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.

The strange thing about shoujo shows, though, is that they do tend to cover a lot of what seem to be the same ground, even between subgenres such as Magical Girl, Elite Society, Girl Convinces Tsundere Guy To Fall In Love With Her, and Uber-Hax Magical Girl. Observe:

Lightning Round: Six Degrees to Shoujo

Shugo Chara – Queen of the World
In the vein of “COOL and SPICY~” Amu Hinamori, in Special A there are rabid fangirls idolizing Hikari, check. To be honest I find this really annoying and distracting, but to each their own.

Kare Kano – Anything You Can Do…
The war for #1 in the class is exponentially more fiery than any other competition in the school; Arima and Yukino constantly lead the charge in Kare Kano, while Kei and Hikari crank the bar up notches until it won’t go any more, and then some. ItaKiss gets into the fever too as Kotoko goes into overdrive to come within a couple miles of Naoki’s number one ranking.

Marmalade Boy – Two Goes Into One
Just like Miki and Yuu, or perhaps like a cheap premise to a sitcom, in ItaKiss, Kotoko and Naoki are quickly put into close contact as they are forced to live under the same house thanks to the forces of nature, luck, and stupidity.

Nodame Cantabile – No Prerequisites Required
Shoujo shows are spectacular in just how wild their casts can get, as designs that might be rejected by saner anime pass with flying colors here – the afro-wielding timpani-playing ambigiously-gendered
Masumi is the poster boy here. Special A whips out some interesting designs in its special seven, such as the mute Megumi or the constantly hungry guy, but ItaKiss takes the cake here, casting not only the insane (good-intentioned?) stalker, the crazy parents, the tsundere guy and his brother, but also a decidely – as they put it – ‘well-proportioned’ girl, something that vainer anime shy away from in droves.

Special A and ItaKiss – Competitive Academics
Wait, what? The two even overlap a bit with each other by having the same premise of classes separated by rank (grade, whatnot). I’m unclear on whether this is a Japanese Thing or just a massive coincidence, but either way, it’s a premise that’s new to me. The styles are different; in Special A it’s a cutthroat fight at the top, while at ItaKiss it’s a struggle for an unknown to reach out to the top-ranked man.

Advantage: To me, ItaKiss feels like it has a higher amount of ’seen before’ factor, perhaps because its premise is a bit more extraordinary. Special A has the advantage of leaning more towards the center of the spectrum with its comedy, while ItaKiss is decidedly more focused on the love-love, something that might make the former seem more creative in a field of romance stories.

Round 1: Promising Premises
Special A: Talented girl meets talented boy. Talented boy pwns talented girl. A time warp follows, revealing the two have been competing all their life for the number 1 position in everything. Add some main-slash-side characters, and hilarity ensues. And maybe some romance.

Itazura no Kiss: Ordinary girl meets talented boy. Talented boy shuts down ordinary girl and her love letter. Random house destruction follows, shoving the two of them under one roof, struggling to establish terms with each other. Add some main-slash-side characters, and romance ensues. And maybe some hilarity.

Advantage: In terms of freshness, following off the last round I would have to give the award to Special A, although ItaKiss has high potential. As mentioned, Special A is more well-rounded in terms of comedy and romance, and feels fresher than ItaKiss which smarts of Marmalade Boy except with a more annoying male lead. The competitive factor of Special A, while also perhaps lifted from Kare Kano, is one that I personally enjoy more, being highly competitive myself. Special A’s breed of insanity fits more with the lighthearted style of it, while ItaKiss’s random lapses into WTF-land tend to kill its sweeter moments.

Round 2: OMG BISHIES and other main characters
Itazura no Kiss: Female Lead: Kotoko, steadfast daydreamer. Bishie: Naoki, tsunderella. Irrelevants: Kin-chan, stalker; Large girl, plump; Parents, obsessive; Other girl, forgettable.

Special A: Female Lead: Hikari, enthusiastically competitive. Bishie: Kei, flirtacious. Irrelevants: Megumi, Kotomi-alike; Hungry guy, hungry; Hikari’s friend, helpful / violent; council president, hilarious.

Advantage:For the main two characters alone, Special A takes this category easily. Kotoko is a strong character and I like her morals and her romantic side, but Naoki is just frustrating, period. I don’t care if he’s supposed to be all love-love towards Kotoko later, ItaKiss is trying too hard to show the eventual change in Naoki’s personality. Even Yuu and Ikuto, to name some, started out slightly playful and flirtatious, or at least not so much of a jerk.

However, I might be coming down too hard on this character archetype; there was a similar backlash in the days of Makoto Itou and School Days still managed to be a standout show. (Then again, if Kotoko breaks out the boxcutters, that’s a bad sign.) Jerks do exist in real life and disliking shows that don’t fit the perfect word would be horribly escapist.

Still, Special A’s cast is strong, not just with the amusing delusions of the student council president and the comedy of the rest of the special seven, but also with the interaction between Hikari and Kei. Kei is wonderfully playful, riding that edge between the high-class king above it all, the knight-in-shining-armor romantic, and the plain fool in love. And Hikari is a character I can especially empathize with; her naivety when it comes to romantic is just plain adorable, and her drive to be number one in any challenge is one I’m far too familiar with. She’s a great character without even trying to tip the moe meter.

Round 3a: Can I Has a LOL?
Special A: Solid funny moments. The “ni-san (number two)” joke, while it landed with a dull thud for others, I found cute, perhaps because I enjoyed Tsuru Pettan (”Tsurupettan tte iu naa~”) and Da Capo (ni-san…or nii-san? The plot thickens). Additionally, there were other points of amusement, such as the rock-solid rice balls, Megumi’s voice, the antics of the student council president, and the physical representation of those bloody shoujo sparkles.

Itazura no Kiss: ItaKiss is more hit-and-miss. A lot of the gags I found either drawn out or kind of silly – Kotoko’s daydream about Naoki during the track race, for example, wasn’t too thrilling. Kin-chan’s stalker antics break the actual story too much to be amusing, and the parents are just annoying. There are some moments that made me smile, but not quite as much.

Round 3b: Awwww, not wwwwww
Itazura no Kiss: On the turnaround though, ItaKiss excels in the ‘mushy’ science of sweet or intriguing moments, compared to funny ones. Watching Kotoko in love, especially in her forlorn state, really stirs emotions, and her slap of Naoki in episode 3, while perhaps not as awe-inspiring as others have made it to be, was quite satisfying. As much as I hate Naoki I hope to smile a bit when he begins to finally admit his feelings for Kotoko. And hell, the summary says Show ▼

… now that’s something to look forward to.

Special A: Special A seems more episode-by-episode based, being more on the comedy side. While this can be said for ItaKiss too, where Naoki acts all tsuntsun at the beginning of the episode and by the end Kotoko has one-upped him, in Special A it’s even more apparent. Hikari and Kei face some challenge, and defeat it. If we’re lucky, we’ll get some vague form of relationship development, as shown in episode 3, but it’s not quite as quick moving as ItaKiss tries to be. Here, the burden lies on Hikari to possibly realize her feelings for Kei, as the one-way street is already moving in the opposite direction.

Advantage: Taking into terms both the sweet and the funny moments, it’s a lot harder to pick a clear winner. I’ll declare it a draw, mainly because each show specializes in one style and doesn’t do too shabbily in the other. ItaKiss has the potential to be incredible amounts of enjoyment as it’s got the touching moments lined up and ready to go, and if it can get its comedy in line to match it, it will be a great show. Likewise, if Special A can get serious without jumping off the edge into drama-land, it will be that much rewarding.

The roadblock for each show, I think, will be, like in most dramas or romances, how long they are willing to stall. I’m not talking fillers but I’m talking plain ol’ failed confessions. The manga Kare Kano jumped out of the gate quick, an advantage to it, while Cardcaptor Sakura hit one of its stumbling blocks by centering the main relationship around the story, relegating its conclusion to the very end of the anime.

I find romance anime more entertaining when they examine both sides of the relationship spectrum. There are many shows and there are great shows that examine the process of falling and being in love but seeing how two people interact when they are in an Actual Relationship is ten times as intriguing if done right. This is why I hope Special A and ItaKiss will not sit still for too long before kicking its romance story into gear; as nice as it is to see Kei and Kotoko go their lovestruck ways, it’s going to get old …
Lightning Round 2: Picking Only The Best Nits
Animation Quality
ItaKiss: Dated.
Special A: Skinny.
Advantage: Sorry, I just wanted to say what everyone else was thinking.

OP / ED Themes
ItaKiss: Solid opening and ending theme; the OP has nice animation while the ED just feels cheap. Watchable but not loop-worthy, overall.
Special A: On the meh-scale from 1 to 10 this gets a solid “ehhhhhhhhhh who cares”.
Advantage: ItaKiss, by a sizable amount. Special A knows what place it’s in. *giant rock falls from sky*

Glasses Girls
ItaKiss: None.
Special A: Nope.
Advantage: What is wrong with this picture!?

Overall:
Special A and ItaKiss is really a toss-up in terms of the best shoujo show this spring season (no, Junjou Romantica does not count, you fujoshi). It’s all about what you want to see in a show; like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, Special A gets romance in its comedy and ItaKiss gets comedy in its romance.

ItaKiss, while very predictable – or at the least, dull – at the start with the annoying Naoki and the spacey Kotoko and miscellaneous story-breaking side characters, has a lot of potential to take off in the later episodes if it makes the right moves. From the sounds of the storyline it has the opportunity to explore what many anime don’t have the chance to explore, and that is the intrigue of a long-term relationship.

Meanwhile, Special A looks to be the more consistent if not static story, with solid humor and what hopes to be a semblance of plot and relationship. I doubt that much will happen overall in the show, but seeing the interactions between the characters – especially in what technically is the Kei-Hikari-Student Council triangle – should prove to be an enjoyable if not fluffy watch.

Since I like it more at the moment I’ll take Special A as my champion of the day, for more entertaining and empathetic characters and a more solid sense of comedy, however, as the VTEC plot kicks in yo, ItaKiss just might become the go-to show of the season.

Although, Special A already is a Goto show. Mi-mi-mirakuru-mikuru-run!

-CCY

(…no comment on that pun, although I have a strange urge to try to make a worse one now. Also, thanks Owen for fixing my blog.)

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.)

Round 1: Rocking OP Challenge
Junjou Romantica: Show ▼

Kanokon: Show ▼

To-Love-Ru: Show ▼

Advantage: To-Love-Ru’s OP takes it easily with some clever animation and a song that will leave you bobbing your head for hours to come. Junjou takes second with a rock song which, while also fundamentally good, doesn’t have the same creativity, with the animation taking a couple cues from the garden center of a Wal-Mart. Kanokon’s is relatively forgettable. What’s with that generic logo?

Round 2: First Blood Facepalm
To-Love-Ru: Show ▼

Kanokon: Show ▼

Junjou Romantica: Show ▼

Humiliating the Others: Ironically I had the longest holdout on Kanokon before wondering just what I had gotten myself into. In terms of “amount of websites I decided to check while letting the show run its course” Kanokon probably racked up the score count, followed by Junjou. To-Love-Ru had an early out with some random jiggling after a Star Wars parody, while Junjou pulled off a whopping six seconds of sanity before throwing in random BL.

Round 3: Halo Character Award Presented by Mountain Dew
To-Love-Ru: Show ▼

src=”http://m3.dasaku.net/images/fanserviceFight/halo_tlr.png” alt=”" />

Kanokon: Show ▼

Junjou Romantica: Show ▼

Winner: To-Love-Ru’s Haruna is probably the most horribly stereotypical shonen romance lead ever, being oh-so-perfect, yet reserved, and secretly harboring a crush on the protagonist. But it doesn’t matter, because she’s cute and she doesn’t have a tail, unlike many other characters in the three shows combined. Kanokon’s twins are adorable in sync as well, although they don’t seem like main characters. Junjou, don’t call me a homophobe for picking the one straight guy; I enjoy characters with permanently pleasant demeanors like his, plus in the flashback he seemed like a mature, protective guy too. Ooh, that last one put me over the edge into BL land, that’s not good.

Round 4: The “This Isn’t What It Looks Like!” Trophy Sponsored by Every Harem Male … Ever
To-Love-Ru: Show ▼

Kanokon: Show ▼

Junjou Romantica: Show ▼

Champion: Junjou Romantica has undoubtedly the closest to a sex scene that the three of these dirty-minded shows had in the first 25 minutes, however, since it probably was a sex scene, I will have to disqualify it, and reach for the eye bleach. Kanokon came dangerously close as well, leaving many contemplating when Chizuru will release her direct-to-DVD special, and To-Love-Ru was relatively tame, although much more sound-effect-minded with its magical erojiji transformation.

Round 5: Most Magically Delicious Premise
To-Love-Ru: Show ▼

Kanokon: Show ▼

Junjou Romantica: Uh… there has to be some magic between the main guy and Usagi…or something…
Victor: Although To-Love-Ru’s premise is arguably more rooted in the supernatural compared to Kanokon’s ‘foxes-with-ballistic-bosoms’, I’m giving the edge to Kanokon because Lala didn’t prance around and say “kon kon, nyan nyan”. Junjou is remarkably down to earth, something that I still find respectable in a show … although it certainly makes up for its technical sanity in its plotwise insanity. “So I heard you have a deep and traumatic past, eh? Haha, yeah right.” “Actually, I do.” oshi~ instant characterization!

Round 6: The Facial Contortion Pantheon Challenge
To-Love-Ru: Show ▼

Kanokon: Show ▼

Junjou Romantica: Show ▼

Chosen One: To-Love-Ru will be recieving a call from a certain J**** M*** very soon, no doubt, as Rito is really getting some exercise in his face – not to mention all the blood he’s been rushing to it. Kanokon and Junjou are more tame, although Junjou tends to have chibi contortion action. Also, do note that this Kanokon screencap is entirely different from the Kanokon halo character screencap.

Round 7: The “Don’t Shoot Your Eye Out” Award
To-Love-Ru: Show ▼

Kanokon: Show ▼

Junjou Romantica: Thankfully, no.
And The Award Goes To…: Kanokon, by a foot. Which, in this case, is a lot. To-Love-Ru gets second by default.

Round 8: Most Likely To Drive Sales of DVDs
To-Love-Ru: Show ▼

Kanokon: Show ▼

Junjou Romantica: Show ▼

Paying the Bills: Oddly enough, Kanokon would seem to be a lock for this segment as overall it is much more ecchi than To-Love-Ru, but it seems to play the strategy of ‘putting all the cards on the table at the start’, instead of TLR, which brought in the fog machine and spent endless hours working Lala’s hair and the laws of physics over just right. Junjou has mysterious darkness which doesn’t look to cover much but it’d be easy to expand the scene.

Round 9: Most Annoying Shoujo Flowers
Junjou Romantica: Show ▼

Kanokon: Nope.
To-Love-Ru: Nuh-uh.
Winner (Loser): I don’t understand this trend at all, and it reminds me of the 6th or 7th volume of the Kare Kano manga where it took me a full five pages to realize “Oh, they were doing it” because the pages looked more like a nursery than the throes of passion. Also, Junjou earns an ‘ironic lyric bonus’ here.

