During the Spring of this year, Gonzo’s initial online streaming experiment began with two series: Tower of Druaga and BLASSREITER. Both shows were featured not only on Crunchyroll and BOST TV, but YouTube as well for an unlimited time. Tower of Druaga was pretty well-liked, and its twist ending caused some interest in Gonzo’s new properties. Then, of course, Panty Witches was a raging success of the dumbest kind. So what about Blassreiter, arguably the most “Gonzo-like” of the series?

Well, it doesn’t immediately stand out the way either Strike Witches or Druaga did. The series tends to slip into Gonzo’s comfort zone pretty quickly, and as such exhibits a quite a few of their typical problems. But it’s not without merit either — in fact, at times it was really engaging.

Story

Without getting too much into it, since part of the fun is watching the story unfold, Blassreiter tells the story of a human augmentation project — somewhere between Twenty Faces’ cybernetic super-soldiers and Gendo’s Human Instrumentality — gone horribly awry. The augmented monsters, called Amalgams, start running all amok in Germany on their way to destroy and remake the entire world. Through it all, the only people with the balls to try and save the world are some glorified cops on motorcycles.

XAT uniforms require cleavage, regardless of gender. I found this to be pretty progressive on Gonzo’s part.

Characters

The series gets a few episodes in before you finally realize who it’s actually about, and it’s not so much racing hero Gerd Frenzen (which you might think through two or three episodes) as it is XAT cops Amanda and Hermann. By the final episode, they’ve become fantastic leads. Amanda is the strongest female I’ve seen in anime in a very long time. If you’re looking for her to break down and need a man at some point, take your moe elsewhere — she stays on point for 25 episodes.

And, she’s a pink-haired looker!

Animation

Notoriously, a lot of people (myself included) ditched this show from minute one when they saw just how bad Gonzo’s trademark CG had gotten. It was like a video game had invaded my anime. But two things happened: First, it got better. The CG fight scenes between the dextrous amalgams were fast-moving and creatively directed. And second, I watched a couple Speed Grapher episodes and saw to exactly what level Gonzo will stoop if they don’t feel like animating a vehicle using cels.

CG motorcycles it is, then.

I mean, motorcycles are cool, right? Right?

The Gonzo Factor

Gonzo tend to try really hard to make their “adult” shows seem very “adult.” That usually means gratuitous violence and ridiculously amped-up sexuality (lol bewbs), combined in a way that makes everything feel decidedly un-adult. Rather than upping the sex-and-violence quotient, Blassreiter’s crew opted to use hopelessness, despair, religious themes, and insane amounts of character death to create something you might actually find somewhat mature.

Themes

Blassreiter’s characters struggle most with trying to maintain their belief systems and their sense of right and wrong in a jacked-up world where most of their friends have been needlessly slaughtered (sometimes twice). A lot of the characters are Christian and question their religious beliefs, and Zwölf is a church-operated organization, but Christianity is a theme that remains mostly unexplored. Ultimately, the characters like Gerd who become Amalgams cling to any belief, even if they doubted it during life, just to try to remain human as their basest instincts start to take over their minds.

Bottom Line

Blassreiter was part of an experiment for Gonzo. They’re not doing all that well money-wise, but they dumped 2 million USD into Crunchyroll, so something apparently worked (probably Panty Witches, actually…). [Edit comes in the form of getting schooled in my comments section — that money came in April so it's actually part of what powered this whole thing.] Considering more Crunchy shows this season and the off-balance amount of Gonzo stuff in Funimation’s iTunes store, these guys are going to be anime’s first real fixture on the Internet, for better or worse. The good news is, you could do a whole lot worse than Blassreiter.

If you like your anime dark and full of action, but without the over-the-top indulgences in sex and violence that Gonzo can be guilty of at times, give it a shot. I think it’s their best “traditional Gonzo” series in a while. And even if you’re just curious, you can jaunt on down to YouTube and check it out for nothing, so why not?

