Day before yesterday I saw a Not Boat,
yesterday an sentimental fic,
and today, you…weird…music video…thing.

I keep trying to be a crazy anime fan. As a guy, I watch magical girl shows, as a realist, I watch ridiculous harems and visual novel adaptations, I fanboy over 2D things more than anything 3D, and I have an adoration of glasses-sporting characters that will put me in a straightjacket someday.

Yet somehow, I always seem to be one-upped by the manic minds across the sea, of what undoubtedly are self-labeled the “true otaku”, those who really have no shame nor sanity.

Perhaps this is the wrong type of person attribute to a mix-up like this, but on a scale of one to SHAFT in the what-in-the-hell department this Kaiji MAD (or whatever music-video-edit thing) probably clocks a nine thousand.

The Japanese really enjoy their weekly dose of zawa zawa, and for some reason this directly correlates to the show being placed in a bunch of strange situations and videos. And I’m not talking semi-plausible mash-ups like Haruhi and Lucky Star here. I mean, first there was Nanoha fanart in Kaiji style. Then they inserted Kaiji into Lucky Star. The Azumanga Daioh OP was redone with Kaiji animation.

But, seriously…KimiKiss? Maybe they’re poking fun at the uber-manly drama of Kaiji as well, but the whole “kiss kiss koishiteru yo” thing, combined with Kaiji art in KimiKiss style (plus some ASCII yaoi) truly makes this video one hell of a strange sensation. KimiKaiji Pure Zawa? Straaaaaaaaaaange. I call dibs on the Zawa Brigade, with Kaiji featuring as Haruhi, Mikuru, and Nagato, because God Knows Andou and Furuhata ain’t going to cut it. (well, Ishida could be Mikuru, I suppose. Hello, mental imagery.)

On a more sane note, in case you have been hiding your eyes trying to make the boats go away, let me pry them open with the reminder that School Days has two OVAs in the works, both of which seem to be decidedly lighter than the usual fare. Magical Kokoro-chan, a shameless magical-girl parody (I imagine; Kokoro sports a Beretta handgun-weapon-thingy in one clip), will be released later in March, but Valentine Days was bundled in with the School Days LxH game release for the PS2 (yes, sanitized School Days, isn’t it weird?), and having been subbed recently, I had the chance to check it out.

Straaaaaaaaaaange. Again. It’s really weird seeing School Days take on a light-hearted tone that I’d imagine you’d find in a comedy-harem like show, like the early parts of Shuffle!, or what I imagine Love Hina is like. It’s not exactly a self-contained piece; it seems to be a prologue to the anime (replete with purposely tacky ‘monologue while panning up’) and makes a lot of jabs at the show, such as the references to two of the bad ends, and Makoto’s deliciously ironic line “My fate is sealed! I’m going to be killed!”

It’s a great finisher to the show, many months later, similar to sola’s second OVA; it’s a light-hearted work that reminds you to have a little fun with the show after some intense drama. Yeah, I know there’s another OVA; but it looks to be a bit more fanservice orientated than this one. There were quite a few funny moments, both intentional and unintentional; the oh-so-subtle “oh yeah!” in the background as we slow-pan over Sekai’s scantily-clad mom is a moment of the latter that jumps to mind.

The only thing is that just like in the real anime, I find myself dissapointed in Setsuna. This time, she really did move over, but for Taisuke yaoi lovin’? I don’t know about that…

And for the third segment to this short post, I recently unearthed a years-old fanfiction of Cardcaptor Sakura that I enjoyed reading five or so years ago at the height of my low-level fandom. It’s over fifty chapters - quite an accomplishment - and I’ll provide a link here, although I have no guarantees as to quality, sanity, or pinkness of the page.

It was something that stirred quite a sentimental moment in me, knowing that such a piece was still hanging around the internet; it’s really funny how much things have changed in just a few years, and at this rate I’ll be senile and making snaps about how “back in my day we had to see sad girls in the snow, and we liked it!” by the time I’m twenty-one.

I’ve distanced myself quite a bit from my ‘old fandom’ self, the days of watching one or two shows and writing cheesy fanfiction, something that seems common in a lot of anime fans, and I wonder, whether it’s better to embrace this past after all. Certainly, there are a lot of good stories out there - it’s just scarily similar to the genre of harem in that there’s a few good ones and a lot of rubbish that will make you wince.

It’s almost like a parallel to the subs vs. dubs argument, in that I’m finding myself increasingly repelled from non-art fanwork (music videos, fanfics, etc) for surprisingly familiar reasons (”it doesn’t do the characters justice”, “it’s just not the same”, etc). Is the anime blog community in a sense just an extension of this fan community, except with essays instead of stories? I wonder…it’s important not to make too many “us vs. them” distinctions.

I’ll end this with a question: what of your anime fandom past? Is it something that you feel ashamed of? Should all the old fanfiction, all the fan pages and connections be swept under the rug? Or are they a mark of pride as well? At the age that a lot of anime fans are at there tends to be that long search for identity, even in a microcosm of life such as anime fandom. Should these moments of the past induce thoughts of “what was I thinking?”, like any more normal mistake of youth, or are they just something to build off?

-CCY

When in doubt, Kotomi. This picture is not yet related.

(I always worry that my introspections sound a little too depressing, but hopefully they aren’t. I have fun with them.)

(Incidentally, I’m thinking of changing the style of this blog a bit. The Track Two category will probably be spread out into more posts, instead of consolidating them into hidden-in-the-archive posts. This will result in more short, spur-of-the-moment posts like this, and less of the organized format. I think it’ll be simpler and entertaining.)

This post is tagged Cardcaptor Sakura, Kaiji, School Days, Track Two