アニ・ノート

The final report may be heavily spoiling, so I wasn’t paying close attention, but at heast he finished the show, and that counts for something.

I noted a few other posts aside from Bluemist’s.

Evirus writes: “The best show of Spring 2009 is Hatsukoi Limited. A mostly wistful look at first love, Hatsukoi Limited is a textbook example of how J.C. Staff can succeed wildly when it plays to its strengths.”

Girls seems to like it too, see Minnie and Janette.

Kabitzin and Hanners wrote a little each, but nothing too interesting.

And finally, Nova’s relationship chart may be useful, if I ever get around to watching Hatsukoi.

The write-up at Dame-Dame didn’t say much for me despite its considerable length and detail. The biggest question is, are J.C.Staff going to put their second-string team on Taishou Yakyuu Musume, like they did with Index (Toradora ran together with it and claimed the top talent)? This season, that other show with lesbians that everyone is blogging who is not at AX probably takes over. I should be able to figure out who’s where by reading staff credits for the four shows at ANN.

The reason why I track this is that I wanted to learn about baseball a bit, and watching Taishou might be a good chance, depending how the exposition is handled. But since I dropped Index in the middle of ep.2, despite being directed by Mr.Nishikori, I’m a bit apprehensive.

I glanced across his report, and Bakemonogatari appears exactly as expected: a hotly anticipated Shinbo’s production after the stop-gap show of Arashi. It seems a bit to violent for my taste though, I’m not sure I’m going to follow.

This blog is in a danger of turning into “Aro-note” for a week, since Tenka Saiha is pretty much the only outlet that has the breadth and Aroduc is dilligent with summaries. Kuro was really lazy on Bake, for example.

He’s sticking with it for another week, but there are reservations:

I’m really liking the stories that this show is trying to tell, and Plug got some great development this week that nicely offsets her from the supergirl Aresta without making them antagonistic to each other, but the fanservice really painfully gets in the way of that… if you can even call it fanservice.

This was my impression as well, only after seeing the first 9 minutes of ther ep.1. In other words, Fight Ippatsu is essentially a Strike Witches redux, only it’s not a GONZO show, so it does not need to crash and burn at the end.

Le sigh. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with this show. Sentou is dreamy a great male lead, and Plug gained a lot of points in my book this week. Even Aresta didn’t turn out to be as much of a stuck up bint as I was expecting her to be. It’s just… I really don’t want to see gushing crotches… you know?

Well, yeah…

Take Dokuro-chan, replace the sex with more violence, add jokes from the kind Sunred made: that is the recipy for Punie-chan (Dai Mahou Touge). Jokes, actually, were ok to great — in particular I remember the suiciding potato man — but I started skipping the rest before the first episode ran out and barely dragged myself to the place where the two little bitches from Don’s banner appeared. They are not even as interesting as Sabato-chan. This may be “one of the better examples of animated black humor“, but it’s not good enough.

BTW, Steven selected the same screencap.

UPDATE: Steven commented. I agree about different strokes for different folks, although I don’t know why he ascribed me the thought that “the comedy in Gurren-Lagann was overwhelmingly funny”. I scanned quickly through my category and saw no evidence of such position. Gurren-Lagann is not even a comedy to begin with; its comedy, such as it includes, is quite solid (see Yoko’s jealosy on the beach), but I don’t think it characterizes the show. I understand that he was looking for an example that went counter Punie-chan between us. Perhaps Azumanga would work better.

In general I’m too picky when it comes to comedy. The only comedy series that I enjoyed recently was Muteki Kanban Musume (aka RFM). And even that required a certain frame of mind courtesy of Jason Miao. Sometimes I rewatch it and yawn at Miki’s antics.

This is not to say that I rejected Dai Mahou Touge undeservedly. Its humour is not just “dark”, it’s nasty, and characters are the same. That’s the main issue here.

P.S. Since we’re at it, here’s what a dark humour should be:

   Дедушка в поле гранату нашел,
   с этой гранатой к райкому пришел.
   Дернул колечко, бросил в окно…
   Дедушка старый, ему все равно. [tr]

The Grandpa’s self-sacrifice is none worse than potato man’s: it’s somewhat cheapened by having less to lose (”Grandpa is old, it’s all the same to him”), but he presumably killed a few communists and so made the world a better place. The potato man made the world a better place by inspiring the other vegetables, thus making the curry a success.

UPDATE 2009/09/25: Compendium and review at Wakaranai.