Round 10: “I can’t believe it’s actually funny!” Kodak Moment
To-Love-Ru: Show ▼

Kanokon: Show ▼

Junjou Romantica: Show ▼

Side-Splitter: Kanokon, oddly, had the most moments that legitimately put a smile on my face, such as the twins’ antics, the whole ‘pata pon pata pon kon kon nyan nyan’ cosplay segment, Kouta’s “Dear goldfish in heaven I’m going to become a real man!”, and you know, the whole hilarity of Chizuru suddenly deciding to throw herself all over someone just over half her size … although that one wasn’t intentional. Junjou had some cute moments, such as how the main guy pulled a good Kagamin impression when reading the ero-manga, or Usagi’s “You said yourself any man would do”. To-Love-Ru’s shining moment was watching Rito get increasingly involved in ridiculous circumstances while trying to confess.

Round 11: Wall of Text Discussion About How Much The Main Character Sucks
To-Love-Ru: Rito is pretty much the stock stereotype for every shonen romance hero ever. He’s brash and enthusastic when it comes to love, but he’s always failed and his dream girl is more out of reach than an Ivy League to a 2.0 GPA student. He’s easily flustered and doesn’t know how to handle an actual woman coming into his life, yet he can step up to the plate with his back against the wall. There’s certainly been worse, but Rito isn’t memorable enough for me.
Kanokon: Kouta’s like three feet tall. That’s freaky, although I don’t blame him for his actions around Chizuru.
Junjou Romantica: Well, I still don’t know his name, that’s one for a start. Plus, the character archetype of “Gee why is my face red and why am I thinking of HIM? It couldn’t be love never not in a million years because that would be too obvious” I find really annoying, male or female.
After Much Discussion, The Committee Has convened And Through A Unanimous Decision Has Decided To Award the 2008 Wall of Text Discussion About How Much The Main Character Sucks Award To: As typical, I give the highest accolades to the one I write the most about, whether in a good way or a bad way. Rito’s a nice guy deep down, or something, so I’d support him. Kouta, size and ero-king status aside, I’m pretty neutral for, and Junjou Guy is just kind of awkward at the moment. I really hope that’s not my bias talking.

Round 12: The Jiggle Counter/em>
To-Love-Ru: Six
Kanokon: Eight, plus eleven additional sound effects
Junjou Romantica: None, thankfully
Most Made of Jell-O: Kanokon is unsurprisingly the king here, although I thought the numbers would have risen higher for the female-laden shows. Over 24 episodes at this rate, it does add up to more than the amount of “uguu~”s in Kanon 2006, though. I prefer To-Love-Ru’s subtlety, at least; I don’t understand why animators have to draw our attention to a shot that’s already filling the screen anyway. Junjou, unsurprisingly, scored a blank here, at least, and I respect it for that.

Round 13: Most Inconvenient Truth to The Human Race
To-Love-Ru: Show ▼

Kanokon: Show ▼

Junjou Romantica: Show ▼

Won The Swing Vote: To-Love-Ru states that if you sit in your bathtub long enough, hot naked girls will appear. Kanokon tells you that foxy girls like to jump and rub their breasts all over midgets. And Junjou tells you that ‘no means yes.’ Who wins? To-Love-Ru and Kanokon have a fair amount of pandering in having random characters just insert themself into the male lead’s life, although the circumstances in Junjou add up to be pretty silly as well. I’d give Junjou the nod here for having some actual sweet moments, while Kanokon was just silly. To-Love-Ru could go either way.

Round 14: All That Matters is Megane
Kanokon: Show ▼

Junjou Romantica: Show ▼

To-Love-Ru:
MOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~\(^.^.)/: Kanokon takes this one easy here, with the class rep girl who has a cute look, personality, and a strange resemblance to Kafuka from Zetsubou Sensei. It and Junjou have two megane people, and Junjou’s … uh … main guy’s brother sports a nice look with glasses, but I found the glasses service of Usagi rather strange yet amusing in a fourth-wall sense. It’s not like I haven’t enjoyed the same thing in female characters, though. To-Love-Ru falls painfully short here, although I heard it has a big enough cast to probably have at least one later on.

Overall:
In summary:
In Junjou Romantica, plot happens and buttsex ensues.
In Kanokon, plot happens and sex attempts to ensue.
In To-Love-Ru, plot happens and failed confessions ensue.

I wouldn’t pick any one of them as a long-term show for myself, to be honest. The fanservice level of all of them is enough to scare me off of it, as I tend to prefer emotional pandering over physical pandering at the least. None of them are really horrible as I was hoping one of them would be at the least, but instead they’re more of a “not my thing” deal.

It does worry me that this type of show is wasting space that another, perhaps better show can fill, but it’s all relative. If it pays the bills – and it does – maybe it’ll pay the way to a better, higher budget show in the future.

If I had to pick one – comical judging criteria notwithstanding – it would probably be To-Love-Ru, because as much as shonen romance is repetitive, slow-paced (failed confession after failed confession) and fanservice-filled, it is still sort of sweet and appeals to a more base side of me. Kanokon has potential (well, if I didn’t read ahead on summaries) to have an interesting supernatural side if Chizuru gets her foxy hormones in check, and Junjou is a question mark to me. I don’t think I can fairly evaluate it as BL is not at all my thing (shocking, yes). There were a few sweet moments near the end of the show where the Brother Guy announced his marriage, but other moments, such as where Usagi just randomly takes Main Guy into his house and when Plot Ensues spontaneously, turned me off the show.

An interesting experiment in any case, although next time I’ll stick to honey, mayonnaise, and potato chips.

-CCY

(Well, not as much of a humor slant as I has hoped, but still an entertaining post to write. I’ve got to try more of these categorical comparisons.)

There seems to be cries every season about how the cropping of shows is worse than the last, and while this may or may not be true depending on your taste in shows, I’ve always found it hard to be lacking in stuff to put up on the screen every night. This is because while there may not be many standout, my-God-I-need-to-watch-this-now shows in every season there are always plentiful bounties of sleeper hits, things worth trying because someone said it was good, or just plain old shows, enough to ensure that I get continually buried deeper and deeper in a pile of anime I need to catch up on.

Perhaps a large part of it is due to the fact that I enjoy being very easily influenced and thanks to that I can pick up random shows if two or three people say it’s actually pretty good – doubly so if they can nail a weak spot of mine – combined with the fact that I really haven’t seen much, having only been in the anime-watching business for just over a year.

To prove that anime Is Out There – cue the X-Files theme – I’m going to spend a little time tonight going over the majority of my watchlist, instead of the huge specialty posts on a single anime which have been written recently. In case you haven’t figured it out, that’s mostly code for “I want to talk about True Tears, Clannad, and Shana II but am too lazy to unify it in an easy way” with some bonus laughing at other shows added in.

Since it’s March and all and I like to pretend to be hip and knowledgable about sports (Protip: Motorsports yes, sportssports no.), it’s a super special sweet sixteen – ow, my manliness – March Madness-type organization with, you guessed it, sixteen shows on the list. There are in reality a few more but the majority of the extra would consist of “I saw this once, and would kind of keep watching it if there were nothing else to watch,” which explains itself well enough.

To be fair it doesn’t have the mass-voting aspect or the actual sports-related references of the other March Madness anime posts, but, hey, 16 anime, that’s a lot.

Incidentally, I’m starting with the last and working back, because, unsurprisingly, I don’t have much to say about the shows I don’t care about as much. Maybe some sarcastic quips, but even writing a lot of that is tough for some of raw ambivalence the lower-tier shows bring. Because you’d drop the bad ones, y’know?

#16 – To Heart 2 (6 episodes complete)
I’m really waiting for mentioning To Heart 2 to become a joke around here, mainly since it was one of my first anime to watch after Kanon last year, and yet, it’s still one of the last I have to finish. It’s kind of like that kid on the playground that nobody picks for the basketball team, except, I don’t really have much pity for To Heart 2.

It’s the Nothing Happens type of show, which works fine except for the fact that the position has already been filled other shows, so what’s really left of TH2 is how it’s basically what appears to be 8-9 character introduction episodes, followed by, I suppose, Konomi winning and fanboys angsting about Tama-nee. The large ‘harem’ size of To Heart 2 works against it multi-fold here; it doesn’t have the time to use all its characters and none of them seem to have long-term relevance. There’s no conflict, nothing that would make it really out of the ordinary.

What’s keeping To Heart 2 on the list is the fact that it still is staring its little puppy dog eyes at me every time I look at it on the hard drive. I heard the first To Heart was good (if not only tangentially related), so maybe that will revitalize my interest in the series if I try it.

#15 – Da Capo II (3 episodes complete)
Oh, sequels, what have you done? The third installment (riddle me that) of the famous Da Capo series personally went flat on its face with the same issues as To Heart 2; what really hurts me is that while the first series (D.C. / D.C.S.S.) were actually interesting and moved at a decent pace, Da Capo II is half the length and twice as short.

It started good, with what I think was the world’s fastest credits-to-confession (or vice versa) time, but it just turned out to be an example of a marathon runner sprinting out of the gate and then running out of breath after the first mile. It didn’t really capitalize on its interesting start, personally, settling back into a typical ‘character introduction’ groove with an awkward taste of ‘fanservice that’s not really fanservice’ (see: Minatsu and the famous Amakaze banana addiction). If fanservice is a teasing of porn, then teasing at fanservice is…what?

Oh yeah, and there’s the whole “first season didn’t conclude anything” deal that the spoilers seemed to have hinted at. I’ll keep the siscon radar handy to see if things get interesting now that the second season is coming up, but I just hope the next 13 episodes will actually start tying up ends. Because it’s not really a Minatsu ending, is it?

(Yeah, I’m just bitter that my bet on Koko to go! All! The! Way! went sour pretty quickly, despite being close to the ‘end’.)

#14 – Gurren Lagann (1 episode complete)
I really don’t have any words to explain why this is still on the list and not in the pile of ‘anime that pierced the heavens’, but my closest excuse is that Stage6 got kicked to the curb and now I’m waiting for the licensed discs to hit before reconsidering going past episode 1.

Well, I will eventually – who the hell do you think I am? – but it’s not high on the priority list simply based on availability. Hell yes I want to see more of this show, just so I have something intelligent to say other than spouting all the catchphrases over and over again.

Oh, if I really want to get lynched I guess I can say this is my first real Giant Robot show. I’ll go ring up the Zetsubou Sensei set.

Final word: Is Yoko jiggling a catchphrase? Suddenly I have an urge for Jell-O.

#13 – Wangan Midnight (6 episodes complete)
Wangan Midnight is another first; my first racing anime, and my first anime to fall victim to stalled subs. Wangan Midnight, despite having a top-notch arcade port, seems to fall into the giant gaping crevice that eats any racing anime not partial to tofu and doriftos, and so a show in which People Actually Crash – with surprising frequency, actually – is finding itself on the side of the road with its hood up.

Unfortunately this show doesn’t have as much of a killer soundtrack as its arcade counterpart but the CG animation isn’t too bad – even if the characters themselves have Shonen Show Syndrome – and there seems to be a plot outside of “win lots of races”. Every character seems to have a motive to be discovered… it’s no mind-thriller but it shows there is plenty to shows like this aside from standing on the gas and turning left.

Actually, wait, there really is no turning on the Wangan Line highway. Or on the pier which the main character’s car is about to get driven off of… by a Mamiko Noto character. There, are you interested now?

#12 – ARIA the Animation (6 episodes complete)
Writing words about ARIA seems counterintuitive. It’s not really a show which invites analysis or raving but rather it’s more of a show to be experienced than dissected. Like, you’re supposed to let its cool waves of mellowness wash over you and soothe you – ironic for a show about a bunch of undines rowing their gondolas through a sort of new age Venice.

For me it suffers from the same problem as Azumanga in that if you consciously try to watch it per se it works horribly. You can’t sit down and say “OK, ARIA time!” because you’ll be bored or asleep within 10 minutes. But if it’s a really slow day, or if you’re doing homework or multitasking, then ARIA’s a fantastic show. Just thinking of the lullaby-like melody of the OP song invokes a sort of tranquility.

The one thing that really gives me a strange feeling about ARIA though is how it likes to set off yuri radars left and right – if only because in neo-Venice and in slice-of-life shows there tend to be a surprising lack of guys. Think about it – Azumanga had Kaorin / Sakaki, Lucky Star had Konata / Kagami or Minami / Yutaka or whatever Hiyori could dream up at the moment, and Minami-ke…well…it’s got something strange going on in the pants with all the traps. Speaking of…

#11 – Minami-ke ~Okawari~ (4 episodes complete)
Minami-ke! I remember that show! It was really cool and had a bunch of funny moments and recurring gags. The three sisters all were amusing and had their appeals, and the side cast was large, varied, and just as ridiculously entertaining. Any slice-of-life that can approach romance on a regular basis gets a thumbs up in my book.

So why did I stop watching Minami-ke?

It’s a mystery. Unlike a lot of people I didn’t really hate the second season. The beginning was a bit clunky and the subs took forever to finally be released but by the time the third episode rolled around it wasn’t too much off form, and while maybe not a top contender, it was still a enjoyable diversion. But then, all of a sudden, one day I had no more episode of Minami-ke downloaded and I just never got around to downloading it.

It’s a strange way to move on and one that bugs me more than actively hating the show and dropping it, but it just seems other shows filled the Minami-ke void. Zetsubou Sensei started up again, the amount of romance shows multiplied, and suddenly there was no spot for the sisters.It’s something that definitely needs returning to but there’s no huge rush to at the moment.

How the mighty have fallen… it really does seem like the blog community has snubbed their collective noses at the once-proud Minami sisters. It seems like the American celebrity world itself…

#10 – H2O ~footprints in the sand~ (2 episode completed)
Well, I watched 2 episodes of H2O and greatly disliked it, and yet, somehow, it’s beating out a good show which I forgot about, a good show which stalled out, a good if not passive show, and one mecha show I really need to get my hands on. The mind really does work in strange ways.

My (relative) enthusiasm to get back into this show is fueled mostly by a sudden recommendation by Moogy and a sudden scarcity in the visual-novel field. Despite the fact that Moogy hated on Myself;Yourself, a show I found quite enjoyable if not a bit School Days Lite, the fact that all the really good visual-novel-type shows are coming to an end within a month is making me search for my fix of implausible escapism – I kid, I kid.

You know that I enjoy these types of shows for the intense emotional conflict and drama they tend to bring, as well as the entertaining aspect of trying to figure out the show and the ‘destined girl’ ahead of time. H2O even tries to bring a few new things to the table (it seems every harem show, even the most cliched ones, have one good gimmick) with a blind protagonist and a seemingly-demonic girl who gets abused all the time at school. Unfortunately the first gimmick was rendered void (although still volatile) after episode one and the second gimmick is outright sickening but there still is lots of intrigue and mystery left in the show which I can’t sarcasm my way through…just yet.

