In The Devil is a Part-Timer! (yes the exclamation point is part of the actual title) tells the tale of a demon king named Satan. He attempts to take over the world of Ente Isla and nearly succeeds, but is defeated and forced to flee to another world. That world? Why modern-day Japan of course. But things are different here. Satan has no money, very little magic power, no way back home and only one of his equally powerless faithful generals to help him. So while they search for a way to restore their powers and get back to Ente Isla in order to try and take over it again, Satan has to hold down a part-time job flipping burgers to pay the bills.

The Devil is a Part-Timer! Could’ve been horribly hokey but it’s an incredibly smart comedy. Sure, there’s the usual fish out of water jokes you get from this kind of setup, but the characters adapt pretty fast and it’s pretty funny to see Satan get excited about getting a raise or getting promoted at his menial job and put real effort into it. It could probably work on this premise alone but it adds great layers with various characters from Ente Isla pursuing him, namely Emilia Justina, the hero who drove him out in the first place who also has to hold down a job while keeping an eye on the demon king and making sure he’s not up to anything nefarious.

The characters are just a lot of fun. At one point another one of Satan’s generals, Lucifer shows up and causes trouble but Satan and Emilia actually team up to beat him and he just ends up living with Satan and his other general and becomes an online shopping addict as well as a very adept hacker (which leads to a pretty funny bit where they hack Emilia’s customer service station at her regular job as an “experiment”.). There’s also a couple other genuinely interesting subplots going on such as things happening back in Ente Isla that end up affecting the human world and the fact that Satan is actually… nice? Seriously, he cares about the people of this world, especially those closest to him (which includes Emilia in an odd sort off way) and seems to actually thrive at his job which hinges on being nice to the customers. Is this from him becoming human or was it a hidden side he had all along? Or is it simply to make everybody drop their guard for his eventual attempt to take over both worlds?

In the end it makes for a very intriguing and extremely entertaining comedy, the best I’ve watched in a while. I sat through 7 of the 13 episodes and had a great time and fully intend to finish the series in the next day or so and I’m sure I’ll be very disappointed that there’s only 13 episodes to enjoy.

Final Rating: 5/5 Former Demon Kings flipping burgers…

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I’ve seen some of the anime that crossed over and became a hit in the US, but Samurai Champloo evaded me, most likely because it was on at odd hours as part of adult swim, which admittedly I rarely watched. But this came stateside in 2005 and had a lot of buzz, but 9-10 years ago there wasn’t the easy access to anime we have today, so I as wondering how it would hold up.

The storyline itself is pretty basic, in ancient Japan two wandering Samurai, Mugen and Jin, don’t really care about much except fighting worthy opponents (or anyone who pisses them off, really). This gets them in a load of trouble up to the point they are set to be executed, but they are rescued by a plucky young waitress named Fuu, on the condition that they help her find a mysterious samurai who “smells of sunflowers”.

Samurai Champloo is tagged as a “hip-hop anime”, but whoever did that probably has no fucking clue and was just trying to make it “hip” to American audiences. It’s supposedly unique hook is these “record scratch” moments where it’ll make the sound of a record scratch like a DJ was playing and either pause or rewind for a second. I just found it off-putting and annoying, and there’s nothing else that would fit the label of “hip-hop”, the music is solid but nothing that stands out as particularly “hip-hop” style.

And it’s too bad that Samurai Champloo feels it has to do this stuff to be different, because it’s a perfectly solid and fun anime. The trio of characters are fun and interesting, the swordfights are stylish and great to watch, and the humor is mostly well done, albeit with a few bits that run for whole episodes and fall pretty flat (like one where an artist who tricks girls into slavery suddenly becomes comedically panicky or the episode with a “European” disgusing himself as a samurai). That record scratch stuff just feels completely unnecessary. If you are looking for a deep and complex story you won’t find it here though, through the six episodes I watched, there wasn’t much in the way of character or plot development to the point where I occasionally forgot  what the protagonists main goal even was. Often the episode has them coming into a town and something distracting them like a rice eating contest or Mugen and Jin getting bored and tired of Fuu and going off to do something else for a whole episode before happenstance brings them together again, with maybe one bit of info thrown in about the samurai they are searching for at the end of the episode. Up to this point, it’s not even explained why Fuu is looking for the Samurai, but admittedly it’s only 6 episodes in of a 26 episode run, that’s plenty of time to explain things. And I enjoyed their distractions, but I could see it be maddening to somebody who wants to find out the mystery behind the samurai and why Fuu needs to find him. I suspect you could watch the first episode to get the basic setup and watch the last few episodes and not miss out on much in the way of important developments. But I would also argue that Mugen, Jin & Fuu are a fun trio to watch no matter what they happen to be doing in a particular episode so it makes up for the overall pacing.

Final Rating: 3.5/5 Samurais who smell of sunflowers…

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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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