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. ;)

BEST NEW SERIES

Well, the best new series this year was only barely from Japan. It was a pretty stellar new series, but… It was definitely one of the more awesome surprises of the year, we can all agree on that. The Anime Expo announcement that the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender were partnering with Production I.G. to make a new series set in a modernization of the setting… well, it was pretty awesome. The series so far has been pretty good, but seems to be missing some of the charm of the original. Hopefully the coming months will see it improve, just as the original improved drastically after a fairly shaky start.

BEST CONTINUING SERIES

Slim pickings here. Fullmetal Alchemist’s asspull of a conclusion was an incredible letdown to all but the craziest fans. No one really likes where Evangelion 3.0 is taking the series. Naruto and Bleach have both taken turns for the worse with both going on simultaneous filler seasons again. So this award is going to have to go to Bakuman. It hasn’t improved too drastically, but it has been consistently funny and engaging, with interesting characters and an original look into the manga and anime industries. It will never be anywhere nearly as popular as Death Note, but it’s continuing to be fun.

BEST MOVIE

Now this one I’m excited about. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. Wow. What a fucking masterpiece. Kyoto Animation has truly set a new standard for epic trolling. Sure, the stunt got them shut down for good, but… I would’ve killed to see the looks on the faces of the thousands of fans crammed into the theaters on opening day when an apologetic manager came out and informed them that the film itself had disappeared! Sure, it’s terrible that some of the managers were beaten to bloody pulps. Sure, it’s sad that we lost one of the most gorgeous animation studios of all time. But damn was it funny.

BEST BLOG

This one. It may have been a shitty year, but that meant plenty of shit to mock. With LKs 1 and 2 working side-by-side for most of the year, we managed to… okay, so we barely got out a post a week, at best. Between the two of us. But all of the rest of you sucked even harder, so… yeah. Fuck you.

MOST INTERESTING BLOG

The OEG. The spectacular clusterfuck of drama that surrounded the last few rounds of it were an absolutely fascinating debacle–kind of like watching a train wreck, where the train is made of everything that is wrong with otaku. I think everyone can agree that the game turned out to be a massive failure, with “otaku” everywhere claiming to be so even more, in a retaliatory backlash… I think the real failing came when digiboy and Funeral, after being revealed as the bloggers behind the mask, let themselves get pulled down to the level of the people trolling them.

SADDEST MOMENT

Ghostlightning announcing the end of WRL in light of how much time he has to spend taking care of BusterBeamSlice. It was completely understandable, but still rather sad. We miss you, GL. Especially after otou-san retired earlier in the year… we lost two powerhouses this year. : [

HAPPIEST MOMENT

There wasn’t a ton to celebrate this year, but CJ did get into her top choice college. That was cool. And from her reports, the anime club she’s started there is doing dang well. She still won’t have sex with me, though. Slut. : [

SO ON THE WHOLE, we’re not doing that much worse than last year, but nor are we doing any better. Con attendance was down. Two more major studios closed their doors. We didn’t have any particularly memorable series.

Frankly I’m not left particularly optimistic for next year. Let’s hope things improve… otherwise, well, I’m seeing less and less reason to keep watching anime, or keep blogging.

.lolikappa

lolikitsune must watch these episodes at least thrice to take less time than it takes Kyon to get rid of his virginity.

This is not an endorsement of the second and currently airing season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. It doesn’t say here that this show is good, and that anyone is missing out. Rather, I agree with Pontifus when he says [->]

All the weight/meaning in the world means nothing if you find the experience regrettable or a waste.