Although, I must ask, what is the point of putting a trap character in an H-game meant for guys? I mean, you’re playing along, going with the story, and then you hit the H-scene and all of a sudden OH DEAR GOD! Or something. I don’t know how they handled it in the game but it’s not logistically making sense to me in the anime. I love being bitter.

#9 – Nodame Cantabile (~13 completed)
We’re really getting into the good stuff here now as Nodame Cantabile is a show I find wildly entertaining as one in a dying vein of shoujo-type romance-of-life shows; that is, a largely slice-of-life comedy, but with some emotional drama and romantic conflict lying in wait.

Unfortunately though about halfway through I decided watching it on a pixellated 4″ by 3″ stream wasn’t good enough for me, so I started downloading Nodame and my BitTorrent client decided to go to hell on me. I’m still getting around to fixing up that whopping 500 byte / sec download speed (note byte) – yes, I have an idea how – but until then Nodame is in ’slow internet purgatory’, which is a shame.

The characters in Nodame really are both wildly exaggerating and appealing, a solid bunch that many shows would struggle to match without lathering on the moe sauce. Chiaki, the male lead, is a bit too bishonen (i.e. wildly squealed about by every girl – and a guy – in the show) for my tastes but his somewhat cynicist, somewhat sarcastic, always determined attitude really clicks with my own, and he is worthy of getting transported into any harem show in lieu of other, more bland protagonists. Since I am a born klutz I also enjoy Nodame’s incredibly strange and Osaka-like antics; it’s easy to see how her energetic personality could rub off on the people around her. Then there’s Milch Whatever His Real Name Is, the famous German conductor who also became a famous pervert around the music school, that one guy with the fro who’s gay for Chiaki, Chiaki’s enthusastic friend who plays rock songs with the violin, etc etc etc.

Oh, and the plot would be good too if I didn’t forget it after two weeks of not watching. What does strike me though is that time does pass reasonably quick in this show – we’re already through a year or two or school, where other shows might drag out time a bit more. Nice to see the characters maturing and evolving quickly.

#8 – Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (4 episodes completed)
If I were smarter and more coherent I would parody SZS’s style in my checkpoint review of it, but it would go something like this:

*lots of fast-scrolling text*

*funny style animation*

*random pseudo-parodical reference*

*Complete gibberish!*

*random cut to something non-related*

*sudden jump to rocking ending song*

Zetsubou Sensei has always been a sort of mind-rending show with it’s off-the-wall insanity and it just gets cranked to eleven in the second season of it, with more budget, more parodies, more random thematic changes (saw a sneak peek at the Magical Zetsubou Girls or whatever of episode 7), and above all more utterly ridiculous humor. Whether the laughing is of the side-splitting or the eye-twitching kind Zetsubou Sensei is a show not to be missed if only because of how different it is.

I also think I’m contractually obligated to say “it’s good because it’s occasionally like a British comedy,” and is. Who needs physical comedy when you can make fun of society?

Again, it’s another show that drops this ‘low’ only because of a.f.k. living too much up to their group name.

#7 – Shugo Chara! (17 episodes completed)
I contemplated on another post what the reason for having shorter shows be the norm rather than the exception, and Shugo Chara seems to be driving the reason home with the famous ‘f’ word of ‘filler’.

Slated for 52-odd episodes, Shugo Chara, I imagine, is in danger of jumping the manga before the close of its run and so we’ve had a lot of tangentially important episodes which range from the really mind-numbing episodes to the more mentally gripping ones. 14, 15, and maybe even 16 were a bit dragging, throwing in random characters for the sake of snapping their poor minds and X-Egg’ing them, but 17 began to set the gears back in motion with the actions of Nikaidou and the temporary “betrayal” of Kukai.

Of course being a show of whose target age and gender I overshoot by miles, Shugo Chara still has some aspects that make me wince, such as the utter left-fieldness of Kukai and Tadase’s “ahaha, we tricked you!” that seemed impossible to guess ahead of time, and Nikaidou’s willingness to sit around and let Amu attack him while he should be running away (or conversely, Amu’s utterly junk ability to actually hit a target when it counts) but what I enjoy about Shugo Chara is how a lot of its elements are strong enough to make up for the times where I get knocked silly by a pink overdose.

It seems almost like Shugo Chara is going in the vein of NanaDrops in devaluing the actual magical girl aspect of the show and putting an emphasis on the character interaction, something that I find far more intriguing here. After all, it’s child’s play for Amu to annihilate any X Chara, no matter the size; apparently all it takes is a quick transformation and a Master Spark (Love Sign Amu Hinamori? You bet.) and the jobs’ done, and I can’t help but think this simplicity is for the sake of the more mature members of the crowd.

Shugo Chara looks to be on the rise as we get back to the somewhat gothic yet somehow interesting character of Ikuto, the typical conflicted, loose cannon bad guy that seems so much more in the hands of this show. I’m still torn as to whether Ikuto or Tadase is the true guy for Amu in this show, both in terms of merit and in terms of the storyline, but having Ikuto take the lead and forcing both Amu – and with any luck, Tadase – to reconsider their feelings would be something very intriguing. Hell yes, we need to kick this love triangle up a notch.

No hurry on the Nadeshiko business, though, let me stress.

#6 – Shakugan no Shana II (20 episodes completed)
It was a tough call to put Shana all the way back here after an absolutely killer pair of episodes, and let me note that positions six through four were incredibly hard fought, but in the end someone’s got to go back here and I gave the spot to the show that took the longest to kick into gear.

Luckily the slow, painful days of Shana II have been forgotten and the real fans of the show have been sorted from the kind that were turned off by the early annoyance of Konoe, as Yuji’s fight in 19 and Wilhelmina’s fight in 20 were outright spectacular. It was good to see Yuji doing something useful and the way he took the Tomogara’s plan to pieces without so much as any assistance from the other Flame Hazes was very impressive.

And episode 20 was a thriller of a fight, something that any action movie could look up to. In fact, it could pass for a horror movie with how much Sabrac managed to survive Wilhelmina’s increasingly powerful attacks, come to think of it. Like Kaiji 20, I’ll probably look back and see that there wasn’t a lot to it other than cool explosions and a lot of swords, but both participants oozed badass in the fight, and Shana, Yoshida, and Margery seem to be setting the stage for more plot to come, so it’s definitely forgivable at the moment.

What really worries me is that Wilhelmina and Margery are both just far enough outside the main character radar to set off the Liable to Actually Die sirens, much like Ishida and Sahara of Kaiji. While they both are essential to the plot living, they could do just as much dead, and the only thing from stopping me from going into full panic is the fact that many of the more knowledgable blogs aren’t snickering about upcoming spoilers, much like they did in the earlier stages about a certain Torch.

(Who, incidentally, is becoming increasingly irrelevant as time passes. Isn’t it sad?

Luckily this makes the show more interesting as I really will watch and hope Wilhelmina will end up pulling through in the end, but at this point I think it’s fair game as the show builds to a climax and prepares to burst the scene wide open. Hecate comes in here somewhere, right?

#5 – true tears (9 episodes completed)
Yes, yes, blasphemous of me to put the ‘year’s best show’ down so low , but in the end while it’s intriguing to speculate on and analyze the characters of this show it’s just not to me as much of a virtual pageturner as other shows have turned out to be. Perhaps this is due to me picking up the show late.

When I do get around to watching it though it’s no doubt that it’s one hell of a show, being one of the most visually impressive things not by a certain “Cute-Oh” Animation, and having a tough decision worthy of KimiKiss itself. Noe vs. Hiromi is still a tough call for me, despite all the signs swinging in Hiromi’s direction; I can’t help but think that a double reverse could be possibly, since Noe means too much to this story to be removed now. What of Shinichiro’s picture book? That and all the Raigomaru referencing virtually guarantees Noe’s relevance to the plot.

Of course, if the anime could pull some way for Noe to be important to the story without falling head over heels for Shinichiro (as meltingly adorable as that is) that would be equally refreshing as well; love often seems like an all or nothing gambit in anime, something that just seems wrong. I doubt many of the heroines that have ‘given up on their feelings’ truly have.

There are plenty of other things to take apart in the show; the cool and collected Jun is a mystery – does he really care for Hiromi, and what are the feelings for his sister?, the motives of Shin’s cold if not a bit stereotypical (it’s almost dripping with I Hate My Parents angst) parents are unclear, and there’s a few other scattered points that I’m sure I’m overlooking.

Ai’s importance to the story, having made quite a few fatal missteps, is another question mark as well; Shinichiro’s friend seemed to be getting the hint that things were falling apart between him and Ai, but will this gap continue to grow or will the two of them pull it shut? For once, I’m rooting for the latter and for the secondary male in a harem show. I think the equivalent is hoping for Sunohara to bag Tomoyo.

Actually, come to think of it…

#4 – KimiNozo / Rumbling Hearts (10 episodes completed)
For all the talk of it being the precursor to School Days, I find that the drama in KimiNozo has a decidedly different tone than School Days. Whereas the latter relies a lot on shock value, the “HER too!?” factor of watching Makoto bed a different girl for the fourth episode in a row, KimiNozo is much more of a slow burn, a match waving over a can of gasoline. It’s not intense all the time, but rather always on the edge, a bit of a melancholy show waiting to burst into conflict.

Finally, in episode 10, the fire may have started with Akane of all people telling her sister Haruka about the whole ‘you’ve been in a coma for three years’ things. No doubt the dominoes of ‘Mitsuki’s with Takayuki now’ and ‘everybody is full of sad’ are next to fall.

I was surprised that Akane of all people, she of the legendary “are you gonna eat my sister?” line (Incidentally, Takayuki did, for those keeping score, and then ate Mitsuki the next episode. Awkward.), was the first to snap, when I would have put money on Mitsuki or Haruka herself. Although, the other two do seem on the brink, with Mitsuki now taking to Shinji in drunken desperation. I only hope Shinji will be one character to take the high road here, like he has so far. Although, playing the Hisui to everyone else’s insanity might be harming to him as well…

Where it goes from here will be the big question; of course we’re going to have some Mitsuki and Haruka conflict, and I’m really torn on which one Takayuki’s going to choose in the end (I pick Mitsuki, because of the whole ‘moving on’ theme), but how much of a factor the other characters will play is a mystery to me. Ayu and Mayu so far have been great comedy in their post-show skits, but Ayu seems like she could be at least partially important – her act is screaming ‘tsundere in love’ personally, but maybe that’s being a bit paranoid. Likewise, Akane has been setting off the air raid sirens for two episodes now; is it possible she has a thing for Takayuki too? That could be very bad, and I can’t decide whether that point makes me want to see it happen or not.

In any case, it’s only a matter of time before this whole thing explodes, and I’m looking forward to being there to see it. Hopefully the emotional damage won’t be too much.

#3 – Clannad (19 episodes completed)
What I really hate is how I can’t hate Nagisa.

I mean, for God’s sake, Kyou and Tomoyo were twice as hot, twice as entertaining, twice as adorable, and just as deserving, but they got hammered down hard in blunt fashion. And so I really should be turning the boom to Nagisa, who, like Ayu, should deserve a good hatred for being a winner and a not-as-appealing character, yet I share Jeff Lawson’s opinion in that I just like Nagisa too much.

Ugh, I tried to rail on her for being overly submissive, but that fell through. I tried to hammer her for being too moe, but hell knows I’m not going to turn on anyone for that. She’s just too good of a character, too supporting of Tomoya, too willing to stand up for herself, too much of a real person to be hated on. And I hate her for being so unhateable.

In other news though we are falling into what I suppose is the final combined arc of Tomoya, Nagisa, and that silly mysterious world in the closing moments of Clannad, and what really confuses me is how the “other world” with the robot and the overly-well-animated little girl has gotten relatively little coverage compared to in-a-dream Ayu or flying-in-the-sky Misuzu. I’m really left clueless on how exactly it ties in at the moment, and at this point it might need a bit of cramming to make work.

It also depends on how much exposition Tomoya’s father gets; I’d like to see more of Tomoya’s dynamic with him explained, if not because 1) we never get anything interesting about a guy, like IKnight said, then because 2) the whole I Hate My Family aspect is just grating. It seems like we’ll have some mysterious mystery secrets of Nagisa’s family, which, in Key fashion, is probably smiling through some great pain or something. Oh, the agony. Hopefully it won’t go full melodrama panic like Key works tend to do – it works in a pinch but I like the mix Clannad’s got going here.

#2 – Kaiji (21 episodes completed)
Fine, fine, Kaiji’s good again.

There was a bit less predictability than I predicted in the 21st episode; Tonegawa seemed to be in a gone enough mental state to fall right for Kaiji’s trap, but instead he caught on… then he double-thought himself, then decided against it, and then kept going, the thought nagging at him and Kaiji grinning at him the whole time.

It was wildly entertaining trying to keep things straight and figure out how Kaiji was thinking that Tonegawa was thinking that he’d think that Kaiji would think that Tonegawa was thinking that Kaiji wasn’t thinking to think that Tonegawa would think to think that Kaiji’s thought was to think that Tonegawa would think that Kaiji’s thought was a thought and not a thought that Kaiji thinks that Tonegawa was thinking Kaiji thinks that Tonegawa isn’t thinking.

Or something, but in any regards it was a lot tougher to figure out where exactly Kaiji put the slave, although it’s a bit obvious now. Can’t have him dying after all. I wonder what that they they brought out in the preview was, though.

One question answered, two more posed, it’s the best way Kaiji works. Also, on a final note, the facial contortions in this episode were nothing short of awesome.

#1 – KimiKiss Pure Rouge (20 episodes completed)
Yeah, it’s still good, and since there’s no new episodes there’s not much to say about it other than that it’s great in multiple ways. It’s down-to-earth, it’s unpredictable, it’s enjoyable, it’s cute, it’s attractive, it’s heartwarming, it’s touching, it’s connectable, and it’s freaking KimiKiss, so watch it. If you didn’t see my ridiculous post on episode 20, you can check that out for more worshipping of this great romance.

-CCY

(Shows that didn’t make the dance, due to availability, apathy, or sloth: Kanon’s drama CD – dear OTL Fansubs, your fans are out there, keep going! – Kodomo no Jikan (yes, I know it’s not 100% pedobait), Hidamari Sketch (slice-of-lives are so hard to pick up on a whim), Potemayo (honi honi honi), School Rumble (contemplating it based off of the manga), Haibane Renmei ($8 / DVD at RightStuf plus massive critical acclaim is so tempting), Honey & Clover (get a release date already!))

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.
(I’ve been dying for an excuse to use this ‘alternate universe’ pic)

There’s jumping in the deep end, jumping in the deep end, and then there’s Kodomo no Jikan. For the first show I decided to try on the whim, I had the feeling that I was trying a pretty daring one. After all, it had been bashed as all sorts of lolicon-pandering stuff, featuring a college-age (I’m spot-guessing on this one) teacher and his adventures with his quite disturbing third-grade class. Still, it recieved a lot of backing from people who sound like they enjoy stuff with substance, claiming that it plays off the youth aspect of the main heroines not just for fanservice but also for story as well. And so it was plug your ears, hold your nose, and anything goes, to see what would happen.

