It's some kind of anime bonanza!
Lately I've been pretty absent on the internet but also IRL too. It feels like I've not contributed enough in a lot of things even though I genuinely want to and of course that's pretty stupid and I intend to stop it. I'm just sorry to anyone it affects including my close friends outside livejournal. But this isn't a personal post so much as a review post - that's mostly something I wanted off my chest.
Something I really enjoyed last year was the university anime society and with a new year comes new anime series to follow over the semester. I got tempted to put together my (kind of long) thoughts on the series we've watched so far and this basically resulted.
(Series under the cuts: Nerima Daikon Brothers, Saikano, Tatami Galaxy, Durarara!!, Planetes, Genshiken, Bakemonogatari, Xam'd; spoilers only for Saikano because I'm positive nobody will actually care)
Just as a note, the society tends to pick recommended anime that it's unlikely they or anyone else will have seen before but either they need to be liscenced by Beez or be so old that no one will make a complaint in order to show them.
Finished series
Nerima Daikon Brothers: This anime is just special but as cringeworthy as it is, it's really easy to love in a weird way. A trio of daikon-farming relatives from Nerima set up their own band and dream of building their own stadium dome on their daikon field but end up in all sorts of ridiculous hijinks and battles against corporations. And ridiculous feels like such an understatement. It's the only anime we watched in dub since it's a musical comedy and after a few episodes, everyone knew the words to the reoccurring songs which was stupidly fun. It's not the best thing in the world and holy crap was it inappropriate a lot of the time but it was so silly and fun to watch with other people.
Saikano: This was awful. As in truly awful. As in a complete piece of shit. There were a bunch of people who left while it was on including the society's president. It's about this girl who falls over a lot and turns out to be a powerful super weapon but then she and this guy fall in love and literally nobody cared. The writing was just painful. It jumped over laughable and dived into painful. Just as an example, the main character spent a good 5 minutes giving a speech about how she was going to embrace the fact she was a weapon and use it to protect the people she loves. She then immediately bursts into tears and begs some guys to kill her. If the writers think that's dramatic and emotional writing, it's just not. It was genuinely trying to be an emotional epic or something and it came out as mind-numbingly awful. And at the very end, he's the only person alive in the world while she lives inside him~
Glad to be rid of it.
Tatami Galaxy: I loved this anime :D The narrating character (who's never named) speaks so fast it's hard to keep up with the subs and occasionally it takes some stupendously strange turns but it was great and it felt very appropriate to be watching it as a second year student. It's about a boy who decides he'll live the perfect student life when he enters university, joins a society and after a year or two realises he's wasted this potentially wonderful part of his life by one means or another. The series isn't linear and each episode deals with all the different ways his life could turn out with him joining a different society or club at the start of each episode and then showing how things went wrong. And in a lot of ways, I can sympathise with that. I seem to look back on every semester and think 'Why was I so stressed? Why wasn't I enjoying myself? Did I do something wrong?'. The anime's all about missed opportunities and getting the wrong expectations. On top of that, the style is very unique but works really well with the unusual storyline and atmosphere. There was a real feel to the story, the setting and the characters, and while it was surreal, that's what made it work. There were points when it was just plain bizarre, like I said, and sometimes it became a little too metaphorical but I really did love watching this one.
Durarara!!: Completely adored it and struggled not to watch it between the weekly sessions. It was fantastic and I'm sort of scared I'm just going to start rambling about every single reason why I love it and exactly to what extent because I'd be here for a while. Kind of hard to sum it up but in a general way it's about a boy moving to the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo and how him and his friends end up mixing with some of the district's more dangerous inhabitants and supernatural beings. It did have its downsides in that there weren't enough episodes to properly explore every single one of the characters and the ending wasn't exactly a conclusion but I think that can mostly be attributed to the light novel series being ongoing. The animation is really nice, the soundtrack is unusual and works really well, the plot is very well put together and all the characters are well-written and easily likeable. I'm completely in love with Shizuo, Izaya and Celty and it would be painful to pick a favourite. I think a lot of the reason why I liked it, other than the great style of it, was probably the fact that every character had something to hide or had sides to them that weren't simple in the slightest. Despite that, the story isn't heavy at all and there's a great balance between more light-hearted and darker moments. I also started reading the light novel series and although I've not read any of the translations of the books the anime was based off, I've caught up with the parts set afterwards that have been fan-translated. Surprisingly, I prefer the anime. It's a story that works because of its plot twists, the multiple sides of its characters and their secrets and the anime seems to use them to much better effect in my opinion. All in all, it was a fantastic series and I get all scary and start obsessively recommending it whenever I talk about it.
Ongoing series
Planetes: This one centres on a group of space-debris collectors in a futuristic setting where there's so much debris orbiting Earth that it's become a serious hazard. It's not fantastic but I quite like it when it's not being preachy as hell. Don't really have that much more to say about this one? The concept's really nice, the characters are alright and the writing is very good for the most part. It's just Tanabe's huge speeches about love are either really appropriate or plain stuck up and intrusive. One episode she'll be telling a rich jerk to stop being so selfish and inconsiderate and it's fantastic. Before that she was yelling at a woman and taking action against her decision when it came to where she was going to lay her father to rest. JUST NO D: But in general, it's pretty good and comes up with some really interesting issues to explore.
