Surprise! Lolikitean Christmas is back after a two-year hiatus :)

The anime of the day is Ben-To.

Ben-to (2011-10-08)

Description

You Sato is a new high school student living in the dorms. While seeking cheap eats at the local market he finds himself beat up and semi-conscious with fleeting glimpses of a girl during the moments of his collapse. As his memories recover the next day, he discovers that trying to purchase half priced lunchboxes can be hazardous to his health as free-for-all fights with local students for the discounted food is the nightly routine. The girl from the night before, Sen Yarizui, is an upper classmate known as the Frozen Witch and is one of the local Wolves who dominates the area. She educates him on the rules of the game where Wolves eat well while Dogs settle for cup ramen. With fellow first year student Hana Oshiroi, a fetishistic germaphobe, You Sato sets out to discover if he too has what it takes to be a Wolf and taste the sweet victory of half priced boxed banquets or wallow in the bitter defeat of reconstituted noodles and salty broth in a styrofoam bowl.

Genre: action, comedy
Theme: Ben-To's, school
Duration: half hour

Links: Official ANN

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Well, enough about how much I suck. Kimaguresan fixed everything. SUCK HIS COCK

Let’s talk instead about how much Shiraume Ume rocks.

She’ll punch you.

She’ll kick you.

And if you’re a girl…

Well, she just might flute you.

Stay classy, my scrumptious sadistic plum.

Seriously, my only complaint regarding the fanservice in this episode is that it was not sexful enough. “Bring it on!” clamoreth the lolikitsune, greasing its flutes.

Major wins this episode include Ayase being hot, a more modern depiction of a convention (Genshiken, Doujin Work, Koe de Oshigoto, etc., only show long tables and folding chairs, but here we have displays and so on), Ayase being even hotter, Kyousuke’s face when confronted by the “porn, porn, everywhere; and ne’er a drop to drink,” and Ayase being the hottests.

I died a little inside

Well, putting that joker aside, let’s get to the meat of episode 4. The verdict? It was not spectacular. Nothing surprising happened, nothing on the level of episode 3. Or… I should say that I in particular wasn’t surprised.

Because I was expecting realism.

And I got realism.

Namely, I was greeted with an implicit retelling of Kannazuki no Miko’s most valuable takeaway message. Himeko worries about Chikane following the KnM episode 8 rape “plot device”, puzzling over whether her best-friend-turned-sexual-assailant is an angel or a devil. She eventually concludes that Chikane is just a sixteen-year-old girl.

Now, Morishima Haruka isn’t 16. (And maybe she’s not a girl! We don’t know for sure, do we?)

But the trope applies.

When she breaks down in the hotel, crying about something so seemingly pointless—why hasn’t TJ confessed again? doesn’t he love her? wtf, mate?—rather than shake my head and sigh, I felt for her (and even more for TJ being subjected to the befuddling rant). One might smack her on the head and say, “Yo! Haruka! Maybe he’s not trying to be overbearing? Maybe the fact that he’s spending his Christmas eve with you is enough of an indication?”

But self-confidence is a big player in reality.

And ‘first-time’ feelings are scary.

It’s understandable that Haruka feel outside her element, and be worried, uncomfortable. What she was thinking by dragging TJ to a hotel is… well, that ED article I linked about 16-year-old girls might provide some answers. I wouldn’t shout “slut!”—or, I would, as lolikit, but not here. A time and a place for everything.

We can pontificate to our wits’ end as to whether all the dog stuff is reasonable/cute/weird/whatever, but in the end we see that this is not mere puppy love. Ten years down the line, the two are “rabu rabu” and still roleplaying.

This show GMH.

I hope future arcs live up to the stellar expectations set by this one.

A recap, in case any of you are even more out of it than I was: there’s an Aniblog Tourney happening. That’s right, bitches, aniblog.

