Viewing the world through giant-eyed spectacles

A bit of a lighter post today as there's a bit of a crunch for time.

Short story shorter being a highly impressionable student I have had many opportunities to laugh at how anime makes you look at ordinary things in a very strange manner (and coincidentally, cause ordinary people to look at you in a very strange manner). And now it's time to share some of those ways, handily compiled in Mildly Amusing quiz format.

Some of these are actual trains of thought I've ridden but more of them are cleverly obvious disguised references to pretty much anything out there. A sign of your anime fandom may be how many you get.

And by anime fandom, I mean "amount of shows you watch that are the same as the ones I watch and/or have heard of."

1) Nissan is:
a) A car brand.
b) Misspelled.

2) Cats are:
a) ADORABLE. MUST PET.
b) Good pets.
c) Fine too.

3) In the name of -
a) - love
b) - the moon, I will punish you!

4) Points and lines:
a) Are used in math class.
b) Can only be seen with your glasses off.

5) Da capos and arias are:
a) Musical terms.
b) Long-running series.

6) Snow is:
a) Cold.
b) Very sad (yet awesome).
c) YUKI~

7) Define tsundere.
a) What?
b) A character that exhibits both cold/mean and affectionate characteristics.
c) THE DEFINITION IS FLAWED! WE MUST REDEFINE IT!

8) Serial depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, animal abuse, and stalking are:
a) Very bad things.
b) Hilarious.

9) Boxcutters are good for:
a) Cutting boxes.
b) Plot development.
c) Falling at improbable angles for dramatic effect.

10) Sunlight burns me. Why?
a) Because you haven't been outside in three days.
b) Because you died and were brought back to life.
c) This question insults me. D:

11) The fastest car in the world is:
a) A Formula 1 car.
b) Twenty years old.
c) Sitting in a junkyard somewhere registered to my name.

12) The key that holds the power of darkness:
a) Is something obviously very evil sounding.
b) Is pink.

13) The opposite of dark is:
a) Light.
b) Krad.
c) God, I can't believe you watched such fangirl yaoi-bait like that.

13a) What always triumphs?
a) Justice!
b) The promised girl.
c) Love and friendship.

13b) Continuing off of question 13a, Justice =
a) The defeat of evildoers everywhere.
b) "Sora!"

13c) Continuing off of question 13b, Sora =
a) Japanese for 'sky.'
b) Gao Gao Stegosaurus!
c) Was that the best thing you could come up with? And you didn't even include the technically correct answer.

14) What is wrong with "the world?"
a) We sleep soundly while people in the third world starved. And this is a stupid pun.
b) She kissed him when he was totally going out with that other girl.

15) Finished.
a) Finally, this stupid quiz is over.
b) What is? The three years of your short life?

No points for figuring out that B and occasionally C were the anime answers, but bonus points for being able to catch every reference. Shouldn't be too bad, considering that I'm not a hardcore viewer. Hope you enjoyed the light break.

-CCY

Can fillers be filling?

Paradoxes and deep posts are so much fun.

Fillers are quite often one of the most dreaded parts of anime that cause us to sigh, roll our eyes, press the fast forward button and/or maybe write a long drawn-out post complaining how this is the twentieth episode we've had with Absolutely Nothing Happening.

They come in many interesting if not always entertaining flavors such as The Beach Episode (pictured), The Convienently One Episode Long Conflict, And Now For Some Of Our Other Characters That Still Exist, and everyone's favorite, The Recap.

Now naturally the entertainment value depends on many different things, such as originality, quality, and how many fillers you've seen in a row. But from a story perspective, I've always struggled with the stigma of filler as something completely devoid of content.

Maybe it's a faulty definition of filler, but I've found that filler episodes, per se, may actually be necessary to the overarching feel of the series in the end in leaving a good impression. This may not be the case for more shonen material (Fights O' The Week) or whatnot, but at least in my specialty genre, romance/harem/harem-likes, I almost find filler to be useful at times.

(Minor blatantly obvious spoilers for Da Capo and huge ending/plot spoilers for Shuffle ahead.)

Even in the most meaningless of filler (pictured) in the midst of a wide sea of filler-type (pictured), I find there to be at least a meager bit of content in the episode. Maybe it's not the plot tour de force you'd find in an average episode of School Days or Kanon, but little things, like the development of the Sakura x Junichi x Nemu dynamic in Da Capo in the beach episode above still count.

In the midst of all the fanservice or lazy animation or scenes you've seen before (or maybe all of the above) usually there will be perhaps a glance, an exchange of words, an unnatural look that will hint at some important plot or character point to be used later on.

It always seems to be said that a series could be better if it was half the length, or an OVA, and I'm always inclined to disagree. As hard-hitting as a series can be with it's plot developments and twists, I find that if a series was just condensed to this, it wouldn't be half as good as if it was slowly put together through character episodes and filler.

For example, Shuffle is one I could use for example. Sure, the first twelve episodes were, as Rin even put it himself in the beach episode, "breasts everywhere you go", with perhaps that blue-haired skirt-flipping kid thrown in for good measure. But certainly if one looked between some lines and some frivolous scenes you could see the tension develop between Kaede and...well, everyone as she got the short end of the stick repeatedly. You could see Primula become attached to the world around her.

If we were just to spend one or two episodes introducing the characters and launch straight into the Primula arc, with the Kaede/Asa arc perhaps halfway through, it just wouldn't have the same impact.

As has probably been said a million times, I find anime better when I can connect to the characters, whether on a personal level, or on an emotional level (i.e. through moe appeal, or pity, or sympathy for a story), and well, if Kaede just sort of showed up within the first few episodes with a boxcutter demanding Asa give Rin back, would we feel the same pity for her desperation than we did in the full 26-episode series?

Rather, it would be more abrupt and jarring, resulting in confusion more than anything else.

Perhaps this is from a faulty definition of filler; usually I label any plotline (if any) that lasts 25 minutes or less and is cleanly resolved within the episode as "filler", especially if it's not attached to any particular overreaching storyline or character arc. But character episodes (the first eight or so of both D.C. and Shuffle) certainly fit the guidelines of this definition but yet are rather indisposible in providing insight into a character and their personality and feelings.

Neither can certain events be proven tip-offs for filler; while an Onsen Episode certainly is bound to waste at least a few minutes (and a large chunk of the budget) on bouncing and/or cleverly hiding genitalia, usually there can be a lot of things discovered (which may or may not already be obvious) by the large amount of female characters (often rivals, if not indirect) in close proximity.

Maybe filler, like a tsundere (Admittedly a little controversial), is one of those things that can't be exactly defined but can only be sensed; while one can always roll their eyes whenever they smell it coming, quite often it's the contrary (Da Capo, at least Second Season, is pretty good with pulling off subtle twists on stale topics). And vice versa, although an episode may not have had any of the obvious Signs of Filler, one can still come out of it with an empty taste in their mouth.

It's not to defend filler or to say that it's always worth watching, but certainly it has its use at times. Something that can be said for a lot of things in anime, at any rate.

-CCY

Breaking: School Days 09

Breaking as in news, and breaking as in all the rules in that I'm blogging about 1) a raw, 2) a raw I haven't watched, and 3) a single episode post.

But, hey, School Days 9 pretty much confirms whatever that you didn't want to happen, so it is big. Quick summary and quick thoughts after the jump.

You've been warned. Huge spoilers. Like, Civic rice rocket spoilers.

So, important plot points, with screencaps thanks to Random Curiosity:
* Makoto chalks up another one, this time scoring with Otome (the ponytail girl that liked him since middle school)...I believe in the videotaped bed as well.
* Sekai kicks Makoto in the crotch. Probably a short term thing and not a large fight, but, hey, I know it's going to get some cheers from the crowd.
* Makoto and Sekai end up dancing at the bonfire thing at the end, which combined with some other screenshots seem to correlate directly with the "Taisuke rapes Kotonoha" scene.

So, not all at once now:

Holy shit. The drama just continues to compound multifold in this series.

You want bad end? You get bad end. It certainly is going in this direction as the order in this series is pretty much going to hell. Otome's officially joined the Makoto battle royale now (although Setsuna appears to have backed down from AnimeSuki summaries), Taisuke's 99% confirmed to have done pretty much what no one wanted (yet many expected) him to do.

