 this show so when I was making the slides and this show when I saw this I was like oh my god this show has two ways it can go glory or despair if it could be if you look at this picture and you look at that text this could be new bocarana it could be and it would be the most glorious because we really need something like that there hasn't been one since bocarana but this could also be like even in the east where it starts out like a bocarana and then goes yeah so have you seen bocarana who's not I haven't you the manga is actually all out now in English you can buy it on it starts a lot like this a whole bunch of kids and it doesn't really tell you what's going on they're just like on a school trip and then things go downhill and the show is just about a series of children so these people go into the mountains to this village at a bus trip and the villages whoa and then they're I guess they're in this weird village for the rest of the show uh that sounds pretty cool to me all mischievous despair over the real world waiting to state the tedious daily life waiting to restart this is bocarana too it could be I think eight on children dying boogaloo but I am 100% going to watch episodes of this show until it proves it is not in bocarana you like it is not a spoiler to tell you the kids dying bocarana every episode a kid dies it's a spoiler to tell you which one's in which order yeah this show is getting watched definitely this is that's the best show we've seen so far so when we did our panel at anime boston our annual panel judge anime by its cover one of the anime we judged by its cover was the lost village and we said oh this looks like it has an interesting concept it looks like it's sort of got one of those like scenario situations like nine doors nine whatever's nine something yeah you know the things that they sort of doors nine dogs a lot of japanese and asian us you know in all mediums books movies you know especially let you know I think the oldest one I remember is like battle royale where you get a bunch of varied characters and they get somehow get stuck separated from society in an oddly specific predicament right in a in a in a scenario with a bunch of rules and or mysteries and something supernatural or something sinister now this is a common trope outside of anime like there's a bunch like if you go to netflix just go through random movies there's a lot of like american movies that you don't even remember that are this exact same thing yeah it's just in anime there seems to be an acceleration of these over the last five or six years right also you know video games visual novel type thing yeah just nine nine whatever's is the one I always think of yeah and the sequel to that but virtuous last reward but when we reviewed it we also said it kind of had a bocarano vibe we weren't sure if it would be like this right because bocarano is basically one of those ones only good right yeah you know these kids they're not completely separated from society in that one it's actually that's what make bocarano cool is that they sort of aren't separated from society like they go to like the military you're like yeah like they go to the cops right away yeah well right away ish but yeah basically they go as right away as you could like you can understand why someone wouldn't go to the cops it's still a group of varied characters that get into a predicament with a lot of specific rules governing the scenario that they have to navigate and horrors and supernatural and you know so sinister things god watched the whole thing I've seen the first five episodes I watched up to what I would only go into describe no real spoilers as the the giant stuffed kappa with a real human face also in it like a photo of a Japanese man it's a half penguin half face but like photo of a real person not even like drawn yeah the supernatural thing but you don't need to watch anymore you're good yeah I was going to ask you should I finish it I'll tell you everything you need to know if you tell me more we have time I will do a trade so here's the thing from the first this is another situation this happens to us kind of often where the first episode of a show makes it look like it's going to be real good right so the first episode of this show makes it look like about 80 percent good right it sets you up in the scenario these people are found on the internet about this hidden village they're on a bus that they rented in like a tour group to go find it on an adventure the bus is weird and they're sinister undertones right they all want to escape their lives for some reasons you got to learn about each character the only thing about the first episode which holds true for the rest of the show is that you know you have a bunch of varied characters and we say a bunch it's not like a normal anime it's not like nine or ten it's like 30 20 or 30 there are 30 people there's a lot plus all the new characters yeah so but you know the trope of these shows is like introduce all the characters give the back stories and then the writing always seems to come down to well these five are together so let's consult our sheet of their personalities and have them interact in a superficial way like those characters would interact this show takes that to such an extreme that after the first episode I actually thought that this show is going to be like what Nadeshiko was to robot shows I thought this was going to be like this is taking the piss out of the genre no but as I started watching more I worry that that is an unintentional side effect of the really bad