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…)

(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…)

Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is the second season following the pessimistic, depressive teacher Nozomu Itoshiki’s crazed everyday adventures at school, and his encounters with the equally demented characters that inhibit his classroom. Some example include Chiri Kitsu, the OCD perfectionist, Kiri Komori, the shut-in, Meru, the shy flamer, and Kafuka Fuura, the eternal optomist. Nozomu’s experiences are never ordinary, as his tales are told through a unique art style filled with insanity and references to politics, culture, and more. Zoku SZS is a show not to be missed for those who like some British-style dark comedy.

1/19/08: Episode 02
Show ▼

Click here for more information on Track Two.

-CCY

“You were…trying to make yourself taller, weren’t you?”

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is a funny kind of show.

Naturally, I mean that in both senses of the word. First off, it’s a ‘funny’ show in the same way that someone like me might smell ‘funny’, with a style far removed from most slice-of-life shows. You come to SZS expecting a standard bright, cheerful school-life comedy and what you get is something you might expect from the British and their flying circuses.

It’s a type of show that’s insulting and off-the-wall, with continuity thrown to the winds in favor of sheer insanity in numerous disconnected sketches. And compounding this is that distinct SHAFT style, with the plentiful camera cuts, the occasional strangely-framed shot, and parody after parody of every aspect of both anime and society.

It’s quite simply, an anime that you’re unlikely to see the likes of again (barring its sequel, Zoku SZS), in style and in concept, for good and for bad. A show like this feels highly experimental in nature (at least for me, who is used to comparatively sane slice-of-lives), a kind of ‘what happens if I press this?’ on a six-hour scale, and naturally as a result it has its great moments and it has its annoying moments.

Luckily enough, for the most part Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is ‘funny’ in the gut-busting sense of the word as well.

(Unless you’re prepared for spoilers, that is.)
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Again the topic of weird ways to start series is brought up, and for a strange series there is of course a strange method of initiation.

At this point perhaps I would be expected to say I started watching Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei because of the fact that it was subbed by a.f.k, a translating group that I’m quite fond of. I’ll admit that’s why I started Lucky Star.

But there are actually odder reasons, such as the fact that a guy on one of the other message boards I frequent said he started watching it because of that factor…and hated it.

“Hmm, so it’s no good…but it has moe hikikomori!” said I, bringing the second factor into account, the ever-humorous blog posts over at AoMM. The combination of 1) bad plus 2) hikikomori plus 3) moe?? was too ridiculous to ignore, and so a despair-filled adventure began.

Amusingly enough the show turned out to be almost even more ridiculous than the three elements I initally took into it; except actually in a really good way. As such I feel a bit better about myself in that I still can enjoy something that’s not packed-to-the-hilt in moe characters and character designs and catchphrases and artwork.

Rather, Zetsubou Sensei is what could aptly be described as “different” - maybe it wouldn’t be so if I had watched some of the previous works from the animation studio called SHAFT (which apparently has a bunch of other strange works out as well); but with a background filled with magical girls, horribly friendly harems, and pastel hair colors, Zetsubou’s strange dark humour blended with, for all I know, social commentary, makes it a standout and still very appealing combination.

As this is the first look at an anime, the trademark comments-cleverly-disguised-as-bet-making will follow after the jump.
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