Today is December 3rd, and you know what that means!!
It’s Nagi-tan’s birthday!!
She’s a little shy, but she eventually ate her cake. She did insist on the Rei cup, however.
You can celebrate Nagi-tan’s birthday, too! And in many different ways! Either do it the way I did it above, or this next way!
I’m not sure if you guys are aware of this, but there was a good episode of Hayate no Gotoku!! (the two exclamation marks mean season 2, remember?) Actually, there were a few good episodes, but this one was the funniest.
If we were to compare this episode to any given episode of season one, it’d fair pretty strongly. The direction is fast paced, and the references are all strong. I’d probably have more to say about this episode if I wrote about it right after it aired, but Japan was busy, ok? I’ll see what I can do, though.
The first half is an advertisement for the Hayate no Gotoku!! trading cardgame. That’s cool. I watch cartoons made to sell toys all the time. But what makes it even better is that it’s strung into an awesome Yu-Gi-Oh! reference. Actually, I think it’s more a reference to the Nicodou meme that sprung up as a result of that Yu-Gi-Oh! episode, but either way it’s awesome. I laughed outloud at 1am in the morning in my little guesthouse room with thin walls in Japan when Nagi said ずっと私のターンだ！
BUT THEN B-PART CAME.
B-part isn’t as good as A-part, but it’s still quite powerful. There’s lots of fun sitcom hi-jinx, but the best part is Maria humming Top Wo Nerae ~Fly High~ while WAKAMOTO NORIO narrates about how when two flames (火) come together they become blazing (炎) to make Maria invincible. If you don’t get what’s funny about that, then you’re The Problem. Why haven’t you watched Gunbuster?
That’s all. I thought that after this episode at least the last couple episodes of the show would be good, but I was wrong. Oh well!
At least by that point they got a KOTOKO opening and a good ending sequence, but it was too little too late!
Quite frankly? It sucks. I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Oh, it’s not been all that bad, but when all’s said and done, it sucks. Well, it sucks in comparison to the first season. On its own, it’s simply average–which is a huge issue, especially considering that the first season was way above and beyond average.
I can no longer just force the blame on to J.C. Staff anymore, though. Even if they’re all soulless worker ants who couldn’t even grasp the concept of Art if they tried, it’s not All Their Fault. Only partly. I’m very sorry, Mr. Hata, but I must push most of the blame onto you. Hata Kenjirou is a wonderful idea man. He has great ideas for lots of fun and interesting characters. However, much like someone like–say–Tomino Yoshiyuki, this guy needs to be put a on leash. His lack of focus is quite frankly frightening.
My issues of course are fanboy driven. I really like the character of Sanzenin Nagi–she’s an introverted, socially awkward, lolita otaku. She’s great. She was also presented as something of “main character” as the series opened. But if that’s the case, why is she spending most of her time playing video games and sulking in two-minute scenes across the show while the rest of any given episode is devoted to Nishizawa and Hinagiku being all stupid about their feelings for the slightly-less-than-generic-but-still-generic male lead. I don’t give a shit.
There’s a couple issues here–the main one being that Hata has no focus, as I outlined before. He has a great, burning desire to write more new and interesting characters. His passion for this shines through in the character profile sections at the end of each Hayate manga volume. He often talks about how he wants to write entire stories for each character.
That’s great, dude. But you already have one story you’re working on. Be patient, Jesus Christ.
Losing sight of your main character and constantly introducing more is Bad Writing. That’s all it is. Oh, you can still introduce a bunch of cool characters, but don’t forget about your core cast. Dragon Ball ran for–what, 40 volumes?–but it’s not as if Goku all of a sudden stopped being the main character. Ok, I guess he died during the Cell Games (again) but he’s still the main fixture throughout the series.
Perhaps my understanding is wrong. Perhaps the title character, Hayate, is the main character. Man, I sure didn’t notice! I mean, he has good moments, but he certainly doesn’t stand out. A series like this is clearly all about the girls, and when you clearly label Nagi as MAIN HEROINE, you better damn well make her as MAIN HEROINE as possible. Fuck Hinagiku. She’s boring as shit.
I’m somewhat in the dark, though. I don’t know what’s going on in the depths of the Shounen Sunday editorial office. The other issue could be that the manga editor told Hata that forcing a romance between a 17-year-old and 13-year-old was bad, or something. I don’t know. I kind of want to know. Either way, the true audience of this comic is being neglected, and clearly it should be running in Comic High alongside Kodomo no Jikan. I guess it’s not a “girly comic”, though. Maybe Shounen Magazine alongside Zetsubou Sensei would be better? Who knows.