writing yeah so the characters a lot of the characters are really really shallow and one-dimensional and really caricatures almost yeah like you know some of them get episodes that like explain their backstory and sort of give a reason for they're so dumb like the surly guy his backstory is I was doing an IT project and something went wrong vaguely and I got chewed out by my bosses because of it and therefore that's why I want to run away from society yeah and that's why you think I have this personality of being angry at everything like you think we're joking that is literally it yeah it's really shallow and not you know complex or interesting and what makes it worse is that even though they show some of the characters pasts and the reasons for the way they are uh they the way they act is really exaggerated and hyperbolic which is okay in some senses because like one of them I love Pia love Pia on or whatever love pond love pond her backstory is like you know pretty serious did you see your backstory uh no all right whatever so her back story is pretty serious and explains why the way she is but basically all she does is be like execute people on the guy and I go he committed a crime we should execute with that guy and she's literally she like hysterically screams execute him execute him execute him constantly no at least the show follows through on that because like in the third episode she does fucking try to murder someone right strangling but it's like she's just a basically a nut she's just like a frantic nut the only one who I don't think is a nut is lying anyway and the the other thing is that she they don't develop right further it's like we learn love pond's backstory we see they're based on the first episode they're all dead they're all dead this is the afterlife no but we see that she's fucked up now but then she doesn't change after that really very much at all only very slightly the only characters that have any development are like the few main ones yeah and you know what the main ones suck right the main ones because that's the thing that happens in so many stories especially anime is the more main the character is the more genero they are because like there's some idea that writers have that the main character needs to be more relatable the the best worst example of this ever is utahane rumono it's a bunch of great characters everywhere and then the main character is literally this vague masked dude with no history I think full melodic is my favorite example because you have all these awesome characters like hues and mustang and shit and meanwhile the main characters are like the twins are like the most boring yeah it's like they have some personality they have some they're not they're not nothing's right but it's like you know it's just like you pretend you're that guy want to watch it but it's like you know I wish that the they weren't even in it and it was about the you know the other awesome but like main kid number one so again if you watch just the first episode the show looks like it's going to be so great because it looks like it's going to be okay well it looks like it's going to be great in this like nadeshko s deconstructive like the character intros like it's almost like a parody because literally the bus driver is kind of crazy and like everything's weird the bus driver is actually the most normal person sinister but he has issues to obviously the bus driver the like the true group leader oh no he's not but all the characters are like super into it he's like he's like a Mormon time they one by one introduce themselves and tell you their backstory or at least tell you something about themselves and that scene goes on for like 10 minutes as that's pretty much the whole first episode and that was great because some of the characters had like all this anime nonsense some of them were obviously crazy like the one kid's like I'm jack and wouldn't talk anymore but and then there's the other jack who's dressed like a pirate or something jack and jack the characters keep confusing this but actually it's jack and a judge ness and just saying those words in Japanese they sound similar but it's jack and judge ness and these two characters keep fighting about how they have the same name and his bullshit like oh my god you stole my OC yeah the characters are just so stereotypical that the first episode I really believe that this show was taking that concept of we've got nine characters with mysterious backstories and just saying fuck it we got I don't know 30 and one of them's like literally just got guns one of them is like literally a demon let's just fucking go nuts I thought that's what the show is gonna be the fact that the show is actually just badly written and trying to do this scenario basically they do find a mysterious village that's mysterious right because it's empty but it's not like it nothing's destroyed it's just like it looks like the people have recently departed and left everything there and it's like what's going on here and then as they stay there and sort of try to start a new life you know of of solitude for the rest of the world one by one characters scream and freak out for no reason at nothing people disappear people you know discover weird things people go off into the woods and shit happens but it's all so dumb which again I still it alternates as you would expect between characters sitting around discussing things like a lot in a very death note kind of way I'll imagine if L was a bunch of characters like oh is is that person up isn't up to no good no that