Arguably, this will keep fans like me, even if I watch and enjoy some of the contemporary (and popular shows, like K-ON!!), on the outside. Instead of looking forward to shows that appeal to my tastes (a lot of such shows were popular in the past; mostly robot shows and science fiction), I’ll find myself having to adjust my tastes more and more “to keep up” with that of the Japanese audience, if I want to remain interested in anime going forward.

I imagine this in terms of K-ON!! episode 16, wherein I get to be Azusa wanting music (anime) to be a certain way, to have some level of seriousness (so to speak) but instead become carried by the current of indolent cake-eating. Azusa CAN enjoy herself this way, and DOES (like I do enjoy K-ON!! a lot), but this isn’t what she wanted to begin with.

Jun-chan is even further removed, a near-complete outsider but interested in the light music club — like many casual anime viewers I’m acquainted with. They unfortunately wouldn’t get into the K-ON!! kinds of shows — and pretty much act like “tell me when there’s a new Gundam show again, or another TTGLI, or Samurai X, or Ghost in the Shell.” It’s quite a challenge explaining to them what I get out of cake-and-tea girl cartoons where “nothing” happens.

I understand that the Japanese anime industry doesn’t exist for me, much less for my acquaintances who are hardly even invested in it. I’m just sharing this moment when I feel like I understood something about where I am in the scheme of things — which is nowhere of consequence at all.

Lemme apply the technique it taught me.

If you watch the first season of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha backwards, it’s about two super-powered girls in a Class S relationship losing each other’s trust and eventually coming to blows.

Wait.

Sounds an awful lot like Huke’s masturbatory OVA.

I died a little inside

Well, putting that joker aside, let’s get to the meat of episode 4. The verdict? It was not spectacular. Nothing surprising happened, nothing on the level of episode 3. Or… I should say that I in particular wasn’t surprised.

Because I was expecting realism.

And I got realism.

Namely, I was greeted with an implicit retelling of Kannazuki no Miko’s most valuable takeaway message. Himeko worries about Chikane following the KnM episode 8 rape “plot device”, puzzling over whether her best-friend-turned-sexual-assailant is an angel or a devil. She eventually concludes that Chikane is just a sixteen-year-old girl.

Now, Morishima Haruka isn’t 16. (And maybe she’s not a girl! We don’t know for sure, do we?)

But the trope applies.

When she breaks down in the hotel, crying about something so seemingly pointless—why hasn’t TJ confessed again? doesn’t he love her? wtf, mate?—rather than shake my head and sigh, I felt for her (and even more for TJ being subjected to the befuddling rant). One might smack her on the head and say, “Yo! Haruka! Maybe he’s not trying to be overbearing? Maybe the fact that he’s spending his Christmas eve with you is enough of an indication?”

But self-confidence is a big player in reality.

And ‘first-time’ feelings are scary.

It’s understandable that Haruka feel outside her element, and be worried, uncomfortable. What she was thinking by dragging TJ to a hotel is… well, that ED article I linked about 16-year-old girls might provide some answers. I wouldn’t shout “slut!”—or, I would, as lolikit, but not here. A time and a place for everything.

We can pontificate to our wits’ end as to whether all the dog stuff is reasonable/cute/weird/whatever, but in the end we see that this is not mere puppy love. Ten years down the line, the two are “rabu rabu” and still roleplaying.

This show GMH.

I hope future arcs live up to the stellar expectations set by this one.

Except apparently there’s some lame blog called chaosderivative or something and it’s run by some third-rate snob who thinks it’s his place to call Amagami SS ‘crass.’ I did pick that up.

But moving on—someone somewhere said that the cafeteria scene warranted more attention than the kneepit-kissing scene. Yeah it did. Because while the kneepit-kissing scene is just a mashup for Clannad’s PE storage room (with the obligatory nod to Jason) and Kimikiss’s Mao-knee-kissing scene, the debacle in the school cafeteria is, as far as I’ve seen new territory.

From a conversation I shared with lelangir earlier,

6:59:51 PM LK: the fucking cafeteria scene shit man
7:00:06 PM LK: that’s legit one of the hottest things i’ve seen in a ¬hentai
7:00:39 PM LK: fuck that
7:00:47 PM LK: that was legit one of the hottest things i’ve seen.

When I watched the first episode of this show, I believe I meeled something like “I AM DISAPPOINT.” And here I am now, certain that Amagami SS will be my favorite this season if not this year. And why? Because I am projecting humanity upon the characters.

Maybe chaostangent is right when he says that the characters are [barely even] archetypes. Maybe all the win in this episode was unintentional. Maybe the cafeteria scene was just the Japanese being Japanese—therefore, weird. Maybe the cafeteria scene is a fluke.

But I don’t want it to be.

So I asked myself: if these were humans, real living breathing eating sleeping loving hating crying laughing humans, what would they be thinking during this (more than fairly) bold roleplay session in the school cafeteria?

