Except for #11.

That is me saying “derp, I’m cramming in more than ten.”

1. Honey & Clover
2. Gunbuster
3. ( Aria || K-ON! || Sketchbook ~full Color’s~ )
4. School Days
5. Cowboy Bebop
6. Byousoku 5 Centimeter
7. ( Amagami SS || KimiKiss ~Pure Rouge~ || To Heart )
8. ( Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu && Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu )
9. ( Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu! || Ouran High School Host Club )
10. Mai-HiME
11. Bonus: If you want to be the little girl. ( uta~kata || Nanoha || Umi Monogatari )
12. Bonus: If you are a rapist. ( DMC )

Why is this an ordered list? I’m bad at counting, so when I put this together I numbered them to make sure I was staying within my constraints. Of course, I failed to do so (see: #11), but failure is an important part of my character, right? Just wouldn’t be the LK without it.

In any event, do not let the numbers above trigger any sense of priority or anything like that. God forfend.

After noticing Nyoronyolo‘s black sweatshirt in the Marriott hallway, being entranced the part of the design I could see and its trademark shade of purple, remarking to CCY, “dude, is that Nanoha? It’s Nanoha isn’t it?” and being correct, I pumped my fists.

Me: “Who’s good?! Who’s GOOD?! Just one corner of the spell circle, and I knew it was Nanoha’s!”
CCY: “How many shows have spell circles, though? Can’t be many.”
Me: “Hmmm… Fullmetal Alchemist… the watches in Eden of the East… oh! And Dennou Coil!!”
CCY: “Haha…”

Surprise of surprises, AniDB has a magic circle tag.

I’ve seen most of the shows in its lists: Scrapped Princess, Negima, Card Captor Sakura, etc. The ones I haven’t seen are fewer than the ones I’ve seen.

And the question is, are they worth watching? (And do they actually have lots of spell circles?)

- Kara no Kyoukai
- Strike Witches
- Macademi Wasshoi
- Pandora Hearts
- 07-Ghost
- Kurokami
- Tears to Tiara

Spell circles make everything better, but they don’t make shit better shit, so I really need to know if these shows are worth watching. Thanks.

I’m in love with this girl, and she loves me. There are some obstacles to us being open about our relationship around people in real life. Last night, one of those obstacles disappeared.

It feels like a huge weight has been lifted, and even though shit’s not perfect yet I kind of just wanted to gush.

That’s all.

Maria-sama ga Miteru: a show about disgustingly rich girls attending a private school that at once shields them from the harshness of reality and subjects them to the darkest, most horrific thing a girl could go through: romantic friendship with other girls! Maybe I’m a lesbian, by Yuki Seto, on sale at doujin markets near you.

I don’t like the new OP song but that’s just because I’m a stickler for tradition. When Undine came on in Episode 26 of Aria the Natural, I came fucktons of omobuckets. When they got rid of Pastel Pure, I cried more rivers than Noe can throw chickens into. Other thoughts on the OP include, but are not limited to:

• “the cake is lie!”
• “magical girl lyrical fukuzawa?!”
• “needs moar Rosa Gigantea (and not the Shimako variety)”
• “FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES”
• “キター！”

Fuck yes fuck yes Crazy Sachiko is back!!

The second best character Of All Time is Ogasawara Sachiko, AKA “Crazy Sachiko” as dubbed by my senpai and hero, Lovely Kitsune. I say second best because Fukuzawa Yumi (ribbons, funny faces) is younger, and thusly a more acceptable lust-target. Fuck yeah lolis.

Back to Sachiko… why is she so awesome? Nobody knows. All anyone knows is that she just is.

I mean, shit man. She has a “Sa” in her name (さ). Look at that mother-fucker right there. Where have you seen that before? I’ll tell you the fuck where. Remember this guy? Shit yeah you remember that guy. Coincidence? I think not. Sa-chan does not forgive and Sa-chan does not forget. Sa-chan is a psychobitch; expect to not go on dates with her. Did I mention she likes tea? Fuck.

It’s like a damn waterfall down there when I think of her, SHIT.

- question for the peanut gallery: if one can “come harder than omo,” can one “come down more gracefully than IcyStorm” (who orgasms while watching anime approximately once per episode per open IM window yet still functions in society)? -

Sorry for getting derailed. At least “Sachiko” is a better name than “Darry” and all that. Oh and her nose is more sexual. But I digress… back to the episode.

