Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu

May 24, 2008 at 7:18 am | In anime, comedy, could be worse, harem, nothing happens (and that's ok), school syndrome, you kids get off my lawn | 2 Comments

Summary: not as great as advertised, but interesting once over the hump
Based on: 14 episodes (first season)
Series info: at Anime News Network

I probably don’t really need to review this one since you’ve likely already heard of it and seen some of it, but it would be silly to just ignore it since it was such a huge phenomenon and reviewers generally seem to be unable to articulate what makes this show stand out (besides the media oversaturation).

It suffers a bit from school syndrome and harem, but not awfully. The school setting gets less and less important, and there are only three main girls.  It’s also a show where nothing really happens yet contains more plot twists than most shows do in 26 episodes.  It’s fairly formulaic on the surface and overly marketed, but it does three things I found interesting that raise it above the genre:

First, it says that it’s okay not to like the main (female) character. The male lead is your normal unremarkable harem anime nebbish, but Haruhi herself is selfish, rude, and generally unlike normal anime girls who are there to cater to the audience (most ‘bad’ girls are appealingly so). And, calculatedly, this in itself is appealing. In contrast the other two girls are basically complaisant dolls there to receive your deflected affections: so you didn’t like a real girl – how about… this (Mikuru’s breasts here)?

Second, it dares you to not like the show.  The episodes are shown out of chronological order, and it starts with the most (purposely) awkward, stupid, and badly acted and voiced episode of the series. Are you lookin’ at me? Are you lookin’ at me? C’mon, I dare you, turn it off. Then the next eps set up your generic school romance/harem formula. You have to sit through quite a bit to get to any payoff at all. It’s playing hard to get where most anime is pathetically eager to please.

Third, it’s unafraid to lull you into complacency then sucker punch you. I can’t say too much without spoiling it, but it’s willing to take the most base of plot cliches, mix them into that totally vanilla school romance/harem formula, then embrace the outre consequences. This in itself isn’t quite so abnormal (most series are ‘generic setting plus something weird’), but the breadth is unusual.

So yes, this is overhyped and overmarketed, but it’s worth watching if only as an exercise in deconstruction and hating the viewer as a useful tool.  And you might even enjoy it once you get past the first few episodes.

Aria

May 22, 2008 at 7:19 am | In anime | 3 Comments

Summary: nothing happens (and that’s ok), whole family, warm and fluffy
Based on: 53 episodes
Series Info: at Anime News Network

I initially passed on this series, thinking it was too girly and contentless… and I was right, but wrong. This is possibly the best anime ever made for young girls, completely escaping the magical girl ghetto.

This is technically future sci-fi: Earth (Manhome) is a completely sanitized existence while Mars has been geoformed into a paradisical water planet (Aqua).  A young girl (Akari) and her friends are gondoliers in training in a suspiciously rustic Martian Venice.  But really all that is just an excuse for the characters. The show tries just a little too hard to be warm and fuzzy, so it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Haibane Renmei, but it’s still stylish, warm, and beautiful. Even the costumes are stylishly reminiscent of Ainu designs. Graphically it’s the closest thing you’re going to find to the beauty of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikkou.

You can watch this with the whole family, but young males will likely be bored out of their skulls. Do not show this to an older male unless you know he’s a) secure in his manhood, or b) has a wife/girlfriend he can watch it with as an excuse.

This is actually split into four series.  Start with Aria – The Animation (13 eps). If you like that, then leap on Aria – The Natural (26 eps), Aria – Arietta (an OVA), and Aria – The Origination (currently in progress). Tokyopop is publishing the manga as Aqua (2 books) and Aria (several books), which is also worth getting.

Warning: Don’t skip the opening credits, they’re different every time.

define: magical girl

May 22, 2008 at 7:10 am | In anime | 2 Comments

Unfortunately, half the anime for young girls falls into this category, which is an ancient one (Mahoutsukai Sally in the mid 60s). The formula is simple: normal girl finds a magical artifact or cute animal and turns into a hero of justice. This can be done well, but it’s just so overdone. It’s also very hard to invoke the one episode rule on these shows because the first couple of episodes are always extremely formulaic, since the shoujo cliche demands it.  The first 4-6 eps are always girl meets magical helper, enemy shows up, magical girl defeats it by invoking her magical power. Even the best shows start out deceptively formulaic.

Common variations on the theme include:

  • Magical girl team (like Tokyo Mew Mew or Pretty Cure)
  • Young girl turns into adult when using her magic
  • Magical device is needed for the transformation which can be marketed to heck to young girls (Pretty Cure is pretty blatant about this).

The canonical magical girl show is Pretty Solider Sailor Moon.  Some of the best are Princess Tutu, Card Captor Sakura, and Magical Lyrical Nanoha.