So I am not apologizing for the currently airing second season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. I will entertain no such folly, never mind the delicious Macross references. What I am saying is that I have pierced the barrier of boredom with my drill of personal enjoyment, and I’ll tell you how I did it. Consider it or not at your leisure. The main problem of the Endless 8 arc is that every episode after the third one is a copy of the same show essentially. The TV format may not even be the ideal way to do it. From the archives I retreive two posts:

1. Towards a Quantification of Love for Animu Part 1: the Rewatchability Ratio
2. Towards a Quantification of Love for Animo Part 2: the Value of Rewatchability Through the Lens of Eternal Recurrence

Both posts by mechafetish, where he looked into our common behavior of rewatching shows we like. The first post measured a show’s subjective rewatchability ratio. Using the tools in that post, I would give this current season 2/6 (current episode count) = 0.33. This does not account for the recency bias; this ratio, as subjective as it is, may not hold over time with me, since I gave the clearly superior first season a 2/13 = .15 (the one with Lost my music, and Haruhi & Kyon’s preview leading to that episode: “LISTEN TO MY SONG! BOMBAAA!”). The second post, references the idea of eternal recurrence proposed by Friedrich Nietchzche as presented by Milan Kundera in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Mechafetish says,

This behavior fundamentally alters the way I derive utility from anime I watch. Generally, I tend to have fonder memories of anime that provide me with rewatchable moments simply because I generate more utility per minute due to selective rewatching. For example, I actually love Brain Powered (an anime generally agreed upon to be atrocious) because of exactly 2 moments in the later episodes that I watched more than all the episodes of the entire series combined.

Crappy anime, but with rewatchable moments. I felt that I was onto something here. There was almost this independentutility in rewatching a particular moment that is distinguished from the show, but not apart from it. The context is still decisive in appreciating such moments, but this enjoyment does influence one’s affinity for the show that made them. So this comprises the first part of the premise of my enjoying Endless 8. The second part is very much related, otou-san put it thusly,

Re-watching anime, like any visual entertainment, can give you new perspective on it just from the plain and simple value of seeing things again. We tend to see plot, character development, and visuals the first time around (and considering anime means watching with subtitles for most of us, even the visuals can be secondary at times). But that second viewing can reveal details of reference, symbolism, and detail. If you only watched The Holy Mountain or, yeah I’ll say it, FLCL just once, you missed something.

–otou-san, Welcome Back or: what color are your glasses now?

While never close to insane levels of rewatching the way mechafetish does, I rewatch anime and reread manga a lot. And yes, I often feel that I discover new things every time I see the same show again.

Kyon is technically the oldest male virgin ever. I bet Koizumi has hit it both ways even before transferring schools. Kyon = 0, lolikitsune = 0.

The way I ended up enjoying Endless 8 episodes 4, 5, and 6 is that I related to them as rewatch adventures for episode 3.

But episode 3 was just a few weeks ago, it’s too soon for an appreciative (as opposed to a data-mining for articles) rewatch. Yes, that is true. It was a solid wall that would’ve stopped my enjoyment frozen. But it didn’t. It was a wall? I smashed right through it. The difference is, that there are definite, obvious, subtle and new things to discover, not only because I missed them the first time, but rather there were changes by design.

Maybe this only works because I don’t have the best short-term memory, maybe I find the episodes interesting because I skipped chunks of it. I’m not the biggest fan of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, but I like it; and I wasn’t enjoying myself at all watching the same episode over and over again. Until, I realized how often I do this for singular episodes of other shows (list does not include the constant rotation of random episodes from the Macross franchise):

• Honey and Clover 2 Finale, where a sandwich is deliciously and beautifully cruel [->]
• Interstella 5555, where I remembered digital love! [->]
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, where the ordinary is more magical than time travel [->]
• Turn A Gundam 50, the epilogue that kills me every time (featuring “Tsuki no Mayu” full version)
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann 27

Now, I’m not saying the Endless 8 recursion of the 3rd episode deserves a place on this list, but as for the episode itself – there was much to enjoy within it. It’s the recursion that bothered me, not the content it is based on. So basically, I found a way to enjoy this (and it’s not like I’m jumping up and down screaming how awesome it is, that happened in episode 02 during Kyon’s ‘Kakizaki Requiem’ with matching Itano Circus).