“This is the first time!!! SO EXCITED” scream countless aniblogosphere sycophants. But no, sadly, this is not the first time. We had the Anime Blog Awards in 200…8? Lemme check my sidebar. Ah yes. Best Satire Blog 08. To give credit where credit is due, there are two original things about this Aniblog Tourney: first, it’s sucking on Jason’s cock by being set up in a sports-esque bracket (which Josh so kindly SGML-ized); second, I’m not in it.

Am I bitter? Fuck no! Being excluded from this sham of democracy is the best thing that’s happened to me all month!

This also means that I can kibitz from the sidelines with impunity. I won’t look like a narcissistic whore and I won’t look like an emo loser! I’ll just be me, you know, just be me. And then no one be judging me, except me.

All this said in various shades of verbal irony, I shall now move right along to the first round of the Aniblog Tourney without further ado.

My picks are winning for now, but will it all be meaningless in the end?

Every day, two pairs of blogs are voted on. Today, it’s… well, you see the names in the above-srced image. Calamitous Intents and The Cart Driver are winning so far today. This is good, because those are the two blogs I voted for. Why did I vote for them? Funny you should ask!

I voted for Calamitous Intents because that’s where Choux resides. For those not in the know, Choux is a lovely lovely artist who did the female character designs of CCY-senpai wa 17sai. Yes, this is a plain case of personal bias. What? How much did she charge me for the artwork? Zero dollars. Fuck, this looks like corruption in action. So much for democracy!

As for The Cart Driver, I was unfamiliar with the blog prior to today. I was also unfamiliar with its opponent, Sekijitsu, but the choice was pretty easy to make after a quick peek at both sites. First, Sekijitsu has about 600 pixels of the HTML equivalent of drivel before you actually get down to business and read their posts. That’s a big no-no in my book. To make matters worse… well, I’ll let the blog speak for itself:

Do you remember what I said about the originality of the Aniblog Tourney earlier in this post?

Okay, okay, so something can be 100% unoriginal and still be epic, but this is really pushing it.

Moving right along, The Cart Driver is… well, you remember how Code Geass R2 ended? Remember how a certain Mike was orgasming over the idea of Lelouch still being alive at the end? Remember how, grasping for whatever straws he could, he came up with a 4chan rumor that zomg the cart driver is Lelouch!! ? Yeah. The Cart Driver is that cart driver.

Negative points in my book, but said aniblog quickly shoots to the top of my list of good blogs due to the number of pixels between the top of the page and the first post (maybe 100? something sexy like that). All this pored over, The Cart Driver carts home an easy win.

Am I suggesting that my votes are important in any way?

I suppose I am. Please forgive me, oh aniblogospeers.

P.S. just for the record, if rankings in the Aniblog Tourney are primarily based on blog age, how is notdotq not even featured? I was around before half of the participant blogs. ghostlightning? You gotta be kidding me.

DRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!

DRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrRrRrrrRRRRrrrrrRRRrrrrr

This looks pretty bitchin’ awesome. I mean, the guy in the middle is a butler or some shit, and he’s got a baseball bat covered with SHADOW SPIKES. Clearly he’s going to murder everyone with his shadowmancy. The other guys are also shadowmancers. The first episode is all about how they meet, at this sweetass restaurant. The guy in the middle (who Im’a call Green ’cause I can’t remember his real name) is a waiter there, and the other guys are hipsters who are meeting there for a date. They all get attacked by motorcycles, whose engines are just like DRRRRRRRRR all the fucking time, but it’s chill, because they use their shadows to cut the motorcycles in half. It’s kind of a ripoff of Pride from FMA, but whatever. It’s cool.

Also it looks like it was drawn by the designers of Persona 4, and some totally hot chicks told me that game was bitchin’, so I’m gonna say it was bitchin’ too. So yeah, bonus points for that.

DANCE IN THE VAMPIRE BUNDT CAKE

So… it’s basically Moon Phase, only with more blatant pedophilia. TARGET AUDIENCE: JOSH PINES. Seriously, I’m playing Star Wars RPG right now (yeah, fuck you) and my DM says he wants to watch this shit. So steer clear of this, because that dude is a fucking pedophile. And unless you wanna get tainted like he is, DON’T WATCH THIS SHIT. I mean he’s a pretty good DM, but seriously the dude likes little girl vampires. Creepy shit.

