So you wanna watch a harem anime. Or maybe you’re just amused by my post title.

In any case, the harem genre is one that enjoys a negative reputation from anime viewers, mainly due to the core nature of it being one guy surrounded by many girls waiting to jump him - rather pandering, even I will admit.

Of course, such a stereotype is the same as assuming that all shonen action shows involve men in spiky hair screaming, or all shoujo romances feature blond-haired ambigously-gendered prettyboys surrounded by sparkles and flowers, or, more pertinently, that all anime is hentai. So it’s my job today to recommend some of the better harem-type shows out there with a fun little activity - and I don’t mean fun like your teacher’s definition of “fun”, trust me, so it’ll be OK.

The problem with the harem genre, and the reason it has gets a bad rap from so many people is that, admittedly, it does vary wildly in quality. There are piles of pandering shows which are nothing more than the stereotype I mentioned above. But not all of them belong in this pile.

Rather, many shows have a harem setup only in appearance, and belong to a greater genre I usually term the ‘visual novel’ shows, after works like Kanon or Tsukihime that were originally visual novels, that have a skewed male:female ratio for sure, but have a more refined (or at least more refined pandering to emotional fools like me) taste.

So here’s a little quiz I devised on a boring weekend to help you determine which visual-novel / harem-type anime might suit you. Amuse yourself, at least to see if you’ve seen what I’ve recommended and whether it suits you or not. It’s all about what personally appeals the best in such a diverse genre like this.

Enjoy! (Yeah, everything’s after the jump. Keep going…) (more…)

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. (more…)

It’s been a while since my last - not to mention only - artbook post, not in the least because I don’t do much purchasing of obscure anime goods; somehow, my sense of reason has managed to continue outstripping the little anime fan in my head that screams “moeeeeee~” at every figurine, pencil board, and plushie that I see.

This may be a result of the fact that these novelty goods are, to be subtle, ridiculously expensive at times. Probably mostly because I’m a student on an overly cheap budget, first and foremost, but secondly because, well, I don’t see what you can do with a figurine outside of taking pictures of it, playing Smash Bros. with it, or making disturbing 4chan gifs with it.

Artbooks, though, have been a fondness of mine, if only because they tend to give some semblance of value to me - after all, you can browse them over and over, they have lots of pretty pictures, and if I ever actually manage to learn Japanese they might just be good reading material.

Additionally, I’ve recently become figuratively married to a little bookstore chain in southern California called Book Off, which offers a lot of new and used books (of which I can hardly tell the difference), ranging from standard English novels, to manga in both languages, to magazines, and - as you may have guessed - quite a few anime artbooks. Depending on the chain, you might even find some DVDs of both regions (spotted some Japanese Shuffle! LEs and AIR and Tsukihime boxsets), or import video games.And all at great prices too - my previous purchase of the Shuffle! On the Stage artbook was half the price I saw at Kinokuniya. Good stuff.

Unfortunately however I am not getting paid royalty fees for this post so I’ll move on to the two latest artbooks I added to my meager collection, and that would be that of Cardcaptor Sakura and Da Capo.

(Note this post actually has pictures, so those of you stuck under a 56K rock still, look out. And for those wondering about the camera work, well, let’s say my house was undergoing a small earthquake during the five minutes I was filming. Or maybe my camera hand was drunk. Maybe you need glasses. Or maybe it was a rush job and I was using a borrowed camera.)
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The “12 Days of Christmas” series is a joint feature by some members of the Anime Blogging Collective recognizing twelve moments, twelve series, or just twelve things about anime that we’ve enjoyed over the past year, that really make us enjoy loving what we do, and that is being an anime fan. Feel free to join in the list-making fun too if you wish. We hope you enjoy this feature.

“There is no coincidence. There is nothing but the inevitable.”

Ah, but what is the inevitable, Kaho-sensei? Sometimes one has to wonder just how the pieces manage to fall in just the right place to make a moment legendary.

It’s those moments that you just can’t reproduce, when it goes beyond the anime itself. A series of events where the stars line up just right, creating an image that’s like none ever seen.

Again, in a sense, it’s connection. A character, a moment manages to hit just the right nerve, hits the resonant frequency, and that is when the powerful moments happen.

It’s when every conception you had of a character gets reversed, when a character you wrote off as scratch comes off to hit you with a story, a moment like you would never believe.

