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 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. ;)

How the mighty have fallen.

Have you ever encounter situations where you need to create a simple yet good-looking chart, graphs or diagrams and all you have is your browser? Charts are good and effective way to show relationship between entities …

Here’s looking at you, kid.

Let’s face it: Baka-Raptor does it better than I.

Funny thing is that this past weekend, I was Baka-Raptor. Long story, and one I don’t think I’ll tell here. If I start talking about this particular group of my meatspace friends, I may end up exposing various embarrassing stories about anime conventions and the dreams of jizzing on men’s faces that are the stuff of such conventions. What? You don’t know what I’m talking about?

Clearly, you have never been to a convention.

ANYWAY—I come here to deliver some words. I know for a fact that my friends, being the drillsluts they are, enjoy exaggeration and hyperbole and various other redundant nouns all meaning the same thing. The word “epic” is rampant in their vocabulary. This is to say that I have a hard time trusting them. Me? A million fans? Last I checked, though the aniblogosphere had grown considerably, a million was still pushing it. And that’s presupposing that the entire sphere likes me.

But, despite all my True Knowledge, despite knowing that my friends exaggerate, I am posting here: there are no millions at the RSS teat, but I know there are at least five of you out there waiting with bated fingertips for my metaphor-mixing magics.

With a respectful nod toward those who would rather see me never stir my grave, I shall now announce my intentions:

I, loliknowimtsundere, shall henceforth return to posting on ¬.Q.

This is a new year’s resolution, bitches, so you know it’s true. Bitches.

Toodles!

Click the thumbnail to see Sixten’s blog post.

As for CCY17 progress on my end, er, school just started. I have an essay due Thursday so I’m not even worrying about visual novels right now.

Will update soon~

And I clicked, ‘Delete.’

Never again, quoth the phantomflash, Never again will I desecrate lolikit’s sacred Jasonian (pronounced JAY-SOH-NEE-UN) shrine with my tomfoolery of a trolling attempt. Never again will I trick people into thinking that lolikit is the one posting these posts. Never again will I so much as think of outdoing Kyoto Animation, henceforth, Team Troll.

Never again, quoth the spectralthunder, Never again.

And then a Frosty Hurricane came upon me, and I sampled his scrotal sweat, and I thought to myself, “what a wonderful world.”

I would do a retrospective like lelangir did, but it wouldn’t be too interesting—every few points would be interspersed with “then lolikit gave up aniblogging in an emo rage fit, and closed down notdotq for five months.” Not that I ever stayed away for long, but…

… I do have a habit for, shall we call them, disappearances.

Instead of a retrospective, let’s do a highlights, and without dates, because I care more about the feelings than I do the historical accuracies:

- after one year of animeblogging, notdotq is born on wordpress.com, one of the handful of “first” anime blogs to use wordpress.com, along with jp meyer’s fairy tale of love and courage.

- Jason Miao promises to put notdotq on Blogsuki.

- Jason Miao removes newcomer RIUVA from Blogsuki, refuses to put notdotq on.

- Various bedraggled anibloggers realize that Jason is a cancer.

- Hung builds AnimeNaNo, invites Jason Miao.

- I start spreading my name by creating and maintaining the AnimeNaNo IRC channel. The community is thriving. Mr. Pippers is still an aniblogger.

- Jason still doesn’t join AnimeNaNo.

- So there are no killer lolis in Higurashi, mmmkay?

- Jason says that Japanese anibloggers are better than English-speaking anibloggers. Reason: graphs.

- Beginning of holy anti-Jason crusade.

- Oh by the way Haruhi sucks balls.

- I go to France, where I finish Fate/Stay-night and die a premature death due to suck. While in France, AnimeNaNo takes off like a flock of majestic birds, Japes becomes my friend, and Haruhi 12 blows me away.

- Hung, Japes, and Hinano–later, Japes’ girlfriend, now, his wife–start the AnimeNaNo podcast. Pips and I parody: podcast.dotq.org.

- wait, this is turning into a chronological recounting. SHIT.

Okay. Deep breath.

