That's a picture of my brain in it's current state

Before I get to the awesomeness, I feel the need to get a little meta.

A quick look at the previous post’s title shows that I haven’t written anything for The Null Set in roughly 3 weeks. This was entirely unplanned and was the result of several factors falling into place at exactly the wrong time. The first was a general sapping of enthusiasm towards anime brought on by looking forward and discovering that the next season just looks appallingly abysmal. (The new series by Gainax and Shaft will probably turn out good and that’s probably it.)

Second, many of the series this season, both great and not-so-great, haven’t really played-out in a way that I feel like I have something to blog about. The sequels to Arakawa Under the Bridge and Sora No Otoshimono have gone the way I wanted them to (focus on Nino, explore the story behind Synapse) and I’ve really been satisfied with them. If they had failed or gone in an interesting direction, I’d have something to talk about; instead, all I got is saying that both sequels do justice to their respective franchises. Shows like The World Only God Knows, Amagami SS, Shinryaku! Ika Musume, Yosuga no Sora, Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru, Samurai Girls and Otome Yokai Zakuro have ranged from watchable to pretty good but have done so without creating waves. For example, Ika Musume is a decent comedy about a squid girl that shows up with the intent to invade humanity and really sucks at being an invader. This description more then adequately explains all 9 episodes of the show that I’ve seen so far; there’s nothing else I need to add. Soredemo turned into a fairly standard Shaft/Shinbou series and most anime fans already know where they stand in relation to Shaft/Shinbou. (That makes it cool in my book.)

There’s been a few new standouts this season – Milky Holmes (one of the best shows this season and one of the best comedies of the year) and Panty and Stocking (Gainax doing what Gainax does best) – but there is a limit to how often I’m willing to repeat myself. And other awesome shows like Jellyfish Princess that’s already getting tons of coverage. The third reason for the lack of blogging is the ol’ real life excuse, you know the one. In my case, suffice it to say that nothing horrible happened and it mainly dealt with getting ready for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. (For example, my family’s iron-clad tradition to have one’s Christmas tree up and decorated before Thanksgiving, even when it’s near impossible to find a tree farmer/seller that’ll open before Thanksgiving.)

Now onto the tenth episode of Panty and Stocking.

I haven’t been the only person to realize that the really awesome Part B half-episodes seem to be matched with very weak Part A half-episodes. I’m starting to think it’s done on purpose; either Gainax is stuck using the weak ones and figured they’d do the least damage when paired up with a great half-episode or Gainax is purposely making a few poor half-episodes because they just feel like it.

So upon finishing the disappointing Part A to episode 10, I hoped and guessed the pattern was going to hold and it did. Before hitting the pure awesomeness, the show took a detour through a middle mini-episode that was rather odd until I realized what Gainax was doing. The entire 3 part Chuck mini-episode was to set a joke up involving the final scene, namely, a literal mind screwing to cap off a figurative mind screw mini-episode. I got a good laugh at the slyness of Gainax in acknowledging their own often mind screw type endings.

The highlight of the episode was the final mini-episode, the animated music video for one of the insert songs that Gainax has been using in Panty and Stocking. This is a field that Gainax has been exploring over the last couple of years with Gurren Lagann and I’m glad to see Gainax is starting to do the same with this show. It was probably the most awesome 5 minutes of anime this season will see and quickly becomes one of the highlights of the year. Screenshots to follow with a poll at the bottom.

The parodies were awesome and this was just some of them.

The poll question deals with the following screenshots.

American edition

Indian version

Australian version

Russian version

Spanish version

Greek version

Japanese version

And because Stocking is my favorite character:

I think the above screenshot speaks for itself but, since I’ve never believed the whole “a picture is worth a thousand words” saying, I’ll add some of my own and post more screenshots of the best character in Panty and Stocking.

