reverse death note no shana (spoilers)
well, color me surprised.
i wasn't that impressed with the first few episode of shakugan no shana. it seemed like a generic low budget action anime with little substance to its characters. actually, goshuushousama ninomiyakun, which i adored, was just that, but it also had tons of hilarious and ecchi content which the first maybe nine or ten episodes of shakugan no shana lacked. ninomiyakun also never took itself too seriously while shakugan no shana seemed to take itself more seriously than even code geass. yikes.
i never really considered dropping it after i saw that the second episode wasn't as weird/stupid as the first one was, but i didn't start to really like it until chigusa (yuuji's mother)'s character started to be developed. now this is really an awesome character - authentic/credible and at the same time a story-catalyst. in particular, her conversation with alastor in episode 11 was really great. especially after we learn what alastor really is later in the series, looking back on that conversation, it's all the more amazing - basically a housewife teaches an interdimensional king of gods about a young girl's love, and he bows to her "will", which is the most indirect thing ever in true japanese housewife fashion. it sounds contrived when i write it now but it totally works in the story.
i owe so much to my parents and so i guess i really identify with yuuji's mother being the only thing shana can count on in the city. actually after a while i started to wonder whether chigusa actually knows about everything and is just keeping quiet for yuuji's sake (somehow). i mean, how can she not know by now that shana actually lives in yuuji's room?
at any rate, how she takes every possible chance to help shana without questioning any of the weird things going on makes her the most endearing character i've seen in quite a while.
i'm concentrating on the story because the music, the sound and especially the animation are average at best. yes, not every anime can be gurren lagann or something but i really think shakugan no shana could have benefited from more in-betweening, especially in crucial, high-profile scenes like yuuji and hecate's spinning in (iirc) the second to last episode. i was almost laughing because it looked like something i would have made in hypercard when i was 10 years old.
but that's not to say that the show lacks polish. the pacing is extraordinarily well done. i think they must have put together storyboards for every episode before starting animation like i'm sure monster was done. no ghost hound style rushed ending with sudden, bizarre shifts in character here.
and the specials. omfg the specials. i watched the three shanatans and the onsen episode immediately after finishing episode 24 and it was like cement for my decision that the series wasn't so bad after all. the reason is simple - the specials are there to let loose and make fun of everything, something i firmly believe is of utmost importance to you name it in this world.
i actually thought the hentai yuuji stuff in the shanatans and the yaoi stuff in the ova were among the best gags in there. and even though i'm not homophobic, i am a heterosexual male, so yaoi for the sake of yaoi will do nothing for me. way to nail that, guys.
things really picked up when noto mamiko appeared (i felt sort of guilty for calling her character that until other characters also did it in the specials - oh man, you should have seen my face). the last four episodes were a lot like the end of monster - really unbelievable that people waited a week between each one back when it was airing. by that time i didn't hate a single one of the characters, even shana's love-rival, yoshida kazumi. at first i didn't think she had much to offer as a character, but then i started to think about what i assume is the whole premise of this series (our relationships with others constitute reality) and how even the supposedly infinitely superior beings don't pick up on the importance of something like a girl falling in love with a boy. so it turns out even she offers some insight and great potential for shana to grow on top of that. i mean without her, how would shana ever get over being a tsundere and actually do crap? come to think of it, there's a male tsundere (keisaku) whose seiyuu reminds me of gokudera from reborn's - maybe my sister would enjoy this show after all. i mean, there's virtually no sexploitation (at least not in the main series), so the comparisons to zero no tsukaima are probably bunk (at least according to people who have seen both on the shana forum).
even the more minor characters have surprising depth (which is why i still suspect chigusa of knowing what's going on). among the "enemies", it's impossible to tell who is going to die and who is going to live to fight against (or, sometimes, with!) shana another day. no ridiculously predictable and outrageously retarded plotlines like amane falling off the horse in strawberry panic.
i didn't like shana herself much until the show out of nowhere spent three full episodes (14, 15 and 16) explaining where she comes from and why she is how she is. by comparison it took code geass 40 episodes to reveal anything substantial about c.c.'s past, and even then it was, in true code geass style, on crack. revealing that shana was once a simple human child also opens up plenty of avenues for character development of the other flame hazes and makes the development of her love for yuuji completely authentic (there's no reason shana's trainers, as a fireplace, a cosplay ~de arimasu freak and a halloween decoration, would have even known how to educate her about that). again, the story is completely thematically consistent as far as i have considered as of right now.
