Several Sequels

Symphogear G:  C+
Toaru Railgun S:  C
Infinite Stratos 2:  F

So I gave Chuunibyou Ren a full post, though it's very relevant to what I'm talking about, as is Haganai Next.  The three shows I'm actually reviewing all came out last year but none of them were good or bad enough to justify their own posts (though I did make a funny gif about Railgun S), and all of them are different kinds of bad sequels.

This Season!

So while I figure out how I'm going to even try to describe Everyday Lives of High School Boys, I figured I'd do a quick post on the shows I'm watching and not watching this season.

Infinite Stratos Season 2:  I know I said I'd watch a second season if they made it, but oh my god is it bad.  Provisional D.

BlazBlue Alter Memory:  As a fan of the franchise I appreciate the new medium and perspective the anime provides, but the animation quality is positively embarrassing.  Provisional C.

Kyoukai no Kanata:  Kyoto Animation's work is as usual gorgeous, and now that we're about halfway through the season we're coming up to what the story is about, and it's working for me.  Not a piece of staggering genius, but certainly fun to watch.  Provisional B.

Kyousou Giga:  I have to admit, the ONA confused the crap out of me, but the actual series proper is proving to be a really awesome eastern fairy tale, a story about magic and family.  Kind of hard to follow, but definitely fun to watch.  Provisional A.

Kill la Kill:  Being the spiritual sequel to Gurren Lagann and containing a lot of girls in skimpy clothing, it's an extremely divisive series.  Some interesting hypotheses on its meaning here, and I hope that this person is right.  It's definitely starting to pick up now that we're about a quarter of the way through, and I think it definitely has the potential to be A or even S rank.  Even if it doesn't live up to that, I'm still enjoying it.

Unbreakable Machine-Doll:  I haven't been able to get into it yet, much as I like the idea of cute steamagic robot girls, I was kinda turned off by them going to a high school for arcanotech.  Maybe I'll give it another try later.

Strike the Blood:  Tried to watch the first episode, couldn't get through it, the premise felt hackneyed as hell.

Sekirei

Sekirei (Both Seasons):  F

This is actually the most clothing I could find a picture of them wearing.

I am a firm believer that people are free to like whatever they like, and that not everything is for everyone.

Sekirei is bad and if you like Sekirei you are bad.

I watched one episode and I knew it was pretty bad, but I had to watch three to make sure.  And at that point, I had to watch all 26, because once I'd committed that much time, I might as well do the world a service and explain exactly what about it is so terrible.

So, Sekirei is a harem/panty fighter with superpowers.  I will be spoiling some things, but trust me you're better off this way.

The Japanese School System for Anime Viewers

So, schools in Japan are an extraordinarily common element in anime, and there are enough differences from Western schools and have a number of visual conventions associated with them that I decided to write a short informational essay about them.  Since I just watched Minami-ke (which I will review forthwith), which has multiple characters across most of the main levels of primary school, this is on my mind as something that a viewer should be familiar with to make discussing schools a little easier.

Rebuild of Evangelion: 3.0 - You can (not) redo

You don't get a letter grade on it, because while it is a movie and a coherent unit, it is also part of a greater series and that series is important to its context.  So this is a bit of a different review.

Let's start by talking about Rebuild of Evangelion 1 (You are (not) alone) and 2 (You can (not) advance) real quick.

Rebuild 1 was essentially a retelling of the first six episodes of the anime with dramatically improved animation and a few minor changes.  In all, it was great.  It was what people wanted.

Rebuild 2 moved away from the original anime plotline, introducing a new pilot (Mari) and rearranging events so that certain characters were more and less important and events occurred in different order with different characters.  Relationships progressed faster, and practically every character was much more emotionally open.  Rebuild 2 was beautiful and made a number of intentionally complex and flawed characters relatable, then ended on a point of extreme shock and tension.  The end of Rebuild 2 is a total curveball for viewers of the anime.

In short, Rebuild 2 was excellent and put us in a place where we had no idea what to expect.  Rebuild 3 had a lot to do: these characters we knew very well and this situation that was completely foreign to us, and build a story we could understand out of them.  It's a tall order.  I think it succeeds, but at the cost of its non-metaphorical narrative.

