Blissmo likes Bunnies, I like Prinnies. Let’s see what I watched this week.

Christmas is coming, look busy. If you’re not busy, you soon will be because it’s Christmas Eve down under and there’s a bit of time left before the traditional midnight one present opening can occur. But what do you do if your lazy film student brother borrowed your external hard drive for a film project and won’t hand it back because he hasn’t finished it? Well it’s time for some licensed Anime DVDs which for some reason have sat on my shelf unwatched for a long time.

That is why this Christmas I decided to finish watching the Disgaea Anime. Disgaea has a warm place in my heart because I manage to laugh with it when others of similar European ancestry would find it baffling to why it produces laughter from me. It’s zany, it’s agressively Japanese in its humor style, but there’s a lot of funny moments to have with this particular Anime.

For starters, this isn’t an ordinary fantasy genre Anime, there are defenders of the Earth in space ships as well who travel with a robot, a moe angel called Flonne and a demon named Etna who are the only two DFC women whom Laharl is not intimidated by via a bounteous bosom. And before you say this series is loli keep in mind there is no chance in hell that any of the characters in this (save “Laharl’s Sister” in what I will call the “onee-chan joke” episode) are children. And if they lock me up in Australia for saying that about this Anime well then our nation has gone to the dingoes.

The Prinnies in this Anime are penguin like creatures resembling bat-winged and blue Linux logos with cash inside them, who are worked like slaves by the Demons, Laharl and Etna in particular.

The anime is twelve episodes and I haven’t been bored watching a single one of them. The good thing about Disgaea is there is no filler, and every moment of it is at least somewhat entertaining, though the progress of the plot is non-linear in a way because characters that appear earlier in the series haven’t reappeared so far, but when I watch the final disc of it tonight I should know what exactly is going on with the squad of mercenaries and what Etna’s motivations are.

Figure Photos taken with my Skypephone camera.

Christmas is coming, and some of you may be recieving Anime figures for Christmas. For Australians, the collected box set of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has finally come out after years of waiting, and years of fans crying out for an easily accessible method of getting Haruhisms. What’s not so easy in acquiring a Haruhism is getting your hands on Wonderfest figures, which are rarer than hen’s teeth.

Fortunately I have the Haruhi Bunny Nendoroid set from Wonderfest and a Skypephone camera (my normal one broke). Let’s take a look at them shall we?

Firstly we have Mikuru in a red bunny suit in which she appears in Haruhi’s student film. She is holding a prop machine gun and she has a moe look on her face, somewhere between not knowing what to do with the gun and sheer lack of confidence (probably because Haruhi bullies her into submission). Mikuru is my favorite out of the Haruhi girls, my second favorite is Haruhi, because even though Yuki Nagato is a meganekko she just doesn’t appeal to me as much as other meganekkos such as Yomiko Readman from Read or Die and Miyuki from Lucky Star. In my opinion Yuki Nagato’s meganekko moe was secondary to her plot device status of being an alien, whereas Mikuru was the time traveller whom Kyon had to choose between happiness with Mikuru or a life with Haruhi and a safe universe. In other words Kyon is screwed.

Here’s the Haruhi Bunny Nendoroid, with guitar and microphone. Haruhi appears in concert in one of the final episodes of the Haruhi Anime, so it’s natural they would base a figure off her outfit in this way. I don’t know about Haruhi, but she has a sort of charm to her that I can’t quite put my finger on. Maybe because enthusiasm for life is something I like to see in a woman. Near the end of the series Haruhi becomes less of a bitch and more like a softened tsundere, reflecting Japanese gendered values somewhat as she becomes a softie. Warm and fuzzy Haruhi aside, her selfishness towards Kyon is pretty messed up.

Finally we have Yuki Nagato, in a white bunny suit and holding the sign she holds in the movie Haruhi makes. Since she is a reader I put her next to some books, the Harry Potter books to be exact. She is also next to my tokidoki Bastardino figure, designed by Simone Legno. Yuki looks at home on my shelf with the other Haruhi girls next to my books, and I guess they highlight my shelf space more. Figures add a touch to modern living that IKEA furniture doesn’t on its own, sometimes modern living must be moefied to work out.

