Happy Chinese New Year to those of you descended from the motherland, and may you collect more of those delicious red packets this festive season. I spent the reunion dinner eve in bed, with a majority of the New Year’s Day going towards getting more sleep in view of my erratic nocturnal schedule. While part of me felt like Nobita in that chapter of Doraemon where he decides to spend the first day of the new year in his room with gadgets in lieu of real human company, I figured trying it just this once wouldn’t hurt.

obligatory picture since it’s the year of Yuki Sohma the Mouse

In other news, the discussion over at In Search of Number Nine and a later post by Cameron Probert reminded me that I should stick to this rule in 2008: If comments don’t achieve their required effect after the first one, taking it to a post would be more productive given the growing length.

This is another Anime Blogging Collective� joint blogging effort brought to you by TheBigN, Roxas, CCYoshi, Moogy, Damien, and Martin. As ef is the Lucky Star of the season in that it’s a severely misunderstood anime that’s getting bad press due to badly written, snap judgement opinions that prefer to brand it the misunderstood problem child from a couple of episodes, we thought that a feature like this was severely overdue.

If you haven’t started on this gem of an anime, now would be a great time to do so. A note of interest would be that the seemingly random images only appear for 10% of the time in the first two episodes, before dipping to about 5% in episode 03 and further dropping to non-existent amounts on consecutive episodes. I’ve heard people comment on ef getting better, but it isn’t merely my opinion when I say that it was always good.

I say this on the strength of rewatching the entire series up till episode 06 so far; it’s evidently an anime that’s intended to be viewed more than once. You could say it’s a flaw in that the first two episodes are incoherent on a first viewing but make perfect sense when viewed later, but I’d rather look at it as a strength. It’s undeniably ambitious and artsy in its own idiosyncratic way, but powerfully executed, only underwhelming due to its extensive usage of what seem like red herrings in the beginning, and I hope that this series of posts will clear the air on that, enhancing your enjoyment of the show as a result.

ef - a tale of memories could very well be- no, it is the Lucky Star of Autumn. It’s easy to bash for reasons like “random visual crap”, “distracting”, “confusing”, and equally as easy to hate for the very same reasons, which are, by some coincidental measure, only skin-deep. I feel that ef has its share of detractors due to how they’re not exactly comfortable with its method of presentation, which is unorthodox; or it could be due to how it’s supervised by Akiyuki Shinbo (note: supervise is not the same as direct), who apparently has a track record of psychedelic and random shows under his belt, thus enforcing a placebo effect like “this has to be bad”, which is, ironically, the direct opposite of the reason why we’re all watching kimikiss (”this has to be good, it has Honey & Clover’s director working on it!”).

I think it’s too convenient to not think at all, deriding the style and ignoring the substance in order to push away another show conveniently, declaring that it’s the work of the anime devil etc. Style is not substance. Once I got past the initial weirdness that the show’s now infamous for, I finally realised that there was a method to the madness — if you could call it that — that was displayed by ef. Word is on the street that SHAFT’s being as faithful as KyoAni and it’s not their style, because it’s what was part of the original CG in the game.

How many of you noticed that the visuals only decide to go kaleidoscope when it’s any one of the three couples having protracted conversations together? No, you couldn’t have, I mean, no one’s watching this show anymore right? I owe this post to Mike of Anime Diet for his keen and shrewd Lit Student observations; in particular, his post about ef 03 finally made me see the light, for I was still floundering about trying to figure out the meaning behind it all. No thanks to him pointing me in the right direction I can indeed see what ef’s trying to do, and it’s a thing of beauty.

There’s been more of that “balanced” talk around this season more than any other this year given how the harem/bishoujo shows have a strong showing, and for that reason alone I decided to dedicate a post to four shows in said genre, namely Myself;Yourself, Blue Drop, Kimikiss Pure Rouge, and ef.

My reasons for watching harem are twofold: Firstly, the networking aspect. I’ll never write off entire genres by virtue of common sense and not wanting to be like the other bloggers whom, despite not being entirely sound in their reasoning, I read to keep me grounded in terms of bias, and not wanting to preach to the converted. It also helps me keep in touch with other excellent bits of writing I wouldn’t be able to understand fully otherwise, like harem overlord CCYoshi or super siscon Stripey.

Secondly, it’s a motivation out of academic vested interest. Like how I won’t really be able to appreciate Nanoha for being a mix of the shounen and mahou shoujo genres if I haven’t had prior experience with both, so does harem and bishoujo help me appreciate Shana for being a mix of shounen and harem. While it’s convenient, I don’t think I have to settle for second-best while trying to go about being acquainted with what the genre has to offer, so here’s an initial assessment of what Autumn’s got to offer.