This not strictly a review of Macross Frontier. There are going to be a lot of those on the web, of varying quality and opinions. And I’m guessing a lot of people are going to say they liked it, with some complaining about a botched ending or how Alto didn’t stick it in your favorite girl, blah blah. And they’ll be right about many of their complaints: the end was a copout and the love triangle was lukewarm at best. But after all the shipping, all the whining, and all the missile spam, what did Macross Frontier really do for the franchise? While thankfully some reviewers can look at Frontier as its own sci-fi series, if you’ve seen previous versions it’s harder to divorce any series from the overall Macross “experience,” the way you could with (for instance) a Gundam series.

First, let’s have a look at what other series and films have brought to the table.

• The Super Dimension Fortress Macross. The birth of Macross.
• Do You Remember Love? Established Kawamori as one of those artists who obsessively paints the same picture over and over — in this case, the chill-inducing juxtaposition of an incredible battle with a majestic song performance.
• Macross 7. Took the vague mystical concepts of Lynn Minmay and turned them into vague hard science. Also made Macross a bit silly and fun.
• Macross Plus. Set a higher standard for music and characterization, and opened up the possibility of a more mature Macross.
• Macross Zero. Gave fans real perspective on the Macross world, and a new view on Protoculture. In a way, Zero made Macross “real.”

Macross Frontier

Zero animator Satelight is back, and this time they’re out to turn all your characters into cyclops. The computer work is better, in fact it’s amazing. But the end result doesn’t smell as good as I’d like it to.

The contribution… What is it? In my mind, when I try to reach a conclusion about what Frontier means to the franchise, I come up short. Since it’s Macross, here’s a musical analogy: Frontier is less like a new album by a master songwriter and more like one of those awful tribute albums — or worse, a re-recording of old tunes by the original artist with none of the fire intact.

There’s no new Macross here, only more of the old Macross. More songs (which is a good thing), more singers to sing them, more space battle, more guy-who-looks-like-Global, and more more more references to past Macross.

The peppering of little smirks and nods to Macross lovers is a cool form of fanservice, and just as panty-shots of Mylene Jenius are a rare and notable thing, so should be those references, or they become less… nifty. Sorry, saying “special” in reference to Mylene’s panties seems totally wrong.

I like a captain who looks like Global, I like the dread inherent in a pineapple dessert, I like filming a movie about the events of Zero, but put them together along with all the other (often forced) wink-wink-nudge-nudge fanservice in this series, and two things happen: instead of creating something original, you’ve created a collection of references; and it only reminds me that all those shows you’ve referenced were better than this one.

Deja Vajra

Not only is Frontier determined to look toward the past, it’s basically made of past Macross spare parts. Take, for instance, Sheryl’s climactic performance on the battle stage, an enemy who is not actually your enemy in the end, or a fold engine for Valkyries that’s newly invented. What the flying fuck? How many times must we invent this thing? Gamlin used one in M7, Isamu used one in Plus, and suddenly Bilrer’s a flipping genius for making another one. Re-inventing the VF fold engine only served to iron out a story issue that should have been solved through quality writing.

The point is…

Perhaps I’m missing the point. Fanservice seems to form the basis of plenty of series these days anyway. Maybe Macross fans deserve to have a TV series that tells a very “Macrossian” story with a modern look, bright colors, and more songs than ever before. And I think I can get behind that idea.

The problem is, Kawamori and Satelight didn’t deliver. If the goal is to sum up the “Macross experience” in an all-encompassing story, then it deserved more consistent production values, a tighter story, and better characters (Ranka…). If the goal is simply a jumbled Super Dimensional antique store full of basic nostalgia, then I guess they did well.

Let’s just say it didn’t leave the best taste in my mouth, that way I’m justified in using this picture.

For now, that is pretty much all. I watched it with beer in hand — and I may have imagined this, but — I think my TV thanked me afterward. Then I had a steak dinner. Then I almost streaked naked through my apartment complex shouting about how Geass is over, it’s over, possibly with my hair on fire, but I realized that no one here has a goddam clue what a Geass is.

I’ll save most of my thoughts for one of the internet’s thousand billion review posts, but let me just say this: It ended much more respectably than I would have imagined, and I really don’t think the much-beloved Goro Taniguchi should quit anime forever.

Ding, dong, the pizza witch is dead! Figuratively speaking, of course, No spoilers.

Kaiba, eh?. Well, I’ve already hyped this thing a lot, so let me round out Kaiba’s awesome elements before I review:

Cute animals!

Crazy outfits!

Funny old people!

So cute!