Rebuild 3, for me, felt like, while it wasn't the direct expositional version of Instrumentality that the original anime had, it definitely was encouraging you to think about what each of the characters and situations represented in a symbolic framework.

And honestly, I think a lot of people won't like that, and the actual movie itself doesn't feel quite as awesome as Rebuild 2 was, though the symbolism and metaphor, a necessary part of the Evangelion franchise, were back, and strong.

Finally, Rebuild 3 ends in a very similar way to how Rebuild 2 did: a situation we, the viewers, recognize as parallel to the end of End of Evangelion, which leaves us absolutely no frame of reference for what to expect from the final installment.

I'm quite curious what the critical reception for 3 will be, I enjoyed it, but I really wonder if other people will.

What I'm Up To

So after a break from anime during which I was playing League of Legends for several months, I'm back to watching.

Partially the reason for the lack of updates is that practically nothing that aired during Spring was worth watching or reviewing in my mind.  I've been keeping up with Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S, but it's so far been a different-perspective retelling of one of the arcs of first-season Index, and keeps with that series' general sense of 'if you don't look closely, it's pretty fun.'  I also watch Nyaruko-san W, which doesn't deserve it's own review, it's more of the same.  I reviewed Oreimo 2 (though it's not completely over, it's got 2 more episodes to air) and Red Data Girl, and that's pretty much everything I was actually watching.

None of my favorite studios, Shaft, Gainax and Kyoto Animation did anything last season, is really what I'm saying here.  So it was pretty slow.

This season, though, is looking up, especially with Monogatari Series second season, which is 4 episodes in and already shaping up to be amazingly well-written and crafted, as I've come to expect.  I haven't gotten into Kyoto Animation's new series 'Free' (which looks to be very man-servicey), but I'm also keeping up on the new Rozen Maiden, which I'm enjoying despite its slow build up in the first few episodes and the weirdness of the whole alternate universe plotline, which is being handled much better than I was originally expecting.  I watched the first two episodes of WataMote, but I found them profoundly depressing, so I haven't kept going with it.  Maybe I'll be in the mood later.

There's a second season of Symphogear airing, and I'm not yet willing to say it's a worthy successor to a diamond in the rough first season.  I'm also watching Tamayura season 2, but that's really just slice of life fluffiness.  I think that's everything that I'm actively watching that's airing currently.

Finally, I'm rewatching Martian Successor Nadesico, as an experiment in how well it holds up, I last watched it about fifteen years ago.  First impressions are ambivalent, it's got some great moments and characters, but it's trying very hard to be a serious parody, and it's not quite working out for it.

I'll have some real reviews for you all soon.

Vividred Operation (And a rant about Fan Service)

Vividred Operation: D+

This is official art, by the way

So this series is ostensibly kind of about techno-magical girls, but in truth is really about underaged girl's asses.  And to a lesser extent their breasts.

So there are these girls and for reasons which aren't entirely well explained they wind up wearing jet suits and fighting invading aliens.  The Jet suits are powered by this cool new reactor that we built that runs on extradimensional magic.  Why we didn't give the jet suits to trained military professionals isn't well explained but probably is due to one of the girls' grandfather, who would be creepier if he didn't get brain-swapped with a stuffed animal in the first episode.  Naturally there's hijinks as the full team of four gets together and the mysterious girl who appears to be working with the aliens, and starts out cold and not wanting to be friends but warms up eventually because she's lonely and the main characters are the only ones who have ever tried just being friends with her.

All that's pretty formulaic, but I am not going to say that something that is formulaic is inherently bad.  It can be well-executed, and the fact is that I do kind of like several of the characters and the execution in places.  The show has enjoyable moments and is fun to watch and listen to, but it's flat.  There is no spark, no risks taken.  No great lessons learned, no moving moments of understanding or betrayal.  Even that would still earn it the C, that were all I had to say.

