I have absolutely no idea how Steve Jobs or crabs have anything to do with this show. To be quite honest, I’d almost prefer we never find out, leaving the opening sequence of Aiura a curious non-sequitur in an otherwise down-to-earth slice-of-life comedy – its existence a mystery that was never intended to be solved.

As for the show itself, it’s another of those series of 4-minute (2-minute if you don’t count the OP and ED) comedy shorts that really seemed to take off last season, and it is something of a strange one. Beyond the bizarre opening theme, the staff is the group of Madhouse veterans behind the Run Melos arc of Blue Literature, and have primarily worked on similarly dark, moody series in the past. I can’t begin to imagine why this was the crew chosen to adapt such an innocuous cute-girl 4-koma comedy, but I suppose I can’t deny the results. The music and sound direction are solid, and the animation and artwork, particularly the backdrops, are a sight to behold. Together, they create a very mellow atmosphere that works extremely well for at least the first episode.

The content itself is the odd one out here. We’ve seen two distinct breeds so far – that of the first episode and that of episodes two and three.

The scenery in this show is absolutely gorgeous.

I originally had little intention of following Aiura to begin with, but the first episode really captivated me. It can stand alone pretty strongly as a singular two-minute showcase of the gorgeously-rendered town in which the show takes place. It is truly a slice of life. While I can’t stand to watch an entire season’s worth of full-length episodes where nothing of value happens, in this two-minute format, watching Ayuko travel across town and briefly interact with the people she meets is a pleasant, diversion that is short enough not to bore. The scarcity of dialogue is key, as it lets the show’s strongest point – the backdrop – speak for itself. What little dialogue there is a subtle mix of inconsequentially silly and lightly introspective, its sparing use serving to introduce and wrap up the episode. It, along with everything else in the episode, felt very deliberately placed to create mood, at which the show’s accomplished staff were wholly successful. Were Aiura an episodic series with each episode giving us a new, similarly carefully-crafted “slice” of life, whether through the eyes of another character or across another part of town, I would probably love it to pieces. This episode was an example of precisely the type of material that would perfectly fit this up-and-coming short format, and the short format is a perfect medium for this type of material. It had a soft appeal similar to last season’s Yama no Susume, though in a much more refined form and with a less directed plot (leading me to question whether the plot really was a necessary piece for a show like YnS to work after all; perhaps it was merely a supplement to an already-feasible short-slice-of-life formula). I would highly recommend at least the first episode to anyone looking for an example of what qualifies as a well-done slice-of-life anime, and just how good such an anime can be.

The first episode was so beautiful it deserves more than one screencap.

Here, have one more.

The second and third episodes, however, take the show in a different direction. Once Ayuko starts going to school, Aiura returns with a jolt to the recognizable format of high school 4-koma, which I feel is a large step down for the series. Most of the jokes so far have revolved around coming up with nicknames for the characters and around Kanaka’s constant need for attention. Her noisiness was well-placed in a small dose as a passerby in the first episode, but having it recur as a larger part of the show recasts it as out-of-place in the atmosphere that was otherwise so meticulously crafted to be slow and easygoing (well, apart from the energetic OP, that is). That’s not to call the episodes bad, though. There are still brief flashes of what I loved about the first episode, and the jokes are admittedly funnier than those in most 4-koma series out there. They could stand to have some more variety, and I’d still rather have my 12 episodes filled with excellent atmospheric slice of life than with slightly-better-than-mediocre 4-koma humor, but it’s still very watchable. Though I think that at this point it’s reasonable to infer that the remaining eleven episodes will be in this style rather than that of the first. Still easily worth the two minutes, but not the show the first episode made me hunger for.

How troublesome, indeed.

I’ll definitely be sticking with this, if mostly for the beautiful imagery from the Blue Literature team and the fact that it’s only two minutes per week to watch (plus the OP and ED). But that first episode was really something special, and I’d love to see that sort of idea expanded upon into a full season’s worth of shorts. If you’re reading this post to decide whether or not to watch Aiura yourself, I’d say give it a shot. Even if what we get from episode two onward turns out to be just another 4-koma series with some pretty pictures, it will likely take you about as much time to get caught up than it did to read this post. And at the very least, a quarter of the experience is that delightfully bizarre crab/Steve Jobs thing that plays before each episode, and if that by itself doesn’t justify the other 3/4 to you, then I don’t know what to say.

Flowers of Evil is an ugly anime. Aesthetically, it is offputting, and thematically it is rotten to the core. In a way, it is a kind of anti-anime. A large part of the draw of anime to many of its fans is as a form of escapism – many, many series place their emphasis on creating a fantasy for the viewer, where ideals and characters are pure, insulated from the drudge and dirt of reality. It’s the source of the popular “2D vs 3D” debate, and readily apparent in a number of the medium’s favorite tropes, perhaps most presently visible in the stream of adaptations of seemingly identical light novels. Aku no Hana’s goal, meanwhile, is to identify and tear down fantasy, to tear away the walls of isolating idealism around it and expose the unsightly, ugly reality behind them.

Now there is nothing wrong with enjoying a fantasy – my biggest beef with light novel adaptations is not the fantasies themselves so much as the tendency to prioritize them over the more interesting or meaningful elements introduced by the story. But what is important to keep in mind while doing so is that it is, in fact, a fantasy, and that expecting it to apply outside of the insulated environment of the show is, well… silly. Aku no Hana, in its early episodes, has set out to examine how fragile that environment is, and to explore just how unsettling some of anime’s favorite fantasies actually are once that layer of cartoon abstraction is peeled away. That is not to say that Aku no Hana is realistic – quite contrarily, a lot of the situations the series sets up are pretty ridiculous – but the way in which it is unrealistic is very careful and calculated. It deliberately lines itself up to fall smack in the middle of the uncanny valley – at just the point in the crossroads between the 2D and the 3D, so to speak, that it can most effectively illuminate the contrast between the two.

While the manga has always dealt with these themes, it is interesting to note how the changes the anime has made allow it to tell the same story and present those same ideas through a completely different method of delivery – its unusual aesthetic presentation.

The Haunting Drone of Emptiness

While it was the Aku no Hana’s use of rotoscoped animation that caused the biggest uproar in the fandom, the real star of the show here is the sound direction. While the manga, lacking the ability to produce sound, relied solely on its visuals to generate unease, the anime has made use of a minimalist, ambient musical score to marvelous effect. What would otherwise be a normal, daily occurrence in Anime High School gains a menacing undertone as the relentless hum hovers like a specter over the scene. A situation that would normally be played for laughs has the playfulness sucked out by the empty void of the background drone. The very air in these scenes feels very heavy and unnatural. It feels almost like an almost Lynchian approach to anime, betraying a sinister side to the apparent normalcy that makes it seem not quite so normal.

Imagine if Moe High School Anime XYZ was done like this

Interestingly, for the actual director of the show, Aku no Hana seems to be a sort of middle ground between his two previous works of note. Hiroshi Nagahama has previously directed Mushishi and Detroit Metal City, two shows that probably could not be more different from each other. From the content side, it resembles the exaggerated depravity of DMC, but the sparse soundtrack gives it the atmospheric, deliberate tone of a more introspective show like Mushishi. Having dealt with both the depraved and the moody, Nagahama puts the pieces together in a way that effectively draws out the uncomfortable side of these characters’ adolescent experience.

One of the most prevalent fantasies of anime is a fascination with and idealization of the teenage years, and it is that fantasy which the music of Aku no Hana most directly confronts. In reality, adolescence is a very uncomfortable time, full of awkward feelings as one undergoes the uncertain transition from a child to an adult. It is a time when you misunderstand and are misunderstood, and a time where the weight of the world slowly begins to lower itself onto your shoulders. It is that weight, and that discomfort, which is thrown aside in the fantasy of Anime High School, and in their place the conflicting teenage desires to be “special” and “normal” are both reaffirmed. Aku no Hana takes place in that same Anime High School, but replaces the cheery background music with its unsettling ambiance. It puts the weight back, it puts the discomfort back, and it aids what the manga started in its portrayal of Kasuga’s adolescent experience.

In, say, a harem comedy, Kasuga stealing Saeki’s gym clothes, and later trying to dispose of them, would be a scene played for laughs: “Oh he is SO perverted!” the show would tell us with a knowing wink. “What a hilariously unfortunate situation! He just CAN’T get rid of these things!” as the upbeat, wacky music accents his frantic run around town, his helplessness a comedy of errors. The strip scene would be a series of comedically overplayed “Kya~”s and probably the result of a harmless misunderstanding from an aloof haremette. But here, the sinister atmosphere provided by the sound puts forth feelings of desperation and confusion in place of absurdity, while the flow of the story has placed the emphasis in these scenes on intent. “What if,” the show asks, “this wasn’t just a cartoony joke?” What if a situation like this were to happen in an environment free of the insulating walls of safety and purity that anime tends to offer? What sorts of feelings does this fantasy really imply? It makes the viewer take a step back and look at what’s actually going on. What their fantasy really is. It’s pretty clever, actually – not only does it bring to the forefront the things we readily accept about anime and question why we accept them, but in putting forward such questioning, it forces the viewer to experience the same uncertainty – the discomfort, the self-doubt – that Kasuga is feeling on his trip through pubertyland.

Though of course, my favorite scene in the series was the one time it did manage to strike comedic gold

And of course, all of this is failing to mention the absolutely perfect ED song that disturbingly and antimelodically fades in as each episode draws to a close.

3D in 2D: Fantasy and Reality Through the Rotoscopic Lens

As was briefly mentioned in the beginning of the previous section, it was Aku no Hana’s unusual approach to animation that was its most striking aspect – it was the visual style which caused the most controversy surrounding the show. It is certainly a more immediately noticeable departure from the manga, and from the rest of anime as a whole, and is primarily what comes to mind when it is mentioned how “ugly” the show is.

After this whole mess surrounding the show, there probably isn’t an anime fan out there who hasn’t heard and become sick of the word “rotoscope” – an animation style in which live-action footage is recorded and then traced frame by frame to create an animated reproduction of the scene. It is probably the factor that has turned off the most viewers – especially fans of the manga – to the show. Admittedly, the rotoscope job is pretty cheaply done – there are clearly budget constraints here, probably compounded by a likely lack of experience with the technique. It very clearly falls apart at times, with a massive loss of detail in many scenes – including the oft-cited “disappearing faces” problem – that makes the show look very muddy and unfinished at times, and can make some scenes look unintentionally funny.

Oh, was he? I couldn’t tell.

