The Fall 2014 Anime Preview Guide

World Trigger

Theron Martin

Rating: 2.5 (of 5)

Review: Four years ago in Mikado City an interdimensional gate opened and monstrous aliens called Neighbors spilled through. They wreaked havoc on the city until a group of specially-trained operatives appeared and put a stop to them. That group became the Border Defense Agency (Border for short). Border agents use special combat suits/weapon sets called Triggers to fend off and eliminate the encroaching Neighbors. Osamu Mikumo once got save by such an agent and so is dedicated to doing what he thinks is right, even if that means standing up to bullies. When an odd, white-haired transfer student named Kuga Yuma joins his school, he is initially suspicious that Kuga might secretly be a Border agent, but when a Neighbor appears while the two of them get into a tussle with some difficult bullies, he soon discovers that Kuga is actually something else entirely.

Taking massive animation shortcuts is sometimes understandable given the budgets that anime TV series have to operate under, but is it really a wise idea for a new shonen manga adaptation to spend most of its first couple of minutes resorting entirely to still frames while narration drones on in the background? That almost deals World Trigger a crippling blow from the start. A highly generic premise certainly does not help, either, nor do mediocre artistic and technical merits, a limp soundtrack, or the irritating way that Kuga is often shown with a pouty expression. (If it was supposed to be cutesy, it isn't.)

What does save the first episode – even if only marginally so – is the characterizations. Osamu is not quite the typical justice-minded individual; he's much quieter about it than one would normally expect for a shonen series, preferring to let his actions speak for him instead of making grand declarations. Kuga's very dryly pragmatic style gives him a deadpan (but hardly emotionless) delivery, and the way his glare is portrayed is surprisingly convincing. He also harbors a big twist revealed at the end of the episode which is a bit off the beaten path, too.

So while this is hardly a strong start, there is at least some potential here.

World Trigger is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Bamboo Dong

Rating: 2.5 (of 5)

Review: At some point in time, a gate to another dimension opened up in Japan, allowing the crossing of giant white monsters dubbed Neighbors. Like most alien invaders from space or another dimension, they are immune to all Earth weapons, making them the perfect villain for sci-fi movies and TV shows. Fortunately, a group of humans were able to analyze Neighbor technology and figure out a way to defeat them. Namely, by using "Trigger" powers, allowing the Trigger-user to don a magical super suit and use special powers to turn the Neighbors into piles of scrap. They've become so successful at vanquishing Neighbors that ordinary citizens no longer have a reason to fear the monsters, preferring to live everyday life as-is, and going to school and work as usual.

The first episode revolves around two primary characters, a seemingly nerdy and soft-spoken high school student, and a transfer student with red eyes and white hair. The twist is that not only can both of them use Triggers, but the transfer student is none other than a resident from beyond the Gate.

The premise of World Trigger is not unique or fresh by any means. Dozens before it have used a similar idea—specialized monster fighters that defend mankind from an other-worldly peril, perhaps receiving help from a not-human insider—but as with all shows of its ilk, it's all in the execution. While the first episode of World Trigger certainly didn't dazzle, it may still turn itself around, provided it find the time and money to clean up its act a little. The main action sequence was pretty bare, and as far as exposition-rushing goes, this episode is pretty slapdash. At the very least, it's nice to see the main character be someone a little on the nerdy and quiet side, unlike the platitude-spouting, muscle-flexing, go-get-'em heroes that typically populate such stories. The jury's still out on whether or not the enigmatic Neighbor Transfer Student will develop beyond his half-Mysterious Visitor, half-beep-boop-what-are-human-customs alien shtick, but with his identity revealed so early, he at least avoids the Plot Device pitfall.

The series still has to reveal much of its hand, especially where Triggers are concerned, but the first episode seems like it's off to a reasonable start. It's a little hard to predict yet where the series will go, and what it will focus on thematically, but it's worth at least tuning into again next week.

World Trigger is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Nick Creamer

Rating: 1.5

Sometimes adaptations can really illuminate the strengths of an original work, or even elevate the material altogether. Sometimes adaptations simply transfer one work to another medium, all strengths and weaknesses intact. And sometimes adaptations just make me feel sorry for fans of the original material.

