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

Time to review three short series that all ended recently!

Kure-nai: I wanted the Hollywood ending. That said, the show did do well to stick true to its sense of realism right down the end, but they could have at least indulged us a bit, right? I guess they did that with episode six, though.

Kure-nai was a very good show. I can’t say it was perfect, but it certainly lived up to my expectations, and at times surpassed them. The show sold itself on character interaction, but what I really liked was the atmosphere and the underlying plot. Being a fan of Gunslinger Girl, I enjoy it when small children are thrown into situations involving The Underworld and Violence, and Kure-nai delivered that somewhat decently. It’s not like I didn’t enjoy the character interaction, because that was awesome– I just wish that they hit more on The Darkness throughout the show.

Kanokon: Uh, I guess the only notable thing about Kanokon was how it was a fanservice show with a really high budget. I mean seriously, every episode of this was crazy beautiful and looked movie quality. I’m not going to ask why, because I enjoyed it as well done softcore porn. GJ, Xebec.

Toshokan Sensou: This won points simply for being the first Production IG show in something like, what, two years? that I actually really liked. They almost won me over with Blood+, but that went sour near the end. However, Toshokan Sensou was by no means perfect. The story was pretty shoddily developed, and the show only really carried itself on character interaction. That’s fine though, since the characters were pretty decent, and I don’t care much for plot anyways.

For some reason I wrote these all in the past tense!

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.

Original Post

Looking back through the archives, I noticed that I hadn’t even so much as touched upon the issue that is Rosario + Vampire. To atone for this grievous sin, here is a comic which more or less sums up my feelings on the upcoming sequel. I have nothing against fanservice shows, but R+V is a pretty good example of how not to do one. It does get points for Shuuichi Ikeda, though. As far as this comic goes, I’m pretty happy with how the script turned out, and I will admit I was partially influenced by Kaiji when I wrote the punchline. The art is fine– I’m happy with panels 1 and 2, but panel 3 is all too rushed. It looked great in messy sketch form, but not so much when I cleaned it up.

The Ascii Weekly article from a few weeks ago gave the site some pretty decent exposure. I got about 600 more page views that usual and a blog entry! Who knows, maybe I’ll even get a translation deal! (no)

(more…)

Hay hay May

Watching
Allison & Lillia: Bit too much “for the family” polish for my tastes. Not sure if I’ll stick with it.
Chi’s Sweet Home: 3 minutes of joy
Code Goose 2: JUST ASS PLANNED hilarity and general madness. Good times.
Golgo 13: ….
Kanokon: I can’t believe it’s not porn!!
Kure-nai: Best of the season. Great animation, great writing, great acting… just perfect.
Kyouran Kazoku Nikki: Second best of the season. Good mix of craziness and drama. Fuka is too cute. Love abused lolis.
Macross F: Third best, I guess. Not much of a Macross fan, but this is good enough. Nice space battles and nyannyan dances.
To-LOVE-Ru: Guilty pleasure show of the season. I love it.
Toshokan Sensou: A good Production IG show?? And they said it couldn’t be done…
Zettai Karen Children: Decent fluff. Can’t really get past the hay 1990s art style, though.

Finishing Dennou Coil tomorrow. It is a good show.

Reading
Gunslinger Girl: Makes me want to watch the anime again. Great stuff.

Read some Ichinensei ni Nacchattara. It’s good.