Having picked up and read a good deal of the manga after watching the first couple episodes, I can mostly agree that I think I would have preferred a style more similar to that one. In particular, I would have liked to see a heavier use – like the manga had – of deep shadows and high contrast to set the tone, rather than the more natural-looking colors we do have. And for a show that was willing to go the extra mile and use rotoscope in the first place, I would like to see more flourishes added to the original footage beyond a simple trace, such as the unsteady backdrops and added-in animated touches of the movie Waking Life. Not to nearly the extreme of Waking Life, of course – it doesn’t share the film’s topic of dreams, but a little extra would be nice. Perhaps even some of the visual highlights common throughout more traditional anime? I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’d like to see Aku no Hana take more advantage of the fact that it is animated, and not simply a live-action show with a colorful filter.

All that said, I do appreciate what the unusual style has done for this anime, and can easily see why the author of the manga agreed to it. It fits the show very well thematically in how far it tries to distance itself from other anime, irrespective of how well the actual rotoscope job was done. On a purely technical level, it make scenes like the strip scene even possible to animate – this would have been an extremely difficult bit of animation to pull off, especially on Aku no Hana’s clearly-lacking budget. In addition, where a traditionally-animated series would make more use of still frames with its characters to save money, the fact that it’s traced from live-action footage allows for the capture of more motion, and more subtle motion – a level of body language usually not seen in TV anime outside the work of Kyoto Animation, which adds another dimension to the way the characters can express themselves.

Speaking of dimensions, the use of rotoscope twists the idea of dimensions in a sense very befitting of the anime’s primary themes. Rotoscope occupies in a unique place in the world of film styles, holding a position halfway between the “pure” 2D of animation and the “pig disgusting” 3D of live action. It is, in fact, the perfect visual representation of Aku no Hana’s exploration of the disparity between fantasy and reality, as that is ultimately what the 2D/3D divide represents to the anime fandom.

It’s interesting to specifically note, as Landon has in his excellent post on the first episode, that the tracings of the characters’ faces are done in a way that seems to very much resemble anime character designs:

“In the rotoscoping process, they pick and choose what gets drawn and what details are left out. The way the faces are drawn pretty much mimics the style of normal anime characters: pronounced eyes, small mouth, plenty of empty space, and the absence of a nose. You take those particular design choices and you get your average anime girl facial design, but if you apply them to something a bit more realistic in design and you get faces that look like the plastered-on faces from fucking Annoying Orange.”

It’s a more literal representation of the “don’t mix 2D and 3D” sentiment – anime characters are a layer removed from reality, and trying to apply their carefully-designed unnaturality to the natural human form results in a grotesque end product. Just as the anime-like features of 2D cannot mix with the human-like features of 3D, the purity and fantasy of 2D cannot mesh with the reality of the 3D world. Visually, Aku no Hana’s anime adaptation is a direct confrontation against the traditional “anime” style that calls out the anime fantasy as the fantasy that it is.

Though Afroman and Unibro are much more kawaii in rotoscoped form.

Of course, the visual style’s gleeful mixing of “2D” fantasy and “3D” reality plays into the story just as well as the metastory. For example, it exposes Kasuga’s idealization of Saeki as his “muse.” He does not know Saeki the person, not for who she is. He know her for what he imagines her to be. She is a fantasy to him. It’s to such a degree that he idolizes her that he doesn’t even really want to talk to her, for fear that the real Saeki does not match up with his own conjured-up image of her. A portion of Kasuga’s unease arises from this internal clash, which we see represented in the animation as something which is not quite an anime character, and not quite a real person.

Kasuga has previously defined himself by the books he’s read, something which is very directly fiction. Over the course of the story, he is slowly learning to express himself more directly, how to recognize the reality of himself as separated from his fantasies of his beloved Baudelaire. It is a transition symbolic not only of his transition through puberty, but also of the disconnect we as fans must have faced and accepted in order to appreciate the anime medium as we do. It is intentionally provocative, especially to those who have not yet come to terms with their fantasies, in that it unabashedly dances through the forbidden ground of the fandom. It was clearly intended to drive away those unwilling to join Kasuga on his quest to uncover the darker, more perverse side of himself and his muse.

Kasuga will never realize that your beloved Baudelaire is the only love you’ll ever need?

But if you’re willing to take the plunge, then pull on that stolen gym uniform and enjoy a date as revealingly intriguing as it is deliciously messed up.

I somewhat recently watched a short OVA from the 90s called Video Girl Ai. I enjoyed it overall, even if I did have mixed feelings about the actual romantic drama that it built up, thanks to its well-acted cast and a few interesting twists on the “rival” characters and jealousy that are so common in romance series. But while the OVA as a whole was surprisingly solid, the biggest surprise, for me, was the sudden shift in its use of visuals for the final episode.

The use of television screens, their contents, and the ambient lighting therefrom, to create a level of uncomfortable detachment between the Video Girl (Ai) and her humanity – the newfound love that she was never supposed to have – bears a striking resemblance to the use of computer monitors provide a similar eerie detachment between the Computer Girl (Lain) and the physical world around her as she transitioned into the Wired. It really caught me off-guard to see one of Lain’s signature visual cues used in – of all things – a romcom OVA from half a decade prior, with no immediately identifiably shared staff (correct me if I’m wrong here). It’s a very effective technique, serving as a powerful reminder that Ai is not, in fact human, and instead originates from within Youta’s television set, bringing to visual life Ai’s crisis with her own identity, just as Lain struggled with her multiple selves.

The most powerful of these scenes is when we see Ai watching Youta through the screen as he searches for her. She pounds on the glass, telling him that she’s right there for him, but he can’t hear her. The tables have turned, and now the character inside the television set is shouting at the screen, helpless to stop what’s happening on the other side.

The rest of the episode was interestingly directed as well – the backgrounds in the video world took on very sparse color schemes, and the climax, featuring Youta fighting to reach Ai by painfully and symbolically climbing a glass staircase as it shattered beneath his feet, brought to mind the similar climactic scene of the recent Mawaru Penguindrum, with a touch of blatant Christian imagery for good measure because why not.

In the end, though, despite all this uncharacteristic focus on strong symbolic imagery from the show in its finale, my biggest takeaway from Video Girl Ai’s visuals – not just from episode 6, but from the series as a whole – was something more nostalgic. It was a reminder of the one thing that I love most about anime made in the 90s. It was the sketchy-line cheek shading.

Dear Anime, Please bring this back. Love, Satchii

I swore off blogging Sword Art Online after episode 15, the point when I realized that even trying to talk about it would be little more than an exercise in frustration, pain, and many wasted hours. The show’s skillful and deliberate evasion of any semblance of the quality it set itself up to achieve has always been a fascinating subject to me, but my disdain for it runs so deep that to attempt to even scratch the surface would be an endeavor whose required investment of time and sanity far outweighs any reward gleaned from doing so. In my swiftly-abandoned “SAO Bug Tracker” post series, I did attempt to take the opposite approach and search for the ways the show could have been good, but the scope of the project exceeded the span of my goodwill for the show. Now that a DVD/BD release for the show, as well as a slot on Toonami, have been announced for SAO, it is once again a relevant topic to discuss, and I think enough time has passed that my sanity regarding the show has returned to safer levels, so I figure now is as good a time as any to post this.

An Introduction to the Fanfiction:

You read that right. A fanfiction. Digging through some old files of mine, I have managed to scrounge up an outline I wrote back when SAO had just finished airing, detailing an alternate plot for the show that was more in line with what I had hoped it would be. A couple of fellow bloggers were interested in what I had had to say and requested I post it, so I decided “why not?” And what better way to introduce it than with a typical fanfiction-author-esque apologetic “I KNOW IT SUCKS OKAY” paragraph?

This outline was all conceived of and written in an afternoon back in December. It’s incomplete, and I have long since forgotten where I was going with it, so I haven’t really bothered to touch up or finish it. Some of it isn’t as well thought-out as it could be and potentially pretty cliche, but I think it gets across my main point well enough. Basically, it was meant to be a replacement for my Bug Tracker posts by providing a specific example of how the show could have been done better, rather than just talking about it. In that afternoon, I managed a pretty detailed summary of a revised first three episodes, and described a number of plot points, setpieces, characters, and character interactions that I felt could’ve been utilized by the show to explore more interesting ground than it did. I hope you’ll enjoy it and get something out of it, despite its flaws. Now, without further ado… (*copies* *pastes*)

The Fanfiction:

For starters, the second arc is basically irredeemable, and the first arc felt like it was cut too short to explore everything it set out to, so all 24-25 episodes are to be dedicated to the first arc.

First episode:
I think it’d be nice to establish the real world to start, with a short half-episode intro that isn’t in the actual show. Kirito is playing some VR game, in the middle of a solo battle, when suddenly he’s jolted back into reality by his mom removing the Nervegear and telling him to stop playing – it’s time to go see his sister’s kendo tournament. She tells him that he needs to go out and get some real friends and stop spending so much time playing games because he’s missing out on the real life that he already has. It’s like he lives in a whole different world, she says. Kirito complains about getting pulled out of the game and how she and his sister don’t understand that online gaming is about playing /with/ people who are depending on you (despite the fact that he was soloing the game). He’s a high schooler now, he can do what he wants, and why does he have to go to his sister’s kendo tournament anyway? It had better not make him late for the big launch of Sword Art Online. He sits through it bored, watching the kendo matches and envisioning the combatants as MMO characters. His sister makes it pretty far into the tournament, and the launch time is getting close, so Kirito gets up to leave for the game store. His sister notices that he’s not there during her next match, and she gets distracted and loses. Kirito walks to the store himself and waits in line to buy the game. When he gets back home to play it, he gets chewed out for being inconsiderate of his sister and for putting his games before even his own family. Games are all he thinks about! His sister is slumped on the couch watching TV, upset over what happened. Kirito ignores both of them and goes up to his room to try out the game. Then we get a commercial break. The second half of the episode plays out much like the first half of the actual first episode, with the exception that, on the way to practice with Klein, they see another newbie player get killed by a low-level monster and they chuckle at how bad he is. The episode ends with the bell ringing to announce the intro sequence, just as they’ve discovered that there’s no logout.

Second episode:
The second episode plays out much like the second half of the first episode, with again a few exceptions. Of course, the purpose of the previous added scene was to help demonstrate the reality of in-game death, as Kirito and Klein look at each other in a crap-their-pants moment of “that guy actually died” when they find out about the Nervegear brain-frying. We also cut to the real world at the point where Kayaba had shown the news reports in the real episode 1. We see flashes of the news reports as if we were watching them, showing distraught families in the hospital with their sons who have been fried from pulling off the Nervegear (and maybe the family of the guy that Klein and Kirito saw), a confirmation that officials and experts are working on apprehending Kayaba and finding a way to reverse-engineer the Nervegear, respectively. The Nervegear has also been recalled, for anyone not playing SAO or who bought the game but didn’t start playing yet (these people are advised not to play, of course). Enough to showcase how serious of a situation this is, and that steps are being taken to rectify it. From there, we show that Kirito’s sister is watching the news and recognizes the game. She sees the warning to not-remove the Nervegear, and races upstairs upon hearing that their mom is heading up to call Kirito to dinner. The commercial break happens as we see Kirito’s mom getting ready to take off the Nervegear, like she did in episode 1, with his sister racing to stop her. After the break, she succeeds in saving Kirito and shows their mom the news. The news gives them instructions not to disturb the players, and to call their local hospital if someone in their household is stuck in the game. Kirito’s mom can maybe comment on the connection between this and how Kirito always used to spend so much time in his games, but now he /really/ can’t stop playing. I could probably think of some more stuff for them to do, too, but I won’t dwell on it too much – the point is that we can see Kirito’s family reacting to his being stuck in the game. We then cut back to the game world, and Kayaba finishes his speech. The rest of the episode is like the end of episode 1.