Actually, I started with the manga first, a decision that I’m not I’m not sure is a good one or not. I enjoy anime a lot more than I enjoy manga for the most part; this is probably because that, since I read quickly, I tend to skip over a lot of nuances of the series that an anime might make sure I notice. For example, I burned through the first volume (10-odd chapters) of Kojika in less than an hour. Maybe, I guess, manga for me is a bit of a hedging of bets; it’s not as much of a waste of time, but it’s not as flavorful.

I still thought the Kojika manga was decent, but that I should have watched the anime first, since I probably spoiled myself for a few episodes by going with the manga first. Some claim that the anime is inferior, though, and so far I’d have to disagree, for no particular reason than the one that was stated above, as it seemed a pretty faithful adaptation. This may boil down to me watching the DVD version, which had a distinct lack of the whirling censors that supposedly plagued the TV version; personally, I would like to see an episode with it, maybe when I get further into the series, just because I’m the kind of person that enjoys gag censors, which Kojika looks like it might have employed. In addition to, y’know, actual censors.

The material itself wasn’t too bad; there were some moments that got a questionable eyebrow-raise or an awkward cough, but on the whole it wasn’t worse than anything else you’d see in on the dirty end of the harem scale. No nudity, just dirty jokes, and I think the only reason people are being offended is because everyone’s in the single digits (When they flashed the teacher at the end, they were only wearing bloomers as part of a joke, after all). The jokes themselves were hit or miss, there were a few that made me chuckle but it wasn’t drop dead funny like any show devoted to humor.

Serious aspects are all over the board so far; glasses girl got kind of skimmed over in the first episode, and I think the next plot point after that that I’m really looking forward to is the revealing of Rin’s background, which really adds another dimension to the show. As a whole, my judgment on Kojika at the moment is mostly nonplussed; there were a few things that would keep my interest and a few things that would repel me, but neither in enough force to warrant a high-priority entry into the viewing rotation. I think anyone scared that it’s a pedofest should give it a shot to prove themselves wrong, though.

After watching something that appealed at least in part to the lolicons, I decided to swing to the opposite end of thing and watch something that would enthrall guys in a more manly way. It was a show called Akagi, and much like the previous show it was in a genre I was utterly clueless about: the mahjong / gambling genre. Akagi, much like its brethren Kaiji, is a show hailed for its intense, dramatic gambling action, and either loved or hated for its lack of moe, cute things, or probably girls for that matter.

One thing that worried me coming into this show was the fact that I hadn’t so much as touched a mahjong tile in my life, which seemed to prove a high barrier to prevent getting into the show, as opposed to the much more friendly games of Kaiji (rock-paper-scissors and walking in a straight line among them). Additionally, there was a lot of talk about Akagi being a highly different protagonist than Kaiji.

I can’t help but agree with both of these assertions after watching the first episode, which, while decent, I found much less enjoyable than Kaiji. Perhaps I like sympathizing with losers, or people down on their luck more, but I just found Akagi to be kind of cold in comparison. There is a bit of a thrill to watching ‘just as planned’ moments go off – why I like watching the James Bond movies and the like where everything falls into place in grandiose fashion – but the emotional connection found in Kaiji is just something that can’t be beat. Akagi, as a cheater, a cold-hearted delinquent, and probably a Japanese gangster as well, just doesn’t really click at the moment.

Plus, how the narrator makes him sound greater-than-life is just off-putting as well. I don’t want to believe that he is God, I want to believe that he is human, perhaps an above-average one, but a real person. Maybe Akagi will show another side, or part of it, later on in the show, but right now he’s colder and more inanimate than a block of ice.

Likewise, watching the mahjong terms get banded about in this episode didn’t help the flow of things, but I have a feeling that I could at least learn a bit about the game if I continued on, so I won’t fault the show for this.

Akagi, if it has the epic moments like Kaiji tends to have, certainly could turn out to be an enjoyable show, but without the emotional moments, I don’t know if it can be a great one. I might continue watching this show in hopes that things improve – both the track record and the show itself do have a high measure of potential – but it’s pretty uncertain at the moment.

Nodame Cantabile, a show I can’t pronounce, or much less spell, was the third one up to the plate and probably the show with the greatest degree of similarity to something I would normally watch. To be honest, I don’t hear of it much, but when I do hear about it I hear good things about this show which revolves around music. As someone who knows a lot of “band people” and as someone who feels a lot of guilt about being musically inept, I felt an urge to give this show a try.

I’m pleased I did, as it seems to be a good example of a relaxing slice-of-life show – it might be a good example of what some people call “healing anime”, a show that soothes the soul instead of setting it aflame with action, moe, or whatnot. Additionally, with the boy-meets-girl episode of the first element, it looks like it could have some romance undertones, or at the least, some interesting character-searching.

The story, despite being named after the eccentric girl Nodame, seems to revolve a lot about the main hero (yes, I’m horrible at names after one episode), and his ambitions to be more than a common piano player and become a conductor. In America Europe, not just Japan. Certainly there seems to be potential for growth within his character, and I can already see the contrasts being set up between him and Nodame. The former is a guy with great ambitions, and a touch of talent too; but he is easily disheartened (in an angry manner instead of a depressed one), and he could probably be called a quitter. The latter is a definitely talented musician, who seems to be more about having fun than being serious, yet still lives a life largely on her own terms. (As depicted by her astoundingly messy – by anyone’s definition – room.)

As Zetsubou Sensei would put it, it largely feels like a “meeting that was never meant to happen,” between two conflicting personalities who are meant to help each other grow (although, this of course, never happened in that other show). The male lead seems to be coming off the tail end of a botched relationship, and the Nodame, the female lead, seems to have something going on with a truly out-of-the-blue confession in the end. Whether she is just being silly again, or really is serious, the second episode will tell.

I’m probably the most entranced with this show out of the five, no doubt because of the characters; the male lead feels very real in a sense, like you or me could be him, and Nodame is a fun character who many people could see a bit in too. The show is pretty relaxed and slow-paced, but there’s a hint at enough of a driving force to keep the plot going. It’s kind of funny, kind of heartwarming, and a lot of musical fun as well; lthough, I can’t tell when they’re playing it right or wrong. Certainly it’s worth continuing.

And hey, Nodame makes a great Neko-Arc face.

Manabi Straight and Hidamari Sketch are two shows I continue to confuse over and over, maybe because of the similar-sounding names, or perhaps as their status as two of the more legendary recent slice-of-life anime. Unfortunately though, they both aired in the winter 2006/7 section, a blind spot for me due to that being the genesis of my newly-fansubbed fandom with the equally acclaimed (among most) Kanon.

As such I’ve made a few efforts here or there to try to catch up with these shows, but failed miserably, probably due to the very nature of slice-and-life, something that’s making it hard for me to watch these shows. Trying to marathon them, or even watch them in fast succession, just goes against the nature of the show as something that’s frequently slow-paced and relaxed.

This means, essentially, that a show like ARIA, Hidamari, or Manabi will never really top the charts of “Oh God I need to watch this now“, but I don’t find that a bad thing. They’re more of a fall-back, the show that’s always there, that you watch because you have nothing else to do, and you just want to chill.

Luckily, this whole five-episode-trial being a sort of “well, here goes” for me, I managed to approach Manabi Straight in the right mood, expecting not very much but a pleasant time, and that’s essentially what I got. Manabi Straight wasn’t exactly a show that left me rolling with its jokes, and the plot isn’t important enough to warrant watching on it alone, but still, I was left in an incredibly bright, cheerful mood once the show ended. Such is the power of the “healing anime” genre, of shows that just make you feel good, for no apparent reason.

This is probably due to Manabi/Manami’s famous line “Massugu GO!” (or “Go straight ahead!”), a determined statement of the attitude that permeates the very soul of this show. Her slightly exaggerated energetic personality works well, as it is built off a strong base of a fun-loving, enthusiastic character who isn’t afraid of what others think.

The one thing that is kind of strange about this show is how, apparently, in the future, birth rates have not only stumped the population’s size but also its height; you could have told me this show was about a bunch of elementary school girls instead of high school girls, and I would believe it.

But that’s merely aesthetic, and a lot of other elements of this show are good-looking, bright, and cheerful, so I don’t mind so much. There’s not much to say about this show, being a slice-of-life, but that’s always been what this genre has been about to me. It’s not something so much that you watch so much as something you immerse yourself in, like a warm, soothing bath. Manabi Straight, in that sense, is like a spa; something that both energizes and calms you.

The final anime in the five-show-frenzy is undoubtedly the biggest name on the list, and that I think is saying a lot; it’s something that I’ll probably get myself killing simply for not watching it up until know, and it’s Gurren Lagann. One of the biggest names of 2007 anime (yes, that’s just a link to an aggregator of posts, because there are too many), it seems, Gurren Lagann is touted as one of the best giant-robot-type shows in recent memory. Not that I would know, because really, I’ve never watched any giant robot anime.

And on that rationale, why not start with something truly epic, I figured? Gurren Lagann appealed from the start, even for I begun watching, on the sheer quotability of it all, that even made its way into other anime. (Incidentally, I finally get all this ‘giant drill’ stuff Konata was going on about) I’ve always been aversive of the other big name in giant-robot, Evangelion, because of all the talk of a weak, depressive protagonist, and the empowering, adrenaline-filled stance that Gurren Lagann appeared to take in comparison clicked instantly.

Gurren Lagann, from what it seems so far from 25 minutes of watching and endless months of hype, is an absolutely over-the-top show, and that’s probably what makes it so much fun to watch. The opening scene shows an impossibly giant robot destroying impossibly huge universe. Kamina’s impossibly awesome go-getter attitude and empowering speeches would raise life in the coldest of dead corpses. The Lagann, or the Gurren Lagann, or whatever, can crank its power to impossible levels (it has to be at least 12 – it’s two higher) and send the enemy flying into the heavens, as shown in the first battle. And, of course, Yoko has some impossibly huge ballistics ifyaknowwhatimean. The anime simply radiants energy and enthusiasm.

Simon seems a bit of the basic shonen hero – enthusiastic but naive, determined but cowardly – but overall he’s not a bad guy and combined with Kamina the two of them make a good pair. The show’s optomistic and empowering overtones make it more than your average show, I think; the enclosed environment in which everyone lives in has hints of the cave allegory in it with the whole “this is the world” deal, and really is quite dreary when compared to the stunning beauty of the real world.

There’s not a whole lot else I can say about this show, as I just realized I don’t know much of the direction of this show; but with the whole world standing before them, it’s more of what Simon and co. can’t do at this point than what they can. As such, it seems like the kind of adventure and exploration show that I could really enjoy, as opposed to the fading glory of the “I wanna be #1″ shows of my youth. I definitely have no complaints with Gurren Lagann; I don’t think it’s as much of a must-watch in a personal sense as Nodame Cantabile yet, but as a hot-blooded person I will definitely look forward to seeing more of this show (in the States, right, right!?) in the future. It’s every bit as energetic and good-mood-inducing as Manabi Straight, but in more of an adrenaline-packed manner. I believe in the me that believe in this show!

-CCY

(Hey, I think I finally get this picture too.)

(Although, about Gurren Lagann, the spoilers about Show ▼

really make me worry for the future of this show after episode eight. )

And now for the Slowpoke news: we’re in the winter season.

I’m still stuck in the past, not because of any traumatic accidents which have permanently scarred me and/or my memory, but because the fall season is arguably a much more robust season than the winter ones, at least in terms of new shows.

Especially for a visual novel slash romance slash restricted rock-paper-scissors fan like me, there were a lot of shows that were very appealing; many of them, despite being in tried and tired genres, brought a lot of fresh concepts to the table.

And what’s interesting about this, is that unlike in the summer season, a lot of the most promising shows didn’t close out at twelve episodes. Those that did, were strong shows, no doubt, but many more than that have been promised at least 20-odd episodes, double the goodness if they can keep the pace up.

As such, the winter watchlist is turning out to be strangely familiar. There are plenty of carryover shows on the list, and those that are new shows to 2008 are mostly sequels in some way or form (Zoku SZS, Minami Okawari). Not to leave a bad impression of the winter season – but there aren’t any names of new shows that really stand out from it.

This doesn’t equate with ‘no good shows’, per se – some of my favorite fall shows have been ones that have been completely off the radar – but going off the blog reactions so far, there hasn’t been a standout show that absolutely blows people away, that came out of nowhere and delivered the awesome. Undoubtedly there probably will be, but for now I’m content with surviving off both fresh old shows, and some true classics that are burning a hole in my DVD collection. Today, I’ll take a look at what we have to expect from some of the shows coming into their second cour in 2008.

Shugo Chara!
Understandably, Shugo Chara! was a show that wasn’t exactly on my radar when the season started. Even if I was born and raised on Cardcaptor Sakura, magical girl shows aren’t always my cup of tea, and I usually rely on feedback from other blogs to pick out the subsets of this genre that would be my type. In that sense, I’m a sort of elitist for magical girls – I tend to prefer only the ones that have an appeal to both genders, those that carry ‘feminine’ traits such as romance and a lowered focus on action, yet don’t come off as too girly. I do have a pink tolerance still, despite all these years of anime watching.

Anyway, Shugo Chara! got a surprising amount of good feedback from placed that I read a lot, namely Jeff Lawson’s and Owen’s locales, and so it was an essential “here goes nothing” while I was scraping the bottom of the barrel one day. As has been detailed, the first few episodes were a bit too pink for my tastes, but contained enough interesting stuff to keep my interest, so I forged on; and man, am I glad I did.

It seems a bit pretentious to both proclaim it the next Cardcaptor Sakura or even compare it to that show at all, considering how times have changed a lot in the 21st century, but there’s no doubt that Shugo Chara! has the potential to be THE magical girl show of this decade. I can’t speak for other popular shows, such as the PreCure series or whatnot, but certainly SC seems to have the wide appeal and fanbase to make it big.

The animators seem to know this too, as the show has been slated for one of the longer continuous runs in recent memory, topping 50 episodes, and this is something that, naturally, is good and bad. The good is of course more of what we love, more of this show and it’s entertaining character dynamics. The bad is that, since there doesn’t appear to be a huge amount of content for the manga, there’s going to end up being a lot of filler in the show, ergo, not as much of the entertaining character dynamics. (Not to mention, it’d be a pain to blog.)

What, personally, deserves the most focus is the quickly-shaping romance tetrahedron of sorts, forming between Amu, Tadase, Ikuto, and Utau. Of course, saying this is a bit simplified; Amu’s torn between the goodly Tadase and the dark Ikuto, Tadase’s smitted with Amu’s transformed self, Ikuto’s busy being the guy equivalent of tsundere (Shiraishi’s “cool-dere” comes to mind), and Utau is mysteriously possesive a la Primula (that suddenly explains a lot for Stripey’s fandom of Utau), and all these facts add up to make the romance side of this story a bit more appealing than your standard ‘will-she-won’t-she’ love story.

