Hayate no Gotoku!

Time for a review of an older series!

Hayate no Gotoku (Seasons 1 and 2):  A

Main character with the blue hair on the left.  The three in the foreground are the fun ones.

Hayate no Gotoku (Hayate the Combat Butler, is the English title) is a highly referential comedic anime about a very unlucky young man named Ayasaki Hayate, who possesses a pair of superlatively awful parents, and is forced (through a series of circumstances in the first two episodes) to become a butler to the astoundingly rich Sanzen'in Nagi, a 12 year old heiress, otaku and hikikkomori, who thus far has only lived with her young maid Maria, the head butler Klaus and her pet "cat" Tama.

Nagi's eclectic lifestyle and friends and classmates and Hayate's adjustment to the world of the absurdly rich are played for laughs (as is Hayate's incredibly bad luck), and a number of Shonen traditions are ruthlessly mocked (there is a 2-episode Tournament arc, and a period where other butlers are coming to challenge Hayate occurs in a two-minute segment at the end of every episode).

As much as that is the plot of the story, such as it is, the show has a fairly large and colorful cast and spends more of its time making japanese pop culture and anime references and hanging lampshades than it does advancing its wacky Love Dodecahedron "plotline".

The first season is a 52-episode series and focuses on the humor, anime referencing and random silliness.  For someone like me, who takes supreme enjoyment in playing "spot the reference," the first season is solid entertainment.  The second season begins with a soft reset (unexplained, but fairly obvious to anyone who's seen the first season) and focuses more on romance and relationship development, without abandoning the absurd humor.

It's a very Japanese series, and while I say that with a lot of affection for it, it is something that I would use to warn a lot of casual viewers.  If you're unprepared for machine-gun references to an unfamiliar culture, Hayate no Gotoku will be a little be a little overwhelming.  Not incomprehensible, but you'll have a constant feeling of "There was a joke there that I should have gotten..."

While the plots are often utterly ludicrous, the characters are extremely lovable, often being extremely competent in one area and extremely incompetent in another at the exact same time (I would posit that that is the theme of the series: the humor inherent in human flaws), and the show jumps between heartwarming moments of friendship and loyalty and snappily-delivered textual and physical comedy.  Overall, it's a positively wonderful show for anyone interested in romantic comedy, with a giant pile of bonus material for the dedicated anime watcher.

Star Driver 13-22

So, I think I'm going to change my official description of Star Driver to the following.

"Star Driver is Revolutionary Girl Utena WITH GIANT ROBOTS."

Need to put that on the Recycled IN SPACE tropes pages.

Feel free to skip the next couple paragraphs if you haven't seen Revolutionary Girl Utena.  Also, you may want to consider going and watching it.  It's a classic.

So I'm nearing the end of the series, and I'm liking it.  It lacks Utena's visceral brutality, but possesses much of its hidden symbolism, conspiracy plotline and quiet discussion of "how does a hero" that Utena was about.  That being said, it lacks the degree of symbolism that Utena had, and the symbolic misdirection of the former (Utena was between 10 and 70% nonsense, depending on who you ask) and, and this is crucial, Star Driver is a much more idealistic series as a whole.

It has the same undercurrent of "growing up" as it's pink-haired sister, along making metaphors for growing up out of leaving, dying, the loss of virginity/innocence and a number of other things.  And like Utena, the true measure of a hero or a villain is shown, not told.

Episode 22 set the stage for the finale, but it hasn't all aired in Japan yet, so I'm going to wait until the series is finished and then watch the remainder in one go.

Current Rating:  B+ (Ending could push it back up to A or down to B, but I don't think it'll go down as far as C.  It's gorgeous to watch and to listen to, and the story and characters are strong enough to hold it at at least B.)

Star Driver 5-13

So, I meant to go to bed early tonight because I've been terrible at waking up lately, but I had laundry in, so I figured I'd watch a couple more episodes of Star Driver.

And I have to say by Episode 13, I'm thoroughly torn on the subject.  So, up until the past couple of episodes, the entire series very much felt like a rehash of the same overall plot of Revolutionary Girl Utena and Melody of Oblivion:  A young, naive hero is gifted with fighting skill which they use to rescue a special girl from an arcane conspiracy, and then become part of a world of challengers facing them down, who defeat themselves through their own weakness rather than particularly through the hero's strength.  It will be surrounded by themes of repetition, western imagery used both properly and improperly with strong themes of growing up, corruption and sex.  When the Puppet Master finally reveals themselves, they will be very much like the hero and their ultimate defeat will be pyrrhic or inconclusive.

