Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is classy, gorgeous, ironic, outrageous, fantastic — all of that at the same time, and whoever disagrees with me obviously lacks good taste. Personally I don’t really think much of the Summer season no thanks to Spring’s prolific QUALITY that ensured anything making its debut now would be overshadowed, but SZS is a good show to debunk that type of thinking.

I’m not sure where exactly to begin, because it’s taken me by the neck and then pinned me against the wall in its strong grip — the art, surely? The colours are of an enchanting, multi-faceted palette, and remind me of Kemonodzume, another series I’ve yet to touch on my backlog. The animation is a noticeable cut above the usual industry standard, with the animators going all out for even the small things, from minute sakura petals to fragments of splintered chalk, and it shows.

I don’t have any real issues with Hayao Miyazaki’s work for the record, they’re pieces of art blah blah critically acclaimed blah blah but it just doesn’t resonate with the average anime viewer. How many of you reading this actually like his work enough to put it at your #1 spot(s)? It’s give or take to me, good thing the latest film he’s working on is purportedly his last.

you know what they say about seeing what you want to see? this isn’t a shop, which makes it even funnier than the Kanon one, displayed after the cut

…wait. There isn’t any “fun” in “Touhou” to begin with. Which is soberingly true, but besides the point. I put my brand-new, 120GB Seagate 2.5″ external to good use today by bringing it over to the house of J, a close friend of mine, and passing him two seasons of Honey & Clover, Code Geass, and Touhou.

Guess which game I showed him first? No prizes for guessing.

now made over 9000% more fun with pictures like these, too

Go on, tell me. Between the lack of coverage and no one making enough noise about it this would be the most underrated and overlooked mecha of the season, if you ask me. If Bokurano�s the sullen, brooding adolescent with black eyeliner and a �bad� hairdo, and Lucky Star Idolmaster Xenoglossia�s the annoying sister on the verge of puberty, then Kishin Taisen Gigantic Formula’s the genius little brother who isn’t taken seriously for playing with his toys too much.

in Japan the mech pilots you, etc.

The problem with this season’s that once the more well-known series have aired, the others that didn’t get as much publicity or hype are ignored as a result — which is a pity, seeing how I struck gold (and shat bricks) when I least expected to. In an attempt to not trigger Animeblogger’s series-detecting algorithm I’ll tick off my choices for Spring in wordfilter:

• Not Brighter than White
• MOE DANCING ANIMU
• Shakespeare’s spinning in his grave
• They grew up and now sleep together ;_;
• Fate x Saber’s lovechild with big sword
• “Our” mecha is slower than Ultraman
• the sky, THE SKY. The sky…

But is that all there is to it? After catching Toward the Terra and Sisters of Wellber, I think I’m going to have to make a little space for my now expanding list. Probably not so with Over Drive, but I suppose it’s due to the relatively dated graphics and storyline that seem atypical of every other sports anime out there. Mildly NSFW screencaps after the cut.

This is sad — no subs for Hitohira that aren’t in worthless XviD/mkv form (i.e. all subbers doing double mkv releases need to learn XviD/avi, because it’s redundant and obtuse to have different codecs in the same containers). Neither is anyone doing Kaze no Shoujo Emily, which is sad considering the number of groups swarming over Claymore, Lucky Star, and Gurren-Lagann, all of which don’t really need more than one group subbing it. Especially Gurren-Lagann, because all the groups subbing them totally, utterly suck for not producing something in avi that doesn’t fail miserably.

Mini rant aside, I finally got around to seeing sola, Lovely Complex, and THE MEXICAN GUNS, I mean, El Cazador de la Bruja, which is an mouthful for something that really doesn’t live up to its name, whatever that means — but I’ll get around to that later. The other two were sort-of nice, which isn’t that much considering what they’re up against this season, although it’s pretty decent for wasting time in-between waiting.

While we’re on the topic, let’s not forget how comparing what was meant to be an hour-long (perhaps one and a half, two?) play to a television series adaptation spanning a likely 26 episodes, is ridiculous. I mean, ridiculous on a scale of comparing all twelve volumes of Death Note to the two 45+ minute movie adaptations and gnashing your teeth while going “THEY TOTALLY SHAFTED THE FANS, I WANT MY MELLO/NEAR/OBSCURE SIDE CHARACTER/ANIME-EXCLUSIVE YAOI FOOT WASHING SCENE”. So let’s not get into that.

