Category: Anime

Ongoing Investigations: Case #024

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My first thought upon finishing the first story in Object of Desire by Tomoko Noguchi was this is certainly a series of Redikomi stories. This means that it is josei with graphic sex. We get the Full Monte from both sexes and pretty graphic intercourse. It’s certainly not traditional hentai but it’s not censored in any fashion. There are four one-chapter stories and one two-chapter story. The title of the book sets the tone about girls falling for guys who might not be the easiest or best choices for them. Almost all of the men cheat on the women they are with and are usually jerk-faces to their girlfriends at some point in the story. In fact, the author mentions that in retrospect even she found the guys to be tremendous jerks even if they were lovable jerks. The art is rather pleasant and cute where it needs to be cute and sexy where it needs to be sexy but the author seems to have an odd policy about hands. She either draws them extremely well and detailed or so horribly that even I noticed it. She does the same things with mouths to a lesser degree. I think Oil and Water and With Lemon were may favorite stories in the series because we get a little more insight into the main characters than in the others. I was most interested in Shizuka and Kimura’s weirdly developing relationship and their coming to understand each other and themselves. Maid for Love was my least favorite story because although the main guy was the nicest and coolest guy in the whole book his girlfriend was sort of a ditzy-subservient-maid-girl. Overall they are short little stories about trying to find a little connection with someone else in sexual relationships. I found the stories enjoyable but extremely fluffy as you would expect from what is essentially girl porn. You can see for yourself if this collection is for you because Aurora has a preview of it up.

I watched the first episode of Basilisk. I got it along with three other first episodes from a Funimation deal with iTunes for free. I had heard good things about it, mostly about the crazy warriors and the fighting. I really enjoy the opening fight between a guy who used wire verses a guy who used sticky goo. Oh a side note, guy who uses sticky goo, not the most attractive fellow. There is also this guy that works for the shogunate that has the craziest chin. I think his secret ability must be hidden in it. This short half hour had a good balance of action and political drama. I enjoyed the fierce rivalry of the two clans mixed with unattainable love plot as well. I am curious to see more of it.

Bartender is without a doubt healing manga. While the stories are warm, touching, and fascinating there is also nothing close to action in them. The story revolves around Ryu Sasakura who is, oddly enough, a bartender. Customers come to various bars where he works and he is able to size them up and give them just the cocktail needed to solve their problems. This neigh magical ability has given him the nickname the “glass of God.” Does anyone know if there is some connection between Bartender and Yakitate!! Japan. Did the artists of both series study under the same guy or is it all in my head? They both have similar character designs and personalities to their main characters. Also, while the comedy is over the top in Yakitate!! Japan the comedy in Bartender can be reminicent of it in style. The Bartender manga seems radially different from the anime but conversely the essence is the same. Ryu uses his Sherlockian attention to detail and empathy and dispenses an expertly served bit of alcohol as he solves their problems. The chapters also end with recipes for all the cocktails presented.

Watched three more episodes of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I really enjoyed the two part murder mystery on the lonesome island. I liked how it established a limit upon Haruhi’s desires because she always seems so boundless. So I am just a few short episodes away from finishing this show.

In anticipation of the upcoming Maria†Holic anime, I decided to read some of the manga to see how much it lives up to our expectations. Kanako is so repulsed by boys she breaks out into hives whenever one touches her. So she goes to an all girls school to meet the girl of her dreams. On her first day, Kanako runs into a beautiful blonde girl named Maria and falls head over heals for her. The problem is that Maria is actually a boy. So Maria uses his influence to become Kanako’s roommate and watch her 24/7 to make sure she does not reveal his secret. Most of the comedy comes at Kanako’s expense because Maria and his maid are horrible human beings. I find this highly amusing but it might turn some people off. It’s a solid anti-romantic comedy. I eagerly await the first episode of the anime. On a side note the reaction shots remind me on Pani Poni at times.

Read a short BL manga collection called Red Blinds the Foolish by est em. The main story is about a famous bull fighter and his lover, a butcher, we get to see their quiet passion for each other but also a loving resolve to try and understand the other. The focuses in all the stories are some unique, and sometimes a little odd, relationships. The manga-ka gives us just a glimpse into the lives of these characters which starts in the middle and doesn’t end in finality. I found this approach appealing and a little abstract but I never felt hindered by not knowing every detail of these characters history. Most of the stories contain some amount of sex however it is not graphic with just a little nudity and none of it frontal. I liked that they kept alot of the Spanish words in the first story and gave us footnotes, however many of the footnotes were close to the spine making it difficult to read or even notice. The art is well done for the most part and made me think of my many hours in figure drawing classes. An added bonus at the end is the manga-ka talking about a trip to Spain to see real matadors. It is a very amusing couple of pages and she draws herself as R2D2. This manga-ka is great a creating quiet little vignettes and also helps to show the range found in BL manga. A preview of Red Blinds the Foolish is also avaliable!