Overall what do I think of the figures? Well if you like Haruhi you could do worse than try and track down this Haruhi Bunny Nendoroid set, but it is very rare and hard to find. The figures look much better in person than in what crappy phone photography I can give you. But if you can locate a set, try and save it for Christmas as it really is worth the wait and anticipation of opening a set of these firsthand. I liked the Haruhi series a lot so I got these, not just for the collector’s value. GoodSmile Company succeeded in bringing out some nice figures this time around, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen some Haruhi Nendoroids like them about.

]]> http://yukan.dasaku.net/miscellaneous/wonderfest-rare-haruhi-bunny-figures-review/feed/ 4 http://yukan.dasaku.net/anime/the-animated-spree-pierce-the-heavens-with-your-quill/ http://yukan.dasaku.net/anime/the-animated-spree-pierce-the-heavens-with-your-quill/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:50:23 +0000 newgeekphilosopher http://yukan.dasaku.net/?p=3221

I almost had Hyakko poached from me, but we’ve come to an agreement, Kaze and I.

In my long absence from Yukan in terms of episodic blogging I suppose I have neglected Machiavelli’s rule of taking over the world by building settlements, and so far my settlements at Yukan seem rather dusty since I haven’t posted a review of some actual Anime in a while. Here are some short reviews of Anime series I’ve been watching since I’ve been expanding into other media such as radio spots and winning blogging competitions for the Sydney Morning Herald:

Welcome to the NHK! isn’t the newest Anime on the block, and it certainly isn’t the most wholesome I could be watching, but it is certainly entertaining and gives me hope that there are far more perverse individuals on this Earth than me, but as Sweeney Todd says, “We all deserve to die… even you Mrs. Lovett even I”. Rather than judging the characters of NHK too harshly, they serve as a reminder of what can happen if a man is pushed over the edge into madness, particularly when some of the madness is his own fault. Saki the nice girl is a sort of reverse Marla Singer from Fight Club, and really Welcome to the NHK! bears the resemblance of Fight Club for Japanese otaku people.

I have not read the NHK novel so the plot remains unspoiled and as of yet I am still wincing as I draw closer and closer to the ending, wondering when in a halfway series lull in the depravity the awful stuff starts to happen again. Please don’t spoil the ending of this series for me as I’ve never seen it before, besides, it’s more fun seeing me revolted at things I didn’t expect than for me to see it coming and lessen its effect.

Moving on there’s another series I’ve been following which I’ve been enjoying, called Strawberry Panic.

Baka-Raptor informed me of this one, and I hope the pacing picks up after the first two episodes. I haven’t watched an episode in a while so I forget the character’s names, but as far as I know from experience, when it comes to me interpreting Anime for the first time, unless the characters are already familiar, there’s a fair bit of “Ooh Blue Haired Girlie did this” (Lucky Star initially caused me some character identification problems with Tsusaka and Kagami, being a twin myself I finally felt the frustration of others trying to tell me and my brother apart). Basically Reddish/Brownish haired girl on the right of this picture (at least in the first two episodes) is being stalked by the senior white haired girl on the left, but the problem for her is that the Reddish/Brownish haired girl on the right is straight. Is it love? We don’t know yet, I’ve only watched two episodes, one of which involves a library chase scene.

One of the reasons I’ve been away from actual Anime episodic blogging is that I’ve been producing some “popular art” of my own for the first time in three months and so far I have a page of an illustrated short story. Maybe one day it will be collected into a graphic novel or something, but it’s not something I can really talk about in an Anime post. Even though it is Anime related, such pimping would be unprofessional.

Hopefully once I catch up with Hyakko Kaze and I will be able to settle our differences and blog the series together as nature intended, since with my lulzy sense of humor and Kaze’s skill of actually getting the character names right, who knows what we could bring to the Hyakko discussion table? As far as I know us two are the only ones who cared about Hyakko from the beginning, Issa-sa certainly didn’t give Torako and her friends a chance.

