Gnostic Lone Wolf Poetry

I grew up with the NES and its legion of very difficult platformers.

This game is like those, but different:

You Have To Burn The Rope

By which I mean this is a pretty good video representation of what work is like at my office lately:

It’s about time there was a season not dominated by The Latest Ero/Sim/etc Game Adaptation.

Here we go!

ACTION
Soul Eater
Would-be shinigami try to capture souls to power-up their companion weapons/love interests. Or something. More interesting than it sounds. Bones animation looks better with every show of theirs I watch. Apparently the lead female seiyuu has taken some flak for her performance here, but I guess I just lack the discerning ear for Japanese voice-acting, cuz she sounded alright to me. I’ll probably watch this until I get bored just to look at the pretty pictures, but it is apparently slated to run for a while.

Nabari no Ou
Boy contains Ninja McGuffin. If you are seriously into ninja action shows, this seemed watchable. I didn’t think it had much to offer though. Except good scoring. And occasionally creative action choreography. And bizarrely placed homosexual innuendo (unless the main character is actually a reverse trap). Oh he’s voiced by Kugimiya Rie…maybe that…explains it?

ROMANCE (with comedy, action, etc)
Itazura no Kiss
Energetic stupid-but-hard-working girl chases after stoic cold-hearted-but-actually-good-deep-down genius boy. Good times if you like this genre. My discerning taste is not terribly discerning with these shows, as long as they are a little funny. I’ll probably watch all of this.

Special A
Girl is always coming in 2nd after her childhood friend / love interest. A little more lukewarm than Itazura no Kiss, but still has potential. I’ll give it a few more episodes at least. I like the girl with the signs.

Vampire Knight
Girl involved in love triangle with calm and genteel bishounen vampire she knows is a vampire and angry distant bishounen vampire she thinks is a human; her adoptive father wants peace between humans and blood-suckers. Technically she isn’t involved in this love triangle yet, but probably headed that way. Surprisingly watchable. Has a bit of action, romance, intrigue.

SOFTCORE PORN COMEDY (with porn, porn, etc)
Kanokon
Nympomaniac Fox Spirit possesses the shouta of her desires, then comes back out of his body and tries to hump him. I really hate this over-glossed style of character design. It looks like somebody has gone over them with Turtle Wax or something. Also this is not my genre. I would rather watch actual porn.

Kamen no Maid GUY
Burly ninja-maid-man does not understand why his young mistress is so resentful of his watchful service. I watched exactly the right number of episodes of Kamen no Maid Guy. It was good for about one episode’s worth of lulz and eye-rolling. And I’m spent. I have filed this away as something to inflict on fragile psyches I intend to break down and rebuild to my liking.

ADVENTURE
Allison and Lillia
I could not get into Kino’s Journey, which makes me in some tiny majority of people I think. I think this had the same author? It has some nice political background of two warring countries, and so forth, and a sort of Indiana Jones feel about it. The first episode was quite good, and this is the kind of thing that I would generally recommend to people who have only a tangential or vague interest in anime, but I expect it may fall prey to my abbreviated attention span after a bit. Not enough nekketsu tsundere moe moe gattai hissatsu. *PRESSURIZED WEEABOO NOSEBLEED-FOUNTAIN SENDS SETH FLYING BACKWARDS*

SIMULCAST GONZO ENGLISH SUBS
Tower of Druaga
It’s like a fantasy MMO or something. The first episode was a somewhat amusing parody. Not bothering to watch anymore since it looked it had spent its comedy potential.

Blassreiter
Motorcycle racers assaulted by Gonzo’s animation team. At least that seemed to be the general reaction. I actually kind of liked it. The pacing felt correct. The more TV I watch the more respect I gain for good pacing. It’s a fairly well addressed problem, I think, for movies (though people still fuck it up IAMLOOKINGATYOUMICHAELBAY), but hasn’t quite been nailed down for story-arc’d TV shows. And anime adaptations in particular seem to screw up pacing, probably because you can’t just directly transfer the pacing of a novel or manga onto the screen. Anyway, if I remember to look for this on the streaming sites, I’ll give it at least a few more episodes. Even a fairly luke-warm story can be engaging with good pacing and tension control. If you don’t believe me, find a professional oral storyteller and listen to them.

OTHER STUFF
Wagaya no Oinari-sama
I like the Japanese fox-spirit archetype usually, and my hope here is that this one will grow as bored with the plot of this show as I already am, and invent new forms of entertainment. This is probably not going to be very good, but I’m not sure where it’s going yet. Needs a few more episodes to die peacefully or get interesting.

Kurenai
Lots of assassins this season. This one has to take care of a loli. I like the premise (even if it is nothing like The Jackal which is what I thought of when I first read the description) and the background art, but the pacing in the first episode was terrible. I had trouble following what was going on in the first half. Give it about two more episodes to fall into some kind of stride.

CODE GEASS
Code Geass Season 2
I had some doubts after the first episode; felt very awkward and rushed. The second episode removed all doubt and fear. The overwhelming JUSTICE caused my prehistoric blood to boil over into tears of nekketsu excitement. If I had not recently exercised my AWESOMENESS sphincter with the Mai Otome manga, I might have fucking strained something. It took me over an hour to calm down.

HAVEN’T WATCHED YET
Library Wars (but there’s good money on this, since it’s in the Noitamina slot)
Kaiba
Golgo 13
Kyoran Kazoku Nikki
Real Drive
The new Macross thing

It apparently got better right after (episode 7) I had quit watching it (episode 6).