Third episode:
This is pretty much just episode two of the real series, where they establish the concept of a “beater” (beta-testing cheater) except for the ending. Here, when the party jeers Kirito for being a beater, he starts to storm off, as he did, but now Klein runs up to catch him and convince him to make a party. This inspires Kirito to turn around and announce that yes, he is a beater. He is going to beat this game and get out of here. And if anyone else wants to beat the game, they know where to find him. (Because really, Kirito’s lone-wolf attitude kinda killed a lot of the show)

Now the rest of it I don’t have as well planned-out, since I kinda feel like the entire story from episode 3 onward should probably be tossed so I don’t have the actual episodes to use as a crutch.

Kirito’s Party:
Klein joins him right away, as I mentioned above. He is basically the same as he is in the original story, because he was easily the best character already.

Asuna is seen looking around for a guild, but because she’s a “girl gamer” everyone either creepily hits on her because she’s hott or dismisses her because she’s a girl and must suck. She joins Kirito’s party (and gains respect for Kirito) because he sees her getting hit-on/shunned and decides to let her into his party after seeing her in action during episode 3 (episode 2 of the real series). Throughout the series, things like that continue to happen, and she fights against the “girl gamer” stereotype by being the competent version of herself that we saw earlier on in the original series.

Sachi can be there, I suppose, but she’s a part of Kirito’s party. And perhaps not a loli, but that’s not all that important. What is important is that she actually gets screentime before she gets killed, so she’s a persistent character who gets developed somewhat thoughout the world-building/character-building episodes following the formation of the party (which take the place of the side story episodes). For added impact, we can see her family in the real world – she could be in the room next to Kirito’s at the hospital, and her and Kirito’s families meet and talk about the predicament they’re in, and if there are any developments on the situation, and talk to each other about the loved ones they have lost to the game and wonder how they’re doing.

A new character, an adult, also joins their party. He’s actually a member of the government, and during his introductory episode, there is some real-world media hubbub about his being trapped in a game. He had been a pro-VR member of the government – one of its biggest proponents, and his opponents are trying to use this incident to ban VR games like the Nervegear and SAO. Being trapped in the game like this, he begins to wonder if maybe his opponents are right, but for now, all he wants is to beat the game so he can see how his colleagues are responding to this without his leading pro-VR voice. So he teams up with Kirito, who, despite being just a kid, was a beta tester and seems to have the best chance of beating the game. Here we have not only a new plot thread about the ethics of banning media, but also a look at the reversal of authority that a video game world can introduce.

I’m not sure if these characters should be members of Kirito’s party or if they should be off on their own, but I love the guys from episode one who turned out to not, in fact, be a girl and a seventeen-year-old. They can be the comic relief lovable goofballs of the story, and they’re pretty incompetent but manage to bring about important plot changes and get themselves (and Kirito’s party) into and out of dangerous situations completely by accident. I don’t want the story to be too dark and gloomy! And they provide an alternate, more believable vehicle for events the original would have resolved with deus ex machinas.

In the real world:
We of course have Kirito’s family. Of them, Kirito’s mom will probably be the one to interact with Sachi’s family, and we’ll see his sister working on her kendo to prove to herself that she doesn’t need Kirito’s support and she can move on with her life without him. Kendo is at the same time her way of coping with his loss and relating to his being trapped in a video game about swordfighting. There needs to be at least one (maybe two) episode(s) of Kirito’s party grinding to level up, and this would be a good place to interweave the start of this kendo subplot, which would progress along with the SAO story culminating with Suguha winning a big match as Kirito and his party defeat the final boss.

There are also government-guy’s fellow governing members, and they’ll be key in the aforementioned subplot about the ban on gaming. Ultimately, government-guy is freed from the game by way of having a malfunctioning Nervegear which fails to zap him when he dies (obviously this will have been foreshadowed earlier, it can’t just come out of nowhere). And he and his opponents go back and forth about what would be a suitable legislative reaction to the incident. In the end, this plot thread is resolved by government-guy convincing enough fellow policymakers that recall and regulation of the hardware is enough, and that the banning of video games as a whole is not the solution. But along the way, we can have a good deal of political back-and-forth, intrigue, etc. about the seperation of games and reality, and some soul-searching on the part of government-guy with regards to what he really believes is the best course of action after having been trapped in a game himself (which makes his coming out against the ban that much more meaningful). Perhaps this story can be foreshadowed during the newsflashes in episode 2. Government-guy can also meet with Kirito’s family and tell them that he’s all right and tell them about his heroic exploits/leadership/taking charge in the game.

Then we have the police/UN/etc. trying to catch Kayaba, and the hackers/devolopers working to reverse-engineer the Nervegear to disable the brain-frying feature. They are mostly there to show that something is being done about this in the real world. There is one pivotal moment where the police find Kayaba’s offices by way of one of fishing-guy’s friends in the game security department, but Kayaba’s computer is on and Kayaba himself is found dead at the desk, Nervegear on his head (he has, of course, transferred his consciousness into the game by this point). Government guy can also work with the police and give them an update on what has happened so far in the game.

An Outro From the Fanfiction:

And that’s as far as I got. Now of course, all this still has the potential to be a massive trainwreck if it’s not done properly. The entire premise of SAO lends itself very much to cheesiness and making things too over-the-top. I am by no means a great storyteller, and having thought of all this in an afternoon, I admit that a lot of it is pretty hamfisted. Even so, I like to think it’d still be better than what we ultimately got. My point with this is less to come up with an actual plot alternative to SAO, and more to demonstrate that it COULD HAVE covered a lot of interesting ground and examined some relevant, relatively unique themes if it hadn’t tossed its entire setting out the window in favor of Kirito deus-ex-machina-ing his way to being the most stupidly broken character, and the laughably handled relationship between him and Asuna and every other female character in the series.

You can see why I call SAO such a fatal timesink for my writing; I can’t shut myself up about it, and only get less and less coherent as I talk more and more about it and get angrier and angrier about it in the process.

Take a Deep Breath, Satchii. It’s Over Now:

Phew. Okay. Now that that’s done, I think it’s time to once more swear off writing about SAO before I get too angry at it again. This whole post has felt really out of character for me.

Well, it’s been a year since I gave in to the overwhelming loneliness and started a blog as a much-needed outlet for my anime habit. I think it’s time for a quick post in celebration!

I’ll admit, between being kinda swamped with real life and getting back into the whole “watching anime with friends” business, I’ve been posting a lot less as of late. I never intended to be the most prolific blogger out there, but even so, I’ve only made one post since the end of May. I’m not dead or anything, and neither is this blog – I’m expecting to have at least a few things to say about next season’s shows, I’ve got a Shin Mazinger Z post in the works that I’ve been stuck on for a while that I am determined to get out there once I’m able to make sense of just how awesome that show was, and I’ve got a host of good shows like Akagi slowly coming off the top of the backlog that I expect to be post-worthy as well. Not to mention the Twelve Days thing that I’d like to take part in again as well. I doubt I’ll be posting as often as I did last year, but I’ll still be here, so keep your eyes open!

This year of blogging has been a lot of fun as a whole – it’s helped me to look at shows in a different light, introduced me to some awesome people in the aniblogosphere, and really rekindled my love of the medium in the process. I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading my posts as much I’ve enjoyed writing them!

I said I’d keep this quick, and I’m not a big fan of meta-posts like this since they’re so content-free (I mean, I’ve said basically nothing except “hey, I still exist!”), so I’ll cut this off here. Thanks for a fun and cartoon-filled year, and let’s look forward to the next one!

Edit: I just realized knew all along that this also happens to have been my 50th post! What a wonderful coincidence I totally planned it that way!

The fall season is upon us, and even if it only happened by brute force due to the sheer number of anime thrown our way, it looks like we finally have a few good shows coming out in an otherwise largely uneventful 2013. Apart from Aku no Hana, most of the good stuff consisted of carryovers from 2012, and while the summer was an improvement over the lackluster winter and spring seasons, none of the titles were all that impressive so much as satisfying. With what must be a record number of new series coming out at once, this fall is predictably full of a lot of trash, but the first two days (I’m half a week late, I know) were stuffed with all the most hotly-anticipated heavy-hitters. Let’s start off by giving them a look-see.

Coppelion

The thick outlines (which I do admittedly like) almost make the schoolgirls look as tacked-on to the gorgeous post-apocalyptic world as they actually are!

Coppelion’s first episode does a great job at setting the scene. The dead and empty post-apocalyptic world is stunningly realized through its almost-distractingly beautiful background art. Details which enhance the broader setting, like the shortage of medicine (and its limited application), are introduced naturally through the dialogue, and we’re quickly introduced to some of the key dangers of the world. The pace, while slow, seems about right for the tone the series is going for. There is one big monkey wrench in the works, though, and that is the schoolgirls. Replace them with some competent, trained adults, and you might have something, but schoolgirls, particularly the easily-impressed and mentally-lacking genki variety we have here, run completely counter to the effectiveness of the show. Not only are they obnoxious as characters with their obnoxious schoolgirl banter (except perhaps the main girl), but they are also woefully unprepared and unequipped, and in general have no place here. That may be the point in these early episodes, but even if that is the case, they really take me out of the otherwise well-crafted setting. If Coppelion finds a way to overcome this and fully embrace its key strengths, it has the chance to be a very good show.

Beyond the Boundary

More like, beyond the boundaries of acceptable levels of moe in a single character!

Kyoukai no Kanata is in a similar boat to Coppelion, actually. It’s got some great animation work and a reasonably well-established setting (I like how the fantasy elements are taken mostly in stride and not shoved uncomfortably close to your face) backing a usable premise, that is ultimately brought down by its attempts to make its characters too cute.  The characters are the typical trope-filled empty shells that you’ll find in any Kyoto Animation outing – the most notable characters from the premiere are the KyoAni Snarky Male Lead™ and the not-all-there lead female with a tragic backstory and moe pouring out her ears. The too-big sweater and glasses and her inability to cross a room without tripping over herself are just too much. Still, it’s basically a starting assumption with KyoAni’s series that the characters will be a drag; what matters is whether the rest of the show has enough upward momentum to counter that. Despite some clunky dialogue, Kyoukai no Kanata looks like it might actually be able to pull that off. Not only do we finally get to see KyoAni’s superb animation scene take on some honest-to-goodness battle animation after being teased with it in Chuunibyou, the overall atmosphere and tone of the series is a bit of a departure from their normal work. There’s something foreboding that’s not usually there, and this is a different kind of story than they usually tackle. I’ll hop on this ride for a little while and see where it takes me.

