This time on The Animated Spree: Frustration, Wuv, and more than moe.

What can be said about what an Anime nerd watches when he is in love? Until a week ago I didn’t realise I was even in love, but then I realised I’d been watching romance Anime without even knowing it. It creeps up on you, love does, and it enters your mind in ways you can’t imagine. For example the way I couldn’t stop thinking about how Yomiko Readman reminds me of how much I fancy a girl who has an uncanny likeness to her in real life. Or how Please Teacher, the only Anime series I’ve been able to complete watching in quite some time, reminds me of how wonderful, yet somehow painful, the road ahead will be if I ever manage to get past getting this girl’s phone number and through to getting married to her if it works out.

Will it work out if I start seeing this otaku girl who has stolen my heart? Maybe by contemplating the type of Anime I continually watch, I can figure out what messages have been implanted into my naive mind about love that are more than my fancy free emotional circuits can handle, and which ones have actual merit.

Lucky Star is good for a number of things, especially metatext visual memes like this one that describes many people’s feelings about the series. But I actually chuckled at some of the jokes, even though many of them went over my head. There are interesting conversations that build the foundations of this show. I have previously said that Konata is one of the most complex characters in Anime. That might not be correct, but she certainly has the most psychological complexes.

Why am I watching this if I’m in love? What is the point? What meaning do I get out of this? Isn’t there a real life Otaku girl I could be admiring instead of Konata? Well, let me explain. In every male Anime fan’s life, “the moment” happens. What that moment is, few fanboys reach. But what it is is this: “the moment” is when you realise you’re watching Anime to cheer on the characters instead of ogling pretty girls like Konata’s dad does. Are the Lucky Star girls worth cheering on? I like the show, but I admit I’ve never finished watching it. The character development is slow and sometimes events are inconsequential. It happens at a glacial pace, but over time the girls I believe are growing into mature women.

Which brings me to another Anime series with a ridiculous premise that actually has something to say about relationships. Please Teacher, when I completed watching it, gave me “the moment”. I came (no not in that way, get your mind out of the gutter) to watch a silly Anime about an alien teacher who happens to be hot, but I ended up rooting for Kei and being happy for the lucky bum. Mizuho Kazami matures over time as well, and when both Kei and Mizuho realise they actually love each other not because of the bizarre circumstances that got them hitched at the beginning of the series, but because they adore and respect each other due to their mutual attraction and willingness to work out their issues.

It’s one of those shows you think is going to be prolefeed from the premise but turns out to be something not quite the same as an Ernest Hemingway commentary on humanity but with a lot of nice, not too angst ridden, comments on the human nature of relationships. Love is universal, this series seems to be saying, and even if you’re from another planet you need a firm grounding in relationships like everybody else. That and the technically disabled guy (who suffers “standstills” or mini-comas) gets the girl, which was really inspirational for an Aspie like me. He gets the girl, because he’s willing to engage with other humans. He has to hide the truth about Mizuho being an alien, but he doesn’t hide the truth from a girl who’s falling for him when he doesn’t love her back. He doesn’t lead her on, and that’s why Mizuho realised Kei’s no cad.

I was going to use more pictures, but really I don’t think I remembered to take any snapshots from Please Teacher. So here’s a better pic from the Good Smile Company site of my Mizuho Kazami figure which sits in my room to represent the Anime that Mizuho comes from. Like the show, this figure is sexy but tasteful, with a sense of refinement but not being too serious that it’s depressing.

Because of a bizarre circumstance of Anime Amnesia I’ve forgotten to take lots of snapshots from series I watch, because this week I didn’t get a lot of time to take snapshots or watch Anime. Future installments of The Animated Spree will be more detailed, but my Anime Amnesia has prevented me from doing too much with this post. Believe me, I will do posts on Haruhi and Genshiken, but that will have to wait until I watch them again.

The Yukan Hiatus of 2008 has really put me behind in matters of Anime reviewing, and sadly because of that I’ve had to postpone a lot of my posts. Which I have now forgotten what details of the shows I want to write about. Oh well, next time, Blissmo, next time!