foxinthestars

I'm still waiting on a late premiere or two (notably Silver Spoon if I decide to try it), but most of the new summer anime have had their first eps now. I'm finding more to watch than I expected, but still not much to get really excited about.

( Impressions in roughly-descending order of impressiveness: Eccentric Family, Sunday Without God, Free!, Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist, Servant x Service, plus Day Break Illusion and other stuff I don't plan to pick up )

Brief interim reports:

Creamy Mami: After several episodes to settle into its formula, it does get fun. Still not something I would buy, tho.

Devil Survivor 2:
Last week (ep 10): "OMG OMG OMG!!!"
This week (ep 11): "::nod:: That's fair."

Gargantia: Chamber was as unimpressed as I was, although I'm not sure I buy his reasoning. I'm also not impressed when an episode ends on a note of "Wait, what? Cultists!? And where the hell are these objects in relation to each other??" (I called this development early on, BTW, although I didn't know what it would look like.)

I also didn't notice my love for Chihayafuru deepening, but I guess it did since I actually put a set of karuta cards on my wishlist and started trying to memorize the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (up to 14 now! I can understand enough of the words to make it easier!). Really hoping they get another season.


And the first Spring show to actually end: ( Red Data Girl )


I still need to post about my last couple of back-catalog indulgences. I did get through Legend of the Galactic Heroes to my satisfaction (I finished the main series, decided enough was enough, and left the Gaiden stuff for another time), and went on to watch Mushi-Shi, so maybe I'll do that later. I've actually been taking some extra dips on the pretext of researching things nominated for parallelsfic... (Nominations close tomorrow, BTW, if you want to join in.)

Time to blabber about anime some more...

I went through sampling everything at Anime Sols (except Black Jack, which is on Crunchyroll). All the reviews are telling me you have to stick with Creamy Mami for awhile, but within the first two episodes it hasn't become something I would watch for fun. On the other hand I am loving Tobikage. I haven't seen it before, but it has a really good nostalgia vibe for me; I think it must be tapping into childhood memories of Voltron or something (Crunchyroll actually has GoLion, BTW, although I haven't gotten around to watching it yet). I guess I did grow up on super-robots more than magical girls...

As for the current-run stuff, most of it is staying on course. Valvrave finally crossed my line from "cracktastic" to "just embarrassing to watch" and was dropped, but Hataraku Maou-sama! is still brilliant, Chihayafuru is still awesome (but enough with the recapping), Red Data Girl is still awesome-but-not-fully-comprehensible, and Karneval is still mediocre but fun ( spoiler ). I'm nicely into Devil Survivor 2; I wouldn't say it's anything special, but it at least has a situation in which tension is steadily building. Gargantia, after vacillating between "OMG, you're amazing!" and "Why did you have to go and do that??" has finally settled in at "Meh;" it's not too bad, but it is disappointing. Episode 9 had a big twist that I want to comment on, under the cut; suffice to say it didn't lift me out of my disappointment, although it could possibly provide tools to do so.

( Major Spoilers for Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, ep. 9 )

Long silence... I need to just own up to this basically being an anime blog for the time being; I still feel bad/reticent, like my blabbering about that stuff is somehow imposing on my f-list, but wth...

So, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. It's my favorite show of the season, and it's also the most vexing. I would like to see the writing credits broken down by episode, because this thing seriously reads like it's being passed back and forth between two people who aren't quite on the same page as to what kind of show it's supposed to be. One of these two --- I'll call them Writer J (eps 1, 2, and 4) --- seems to be taking some genre trappings and repurposing them into a grounded, sensitive take on the Dances with Wolves sub-genre as Ledo gradually and naturally grows toward the humanity that was denied him in his place of origin. The other one, whom I'll call Writer H (eps 3 and 5), seems to have a certain task to complete each episode and heads for it along a route scenic with genre-fan pandering. I like one of these writers much better than the other one. Indeed, Writer J's stuff is the kind of thing I want to show to everybody I know --- and then Writer H's stuff crops up and I don't really want to be seen in public with it. It's still my favorite thing going except for maybe Chihayafuru, but (just to point out what I did there) the Jekyll & Hyde quality is deeply vexing.