The magical girl elements of SC are a bit overdone, personally, as Amu seems to be able to hax any X Character into submission without barely breaking a sweat, but this might just be the show’s way of deemphasizing these aspects in favor of it’s stronger romantic and slice-of-life elements.

So what’s to look for in the upcoming episodes of Shugo Chara? To be honest, I’m worried that the answer is ‘not much’ – different shows handle their mid-sections in different ways, but Shugo Chara! has a lot of time to burn, and so it might not be doing much in the way of developing character relations in the near future. Hopefully it will be like many recent shows and not delay the love confessions until the end.

Although, regarding that, what’s really keeping me interested in this anime (aside from denying cute traps) is that I can’t really decide who Amu’s going to ‘win’ at the end…presuming she does at all. Both Tadase and Ikuto have their appeals, both to Amu and to the viewer, and it’s not as clear-cut as other shows which one will end up being the ‘main’ guy. Tadase is undoubtedly the more traditional choice, being the good guy who fights along her, but Ikuto’s been getting a lot of attention recently, and being the somewhat rebellious yet soft-hearted personality he is, I can’t help but root for him.

Oh, and the mysterious evil motives of Easter, I suppose I have a little vested interest in; who knows if it will be some typical “parents vs. kids” endeavor or not. I can’t get a lock on this either.

Shakugan no Shana II
Shana II was not exactly the most popular anime around the blogosphere recently, having eschewed it’s action and love-triangle aspects for more of a repetitive drama that failed to be really engaging. But with the recent episodes having kicked the series full throttle ahead, it might be time to pick up interest in the show again.

For me, Shana II has always been a show that was sort of a bread-and-butter watch – something it would be a little painful, other times a little more intriguing, but most of the time it was relatively typical supernatural-action-romance fare, with the action part just getting into gear now. However, with some of the plot points that I think lie ahead, both involving a few Torches (accidental spoilers, whee) and the story of Pheles and the Reiji Maigo, Shana II might have an opportunity to prove itself more than that, and show that the hype for this show isn’t just irrational love for melon-bread-eating tsunderes.

In that regard, it might have actually been a wise decision in the end for the beginning parts of Shana II to be so slow; it could be considered that the animation team was merely getting the filler out of the way so that the rest of the show can be exciting from here on out. Maybe not a good business decision, but if it holds true it will be promising for the second half of Shana.

As for what will happen in what episodes remain, I don’t really know. I’m really unfamiliar with this series as a whole, and so what I can say is that there will be a lot of fighting, a few romantic scenes, and a lot of terminology spamming to come. It’s pretty cut-and-dry that Shana and Yuuji are into each other, but I can’t decide whether we’ll get true confessions and conclusion with this season, considering the retcon we got this time. If there is enough material for Shana III, that aspect might just be held back on. Kazumi doesn’t look like she has much to go on; we already know she likes Yuuji, and now she’s in that limbo between backing off and going on the attack, neither which would really suit her. As such, I think all she’s good for so far is some romantic insights, what with her virtues of patience and all.

And so my hopes for this show lie with Ike for reasons too numerous to count. He’s your glasses-sporting “just as planned” smart guy, he’s gotten shafted through the whole cultural festival arc, and he seems pretty level-headed and likable as a whole. Not to mention, he’s shooting for the moon in going after Kazumi, who even he knows prefers Yuuji; he’s effective working off a rationale of ‘well Yuuji likes Shana, so someone’s got to be there to catch Kazumi’.

I really hope he gets his fair share of screentime considering how much he’s been made fun of recently, as I think he could be a really strong character. I’m hoping they have time to fit him in among all the more standard storyline fun with the green-haired ladies.

Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji
I think I will forever tout this as the reason why blog hype is important; I would not go within a million miles of a show featuring ugly men (and no moe girls) fighting it out in rock-paper-scissors, yet undoubtedly some of the latest arcs of this show have been nothing short of stunning.

It’s funny; what makes this show work is that it’s not pure macho, nor pure mindgames, but sort of a mix of both, and then some. There are moments that make you think, there are moments that make your blood boil, and sometimes, there are even moments that make you tear up. Sometimes, there are all three at once. I mean, for the love of whatever deity I worship now, I thought Aozora was going to start playing during Ishida’s scene in episode fourteen. It was absolutely wrecking, in that way that made you contemplate the nature of man while crying manly tears and shouting “ISHIDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”.

Kaiji rivals the best of the visual novel genre in having disturbingly touching insights; while those deal more with the romantic irrationality of man, Kaiji goes more into the nitty-gritty stuff. The difference between the haves and have-nots, the wants and want-nots, how everyone is selfish in being kind and kind in being selfish. (A bit of a stretch, but I heart parallelism)

And it’s a great mix of predictability and unpredictability as well. You know that Kaiji isn’t going to win millions every time soon, but you know they can’t quite kill him off either. You know that he’s going to work his way out of this hole somehow, but fall back into another. It keeps the mind racing, and to be honest, I still don’t know how the Brave Men Road is going to come out. We know he’s not doing to die. So what is he going to do to get rid of the money? I’m guessing give it all to Ishida’s wife, because there’s got to be another yakuza-sponsored game on the horizon; the other aspect that keeps it interesting. It’s that ‘what will they think of next?’, both in the fourth-wall and in the storyline sense.

It’s that strange mix of disgust and delight when you see the shoving in Brave Men Road, that puts you disturbingly close to the action, in a similar position as the ‘rich bastards’. It’s eerie in a sense, how unwittingly we are becoming like them, being the viewers watching something like this for pleasure. It ties you into the show like what nearly no other show can do, and so that’s why I can reccomend Kaiji as one of the top shows – especially if you hate moe – of the fall season.

KimiKiss Pure Rouge
For as many times as I’ve used this phrase, KimiKiss is one of the shows that I think could most fit the idea of being ‘unpredictably predictable.’ It’s a very vanilla show in a sense, one that’s refreshingly down-to-earth and real, and at first the romance seemed pretty much a straight shot. It could be easily seen how Kouichi will be with Yuumi, how Mao will end up with Mai, and how Kazuki will snag Eriko.

But, since this show is so multi-threaded, it’s easy to see how these threads will intertwine as well. The show seems to be dropping plenty of hits of possibly tying Mao and Kouichi together. Plus, it’s tough to tell whether Asuka or Eriko is the true girl for Kazuki.

Let’s go with the latter first. Eriko is probably the more likely shot – on-screen kisses aren’t taken lightly these days, and it seems all too sensible to have the romance with Kazuki be the thing to introduce Eriko to the world of emotion – I would say break her out of her shell, but Owen has another way of putting that.

Still, like in Shugo Chara’s similar dilemma, I can’t help but root for Asuka, the underdog here. It just seems wrong that the one who seems to be more passionate will lose, although I think that instead of Asuka winning here, she will just get some major development instead. She seems the strong, fiercely independent type, and she could definitely learn how to fly on her own with her love for soccer instead of Kazuki.

Mao and Kouichi’s situation is even tougher to call. Certainly it seems like it would be impossible to break the romantic bonds between Kouichi and Yuumi, given the collective amount of time they’ve stared at each other. And certainly it seems hard to split Kai and Mao, who seem the reverse of the Eriko – Kazuki situation; Kai is an interesting character, the ‘frequently misunderstood delinquent’ type that’s cold, but has a big heart.

But there still remains that possibility that Mao and Kouichi will in the end, be together; after all, she had to come back from France for a reason, and the anime has certainly dropped more than a few hints. I could see how Kai could live independently, like how Azuka could. And Yuumi could – could, the imperative word – be removed from the story with her moving away.

But that’s the catching point, that it would just seem too sad for her to be alone; she doesn’t look like she has a fallback, she seems much more emotionally invested in Kouichi. Enough to nearly clinch the ‘with enough effort, you’ll win’ romance award, but not enough to go yandere. So somehow I think Kouichi and Yuumi is the most likely combo, which will probably set Mao up with Kai. I wonder, if maybe Mao will be the one who has to understand who her true feelings are for.

(Oh, and don’t leave Hiiragi and Mamiko Noto out of the picture, either.)

There’s a lot to think about for such a simple-looking show, which is why KimiKiss is one of the strongest romances running so far. I look forward to seeing how it can do so much with so little in the future.

Clannad
Visual novels are probably the toughest shows to predict for, which is why I enjoy them so much. Others may not be as fond of the wild, rampant plot twists and overly idealized characters that these shows frequently make use of, but this is probably an issue of cliche more than anything else.

The visual novel genre is full of them, with childhood friends left and right throwing themselves at some undoubtedly bland guy. That’s probably part of the reason why I’ve always been a fan of the Key shows – AIR, Kanon, and now Clannad – because they do things differently.

Yeah, a lot of things are the same. Everyone’s still love-love toward one guy, and most of them have a history with him, but it’s not always about that. Clannad is a show that feels more balanced – it’s not just romance, but it’s comedy, it’s not just about the girls, it’s about Tomoya as well, and when it is about the girls, it’s more about them discovering themselves rather than their affections for Tomoya. In that sense it really is a show that anybody can enjoy.

The beginning episodes and the Fuuko arc were a great representation of this; people left and right both enjoyed the comedy, and when it came down to things, spouted fountains of tears at her story. Despite its somewhat derivate roots of Ayu, Fuuko’s arc managed to work well because it wasn’t just straight Tomoya – Fuuko interaction, but since it also involved Nagisa both helping them and helping herself.

Nagisa’s probably the reason why Clannad works, in that despite her soft, pushover personality she’s a very strong character all her own, and a great complement to Tomoya. She’s not one-tenth as adorable as Kotomi or Ryou, but that might be exactly the reason why: she’s more of a real character, with real thoughts and emotions, instead of a cardboard moe cutout. Yet she doesn’t renounce those roots either.

Recently I think the anime has slumped a bit with Kotomi’s arc – I love her character, her story’s interesting and all, but it’s just so typical. I think any visual novel anime could pull the ‘reclusive childhood friend with dead parents’ concept off, since it just seems so perfect storm, the sort of dream that any lonely guy would wish to have, to be the only one there for a girl like that. Clannad needs to be different.

Luckily, I think we’re getting into the best parts of the show, with what arcs we have left. Despite not knowing anything about the show, I have high hopes that Fuuko and Kotomi, as interesting as their arcs may be, will be utterly shamed by the powers of the three (four) girls remaining.

Tomoyo’s always been a riot in character, and she looks to have the story to back it up, if it involves her trying to change the way she’s seen, like it sounds so far. It’s definitely potential for her to develop a lot on her own, into a strong person.

Kyou and Ryou are perhaps a more typical bunch but one I’m much more willing to fall for than Kotomi. Kyou is a great personality, with her light-hearted, flirtatious attiude absolutely captivating, combined with more of a sisterly love for Ryou, equaling something fierce. Ryou, well, she’s a mix of Shiori and Tsukasa, and that I’m willing to overcome any sense of logic for. I just wonder what their story could be about, and that’s what really interests me.

And of course, we’ll close with Nagisa, where it really could go any way in the world. Whether they expand more on her story or Tomoya’s story, them or their parents, the real world or the imaginary one, time can only tell. I can only hope it will be legendary like everyone is making it out to be – right now, it is a good show, but the potential astounds me.

-CCY

Looking forward…

So instead it’s time for more fluff as I share some biased opinions, some crackpot theories, and maybe even a few valid comments, about what we should expect from some of these shows as they pass their halfway (or quarter) mark. Feel free to share your own as well.

Inspired by the recently released Myself;Yourself (PS2) OP, which in typical fashion dropped plenty of almost-hints about how the teacher is actually important, and that angry Nanaka is angry (and jealous), among other things. Also, that whoever this KAORI singer is (that did the anime OP as well), that she is very awesome.

Place your bets after the jump.

Myself;Yourself
Let’s lead off with said title, everyone’s favorite Engrish pronoun nightmare, which has proven to be an interesting visual novel (pre-)adaptation that, while light-hearted, has dropped a lot of hints that it’s about to be hit by the drama train very shortly. This has prompted some to call this the next School Days, which, although a bit of a stretch, could come scarily close in some regards…
1:1 Nanaka wins. She’s the chosen one hands-down, which is obvious in the show and in the promos. The question is how we’ll get there; she’s proven to be rather warm to Sana after an initial cold spell, but with impending plot coming, things might change.
2:1 Grandma Kaji figures largely into Nanaka’s / Asami’s plot. Having gotten a few good minutes of ‘crazy time’ back in episode 5, it’s shown that she is very mentally unstable, and could have something to do with the gone-missing bird of the nursing home. There was a good theory going around that she might try to drag Nanaka into her world as well, giving Sana a chance to shine. Asami, who helps at the home a lot, probably will have her story here. With M;Y being 1 cour, they have to hurry.
4:1 Backstory elements to keep an eye on: Nanaka’s a likely orphan (lives with uncle) due to her parent’s house burning and killing them (flashback of fire). Either of these may be related to the fact that Sana probably tried to cut himself (watch, fear of blood), which may have something to do with what Shuu shouted at Sana in the first episode. Complex. It’s something that Aoi / the twins seem to know of, given that they spontaneously go quiet at times.
5:1 Something with clocks. Seriously, the opening is riddled with them. There has to be some theme of ‘time’ here but I can’t figure out how it adds up, as there don’t seem to be any astral projections in this bunch…
250:1 Asami wins.
750:1 Aoi wins.
1500:1 Hinako wins. Isn’t it sad, non-Nanaka fans? Asami’s too much of a ‘chance meeting’, Aoi’s too friendly (and energetic, and racked, and awesome), and Hinako’s the token loli. I would give similarly high odds to Shuu ending up with anyone, given that he’s not a siscon and that Hinako’s slanting toward Sana now. Luckily, this show seems to be more about the ride than the conclusion.

KimiKiss Pure Rouge
Another popular ren’ai conversion, KimiKiss has come under a lot of fire for coming across as more of a show aimed at girls than guys. Still, for fans of romance in general, there has been a lot to like with the triple storylines, each following one of the main character’s search for love in high school.
2:1 Kouichi gets with shy girl. C’mon. They’re way love-love towards each other in that scared, shy way that only gutless high schoolers could pull off. Still, given that most of us went through that phase at one point or another so it’s a coupling that likely will recieve a lot of fan support. This one’s probably the couple that’s the most locked of the main three.
4:1 Mao ends up with Kai. This one’s a bit more of a surprise; we have a childhood friend coming back for a reason other than to hook up with the main guy? No way! But at this point a Mao and Kouichi coupling is an outside bet, although highly in the realm of possible. But they’re developing the whole “get Kai out of his cold exterior” thing too far for that to be likely.
6:1 We get some relationship cross-fire. With this many important characters and relationships one would think that there would be some conflict between characters over personal property (people), but two of the three main characters seem pretty much on one track. If there’s any conflict, it’ll probably be imaginary.
10:1 Kazuki ends up by himself. Kazuki, as the secondary male (although the balance of power is pretty equal), is a bit of question mark and has less of a shot than anyone else, and the fact that he’s got the most action early doesn’t help his cause. Another ‘cold exterior’ pairing (with genius girl) would just be redundant, he doesn’t seem to have much towards the soccer girl, and so, since he’s not a siscon (new catchphrase? sure.), that leaves…nobody. They can’t all be winners, kid.
40:1 Mad yuri loving between the frog girls.
500:1 That I ever can manage to watch the OP fully. I saw it once and can’t stand the song, for some reason. Lazy animation (visual novel style, with a bunch of stills that move) turns me off as well.

