B-Project: Kodo Ambitious Review (Collab)

B-Project: Kodo Ambitious (bitches) Review (Collab)

Warning: The following podcast episode/s will contain spoilers of the series B-Project: Kodo Ambitious. If you wish to stay clear of what happens in this show, please exit the tab and link provided below, and join us once you've watched said show. Or you can take that warning with a grain of salt. Whatever floats your boat.

With that said, onto the preamble:

I haven't officially announced this on my blog, but I've referred to Luke, someone who has partnered up with me on reviews and mentioned several times through the years, as one of my close friends. Well, that's not true. He's actually my brother. The reason why I kept this secret for so long is that I didn't know how to write it in words. When we first made accounts online, we were in the same community and paranoid as hell about people finding out we were related. Years later, some people know, and it doesn't even matter, so why keep it hidden when we're doing this podcast together?

We've been thinking about doing a podcast since the year started. After hearing about America's Next Top Best Friend, where two women recap the entirety of America's Next Top Model (they're now on Australia's Next Top Model, Cycle 1), we wanted another place to share our thoughts on media we're passionate about. Whether it's anime, reality TV competition shows, TV, or Hallmark movies (although that's more my thing), why not have an audience hear what we have to say than just our close friends? After all, you might not care about what we talk about, but you'll care about how we talk about it.

Enter B-Project, a longtime friend of this blog. I've wanted to do a review of this for so long, it's not even funny. A multimedia franchise created by MAGES.inc. head Chiyomaru Shikura and musician Takanori Nishikawa (some of you may know him as T.M.Revolution), the ten idols debuted in late 2015, along with four more in December of that year, a sub-group named KiLLER KiNG (who aren't in this season outside of cameos). The anime adaptation wasn't greenlit until March 2016, coincidentally airing in the same season as Qualidea Code. I say coincidentally since A-1 Pictures animated both shows, and each had their own horrifying moments.

When this was announced, I was excited to see where it would go. It looked cheesy, it looked fun, and I was curious to see if it would do things I hadn't see in other idol anime. After following it during the Summer 2016 season, it was definitely cheesy, but it stopped being fun. While the first half was fine, the second half's quality wasn't appetizing. The writing wasn't consistent, the melodrama was too melodramatic, some of the characters didn't get that much focus (including my personal best boy, Tatsuhiro Nome), and the ending was one of the worst I've seen in any property. My expectations weren't high on this rewatch. I was expecting a hot mess, a cheese fest, something I was better for leaving in the past.

For the next four Tuesdays, we will be covering this show. Hear how we felt coming back to this after four years and catch up on the highlights and low blows. At the time of this post going up, all four episodes have been recorded (we covered three episodes in each). For me, this show did improve in some aspects (the finale was actually entertaining), but my overall opinion didn't change. Yes, Tatsuhiro wasn't a loaf of bread. Yes, there was plenty of good cheese and angst. Yes, Episode 9 wasn't a complete s**tfest. But at the end of the day, B-Project really struggles in its story and character writing. Aspects of the group's forming don't add up, the writers fail to define Tsubasa's role in the story, the characters are very static, the animation isn't great, the score's okay, and the manservice feels like a gimmick. The parts where I laughed aren't enough to push me through another season (yes, another one got made).

We still at least get the endcards, even if the second to last one with the managers feels completely out of place:

Four years later and I'm still proud of this simplistic Picmonkey editing. I'd like to do this more often.

The podcast is now private as of December 2023. The episodes may return at some point down the line, but that'll require conversations with my bro.