I’m of two minds with this show. I’m completely not surprised that I’m enjoying the fun romp  that is Panty and Stocking because it’s Gainax doing the organized-chaos thing they do best but I’m also completely surprised that I find this show so much fun when I don’t normally find shows that revolve around bodily fluids and comedy funny. Maybe Gainax makes that much of a difference or maybe I just like shows that it’s impossible to know what’s going to happen next time. For example, in the first half of episode 7 …

… we get the story of what happens when two competing factions of sentient robots come to Daten City and our heroes, Stocking and Panty, get turned into robots. A shoujo robot series threatens to break-out during the course of the the story …

… but a ghost shows up and ruins the fun. (And we get yet another variation to the transformation sequence by our heroes. Sadly they only show Panty’ s part   .)

The second half follows what happens when Stocking and Panty need to raise a load of cash in only three days.  They start with those part-time jobs that seem always in need of filling like waitress, traffic cop, car washer, and geriatric nurse.

And finally as hostesses at a bar, (I knew Gainax would work in the bunny-girl suits eventually) when they learn that it’s possible to make loads of money at the casino and change for the occasion.

The only predictable thing about this show is that a ghost will inevitable show up but even then, Gainax keeps showing creativity. I think the ghost inside the casino was my most favorite yet.

Chalk up another great episode of Panty and Stocking by Gainax and I’ll have to wait another week to see what new surprises are in store.

I just finished watching episode 6 and it was epic epic, like when Simon and crew defeated the anti-Spirals or when Mustang fought Lust or the true ending to Clannad After Story. I thought last episode’s fairly light nature meant that Shaft/Shinbou was going to lay off advancing the story further then what happened over the first four episodes. I was hoping that wasn’t the case because I didn’t want to see a repeat of the second season of Natsu no Arashi where, after the first 3 episodes, the story that made the first season so interesting was set aside in the name of random hi-jinks and pointless comedy. Episode 6 signaled that, no, it was going to stick to the story.

If you don’t want to be spoiled, stop here and just enjoy the sketch of Nino that I stitched together from this episode and then go watch the episode.

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I knew this episode was coming; I knew that someday the signal that this show was ready to show the cards it’s kept hidden would happen. I just didn’t know it was going to happen in this episode and it leaves me feeling anxious, a bit worried and just plain excited.

A bit worried because I’ve come to really like (deeply love would probably be a better description) Arakawa Under the Bridge and I don’t want something to happen that’ll spoil it. Anxious because it is very conceivable that we won’t actually find anything out next time like the time that Star recorded the leech song onto Nino’s tape. Excited because it looks like we’re about to learn in Nino is a real Venusian or not and because Nino is going home. So it feels like the show is standing on the precipice, a long way up the side of a mountain, right now. A fall here would be deadly for Arakawa Under the Bridge but if it succeeds with episode 7, I think it’s got a lock on the top spot for best anime of 2010 and eventually earning a spot on my top all-time anime list.

(As a completely off-topic aside, in today’s society of instant gratification, I think it’s good that I, and everyone else, will have to wait a week for the next episode. It’s character-building and it increases the viewer appreciation of the show in question. I really believe one of the main reasons that I rank Gurren Lagann so highly is because watching it weekly allowed me to tear apart and examine each facet of each episode while waiting for next week’s episode.)

Okay, that’s enough worrying about the future; let’s look at some of the awesome parts to episode 6.

The Mayor just became one of my favorite characters in the show.

She should have heeded the Mayor’s warning

Nino and Recruit’s conversation was done just perfectly.

Commercial for the new Shaft show. It’s hard to get excited about it when your watching Arakawa Under the Bridge.

Recruit’s fantasies are showing that he’s come a long way from the start of the show.

You can’t get enough Nino smiling, it’s a proven fact.

Swapping the live-action sequence for the ending song helped make this episode feel more special.

The people at Shaft know how to appreciate the night sky.

EMP Pulse for the win!

It’s time for yet another entry of finding odd things to enjoy in an anime. This time the target is the final episode of High School of the Dead (HOTD). This time I’m limiting myself to mentioning only two small scenes. Any more and I run the risk of going into full rant mode about the problems and observations I had about the show. (I really, really want to complain about how implausible the HOTD zombies would be at causing the level of chaos seen in this show.)

