we're finally notdotq anymore

I wrote up a long post at Dreams of the Quill where I discuss some of the past year’s highlights. I’m not going to do an anime-centric post here of a similar nature because I think that my 12 days posts sum things up pretty well.

Happy New Year!

One of the central themes I intend to explore in my blogging is the concept of the guilty pleasure.

In the more common contexts, guilty pleasures are negatively valued/low-culture activities and pursuits relative to high-culture media. For example, a person with a ‘cultured’ self-image may feel guilty taking pleasure in a lot of reality TV programs as opposed to watching classical theater or the ballet.

I am not interested in this particular context. I don’t make value judgments, or subscribe to the high/low culture binary. It’s all deculture to me. But as should be clear in my first meditation on this, there is such a thing as a guilty pleasure. But taking pleasure in what things exactly?

In the aforementioned post I confessed to an attraction to and an appreciation for evil characters in anime. Here the guilty pleasure is thinking dirty thoughts about 2d females in fictional high school age. The freshman high school student in Japan is 16 years old. I will be 32 in less than 3 weeks.

Every year, it gets worse and worse. I get older and older, the girls stay the same age. I’m even attracted to a particular subset of 2d high school girl: the loli.

Like Izumi Sou, Konata’s dad, I too, am also a lolicon. However, according to the source of all that is good and true, there’s nothing wrong with me:

Some level of sexual attraction to late adolescents is common among adults of all sexual orientations.^[8] The term ephebophilia is used only to describe the preference for mid to late adolescent sexual partners, not the mere presence of some level of sexual attraction.

I’m actually married to an older woman (though I admit she looks younger than I am and is often described as more girly than womanly). But if there’s nothing clinically wrong with me (I am neither a pedophile nor an ephebophile), why do I feel guilt? A clinical psychosis would actually absolve me of guilt because it takes away my freedom. But I am well, and I am free. And I use this freedom to indulge my attraction through the consumption of media that allows for a certain level of wish-fulfillment: I get to pursue thinking dirty thoughts about these underage females.

While I get to see these characters in a large number of anime, and the experience is quite voyeuristic especially for slice-of-life shows watched in marathon sessions, I don’t feel as guilty as I do now. What’s different about now? I’ve discovered eroge, having started playing Fate/stay Night. The difference in the experience is that the eroge is so much more immersive.

I feel like I’m living with these girls. After hours and hours of play, which is weeks in ‘anime time’ is merely a day or two in the game. The frequent breaks the text-based medium allows also gives an added ‘lived-in’ impression. Mind you, at this point in the game, I have yet to encounter a hentai moment. So I’m really confronted with the guilt only freedom allows.

How so? It’s because I’m free to stop this at any point. I don’t have to pursue this pleasure. Only that I most probably will. It’s this exercise of freedom that makes me feel the guilt. Nobody’s forcing me to perform vile acts on these girls, as vile as the thoughts I have tell me I’m so ready to do.

I’ve theorized in the recent past that there are two broad categories of otaku behavior: the amassive, and the expressive. My immersion in Fate/stay Night has led me to some amassing activities:

These toys aren't cheap, hence some of the guilt.

Fraulein Revoltech Toshaka Rin (in previous photo, Revoltech Enoki Tomohide-sculpted Saber)

However, being the expressive person that I am, I put together the ff. images. Like I said, nobody’s forcing me to perform vile acts on these girls. I put these images here (NSFW) not because I underestimate your imagination of what I am capable of doing, only that I’m very fond of my own imagination thank you.

Click to Reveal [NSFW]

"Let's buy ALL Revoltech": Toshaka, Gurren-Lagann, Eva Unit-01 Test Type

Going beyond the impossible

The heavens are being pierced, WITH HIS DRILL!

←[99] SHAFT + School Rumble + Strawberry Panic. That’s the impression I got.

One half of the lead character binary is Kanako: lesbian, tall, tomboy, deretsun for Maria; only becoming insecure (tsun) once her homosexuality is put into question. Her character design and personality remind me of a cross between Yakumo and Tenma. Her external side is amiable, unconfident, pretty darn moe; her internal side is yuri. She contains both the lady-like grace of Yakumo and the horribly klutzy comical antics of Tenma. Her internal/external tendencies can reflect both Maria’s “split” personality and that pleasant Tenma/Yakumo proportion. Maria in fact breaks the fourth wall and calls her out for her lack of verbosity.

The other half of the duo is Maria, the trap. Without drawing needless parallels to Eri Sawachika, it seems established already that Maria is the seme and Kanako the uke. Maria’s façade is humorous enough now that the entire universe has been spoiled of the secret, though it’s the masculinity that is paradoxically accentuated by the feminine appearance, making him much more conniving and serpentine. In some ways he reminds me of Light - not overbearingly GAR but with enough boyishness to possess “best” (or worst?) of both gender.