Maybe I’m a sucker for tear-jerkers. Maybe I’m a sucker for these plots. Maybe I’m just a giant sap inside.

But I never thought I would like cat-eared maids as much as I did when watching Da Capo 22.
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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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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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“Do you still think that, in this world, everyone is happy?”

A fitting adage for the second season of Da Capo (not to be confused with the currently airing sequel, Da Capo II) would likely be, “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”

Or perhaps in this case, one cook can spoil the broth for everyone else.

However, to throw out the broth would be rather a waste. Although connoisseurs might turn up their nose at D.C.S.S, certainly the layman who just enjoys eating food (or, watching harem series) will find this effort a passable one, if not a spectacular one.

Da Capo is one of the megaliths of harem shows, with somewhere along the lines of 8 visual novels, 2 mangas, and an anime series essentially 52 episodes strong. As such, it has a pretty die-hard fanbase among the harem lovers.

Unfortunately, this is the audience that will probably be turned off the most by this second season. D.C.S.S follows the great(ly annoying) formula of keeping about half the old characters around while shifting the focus to a new set of characters.

It’s good for keeping things fresh but fans of the series will have likely established strong favorites by the end of the first season (since every girl really did have her moments in the spotlight), and will feel shafted that the focus of the show, admittedly, is on the New Girl, energetic Aisia.

Unfortunately energetic in this sense comes across as annoying, as D.C.S.S. seems like it’s predecessor to be a 13 episode series stretched out to twice this length.

It can work, but the place where the first and second season differ is that while the original shifted around the focus from girl to girl rather frequently, most of the slow episodes in D.C.S.S. focus on said focus girl Aisia and the all-too-frequent trope of Misunderstandings Occur.

Which is good for one episode, bad for ten. D.C.S.S. definitely hits a stride later on but if you’re a fan of any of the ‘minor’ characters you’ll definitely be dissapointed.

The show has definitely a bunch of characters with very likable traits, whether it be a meganekko doujin artist, a shrine maiden, resident ‘boku’ girl, or one of the returning characters from first season, but when you consider that the de facto harem size starts at seven and grows, it really becomes a shame that none of the lesser haremettes get much time to shine.

Nevertheless the drama and the storyline does improve just past the halfway mark, the apparent maturing age for any good harem show, as things begin to Actually Happen. Anything I can really say will be wildly spoileriffic - albeit probably a little bit predictable - but short story shorter there definitely are a few welcome (or unwelcome) surprises in store, depending on your character alignment.

The best way to describe Da Capo Second Season is “more of the same,” which is ironic given that the title alludes to a musical term meaning “to repeat,” which it does very well. If you liked the original story, if you liked the original characters, you’ll like the second season; at least near the end of things when the focus really does return to where it should be.

If you’ve never seen the original, arguably it’s a different series that is often considered better than the second season. A true statement, although certainly the second season is still watchable by many. It’s not a harem show for the ages, but rather a harem show for people who watch harem shows.

(1) Intro segment
2) Jump
3) ???
4) Spoilers!)

A lot of a fan’s enjoyment of D.C.S.S. will depend on one’s ability to accept certain facts, certain things that you’ve seen before in Da Capo, and, true to name, will see again.

The fact is, many people don’t see D.C.S.S. as part of the same universe as the first season. Many expect Jun’ichi to chooose someone different this time, since this show is “new”, and at the beginning Nemu has been taken out of the equation.

This is patently false. In the same way that frequently the couple conflicts near the end of the show (true even in the end of this season!) quite often the ones that are the closest are the ones that are the farthest apart. Love knows no bounds, etc.

While Nemu may not be physically present for the beginning part of the show, she certainly had a presence for a large part of the show. And one has to accept the fact that, since Nemu is present, she is going to win. Period.

This isn’t a dark harem show. Jun’ichi is a nice guy. As friendly as he can get with Kotori, Aisia, Sakura, Mako, Moe, Nanako, Alice, Miharu, Misaki, Yoriko, and Tamaki (no short list), he remains devoted to his actual love (and, yes, sister) Nemu.

Unfortunately Kotori fanboys are the firey type and it doesn’t help that brother-sister relationship are looked at in a strange light, despite the fact that, as in all anime, there is no such thing as Blood Related Siblings. So Nemu, and Nemu winning, could certainly be a turn-off for a lot of the show, especially compared to such idols as Kotori, who I won’t deny certainly deserves more.