Waitaminute…

I’m going to go download a different version of the episode once my eyes stop being the new waterfall.

“I don’t know how to become friends.”
“It’s super simple, Genpou-chan! All you have to do is call my name!“

Great Guardians … it left me feeling like it lacked something integral, something promised by the name. Maybe the whole “great” part. There also weren’t any guardians. There wasn’t a whole lot of anything, in fact. Maybe after twenty-five episodes of shit I was desensitized to such things as pantie shots or cleavage but this time around even those felt scarce. I missed the conflict, I missed the resolution.

Hell, I missed the part where Ryomou forgave Ryofu for fingering her back in season one.

Um, does anyone care about Ryofu dying again? I think I was with this season for about two minutes when I thought Kannu was dying. That made me kind of sad. Then I watched the next episode and she was alive. I think there was a disconnect at that point. So Ryofu going again? Big fucking deal. Maybe Ryomou’s sad because Ryofu promised a flute for their second time but the second time never came.

When I say “Big Success,” I mean that the creators succeeded in creating something vaguely approaching value. By taking MGLN’s stellar premise and themes and applying those to their lame fanservice shit, they leveled up their product. “Big Success” in no way refers to the actual quality of Great Guardians. I’m throwing it into the ever-humongous 1/10 category on MyAnimeList.

I can’t bitch too much, though.

The observant observer might take the time to comment, “what did you expect, dipshit?”

Anyway, one last parting shot before I burn this show from my memory:

What is this—the non-existent wish fulfillment arc for Kimi ga Nozomu Eien?!

Majime na Lolikit
How Aria Ruined Subtext, or Why Yuri Isn’t Funny Anymore

In early 2005, I finished watching AIR. At the time, I was active on the AnimeSuki.com forums (handle: Broken), and was active in discussing the episodes as they were aired and fansubbed. In the AIR episode 12 thread, someone linked to lovelykitsune.com‘s special feature. LK had written Misuzu’s final diary entry for her. I laughed my ass off and proceeded to read through the rest of his archives. I gobbled up his Maria-sama ga Miteru reviews like candy. It was, as he himself put it, a writer’s gold mine.

Amazed at how humorous this Maria-sama show appeared to be, I downloaded it (along with Negima and Kanon, some of the first anime I consumed after my introduction to the medium via Naruto) and watched it.

I laughed at the subtext and the ridiculous premise (it’s a lesbian Catholic school lolol) but the show simply wasn’t as funny as Lovely Kitsune had portrayed it. Saddened, I groped for a new angle from which to enjoy it, and eventually I found it: I could amuse myself by looking too far into possible subtext and then laughing at how gay everyone was (it’s a lesbian Catholic school lolol). It wasn’t that I was homophobic (those were turbulent times, and I was seriously considering the possibility that I myself was gay—actually, I still don’t have an answer O_o), but the overabundance of this otherness was more than enough to make me chuckle.

After reading Pretty Face (“Become my onee-sama #2!”) and watching such blockbusters as Mai-HiME (ShizNat) and Kannazuki no Miko (best confession scene ever), I found that I liked this ‘shoujo ai’ business quite a bit. They were so cute, and in a lot of cases they were facing adversity in order to stay true to themselves and their hearts.

A lot of the lulz went away, but the yuri goggles remained.

(What am I talking about? The lulz was as strong as ever. I lurked the shoujoai.com forums for a while and witnessed the first ever declaration of YFR—the hilarious forum interchange that led to me creating kyousora.com and infecting the minds of several other anibloggers.)

Eventually I came upon Strawberry Panic. It made me laugh at the yuri because it was laughable. I blame this entirely upon premise and script. Oh, and the over-dramatization of everything. Around the same time, I was just a fledgling aniblogger. I discovered danbooru. I discovered various other things… like Shoujo Sect… long and short of it is that I came to this revelation: yuri is hot!!

Subtext became even more awesome as I tread into the world of AWESOME Nanoha.

Desires were fulfilled as Kyoushiro to Towa no Sora ended.

And after some time, I saw Aria.

You say good things sometimes, Alice!

Aria’s an odd cookie. Almost entirely female cast, lots of deep caring and emotion, and yet not once—not once did I find a hint of girls’ love, subtextual or otherwise. I found sisterly doting, I found friendship, I found admiration.

