Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!:  S*

This is a series for anyone who's ever done anything for absolutely no reason other than because it was cool.

This is a series for anyone who's ever tried to get away from reality by inventing a fantasy to replace it.

This is a series for anyone who's ever felt out of place, like they didn't belong among the rest of the world.

This is a series for pretty much everybody.

* While Chuu2Koi gets the S rank for being extremely thought-provoking, very intelligent, heartstoppingly gorgeous and a genuinely deep story about being human, the final episode falls short of the series' potential.  It resolves the story itself, but fails to come to any true conclusion regarding the questions it raises, probably because they are extremely personal to everyone who engages with them.  The ending's weakness reduces the final impact of the series, but doesn't prevent it from still being eye-opening on a level few anime series manage, so it still gets the S rank from me despite being considerably less perfect than most series I rank as S.

Oda Nobuna no Yabou

Oda Nobuna no Yabou:  B

"Oda Nobuna's Ambition."  An obvious reference/play on "Nobunaga's Ambition," a long line of strategy games where the player plays through the story of one of the Sengoku Jidai's most famous and successful warlords.  (The girl above is actually Niwa Nagahide, one of Oda Nobuna/ga's retainers.  And 'Nagahide' is Nah-gah-hee-day, not Naw-guh-hide.)

ONY follows the story of Sagara Yoshiharu, a big fan of the Nobunaga's Ambition series who is somehow thrown into an alternate version of medieval japan which is dramatically less sexist, possesses a number of modern fashion trends, and has a large number of famous historical figures who were born female rather than male, despite holding their same positions.  I have to say, the pitch is pretty bad, in particular I was disappointed at the very thought of a Normal High School Student protagonist.  "Historical figures only female" worked pretty well in Koihime Musou, so I was open to that being pretty good.  Indeed, comparing ONY to Koihime Musou seemed obvious, until I actually got into the series.

ONY, instead of being comedy, is an actual deliberate alternate history, told with a number of modern anime tropes thrown in, including a harem element and a fair amount of fan service.  However, while the majority of the cast is female, there is a substantial male cast and once Yoshiharu (who is kind of being a kharmic replacement for Toyotomi Hideyoshi) influences Nobuna to behave differently from the historical Nobunaga, the series lets events begin to unfold differently.

The series actually holds together remarkably well, making itself worth watching for more than just fan service and giggles, though if you're not at least appreciative of fan service and giggles you probably won't enjoy it, likewise if you're not at least passingly familiar with the Japanese Warring States era you won't have quite enough grounding to enjoy the twists, which, like Sengoku Basara, portray the characters as slight twists of their original selves (closer to their originals here than Basara, which isn't hard).

Oda Nobuna no Yabou has action, pretty girls, and interesting plot, humor and at least a bit of heart.  If you can appreciate those, you'll like it, but if you're hoping for true brilliance, ONY will leave you disappointed.

Chu2Koi: Episode 11 Update

Damn this series is good.

It's like, this year's Madoka.  If the ending brings itself together like episode 11 makes it look like it's going to, it may earn an S rating for being an intelligent discussion of a deep and pervasive stage of psychological development that is nevertheless very difficult to take seriously.  I have high hopes for the last 20 minutes.

Short update today.  I've gotta review Oda Nobuna no Yabou, then after that... I'm not sure.  Maybe the second season of Sengoku Basara, but I'm not expecting it to be really different from the first.  Maybe I'll get into Clannad and Clannad After Story?  We'll see.

Sengoku Basara (Season 1)

Sengoku Basara:  C

Sengoku Basara is not good, but it is awesome.

The famous generals of Japan's Warring States era are souped up and made five times more awesome than their original incarnations, whether this means making them into actual demons rather than just possessing legendary ruthlessness or giving them ridiculous fighting styles and absurd levels of shonen anime 'combat power' such as wielding six katana at once and causing lightning dragons to erupt from the ground where they strike.

Sengoku Basara's plot is fairly simple: Oda Nobunaga is evil, good guys all team up and beat him up.  There are some interesting nods and interpretations going on regarding the actual historical figures, but any real connection to the actual historical events is distant at the very best.

Also, Date Masamune's horse has handlebars and exhaust pipes, like a motorcycle.  Yeah.

Sengoku Basara is a thoughtless semi-historical parade of boyish fantasy violence spiced with childish humor.  It's quite entertaining if you're looking for something full of shouting men, swords and explosions.  If you're expecting realism, historical accuracy, or strong female characters, you'll really regret watching Sengoku Basara.

Kanon (2006)

Kanon (2006): A

It takes a lot for me to give a Visual Novel adaptation an A.  Kanon earns it.  The name comes from the Katakana reading of 'Canon,' the name for a piece of music which takes a central theme and repeats it with slight changes, an idea which the anime explores, once you look between the lines.  Just one example of the way in which Kanon is a very intelligent series, hiding behind its girl-game exterior.