Shakugan no Shana II
One of the most-(melon)-panned shows of the new season, Shana II had a lot to live up to in terms of interesting action/romance hybrids, and failed to deliver on most of it, being a drama-fest that turned many people off. Still, I maintain faith that eventually, this show will improve. Will it be too late for the fanbase?
1:1 Ike loses in the Yoshida battle.
1:1 Yoshida loses in the Yuuji battle.
1:1 Konoe loses in the Not-Being-Hecate battle.
1:1 Shana wins in action battles, of which there will hopefully be more.
1:1 Joint wins in the Oh-God-Shana-II-OP-is-hot battle.
3:1 Yuuji wins in the Shana battle. Like M;Y, Shana isn’t exactly meant to be a stumper on what characters will take who home, but the only thing that might stop a full-on relationship from forming between Yuuji and Shana by the end of this show is an open-ended conclusion. This is considering 1) the reset at the beginning of episode one, 2) the fact that the light novels haven’t gone that far between the two, and 3) needs more Yoshida fight~!
5:1 Ike drama gets pulled off well. Despite the flop of the jealousy-fest over Konoe (who I presume is dormant Hecate or something), Ike has been proven to be a level-headed character and I have faith it’ll be interesting to see how he handles the Yoshida situation; especially considering that he’s got to know that she’s going after Yuuji.
15:1 People will consider Shana II a ‘good’ show by the end of the series. A bet that’s quickly becoming unprofitable, but I continue to fly the banner of ‘it’s just a really slow start’, despite being one of the newer people to the Shana bandwagon.
20:1 Wilhemina overtakes the Hisui & Kohaku tag-team in the ‘most awesome maids’ column, or at least passes Yoriko. (No, you have not stumbled upon AoMM.) A bit of a uphill feat, but she’s actually a pretty nice side character in a show where the side characters (Margery, side students, etc) have proven to be relatively appealing and, well, sane.
500:1 Odds that whoever the mature green-haired girl seducing Yuuji in the OP will NOT cause drama amongst Shana, Yoshida, and maybe Konoe…again.

Da Capo II
Actually, I still haven’t watched this past 3, but given blog reactions:
15:1 Koko. Yoshiyuki. All the way, Chris Berman, etc.; with all the shouts of “hurry up and move on already” that grow louder with each passing episode, I continue to hope that she can hold on in an epic upset for the perennial loser team in harem shows. I know I love me some underdog.
10000:1 Nanaka win. Isn’t it sad, Shirakawas?

Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji
An anime different from any other this season in that it features exactly zero females and zero moe. Instead, it’s about a gambler down on his luck and some excellent mindgames that have led some (me) to call this the under-the-radar show of the season. Unfortunately, the blogging presence of the show reflects similar levels of under-radar-ness.
2:1 Kaiji wins in the end and escapes with his debt relatively cleared. What do you think this is, Evangelion? (Note: I’ve never actually seen Eva.)
4:1 Furuhata and Andou backstab Kaiji…again. They’ve been shown to be very cowardly in the past, and I think with the impending reshuffle, they’ll turn tail once they get the chance. I wonder what the scheme behind the reshuffle is, I know Asshole Man has something up his sleeve, but can’t determine what.
7:1 Kaiji and co. are forced to buy stars and go further in debt to go to the next round. They may score one or two more stars, but I doubt that they’ll be way in the green (gold). Kaiji seems the type of show where the main character digs himself an even deeper hole so they can climb even further back up.
10:1 The last 20 minutes of game 1 will take at least 2 episodes. The first few hours of the game went pretty quick but now it might be time for some Anime Time Compression as Kaiji and co. beg for games or stars. While it may seem that I don’t have a lot to say, it’s mainly because either 1) I’m confused beyond belief (in a good way) or 2) the action has been relatively choreographed. It’s a good mixture of both.

Minami-ke
The one slice-of-life show that’s struck it big this season; it features three typically amusing slice-of-life character archetypes (the mature one, the crazy one, and the sarcastic one) that are close enough to reality to be believable, yet far enough away to be funny.
5:1 Minami-ke continues to be a solid, funny show. There’s been instances in the past where previously brilliant shows fell a little flat near the end, like Zetsubou Sensei. The mild fanservice set off little alarms of the latter; random hikikomori/teacher yuri may be hot for some, but for me it’s distracting. Hopefully Minami-ke will keep away from Haruka’s breasts. (Although if Kana can make some funny out of it…)
15:1 Any of the two or three guys romantically involved with the three sisters gets anywhere with them. Slice-of-lives have been infamous for shutting down suitors or even locking guys out entirely, but I hope that Minami-ke will continue to break the norm (considering it even has these aspects) and let one or two of them get their foot in the door.
20:1 Sensei and Ninooooooomiyaaaaa-kuuuuuuunnnn get a Good End. Here’s how to do a good repeating gag – the video game adaption was gold.

Clannad
KyoAni’s show turns out to be heavy hitter of the season as always, as another Key adaptation leaves many in despair (and amazement) again.
1:1 Nagisa appears to be designated ‘ending girl’, although why I always mention this and then say “oh, it’s not that that counts” is beyond me.
4:3 Dead horse, sorry.
3:1 Fuuko is really Ayu in disguise. I mean, seriously. There’s an interesting aspect brought up at the end of episode 6, and I suppose ’sucking-drink-through-nose’ is a new moe mode we haven’t seen, but she’s just not clicking (see previous rant).
4:1 Chance for Kotomi to pull herself out of the same hole. I’m worried about her character, as we haven’t seen enough interesting ‘intelligent girls’ (someone get Kotomi her pair of designated ’smart girl megane’, alternatively) in anime recently. I’m all for the smart time, and I only hope that Kotomi doesn’t end up being as socially braindead as she first came across as.
4:1 Tomoya’s father plays a key role later, perhaps in Nagisa’s plot. Yeah, the whole “omg I haet you dad” thing was a bit melodramatic, but real family interaction (beyond the usual “parents are awesome, make funny jam, etc” deal) is another thing that files under the “sorely lacking” column…and in anime too! Kidding, kidding. Seeing more development between the male Okazaki’s, and maybe of Nagisa’s parents as well, would be nice.
6:1 Dream world is related to Nagisa or possible stillborn sister of Nagisa (wild stab). Where’d it go recently? We’ve sure been focusing on Fuuko’s plot a lot lately. This supernatural aspect is one of the more unrealistic parts of Clannad, yet one I want to learn more about.
10:1 Tomoyo hit counter tops 10,000 by the end of the series. It’s been two whole episodes without the hit counter. Seeing Sunohara get beat up is one of the best parts of the show. (OK, seeing what he does to get beat up is the good part.) Tomoyo’s plot as a whole is still curious – we have her wanting to be accepted as a girl and not a running gag. She has potential.
15:1 Bad Stuff happens to one of the Furukawa parents. I got a minor spoiler that one of the characters is going to bite it, and since then the paranoia meter has been off the charts. I apologize if this is a spoiler to you as well, but it’s the kind of spoiler that makes the show more interesting, I believe, since there are no details. Back on topic, it seems that perhaps there needs to be something to test Nagisa’s family relations as well. I’m not sure if Fuuko qualifies under this category or not, so I’m just expecting something tragic to happen to one of the main characters. It IS Key after all.
50:1 Twin maids Ryou and Kyou make a dent into the ‘most appealing maids’ column (Last maid reference, I swear, officer.). Funnily enough that cafe scene in episode 6 really smacked of Tsukasa / Kagami instead of Hisui / Kohaku. I still maintain right to hail Ryou as the next Shiori and Tsukasa hybrid of awesome. She makes a good foil to Tomoya’s jokes, at least.
200:1 We figure out why Kyou has a pig and why it says ‘Puhi’ instead of ‘Oink’ or something resembling it.
300:1 Mother Furukawa defeats TokiMemo’s Bread Lady in a battle to the death of hilarious characters in anime who sells bread. Sorry, but the fact that you can get military-grade weaponry from the latter will seal the loss for the rice-cracker-bread alliance.
Google:1 SUNOHARA ENDING for the lulz.

-CCY

Perhaps it’s one that can be considered overdone in the anime blogging world, but it certainly serves a purpose. A blogger’s watchlist can say a lot about their tastes and passions, something that can be helpful when getting a concept behind the words. Not to say to form massive stereotypes on bloggers, but at least once you know the general viewing pattern of a person you can know where to turn when you need your fix of genre-specific fandom.

The seasonal review posts that pop up around the first few weeks of a show are also helpful to those of us who actually don’t have the time to watch every first episode individually (major props to those who can; it’s some serious effort just handling half) and need to gauge popular opinion to see what are some of the unknown shows that went previously under the radar.

As such, it’s a little late but it’s time for one more take on what shows suck, what shows don’t, and why you should listen to me instead of everyone else. Most shows have gotten three episodes in by now (look at the title. Ooh, alliteration, exciting, I know) and that seems a fair enough time to get a reading of the series, especially with the projected 12-episode length of many of this season’s shows.

I don’t plan on directly ranking the shows against each other but rather putting them on an overall barometer of just how much hype a show can build in me; whether it’s more likely that I’ll crash the servers looking for the latest release or whether it’ll pop up months later to remind me that it still exists.

If you’re looking for a take on all 30+ shows I would reccomend one of the excellent summaries from somewhere else, but if you want overly biased harem / romance comparisons (plus one or two oddballs; 8 in total)…welcome home, master.

Yeah, I can’t stand that line at all.

Da Capo II
Concept: Popular harem show / eroge adaptation Da Capo (a musical term for return to the very beginning) repeats itself, except this time 50 years into the future.
Why Watch It: It’s Da Capo all over again; also, a fast-paced first 2 minutes with a confession before the first episode is through.
Why Drop It: It’s Da Capo all over again; also, a slow-paced last 2 episodes and 23 minutes with not much relationship buildup.
Judgment: Take 10 episodes and call me in the morning. Not worth watching week-by-week.
As you may surmise, D.C. II’s greatest strength and weakness is its brand pedigree. It’s what keeps me watching the show, and leaves hope that the slow start will lead to a strong ending, but on the other hand, none of the really good aspects from the original have carried over…yet.

All the characters from the original show, bar maybe Sakura, have moved on (naturally, it’s 50 years later), and we’re left with a bunch of newcomers who are close but not exactly like the old cast. The problem is, this semi-derivative formula really, for me, hurts the longtime fans: either you’ll be dissapointed that the characters have changed, or you’ll be dissapointed that they haven’t changed enough. They still have the school idol Shirakawa, but now she’s more towards the popularity-manipulating end rather than the maturely playful side. They still have sisters as love interests, just split into two separate, almost opposite personalities. And there’s still a weird banana-innuendo-loving robot, except more annoying.

Oh yeah, and no Yoriko.

The D.C. series has always been one of the more unabashedly harem harem shows out there, and as such perhaps it’s quite old inner workings by now are beginning to show against tougher competition. It’s still a decent show, per se, it’s just that there’s not much of the happening going on. It’s probably better marathoned.

Bonus Harem Show Prediction: Siscon ending seems inevitable (probably with Otome, the more Nemu-like of the two), but the Chris Berman in me wants Koko to…go…all…the…way! …but not in that sense, you perv. Nanaka, as always, loses to the Shirakawa curse by default.

ef – a tale of memories
Concept: Eroge-like adaptation romance with two parallel stories; one male lead deals with a girl with extreme short-term memory, while the other gets to know an outgoing, mysterious girl. Also, the plots are connected in some way through family relations.
Why Watch It: Novel Shaft animation is unique and good-looking; intriguing characters and plot.
Why Drop It: Novel Shaft animation is confusing and annoying; a bit too complex to take week-by-week.
Judgment: Come back when it’s over and I can make sense of it in one sitting.
ef is one of those shows that I feel bad putting on the shelf for a few weeks, if only because it does have some very interesting characters and concepts.

While a lot of the ideas feel like they should be Sad Visual Novel 101, with the memory loss and the random girl coming on to you and all, it really doesn’t come across as such; the interactions between the characters have a decently believable feel to them.

The problem is is that ef is one of those shows that is hard to understand, especially with a week gap and 7 other shows in-between. The Shaft animation style is a bit trippy, and even though it’s toned down from Zetsubou Sensei, the random cuts and silhouettes don’t help in making the siutation better – although, they are good looking. But one has to wonder why a character will random seem to glow, float, or do something out of the ordinary.

The second factor contributing to the confusion is the multiple plotlines. I think there are at least two; one revolving around mysterious girl Miyako, the other around amnesia girl Chihiro, but with the AnimeSuki forums giving three plotlines, and AnimeNewsNetwork talking about only one lead guy in the show, I found out that I really have no idea what’s going on here.

Which is a shame because I have this sneaking feeling I would really, really like this show if I knew what was going on, since it’s relatively good-looking and the character personalities are pretty likable. Chihiro’s story in particular seems like a tear-jerker, or at least one that will be very captivating.

Bonus Harem-Type Show Prediction: I’d tell you if I knew how many guys there were open. Still, I think Chihiro and Miyako are pretty solid ‘win’ locks, since it’s not really a harem but more of a multi-thread romance.

Minami-ke (Through 1)
Concept: Three-girl slice of life, humor ensues.
Why Watch It: Tsuyuri (Doujin Work), Tomo (Azumanga), and Alicia (Aria) all in one place. Also, sexy camera work.
Why Drop It: Y’know, you’ve seen all three of those before. Slice-of-life is kinda a hit-or-miss genre as well.
Judgment: A keeper, but I’ll get to it when I get to it.
That works better with the relaxing mood of slice-of-lives anyway.

Minami-ke is a slice-of-life (as you may have surmised), and that combined with the fact I’ve only watched one episode of it so far means there’s not really much to say about it so far.

It has pleasantly surprised me in that it has pulled off two things I’ve haven’t seen before, or at least in a while; 1) some great camera action (like the psuedo-Matrix scene) and 2) a girl-on-girl kiss that wasn’t meant for fanservice.

Somehow I feel that people won’t believe me, but in that case I’ve won a few converts for Minami-ke already.

The good part about this show so far is that it has excellent character interaction, in that comedy way. The super-energetic, attention-craving middle sister and the quiet, secretly-manipulative younger sister bounce off each other quite well for some great laughs, whether it be the aforementioned kiss scene or the Mysterious Love Letter.

The content doesn’t feel overly stale either despite the personalities that we’ve seen before; although they were entertaining personalities, I must admit.