Please direct your attention, for a moment, toward this post of Erica Friedman’s: Yuri Anime: Aria OAV Arietta (Thanks to icystorm over at Miminum Tempo for the heads’ up.)

I’ve never been a huge fan of Friedman’s. I know she’s done some great work, etc., but one day I stumbled across some Noir review of hers and it made me cringe. Noir wasn’t yuri as far as I could tell. I recall thinking to myself—is friendship such an impossible thing?

This is, for the record, the same reaction several of my classmates had in Bible as Literature when my teacher presented unto them the theory that David and Jonathan were “romantic friends.” So maybe I just had a preconception of Noir since I’d seen it before and might find the romance between Kirika and Mireille if I were to go into the show with Friedman’s review in mind… but there’s still a distinction, I feel, even between:

- romantic friendship

and

- sexuality

I can’t really imagine David and Jonathan going for that hawt hawt butthsekcz. They definitely did seem like more than (contemporary definition of) friends to me, though. The characters in Noir share an incredibly powerful bond; does that mean that they are a yuri couple? I don’t recall any indications that the two of them felt ANY attraction toward each other, physical or mental or otherwise. I was under the impression that they were brought together by the past, or fate, or something dumb like that, and that perhaps the “odd bedfellows” saying applies.

But a yuri couple?

And I say that same thing to Aria, only a million times over.

Creating something, together—possibly the height of human existence.

When I first watched Aria episode two or whichever, the one where Akari sleeps over in Aika’s room, I probably thought something like, “oooo yuri action oh yeah.” I guarantee that by the time I finished season one, such vulgar thoughts had been completely dispelled. When I say vulgar, I am not incriminating yuri—I am incriminating subtext. Sure, it’s there, and I’m sure people can find it (after all, Erica Friedman did!), but what does it add, other than cheap giggles? If it’s not solid, if it’s not canon, it’s only speculation.

Speculation is something that you get fans to do when you try to entice them with fluff (see: Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu). Did Kozue Amano want us to try to figure out which of the Aria girls were getting off on which others’ fingers? For some reason, I doubt it. Did Mag Garden? Please. It’s there, but only if you’ve trained yourself to find it anywhere can you find it in Aria. Subtext can literally be found in everything if you’re well enough trained.

It’s like over-analyzing things.

I’m not trying to be a deconstructionist, I’m just trying to rationalize—what benefit does Aria gain from lesbianism? I found it quite reassuringly non-retarded that the work just about never touched on sexuality (we know Akatsuki is crushing on Akari and that Aika and Harry Potter get together, but even that doesn’t tell us that much) because, from my point of view, sexuality is a fairly boring topic (though this does not mean that I intentionally ignore it). It’s much more interesting for me to focus on the scenery or the messages or the character drama than the possibilities of who’s attracted to whom. Yes, believe it or not, you can have character drama without romance! Alicia and Akari’s tearful hug in Origination 13 was not the culmination of their lust and sexual tension.

gomenasi, for everything gomenasai

Before you say “but it could be!” let me point you to a very similar scene, both in direction and character action: AIR episode 6; Tohno Minagi returns to her mother’s home and the two share a tearful embrace.

The writer(s) behind AIR had serious mom issues, methinks—there’s a bit of a trend here.

(I refuse to believe that Minagi was hot for her mom. If you think that this is a bad comparison becaue she was hot for her mom, please explain to me why and how she is hot for her mom.)

And because there is nothing explicitly stated in Aria, and because I see no sexuality implied in it, I don’t find any lesbians. Whether the characters ARE gay, or straight, or bi, or what have you, is a pointless question: none of the characters are in yuri relationships. You can spend a lifetime speculating about sexuality if you have no solid cues.

The idea of Aria porn makes me uneasy.

The show is too pure for that. Too innocent. Too much about living a certain way. Not at all about whom to do or why.

Similarly, the idea of pairing Aria characters and doing anything in the vein of fanporn unsettles me, be it fanfic or fanart or so much as discussing one’s support for a coupling. Much as Neo-Venezia is a world beyond disease and homicide, it is a world beyond sex. Such thoughts simply don’t exist in Aria. There was never anything about dating or societal pressures to fulfill gender roles and get into certain relationships or making babies or not making babies or defying a conservative society or taking advantage of a liberal one. None of these topics are touched upon, thus furthering the detachment from sexuality.

