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…)

Matsuri, YOU’RE WINNER!

Yeah, it’s so shocking it’s worth stealing and reposting from Danny Choo’s barely five-minute-old post. I happen to get on the internet at just the right time, I suppose.

Anyways, according to Danny Choo the results from about 2 million Japanese ballots are in, and everyone’s favorite tomato-juice-drinking, sky-photographing show apparently grabbed the top spot by an overwhelming margin, with over 340,000 votes to runner-up Lucky Star’s 140,000. The full standings are as follows:

1) sola
2) Lucky Star
3) Katei Kyoshi Hitman Reborn
4) Ookiku Furi Kabutte
5) Higurashi
6) Gintama
7) Nanoha StrikerS
8) Nanatsuiro Drops
9) Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
10) Hidamari Sketch

Really curious, if you ask me. It makes me wonder (as I commented on over there) what the criteria were to be eligible, as many big-name shows that ended this year, like Kanon and Gurren Lagann among other things, are nowhere to be seen.

I’m pleasantly surprised to see sola up there at the top - it was one of the shows I enjoyed greatly this season, despite it having a few glaring flaws. Still, to have it top all with nary a moe show (or even very many manly shows) in sight is quite perplexing. Makes you curious what the polling audience was in Japan - random people off the street? 2ch visitors? Any certain demographic?

It makes me wonder again of the divides present in anime fandom; it’s apparent to many that anime that casual or inexperienced U.S. fans watch (typically shonen), and anime that hardcore English bloggers watch (all over the board, but a lot more moe, mecha, and dramatic) are worlds apart, but is there a second difference in taste between the anime fanatics on both sides of the Pacific? And is there a similar, ‘casual’ anime division in Japan that is looked down upon?

And which one was the most vocal in this vote? All food for thought, speaking as a relatively new member to the anime community.

Regarding that and the rest of the list, I guess this means I can’t tout sola and NanaDrops as ‘underrated anime that no one’s heard of’, as I’ve been out to do of recently. I do enjoy playing a show’s (advertising) knight in shining armor too much.

Lucky Star was popular, as expected from a slice-of-life on moe crack (lemme tell you, them’s good crack too), and I’m happy to see SZS up there on the list as well. This list also reinforces my idiocy as the only person left on Earth who hasn’t waxed poetic about Hidamari Sketch as well…time to put that back on the list.

Would like to see the rest of the list, but that’s probably not possible.

-CCY
(Obvious thanks to Danny Choo for the news.)
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The “12 Days of Christmas” series is a joint feature by some members of the Anime Blogging Collective recognizing twelve moments, twelve series, or just twelve things about anime that we’ve enjoyed over the past year, that really make us enjoy loving what we do, and that is being an anime fan. Feel free to join in the list-making fun too if you wish. We hope you enjoy this feature.

Sometimes, the best way to say something, is to say nothing.

Any anime, any form of fiction can go on and on in a never-ending monologue about life, the universe, and everything. Sometimes these rants can be quite intriguing; watching a character deconstruct or perhaps devolve allows a close-up, personal, and quite emotional look at events and the inner workings of it all.

So it’s understandable that quite a few anime like to embrace the long-winded speech, whether it be a bit of technobabble, a Shakespearean emotional dump, or just a simple an explanation as to why everything is Just As Planned.

But over the my first real year of anime watching, I’ve found that the moments that really make your skin tingle are the ones that are aren’t really moments at all.

A silent moment, a seeming pause in time, can hit hard like a sonic boom after an intense scene. Rather than being told how powerful a moment is, one can simply feel the air crackle with tension, with emotion, with anything and everything that can make a single scene stand out.

In that sense, one part of sola 12, says volumes.
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Going through a rewatch of sola, one of the more appealing animes of the spring 2007 season - at least to a Kanon-type-phile like me - and let me put this simply.

I don’t get it anymore.

The events that happen in the final few episodes are great for shock value, but now I’m trying to dissect them, and, I’m just not seeing the connection. I have one particular thing in mind, which revolves around episode 12 - so obviously, if you haven’t watched sola, stay far far away, and whatnot.
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Another new miniseries here, dealing with something that seems to be far too common among the anime community, and that is comparisons. Why isn’t Series X more like Y? Series Z is such a rip off of series S. Series W set the bar, and A, B, and C don’t come close to matching the original. Feel free to fill in the blanks.

Now, the question here is: are those comparisons justified? Are the claims of copying fact or fiction? It’s time to put that to the test.

First up to the line is a pair of series that at least to me seem rather similar, and maybe justifiably so - the story of sola was written by Naoki Hisaya, a man who worked on Kanon as well, so there certainly is reason for a lot of Key-sounding stuff to happen. But, AIR and Kanon are pretty dissimilar on their own, so that shouldn’t be a reason for too many similarities.

But you never know. There are many things which sola and AIR have in common. You might be surprised. (By the way, huge ending spoilers and whatnot for sola and AIR after the jump)
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As of about fifteen minutes ago sola has been completed, and it really was a ride.

sola is an interesting series. When I first watched it I found it was best described as ‘Kanon Lite’, which is close to the mark but not quite. It is very similar to another Key work, AIR, in both story and thematic elements, but there are many things that make it stand apart - in both good and bad ways.

sola starts off quite strong - for one, it was a series whose first episode I enjoyed (as opposed to say, Haruhi, Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star, Shuffle!, and so forth) - but it is true that it does stumble a lot in the middle, but in the end the conclusion was fulfilling and it really could have been done a lot worse in the end.

There are flaws for sure in sola if you look closely - some of the characters are paper thin, there are continuity errors on occasion and more than a few uses of epic hax. sola definitely feels more of a work of fiction as such than a real, believable environment, but it still has merit as such.

In the end it’s not so much a Kanon Lite as one would believe, and sola does do a decent job of standing on it’s own. I give sola a recommendation to anyone who still does like the genre of mysterious, visual novel type things, with a request to not be too picky.

Preliminary other final thoughts and stuff after the jump.
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Luckily, before the downtime I was able to stock up a nice pile of anime to watch, a lot of them old and some of them new. Among the ancient we have Honey & Clover, Da Capo, To Heart 2, and ONE. Among the newer we’ve got Wangan Midnight and sola in the queue along with Lucky CHANNELUUUUUUUUUUUUU Star.

Although, I must say, with every series I’m getting more and more piled up in a jumble of names, hair colors, and relationships.

In this post I’ll cover briefly in text form Kanon Kazahana, the special OVA-ish thing that came after the TV run of Kanon 2002, as well as the first episode of sola, a series from 2007. Whoa.

Technically, I should warn for Kanon spoilers, as Kazahana comes after the canon Kanon (OK, I just like to say that word) storyline, not to mention me discussing the ending of Kanon for no reason than other to scare off people. Hit the jump.

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