After I quit watching it, apparently the show became all about EXUBERANT YOUTH leading to things like SUDDEN GOTHLOLI COMING-OUT, which was great, as was all of the characters related reactions including the old man who is just like “ahh, to be young again”, and the bondage doctorette who responded to “EWW MAN KISSING MAN IS GROSS YOU ARE DIRTY!” by ambush-kissing the poor girl and telling her “WELL GUESS WHAT NOW YOU ARE DIRTY TOO”

And any flaws this show might have had were negated by the scene in the last episode, where after being ambush-hugged by the bondage doctorette, Sawaki is encouraged thusly by his microbe-pals:

“Hey, hey! You shy boy!”
“You just gonna go home?”
“Stttteamy….”
“If you’re a man, you should have gone down on her!”
“Yeah, really…”
“Normally, most would go for it.”
“Go back laughing and get on her!”
“Push her down! Push her down! Push her down!”

Even though I am a big fan of the Mai [Z]HiME franchise, I had not read any of the manga before, because I heard it was basically just really bad softcore pr0n.

This is a blatant lie.

It is not just softcore pr0n.

The Mai Otome manga is the manga incarnation of the world’s most massive BONER.

It breaks down basically likes this:

30% softcore pr0n
20% pr0n-related jokes (”two small breasts pressed into my back…my element…it’s about to…MATERIALIZE”)
50% action scenes that made my head explode

This manga is like a genre-connoisseur’s dream-come-true.

This is the plot of Mai Otome (manga):

Part One - It’s basically OtoBoku, but with better art.
Part Two - Schwarz attempts a revolution. And not, like, a revolution in efficient housecleaning. Like they have a slave named “Robespierre” and say things like “I WILL GLADLY SACRIFICE MYSELF FOR THE SAKE OF THE REVOLUTION.”
Chapter 17 - Midori appears. Everyone feels a rekindled passion for JUSTICE.
Part Three - Everyone does their best, deshou. And they fight evil clones of their HiME versions. And Natsuki makes fun of her clone for padding her breasts. Everyone reveals their TRUE FORM and they use courage and friendship to execute combination attacks which protect the ones they care about. Also, at some point they re-enact the plot from Empire Strikes Back.

Here is a very small sample of hissatsu:
GENOCIDE SUNSHINE
MIDORI DYNAMIC
LA MARSEILLAISE

The Mai HiME manga is also pretty readable, but the earlier parts are less good; the later parts are pretty great. Particularly when you reach chapters with titles such as “Justice Doesn’t Die”.

One thing that stays constant throughout every anime and manga iteration of this concept is that Haruka is full of win. Sometimes she has magic powers, sometimes she just has DISCIPLINE.

Also, all things said, the manga stories are a lot more cohesive than the anime stories, particularly Otome, but they’re also not trying so hard to be all “OMG IS THIS A CLUE?!”

(EDITORIAL NOTE: This blog is not dead. I’m still watching a few shows a season, but not much has felt worth writing about lately. Also, busy with full time job. Expect a post roughly once a month.)

Shion no Ou, if you’re not watching it, is the show about the mute girl playing shougi. It’s also ostensibly a murder mystery. Incidentally this post is full of spoilers, if for some reason you actually wanted to watch the show.

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I do like subcultural in-jokes and send-ups, but I am not very keen on using them as the primary meat of a comedy, which is probably why I quit watching Pani Poni Dash, and why Welcome to Eltingville was never actually produced. They can also get really irritating, like how people in the circles I travel have this tendency to drastically over-quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I thought Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei had enough humor from other sources that I didn’t really care about it being replete with anime/manga references. I ignored most of them and snickered at the ones I got. Except for this one, which imbued me with BIG LULZ:

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This post is full of lulz spoilers.

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So, forgetting all the fall anime for the moment, I’ve been watching the Gokusen dorama. Somebody recommended it to me a long time ago, but I forget who; and then one of the new kids at the university anime club brought some of it to an event, and I’m like “Oh yeah!” but without the bursting through a wall to give everyone Kool-Aid.

Comparisons to GTO are unavoidable, because there are huge huge story similarities, but Gokusen is awesome in an entirely different way from GTO.

With GTO, I cry manly tears every time I watch an episode of it. It is full of manliness, and extreme dedication.

Gokusen has only had one ep that made me cry manly tears (8, with the nurse’s little kid), however it is much more full of JUSTICE and FRIENDSHIP.

For example:

If a biker gang were harassing one of Onizuka’s students, he would footrace down the bicycles, kick the gangsters off a bridge, take their bikes, tie the student to the front of the bicycles and simultaneously drive all of them down a busy highway to teach the student not to have fear, the student would cry (terrified), the bikers would cry (from intense physical pain), and Onizuka would laugh (maniacally) while egging on the student, and then he would make a lame-ass excuse when he accidentally flashes a high-school girl he has the hots for.

If a biker gang were harassing one of Yankumi’s students, she would interrupt them when they tried to corner the student, throw them off their bikes, give them a lecture about how ganging up on one person is cowardly and real men fight one on one to protect the things they care about, the gangsters would cry (inspired by her speech), the student would cry (inspired by her speech), Yankumi would cry (inspired by her speech) while ruffling the student’s hair, and then she would make a lame-ass excuse when she accidentally bumps into the upstanding policeman she has the hots for.