Fanservice!

And it was all made by one of Crayon Shin-chan’s writer-directors, so you know it has to be fun!

I was really going to do the whole post that way, but I wussed out.

Where’s the plot, fuckhead?

I didn’t blog Kaiba episodically, so that makes me at least in one way similar to everyone else in the world. It seemed too easy to spoil something that really relied on not knowing what the plot was in advance. But here you go: Kaiba (or is he Warp?) wakes up with no memories, only a locket containing a blurry picture of a girl he’s pretty sure he may have been in love with. His journey to find her and figure out his own identity, is what Kaiba is about. So you really have to learn as you go, just as the protagonist does. The first time through, it’s very much about uncovering lost memories, hidden conspiracies, and other obscured plot elements. The story is not laid out in advance. Fair warning.

Characters

In the futuristic world of Kaiba, peoples’ memories are stored on chips and transferred around between bodies or stored for periods of time. Whole or partial collections of memories can be erased, distorted, and manipulated. As a result, the very nature of peoples’ personalities gets all mixed up. This is a great theme for the show, but it leaves little that viewers can identify with as far as the characters go. Characters really only further the plot, and sometimes add to that plot’s somewhat-confusing nature.

Animation

As Korasoff says, you’ll either love it or hate it, though I really haven’t talked to anyone who outright hated it. The rounded, bouncy and fluid art style really does belie the very adult nature of the series, which makes everything a little more surreal than it already was. But it’s always consistent, with a little computer enhancement that never gets in the way (think Soul Eater), and no major drop-offs in quality from episode to episode.

It was hard to organize my thoughts, because there’s plenty to say about Kaiba but it all ends up sounding vague because I don’t want to give away the story. I also want to stay away from hyperboles and superlatives. So I’ll go back to the old dangers/benefits system:

Dangers of watching

• Relative inability to identify with the characters – thanks to their mutable personalties and the fact that nearly everyone was working with misplaced motivations.
• Often-confusing storyline – clones abound, bodies are switched, and just keeping track of who’s who is a little tough, but then the conspiracies start coming out and it gets even worse.
• Hazy feel – it’s great for atmospherics, but started to hurt the show when climactic plot points came around and the surrealistic feel overpowered the excitement I should have been feeling.
• Adult themes – lots of sex early on and some uncomfortable glimpses of realism in this weird world make it neither kids’ stuff nor light watching.

Benefits of watching

• Excellent music – not much more to say there, it captures the feel of the show perfectly, and in turn helps define the feel.
• Great animation – it goes with the great atmosphere and music. Aesthetically, this is the total package.
• Intellectual stimulation – if you like philosophizing with classic sci-fi themes, you’ll find plenty to chew on.
• Emotional stimulation – I know I said it’s hard to identify with the characters, at least up until the end, but somehow Kaiba manages to wring a great deal of emotional appeal out of its strange setting. The whole thing has a lonely, mournful feel that grabs you early on — and is infinitely more rewarding than the crying haremette scenario.

Time’s up — make your point.

Ultimately, Kaiba was really ambitious and didn’t always succeed. But I do think we should reward even marginally successful ambition with our praise, lest we get no more of it and instead suffer through endless variations on Strike Witches and To Love-Ru. And you shouldn’t let that ambition turn you off from the show — ambition and pretentiousness are not the same thing, and Kaiba is never pretentious, always understated.

At its heart, it uses the most basic of Frankensteinesque sci-fi premises, which is to answer the question: What are the implications of a particular piece of world-altering technology? So fans of JG Ballard, Masumune Shirow, etc. should really be able to get behind that. The questions of memory and how much memory defines us have been pondered before in plenty of media, but never so deeply in anime.

And speaking of memory, Kaiba will stick in mine long after the next couple seasons are over. Unlike last season’s other highly-lauded show starting with a K, I have every intent of watching this again and I think it’ll continue to look good with time. It was a great watching experience, I’d do it again, and I think you should give it a shot too.

I’m hoping not to be the last person to wrap up Kure-nai — quite a few people already have — but I needed a little time to collect my thoughts about one of the most interesting series of Spring ‘08, a pretty good season.