So what’s this about? Well, the first episode involves this naked vampire chick (I mean technically she’s got a cloak) and she eats like twenty guys, and turns them into zombies. Then she uses the flowers in her hair to seduce this salaryman, Kotaro. See he’s secretly a pedo too (viewpoint character or something) and she’s seducing him away from his boringass wife. There was some sketchy implications that Kotaro was a chosen one or something, but I didn’t really pay much attention.

My main concern: WHERE THE FUCK WAS THE BUNDT CAKE? I’M HUNGRY AS SHIT.

SORA NO WOTO

The only thing that could make this picture better would be if it were a flute. And if she were playing it with her vagoo.

Sora no Woto is fucking amazing. I mean seriously, I’m tentatively gonna declare this best series of 2010. I only saw the OP, but that’s already enough. From what I could gather from the PVs and stuff, it’s the story of a wandering soldier known only as the Sky Bugler. She passes through the post-apocalyptic industrial countryside, showing off her badass bugling skills. It’s a heartwarming story of life and love in a world beyond the end of the world. Science has failed, and only music can save humanity at this point, so it’s up to the Sky Bugler. She has a profound elemental connection to the sky, and can understand the nature of the war that came before.

This is one to watch, guys. Trust me on this. I’m an expert.

HANAMARU KINDERGRABBER

No seriously, FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Apparently someone decided Ichigo Mashimaro wasn’t foetal enough. So now we legitimately have a show about FETUSES RUNNING AROUND. Holy fucking balls. And their dad is a florist. Who looks like Keitaro from fucking Love Hina. Holy balls.

The first episode… NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED. It was literally 24 minutes of fetuses staring at each other and giggling occasionally. Then one of them SHAT THEMSELF. I feel like I could’ve scrubbed bleach into my eyes for 24 minutes and had it be more productive than this bullshit. Jesus fetusfucking Christ.

NODAME CANTPLAYIT GRAND FINALE

So, this is the seventeenth season of this series, about some chick who plays piano and some guy who stabs people with a conductor’s baton. The chick used to be lame as shit, but in the new series, she’s taken a level in badass, and has ninja skills. You can see that in this picture, where she catches a fly with her bare hands. It’s pretty intense.

Anyway, this series picks up where the last one left off, namely with her discovering his secret identity as a crime fighting Parisian. That’s right, motherfucker’s from Paris. Since she’s British and Japanese, this is pretty intense. But as the new episode opens, she reveals that she too is a crimefighter. Now, with both of them together, they can take on the most dastardly villain of all: Michael Tilson Thomas. It’s going to take all of their power to stop his mad plot to take over the entire world through a particularly intense concert. Everyone will dance to the beat of his baton!

I’m pretty excited for this series, because Michael Tilson Thomas is a badass, and has glowing blue glasses. I met him at a party this one time, up in Mendocino in a barn. He was a cool dude. I almost got glasses like him.

Some promo art of the Big Bad. Look at that badass.

KATANAGATARI

So, “Katanagatari,” which is short for Katamari Gattai Train, is pretty damn awesome. The art style is absolutely gorgeous. It’s by Nisio Isin, and is an adaptation of the original Katamari, but takes the series in a VERY different direction. That guy in the middle there? That’s the Prince of All Cosmos. See, his father, the King of All Cosmos, got drunk as shit one night on sake, and crashed the beautiful Japanese palace into itself, resulting in the cherry blossom petals being scattered to the four winds. The Prince must now set out on his magic train to gattai with every beautiful girl in the land, in order to prove his own self-worth to himself. The whole thing is very metaphorical, and has constant allusions to the Tale of Genji. It’s a beautiful work of art, and definitely one to follow this season.

SEIKON NO QUASAR

So, quasars are the coolest shit in space.

