I've already watched everything I want to watch for the week, so I figured why not post this right now before I go to sleep? This was actually a busy week for me -- a fair number of series, a good number of episodes and a metric fuckton of writing. I really do not know when to shut up, seriously.
Anime discussed: Baka to Test to Shokanju, Cromartie High School, Detroit Metal City, Kemono no Souja Erin, Now and Then, Here and There, Planetes, Sora no Woto
UNMEI KAIHEN: Cross Game, Kimi ni Todoke, Sasameki Koto
Baka to Test to Shokanju ep1
Not a bad first episode, actually. The premise is pretty silly and kind of convoluted -- this high school has a caste system that separates students into classes based on how well they do on tests, and students can challenge each other in an MMORPG-type game where their test scores determine their stats and they can switch classes if they beat someone above their level -- but thankfully it is more focused on the humor and visual style than the premise, which will probably get old really quick if it is leaned on too much. (Interesting note: The animation studio behind this series, Silver Link, apparently has a lot of ex-SHAFT staff working on the show, including Shin Oonuma, who directed both ef - a tale of memories and a tale of melodies, which both have a fantastic, distinct visual style.)
The first episode leans a bit too much on cliches sometimes, but it also ribs a lot of them at the same time, so it's a bit funnier than the normal high school comedy series. Best joke is the effeminate boy getting a full-blown transformation sequence when his MMO avatar pops out, and then being completely indignant about this afterward. Poor guy, haha. Not completely special, but I at least want to watch the next episode, which is more than I can say about shit like Chu-Bra!! and whatever else is out there that I won't touch with a 50-foot pole.
Cromartie High School eps 1-26
I enjoyed this series, but I'd compare it to something like Pani Poni Dash! where when it hits, it is really funny, but when it misses, the episodes are just miserable to sit through. Basically the series is a parody of juvenile delinquent series of the '70s and '80s with a bunch of tough kids in a chaotic high school and their everyday life. You don't need to be intimately familiar with that type of story to get something out of this series, however; frankly, I don't know shit about those types of series, although the basic archetypes are pretty easy to identify by the characters in Cromartie. Many of the characters break free of those archetypes and parodies by being simply bizarre, anyway.
For example, there is a student who is literally a gorilla, a silent student who bears an uncanny resemblance to Freddie Mercury and the toughest student in school is a robot who doesn't know he is a robot (and the other students, aside from the two main characters, never bother to question his humanity, or lack thereof). The series plays around with some of these tough guy scenarios like a contest to see who is truly the toughest kid in school, or motorcycle races, but mostly those are dismissed with a silly handwave and are done with as quickly as they begin. (The tough guy contest had me cracking up.)
Each episode is 11 minutes (and about 2:30 of that is taken up by the OP/ED, so there's really a little under nine minutes of content), so there's not much room for development. What each episode mainly does is take one joke/scenario and run with it until it reaches its logical conclusion; sometimes they take up the whole episode, and sometimes there will be two or even three different segments that usually have little to no relation to each other. A good deal of them hit the mark, and some of them are just really boring -- mainly the ones where there's a lot of drawn-out talking, which isn't this series' strong point. It's much better when it takes some of these crazy scenarios and turns them upside down. My favorite episode, for instance, has the robot character, Mechazawa, turned into a motorcycle, and he teams up with the main character, Kamiyama, to fight crime. That is pretty much all that happens, but it is hilarious. A lot of that has to do with the voice acting. Norio Wakamoto voices Mechazawa, and he does the funniest motorcycle noises I have ever heard. A simple joke, but it's exploited enough to be funny and not so much that it is stretched to the bone. There's another story featuring the gorilla character working at a sushi joint, and he gets involved with the rift between the owner and his loan shark son. It's completely absurd but executed brilliantly.
One more thing I want to mention: The English dub for this does not fit quite right with the tone of the series. It's not badly acted so much as it pushes the "wink wink, nudge nudge, we're doing a comedy!!" thing a little too hard. A big part of what makes the Japanese funny is that, for the most part, all the characters are played completely straight. Takahiro Sakurai in particular plays Kamiyama with this insane gravitas he hasn't hit with any actual serious character outside of maybe the Medicine Seller from Mononoke. But it works well because it fits perfectly -- absurdity is funniest when people take it completely seriously. The downside to that, though, is that the acting can't really carry the material when it's fucking boring, which it is at least a third of the time. Again, when Cromartie hits, it hits, but when it bombs, it bombs. But overall I like it.