New series
Genshiken: Only seen one episode of this and, while it doesn't exactly look promising, it doesn't look godawful either. I'm just praying that they'll stop using the main character getting hot off fictional girls as their running joke because it wasn't even that funny the first time. And the last thing I want to see in an anime about an otaku society in a university is just joke after joke about otaku being socially inept. I'm not completely writing it off though because it's only just started, it wasn't horrible and there's a chance it could provide some really good characters and an interesting story once it gets going.
Bakemonogatari: It's been two episodes and I hate it already. To quote a friend, 'Someone had too much money'. From what I've seen so far, it's about a boy who used to be a vampire and is now helping a girl to lose her vampiric qualities too. The animation is unique and gorgeous but it's about the only thing going for it and they don't even know how to use it. It's like they had some weird compulsion to make EVERY SINGLE SHOT dramatic and unusual and it just comes across as awkward, unecessary and irritating. I have never seen so many pointless eye close ups. The big problem with that is that the vast majority of the time was spent on completely boring dialogue or half an episode with the girl in nothing but her underwear. So there's plenty of time there to flesh out characters, none of it gets used and instead there's like two minutes of 'tragic past' exposition. Which only really works if you make your audience care about your 2D heroine who just really behaves the way that's most convenient or 'attractive' at the time. I'm guessing it's also trying to be hip or original but in my opinion, it's really not working :| So.... yeah. Either I hope it gets better or I'll just tune out at admire some of the better bits of animation.
Xam'd: Apparently I'm one of the only people who loves this so far? And I'm sort of setting myself up for disappointment in how much I like it and how much everyone else seems bored with it but I did love the first two episodes. It's probably the unusual setting, the incredibly weird monsters and the fact that I could instantly tell the animators had worked with Studio Ghibli before. Or maybe Xam'd itself just reminds me a little of Digimon ;;; I can't actually explain this plot yet. I have no idea what it's about but there's a boy turning into a weird creature called Xam'd. I'm really looking forward to finding out more about the strange monsters and conflict though. It's got a great feel to it so far is all I can say and even the parental characters have a believeable yet interesting slant to them.
I'm starting to get into a lot more new series this year actually :D I'm pretty happy about that. I can go for so long without really reading or watching many new things at all and it kind of bugs me. It seems a bit narrow-minded in a way but I've loved watching things like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Baccano!, Durarara!! and Inception this year and recently I've fallen in love with Doctor Who again. And I'm sure there are a lot more things for me to try and love in the next few months!
Something I really enjoyed last year was the university anime society and with a new year comes new anime series to follow over the semester. I got tempted to put together my (kind of long) thoughts on the series we've watched so far and this basically resulted.
(Series under the cuts: Nerima Daikon Brothers, Saikano, Tatami Galaxy, Durarara!!, Planetes, Genshiken, Bakemonogatari, Xam'd; spoilers only for Saikano because I'm positive nobody will actually care)
Just as a note, the society tends to pick recommended anime that it's unlikely they or anyone else will have seen before but either they need to be liscenced by Beez or be so old that no one will make a complaint in order to show them.
Finished series
Nerima Daikon Brothers: This anime is just special but as cringeworthy as it is, it's really easy to love in a weird way. A trio of daikon-farming relatives from Nerima set up their own band and dream of building their own stadium dome on their daikon field but end up in all sorts of ridiculous hijinks and battles against corporations. And ridiculous feels like such an understatement. It's the only anime we watched in dub since it's a musical comedy and after a few episodes, everyone knew the words to the reoccurring songs which was stupidly fun. It's not the best thing in the world and holy crap was it inappropriate a lot of the time but it was so silly and fun to watch with other people.
Saikano: This was awful. As in truly awful. As in a complete piece of shit. There were a bunch of people who left while it was on including the society's president. It's about this girl who falls over a lot and turns out to be a powerful super weapon but then she and this guy fall in love and literally nobody cared. The writing was just painful. It jumped over laughable and dived into painful. Just as an example, the main character spent a good 5 minutes giving a speech about how she was going to embrace the fact she was a weapon and use it to protect the people she loves. She then immediately bursts into tears and begs some guys to kill her. If the writers think that's dramatic and emotional writing, it's just not. It was genuinely trying to be an emotional epic or something and it came out as mind-numbingly awful. And at the very end, he's the only person alive in the world while she lives inside him~
Glad to be rid of it.
