Weeaboo

Because sometimes I don’t have enough to say on each title to warrant an entire post of its own.

Ikoki Meiro no Croisee

LOOK AT THE TEENY TINY HANDS!!! *cough* Ikoku Meiro feels rather unpolished. There’s a fair amount of eyebrow raising moments in the first episode alone that made me wonder if the creators were actually thinking about what they were doing. The most obvious example is the teeny tiny girl with those miniscule hands oh god they’re so cute speaking in Japanese. Or was it French? She’s meant to appear not to understand French, yet she talks to the gormless male lead midway through the episode without him apparently being able to catch on that she can speak French. Or Japanese. The language barrier got me all confused as to whether the reason the gormless male lead couldn’t wrap his thick head around the concept that because she spoke French, she could understand French, or whether she was actually speaking Japanese this whole time. This made the conflict in the episode come off as strange and confusing, because it was difficult to understand what the conflict was arrising from in the first place.

Not that the creators particularly care about the conflict. Nor do they particularly care about that much of a realistic depiction of 19th century France. This comes from the same logic banks Gosick did. The fascination with the era comes less from a historical interest and more from a ‘look at dem pretty clothes’ interest. The whole logic behind the plot strikes me as a bit fucked up too, taking some little girl from Japan to stand around and look pretty in their shop. But all the creators really care about is how cute the little girl is. And she is indeed really fucking cute, what with those teeny tiny hands. So if you’re the kind of person who can watch something based on sheer cuteness alone, then go nuts. I need something a bit more substantial than shallow cuteness, being the big stinking elitist that I am, and Ikoku Meiro hasn’t put much thought into any other area of the production. Props for getting a proper French speaker for the title screens though.

Natsume Yuujinchou San

I still don’t quite get why people go utterly gaga for Natsume Yuujinchou. The soothing atmoshpere it’s so often praised for seems to stem from a echoey narration from Natsume himself about what had literally just happened before he started narrating. It’s been referred to as Mushishi-lite, which I kinda understand, but the ‘lite’ part means it removes the eerie and slightly oppressive  side that Mushishi excels in, leaving not an awful lot left. The show has this taste for introducing a new character as though they’re important and keep treating them as though we’re meant to care about them, when ultimately all they do is hover around in the background and wave at Natsume when he goes to school.

However I feel like a bit of a dick for railing against Natsume Yuujinchou. I like the show. The return of Nyanko is certainly welcome. Each of the stories are generally agreeable and heart-warming. There’s rarely any change in theme to these stories, usually being simple little tales of loneliness, but there’s enough variation between them that it doesn’t get old. This season is more of the same. OK, this episode was a bit heavier on the exposition than was necessary, and the very final twist wasn’t that well executed, but the story of the yokai was the same old heartwarming tale of loneliness that is this series bread and butter. So good for all you Natsume fans. And good for me too, I guess. I just wish Brains Base would make another Durarara sometime soon…

YuruYuri

A work of pure brilliance. Such a seemingly simply yet ingenius twist on a well known tale. The effort gone into this is immense. Each scene is brimming with energy and charm, yet it has this underlying tone and message that cuts straight through to the heart in a way that’s difficult to describe. Each character is memorable in their own unique ways, playing off each other, leaving as much unsaid through their actions and non-actions, leaving you to reach beneath the characters to discover what their true feelings are. Each line is brimming with wit and crafted so expertly, occasionally with parodies so subtle that I found myself rewinding the video to check if they really just said that. It’s mature, clever, funny and there’s nothing else quite like it out there. Outstanding piece of work.

Yes, you guessed it right. It’s the same cute girls grope each other while doing absolutely nothing anime that Japan has been shitting out for the past few years. Lalala nothing to see here

And then the first episode aired. And my fears were put to bed. This is not perfect, but oh yes is it ever awesome.

Somewhere in amongst all the pre-hype, I’d forgotten who Kenji Nakamura is and what weird tastes in animation he has. This fella clearly stepped right out of the Trapeze character design mold. For the uninitiated, Kenji Nakamura is a nutcase director, usually associated with Toei animation, who has produced anime for the Noitamina timeslot before. These two anime are Mononoke and Trapeze. Now I know I will instantly lose my self-important elitist license by saying this, but Mononoke really didn’t click with me and I dropped it after two episodes. However I did really enjoy Trapeze in all it’s feel good value, even if it was rather imbalanced and varied widely in quality. That said, I like what he tries to do. I like any director who actively tries to move away from the standard boring talking heads version of animation, like Yuasa (Tatami Galaxy, Kaiba) or Shinbo (every single Shaft anime). [C] isn’t quite the same sort of unusual presentation, but it’s different and unusual in what the actual story it’s presenting is. This is a Metaphor.

