Comic Site Rant: フルフルフルムーン

Posted On April 8, 2007

Orginal Post

I didn’t notice until this morning that in the orginal version of this comic, Rets had six fingers in the last panel. I hastily fixed that a little while ago. It looks a little strange, but it’s better than him being a six-fingered oddity. Aside from that, I’m more or less happy with this one. Not necessarily specular, but not bad. The comic is making fun of AnimeTV. If haven’t already had the, erm, privilege of seeing it, you’re not missing much. I wrote about it on some other guy’s blog. There may be a short follow up to this comic.

The Spring season is underway, and honestly I’m not all that hot about too many things. Gurren Lagann didn’t let me down in its first two episodes, which is good, given I’ve been hyped about it for months. I kind of wrote it about a little while ago. Hayate the Combat Butler is a unexpected surprise. Before watching it, I didn’t know much about the original manga past the premise (which is pretty funny in itself) so I went into the show with no expectations, except for “it better be funny.” And, oh man was it funny. This kind of humour is right up my alley. There are a ton of parodies and references, a number of self referential jokes and a pinch of mean spirit that makes for something that kept me laughing for a good 24 minutes. There is more than that, though– the production values are spectacular, at least in this first episode. The studio behind the production seems fairly new. I’ve not seen Kirarin Revolution, but I’ve seen the productions they did in-between work for, and they were fairly high quality animation wise, so I expect the quality to continue. Also, the vocal cast is top notch. I can’t get enough of Norio Wakamoto’s narrations, or Rie Kugiyama’s tsundere voice (though I do prefer Chiwa Saito…)

Kyoto Animation‘s new show, Lucky Star recently premiered and I just finished with the first episode in its “rawest” form. It was all lost on me, but the animation is good. The kind of detail KyoAni put into productions like Haruhi and Kanon is no longer here, mostly due the subdued art style. They make up for this by making the animation very fluid when they need to, and keeping the designs very consistent throughout. One thing that bothers me are the backgrounds. They seem too roughly rendered against the smoothly drawn characters. I kind of wish they’d make the backgrounds look more streamlined. The opening is quite good– very energetic. Despite what everyone else is saying, I like the song…

Provided I can get the right people together, there might be a spring season review podcast on the horizon.

I’ve been watching Tsukuyomi ~Moon Phase~ lately. I missed the show when it was airing, but was interested once I found out Akiyuki Shinbo was behind it. I only became a fan of Shinbo via his work on the opening episodes of Negima!?. I didn’t think much of his work in Pani Poni Dash, given that works mainly because of its gags, and not for innovative direction. Probably the only reason why I make such a big deal about Shinbo is a because a certain forum member on a certain forum was always making a lot of noise about him, so I had to see what this noise was about. Tsukuyomi definitely has spots of wonderful direction. I can’t say it’s totally consistent throughout the series, but it hits a lot, and misses a few times. I love Shinbo’s use of colour and his odd camera angels. They make for a very rich visual experience. I’m not only mesmerized with the direction in this series, but also the characters. I like the development of Hazuki and Kouhei’s relationship. It may be a bit creepy to some, but I think it’s written very well. In fact, I think most of the characters in general are written well. The story on the other hand could use some work, as it’s basically a constant chase scene. I find I like the more humour oriented bits of the series better, but there are some great action bits. However, I don’t think anything can beat the tubs falling on people’s heads. For some reason that always makes me laugh…

That’s all for this week. Later.

i promise i’ll update the reference guide…