One of the great resources in anime fandom of late has been this guy. His charts have become almost indispensable when trying to figure out what to watch in the upcoming anime seasons. Recently, he’s started to compile these charts for previous years and the information that can be gleaned from these charts are extremely interesting and a real eye opener.

Last year, 2008, was the first year of this blog and as a result I watched many shows I probably won’t have otherwise and tried to make sure that I discovered all the “good” anime of a season so I could help other people discover these anime shows. So one of the first things I wanted to figure out was how much of the 2008 anime did I watch in the end.

Percentage of Shows Watched

This is the chart in question that I’m using; you can find it and more here. It lists 130 total anime shows that begun airing in 2008 and looking over these shows I realize there is a handful of shows that are aimed at very young viewers and these shows are never fansubbed, talked about, or licensed so the first step I’m going to do is remove these shows from consideration. I then tabulated how many shows I’ve watched, dropped and completed and I’ll summarize them here.

• 114 total shows (19 from Winter 07/08, 34 from Spring 08, 21 from Summer 08, 37 from Fall 08, 3 from Winter 08/09)
• 50 shows watched (5, 15, 9, 18, 3)
• 19 shows dropped (0, 9, 3, 5, 2)
• 31 shows completed (5, 6, 6, 13, 1)

I should note that the Winter 07/08 season was a season that I essentially took off. I needed the break and the only new show I watched that season while it was airing was Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei s.2. Yes, It is strange that I decided to start a blog during a season I wasn’t actively watching but that just how I like to do things. Because of this, the only shows I watched from this season where ones that I really wanted to see at a later time. This skews some of the results I’ll highlight below.

• Overall watched percentage by season – 26.3% of Winter 07/08, 44.1% of Spring 08, 42.9% of Summer 08, 48.7% of Autumn 08, 100% of Winter 08/09
• Overall watched percentage of 2008 – 43.8%
• Percentage of watched shows that were dropped by season – 0.0%, 60.0%, 33.3%, 28.8%, 66.7%)
• Percentage of watched shows that were dropped in 2008 – 38.0%

While going over the list of shows, I’ve noted that there were a few shows that I still have some interest in catching and could see myself watching at some point in the future, time willing.

• Possible unwatched shows that may be watched in the future by season – 2 from Winter 07/08, 2 from Spring 08, 0 from Summer 08, 4 from Fall 08, 0 from Winter 08/09
• Total unwatched but still interested in shows for 2008 – 8
• 2008 Total of shows watched and possible shows watched in the future – 58 or 50.9% of all 2008 anime shows

This leaves 49.1% of the entire 2008 year of shows as shows that I have not watched nor am I interested in doing so. Just looking at the raw number, it seems like I’m leaving a huge percentage of shows unwatched but looking over the shows the I’ve missed – I don’t think I’m missing much. I wonder how this compares to other anime fans.

Excellent Shows and Strong Seasons

Next, I compiled a list of shows that I consider being the best of 2008 – the titles that I would recommend to other people and would be worthy series to own on DVDs, if possible. I was curious to see how these shows were distributed and if the general thinking about the spring and fall seasons being the strong seasons seemed justified.

• Excellent shows from Winter 07/08 – Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei S.2 and Spice & Wolf – (2)
• Excellent shows from Spring 08 – Wagaya no Oinarisama, Library Wars, Kaiba, Soul Eater, Kurenai (5)
• Excellent shows from Summer 08 – Natsume Yuujin-chou, Birdy the Mighty Decode, Somedays Dreamer’s S.2, Ryouko’s Case Files (4)
• Excellent shows from Fall 08 – Toradora, Clannad S.2, Shikabane Hime:Aka, Ga-Rei:Zero, Mouryou Hako, Kurozuka, Michiko to Hatchin (7)
• Excellents shows from 2008 – 18

Looking at the pure number totals, it appears that the fall season was the strongest season and that’s definitely on way to look at it but I wanted to see it from another perspective.

• Percentage of overall shows that were excellent by season – 10.5% of Winter 07/08, 14.7% of Spring 08, 19.1% of Summer 08, 18.9% of Autumn 08, 0% of Winter 08/09
• Percentage of overall shows that were excellent for 2008 – 15.8%
• Percentage of watched shows that were excellent by season – 40.0%, 33.3%, 44.4%, 38.9%, 0.0%
• Percentage of watched shows that were excellent for 2008 – 36.0%

Looking at the number of excellent shows in the context of the rest of the season shows, it turns out that the Summer season squeaks in front of the fall season as having the highest percentage of excellent shows. If the saying about how only 10% of anything is worth fighting for and the rest is garbage then one can’t complain about the quality of anime from 2008 since it beat that by a bit.

Why It’s Hard To Be a Fan of Anime Without Resorting to Fansubs

I want to say up front that I’m not writing this to defend fansubs per se nor am I trying to pick a fight – it’s been my observation for a while that oftentimes when an anime is announced as being licensed, I’m disappointed because it’s not one that I felt deserved to get licensed and I want to see if this observation is backed up by the data.

The first thing that needed done was to compile a list of what shows where licensed from 2008. I started with the list that animesuki keeps of shows that are licensed and thus they no longer list and then I checked out the various licensing articles from anime news network and finally I checked crunchyroll. I might have missed a couple but they won’t be enough to change the conclusions that I discovered. Onto some data.

• Total number of anime shows licensed from 2008 – 32
• Total number of licensed shows that I watched from 2008 – 13
• Total number of licensed shows that I completed from 2008 – 9
• Total number of licensed shows that I consider excellent shows from 2008 – 5
• Total number of excellent licensed shows that will come out on DVD – 3
• Total number of excellent licensed shows that will be dubbed on DVD – 2

I’ll note here that of the 19 licensed shows that I have not watched, none are on my list of shows that I might be interested in watching so those figures are final. Without running the exact numbers it’s pretty apparent what can be concluded but let’s run the numbers for completeness sake.

• Percentage of total anime shows that were licensed from 2008 – 28.1%
• Percentage of total anime shows that were not licensed from 2008 – 71.9%
• Percentage of licensed shows that I watched – 40.6%
• Percentage of licensed shows that I completed – 28.1%
• Percentage of licensed shows that I consider excellent – 15.6%
• Percentage of excellent licensed shows that will be released on DVD – 9.4%
• Percentage of excellent licensed shows that will be dubbed and released on DVD – 6.25%

The one glaring conclusion that I have to conclude is that the “anime fan” that the North American companies are going after is not me. If they were, I’d expect to see almost all of my excellent shows as having been licensed. (Afterall they should be picking the best titles to maximize the number of DVDs bought.) That’s not the case, though, and looking over the shows that did get licensed I find a lot of shounen/fighting shows, fan-service shows, and shoujo shows. I can’t help but feel that one of the results of a licensing pattern like this is that once an anime fan has been sated with enough shounen, fan-service, and/or shoujo shows that these fans discover they are no longer anime fans because anime has become either too childish or repetitive.

The reason I took the category down to excellent licensed shows that will dubbed and put on DVD even when I’m not the biggest dub fan is because there’s a segment of anime fandom that are people who like anime but don’t want to read subtitles and also want to watch on a TV. My one sister is like this and in the end she buys almost exclusively manga because she can find so little anime that interests her. When I was starting up my blog she told me that she’d read my site to find shows to buy but she quickly realized that this was not possible. I don’t blame her, of all the shows that I’ve watched and blogged about in 2008 there is a total of two shows – Soul Eater and Spice & Wolf that I could possibly recommend to her to buy and I don’t think she’d like Soul Eater. That leaves Spice & Wolf as the only anime out of the 114 anime that started airing in Japan during 2008 that I could recommend her to buy.

I feel like I should repeat that; for the entire 2008 year of anime, there is only one anime that I could recommend to my sister as being good enough that it’s worth buying on DVD. And these companies complain about the fans – maybe it’s not the fan’s fault.

I realize that 2009 saw a large increase of shows getting quasi-licensed on crunchyroll so by now it’s possible that my title about having to almost having to resort to fansubs may not hold as much water but I’ll leave that to a follow-up article in the future to see how the numbers work out. I want to hold off for a while to see how many of the 2009 shows get physically licensed and which ones will get dubs. Also left for a later article is my thoughts on how exactly to get the North American anime scene going in the right direction; here’s a hint, I don’t think there will be many people who will become fans of anime from having crunchyroll stream subtitled anime.

