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your thoughts have summoned this post from hell so, as i pray... Home > Archives > 2010 > June > 27 President Aria and the K-on! CompanyAria is the show that everyone loves to love… if they know about it and give it a shot, typically. There are some outliers[1], but most people who watch it seriously end up with it high on their lists of favorites. But Aria receives a weird kind of love, an austere love—few people who love it rave about it. Sure, you’ve seen posts here and there in the ‘sphere talking about it, but the going is sparse, and many of those posts boil down to “zomg I love it, it’s so beautiful, words can’t do it justice so I won’t try.” If you’re a regular around here, and were before I “stopped being an anime blogger” (thanks, Scamp!), you’ll know I’m one of the few who talks about Aria a lot. But more likely, you’ve seen the name a few times, know the premise of the show, and little else. I mean… in all honesty, there’s little else to Aria, save the experience of watching it. It’s slice of life at its most distilled consistency, meaning that outside the premise there’s very little to be said about its contents. They just kind of happen. But wait—there’s probably one other thing you know about Aria. And that is that its titular character is an ugly, fat, noisy cat who does hideous semi-anthropomorphized dances and shakes his x-shaped bootyhole all over the place while shrieking noises formerly only ever heard in bad Kyoto Animation Key adaptation anime: “puinyuu,” &c.. Don’t get me wrong. I love President Aria to death. But I didn’t use to. And that’s actually a trend I’ve seen amongst lovers of Aria. Initially, they’ll say “it’s good, even though Aria (the cat) is horrendous.” Eventually they’ll be oohing and aahing at the sight of the lovable white blob. Did I just say blob? Let me introduce another concept: moeblob. You know the kind… the weaker of the two Hiiragi sisters from Lucky Star, Ayu from Kanon, Hideaki Anno, etc. And you know them from K-on!: Yui, Mio, Azusa… They make retarded noises, their maturity is about at the level of a sea urchin’s, they can’t perform basic problem solving, their presence alone makes you want to huggle[2] them, and so on. So what happened to Aria (the cat) as Aria (the show) progressed? The blob became less of a blob and more of a, let’s say, friend. After fifty-three episodes and an OVA, he’s kinda just there, and we’re used to him, and we’re maybe even kind of interested in his struggles and tribulations. He operates much like the rest of Aria’s cast, albeit he starts out at a worse place. Would we care about the climax of the show if we hadn’t been watching Akari for fifty episodes? Would we care about Aria (the cat) if we hadn’t been watching him for fifty episodes? There’s a saying: “I used to hate mushrooms; then they grew on me.” Gross, but fitting. Aria (the cat) is a mushroom. The moeblobs of K-on! are mushrooms. I’ll admit it was hard for me to get past the first few episodes of stupidity and retardation, but I forced myself to sit through it. Every episode it became more bearable. This isn’t just a case of the senses being dulled: I became more invested in the characters’, well, characters; in their daily lives and encounters and attempts and failures. And by the time I got to the episode in which they’re all failing at their various Sundays in “A Winter Day,” I cared. They’d grown on me. Is it a fault of K-on! that its cast is a bunch of foetuses with head problems? Probably. Is it a fault of the viewer to dismiss the show at first brush due to said fault? I wouldn’t say so, necessarily, though a scathing commenter such as Owen might unabashedly bash on the dismissive viewer. But I would say it’s fairly rewarding to see a slice-of-life show through and really get in bed with the characters (I mean this in a nonsexual manner). I’m a few episodes into K-on!!, and I don’t know if it’s just better than the first season or if the phenomenon I’ve outlined in this post is simply working its wonders. I’m having fun with those kagayake-ing girls and their growth. [[ I felt the need to write this in defense of K-on! after declaiming against it quite vehemently to my friends less than a month ago. I felt that showing a similarity with Aria—my favorite show—would show my sincerity. I hope you all understand that I am not trolling. Cheers! ]] Footnotesthese notes are like lelouch's head to the boot of this post's suzaku |
it is moist & delicious meta and it's not even a lie! 18 ResponsesLeave a Comment |
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RyanA said:
LOL, “HUGGLES” … man, mushroom comparison is lol, but.. yea, it takes time to get comfortable with some characters.
