12 Days of Anime – Part 3 (END) – Prisma Illya, Gargantia, Neptunia, Little Busters

As Christmas arrives in less than 2 days, it’s time to share my final four moments in Anime. (Image Source)

Prisma Illya

When I started watching it, I knew I would enjoy it since I have a soft spot for magical girl shows. This show is basically a light-hearted parody of all the tropes present in all magical girl shows that meets the Fate/stay night where the Grail Wars never happened. While Illya is an adorable character, I liked how she developed thought the whole story as she becomes more experienced at using her powers while getting closer to Miyu who wanted to capture the class cards on her own. Although there are some scenes that were memorable such as Illya transforming into her Archer form and defeating Saber, the scene that stands out the most for me is Illya obsessing over Miyu’s maid outfit. Still, I wonder how their relationship will develop in the sequel because they grew closer in the finale.

Gargantia

While the ending disappointed some people, I felt that there were a lot of interesting things that I liked from this show.  Compared with other mecha shows, this show focused more on the struggles Ledo faced on Earth as his mindset is focused on war against the so-called “Hideauze” rather than on robot battles. Although this show didn’t have a bittersweet ending compared to Madoka (besides Chamber sacrificing himself in the finale) for the fact that Urobuchi only worked on part of the story, I felt that Ledo witnessing the truth and eventually the carnage from the cult purging undesirables allowed him to realize that perhaps the Galactic Alliance is not so great anymore and the Hideauze aren’t so bad after all. Not only that, I think he would rather stay with Amy and the others rather than reuniting with the Alliance.

Neptunia

To me, I felt that the anime adaption of Neptunia was very enjoyable as it featured consoles and even gaming companies personified as cute and attractive girls with enjoyable personalities. While the story is light-hearted, there were a lot of references to video games such as the infamous Playstation Network hack in 2011 by Anonymous.  In this show, Anonydeath (personification of Anonymous) hacks into Lasation’s network in order to stalk Noire, which he has a crush on.

While watching the Anime, I was convinced that I should also play some of their games as Compile Heart made a lot of improvements starting with the second game. I imported a copy of Neptune Re;birth1 and when I started playing it, I was impressed by the game for the fact that you don’t have to fight the other goddesses numerous times (they just join as the story develops) and they now play a bigger part in the story. For instance, Vert joins the team after finding out Neptune is poisoned and help IF and Compa to make an antidote.  Hopefully, the remake of Mk2 will also impress me the same way when it comes out in March of next year.

Little Busters

Despite the first season having a good number of imperfections, the sequel in my opinion is a big improvement not because Yuiko’s arc (my favorite girl) finally got adapted and JC Staff improving the production values, but rather the drama as the world’s secret finally gets revealed. To me, episode 11 was the most emotional for the fact that Kyousuke finally breaks down moments after he revealed to Riki that they were involved in a bus accident and that there were no survivors besides Riki and Rin. From the trials Rin and Riki endured in order to become stronger, I hope there are still a good number of survivors left and that all the members are still alive despite being injured in the finale.

With that, this concludes 12 Days of Anime. In the coming days, I will be focusing on the best and the worst Anime and Video Games in the coming days so please look forward to that. ¶