Spring 2012, a retrospective

It's blogging time gentlemen and other persons, and the topic of today is a look back at the currently ending anime season - which by all accounts has been rather entertaining.

I don't really want to plump for a "best show" (an assignation which is always purely subjective), but of all the series which aired my favourites were by far Jormungand, Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka II and Saki Achiga Hen.  Apologies to the T-man, I still haven't got around to trying Apollon, but it is a high priority on my backlog.

Jormungand was a show that managed to get a great many things right: it was a great action series with a very nicely paced plot and decent story. For those unfamiliar with the series, it follows the adventures of an arms dealer and her elite group of bodyguards; incredulous occurrences follow.

In some ways the series harked back to the good old action movies that were made in 60s-70s, when there was some semblance of credibility mixed in with an otherwise fanciful plot (eg Where Eagles Dare etc). The characters for the show also harked back to that era - there was a huge cast of main characters, rather than the usual "odd couple" which have been commonplace in almost every action movie / series since the 80s.  Needless to say in such a large ensemble a viewer should find a character who appeals to them.

Rather than letting itself be too serious (considering the genre, many contemporary series do) Jormungand frequently made use of comic scenarios to lighten the mood.  These actually felt appropriate in the context of their settings (comic moments never felt shoed in).  It was great to see a show that didn't take things too seriously, but was also able to provide plenty of kick-ass moments.

As an aside, this deserves special mention for being one of the stupidest things I've ever read:
"I was massively dissapointed with Jormungand it had no real substance and oh the Jonah most of the other characters were just really carried along or 1 dimensional" 

DERR HURR. Extra points for appalling use of English. For any passing readers, I feel I should point out that characters had plenty of depth.  I could go into why, but instead I would urge anyone who hasn't seen the show to check it out.  Preferably now.


Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka is a show I have waxed on about more than I'd care to do, but I absolutely love it... so I suppose that's a good enough reason to mention it in passing once more.  The second series did a great job delivering plenty of hilarious episodes, with the nerdy (but awesome) main character falling victim to evermore ridiculous situations; meanwhile he acquires the greatest harem known to mankind* and occasionally fights monsters.

So yeah, check it out if you're looking for something outrageously funny to watch.

* I'm absolutely serious, I can't think of a better harem. All the girls are god tier.

Saki Achiga Hen is a sidestory to "Saki", and follows various groups of girls who battle to win a mahjong tournament whilst SOL elements intermingle. I suppose it's best described as being a moe-battle series - with some similarities to K-on, albeit with a far broader cast.

I have no knowledge of or interest in mahjong, but fortunately the show rattles along in such a way that prior understanding isn't really required to enjoy the show (TL notes explain any key points whenever they arise).  The enjoyment of the show comes from the characters: their various modes of cunning employed to outdo one another (psychology ahoy!); or at other times being endearing to the point of heart damage (the inept Matsumi sisters especially so).  So be prepared for moe-moe, but not of any intrusive sort - it's just there and part of the show.

If you're looking for a great SOL show with a twist, then I really recommend this.  There is implied yuri throughout the show, so just mind who you watch it with.


Honourable mentions also go to Tasogare Otome x Amnesia (Dusk Maiden of Amnesia) and Acchi Kocchi.  Both of these are very good shows, but I wouldn't say they were essential viewing; Upotte!! was another show I enjoyed a great deal, but I concede is one which has little appeal to non-guntaku.

Anyway, that's all for now.  Of next season shows I'm looking forward to Muv Luv Total Eclipse, Binbougami and Campione, but as always time will tell what's actually good (and there are usually some unexpected surprises).

Tea fuelled rage.

There are some series I have never been able to get into for one reason or another. Evangelion is one such series. Why am I talking about such an old series now? Well, I tried to watch the new remake movies recently. So here we are.