Think about it.

For Morishima to play along, to acquiesce. She’s not a total idiot. She’s not just looking for an interesting meal.

For Tachibana to step up, to instigate. He’s not a total idiot. He’s not just trying to make lunchtime interesting.

Allow me to don my Captain Obvious face: there’s something more going on here!

It’s that something more that makes Haruka restlessly kick her legs as she lies on her couch thinking about lunch. It’s that something more that makes her shiver, it’s that something more that makes her giggle until she starts sobbing. This is leaps and bounds beyond the ‘deep insights into the female’s thoughts’ we see in other shows of a similar genre: usually some irrational brooding, or, less frequently, simpleminded excitement.

What I see is a feeling that can cause an upstanding and respected member of the fairly rigid Japanese high school culture to put her arms behind her back and play along with an extremely sexualized hostage spoon-feeding fantasy in the middle of her school’s cafeteria.

I might call it “thrill,” something I don’t think is realistically represented often if at all in anime.

And maybe I’m a tool of my own psyche.

But I am thrilled for Amagami SS.

I just saw this and figured I’d try it out. Let’s see, what’s that show I marathoned in the last 24 hours?

うみものがたり～あなたがいてくれたコト～ (2009-06-24, Summer)

Details
Genre: adventure, magic
Theme: mahou shoujo
Length: 12
Duration: 24m
Resources:

Description
The story centers on Marin and Urin, two "pure" sisters who live alongside the fish in the sea, but yearn to be in the world beyond the water and above ground. One day, a beautiful ring falls in the middle of the sea, and Marin and Urin retrieve it. The two decide to leave their waterbound world for the first time to deliver the ring. After an arduous journey, they come across an isolated island where a high school girl named Kanon lives. The encounter between Marin and Kanon and the maiden of the sea and the maiden of the skies and awakens a hidden power as the world is threatened by an enveloping darkness.

via ANN

---

Neato. Was it good? Eh, talk to my Melative account.

Melative? When did Melative become such a frequent word in my unfortunately limited vocabulary? I dunno. I started using the service just the other day, and it’s pretty freakin’ sweet. Not the noob-friendliest web UI, but the internals are awesome.

I’m loving it.

Someone just lost my vote.

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 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! ]]

I saw the challenge of the Ultimate Post call-out, and felt the need to show digiboy that picking strong allies is only one factor in deciding the victor. He got Baka-Raptor, he got ghostlightning—formidable opponents, to be sure, but not the best team players. I used science to determine which trinity of anime bloggers would form the best gattai and, swallowing my pride, called up three old enemies: Jason Miao, Sixten, and Pete Zaitcev.

Surprisingly, they answered my call—Jason seems to have gotten over the fact that my sense of humor uses his as its urinal, Sixten seems to have overcome the trauma dealt him when I told him to remove the “amateur” qualifier from his About page, and Zaitcev seems to have finally accepted the truth about my Night Switch series (that it’s not serious, and thusly not a left-wing alarmist allegory)—and here they are, full of fight, ready to put digiboy in his place.

Please, listen to their song.

J.C. Staff’s A Certain Anime Blog Post, Twittered

In 2008, when J.C. Staff announced that they had acquired the rights to do a movie adaptation of Kazuma Kamachi’s A Certain Anime Blog Post (TOARU ANIME NO BLOG), there was much rejoicing in the aniblogosphere. Here’s an idea of how pumped people were for this thing:

“just read the 6 chapters in one go, pretty good stuff. too bad it’s only one novel…” – boo

“I mean, wow Jason.
I still feel like Kamachi and Haimura should reconcile and continue work on Index, give it another 24 episodes, and that might fix the uneven narrative. They could even shoe in a Kuroko arc!
This new story’s lame in comparison.” – Myssa Rei

“Needs more Index. Cutest one there. No way to have TOARU Anything when Kamachi eliminated all partner artists with penises.” – Haesslich

“Riiiiight. Specifically pick up on the gay innuendo that’s used as a gag. And keep repeating Touma penetrating Stiyl jokes because THAT’S what J.C. Staff was getting at. Don’t worry, though, I still love you jason :)” – Beowulf Lee

Yes, these are my readers… and they weren’t particularly enthralled with the prospect of Blog Post, no. But other bloggers were. Ones more into the whole meta thing. And ones more into J.C. Staff (which really should have folded after Takasu passed up on the Minorin buffet in episode 18). And that’s why Author and Sixten are joining me today as we pick apart the Blog Post movie.

First, to clear up some misconceptions people had about the movie prior to its release in Japan, because these were rampant.

4. J.C. Staff announced a movie, so it’s going to be high quality.

The truth of the matter is that you can only have so many minutes of people looking at a computer screen before the audience gets bored. If people were watching basketball on their computer screens, it might be an interesting exercise in breaking the fourth wall. You could have a show about basketball, but it’s actually about people watching basketball—you could get into the mentality of sports fans, and a lot of people would relate to that.

