Expect­ing Ookami Kakushi to be like Higurashi/Umineko would almost be like expect­ing Sora no Woto to be like K-on, just a smaller mag­ni­tude of wrongness…

How dare you com­pare me to Rika or Beato!

I remem­ber how, at the begin­ning of win­ter sea­son, many peo­ple were look­ing for­ward to Ookami Kakushi being one of the bet­ter ones of the sea­son, as it was the adap­ta­tion of a visual novel crafted by the sto­ry­telling bril­liance of Ryukishi07 (Higurashi/Umineko) and char­ac­ter designs by Peach-Pit (Shugo Chara). Then, once the series began, peo­ple began to dis­like it because it wasn’t what they expected: the mys­tery was shal­low, the story was slow, and not to men­tion that series of ques­tion­ably dis­turb­ing scenes with Issei and Isuzu’s cling­y­ness. Also, peo­ple weren’t dying left and right, or at least the main and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters weren’t.

Must every­thing Ryukishi07 writes be dri­ven by mys­tery and blood and yan­dere lolis? I don’t think that was the goal of Ookami Kakushi at all. Both Hig­urashi and Umineko had a com­mon approach that defined them as a mys­tery series: we know very quickly what hap­pened, what we don’t know is how or why it hap­pened, and hence most of the series was spent piec­ing together infor­ma­tion to under­stand that. It’s drama dri­ven by the quest for infor­ma­tion. But Ookami Kakushi isn’t that way. Even some­one who doesn’t really like mys­tery series like me real­izes very quickly that this isn’t a mys­tery series, not when an ama­teur could guess very early why every­thing is the way they are. No, this is a much more stan­dard­ized ver­sion of drama, one pro­pelled by the esca­la­tion of mood, by the forg­ing of rela­tion­ships, by a desire to know what hap­pens next and how will they resolve this. It was meant to be a grad­ual approach, and not one full of sud­den sharp turns like Hig­urashi was.

This may not be what you were look­ing for as a viewer, but it’s what it is. From this per­spec­tive Ookami Kakushi did an admirable job. It’s nowhere even approach­ing being per­fect, but it has been nev­er­the­less very enjoy­able. At least a grade of two above aver­age I’d say.

Read the rest of this entry »

George Lucas can take his fran­chise and call it some­thing else, because this is the true Star Wars, and not one of those super-cliched eye-candy. For one, Leg­end of the Galac­tic Heroes (LOGH) is any­thing but the story of the gal­lant hero ver­sus the evil empire, even if those pilot suits look remark­ably similar.

There are no antag­o­nists within the main cast, only pro­tag­o­nists with dif­fer­ent moti­va­tions, tak­ing dif­fer­ent paths to become leg­ends in their own right. There are no stock worlds, only Star Sys­tems care­fully molded to the Author’s needs. Yet just when you think you know what is going to hap­pen next thanks to the detailed fore­shad­ow­ing, the plot tosses a wench at you to spin it in a some­what dif­fer­ent yet com­pletely log­i­cal direc­tion that you should have seen com­ing episodes ago. Char­ac­ter, set­ting, and story, this is when you know the series succeeded.

But that’s not where Yoshiki Tanaka, author of the orig­i­nal nov­els, truly shines. No, it’s the themes of the show, the unbi­ased side-by-side com­par­isons of ideals and morals between the Demo­c­ra­tic Alliance and the Auto­cratic Empire, that allows LOGH is shine brightly even from amongst the best. This is where the series’ orig­i­nal­ity and pro­found depth comes from: the con­flict of ideals that is not only given bal­ance in pre­sen­ta­tion but also expanded to epic pro­por­tions by exem­pli­fy­ing almost every kind of mis­take made by man to date.

If any anime truly deserves a per­ma­nent spot on the MAL top 10 list, LOGH is it, even if it has a few crit­i­cal flaws (which I might get to later in another post). I think any­one who has a taste for explo­ration of the intel­lec­tual, philo­soph­i­cal, and espe­cially in tick­ling moral­ity, would greatly appre­ci­ate this epic story and pile lav­ish praises upon it, as many have done so like here, here, and here. It may have been my biggest under­tak­ing as an anime fan with its 110 OVA episodes of 28 min­utes each (as opposed to the nor­mal 21 minute TV episodes), but many of its 3–6 episode sub­arcs had given me more to thor­oughly savor and enjoy than entire full-season series. Don’t be fooled by the length either, cause this show has vir­tu­ally no filler, and even a sin­gle episode skipped can leave one bewil­dered on a later event.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey look it’s chartfag’s poster for the 437th time!

As usual, every episodic blog­ger in the world already rushed out to take their stab at rat­ing each and every show. I’m not going to waste my time over that, but I do have some thoughts of my own on some of the series. My over­all thoughts on the sea­son are: looks awe­some, but in need of yuri (espe­cially since Rail­gun is fin­ish­ing). Also, there are sure a lot of excla­ma­tion marks.

Here’s the short ver­sion. Entries within each sub­cat­e­gory is ordered from most antic­i­pated to least. I think I have like… the strangest list.

Def­i­nites: Angel Beats!, Het­alia Axis Pow­ers, K-ON!, Da Capo Ext.
Prob­a­bles: Work­ing!, Kai­chou wa Maid-sama!, Senko no Night Raid
Tak­ing Peeks: Arakawa Under the Bridge, Ura­giri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitte Iru,  Haku­ouki, Mayoi Neko Over­run, B Gata H Kei
Movie: Unlim­ited Blade Works, Nanoha the Movie 1st
OVAs: Nodame Cantabile OAD, Gun­dam Uni­corn, Black Rock Shooter

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a rather rare treat when a series give me a moment of rev­e­la­tion: the sud­den leap from “ehh­hhh this just doesn’t fit together” to “OMG it all makes sense now”. Well… I’m glad I didn’t drop Sora no Woto. I’m still not sure yet if I actu­ally like the way this show paces things, but those two lines in episode 7 def­i­nitely gave my brain a short cir­cuit. It’s slightly dis­ap­point­ing that the show went back to shenani­gans in ep8, but ep7 was what allowed me to finally under­stand and accept this series for what it is…

Or as the zom­bie puts it: “The World has ended. You all are just rem­nants… the last remain­ing bub­bles in a ladle of water.”

Some might remem­ber the prob­lems I had with Sora no Woto, about how it’s not tak­ing itself seri­ously enough given the heavy themes pre­sented by the show and how there are sim­ply too many gaps in its world design. Yet despite all the pride I have as a world­forger in set­ting analy­sis, I missed one cru­cial pos­si­bil­ity about this show:

What if this world doesn’t want to take itself seriously?

Human curios­ity always grav­i­tate itself towards the truth. When it comes to his­tory, civ­i­liza­tions have always strived to dig up the facts no mat­ter how painful and bloody it may be. After all, his­tory serves as both the text­book and the crys­tal ball for the future, and the most trau­matic past events also serve as the finest lessons for future gen­er­a­tions. But what if there is sim­ply absolutely no advan­tage for the truth, when igno­rance is 100% bliss and 0% ben­e­fi­cial? Well — this seems to be the case with Sora no Woto. What pur­pose is there to reflect the past or invest in the present when there is no future to speak of?

It’s not just the 1121st pla­toon. Every­one in their entire Sora no Woto world prob­a­bly under­stood this deep within their hearts. When you look at it this way, the atti­tudes taken by dear 1121st pla­toon is prob­a­bly the best one pos­si­ble in this post-apocalyptic scenario.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while since I feel in love with a manga so quickly and after being utterly impressed by the sheer orig­i­nal­ity of it. Is the Otomen con­cept com­pletely unique? Not quite, there have been sim­i­lar con­cepts, but I can’t think of one that’s this well pre­sented and inter-supported. The fact it turned the tra­di­tional shoujo con­cept box inside out also gained huge points.

And Asuka-chan is SOOOOOOOOOO MOE~!!!! >.<

Otomen is about a funny yet some­what seri­ous story of gen­der role-reversal in the mod­ern world still filled with gender-based stereo­types. It fea­tures an orig­i­nal premise, an excel­lent male lead (main char­ac­ter) with all the quirks of a real human being, and a tri­an­gle of bestest friends that fits together so per­fectly. Although, the sto­ry­line is rather light and pre­dictable though, great for pure enjoy­ment but not enough to be con­sid­ered dramatic.

On that note, Viz Media released Otomen vol­umn 5 this month, and vol­umn 6 and 7 are due in May and August. I’m so late on this already!!!