I don't believe Otome nor Setsuna were ever actually involved in the competition in any of the canon game paths which involved Sekai or Kotonoha - although I haven't played the game - so it's strongly likely that the path the anime is taking is a bit of a compilation of many. Needless to say it's not getting any better as pretty much all hell is going to break loose in the harem and beyond in the upcoming episodes:
* The video of Otome x Makoto
* Pretty much damn everything that's happened to Kotonoha
* Sekai's losing ground as well as losing Setsuna to France (don't think she's broken the news to her yet)
* Hikari might have a role to play if she hears about Taisuke and Kotonoha; certainly won't doubt he'll brag about it, and even if just Makoto hears about it, certainly some interesting possibilities could result.

Seems like we're getting exactly what we expected and more. Certainly the scary thought. Get out your cameras, this is going to be one hell of a wreck...

-CCY

Eternity Turns 100

A somewhat non-anime related post as we (and by we I mean me) celebrate achieving large round numbers by reading off more numbers and stats. Come on in, we've got image packs to celebrate.

So...I've been in the business for approximately four months, and I think this is the first big milestone I've hit with 100 published posts (rough drafts a few more). Felt like it'd be a good idea to celebrate with some thanks and some...uh...statwanking, so here it is after the jump.

Days In Business: 144
Posts/Day: 0.69
Surprisingly I've been posting a lot more than I thought; originally the plan was to post one entry a day but as schoolwork and laziness piled up the schedule changed to every other day, to ensure quality posts and retaining of sanity.

Total Visits: 5,123
Total Pageviews: 7,708
Total Visitors: 2,762
Not bad if I say so myself. The AnimeNano and AnimeBlogger antennas have really contributed more than I could ever express to getting the posts out there, much props to them for doing what they do in making the anime community accessible. Also props for those of you who keep coming back - you know who you are.

Average Visits/Day: 35.57
Peak Visits: 270, 8/27/007
35 clicks every day...I can't even say I visit that many blogs in one day! Admittedly there's been a wide variance in visits, especially depending on the content.

The top ten pages are as follows:
1) The Haruhi/Shuffle artbook review, 273 pageviews
2) Lucky Star 15 episode post, 235 pageviews
3) State of Anime 2007, 224 pageviews
4) Lucky Star visual novel news with trap title, 217 pageviews (in one day!)
5) 10 Overused Commandments of Anime, 195 pageviews
6) Haruhi II season announcment The Prestige style, 184 pageviews
7) Ayu and the Uguu~ CD, 178 pageviews
8) Kanon drama CD review, 171 pageviews
9) sola/AIR comparison, 162 pageviews
10) Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei episode 1 "preview post", 162 pageviews
(Honorable mention: Kagetsu Tohya advertising post, 161 pageviews)
So I heard you guys like KyoAni. No shock to me, as I'm an admitted slave also. Some of the deeper content as well got some good views, which is good, as well as the funny stuff as well. No plans on catering directly to the audience as this be mah corner to whine in, but it seems there's always a crowd for what's current, if not what's, uh, moe.

Also, I'm very proud that I've gotten 11 Google hits for "haruhi threesome" because of that trap post I did a while back (and all the references back to it), with the next most popular query being for "asa shigure sex". Ah, the crowds I draw in~

For whoever Googled "haruhi" and managed to reach my blog somehow, you deserve a prize. Please tell me how, though. I've got to be on approximately the thousandth page.

Well, enough of stats at any point, here's me "giving back" to the community, if by giving back you mean redistributing images you probably already have! I'm not an avid image-board scourer but I do visit some regularly and as such I've built up a decent collection of fanart for popular series.

Sources are in entirely random order the Raki-Suta imageboard, the SOS-Dan imageboard, /fate/ imageboard at Koichan, the Tenka Seiha blog (for Tsukihime art), and the AnimeSuki forums. Thanks, random people who draw and post images!

Since I have a couple hundred images I won't post them up one-by-one but rather in annoying free download places; they shouldn't put you over the limit but just in case they're split among services. Each image pack is pretty much as labeled for a specific fandom; I specialize in more of the cute pics (which would explain one reason that these files are small) rather than the sexy ones - I've always though the more fanservicey type pics demean the character - so you want anything even vaguely NSFW, head elsewhere.

If not, enjoy! And thanks for reading!
Lucky Star (129 images, 23 MB)
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (excluding Yuki, 81 images, 16 MB)
Yuki Nagato (117 images, 13 MB)
Tsukihime (93 images, 20 MB)
Kanon (113 images, 45 MB)

-CCY

Series "Review": Azumanga Daioh

Azumanga Daioh is a show about everything and nothing. It's so unfunny at times it's funny and sometimes it tries to be so funny that it's not. Whatever it may be, it's certainly one of the bigger-name shows, being the benchmark to which many slice-of-life/4-koma anime have been compared to. Rightfully?

Probably. I can certainly say that I enjoyed the anime very much, but coming from Mr. Likes Everything that may not be saying much.

The most balanced way to evaluate Azumanga is probably to say that it's appeal and downfall stem from the same aspect of it, in that it's a very simple show.

Simplicity is good, because it allows one to turn their brain off, relax, and enjoy the straight-up comedy. Azumanga is a very simple show with obvious jokes and as such you won't be alienated by the more obscure Japanese or anime humor found in other series such as Zetsubou Sensei or Lucky Star.

Simplicity is bad, because it makes one turn their brain off and just sort of veg out. There's not much that one can derive from the series after the show has ended, and it's really just sort of a waste of time compared to series like Zetsubou Sensei and Lucky Star that keep you involved and make you feel smart for getting the jokes.

Aside from that though Azumanga actually does have a strong second side to it, and that is one of the most important of any anime, and that is relatibility, which happens to be a word coined about five seconds ago to mean "how much one can relate with something that they are watching".

I find that connecting with an anime is one of those aspects that can really make a good show great, or maybe a average show watchable; I feel a large aspect of Lucky Star, for example, at least, is that "Hey, I've thought that too" factor, which would explain why they talk about food for 15 minutes (or, alternatively, reference a different anime every 10 seconds).

Azumanga Daioh is, as such, for a high school student, especially one towards the closer end of anime, very topical. While Azumanga is similar in a sense to a lot of American sitcoms in the sense that it's humor-based and that the plot, if any, is contained in an episode, there is very much almost a sense of development as well in Azumanga.

It's not development in any other anime's sense of the word but the anime is always set in forward motion, and the characters do change ever so slightly as they go from first to second to third years. It's not like an average American show or comic strips where high school students stay students for years or maybe decades on end.

And as such you can definitely feel the passage of time, whether from the outside perspective of "There's only two episodes left" or from the inside, especially in the last episode where both the characters and the viewer can feel the bittersweet emotions of things coming to an end.

Perhaps I'm waxing poetic because I'm a high school senior myself and as such the last episode was quite touching in a way, but Azumanga definitely has a start and a end, defined by the years of high school; as opposed to many other series where the ending is sort of like "Everything's resolved and happy and things are normal, so there's nothing more to see here."

Azumanga, per se, was always "normal" in a sense although the characters never were, and to be honest, it could've kept going in showing everyone's separate travels through college, but, aside from being limited by the manga, the parts of Azumanga just don't work as well as the whole.

A large part of Azumanga is the the characters. Although they may not be wholly realistic most people probably know someone with at least a little Osaka or Tomo in them. And the humor in Azumanga, as in-your-face as it is, is at it's best when the characters bounce their personalities off each other; you know the type of humor. A character will say or do something totally of the wall, and depending on the crowd, you'll either get a stunned epic silence, a fiery argument, maybe an equally ridiculous response, something that will at least make you laugh a bit inside. It's just the sort of thing that wouldn't work with one or two main characters and a bunch of secondaries.

The characters can be criticized for being a little one-dimensional but arguably this anime as a whole is largely one-dimensional, and if you are expecting something else than it might be a better idea to watch something else. Besides, a large variety of these comedy anime have relatively flat, exaggerated characters and yet we don't see much complaining about a depressive teacher with a class of stalkers, Anonymouses, OCDs, and hikikomoris.

The personalities of the characters lead to that sort of familiarity that breeds humor as well, personally. You know Sakaki's crazy about cats and so when you see anything that's vaguely a cat-like substance you wonder "Heh, what's going to happen this time?" It sounds like it's predictable and boring but it's more common than you think. You take the characters and their pre-cut personalities, maybe you twist them a bit, mix up the gags a bit each time, keeping the show fresh yet familiar at the same time.

This does lead to a problem of Azumanga in that it's not exactly one of those things you can take in large doses. Like candy, it's tasty, high in sugar yet low in useful substance, so it's not a good idea to take it all in at once. After your fifth candy bar you really begin to hate the taste of chocolate, and after the fifth episode of Azumanga you really begin to get annoyed by Tomo being crazy.