Very similarly, I do reread books; and even blog posts. Here are some that I’ve revisited very often (aside from the regular The Animanachronism posts I reread in my usual rotation):

• otou-san, “It takes a fanboy” (Validates my way of life)
• Lbrevis, “Nana Rocks, This is How You do Drama” (Introduced me to one of my most loved manga)
• Omisyth, “Lest We Forget” (delicious meta)
• Sakura, “My Super Spectacular Shounen Power” (We Remember Love for THE POWER OF TEAM BLOGGING)
• maggeh, “Insert Food-based Pun >Here<” (fooled me into thinking OH! posts will be this substantial)
• Xephfrye, “Rage Over 2D Sometimes” (RAEG is LOL, yes I really think so)
• Baka-Raptor, “Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Epic” (To me, EPIC is just a four letter word, but so is LOGH and both are awesome)
• coburn, “Anime of the Year 2008” (needs to be read to be believed, the sphere needs more coburn)
• 21stcenturydigitalboy, “I want to be like Takasu Ryuuji” (bad ass)
• lolikitsune, “vocab lessons, part 1” (because this faggerjackerry of OH! alumni wouldn’t be possible without the very concept of being a faggerjack)

So this is how I inadvertently found myself enjoying episode 06 after I thought I’d given up after episode 05. Take this as you will. I just happen to think that ‘who enjoys, wins.’

lolikitsune almost committed suicide once. Then he watched an episode of this show. He’s still borderline. Convince him to watch the rest.

This is not an endorsement of the second and currently airing season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. It doesn’t say here that this show is good, and that anyone is missing out. Rather, I agree with Pontifus when he says [->]

All the weight/meaning in the world means nothing if you find the experience regrettable or a waste.

So I am not apologizing for the currently airing second season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. I will entertain no such folly, never mind the delicious Macross references. What I am saying is that I have pierced the barrier of boredom with my drill of personal enjoyment, and I’ll tell you how I did it. Consider it or not at your leisure. The main problem of the Endless 8 arc is that every episode after the third one is a copy of the same show essentially. The TV format may not even be the ideal way to do it. From the archives I retreive two posts:

1. Towards a Quantification of Love for Animu Part 1: the Rewatchability Ratio
2. Towards a Quantification of Love for Animo Part 2: the Value of Rewatchability Through the Lens of Eternal Recurrence

Both posts by mechafetish, where he looked into our common behavior of rewatching shows we like. The first post measured a show’s subjective rewatchability ratio. Using the tools in that post, I would give this current season 2/6 (current episode count) = 0.33. This does not account for the recency bias; this ratio, as subjective as it is, may not hold over time with me, since I gave the clearly superior first season a 2/13 = .15 (the one with Lost my music, and Haruhi & Kyon’s preview leading to that episode: “LISTEN TO MY SONG! BOMBAAA!”). The second post, references the idea of eternal recurrence proposed by Friedrich Nietchzche as presented by Milan Kundera in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Mechafetish says,

This behavior fundamentally alters the way I derive utility from anime I watch. Generally, I tend to have fonder memories of anime that provide me with rewatchable moments simply because I generate more utility per minute due to selective rewatching. For example, I actually love Brain Powered (an anime generally agreed upon to be atrocious) because of exactly 2 moments in the later episodes that I watched more than all the episodes of the entire series combined.

Crappy anime, but with rewatchable moments. I felt that I was onto something here. There was almost this independentutility in rewatching a particular moment that is distinguished from the show, but not apart from it. The context is still decisive in appreciating such moments, but this enjoyment does influence one’s affinity for the show that made them. So this comprises the first part of the premise of my enjoying Endless 8. The second part is very much related, otou-san put it thusly,

Re-watching anime, like any visual entertainment, can give you new perspective on it just from the plain and simple value of seeing things again. We tend to see plot, character development, and visuals the first time around (and considering anime means watching with subtitles for most of us, even the visuals can be secondary at times). But that second viewing can reveal details of reference, symbolism, and detail. If you only watched The Holy Mountain or, yeah I’ll say it, FLCL just once, you missed something.

–otou-san, Welcome Back or: what color are your glasses now?

While never close to insane levels of rewatching the way mechafetish does, I rewatch anime and reread manga a lot. And yes, I often feel that I discover new things every time I see the same show again.

The way I ended up enjoying Endless 8 episodes 4, 5, and 6 is that I related to them as rewatch adventures for episode 3.

