A Black Falcon
Member
It's definitely better than most of the junk airing these days, that's for sure. In my opinion, Senran Kagura is easily the best anime airing in Spring 2013...
And on that note, how about something I wrote up while not posting in the anime threads. I don't have much, but this one's long enough to probably be worth posting. There's this, a review for one of the Saki Achiga-hen OVAs, and some couple-sentence reviews of a few episodes that probably aren't worth posting, and that's it. But this I do want to post; it's my review of Milky Holmes Alternative, from January. Remember that I really liked the first season of Milky Holmes, and liked season two overall as well; S2 had some weak episodes, but was mostly good. This... this was not good, at all.
Tantei Opera Milky Holmes Alternative 1-2 (All) - Even though I went into this with somewhat low expectations, this series sadly fell far, FAR below them, and overall was very disappointing. Essentially, Milky Holmes Alternative is a poor series that exists to sell copies of the Milky Holmes PSP games. It's no good on its own, and as an ad for the games, it makes me want to stay far, FAR away, and would even if I knew Japanese. This is completely off tone for the franchise, and the whole idea was poorly conceived from the start. Why do they keep ruining franchises like this... though it looks like the anime is going to get a third season, fortunately based off of the first two and not this stuff. Alternative looks like it sold badly (under 900 sold month one). Good, it deserved to.
As for the plot, Milky Holmes Alternative is an alternate world where Milky Holmes still have their powers (good concept, could be fun for an OVA), and are the students of a male master detective (who is the main character of the games and is an obvious self-insert protagonist). Need I even say that putting such a character in this was a horrible idea? Well, it was, that's for sure. The guy's not the worst -- at least in this anime there's no romance at all between him and the girls, for one thing. If there was it'd be creepy, because he's like twice their age (can you romance them in the games? I don't know), but here at least there's none. There is some scenes about how they like him as a teacher, which probably exist to suggest to the audience that maybe they do like him that way, but it doesn't really hint at anything beyond that, and even that was of course way too far. This guy should not exist! That the guy exists at all is a strike against this series. There's also one new female character, a girl called Lily. She's alright. Kind of bland, but alright. She has a nice improvement by the end of the series, versus how the starts out as.
But it gets worse. Indeed, the biggest problem with this series isn't the new male character, as questionable as that inclusion is. It's the plot and concept. Essentially, episode one barely even has a plot at all. It's more about them looking around London and exclaiming about how cool London is and how they want to see the Thames Festival etc etc, than about anything else. There is a plot, which ep. 2 continues, about these stolen paintings, but it's secondary. Still, I did like how at the end of ep. 1 Lily's power is instrumental to stopping the villain; she was quite down on herself, so it was nice to see her do something helpful.
So, after ep. 1, I was thinking that this series was poor, but not the worst. Maybe just barely passing overall (maybe).However, after ep. 2, that changed. Ep. 2 managed to be even worse than the first one. The biggest problem here is that the plot is FAR too dark and real-world-supervillain serious. I mean, Milky Holmes is about silly stuff. The "villain" in the main series, Arsene, isn't too evil. Even when there is a worse villain, like pig-boy, it's presented in a comedic way. But this guy... this is all serious. And the threat is serious too. Remember great, funny stuff like the evil god of lard stealing all of the world's lard? Well, this time, the villain's plot is deadly serious: he wants to set free a vial of plague which will start a plague that will kill 98% of humanity, simply because he thinks that people don't fear the darkness enough anymore and he wants to change that. Yeah, this is NOT a plot that has ANY place in Milky Holmes, to say the least. What in the world were they thinking here? I have no idea, but it's sad that someone thought that this was a good idea. It wasn't, to put it mildly. Awful, just awful. This OVA has no place having the Milky Holmes characters in it.
And then, to add insult to injury, the ending is a non-ending --
the villain gets away at the end. Play the games to really catch him, or something, I guess? I don't know if he appears there.