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As an aside, if you happen to be looking to buy a good anime series on DVD (maybe for a Christmas present) and want a quality show that will get rewatched more than once, let me point out that Bamboo Blade is coming out soon. And there’s Spice & Wolf as well but it’s coming out the week of Christmas.

Posted in anime, anime rants/views

I’m always leery of writing top all-time posts because I realize that I don’t have the encyclopedic knowledge that a decade long anime fan might have so I always worry about missing obvious picks. And I’d probably skip them all-together if I didn’t realize that such lists give readers and potential readers a large amount of information about a writer (as was pointed out elsewhere just recently). Before I tackle an overall top all-time list, I want to start with an easier list that I’m more sure upon – my picks for top anime comedies.

The reason I’m more confident is twofold. The first is that of all the shows I watch, it’s the comedies that get rewatched the most so I know how well a show will hold up. After all, if a comedy is only funny one time then it’s nothing more than a flash in the pan. And every show on this countdown has been watched at least twice and a few have been watched more than that. The other reason I’m more confident is because I don’t think I’ve missed too many older series that should be on this list. When people talk about comedy animes, I don’t see many titles that I’ve never watched. I’m sure there’s some out there (and if one wants to point them out – please do) but I’m fairly confident that this is a good list and it does reflect what I consider a good anime comedy.

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(5) – Azumanga Daioh

I just know that my ranking of Azumanga Daioh at only number 5 will get a sizable percentage of anime fans out there angry. And I could try to deflect these comments by saying that just getting on this list an honor but even I want to rank this show higher. The problem is that when I rewatched Azumanga Daioh recently, I still found myself laughing at it but at times I felt a bit bored and wanting the show to get to the parts of the story I especially liked. I think Azumanga Daioh might be suffering from the same fate that individual songs sometimes do – they’re overplayed by everybody and one gets tired of hearing that song over and over again. So, I don’t think there’s a flaw with the show itself and it remains funny enough that it definitely deserves it’s spot.

In case there’s readers out there that have not heard of Azumanga Daioh, let me say that you’re missing out on a very hilarious show. The main characters are an eclectic band of high school girls – very memorable as individuals and their relationships are even more memorable. The show follows them through all 3 years of high school life as they tackle the common pitfalls of school life – immature teachers, mean cats, low test scores, and placing first in the classroom athletic competitions. The show was done by J.C. Staff (Hayate Season 2, Toradora, Honey & Clover, Aoi Hana) and remains one of the best shows that they’ve done.

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(4) – Lucky Star

Where a recent rewatch hurt the previous show, a recent rewatch significantly raised my feeling for Lucky Star. And for the record, I’ve always considered this a comedy and not a slice-of-life show.

Controversy, drama, and sky-high expectations have dogged Lucky Star from the beginning and as a result, it became very difficult for someone to just watch the show and react to it as if it was a normal comedy anime. Collectively, I feel this contributed to many people coming to dislike the show and I’d probably be in that boat if I hadn’t stuck it out long enough for the characters to really grow on me (about 8 episodes). Once I hit that point, I liked the show in ever-increasing amounts; I still wouldn’t have had Lucky Star here if it wasn’t for the rewatch. I realized the second time through that the early episodes where just as funny as the later episodes and the lone defect of these episodes was how long it got the viewer to like the characters. Once the viewer gets to know the characters, the entire show is a stellar comedy and is even better the second time.

For those readers that have not heard of Lucky Star, it follows the not-so-typical lives of 4 high school girls (including a pair of twins). Of the four; the visual novel and MMORPG playing Konata is the main focus, troublemaker, and engine that drives most of the show’s comedy. The show was done by Kyoto Animation (KyoAni) and the director of the first four episodes went on to work on Kannagi (which I was disappointed with) and the rest of the episodes were directed by Yasuhiro Takemoto who did the hilarious Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu. (Which almost made it on and speaking of FMP, there really needs to be a new season of that).

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(3) – Potemayo

This is probably the least well-known or more accurately – the least watched show on the countdown because many people looked at a couple screenshots and decided a “moe blob” show couldn’t possibly be worth the time and didn’t stick around. And it’s a shame because these people missed a truly funny show.

Potemayo is a cute little thing that appeared one day out of the main character’s refrigerator and took up residence in his household. He didn’t seem to mind, naming her after the potatoes and mayonnaise that where in the fridge, and allowed her to come with him where he went. She had the vocabulary and apparent mental capacity of a year old baby but that wasn’t the only source of humor. For one, the show had a twisted sense of humor that came out every now and again, for instance I still can’t get enough of the scene that shows a bird eating a piece of fried chicken.

Something that separates this show from the others is that it occasionally swings from being a comedy to being somewhat serious. Never for a long time but it’s enough to get this show a slightly different feel. These transitions are always handled perfectly and never feel out-of-place (the wonderful closing song helps). This show was also done by J.C. Staff which makes them the only studio with 2 shows in the top 5.

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(2) – Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Take one teacher prone to despairing over anything and everything, mix in a classroom of oddballs, and flavor with “Shaft being Shaft” and you end up with a very hilarious show. In particular, the second season is (to date) the strongest all-around season and was what pushed this up to number 2. That’s not to say the other seasons were bad but the first season had to introduce the show and it wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders yet and the third season had to split time with Bakemonogatari so it’s animation was a bit lacking.

There’s so much to enjoy with this show. I love to see what Mr. Despair will despair over. I love when the item that he despairs over is actually something I despair over because oftentimes it’s things that I thought I was the only one that did so. I love the societal commentary that shows up in the show. I love the students and their quirks. I love the high quality voice work and the unique animation. I love the songs used. I love how there’s a whole layer of comedy in the background signs (even if that means I have to pause numerous times to catch them all). And I love how it’s a perfect vehicle to allow Shaft to be Shaft.

It’s probably the hardest show I watch fansubbed (between having to read the signs and trying to understand the 15% of jokes that are really Japan culture centered) but it’s really worth the effort.

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(1) – Minami-Ke (Season 1)

I needed to call out only the first season of Minami-Ke because production of the second and third seasons was given to another animation house (for some reason) and they were know where near as good as Studio Doumu that did the first season.

This show follows the everyday lives of the three Minami sisters – one high school aged, one middle school aged, and one in elementary school and their social circles. The eldest sister is the mature one, the middle one is the trouble maker, and the youngest is the smart one that can’t stand stupidity. One of the exceptional components is how effortlessly Studio Doumu was able to handle the rather large cast and the various ways the different people added humor to the show. And trust me, there’s so many ways to find humor in this show that I won’t start listing them because I’m sure to leave several out. My favorite single character is Hosaka and his fantasies.

I still hold out hope that whatever prevented Studio Doumu from doing the other seasons will get fixed and we get a true sequel worthy of this season.

Posted in anime, anime rants/views

You can thank Winamp and it’s non-random random shuffling for this post.

I have a super condensed anime music playlist that I like to listen to; it’s only 230 songs long and there’s a handful of songs on this list that when I’m in the right mood will get me to shed a tear. Last night I wasn’t much in the mood but out-of-the-blue Winamp starts playing every sad song on the list in a row and even repeating some more than once so now I’m in that mood.

It’s probably not a good idea to marathon a Key series right now so instead I’ll write this post.

Oh, and there’s some spoilers so read at your own risk.

Natsukage – from AIR

Let’s start off with an obvious show that could generate a tear inducing song – AIR. This anime holds the personal record for the most tears shed while watching it (Clannad is a close second). See, I was a relatively new anime watcher at the time, mainly subsisting on a diet of shounen shows and wasn’t aware of the emotional depths that could be found in anime. It also didn’t help that I had absolutely no knowledge of what to expect and was lulled into a false sense of security by it’s light-hearted start. Therefore, when the story turned tragic, I wasn’t ready for it and ended up crying for just about every remaining episode.

Natsukage is the name of the instrumental track that KyoAni used for many of the emotional scenes during AIR and thus when I hear it, I’m reminded of those scenes.

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Koikogarete Mita Yume – from Cross Game

The show’s first closing is another song that can bring me to tears and was able to from the very first time I heard it, which was in episode 1.

