Anyways, Mother Up is the story of Rudi. A powerful, no-nonsense music executive who’s got it all. That is, until a scandal gets her fired from her profile job and black listed in the industry. Now she’s stuck in suburbia with her two kids, who she has no idea how to raise as some nanny whose name she can’t even remember did that before.

And if Mother Up was a fresh look from the female perspective of a formerly corporate mom trying suddenly trying to raise her kids, it might actually have some merit. Instead what we get is extremely tired tropes of city clashing with suburbs, and a mom who 5 episodes in still doesn’t give a shit about her kids and hasn’t even tried to be a mother.

It’d be one thing if she tried and failed, it would be kind of fresh because TV, animated or otherwise generally portrays the dads as the bumbling idiots. The key difference here is that Rudi is smart and capable, just a selfish heartless asshole and it’s not funny.

Mother Up is presented as a “female take” on shows like Family Guy but the difference is while those shows featuring bumbling idiots generally inept at parenting, they give a shit about their kids and genuinely try to be better parents. Even if the characters don’t really grow and change you continually see them trying their best. That’s what people identify with and find funny. Flawed characters that can royally fuck up sometimes but are genuinely trying. Mother Up’s protagonist isn’t just flawed, she’s an awful person who you have no reason to root for and hope her kids get taken away, The sooner the better.

Final Rating: 1/5-Moms who would actually name their kids “Apple” and “Dick”.

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One big catch though. Everybody above the bottom of the barrel “no-stars” students get special suits that enhance their innate abilities, making upward movement nearly impossible. At the top of this hierarchy is Satsuki Kiryuin, who runs the student council and rules with an iron fist. This all gets torn upside down though when Ryuko Matoi transfers into the school, wielding a scissor blade and looking for information about who murdered her eccentric scientist father.

Kill La Kill sounds like a pretty normal mystery & revenge tale (at least by anime standards), but it adds in lot of crazy but fun elements that rise it a notch above the cookie cutter anime. It has slutty outfits but for both guys and girls and constantly pokes fun at them. There’s an organist literally called “Nudist Beach” which seems to have a weird tendency to get undressed while speaking exposition (or at least Ryuko’s homeroom teacher, who is a member). And there’s the absurdity of this all happening in the confines of the school. In Kill La Kill, nearly all the fights only happen inside the school and they are pretty insane. But nobody tracks down and fights anybody outside of the school. And they do acknowledge how absurd that is on occasion.

Kill La Kill is just a really fun series. I enjoyed the characters and the battles with crazy animation, Even the filler episodes are pretty fun. Highly recommended.

Final Rating: 5/5 Slutty blood-sucking outfits

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Right up there with Howard The Duck

But it wasn’t one of those shows I was hugely into as a kid. Still, I got the jist. Prince Adam, who is secretly He-Man, battles the evil Skeletor. Lots of gay innuedos for adults and you have wacky characters like Beast Man, Man-At-Arms and so on. There’s also Orko, who’s a fucking annoying incompetenet wizard or Jester. He never decides.

So like most hit cartoons of the 80s, of course He-Man would get some sort of reboot. So, in 2002 along comes He-Man and The Masters of The Universe, which basically rewinds everything back a bit. You see the “origin” of Skeletor (he had an origin?) de-age Prince Adam a few years and include characters seen in the toy line but not in show, and bam! He-Man lives again!

So here’s the surprising thing: The setup isn’t terrible. I mean the original is goofy as fuck and has it’s charm, no doubt. But for what would probably be sacrosanct to fans of the original, this plays it pretty close to the chest Teela is still pretty kickass, Orko is still annoying. Adam is a bit of a coward, but tries to be a hero without always relying on He-Man on occasion. Evil-Lyn is basically Starscream, which is great. There are ongoing story arcs. It even has a heartfelt lesson at the end of every episode. The animation isn’t spectacular but better than you’d expect from a lazy update of an old show.

Where He-Man and the Masters of The Universe falls flat is like 90% of the dialogue and actual plot execution is goddamn painful. A perfect example is in one episode Man-At-Arms and He-Man are trapped in a giant fish thing. He-Man is desperately trying to carry Man-At-Arms up the stomach before Skeletor wins the day. Man-At-Arms tell He-Man to just drop him because he’s too heavy with his armor. TAKE OFF YOUR HEAVY AS FUCK ARMOR, MAN-AT-ARMS. He-Man says some bullshit about not leaving friends behind later, but he’s just as fucking dumb for not telling his buddy to lighten the goddamn load. There are numerous examples of this. I’m not expecting something on the level of Mad Men or anything. but even in a kids show some goddamn logic and basic common sense has to be at play (unless you are purposely going for no logic or common sense, and this isn’t doing that).

