Shameful Otaku Secret!

Premature Speculation, if you will (ew…)

Ha you assholes I beat you to it. I’m old, see, and that allows me to be judgmental. Actually, I’m not that old, but I’m prejudging anyway.

Best OP: The Tower of Druaga.

This was a hard one. Lots of great tunes and animation this time around. Kaiba’s ethereal opener with English lyrics shows you exactly what kind of beautiful and haunting 25 minutes are about to happen. To Love-Ru’s tantalizing but stylish OP turned out to be the best thing about the show every fucking week. Even the gay-ninja saga Nabari No Ou, which I don’t really care for, has a great song by a previously awful band (VELTPUNCH). But Druaga gives us clever credit placements, a jaunty ska-rock tune that turns dramatic toward the end, and most importantly, a question that we have to ask weekly: are we being faced with a an alternate reality situation in this series?

Best Music in general: Macross Frontier.

There is a two-part quiz to establish best anime music in a season.

1. Is there a Macross series?
2. Did Yoko Kanno do the music for any series?

If you can answer “yes” to either, you’re set (some of Macross 7’s butt-rock aside). We can answer “yes” to BOTH this season. Aren’t we fortunate bastards? Ranka’s “Aimo” is Yoko Kanno’s best tune since my favorite one, “Myung’s Theme (Voices)” from Macross Plus. But here’s the close runner-up, “Ninjin Loves You Yeah!”

Train Wreck of the Year: Geass R2.

I stopped blogging it, mostly because everyone else already was. But I still watch, usually open-mouthed. Time after time it leaves me in slack-jawed disbelief as the camera pans out to millions of Zeroes! Orange-kun comes back from the dead! LeDouche quotes Light Yagami! Tits flow from Sunrise’s pencils like a mighty Mississippi of mammaries! Underage heads of state with no tits at all convene, possibly panty-free, in a soundproof room in Zero’s giant truck with a fucking panda on the side being driven by CC and covered in fucking Cheese-kun window stickers! FUCK! Where does it end?? This quote from Derailed By Darry sums it up pretty well:

Code Geass R2 is genius on so many levels, just not on the classical “well-written” level.

Fantastic observation. I realized this week that there is nothing out there like it, and yes thank you jebus I’m grateful for that, but there is a bizarre brilliance in the over-the-top-ness.

By the way, mai waifu on Geass: “Oh, is it time for your stories?”

Biggest surprise: Tie! Daughter of 20 Faces and Kamen No Maid Guy.

20 Faces had potential from the get-go, being from Bones, but it was clear that early on their attention was focused mostly on Soul Eater. However, the series consistently played out so solidly that I find myself waiting for it more all week than any other. To top it off, the last episode was jam-packed with the kind of ballsy direction and stylish animation that are Bones hallmarks.

Maid Guy was a surprise simply because it turned out to not be shitty. Yes, the animation budget was probably fished out from between Madhouse’s couch cushions, but at least they don’t save money by having all the characters drink tea for 10 minutes per episode like some other Madhouse shows. Kogarashi is a previously-unseen mix of hilarious and frightening, and I will gladly watch every week to find out what crazy Maid Guy Power will be unveiled next.

Best First-Episode Experience: Soul Eater

Yes, it’s a shounen/action/talking-during-battles kind of show, but Bones aimed to prove early on that they could execute with style. I immediately re-watched the first episode because my head spun too fast to figure out what was going on the first time.

Voice actor of the season: Megumi Nakajima as Ranka Lee

Open auditions are apparently a very good idea. She out-acts most of the rest of the cast, and her tongue doesn’t sound nearly as thick as Sheryl’s on those Engrish song lyrics. Shin sums it up much more clever-style.

Best Shoujo: Toshokan Sensou

Dear Itazura Na Kiss, I still love you, and I think you embody your genre like nothing else. Unfortunately, a new character who is vulnerable and real but not quite so pathetic as the usual shoujo heroine has risen up, and she’s really tall! Plus, as a boy, I find all the guns to be exciting.

Dear Special A, Toshokan Sensou’s ensemble cast is far better than yours. Also, I never liked you.

The wiener

Drum roll…. OH SHIT Copping out. But unlike most people who don’t believe in superlatives (like me) I will pick the “best” show of the season. Just not until the end.

I’ll say this, though — it’ll probably start with a K, whatever it ends up being.

These aren’t the blog posts you’re looking for

Lured by the promise of cookies, I have joined forces with blissmo and crew over at Yukan Blog. I need to practice playing well with other kids, and she only demands a few small screencaps, no faux-clever captions.