There are good parts about this show, though. One of them is episode 19, which I think I’ll highlight in another post. I do enjoy the odd serious portrayals they managed to get out of Nagi between fucking boring love triangle shit. They do well to highlight her loneliness, which I think is wonderful. There was also inspired bits of humour sprinkled across the show (with most of it concentrated on episode 19) and on the whole, the animation was nice, even if the character designs looked more like amorphous blobs and less like people.
But sadly, I must mark this series as “not very good” in my book. It’s painful, but Hayate in my heart will probably just be the first series. I want to like the manga, but if it’s just like this cartoon (which seemed to have covered most of the manga out so far) I think I’ll pass.
Yes, I know there’s still one episode left. I doubt it’ll redeem anything.
Thank you, and good night.
Here’s a picture of “Main Heroine” Nagi. Look at it whilst listing to Kaze Ni Hitori De.
Leaving Japan in two weeks :(
Bakemonogatari: I kind of wished this would be the show where Shinbo would exercise more creative control over the production (a la his older work) but this more collaborative effort between everyone (which I believe is how most SHAFTXSHINBO works are) shows just how far the team has come over the past couple of years. The writing is brilliant, even if I do miss out on some cultural ques. I probably don’t have to mention that Watanabe Akio’s designs are brilliant, but they are.
CANAAN: I haven’t seen an action based show this strong since Cowboy Bebop. I couldn’t really care less for the plot, but the character interactions are nice and the gunfights are some of best I’ve seen in a while.
Dragon Ball Kai: I guess they’ll be cutting out the episode where Piccolo and Goku get their driver’s licenses.
Fight, Ippatsu! Juuden-chan!!: Finally, a show which acknowledges the superiority of the pee-fetish. I enjoy fanservice romps when well done, and this is fairly good. Needs more exposed boobs, though.
Hayate no Gotoku!!: This show has really made me sour towards J.C. Staff. All they can really do right is softcore porn. It’s not bad, and at some points it’s quite good, but on the whole it’s simply not as strong as the first season. I’m also going to shove some blame onto Kenjirou Hata–dude, you should have serialized you comic in Comic High or something…
Saki: In the beginning I was watching this because I thought a lot of the cast was adorable, but at this point the Mahjong stuff is proving to be extremely riveting. I kind of want to re-watch Akagi now!
Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-Hen: Even though this show is devilishly simple to understand raw, I had no idea what was going on in the last two episodes. The low budget really does hurt the show more than it should. Imagawa’s directorial talents can only go so far. However, when it’s good, it’s really good.
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu: Fuck the haters, Endless Eight is great… provided it ends at eight episodes. I do hope they announce another series after this reboot of S1, though.
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0: Hm, I like a show by Bones. Something is wrong. Perhaps because it has a loli? Perhaps because I like seeing places where I’ve just visited get destroyed in a cartoon? Perhaps the realistic portrayal of lost and scared children? I dunno, but it works fairly well.
Umi Monogatari: I had no idea the pachinker game for this had been around for 10 years. The show itself is a fun diversion each week. Nothing extremely special, but nice.
Umineko no Naku Koro ni: I had no idea that the Japanese word for “seagull” literally meant “seacat” until I saw this show. A fine show, but it would be nice if Deen could learn how to make animation that wasn’t horribly muddy.
Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: I do like how each series distinguishes itself with its own quirks, with the new ones in this season being quite obvious if you have eyes and ears. Some of the rantings are a bit too Japanese culture centric for only-here-for-5-months-me to understand, but it continues to be a fine television show.
I was at some point watching Asura Cryin’ and stopped at episode 8. Should I finish it? I should I watch the sequel? I also saw the first episode of that GA show, but no one has subbed it, surprisingly enough.
Also caught one episode of Kanamemo on TV before infomercials on Teletama pushed Zetsubou Sensei to the same time as it. I liked the first episode, and should watch more…!
I still need to get through the DVD backlog. Working through it slowly, but surely. Eventually I’ll work out a routine for all of this.
Oh, I guess I’m struggling through the odd manga in Japanese.
I know THE FIRST THING that’s coming to your mind is, “But wah, you already own that Kaede figure.” And to this quite understandable query, I will reply with this–that Kaede figure was the first PVC I ever got, and as such I didn’t know how to take care of it, so I left it in the sun for an extended period of time, and it got bent up. I tried to fix it up, but my mortal hands can only do so much. I saw the same figure in Mandarake for 1200 yen, so I figured I may as well buy it.
With that matter taken care of, I bet you are now wondering, “But wah, you don’t like Rei! Why do you have a figure of her in a bikini?” Well, see, my friend found that figure on the street. Literally. Standing straight up on the street, right out side of club Sega. I offered him 1000 yen for it.
Her tummy is soft!
Asura Cryin’: The entertaining part has kind of gone away and now it’s just bad. If this episode I have sitting here doesn’t blow my mind I’ll drop it, even if I am past the point of no return.
