't know, Mr. Walker is the man behind The Nostalgia Critic, a fairly popular Internet reviewer character and the mastermind behind the website ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com, which hosts dozens of other online reviewing personalities. Of course I didn't want to be a bother to him during what appeared to be some free time in his certainly busy schedule, I asked for a quick hello, picture and handshake, to which he was more than gracious enough to oblige. Apologies for the terrible quality on the picture, but I only had time to get it with the front camera on my cell phone. 

After that exciting moment, I headed on my main reason for going to the artist's area, meeting up with one of my favorite artists, and at this point, friends, Jessi, who runs the excellent nerdy webcomic Geeks Next Door along with her husband Matt. I've given them a lot of business through conventions over the years and I've always praised their works immensely. Plus they're just wonderfully nice people to put up with me always hunting them down at cons and distracting them from their business. Seriously, check out the webcomic and buy a shirt or something from them, they deserve it. I mean, if Jessi's willing to dress up as a donut-themed Sailor Scout, the least you can do is check her webcomic out.

After catching up with my friends it was finally time to do some shopping, which means indulging in some art for the most part. I didn't bring a lot of funds, put I did pick up a few prints that caught my eye for one reason or another, such as an odd King of the Hill/Sailor Moon crossover, a stylized graveyard that the artist originally made out of paper scraps, a sweet Shaun of the Dead poster and an additional badge of a delightfully manic Harley Quinn. Maybe one of these days I'll do a feature on all the art I've collected from cons, because I certainly have my fair share.

Next on my agenda was my first big panel, the big collected Voice Actor's panel with, among others, the other major guest I came to see, Jim Cummings. Best known for his work with Disney animation, most people will know Mr. Cummings as the voices for Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Darkwing Duck and many more. He was even part of the singing voice for Scar in The Lion King, which seriously shows off his skill. Many didn't even recognize him for that since the blending of his voice during the song was so seamless. Along with him at this panel were four other voice actors:

• Marc Swint, known as The Engineer in his work with online reviewer Bennett the Sage and his major role in the anime for Mass Effect as Mason.
• Greg Houser, a veteran of voice over in several fields as well as roles in the recent Evangelion movies.
• Bill Rogers, the current (not original, as there was some confusion at the panel) voice for Brock in the Pokemon anime, as well as roles in Gravitation, Boogiepop Phantom and Genshiken.
• and finally Brina Palencia, the voice for Ciel in Black Butler, Natsuki from the movie Summer Wars, Tony Tony Chopper in One Piece, Mad Moxxi from the Borderlands video games and many more.

The panel consisted of two major parts, a few sessions of fan Q&A, and my personal favorite, reading from famous movie scenes as their respective characters. Since this part was too good to pass up, I filmed it to preserve and share with all of you. Please enjoy and forgive any jitters from my handheld camera.

Following that panel I took a little time to eat and explore the various gaming areas, both an expansive area for board, card and tabletop games with an impressive library of games for all to play and rather intimate video game room that include a few arcade machines, such as this excellently preserved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cabinet. 

 Later on I attended a more dedicated Q&A with Jim Cummings, where he went a bit more in depth on his background and the business of voiceovers, from being the class clown of a Catholic school in Ohio to shaping the childhoods of multiple generations from his iconic characters. He also shared a few funny stories and bits of insight, such as a certain musing about how much fun villains are as their own characters and if they ever get a song, it's usually a tango or something of the sort, unlike heroes whose musical choices aren't nearly as fun. I was also lucky enough to get his autograph and a picture with him afterwards and I value his time spent amongst us, the fandom. 

With another big meet and greet out of the way, I then shifted to having some real fun and attended a panel on bad video game cartoons which turned out to be a real hoot. To give any of you a tip as to how to either run a convention panel or pick which ones to attend, leading off by dumping out several huge bags of candy and promising to toss out every single piece to the crowd is a good way to start. We were encouraged to make fun of the terrible cartoons, which consisted of an episode of Captain N: The Game Master (Episode 8, “Mr. and Mrs. Mother Brain”) and a episode of the Saturday morning Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon (Season 2, episode 1, “Game Guy”), to which the snarky quips and chocolate flew to all, not to mention other weird things, like (no fooling) a plush Hungry Little Caterpillar I grabbed for shouting out how terrible and off-model Rotor the Walrus looked in the Sonic episode we watched. Yes, the same Hungry Little Catterpillar from your elementary school library. In between shows we had random bad trivia games and even worse NES challenge competitions, though I think the problem was in the competitors rather than the games, which made it more hilarious and more agonizing to watch people fail at completing basic things such as getting through World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. as fast as possible or knocking out Glass Joe in Punch-Out!!. I will give them a little slack about trying to get through the first level of Contra on three lives, that does take a little practice. At the end of the panel, they even made cleaning up everything into a game which they rewarded people with random junk prizes. I cleaned up and got a DVD copy of the awful Will Ferrell/Jon Heder figure skating movie Blades of Glory to go with my Hungry Little Caterpillar plush. Weirdest prizes ever. 

So after that blur of sugar-rushing weirdness I thought I'd wrap up the day with a pair of panels run by Doug Walker himself, the first being a quite stimulating discussion panel on movies, specifically ones where we have a differing opinion to our peers. Whether we enjoyed a movie the majority of people hated or we couldn't stand a film that everyone praised, it was up for discussion here and made for a very engaging and entertaining group exercise on expressing our own structured opinions despite what the majority thinks, which as always been a personal driver for me and this blog as a whole. Unfortunately I didn't get called on for my personal choice of movie, which would've been Shrek 2 and its appealing to the lowest common denominator, but those who did share praised films such as The Rocketeer and the recent Ender's Game movie, while deriding popular films such as Frozen, The Nightmare Before Christmas (providing an interesting comparison to the classic Land of Oz books) and even such supposed classics as The Breakfast Club. Following that panel, along with a game of convention-style musical chairs involving leaving the panel room and getting in line to back into the same panel room, we had a more dedicated Q&A towards The Nostalgia Critic and Doug's website as a whole. Doug went into details about learning from mistakes and projects that failed to find their audience, as well as more about his personal favorite choices of his catalog of work. He really expressed his love for all forms of media and showed to us that the only way to succeed in anything creative is to try everything you can and learn from all the experiences. And of course someone had to get him to do his classic Nostalgia Critic freakout over the Bat Credit Card from his review of Batman and Robin. 

