Shameful Otaku Secret!

Apparently, lots

I’m keeping myself busy with blogging (as if I wasn’t busy without it) this season, but I never forget to enjoy. After all, it’s not a job. And there are a lot more interesting shows on this season than last. What else is good?

Kure-Nai.
So far I like the main character, I love the animation (although some facial character designs are just anatomically fucked), and the premise could be interesting, if possibly creepy. And what’s with his arm? Check this one out if you haven’t yet. OP and ED are weirdly inappropriate for the mood, but this show is shaping up to be a very unexpected mix of violent and cute, scary and sweet.

Golgo 13.
Golgo 13 is so old your dad probably read his mangas (assuming your dad is Japanese), and he’s so badass I won’t shit-talk him for fear he’ll jump out of my TV and kill my ass. Until it’s dead. Golgo 13 eats GAR and shits bullets. Also, he fucks the hell out of some prostitutes. Apparently, he’s voiced by a “real” actor, and it pays off. His dour voice matches his toughass appearance, which is something like a grown up version of Shin-Chan when he dresses like Lupin III. What impressed me the most was that the whole episode led up to a single sniper shot, and they managed to make that single moment suitably awesome instead of horribly anticlimactic. Watch this or Golgo 13 will come fuck and kill you.

Vampire Knight.
Check it out, it’s Jun Fukuyama. Along with the current other hotness, Mamoru Miyano (Setsuna F. Yagami), together at last. In another dumb vampire show. Apologies to the people who liked this from the get-go, or who liked the manga (vampires are not zombies, so… didn’t read). But I’m really not behind it. Will keep trying for a couple more episodes, but I really don’t like vampires.

I think vampire shows and movies (both Japanese and Western) try very hard to put a new spin on the whole bloodsucker thing every time, and rarely does it work, except for the goth kids.

Special A.
Oh guess what? Jun Fukuyama, who seems increasingly unable to sound anything other than egomaniacal. Along with Yuko Goto, who cannot sing (it was funny in The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina, but precisely because she can’t sing). Actually, no one here can sing, and yet the cast is tapped for both the opening and closing songs. The style is fun, but everything else screams “meh” and I hate saying “meh.”

Kamen No Maid Guy.
Looks like Kabitzin is following this one, and I’m already regretting that I didn’t put it up against Kanokon in my Ecchi Deathmatch, To Love-RU may not be up to the challenge. Kanokon shocks me with its volume of questionable content, but Maid Guy disturbs with the questionability of its questionable content. And its intense focus on the protagonist’s rack.

Nabori No Ou.
Ninjas tend to be a warning sign for me. Warning: show you will hate coming! Danger! (The Tick aside, of course.) The wife liked it though, mostly for the style and the admittedly super cool action sequences, but hopefully not as much for the trap and the gay undertones. I’m impressed at JC Staff’s ability to give this such style, so I’ll give it a go.

Blassreiter
Still haven’t made it through episode 1. I can’t take the video game graphics.

The Tower of Druaga
I found episode 1 marginally fun, but I keep hearing they cut the fun. I dunno, I did that “download the mp4 version from YouTube” trick with episode 2 and put it on my iPhone, where higher-quality YouTube vids actually look OK, but I haven’t watched it.

Kyouran Kazoku Nikki
The “Kazoku” in question consists of a nerdy Fox Mulder wannabe dad, an over-loli-fied catgirl mother, and five kids: A human girl, a lion, a biological weapon, a jellyfish, and the living embodiment of Japan’s latent homophobia. To call this “throwaway” might be an understatement but they did bother to go a little crazy so I’ll give it three episodes to convince me I’m crazy.

Random Thought

Incidentally, Anime News Network has jumped on the Episodic Blogging bandwagon, so does that mean they endorse the questionable practice of fansubbing? I’m guessing mid-season licenses, if any, will consist of Soul Eater, Macross, and maybe Allison & Lillia, so you kids better stop watching when that happens, you hear? I mostly mention it because one of their writers had this to say about Kanokon:

I suspect that only the hardest of hardcore otaku will be much amused.

Snap! Boy do I feel worthless now, because trust me, I am amused. Horrified, sure, shocked and ashamed, yes, but also highly amused.

Year of the Robot begins

I’ve been a busy boy. In the name of research, I watched a lot of first episodes. And in the name of science, I’ve visualized some of the data based on those episodes. Here’s what I’ve found:

Wow! As you can see, skirt hems are way up, as is Jun Fukuyama, while visual novel adaptations and of course camera angles are at an all-time low.

The sidebar tells its story, and I have a lineup of 6 count ‘em 6 piles of animation ranging from pure shit to pure Macross.