Here are my top ten moments in animeblogging.

#10. The founding of AnimeNaNo. Shit was so cash.

#9. Blogging Kyoushiro to Towa no Sora, Sola, and Aria the Origination with Shirukii.

#8. That time a newbie added me to her initial blogroll along with the big names–Jason, Jeff, Japes, Omo, etc.

#7. Baka-Raptor informed me that I was the king of trolls. (Or maybe it was ‘trolling king,’ either way.)

#6. Konoe and I enjoy many philosophical discourses over AIM, I publish these discourses (“on disagreement,” etc.), ghostlightning realizes that love needs explanation just the same as hate, various anibloggers begin defending their stances more rigorously, “lolikitean” invented.

#5. Kyousora.com is registered and built. My first exercise in hilarious satirical porn stories, perhaps the genesis of my visual novel project.

#4. Graphs. So fucking many of them. Everywhere. All the fucking time.

#3. When Jason stopped posting for three months. Hell yes. This was also when lots of people (ghostlightning, lolikappa, lelangir) were posting on notdotq. I was being extremely productive and the ‘sphere was looking happy.

#2. Miao on My Mind.

#1. So, CCY-senpai, I herd u were maiking a gaem?

I’m going to stop the nostalgia train here because I’m not being very coherent or classy. This was really just a poor excuse to post more.

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

Here’s what I watched today:

1. Queen’s Blade 12.

I wondered why this was so bad until I realized I was watching it at 1x instead of 2 or 3x as I usually do bad shows like these. Damn this was painful. Gotta love Nowa, though. Anyhoo, I’d celebrate the conclusion of another terrible series, but there’s gonna be another season! I’m a glutton for punishment, as one of my older brother’s coworkers said the other day.

2. Queen’s Blade Special 1.

I jizzed in my pants… for values of “jizz” equal to “vomit” and values of “in my pants” equal to “all over.”

3. Clannad: Another World, Kyou Chapter

Once again, Tomoya is made shallower such that he can hook up with a girl in the space of two minutes’ worth of montage. Once again, teenagers are melodramatic. Once again, there is a happy ending. Though this episode focused on Kyou, I’m sure Captain Miao is seething—her thighs didn’t feature much. All in all, a bit of a waste of time, though you gotta love Kyoto Animation’s signature stumbling rainy tears.

Apologies for the lack of screencaps. I deleted all three of the above abominations from my computer before I decided to blog them.

Briefly, on the topic of what I’ve been watching recently…

- I started both Touka Gettan and Haibane Renmei. I expect to enjoy both, in different ways. I’ll keep you all updated on how that goes.

- Eden of the East I’m at 5/11 on, and will finish once the opportunity arises (I’m waiting for SAKI to get some free time so we can watch it together).

- Sengoku Brosara is proving to be total shit, but it’s been fun to laugh at the ridiculousness. Unfortunately, starting with Azai’s death the fun factor all but disappeared. Kinda lame. I’ll finish this sometime but it’s not a huge priority…

- Haruhi Hog Summer is repulsive beyond belief. I already could barely stand episode two, stating that it was a worse waste of time than watching Queen’s Blade, and then lolikappa gave me the inside scoop on episode three. Seriously, Kyoto Animation? Go die. Now. Whores.

Eventually I’ll make some progress on the shows I’ve had on hold for a long time: Skip Beat, Mouryou no Hako, Michiko to Hatchin, Zettai Shounen, Kurozuka, Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora, and A Certain Magical Index. I’m also going to rewatch more Aria soon; you can expect some feedback on all of the above at some point, even if it’s not in much depth.

Things I’m not looking forward to: A Certain Scientific Railgun, Darker than Black 2. Both are abominations of the mind. Aberrations as it were. Do. Not. Want.

Finally, I’ve got my netbook, a sexy Dell Mini 10 that had some issues running Jaunty initially but is now puttering along just great with stellar battery life and an amazingly usable keyboard. If I get Ren’py onto the thing, I might be able to work on my VN on the go, which would greatly increase the chances of a v0.05 sometime this summer!