That episode completely blew me away. I wasn’t expecting to see enough character building and tragedy to fill most series all within those 24 minutes and by playing this song at the saddest scene meant that I’d always link this song to that first episode. Nor has that episode and that song lost it’s power to move the viewer, recently the animators essentially reshowed the first episode in it’s entirety for the episode 30 recap.

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Kanon by Pachebel – from Kanon

The wedding standard got repurposed for another of Key’s works – Kanon. This time, the characters actually referenced the song in the show and provided a strong means for the viewers to attach the often tragic nature of Kanon to the song. At least when I hear this song in public it’ll probably be at a wedding and it’ll be more socially acceptable to cry to it.

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“Libera me” From Hell – from Gurren Lagann

I’m convinced that Gurren Lagann is one of the greatest anime ever made and should be required watching for, not only those who profess to be an anime fan, but also for every single kid that grows up watching the insipid tv shows that pass for kid’s shows these days.

This song was used in many places throughout the show, primarily when it was time for the good guys to kick butt which makes it a strange song to cry over. And it would be but for it’s use during one of the best scenes to Gurren Lagann which happened in episode 26. The hero of the show, Simon, was given the choice between the easy way out and the harder path that true heroism calls for. He chooses the path of heroism and as a result is able to break himself and his comrades out of a devious trap laid by the enemy. The whole scene is very emotional, a testament to Gainax’s stellar character development and story telling ability, and having this track play during the entire scene meant that those emotions come back whenever hear it.

And within the entire scene there’s a small part that absolutely gets to me every single time I see it. The trap that Simon breaks everyone out of gives each person the ability to live in whatever dream world they wish for. One of the people trapped is Viral; he’s a beastman which means he looks human but was created sterile and he has a tough-as-nails personality so one would expect his dream world to be some sort Valhalla battlefield but it’s not – it’s living in a little cottage in a country meadow with a wife and a daughter that calls him “Papa”.

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Dango Daikazoku – from Clannad

Yes, another song from a Key/KyoAni anime, this time it’s from Clannad. This was used as the first season ending but it wasn’t until the second season that this became tear inducing. Though in the case of Dango Daikazoku (or “Big Dango Family”), the song brings tears from being linked to the tragic parts to Clannad and also from the happy parts.

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Love is a Flower, You are a Seed – from Only Yesterday

In many ways Only Yesterday is my favorite Studio Ghibli work so I find it an absolute travesty that it’s the only Studio Ghibli movie not released in America.

This is the only song that exclusively makes me shed tears from happiness alone. It’s the end song to Only Yesterday and the animators had it playing while the movie had it’s climatic scene before going to credits. So, like the others, those emotions got transferred to the song and hearing this song gets to me every time.

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Anyone else want to share? Or is everyone too busy getting in the Halloween mood today?

Posted in anime, anime rants/views, general anime interst

Sure it’s easy to say this is a weak fall season of anime but how do you quantify it?

I could say that as of right now, I’ve seen only 2 shows that are good enough that I would consider placing them on my fall seasonal top anime list when it gets compiled in the future. Which is true, however this doesn’t really enumerate the problem well enough so instead I’ll make the following comparison:

Let’s call the following group of fall shows Group A:

4 episodes of Kampfer +
4 episodes of Nyan Koi +
4 episodes of Armed Librarians +
4 episodes of Railgun +
3 episodes of Sora no Otoshimono +
3 episodes of Miracle Train +
4 episodes of The Sacred Blacksmith +
1 episode of Trapeze +
3 episodes of Seitokai no Ichizon +
3 episodes of Kimi no Todoke

If I take all the entertainment and enjoyment from these 33 episodes of anime and compare them to a single episode – episode 12 of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei Season 3, I find that episode 12 wins. Or to write it a little more mathematically:

Group A < Ep.12 SZS s3

Sadly, I’m completely serious and if I want to rub some salt into that wound, I’ll add that episode 12 wasn’t particularly that much better from the rest of the series. Here’s a recap.

Episode 12 had it all and it only took 23 minutes to cover all these bases.

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I’ll probably get some feedback about including Kimi no Todoke in group A and because I haven’t written up my impression post let me just say that I do like the show but right now it’s seriously lacking in providing any sort of tension / conflict and I wonder why this show needs to run more the a couple more episodes.

Posted in anime, anime rants/views

The awesomeness of the final televised episode of Bakemonogatari has been well documented already but there was one angle that I don’t think I’ve seen anyone pick up on. Namely, the night sky seemed to be on the minds of animators this season because it was featured in at least 3 different anime. There was maybe more but these are the three that I remembered.

Another thing that might be surprising to some is how these scenes were similar. One way was the idea that the night time sky in a rural area is an awe-inspiring sight. Second, upon seeing the night sky for the first time, the viewer is left speechless. And third, it’s possible to look at the night sky for a long period of time without getting bored. I say that it might be surprising because up until summer of last year, I was in the group of people who had never seen the night sky from a rural area and I didn’t believe that it looked as nice as it did in shows like Air. Therefore, I wouldn’t think that all three of these shows would follow so closely the same viewpoint since it really couldn’t be that amazing. Now, I know better, and seeing these scenes makes me want to go somewhere that I could see the true night sky.

I wonder why the awesomeness of a true night sky is suddenly showing up so frequently in anime? I don’t mind but I wonder if there’s some underlying reason. Maybe it’s a subtle environmental idea about getting rid of light pollution or just to appreciate nature. Or a desire to get back to simpler times when it was possible for everyone to see this sky. Or maybe it’s a desire to get people to appreciate the simple joys in life. Or something totally different, I don’t know. All I do know is that I have a bunch of screenshots (and one wallpaper) from these anime that I’m going to post now.

Aoi Hana

Sora no Manimani

Bakemonogatari

1280×1024 wallpaper and my current desktop below – stitched together from this episode of Bakemonogatari. When the bluray edition comes out in a few months, I’ll try to create a large one for other screen sizes.

Posted in anime, anime rants/views, anime wallpaper, general anime interst

Before I begin, I wanted to mention that I’ll be posting my seasonal top anime picks soon. This season had so many good shows that picking winners was going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, so I hoped that watching the complete series would help. (The difficulty starts with the very first award – best female main character – and will just continue from there. )

So in the mean time, I had some thoughts about the shows of this season that wouldn’t really fit anywhere but in there own posts.

The first part of the title refers to an observation I’ve made after watching Wagaya no Oinari-sama and tried to pinpoint exactly why I liked it so much when nothing about the show seemed particularly memorable. I couldn’t quite figure it out; so while I was willing to grant that it was a good show the first time through, I was sure that a second go-round would reduce my opinion of the show. That was not the case though, so I continued to ponder exactly why I liked it so much. One day I remembered a saying I learned in seventh grade shop class; namely, it’s best to follow the KISS rule – “Keep It Simple, Stupid” – because making things overly complex will more-often-then-not lead to failure. It was a good rule in shop class and as often happens with these types of sayings they have other real world uses, including as a means to describe why Wagaya no Oinari-sama was good.

And I think it’s a good way to explain it since a simple anime may lack the slickness of a Bakemonogatari or experimental feel of a Kaiba or the boundary pushing of a The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006) but it’s still able to become memorable.

I bring this up because Umi Monogatari (Sea Story) was one of the surprisingly good shows of the season and on the surface, it shouldn’t have been but there I was, getting more-and-more hooked with each passing episode. I eventually realized that much like Wagaya no Oinari-sama, it was succeeding because it stuck to being a “simple” anime. It didn’t try to outdo past shows that where similar, it didn’t try to take a current popular character type and “improve” it by increasing the traits of that character, it didn’t create an overly complex story when a simpler one worked nor did it rely on contrivances and coincidences to artificially add to the complexity of the show. Instead, Umi Monogatari created an interesting cast of characters that felt like people the viewer could actually meet (if one doesn’t count the talking turtle) and made the viewer care about them and allowed these characters to act naturally and all the drama derived from how these characters would behave.

Should every anime be simple? No. I love shows that are slick, experimental, and boundary pushing as much as the next person but I think it’s also important not dismiss shows just because they lack the latest bells-and-whistles. Is Umi Monogatari going to win a bunch of awards from me? No, but I enjoyed it and will certainly watch again in the future – something I can’t say about Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 or Canaan.