World Trigger is not a very well-produced show.

The story itself isn't very complicated. It's a classic battle-shounen setup, as the show's graceless opening monologue explains. Portals called “Gates” have opened up over Mikado City, allowing the awkward CG “Neighbor” monsters through. These Neighbors are fought by humans with special powers who work for the Border Defense Agency. Cue our mild-mannered but ideal-driven high school protagonist Osamu, mysterious and possibly dangerous transfer student Kuga, and the sudden appearance of a Neighbor, and you've got yourself a bare-bones action-adventure narrative.

Nothing about the narrative itself is particularly exciting or creative, though I did enjoy Kuga's seemingly otherworldly heartlessness. He's actually a legitimately weird person, which works to the show's benefit. Outside of that, the show has a bad tendency to over-tell - as I mentioned above, instead of actually letting the story reveal itself through the actions of the protagonist, the show begins with a largely unnecessary five minute monologue, and later plot turns are equally overstated. It's an unremarkable story told without much creativity, which would be unfortunate enough on its own. But that's not the big problem with World Trigger.

Unfortunately, the only thing that really sets World Trigger apart is the singular awfulness of its production. Characters are constantly off-model, and even their actual models look ugly and awkward. Animation is non-existent to the point of self-parody - the show's backstory is illuminated through a set of four or five still frames, the image constantly holds on poorly drawn still images for several seconds straight, and what animation does exist is incredibly stilted and limited. And the entire visual style is extremely flat, with finished frames looking more like drafts than polished animation. However generic World Trigger's story may be, no anime deserves a treatment like this. It's a shame to see.

World Trigger is available streaming at Crunchyroll.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating: 2 (out of 5)

World Trigger takes itself very seriously to the point where if I were writing this in the 19th century, I would have to capitalize that. To a degree, this makes sense: the story is set in Mikado City, the site of a devastating alien invasion. Mysterious creatures known as “Neighbors” descended from holes in the sky to wreak havoc on the citizens, and it was only the arrival of an equally mysterious group known as Border that saved them. Today Neighbors continue to arrive in Mikado City, but Border has established a gigantic base that looms over the town and monitors their arrival. If a Neighbor shows up, Border is there to stop it. The whole situation is quite ominous, and there's something especially so about Border itself. Where did they come from? How can they use Neighbor technology? The way their enormous base rises from the cityscape is equally alarming and certainly makes me wonder what they're hiding in there along with the Neighbor monitoring equipment.

That said, World Trigger still takes all of it a bit too heavily. The narration is somewhere between ominous and unnecessary, giving us information that could very easily be worked into the story, or could have been told to us by the hero, Osamu, which would have made the show feel a bit less child-oriented. While I am aware that this is based on a Shonen Jump property, the narration takes away from even that target demographic's ability to infer things about the set up that makes watching the show feel lazier than it ought to, given that it is about a deadly alien invasion. Even Yuma, who is, if not precisely a comic character at least a slightly more light-hearted one to Osamu's dead serious personality, comes off as very serious, an impression I did not get when I read the manga. The fun hasn't quite been sucked out of the story, but it does feel less appealing than the original manga version.

Unfortunately the art and animation doesn't help a whole lot. The characters did not make a smooth transition to animated form, and frequently we can see them looking off-model while background characters can range from “slightly weird” to “totally deranged.” The Neighbors have a weird texture to them that almost works, but their moments feel too plodding to be as dangerous as they're meant to be. Also, I personally hate that the Border agent we see in the flashback wears glasses that have an invisible bridge. I'm not sure why this offends me, but it did keep jarring me out of the show. Yuma, who is meant to be short, instead looks strangely compact, as if his body was compressed somehow, and Osamu's eyes are a slightly bilious shade of green that is at odds with the rest of the color scheme.

With the introduction of more main characters, which may take place next episode, this could improve, but as of right now World Trigger is simply trying too hard to get us invested in the seriousness of its world without giving us any reason to actually care about it. This may be a case where you ought to just read the book instead.

World Trigger is available streaming on Crunchyroll.

