(Un)fortunately, none of us bloggers will look like this

Well, now that Author’s linked it from his end, I might as well make an official page for it.

As mentioned before in previous posts, I am heading to Fanime, an anime convention in San Jose, Calfornia, this year in 2008. It’ll be my first time and I figured what the heck, let’s make a social-type event out of it, so we can put some faces to the flames … er … posts because I have no friends.

So I proposed a ani-blogger meeting at Fanime, and lo and behold I’ve got something resembling interest. Now you too can be trolled in person by shouta imouto lolikitsune, and be bombarded with the Kanon propaganda of…uh…me, and I imagine that Author will be there too, except you won’t see him because he’ll be on a open-air balcony somewhere sniping people.

Of course I digress and I’m just playing up the stereotypical images for fun, so, y’know, don’t kill me any more than you usually do.

But on topic here somewhere, here’s a little discussion page for any plans for a blogger meetup at Fanime. Frankly, I’m a teenager, I don’t plan things, and it’s my first time at Fanime, so it would probably just end up as a big group of people walking around the convention like any other group, except with more snarkiness and obscure references. But if there’s anything good that’s worth doing outside of the convention, like grabbing a meal (bah, food is for the weak) somewhere, let’s work something out.

Well, assuming we get a group that amounts to something. I don’t want to drag people out to Fanime just for one or two other people, especially when they’re quiet like me (at least, I hope I’m not going to turn into someone who runs around beating people with yaoi yuri paddles).

So yeah. I guess I’ll start camping on some IRC channels if anyone needs to discuss, I’m usually on #animebloggingcollective at Rizon. I suppose I should start hanging out in #animeblogger too, or wherever all the cool kids go.

-CCY

Following the two-and-change shoujo shows in this season has been an interesting look at the sort of evolution this genre has undergone in the 21st century.

There are distinct kinds of styles found in these shows tailored for the female audience - although they still manage to find a large audience for both genders with their emphasis on the emotional and with their sense for gender-neutral slapstick conversational / slapstick humor.

Itazura na Kiss is a throwback to the old days, the anime of the early 90’s built off of manga even older. (Perhaps that’s because it actually is such a well-aged title.) It has a very strong romantic undertone to it, featuring the ever-popular tale of a prospective couple shoved in close quarters. Like many shows of this day, the lead girl is unmistakably the main focus, as she tries to work her way into the heart of the male lead. This is always a large part of the story, with the emotions of the male lead often obscured from view; although, there is always time for more side characters and their stories.

Special A is the new-age shoujo, one with a more balanced feel to its mix of comedy and romance. In here it’s not so much about life lessons and love as much as it is simply having fun; being patently ridiculous in the name of hilarity is all part of the equation. There are interludes for sweet moments, but not even all of these are serious. The story is quite often episodic, with morsels of plot scattered among challenges or events of the week.

Just over a week ago I pitted these two shows against each other after their third episode and declared Special A to be the show with the better start. It was more amusing and had a more appealing cast; although, I declared, when they both stopped spinning their tires and started moving forward with the plot, Itazura na Kiss might be able to make a comeback.

Two episodes later for the both of them I’ve got reason to think just so, but don’t count the comeback done just yet; a new show’s entered in style, smashing through the proverbial glass windows, and it’s name is Toshokan Sensou, i.e. Library War.

Toshokan Sensou at first glance is hardly a shoujo show at all. Anything which has ‘war’ in the title, and features footage of uniformed soldiers engaged in firefights would appear to be much more appealing to adrenaline-filled males.

But look past that and you’ll see an equally engaging second side revolving around the life of Iku Kasahara, a female enlistee in the Library Task Force. Her business relationship with Instructor Dojo, someone who might have a bit more for her that what it seems, and the amusing breaks for slapstick comedy in this show, are definitely enough to flag this down as a show with more than a moderate feminine spin. (This, backed up by the fact that Toshokan Sensou has been serialized as a shoujo manga.)

As we approach the halfway mark for some of these shows on their one-cour (~12 episodes) schedule, it’s time to reevalute the worthiness - as one not quite humble blogger will gauge - of these shoujo-styled anime, in the quickly-becoming infamous fashion of the Series Showdown comparisons.

Except wordy, y’know, but that shouldn’t be a shocker.
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The adages “birds of a feather flock together” and “opposites attract” are often at war, being two different ways to describe how people come together. While usually this is meant to describe the relationship between two distinctly real people, these sayings can be applied to the fandom of anime characters as well.

And in this 2D realm, oddly enough, the situation is much the same in that there are veritable arguments for both sides of the coin.

It’s quite obvious that there are character types in anime that would never be possible (or at least extremely implausible) in real life, ones that clash with the passive, soft-spoken attitude that most male anime fans embody. At the extreme end of the scale you get dominatrix-type characters in shows best left hidden in a dark corner somewhere (or under a mattress), but even more family-friendly personalities can pull off the appeal of being the polar opposite of the stereotypical harem lead archetype.

There are the extremely hyperactive types that simply exude energy, bouncing off the walls and willing to try everything as least once, no matter the consequences. Their outgoing attitude and lack of shame is a nice fit for any daydreaming viewer who wishes they could be as enthusiastic.

