Back in 2002, in one of my classes, there was a particularly odious little fellow that loved Rurouni Kenshin. Every single day he’d butt himself into every conversation, uninvited, and turn the conversation into his favorite subject: Rurouni Kenshin. To him, everything was Rurouni Kenshin and Rurouni Kenshin was everything. He’d talk about how many times he’d rewatch an episode each day. How he practiced the sword techniques. How he wished for his own large, obtrusive facial scar. It didn’t matter that he was uninvited, that nobody liked him, that he was quite rude in his butt-ins. Everything was Rurouni Kenshin, and Rurouni Kenshin was everything. It got to the point where I simply hated Rurouni Kenshin out of spite. Eventually he went away, and even though it’s been nearly a decade since I met that guy, I can’t countenance the thought of watching Rurouni Kenshin. I literally get physically ill at the thought of watching it.

This is a contributing factor to everything I watch, now. The scope of this is actually significantly larger, though. It’s not just a personal grudge against every Jared Riches that goes out and ruins every anime out there for everyone else. You see, here’s how it works: A good portion of anime is targeted marketing. It’s designed to appeal to a specific demographic. The idea is to encourage consumerism: buy the DVDs. Buy the Blu Rays. Buy the figures, the games, the apparel, the T-shirts, the pencil boards, the dakimakura, etc. Setting aside the consumer aspect and refocusing our attention on the demographic-targeting, you understand that specific genres of anime are targeted at age and gender demographics. A good and clear way to differentiate whether or not a particular show is right for you is to look at its destination- or more appropriately, its fanbase. Is a large part of the fanbase idiots? Are they inarticulate neckbearded Internet Warriors? Are they teens? Young adults? Children? Do they fit into the same social strata that you yourself fit into? Consider the possibilities carefully. You could be the only 25 year old man that watches a show that is targeted towards little girls, aged 9-12. You wouldn’t want that, now would you?

This of course brings to light all sorts of hilarious tangents. Let’s say you have an anime that is typically targeted to girls, aged 9-13, but the demographic just hasn’t historically created the market penetration you’re hoping for. You instead take that show and retarget it towards another demographic while keeping the elements functionally the same. In that case, you might be a 25 year old man watching a show that’s for girls, aged 9-13, but has been modified to include adult males between 18-25. Ain’t that some shit?

A second tangent would be the worst tangent. Let’s say you watch a show that’s relatively popular. You happen to be fairly intelligent, clean-shaven, sophisticated, and you can tie your own shoes. Every single other fan of this show is drooling, slack-jawed, runs around yelling BAKA KAWAII NEKO SUGOI DESU NE~. People are very quick to associate one thing with another. They think “This show = This fan.” Do you want to be lumped in with that?

I think it’s perfectly acceptable to avoid a show because of the fanbase.

Is it a genre I don’t follow? – I don’t particularly have a genre I don’t follow per se, except shows targeted at specific demographics that I don’t fill.
Where have I heard of a plot like this? – I started watching anime because the shit I saw on american TV was predictable. I want to see things I haven’t seen before. I want to explore new ideas and settings. I don’t want to say “Oh look, it’s this. Again.”
Is this based on a manga? light novel? visual novel? – Where it comes from is important to me. If there’s a manga, I may skim a few pages. I read pretty quickly, and if it’s something that catches my eye, I’ll pick it up. If it’s a light novel, well, there are sources for those too and while my japanese reading comprehension isn’t perfect, I can pick out the gist of things without exerting myself. If it’s a visual novel derivation, I won’t watch it, period. Too many experiences with bad adaptations.
Is [series name here] a derivative of another show? – This is important, and I think a lot of people disregard this unnecessarily. If you see a show with a spineless male lead, a tsundere childhood friend, and it takes place in high school, what’re the chances that the next show that has the exact same elements won’t do the exact same thing in this series? If you’ve seen it five times, or fifty times, what value is there in watching it a hundred and fifteenth time? sure the characters’ names may change, the art may change, but the same principles are there, the same tired, recycled dialogue is there- so what is the point? The answer is, there isn’t. It doesn’t matter if there are well-known voice actresses or it’s done by a unique studio. a story is just that: a story. If it happens to be the same story you’ve seen repeated ad nauseum, then it’s simply time to set it aside and go watch something else.