Cross Game eps 27-29
Second-best game of the show so far behind the women's game where Aoba mindcrushed her opponents. I expected Seishuu to lose the tournament, but I didn't think it would happen this quickly -- until ep29, that is, where the creators were basically like, "Yeah, foreshadow the hell out of the viewers!!" to the point where it becomes ridiculously obvious what will happen. Oh well.
Detroit Metal City eps 1-12
I can't believe I went this long without watching this series. Ridiculous. For the uninitiated: Detroit Metal City is basically a really dark, twisted sitcom about a pansy college graduate, Souichi Negishi, who has always dreamed of being a pop star who makes pleasant music; instead, Souichi somehow becomes the lead singer of a death metal band -- the titular Detroit Metal City -- and plays insane concerts as his alter-ego, Johannes Krauser II, a thieving, murdering, rapist demon king. Souichi has to balance his normal life with that of Krauser II, which becomes increasingly difficult as Detroit Metal City becomes more popular by the day.
Like many great comedies, Detroit Metal City brings the laughs on multiple levels. It plays to very base, vulgar levels with a lot of its humor, with Souichi being caught in the most horrifying situations imaginable, and also with the insane antics of Krauser. And there is also my favorite character in the series, the hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, eternally horny president of the record company employing Detroit Metal City, who also doubles as their manager. Her bullying of poor Souichi never gets old.
But Detroit Metal City is also much smarter than it appears. One of its most hilarious ironies is how Souichi constantly demeans his role as Krauser and consistently points out that he is really nothing like Krauser and that everything is a contrived act ... when his desired profession (a pop musician) is also completely contrived. Everyone has a role to play in the series: Nearly every musician featured throughout the story is nothing like the persona he or she plays at on the stage, or has at least completely comprised his or her beliefs about the type of music that is good. That balance between being true to yourself and forming a separate persona (which people do everyday, except not to this extreme, usually) is actually explored to an interesting extent in Detroit Metal City. You can count on one hand the number of characters who are actually completely true to who they are with absolutely no shame involved, and most of them are deviants lol. Society forces people to compromise their true selves to an extent so that they can co-exist with other people; frankly, I think Souichi is actually happiest when he assumes the Krauser persona, despite how miserable he is a lot of the time.
But mostly the show is just really friggin' funny. The darker your sense of humor is, the more you'll enjoy this. Watch it now.
Kemono no Souja Erin ep47: Pretty good episode that mainly inches the plot a bit closer to the endgame. Not completely sure how I feel about Seimiya buying Erin's story so quickly. Yeah, we know Damiya is a lying sack of shit and that Erin is telling the truth, but to Seimiya, Damiya has been a trusted relative who has supported her all her life (even if he has been really freaking creepy lately). Erin tells her story well, for sure, and she gets Seimiya to realize the situation she is in (especially regarding how little freedom she has), but it doesn't seem like enough to completely shake Seimiya's confidence in Damiya. I guess I'll have to see how the final three episodes shape up to see the full effect of Erin's words on Seimiya, though.
Kimi ni Todoke ep13
Said it on my blog, but I'm repeating it here: Kurumi would be a great gangsta. Don't make her Sawako's friend; instead, she should be going into full on Hollywood Hogan heel mode. Do it!!
