The fact that this guy basically has six genie wishes in his pocket and women literally lining up for his baby batter and is STILL considered a loser is Peak Anime.
Pretty much. I didn't know the wish-fulfillment genre had such audaciously paradoxical all-powerful yet treated-like-a-loser self-insert characters back then.
@@LinkEX i suppose this is the other side of the coin of self insert wish fulfillment stories by/for highly insecure people: having so little confidence that you can't even imagine your ideal life in a fictional setting you have complete control of.
@@58209 I mean, insecure protags in situations like these *can* work. Suddenly going from lonely to popular could make the MC suspicious (and suspect that the people crushing on them have ulterior motives.) The MC could have trauma that runs too deep for this stuff to instantly cure. The MC could want to become a better person to feel worthy of their harem/powers/etc. (possibly by doing "chad MC" things that, in reality, people would *not* react well to.) Or the positives are balanced by a daunting responsibility that the MC struggles under the weight of. That being said, the above options would all require compromising some degree of wish fulfillment in favor of writing a more compelling story.
@@Snopelol TBH, wish fulfillment isn't necessarily bad as long as it is done well. Many famous works of entertainment like action (i.e. a story of one person taking on huge obstacles) and romances (like a down on her luck girl finding a guy who helps her get through issues) indulge in people's fantasies. The trick is to add some depth to the stories like the hero making mistakes or a relationship having obstacles that must be overcome. In other words, don't just give what a viewer wants. Give them life lessons as well.
Wait a second: The teacher is not in the harem and secondary male characters who do things actually exist? It's like observing a fossilized ancestor of the current trash harem shows!
I was that kid thar got expelled from high school for smoking weed on my RUclips channel.. now i smoke weed on my RUclips channel for a living 🥶💚how times change..
I'm amazed that the fact the teacher is a vampire is barely acknowledged, apparently irrelevant, and never expounded on. It might've been a joke. I honestly can't tell. It's kinda great.
They could’ve had tons of visual gags like drinking blood from a coffee mug, spitting out food with garlic, having a relative or old boyfriend that is clearly Dracula, or have her dress as Dracula for a costume party or something
@@wren_. I love that, especially if it’s like a very clear spoof of an ACTUAL vampire video game like castlevania I would especially love for that to be a recurring gag with her, that she consumes vampire media that is clearly in reference to stuff that actually exists
i thought there was gonna be a plot twist that his spell count is actually infinity and not eight but he never notices because he doesn't use spells because he has so few
@Tin Watchman Not gonna lie, the idea of a sudden plot swerve because someone recognizes that change meaning an integer overflow, meaning they live in a simulation and *_someone_* must be running it for some reason, with finding out becoming the ongoing plot (with the usual antics now being a show they put on for fear of discovery) of the show? That'd be memorably awesome.
@@Sorain1 Isn't that what animegataris did? that they went from "anime club discussing anime plots trying to salvage it from the student council" to "existential cosmic 4th walll breaking crisis equal to the amazing world of gumball and lego movie" ?
Pity there was no mention of his actual family tree. I cracked up when at the end I saw it laid out showing all his ancestors, including one "H. Potter"...
You know, I think it might be a reference to Card Captor Sakura which despite being a really rather important shoujo anime in the history of such anime has basically the same lore explanation for it's magic powers and it remains almost 100% unexplored as a plot point, they explore the mechanics of the power a ton, but not it's source. I know, I know, he comes back as his reincarnated self halfway through the show...to no effect whatsoever, as though he had contrived from the very beginning of his existence to use his entire original lifespan to create a situation in which a magical girl exists. They even do an OVA where a contemporary of her ancestor attacks her, mistaking her for his reincarnation, but all you learn is that she was jealous of his ability to see the future...further suggesting that he used his entire original existence to contrive a situation in which a magical girl would just organically exist. ...anyone ever read Dune?
This reminds me of the time that William Shockley speculated that his children were idiots because his ex-wife was genetically inferior and then expressed an opinion that he should be given a harem to spread his genes across the world.
Imagine if the main character decided that the "might makes right" society he lives in is bad, and that the hoarding of power by a select few is evil... so he goes and bangs every single person who will let him and spawns an entire generation of super mages who upset the status quo. If only
10,000 spell casts seems like a lot. It is not, at least when you look at how casually the characters use spells. Fun fact that I learned from some random teen drama manga- you live 6,000 days by the time you are 16. So you can burn through all your spells in like 8 years if you cast 2 a day. For example, casting a spell to fly to school and back. All I'm saying- tsundere is not surviving highschool at the rate she comically blows things up.
@@Draeckon 10,000 might have been a fine number if these were treated like military grade weapons and this was a gritty story about effectively child soldiers and burn out. ...instead, these spells are used as tsundere emotional expression. While the main character wastes his spells too, that is just a kid making a small number of bad decisions. But "flying to school" is a bad decision born out of long term bad decisions due to the perception that they have plenty of spells.
Something that occurs to me after watching this video and dealing with the resurfaced memories of this series: you can take the stock harem anime setup and turn it into a surprisingly effective psychological horror. We've seen series that deconstruct the genre by turning the male lead into exactly the kind of scumbag who would actually try to engineer this situation, but I don't think anyone has tried to do the opposite. Keep the main character a hapless doof getting led around by the nose, but turn all the girls into cold, manipulative sociopaths who are only pursuing him because he has something they want. They can't just take what they're after and have no other source of it, so they pretend they're in love with him. They're all powerful enough that they can prevent him from escaping even if he becomes aware of the situation so the only obstacles they have are each other, hence the fighting. It even gives the side cast something to do. Some are working for a given girl and try to assist her, and some are actually his friends who've realized what's going on and are trying to help him escape. It even justifies the trope of a girl becoming violently possessive since they don't really care about his well-being beyond how it affects their goal. They try to minimize any harm he suffers at their hands but accidents happen, and it explains their overall tropey personalities. They're emulating archetypes to make themselves more appealing.
Or we turn it into an intense game of wits as the girls and the sidecast attempt to take down their rival factions, allegiances are made and betrayed, diabloical plots crash into each other all while carefully keeping up a facade so that the main guy doesn't figure anything out. We could even work in the eugenics thing that way for extra anime points.
I think i read one manga like that, the girls are trapped inside of game and the only way to get out are obtain protagonist love. The protagonist are unaware of everything,but the girls are literally fighting to death behind the scene. I forgot the name of the manga
Bokurano was a great anime... not a harem but definitely psychological horror "When they cry (higurashi)" sounds much like the fictional anime you are describing. Would highly recommend.. both seasons. Psy/hor
@@MK_ULTRA420 The fact that people are worrying about the US producing some kind of dysgenic effect on its population is, in fact, another symptom of US eugenics rhetoric.
What's wild is the premise of a world where your lifespan is basically however long you can hold onto your last spell is a very interesting premise that could make for some very dramatic story telling. Too bad it was only used for this.
Spellcount doesn't equate to unlimited lifespan if you never spend it all, but that your life essence is gone when the count hits zero. I'm assuming you still age normally if maybe a degree slower.
I am frankly shocked they didn't go the route of after protag-kuns 8th cast of his God magic, he actually DOESNT insta-die like he should, and upon rechecked his magi-count it comes to rise that his count hasent gone down at all, for you see his magic cast limit was not a measly 8, but in fact, INFINITY I swear on my life I thought that was 1000% gonna be the twist when you mentioned he specifically was only ever born with '8 casts' of magic on his limit And frankly I'm disappointed they didn't go down that route
Two of the potential love interests are textbook abusers, one is a child that probably got groomed by her family, the school is full of the Junior Capitalists of Japan, the teaches are almost criminally negligent ..Someone should have called Protag Protective Services for this guy yesterday.
The actual background for the story is actually interesting: like, hey, there's magic, but everyone is only able to cast a certain amount of spells in their lives. That's actually kinda cool when you think about the different kinds of stories you could write with that concept and the situations you could put the characters in. But then they just decided to take this intriguing concept and put it into a harem anime. Definitely not the genre I would have went with.
The Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks explores that idea, with the modification that if you go over you limit, you go insane in a way depending on your type of magic. It's much more into the magical politics of the mages being defacto leaders due to their ability to blow up normal people with their minds, and how that is resulting in a lot of animosity.
Surprising that all those powerful families are risking their daughters failing to attract this guy rather than pressuring or paying protag-kun to make regular visits to a sperm bank. Artificial insemination was already a well-established medical practice at the time.
If he goes to a sperm bank, then they can't monopolize his good genes. If everyone has superpowerful magic genes, then none of them has an edge. I mean, that's probably more thought than the author put into that question, but it's answerable.
For me it was going to my local Media Play and buying the boxset of La Blue girl. But you could only do it by using the clipboard that had a full list of hentai you could purchase...and then you had to ask a store associate to run to the back to grab it...good times.
I only hope this comment chain becomes people telling their early anime stories... so nostalgic. As for me, I spent like over $100 on Season 1 of Hell Girl at the Suncoast in the mall where I worked. Remember Suncoast people?
I can still feel the pain of paying $20-$30 for those InuYasha DVD's that only had three episodes each on them. It blew my mind when I started being able to buy entire seasons of anime for just a little more than that.
So I realize that I'm completely missing the point, but I can't help but notice how these kids are casually using their magic like it's nothing but if the best of them get only 10000 spells in their life then using just one spell a day would kill them in 27 years.
hoensty it really only matters for Kazuki, everyone else seems to have so much magic they can just cast spells willy nilly so it doesn't matter kinda makes you wonder why they even bother making it a ahrd rule and not jsut something unique to kazuki
That was one of the things I noticed when I first watched this show. They use magic for EVERYTHING but even for people with the highest magic count like Kuriko who has around 140k at the show start, that only gives you about 5 spells per day if you want to make it to retirement age.
Technically, the magic system has almost no boundaries, kinda, so why can't kazuki just do a "wish for more wishes" kinda thing and use magic that gives him more magic.
Exactly what I thought of, this school is said to have kids with the highest spell counts in the tens of thousands but realistically with how much they use their spells on random shit, I’ll be surprised if most of them are able to see their kids graduate elementary school
Wait... wait... there are hot springs that increase your spell count by staying underwater for 2 years.... and the main character has reality warping wish spells... even using 1 to just let him safely stay underwater for 2 years would be at least a way to break even or to get a net gain. Why doesn't he do that?
As a 1980s era weeb, let me assure you "expensive box set" was better than "perpetual expensive long distance phone calls to obscure BBS communities looking for someone who had an episode you were missing and could mail you a VHS dub of it," which typically ended in having eight episodes in the original Japanese with French subtitles, and the other four dubbed in German with Italian subtitles.
My internet friends and I used to literally send CDs with random anime episodes, jrock videos, and art book scans back and forth. Because our connections were so bad that even uploading a 2MB mp3 took hours. I used to leave my pc running overnight to download a concert rip that was 1GB and is literally 1cmx1cm on today's monitors. Shit was WILD!
"It's bad, but it's not _Final Fantasy Unlimited_ bad." How _DARE_ you insult my favorite anime from the 7th grade with this completely accurate and irrefutable statement!
@@letsreadtextbook1687If you like “Harem Excuse Plot” anime, then this might be the series for you. In some ways it’s actually better than some modern anime that uses a similar concept, like it takes till halfway through first half of the anime for 2 of the 3 main heroines to actually want the protagonist for reasons other than his genes.
After a quick search, the novel didn't split him into 10 clones. He got revived with a SUPER magical body that could cause great calamity to the whole world if he uses magic. Oh, and sometimes it leaks magic and causes minor or major misfortune.
So apparently dying isn't a big deal you just need to be resurrected and in the most goofy way possible and you become God like in ability and no other mage attempted such a feat until just then
Gotta say that I prefer that over the clones. I can't see in any possible sense how reviving a guy even when they're incredibly magical would cause them to turn to 10. While I can see multiple ways reviving someone turns them into the magical version of Nitroglycerin.
@@rockclanhawkstar1454 It would have made sense to me if each clone had one of remaining wishes, like splitting the magic. Or if each had normal magic.
@@pedrovascodeoliveiraveriss6293 On the other hand, he would probably be able to entertain us in other ways by using that money to fund some damn good anime remakes.
At the time of writing this, this video has 71,535 views. Assuming each one watches exactly 38 minutes of it, we have wasted (as said at the end of the video by Jeff himself) 5.17 YEARS of combined time on this show. Also assuming young Jeff watched every minute of every episode and each episode was exactly 24 minutes in length, that would only add up to 576 minutes, or about 9.6 hours SO, he has wasted at least 4,719 times more well.. time than this show ever did to him. Who's the real monster now?