Kill la Kill

I love sketchy lines.

Perhaps the only show more eagerly awaited by the legions of slobbering anime fans than Kyoto Animation’s latest endeavor was Kill la Kill, the debut work from Studio Trigger. This is where the vast majority of the remaining talent at Gainax went off to after Panty and Stocking and hid out until this year, when they released the lovable and Western-cartoony Little Witch Academia and the glorious, barely-animated INFERNO COP. Kill la Kill is their first proper anime, and right out of the gate, it is a debut every bit as impressive as you would expect from the star-studded veteran Gainax team. Within minutes I was reminded of just how much I missed the direction of Hiroyuki Imaishi and his inimitable style of over-the-top, ridiculous action choreography. Delightfully gratuitous is the descriptor of choice here, with exaggerated ragdoll physics, spinning cameras, expressive angles, and a mastery of powerful impact and kinetic energy. Content-wise, many have compared it to a Go Nagai work, but I’d really only agree with that to the degree that Nagai is an influence on Imaishi himself (which, admittedly, is likely a rather large degree). This is very clearly Imaishi’s own perverse imagination running wild here, being funneled into a coherent whole by writer Kazuki Nakashima, who had the same duty on the staff of Gurren Lagann, the most sane realization to date of Imaishi’s strong but at-times-undisciplined vision. And it shows, what with the surprising amount of substance hidden behind all that style. The pacing is excitingly fast but not unmanageably so, and in between (and in) the fights, there’s plenty of foreshadowing of future plotlines (after some inevitable episodic battles, which in this context I’m more than okay with), thematic development, character establishment (however silly it may be), and a generally coherent flow to the plot that gives me confidence that these guys know what they’re doing. Perhaps the biggest complaint I can offer at this point is that there were more than a few somewhat uncomfortable moments throughout the episode, but really, when you’re dealing with this team, that’s all part of the package. In conclusion, Studio Trigger is saving anime as expected.

Stay Tuned!

Well, this post turned out a little longer than I had originally intended… In any case, to further prove that I’m not dead yet, I’ll be continuing my first impressions in a series of several more catch-up posts – next up: a touch of romance.

As the fall season has been rather frontloaded, so has been my first impressions series. With all the biggest shows released in the earliest days of the season, things get noticeably more low-key from here on out. Interestingly, the shows also seemed to come out in waves: the big-name blockbusters came first, then the more romance-oriented titles, the crappy light novels, the sports anime, the toy commercials, etc., which gives me a convenient way to organize these posts. After the big blockbusters, the romance titles were next off the starting line, so let’s get to it!

Series with a focus on romance have a tendency to leave me feeling very neutral. I’ve never been big on shipping – the goal of two characters “getting with” each other is too nebulous a concept for me; doubly so when anime tends to be more accurately describable as “anti-romance” which rarely allows for any meaningful interaction beyond the dreaded hand-holding. In addition, the drama surrounding relationships in these series tends to be strained to the very limits of believability and beyond, heavy-handedly manufacturing conflict where none could reasonably exist in the wild. Personal biases now stated, let’s actually look at the shows themselves.

Golden Time

Oh, no wait, hold on I’m not either; I just… rats.

There were two big draws for this show back when it was announced. The first is that it’s from the author of Toradora, a light novel and adaptation which are generally accepted to have not-sucked. I dropped the anime after one episode, but haven’t given it a chance since my “Any anime in a high school is 100% guaranteed to suck, especially if it’s a romance or comedy, except if it’s Azumanga Daioh” phase, so I can neither comment on that as a net positive nor negative. The second is that it takes place in college and not high school, which is admittedly likely to be a superficial difference in practice, but is nonetheless encouraging because it hints at a different target age group. But that’s all without having seen the show. In practice, it ended up being above-average as far as light novel romantic comedies go, but still not much of anything to write home about. Production-value-wise, it was wholly unimpressive – the artwork and direction was nothing special. A number of people have commented on the sound mixing, saying that the dialogue is often drowned out by the music and sound effects. I actually didn’t notice the first time around because I was reading the subtitles instead of listening to the dialogue itself, and because the air conditioning unit in my room is so loud that it does a darn good job of drowning out the dialogue by itself, music notwithstanding. But going back and listening to it again, with the A/C off, yeah, it is pretty bad. The characters are also not the most interesting – this is looking to be a pretty typical harem setup with a pretty typical harem cast. What puts the show in the above-average category is the sense of humor – it’s got a good number of absurd moments that it rolls with quite well, and it can be surprisingly patient with its punchlines at times, which lets some of the jokes work better than they otherwise would have. I especially liked the one at the beginning about the main character getting lost and following some classmates to school, only for them to walk into an ice cream shop and leave him behind while he made an impulsive purchase. The one where the crazy stalker girl sat behind the two male leads as one ranted about her to the other showed a level of comedic restraint rarely seen in anime, which typically likes to shout the punchline before the joke has even ended. The college setting hasn’t made much of a difference yet, but it’s only the first episode, after all. Golden Time, in the end, is an enjoyable enough show that I would like to see a few more episodes’ worth of what it has to offer, but I can’t see myself sticking with it through its entire two-cour length. It’s the kind of show I can enjoy for a short time before dropping it on relatively good terms. If you’re the type of person who’s into romantic comedies, though, it’ll probably be right up your alley, as it’s got the sense of humor to make even a cynical hater like me laugh a few times.

Nagi no Asukara

This show is a show about fish farts.

Between this and Arpeggio of Blue Steel, we’ve basically split Blue Submarine #6 into its constituent components – alienated fish people and CG submarine battles. Anyway, after a refreshing break from their usual formula last season with the uncharacteristically palatable Pretentious Family Eccentric Family, PA Works is back to doing what they do best – nauseatingly melodramatic stories about unsettlingly shiny people with beautiful scenery in the background to distract us. Nagi no Asukara right in line with stuff like Tari Tari, so if you’ve enjoyed PA Works’ output in the past, you’ll probably be similarly swept up by this tale. The underwater and surface worlds are both a treat to look at, the animators certainly did not skimp on the eye candy. Though as tends to be the case with most of PA Works’ shows (though this may be more attributable to returning writer Mari Okada?), the characters were all insufferable and the drama between them utterly unconvincing. The key trait in the main girl’s character description is that she’s “prone to crying,” and much of the conflict in the episode is generated by placing her into transparently-manufactured emotionally compromising positions. This style of constantly setting up and subsequently shooting such low-hanging dramatic fruit has always struck me as ingenuine (probably not a word) and never sat well with me. Part of me wants to continue watching the series for its unique and surprising elements – I want to see more of the undersea world, and the whole puberty metaphor of a farting fish head growing out of the poor girl’s knee. There are some creative ideas at work here, but I can’t justify sitting through what will doubtlessly be increasing amounts of unsavory Okada drama to see them come to fruition, especially not for 26 episodes. So for those of you with a stronger stomach for that sort of thing, Nagi no Asukara’s got a lot to like, not the least of which are some interesting aquatic motifs to ponder and a developing love story. But for me, the cons outweigh the pros with this one.

Stay Tuned!

I’ll be back next time with some less-than-kind words for some less-than-classy shows. Don’t worry, though; I didn’t hate everything this season!

Light novel adaptations and I haven’t really gotten along very well since they stopped being like Boogiepop, Kino’s Journey, Baccano, Durarara, etc., and started being more like I Want To Do Icky Yucky Things To My Big Brother But I Can’t Because I’m A Demon King And He’s Too Busy Unsuccessfully Avoiding Sexual Advances From Other Girls To Notice That I’ve Been There For Him All Along. So when four light novel adaptations push and shove their way to being released within about 24 hours of each other, it’s pretty safe to guess that I’m not all that thrilled. Still, they all somehow managed to avoid mentioning a little sister in the title, and only one of the titles was longer than three words, so I gave them each at least a few minutes anyway, just because. Let’s get this over with.

Strike the Blood

Hehe, she said Schneewalzer.

Strike the Blood is the first of the light novel adaptations this season to have a title that, in addition to being succinct, also sounds pretty awesome (the other will be brought up in a later post). I mean, STRIKE THE BLOOD. So much action and engrish packed into those three words. And then the episode starts things are pretty typical with magical creatures shoehorned in everywhere but it might get interesting maybe? but a female character is getting sexually harassed so she beats up her attackers with a magic weapon which is admittedly kind of cool until some random guy (I’d guess he’s the main character) tells her to stop beating up those poor guys and that she shouldn’t strike first because they didn’t do anything wrong so she gets mad at him – not for that, which would be wholly understandable, but for seeing her panties – and then the wind magically blows her skirt up so she gets mad at him for seeing her panties again and calls him a pervert and oh my god I can’t take this anymore.

Outbreak Company

Is he bringing moe to the people, or are they bringing moe to him?

Interestingly, with all these light novel adaptations coming out at once, each of them managed to cover a different portion of the light novel spectrum. Strike the Blood was the typical, by the books, high school romantic action show with supernatural elements. Outbreak Company is the meta-aware type of light novel, with an otaku lead and whose jokes revolve around either (1) referencing other anime, or (2) putting forth an anime trope and subsequently pointing out that it is, in fact, an anime trope, while continuing to play it earnestly and completely straight. The premise here has potential – it has a great deal of room to provide tongue-in-cheek commentary through things like anime being the downfall of a great society. There was indeed some amusement to be had through the very nature of the premise, but when you have a premise like this it can also be very easy to forget what it means to satire and fall back on the cliches you were lightheartedly poking at. When our otaku hero gets the “moe missionary” job and travels to the other world, only to be greeted by an actual elf-maid and a military officer whose defining trait seems to be that she is well-endowed (and a loli princess later in the episode), and the show plays it completely straight, it’s not really a good sign. It would have been more interesting if the world to which he was supposed to introduce moe had more of a contrast from the anime he’d be introducing to it. I’m really not in the mood for this type of self-congratulatory meta-show, but if the premise legitimately interests you and you don’t mind/are looking for the standard library of anime tropes, it looks like a moderately competent, if entirely unambitious implementation thereof.

Something Something Demon Lord Something Something Part Time Job

(This is that the “something”s are)

Yuushibu had about two minutes of absolutely excellent (if “boing”-y) fantasy battle animation at the very start of the episode that I would highly recommend. From there, the focus turns solely to the “boing”. Apart from the surprisingly high budget, this show is entirely lifeless and I couldn’t make it through the rest of the episode. But at least the first two minutes were great, so I don’t regret watching as much of it as I did.

Log Horizon

[DameDame] subs know what’s up.

