I take it back. I once thought Kimi no Todoke was just a commonly-used shoujo manga story setup with a remark­ably good pre­sen­ta­tion. Oh, it’s still stereo­typ­i­cal, and we can still see the incom­ing events from a mile away. But to take such plain story/character con­cepts and — for­get touch­ing my soul, try hug­ging and deeply embrac­ing it — Kimi no Todoke has gone beyond just an excep­tional sto­ry­telling style. It doesn’t need the scream­ing drama and con­ve­nient rev­e­la­tions of shows like Toradora. It doesn’t need the sur­real premises of KEY works, nor the con­trast­ing dark­ness that main char­ac­ters must chal­lenge in most Nakige visual nov­els. It doesn’t even need to focus on the main pair­ing rela­tion­ship like one would expect out of a romance drama, espe­cially shoujo. It man­ages to warm the soul and draw tears from our heart with­out any of those excep­tional ele­ments, with­out even the need to make us feel depressed. That, is pre­cisely why Kimi no Todoke is so pro­found in its own right: its pre­sen­ta­tion isn’t just excep­tional, it’s godly.

The setup of this story is so com­mon it feels like it could hap­pen in your neigh­bor­hood; the deliv­ery of the story feels like it did hap­pen in your neigh­bor­hood, to your best friends and right before your very eyes.

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It’s ironic in a way. Kimi no Todoke adheres to stay within the box of nor­mal shoujo manga, but in doing so it exceeded the lim­its of not just the shoujo genre, but tra­di­tional romance-drama in general…

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Screw you Gainax, screw you…

A movie adap­ta­tion lacks the time for details that a series enjoy. With that in mind, the sec­ond movie of Ten­gen Toppa Gur­ren Lagann: Lagann-hen was as good as it gets. Yes, it skived out a lot of the details from the early parts of the TTGL episodes range that it’s sup­pose to cover, but the bonuses it did add in totally destroyed any com­plaints I would have had. Seri­ously, the cli­matic bat­tle of Lagann-hen makes the final boss fight of Gur­ren Lagann TV series look like a cat­fight in com­par­i­son. Not to men­tion they did a bet­ter job clar­i­fy­ing the Spi­ral Neme­sis, and Lord Genome’s lit­tle Tron adven­ture were both brick-shitting and hilar­i­ous at the same time (screen­cap, 2).

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE!?! –is some­thing I want to say to Gainax

My beef with the movie how­ever, lays in how badly Gainax’s mood pac­ing ruined my emo­tional con­trol for an entire night, and not in a good way. Deliv­er­ing absolute despair to your fan is not cool. I guess they’ve accom­plished their objec­tive: I can never for­get this movie now. But that still doesn’t mean I want to watch it a sec­ond time; at least, not all of it.

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So Honya finally started the sec­ond round to the anime fam­ily project. Yay! It also means it’s time for me to pub­lish this post that I started two months ago. About time. There’s been quite a few changes in my anime fam­ily, reflect­ing upon how my views have shifted over the two years since Honya’s first anime fam­ily project startup. But I think this time, a few more of the char­ac­ters have entered the frame to set­tle down permanently.

The bestest true end I wish for

The anime fam­ily project is, in a nut­shell, a selec­tion of char­ac­ters from anime, manga, vis­novs, et cetera, that are assigned to roles in your ideal fic­tional family.

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Netto first got me think­ing when he reported the eroge indus­try to be in a state of peril, but I’ve been put­ing it off until this past week­end, when I (finally) fin­ished Per­sona 4 and got started on my UK ver­sion of Agarest Wars. As one might guess, those two games are very much on the topic here.