Questions like these filter things down pretty well. I usually end up watching 1-2 series per season, sometimes one more. There are of course a couple of notable exceptions to this season, the ones I’ve decided to follow are Level E and Kimi no Todoke 2. Before I talk about why I’m following them, I’ll take a brief moment to explain what I’m not.
First, the word on everyones’ eyes and lips is Madoka. There’s three main reasons I can point out why people follow it:
1. It’s SHAFTxShinbo. What will they think of next?
2. GRIMDARK DARKBAD PLOT
3. Yuki Kajiura is doing the music.
My response to those three points is this:
1. It’s always the story, and never who tells it. A good story will stand on its own, regardless of who tells it. People that watch SHAFTxShinbo often forget this and go on and on (at length) over how amazing they think SHAFTxShinbo is. They pore over thesauruses and congratulate themselves over how unique their superlatives sound in each others’ ears. Ultimately, it’s the hysteric and masturbatory fans that ultimately drive me away- it’s never about the show, it’s aaaaaaaall about SHAFTxShinbo.
2. It’s nothing more than a nihilistic Theatre of the Absurd. If you think about it, ALL of SHAFTxShinbo’s works fall into this category in some form or another. Again, if thought were given, there are dozens of magical girl shows that deal with despair, death, tragedy, etc going back ten or twenty years. If you disagree, then simply say that it’s a magical girl show with faustian overtones and leave it at that. If you look at it that way, It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and thus not particularly worth my attention. How many magical girl series have existed since, say, the 80′s?
3. Yuki Kajiura, fuck yeah. Ain’t gonna lie, she makes some good music.
So yeah, if there’s a gripe, then it’d be that.

On to Kimi no Todoke 2: I don’t know why I picked up the first season. I’ll have a look at the MT archives and find out. It’s not my typical fare- why did I pick it up? I remember I was going to drop it at several points, but kept watching. Sawako is pretty sweet, and of course the long hair is definitely a selling point for me. Somewhere between the first season and the second season, however, I became … disenfranchised. I no longer saw it as a sweet and endearing show about a sweet and endearing girl. Instead I find myself more and more thinking of it as a overdramatized, saccharin-dosed show about a socially retarded aspergers girl. Every new episode I watch is a struggle to recapture… whatever it was I saw about the first season. I’m still watching, so either there’s still a heart left somewhere in me, or it’s all pointless discourse anyway.

On to Level E: By far, this is the show I’d recommend above others. I find myself at a lack for words when I try to describe, explain, and recommend it to you, though. I think it’s pretty intelligently written. There’s a good dose of humor and seriousness mixed in, and the first three episodes present things in a way that keep you engaged. I like the art style- in some ways it reminds me of the stuff I watched in the 90′s. On the other hand, the CG is pretty obvious, so you can’t take it entirely too serious. It’s about aliens. Of course, all the aliens live on japan, and that of course means hilarity ensues. Give it a shot.

It’s been a long time since then. The world has moved on. My tastes in anime are bizarre and eclectic. A few years ago, I saw an advert for K-on. Because I don’t keep my thumb on the pulse of the anime community, because I don’t follow directors, studios, staff, seiyuus, I initially thought it was going to be a show about ENOZ from Haruhi. (In retrospect, i think it’d've been significantly better if it had.) The first season is arguably decent, if weak-watered. It’s a typical SoL that revolves around a “light music club”, sort of a school-sponsored garage band. I thought to myself, this is something I can relate to. Fourteen years ago I was teenager, all glazed eyes and gleaming reproductive organs, and I wanted to learn bass guitar. And I did. Our band lasted six months, we played a whopping three shows (only one of which we actually got paid for) and we wrote three songs and had parts and pieces of lyrics and riffs for another twelve. Although I only played bass for a school year and never looked back, being in a band leaves a mark on you. So forgive me if I wax a bit nostalgic while reviewing K-on.

Some of the trials and tribulations they went through I can relate to. Getting your band together, getting their equipment squared away, learning chords and riffs and trying to make money to pay for the gear, (which is terribly expensive) unplugging the amp while it’s still on, learning about your bandmates’ quirks and musical tastes, mysterious calls at 2am, lunatic drives all over the place to go to concerts, endless drinking and drugs and women of questionable moral value, and somewhere along the line you stop fucking off and music happens. When your fingers his the chords just right and you feel it all come together in a righteous glorious moment. You feel galvanized and you know that this is it. this is what it’s all about.

