I watched a bunch of episodes of Gundam double-zero which started airing last fall.  Being a Gundam series it has a big budget so it’s a good indication of things to come.  The quality of drawing, CGI and animation is all excellent but the real draw is watching it in HD.  The amount of extra detail, sharpness, clarity and colours are all amazing. 

1. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
2. Honey and Clover, Season 2
3. Welcome to the N.H.K.!

Best anime opening or ending songs:

1. Kimi no Koto – Coach / 2nd ending for Suzuka
2. Life – Yui / 4th ending for Bleach (not sure if it belongs to this year, will see later)
3. Modokashii Sekai no Ue de? / Second ending for N.H.K.

But never mind that! Try to get some always-needed bonus points by telling me what does this remind you of? I almost fell off my chair when I saw it.

Technorati Tags: anime, honey and clover

I do see a few potential problems though. First, there’s an insert song – I prefer to reserve such way of presentation for really important moments, which had a long build-up. Not for random mid-episode moments in season starter episodes. I can forgive them in a recap episode, but not in an episode like this. It seemed out of place. I hope they don’t keep it up because it will devalue those moments when an insert song is really needed

Second is, they still linger on Yamada’s obsession with Mayama and her attempts to solve it – but they are still get nowhere, and the situation has not changed a bit since the show start. Well, one indication in this episode points toward further developments – thankfully! – but we’ve seen that several times before yet nothing came out of it. This is going to be a problem for the series – even in the first one I thought the Yamada-Mayama thing was dragging on without resolution for far too long.

So let’s start with the laundry list – this is some fairly spoiled underwear we have here.

Repetitive jokes. Repetitive subplots. Repetitive behaviour. Same gags over and over. Nothing of importance happening even though dozens of episodes and several (in-anime) years have passed. Numerous characters with so little depth that their shadows would be heavier. Numerous characters with so little compassion that it’s not hard to imagine the plot of the series was created by an association of professional torturers during their retreats. Incredibly lame loser lead. An equaly indecisive and often irritating female lead. The best character of the series, by far being actually Godai’s love rival, coach Mitaka. But the rest of rivals and sidekicks being irritating, overused and abusive at the same level as leads.

1. Let’s all party in Godai’s room. At least once every episode. On average, two or three times every episode. Every single one out of 96 episodes. When he’s sad, when he’s happy. When he has to study, when he has guests, when he’s in trouble, when he’s sick. Can I stress it any more than that? It’s so funny that I have to get my ulcer medicine just to keep it in.
2. Let’s steal Godai’s money. No matter how poor he is, even if he has no money to buy basic food, let’s steal it. If he spent the last yen on that pitiful ramen, the lowest of the foods for poor, let’s steal that from him too. Oh, but isn’t it so funny? Whose sick mind comes up with this, eh Yotsuya-san?
3. And that Godai, all the partying in his room before crucial exams or important days, letting others take advantage of him even in the most desperate of situations. He owes money because a guy who got a salaryman job thanks to him took him to a cabaret and left without paying. Now Godai works there to make up, but of course the rest of Maison Ikkoku tenants shows up and parties inside on his tab. Making him even deeper in debt. And he doesn’t refuse to pay for them for what reason? Oh, in this particular case there might have been a smidgen of a reason, such as not telling Kyoko-san about what’s he doing when he should be job hunting. But this same scenario was repeated many times over; only this time someone decided to make it more elaborate, that’s all.
4. Oh, and don’t even think of making all those side characters merely irresponsible and say how deeply in their hearts they love Godai. No. Not for a single second in all 96 episodes do they ever show a gram of compassion or even basic respect towards Godai. I bet you will find better human beeings in a prison than in Maison Ikkoku. Absolutely deplorable. No, don’t trust me, go and watch all 96 episodes and tell me where do they show any trace of mercy and concern for him. I dare you.
5. Many of the characters are in fact one-dimensional and can be completely described with a sentence or two. A (very )few episodes that tried to focus on some of these characters proved to be complete failures – they didn’t show us another, usually hidden side of those characters, they showed us a side that logically cannot exist. And even then they only teased us for they never really explained any of the mysteries that are actually interesting, such as what does Yotsuya do for a living.
6. While I can’t say I know what was the status of women (and men) in Japan during 80′s, I find it hard to believe it was as regressive as it is displayed here. Kyoko-san wondering whatever shall she do if coach Mitaka tries to do something to her while she’s visiting his home. (Yet, she doesn’t mind slapping Godai on many occasions and for far smaller issues – can’t she just do the same to Mitaka if he tries to force himself on her?). And otherwise servile relations between women and men. Some of them I can understand, like many women only living for marriage or men considered only as worthwhile as their careers, with their jobs being for life; those have really been staple of that society until recently. But the women seem to be way too far behind as presented here to be able to catch up so much in only a decade.
7. You know that stupid anime practice, the ultra-lame one where every time there’s a situation that can be misunderstood, such as an accidental kiss or peek, or hearing a sentence out of context, that the “worst possible” person will be the one to see or hear or walk on it? Guess which anime did that come from? Right.

