So…much…anime
Shikabane Hime isn’t that interesting, but it looks frickin’ beautiful in HD.
Toradora’s held up longer than I expected. Still entertaining. Probably best new show of the season.
Kannagi has gone of the rails, and landed somewhere vaguely hilarious. Are karaoke episodes the new thing?
Gundam 00 is still serious business.
Index makes me wonder why I’m still watching it. Oh right it was supposed to end soon.
Zettai Karen Children has too much filler lately. I don’t see how they’re going to run this plot without some time-jumps. Maybe they aren’t.
Chaos; Head still surprisingly good, if you’re into the surreal mystery suspense thing. It feels a lot like a World of Darkness RPG (probably why I like it).
Nodame Cantabile still as gyabo! as ever.
I think I dropped everything else, or at least put it off until later.
Between that, work, school, and my recent PS2 purchase (buying awesome games for $10-$15 is very satisfying), I basically don’t sleep anymore.
Gigalomaniacs
According to Wikipedia, “Chaos; Head” was originally going to be called “Gigalomaniacs”. Loljapan. Also, the designers refer to it as a “Delusional Science NVL”.
The third episode has totally drawn me in. The director must be a Satoshi Kon fanboy, like me; the style is a bit similar. Damn, I was hoping I’d be able to drop this. Tooooo much anime to watch =\
Out with the old anime, in with the New
FINISHED!
* Allison and Lilia – solid B+ adventure
* Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu – brought out my inner fangirl; late-game cockblocking was a little annoying, but in line with the show’s general demeanor
* Itazura na Kiss – This got dull, but I finished it anyway. Needed more…lulz.
* Special A – Good for a few laughs. Got better after first six episodes, but the regressive gender presentation bugged me (i.e. girls are weak and have to be protected; on this count Itazura no Kiss was much better, but not nearly as funny).
* Code Geass R2 – I forgot to check and see how people liked the ending. I was surprised that it even managed a vague level of cohesiveness, so I guess it won the expectation vote. But I think expectation control was a big part of enjoying Code Geass R2. Can we call this genre “KEIKAKU SHOUNEN”?
STILL WATCHING…
* Zettai Karen Children – This show has grown on me quite a bit as a piece of disposable humor/action/mahou shoujo (the Chilrdren’s sentai cheers always make me laugh). I need to see how long it is intending to run, but I’d be fine with it going on for several seasons.
* Daughter of 20 Faces – Has been dragging in the latter half, but I want to see how it ends
* Wagaya no Oinari-sama – Still a solid B+ show. Has everything. Action, comedy, blushing.
NEW SHOWS? OMG…IT’S FULL OF HAREM
* Clannad After Story – Not something I get excited about each new episode of, but sometimes funny and sometimes sweet.
* Nodame Cantible Paris Chapter – first episode looked to be just as good as a first season episode
* Gundam 00 – It’s still shiny mecha action SERIOUS BUSINESS. Predict I will like this more than the first season.
* Toradora – Started off pretty funny, nicely animated romantic comedy, and blazed through the little bit of manga I’d read, but I predict it will tank by episode five or six. Could do without the “URUSAI!” Had enough of that from…like every other show she starred in.
* Shikabane Hime – Mediocre occult action / horror. Not off to a great start, but with GAINAX it’s just hard to tell. I’m going to give this some time to get its shit going before tossing it.
* Yozakura Quartet – Slightly less mediocre occult action. This is basically the Jump show of the season (I have no idea if it was actually in Jump). These shows are all pretty much the same, which doesn’t mean they aren’t entertaining (except for Soul Eater, which wasn’t entertaining, except to everybody who isn’t me).
* Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka – Romantic Comedy #4 for this season. So far so…okay. Good planning by the director though. First episode leaves some good open questions, and second episode mostly answers them and ratchets up the show complexity / humor a bit. I’ll give it probably six episodes to see where it’s going.
* Kannagi – Romantic Comedy #5 for this season. Anime is not really celebrated for new and original ideas. For instance this is a show about a human-like non-human girl who must arbitrarily live with her level-headed male theoretical love interest who otherwise lives alone; the romance and comedy are both based on her disconnect with normal human society. Most tropes don’t repeat quite this much…detail. HOWEVER! So far the acting is really good, good production values, and pretty funny, and I’m a bit curious if the whole ‘idol’ thing is just somebody being stupid with the OP or actually something that happens in the show. This one is worth a shot.
* Etc Etc Index – Occult action #3 for this season. I hear it’s short. It takes very little convincing to get me to watch a one-cour anime.
* Chaos; Head – Surreal suspense starring a fucking NEET. I hate the characters and don’t like the art or animation, or much about the show. Except that I think the plot and the way they’re trying to present it actually looks sort of interesting. I expect I will get sick of Choas; Fuckhead when that turns out to be totally an accident and the plot goes into idiot-land, the land filled with idiots.
* Tytania – second to last show I was waiting for subs on. In a season full of harem, we bring you EPIC SPACE OPERA. I, uh, rather like epic space opera, though in my experience anime attempts at the genre have been a bit clumsy in the past. This, however, looks like sex on toast. Definite watch.
* Michiko to Hatchin – last show I was waiting for subs on, and the first show that grabbed my attention when I was looking over the bullet summaries for this season. Looks like the kind of thing likely to be very popular with mainstream audiences, particularly in the U.S. I say this mostly because, rather than being in an Anime Genre (robot harem, sentai action, mahou shojou, gay bakers, etc), it’s in a Cinema Genre (powerful but hard-hearted older character + innocent younger character are suddenly thrown together due to Circumstances and do the Character Development Dance while they have some sort of Adventure related to their Circumstances; somebody probably dies). First episode good production values; that’s never very telling, but I have high hopes.