I'm just here for the Lols. Though consider that it is possible to do something else whilst watching this video in the background/on your phone and playing a video game that doesn't require all your attention fixated on it at the same time.
The sad thing is that the concept of only having a limited number of spells in your life sounds really cool. Too bad it was squandered by bad, horny writing.
But even then this series really doesn’t do well at conveying the limit for anyone other than MC. Everyone else throws spells out like it’s nothing when if the highest limit is around 10000. By doing some math if a person only used magic once a day, they’ll day in about 27 years. But everyone are using their spells like crazy either to get to school, peep on girls or random nonsense. Honestly I doubt most of these idiots would make it to 30 with their excessive magic use
Honestly there's a surprising amount of decent concepts. The limited spells, the losing everything that made the girls attracted to him for, like, an extensive period of time rather than a one episode gag, and even one of the characters just straight up hating him because it's essentially an arranged marriage. The last two, you could probably write a full story about, or at least a pretty lengthy arc. It's just a shame those kinda-cool concepts got thrown into the infernal harem playdoh and ended up merging into the same color of off-gray dullness
Yet another thing it has in common with so many formulaic shows that came after it: take an interesting idea and then instead of developing it, just murder it so brutally that everyone looking to make/watch anything that isn't formulaic garbage is hesitant to even go near the idea.
Just wrote the same thing and then I see this comment, lol. Agreed, this was a good premise for a show! What a waste for it to be squandered with the harem being added.
@@BlueBlazeKing My suggestion would be to make it that everyone has a small limit of times or maybe the same number. They still face supernatural issues and foes though so magic either had to be used or they have to get creative with not using magic (natrually, some of the cast will die and I'd rather the ability to come back be removed). With nobody having a higher count than another, everyone is on equal grounds. Maybe give specific powers to everyone though so that they stand out uniquely instead of just generic "characters with magical powers".
Step 1: Use reality bending powers to give yourself the ability to breath underwater and heat resistance Step 2: Convince someone to throw food in hot spring sometimes or if you have a spare cast, create infinite bag of water proof snacks Step 3: stay under water for 2 years Step 4: profit
Not sure if anyone knows this but the MC of Girls Bravo was voiced by Yuri Lowenthal. Who is most famous for voice Sasuke in Naruto and most recently Dainslef in Genshin Impact.
"Another secret lurking beneath its waters:....Baseball Zombies." I F-ing LOST it and burst out laughing! Peeeeeerfect example of the Mad Libs style of writing Geoff was putting on display with those plot descriptions!
Wasn't "baseball game against supernatural beings where if you lose you go to hell" also the premise of a Real Ghostbusters cartoon episode? Maybe it's a more common story trope than I thought, who knows
5:50 Imagine the reactions of the heads of those magical dynasties when they heard he McFucking killed himself BEFORE knocking up any of their daughters If they, you know, actually existed "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN HE KILLED HIMSELF?!"
"To be fair, he was trying to save someone else's life. It's not like the spells he wasted on a baseball pitch, or fixing a bento someone dropped, or making it snow in summer to impress a girl in grade school-" "He tried to impress a girl with some friggin' snow?" "He did that twice, actually. No idea how he survived to high school."
According to Wikipedia: "In the novel, the side effect of Kazuki's restoration was gaining a special magical body that can cause disaster to the whole world if he lets out his magic powers. Another side effect of Kazuki's restoration is the overflowing of his magical powers every now and then causing minor mishaps and sometimes great chaos." So, it sounds like the anime just made up the ten Kazukis thing, and the novel's thing that happened was even more stupid and boring.
28:50 you mean to tell me the brother of one of the harem girls is introduced, turns out to be a werewolf, is fought, is killed, and his soul goes to the moon in one episode.....and this doesn't change anything???
@@timothymclean but we find out she has/had a brother, find out werewolves exist in this universe, she has to fight and kill her own kin, and then he isnt even really gone but his soul is in the moon, and no one brings any of this relevance to their world building up later on in the story.
OK, points taken, but the bit of him running around with the blonde one clinging on him and her flying out the window when he takes a turn at 23:46 is hilarious
And then another girl yeets herself out the window after the blonde one. what the fuck is the context there? _especially_ why was protagonist not bothered by any of it? Thank you for pointing that out, it adds layers Edit: it was two girls. What
A comedy built on the premise of "guy from esteemed families is just kind of a loser and has to fight (and fail) to survive a hoard of magical batshit fucking lunatics" could be great but sadly that would require a writer who could think with the head on his shoulders and not in his pants.
I will say, one thing that got a chuckle out of me was the sign saying "This Month's Goal: Don't use attack magic inside the school." It's self-aware, but not in an obnoxious wink-and-nod kind of way.
It's pretty nonsensical that he has no magical power besides his charges yet his DNA can ensure hyper powerful magic users can be born which when you think about it makes no good sense since if the magic power can be passed down genetically he should have more than that so all number regardless of plot idiocy or is it some excuse that his body min maxed into all magic but no intelligence
It definitely is because he is totally correct. There is no idea too bonkers to get discarded. Vampires and Werewolves exist and everyone is just okay with that.
@@warmachine5835 Except we don't KNOW he can't, the magic rules in this show never establish such a law. He is established to have 8 world+ level wishes, yet never uses his empty-oatmeal brain to even try with ONE of them.
@@thunderspark1536 I'm willing to bet that either there are people before him who tried and this is covered next to "Wasting all your spells kills you" in first-grade magic class, or casting a spell to increase your spell count does slightly less than kicking a wall to move your house. Possibly both!
@@timothymclean Well, they never address it, that's called a plot hole kid. If they DID include a throwaway line saying so, then boom no more plot hole.
I will say, that bit with Kazuki running with Kuriko hanging around his neck and then he hard stops, causing her to fly out the window is actually a pretty funny visual gag. Decided to rewatch the video and wanted to share a story. I had a strangely similar experience discovering this show way back in the day. Saw it in a magazine, and then watched it. The difference is that I watched it via an anime channel On Demand while my Dad was getting our house remodeled. I actually had to stop it whenever my family was around since well... I was like 10 or 11 when I first saw it and didn't want to get in trouble. Later in my life I watched it via RUclips back when they were less strict about copyright stuff along with Love Hina and Negima.
I’m ashamed to say I watched this show and wholeheartedly love watching it because I was a lonely 15 year old who this was directed towards so why wouldn’t I…. and it was here on RUclips because I doubt anyone cared that it was here lol AAAAND I hated the end because it was such a let down…. Even my no taste 15 year old self knew the ending was awful lol
Same, I spent years having this anime pop back up in my head and not being able to remember what it was called. I also remember thinking the ending was a let down, but by then, I thought it was because they ran out of material to take from the Manga and went for a cop out happy ending.
5:25 That line immediately gave me flashbacks to one of the first doujins I ever read way back in middle school. It was called "My Balls." The MC had Satan trapped within his balls, and he couldn't "release his frustrations" without also releasing her and throwing the world into thousands of years of darkness.
So, why not call a Hoo....uhm, experienced Healer to exorcize his balls? We already have a great set up here with the character getting tied to a bed. We would just the exorcist in the skimpy clothes. 😄
@@ruiira Bit late, but basically an ancient (IIIRC 10k old) agreement between Heaven and Hell states that Satan and her horde of demons can only invade the Mortal Realm during a specific timeframe. This timeframe happens to be during our modern time. Part of the contract states that Satan has to lead her demon horde personally for it to be allowed. So when the time comes and Satan is going to lead her demons to invade Earth, a single angel (or monk. Or angel disguised as a human monk) decides they are not going to sitback and simply watch, and so they basically do the Dragonball Evil Containment Wave in order to seal Satan into a ball or pot or something. However oblivious MC just happened to walk by as the spell was being cast and so got his balls hit by the containment wave instead. And thus Satan herself is stuck in his balls and he is told to not jerk off for like a month or a year or something or else she will be released and the invasion will resume. Which is horrible because he is a porn addict. What follows is shenanigans as hell sends increasingly kinkier demons to try and jerk him off. At least that was the setup as far as I remember it. It's been so many years since I read that manga. I remember it being fun, but I was also a horny teenager at the time.
this shit became so mass produced that we can slot those girls not just into single drawers but into "variant" files. It's like a goddamn fast-food restaurant or catering business. "Yes, halo sir? another girl for your harem? Wonderful! We have a full palette. Which one would you like? A silent violent type? Good and what hair would interest you? We have purple, green, liliac, violet...whole rainbow really...." I can picture an employee just browsing through files or clicking on some character making software and then printing the girl in 3rd printer XD with what little personality she is supposed to have
That sounds like it could make a decent cyberpunk premise. Some rich guy orders a custom girlfriend from a company that surgically/cybernetically modifies a girl to fit the profile. Of course, the girls they choose are all impoverished, since it's pretty cheap to get them to sign a contract that lets the company do stuff like that to them and ship them off to some guy. @@mordet2 I hate that you made me aware of that and will now start trying to forget it.
"The onsen episode turns into the sports episode because Baseball Zombies" sounds like a setup that deserves to be in basically any show better than this.
In all of these "eugenics we got to have that guy's children" series, I always wonder why they don't just have him bust one out and store it like a sperm bank(If it's a girl then things are more complicated, but let's be real, it's always a guy for some reason.). Especially in ones where it's a life or death situation and the guy is trying to keep his virginity or something, like just humor the dude and have him do that and everything is done. That's especially important if the girls throwing themselves at the guy are becoming a big problem, which they always are, eugenicists tend not to be very good with romance... Or anything related to human emotion for that mater
The Witcher books actually have a story where the main girl is wanted by everyone for the eugenics reasons, and it's exactly as terrible as it would be in real life. The main antagonist straight up tries to remove her womb and make it grow a child artificially with magic
Yeah, but if they did that then that'd solve like 90% of the contrived issues in the show and the writers would have to actually put in effort in order for things to continue happening.
It also implies a lot of bloodline marriage prestige politics, and historically the first thing any dude who has people believing his bloodline is special or magic does is use it to fuck lots of women. The magic reinforces patriarchal norms.
@@dakotaadams189 Problem with that claim is that a lot of those marriages were arranged, and judging by all the Hapsburg chins and hemophilia they were married off to relatives more often than not.
I feel as though half the problems in this show's story could be solved by Kazuki just continually donating his seed. Like a one-man sperm bank, if you will.
Precisely this. Even if he wouldn't _want_ to donate: It would also make sense for any of the rich families to abduct him for that purpose. It's established that their whole society is very corrupt and ruled by power, so I don't see any repercussions even if it became public that Kazuki is the father of the children.
I actually think the guy literally dividing himself in order to be with each of his harem components is actually a really fun idea to work with, as long as you focus on the comedic side and try to soften the existential horror. I would be very interested if an anime used this concept as the premise of the story.
25:50 You see, a smart person would use their literal reality warping spell power to make it so they can breathe underwater then set up a system where they get fed every day for the next 2 years to increase said spell count. Of course there is the problem of exactly how much it increases your spell count, and how anyone would in a harem anime have the mental capacity or patience to let someone with literal godly power not die before he can pass on his genes.
@Vincent Celeste Except he turned back time at one point, so couldn’t he theoretically pause his own aging/make himself physically immortal & put time under the water in fast-forward? It’s more spells spent, but if it’s legit then he could get basically infinity spells that way.
@@msf2399 you guys keep putting thought into the world and characters. this show was about marketing with copy-paste characters, not making any semblance of sense or artistic integrity.
@@Direk091 Yeah, but the thing is when writers leave an obvious hole in their story, no matter how cheap the story was, it is the nature of people who think to go, “Wait, why didn’t they do [this other thing] instead?” It’s a sign the audience isn’t engaged with your story, when they start making up “better” ones in their heads. Not to be confused with doing the same thing while watching a *CRITIQUE* of said story, for the record, where we’re being *invited* to look for holes in the writing & how the writer/s of the story went for the least interesting or most contrived option. That means the critique did what it was supposed to: got you thinking about the work & what you can learn from it. Also, it’s just… very fun to point out obvious solutions to contrived story problems. Can’t forget that.
Okay, that Girls Bravo scene with the protag getting repeatedly injured was god damned hilarious. It got a big laugh from me, which I did not even remotely expect.
The world building of this show actually sounded like it had a lot of potential for really interesting exploration until you mentioned the superpowered genetics part.
Okay so we have casual rape, racism, pedophilia... The only thing keeping this from being one of the most problematic animes ever is the lack of incest!