Listen in to me chatting to Safran and Father Bob about Tezuka’s Buddha on the podcast I’m about to link you.

Here is where I talked to John Safran and Father Bob about Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha manga on their show Sunday Night Safran. It took months to organise this interview and because of that I felt really nervous when I finally got on the show, so if you hear some heavy breathing occasionally when I talk (by the way I’m Jacob Martin on the show) it’s because I was really trying to fit as much as I could in the time. You can fast forward to me at 36:53 mins on the Quicktime player of the podcast to hear me speak.

It’s like Timezone only old school! 0_0

I couldn’t take any pictures myself because of copyright issues with the games at the Game On exhibition, so here’s some Google impressions of what the exhibition looks like.

Here is Donkey Kong and Galaxian. I love Galaxian and play it often, whereas I recall spending hours completing the Donkey Kong game in order to progress in Donkey Kong 64. There were plenty of old arcade games like this in the Game On exhibition as the exhibition is a showcase of the history and future of video gaming. I got to play on a few of these but didn’t get a very high score. Discs of Tron was another game I tried, and I found it entertaining but somewhat overrated. It’s like a throwing disc game where you generally have to hit the other guy off the platform, but you have to make sure you don’t get knocked off yourself.

This exhibition reminds me how annoying old arcade games used to be as I played them when I was a kid exploring the back of Timezone, because sometimes people would leave a game unattended in the middle of a game without finishing their game! Who does that? Clearly people at the Game On exhibition do, because there were plenty of paused games on consoles like the PS2 (Odin Sphere was an example of an abandoned and lonely game, as was the Dreamcast Tennis game). The Dreamcast looked so lonely and neglected, crying out for love. But it was playing a crappy tennis game so it got none. T_T

Oh Sega Dreamcast, you always did lose out…

While I was at the Game On exhibition I tagged along with a Romanian guy who was one of my brother’s dorm buddies. He has the biggest crush on Kasumi (the girl in blue in the middle) from Dead or Alive, so naturally he always plays as her when he plays Dead or Alive Ultimate. Even though he was getting his arse handed to him by his brother who was visiting from Romania, he insisted that Kasumi was awesome. Still, she has less dignity than Chun-Li from Street Fighter II Turbo, which I had a go at playing as Chun-Li with my brother who was playing as Ryu. My brother handed my arse back to me too, but not only that, he called Chun-Li a slut just to knock me off my SNAG guard.

I mean how is Chun-Li a slut compared to Kasumi from Dead or Alive? Chun-Li has dignity, and is awesome without having to expose too much chest.

I got the chance to play a real Game and Watch instead of just my newly acquired second hand copy of Game and Watch Gallery Advance. Sadly to say, Game and Watch Gallery Advance makes the Game and Watch games a hell of a lot easier to play than the original format. Donkey Kong on Game and Watch is a pile of donkey doo, at least on the original version. The presentation of the handheld in the exhibition was poorly lit because most of the playable handhelds featured were backlit, like the DS Lite, PSP and Game Boy Advance SP. The Game and Watch was left to rot in the dark by comparison, and I might have been able to play the damn thing had I better lighting.

I played some Final Fantasy VII, only to find that the graphics suck. Boy do the graphics suck, the story is great, but boy do these graphics suck. I mean look at the guy on the left’s arms, he looks like he has Elephantiasis or something.

After a round of Doom on an authentic Windows 95 PC, me, my brother and his dorm buddies decided to wrap it up with a try at the Steel Battalion mecha simulator. It was all your Gundam nightmares come true!

Who the hell can control 40 buttons? You’d need to be a hentai tentacle monster to play this!

Well that’s it for my Game On exhibition coverage, hope you enjoyed it. The exhibition was held at the State Library of Queensland and you can see it until February next year.

