It’s been two days since quite possibly the most hectic weekend of my life, and I think I’ve finally shaken off all the sleep deprivation and worn off that tasty mix of adrenaline and insanity, that anime conventions tend to impart upon an otherwise normal person.

As such it’s time to immortalize my first Fanime (do note that the phrase “my first time” has been beaten to death at the convention already) in literary form by going over some of the more entertaining events that made my weekend and my $55 worth it.

Additionally, in the next few days I plan to make a broader coverage of the convention as a whole with more general info and more griping, but until then I’ll stick with the starry-eyed wonder that makes all the seasoned, hardened anibloggers jealous.

It might be perhaps a bit self-indulging in a sense to brag about all the cool stuff that happened, but on the other hand, I hope I can inspire and encourage future entertaining events like this in the future.

OK, yeah, it’s just wankery. But it’s entertaining and hilarious wankery. Trust me. It’s apparently not just a coincidence I was wearing a Cirno shirt around. I make a lot of idiotically awesome stories.

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So what happened?

I posted numerous times on the show, shoved it to the top of the viewing list over and over, gave it a nine - the highest ranking possible - on the ever-important Scale of Condensing A Complex Anime Into A Single Digit Number (aka MyAnimeList). And yet, it takes until a month later for it to finally push its way out of the review queue, where shows I don’t have much to talk about go to die.

It’s not like I was collecting my thoughts on the show.
It’s not like I was rewatching it.
It just simply passed out of mind for a very long time, and that’s something that worries me, because I really did think I enjoyed this show much more than the average show.

This is because, for the uninitiated, this is nowhere near your average show.

This is a show that goes beyond the forces of moe that some claim poison (or at least, run rampant in) today’s anime. There is no moe to speak of, hell, I could probably count on one hand - probably one finger - how many girls even appeared in the show total.

Rather, what Kaiji is, is a ruthless adrenaline rush, both physical and mental. A show all about a sometimes naive, sometimes genius, sometimes emotional delinquent (named Kaiji) who gets himself in all sorts of shady financial debt, and is forced into a series of increasingly implausible, incredible, and intriguing gambles in order to pay it off.

These gambles are great to watch because most of the time they are at least thrill rides which will leave you guessing as to the outcome - don’t take winning for granted in this show - with incredible moments of raw emotion along every twist and turn. On a good day, they are great introspectives as well, as Kaiji ponders the viciousness of human life while getting whipped in a human-vs-human battle of mind and body.

It’s very much a complete package, one that I think deserves a watch by anyone, just because you’re unlikely to see a show like this often amidst more common show archetypes. It drags a bit at times and the noses are awfully pointy, but Kaiji is an injection straight to the heart, which feeds blood to the brain and the masculine regions of the body.

(Manly spoilers ensue after the jump.)

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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…)

Actually, looking back on the 20th episode of Kaiji about a week later, I’ve found that said ‘perfect vision’ seems to be blurring. But undoubtedly, explaining - or, rather, finding out - why will be just as interesting an experience, so here we go.

I think the best way to put it is that Kaiji, the show, has done a good job in putting us, the viewer, in the shoes of Kaiji, the character.

I say this simply because my thoughts regarding the show have mirrored Kaiji’s state of mind as well. When I first saw this episode, I was absolutely, out and out left breathless at Kaiji’s adrenaline-packed mix of fearlessness and insanity. Ten-odd straight posts of “HOLY MOTHER OF~” (paraphrased) over at the AnimeSuki forums seemed to conclude the same.

But now, I’m just wondering where they can go from here, and about the implications of such a shocking event, and how, really, it is sort of a change from what made Kaiji great in the beginning. What always endeared itself to me in the beginning was how it was a show that rode the edge of disbelief masterfully - it was patently ridiculous the way Kaiji got shoved to the wall and promptly came back with all the cutting-edge analytical power of a humanoid interface, but it was great because 1) we liked Kaiji, 2) we hated his enemies, and 3) the kind of mind-manipulation that happened in the early gambles was plausible, especially between two less-than-sound minds.

But episode 20… is it jumping that line of no return? That line between creeping realism and, as wildarmsheero bluntly puts it, shock value?