I actually dropped Attack on Titan after the first two episodes; I think it was the ham-fisted emotional cues that did me in. Yes, seeing people bug their eyes out and yell (and optionally stream tears) got old and/or unintentionally funny.

I'm still sticking with everything else that made it out of the first impressions round. Hataraku Maou-sama! is still brilliant; it manages to keep its humor fresh and even incorporate drama and action without bogging down. I still love Red Data Girl, too, but I acknowledge that it takes some effort on my part; it's an awesome show, but it doesn't really seem to care that people are watching it and would like to get close and understand it. Devil Survivor 2 and Karneval remain intensely average but interesting enough to follow; DS2 at least has polish going for it (it also manages to interest me in the game; I see a lot of people saying the game is even better); Karneval really doesn't (it's like that show has no sense of timing and doesn't know how to bring a moment off with flourish even), but I'm not wanting to drop it.

And then in back-catalog stuff, I'm currently about a quarter of the way into Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Yeah, I went there.

Mainly though, I wanted to bellyache about Gargantia being charming but untrustworthy...

I may not do much these days except blabber about anime, but I can at least do that.

So the Spring season is starting up; going in I was like “enh, maybe a couple things,” but watching first episodes, before I knew it it had snuck up on me with a lot of neat stuff, to the point that I might get overstretched and have to cut back. I’ve now seen the first episode of almost everything I plan to sample (still plan to catch ep. 1 of Valvrave but it’s not out until Friday and I don’t wanna wait), so I thought I’d make my report. As always, these things could take off in whole new directions, but how I see the lay of the land now...

( Long post under the cut, with first-episode impressions of Majestic Prince, Zettai Bouei Leviatan, Flowers of Evil, Severing Crime Edge, Hataraku Maou-sama, Devil Survivor 2, Karneval, Attack on Titan, and Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet )

Been awhile, lots of random babbling...

I mentioned awhile back that doing Natsume Yuujinchou fic is breaking a long-established pattern for me (in that my favorite character is not being as horribly savaged by the bunnies as I'm used to), and now I'm finding it's breaking other patterns, too. For one thing, I'm not making any effort to come up with an over-arching headcanon on this one. Usually when I get obsessed with something I construct an elaborate personal myth-arc for it which I then only self-consciously depart from, but this time not so much. Mirror's Depth is my headcanon for Matoba and will probably stick where relevant, but now I've got Seven Year Promise, which I still just love, but after it I'm willing to just go on and write whatever strikes my fancy and whether it happens in the same timeline as 7YP, I don't really care; it would just be a matter of the new story's convenience. (And actually, I don't care whether Mirror's Depth and 7YP are in the same timeline; they have no characters in common so it just doesn't matter).

I'm also finding myself doing at least a little bit of actual revising on this stuff. Revising is a weak point for me, I admit; I'm such a perfectionist that I generally can get something presentable on the first try (knock on wood) and then I tend to just fuss around the edges, but now... I'm still working on revising 7YP (no one but Branch has read it AFAIK, so I'm just doing the best I can; if you want to have a look, I would appreciate it, but just LMK and I'll send you the RTF, I'm sick of updating posts every time I change it), and yesterday I did actual revising as in "Hm, I could make a stronger narrative decision than this. Check the logistics... Yeah, I'm gonna re-do this whole scene and make it happen different." (Spoiler: for complicated reasons, Natsume will die if he gives back my youkai guest star's name before we resolve things, and we can't tell him what's going on, which leads to Tanuma stealing the Book of Friends; originally I just had him do this while Natsume was asleep, but in the new draft, he tries telling Natsume in a general way not to return the name yet, backs off in the face of Natsume's reaction, and then has to walk out with the Book right under Natsume's nose; the original version was kind of cute in its way, but yeah, the new one is a stronger narrative decision I think.) After 7YP, I promised myself I could write some fluff, so I have a little 1000-word thing that amounts to a cheap gag --- and I have two complete versions of it; in the first one I used the context/set-up in which the idea first came to me, then decided that made it too heavy and re-wrote almost the whole thing (I'm gonna let that one rest for a little longer; it amounts to a cheap gag and I've fussed with it enough I can't really tell if it's funny, but LMK if you want to see it).

This makes me kind of proud.


And anime. The season's winding down; only going to comment on a couple of things right now.

