Mega Megane Moé
Hell and Heaven Moéltdown
Posts tagged Analysis
The Hook: OP/EDs that will have you biting the bait again and again
Apr 9th
A long, long time again, in a blog post much removed from today’s, I talked a bit about how the OP of a show was something quite vital to the success of a show; maybe it was the show that made the OP, or the OP that made the show, but either way, if I liked one, I probably liked the other.
And usually the music side of not only this, but both bookends to a show, the opening and ending sequences, is focused on when reviewing these sections. It’s logical enough, given that, like many a person has learned from dating in real life, as pretty as something can look, if you can’t stand it when it opens it’s mouth, it’s a bad sign.
Unfortunately a lot of opening and ending sequences are pretty much the same as every other one in the history of the planet (or, perhaps, anime). Show a quick shot of all the characters in the show, perhaps hint at some plot spoilers to come, pan up to the sky, call it a wrap. For an action show, flash through some fight scenes; for a harem/visual-novel show, show a bunch of scenes of the heroines looking alternatively enthusiastic and pensive.
Usually, after the tenth or so iteration of the same thing over and over, it gets boring.
Read the rest of this entry »
Haruhi Season 2 possibly dated, other news
Mar 31st
Been doing some news compilation over the last few days, nothing really worthy enough to deserve its own post but something I found out recently made it all worth it…apparently we might be seeing more Haruhi sooner than we think! Full story after the jump, along with some other noteworthy stories. Read the rest of this entry »
Meta Night: Affecting the Anime-Watching Experience
Mar 16th
Although I’ve done very little actual posting about Clannad’s story itself in comparison to other shows, it’s popped up a reasonable amount of times in tangentially related works, such as (prepare the selfcest radar) some of the rants on moe I’ve written recently, and here it goes again for the third time I’ve said this and the zeroth time I’ve actually meant it:
Clannad, for all its good points, somehow has failed to really rock me in the long run.
I mean, it’s a good show. It’s funny, it’s touching, and the characters run the gamut from genius moe to spectral apparation moe to not-moe moe to thigh meat moe to Nagisa, who while not adorable warrants mention based on her character, but it’s missing that spark that other shows have really given me.
Maybe it’s because I can only get a revelation in a particular area once. Tsukihime and Kanon were the first works to really reveal the emotionally deep genre of visual novels to me, from the dark perspective of Tsukihime and the bright perspective of Kanon. School Days and Shuffle! were legends for being so dramatically different than the harem norm, in one boxcutter way or another. ef ~a tale of memories~ had the artistic flair (some say pretentiousness) and emotional moral messages that struck the very heart.
And Clannad…well…it’s the epitome of jack of all trades, master of none. Maybe it’s better than a jack, but either way, it’s very good in characterization, very good in humor, very good in plotline and messages, but it’s not a great. It feels like it’d be one of those shows that you rant and rave about for weeks while it’s airing, but ultimately, once it’s over, it’s cast aside like Kotonoha Katsura. A great time, but not memorable.
And for someone who usually takes the metal pole up the butt from KyoAni and enjoys it, that’s kind of distressing.
Perhaps this is actually because the anime Isn’t That Good (with no knowledge of the visual novel, I can’t compare), but I also want to, in that self-depreciating way, blame myself on another level, and that is how I’ve been viewing Clannad.
Yes, the wool has been pulled over your eyes, the topic of this post as you may recall is not Clannad but rather the more general experience of how to – or not to – watch anime, something that is little considered but could very likely have an effect on how effective anime is at affecting you. And that’s something important.
Especially here at M3, where it’s more fun talking around the anime (see the thousands of words on why KimiKiss confuses me) than about it.
(Clannad fanservice after the jump. That should be enough incentive?)
Kids (and adults) in anime, everyone live for the music-go-round
Mar 10th
A world without parents, without adults, without the man (and frequently, woman) telling you what to do and how to live. An ideal paradise for many disgruntled, rebellious teenagers, tired with being forced around and shoved into a pigeonhole they don’t want to be in. Little do they do how close their nirvana can be to them…
Step 1: anime.
Strangely enough Japan, at least in animation form, is a land populated most by magical little kids, girl-(or-guy)-magnet teenagers, and talking mascot animals, with the odd parent or adult figure being the rarity rather than the norm. It’s to the extent where one wonders how these people live day-to-day on their own, or, in the longer term, reproduce, since once you hit 25 you’re tossed out like an old Christmas cake (or, possibly, Nanako).
On the other hand, with the attractiveness of the few women who survive past age 30 (but frequently don’t look past 18), I could see why there would be people lining up by the dozen to crank the child machine. It must be some equation where the amount of cuteness/hotness of characters remains constant, so with less characters, there is more I’d-hit-it-ability per capita. Have you started coughing awkwardly yet?
In all seriousness there is a surprising lack of middle-aged people in anime, whether as a parent or as a more general authority figure, perhaps not so surprising when you take some other factors into account, but still something that merits a bit of thought… Read the rest of this entry »
20/20, Perfect Visions: KimiKiss
Feb 27th
You know an episode – or perhaps, a show – is good when your soul is so sufficiently rocked that you can’t come up with a sufficiently interesting one-liner for it, outside of a self-referential, fourth-wall-obliterating, H2O-referencing sentence that seems to drag on and on because no one had the heart to stand up and put an end to the piece of work that’s quickly becoming a paragraph.
But, perhaps more coherently, there’s one thing that’s definitely clear, and that is that the twentieth episode of KimiKiss and Kaiji utterly floored me. I’m not sure if it’s the actual merit of the show or just a logical short-circuiting caused by sheer fanboyism but either way the events that went down in each respective show contributed in massive part to moving the story forward, answering old questions and posing new ones, and that, combined with the sheer emotional rush of each show – one might say, equal and constrasting amounts of moe and gar – made them quite the stand-out pieces.
As such I really couldn’t find a way to combine a summary / analysis of both of them into one coherent post, especially in regards to a unifying topic, so I did the next best thing – create a little mini-series for the two ‘episode editorials’, “20/20 – Perfect Visions”. The 20/20 part is pretty straightforward, being the aforementioned episode number of each series. Perfect Visions sums up my thoughts on each episode, in that they were quite the wonder to see, as well as a pun; if you recall, 20/20 is what is considered ‘perfect vision’.
In all honesty 20/20 is actually just ‘perfectly normal vision’, but from that angle, perhaps you can consider that these episodes aren’t the be-all, end-all, if-you-saw-25-minutes-of-anime-this-year award winners, but rather just relatively fantastic pieces, with a few flaws characteristic to something with less than eagle-eye vision. Then again, being a glasses guy myself, and enjoying KimiKiss and Kaiji a lot, 20/20 isn’t anything to scoff at.
First up of two is KimiKiss, where the metaphoric friction between the main relationships is just beginning to heat up. The two male leads, Kazuki and Kouichi, are coming down to a choice…but will it be them making the decision? Or will the female fighters, or the male spoiler, Kai, have the final say? Paths continue to cross over as time waits for no one…it’s time to take action!
(Psst, 3000 words. I don’t know how I did it either.) Read the rest of this entry »