]]> http://yukan.dasaku.net/miscellaneous/game-on-report-from-an-exhibition/feed/ 5 http://yukan.dasaku.net/manga/manga-review-solanin/ http://yukan.dasaku.net/manga/manga-review-solanin/#comments Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:16:54 +0000 newgeekphilosopher http://yukan.dasaku.net/?p=3031

A Manga that reads like a contemporary Leonard Cohen song.

I heard people raving about this one on the IRC channels at dasaku and AnimeBlogger, so when I saw this in Kinokuniya I decided to give this one a try. I expected a reasonable romp through the life of an office lady and her boyfriend, but what I got was this formula:

Seinen manga + J-Pop meets Leonard Cohen + Catcher In The Rye + characters who actually look Japanese = Solanin

I really haven’t read a manga like this before, mostly because I haven’t read a lot of manga that wasn’t written by Osamu Tezuka. The commentary through the Solanin manga notes that the year is 200X (like in a lot of old manga and anime, this means postapocalyptic futures) but here the narrators state that the only thing people want now is a quieter future free from terrorist attacks and natural disasters, not the wastelands of sci-fi manga and anime.

Solanin is about Meiko and her journey through life, and what a journey it is. This volume is two volumes collected into one, it’s a short series but boy is it satisfying, I haven’t been this emotionally affected by the end of a manga since Read or Die’s conclusion (and not to spoil anything, but Yomiko shares a similar fate to that of Meiko, dealing with the events of her life as she continues to get older, and a bit lonelier, but she manages).

There’s not much I can say about it without spoiling anything, as you really need to read it yourself to fully appreciate what you get with this manga. As I have said, it reads like a Leonard Cohen song, melancholic, but somewhat cheerful and accepting about it. It’s not as cheerful as Yotsuba&!, even though it has some really funny moments like at the Zoo with Tanada and the other guy who’s his friend, but it’s nowhere near as depressing as say, Neon Genesis Evangelion. The Leonard Cohen analogy stands because like listening to one of his songs, you feel your heart twinge for the characters as you read Solanin but you come out of it knowing the world a bit better, from the experiences of a licentious poet songwriter, or in this case, a mangaka who is getting older and decided to document in this manga the experiences of his generation.

Reading this reminds me of Catcher in the Rye in that it’s certainly got some subversive elements to it about a reaction to Japanese society and salaryman syndrome (career focus instead of following one’s dreams and hopes). All the characters in the band who helped create the song Solanin, a song of leaving behind the boy Meiko’s boyfriend once was, feel a sense of hopelessness in their careers, clinging onto their employment hoping nothing worse will happen to them. There’s no annoying Holden Caulfield like brat to destroy the integrity of what really is a heartfelt look at the feelings of a generation of young Japanese people, so I can’t say I felt irritated by this manga.

I got a good two to three hours of being immersed in the story of Solanin, and not once did I put it down except when I was expected to talk to my parents about how my exam today went. The art style is amazing, and for once nobody can point the finger of Westernisation in manga and anime at this particular manga work, you can tell straight away these people are actually Japanese and not just funny looking blue haired and pink haired people because of the seinen art style which is more realistic than most shonen or shojo works. The dream sequences remind me a bit of Simone Legno’s tokidoki graphic designs and designer toy works, really it’s quite inventive but at the same time raising a bit of a question to the reader about how in touch with reality young people in Japanese culture are.

All in all I highly recommend this to people who might be looking for something different from the sugary loli moe hegemony or maybe if you’ve got a friend who’s a manga fan but feels a little lonely, something in this manga will remind them to hope again and learn to accept that even though it gets lonely sometimes in life, just sitting around waiting for something to happen is a lot worse than enjoying life and living it.

Find out in this article.

I have gotten in trouble for making up words to describe already existing phenomenon before. Anyone who’s seen my Anime Eccentric article which attempted to give a name to the zaniness of some Anime knows that. But I believe Australian Anime fans sometimes are misclassified, and Aussie Anime fans who are not otaku but significantly entrenched into Anime fandom, need a new word, (not a fancy buzz word) to describe what these people actually are.