The appeal of a tsundere can somewhat fall under this umbrella as well; rather, it is the umbrella, housing the love-love couple of these two trains of thought at one time. A tsundere character as strictly defined will reach both sides of the spectrum; being a totally different, almost foriegn personality with their cold, sometimes brutal tsuntsun side, yet exhibiting the same blushing, stammering, flustered deredere side that many inexperienced romantics are familiar with.

But more than that, when I mean ‘birds of a feather’ I don’t mean characters with simply the same personality but those who share the same kinds of beliefs and passions as an anime viewer. It’s one thing to relate with a character based on their experiences and emotions but when you find someone else who can appreciate the same thing you do … it’s scarily intriguing.

Perhaps too much. Read the rest of this entry »

The feature that everyone expected to be dead - probably including myself - returns for a second edition of quick ramblings about nothing in particular.

It’s pretty much as the title says in terms of the three topics - a call to arms about the upcoming anime convention in San Jose, new enlistments in the integrated blogroll, and a rave about the strangely delicious mix of books and guns, so check it out.
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All right everyone, great play we put on their for the Theater Club, now let’s wrap this up with a final reflection on how it all went. Nagisa, you’re the lead character, you start … uh … where’s Nagisa?

Tomoya and her went to go take the trash out by the gym storage locker a long time ago … I wonder if they’re OK?

WHY THOSE~ Uh, Ryou, where did I put my chainsaw?

W-w-weren’t you stripped of your license to use one after the incident with the last thousand fanboys?

Mmm, stripped…

Ah, fine, I’ve got better weapons anyway. I’ll be back in a minute.

(THIS NOT OUT-OF-PLACE INTERJECTION AT ALL INDICATES KYOU IS WHERE NAGISA AND TOMOYA SHOULD BE)

Hmm…the door’s locked. That’s it, then! *clears throat*

S-s-stupid door, it’s not like I wanted to open you or anything!

(Door breaks cleanly in two. Kyou gets duct tape and patches it up cleanly before continuing.)
Ah, Kyou!

ALRIGHT YOU LITTLE HUSSY PUT YOUR PANTS BACK wait what? What’s this?

Look, look! We found this dango farm in the gym storage room and we’ve been entranced with it ever since! Isn’t it just adorable? Dango, dango, dango, dango…

Alright you guys, can we get serious here? We have to do a peer review and we have to get going now. We’re months behind.

Tomoyo? What are you doing here too? (Alright, I get a speaking line!)

Well … I figured … if Tomoya was going to be here so long with Kyou and Nagisa … that I …

FUUKO’S HERE!

No, Fuuko! Go away! You’re killing my deredere Tomoyo fantasies!

(Actual review-like content after the jump … sadly. Also, watch out for spoilers.)
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I enjoy contradictions; not only in my mind-bending anime that I watch but also in what kind of anime I watch.

I like to tout my love for the visual-novel conversions, a genre that is on the mild end, gender-neutral with cute girls and sad stories, and on the extreme ends, a fanservice free-for-all harem-fest with characters filled to the nines with appeal and moe.

But there’s an equally large and some might say equally awkward soft spot I hold for the other end of the so-called gender divide, the shoujo drama. These are the shows that could almost pass to be daytime American TV, so filled with relationships made and broken, hearts yearning and hearts weeping, and more characters than any typical harem lead could ever dream of snagging.

Of course, the appeal of them is not the chance to watch another hour of The Days of Our Lives, but rather the emotional power of these shows that so often can speak to souls. Typically, the content found in these shoujo stories are quite down-to-earth, and extremely pertinent to the teenage age group of which I am a part of. They have a sky-high relatability factor, something that makes it easy for anyone to take many of the life lessons that these shows emit, and make it personal, and thus make the anime great.

And equally such, the shows are not grounded in reality so hard as to be drab, either. Most inhabit a realistic-like setting with more than a fair bit of ridiculousness in the content itself. It may be a school life show, but when the school life features giant glass greenhouses, over-the-top competitions and rivalries, and overally highly unlikely circumstances, it’s likely to induce a smile.

This mix of heartwarming story spiced with a sprinkle of insanity is what endears this genre to me, and when I found that two shows of this type were coming down the pipeline for the spring season, I was quite excited in finding my two ‘must-watch’, or at least ‘must-try’ shows of the season. But how do they stack up now that the first three episodes of each have been viewed?

An impromptu part two of the “Spring Season Battles” feature follows. Do note that this one is lighter on the pictures and heavier on the text, due to time restraints, and, y’know, things to talk about.

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It’s Fight Night (Morning, Afternoon, etc.) at M3 as we finally begin the attack on the spring season!

Ironically enough the first three shows I watched were the three I expected most to make me want to go Oedipus and stab my eyes out, the fanservicey pair of To-Love-Ru and Kanokon, and the BL (Boys’ Love) show Junjou Romantica.

