For the biggest damage caused by my slow posting speed (currently beaten in a point-to-point footrace by Isumi Saginomiya), predictably, is to myself. Writing (it sounds more eloquent than blogging) is my form of emotional release, and I find it provides a chance for me to put some second thought and some insight into the series I have been watching, instead of scarfing an anime down, belching “MOE~”, and moving on.

And indeed, with the amount of text wankage I put down on a post approaching disgusting levels, only found in extremely perverse (and probably illegal by the next time I post) H-doujins, it really seems like something that should be important.

To contrast with the increasingly R-18 metaphor, however, as time passes, the amount of … uh … stuff I can write about decays, instead of building up. Vivid recollection of scenes become boiled down to fond memories, robust characters become 1D memes, and suddenly the first thing that comes to mind about Toradora! is “CHOU MORUZE~”.

Yes, I had compiled a list of some 40-odd blog posts about the best romance-comedy in seasons (I hesitate with my experience to say years), in order to write a passionate meta-synthesis post deserving of such a high-quality show, and now I realize a few months later that that passion might not come again.

Perhaps it’s ironic then, that as much as I try to avoid that feeling, I’m driven by an impetus of fear and paranoia, that I must write about the shows I am watching NOW, instead of later. Ye olde modus operandi of romantics everywhere: speak now, or forever hold your peace.

(Yes, the whole introduction boiled down to, if you substitute a few words, MUST VERBALLY FAP NOW. And to think for a second my introduction was going to be one sentence long.)

Naturally there are other feelings that come at odds with this train of thought, such as that of ‘I don’t really have anything to fill up a full length post’, or ‘I want to program / play Touhou / laze around and do nothing’, but of course that is why I do something silly like write about three anime while attempting to throw them all into the same context.

And besides, when was I ever ashamed of throwing proper writing etiquette to the side and moegasming
for 2000 words straight?

Which for one or two of the above shows may make sense. Certainly Hayate the Combat Butler is more of a passive-enjoyment show. It’s not a huge thinker, which is emphasized with J.C. Staff hitting you over the head with bubbly shiny backgrounds and large doses of gut-imploding cuteness (the kind that appeals to guys).

My favorite girl still remains Isumi, but there’s not a huge need to go on a 2000-word tangent for that. One reason may be because Isumi is pretty much the continuation in a long line of characters that fall under the ‘birds of the same feather’ category – Chinami Ebihara, Kotomi Ichinose, Miyuki Takara etc, all Class SS character designs which share some trait (usually idiocy) with me. It seems fair enough, kind of like how many people idolize Konata Izumi.

But the real reason, naturally, is with the Nagi supporters and the Hinagiku club teetering back and forth on the brink of war with every new episode, I’m more than content to label myself a ‘cool indie hipster who goes against the flow’, and sit around in a more relaxed corner of the Hayate harem battle, probably sipping an iced tea with members of the Maria faction.

Well, unless J.C. Staff keeps it up with what they’ve been giving Mr. Ayasaki himself. A few more episodes of that and I may have to seek some emotional counseling from Shin.

Probably the most meaningful I can do regarding Hayate, as a show, is to comment on that one nagging issue that comes up every now and then, is how it’s almost painfully faithful to the manga. I went and compared some scenes from the Cruel Angel Thesis chapter just for reference, and a lot of the framing was the same as well.

What probably is the bigger underlying issue, more than this, is Hayate’s bold leap away from that of the manic, fourth-wall-breaking, reference-making genre to the perhaps more normal romantic comedy. Many people mourned this, and the more I think about it, the more I’m likely to consider myself one of them.

This is because Old Hayate’s humor is almost one-of-a-kind, probably comparable only in large leaps-of-faith to Zetsubou-sensei, at least in the way in which it bombarded the viewer with both easy-to-swallow and impossible-to-understand gags, aimed at both the simple comedy fan and the hardcore otaku.

New Hayate feels much slanted towards the former, for with a few exceptions, such as a few scenes from episode 12 (which I heard were still toned down in referentiality), I’ve been able to figure out everything that has been going on … and have enjoyed it, admittedly enough.

I do miss the complete ridiculousness of Old Hayate, but I’m not willing to mourn it yet. It seems most people are the same, wishing there was a bit more of Old Hayate, but finding New Hayate much more palatable than New Coke. After all, the romantic, character-developing side of Hayate is pretty solid as well, especially with such a strong, unique, diverse cast, the likes of which I can hardly think to match.

But all that has pretty much been said around the otakusphere, so in conclusion, I hope we get many more episodes more of New Hayate, because 1) eventually they will get to manga material which has not been scanlated and 2) the one problem with romantic comedies versus manic comedies is that the former take a great deal more momentum to stop cleanly.

Granted, if S2 ends, it’ll probably be on a vague ‘there will be more later’ note, but why even bother with that? I’ll take Hayate any time. And I’d watch the anime any time too.

Second up is the long-awaited, long-trolled second season of the anime that needs no introduction, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Undoubtedly the anime with the biggest bullseye painted on it, now that K-ON! has concluded, I was all ready to jump on the hate bandwagon again with the next non-Key KyoAni offering, but after seeing the third episode … maybe my mind changed.

This seems to happen every time, I get all ready to troll and rage against something, but then I suddenly start liking it again. H2O, K-ON!, ef … well, two out of those three I turned out to hold in high esteem. I’m still meh on K-ON, although that’s an improvement.

Maybe it’s an instinctive Mizunashi Mode kicking in. I like it, whatever it’s done, because it was worrying me before that I was about as interested in watching Haruhi as Nagato is interested in … well, anything. On the outside, anyway.

