I’m quite amused to hear that suspension of disbelief still becomes an issue nowadays. What, you want realism in a medium where oversized eyes are a norm, saving the world is perfunctory, and girls develop mysterious terminal diseases that require a guy (who also conveniently pops out of nowhere)’s love to cure? Surely you jest. That’s really weak reasoning, especially when it’s used as grounds for why an anime fails.

Library Wars, for one, seems to be the target of things like these: It’s not believable enough, it doesn’t make sense that there are autonomous militias fighting over books, why aren’t they going for the publishers instead of the bookstores, and so on and so forth. My response? Wow, just shut up and enjoy the show, seriously. Trying to over-analyse the premise while suffocating the show through the paralysing grip of Reality isn’t going to make things any better, and who cares if it’s not believable? The same could be said of any other show.

omg the sunlight is conveniently blinding her from looking at his face even though there wasn’t any a minute ago in the fluorescent lighting this is so UNREALISTIC!!@`123

A long long time ago, in a place far far away, I made a deal with the devil bateszi to watch four episodes of Shigurui and write about it if he would do the same for True Tears. Or maybe it was the other way around, because like Faust, I’m wondering what I got myself into. It’s fortunate that I’ve got an absurdly high level of tolerance for gore and its ilk (to the extent of being able to read a work of Shintaro Kago’s and not be too disgusted), for while I’m not about to go retching into a bucket just yet, the visceral, primal nature of it has floored me.

About the title/post excerpt: I’m referring to how things can be put into perspective so easily, give or take an episode. The wandering samurai with an X-shaped scar on his face doesn’t seem all that glorious anymore, but such is the fate of romanticisation; while Nobuhiro Watsuki might have made the era of the samurai out to be something you’d want to leap headlong into given the chance, what Takayuki Yamaguchi has done here is priceless — for once, I was glad I was on this side of the screen, watching from the comfort of my living room.

It’s the antithesis of entertainment. Blatantly atmospheric, with an intent to make you squirm more than smile; all flinch and no fun. Yet why do I find myself wanting to watch more and more of a show copiously laced with brutality, sex, and the occasional bit of brutal sex? Shigurui shimmers with realism like a mirage in the desert, an almost-there apparition that isn’t at the same time, yet is. It’s too bad that being what it is, not everyone will be able to stomach it, for if there was one anime in the world right now that I wish everyone would have seen, it would be this one.

Word is on the street that the non-moe faction is rejoicing this season, if only due to the fact that the number of shows with moe in them aren’t dominating for the first time in so long. I was thinking of a theme by which to group the anime in this post under while writing this, and it occurred to me that none of the characters in the shows featured here have eyes the size of tennis balls, or irises the size of ping-pong balls.

this automatically becomes non-moe because Duke Togo is in it

I know, lumping in Macross F together with Special A and Itazura na Kiss is indiscriminate. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to make a post with just Macross F or write a post about it with merely Code Geass as its sullen companion because it would be like comparing a Portobello Mushroom burger and a Wagyu steak — they’re both good in their own ways, but the latter is on an entirely different level, and they appeal to different people looking for different things.

yes, they retained this despite all the other cuts and changes

Fun. There’s a lot to be said about the word, and the anime that defines it; fun so pure and simple that all you’re experiencing during the 24-odd minutes that make up the episode is one huge grin, with a couple of smirks and chuckles served up alongside several bite-sized laughs.

Watching these shows made me go “Now that was great” after it was all done, with strains of the ED still ringing in my ears. I think this is exactly what the Spring season needs, if only because we’ve got a bevy of thought-provoking, deep, riveting, intricate shows lined up, and we need something to skew the balance in favour of light-heartedness, fluff, and entertainment for entertainment’s sake.

You know what they say — when life gives you loli, you make lollipops an anime.

what hardcore lolicons must look like to the rest of the world

Or so would appear to be the premise of a show like Kurenai. Despite how the man on the street might have misgivings about the loli aesthetic, I prefer to think that much of its criticism stems from the inability of a fan to differentiate. Do we call Aishiteruze Baby loli? No, we call it a respectable shoujo series that we wouldn’t be ashamed to read in front of our family and friends. Do we call Card Captor Sakura and the Nanoha franchise loli? Yes. Why the double standards, then?

Here we go again. The misrepresentation of an anime during the quarterly season preview will always be a point of contention for me, but you know what? If you don’t know Japanese, or happen to have a vocabulary so utterly worthless in nature that you can’t write at length and cite specific instances or scenes in an anime where the dialogue’s what makes or breaks it, you should give up all those “raw watching” pretensions and stick to watching subs. Pretending you know the language never did a show or your readers any good.

