Dennou Coil– the internet is serious business
I finished Dennou Coil tonight by way of one of MIT’s anime screenings, and boy it certainly was something.
Dennou Coil was really one of those shows were I just kicked back and enjoyed it for the spectacle. I didn’t pay close attention to the story or the characters, opting to instead just relax and marvel at the animation and the direction. Because that stuff was good. That isn’t to say the story stuff wasn’t good either, since there certainly were moments when I really wanted to know what was going to happen next. Though, the problem is, when I actually force my self to think about how the story flowed, it feels very uneven and rough. I dunno, maybe I just can’t decipher wacky technobabble so there’s probably holes in my understanding, but some moments felt too “lol anime” in a show that seemed to want to separate itself from that kind of thing.
I’m not sure how to feel about the characters. Yasako was serviceably moe and Isako was, for the most part, annoyingly emo and DON’T TALK TO ME-ish. The rest were decent in their own ways, but none struck me as particularly interesting. Honestly, my favourite is probably Mega Baa, since she’s just nuts. Her or Densuke. What a fucking legend Densuke was.
The soundtrack was pretty good. They used a lot of the same tracks over and over and OVER again, so eventually they stuck in my head as Pretty Good Stuff. Also, as classics like Gunbuster and End of Evangelion prove, dramatic scenes matched to overly dramatic piano pieces WIN. So yeah, I guess I’ll be downloading buying this OST.
In the end I liked Dennou Coil, but mostly for the Flashy Special Effects and stuff like that. It had some plot points that really interested me, but on the whole the show kind of fell flat when it came to the things that mattered. This is kind of fine though, since the mid-series filler was pretty entertaining. Not really sure about rewatchability as of yet.
BONUS: After the showing I approached rikchik (you can find him lurking in the comment sections from time to time) with my theory– that being, Dennou Coil is a message to otaku telling them not to get too engrossed in eroge and 2ch flame wars. They of course totally fuck this up with the Yasako x Isako yuri at the ending, as it encourages us otaku to go back to our computers and fap to pics of Yasako and Isako doing it.
Denno Coil workd for me as a sort of “monster-a-day” series, but not so much as a drama. In the end it was nothing more than a silly kids show, but it was relatively well done.
It really is a great anime – we were worried it would get licensed during the semester we were showing it, which (by club policy) would have meant we’d have had to stop showing it.
(Any suggestions for the “weird stuff” pre-finals brain-reset showing in 2 weeks? The last one we showed included PPGZ, Getsumen To Heiki Miina, Potemayo, Moyashimon, Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge, Ippatsu Kiki Musume, and Kawaii JeNny,)
Yeah, this is definitely one anime I enjoyed the setting more than the story and characters. Not like they were bad though.
You pretty much sum up my feelings on this show.
>>rikchik
Gyagu Manga Biyori season 1. 12 episodes, each at 5 minutes. Sadly, only the first season has been subbed completely, but that’d fill a decent hour. Here’s a clip: http://youtube.com/watch?v=70EM5vnE34Y
I’m not sure how weird Akagi is beyond the art style, but that may work…
You could probably show some of Colorful, but that may be too many panties for skool.
Honoo no Tenkousei (Blazing Transfer Student, the OVA Gainax won’t admit to making) is good, but there’s only low-res versions of the second episode out there.
I”m glad you liked it for the right reasons.
Also, yeha, I got banned from /a/ for posting isakoxyasako porn >_<
I like the meta-analysis bonus part. I don’t ever really look at anime like that. Maybe I’m not too steeped in otakudom…yet.
I saw on a blog somewhere, don’t remember though, that Konata is a satire of the general otaku. Never thought about her like that until I read it.
I don’t think Konata is satire so much as she just is. But I guess part of satire is imitation to some degree, but I don’t see the part that makes her a satire on otaku. Maybe the fact that she’s a girl?