Yesterday, I marathoned fifteen episodes of Tiger & Bunny, a show I have heard much about but never sat down to watch until I learned that Hulu had it streaming. Score!
I mean, really, the word of "bunny" in the title threw me off of any hopes I had of this being a kickass show. Seriously. If you give me a dynamic of an awesome beast like a tiger and a fluffy bunny, my automatic assumption is that it involves some dude and some sparkly girl.
NO. NO, I COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG.
Bunny is a guy named Barnaby, which already cracks me up. But this show has none of that loli moe desu BS that has turned me off to anime for the past couple years. It seemed any series that didn't have these elements were few and far between, and I wasn't really hearing about them (not that I really had the time to watch anything, given my past year in particular but just my college life in general). The characters are all well-rounded, non-gimmicky types that are distinct from one another and aren't built on single-minded tropes. I have been begging for this thing for a while.
(This one just cracked me up)
What makes it even better is one of the biggest answers to my prayers, the art work. Oh my God is this series gorgeous. The promo, openers, and enders are good, but the actual in-show stuff is amazing. Everything has life and atmosphere, and it all just looks good, like actual quality. I have been begging for this for an even longer while.
(I love glowy things so, so much)
So that's all awesome, and today I went and read ANN's summer anime guide. Now yeah, I know that summer is like a dumping ground, but holy God what an abomination of things I have seen. I mean, there's a few things that look good, but most of it is middling, if not absolute trash.
Take for instance R-15, a series I just had to watch out of my own morbid curiosity. To quote 'gome, "It's an anime about a shota that writes porn". He goes to an academy for special people, who are not cool enough to be starwhales, and everyone there is a "genius" in their field no matter how BS'd that "field" is (math? computer programming? cheer...leading?). Said shota boy is rightly ostracized by the female students because every time he seems a girl, he has erotic fantasies. And you see it. And they're sparkly and damn near blinded my eyes out.
It is just damn creepy is what it all is, but moreso than that, it's just dumb. It tries way too hard to be a comedy but also way too hard to make the shota be likeable (but he really just comes off as a jerkass to me).
It's also a series that utilizes the kawaii moe desu sparkles that I have come to hate with the strength of a million Foreman grills.
It's just...how do I go from viewing the anime that restored my faith in anime to the one that near destroyed it? Tiger & Bunny represents all that I love in anime, whereas R-15 is everything that makes me cringe.
