Between mediocre anime and really great anime lies one’s comfort shows. These are shows that generally don’t aspire to much, but do their thing well. At the same time, there are also shows which fall short of their expected potential, but are still quite entertaining regardless. Here’s a list of 2008 shows that fall into either of those categories.
Just going to post random stuff.
I saw this in Tokyo Kid a few days ago. I wonder how well these are selling in the US– they’re not as good as the Japanese ones, but they’re not bad either. I didn’t check the price, but they’re probably cheaper than just the Japanese covers which are something like 9000 yen.
I had no idea there was a place in Massachusetts called Wonderland. Apparently they’re all up in the dog racing there. Or were– that shit got hit with the banhammer recently. I’ve never taken the Blue Line, by the way.
I saw these in Bed Bath & BEYONDDDD today while looking for a laundry thing since my old laundry basket exploded over the past week. I would have bought one of these, but they were too small. Also, explaining its existence to my parents would be awkward. Well, my dad. My mom reads the comic and the blog anyway.
I had no idea Pacman was on these soy sauce packets.
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Bonertown and I go on for an hour on how useless Code Geass season 2 was. Lots of spoilers abound, as usual, so listen with that in mind. This one isn’t just filled with spoilers for Code Geass, though– it has Death Note and Gundam 00 spoilers, as well. There’s also a BIG Cowboy Bebop spoiler that everyone should know by now.
Guest
Songs
Current
Chi’s Sweet Home: Pretty easy to catch up on considering each episode is only three minutes. I watch them in sets of four here and there.
Code Geass R2: Oh lawd.
Golgo 13: ….
Hidamari Sketch x365: This show almost has the best Shinbo opening ever. Almost, since the best Shinbo opening is the second SZS opening. Neko Mimi Mode gets an honorable mention.
Koihime†Musou: Still junk food. Half-way done.
Kyouran Kazoku Nikki: Yuuko Gotou is a butterfly girl. Win.
Macross F: I kind of don’t care anymore. Not like I don’t like it, but eh. Who cares.
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: Has slipped into being kind-of-sort-of generic, but I don’t care. It’s done well and I’m actually archiving the episodes!
Sekirei: I can enjoy me some tits, too.
Slayers Revolution: Where is it.
Strike Witches: Still the best of the season.
To Love RU: SAIGO NO CHANCE NOW IS THE TIIIIIIIIIIIME. Better than Rosario+Vampire.
World Destruction: Disposable action series. Has Toru Furuya.
Zero no Tsukaima ~Princess no Rondo~: Almost as good as season two. Kind of slipped down into season one level of good.
Zettai Karen Children: Plot’s getting pretty intense.
Birdy is on hold.
Will write about the upcoming season soon. Lots of regular looking stuff.
Character centric humour? Unbelievable! Though, I’m not sure if this one is really funny. I just wanted to write something about 0nT. I hope it’s funny though, since the next comic is basically this joke again. This comic kind of feels like corny anime humour, so if you like that (as I sometimes do) I guess you’ll like this. By the way, they’re in Staples. It’s time to buy school supplies.
Time to finally address that question I asked to all of you about a month ago regarding what you want out of the comic. Like I said earlier, I won’t 100% implement any of these suggestions, but I did read them all and took them into consideration. One big one was that the humour is too obscure. This is not something I will change, since this comic is built around obscure not-quite-PPD-level-but-more-Hayate-level anime jokes. One other suggestion was to flesh out the characters more, which I do kind of try at. I’m not a great writer, and I’m no master at defining character traits, but I do try my best to improve. I’ll just say that yeah, I’m working on it, and hopefully… maybe these characters will be memorable and live on in your hearts forever! Yeah right. But I’m trying. And the last notable bit of advice was to just keep doing what I’m doing and improve, which is what I’m doing anyways. Or trying to. So, thanks for the comments. They were helpful.
Anyways, on to other stuff. One show that’s been surprisingly enjoyable has been World Destruction. Despite the dumbass premise, the show actually manages to be very entertaining. It’s a popcorn-flick type of entertaining, but still entertaining nonetheless. All the characters are fun, and each episode is written decently enough. The best episode ever was probably when they pit Toru Furuya and Shuuichi Ikeda together as rival characters… and these characters were both cute little teddy bears. It’s great.
Nogizaka Haruka has kind of gone down a quarter of a notch from its opening episodes, but I still like it a lot. Haruka is consistently delightfully moe, and her younger sister Mika is the kind of mischievous loli I love. I hope another season is greenlit, since one cour isn’t really enough.
Code Geass is really bad. But it’s gotten bad in the same way that I assume Kazuo “PEE IN MY EYES TO WASH OUT THE BLOOD” Koike manga is bad. It kind of lagged in the middle because the writers were taking their bullshit entirely too seriously, but now it’s relaxed back into being wonderfully over-the-top and nonsensical. What’s sad about the show at this point is that the damage done, and it’s not Taniguchi’s fault. I really wanted to see his original concept– what he had in mind sounded like it could be s-CRY-ed-level good, as opposed to this season which is very School Days. Except not as cool.
And that’s all for this week. I have a day or so off before classes start, so in that time I’ll try to crank out this other comic and get back on track. Later!
Current
Chi’s Sweet Home: I’m almost confident that I have not seen an episode within the past month. Oh well.
Code Geass R2: Feeling really Gundam Seed Destiny at this point. The stupidity is actually getting to me now.
Golgo 13: ….
Hidamari Sketch x365: Liking it better than season one, possibly because subs are coming out regularly and the episodes are slightly faster paced.
Koihime†Musou: Junk food anime. Tasty but forgettable.
