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…)

And so it’s back to everyone’s other eroge harem show (technically), To Heart 2.

In episode 6 we find, as usual, the introduction of a new character. This time it’s pink-haired Ruuko , who makes her appearance in typical sickly-girl fashion by passing out in front of the main character Taka-kun.

As usual, our protagonist with nothing better to do takes her out for a meal in the park, where there is no time in wasted in hinting she is not quite normal. Insert head-knuckle.

Ruuko spreads across many tropes in her episode, proving to be a foreigner (an alien, for that matter), a transfer student, a cat lover, one of them cutesy third-person speakers, and quite clearly the role of the mysterious girl. Come to think of it I’ve watched the full episode and I don’t know her first name or why she’s here.

She says about coming to observe the planet U and all the Us within it (I wonder if this will be elaborated on) but that’s about the only line that gives her much backstory. She does some supernatural neato stuff like pwning a tree in order to save Meow that cat, though.

This episode is remarkably more continuous than many of the other episodes in that you
see more than one girl throughout the episode.

For example, Konomi shows up to spout a real naive line about karma and stuff. I see
this as a bit of characterization and find it cute how childish Konomi still is.

And then she goes away and we get a lot of Yuuji, who deserves more screen time being
tortured by Tama-nee, who appears for 5 seconds in this episode to do just that. Library/class rep girl who’s name I’ve already forgotten plays a role in this episode by staring at Taka a lot, usually because of the weirdness of the transfer student from the 3rd planet in the 47th whatever that hangs around Taka. Also, she plays an overenthusiastic role in finding a seat for Ruuko, which as expected would be right next to Taka. Amusingness ensues as Ru shows a blatant disregard for social patterns on earth. Maybe a bit predictable but amusing.

Everyone’s favorite blackmailer Karin shows up suitably excited by the oddness of the mysterious transfer student and sends Taka out on a recon (stalker) mission. It seems the ‘you groped me, guilt guilt’ gag will never get old, although I must say that I laughed at how fond Karin sounded when she recollected the scene.

Of note here is that “this and that” is supposedly Japanese for whatever innuendo you can come up with that means ’sex’. Certainly Karin is stretching the truth a bit and any day now she might end up claiming to bear Taka’s child.

Also, how come nobody ever questions if Karin’s devices actually work? I was a bit suspicious, at least.

The drawing scene was a bit odd as for some reason, although everyone was rushing to the roof see Ruuko’s strange art on the school grounds, when Taka finally got to her there was no one up there. Lazy artists or short attention span; you decide.

Also, those drawings smacked of Haruhi, but nowadays what doesn’t?

Not sure of the relation of the cat to Ruuko yet (if there’s anything out of the ordinary), but the cat was an amusing plothole as Taka pulled the ‘there’s no way it could show up’ card to produce the cat out of nowhere. This led to Taka’s flagrant ignorance of animal abuse rules and the subsequent Kanon stunt the cat pulls by jumping over the fence.

Unfortunately, there was no truck and no human kitsune here.

All in all this episode wasn’t horribly exciting and I found myself wishing for more Lucky Star or TokiMemo subs throughout the episode but I can’t really call this a waste of time. To Heart 2 is a good series for those who like fluff, as it’s not horribly complex nor emotional, just sort of happy happy.

I appreciate the sudden influx of supernatural with Karin and Ruuko, but I’m hoping that some sort of explanation or connection behind all this U-Foe stuff is waiting in the wings, rather than “Karin likes UFOs. See, there’s one! Yay, Karin!”

But, yay Karin!

Next time on TH2: More Konomi, which appears rather early for a repeat of a character as the focus of an episode. I’m still waiting for the gamer twins who appear in the opening… also, since it’s a stargazing event I can probably expect a lot of Karin along the way too, with maybe a bit of Ruuko. We’ll see.

-CCY

To Heart 2 is probably one of the visual novels that gave the genre the ‘dating sim’ title, given that there’s not much else to it. Similar to Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial, the series lacks the supernatural stuff that makes many of this genre unique. Not to mention the sex. TH2 is 100% clean - there was an X-rated version released of it but this was an ‘after the fact’ deal - I believe it was concieved without this in mind.

What is, I suppose interesting about To Heart 2 is that the main character’s harem is much larger than usual. While most visual novels I’ve seen are constant at about 5 (Tsukihime, Kanon), and some go down to three (Air, the anime TokiMemo), TH2 clocks in at what I’ve heard is 8 or 9!

This proves consistent with the anime version of it that I’ve watched so far, as of the 5 episodes so far each has centered on a different girl - the candidates include;

Konomi: The Chosen One. A childhood-friend type that proves versatile as the imouto-type also. She sleeps with Takali (the main character) in the first episode, although in a completely non-sexual way (scared of monsters, suuuuuuure)

Tamaki: I’m hoping that’s her actually name as I don’t recall hearing her called anything but Tama-nee in the story. That’s a sign of her high amount of followers, who seem to be enchanted with her rich (in money) background and bust size. Closest I could compare her to is the Meilin (from CCSakura) type of being very, very possessive of Taka(ki).

Manaka: The quiet, underspoken type who likes books, who is decidedly less awesome than usual for someone of that trope. The class representative (by default), forced into doing lots of things, gets convinced into standing up for herself by Taka, etc etc been there done that. Bonus innuendo points for “showing [Taka] her special spot” - her secret library hideout, that is. Pervs.

Yuma: A mixture of cliches but still not greater than the sum of her parts, she’s the isolated rich type, but makes up for this by being overly competitive and genki genki. May end up a tsundere as she takes Taka out on a movie date for her “own reasons” (bs). The most competitive air hockey player in the history of mankind.

Karin: The most interesting so far, to me. A loner type, but not by choice. Her life seems to be devoted to the Mystery Club, as she searches for time travelers, aliens, and espe*cough* UFOs and UMAs, that is. Seems to be the genki type also, very upbeat.

Karin, the most recent one introduced in Episode 5, gets major awesome points from me mainly for subverting the Accidental Groping cliche so cleverly. The scene rolls out somewhat as follows:

Taka messes with some boards, which, as typical, knock him over on top of Karin, taking them both by surprise. The usual moment of stun follows, until Taka is smart enough to follow his hand. 3, 2, 1, panic! Taka begins the usual apology x 1000000, but then Karin throws in the kicker by silently taking Taka’s hand and placing it back on her chest (note Taka is shaking the whole way). Karin, in a very subdued voice, whispers, “I don’t like to play ‘what if’, but…”

“If I were to yell for help right now, you’d be done for, right!?”

Aha! Blackmail! A great example of what makes To Heart 2 worth watching. For most of the 5 episodes so far, TH2 hasn’t been much special out of all the normal harem animes. It’s the little moments, where the series handles things differently than expected, like this that make it just that little bit different.

And as such, I solder on, as Taka’s harem grows larger and larger. And he claims he’s bad with girls…

-CCY