Dog Days

ThatAnimeSnob May 14, 2012

3

The year before this we had Asobi ni Ikuyo which was about cat eared chicks at war with dog eared chicks and now we have the exact same thing but with reverse leading faction. What comes next, a show about rabbit ears? … What?! Usagi Drop?! Never mind, false alarm…So this is from the same studio (Seven Arcs) and the same director (Kusakawa Keizou) who made the overrated Lyrical Nanoha franchise, and if you think they once again created some weird blend of magic and technology, you are absolutely right. The problem with these guys is that they have studio J.C. Staff as their role model and instead of going for something good they pretty much waste all their potential in throw away ecchis and moes. So they basically ripped off the Familiar of Zero basic idea and added animal ears in a DOTA setting (you know, that fanmade World of Warcraft map). Hey wait, didn’t Astarotte no Omocha rip off Zero as well at the same time this one aired? Only difference is that it mixed it with Ah My Goddess and it’s from the same studio so it’s rather excused. Man, isn’t it lovely when writers barely try to do something new and just fool around with the old formulas? I mean, you can’t teach an old dog *wink* new tricks; can you now? But anyways, this is not as good as Familiar of Zero because it doesn’t have a loli tsundere voiced by Rie Kugimiya … Ok, that is not the only reason; it also lacks substance completely. “So what, so does any show with Rie Kugimiya”. But you know what? Even without her voice, there were thousands who went apeshit with the show because it had a dozen other famous voice actors from various other anime, mostly moe and ecchi. And apparently that was enough to love the show, disregarding completely the interesting story or the developed characters. Because it is that kind of an anime; you watch it because you are a fanboy of some voice actress with squeaky voice or you still dig fan service. Anyways, the story is as I said a Zero/DOTA combo with animal ears. A dog eared nation named (dog?) Biscuit is at war with a lion/cat eared nation and they have this non-lethal game of DOTA (or shall we call it a DOGTA?) in order to settle their differences. Each sends in their identical creeps through predetermined linear routes, while the unique-looking generals are standing in key points to take them out with ulti attacks and turn them to little fuzzy critters who return to respawn back to base. The dog nation has gathered enough gold from the battles and now summons a hero from another dimension to aid them in their session before their defence towers break. And thus they bring a typical high school boy from our world with hidden potential to be their new champion. Yeah, it couldn’t be a working adult; it had to be the stereotypical youth whose only concern is not being late for school *yawn*. The hero immediately starts kicking butt because he is an athletic type and this war needs more acrobatics and less actual proficiency with weapons and spells. And since everything is done for kicks, when a general is defeated he or she don’t turn to little animals but simply lose their powers and their clothes. And the whole thing is broadcasted live in the whole world. “Aha, now they are ripping off Queen’s Blade as well!” Well that is pretty much it; after that is just goofing around with gags, slapstick, poorly orchestrated battles and light fan service. There is no real conflict and even the enemy nations are acting friendly to each other. “Aha! So it really is like a Rie Kugimiya show!” Perhaps. Anyways, the whole event is closer to a sport contest than a war and there is not much of a plot other than trying to find a way to return the boy back to his world, as the summoning is normally one-sided. In the meantime he constantly gets to all sorts of silly missions and harem situations and because this is not a hentai, he lacks balls to do anything about it. End of story. In fact, that is why I find no replay value in this show. I read about many other users complaining about this show being highly underrated and highly funny, but they all miss the same basic element. There is nothing to care about in it no matter how funny you find it. The premise is ok and it would be lovely if there was actually something more going on with the story. Yet, the hero doesn’t take advantage of the situation and doesn’t demand to be called a master and have all those cute inumimis playing “fetch” with his penis (if he even has one). I quickly ended up “playing dead” with my interest because of the completely aimless and light direction of the show. I mean THAT is why we are watching this anime right? If it doesn’t have a story it might as well have deep character immersion. If doesn’t have even that, it might as well have hilarious jokes. If it doesn’t have even that, it might as well be an orgy fantasy hentai with inumimis. Well none of that are present in this show; so how can it be entertaining? “Because it has many famous voice actresses you fool!” … Yes. And? “And because we don’t get many good fantasy comedies anymore!” When the devil did we get many to begin with? If you ask me, it does very little with all its elements. It is not much of a good fantasy setting, since it does very little with it. It is not much of a comedy since it is quite light both in humour and fan service. It doesn’t even have interesting characters, since they are all cardboard cop-outs defined just by their hair colour (and in this case their ear shapes as well; major innovation NOT!). “Come on! The humour was very good and the characters were amazing because they were voiced by my favourite voice actors.” Jesus, since when do we define a character voice as characterization and not behaviour or personality traits? This is closer to grouping them all to teams of clones. But aside from that, what is even more insulting is how the show is labelled as “seinen”. In theory, that means it’s ok to be full of any crap you can think of and yet it has nothing extreme in it. What kind of manchildren would be interested in this juvenile thing that has jokes and fan service for 12 year olds? What is this Japan, are you saying than men who like anime can be satisfied with just that? And then you wonder why so many dropped anime and returned to cartoons?Not even the production values help in any way to keep the average viewer interested for long, as the artwork is poor, the animation is basic, the battles are simplistic, and the songs are generic pop trash. The cast is nothing to look forward too, they are all stock characters with a very basic personality, don’t develop or don’t stand out from any other light show out there. Hell man, all the minor characters are identical stick figures! “But the voice actr…” SHUT UP WITH THAT STUPID EXCUSE! I HAD ENOUGH OF IT! You might as well go read porn doujin about the actresses and not the characters they voice. What I only care about is how Seven Arcs became worse than its shitty role model. They miss Rie Kugimiya, remember? So what is there to praise in this show? Nothing! In the contrary, just looking at this retarded thing for more than a few minutes is making me angry. How do people still enjoy such trashy works? Especially those that are not of the elite garbage level of J.C. Staff with some naked Shana clone all over the cover? Oh, that’s right, this is for adults, it’s serious business. No, just no. I don’t consider it worthy of our attention. Go play DOTA instead, with a mode that has nekomimis and inumimis.

