I had all but abandoned this blog but today I am really fuming after I heard about Toukai TV’s decision to cancel the airing of the twelfth episode of Higurashi. For those of you who haven’t heard it yet – in a nutshell the story goes like this:  girl kills father, girl says she has wanted to become mangaka, media fuels anti-anime hysteria, TV station gets scared and refuses to air the episodes of Higurashi and School Days for “various reasons”, fans of Higurashi and School Days are enraged.

Anyone sees the big problem in this story? I know, you will say the problem is that we can’t be certain whether the girl even watched these series, let alone got inspired by them in order to do her terrible crime. That’s part of the problem, yes. But the bigger problem is the sensaniolist, blood-hungry, disinforming, biased, full of hypocrites media. The fact that the more violent and sick the crime is, the more attention it receives in the news is sickening enough but the witch hunt that starts almsot every bloody time a shocking crime occurs is even worse. For crying out loud, there were gruesome murders in abundance long before there was anime or video games (or whatever modern influence the journalists choose to blame for the decay of youth depending on the case), yet if you listen to some “experts” you might get the impression that these harmless leisure activities are virtually the most likely source of making someone commit a murder (I am talking in general as I have no first impression of the media outrage that is currently going on in Japan but the results of it seem pretty indicative).

But I am going to go one step further and say boldly – I don’t care if the girl got inspired by Higurashi, Lord of the Rings, Grand Theft Auto or Mozart’s Requiem. The fact that millions of others did not is more than enough proof that the problem lies somewhere else, not with the hyphotetical influence. Moreover those who cannot make a difference between fiction and reality are already virtually insane anyway, no use blaming the straw that might have broken the camel’s back rather than think what might have made them dellusional in the first place. And if you going to blame the anime industry – fine, but be fair. Why start with this small fish and not with the big fish? You know what work of fiction has inspired and continues to inspire (on a smaller scale, thankfully) millions of people to massacre others? That’s right – The Bible. Or if one happens to be a Christian – The Quran. No one believes in them both, so at least one of them must be (mostly) fiction, right? So if the media watchdogs want to blame something – deal with the big issue first.

Or why don’t the media start a campaign against, say, Agatha Christie? In each of her mystery novels, someone gets murdered, usually in a very cunning fashion. The modus operandi of the murderer is described in detail. Using the same retarded logic that makes the journalists blame anime or video games or death metal lyrics for all knid of crimes, one can say that Christie’s books practically teach people how to murder and not get caught (since most detectives are nowhere near Poirot’s skills, after all). So what are you waiting for, media watchdogs?  Start the campaign now!

Oh, but Christie does not glorify or justify violence, I hear you say. And Higurashi does? Without spoiling much, I can say that whenever a character in Higurashi goes on killing rampage, they are not portrayed in a symphatetic light and really regret their actions in the end, an end which is usually anything but happy for them. As for Christie, let’s just say that in one fo her most famous books, Poirot lets the culprits get away free after they have taken justice in their own hands and murdered a certain criminal. Do you think it’s likely the media will call for a ban of this book next time someone is lynched? Of course not, and that’s how it should be. But this shows the disgusting double standards of mainstream media.

OK, I had to get that off my chest, thank you for reading this rant and I hope I haven’t offended any religious people, it’s not religion which is the problem, it’s the double standards.

I haven’t read that much manga and what I have read so far has been mostly unfinished series or a few volumes long. I say that as a disclaimer – maybe there are many great long manga series out there and the heaps of praise I intend to write for Battle Royale would be an expression of my relative inexperience as a manga reader. But I can’t help it, this manga has affected me too much, so I have to write down my impressions.

The premise of Battle Royale is simple, if extremely brutal and disturbing. In a totalitian ruled Japan the greatest entertainment show is simply called The Program. Every year a random (or not so random as it turns out) school class is picked, delivered to a certain location and told the rules of the game. Every student receives a random weapon, they are all in a restricted area and they have three days to win the game. How does one win? By being the last man standing. Literally. So the choice is kill or be killed. And if they don’t want to fight – they all die. So we have 42 ninth-graders (or third year middle school students if you want the Japanese system) battling it out to the death, TV ratings soaring with each juicy murder or rape attempt, plot twists are in abundance – treacheries, alliances, plans, detailed action scenes with their own twists – it’s not easy to guess what comes next, even for people like me, obsessed with guessing exactly that. And now I know why the final third of Mai-HiME is so often compared with Battle Royale and as much as I love Mai-HiME, I think Battle Royale is better, not least because it doesn’t have the an ending that ruins everything but also because it is even more brutal to its characters.