Shakugan no Shana II
Concept: Supernatural girl and mildly less supernatural guy meet and fight off bad guys, while shy girl comes in for some love triangle action.
Why Watch It: Easy to watch; has both action and romance elements; teaches you that melon-pan isn’t just an innuendo for ‘breasts’.
Why Drop It: Almost painfully obvious with some elements.
Judgment: At the back of the longest ‘must-watch’ list in romance; weekly for sure, but no hurry on a day-by-day basis.
Let me qualify my post by noting my previous Shana experience consists of solely the movie and one volume of the manga and light novel. As such, it’s a bit harder for me to jump on the ‘Shana, Oh God, hot, etc.’ bandwagon right away.

Still, Shana is an enjoyable show, if only for simple reasons. Most of the show can be figured out easily (i.e. Kazumi has no chance in hell, Ike has less than no chance, Shana and Yuji are going to pwn whoever come their way, so on so forth), but some of the aspects could prove to be interesting on how they play out; such as the aforementioned love quadrangle, or just how the Obviously Evil Villians are going to obviously lose this time.

I’m not sure at this point whether it would be a better show as a romance-slash-action or an action-slash-romance show, as it seems to be blending the two in relatively equal amounts, although there could be a tilt towards lol-romance-drama in the next few episodes. For the sake of sanity I hope it stays away from that, as the whole “I am obviously jealous of that Not-Hecate girl but am too shy / tsundere to act on it” thing just rubs me the wrong way. I think a goodly focus on more interesting action scenes punctuated by romantic elements here and there would work well.

And does anyone else feel talked down to by the omnipresent announcer recapping the previous episode at the beginning of the next one?

Bonus Romance-Type Show Prediction: I’d only lay about 75% odds on any relationship getting resolved at all; for all we know the second season might not be the end of the adventure, so they wouldn’t want to tie Shana up with Yuuji yet. Ike has nearly 100% chance of confessing to Kazumi, though, while he has a 0% chance of going anywhere. The Shana-Yuuji-Kazumi triangle is going to outlast time.

Myself; Yourself
Concept: Same old ren’ai / harem formula, same decent taste. Now with 500% more childhood friends!
Why Watch It: Chiyo’s VA voices a hyper girl with breasts, glasses, and an addiction to reading, and the lead male gets slapped.
Why Drop It: Been there, done that.
Judgment: Best consumed within a few days of release.
Myself; Yourself is the opposite of ef; I should be groaning with disgust at the raw derivative-ness of it all, but I’m finding myself enjoying this series quite a lot.

Perhaps it’s that the characters, as cliche as they are, still are entertaining. While the raw amount of standard moe elements that Aoi contains is staggering, she’s still a very appealing character, and, failing that, obvious candidate for the Nayuki Award for Losing Osananajimis Who Are Awesome. Nanaka fulfills the tsundere quotient, Asami’s the relatively normal yet cute random acquaintance, and Shuri can be a Mayumi-alike. You’ve seen it before, but you still might enjoy seeing it again.

M;Y has a bit of a fresh feel to it as well; the amount of initial coldness Nanaka had towards Sana was surprising, the overwhelming cast of childhood friends effectively negated that cliche, and they seem to be going in an interesting direction in hinting that Sana cut himself. Even the typical Aoi fanservice is novel, which I find amusing in the “what will they come up with next?” manner.

Or maybe it’s the entirely awesome OP as well, which seems to have some interesting aspects to it beyond the music as well; what’s with all the clocks?

Myself; Yourself comes across to me as a ‘greater-than-the-sum-of-it’s-parts’ anime. It might just, though, be that the simpler, ‘lower denominator’ style of the show (while not stooping to, say, Ninomiya level) is easy to digest and enjoy.

Bonus Harem Show Prediction: Aoi might come close with the raw power of the fanbase pushing her on, but Nanaka’s got this one in a lock. Asami will probably take second.

Clannad
Concept: Moe sad girls in spring interact with witty male lead (and incompetent male runner-up) in plot-tastic fashion. Also, some family overtones.
Why Watch It: It’s Key, it’s KyoAni, and the male characters are nothing short of awesome.
Why Drop It: It’s KyoAni, it’s Key, and the female characters are mostly incompetent or overly moe.
Judgment: Still sold on the formula, although I’ll cut back the dosage. Watching it week-by-week for sure, but it just doesn’t have that ’same-day’ power.
Clannad is surprising, because while I’m not quite drawn to the female cast as much as past Key works, the male cast is by a mile the best and funniest I’ve seen in a long time.

Perhaps it’s because, this being the third Key game, the girls are beginning to overlap a bit, and you can start describing one in terms of the other:
Nagisa equals Shiori’s courtyard stalking skills minus her resolve and ice cream addition, times Misuzu’s social incapability.
Fuuko equals the mental age of Ayu times the maturity and gullibility of Makoto.
Ryou equals Shiori plus Tsukasa. (OK, that’s Lucky Star, and actually not too bad of a combo)

I’ve ranted about most of the female characters of Clannad before as unrealistic, which may be harsh, but the point stands that, well, I don’t like them that much. There are still a few out there that are good – like the aforementioned Ryou, the badass Tomoyo, or even the Kotomi who has a shard of possibility; but it’s not like the choices in Kanon that seemed like having to pick between a Ferrari and a Lamborghini.

On the plus side, Sunohara is a hilariously stubborn male runner-up that makes for a great butt end of a lot of jokes or running gags, Nagisa’s father lives in his own macho mental world, and Tomoya Ethanol is pretty amusing himself without being a carbon-copy Kyon.

There’s not much to say about the plot of Clannad yet; there seems to be some great (and grounded) family aspects, some decent supernatural aspects, and undoubtedly a million plot twists that will leave us in despair again, but I can’t say for sure.

One thing for sure about Clannad, is that, being a KyoAni work, it will recieve a lot of attention both positive and negative (look at the size of its entry); not to say it’s undeserved, but Clannad is dangerously leaning towards the overhyped side despite being still a very good show; just not a great.

Bonus Harem-Type Show Prediction: Nagisa wins, if she lives. Joking, joking; she will. I’d be worried about her family, but they seem too comic to lose. Something about the wheelchair shot in Tomoyo’s OP segment seems ominous.

Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji
Concept: Down-in-the-dumps delinquent goes aboard a mysterious gambling cruise run by yakuza in a last-ditch attempt to save his life from the gutters of poverty.
Why Watch It: Great yet simple mind-games, and some brilliant human emotion and interaction.
Why Drop It: Typically scary art quality, gives itself away sometimes.
Judgment: Like a gambler, always greedy for more. Watch within a few days for sure.
To compare Kaiji to other shows with stars and cards in it like Yu-Gi-Oh almost feels insulting; although that may have just been the power of 4Kids and time corrupting my memory of that show.

But Kaiji is a show more than the gambling, but about the emotions as well. The game is so simple (and decidedly, ahem, not open to deux ex machining) that a lot of the show relies on the human interaction, the playing of each other like a fiddle. It’s how Kaiji gets snookered out of two stars, and how he manages to win 2 more back later with 4 scissors in a row.

If it was just straight rock-paper-scissors, where everyone selected randomly and the only tension was who would win, Kaiji would be very boring. But since there is a mild degree of strategy, in trying to outthink your opponent and trying to talk him into submission, Kaiji works very well with its semi-mind-games.

It hurts that the announcer gives it away half the time – we’d like to think that Kaiji has the possibility to lose – but the way in which Kaiji pulls off the seemingly impossible still isn’t always obvious, so there is a little bit of possibility to try to think ahead of the show without being spoiled.

Kaiji is more spiritually like Battle Royale than any ordinary card game, in that it’s a relatively simple, yet complex – and very deadly – game.

Bonus Competition Show Prediction: I don’t think Kaiji has the potential to lose completely, given that this show seems to be slanted in his favor (as opposed to being neutral in position), but he’ll probably legally “lose” at least once, only to make a comeback.

KimiKiss Pure Rouge (Through 2)
Concept: A bunch of people fall in love with each other.
Why Watch It: The ordinary tone makes it very believable, more than one main character for each side, potential to be unpredictable.
Why Drop It: Ordinary tone may turn off those looking for escapism, gets a bit confusing and even shoujo-like with its storytelling.
Judgment: Infatuated so far. See if it can keep that ‘day-after’ viewing appeal.
The plausible nature of KimiKiss is probably what has kept it near the top of the list so far; all the characters seem like the type that you could reasonably see in real life – even Mao doesn’t stretch the disbelief box too far, surprising for an osananajimi.

The female characters have a decent charm to them, whether it be the oh-so-adorably-shy girl, the genius delinquent, or Mao herself, and I’m sure there are two or three more to be added into the equation.

And none of them seem to be too typically over-the-top in character; they all seem built pretty sensibly, with a lot of possibility to them. Like the genius girl; is she really hot for Kazuki, or just messing with him like she says? Was Kouichi the reason Mao came back, or will she be content playing on the sidelines? Will Kouichi’s shy-girl crush last (and vice versa)…or even ever come to fruition?

It’s these kinds of questions that, while you think you know the answer to, leave an opening for alternate solutions that could really turn the show on its head. Perhaps the largely gender-ambiguous audience of the show (it’s not orientated towards one specific genre) may turn some people off, but I’m looking forward to seeing more of a romance vibe in this show than an unrealistic harem aspect.

I suppose, two leads are better than one.

Bonus Romance Show Prediction: Mao’s got good odds on Kouichi, being an osananajimi, but I’ll go on a limb and say shy girl might be able to pull it off, with any luck. Kazuki’s a question mark whether he will end up with anybody at all, but I doubt that it is genius girl.

-CCY

Adaptation season may be closer to the truth, as pretty much every show I’ve followed so far is based on an eroge or ren’ai.

This probably says something about the creativity of harem shows nowadays, with probably one completely new romance (Code-E) and one completely new visual novel adaptation (sola) in recent memory, but the content is all fresh to me anyway.

Not to mention, the logistical challenges of adapting premade content still are fairly high, especially with the branching nature of harem-types.

The point still remains that there are a lot of the same shows out there this fall season, and while the moe-bishoujo-hater is probably off cursing somewhere, lovers of either harem, romance, or just general fanservice/moe are having a busy time.

As such it’s time for another triple take, taking looks at three more first episodes, bringing the total to six fall anime so far…

ef – a tale of memories is perhaps the most and least traditional of the harem shows so far. The concept is almost blindingly average; there may not be many ways to introduce the male and female “leads” to each other other than a chance meeting, but when you get two pairs of utter strangers united in the first episode, one starts to wonder just how many times you’ve seen this before, and the mind instead turns to wondering just how are they going to make the established (i.e. osananajimi) characters lose this time.

On the flip side, being a Shaft show the art style of ef was spectacularly nonstandard, with plenty of innovative camera angles, cut-out shots (i.e. black background with the sky background filling in a girl’s profile), and more. It was refreshing as always, and yet was sane enough that it didn’t really kill the mood of the show at all.

The show features what appears to be a parallel story as well, with two male leads (which took a long time for me to figure out with their similar designs, I must admit) befriending two different girls, with the connection seeming to be through a six-degrees-type relation between some sisters. It certainly seems promising, as more and more shows are moving away from the one-strong (or weak)-male-lead syndrome that gets a bit ridiculous at times.

Overall, ef does a great job at proving that the first episode really doesn’t tell much about the series, as it could really go either way at the moment.

The two lead female characters are adorable, especially the eyepatch-girl, but they tread the line between believable and just overly weak, whether it be being ridiculously friendly or emotional around their respective “partners.” The male leads don’t seem too bad, and I enjoyed their little speech about “wanting to be the knight in shining armor,” but really, they’re just so nondescript at this point I can’t say much about them.

This seems to sum up my opinion of the whole show so far, in that it feels awfully…done before and forgettable. I remember watching this episode, liking it a lot – and forgetting about it. Maybe it’s the fault of watching so many shows, maybe it’s the passage of time – but ef hasn’t made an imprint yet. This isn’t to be confused though with a lack of promise; I hope that the second episode will bring back the good memories of…3 days ago, and prove that Shaft can do romance as well as they did despair.

On a final note, any show that features a combined Lucky Star / Touhou reference (and, yes, a Nice Boat) deserves at least a double eyebrow raise.

Next up on the list is KimiKiss Pure Rouge, which gives off the feel that it’s more of a romance aimed at girls, or at least at both genders. I say this because of the impressive gender-neutral feel of the show. Again, there are two equally balanced male leads, and the female cast is varied without pandering to any particular stereotype.

It’s a different type of show than the other ones airing so far which certainly seem more fantasy-based in either setting or characters; KimiKiss gives off the feel that you’re entering a show that has been going for quite a while now. The characters are established, whether it be the three guys, the quiet girl that Kouichi likes, or even the returning childhood friend, Mao. Even the chance encounters between Mao and Rebel Guy, or Kazuki and Delinquent Genius, don’t feel overly forced.

As such, KimiKiss is an anime that’s a bit harder to grasp onto, especially with a slow opening like the first episode provided. Mao’s return and the first half as a whole was admittedly on the bread and butter side but once the school day started the episode picked up in pace, introducing many of the characters above, and probably some more. The sheer complexity of the possible relationships certainly has a girls’-show feel to it (a la Marmalade Boy) compared to most harem show “triangles”, where you take all the girls and draw lines to one guy in the center.

All this means though is that KimiKiss will be a noteworthy show if only because it will sort out those who like more ‘real’ romance than those who just enjoy the simplistic harem romances. I can’t claim to swear allegiance to either side yet but KimiKiss will be a test as to how much concentrated relationship-spaghetti one can handle.

It certainly leaves a lot of interesting ends open at the first episode anyway, with the “secondary” male Kazuki getting his first kiss already, the issue of the relationship between Kouichi and that quiet girl he always blushes at, and the reason for Mao’s return among others being interesting discussion topics. At which point though this ceases to be interesting and instead becomes confusing, though, is an excellent question.

Shakugan no Shana II is the odd one out here, being of the supernatural action-romance crossbreed variety. The Shana series is a strong one with a wide fanbase and something along the line of 17 light novels, a couple games, a manga, a movie, and two anime series, and I’m beginning to see why.

As mentioned extensively in my review of the movie, Shana isn’t a series that’s designed to randomly mindrape you, and instead is more of a show that surprises you with the path from point A to point B. It lays out most of the cornerstones for you – time loop enemy, increasingly-complex Shana/Yuuji/Kazumi/Ike love square-type, action happens, but how everything is going to get resolved is the interesting point.

Time loops or repetition in general are always a somewhat controversial topic for me in anime; on one side, it’s kind of cool to see what you’ve seen before; on the other, you’re seeing what you’re seen before. Still, the logical fallacies and the inner desires/conflicts of characters which can be seen in the dream-like sequences in Shana can still generate some interest (case 1: Yuuji jumping off the ladder yet still floating to the top), although, as in the case of the Torch theory, I may be giving Shana more credit than it desires.