Read the rest of this entry »

With Sono Han­abira ni Kuchiduke wo trans­lated, I thought back to my fun time with Aoi Shiro and grabbed it in a flash. Well unfor­tu­nately things didn’t go as I would like— the game ended up dis­turb­ing me in under ten min­utes. Why? Because this is no yuri romance story, it’s almost pure yuri H, with two really per­verted girls nonethe­less and prob­a­bly more H text than story writ­ing… Really, the cute title and soft color pal­lette fooled me. But it’s been a long time since I’ve dis­liked a yuri story and that got me thinking—

I wish I had an onee-san like Yuki-chan

Most peo­ple clas­sify yuri as a pri­mary genre, like romance or action (as opposed to secondary/tertiary gen­res, like psy­cho­log­i­cal, school, etc, which are more like descrip­tor tags). This implies it’s amongst the main rea­sons to watch a show, and that if you don’t love yuri then you can’t enjoy the show. To date I’m still not com­pletely sure of this view. Yes, I’ve picked up yuri for the sake of it being yuri, but is yuri the tar­get that I’m look­ing for? Or, is yuri merely a medium of deliv­er­ing what I really sought? I’m reminded of what ETERNAL said:

Yuri, like all set­tings and devices and what have you, is sim­ply a premise.

Maybe when I sought yuri, I’m sim­ply look­ing for a really cute romance with an ele­gantly refined atmosphere.

Read the rest of this entry »

Before I get labelled as some Yan­dere the­o­rist like meflo­raine: no, I’m not a Yan­dere expert. Heck, I’m not even a Yan­dere fan, even if Kaede from Shuf­fle sits on my MAL top 10 favorite char­ac­ters or that I tend to like a lot of yan­dere char­ac­ters or that I argue for them when— okay not help­ing my case.

Of all the char­ac­ter archtypes lying about out there, Yan­deres seem to be the most mis­un­der­stood and hated, far more than even the most sadis­tic vari­a­tion of tsun­deres. Obvi­ously, I can’t judge other people’s pref­er­ences on the mat­ter, but I always felt like peo­ple are tak­ing Yan­deres the wrong way. When most peo­ple think of yan­dere they instantly think of “they will mur­der you! Nice boat style!” Uuu­uuu— I feel bad for them already. After all, they just wanted to be your bestest friend for ever and ever and ever. That box­cut­ter busi­ness? It’s not going to hap­pen unless you cheat on or betray them, and in some cases you might be just a bit deserv­ing of what’s com­ing… I mean, Makoto (School Days) sure does.

But even then, it’s not quite that sim­ple. I knew that Yan­deres (and Yan­gires for that mat­ter, see their MAL club for word break­down) were on the extreme ends, but even I didn’t quite under­stand the issue involved until I read this TIME mag­a­zine arti­cle on Bor­der­line Per­son­al­ity Dis­or­der. Yeah, psy­chol­o­gists once thought of this as a fatal dis­ease, how’s that for you sick-girl Moe lovers, not to men­tion all the Dam­aged Goods and Katawa Shoujo fans.

Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, fair reminder. But Japan, you just love to remind us… (Uwasa no Midori-kun by Ikeya­mada Go)

When was the last time a shoujo manga lead char­ac­ter was strong and capa­ble, in more than just an emotional/supportive sense? Okay plenty of times, scratch that. When was the last time they were strong and awe-inspiring with­out being foiled by some­thing else, such as comedic ridicule or con­sis­tent over­shad­ow­ing and shel­ter­ing by an even more GAR male? I’m pretty sure I can count my encoun­ters using just my fin­gers here. The key words here aren’t the ‘GAR male’, as I’m quite fine with the pres­ence of awe­some guys who are even bet­ter than the hero­ine; the key terms are ‘over­shad­owed and shel­tered’. I under­stand that being pro­tected and saved by the clas­sic knight-in-shining-armor is quite roman­tic, but some­times, they really do overuse it.

Doesn’t look like it’s a rare feel­ing of annoy­ance either, as I loled when Hyper Par­fait yelled out:

A CHAPTER WITHOUT KAZUMA PROTECTING FUMIKO!!!! *CELEBRATES*… I’m so sick of her being pro­tected. So Sick. SICK.

Well yeah, I agree, espe­cially given that Fumiko from Faster than a Kiss was sup­pose to be one of those strong delin­quent type char­ac­ters in the first place.
Read the rest of this entry »