anime update

[cerusee]

Finished:

Sola:

It ain't AIR. Not much is. But at least it was coherent, and unlike Kanon, it was short. Bonus: Mai Nakahara and Ai Shimizu, alive and together at last. Girly bonding is what they do best.

Nodame Cantabile:

T'was good. T'was fun. The undoing of this anime was that it lacked Tamaki Hiroshi and Juri Ueno and had the misfortune to be made after the live action drama, which owns my heart forevermore. The saving grace was that it played the entire first movement of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto, liek, omg whoa. Chiaki's so hot. But live action Tamaki Hiroshi's Chiaki was hotter, and that's all there is to it.


Dropped:

Bokurano: The op theme is awesome, the manga art that the look is based on is great, and ever since Fantastic Children, I've been deeply in love with Junko Minagawa's voice. Nevertheless, the nicest thing you can say about the aesthetic of Bokurano is that it's pedophiliac, the worst thing you can say about the aesthetic is that manga-ka Kitoh might be a pedophile with a rape complex, and I don't think I want anything to do with him. Dropped this like a hot potato when a would-be rapist was leveled against a teacher who distributes internet videos of his sexual liason with a middle-school student. Rape v.s. statutory rape? I can't contain my excitement. And now, I go to bathe the stink from my skin.


Still watching:

Kamichama Karin: Sure, it's got way more cute than plot. But I'll take tiny blonde chibis and Mai Nakahara yelling, "I AM GOD" over pedophilia and rape-as-love any day.

Lucky Star: The amazing thing about Lucky Star is that I'm not watching it solely for the Lucky Channel segments at the end. Sometimes, I get through almost the entire episode without remembering Lucky Channel. Nevertheless, whenever I get to the end, I remember that no matter how cute and Azumanga Daioh-esque Lucky Star is, it's all for naught without Lucky Channel's snarky satiric endcap.

Maria-sama ga Miteru season 3: I love this as I imagine I might love my own children someday. Need I explain? Well, just in case I do: Maria-sama ga Miteru came out during one of the worst years of my life, it's one of my few genuinely good memories from that period. It also has a very attractive sort of grey/pastel color palette, and muted lesbian overtones. It's all very tasteful, all very pseudo-Catholic, and in OVA 3, Sachiko is able to identify, at a distance, Yumi as dressed in a giant panda suit. It's quite romantic. If you don't believe me, watch it yourself.


Picked up:

Terra E:

omwtfbbq manga. Manga is beautiful. Manga is lovely. I love the manga. I am watching this because I can't bear to just put the manga on the shelf without some kind of farewell, and because Takemiya's stunningly beautiful portraits overlaid onto a sea of stars deserve to be animated in a thousand color palette. I pray this will not be fucked up. Bonus: Sanae Kobayashi (aka Akira from Hikaru no Go, and Akira from Mai-HiME) as Physis. Dude.

Comments

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I finished Bakura no. In my mind the high point of the series were the first two episodes. The rest of it maintained a certain interest level, enough for me to finish, but never lived up to the potential. [my review (http://rashaka.livejournal.com/2007/12/26/)] The things they chose to be disturbing were often sexual in nature, and I was mostly disengaged by that. I couldn't feel tension because the very idea of how some of the issues are presented just blocked me from participating with the characters. And they didn't go far enough with the other aspects that could have made it more disturbing-- identity, murder, sanity, ethics, pragmatism. Those are more difficult moral dilemmas, at least from an audience participation standpoint. There's no moral dilemma about rape. I'd rather watch shocking moral dilemmas than watch shocking pedophilia. I gave it a C+ for its ambition and attempts at subverting the robot cliche, but it's still just a mediocre series.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

:D I feel validated about dropping it--not because it was omg shocking, but because it sounds like there was never anything worth sticking around for.

I generally don't feel too guilty about dropping books or shows or movies when I have a strong, bad reaction to them--the chances that I'll be able to get anything out of a TV show that disgusts me are marginal, whether or not it's got redeeming value. Iffier is when I simply have a meh reaction--I often wonder if I'm missing something.