Stay Tuned!

We’re moving up in the world! Next time I’ll be covering some weekend shows with a little more draw, even if they’re not really cut out to be season highlights.

First wave of light novel adaptations out of the way, it’s time to move on to something more colorful. The weekend brought with it a few potential sleeper hits, in addition to its heaping helping of sports anime. (Just don’t tell anyone I’m a week behind)

White Album 2

This was probably one of the most “anime” interactions all episode, and it really isn’t all that out-there.

I didn’t originally plan to watch White Album 2, mistaking it for a sequel to the first White Album, which I never watched (and apparently already got a second season, so I guess this is based on another iteration of the source material?), until Deadlight recommended it to me in the comments. He’s been given the show nothing but the highest praises, and, well, he liked Texhnolyze so I might as well take his word for it. It took about half the episode, maybe a little more, before WA2 managed to grab and hold my attention, but once I got into it I noticed that it wasn’t quite hitting my expectations of it. I was continually waiting for an exceptionally “anime” moment of overreationary, overemotional drama or comedy, with all the blushing and yelling and pervert-calling and misunderstanding, but it never came. It never cracked a self-aware joke. The characters take each other seriously, treating each other like people instead of plot objects. It felt a little eerie, honestly, how un-anime-like it was. As of the first episode, I’m still not completely hooked, but this bizarre phenomenon has prompted me to watch another episode to see if it can hook me. It’s not really saying much to praise a show for what it doesn’t have, while on the whole what it does have so far is not all that much (though it did look pretty good and have some nice background music), but I’d like to see the slow burn eventually build up to something good. I’m not sure if it will – for all I know it will just continue its streak of being a little boring – but it would be refreshing to have a solid romance series that doesn’t resort to the same cheap tricks that other anime do.

Gingitsune

If you give a fox an orange…

Keeping the trend of colors going, we had White Album, and now Silver Fox. Like White Album, Gingitsune is very low-key; there’s not really much excitement to be found here. It’s not dissimilar from shows like Natsume Yuujinchou – it deals with a girl who can communicate with spirits and presents a series of short stories about her using this ability to help others with their problems. The problem is, these shows have a real tendency to put me to sleep with all their Shinto harmony – everything feels really lightweight and nothing has much of an impact. They’re a pleasant way to calm down and relax, but hardly make for a thrilling experience. The silver fox himself probably has the most personality here, and if you’ll like him, you’ll probably like the show. But just like Nyanko alone wasn’t enough to make Natsume resonate with me, the fox could not do the same for Gingitsune. It’s not a bad show by any means – I can see that it’s good at what it’s trying to do, but it’s just not really my genre.

Meganebu

Mirai from Kyoukai no Kanata could really benefit from paying these guys a visit. They’d whip her glasses into shape in no time!

So this one doesn’t actually have a color in the name, but it is darn determined to be the most colorful show of the season. There are two things that really make Meganebu stand out: one is the bizarre and intriguing visual direction with its blindingly bright palette of unusual color combinations (pink and green and yellow, oh my!), and the other is the absurdly hysterical background music singer, who will occasionally remind us with great aplomb that “This is Megane-BU-UUUU”, and that “All you NEEEEEED IIIS… M-E-G-A-N-E”. Beyond that and the unexpected appearance of a giant robot (which – spoilers – is actually glasses), there is little of note about the series. It is somewhat remarkable just how much they can think to say on a topic as seemingly mundane and one-note as “glasses”, and part of me is curious as to how long they can keep it up. None of the characters in particular stand out at this point, and the jokes weren’t really all that funny. But rookie (and formerly independent) director Soubi Yamamoto has lent an otherwise rather dull series a unique vision (har har), that I’d like to see more of. Even if it’s just for the visuals. Which will likely take enough of a toll on my eyes with its intensity of color to make me bump up the prescription on my own glasses. Clearly that was the plan all along!

Stay Tuned!

Next time I’ll be hitting up the big genre of the season with fall 2013′s sports anime! I’ve recently taken more of an interest in sports anime than I previously had thanks to last year’s Kuroko no Basuke, so I’ll be putting that newfound interest to the test!

This is turning out to be quite the season for fans of sports anime. Not only do we have five sports series coming out at the same time, but each one of them is about a different sport. We’ve got baseball, basketball, biking, boxing, and wrestling all represented here. Now I won’t be following the boxing anime (because, as I am ashamed to admit, I haven’t seen the earlier seasons of Ippo) or the wrestling anime (because, as I am ashamed to admit, I have seen the trailer for this anime), but the rest of them are fair game, so let’s bring them up to the plate and see how they play.

Ace of the Diamond

Nobuyuki Hiyama is the king of manly yelling.

Let’s work our way down from the top here in terms of emotional intensity. Tensions in Ace of the Diamond run through the roof; where I took note of White Album 2 for its refusal to deal in emotional outbursts, Ace deals in little else. Tears and punches and jerks mocking and yelling at each other is the order of the day, and when it’s Nobuyuki Hiyama doing the yelling, it’s hard to complain. Most of the cast, from the main character to the recruiter to the high school’s batter are pretty irritable or manipulative folks, and the faces we see in the OP sequence don’t seem to suggest that the friendly faces of our hero’s middle-of-nowhere local middle school team will be the norm where he’s going. If you’re looking for a heartwarming, uplifting underdog series, I’d suggest looking elsewhere. The high school team is comprised of bought talent, and hypercompetitivity is the new teamwork. It’ll be interesting to meet the rest of the high school team once the MC inevitably decides to accept the offer there; until then, there’s not much to go on character-wise, which is often a huge factor in the appeal of a sports series. The animation’s nothing too special, but it gets the job done. The heavy-handedness of the drama is probably the biggest potential turn-off for the series, but it’s heavy-handed in a different way than Nagi no Asukara – rather than forcing dramatic situations to occur where they shouldn’t, Ace takes the reactions to understandable situations to the extreme. It’s an approach to heavy-handed drama that I’m more willing to accept, especially in a sports context like this, where competitive instincts can ramp up emotions to ridiculous degrees. If, like me, you want a show about a bunch of angry baseball players playing angry baseball, you can get your fix right here. Anyone else need not apply.

Kuroko’s Basketball S2

This show is about basketball.

The first season of Kuroko’s Basketball is the sports anime that broke the sports anime bubble for me. You know, that imaginary bubble that everyone has that’s all like “you know, I don’t normally like sports anime, but this one sports anime was pretty good, and also happens to be the only one I’ve seen, and I don’t really want to watch any other ones because of some nebulous prejudice that I have yet to identify within myself”. Kuroko is the show that made me WANT to watch more sports anime. While the first season was thoroughly eclipsed by an absolutely stellar Spring 2012 season, the pickings are a bit slimmer this time around, and, like S1′s summertime second cour, it has its chance to shine as the show I most look forward to every week. The fourth-ever post on my blog was a love letter of a review for the series, I gave it perhaps the longest of my 12 Days of Anime posts, and though I ranked it 13th on my Top Anime of 2012 list, every time I look at the list I wish I’d bumped it up a few more spots. Suffice it to say, this show is a Pretty Big Deal to me. So big a deal, in fact, that I’m giving it another paragraph.

So yeah, the first season’s great and all, but that’s not what this is about. How’s the second? It’s every bit as good. This is very much the same Kurobas we were left with almost exactly a year ago when the first season ended, and it does all of the same things right.

• It’s got the same knack for well-defined and purposeful character interactions that fans like to (quite knowingly) misconstrue as homosexual undertones. In contrast to this summer’s notoriously gay swimming anime Free, which let its petty elementary-school drama linger and fester throughout the entire series, Kurobas puts forth an overly-dramatic flashback only for Kagami to get over it almost immediately and increase his resolve to play the game. A new member of the Generation of Miracles also makes an appearance, getting an unusually expressive reaction out of Kuroko.
• It’s got the same wacky hijinks and the same sense of humorous juxtaposition. After a very dramatized reintroduction to all the main characters and their powers (in amusing contrast to the ridiculousness of their abilities), including a grin-inducing return to the series’ classic and familiar “people don’t realize that Kuroko was there the whole time” joke, and the energetic rock-n-roll opening theme, the first scene we cut to is Kagami struggling to eat broccoli and spilling it all over the place.
• It’s got the same silly BS-ball powers to spice up the games. In addition to the regular powers we know and love, we have a character who shoots a jump shot that seemingly passes straight through Kagami’s hand, and an introduction to Kuroko’s new ability-in-progress, an unstoppable drive that plays on his lack of presence (yes I know I’m cheating and these are from the second episodes, but I’m already making all kinds of exceptions for Kurobas because Kurobas.
• It’s got the same goofy Engrish thrown in all over the place.
• Heck, it’s even got the same bands doing the theme songs (and dear god is the OP beautifully-animated).

In short, Kurobas is back and it’s as beautiful as ever. If you liked the first season, you’ll continue to like the second season. If you didn’t like the first season, then I am sorry you were not gifted with good taste. And Kuroko still is, and always will be, the best Basugay.

Because he is perfect.

Yowamushi Pedal

My reaction to Yowamushi Pedal as it just kinda casually coasts up the hill doing its thing.

Yowamushi Pedal is quite unlike Kurobas, which I knew would be great and which lived up to all my expectations. Yowamushi Pedal, instead, was good very much by surprise. The otaku lead had every opportunity to be annoying, but was instead endearing in his dedication to his hobby. This dedication could have been shown through gratuitous anime references and nothing more, but instead was used to develop his character through his desire to restart the club and his circumstantially acquired skill at biking. The biking CG could have been obtrusive, but instead blended reasonably well (at least so far). The actually-athletic brooding rival character could easily have angsted the show into the ground, but instead he is inspired in ways both expected (biking) and unexpected (whistling) by his unlikely challenger. The show doesn’t go out of its way to beat us over the head with things, and lets the characters and situations speak for themselves for the most part, which made things feel surprisingly natural and made it a lot more enjoyable to watch. If Ace of the Diamond’s overbearing nature was too much for you, this may be the series to try instead. It’s lighthearted, well-written, and just plain fun.

Stay Tuned!

As I fall farther and farther behind the currently airing shows with these first impressions, I move on next to the mechanical side of things. The weekend sports were one of the big highlights of the fall, but the first impressions are far from over!

And here I am almost two weeks after my last post finally getting around to this one. This is why my previous first impression posts never came out till about week 4. Anyway, as I said last time, we’re moving on from a weekend’s worth of darn good sports anime to a weekday that’s more machine-oriented. On the one hand, I love me a good show with some robots and junk in it. On the other, I’m very picky about what I actually define as a “good” robo-show. Admittedly, only one of these shows is “mecha” in the technical sense, but they’re all about machines and their masters duking it out, so I figure that’s close enough.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel

A face only a battleship could love.