The second obstacle is Aisia, who as advertised is very grating on one’s nerves. Aside from going from zero to energy girl (plus “goshujin-sama” for a few episodes) in 25 minutes screen time, a large part of the hatred and of the show is her amazing sense of idealism.

I admire her belief that everyone should be able to be happy, that Jun’ichi should be Everyone’s Jun’ichi, that magic is a thing used to make things happy. For the most part, her character in the closing parts of the show consists of the first two parts, which work very well, and very entertainingly.

But, the entire first half of the show seems to be made to drive the third point home with a large, pointy stick; there’s not getting it, and then there’s Not Getting It, which Aisia takes a ridiculous amount of time to understand. Maybe it’s that I have a lower tolerance of stale jokes than I do even for Random Fanservice, but the formula of “Aisia wants to make people happy. Hijinks ensue.” gets old. Fast.

Luckily, as mentioned, a lot of the rest of the characters do manage to keep the show afloat, as D.C.S.S’s strength lies in again it’s fact that, essentially, the harem race is locked up. It’s very interesting to see more of a focus on the girls coming to terms with their feelings, instead of the guy just going “Hmm, who do I pick.”

For example, Kotori’s, and arguably everybody’s, struggle with pushing herself away from Jun’ichi was a very compelling and at times emotional part of the show, as D.C.S.S. manages to explore the other side of the spectrum. It ignores the long, dull build-up to confessions (although one from Aisia, who arguably did a lot of work not just for everybody but for herself, would be nice), instead replacing it with the constant battle between enjoying just being friends, and yearning for something more. Almost reminiscent of a lot of School Days, except a lot less ugly.

The clash between the viewpoints on magic between Sakura (who has had to learn the hard way) and Aisia was well welcomed as well. Instead of just becoming another player in the “race”, Sakura took on almost a villainous role, or at least one of strong opposition to Aisia. While she may not have gotten as much screentime as she should, or could, have, Sakura definitely made her presence made with her long debates with Aisia over the justification of reviving the sakura tree.

And inevitably one will be able to find a fan favorite in the 10-odd characters that make recurring appearances. Mako and Suginami are the best and most awesome comedy duo since Mayumi and Itsuki (these four seriously need their own spin-off show). Kotori will probably get at least a few pity points for everyone. Nanako and Tamaki were my underdog favorites, the type where you consider a dedicated episode or a confession to be a moral victory.

The repeated themes really do a lot towards making the show better as well. Nemu and Jyn’ichi fighting and making up (out) over and over again. Kotori and the lesser haremettes facing the issue of just what to do with unrequited love, over and over again. The tree cutting off the relationship between Nemu and Jyn’ichi, for unknown motives, over and over again. It’s really a show that rewards the observant, especially in the last few episodes where you can’t shake that sense of deja vu.

Relatively objectively, there’s not much to say about D.C.S.S’s production values. Aside from the strange shift in Jyn’ichi’s hair color from the first season, the second season was pretty solid if not spectacular in animation values. The music was spectacularly average as well; the OP theme was a great song but the background music is all but forgettable.

In the end, D.C.S.S., like Aisia herself, is a show with good intentions and a great effort, yet with a misguided focus. Still, it’s a very watchable and entertaining show - just not a blockbuster nor the dramatic tour de force (at least near the end) that D.C. was.
-CCY

Fumoffu, etc. as the D.C. train chugs along. It may be a bit dated but there are more of me out there who look for information and recommendation on series from times past, so, uh, this post is for that horde then, as it is.

Now that I’ve got the memes and random in-jokes out of the way (it’s what having Marisa Stole the Precious Thing looping does), Da Capo Second Season is actually a pretty timely watch, as with the anime of the visual novel sequel, Da Capo II (set forever in the future, technically), hitting this fall, it’s a good time to be watching a lot and a lot of D.C.

Unless of course Second Season turns out to be a pile of junk. With second-season-eroge rivals such as Shuffle! Memories however there’s always going to be something worse out there.

But still I find a 2-years-late sequel to a rather concluded anime to be strange - I would like to think that the main character Jyunichi would remain, well, attached to his love of the last season, but it doesn’t seem quite so at the moment.

There’s obviously some plot-related reasons why the centerpiece of last show dissapeared but it just seems like an excuse to open up the field again; D.C.S.S. is fairly newbie-safe and requires very little knowledge of the past season.

