Hirasawa Yui is no Mizunashi Akari, but her love song to Azusa is most certainly an aria.

My relationship with K-ON! has been a complicated one.

It’s been an interesting ride since my initial derision of the 4koma-inspired iyashikei series about foetal high school girls eating cake and occasionally picking up instruments, but it has ultimately been a rewarding one.

Aquamarine tears returned as the girls graduated.

There are so many gripping moments in the final episode of K-ON! that it would be impossible to list them all. But there are definitely words that will stay with me for a long time, Sawako’s “how could I possibly erase this” being foremost among them.

Is K-ON! a favorite? Yes.

Is it in the top 10? I don’t know. I did away with rankings when Aria the Origination ended.

But Yui and Nodoka exchanging their secret handshake, Azusa turning to follow her bandmates with her eyes and running into a wall, Sawako’s fretting during the ceremony, a failed game of telephone, Yui’s relaxing metaphors… who would have thought that ultimately Yui would prove the best rhetor of Houkago Tea Time?

It’s the stuff of beauty.

It’s “wonderful”—and that’s what’s so wonderful about it.

Tomorrow morning, Azusa will wake up, greet President Ton-chan, and head downstairs to lift the storefront blinds. But it isn’t time for “her” keionbu, it isn’t time for “her” Aqua. Because she, unlike Akari, is not alone.

The rest of HTT will be with her forever.

“We’ll be forever friends.”

Another mythic line to add to the collection.

P.S.

The world is wonderful in the eyes of wonderful people. – Alicia Florence

And the Phoenix Wright knock-off minigame.

Didn’t something like this happen in the aniblogosphere recently?

internet games are scary—they hit so close to the mark sometimes

If you like things nice and Rule14′d, or if you like hacking and internet drama, or if you like cybering with old men who get turned on by phonographs, or if you like Phoenix Wright, then I suggest that thou getst thee to a Paypallery.

Seriously, it’s great fun.

And finally, to the shits who are thinking, “what? MONEY?! Where’s the free demo?”, you can still play Forumwarz Episode 1 for free. The Crotch Zombie fellows are good people, and their business model is more than fair.

There’s something magical about the summer
The way the clouds look like fire,
and the sky’s so dark in comparison
The normal green of nature glows, fades to yellow
You know, that raincoat yellow you never see out there,
It’s there in the hues of summer

And a sky so wide—I don’t see it here
I’ve seen it twice, and it blew my mind both times

I wrote an essay about it, you know… about AIR, and summertime bliss
It was the first A I got in AP Language & Comp
It was the first time I put into words
Why I like AIR
The atmosphere, the sounds and the sights
It’s not about the huge gaping eyes
Or the gargantuan chins
Or the moe noises, or the rainbow hair
It’s not about the sick girls and it’s not about the words or the story

Yukito became a crow? What the fuck man, that’s shit
I couldn’t give a fuck about his scars or the past
Reminiscing, it makes me emo, why would he do it
Why would the creators do it
AIR was shit
Its plot was shit
Its characters—what characters

(I did this with Kanon and Lucky Star, Kyoto Animation you are whores)

But that’s not important because despite Owen’s hateful prodding
I know that I like AIR, and I know why, and it’s totally subjective
There’s no way for me to be wrong
Because it’s my aesthetic and I’m not forcing it on anyone

AIR glistens in my past, in Tahoe, in the summer
Every blue sky, every nostalgic moment, every bright day

I remember the beauty.

Majime na Lolikit

In July 2005, I went to Lake Tahoe. I had seen AIR earlier in the year (while it was airing), and happened to be listening to some tracks from it on my iPod as my father’s car turned the first bend that granted us a view of the lake. I think it was Aozora playing, or maybe Natsukage—I looked down at that lake, that glimmering blue body of water, and then up at the sky and saw that the clouds looked nothing like anything I’d seen in meatspace before.

