Mega Megane Moé
Hell and Heaven Moéltdown
Nodame Cantabile
[Rapidfire] Shuffle! returns, selling out, Howl’s Moving Castle and emotional connection
Jun 15th
The rumors of my blogging laziness have been greatly exaggerated.
In the midst of the working world and of real life another Rapidfire post rises from the ashes to inject a thousand-odd words of anime ranting and raving into the bloodstream of a starved anime fan.
Well, in all honesty I hope you’ve been reading elsewhere too, so you shouldn’t be starving, but in any case, I’m just starting to go off on random tangents, having already written all the content out of my head (yes, the pre-jump section comes last here) and now desperately typing random, fourth-wall referential content in an attempt to fill space.
In case you’re interested in what’s on board for today, there’s a news section announcing a new Shuffle!-like substance for the PC, a short metarant involving ads and websites, and a good long analytical-type thing about Howl’s Moving Castle – one of the popular Miyazaki films – and the power of emotional connection versus logical appeal.
Well … uh … how about that Nagato?
Read the rest of this entry »
Gyabo and Kiss! The evolution of shoujo romance?
Feb 7th
Mildly Engrish, yes, thanks for asking
A while back, I wrote an article about how true shoujo (girls’) romance shows, replete with shiny sparkly slow-motion pans of blond-haired pretty-boys, were lacking compared to the Marmalade Boys of years past. They seemed to be slowly fading out of favor; whether it was overcrowding due to more male-orientated “moe shows” (less of a genre and more of a giant classification) or simple dissapearance due to change of taste, I was unsure, but the fact was, they just don’t make romance stories truly aimed at just girls anymore.
With some coincidental genre-talk crossfire going on around other places, combined with my following of 2007 hit Nodame Cantabile, I began to think a bit again about the status of girls’ romance. Nodame Cantabile definitely had the feel of a show that could masquerade as being such a type of show, yet it also was decidedly different from the typical fare that occupies the genre. And what of KimiKiss? It’s a show that, despite being so much ’seen before’ material, defies classification by typical means, being neither guys’ harem nor girls’ romance.
These may be but two shows but to me they signify pretty clearly the direction that romance shows are heading. They may not be as popular as they used to be, passed up in favor of more pandering harem shows (not indicative of the harem genre as a whole, I must note) or the ever-strong action / mecha favorites, but what’s left in the romance corner is truly a distilled and refined version of what both guys and girls have come to love in love stories. Read the rest of this entry »
Playing Catch-Up: The Alternate Universe Winter Season
Feb 2nd
(I’m just amazed I didn’t go straight to my Kanon folder for ‘winter pics’)
There’s been some muttering about the winter season being a bit slower than the previous fall, or even summer, with most of the big-name blockbusters being either continuations from seasons past or straight sequels (or sequel-like substances, etc) … or, y’know, licensed.
As such it’s been tricky trying to fill the ever-demanding viewing schedule with new and exciting things, especially for someone that is closed-minded in anime genre; in terms of visual novels, the winter 2008 season is kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel, with H2O, which has been underwhelming so far, and True Tears, which, is, y’know, licensed.
There are many things that could and are being done to remedy this situation: for one, cracking open that stash of KimiNozo / Rumbling Hearts gaining dust somewhere, or two, rewatching an old classic like Cardcaptor Sakura, or simply just staring at the mailbox waiting for Ever17. But rather, I figured I’d do something interesting and likely painful, and give a shot a bunch of random shows from random genres that people have been praising over the months; the kind of shows that get demands to be, y’know, licensed.
As such the last three days have kind of been like a strange icebreaker, or walking around at a party, or something, as I’ve been stepping from one first episode to the next in rapid succession, shaking hands with musicians, genius delinquents, little girls, littler girls, and giant robots. It’s certainly been an interesting exploratory experience, and on the whole it’s been one that’s positive. None of the shows really turned me off, although I would only really actively watch one or two of them. (The obligatory gag is falling a bit dead here, but I feel I have to say…y’know, licensed.)
What follows after the jump is a bunch of twenty-five-minute impressions of five quite acclaimed (or, at the least, talked about) shows from the eyes of someone who has no idea who, why, or what is going on; let it be an exercise in snobbish snickering for the veterans, or perhaps, an eye-opener to a series some of you dismissed blindly. Read the rest of this entry »