Notes taken with a 0.7mm pencil.
DiGiKerot didn’t jump on the bandwagon, because he was running in front of it, and so he attempts to inject the conventional wisdom into the discourse. Needless to say, I do not feel like agreeing, but he makes some good points (e.g. OP should have showed more characters), so RTWT.
BigN wrote (elsewhere) about “the hubbub about it [Shingu] these past couple of weeks”. With all due respect, this’s not hubbub. The hubbub is going to happen when Jason Miao sees the facial distortions.
I’ll be first to note that Nayuta is not doing what is known as “panteon class” distortions… but only because she’s not zoomed in when it happens. She is quite capable.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention, the (only) panty shot from Shingu haunts me. I understand that it was a joke, but man it was bad. I do not remember well, but wasn’t it caught on video and played over and over all across Tenmo?
When I watched Shingu, I had an feeling that I’ve met Hajime before. On reflection I think that it comes to his ability to set things straight by talking to people. This might not be a real trope, but it’s something reasonably discrete (more so than “moe”, perhaps). The little theatrise below contain spoilers for Shingu, Mahoraba, Fruits Basket, and Hanaukyo Maid Team.
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I think the creators might be sending a welcome message here; any girls watching the show should be paying attention.
To Heart: Akari
Shingu: Nayuta
Jokes aside, To Heart and Shingu leave the same sort of warm impression although their genesis, plot, and other attributes are drastically different. In one case it’s all about shagging your classmates, and in the other case it’s about the fate of the world, and yet…
This is a very trivial observation, but all members of the Student Government, except Harumi Mineo, have the kanji character from “mamo-ru” (守る) in their family names (pronounced “mori” in this case): Moriyama, Moriguchi, Tsumori, Morihata. The only other person with “mamo/mori” is the head of Sanemori clan, Momoe.
Back when I encountered Shingu, I expressed a hope for better connection with it on the second pass. Unfortunately, it didn’t play out. I only see more animation errors (e.g. Hajime closes the door on the borrowed camera). One plot move became more dubious with the second take: when Moriyama carried out Harumi’s body out of the closed-off space, he should’ve not had the ability to do so. On the upside, the final explanation made more sense this time around. So, it was a wash. Enjoyable? Yes. Favourite? Hmm…
One good thing about Shingu is its consistent quality throughout. In Stellvia I do not rewatch anything between the end of the Great Mission and the beginning of the Genesis Mission. In Shingu, it’s all the same level and can be rewatched in sequence.
Over the course of the last two months, I coaxed myself through 7 complete episodes and 10 minutes into ep.08 of Marimite. I even started thinking about completing it, when three days ago I accidentially thought: “School government in Shingu was so much more fun”, and it was the drop which overflowed the cup of my determination. I quit this horrible, bleak, dreary excuse for an anime, and was so happy to unwind watching Shingu that I went through 16 episodes in 3 days. Forgot to blog even.
To be fair, Marimite is not bad per se. As mentioned previously, the idea is that girls are being friends in it. Unfortunately, the relationships are set up to pump angst for no good reason, and it’s pretty much the defining feature of the show. When Shipon were angsty in Stellvia, she had a good reason: the fate of the whole world depended on her performance. Yumi’s tears were completely self-induced and hollow.
The show may be full of valuable life lessons for little girls, but its entertainment value for me is negative. I’m glad it works for others, at least.
Words:
お姉様がた: you can use 方 the same way as 達.
へんじ: “response”, different from こたえ/answer… somehow
そうたい（する）: leave early
いらいら（する）: be irritated
宿題を上げよ: [I] assign homework [to you]
けち: cheapskate (?)
温室【おんしつ】: hothouse/greenhouse
In contrast, Shingu is plain fun. The more I rewatch it, the more I like it. Back when SDB introduced me to it, I was rather sceptical. I mean, all the visual imperfections and stuff… But I think seeing Gurren-Lagann helped me here. Shingu’s scope is actually about the same, its biggest comparative downside being the screwed-up story of Muryo. Also, there was not as much growth in Shingu; lonely Nayuta does the job that Simon shares with Rossieu et.al. But if Gurren-Lagann is one of the four greatest series ever, surely the Tatsuo Sato’s masterpiece deserves to be categorized as simply great.