The world that is the financial district is one not governed by the laws of reality, nor the laws of common sense. A world in which the rules of economics and finance are explained via the medium of card games, demon girls and Pokemon battles. It’s a bizarre, visually imaginative world that I really haven’t had a chance as of yet to make heads nor tails of yet. But I partly knew what to expect after having read this interview with the cast. This is all one big fancy Metaphor for economics and finance and whatever. I don’t know where this is going but I love this sort of stuff generally. I love the way it tackles stories like Legend of Black Heaven or Revolutionary Girl Utena. Using the bizarreness that animation can bring to the table to construct complex ways of telling stories. I’ve seen some people complain of the apparent Yu-Gi-Oh approach, which rather baffles me. So what, you want the boring old economics lectures like in Spice and Wolf, where you sat through the economics because you were a good viewer who realised you had to pay attention to this stuff to get through to the Horo X Lawrence scenes later on? Or do you want economics explained via the medium of demon girls summoning monsters with your bank balance used as life points? Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

The animation is still derpy though. The point that sticks out is the character designs. Whenver they’re shown in anything other than a close up, it turns all jarring and derpy. Their heads are too small! OK, not quite XXXHolic levels of small, but that’s practically impossible to achieve and I hope we never see those freaky levels of shrunken heads in anime again. But [C] got it just the wrong level of small head syndrome that it becomes noticeable and annoying. The series shines again when we run into the Willy Wonka character and we leap into the Financial District via Taxi 9 and three quarters, but for Nakamura the animation in the more ordinary life scenes can be rather mundane. Or perhaps that’s the point? I dunno, but it doesn’t blend well and looks awkward at times. The CGI is far less obtrusive than I thought it would be though. If anything, I like CGI Willy Wonka. He’s such a bizarre creature anyway that his free-flowing CGI form is still pretty cool to watch. Or maybe I’ve just been won over by CGI characters ever since the Suite Precure ending song dance routine (which I would link but boy do Toei love taking down any Youtube upload of that dance).

Don’t you want to become a magical girl? Wait no sorry, I mean, do you have your Golden Ticket? Wait no, not that either. If you were given 10 billion yen, how would you save Ja…wait damnit, not that either!

In short, I really enjoyed the first episode of [C]. It’s bizarre and imaginative, with intelligent dialogue and quick wit with some incredibly interesting ideas that I really want to see it explore further. What are they going to do with all of this though? It could still all collapse horribly, but I’m here for the ride anyway.

Vampire Princess Miyu

1988–9 — 4 episodes

Most of these OVA’s I watched I either rented out or downloaded off BakaBT (awesome website btw, especially for older anime). My general rule was to start off watching the english dub and only switch over if the acting was dreadful. Sometimes the corniness of a poor dub just added to the whole 80’s OVA experience anyway, as was certainly the case for the hammy acting in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. So I started watching the dub of Vampire Princess Miyu and the voice acting was so bad that the opening narration became the greatest bit of unintentional comedy I have ever seen. Just watch it. The way the guy drags out the Miyuuu gets me every time. The whole dub job remains at about the same level. I’m not sure if the actual episode was any good or even what it was about. I was too busy laughing at it.

Zillion Burning Night OVA

1988 — 1 episode

Have you ever watched that movie ‘The Princess Bride’? You know, the one with the line “I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”. It was deliberately being incredibly stupid with its style of storytelling. That was Zillion Burning Night OVA, except I don’t think it ever realised how dumb it was being. It was quite amazing how it cycled through the cliches like clockwork, as though it was going through a checklist and ticking them off one by one. I’m not talking plot point cliches or anything minor like that. When I say Zillion was cliche, I mean every single line of dialogue. It was morbidly fascinating to watch. Even the mood changing humour I could have set my clock to. I don’t even remember what it was about, I was too busy thinking “now is the time the bad guy appears through a hole in the wall and announces “not so fast” but the main character totally ignores him oh look I was completely right”.

Twilight Q

1987 — 2 episodes

I’ve written about Twilight Q before. Don’t remember? Maybe this will jog your memory.