Story

Kure-nai has a fairly simple, though inherently odd, storyline. Shinkurou Kurenai is a high-school student who has a part-time job as a “dispute mediator,” working for the tough and somewhat mysterious Benika. His duties include kicking a lot of ass in some fairly brutal sequences, and… that’s about it. But one day Benika has a job for him: protecting rich little kid Murasaki, who’s been forcibly removed from her family, the Kuhoins.

Characters

I often lump “story and characters” into the same little section in my reviews, but characters are way too important to Kure-nai for that, especially Shinkurou and Murasaki.

The main thrust of the series is Shinkurou’s development as a character; he starts off as a kid who admits his own weakness. He’s had a demonic bone-sword installed in his arm by high school haremette Yuno’s assassin family to compensate for his weakness, but he spends most of the show trying very hard not to use it. Murasaki of course makes the typical transition from spoiled rich girl to a regular kid who’s able to enjoy simpler things, to a child with a head full of crazy ideas implanted by Shinkurou’s bizarre neighbor women, and to something much more by the end.

Genre

Not an issue you usually have to discuss much, but Kure-nai seems to defy easy categorization. The fight scenes, though sporadic, are especially brutal and simple, far unlike the stylized Ninja or Chinese martial arts normally found in anime. But a big portion of the series was spent on simple slice-of-life non-events. Yes, between Shinkurou’s job, the freaky neighbors, and the very nature of the situation, these were really weird slices of life. But they could very easily be touching, cute, sad, or laugh-out-loud funny. So I have to hand one the best compliments I can think of to Kure-nai: It doesn’t live too simply in any one genre.

Plausibility

I’ll cover this issue more fully sometime (put it on that big list of Someday Posts), but certain bloggers seemed to be really cheesed off by certain aspects of the plot. I can definitely speak specifically to that issue, and maybe even said blogger understands now that that particular point was fully explained in later episodes. Either way, Kure-nai does in fact make a weird situation seem somehow plausible, despite what the dinosaur says. I think that’s achieved by the creation of what basically amounts to a fantasy world, even though it resembles the real world. A high school “dispute moderator?” Female friends who are an information gatherer and the heiress to a family of assassins? Incestious imprisoners of female family members? A musical episode? It all works. How?

Anachronism and other contrasts

Kure-nai seems obsessed with the idea of strange centuries-old traditions (and equally dated career paths) living comfortably alongside the modern society that the rest of us think is hunky dory. There’s an air of mysticism that subtly presents itself time and again, even when nothing strange is really happening and the series is focusing on thoroughly modern stuff.

That contrast and duality is not the only one — obviously you have Shinkurou’s high school life and dangerous job, or his deadly serious task and the goofy antics he gets into with his friends and neighbors. Even the execution of Kure-nai is about contrasts. The show itself seems far more serious than the throwaway pop OP would lead you to believe (especially in the first episode, which starts pretty violently), and the similarly useless ED carries us away to happy-land right before the “next episode” preview halts all action and demands your attention with a captivating, minimal shamisen tune and silenced dialog.

Animation and execution

Some of the character designs really weirded me out, and anatomically just didn’t jive. Especially Benika’s. If you add it all up, two and two don’t equal four and the ears shouldn’t be coming from there. But Shinkurou and Murasaki were very appealing designs, and the animation (by Brains Base) was overall one of the show’s highlights.

So?

The ending didn’t do it for me. Perhaps the writers needed just a little more time that they didn’t take in other places, but the end took that plausibility and threw it out the window. I think the believable-factor really only happened the way it did because of the characters. They acted, overall, in a way that you didn’t have to stretch to much to imagine real people doing. Many times that was in the little details, like bored bodyguard Yayoi’s obsession with some game on her cellphone. Sometimes it was in the overall character arc, like Shinkurou himself. But for those of you who have seen it: Murasaki’s behavior at the end provides a convenient way to tie up the show without going in one totally obvious way or another, but is it right?

Bottom line, even with that ending, Kure-nai managed to be that one show that comes along every once in a while and elevates itself just a little bit above the typical TV anime fare. Not really even as much as last season’s True Tears, but enough that I can recommend it. The story was decent, the animation quality was a notch above standard, and I think it actually stands a reasonably good chance of being licensed somewhere in the future.