Also, enjoy this funny scene of Doug interacting with a flirty dragon hand puppet in the dealer's room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV1xi4VqGTA

Alas, that was all for me for this one day as the siren song of the road home and my bed was calling and I could not stay longer. Overall, I think Zenkaikon was a wonderful experience and a refreshing change of pace from the big cons I'm so used to attending and working. It really felt like you could do anything and everything you wanted without waiting in never-ending lines or fighting through crowds. From the guest lineup to the layout of the space to all the fans and attendees involved, everything went smoothly and pleasantly and makes me want to come back next year, hopefully for an entire weekend in that case. Don't get me wrong, I love the atmosphere and fellowship that Otakon and its tens of thousands bring each summer, but for a more focused experience, a con such as Zenkaikon was most definitely worthwhile. To wrap this up, I'll share a few nice pieces of cosplay I found in my journeys throughout the convention center halls and encourage you all to come back for another edition of President Dog Takes On... where I'll (hopefully) be getting back into the swing of reviewing anime. Enjoy!

Happy Easter from President Dog Takes On!

Hey everyone out there, President Dog here wanting to wish all who celebrate it a happy Easter. Of course, what's better than celebrating than with a few bunnies? Why, bunny girls of course!

Also, I'm watching the new crop of anime for the spring and these are the ten shows I'll be keeping an eye on, along with the day of the week they air or get uploaded so you can follow along:

Brynhildr in the Darkness (Gokukoku no Brynhildr) - Sunday
The Irregular at Magic High School (Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei) - Sunday
One Week Friends (Isshuukan Friends.) - Monday
Black Bullet - Tuesday
Majin Bone - Tuesday
Soul Eater Not! - Wednesday
No Game No Life - Wednesday
Hitsugi no Chaika - Thursday
Nanana’s Buried Treasure (Ryuugajou Nanana no Maizoukin) - Friday
Selector Infected WIXOSS - Friday

So enjoy your sweets, celebrate the zombie Jesus (if that's your thing) and dig in a new batch of anime! New reviews and features are coming soon!

P.S. If the stars align, I may be heading for a day trip to Zenkaikon in Lancaster, PA on Saturday, April 26. I don't get to many anime conventions as an attendee, mostly due to being staff at the major one I attend, so if I go, expect a special feature on it!

President Dog Takes On... Super GALS!: A Retro Review

Hello everyone and welcome back to President Dog Takes On... this time with a special retro anime review!

Since I started on this journey of writing and reviewing I've been wanting to go back and honor a few underrated gems of the past that I've bonded with for one reason or another. To lead things off here, there's not a bigger show that comes to my mind than our subject today, Super GALS!

 

Now before I get into what the show's all about, a little bit of backstory is in order, both for the subject matter and what bonded me to this show. I first discovered GALS! when I was in high school, somewhere either in 2004 or 2005, as part of a collection of on-demand programming through my cable TV subscription. For those unfamiliar, as part of most major digital cable packages in the U.S. and other countries, cable companies will often give their subscribers a small library of shows they can access at any time, ranging recent episodes of popular shows to obscure, new or unknown programming with a more dedicated focus than a typical cable channel. The anime available through these services came mostly from The Anime Network, though a few other collections existed from Funimation and other companies, and rotated through series on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis. Being the naive pup for anime that I was at 16, I decided to basically spin the wheel of what was available and try my luck. Fate happened to land on GALS! (specifically episode 23, “Tear it Off! Rip Rip! Teacher's Golden Image) and with its blend of action, drama and comedy with just a touch of romance and heaping helping of solid characters, I was sold. I quickly found the first half of the show on DVD and watched it all the way through, only reluctant to the fact that after episode 26, it previewed another episode that didn't exist on that set. It wasn't until a few years later when I was just starting my first year of college that the second half of the series was finally released, albeit only in subtitled form as opposed to the sub and dub options on the first half. Undeterred by that small fact, I gladly ate up the rest of the series, especially as a way to pass the time in between classes or when I would have to take public transportation to the campus.

The series was one of my first looks into more direct Japanese culture as GALS! is a slice-of-life show in the sense that it looks at a specific subculture of teenagers, the kogal, as well as the cultural center for fashion and said subculture, the Shibuya ward of Tokyo. Like how otaku and technologically-minded people flock to Akihabara, the fashion-minded and (at least during the turn of the millennium and the time in which GALS! takes place) the kogals flock to Shibuya. It's still a major focal point for the fashion world in Tokyo, but as with any trend, the kogal subculture passed and the female youth of Japan moved onto other things. If anything, this show would just be an interesting little media representation of a subculture and nothing more. Fortunately for GALS!, it is much more substantial.

Our show centers around Ran Kotobuki, the self-proclaimed 'World's Greatest Gal.' Now most people tend to have a bit of a split in intelligence, either towards education (a.k.a., book smarts) or learning facts of life and good morals (a.k.a., street smarts). Ran seems to have a pretty lopsided split towards street smarts. Usually lazy and absent-minded when it comes to school (the only class she doesn't tend to fail is PE and she often mooches homework answers off her more adept friends and acquitances), Ran truly shines on the streets and when dealing directly with people, always willing to dispense good advice about friends, life, or when needed, a good swift kick in the rear or slap in the face. Literally. It all comes from Ran's upbringing, living in a family of police officers and instilling within her a deep-rooted sense of justice. Unfortunately for her folks, she has no desire to join up to the family calling and decides, at least for now, to keep on being herself while dishing out a bit of vigilante butt-kicking on the side. In between shopping, karaoke, parapara dancing, octopus balls and other fun things in Shibuya, of course.

