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…)

In the end, Owen is probably right. After how many thousands of words over the last five or so episodes riding the tide of KimiKiss, from the highs and lows of both the show’s execution and of my own personal Yuumi fandom, I’ve finally beached out on this show.

I say tide for a reason. KimiKiss isn’t a rollercoaster, per se. It doesn’t always leave you hanging on the edge of your seat, threatening to buck you at every turn like most visual-novel type harem/romances go. Rather, it really does feel like a relaxing trip out to sea, a place disconnected from yet not totally out of touch with the real world, in that style in which KimiKiss lets every viewer live out their idea of the ideal high school romance.

Indeed, my thoughts regarding KimiKiss itself have fluctuated like that of a schoolboy first falling in love. At the beginning I was sure I was smitten with it, that it would be the greatest forever, and indeed, we spent many great times together. But as time moved on there was that little nagging doubt, that ‘is it me or is it you?’ feeling. I still liked it a lot but it didn’t seem like it could be The One. In the end, we had to separate and head our own separate ways, something that I still approach with a bit of sadness, which probably is a bit contrary to everything about the show I’ve said so far.

In the end I find myself regarding KimiKiss much like others have, a show that bends the box but doesn’t break it, and more of a entertaining watch than a truly didactic one. There’s a bit of me that wishes KimiKiss could be more, as it really could have, but I’m not sure how, or in what way, as as much as I try to put it down and say it wasn’t incredible, my gut feeling keeps saying it’s something more.

It’s a strange show. It’s ambitious, yet ordinary, complicated, yet simple, unpredictable, yet not.

The one thing that I think KimiKiss really excelled in, though, was being very interactive-friendly (for lack of a better word), encouraging viewers to get out there, pick a side, and get into the show, something that will instantly make anything - any show, any work of fiction, any event - more entertaining and more fulfilling.

This is the reason I liken to KimiKiss to politics, except fun.

(Obvious spoilers after the jump, etc etc.)
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We’re just under the half-hour mark in terms of time left for the brilliantly normal and delightfully split-threaded romance KimiKiss, and still there is no end in sight, something that’s quite distressing given how much has to be done in how little an amount of time.

It’s a strange thing that reminds me of when I was watching Myself; Yourself a while back, yet this time coming from a show of much different style and feel. Whereas Myself; Yourself was fast and furious from pretty much the middle point on, KimiKiss has moved all the way from a crawling pace to a brisk walk. It’s kind of ironic, because even the characters in the show have a definite deadline on their time (with the end of the cultural festival marking many things), yet neither they, the animators, and arguably we don’t realize just how close things are to coming to a sudden stop.

Perhaps that’s something that’s significant of high school life as a whole, something that as a senior I can identify with, that creeping feeling of “the whole world is about to change upside-down and I’m still refusing to accept it”. Wouldn’t it be nice to be with your friends (and possibly, lovers) forever?

Of course, that’s not a reality, and so the sudden shift that’s about to hit at least half of KimiKiss like a out-of-control car clobbering a hot anime mom with two thousand pounds of plot is going to be something that will be wildly emotional, and different, if nothing else, to witness. We can be with KimiKiss not much longer than certain characters in it can be with each others, and so it’s time to look forward to a lot of coping and with any luck, one hell of an ending next week.

But until then, it’s time to fire up those analytical engines one more time as KimiKiss gears up for its final lap, and take a look at what business has to be done in the last episode of this anime. (more…)

Perhaps I’ve compared KimiKiss and Kaiji one too many times for two shows which couldn’t be more opposite in genre and tone, but once again the former surprises me with how much, speaking both outside and inside of the show’s context, it handles itself in a manner that’s almost, if not completely, not unlike that of Kaiji, in how it messes with the outcome and the characters.

Quite simply, in KimiKiss around the halfway mark or so the outcome of the show becomes fairly obvious, although to this episode it’s not set in stone, an issue that has popped up in Kaiji every now and then, when the drama is muffled a bit by the issue of not being able to kill off the main character. It’s not a deal-breaker, given that a lot of the fun in both shows is to figure out how the characters get from point A to point B.

Additionally, KimiKiss offers up a little more unpredictability, but it still would take a bit of insanity to go and argue against the relationships that seem to be developing.

But still, to quote Kaiji himself, “You have to be deviant, or else you can’t kill the devil!”

Whether it be as a viewer or as a character in a show KimiKiss really does almost play out like one long, protracted game of E-Card, perhaps a testament to that game’s representation of society. As the rounds begin to run out on KimiKiss the tension continues to increase almost unbearably, and now with just two episodes left, it’s easy to see who has the advantage, but just as easy to see how the tide could turn in an instant… (more…)

Ignoring the fact that I seem to be mixing up two entirely different card games (and neither of the ‘children’s card game’ variety) the action at the final tables in KimiKiss seems to be heating up (or at least, not cooling down) as the final cards begin to play out.

It’s easy to see who are the leaders here but in the world of gambling and of romance it’s easy to turn the tables with just a few shock twists, so don’t get too comfortable yet.

