Shameful Otaku Secret!

About 5 hours of my life I’ll never get back

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.

Kohinata

Yowzers. Do the kids still say that these days? I’ve been gone a while, and for those people out there who say that when “IRL” issues subjugate your blogging it’s really just an excuse for laziness, I challenge you to go through the last week of my life and still blog about cartoon television. Even if I had the readership of some of the mildly popular blogs, physical impossibility is a bitch. I barely got a chance to even watch, so I’ve been catching up.

I figure, why not grab the low-hanging fruit first? What’s the easy task? Oh, yeah. H2O.

See there’s this kid, right, and he’s blind, but th— Ah fuck it.

Recap contains spoilers if anything could possibly spoil this show for you

It’s all lovely and happy-town for Hayami and Takuma. They’ve kissed, how cute, but this is anime so that makes things more awkward than ever, especially in school.

What do you think? Your fucking EYES! Fuck!

Lots of crazy hijinks ensue when Hayami, who went from too rich to do anything herself to too poor to have electricty, tries to operate vacuums and washing machines. Takuma does it all for her, thus initiating the great Panty-Seeing of ‘08.

They’re like 12! Statistically, it’s highly unlikely!

Hotaru’s crusty old gramps is still on the warpath, so he tells Takuma and Hayami the great “spoiler.” Uncle Dragonball confirms. Turns out, blah blah arranged marriage, someone else is dead because of some vague horror brought down by the awful Kohinata family and it’s Takuma’s mom.

Really? You don’t say.

This sends Hayami into a whirlwhind of nervous apologetic turmoil, but Takuma doesn’t seem to be too bothered. At any rate, blah something, Hayami tries to go back across the bridge but it’s blocked for typhoon preparations, and those two male kids who only exist when we really need them to (and are drawn with the same eye for quality found in Pokemon fan art) find her and beat the everloving crap out of her.

Now THAT I’d watch.

What We’ve Learned

If something bad happened in the past, the Kohinatas are responsible. Also, Takuma’s going blind again. Especially if he looks at Hayami. Which makes perfect sense.

It starts now, and leads to episode 13, the Promised Land.

Thoughts

Still trying not to think. H2O does not reward thought.

If they can manage to end this with some sort of twist or story element that does not feel either predictable or totally contrived, that will be the real surprise.

Hozumi

Sometimes Kyon’s narration from Haruhi slips into my anime-related internal dialog, for instance, “Why am I watching this show? If there’s anyone out there with the answer, please let me know.” Well, I’ve found the answer. Every time you spot a well-worn anime cliché or seriously yell at the screen “I fucking knew that 6 episodes ago” or, you know, you just spot something that makes your brain tired — Drink.

Poontang! Did I get it right?

Recap: Welcome to the H2O drinking game.

Takuma sees bells everywhere, which reminds him: he has some bell that his obviously-dead mother used to wear, in some hazy flashback scenes where he reaches out but she’s walking away from him [take a fucking drink], and he brings it to school.

I’m leaving now, Takuma. Have a drink, kid.

Coincidentally, in a typical sweat-bead misunderstanding that’s become this show’s stock in trade, if a boy brings a bell to school during this festival that’s about to happen, he’s supposed to give it to a girl. And I guess that’s tantamount to obligation chocolates or something to that effect. Wow, how coincidental. Or whatever. Drink for the hell of it.

You get this yet? Anyway, a bunch of nameless girls (and Cross-dress) argue over who’s going to get the bell because there are apparently no other boys in this Village of the Damned [drink]. Platform Shoes even thinks she’s going to get the bell, which is a “funny” situation. The bell breaks, though, and Hayami takes it home to fix it.

Umm… It’s about the budget. We’re going to make them look at a medium shot of the back of our heads for at least 3 minutes this episode. If we can push it to 7, well that’d be just great.

Some thugs burn down Hayami’s train car because even though children can overcome the past, adults are terrible people yadda yadda [drink].

Yeah! That homeless little girl who lives in an old train car, she’ll destroy us all! Fuck!

Uncle Toughass lets her stay at the house, and then affects a worried look when the topic is raised at the village meeting, because there’s more to him than you imagined by his Dragonball looks [drink]. Hayami being at the house of course causes “funny” misunderstandings, like the ol’ “accidental peek in the bath” chestnut [drink], which bothers me for two reasons: one, haven’t they done that before? Like eight times? Maybe it’s just me. And two, Hayami really doesn’t know how to work a shower? Sure, she lives alone in a railroad car, but wasn’t she the richest person in town before the tragic events of the stupid past? Anyway, there’s a lot of steam covering up the details in the image (that means nipples, get it, also means drink.)

I always thought salting watermelons was weird. Now that I know the Japanese do it, this is confirmed.

I digress. To the tune of that faux-ragtime crap that plays when Yui’s on screen.

Hayami blah, Takuma tells her blah tragic past incident about a mother blah, and eventually when she goes to give him back the bell in the obligatory running-while-wearing-a-Yukata scene [take a big swig, sister], seriously this show is a bunch of clichés strung together without any reason, he says “hey can you keep that, sugar britches?” She says sure, and finally the wild girl is tamed and they smoooch under the moonlight. Apparently, Hota-Hina-whoever gave up. Reward yourself with a drink for making it through this tripe.

Like the satisfaction of getting to the Barry Manilow show on time, coupled with the disappointment of your realization that it’s Barry Fucking Manilow… Looks like we made it.

What We’ve Learned

I think I might hate this show. But now I’m drunk.

Itadakimasu! Now, wash down this scene of young girls enjoying phallic treats with… a drink!

Thoughts

Is there anything to think about? They’ve now given me no reason to wait for next episode, even the horse heads were gone, and I cared so little to begin with. Now I’m pretty sure I’m at the bottom of my Bag of Fucks, and I just can’t give any more to H2O.