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.

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.

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.