But no. The Blog Post book is about just that, a blog post. There’s nothing interesting about that. I mean, a fanservice blog at least! Melonpan! But it’s just a blog.

And you can only have so many minutes of that, so they chose to make a movie instead of a TV show.

3. J.C. Staff announced a movie, so it’s going to be at least an hour long.

Nope. It’s almost as if the director, after having spent the entire budget on tacos and lapdances—and subsequently putting the animation studio out of employment temporarily—, wrote in to the producers suggesting that they steal footage from other anime rather than rely on J.C. Staff’s, well, staff.

According to Heisei Democracy, a month before Blog Post hit the theaters, JASRAC smelled blood and cracked down on the already-sorry production. Half of the major animation studios whose content had wound up in Blog Post sued, and so half the movie was simply cut. It’s twenty-seven minutes long… almost short enough for a normal TV spot.

2. J.C. Staff set the release date as May 2010, so they gave themselves a long time to make sure the film would be a masterpiece.

For those who read the original light novel, you know there’s some magic even in something as mundane as a story about an animeblog post. Namely, Kamachi described several bits of web technology that simply didn’t exist back in the day. J.C. Staff—always concerned with realism—decided to consult with Google and subsequently scheduled the film to come out only after Chrome’s speed test videos proved that yes, the internet IS faster than a potato gun.

1. There would be graphs.

I am guilty of this one, I admit—I anticipated an anime about a Japanese anime blogger to include at least one or two graphs. Unfortunately, it seems graphs fell out of fashion in the Japanese-language blogosphere shortly after Spring 2006, and we’ve been following in the footsteps of mediocrity for the past four years.

I would insert a graph of graph decline here, but eh. I need to be trendy.

Well, let’s get down to business, shall we?

Sixten: before Jason scares off all our readers—or worse, encourages people to not watch the film—it should be said that even though this is slice-of-life (bordering on iyashikei, no less), there is still that authentic J.C. Staff tsundere flavor. If you’ve considered selling your soul to J.C. Staff as I did, you can’t afford to miss this movie. I know it’s hard to compete with Haruhi’s disappearance, especially when that movie made it clear that it was serious with Windows 95 footage, but I think true fans such as myself may well end up remembering Blog Post as the best anime of 2010.

Author: I also have a brief note before we get deep into the bones of it. Evirus noted something interesting in an e-mail reply to my post about Pizza Hut:

“Did you wonder about all those fuzzy black squares in Blog Post? I hear the majority of the budget came in the form of Pizza Hut sponsorship; once the news with JASRAC broke that poor director was forced to censor all the Pizza Hut boxes in his show for fear of incriminating the chain.”

“Poor director?”

He’s just lucky he didn’t get AIDS from all those strippers. In any event, you will no longer be confused by the fuzzy black squares!

UPDATE: we’ve updated the post to use screenshots from the uncensored version. Er, the Pizza Hut is still gone, but the black squares are, too! No trace of the pizza chain remains.

lolikitsune: No, stop there, guys. We’re at 2330 words, and the limit is 2500. I know Author is a man of concision, but if you drag Sixten into a digestive discussion this could go on forever. Thank you, all of you.

So the only other person who participated in the contest was digitalboy. He picked the team of ghostlightning, Baka-Raptor, and Shin. He thought he would win. I talked to him yesterday—he still didn’t know I was participating, one day before the deadline—and he told me that baaaawwww, his buddies abandoned him.

I suggested that he publish the current working draft for his ultimate post, and he laughed.

I was thinking about making th epost called ‘Fuck You Guys, I’ll Make My Own Damn Ultimate Post’ and then talk about why these kind of projects fail lol – digiboy

Protip to digi, and, well, to everyone.

The secret to success with group projects such as these is to not rely on anyone else. ;)

But almost all of the criticism leveraged against Aiko and her actions, nay, presence in True Tears is made within the paradigm of bad harem anime. People wanted True Tears to be a typical love polygon anime, they wanted Shinichiro to be a chick magnet for stupid reasons, and so on. They expected Aiko to be more or less, but not to be what she was: a wrench in everything. Something Shinichiro hadn’t planned on, but not a windfall. Something that threw him off. Something that threw off his audience.

The problem with Aiko is that everything about her is awkward.

Not that she as a character is awkward (though she might be).

But that she as a part of the show is awkward.

No one was ready for True Tears to be so honest, so genuine. Sometimes, your best friend’s girlfriend falls in love with you. And you’re like, “well, shit.” And you do exactly what Shinichiro did and refuse to let it become an issue. And she fades into Bolivia. And when the story’s over, and you’re happily sharing gentle days with a girl you love, you might remember the time she forced a kiss on you—but probably not.

Rest in oblivion, Aiko.

You were honest. And Shinichiro was honest. And True Tears was good.

No one—not even I—was ready.

But I understand you now.