But episode 3 was just a few weeks ago, it’s too soon for an appreciative (as opposed to a data-mining for articles) rewatch. Yes, that is true. It was a solid wall that would’ve stopped my enjoyment frozen. But it didn’t. It was a wall? I smashed right through it. The difference is, that there are definite, obvious, subtle and new things to discover, not only because I missed them the first time, but rather there were changes by design.

Maybe this only works because I don’t have the best short-term memory, maybe I find the episodes interesting because I skipped chunks of it. I’m not the biggest fan of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, but I like it; and I wasn’t enjoying myself at all watching the same episode over and over again. Until, I realized how often I do this for singular episodes of other shows (list does not include the constant rotation of random episodes from the Macross franchise):

• Aria the Origination 12, “Chotto ureshii dake da yo” [->]
• Shin Mazinger Z 03, “Its name is… Its name is…” [->]
• Black Lagoon 07, where Rock grows a pair [->]
• Turn A Gundam 50, the epilogue that kills me every time (featuring “Tsuki no Mayu” full version)
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann 27

Now, I’m not saying the Endless 8 recursion of the 3rd episode deserves a place on this list, but as for the episode itself – there was much to enjoy within it. It’s the recursion that bothered me, not the content it is based on. So basically, I found a way to enjoy this (and it’s not like I’m jumping up and down screaming how awesome it is, that happened in episode 02 during Kyon’s ‘Kakizaki Requiem’ with matching Itano Circus).

So this is how I inadvertently found myself enjoying episode 06 after I thought I’d given up after episode 05. Take this as you will. I just happen to think that ‘who enjoys, wins.’

lolikitsune may only adjourn this anime for furry buttsex.

This is not an endorsement of the second and currently airing season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. It doesn’t say here that this show is good, and that anyone is missing out. Rather, I agree with Pontifus when he says [->]

All the weight/meaning in the world means nothing if you find the experience regrettable or a waste.

So I am not apologizing for the currently airing second season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. I will entertain no such folly, never mind the delicious Macross references. What I am saying is that I have pierced the barrier of boredom with my drill of personal enjoyment, and I’ll tell you how I did it. Consider it or not at your leisure. The main problem of the Endless 8 arc is that every episode after the third one is a copy of the same show essentially. The TV format may not even be the ideal way to do it. From the archives I retreive two posts:

1. Towards a Quantification of Love for Animu Part 1: the Rewatchability Ratio
2. Towards a Quantification of Love for Animo Part 2: the Value of Rewatchability Through the Lens of Eternal Recurrence

Both posts by mechafetish, where he looked into our common behavior of rewatching shows we like. The first post measured a show’s subjective rewatchability ratio. Using the tools in that post, I would give this current season 2/6 (current episode count) = 0.33. This does not account for the recency bias; this ratio, as subjective as it is, may not hold over time with me, since I gave the clearly superior first season a 2/13 = .15 (the one with Lost my music, and Haruhi & Kyon’s preview leading to that episode: “LISTEN TO MY SONG! BOMBAAA!”). The second post, references the idea of eternal recurrence proposed by Friedrich Nietchzche as presented by Milan Kundera in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Mechafetish says,

This behavior fundamentally alters the way I derive utility from anime I watch. Generally, I tend to have fonder memories of anime that provide me with rewatchable moments simply because I generate more utility per minute due to selective rewatching. For example, I actually love Brain Powered (an anime generally agreed upon to be atrocious) because of exactly 2 moments in the later episodes that I watched more than all the episodes of the entire series combined.

Crappy anime, but with rewatchable moments. I felt that I was onto something here. There was almost this independentutility in rewatching a particular moment that is distinguished from the show, but not apart from it. The context is still decisive in appreciating such moments, but this enjoyment does influence one’s affinity for the show that made them. So this comprises the first part of the premise of my enjoying Endless 8. The second part is very much related, otou-san put it thusly,

Re-watching anime, like any visual entertainment, can give you new perspective on it just from the plain and simple value of seeing things again. We tend to see plot, character development, and visuals the first time around (and considering anime means watching with subtitles for most of us, even the visuals can be secondary at times). But that second viewing can reveal details of reference, symbolism, and detail. If you only watched The Holy Mountain or, yeah I’ll say it, FLCL just once, you missed something.