Now, I don't think that this is a bad formula, in particular, it's one that allows for a lot of characterization to be put into your villains and other challengers, but as of around episode 12 or 13 of Star Driver, I'm starting to think they may be mixing it up on me.  Any further would be spoiling, but let me just say that I'm at the halfway point and things (predictably) are starting to turn around.

Also, one of the guys at work (the one who recommended Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which I adore, to me, but whose opinions remain otherwise unknown) gave Star Driver a pretty tepid review, so I was prepared for it to go downhill, but it doesn't seem to have done so.  He may not have seen the two series that form the concept, and it's possible that my primary appreciation for the series is rooted more in the trio of series (Utena, Melody and Star Driver) than in Star Driver itself.

If the story continues in the vector that 12 and 13 left me in, I'm very interested to see what becomes of it.  If it goes in a different direction, we'll see...

Current Rating:  Tentative A.

Star Driver 1-4

I downloaded Star Driver a while back and the gg subs version of it has been sitting in my "to watch" folder, but I watched the first few minutes and they didn't get my attention, so I held off on it.

Tonight I cracked it, and my immediate thought upon finishing the first episode was, "Huh, this is like Utena meets Gurren Lagann."  Now, let's get straight that I consider both of those series to be excellent anime and worth anyone's time, but mixing concepts isn't necessarily a good idea.

I got curious around episode 4 and decided to look into who's writing this crazy, because a certain sequence reminded me of Ouran High School Host Club.  The following was my answer:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%8Dji_Enokido

I feel bad not knowing this guy's name!  Those are some high class titles he's written!  I've seen ALL OF THEM except RahXephon, and now apparently I'll have to, since they were all pretty good.

Anyway, Star Driver is a B+ at the moment, but I'm only 4 episodes in.  It could be as good as an S if it really shakes things up later on, but so far it's a little mind-warpy, but worth watching.

How To Watch Anime

That's a bit of a presumptuous title, but I'm going with it.  Being a critic is an inherently presumptuous job, after all, you're telling people what they should and shouldn't like.

So, I mentioned in my very first post that I loved Neon Genesis Evangelion.  I will never forget when I tried to show it to my then-girlfriend (who I watched a lot of anime with) and her older sister (who was also into it, but was a bit more generally cynical), nor my intense disappointment when they didn't "get it" in the same way I did.  Being as I was only 16 at the time, it shouldn't be too surprising that it took me about 6 years to really understand what I did wrong.

Evangelion is a series that relies very heavily on the viewer empathizing with characters who are at best flawed and at worst downright vile.  If the viewer does not let the struggle of the characters become their own struggle, the series loses all meaning and becomes the many things it is mocked for: absurdity, wangst, mind screwery and bizarre Christian imagery.

And it is much, MUCH harder to let yourself empathize with the characters if you're in front of other people.  Humans are naturally social creatures, they want to be understood and to understand, and to impress people. Evangelion is a crowning example of a series that a first-time viewer will reflexively mock almost as a defense mechanism against empathy.  "Shinji's a whiny little wuss," is something that you don't need to say when it's just you and him alone, but in front of other people, it's far, far easier to let posturing and joking get in the way of a series' actual emotional message.

That being said, when a series is funny, clever or tricky, watching it with friends will add dramatically to your enjoyment, as multiple sets of eyes will catch more details, and inside jokes can be generated and spread.  So I'm not saying that you should watch all anime alone.

The Shorthand version is this:  Drama should be watched alone the first time you watch it.  Comedy should be watched with friends.  Both types very often benefit from a second watching.  There are series (for example, Gurren Lagann and FLCL) which aren't really either one, or are both.  In my opinion, FLCL falls into the former category and Gurren Lagann falls into the latter, but I'm not sure I could completely explain why.

I should also note that series which can't make up their mind if they're drama or comedy will usually crumble worse in a multi-viewer environment than a single-viewer environment.  If you're the only one there, you can give it credit rather than poking at every plot hole you see, which I find that people do reflexively when they're with others.