Several years ago I watched a documentary on the classic Looney Tunes cartoons and one of the most memorable parts was a short discussion about how the animators would often distort how people and animals were drawn to heighten the sense of motion. To illuminate the point they showed a clip at full speed and then showed the same clip going at a much slower speed. I was awed by the technical mastery shown in this art form.

I’ve often wondered how a non-human eye would perceive these scenes. Would their eyes be fooled as well or would they be able to see through the illusion?

I’ve also tried to look for examples of this technique in whatever animated show I watch since first watching this documentary and it fairly frequently, especially in high-quality animated shows. The last really good example that I can remember was in episode 15 of Bakemonogatari. It was a short scene when Shinobu did a series of quick somersaults before sinking her fangs into the shoulder of the cat-spirit possessed Tsubasa Hanekawa. The movement literally felt like it popped out of the screen. I wanted to do a frame-by-frame shot to show how awesome this was done. However, one of my desires when running this blog is to keep it SFW and when I started capturing the individual frames I realized that Shinbou decided Shinobu was fine using a band-aid as a pair of pantsu. So, I had to scratch that post and look for another example.

I didn’t need to wait too long; Madhouse (which figures actually) gave me a really good example in episode 12 of High School of the Dead. The scene was towards the end when the mechanic twirled a wrench as he got ready to fight the zombies. My eye caught this, even as my mind was wondering why leaving behind the mechanic was a good idea. So, the first clip is of the scene in question going at normal speed (or as close as I can get it) and the second is the same frames slowed down.

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Cool, isn’t it. I especially liked how when he grasped the wrench at the end they actually make the wrench disappear for a couple of frames and let our eyes fill-in the implied movement.

The other scene tickled the political side of me. I know it’s generally a bad idea to bring up politics online but the last time I did here, I remember being surprised by the civility of commenters so I’ll hope for the same civility. The scene in question is at the beginning when they show the combined effort of Japanese and American forces trying to shoot down the four nukes that were launched in the last episode. I don’t think this scene was originally conceived as a sly dig at Obama (unless it comes from source material done since his election) but I couldn’t help but see it as one.

There hasn’t been a lot of coverage of Obama’s foreign policy but one of the few concrete things he’s done in this arena is stepping back from Bush’s planned nuclear missile defense shield. Why he thinks this is a good idea, I don’t know. The need of a system like this is so plainly apparent that many countries, not just the United States, want to be included. One of these countries is – surprise, surprise – Japan. They worry enough about it they are actually funding a significant portion of the development and I don’t blame them, they live so much closer to North Korea and have had missiles shot over their country.

Like I said, I don’t think it necessarily was a critique of Obama but, nonetheless, that scene only needs a slight alteration, North Korea being the source of the nukes, to be completely relevant to a real life scenario and showcasing the need for a nuclear missile defense shield.

Sadly for Japan in HOTD, one of the ships were zombie infested and didn't stop the nuke in question.

Figures that mere hours after finishing my previous post about Occult Academy and Asobi ni Iku Yo! that I’d find something else I wanted to include.   I hemmed-and-hawed as to if I wanted to double post about Asobi ni Iku Yo! but I finally decided why not.

The ninth episode of Asobi ni Iku Yo! was a bit of a departure from previous episodes in terms of tone and pace and probably was used to cleanse the palette for the finale, if episode 10 was a proper indication of how the show will end. I liked it, though. I’ve already mentioned how I have the habit of finding odd things to enjoy about an anime. This time I had another personality quark scratched. From a young age I’ve tried to take the saying about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes to heart, even if it’s just a book or anime.

