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.

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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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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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As the very much over­rated (but enjoy­able nonethe­less) Ouran High School Host Club has proven before, char­ac­ter and story premise orig­i­nal­ity in manga is hardily nec­es­sary for it to become a smash hit. For this sub-genre, all the man­gaka needs there is some­thing just inter­est­ing enough even if its cliche, com­bined with a great sense of humor in pre­sent­ing it. By the time the reader has fin­ished laugh­ing at the high ratio of early chap­ter jokes, they’ve already become attached enough to the char­ac­ter rela­tion­ships to keep going for a while, thus pro­vid­ing the man­gaka an extended period of chance to take a series to the next notch. This is pretty much what I feel about Obaka-chan, Koigatariki (by Sato Zakuri).

One of the best con­fes­sions ever Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ

Thanks goes to Sakura for rec­om­mend­ing this deli­cious piece of mango, and to Shin­nen for scan­lat­ing it.

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It’s the first sea­son after my post-graduation life setup. With­out an engi­neer­ing ‘double’-major I find a lot of time at my hands and tries to allo­cate a good chunk of it towards anime. Well that was a poor choice, as Japan sees fit to send me the most dis­ap­point­ing anime sea­son of my life.

Onee-sama is not amused

Well, let me try going through a list of all the things I watched wasted time on… I’ll save Rail­gun and Todoke for last as they’re the only two that really man­aged to save me from bang­ing my head against the wall repeatedly.

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It’s fam­ily in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent fla­vor from Clan­nad, but I loved it nevertheless…

It sure took me a while to get started with this vis­nov. Despite hav­ing top rat­ings on erogamescape and claimed to be KEY’s inspi­ra­tion for Clan­nad, there sim­ply wasn’t that much hype about it. I mean heck, the title doesn’t even have a wiki page! The fact it was trans­lated by JAST / G-collections also made it par­tic­u­larly easy to dis­miss, as com­mer­cial ero­ges have a pretty poor reputation.

But Fam­ily Project really struck a chord with me. Its sto­ry­telling style may still be lack­ing com­pared to Jun Maeda of KEY, but it cer­tainly brought up a far greater range of con­cepts and emo­tions to drive in their theme of “What is fam­ily?” Iso­la­tion vs bond­ing; betrayal vs trust; exploita­tion vs reliance; mis­un­der­stand­ing vs love; it’s these opposed feel­ings that FP uses to bring forth its tear­jerk­ing story. After all, one must heal the heart first on the route to hap­pi­ness, and that’s what FP is paced best for.

One thing I really like about the story is that they really hit the darker sides of soci­ety. Failed busi­nesses, child abuse, mafia debts, drug deal­ing, arson, pros­ti­tu­tion, gang wars, human traf­fick­ing — the writ­ers seri­ously didn’t hold back. It really helps to accen­tu­ate the drama and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment by show­ing just what kind of cesspools the char­ac­ters had to pull their lives out of and how ardu­ous the jour­ney was.

I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend at least try­ing the Mat­suri or Chunhua/Haruka route, the two most touch­ing ones in my opin­ion. You can get the game at JList.

Score: 81/100
Story : 9.5 x 4
Char­ac­ters : 8.0 x 2
Art­work : 7.0 x 2
Music : 8.0 x 1
Pre­sen­ta­tion: 5.0 x 1

I can’t wrap my head around why Erogamescape regards Kazoku Keikaku as one of the best (but then, I don’t see Clan­nad that way either), but the poten­tial is cer­tainly there.

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Yeah I know, it should be the other way around right? Well my anime club fin­ished this as our last show­ing project of the year…

It hasn’t been that long ago since the anime com­mu­nity exploded over Gur­ren Lagann and its sheer epic awe­some­ness, man­li­ness, and a healthy dose of Moe. Want another show with that Pierc­ing the Heav­ens atti­tude and all the finest parts of Gainax? Well there’s this not-well-known-enough series called Top wo Nerae! [Eng: Aim for the Top], bet­ter known as the Gun­buster and Die­buster series. For a show many anime fans have never touched (ranked #689&701 on MAL pop­u­lar­ity, com­pared to #13 for Gur­ren Lagann), the Gunbuster/Diebuster series is the ori­gin of almost every­thing Gur­ren Lagann had to offer.

Looks famil­iar? In before THAT POSE

My friend Cit­rus prefers to cat­e­go­rize Gunbuster/Diebuster in just seven words: “hard work, guts, and lov­ing your Onee-sama”. Okay, so you might be able to watch this show with Yuri Gog­gles, but it mostly par­al­lels the beloved “Soul Broth­ers” of Gur­ren Lagann. There’s also three more words which I feel must be added, which is “believ­ing in your­self”. Whether it’s believ­ing in the aniki coach who believes in you, or believ­ing in the Kouhai who believes in you, or believ­ing in your­self who believes in you, believ­ing will always be a neces­sity. Of course, you also need hard work and guts to back it up. Put all this together, strike the pose, and you have your awe-inspiring, heaven-piercing action. Sure, Gunbuster/Diebuster may not be toss­ing any galax­ies around, but we do get to throw Jupiter, slice black holes, and cre­ate Big Bangs …in dur­ing shirt-ripping action that shat­ters crazy eyeglasses.

Want any more rea­sons to watch? Gun­buster and Die­buster are respec­tively directed by Hidaeki Anno and Tsu­ru­maki Kazuya as one of their debuts. Of the two famous direc­tors, the for­mer made the orig­i­nal Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion series and is now direct­ing the new movies, while the lat­ter is co-directing the same movies while stash­ing away the widely pop­u­lar Furi Kuri under his belt (although I’m not a fan of it). Some would also claim that Gunbuster/Diebuster are the two’s great­est achievement.

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