(Spoilers, spoilers, the magical fruit, the more you read them, the more you…)

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Where blogposts run wild in the internet, one man stands between a computer screen…and the wall behind him. And actually, he’s sitting. Coming soon - actually, right now - to a screen near you…

The Editorial. (This post is not yet commented)

Unfortunately that’s about as funny as the post is going to get, as we return back to our regularly scheduled Shiori worshipping search for a better memorable meme analysis, commentary, and yes, topic title, which, as you may have noticed, has a lot to do with that great voice from the sky.

Uh, the narrator.

Ironically enough most anime, and probably TV work in general, have as many varying beliefs in the existence of the narrator as the world does in the existence of the higher powers vaguely alluded to in the last paragraph. The majority of the shows take a largely individualistic approach, believing that The Narrator is inside each and every character, with the male lead interjecting useful mental comments into the conversation such as “Heloooooooo, <s>officer</s> meido.” (This is anime after all.) Very rarely, a show will be a nonbeliever, not implementing the narrator at all, giving a very third-person view to the scheme of things. And also quite uncommon is the canon implementation of the narrator, the enthusiastic and energetic voice that helps to explain the action, shouting statements like “The hero makes his move!” (Followed, of course, by the girl turning him down - don’tcha love context?)

A mix of the first and third variations are the ones I’ll be covering today in a case study, as I’ve recently been doing some musing about the storytelling of Kaiji during the ample downtime (action-wise, perhaps, although the mental conniving goes non-stop) of a show that is probably taking a few episodes to explain less than an hours’ worth of play.

The situation I pose is simple: the anime utilizes both lengthy inner monologues by titular character Kaiji and external explanations by the third-person narrator. Together, they probably compromise the bulk of the show, as Kaiji is very much a thinking man’s show, in-between all the falling off beams (among other physical punishment) .

But, what if we were to remove these segments? (more…)

Day before yesterday I saw a Not Boat,
yesterday an sentimental fic,
and today, you…weird…music video…thing.

I keep trying to be a crazy anime fan. As a guy, I watch magical girl shows, as a realist, I watch ridiculous harems and visual novel adaptations, I fanboy over 2D things more than anything 3D, and I have an adoration of glasses-sporting characters that will put me in a straightjacket someday.

Yet somehow, I always seem to be one-upped by the manic minds across the sea, of what undoubtedly are self-labeled the “true otaku”, those who really have no shame nor sanity. (more…)

The story of Kaiji is a mentally and emotionally charged one, revolving around the titular character’s quest to escape from a crushing debt inflicted upon him by the yakuza, the Japanese gang. Kaiji, an anti-hero with a dead-end job, is forced to participate in emotionally and physically testing ‘gambles’ against his fellow kind of losers, in a last-ditch chance to win big…or die trying. These games include an evil form of rock-paper-scissors, a tightrope walk 22 stories up, and even more sinsister events, where the punishment is often too painful to comphrehend. Much commentary on the society of today, combined with complex psychological battles, makes Kaiji a deserving watch for anyone who likes mental challenges with a shot of adrenaline.

1/26/08: Episode 16
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1/19/08: Episode 15
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Click here for more information on Track Two.

-CCY

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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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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If there’s one bad thing I can say about Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji it’s that it didn’t cause me suddenly grow hair from my chest and give me urges to stand on my chair and utter primal screams.

On the flip side, it didn’t send me fleeing into a corner, shaking and quivering and searching for Shiori pictures in order to replenish healthy moe levels. In fact, my first guys’-orientated show in quite a while was refreshing and quite enjoyable.

This is probably due to the fact that Kaiji isn’t a “guys” show in the typical sense of the word, which conveys the image of shows with random action, filler, and over-9000 episodes length. Kaiji is more of a thinking show, a mind game; I’d liken it to Battle Royale, except instead of playing with physical lives, they are playing with figurative (yet still very real) lives.

It’s not a mind-render in any case, being still mostly predictable, but one can derive a certain joy, perhaps in a slightly sadistic manner, by seeing the expert interaction, or, more likely, manipulation, of characters.

Even, or perhaps, especially, for one whose typical plate of character interactions consists of ‘blush’, ’stammer’ and ‘fall on floor in provocative position’, the playing of characters like a fiddle in the free-for-all world of Kaiji is quite refreshing.
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