Tag Archives: dere-dere

Mahoromatic, a series I hate to love

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4

Way back when, I watched the first season of Mahoromatic because I’m a Gainax completist and later made a mental note to pick up the second season when time and finances allowed. Even then, Something More Beautiful sat on my backlog shelf for months. The fact that I have an entire DVD shelf dedicated to my backlog might explain why that happened, but Mahoromatic‘s second half wasn’t something I was in a hurry for in the first place.

I found myself compelled to see it through to the notorious end, but I can think of so many reasons why I perhaps shouldn’t have bothered. My lasting impression is that it really wasn’t bad; ignoring the waste of time that is the Summer Special (a course of action I thoroughly recommend, by the way) it still had its fair share of problems.

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Reading stats: 1093 words, 4 images; estimated reading time 4:22 mins

Rawr~! Godzilla is still the daddy

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It’s embarrassing to admit that I consider myself a fan of Japanese cinema yet have never seen, for example, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. It reminds me of the concept behind I’ve Never Seen Star Wars in that there are some glaring gaps in my knowledge and life experience that need to be filled. Another good example is that I had never sat down to watch the original 1954 movie of Godzilla. Until now.

It goes without saying that Godzilla is a cultural icon; the image of a giant lizard owning the streets of Tokyo is one of cinema’s most enduring images but out of the people who recognise the popular silhouette of this radioactive dinosaur, how many have seen its first silver screen outing? With the aid of my Lovefilm subscription I decided to conduct a little experiment in experiencing a piece of filmmaking that’s around the same age as my parents…and the results were surprising.

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Reading stats: 1095 words, 1 image; estimated reading time 4:23 mins

Halfway through Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica: holy crap, this is good

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15

An issue I see quite often in anime fandom is the cry of “it’s not a cartoon! It’s animation!” I’m as guilty of that as anyone, and even set out my own thoughts on the topic a while ago but quite frankly it’s a whole can of worms I can’t be bothered to deal with again. I will say though that Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica IS a cartoon. But what a cartoon it is.


“I am the bone of my sword…” and so on. Make of that parallel what you will

I have it on good authority that the magical girl genre isn’t always aimed solely at a young female audience and, if you look at how long ago the Cutie Honey franchise ran before Hideaki Anno did his live-action remake, it never was. In terms of premise and outward appearances Madoka is the sort of thing you’d expect to see kids tuning into on Saturday mornings but what makes it one of the first big pleasant surprises of 2011 is how much else is hidden up its frilly sleeve.

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Reading stats: 989 words, 3 images; estimated reading time 3:57 mins

Shiki and the disease that makes monsters of us all

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Shiki was hard-going at first what with its slow build-up and all, but it got better towards the end. The new OP and END theme tunes were an improvement on those of the first half and many of the backstories to the characters were satisfactorily filled in. The premise and rural setting are allegedly a homage to Salem’s Lot by Stephen King; I don’t care much for King’s style but I enjoyed this all the same.


I really liked these two in the end

I suspect the novel is even better (aren’t they all?) because the artwork and screenplay were a bit clumsy yet the characters were fascinating and, personal reservations about King-esque horror aside, it’s a good story. These were the series’ saving graces, in addition to a wonderfully fascinating moral ambivalence that just managed to make it memorable.

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Reading stats: 1150 words, 3 images; estimated reading time 4:36 mins

It’s time we showed REC some love

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11

I think REC must be a forgotten gem because I’ve never read or heard much about it at all. In fact I stumbled on it purely by accident when the premise of “boy meets girl, girl becomes roommate after her house burns down and romantic awkwardness ensues” read exactly like the early strips of my favourite webcomic, Questionable Content. Even so, my hopes still weren’t high because it didn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary.

Satisfied that I’d at least discovered something about the lives of characters who were out of high school I then learned that it was directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, which was another happy coincidence. As a matter of fact the storyline of REC is itself founded on happy coincidences and how things sometimes just…happen. Nakamura’s involvement may also be the crucial factor that tips this from being a likeable yet ordinary story into something a bit more special.

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Reading stats: 1078 words, 3 images; estimated reading time 4:19 mins

Several girls galore (the alluring aroma of Perfume)

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The PC’s on the blink again. It’ll be over a week before I can put right whatever’s wrong so in the meantime I’m working on the backup machine, my trusty four-year-old low-spec laptop. So here I am, running in the Aniblog Tourney with little to write about because I can’t watch much; I feel like I have an important call to make when my mobile phone’s in the pocket of My Other Jacket.