This is what Oztaku means:

Oztaku (adjective noun): An Anime fan who is Australian, often Anglo Saxon, who is not quite as obsessive as the Japanese otaku, but still knowledgable about their Anime and Manga hobby. This is not a word that has negative connotations like otaku does, and it is meant to describe Anime and Manga fans who are Australian who may not be comfortable with being called otaku because of the negative connotations. It is a mark of respect, and not to be used in a derogatory manner.

An example of an Oztaku: this guy I used to know from school who was an advanced illustrator of manga and a consumer of published manga. He was not an otaku by any means as he was highly social depending on whether he wanted to talk to you or not, and did not use his hobby to rebel against society. His hobby was closer to a social group than a counter culture.

Perhaps blissmo is not an Oztaku to the extent this friend of mine was as she goes on and off anime, and has repeatedly told me to get out more. Therefore she is not an Oztaku, as she does not define a significant portion of her daily life to the production or consumption of Anime and Manga fandom. HOWEVER, she is an Australian Anime blogger who contributes a large amount to the Aniblogosphere through her episodic reviews, therefore, I cannot say whether she is or is not an Oztaku unless she confirms or denies it.

Another example: the man who runs my local Anime figure shop in my neighbourhood IS an Oztaku in many ways, because Anime and Manga fandom contributes to his livelihood. Oztaku as a word particularly describes people who not only consume Anime and Manga, but actively create their own Anime and Manga works of art, or at least make their hobby part of their financial livelihood. In addition the Anime figure shop guy is well knowledgable about the best way to import Anime figures into his shop for the least amount of money, and such knowledge is used to make him a profit.

In a similar manner I am an Oztaku because I was recently contacted by a producer of a radio show for the ABC to talk about Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha, a manga epic biography of a significant religious figure, on a Religion and Politics themed radio show. How did I manage this? Well I actively researched if the show’s cast were interested in manga and whether they had had somebody talk about a Buddhist related thing on the show for a while, and deliberately linked the radio show’s website on my home blog in articles campaigning to have Tezuka’s Buddha featured on the show. Anyone who goes that far to get a decades old manga series mentioned in any way, shape or form on a Religion and Politics themed radio program for the ABC is most likely an Oztaku, because they interact with established media networks to promote Anime and Manga actively.

To sum this up, even though this is a word I just made up on the spot it makes a lot more sense than calling white Anglo Saxon people who don’t see their hobby as counter-culture at all otaku. Even non-Anglo Saxon Aussie Anime and Manga fans that I have known would not entirely be classifiable as otaku. We need a liberating word that empowers us in following our hobby but one that is recognisably Anime and Manga related, while at the same time relating to our geographical location. Hence, “Oz”taku.

Making a distinction between the girl you’re dating and an Anime character who has the same first name is probably a good idea.

How many times do I have to revise it? My girlfriend’s name is Yomiko Azuma, not Readman. And she wears completely different glasses to that Anime character too. Besides, Yomiko is a common name, and if I’ve ever got a chance with this lovely woman then I’m going to have to stop thinking how much she looks like a fictional character I once had a crush on as a younger man.

But all the same, I can’t help but have Yomiko Readman remind me of the girl I love. Excuse me if this is a personal post, but I’ve decided to expand on my last Animated Spree post which dealt with what a man watched when he was in love. There seems to have been a popular demand for it.

Yomiko (Azuma), has given me permission to write another article involving my relationship with her. But I’m putting my foot in it and I’m going to address the Azuma/Readman dichotomy first.

A long time ago (about a year ago actually, when I was just starting out reading manga and Anime) my eye came across a series called Read Or Die. A bit later I actually got to read it. I was mad, insane. As you can imagine, I became a fanboy of that character at that age, hoping I could comfort Readman in her loneliness after losing her precious Donnie. And I felt the pangs of my own loneliness when I recognised that she wasn’t real and couldn’t love me back, no matter how much I pined for this woman.