Now and Then, Here and There eps 9-10
The first half of ep9 is a nice, if brief, respite from the horrors of this world. Shu and Lala Ru come across a village that seems like paradise -- there is water, decent food and a roof over their heads if they are willing to work hard. There are also plenty of friends for them both, since the kids in the village (all orphaned as a result of Hellywood's attacks) welcome new people into the fold. However, this peace does not last long. The fact that Shu escaped from Hellywood quickly spreads through the village, and Shu is recruited hard to lead a band of assassins to kill Hamdo. Shu refuses, of course, and wonders why the villagers are so eager to continue the violence Hamdo began when it would be more peaceful to simply live life in the village and not bother anyone. I wondered for a moment why the series went for such a simple message when it had been making things complicated all along, but sure enough the leader revealed his reasons for wanting to kill Hamdo so badly: His sister was taken by Hellywood's soldiers, but she was so beaten and worn down that she ended up dying of dehydration along the way, and her body was left in the desert to be eaten by animals. It's a pain the brother feels every day, and he believes he can pay it back only by killing Hamdo.
It's tough for me to completely condemn the guy because I think anyone would find it difficult to not be consumed by those types of feelings in the same situation, although I believe blind vengeance is wrong. But it's easy for me to write that here in front of a computer -- who is to say I would be big enough to stave off hatred? Shu doesn't change his stance after hearing the guy's story, but it does burrow itself deep into his heart and leave an impression. I will say this comes sort of close to emotional manipulation, but the show avoids that by not really taking a side either way. The brother has a lot of hatred in his heart, but it is understandable why he is the way he is, while Shu has pure ideals but is still trying to reconcile them with the reality of this world. It really is tough. For the most part, I think the nonviolent options are the way to go, but even I can admit there are times when people must fight. But when is the right time? Hamdo is undeniably responsible for many atrocities. Is it wrong to want to stop him, even if one might be doing it for the wrong reasons? Will fighting truly stop these horrible things from happening? I honestly don't have an answer, because it's not an easy question.
Couple of other things: The village takes in a Hellywood deserter, but then a scene at night shows a Hellywood soldier on the outskirts of the village activating some sort of device that led to the beginning of a Hellywood operation to destroy this village (because the would-be assassins from earlier in the series were from this village). Then Abelia -- after an intense scene where she basically wills Hellywood to fly so that she does not lose face with Hamdo -- orders the execution of the deserter should he be found. After looking at the scene again, I think the deserter is a covert agent sent to scope out the village (as I suspected in the first place), and that, for whatever reason, Abelia was not clued into the plan. But why? Is Hamdo losing trust in her? Or is someone else behind this?
The end of ep10 also sees the return of Sara, who was indeed picked up by members of this village -- and boy is she ever pissed when she sees Lala Ru, whom she blames for everything that has happened to her (because Hellywood would never have picked her up in the first place if they weren't looking for Lala Ru). It's not Lala Ru's fault Hamdo is a sick, evil bastard, but at the same time, Sara has been through a whole fuckload of trauma, so I can't in good conscience condemn her for misplacing her blame.
Planetes eps 1-5
So, hey, finally watching a series that a certain someone has wanted me to watch for a while now! (But not .hack//SIGN. Sorry.) Most of what I heard about Planetes beforehand centered on a few things: 1) The whole "space garbagemen slice-of-life" aspect of the series -- actually, Planetes is probably closer to what "slice-of-life" should actually connotate than most so-called slice-of-life series. Sure, it takes place in the future, and there are dramatic events, but the series mainly gets into the day-to-day minutiae of the stupid shit that the debris collectors at the Debris Section of Technora Corp. have to deal with every day. That actually leads into the second thing I heard a lot about regarding the series, which is its 2) realism. Now, the realism is brought up mostly in terms of Planetes' scientific realism -- it approaches space in a way that is much closer to 2001: A Space Odyssey than Star Wars. Actually having a space debris collection agency is a fictional exaggeration from what I've read (since the amount of energy expended in the course of such an operation would make the entire exercise impractical), but the parts involving gravity (particularly movement in zero gravity), collisions in space, the absence of sound in space, the numerous ailments people can get from extended time in space and so on are realistic.