I don’t have anything to add I didn’t already say in the original post. Just remember that the two episodes are stand alone pieces with no connection to each other. The first episode is crap but the second one is cool. Plus, it has a plan turning into a giant fish. Is that not reason enough?

Memories

1995 — 3 episodes

Like Twilight Q, Memories is made up of unconnected stories put together in an anthology. The best way to talk about it is to simply cycle through each of the 3 episodes.

Magnetic Rose

It’s not that well known that this was Satoshi Kon’s first directorial work. Even better, it has Yoko Kanno doing the soundtrack, which gives the whole piece this feel of a mindfuck version of Cowboy Bebop. Despite being the best of the Memories collection, it’s unfortunately the one I can talk about the least because I watched this quite a few years ago now, before I knew it was part of Memories. It was only over Christmas did I finally get around to the other two pieces. So I’ll just leave it at this: if you like Satoshi Kon’s films (Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers etc.), give Magnetic Rose a shot. It’s as competently put together as any of his other works.

Stink Bomb

Unlike Magnetic Rose, where you probably have to be a big stinkin’ elitist like myself to get the full enjoyment out of it, Stink Bomb is a much more accessible piece. It’s sorta Roujin Z lite in the sense it’s a comedy about a superweapon being controlled by an poor unassuming human running out of control as the military try to stop it  rampaging across the countryside (I think it’s by the same director as well). The best thing about this episode is the gormless salaryman who has let this stink bomb loose across Japan, with no knowledge as to what he has done. It even works as a clever bit of social commentary as to how the cog in the corporate machine has no idea what he’s working on. Heck, the closest anyone gets to telling him what’s happening is when his granny calls out to him on a megaphone from a helicopter. But it’s not the social commentary you’re necessarily watching this for *he says, afraid he might have turned off the more casual fan*. You watch it because it’s a whole heap of fun. Then watch Roujin Z, because it’s Stink Bomb except better and with old man hackers.

Cannon Fodder

The shortest and strangest of the Memories collection, Cannon Fodder plays out like an episode of Kino’s Journey. Introduce a town where they have decided on a strange system how to run the place. It may not make sense from a logical standpoint, but the real appeal is working out what the message of the episode is. A world in which the greatest a child can hope for is to be the man who fires the cannon at empty space. It doesn’t work as well as Kino’s Journey though, for one simple reason: No Kino. What Kino does is ask the questions you want to ask. Get down to that layer behind the peoples psyche and understand why they do this. Nobody in Cannon Fodder has the purpose of asking the man why he works at the cannon place. It’s not the most damning of problems, but it does hold the whole thing back just a bit.

Everyday is Sunday

1990–2 — 6 episodes

There was an episode of Gintama where Gintoki and some other bloke were sitting in a maid cafe looking very bored. They were having a conversation about something or other but every now and then they would interrupt their conversation to say “oh, I saw panties” in a rather bored yet intrigued tone, like a potato picker who notices the latest potato he picks resembles the face of a famous politician. That’s what I was doing watching Everyday is Sunday. When it comes to pantyshots, newer anime draw attention to the fact they’ve just shown you up the girls skirt. There’s that little bell chime, the camera placement and lighting highlight the shot and often zoom right in, just in case you happened to miss them. With older anime, pantyshots tend to happen almost by accident when the girl is doing a somersault. Plus they’re generally the plain white ones rather than the striped or whatever pretty patterns modern day pantyshots have.

The only anime I can think of recently to take this approach was Ride Back. Unlike Ride Back though, where the pantyshots simply happened because the physics of riding a motorcycle robot with a dress on means it’s practically impossible not to flash your underwear to the world, Everyday is Sunday pantyshots felt like it was meant to be something the viewer craved. Which made it all the more weird when, in the very next episode, as was required by law, they had a full on extended boob shot. Times sure have changed since then when it comes to fanservice. Yeah, in case you hadn’t figured out already, there was nothing worthwhile to talk about with Everyday is Sunday. But I hope you enjoyed my piece on the evolution of the pantyshot regardless.

Have you ever heard about the story behind the Negima manga and why it’s a harem? Ken Akamatsu wanted to write a shounen battle manga but wasn’t allowed to by his publishers. So he started Negima like any other crappy harem fest and gradually worked it into a battle manga with every volume. The start of Freezing makes me wonder is there something similar going on here. The author wants to write a serious psychological drama but is being forced by his publishers to include T&A shots. That, or his publishers are forcing him to put in a plot when all he wants to do is draw women fighting with their clothes being destroyed.