This show’s got a pretty sweet name, not gonna lie. I also like that it’s a show about battleships. The naval battles are pretty cool; I enjoy following the sonar-based tactics, and even if the Klein fields and wireframesplosions are kinda weird, maritime warfare is just not something we see very often in anime. The CG for the ships themselves doesn’t look half bad, either; it’s serviceable enough by TV anime standards. What does look kinda bad are the CG characters. Arpeggio is full-CG, and character animation in CG anime has always looked off. The hair and faces are the biggest offenders here – the hair is blocky-looking and the facial features often seem poorly-placed. Beyond just appearances, it’s the other half of the premise that I’m not too keen on – it’s about little girls who are actually battleships. Not that the rest of the cast is anything to write home about, but the main ship girl especially is just… boring. Now, I’m maybe not one to talk here because I rarely have the patience to pay enough attention to war/tactical stories to get hooked by the plot at all, but I felt the same way about the story here. There’s some kind of battle going on here but I can’t be bothered to figure out who’s fighting and why; all I know is that we’re supposed to be rooting for the main character and his ship-girl because they’re the ones most prominently featured in the promo art. I’m sure fans of weapons/military equipment or tactics/warfare will find a lot to love here, because I did like the way some of the ship-centric action scenes in the first two episodes developed, but the bigger picture does very little to grab. I probably won’t be keeping up with this one, if only because there are just so many good shows this season.

Unbreakable Machine Doll

CG Dragons have come such a long way since Fate/Stay Night

Another show with a supremely awesome title. I mentioned back when I was talking about Strike the Blood that there was another LN adaptation that puts a perfectly good title to waste, and this is it. Unbreakable Machine Doll is about how the titular magic-fighting-puppet-thing wants to have sex with her master, and how she even moreso wants to tell everyone and their 5-year-old daughter that she wants to have sex with her master. And she sometimes gets into poorly-rendered CG fights with poorly-rendered CG trains and dragons. If I learned anything from Fate/Stay Night, it’s that poorly-rendered CG dragons are always a metaphor for sex, so I guess the Machine Doll got her wish after all.

Gundam Build Fighters

More like Gundam BFFs

Gundam BFFs is about how Sunrise decided that Gundam wasn’t selling enough toys because it was too subtle about being a toy commercial, so they went out and made it an actual toy commercial. This iteration of the franchise looks a lot like those more kid-oriented tournament shows, usually involving card games or tops or what have you, only this time the kids fight with their Gunpla. You know, those fragile plastic robot kits that take hours of snapping and snipping and gluing and painting and love to build. And in every battle, one poor kid’s robot gets completely destroyed. That doesn’t really bother me about the show, just that this is not a hobby I think I would enjoy if I lived in this world. Anyway, it’s about this kid who’s really good at building Gunpla and sucks at fighting with them, who meets up with this magic “Newtype” kid who’s really good at fighting with Gunpla, and how they join forces to go win tournaments and become BFFs together and that’s why the show is called Gundam BFFs I think. Except there’s only one F so maybe they’re just BFs. Ramba Ral is definitely the best part of the show, because he came here all the way from the universe of Gundam 0079 just to provide awkward match commentary to any innocent bystander who is willing (or not) to listen, and he was one of the best characters in 0079 to begin with. He’s even got the same voice actor! As should be somewhat clear by now, there are a lot of fun references to older Gundam shows strewn about here, and it marks this series as being of a concept that I can certainly get behind: it’s a kid-friendly Gundam show for the now-adult fans of the original series to watch with their children. The parents can enjoy seeing all the vintage Gunpla in action and catch all the references to older series, while the kids enjoy the meat of the material, which is clearly targeted to their age group. As I’m only barely a fan of the franchise to begin with, I’ll give BFFs a pass, but as with Arpeggio, it’s a type of show that I’m glad to know exists.

Stay Tuned!

I’m almost done! In the penultimate first impression post of the season, I’ll be looking at some week-2 series that place their focus on their ever-growing gangs of wacky characters, with a couple of them from some promising up-and-coming directors.

What is anime, really, if not a means through which to throw scores upon scores wack-job characters with outlandish powers and even more outlandish personalities in a just-as-much outlandish premise at you faster than you can hope to process even one of them? “Nothing!” says week two’s continuing anime lineup.

My High School Romantic Comedy Is Ruined Because of a Multiple Choice Test or Something

It’s ironic that the show about making decisive choices is making it so hard for me to decide how to answer this question.

I’d just like to take a minute to point out that this is now the second time this year we have had a show whose title is a sentence portraying the story’s main character bemoaning the ruination of his high school romantic comedy, and how far up their own butts this demonstrates that light novel titles of this sort have stuck their heads at this point. In contrast, the show itself is one of the better light novel-based series I’ve come across recently. Even if the titular multiple-choice gag is more or less completely wasted, there are a not-insignificant number of well-played and surprisingly funny jokes throughout the first couple of episodes. Most of the laughs – and most of the general enjoyment – I got from NouKome stemmed from the hilariously blunt white-haired Best Girl whose name (like all the other characters’) escapes me. It’s not so much what she says that’s inherently funny, but the way she goes back and forth with our indecisive protagonist, and her bluntness is representative of how the show casually makes one-off jokes of topics lesser shows like to dance around, avoid entirely, or wouldn’t even really think of. While the rest of the Reject 5 (or what we’ve seen of it so far) manage to avoid falling completely into light novel tropes, it’s White who easily steals the show here. The problem is, despite being a large step above the majority of other series like it, NouKome cannot escape its roots. Even if it happened as part of a joke, we still had a mentally deficient bunny-girl literally fall from the sky and become a major character in the series. The humor (with exceptions) is still crude, overly-referential, and ultimately empty, even with the above-average delivery that increases its laugh quotient. The multiple choice is being used as a way to artificially force irrelevant humiliating situations, rather than to organically push the story forward. The show is, in the end, about a bunch of girls wanting to get into the MC’s pants. In short, it may be funnier than most light novels, but NouKome is still very much a light novel.

Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta

Surprisingly, Yozakura Quartet is not the only show this season with goldfish as a recurring visual.

Externally, the big draw to Yozakura Quartet is the director, a young animator known as Ryo-timo. Having been brought into the industry as a result of his GIF animations, Ryo-timo is very good at putting out efficient and impactful bursts of animation, and has done animation work for an impressively comprehensive list of recent years’ high-profile animation-heavy titles, but the Yozakura Quartet reboot project is his first time fully at the helm of a series. The fact that there are not one, not two, but three up-and-coming directors (as well as one up-and-coming studio of veteran staff) with TV debuts this fall is a big part of why this season is so exciting. First was Meganebu’s Soubi Yamamoto, who excelled at visual design, and the motion-focused Ryo-timo is the second. Indeed, Yozakura is a series in constant motion – plot points and character introductions fly by like nothing and the show doesn’t even blink. Whatever happens, the show just kinda rolls with it, never stopping for too long to think about anything, and expects the audience to do the same. This is at the same time one of the things that makes it so fun to watch, and so hard to follow. It starts out by just throwing so many characters at you it’s not possible to keep track of them all, but as it goes on it slowly and cleverly weaves them into the story just enough for you to pick up on what makes them tick. It’s an approach that sort of reminds me of the way that Durarara handled its characters. The story’s been primarily lighthearted and episodic so far, though there are some hints at a darker developing story later on that I hope it can handle with the same elegance it did the character introductions in episodes two and three. One point that doesn’t sit quite as well is the surprising ubiquity of panty shots and boob grabs, albeit in the same unfazed, nonchalant style of the rest of the show. It doesn’t pose as big of a problem as in other shows due to this attitude, which prevents it from interfering too much in the story, but Ao’s dress seems to love flying up every chance it gets. This sort of leads me to one of Yozakura’s biggest highlights: the animation. It’s not as balls-out (yet) as Ryo-timo got when he was on animation duty with Birdy Decode, but more channeled into the details and subtleties. The characters are rarely static, and there’s always something happening on screen. Ryo-timo loves to make things move, and there’s never a moment that Yozakura Quartet sits still.

Tokyo Ravens

RETURN OF THE CG DRAGONS

I want to like Tokyo Ravens, because it has a lot to like. It’s really unfortunate that the show is weighed down by as much obligatory light-novel drudgery as it is, because it really feels like there’s a pretty good story somewhere in there. There are some very good scenes done very well, but Ravens is filled just as full with fluff. There are some great turns that are painfully undercut by the fact that they pave the way only for more fluffy cliches. Every time it seems ready to “get to the good part” with some exciting new twist, it takes that opportunity to drop right back down to its laurels, and it makes watching Tokyo Ravens an exercise in frustration. There’s nothing here that’s really all that special, and the CG is kinda lackluster (though I feel like I’ve harped on that enough this season), but about a third of the time, it’s used well enough to be gripping (before it starts slipping). Tokyo Ravens joins the ranks of Outbreak Company, Nagi no Asukara, Log Horizon, NouKome, and Arpeggio of Blue Steel in being a show that I’m too much on the fence about to continue watching when there are so many better shows this season, but that I hope can find an audience among those more receptive to the strengths that each of them clearly have.

Kyousougiga

Basically every shot in Kyousougiga is gorgeous.

This season’s third up-and-coming director, Rie Matsumoto, comes onto the scene with a project that, like Ryo-timo with Yozakura Quartet, she has already brought to life in OVA form over the course of the past couple years. The Kyousougiga OVA was a pretty dense, fast-paced, nonsensical affair, but with 10 episodes of TV anime to work with, Matsumoto has slowed down to give the crazed world of the Mirror Capital more time to come to life. The result is significantly more sane than the OVA was, but even with the slowed pace this is a show that demands your full and constant attention in order to keep things straight. A lot of the story is told through the visuals, making use of imagery, symbolism, the expressive character animation, and the creative, jumpy directing to relay key emotional details. It can be a little exhausting to watch, and it can be easy to get distracted by all the vibrantly-colored eye candy that fills the world. But cutting through the show’s many layers (I had to watch each of the first two episodes twice and read the wiki summaries to really grasp what was going on) is worth it to get to the story beneath; there’s a reason Kyousougiga’s become so beloved among the aniblogosphere as to rival Kill la Kill on the Anime Power Rankings.

Stay Tuned!

One more to go! Next time I’ll wrap things up with a look at the two noitaminA shows and finally get back to catching up on actually watching the new shows that are coming out.

It’s been a pretty dead year for the noitaminA block this year. The winter saw two carry-overs from 2012. Spring was a rerun of Katanagatari. It wasn’t until summer’s charming Silver Spoon adaptation that we started to get anything new, but even then we had an Ano Hana rerun alongside it. Things are finally back into full swing this season, though, with two anime-original works.

Galilei Donna

What’s that? In the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a… gold… fish. A flying robot goldfish.