I mean, with how mainstream the meme of consensual incest is, it... doesn't *seem* as problematic as it used to be. As someone from the '90s and 2000's, I'll admit that I never really expected to see the meteoric rise "onii-chan"... I mean, both KissxSis and All You Need Is A Little Sister were things that sold enough to justify a company to make an anime adaptation... while A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones were very explicitly bashing the concept of Brother x Sister sexual pairings, but you could find fans of all four... Truly, we live in one of the wildest timelines.
@@marionette8739 All you need is a little sister at least was decent as a kinda romcom workcom sure the MC's dellusions about a little sister were offputting but somehow they actually gave him a reason why he is like that if the anime was about him working his way to stop that weird fantasy of having a little sister it would be better
To be fair, ADV/Sentai dubs are pretty hit or miss all around while dubs from other companies, like Funimation or Ocean productions, were pretty solid even back then.
Damn, people really thought they were doing something new when they said "solve the love triangle with polyamory" completely unaware of ghost harem horniness from 2005 huh
@@craigyeah1052 I know what you mean but I think there's nuance lol ironically is when you call the gang over and make it a drinking game, unironically is when you still pass out laughing over the spinning love motel bed even tho the Bento box spell scene made you lose brain cells. But maybe that's just me watching this and thinking that basement sensei still did too good a job selling it to me lol
Ah yes this show, in high school my ace butt was just trying to figure out why he didn’t just sell his baby batter for a fortune a cup. He’d be rich enough to never miss not being about to use magic, his kids would be titans of industry and he could marry (or not) the person he wants to.
Like I'm ace too and if I were him I'd just be selling this stuff to everyone like why do they have to get married?? Although you could still have them jockeying for like like.. sole breeding rights I guess
Also ace, I probably wouldn't sell it since that'd probably get me in a hell of a lot of trouble by turning it from a sex thing into a money thing (because now that it's on the market it can be murdered over and such, and I might get iced to monopolize the genes once evilman gang gets their hands on it), but I *would* pretty clearly lay out sensible ground rules about what I'd be willing to perform... genetic transfer for. Ground rules like "don't commit sexual assault on me" or "don't commit regular assault on me", which would mean that the girls would either instantly all get disqualified and I'd be left with background character Q who's probably more charismatic anyway, or the rich idiots get their act together and fight over me without me getting caught in the crossfire. Eventually, if and when I worked out who's the best option, I'd just get some non-sex method set up and be done with it.
This show is absolute garbage, but, in the girls’ (admittedly quite weak) defense, perhaps it’s the social implications that would prevent them from accepting him as a sperm donor. Even if they had powerful babies from it, getting pregnant out of wedlock probably is not good for their reputations.
Bi here, but like Fucking YEAH, right? Like, dude, come on, sperm banks are a thing, just donate some of that primo ammo you're packing to a worthy cause and reap the spoils! You don't need to settle for trying to somehow satisfy half a dozen violent psychos who try and pull you apart like monkey bread every time more than one of them are in a room with you! Geez!
I read a very short synopsis on this when I was fifteen. Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I thought that this was a really wonderful setup for a romance anime. And it certainly could have been. "Boy brings joy/wonder/hope to others with his few charges of magic" could have been an amazing romance tragedy. I feel sorry for the potential that this anime wasted.
There’s something I don’t get here. Yuna and Brunette Childhood Friend-or BCF for short-both have high spell counts, and Yuna at least can afford to be very reckless with her magic, as evidenced by the fact that she’s casting a dozen spells per episode and hasn’t died yet. If they wanted to see snow way back in the hazy, forgotten childhood friend memory, why did they just sit there moping instead of using one of their apparently infinite spell slots to make some snow themselves? They didn’t need Kazuki to do that for them!
This was actually one of the first anime I intentionally watched online. At the time, I thought it was amazing...because I was 14 and never watched anything like it before. Then, after watching dozens of other shows that are basically the same, I realized that it was actually generic trash. But dangit, it's nostalgic trash.
@Tin Watchman My very first one would be KissxSiss. I don’t think I’ve found anything that quite matches that level of absolute degeneracy without being an actual hentai.
Big mood. Looking back on it after all these years I've realized it's pretty shit but nostalgia is a crazy thing man. Makes it impossible for me to truly hate something even tho I by all accounts should
@@battleon81 lol My first harem was Girls Bravo because the preview on Netflix had a single frame of OO and I searched for it later. I tend not to watch shows like that anymore though.
He used one if his spells to reverse time to save a bento box? I don't know if this guy should be the one everyone's aiming thier eugenics plans at, he clearly deserves the Darwin award.
Never mind that it is also clearly stated that the main harem target in this anime, has gone through this entire process of making his wishes, turning to ash, and returning back to life without memories quite a few times, and it is implied that he is actually hundreds of years old since the dorm manager and the ghost collector were in fact obsessive love interest of the main character but when they were living in feudal japan, and that is why the ghost collector both wants to keep his ghost so she will never be apart from him since she still very much loves him and has loved him for centuries, the dorm director also loves the guy enough that it is implied that she considers herself his widow, but because he will always return after using all his spells after getting back his ashes means she will forever be dressed in funeral garb, because like the ghost collector she too has loved him for centuries.
ya'know it just dawned on me the whole gender standard thing of anime. you got the male pervert that is often just a scummy person that invades women's privacy, stalks them and makes unwanted sexual advances... and then you have the female characters that just outright assault the MC. yeah, women have the female pervert but not only is that not as common as the male version but when a male attempts to assault someone they usually get their shit pushed in. reminds me of that whole male teach and female teacher thing
This isn't just an anime thing. Unfortunately, tons of media use male rape as a punchline. There's plenty of American sitcoms, movies, etc that involve scenes where a guy is subjected to unwanted sexual advances, and it's always for laughs. Usually the unwanted attention is coming from a fat or older woman as well, implying that the only reason a man would ever want to turn a woman down is because he finds her disgusting. The channel Pop Culture Detective did a good video on this topic if you want to explore it further.
It's got similar root causes to that Love Hina comedy style of just every single main girl physically assaulting the protagonist multiple times in a manner that he, and we, are supposed to forget 5 seconds after it happened, after we've had a hearty belly laugh at his expense. Thankfully that outright variant is getting slightly less popular, though it is by no means gone today.
Not that women dont get objctified and given the fall over peronality, but the making fun of female on rape abuse is no less terrible. And thats not saying abus on omen isnt a problem, just on guys especially boys too.
The one time I remember the jealous sociopath classmates being funny was from the Baka and Test series. They really cranked it up to the eleven there though by having all of the single boys forming a KKK-style cult that punished any male that dared to have a girlfriend. The story even acknowledge how messed up everyone in class F was by how everyone only really cared about themselves and were more than happy to throw their fellow students under the bus to forward their own goals. Several of their crazy plans against much stronger opponents worked because the other classes couldn't believe how willing they were to disregard each other's safety. There was one hilarious scene where the Tsundere love-interest got taken hostage and when main character heard that she got caught because she was worried about him, he immediately said that she had to be a fake and ordered a charge against the surprised hostage-takers whom were stunned that they charged uncaring of her safety.
Baka and Test is written by Kimitake Yoshitaka, also famous for Grand Blue, which can be summed up as "Nudist Alcoholic Scuba Divers-slash-College Fratboy Shenanigans: the Manga/Anime."
@@shriek_a_boo If true incels were as the guys in Baka Test, the world would be so much better and they would have their cherry popped already, the possesive sadistic kuudere got with the Elliot Rodger equivalent of that universe.
"What if the person secretly playing gameboy in class was the teacher?" I can tell you exactly what happens when it is the substitute teacher. Cause it was me. And the highschoolers loved me. Except for the one time I got too bold asking on of the special needs students to fetch me some headphones so I could hear the audio from my PSVita and the little shits ratted me out. Fortunately, my punishment was the principle basically saying "just try to be a little more discreet." This is really the only way to go as a substitute teacher imo. You are not going to get the kids to work. You will not earn their respect. The best you can hope for is to earn their cooperation. Most of the time, I just blatantly made deals with the class along the lines of "I am going to make a token effort to get you to work, you are going to lie to me and say that you will, then I am gonna read/play phone games. As long as you don't get too loud to where a teacher or admin comes in to check on us, I don't care what you do. But if a teacher does come in, I am throwing you all under the bus and saying I tried my best but you refused to cooperate." I was a selfish lazy scumbag, but I will be damned if I didn't have the most well behaved classes in the county.
I think the thing that hurts the most might be that the premise - the stuff about limited spells - is sort of neat. It could make for a pretty interesting system to base some sort of battle anime about. Maybe everyone has the same magical energy to spend over their lifetime, with the difference being how much they let out each time they cast a spell, so the fewer spells you're limited to using the more powerful each one is. So you wind up with everything from people who can nearly endlessly spam weak magic bolts to people who can drop a nuke once a lifetime. Maybe, if you want to go this way, there's discrimination on both ends of the spectrum - people with too many spells can't do anything useful with them and are basically magicless, but people with too few spell are considered dangers to society because of how powerful they are and are persecuted in some way, while simultaneously also being unable to use their magic too often and thus basically having the same problem as people with too many spells where they're basically muggles. You figure out what an interesting number to give your protagonist is - maybe like 50 to a 100, so each spell is significantly powerful, but they're not instawinning every fight and have to conserve spells as much as humanly possible so every cast feels important. You then populate the party (maybe a heroaca style police force dedicated to fighting magic crime?) with different people with different numbers and explore what that says about how they fight - maybe there's an agile thief-type with a very high spell count who rapid-fires weak spells like daggers, or someone with a very low spell count who's got to fight without magic and is mostly there as a desperation measure - a last-ditch, single-use "we win" button for worst case scenarios. (maybe they have to do a heroic sacrifice by using their last spell near the end of a big arc, they could be the first-arc mentor figure who dies to set up the villain, even). Maybe there's an old vet who's super experienced and smart but is down to their last few mediocre-powered spells from a lifetime of crimefighting, so they're there in a support role. If you want to do social commentary, maybe they're now seen as useless by command, and are constantly barely dodging being fired and left with no prospects because they've destroyed their magic for an organization that only sees them as a body to throw at the enemy. Just think of all the thematic resonance here - literally throwing away your life force for power, inching closer to death with every use of your magic, a society which demands that you use your limited and precious life force if you want to be able to be competitive and productive. Up until now I was envisioning a Heroaca-like superpower battle show, but you could also give it a darker bend and do something with the tone of Psycho-Pass (maybe even give it a Shadowrun cyberpunk-but-with-magic type aesthetic), where society only looks like it's doing good because they're casting away the people who don't neatly fit into the system or aren't willing to sell their literal life force to their employers. And that's just the barebones series of ideas that immediately come to mind. There's so much to flesh out here and so many cool concepts, this could be a legit good shonen or even seinen. But no. It's an excuse for... This show to happen.
*raises hand* Um can the thief spammer use a slip on magical banana gag as a go to weak spell resulting in him getting a ridiculous nickname.... would love this.
Bro, if you need assistant writers and illustrators for that BEAUTIFUL concept, I'd like very much to be one of them. And I shall be very happy to help *out of pure, unadulterated spite.*
I was re-watching your "Harry Potter Anime Knock-offs" video for some enjoyable listening whilst I was playing the isekai Pokemon Legends Arceus and just when you say and I quote, "Maburaho is one of the worst anime that I've ever had the displeasure of sitting through in it's entirety, and since nobody is going to click on a video about some shitty harem anime from the early 00's that they've never seen I basically made this whole essay just as an excuse to bitch about it." I get a Google notification saying Mothers Basement uploaded a video roasting Maburaho. Made me chortle.
What if there was like, a reverse harem anime, where the focus is all the waifus and we see everything *except* the time spent with their prospective love interest, and never meet the protag-kun
I love that you either A) Instinctively kept that same box of Maburaho, as if you knew you’d need it one day to destroy it, Or B) You didn’t keep the original box, but bought another copy just out of spite Either version of events is amusing to me
It's amazing just how many profoundly mediocre stories I could solve by dimension-hopping about these world and introducing them to the turkey baster, which was clearly never invented in any of these worlds.
Wait if he has 8 reality warping dragonball wishes, why doesn’t he wish for the girls and their families to forget his superpowered genes exist so he can live a normal life away from these psycho wives?
There are multiple in-universe ways to get more spells *and* one of them actually happens to and works on him. If his magic is *world-destroying,* why not just like, idk, steal spells from his asshole classmates?
Heck, surely spells that powerful are enough to let him get away with wishing for more wishes somehow, right? There's gotta be some shenanigans you can manage!
When you said "existential horror", I _honestly_ thought the memory erasure thing would be what actually happened, and that would be the horror in question, because it's arguably at least a partial death of identity and is that worth it? I should have realized that would be too interesting.
