Shameful Otaku Secret!

Eureka-ism

This one’s still fresh in my mind. Xam’d: Lost Memories aka Bounen no Xamdou aka Bonen no Zamned is proving to be one of the year’s finest shows. And honestly that doesn’t surprise me much. After RahXephon and Eureka Seven, Bones should command attention when they create an original mecha series — especially with Sony forking over a small country’s annual budget to get it made and shipped out via PS3. As this is still the current episode, I won’t post a picture and I won’t even talk too much about it. Suffice to say… episode 19.

There are those who thought it was too much, but there are those who didn’t like Diebuster either. For me, a tribute is a fine line — Macross Frontier was 26 episodes of tribute, and while it was mostly enjoyable, I’ve made my overall opinion known so I won’t go on and on. But a beautiful, seat-gripping moment like this one? I’ll take a tribute. Especially considering what it did for the story and mood of Xam’d.

Aside from their consistently high production values, unique recognizable style, and obsession with western aesthetics, there’s an even stronger mark of a Bones production (at least of their grandest projects): their stories’ unshaking faith and optimism. Hope and love are Bones’ hard work and guts.

The start of a wild ride

Soul Eater has turned out to be a monumentally entertaining shounen action/adventure, with a minimum of the fillers and talk-through-battles syndrome that plague other series of the genre. The characters are good, the humor is silly but spot-on, and of course the action is rad. But when I first saw the opening episode, I had no idea what I was in for, and Bones capitalized on that like no one in recent memory.

The opening episode of Soul Eater will forever stick out in my mind as “the right way to start a series.” Unlike sneaky beginnings like Ga-Rei, Soul Eater doesn’t rely on confusing its audience. Everything’s pretty straightforward, it’s just an incredible rush of excitement. The mysterious opening monologue that segues into an OP that’s made of wild anticipation, the crazy character designs and manic fighting, all the way to the “Ikouze!” closing song — it all added up to a total experience that I absolutely had to watch again to believe. And then I had to show it to mai waifu, who was hooked just as fast.

Soul Eater’s greatest strength may have been its ability to maintain, but its most standout moment will probably always be its first. And yes, I realize that it’s not so much a moment as 22 moments, each a minute long, but it’s my blog, and you go to hell.

So… what’s on?

Lots of people do it, I suppose, but when I first started doing the “What’s on” posts, was I subconsciously copying Kabitzin? Probably, but then he went and got married just to copy me, so I hope we’re even. I haven’t seen a standout episode worth blogging in a while, so… what’s on at my house? (organized by how current I am, since that’s a pretty good gauge of my interest)

Caught up

Code Geass. It’s a sea change for Zero. Now that Lulu has pretty much lost everything, I’m anxious to see where the story goes. Maybe Goro and Sunrise aren’t even sure, who knows. I’ve been thinking for a while that LeDouche would end up founding a new group, consisting of Kallen, Orange, C.C. (for whatever that’s worth these days), and probably Suzaku, but I’m not sure what exactly I think this crew will actually do. What I am sure of is that Suzaku losing his marbles is pretty awesome.

Soul Eater. This one’s hitting its stride with action after some really funny non-fighting episodes. It’s getting dangerously close to the standard shounen series that it parodies, but there’s still enough style and humor to set it apart. Incidentally, I watched the Excalibur episode a couple times, making it Soul Eater’s first repeat for me in a while. America!

The Return of Maid Guy. I hope public outcry has brought those fansubbers back on for the duration (two more episodes), because the ridiculous Miko episode was gold. In fact, it was so brilliant, it was a fanservice show about fanservice. Meta.

Real Drive. When you take a step back, RD is just a series of portraits of this future world that Shirow has created, with Nyamo serving as a window for the viewer to look through. Still not a lot of people watching this one, but I’m glad to see that they’re all very vocal about how much they love it.

Macross F. Sheryl went through a nice period of “Who’s moe now, bitch?” but it looks like Ranka’s getting a little taste of pain just as she realizes how smitten she is with Alto, for whom shoujo bubbles were seemingly invented. Hopefully Alto won’t be fighting his next battle in a nice boat instead of a variable fighter. The self-shipping/everyone’s-on-a-date episode was dumb to me. And by the way… triangles, we get it. Worse than the freaking pineapple dessert. Anyway, I’m watching, still up to date… but for some reason I’m not doing a lot of caring. Oh yeah, the animation is dog shit. See above, Sinbad.

Daughter of 20 Faces. Chiko’s aunt has yet to learn that her niece is immune to soup-based attacks, but Tome has thankfully put those to a stop with a little blackmail. Akechi’s starting to look formidable, and though he seems nice enough, I don’t think he’s looking for Twenty Faces so he can make friends. It seems like the series is getting a tad sloppy lately, but I’m still on board and ready to find out what the hell TF did to himself in the lab to get so un-killable.

Behind

Bonin’ knows, am dough. aka, Xam’d: Lost Memories, aka Bonen No Xamdou aka Bounen No Zamned aka 亡念のザムド aka bleeeeearararagh. You could bullet list the similarities to Eureka Seven: motley ship crew (mailmen rather than surfers), organic mecha things, familial issues, grumpy captain. But as OGT mentioned, Xam’d opted to start with a bang instead of Eureka’s gradual ramp-up. Like Soul Eater’s first couple episodes, Xam’d grabs you with its action, energetic mood, and typically awesome Bones style. Don’t expect too many more episodes of 20 Faces with great animation though, since the Xam’d crew is currently wallpapering their cubicles with approximately Lichenstein’s annual defense budget. Even though I’m behind, this one is high on my list.

Blassreiter. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but when the series took a brighter turn toward action and away from everyone dying, my interest level dropped. There’s just not enough dark stuff going on in my anime lately. Still, Amanda is one of my favorite characters currently, and who doesn’t want to see Wolf get his just desserts deserts desserts whatever.

Nabari No Ou. Still watching. Still gay. It got pretty cool for a while, with Miharu playing both sides and everyone stepping up their game. I’m pretty far behind on this one, but the big make-out session is inevitable, right?

Itazura Na Kiss. I really love the fact that a romantic anime has the balls to go past the wedding. Unfortunately, Kotoko still hasn’t grown as a character much, and the gender role issues that are coming to the fore make a somewhat progressive Yankee like me uncomfortable. But it’s cute, and the humor is still spot-on much of the time.

Kind of stopped caring.

Kyouran Kazoku Nikki. I still push play with excited abandon, but for a few episodes now I’ve been met with disappointment. The American-accented teacher was a riot, but what is this thing they’ve introduced? … oh god, it’s a plot.

Koihime Musou. I tried. I’m not sure why, but I tried. KM has a good heart, and piles of fanservice, but really, it’s dumb. As you can see, I am watching a lot of anime right now and I just don’t have room for Samurai Girl-on-Girl Pantyshot Showdown, fun as that sounds.

Golgo 13. I watch it whenever I’m bored and have no backlog, which is rarely. But the episodic format makes it great for just that. I can pick up Duke whenever I want and not worry that I won’t know what’s going on.

Special Rapey Bonus

Detroit Metal City. Go watch this thing. It’s fucking hilarious. It doesn’t have anything to do with Detroit (trust me, I lived there), but it has a lot to do with pig-bitch-rape, patricide, and sensitive artists. There’s not a big time commitment — it flies by at about ten rapes a second — and it packs a lot of laughs into a short, unique period.

So… there’s my schedule of watching (and generally not blogging) about cartoons. I don’t know how it happened, I just looked up one day and I was watching a lot of shit. Anyone else have this kind of anime load right now?