I bit the bullet and watched Revenge of the Space Pirate aka The Just for Kids version of Arcadia of My Youth. It was bundled at Wal-mart with Defenders of Space and Protectors of the Universe for three dollars. While Arcadia of my Youth is considered a classic, less people feel the same way about Revenge of the Space Pirate. I have seen less wooden acting in a marionette show. Half the time the voice actors seem like they are on qualudes and the other half they are just plain terrible. The dub script looks as if someone who did not know Japanese read a quick summary of what the movie was about and then wrote a script based on their best guess of what was being said. I know that Arcadia of My Youth is not the quickest moving movie, but Revenge of the Space Pirate moved at a glacial pace despite cutting out parts of the original film. I am still interested to see original because if you look under the deck you can see there is a well-made manly Harlock movie. There was also two episodes of Robo Formers (Getter Robo G) and two episodes of the lusciously well-animated Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 40s to fill-out the DVD. Robo Formers makes Revenge of the Space Pirate look like a masterpiece. I’m not how much the “quality” has to do with Getter Robo G being garbage and how much is just a terrible dub but my goodness was Robo Formers painful.

Because there can never be too much Alice in Wonderland fan-art, this is the pic of the week:

Poll Results: Is CLANNAD actually popular in the U.S.?

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CLANNAD, key

I wouldn’t say I frequent a lot of forums, but I am active in a couple. I can often be found in the anime recommendation section of forums. I can’t go a day without someone/many people suggesting CLANNAD for various reasons, sometimes completely unrelated to the topic at hand. I also see it frequently blogged about, whether it be general praise or following it episode by episode. So after all this, I just kept asking myself was it really that popular? We set out to try and find out.

I can tell you first hand from several online interactions that CLANNAD has a evangelical fan following. You could easily get the idea the Internet that it is this hot show with thousands of very vocal and devoted fans. I remember stumbling on one web review of CLANNAD that called anyone who did not like CLANNAD lame, gay, and without artistic taste which strikes me as a rather extreme reaction. But I feel it is exemplary of the attitude of many of CLANNAD’s die-hard supporters. The question was how much does this translate into an actual fan following in anime fandom. Does a single online supporter translate into something like 100 real life fans or does it translate into two real life fans?

Hypothesis
CLANNAD only appears to be popular because of a vocal minority on the Internet. Our theory is there is no sizable mass of mid-range fans of CLANNAD who love the show but don’t talk about it online. There is also no hidden market outside of the established online fans making it an excellent license for the U.S.

Method
In person, vocalized, polling of anime fans attending New York Anime Festival and Providence Anime Conference. This was done to get the widest variety of people who have varying degrees of knowledge of current titles in Japan. We first asked each person had they ever heard of CLANNAD. We also gave a brief description if people seemed fuzzy on what the show was. If they had heard of it we then asked if they watched any of it, whether it be an episode or a whole season. If they answered in the affirmative, we asked if the liked it. This gave us a good insight into several things. One, how much of a general buzz was there about the show. Was the show popular enough that it is recognizable to a majority of anime fans? Two, how many people then investigated the show due to the buzz. Third, when people finally sat down and watched the show did they enjoy what they watched?

Results

Total polled: 320

Haven’t heard of the anime: 219 (68%)
Heard of the anime: 101 (32%)
Of those who had heard, how many watched any of it: 56 (55%)
Of those who watched, how many disliked it: 27 (48%)
Of those who watched, how many liked it: 29 (52% which is 9% of the total group surveyed)

Conclusions
I think a good question that we didn’t ask of people would have been whether or not they were interested in seeing it if they hadn’t. But unfortunately that is hindsight. And we are only two people (plus Kohaku helped) so getting more people to survey during the allotted period was rather impossible. As our experience was everyone under the sun had seen CLANNAD, these results make that obviously untrue. Though I think these results do translate into a small established fan-base with very proud and fervent supporters, that doesn’t mean that people wouldn’t be interested in it if it comes to the U.S. However, it does seem to suggest similar results as seen with the debacle of the Rozen Maiden license.

The Internet has the proven ability to easily give a misleading perception of what is popular. Rozen Maiden is was a huge phenomenon in Japan and had a large vocal fan following on the Internet in America. So it was easy to assume from the number of people in the U.S. talking about it that it would garner solid U.S. sales among an otaku market like it did in Japan. From everything I have heard Rozen Maiden totally bombed for Geneon when released. Most people who had already watched it passed on buying it and almost no one who was not already a fan picked it up. Looking at the numbers we gathered a similar situation could occur with CLANNAD. The vocal minority of fans who love the show have made it seem like it has a large fan-base but in actuality the number of people who purchase DVDs tends to be smaller than the number of people talking about any show. Only 18% of the people interviewed had taken the time to watch the show when it was available free to them.

