アニ・ノート

Seen in the lead-in of an article at Karmaburn:

My interest in Kimi ni Todoke originates entirely from a 95-second preview. Before that, I did not even give it a second glance when perusing the many Autumn 2009 season previews.

How typical. I dismissed Stellvia until I saw Yoko Ishida doing one of her Eurobeat parodies karaoke with a trailer.

Previews on blogs really don’t tell us much. As far as information transfer, they might as well not exist, I only read them for the wit.

Poor Eternal struggles to define the essense of Kimi no Todoke and comes up with heart, which is the same signifier Mahoraba commonly received back in 2005. Now I have to extract the anime from the “rejected” pile, where it landed after a brutal beating by Aroduc, and put it into the queue.

BTW, both Choux and Eternal are men, or at least boys.

UPDATE: Ryan joins in. Now it’s a veritable gaggle of bloggers and their inner fangirls against the grumpy blogger with a heart of stone.

UPDATE: Even Jen wasn’t immune, although she selected some ugly screencaps I have to say, as if to boost Aroduc’s objections. I guess it’s like Kaiba then.

Swayed by the exhalting posts, I gave Kimi ni Todoke a good try and giggled maniacally non-stop through the first 15 minutes of the episode. Also, squeaked “OH NOES SHE’S CHANGING COLOR” and such. No idea if this is my internal fangirl or what, I’ve never met her before.

As far as art goes, it’s open to interpretation. Yano and Yoshida are drawn as caricatures not completely dissimilar in spirit to the monkey boys of J2, and I recall Aroduc had no objection to that. And Windy Tales proves that anime can be breathtakingly beautiful while disposing with the trappings of big-budget show that we take for granted: complext layouts, animations of large numbers of background characters, numerous lines and shadings, etc. Backgrounds of Todoke certainly are amazing and it’s obvious that the show is prepared for a BD release. So, it’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Same applies to the work of Mrs. Noto. Evirus e-mailed me that she “is still refining the role, but when she does hit her marks she is spot on.” After listening for myself, I think he’s right. Sure, there was too much breath and such, but it’s abating. So I’m optimistic on her score.

As far as the story, too early to tell. Chracters seem sympathetic, but again the dude is a big question mark. I’m not even certain I’ll stick with the series in the long run, but it was a good ride at the start.

That sure was a lot of quotes. Now my biggest fear about Kimi ni Todoke is that it may disappoint all these people by a failure of directing, or leaving a continuation hook, or any other reason why anime fails utterly.

Buried in the usual avalanche of big screenshots was a marvelous tribute to Sawako by ExecuteOtaku, a co-writer at T.H.A.T.:

OGIUE MANIAX:

Production IG has managed to achieve is a show that truly looks shoujo in a way most anime have not, including perfectly good works such as Cardcaptor Sakura and Itazura na Kiss.

There’s a very strong understanding by the staff on this show as to when to utilize the more visually two-dimensional and emotional elements and when to incorporate a three-dimensional sense of spacing among the characters, and it, and the result is that it achieves that pastel and wispy shoujo manga feel while still making sense as an animation. In a way it reminds me of 70s-style shoujo, only with less emphasis on the melodramatic, and more technical skill on the part of the animators.

I think it’s a good time to remind everyone about another P.IG production with a similarly singular visual style, Windy Tales [link]. There’s even a small overlap in staff, for example Masatsuguru Arakawa worked on both.

KnT managed to raise BakuGasuBakuhatsu from the dead, as Hung shared his impressions. Long story short, he didn’t like it much. Check out this speculation, however:

Hopefully something will come up that will make the series more interesting. Like Sawako falling into a coma (probably not) or a super bitch coming along to steal the dude (probably more likely) or the dude having some dark secret like being Batman.

Nice, isn’t it? Now, Hung, watch Kampfer and tell me what you think of Sakura Kaede’s identity.

P.S. Oh noes, he made me to rewatch ep.1. Kickass show.

Starting with ep.2, every episode ends in a cliffhanger of sorts, which is extremely irritating for a supposed iyashikei. So, my answer is not to watch the last 2 minutes, but instead suspend the video. I resume it when next week’s episode becomes available, thus negating the cliffie. Take that, P.IG!

The benevolent dictator of Meenuvia is also an anime fan, but unlike our own overlord Maestro, he finds time to blog about it (albeit infrequently).

Take your standard high school teen romance angst-fest… And attach a JATO unit and smash it into the side of a cliff at 600MPH where it explodes into a shower of rainbow-coloured sakura petals.

This one is actually good. Double bonus points for teenagers who aren’t all jerks and/or idiots by default.

This echoes the sentiment that we’ve seen at Subatomic Brainfreeze: “It’s like watching puppies and kittens go to high school.” I didn’t link it back when it was posted because it’s just not true, but to argue otherwise is to post big spoilers.

Still, since good anime cannot be spoiled… Ready? Here’s a screencap of some bitches beating Sawako up in the washroom:

Oh and by the way, apparently, characters who are more evil eschew direct violence and choose to pull strings, although it wasn’t broadcast yet.

Granted, Pixy didn’t say that all teenagers weren’t jerks…

UPDATE 2009/11/16: Now he says it’s the second coming of Gurren Lagann.