Mega Megane Moé
Hell and Heaven Moéltdown
Posts tagged Series Review
A Month Late, A Couple Million Yen Short: Kaiji, reviewed
May 14th
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.)
Team Clannad reviews … themselves (Series Review: Clannad)
Apr 30th
All right everyone, great play we put on their for the Theater Club, now let’s wrap this up with a final reflection on how it all went. Nagisa, you’re the lead character, you start … uh … where’s Nagisa?
Tomoya and her went to go take the trash out by the gym storage locker a long time ago … I wonder if they’re OK?
WHY THOSE~ Uh, Ryou, where did I put my chainsaw?
W-w-weren’t you stripped of your license to use one after the incident with the last thousand fanboys?
Mmm, stripped…
Ah, fine, I’ve got better weapons anyway. I’ll be back in a minute.
(THIS NOT OUT-OF-PLACE INTERJECTION AT ALL INDICATES KYOU IS WHERE NAGISA AND TOMOYA SHOULD BE)
Hmm…the door’s locked. That’s it, then! *clears throat*
S-s-stupid door, it’s not like I wanted to open you or anything!
(Door breaks cleanly in two. Kyou gets duct tape and patches it up cleanly before continuing.)
Ah, Kyou!
ALRIGHT YOU LITTLE HUSSY PUT YOUR PANTS BACK wait what? What’s this?
Look, look! We found this dango farm in the gym storage room and we’ve been entranced with it ever since! Isn’t it just adorable? Dango, dango, dango, dango…
Alright you guys, can we get serious here? We have to do a peer review and we have to get going now. We’re months behind.
Tomoyo? What are you doing here too? (Alright, I get a speaking line!)
Well … I figured … if Tomoya was going to be here so long with Kyou and Nagisa … that I …
FUUKO’S HERE!
No, Fuuko! Go away! You’re killing my deredere Tomoyo fantasies!
(Actual review-like content after the jump … sadly. Also, watch out for spoilers.)
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Emotional Sonic Boom: Five Centimeters Per Second, (First) Final Impressions
Apr 12th
I’m about as late to the Five Centimeters Per Second party as its main character was to his destination in the first story, so we’ll spin this off into a fancy, deep, vaguely pretentious post.
Five Centimeters Per Second was one of those anime that personally had a hype level that surpassed nearly anything else I’ve heard of. Where as Haruhi was the god (and her anime too) of second-mainstream anime – all the shows a person would be likely to encounter after their initial shonen or CLAMP phase – 5cm was something praised as one of the most moving romantic works in a long time … or at least in as encapsulated a story as movies have to be.
I’m not inclined entirely to disagree, as I was definitely entranced by the story and the visuals (oh, the visuals), but it didn’t quite nail the perhaps implausibly high expectations I set for it.
It was a bit of a tear-jerker but not as much as I first believed, the characters bordered on that line between enrapturing and just plain cheesy, and, well, the ending.
The ending, and, to a lesser extent, the whole progression of 5cm was something that didn’t quite mesh. There were some ‘click’ moments, like when Takaki spoke of his search for a philosophy, but lacking a bit of one myself, his story overall was something that left me stirred, but not shaken. (James Bond would be dissapointed.)
At least during my viewing of it, anyway. After reconsidering and writing out this post, in final revisions I find myself to be quite tsundere, if I shall kick a dead horse, for shows in the vein of this and True Tears. There’s quite a disconnect between feelings from watching it, and feelings from analyzing it.
(Movie spoilers, and possible incoherence ahead.) Read the rest of this entry »
True Tears, the Heroine Paradox, and the Madden Cover Jinx
Apr 7th
Of course, that is all pretentious-speak for “I finished True Tears and I can’t decide whether to be angry, satisfied, or moved to tears,” but carry on.
I’ve railed on True Tears a couple of times before for being decidedly normal and unchallenging. It was very good looking and did what it did very well, but it’s kind of like polishing and perfecting a text-only program when everyone had moved on to graphical ones.
Nevertheless I had forgotten that games like Nethack still have their charm, and as such True Tears provides all of the emotion and pendulum drama of a good visual novel conversion.
I could best sum up my conflicting emotions on the superiority of any one recent visual novel show – if you read the recent reviews you will find I waver more than Makoto Itou – by the fact that despite all being in the same rough genre (and a very rough genre at that) all four I’ve seen have quite a unique style to them.
Clannad is two things at once, the ‘crying’ visual novel and the ‘funny’ visual novel.
H2O is the ’shocking / mindscrew’ visual novel.
KimiKiss is the ‘relaxed / slice-of-life / realistic’ visual novel.
And True Tears, is what you could probably consider the ‘normal’ visual novel, everything you’ve seen done before, but done to a high degree of quality.
In the end I will rate True Tears as an excellent example of what to do if you have to do the same thing as everyone else. Would I watch another True Tears? Maybe, despite it all, I’m a sucker for these types of shows – but I’d prefer something with a slightly different flavor.
(Series spoilers, shockingly. Also, this review heavily influenced by the excellent and comphrensive analysis by LianYL over at Riuva.)
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Series Review: KimiKiss Pure Rouge … love, where is thy sting?
Mar 29th
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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