[] as a practical matter, audience recommendations for titles I “might want to consider” have been utterly useless, far more likely to be wrong than right at predicting audience (me) satisfaction.

I rely on recommendations heavily. Exceptions exist, of course; for example, I decided to watch Stellvia after I saw Yoko Ishida performing a remix for Stellvia’s OP “Brilliant Road” at a concert in a local mall. Before that, Stellvia was striken down by the “gizmo obsession” classification in Steven’s “future series” list — oddly enough. Nonetheless, the rule is to follow recommendations, and it served me well.

The trick is to be smart about it. Always ask what is good about the series, reject unsubstantiated recommendations. Weigh by the level of trust in the recommending person. Verify against ANN ranking graph. Basically, use your common sense.

The whole business smells of AnimeFusion, I’m afraid. That one was a series of concerts at shopping malls, sponsored by SunCoast (which was at the verge of bankrupcy at the time). I was quite happy to attend one, but the overall impression was of a sorry affair, with pathetic crowd sizes. Admittedly, it’s different this time. Scion sponsors the tour, and we get to buy tickets. So it’s not going to be quite as embarrassing.

Unfortunately, Virginia is quite far for me, and I’m not enough of a fan to travel there. I’m just going to buy the new CD, GNCA-1142, coming out in September.

UPDATE: David of TheAnimeBlog asked me to clarify what “of course” statement meant. I thought it was self-evident that TheAnimeBlog was geared towards those already in the orbit of the industry, and I am a fan. Industry news are important for fans, of course, which is why we have ANN. But TheAnimeBlog also likes to antagonize fans for some reason… They were in my holding tank of candidates forever, but every time I get ready to add them to my feedlist, street cred be damned, something like AX07 coverage happens.

Somewhat processed notes follow.

OP is sung by Yoko Ishida. Despite being happy for her getting a gig at last (I think we didn’t hear her in anime since AMG TV), the song is rather uninspiring. I wish she snatched another Towa no Hana to boost her sagging career. She is a talented singer. The competition is rather tough these days, especially from up-an-coming CAPSLOCK people. I was incredilous when MAKO stole Kamichu (a Geneon production), but ELISA did a very strong job with ef… It is tough for poor Ishida-san.

It took me a while to convince myself that I see a GONZO production. The designs looked like something from J.C.Staff.

Yoshika’s Mom and Grandma wear normal clothes.

The kid Sakamoto in the picture wears the insignia of Major (or something very similar to it). Umm…

Neuroi have strangely poor aim.

Japanese lessons:

• 先生呼んでくるね (I better call a teacher, eh) — I have a trouble using kuru/morau/ageru, since neither of languages I knew before had such a form. I continue to get by without unless it’s a request, but in Japanese these forms are far more common and carry an important meaning.
• おことわりします (No, thank you) — Never heard this before. Another idiom.
• ーはかせ — Does this mean Dr. or Prof.?

Overall, I’m not sure if I should continue this. I don’t see anything outstanding.

UPDATE: Crisu has a roundup at CJ’s.

LATER UPDATE: Omo’s take is, “Just because the premise is ludicrous doesn’t mean there’s a license to goof around.”

Somewhat ironically, this information came to my attention only due to the endless quest for legality. By now I have three CDs: a CD-R of mysterious origin, a Taiwanese knock-off (a present from the family, tired from my whining about not being able to find the CD: I’m sure they had best intentions), and the aforementioned U.S. mix. The result is, I still miss some tracks.

BTW, it’s a good news for Yoko Ishida

放送されなかったね。。。
結局、放送ではお詫びも告知も何も無しですかい。

I got into the habit of just skipping everything I don’t understand right away, so my first reaction was… “owabi mo”? What the…?

It turned out that the BS11 station suddenly cancelled Kannagi (NSFW, as always at Sankaku Complex), and the main message was actually in the first sentence “housou sarenakatta ne” (was not broadcast). Damn the passive voice.