This is why the anime Golden Time is one of my top favorite horror anime without being in the horror genre. If you haven't watched it, I suggest giving it a shot.
"Once you cast your last spell, however, your body instantly crumbles to ash." This sounds more like the premise to an anime like Guilty Crown than Love Hina.
Love Hina was that show for me. Though technically speaking Oh My Goddess could have done the same thing… Then there’s Ranma 1/2, Tenchi Muyo, Sailor Moon, and yes, Berserk.
Oh My Goddess is still a favorite in my collection. Though my friends introduced me to Love Hina and Negima back in high school. Man all those long nights marathoning shows, good times.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick For real. Back in the early 2000's you could find series after series uploaded on youtube. Watched a good handful of shows that way lol
I love how your description of everything pre-isekai still applies to the letter, it just takes place in a generic fantasy world setting now. Truly there is no original thought under the sun.
This seems like a really interesting concept. Even the eugenics bit. If everyone trying to take advantage of his powerful genetics (?) were explicitly framed as bad. But then we've just remade the witcher sooooooo eh
That's something I had said in a comment myself. the whole Magic Eugenics thing seems fairly interesting just because of what it would socially mean to be the result of the bloodline of basically every powerful wizard to ever exist. And how that might socially isolate him when everyone wants to take advantage of his genetics for eugenics reasons.
NGL I completely forgot about the Monks being one of the few things in this show that were legit funny. Also shocked you didn't mention that because everyone is covered in ashes, that means they haven't showered in weeks. It's not like it's fucking God of War...wait is it? Also yes Girls Bravo is GOATed
I'd be up for a "Taking Out the Trash" series like this. Something where you single out a series that wasted your time and/or money and just destroy it
I usually avoid harem anime as a matter of principle, but you've honestly convinced me that Girls Bravo is worth checking out because I can't stand not watching something full of really good action sequences.
For once, I would like a harem anime where at least one of the MC's male friends doesn't get violently jealous and petty at the MC's success with women and is actually a total supportive bro about it
What you're asking isn't exactly rare but it isn't good either. They end up taking the role of the friend whose only purpose in life is telling the MC how the girls actually like him, which is so bland cookie cutter 90's VN stock that some anime like Nyaruko-san make fun of it. Pretty sure there was one in Nisekoi, but I barely remember the guy.
I'm of the thought that this type of show with a bunch of "kooky, eccentric characters that are actually all sociopaths" could be made extremely interesting if you had the main character as a sane individual trying to push back against the insanity without ever reaching the point of "aww shucks guess this is my life now" that this sort of character tends to unfortunately reach in these sorts of situations. Give the main character a proper moral compass, an unwillingness to bend, and a few dozen emotional breakdowns when things get to be too much, and you get at least some drama.
Haiyore! Nyaruko-san might be up your alley then. All of the characters in the show are complete weirdos except for the main character, Mahiro, who finds every other character in the show utterly unbearable to hang out with. I have no idea if it's aged well at all (it probably hasn't), but I'd at least check it out.
@@GodwynDi while Black Lagoon is a great show I don't think that description applies to it Rock and the other characters are shown to have pros and cons then during the OVA rocks dark side becomes apparent
I actually watch this show in its time. I only remember the ending that felt like a cope so the author doesn't have to take a decision. A lot of harems of different qualities do share that problem.
"Trick him to double-killing himself" would be sociopathic enough if nearly everything before that wasn't bad enough. Harem "comedy" anime like this and Inukami has some crazy wild moments that really don't age well.
This era of anime was just... something else. Thank you for the stretching scene. I get everyone was trying to learn a new medium, but it's amazing just how many steps back in quality they took entering the digital age
I think the best thing to come from this show (aside from this hilarious analysis of the early 2000s harem formula) is all the comments from viewers saying “here’s how I’d use the “limited spell count per life” setting in a dramatic story”. If just _one_ of these ideas can become a fully realized book/manga/show, then all that time “wasted” will have been worth it.
i'd love to see you cover more early 2000s anime with weird plots that are "mostly formula but sometimes really dark for some reason". BL from this era in particular is bonkers i.e sukisho. Its like watching a bunch of aliens try to act human and recreate a romance novel.
Honestly I’d love to see a comparison between harem anime targeted towards women and harem targeted towards men now. I always feel like harem anime targeted towards women or reverse harems, while usually using the same bland protagonist everyone can see themselves in still allows the male cast that compromises the harem to be more complex characters, while the harems targeted towards men really only allow its female cast to be a trope they don’t develop themselves much further than. I don’t know, it just seems very interesting to me.
And in defence of reverse harems, I've seen at least some that even have a decent main character, at least on the Korean webtoon side. For example, the character is relatable, not by being as bland as possible, but by doing things that one can imagine doing if ever got isekai'd into a fantasy world.
The instant I saw this notification pop up, I clicked, because I watched this anime when I was a teenager, literally half my life ago, and I never forgot the title, because it was the first time my zero-taste brain said "this is bad".
“I don’t know if you’ve ever talked with a teenage girl before- definitely DO NOT start now” fucking killed me. Great job
My Daughter left the Nest, a Manga briefly seen in this Video,
is absolutely Epic.
Timestamped for posterity: 13:22
I had to rush to post a comment, and I'm glad to see that it was already posted. That line was perfect. 🤣
God such a well delivered line
Only he is absolutely wrong about all teen women not wanting to get pregnant. There are plenty of teen women that want to get knocked up ASAP.
Ok, a lot of this is really stupid, but I will say, the idea of a ghost getting evicted from the house she's haunting is pretty funny.
Yeah haha!!!
a lot of these are pretty funny ideas, but 90% of comedy is in the execution.
there are some good gags....its just overshadowed by everyone being terrible and lacking a real plot
Feels like the plot of a sidequest from one of The Witcher games.
I second this but with the baseball zombies, at face value that's a shockingly fun concept that deserves far better handling
The fact that this guy basically has six genie wishes in his pocket and women literally lining up for his baby batter and is STILL considered a loser is Peak Anime.
Pretty much.
I didn't know the wish-fulfillment genre had such audaciously paradoxical all-powerful yet treated-like-a-loser self-insert characters back then.
@@LinkEX i suppose this is the other side of the coin of self insert wish fulfillment stories by/for highly insecure people: having so little confidence that you can't even imagine your ideal life in a fictional setting you have complete control of.
@@58209 I mean, insecure protags in situations like these *can* work. Suddenly going from lonely to popular could make the MC suspicious (and suspect that the people crushing on them have ulterior motives.) The MC could have trauma that runs too deep for this stuff to instantly cure. The MC could want to become a better person to feel worthy of their harem/powers/etc. (possibly by doing "chad MC" things that, in reality, people would *not* react well to.) Or the positives are balanced by a daunting responsibility that the MC struggles under the weight of.
That being said, the above options would all require compromising some degree of wish fulfillment in favor of writing a more compelling story.
@@Snopelol TBH, wish fulfillment isn't necessarily bad as long as it is done well. Many famous works of entertainment like action (i.e. a story of one person taking on huge obstacles) and romances (like a down on her luck girl finding a guy who helps her get through issues) indulge in people's fantasies. The trick is to add some depth to the stories like the hero making mistakes or a relationship having obstacles that must be overcome. In other words, don't just give what a viewer wants. Give them life lessons as well.
@@Snopelol I have trauma of public shaming from school, so this shit would be fucking hell on earth for me.
I think the thing that kills me most about this series is that the elite magic academy looks like a completely normal high school
It's like Carcinisation: Like how a bunch of different creatures all evolve into crab-like forms, all anime institutions become high school.
Just re-use the backgrounds from the last show. ;)
Right? at least places like UA, IS academy, or Demon King academy have a certain scale or exaggerated style that make them stand out
No. It's world building. This is the elite school. Every other school looks like a North Indian poverty school under a collapsed overpass
If I'm being frank, I'm pretty fucking tired of this trope.
Wait a second: The teacher is not in the harem and secondary male characters who do things actually exist?
It's like observing a fossilized ancestor of the current trash harem shows!
Before the vestigial tail fell off
@@librarianseth5572
It devolved right in front of our eyes.
@@Alias_Anybody Did I ever say losing tails was a good thing? They'd make carrying groceries SO MUCH EASIER!
@@librarianseth5572
"Imagine the possibilities!"
I was that kid thar got expelled from high school for smoking weed on my RUclips channel.. now i smoke weed on my RUclips channel for a living 🥶💚how times change..
I'm amazed that the fact the teacher is a vampire is barely acknowledged, apparently irrelevant, and never expounded on. It might've been a joke. I honestly can't tell. It's kinda great.
They could’ve had tons of visual gags like drinking blood from a coffee mug, spitting out food with garlic, having a relative or old boyfriend that is clearly Dracula, or have her dress as Dracula for a costume party or something
Maybe it’s just a jojo reference
@@Suchwerewolfor even a line of dialogue complaining about a new vampire game she got because it’s not realistic enough
@@wren_. I love that, especially if it’s like a very clear spoof of an ACTUAL vampire video game like castlevania
I would especially love for that to be a recurring gag with her, that she consumes vampire media that is clearly in reference to stuff that actually exists
@@Suchwerewolf So... You mean that one teacher from Milo Murphy's law?
i thought there was gonna be a plot twist that his spell count is actually infinity and not eight but he never notices because he doesn't use spells because he has so few
Just gonna throw out that the 8 key on a keyboard is also used for *, which is used in the bash shell as a wildcard.
@Tin Watchman Not gonna lie, the idea of a sudden plot swerve because someone recognizes that change meaning an integer overflow, meaning they live in a simulation and *_someone_* must be running it for some reason, with finding out becoming the ongoing plot (with the usual antics now being a show they put on for fear of discovery) of the show? That'd be memorably awesome.
@@Sorain1 Isn't that what animegataris did?
that they went from "anime club discussing anime plots trying to salvage it from the student council" to "existential cosmic 4th walll breaking crisis equal to the amazing world of gumball and lego movie" ?
@@ianr.navahuber2195 nani? I don't think I heard of this
@@sarafontanini7051 yeah. it was an anime show from fall 2017
Pity there was no mention of his actual family tree. I cracked up when at the end I saw it laid out showing all his ancestors, including one "H. Potter"...
You know, I think it might be a reference to Card Captor Sakura which despite being a really rather important shoujo anime in the history of such anime has basically the same lore explanation for it's magic powers and it remains almost 100% unexplored as a plot point, they explore the mechanics of the power a ton, but not it's source. I know, I know, he comes back as his reincarnated self halfway through the show...to no effect whatsoever, as though he had contrived from the very beginning of his existence to use his entire original lifespan to create a situation in which a magical girl exists. They even do an OVA where a contemporary of her ancestor attacks her, mistaking her for his reincarnation, but all you learn is that she was jealous of his ability to see the future...further suggesting that he used his entire original existence to contrive a situation in which a magical girl would just organically exist.
...anyone ever read Dune?
This reminds me of the time that William Shockley speculated that his children were idiots because his ex-wife was genetically inferior and then expressed an opinion that he should be given a harem to spread his genes across the world.
@@hypothalapotamus5293 an original male feminist!
@@Suiseisexy CLAMP clearly saw the mess it could become, said "nah" and barely touched the topic since then, Clear Card included.
@@Suiseisexy Dune was such a great classic Book series, I have all the original books myself.
Imagine if the main character decided that the "might makes right" society he lives in is bad, and that the hoarding of power by a select few is evil... so he goes and bangs every single person who will let him and spawns an entire generation of super mages who upset the status quo. If only
Alternatively, he could raise an army of loyal super powerful child soldiers
Far too subversive
Or just wish said society was better.
That would make for a good AU fanfiction
redo healer time
10,000 spell casts seems like a lot. It is not, at least when you look at how casually the characters use spells. Fun fact that I learned from some random teen drama manga- you live 6,000 days by the time you are 16. So you can burn through all your spells in like 8 years if you cast 2 a day. For example, casting a spell to fly to school and back.
All I'm saying- tsundere is not surviving highschool at the rate she comically blows things up.
That's what happens when you have people spitballing lore ideas and just running with them without really thinking through the consequences.
@@Draeckon 10,000 might have been a fine number if these were treated like military grade weapons and this was a gritty story about effectively child soldiers and burn out.
...instead, these spells are used as tsundere emotional expression. While the main character wastes his spells too, that is just a kid making a small number of bad decisions. But "flying to school" is a bad decision born out of long term bad decisions due to the perception that they have plenty of spells.
if they only use 2 spells a day(example: flying to and from school), and don't use any on weekends, 10000 spells would last for 19 years!