Hope Chapman

Rating: 2

World Trigger is unique in one regard. Its world-destroying monsters seem to be based on the axolotl, the weird little amphibian that never grows up. Outside of that, this is a conventional "kids with powers must stop monsters spilling into their city from another dimension" story, with a tiny twist on formula that implies these "monsters" may not be the real monsters here and maybe our heroes will also have to learn about true friendship in order to save the world. Either way, the show clearly wants you to axolotl questions about the mysterious world of World Trigger, but I only wanted to axolotl questions about what went wrong with this production.

The tone and aesthetic here leans way more "mid-day children's cartoon" than most Shonen Jump adaptations, (even the more family-friendly ones like Naruto) and this is probably due to Toei's oversight on the project. Unfortunately, this "kids' show feel" translates into the art and animation as well, which is to say both are flat and poorly realized. Faces go off-model to convey dull or tone-dissonant expressions even at pivotal moments like the emotional climax of the episode. Walking animations are routinely laughable and out of proper perspective with the background in a way that reminds me of DRAMAtical Murder. Not even the competently animated scenes (and there ain't many) are much fun because of the sheer number of cut frames still haunting the action and some truly uninspired direction on top of that.

The budget limitations wouldn't be so bad if the writing underneath them was compelling, but this is all extremely conventional stuff, so Toei's cheap coat of paint only weighs it down. It becomes obvious that the story isn't engaging you the way it should when your mind starts to wander to weird little details and story inconsistencies you were no doubt meant to ignore. Why does our hero think that the mysterious transfer student can't have anything to do with government organization Border even after an important scene where he staunchly defends his right to wear the ring of a Border agent in class? Why is that transfer student so baffled by the concept of school uniforms when he himself is wearing one that the school clearly must have shipped to him? Why are the Bamster-beasts all one uniformly lit texture? (Oh wait, I know the answer to that one, Toei.)

All these questions and more surface in the mind in lieu of an engaging story, characters, and definitely visuals. The presentation here is soulless, unattractive, and embarrassingly cheap, and that becomes all you can really focus on, along with some dumb plot inconsistencies. The world-ending premise isn't enough to make the drab execution exciting at all, and that's really too bad in light of how fun the show potentially could have been.

World Trigger is available streaming at Crunchyroll.

Zac Bertschy

Rating: 1.5

The world changed when the monstrous Neighbors showed up, giant alien worms from the Low-Poly Untextured Dimension, attacking humans and destroying buildings. One day a group of superpowered folks arrived and started taking them out, eventually forming BORDER, an organization which now keeps the town safe. Enter white-haired Yuma Kuga, an "exchange student" with a Trigger ring that manifests itself as a helpful little robot guy named Replica who also turns into a combat suit that allows Kuga to fight the Neighbors. He befriends a quiet guy with glasses at school, Osamu Mikumo, who as it happens also has a Trigger. Anyway, long story short, Kuga's a Neighbor himself.

So, just like Terraformars, here we have an adaptation of a smash hit manga, presumably anticipated by multitudes of fans, that for whatever reason the production committee determined only needed a 500 yen animation budget. World Trigger's story and characters in this first episode are as "dull, rote opening chapter of a Shonen Jump manga designed to run forever" as you can get, so there's nothing to write home about there, but you might enjoy yourself marveling at how unbelievably cheap and junky the animation and art are. The simple character designs kinda stay on-model in closeup, but anytime they're in medium shots (or, god help you, a wide shot) they become a scribbled mess. Action sequences are hilariously poor (watch out for anytime the bullies move as a group) save for one brief moment of fluidity during a Neighbor fight. Amazingly, even the background art is bad enough to stand out; everything's super flat, simple, and frequently doesn't match the angle or perspective of the characters on screen. There's a shot of a damaged car that looks like someone just scribbled on the hood of an existing line drawing of a sedan and colored it in. It's a good thing I didn't need to pay close attention to the story because I was so busy sitting slack-jawed at how bad this show looked.

I understand the need to save money but even the kids who are the target market for this will notice that it looks like their 6th grade art class produced the animation. At least hire some folks who can draw. Maybe they'll fix it on the DVD, but until then, there's nothing to recommend about this show.

World Trigger is available streaming at Crunchyroll.