The experiment that animation studio Gonzo underwent in realtime, worldwide distribution of quick-subbed anime along with their channels — YouTube, Bost TV, and CrunchyRoll — was innovative, timely and all around a great idea. Maybe it’s not totally about “beating” the modern fansubbers, but it certainly didn’t hurt to take advantage of their primary tools (digital formats and online distribution) to basically make history. Thing is, the experiment is doomed to fail if you’re missing one key part: the show.

So was Druaga the right choice?

Background & Story

The Tower of Druaga is an old-as-the-hills RPG video game that I’ve never played, but that had to be a strike against the anime to begin with. I can’t think of a good fantasy-RPG-turned-anime, although there probably is one out there somewhere. Anyone? In the story, every year a bunch of treasure-seekers form parties in order to climb to the top of the titular Tower and stop a horde of monsters from plaguing humanity. Nothing too revolutionary.

So the story ingredients — focus on small-fry would-be hero, develop a rag-tag party, and defeat the big bad guy while beating smaller bad guys along the way — form more of a white bread than tasty cake. Pepper it with a romantic subtext (if not really a romantic sub plot), some familial issues, and a couple twists, you’ve got the makings for a potentially fun but not exactly engrossing series. Fortunately, Gonzo and co. didn’t stop there.

Despite being based on a typical foundation, Druaga seemed to refuse to be normal. The first episode was a total joke, more about parodying its genre of games than establishing a story (although it did get that done too). The joke was a little weird and out-of-context to start a series with, and it wasn’t 100% funny either. But if you stuck with it you got the chance to see more and more game reference and other weird parodiess: 8-bit sequences, cryptic joystick movements (back back left right left right), and hint books.

While the overall story arc may not be anything special, the way the writers weave seriousness, cute charm, and all-out parody with one another is, with few exceptions, consistently entertaining. A problem with consistency is one of the calling cards of any good Gonzo-bashing, so ease off. Besides, Gonzo bashing isn’t even cool anymore. It’s been cool for quite a while now to act indignant while defending Gonzo, haven’t you heard? I can’t really feel strongly enough to get indignant though, sorry.

I’m not sure I was totally prepared for the end. I guess that’s another bump for the skillful writing. Nothing about the end came out of the blue, as we got plenty of foreshadowing and hinting, but there was a real strength in execution that put viewers in the place of the dumbfounded characters. Not to mention, a small part of the OP that I called the best of the season finally made its way into story, but turned completely on its head. I don’t want to spoil, but suffice to say: the end is not really the end. A second series is promoted as coming in 2009, and that won’t come soon enough.

Animation & Music

Like I said, the OP was one of the best of the season for its fun-turning-to-dramatic tune, mysterious alternate-reality premise, and really clever way of displaying the credits. Incidental music is a little more typical of the genre though it’s sprinkled with game sounds. It’s nothing to write home about but enhances the show well enough and never gets in the way.

Some character designs are a little samey for my tastes, but they’re appealing. The main characters all have decent personality in their designs, especially cute female lead Kaaya and disgraced aristocrat magician Melt, with his perpetual stubble and pre-morning-coffee attitude. Just like the writing, the animation was very consistent. Then again, a 12-episode series really shouldn’t have any consistency problems. The one unfortunate thing is the computer-animated big boss monster in the final few episodes. Boy is it awful. The other show in Gonzo’s experiment, Blassreiter, suffers from the same wretched CG. It’s just terrible. I don’t know if I can say enough bad stuff about it. For a company that made some decent early forays into CG, Gonzo has not progressed much since. But overall, this is highly capable work from the studio, on par with some of their better stuff like Full Metal Panic!

The verdict

I actually plan on writing a whole post about the Druaga experience, so I don’t want to get into the Crunchyroll nonsense yet, I just want to talk about the show — because like I said, the experience and thus the experiment don’t matter for shit unless the show is decent. I’d have to say I’m impressed. For a series that started with a joke, it ended with real maturity (and a whopping cliffhanger). Gonzo haters looking for stuff to pick on will find it, I’m sure. Look no further than the CG. But Druaga stands on its own very well, and capably next to the studio’s successes like FMP! and Speed Grapher. Besides, if you take the YouTube route, you really have nothing to lose by checking it out. That goes for non-fans of fantasy, as well.