lolikitsune said:
Dude you have no idea how moe mushrooms can be, I’ve got some growing on my monitor and they’re *squeeeeeeeeee*
RyanA said:
I cut up mushrooms and eat them… with steak (:
dm said:
I realized the other day that one’s take on K-On probably corresponded to whether one can tolerate Yui or not. Sawa-chan, Mio (when she’s not being used for barnacle-bait, she’s actually not bad — anyone who can write lyrics about wanting to write a love-letter with a calligraphy brush, but being stuck with a ballpoint pen is worth paying attention to), just aren’t as charming as Akari. But Yui isn’t as charming as President Aria’s litter-box/
lolikitsune said:
LOL, well said bro
lolikitsune said:
I mean it’s funny because Yui really is just Aria but noisier and can play a guitar.
Pip said:
Still a troll. KTHX
lolikitsune said:
Fuck you pips
kigamoosh said:
I’d argue that it’s fair to give a higher tolerance for uselessness / bumbling idiocy to an animal character than a human one. (I’ve only seen a few eps of K-On so pardon me if I overgeneralized, but Yui seemed completely incompetent at even the most basic survival requirements.)
Point: There’s a line where awkward cuteness becomes annoying idiot, and that line is drawn much shorter for animals than humans. Or maybe it’s just screentime – would you feel the same if Aria got as much screentime as Yui?
lolikitsune said:
You’re definitely right. I mean—I point out as a flaw that K-on!’s cast is essentially Aria (the cat). I don’t point out as a flaw that Aria (the show) has Aria (the cat) as a character. Of course the two are not equivalent, and I’m not trying to make it seem like they are. I’m merely developing a theory of moeblob slice-of-life…
Aria (the cat) is almost the ultimate moeblob, really. In a way Yui is too competent to compete, shockingly. But then as you say she is a human. And Aria is a cat.
Oh well.
Were Aria the main character of Aria, with focus percentages rivaling Yui’s (and I say focus and not screentime because to be fair, Aria IS on screen most of the time!), the show would doubtless be worse than K-on!.
lolikitsune said:
In case this wasn’t clear, by the way, I’ve not become a mindless slave of the show helplessly extolling its virtues. I am interested in reconciling my gradually growing fondness for the show with my distaste for much of its aesthetic, and I found Aria (the cat) to be a pretty good liaison. Hope that makes sense.
ghostlightning said:
I appreciate this post a lot, because I know it too well. I give off the impression (or used to, in any case) that I liked everything, but nothing can be further than the truth. I am not inclined to like moe, being a science fiction (particularly robot) anime fan, but I certainly like it now.
True story: I didn’t even really like Gundam so much until 2009.
I too, would agree with placing K-ON! within the tradition of Aria, and (even if not wholly within). Both are stories of days spent working towards, or not working towards graduation.
lolikitsune said:
Heh, fun stuff.
You know how I hate categories and how useless they tend to be? Sometimes I enjoy them. Like when I can use something broad like “the daijoubu story” to encompass everything from Kanon 2006 to World Destruction.
Or when I can say that K-on! and Angel Beats are the same damn thing.
Martin said:
S’funny, my opinion of these two series isn’t all that different from yours. The first time I watched Aria I honestly thought “what the hell is that ugly thing?” but by the end of the first season he was just part of the furniture and I didn’t think any more of it.
The reaction K-On! gets mystifies me even now. I mean, people really HATE it. I don’t get it. The worst you should think is “what a boring waste of time.” and watch something else instead. The show is so devoid of substance there’s not enough in there to actually *do* anything to offend anyone. right?
When I have a bad day at work I get home, make something to eat, pour myself a cold beer and watch an episode of K-On. It makes me laugh, doesn’t make me think too hard and as a result the day sucks a bit less. How can that possibly be a bad thing?
Incidentally, Aria is good for that too, for subtly different reasons. But I enjoy both shows because, well, I enjoy them. Screw the haters…if their jobs sucked as hard as mine, they’d need some lulz too. :P
lolikitsune said:
That is exactly what Aria is—it’s something else, too, maybe, but it’s certainly that—and I think that’s part of why there’s not a whole lot to be said for it.
Alar said:
You grew on me, Flak. <3 And I don't think I'll ever be able to unstick you.
lolikitsune said:
d’awww :3
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