Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

Original Post

Here is the Anime Boston con comic, which puts a lid on my Anime Boston 2008 coverage. Like last year, most of this stuff only really made sense in context, but whatever. I should also note these kinds of comics aren’t really what people said word-for-word– if you want that, listen to the podcasts. Expect a comic about noses next week.

Lots of stuff from the TAF, which actually took me by surprise for some reason. Unfortunately, I can’t be all too excited about much of it since I’m not all that pumped about this next season, even after seeing these trailers. I guess I’ll just bullet-point this stuff.

• The Golgo 13 trailer is good, but it has too many still images, which makes me worry for its budget.
• Crystal Blaze looked fine for the first minute, then in the last minute it took a nosedive– I’m afraid it’ll take itself seriously.
• DMC looks like it could be fun.
• Jigoku Shoujo is the same old thing, which means it should be moderately entertaining.
• Michiko to Hatchin is Manglobe’s new offering, and certainly looks more fun than Ergo Proxy. Approaching with some degree of caution, but I have high hopes for this one.
• I’m guessing this new Gurren Lagann footage is from the new music video project, and not from the new movie. Some of it looks quite interesting.
• I certainly hope the people in this video are cheering for something else going on in the hall, and not for Kanokon.

Reading that Ballad of a Shinigami novel that Seven Seas sent me. I’m about 1/3 of the way through, and should be done in a week or so. It’s a good light read, but doesn’t really have a distinct writing style that inspires me or anything. It’s not bad, but it kind of just makes me want to watch the anime again. Maybe I’m just not used to reading books that aren’t written by Patrick Macias.

So I guess Hayate is getting a second season, which is good news. It’s managed to keep my attention for 50 episodes, which is quite impressive. Let’s hope they don’t drop the ball with this next one!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand that’s a wrap.

2007 was really fucking uneven. The first few months got by on the better titles that carried over from 2006, but between April and August it was something of a wasteland. I managed to get my fix for good modern anime by way of genius works such as Gurren Lagann and Hayate no Gotoku, but all the other offerings during that period of time where somewhere between mildly amusing to plain bad. Thankfully, August saw the debut of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Zero No Tsukaima 2, both of which restored my faith in the industry somewhat. October once again impressed with Minami-ke, Kaiji and Clannad.

What follows will be something similar to my monthly posts, but for the Year In Review, I’ll be ordering things by quality using letter grades, starting from the worst to the VERY BEST. I cover a lot of shows in the post, but it’s not everything I watched during the year.

Here’s my rankings.

(more…)

Original Post

Whoa, cheapshot alert. This comic isn’t very clever at all. I felt I had to do something about Genshiken 2 though, given it is Big News. Yes, I am excited about it, but if it’s going to be the quality of the previous two animated works, then I can’t help but be a little disappointed. The art here is ok, I suppose. I can do better. I want to do something about Gurren Lagann episode 4 next week, but I’m not sure if it’ll be totally Old News by then. Oh well. After that I may continue on with my short Lucky Star arc (which really feels out of date now… do people still hate it?)

(more…)

Thank god.

This is one awesome kid’s show.

Watched Gurren Lagann episode 4 again, and I do have to say that the character animation was pretty dismal. I do appreciate that there is a degree of artistic merit and style in the work, but it’s just totally unappealing to me. This kind of work only works in context. Basically, keep the Studio 4c in Studio 4c, please. Not in my Sunday morning cartoons. Work like this really has no place in mainstream works in general, especially coming out of the blue like it did here. I can understand the desire to experiment, but when you’ve already set a standard, something like this is totally off putting.

(more…)