BTW, just to illustrate the above, think how Shingu and Gurren-Lagann handle the times when a hero needs a good shake-up. Asogi and Muryo did not use a good punch in the face, like Kamina and Simon did. I actually liked the Shingu’s way more than the TTGL method.
Words:
屋上【おくじょう】: [on] the roof
運動会 vs. たいくさい (elementary school vs. high school)
お見送り: walking home, also parting, farewells
らせん: they all love spiral: Naruto, Shingu (Kyoichi’s), and Gurren-Lagann
みっかが すぎた: three days passed.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to continue watching and enjoying the remainder of the show, blogging be damned. I need to rest from Marimite some more.
UPDATE: Steven says that doesn’t feel much sympathy. But it’s ok. And certainly, Harumi Mineo was absolutely amazing, Feena class, out of this world great character.
IN E-MAIL from J. Greely regarding へんじ:
The general rule when two words have basically identical meanings, is that the one based on on-readings is more formal, because all of the Chinese-derived words were historically used by the upper classes.
Also, I grepped through the Tanaka Corpus, and in most cases, henji referred to a reply, and kotae to a solution, with some overlap. Most of the henji examples were more formal, although there were several expressions that used o-kotae. Not a definitive answer, but suggestive.
I suppose it goes well with people using -gata for -tachi.
I don’t have much time and I have a choice of either blogging or watching another episode of Shingu.
BTW, Hachyo is holding a combo that includes the tube.
I look down on people “twittering” or “liveblogging” their anime runs because it is virtually guaranteed to be a weak substitute for humor (Jason, I’m looking at you). In fact I never saw a dump with anything interesting, not even once. Yet, in an e-mail discussion yesterday Zyl in essense suggested such infodump as a valid blogging form, especially if it has screencaps (he opposed it to the art of capturing one screencap that expresses the essense of the whole show; it is often a difficult excercise and I think the only time I succeeded with it was To Heart).
Since I rewatched Shingu for the 5th time, this may be a good time to try The Zyl Style. Poor server! The chronological order is kept, spoilers are absent to minimal.
This is how far I reached into true tears before I decided that the required emotional investment was too great, ejected the disc and loaded Shingu v.1.
The obligatory intro: it’s the future, baby.
Shingu does not have “Parential Abandonment” trope (even it looks like it at first). Go Tatsuo Sato!
Hajime slays the party with his fake naivite.
Yawning Nayuta is a big clue, one of many thrown around, but when I watched for the first time, I ignored all this stuff. Why think? It’s anime, right?
The two caps above do not quite work in a gif since the color changes. Blasted celluloid film technology. Check out how all three characters move.
“Okujou ni!”
Fourth from the left is the stereotypical English teacher, which may be fine for an anime as old as Shingu, but it’s about time they used a big black dude for it.
The note for this was “03 Harumi is not moe, just awesome”. I didn’t mean to blog this and used the m-word.
Oh, god.
A one-shot character. So good. BTW, animated.
Harumi again. For those who’s seen it, I find the logic of the scene confusing. What is the problem here?
Nayuta and Romi Pak’s voicework. At first pass, her diatribes irritated me a bit, but later I warmed up to them.
It’s not a pantheon-class facial distortion, but it’s good, not overdone.
OK, this one is not so good, not like most of them. Off-model a bit, I think.
I think I blogged this before, but one kg of meat for what, seven people? Japan is tough, even in the future.
Caption.
Oh hell yes. Hell, yes.
Nayuta-no-miko-san.
The glass, can you see it?
Odd coloring here.
The food (two shots).
I really turned around on just about everything about Shingu, except Setsuna. Something about her demeanor irritates me immensely even now.