I didn't ever finish watching the TV series because honestly I found it quite boring to watch; I can respect that it set a precedent for psychological character development, but aside from that it had no real interesting facet or features (perhaps I'm being harsh, it was a long time ago when I tried watching it). Thus I come to the first big problem I have with the movies - all that character development is thrown out. The result is GIANT BLOBS FROM SPACE FIGHT GIANT ROBOTS. Or to put it another way: Power Rangers with less depth.

The bulk of these films is spent on the giant robots fighting the giant blobs from space, so it doesn't exactly help when the fight scenes are so boring to watch. Worse still, they all seem to follow a standardized pattern: robot and blob struggle together, blob gets the upper hand and almost destroys the robot, then the robot recovers from near death and pulverizes the blob.  This tripe is forced into your face from the first 5 minutes of the movies too, there isn't any build up - the blobs just appear and stuff happens. Without any real reason for this, I don't really care. Yes there is all that Christian symbolism and blah blah blah, I don't care. That isn't a story, it's pretentious garbage - no better than writing an essay on the symbolism of a blank art canvas.

The characters in the movies still seem to be the same dullards from the TV series, though for some reason the 2nd movie felt the need to throw in a mary-sue (who has less personality than Rei). She appears by parachuting from the sky into Shinji's face (how does he NOT SEE SOMEONE PARACHUTING FROM THE SKY) landing crotch first of course, then losing her glasses... ugh. It's horrible horrible exposition which served no purpose aside from otaku pandering fanservice.

Perhaps fanservice is the best way to summarize these movies, because I can't see them appealing to anyone outside of the pre-existing fanbase. I get the feeling whilst watching that the movies are akin to an aging rock band going on a reunion tour, except most of the original band are dead leaving the sole survivor is propped up a bunch of fill ins... I'm not sure where I was going with this analogy, the tea is starting to wear off. Long story short, the Eva movies are bad - even if you're a fan of the series I cannot under any circumstances recommend them.

Spring Anime 2012

It's been a while since I last posted anything, I'm needing something to do while I let other thoughts stew so here's a derivative post about BLAH anime series currently airing.  So far a lot of really awesome stuff has aired. Still struggling to keep up with stuff (Hyouka for instance I still haven't got around to watching, nor AKB48 or Natsuiro Kiseki), but this isn't a bad thing.

Yuuko is a miracle of the universe

Tasogare Otome x Amnesia (The Dusk Maiden of Amnesia) is still my favourite show by a long shot. In case I haven't waffled on about how awesome this is to you, it's basically about a ghost (Yuuko) who enjoys trolling people and having a somewhat romantic relationship with a living guy - much to the jealousy of her own living descendant.  Thematically, the story is about a paranormal detective club who - like most clubs in anime - rarely do what they're actually meant to be doing, instead spending time fooling around with various things. 

As said above, the focus of the show is the dere-dere relationship between Yuuko and her love interest - which occasionally drifts into glorious (but completely tasteful) fanservice.  Animation is nicely handled (though occasionally has moments of QUALITY) and the character designs are pretty awesome, going for a semi-realistic look which also somehow manages to be moe.

Oh god

Acchi Kocchi is another show I'm still getting a lot of enjoyment out of. It's a moe-moe SOL that ditches the usual 4 girl character roster, placing instead a mixed group of friends (guys included) who like to troll or outdo each other.  Much is made of central character Tsumiki being in love with one of the guys - though he's entirely oblivious to her intentions. Said guy carries a great deal of swag and awesome, so pretty much everyone drops to his feet... only for him to trample over them again.  Cool guy.

Whilst this may sound like a tedious boring show in print, it really isn't.  The timing and delivery of humour is tight, story and scenarios are relatable (whereas many other recent SOL series have come up with less and less realistic scenarios) so the whole thing feels pleasantly fresh. Just don't mind the fact that Tsumiki looks a lot like Konata.

Haiyore! Nyaruko-san is a bizarre parody of HP Lovecraft and popular culture. Cthulu driving a flying Delorean? Yep. Moe anthropomorphism of Lovecraftian monsters? Check.  Summoning magic pokemon style? You get the idea... 