It’s annoying because there’s so much in Freezing that could make for a fascinating story. The show takes a lot of it’s visual cues from Evangelion with the way it presents the giant monster things and the awe-inspiring fear that radiates out from them. Freezing is also similar to Evangelion in that the ‘chosen ones’ are put through intense pain and mental suffering if they are going to fight these monsters. There’s a scene where they’re trying to heal those wounded in battle that contrasts the squeaky clean classroom scene. None of it’s done anywhere near as well as it’s done in Evangelion, but that’s obviously pretty high standards you’ve got there. Heck, even the young boy/older women combo has a lot of potential for weird relationships. Older sister become surrogate mother for estranged boy. Sadistic boy puts older girl through pain and she can’t refuse him because they’re tied together. There’s potential there for some really fascinating stuff.

But Freezing isn’t about that though. Remember that this comes from the same thought process that the likes of Ikkitousen or Queens Blade came from. This is about the clothes exploding mid-fight kind of stuff. It already has a massive bonus over the other two for having a potentially fascinating story. Compare my viewing experience of Freezing, where I counted Evanglion similarities, to Ikkitousen, where I spent my time counting panty shots, despire the two having roughly equal number of panty shots, give or take 10. But the tits ‘n ass get in the way. I’m watching for how they frame the Angel things, only to instead get treated to a screenfull of ass. When the main girl meets the main boy, she spends her time orgasming instead of perhaps a reaction that could be more in tune with the story of the anime. When one girl moaned rather loudly when she unleashes her weapon, I started concocting her reasoning behind fighting is that she had a lust after violence and got genuine sexual pleasure from unleashing her powers. However I was quickly forced to dismiss the idea when you consider it was more in tune with the show for it to have done that so the loser otaku can hear their favourite seiyuu moan.

Am I taking this anime too seriously? Yep, I guess I am. But I like taking my anime seriously. You get a lot more out of it when you do, so shame on you for not doing likewise. If this approach means I can’t get my hur hur boobs enjoyment from Freezing but can derive far more enjoyment from the visual cues in Madoka Magica, then I’m perfectly happy keeping to this form of viewing. I’m a big stinking elitist and I wouldn’t have my anime any other way.

This is because there’s a myth built up behind the phrase ‘dumb entertainment’ that’s built up more by it’s detractors than its defenders. It’s the idea that something is dumb because the creators behind it messed up, or weren’t intelligent enough to create smart entertainment. That there was little thought put behind each scene and the randomness or predictability is what the defenders of dumb entertainment like. The defenders aren’t doing themselves any favours though. They defend each version of dumb entertainment, meaning it’s difficult to pick out which are the series that are genuinely entertaining, in much the same way having people say “this upcoming anime season is shit” every single bloody season detracts from instances when the season is genuinely shit. For dumb entertainment to succeed, it still needs real thought to go into it to make it entertaining.You can’t just trot out the same tired and lame crap. You can’t have someone fall into another characters breasts and call it a day. You can’t blow a zombies head off and think that’s sufficient. There will still be fans, because there’s people who will even defend Akane Iro ni Somaru Saku. If you want quality dumb entertainment, you need bullet time tits.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m not saying Highschool of the Dead is the pinnacle of dumb entertainment. It still tossed out tired tropes and lazy excuses for fanservice. But Bullet Time Tits was genious. Of course they knew that if Saeko’s boobs were really moving that fast, the would fly straight off her chest. That’s part of the reason they did it.

Yup, my 10th moment of anime is breasts gyrating faster than the speed of sound.

BOOBS!!

I know I said I’d talk about plot, but holy crap these boobs were going wild in this episode. They must have brought in a seasoned specialist boob bounce animator for this episode, and they probably had a lot of fun with it. Bra-less Mikaze must be in pain after this episode, Black Witch or not. They were also slightly more realistic than the boob bouncing in HOTD, which seem to run on perpetual motion or gun recoil ripples. I wouldn’t call any breast movement in anime fully realistic, what with them flying about independently from each other, but at least the animation was slick and solid. You start to notice things like that when given enough time, and Occult Academy sure gave us plenty of time to observe these mammaries in motion.

And I thought HOTD would be the only anime this season with crazy sex cults. Wait, that’s the second time in two paragraphs I’ve mentioned HOTD, I’ve got to stop doing that. I’d mention other anime from this season too except the only other anime I’m watching is Giant Killing and that’s curiously lacking in bouncing breasts and crazy sex cults. If Maya starts speaking in mangled Dutch or Smile starts frying a frog, then I’ll drop in a Giant Killing reference.

Now I’ve seen a lot of anime kisses in my time. I’ve seen miserably animated lips just bashing off each other in Spice and Wolf. I’ve seen a solid connection of the mouths in Arakawa Under the Bridge. I’ve seen a cigarette kiss in Black Lagoon. I’ve seen a literally breathless kiss in Neon Genesis Evangelion. I’ve seen a long fucking time coming kiss in Eureka Seven. I’ve seen ‘imaginative’ male on male kissing in Genshiken. I’ve seen the yuri kiss of life in Re: Cutie Honey. I’ve seen no kissing whatsoever how dare you even suggest Nagisa would do such an impure thing in Clannad. I’ve seen repeated kissing in Toradora. I’ve even seen spit strings before in They are my Noble Masters. However I’ve never seen a kiss quite a sexually charged and graphic as this (hentai notwithstanding). It kept going, with groping and drool everywhere. Clothes were dangling precariously by the end, held up only by erect nipples. Crotches were rubbed. Bums were shaken. On a sheer visual level, nothing beats that kiss. But when it involves Bumnei and Succubus girl then the emotional level behind the kiss pales in comparison to many of the rest I’ve mentioned.

What do you see as you gaze into the crystal ball?

I see the next episode being animated by Masaaki Yuasa, and it makes even less sense than any of his other works!

What, you mean less sense than that extra episode of Tatami Galaxy where Ozu is a giant octopus?

OK, maybe not quite that incomprehensible

(Just to prove I watch more intelligent anime than HOTD, I’ll reference some elitist Madhouse Noitamina anime)

I don’t like these sort of character deaths in anime. The forced good humoured scene they have before they ‘die’ to put the character in a good light so you feel extra sad when they do kick the bucket. We all know Maya hadn’t died, and yet we still had to sit through obligatory mourning scenes. No really, I genuinely hate scenes like that. Maya isn’t dead, are you lot not genre savvy enough to know that? But hey, Maya returns after about 5 minutes so at least it wasn’t an entire episode of dull mourning and attempting to make the viewer feel sad.

And as soon as we return, Occult Academy decides that now is the perfect time to reveal that it was actually a magical girls anime all this time! Suddenly we get transformation wardrobe change sequences and spells and black mage vs white mage. It didn’t exactly come totally left of centre. We all knew she was eeeeevil all along. But still, that whole change rather threw me. Although it did reveal something I rather liked. One of my theories was that there was no occult in Occult Academy and it was all caused by the aliens. Turns out I was almost right, I just was on the wrong track. There are no aliens. They’re just occult creatures called from the other dimension by a black witches powers. Although it would be amusing if, in the middle of a magical girl duel, a bunch of aliens land and go “hi guiz, sorry for interrupting your battle and all, but we’re gonna take over your planet lol”.

Even better than that though is the VP being a white mage. Think about the contrast between her and Mikaze for a second. The evil black mage drives a fast car, doesn’t wear a bra, spends her whole time groping and invading personal space with no consideration for the person involved or those observing. The pure white mage writes love poems, makes her unrequited love bento boxes and dresses in a very reserved manner. Notice the slight depression in her voice when she asked Bumnei was she not good enough for him when he was crying about Maya? Hey all you loser otaku with a purity fixation. This is what purity really looks like.

Oh, and Maya’s dad is the leader of the revolution against the aliens/inter-dimensional beings in the future. Because that makes perfect sense. Oh whatever, I’ll assume Occult Academy knows what it’s doing with this. Probably not a wise move on my part…

There is no such thing as drop­ping an anime forever. When I use the term ‘dropped’ that does not mean that’s the last I’ll see of that anime in my life. Drop­ping a show means that I don’t have the enthu­si­asm to watch this show cur­rently and at a later date I’ll return to that anime. This later date may be the time when I’m trapped on a desert island with noth­ing other than a dvd player and a ‘Lucky Star’ box­set, but I will one day return and give the anime another shot. With this in mind, com­bined with the fact that I’ve passed the 100 anime mark on my MAL account for anime I’ve dropped, I’ve decided that I’m going to take a look back at all those series I’ve dropped, recog­nise why I dropped them and eval­u­ate when I should give them another go.