In a show like K-on there’s a certain leeway permitted; you can’t really have the expectation that a bunch of girls in japan are going to drive around at 2am looking for a party or discuss the merits of one guitarist over another while passing a j back and forth. Or all at the same time. No. Instead it’s a SoL moe-blob show about a bunch of cutesy girls in school (By the way, what the fuck man, This school can afford some high-tension gear. I about shit down both legs when I saw that set of zildjian drums.) who decide to set up a band. The animation goes from mediocre to terrible and back again, the plot is inconsistent but it tries to stay on track, and over the course of one school year they produce a whopping two(?) songs and the first season ends. While overall the entire first season was a piece of shit in terms of animation, direction, consistency and effort, there is an underlying thread that I could connect to, which was me in the garage band, relating to the girls in the club.

The second season is an utter failure in this regard. There’s nothing to relate to. Well, there was one episode where they hocked a guitar, which is something I remember our lead guitarist doing, but the rest of it is dumbfuck shit that no one gives a shriveled ratdick about. The season is about half over and they haven’t done anything worthwhile at all. When you think about how things fit together, you realize you’re simply marking time until something happens, hoping something happens and instead you get a bunch of bland dumbfuck shit about nothing. So, the second season is largely uninteresting and I suspect that when the season is over I will say to myself, “I can’t believe I watched that shit.”

First, we know that they forced japan to essentially fuck themselves in the ass. Well, the Japanese fucked themselves in the ass, because they bent over for the giant gaijin penis. err, vagina. Whatever. The Japanese should have told the histrionic feminist group to get fucked, get back to the kitchen, and then slapped them in the face with their constitutional rights. To climb on a moral LAWFUL GOOD soapbox here, it doesn’t matter if I find rape games to be disgusting or reprehensible, the constitutional law says they can be made and sold to the adults that want them and that right cannot be infringed upon. Period. Equality Now should have been told to fuck off.

Secondly, and apparently most recently, (no verifiable sources on this one, sorry) Equality Now has decided that what they’ve done simply is not enough. “Japan is a nation which accepts hentai. This encourages rape so hentai must be banned. Rapelay was withdrawn from sale, the EOCS banned all fetishes, and some companies have banned foreigners from their websites. This is not enough. The Japanese government must ban everything we object to and make it all illegal. The UN must tell the Japanese to do as we direct.” Of course, they also say, “Women should not have to resist sex to be able to call it rape.” which opens up a whole different direction of irrationality and misandric terrorism. I can see it now: “he raped me.” “no, it was consensual.” “I don’t have to say no, fight back, disagree, or otherwise express an unwillingness to have sex, I can simply decide that it was rape and it is so.”

Let’s sort of set that to the side here for a brief bit. One thing I can’t help but do is draw a parallel between this… ridiculous campaign and jack Thompson’s equally ridiculous campaign against violence in video games. Same medium of entertainment, same question of artistic expression, etc. But I will show you a couple of things I’ve picked up in my travels through the internet and I’d like to ask you to consider a few things.
First, rape has gone down since the early nineties.(Source) This roughly coincides with the increase of VCRs and VHS distribution of porn. There’s no direct correlation that says that as sales of porn videos have gone up, rape has gone down, but it’s damn suggestive.

Second, Violent crime has also gone down since the early nineties (Source) which again also roughly coincides with a larger market penetration of ‘violent’ console and PC games. Again, no direct correlation between violent crimes and violent games here, but as I said before, it’s suggestive.

So, putting two and two together, we can see the direction Equality Now is taking is a bad one. However, the Japanese have a bit of a passive-aggressive inferiority complex, which means that if a vocal histrionic and irrational minority like EN says something should be banned, they will willingly and happily legislate it out of existence without so much as a whimper of resistance- and then they’ll angrily mutter under their breaths about how it’s EN’s THE FILTHY GAIJIN’S fault. Simply put: Equality Now is a bunch of fucked-up and histrionic cunts, and the Japanese are servile spineless fags. What a great combination.

Mercifully, I forgot all about Shuffle. I picked up the translated game… I’m not sure why. I went on sabbatical from playing ren’ai and visual novels for a few months because I could no longer feel the magic. Anyway, I picked up the translated game the other day. I struggled with myself and decided to play it. No guts no glory, and sometimes you have to suffer so that you can ultimately appreciate something else even more.

