I’d watched till episode 13 last September, by which point Triad decided to take three months to work on episode 14, which made me decide to wait till they’d finished subbing all of it. It was then licensed around March or April, which set me off searching for the remaining 5 episodes, and as the Spring season came all thought of watching it flew out the window till Saturday afternoon.

The lesson here? Don’t rely on Triad for anything (I mean, just look at StrikerS), unless it’s an obscure, non-moe series like Bokurano that no one else wants to sub, which means you’ve got to rely on them anyway. I digress. Higurashi was a mixed bag, although I loved it more than anything, and I’m really looking forward to the next season. Bring on Summer.

About the title. This is to save some of you the effort of reading through this: there isn’t any, at least not with respects to Code Geass — if you’re one of those who think it is, excuse me while I pause to laugh and make fun of your crap anime that you think is superior to it, like Gravitation or Sister Princess, Loveless or Ichigo 100%. You can press Ctrl+W now.

To those of you who’re reading on, well, I loved it. What can I say? While my eyes were suffering towards the end (like yours would too if you’d watch 23 episodes over three days), my mind was revelling in the sheer quality of it all. As I mentioned previously I loved the unoriginal premise — an unsubtle blend of Gundam SEED and Death Note. Kira (Yamato) + Kira, anyone? It’s more likely than you think!

this screencap is justice, like Light

So after watching the entire season, let’s talk about what I think of Azumanga Daioh. It didn’t improve after the first episode, but considering the pathetic waste of time that was most of the series, I guess that was to be expected.

Azumanga Daioh is, at best, an average show. At worst, it’s like Charlie Chaplin trying to cheer up a little girl post-rape with his legendary slapstick humour, which is technically funny, but really sad when you look at the bigger picture.

I finished Air. After watching two out of four key Key works I feel a take on the genre would be appropriate so watch out for a hopefully extensive critique on the visual novel as a genre in the next two, three, maybe five days — in addition to that, I should be reading Planetarian after my exams (I keep on thinking “Planetes” for some reason) and I can’t wait for Clannad to air next season, if everything goes as planned.

the summer specials obviously weren’t about fanservice.

I insist on coming clean about this: till a week ago I was one of those elitist bastards who wouldn’t touch eroge adaptations even if you paid me. Well, alright, maybe I would, but I always had a prejudice against them. Point being? The concept of eroges/visual novels/dating sims didn’t appeal to me at all. To put it crudely, they always seemed to me like a Japanese amalgam of Choose Your Own Adventure and Mills & Boon. It was that bad.

The logic behind the aversion? Pretty simple — it was how sex and a decent story were mutually exclusive. Or how the sex always came first and the story second. Oh, don’t tell me — they made the story first and then tried to cram in the sex later. I can imagine it already, some overweight, middle-aged salaryman looking over the shoulder of his Chinese sweatshop programmer, going “What do you MEAN they can’t have sex now?” Assuming then, that the eroge is in all respects created from the ground up with equal allowance to both sex and story doesn’t make it any better — just less pathetic, like comparing a home-made porno to a professional one.