Texhnolyze

Dropped After: 2 episodes

Why I dropped it: Interesting fact: This is the only anime out of the 66 I’ve listed so far that I dropped for being pretentious. Even Lain I was quite interested in the parts people would call pretentious.. The problem was simply summoning up the enthusiasm about the rest of the show in order to care about these parts. I suppose this is as good a proof as any that I’m a raging elitist who loves DEEP anime. However Texhnolyze was too much even for me. The deep breathing into the mic got on my nerves. Long stretches of just the main character limping through the streets that were probably supposed to symbolise the characters suffering and whatnot just annoyed me. Far too wrapped up in itself and the idea of trying to prise it open and make sense held no appeal to me whatsoever.

Rebirth Chances: Below Average. The music was great. I’ll give it that. But my reaction to what I saw was far too negative for me to feel any urge to pick it up again. Plus I watched less than a year ago. I don’t think my opinion is going to change much in that short a time.

To-Love-Ru

Dropped After: 10 episodes

Why I dropped it: I’m still a bit amazed that I watched 10 episodes of this show. The power of an addictive opening and hot girls compelled me to continue. In fact, I think it was only when they started introducing lolis that I dropped the show.

Rebirth Chances: Low. Look, let’s be honest here. This show has no redeeming factors other than the hot girls. It knows this as well and simply spends its time reproducing largely the same episode over and over again, possibly introducing a new hot girl to spice things up. The manga got cancelled because readers ratings were so low, the story was going nowhere, the comedy was repetitive and unfunny and the characters had as much depth as a frying pan. Anyone who tries to say there’s any other appeal to the show is lying. I think I’ve graduated beyond watching generic fanservice crap…although I am still watching Highschool of the Dead, so…

Tokyo Magnitude

Dropped After: 5 episodes

Why I dropped it: Me dropping a Noitamina anime? What has the world come to! But Tokyo Magnitude managed to tick a lot of boxes of stuff I really don’t enjoy watching in my anime. Hyper rational characters often don’t interest me. Neither does sob stories nor human struggles. Hmmm, I’m finding this hard to verbalise. It was the realism of the show I guess. This was not meant as entertainment nor was it meant to have deeper meaning. It was an honest study of what would happen in the event of an earthquake in Tokyo. Human struggles and so on. Some people love that stuff. I don’t.

Rebirth Chances: Average. I know the big spoiler that happens in this show and that doesn’t make me any more or less interested in picking up the show again. Also, it has only been a year since this aired and I doubt my opinion is going to change that much.

Stellvia

Dropped After: 5 episodes

Why I dropped it: Oh dear, not another one of these ones. I can remember very little whatsoever about Stellvia. I vaguely remember something about Hogwarts in space and the characters going on adventures on the spacecraft only to be caught by Severus Snape or some other pilot teacher hotshot. There was also sweets in a big jar. And body-hugging space-suits, although they’re pretty much a given when it comes to those sort of series. Otherwise I’m afraid I’m at a loss as to why I dropped it. However I must have dropped it for a reason though, right?

Rebirth Chances: High, as is always the case with shows I can’t remember a thing about. It’s decently rated, if admittedly not all that highly. I never hear anyone talk about the series at all, whether it be with disdain or praise, neither or which is exactly a good sign. However people also don’t talk about a lot of other early 00’s shows that are excellent so eh, maybe I passed over a gem that gets better I swear!

Umi Monogatari

Dropped After: 3 episodes

Why I dropped it: It’s ZECXS so you know what that means kids? Yup, it was the absolute pinnacle of averageness! Remember, being average doesn’t mean you’re bad. I wouldn’t call Rental Magica or Legendary Legend bad shows. I even gave this show a B– after the first episode. But it pretty quickly became clear what was going on with this show. Pure pure magical girl transformation sequences with cute girls being insufferably nice to each other with plenty of yuri undertones and humour innocent and fluffy and involving giant talking turtles. When you add all those together, I’m actually amazed at how much I failed to hate the show. ZEXCS and their power of averageness is truly outstanding.