Food for thought, I suppose.  Tonight I may (or may not) watch Triangle Heart: Sweet Songs Forever, the OVA of which Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha was a spinoff/alternate universe setting of.  As Nanoha is far better known than its predecessor, I'm curious as to what the "original" was like...

This Ugly Yet Beautiful World

This Ugly Yet Beautiful World:  C++

For all my defense of it, this is the best image I can find.

I really do try to avoid Nerd Rage.  It's an embarrassing phenomenon that happens when those of us obsess over things find someone else who obsess over them out of phase with our own obsession.  I say this in my defense in case anyone finds out that I was behind the rather heavy-handed edits to a couple of Tropes pages discussing This Ugly Yet Beautiful World, which I'm rewatching now.

Some backgrounds.  After I first watched Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, I decided that Studio Gainax could do no wrong and that I should watch everything they've ever produced.  This led me to watch some really good series that I would have otherwise missed and some series that are really just about breasts that I would have otherwise missed.  This Ugly Yet Beautiful World is somewhere in between these two.  It's a series with a shameless amount of casual nudity, but dismissing it as a series about nothing but fan service is completely missing the point.  It's also a story about emotion, hope, struggling against fate and pain of love.

If that sounds a bit like Neon Genesis Evangelion, it should.  Now, I fucking loved Evangelion, and while I will not say that any series that is like it is equally good, but I do think that Eva and series that are actually deeply emotional are incredibly difficult to appreciate if you're unwilling to open yourself to a serious series.  I'll go ahead and add that a series that has an awful lot of fan service is less likely to be taken seriously.  However, I don't think any of these truly justify being completely dismissive of a series that actually has well-written emotional complexity.  Which is what the TVTropes page was before I took my pen to it.

Now, I don't think that This Ugly Yet Beautiful World (jeez that's getting to be a mouthful) is an absolutely stellar series.  I rate it right on the line between C+ and B.  I guess I'll be satisfied with calling it a C++ (ha ha, and now my blog will show up on a lot of the wrong searches).  I guess I just can't stand to see something not given it's fair shake in a place like TVTropes, which, humorous though it may be, is a place people go for information, not to hear things degraded like a high school classroom.

And that's enough defensive rambling from me.  My recommendation:  It's a worthwhile bittersweet romance with a slight sci-fi bent fueled by pseudo-paleontology and downright made up biology.  If you can't stand gratuitous (if justified) nudity it's probably not for you, but even if the idea of a Magical Girlfriend show doesn't appeal to you, give it a chance, it explores the trope and its ramifications rather than simply being an occurrence of it.  It's only 12 episodes, not much of a time commitment, and it's a complete story with an ending and everything, but it's a story that knows what it's really about.

"I'm thankful, for things that are ordinary and obvious."
        -Hikari

Infinite Stratos: Update

So, I finished the last post around episode 6.  Having just finished episode 9 (which is the obligatory beach episode), my opinion of the series has improved.  It will take a truly awful ending drop this series to a D, and it's got a good chance at being a B series.

A lot of the weaknesses in characterization have been lampshaded, which eases my mind about them, and we've had a bit of time away from plot to get to know the girls (who are now in full on vicious competition mode).

I still would characterize it as a bit of a guilty pleasure series, but it has avoided the thing I was most afraid of.  I worried that Ichika was going to kick all the girls' asses and prove how superior it is to have a Y chromosome, which has been mercifully avoided completely.  The series has taken a few hops in the direction of comedy as well, which also eases my mind regarding everything.

However, due to the earthquake and Ayako Fansub's general laziness, I suspect it'll be a while before I get to finish the series, which is a shame because we're into the home stretch, where they get to try and wrap up what has been thus far the background plot.  How well they do it will be the deciding factor in whether it's a C or a B.

Infinite Stratos

So this is an incomplete series, I can't give a fully review of this show yet.  I'll post a followup when all twelve episodes have aired.  I started watching it because it's being subbed by the same folks who are subbing Toaru Majutsu no Index II and Kore wa Zombie desu ka, both of which I'm enjoying (if not quite completed).  And they had a couple funny shots from IS, so I watched the first episode.

I wasn't impressed, but I don't have a lot of other new stuff, so I tonight I figured I'd watch the second.

The mecha are gorgeous and the combat is lovingly rendered, and the events of the story are surprising and twisty.  The weakest part of the story is the romance plot, which rather impressively conspires to place the main character at the center of a Love Dodecahedron.  His popularity as the only boy in an all-girl school isn't necessarily inaccurate, but it's a little bit overplayed.