As we follow Ran, our cast naturally builds around her, from her best friends, Miyu and Aya (a former troubled teen saved from her delinquent ways by Ran's older brother, Yamato, and a smart, yet sheltered girl that Ran helps to come out of her shell and enjoy life as a gal, respectively) to a few guys from a popular all-guys school, Rei and Yuya (An aloof, somewhat snarky guy who Aya falls in love with and his upbeat partner-in-teen-idolness who has eyes for Ran) and eventually grows to include rivals, other boyfriends (including Tatsuki/Tatsukichi, Ran's energetic, silly and very monkey-like squeeze) and many others. There's no shortage of colorful, interesting and intriguing characters to be had here, which keeps episodes fresh. Another aspect of GALS! that keeps the viewer engaged is the variety and balance the stories provide in each episode while maintaining an evolving state of relationships. Plots can range from the serious, such as romance, finding jobs, or even family issues, to the silly and absurd sometimes. No joking at all, there are at least three episodes where Ran gets either hypnotized or hit in the head and her personality changes completely. It even gets lampshaded after the first time it happens in the episode previews. The most gripping overall plotline of this show has to be the relationship between Aya and Rei, as it's the longest-running and it quickly gets the viewer invested emotionally. Several times throughout I felt myself feeling so sad for Aya and getting increasingly angry at frankly, how much of a stone cold jackass Rei as acting towards her, but that's just my reaction and things do eventually grow towards the positive for both characters.

I do recommend checking out this series in one form or another between the anime and the manga (of which I also own a few volumes and gives its own spin on the show, but includes many if not all of the same stories), but the anime itself is an odd duck in the way of how it was licensed and translated, as I alluded to in my introduction. The first half of the series was distributed by the now-defunct ADV Films in both its original Japanese and an English dub. As much as I highly enjoyed the dub, which I can't say for very many anime in general, and its colorful choice of slang and dialogue, I have to recommend that any prospective viewers watch this series in its original Japanese because that is the only way the second half of the series is available, as the transfer of distribution rights to Right Stuf International neglected to continue the dubbing. However, Super GALS! is an ample length at 52 episodes, has enough going on to keep a viewer invested and is an enjoyable, albeit not the most original show. It does fall in line with some of the main character archetypes of the early 2000s era of anime and usually sticks to their guns about it; although characters do grow, not everyone truly does and those who do tend to do so very slowly. Another small nitpick is that the art style doesn't stand out all that much compared to its contemporaries. All the girls tend to have the same thin, almost twig-like body type just differentiated by their clothes and hair and such and outside of some colorful choices of palette, a lot of the set pieces are your typical cityscape of streets, shops and public areas (location accurate hotspots such as the Hachiko statue and the Shibuya 109 building are present and prominent, however, so points for detail). Overall, as an objective review, I give Super GALS! 3.5/5, but with my sentimental value factored in, it's at least a 4 to me. An enjoyable show with an ample length and story, but may not be something that sticks with you long after the final episode.

As a special bonus for anyone interested in checking out the show, not only is the entire subtitled version available on YouTube, I compiled all 52 episodes into a playlist for your viewing pleasure. Just follow the link below and see what it's all about.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyTww4fiJxEMZkBim8I5A0QNIXtC2hn1

President Dog Takes On... The Summer 2013 Anime Blitz!

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of President Dog Takes On... Before I get started, a few bits of housekeeping:

1. I apologize for the brief hiatus, life got in the way for a little while.
2. The Kim Possible retrospective will be continuing and I promise it'll be the next entry.
3. I've started watching about 8 different shows from the fall season, so expect highlights from them in the future.
4. Scratch what I said I was going to do at the end of the Fantasista Doll review; we're going in a different direction, though if you're still interesting in Danaganropa, keep reading.

Okay, enough chit-chat, let's get down to business. The summer anime season of 2013 has been quite an eventful one and turned out to be an excellent time for me to jump back into the medium head-first. I've thoroughly enjoyed seeing the newest shows Japan has to offer over these past couple of months, but I haven't had the time, content or sheer patience to do a full review for each and every one, though I've certainly tried to give a few the full treatment. To remedy this, I figured I'd give you all a few quick hits and misses from the rest of this season, share why I liked or disliked them and give a little more insight into why they didn't get the full review I've provided some of the others. Also, for the shows I gave an initial review, I'd like to follow up on how they panned out and whether I recommend them after all is said and done. So strap in, listen up and get ready for...

President Dog's Summer 2013 Anime Blitz!

First off, let's knock out the shows I've already gone over in their own reviews (click the title of each show to go back to my initial review). I'm not going to recap the overall plot here, but pick up from where my initial review left off, as some stayed pretty consistent and other veered way off course, such as...

Stella Women's Academy

Wow, where to start on this one... Remember in my initial review how I went on that giant rant about Yura and the moment when she surrendered and got unjustly scolded by Sonora? Turns out that moment pretty much made our main character snap. No, she didn't go and shoot up her school or anything, but her mind pretty much warped around the fact that she showed weakness. This moment starts a gradual descent for Yura which lands her the dubious honor of being quite possibly my most hated character in all the shows I watched this year. Not only did I still despise her haircut (I will not let that go, especially when the OP and ED animations were inconsistent with it afterwards), it created a rather jarring tonal shift in the rest of the show. A few episodes after Yura's character shift it quickly becomes clear that the fun times are over for the viewer and serious, 'I don't want to play this if I'm not the best' Yura is here to stay. She becomes so obsessed with becoming strong that she pretty much takes over everything in the C3 Club, ignores her friends' needs and wants to have fun and eventually shuts them all out in her own personal quest to control every little thing around her. In doing so she alienates her team, breaks the rules in a tournament out of petty vengeance and even joins the rival team, though it does give the only moment where Yura gets some comeuppance for her attitude towards the game of airsoft and not knowing her role on a team. Therein lies the problem overall with this show, however; in the end, Yura truly receives no punishment for acting so horrible outside of her own guilt trip. No one gives her the scolding she really needs, no one acknowledges to her face how she's changed for the worse and when she finally returns to the C3 Club, they welcome her back like nothing ever happened. Even Sonora, the girl she was supposedly sharing a dorm with and the leader of the club, not only said nothing, but actively ignored Yura multiple times throughout the series. In short, every decision Yura made through the bulk of the series made me want to reach in the show, slap her and tell her to stop screwing up so much. Also, another big issue with the series is what I'm calling a case of show-stitching and this also goes back to my tonal shift issue. As I stated before, starting in the tail end of episode 3, the mood and tone of the show got considerably darker, focusing on Yura's downward spiral. Outside of a festival-type episode where the C3 Club puts together a shooting range, everything from episode 4 to the near the end of episode 11 is all one big shift from the somewhat upbeat mix of a new girl in a new school and cute girls doing cute things. However, once that ending for episode 11 happens, we're out of all the doom and gloom and back into silly fun. We even got a completely crazy episode 13 where all the girls in the entire series compete in an odd cross between an airsoft tournament and a beauty pageant! To be fair, it was the most enjoyable episode of the series, in my opinion, but still this whole setup reeked of Gainax either screwing with people's expectations or trying to have their cake and eat it too. If Stella Women's Academy could've decided whether it was a fun moe sports anime or a dark character study and stuck with that decision, it wouldn't have been the trainwreck it ended up becoming. I have to knock off a full point from my initial rating of 3.5/5 due to the inconsistent mood and for making me actively despise the main character, but as far as trainwrecks go it may still be worth a watch. Also, since I'd be remiss to wrap this up without mentioning it, here's the brilliant mashup between this show and the video game Spec Ops: The Line, an impactful, highly recommended military shooter that all the Call of Duty obsessed gamers need to play. Spoilers to both included, fair warning.

