Speaking of personality, some biatch is stealing my bit of being the crazed lolicon bisexual chick! I'm being single white female'd! Though, I'm not really single... or white, persay... The way she writes is how I speak -- unfortunately being an English major, the way I write is quite different than that, and this being the internet, the only thing you see is how I write. Blast!
To be honest, she's quite an amusing read, but it's unnerving realizing how much my personality -- at least, the immediately recognizable traits my friends in real life consider to be mine -- are easily replicated by someone else, completely naturally.
Though kudos to her for being able to stomach School Days at all -- I couldn't even handle KimiNozo's horrible male lead for more than one episode. I kept skipping his scenes in the other episodes I tried to watch before I was forced to acknowledge that it's kind of impossible to watch a show when you dodge every scene with the main character. It's gotta take a special kind of lady to handle 8 episodes of some dude worse than that.
Actually, all this blah blah about the startling replication of personality bring me to today's rant.
In Hidoshi's recent post on Lucky Star, he points out his tendency to relate to side characters more than the main ones. One of my favorite rules when I meet people -- hmm perhaps I should back track to explain myself.
I have a few rules that determine how I feel about someone's existence. Not a whole lot, and many of them are silly. Stuff like, if someone thinks Firefly is an awesome show, I form a better opinion of them. Hell, if they have even managed to hear of Firefly I form a better opinion of them. However, if they have heard of Firefly, have watched it, and don't like it, my opinion of them is a bit less than it was previously. Stuff like that.
A few things cause immediate dislike. For instance -- being an Orange Girl. This generation's non-hipster 'everygirl', to be more general. If you are female, and are the cardboard cutout of what you think a girl should be (probably dye your hair blonde, or at least get highlights, have a horribly dark fake OR real tan, tie your hair up into absurdly high headache-inducing ponytails, and/or wear gobs upon gobs of makeup. May like Laguna Beach, Grey's Anatomy, and only votes in American Idol based on the 'hawtness' of the male singers)... yeah, I don't like you. If you however, are an Orange Girl, and once speaking to you I find you prefer Robert Browning to Walt Whitman, or happen to prefer House M.D. over Grey's Anatomy, then my opinion of you improves.
Everyone has unconscious rules like these, and one of mine is that if someone's favorite character in something is the main character, my opinion is lessened considerably. This isn't necessarily always the case, but it's definitely a 'usually'. My reasoning behind this rule is this: in all my time spent in literary analysis courses and general observation of the things I have read or watched or even played -- narrative structure dictates that the main character be bland, boring, a blank slate. A few defining traits, sure, here and there. But nothing that could majorly alienate the main character from the work's target audience. Say we're talking about an action game, where the main character's goal is to save the earth from aliens that plan to kill all women on the planet, thus preventing the human race from continuing to exist. The main character will likely be: totally buff, with a ridiculous arsenal of weaponry and skill, or maybe just plain old average build, maybe his first time picking up a gun. Maybe it's a hot half vampire chick with crazy blades attached to her arms for no reason, but by no means will the main character be a fugly skinny nerdy dude with anemia, or a crack addict, or a wimpy cheerleader bitch (unless her name is Buffy). Not only is it illogical, but it totally kills the largest possible audience for who you're trying to sell this game to. This, of course, changes according to who you're selling to -- what your 'product' is. A parody, say, would be the perfect medium for Mr. Fugly Anemia saving the world.
Most main characters are blank slates, largely defined by what they do, who they associate with. The way I think of a story is that the main character is the Body, but the side characters are the Brain. The main character creates the vehicle for the other characters' existences (at least in terms of the reader) but the other characters form the purpose to that existence. The Body is useless without the Brain, and vice versa. Main characters exist so that people can project themselves easily into them, and thus they generally have the least amount of defining traits out of any of the cast, because that way more people can "be" them.
In my opinion, people who's favorite character is the main character, are basically saying their favorite character, the character that reflects them best, is the character that is meant to reflect pretty much everyone possible. How boring is that?