First is the eccentric but forgettable Galilei Donna, helmed by A-1 Pictures and the creator of Kite. The series centers around three girls who are descendents of Galileo – one of them is some kind of goldfish-obsessed genius middle-school inventor who somehow assembled an armored and weaponized goldfish airship using some blueprints from the attic, one is insanely jealous of her for this and is skilled at hand to hand combat, and the other is… I think a lawyer or something? I don’t remember. It doesn’t help that their names are all basically the same so I can never remember which one is Hozuki or Hazuki or Kazuki. They’re all fighting to keep a sinister organization from getting their hands on some sort of mysterious Galileo-related treasure by getting their own hands on it first, and from the looks of it, they’re going to do it by following some Da Vinci Code-style series of clues based on trivia about their ancestor’s life. Each aspect of the show, from the premise to the characters to the animation, stands as “passable but unimpressive”. The biggest thing that’s stuck with me about Galilei Donna is the mere fact that there is a weaponized goldfish airship. Very little else has stood out as anything other than competent. Galilei Donna is quite a competent show, and you can do far worse than watching it. I’ve been trying to wean myself off mediocre anime recently, though, so I think I’m done with this one.

Samurai Flamenco

Samurai Flamenco clearly took Carranger’s traffic safety lessons to heart.

Samurai Flamenco, on the other hand, is easily in the running for show of the season if it can keep up the same way it’s been going. I continually find myself at a loss for what to say about it beyond squeaking out a “this show is so perfect” every time something happens in an episode. It’s exceedingly rare that we get characters this well-written in an anime, and it makes all the difference in the world in a low-key, (very visibly) low-budget show like this. They’re believable, they’re lovable, they’re multifaceted, they’re flawed, and they all fit perfectly into the niche that the story has carved for them among the other characters. Think Koutetsu from Tiger and Bunny. I’ve got a soft spot for that kind of unfulfilled adult character looking for a place to belong in life. Not only that, but there are so many little subtleties to the setup and the story itself that tie into not only the characters and their interactions, but also some subtle (by anime standards) real world commentary on things like superheros and idols and talk shows and other little cultural nuances. I have no idea where the story’s headed at this point, since it’s moving a long at an unusually brisk pace for this type of show, but I really hope this doesn’t lead to them wearing the premise thin before the end of its run, something that its 22-episode length increases the risk for. So far it hasn’t missed a beat, though, and given that this is helmed by veteran director Takahiro Omori (best known for Baccano, Durarara, and Natsume Yuujinchou), the impressive feat of keeping both the quality and the pace at their current level doesn’t seem all too far out of reach.

That’s All, Folks!

It’s nice to end this over-long, over-late first impressions series on a good note like that. I’ve not-dropped eleven new shows so far this season, even with my standards set a little higher than usual, so while it’s still a little early to tell for sure, I’d label fall 2013 as a darn successful season. It’s about time we had one of those this year. Even better is that about half of them will be carrying over into the winter, so even if Space Dandy and Silver Spoon are the only good to come out of next season, I’ll still have plenty of shows to enjoy!

I seem to be somewhat lonely in the aniblogosphere in that I’ve been enjoying Ace of Diamond a lot so far (or really, in that I’m even watching it at all). It’s a rock-solid old-fashioned shounen sports series; it knows exactly what it’s doing and it does it very well. Anyway, in case there’s anyone else out there who actually watches the show, Guardian Enzo’s been hitting it out of the park (har har) with his episodic posts on the series. This post was originally going to be a comment on one of his episodics, but I decided to expand it a bit into its own quick post.

In his post on episode 6, Enzo mentions, “I like the fact that while Sawamura is clearly the star here, this story remains very much about the team – and that’s been set up as a very significant difference between he and his rival, Furuya.”

I’ve been digging the focus on the team as well. One detail that I really appreciated in this episode was the way that Sawamura’s unpredictable pitching was used to build that focus and to set him up directly as a team-centric player. In contrast to Furuya’s single overpowering pitch (reflecting his view of the catcher as a hindrance rather than a teammate), Sawamura’s pitches complement his more outwardly visible vocal encouragement in relying on and inspiring the team to take on the upperclassmen. Rather than strike out batter after batter, the surprise curve results in a series of easy flies that go right into his teammates’ gloves – his pitching style ultimately empowers the team as opposed to showing them up. While Sawamura is on the mound, he isn’t the lone star player, he makes everyone else on the field into a potential star player.

Now I know nothing about the physics of baseball or what have you and I don’t have a clue if that’s actually what this type of late-curving pitch is meant to accomplish, but the way it’s used in the episode to funnel easy plays to his teammates and boost their confidence does well at setting Sawamura up as the team player he claims so loudly to be.

Just half an inning ago these players had all but given up on the game.

I was in a podcast! Had a lot of fun as a guest on Deadlight’s Seasonal Anime Podcast, along with Juno, psgels, Flawfinder, Slashe, and Landon. We talked about fall season shows that started out strong and fizzled out, and also a studio that started out strong and fizzled out. And the gorilla in the room with this week’s episode of Samurai Flamenco. Be sure to check it out on Deadlight’s blog: http://deadlightanime.blogspot.com/2013/11/seasonal-anime-podcast-dropped-fall.html

So I just got home from seeing the first two Madoka Magica movies tonight. I know I’m about a year late to this party but the theater near me had a reshowing in preparation for the third movie coming out so I decided why not go for the refresher course.

This is now my third time through the series and my reaction was more or less the same as the previous two. Madoka starts out very strong – it sinks its hooks in early on and, for about half its length, maintains a delightfully sinister and mysterious aura about it held up by impressive direction of its aesthetic elements (which really shone in the theatrical setting) and careful, deliberate handling of its plot threads. I’ve fallen in love with this series again each time I’ve started it anew. At about the halfway mark, though, the magic slowly begins to fade, until Sayaka becomes a witch, from which point I end up watching the rest through a detached state that fails to leave any sort of impression on me. This turning point was further reinforced here in that this was the point at which the first movie ended.

The first movie compressed eight episodes of the series into five and a half episodes’ worth of runtime, where as the second was essentially the last four episodes in their entirety along with even some additional footage. This, combined with the fact that those four episodes are to some extent a story of repetition with their focus on Homura’s time traveling, and the overlong God Madoka sequence, makes the second movie seem to drag on much more than the first did, despite being a shorter film. It feels odd that I praise the deliberation of the first half and its willingness to take time from the plot to build the atmosphere, but complain that it’s the faster-paced second half that feels slow. I’m still not sure where this disparity lies exactly, but for now I’m going to chalk it up to the series starting to go through the motions once it’s gotten over its initial hump. The time for fascination is past, and in its place is more stripped-down, efficient storytelling that gets the point across but doesn’t necessarily engage. It could also be the shift towards a more character-driven narrative in a story whose strong suit was never its characters. Maybe the whole show actually was too slow all along and the compression at the beginning just managed to trim it down to a more ideal length.

Whatever the case, I’ve always been more impressed by Madoka’s beginning than its end, and the films have only followed in kind. I’d also like to add that while I could’ve done without hearing the girls’ high-pitched wails through the theatrical sound system, I otherwise enjoyed seeing Madoka in a movie theater environment. It’s not too often that anime is shown on the big screen like this, and something like Madoka, while it has some inconsistency with the character art at times, also has a lot of little details – especially in the witches’ labyrinths – that are appreciably improved by the big screen experience.

As for the third movie, I’m going in equal parts curious and cautious. I’m interested to see where they take things from here, with the series having reached its existing conclusion. I’m not sure how much more story there really is to tell without feeling like a forced continuation. At the same time, if they do have something more, I’d like to see what it is, and having had a break between working on the original series and this new material may have allowed the creators to step back and return to the high level the series started at. So I’ll be looking forward to seeing the third movie in a couple weeks, whether it’s for better or for worse.

THE POWER OF GLASSES has won me over. Where I had previously only continued past episode 2 of Meganebu for director Soubi Yamamoto’s bizarre choice of color palette, pointing out a lack of funny jokes and uninteresting characters to carry the show, it’s continued to grow on me with every episode until somewhere along the way I just started gobbling up all of its nonsense and for the life of me I can’t figure out where it happened. While most of the shows from this season ended up being either exactly what I expected them to be or fizzling out like Coppelion, Kyoukai no Kanata, Galilei Donna, etc., Meganebu has evolved itself into the surprise of the season for me.

Currently sporting a proud 5.76/10 average rating on MyAnimeList, Meganebu seems to be the show that people love to hate this fall. I’d agree that the first episode, while not necessarily a bad episode, was a pretty weak introduction, and I was still on the fence by the end of the second episode (though it was a marked improvement), but having stuck with it a little longer, I can’t agree that its reputation for being terrible is at all deserved. There’s so much creativity here – in the visuals, as is clear from the start, but also in the bizarre scenarios the creators continually manage to conjure up. It’s easy from the premise to pass this off as yet another fujoshibait show about pretty boys with glasses and homosexual undertones (well, more like overtones – Mitsuki actually is gay for the club president), but it’s as much fujoshibait as Azumanga Daioh or Milky Holmes are otakubait.

The God of Glasses is a powerful friend and a cruel master to our bespectacled protagonists.

Actually, speaking of Milky Holmes, Meganebu reminds me a bit of that show through the characterization of its leads and the source of its humor. The primary cast consists of a tight-knit group of worthless dame-dames segregated off to their own little no-man’s-land within the school – a colorful brigade of unfathomably stupid people – who indulge in antics as increasingly absurd as their endearingly broken heads malfunction to conceive. As much as from the loud personalities and wacky hijinks themselves, the humor flows from the constant punishment doled unto the glasses club for their stupidity (most of it self-inflicted) and the way the show sweeps you up into their fantastical delusions, giving these nonsensical developments the same magic that the club members have convinced themselves to see in them. The absurdity is much more low-key than the relentlessly energetic Milky Holmes, but it’s got the same habit of making you root for the band of lovable idiots as they take on a world that loves nothing more than to crap all over their plans with only an unrealistic amount of optimism, a twisted view of the way things are supposed to work, and of course, the power of glasses. Watch as they brave the rain with a five-man bicycle powering a pair of windshield-wiper glasses! Be amazed as the president takes on a full-grown praying mantis armed with only a welding suit! Solve the mystery of the ominous four eggplants! Cheer as they install 55-minute clocks all across the school, with the help of a ghost tied to this world by a lost pair of Ray-Bans!

The humor doesn’t all stem from the Milky Holmes vein of watching stupid people suffer for their sins, though. Another factor in it is the awe in seeing the sheer amount of glasses-related technology and showmanship the club puts on display. Not only are they on their central quest to build the elusive X-Ray Glasses, but they have such devices as Windshield Wiper Glasses, Adjustable-Prescription Glasses, Wakey-Eye Stickers, Spirit Glasses, Spare Glasses (such a novel idea!), Miracle Lens Cleaner, Frame Strength Testers, Exploding Glasses, Robot Glasses, Honesty Glasses, Glasses-Protecting Diving Helmets, Glasses Hovercraft, Glasses-Themed Bento Boxes, and more! Meganebu is a show that understands the glasses condition, dealing with such meaningful issues as glasses steaming up when you eat ramen, and the slight erosion of lenses caused by excessive wiping.