Question.
Why the hell hasn’t Ai Kora been animated?
Pantyhose Buddha
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Not to mention some of the Dust Loops…
I was watching Code Geass tonight. I love stock action stuff like this:
But I was thinking…this would actually be really easy for a practised Guilty Gear player. That’s about the same input window you have for a lot of False Roman Cancels, or for Slashback parries in Accent Core.
School Rumble Z. LONG LIVE SCHOOL RUMBLE
I was kinda bummed that School Rumble ended, but then tonight I saw this:
Awesome time-jump is awesome
Allison and Lillia, now in Lillia’s arc, continues to entertain. I tend to like continuations that feature the next generation of characters. Keeps things fresh without sacrificing what’s already occurred.
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School Rumble is Smarter Than You (and wtfbbq San Gakki?!)
I started following the School Rumble manga at some point after the end of the second season. It just ended, like, a week or so ago, and I was overall satisfied with it, though it was a little incoherent between the last major arc (the walk-a-thon) and the series-end. There was totally enough material remaining to do a one-cour finale season, or at least like a four-episode OVA. For some reason they skipped into the very end of the walk-a-thon, and I guess are doing a two-episode wrap-up. LAME.
At least this frame made it in from the manga
The rest of this post is spoilers.
Fall 2008 looks to continue a good anime year.
This Spring has been rather satisfying with Daughter of 20 Faces, Allison and Lilia, Itazura na Kiss, Special A, Code Geass R2 and others. The Summer, for whatever other faults it might have, will have more School Rumble. And this Fall looks pretty bitchin.
Let’s see what we got this Fall…
* Tytania. Artland has made some nice visuals in the past. Looks like a retro science fiction show. That’s totally my bag.
* Shikabane Hime – Aka. Undead action vengeance girl…not normally my kind of thing. But any GAINAX show is worth checking out in my experience. They seem to be either total flops or ridiculously great.
* New Hokuto no Ken. Maybe good for a lol? It would be so much better if it were a musical.
* Michiko to Hatchin. Two girls on the run. I get a good vibe off of this.
* Casshern Sins. Unnattractive promo art, but, hey: robots.
* Yozakura Quartet. Misadventures of young superheros and some normal dude. Quality probably depends on animation. I’m not too familiar with Nomad’s previous work, except for Rozen Maiden, which was pretty good.
* More Nodame Cantabile. Can’t go wrong there.
* More Gundam 00. Can’t go wrong there.
* Toaru Majutsu no Kinsho Mokuroku. Dude with magic-negating fists and randomly acquires Nun. 30/70 toss-up quality. Worth checking the first ep, since it’s JC Staff.
* Kurogane no Linebarrel. Dude gets crushed by satellite and randomly acquires Giant Robot. Fights for medical supply company. Any medicine-related anime would have to be better than Ray. Pass on this.
* Ga-Rei. No description provided, but I really like the promo art.
* Tales of the Abyss. No description provided, and it looks like a super-generic Sunrise fantasy show.
* Kyo no FIVE no TWO. Not just an OVA anymore. THINK OF THE CHILDREN. NO, OH GOD, DON’T THINK OF THEM LIKE THAT!
* Kannagi – Crazy Shrine Maidens. Okay, you can stop now.
That’s, like, half of it. Also many people that aren’t me will be thrilled by more:
Clannad.
Ef.
Lucky Star.
On Into Summer
Extended weekend fuuuuuuuu~!
Finished Vampire Knight season one, which was crap (started out well enough, but didn’t go anywhere interesting, and moved too slowly). Finished Library Wars which was okay, but a little lukewarm. Finished Reaper’s Gale, the 7th volume in Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. If you like brick-sized epic fantasy novels, you need to check this series out. The books each take about 100 pages or so to get rolling, but they do pretty well after that (and they’re all like 1000 pages long). One of the things I like about this series is how Olde Things From The Lost Age etc aren’t necessarily better than Modern Day Things. In fact, the Malazan army’s munitions tend to blow up lots of Resurrected Immortal God-like Beings From Fell Barrows Of The Time Before Man, who wonder briefly why the hell some idiot is throwing a clay ball at them, before exploding all over the place.
From the Spring I’m still watching Code Geass R2 (fuck yeah), Itazura na Kiss, Special A (which got a LOT better after 8 episodes or so), Zettai Karen Children (because…I don’t know), Allison and Lillia (where the hell is Lillia, btw?), Daughter of 20 Faces (needs second-half plot to pick up faster), and Wagaya no Oinari-sama (which continues to be unexpectedly entertaining to me; sleeper hit?).
The Summer is bringing in a couple of shows that are sort of interesting like Antique Bakery (which I failed to incite a complete flamewar over by glossing over the fact that it is Not Actually Yaoi etc), Telepathy Shoujo Ran which is starting out alright, a new Someday’s Dreamers series that uses minimal animation on top of very nice photography background art (predict this will go over quite well with fans of Healing genre), another episode of Mai Opwne SifR (about fucking time), Blade of the Immortal, and of course MORE FUCKING SCHOOL RUMBLE GUYZ. I am pretty excited about that. The only reason I’m not falling out of my chair with excitement is that I’ve been reading the manga because I got tired of waiting for them to make more anime. Which doesn’t change the fact that School Rumble is the best comedy anime not named Ouran Highschool Host Club or Azumanga Daioh EVAR.
Also, I only watched about five minutes of Strike Witches, but I lol’d at how they basically combined the idea of Hardsuits and Thigh-highs.
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Gnostic Lone Wolf Poetry 