Which brings me to my current rage. The large majority of the otaku community who loves Lucky Star are all a flutter about how Konata is the 'best character evar.' No, she's not. Konata has little personality on her own that isn't defined by her hobbies. In fact, the only bits of her personality that break the standard otaku mold are things that make her appealing to the general audience expected for the show. On top of being a female otaku who likes stereotypical male otaku things (note that she is NOT a yaoi fangirl), she's an excellent cook, she has a great sense of teasing type humor, and she has close female friends (*cough*Kagami*cough*wink wink). She's pretty much what every otaku dude would want in their imagined otaku girlfriend.
Which means, I guess, that my beef isn't really with Konata so much as the blatant fanservice character she is. And I don't mean in the sexy sense, I mean in the imaginary and ego sense. She's an otaku, and yet she has friends who aren't otaku AND are cute AND aren't bothered immensely by her constant weird otaku references. She's an otaku and yet does fine in school without too much effort. Ad nauseum. You get my point I imagine. It just seems such a waste to have Konata be your favorite character in Lucky Star when Konata is meant to be us. I already have me to be me, so why should I have my favorite character being me in a show? She's awesome yeah, she's a lot of the things I find amusing in myself, but... I mean. I'm used to that kind of awesome. I do that on a daily basis.
But then again, liking a side character is also just finding a reflection of yourself as well, so the question really is why does having the main character be someone's favorite seem so much more egotistical to me? Both are just finding something to relate to in a fictional character, but I guess it might be because the side character's range in a story is more limited, and therefore it seems less selfish? It's an odd conundrum.
As a little side note: The main character rule doesn't work as well with foreign products because different cultures have a different expected audience. It's that whole deal of one person's everyday boring is another person's fascinating and new. Thus, the main character rule often doesn't work with anime from my own personal standpoint, just because even if a main character in a shounen anime is a typical Japanese shounen type character, that is still different than what the American equivalent to that type of character would be, and is thus more interesting to me, purely as a result of my background. This is pretty much the major flaw that I can see in applying this rule to Americans or other non-Japanese foreigners who like watching anime. It's really only applicable in this case if the character is an obvious foil for the audience, or if that person's entire list of favorite characters are all main characters.
Teasing aside, there has been a rise in the amount of people mumbling about "taking a break" and "hiatus", seemingly having lost the flames of passion they once had for the medium. Or whatever. Situations like this tempt relationship metaphors far too easily. Or drugs, if that's your preference. Is anime blogging like rock and roll -- it's all about sex or drugs, depending on how you look at it? I'd say that is a marker of our hobby, but honestly I think it's more a marker of being human.... finding another sort of "hobby" to build a relationship with/get addicted to.
Speaking of relationships, the concept of 2D crushes was brought up recently, the question being -- why is it so rare that people remain "faithful" to a single, ultimate favorite character of all time. His answer to his question sort of baffled me, because it kind of ignored the question. Ok, so it takes a particularly unshaken individual to maintain such passion for a fictional character (in essence, loving them without caring about the impossibility of being loved back) but that really doesn't explain why that kind of personality is so rare at all. Insight into the mindset does not provide the reason for that mindset's existence.
Frankly, the answer, to me, is simple: it takes out all the fun of being a fan. One of the best things of starting a new show is picking out your new favorite, the character you want to root for most of all. In harem shows, it's about rooting for the girl to get the guy, or vice versa, whichever kind of harem it may be. Most often romance is the motivator for liking a character, but often it can be purely aesthetic, or merely about attitude. Sometimes it's about a reflection of one's self the viewer finds in a character. If all you ever think watching a new show is: Damn, all these people suck compared to Kaji/Shizuru/Kamina/Yuki/Manabi/whoever -- where's the fun in ever watching anything but that one show?
It is interesting to note though, that it's easy to find patterns in a list of people's favorite characters. Even if most people do not always love one specific character above all other forever, it's fairly common that a person's favorite characters can, for the most part, be categorized under the same general 'type'. Amusingly enough, "types" have also been a topic of late. One of these day's I might, out of curiosity, make a list of my favorites and see where the bell graph lies.
Pardon me, but here begin's a bit of a rant.
