アニ・ノート

Major spoilers for future reference (from Calamitous Intent):

The ending of the game is considerably different from that of the anime. The latter had the dramatic scenes, where Renji saw Chihiro lose her memories, where Chihiro struggled to preserve her love, and of course the amazing climax. But the ending was a tad… unrealistic, I suppose. The ending in the game was less dramatic but so much more real. Renji chooses to start his relationship with Chihiro afresh, even though he had the pages of her diary in which she wrote that she loves him, he chose not to give those pages to the Chihiro when he meets her again. There’s something endlessly sad about this, but it was beautiful and hopeful.

Interesting.

I am reading the RightStuf catalog, printed on paper.

The bad thing about it, there’s no telling what’s worth watching, so consumers have to go to the Internet anyway.

This post spoils heavily.

But first, here’s a tidbit from the review @Wolf Hurricane that prompted the present post:

In all of this, I would say the only real drawback is the male lead, Kouta Otoyama, who is honestly pretty boring - Shima and the others totally steal the show, although Shima as the heroine rightly should. It’s too bad that her love interest is so bland, but it isn’t a deal-breaker, so you should be able to deal.

The above is an example of plain looking at things wrong, since Stellvia is not a romcom or 08th MS Team. Tatsuo Sato went out of his way to demonstrate the enormous patchwork of relationships and characters, each minding their own business, yet managing to save the humanity in the end. All of that is told with the focus on Shipon as a whole, not Shipon-Kouta relationship specifically, which is why Kouta is not as developed. In short, Kouta is not the “male lead”, Shipon is not a “female lead”, she is the lead, period.

Note that as far saving the humanity goes, Kouta is the keystone, and Shipon is the supporting character. He could’ve done his job with someone else in place of Shipon (for example, Ayaka). It’s not, however, the story told in Stellvia.

But now, to the business.

Most of the anime choses to deal with yuri themes to disgust me unless there’s some interesting twist to it, e.g. Vandred, where Barnette’s growth and Jura’s support of it were marvelous to see (Barnette is easily my favourite in the show). Stellvia, however, makes unusual efforts in the disgust department, thanks to Ayaka.

As I mentioned before (on Usenet), the biggest issue here is the attempted murder of a student by another student, twice. When it happened for the first time, the issue was hush-hushed and written off as a training accident, which emboldened Ayaka to do it again. A typical dynamic, isn’t it? Needless to say, it was harder to smooth over for the authorities for the second time, but Ayaka’s lesbian lover, and, coincidentally, her first victim, refused to testify and thus helped Ayaka to escape accountability again. Talks about the battered wife syndrome! Moreover, are we supposed to believe that, after a little bit of crying in her room over being foiled again, Ayaka will be squeaky clean thereafter? It’s inconceivable!

Time after time, if yuri comes around in anime, it’s accompanied by depravity, as if all creators are soft bigots. There’s a very specific exemption for high-school adoration, typified by Kaorin, which they allow themselves to play straight. But otherwise you can count on it. Is such a signifier a good thing? Certainly I learned to avoid any anime which promises yuri for that reason.

STEVEN DEN BESTE adds examples.

The Webkare is an old hat indeed, but the main attraction of the article is the comic.

Still, there’s this:

I did pay a short visit to the site and when I managed to get my “virtual boyfriend” talking, I — the AWESOME blissmo who adores horror, blood, horror, and blood — was totally freaked out. Not only was I more than slightly disturbed, I was utterly speechless. In fact, I don’t think I’ll be able to get a goodnight sleep for a very long time.

I have discovered yet another Lelangir’s blog (is this some kind of a game he’s playing with us?) (via saturnine on IRC). This one has a collection of reactions to Ami:

Xebek: [Ami is], definitely, from what I’ve seen, a fan favorite. Ami has actually really surprised me. When she was first introduced I disliked her, the whole lying about who she was kind of irked me. However these two episodes of the beach villa arc kind of made me change my mind.

I saw right through it in ep.7.

Kurogane: [ep.10] turned out to be more of an Ami episode than anything. I love how the director is intentionally making her real feelings being vague. It kinda evokes a certain amount of pathos in me towards her. Is she actually teasing Ryuuji just for the sake of teasing him? Or has she really fallen for him? The conversation with Ryuuji about being “equals” also was a masterful touch of almost touching her real feelings but not quite there yet. The use of metaphors in this series is seriously winning me over.

