アニ・ノート

Visual notes follow.

Meaning of the nose growing is unclear to me. The only Western example I know is that of Pinoccio, but clearly Yunocci is different.

You know what is bound to happen when boys are prohibited? And sure enough…

What can I say? Maybe write a letter to SHAFT: “If you keep doing this, I’ll stop pirating your shit!”

One thing that I noticed is that anime Japanese love the break-off blade for some reason. Many a little pink-assed punk draws one when he wants to pick up a fight, like in Noein. I think that a box cutter is a much better tool. It can be safed easily with one hand, and it comes with a variety of blades, including such specialty items as plexiglass cutters. What do Japanese find in the break-off? Granted it’s not as easy to pack into the 筆入れ aka пенал, especially a flat one like the above.

吉野屋ON☆STAGE ought to be animated, even if briefly.

Fanservice 1. Yoshinoya and the neck shadow.

Fanservice 2. Yunocci meditates.

Fanservice 3. Yunocci’s bed hair.

Fanservice 4. Yunocci and SHAFT trees. We demand more bamboo.

Since Pantsu Witches failed me, I had to find something to carry me over until the Autumn. I guess Hidamari x365 will have to do.

The x365 varies quite a bit. Episode 05 (Chika’s visit) was sort of… too earnest. Episode 06, right on. We received a rendition of Yoshinoya ON*STAGE, only in a private setting of a bathhouse. But the 07, well… We know what Yoshinoya was capable of already. So it’s not like the “naked apron” joke adds much.

And with that I’ve caught up.

Moe Check:

A part of it is that I’ve not actually been watching a lot of bloggable anime, which is a distinct case from watching anime period. I watch quite a lot of Hidamari Sketch x365, for example, but I can’t find anything to say about it.

I noticed that too… I follow Hidamari, I read what TheBigN manages to commit to blog, and wonder just how he does that. A slightly different example is Gurren Lagann. The enormity of it is just overwhelming, but there’s not much for me to blog that millions of monkeys haven’t blogged before. Meanwhile, ef and Lucky Star are most blogged shows here (at 33 count), and they are nowhere near as great.

Tenka Seiha:

You know, to be honest… I’m glad this show is nearly over. This experiment in covering a low key, plotless anime has really proven to me how ill-suited for the job I am. I feel like I ran out of things to say a month ago and have just been coasting on fumes ever since then.

At first, I thought I knew what he meant, but the next graf had things like this:

It’s worth noting that Sae is apparently the parallel to Yuno’s mom. I’m not entirely certain what that makes Hiro. Maybe destined to be massaged by Yuno.

If that’s fumes, I missed a lot while I wasn’t subscribed to that blog. A LOT.

Came across Yen’s Sunshine Sketch yesterday. Two things:

First, the wide faces that did so much to sour me on the anime are 100% taken from the manga. The whole style was extremely faithful, actually. The difference is, in the manga the wide faces are used sparingly to underline the moments of fooling around. In anime, it’s a major shortcut. BTW, I was not alone, see the “WIW/WIE/WIG” picture at Danbooru (NSFW ads).

Second, remember the ridicule pros heaped on fansubbers for “JUST AS KEIKAKU” and so on? Now Miyako says “OKAERI”.

Gia says that the 3rd season of Hidamari is in the works, although it’s unclear what her source is. Its title is spelled “Hidamari Sketch×☆☆☆” and pronounced “Hidamari Sketch Hoshimittsu”.

According to Josh, in January BigN and other fans of Hidamari Sketch might have an opportunity to end the life of illegality.

The same announcement also proclaims a release of Glass Mask, which was available at Crunchyroll without DTO for a while (still is). Now we know that Japanese owners are open to splitting Webcast rights from DVD rights.

At least he watches it.

While this episode isn’t quite as well made as the first episode of x365, Shaft really polished the art-style up quite a bit this time around. The color palette is noticeable brighter, there’s less use of pastels, and all the character art in general feels a lot better defined and offset from the backgrounds. I want to say that their outlines are thicker, but I don’t think that’s it. They also abused the hell out of CG this time around, which was a tad creepy in places.

Screencaps report that the wide heads are as wide as ever, so I don’t know if “really polished” would be the right description. Having dropped Hidamari two times, I don’t know if I should bother. I’m not even done with my rewatch of GA:GADC. And I hate CG in anime.

Kurogane became excited about the promise of “Yuno Crab” in the upcoming episode of Hoshimitsu. Sorry to disappoint, but I think it is a mistake. “ゆのクラブ” means “Yuno Club”, if anything. The translator was just thinking about crabs (kani) that Yoshinoya talked about in the previous panel and thinkoed it in, spell checker ate it.

UPDATE: I take it back. There’s an explanation in the speech balloon, and “クラブ” is a legitimate name for a crab, just not a default.

He opens with the following attention-getter:

[Yuno] flushes her key down the toilet and then spends most of the next week as a hobo, wandering from room to room, trading sex for lodging [...]

Oh LOL.

But then, the grumpy animeblogger with the heart of stone tries to live up to his reputation:

In any case, it was better than most of the last few episodes, and I’d call it one of the stronger episodes of this season, but like most of the rest, you can really feel the formula that Shaft has completely locked themselves into. That would be fine if they used it as a platform, but after the 10th time of seeing this exact same morning exercise routine and about the 23rd time of the ending bath, I can help by groan and fight off the urge to fast forward every time they start.

The tough love, which SHAFT probably needs. Actually this is kind of how I felt twice, when I dropped Hidamari and Hidamari x365 after ep.6.

What made GA different, I think, was how it a) used the cast’s quirks to a great effect (although Hidamari tried too, but…), b) inserted all the pseudo-educational stuff to water down the slice-of-life, c) paid attention to the animation, d) delivered the funny. And they did not overstay their welcome, at least thus far.