If you're willing, walk backwards with me about two weeks, and relive the honestly-not-that-great group discussion episode of the Anime Blogging Circle (ABC™?), incited by none other than Owen. The headache this escapade left me with lasted long enough to postpone my entry to now -- despite my initial interest, the experience proved to be more trying than enlightening. Though inciting discussion on a topic from numerous bloggers shouldn't necessarily be considered a bad thing, I must say that discrediting tj_han's "miss" was Owen's imperfection, and not particularly associated with tj_han's aim, or lack thereof.
Asking an inherently flawed question in order to see the different ways people will go about defying a straight answer is cool in theory, but frankly, there weren't ever more than three possible answers to begin with. Yes, no, and sometimes. Yes and no being the answers of people who cannot regard things in the grey area that artistic evaluation requires, and the sometimes being the generic answer for everyone else, albeit quite simplified. Though maybe tj_han was missing the point of the social experient in saying that people should write on seperate subsections of the same topic, he definitely did manage to propose something that would have been more interesting. There are a billion shades of gray, but they're just muddy nothingness if you don't give each one a shape and substance of its own to create the peices of a whole picture. Or you can take tj_han's food metaphor, whichever works for you. In essence, what you had as a result, was a bunch of "lengthy, informative posts" that all (or most) of which said essentially the same thing. Owen's social experiment might have been interesting in terms of just that -- an experiment -- but when you merely look at the results in the context of conclusions on the subject matter itself and not the logical fallicies or motives of the minds behind those conclusions, than frankly it's all just very, very dull. Which is something, if I'm not mistaken, is something bloggers have to try to avoid.
Though perhaps my mild bitterness on this matter is a bit incensed by unfinished business I have with Owen with regard to Kanon '06, I couldn't restrain myself from at least saying this much. I do hope to see more group discussion, but I should hope in the future the methods of organizing one will be a bit wiser. Perhaps not quite the same as tj_han's lovely suggestion, but I'm sure someone who considers it easy to "spout academic jargon" and uses words like "obfuscate" in an online journal about animated tv shows can figure out a way around that.
...
On that note, perhaps I should stop for today.
1, 2
I've seen a bunch of these type of posts lately, trying to define things, even more than just these two, but today was the final straw. If I were a wittier person, ala Alexander Pope or a certain Mr. Swift, I might feel compelled to write an essay on how the current use of some incredibly common term, such as "like" or "as" has been bastardized in it's modern usage and how we should either come up with new words to replace them in their new form or solidify the old, correct definition. Because damn, language evolving and changing is such a pesky thing, especially when everyone still knows what you mean anyway.
In all honesty, the questions surrounding genre labels and terminology within mediums have always been a source of debate, in large part to the fact that people's brains favor certain words in ways that other people don't. Thus one person using a word to describe something may sound incredibly wrong to you, just because you wouldn't use the same term. Now, what I mean isn't something like, one person describes a soda as sweet and the other salty, but rather like if one person were to call the soda bubbly, and the other person to say it was carbonated, and a third to say it was effervescent. Now imagine all three of those get in a huge fight because they claim all three of those things are not an accurate description of the soda -- this is what reading these blogs feels like to me. It's semantics. Aka the most retarded argument in the world. It is, I give, a bit trickier when it comes to talking about abstract concepts or names/titles because at least with soda we all feel the same sensation that is, essentially, bubbliness, effervescence, AND carbonation. A fight wouldn't break out over describing it that way because we all feel and experience the same thing, which is based on a physical sensation.
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I'll respond specifically to Bateszi's blog here, because his issue is semantics, but it's also a bit more complicated than that. The question of what is anime is a dangerous one because an anime fan does not want to admit they watch cartoons. Cartoons are low class... anime is foreign and therefore classy. Adding Americans to the background of making an anime is a dangerous idea, because Americans make cartoons. The problem here, is once again... semantics. Mixed with a weird sort of backwards xenophobia... instead of being afraid of foreigners, you loathe the remnants of your own nation in favor of being a complete fanboy (xenophile) for another. Annoyingly common among the more retarded anime fans, but apparently, not absent from the more intelligent ones either -- at least in trace form. I'm going off an a tangent here -- back to my topic.