Dragon Ball Kai: I guess I should feel embarrassed about this or something, but this recut reminds me that shounen fight anime can be good when all the characters don’t look like emo J-rock stars. I should probably watch Hokuto no Ken though.
Hatsukoi Limited: While this started off pretty slowly, it has since developed into a good–but throwaway– high school romcom.
Hayate no Gotoku!!: I kind of wrote 700 words about what’s wrong with this, but to keep it short: J.C. Staff doesn’t know what creativity is.
Higashi no Eden: What a weird show.
K-ON!: Not BREAKING MY FACE, but a well executed, heartful and entertaining high school comedy with a unique musical twist.
Natsu no Arashi!: I’m still not quite sure if it’s consistently entertaining, and it is pretty noticeably cheap, but it’s a nice calm before the storm which’ll be… Bakemonogatari. Well, I guess Natsu no Arashi! IS the storm, if one is to take the title into consideration. Also, best opening song of the season. Maybe best ending song, too.
Saki: There’s doujin where all the dudes from Akagi fuck all the girls from this show. It’s WEIRD, dude.
Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-hen on television: Really wish this had a budget/real opening. But stuff always happens, so it’s cool.
Sora Kake Girl: Watching it on TV, am somewhat behind on subs. Episode 23 looks nuts!
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu re-air: Wow some of those random comments don’t seem so random anymore.
Also, where’s my giant Gundam silhouette in the opening? Why is Elisa singing a song without Tenmon doing the instrumentals? What’s wrong with this show?!
That said, when I first wrote that title (back in May 9th–it’s been busy) I was slightly more angry at this show then than I am now, but there’s still things to say about J.C. Staff’s fling with Hata Kenjirou’s Hayate no Gotoku!
It more or less goes without saying that this new Hayate cartoon is a bit different from the first one. First off, the timeline is reset to make everything work in the context of the original manga (an issue I addressed in a comic); secondly, the show is now in the hands of J.C. Staff; and thirdly, the show is now also in a more otaku-oriented late-night timeslot. I don’t think I need to tell you that this has changed the tone of the show dramatically.
What probably hits the hardest–at least at first–is the resetting of the timeline. As a rule I hate shit like this, because it cheapens everything that happened previously. Of course, this is Hayate we’re talking about, so continuity isn’t that important (oh wait, I guess it is) but it just kind of seems like a giant “fuck you” to people like me who liked the first series better. Other than that you do get some repeated scenes, but nothing too major.
The new timeslot isn’t really worth talking about, since the first series was more or less a late night show that aired at 10am on Sunday, but the fact that J.C. Staff is behind this second series is something that should be discussed.
I wrote a fairly wordy post about the possibilities of a Hayate anime made by J.C. Staff before this series began airing. I was cautiously optimistic, but it seems I placed too much faith in J.C. Staff, who have–by the way–been really phoning it in lately. To be blunt, the execution of this new series is completely soulless. Sure, there is a decent amount of spirit carried through in the writing (which is lifted wholesale from the manga) but there’s nothing in the direction that really takes any of the source material up to 11. In fact, J.C. Staff’s careful, clinical and scientific approach to making cartoons actually robs the work of some of its charm.
Synergy SP really knew what they were doing, and I think if they were making this second season–in all its reset timeline, closer to the manga glory–they’d do a better job. J.C. Staff plays it too straight and safe. I don’t think the concept of even making an artistic directorial assertion even crosses the mind of any of the boring people there (who I imagine all look like the Anti-Spiral.) Their work is simply taking manga panels, colouring them, and putting them on the small screen. That’s it.
Synergy SP makes the most of it all. While their Hayate series didn’t adhere to the source material at all, I get the impression that Zettai Karen Children was fairly faithful. I haven’t read the manga, but Synergy SP injected so much energy into that show, even in the dark, serious moments–moments that could have been trite, horrible and cliché, and made them good by simply giving it their all. The team over at SP knows how to present things in such a way that is just totally and completely entertaining, and I think their touch would really work in this new series. Heck, the serious moments in the first Hayate series were handled splendedly–the Radical Dreamers episode is better in the anime than it is in the manga. J.C. Staff’s approach is dull–there’s no energy put into dramatic moments, jokes incite chuckles–maybe real laughs, if lucky, and everything just moves slower than it should.
With all that badmouthing, I’m still enjoying the show. At its core, Hayate is still Hayate, even if it’s gone from Keroro-grade parody show to romcom. I’m enjoying the characters, do appreciate a stronger focus on story, and J.C. Staff’s animation work is pretty topnotch. That said, I still want more random Gundam references.
First, let us open with a story told in pictures along with some not-very-witty commentary.
It took me longer than I thought it would to get there. Not too long, but longer than expected. Resulted in me arriving 30 minutes late, but I knew I was running late right as I walked out the door.