So how bad is Maison Ikkoku? It should be only made available from libraries and even then with special permissions, and forgotten and stricken out of all books, reviews and references. This anime needs to die a horrible death. And whoever is responsible for its content needs to be sent on the streets of Tokyo to work in a ramen fast food stand as a lifer. Begone, foul creation.

Ok, that was perhaps slightly too harsh. There are worse creations out there. It’s just that normally they don’t get 5-star reviews from respectable people, leading you to believe it’s actually good.  And hey, it has two weddings at the end – a rare feast for shuojo fans (understandable as most of them concern highschoolers, but missed nonetheless).

Technorati Tags: maison ikkoku, anime

It isn’t possible to have a fully objective assesment of any work of art.  People will never agree even on what criteria to use, much less on what those criteria are exactly.

However, it should be possible to have at least some kind of coarse scale that would assign reasonably objective evaluations, expressed in relative terms.  For example, it is possible to at least determine if something is significantly different in quality that something (concrete) else or if’s significantly better or worse than the average.  There are attributes such as animation quality, story originality and so on that can be used for such purpose.  As such, one should be able to say if something is the worst there is, by doing one to one relative comparison to all of its “opponents”.

For example, it is really hard to imagine that shows like Full Metal Alchemist or even Bleach could be considered “the worst” by majority of criteria.  When I see that some people name as “the worst” stuff that many others find “the best”, I always have to wonder how much of their opinion is an honest objective attempt at evaluation (as nebulous as it may be) and how much of it is clouded by passion.

If I were to take a guess, I would say it often happens because one starts watching the show with preconceptions about it – due to familiarity with source material such as manga – or because the show strucks a painful chord with the spectator.  A perfect example would be me, watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for the first time.  I came out of the theatre really pissed, due to many objections I had on the portrayal of some events and especially some characters (namely Faramir).  As a huge fan of the book, which I’ve read two decades ago and many times over since, I obviously had the entire thing – or at least the parts I care about – fully imagined in my head already (perhaps even with soundtrack).  Any complex work of art is bound to have dozens, or even hundreds of highlights that the “consumer” mind would focus on, and any work of art worth that categorization would light up different set of bulbs in minds of different people as they would percieve those highlights differently and hence reach different conclusions.

Anyhow, because they are passionate about it, people will stubbornly hang onto a handful of issues and voice their opinions very strongly.  They will disregard the sum of the parts and focus madly on a few highly visible issues, not unlike a potential homebuyers would focus on laundry hanging off balconies rather than location, view (sans panties and bras and… heeey, why sans??  What’s wrong with that?), state of property, quality of management and so on.

None of this is either novel or noteworthy.  But I do find it interesting that even when asked, people just cannot put their passion aside for a moment and try to be objective.  At the very least, they will use the oportunity to poke fun at the thing they love to hate the most at least once before assuming a more rational posture.

Maybe this is because it doesn’t happen very often that someone actually asks for our opinions?  Usually it’s us trying to lobby others, to the point they get sick of both us and what we’re talking about.  So when we’re being allowed to, we just can’t resist not to.

And of course, why people put up posts like these?  I mean like the one you’re reading, but I suppose the same applies to the one that prompted this.  Don’t I often say that I don’t really care  about what others think of me and my opinions?  Why should I then be upset about people calling something I like “the worst”?  Because in the end, we all do care, even if just a little, or we’d never ask.

I say “all”, but I’m sure there are people that really don’t.  However, we never hear from them, except sometimes we hear of them on evening news; it is true, you know - hope dies last.

And when we ask others for their opinion on matters such as this, we’re not really asking for their opinions – we want them to say what we want to hear.  In other words, to to agree with us.
Well, unless it’s their job, that is.  Then is both business and pleasure.

Technorati Tags: anime, worst, objective

And so ends the arguably best anime of 2006 Spring season. It’s been a fun ride, as this anime cannot be easily categorized (not that it, or any other, needs to be). But you could safely say that it was foremost a comedy – one that never settled for familiar gags or rested on the laurels of its own invention. It kept you guessing what will happen next, and if it was ever predictable, it was in order to make fun of stereotypes.

What sealed the deal for me were its unusual, original characters. Perhaps not too original, but original enough to keep surprising you (you can’t have unpredictable behaviour from predictable characters, now can you?). Same could be said about the plot, although in this series it’s just there to put things into context and get the things moving, rather than being the focal point of it.

But it was the production values that held it all together. I haven’t seen such a well produced show in a long time. Meticulous attention to detail. Superb animation, amazing facial expressions and mannerisms, great soundtrack, great opening and ending songs as well as OP/ED animation. In fact, possibly the best OP/ED animation I’ve yet seen in a TV series (my memory is short so I might be speaking nonsense). In the end the series doesn’t have any depth beyond its facade but it’s far from mindless entertaintment.

In fact, that may be just it, the reason behind its success – it’s just entertaintment. No pretense of being something else, and none needed. Your brain will be required to watch, but you’ll need that other half of it.

It’s funny to hear people saying things like “Haruhi Suzumiya is overhyped”. Haruhi overhyped? Uhm, it’s a show that wasn’t even on the radar. The “hype” comes solely from the word of mouth. Which is the best recommendation something can get. The same can be said about Ouran.