Rebirth Chances: Low. The little I read from positive reviews afterwards came from the type of fan who love shows with names like Magical Musical ~Chu~ ~Chu~ Lyrical Heart and Soul Puni Puni Girl SOS, a genre that never particularly interested me as you can probably tell from my aloof and degrading attitude towards them. If I’m going to step outside my comfort zone when it comes to these sorts of shows, I’ll watch something a bit more highly rated. Like Cardcaptor Sakura or Princess Tut…oh wait…

Valkyria Chronicles

Dropped After: 6 episodes

Why I dropped it: Ah I remember this! I was instantly dismissive of the show because it was a game adaptation, and we all know they are never any good. But Valkyria Chronicles insisted on not being bad. It had a hot female lead, a tank, a bit of invention gone into the world design and a strange style of animation that gave everything the texture of wood. Around episode 3 there was a tank driving underwater. You know, pretty cool stuff. But this was all just staving off the eventual turn to crapness that was always hiding just out of view. What pushed me away was a plot twist to rival the stupidity of Alison to Lillia. When attacking a base, the main character came up with the daring plan to attack from the side! I know, he’s like the second coming of Yang Wenli.

Rebirth Chance: Above average. As you can probably see, I was more than a bit harsh on the series. All I was really doing was looking for an excuse to drop the series at the first available opportunity. Heck, Cowboy Bebop also had a miserable episode 6…wait, did I just compare Valkyria Chronicles to Cowboy Bebop? Yikes, I guess that means I should end these posts here and now.

Picked up on: Epis­ode 1

Why I picked it up again: Because you lot told me to. Which is pretty much the same reason I pick up any anime in these posts. Why do I have this section again?

Review: I can certainly see why I originally dropped Macross Frontier. It is awfully derivative, but not necessarily in a bad way. Which sounds like an oxymoron but bare with me for a second while I explain.

When I make season previews, I’m often on the lookout for something a bit left of centre. Something very different from the norm, like Tatami Galaxy last season. They’re a welcome change of pace from your standard anime fare and any anime watcher needs these shows occasionally in their diet to keep them from growing bitter from repetitive viewings of the same old anime. Some people state that these types of shows are why they watch anime. They watch anime for those series that set themselves aside from the rest of the pack. Ultimately I believe these types of fans are doomed to the burnout. These anime are rare. You might get 2–3 every year, leaving you disenchanted with the rest of anime fandom as they watch whatever this latest mecha singing craze happens to be.

To really enjoy anime though, there has to be an inherent love of the staples of the medium. This isn’t something you can naturally create and cultivate. It’s deep ingrained into your psyche. Whether you want to or not, you will enjoy the crazy coloured hair, the robots, the love triangles, the grand plots, the exaggeration of certain character traits. This might sound like I’m describing Macross Frontier but you could use those exact same descriptions for Code Geass, Full Metal Panic, Mai Hime and many more. Series that are so inherently ‘anime’, yet have a sheen to them that says the creators loved and cared for what they were making. This is what I watch anime for. Not for the latest arthouse series. I watch it for the series that scream of anime and scream it the loudest and with the most passion.

I wouldn’t say Macross Frontier restored my love for anime or anything like that. For one, it’s not like I never lost it, and anyway that would be giving it way more credit than it deserves (I ended up giving it a MAL score of 7). This time though, I removed the jaded veil of someone who thought he had seen this all before. That season I was busy being enthralled by Kaiba (Geass R2 was also airing at this time, but I was late to that train and only started watching R2 when it had reached something like episode 14). I had seen it all in regards to Macross Frontier before. But this time it managed to recapture the feeling of a newbie anime fan, amazed and entertained by everything that was atypical in anime.

Also Sheryl > Ranka

Was it worth picking up again: Yes. Unbelievably ridiculous civil-war stopping divas and all.

Angel Beats!

Probably the most hyped anime of the season is also the most divisive. I think fans split quite evenly into three categories as I shall outline using this badly drawn 4-koma.

B Gata H Kei vs KissXSis

Some of the reactions to these have been absolutely nonsensical. Now the Kiss x Sis reactions are pretty much as expected. It’s about pseudo-incest and its only aim is sexual titillation. It’s basically porn, which is what people should be treating it as. People don’t get up in arms because some kid fucks his mother in the latest hentai title so why get in a fuss over Kiss X Sis? Anyone who is honestly watching this for the comedy, then all I can say is I admire your detachment. B Gata H Kei though, is getting similar reactions that Kiss X Sis is. People seem to be split into two categories. One who think it’s more shitty otaku-bait and those who believe these elitists are too uptight to see a great comedy with an ingenious concept. What it is in reality is an unusual yet potentially great concept executed miserably. It’s sad that one has to justify that they’re dropping this show not because they’re an uptight elitist but because it’s a poor anime.