@@Eliza-hb1nc So until their first year of college?
@@lemeres2478 basically yes
Something that occurs to me after watching this video and dealing with the resurfaced memories of this series: you can take the stock harem anime setup and turn it into a surprisingly effective psychological horror. We've seen series that deconstruct the genre by turning the male lead into exactly the kind of scumbag who would actually try to engineer this situation, but I don't think anyone has tried to do the opposite. Keep the main character a hapless doof getting led around by the nose, but turn all the girls into cold, manipulative sociopaths who are only pursuing him because he has something they want. They can't just take what they're after and have no other source of it, so they pretend they're in love with him. They're all powerful enough that they can prevent him from escaping even if he becomes aware of the situation so the only obstacles they have are each other, hence the fighting. It even gives the side cast something to do. Some are working for a given girl and try to assist her, and some are actually his friends who've realized what's going on and are trying to help him escape. It even justifies the trope of a girl becoming violently possessive since they don't really care about his well-being beyond how it affects their goal. They try to minimize any harm he suffers at their hands but accidents happen, and it explains their overall tropey personalities. They're emulating archetypes to make themselves more appealing.
Dear god... this is actually a fantastic idea.
The Psychological Thriller/Horror/Harem Anime I didn't know I wanted until now
Or we turn it into an intense game of wits as the girls and the sidecast attempt to take down their rival factions, allegiances are made and betrayed, diabloical plots crash into each other all while carefully keeping up a facade so that the main guy doesn't figure anything out. We could even work in the eugenics thing that way for extra anime points.
I think i read one manga like that, the girls are trapped inside of game and the only way to get out are obtain protagonist love. The protagonist are unaware of everything,but the girls are literally fighting to death behind the scene. I forgot the name of the manga
Bokurano was a great anime... not a harem but definitely psychological horror
"When they cry (higurashi)" sounds much like the fictional anime you are describing. Would highly recommend.. both seasons. Psy/hor
Eugenics comes up as a main plot point in anime a lot.
It’s almost as if Japan has some serious issues to work through with a therapist
To be fair, they're issues that a lot of other countries have to work through. Like the USA.
@@timothymclean Bruh if anything the USA has gone the complete opposite into dysgenics.
@@MK_ULTRA420The USA is trying to Eugenics on their own population these days. Honest to god fact.
@@MK_ULTRA420based
@@MK_ULTRA420 The fact that people are worrying about the US producing some kind of dysgenic effect on its population is, in fact, another symptom of US eugenics rhetoric.
What's wild is the premise of a world where your lifespan is basically however long you can hold onto your last spell is a very interesting premise that could make for some very dramatic story telling. Too bad it was only used for this.
If you are interested, the lightbringer book series has this as one of the main points of the magic system
The Neverending Story 2 also used this, but it was even more dark than the first movie.
@@CTimmerman My Daughter left the Nest, a Manga briefly seen in this Video, is absolutely Epic. Very high Quality.
Spellcount doesn't equate to unlimited lifespan if you never spend it all, but that your life essence is gone when the count hits zero. I'm assuming you still age normally if maybe a degree slower.
@@fasteddie307 Exactly.
I am frankly shocked they didn't go the route of after protag-kuns 8th cast of his God magic, he actually DOESNT insta-die like he should, and upon rechecked his magi-count it comes to rise that his count hasent gone down at all, for you see his magic cast limit was not a measly 8, but in fact, INFINITY
I swear on my life I thought that was 1000% gonna be the twist when you mentioned he specifically was only ever born with '8 casts' of magic on his limit
And frankly I'm disappointed they didn't go down that route
if he did had that then people would try to physically kill him to render it useless. but yeah him having a infinate count on magic will do.
"His spell count wasn't 8, it was sideways-8!"
omg Jonesy pfp
I'd have been okay with that
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5:12 - "This month's goals: Don't use attack magic in the school".
That plot hook sounds way better than the rest of the series.
Two of the potential love interests are textbook abusers, one is a child that probably got groomed by her family, the school is full of the Junior Capitalists of Japan, the teaches are almost criminally negligent ..Someone should have called Protag Protective Services for this guy yesterday.
oh and one of the love interests is an attempted murderer, so that's bad too
@@sarafontanini7051 pff, they don't hand out awards for arrempted murder.
Unfortunately Protag Protective Services was criminally underfunded in the mid 2000s so they couldn't do much to help him.
of course or at least get him to the states and be safe there.
Now I need an anime called “Protagonist Protection Services”
The actual background for the story is actually interesting: like, hey, there's magic, but everyone is only able to cast a certain amount of spells in their lives. That's actually kinda cool when you think about the different kinds of stories you could write with that concept and the situations you could put the characters in. But then they just decided to take this intriguing concept and put it into a harem anime. Definitely not the genre I would have went with.
The Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks explores that idea, with the modification that if you go over you limit, you go insane in a way depending on your type of magic. It's much more into the magical politics of the mages being defacto leaders due to their ability to blow up normal people with their minds, and how that is resulting in a lot of animosity.
What would you have done
@@starvoltnexus3139 Nothing that original. I probably would have just done fantasy. I'd have to sit for a while to think of a decent concept.
I thought the same thing. I heard Jeff say this and instantly wrote it down in my notebook of D&D character ideas. Such a cool concept.
@@Turtlewax63 that series is on my list
Surprising that all those powerful families are risking their daughters failing to attract this guy rather than pressuring or paying protag-kun to make regular visits to a sperm bank. Artificial insemination was already a well-established medical practice at the time.
If he goes to a sperm bank, then they can't monopolize his good genes. If everyone has superpowerful magic genes, then none of them has an edge.
I mean, that's probably more thought than the author put into that question, but it's answerable.
But then, how are we gonna get the cheesy and not at all overused harem formula to work? What you say makes too much sense :)
"Anime Dark Ages huh?" Sounds like someone has paid $40-$50 for 4 episodes of an anime more than once in his lifetime... I'm here for you my brother
For me it was going to my local Media Play and buying the boxset of La Blue girl. But you could only do it by using the clipboard that had a full list of hentai you could purchase...and then you had to ask a store associate to run to the back to grab it...good times.
Saved up all of my babysitting money for a year to get Outlaw Star on DVD when I was in high school.
I only hope this comment chain becomes people telling their early anime stories... so nostalgic. As for me, I spent like over $100 on Season 1 of Hell Girl at the Suncoast in the mall where I worked. Remember Suncoast people?
I can still feel the pain of paying $20-$30 for those InuYasha DVD's that only had three episodes each on them. It blew my mind when I started being able to buy entire seasons of anime for just a little more than that.
@@BenFranklin89 I remember it well.
So I realize that I'm completely missing the point, but I can't help but notice how these kids are casually using their magic like it's nothing but if the best of them get only 10000 spells in their life then using just one spell a day would kill them in 27 years.
hoensty it really only matters for Kazuki, everyone else seems to have so much magic they can just cast spells willy nilly so it doesn't matter
kinda makes you wonder why they even bother making it a ahrd rule and not jsut something unique to kazuki
That was one of the things I noticed when I first watched this show. They use magic for EVERYTHING but even for people with the highest magic count like Kuriko who has around 140k at the show start, that only gives you about 5 spells per day if you want to make it to retirement age.
Technically, the magic system has almost no boundaries, kinda, so why can't kazuki just do a "wish for more wishes" kinda thing and use magic that gives him more magic.
Exactly what I thought of, this school is said to have kids with the highest spell counts in the tens of thousands but realistically with how much they use their spells on random shit, I’ll be surprised if most of them are able to see their kids graduate elementary school
@@K..C just use magic to make magical tools that do the magic for you without doing actual magic. done.
Wait... wait... there are hot springs that increase your spell count by staying underwater for 2 years.... and the main character has reality warping wish spells... even using 1 to just let him safely stay underwater for 2 years would be at least a way to break even or to get a net gain. Why doesn't he do that?
2 years is a crazy long time for a high school and his circle of waifus. He didn't use the Dragon Balls for Immortality, remember.
Probably because that is an actually good idea.
You're expecting too much from the people that wrote "...and then the ghost likes to rub on her boobs."
Hey, just put him in a 2 year coma!
This is why I love the comments section
As a 1980s era weeb, let me assure you "expensive box set" was better than "perpetual expensive long distance phone calls to obscure BBS communities looking for someone who had an episode you were missing and could mail you a VHS dub of it," which typically ended in having eight episodes in the original Japanese with French subtitles, and the other four dubbed in German with Italian subtitles.
Wow😅🤣
At yes the past did indeed suck, as does the present, and the future!
My internet friends and I used to literally send CDs with random anime episodes, jrock videos, and art book scans back and forth. Because our connections were so bad that even uploading a 2MB mp3 took hours. I used to leave my pc running overnight to download a concert rip that was 1GB and is literally 1cmx1cm on today's monitors. Shit was WILD!
@@erylaria398 Remember when modems came with built-in fax capability that was somehow faster than the modem? 2400 bps modem, 9600 bps fax.
@@Poormrworry they all have distinct ways of sucking
Hearing “I’ll escort you to your roomy room” in a southern accent is unironcally one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.
Is there any other accent you could say "roomy room" in without sounding unnatural? (Australian, maybe?)
"It's bad, but it's not _Final Fantasy Unlimited_ bad."
How _DARE_ you insult my favorite anime from the 7th grade with this completely accurate and irrefutable statement!
Me during that statement: "So it's... Good...?"
@@letsreadtextbook1687If you like “Harem Excuse Plot” anime, then this might be the series for you. In some ways it’s actually better than some modern anime that uses a similar concept, like it takes till halfway through first half of the anime for 2 of the 3 main heroines to actually want the protagonist for reasons other than his genes.
After a quick search, the novel didn't split him into 10 clones. He got revived with a SUPER magical body that could cause great calamity to the whole world if he uses magic. Oh, and sometimes it leaks magic and causes minor or major misfortune.
So apparently dying isn't a big deal you just need to be resurrected and in the most goofy way possible and you become God like in ability and no other mage attempted such a feat until just then
Gotta say that I prefer that over the clones. I can't see in any possible sense how reviving a guy even when they're incredibly magical would cause them to turn to 10. While I can see multiple ways reviving someone turns them into the magical version of Nitroglycerin.
Interesting to see that was a different outcome.
@@rockclanhawkstar1454 It would have made sense to me if each clone had one of remaining wishes, like splitting the magic. Or if each had normal magic.
My mom, upon reading the title of this episode: "Whatever this man (Geoff) makes, it is not enough to cover the psychological damages."
show your mom his Re:Zero videos
Unfortunately, if Geoff were a Billionaire, it would be highly unlikely that he would make these very entertaining RUclips clips for us.
@@pedrovascodeoliveiraveriss6293 On the other hand, he would probably be able to entertain us in other ways by using that money to fund some damn good anime remakes.
Your mom has a sharp wit. And is also totally right.
Accurate description of all anime fans really
That gag at 27:00, that VA understood the assignment. Rest of it looks like hot trash but dang that gag hits
At the time of writing this, this video has 71,535 views. Assuming each one watches exactly 38 minutes of it, we have wasted (as said at the end of the video by Jeff himself) 5.17 YEARS of combined time on this show.
Also assuming young Jeff watched every minute of every episode and each episode was exactly 24 minutes in length, that would only add up to 576 minutes, or about 9.6 hours
SO, he has wasted at least 4,719 times more well.. time than this show ever did to him. Who's the real monster now?
It took me around 15 seconds to read your comment and another 30 to write this one. THANKS FOR WASTING MY PRECIOUS TIME, Timmylord Omega.
Don’t forget all that time Geoff wasted _thinking_ about this show that ruined his childhood (esp that ending) ! ;D
I'm just here for the Lols. Though consider that it is possible to do something else whilst watching this video in the background/on your phone and playing a video game that doesn't require all your attention fixated on it at the same time.
I watch at 1.5 times speed so you are wrong.
To be fair, the show wasted more than just his time.
The sad thing is that the concept of only having a limited number of spells in your life sounds really cool. Too bad it was squandered by bad, horny writing.