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The second half of this post covers what I’ll call “shortcuts” that helped improve my liking of two shows (Umi Monogatari and Sora no Manimani) and where noteworthy enough that I wanted to share. (Especially since not a lot of people watched either show.) I say shortcuts because they were able to convey a lot of information to the viewer in a very short amount of time.

First up was the opening in the final episode of Umi Monogatari. It shouldn’t be much of a spoiler to say that this show featured an evil that threatened to defeat the side of good and the end of episode 11 left the good guys with dim prospects. And this was superbly reinforced when the animators changed the happy, light-hearted animation that accompanied the opening song with a darker version that reflected the state of affairs for the final episode. Screenshots to follow.

Brilliant, just brilliant. I can’t think of another show that’s done this before and seeing it done, I wonder why it was lowly Zexcs that did this and not one of the premier anime studios.

The other “shortcut” is how the choice of a voice actor and the past roles of that voice actor can instantly give a large amount of character development.

In episode 9 of Sora no Manimani, the astronomy club had the chance to meet some of the neighboring school’s astronomy clubs. This instantly added a couple dozen characters to the show and one of these new characters takes an instant liking to one of the main characters, Hime-chan, and she takes an equally opposite dislike of this guy. There’s not enough time to really show if this new guy should be liked or disliked but it’s important for Hime-chan’s character to know if the guy is nice or not since that would alter how we view her character. So the animators made a great move and got Daisuke Ono to voice him. Why great? Daisuke Ono does the voice of Itsuki, the ESPer from Haruhi that everyone finds creepy. By casting him and having him do this new character in a very similar voice of Itsuki, the animators are able to draw upon the audience’s feelings for Itsuki and instantly (as well as accurately) transfer them to this character. Now, when Hime-chan brushes him off, we all sympathize with her and love to see him finally get some payback for being so creepy.

Another example of this comes from Sora no Manimani but the situation is reversed. The potential boyfriend is voiced by Ryoko Shiraishi who’s best known for doing Hayate’s voice on Hayate the Combat Butler. This boy gets brushed off by one of the main female characters but in this case, the audience draws upon the association with Hayate to realize the this boy is a nice guy and it’s the girl that’s in the wrong. This view is vindicated by the rest of the series but by choosing the right voice actor, the audience was able to make the correct conclusion without a lot of exposition to slow done the flow of the show.

And if we want to go one step further; let’s switch these two voice actors and think about the result. Not so pretty, if you ask me, because we would get a distorted view of the characters.

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I hope I explained these well enough, if not please leave a comment and I’ll try to clarify. I’ve realized that sometimes when I right up an argument that it will make sense to me but that I leave too much unsaid so others have a hard time understanding what I’m actually trying to say.

Posted in anime, anime rants/views

I finished Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 a couple of days ago (watching episodes 10 and 11 together) and it’s left me in a mood. I really wanted to like this show and for small stretches of the series I did but my issues with it kept piling up and the twist at the end was too much.

I normally keep my posts spoiler-free for my readers but I felt I had to diagram my exact thoughts on this show which require huge spoilers. So, for those readers that don’t want to be spoiled, I’d suggest stopping here and waiting for my series review.

Let’s start with something positive. With the premise of the series – a huge earthquake hits Tokyo, several different angles could have been used for the series. They opted to show it through the eyes of a small number of normal people who is a good choice since it allows the viewer to form emotional attachments that make the series more compelling. Another show that did this as well was the recent adaptation of War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise and if one thinks about it and strips the Martians out, they’re left with a show that’s very similar to Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 in terms of structure.

Comparing it to War of the Worlds, however, starts in on my problems with the show. A key difference between War of the Worlds (WotW) and Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 (TM:8) is the length of the show. WotW ran for 117 minutes (~2 hours) and TM:8 ran for 220 minutes (~3.7 hours) if you count actual show time. The result was that WotW did not pad the experience and TM:8 had too. And I’m not talking about how long it took to get to the actual earthquake because establishing characters so we care about them is essential if the animators aren’t going for the epic disaster/destruction angle. I’m talking about having the main characters go to Mari’s office in episode 6, the “gee-whiz aren’t robots great” episode 7, the “let’s drag out the fate of Mari’s family for as long as possible in episode 9, and the “let’s mess the viewer’s mind and stop telling a coherent story so we can see how long we can drag Yuuki’s death out because we need a twist” in episodes 8-10 as prime offenders. So if this had been done as a movie, I think it would have worked much better.

Speaking of episodes 6 and 7, that reminds me of another issue I had with the show. Too much of the series was built off of coincidence and bad/implausible decision making. For coincidences we have how the bridge decides to fall just as the main characters are in position to have there life’s in peril but luckily the characters got on the boat they did because the other one got sunk by the tidal wave. Or how Tokyo Tower decides to fall just as two of the main characters happen to be standing where their lives would be put in danger. Or when at the end of episode 8, the no-longer-with-us Yuuki says that he can hold his bag and, luckily for the animators, Mirai says that she can hold the bag for him.

Or how when the main characters finally get to Mari’s house and can’t find the grandma and child they head to the makeshift morgue and there just happens to an unidentified 50-year-old woman and 4-year-old girl found in the area where Mari lives. It turns out that these 2 aren’t Mari’s family because Mari’s family is okay but think about the coincidences that lead to this turn of events. First these two unidentified people must have been found together because they were placed together in the morgue and they just happen to match the age, gender, and haircut of Mari’s missing family members and happen to live in the same neighborhood. What are the chances? And how do the morgue workers know these unidentified people are in fact 50 and 4 (presumably the same ages as Mari’s family) when they obviously have no identification on them.

Then there’s the bad/implausible decision making by the characters. Let’s start with Yuuki getting beaned in the head by Tokyo Tower. A sizable chunk of masonry has just gotten Old Testament on Yuuki’s skull, leaving a sizable bump and no one thinks to have it checked out ?!?!! Seriously. I’m supposed to believe citizens of a country where earthquakes are common are not aware of the dangers of blunt head trauma. I can’t help but think that a prompt CAT scan could have saved Yuuki’s life.

Or there’s the frankly very implausible turn of events where Mari turns down the chance for someone to look after Mirai and Yuuki and a motorcycle so she could quickly check to see if her own family is okay. I can understand Mari’s desire to look after Mirai and Yuuki but I’m supposed to believe a mother passes up the chance to see if her own child and mother are alive. Especially when someone you obviously trust is willing to look after the two for the hour or two it will take to check. And am I to believe that Kento’s parent(s) allow Kento to run all over creation chasing robots when aftershocks are still happening and buildings are still falling down? Do the Darwin Awards cover animated characters?

By the end of episode 9, I had the inkling I was going to write a post like this but at that point I was going to focus on how the show was pulling it’s punches. I was angry over how they teased us with the fate of Mari’s family then ultimately couldn’t kill the characters off. I decided at this point that Yuuki’s and Mirai’s parents where alive because the show didn’t have the guts to actually kill anyone off. Turned out I was right about the parents but not about the show not killing anyone important. (I figured something was up with episode 8 but since I didn’t check the online chatter, I didn’t quite put it together.)

I still think it could be argued that Bones pulled it’s punches but it’s not as clear cut and how they treated Yuuki’s death is a bigger issue so I’ll leave that alone for now.

The fact that they killed Yuuki and the way they handled it was obviously their way to put a twist into the show because they felt (as did I, even early on) that merely showing the earthquake and following the characters home made the show completely predictable and without dramatic tension, the viewer has little reason to tune in week after to week. How they handled it was, in my opinion, about as good as if they used the “it was all a dream” twist.

And my disposition isn’t helped when it looks like Bones actively tried to hide Yuuki’s status until they could reach the maximum emotional effect and give themselves the twist. I say actively because even with how episode 8 was done, there would be one really telling difference between Yuuki the ghost and Yuuki the person – a shadow. And in episode 11, after Mirai realizes the truth about Yuuki, the animators do a scene where the viewer (and Mirai) sees that he no longer casts a shadow. Great but what about earlier? A check of the time between Yuuki’s death and this scene shows that Yuuki cast a shadow. See below.