I’m not a huge science person, nor am I very observant despite calling myself a writer, so I don’t know why the clouds were so different over Tahoe. I also don’t know how the brain works; how do we make connections? In what order do our experiences influence each other?

I don’t know any of that stuff, but that was the best trip of my life.

I spent hours lying on a pine beach, Natsukage in one ear through my headphones and in the other through the reality of where I was. It was summertime. It was buzzing. There were shadows everywhere, and lights everywhere, and vivid color. People were happy. I was happy. I saw some meadows around Tahoe, fields of red and yellow and purple. I was in awe.

Eventually, I stopped needing cheap thrills from my anime. In fact, twenty minutes ago I yawned my way through Mnemosyne. Maybe I’m desensitized or maybe it’s just not interesting to see all this crap thrown at me. I much prefer something more mellow, something more gentle. Aria enlightened me, in a sense. I’m not trying to sound elitist right now—I’m not going to say that Aria is the apex of anime and everyone should subscribe to it. Just, it changed my mind. About a lot of things. Opened me up to new perspectives. That’s an enlightenment.

A couple weeks ago, I blazed through Lamune. I started from the beginning. The first three episodes benefited from the feeling of nostalgia I had as I chomped through them.

All the symbols of summer were there. Watermelons, watering hoses, sunflowers, green and yellow, dazzling skies. Lamune lacked one key thing AIR had, though: the sound. If Lamune had favored me with the notes of Kawa or Enishi or Niji or Natsukage, I might have come on the spot. Instead, I was just moved.

Wait.

I just said that Lamune lacked something AIR had, yet the title of this post would indicate that Lamune was better! LOLIKIT YOU’RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE

-sorry for that, I’m kinda tired as I’m writing this

But here’s the deal: Lamune failed to deliver something AIR delivered. But you know all that shit AIR did wrong, all that dumb shit I mentioned before? The nonsense plot, the stupid twists, the retard girls? Somehow Lamune didn’t do that. Lamune didn’t fall into those pitfalls. If it had had something to rival AIR’s soundtrack, I might like it more than Aria, even.

Why did I like it so much?

The atmosphere. The summer.

Why did I like it for those reasons?

AIR.

AIR changed the way I look at the world; it changed the way I interpret visual cues (like that summer imagery shit, and colors). That’s also an enlightenment. I couldn’t be more grateful to it. But still, it’s shit in comparison to what it opened my eyes to: the real world summer. And that, combined with my new-found love for boredom (hurray Aria!), led me to love Lamune. The sweetness of the characters’ emotions and the lack of generic anime idiocy and harem ‘comedy’ in Lamune also added to my enjoyment, but really, it’s all there in the summer.

The colors.

The imagery.

The sounds and nostalgia they evoked. Woow I’m fail otaku. I’m going to shut up soon because this is about to be 1000 words written inside the WordPress posting box. No images, no jokes, no abbreviation tags, no links, minimal formatting. What the hell is this blog coming to? All I know is that I want to go back to Tahoe, where there’s a wide sky. Word.

I woke up two episodes later, went back to the hotel room, cleaned up, and headed for AMVs, which were much more exciting. At this point, I was super low energy (and probably kind of lame) so I headed back to the room to catch a nap. … this was everyone’s plan, it seemed, because there was barely room for me to walk for all the bodies on the floor. Soooo I got on my comp and blogged Friday and Saturday.

After blogging, I sort of hung around and talked to people for an hour or two. Then grabbed breakfast, hit up the dealer’s room, tried to watch more AMVs/anime, and I either succeeded or failed epicly because and completely just forgot I met up with CCY and his friend at noon. Author wasn’t there (fucker!!) and no one else approached me with my sign (sigh…). There was some good punching. We chatted a bit, wandered a bit, and then next thing I knew I was waking up for the webcomics panel at 3 P.M. I know that sounds suspicious, but I promise it’s not what it sounds like. It sucked because Dom wasn’t there. What.