Since we’re going for the jugular, why not stop too with the Gonzo bashing for a second to realise that, shock and horror: judging an anime based on its predecessors’ performance, and the animation studio responsible for said predecessors, is pretty dumb. No, maybe exceedingly blind is a better way of putting it. If you thought the KyoAni fans were bad enough, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a victim of shoddy plot, form over function, exceedingly short-sighted expectations, and jaded cynicism — the Gonzo hater.

Claymore’s apparently scheduled for 50 episodes, and I’m torn on whether to follow something that doesn’t suck in theory, but doesn’t really do anything for me either, in practice. I’ve heard that it gets better as the manga goes on, but fifty? With a chance that it might get better because they didn’t want to get you into the plot at the very beginning? It’s a pity, but I guess it can’t be helped given the number of volumes they’ve got to adapt.

An issue I have with Claymore is that it reeks of a certain vampire anime some time ago, that had a major failure of an ending due to the writer of the light novels dying, God bless his soul — the medieval setting only makes it worse because while the amalgam of steampunk and post-apocalypse tech in Trinity Blood was at least made refreshing since there was a power balance, medieval just cries out SHOUNEN DYNAMICS due to the sole dependence on physical power, which means a lot of fighting, losing, training, and then winning before losing again to a new challenger. Rinse, repeat.

Late Nanoha fan here. Think it was the beginning of this year or around November last, when I kept on seeing a recurring face among the posts of /a/. Some hushed whispers about it being QUALITY, and there was all manner of Photoshopped pictures on blogs everywhere. After awhile I couldn’t stand it and decided to get the two seasons to see what the fuss was all about. It reminded me of Cardcaptor Sakura, what with the magical staffs and all.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Nanoha is the type of series that comes along ever so often and reinvents the genre wheel. The tag “post-mahoushoujo” comes to mind, because, like Touhou, the stigma that once came along with adoration of little girls with magical powers — it’s all gone now. Well, maybe the little girl part still is stigmatized, but it’s generally okay nowadays for a young adolescent male to go about singing praises of an anime rooted in the series.

“TH- THIS IS MY CHAIR! IT WAS MADE FOR ME!”

So I presume this is going to be like Evangelion, but with more character development? Hold on, this is NGE we’re talking about here. As long as the monologues aren’t limited exclusively to abstract images and there’s none of that ‘intelligent’ symbolism I guess I’ll survive. But I’m serious about the character development bit. 15 characters, and what- 24, 26 episodes? If there’s going to be like one death per fight I’m still wondering how they’re going to go about the other 9+ episodes. Mecha filler has never been a high point for me.

…your latest gift to mankind, and we thank you. The episode’s moment came for me when Hei confronted Rui on the rooftop during the opening sequence — post-rock, in my anime soundtracks? You’ve come so far since your early days, and while Solid State Society was only last year, oh boy. Have we missed you.

I’ve always been a fanboy. Always, and almost all of it — The Vision of Escaflowne’s majestic classical compositions; Cowboy Bebop’s flightly jazz; GITS:SAC’s dystopian electronica; Wolf Rain’s melancholy acoustics. It was like the music drove the series to excellence, not merely supported it. Or maybe she’s been approached by more discerning studios who knows just what it is that their anime needs (definitely not Yuki “My-Compositions-All-Sound-Alike” Kajiura). I’d like to think she has a waiting list and that she can actually pick and choose, because I can’t picture her doing harem or slice of life.

I know this seems like a terribly opportunistic time to start my blog given the topic of the moment, but I guess it’s better than nothing. So everyone’s got an opinion about Lucky Star, with the lovers going “MOAR” and the haters going “NO MOAR”, and while I found the list of reasons for not liking it to be pretty acceptable, lolikitsune’s post left an awful taste in my mouth and I thought a more positive take on the whole thing would be appropriate.

I know coloured hair’s there for character differentiation, but…