And, of course, this is on top of the standard coincidences and lucky turn of events that keep Mirai in the dark for so long. I’ll give Bones the combo of shock over Yuuki’s death making her forget it happened and the appearance of ghost Yuuki to allow Mirai the belief that her now deceased brother was not deceased. However, this belief should have been found out rather quickly and not dragged out for another 2 episodes. For starters, what happened to the death certificate that Mari was given? If you were Mari, wouldn’t you give it to Mirai? Also, if you were Mari, and Mirai started to act like her brother was still alive and next to her – wouldn’t you do something? Even if you instantly thought that it could be his spirit, wouldn’t you get her admitted into the hospital to make sure nothing was wrong with Mirai as well? I’d be real sure that I wouldn’t have to meet Mirai and Yuuki’s parents and tell them that both of their kids were killed while I was watching them. Also we have to believe that Mari never once mentioned Yuuki passing while talking to Mirai or that Yuuki was able to make it look like he still needed to eat, use the restroom, etc. or that Mari never did something that tipped Mirai off that she could no longer see Yuuki.

Then there’s the question of if Yuuki should have been killed off in the first place. In most situations I feel the only time an anime character should be killed is if there’s a good reason for that death. Of course, there’s exceptions and in real life people die all the time without a “reason”. Since Mirai had already learned the lesson about being thankful for the blessings that she has before Yuuki got sick, I’d be inclined to say no. However, I do think someone major had to die to help get the point across about how bad the earthquake was but Bones could have done a better job of communicating the “lesson” we’re supposed to have gotten. Yuuki’s name means hope and Mirai’s name means future, so as the show stands, hope is a lying little brother who manipulates the future into moving forward.

There are better ways they could have handled the ending. For instance, one could keep the shock/ghost Yuuki angle but clearly show the audience that this is in fact what’s going on. From there, I’d have Mirai find the truth out from either Yuuki being up-front about things or from Mari. Mirai would breakdown, maybe run away from Mirai because she decides that she can’t face her mom after allowing her brother to die but Yuuki could talk enough sense into her to get to continue moving forward. Then reunite Mirai and Mari and have Mirai push the increasingly worried Mari to actually go home to find out what happened to her family. From there, we could still have Yuuki use his “knowledge-from-beyond the grave” to find Mari’s family and Mari getting stuck to look after her Mom. And now that Mirai knows the truth, there’s no need for the extensively long reveal, instead Mirai and ghost Yuuki could go home and from there we could get the final good-bye to Yuuki and the montage of his life that had so many (including myself) shedding manly, not-so-manly, and normal tears over.

And I’m sure other people could come up with even better endings. If there’s one weakness that Bones has shown for as long as I’ve known them is they have real problems with the endings of shows – think first Full Metal Alchemist series, Eureka 7, X’amd: Lost Memories, and The Daughter of Twenty Faces (with Soul Eater the only Bones series I liked how it was ended).

After saying all that, though, I still can’t call Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 a failure because I still cried over the montage of Yuuki’s life and I’m reminded that I need to be more thankful for the happiness in my life. So I guess Bones did something right.

Posted in anime, anime rants/views, series review

Seriously.

This thought came to me as I pondered how to improve the currently airing Kanamemo. I realized that the structure of the story – the female main character, upon the death of her grandma who doubled as the parental figure, goes off and without meaning to, ends up working as an apprentice in a business – almost exactly matches the recently completed Ristorante Paradiso. That show was one of my favorites of the Spring season but Kanamemo got dropped for being so lousy. So what’s the difference that caused the disparity between the two?

I could fault Kanamemo for including characters like the loli-obsessed yuri girl and praise Ristorante Paradiso for including interesting characters like Luciano but that wouldn’t get to the heart of the matter. The difference – I realized – is Ristorante Paradiso packed their show with older men and these men, because they’ve lived a longer time, have accrued interesting and varied life stories that influenced their actions and made them great and unique characters.

I concluded then the way to improve Kanamemo was to include some older characters – maybe change it so the paper is run by an elderly couple that are working hard to keep the paper going even when more and more people turn to digitally getting their news. I’m sure there are other improvements one could do but just changing this one thing makes this show sound much more interesting.

My mind wouldn’t stop there, I started to think about other older characters in anime. The first show that came to mind was Ghost in Shell: Stand Alone Complex. For all it’s sleek, cyber-infused future, the character that just oozes coolness isn’t the Major or Batou but Aramaki. With a simple look he could stare down a criminal or just as easily, out-maneuver a government bent on shutting him up.

Or who could forget the granny from Dennou Coil

Or Takeda Shingen from Sengoku Basara

Or the detectives Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple from Great Detectives Poirot and Marple

And I could go on – I didn’t even touch any of Miyazaki’s movies – but I think I made my point. Anime needs to have more mature characters (and American animation too – just look what Pixar did with UP.)

Posted in anime, anime rants/views, general anime interst

Out of the blue, I had an epiphany concerning the inclusion of fan service in anime a couple of days ago. The topic of fan service in anime is something that I’ve been thinking about for awhile, among other things – I’m always trying to improve myself so I can be a better blogger. I always had a gut feeling towards it; namely, it is used to plaster over defects in the storytelling and characters. This worked in a lot of cases but it didn’t really explain how in some shows I’m okay with fan service and in other shows I’m not. This is where my epiphany comes in.

Fan service is a concept that becomes readily apparent to anime fans soon after they start consuming anime. And as a result, every anime fan is forced to decide how they feel about fan service. Some might love every single shot of scantily-clad buxom women that can be stuffed into an anime, others take a hard line against it and won’t watch any anime that has a single shot of a lady’s undergarments in them, and still others (like myself) are bothered when it’s used to gloss over deficiencies in the show but are not inherently against it and can enjoy it in some shows. And, as always, there’s people falling somewhere in the middle of these categories. Just to be clear, I’m not saying one viewpoint is better then another – everyone is entitled to their opinions, I just wanted to share my thoughts the matter.

My epiphany is this: Fan service is almost always very blatantly meant for the fan, so when the viewer sees fan service, it breaks the fourth wall and tells the viewer that the show is aware of them. This destroys the illusion of feeling of being a part of the show and returns the viewer to being a person watching a screen where stuff is happening.

Sometimes this is a big deal and sometimes it’s not. When I thought about it, I realized when I dislike fan service in a show matches up pretty well with when fourth wall breaking is a big deal. Likewise, when I didn’t care about fourth wall breaking, I didn’t really mind the fan service.

For example, there are genres like comedy, harem, shounen, and shoujo that will often create a very contrived situation to maximize the potential of a show. These situations are not meant to be taken seriously – everyone knows they’re contrived; just by watching these shows we’ve done the fourth wall breaking. As a result, when we see a girl’s pantsu or see a boy trip and fall into a girl’s chest or he catches her changing by accident or whatever the fan service shot is, it does not break the fourth wall and it becomes a question of if the viewer is interested in the fan service itself.

On the other hand, some shows wish to draw the viewer in and make them forget that they’re watching an anime. There’s many reasons for this but the most likely is so the viewer will feel a wider range of emotions. How scary is a horror film or how sad is a tear jerker or how mysterious is a mystery if you’re aware that you’re watching it on a TV or computer screen, nestled comfortably at home. Breaking the fourth wall in these cases breaks the illusion and can ruin the experience.

I don’t want to do a super long post on fan service but I can’t leave it at this just yet. If fourth wall breaking was the only criteria for fan service, many shows couldn’t include any shots but in reality, even these shows can successfully add fan service scenes without wrecking the show. The trick is to have a reason (or at least a good excuse) to be including these scenes. For example, in Bakemonogatari episode 2, Shaft can get away with Senjougahara fan service because she feels so superior towards Araragi that she doesn’t care if he sees her in her lingerie. Or a show like Birdy: The Mighty Decode can show Birdy in the bath tub because they show her thinking about a problem – something many people do. However, these types of scenes can still back fire if the animators make it really blatant because, once again, they’re breaking the fourth wall. It’s a balancing act that great directors can walk and the not-so-great ones can’t.

So, that’s my thoughts on the matter. I’d love to hear some feedback – either positive or constructive criticism.

Posted in anime, anime rants/views

Awhile back I posted my top 10 influential anime shows. I was happy with the final list but something nagged me about it and I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was until just recently. I mentioned maybe putting up my most influential non-anime animation shows but didn’t really see the importance of this list. The moment of insight came as I was reading another blogger’s reason for dropping a show. I realized that I enjoyed the show for the exact same reasons that he was dropping the show and that long before I was an anime fan, what I liked in animation and entertainment in general was already being shaped. Therefore I thought it would be a good idea to create a companion list for non-anime animation and post it.