eaper Jun 30, 2011

4

Well, this series seemed rather kiddy from the start. Their wars were "family friendly," the characters were all rather... fluffy and family friendly, and things like that. The story was pretty cliched and not all that well exucuted. It had its moments, but when there are multiple filler episodes in a single short season, the pacing is obviously wrong. The characters were almost too nice to one another, making it less believable. The animation was, for parts of the series stunning... which is what makes the few episodes where it seemed like they gave up all the more striking. Episdes where most of the scenes were CGI still had HORRIBLE animation, making it almost unbarable. The seiyuus weree almost all well known and were used well, making it probably the only redeeming factor of this show. They had two of the best singer-seiyuus in the staff (Nana Mizuki and Horie Yui), and they did a good job taking advatage of this with inserts and a great OP. The characters were.... so cliched it hurt- for the most part. None of them were really memorable or overly likable. No characters were very well developed, and the most well developed character was probably a secondary character that was the protagonist for a large portion of the series. Anyways, my wall of text written at midnight is now done, and I'll give you a quick overview for those of you that decided tl;dr- Don't bother with this show. It is not good. It is not worth your time.

scizorg45 Jul 21, 2011

6

First of all, don't be dissapointed. This series contains cat girls as well! :)   Story 5/10 There wasn't really much of a story to dog days. Some random guy got ported into a world full of dogs and cats, where they have friendly or not so friendly battles with eachother just for the sake of having battle(and money)(while typing that, a strange image of america came up with me, I don't know why). This kind of story has been done before, and it just had nothing new in itself(except for the cat and dog girls. Oh, there were guys as well, sometimes, in the background). So no a high score on the story part.   Animation 7/10 Dog days was very colorful, which I liked a lot. Because dog days is all about happy battles that sort of style suited it perfectly. I also liked it that the main characters were 10 times more detailed unimportant random battle dudes, who all had the same face.   Sound 5.5/10 Barely passed the grade on this part, the characters all sounded way too squeaky. The opening song was very forgetable as well. As was the ending song. I guess I must´ve liked the ambiance to still give it a passing grade on the sound. Characters 6/10 First of all: There were just too many. The serie had like 3 main characters and 50 billion side characters. I had the feeling that the characters which actually had an expression on their face should've played some part in the plot, but just didn't. They did get some lines of text, just enough to make me interested, but not enough to satisfy me. And the main characters story sucked big time. Overall 6/10 Dog days was a very lighthearted series, which I liked at the time of watching. After looking back though, I noticed that there wasn't all that much going on, and that it completely lacked any sort of progress in the story(other than some characters liking each other more and more. Yea, what else is new?). So if you want to have some eye candy in the form of cat girls which doesn't require your brain to digest: Go for it. Just don't look back on it later.