アニ・ノート

I wish Musubi were a Nanoha to Tsukiumi’s Fate (Matsu is obviously Hayate). But the presense of Haruo spoils everything. Musubi is not interested in messianism, this is what Haruo does.

Oh goodie.

You dumb shits do not deserve making cameos like that (no disrespect to Kusano, obviously — she’s only a victim of her scriptwriter).

UPDATE: Matthew sagematt@#animeblogger says that it’s not a penguin, but a wagtail (aka 鶺鴒【せきれい】 or трясогузка). Get it? A clever pun on the Sekirei, if so. But I’m not sure I agree, the tail wasn’t wagging all that much, and the color scheme seems a bit off.

MORE: Aroduc produced a picture of the Japanese version:

But this is what I had in mind:

Who knew that Japanese sekireis were so… uniformly painted.

Chihiro (the group) is not done yet, but Japanese have reactions:

両手で2人を掴んでは、大空に向かってポイ捨て。これには皆さん呆然とするばかり。

Pouzen bakari, huh. Looks like a fun episode as always. Also, poor Squirtle. She’s always #2.

UPDATE: Raw watches are close behind, here’s Aroduc:

I think the really telling sign here, is that as the end credits were rolling they were still introducing new characters. Stop that! The show is over in 90 seconds! Given 7Arcs’ production speed, probably for at least a year. Why are you still introducing new characters! Stop that now! You didn’t even use some of the ones that you already had!

As everyone already knows, Sekirei does not really end, but rather pulls a Vandread on us. Unfortunately, unlike Vandread, Sekirei is based on a nearly endless manga, which it follows slavishly, not quite unlike Naruto.

Somehwat surpisingly, this is the first show of the season that I completed. Sorry, Miss Nogizaka. Sorry, Kaory, Aoi, and Shiho. You are the second best to the pokegirl #09… And frankly, to #88 as well, dumb as she is. And Allison? Don’t call me [Allison was the previous season, you dork. It's Lillia now.]

Liked: Yes…
Rewatch: Quite possible.

The One Screencap excercise was tough. The picture I selected at least has the main cast (mostly), and displays their characters somewhat, but it’s very busy and does not scale down well. I’m going to cheat and post a few rejects too, which sort of defeats the purpose of One Screencap, but oh well.

The brand of humour that can be expected. Fails to showcase normal art.

Musubi is essentially the female lead. But again, the picture does not show enough.

A rare catch of defocused Miya, great as an inside joke, but too obscure.

Not bad and essentially the same thing as the winner. Close call really, but the top picture is more explicit regarding the characters.

People’s minds just aren’t working the way I want them. Apparently the best bloggers were capable of doing was summing up the details and bringing more details over from manga. It’s not bad as such, but we need someone of SDB’s caliber to re-analyze the show. Sadly, there’s no mecha to attract Animanachronism.

Totali:

Sekirei is one of those shows that I instantly take a liking to after picking it up. Looking into the manga with the intention of simply sampling it before the season started, I was instantly hooked. Even after reading all the way to current chapters, watching the animation did not feel repetitive or slow at all. Seven Arcs did a wonderful job with the adaption, staying true to the original story from start to finish.

So, another manga purist. One of his commenters explains the Homura’s transformation.

PSgels:

Thankfully, the series makes up for it through its characters. There’s a wide variety of them in the series, and the creators succeed in actually making the viewer care about them. This is also the biggest strength of this series: it knows how to tell its story (which turns out to be much more complex than I originally expected) and keep the viewer interested. Overall, it was a very pleasant surprise.

It was a surprise all right. Boobs the size of Divergence Eve and a story… Who thought!

Sankaku Complex (ADULT BLOG):

The usual mechanism of mysterious foreground objects is used, along with simply not drawing the nipples. Expect sudden nocturnal bursts of blinding sunlight from lesser stations. The pleasures of regional physics are sure to return, though this is probably the best version.

Sadly, it’s true. Just as soon as I congratulated the creators of Sekirei for not doing it, they completely switched into “buy our DVDs” mode. I don’t know if I should second-guess them and proclaim a rankings-driven decision… But I can see that Sekirei was underblogged.

