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Posts tagged Clannad
Looking Both Ways: The Fall Season Carryovers
Jan 19th
Looking back…
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.
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Through Three, Fall 2007
Oct 25th
Oh no! It’s the dreaded but ever-popular “here’s what I think about all the new shows in a season that I’ve barely seen an hour of” post!
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.
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Emotional Weakness vs. Emotional Dependency
Oct 21st
Anime girls are apparently the polar opposite of superviruses. They don’t evolve resistance to disease but rather become more susceptible to it as they go on.
The disease today is, moreso than any harem lead, a lack of an ability to stand on their own, a sort of AIDS affecting the brain. Perhaps it’s too much of a blanket statement to say that all anime girls are affected by such an affliction, but certainly in some harem anime it seems we’re getting less and less real believable female characters and more and more one-legged props.
At least, it seems so, that many of the haremettes today just aren’t capable of standing on their own.
Now I would enjoy being a knight in shining armor just as much as the next guy, but the extent to which characters are becoming socially or mentally, well, retarded, is sort of ridiculous.
It’s part of the reason why I’m not getting into Clannad perhaps as much as other Key/KyoAni works, that from Kanon to AIR to Clannad the relationships have become increasingly one-sided. Certainly KyoAni’s latest work has some merit in the vast amount of nonstandard (i.e. male) characters and their hilarious antics, but it really feels the harem itself leaves something to be desired.
(yeah, Kanon and AIR get spoiled.)
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Harem Wars: Fall 2007
Oct 7th
I just want an excuse to use the word “threesome” in the ‘wrong’ way again.
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)
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