It was an experiment of sorts, a stretching of boundaries to see whether perhaps there was good in these two genres after all, but more than an experiment, it was a chance to satirize the hell out of these three shows…

(Surprisingly, the post is relatively safe for work after the jump, as all images are in spoiler tags so you can choose to view them or not, in case LOOK OUT SHE’S RIGHT BEHIND YOU CLOSE IT!

But seriously, no actual nudity, just some very close or - depending on your orientation - very awkward content.)
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It’s quite ironic that shortly after a lengthy meta-post on how side characters tend to have their characteristics amplified (since they only usually have a single one) to the point that their image eclipses their true merit, I find myself stumbling upon the a similar concept in characters, and that is ending the lifespan of a character early.

Thankfully for our sanity, I mean that only in the chronological sense in Shugo Chara, as a character is removed from the plotline not by force, but by circumstances, but still it circles around to the same point, as suddenly I find myself wishing for a lot more of said character.

It’s probably something about how we always desire more than we have, and since side characters and those who don’t stick around for the full series get less screentime, we wish they had more attention paid to them, and take to flying the banner for them as a way of pseudo-protest. But I’m no psychology major.

What I am is very glad that Shugo Chara is restoring (or keeping, at least) my faith in its cast and in the genre as a whole. I’ve found the magical girl genre to be bar none the best for establishing a mood of warm fuzziness, with a level of sweetness that can stir hearts without rotting teeth.

Shugo Chara has this done pretty well in having more than just a lot of pink and shiny transformations, adding in some great character dynamics and development that really show just why shows like Cardcaptor Sakura can hit it so big in being appealing to viewers both young and old.

To me, Shugo Chara really feels like the Cardcaptor Sakura, like the definitive magical girl show, of this decade, and the most recently released episode, the 25th, only reinforces this belief.

(Pretty major character spoilers, be forewarned.)
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Premise 1: Tsukihime, one of my personal favorite visual novels - and one I would highly recommend to anyone who wants some real sad girls in stuff, except with stronger characters and hundreds of times more action scenes - is apparently getting a remake of sorts. To use a colloquialism, much bricks were pushed out my rectum.

Premise 2: There has been more than a fair hint that everyone’s favorite no-luck heroine, Satsuki Yumizuka, might finally have her arc and story ending in said remake, mainly because 1) she’s listed as a “heroine” in the scan, 2) there’s not much else to add, and 3) Sacchin fans are probably standing outside Type-Moon headquarters right now with pitchforks right now demanding it. If this is true, I might push out enough bricks to build a house. Not like a apartment, but like a three-story mansion with twenty rooms, all filled with brick furniture and brick technology and brick refrigerators filled with brick food and drink. And, of course, a meido…made of brick. In fact, twin maids.

Needless to say I am a mild fan of Satsuki Yumizuka and being able to see her true ending, hinted at in the spin-off game Melty Blood (which worked things in the typical Nasu way by going off an ending which at the time didn’t exist), would be quite the experience. But I can’t help but feel a bit pensive about this development, in part due to something I’ve been brooding.

It was something I read on a fellow blog, or perhaps on a forum, about the popularity of side characters. Side characters, or at least characters without a defined story, tend to be quite popular, sometimes more popular than some of the main characters. Think of Kanon’s Akiko Minase, the Itsuki / Mayumi comedy duo in Shuffle!, Yukine of Clannad. Or, going outside of the visual novel genre, any of the Lucky Star minor characters, Wilhelmina / Margery / whatever yuri bait from Shana, hell, I even have soft spots for Hamaji (H2O) and Sakura Sae (sola).

But is there any logical basis behind this greater appreciation of characters left out from the big dance? I think there’s definitely a sort of bias going on here, one that might end up dimming the ranks of the Sacchin supporters if such a route ever comes out.
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I’m about as late to the Five Centimeters Per Second party as its main character was to his destination in the first story, so we’ll spin this off into a fancy, deep, vaguely pretentious post.

Five Centimeters Per Second was one of those anime that personally had a hype level that surpassed nearly anything else I’ve heard of. Where as Haruhi was the god (and her anime too) of second-mainstream anime - all the shows a person would be likely to encounter after their initial shonen or CLAMP phase - 5cm was something praised as one of the most moving romantic works in a long time … or at least in as encapsulated a story as movies have to be.

I’m not inclined entirely to disagree, as I was definitely entranced by the story and the visuals (oh, the visuals), but it didn’t quite nail the perhaps implausibly high expectations I set for it.

It was a bit of a tear-jerker but not as much as I first believed, the characters bordered on that line between enrapturing and just plain cheesy, and, well, the ending.

The ending, and, to a lesser extent, the whole progression of 5cm was something that didn’t quite mesh. There were some ‘click’ moments, like when Takaki spoke of his search for a philosophy, but lacking a bit of one myself, his story overall was something that left me stirred, but not shaken. (James Bond would be dissapointed.)

At least during my viewing of it, anyway. After reconsidering and writing out this post, in final revisions I find myself to be quite tsundere, if I shall kick a dead horse, for shows in the vein of this and True Tears. There’s quite a disconnect between feelings from watching it, and feelings from analyzing it.

(Movie spoilers, and possible incoherence ahead.) Read the rest of this entry »