Kuroshitsuji

October 8, 2008 at 7:31 am | In anime, fall 2008, ridiculous premise, shoujo cliche, yaoibait | Leave a Comment

Summary: Shojou Hellsing (again)
Based on: 1 episode
Series Info: at Anime News Network (pic shamelessly stolen)

[edit: I reread my initial review of this, and it came off far too harsh - sure, this is formulaic, but it's not as bad as I made it out to be.]

Sigh. It really is disappointing that anime/manga for girls are even more more generic than anime/manga for boys. Aren’t women supposed to be more subtle, nuanced, and intelligent than stupid brutish men? Then you look at Harlequin romances (and shojo anime) and realize this isn’t the case. Women prefer their plots even more formulaic and predictable than men do.

So now that I’ve got that ranting out of the way, if you liked Nabari no Ou this is the your shojo anime for you this season.  Ciel Phantomhive (eye-patched prettyboy) is the heir of the English Phantomhive toy dynasty. His butler, Sebastian, is an ultra-competent ultra-handsome demon lord. Everyone else in the household is comic relief.

I had a brief moment of appreciation for this show when it actually invoked some horror (the oven scene), but then it completely cheapened and nullified it. The best I can say is this isn’t as horribly bad as Trinity Blood.

But, for you people who need your formulaic prettyboys (and I have my own guilty pleasures), this is your show. And the production values are indisputably good.

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.

define: shoujo cliche

April 28, 2008 at 5:24 am | In definition, shoujo cliche | Leave a Comment

I know I’m going to take some crap for this, but after watching hundreds of anime (and reading hundreds of manga), I’m going to assert the following: anime/manga for females is far more cliche and forumlaic  than anime/manga for males.

Now I’m not sure why this should be. Generally series for males (’shounen’) fall victim to the fight fight fight cliche and the harem cliche.  Put crudely, all guys are interested in are beating things up and screwing.  And females are generally viewed as being more interested in dialogue and relationships than males, so you’d expect female anime or manga to be more varied: yet it’s not.

Series for young girls tends to fall into the endlessly recycled magical girl category  while anime for teen girls tends to fall into the cliche bishounen (beautiful dangerous guys) category. Characters are little more than a small set of quirks to be exploited for humorous effect, some hidden tragedy in their past to give them a veneer of depth, and emotions limited to self pity, unfulfilled longing, unfocused rage, vague protectiveness, and ‘being cool’. I know the last isn’t really an emotion, exactly, but it seems to qualify as a primary state of mind for the characters.

Since cliches are the main detriment to my enjoyment of new series (been there, done that, dozens of times) you’ll see that I recommend very few shoujo (‘girls’) anime. I freely admit that as a man I don’t understand it completely: is this some Japanese paternalism? But then I think of romance series like Harlequin here in the west – basically all the same five plots with the names changed. So my guesses are that a) by reducing the plot and setup to formula they allow the reader/viewer to concentrate on the dialogue and b) the unchanging framework provides a sense of security.

Whatever the reason, there are far fewer shoujo series than shounen series that won’t insult a reasonably intelligent adult.

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