I’m progressive to be sure, and I support independent women to be happy without a boyfriend or a husband. But Yomiko Readman broke my heart, not just because she couldn’t love me, but because there was nothing I could do about her pain. She wasn’t real, and I had to accept that. As silly as Read or Die tended to be as a manga, there was some real pathos to it that hit me as a young man that stays with me today. Sometimes, like Yomiko Readman did, you can pine and suffer over what was essentially your own fault. I’m not going to spoil the ending of the manga further than that.

Two years of hopping from misguided and naive real world and Anime crushes and I began to despair that no woman would ever love me. I was shattered. Until the other Yomiko came along. The one who was real, and had a strange habit of looking at me funny when I met her in that bookshop we always ended up meeting in, and glancing at each other, on the occasional Friday. First time I saw her I went in there to buy Astro Boy manga, but I remembered I’d seen her even before that, blushing as her friend caught her peeping at yaoi out of curiosity. And that is why I thought, at first, that she was a fujoshi.

A normal woman would have slapped me for that, but she was different. We exchanged a conversation: “I’ve seen you in here before, what are you reading?” I said. “Hot Gimmick” she replied. “And it’s not yaoi just because it has girly guys on the cover”.

I was a bit bold, so I offered to give her my phone number. She took it, and called me when she felt like it.

I needn’t go into the private matters that occurred in the two weeks we’ve been involved, but basically the point I want to address in this post is that sometimes when you think the sky will fall on you and you’ll be crushed, dying a virgin forever, there are people in this world that come into your life and remind you it’s worth living.

Ok, so this is a long post. Allow me to sip some manly tea to sustain myself from my romantic gushings. Basically I’m writing this article because of one thing, I’m going on a date with my girlfriend tomorrow and if she bothers to show up my life is likely to change. And all I can really think about is hardly Anime, but what the hell I’m going to wear when I leave the house to meet my destiny.

Nonetheless, the lesson I have to learn is that Yomiko (Azuma, the real one) will never be Yomiko Readman, because she’s a completely different person to that character. Hopefully she sticks by me long enough to build a meaningful relationship. And let me tell you, it’s pretty hard leaving behind your boyhood to become a man.

I’ve done sociology for school, and I know this from it. Masculinity is fluid, not one person can define it as a wholeness. There are “multiple masculinities”. I’ve forgotten which theorist said that, but that’s the last of my worries right now. The point is, which masculinities are accepted, and which aren’t?

I’m hardly the typical Aussie bloke, particularly because of my condition. I didn’t call myself the Asperger’s Anime Blogger because of my incoherence sometimes. It’s part of me. My girlfriend is aware of my condition and she doesn’t mind. So what am I afraid of?

I guess I am afraid of holding onto something solid, instead of a fleeting dream. I’ve been wishing and hoping on first stars in the sky for a girlfriend for years, and not once did it come true. Until now, I’ve never had a stable relationship. This is big for me. And as you can imagine, it’s big for any Anime and manga fan. The first time they ever go on a real date with somebody who isn’t two dimensional or possessing of paranormal abilities of any kind. (My girlfriend is not a Magical Girl, and she’s hardly confident enough to face a threat to the universe. But lately she’s been confident enough to approach me, so who knows?)

I’ve had my heart broken before, and that’s probably why this is so hard. One too many times I’ve been standing, waiting for Godot-girl, who is always mentioned by those who wait, but who never shows up. There is the hope of meeting my true love, which was usually crushed and stomped on by those who thought it would be funny to see what would happen if they could make me cry.

I don’t know where I’ll be with Yomiko in two years time. But if I am successful, I will have found a love which is true. If not, it’s probably likely that I’ll be heading home to meet bitter disappointment.

But all I really have to do, is walk through the door of that bookshop to meet up with her. It’s not like I haven’t met up before, it’s just that now I’m one of a couple and it’s possible that this might continue into something bigger.

Ok, calm down NGP. Enough gushing. Let’s get to what Anime you watched this week!