Anime breeds this sort of mentality because it's the animated medium being used to tell stories that aren't necessarily for children. Americans have this mentality that cartoons are for kids, but Japan defies that sort of mindset. Yeah there's anime for kids, but it doesn't have to be. Thus anime gets held up as this entirely separate thing when frankly -- it really isn't. Cartoons aren't necessarily only enjoyed by children, even the American made ones. And it's not like other countries necessarily believe that animated films are only for children either... take for example the Triplettes of Bellville, a French animated film. Or even any of the Disney movies. Frankly, the only thing that defines the kids medium is a bit less violence, and watered down sexuality ("girls like boys but not in detail thankyouverymuch".) A kid's show isn't bad because it's a kid's show -- it's bad because it's a crap story. Children can still be entertained by it much the same as a new fan of horror films will start out liking even the terrible ones. They haven't formed their taste yet.
People who deem anime as separate from cartoons are in denial of the fact that anime can often be just as crap as any American animated show. Many of them are. The distinction here is not at all in the word, but in the countries acceptance of the animated medium. Anime is not "Japanese cartoons." They're cartoons that are not necessarily made for children. Any country can make them, and many countries have. The Americans brought on board to write for The 5 Killers likely had a story that could not be marketed to the average American audience because American's have that stigma of cartoons being only for children. And hell no would the PTA back down from burning some crosses at making a cartoon about a bunch of Killers and assassins. Thus they teamed up with Japanese people to make something that a receptive audience would enjoy -- anime fans. Anime is not Japanese. Anime is a diverse perspective in the animated medium. It just so happens that that happens a lot with Japanese cartoons.
At least that's how I think of it.
p.s. This totally applies to manga, too.
It seems I failed to actually finish the summer preview entries before the summer season actually started >.> The FAL season has also already started, so the point to writing them has pretty much disappeared. Sorry guys, I fail. This is why I would never actually write an anime blog on a regular basis. :-p I’m not very consistent with this sort of thing.
I’ve been reading lots of manga lately to distract myself from the lack of Kodomo no Jikan updates. Can’t be helped I suppose, when the 4th volume isn’t out yet… unless I haven’t remembered the date correctly or something. In particular I was really enjoying Mirai Nikki (Future Diary) and Doujin Work’s manga form (what little there is available anyway). Mirai Nikki could use some help with exposition but I guess I can let it go since it’s supposed to be a suspense horror/mystery type thing. Even though even in so far at that it’s exposition is still crap. The art at least is pretty, and Yuno, despite because fucking insane is still fucking awesome.
The real gem was the Doujin Work manga though. I have read the five “chapters” that have been scanslated, no joke, 5 times over. It’s just as hilarious the second time around. I went searching for it after greatly enjoying the first episode of the anime adaptation but frankly the anime and the manga are very different creatures. The humor still comes through in the anime but the manga is much dirtier in it’s brand of humor. I suppose they needed to clean it up a bit to be aired on tv, especially considering it’s a show about drawing porn manga and there’s only so much you can say about that without crossing a line. I’ll likely enjoy both quite a bit, and probably in large part because they are so different. It’s not as fun to read/see the same exact thing over again…
Because goddammit I’m getting so sick of seeing this crap all over the anime blogging community. Long ass post ahead!
== If I see one more person refer to an anime as being “moe” as if it was a goddamn genre, I will start stabbing people’s eyes out in a bloody trail across the planet until I reach the origin of stupidity and then slice off their fingers and tongue so they can’t fucking communicate such retardation anymore. This trend seemed to pretty much begin with Lucky Star (which is my second rant, but I’ll get to that in a moment), and the internet penis battle over who watched less of the show before deciding it was absolute crap. “I turned it off after 6 minutes!” “…Well I turned it off after a two minutes!” “I got you all beat! I didn’t watch the show at all and I’m still going to rant about how crap it is!” Then came the page long rants about how ‘moe’ is ruining the industry, and ‘moe shows’ (whatever the fuck that means) are an abomination of the anime industry, and other such crap. Can I just have a moment to say how utterly retarded this is?