Menus/ interface: First off, I don’t particularly like the default settings. The music was too loud, the text didn’t appear quick enough, and the menus were a bizarre and motley collection of nigh-incomprehensible sliding bars. The font was faint and barely visible. There was no cute game cursor. After spending more time than necessary configuring and customizing things to my liking, I started playing. (4/10)

Story: I want to say that the story is as bland as it was in the anime, but that would be wrong. Ultimately it’s worse. You find yourself going back over the same territory over and over again, rehashing the same plot details over and over and over, ad nauseum. Skipping text you’ve already read is a given, but I spent more time skimming through text I’d already read than actually getting to individual story. Ultimately a very bland and unrewarding experience, especially as the already-read text seems to multiply with each route completed. Whomever decided to “decensor” the game really, truly, and strongly needs to take a class on human anatomy. Barring that, they need to watch a porno. Things don’t work that way (or look that way). Story-wise, the world is flat and two-dimensional. I’ve played a variety of other games and if you took the characters away, you can see the world behind them. A strongly shining example of this is Planetarian. If you took the Junker and Hoshino Yumemi out of Planetarian, you could still see beyond them, see the city, and see the world as it was, but the world of Shuffle is simply a contrivance. Tripping flags is ridiculously easy and the choices available have no effect on the inevitable conclusion except that it locks you into a specific route. Once you’re locked in, you can skim the text, collect the ending, and move on to the next girl. Speaking of girls… (2/10)

Sia: I went through her route somewhat baffled that I was interacting more with Primula and Nerine and Kaede more than with her… up until the point that I bagged her. Her … plot twist was lackadaisical and didn’t seem to have any real tangibility. Ultimately, I didn’t like her. The only benefit to playing her route was that her voice was different than the anime and it didn’t grate as badly. I apparently didn’t have a lot to say about Sia during my playthrough; my notes seem to only mention her a few times. “Oh God Sia is stupid. She’s about as dumb as a sack of hammers. Hahaha, logic 1, girl 0.” Her ending is as baffling as it is insipid and destroyed any hope of redemption for her. (3/10)

Kaede: I played Kaede with some trepidation; To give fair credit where credit was due, I tried my best to like her, but I dislike her very strongly. My notes reflect this, at length. “She’s such a fucking tool. “I’m a gaping vagina that exists solely for the purpose of Rin-kun”  Oh fuck, there she goes again. “I have no self identity, I simply exist to be useful to you.” What the fuck girl. Oh for fucks sake girl, you’re fucking retarded. just kill yourself. God, Kaede’s obsequiesness is disgusting. Fuck, Kaede sounds a lot like Mikuru from Haruhi- Oh god, she is. No wonder I can’t stand her. I think Kaede-chan has sort of a persecution complex: she feels he should reject or punish her or take advantage of her, but he doesn’t. Of course Kaede is also a retard, so there’s that, too. I’m fairly certain that her childhood illness (lol) scrambled her brains and she was never actually able to grow up as a normal child. Maybe I’m a bit jaded and cyhnical, but she gets no sympathy or pity from me. She’s just a retard, herp derp. Oh, finally got some Kaede time. Wait, what the fuck is this shit? “I’ll hate you if you don’t”? She’s a fucking retard. And a slut. a trite, manipulative whore that needs her meatsocket to be filled in order to think she’s a verifiable human being. God, her ingratiating servility is disgusting. I want to puke twenty years of cigarette tar directly into her mouth. She’s the worst kind of woman. She takes away the entire valuation of being a man. How can a man feel like a man if he’s expected to do jack shit? “use my body, take advantage of my kindness, capitalize on my retardation but don’t love me.” God what a fucking piece of work. I was right about the persecution complex. “To serve Rin-kun is my life!” What fucking outrageous stupidity.” (1/10)