Long story short, you get a moemoe show about a Nyarlkothoep (or Nyaruko as the show calls her) and wacky goings on as she tries to police the behaviour of other cthonic monsters, and when she isn't doing that she's aspiring to be the wife of the tsuntsun MC.  It's a waferthin plot which basically serves to setup various nerdy jokes and or fanservice - and I love it.  It's not a show that will be for everyone, but if you "get" the humour you should find plenty of enjoyment to be had here.

On a related note is Upotte! which is produced by the same studio, and features a similar style of humour (though it is much more subdued in Upotte).  I don't need to say much about this since it's pretty widely known about anyway, but I really enjoy the character development, pacing and scenarios.  The current battle arc makes for a great break from typical school scenarios, I'm glad it doesn't feel like they're rushing things at all. 
Hopefully this will sell well enough in Japan to bring about a second series - at 10 episodes this will be a very short series.

Speaking of school settings, there was a Seitokai Yakuindomo OVA released the other day.  Was not expecting that at all.  It's a fun series but the sex jokes become somewhat repetitive after a while, so I guess occasional OVAs suit it better than a full blown series. 
Medaka Box on the other hand is just... bah... boring.  This is an accusation you could place on many JUMP series, but this is astronomical levels of dull.  It's supposed to get better - just as Gintama did, but at least the early Gintama episodes were in someway funny or entertaining; Medaka Box doesn't even try to get past generic scenarios.  Purportedly it is written as a troll series, but honestly if that's the case why even bother?

Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka II is a great deal of fun, so far spending its time on slapstick-parody-harem antics which were the strongpoint of the first series.  For those who don't know, the series is about a zombie who also happens to be a magical girl (despite being a guy), thus when he needs to fight monsters he is forcibly required to wear a frilly dress and wield a chainsaw...

Normally this passes without incedent, but the second series begins with all the MCs friends discovering him in frilly uniform, so he seeks out a drunk loli who can hear out his problems, whilst his friends attempt to cure him of his perceived perversion... So yeah, the show doesn't take itself seriously at all - if anything it generally likes to parody atypical battle-harem scenarios (not even FMP is exempt from this).  Even though it does parody harems, the harem of the MC is god tier with more waifus than you can count.  Oh, and there's fanservice aplenty.  As with Upotte this is only going to be a short run show, so hopefully it'll be back for another series next year sometime.

Fate / Zero keeps getting stupider and stupider. What went wrong? Series 1 was damned good, but this is just... not.  Ridiculous plot devices pop up everywhere, which is a real shame because I'm wanting this to redeem itself somehow.
What really bugs me is that a lot of filler material has been inserted - stuff which is entirely unnecessary. Yes, we know that Kiritsugu and Kirei are asshats, we don't need to see lengthy generic exposition about why this came to be.

The weakest thing so far was a character claiming to have developed an elixir of life which induces immortality. Of course, magical potion for eternal XYZ makes generic flesh eating zombies. Zombies. Seriously? This arc is still ongoing too.  Bummer :\

Om nom nom

Sankarea takes the zombie angle to a similar direction to KoreZombie, insomuch that it crafts a romantic relationship between the MC and a zombie (Rea).  Oh, there's also a zombie pet cat and a busty cousin (Wanko) who doesn't seem bothered by the concept of romantic relations with uh... related people.

It's pretty passable, I'm only watching it for the shenanigans of Wanko and whyboner (the last episode had full on zombie-yuri, should not want).

That's probably enough for now, I haven't covered *everything* I'm watching but that's pretty much the gist of what I'm watching.

LOL Heroes, Shana III

Wordy-words time: I just finished watching Legend of the Legendary Heroes (not to be confused with the galactic ones) and wow was that a great series.  Otherwise known as LOL Heroes the series was one of many different things, to the extent that it's hard to categorize.  Broadly speaking it's a political series in a fantasy world with occasional war and or fighting.

