アニ・ノート

Back in the day I was quite disappointed that ViZ decided to issue the first season of Honey and Clover on DVD well ahead of the second half, because the story does not break into two neatly. Take it from here: no matter what Omo says, ef ~memo~ made complete sense without ef ~melo~. H&C makes no sense without H&C II. And to make it worse, ViZ clearly sat on the license longer than the realities of production dictated.

One way or the other, without much trumpeting, complete H&C is out on DVD and is safe to buy and watch. My own impression, oddly enough, was rather negative, but only because I disagreed strongly with some messages in it. It certainly was a quality production technically. H+C also induced bloging merriment. Good times.

UPDATE: Chris Beveridge twitters: “I swear, the Honey and Clover #anime must be one of the most dull and uninteresting shows ever.” It wasn’t my impression, but for people out there who put stock into his opinion, there you go.

Some of the videos that I watched at LCAD were availabe as an add-on DVD for a sound release. Unfortunately, I am late to the party, and neither CDjapan not Amazon carry it anymore (Amazon offers it second-hand, but no sellers are willing to ship abroad).

Naturally, the torrent dried up too. There ever was one, from Raws-4U at Nyaa, unless we count the “Chinese ISO” torrent, which is dead too. The most hurtful thing is, it is 94% complete, with several desperate people hanging on to it, but without a seed there’s no hope to get the remainder. ;_;

The last, slim hope is for some kind of second edition, but those may be difficult to snipe: an upcoming Master Box is already sold out on preorder (it’s CD only, but an example anyway). I cannot help suspecting a ploy of artificial scarcity.

Pulling no punches:

I agree in general that complaining about “moe pandering” is silly. It’s not so much a criticism as a means in which I sympathize with those people who got into anime because of 80s mecha shows or the various gory/sexploitation stuff. And then as time moves on, cultural trends and what sells changed. Consequently people are left in the dust if they couldn’t “grow up” with it.

Oh, the sweet triumph. There never was a better time to be a moefag.

Still, it’s not like studios aren’t publishing Darker than Black or whatever other shows I never watch. As for sexploitation, just look what they did to Strike Witches and Juuden-chan. On a historic scale, we get tons and tons of every kind of stuff.

Her spoilers are horrifying:

At one point in this episode, two young men are hassling the little waitress who is the lead girl in this show. The manageress, who has previously been established as a fairly sympathetic character, comes over to stop them. Instead of talking them out of it, as one might expect, she immediately boots one of them to the ground. They call her a “damn bitch” and leave without paying. She then takes her cell-phone and calls some local toughs she knows, telling them to stop the two guys and take all their money. Absurd.

And this is supposed to be funny… how? Sounds like exactly the same drek that made Ichizon unwatcheable. Coincidentially, Hashi fooled me back then, but not anymore.

Just received an official notice from “The Crunchyroll Team” (not even Shinji — was he ousted?):

As Crunchyroll continues to evolve, we add new features and remove ones that don’t perform well. Recently we’ve made a decision to discontinue our Download-to-Own service, which lets users purchase DRM-free, downloadable videos of our popular shows. We believe online streaming video is the future will continue to focus on those efforts. Starting March 31, 2010, no new purchases of video downloads will be allowed. However, your existing downloads will continue to work until May 1, 2010. Please download and save your video files by May 1, 2010.

My first impulse was to buy the rest of Precure before too late. But on second thought, why reward the bastards? I already gave them money, and they knifed me in the back.

Anyway, they seem to want to re-enact the obsolete business model of “TV”, what with the taking down shows after broadcast. The reason for them is to get publishers like Kadokawa and Media Factory on board, who are less desperate than Toei, and would not agree on DTO. Well, good luck with that. And I’m going to check what’s new on Bakabt.

P.S. BTW, it well may be that “The Crunchyroll Team” sent this e-mail only to people who actually bought something. This is why the news is not on any of the usual news sites (Gia’s Vice, AnimeNation, etc.). Maybe I should tip ANN.

UPDATE: One of Gia’s minions finally noticed the news after a discussion at forums. His sample list of removed shows is not complete (no Precure, for one), but it includes some interesting items. For example, I did not know that Naruto was on DTO. I have most of it on DVD, but perhaps it’s a good opportunity to grab some. {Update: Actually, it’s a bogus list. Naruto is not available. The only available show is Last Exile (oddly enough, not available for streaming anymore after March 1, but still present on DTO).}

BTW, you know what show is really going to hurt (and by extension, its owners)? Eve no Jikan. It is indie enough to get a significant revenue from DTO, in comparison to DVDs.