Dog and Scissors

Okay, not as much to talk about here as there weren't as many major problems with the show from where I left off in my initial review. The big things that happened as the show went along were a somewhat meandering mystery plot between trying to find the cafe gunman who killed Kazuhito, which evolved into someone threatening Kirihime which in turn evolved into strange attacks by hypnotized civilians. Throw in some other crazy characters such as Kirihime's masochist editor who loves nothing more than to be tortured by her, Kazuhito's well-meaning, but equally off-the-rails sister who's obsessed with making curry and fights with a giant electric knife, a depressed, often suicidal young author who was behind the attacks by the hypnotized people (from reading hypnotic suggestions in her book, natch), a maid who loved showtunes but attacks anyone or anything that comes close to knowing her secret... the list goes on. The series didn't really have much of a conclusion, for better or worse, ending on an odd premise: what would happen if Kirihime got drunk? Let's just say it results in wedding bells, a trip to Hawaii and eventually a nice big off-screen blowing of chunks. Overall, this show was a lot of fun just to take in, despite its overarching aimlessness in the way of plot. The characters and situations they got in were enough to keep me going with pleasure and hopefully it receives a season two, as there appears to be much more that this world of young authors has to offer. I will have to knock off half a point in its rating for the lack of a real consistent plot, but it's still a 4/5 to me. Just an aside here, I feel at times I'm the only reviewer who didn't immediately write Dog and Scissors off as allegedly being garbage or a waste of the audience's time. I'll admit it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I can't deny having a lot of fun watching this show from start to finish. I'll recommend it personally, but I can understand if it's not followed through.

Sunday Without God

To make this short and sweet, I dropped this one soon after episode 3. All the issues I had with the show that I mentioned in my review took me completely out of it and frankly, any show that's going to take up until the fourth episode to actually start isn't worth my time and shouldn't be worth yours either. Also, by that time, the art style was far too grating with its constant lens flare and sunset lighting for me to tolerate it. Still think it wasted a brilliant setup, don't bother unless you have tons of patience to spare, moving on.

Fantasista Doll

As I expressed at the beginning of my original review for this show, I went into it not expecting much, just hoping for a genuine old-school magical girl anime. What I got was a surprisingly pleasant little romp with just enough intrigue, interesting episode setups (including one all about playing poker, of all things) and character development to keep me invested, not to mention an active ongoing plot, especially compared to the other shows previously mentioned. There are a few nice little twists that I didn't see coming, plenty of action and humor, not to mention one of the silliest yet most awesome things in a show this season: The Friendship Cannon, where Sasara gets shot out of it like a human cannonball.

Uzume even gets a drum while the cannon is summoned to do a drum roll upon firing.

I'm somewhat inclined to raise my rating of this up a half a point to a 4, but as I said before it depends on how much you enjoy some of the tropes of this sub-genre of anime. Like I said before, it scratched an itch in my viewing habits and did so admirably. Another show of which I wouldn't mind a second season and I do recommend.

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Now that the recaps are completely done, let's break a little new ground with some of the other shows from this season I didn't get to cover in full.

Blood Lad

What's it about: An action tale of a vampire named Staz who is obsessed with the human world whose life gets turned upside down when a human girl name Fuyumi wanders into his world, dies and becomes a ghost. He vows to find a way to resurrect her which takes him across the four corners of the Demon World.

Brought to us by Brain's Base, the studio that gave us Baccano and Durarara!!, Blood Lad is the obvious choice for the dedicated action show of this season. The aesthetic of the show quickly reminds me of another supernatural action series that I particularly enjoyed, Soul Eater, though without the bigger set pieces and as many dark colors. However, outside of a few interesting characters and unorthodox fights (Including a boxing match with Staz's rival and ally Wolf and a strange portal-hopping fight with the eccentric Hydra Bell), this was really average action fare that never really had the time to get its feet under it, more than likely due to this show being only 10 episodes long, making it significantly shorter than most shows this season. Action shows generally need a longer run to really be impactful, to build their world and set up the powers of the main characters, much less the characters' personalities overall. Going back to my previous comparison to Soul Eater, that series took the first 3 episodes introducing the main cast gradually and in small groups, taking the time to establish a personality for each character, motivation to why they're in the story and built some enjoyable action around them. Blood Lad, while not having as many protagonists, still has to be forced to get its setup, very rough framework for character personality and motivation out in one episode and even then we only really get it for Staz. The final episode of the show does end on a cliffhanger though, so there's possibly more to come beyond this initial 10-episode run. Frankly I'd hope it gets more time and episodes to build up the mythos and details of the Demon World. At a bare minimum there is an OVA coming at the end of the year, so if supernatural action is what you're yearning for, you could do a lot worse than Blood Lad, though I'd stick with Soul Eater overall in this type of show. 3/5 from me.

Gatchaman Crowds

What's it (supposedly) about: In a modern, yet futuristic Tokyo, a team of superpowered people in personal armored suits fight evil anomalies to protect the city.

