Month: October 2009

Ongoing Investigations: Case #062

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Read through Palette of 12 Secret Colors books 2-5. This series is just delightful, it never fails to make me smile. Things progress quite nicely between Cello and Dr. Guell through a series of mostly humorous incidents about town and involving the birds of the island, random students, and old friends. There are some particularly hilarious chapters focusing on Yoyo, Cello’s bird, and Olga, Dr. Guell’s companion, both of whom have it in for their masters budding romance. Also, Olga takes it upon herself to sort of boot camp Cello in studying to be a palette. From this I learned the saying “Four pass, five fail,” which is apparently a very common saying in Japanese schools by which it means four hours of sleep (spending the other 20 presumably studying) and you will pass your tests. I also found the friendship between Dr. Guell and Cello’s dad ceaselessly amusing. Besides these sort of trip ups on the road to love, I am pleased to say there haven’t been any love rivals. Looking forward to book 6, which is in the mail, to the surely funny but sweet conclusion.

Saki has been a fun little series with varying degrees of mahjong and yuri fanboy relationship fanservice. I think Narutaki summed it up quite well with, “Men are so easy.” I still stick by my guns and state that I liked Saki more for it’s mahjong than for it’s pandering but part of me wonders if almost everyone who watches Saki says that. And how many of them are lying? That being said the mahjong is usually pretty fun in Saki. It is not the crazy intense madness of Akagi but sucks you in. If Akagi is all about the razors edge life and death struggle of the professional gambler taken to a melodramatic extreme then Saki is about the friendships and passions of team mahjong taken to a melodramatic extreme. The fact that most of the characters are pretty well fleshed out for the amount of screen time they get helps this as well. Since you care about all the characters playing the games they become that more more intense. Unsurprisingly this seems to be popular among the otaku crowd in Japan so there are hints that a sequel is in the works provided Gonzo does not go out of business before that can happen. The ending is full of scenes from later in the original manga filled with hints that the mahjong only gets crazier. I will admit I always get the urge to eat tacos after watching Saki. And that is hardly a negative. Still it was a fun ride and I would easily watch a second season. Continue reading →

Nagi Sanzenin: In Praise of the Ota-Queen

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My favorite character in Hayate the Combat Butler is without a doubt, Nagi Sanzenin. Not that I don’t love Maria with all my heart. Maria is exactly my type of character: strong, smart, independent, and willing to speak her mind while still being supportive and kind. But for a wide variety of reasons I actually like Nagi more. I am more romantically attracted to Maria but Nagi speaks to me as both a changing character and someone to root for. But despite being an excellent and thoroughly enjoyable character there is a good deal of hate out there for Nagi and I just can’t understand why.

Nagi Sanzenin is a 13-year-old orphaned heiress to a multi-billion dollar estate. This has made her the target of frequent kidnapping plots and assassination attempts. Because she is so often the target of ne’er-do-wells she has grownup strangely and has become reclusive to the point of being a hikikomori also making her a major cynic. She has also grown into quite the otaku. In fact, she has several rooms in her mansion filled with nothing but doujinshi and several others devoted to every video game system. She is scholar and aficionado of anime and manga of all stripes and she even draws/writes her own bizarre “ultra high level” manga called End of the Century Legend: Magical Destroy. Nagi can be stubborn, spoiled, lazy, and quite naive about how the actual world works outside her own bubble. However, she is also strikingly sharp, fiercely loyal, and adamantly determined.

I will admit that one of the main reasons I like Nagi is I feel a very strong kinship to her. I see many of my strengths in Nagi as well as many of my weaknesses. We are both hardcore otaku. We are both types who want to be friendly outgoing people but find our inherent mistrust of others always keeping us back. We can both be very sullen and withdrawn;  sarcastic and cynical; and selfish and self-absorbed. And we both can be very lazy when it comes to things we are not a fans of, skipping chores and drudgery but throwing ourselves completely into the things we loves. Is that not the hallmark of the otaku? On the positive side we are both quite intelligent people. Both of us go above and beyond for the people we love. I see much of myself in Nagi and it makes me sympathize with her.

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Eureka Seven: Surfing, Robots, Surfing Robots, and Young Love

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Guest Review by Lothos

I went in to Eureka Seven knowing next to nothing about it. All I really knew is that it had aired on Cartoon Network and had something to do with a young guy, some girl, robots, and something like surfing. I was pleasantly surprised by the series; it just got better the more I watched. It’s brought to us by Studio Bones, the same group who did Fullmetal Alchemist, Sword of the Stranger, Wolf’s Rain, and Darker than Black. Eureka Seven, like the other shows I mentioned, takes a bit of a dark streak towards the end, which I was not expecting given that the overall tone of the story is rather light.

I will say that it shared quite a few similarities with Neon Genesis Evangelion. From characters to themes, you can easily draw comparisons between the two. Renton can easily be compared to Shinji, though much more likeable. Eureka of course to Rei. Holland is kinda like Kaji without the spy part, but just being a badass and awesome in general. Talho is very similar to Misato. Then you have the bridge bunnies; Gidget, Matthieu, Hap, etc. filling the roles of Maya, Hyuga, and Aoba. Mischa is a bit less sinister version of Ritsuko. Anemone I feel is a pretty close analog of Asuka. Dewey is a slightly more demented version of Gendo. The Council of the Sages is Selee. The Scub Coral can also be compared to the angels. You also have giant robots, with the Nirvash being pretty comparable to unit 01. Characters aside, there are also quite a few similar thematic elements and styles between Eureka Seven and Evangelion. Without giving away too much, the Scub Coral really are much like the angels in terms of their purpose in the series. There are some times of trippy introspection and metaphoric symbolism thrown in. There is also the theme, though definitely not unique to Evangelion, of a boy having to save the world with his robot. Things seem to get more tragic as the series progresses as well, with some characters falling into periods of deep depression to the point of being suicidal and hating their existence in general.

Despite all of these similarities, I still fell Eureka Seven is its own series and wasn’t trying to make itself like Evangelion for the sake of being like Evangelion. One might be tempted to think of Eureka Seven as Evangelion-Lite, I know I was at the start, but this would be doing the series an injustice as it really is great on its own. I just wanted to go ahead and get the Evangelion comparison out of the way since if you’ve seen it, you’ll likely see the same similarities I saw. I also wanted to stress that despite on the surface it having so many similarities it is not trying to be another Evangelion.

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