May 2011
1 post
February 2011
4 posts
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Big eyed, pointy-chinned character design seems rather fitting in Casshern Sins, where robots have replaced humans. Sure, a number of the robots are more primitive designs, but a lot of the main cast are functionally undistinguishable from shiny anime humanity.
Which at least makes the moeblobs amusing.
The sleek character designs serve as a representation of an artificial humanity with...
The Horror of Madoka
Slowpoking away, I had a look at the latest talked-of anime show. Right from the offset the team at Shaft have let us know that something is deeply wrong in Madoka-land.
There is no window seat in this classroom.
In fact the transparent classroom setup is an absolute solution to dawdling in corridors, not paying attention, and distributing illicit material on school premises. With appropriate...
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On Inconvenience
In the Aria Special Navigation, Parallel World (The Natural, ep 22, pt 2) President Aria is maybe transported to an alternative, genderflipped reality. Alternatively he just hit his head and got delusional, but maybe all of the proof-token’s of Akari’s supernatural visitations are mere fakes concocted by her cynical Tyler Durdenesque alter-ego. In the spirit of enjoying a better...
January 2011
4 posts
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December 2010
2 posts
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I did this thing by way of a blogging amusement, organised by Reverse Thieves. So this is a Secret Santa post. As a result of the recommendation of A Person Unnamed I got Gundam 0800: War in the Pocket, Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight, and Aoi Bungaku, a surprisingly (indeed… suspiciously) good-looking little selection, with a nice enough diversity between them to make me feel guilty about the...
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November 2010
8 posts
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Taiyo Matsumoto's ZERO
I haven’t really ever watched boxing, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I can get by fine by disliking on principle. Of course I do also really like Raging Bull.
And in a way that’s a pity, because being a fan of a great film about something I don’t really get kind of obstructs my enjoying other fiction about boxing. In this case, the mythic boxer in Taiyo...
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Shocking Hobbies
I’m not sure I even should be seeking merit in shock value. Nonetheless, I tend to have positive associations for any fiction which can jolt me out of complacency. I imagine this isn’t unusual for an anime fan. Whatever our justifications, I think a fair bit of the experience of watching lots of anime for any period of time comes from asking what mad shit the Japanese can pull off...
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I’ve been reading Perdido Street Station by China Mieville and finishing up K-On!!, and believe me I have tried to come up with a solid mish-mash title for this post. China Mugiville, Perdido Street Sawako, Chazunyan Mienyan, I just couldn’t do it. So titleless post of the day is about liking things you didn’t think you’d like and about getting suspicious of things...
October 2010
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Fitting Star Driver into the Studio Bones...
The first scene of new mecha series Star Driver sums up the silliness and the peculiarity of the show. We’re dumped in medias res on a scene between two young things, some kind of dramatic conversation. Fans of previous original anime by Studio Bones will of course be quite used to this sort of situation - shows like Rahxephon and Xam’d were enthusiastic in throwing the audience into...
September 2010
15 posts
Don't Move
This is something by way of an extremely belated response to a post on Ha Neul Seom.
In his 2009 post gaguri contrasted Japan and America in terms oF animation style - dividing them into ‘modernist’ and ‘classical’ - the expressive and the realistic, if that’s not dumbing it down too much. On the anime side of the equation the description brings to mind the frantic...
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Killing off the humans
It’s funny trying to keep a handle on Tsutomu Nihei. Reeling from the last chapters of Blame!, I felt a sort of awe toward the man, badsed in admiration for his uncompromising aesthetics and trippy semi-comprehensibility.
It’s the aspect of punishment in reading his work which make it work this way - the persistent difficulty of working out what anyone’s doing and why makes...
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Having enjoyed the pontifus viscera chart and puzzled over ways to fit it to non-mecha anime, I found myself struck by a foolish idea…
Alright, this is kind of cheating, since it’s less like a measurement of emotional reactions and more like some sort of horrible d&d alignment system (can I be Airship Neutral?).
But after a fashion you could see it as a chart of...
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Saeko Killer
Discussing fanservice always feels odd, but when a show’s subtext is being screamed out by the cast members and subsequently printed in superscript across the screen it seems churlish not to try.
What is really strange, disturbing even, about the 9th episode of Highschool of the Dead is the fact that it was a character episode. A no-fooling character episode.
The cast, especially the...
August 2010
9 posts
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Notes on the Illusionist # 1: National character
In Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist our hero, Tatischeff, is a Frenchman in a strange land. He is a stuffy old geezer, uptight and quietly bewildered by the lives of the British. The sentiment is the fundamental feeling of a foreigner and of an old man.
Which is to say, Tatischeff is not exactly my image of the French mentality, and his meeting with Britain is very much an idiosyncratic...
Notes on the Illusionist # 2: On tumblr
Consider this a warning, when The Illusionist is released on DVD, should this blog still be alive, I expect to launch a devastating barrage of random screencaps. Because it is a pretty film.
If there’s one satisfaction in the film which is untinged with melancholy it’s the pure satisfaction in Chomet’s attention to detail. He stuffs his work with on screen jokes and rewards,...
Notes on the Illusionist # 3: End Credits
Things to note from the end credits of a great film.
The music is co-authored by the director, which makes me love him all the more.
Each core character got a lead animator assigned, which is glorious.
Only, when you sit through the credits a bit longer you see an army of Kroean names all in a row on animation duties. Because that’s how professional animation works now. French lead...
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Aesthetic
Ethical
Religious
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A Fondness for Revelation
[Seems like everyone else in blogland has overtaken me in watching K-On!! (I’m on episode 4). I lag even further behind in regard to Aria (still working on the Organisation), so this will not be a very authoritative post with regard to either show.]
Aria clearly means a great deal to a fairly large number of people. In my own experience of the franchise I’ve come across a few of those...
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July 2010
14 posts
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Pics from Spider Thread arc of Aoi Bungaku
High School of the Dead Manga is Meant for...
I am now up to date with the HSotD manga. I’m delighted how in 6 volumes it made no attempt yet to explain the epidemic or create some kind of overarching broad storyline.
It’s survival mayhem, echhi fanservice, and harem shenanigans all the way. I am not big on any of these elements at all (especially floppy boobservice), but somehow this manga did some alchemy and the whole thing is...