Abymage

Cross Game



Kitamura Ko has grown up in the same neighbourhood as the four daughters of the Cafe Clover, and has always been friendly with them, especially Wakaba, who was the born the same day he was, who is pretty much his girlfriend; and baseball-crazed Aoba, one year younger, who bickers a lot with him because she resents him taking away her sister's attention - but the summer when they are 11, Wakaba dies in an accident. Fast forward five years, Aoba is still as serious about baseball; and still bickers a lot with Ko who didn't join the baseball team in middle school, but still practices for it, when another childhood friend, Akaishi, mention that Wakaba's last dream was for both of them to play baseball in the national high school competition at the Koshien stadium.

Adapted from a shounen manga by Adachi, Cross Game is a series that is... well, very much like every Adachi series. Quality slice of life / sports / romance / comedy story, with romantic development that take forever to develop; and simplistic, almost caricatural character design. It makes me nostalgic, because I remember loving Touch when I was 14; but that asides; it's genuinely a good series and very pleasant to watch.

( cut for length )

Bakemonogatari aka Ghostory



Highschool student Koyomi Araragi has already encountered the supernatural (callled "oddity" in this show) once or twice before, in particular he was a vampire for a while, he got better but it left him with a super capacity for healing and a contact with oddity specialist Oshino. So when he discovers that a girl in his class Senjougahara is literally light-weighted as a result of an encounter with an oddity as well, he proposes to help her by asking for Oshino's advice. Then he goes it again and again as various girls around him have similar problems.

This is going to be a tough review, not least because I watched most of it last year, thanks to the ending being broadcast as web OAV (OAW?) - but also because it's show I almost dropped once before getting convinced to pick it up again by the fanboys of RPG.net gushing about it. Bakemonogatari is on many levels so annoying, but it also have some qualities that make it (barely) watchable.

First there's the harem dynamic. Araragi is a pretty boring lead. He's ridiculously self-sacrificing but that's his only quality (?), he's insensitive, a geek, and a little bit of a loser in that boring way that so many show go for; and he's surrounded by girls who need his help and a more or less have a crush on him (even the lesbian among them banters with him in a sexual teasing kind of way). To his credit when backed into a corner, he improves greatly. There's a some gratuitous fanservice, some of which came across as fairly creepy. This is only slightly undermined by the fact that Senjougahara is a pretty unusual female lead : despite calling herself as a Tsundere she betrays the archetype in various ways:
One is by how her violence is portrayed : usually in shows that have a Tsundere character behave in violent way, that violence is portrayed in a comical way, frequently by going so over the top it goes into slapstick and absurd reach. Senjougahara's violence is extreme yet portrayed as scary. She mostly gets away with it because Araragi heals so fast and because after showing what she can do, she mostly resort to threats and mind games after that. And yet that violent character is still somewhat portrayed as seductive in a way.
The second one is that Senhougahara is mostly straightforward and honest with her feelings, after a few false starts, she right away confess to Araragi and ask to date him, as a result of which they hook up very early in the show. Really, I'd be tempted to call her a Yandere rather than a Tsundere character (I wonder if anyone would agree with me on that). Despite being the romantically aggressive character in their couple, I was disappointed by the fact Senjougahara mostly did it through objectifying herself instead of treating Araragi as sexually attractive to her.

The artistic direction is very idiosyncratic in the way SHAFT tend to do them. In some occasions it's strikingly beautiful, but in most of them I found it annoying; though I'm sure many other people would have mostly loved it. (I saw someone at a blog describe SHAFT's visual style as an "acquired taste" which I find amusing because as far as I'm concerned, it's the opposite : I loved the first show I watched in that style - Sayounara Zetsubou Sensei - found it dull the second time - Bakemonogatari - and now have come to disliking so much I could barely go through one episode of it - Arakawa under the bridge). There's a lot of close up on eyes, Araragi's emotive hair ahoge, random items, and wall of texts; for a result of a faintly surrealistic atmosphere. The surrealism is increased by the fact the world is literally empty of people asides from Araragi, Oshino and the girls, for a rather claustrophobic result.

The thing I actually liked a lot in the series was the treatment of the supernatural. Every oddities play up in a kind of punish way on the character's name, and everyone are a metaphor for some kind of psychological issues, usually a strong emotion that is being repressed. The treatment was usually pretty clever and interesting (though sometimes uneven), with some great moment of cathartic realisation. In general, the show had strong themes related to, as one of the best blogger on the show put it, inauthenticity and overcoming it. The storytelling overall had very good drama at the right points (with the exception of the Snake arc which was very underwhelming as well as having the creepiest fanservice).