But even then this series really doesn’t do well at conveying the limit for anyone other than MC. Everyone else throws spells out like it’s nothing when if the highest limit is around 10000. By doing some math if a person only used magic once a day, they’ll day in about 27 years. But everyone are using their spells like crazy either to get to school, peep on girls or random nonsense. Honestly I doubt most of these idiots would make it to 30 with their excessive magic use
Honestly there's a surprising amount of decent concepts. The limited spells, the losing everything that made the girls attracted to him for, like, an extensive period of time rather than a one episode gag, and even one of the characters just straight up hating him because it's essentially an arranged marriage. The last two, you could probably write a full story about, or at least a pretty lengthy arc. It's just a shame those kinda-cool concepts got thrown into the infernal harem playdoh and ended up merging into the same color of off-gray dullness
Yet another thing it has in common with so many formulaic shows that came after it: take an interesting idea and then instead of developing it, just murder it so brutally that everyone looking to make/watch anything that isn't formulaic garbage is hesitant to even go near the idea.
Just wrote the same thing and then I see this comment, lol. Agreed, this was a good premise for a show! What a waste for it to be squandered with the harem being added.
@@BlueBlazeKing My suggestion would be to make it that everyone has a small limit of times or maybe the same number. They still face supernatural issues and foes though so magic either had to be used or they have to get creative with not using magic (natrually, some of the cast will die and I'd rather the ability to come back be removed). With nobody having a higher count than another, everyone is on equal grounds. Maybe give specific powers to everyone though so that they stand out uniquely instead of just generic "characters with magical powers".
Step 1: Use reality bending powers to give yourself the ability to breath underwater and heat resistance
Step 2: Convince someone to throw food in hot spring sometimes or if you have a spare cast, create infinite bag of water proof snacks
Step 3: stay under water for 2 years
Step 4: profit
Or make it so for you specifically it only takes 2 seconds or skip that and wish for more wishes
Not sure if anyone knows this but the MC of Girls Bravo was voiced by Yuri Lowenthal. Who is most famous for voice Sasuke in Naruto and most recently Dainslef in Genshin Impact.
Simon the Digger as well.
One of his most prominent roles was Ben 10.
Man, Spider-Man sure has had a wild career
Dainslef in a harem anime
He's also Marth (among others) in the Fire Emblem games.
"Another secret lurking beneath its waters:....Baseball Zombies."
I F-ing LOST it and burst out laughing! Peeeeeerfect example of the Mad Libs style of writing Geoff was putting on display with those plot descriptions!
Wasn't "baseball game against supernatural beings where if you lose you go to hell" also the premise of a Real Ghostbusters cartoon episode? Maybe it's a more common story trope than I thought, who knows
@@emmamaki5862 Field of Dreams might have something to do with that trope.
5:50
Imagine the reactions of the heads of those magical dynasties when they heard he McFucking killed himself BEFORE knocking up any of their daughters
If they, you know, actually existed
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN HE KILLED HIMSELF?!"
"To be fair, he was trying to save someone else's life. It's not like the spells he wasted on a baseball pitch, or fixing a bento someone dropped, or making it snow in summer to impress a girl in grade school-"
"He tried to impress a girl with some friggin' snow?"
"He did that twice, actually. No idea how he survived to high school."
@@timothymclean Worst it did that 3 times...
Mc fucking killed himself is one of the best sentences ever
According to Wikipedia: "In the novel, the side effect of Kazuki's restoration was gaining a special magical body that can cause disaster to the whole world if he lets out his magic powers. Another side effect of Kazuki's restoration is the overflowing of his magical powers every now and then causing minor mishaps and sometimes great chaos."
So, it sounds like the anime just made up the ten Kazukis thing, and the novel's thing that happened was even more stupid and boring.
Ah, that's actually original... I think: an anime original ending that discourages you from checking out the source material! How novel for it's time!
if it didn't end with his clas of sociopaths being killed/sent to hell, then I don't care
Easily retconned in the next season by letting the clones be a magical mishap. Boom!@ You're welcome, anime industry.
Oh wow, mishaps and chaos? How unlike everything that happened to him before he got his new magic body!
28:50 you mean to tell me the brother of one of the harem girls is introduced, turns out to be a werewolf, is fought, is killed, and his soul goes to the moon in one episode.....and this doesn't change anything???
Well yeah. Once his soul goes to the moon, he can't affect anything. Perfect bottle filler.
@@timothymclean but we find out she has/had a brother, find out werewolves exist in this universe, she has to fight and kill her own kin, and then he isnt even really gone but his soul is in the moon, and no one brings any of this relevance to their world building up later on in the story.
@@h2ojr1Man, your expectations for this series are a lot higher than mine!
Listening to this on the side while the internet blows up about the queen dying when suddenly 'Said Ghost is named Elizabeth' hits me out of NOWHERE.
OK, points taken, but the bit of him running around with the blonde one clinging on him and her flying out the window when he takes a turn at 23:46 is hilarious
I’ll also vouch for the basic concept of a rotating heart-shaped love motel bed being installed into a school nurse’s office (as seen at 28:08)
And then another girl yeets herself out the window after the blonde one. what the fuck is the context there? _especially_ why was protagonist not bothered by any of it? Thank you for pointing that out, it adds layers
Edit: it was two girls. What
@@julianffan i think those were blonde girl's maids? servants?
@@cravenlunatic1 Yeah, closer inspection I can see maid clothes. They were trying to save their mistress.
Like the show seems like garbage, but that's one of the best "blink and you'll miss it" gags I've ever seen
A comedy built on the premise of "guy from esteemed families is just kind of a loser and has to fight (and fail) to survive a hoard of magical batshit fucking lunatics" could be great but sadly that would require a writer who could think with the head on his shoulders and not in his pants.
Lol, like Encanto but as a high school anime. I'd watch that!
Right?!?! Or even a drama exploring how nobles fell from grace or how modern society doesn't care about history or who knows.
I will say, one thing that got a chuckle out of me was the sign saying "This Month's Goal: Don't use attack magic inside the school."
It's self-aware, but not in an obnoxious wink-and-nod kind of way.
"And while the little guy's magic may not be all that potent, HIS little guys are as potent as they come!"
That is gold. Solid gold.
"White Gold", perhaps?
@@arutka2000 aw man, i was gonna make that joke :(
@@daalimbe Gonna be honest. I felt gross even hearing that joke, let alone writing back down.
It's pretty nonsensical that he has no magical power besides his charges yet his DNA can ensure hyper powerful magic users can be born which when you think about it makes no good sense since if the magic power can be passed down genetically he should have more than that so all number regardless of plot idiocy or is it some excuse that his body min maxed into all magic but no intelligence
"It's just a bunch of random stuff happening until the episode then the show are eventually over."
Sounds like my type of show right there
Man you truly do show up everywhere in record time, still miss your old pfp.
It definitely is because he is totally correct. There is no idea too bonkers to get discarded.
Vampires and Werewolves exist and everyone is just okay with that.
For Adults' Ringetsu - for Puff Puff Myself Yourself - a Anime
Yo!! Ya got a checkmark now??? Sweet as hell
What's the name of the anime at 34:40?
So if Kazuki's magic can literally do anything, why can't he, like, give himself a higher spell count?
You can't wish for more wishes dawg. This is like magic wishes 101.
@@warmachine5835 Except we don't KNOW he can't, the magic rules in this show never establish such a law. He is established to have 8 world+ level wishes, yet never uses his empty-oatmeal brain to even try with ONE of them.
@@thunderspark1536 I'm willing to bet that either there are people before him who tried and this is covered next to "Wasting all your spells kills you" in first-grade magic class, or casting a spell to increase your spell count does slightly less than kicking a wall to move your house. Possibly both!
@@timothymclean Well, they never address it, that's called a plot hole kid. If they DID include a throwaway line saying so, then boom no more plot hole.
@@timothymclean I mean, there were those magical hotsprings with the Baseball Zombies.....
I will say, that bit with Kazuki running with Kuriko hanging around his neck and then he hard stops, causing her to fly out the window is actually a pretty funny visual gag.
Decided to rewatch the video and wanted to share a story. I had a strangely similar experience discovering this show way back in the day. Saw it in a magazine, and then watched it. The difference is that I watched it via an anime channel On Demand while my Dad was getting our house remodeled. I actually had to stop it whenever my family was around since well... I was like 10 or 11 when I first saw it and didn't want to get in trouble. Later in my life I watched it via RUclips back when they were less strict about copyright stuff along with Love Hina and Negima.
23:41
XD
@@Ramsey276one i was thinking that too
I’m ashamed to say I watched this show and wholeheartedly love watching it because I was a lonely 15 year old who this was directed towards so why wouldn’t I…. and it was here on RUclips because I doubt anyone cared that it was here lol AAAAND I hated the end because it was such a let down…. Even my no taste 15 year old self knew the ending was awful lol
Same, I spent years having this anime pop back up in my head and not being able to remember what it was called. I also remember thinking the ending was a let down, but by then, I thought it was because they ran out of material to take from the Manga and went for a cop out happy ending.
5:25 That line immediately gave me flashbacks to one of the first doujins I ever read way back in middle school. It was called "My Balls." The MC had Satan trapped within his balls, and he couldn't "release his frustrations" without also releasing her and throwing the world into thousands of years of darkness.
what
I remember that. Ore Tama. It's not a doujin. It's an actual manga
So, why not call a Hoo....uhm, experienced Healer to exorcize his balls?
We already have a great set up here with the character getting tied to a bed. We would just the exorcist in the skimpy clothes. 😄
What I wanna know is how Satan ended up in his balls in the first place 😭
@@ruiira Bit late, but basically an ancient (IIIRC 10k old) agreement between Heaven and Hell states that Satan and her horde of demons can only invade the Mortal Realm during a specific timeframe. This timeframe happens to be during our modern time. Part of the contract states that Satan has to lead her demon horde personally for it to be allowed. So when the time comes and Satan is going to lead her demons to invade Earth, a single angel (or monk. Or angel disguised as a human monk) decides they are not going to sitback and simply watch, and so they basically do the Dragonball Evil Containment Wave in order to seal Satan into a ball or pot or something. However oblivious MC just happened to walk by as the spell was being cast and so got his balls hit by the containment wave instead. And thus Satan herself is stuck in his balls and he is told to not jerk off for like a month or a year or something or else she will be released and the invasion will resume. Which is horrible because he is a porn addict. What follows is shenanigans as hell sends increasingly kinkier demons to try and jerk him off.
At least that was the setup as far as I remember it. It's been so many years since I read that manga. I remember it being fun, but I was also a horny teenager at the time.
Maburaho ran so Peter Grill could fall head first down a flight of stairs.
Peter Grill is a lot of fun
@@murderman8578so is falling headfirst down a flight of stairs, but it still hurts
this shit became so mass produced that we can slot those girls not just into single drawers but into "variant" files. It's like a goddamn fast-food restaurant or catering business. "Yes, halo sir? another girl for your harem? Wonderful! We have a full palette. Which one would you like? A silent violent type? Good and what hair would interest you? We have purple, green, liliac, violet...whole rainbow really...." I can picture an employee just browsing through files or clicking on some character making software and then printing the girl in 3rd printer XD with what little personality she is supposed to have
This makes me want to see some sci fi horror kinda meta "harem" series now.
Sounds to me like you just described all the Twitch V-tubers
You have no idea, though as generic as it sounds then, it's only that way through today's viewpoint.
yeah, the game exists already. it's called honey select.
That sounds like it could make a decent cyberpunk premise. Some rich guy orders a custom girlfriend from a company that surgically/cybernetically modifies a girl to fit the profile. Of course, the girls they choose are all impoverished, since it's pretty cheap to get them to sign a contract that lets the company do stuff like that to them and ship them off to some guy.
@@mordet2 I hate that you made me aware of that and will now start trying to forget it.
"The onsen episode turns into the sports episode because Baseball Zombies" sounds like a setup that deserves to be in basically any show better than this.
ZOM 100 got like 90% of the way there, but sadly its zombies don't play baseball. They _do_ play a slightly more violent form of rugby, though.
In all of these "eugenics we got to have that guy's children" series, I always wonder why they don't just have him bust one out and store it like a sperm bank(If it's a girl then things are more complicated, but let's be real, it's always a guy for some reason.). Especially in ones where it's a life or death situation and the guy is trying to keep his virginity or something, like just humor the dude and have him do that and everything is done. That's especially important if the girls throwing themselves at the guy are becoming a big problem, which they always are, eugenicists tend not to be very good with romance... Or anything related to human emotion for that mater
The Witcher books actually have a story where the main girl is wanted by everyone for the eugenics reasons, and it's exactly as terrible as it would be in real life. The main antagonist straight up tries to remove her womb and make it grow a child artificially with magic
Yeah, but if they did that then that'd solve like 90% of the contrived issues in the show and the writers would have to actually put in effort in order for things to continue happening.
It also implies a lot of bloodline marriage prestige politics, and historically the first thing any dude who has people believing his bloodline is special or magic does is use it to fuck lots of women. The magic reinforces patriarchal norms.
