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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Watch | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:2554#1552] |
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This ONA series seems heavily geared for gun otaku considering its concept of anthropomorphized guns in the form of teenage girls. The anime's humor is mostly focused on the everyday interactions of the "gun girls" and the personality quirks they have from the different origins in which their real-life gun counterparts go through. The anime even features detailed narration exploring the real-life specs and actual history of the guns at points throughout the series. The anime does have some fan service and innuendo coming from a number of the predicaments of the "gun girls", though it gets nowhere as gross out and overloaded as you would find with ecchi titles like KissXSis (TV) and Seikon no Qwaser. Still though, this is an anime targeted for the otaku fanbase and the "gun girls" have differing character types of the moe setup to pander to its audience. While the characters are mostly tolerable despite their simple characterizations, Sako was a major turnoff for me with her typical psychotic behavior and twisted actions. Upotte even makes a sloppy attempt at creating a more serious storyline in its final two episodes with the introduction of an antagonist faction that gets very little depth, is rushed through, has a cop-out resolution to a shocking event during the gunfighting and the conflict gets left open-ended. Overall, I found Upotte to be pretty average with its quality. The approach it takes with its pandering is an original premise and is lighter with its ecchi content compared to other titles of the genre. But said pandering does greatly limit the audience this title can attract (if they can look past the 'gun girl' element being creepy), the characters are still stock archetypes you can find from high school gal pal shows and the anime has its sloppy moments with its approach in later episodes. If you're a major fan of guns and anime, this may be an anime worth looking into. Beyond that, this baby doesn't have much else that sticks out beyond its "gun girl" premise. Last updated Friday, October 12 2012. Created Friday, October 12 2012. | ||||||||
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[series:2554#628] | ||||||
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(All episodes watched): Upotte!! may well be the ultimate 'Girls with Guns' show, or, more accurately, 'Girls who are Guns' show. Seriously, each of the girls at this multinational school is a gun, specifically some sort of assault rifle from her home country, if that makes any sense. That's what we're told, anyhow. Curiously, none of them seem to be Japanese, instead this show plays around with stereotypes of foreigners. A totally absurd premise always has the potential to be original and hilarious, but only if the makers didn't just settle for an odd premise, but also invested the necessary talent and effort into humor, character development, and drama as well. I was eager to check this new series out, but was disappointed by what I found. Not a whole lot is done with the strange premise--it's like it is one big joke and everything else is an afterthought. 'Just give the viewer fanservice and firearms' the idea seems to have been, 'and he won't care if the rest of the show sucks'. Furthermore, Upotte gleefully reduces each girl to an object; to give you an idea what to expect, at least one of them gets horny at the thought of being 'fired' by a new male teacher. The show gets very suggestive, which, no doubt, was the intention all along. I am repeatedly frustrated by anime in which wild premises are pitched to us, but little effort is made to expand on them afterwards. Since Upotte is by no means outrageously funny I couldn't help wanting some sort of explanation for these gun-humans. I think a major problem is that the show never really manages to convince us that these girls really are guns, rather than girls who just like to shoot them. Their only special power seems to be that somehow they just have their namesake gun at hand whenever they need it. Can they summon them out of thin air? If you are a gun, why do you need a gun as well? Do these girls have parents, or were they 'manufactured' somewhere? If you are going to go so far as to portray these girls as gun/human hybrids, and there isn't going to be much comedy to carry the show forward, there needs to be something else to hold our interest. Give them a few more strange characteristics; like, they can be damaged but not 'killed' if they are struck by a bullet. That would certainly come in handy, given some of the harsh training they undergo, and might even make the show interesting. But this show wants them to be guns yet isn't prepared to make the slightest change to their sexy bodies--nothing more than a gun you could f---, basically. It gets kind of boring. Again, Upotte!! strikes me as an interesting premise which was given only a half-hearted execution. This is a school where marksmanship is considered the most important subject. I have heard that just as there are anime otaku, there are military otaku in Japan--people who are obsessed with weaponry and the armed forces. I guess this show was targetted to them; we learn things like the advantages and disadvantages of assault rifles with relatively small caliber cartridges. In episode two the girls engage in a live fire exercise in which each has a balloon over her head, and if it is shot away (with live ammo) she is 'out'. Obviously it's a dangerous and foolhardy thing to do, and nobody in the real world would ever try it. After episode one the fanservice is tamed down a good deal, so I don't really dislike this show, and I guess what we learn about the history and technology of particular rifles is kind of interesting. If only Upotte was a little funnier. As it is, it feels kind of vacant. It's a shame to come up with a novel, racy premise like this but let it wither on the vine for lack of a few good jokes. Episode ten was strange, in that it seemed that Upotte was going to burst out of it's simplistic, fanservice-and-dumb-jokes mode and become something more. There were several intriguing lines about the relationship between gun-girls and humans, including an accusation that humans are to blame for a good deal of violence since they 'produced' the girls. But ultimately it winds up as a garbled, confusing mess rather than an epiphany. The human teacher gets shot, and things seem to have gotten serious, but an inexplicable cop-out is quickly used to fix him up. Something about humans cannot be killed by a gun alone, only wounded by one--does that make sense to you? Otherwise, this episode was kind of cool, with lots of shooting against fairly serious enemies, tricks being employed, cartridge cases flying, etc. The problem, as always, is that for all the shooting, hardly anyone gets a scratch--how do you maintain suspense like that? It reminded me of Queen's Blade, where for all the swordplay not a drop of blood was shed. ...and that's it--the strange episode ten was the climax and end of the series. When the climax of a show slips by you, and you don't even realize what has happened until you find that there are no more episodes to be downloaded, that's not a good sign. Upotte as a whole had just enough weirdness and originality to it to keep me coming back, since even if the overall quality wasn't great, I wondered what sort of explanation (if any) would be forthcoming. Again, Upotte!! strikes me as an interesting premise which was given only a half-hearted execution. Last updated Sunday, July 08 2012. Created Thursday, April 12 2012. | ||||||||
Other Sites
| Name | URL |
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| Official Japanese Series Web Site | http://www.upotte.jp/ |