Well, some of it is not so bad, but still.
Gesturing.
I think Isozaki is kinda cold. Pretty, yes, but remote.
OK, now Momoe can make me a henchman any time. It’s unclear to me just what she knew and when. For example, was she aware for Setsuna’s identity (through Asougi)?
LOL.
I bypassed capping this part before, so for completeness.
Futaba is withering, almost like Chiyo-chan who learned that Okinawa trip is cancelled.
Ditto. BTW, voiced by Rie Kugimiya, and says things like “wara-wara” (in jest).
LOL.
A throwaway shot on a moldy topic, but still good.
Shingu features a few awesome talk scenes. If I’m not mistaken the role of Judo club captain is played by Makoto Higo.
“Tabeta yo ne?”
LOL, right?
Hajime identifies it as “oden-pan”. Later they talk about kelp and fish cake being in it.
Can never have too much Harumi. BTW, she’s the only character (with a great degree of precision) who changes her attire.
Weird musical instrument.
As the action heated up, capping stopped. Still, one tense moment. The object in front is Shun’s head (duh).
All in all, 44 honest pictures, and heavy on the mystery food-like product. Steven’s commenters did not mention “oden”, and settled on “chikuwa”.
He liked it enough to whitewash:
I’m happy that the show did not attempt to explain the situation with Muryou. Some things are fine to remain mysterious because they ultimately don’t matter to what the show is about.
Oh, brother. I am pretty sure this was unintentional, based on the small exposition fragment in the end (with chibi Muryo in a Roman toga). It may be that it came out better that way, but it would be even better if the little segment was missing entirely. But what does it matter now, it is what it is, and it is a great show. I did not see a direction this strong until Oh Edo Rocket came about.
UPDATE: [link].
Hajime Murata is the archetype. His premise is a regular guy who gets to rub with magic users. He has no magical abilities of his own, so in order to be level with them he is awarded a special ability: smooth-talking his associates. As a result, they are sufficiently enthralled to let him into their inner circle, and so the adventures and whacky hijinks ensue. So, this is the basic formula. It allows to avoid the trope of the guy who suddenly pilots the mecha/ship/etc. without any training. For some reason the populus believes that it’s natural for such smooth-talking to be innate and accomplished without any training under the difficult conditions of extemporaneous communication; all the hero needs to do is be the nice himself and presto! everyone is charmed. 
Toru Honda is essentially a girl Hajime, and so in addition to the power to smooth-talk she commands the power of girls. She gets to demonstrate her enormous skills at running the household and adhering to gender roles. She would be impressive even if she said as little as Kasumi Tendo. This obscures her smooth-talking talent, but it’s still quite present. When applying it, Toru often is a one-trick pony, trying the same approach of “let’s all get along” and big-eye charm even to utter assholes who by all rights should not be vulnerable. But it’s not quite as dire and she can be smarter than that if she wants to [citation needed -- rewatch how she dealt with the little rabbit jerkface; other later relations?]. Maybe she’s just intellectually lazy (and lacks good sleep due to all the chores). 
Ryuushi Shiratori is different in the way that he has to excercise his smooth-talking talents on manifestations of Kozue. That is the secret circle which accepts him, and the obvious circle of residents is slaved to it. They don’t even have any extraordinarily abilities; they are but keepers of the secret. The only exception to this is Tamami, and perhaps this is why Shiratori has to deal her and her alone such a crushing defeat with his golden tongue. The raw difficulty of the tasks in front of Hajime and Shiratori is about the same, that is to say, they are very hard. However, Hajime’s responsibility is greater, he cannot fall back on his drawing skills for support, and he does not permit others to mop the floor with him as much. This is why he is the archetype.
Taro Hanaukyo is different from everyone else on this list by virtue of possessing a proper authority. So, strictly speaking, he doesn’t have to be on top of the smooth-talking game. We saw plenty of effective leaders who weren’t as astute in this regard. However, he is good at it, which helps. As it was argued