Pontifus's Blog

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I know I said I'd keep this blog up to date as a casual contrast to Super Fanicom's pseudo-semi-formality. Or, I think I said that. Did I say that?

Either way, what I'm going to do here is lay out my thoughts on the fall anime season as it stands right now. I didn't want to do this any earlier, but now that all the shows I'm watching have hit their third or fourth episodes, I'm a bit more confident in my early opinions.

I'm totally sold on:

Clannad ~After Story~ -- Excepting a certain show about astral phenomena endowed with good fortune, I'm a KyoAni fanboy, especially when they play the Key card. The first episode was irrelevant but funny, and the Sunohara thing was great. Beating the hell out of each other and laughing about it the next day: this is the stuff of which male friendship is made.

Kannagi -- The first two episodes were decent, though I liked the animation from the outset. After that, though, this one started to shine. The whole religious juxtaposition in episode four (and the end of three) finished the rather easy job of capturing my attention. Kannagi seems to be going in the harem direction now -- but hey, for all the genre's flaws, I like a good harem show.

Tytania -- I. Love. Fan. Hyulick. In a completely heterosexual way, of course. Besides that, Tytania seems to be quite a well-written space opera -- and, while I don't have much experience with space opera anime, my mental repertoire includes a few classic novels of the genre that set the bar rather high. Or it could be that the fantasy fan in me is drawn to all the politics, even if they do happen in space and not on some magically-endowed world.

Casshern Sins -- This one came out of nowhere. I don't know how Madhouse turned an action show from the 70s into an apocalyptic rumination on...well, lots of things, but I'm not about to complain. Oh, and not to mention that both the animation and music are far beyond what I expected.

I'm not totally sold on, but am still enjoying:

Kyou no Go no Ni TV -- Ah, childhood: that brief period of life during which everything is awesome. Somehow, elementary school kids taking simple things seriously is very entertaining. Is it because I'm nostalgic, or because I'd totally play air guitar with a broom at age 21? The only thing I'm not so sure about is the lolicon ecchi -- and, let's be honest, that's what it is. Fifth-graders just don't do it for me.

Toradora! -- That's not to say Toradora! is bad; it's actually very good. I just thought I'd like it a little more than I do. I'm more likely to end the season sold on this than on Kyou no Go no Ni. Kugimia Rie's at the top of her game, anyway, and that may be all that matters.

I'm on the fence about:

ChäoS;HEAd -- Jesus Christ...the capitalization I can deal with, but were the umlaut and the semicolon really necessary? This show has started to go somewhere, but, based on the first few episodes, it may not be going to such a great place. One can hope, though. It certainly has the potential to be very cool indeed.

ef - a tale of melodies -- "But Pontifus!" you protest, "a tale of memories is on your favorites list, and you gave it a 10!" Yeah, and I'm pretty sure I did so in large part because I was interested in its central characters. In fact, the high point of melodies for me so far has been seeing Chihiro and Renji together -- and by "together" I mean "in the same geographic location," since they hardly even look at each other the whole time. On the other hand, Yuu's story strikes me as bland, and I don't give two fucks about Kuze, for some reason -- in fact, he's inspiring in me the kind of vehement anti-care I felt for Honey and Clover's Morita. Don't ask me why; he just rubs me the wrong way. In any case, it's far from being a bad show, and I'm still enjoying ef's use of colors and textures, even if the whole approach is starting to feel a bit bland. Oh, why must I be so fickle?

Shikabane Hime: Aka -- I want to strangle Ouri, and I will, if he doesn't cut the idealistic, impractical virtue nonsense, get out of the damn way, and let the dead bitch kill monsters with submachine guns.

I'm not that into:

Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka -- I started watching this one on a whim -- a whim named Kugimiya Rie. Hirano Aya has a role, too, but I'm not that into her, and I never was (don't hurt me, Aya disciples; I know there are a lot of you). It's sort of funny at times, but if I judge this one to be anything more than mediocre upon completion, I'll be more surprised than anyone.

Yozakura Quartet -- Is it just me, or is the pacing of this show really, really bad? If it'd just slow down a little and let us get to know the characters...or is the in medias res approach going to lead us somewhere interesting? Is Yozakura Quartet a 21st-century Iliad? I have my doubts...

There's a chance I might drop:

To Aru Majutsu no Index -- Bleagh. Give me a friggin' break. I'm tempted to keep watching this in anticipation of adding another score of two or three to my list, just because I don't have enough twos and threes. At least some of the music is alright.