What I just wrote above is basically the same thing I originally read when scouting out shows to watch this season. Combine that with the name Gatchaman, which immediately brings to mind memories of the classic Battle of the Planets/G-Force style Gatchaman of the past and needless to say I had some decent hopes for a fun action romp. What I got, however, felt like something completely different and in my opinion, not for the best. There are some novel ideas at work in this show, especially on the matters of advancements in social media and people's decisions to help their fellow man in a technology driven society, but the core concept here seems far removed from the product we received. The main team of heroes is as loose a collection of people as you can get for a show like this, with none of them really standing out in a positive way. Even the suits the main Gatchaman team have are all completely different from each other in the style and structure, no theme or connecting elements between them at all. The most egregious offender, character-wise, is the show's lead, Hajime. Now let me get something straight here: I absolutely love the energetic, downright crazy girl archetype in most of my media. Haruhi Suzumiya, Harley Quinn, Izzy from the Total Drama franchise and yes, even Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic all rank in as some of my favorite characters to watch. Hajime, however, is probably the first character of this type that really turns me off. It's just the particular eccentric habits of this character that grate on me, like for example, whenever a character calls out to her or tries to get her attention she commonly answers back 'Yes, I'm Hajime!' like either she doesn't know the person calling out to her or the other person doesn't know her. She also tends to get along with random strangers uncommonly easy and vice versa. Normally, silly aspects about characters of this type endear them to me, but not these traits and not this character. Worst of all, the show tend to focus on Hajime's eccentricities for the bulk of the early going of the show, even taking away from the fighting and action to give us an extended scene of Hajime making friends and doing arts and crafts projects with people she randomly met up with on a train through social media. If you wanted to do social commentary on how things like Facebook and Twitter affect modern life, that's fine, I think it's actually a clever idea. Just don't made it a priority in a new entry into a longtime classic action franchise, especially when it keeps the viewer from what they came on board to see: sentai-style superpowered action. I can only muster up a 2.5/5 on Gatchaman Crowds; personally, I dropped this about 4 episodes into its run for lack of action and the annoyance level of Hajime. It may still be worth it for the previously mentioned implementation of social media to the story, but I expected far more from an iconic franchise than that.

Danganropa: The Animation

What's it about: A group of 15 teenagers with different special talents are mysteriously gathered, and subsequently locked inside, a state-of-the-art high school where the only way to escape and graduate is to murder one of their fellow classmates and not get caught.

Based on a visual novel/mystery game of the same name, Danganropa is basically what you'd get if you merged the board game Clue, the Phoenix Wright video games and the movie Battle Royale together. The main character of the show is Naegi, a lucky, optimistic but otherwise normal guy who just got accepted into the prestigious Hope's Peak Academy, the school for the crème de le crème of the high school world. The moment he sets foot on campus, he blacks out and when he comes to, he's assembled up with 14 other talented teens by the bizarre, creepy and silly plush bear/supposed principal of the school named Monobear. The ground rules for graduation are laid down (as mentioned above), the gears of murder and mystery are set in motion and it's up to Naegi and whoever he can align himself with to escape and survive the despair. Now the main reason I backed off from doing this as a full review is simple: it's a mystery story and doing anything in detail would ruin the show more than typical spoilers. In its most basic form, this is the main structure of the series: student get murdered, survivors investigate the crime scene, students have a class trial to determine the culprit, accused gets punished in a crazy yet fitting way to their super awesome talent. The brilliance is in the execution (no pun intended) of that framework with these characters and the motives for murder. At the beginning we get a somewhat disguised scene where in order to motivate the students towards playing his little game of murder, Monobear gives each one a message or video of something or someone they hold dear. We see Naegi's, as he's our protagonist and in the game the player character, but we never know the others. Combine that with the growing friendships and alliances between students, an overarching mystery of how they were trapped inside the school in the first place and the brilliant payoffs for those found guilty, there's a lot to keep the viewer motivated to watch. Another smart touch is that unlike typical shows, there's no 'next episode' preview after the end credits which gives even further incentive and debate as to what will happen next. The characters are varied enough to butt heads or work together nicely, as they take archetypes from all ends of the spectrum of teenagers and works well for this kind of show. We don't need to know everything about a given character for them to work here, just enough to keep us guessing about their motives and understand in some detail their personality. From what I know of the original game, the show follows the exact same plot, so fair warning. If you want to truly experience this story in the most immersive way, I'd seek the game out, but for someone like me who doesn't want to go through all the mess of figuring everything out on their own, this series is well worth a watch. It's well-paced, exciting, and like any good mystery, has enough twists and turns to motivate you to press on. 4/5.

Watamote (No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!)

What's it about: The life of a teenage female social outcast named Tomoko who laments how despite her success in dating sims and online life, she's hopelessly friendless in reality and vows in her own odd way to change that.

And now we've come to possibly the most divisive series I have run into in a long time. The main anime reviewer/writer on Kotaku recently called this show 'the most mean-spirited anime [he'd] ever watched.' Honestly, I wouldn't quite go that far, but it's pretty uncomfortable and awkward to watch in my opinion. Others share my sentiments, others find it hilarious, others still even bond with the awkwardness. But let's get one thing straight: this is not the typical depiction of an obsessed otaku we normally see as a character in modern anime, far from it. This isn't like Konata from Lucky Star whose otaku nature is played for being silly and cute and quirky. Tomoko is basically all of the horror stories we were warned of before getting into our own nerdy hobbies and then some. She constantly has deep bags under her eyes from lack of sleep, she has an extremely pessimistic view of the people around her, frequently calling her peers unsavory names in her own internal monologue, has a crippling level of social anxiety so severe that she makes a personal victory out of being able to order fast food, for example, and constantly has life dump misfortune on top of misfortune upon her head. Now I've always believed in the concept that humor is a subjective thing and that there is no one joke or moment that is funny to everyone, but this is certainly not something I end up laughing at or feel anything outside of an odd mix of sympathy and awkwardness. I both want to help Tomoko, but realize, even at just being a teenager, she may be too far gone to help her get out of her warped mindset. There's being an introvert and then there's her. In the end, that's all this show is: a slice of a life we don't usually see portrayed in anime boiled down to its most exact and frankly unpleasant detail. I guess the only other thing I can really say is that it's at least important to give Watamote a shot. Who knows, you may find it funny in a schadenfreude kind of way, you could bond with it if you've been on the wrong side of the cruel hand of fate, or you could be like me and find it overrated and not funny. One final thing, the opening sequence and music are probably the most interesting thing I can find related to this show; though it really doesn't fit with the subject matter, outside of a lyric or two, it still rocks pretty hard and makes me wish it was being used for some psychological trip into the mind of a serial killer or something. But it's not. 2/5.