Once again the list is in roughly chronological order. This list was harder to compose because growing up I wasn’t a fan of animation, it was just entertainment for me. So, it’s somewhat hard to call a certain show influential even though I loved the show to death growing up. In the end, I cut the list down to 5 so I can realistically call all 5 influential to my viewing habits even now.

This left off several shows that deserve some sort of recognition so before I get to the list so let me mention them here:

Watership Down was an animated movie that I watched when I was three or four and all I really remember from it was being disturbed that it showed talking rabbits being hunted and killed. I really should watch this now to get an adult perspective but this movie showed me from an early age that animation could be something more entertainment.

The Rankin Bass’ version of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings left such a strong impression on me that I read the Hobbit in third grade and Lord of the Rings in the fourth grade.

Shows like The Little Prince, Unico, and The Last Unicorn all had intriguing animation styles that made watching them interesting. And technically, all are anime but growing up they were so Americanized that I had no idea they where anime.

Space Ghost: Coast to Coast was funny, unpredictable, and a great example of what you could do with animation, even on a shoe-string budget. It was one of the first shows produced by Cartoon Network and it’s success paved the way for Adult Swim.

Now, onto the list.

1. Thundarr the Barbarian

Back before wide-spread cable television and VCRs, if a child wanted to watch cartoons the only way was to wake up early on Saturday. Any other day of the week and you were out of luck. Scheduling changes, cancellations, and new additions all seemed arbitrary to me at this tender young age and was the primary source of drama for me at that age. I can still remember the anger I would feel when finding out that one of my favorites where being dropped.

Many of these shows I have forgotten, some I still vaguely remember watching but Thundarr the Barbarian is a show I still remember vividly. It was set in a post-apocalyptic America where strange creatures roam, magic is commonplace, and remnants of our half remembered society could be found. Our trio of heroes: buff dude, female sorceress, and a Chewbacca knockoff, journeyed across the country, fought evil and helped those in need. This was a recipe for weird things to happen, for example, an evil magician might make his hideout in a mall or magic would be used to get a still functioning train across a lake.

My young self thought this was the coolest; never thinking the reason a show like this existed was because the adults of the time where worried that the Cold War would end in nuclear holocaust. This was obviously where I first developed my love of science fiction in general and post-apocalyptic stories in particular. Also, because they used a setting that was at the same time familiar and alien, I started to look at the mundane and would imagine the hidden fantastical element or possibilities.

2. Scooby Doo

I must have watched literally hundreds (and probably thousands) of hours of Scooby Doo growing up. I wasn’t deterred even if I had no idea who Sonny and Cher, Don Knots, and Dom Deluise where or that I figured pretty early on that there were no real monsters – it was always a hologram, a person in a costume or something similar.

The problem is that I’m not quite sure how even this amount of Scooby Doo influenced me. Surely, it must have. Maybe it helped cultivate a desire for mimes in the shows I watched. After all, what episode of Scooby Doo was complete without the culprit saying – “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddlin’ kids”. So when I watch something like Minami-ke, is it really a complete experience without thinking, “Haruka-neesama is amazing.”? Or maybe this is where I learned that the longer a series is around, the more the creators will monkey with the concept till they ruin the show.

Whatever the reason, I couldn’t imagine not including Scooby Doo on this list.

3. Looney Tunes

There was no question that Looney Tunes belonged on this list and I’d even go so far as saying that Looney Tunes did more to shape what I find entertaining and what it means to be funny then any other show, cartoon or live-action.

This is where I learned to love and appreciate witty physical humor. The eternal struggle by Coyote to catch the Road Runner and Elmer Fudd’s perpetually fruitless pursuit of Bugs Bunny where fertile grounds to showcase how sublime physical humor could be in the right hands. Sadly, not many other shows can match that level but it’s always nice to see some sort of physical humor bit worked into a show, be it a Kyou Dictionary Attack or a Fujioka Teddy Bear to the face.

Speaking of the Coyote, something about his character really resonated with me – maybe my support of Cleveland sports teams had something to do with that – but I was drawn to watching his countless attempts, hoping he’d finally get that Road Runner. It was always a plausible chance that he would and it felt like he just needed a little better luck. Since then, I’ve become very sympathetic towards characters that strive continuously to meet a personal objective and wish to see them finally get what they desire, even if it’s only to get the eldest Minami sister to realize your existence.

I could go on but I’ll just mention one more way that Looney Tunes influenced me. Long before watching and enjoying anime like Maria+holic that feature traps, males impersonating women, and reverse traps, females impersonating men, I learned the comedic value of gender-bending from Bugs Bunny.

4. Animaniacs

This modern attempt (early-mid 90’s) at recapturing some of the magic of Looney Tunes couldn’t match the brilliance of Looney Tunes but was a very strong effort. The adventures of Yakko, Wakko, and Dot (along with Pinky and Brain) where funny with a slightly subversive streak to them. I still have the wheel of morality song burned into my brain – “Wheel of morality, turn turn turn, tell us the lesson we should learn.” – and the lesson was supposed to be something we should have learned based on the show but would often be something really out there like ‘Vote early and often’. The reason why this show was so important stems from the age I was when it aired. I was just starting to get into that teenage mindset that I was grown-up now and didn’t need to watch cartoons along with other childish things. Animaniacs showed me that more mature people could still enjoy animated shows.

5. Toy Story

Toy Story earns the fifth spot not because it was the first full CG animated movie I saw but because it proved to me that an animated show can tell a story just as well as a live action show. This is a vital thing to learn for the continued watching of animated shows, including anime, as an adult. Of course, most anime fans know this already; watch something by Satoshi Kon, for example, if you don’t believe me but for me anime was years in the future. I had to rely on one of few American animation houses, Pixar, that believes an animated show can tell a real story to teach this fact.

Posted in anime rants/views, youtube

Ask a fan of science fiction (as defined as someone who reads science fiction) what they would like to see more of in the genre and one popular answer might be more quality SF on television. There is a limit to how often a person can rewatch the same few shows like Firefly, Stargate, and Twilight Zone to satisfy the urge to watch something SF. And heaven forbid if an American SF fan wanted to see realistic cutting edge technology like Augmented Reality or a show that remembered that space is a vacuum.

When I became an anime fan I wasn’t expecting to find shows that where both good anime and good SF but I’ve come across a number of shows that do both. So in the interest of helping non-anime science fiction fans, I thought I’d point out some of the best titles. For each listing I’ll list what type of SF it is, a fairly spoiler free synopsis of the show, and the show’s availability in America.

A final word before moving onto the list. One of the big differences between anime and most American shows – if you’re not familiar with anime - is that in anime, just because the characters are school age, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the show is any less complex then if it had only adults. Granted, in many instances anime can be juvenile but that’s the same as with science fiction – not all of it’s mature but some of it is.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Movie
Type of science fiction – Time travel
Available on DVD – English dub and subtitles

This movie is about a normal high school girl when she suddenly gains the power to travel to the recent past but this isn’t a story about how she saves the world. Instead, this is a story about how she uses this power to improve her life and the consequences of her actions. It starts off good; she uses the power to eat the pudding cup that her sister stole, she goes back to ace a recent quiz and she switches what food she makes during cooking class to name just a few. As time moves forward, though, she sees what the unintended consequences are to her actions and must try to fix what she’s done.

This type of story is by no means unique but what sets this movie apart is the characters are given abundant depth so you sympathize and like them immensely. Also to the movie’s credit, it never gets that contrived and arbitrary feeling many time travel stories get. It somewhat reminds me of a Connie Willis time travel story in that the focus is on the characters and the time travel is just a means to the end.

Dennou Coil

Television Series, 26 Episodes
Type of science fiction – Augmented Reality
Unlicensed * – English subtitles only

Earlier this year I wrote of this show, “Imagine a show that deals of the same cutting edge technology that’s found in works by Charles Stross and Vernor Vinge. Imagine this show centers around characters still in elementary school. Finally, imagine this show running on the Japanese equivalent of America’s PBS station. If you could imagine a show like this then you’ve probably already watched Dennou Coil.” It was hard to imagine that a show with this type of background would ever see the light of day but it did and it was a winner.