And yet, to avoid any significant spoilers, every time the series is getting bad enough that I'd stop watching, something unpredictable and awesome happens that keeps my interest.  As usual, the series starts out within a step of where it'll end up, and it started out as a C.  With solid buildup and resolution it could be a high B, with a really miserable one it could be a D.

Would I recommend it?  If you're willing to swallow some awkward romance plots for some absolutely glorious mechanized violence mostly perpetrated by teenage girls in swimsuits wearing techno-armor, rock out.  If you're looking for well-written characters and clever dialogue, and aren't that into mecha or laser swords or explosions or girls in swimsuits, go ahead and skip it.

Cold Opening

Hello, blogosphere.

I'm Nick, you can call me Headlessnewt or, if you're feeling rather snarky, "Kenshin," after Himura Kenshin, my teenage hero.  If you need me to explain where he's from, things are going to get difficult from here, because this is going to be a blog dedicated to my reviews of the anime I watch.  Naturally, if you're going to take a critic's opinions into consideration, you should know a little bit about what that critic likes regarding the medium that they're discussing, so that seems like the best place to begin here.

So, a little about me.  I'm a twenty-something who works in the MMO Industry professionally, so I deal with a lot of nerds as a matter of course.  I've been watching anime for well over a decade, and I am semi-fluent in Japanese (yes, I got most of it from watching a whole lot of subtitled anime, yes I have also taken classes).  I am a very experienced role-player, and I read when I don't have the option to watch anime.  I'm a troper and very interested in story elements and creative interpretations of old ideas.  I'm of a very strong opinion that a story which is too long is a bad story; I despise filler and it takes a lot for a series that is longer than 52 episodes to impress me.

While I'm on the subject, since I will be using this a lot, I provide my rating system.  Both because I find it more useful than a simple X/Y stars method, I use a letter grade system as follows.

F rank series are terrible.  Spare your eyes and your soul.  I rarely give this ranking.
D rank series are bad.  It may have been  waste of time, incoherent, unoriginal or just extremely meh.  Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals gets this ranking for unoriginal characters, predictable story, weak animation and general badness.
C rank series are okay.  This is my "average" ranking.  They may have parts which are genuinely excellent but ultimately fall short, or may have a brilliant concept that isn't played through thoroughly.  Moon Phase gets this ranking for unique characterization and some very creative design decisions, but an ultimately weak and poorly followed-through story.
B rank series are good.  While there are no series that I would recommend to absolutely everyone, B rank series I recommend to anyone interested in their subject material or overall genre.  A series that would otherwise be C rank with an excellent ending or one with a weak concept and writing that manages to be just plain fun despite it will also often earn a B rank from me.  Murder Princess gets a B rank for being a very short, unpretentious but creative story with an excellent soundtrack and amusing characters.
A rank series are excellent.  They are flawless: excellently told, lovely to watch, emotional, thought-provoking, with believable characters and a well-constructed story.  These are the series that I will recommend to people to prove that anime can tell stories of a genre they might otherwise think they can't.  Higurashi no Naku koro ni is an A rank series for being a beautiful work of character and setting-based horror and mystery.
S rank are series which are not only excellent, but they break the mold of what anime means.  These series challenge the veiwer's way of thinking and leave us deeply and thoroughly affected.  I am very hesitant to give out this rating, and I will acknowledge that even more so than the others, the series that I define as S rank say more about me than they do about the series themselves.  Neon Genesis Evangelion is an S rank series for being not only an A rank series, but for opening up the viewer's own mind and showing it to them, revealing hope, depth, fear and possibility.  Naturally, viewers mileage varies.

In all cases, I will sometimes add either additional letters and +'s to signify that a series is close to the rank above it, but for some reason I could not give it the higher rank.  This occurs most often in the B and A ranks, but I have also found quite a few series that are C+ rank, okay, and I liked them, but I couldn't genuinely say they were good.  For example, Toradora! I rank as AA+, because it is positively the best crafted Romantic Comedy that I've ever seen.

Anyway, I'm new to the actual blogging thing, so I will leave my first post off here.  I don't suspect many people will be reading this for a while, but hopefully when they do, it'll serve as a kind of crash course into the beginnings of the way I talk about the strange and wonderful things that anime has produced.