Ubu writes that, contrary to Aroduc’s assertion (which Ubu forgot to link, tsk tsk), Sekirei ep.12 is “not introducing new characters at the end; all of those have been shown before, most in that episode.” While technically true, Aroduc’s point still stands: creators were gunning for a sequel.

Since we’re on topic, Aroduc’s “prepare to find out… NEVER” was erroneous as well, strictly speaking, because we’ve been shown in ep.12 who the characters of the series preview were (and Kurasuba was well known to us well before ep.12). But then again, we weren’t shown just what exactly happened. It’s the same kind of mystery that transpired in Naruto… including the special baby who becomes a main character.

Hopefuly the coverage of Sekirei comes to an end at Ani-nouto. Unless someone like Lawson or Badger suddenly produces an amazing reflection post that I can link, these small notes are it.

• If a programmer wrote the script, Yume would’ve been #0 [but see also the discussion of numbers below].
• Missed opportunity for a joke: someone should’ve been Sekirei #007.
• Twins have different personalities: Hikari is boisterous and Hibiki is shy.
• The number 88 is supposed to be a good luck number in CJK, although I’m not up on the details of this superstition. It marks Musubi as “lucky sekirei”. Similarly, number 4 means death; this is why Karasuba is #04. Other numbers may be similary significant, aside from obvious rankings (low-numbered Sekirei are generally assumed more powerful by others… with the only exception being #02 Matsu, I guess).
• I had no idea that shoguns had such highly structured harems. Must watch more period pieces.

Unexplained, or things which I missed:

• Why does Seo make or permit the twins to fight wingless Sekirei? He’s never around to wing them, not to mention that twins apparently look dim on it.
• The stats sheet for Tsukiumi shows three types of match ends: “Win”, “Lose”, “Defeated”. How does “Defeat” differ from “Loss”? Sekirei either loses the mark or not, isn’t that right? Is a draw possible?

According to a post somewhere [NSFW] (via), they removed the pretty censoring strips and Nico-nico styled comments. Honestly, I’m very disappointed. Dropping the steam and foreground objects is a time honored tradition, but this?

UPDATE: Sankaku Complex reports [NSFW] generally poor quality on the DVD. I’m so sad… It was a very nice anime, but the art was so-so from the start, and now it’s made worse.

There was a noticeable number of people to visit Ani-nouto searching for “Sekirei DVD” recently. They were coming for a one-sentence post which referred elsewhere, to “Something of Red Comet #3″ (deshou?). That blog runs script which creates a link dashboard:

Sekirei’s power must be amazing if it can lift Ani-nouto where it does not belong.

Notice how well John is doing. It’s a nice, focused newsblog which I read too. I remember how Omo called Giapet having “the intensity of a thousand nontenki moe dolls”. John tops Gia easily, although I think he does it professionally.

Speaking of seyuu, I came to appreciate Marina Inoue (BTW, “Marina” has a kanji spelling: 麻里奈), because I’m listening to Sekirei Sound Stage 01. The SSS is a so-called “Drama CD”. It reminds me of radio adaptations of my youth: seyuu play out the dialogue, instead of everything being read by a narrator, as in an audiobook. Naturally, the voicework takes on a bigger significance without visuals, and Marina Inoue makes a good account of herself as Squirtle… er, Tsukiumi. Her other role was Yoko in Gurren Lagann.

Curiously, even J.P.Meyer asked if listening to SSS makes sense, since Sekirei is presumably about big breasts. The “even” part comes from this idea being simple enough to pop into minds of juvenile friends of Lolikit[sune]. I expected more from J.P. and, I admit, my first temptation was to ask him to stop thinking with his penis. But then I remembered how much effort SDB spent on evangelizing Divergence Eve. Sekirei is even a tougher case: the creators of anime clearly wanted the fanservice to shine… and then the DVDs came out uncensored. The story is also not very large in its scope, so it’s a little wonder J.P.’s thought process ran in the obvious track.

The story in SSS is different in details from the anime. For example, the whole initial capture arc is bypassed, but then we’re treated to additional scenes: Kuu and Uzume working in the yard, or the cliche of Minato evesdropping on his “wives” (Kuu calls them “あれのつまたち”) when they discuss him.

One thing I rue now is how Japanese are serious about their limited releases. Aside from SSS, Sekirei also had a “normal” Drama CD (which is bit confusing, since I think SSS is a typical Drama CD), but it’s sold out.