Ongoing Investigations: Case #023

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Has anyone played the original Higurashi sound novel? I am curious what the fan-service levels are in the games. I ask this because I don’t remember the Higurashi anime being the fan service bonanza that the manga or the art books are. They really like the semi to fully lesbian fan-service shots in the artbooks. It’s like they were drawn by male fujoshi. Despite the abundance of fan-service in the Higurashi manga it is a pretty faithful adaptation. Yen Press went all out with color pages in the front and middle. The manga has yet to even give me close to the chill that anime did but it is still enjoyable. However, I don’t think it’s going to win any new fans to the franchise.

So I sort of did the Gurren Lagann suggestion made by our friends in their review, which was to watch the last 7 episodes and not worry about the rest. Well, I had already watched the first 9 but I did skip the next 12 and watched the end. I was entertained by its ridiculousness and was also able to grow fond of a couple of characters in that short span at the end. It goes full-throttle giant robot as robots start hurling entire universes. As for why I decided to skip so much, that would be a major spoiler. However, I can say that there is a missing piece of the puzzle and the show for me was incomplete without it. My overall feeling was the show was good, whereas the first 8 episodes were great. It was hilarity to the max.

I enjoyed Gurren Lagann for what is was, an over the top giant robot show about believing in courage and guts. I enjoyed it more than Boxingoctopus and Lothos because that is all the expectations I went into the show with. Therefore I never felt let down. I for one enjoyed the middle part of the series although not as much as the beginning or the end. Certain parts of Gurren Lagann seem like Gainax’s response to Evangelion. Simon is like Shinji Ikari in both of them spiral into the abyss but Simon is able to rise out of it where as one of the major points of Evangelion is Shinji’s inability to connect to others and find a way out. I can’t say for sure if it’s partially reactionary to their older work or it is less intentional and more the natural comparison by viewers despite any active agenda. I also really liked the very Japanese concept of circular belief. Circular belief being the idea that there is someone who you believe in that believes in you when you can’t do that yourself. I suppose I have always wanted someone like that myself. I also think the fact that Simon and Nia grew on me helped a considerable bit. They would never ever be as cool as Kamina or Yoko but then again who could be that cool.

Read Nightmare Inspector volumes 2 and 3, I am glad to see this series establishing little bit of a running narrative along with giving Hiruko and Mizuki some backstory. Though I just makes me want to know more since we’ve only gotten crumbs. They have also introduced a humorous tenant who moves into one of the rooms on the upper floor of the tea house. He isn’t in it too much so the somber and melancholic feel of the series stays in tact but he does throw a little spice in the mix now and then. This manga-ka always puts in some funny bonus stuff including a song written by Hiruko about how much he loves soda.

I have been playing Chrono Trigger for the DS. It stands up well in retrospect. The game play is solid, the story is still fresh, the amount of little changes you can make on the plot are still well done. Playing this reminded me of a conversation with my brother about Final Fantasy 7. We were discussing how flat characters in RPGs are today but they were even flatter back in the day. You were more willing to fill in the blanks in your mind back then. I remember the characters of Chrono Trigger being much deeper than they actually are. They aren’t bad characters if they were I would have never remembered them so well. It’s just the amount I had to fill in from what was implied had become actual fact. Still it’s great to be able to go back and play this again now only it’s portable. If I had a PSP I would be sorely tempted to play an emulated Chrono Cross on it like David Riley is going to do. Even though the prevailing logic is Chrono Cross is the devil’s spawn by most fans.

Finished the xxxHOLiC novel AnotherHOLiC. I have to say putting the first story in FAUST was a good move, not only did it make me interested in the novel but it was also the better story of the three and it doesn’t require me to know about the manga. The second story seemed too similar to the first, but also easier to figure out. And since those stories were back to back it made me wonder where Watanuki’s brain was. As for the third and final story, since I haven’t read the manga it didn’t help establish anything about Watanuki for me. I didn’t really understand his reasoning. Oh and the other guy in the story was super annoying.

I assumed this story happens early in the xxxHOLiC storyline but I can’t say for sure. Although it is never outright stated, one of the reasons Watanuki works at the store is Yuko is training him either as a her student or her outright successor. So it seems like the part of the story where she is no longer by his side on jobs but he has still not learned enough that she has taken of his training wheels. I thought that the first two stories bookend each other well enough so that they made a point when the third story came along. I just hated hated hated the eye theory guy in the last story. NISIOISIN is talented at making original characters that are annoying jackasses. This is not a compliment. He a good writer but he has to start cutting back on shrill, nasty characters in his work.

I made an entry for the Anime News Network 2008 Holiday Logo Contest. This is my first year entering. I had some extra time before my vacation so I thought, why not?

The best way to cap off Reverse Thieves completion of Gurren Lagann is with a piece of Gurren Lagann fan art: