アニ・ノート

Heavy spoilers to follow, I’m not even kidding.

Toradora 24 makes a sudden turn as if specifically to address my previous objections. From petty and irrelevant things became significant and meaningful, when goings-on came to a head. I may write about it more when the series ends.

Now I wish only to address a remark at Calamitous Intent:

Now that Ryuugi has proposed, the love triangle is finally resolved. However, as much as I loved the confession scene and how everyone’s trying to help the lovers elope, I can’t help but feel like it’s wrong. Everything was done on the spur of the moment, and neither Ryuugi or Taiga has real plans about what they are going to do. How can they expect to have a future like this?

I do not see a big problem. I and my [future] wife — and we’re still married — ran away 25 years ago too, but only for a couple of days. By comparison, Taiga and Ryuji are meticulous planners and masterminds.

Neeba was out of arrows just one episode ago and now he shoots Henaro (from a bow that he discarded god knows where). GONZO have completely lost their marbles. Just go bankrupt already and stop this embarrassement.

UPDATE: Chris e-mails to point out that a) Neeba possibly only spent special arrows, and b) the bow is somewhere in the throne room. The problem with this is, I do not want to take a charitable look and work to retcon the dangling ends anymore.

Daijoubu:

But let me reiterate: you do NOT — repeat, NOT, NOT, NOT — need a doctorate to do good, thoughtful, and thoroughly solid critical writing about anime and manga.

–Tim on the amrc-l (Anime and Manga Research Circle) mailing list.

True, but you still need some training in writing. Else, your best ideas cannot be effectively transmitted. The problem is, it’s completely up to the bearer of degree if to use it to advance his love for the final art or for morally bankrupt intellectual wankery, and many people chose the latter. Thus formed implicit association between scholarship and douchbaggery prompts denials like the above.

This is what a professional sees when watching DVDs:

Went back to watch some Fate/Stay Night out of the box I’d picked up a while back, and… I’m kind of disappointed. Not in the show (seen it already), but in the subtitling job, or the authoring job, or both. The subs are clearly coming up late by a couple tenths, and it’s more or less the same everywhere, which makes me think that it was authored on a Spruce system and the author didn’t know he had to tweak the timecode by two frames to get it to line up properly (Spruce bug)… but even then the subs would have been a bit late. Combined it’s seriously distracting, especially because the script’s written with a lot of subs that are “longer” than they should be for the space they’re in. I mean, it’s not ruining the show or anything – it’s got Rin, after all, how bad could it be? – but eh.

And when I watch Rocket Girls, the question of LOX-oxidized hybrid weighs heavily on my mind (at least there’s not going to be a nitrous explosion like at Scaled in 2007).

BTW, subs in Midori no Hibi had “You’re parent’s”. I cannot wait to make to raws completely. Maybe in another 3 years.

Regarding Minori’s serendipitous arrival (heavy spoilers), I thought it was a coincidence too. I am not diligent with notes anymore, but a piece of paper in my recycling box contains: “19 0:18″ (obviously incorrect offset), “Oh shit, it’s Minorin taking her sweet time getting to the party” (meaning that I sensed the danger during the build-up for the scene in question), and “R. & M. meet in front of the school”. Curiously, Taiga’s wailing did not end noted, although I remember it. On the other side it says “Hilarious: the female trio, all alone” and “Christmas ED”, so that was later. And that’s all.

J.P. twittered a link just now, where Moogy talks about the succession issue in regards to currently running Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo. I only watched some 3 minutes of ep.1 of it, and I’m considering if I should continue. So, the post was quite informative (as far as I can trust Moogy). It’s also amusing how we essentially look at this topic from the opposite directions.

You may ask what exactly my suspicions were. Well, to put it simply: One, that Sora Kake Girl is indeed the true successor to HiME; and two, that Sora Kake may very well end up being better than HiME.

Since I dropped My-HiME over thematic concerns, this is an extremely worrying statement, depending on what Moogy means by “better”.

[] HiME hit me (and continues to hit me, with each rewatch) on a very deep level. It was something with an absolutely visceral, raw impact.

Yeah, same here. Only I hated the sensation of being hit (not masochist, you know).

And, yeah, Sora Kake Girl hits me like that too.

And that’s our problem right here.

This reminds me how I looked at the Clannad diagram and thought that it must be anime for people who get high on death. While there’s a lot of them, I am not one.

Xenoglossia – Actually a rather decent show once you get past the, shall we say, placidity of the first six episodes or so.

Funnily, I wrote after ep.2: “I hated Mai-HiME, so what am I doing watching this? Well… it’s not exactly Mai-HiME, for one thing. And it can be amazingly exciting.” And I dropped it after ep.7, when the silly X-files stuff started to ramp up. But god, Haruka was cute.

I’m pretty sure we would diagree about S.ifr as well, if Moogy only bothered to elaborate on his assessement.

Absent other bloggers stepping forward with effective Sorakake advocacy, it increasingly looks like a nonstarter.

UPDATE 2010/01/08: Apparently the original source of the Clannad AS diagram is Tsundere Storm (via).

Seen at Bridgebunnies:

However, attached to my order was this note from Bob: “Thanks Ubu, we love the blog!” Well, he used my real name, but of course he has my billing info…. Personally, I think he was just happy I quit being a cheapskate and paid for the shipping, even if it was an accident. :P

Win! Although now I’m bummed that Bob hates my blog. Oh well.

Wolf Hurricahe delivers another look, possibly contrarian:

Drama has taken over the show recently, putting Toradora into a very uninteresting emo mode. The cast just isn’t dynamic or interesting enough to pull off convincing drama, which had made each recent episode a 24 minute grind to get through. To me the drama between the characters has been over very trivial, petty things. I honestly can’t remember what Minori has to feel guilty about. Ami has been unbearable with her “pay attention to me, love me” attitude. Ryuji is in denial that he loves Taiga and continues to draw out all the drama with Minori. In fact the most bearable character amidst all this drama has been Taiga. Freaking Taiga, the most annoying character in the show. I can’t believe I just said that.

So far so good, but he completely wasted the impression with the very next paragraph:

Drama is not Toradora’s strong point. It is very rarely done well in this kind of show unless the cast is genuinely interesting like School Rumble. SR had plenty of flaws, namely that the story kept going around in circles, but it struck a good balance between comedy and drama with an interesting cast to boot. Toradora has really fallen on its face with drama that fails to impress.

Freaking School Rumble. I really wanted to love that show. But its idiocy was just unbearable. Its devotees keep claiming that it gets better further on, in another 20, 40, 60 episodes. I’m sorry, but there’s just no comparison with Toradora.

Back on topic, Yamcha’s main mistake is to confuse drama and melodrama of Toradora. Its drama is excellent, top level. It is the show’s strong point. But Toradora’s melodrama is overblown and unnatural, especially after 20. I have to wonder if he simply does not know what these words mean, or meant before the common use of “blog/LJ drama” muddied the water.

UPDATE: Another subtler point is, when Yamcha says “to me the drama between the characters has been over very trivial, petty things”, he almost says the same thing that I said re. motivations and outcomes of Taiga et.al. But I still permit for the “issues of teenage love” to loom large in their minds. And you know, love is not necesserily some bullshit. Remember how Marimite is a “social commentary” to Jonathan Tappan? It can still be masterfuly written, directed, animated. I’m inclined to think it’s the case of Toradora.

When I blogged Toradora 16, I managed to ignore what was presumably the main part. Here’s how Calamitous Intent reports the impression:

I can’t believe it, I actually had to pause the episode, run out of the room, and get tissues. The only other anime that actually got me to do this was Air, and that was a looooong time ago.

Is this a good thing?

The 16th episode was absolutely amazing. (No wonder the subbers said that you’d need antidepressants after this episode)

Same question again.

Questions about tissues aside, I didn’t need any antidepressants. Maybe I’m too old to care, maybe it’s Nanoha’s fault. But the intense proceedings of 16 seemed empty and meaningless to me. I complained about the same thing before. Since then, all that 16 has done was to up the fury a few notches.

But I’m happy that Choux is able to enjoy the show.

I was wondering why there are 108 Sekirei(s). I asked Ana-sempai, and she said it had something to do with a Buddhist belief; there are 108 sins or other.

Sekirei is not the only place where 108 pops up. For example, Yurie Hitotsubashi ranks 108 during her temporary transfer. I could swear I saw 108 elsewhere, quite recently even, but now I cannot remember.

Google suggests that Suikoden, a game for DS, has 108 playable characters. It’s not an anime, however.

UPDATE: Omo reminds about Shikabane-hime, who, as I now recall, had to kill 108 corpses (don’t ask, I have no idea what that means; something like Soul Eater with a bare ass, presumably).

David Mankins sent a link to a page with some of the things linked to the number 108, e.g. “There are said to be 108 earthly desires in mortals”, etc.

DiGiKerot speculates that Sekirei may actually be hinted by Suikoden or at least its Chinese parent, 108 Stars of Destiny.

Steven Den Beste also found 108 in Negima, where someone gets “108 Carnal Boys”.