At the end of the day though, much like G.I. Joe: Renegades, I have to ask: Who is this for? I guess it was originally to help launch a whole new Masters of The Universe line along with a movie (that’s still in development hell to this day) but since that never really materialized it just stands on its own as a weird oddity that probably hung around for 3 seasons because they had nothing else to put on in it’s time slot.

Final Rating: 2/5-Guys who had their face melted off with acid and still survived

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Welcome to Animation Quick Look! You know the drill, I watch something animated, tell you if it’s shit or not.

Ah the ever popular reboot of a show kids these days probably have no clue about. G.I. Joe Renegades cuts down the number of “Joes” pretty drastically (though ridiculous names like “Breaker” & “Lift Ticket” remain) and making everybody look like at best collge-age Joes if not high-school. Young is fine, but these “Joes” are supposed to have already seen plenty of action for the most part.

Anyways, this version has Cobra as an organization that basically runs everything, but appears benevolent on the outside. As Roadblock says, his momma works at a Cobra bakery, and damn those pastries are good! (not an exact quote, but pretty close). But of course they wouldn’t be Cobra if they weren’t doing some incredibly shady shit on the side like developing monster soldiers and arms dealing.

Essentially Duke, Scarlet, Snake Eyes, Ripcord, Roadblock & Tunnel Rat investigate some sneaky going-ons at a Cobra warehouse and get framed for blowing up the warehouse and murder.

They badly need to clear their name because they are on the run not only from Cobra but from an incompetent as fuck military investigation squad ran by Duke’s rival, Flint (yep, they’re rivals now). I mean seriously, there is one episode where they spend ample time in a small town helping the townspeople stand up against Zartan, who now runs a motorcycle gang. It takes them til the end of the episode to arrive. The Joes are considered terrorists, what the hell was Flint doing that whole time? It would’ve actually made for a pretty interesting episode if they had to help the townspeople while avoiding Flint and his squad. They have Lady J on the inside helping them, it wouldn’t be impossible.

The dialogue isn’t terrible, but the group constantly refers to themselves as “ordinary joes”. They aren’t fucking ordinary joes. Having people calling them GI Joes would be corny as hell too, but you don’t have to say it several times in an episode.

Ultimately, I just don’t know who this show is for. Anybody who is a fan of the original would probably consider it blasphemy, kids won’t care as theere is nothing to make it stand out from all the other military cartoons of the past decade. It’s not completely awful, but it’s nothing special either. No go joe.

Final Rating: 2/5 ridiculously named highly trained army specialists.

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Adventure Time is a goddamn phenomenon. It’s on Hot Topic T-Shirts and has several video games to it’s name. It has fans of all ages. Not having regular access to cable for the the last decade or so I never really got around to watching it on cartoon network, but as it’s recently been available on Netflix I decided to finally give it a try.

Adventure Time tells the tale of Finn, a young heroic adventurer and his best friend Finn, a talking dog with the ability to stretch and change his size at will (because why not) as they have various adventures through the magical land of Ooo.

And I’m really struggling as to why this is so popular amongst different age groups. I can see the kid appeal. It’s colorful, admittedly has unique designs and is full of the completely wacky random humor that kids usually love. But it doesn’t go beyond that. The humor isn’t clever, it’s just completely random for the sake of being random the same way Family Guy is and usually gets heavily criticized for. Hell it seems a more grown up Teletubbies, where there is little range or depth to the characters and little in the way of actual plot, just a bunch of random nonsense. I can appreciate random humor and weird characters, but they alone cannot carry a show and at least need to actually be a joke. I think the only time I even smiled in the 6 episodes I watched was at the end of an episode where they guide a frail old little elephant through a dangerous forest to a crystal fruit she’s wanted to try and after eating a bite she explodes and that’s the end of the episode. Random on its own is not funny, and random is this show’s whole theme. Maybe this is just a type of humor that’s not for me. Possibly because I’m not eight or stoned. Hell I love Spongebob Squarepants, which is a bunch of randomness but wrapped in some consistency and well-defined characters that Adventure Time is sorely lacking. To say I hated it is far too strong but I sure as hell didn’t get and do not understand the wide crossover appeal it has.