The Swingin’ Six

• Macross Frontier
  Alto is pretty, sure, by no means a match for the ladylike Gundam Meisters of last season’s Son of Double-Ought Robot Suit 137, record-setting even for their ridiculously effeminate franchise. View preview post »
• Code Geass R2 Pizza Count Project
  I personally find Pizza Hut to be a disgusting greasy mess, but even I can’t help but desire it just a little after watching C.C. order pie after pie of cheesy thick-crust product placement. View preview post »
• Soul Eater
  Were you one of those kids that thought it’d be fun to snort Pixie Stix? Even better, do you still do it? This is for you. View preview post »
• Allison & Lillia
  Sometimes after watching a lot of anime you really need to feel something wholesome. Probably need to eat something wholesome too. Pocky is not food, nor is Pizza Hut. View preview post »
• Itazura Na Kiss
  After a long run of Kyoto Eunuch High School Platonic Harem and its school populated entirely by nearly-identical Big-Eyed Moe Goddesses, an anime for girls — complete with downright homely-ass sidekicks and the guy who voiced Makoto playing a dickhead — seemed like just the thing. Aaaah. View preview post »
• ECCHI DEATHMATCH ‘08!
  Now this I’m excited about. Two absolutely awful shows enter. One absolutely awful show emerges victorious. We all lose. Every week, I will pit Fox Girl Panty Shot High (or Kanokon as you might call it) against Tenchi Rides Again! (more accurate name for To Love-Ru) and we’ll see whose breasts bounce the highest. The ’snapshot’ guy from the Random Curiosity blog actually quit over the flaming he got for (among other things) ripping on TLR, so in my own little way I am expressing some solidarity. Because if I may judge from one episode, it is horrible. View Kanokon preview post »

Not appearing in this post

Or so you think!

• Special A
  It screamed lame, pointless, and unlikely at me, though its gaggle of sparkly voice actors (including holy shit, Jun Fukuyama) seemed appealing and I liked the thin wobbly legs.
• Vampire Knight
  Like certain other shows trying to be a new angle on vampires, I bet this would be really good on Adult Swim featuring Crispin Freeman, where I’d find myself watching just because it’s on after Death Note. Nice use of Jun Fukuyama though.
• The Tower of Druaga
  I think it’s great what Gonzo is doing. Really. And thanks to their cool plan, this show is already at episode 2 in the non-Japan world. But the jury’s out still. It might be funny, though, and I’ll probably at least give it a try.
• Blassreiter
  I think it’s great what Gonzo is doing. Really. But this thing looks just awful. Gag me with a fucking computer-animated motorcycle that looks like it came out of a bad video game.

And there’s my season. Six shows, can I keep up? We’ll see. But it should be fun either way.

New show promises adventure, may have candy in van

This season’s getting crowded. After last season’s initial reactions, which ranged from ho-hum to enraged to “hey I know what would shake up a boring season, let’s enter the already-crowded anime blog space partway through,” my brain shakes and twitches like a junkie’s at the though of Macross and Geass fixes. I doubt I will watch everything I started with (I see no intrinsic value in Special A aside from the fact that Jun Fukuyama is in another freaking show), and I probably shouldn’t be blogging everything I watch. Oddly, Geass may fall into that list, much as I enjoy watching it, unless I can make a really fun game out of screencapping Pizza Hut logos and goth poses. And then along comes Allison & Lillia.

Story and Characters

Allison & Lillia was initially a bit confusing to me until I found out that the series is divided in half: Lillia is Allison’s daughter and doesn’t appear until the second half of the series.

In an alternate reality defined by an early-20th-century European look and a country at constant war with its neighbor, Wilhelm is a model student, so much so that he’s often asked to teach younger kids in the name of obvious plot exposition (still beats Special A, seriously). But one day in the middle of school his childhood friend Allison shows up in her biplane. Apparently she opted for the air force instead of high school.

When they encounter an old man with a bunch of made-up stories, their summer starts to get odd. One of his stories about his days in the army — which he claims to have not made up — turns Allison and Wil’s notions of world history upside down.

But before they can find out more, a man in a black car who claims to be the tax assessor takes oji-san away. Sensing something suspicious, impulsive and athletic Allison drags the reserved and bookish Wil along in a chase that starts by motorcycle but ends the episode in a plane, and very obviously begins a huge old-school adventure.

Psych Evaluation

Are you interested in seeing a cartoon where a pair of kids go off on a grand adventure in what (at first glance) appears to be a family-friendly, but grand and epic way? Would you like to see such a show capably animated in a vaguely vintage-feeling style? Then you, my friend, are sane! I know I want to see it, and I am almost definitely not that crazy.

This show had near-instant appeal for me. In spite of what my sidebar tells you, I’m still in the midst of establishing what to blog, but this has a better chance than most of making it on the list.

Will it hold up? Madhouse’s animation varies between shows but they are solid technicians, usually consistent from beginning to end. In this case it’s not bad, not great, but certainly watchable. Computers are used minimally to improve the smoothness of the airplanes in flight, and it works very well. The music enhances that old-school adventure feel, and seems very cinematic if this episode is any indication.

It was really refreshing, much as I like robots and Jun Fukuyama (and as much as you like fox-girl-panties, come on…), to see something like this. I’m really interested in seeing where it goes.