What ruins it for me, and rarely will I say this, is the fan service.  Now, I want to go on record with saying that I enjoy the lovingly animated female form as much as the next creepy nerd on the internet.  Fan service is not inherently bad for me, and can be used to enhance storytelling while ALSO providing titillating content for viewers.  To this end, I categorize fan service occurs into three varieties:
1) Integrated Fan Service.  This is the fan service where we're shown cleavage, jiggling boobs or panty shots for a good reason within the story.  Often it's because it's what a male character present in the scene is focusing on, and it's shown to help us sympathize with his horniness, and the awkwardness that ensues from that.  It might be deliberately sexual to showcase a character's depravity or innocence, based on their reaction.  It's also meant to titillate, but it serves a significant purpose: the fan service is fully integrated and justified by the story and setting.  Bakemonogatari and Haganai are full of this, and Speed Grapher had its fair share as well.
2)  Tongue-in-Cheek Fan Service.  These are the humorous panty shots, the fourth-wall breaking moments where other characters block the camera, or where circumstances contrive to cause the characters to get into situations that result in clothing being lost or undergarments being shown off far too often for it to be taken seriously.  Koihime Musou is full of this, as is Dog Days.  The fan service is not integrated into the story necessarily, and probably could be left out, but it is given a nod from the characters themselves, and so is contextualized, usually as humorous.
3)  Straight-faced Fan Service.  In this form, we get acontextual shots that showcase a character's body purely for the sake of titillation.  Its use has no impact on the story, and nothing to do with any character's portrayal or perception of others, and nobody in the story seems to notice or care, much less comment.  It often seems as though the cameraman just happens to be putting himself somewhere where we get a shot of a girl's magnificent ass, or rack, or whatever.  This type is present only for the audience's benefit.  The lack of integration causes mood whiplash, desensitization to further uses of it and an overall weakening of the audience's ability to engage with the story.

Type 3 is the kind in Vividred, and it's the kind that offends me.  It marks a story as being weak, because if you feel the need to have lovingly animated ass jiggle for no reason other than to show it off, it makes me as a viewer feel like that's all the show has to offer.  And that's why Vividred is probably not worth your time: because pretty much all it has to offer is several barely-teenage girls' butts in short shorts; nothing original or creative, or even particularly noteworthy.

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Episodes 1-7

So, I've added Kyoto Animation to my list of studios (after Shaft and Gaianx) that I will just watch everything they produce because it's gold.  Their current project is an adaptation of a two-volume Light Novel series of the title seen above.

(Man, I'm watching a lot of series these days that are just long strings of words in Japanese.  "Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!" is usually translated "In spite of my adolescent delusions of grandeur, I want a date!")

It's about a boy (Togashi Yuuta) who, before entering high school, was a delusional sort who wore a long jacket, carried a oversized fantasy resin sword, spoke in an incredibly melodramatic fashion and called himself (in Engrish) "Dark Flame Master."  However, at some point he realized how incredibly embarrassing this is and stopped doing it, trying to forget everything about it and move on, making a fresh start in high school.

Unfortunately, a girl (Takanashi Rikka) moves into the apartment above the one where he lives, and she still does stuff like that, wearing a medical eyepatch (to seal her 'Wicked Eye') and a bandage on her left arm (covering a seal on the power of the harbinger of darkness), making combat poses at everyone she meets and talking a lot about her  mana, chimera familiar (a stray cat she put wings on), the evil Priestess who shares the apartment she lives in (her big sister) and how she must be ready for battle at all times.  Due to a momentary indiscretion when Yuuta is attempting to cleanse himself of his past forever, his neighbor (also his classmate) overhears of him being Dark Flame Master, and attempts to befriend him as a dark sorcerer who is also facing the threats that she faces.

... And we've all been there?  Right?  ...Right?

Anyway, as someone who is only about 90-95% over his own adolescent delusions of grandeur (Chuunibyou literally translates as 'Eighth-grader disease'), I find the premise to be nostalgic and amusing (and that's without mentioning Kyoto Animation's eye-melting artwork), and the execution to be effective and interesting.  Rikka and Yuuta are hardly the only characters who have ever suffered from chuunibyou, and it's not portrayed as a life-destroying disease as much as a phase that may or may not have deeper roots.

A part of me wants to write an entire essay on the idea of adolescent delusions of grandeur and how they figure into society, grow and evolve and how accepted they are even in adults, but this is an anime blog.

So, instead, I'll say that Chuu2Koi (that's the official abbreviation, apparently) is pretty good, so far, and is likely to be high on my list of recommendations to my more grown-up nerd friends.  Since we all were like that, once upon a time.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Neon Genesis Evangelion:  S

So, Evangelion was for me what Harry Potter was for a lot of kids who are slightly younger than me.  It was formative.  I saw it when I was 14, in 1998, and it was one of the first anime series I ever saw.  I was at a point in my life where I was searching for meaning, for motivation, for purpose, and I found it through the suffering and growth of another 14-year old, the boy named Shinji Ikari.

