Anime Round-up
Okay, been watching slice-of-life stuff because I haven't been in the mood for watching people's souls getting destroyed.
Haibane Renmei seems to be the benchmark I compare this kind of stuff to. It's a lovely series, with the right mix of the mundane and the alien. I dug a copy up and it still leaves me with that sense of quiet sadness once it's finished.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is a recent discovery. Seems to be one of those gems that nobody has ever heard of. The two OVAs are brief, but were enough to catch my attention. It may have been because I was in a bad place, but the mangas were such sublime pieces of work that I sometimes wonder if this is what joy feels like. Such a loving contemplation of mono no aware left me feeling, well, peaceful, I guess. Like every moment should be savored, because you will never get a second chance.
Aria the Animation and Aria the Natural were recommended. I can't see why. Overly moe and saccharine with poor character development and a haphazardly thrown-together setting that makes no goddamn sense in the context given. Add in the vapid, bland storyline, and it's pretty uninspiring. I can't believe that HR only got 13 episodes and YKK got 4, while this load of tripe gets 39.
Someday's Dreamers could have been good. Too bad it wasn't. The female characters mostly seemed fantastically ineffectual or just unreal, and all the male characters were gayer than a bag of penises (even the straight ones). Come on, that's just being unimaginative and/or pandering to all those furiously sketching artists fantasizing about Oyamada/Kera or Ginpun/dachshund/whatever pairings. Characters I can't relate to is a death warrant for a series in my opinion.
After those last two, I'm looking forward to finishing up Last Exile and Texhnolyze.
Haibane Renmei seems to be the benchmark I compare this kind of stuff to. It's a lovely series, with the right mix of the mundane and the alien. I dug a copy up and it still leaves me with that sense of quiet sadness once it's finished.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is a recent discovery. Seems to be one of those gems that nobody has ever heard of. The two OVAs are brief, but were enough to catch my attention. It may have been because I was in a bad place, but the mangas were such sublime pieces of work that I sometimes wonder if this is what joy feels like. Such a loving contemplation of mono no aware left me feeling, well, peaceful, I guess. Like every moment should be savored, because you will never get a second chance.
Aria the Animation and Aria the Natural were recommended. I can't see why. Overly moe and saccharine with poor character development and a haphazardly thrown-together setting that makes no goddamn sense in the context given. Add in the vapid, bland storyline, and it's pretty uninspiring. I can't believe that HR only got 13 episodes and YKK got 4, while this load of tripe gets 39.
Someday's Dreamers could have been good. Too bad it wasn't. The female characters mostly seemed fantastically ineffectual or just unreal, and all the male characters were gayer than a bag of penises (even the straight ones). Come on, that's just being unimaginative and/or pandering to all those furiously sketching artists fantasizing about Oyamada/Kera or Ginpun/dachshund/whatever pairings. Characters I can't relate to is a death warrant for a series in my opinion.
After those last two, I'm looking forward to finishing up Last Exile and Texhnolyze.