‘Moe’, first of all, has no specific definable traits, other than the fact that it makes someone think a show is cute/lovable/attractive in some way. Basically, it’s fanservice. Fanservice is not a fricking genre. Every genre has its own kind of fanservice, but there is no ultimate fanservice that will work on everyone in every show. Replace the word fanservice with ‘moe’ (since they are basically the same goddamn thing) and you have my issue. Nothing is more sickening than hypocrisy, and if I see one more fucking blogger rant about hating ‘moe’ shows and then declare their reason for watching a different show is ‘bishies’ or some other kind of –GUESS WHAT– ‘moe‘, I will stab them. Because people that dumb need to fricking die. And yes, strong independent women? Are moe too.
== I like Lucky Star. I’ve liked it since the beginning. But once again, there will be stabbing in the immediate future if I hear one more person rant and rave about how fricking AMAZING it is. I haven’t read a single honest post about Lucky Star since its fricking inception. There has only ever been “omg Sucky Star, lol.” and “zomg this show is so funny any one who doesn’t think it’s the best thing ever is retarded.” Lucky Star is a good show. But it is hardly the best slice of life based off a 4koma anime ever. Hidamari Sketch is a better show of the same genre. It may not have the production values, the KyoAni pedigree, or Aya Hirano (who I confess, is not only one of my favorite voice actresses, but in the process of her best role to date as Konata), but I think it has had better pacing for its jokes ever since the very first episode, something that Lucky Star couldn’t seem to manage at the start, and is still rather shaky with. Not only that, but the characters in Hidamari Sketch were all set up/introduced much better, and way easier to fall in love with than the ones in Lucky Star because of that.
I understand the need to defend the show from the extreme and immediate backlash that occurred right after it began, but honestly, Lucky Star was a show that needed to be grown into, even for a lover of slice of life shows like me. The jokes required knowing who the characters were before you could really appreciate the humor, but even so, the jokes themselves lack the proper set up so that even knowing the characters isn’t enough to let you know when you’re supposed to laugh. Lucky Star is an infinitely better watch the second time through simply because of this very reason — you actually know when to laugh because you’re familiar with the timing. The 4koma is better for the same reason — the joke is always in the fourth frame, so you know when it’s going to be funny.
== And if anyone else compares Lucky Star to Azumanga Daioh in my presence I will likely stab them in the face. The only real similarity is that both shows can be described as quirky humor. That is all. The delivery is not the same, the subject matter in Lucky Star is far less accessible to the average (aka non-otaku) person, and the tone of both shows is very different. Azumanga is weird in a way that incites laughter, Lucky Star points out its own weirdness to both laugh at itself and incite laughter. These two types of humor are not necessarily compatible within the same person sometimes. Better options for similar shows would be things like Ichigo Mashimaro, Hidamari Sketch, or Manabi Straight. The goal of Lucky Star is not to make you crack up, but to endear the audience to its characters, to incite the audience to react with the characters, not laugh at them the way that Azumanga Daioh does.
I can understand the desire to make a show you like more popular by comparing it to a show of the same genre with a larger audience (casting a wider net catches more fish and all of that rot) but the fact is audiences of shows that are closer in tone and delivery are going to result in the more receptive audience when it comes to shows dealing with humor. A mech show is always gonna have mech for everyone, but a humor show is not always going to be funny for everyone. Adapt your recommendation for the genre you are recommending, is all I ask. -_- It can only bring good things.
== Last and not least, this bit about Seirei no Moribito being boring just because Balsa isn’t beating the crap out of everyone is ridiculous. Yes, Seirei had the best fight scene I have seen, probably ever, in an animated show. But I feel like having the fight so early made people expect that fighting and action was going to happen all the time, and then when the show focused on less actiony matters, it’s like the audience suddenly shut off the ability to see those scenes as being anything other than boring, just because there wasn’t fighting. Seirei has taken a turn to expose more about the characters and the world they live in, and has become more about why the fight is necessary than about the fights themselves. Not only that but imagine if the show was just fighting all the time — fighting is awesome, but if you don’t care about the characters it’s irrelevant — and that’s without even mentioning the issues that would cause with the animation budget, which has been gorgeous so far for the entire show. Watching Balsa fight in those first few episodes, knowing what I know now, the fight is so much more intense, because I have some knowledge of how Balsa must feel. The next time a fight happens on the show, especially if a death occurs on any side, the emotional weight on the characters will be shared by the audience. Seirei is not a bad show just because it is taking the time to actually have a plot and characters, without needing to use swords as immediate character development plot devices like so many other shows have. Life is not a constant battle against everyone else, life is a fight against the weaker aspects of yourself, to become who you truly want and need to become. Seirei, in my eyes, illustrates this point beautifully. Why can’t that be enough?