There were a few other events in here as well, and one of them happened to be a Touhou event. There were people lined up all around the block. All of the events were rather small, but had enough people so that it wasn’t totally crowded. This Touhou event was the same size as the others, but about 100 times the amount of people wanted to get in.
The beginning of the massive Touhou line. You can’t really assess its size from this photo, though.
After some wandering around the Tokyo Trade Center for about 15 minutes, I finally found my way into the event space.
I would steal Shingo’s old joke about Japanese people having a horrible disease which causes their faces to get blurry whenever photographed, but he’s not around to call me on that.
Not quite Comiket. More like an Otakon artists alley.
Since I arrived late, I missed Bolze’s book. I had only found out that he was going to be in attendance hours prior, so I didn’t really care. He was nice enough to let me photograph his sexy Nagi illustration. Still can’t find his new book in doujin shops, though. I wonder if it was even a new release or just a reprint of old stuff. Since he was sold out, I’m guessing it was a new book but I’m too lazy to check.
I left after about 90 minutes, if I recall correctly, and the Touhou line was still alive and kicking. To make things even better, it had started raining while I was inside. Good thing I brought my umbrella, because when it rains in Japan, it’s always for the whole day, and it’s never, ever a light drizzle. I met up with kransom and penguinman a few moments later, in said horrifying Touhou line. After waiting for them to do their run, we went and acted like nerds in Akiba for a bit.
Here’s an ad for a DVD box only 2000 people bought.
My modest loot pile. I only bought that HinaxHamsterxTrapHayate book because the circle selling it had a free file you could take. I had forgotten my bag, so I needed something to hold my books, but I didn’t just want to take her file without buying anything, so I bought her book after some thought. If anyone wants it I’ll sell it to them for what I bought it for.
And now, some brief impressions.
Golden Week is prime time for otaku events. In fact, in the days prior to this one both Comic 1 and Comitia happened. I didn’t go to those–I didn’t want my first doujin event to be something big and scary. Thusly, I decided to skip those, and instead check out this small “Only”–as they call it in Japan–event for my (somewhat, season 2 is grating on my nerves) beloved Hayate no Gotoku.
The event was as small as I expected it to be. The quality of the books was generally fine, but there was some real homely stuff being sold. The best example was–and I really should bought it, in retrospect–was this horrible Hinagiku-centric copy-bon. The art was completely done in pencil, and looked as if it was drawn by a third grader. I think it was ero, too. Not sure. The guy was so desperate, yelling “please, take a look” at anyone who passed by. As such, his book was the first I looked at.
There was a line forming for something popular, so I just got in it on a whim. When I was about half-way into the line the big “our new issue is sold out” announcement was made, and everyone dispersed. I really had no idea what it was, but it looked fine from when I caught a quick glance at it earlier.
One thing that’s interesting about an event like this is that you get to the see the faces of people who make the books you buy. Well, that is if they’re not wearing a kaze mask. Whether this is a good or bad thing is up to you. What surprised me is how many not-horrible-looking women were behind some of the booths. Actually, a good number of the people I bought from were women. I’m not sure if they were actually the artists, though. On the same vein, some people I follow on pixiv were there, so it was cool to see what they looked like.
Overall, I had a fine time. It wasn’t the vigorous Comiket experience, but it was still nice in its own, chilled out way. As my first event, I thought it was good, but I really feel like tackling bigger events in the future. However, I think the only real big event coming up next is… Comiket.
Asura Cryin: Moments of expert storyboarding and directing, but the writing really isn’t that stellar.
Dragon Ball Kai: Wow, is Goku really getting across Snake Road in like… three episodes? Man, DBZ with all the fat trimmed is actually pretty cool, but a lot of those fillers were endearing in their own way. I’ll probably keep watching this until the nostalgia dries up.
Hatsukoi Limited: Dances between entertaining and boring. I feel like dropping it.
Hayate no Gotoku!!: It’s kind of sad that J.C. Staff saw it fit to cut all the humour from one of the most hilarious comedies ever, but if they keep pushing out episodes like episode 5 I really won’t care.
Higashi no Eden: I didn’t know that I watched things for plot anymore. The character interaction is ok, too, I guess.
K-ON!: Really starting to dig this show. Not sure if it’ll stick with me far into the future, but it channels good energy, and controls it expertly.
Natsu no Arashi!: The entertainment value varies between episodes, but it’s generally quite good. Probably one of SHAFT’s better outings as of late. Love the opening and ending, as usual.
Saki: The Mahjong parts lack the same tension found in Akagi, but I’ll be damned if these girls aren’t adorable. I’m watching this just to see girls be cute.
Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-Hen on television: They sure are dragging out this first night, but it’s working well to ease us into the world. I suspect it’ll speed up soon. Pretty good show, and definitely the greatest first episode I’ve seen in a long while.
Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo: Still very enjoyable. I like how the plot is developing.
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