Badger on ef 3

I had to delay a reply to Concrete Badger's ef 3 post until I collected some material, but here it is now.

It’s a show that has divided opinion (and dropped off quickly in popularity, judging by the BT download speeds and stats) but the very reasons that have earned it so much derision are part of what make it so intriguing [...]

I suppose I wasn't reading the right blogs, but I didn't see much derision. Someone mocked the retarded streetlight, but I cannot find who that was: seemingly nobody in my feedlist did, so it must've been a visit through Antenna. OK, Lawson dropped it, but I don't recall derision there either. He just got bored.

Actually, ef looks really cinematic. The reason why it comes across as pretentious I think is because it’s taking an approach normally associated with feature films, but unusually doing it in an episodic TV format.

I am inclined to think that the impression of pretentiousness happens more because some of techniques fall flat. For example, I am pretty tired with off-center camera... where it does not work.

The beach scenes were great, but this is just not it.

It’s not that ef makes no effort to appeal to its otaku audience: there are a number of clichés and plot devices in use which feel a bit out-of-place when placed next to the more quirky aspects but to my mind are an attempt at keeping the otaku viewers on familiar ground; they often have more experience with other anime than arthouse cinema, after all.

We can speculate about the reasons, but yes, I noticed that too. Sometimes it's more blunt, like NICE BOAT and directly presented characters of Lucky Star, sometimes it's generics:

Non-otaku symbols range in their intricacy quite a bit. Here's something very overt:

This one is confused. I think the idea was to present a "dark emotional state":

And sometimes one can't help thinking that creators do these tricks for shits and giggles:

I didn't connect the cinema club meeting with the show itself. That would probably be too arrogant or too self-flaggelating, depending on how you slice it. I suppose they could have thought it. Anyway, on a different topic, new weaboo's treasures:

"読んでいのは そこまでです。" -- I don't understand what the "ino" is supposed to be. Chihiro does not mumble, but it's just hmm... I wrote before about her propensity to omit syllables, just to make poor gaijins miserable. Here she probably meant "よんで いるのは〜".

いじわる -- "mean", the dictionary form is "意地の悪い" (いじのわるい). Grrrr Chihiro.

だっこする -- "(to) hug". I know "だきしめる", but this is new (although it can be the same stem, who knows).

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