Mega Megane Moé
Hell and Heaven Moéltdown
Posts tagged Season Review
Shoujo Showdown! Special A vs. Itazura no Kiss, expounded to painful length
Apr 29th
I enjoy contradictions; not only in my mind-bending anime that I watch but also in what kind of anime I watch.
I like to tout my love for the visual-novel conversions, a genre that is on the mild end, gender-neutral with cute girls and sad stories, and on the extreme ends, a fanservice free-for-all harem-fest with characters filled to the nines with appeal and moe.
But there’s an equally large and some might say equally awkward soft spot I hold for the other end of the so-called gender divide, the shoujo drama. These are the shows that could almost pass to be daytime American TV, so filled with relationships made and broken, hearts yearning and hearts weeping, and more characters than any typical harem lead could ever dream of snagging.
Of course, the appeal of them is not the chance to watch another hour of The Days of Our Lives, but rather the emotional power of these shows that so often can speak to souls. Typically, the content found in these shoujo stories are quite down-to-earth, and extremely pertinent to the teenage age group of which I am a part of. They have a sky-high relatability factor, something that makes it easy for anyone to take many of the life lessons that these shows emit, and make it personal, and thus make the anime great.
And equally such, the shows are not grounded in reality so hard as to be drab, either. Most inhabit a realistic-like setting with more than a fair bit of ridiculousness in the content itself. It may be a school life show, but when the school life features giant glass greenhouses, over-the-top competitions and rivalries, and overally highly unlikely circumstances, it’s likely to induce a smile.
This mix of heartwarming story spiced with a sprinkle of insanity is what endears this genre to me, and when I found that two shows of this type were coming down the pipeline for the spring season, I was quite excited in finding my two ‘must-watch’, or at least ‘must-try’ shows of the season. But how do they stack up now that the first three episodes of each have been viewed?
An impromptu part two of the “Spring Season Battles” feature follows. Do note that this one is lighter on the pictures and heavier on the text, due to time restraints, and, y’know, things to talk about.
My Show Is Better Than Your Show, March Madness Edition
Mar 5th
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Playing Catch-Up: The Alternate Universe Winter Season
Feb 2nd
(I’m just amazed I didn’t go straight to my Kanon folder for ‘winter pics’)
There’s been some muttering about the winter season being a bit slower than the previous fall, or even summer, with most of the big-name blockbusters being either continuations from seasons past or straight sequels (or sequel-like substances, etc) … or, y’know, licensed.
As such it’s been tricky trying to fill the ever-demanding viewing schedule with new and exciting things, especially for someone that is closed-minded in anime genre; in terms of visual novels, the winter 2008 season is kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel, with H2O, which has been underwhelming so far, and True Tears, which, is, y’know, licensed.
There are many things that could and are being done to remedy this situation: for one, cracking open that stash of KimiNozo / Rumbling Hearts gaining dust somewhere, or two, rewatching an old classic like Cardcaptor Sakura, or simply just staring at the mailbox waiting for Ever17. But rather, I figured I’d do something interesting and likely painful, and give a shot a bunch of random shows from random genres that people have been praising over the months; the kind of shows that get demands to be, y’know, licensed.
As such the last three days have kind of been like a strange icebreaker, or walking around at a party, or something, as I’ve been stepping from one first episode to the next in rapid succession, shaking hands with musicians, genius delinquents, little girls, littler girls, and giant robots. It’s certainly been an interesting exploratory experience, and on the whole it’s been one that’s positive. None of the shows really turned me off, although I would only really actively watch one or two of them. (The obligatory gag is falling a bit dead here, but I feel I have to say…y’know, licensed.)
What follows after the jump is a bunch of twenty-five-minute impressions of five quite acclaimed (or, at the least, talked about) shows from the eyes of someone who has no idea who, why, or what is going on; let it be an exercise in snobbish snickering for the veterans, or perhaps, an eye-opener to a series some of you dismissed blindly. Read the rest of this entry »
Looking Both Ways: The Fall Season Carryovers
Jan 19th
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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Gaze Into the Crystal Ball… (no, not the one with the stars on it)
Nov 13th
It’s a bit late to sum up all the anime currently airing for the fall 2007 season, especially considering the fact that I’ve already written a post evaluating a large amount of them.
So instead it’s time for more fluff as I share some biased opinions, some crackpot theories, and maybe even a few valid comments, about what we should expect from some of these shows as they pass their halfway (or quarter) mark. Feel free to share your own as well.
Inspired by the recently released Myself;Yourself (PS2) OP, which in typical fashion dropped plenty of almost-hints about how the teacher is actually important, and that angry Nanaka is angry (and jealous), among other things. Also, that whoever this KAORI singer is (that did the anime OP as well), that she is very awesome.
Place your bets after the jump.
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