maybe i should be reading this instead of watching it. but then i wouldn't be hearing japanese. and reading japanese is so hard/time-consuming i'd more than likely never actually read anything even if i bought the books.
anyway, as you can imagine, i'm highly anticipating starting the second season, which thankfully is already complete on my local drive ready to go. i hope, though, that eclipse learned to encode between the first and second seasons as the first was really nasty - except for the first two episodes, which were dvd source, and the specials, which were as well, i'm assuming. actually that was how i knew it was so nasty.
first season gets an 8 - average of the first third which was barely a 7 and the finale which was easily a 9. not bad at all for something i watched purely for literacy reasons. too bad twilight princess wasn't this good (i never finished it).
sayonara zetsubou sensei
god damn this show is weird.
weirder than anything else i've seen even.
i think it must be real art because it's not constant pleasure but each episode is over before i know it.
logic ftl.
BOKU SATCHII
i realized last night that if i assume the sexes are unequal now then neither i nor a member of the opposite sex can tell if they did become equal one day. i think the reason is the usual - the conrad - you-can't-know-how-other-people-feel thing.
to eludicate a bit, imagine you are a girl, and you always feel like the exception to the rule. then, one day, thanks to women's lib and all that, you suddenly feel superior in relation to your average boy - you feel as though you are allowed (socially, mentally) to do more than he is. but are you now an equal to a boy, or are you superior to him? how could you ever know? no matter what you feel, you will always be able to find someone who says he is the victim. is he wrong?
now imagine you are a boy, and you are feeling less and less superior, less and less right-all-the-time. at what point are your feelings most like those of your opposite? at what point do you know you have become truly inferior - and no longer equal? how could you know? certainly your point of view can't be wrong all the time ... but when is it considered right exactly half the time? who can be an objective judge in this situation?
i noticed this because of dennou koiru. things are a bit different in that show than they are here, but i can't say exactly how different.
none of us can.
kai 4
the best thing about higurashi no naku koro ni has always been how each arc is told from the perspective of only one character. there is probably no better way to make a story good than this. and it was like they read my mind or something and made satoko go first this time around.
moral of the story so far: do not act psychotic if you want people to believe you when you say crazy things.
toki wo kakeru shoujo
so it wasn't quite a 10.
still pretty good though.
for people who haven't had time travel as a plot device beaten to death for them i'm sure the story was much better. but to me it was actually a bit weak.
i mean the novelty just wasn't there. the only thing i thought was slightly innovative plotwise was how makoto does not encounter herself in the past or otherwise duplicate herself in any way by time leaping. she could not have been the one to write that english quote on the board, for example.
in this way the plot is kept simple, but for me it was really too simple except at the very end, and even then i would have preferred makoto to turn out to be auntie witch or something along those lines. i knew that that wouldn't be the case after i saw the picture of her from high school, though. i hear that the whole auntie witch thing is actually a reference to an older, live action version of the story, so no points for originality there.
i did think that the story captured the unstable nature of average people's emotions quite well. i've always suspected that the timing involved in making the decision to ask someone out was particularly fragile, and so it was cool to see that play out on screen.
i have to say, though, that if i were speeding toward a closed train crossing on a bike with no brakes, i would just take my chances jumping off of the thing. on that street there were plenty of warm bodies around to use as cushions, too!
end of sola + start of kai
obviously, major spoilers follow.
i'm still not entirely sure what to make of the last episode of sola. for me, having the ending be about aono when the series was (at least for me) primarily about matsuri was pretty ... well, lame. the penultimate ep set things up so well, too.
i didn't appreciate the juice cans at the end really ... it was probably supposed to be throwing matsuri fans like me a bone, but it just came off as weird. i wanted to know so much more about matsuri's character, and now she's effectively dead, empty cans on a picnic table notwithstanding.
did she deserve to die?
who knows?
i mean, the story for the most part wasn't bad until the last ep. they could have gone into detail about the people who condemned aono as a sacrifice, the origin of matsuri, etc.
but no, i get juice cans.
i heard there's supposed to be some tiny money grabs coming that might clear things up, so maybe i'll eventually be able to bump it back up to 9. who knows.
in the meantime, higurashi no naku koro ni kai is the brightest star in the night sky atm. i figure i might as well give it a 10 now and be done with it. they took what was already an excellent series and made it a masterpiece. the plot is fantastic, the characters fascinating and the art amazing.
i'm just hoping the "kai" will be appropriately awesome.