And with all the unbridled potential for yuri (a full cast of females at the extremes of hot or cute in terms of both appearance and personality), combined with this total absence of sexuality, I have completely lost my drive to examine subtext or find lesbians in anime.

I don’t see the point anymore.

Why seek cheap laughs or pursue fetishes when something so perfect, so pure, so devoid of questions exists? Aria is the end-all be-all of my anime experience, and it has vanquished my love for yuri. It has vanquished my love for giggling childishly at possibilities.

Aria killed subtext.

And one last note, in case any staunch Aria yuri fans are reading this:

If Akari and Alicia were in a lesbian relationship, would Alicia have left to go get married to some other person? Alicia is mature. She doesn’t need to graduate schoolgirl lesbianism.

This is not a shop.

It seems as though bitches don’t know ’bout my anger. Or something. Did I not make myself explicitly clear? Just in case I didn’t, allow the redundancy in my previous sentence to strike home the point that I was serious. Just in case you’re trying to egg me on… just in case you understood my graph, and thought that it would be OMG FUNNIEEEE to provoke me and to rage my raise meter… I’ll give you 15 reasons not to vote for me, in the form of previous posts I’ve made on this site. I will provide links to each of them along with an adjective. Keeping that adjective in mind, read the linked posts. You’ll find that I’m a worthless piece of crap and that you should not, under any circumstances, vote for me.

15. Vote Lolikit? No we can’t! – whorish

14. Loli vs. MILF – i has an answer – pitiful

13. Sola 01 – Matsuri my Vampire – clever

12. This is a response to: Impz’s advice about inspiration – bitchy

11. Fanime, second day in review: anime blogging panel #2, lolicon sign, etc. – dangerous

10. Sola 02 – Endless my Sky – redundant

9. I suppose it’s time to say goodbye… – anime blogger (adj)

8. Kannazuki no Miko Ep. 25 [END] – adoring

7. Kyousora – STUNNING FACTS! AMAZING DISCOVERY!!! – cruel

6. Taking Faulkner to Haruhi, part 1 – sardonic

5. I love you, Os. – single-minded

4. 2.5 minutes of Lucky Star ep01 – Subtitle: you fucking suck – idiotic

3. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – Fuck you WinD, Fuck you Jason, and Fuck you mindless fanboys – rageful

2. I joined the SOS-dan… – awesome

1. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – There are no "Killer Lolis" – correct (also, bonus)

The DL Plan is proceeding just as planned.

WE CAN’T STOP HERE. THIS IS FIRE COUNTRY.

The series starts pretty well, with shit on fire. I like fire. It burns, you know?

There’s also a little girl. She’s not on fire.

MIKURU BEEEEEEEEEMU!

And wait, now there are lasers and more shit blowing up!? This show wins, clearly.

So now the little girl is all grown up and ready to kick ass. Or something. Skates-tan clearly knows the value of stretching. Otherwise she’d get cramps, ya? And everyone knows cramps suck. Shooty-tan will get cramps. She’s not stretching.

I’M NOT STRONG ENOUGH! LEAVE ME TO DIE!

So they break through the window just in time for angst. Because it’s like… the same building that got lit on fire, right? So Skates-tan is all, “Unh! Life story!” Yeah, whatever. That shot is too damn blue, bitch. Save it for the ocean.

AIN’T GOT TIME FOR THIS SHI–

FUCK, CRAMPS. DON’T SAY I TOLD YOU SO, ‘CAUSE YOU DIDN’T.

Man, I hells of knew that the lack of stretching on Shooty-tan’s part would fuck her over. She tries to be all stoic and shit, but her legs give out on her. She drops to her knees and is all, “Unh! Support casting!” Way to be useless. YOU HAVE A GUN. USE IT FROM LONG RANGE. God, what a slacker.

UNNNNH! I CAN’T DO IT! DEATH NOTE 25 WAS JUST TOO MUCH!

The episode ends with Nanoha herself showing up again to comfort the still-angsting Skates-tan. I had been hoping for some seriously GAR tough love or shit, but NO. The episode ended on a lameass sappy note.

I mean, come on, Death Note 25 wasn’t that depressing.

Get over yourself, bitch!

Next episode better be less angsty.

And more laserysplody.

_lolikappa