There's one last series I want to talk about from this season before I get absorbed into the massive blob of shows that makes up the fall anime season (49 shows!), but I actually want to give it the full review treatment, mainly because it's deserving of it and also deserves to be called my favorite anime of Summer 2013. Get ready to learn the science of the heart when next time, President Dog Takes On... Love Lab.

President Dog Takes On... Kim Possible: A Retrospective, Part 1

Hello again everyone and welcome back to another edition of President Dog Takes On... This time around, we're going to be taking a detour from the world of Japanese animation to take a look back at, in my opinion, one of the most well-crafted and fun series of western animation of the past decade: Disney Channel's iconic teen hero action/comedy, Kim Possible. Don't worry, I'll get back to the anime soon, but I just want to change up the pace. Anyway, I digress...

To really get some perspective on the whole history of this show and its significance, we need to go back farther than when our subject today premiered, all the way back to the middle of the 1980s. It was around this time that the Walt Disney Company set their sights on making their first animated series for network television, a realm only previously explored by the company with live-action fare, such as Zorro, The Mickey Mouse Club and the iconic anthology The Wonderful World of Disney. The risk was very high, as at the time the mindset towards television animation was that shows were rather disposable, thus not worth spending substantial amounts of money to produce, even for major networks and their Saturday morning children's blocks. Disney decided to defy the industry's conventional logic, establishing the Walt Disney Television Animation studio in 1984 and soon after creating their first pair of original animated series, Disney's Adventures of The Gummi Bears and The Wuzzles (Interestingly enough, the two shows premiered on the same day and time slot on competing networks, NBC and CBS respectively). The shows were small to moderate hits, nothing too spectacular, but it was incentive enough for Disney Television Animation to aim higher. Taking some of their established property, in this case the long-running comic book stories of Donald Duck, his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, as well as Uncle Scrooge, creating original adventures for them and presenting it with their established high standard of animation quality, Disney gave the world DuckTales in 1987 and it was finally the hit the company was looking for on the television front. With the creation of DuckTales, and soon after Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, Disney created a base for a programming package of high quality animated series that quickly became a cornerstone of a generation of children throughout the 1990s. For nearly a decade, Disney had shows that were just as iconic as the big budget animated features they were renowned for (some of which eventually became shows of their own, such as Aladdin, Hercules, 101 Dalmatians and a spinoff from The Lion King starring Timon and Pumbaa) and even showed range from episodic comedy shows to full fledged serious action shows like Gargoyles.

Unfortunately, the syndication and network children's programming market began to bog down near the turn of the 21^st century with government mandates on providing specific kinds of programming, such as shows required to be educational, thus leading to the reduction or overall elimination of most blocks of animated series on major television networks and their affiliates, The Disney Afternoon, its contemporaries and successors included. In the meantime, and probably just as big a factor in this shift in the programming landscape as what was previously mentioned, the boom of specialty cable networks such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and most specifically in this case, The Disney Channel were in their prime to pick up the slack. One major difference between the channels however was the fact that for much of its lifespan, The Disney Channel was a pay channel along the lines of HBO and Cinemax; cable subscribers either paid a premium for it or didn't have it. This changed in 1999 when in negotiating conditions with cable operators, Disney pressured to either have Disney Channel carried as a basic cable channel or not renew their carriage contracts. Eventually the cable operators relented and Disney Channel was no longer premium fare. Despite this switch, to this day, the channel does not run traditional commercial ads, rather filling in time gaps with other features about their programming and other Disney media mixed with small sponsorship bumps. Around the time of the basic cable transition, Disney Channel began to ramp up their original productions focused on the preteen and teenage demographics, starting first in live-action programming but premiering their first original animated series, The Proud Family, in 2001. However, like the previous initial foray into animation, the initial offering was a mild success at best. It wasn't until June 7, 2002, that Disney Channel would find its equivalent show in terms of breaking ground for the future to DuckTales. That show was Kim Possible.

 Our heroes.

The brainchild of co-creators Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle, who previously worked on shows such as the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command spinoff from Toy Story and wrote for several of Disney's direct-to-video sequels, Kim Possible centers around the titular teen hero battling evil, righting wrongs and spanning the globe, all while managing a typical high school life. Well, as typical a life as you can have while having the responsibility of saving the world. Luckily, Kim's not alone in her fight against the forces of evil; Always at her side is her sidekick and best friend (and eventual boyfriend) Ron Stoppable (yes, both Kim and Ron's name are puns and completely intentional), his pet naked mole rat/deus ex machina Rufus and the gadget-building supergenius prodigy Wade. With their help, Kim frequently thwarts the villainous efforts of mad scientists, corrupt billionaires, killer robots, mutated swamp monsters, twisted famemongering debutantes and much, much more, all in time to make it to cheerleading practice. So now that we've established what the show's all about, let's get down to the big burning question: why is this show so much fun? The answers are both simple and complex, so let's break it down.

1. The characters are well constructed, with strengths and weaknesses, and are able to grow and change over the course of the four seasons of the show. In the case of the main teenage characters of the show, it falls right in line with the four year structure of a typical high school, going from freshmen in season 1 to fully acknowledged seniors in season 4. Breaking it down even further, several episodes give ample character development to our main cast, from Kim knowing her limits in world-saving and in normal life to Ron learning not rely on people and being capable in his own right outside of being a distraction of simply a sidekick on Kim's missions. By season 4 he even uses his skills at running and dodging villainous attacks to become their high school's star running back in football.
2. The writing compliments the degree of detail the characters receive, while still providing lots of action and comedic moments throughout. It's rare when an action show has a rogue's gallery as entertaining as the main heroes, if not moreso. Case in point is Kim's arch enemy Dr. Drakken and his main henchwoman Shego, who have a dynamic together that's possibly even more enjoyable than Kim and Ron with their over-the-top ideas to take over the world coupled with ample snark and deconstruction of the hero/villain relationship over time. Also, I'm a big fan of a lot of the normal dialogue Ron gets, as they can swing him from simply thinking on a different odd wavelength at teenage life to being a total conspiracy nut at times. He is really the comedic base of the show and gives a lot of the show balance from both the civilian and world-saving angles.
3. The animation and overall style of the show, while hit or miss in the first season due to using different animation studios, is very flowing and unique. It works well both capturing the grandiose action moments and the more low-key everyday life scenes as well. A lot of that credit goes to character designer Stephen Silver, who also designed the characters for the Clerks animated series and another favorite show of mine form the same time period, Danny Phantom (but that's for another time).

