protoman96's Blog

Anime Relations: So Ra No Wo To

at first i couldn't believe what i was hearing. and then even after like fifty lines i still couldn't believe it. it's like someone who is so nearly fluent in german but then for some reason is pronouncing things really carefully or is trying to speak too loudly into a mic or something. or trying to make these stupid people understand.

i've heard japanese people try to speak german before (in evangelion for example) and it ain't pretty. there are some things you can pull off (with for example creative use of ヒ) and some things you get off easy with (vocalization of coda rhotic, just like standard english) but i heard correct onset r in there. for the uninitiated, try pronouncing crap like rübe or wernigerode with the authentic r. i didn't even understand what it was when i lived in germany so i had great difficulty with certain words as you might imagine. and i'm sure my accent was atrocious. i was able to pick it up by practicing little by little after i got back to the us and i got pretty good at it just in time to stop ever needing to speak german out loud.

wikipedia says it's [ʁ̞]. have to add the little guy underneath because there's no simple ipa symbol for it. so apparently even ipa can't handle it and they just don't do anything about it because the rhotics "seldom contrast." yeah ok fine but not very helpful when you're trying to not sound like a moron or else talk about anime in your weeaboo blog.

the actual anime itself was pretty weird. difficult for me to say thumbs up or thumbs down. probably what i'll remember is the scene when they check on the watch posts next to no man's land even though they don't understand how they work to fix them if they find that they aren't functioning. i guess my roommate freshman year told me about how the romans had concrete and then europeans lost that knowledge after the fall of the empire so every day europeans walked on streets they didn't know how to repair. i don't really think western people gloss over the dark ages but i also don't think enough attention is paid to them if things like this aren't common knowledge. like it seems to me that western people don't regularly entertain thoughts of the collapse of civilization even though it has precedent in the western world.

of course now supposedly we have a global society and both the fall of the roman empire and sora no woto seem pretty unrealistic. it's probably something like coke or britney or pedobear instead of amazing grace but it's definitely there. look at how the focus of anger of the tea partiers is american politicians. these are pretty rough people and i don't think they would be shy about blaming everything on the chinese. and yet they don't. it's all obama's fault. the chinese, by contrast, are people too.

i didn't really get the whole zenmetsu theme in japanese stuff (like selvaria seppukuing at ghirlandaio) until a few months ago. i always thought it was contrived and childish. but i was an american child and these people were probably japanese children and they had other experiences. mom's dad just told her stuff like "if there's a nuclear attack, you hope you die in the explosion" without actually coming out and describing the details of what happened to them. if you don't know what i'm talking about i suggest you read some accounts - not going to go into it here. but this is what japanese children heard and so postapocalyptic stuff that is borderline ridiculous to an american audience is authentic to a japanese audience. sometimes, there is an apocalypse.

at least that's what i think.

so the main problem was the contrast between the kawaii slice of life crap and the postapocalyptic setting. lot of people talking about it in this thread. seems like something they were really going for and didn't quite pull off. like two ships sailing off into the night and never the twain shall meet. could really see it in the last two episodes when the kawaii characters, especially kureha ("claire"), get emotional about apocalypse stuff. i'm not anywhere near native but with subtitles i can understand nearly everything and i noticed quite a few times where i felt the acting was really sketchy. like the director just didn't know how to get these new faces to perform consistently or something. so she's giving it her all and yes this is a very emotional thing for a human being but she's also this moe blob and we're trained not to take crying moe blobs seriously. it's like ok moe blob, thanks for being a moe blob.

hard to really get into it.

so i was really surprised when i liked it when kanata played amazing grace at the end. i guess most of it was just me patting myself on the back because i called it like two seconds before it came out but still. at least some attention went into the story and it deserves some points for that. and then it hurried up and ended before it could get crappy again. good.

no idea what i would rate it and thankful i don't have to since quitting after shana ii almost two years ago.

btw i checked on wikipedia and the reason they pop out of the tanks like morons to bugle is because they don't understand how radio works. so this is 21st century armor technology that doesn't have working radio so they're using 19th century signaling. stranger things have happened i suppose in places like hiroshima.

Anime Relations: Senjou no Valkyria

ok, wtf did they do to the v.chron anime? i guess i don't know what i was expecting, but it wasn't this ... it seems to be marketed almost exclusively at women. the only hint i got that they might have considered males was when selvaria appears for about five seconds in the episode i just watched (4) and we get a glimpse of her famous rack. even compensating for male gaze, faldio's chest must have been on screen at least twice as long.

episodes typically consist 25% of welkin doing something cool (such as riding in a tank his sister drives), 25% of faldio doing something cool (such as reading a book), and 50% of alicia getting manhandled by one or both of the aforementioned otokos. she doesn't seem to get into it very much, but that's not the point: i am convinced now that i am supposed to be imagining myself in her place.

and we haven't even gotten to the gay guy yet.


yikes.


as all my friends know, i've got nothing against gay guys. i just can't really see myself watching yaoi or female fanservice except as a joke (pripri), and so v.chron caught me off guard.

looks like next episode is hans's introduction. he's a small pig with wings. no, really. alicia gets to pick him up and hold him. also there's something about a mission to retake something somewhere. but i'm not sure that matters as much as the fact that faldio is going with them to do that, so we're sure to get more "ouran lite" as alicia's reverse harem finds new ways to mess around with her.

of course, i'm going to keep watching. it isn't nearly as bad as, say, umineko, so i know i can take it. and i don't feel like i'd be a loyal v.chron fan if i couldn't say i suffered through the anime.

so here's to heterosexual romance - from a different perspective ...

Anime Relations: Shakugan no Shana, Shakugan no Shana-tan, Shakugan no Shana: Koi to Onsen no Kougai Gakushuu!

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).

Anime Relations: Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Anime Relations: Dennou Coil

Anime Relations: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai