Let’s face it. I watch a lot of harem shows. I can call them visual novels, I can call them crying games, I can call them whatever, but it still boils down to a superb girl vs. guy ratio and a lot of moEmotion.

Yes, I still like coining new terms. I hate coupling portmeanteaus (see: Tadamu, Amuto, my internal organs forcing themselves out my mouth) but when it comes to inventing words, I become a bit of a hypocrite.

I shall call this moEmotion a subset of the visual novel / harem / Stuff CCY Watches Genre, a mixture, as you may imagine, moe, and emotion.

Because I like emotional tugs at my heartstrings, what with all the deathly sick girls (Kanon) and girls with exceptionally poor memories (ef) and whatever KimiKiss has … but such emotional pulls are reinforced by any connections I have with the characters.

And while I’m not supporting bathing characters in a bath of 110% superconcentrated moe, I find that a little dab goes a long way; again, returning to the term of ‘hyper-realistic’, a character which may not be easily found in the real world, but one that you can imagine exists, if only in very small amounts.

A little bit soft and weak, but still a strong and crisp character, kind of like a cookie fresh out of the oven. And everyone knows how tasty those are.

But tangents on made-up genres and terms aside, sometimes it’s worth it to expand out of that shell of moEmotion. If not because it’s a Good Thing to Do, because there just isn’t a good enough quality ratio in the visual novel genre anymore. There is barely any middle ground between “pantsu and breast service show” and “massively pretentious emotional tearjerker of legend”.

And so I am often reminded, sometimes quite loudly by the otakusphere, that there is Other Stuff Out There. I exaggerate a bit, because sometimes I delve to watching Other Stuff, sometimes stretching to the far out lands of GARmbling (a frustratingly lonely genre), Shiny Sparkly Shoujo, and I Swear This Shonen Romance Is Better Than Your Normal Stupid Shonen Romance.

But as I search for the next big thing in anime, at least personally, I am reminded of the fact that sometimes quality transcends genre, and so I often make a note to watch certain shows that have their names treated like gold in the otakusphere.

I think, next year, I shall finally make good on my promises. Time to watch some new stuff, even if it kills me. Can’t be a bigger waste of time than Akasaka or Shuffle! Memories, anyway.

So, here’s the short list:
* Super Suteki Relaxing Slice of Life: Aria
* Manly Mecha Full of Manliness and Memes: Gurren Lagann
* It’s a Trainwreck or Something lol also Lelouch is Bishie Bait KYAAAAAAA~: Code Geass

And a few others that are less important but still there:
* I Still Have No Idea What This Is But The OP is Damn Sexy: Baccano!
* Supposedly This Magical Girl Anime Is Actually of Interest to People Older Than 5: Princess Tutu
* Hehe, Just as Planned, Hehe: Death Note
* I Still Can Picture That Badass Manly Anime Reviewer Meme Post: Ouran High School Host Club
* Rise is Possibly the Best OP, Aurally and Visually, From an Anime I’ve Only Seen 4 Episodes Of: Ghost in the Shell (yes I know Rise is from second season)

And MAL loves Junjou Romantica, so maybe I need to go hurt myself with some yaoi again. I may be a bit harsh, but the last time I tried it, there wasn’t much worth watching for (except for, I guess, buttsex).

Feel free to suggest others I missed, naturally.

In Computer Science, we learned of the concepts of ‘countable infinity’ and ‘uncountable infinity’. Such an idea makes my head hurt a lot – just as how my cousin tried to explain to me that ‘two-dimensional infinity’ is more infinite than ‘one-dimensional infinity’, it makes sense in a quasi-logical way, but trying to rationally prove it is a bit harder beyond the step “well, it just is”.

I mean, infinity is infinity, isn’t it?

One would think that, but my looming backlog of visual novels is quickly trying to teach me this concept of differing infinities. For it really seems that the amount of visual novels I have to read (in addition to the ones I HAVE to read) is quickly approaching this ‘uncountable infinity’, at least in my reference frame.

This is mostly because visual novels, English or not, are somehow being released faster than I can read them, and even my pile of translated novels is managing to grow every time I even think about reading one.

The problem partially stems to the fact that while the amount of VNs approaches infinity, my reading speed approaches zero. No one knows why.

Maybe it’s just that reading them seems like a major time commitment – like I have to be ready, and have a block of Reading Time, while anime I can pick up and put down whenever I please. A result of higher expectations.

As a result I would prefer phases like where I powered through Tsukihime, breathing, living, eating it, in a week (hey, I had school after all), rather than make VNs like Ever17 suffer the fate of me reading about an hour’s worth in spring, two hour’s worth in summer, and so on. I will probably restart that one, now.

And so I end up with more visual novels than I really know what to do with. Observe:

* Ever17: bought a boxed copy off RightStuf at least a year ago when it was on sale. Installed it immediately. Played an hour. Stopped.

* Fate / stay night: Have been urged by at least three people to play it, forwards, backwards, and sideways. Vowed to marathon it over Thanksgiving break. Haven’t touched the executable.

* Clannad: It’s as translated-ish as it’s going to get, as far as I know. I was holding out for an official release but it’s getting more and more tempting by the minute, if only to fill in whatever holes KyoAni left in the story. Then again, this one’s long …

* Chaos;Head: This one sort of ninja’d out of the blue, shouting “hey look I’m translated too” (I think, since I can’t find it in the database per se; a patch leak?). The anime had a very intriguing premise, looking to be Higurashi-style mindscrew with a bit of general insanity all-around, but it sort of floundered. However, I’ve been told that the visual novel is much better. Thus I shall try.

* CCY-senpai wa 17-sai: For some suicidal reason, I am acknowledging this game’s existence. I love you, kouhai. Although you scare me. Your representation of me scares me too.

* All those short novels translated in al|together: THERE’S LIKE A BILLION OF THEM OH MY GOD WHAT please don’t tell me all of them are good

* ONE ~kagayaku kisetsu e~: I’ll never get down here, and if I do, I probably won’t play this. It was kind of lame. I still think the Nanase H-scene was funny for the fourth wall breaking, even if I don’t care for H.

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Well, what I make may not be serious business works all the time, but I’m serious enough about them. I’ll work on whatever my impulses bring me, but there are at least four projects (i.e. three too feasibly many) that I hope to be able to say more about in 2009. Until then, I’ll just be a jerk and tease the fact that I’ve been doing interesting things~