–otou-san, Welcome Back or: what color are your glasses now?

While never close to insane levels of rewatching the way mechafetish does, I rewatch anime and reread manga a lot. And yes, I often feel that I discover new things every time I see the same show again.

The way I ended up enjoying Endless 8 episodes 4, 5, and 6 is that I related to them as rewatch adventures for episode 3.

But episode 3 was just a few weeks ago, it’s too soon for an appreciative (as opposed to a data-mining for articles) rewatch. Yes, that is true. It was a solid wall that would’ve stopped my enjoyment frozen. But it didn’t. It was a wall? I smashed right through it. The difference is, that there are definite, obvious, subtle and new things to discover, not only because I missed them the first time, but rather there were changes by design.

Maybe this only works because I don’t have the best short-term memory, maybe I find the episodes interesting because I skipped chunks of it. I’m not the biggest fan of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, but I like it; and I wasn’t enjoying myself at all watching the same episode over and over again. Until, I realized how often I do this for singular episodes of other shows (list does not include the constant rotation of random episodes from the Macross franchise):

• Code Geass, The Battle of Narita [->]
• Lucky Star OVA, where volleyball is Gundam! [->]
• Detroit Metal City 07, where a giant penis gets raped [->]
• Turn A Gundam 50, the epilogue that kills me every time (featuring “Tsuki no Mayu” full version)
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann 27

Now, I’m not saying the Endless 8 recursion of the 3rd episode deserves a place on this list, but as for the episode itself – there was much to enjoy within it. It’s the recursion that bothered me, not the content it is based on. So basically, I found a way to enjoy this (and it’s not like I’m jumping up and down screaming how awesome it is, that happened in episode 02 during Kyon’s ‘Kakizaki Requiem’ with matching Itano Circus).

So this is how I inadvertently found myself enjoying episode 06 after I thought I’d given up after episode 05. Take this as you will. I just happen to think that ‘who enjoys, wins.’

But wait–the loop is broken tomorrow!

lolikitsune must trade fapping to Kaiji hentai or whatever else he’s failing at doing in life to enjoying every second of this season’s star show.

This is not an endorsement of the second and currently airing season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. It doesn’t say here that this show is good, and that anyone is missing out. Rather, I agree with Pontifus when he says [->]

All the weight/meaning in the world means nothing if you find the experience regrettable or a waste.

So I am not apologizing for the currently airing second season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. I will entertain no such folly, never mind the delicious Macross references. What I am saying is that I have pierced the barrier of boredom with my drill of personal enjoyment, and I’ll tell you how I did it. Consider it or not at your leisure. The main problem of the Endless 8 arc is that every episode after the third one is a copy of the same show essentially. The TV format may not even be the ideal way to do it. From the archives I retreive two posts:

1. Towards a Quantification of Love for Animu Part 1: the Rewatchability Ratio
2. Towards a Quantification of Love for Animo Part 2: the Value of Rewatchability Through the Lens of Eternal Recurrence

Both posts by mechafetish, where he looked into our common behavior of rewatching shows we like. The first post measured a show’s subjective rewatchability ratio. Using the tools in that post, I would give this current season 2/6 (current episode count) = 0.33. This does not account for the recency bias; this ratio, as subjective as it is, may not hold over time with me, since I gave the clearly superior first season a 2/13 = .15 (the one with Lost my music, and Haruhi & Kyon’s preview leading to that episode: “LISTEN TO MY SONG! BOMBAAA!”). The second post, references the idea of eternal recurrence proposed by Friedrich Nietchzche as presented by Milan Kundera in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Mechafetish says,

This behavior fundamentally alters the way I derive utility from anime I watch. Generally, I tend to have fonder memories of anime that provide me with rewatchable moments simply because I generate more utility per minute due to selective rewatching. For example, I actually love Brain Powered (an anime generally agreed upon to be atrocious) because of exactly 2 moments in the later episodes that I watched more than all the episodes of the entire series combined.