As such, Azumanga, perhaps like those sitcoms mentioned a few times, is one of those shows that is better in small pieces, perhaps with some different flavors of shows in-between to cleanse the pallete; a piece of advice that might go well with any anime, but especially this one.

To be honest this review was a tough one to write, perhaps because Azumanga is such an off-the-wall series that it defies summary and normal review, perhaps because it is somewhat of a personal series. Maybe because it's a big name. But to put it in a very tl;dr fashion, Azumanga is a great example of the comedy school/slice-of-life genre, but it's upfront and direct sense of humor, with obvious jokes and clearly-defined, largely stagnant characters may or may not be for you. It's a good show if you don't mind mindless stuff; something easy to watch after brain-burning episodes of drama and tears, or maybe Actual Work.

Ask your doctor self if Azumanga is right for you.
-CCY

Oh my God they killed Tsukasa

Just a short newspost for today, since it's something I heard of off the AnimeSuki forums and haven't seen much news about recently (maybe since it's originally two months old, anyway, but right now is prime time for Lucky Star).

Short story shorter, the Lucky Star bandwagon marches on as the manga and quite popular anime marches on to conquest it's next media form...books. The Lucky Star light novel, "Lucky☆Star Satsujin Jiken" (Lucky Star Murder Case) is due to be released on September 1st.

Certainly it seems like odd material for the lighthearted slice-of-life show but this probably means we'll either get a parody or another Remote Island Syndrome setup. It's certainly an interesting and altogether different premise and I look forward to seeing how the Lucky Star characters fare in a more...drawn-out storyline.

And in case you haven't put together the pieces from the title and the text, take a closer look at the snapshots in the cover art. Yeah. Might be Yutaka on the right too. Man, they kill off all the innocent naive characters? Those are the funniest.

Still, I look forward to seeing just how the false murder mystery plot is going to get pulled off - not to mention who's behind it (Miyuki. You know it.). I say false perhaps out of knowledge of the tone for the series - and for the fact that if it's not, I'll be the first with a pitchfork.

-CCY

School Days: Are we headed for the cliff?

With the recent episodes of School Days being aired and subbed, the burning desire of fans to go burn Makoto in a fire may have lessened slightly as a lot of the Uber Melodrama which has been kicked up is out of his control.

Still, it's no secret there was a large crowd that came for the Bad End, which only grew as Makoto did more and more stupid things and as characters did more and more stupid things to Makoto, like fall in love with him.

To that end School Days can almost claim the title of horror-mobile, as the most recent episode almost proves that no one...no one is safe from the Makotomobile. (Hint: You don't want a ride on it.)

Granted, there's one girl that has the hots for Taisuke but that goes beyond the realm of horror and into the supernatural, as in "What spell did he cast on her to do that?!"

But the purpose of this post is not to criticize nor support the nearly non-existant bases of the feelings between many of the School Days characters - although, I won't doubt that this sort of relationship isn't uncommon in most high schools. Not to mention, show me any anime meganekko and I'll show you highly biased worshipping.

Perhaps a more important issue for many viewers of the anime is not who has a crush on who or who's stupid for having a crush on who or who's stupid for not noticing stupid's stupid feelings for them but rather when we will get to the slashing (or roof-jumping, or stabbing, or whatnot).

In my previous takes on School Days I've tilted toward the kinder end towards Makoto, similarly to perhaps Kotonoha in the anime. Even as Makoto's brain slowly shifted from his head to his crotch in the later episodes, I stayed on the kinder end of things, suggesting maybe that he live...just not happily ever after. Proverbial life in prison instead of the death sentence.

And in the end I retained some hope for a happy ending, yearning for a Makoto 2.0 that wasn't a completely hormone-driven two-timing jerk.

But, two-thirds of the way through things continue to change and perhaps I've been a little shaken by the fall of even what I thought would be the most Makoto-resistant force to the typically infectious harem vibes that he gives off; it's hard to say whether a happy ending, a sad ending, or a bad one is the most realistic at this point.

So, it's time to step back, and take a look at the two-thirds mark as to where this show is taking us. Naturally, there will be more spoilers so I don't have to talk so ridiculously vaguely after the jump.

My first, almost Kafuka-like impression of School Days and endings was of the "Who would want to see such a depressing ending?" manner. As much of a show with characters that may deserve a bloody end as School Days may be, the fact of the manner was that this is one of those shows that actually airs on TV in Japan for everyone to watch - so certainly there had to be a large mass of unspoiled people out there who didn't exactly tune in to watch throats be cut.

Increasingly though this faction appears to be the minority; in the English-speaking anime community virtually everyone has seen or heard of the bad ends through experience or word of mouth, and I imagine the situation is the same if not greater on the other side of the Pacific. School Days is, if I'm not mistaken, a show that airs quite late at night (perhaps because it so badly wants to be R-15), so it's not horribly susceptible to innocent viewers.

As such, the large majority of School Days viewers just may be the type that are out for (Makoto's) blood. Now, it would be wrong to say that because a lot of people want it, it will happen, otherwise Haruhi would have had 20 seasons by now, Mina would have won, Aeris would have lived, and Makoto would have been long dead anyway.

Still, companies do quite often make an effort to pander to their fans, which is why catgirl maids, childhood friends with 10-year-old crushes, basketball-breasts with no concept of physics, and perhaps harem shows as a whole exist today. And certainly the BAD bad endings are what made School Days the eroge famous (in the English community, at least)
, so they are the most likely to get animated; School Days doesn't seem to have a per se canon path in which one main girl is strongly favored over the other (i.e. Ayu, Konomi, Arcueid, etc) so certainly any ending is open.

The most likely are at this point either the main characters' (Sekai/Kotonoha) or the bad ends, because those constitute the majority of said endings. It is technically possible for Setsuna or Otome (Hikari? The ponytail girl that has the same phone as Makoto) to claim victory still but from an anime standpoint they've entered the game too late - both of them tried to lay stakes on Makoto when, past halfway, there can really be no more serious bets.

Logically I've never really seen a harem anime where the winner did not have major presence with the main character in the beginning - I've referred to it before as "keepalive" checks, where a character gets at least minor attention paid to them in most episodes, and neither Setsuna nor Otome has come close to clearing these bars.

Not to mention, Setsuna's going to France, ponytails don't turn Makoto on and he doesn't appear to like delicious flat chests.

Kotonoha feels more plausible than Sekai because from the start Sekai's been somewhat of an outsider to the official relationship between Makoto and Kotonoha. Arguably Sekai launched the whole series with her kiss on Makoto at the end of episode one, and to that end she's at "fault" for stealing Makoto from Kotonoha. If the series wants to go with the typical "good" ending where the best woman wins, Kotonoha will probably be the victor.

But really, typical is the last thing School Days has been, being a cold, down-to-earth type harem anime in a world full of peaceful, magical, co-existing harems. At this point, I would really place money on the bad ending. As Mikoto has put it School Days almost seems like a lesson in how NOT to do relationships, as pretty much every character has put themselves in the wrong. And how to cap a lesson like that then with an ending that'll stick?

Think of those silly educational videos that one has to watch before drivers. The ones with the grisly footage of cars (and people. and families.) torn to shreds
because someone was drinking, or speeding, or something. It's a bit of propaganda, but it's goal is to get a message across: Drink, and die.

As such, School Days just might be saying: Have two girlfriends, and die. (Or have one of them kill themself) A bad ending to a convulted story. In the end, no one wins. The only way to win is not to be a player. Player, being in the pimp sense.

Go ahead, picture Makoto in a purple suit with a cane. It'll be a good break from the post.

Evidence from the anime itself seems to be mounting as well. The pressure is mounting on Kotonoha like they want her to snap. Aside from the rampant peer pressure from the student council - Setsuna especially - she's come across Sekai in at least two semi-make-out sessions with Makoto, and now coming across Setsuna who's "making a memory just for herself", it certainly seems like Kotonoha is getting the short end of the cliffhangers, which would point towards a snap later down the line.

The question is not if but how, as we've already seen one outburst from Kotonoha in slapping Sekai at the end of 7. If the pressure builds much longer, like if Setsuna shuns Kotonoha at the start of 9 (as she has done so far) and leaves the whole "Why is everyone making out with my Makoto?" thing standing, then we might see something deadly. If the storyboarders are feeling nice, maybe we'll just get an emotional breakdown or something.

In any case, I think the characters to watch over the next few episodes to gauge the stability are mostly the two guys. Of course Makoto's position is very important, especially now; he mentioned in episode 8 how "he's the worst", but it remains to be seen whether this is a sign of somewhat change or just a lapse into sanity. How he acts around Kotonoha (em, how he's going to make out with Kotonoha, whatever) and Sekai, especially considering he knows Setsuna's leaving, will be key.