The other thing that appeals is the cleverness of the writing, full of meta-ness, self-awareness and witty banter. While I didn't find those as amusing as many people seem to have, it was reasonably entertaining and funny. (Though so far I'm enjoying the adaptation of another novel by the same writer, Katanagari, much more in term of witty dialogues).

Overall Bakamonogatari is the sort of show that will appeal a lot to some people and repeal most others.

Sukisyo aka Suki na Mono wa Suki Dakara Shōganai!!



At an all boy Highschool, Sora Hashiba finds himself with a new Dormitory room mate in the presence Nao, except that at their first meeting 1/ Nao called himself "Ran" 2/ climbed up on him while he was sleeping 3/ insisted to him to talk to "Yoru". Also both Nao and dorm president and friend of Hashiba Matsuri used to know Hashiba when he was a child but he forgot all about them nowadays. What are "Ran" and "Yoru", why did Hashiba forgot his childhood, and why did Nao suddenly re-appear into his life?

Sukisyo is a cute, slightly dark and slightly sexy BL series, adapted from a visual novel. In other words, if you like BL, it's pretty charming all around. (Of course I've read enough bad BL manga that any BL story with #1 an actual plot #2 no rape-as-love automatically qualifies as "good" >_>;)

Its first half is mostly filled with fluff and comedy based on Matsuri's money-macking schemes which he persuades Nao and Hashiba to participate in (Matsuri is kind of like a only-slightly-less-crazy-and-overbearing Ayame (of Fruits Basket's fame); including in his character design).

The second half, more focussed on the resolution of the main mysteries, is darker and more dramatic, despite the plot lacking much in sense when you think twice about it and fulfils the character's arc well.

There's a relatively large cast of characters - all male (I sometimes wondered if women actually existed at all in this world ^_^) with several m/m couples. Most of them are rather endearing and well characterised (except the villains who are just... evil, cuz, evil I guess). Nao being the cranky trsundere kind of uke, he's pretty entertaining. Hashiba is a bit clueless, mostly well intentionned and willful kind of male lead; and they have good chemistry. Matsuri of course is awesome and brings a lot of energy to the story.

The character designs are a bit more stylisized than I usually like, but they work well in this case and I didn't dislike them at all. The animation is decent enough. Can't remember anything about the music.

All in all, not a great series in any shape, but a lot of good fun.

I had promised... I forget if it was misstopia or haremstress, or both, a big rec post about SKU at some point; so there it is!

Revolutionary Girl Utena, aka Shoujo Kakumei Utena or SKU for short, is a series from the mid-nineties. It exists in both manga and anime form; and there also was an animated movie adaption made in 1999; but i mostly want to talk about the animated series which is, IMHO, the best and more interesting form the story takes. It was directed by Ikuhara, which at that point was mostly known for working a lot on Sailor Moon; and comports 39 episodes organised in 4 narrative arcs of unequal size.



The Story

Tenjou Utena is a 14 year old girl enrolled at the Ohtori Academy. When she was a young child and after just losing her parents, she remembers meeting a Prince who saved her and gave her a ring to remember him by. She was so impressed by him that she decided to herself become a Prince as well as cherishing the ring in the hope of meeting him again. Thus motivated, Utena grows up as an impressively athletic girl who values noble qualities and straightforwardness; and she always wears a male uniform in high school to the annoyance of her teacher and to the boosting of her popularity amongst other girls.
One day, in order to defend her best friend who just got her heart broken by a jerk, she ends up involved in a duel against a member of the Student School on a very weird duel arena that exists in the Forest behind the school and under an upside down castle floating in the sky. It just so happens that every members of the Student Council wear the exact same ring that was given to her by her Prince, which marks them as Duellists in an elaborate game organised by a mysterious letters writer naming themselves The End of the World where the Victor receive a young girl, Himemiya Anthy, as their Bride for as long as they keep winning; and has a shot at winning the vaguely defined Power to Revolutionise the World. By the way, the current Victor needs not bring a sword to the duel, they can just magically bring forth the Sword of Dios from inside the body of Anthy. Because Anthy is cruelly abused by her initial Victor, and appears to submit to it meekly as per the rules of the game, Utena ends up participating in those games in order to protect her as, one by one, each member of the Student Council challenge her.

( Pics and lengthy review )

In order of 'liked it most' to 'liked it least', no spoilers unless marked & whiteouted.

Aoi Hana

( Read more... )

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

( Read more... )

Spice & Wolf S2

( Read more... )

Taishou Yakyuu Musume aka Taishou Era Baseball Girls

( Read more... )

Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom

( Read more... )

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi S2

( Read more... )


That's all for this batch. Will review Bakemonogatori (if i feel up to it because I have some very mixed feelings about this one) and Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood when they are actually finished.

Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna
A 25 episodes anima adaptation of a shounen manga about investigations and complicated mind games around some mysterious Blade Children (English in the text) and the just as mysterious hunters who try to kill them; the hero of which is the very intelligent yet insecure high school boy Ayumu and his impossibly genki and quite awesome friend Hiyono. Spiral sadly utterly lacks conclusion, leaving me a bit at a loss as far as rating how I liked this series go, since the main mysteries isn't even close to being solved, and all we're left are teasing and frustrating hints which so far don't explain much apart from sounding grandiloquent. I bet the conclusion is in the manga though, but I haven't read that yet to know if it a was worth all the plotting before and I wanted to do my anime reviews as I go >_>;
So the stuff I did like: the characters are usually pretty interesting and fun to watch. I'm extremely fond of Hiyono, as mentioned, and Ayumu is adorable in his ways too. I'm also intrigued and pleasantly entertained by most of the Blade Children too, especially Kousuke and Ryoko. Madoka - Ayumu's step sister and a police detective - is pretty cool as well despite too little influence on the plot. There's generally speaking a good balance of male and female characters, with most of the female characters being awesome in some way or another and good at impacting the plot. More than just the characters, the relationships between characters are well done and sweet, whether as teamwork, family, or shipping. It's one of the thing that makes the show very pleasant to watch as well as following the ongoing plot.
The storytelling has those ridiculously complex crime scenes to solve, mind games and other "Just As Planned!" plots; which it does pretty well and cleverly despite their hilariously over-the-top set up. The pacing's also pretty good.
So on the flip side, it's full of what do you mean this is not awesome and annoying and meaningless catchphrases supposed to sound meaningful, or characters that are supposed to be super-cool angsty badass but you just want to point and laugh at because they try so hard to look cool and are just emo.
I'm not crazy about the graphic style - even for a shounen; and the animation isn't really anything to talk of about either.
So I guess if it sounds like anything that would interest you, I'd recommend reading the manga first (even if I haven't myself) and then watch the anime after while because it's probably more pleasant that way than the reverse. (Experience tells most manga are better than their anime adaptations anyway)

Paranoia Agent

An epic-level mindfuck series by Kon Satoshi revolving around a pheonomenon ofa young boy nicknamed "Shounen Bat" randomly agressing people with a baseball bat, the investigation thereof, his victims, and a parallel phenomeon of enthousiasm for a cute pop character à la Hello Kitty whose designer was the first victim of Shounen Bat. Like all Kon Satoshi stories save perhaps Tokyo Godfather it features a lot of interesting mixing between fantasy and reality, and meta-ness. See the part where I said it was epic-level mindfuck.

Sadly the copy I've watched were borrowed japanese DVDs which just happened to have English subtitles but those subtitles were somewhat... lacking. I have seen worse, but they had a lot of typos, bad grammar, lines left untranslated for no reason at all, text appearing on screen almost never translated, etc. which in a series that's already pretty difficult to understand perfectly is a bit annoying. So yeah, I kinda regret not having simply watched some fansubs.

Otherwise Paranoia Agent is extremely fascinating. It does atmosphere perfectly, oscillating between cryptic, disturbing, cynical, morbidly creepy, morbidly funny and morbidly-I-don't-know-if-it's-funny-or-creepy-but-my-jaw-is-on-the-floor. It does a pretty good job of exploring various the rather big cast of character with pitiless examination. Add a very good graphism, animation and musical score, and it's certainly entertaining as well as brain-breaking, while dressing a rather depressing portray of Japanese society - or of people's neurosis in Japanese society. I also loved how the story focussed on not one person but on the way different people crossed the phenomenon, and i found the narrative modes picked by different independant episode very unique and brillant - I think my favourite was the episode focussing on the urban legends told by gossipning housewives.

Code Geass

TV Tropes wiki seemed to love this one, and the tropes involved made me think I should give it a try. I was right : I devoured one season and a half in two days.Then I watched it again with a friend and am slightly more critical. Not that I don't love it any less - the show hits fairly on quite a few of my favourite narrative kinks - but it's also fairly flawed in other ways.

In an alternate world where the empire of Brittania rules a good third of the world and invaded Japan 8 years ago, Lelouch, a young Brittanian student living in Area 11 - formerly called Japan - finding himself in the middle of a fight beween Japanese terrorist and the Brittanian army, meets a mysterious woman who gives him the power of geass which allows him to give an absolute order which must be obeyed to any person he meets the eye of. That's a good news for him : he's always planned to destroy the Brittanian empire, this power only makes it possible for him to move faster. The first step of his plan is to take over a Japanese terrorist group and work to liberate Area 11. Bad luck for him : his Japanese childhood friend Suzaku is working for the Brittanian army and is going to become an elite mecha pilot for them.