In the end it shows that a lot of love was put into the show from all aspects and the fans returned the love in spades. From its initial premiere on Disney Channel in 2002, it was the highest-rated and most-watched new show in the channel's history, the first episode, “Crush,” was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award, and the show as a whole was nominated multiple times for Daytime Emmys, winning once for Outstanding Sound Mixing in 2005. However in February of 2005, after wrapping up its third season and 65 total episodes, it would end production and wrap up with the television movie “So The Drama.” Now I'm sure many of you are wondering about the three season thing when I just spoke about a season 4 not too much earlier. Well, due in large part to a major fan campaign and petition and the overall popularity of the show, Disney Channel decided to bring back Kim Possible for a fourth and final season in 2007, capping the final year of high school for Kim and Ron, ending in their graduation in the two-part finale, also named “Graduation.” Overall, the series ran a total of 87 episodes, including two made-for-TV movies, “A Sitch in Time” and the aforementioned “So the Drama.” That run gave it the honor of the longest running ongoing series on Disney Channel up until very recently when Phineas and Ferb surpassed it. Not a bad legacy for your basic average girl who can do anything.

So with that many episodes making up this series, it may be hard to figure out where to start checking out the show, especially with its overall episodic nature with ongoing parts sprinkled in here and there. For new viewers, I'd suggest starting at the beginning with “Crush” and go on in order from there. Conveniently, Disney has nearly every episode of the series posted on a YouTube channel for everyone's enjoyment here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL07AF77521FAFF928 (EDIT 6/27/14: Sorry folks, link doesn't work anymore, Disney made the playlist private.)

For others who may just want to cut to the chase and see the best and avoid the worst episodes the show has to offer, join me in the next part of this retrospective when President Dog Takes On... The Top 10 and Bottom 10 Kim Possible Episodes.

President Dog Takes On... Fantasista Doll (Summer Anime 2013 Part 4)

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of President Dog Takes On... Summer Anime 2013. Recently a certain prominent critic, or guy who plays the character of a critic depending on your view, took a look back at the quintessential icon of the magical girl genre of anime, Sailor Moon. Granted, it was the hacked-to-pieces English dub DIC Entertainment produced (and mostly just the first episode for some reason), but between this, the supposed remake of the former series coming this winter and the subject of today's review, Fantasista Doll, I've been in a bit of a mood to talk about this staple genre of the medium.

For those unfamiliar with the archetype genres of anime, magical girl anime tend to center around a middle-to-high school age girl who, through either an encounter with a magical being or object, is endowed with special powers which they use to fight evil and right wrongs. For such a simple premise, there have been countless variations on the basic formula, adding psychological drama, tragedy, satire, parody and more in with the original elements that make up a show of its kind, though for the most part staying lighthearted and palatable for a variety of ages. In other words it was the fluffy, ineffectual genre looked at mostly as kids' stuff. I do admit that even as a male in his mid 20s I have watched my fair share of this genre and I dare say a few of them were some of the most influential to me in getting into anime as a whole. The previously mentioned Sailor Moon was a staple of my after-school viewing from its days on Cartoon Network's Toonami block and the English version of Cardcaptor Sakura was also high on my radar during its run. 

However, a lot of the more wholesome elements flew right out the window with one show from 2011: Puella Magi Madoka Magica. I won't go too far into the details of it, as just the shock of thinking 'This is actually happening in a magical girl anime?!' is worth the price of admission, but it significantly darkened the genre into something, quite frankly, it shouldn't have been and other shows have since followed suit, leaving me to wonder the fate of the traditional magical girl anime. I'm all for expanding the boundaries of a time-worn genre, but sometimes I just want the genuine article and I don't believe there's anything wrong with making a show like that as long as it has personality and doesn't bore me to death or get me angry watching it.Referring back to the original guide from Kotaku I have been using as inspiration for my choice in this review series, there were three new series of this type: an alternate universe to the Fate/Stay Night series (I'm not familiar with the base series, so that was out), Daybreak Illusion, which looked to me like something along the Madoka Magica line of overly dark and trying to be mature in both subject matter and art style, and Fantasista Doll. Thankfully, the final of the three was just what I needed to scratch my itch, though with a slight, but not too off-course twist.

Unlike my previous entries in this series, Fantasista Doll doesn't come from a big name production studio, which in and of itself could be a blessing for the show. Instead it comes from the relatively recent Hoods Entertainment, which only has a few shows under its belt such as Mysterious Girlfriend X and few scattered OVAs, though they will be producing the upcoming BlazBlue anime in the fall, so it's certainly a group to keep an eye on for the future. For now, let's jump into their most current work.

On a stormy night we find a young girl watching a horror movie, though not really enjoying herself too much and looking pretty scared, clutching a pillow. This is our main character Uzume, who will find out much more about after the opening scene. Meanwhile, in a mysterious building, we see a figure opening a cabinet revealing a row of glowing cards with silhouettes on the faces of them. Interspersed with more of Uzume watching her movie, the figure runs and drops the cards, spilling them onto the dirty floor and giving the viewer a better look at the silhouettes, revealing the outlines of female figures on them. Now between the juxtaposed scenes here, only one is actually important to the show and it's not too hard to guess which, though the scene with Uzume running scared from the movie into the bathroom and screaming after running into her sister was pretty funny. Can't say that something similar hasn't happened to me personally, though with was never as a result of a movie. 

 Oh, these figures couldn't be anything important, could they?

Anyway, onto the opening sequence and along with it, the first thing that really grabbed me about this show: the theme. I have to say, I'm a bit of a sucker for choirs in opening themes for anime, even if the contribution is minor. The choir part of the opening for Sunday Without God was the only part that I enjoyed of that theme and it fits the tone of that show overall. In this theme for Fantasista Doll, it's really the hook to its chorus (and the first words of the song) that, at least in my case, gets me excited for the show to come. It's a simple as saying the name of the show, but it's effective. The song from there has a slightly harder edge than your typical upbeat magical anime, with a well-placed guitar riff mixed into its core that lifts it up back into that earworm of a chorus. I admit it's not profound music by any means, but it's just an infectious sound that sets a fun tone for a show of this type. Throw in a few nice action scenes and even what looks like a little Sailor Moon tribute at the end and it's a nicely well-rounded opening.