Taisuke, the only man to ever possibly eclipse Makoto in stupidity, is a minor character but one single action he takes will play undoubtedly a huge role. For those who don't know much of the visual novel, there is something that Taisuke can possibly do at the end of the cultural festival that will undoubtedly push Kotonoha over the edge for sure. (I can't confirm if it directly leads to a bad ending, but it most certainly is a Not Good Moment)

Setsuna is probably the third X-factor; depending on how much she tells Kotonoha at the start of the episode, how Sekai takes her departure, and if she really takes the race for Makoto seriously (as she does have an ending and an entire spinoff, Summer Days), could send the series down completely different directions.

To be honest I'm not familiar with the inner workings of the visual novel, as in what event sends the story in which direction so I can't make educated guesses based on the events so far; but I think that based off the cues in the anime at least so far...it's not going to end well.

For them. It might mean that it ends well for us. Feel free to twiddle your fingers and chuckle evilly.

-CCY

Da Capo: The Second Raid

Fumoffu, etc. as the D.C. train chugs along. It may be a bit dated but there are more of me out there who look for information and recommendation on series from times past, so, uh, this post is for that horde then, as it is.

Now that I've got the memes and random in-jokes out of the way (it's what having Marisa Stole the Precious Thing looping does), Da Capo Second Season is actually a pretty timely watch, as with the anime of the visual novel sequel, Da Capo II (set forever in the future, technically), hitting this fall, it's a good time to be watching a lot and a lot of D.C.

Unless of course Second Season turns out to be a pile of junk. With second-season-eroge rivals such as Shuffle! Memories however there's always going to be something worse out there.

But still I find a 2-years-late sequel to a rather concluded anime to be strange - I would like to think that the main character Jyunichi would remain, well, attached to his love of the last season, but it doesn't seem quite so at the moment.

There's obviously some plot-related reasons why the centerpiece of last show dissapeared but it just seems like an excuse to open up the field again; D.C.S.S. is fairly newbie-safe and requires very little knowledge of the past season.

Overall D.C.S.S. appears to be a lot of the same from D.C., in that the first few episodes are going to be delightfully slow, bordering on ridiculous. In typical fashion I wrote the preview based solely on the first episode so expect it to be wildly inaccurate, but I do it just to see how opinions change over the course of a show. It's a strange changwe that happens to all of us; but it's completely normal...

Spoilers, whining, preview, etc, jump.

Speaking on that somewhat double-entendre-ish note, D.C.S.S. is largely the same as at least the early moments of D.C. in that it enjoys messing with your head, although I don't think a lot of the moments were established quite as well as the first season. It might just be, perhaps, that I'm getting used to being faked out.

Miharu - not Nemu - waking up Jyunichi in the morning was a good, and it pulled one over on me, but my God, that had to be the world's biggest lens flare/whiteout of camera thing ever.

Likewise, Jyunichi's "I'm totally going to make out with you now" shove of Kotori against the wall - to actually protect her from a passing car - was a good idea...maybe if I viewed Kotori as an actual contender.

Which I imagine I'm supposed to be. Kotori gets a huge amount of focus, at least in the first episode, which seems to set her up to be the main heroine of this series; at least discounting any important new characters, to be touched on later. It seems that with the plot-tacular disappearance of Nemu, Kotori has swept in to become Jyunichi's new escort, and certainly the two of them spend a lot of time together, going shopping, to the beach, etc; it would certainly take someone as dense and/or blindly ignorant as Zetsubou's Kafuka to not figure out that Kotori is all over Jyunichi.

Logically this falls into place with the last series as well, with the minor fact that she technically already had a confession there, even if it wasn't half-hearted. In any case, she is taking a second chance to shed Nayuki Status in this season, and I'd like to say she has a shot. Certainly it's an interesting dynamic in that Kotori has already been turned down, but continues to fight. In that sense, if D.C.S.S. can capitalize on that fact for Kotori, and maybe even the return of Sakura - not to mention the past arcs that all the other returning cast shares with Jyunichi - it will be very interesting to watch.

But logically, I think faithfulness is usually rewarded more and although Kotori likely has been that for the last two years, Nemu's been with Jyunichi approximately forever, and since they already swapped kisses and perhaps a lot more in the first season, I highly expect Nemu to swoop out of nowhere in the latter half of the season and snatch Jyunichi again.

This series is hard to gauge so far, however, in relation to how plot-ful it's going to be relative to the first half of D.C.; there are even more open ends than the beginning of D.C. brought up - aside from finding out just what Bad Thing happened to Nemu, there are many new characters that are highly unexplained, from the Hiyori-type meganekko (whoever invented the rule that female doujin artists in anime have to have glasses (exception: Najimi Osana (let's see how many nested parentheses now? (that's a total mood-killer (shut up. -ed)))) is a very smart person), to the one who addresses Jyunichi as a -sama, to a purple-hair underclassman (likely a quiet type), shrine girl Tamaki, and a bunch of other ones that don't stand out...yet.

Oh, and the one that flopped through his door right when Kotori was ready to get it on with him. A bit of a stretch but the series is resorting to a lot of fanservice early; although Miharu and Jyunichi's reenactment of the banana joke was somewhat amusing, it was rather creepy as well - almost makes you wonder if RoboMiharu is back, considering the density that she showed before she caught on.

At least she's not curious about what a wang is.

In addition we get lot of Kotori servicey stuff, whether it be her out in the rain or her taking a bath (in Jyunichi's house, natch). Luckily Jyunichi seems to be a little embarassed by this as well and so we avoid the Itou-vision closeups but it really drags the show on a bit.

Arguably there's already enough to discuss in terms of foreshadowing so I can't fault the series too much for taking it slow; being one of them time-conscious Americans I like things to keep up a constant pace, and so I tend to criticize things if they take too long to get going.

Nevertheless D.C.S.S. does show a lot of promise in its characters, although it does bother me trying to figure out how to keep an even harem fight (well, he does still have a lot of girls, I must say) when technically Nemu's already the absentee winner.

Or is she? We can never tell - well, 90% of the time, we can, but I also adhere to the horribly optimistic rule of "It ain't over until it's over," and there certainly is possibility for at least Kotori among others to come close...

-CCY
Wishing for more dynamics between Mako and Suginami

The DDR Corner: Anime, dancing, and you (and advertising)

The anime community and the Dance Dance Revolution community aren't horribly far apart. With both things being mostly Asian fads given strange looks by most Americans, it's not suprising that a large amount of anime fans enjoy DDR as well.

DDR as one might surmise is mildly lacking in official anime songs; while they feature enough Eurobeat, techno and J-Pop (and for lucky Americans, silly 30-year-old songs as well) to keep a mildly Japanophilic dancer happy, sometimes one just has the urge to bust some moves to Hare Hare Yukai (one can already bust some drums, but that very well doesn't count).

Enter popular DDR simulator Stepmania, pretty much a free DDR clone for your computer. The default interface is pretty much a carbon copy of DDRMAX, although the program can be reskinned in all sorts of fantastical ways. The program is pretty obvious and easy to use once you get the hang of it, and if not, I'll be sitting here with my Tech Support cap on backwards.

But for those new to Stepmania, you'll notice one thing; there's no songs.

Haven't found a place to put the jump yet so I'll leave you on a cliffhanger; if you're still interested in DDR on your computer, or if you just need a few more locations for songs, march onwards.

Yeah, if you ever wondered why that download size was so small it's because Stepmania doesn't come with a default song set. And it's probably better than way.

Customization is once again the name of the game, and this time it extends to songs as well. Like home versions of DDR, you can create your own steps for songs, except in Stepmania, you can create songs from the ground up!

The fact that pretty much anything can be stepped is evidently shown in Stepmania song sharing communities such as BemaniStyle (one of the largest, featuring what has to be thousands of songs). The variety of songs is staggering; American rock and music, anime theme songs, video game tracks, custom remixes of DDR songs, even a few joke tracks (This Is Spartaaaaa! Techno Remix). It's really endless and if you're not careful you'll find yourself gigabytes deep in Stepmania.

However if one is a mad anime addict and is looking for more of that and less of Sparta, it might be a bit tricky. There is definitely an established anime simfile (as they are called) base at BemaniStyle - I've even created four and uploaded them there myself (look at the top) - but there are certainly other places out there which are far better.

Otaku's Dream, I've found, is one of those Best Places, and it may say something that I only have one source for anime simfiles. This place for me at least is guaranteed to leave your bandwidth taken up for days on end - there is probably at least 4 or 5 gigs of zipped simfiles on there. Some may be duplicates but there are so many files on the site I can hardly check them all.