Glasses-related club activities include competing to hold JoJo poses for the longest while the train goes around a turn.

While it’s mostly the ridiculous situations the glasses club gets themselves into that provide the comedy for the show, the characters themselves lend themselves to a few jokes as well. Except maybe the one guy who likes cream puffs – he’s not really memorable in the least. Yukiya is the inventor of the group – he and his yPad are responsible for many of the zanier glasses-based technologies. He’s also the quiet, gloomy one, and leads to a lot of lower-key defeatist humor as he tends to step back and accept his punishment, such as the scene where he makes a mess of himself walking home or the many times that his creations literally blow up in his (or Akira’s) face. Mitsuki is more of a mixed bag, as his clinginess to the president and overall helplessness can be grating, but he leads the charge into some of the wackier hijinks, and his defensive aggressiveness towards Hayato – often manifested by way of wrenches to the foot or eye-stabs through Hayato’s lensless glasses – is quite funny. He’s the most annoying club member, but also the one who grows the most as a person and a character, with enough great moments to make up for the bad ones. But the driving force of the show really comes from Hayato and Akira. Hayato is possibly the most sane one of the bunch and consistently has the best interactions with other club members. One of my favorite running gags in the show is how, as a fake glasses wearer with perfect vision, he so tenaciously wants to be a part of the club, but the members so adamantly refuse to grant him official membership. It hits on both a very personal desire to belong and also a lot of comedy potential in the ridiculous ways he tries to prove himself and the bluntness with which he is consistently turned down. Akira is the reason the entire club exists to begin with. His hotblooded passion towards glasses is the show’s most memorable aspect, with his frequent shouts of “MEEEGANEEEEEEE”, and uncanny knowledge of and belief in the power of glasses. The very concept of glasses is so powerful a thing to him that it’s infectious – even as a viewer outside the show it’s hard not to get caught up in it (if only for how silly it is that he derives such pleasure from something so mundane) – it’s that passion that inspired the other members to join the club to begin with, and it’s that passion that holds the club together.

NO MEGANE, NO LIFE

The aesthetics of the show reinforce this passion for glasses with a number of clever little glasses-related motifs. In addition to the occasional JoJo poses, the characters (especially Akira) will pose themselves in some glasses-like form. Glasses appear all over everything – from backpacks to backgrounds to stylish cutaways. Scene transitions often consist of an eyecatch of one of the character’s glasses, accompanied by that character declaring “megane” with a decisiveness that lends a curt finality to the scene. Then are of course the cheesy backup singers, who, as I mentioned in my previous post, will occasionally see fit to remind us with great aplomb that “ALL YOU NEEED IS… M-E-G-A-N–E~”.

And really, it is. Meganebu has surprised me by being a very silly show with a remarkably clever side that’s consistently able to make me laugh, and I’m glad I kept going with it after getting of to an uncertain start. I can’t wait to see what the climax of such an unpredictable series has in store.

Starting today, I will once again be partaking in the annual aniblog tradition: Twelve Days of Anime. In a nutshell, the idea is to write about 12 moments in anime (or related to anime) that you experienced this year that you feel deserve to be included in some kind of end-of-year list for whatever reason. Was it something really good, really bad, really inspiring, really shocking, really important, really silly, or even just something you really want to write about? It’s a candidate for The List.

It’s always really hard to narrow down these moments, because so many things happen during the year that are so equally deserving of Twelve Days posts. In part because I’m too lazy to consider my choice more carefully, and in part because I feel bad leaving them out, here are some honorable mentions that, while they didn’t make the cut for whatever reason, I still want to shout out to:

• I’ve already written just about all I have to say about the One Breathless Moment from Space Bros earlier this year, so I decided to leave it out to open up the floor for new topics.
• Same goes for Aiura Episode 1. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve gone back to enjoy it, but I’ve got very little to say about it that I haven’t already (and it’s surprisingly found its way into my top 5 most-viewed posts!).
• Hunter x Hunter is a show that has been so consistently good for so long that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to zero in on any one moment that’s truly special relative to the others. Searching through a year’s worth of Hunters, however enticing the idea of a rewatch may be, is a bit too demanding for my current time crunch, and since it already made the list last year, I’m less inclined to bump off a new show in its place. I’m sure Shinmaru over at The Cart Driver‘s got me covered with at least one (probably Hisoka’s chiseled butt), but I felt it necessary to report that, with everything from JoJo Biscuit to Kite-ro Bajeena to Ants Vs Spiders to Moe-Moe Octobros, Hunters is still laughing in the face of 90% of the shows this year in terms of being awesome, even if it’s not represented in this list.
• I will be very surprised if GUILLOTINE GORILLA from Samurai Flamenco does not show up on a huge number of these lists, so I feel I can safely exclude it from my own.
• Akagi is a series that shines more in its overall execution than in any particular scene. It’s one of the best shows I watched this year, though, so I’d like to give it a mention here.
• The episode of Carnival Phantasm where Berserker goes shopping is gut-splittingly hilarious proof that Seiji Kishi needs to go back to directing comedy. I would’ve put this on the list if I hadn’t already seen it about five times (just as funny each time) before finally watching the Carnival in its entirety this year.
• Just a little reminder that some noble soul translated four magnificent episodes of Musashi Gundoh before disappearing off the face of the earth.
• As fantastic as Pirate Asuka, Hideaki Anno doing his best to piss off as many people as possible all at once, and Shinji and Kaworu gaying the piano were, I regretfully had to make a cut somewhere, and Eva 3.33 just missed it.
• I’m so glad that I was finally persuaded, after hearing its praises sung from all sides, to watch Milky Holmes. This was the last cut I made from the list, and also the hardest to let go. To make up for this travesty, please enjoy the picture of Twenty’s nipples that lovingly adorns the top of this post.

I’ve also got something really special planned out for my 12 Days posts this year – a FULL SECOND SET OF POSTS entitled “12 Days of HOTBLOOD”! Is this an excuse to be even more indecisive with my list? You bet it is! Is it an awesome excuse? You bet it is! But I’m going to leave the actual nature of the posts as a surprise for a little bit.

For now, though, LET’S DO THIS THING!

If you haven’t yet started watching Kill la Kill, I think this post should be enough to convince you to drop everything and start it RIGHT NOW.

Usually these 12 Days posts are meant to be about some moment in anime that was particularly special. Something that happened. I’m going to do something a little different this time and instead dedicate one of these twelve days to a character.

In other words, I’m going to use this post as an excuse to imagedump a whole bunch of Mako faces.

Our first meeting:

A delightful classroom experience:

Mako, now in portable form:

Mako tries her hand at a classic moe trope:

Mako feels no pain:

The first of Mako’s many charismatic speeches, truly a sight to behold:

Please don’t wake the Mako:

Such a loving friend:

Mako WILL NOT STAND for ANYONE talking down to Ryuko:

Mako shows off what she’s got:

She’s learned to multiply – the world may not be able to handle this:

This is why you don’t wake the Mako:

Mako’s quantum morning routine:

Mako and the power of festive pajamas:

What a cheesy face:

The cutest of machine-gun operators:

Bestest friends forever:

Mako has the best impression of Ryuko’s outfit:

Oh goodness, those hands and that face – so perfect:

She’s always wanted a ride in one of these:

Another of Mako’s most persuasive speeches:

Mako may not have gotten much screentime in episode 6, but she certainly made the most of it:

That sudden reversal of expression:

Mako’s “LET’S DO THIS” face:

Oh goodness my heart is melting:

The potential of glasses is truly terrifying:

Business Professional Mako, at your service:

Absolutely the greatest:

You know you’re truly evil when you can make Mako cry:

Redline-ing it up:

Even frozen in time, she’s still adorable:

Mako is a spectator extraordinaire:

HNNNGH:

Rocking out to the music:

Mako riding on Gamagoori’s shoulders was just the cutest:

He wasn’t too happy with it, though:

Mako the one-man band:

Such perfection:

WHAAAAAT-CHA DOIN’?:

Mako’s had enough of your crap:

I love this show so much.

(Fun Fact: I gathered over 170 Makofaces for this endeavor before I narrowed it down to just 70. I can think of no better use of three hours than digging up and sifting through 170 Makofaces.)

As I went back through JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure to try and decide on a moment for this year’s 12 Days of Anime, I found that just about every episode of Battle Tendency contained several scenes just as worthy of The List as any of the moments I had included from other shows. Recognizing a futile endeavor when I see one, I created the 12 Days of HOTBLOOD, to run alongside the regular 12 Days of anime, and I’ll be dedicating half of those days to approximately episodically blogging the 2013 portion of Battle Tendency, two episodes at a time.

Awaken, My Masters!

Having survived their first encounter with Santana, the powerful Man In The Pillar, JoJo and co. travel to Rome to investigate the report that there may be more of these ancient warriors in slumber there.
Arriving on the scene, they are greeted by a peerless display of sculpted musculature, as the Pillar Man Wham gracefully springs from his stony prison of 2000 years. With an ominous, chanting BGM and a cry of “AWAKEN, MY MASTERS!”, he summons his fellow Pillar Men from their slumber to assume a group pose so overpoweringly manly that it shimmers in the darkness of the cave.

Not to be outdone, our heroes answer the challenge with among the most iconic of poses in the JoJo franchise.

And through so formidable a display of posturing was begun the great war between humanity and the Pillar Men.

Wham Drops The Bass

Caesar and JoJo take the fight to the Pillar Men, using their superb posing ability and comically enormous back muscles, respectively.

Wham’s response?

The devastating Divine Sandstorm, an attack so powerful it drops the bass, transforming the very soundtrack of the show into a dubstep-inspired whirlwind of rage.

TNT – It’s Dynamite

Desperate as the Pillar Men easily shrug off the power of the Ripple, JoJo puts into action his most reliable backup plan.

When Wham sees through “Plan B: RUN AWAY!”, Plan C involves more traditional means of warfare: namely, a stick of dynamite. AC/DC, however, identifies this new battle plan as a golden opportunity for a music reference.

A Warrior’s Wedding

Out of options, JoJo is left with only one last ditch attempt at survival. The master of trickery tries to sweet-talk his way into being let go.

Both to his immense relief and immense despair, he manages to successfully woo two of the Pillar Men with his golden tongue, who like him so much they just have to put a ring on him.

In keeping with the time-tested Pillar Man mating ritual, the rings are filled with poison and will dissolve in one month, meaning that JoJo must, in that time, fight them to the death for the antidote. If this isn’t the most romantic thing you’ve ever heard, I don’t know what to tell you.

Let’s be honest, though – JoJo got the better end of the deal here. He’s married now. These butts are HIS.