Somehow the rest of the evening burned away—I think we watched some Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Dennou Coil, and I think I fell asleep a couple times. Eventually I went to the room to nap only to run into a super-awkward situation involving a male friend and his female friend. It was lulz, though, because I’m good at making awkward awkwardly funny. An hour or two later, I hit up a pizza place nearby with the guy who watched School Days with me. After that, we went to Damn You Internets…

… is what I’d LIKE to say, but it was canceled. It turns out that maybe the convention center doesn’t like having watermelons spun on against their floors. Remember, with every full revolution of your fist, your arm grows one step longer. Instead of Damn You Internets, we cracked Nice Boat jokes while in line for the second Gainax/TTGL panel. The panel itself may or may not have been cool; I went to pick out Jason Miao but was easily distracted by the opportunity to watch AMVs across the hallway. It’s kind of sad because I don’t even like AMVs that much. Then again, I don’t even like TTGL that much, and that’s not even me talking about my feelings for Gainax. FLCL? You really don’t want me going there.

After some AMVs degenerated into Anime Hell, we went across the hall again, this time to the Karaoke Gong show, which was being run by Tommy. Yes, that Tommy. The Tommy who confiscated my sign at AOD 2006. The Tommy whose karaoke contest we trolled at AOD 2007. My friend lolikappa/Duk/Sunshine was signed up to do Shiraishi Minoru. I was lulzing at the prospect until two people before my friend did Shiraishi Minoru. At that point I decided that Minoru was corporate bastardization in a similar vein to Haruhi, and I took down the minoru-dan.dotq.org site in a fit of self-righteous fanboy fury.

My friend’s “Ore no Wasuremono” was total fail but it was total fail done right. Before singing, he dedicated the song to Tommy. Before the judges said their bits, Tommy told my friend that he had come a long way from the little boy with the lolicon sign. I /facepalmed but my friend on stage—and my friends in the audience—called out to me. I stood.

“Take out the sign!” they said. “We know you have it with you!”

I had previously put it in my pocket. A suspicious not-so-obvious troll staff member had told me to take it off, so I had. I had, however, made a grievous mistake right after returning from pizza. I had left it in the room. My pocket had no sign. I decided to go out in a blaze: I would empty all my pockets, rip off my clothes—”I HAVE NO SIGN!!!”

But. It was not to be.

After emptying one pocket, I found in the other my schedule for the convention. My schedule, which had been used as scratch paper by KigaMoosh at our Create That Anime! panel. My schedule, which had “FURRY!!!!” scrawled across the back. Changing my plans in a flash, I carefully unfolded the piece of paper and then held it out.

“I HAVE BECOME A NEW MAN!” I shouted. Tommy laughed. The audience—what of it could see the new improvised sign—went wild. It was awesome. My friends couldn’t contain themselves and burst out. I bit my lip to keep myself from cracking up. I was almost crying—I couldn’t be the lolicon I wanted to be. I had to become a furry.

Then some other shit went down, and I ended up going to bed at midnight.

That was a good day somehow, even if I don’t remember what the fuck happened for most of it.

BY THE BY HERE’S WHAT I BOUGHT AT THE CONVENTION:

ARIA FIGURINES

PRESIDENT ARIA

FINALLY, in response to some things said earlier:

Zeroblade:

Also, your con posts are composed of incoherent rambling.

No; they’re composed of sleep deprivation, euphoria, and enthusiasm. Incoherent rambling is the resulting structure, not the entirety of the composition.

IcyStorm:

Punch Miao for me. He’s been soiling the name "Jason."

Fucking Jason.

Os:

You noob. You dont go to cons to watch episodes of anything.

Shut the fuck up, Mr. I Don’t Know The Joy Of Enjoying Things With Others.