@@dakotaadams189
Problem with that claim is that a lot of those marriages were arranged, and judging by all the Hapsburg chins and hemophilia they were married off to relatives more often than not.
I feel as though half the problems in this show's story could be solved by Kazuki just continually donating his seed. Like a one-man sperm bank, if you will.
that can work in a way for common sense but again fan fiction will have to step up to the plate to write out the logical stuff like that.
A reverse DNA²
The number of harem shows where "Your problems could go away if you'd just..." doesn't apply is ridiculously rare.
I thought of that too but all things considered It wouldn’t pan out sadly
Precisely this.
Even if he wouldn't _want_ to donate: It would also make sense for any of the rich families to abduct him for that purpose.
It's established that their whole society is very corrupt and ruled by power, so I don't see any repercussions even if it became public that Kazuki is the father of the children.
I actually think the guy literally dividing himself in order to be with each of his harem components is actually a really fun idea to work with, as long as you focus on the comedic side and try to soften the existential horror. I would be very interested if an anime used this concept as the premise of the story.
25:50 You see, a smart person would use their literal reality warping spell power to make it so they can breathe underwater then set up a system where they get fed every day for the next 2 years to increase said spell count. Of course there is the problem of exactly how much it increases your spell count, and how anyone would in a harem anime have the mental capacity or patience to let someone with literal godly power not die before he can pass on his genes.
Either that or use his reality altering magic to steal the spell count from his asshole classmates
but it only goes up by one for every 2 years so not very effecent.
@Vincent Celeste Except he turned back time at one point, so couldn’t he theoretically pause his own aging/make himself physically immortal & put time under the water in fast-forward? It’s more spells spent, but if it’s legit then he could get basically infinity spells that way.
@@msf2399 you guys keep putting thought into the world and characters. this show was about marketing with copy-paste characters, not making any semblance of sense or artistic integrity.
@@Direk091 Yeah, but the thing is when writers leave an obvious hole in their story, no matter how cheap the story was, it is the nature of people who think to go, “Wait, why didn’t they do [this other thing] instead?” It’s a sign the audience isn’t engaged with your story, when they start making up “better” ones in their heads.
Not to be confused with doing the same thing while watching a *CRITIQUE* of said story, for the record, where we’re being *invited* to look for holes in the writing & how the writer/s of the story went for the least interesting or most contrived option. That means the critique did what it was supposed to: got you thinking about the work & what you can learn from it.
Also, it’s just… very fun to point out obvious solutions to contrived story problems. Can’t forget that.
Okay, that Girls Bravo scene with the protag getting repeatedly injured was god damned hilarious. It got a big laugh from me, which I did not even remotely expect.
Me too.I was like a looney tunes marathon boiled down to all the cartoon violence
The world building of this show actually sounded like it had a lot of potential for really interesting exploration until you mentioned the superpowered genetics part.
Okay so we have casual rape, racism, pedophilia... The only thing keeping this from being one of the most problematic animes ever is the lack of incest!
I mean, with how mainstream the meme of consensual incest is, it... doesn't *seem* as problematic as it used to be.
As someone from the '90s and 2000's, I'll admit that I never really expected to see the meteoric rise "onii-chan"... I mean, both KissxSis and All You Need Is A Little Sister were things that sold enough to justify a company to make an anime adaptation... while A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones were very explicitly bashing the concept of Brother x Sister sexual pairings, but you could find fans of all four...
Truly, we live in one of the wildest timelines.
@@marionette8739 All you need is a little sister at least was decent as a kinda romcom workcom
sure the MC's dellusions about a little sister were offputting but somehow they actually gave him a reason why he is like that
if the anime was about him working his way to stop that weird fantasy of having a little sister it would be better
Don't forget casual attempted murder disguised as a joke! By botha protagonist AND the characters who are the real main villains of the story!
You forgot necrophilia ! Don't forget the girls lust for a dead guy for a few episodes !
Judging by two of them sharing the same surname, pretty sure there's incest in the series. The two are protag and pink-haired girl.
This really makes me appreciate how far dubbing has gotten
To be fair, ADV/Sentai dubs are pretty hit or miss all around while dubs from other companies, like Funimation or Ocean productions, were pretty solid even back then.
Totally agree!!! I love good dubs!!!
Awesome! Love a great Funi dub!!
I really liked the kaguya sama: love is war dub season 2 it’s pretty good the dub narrator is pretty funny and sassy
Damn, people really thought they were doing something new when they said "solve the love triangle with polyamory" completely unaware of ghost harem horniness from 2005 huh
Sounds like another funny idea: Ghost Harem Horniness-He sees dead girls. And they all want to marry him to break their curses."
I unironically enjoyed this anime when I found it. The anime is objectively awful, but its like watching a train wreck. You can't look away.
I don't think you know what unironically means
@@craigyeah1052 I know what you mean but I think there's nuance lol ironically is when you call the gang over and make it a drinking game, unironically is when you still pass out laughing over the spinning love motel bed even tho the Bento box spell scene made you lose brain cells. But maybe that's just me watching this and thinking that basement sensei still did too good a job selling it to me lol
Ah yes this show, in high school my ace butt was just trying to figure out why he didn’t just sell his baby batter for a fortune a cup. He’d be rich enough to never miss not being about to use magic, his kids would be titans of industry and he could marry (or not) the person he wants to.
Like I'm ace too and if I were him I'd just be selling this stuff to everyone like why do they have to get married?? Although you could still have them jockeying for like like.. sole breeding rights I guess
I'm not even ace and that would be my plan. Sex is overrated.
Also ace, I probably wouldn't sell it since that'd probably get me in a hell of a lot of trouble by turning it from a sex thing into a money thing (because now that it's on the market it can be murdered over and such, and I might get iced to monopolize the genes once evilman gang gets their hands on it), but I *would* pretty clearly lay out sensible ground rules about what I'd be willing to perform... genetic transfer for. Ground rules like "don't commit sexual assault on me" or "don't commit regular assault on me", which would mean that the girls would either instantly all get disqualified and I'd be left with background character Q who's probably more charismatic anyway, or the rich idiots get their act together and fight over me without me getting caught in the crossfire. Eventually, if and when I worked out who's the best option, I'd just get some non-sex method set up and be done with it.
This show is absolute garbage, but, in the girls’ (admittedly quite weak) defense, perhaps it’s the social implications that would prevent them from accepting him as a sperm donor. Even if they had powerful babies from it, getting pregnant out of wedlock probably is not good for their reputations.
Bi here, but like
Fucking YEAH, right? Like, dude, come on, sperm banks are a thing, just donate some of that primo ammo you're packing to a worthy cause and reap the spoils! You don't need to settle for trying to somehow satisfy half a dozen violent psychos who try and pull you apart like monkey bread every time more than one of them are in a room with you! Geez!
I read a very short synopsis on this when I was fifteen. Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I thought that this was a really wonderful setup for a romance anime. And it certainly could have been. "Boy brings joy/wonder/hope to others with his few charges of magic" could have been an amazing romance tragedy. I feel sorry for the potential that this anime wasted.
I did not skip the ad because I knew it was gonna be the only part of video without pure pain so I guess thanks bookwalker
As an man who also had the “luck” of buying that same exact dvd set, all I can say about this video is, thank you.
I watched it for free....I still grossly overpaid.
Same.
@@dynamicworlds1 Same. Couldn't find the last few episodes.
There’s something I don’t get here. Yuna and Brunette Childhood Friend-or BCF for short-both have high spell counts, and Yuna at least can afford to be very reckless with her magic, as evidenced by the fact that she’s casting a dozen spells per episode and hasn’t died yet. If they wanted to see snow way back in the hazy, forgotten childhood friend memory, why did they just sit there moping instead of using one of their apparently infinite spell slots to make some snow themselves? They didn’t need Kazuki to do that for them!
I assume their spell slots aren't high-level enough to cast Control Weather.
This was actually one of the first anime I intentionally watched online. At the time, I thought it was amazing...because I was 14 and never watched anything like it before. Then, after watching dozens of other shows that are basically the same, I realized that it was actually generic trash. But dangit, it's nostalgic trash.
@Tin Watchman My very first one would be KissxSiss. I don’t think I’ve found anything that quite matches that level of absolute degeneracy without being an actual hentai.
Big mood. Looking back on it after all these years I've realized it's pretty shit but nostalgia is a crazy thing man. Makes it impossible for me to truly hate something even tho I by all accounts should
@@battleon81 holy shit dude you too? I found that crap when I was 13. And I couldn't agree more with you.
@@battleon81 lol My first harem was Girls Bravo because the preview on Netflix had a single frame of OO and I searched for it later. I tend not to watch shows like that anymore though.
That was me with Rosario+Vampire
He used one if his spells to reverse time to save a bento box?
I don't know if this guy should be the one everyone's aiming thier eugenics plans at, he clearly deserves the Darwin award.
Well you'd hope the magical potency isn't tied to intelligence- and why am I considering this so deeply and dispassionately!?
Annd the dubious winner of the anidarwin awards 2003 is a ten way tie between Kazuki and the ten clones that are the exact same as him.
Never mind that it is also clearly stated that the main harem target in this anime, has gone through this entire process of making his wishes, turning to ash, and returning back to life without memories quite a few times, and it is implied that he is actually hundreds of years old since the dorm manager and the ghost collector were in fact obsessive love interest of the main character but when they were living in feudal japan, and that is why the ghost collector both wants to keep his ghost so she will never be apart from him since she still very much loves him and has loved him for centuries, the dorm director also loves the guy enough that it is implied that she considers herself his widow, but because he will always return after using all his spells after getting back his ashes means she will forever be dressed in funeral garb, because like the ghost collector she too has loved him for centuries.
ya'know it just dawned on me the whole gender standard thing of anime. you got the male pervert that is often just a scummy person that invades women's privacy, stalks them and makes unwanted sexual advances... and then you have the female characters that just outright assault the MC. yeah, women have the female pervert but not only is that not as common as the male version but when a male attempts to assault someone they usually get their shit pushed in. reminds me of that whole male teach and female teacher thing
This isn't just an anime thing. Unfortunately, tons of media use male rape as a punchline. There's plenty of American sitcoms, movies, etc that involve scenes where a guy is subjected to unwanted sexual advances, and it's always for laughs. Usually the unwanted attention is coming from a fat or older woman as well, implying that the only reason a man would ever want to turn a woman down is because he finds her disgusting. The channel Pop Culture Detective did a good video on this topic if you want to explore it further.
It's got similar root causes to that Love Hina comedy style of just every single main girl physically assaulting the protagonist multiple times in a manner that he, and we, are supposed to forget 5 seconds after it happened, after we've had a hearty belly laugh at his expense. Thankfully that outright variant is getting slightly less popular, though it is by no means gone today.
Not that women dont get objctified and given the fall over peronality,
but the making fun of female on rape abuse is no less terrible. And thats not saying abus on omen isnt a problem, just on guys especially boys too.
That's the whole "ara ara" theme.
The one time I remember the jealous sociopath classmates being funny was from the Baka and Test series. They really cranked it up to the eleven there though by having all of the single boys forming a KKK-style cult that punished any male that dared to have a girlfriend. The story even acknowledge how messed up everyone in class F was by how everyone only really cared about themselves and were more than happy to throw their fellow students under the bus to forward their own goals. Several of their crazy plans against much stronger opponents worked because the other classes couldn't believe how willing they were to disregard each other's safety. There was one hilarious scene where the Tsundere love-interest got taken hostage and when main character heard that she got caught because she was worried about him, he immediately said that she had to be a fake and ordered a charge against the surprised hostage-takers whom were stunned that they charged uncaring of her safety.
Baka and Test is written by Kimitake Yoshitaka, also famous for Grand Blue, which can be summed up as "Nudist Alcoholic Scuba Divers-slash-College Fratboy Shenanigans: the Manga/Anime."
oh my god they predicted incels
😭😭God the ending of this anime upset me. No pay off and it was so obvious Himeji and the MC loved each other
@@shriek_a_boo If true incels were as the guys in Baka Test, the world would be so much better and they would have their cherry popped already, the possesive sadistic kuudere got with the Elliot Rodger equivalent of that universe.
"What if the person secretly playing gameboy in class was the teacher?"
I can tell you exactly what happens when it is the substitute teacher. Cause it was me. And the highschoolers loved me. Except for the one time I got too bold asking on of the special needs students to fetch me some headphones so I could hear the audio from my PSVita and the little shits ratted me out. Fortunately, my punishment was the principle basically saying "just try to be a little more discreet."