Asa: I remember I liked her in the anime, up to the end, when she just became repetitive and stupid. The game is a lot like this, but because of the story bloat and all the “skip previously read portions” I was simply marking time until I could read through her arc. She was awkward in her femininity and responded to certain inquiries like a tsundere. Certain elements of her arc (namely unnecessary bloat) kept me from liking her. When there wasn’t crap in the way of her story, her arc seemed contrived. There’s this block of time between “I’m interested in someone else” and my kiss with Asa that is completely devoid of interaction with her. From zero to hero in a couple weeks? I don’t fucking think so. Then things started balancing out and I was daring to hope, but no. crash and burn. In the final result, I was wanting a Kareha route more because she was far more entertaining. Ama and Kareha made this route shine, but unfortunately the route wasn’t about them. (4.5/10)

Nerine: Surprisingly, all throughout Sia, Kaede, and Asa’s routes, I was always sort of eyeing Nerine. When I played through her, though, my first thought was “Start a new route, skip through blue text.” The blue text being, of course, shit I’ve already read before. The blue text kept going and going and going. The game starts June 13th and her route-specific content doesn’t actually start until July 22nd, and that was a five-minute scene at the pool. Afterword she seems to display the same sniveling, cringing, eager-to-please meatsocket philosophy that Kaede seems to personify. However,  in the tiny amounts of story we get while sifting through the already-read bloat, you catch glimpses of a potentially decent character that doesn’t suffer Kaede’s crippling flaws- there’s a world of difference between sniveling servility and devotion. But because you don’t get anything you haven’t already seen until mid-august, she falls flat. Her ending drama is very much in tune with Sia’s, Kaede’s, and Asa’s- female irrationality heaped atop poor writing and straw logic. (4/10)

Primula: Throughout my playthroughs, I never once considered Primula’s route. I can appreciate judicious use of a token loli, but there was never anything through any other route that said Primula was worth pursuing in the slightest. She’s also the last route in my playthrough, so with that in mind, the deck has already been stacked against her. Primula in a school swimsuit is appropriate in her type of appeal, but it simply seems I’m being pandered to. “Here is a token loli. It’s expected you’d see her in these things and doing these things, so here she is, doing those things.” I feel patronized and insulted. She wants validation and affection, I respond by giving her penis. LOGICAL CHOICE. (2/10)

Secondly, Saber makes a great Space Marine. See?

In Fate Stay Night news, there’s going to be a movie on Unlimited Blade Works. It hasn’t come out yet, and won’t until January 23rd 2010, but people are already saying it sucks, it fails, and generally has already gone into the grave without ever being produced yet. Perhaps I’m optimistic, or perhaps I’m sick of the jaded cynicism that pretentious faggots put out because it makes them seem edgy or cool, but I’d rather see for myself when it comes out, rather than castigate something that hasn’t even been made yet. Additionally, I’ve been planning on writing a full review of Fate Stay Night and dissertations on each of the three arcs, but I haven’t had time. It’s coming, so please wait warmly.

Thirdly, I may actually start posting some of my older photography.

Finally (and I know you’ve been waiting for this, hahaha) I’ve come across Suigun Murakami’s F-ism volume 13. Holy shit, stop the fucking presses, amirite? Hell yeah. That shit is always awesome. This time, there’s a nun. I love nuns. Especially tied up with crosses sticking out of their butts. I am the quintessential and discerning bastard, enjoying only the finest of pleasures.

In a lot of different tangental aspects, I enjoyed each series for what it was, but the main underlying formula destroyed them for me. Unfortunately by the time Clannad came around I had become calloused and cynical- their attempts to elicit an emotional response from me fell on deaf ears, and I simply watched as a dispassionate observer. There were plot elements I could appreciate and enjoy, but the foreknowledge of the inevitable result left only a tired sort of acceptance.

Final notes:

Tomoyo is fucking hot.

A random bowl of bullshit and sophistry and pseudo-psychological and pseudo-religious babble revolving around a simple story of people that are ultimately and fundamentally broken? What’s to like, right? I think listening to TEN YEARS of rabid and histrionic prepubescent fanboys (and post-pubescent too!) slavering and masturbating to something that was mediocre at best has got to be the worst part of Eva- the second being the almost auto-cannibalistic release and re-release and re-re-release of “new versions”. Who here remembers the collector’s series white VHS tapes? ($30 each!) The black box DVD set? The metal black box DVD set? The White DVD pack? Gold Edition? Deluxe Edition? Deluxe edition with 30 second more footage? Deluxe Edition with Director’s cut? Platinum? Platinum thinpack? Those two things made me hate Evangelion the most. It’s an average story, overhyped and overmarketed. But in all honestly, I think that the first and second movies have redeemed the show in ways that may not necessarily be readily apparent.

