アニ・ノート

Damien Kellis hits bulls-eye with this question:

Why are most of the customers in the Maid-ish Cafe female? Fushigi mystery.

On second thought, Kampfer is so full of manifest impossibilities, that this one should count as something very minor.

Thanks to the opening and ending animations, the identity of this New Kampfer is no surprise. What I did find refreshing was that the Obvious Questions asked in the usual fan-speculation manner are, if not answered, then at least acknowledged: where do Kampfers come from? Why are the Messengers all from the same toyline that apparently only Kaede [Sakura] likes? Is Kaede involved in this somehow?

Obviously I need to find a less obvious topic about which to speculate.

Heavily spoiling remarks included a question:

Natsuru has not yet taken showers/baths as a girl. And this is supposed to be a real full-blooded hetero adolescent?? What gives??

He wasn’t able to keep the transformation or transform at will previously, so showering was out of question.

At Moe Check:

Do people in Real Life actually play that Pocky game? [...] For some reason Spin The Bottle is popular in fanfics, but I don’t think I’ve seen an occasion in an anime itself.

I cannot vouch for Japanese, but American teens play all sorts of innuendo themed party games, so the answer is “yes”.

Actually, funny he asked. I remember how Ana-sempai went to a slumber party when she was 11, and reportedly girls there spontaneously cosplayed their favourite Bible characters. It’s all about the dominant environment. Say, in Oakland they play Russian Roulette at parties.

Why did Kaede (Sakura) lose consciousness? Quoting Damien, fuushigi mystery. I suspect we just don’t have enough material in the anime yet to form a good guess. {Update: Sage says she just fainted. On rewatch I concur, and think it was probably the shock from the hair and subsequently Natsuru jumping up.}

The pajamas transformation thing was weird as well, if not to say bogus. I am inclined to write it up as Natsuru’s imagination depicted. {Update: Clearly it was.}

BTW, from the location of hits on the blanket, we can make a good guess of what Akane thinks about her own expected accuracy for a triple-tap:

Which is to say, not very spectacular. Although I would probably not risk anything flashier under the circumstances myself (in fact I would not take the top one in case Natsuru propped the blanket with his elbow), she’s a Gewehr-type Kampfer for crying out loud.

Chris continues to beat the horse:

I continue to think that Akane was not shooting seriously for whatever reason. Otherwise, she is an embarrassingly bad shot; has she hit anything meaningful?

There’s a lot of poetic license in all of it. If you look at the first engagement with Rika, even Natsuru was unable to touch her — with an area weapon! — but Prez scored a significant enough point to give her pause. What gives? What authors try to do is to establish a relative balance of power (with Akane at the bottom of the ladder).

I think that white Kampfers must be hench[wo]men of Moderators who do not fight as such, but beat up colored ones and make them fight like gladiators. Shizuku is going to have it tough.

BY THE WAY:

When I watched how gears were furiously turning in Shizuku’s head, I remembered how Pixy said: “the way Sawako treats social interaction as an intellectual puzzle rather than an instinctive response is typical, perhaps even diagnostic of Asperger’s.” It’s amazing, but it’s very obvious that Prez had no clue what to do, how to approach solving the problem.

There’s not one torrent at Tokyo Toshokan yet, but Aroduc has posted heavy spoilers for Kampfer 09 already.

Fueled with the high-octane shipping juices spiked with bro solidarity, Zyl is willing to press further than I dared to go:

Of course the big question from this episode is: “How much of Bible Black Eyes Sakura is the real Sakura?” Those tending towards Yes, like Steve and Aizen, also seem to have react unfavourably to Sakura hereon. Or as divine puts it so well, Sakura is “now the antagonist of the series, which should make all her haters out there happy.” I’m personally more with Rozza C in assuming that Sakura is being controlled though not all the time and more via manipulative suggestion than robotic mind control.

Anyhow the Really Big Question for me is: Without Moderator influence, would Sakura still prefer Natsuru Girl Type??

Zyl’s agenda here is — although I’m second-guessing — if Shuzuku finds a way to exorcise Moderators, Sakura will revert to her old self, and then they live happily ever after (and Shizuku is either killed or goes Ami). I don’t think this chance is very fat. I assumed that Sakura was bipolar back in ep.2 times. But without a personal dog in the fight, I have no need to cling to any ray of hope for Natsuru.

One word of warning though. I heard that in the original novels, they ran for 13 volumes without giving an explanation to Sakura’s identity. Then in the manga fork, she’s one of the whites. I think it should be clear by now that anime creates its own continuity. This at least gives us a hope that Sakura’s question may be resolved some time by the end of Spring 2010, if the creators are smart.

Went to check if a contrary opinion on Summer Wars popped up, saw the strip. For the record, I always knew that Kampfer was gold.

Damien maks a call:

This may also explain why I am not Filled With Fury over wasted opportunities or whatnot in Kampfer. It’s entertainment that doesn’t require me to do anything particularly strenuous, but still surprises me with its humour, while not actually leaving my comfort zone of the familiar. It’s a very nice feeling, and unless something drastic happens in the last four episodes or so, Kampfer deserves its place as my favourite anime of this season [Emphasis mine — Author].

That’s all fine and well and I approve, but I demand a proper ending or an extra season and a proper ending. Nothing less is acceptable.

This went up just now:

What? It’s over? That’s not an ending! But it’s okay, because I was laughing my ass off through the last five minutes of the show. Even now, it’s kind of hard to type because I’m still giggling like a school girl when I try to think about various things. Hell, I can barely even remember rolling my eyes when they went through almost every single transformation sequence in turn.

First the big moment for Natsuru’s testicles to finally drop, then the good guys transformed into their battle-damage versions while all the animals sang to the tune of the ode to joy. [...]

At this point I figured that I have to watch it and stopped reading further. Unfortunately, I’m busy with work right now. Fortunately, torrents are not up yet.