Jared:

So I herd you liek me

FUCK YEAH JARED

P.S. I will write about Monday ASAP. Also, I have new shit to disseminate regarding Damn You Internets. Also, next year I will panel as much as possible. It turns out that our Create That Anime! panel was the funniest and possibly best of all the events this year, so clearly we should do more of it

P.P.S. The only two things that would have made the weekend better than it was: more people watching School Days Saturday night, and Damn You Internets not sucking.

P.P.P.S. I should blog anime again sometime.

I started off the morning with failing to blog about Friday (note how Friday’s post was written mostly on Sunday—the same day I’m writing this) and followed that up with some delicious hot chocolate and lemon bar. I then headed over to AMVs where I wasted a good two hours enjoying the mostly fun and sometimes incredibly lame fan creations. After the AMVs I hit up the dealer’s room again. This time I walked away with a new hat and an Aria figurine. And not just any Aria figurine—an Aria figurine. That’s right. The cat. Fuck yeah Aria.

After the dealer’s room, I found myself at loose ends. I tried forcing myself to re-watch some El Cazador de la Bruja and that went over real shittily. The first problem with it was that I realized that its re-watch value on go #3 is like, 0. That was the only problem I recognized because I got the fuck out. I ended up being tooled into going to the Gainax room and watching four episodes of Gurren Shittan. I flame, as usual, because I love.

At four I flounced over to the MAD about Nico panel, which was cooler than last year’s MAD panel and better than this year’s lack of Nico-ness in Damn You Internets!, due to… well, having Nico-ness. I lulzed at Nagato Yuki’s UNINSTALL. I think I lulzed too much. I think it hurt a little bit.

At five I scurried over to the Gainax panel. I sat with three friends, each of whom asked a question (the guy who asked about Yoko’as age? He did it at my bidding—I was too shy and self-conscious). I heard both of Miao’s questions. The first was, admittedly, cool, because it prompted a lot of interesting talk from the president. The second was shit because Ikari Shinji should never be apologized for. If Simon and Kamina are so different, Jason, that’s not an apology—it’s a compliment. Faggerjack.

After Miaonax I tried to hit up the How To Talk To Girls panel with my buddies but it was crap despite having Mr. Evangelion on it. We ditched it in favor of food, which was needed and sooooooooo delicious. We came back from food just in time to line up for Damn You Internets!. Which uh, for lack of a better word, sucked ass.

No internet connection, so no nico nico douga.

No Jared, so no lulz.

No Stu, so no sex.

Mikey completely failed and holding the focus while being funny and half the people who said things at the audience mic were fail. My friend who measured… well, he measured, and I was surprised that it only came out to be that long because when it’s inside me oh let me tell you it is the bomb and it is the snake and it’s like the ultimate in terrorist technology if you consider my ass to be a flying car. Or something.

There WAS a beautiful beautiful gigantic picture of wet&needy Hatsune Miku. I came a bazillion times.

I also found out WHY Jared wasn’t at the panel—the story’s lulz, and I’ll recount it when I do my more in-depth end-of-con report on Monday that will have precious anecdotes and stuff. Notable events at the otherwise fail 4chan panel: my friend announcing his measurement. The Mexican guy breaking the watermelon. The one Ronald video. Some not-too-impressive rickrolling. I yelled something about xenutv being down for breaking the law; thankfully no one paid heed.

After the fail panel, I took a shower (masaka!!!!! rite?!), chilled a bit, grabbed some food, and then catapulted myself into School Days.

School Days.

School Days.

School Days.

I love you. I don’t know if it’s that I was watching you with someone else. I don’t know if it’s that I knew Makoto had it coming. I don’t know if it’s that I’d been cracking Nice Boat jokes all day. I don’t know if it’s that I was sleep-deprived. But holy fuck, that show was awesome. I’m not editing my MAL right now, but if I were, I’d set it to complete and give it a 10/10. It was amazing. Bantering with the other audience members throughout the penultimate and ultimate episodes was hilarious fun. And there was so much applause at every event in the last episode—Makoto’s death, Makoto in a bag, Sekai’s death, Sekai’s disembowelment, “there’s no one inside you,” the Nice Boat. Some yelled, “BAD END!” I yelled back, “BEST END!” Someone said they needed to watch something happy ASAP. I said nothing’s happier than watching Makoto be raped with knives.