Kyouran Kazoku Nikki: Fun to watch– a curious mix of serious stories with comedy-like execution.
Macross F: Uh, I have no idea what this show is about anymore, I just like Ranka Lee. Sheryl can die in a fire etc.
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: I support anime about hot otaku girlfriends.
Sekirei: My Kanokon for this season– well produced fanservice fluff.
Slayers Revolution: Fun fantasy series– want to get around to the originals eventually.
Strike Witches: DELICIOUS FLAT CHESTS CROTCHES AND PANTIES ALL OVER DEAR GOD BEST OF THE SEASON
Telepathy Shoujo Ran: Ok kids thing. Have three episodes waiting to be watched– if they suck I’ll drop it.
Tetsuwan Birdy Decode: I liked the first two episodes… where’s the rest??
To Love RU: Why can’t THESE types of Jump shows run for 100+ episodes?
World Destruction: Has turned into a surprisingly fun adventure/fantasy series. Completely disposable, but I like it.
Zero no Tsukaima ~Princess no Rondo~: Girls, girls, GIRLS!
Zettai Karen Children: Watching it raw at this point. Hopefully Chihiro will continue on with it now that Deculture has folded.
Dropped Natsume Yuujinchou because it sucked.
Sitting on a bunch of DVDs and manga, too.
Man, so much anime, so little time. I work 40 hours a week, dammit!
Current
Chi’s Sweet Home: Good ol’ cartoons
Code Geass 2: Best part of my week.
Golgo 13: ….
Kyouran Kazoku Nikki: I’ve finally accepted the fact that this is not a comedy. It still works, but I like it less than I initially did.
Macross Frontier: Consistently entertaining. Though honestly, I just watch it for Ranka and space fights.
Telepathy Shoujo Ran: lol kids show. Like the psychedelic effects.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann music videos: Entertaining little diversions.
To Love Ru: Wonderfully entertaining boobalicious fun.
Toshokan Sensou: Kind of badly written, but it’s a not-boring IG show.
Zettai Karen Children: It has faults, but it’s just too entertaining to not like.
Waiting for other things to start.
Manga
Read a bunch of stuff. Keroro Gunsou is great and I wish I read it 5 years ago and the Hayate manga is just the anime with more stylized art. Moving on to a vampire triple-play with Blood Alone, Karin and Tsukuyomi.
Image stolen from here. Please don’t kill me original artist.
Current
Chi’s Sweet Home: Cat.
Code Gayass R2: Even more over the top! And they said it couldn’t be done…
Golgo 13: Man this is some trashy stuff.
Kanokon: Man this is some trashy stuff. With heart shaped nipple covers.
Kurenai: IT’S GREEEAAAAT. The end of episode 9 was a bit wonky, but this one is still the best.
Kyouran Kazoku Nikki: Liking it less. The episodes seem kind of thrown together and the direction is poor. Maybe it’ll get better.
Macross F: Ranka is still cute. The CG is still good. Story is moving kind of slow, though.
To-LOVE-Ru: Wow, way behind on this one. Still, good harem fun that’s worth catching up on.
Toshokan Sensou: Getting a bit too serious. Still, it’s a Production IG show that’s actually good! They haven’t done that since IGPX (shutupitsagoodshow)
Zettai Karen Children: As good as Kurenai but for totally different reasons. So cute~. The story stuff is silly, but who cares.
Not so current
Nadesico: Kind of got stuck at episode 18. I’m enjoying it, and I can see why it’s an anime staple, but I’m not totally in love. It seems like its obsessed with fitting in AS MUCH INFORMATION AS POSSIBLE into 25 minutes sometimes. I don’t see the genius that dm sees in it yet.
Dropped
Allison and Whatever: Not like I don’t like it, just I noticed I was behind by 3 episodes and didn’t really feel like catching up.
The last episode of Miina is finally subbed. I dropped off at episode 8, so I’ll marathon the last 3 at some point.
Will finish Baccano after this post.
After Nadesico I may watch Planetes since I realized I own it all and haven’t finished it. Whoops.
Code Geass won’t win any awards for outstanding writing, but I’ll be damned if this stuff isn’t extremely entertaining. It’s like a 24 minute party each week, and everyone’s invited. The problem with having a guest list like this is; while you’ll get some dudes who really know how to party it up, you’ll also get some dead serious types who take all the fun out of the whole affair. You know, those guys who write the Code Geass entries on Wikipedia and sometimes forget to write in the historical present.
Code Geass is fun. It is not something meant to be taken entirely seriously. It’s a show that concerns itself with giant, toyetic, multi-coloured robots and plans that are about as plausible as the plot of a Golgo 13 episode. Yet, despite this, you have an entire legion of fans who treat this thing like the End of Evangelion. They’re the kind of people who take you extremely seriously when you crack a sarcastic joke. They somehow miss the irony here, which I find quite difficult since it hits me in the face like a sack of bricks episode after episode.
Geass is not deep. Geass is not complicated. Geass is not clever. Geass is crazy. It’s motherfucking insane. It has the kind of plot that only a night of heavy drinking and drug use could produce, and that’s why I love it. It beats me in the face each week with a giant WHAT bat, and more often than not it beats me way more than once. It’s a good time.
What ruins that good time is the fans, though. I mean seriously, how many times are you going to take the same joke seriously? It took me four episodes before I learned that Code Geass wasn’t going to be serious business, so I don’t see why these guys haven’t even so much as considered that their holy grail of alleged exceptional writing may not be as serious as they think two seasons in.
C’mon guys, seriously. What is this, an episode of Gundam 00?
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