Tears to Tiara Visual Novel on the PS3 (those graph­ics aren’t bad at all)

The bound­aries between JRPGs and Visual Nov­els has always been blurred. After all, IGN recently iden­ti­fied the JRPG “talk­ing card­board cutout” tra­di­tion in their Top 10 Ways to Fix JRPGs, and the most rec­og­niz­able image of Visual Nov­els has got to be that win­dowed screen­shot of bishoujo char­ac­ter CGs atop a class­room back­ground with dia­logue box beneath it. Not to men­tion, there are Vis­nov pro­duc­ers like Alice-soft (Rance) and that branch of Leaf/Aquaplus (Tears to Tiara, Utaware­ru­mono) who seems to spe­cial­ize in import­ing RPG ele­ments into their Vis­novs. But com­bin­ing JRPG and Vis­nov ele­ments goes far deeper than just the graph­ics corner-cutting of pre­sen­ta­tion or the addi­tion of a basic com­bat system.

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There’s no Impres­sion in regards to Nodame Cantabile at this point, one either likes it or they don’t after two whole sea­sons. Although, I find it mighty hard to appre­ci­ate the anime fully after enjoy­ing the live-action so much. The faces of all the char­ac­ters just look so… flat (=_= ). Not to men­tion how much they cut the per­for­mances down by.

In many ways, it felt like the Finale chap­ter had reset the stage once again. Lone­li­ness brought forth by genius seems to be a reoc­cur­ring theme within Nodame. For Chi­aki, his super­hu­man deter­mi­na­tion and drive, com­bined with unde­ni­able nat­ural tal­ents, are send­ing him off to the stars where none of his peers could match of being his equal. For Nodame, it’s her unique tal­ent whom few can rec­og­nize and understand.

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As a hob­by­ist world­forger, Lelangiric’s post and Eternal’s con­tin­u­a­tion on how the mechanics/setting of anime tends to fall short of expec­ta­tions actu­ally ticks me off a lit­tle bit. Not quite because of their view­points, but because mod­ern Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, and much of recent scifi/fantasy in gen­eral, are a rather poor gauge on mea­sur­ing the lit­er­ary val­ues of set­ting cre­ativ­ity. But then, that’s also par­tially our fault as the viewers…

Expo­si­tion start: acti­vate lec­ture mode! (and who remem­bers this old yet remark­able anime?)

By and most in today’s series, we don’t have ‘set­ting’. More pre­cisely, we have a very much watered down ver­sion of ‘set­ting’ which is far bet­ter enti­tled ‘premise’. The dif­fer­ence between these two? A set­ting attempts to round out the details behind all the pri­mary con­cepts and mechan­ics it intro­duce. It goes beyond just those two ini­tial lines of con­cep­tual expla­na­tions and seeks to reflect the cast’s under­stand­ing of their World to the audi­ence, with­out inhi­bi­tions or con­ve­nient cutouts. On the other hand, a premise is a set of con­cepts and mechan­ics sim­ply handed to the audi­ence with min­i­mum scrutiny, and the viewer is expected to accept it in order to make the story work. ‘Premises’ can be upgraded to ‘set­ting’ through sto­ry­telling, but with­out intri­cate detail­ing and/or in-depth analy­sis, it will always remain what is it: merely a premise, a set of ideas and foun­da­tions, not a World.

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Episode 2 con­firmed my ini­tial thoughts. At the rate they’re going, Baka to Test to Shokanju is going to out­right win for me as the best anime of Win­ter 2009; even with how much I’m look­ing for­ward to Nodame Cantabile.

I mean seri­ously, it’s got just about every­thing, and it does it with high qual­ity style:

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A love born from an exper­i­men­tal act, as threats and exploita­tion from one side meets back­stab­bing from the other…

As the lat­est series authored by Tooyama Ema, the man­gaka of Hyakuen! and Koko no iru yo! (also known as that Kimi no Todoke alike, which isn’t really true), Watashi ni xx Shi­na­sai sure made huge strides of improve­ment in break­ing out from the stereo­typ­i­cal Shoujo shell. I’d def­i­nitely say this is her best work yet.

Though, I have to admit, this manga has one smut-covered title that really gives off the wrong impres­sion. Yet it’s also sur­pris­ingly accu­rate in an dif­fer­ent way. The premise may not exactly be orig­i­nal, but it’s uncom­mon enough to war­rant a refresh­ing read, and the pre­sen­ta­tion is just won­der­ful. Thanks goes to Nagare­boshi Manga for scan­lat­ing it.

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