This is hardly Saturday any longer (the entire School Days marathon took place on Sunday, technically) but I slept for about an hour in the Clannad marathon afterward, and I’m using that as the bookend of the day.

And now I’m off to go enjoy Sunday!

There’s an animeblogger meet-up in two and a half hours in the lobby lounge of the hotel I’m in, I think, so uh—I’ll be there, I guess. I wonder if Miao will show his face. That’d be fucking hilarious on all kinds of levels.

I went into episode 10 expecting a disappointment.

Anyway, as was kind of expected, the show let me down.

Aria the Origination episode 11 dealt beautifully with Alice’s doubt and depression. I couldn’t have asked for more, and yet here I am, smiling like an idiot at Akira’s megadere worry for Aika’s spirit. Here I am, basking in yet another wonderful episode of Aria. Here I am, pleased beyond belief by this episode—which was, for all intents and purposes, epic.

Right now, I’m at my screen like this:

Episode 11 left me… not shocked, no, so it wasn’t like episode 9, but it definitely left me speechless. Proof: I’m writing this almost twelve hours after watching the episode. Took a while to recover. Now, it seems like all I have for Aria is praise, and this is true… now more than ever. Halfway through 11, I was thinking to myself, “Aha! They’re addressing this after all! <3 Aria staff! But, uh, pacing and story telling order is off—they should have done this BEFORE the Al business.”

And then Aika took Alice’s hand and said that makenai wa yo!! and I realized that the order things were done in was, in fact, optimal. By throwing in the stuff with Al, the show preps us for Aika’s good spirit and happiness and readiness to become a pro. While it might seem tangential, after some reflection I think that her interlocution with the gnome in 10 was very important for her character development—it enhanced her maturity and made her happy. Aika shines when she’s happy (remember the episode in Natural when she fucked her hair?) and I think that her mood is a significant factor in her performance. Unlike Alice who’s hella down and acts kinda robotic, Aika really gets gloomy, and it interferes with the rest of her life… conversely, well, what I said before. Happiness = fish, or something.

Akari of course took the wonderful power cake this episode with an incredibly sutekiiiiii~~~~ line about how Alice brings Alice to the table and that’s more than enough reason to congregate for dinner. Alright, so the point wasn’t really food (it wasn’t food at all, as it happens) but the line was amazing: you’re you, and we want to chill with you because we like you as a person, and there’s no need for any additional excuses. It’d be so fucking great to see real flesh and blood people be more honest and say these kinds of words to each other more often. I think that friendship would be a much more pure and pleasant thing if appreciation were expressed more often.

So long as, of course, you have a healthy dose of

Everything in moderation, right? Get some objections in, get some IRL trolling in, salt the earth a few times, be an asshole to your buddies… and then, at the end of the day, when you’re standing on your porch watching the moon, say something warranting an objection yourself.

Aria, I love you.

P.S. I’m also pleasured out of my mind by a string of devastating victories in Physics class today. Boring class is boring, awesome card game is awesome. Raped tablemate is… well, completely and utterly destroyed.

Today, upon returning home from Senior Day at school, I was ambushed with the day’s hot news: Aria has been licensed. All of it. Three series and an OVA, and the first series—Aria the Animation—is due out on September 30th in the form of a 50-dollar boxset entirely lacking in English dubs. I’ll be buying of course. I suggest that every other person in the states buy as well. Of course, this license (not so unfortunately) stopped HnK in its tracks. I’ll be watching the rest of The Origination in 2014 when RightStuf releases it I guess (of course, this is assuming that Google Eπc goes terribly terribly wrong and doesn’t actually destroy the world as we know it).