Unfortunately, this show doesn’t live up to the brilliance of its own premise. It’s set in the distant future, and follows the story of that young badass in the front, Seikon. He lives with his four sexyass goth-loli maids in a fucking quasar. That’s right, a quasar. Unfortunately, the quasar recently set a blast of energy at an inhabited planet, and wiped out half of the planet. So now the survivors have come for Seikon, to get their vengeance. Seikon must ride into battle to defend his harem, armed only with his epic scythe, made out of space.

It’s incredibly sweet, but beyond the character designs, there’s not a lot to see here. The writing is mediocre, the fanservice is crap, and the fight scenes are incredibly poorly animated. DROPPED.

That’s all I’ve got time for today. I’ve gotta convince Mace Windu not to kill me, and get his help to kill some Unifying Force bitch. Whatever, I’ve got a Kaminoan geneticist captive to extend my lifespan, because I’m a badass Clone Trooper.

I’ll post my thoughts on the remaining series sometime tomorrow.

For now, this is lolikappa, signing off, underlings.

.lolikappa

A new decade is upon us! There are many strange things afoot in the world of the aniblogosphere! A great otaku cleansing is underway! A baby has been born! Certain females have embraced their true calling as agents of the truth of YFR! These are all clearly omens and signs that it is high time to shake things up in the world.

As such, I have stepped up to the plate to rule as notdotq’s new overlord.

Greetings underlings, I am lolikappa, your new lord and master.

Or something.

For those of you who don’t recognize me, I’ve been here longer than all of you, so shut the fuck up and sit down. I’m a duck and shit, I watch animu, I play vidjamagames, I go to school in the frigid east, and I’ve been IRL archrivals with lolikit for like six years or some shit. Traditionally I make one post on here a year, despite having originally been a coblogger or something like that.

So what happened to lolikit? Well, see, last week he made a grave error. He took on the guise of someone he shouldn’t have. He overstepped his bounds. He took on the mantle of the most rapturous raptor, the madman in the sexy hat, the one, the only… Baka-Raptor-Jesus. He reigned on high for a few glorious hours, but was soon struck down by the mighty hand of the real Baka Raptor, and is thus lost to the world. The mighty lizard cast his pale imitator out into the wild world, where his scrabbling family caught hold of his flailing limbs, and dragged him off into the horizon.

(Of course, I was the one who got him to take on that guise in the first place. As Kurosawa would say… just as keikaku.)

So what will notdotq be like under my reign? Not much different. I’m going to try to post every day, even though most of those posts will be meaningless drivel. Maybe there’ll be a Winter Kickoff Shit? Or maybe some ramble about Eden of the East, or Brotherhood, or Bakuman, or Casshern, whatever else I’m watching/reading these days. WHO THE FUCK KNOWS.

And maybe this regime change won’t be permanent. Maybe someday lolikit will return. But maybe, just maybe…

Maybe this is the dawn of a glorious new decade.

.lolikappa

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

But then it was some new anime that was shitty through and through. It felt a bit like Jojo, what with all the extremely buff and disproportionate dudes being buff and disproportionate. There were some nice jiggle physics, I guess, but they didn’t make up for anything.

I made it all the way through the first episode of Needless, surviving off my masochism, and then…

… I was rewarded.

The ending animation entails three lolis kissing each other, rubbing each other, licking each other, rubbing against each other, and so on and so forth and doing all the things that three lolis normally do whilst removing each other’s clothing, and I went to heaven, dying a million times and coming back to life a million times.

Then the preview for episode two replaced the loliyuri and I cried a million times and died and didn’t come back to life.

Verdict: shit.

Positively taken with the masterful art-style present from episode one of endearing slice-of-life/comedy K-on!, I hung myself upside down from a tree for three weeks in order to contemplate the meaning of my relatively bland existence. I died and was reborn, and when I examined my robes I found them gray no longer. (They were blood-soaked, possibly the result of the runes.) I took a long, soapy bath and, when the laundry finished drying, I looked at my figure in the mirror.

My Days, Jim, has kindly recorded the words I uttered as I examined my new self:

“I have become moe, destroyer of brains.”