Crappy anime, but with rewatchable moments. I felt that I was onto something here. There was almost this independentutility in rewatching a particular moment that is distinguished from the show, but not apart from it. The context is still decisive in appreciating such moments, but this enjoyment does influence one’s affinity for the show that made them. So this comprises the first part of the premise of my enjoying Endless 8. The second part is very much related, otou-san put it thusly,

Re-watching anime, like any visual entertainment, can give you new perspective on it just from the plain and simple value of seeing things again. We tend to see plot, character development, and visuals the first time around (and considering anime means watching with subtitles for most of us, even the visuals can be secondary at times). But that second viewing can reveal details of reference, symbolism, and detail. If you only watched The Holy Mountain or, yeah I’ll say it, FLCL just once, you missed something.

–otou-san, Welcome Back or: what color are your glasses now?

While never close to insane levels of rewatching the way mechafetish does, I rewatch anime and reread manga a lot. And yes, I often feel that I discover new things every time I see the same show again.

The way I ended up enjoying Endless 8 episodes 4, 5, and 6 is that I related to them as rewatch adventures for episode 3.

But episode 3 was just a few weeks ago, it’s too soon for an appreciative (as opposed to a data-mining for articles) rewatch. Yes, that is true. It was a solid wall that would’ve stopped my enjoyment frozen. But it didn’t. It was a wall? I smashed right through it. The difference is, that there are definite, obvious, subtle and new things to discover, not only because I missed them the first time, but rather there were changes by design.

Maybe this only works because I don’t have the best short-term memory, maybe I find the episodes interesting because I skipped chunks of it. I’m not the biggest fan of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, but I like it; and I wasn’t enjoying myself at all watching the same episode over and over again. Until, I realized how often I do this for singular episodes of other shows (list does not include the constant rotation of random episodes from the Macross franchise):

• Honey and Clover 2 Finale, where a sandwich is deliciously and beautifully cruel [->]
• Interstella 5555, where I remembered digital love! [->]
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, where the ordinary is more magical than time travel [->]
• Turn A Gundam 50, the epilogue that kills me every time (featuring “Tsuki no Mayu” full version)
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann 27

Now, I’m not saying the Endless 8 recursion of the 3rd episode deserves a place on this list, but as for the episode itself – there was much to enjoy within it. It’s the recursion that bothered me, not the content it is based on. So basically, I found a way to enjoy this (and it’s not like I’m jumping up and down screaming how awesome it is, that happened in episode 02 during Kyon’s ‘Kakizaki Requiem’ with matching Itano Circus).

So this is how I inadvertently found myself enjoying episode 06 after I thought I’d given up after episode 05. Take this as you will. I just happen to think that ‘who enjoys, wins.’

lolikitsune must put this show on the top of his MAL favorites to gain any credibility in the sphere.

This is not an endorsement of the second and currently airing season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. It doesn’t say here that this show is good, and that anyone is missing out. Rather, I agree with Pontifus when he says [->]

All the weight/meaning in the world means nothing if you find the experience regrettable or a waste.

So I am not apologizing for the currently airing second season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. I will entertain no such folly, never mind the delicious Macross references. What I am saying is that I have pierced the barrier of boredom with my drill of personal enjoyment, and I’ll tell you how I did it. Consider it or not at your leisure. The main problem of the Endless 8 arc is that every episode after the third one is a copy of the same show essentially. The TV format may not even be the ideal way to do it. From the archives I retreive two posts:

1. Towards a Quantification of Love for Animu Part 1: the Rewatchability Ratio
2. Towards a Quantification of Love for Animo Part 2: the Value of Rewatchability Through the Lens of Eternal Recurrence

Both posts by mechafetish, where he looked into our common behavior of rewatching shows we like. The first post measured a show’s subjective rewatchability ratio. Using the tools in that post, I would give this current season 2/6 (current episode count) = 0.33. This does not account for the recency bias; this ratio, as subjective as it is, may not hold over time with me, since I gave the clearly superior first season a 2/13 = .15 (the one with Lost my music, and Haruhi & Kyon’s preview leading to that episode: “LISTEN TO MY SONG! BOMBAAA!”). The second post, references the idea of eternal recurrence proposed by Friedrich Nietchzche as presented by Milan Kundera in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Mechafetish says,

This behavior fundamentally alters the way I derive utility from anime I watch. Generally, I tend to have fonder memories of anime that provide me with rewatchable moments simply because I generate more utility per minute due to selective rewatching. For example, I actually love Brain Powered (an anime generally agreed upon to be atrocious) because of exactly 2 moments in the later episodes that I watched more than all the episodes of the entire series combined.

