Momentary Lily

Cynthesia★ 2

Oh jeez what a mess. Momentary Lily has no clue what it wants to do and the result is a complete train wreck. Is this a generic monster of the week show? A generic CGDCT post apocalypse show? A generic sci fi show? A... cooking... show? Well it's technically all of these things at once but without any of the quality control required to make any of it work. First things first, the visuals. I actually don't mind them and am able to appreciate GoHand's maximalist style for the most part. Although this is almost entirely in regards to the action sequences which, while theydon't come anywhere close to the top brass, are interesting if anything else. In particular I enjoy the unique camera work and angling of shots, if it were paired with high quality art it would be quite satisfying. However, outside of the action the viewer is subjected to preset visuals which contrast against the character models to such a degree that it looks like they're navigating cheap green screen... despite being animation. Characters have to be in instant movement and so if t hey do much as breathe their entire body mass has to respond in kind. This is most blatant with Erika whose oversized boobs seem to be perpetually bouncing on a trampoline, for the less endowed this is shown through their hair which has the same level of jiggle physics. The plot is just an absolute mess. For the first quarter you'll expect this to be a generic monster of the week show, maybe even less than generic as the aliens they fight against all look exactly the same and lack any defining characteristics. They must've gotten bored of this though because they suddenly spend the next half of the show on extremely generic slice of life before leading into a not even half baked twist conclusion that doesn't lead anywhere. Every episode more or less plays out the exact same and they seem to be chronically afraid of development (of both plot and character) so when they do decide to let something happen it completely lacks any impact. Every episode also features this weird chibi cooking segment which seems to be included entirely to fill episode time and nothing else. The benefit of an anime original story is that you're allowed full reign of control over the events of the show, meaning that you aren't limited by deciding how much of the plot you're allowed to adapt in order to create a cohesive story. The downside to this is that if your writing team clearly isn't capable of creating a complete story you end up with something like this where every episode ends up being filler or stuck to stereotypes, half assing the entire thing and wasting everyone's time. A story needs a plan and they clearly ran out of ideas past the third episode. The lack of ideas is equally apparent in their characters as well. They can barely even be called characters as each of them are limited by one or two stock phrases based on their archetype. Renge technically has the most range of them all, she's shy, likes to cook and has amnesia. This at least frees her from not being limited to catchphrases every time she wants to communicate but she is also the one responsible for the episodic cooking segments so even she isn't free. For the rest of the cast it seems that they thought of a catchphrase for each of them and than designed the character after the fact. Yuri is a genki girl who says "don-don-don" all the time. Hina is a gamer who makes gamer references, mostly referring to energy drinks as "buffs." Sazanka honestly doesn't do anything but she makes proverbs every now and then. Erika starts every sentence with "onee-chan's pearl of wisdom" and has big boobs. Ayame is kind of a leader type and says "guilty" all the time as an attempt to be the world's most boring chuuni character. There's nothing else to any of these characters and they don't have any chemistry with each other either. The slice of life segments attempt to fix this by pairing them off and having heart to hearts with each other which reveal a shred of backstory but this doesn't add anything substantial to any of their relationships. It's impossible to care about any of them when every single one of their interactions plays out the same and the depth of their character is as deep as a drop of spit. It's hard to find qualities of Momentary Lily to praise. If it had simply stuck to one of the many tropes it wanted to play out and ran it through until the end then it could have just been another slightly below average anime with maximalist visuals. However by creating something without a fully formed idea of what to do in the first place naturally the result is going to be a dumpster fire. Even in an era where CGDCT reigns supreme and demonstrates that you can get away without a concrete plot so long as you go all in on character relations they still fumble that element by forgetting to flesh out their cast beyond catchphrases and the most basic of backstories. Momentary Lily can't even be given the benefit of the doubt by assuming they simply aimed too high and came up short because they tried to do too much, because they didn't try to do anything with this in the first place. Disgraceful.

SuperAdventure★ 8

Ever since Hand Shakers, the modest studio GoHands has had a reputation. Hand Shakers was awful because of its characters and story, over-rendered CGI notwithstanding… but every season this studio debuts a new show, the criticism has been a little too predictable. MAL featured an article about this show that caught my eye, and rather than do what everyone else says and moan “bwaaah Gohands!” …I decided to give it a try. 
It is a huge, huge improvement over Hand Shakers. A group of girls are hanging out in a very glossy, crisp and clean city- but there are no other people around. They meetsomeone new- a girl named Renge- who is bashful around them and has some adorable funny faces as she fusses about how to introduce herself. Each of the girls is very pretty, beautifully drawn, and with different color hair, stylish outfits, and their own pet phrases. But what you may notice first is- the camera angles. The camera swoops all around in I suppose GoHands signature style, birds-eye, worms-eye views and all kinds of other angles, but the girls themselves are possibly more animated than anything you’ve ever seen before. Their boobs bounce- up and down and left and right- they move their heads and shoulders around constantly, and EVERY STRAND OF HAIR is moving- and it’s not choppy- it moves like fluid. You can criticize the stylistic choices and the lackadaisical plot, but you can’t deny the characters are beautifully animated. As the show progresses, the laid back feeling finally shifts to some action and even a shocking character-death that was really very dramatic… the number of people watching the first episode had dropped to a dedicated few by the mid-way point, and all I could wonder was why? Yes it’s true, GoHands has an offbeat style… more like they lean way too heavily on 3D graphics programs, and someone at the studio can’t keep their hands off the ‘increase contrast’ knob; and for some reason they are obsessed with making cherry blossom trees glow brighter than the downtown of a medium sized city on a Friday night. And the monsters they fight, even the weapons they fight them with- have neon colored glowing liquid LIGHT spewing out of them… if you were vegging out on a typically boring, visually flat episode of Magic Maker and suddenly switched to the middle of one of these fight scenes, I’m pretty confident your eyeballs would catch fire. But maybe that’s why I love this show so much. Aren’t people tired of seeing the same crappy 2D drek with the same archetypal isekai protagonists, dull colors, wooden dialogue, and the same unimaginative magic crap in season after season of mass produced slop? What is the real reason you like anime as a medium? The stories? You can read a story in a book. Don’t you want to see ANIMATION??? That’s what this show was made for! I have a completely different view of it- and the studio GoHands- than I did at the beginning. The reason anime became so popular was that it did radical things western animation didn’t attempt, it had exciting camera movement, (and stories for grownups), action-packed fights, memorable characters and…. loads of cute girls. All of those things are packed into this anime, it is a dazzling overload for the eyes- maybe that’s what anime should be. I can’t understand the appeal of liking something because it’s flat and boring and safe. This show is bright, colorful, loud, obnoxious, confusing, and absolutely bonkers- and that is EXACTLY THE REASON you should watch it. Now- you CAN look for every flaw in the scenery or point out the direction of the shadows not matching up, or some other pedantic gripe about some background detail. You COULD also sit back and watch the world spin, see colorful girls twirl around and scream while riding guitars through the air attacking some hilariously stupid looking glowing monster.. When it’s put that way, that choice seems easy- I had a great time watching this show and I wish more anime were like it.