I could give a summary of Eva, or reasons to watch it, but everything I could say on those topics has already been said elsewhere on the internet.  It's too popular, too embedded in the anime-viewers' collective consciousness, even the ones who have never seen it, because of the effect it had on anime as a medium: Evangelion is almost certainly the single most influential series of all time.

For me, the thing I want to talk about is how difficult it seems to be for viewers to allow themselves to be affected by the emotional content of the story.  Eva is a series where practically all of the characters are varying degrees of unlikeable: Shinji is a passive, self-denying doormat, Rei is incapable of coherent self-expression, Asuka is an egocentric showboat, Misato is self-deceptive hypocrite, Ritsuko is a liar of outstanding proportions and Gendo is utterly lacking in compassion.  However, the power of the series comes from the viewer's ability to sympathize with these characters despite their flaws, indeed, to recognize these flaws as being human and reflected in themselves:  These people are like you, and who they are brings them pain, just like you.

I cannot count the number of times I have heard the series referred to or discussed in terms which ignore its emotional content, instead making jokes about the screen going red and Shinji screaming, dialogueless scenes, frame saving, incomprehensible philosophical pontification, or sexual subtext (or just plain text, in a few cases).  Joking about it allows the viewer to evade sympathy by treating the content as absurd or engaging in schadenfreude at the characters' expense, and that denies the emotional impact which is the core of the series' purpose.

Much like it's younger, more upbeat cousin Gurren Lagann, if Eva doesn't affect you emotionally, you're missing what the series is about.  Not everyone is interested in being affected in the violently cathartic way that Eva attempts to affect you, though, and this is probably the real reason that there are so many jokes at the series' expense: when you're watchin' anime with your friends, you don't want to have your emotional walls torn down and your mortality and purpose in life brought into question, you just want to watch the explosions and the boobs.

This is a reason why I have strongly recommended that the series be watched alone, because when viewed in a group, people are far more likely to try to appear knowledgeable, clever, or funny at the cost of sympathy and connection, without which, Eva becomes what it is most often described as: weirdly-used christian iconography peppered with sparse dialogue, technobabble and scenes of crying, screaming and giant robots fighting giant monsters (often at the same time).

But for me, and many others, that was not what Neon Genesis Evangelion was about, that was simply the context in which an empowering story about personal responsibility, identity, choice and love could occur.

At The Moment

Today I post to ease the agony of ordinary unemployed life.

So I've still got a bunch of series sitting in my Unfinished  folder, but none of them are reaching out and grabbing me right now.

I've been watching and rewatching the Touhou M-1 Grand Prix series, which is a series of manzai comedy sketches performed by the cast of the Touhou Project games.  Manzai is a particularly odd and unfamiliar form of comedy to most Americans, and the M-1 series is additionally extremely referential to the Touhou Project, so it's very much a niche market, though if you're into these things, it's pretty hilarious.  That said, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person I know who has a thorough enough grasp of Japanese and Touhou to fully appreciate them, so if you stumble on this and look them up and like them, fergodsake tell me so I don't feel like such a freak.

Other than that, I'm mostly watching Haiyore! Nyruko-san and Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka? Of The Dead, both of which are in the process of airing.

Nyaruko-san is best described as the least dignified of all possible stories that could ever be told about the Cthulhu mythos.

KoreZombie OTD is pretty much exactly like original edition KoreZombie, though with even less shame (if that was possible) and no real justification for the creation of absurd and fan servicey situations.

I'm enjoying both of them, but neither of them is good.  It's a guilty sort of enjoyment.

I'm also waiting for Dog Days season 2 to start, but that's not til July.  I should probably look more carefully at what aired in Q1, some of it might be good.

Tidbits

I've been kind of bad about updating lately, which can be blamed partially on Skyrim and partially on my poor sleep schedule which is also mostly the fault of Skyrim.  So here's some teasers for reviews I will and won't be doing in the future:

Gintama:  I finished the first run (all but the last of 178 episodes) and was generally very impressed.  It wasn't really amazing quality anime but I didn't feel like my 178 episodes were wasted, it stayed relatively fresh, though I often just had it running in the background.  It's good for that.