It goes to show how good the so-called Japanese experts among the anime bloggers are, that none of the posts dedicated to covering the first episode at the time of writing this post have so much as hinted at to what actually happens. Spare us the rewritten synopsis that’s been floating around for months, stop looking at the pictures, pay attention to the dialogue, and actually write about what happened, will you? That’s all I ask, really. Maybe the day will come when this will no longer be an issue, but before that ever happens I feel I simply have to speak up against misinformation like this.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what exactly Kaiba’s all about, from what I could gather from the first episode it was something akin to Planescape: Torment + The Matrix + GITS:SAC all wrapped up in an aesthetic equal parts Alice In Wonderland and The Little Prince. Not too shabby a mix, don’t you think? Who could’ve known that something that’s been praised mainly for its visual style could be so complex? Not those posers who weren’t paying attention to dialogue, that’s for sure. But I digress.

The problem with anime references or puns is that they usually fall apart quite miserably when you attempt to throw two or more of them together. It’s the sheer futility of making a Yoko Kanno reference in a Nanoha post title (a Venn diagram would easily illustrate the naivete behind this), or stringing together similarities between a not-so-popular mahou shoujo anime and an extremely famous shounen one (on top of a Narnia parallel) that leaves much to be desired, but I try anyway. If you manage to catch both references in the post title, well, consider yourself to have otaku street cred.

if recent episodes are anything to go by, he’s getting there

A short update for those of you who were wondering where my blog went, and why Sasa’s feed was flooding AnimeNano earlier: Ikimashou.net is currently in the hands of a squatter, no thanks to the registrar screwing Randall over by conveniently “forgetting” to e-mail him about the domain lapsing. As a result, everything broke, and he’s fighting to get the domain back now. In the meantime, don’t bother updating your links, unless you feel like changing them later on. If this Dasaku.net domain turns out to be permanent, I’ll be using a different subdomain name to go with it in good time.

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but Hirose looks a lot like Yuki Nagato

A reference-laden quote needs a little something to give it context, and considering how I’ve learned to not look at harem and its deriatives with derision anymore (I credit CCYoshi partially for that accomplishment, who, coincidentally, has an awesome new blog over at Mega Megane Moé — we’re hosting buddies now!), it seems all the more apt.

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.

This is, of course, the premise by which I’m watching the more “dubious” picks this season. Considering how subs are going to be and have been frighteningly efficient due to the alliance of m.3.3.w + BakaWolf + Ayako, passing up on what could be the ef of Winter seems patently obtuse. I mean, all the cool kids are doing it, so it should be fine, right?

Spice and Wolf has what is possibly one of the most vivid and breathtaking OPs, with gorgeous animation not seen since Byousoku 5cm, although for all purposes, this high-quality YouTube can only come so close to capturing the enrapturing experience on a full-screen.

This was a real exchange between Jeff Lawson and J. Valdez:

Jeff Lawson: I watch a lot of slice-and-life shows.
Jeff Lawson: And by “slice-and-life”, I mean “slice-of-life”.
J. Valdez: Do you mind if I start calling shows like Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and School Days, “Slice-and-Life?”

Fun times. I reserved the slice of life shows for the last because I had a nagging feeling I was going to like them regardless of when and how I saw them, to say nothing of how viewable subs for Minami-ke were only made available some time back. The wait was worth it, in any case, since I can’t remember the last time I laughed till my chest hurt.

The following are a bunch of shows that wouldn’t really fit anywhere else, or stuff that I got lazy of thinking of categories to pigeonhole them in, and therefore making this quite the mixed bag. Some might say I already ruined the whole category thing by throwing in Blue Drop there with my previous post. I digress. With this are reviews of Shugo Chara, Bamboo Blade, Moyashimon, and Ghost Hound.

Shugo Chara! was an embarrassing affair, a show that I found a whole lot more engaging and entertaining than its intended audience, i.e. my little sister, found it to be. Maybe the magic didn’t really work, pun unintended, because she wasn’t as familiar with Japan’s school life, acting nonchalant for the most part, not laughing where I expected her to, or being as interested overall like I was.

For the record, my sister turns 12 mid-December. Yours truly turns 21 late November. What this all really means is that my liking for the show isn’t unlike the horde of male otaku during the recent Shugo Chara event. Although I’m pretty confident that my fondness for the show stems from more than just a fetish with creepy undertones, of which I don’t have, in case you were wondering.

A competitive gaming (sports, board game, etc) series will inevitably choose to major in one of two areas, both of which are crucial in determining how wide or specialised an audience it will snag: the first, drama; the second, jargon. While the second is important in tapping to a pre-existing fanbase and ensuring a dedicated following, the first is by no means unimportant — too much emphasis on jargon leaves the non-fan alienated, something no self-respecting author or animation studio would want to do.

it’s tough love, making fun of your target audience is