The last act of Shin Sekai Yori is actually getting good reviews, and I probably will have to finish it sometime. If I'm honest, it's not that I don't care, it's that I care too much. My rants about it were probably just self-protective hackling to some extent --- but at the very least, they will always stand as a testament to what a hard ride that show is.

Also, one of the ones I've been looking forward to in the upcoming season, RDG: Red Data Girl, was previewed online and fansubbed, so I got to see ep. 1, and it's not blowing me away yet, but I'm in for now. Part of what was so promising about this one is that it's based on novels by Ogiwara Noriko (Dragon Sword and Wind Child, Good Witch of the West), and "based on a novel" seems to be a good sign for anime. It's slowly hinting so far, but the basic setup is the heroine, Izumiko, who is some kind of destined medium of divinity/spiritual power, and the hero, Miyuki, who is her destined guardian (kind of like Hiiro no Kakera but it plays better; HnK hit an unhappy medium for me where the otome game basis was painfully obvious but not shamelessly brazen like in Amnesia). The big thing that strikes me in episode one is that the lead characters are very immature, each in their own way, and it's a bit irritating to watch but very understandable given their circumstances. Izumiko has been smotheringly sheltered her whole life and so has arrived at this point mousy and uncertain --- the huge deal everyone makes about her cutting her fringe is ominous on two levels: both as a sign of how constricted her life is and a hint that we're in a story world where this really could have momentous consequences. Miyuki for his part gets dragged in and told that he's destined to be Izumiko's servant; his reaction of "fuck that noise, she's ugly and stupid" goes right to the point of being childish (as the show subtly but effectively points out), but is quite understandable given what was just done to him. As I said, it can be uncomfortable to watch them at this point, but the show seems very aware of their immaturity; I sense a real promise of watching them grow, and at least for now I'm looking forward to it.

(The other one that looks promising to me is Karneval, but really won't know about that one until I get to see some.)

Um, yeah, the whole Shin Sekai Yori thing?

It has now gone from "highlight of my week" to "making me want to throw Wikipedia against a wall."

( What do you call armchair quarterbacking when the armchair isn't even in a house where the game is on? )

OMG you guys. I have a draft. An actual complete draft of the epic Natsume Yuujinchou fic. It came in around 28,000 words, and I want to go over it once before posting, but I should be able to show it off within a few days. Could still use work in some places, but that's why it's called a draft, and I'm giving myself a month to revise it...


Also, today's Unlimited episode, because it vexed me.

( spoilers and stuff )

Other than that, it was awesome as usual.

(Something besides my fanfic!)

So I just finished my promised-to-self monthly foray into back-catalog anime, sort of a semi-marathon. This month I actually picked it in advance, once I remembered that I had, so I just got done watching Trigun. My sense is that it's one of the classics, and I recall in particular a friend who was into it years ago when I was into Rurouni Kenshin and how it was often compared to RK (RK being one of my foundation stones as an anime fan). However, all I'd ever seen of it was the first four episodes dubbed on VHS, so yeah, it seemed overdue.

And now that I've seen it... Um... I have to admit I actually didn't care for it all that much. I mean it's not bad or anything, but it isn't a favorite, and certain things bugged me enough to want to rant a little.

It made me feel my age to see just how old-school the thing looks, but that's fine with me (at least short of Bubblegum Crisis flashbacks and it wasn't to that point). My problem was with the story and characterization part; basically it started out as good clean fun but didn't really win my heart before it made its series of turns into thankless grimdark (which I hadn't done the due diligence to see coming), and IMO the writing wasn't tight or graceful enough to pull off its themes very well. I feel less like I just watched an exploration/deconstruction-reconstruction of the Abslolute Pacifist Fighting Ace trope and more like I just watched a chaotic shouting match about it that the writers simply called for the good guys despite a lack of conclusive results.

( Cut for specific instances WITH HUGE SPOILERS )

So yeah, um... If you haven't seen it yet, be warned it gets darker than you'd expect early on. For me, it's no RK, but now, however belatedly, I know. And I apologize to anyone whose foundation stone I just insulted.

So, after saying that before I haven't posted about any of the other stuff I watched and it's getting not-so-timely anymore, but what the heck...

( Impressions of first episodes: Code:Breaker, K, and Psycho-Pass )