(Thanks, Jim.)

As I stood there, transfixed by my own fixation, I realized that I was missing but one thing: a musical instrument. I was going to revive pop music. I quantum divided my hand into a drill, focused on the tones I most dearly wished to reproduce, pierced time and space and the twelfth wall, and—you guessed it—produced my instrument: a shiny new well-greased flute.

Transformation complete, I stand before you on my wobbly spearlegs.

Now, who will be my three accomplices? I know that I’m the most bad-ass thing to ever set foot on the stage of the world, but a band is four (or five?!?!!?!?), not one.

UPDATE: Please post your interest in joining the band in the comments below, along with your cell-phone numbers. You will receive anonymous texts instructing you where to go for your… *ahem*… auditions.

[canned introduction] 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! [/canned introduction]

As DiGiKerot pointed out, there’s a lot wrong with this new season of Maria-sama ga Miteru. This isn’t limited to the OP song change, or to the running in the OP sequence. This episode sees the *gasp* introduction of apparently heterosexual men! In my Hanadera Academy? Obviously it’s more likely than I thought—I would have said the chances were 0%.

Spiral power? “Your sexy lesbian is a sexy lesbian that can pierce the gay man’s gayness?” I don’t even know!

Anyway, this episode sees us approximately one year after the events in episode one of season one. The school festival is coming up, and Lillian Jougakuen’s Yamayurikai is once more holding a play. Once more, the boys from sister gay school Hanadera Gakuen are participating. Once more, there’s some tall, dark, and bishoujo girl bitch who hates men and wants out. Once more, Yumi is given the task of making everything work out.

By the way, Kanako. You want Yumi to remain an angel?

Protip: People die when they’re killed.

Crazy Sachiko, in classic Crazy Sachiko style, informs the actors that the girls and boys will be switching roles. Well, she’s gotten better about gender issues in the last year (remember her moaning about how evil men were?), but this kind of blunt trolling isn’t very attractive. At first Yumi is displeased with her onee-sama’s decision, but then she decides to take it like a good little walking vagina when said onee-sama melts her with her eyes.

Shirukii is also on board with Sachiko’s “meaningful” expressions.

“Rape is imminent.”

In between the Yamayurikai practicing the play and Shimako training her new dog, Yumi has some flashbacks of when she became Crazy Sachiko’s petite soeur. We get some nice piano version of Pastel Pure that almost makes up for the new OP, and… Yoshino suggests that Yumi have a nice anniversary with her onee-sama. I’m starting to see eye-to-eye with IcyStorm here; Yoshino rocks. “Nice anniversary?” Roses, chocolates, a fancy dinner, and a hotel room.

The fanfiction writes itself!

In any event, Crazy Sachiko clearly remembers what day is coming up. She’s got her rape mask on.

Later on, Yumi and Touko are having some problems with their relationship. Thankfully Yumi has learned the lessons taught by Rainy Blue and confronts Touko directly, making a big fuss in front of the Yamayurikai’s sex chapel.

As the school watches in horror, Yumi trills “Ano (Tou)ko wo Rape.”

Now that Maria-sama ga Miteru is current again, I should really do some YFR fic of it, huh?

The stage was set. The metools painted a rainbow over Lillian’s entryway and the Yamayurikai took to the sky in kaiawase formation. Who will profit? Who will get sexxings? Who will make my next blog post funny? So many questions, and a whole another week until episode two…

(The emo girl was emo, but such is the lot in life for those who fall in love with DEAD PEOPLE WHO WERE KILLED. OH EM GEE.)

Fuck Yesssssssssss

Toward the end of the episode, we are informed that Rosa Gigantea is coming back for the school festival. The possibilities are endless. Personally, I’m hoping for the “Sei surprise-sexes Yumi while Yumi is waiting for Sachiko to meet her for their after-festival anniversary-celebratory make-out session” route. Other lovely possibilities include a threesome, an overly-dramatic scene with humongous sexual tension, and a tennis match.

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