Tatami Galaxy: I loved this anime :D The narrating character (who's never named) speaks so fast it's hard to keep up with the subs and occasionally it takes some stupendously strange turns but it was great and it felt very appropriate to be watching it as a second year student. It's about a boy who decides he'll live the perfect student life when he enters university, joins a society and after a year or two realises he's wasted this potentially wonderful part of his life by one means or another. The series isn't linear and each episode deals with all the different ways his life could turn out with him joining a different society or club at the start of each episode and then showing how things went wrong. And in a lot of ways, I can sympathise with that. I seem to look back on every semester and think 'Why was I so stressed? Why wasn't I enjoying myself? Did I do something wrong?'. The anime's all about missed opportunities and getting the wrong expectations. On top of that, the style is very unique but works really well with the unusual storyline and atmosphere. There was a real feel to the story, the setting and the characters, and while it was surreal, that's what made it work. There were points when it was just plain bizarre, like I said, and sometimes it became a little too metaphorical but I really did love watching this one.
Durarara!!: Completely adored it and struggled not to watch it between the weekly sessions. It was fantastic and I'm sort of scared I'm just going to start rambling about every single reason why I love it and exactly to what extent because I'd be here for a while. Kind of hard to sum it up but in a general way it's about a boy moving to the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo and how him and his friends end up mixing with some of the district's more dangerous inhabitants and supernatural beings. It did have its downsides in that there weren't enough episodes to properly explore every single one of the characters and the ending wasn't exactly a conclusion but I think that can mostly be attributed to the light novel series being ongoing. The animation is really nice, the soundtrack is unusual and works really well, the plot is very well put together and all the characters are well-written and easily likeable. I'm completely in love with Shizuo, Izaya and Celty and it would be painful to pick a favourite. I think a lot of the reason why I liked it, other than the great style of it, was probably the fact that every character had something to hide or had sides to them that weren't simple in the slightest. Despite that, the story isn't heavy at all and there's a great balance between more light-hearted and darker moments. I also started reading the light novel series and although I've not read any of the translations of the books the anime was based off, I've caught up with the parts set afterwards that have been fan-translated. Surprisingly, I prefer the anime. It's a story that works because of its plot twists, the multiple sides of its characters and their secrets and the anime seems to use them to much better effect in my opinion. All in all, it was a fantastic series and I get all scary and start obsessively recommending it whenever I talk about it.
Ongoing series
Planetes: This one centres on a group of space-debris collectors in a futuristic setting where there's so much debris orbiting Earth that it's become a serious hazard. It's not fantastic but I quite like it when it's not being preachy as hell. Don't really have that much more to say about this one? The concept's really nice, the characters are alright and the writing is very good for the most part. It's just Tanabe's huge speeches about love are either really appropriate or plain stuck up and intrusive. One episode she'll be telling a rich jerk to stop being so selfish and inconsiderate and it's fantastic. Before that she was yelling at a woman and taking action against her decision when it came to where she was going to lay her father to rest. JUST NO D: But in general, it's pretty good and comes up with some really interesting issues to explore.
New series
Genshiken: Only seen one episode of this and, while it doesn't exactly look promising, it doesn't look godawful either. I'm just praying that they'll stop using the main character getting hot off fictional girls as their running joke because it wasn't even that funny the first time. And the last thing I want to see in an anime about an otaku society in a university is just joke after joke about otaku being socially inept. I'm not completely writing it off though because it's only just started, it wasn't horrible and there's a chance it could provide some really good characters and an interesting story once it gets going.
Bakemonogatari: It's been two episodes and I hate it already. To quote a friend, 'Someone had too much money'. From what I've seen so far, it's about a boy who used to be a vampire and is now helping a girl to lose her vampiric qualities too. The animation is unique and gorgeous but it's about the only thing going for it and they don't even know how to use it. It's like they had some weird compulsion to make EVERY SINGLE SHOT dramatic and unusual and it just comes across as awkward, unecessary and irritating. I have never seen so many pointless eye close ups. The big problem with that is that the vast majority of the time was spent on completely boring dialogue or half an episode with the girl in nothing but her underwear. So there's plenty of time there to flesh out characters, none of it gets used and instead there's like two minutes of 'tragic past' exposition. Which only really works if you make your audience care about your 2D heroine who just really behaves the way that's most convenient or 'attractive' at the time. I'm guessing it's also trying to be hip or original but in my opinion, it's really not working :| So.... yeah. Either I hope it gets better or I'll just tune out at admire some of the better bits of animation.
Xam'd: Apparently I'm one of the only people who loves this so far? And I'm sort of setting myself up for disappointment in how much I like it and how much everyone else seems bored with it but I did love the first two episodes. It's probably the unusual setting, the incredibly weird monsters and the fact that I could instantly tell the animators had worked with Studio Ghibli before. Or maybe Xam'd itself just reminds me a little of Digimon ;;; I can't actually explain this plot yet. I have no idea what it's about but there's a boy turning into a weird creature called Xam'd. I'm really looking forward to finding out more about the strange monsters and conflict though. It's got a great feel to it so far is all I can say and even the parental characters have a believeable yet interesting slant to them.
I'm starting to get into a lot more new series this year actually :D I'm pretty happy about that. I can go for so long without really reading or watching many new things at all and it kind of bugs me. It seems a bit narrow-minded in a way but I've loved watching things like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Baccano!, Durarara!! and Inception this year and recently I've fallen in love with Doctor Who again. And I'm sure there are a lot more things for me to try and love in the next few months!