Also, regarding Ubu’s confusion: indeed, Crunchyroll removed links to DTO from episode pages. Apparently you are not supposed to watch something on stream, decide “hey, I like this, let’s buy!” and click to download. Chairman Kadokawa would not like that! You have to go to the main page for the show, then click on the grey “Download” tab (next to “Fans”, etc.).

Gia drew my attention to the upcoming removal of Omamori Himari from Crunchyroll, by — who else — Kadokawa. Crunchyroll’s Rob Pereyda even made the following observation about Kadokawa’s insufferable arrogance:

“While I cannot reveal too many details as to the specifics of the Kadokawa Pictures deals, I can confirm that there is a window in place for the two titles. While I am not privy to their entire media strategy, I can say that the windowing of content across various forms of media has become more and more widespread recently, especially overseas, and that both rights holders and distributors ultimately come to these kinds of agreements to best ensure the future, viable production of high-quality media.”

See this middle finger, Kadokawa? See it? You are making me to download Himari elsewhere and then who is going to lose? Not I. I do not even want to watch it all that much.

P.S. It should be noted that Kadokawa did exactly the same crap on Youtube when they uploaded and took down Haruhi-chan. So it’s entirely in character for them.

There was some anime ruse involved, but essentially, today’s blog post at 2DT is about the trench toilet. Usually this topic elicits balanced discussion, but somehow it grew extremely lopsided in this instance. The blogger himself set the tone by refusing to use the “barbaric” device, and it snowballed from there, down to anonymous commenters calling Japan “uncivilized” etc.

So I guess it is down to me to redress the balance a little by reminding everyone how horrible the American toilet is, the one with the standing water. Due to the height from which a man necessarily has to drop the natural product into it, one is virtually guaranteed to have the butt splashed with the freshly produced mix. With the Japanese trench, you are completely free to vary the height and aim with a precise offset, therefore staying clean.

Oddly enough, Russians found an elegant solution to the problem: they built a toilet that is just like the American one, but includes a ramp that allows your log to slide gently into water without splashing. So their souls may be dirty, but their butts stay clean.

The second worst feature of American toilet, although fortunately not present in every instance, is how bizarrely short the bowl is, front to back. This is mostly an issue of private residences, but if every available rental house in town is like this, you are in trouble. Move forward, and your penis is pressed against the front of the bowl (better clean it very well every day and never let your guests to use it). Move backward, and there is no way to take a dump inside. Again, not an issue in Japan.

No matter how you look at it, the Japanese toilet is easier to use and is more hygienic, and that is civilized. If 2DT’s commenters have some other definition of civilization, that is only sad.

There’s a gentleman plugging on his Ph.D in a local university. He is not an immigrant, but is actually a teacher in some Japanese university. Somehow or other he obtained a 2-year sabbatical and used it to pass comps and take classes here. I hear about his exploits through the grapevine sometimes.

He brought his family with him, including his two children. And recently he revealed that he does not allow them to watch anime, because it’s harmful for their development. They are too impressionable, you see. Instead, he lets them watch Disney cartoons.

The idea of a Japanese parent forbidding Japanese cartoons from his very Japanese children seems rather strange at first. But then I remembered the reaction that my retelling of events in Hanamaru received from generic populace. You would think it was Kodomo no Jikan! And Hanamaru is the most gentle, heartwarming, and wholesome anime on TV this season (unless we include Sazae-san and such).

Poor FUNi. They still suck, but I sympathize.

UPDATE: Jonathan Tappan explains this as anime familiar to us being not aimed at the young children. Which would be understandable in case of late-night anime (which is meaningful, because apparently Japanese are not very good with TiVo), but then he says that children’s anime is no better than American cartoons either. I have to wonder if he watched Binchou-tan.

He says:

Oh god.. what?!!

I’m looking forward to Hanamaru 09 now.

Also, a thought occured to me: so, this is what Sumire looked like when she was in the kindergarten.

Aroduc and Scamp quickly focus on the same thing:

The rest of the cast is cut right out of the same cookie cutter collection as a billion other terrible pseudo harems. The idiot loli, the older girl sensitive about her age, the one afraid of men, the one with a sword (except when they forget to draw it), and both a sullen and a friendly male sidekick.

and

[T]his unusual character trait (which, incidentally, you’ll have seen in hundreds of other characters before []) will be repeated and used as the joke throughout the rest of the series. The girl is small, the guy is a minicon [], the graceful girl carries a sword. Worst of all is the girl who is afraid of men. Yeah, I haven’t seen that a bizzilion times before.

Sounds like my kind of show.

Update: Even PSgels:

The biggest problem with this first episode however was that most of the characters rely too much on their quirks for their characterizations.

Wow. Same talking point again! It almost looks someone created a JournoList for Animebloggers (I mean, more successfuly than Saturnine did with ABC).