person's up to no good I'd watch that but that person went into the woods and did and that person wants to leave at that person here's again why I thought it was going to be a parody because and then and then stuff happens and then they talk again and it's not absolutely talk again the stuff that happens was like really dumb and they were all overreacting pretty much every time up until the fifth episode they're overreact about everything but two the argument like the discussions like why won't you tell us you must be no good the discussions they had were so dumb and fake like our group of friends playing mafia sounds more together than these kids yes it was like it's like a bad game like at one point a kid starts singing a song and there's someone else is like that's not the lyrics aren't the lyrics this and then some other kids like I thought the lyrics were this and that's what they have this discussion about that just as seriously as well so-and-so was murdered so who could have done it well so-and-so was somewhere else you were the last person to see them what happened and we're going to torture you and make you tell us the best one is the paper rock scissors they start arguing for like five minutes about how paper rock scissors works yeah so all those things led me to believe that this is a parody and if it is at least from the first couple episodes if this is a parody of that kind of show no it's brilliant no but as you have just informed me one it appears it was released on April Fool's Day I didn't know about that that's when it started airing so even better but I mean baby metals album came out in April first but if this show is actually seriously going to try to for real I don't think Japanese people care about April Fool's Day this show is terrible and I'm not going to watch anymore you don't need to watch anymore so they do resolve and explain everything is it dumb it's a supernatural explanation as you might have guessed from episode five but it doesn't there's no like climax or like satisfying resolution is just sort of like it goes out with like a whimper like all right here's the only question I have is lion the only smart one lion's barely a character like a side that that's why I think lion's the smartest one because lion's seem personality seems to be sitting there yeah lion and then like that that there's like a group of lion and like two or three strong people strong lion strong girl and like two other people they're you know they're still around I think in the last episode they're on screen for like a minute maybe does the guy does they're like they're like the least there's some they're amongst the least crazy people does the rapey guy from the first episode who disappears die rapey guy is he's still missing when I stopped watching yeah no he is he is only half as rapey as you think and he is not dead okay but and he only comes back in like one episode fat guy has to die because fat guy literally just eats food all the time and bitches about food lazy fat guy yeah he basically all he's just lazy fat guy to the end that's it there's nothing else going on with him he's just sort of like they're like oh yep he's a background character there's something to be said for the same thing with like the two people who are all like super in love same deal wow those two reminded me they're like they're like nothing throw away characters they were like in the show they were like shittier versions of the two characters from it would have been something if they gave every character a full episode to explain their backstory the way they gave some of the characters um but it's like love fun isn't any more of an important character than any of the than fat guy or in love people or anything but for some reason they gave her an whole episode to explain her shit and some of the other characters they didn't but she has maybe even less impact on the story than they do it's just like just from the first episode like I guess my advice to all of you as anime fans watch the first episode because like watch it don't watch any more of the show pretend it was a parody of these kinds of shows and you'll get a lot out of it I think man maybe the first episode is really good it's kind of like cause I know your jimbo you watch the first episode this isn't like the worst anime ever is just not really worth your time even for 13 episodes unless you're really hard up for some animes it's maybe you can make we can at least it's not at least it's not perverted or you know it doesn't have any those kinds of problems yeah you know it's I guess it's animated normally what if you just cut out every scene where either nothing happens or a character says their catchphrase how long would the show be maybe 25% shorter than it is so that means a lot of like all right in the fourth episode I'll just spoil it at one like they're like they have this stupid plan they like split up because some of them are going to go back to the bus and I don't know why they think that's going to work because the bus like fell off a cliff and like isn't for some reason the bus keeps working it never runs out of gas or anything it never runs out of gas it never fill it but it just keeps running whenever they need it like whenever the bus keeps doing stuff but it's in it's in the show straight to the end the bus but then like they're half the group is like fuck this we're out which when they split into two groups it was obviously like smart kids on that team dumb kids on the stay behind team but the smart kids start numbering the trees like walking away