Indeed, Ami is a like Milch in that regard.

My original plan was to sweep the issue under the carpet out of respect to J.P., but in a fit of evening daze I accidentially went public with it in Steven’s comments. And now Hinano has seen it. So, to make it clear, indeed I’m unhappy with the removal of the domain and the resulting loss of permalinks. Randall has caught heat for mishandling ikimashou.net (which, of note, hosts Sasa and Owen), so now he deserves props for recovering it. I have no doubt that it costed him money. The coincidential timing of the loss of minaidehazukashii.com and recovery of ikimashou.net provides the contrast that I pointed out.

Another thing I wish to make clear is that I am not going to assign blame here. In a just world, the DoSers should have their balls ripped out. In our world, plenty of blame is to go around, from Bluehost being a bunch of cheating swine with oversubscribed VPSes to J.P. unwillingness to back up his fiance’s antics (with a subscription to Hosting Matters, for instance). But I only care about the result: broken permalinks.

Still, even speculatively, Hinano’s “provocations” are excluded. Blaming her rage for DoS is akin to Catmeat Sheikh blaming women for being raped. Screw that kind of mentality. Secondary to that, I have absolutely no issue with her personality. The deal is: she writes good stuff, I link to it (and if she doesn’t, I don’t). Nothing else matters.

And now I’m going to watch Minaide Hitorigoto with great interest, and I wish them all the best.

I ordered Midori Days from Netflix with a certain trepidation. I pride myself on being spoiler-proof, but I managed to spoil myself by reading old Lawson’s bloggage (and that means old old bloggage, before Hop Step Jump). So I know that Ayase is a kind of a prototype for Ami of Toradora. But this series has an ending.

Everything was quite good so far. The organization of the beginning is similar to Ranma or Kamichu, where viewers are made to face the life-altering fact at the start, and everything flows from there, with the backstory filled in as necessary. Simple and effective. Everyone is likeable and acts naturally. Honestly, I’m concerned… Some bloggers said that the series is “forgettable” (Aroduc went as far as say that every time with Ayase on screen was “painful”). But I’m enjoying this a lot.

Claiming Ground:

So there was this chap (with an anime blog) who went by the name of Cameron Probert. This chap was looking for a 9th entry for his personal list of all time top anime. Something to rank up there with the very best shows he’d ever seen. As it were, a 10/10 show.

[...]

If I am in search of my #4, then I need to look to the right places.

This reminds me about the anxiety with which I searched for my #3, because the time gap was so long. I wondered if anime creators can ever make something equally good. This might have led to enshrining Manabi Straight prematurely, since it does have a rather slow start and the big heads. But I learned to take them as they come and the #4 Gurren-Lagann was added without extra fanfare (also, it’s a pain to recompose the collage). Cameron is lucky to have 9, however.

UPDATE: We awoke C.C. Yoshi. No fair counting a VN! Also, Lelangir tends to overdo it. All the authoritative essentialism is but a hint, so the synergy occuring there is genuine liking of good anime, or so I would like to think. Look, there’s a lot to like about Naruto. If I like it, I’m not a slave to societal expectations.

Nakama Britannica was supposed to be a high-brow collective, right? If so, it’s difficult to believe when reading an article by Lewis, which not only uses the word “crap” to describe Speed Racer the movie, but more importanly disses Divergence Eve. When I rewatched Speed Racer on DVD the other day, I thought it was awesome and done just right, but it’s only me. Divergence Eve, however, is well established to be more than just boobs. Too bad that its plot complexity outstrips Lewis’ capacity to comprehend.

Since the classical music is yucky, I rejected Nodame Cantabile when it first aired and only turned around when I was made to watch it. Transientem provides an opposing example.

Despite being a very good series, this integration is one aspect that is lacking. Certainly there is no shortage of hysteria concerning the performance of music, but the kind of impact it has on the story is purely psychological which… is to be expected. As for the music itself, the story takes a temporary backseat when it appears. People play it, some grown adults get all sparkly, some even have their lives forever altered, the music stops, and the story resumes.

I just realized today that I was half-expecting moving pictures to make classical music cool. I forgot to account for the fact that somewhere along the line, there’s supposed to be a continuing plot.

The phenomena of various people being attracted to varying - and often superficial - attributes of a series is well known. I watched Stratos 4 for the airplanes.

BTW, another classical-y inclined, Theowne, was quite positive about Nodame and its musical component. Go figure.