So I thought I might as well write about Perfume. Music dominates a lot of my spare time: I immerse myself in as much as possible, ignoring the usual boundaries of time, trends and genre in favour of my own so sometimes my tastes are a bit unpredictable. My fascination with Perfume is a guilty-pleasure kind of thing, but not completely so.

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Reading stats: 1177 words, 2 images; estimated reading time 4:42 mins

A feelgood after-life and meaningful ecchi in My Lovely Ghost Kana

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Sometimes it’s rewarding to take a complete stab in the dark and pick up something different from what you normally read. I’m unfamiliar with Yutaka Tanaka for instance, which isn’t surprising since his CV largely consists of ero stuff and a few bit parts in animation on the side. I had second thoughts about reading and blogging about My Lovely Ghost Kana since it is, in parts at least, an ero title.


The legal alcohol drinking age in Japan is 20, so yeah. No thought-crimes committed on my part

There is indeed a lot of sauce in this, to the point at which the opening chapters give a false impression of where the story eventually chooses to go. The infamous ‘deceptive-ness of the first impression’ isn’t on the scale of Onani Master Kurosawa, but the effect it had on me was similar. It even manages to go some way towards justifying the sexual content, which is an achievement in itself; the clincher is that it pays attention to the characterisation and even makes a worthwhile attempt at a storyline. Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised.

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Reading stats: 1017 words, 4 images; estimated reading time 4:04 mins

Careful with that axe, Yui

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23

As difficult as it is, I have to admit that I’m enjoying K-On. Not because it’s intelligent, thought-provoking, original or a work of art. I’m enjoying it despite it not really being any of these things, mainly because something that’s so intentionally dumb is undemanding and therefore the perfect thing for unwinding with at the end of a long day.

Yes, it’s shallow, commercialised and derivative but truthfully as long as it makes you smile, who the heck cares? I’ve done at least three drafts of this post before wiping the whole lot off the screen and starting over; this is by its very nature a show that’s difficult to write about because there’s not much to it beyond the obvious observation that it’s cute, undemanding fun. That was before my word count began to mushroom…

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Reading stats: 1045 words, 3 images; estimated reading time 4:11 mins

Haruhi Suzumiya light novel #1: where Kyon fears to tread

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15

haruhi-light-novel-1-coverThere’s still a lot to be said for the good old-fashioned medium of words stamped onto slices of dead trees. I honestly believe certain stories work better in one medium than another; Haruhi Suzumiya is I think a case in point. The TV show’s shuffled broadcast order never significantly improved the experience because I’ve yet to hear a convincing explanation for it. The translation of the light novel on the other hand seems to keep an ordered chronology as nature, and Nagaru Tanigawa, intended and is more satisfying for that.

The prose reads smoothly and I’m pretty impressed with the presentation too (my only regret is not getting the hardback version. I’m anal about such things). What makes an even bigger difference than its adherence to the timeline, or the fact that it retains Noizi Ito’s original illustrations, is the first-person narrative approach that the novel takes. Unlike the TV broadcast order, which came across as little more than a cool gimmick, this detail makes the world of difference.

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Reading stats: 869 words, 1 image; estimated reading time 3:29 mins

Onani Master Kurosawa: Redemption is in your own hands

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A long time ago I saw a single-page scan of what looked like a one-off doujin Death Note parody where a kid made it his mission to masturbate daily in a girls’ toilet at school. His triumphant “Just as planned!” was amusing enough but I assumed it was a throwaway piece of toilet humour so after forgetting what blog I saw the pic on I thought nothing more of it. That was until the community word-of-mouth thing featuring Ghostlightning, David and Samshiel among others jogged my memory. The doujin in question was Onani Master Kurosawa and it proved to be more than just dirty jokes and a parody or two. A hell of a lot more.

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Click for the full size version

Make no mistake: this is a story with strong language and shows events and behaviour that are liable to offend some. It has some wonderful bits of humour though, including neat jabs at not only Death Note but Haruhi Suzumiya and Code Geass, but what makes this something I’d recommend so strongly is the fact that the superficial lulz accompany something more memorable and moving. If you excuse the pun, I never saw it coming.

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Reading stats: 1051 words, 4 images; estimated reading time 4:12 mins