Decent adult sendups (not for kids) of the genre are Puni Puni Poemi and Lingire Soldier Papillon Rose.

define: nothing happens (and that’s ok)

May 22, 2008 at 6:50 am | In definition, nothing happens (and that's ok) | 1 Comment

Occasionally you get a show where nothing happens… and that’s okay. Well maybe something happens. Maybe the main character visits a park. Or meets a ghost.  Or time travels.  But it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the characters and the setting and the fuwa fuwa (warm fluffy).  If you’re a fan of Jane Austen or Patrick O’ Brien novels you know this – it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

Non-comedy anime series that try this often end up being too precious or cute for their own good (especially falling prey to buffet of girls, but those that can pull it off are some of the best. I’m going to exclude comedy series, since most of them fall into the ‘nothing happens’ category – it’s the serious or whimsical that are much harder to pull off.

A prime example of this is Haibane Renmei (one of the best anime ever), where anything that actually happens is just incidental. One of the best manga ever, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikkou (Yokohama Shopping Trip), is perhaps the epitome of it – if there were more than just a measly 4 episodes of it it would be on the best anime list. Another fine example is Aria.

define: buffet of girls

May 16, 2008 at 10:41 pm | In buffet of girls, definition | 1 Comment

This is obviously related to harem, but isn’t quite the same. The harem usually involves the buffet of girls but you can have the buffet of girls without the harem.

This kind of show runs down the fetish list and makes sure you have one girl for each of the major categories. You have the dumb tanned athletic girl, the brainy glasses wearing class rep (iincho) type, the well-stacked ditz, the lolicon girl, the blue-eyed blonde haired foreign girl, the ‘weird’ girl, on and on. Each girl is more or less the objectified personification of her fetish. Probably the nadir of this is Negima! which makes sure you have 31 different fetishes taken care of like robot girls, witch girls, etc. [1]

The high school girl comedy genre is very prone to this: No central male character (or sometimes any at all) to make it a harem, but one of each girl for the viewers. It’s your harem! What makes Azumanga Daioh superior to similar series like Pani Poni Dash is the way the latter objectifies the girls (complete with cheesecake shots for their first appearances), who are no deeper than their stereotypes, and the former doesn’t. [2] And Pani Poni is still fairly mild as far as this goes – it just would have been much better without it.

Another well-known example is Lucky Star – the only character with any depth on the entire show is Kagami, and the template for Konata is about as coldly cynical as I can imagine.  But while it’s ruthlessly commercial it’s not as exploitative as something like Shuffle!.

Does this sound too cynical, like these series are factory production lines? Well it should, because that’s exactly the case. The doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it if it’s done well, but recognizing this really helps your up front crapfilter.

[1] To be fair, the execution is far better than his previous Love Hina, but the premise is still the ultimate example of buffet of girls.
[2] Azumanga even includes type overlap (‘redundant’ characters) which is usually anathema for this kind of show since it’s inefficient to have your fetishes doubled up.

Anime Del33ter

May 14, 2008 at 7:01 am | In meta | Leave a Comment

I wrote a little wrapper around mencoder to simplify the task of converting mkvs, mp4s, wmvs and those other formats to convert them to avis my X360, PS3, or N800 can easily playback.

Anime Del33ter is located here.

Vampire Knight

May 14, 2008 at 12:51 am | In adventure, anime, could be worse, one episode rule, ridiculous premise, school syndrome, shoujo cliche, spring 2008, yaoibait | Leave a Comment

Summary: slightly better than average vampire bishounen
Based on: 4 eps
Series Info: at Anime News Network

(Image taken from FuanBLOG where you can see ep by ep summaries)

At this school there is the Day Class and the Night Class. The Night Class are all secretly(!) vampires, and all the girls of the Day Class are wildly enamored with them because they are of course all gorgeous and moody and aloof.  Two prefects from the Day Class are adopted children of the headmaster and are the only ones who know the secret, but of course they have mysterious secrets of their own.

Everything about this screams typical – it’s got all your bishounen vampire cliches, it’s at a fabulously stylish high school, and moody sullen pretty boys abound. But I think in this case it actually manages to transcend the cliches with some very nice art, some decent action sequences, passable plot and dialogue considering the setup, and a slowly growing sense of discomfort. The only place where it really falls down is where the headmaster is involved – when he’s in the scene it’s a painful reminder of everything wrong with shows like Trinity Blood and Saiyuki.

So this isn’t exactly a glowing endorsement, but if you need your shoujo fix this season this is probably your best choice.

Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture

May 14, 2008 at 12:22 am | In anime, best, comedy, one episode rule, ridiculous premise | Leave a Comment

Summary: Boy can see microbes, mild comedy, must watch
Based on: 11 Episodes (all of them so far)
Series Info: on Anime News Network

(This great pic is taken from randomc where you can see more pics and more plot.)

This show falls firmly into the ‘ridiculous premise yet still managing to be awesome’ category.  Tadeyasu, seen above, can see microbes like E. Coli, brewer’s yeast, mold spores, as little cartoony characters. But this is really used mostly as a gimmick – the real action is in the relationships of people around him. He himself is just a big hapless straightman who gets swept up in the various dramas and people plotting to use his talent. Since it’s based at a college and not a high school or middle school it’s technically a school anime but completely escapes school syndrome.

It reminds me of Nodame Cantabile more than anything else, so I guess it’s not surprising that there are some small Moyashimon/Nodame crossovers in the manga.

There’s also plenty of fascinating information about the various microbes (especially yeast in the context of fermentation) – make sure you watch the Microbe Theater after the credits at the very end of every episode.

The big downer here is that the anime is only 11 episodes, which covers a small fraction of the story that’s gone by in the manga.  It also severely cuts back the manga microbe scenes.  I’ve resorted to buying and reading the manga even though it’s intensely text-heavy and my kanji skills are weak. Apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way, since the manga has been winning awards left and right, including the prestigious Kodansha Manga and Tezuka Cultural awards.  So maybe they’ll make some more anime (please?).

The only negative thing I can say about it is that it resorts to more cheesecake than it really needs to.  Nothing like the constant panty flashes of your teen anime, but it’s a bit gratuitous and out of context here.

Moyashimon wins Kodansha and Tezuka Awards

May 13, 2008 at 6:31 pm | In anime | Leave a Comment

The Moyashimon (one of my all time best list) manga just won this years prestigious Kodansha Award for best general (i.e., for grownups) manga and the Tezuka Award Manga Grand Prize. Perhaps this will convince them to give us that desperately needed second anime season.

Anime News Network Kodansha Awards

Anime News Network Tezuka Awards

Spring 2008 Update

May 11, 2008 at 8:51 pm | In meta, spring 2008 | Leave a Comment

Well, there’s not too much more to say about the current season, but I’ve been keeping things up to date in the Spring 2008 Summary. The things I’m still watching are Kaiba, Kure-nai, Daughter of Twenty Faces, Library War, Allison and Lillia, Macross Frontier (I’m just a sucker for Yoko Kanno), Chi’s Sweet Home, and for my dumbass guilty pleasure show, Kamen no Maid Guy.

Hope to do writeups for Allison and Lillia, Vampire Knight, and Wagaya no Oinari-sama soon.

define: ridiculous premise

May 1, 2008 at 7:06 am | In definition, ridiculous premise | 4 Comments

The title pretty much says it all, but this certainly deserves its own category. Sometimes you get an anime that has a trick premise that’s just so ridiculous it impacts your enjoyment of it even if you love it otherwise. It just erects a huge barrier between you and your immersion.

On the other hand, if a really bad anime has a ridiculous premise, that’s a plus because then you can at least enjoy making fun of it.  Or if it’s a comedy anime it doesn’t matter so much that the premise doesn’t make sense because you’re just in it for the characters and comedy.

The poster child for ridiculous premise is probably Library War.

Update: a commenter (read the great comment below) notes that Midori no Hibi is another candidate for most ridiculous premise: the girl the guy secretly likes (and vice versa) ends up as his left hand.  But in this case it doesn’t really hurt the anime, which is passable teen comedy romance.

And now that I’m thinking about it, there’s Luna Varga, which has a girl sticking out of a T-Rex’s forehead.

It doesn’t matter

May 1, 2008 at 6:52 am | In you kids get off my lawn | Leave a Comment

I’ve had people ask me why my reviews never really give any character names or detailed plot background when most anime reviews spend at least a paragraph setting you up with the premise and actors.

Simple: in most cases, it doesn’t matter. Do you really care if the high school robot pilot prodigy’s name is (with high probability) Akira or Ryousuke, or the plucky girl who’s great at sports and has secretly fallen for him has purple hair and her name is Reiko and she’s the sole heir of the incredibly rich Tanaka family? Do you care if the evil organization is named Warudyne or E.V.I.R. or P.O.O.P.Y.? No. None of this matters unless you watch the first episode yourself and enjoy it, and there’s no reason for me to tell you any of that up front except to prove that I actually bothered to watch it or I think I’m writing a book report for high school.

Generally you’ve seen it all before a dozen times. So unless I’m particularly taken by something or think it somehow matters in whether or not you should see the show (like if the premise and execution are unspeakably deficient) I won’t waste your time or mine with it.

– Cranky Oldtaku

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