I think there are certain things you can’t look at directly, at least not at first. You must first glance sideways, examine things laterally. Look at the edges. Examine principles of effect and causalities. Find trends and values and from all of the outlying data begin to coalesce the fundamental core of what you are seeking. Look at footprints, fingertips and strands of hair, only then can you dare lift your eyes and truly understand all of it. So it’s with that that I watched Evangelion 01 You are (not) alone and Evangelion 02: You can (not) advance.

There are certain things that one must think of as “necessary” when you think of the series of Rebuild movies; and most specifically, the second one.  The expectations have already been set with previews, promos and hype:

• First, that there’s a new pilot we never saw in the series. Mari. We’ve got that, and it’s fine.
• Second, that Asuka shows up, and accordingly, so does Unit 02. She has, and that’s fine.
• Angels will show up and die. Okay, we’ve got that covered.
• Gendo’s keikaku doori.
• Bizarre insertions of random religious symbology.

The lesser-known but still necessary elements, though, are the things that bring home to us the realization that while it may be done with new technology, better animation, smoother transitions, amazing music, and such and so forth, this is still, irrevocably an evangelion movie. Like Asuka’s ubiquitous ‘Anta, baka?‘. Or, perhaps Misato’s enthusiastic beer-chugging and self-satisfying war-whoop at it’s completion- I believe that details like this flesh out and draw up the phenomenon known as Evangelion.

I’m going to admit it, I’m a slut for the almost…. pornographic level of detail that goes on in the background. Buildings raising and lowering, solar panels turning to catch the rays, cars moving, clouds shifting, escalators churning away. Even in this badly captured cam, you can still see beyond the mundane and appreciate the less obvious. One of the things that’s only hinted at, viscerally, throughout the eva franchise, is just how big the complex that houses NERV and the EVAs really is. If you’re not specifically looking for it, you will miss the important detail- it’s huge. Staggeringly huge. Mind-bogglingly huge. And that’s something you can clearly grasp in the second movie.

Another detail that we’ve got to learn before we can raise our eyes to the sightline, is not something we can see, but instead we have to hear it. The music. A large part of the pacing and overall mood of all iterations of the movies and the series and such has been the music. Prior to watching Evangelion back before I got married, I had never heard so much ‘brass’ in a show. Blaring trumpets and trombones and tubas and such; Rebuild brings in new iterations of these same tracks with different instruments to create a heartfelt similar yet audibly different, experience.  That’s not to disregard the strings. Most certainly not. There are string movements in the movie that awe-inspiringly dramatic and only serve to apply elements to the story we may not immediately see if we were to look at the movie straight on.

If watching the series, simply look straight at it. There is nothing beyond the obvious. There are no magic suppositions or deeper meanings except the ones that you yourself impose. Ray Bradbury once said, “My stories are often open-ended so that the reader can draw his own conclusions.” and while you have the freedom and encouragement to seek a deeper meaning, there really isn’t. If you’re watching the Rebuild movies, don’t look at them straight on. The story hasn’t changed in new or dramatic ways- you’re not missing anything. Instead pay attention to the things you wouldn’t normally think of, and ultimately the true reward will present itself: the redemption of an otherwise shit franchise.

Utawarerumono is a story centering around the masked protagonist, Hakuoro, who one day is found by a family of two girls and their grandmother in a nearby forest close to their village. He is badly injured and is soon found to have amnesia, so they take him to their home and treat him until he is well again. Hakuoro is soon accepted into their village where he stays and lives with them. The story’s genre is at first a fantasy-style story with heavy Ainu influence, though later develops science fiction themes towards the end.

Standard fare regarding the story progression, though there’s a few things I’ll mention:

1. There are no “story” choices per se. You progress through the linear story and things happen.
2. There are sRPG battles, which really make it worth playing over and over.
3. Some of the ero scenes are pretty lulzworthy.

I’ll post some screencaps and may even upload a FRAPS of one of the battles. Keep in mind that I’m not so good at sRPGs, so if you see something I’m doing wrong, i’m a noob, don’t lose sleep over it. I’m not.

Jury’s still out on GSG: Il Teatrino. Needs more Triela. Always needs more Triela.