The comments on this post were cute. Specifically, though, I’d like to commend Higevs, Xerox, and lKnight for taking the bait. My mention of “magnum opus” was deliberately provocative, utterly random, though not without careful forethought and really a point I meant to expand on in this post; it was interesting, other post comments aside, to see what the term really means to each of them, and how their taste influenced their criteria for such judgement.

while light shows juxtaposed on serious ones make for hilarity…

What I mean by “the point of adaptations” isn’t “the point where adaptations start sucking”, but more of like “what is the point of adaptations?” After all, regardless of how good or bad an adaptation will be, you’ll always have the grassroots insisting on the superiority of the original. The fanbase is fickle and insatiable, which means most, if not all of the discussions will result in a discordant clamour of “YOU NEVER SAW HOW BRILLIANT THE MANGA WAS”, or “YOU’RE BIASED BECAUSE YOU READ IT FIRST”.

Which brings me to two shows, both brilliant manga in their own domains: Bokurano and Claymore. I thought it’d be a good opportunity to review the anime for both seeing how they’re both based off a manga; furthermore, I’ve only read the manga for Claymore, and only saw the anime adaptation of Bokurano. So I have two questions:

What can be really constituted as perception bias? How should an adaptation from its source material, be it a visual novel, manga, or light novel, be truly judged? I find these questions to be of utmost relevance especially in this Autumn season for the top-tier, or at least what I perceive as the fandom perceiving as top-tier anime, i.e. Clannad and Shana II, happen to be adaptations too.

Now that the two main first impressions posts are over, I guess I can start to slack off or something. There isn’t a whole lot that I’m expecting in the shounen, action-packed side, but that might be due to how I don’t carry a lot of expectations with me when I watch new shows, unless it’s been hyped to death before its debut. Between you and me, though, I’d take this over the overtly romance/harem stuff I’m due to watch next.

Dragonaut -The Resonance- was concentrated awesome, like Code Geass all over again. It’s one of those anime that you immediately hate or love, and I’m falling hard for this little gem. Dragonaut has everything — a fairly original premise, a hero you can’t help but feel for in his wretched state, a heroine that will have feminists everywhere giving their unanimous approval, and a cast that doesn’t scream “clich�” as much as you’d think those well-endowed girls would be prone to.

Or that muscular, chest-baring guy for that matter, in case anyone’s accusing me of being sexist, which is something Dragonaut couldn’t be found guilty of. To my mild annoyance and amusement, the guys have gone naked more often than the girls have so far (2-1), and as the picture below might indicate, it isn’t the guy that’s brimming with natural, world-changing powers in a bid to save the poor damsel in distress; rather, the inverse is true, which made for hilarious role-reversal when Toa (the girl) carried Jin (the failure guy)to safety before having an epic fight with that Berserker clone.

If there was one fault I could attribute to the first season now that it’s all over, it would have to be the cliffhangers, assuming that while some cliffhangers are indeed faults, not all faults are cliffhangers. One day on IRC amidst the usual verbal diarrhoea TJ of Riuva fame wondered aloud if Code Geass was the pinnacle of mecha anime, and although his statement was buried in a deluge of anal statements shortly after it got me thinking.

the first rule of parody fanart is that Lucky Star makes anything funny

To begin with, it’s short-sighted to compare Code Geass to Evangelion when talking about the pinnacle of mecha, which would be like comparing the proverbial apples to oranges. This stems from the two subsets present within the mecha genre, of which I’ll name Symbiote and Vehicle respectively:

There’s been a smile on my face this morning ever since the last few minutes of StrikerS 12, and it lasted all the way till breakfast and two episodes of Gigantic Formula; think of it like Lelouch triumphant in his Gawain, or Light grinning in his helicopter, both wearing rictuses of victory. It’s immensely gratifying to know that your predictions were spot on all the while, this being a midway assessment of sorts for three series, namely Nanoha StrikerS, Gigantic Formula, and Darker than Black.

What Author says here regarding recommendations would be valid and applicable, surely, for those like him or Steven, especially the latter, who regards watching anime as a gamble, a potential investment in terms of time and money. The thing is that, having an abundance of the former and by no means requiring the latter, it’s not really applicable to me, which means I personally don’t ask around that much regarding a potential anime that I might want to watch.

But we’ve been there with regards to the subject of taste, haven’t we? Judging from initial appearances is something I’m deign to do, although there are exceptions to that rule, naturally. While Spring ‘07 brought along with it an excellent selection of anime, it’s a pity there wasn’t a whole lot of critical opinion accompanying it, for as far as these three go it’s sad to see how those who shun them have been doing so for the wrong reasons.

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.

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!

Note to self: watch the damn thing as soon as it comes out. This would’ve been up way earlier had it not been for the other series I’ve been trying to sit through. See previous post for details. Also, there’s a spoiler after the cut — hell, just assume all Bokurano posts from now on will contain spoilers. It’s that kind of anime, the type where something happens every episode.

Maybe watching this while waiting for Triad to sub StrikerS (yeah, I prefer Hallaoun and Raging Heart, thanks) won’t be such a bad thing after all. Episode 2 of Bokurano was, as TJ Han put it, definitely one of the top 5 WTF moments so far. Yes, that link’s also a spoiler, and no, this goes before the cut. Click at your own risk.

“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.