アニ・ノート

Almost as great as 01, only the subject matter was weaker.

It would be great to know where this picture was taken, back in the days of Kamichu and juice cans with pull-out tabs.

Nice cameo, but I want Yunocci.

UPDATE: Tenkousei: a commenter says: “1982 Japanese movie “Tenkousei” (Transfer Student) directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. Based on the novel written by Hisashi Yamanaka. There is a new one “Tenkousei, Sayounara Anata” (Transfer Student, Good Bye My Love) by the same director in 2007, also very good.”

Natsu no Arashi 09 poped at Youtube an hour ago, and my wish was granted in the first minute the of show:

No idea who the little freak with pantsu on his head is.

UPDATE: DiGiKerot has a more complete collection of cameos, which came quite thick. Note that SHAFT uses general cultural references quite a bit, e.g. Tenkousei in 08. It’s completely impossible for me to catch them, unless they are stated explicitly like the 1936 movies that Arashi liked in (BTW, the year of King Kong). I still have no idea what the tank was about. Good money is on most of these flying right over my head.

A post at Animesuki gave me the hook with which to find what the other of Jun’s images of war was: “Bokura no Nanokan Sensou” (ぼくらの七日間戦争), or Seven Days War.

He’s such a tsundere for Shinbo in this post:

I’m really glad that I ended up picking this show back up, because boy, was this episode awesome! For this episode, I feared a bit for Kanako and Yayoi’s lack of airtime, but this episode worked out really well. This episode was full of nice and clever touches. When I watched Tsukuyomi Moonphase about half a year ago, I really was tired Shinbo’s style, and the subsequent Shaft-series of a tale of Melodies and Maria Holic only made this worse for me. But I really have to say, that with Natsu no Arashi, I’m back to being a Shinbo-fan. Of course, I still believe that the third season of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei is going to suck unless proven otherwise, but I’m also pretty much looking forward to Bakemonogatari.

I concur, Arashi 11 was great. But the plank is set even higher now. I’m curious to see if Shibo can make up an ending for an anime made from a running manga, and a manga by Jin Kobayashi to boot! If he pulls it off, it’s going to be awesome.

It wasn’t only the movies, or anime, far from it. Today Astronerdboy posted a reference chart for the album covers.

As we can see, not all covers are known, and the chart is sure to expand soon. Next time, please refer the 2ch.net thread, thanks.

P.S. All of Jun’s covers are really cute.

Thanks to the wonders of broadcast order, today’s episode (13) was actually the first episode. But in reality it was a pale imitation of the first broadcast episode (01), which it ostensibly precedes. The distance from great to mediocore is only one wrong step.

In my judgement, despite all the trickery, Shinbo failed to break the curse of Jin Kobayashi and the running manga. The official ending (12) was ok, and attempted a minimal closure, but did not reach further than Fruits Basket. So, the leader episode was the best part, and the rest wasn’t worth watching (mind, plenty of people disagree, but the war horror didn’t impress me).

Liked: it wasn’t bad
Rewatch: not likely

QUICKIE: To see a drastically different tack on Arashi 13, check how Moero Amazon summarizes it as: “Jun is cute indeed. But we weren’t able to see Jun in swimsuit, and it’s a pity…” (all screencaps are that of Jun as well). For each his own, I guess.

Another thing, I know now that I should’ve watched K-ON instead. I have Crunchyroll and easy availability to blame for that. Ironically, I was interested enough in the beginning to switch from Crunchyroll to raws on Youtube in order to gain a week.

Via John come the news of Arashi 2. I’m going to go on a limb and declare that I’m not watching any more of Jin Kobayashi’s artistic bankrupcy and Akayuki Shinbo’s attempts to paper it over.

I went to Beta-Waffle to see what I’m missing due to insisting on a story in my anime, and:

Master still has absolutely no comprehension of the concepts of time travel, and that guy still hasn’t gotten his salt, so I guess I can’t complain too much – it was a pretty funny episode regardless of the lack of anything of particular interest to talk about.

Heh. I knew it.

However:

[] given the comments coming from Shinbo about them getting more job satisfaction out of this show than Bakemonogatari due to the popularity not being mostly down to the original author []

So, two things:

1. Shinbo knows that Kobayashi is a talentless hack who ruined School Rumble.

2. For a self-proclaimed fanboi of SHAFT and Shinbo, WAH is surprisingly useless as a source of information. Less stalking, more reporting, please!

UPDATE: Screencaps at Random Curiosity are too beautiful. I’m wavering…

At Mahou Meido Meganekko:

I’ve been thinking since the first season that Jun and Hajime are doomed to a lifetime together.

That Kobayashi! There are some things Shinbo cannot fix.

Just like the last time I checked out a season’s preview, the quality is absent. The whole enterprise seems like an enormous trolling effort, born out of a condescending to the lowlife of the Internet. Naturally, by diving into the septic tank so forcefuly, ANN only serves to legitimize and perpetuate the trolling. In my world, ANN’s preview has no relevance whatsoever. This season, Scott Von Schilling’s enormous love of self-aggrandizement reminded me about the silly thing, and delivered my eyeballs there. ANN’s advertizers salute you, Scott!

When I wrote about “extremely poor quality of articles” back in 2008, I didn’t quote anything. To correct the regrettable oversight, here’s the lead from an article by one Summer Mullins:

I should have just stopped watching the first time I threw up in my mouth, which was a few minutes in, but I masochistically decided that I should push myself as a reviewer to watch something that is outside my normal viewing diet. That said, it was a terrible mistake. This episode managed to squeeze in an amount of blushing-moe-girls-in-maid-outfits-and-swimsuits previously only accomplished by three regular otaku-bait episodes, and for that, I salute Akinai-chuu. It gets right to the obsessions with no need to set up a plot. Although, if you’re interested, it’s about a cougar (a woman, not an actual cougar) who runs a maid café staffed by all the moe stereotypes — including a girl pretending to be a boy — plus one hideously offensive guy []

According to ANN, Mrs. Mullins was an editor of Anime Insider, a paper magazine. You cannot get more mainstream than that. So, time and time again I’m surprised by the monstrous negligence (Master is a cougar?) from the people who are supposed to be blogger’s betters. They are the lowlife of anime halo, not we. And Von Schilling wants to become one of them!

UPDATE: Summer’s boss Zac Bertschy twitted: “Sora no Otoshimono and Natsu no Arashi 2 previews up. they both look toxic” (12:06 PM Oct 5th). Who are they, reviews or shows?

UPDATE: DS threw a strip. Heh. It’s like shooting fish in the barrel.