Wandering Bitch: The Journey of Who Gives a Shit
When the man who wrote Kino's Journey: The Beautiful World came up with the splendid idea to have an episodic fantasy show starring an individual traveling from country to country philosophically handling metaphorical quandaries representing the human condition, I bet he never expected his vision would one day get twisted into the pretzel of misery and misguided ignorance lookin like a snake 69-ing itself that is Elaina's Journey: the Bullshit world.
However, watching Kino to get the gist of the general idea this anime was based on can never truly prepare you for the steamed and lovingly pre-prepped crockpot of slug slime that this show has in store for you, so don't bother.
This heaping helping of heaving horse apples may be the worst anime I've ever had the displeasure of watching. Why? Well to start things off, the main character is an unbearable POS who thinks she's all that and a bag of gold-plated chips who learns nothing ever and has no likable characteristics. And as if to contrast the idea of a Kino's journey character who is impartial and more of a channel to throughput philosophical ideals into a situation and introduce an outside force than an actual character, Elaina is introduced as an actual person who's naiive as hell but has room to grow, only for it to be thrown out the window one episode after the pilot.
This creates a disconnect between the world and the main character that seems unintentional, making every interaction she has with the cast of each episode feel forced and everything she does seem out of step with who she was in her introductory episode. More or less, you can expect every episode of this show you watch to feature a different main character, because that's honestly what it feels like. The only consistant thing is that she's a preening, pompus, egotist who sucks her own dick at the beginning of every episode hoping to remind you how pretty she is.
THANK GOD IM PRETTY HLOLOLOL
And if that wasn't enough, the artstyle is generic as hell to boot.
The second major clump of snot in the soup of this anime's setting are all the other characters that have the misforunate role of making the high and mighty, apathetic elaina look like the fucking patron saint of angelic donors to St. judes charity hospital, just by virtue of being so much more unbearably incompetent and/or annoying. You'd think based off the premise that every episode would feature a different set of human characters representing some element of humanity for us to ponder, right? Wrong. That's false advertising, because the synopsis really should not be "elaina encounters humanity in all its forms whether strange, bizarre, or emotional" and should instead be "encounters other cutout witch characters in all its forms whether shitty, shittier, or shittiest." Because there isn't a single actual relatable human character in this whole goddamn anime no matter how hard you squint.
A lot of conflicts are created using yuri-fapbait situations between rapey, creepy characters played off for laughs, which is apparently only okay because they're little girls. I don't even wanna picture the target audience, but I imagine they're obese, and have enough neckhair to tie an organic noose.
The places Elaina visits are hardly intrinsically interesting and have no defining characteristics other than a wacky stand-in variant on a certain theme. They rely instead on this hapless boring cast characters to keep your interest, always making them either over-the-top or quirky instead of actually meaning or representing anything. This show stops writing creatively after it pumps out a concept and doesn't bother trying to execute it well. And it even has recurring characters, like Kino's Journey, but you'll only roll your eyes every time they make an entrance, because the same predictable quirky sludge always comes out their mouth, only intensifying their annoying traits with every risidual appearence.
Every episode is either a deceptive mockery of its own concepts that goes nowhere and has no purpose, or a grimderp predictable plot-twist-fest that would put M Knight Shamalamadingdong out of a job, if only he wasn't so much more talented than this series' writers. In fact this show is more comparable to anime like Magical Girl Site and Magical Girl Spec-ops Asuka with its mediocre presentation and default setting of edgy magical girl bullshit to fill time when the writers can't think of a good enough meaningless slice of life venture into the eternal void of pointlessness that are all other episodes.
"DOES ANYONE KNOW THE WAY TO THE OVERUSED EDGY MAGICAL GIRL TROPE CONVENTION?"
In short, this anime is a disgrace and a vile heap of trash that I'm ashamed to say I was ever excited for. I wish the writer an anxious existential night of pondering his life choices in front of a microwavable meal and a melted slushie for this abysmal, dull, boring, wasteful attempt at a Kino-inspired series.
1/10
Screenshots
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