Code Geass aims at being a fan pleaser. It does so in various ways, cramming various genres together in a way that's not always wieldy : highschool hijinks, mecha battles, complicated plots & counterplots drama, harem-like fanservice. Despite this it holds itself pretty well together, with a good helping of a high threshold of suspension of disbelief and a fair resistance to fanservice abuse. It's very over the top, extremely DRAMATIC, occasionnaly quite subtle and clever, thankfully full of self-derision and never fails being entertaining.

On the plus side, as I've mentionned, it pushes some of my buttons :
The main character, Lelouch, is an adorable manipulative bastard. Between his pretty pretty CLAMP designed character, his reliance on complicated and twisted plotting, his fastidiousness and analytical mind, his love of DRAMA and chess metaphores, his evil overlord laugh and his genuine caring for the people close to him, he makes quite the fascinating anti hero. He reminds me much of a much younger Gerald Tarrant who hasn't learned to sacrifice as much yet but is well on his way to. He's a powerthirsty, ruthless revenge driven fiend yet angsts very prettily when he realises the not always foreseen consequences of his action. I've seen a lot of comparison to Light Yagami, and it does work as a comparison, but mostly for contrast. Lelouch sees just as big and is just as prompt to analyse the exact limits of his power and to exploit it to its utmost, but unlike Light he's not a sociopath - which I find much more appealing. (Also Lelouch has a power that's actually useful instead of somethign that forces him to see every problem like a nail!) Also, I love it when the show sets him up for mockery, and the show does it a lot.

The antagonistic relationship with Suzaku is the other point of appeal. Suzaku himself is pretty fascinating, quite a complex character and an excellent foil to Lelouch. Impulsive where Lelouch plans wheels within wheel, full of qualms where Lelouch is ruthless, physically able like Lelough isn't, willing to work from within the system that Lelouch wants to destroy, taking on a personna of a white knight where Lelouch sets himself up as a shadowy masked terrorist... and full of his own contradictions. Their friendship and its evolution as the fight gets more and more between them is very appealling.

Then there's the big screwed up Amber-like royal family of Brittania, huge, fucked up, full of infighing and caring and twistedness and all sporting purple eyes (perhaps they're a Taragaryen off shout;)). Yeah, I love this trope.

The alternate history that's the background of the world looks fascinating but is way underdevelopped in the anime itself - I learned most of it from the wikipedia instead. Still, it's definitly got an appeal and allows the show to explore ideas around themes of imperialism, nationalism, quite a few ballsy references to WW2 in a way that's surprisingly subtle. It's kinda funny to see a show where ethnicity matter to the characters involved yet they all look like polychromed haired anime characters to the audience. Appart from Lelouch (yes, he does get called on his mithey whitism) and Suzaku (yes, he does get called on his collaboration), there's Kallen a half-Brittanian half-Japanese who sides with fights with the Japanese yet passes for Brittanian in her day to day life, weapon support coming from India, in fighting between various revolutionary groups and many more. The morality play is never simplified and you sometimes get surprise character development even for villains (in one case posthumous).

The mandatory just as planned plot twist isn't always clever but is almost always fun to watch.

On the bad side, the show is riddled with fanservice in a way that is occasionnaly detrimental to the plot. There is a huge cast of character which is not always plot relevent as some characters seem to be only there to look pretty or moe, provide with comedy, or be the ubiquitous morality pet and source of angsty manpain. Female characters are especially treated badly : some of them are pretty cool (I'm very fond of badass strategist princess Cornelia and Euphemia for all that she is cringe inducing on first appearance is fairly well rounded, developped and plot relevent in her own character archetype niche and Kallen definitly has her appeal as well beyond the boobs) but they tend to be way too much used only to further male characters' story or just... to provide the fanservice.

Some of the plot devices are overused (amnesia I'm looking at you), and the parallels between s1 and s2 got old very, very fast. And yes, there is such a thing as too much cliffhangers.

So many characters and plot threads and it's sometimes overloaded. A lot of material isn't in the series itself but in drama episodes and book dramas or even elsewhere which I haven't managed to track yet.

For all of the flaws, I am hopelessly addicted. ♥

Nodame Cantabile

That would be the liveaction drama, not the anime. A friend showed me the first episode saying it was extremely silly and hillarious and I loved it right away. It's centered around a character whose dream is to become a musical orchestro conductor, yet is hindered by his phobia of flying when he should study abroad to get any far in his studies, and his relationship with a wacky eccentric and sloppy yet brillant piano player Nodame. It is extremely, extremely silly - sometimes not in a subtle or unproblematic ways (if you've got a squick for seeing a male character hit a female one even if it's done in manga comedy style, this is not for you); but also works very well at being adorable and tender. Then there's the musical score, which is awesome (great use of Gershwin).