we're finally notdotq anymore

I watched the first three episodes of Lamune more than a year ago and was bored to tears. This year, my older brother asked me if I’d seen it, he thought it would be my thing. I told him it had bored me, and he asked me “what about Aria?” I stood there dumbfounded for a bit, and then I marathoned Lamune.

The series benefited from the nostalgia of having seen the first three episodes previously. Oh, and it was just good.

I loved close to every moment of the show. The summer imagery resonated strongly with me (being a lover of AIR for purely atmospheric reasons), and the relationship between Ken and Nanami was extremely sweet. I’ve ranted about Lamune twice (once here, and once in CCY-senpai’s comments), so I won’t go too into it now, but yeah. Love that show to pieces.

The other day I read some post on IcyStorm’s blog that mentioned Clannad’s “themes” being better than those of Key or AIR, Kyoto Animation’s two other Key adaptations. My response to that seemingly reckless statement was to take a moment to really think about what Clannad’s themes were.

IcyStorm later pointed out to me that he was referring to the value of family and friends, but I think that’s secondary to what I found for myself, which was that hope never dies. “Hope is like a dandelion—it grows back from the same stalk in the spring when it dies.”

And I don’t think that this theme is unique to Clannad; I think we see it in AIR and in Kanon as well. In AIR, after a thousand years, the curse was finally lifted. In Kanon, a new branch grows from the tree whence Ayu fell, and we see a fox—presumably Makoto/related to Makoto—walking around. So on one level, I disagreed with IcyStorm.

But execution still matters, right?

And the Clannad movie portrays this theme better than any of Kyoto Animation’s adaptations, I believe: when Tomoya is finally dragged from his apartment, and made to face the future (“this is why people make lies,” etc.), the future being, in this case, his young daughter. He realizes he doesn’t need to be the man his father was, that he can be a new man of his own and that there’s hope for his family. The moment on the train platform literally moved me to tears. Tears, needless to say, of joy.

You did your best, Tomoya.

Defying all odds, Code Geass R2 stopped sucking long enough during its final episode to pretend that it had been decent the whole time. It had a strong finale, and managed to do a lot of ass-covering. The moment in anime here isn’t so much in the contents of the episode, though, as it is in cherishing the memories of 50 episodes of black swans, memes, and angry pseudo-intellectual bloggers who kept reassuring us that everything was bright (believe it or not, dumb plot twists are dumb no matter where you get with them!).

Code Geass R2 Episode 25 to me signified the end of an era and was extremely nostalgic. No matter whether you love the show or hate the show, as someone pointed out a while back, it provokes a strong reaction in you, and it has sculpted a significant portion of the aniblogosphere.

Dumb though the show arguably was, it was incredibly influential for us more moronic anibloggers, and therefore its ending has impact.

Love and peace and rock my song,
-Dr. lolikitsune.

P.S. Code Geass embodies lolikitean romance.

True Tears was surprisingly good in the production quality department, but that didn’t save it from failing hard as a show. Thankfully it redeemed itself in the last episode (or was it second to last? Who cares?) when Noe slipped and fell out of a tree, Ayu-style.

You all know what I think of Ayu.

Anyway, as I like to refer to the moment, “Noe fell out of a tree, epic lulz ensued.”

I’m going to kick this off with something unimaginative.

Code Geass Episode 15.

“I bought a house in Australia. But to go to Australia, we need to take a plane. And you won’t fit into carry-on, C2… so I’ll make you compact!” – Mao, Code Geass Episode 15

I know that macros of this have probably deluged /a/, but I watched this show unawares of its memeportance and I laughed my ass off at this set of lines so hard it wasn’t funny for very long. No but seriously, I’m surprised that “I’ll make you compact” didn’t become the new “I’ll turn you into junk.” Actually, maybe it did, and I am just blissfully unawares. In any event, epic lulz were epic as Mao’s dialogue ra/i/ded my chest and filled it with pain.

I’ll be participating in CCY-senpai’s 12 Moments project this year. I would have participated last year as well but I didn’t blog between August 2007 and March 2008. Ah well. Late to the party, but that’s fine by me.

Over the next twelve days, I will post once per day, doing a run-down of my favorite twelve moments in anime of this year. To qualify as “this year,” I just need to have seen the anime in question this year; its vintage doesn’t matter.

Here are a few rules I’ll be following for my posts:
1. nothing over 500 words
2. no links
3. minimum images
4. minimum metabloggery
5. no asshole jokes
6. no trolling

Hopefully these guidelines enforce some commonality between my twelve posts, and will keep the posts friendly and in the holiday spirit (rather than being in my usual hateful style). Oh, and there will obviously be lots of spoilers.