Apologies for putting this off for so long ^.^;; Real life has been a major obstacle lately. That and a severe need to rant before I finished this post. Considering none of these have aired yet though, I consider myself still in the clear >.>
Anyways, in the tradition of my first post, here’s yet more of the anime to watch out for in this new season. Hopefully those of you who couldn’t find anything of interest in the first post will find something here. :-p
Mushiuta: airs July 6
“Bug Song”? Japanese titles never fail to amuse me sometimes, especially when I translate them into incredibly literal and hilarious English. At the time of me writing this post, this has the least info on MAL of any of the series I’ve looked at thus far. o.o;; Basically, the anime is about alien bugs that eat peoples dreams, and for the person who got their dream gobbled, this can be either totally awesome (in the form of sweeeet super powers) or totally, incredibly lame (death is the consequence of getting your entire dream eaten, apparently). To be frank, I had an amazing lack of interest for this series until I saw these sexy fricking book covers from the light novels the series is based off of. Yes, I know the series won’t look exactly like the covers, but if at least half those female characters show up, I really won’t mind. Voice actors include Mai from Kanon (squee!), MARGERY DAW (!!!), and Kaede from both Negimas (is she gonna be a busty ninja again?) and… this sort of worries me, a male who is also slated as the lead from School Days. From all the talk about School Days crappy main dude and crappy voice acting, I’m hoping this guy has nothing even resembling a cool role. I will be very sad if the case is otherwise. Also, one last point of interest, the animation production is being run by Beat Frog, and it will apparently be their first work. The question is, are they gonna storm out of the gate or trip in the first leg? Hrmm. P.s. yuribait? I certainly hope so.
Sky Girls: airs July 6
For those of you who have seen the OVA, you pretty much know what to expect. For those of you who haven’t… you pretty much know what to expect. Girls + Mechs + Saving the world + loli fanservice… rinse, repeat as needed, sprinkle sparingly with plot. Kidding aside, I actually sort of liked the Sky Girl’s OVA, in a lowered expectations kind of way. The mech designs were kind of neat, and the girls who pilot the mechs have little tails attached to their plug suits (pardon me) leotards. The cast from the OVA is sticking around, which means OMG Horie Yui (Ayu from Kanon), Itoh Shizuka (Alice from Pumpkin Scissors, or Rei from MariMite), and Kawasumi Ayako (Saber, and more recently, Nodame) all together? I just had a seiyuu-induced nosebleed, people. Also, MELL is doing the OP. Cross your fingers for engrish. Frankly though, for most of you, this might seem a bit dull, but I’ll probably indulge in it as my guilty pleasure of the season.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai: airs July 7
Once again, if you’ve seen the original you pretty much know what to expect. Blood, occaisionally nonsensical but usually chilling plotlines, resets, etc etc. Well, actually, there is going to be an anime original storyline implemented at some point annnnd Yui Horie is popping in as the oft discussed (among fans of the games) Hanyuu! Look at her cute little horns! Also, Rika and Satoko are wonderful. Mion’s pretty cool too.
