WWHCurrent Anime & Manga Blog: Initial Impressions: Upotte!!

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Initial Impressions: Upotte!!

May 12, 2012
Posted by DarrenW

Woah. Very late with this review.

Sorry readers. I was busy tending to my collection of OP & ED videos, changing them from 360p to the HD 720p. Yes I collect anime OP and EDs as a habit. Hope I'm not alone on this.

Anyway, today I will be doing a new review on an anime all about guns, Upotte!!

Our story begins in Seishou Academy, which our 4 main characters attend. But, littered in the hallways, are warning signs, "Keep your safety on!" and "Keep your chamber empty." Also, all the students are named after famous rifles, like G3, Fal, or 14.

What? What gives at this school? Well, the main reason is because this ISN'T your normal school. Yes, this is a school, where they teach students how to use... RIFLES, of which they themselves are rifles. I believe the correct term to use here is anthropomorphism.

Our main characters have been given names such as:

FNC, a rifle that was introduced by a manufacturer in Belgium in the late 1970s.

16, also known as the M16A4 assault rifle produced by America.

L, otherwise known as the SA80 or L85A2, a rifle made by the United Kingdom, which had a checkered history and was defective to some extent.

And Sig, a swiss SG 550 rifle which has the ability to shoot far distances with great accuracy and precision.

Main Characters

Shocked Sensei

Anyway, this is what our arriving character, Genkoku-sensei, a new teacher hired for the job, will find out eventually. Thinking that he got hired for an ordinary academy, he has no idea what's going to happen to him. Well, until he gets fired at. He has the natural ability to produce a perfect pose for firing rifles, but when he shoots, his aim is always way off. He gets shot at by FNC twice, of which he survived both incidents. (LUCKY)

So far, the anime, until episode 3, features the main characters, as well as the other guns from the other schools in the academy, such as the battle rifle class: Fal (FN FAL), 14, (M14) G3 (G3A3) . There's quite a lot to go through. Since then, they have introduced what the guns actually are, and it begins to become something like a documentary at certain times, but of course, other than that, your normal schoolgirl anime plot and theme holds on.

Training

Personally, I find this anime interesting because I'm not a gun fan, so this anime provides some good insight to the different parts of rifles, especially with the narrator being so specific about it. Art is really awesome because to be able to reproduce the image of the gun in the anime takes some degree of skill, of course unless it was a computer CGI image.

The theme is your usual real-life schoolgirl genre, which includes some humour and action (Well duh it's a show about guns). Since gun-wielding schoolgirls (Angel Beats!, Hidan no Aria) are in demand recently, it deserves a look.

Upotte!! premiered on April 8, 2012 (LONG TIME), and currently has 5 episodes to date, I think, and it will have only 10 episodes with one special. It is currently fansubbed by Commie ONLY. Wow that's surprising. It also has a manga version which has 4 volumes and was released in 2009.