Look for me as Otou-San: I’m going to move Itazura Na Kiss and Allison & Lillia over there. This is great to me because Yukan has gained a pretty decent readership in the short time they’ve been around and I don’t see a lot of people rushing out to blog either show, so maybe I can change a mind or two. Plus, I am a first-class whore.

The short but enthusiastic list of comments on the initial post at THAT give me hope that Allison might very well get some fans, despite lacking in robots, panties, or moe. And people who can’t seem to get over the artwork of Itazura are slowly coming around as well, so let’s see where it goes. Even if both shows eventually bomb and suck, I solemnly swear to continue giving them what they deserve.

In other news, I am now using Feedburner for my RSS, so you may need to re-subscribe if you are reading through RSS.

Update for clarity: For anything involving Soul Eater, LeDouche, Nyan-Nyan, or … panties, keep reading over here.

Itazura Na Kiss posts at Yukan | Allison & Lillia posts at Yukan

Dangerous Cohabitation

When we last left poor Kotoka, the best-worst thing to happen to her in her young life was making things really difficult for her, and she was forced to share the same roof with Naoki Irie, the Makoto-voiced boy who she crushes on hard even though he’s a cold-ass dirtbag. I don’t just mean Jun Isurugi cold… this kid is over the top.

See... what did I say?

In my younger days as a lonely nerd, as opposed to my college days as a reasonably well-off nerd and current days as a married nerd, I would say “serves her ass right.” After all, girls only go after the jerks, right? Apparently it’s actually true, because a female writer of a female character aimed largely at females holds the same opinion. So remember, guys, don’t blame the girls: it’s a biological imperative, and it takes at least 24 episodes to overcome it.

He’s a cold hearted snake, look into his eyes oh OH

Well, let’s be fair though. Naoki is really pretty. I mean, Gundam Meister pretty.

Recap

I’m not entirely sure if it’s to impress Naoki or give him the ol’ what for, but Kotoka decides she’s going to get herself onto the top 50 board for midterms. Naoki says that would require divine intervention, but fortunately, she gets some. Mrs. Irie wanted a girl, that much is obvious from the room Kotoka stays in, but she wanted a girl so bad that she put her little dickhead in dresses for the first few years of his life. And took plenty of pictures.

Woman just got a lot weirder. And more awesome.

Explains a lot.

Kotoka may not do well in school, but she’s not as dumb as Naoki would like to think, and blackmail is not beyond her realm of comprehension. So it’s a trade: You, asshat, will tutor my sweet underrated ass to the top 50, or I shoot this childhood photo with my cell phone and broadcast it to everyone with a pair of eyes. Good work.

You, uh... go girl? No, seriously, that’s pretty rad.

And it pays off. After endless late nights with fuckface, not only does she just push her way to the bottom of the board, she may have put a tiny crack in that male-tsundere heart of his. He even holds the door on the subway for her, and wishes her luck on the test. Big stuff.

I had to capture that, but now I don\'t know what to do with the caption. It’s almost too easy.

But when she returns the picture, bound by her word since he got her into the top 50, he reverts pretty much instantly. Douche.

But there’s another “but.” Camera-happy Mom Irie snapped a picture of the two of them passed out on the coffee table at a late-night study session, and packed it with Kotoka as a good luck charm for the test. Yeah. The woman has premature grandma syndrome really bad. When Kotoka’s slovenly crew of miscreant friends see it, things get bad — and the badness spreads.

I suppose if he said well, we look cute there, I suppose let’s just fuck and get it over with, the show would be really short.

Unfortunately, as much as she’d like to, Kotoka can’t seem to change her feelings toward Dick Boy.

What We’ve Learned

I wasn’t sure about this show at first, I just thought it had a little more potential than Special A and I knew it was a successful manga with a weird history. But barring a really awful episode 3, this one has sold me. There are lots of great robots, epics, and even panty-horrors this season, but Itazura Na Kiss promises to be the real “root for the underdog” story. Kotoka may be stupid about someone who doesn’t deserve her, but in the process she becomes a charming character you can really get behind — plus, who hasn’t been there?

It’s a little cartoony in its characterization so far to be a real knockout drama, but you could spend a half hour on something much worse.

Update: For the rest of the season, you’ll get to see what happens to poor Yukan Blog when I come spraying my unwelcome opinions all over the place there. This show as well as Allison & Lillia are going to be moving over there for the duration as of Itazura episode 3 and Allison episode 2. So join me, will yas?