However, what I also like is that there is a strong element of social realism to the story that makes this world feel like a natural evolution of our society. For instance, a main subplot of one episode involves insurance agents constantly bothering the debris workers and their bosses to sign up for life insurance, and involved with that is the struggle of the two main characters, Hachimaki and Ai, to conceive of what it really means to write out their last will and testament just in case something bad happens to them in space. Another episode centers around the annoyances the Debris Section has to endure while putting up with the snotty son of the president of a major client whose big-time debris collecting jobs can provide a decent boost to the Debris' Section's annual budget. (The son is hilariously voiced by an almost unrecognizable Cripsin Freeman, although you can tell it's him here and there. Many of the English dub actors venture away from their more well-known voice types in this series, actually.) It might sound boring, but Planetes approaches these stories with a lot of humor, and it's tough to not at least grin and nod at the satire. This is actually one of the most realistic depictions of the future I've seen in science-fiction. (Not that I think this is exactly how the future will be in 65 years, but if we had the capability, this is probably close to where we would end up.)
Much of that social realism makes some of the early themes pretty strong and easily noticeable -- for one, Planetes is critical of blind ambition at the cost of not just forgetting one's own dreams (which is where a lot of anime would just stop) but also forgetting the importance of making some sort of contribution to society and taking pride in the work you do. The captain of the debris ship, Fee Carmichael, makes it clear in the first episode: The work debris collectors do is rough, dangerous and completely crappy, but it has to be done, or else space exploration is impossible. The characters might mope or grouse about their low social status, their garbage pay and how much they are neglected and mocked within their company, but at the end of the day, they at least know the work they do makes some sort of difference, now matter how small and/or thankless it is. The series has also taken great pains to show that whatever debris is collected serves some purpose in the end, whether it is used as scrap or used to put on a show to give a small sliver of hope to some people (as in the first episode).
This is probably an obvious metaphor, but I like how the debris collectors are much like the debris they collect: Apart, floating around on their own in the world, they seem like nothing. Ai was among the lowest scoring students in her class, Hachimaki has a seemingly fruitless dream to own his own spaceship one day, Fee is a chain smoker, and the two managers are often at their wits end about something or other and must resort to sucking up to their superiors so that the Debris Section will get some attention. (There is also another crew member, a Russian man named Yuri, but not much information has been revealed about him yet, except that he often acts as the level-headed voice of reason in the group.) But together they all have a purpose, as insignificant as that purpose may seem to people on the outside. It's kind of rare (OK, really rare, haha) that a series is socially conscious to this extent (and I'm not even really deep into it), and still remains very entertaining, so I'm certainly enjoying it!
With all my blather about themes and social realism and whatnot, I should probably end with the characters: They're a likable bunch so far, although all have their flaws of course. Ai is the optimist who needs a slight dose of reality, although what I like about her is that when she gets reality checks it hardens her resolve and makes her grow instead of shattering her worldview. She's a tough cookie -- tougher than she initially appears. Hachimaki is a loudmouth who has been beaten down so much by his lowly status in life that his worldview actually is in the process of breaking down, although he still possesses traits that make him much more like Ai than he would ever admit. He's sort of annoying in the beginning, but Ai earns his respect a few episodes in, so he's been much better. He still acts more or less the same, but it comes off differently now. Fee is the very essence of a cool pilot. She's a bit rough, and she's also not afraid to give out ego checks (which is a good thing with Hachimaki, haha). It's easy to see she truly cares about this job. The other characters -- Yuri; Philippe and Arvind, the managers; and Rivera, a hilariously stonefaced temp -- are just sketches right now, but they're pretty entertaining sketches.
So, yes, I'm enjoying Planetes right now. Glad I finally gave it a shot!
Sasameki Koto ep13
Nice ending. I enjoyed Sasameki Koto the whole way through, and I certainly hope it gets a second season eventually. (But I hope more so that Aoi Hana gets a second season. Either one (or both!) being continued would be fine by me, however.)
Sora no Woto ep1
I'm tentatively interested in this series. It looks nice, and hopefully the cast can be interesting enough, and I think the setting is nice. The premise: A young female soldier, Kanata Sorami, arrives at a fortress in a rural town. She is one of five soldiers who guard the town and dabble in music on the side. Not totally sure whether the series wants to be slice of life military style or actually have an evolving plot, but here's hoping it chooses a direction in the next episode and actually sticks with it. The whole "anime original series" background doesn't really do anything for me, since I am not a big manga/light novel reader, so anime is my first exposure to many of these stories. However, I would like this to do well since I, you know, enjoy watching good series. :P
