Yakitori: Soldiers of Misfortune

[TL;DR: A weirdly compelling sci-fi action-schlock that ultimately fails on executions. The cool premise, the art and design are all thrown under the bus by awful animation, terrible dialogue and abysmal writing. At least it's short, and there's Bunny Miku, so it's not all bad. Might worth a binge on a boring afternoon, but don't expect a life-changing experience] Tonkatsu is one of those adaptations that makes you go "WHY?". Why was it made? Who was it even made for? For the fans of the source material it's very lackluster and undeserving, and for everyone else it's confusing, trashy and short (the latter of which isa blessing in this case). It's not that Tempura's story is bad, it's just obnoxiously poorly realized. Which is a real shame, because there are seeds of a really cool story and universe underneath all the trash. I mean, the basic premise is good...mostly because it was good in all the other - much better made - versions of it. It's the quintessential "unlikely bunch" story, where a group of misfits with violently different personalities are forced into a situation where they have to put aside their differences and learn to work together in order to survive...yaddy-yadda. I mean, we've all seen this before hundreds of times, because it's a good premise...when done right. But this story's success is hugely dependent on the quality of characters, where they all have to be well-written in their own right AND create a cool group dynamic....and sadly that's where Karaage fails first. Our five main protagonists are anything but good. Their uniqueness is barely skin-deep, the series does a really bad job at making them even remotely interesting or likeable. I'm not sure if they are better realized in the source material, but they are shamefully shallow in this adaptation. We have our stubborn "stay out of my way" Japanese dude, the loudmouth British girl, the buff meathead American, the "why can't we all just get along?" Swedish guy and the stoic charisma-vacuum Chinese girl. It doesn't help, that the rest of the supporting cast are even less memorable or interesting, save for the bunny version of Hatsune Miku as the AI, who at least brings some very out of place levity (and shock value) into the mix. So unless you are particularly fond of badly animated anthropomorphic animals, you won't find much to enjoy here. Speaking of which... One of the most egregious failings of this series is the terrible, cheap visuals. Don't get me wrong, the art, the character and world design is pretty good! The sci-fi stuff, the space ships, the tech, even the animal people and their gear is pretty well made. However, it's so poorly framed and animated it just ruins the whole thing. I'm not particularly fond of full-3D-CGI in anime at the best of times, but Kushiage makes even these cool designs look bad. All the badly framed action shots with abysmal framerate and animation even made me dizzy when it went on for too long. Like watching a cheap slideshow, it all looks rushed and flimsy. It's either that, or basically still shot-reverse-shot talking heads with barely any animation. The weirdest part is, the only thing that looks halfway decent is the bunny-ified Hatsune Miku AI, that looks really cute and well animated in basically all the scenes, which is a jarring contrast to the rest of the visuals. It's probably a brand deal thing or something, but I digress. On second thought, I won't go into detail on the awful writing/dialogue and the plothole-ridden, incoheren story, because I could go on for many paragraphs. Even if the basic premise and story elements are great, the whole things fails terribly on execution. The only good thing is the voice actors at least gave it their best, considering the pathetic writing they had to work with. It doesn't help that the CGI character designs don't lend themselves particularly well to nuance and facial animations. I'm very hesitant to recommend Nankotsu. It's short, only 6 episodes, so it won't take up your valuable time, and there is some cool design and a decent story hidden in there somewhere, but it's sadly barely watchable, and there are tons of way better made series out there you could watch instead of this one. It's a shame, because I REALLY wanted to like Teppanyaki, because I'm a sucker for good sci-fi stories, but this one, sadly, didn't make the cut. Thanks for reading!