What’s significant is that the viewer experiences the anime through Kanako - we see her internal monologues. By positioning the viewer “outside” of Maria, [s]he is effectively transformed into the incrementalist, the character that is revealed bit by bit. Reaction porn for some hopeful action porn? I think what this means in the long run is, unless SHAFT starts dealing out paradigm shifts and situating the viewer within Maria’s soliloquies, it will be expected of the viewer to find humor (1) in that incremental revealing of Maria’s secrets and (2) Kanako’s predictable reactions - all the super deformation is reserved for her. The anime, replete with Kanako-colored lenses, establishes a sort of Unlimited Poetic Justice Works: since all of Kanako’s yuri actions are laced with guilt, it’s only natural that we expect Maria to backlash with hypocritical masochism (HUH?).

Anyway, this show is really hilarious! Its comedy does not downplay at all the yuri, and even if you DO NOT WANT trap, you’re basically forced to temporarily forget about it because we’re observing Maria via Kanako. Kanako the flaming lesbian.

Final verdict: if you liked the characterizations in School Rumble, the yuri/catholic(?) themes in Strawberry Panic, and SHAFT’s crazyness, you will definitely enjoy Mariaholic. [note: I did not catch a lot of marimite in here - marimite isn't really even indirectly satired.]

BTW, 100^th post, dedicated to lolikitsune, mai dear waifu.

2.14x show.

Not as painful as Remember my Memories, but just as bad if not worse.

So this whole show turned out to be a bawfest about an angel. Who gave a fuck? I certainly didn’t.

» Continue reading this…

What better way to finish off a series of posts like this than to reminisce on my most awing anime experience of the year? On May 7th I woke up to see that Aria the Origination episodes 12 and 13 had been delivered to mplayer. I was nervous about my AP Calculus exam, so I figured I would watch some calming Aria and let it soothe me.

I always liked Aria, from the day I watched the first episode of the Animation more than a year earlier. I’d never for one moment, though, considered that it would break into my Top 10 list. My Top 10 list being riddled with such hits as… Interlude, Kannazuki no Miko, AIR, Loveless, and Saishuuheiki Kanojo.

I cried once during episode 12 of the Origination and I cried four times during episode 13. I cried when Akari cried, I cried when Akari cried again, I cried when Akari woke up the next morning, and I cried when she uttered the last line of the whole show:

“Chotto ureshii dake da yo.”

The moment I heard those words, I understood that Aria was my favorite show of all time. My Top 10 list crumbled like Teppelin, replaced with a single show upon a single pedestal. I cried like a mother at her daughter’s wedding when I heard those words, and then I went to school and kicked the shit out of that Calculus exam’s ass.

P.S. “Only two posts about Aria, lolikit?” Yeah, I could have made every one of these twelve posts be about this show. I tried hard not to. It was a grueling task, but I won in the end. V!

“But never mind any of that,” says Sekai earnestly, “let’s practice!”

Watching School Days was possibly the most pleasing anime experience of my life. It was a Saturday night, Memorial Day weekend; I was with a friend in a dark viewing room at Fanime. I, being a proficient aniblogger, knew the spoilers. He didn’t. The rest of the room didn’t.

I’d been prepping my friend all day, throwing “Nice [Noun]” references all over the place. Quoting the final scenes of School Days such that he wouldn’t be able to guess what I was hinting at, all the while piquing his curiosity.

I was sleep-deprived, I was cold, I was hungry.

And I marathoned that mother-fucker with my friend and the rest of the viewing room. It was one hell of a painful show, but every additional moment of Makoto dipfaggery brought me one step closer to hilaritygasm. I knew what was in store for him. No one else in the room did. People were getting up and leaving in disgust. By the time shit really started hitting the fan, the room was half-empty.

My friend was on the edge of his seat.

I had figuratively creamed myself at least ten times.

“This isn’t practice anymore.” - Sekai

“I feel like if I stay with you, the same thing will happen to me as happened to Sekai.” - Hikari

“I was reckless and impatient back then! I’m different now.” - Makoto

What’s not to love about a show in which your typical weak male lead actually makes decisions, and those decisions involve bedding every single girl in his school? Oh, and let’s not forget to mention impregnating them. Heh, the Bible Belt would love Makoto, and so did I! The answer to my question is “not a whole lot, if you’re sleep-deprived and meme-prone.”

Makoto’s head got its ride on a pleasant ship, and those remaining in the viewing room stood up and gave that mofo a standing ovation.

School Days got a 10/10 from me, just for that one night stand.