Potemayo: airs July 7
Whoa. This apparently doesn’t exist in the MAL database. o.o For shame! There is a severe lack of info on this (at least, english language info — my grasp of Japanese isn’t quite up to reading the official site’s plot summary -_-), but from what I’ve gathered (thanks in part to hashihime’s blog, and pieces I remember from other sources), it’s another series based off a 4koma manga. Potemayo is apparently abbreviated from “Potato Mayonnaise.” Gross. Potemayo is the little pinkhaired thing in the image, and she emerges from Sunao (wearing glasses)’s fridge one day and becomes friends with everyone in her… his? class. Eventually Potemayo’s rival, Guchuko eventually emerges from the fridge as well. People apparently like the manga, and the art looks pretty cute. Rie Kugimiya seems to have broken out of her typecasted role as a crazy tsundere (re: Shana/Louise) as in this series she’ll be that calm looking blue haired gal. Unless she turns out to be randomly tsundere the like two dudes in the show — unless they’re all girls and just some of them prefer shorts? It’s kind of hard to tell, especially since boys aren’t necessarily even voiced by dudes >.< In any case, some interesting voices are here, Ayako Kawasumi pops up again (<3), as well as Miria’s voice (Claymore), and some relative unknowns that will be working on some other shows this upcoming season as well (Rin in Kodomo no Jikan, and Shiika from MushiUta, not to mention Eleanor/Belldandy — as mentioned in ZnT entry later this post — will be in this as well). I’m kind of glad there’s sort of a new crop of voice actresses for this new season, it’s good to see variety :-p
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: airs July 8
To put it shortly, this is a comedy series about a depressed man who is constantly trying to commit suicide, and a upbeat young girl who constantly saves his life. Apparently, when he hung himself, she thought he was just trying to make himself taller. I personally, find that to be a hilarious premise, but those of you who have a less absurd sense of humor might wanna shy away. There are apparently tons of cultural references, and since this is another work managed by SHAFT, I’m sure we can expect something similar to Negima?! or Pani Poni in terms of both joke delivery and animation quality. The cast list has me excited for two reasons: Goto Yuko (Mikuru!!!) and Inoue Marina (Yoko from Gurren Lagann, also Mucchi from Manabi). Cast members that I care slightly less about but are still a notable draw include: both Sae and Yoshinoya-sensei from Hidamari Sketch, Shinku and Jun from Rozen Maiden, Setsuna and Konoka from Negima?!, and Yuuta from Honey and Clover. It’s like they surfed fanfic sites and found popular pairings for animes, and stole those voice actresses for this show (Sae/Hiro, Mucchi/Mikan, Konoka/Setsuna, Shinku/Jun… Though one of those voice actors I used twice >.> Points if you figure out who!). Kind of creepy. And awesome.
Moetan: airs July 9
Apparently based off a popular series of quirky books that teach English to otakus — really, random English. To be honest, when I read the newspost for this on AnimeNation, I totally thought it was Mari-tan, and was so excited I cannot even express to you, and so of course, my reaction when I found out it wasn’t, was the exact opposite and to the same intensity. Mari-tan is basically the same idea as Moe-tan, it seems, but Mari-tan is all about vicious military insults and beating the crap out of Navy-tan and Moe-tan is about… being otaku? Honestly, I don’t actually know anything, just seeing cute little anime characters saying “fuck” and misusing various curse words is hilarious to me. So probably seeing cute little anime girls say random English not-vulgar slang will also be hilarious. At the very least it looks disgustingly cute (God knows I’ve sat through enough episodes of Bottle Fairy to prove that I can handle sickening sweetness.) Speaking of Bottle Fairy, one of it’s alumni — who was also Eureka/Nunnally — will be in the show. Only other voice that caught my eye was Mai from Kanon. Considering the cast seems to be rather small, not much to be excited about if you aren’t interested in watching cute anime girls charmingly mispronounce English nerd phrases. Which, for me, means at least watching it for an episode. >.>
Zero no Tsukaima ~Futatsuki no Kishi~: airs July 9
Once again, a sequel series that will need little introduction for the people who’ve seen the original, and is pretty much pointless for the people who haven’t since they will probably want to see the original before touching this at all. Loli tsundere Shana Louise is back to bust some nuts some more, Seista is yet more adorable, and Saito is yet more… uhm. Boring? My opinions about the first show were generally pretty mixed, despite the fact that I did enjoy it. Harem, yes, is a guilty pleasure of mine when it doesn’t do much to deviate from it’s stereotypes. And that’s pretty much what this show is, with a little bit of Harry Potter magic school thrown in. However, the next season is going to have Louise’s sisters pop up, (I’m assuming Madam Pink Hair and Blondie in the pic). What weirds me out is the voice behind Belldandy, who I hear is the nicest anime chick in existence, is going to be the stern looking blonde one (Eleanor), while some relative unknown is doing the sweet looking pink haired thing (Cattleya). I guess it’s good you can’t say she was typecast, but really… o.O
Anyhow, hopefully that helps you guys, and hopefully the last post will come a bit quicker than this one did. ^.^;;