Depiction of politics probably is the most central aspect to the series: the story - at least sequentially - begins with the bastard child of nobleman seizing power and seeking to reform his country (such as many politicians with good intent set out to do), however as in real politics things don't go quite so smoothly or so honestly.  I could say more about the political side of the story, but it would really really spoil the impact of the story to anyone who is unfamiliar with it - needless to say a lot happens.

Ferris serves as a comic foil for much of the series.

As an aside to the political story, the Usurper-King appoints an old friend (Ryner Lute) and a swordswoman (Ferris Eris, token bishoujo) to seek out magical artifacts (or hero relics as the story calls them) which are of military benefit to his kingdom.  This side of the story is much more fantasy based, with magical powers and abilities frequently being used.  Ryner is more or less the reluctant protagonist of the series (see also: Rincewind in Discworld) who possessing extraordinary magical powers is considered the best person for the job.  The magical powers come with a price however, as certain conditions will cause Ryner to go berserk and destroy everything - something Ryner himself is aware of and seeks to avoid.  It's a nice plot device that neatly avoids powerlevel herpaderp.


My mind is buzzing but I'm running out of steam here.  Needless to say, great series and one which is seriously so worth checking out.  If I were to make any complaints, it would be that the artwork mish-mashes a variety of European styles from the last 2000 years... which feels a bit weird (especially when you see character wearing modern-ish clothes) but that's a pretty minor complaint.
Series 2 when D:


Also today I finished Shana III.  I must say that was a pretty satisfactory ending to the series, it did a nice job of finishing things without falling prey to seeming predictable.  On the whole it was enjoyable series, not one I would watch again but it was certainly entertaining to follow it each week.

No more Sydonay or Hecate ;_;

The biggest shortcoming of the series was that it had far too many periphery characters who could have easily been omitted, I'd rather the episodes focused more on say Shana herself or the central members of Bal Masque, who were always the most interesting characters to follow in the series.

Another post about Another.

Not Misaka.

I have previously posted about "Another" in various blog posts, noting with passing time that the quality of the show has declined significantly. 


I just... arg.  I mad.  Where do I even begin?  None of this latest episode made any sense whatsover, it was just 20 minutes of pointless grimdark.  The episode started with a character about to reveal all when conveniently they get interrupted, some guy decided to randomly kill someone else because he thought this other person was a murderer (yeah really makes sense), then an unrelated corpse is discovered in a burning room (which somehow contains the fire for a very long time without any structural damage), then some crazy old lady appears and starts killing people, then some crazy girl appears and starts killing people - said crazy girl then gets on a speaker system and tells people to kill... OH I DON'T CARE.  This was just beyond stupid.

How can I put this... the best analogy to describe the show at present is to say that it has flown completely off the rails and collided with motorway traffic to cause a multi-car-train-wreck.  It is so far beyond being a trainwreck right now I cannot think of any other way to describe it.  It is just incredibly bad, in this episode it went past the point of being enjoyable bad which you can laugh at.

"Send the dead back to death" was a line which got repeated A LOT in the last few episodes.  I can forgive "people die when they are killed", but this is whole new level of DERP.  This probably neatly summarizes the series in a single image I guess.

One episode of the show is left to watch, I'm not expecting any improvement but it would be nice if it did improve.

For anyone who has a passing interest in the series, here is the ONLY GOOD PART in gif form.

Yeah that's it right here.  A small dance scene and about all there ever was of character development in this (I'm not even kidding).








I was planning to write stuff about the penultimate episode of Shakugan no Shana III, I'm running short of time now so all I'll say is that the episode had a pleasantly unexpected outcome.  It was a very mixed series in terms of enjoyment, some points being pretty awesome (the new Yuuji was badass) but there were far too many of those long drawn out battle scenes which weren't particularly interesting in previous series, and it took itself far too seriously for something that's a bit weird and goofy.  That said, there were points in the Shana series which I really loved like the OVAs or the Movie (which was so much better than the first arc in the TV series), there was just something a bit flat about this final series.