The show knows how to balance the light-hearted antics of the kids with the more serious story of one tranfer student’s effort to figure out what happened to her older brother who disappeared while using his AR glasses. This show also did a good job in imagining how AR operate and what new problems would need to be addressed. One of my favorite touches was the mobile anti-virus program that went around the city searching for irregularities in the system and fixing them. Since all the kids hacked their AR glasses to do more, they had to keep away from these programs or else their glasses would get fried and they’d have to get a new pair of glasses.

Kaiba

Television Series, 12 Episodes
Type of science fiction – Total mind and selective memory uploading and transference
Unlicensed * – English subtitles only

Kaiba wakes up at the beginning of episode 1 without any memories. A scan of his mind reveals that his mind literally contains no memories. So he does the logical thing and goes on a quest to figure out who or what he is. Along the way he loses his original body, gains two new ones, sees first hand how mind uploading and transference has altered society and finds out that he’s lost someone that’s important to him.

For all it’s focus on the technology that’s made this society possible, it doesn’t forget that to make a good show one needs characters and a story to tell. It was advertised as a SF/Love story and succeeds on both fronts. So don’t let the odd animation style stop you from watching this exceptional SF show.

Planetes

Television Series, 26 episodes
Type of science fiction – nuclear fusion, moon colonies and mining
Available on DVD – English dub and subtitles

The year is 2075 and space has become dangerously full of space junk. To contend with this problem, governments offer bounties to companies for the removal of debris that would threaten the human activities in space. As you might guess, even governmental bounties do not make this profitable for companies so these companies run their Debris Sections on a shoe-string and duck tape budget. Planetes focuses on one company’s Debris Section and their adventures.

A series about space garbagemen might not sound interesting but it turns out that this series is anything but boring. Some episodes focus on what happens when the space junk turns out to not be junk; for example, in one episode it’s a secret military satellite and in another, it’s the coffin of someone buried in space. Other episodes take place on the moon bases and we get the chance to meet one of the first persons to be born on the moon and see how that affects her outlook on life. Other episodes deal with a terrorist group from the have-not nations that can’t take advantage of nuclear fusion because they can’t afford to mine the moon for fuel like the rich countries and how the paths of our Debris Section and them cross.

And if you still need a reason to watch this show, then let me say that this show remembers that space is a vacuum and sound doesn’t carry.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Television Series, 52 episodes
Type of science fiction – A.I., prosthetic bodies, mind uploading
Available on DVD – English dub and subtitles

Don’t confuse the television series with the pair of movies – they’re the same franchise but unconnected to each other. I listed the series over the movies because the series has more action, lacks much of snobby philosophizing of the movie, and has the time to better explore it’s futuristic world and the ramifications of it’s advanced technology.

GitS:SAC, as it’s abbreviated, takes place in the near future where mind uploading and entire prosthetic bodies are a reality and almost commonplace. To further blur the line between man and machine, A.I. development has come a long way in creating A.I. that is very humanlike. In this hyperconnected, digital future society it becomes imperative for a government to have crack professionals that can keep it’s citizens safe from the profuse types of cybercrimes of the future. This is where Section 9 - a mix of ex-mercenaries, hackers, and intelligent cops - of the Japanese government comes in.

One of my favorite episodes involves the uploaded brain of a film maker. In physical life, he found it nearly impossible to find the funding to make his movies. To remedy this, he uploaded his mind into a digital braincase where he could create the movie and people could jack in and watch his movies in a virtual movie theater. The problem for Section 9 is that his movies where so good that almost no one wanted to leave – even if that meant their physical bodies died.

So, if you’re looking for a show that is one of best examples of how SF can be entertaining, action-packed, and still intelligent – check out Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

Freedom

OVA Series, 7 episodes
Type of science fiction – moon civilization, massive environment cataclysm on Earth
Available on DVD, Blu-Ray – English dub and subtitles

It’s the dawn of the 23^rd century and it’s been a hundred years since a human-triggered environmental cataclysm has supposedly rendered Earth uninhabitable. This has left the couple million inhabitants of the Moon City Eden as the last outpost for humanity. A strictly controlled society is necessary for Eden to survive but the teens of Eden don’t like it and this causes them to frequently get punished. It happens that while inspecting conduits outside as punishment, one of these teens, Takeru, witnesses an object crashing into the Moon’s surface. He rushes over to examine the crash site and his life will be altered forever after he discovers what this object’s cargo was.

This was a fun title to watch and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. One caveat with this title is that originally this was only 6 episodes long and when you watch it, you’ll see how the ending of episode 6 was a natural ending point. Episode 7 was added later on and while it was good to see what happens next, they tried to cover to much in one episode so it felt very rushed. Just a heads-up, this is still a very good show to watch – especially if you like the type of SF where humans overcome adversity in the face of danger.

The next two anime shows might not be science fiction per say but are definitely SF-related and almost guaranteed to be liked by a SF fan.

Kino’s Journey

TV Series, 13 episodes + 2 Stand-alone short movies
TV Series is available on DVD with English dub and subtitles but the short movies remain unlicensed

Kino is a traveler. Travelers spend their life traveling to the many different small city-states that dot the landscape of this earthlike world. For the most part these city-states leave each other alone which has allowed many different types of cities to develop. Some are high-tech, some are decidedly low-tech, and most fall somewhere in the middle. Kino spends only 3 days in any one city, just long enough to get a taste of what makes the city tick but not long enough to want to stay.

This type of set up allows Kino to be presented with many different scenarios that are designed to make the viewer think. For example, in one episode she visits a city that had been locked in a century long war with a neighboring city but fifteen years ago peace was achieved. The citizens are very proud at being able to finally end this war so Kino checks out the History museum. The curator of the museum, a mother who lost her husband and sons to the war, was instrumental – along with a mother on the other side – in ending the war. Their solution involves a yearly contest between the two sides, with a set number of combatants and automatic rifles, in how many people they can kill in a nearby underdeveloped city. The side that kills the most, is that year’s winner. Sounds horrible but as the curator points out, overall the number of people dieing is less and the standard of living in both cities have increased immensely now that the expensive weapons of war no longer have to be made.

Not every episode has a scenario this extreme or depressing but the series will make you think, much like good science fiction. I highly recommend this title.

Millenium Actress

Movie
Available on DVD – English subtitles only

Millenium Actress is one of those titles that are hard to adequately explain. The frame of the movie follows a documentary maker as he interviews an aging film actress about her life. We discover, from the moment she bumps into a fleeing artist/anti-government protestor in the early 1930’s and falls in love with him, that her life has echoed many parts that she played in the movies. This fact might help to explain how during the course of the interview, her recollections seem to bleed into real-life and the documentarian and cameraman find themselves physically watching parts of her life and finding themselves in the movies that she was in.

This might sound a little odd but it makes for a very riveting movie. In fact, as I was writing this I got the urge to watch it again and did so. The reason for it’s inclusion on this list comes from the actress being in SF movies and the use of one of these movies as a metaphor for something I won’t spoil here.

That’s it for the list now. I plan on adding onto this list in the future as I watch other worthy titles so I’ll be giving this post it’s own easily findable page up above.

*It’s relatively easy to find and download unlicensed anime on the internet, subtitled in whatever language you want. I don’t have the space here or desire to argue about fansubs so I will leave it at this. If the show is unlicensed, the only way to get it licensed is if American companies think they can sell enough DVDs so the more people that have seen these unlicensed shows and are talking about them – the greater chance that it’ll get licensed. And if the show is available on DVD and you liked it – buy it so more shows of this type are made. And if you’re unsure about a show and don’t want to spend money on a DVD you won’t like, remember that it’s rentable through a service like Netflix.

Posted in anime, anime rants/views, general anime interst, science fiction      

I was just reading on animenewsnetwork.com about supposed rumors about why there hasn’t been a Yotsuba anime series yet. You can read the entire thing over but what I wanted to comment on was Yotsuba’s creator, Kiyohiko Azuma, statement that a Yotsuba anime would be hard to do since it has “idiosyncratic storytelling”.