Overall D.C.S.S. appears to be a lot of the same from D.C., in that the first few episodes are going to be delightfully slow, bordering on ridiculous. In typical fashion I wrote the preview based solely on the first episode so expect it to be wildly inaccurate, but I do it just to see how opinions change over the course of a show. It’s a strange changwe that happens to all of us; but it’s completely normal…

Spoilers, whining, preview, etc, jump.
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“Once upon a time, on this island, there was a girl that fell in love with a boy.”

It’s certainly not just one girl to be worried about in Da Capo…

Da Capo is a pretty in-your-face harem series, unlike perhaps more subtle, more character-driven shows like sola and the Key works. The latter are technically harem shows, but they occasionally have other focuses other than how much everybody loves the male protagonist.

There is no such playing around in that sense in Da Capo. Pretty much everyone falls for - if they’re not already in love with - Jyunichi Asakura, a normal schoolguy with a couple magical abilities, such as the power to see dreams and to produce funny food out of his hand.

His harem is equally slightly unorthodox, including:
- Nemu, his little sister (but not really)
- Sakura, his other little sister (but really, not really)
- Miharu, who comes in two flavors: robot and not robot
- Moe and Mako, twins of two different styles (one might say moe and not-moe)
- Yoriko, the cat-eared maid
- Kotori, the school idol

I say slightly unorthodox because while the cast does seem built mainly to reach as many different appeal types as possible - lolicon, siscon, meido…con, big breast girl…con… nearly every character does have a bit of depth to them with hidden secrets and stories.

By no means is Da Capo another Kanon, in that one’s going to be in tears after every plot revelation. But one will find that there is a Almost Logical reason for there to be Cat Maids and lolis.

In fact, one of Da Capo’s strengths is it’s overarching theme. Most anime take at least a swing as creating some sort of thing that ties everything together; in some it’s worked well, in others, it’s just implausible; but the theme in Da Capo, the ever-blossoming cherry blossom trees, plays a big role in just about everything supernatural in the story without becoming silly.

But on becoming silly terms, look no further than the first, well, sixteen episodes of Da Capo. It’s certainly a series that could’ve been condensed into a series half it’s length, as the first half and change of the series was essentially filler. There was some useful character development and exposition in some of the episodes but largely these episodes had very little development outside of Moe’s cup size.

As well, even when the series actually gets going, an 8-minute chunk of the episode (with the exclusion of the final 4 episodes) is reserved for a “Side Episode”, more light-hearted stuff that I’m sure would be great if I weren’t dying to get to the content.

In short Da Capo is not exactly a series that moves fast and I think it would lose in a footrace to Moe’s speech rate (she clocks in at about the lighting slow speed of Sae of sola). If one has more tolerance than I for random fanservice and wacky hijinks then Da Capo will certainly be a much better series, but for me…it’s just silly.

I’ve whined about it time and time again if you’ve been following the blogging on D.C. but in the end the series did manage to redeem itself with some useful high-pace episodes in the end. It’s a strange approach to the show, considering that even within the show itself divisions were labeled and apparent between the non-plot first sixteen and the action-packed (sort of) final ten.

Da Capo doesn’t pace itself very well and certainly seemed on the verge on stumbling over itself during the last few episodes as it tried to pack in all the plot that was missing, but in the end the conclusion was much more satisfying than originally expected.

This might be in the least because the main relationship between Jyunichi and the winner was one of the least touched on aspects of the show. It was pretty much said and done in one episode, and then the rest of the series dealt with the rest of the cast; so there’s very little shafting done (note very little, not none).

That’s pretty much all I can say at the pre-jump; post-jump we’ll take a look back at my predictions from episode one and analyze some more of the characters in depth. If you want a tl;dr summary of Da Capo, it’d pretty much be this: if harem shows aren’t your thing, this isn’t going to come close to changing your mind. If you do like them though, Da Capo is a worthwhile if not great watch; and hang in there, the good stuff comes late, but it’s there in the end.
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What can I say? It ends up getting better in the end after all. Even if the episode was 99% predictable from start to finish, I find myself to really be a sucker for visual novel conversions.

Although I’ve been through the same forced emotions tens of times, the eleventh time that a seemingly normal, happy character that will last forever dies, dissapears, or otherwise comes down with a case of Serious Plot, I still manage to tear up like the sap I am.

And what really makes things, well, funny in a way is how even my computer is in cooperation with it…
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