We start out the first episode proper with a small flashback to a young Uzume playing a card game that bears a striking resemblance to Magic: the Gathering (a personal pastime of my own) in a big tournament and landing the deciding play to win. But in the current time, our heroine has overslept in typical magical girl heroine fashion and runs to get ready and head out the door to another day of school. Of course getting dirty looks from rude businessmen and getting squished like a sardine on the train don't make for a pleasant morning either.

 Uzume, it could be a whole lot worse for a girl your age in this situation. Just grin and bear it.

However, on that train a stranger grabs Uzume's bag and pulls it back into the train cab, but we never see who or what happens to it and neither does she, so she lets it slide until she finds an odd, ornate cell phone-looking device in her bag. 

During one of her classes, the image a of a blonde haired girl appears on her notebook out of the corner of her eye and we see other girls of different colors around other parts of the classroom, though no one else can see them. Uzume thinks she's just seeing things again and goes on with the rest of her day, getting asked to join a card game club in the process by one of her classmates, citing her tournament prowess and dropping a fun, more direct reference to Magic.

 I love little nods to things like this, though it always makes me wonder what a MTG anime would be like.

Later on, as she's getting ready for a tennis game, Uzume is startled by a rattling of the locker room door and a mysterious hand trying to grab her. She dashes off in fear and hides in a closet, calling out for help. Just then, an unknown, somewhat robotic voice calls out that it could be of assistance and out of desperation, Uzume accepts, though for some reason this 'entry process' requires everything from the typical name and blood type information, to favorite foods and the age when she had her first crush. 

 But after all that, a light flashes from her pocket and the newly acquired phone device and from it a girl appears, calling Uzume her master. This is Sasara, the first of Uzume's newly acquired team of Fantasista Dolls and well... she has a little bit of an attitude problem. Of course I'd be irritated a bit as well if I was just in my skivvies for the first meeting of this kind, but that's beside the point. 

After that, another girl, dressed in the same school uniform as our heroine, enters, summons her own ninja-like doll and attacks Uzume and Sasara, the latter trying to protect against the ninja doll while Uzume tries to escape. The chase leads to the school gym where Sasara finally gets equipped to fight after teaching her master how to properly summon her dolls. Apparently inside the card collecting phone device they keep all of the clothes and equipment for the dolls in giant bullet trains. Go figure. 

Anyway, with Sasara fully equipped, we really down to business into an excellent, but short fight scene, between her and the ninja doll. Flips, dueling on top of a balance beam, flying kicks into one of those vault horse thing (I seriously don't know the proper name of it), it packs in a lot of action in a short amount of time. Uzume even gets in on the action, inadvertently, by headbutting the ninja doll out of panic. 

After defeating the girl and the ninja, Sasara explains that there are evil forces out to get her and the rest of her group of dolls and that as her master, Uzume is their only hope to keep them out of harm's way. Obviously this is a lot for a young girl to take in all at once, so she's hesitant at first and asks for more time to truly decide. Later that night, Uzume meets the other dolls under her service, though they make it kind of tough for her to take her bath, as they all want one too. One thing to keep in mind with the dolls: they aren't just holograms or digital representations of beings. When summoned they take on physical forms, though they are somewhat tethered to the summoning device of their master. However, even though they're meant to serve their master, they won't do everything on command and have a certain level of free will, such as Sasara coming out of the summoner at will and the dolls giving some resistance when Uzume wants to use them to do her homework and clean her room. 

But after some talking out their misunderstandings and filling in the gaps of the whole master/doll relationship that Sasara neglected to mention during the entry process, Uzume thanks her for coming to her defense and risking injury for her sake. This touches the dolls deeply; they had never been directly thanked for their actions by their master before, though they thank Uzume in return for allowing them to be free once more and under the guidance of a master again. Just then, she receives a phone call from a strange man named Lord Rafflesia, congratulating her for forming a bond with the dolls and tossing a bouquet of flowers to her from her bedroom window. We then see another mysterious figure, this time all in white with a cape standing on top of a telephone poll. Apparently, he is the one who bestowed upon Uzume the summoner and the dolls in hopes that she would become a great master. Plus I can't help but mention he bears a resemblance to Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon, just needing a bunch of roses to really seal the look. 

Beyond the first episode, the series the goes on to give each of Uzume's dolls a focus in the next handful of episodes respectively, which gives us time to get to know their personalities and abilities more in depth than what we ever could have in the opening episode. I personally enjoy when shows take this level of time to dedicate to character development, most notably when Soul Eater did it for each of the main groups that made up their ensemble cast, which in essence is what we have here as well.  Along with the spotlight on each doll, Uzume gets a lot of growth as a character too, starting as a bit of a scaredy-cat in the beginning but growing more and more confident as things go along, as well as getting more knowledge on the world of her dolls and others that have them. For those main reasons, I didn't want to go too much further into the show from the first episode, despite the fact it leaves this review a little shorter and less detailed than previous entries. I encourage you to go farther and look at the next five episodes if this show sounds appealing; by then the cast is much more fleshed out, the plot ongoing and the setting more three-dimensional. I will say that the dolls have a nice mix of energy and personality and are thoroughly pleasant to watch, whether just being funny, experiencing the world around them or getting into brawls with other dolls. The animation's solid once again, no real complaints on that front, but nothing too spectacular. It does get points for being so crisp from a relatively new production company (roughly 3 years old as far as I can find), but it's nothing that will set your world on fire. Echoing my sentiment on the opening, the music when noticeable is solid as well, though the ending theme may be slightly too sugary sweet for most people as well as the visuals that go with it. I can forgive that since it's a very female-heavy show in its cast and all, but it is worth giving a heads-up just in case.

Overall, if you took Cardcaptor Sakura, modernized it and threw it in a blender with a Magic: the Gathering deck, you'd probably end up with Fantasista Doll... and a very nasty, gummed up blender. I give the show a 3.5 out of 5 though it can go up closer to a 4 depending on how much of a fan of the genre you are and how deep you like to get into knowing the characters. It's not truly remarkable by any means, but it's very solid for what kind of show it is and sometimes that's all I really want in a show. Fantasista Doll airs its simulcast on Sundays at 2:30 PM on Crunchyroll. Next time, it's going to take more than a clue and your best Phoenix Wright impression to escape this school alive. President Dog Takes On... Danganropa: The Animation.