Senko no Night Raid

This was always going to cause outrage and heated discussions. The basic gist is that, while Germany spends its time living in a permanent apologetic state for its history, Japan spends a lot of its time pretending they’re horrible historical achievements never happened. Senko no Night Raid focuses in on a period of history that is pretty darn controversial.

What’s not helping is people on the internet are stupid.

Bringing up periods of history that have no relevance in the conversation, using the standard reaction of ‘but so-and-so did this so that means this is OK’. Anime fans seem to quite often become defenders of the elevens, such is the level of weeaboo-ism on the internet. Not that the other side is much better. Leaping on this series to sprout gross overstatements when the anime in question has yet to cover any of the history or what it’s intentions are. It could be any anime that covers this period of history, it just so happened to be Senko no Night Raid.

(I need to learn how to draw. Not Mistakes of Youth quality, just being able to draw facial expressions would be enough)

Giant Killing

I can see where this is going already. The same thing happened with Cross Game. Sports anime seem to hold this odd aura of being underrated gems and it is the duty of anyone who watches the show to praise it to the heavens. While watching Cross Game I often gave it a hard time. I did love the show but that was because I often felt like I was the only person who would dare criticise a show that was already being ignored by a lot of anime fandom. And so the same thing seems to be happening to Giant Killing. Stupid people are ignoring it because it’s a sports anime and those who do watch it praise it more than it probably deserves in an attempt to get more people to watch it.

Mayoi Neko Overrun and Hakuouki

Both sides of fandom are as bad as each other over these two. The main praise I’m seeing for Hakuouki is that it has lots of beautiful bishies. The main praise I’m seeing for Mayoi Neko Overrun is that it has a tsundere. Such is the superficial nature of some anime fans that an anime just needs to check as many items on a list of lazy plot element and visual eye-candy that the actual quality of the finished product is no longer relevant.

K-ON!!

This is an interesting one indeed. When K-ON first started airing, it took until about 5–6 episodes in for the backlash to occur when waves upon waves of people descended in and cried in horror that it was just a bunch of girls doing moecrap. Before that, the moefags of this world were calling this the best of the season and KyoAni strikes again. I’m not sure whether it’s because of the backlash it got but this season the K-ON fans have been a lot quieter about their love for this series. It’s become a defensive attitude of  ‘I know it’s just a bunch of girls doing moe stuff but I like it’. Not only that but their love for this series is not quite as blinding as it was when it first aired. So hey, high-five fellow anti-moe brigade on this one!

House of Five Leaves and Youjouhan

Noitamina. Late to the party as bloody usual.

Oh, and as anyone who’s watched Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei knows, every 4-koma has a 5th forbidden panel of darkness.

Lets talk for a minute about Monster. It’s a very good anime, there’s no denying that, but so many of the reviews seem to focus on the fact that because it’s dark and dreary that means its automatically better than anything else. That thinking process isn’t that far away from people liking moe anime because it’s moe or liking an anime just because it has a tsundere character in it. Monster is a flawed piece of work. It’s too methodical about exploring the plot that it gets bogged down in uninteresting side stories for large periods of its run. But it’s dark and gritty and features adults and therefore is an untouchable masterpiece.

With Rainbow the flaws are far more pronounced. There’s not an ounce of subtlety in the writing or directing. The prison guard is horribly overacted to the point that I couldn’t take any scene with him in seriously at all and the constant narrating of how everything is going to get even worse induces severe eye-rolling tendencies. There are some good things of course. With Madhouse doing the animation it’s pretty unsurprising to see animation and artwork done as well as this and…umm…I actually can’t think of any other praise. I was going to say they set the scene well but that would be a total lie. It was horribly overdone and in desperate need of a clever hand at the directing side of things to give us some smart foreshadowing that does not consist of a voice-over explaining how miserable life will be for these boys.

If the elitists of the anime world keep praising every dark and dreary anime that comes out, the rest of anime fandom will miss out on the actual good stuff. I had a little go at Monster earlier but that’s an example of one of the better dark and dreary anime. Rainbow is not. Maybe I’m being a little too harsh but at the same time I would bet my house on both of the upcoming Noitamina anime being better directed and more interesting than this.