lawlmartz

Hackadoll is my surprise anime of the season. I picked it up about halfway through expecting it to be a stupid boob comedy based on the moe blob art style and the obvious character archetypes they were shooting for in their three characters: dumb blonde genki girl, big boobs-chan, and sleepy loli girl. However right I was about these characters, I was also very wrong. Hackadoll turned out to be a very entertaining short anime, much in the vein of Comical Psychosomatic Medicine of this past summer season. Hackadoll's strength is that it picked one anime franchise or a trope and made that the backboneof the joke it told throughout the 7 minute runtime of each episode. They lampooned everything from Neon Genesis Evangelion to Dragonball Z to Shirobako to dating sims and hentai. In fact, nearly every episode makes fun of a different genre or series with the antics of the bumbling, clueless Hackadolls, a trio of AI whose purpose is to "advance" the people who download their app. "Advancing" people typically turns into the Hackadolls screwing up the person who summoned them's life beyond repair, but then by some horrifically humiliating or mortally dangerous event, the person manages to achieve their goal... mostly. It plays out on screen a lot better than it sounds on paper. Hackadoll's animation is fairly simple traditional style- since it's a web series with probably a negative budget, but blowing the audience away with visuals isn't the point of the show anyway. The three main VA are all relative newcomers (two of them are even younger than I am) and give solid performances as the aforementioned character archetypes, but are backed up by the awesome veteran Ryouka Yuzuki, or LADY SATSUKI KIRYUUIN herself, as the irascible, overbearing boss, Hackadoll 0. This show was a good way to blow 5 minutes (because a minute and a half of it is the intro song) with some lighthearted, goofy humor and a bit of parody of some series that I love. I'm not sure how much studio Trigger had to do with the production of this show (they're tagged as a producer), but their influences are strong here. It's zany, off the wall; a lot like watching some kids on a sugar high acting crazy.

Tettsui

There have been plenty of shorts this year, but almost none of them were as good as this one. At first glance, it doesn't look like anything special, but I was surprised to find how entertained and engrossed I was, despite it only being about 7 minutes long. I enjoyed each individual story, loved the characters and music, and was really impressed with the different drawing styles introduced during certain scenes. I didn't expect that from a short anime! I also really liked the casual references to other anime. I'm not sure how well this one would work as a full-length anime, but I really wishthere will be a second season. I think it's a fun, entertaining anime with a lot to offer!