Otakuism

In this episode of Manly Battle Team Animate Force G, Gaigerryu and his checkout assisstant George find themselves trapped at Comiket and soldout of limited merchandise. With a hoard of moe-addicted Otaminions about to attack, they quick have to find a way to put worth into useless items. While their attempts are valient, they are ultimately useless and are not able to pass off cheap Kyon X Sousuke porn as worthy merchandise. Fortunately, Supreme Commander King Godjinen arrives and uses his special attack “Nagato Yuki in glasses moe” to vanquish the hoard. Gaigerryu and George learn a good lesson in brand value. Elsewhere, Gaoraiten and Comgaingern try to sell their own doujin with no success at all. Sadly, no one wants to buy Viral X Boota porn.

Yes, Otaku are scary people. Especially when surrounding moe little girls.

Kagamin discovers the wonders of yaoi porn. Here’s a question: how is it legal for Konata and co. to even go to comiket, let alone buy anything?

AWESOME DAD, WHY ARE YOU SO AWESOME? Seriously. I’ve recently been thinking how awesome it’d be to own a pair of Samue work clothes like Awesome Dad. They look pretty comfortable, and perfect for the lazy writer I am.

FIGHT-O, KUROI-SENSEI!

Odd how the show with the most potential to be the best over-the-top sci-fi action anime in years is a Korean film about, well, shit. You’re dropping behind Japan. Original Wired article with a better plot synopsis here.

Finally finished playing the FATE route today. Yes, it’s been like a month since the patch release, but these things take time. One of the things I noticed about the fate route is how hard it was to get through. Not difficulty, but just getting the effort to play through it. Probably because I watched the anime first and knew exactly what was going to happen. Didn’t help that certain stretches of the story are incredibly long and boring. Why the hell do you need to explain the rules of the war every freaking other day! But I’ll talk about that more later on.

The good parts of Fate were the good parts of every Type-Moon work: strong characters and a strong storyline. Nasu took common myths like the holy grail and King Arthur and made them into something entirely new with great success. It’s an engaging storyline that questions the themes of what it means to be a hero in the modern world and questions those same ideals. Fate is also a great action story. The increased production values are used to great effect during battles, using a system of artwork and sound effects to make you feel every hit of the blade. The values of FSN must be commended as a whole, with artwork, music, and graphics all a step above Tsukihime. The only thing I would say on the music is that, while all tracks are good in some way, many are repeated to much.

Not to say Fate doesn’t have some negative aspects, all based in the story and writing style of Nasu. One is Emiya Shirou. I have never seen a more annoying protagonist in any written work. His stupid ideals, his uselessness to give into reason, his resistance to such modern ideas that women can stick up for themselves, his insanely flawed logic, everything about him is annoying. Even if Shiki was little more than a god-mode hax stand in for the author, at least he’s not stubborn.

The greatest thing I hate is his reasoning when trying to dissuade Saber from redoing her life. He wants her to wish for something selfish, to forget her oaths to other people and act for herself, and he gets mad when she won’t do that. The thing is, Shirou is the exact same goddamn way! Everybody tells him he should think of himself, and he refuses to. What right does he have to tell Saber that same advice when he won’t follow it? And when Saber decides to not redo things but go back and die, he’s happy. I can understand wanting what’s best for her, but isn’t that kind of death still unfair, since nothing has really changed? How does that make him happy? His logic is completely insane. Can’t wait for Heaven’s Feel Shirou to dump all that. No wonder Archer wants to kill him so bad.

Second problem I have is with Nasu’s writing style and sense of pacing. Fate really makes glaringly obvious the problems in Nasu’s style. One is constant use of arcane laws and rules to explain his universe. Sure, they’re kind of cool. But when he’s constantly interrupting the story to explain, in a very artificial way may I add, they just get annoying. Then there’s all the instances of Shirou getting almost killed. Nasu seems to have a cruel glee in describing the many ways Shirou should be dead, but isn’t. I get it, he’s special, but you don’t have to kill him every other day to explain that. Another thing I had problems with is the pacing. There’d be a major battle, then it’s like “oh well, no enemies to fight. Hey Saber, why don’t I get my ass kicked by you now?” It just felt so artificial, and didn’t help that those instances were boring, too.

I’ve realized something about Nasu now; this man should not be writing visual novels. The medium is too constrained, too artificial, requires too much fanservice. His best work, literary-wise, is probably Kara no Kyoukai, because he could change viewpoint, pacing, etc. Perhaps it’s kind of selfish, but I would prefer it if he did something like that. These days Nasu seems to be creatively dead, churning out one sequel to FSN after another. Hopefully he’ll fix that soon. Overall, I enjoyed the Fate route. It’s a good introduction to the characters and sets up the “ideal” situation, allowing for it to be questioned in Unlimited Blade Works and ultimately destroyed in Heaven’s Feel. Just have to wait for the translation to appreciate those. Oh, and Archer was still GAR here. I gurantee it.

Most “wtf!” scene so far.

I’m finding it hard to say something new about ARIA that I haven’t said before. It is impossible for my opinion of the series to go any higher, and I have praised it every opportunity I have had to talk about it. It is the epitome of the slice-of-life anime, healing anime. Such is ARIA’s greatness that you might as well just replace both those terms with its name. This is suppose to be a review, but it didn’t quite turn out that way, so just think of it as my fan favings on ARIA.