The simfiles are very high quality as well, usually, featuring full videos as well as steps. I would give them a reccomendation if you're in the need for more Stepmania simfiles here. A lot of these are not uploaded to BemaniStyle as well; my only complaint is that a lot of them are in huge (like, huge zip file is huuuuuuge. like, Mikuru huge.) packs of more than 400 MB so it's not exactly for the faint of connection. If you have the time, the urge, and the bandwidth, it's a great place though.

That's my 5 minute rant on Stepmania. If you have alternate sites for simfiles or some of your own you'd like to advertise, feel free to post about them.

-CCY

Series Review: Da Capo

"Once upon a time, on this island, there was a girl that fell in love with a boy."

It's certainly not just one girl to be worried about in Da Capo...

Da Capo is a pretty in-your-face harem series, unlike perhaps more subtle, more character-driven shows like sola and the Key works. The latter are technically harem shows, but they occasionally have other focuses other than how much everybody loves the male protagonist.

There is no such playing around in that sense in Da Capo. Pretty much everyone falls for - if they're not already in love with - Jyunichi Asakura, a normal schoolguy with a couple magical abilities, such as the power to see dreams and to produce funny food out of his hand.

His harem is equally slightly unorthodox, including:
- Nemu, his little sister (but not really)
- Sakura, his other little sister (but really, not really)
- Miharu, who comes in two flavors: robot and not robot
- Moe and Mako, twins of two different styles (one might say moe and not-moe)
- Yoriko, the cat-eared maid
- Kotori, the school idol

I say slightly unorthodox because while the cast does seem built mainly to reach as many different appeal types as possible - lolicon, siscon, meido...con, big breast girl...con... nearly every character does have a bit of depth to them with hidden secrets and stories.

By no means is Da Capo another Kanon, in that one's going to be in tears after every plot revelation. But one will find that there is a Almost Logical reason for there to be Cat Maids and lolis.

In fact, one of Da Capo's strengths is it's overarching theme. Most anime take at least a swing as creating some sort of thing that ties everything together; in some it's worked well, in others, it's just implausible; but the theme in Da Capo, the ever-blossoming cherry blossom trees, plays a big role in just about everything supernatural in the story without becoming silly.

But on becoming silly terms, look no further than the first, well, sixteen episodes of Da Capo. It's certainly a series that could've been condensed into a series half it's length, as the first half and change of the series was essentially filler. There was some useful character development and exposition in some of the episodes but largely these episodes had very little development outside of Moe's cup size.

As well, even when the series actually gets going, an 8-minute chunk of the episode (with the exclusion of the final 4 episodes) is reserved for a "Side Episode", more light-hearted stuff that I'm sure would be great if I weren't dying to get to the content.

In short Da Capo is not exactly a series that moves fast and I think it would lose in a footrace to Moe's speech rate (she clocks in at about the lighting slow speed of Sae of sola). If one has more tolerance than I for random fanservice and wacky hijinks then Da Capo will certainly be a much better series, but for me...it's just silly.

I've whined about it time and time again if you've been following the blogging on D.C. but in the end the series did manage to redeem itself with some useful high-pace episodes in the end. It's a strange approach to the show, considering that even within the show itself divisions were labeled and apparent between the non-plot first sixteen and the action-packed (sort of) final ten.

Da Capo doesn't pace itself very well and certainly seemed on the verge on stumbling over itself during the last few episodes as it tried to pack in all the plot that was missing, but in the end the conclusion was much more satisfying than originally expected.

This might be in the least because the main relationship between Jyunichi and the winner was one of the least touched on aspects of the show. It was pretty much said and done in one episode, and then the rest of the series dealt with the rest of the cast; so there's very little shafting done (note very little, not none).

That's pretty much all I can say at the pre-jump; post-jump we'll take a look back at my predictions from episode one and analyze some more of the characters in depth. If you want a tl;dr summary of Da Capo, it'd pretty much be this: if harem shows aren't your thing, this isn't going to come close to changing your mind. If you do like them though, Da Capo is a worthwhile if not great watch; and hang in there, the good stuff comes late, but it's there in the end.

In the end I managed to predict correctly that Nemu pulled through in the end; it certainly was cutting in close, given all the attention on Sakura at the end - but maybe it's my fault to not just see that the post-18 episodes were just the Post-Relationship Crisis that is common in shows like these (see: Kanon, Shuffle)

Although to be honest Sakura ended up stealing the show, which wasn't too bad. She had strong ties to the Overarching Theme, the big huge master magical sakura tree, and the fact that it grants all her wishes, even the ones she doesn't really mean (i.e. bad stuff happening to Nemu), was definitely an interesting plot element. As such the last few episodes strongly revolved around her coming to grasps with the fact that Jyunichi likes his other non-blood-related sister. It was pretty well executed, although I thought it was a bit rushed in the final episode.

That might just be because Nemu took up like 5 minutes plodding everywhere at her zombie pace.

Sakura's killing of the sakura tree (although I was expecting a more literal version, like, with an axe or something. That would be epic.) had some very interesting aftershocks as well in the final episodes. Kotori, Yoriko, and Miharu, three who owe a lot to the tree, got great - if not really saddening - resolutions to their stories.

Yoriko, the nekomimi maid who, somewhat predictably, actually was a cat was the first to go, in both senses of the term. With the sakura tree's powers gone, her time was running out, and so we got a very emotional goodbye. She had to carry the feelings of two people (Nerine who?) - the Sick Girl who actually never showed up, and her own feelings that developed for Jyunichi. Certainly the last few minutes of her goodbye were very strong, compounded only by her own breakdown in trying to hold up her role as the family maid, ending in...yeah, a goodbye kiss that I didn't quite see coming. One of the strongest part of the series.

Kotori, the school idol with the very intriguing ability to read people's minds, was next. This episode was good as well, although the most important part - the confession - felt almost like an afterthought. Maybe it's Kotori's fault that she didn't know she liked Jyunichi in that way until it was too late. In the end Kotori became a very dynamic and real character despite the bland starting point of School Idol, and I can understand why she has quite the fanbase in the D.C. community (which is small, to be honest). If there's one thing that annoys me about Kotori, it's that we never did get to actually find out how many guys confessed to her.

Miharu, the robot (and very much a real character unlike my first impression), since the real one went all coma on us (must, resist, spoilers) had some interesting existential crises; whether she should be more like the real Miharu, whether she should replace the real Miharu, whether she IS Miharu, which were touching as well; but somehow, her goodbye just didn't have the same strength to it for me; maybe it's because I've always thought of Miharu as somewhat of an annoying character since the start - although I can't say that now.

Oddly enough apparently real Miharu was a third (one might say fourth) wheel in Jyunichi's harem when he was little - considering she also considered him an onii-chan and that she wished to be with him forever it's surprising that, well, Robot Miharu's feelings didn't quite pan out as much as expected.

The one glaring issue in all of these conflicts though is that Jyunichi almost seems cold after all of it. Kanon 2006 did a good job of showing just how much stress five girls gone wrong (but not in the right 'wrong' way, if you think like that) can be on one man, but the tears shed by Jyunichi over Yoriko and over Miharu just didn't seem to carry over between episodes. Continuity has always been one of Da Capo's flaws, whether it be from the filler episodes (of which none is necessary) or here. It just doesn't feel like Jyunichi is feeling the emotion over the side characters as much as we do; in the end, Nemu really is the one that really matters to him.

Now you'll note that there's two characters missing from the list and that's the Mizukoshi sisters of Moe and Mako. If anyone can be classified as Nayuki Status in the end of this series it'd be these two, who really never had a plot at all. Mako was one of the first to have a "oh no, I'm falling in love with Jyunichi" sequence in the excellently executed episode twelve, but that was about as far as she got. Unfortunately, Moe never got beyond the "look, I talk slow and have big breasts" element of her character. Depressing, considering she was shaping up to be an interesting Halo Character from the start, but there really was nothing to her, at least in the anime.

In the end I think Yoriko was one of the characters that carried the series for me - although the amount of cliches she stacks up (maid -> catgirl maid -> shy catgirl maid -> shy clumsy catgirl maid -> shy clumsy catgirl maid with poor sense of taste) is scale-breaking, she has some good character development among her episodes, plays a minor role in the plot, and...well...maybe I'm a fetishist after all. While she doesn't quite reach the depth level of other likable maid-types (Hisui and Kohaku!), she's not a flat character in any regard. It's just a shame we never really got to know who that Quiet Girl in the Window was.