Cardcaptor Sakura:  I'd seen a bunch of it before, but had never finished the entire thing.  I liked it, but I felt it didn't make as good use of its length as it could have, and it's 'second season' was tacked-on and a little odd, though in the end it worked out.  I have to watch the second of the movies before I give a full review.

Bakemonogatari:  I recently rewatched the entire first season with a friend, and realized that the more times I rewatch it the more I like it.  While I still wouldn't quite rate it an S, I certainly rate it as one of my 'must see' shows.

Nisemonogatari:  This one won't be for another six or seven weeks, when the entire thing has aired.  So far, I'm loving it, despite it being notably slower than Bakemonogatari, it's more thoughtfully exploring relationships that we have only had inferred.  Nisemonogatari is thus far making it completely clear to me that the story is about people, not about monsters.

Arakawa Under the Bridge:  I watched the first episode a while back then picked it up again, it's very weird but fun, in a playful, thoughtful kind of way.  Very much about questioning what really matters... and also about just being absurd.

Bakatest Season 2:  I probably won't review this, since it only stood out to me as 'more of the same,' as in, 'more potential wasted on maintaining a status quo or faking progress.'  It was fun but ultimately not worth an entry.

Summer Wars:  I'd really like to review it, it was really quite a good movie (not quite as good as the Girl who Leapt Through Time, but still good) but ultimately I saw it at what was for me an emotionally relevant time in my life to the subject matter, and so I don't feel like I can give an honest rating.  It's good though.  You should watch it.

Hayate no Gotoku! Heaven is a Place On Earth:  The Hayate movie, it was cute but not unique or amazing enough to be worth reviewing on its own, it's more Hayate.  If you need more Hayate, watch it.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS:  I'm watching this for a third or fourth time with a friend who's never seen it before.  I'm not sure if I'll post a review when I'm finished, I consider it good but not amazing, fun to watch but considerably below the outstanding quality of Nanoha A's.

Fate/Zero:  So, I'll say right off the bat that this'll be a difficult one to review because I cannot in good conscience tell anyone to watch it without having first played through Fate: Stay/Night (the Visual Novel, not the godawful anime), which is a testy prospect at best.  The VN is wonderful and one of the most soul-crushingly depressing and horrific stories I've ever seen, qualities I adored about it even as they make me cringe at the thought of ever 'playing' through it again.  Fate/Zero is a prequel, set some years previous, and spoils a couple of the biggest shocks of the Visual Novel in the first 30 minutes of it.  It also looks very, very good.

Lucky Star, Infinite Stratos, Bakatest, Toradora OVAs:  Some of these I've already seen, some of them I'm working on getting.  None of them seem worth reviewing separately, being just individual episodes and not wildly divergent from the quality or subject matter of their originator series.

Shakugan no Shana Final:  I'm really looking forward to watching the third season of Shana, since I always was very impressed with the series' construction, but I feel honor-bound to rewatch the first two seasons so that I'm in the right mindset for the third, and that's about 65 episodes worth of watching, which I'm not quite dedicated to doing yet.

Ikamusume Season 2:  Pretty much exactly the same as Shana Final, though a bit less so; I saw Ikamusume more recently and the 'plot' doesn't require certain memory as strictly.

Durarara!!, Working!!:  I saw a bit of the first episodes and they didn't grab me, but I'm curious about them both.  More so now that I know that some of my favorite voice actors are involved.  Yes, I will watch series just to hear people with lovely voices talk.

Ao no Exorcist, Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai, Sacred Seven, RahXephon, Fate/Unlimited Blade Works, Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex Season 2, Hell Girl Season 2, Hourou Musuko, Eden of the East, Gokusen, Claymore, Starship Operators, Death Note:  Downloaded.  Waiting for inspiration to watch them, which may or may not come.

...now that you more or less know the contents of my "Unfinished" folder, I'm going to go back to deciding if I'm going to try to pull an all-nighter to hopefully restabilize my sleep schedule or not.

Demographics

Gosh have I really not updated since Nichijou?  That was like a week ago.