ARIA the NATURAL is not so much a sequel than a continuation of the first series. It excelled at what the first season introduced: heart warming self-contained stories. I’ve always marveled at the ability of ARIA to tell self-contained yet meaningful stories, whether they be regional folktales, legends, the supernatural, exploring the character’s lives, or just about Neo-Venezia itself. You really feel like you’ve learned something special after watching the show. The characters are all great; pure, yet filled with their own individual quarks. I honestly love all these characters, even the crazy old mailman guy.

The last two episodes were great. 25 was adapted from a manga story I remember, except with Athena and Ai added in. I love how obsessed Alice is with Grandma, and the Ai/President/Athena dance was hilarious. 26 was pretty much just an Akari episode, but it had a nice feeling, like the circle is complete now. Also one of those episodes where you want to go “why the hell can’t I live in Neo-Venezia?” A good ending to the series proper.

So, basically ARIA is one of the greatest “slow” anime ever, and NATURAL is a great continuation of that. Now go watch it you heathens. Now it’s just time to wait for the OVA and marvel at how beautiful and heart-warming it is. One thing I want to see: Alice being promoted to prima. That’d be perfect.

No, not really. Just a preview for a fan anime, though a very well done one at that. I’ll be very interested if they get anything more than this done. And, please, drop the KOTOKO. There are some places she works, and some places she doesn’t. This is one of the latter. The group who’s working on this is Maikaze and their site is here.

Subs are out for ARIA 25 and 26. The Journey is finally over. Get them from the usual places. Now I have to go download them myself. Neo-Venezia, I’m coming!

Maybe I should change the name of this blog to Mechaism, because for the fourth day in a row I’m blogging about mecha shows, and I’ll probably be doing Gurren-Lagann tomorrow. Oh well, what can you do when subs are slow (in before where are subs for Nanoha/hidamari sketch). But now the real reason for this post: Koutetsushin Jeeg has gotten insanely awesome this week. Not that it hasn’t been awesome before, but this week is on an entirely different scale.

First, we begin with Kenji attacking Himika’s base with Baruba to rescue Tsubaki and encountering all the demons there, wiping them out with a few Spin Storms and skillz with the Magnet Rope. Then Himika releases the ultimate haniwa genjin Banshouraguu, that promptly acts to absolutely destroy Jeeg. But Kenji isn’t done yet. He’s here to rescue Tsubaki and he’s going to do it, dammit! Baruba feels his hot bloodedness and the two combine. Now, how exactly Jeeg combines with a millenia old god beast, I don’t know, but it’s still damn awesome. Jeeg then slashes the haniwa in two with its new bigass sword, while Baruba destroys its core with the ultra powerful Baruba Storm. The two then head into Himika’s inner sanctum.

Of course, by the time Kenji arrives it’s too late. Himika has already absorbed Tsubaki’s power and uses it to destroy Jeeg and extract the two bronze bells. Right when it looks like everyone’s going to die, Kyou arrives to save the day. And, as it would happen, provide some necessary backstory. Turns out, Kyou is an alien called Takeru, who along with his sister Miyazu crashed landed on earth millenia ago. After seeing the beauty of earth, they decided not to conquer or destory it. But Himika, their creation, thought otherwise, and the two fought. Eventually Himika was sealed away and Takeru and Miyazu went into hibernation, only to wake up when Himika was revived. The two awoke at the same time she did and helped Shiba Hiroshi seal her again. Oh, and Miyazu is Kenji’s mom. But Kyou/Takeru is dying, so he has to act right away.

To fight Himika and her goons, Kyou transforms into Ultraman Takeru and starts fighting while Kenji, with the help of the Build Angels, escapes. Kyou/Takeru wages a ferocious battle with Himika’s henchmen, even managing to kill one of them. But just as he does he starts coughing up blood, giving one of the henchmen time enough to stab him in the chest. Beaten, Kyou/Takeru falls into the lava, his final words being “We couldn’t settle our race,” referring to the race between him and Kenji in the first episode. A suitably gar death I think. Outside, Himika has launched her massive, hydra-headed airship and is destroying everything in sight, including the Build Base, which is destroyed in a massive explosion. Episode end.

Shear awesomeness this episode. The action was great; not only the normal battle sequences, but the Jeeg/Baruba transformation was just epic. Only problem was that is was destroyed so quickly. And we finally got some much need backstory to everything. Yeah, it feels like they pulled the whole alien plot out of nowhere, but then I rember this is Go Nagai and that’s just how he does things. The only thing I don’t get right now is where Tsubaki falls into this. Kyou/Takeru called her the Maiden of Mafutsutsukujin, and when she and Kenji come together a miracle will happen. Very mysterious, and we don’t even know why Tsubaki is this maiden. At least they told us Kenji is the son of Miyazu the alien, so that explains his power.

Right now, with Himika having all the power and basically everything destroyed and going to hell, things look very bleak for our heroes. Apparently, they have to go the moon next, probably to destroy the mothership Langun, so I can’t wait to see how everything will play out. Right now Jeeg and Gurren-Lagann are neck and neck as the best super robot shows I’m watching. GL’s plot is better paced, but Jeeg’s fights are a whole lot better. GL pulling out the continous Deus ex Machina attacks out of nowhere is getting annoying. So if you like GL, definately start watching Jeeg now, as the awesomeness just keeps getting better.