Final Rating: 2/5 exploding little elephants

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Last week, I reviewed Attack on Titan. It was fantastic but also brutal so admittedly I was looking for something a little lighter. Blood Lad is about Staz, a powerful but extremely lazy vampire. He is the boss of a demon territory, but all he really cares about is stuff from the human world, especially anything from Japan. He obsesses over manga (Japanese comics), video games and action figures and doesn’t particularly care about anything else. He thinks it’s a dream come true when Fuyumi, a human girl from Japan somehow has accidentally wandered into the demon world. Unfortunately it’s not long before she’s killed and becomes a ghost. At that point, Staz decides it’s his duty to revive her. Unfortunately, he has no idea how…

If you haven’t watched much anime, Blood Lad might seem pretty unique based on it’s premise, but really it’s not. It’s the Japanese version of your cookie cutter sitcom. There’s nothing horribly wrong with it, it’s well animated, it’s got a few solid laughs but demons and humans interacting and having separate worlds that interact is an extremely common theme in Japanese anime. The characters have extreme reaction to every single thing. They throw in the usual cute furry sidekick. give girls who are clearly of high school age huge tits and make them unusually sexual with constant references to their breasts and fleeting glimpses of nudity for no reason other than titillating desperate virgins. I don’t have an issue with animated nudity or sexuality and it can be used to comedic effect quite well but this just hammers it over your head again and again in every episode and feels extremely pervy.

And as oppossed to Attack on Titan where I watched a bunch of episodes because I was instantly hooked and wanted to keep watching, I watched about five episodes and figured that was enough. And the series is only ten episodes long. Even five episodes in there is clearly some filler material with Staz’s brother only giving him vital info about resurrecting Fuyumi if he’ll go kill a evil monster on the loose terrifying the various demon territories. What is this, an rpg? It’s not like the brother needs Staz’s help in taking the monster down, he’s more powerful than Staz is. It’s more like he feels it’s beneath him to get involved but he still needs to deal with it anyways (that does lead to one really good joke about Staz initially saying no because he just doesn’t give a shit).

The one really unique thing that I actually did enjoy is that most anime don’t really acknowledge that other anime exists and Blood Lad is filled with quick humorous references to things such as Naruto and Dragonball Z and Shonen Jump manga. But it’s not really enough to give the series a unique identity or anything.

If it sounds like Blood Lad is awful, it’s not. Overall I enjoyed it much more than I groaned at it. It’s a perfectly decent enjoyable anime that you can pretty much finish in an afternoon. It’s just doesn’t really do anything to stand out or be original. It’s the Japanese equivalent of a CBS sitcom. You might enjoy it while watching but then promptly forget about it not long after.

Rating: 3/5 Busty schoolgirls being eaten by carnivorous plants.

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So, moving on to my first review, Attack on Titan, which was one of the most popular anime series of 2013, so it has a ton of hype to live up to. The premise is pretty easily explained: Take the premise of Pacific Rim, but make the giant monsters mostly human looking (and naked but lacking genitals, thank god because I really didn’t want to look at giant dongs for a couple of hours, as it is you see plenty of giant ass) but technologically all the humans have to battle them with is cannons which barely do anything and swords. So yeah humanity is pretty well fucked. The last remnants have gathered in one big central city protected by a series of big walls. Things remain fairly peaceful for about a century (unless you dare to go outside the walls then if you are lucky you might come back with just one limb missing) but apparently the monsters were just holding out til they got bored, because they suddenly decide to take down the outermost wall and have no trouble doing so. After decimating most of the population of the outer city they mysteriously stop and everyone who survived has been evacuated to the inner wall. At this point the three young protagonists join the army with the intention of helping drive back the Titans (especially the main male, Eren, whose mother was killed and brutally eaten right in front of him) but when they resume attacking again five years later it all goes to shit and something drastic will have to happen if humanity is going to survive.

Probably the highest compliment I have to give this show is though I only intended to watch several episodes just to get a feel for it, I was pretty instantly hooked and ended up blasting through the first 10 and had to stop myself so I could actually write about it. On top of that it’s currently only available as subtitled rather than dubbed. I generally prefer dubbed just because it’s easier to follow but if a series is good enough I’ll have no issue with subtitles and that was certainly the case here.

The first thing that really struck me is the brutality. This series pretty much has an Game of Thrones attitude about it’s characters with interesting good characters constantly introduced and then savagely killed. And that’s good, because it makes the Titans a very viable threat instead of usual lumbering idiots who you know the heroes will always defeat and save the day without anybody even getting a scratch. The general style and fight sequences especially are pretty awesome, especially when the humans use “3D combat” where they basically fly around with hooks and gas canisters trying to take down the giant Titans. And it goes well beyond the simple soldiers vs. giants plot with Government incompetence and hubris, secret medical experimentation and corruption that adds a lot of compelling mystery and intrigue.

My one real complaint? The title doesn’t make a ton of sense. The monsters are called Titans sure, but Attack on Titan sounds more like some kind of space battle than humanity’s last stand against a nearly invincible enemy. But aside from that this is a ridiculously great series that at only 25 episodes would certainly be an excellent way to get your feet wet on serious mature animation.

Rating: 5/5 Giant naked humans

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