Probably it’s a sign that I’m a sucker for time loops because they make me feel clever with how they reference themselves and I like things that are the same but slightly different.

The problem probably is that Haruhi is not the same but slightly different, because it had been about 2 years since my last viewing of it, and so all I remembered were random scenes, memes, and moeblobs. My return was a bit clunky, with the lolikitean viewing of episode 1 skipping over most of the actual content and episode 2 being little other than fluff. I had lost what I came to Haruhi for.

Maybe I will never find that again, mainly because I remembered first watching Haruhi because it was popular and I kept seeing avatars of Mikuru exposing her star birthmark, and neither of those are particularly worthy reasons nowadays for me to stick with an entire series. Maybe ‘what I stayed with Haruhi for’ is a better guiding stick.

Of course, that’s ambiguous as well. Naturally it might be easier to enjoy Haruhi from scratch, at that rate. Perhaps that is what I did with episode three. Or maybe the introduction of the timeloop kept me searching for similarities and differences in the content rather than searching Google for things to stare at.

It definitely would be interesting, to find someone who has not seen the first season of Haruhi Suzumiya and have them watch the second season, for comparison and contrast. Unfortunately KyoAni does not appear to be retracing any old ground in terms of character exposition in season 2 (perhaps due to the unique way in which it is aired), so such an exercise may be futile.

Well, it has been long enough for me to forget most of the upcoming content for Haruhi S2, but now that we appear to approaching actual content as opposed to mostly carefree episodes, and with some good Nagato time on deck, it can only be uphill from here. Or so I hope.

Maybe it’s just a sign that I’m too busy-minded a person to handle anime in which very little happens. At least at the moment. What a shame.

Finally, what probably should be the prime topic, Eden of the East, which has just concluded … well, its TV run anyway. I’ve got to do something to keep my hype for this show going all the way until the movies come out in 2010 or whenever … perhaps this is a bit early, but oh well.

Certainly I would like to tag Eden of the East as the ‘best show of the spring’ or whatever people have been parroting; it was the one show I would consistently stay up waiting for the download to complete, such that I could watch it immediately. Hayate could be put off a night if I was tired. I’m still afraid to watch episodes of Hatsukoi, a force too powerful for me at times. But Eden … there was nothing between the two of us.

For those of you who know my tastes, such a thing should be natural to understand. My tastes have always tilted a bit toward pretentious, which is why the ef series filled me with so much energy and superlatives to the extent of almost no other show. I also like to appreciate things that are different, even if other people are convinced they suck. In fact, maybe if they do suck. I still think H2O is the former, not the latter.

Therefore, Eden of the East, which only needs a glance at the full-of-English-text OP to ascertain its style, and a quick scan of the summary to understand that it is unique, was pretty much a sure-fire hit, and hit it did.

Ironically, I can’t coherently say much beyond that; in the end (or maybe just the beginning of the end), Eden of the East belies its description all over the place. Even though the OP is delicious pretentious crack, the show is decidedly not so; indeed, although the story is supposed to be about a guy with 10 billion yen that is supposed to save Japan, it at times is decidedly not so.

When in the last episode you still have Micchon shouting about how NEETs are “only interested in 2D girls” and screaming about how Ohsugi shouldn’t let the laptop touch his Johnny, you have to wonder how serious Eden is about itself, certainly since it’s busy doing random things like making Johnny-choppers float out of the top of a hotel while sprouting wings, or focusing on Saki’s life, while not really explaining anything about the backbone of the story itself.

I ended the 11th episode knowing a bit more about the story and the characters than before, but in the end I only got a window into everyone’s life – seeing a little bit of each Selecao, but never really getting the full picture.

Maybe this is only just, because there are two movies to go, but I really have that feeling that over the 11 episodes we have seen, we’ve gotten a lot of exposition but no explanation. The last two episodes perhaps finally got the ball rolling on Akira’s past, as well as cleaning up a few of the last Selecao, but it still doesn’t feel quite right.

This is probably due to the peculiar tone of Eden, which never feels like it’s 100% serious. For a show about an amnesiac and a plot to blow up Japan, it’s surprising light-hearted, with lots of humorous moments right until the end.

Perhaps this is what I enjoy best about Eden, in that it’s a different show … being different. It’s not unnecessarily grimdark, nor is Akira unnecessarily angsty; just because it’s not moe’d up to the hilts and has a different premise doesn’t mean that it has to be Dark and Edgy, and Eden captures this very well.

In a sense I suppose it is like many other Noitamina shows – Toshokan Sensou, maybe Nodame Cantabile – that deal with topics that should be more serious, but still manage to inject a bit of flair and fun without turning the story into a total joke.

And I like it this way – it makes for a watch that is always compelling, whether I’m in a serious, thoughtful mood, or in a tired state that just needs a simple unwinding. This is what dooms many shows for me – I’m just never in the right emotional state for Honey & Clover to work for me, Iriya was just too angsty and serious for the longest time… but Eden is always just right.

Perhaps as a result it takes on a bit of a ‘jack of all trades’ feel to it – certainly those looking for a compelling, airtight story will be slightly dissappointed. If you came to Eden looking for hand holding … well … I’m not sure how you did that.

Regardless, Eden of the East is a work that at least needs to be tried, for we don’t get enough anime that mix genres and genders and get away with it. I don’t feel like there’s a concrete enough reason to try it – I’ve been recommending it using the main premise to induce a ‘lolwut is this’ reaction, hardly enough to cover Eden’s true scope – but I’ll just have to go off my gut feeling.