Yakitori: Soldiers of Misfortune

After Earth is conquered, the survivors are pushed into becoming soldiers for an alien military.

This isn't exactly a unique idea, but it's nice to see a plot from anime that doesn't involve a high school student saving the planet using a giant robot. In Yakitori, it turns out that humans aren't really good for much but eating or using as cannon fodder. The recruiter is amusingly blunt about this and straight up tells our protagonist that the best he can realistically hope for is to come back with one or two few limbs missing.

However, this isn't just any recruiter. No, he's got a title that takes 30 seconds to say out loud. Something official-sounding that has to do with the United Nations. He's also got an enigmatic smile that seems to imply that he's a chess grandmaster who has already won a game that you didn't know you were playing. He denies that he's planning anything, of course, but nobody with good intentions smiles like that.

But who's our protagonist? You know, I couldn't really tell you. I think shouting angrily at people is his primary hobby. He also strikes me as being dumb as a pile of rocks. He's very committed to his stupidity, too. He'll see that there's an obvious solution to his problems, but he'll stubbornly refuse to take it just to spite viewers.

Eventually, over the course of several episodes, our idiot protagonist learns the value of friendship and teamwork. He continues shouting angrily at everyone, though. I think at least half of his lines in the script are in all caps, followed by three exclamation marks.

Once you get past the crazy number of flashbacks that establish all this, his squad is deployed to a tense situation involving the occupation of a world much like Earth. The rodent-like natives rise up in rebellion, and some of the most powerful units defect. The human squad has to shout at each other loudly, think up stupid plans, and have some adventures as they try to survive.

At this point, the story takes on a somewhat ambiguous tone. Poe's Law makes many movies like this ambiguous, really. The human squad mows down thousands of little rodent dudes who are just fighting for their freedom. Without the benefit of "Would you know more?" and "I'm doing my part!", it's harder to tell how exactly the creators feel about this, but it's easy to read in some satire.

It's passable. I think that if you're used to anime where the protagonist only has two moods (angry and I AM SO ANGRY THAT I WILL NOW SHOUT EVERY LINE AT MAXIMUM VOLUME!!!), you'll be able to sit through it. The art is occasionally good, though the frame rate is terrible. It can be very distracting if you're used to higher quality animation, but you'll get over it. Recommended mostly to edgy teens, who will probably appreciate the shouty protagonist. Adults will probably tire of him quickly.

Yakitori is not for everyone. Based on a Japanese novel series, it is a military / sci-fi anime that is actually pretty good for what is it - a basic story about a young man looking for his place in the world, space dogs and cats and other species, and fluid combat that is not too outlandish if somewhat simplistic.

The Good: The animation is sufficiently detailed and crisp. There is good use of tracking shots, which in anime is not all too common. It's done skillfully and judiciously, thankfully. The story itself is also refreshingly interesting. And rare for Japanese anime, the English voice version is actually better than the Japanese once. Not that the voice actors are better - they're not really; it's that it fits better with the diverse human characters.

The Bad: The dialogue, as in many Japanese manga and anime, is terrible. Too much exposition and unrealistic ways of speaking. Good dialogue has a natural rhythm and recognizes that people talk differently, with each conversation propelling the narrative forward. Not so much here; it's serviceable though. Also there are some elements of the plot that is simply unbelievable, even for a sci-fi story.

The Verdict: Overall this is an enjoyable anime. Is it memorable or ground-breaking like "Akira"? Nope. There's nothing thought-provoking or philosophical like "Ghost in the Shell". But it is entertaining and at the very least not boring.

A lot of folks in the reviews here are complaining about poorly written dialogue and simplistic characterization. They're not wrong, but to be blunt, that's also not really the strength of the military science fiction genre this is aping.

The concept of humans escaping conditions on earth by serving as foot soldiers among the stars is one used by at least three different military sci fi novel series I can think of (Old Man's War is probably the best of them). It seems a little overdue for a visual treatment. That alone is the reason I've rated it as highly as I have.

But while these books can't normally be counted on to be works of literature, you can at least expect that they'll present interesting tactical situations and the threat of mortal danger. This story misses the mark on both counts. The characters repeatedly charge headlong into automatic weapons fire at close range without being hit. The tactical situations they are thrust into are practically nonsensical within the context of the setting. The less said about the "moral dilemma" at the end of the show and how badly that was handled, the better, but you can definitely see comments about it here.

So anyway, my point is, if the idea of Yakitori appealed to you because you liked the idea of an anime with an approach to action that's more grounded in contemporary military fiction, you'll see plenty of promise in Yakitori, and you'll see all of it squandered.

Well, I officially have a new standard for "meh" anime. This is pretty much a middle-of-the-road anime; while the characters are pretty well differentiated both in terms of design and personality, the animation is smooth, and the world is definitely interesting; this is one of the few well-realized anthropomorphic worlds. It doesn't hold back on the violence, and the weapons and vehicles are well-designed. The continuity is actually pretty good and the world is well-realized.

However, it does suffer from the Navi problem and there is little tension. The administrative avatar, a cute bunny girl, can be all sorts of cloying and seems designed for younger audiences; its just too jarring for this and that it never speaks English doesn't help. That it's constantly dancing doesn't help much. There's also little tension; the cliches tend to rob the writing of tension because you know what's going to happen and it usually does.

However, at six episodes this is well worth the investment, and the show makes for a good couple hours of entertainment. Just don't watch the credits; no one needs that kind of torture. But do watch the show; it's definitely worth the time.

Basically a non-stop action flick that had the potential to be so much more, but didn't bother trying.

Various aspects of the background and setting established room for a lot of intrigue and mystery. There are various races and caste-like social levels with complex politics and rebellions, unexplained AI tools, powerful military machines, and serious moral and ethical dilemmas. Yet these are all subsidiary to the action and never explored.

The action is interesting enough, and there are historical reflection scenes that help pacing by allowing for an occasionally slower pace and a bit of character development. Unfortunately, that's pretty much limited to getting a bunch of selfish idiots to work as a team. Their individual characters aren't explored, and the two that get the most lines are the most annoying: one stereotypically silly and boisterous; the other constantly whining and selfish from start to finish.

It's also not very consistent internally. For example, early on the 'heroes' are fighting against tech that was effectively stolen from their own military. Yet, despite their specialist training they seem to have never seen nor heard of any of that tech before. They even have an AI assistant that can control some tech, but have no idea that it can.

The worst part is the ethics of the whole thing; but that's getting into spoiler territory.

Watchable, even entertaining, if you can ignore the whining. But don't expect much in plot or character dev.