I wanted to talk about the four anime demographics, because I've been getting out of my normal demographic lately and talking about the others will save me some time when I get around to reviewing Princess Jellyfish and Maria-sama ga Miteru.

The four demographics are based on gender and age.  Naturally, there are plenty of people outside the standard demographics who like shows from demographics, but the terms have underlying connotations beyond simply who they're aimed at.

The best known demographic, indeed, what most westerners think of when they think of anime, is shōnen, anime and manga aimed at boys high school age and  younger, epitomized by Naruto, Bleach and Dragonball Z.  However, the genre is not solely composed of fighting series, there are a large number of manga and anime about sports, as well as a number of series that seem mature enough to fall into the next category, such as Death Note, Gurren Lagann and Evangelion:  shōnen is not distinguished by immaturity, but rather by the intended appeal.

Not as well known in the west but for the shining example of Sailor Moon is anime intended for girls of high school age and younger, termed shōjo in Japanese.  These stories tend to focus on relationships, love and drama, with all manner of variations on the theme, though again, the definition is based on who the series is marketed towards rather than who might otherwise enjoy it.  Of the series I've reviewed, only Lovely Complex qualifies as shōjo.

The third category is the one that I watch the most of, anime for adult men, seinen.  This category contains almost all 'harem' and 'fan service' series (not that shōnen doesn't have fan service, but it tends to be less common), though these series will often have deeper explorations of emotions.  Seinen series tend to have a large percentage of female characters on the cast compared to shōnen series, and much higher sex appeal than shōjo, though other than these, it's often easy to mistake seinen for shōjo or shōnen based purely on concept.

The final category is almost unknown in the west, and is small even in Japan: josei, anime intended for adult women.  It often strongly resembles shōjo but viewed through a less rose-colored lens: the relationships and interactions explored by this tend to be more realistic and mature.  I can't say too much more about it because I know so very little about stories of this type, given their relative rarity.

Recently, I've been watching Gintama (a shōnen series), Princess Jellyfish (a josei series), and Maria-sama ga Miteru (a shōjo series), as well as Nisemonogatari (seinen) as it airs in Japan.  I'll update you on all of them sometime this week.

Shinnen Omedetou Gozaimasu!

That's Happy New Year for those of you too lazy to look it up on Jisho.org.

So, as one of my resolutions, I'm going to be updating this blog at least weekly for the next year.

I'm presently rewatching the entirety of Hidamari Sketch, so I'll probably have a review of that soon, but for now I thought I'd make a Top 5 of some kind.  But I didn't want to restrict myself, so this is the Top 5 series that I thought of while writing a Top 5 Series You Should Watch in 2012:

#5)  Murder Princess:  It's so rare to find a series that is as quite as thoroughly full of awesome things as Murder Princess.  Badass girls with swords?  Check.  Tiny girl androids with rocket fists?  Check.  A rather small shinigami wearing a leather jacket with a badass motorcycle?  Check.  Plenty of J-Rock to keep things energetic?  Check.  It's also only 6 episodes, and it doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not, like deep, thoughtful or slow-paced.

#4)  Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt:  The less said about this series, the more you will enjoy it.  Just, whenever you ask yourself, "Wait, really?" Imagine me there, grinning and saying, "Yes, really."  Also, don't watch it with your parents.  Or... anyone who is offended by cluster F-bombs.  In English.  Even though it's in Japanese.  Or is easily offended in general, really.

#3)  Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei:  Did 2011 leave you in despair?  Would watching an extremely pessimistic teacher discussing the ills of modern Japan with his neurotic class of high school girls cheer you up?  Spoiler alert:  Yes, it will.  It will also leave you giggling and quite certain that the Japanese are crazy.

#2)  Katanagatari:  You know what you like?  You like love stories.  You know what you like?  You like martial arts.  You know what you like?  You like ninja with crazy ninja powers.  You know what you like?  You like intelligently developed villains.  You know what you like?  Tastefully stylized art.  You know what you like?   You like Katanagatari.  You just don't know it yet.

#1)  Puella Magi Madoka Magica:  I didn't keep up with a lot of the late-season releases in 2011 (or much of any releases in after about July 2011), but I have heard nothing which would make me think that Madoka was anything less than the most impressive piece of animation that the year produced.  Do yourself a favor and watch it.  And then, you may want to hire yourself a psychiatrist.

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...

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.