True to impression Da Capo did not shy away from using the confession - especially with the later episodes my bar set at 4.5 was cleared with relative ease. I really like it when the side characters in a show get representation, and when Yoriko and Kotori, even Miharu and Mako showed that romantic side of them, it was really touching.

The constant "But I love nii-san" of both Nemu and Sakura wasn't a detractor as well - the dynamics between Nemu and Sakura, in the last few episodes, was excellent; it was a conflict without actual conflict, almost. Sakura doesn't need a boxcutter, or even any evil intentions, apparently, to wreak havoc.

In the end Da Capo was a watch that I don't regret, in that the end did make up, in a sense, for the slow, slow, slooooooooooooooow beginning. But, it's missed potential in a sense; Da Capo could've been better, it could've been more, if it were better spaced, more consistent, if it didn't cram 20 minutes of flashbacks into one episode, if it didn't waste time with two recaps...this keeps it back from being a top-tier anime, or even one I can reccomend to casual fans; but for veteran viewers of anime who enjoy harem shows, this show is worth your time. Give it a shot; the first few episodes are stronger than the middle, and will probably be a barometer on how the series is. Da Capo doesn't bring a whole lot new to the table but it does know how to make it's presence known and definitely, without doubt, has it's moments.

-CCY

When Ends Are Nigh

They always say there's two sure things in life; death and taxes. The adage is quite the same for anime, except perhaps the sure things are a loli and a girl with breasts the size of her face.

Death in anime is very much applicable though as well; in not just the character sense but also in the series sense as well. Time tends to travel in the forward motion and so all anime series, with the possible exception of certain shonen series with 300+ episodes, eventually come to an end.

It's definitely a conflicting time when one gets to the last few episodes of a long-running series. It's often the most exciting and climatic point of the series; but on the same hand there's that creeping sense of time passing by.

One episode left. 25 minutes. There's the eyecatch. That's what, 12 minutes? Wait, the last part's probably an insert song. 8 minutes.

Tick tick tick.


Tick tick tick.

And before you know it, it's all passed by. Game over. One can watch the series again over and over but there's really nothing quite that matches the first viewing of a series. That sense of mystery, wondering what happens next, is gone. It's not like one can never watch a series twice; but the first viewing is definitely the best.

And so, sometimes one would wish that some shows would just go on forever. Certainly some shows have the possibility to do it; slice-of-life shows can run on as long as 5-minute plots can keep getting produced.

But, to be like a cheesy sitcom, you get what you ask for. Would it be such a good idea to keep some anime going for eternity? Or would a definite ending be better?

Of course each argument has their merits but I would have to side with the side of conclusion. The fountain of youth may keep shows looking young, but there's plenty of disadvantages to being young forever...

Perhaps the strongest argument for ending shows after a sane amount - I've always found 26 episode series to be a good number - is that after a certain point the fountain simply runs dry.

Especially for plot-driven stories - typically the visual novel adaptation genre - there's only so much you can do with a setup and a bunch of characters. A lot of the magic of these series lies in the balance between normal life and the paranormal, the supernatural, or maybe just the out of the ordinary.

As a series grows in length, the balance gets tipped more and more (plot twists and revelations can only last so long). And if things get too mindless...things get, well, dull, especially if one actually expects something to HAPPEN in these series. At least it's me that can't handle straight-up fanserviced and half-baked attempts at humor.

Slice-of-life shows may seem equally aimless as well, but a lot of them do seem to have forward motion as well. A lot of these series are school-life series, and characters actually do progress through those three years of school. Theoretically we could have the American sitcom version of time, where characters stay constant forever.

But how many different plots and gags can one come up with? It's certainly possible to watch Osaka being spacey, Konata being geeky, and Nozomu being in despair for hours and hours - but in the end, there's a concept of "too much of a good thing". Tsukasa and her naive moe mode is great, but could you watch that for 25 minutes straight?

...Don't answer that. The concept is the same for any other character and stereotype that you think of - oftentimes the characters in slice-of-life characters have a decent amount of depth, but usually they rely on the same jokes repeatedly. There's only so many different ways for Konata and Kagami to interact with each other. And well, it seems like it'd be almost strange for it to be any other way - so how much character development (change) can we have?

In the end a good reason to end anime is to prove that there is more to anime than Haruhi, or any mainstream show. It seems like a better idea to broaden one's horizons, even if it is just horizontally in the same genre (speaking as eight-harem-series-man).

In fact, even if one is such a mad fan of Kanon as myself, it's certainly not the case that one needs more content to have more enjoyment from the series. Just like a character that got killed off halfway through the series, even if it's gone it still exists in the heart or minds of everyone else.

There's always the fanart, the discussion of the deeper elements, even the speculation about the ends left open. Sometimes it's better for an ending to leave a few things unsaid, to leave some room for contemplation. In a harem show, the possibilities for shipping side characters together. In a plot-driven show, the meaning of a theme or a symbol at the end of a series (say, the shoot on the stump - and the fox in the background - at the end of Kanon).

In a sense, even in the absence of actual content there is still content apparent. And that's why endings aren't too bad.

-CCY
(who still wishes that he didn't finish Da Capo, TokiMemo, and Azumanga all at once.)

Ten Steps to Filler Time

Hey, animation studios! Budget got slashed in half again? Or the budget got blown on making things bounce? Forced to adapt a four-panel manga with no actual content? Can't manage to put 20 minutes of animation together? Then our pamphlet, Ten Steps To A Complete Episode On The Cheap is for YOU!

With your order this instructional material, you're ordering essentially a fool-proof method to stretch out your tight budget to fill up all that empty filler time you've got on your hands! Ten Steps gives you a full count 'em TEN easy ways to make an episode longer without spending an extra cent! It's like magic!

In fact, order now, and we'll throw in an extra method ABSOLUTELY FREE! That's not just ten, but ELEVEN steps! All for the price of one less! It's a win-win deal as long as you order RIGHT NOW!

Ten Steps to a Complete Episode on the Cheap gives you all the methods you need to make those minutes drag on without having to add any extra expensive story content or animation, for only $1 meeeeliion $99,999.99 a thousand bucks five hundred and five easy payments of 99 cents! And if you order right now, we'll throw in an extra method, FREE!

But remember, you have to order within the next 500 milliseconds to get that FREE method! Shippingandhandlingnotincluded cashmustbepaidupfront wearenotresponsibleforanyflamingsuicideormassviolence causedbythisproduct batteriesnotincluded.

Click the link and buy NOW!

Ridiculous intro aside, yeah, it's silly article day, discussing some of the ways I've noted that episodes just manage to draaaaaaaaaaag on some times; these filler methods aren't always a bad thing per se, if they're used correctly, but more often than not it induces Kyon-style "OMFG it's a pan up again" mode.

Disclaimer: Any slandering statements I made in the pre-jump segment were not aimed at any shows or animation studios in particular.


1) Completely irrelevant, ADHD-style segments
Quite possibly one of the most useful if not strange ways to stretch a show is to throw in segments that almost if not completely come out of nowhere. Often times they can be used as ridiculous transitions in less-than-serious animes; a way to get from point A to point B (eventually) without making much sense. It doesn't usually take too much work to get a laugh this way either, simply because it's so nonsensical that one cracks up just trying to make sense of it.

2) Repetition
Is something funny once? Do it again. They'll laugh again.

3) Flashbacks to what happened a minute ago
One of the most annoying things, at least for watchers of fansubs like me, are flashbacks to recent events, sometimes as early as a few minutes ago. It's an understandable move, especially across eyecatches (and therefore commericals) but it usually doesn't fail to elict a groan about how I just saw this. I think the most blatant violators of this are the ones who, after an eyecatch, replay the last 10 or 15 seconds of pre-eyecatch stuff.

4) Long OP/ED/eyecatch sequences and/or music sequences and/or live action
Not a common tactic at least that I've seen; at least, it's hard to detect that certain OPs/EDs are longer because usually they are still enjoyable animation; it's just canned, and so might get a bit repetitive. Music videos tend to be hit or miss - usually they're combined with a clip show/still shot montage which tends to make it a bit dull; I've even seem some shows which actually have music videos with no relation to the show (ever wondered why D.C. had 16 minute episodes?) - but usually, this can be forgiven if the music is good.

5) Repetition
Is something funny twice? Try it a third time. It's still good.


6) Really slow talking characters
Most of the offenders of this concept tend to get away with it, as there certainly does seem to be at least a small moe faction for slow-speech characters. But sometimes, it's just silly when a character takes ten seconds to say a sentence. How did they develop such an ailment?