A lot of my enjoyment from Shana, and confusion as well, may stem from my relative newness to the series as well; what’s old to some people is still new to me. This applies to both canned-ish footage from the first series, and, more crucially, to terminology and characters as well. As such, anyone outside of the core love triangle and (the soon-to-be-defunct, I imagine) Friange are completely new.

Hopefully figuring out just what role the obscurely named villians, Maid De Arimasu and Minami Nagato Green-Hair Girl play in the scheme of things won’t be a huge trial by fire. It seems that they’re trying to keep things relatively straightforward so far, at least in the romance section, with the apparent recap of Shana’s non-confession, Kazumi’s obsession, and Ike’s challenger entry.

Shana seems like the series that could work relatively well, at least with me, as long as it doesn’t devolve too hard into a monster-of-the-week show; there seems to be an overarching plot or conspiracy at least, but we’ll find out. It certainly can occupy the status of ‘light watching’ for now, anyway, compared to all the budding drama/tear-fests that we know visual novel adaptations are. The best way to put it is; I like what I see so far, but I don’t know how much of it I’ve seen.

And, with one more off-hand comment, the Shana OP rocks almost as hard as the M;Y OP. Literally.

So far the fall season has been quite pleasant so far on the adaptation side as a whole. A lot of series have shown a lot of possibility to become great shows; instead of being a huge, breakout show, there’s a bunch of solid shows. Clannad and Myself;Yourself are top picks from the old school of harem shows with strong and way moe characters. KimiKiss looks good for the more traditional romance crowd. ef’s the Shaft title which could go any way. Shana II is Shana, which I understand means a lot.

D.C. II is the one show that’s really dissapointed me so far; the second episode failed to continue with any of the interesting “progress” from episode 1, and the characters aren’t anything spectacular. But even with this show, I expect to make it to the end, if only to prove myself that there was nothing there.

With any luck though, this could be a very thrilling fall season…if you can keep your characters straight.

-CCY

In all seriousness though this season’s crop of anime is looking very promising for any harem/visual novel show lovers, with at least four shows out there that look to impress.

In the four corners we’ve got:
Clannad, the 500 Pound Moe Gorilla,
Da Capo II, the Never-Dying,
Myself;Youself, the Newcomer,
and ef, a.k.a. Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film (because it hasn’t been subbed yet).

Luckily the subs for the shows have been very speedy as well so I can offer first impressions on the first three of this batch, and if there’s one thing I can say about them it’s that, despite all technically being visual novel anime, they all feel like they have a different approach to the genre.

It’s not the world-upside-down approach to the harem genre like School Days, by any regards, but certainly each show has a different feel and creates different expectations. It looks like the next 3 months or so will have a lot of tense spamming-refresh-waiting-for-subs moments…

(No spoilers for anything past the first episodes ahead but I might hint vaguely at past anime of the same genre)

Da Capo II was one of the first shows of the fall season to hit the ground, and it hit the ground running…for about five seconds. It uses the perhaps seen-before but still highly awesome premise of “let’s start with a confession,” which I find a great way to kick-start a series in gear. Perhaps it’s because I dislike it when a show takes too long to beat around the bush.

Which, to be honest, is kind of what DCII does for the next 23 minutes; it’s a very introductory episode with every Important Character getting at least a scene as we dash about the cultural festival in the typical fashion.

Watching anime girls stumble over themselves and blush the color of a tomato has never been one of those things I could really call adorable for more than 5 seconds, and considering that Koko’s character essentially consists of that for the first episode it was almost a painful episode to watch.

As I always say though, other characters again swoop in to save the day. Yoshiyuki, the protagonist, seems mostly the typical naive, pushed-around harem lead but at the end of the episode where he accepted Koko’s confession with a smile (despite, perhaps, not loving her in the same way) one can really begin to like the accepting and friendly personality that the Asakura bloodline has passed down to him. (At least, I assume he is such, being the male protagonist)

As one who has watched the first two Da Capo seasons I can also enjoy the other hints of characters from the past, whether it be the now double-trouble siscon incest pair, another Shirakawa, or just mysteriously-exactly-the-same-but-still-entertaining Suginami.

The D.C. series has never struck me as a fast moving series, as the first episodes of each season have been less than impressive and so in that regard D.C. II is right on track; although I expect it to move faster if it really is a 12-episode series.

Another thing I’ve enjoyed the series for is the lesser amount of focus on just one confession; frequently the relationships are taken care of ahead of time, with a bigger conflict at the end that’s more of a test for the already paired lovers. Koko getting “with” Yoshiyuki certainly looks to breed some interesting conflicts (cause, y’know, it’s a harem show) in the following episodes, to that regard.

And, finally, D.C. II does seem to continue the trend of being a very unpredictable show, harem-wise, as I am unable to find the winner out of the crowd, unlike many more obvious harem shows. Koko’s got the disadvantage of being a childhood friend and getting the first strike, Nanaka has the Shirakawa name working against her, and even if we nail the contenders down to the two sisters, which one at the moment seems like a toss-up. So I hope that D.C. II will remain fairly interesting in that regard.

Myself; Yourself was the second show up, and being based on a as-yet-unreleased visual novel it has the clear advantage of a unspoilerable show. While watchers of the other three shows may be tainted by prior knowledge and focus more on What Path Are They Going to Take, Myself; Yourself works with a blank slate.

This of course means that it has to work a bit harder to establish a devoted audience, but the first episode seems to be a solid intro to the show.

Admittedly, Myself; Yourself is a bit by-the-numbers as far as harem/VN shows go. There’s one standard-issue harem lead, a bunch of moe girls, and a large time gap. However, this somewhat-cliche setup can still run a bunch of paths, anywhere from Kanon’s sad-in-snow-fest to Shuffle!’s boxcutter-frenzy, so don’t count this show out just yet.

And it does seem to have a couple of tweaks on the normal formula as well. The support male is actually from the childhood friend era as well. The lead female (Nanaka) seems to have undergone an interesting personality change – many call her a tsundere over five years (all dere before, all tsun now; how ’bout it) , which may be a stretch, but certainly she’s been doing some brooding.

And Sana, the lead male, certainly seems to have a balanced personality. While he makes no pretenses that he’s a guy (sizing up Aoi and Nanaka) he isn’t overly perverted or overly spineless, which makes him what could seem to be a realistic character.

Some interesting points, some new and some old, are raised as well. Why did Sana move back, and why does he seem to have such a rocky relationship with his parents? What did his friend (the support male) yell to him when he was leaving on the train? How have all the characters changed in the last five years?

…And there’s a couple sticky points in the OP too (awesome song, I must add); the guy in the flame background right before the concert scene, the clock stuck at 11:59 with the two twins leaning on it, Nanaka playing the violin, depressed Sana in the middle of the street, all sorts of things to think about.

One last point on the characters; the voices really throw me off, like they do a lot of people, but it’s less the squeakiness and more the previous roles. To see Sakura (D.C.) and Chiyo (Azumanga) voice characters with a physical appearance in the double-digits for once is really kind of strange, but it’s not really that bad. It’ll just take getting used to.

One complaint of mine about the characters though is that Aoi, as awesome as she may be, seems too manufactured. She’s moe to the ninth power, yes, but it almost seems like she was made that way rather than just happening to be that way. Think about it; megane, energetic, likes books, large chest, easily blushing, loli voice… it seems to hit a lot of demographics, which almost seems like too much of a perfect storm, so to speak.

Other than that, though, I like the cast of Myself; Yourself so far.

The direction of the show is wonderfully ambiguous as so far it has mixed some light fanservice with a bit of heavy plot, so it’s anyone’s guess whether it will be more D.C. or more Key. The main girl seems to be pretty guaranteed Nanaka, but there definitely will be a large fanbase and hopefully plot built up for Aoi or…uh…the other one, so we’ll see just how this turns out.

Not a lot of complaints so far, which might remain my biggest worry; a show that starts strong has a lot more pressure to stay strong.

And to that regard Clannad is going to be one of the toughest-judged anime in the history of mankind, given that it’s from a highly reputable studio (KyoAni) adapting a highly-reputed viusal novel work (from Key).

The amount of hype that this show has recieved is immensely huge, and even I’ll admit that this was my big-ticket show for the season.

And, what can I say? It’s lived up to the expectations so far.

Perhaps it’s just because I am partial to the Key storytelling of “Rend mind first, ask questions later” but the first episode introduces a lot of really likable characters and really burning questions.

What appeals to me about the Clannad cast is that it’s a different balance than usual. While most anime have one strong guy and perhaps a tsun girl, Clannad is bursting at the seams with badassery.

Tomoya, the main lead, is striking of Yukito from AIR, a character who doesn’t take any crap yet is kind of a softie at the core. Nagisa’s father is hilarious in his macho parentitude; take his consideration of Tomoya as 1) the ungrateful rice-cracker-pan-hater, 2) potential boyfriend (yes, no, and maybe), and 3) Tomoya ETHANOL. Oh yes.

Meanwhile, on the female side, we have the tsun + dere twin pair of Kyou and Ryou. Ryou’s strange mix of Shiori, Tsukasa, and maybe Mikuru seems to be a win of the ages for those who like shy characters (and I’ll admit her off-kilter fortune telling was funny as well). I don’t find Kyou too appealing yet but I like the different factor in that she’s more cocky and up-front than an already cocky and up-front delinquent character; most normal harem shows wouldn’t have characters with half these guts.

Oh yeah, the other fighting character: Tomoyo. Wow. Real impressive fighting skills, and I look forward to learning more about just how she’s like that.

Nagisa, the final remaining main heroine (aside from the Phoenix Wright pose underclassman who hasn’t been introduced) seems to be the main heroine from all the attention she’s got, and to be honest I’m not a huge fan of her character. To do more comparing, she’s like Shiori (with the sickness and whatnot) but without that great combo of shyness and boldness. She’s just sort of a quiet, antisocial pushover at this point. Almost like Misuzu as well, but again, less bright.

Which is great. I’m sure she appeals to a bunch of people out there who feel they are in the same situation, to the loners and the shy ones, but really her character just doesn’t really strike me as something entertaining, or, realistic to be honest. Only in visual novels, kiddies.

Still, even if Nagisa isn’t strong yet and even if she is The Chosen One (which I can’t say 100%), there’s a bunch of episodes between now and the end, and the strength of Key anime has always been the focus on the characters instead of the relationships. Perhaps it’s missing the point to say “I’m looking forward to crying manly tears,” especially considering the very amusing and light nature of Clannad so far, but at the very least I imagine that a lot of the characters have some secrets to tell, especially starting with Nagisa and the mysterious world at about 6:00 in.

Not to mention, Nagisa and what my anime companion called the “hooker speech” at the end of the episode. Seriously, standing under a streetlight at night, promising to make dreams come true…naive as ever, Nagisa.

Don’t feel ashamed, I laughed at it too.

Oh yes, and the animation was sexy as ever. Just take the mysterious world sequence and the dull-tone/color flashing in the beginning as proof.

To sum it up, D.C. II is the only show so far that I feel mildly let down by, but it will get by on it’s track record of starting slow and ending strong. Myself; Yourself has a decent start and I can only hope that it keeps the pace up. And Clannad? I’m afraid it’s everything I imagined it would be at this point. Fanboyism is a dangerous thing like that.

All we have left at this point is the ef subs to complete the quartet…

-CCY

The last title I remember that works like that was the legendary (and quite old) Cardcaptor Sakura, and as such how fitting that one of the shows that has captured my attention is almost a spiritual successor to it, Nanatsuiro Drops.

Although, to tell the truth, they’re similar more on the exterior than on the interior; but magical girl shows in general all feel and act the same in the magical regard; the relationship aspects of Nanatsuiro Drops are what are boding to be quite interesting.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have a show that about three people have heard of, or at least blogged about – Code-E. Code-E is billed as a comedy/romance show which is a promising if not well-traveled road but with an original story and without any big names behind it Code-E is a really difficult show to come across.

Both of these shows, from at least a romance fan’s perspective, are quite enjoyable in their own regards and have their own merits; despite being from the same genre they aren’t exactly fighting over the same audience and they both have widely different approaches to the main topic of today: first loves.

(Spoilers through episode 7 of both series)

First love is pretty much the theme of a lot of shows with romance and romance aspects. While it may be an interesting concept to follow the path of, say, a hazed and disillusioned character who has vowed never to love again, or a sleep-around player who finally learns the meaning of true love, it’s easier and simpler to write the story around a naive, innocent high schooler who is just learning for the first time how to properly flood-fill her face red.

The problem is predictably that easy != entertaining and we come to the predicament of Code-E.

Code-E really is a charming show, with what many call it an old-school flavor to it. The characters are adorable without being overly moe, and the slice-of-life feel to it is relaxing while still entertaining. It’s largely a show that can be enjoyed without not much per se actually happening plot-wise; maybe because it’s a show that revolves more around the characters than any doomsday plot or anything. Sure, there are hints of a Greater Evil (whether it be the inept German spies or the mafia guy with a pocketwatch), and sure, many of the characters do have supernatural abilities, but these don’t steal the show at all, rather just being touched upon at times, with the main focus being Chinami’s attempts to fit in and make friends in her new school.

Unfortunately since this is a romance show “make friends” essentially is code for “get to know all the female characters and spend a long long time falling for the one guy,” and as such the show is taking a distinct direction towards playing out Chinami’s development of feelings for the main character, Kotaro.

Which is great. Fine. Except, they do it the way every girl in anime has fallen in love since the history of mankind.

Denial is boring. Denial for two episodes is boring. Denial while shorting out the electrical system to a somewhat James-Bondy soundtrack is cute and innovative, but still boring. What is that feeling when you think of Kotaro, Chinami? I wonder. I really do. It couldn’t be that you like him, because that would be too easy to admit.

Perhaps it’s a result of what I watch but having characters deny their feelings at every opportunity gets repetitive fast.

This is precisely the reason why Nanatsuiro Drops is hitting its stride, because right before the three-quarters mark we’ve already got The Confession over with between the obvious love interests of Sumomo and Haru, and now we can get on to more interesting things.

Nanatsuiro Drops may have lost a bit of charm as it’s magical girl story admittedly grows more cliched by the week (I’m missing the fun that they’re supposed poking at the cliches) but the important part of the story is in full gear, and that is the developing relationship between the two main characters.

Now I’m only up to episode 7 and so I’m in the post-confession stage by about five seconds, but the promise of Getting On With It (admittedly, in more ways than one) and not lollygagging on the What Is This Love? factor is really engaging, almost too much for a show that seems to renounce it’s eroge roots so soundly.

Although, the second interesting thing about NanaDrops is that, being based on an eroge, has it’s focus primarly on the male lead, unlike most romance shows which follow the female lead around. It’s nice to see things from the other side of the spectrum. Despite that being my side of the spectrum.

Of course at the three-fourths mark there are plenty of things that can change at this point; Code-E’s clearing or stumbling into the confession bar, and NanaDrops’s handling of the What To Do Now That We’re Together sticky point will be pivotal. We will see at the end of these shows whether the romance show can still work in a day and age of moes and lolis.

-CCY