At the Kouichi table it’s been a tough fight between Mao and Yuumi all evening, with Yuumi taking the early lead but losing it late on some unlucky deals, as Mao has come on strong with some excellent strategy. It’s easy to see how her short stack has affected her attack plan, as she’s been letting Mao walk over her all night, and once again she got led into an easy check-raise by Mao, hiding pocket queens to Yuumi’s eight-nine suited with a five-queen-ace rainbow on the table. It’s a huge pot and one that might just determine the fate of this game, and while Mao’s got the clear advantage here it’s easy to see that Yuumi could pull this one in a pinch with an inside straight. Not to mention, we’ll see if one can get the other to fold first…

Over at the Kazuki table Eriko’s been wiping the floor with Asuka all night and going into the next hand it’s going to be near-impossible for Asuka to make a comeback being so far down on chips, but with any luck maybe she can pull out a few wins in order to make it competitive.

We’ll find out when we come back to the World Series of KimiKiss, brought to you by the Udon Association - “At Least It’s Not Those Damned Frogs!(tm)”

(The analogies for KimiKiss, they just keep coming…at least I can speak poker better than politics.)

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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…)

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.) (more…)

Sometimes it seems that everyone’s favorite high school romance has more in common with American politics than the date of the week where important stuff happens (this being the usual time for the fansub release).

The fight is intensifying on both sides, in this case over the hearts of Kouichi and Kazuki, the male leads, with two vastly different situations shaping up as we come into the closing quarter of the show.

Kazuki represents the Republican party, a battlefield that looked to be intensely fought over in the beginning, but now is just one that’s quickly becoming sparsely populated. Technically there are still multiple candidates left in the field but it would have to take some serious deluding at this point to believe in any other than the one that’s in the lead - with one of the main contenders seemingly dropping out and endorsing a rival, it seems almost a done deal.

Kouichi and the Democratic party has the tougher choice, a straight-up dogfight between two evenly-matched characters that may be similar in viewpoints but worlds apart in appeal. The innocent schoolgirl romantic seems to be the more charismatic of the two as the childhood friend has made a few missteps on the campaign trail but arguably up until recently it was a relative dead heat. Now, however, the pendulum of momentum is really beginning to swing and there’s one that ends up squarely in the lead, barring an unexpected surge.

So, who’s going to take the win? Eriko or Asuka? Mao or Yuumi? Will Kai, the underground favorite, play a role in stealing away hearts? Can the third-party nominations of Hiiragi and Mitsuki do anything other than get laughed at again? All this and more spoilerific commentary after the jump.

(Note: I’m really bad at politics.)

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(Part of a Anime Blogging Collective Valentine’s Day post rush; refer to IKnight’s handy article collection for links to all the others.)

Who is she? I don’t know, but she has glasses and a valentine. Instant kill, no saving throw.

With the rise of the Internet, it’s easier than ever for people to destroy their personal privacy and post up their biggest, darkest secrets all over the Web, where nobody - except everybody - can see it.

As such budding paparazzi such as myself consider the blogging scene a veritable goldmine for digging up the dirty, the dorky, and the dunce-headed on the most popular or intriguing idols of today, and this isn’t any exception when it comes to the anime community.

No, I’m not talking about the anime blogging community, as many iconic characters as it has. Rather, there’s a lot you didn’t know your favorite anime character was up to on everyone’s favorite romantic holiday, and I’ve taken it upon myself as a freelance reporter to peruse the masses of entries every day for the most exciting, interesting, and controversial stories of what “everyday” life shapes up to be for the biggest names in harem, magical girl, and straight-up romance anime. I think you’ll be very surprised at what dirt I’ve got on them.

(Disclaimer: As you may have guessed, this is a fictional entry based on fictional characters, and a lot of the preceding was patent nonsense. I’m not part of the paparazzi nor a reporter, and if you see any blogs by anime characters I think you need to pinch yourself a bit harder. This is just a fun little idea for a Valentine’s Day post, based off this similar Christmas idea by Stripey, in imagining the (likely much more exciting) happenings of some popular anime heroes and heroines. Please enjoy.

Oh, and yes, I’m trying to inject a little analysis into this as well; these shows all have ties to romance in some way - although most of them, as predicted from someone like me, are harem - and I’ll be commenting on why this show might be something interesting to watch for someone in the mood for a little lovin’ on a day like today.)

(Yeah, I kinda minorly spoil KimiKiss, ef, and Clannad, in a roundabout way.) (more…)

Mildly Engrish, yes, thanks for asking

A while back, I wrote an article about how true shoujo (girls’) romance shows, replete with shiny sparkly slow-motion pans of blond-haired pretty-boys, were lacking compared to the Marmalade Boys of years past. They seemed to be slowly fading out of favor; whether it was overcrowding due to more male-orientated “moe shows” (less of a genre and more of a giant classification) or simple dissapearance due to change of taste, I was unsure, but the fact was, they just don’t make romance stories truly aimed at just girls anymore.

With some coincidental genre-talk crossfire going on around other places, combined with my following of 2007 hit Nodame Cantabile, I began to think a bit again about the status of girls’ romance. Nodame Cantabile definitely had the feel of a show that could masquerade as being such a type of show, yet it also was decidedly different from the typical fare that occupies the genre. And what of KimiKiss? It’s a show that, despite being so much ’seen before’ material, defies classification by typical means, being neither guys’ harem nor girls’ romance.

These may be but two shows but to me they signify pretty clearly the direction that romance shows are heading. They may not be as popular as they used to be, passed up in favor of more pandering harem shows (not indicative of the harem genre as a whole, I must note) or the ever-strong action / mecha favorites, but what’s left in the romance corner is truly a distilled and refined version of what both guys and girls have come to love in love stories. (more…)