Kanon is a story about love, memory and miracles.  It is a story about loss, fear and depression.  It is a story with a lot of drama and a lot of suffering.  The thing I love most about it is its humor: Yuuichi (on the right, above) voiced by Tomokazu Sugita (best known as Kyon from Haruhi Suzumiya) being snarky and teasingly friendly with the girls of the cast.  Yuuichi also stands out for me as being a very characterful protagonist, he gets awkward around the girl he likes, forgets his promises and makes fun of his friends even as he struggles to do the right thing, rather than providing the weird sense of 'boys must protect girls to get laid' that so many harem series do.

Kanon's adaptation from a Visual Novel is one of the best I've seen, though it also is very clear how they chose to handle the multi-arc presentation: after the cast is introduced, a 3-5 episode arc is dedicated to each of the Visual novel's original storylines, and Kanon manages to thread them all together quite nicely, far better than Air, Utawarerumono or Fate Stay Night; Kanon's overall story is coherent and builds on itself nicely.

Kanon is, like most Key adaptations, quite sad.  I cried.  Not as much as I cried at Ano Hana, but I did cry.  It's genuinely heartwrenching in places, but somehow manages to have an uplifting ending, and not one of those endings that's actually depressing but I personally find uplifting, either.

I hesitate to call it a 'harem' series, because while there are are a high number of female characters, and even female characters with crushes on the protagonist, the crushes are not the focuses of the story and are treated with a certain amount of gravity.  Which isn't to say that I couldn't criticize the series at all, but I find myself not needing to because it handles itself with such grace.

If you want to watch a gorgeously animated series with plenty of sorrow, growth and heartstring-tugging, Kanon is a lovely tale of hope in the middle of winter.  If you're looking for something funny... Kanon delivers there too.  If you need action... actually Kanon has a bit of that, but not a lot.  Really what I'm saying is that Kanon is very, very good.

Air

Air:  C

Air was originally a visual novel by Key Visual Arts, a hentai game in probably the least pure sense of the word, a 20+ hour story in which there are a handful of sex scenes that don't contribute much to the story.  The anime adaptation was made by Kyoto Animation, and so, since I've decided to watch everything KyoAni has ever done, Air was early on my list (since I don't want to watch all of Full Metal Panic right now, with some of it being done by not-KyoAni).

While I hadn't seen it before, I had heard of Key's work being heartbreakingly depressing, and it does hold up on that score, if you can follow the story well enough to understand why it's so depressing.  Of the original three female protagonists, two of them get rather short-changed in the story, with one having her arc resolved and one having her arc partially resolved, and both vanishing from the story after their stories are complete; yet another example of what I am now thinking of as "Fate Stay Night Syndrome" where a Visual Novel has too much material to make it into an anime.

To add to the confusion, we flash back to 10th-century Japan for a couple episodes for reasons which make sense only if you're willing to read between the lines and have been paying attention to the characters' occasional ramblings about their dreams, before returning to the present day at the beginning of the story, throwing another 'character' into the mix and going through one girl, the 'main' girl's arc again, very quickly with some minor changes and a conclusion that is somewhere between bittersweet and just plain sad.

A couple of extra episodes, "Air in Summer," are part of the flashback to ancient Japan, but while they expand on the characters from that story, they don't add much to the coherence of it.

Air is very pretty, but it comes up very short of a good story due, I assume to the translation from Visual Novel to Anime, which, in a story with multiple arcs which are theoretically based on the main character's actions and choices, are not usually well suited to transformation into a single linear story.  If you're interested in a lovingly animated, rather sad story about reincarnation, cyclical suffering and thousand-year-old curses, Air is worth a watch, but if you're hoping for a solid storyline or any sort of happy resolution, I'd recommend Kanon (see my next review) instead.

Acchi Kocchi

Acchi Kocchi:  C+

Oh hey, it's another C+.  I haven't given one of those out in a while.

Acchi Kocchi (Alternately translated as 'all over the place' or 'place to place', literally 'here there') is a cute, slice of life romantic comedy based off a 4koma comic.  These are all traits which cause it to be fairly insubstantial, which isn't necessarily a problem, but it does leave me with very little to say about it.

The main character (above) is described as a tsundere, but she's more just very easily embarrassed about her crush and amusingly intolerant of her friends' pranks.  The male characters are a fairly traditional pair, one being the cool guy and the other being the goofball, though the cool guy is the focus, because he is the target of our main character's crush.

And once you know the formula of the cast, there isn't really a story or any sort of progress or change in the status quo, just a series of vaguely connected episodes of high school silliness.

It's certainly not a bad series, and it's regularly funny, but it lacks the brilliance and audacity of Potemayo or KoreZombie of the Dead.  I'd certainly watch more of it if there was more of it to watch, but I really do find it difficult to praise.

If you want to watch high school kids being cute and silly for 13 episodes, you could spend your time a lot worse than watching Acchi Kocchi.  If you're looking for any sort of depth or meaning, look elsewhere.