7) Really long establishing shots
Transitions are surprisingly good for burning time. Since it'd be too abrupt to just cut from point A to B, and too silly to use a Ridiculous Transition, why not show a shot of the sky (time passing), and then of the area they're in. Maybe the ground (footsteps, human tracks). An open door (sign of life). Completely random people (proof that they exist). Eventually we'll get to the characters.


8) What faces?
Sometimes it's just sort of silly how things are animated so that all parts of faces don't have to get animated. Yeah, it's more dramatic if we can't see their eyes or something, but hiding the mouth just came off as sort of strange, especially if they just shove props in the way or something. Don't know how much budget it would cost to draw open mouth -> closed mouth -> open mouth over and over, but I can't imagine it's much work.

9) Triple pans
Or any 'x' number of pans where 'x > 1'. As with the ADHD sequences these can be used for ridiculous effect at least - putting a triple pan where there's no reason to be one. But most of the time it's more of a "Hay look guys she has boobs lol. Wanna see it again? Omfg still hot. Wanna see it again?" swimsuit triple pan or something. Usually these are quick at least; but I suppose slow pans are somewhat annoying as well (although usually it's funny when the other side notices, in a bit of a fourth wall moment). But this is sort of scraping the bottom of the well.


10) Awkward silence
Useful in all kinds of situations, from the guy walking in on the girl in the bathroom to the guy walking in on the girl changing to the guy walking in on the girl with another guy to the just plain 'what the hell do I say now?' post-plot moment. If they're generous we may get some pans back and forth with some strange camera angles at least. Usually these are necessary in shows, but when they stretch out a long (as in, meme long silence is looooooooong) time, it's sort of silly. Unless...

11) Repetition
Something funny the last three times? Do it a couple hundred more. I've found that repetition walks a fine line of funny - I call it the Rule of Ridiculous. If something is funny once, it's probably funny again. It might be funny a third time. Any more than that and it's just stupid. Unless it keeps going for another ten or twenty times, at which point one realizes it's simply ridiculous and has to laugh at the insanity of it all. It's like an inverse bell curve, in that it's good if you do it once or a hundred times, but not an amount too far in-between. I find this applies to a lot of elements in fiction, such as the ones above.

-CCY

A happy day out of the year for Sacchin

Following on the heels of my praises of Hisui and Sacchin in the other post, Kagetsu Tohya (the visual novel sequel to Tsukihime that I've raved about before) is telling me that it's Satsuki Yumizuka's birthday today.

As silly as it is to celebrate the fictional birthday of a fictional character (which would explain why my post is the first one for it as far as I can find), I'm an anime blogger who has lost all sense of shame over the summer and as such it's time to have a day where maybe it won't be so sad for Sacchin.

(Now if only that wasn't one of her two-odd appearances in KT...)

Pictures, character ranting, blatant fanboying, etc after the jump. Spoilers on her character from the Tsukihime visual novel, if that worries you.

The Tsukihime fanbase has always been a tough one to get a read on; unlike other series where clear fan favorites have been established, it's difficult for white me to say just how popular or unpopular a character like Satsuki is.

While it's true that the catchphrase "Isn't it sad, Sacchin" was borne out of, I believe, a CCC doujin page discussing how Satsuki came in last place in the popularity poll, it certainly feels like, at least in the English-speaking Type-Moon community, that Satsuki has quite a following, at least more so than the likes of, say, other main heroines, like Ciel or Kohaku.

I'm pretty sure Arc is up there because she's the Main Character. Akiha's a tsundere, and an imouto. Hisui's a shy/quiet girl (and a maid, I suppose) and adorable to the eleventh power. So while I don't expect Sacchin to be the unloved character of the Tsukihime universe like her reputation is, she's not going to be a chart-topper at any rate.

But, topic-wise, some of the less Sacchin-devoted may ask, why Satsuki? (and why do you keep changing back and forth between the two names?)

I think the first reason that a lot of people like Satsuki is, well, what has come to be known in the business as the Nayuki Factor. Characters that have high potential in this factor are usually the ones that well, don't win, to put it that way. These characters get the shaft in one or multiple ways, whether it be simply getting ignored by the main character or all the way up to, in poor Sacchin's case, turning into a vampire and dying. In a sense, a lot of these characters are Red Shirts in that they are sort of expendable, and not the main focus of the series.

Those of us who like to root for the underdog will find all sorts of things to like in the Nayuki-Class as a result; that urge to see the infamous Nayuki Ending, or Satsuki Path, really drives a fanbase, to the point to where it almost becomes ridiculous (I know the fabled Satsuki Path has been mocked once or twice by Type-Moon in their works).

So, perhaps if Satsuki did have an arc in Tsukihime, she wouldn't have had as much love as she does now. But, as just mentioned, there are plenty of things to find to like about Sacchin.

She's pretty much The Normal One of Tsukihime, something that no other main heroine in Tsukihime can attest to; although she does get vampireized, it's not a condition that exists in the start of the visual novel, as opposed to everyone else, who is just hiding secrets from you. Sacchin is closer to a, I suppose, more typical and pure visual novel girl, the kind that fell in love with the main character X years ago and just now is trying to really capture him.

Except in Tsukihime, everyone is somewhat of a three-dimesional character, and so Satsuki made a few wrong moves and ended in up the perilous situation of being a vampire, leading to the famous confrontation between her and Shiki which brings new meaning to his promise to "always protect her" - which in this case, means killing her to end her suffering.

And yeah, there's nothing you can do about it. It's really sad, Sacchin.

Somehow it seems that the more tears a visual novel character can induce in their arc, the more love they get; maybe this is part of that whole "moe = want to protect" thing (which is probably completely wrong on my part), but definitely I am a fan of characters like Satsuki, and Hisui, whose whole story - especially the ending - just brings a new meaning to ";_;".

In conlcusion, yay for Sacchin, the underdog character of Tsukihime who will probably never get a true closure apart from death; but she lives on in non-canon stories (truth: her Blood Arc in Melty Blood, especially versus a Shiki, is one of the best moves in the game to watch) and in the fanbase.

If you're looking for those pictures of Satsuki, I'm sorry to do this to you but I've put it into a zip file and uploaded it to Rapidshare; 25 images is a pain in the butt to upload one-by-one, so download them all at once and pick out the ones you like. There's a lot of good artwork in here.

Yay, Sacchin! Fight!

-CCY

Da Capo 22: Singing the Praises

What can I say? It ends up getting better in the end after all. Even if the episode was 99% predictable from start to finish, I find myself to really be a sucker for visual novel conversions.

Although I've been through the same forced emotions tens of times, the eleventh time that a seemingly normal, happy character that will last forever dies, dissapears, or otherwise comes down with a case of Serious Plot, I still manage to tear up like the sap I am.

And what really makes things, well, funny in a way is how even my computer is in cooperation with it...

My computer has a program that changes the background every minute or so to give me an excuse to download and keep 5 more Nagato wallpapers keep things fresh, but somehow right in the middle of Yoriko's goodbye scene, this popped up...


Art imitating art, isn't it. It's such a odd coincidence that almost wants to make one laugh with tears. In a way one could almost make a convulted comparsion between the almighty Sacchin and Yoriko, in that they are both characters that are apparently not meant to last the duration of their show, yet still madly in love with the main character (who doesn't see it coming until it's too late).

Now to be honest Sacchin doesn't have cat ears and isn't a maid and didn't ever really get to make a move on Shiki - isn't it sad? - but the untimely coincidence of her popping up when say, it could have thrown one of about 80 other non-Sacchin wallpapers on (although I really do need more of her) really serves in a way to compound the emotion of Yoriko's episode.

So I guess the point here is that other than that, Yoriko wins at Da Capo; although she's basically a typical maid-type character; kind of shy, bad at cooking, a behind-the-scenes person - it's almost ironic that Yoriko's VA did Hisui in Melty Blood; if you ever wanted to know what Hisui looks like with less of a stoic outer shell and with, um, cat ears, I think Yoriko would make a good substitute.

Yoriko: Sugar-free Hisui, for when Hisui is so moe you're gonna die, or whatever that phrase was.

Her ridiculous struggles with walking outside (i.e. omfg other people) are similar in both silliness and cuteness to Hisui's struggles with physical contact (i.e. omfg dirt). Yoriko, although somewhat shy and out of the way, does have confidence it seems when things come down to crunch time; tilting towards the Mina Yayoi end of the shy scale rather than, say, Kaede Fuyou. And yeah, I suppose one has to appreciate a character that is able to come to grasp with the limited flow of time, and that is able to sacrifice oneself for the greater good (Nemu).