and that's the kind of thing that happens in this kind of show so they're numbering the trees on the map and they get to go in a circle they get to tree like 91 and then they get to tree eight so they got back to the campsite pretty quick so it couldn't have been that someone tricked them by putting an eight there way out on the map but the map matched the so was it just a supernatural thing because it didn't make sense otherwise I mean I'd have to explain the whole show which I don't mind doing but people get mad so whatever and I want to go home yeah I don't even care actually it's interesting like some dumb shows like I'll watch the end because I got to know but like wheel of time nothing to know part of the reason I kept going was like I really wanted to know and it was taking me longer to figure out but I don't want to know read 15 books badly it took me like like I read a bunch of wiki pages to spoil the wheel of time and it was so hard to piece it all together from that it was literally faster to read the books but with this show I just watch the first episode I really think you should watch the first episodes you at least see what I mean I don't even you don't even need to watch that just watch book around instead the first episode was interesting like the fact that all the characters were like their screen names and every one of them was like a different kind of that guy from the internet and yeah whatever the show has got bad and I'm not going to watch any more of it we said the show was going to be good well it was it was it was better than most the other shows out there yeah but I feel like of the shows we said we're going to be like it's like a c this was the big plus maybe c minus so far of every show we're in your mood we pre-reviewed this has been the biggest gap between what we expected and what we got I didn't say I never I think I never said it was going to be like so good I said I have potential which we said had a lot of potential but it fell so far short of that potential I mean it fell short of expectations but only slightly yeah my expectation wasn't that high my expectation was b and it got a c yeah but c gets you already into like harmageddon territory so it's better than actually I think harmageddon might be like a b minus harmageddon might be more entertaining in certain scenarios yeah like this gets less entertaining every minute that it goes on yeah it don't come to this show for entertainment value you're not going to get that yeah now I now I started scrolling through reviews and the people who say it's great clearly haven't seen a lot of anime and the people who say it's bad or no sorry the people who say it's great either haven't seen a lot of anime or they're basically saying it's a shitty b movie that goes on forever if you like shitty b movies you'll love the shit out of this it does have that kind of feel like and you'll enjoy it if you're literally in it to see how bad the script is written yeah which it has that kind of feel for sure like I've enjoyed things on that level before so I can see that of poorly paced b movie the people who say it's bad seem to be split between people who say they don't get it and there's nothing not to get if you don't get it so it isn't a show it spells it all out for you and near the end they just tell you everything literally and the anime news network forums like in the episode five I found a thread where like the giant kappa gets revealed it's not a kappa it's a half penguin half person but it's got the bald headed kappa looking thing on it it's not it's no kappa so it's a penguin it's half stuffed penguin half person because at first I thought it was a penguin but then I saw the bald head thing I was like oh I guess it's kappa and a Japanese guy with like a thin mustache coming in yeah whatever like a photo of him but like in the fourth episode they go into the train track tunnel and I'm like all right train track tunnel is a big deal but then the kid the one girl the guys that got the flashlight he's like oh my god there's some crazy shit and then they all scream and run away without saying what it is but then when they get back to camp they're like it was a giant like main character yeah the that's not that is literally the second to the last thing I would have expected them to have seen screamed and run away from on my list was number one train number two ghost train ghost train would have made the show great yeah number three the bear monster that would have been great too number four like mirrors of all the other kids uh but at near the bottom of the list was things like actual freddy kruger black dynamite evangelion but black dynamite yeah like literally it's Hideaki ono like he's a character in the show now but right at the bottom that's blue blazes you should watch that right at the very bottom down there is a bigger version of one of the characters four meters tall give or take whatever don't watch this show just watch the first episode this has been geek nights with rim and scott special thanks to dj pretzel for the opening music cat lee for web design and brand okay for the logos be sure to visit our website at front row crew dot com for show notes discussion news and more remember geek nights is not one but four different shows sci-tech mondays gaming tuesdays anime comic wednesdays and indiscriminate thursdays geek nights is distributed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license geek nights is recorded live with no studio and no audience but unlike those other late shows it's actually recorded at night