Notes taken with a 0.7mm pencil.
I think 3 is best for the long-term narrative construction. And one more thing:
Five implies a sentai show.
Right, but I was surprised to learn from Sunred that you can have a sentai group of 3 (e.g. Red himself as Weather Red, Weather Blue, and Weather Yellow).
BTW, Sunred 13 offers a great relationship advice. It works IRL. Due to its practical nature it’s a rare episode that I suggest watching with subtitles, unless you’re fully fluent.
Looks like he liked it:
The combat is both thrilling and amusing to watch as cute rabbits pump jihad camels full of lead, and it shows that the production crew has taken considerable time studying modern combat tactics and weaponry. As an old military enthusiast it pleases me to see some attention to detail used where it counts.
OK, torrenting なお.
UPDATE:
Enthusiastically approved.
Of course, it’s a vastly improved Shrek, a 3D. Not really an anime. But hey, I have wide ranging interests, and it’s made in Japan, so whatever.
I don’t care for his attempts to ride the concept of “brokenness”, but we need more blogging commentary like this:
Dad was awesome. A role model, really. I liked how he thought it was a good idea to run through the city while clutching his daughter’s underwear a la Araragi after Nadeko Snake. “Hey, kids! Good news! I brought your underwear! I had to run under this hot sun to get here, so don’t mind that they’re a little bit damp with sweat!”
(I absolutely do not blame Hitoha and Mitsuba for throwing him under the bus. That’s was a bad parenting job by him. I guess the lesson is… if you want to be a better parent, a more supportive girlfriend, or a more effective teacher, don’t take lessons from anime.)
Episodic blogger-tachi! Say “no” to retelling!
The difference between the two is pretty clearcut: Ichizon was funny.
Ichizon was nasty garbage (what’s worse, in a moment of weakness I fell for peer pressure and tried it twice). With that in mind, and knowing that my and Wonderduck’s tastes are usually diametrically opposed, I am likely to love Seitokai Yakuindomo. But there’s is no time! This season is crazily full as it is.
My new Jeep comes with MP3 CD but no USB or SD, so I went back to burning CDs (it’s a purposefuly crude vehicle: no power windows, for one). Doing that, I misunderstood how the -path-list option of genisoimage worked, and thus created an ISO where all tracks were shuffled. I listened to that CD ever since, because I was too lazy to burn another one. Today, one of the tracks in Sososo’s i.Next came up, and I was shocked by the clarity of Miku’s singing. I could understand every word.
How did that happen? I blame Teto Kasane. I listened to her way too much recently, enough to sing along… “Watashi ha uta-hime na no, watashi ha uso ja nai no… la la la… MISOJI TO YUUUUUUNA!” And honestly, Teto’s speech is just awful with her 8-bit anounciation (sorry, UTAU fans, but it is). At first I was not sure if she actually pronounced any words or just made meaningless sounds… But gradually I started to understand her and that probably made something to my speech centers. That’s how Miku surprised me.
Tried out watching SW2 02 at Rutube. Subs are pretty bad in the liberties they take in order to add the spice. In America, translator’s butt would’ve been handed to him on a platter in various forums.
I’m sticking with raws for now. But it’s good to have some backup.
UPDATE: Zyl asked me what the subtitles say. That is actually a difficult question, because answering it amounts to translating from Russian to English and keeping all the subtleties: the same task an unknown translator has attempted, only between Japanese and Russian. I would say that a close English translation would be, “Where the fuck are those Romanian witches?!”. Original Mio said, “ロマニアのウィッチーズまだか？！”, even without the -は particle. Clearly, it’s not something you want to translate as “Have the witches of Romania arrived?” Russian has become laced with obscenities in the recent decades just as much as English, especially if voices get raised. And “черт побери” is just mild enough. I am not qualified to find the right level, but I expect a truly proficient translator to find a trick to make it sound better while being literal. As it is, it’s rather crude, IMHO.