Bad Modders / Game Developers

Being involved in game development you get to meet a lot of people over the years, most of whom I'm pleased to say are extremely decent and amiable fellows.  But there are one or two bad apples I've met on occasion - not often I should add, but lately there seems to have been a fair number of them appear. 

Typically these bad developers amass a following of supporters who give credence to their sloppy work / behaviour.  It's pretty frustrating to see someone blatantly plagiarizing content and getting heaped with praise by a teeming group of people who don't know any better, which serves to legitimize (at least in the minds of some developers) sloppy practice.

This brings me to the next kind of bad developer I really hate seeing, one who hangs on the coattails of successful IP.  Now, in many cases you could justify making something like "Half Life 2: City Whatever" providing you were making it as a mod for Half Life 2; where things go wrong is when people start making things like "Nazi Zombies Source" or "Modern Warfare Source" (I'm not making these up), which typically have extremely weak developed content - yet once again uninformed members of the public flock to such mods purely because of the IP.  I really hate this, it's like someone scheduling a bad tribute act to a now defunct superband or a bootlegger selling now out of print movies... it's a cheap way to rip off someone else's work purely by using their name.

Tying in to all of this is the egotistical developer: one who is completely incapable of seeing fault in their work, who refuses to listen to constructive criticism and is always incapable of working with other people.  I especially despise this kind of developer: no one is above criticism, it's pretty sad that almost all of these people will rely on fans to defend their own delusional shortcomings.  What is worse is that they reflect extremely badly on the rest of the developer community... they have extremely destructive asocial personalities that... uhh I must confess that at this point I am pretty drunk and am struggling to remember where I was going with this.  Long story short these bad types of developer often overlap with each other, it's kind of annoying to see so many of them around right now.

Time for Gintama and sobriety.

Damn you PA Works

Why is it that certain animation studios seem to produce initially interesting series which then turn sour after a few episodes?  PA Works is one such studio, having worked on a number of interesting concepts which quickly fell to pieces.  They're certainly very good at animation, but their projects nearly always seem to suffer from bad direction - which always seems to mismatch elements of storytelling that have no place together.

Angel Beats had the initially interesting concept of badassery and revenge, but quickly broke itself with derpy "humour" and a pointless ending that flew in the face of the initial premise.  Hanasaku Iroha was billed as a serious drama series but then started throwing in bizarre filler episodes about hentai and airsoft.

It looks like 1991 but it's really 1998

The latest series by PA Works - 'Another', had the unoriginal (but attention grabbing) concept of a boy who moves to some small town which is basically Hinamizawa with unexplained deaths happens.  This I would be entirely fine with, but the focus of the show is pretty much entirely on the unexplained murders - character development is entirely steamrollered to the point that conversations are always "hey do you know about the mysterious deaths?" "no... I can't remember anything about those".  Every conversation is like this, even when the MC's father calls him on the phone all they talk about are words to that effect.  I'm dying for some character development to happen (particularly between the MC and the heroine) but they just don't shut up about stuff they don't know.  Eight episodes in and things are still like this.

Apparently Axis logos are pretty popular in Asia @__@

There are other stupid things in the series I could mention too, like the horrible Ali Project OP or the ridiculous building of tension for non-events (in the last episode tension was built up for a truck overtaking a car.  That was it, just a truck overtaking a car.  Nothing happened aside from that).  When deaths do occur they seem entirely random and accidental - even when Higurashi had its mystery it still seemed like there was a point and direction to the deaths, but here they just seem to be for the point of gratuitous grimdark - well I say grimdark, the last two deaths were absurd to the point of being comical.

It's a real shame because I really wanted to like this series, but right now it makes Tsukihime look like a flawless masterpiece.