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.

You’re both wrong

I know, I know. I really am terrible. Behind the curve. I just watched Elfen Lied. Incidentally, that name is hard to type, it keeps coming out Lief, like Garrett. Apparently it’s German, meaning “Elf Song,” why I’m not sure I’m interested in knowing. What I do know is that a few years ago when this series came out it was instantly notorious — and very divisive — thanks to its vicious opening minutes, and its gratuitous nudity, violence, and reliance on anime clichés.

You act all cool like you don’t think this is awesome, but look. at. it.

Story

Elfen Lied concerns mutated people called diclonius who, at the age of about three, begin to kill with invisible arms called vectors. One especially nasty one called Lucy escapes containment in a research facility in the beginning and proceeds to wreck shit until the amnesiac, mellow and friendly side of her split personality takes over and she moves in with a boring guy called Kouta and his equally boring cousin Yuka in their inherited house/former inn, where they all eat noodles and fuck like beasts. I made only one part of that up, just replace it with “engage in pseudo-hilarious antics of vaguely sexual misunderstanding.” Here’s where shit gets bad, and that’s the first episode. From here on out you’ll find an endless parade of anime clichés from nearly every genre, all living under one roof at the Love Hina Inn.

• Pair of cousins who enjoyed life as childhood friends until the boy moved away and the girl developed unrequited love for him.
• Girl from the sky/aether/secret research lab with destructive powers who doesn’t understand our world and can’t communicate well, and throws herself at boring protagonist.
• A harem-esque setting that continually grows.
• A scientist who loves one of his experiments as his own child while his real offspring suffer.
• A cold-ass female scientist with possible feelings for aforementioned other scientist who eventually realizes her mistakes too late.
• Horrible tragedy in the past causing protagonist to lose all memory until the climactic scene when finally he realizes what the audience has been shouting at him for 13 episodes while throwing Doritos at the TV.
• Nudity. Lots of nudity. And as a bonus… fanservice too. Sounds weird, but it won’t once you see this thing.

So detractors really have a lot of ammo, but at least there’s truly unbeatable gore. The vectors can twist and tear people apart brutally and instantly, so buckets of splatter and severed spines are really the flavor of the day here. Is that enough? I don’t know. There’s not a lot of depth here until the final couple episodes.

Animation and Design

Character design is really crap, except for vicious-eyed Lucy, who seemed to have a little time put into her. The animation is totally capable and really shines during the action/gore scenes. Decapitation seemed to be a real priority for these animators. Diclonius have “horns,” but tell me with a straight face they’re not cat-girl ears.

The OP is actually great with Latin chanting and a Gustav Klimt painting come to life.

Fanservice is an odd thing to think about in a series where at least three characters spend a lot of time completely naked. Supposedly there is some symbolism and thought in the nudity, but I didn’t catch it so well. It is interesting, though, the animators (Genco) did seem to treat the naked diclonius different from fanservice: if you need proof, check out episode 6, which is that obligatory burst-of-panty-shots episode you so often see. Someone was definitely conscious of making “fanservice” its own entity here.

bewbs bewbs bewbs OH GOD

Thoughts

The content itself is really going to get in a lot of people’s way, and I think that’s fine, it’s rough at times. Only one bothered me, and if you have a problem with violence against puppies (who are you? Hitler?) it’ll bother you too. But all in all, I not only enjoy the ridiculous gore, I think those scenes are the only ones that really kept driving it for me until the end. Kouta’s moment of realization of what happened to him 8 years ago was obvious in its conclusion, but the execution of it is brutal. And Lucy’s childhood is pretty nasty as well.

what body parts?

If you can see past the clichés and easy routes, you’ll especially find a great character in Director Kurama and a decent, if not especially deep, commentary on the nature and importance of family. But the emotional involvement you can get from Elfen Lied is a lot weaker than what its proponents have claimed.

Before you ask, the girl fights are not hot. Well, depending on your views on dismemberment.

Ultimately the good is pretty good and the bad is really bad, so it’s a battle for your taste. Your level of anime fandom in general may be directly proportional to the amount of retreaded abbreviations and clichés that you can take before you snap. So I guess that makes Elfen Lied an interesting proposition: Those people who aren’t too familiar with the old chestnuts and those who are willing to overlook them will find scraps of a decent story and some cool brutal action. But in the end it’s neither as horrible or great as people have made it out to be. It’s fairly forgettable save for some of anime’s best dismemberment scenes.

I guess at least there won’t be another show I’ll say that about any time soon.