For episode 9 of Asobi ni Iku Yo! I imagined what it be like if I traveled across the universe to meet an alien race and discover that their culture could create something that resonated with me.  I’d like to think if/when we meet an alien culture that some things are universal (though, hopefully, blowing things up if one doesn’t understand them is not one of them). I also gave some serious thought about the Assistroids. The idea of making them incapable of speech and keeping them “simple” for their own happiness really struck me as wrong. I know I’m over thinking this but if I was Kio I think I’d be pushing for Assistroid emancipation. (There goes my American cultural superiority complex kicking in, thinking not only are these people wrong but it’s my duty to fix them. )

Becoming a willing participant in the future robot rebellion wasn’t the biggest reason why I enjoyed this episode. I loved the science fiction reference that permeated this episode and discovered a freaky coincidence. I knew who Captain Future was from a very memorable novella written by Allen Steele several years ago. What I didn’t know and was completely shocked about was the author of the Captain Future books, Edmond Hamilton, was born in Youngstown – my hometown.

I was flabbergasted at this connection. Here I was watching an anime in Ohio that referenced the late 1970’s anime (which ran for 53 episodes) that adapted the stories and novels of Captain Future written during the 1940’s and 50’s half-a-world away by a guy that born more than a hundred years ago in the same town I was born in and still consider my hometown.

I also found out that there’s a Captain Future Hollywood movie in the works. Seems the director grew up in Germany and loved the 1970’s Captain Future anime that had gotten dubbed and released there. If it does, in fact, get made I’ll probably go see it just to enjoy the string of events that led me to see a Captain Future movie.

There were a couple other same items that stuck out to me during this episode as well.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures - Armageddon

I love when animators have to change the name of a company and squeeze a joke out of it.

A&W Root Beer fresh from their restaurant is one of the most delicious things known to humanity.

Filed under: anime, episode review, general anime interst, science fiction

Between birthdays, Father’s Day, trying to protect my garden (slugs, groundhogs, rabbits,  Japanese beetles, and a lack of rain) and finally getting to four different spring anime shows (Working, Rainbow, Night Raid and Hakuouki:   Shinsengumi Kitan) – I haven’t had the chance to post anything or reply to any of the recent comments like I’d want to. I have a bit of time, though, so I wanted to post a couple of observations I had about the latest episode of Angel Beats.

I like reading reactions to episodes such as episode 12 to Angel Beats because I get to see who else saw what I saw and who saw something different. For the screen shot below,

I’m glad many other people did not enjoy having  a new character appear this late into the show, since my sister and I felt the same way. He seemed familiar for some reason, though, and today I remember why. We do know the identity of this character, he was shown in episode 23 from Cowboy Bebop.

Medical accident left him in a vegetative state but his family must-have eventually pulled the plug.

He had delusions of grandeur and had a thing for tons of computer monitors.

So it has to be him.

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There’s nothing new about mentioning how Angel Beats has a knack at reminding viewers of other shows. I won’t mention the obvious ones, it’s been done, but I found a new one in episode 12 and this time it’s a video game. I’d probably dismiss this connection but my sister had the same exact thought at exactly the same time so I’m not completely crazy.

Coincidence? I think what made me think Kingdom Hearts was the design of the Shadows (or should I say Heartless!!) and how it was 3 vs. dozens of Shadows in the screen shot and how the Shadows were relatively easy to kill. I’m still undecided; is Hinata Donald and Naoi Goofy or vice versa?

I’ll admit that I was a bit surprised how much I liked the first episode of Hanamaru Kindergarten. It fell far outside of what Gainax is known for – more reminiscent of a J.C. Staff show then a Gainax show. For the second episode, Gainax was able to keep the warm, slice-of-life, cuteness feel but they also slipped in some awesome stuff that reminded the viewer that they’re watching a Gainax show. Look below to see what I mean.

It appears that Gainax might go the route of Sora no Otoshimono and do different ending songs for each episode. For episode 2, we got, presumably, Hiiragi’s closing song. I love the Gainax feel to the animation.

And of course the episode was full of cuteness.

The trio go exploring

Tsuchi-sensei is overwhelmed

Tsuchi decides to let his student's slide on the slide

Know-it-all kid tries to make trouble

He finds a ghost

And needs saving by Hiiragi

At least he's willing to admit that Hiiragi is superior

Next episode seems to involve a love triangle:

Posted in anime, episode review