Those who like series such as “Strike Witches” for the characters’ chronic lack of pants might also enjoy “Cat Shit One” as both the bunnies and camels sport outfits without pants.
Facepalm.
BTW, I was a bit repulsed by Idea Factory’s region block in their “world premiere”. Sure, I can torrent a fansub, but still… If it were an empty season otherwise, I might have, but not this time.
One thing I’m quite liking about Campanella is how they are doing a better job of depicting an RPG game than most other RPG game anime adaptations. Ironic since it’s actually an eroge in origin.
My luck with the quote-unquote “RPG” genre was mostly bad. Legend of Lodoss War was unbelievably dragging. I rented a DVD because a few people were enthusiastic, but perhaps they were too much of tabletop nerds to trust on this. Another series in this vein that I tried was Tales of Symphonia. It did not work much better. Druaga did work better, until the inevitable GONZO crash and burn in the and. Kuro’s praise of Shukufuku no Campanella makes me wonder if something like it can be made work at last.
UPDATE: Hikago links to a 3-part write-up at Relentless [part1, 2, 3].
With ep.3, Mitsudomoe got its mojo back. Certainly, doubts in the long-term viability of the formula are going to persist, and then the usual “slice of life” problem is going to occur, but then, how many episodes did The Simpsons run for?
One thing I appreciated in particular was how the creators manage to produce the funny by what appears to be beating a dead horse with persistence. They just beat and beat and beat it, and then… suddenly… how did that happen! That’s what I thought when the usual, banal comedy of misunderstandings set-up played out (e.g. Person A says X about Y (book), and person B thinks it was said about Z (pantsu)). This is a very good way to mine the vein of laugh in anime these days, because everything was tried before. Otherwise, it’s either back to combining more and more disparate elements, turning the sexploitation up until TV melts, or just feed on remakes of the classics.
All along, the visual feast continued. Aside from every sister remaining plain beautiful (especially in case of Mitsuba), Mitsudomoe very much tells me that anime has a bright future in the Blu-ray era. I am sure most other bloggers knew it for a while, but I am slow. I don’t even have a BD player. One funny new trick that I noticed in ep.3 was how the director intentionally makes scenes with very small characters doing something, and you can see every detail, to the extent it simply was impossible on the analog TV. More creative freedom through technology.
Jessi[1] received a strong rival today with a post on Amagami (h/t Aroduc at #animeblogger):
Amagami SS is a crass, deplorable show that in three episodes proves how creatively bankrupt the writers are to produce a romance with a cast that is devoid of character, personality, empathy and interest. Each scene is a torpid examination of uninteresting people who are slaves to their lusts, [ yak yak yak. ]
A bonus part is, the site runs a re-feed ticker of Sankaku Complex, which is of course the peddler of the lusts and such.
I guess the today’s lesson is two-fold. First, appreciate PSgels’ [imminent] victory more. It could be this… or Colony Drop. And second, eschew the word “bankrupt”[2]. It’s crass and a signal of uninteresting.
UPDATE: Pablo asks aloud: “I just can’t put my finger on what makes him that stance.” Not sure if it’s my place to second-guess him. But if you flip a few pages back, his hate seems generally rooted in snobism.
MOAR: We awoke Kuro so a commenter puts the final dots over the eyes:
The rant by Chaostangent doesn’t even merit a serious response. It’s merely an example where one blogger tries to do the “maximum slam” on a show without any trace of fairness or base in reality. You could understand that much after 3 sentences. It’s an attempt to ride Amagami’s popularity wave on the negative side, nothing more than that. Oh, and the fact that he deletes comments disagreeing with him robs this blog of any remaining credibility in my eyes.
The observation about the cunning use of badmouthing a popular show for the sake of linkage is an astute one. I linked to it too. As for the comments, well, that only shows their fundamental weakness. This is why Ani-nouto…. Why do I even bother explaining the basics? Mentar, get a blog already.
[1] The queen of the amusing hate of all things good in anime, see K-ON.
[2] The lesson came a few hours too late.