Well, I can’t say I really watched a lot of Anime at all. All I really watched was all six episodes of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, which is a British TV spoof horror show set up like it’s a show rejected from the 1980s. It was pretty funny, but I’ve been so busy I hardly remember anything but fragments. I watched a bit of Detroit Metal City, but somehow metal satire isn’t what I need at this time of focusing on romance that doesn’t involve rape.

]]> http://yukan.dasaku.net/miscellaneous/the-animated-spree-separating-a-true-love-from-an-anime-crush/feed/ 6 http://yukan.dasaku.net/anime/hyakko-first-looksies/ http://yukan.dasaku.net/anime/hyakko-first-looksies/#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 06:33:28 +0000 newgeekphilosopher http://yukan.dasaku.net/?p=1960

Turns out it doesn’t suck!

This is my first ever current Anime season post. So you can imagine I’m a little excited about it. Well, I’m a little excited about a few other things happening in my life right now, namely the otaku girl returning my phone call and my internet returning to working state, so let’s have a looksie at Hyakko.

So basically the episode opens with a girl jumping out the window, and this blonde girlie here is obviously surprised. We find out more about this later in the episode. Having the condition (They don’t call me the Asperger’s Anime Blogger for nothin’) that I have, I find it difficult to attach names to faces upon first meeting them. So I apologise if I forget the names of the characters immediately after watching the Anime.

Basically the plot of the episode goes like this. Blonde girlie (again I apologise, as the series progresses it’s much easier for me to learn character names) gets lost because the school she goes to is friggin’ huge. She has just gotten into high school, and she’s despairing that the changes she thought would result in her maturity from going to high school haven’t happened yet. And this goes on for five whole minutes without a panty shot. In fact, the director showed enough restraint not to have pantsu in the entire episode. This is clearly the Azumanga Daioh school of High School Comedies.

As you can see in this shot, there’s a unique balance between comedic Anime faces which are chibi in a way to more serious faces for the less comedic aspects of the series, in this case Blonde Girlie is contemplating her seemingly immature character as percieved by her friends when she is late. I like this contrast a lot and it’s something you rarely see in Anime these days, but the cutscene crossed with what’s actually happening is an underused artform cornocopia of character development. A lot of people have compared this to Lucky Star based on its adaptation from a four panel manga, but really it’s closer to a mix of Azumanga Daioh and ARIA.

The animators really try hard to keep a balance between the sadness of a character and not overemphasising the moe-ness of the lead female character’s plight. Instead of going “MOE!” immediately, you actually feel sorry for this poor young lady.

My “L337 screenshot skillz” not only capture the motto of the school this series is set in, but really shows the magnificent scenery that the Anime has. Top marks on that front.

This comes from one of my favorite parts of the episode, where one of the other characters, who Blonde Girlie meets along the way, tricks Blonde Girlie into believing in all sorts of crazy Urban Legends about the school. The way this is done sets the tone of the series. There are no crazy Urban Legend plots or other supernatural silliness here, just no-nonsense school comedy.

Remember when I told you about the girl who jumps out the window? This is the girl who jumped out the window, in agony. However, as we learn, she’s not suicidal, just a bit crazy as a troublemaker.

The one with pigtails is the one I haven’t shown you a picture of yet. She seems to be competing with Blue Haired Girlie for Official Tsundere status, but at this stage in the series I’ve had my mind changed before, so she might just be giving off Kagami vibes from when I finished watching Lucky Star.

And yes, they try and find their way to class using the Global Positioning System, because the school is too friggin’ huge. Here is Pigtails Girlie I was talking about, next to Troublemaker Girlie.

Troublemaker Girlie and Blue Haired Girlie fight over a brick which Troublemaker Girlie is going to use to break a window, which accidentally happens. One of the teachers notices this and the girls get in trouble, moreso because Troublemaker Girlie beats up the teacher…

Which gets them into even more trouble of course. But they meet each other and they bond, and they start to make friends amongst themselves. Isn’t that nice?

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!

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