Mega Megane Moé
Hell and Heaven Moéltdown
Series Showdown
Ren’ai Round Table! RenAi Blogger takes on the big names in visual novels
Aug 6th
If perhaps you’ve been within a few miles of the otakusphere in the last few days, you will have noticed that something quite interesting has come out of its innermost workings in the form of a doujin-esque visual novel from Hinano, named RenAi Blogger.
Now of course, like most things I write, I’m too lazy to fill you in on the details especially given that many other bloggers have helpfully done it for me – suckers – so I will skip to the meat of this review and that is tearing this effort a new one.
To do this today I decided to disseminate RenAi Blogger in a completely novel and unique format that no other idiotic dinosaur could copy and that is in an exhausting multi-round fight contrasting and comparing it to some other popular visual novels in the industry in a half-humorous, half-serious manner.
Of course, RenAi Blogger is only a four-month, one-person effort and so it would be cruel to line it up against visual novels that took dozens of people years to complete … so I decided to set the bar a bit lower. I figured another doujin effort would be fine – but I only had one of those that I actually played, so I settled for picking up another first visual novel, one that was the beginning in a long pedigree of games.
And so there the three competitors sat…at least virtually, on my hard drive.
One doujin visual novel, and one first-in-a-series visual novel. Can Hinano’s top either? Read the rest of this entry »
Romantic Rematch! Toshokan Sensou challenges ItaKiss and Special A
May 10th
Following the two-and-change shoujo shows in this season has been an interesting look at the sort of evolution this genre has undergone in the 21st century.
There are distinct kinds of styles found in these shows tailored for the female audience – although they still manage to find a large audience for both genders with their emphasis on the emotional and with their sense for gender-neutral slapstick conversational / slapstick humor.
Itazura na Kiss is a throwback to the old days, the anime of the early 90’s built off of manga even older. (Perhaps that’s because it actually is such a well-aged title.) It has a very strong romantic undertone to it, featuring the ever-popular tale of a prospective couple shoved in close quarters. Like many shows of this day, the lead girl is unmistakably the main focus, as she tries to work her way into the heart of the male lead. This is always a large part of the story, with the emotions of the male lead often obscured from view; although, there is always time for more side characters and their stories.
Special A is the new-age shoujo, one with a more balanced feel to its mix of comedy and romance. In here it’s not so much about life lessons and love as much as it is simply having fun; being patently ridiculous in the name of hilarity is all part of the equation. There are interludes for sweet moments, but not even all of these are serious. The story is quite often episodic, with morsels of plot scattered among challenges or events of the week.
Just over a week ago I pitted these two shows against each other after their third episode and declared Special A to be the show with the better start. It was more amusing and had a more appealing cast; although, I declared, when they both stopped spinning their tires and started moving forward with the plot, Itazura na Kiss might be able to make a comeback.
Two episodes later for the both of them I’ve got reason to think just so, but don’t count the comeback done just yet; a new show’s entered in style, smashing through the proverbial glass windows, and it’s name is Toshokan Sensou, i.e. Library War.
Toshokan Sensou at first glance is hardly a shoujo show at all. Anything which has ‘war’ in the title, and features footage of uniformed soldiers engaged in firefights would appear to be much more appealing to adrenaline-filled males.
But look past that and you’ll see an equally engaging second side revolving around the life of Iku Kasahara, a female enlistee in the Library Task Force. Her business relationship with Instructor Dojo, someone who might have a bit more for her that what it seems, and the amusing breaks for slapstick comedy in this show, are definitely enough to flag this down as a show with more than a moderate feminine spin. (This, backed up by the fact that Toshokan Sensou has been serialized as a shoujo manga.)
As we approach the halfway mark for some of these shows on their one-cour (~12 episodes) schedule, it’s time to reevalute the worthiness – as one not quite humble blogger will gauge – of these shoujo-styled anime, in the quickly-becoming infamous fashion of the Series Showdown comparisons.
Except wordy, y’know, but that shouldn’t be a shocker.
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Fanservice Fight! An entirely biased comparison of To-Love-Ru, Kanokon, and Junjou Romantica
Apr 26th
It’s Fight Night (Morning, Afternoon, etc.) at M3 as we finally begin the attack on the spring season!
Ironically enough the first three shows I watched were the three I expected most to make me want to go Oedipus and stab my eyes out, the fanservicey pair of To-Love-Ru and Kanokon, and the BL (Boys’ Love) show Junjou Romantica.
It was an experiment of sorts, a stretching of boundaries to see whether perhaps there was good in these two genres after all, but more than an experiment, it was a chance to satirize the hell out of these three shows…
(Surprisingly, the post is relatively safe for work after the jump, as all images are in spoiler tags so you can choose to view them or not, in case LOOK OUT SHE’S RIGHT BEHIND YOU CLOSE IT!
But seriously, no actual nudity, just some very close or – depending on your orientation – very awkward content.)
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