This is really the only way to go as a substitute teacher imo. You are not going to get the kids to work. You will not earn their respect. The best you can hope for is to earn their cooperation. Most of the time, I just blatantly made deals with the class along the lines of "I am going to make a token effort to get you to work, you are going to lie to me and say that you will, then I am gonna read/play phone games. As long as you don't get too loud to where a teacher or admin comes in to check on us, I don't care what you do. But if a teacher does come in, I am throwing you all under the bus and saying I tried my best but you refused to cooperate."
I was a selfish lazy scumbag, but I will be damned if I didn't have the most well behaved classes in the county.
“Give this man a medal!”
-somebody somewhere
Absolute legend.
I would have respected the hell out of any sub who did that
I think the thing that hurts the most might be that the premise - the stuff about limited spells - is sort of neat. It could make for a pretty interesting system to base some sort of battle anime about.
Maybe everyone has the same magical energy to spend over their lifetime, with the difference being how much they let out each time they cast a spell, so the fewer spells you're limited to using the more powerful each one is. So you wind up with everything from people who can nearly endlessly spam weak magic bolts to people who can drop a nuke once a lifetime. Maybe, if you want to go this way, there's discrimination on both ends of the spectrum - people with too many spells can't do anything useful with them and are basically magicless, but people with too few spell are considered dangers to society because of how powerful they are and are persecuted in some way, while simultaneously also being unable to use their magic too often and thus basically having the same problem as people with too many spells where they're basically muggles.
You figure out what an interesting number to give your protagonist is - maybe like 50 to a 100, so each spell is significantly powerful, but they're not instawinning every fight and have to conserve spells as much as humanly possible so every cast feels important. You then populate the party (maybe a heroaca style police force dedicated to fighting magic crime?) with different people with different numbers and explore what that says about how they fight - maybe there's an agile thief-type with a very high spell count who rapid-fires weak spells like daggers, or someone with a very low spell count who's got to fight without magic and is mostly there as a desperation measure - a last-ditch, single-use "we win" button for worst case scenarios. (maybe they have to do a heroic sacrifice by using their last spell near the end of a big arc, they could be the first-arc mentor figure who dies to set up the villain, even).
Maybe there's an old vet who's super experienced and smart but is down to their last few mediocre-powered spells from a lifetime of crimefighting, so they're there in a support role. If you want to do social commentary, maybe they're now seen as useless by command, and are constantly barely dodging being fired and left with no prospects because they've destroyed their magic for an organization that only sees them as a body to throw at the enemy.
Just think of all the thematic resonance here - literally throwing away your life force for power, inching closer to death with every use of your magic, a society which demands that you use your limited and precious life force if you want to be able to be competitive and productive. Up until now I was envisioning a Heroaca-like superpower battle show, but you could also give it a darker bend and do something with the tone of Psycho-Pass (maybe even give it a Shadowrun cyberpunk-but-with-magic type aesthetic), where society only looks like it's doing good because they're casting away the people who don't neatly fit into the system or aren't willing to sell their literal life force to their employers.
And that's just the barebones series of ideas that immediately come to mind. There's so much to flesh out here and so many cool concepts, this could be a legit good shonen or even seinen. But no. It's an excuse for... This show to happen.
I’d buy that book/anime!
If you ever write a book using this concept, I'll buy it
*raises hand* Um can the thief spammer use a slip on magical banana gag as a go to weak spell resulting in him getting a ridiculous nickname.... would love this.
Bro, if you need assistant writers and illustrators for that BEAUTIFUL concept, I'd like very much to be one of them.
And I shall be very happy to help *out of pure, unadulterated spite.*
@Orteza, C. I'd be interested in using the concept and could use a beta or illustrator, if you're interested.
I was re-watching your "Harry Potter Anime Knock-offs" video for some enjoyable listening whilst I was playing the isekai Pokemon Legends Arceus and just when you say and I quote,
"Maburaho is one of the worst anime that I've ever had the displeasure of sitting through in it's entirety, and since nobody is going to click on a video about some shitty harem anime from the early 00's that they've never seen I basically made this whole essay just as an excuse to bitch about it." I get a Google notification saying Mothers Basement uploaded a video roasting Maburaho.
Made me chortle.
What if there was like, a reverse harem anime, where the focus is all the waifus and we see everything *except* the time spent with their prospective love interest, and never meet the protag-kun
13:23 “Look, guy who wrote this, I don’t know if you’ve ever talked to a teenage girl before, DEFINITELY DO NOT START NOW”
this fucking floored me
I love that you either
A) Instinctively kept that same box of Maburaho, as if you knew you’d need it one day to destroy it,
Or
B) You didn’t keep the original box, but bought another copy just out of spite
Either version of events is amusing to me
It's amazing just how many profoundly mediocre stories I could solve by dimension-hopping about these world and introducing them to the turkey baster, which was clearly never invented in any of these worlds.
Wait if he has 8 reality warping dragonball wishes, why doesn’t he wish for the girls and their families to forget his superpowered genes exist so he can live a normal life away from these psycho wives?
Despite literally having the balls to do that, I don't think he had the balls.
Did... did you just ask a harem anime to actually make sense?
Because trash show has trash writing
There are multiple in-universe ways to get more spells *and* one of them actually happens to and works on him. If his magic is *world-destroying,* why not just like, idk, steal spells from his asshole classmates?
Heck, surely spells that powerful are enough to let him get away with wishing for more wishes somehow, right? There's gotta be some shenanigans you can manage!
When you said "existential horror", I _honestly_ thought the memory erasure thing would be what actually happened, and that would be the horror in question, because it's arguably at least a partial death of identity and is that worth it? I should have realized that would be too interesting.
This is why the anime Golden Time is one of my top favorite horror anime without being in the horror genre. If you haven't watched it, I suggest giving it a shot.
34:45 i agree wholeheartedly that this fight is better and all, but what the haruhi-loving FUCK is going on with that music
"Once you cast your last spell, however, your body instantly crumbles to ash."
This sounds more like the premise to an anime like Guilty Crown than Love Hina.
The premise itself actually sounds cool, if it weren't just used as the backdrop of well, what it was.
Ah Maburaho. Together with Girls Bravo this was one of the shows that introduced me to the harem genre all those years ago
Love Hina was that show for me. Though technically speaking Oh My Goddess could have done the same thing…
Then there’s Ranma 1/2, Tenchi Muyo, Sailor Moon, and yes, Berserk.
same here LOL
Oh My Goddess is still a favorite in my collection. Though my friends introduced me to Love Hina and Negima back in high school. Man all those long nights marathoning shows, good times.
Bootleggers on RUclips were a very valuable thing in my teenage years.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick For real. Back in the early 2000's you could find series after series uploaded on youtube. Watched a good handful of shows that way lol
I love how your description of everything pre-isekai still applies to the letter, it just takes place in a generic fantasy world setting now. Truly there is no original thought under the sun.
Oh, Maburaho... that sure was a show.
Demonitized in 3
Well, it was something in the form of a show at least...
Ngl this feels like the strongest insult I've ever seen of any form of media
Of all the anime, this was certainly one of them.
It definitely existed, and had visuals and audio that also existed.
This seems like a really interesting concept. Even the eugenics bit. If everyone trying to take advantage of his powerful genetics (?) were explicitly framed as bad. But then we've just remade the witcher sooooooo eh
That's something I had said in a comment myself. the whole Magic Eugenics thing seems fairly interesting just because of what it would socially mean to be the result of the bloodline of basically every powerful wizard to ever exist. And how that might socially isolate him when everyone wants to take advantage of his genetics for eugenics reasons.
Really idk why there's so much hate for this anime it's literally like every harem anime and people like those
@@shoelessbandit1581 it's aged horribly and acted as the precursor to the modern paint by numbers harem show
@@aquamarinerose5405 so in a way it's the only original harem anime
@@shoelessbandit1581 there are still better shows in the same vein
NGL I completely forgot about the Monks being one of the few things in this show that were legit funny.
Also shocked you didn't mention that because everyone is covered in ashes, that means they haven't showered in weeks.
It's not like it's fucking God of War...wait is it?
Also yes Girls Bravo is GOATed
You are single handedly responsible for keeping this anime alive in the back of my head.
I'd be up for a "Taking Out the Trash" series like this. Something where you single out a series that wasted your time and/or money and just destroy it
I usually avoid harem anime as a matter of principle, but you've honestly convinced me that Girls Bravo is worth checking out because I can't stand not watching something full of really good action sequences.
For once, I would like a harem anime where at least one of the MC's male friends doesn't get violently jealous and petty at the MC's success with women and is actually a total supportive bro about it
What you're asking isn't exactly rare but it isn't good either. They end up taking the role of the friend whose only purpose in life is telling the MC how the girls actually like him, which is so bland cookie cutter 90's VN stock that some anime like Nyaruko-san make fun of it.
Pretty sure there was one in Nisekoi, but I barely remember the guy.
@@neh1234 Don't you talk about Tomoda that way
better yet: the mcs friend is actually secretly in love with him, but he doesn't realize that until its too late
How _dare_ you, acting like best boi Sunohara doesn't exist.
Nyaruko
I'm of the thought that this type of show with a bunch of "kooky, eccentric characters that are actually all sociopaths" could be made extremely interesting if you had the main character as a sane individual trying to push back against the insanity without ever reaching the point of "aww shucks guess this is my life now" that this sort of character tends to unfortunately reach in these sorts of situations.
Give the main character a proper moral compass, an unwillingness to bend, and a few dozen emotional breakdowns when things get to be too much, and you get at least some drama.
Haiyore! Nyaruko-san might be up your alley then. All of the characters in the show are complete weirdos except for the main character, Mahiro, who finds every other character in the show utterly unbearable to hang out with. I have no idea if it's aged well at all (it probably hasn't), but I'd at least check it out.
i seem to remember bludgeoning angel dokoro-chan doing that for awhile
bro try NouCome, literally the protag has the worst comedic decisions of his life
Black Lagoon
@@GodwynDi while Black Lagoon is a great show I don't think that description applies to it
Rock and the other characters are shown to have pros and cons then during the OVA rocks dark side becomes apparent
I actually watch this show in its time.
I only remember the ending that felt like a cope so the author doesn't have to take a decision.
A lot of harems of different qualities do share that problem.
Know Hbomberguy? He's like MB but not specialized as a YT-Channel, if you know what i mean.
"You'll have your day Maburaho" - Geoff like 30 years ago
Me: The promised day is here!
"Trick him to double-killing himself" would be sociopathic enough if nearly everything before that wasn't bad enough. Harem "comedy" anime like this and Inukami has some crazy wild moments that really don't age well.
My Daughter left the Nest, a Manga briefly seen in this Video,
is absolutely Epic. Very high Quality.
I think she wanna make him part of her collection what would having him kill himself twice serve
Doesn't "didn't age well" imply they were decent plot points at the time?
This era of anime was just... something else.
Thank you for the stretching scene.
I get everyone was trying to learn a new medium, but it's amazing just how many steps back in quality they took entering the digital age
I think the best thing to come from this show (aside from this hilarious analysis of the early 2000s harem formula) is all the comments from viewers saying “here’s how I’d use the “limited spell count per life” setting in a dramatic story”.
If just _one_ of these ideas can become a fully realized book/manga/show, then all that time “wasted” will have been worth it.
i'd love to see you cover more early 2000s anime with weird plots that are "mostly formula but sometimes really dark for some reason". BL from this era in particular is bonkers i.e sukisho. Its like watching a bunch of aliens try to act human and recreate a romance novel.
I watched Sukisho in 2010 and I still don’t understand what happened.
Honestly I’d love to see a comparison between harem anime targeted towards women and harem targeted towards men now.
I always feel like harem anime targeted towards women or reverse harems, while usually using the same bland protagonist everyone can see themselves in still allows the male cast that compromises the harem to be more complex characters, while the harems targeted towards men really only allow its female cast to be a trope they don’t develop themselves much further than.
I don’t know, it just seems very interesting to me.
i honestly agree,,,, interesting thought 💭
And in defence of reverse harems, I've seen at least some that even have a decent main character, at least on the Korean webtoon side. For example, the character is relatable, not by being as bland as possible, but by doing things that one can imagine doing if ever got isekai'd into a fantasy world.
This wasn’t a waste of time. It actually helped me appreciate Ranma more.
The instant I saw this notification pop up, I clicked, because I watched this anime when I was a teenager, literally half my life ago, and I never forgot the title, because it was the first time my zero-taste brain said "this is bad".
HA! I fooled you. You did not waste 38 minutes of my time with this video. You wasted 76 minutes because I watched it twice! Oh wait...
In no uncertain terms, I love you and the works you do.