Bottom line, The Tower of Druaga will never be top-shelf anime, but it’s entertaining enough to recommend with few reservations.

Boy am I behind! Already I’m watching first episodes, and I haven’t blogged the final Shana. It was a good one too. Except for the lines I can’t get out of my screenshots. What the hell?

Recap

Shana and Wilhelmina battle Hecate and Sydonay, while Yuji tries to get to the Silver, and thus the Reiji Maigo, before he uses all his life fighting.

He’s tossing around the Blutsauger even as he gets weaker and weaker, but Shana finally breaks through the crazy clock tower to go after him desperately. It’s sad just how crappy the high school episodes are, because I know they serve to make moments like this more dramatic, as Shana’s feelings for Yuji come to a head and seem to fill the previously-uninterested Yuji with the power to go on.

As the clock tower tomogara begins its march, Marjorie uses the last of her failing energy to cast a Fuzetsu around it to protect the city, then flies out to save Kazumi from certain doom.

The Silver proves pretty tough to beat, but I called it (not that that’s any huge achievement) — Hecate was the wild card. The scene a while back with the birds was obviously a hint, and here it all comes back to blow up in her face.

The memories and emotions she collected as Konoe make the silver try to enjoy some birds himself, giving Shana and Yuji the chance to kill him and get the Reiji Maigo. Hecate is further baffled when she finds herself tearing up.

Thoughts

I’m glad to see the series end so well. It almost had me giving up, but I’m actually glad that I didn’t. The last few episodes really brought everything home — fast paced action, creative fight scenes, touches of fanservice, and the tying of the half-baked drama back into things. I don’t think the Konoe thing was a deus ex machina, since it was obviously planned.

Most significantly, though: the Yuji Choice Maneuver from last week was restarted, and the end of the episode treats us to sad-face Kazumi and happy-face Shana, so… could it be?

I’d like to think so, but this show manages to make backwards progress an integral part of its story, so I wouldn’t be that surprised if the Love Triangle With No Sharp Edges continues.

Also, bonus screenshot because it was funny-looking.

So, I’m a weak ass who couldn’t manage to finish blogging a couple shows before they ended, but I watched them, and if I didn’t finish blogging it’s probably because I lost all interest in even hating on something. Spice and Wolf disappointed in the end for sure, but having had no expectations for H2O from minute one, I suppose I wasn’t let down.

That said, I did watch it, which reminds me of something a teacher in art school said once: if you go to a restaurant and they serve you a shit sandwich, you don’t have to eat it.

Screengrabs are all from the final episode, just to make things look more exciting.

Plot

Is there a plot? Like a plague of rats, the Visual Novel has descended upon everything, devouring real storytelling in favor of individual mini-arcs devoted to different girls. In H2O, Hirose Takuma is a middle school kid who moves out to the country with his Uncle Dragonball to recover from a bizarre disease that made him blind. If your bets were on “tragic incident in past, repressed” then either you wrote this show or you possess (at least) average intelligence.

Takuma meets a cavalcade of girls, like I’m-Not-Me, Platform Shoes, and Cross-Dress, but enters into a pseudo-relationship with village outcast Hayami, who lives in an abandoned train car in the woods and is inexplicably treated like Gojira with bad breath by the redneck townies.

Gradually the past of the village is discovered, and is of course inextricably linked to Takuma’s own recent but hazy past. And if you’re like me, you don’t care.

Animation

I suppose I’d call it “capable,” but the character designs were not at all appealing to me. The show was produced by ZEXCS, who have only a little work out there, none of which I’m familiar with.

Music

Forgettable incidentals, straight-up unenjoyable OP. I fast forwarded through it every time.

Dangers of Watching

• Fantasy elements I can handle, but those aren’t what kills the believability of the show. That’s handled by horrible characters.
• This show takes to clichés like a fish to water (see what I did there? sigh…)
• I’ll quote myself: there are some sweet moments, but it’s kind of like visiting your dying Uncle Bobo in the clown hospital — a bittersweet ending to a ludicrous experience.
• Animation is pretty crappy.

Benefits of Watching

• The aforementioned sweet moments, of which there are two or three in the series, really can be nice.
• I kind of liked Uncle Dragonball

Bottom Line

Let’s keep it simple, stupid: I pretty much hated this show.