Anyway, now that I’ve covered the two mega-ambushes, let’s get to the meat of the post: how Aria rocks, and how I’m kind of disappointed with one aspect, and how Aria rocks.

The function f(x), which is continuous and differentiable for [0,13], models the greatness of Aria the Origination in Alicias/km. Pictured above is f’(x), Alicias/km/episode. f(1)=20 Alicias/km. You get the picture, hopefully.

Basically Aria the Origination gets better and better with every episode. I could make a similar graph for the greatness of Aria in general per rewatch. In fact, I think I will, someday. Anyway, the point here is that Aria the Origination never ceases to amaze me. This episode 10 business, what with Aika and Al and all that, was very, very cool. I mean, once you suspend disbelief and accept that Aika didn’t break her legs after that fall into the well…

I went into episode 10 expecting a disappointment. Episode 9 had blown me away—replacing episode 13 of the Natural as my second favorite episode of Aria—but the community response of almost unadulterated happiness had unsettled me greatly. I recalled Alice’s semi-depressed musings in the Animation episode 11 and I knew that Alice had been looking forward to her time training with Aika and Akari as fellow Singles. I knew that she was sensitive about time (in a sort of Hagu-esque manner) and the moment her second glove came off in episode 9 I was crying. Thinking, there went that time. They stole it from Alice. They stole it from her.

The reactions I saw in discussion were mostly “omg omg wooooooot go Alice!!!!!!!” and that clashed with my perception of her character. I wanted Aria to address some kind of depression from her, I wanted there to be more conflict, more resolution. Not because I wanted Alice to suffer, of course, but because I wanted the show to do her feelings justice.

I don’t think this is me projecting on the anime character (though feel free to jump in and tell me I’m insane, if you’re Mike).

Anyway, as was kind of expected, the show let me down.

Yeah, Alice was somewhat depressed in this episode, but mainly as a result of stress from her first day of work. The subject of being with her senpai-gata was not touched upon, and I believe the three water fairies didn’t make any appearances in this episode (at least, none of any note). As such the whole “peer” issue wasn’t addressed at all. So yeah, that was a let down of sorts. On the other hand, thought, what the episode did offer—a very interesting study of Aika’s character—was still Aria at its finest.

The thing that pleased simple old me about this episode the most, though, was probably how Hime got closer to Aria. He’s been trying so hard, and he’s such a good guy, and Hime always seemed a bit aloof to me… it was nice to see his efforts rewarded, even if he had to “tart [himself] up to get it,” to quote my English teacher on Grease. Maa’s inebriation (what else could that have been?) was cute.

Yeah, that’s right, I went Daijoubuon your asses.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this episode’s good points—mostly, they were just enjoyable. There was nothing unfathomably deep about Aika and Al accepting each other like there was with episode 4 and the motivation question. The physics tie-ins, while suteki, were definitely not ground-breaking metaphor. I was really surprised by Al reciprocating (I was sure that Aika was setting herself up the bomb) and that surprise was a good and happy surprise. Yeah, this episode gave me the warm-fuzzies. It was great.

So yes, I’m disappointed about the lack of emphasis on Alice’s inner turmoil (I know it’s there!!). But on that topic, I’m pleased that Aika still calls her “kouhai-chan.” And the show continues to amaze with other good things. It doesn’t revolve around every detail of how much attention Alice gets. I respect that. She’s not even my favorite character.

And now, back to Aria in general:

It’s amazing stuff, this show. Jeff said, in a post about the license announcement, that “there’s an Aria fan born every minute.” There’s another part to that, I think. Aria fans are reborn. Almost every episode of the Animation and the Natural that I’ve rewatched has reduced my to tears with combined suteki factor and nostalgia. This is truly a show to be reckoned with.

Your regularly hateful, raging lolikit will return soon.

I apologize for this debacle of a break from the usual.