I can think of two different animation houses that have the ability to handle the anime adaptation. The first is Hal Film Maker. With Aria, Skectchbook and Somedays Dreamer’s Season 2 under their belts they’ve shown they can handle making the slow pacing of a slice-of-life show interesting. The other would be Brains Base. They’ve shown in Kamichu and Natsume’s Book of Friends that they can handle slice-of-life shows and infusing the characters with warmth so that you can’t help but love them. Either would make good picks.

Posted in anime, anime news, anime rants/views      

One of the things that I’ve wondered about the Japanese is: why isn’t autumn featured more in anime? There’s countless examples of cherry blossoms during the spring in anime but there’s almost no emphasis on fall leaves which I think is just as lovely. This year, while watching my Japanese maple, I had an idea. As you know, Japanese maples have red leaves year round but they get redder for fall. The problem is that the added color lasts about 3 days before the leaf drops off quickly. So maybe, Japanese trees, in general, don’t stay colored long enough that autumn leaf watching became a cultural thing.

The day after these two pics, every leaf on the tree had fallen off. Another thought I had was maybe because winter comes so quickly after Japanese trees turn colors, autumn doesn’t leave as much as an impression as spring does with the cherry blossoms. These pictures where taken on Nov. 7 and the pictures below where taken Nov. 17/18. (click on any pics for full-size versions)

Posted in anime rants/views, other wallpapers and pictures      

This half of the list will probably leave more then a few scratching their heads. So let me say again, this is a list of anime that influenced me as an anime watcher and not a list of favorite shows. There where many wonderful shows like Ghost in the Shell or Azumanga Daioh that for reasons like ‘I was already a fan of intelligent SF’ or ‘I saw similar shows before it so it wasn’t a new experience’ where not influential to me.

I divide my time as an anime fan into 3 parts. The first span was the time that Rurouni Kenshin and Yu Yu Hakusho where the only anime that I knew. This phase lasted awhile and of this phase, only one show made the list. The second phase started when I purchased the first Witch Hunter Robin DVD and committed to becoming an anime fan and lasted till roughly the fall of 2005. Because of the price of buying DVDs, I tended to stick to shows that were like other shows I liked and where well-reviewed – mainly shounen or action titles. Of course, I still got series that ended up not being worth the purchase and slowly I shifted to buying manga. I could look over what I was buying before buying it, it was cheaper to follow a series in manga form and I’ve enjoyed books since I was little. Even then though, I pretty much stuck with the same types of titles and it didn’t help that was the lion-share of the market. Numbers 2 – 6 fit into this phase.

The third and current phase started when I stumbled upon fansubs while trying to find out information about the anime version of Bleach because I was loving the manga and couldn’t figure out why the anime wasn’t here as well. Once I learned about fansubs, I became curious as to what other shows where being shown over there and not being brought over here. So with the twin desires of seeing different types of anime and using fansubs to decide if a show was worthy of purchase when it eventually came out over here, I dove in to see what else I liked. The final four series have come from this phase and at this point I think there’s little chance of encountering another series that belongs to this list. Maybe in a few years when I become a bitter anime fan and complain about everything was better back in the day, I can add titles that influenced me to dislike anime.

6. Paranoia Agent

The sixth, and final series from my second phase, is Satashi Kon’s masterpiece Paranoia Agent. Paranoia Agent, if you haven’t seen it yet, tells the story of the creator of Miromi (a plush doll sensation, set to become the next huge anime series) and how a city is turned upside-down when Lil’ Slugger, always on rollerblades, begins to attack people with a golden bat.

This was one of the titles that I knew belonged on this list even before I started because it influenced me in a few different ways. The first was that it showed me that anime had the ability to seriously mess with my mind and still remain entertaining. Also, this was the first anime that I watched that had significant amounts of realistic-feeling and often disturbing violence. And it wasn’t just because it showed that anime could be violent but, in addition, that violence could be vital to the story and not gratuitous.

7. Melancholy of Haruhi

Having grown comfortable with fansubs and reading anime blogs at the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006, I was looking forward to the spring season 2006. I diligently used the preview guides to find what seemed to be the popular series and planned on which I was going to watch. A strange thing happened that first week; a show that didn’t even make most preview guides, and had absolutely no hype, suddenly was being talked about by everyone. I had to investigate for myself.

When I watched it, I was blown away. Then I went to the blogs and reading different analysis’s, I particularly remember a couple done by film students that pointed out all film errors that Haruhi’s amateur movie committed, and ended up rewatching that first episode at least a dozen more times. The sheer audacity shown by KyoAni with this first episode, the attention to the very small details that were needed for such a brilliant and purposely mediocre movie, the little hints that something more then just being a school comedy, the very original characters we meet and the promise of more next week all contributed to almost melting my brain that first week. This episode seemed to exist on a totally different plane then every other anime I’ve ever seen.

It would have been disappointing if the rest of the show failed to live up to the promise shown in the first episode but it turned out that the show was more than a one-trick pony. The non-linear storytelling was different and also allowed us to see Haruhi develop into a real character that we could sympathize with. Kyon’s sarcastic nature and non-suckiness was a breathe of fresh air from the prevalence of Shinji-clone male anime protagonists. There was also the show’s ability to incorporate many different types of shows into itself and still work as a show.

For shattering my perceptions of what an anime series could be and being the Tiger Woods of anime – permanently raising the bar – the Melancholy of Haruhi easily earns a spot on this list.

8. Kasimasi

As I worked on this list, I started thinking about certain shows I’ve watched recently and started thinking back to the first examples of them. This show, Kasimasi, was one show that I was surprised when it came up. The more I thought about the more I realized it did belong.

Kasimasi focused on three characters: a boy, the boy’s female childhood friend who is secretly in love with him, a female classmate of the boy who the boy likes but has rejected his confession of love. The boy gets hit by an alien spaceship but instead of dying, the aliens save him by reconstructing the body but also change the body into a completely female body. The show explores, in a mixture of seriousness and humor, how the boy’s transformation affects the relationships amongst the three.

This was my introduction to not only “gender-bending” anime but, more generally, absurdly premised anime shows that use the premise to tell a story that’s impossible to tell in another way. Having never seen anything that could be considered gender-bending in mainstream American entertainment, I initially didn’t quite know what to do with this show. I realized during the course of the show that it wasn’t dissimilar from other anime in that it had a story to tell and it was going to tell it, and I came to like the show. So for introducing me to gender-bending anime and absurdly-premised anime as well as making me comfortable with gender-ambiguous characters (traps and reverse traps, for example); this show earns a place on this list.

9. Air

I was somewhat reluctant to put a second show by any one studio on this list but neither Haruhi or Air could have been left off this list. From my recent review, I wrote how the story dealt with one man’s search to find the girl connected to a 1000 year curse and what happens when he meets a girl who dreams of her other self beyond the clouds. And how I was drawn into this story and shed many tears over the course of the show. If you read that, you might think that Air is listed because I cried. That’s only partly true, the reason why I cried and why it’s getting listed here is because the show – through it’s story, visuals, music, and voice work – made me care far deeper about a character then I have ever before. Because of this series, now anytime that I watch a show and it creates real characters with depth; I end up caring about them more.

10. Kamichu

The last show to make the list, Kamichu, first came to my attention when I saw a picture of the show. Something about it drew me in and made me want to see it but I had no clue what show it was. By happenstance, I was reading through old posts from Anime on my Mind (now Derailed by Darry) one day and came across the anime that the picture was from – Kamichu. If I remember correctly, the show had received the author’s “Best anime no one watched” award. I decided it was worth a watch.

I mentioned that Kino’s Journey has a slice-of-life structure to it but Kamichu was a slice-of-life show, through-and-through. It, like other great slice-of-shows, can find magic in the mundane and reveal secrets from the simple stuff of everyday life. So for making me a slice-of-life fan and learning that anime can be relaxing, Kamichu earns the last spot on this list.

And with that last show, I’ve became the anime watcher I am now. This probably helps to explain why I enjoy so many different types of anime. To close,I’d like to thank everyone that read and commented on the first part of this list. I didn’t intend to write as much as I did about each one but hopefully, I made your time worthwhile. I’m happy for any comments – positive or negative – that you might feel like writing. I’m also thinking about doing my 5 most personal influential non-anime animated shows at some point in the future, so be ready for more personal ramblings about shows.

Posted in anime, anime rants/views