Both Haruhi and Ouran are specialty series that don’t appeal to mainstream so it’s hardly a surprise people are divided. For me, personally, Ouran is the one that has less appeal. Haruhi is just so well done. It’s not an amazing show (compared to say Lain or Gundam Seed or FMA), but it shows what can you get when you take a good premise and polish it to greatness by animators, storywriters, choice of music etc. Craftmanship shows in every frame and many little details.

While Ouran… The biggest problem with Ouran is that the lead character (if the girl dressing like a boy is one, that is) is completely flat. We know next to nothing about her/him after 13 episodes. I can’t recall any series of this quality that had a lead so flat. That’s another reason to rate Ouran lower. You might hate Haruhi Suzumiya – and who wouldn’t? – but you can’t deny her presence on screen.
What really sucked big time was School Rumble 2 though. After amazing first season, the utter lack of focus, story and yes even humour in many of the episodes is appaling. The “survival” episode was terrible, never mind having two of them (people say it’s an omage of Battle Royale but I know plenty of anime funs that haven’t seen BR, including me – make a reference if you must but don’t make two freaking long episodes out of it!). Both other shows are way ahead. The ED was pretty nice though.

The show that I consider a gem of the season (not the best show but most surprising) is Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. That anime is freaky. It’s a horror/mystery, and the horror part is mostly psychological – and extremely well done – which makes it quite scary. And the mystery part is, well, as mysterious as any show I’ve seen. The execution, scenario wise and voice acting wise, is perfect.  The rest of it is serviceable though I agree it could use a bigger budget. And all this after only 4 episodes.

Right on, so I decided to watch it and see if it would appeal to me in the similar fashion that shonen-ai appeals to women. Probably not for same reasons, as women and men aren’t really fully compatible when it comes to expectations from a relationship and likewise their imagination differs quite a bit too.

I watched two episodes initially but was then caught up in other series and lost track of this one. Eventually about a week ago I decided to finish what I started (I have an obsessive feeling of duty to finish movies and games that I start watching or playing for some reason, as if it were my job).

Anyhow, this series is probably about as good (or bad) as the Gravitation was, overall quality wise. I quite liked the ending song, while the opening was a mixed bag. Regarding the love content, you will only see a few kisses which are so ultra-romantically set up that there’s no doubt this is shojo.  As for character design, if you thought women watch shonen-ai for all the pretty guys (bishonen), you can safely say guys could watch shojo-ai for pretty girls (bishojo). What I find funny is that they refer to one girl as tomboyish; her character is certainly more man-like in many ways, but physically? Take a look and tell me you think she looks like a guy.

Now, the following girl actually was a guy before an incident in the very first episode. Her perfect gender change – while her soul remains intact – is what perhaps can be used as a justification why other girls like “her” – because she used to be him, and they used to like “him”. So it’s not really lesbian love, right? Riiight. But why the pretense? It’s japan, and it’s 21st century – no need to justify relationships such as these.

And finally, there’s one more “main” character. Poor girl cannot see men – they appear as fuzzy shapes to her. She’s also the reason why aliens are involved…

Now as you can see, they look more like middle school students rather than 16-17 y/o high schoolers which they are. They have the super cute design that you usually see in shojo-manga targeting younger girls. The enitre show is full of such cute and romantic things, which makes sense given the target audience I guess.

There’s lot of usual anime trappings – girls beating on boys that attempt to sneak a peek, adult women beating on adult men that try to do the same, cute but completely useless and unnecessary mascot character (and alien at that!), wierd-dressing adult that looks very much like the creator of Chobits in Angelic Layer (alien too!), beach episode, amusement park episode.  As I said, I’m torn between giving it 2.5 or 3 stars – it does have a nice soundtrack and character design, so perhaps 3 is in order?  But my reviews are starting to get skewed toward higher ratings so it may not be quite right.
In the end, did I enjoy it? I guess this kind of sweet, pure, idealistic relationship is supposed to appeal to guys if the theory is to hold? I don’t know. If shonen-ai is about cute boys being open about their feelings, then shojo-ai is about cute girls being open about their feelings… before the relationship has started. Hearing girls confess first is nice. Girls not relying on their “assets” to get the attention is also refreshing. Well, at least once in a while.  There’s also very few male characters in the whole story, and they only serve the purpose of punchbags anyway.  So what’s left is cute, romantic girls confessing pure love. That is kind of nice to watch – I always liked shojo manga so it shouldn’t come as a surprise.  It’s like shojo distilled.  But just like icewine, it’s good to have it sometimes and in small quantities; but try to drink it too often and you’ll get sick of all the sweetness.  Realistic romances carry much more impact after all – but they are hard to get right.

Hm… I am really not satisfied with this at all.  I don’t think I’ve managed the answer the question I wanted to.  So perhaps I will watch another shuojo-ai show, say Strawberry Panic.  You know what happens when you are trying to make up your mind about how good a slice of cake is?  You keep eating piece by piece until all is gone… then you ask for another slice.  Heh heh.  But no, seriously, I cannot make up my mind at this point.