[no really, last link to Clannad info page]

Finally! I’m vindicated! Long ago, I accused Okazaki of being a eunuch, and almost went back on my word until this happened:

Now after the charming victory for Akio in the final episode, we get a nice light-hearted comedic recap before the OVAs, where the real tragedy can feel free to happen.

Recap after the recap

Not much to speak of here, the primary story is that Okazaki and Nagisa are moving unsurprisingly slowly in their relationship, much to the dismay of Sunohara and his visiting sister Mei — who takes to some hardcore meddling.

In the process, we get one of the best laugh-out-loud Akio and Sanae moments, a pile of cutely funny scenarios involving the awkward Tomoya/Nagisa relationship, and some real insights into how our deliquent’s mind works.

In the end, they finally make it to the dangerous step of Holding Hands. They’re not wearing bathing suits though, so I’m pretty confident no one will end up pregnant.

Thoughts

If you wondered about whether Kyoto Animation could learn a little something to apply to more “conventional” projects by doing the otaku-centric but totally hilarious Lucky Star, here’s your answer. Comedic pacing is right on, down to Sunohara’s dead thumping fall after the “cute girl looking for you” joke gets played on him for the second time in the series. Basically, this episode exists to make you laugh, and it has some of the best laughs of the series, so I guess it worked.

The preview for the upcoming vids looks more up the alley I expected when Clannad started. Horror, tragedy, bad things. So what happens now? Kyoto have teased about Full Metal Panic! and Haruhi Suzumiya getting new series this year, is that out the window? Who knows, but I’m guessing a couple OVAs aren’t going to spoil everyone’s lunch.

[last link to soon-to-be-lonely info page]

This is it, people. Savor these last 20 minutes.

Recap

In spite of the ominous opening music, Noe didn’t die. She was barely hurt, just a broken leg, cushioned by the thick snow.

Jun and Hiromi have a little chat, in which he maligns her and Shinichiro’s urges to blame themselves. Seems to be his viewpoint that it doesn’t really fix anything if you say that. He confesses he never really liked her.

Shinichiro is popular back at school, thanks to his flawless execution of the traditional manly-man warrior dance. But he’s dining on awkward cake at Hiromi’s apartment, since she’s loaded down with confusion. Where does she stand in this whole triangly-shaped thing? But she has an exceptionally hard time vocalizing.

Shin asks his dad why we cry, and after recovering from his obvious surprised confusion, he says “because our hearts waver.” And that eventually makes perfect sense to Shin — because his heart wavers. But he’s not given the luxury of waffling when Hiromi delivers an ultimatum. No matter what he does, he has to do it clean.

So he goes off to show Noe his book, but she’s all full of stubborn and won’t look. He scatters the pages at the ocean where she took Jibeta, but is more than surprised to find her follow him out and try to retrieve the airplane-folded pages.

She looks at the book, and they part as he sings her little roach song, feeling guilty and sorry for himself.

Hiromi isn’t at her apartment, so Shin searches the obvious place in the woods where they walked with one shoe off as kids. Their exchange when they meet is sublime, and pretty much ends things.

Otherwise, we get a montage for closing: Jun moving away, Shin drawing more pictures, Noe making friends and becoming somewhat normal, Aiko and Miyokichi generally being cute, and of course the final shot by Raigomaru’s grave where — blink and you’ll miss it — Noe cries.

Thoughts

True Tears ended as it began: gauzy and dreamlike, seemingly casual in feel, but utterly captivating.

Its dedication to realism in the story was maintained until the end. Noe’s ultra-melodramatic attempt at suicide ended with an embarrassingly non-dramatic fractured leg, Jun slapped away everyone’s attempts at martyrdom, and most of all Shinichiro learned that love ain’t easy. Human emotions are complicated things, and unless you want to star in School Days (and we know how well that ends…), sometimes difficult choices must be made.

The thing that may have impressed me the most is that, taken from start to finish, the story moves along what seems like a very predictable arc. Nothing major (excepting the details) happened that didn’t seem like it was going to, and yet True Tears made me feel like I was watching something completely amazing and unexpected — without pummeling me with comas,  drawn-out deaths, or any of that nonsense.

This show’s position as the best thing to happen this season has been cemented as easily as it was first taken.