Myself, being much less mature, thinks "Should've voted for Sakura, then all this wouldn't have to happen..."

-CCY

Connecting the Dots (and the Characters) in Anime

In the recent anime season a certain harem lead who will pretend to be unnamed has come under much fire for being a cold-hearted, brainless jerk who thinks with his crotch instead of his head.

Now the purpose of this post is not to defend this guy or to add fuel to the burning of his effigy but rather to address a different point often brought up in the discussion of this character.

"I stopped watching the anime because of this guy."

It's a strange thought; that a character repulses one so much that they can't even stand the sight of him (or her, of course) anymore.

The core of today's question, to get to the point, is whether an anime has to have likeable characters, per se, in order to be, well, watchable.

Is it necessary, for one to be able to connect with the characters or plot of anime anime to make it enjoyable.

Of course, it is always preferred to have these aspects present, but in the absence of such factors, does the show shrivel up and die like a plant without water?

Naturally the show I was discussing in the pre-jump, School Days, is a strong proponent of the argument that one can have, well, despicable characters and still be an entertaining watch. There are generally two types of people who watch School Days:

1) Those who watch it like any other harem show, rooting for a winner, either Katsura or Sekai. Many of these people may still find hope in Makoto, attempting to defend him as a victim of cirumstances (teenager-ism).

2) Those who watch it hoping for a train wreck; the bad endings. This group is increasingly getting larger, as people lose all hope for Makoto, or anyone in this
show.

The second group is an example of those who really want nothing to do with anybody in the show, and yet still derive enjoyment (in a dark sense, at least) watching the cast stumble all over each other.

School Days, admittedly, however, is a bit of an exception, in that its endings were infamous, with some waiting for the wreck from the start. So what about other shows?

Comedy shows seem to be also immune to this rule. For example, it's highly unlikely that you REALLY have anything in common with the cast of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. You can claim to be OCD, or a stalker, or a hikikomori, but you're just not going to quite make it to the insanity level that they do.

And the insanity level of just about everyone in SZS is what naturally makes the anime great; but again the question is being dodged in that while viewers can't connect directly with the cast, they aren't per se disliking the cast.

To be honest it's hard at least for me to find characters that I truly dislike; although I may have preferences against, say, lolicons, or characters with ridiculous cup sizes, that doesn't give me a valid reason to hate on Primula, or Moe-senpai, or whomever.

But even in my less ridiculously forgiving moments of judging characters, it seems hard to turn down a series on the merit of unmeritable characters. Even during the dull, plotless period of shows like Da Capo, there is always the promise of, well, change; and this is what draws us back into shows with a cast full of nobodies.

Most shows are very rarely constant; even relatively "pointless" slice-of-life shows like Lucky Star show clear evolution and expansion of the characters' personalities (and yes, that goes beyond Tsukasa moe++ as well). It's the little things that happen, whether it be the slow but steady snapping of a character, a sudden plot twist that turns everybody on their head, or something else, that at least keeps me coming back to shows.

Maybe it's because there are only two types of situations out there in terms of liked/disliked characters; either there's a type of "halo character" that can be followed that brings the show up, or the entire group of people is junk, but in both cases there is almost an urge to keep watching to either see that character again, or, admittedly, see the crash.

Perhaps others who have less time and more anime have a different attitude but that's what blog posts are for, discussing, flaming and expressing opinions and that is mine on whether one has to be sympathetic with the characters of a show in order to enjoy it. Maybe it's being in the golden age of school-year summer that allows one to watch anime endlessly and enjoy everything, but it seems to me that it's a bit ridiculous to stop watching a show just because one doesn't agree with the actions a character takes with another.

So what if Aeris died? It might seem selfish to say "it's for the greater good," but essentially it's true. Bad things, shocking things aren't meant to happen solely to screw over the viewer. There are reasons. There are motives. There is character development that is borne out of it, which allows for that all-important change in a show that keeps it fresh and interesting.

I guess in the end of this entirely off-topic rant, the most important thing is change; mixing things up, making things feel new again. Makoto might be a bona fide pimp jerk, but he still shows emotion. Konata might still be a level 99 otaku, but she still shows human thought processes. And, perhaps the most famous thing to justify change, tsunderes. That switch between cold and shy (to sum it in one word); would there be as much of a giant fandom for Haruhi, Makoto (Sawatari), Shana, Akiha if they were just one side all the time?

-CCY

Down the Homestretch: Da Capo

The gears start to wind as the oldest anime being watched this summer lurches into motion coming to the two-thirds mark.

If there's one complaint about this series it's that it's horribly, horribly slow. It was said by a commenter on my last D.C. post that the series essentially starts at episode 16; even the anime backs this up at episode 15, saying that "ahead there is no more moe, only tears".

Somehow I wish things had started maybe a bit earlier as for the first half of an entire 26-episode series to be pretty much write-off-able is kind of unforgivable. The ending is shaping up to be vaguely interesting if something ends up happening with all the loose ends that have yet to be resolved.

To be honest, it's a lot of loose ends, as there didn't seem to be much of, well, direction with the characters up until when the plot officially started.

Spoilery whining after the jump.

The strange thing about Da Capo so far, is that it hasn't really had 'arcs', per se, which is odd for a harem-type anime. Even in Shuffle, an anime with an equally worthless first half (although, somehow, Shuffle actually did have vague miniplots, I believe), had minor arcs in the beginning with Sia.

Da Capo's simply stuck to two rounds of character episodes and two recaps and that took care of the first 16 episodes of the series. Character episodes haven't always proven to be a bad thing in the past, but with Da Capo, it just seems like the characters weren't really even built up in a fashion similar to how other shows did their character episodes.

I enjoy having likable or at least in-depth characters in anime, and Da Capo's just feel a bit...well...empty. There are plenty of interesting devices in Da Capo; Miharu being a robot; Kotori reading minds; and well, Sick Girl and Cat Maid - but there hasn't been any real capitalization on it outside of humorous potential as of yet.

This might be because D.C. has a huge focus on it's two female leads, Sakura and Nemu, who faithfully move the plot forward with lots of flashback fun. Episodes 16 and 17 certainly felt like they were trying to catch up with lost dream sequence time; it's good that we get to see a bit of their past but there hasn't been a whole lot - yet - that's question raising.

We got to see the same dynamics between Jyunichi, Sakura, and Nemu that exist today, with Sakura being hyper and Nemu giving up annoyingly easily. Additionally, why Nemu's always been Jyunichi's non-blood-related (emphasis on that) sister was revealed, in that her parents got in a Deadly Car Crash.

Not to rip on the series entirely - there were one or two interesting things to take note of, such as Sakura casually mentioning Kotori's and Yoriko's powers. I'm not sure why she would know this but Sakura continues to be the biggest (ironically) and most interesting mystery of its show.

It seems the majority of Nemu's backstory has been revealed and so it will probably soon be Sakura's turn in the spotlight. She has plenty of things left untold - for example, the infamous Third Promise from episode one, the reason why she's so short, her connection to the sakura tree, etc. It's definitely an interesting question that she brought up at least, that if she had matured at the same rate at everyone else, would Jyunichi like her more? Not to mention her talk about her talking about Jyunichi "giving her a kiss to break the spell" - it's tacky and might just be figurative but I'm a conspiracy theorist and it definitely seems that there is Something Up with Sakura.

Nemu seems to have the victory all but locked at this point but there are some aspects that make me worry that Sakura might steal the win at the last minute. Although Nemu and Jyunichi did both Willingly Kiss each other, what annoys the Despairing Conspiracy Theorist is that 1) the kiss was offscreen and 2) we haven't gotten the confession in words from Jyunichi yet.

Naturally a logical solution would be that they're saving that moment for the very end of the anime (see: Cardcaptor Sakura: Sealed Card) but for the sake of making Da Capo a more exciting anime, it's not over until it's over.

In the end D.C. is not really as bad so far as I've made it sound; it's a personal taste as to how much lighthearted comedy one can stand and for me I prefer to leave that to the dedicated anime (Azumanga, etc.) or at least have the light parts balanced by heavy - or at least useful - parts in the same episodes. Da Capo takes a different approach in that it seems to get all the funny and the fanservice out of the way in the beginning, and now coming into the last part of it it's taking out its big guns and kicking into gear.

One can only hope that the post-confession era of episode 19 on will keep the pace going and resolve some of the issues of...well...the rest of the harem. Certainly the second level of the harem (i.e. those who don't address Jyunichi as Nii-san) hasn't recieved a lot of attention so far, and it will be interesting to see if they play any role in the end.

Not to mention, what the end will be itself.

-CCY