Crappy anime, but with rewatchable moments. I felt that I was onto something here. There was almost this independentutility in rewatching a particular moment that is distinguished from the show, but not apart from it. The context is still decisive in appreciating such moments, but this enjoyment does influence one’s affinity for the show that made them. So this comprises the first part of the premise of my enjoying Endless 8. The second part is very much related, otou-san put it thusly,

Re-watching anime, like any visual entertainment, can give you new perspective on it just from the plain and simple value of seeing things again. We tend to see plot, character development, and visuals the first time around (and considering anime means watching with subtitles for most of us, even the visuals can be secondary at times). But that second viewing can reveal details of reference, symbolism, and detail. If you only watched The Holy Mountain or, yeah I’ll say it, FLCL just once, you missed something.

–otou-san, Welcome Back or: what color are your glasses now?

While never close to insane levels of rewatching the way mechafetish does, I rewatch anime and reread manga a lot. And yes, I often feel that I discover new things every time I see the same show again.

The way I ended up enjoying Endless 8 episodes 4, 5, and 6 is that I related to them as rewatch adventures for episode 3.

But episode 3 was just a few weeks ago, it’s too soon for an appreciative (as opposed to a data-mining for articles) rewatch. Yes, that is true. It was a solid wall that would’ve stopped my enjoyment frozen. But it didn’t. It was a wall? I smashed right through it. The difference is, that there are definite, obvious, subtle and new things to discover, not only because I missed them the first time, but rather there were changes by design.

Maybe this only works because I don’t have the best short-term memory, maybe I find the episodes interesting because I skipped chunks of it. I’m not the biggest fan of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, but I like it; and I wasn’t enjoying myself at all watching the same episode over and over again. Until, I realized how often I do this for singular episodes of other shows (list does not include the constant rotation of random episodes from the Macross franchise):

• Aria the Origination 12, “Chotto ureshii dake da yo” [->]
• Shin Mazinger Z 03, “Its name is… Its name is…” [->]
• Black Lagoon 07, where Rock grows a pair [->]
• Turn A Gundam 50, the epilogue that kills me every time (featuring “Tsuki no Mayu” full version)
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann 27

Now, I’m not saying the Endless 8 recursion of the 3rd episode deserves a place on this list, but as for the episode itself – there was much to enjoy within it. It’s the recursion that bothered me, not the content it is based on. So basically, I found a way to enjoy this (and it’s not like I’m jumping up and down screaming how awesome it is, that happened in episode 02 during Kyon’s ‘Kakizaki Requiem’ with matching Itano Circus).

So this is how I inadvertently found myself enjoying episode 06 after I thought I’d given up after episode 05. Take this as you will. I just happen to think that ‘who enjoys, wins.’

Hatsukoi: favorite of this season. This is still spring right? I forget. I like the dynamics, especially Kusuda/Enomoto. Yamamoto is hawt, too.

Saki: I semi-marathoned Akagi whilst Saki aired, and I instantly lost interest in Saki after that.

Eden: *yawn* (not enough motivation to watch ep3)

K-ON: soooooo disappointing. A music anime could have potential…Beck needs rewatching…but the malignent cancer was getting to me. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of was really enjoyable, but when there’s about 3 seconds of music in an episode it’s kind of like wtf.

ristorante paradiso: wwwwww reverse pedophilia.

haruhi s2: first episode was nice. want moar.

What is this bullshit?!

Kyoto Animation has almost as many posts as the rest of the top 10 list combined. (It’s six short, to be exact.) It’s not a majority, but it’s a disgustingly large plurality, and it. is. not. right.

Comrades, I urge you to fight the power by blogging about good shows for the next week.

This change is one for the worse, I feel. It eliminates one of the most fun dynamics of the original series.