As great as the plot and art of Battle Royale are (more about them later), I think what I like the most is the emotional intensity. It makes you hate certain characters with a passion (sure the boss of The Program is a way too one dimensional villain but he still made my blood boil with anger) and hope agaisnt hope that your favourites will somehow survive against all odds. Sadly this did not happen to my favourites and not surprisingly the manga is full of sad scenes, of people mourning their dead friends and people losing their lives in all kinds of ways – from heroic to so absurdly trivial and random that it makes the loss of life even sadder. A lot of times I was unable to continue reading despite the gripping plot because I was overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness for a character who had just kicked the bucket.

But as much as one is inclined to despise those of the teenagers who kill their classmates in cold blood, the big issue in the manga, in my opinion, is what kind of society can be so full of miserable voyeours that something as monstrous as The Program is seen as pretty much the best entertainment show – people even bet who will win. With the rising popularity of all kinds of “reality” shows and films or games full of violence, I can’t help but wonder whether something very similar to the game depicted in the manga will not appear in the near future. Yes, it does not seem likely but even the slim possibility is chilling. We can try to explain the popularity of The Program with the dictatorship but I doubt any dictatorship would bother forcing people to make bets, so I guess a lot of people actually di like The Program.

As far as deeply moving, even to the point of being traumatising, events in the manga go, I think the lighthouse massacre tops them all. Things go from joyful reunion to a horrible sequence of deaths in at an appallingly fast rate and in a hauntingly absurd, yet ghastly logical fashion. And to make things even worse, you can’t point out the real culprit among the direct participants in the events, it’s basically a horrible misunderstanding with disastrous consequences. Of course, the root of the disaster was the suspicion that everyone playing this horrible game had to live with, the suspicion that his friends just wait for the best moment to kill him and increase their chances of victory.

Battle Royale really manages to make one care for characters who have only recently been introduced…and then kill these very characters right when you want to read more and more about it. Yet, this rarely seems to be a crudely manipulative trick to sadden the readers, I see it more as a way to really emphasise the horror of The Program – any participant can die any minute. No one can feel safe, even among people he regards as his or her best friends. It’s actually a bit unbelievable the teenagers trust each other as much as they do in the manga, even considering the paranoia and distrust are rampart. But it would have been an extremely boring action if everyone just played for himself, exactly like in some multiplayer deathmatch shooter PC game., so I am more than willing to accept this as a bit of suspension of disbelief. Plus, I am no psychologist, maybe people would actually behave like this, deny the reality that tells them only one is going to leave the island and stick with their friends.

The plot concentrates on several main characters, who not surprisingly last until the late stages of the deadly game. But the mangaka has tried to give enough background for virtually every character and has done that with a heavy use of flashbacks showing moments of the students life prior to being forced to fight for their lives. This is wonderful for the character development, of course, because the game lasts less than three days and it’s much easier to see the changes in personality by comparing the character in the flashback with the present version, so to speak. However, sometimes this does get repetitive and slows down the break-neck pace of the “non-flashback” plotlines. Also, sometimes the flashbacks seemed forced since the situation does not seem suitable for a character to reflect on his or her past. But since he or she is going to be killed next and not have much screen time overall, I guess the mangaka (or the author of the book) did not really have that much choice.

Due to the extreme nature of The Program there are many plot twists. The problem is that it’s not difficult to perceive the most skillful characters early on and guess that most of them are there to stay up until the final volumes. That said, Battle Royale is full of small surprises – for instance one characters defeats an opponent after a protracted and painful battle, only to be shot like a sitting duck while still catching her breath after the previous deadly duel. This comes as a total shock to the reader – in mainstream manga or anime you’d expect almost any character of some importance to have a chance to do something, even if even he understands it’s impossible, not to be shot just like this. I guess one could feel cheated by such a death but even though the character I am talking about was one of my favourites (more in spoiler section of this review), it served to prove that the game was not fair at all, it was simply a terrible, pointless waste of wife. Also it hinted that anyone could die but sadly this was subverted later and some characters were saved by “plot shield” or Deus Ex Machina a number of times. Mind you, this is not really over the top like in a stupid shonen series where the hero survives against all odds so often that you’d think he should use his luck and win the lottery, but nevertheless I can’t help but feel cheated when Kiriyama seemed like an indestructible force of nature while my favourite characters were dropping like flies. But overall the plot is simply addicting, I read the entire manga, which is fifteen volumes long, in a few days. It actually took me more tiem to write this review than to read the manga. Of course, I am talking about the number of days passed since I first started writing it, not actual writing time but still, this serves to prove how addicting and good the manga was – I just had to write a very long entry about it.

I think one of the main flaws of the manga is that there are just too many extraordinary persons in that class. I guess the author of the book on which the manga is based wanted to depict the class as a miniature Japanese society but it just had too many geniuses, heroes and psychopaths. Kiriyama especially is just out of this world, not only he is a genius who can put Einstein to shame, he is also fast as lightning and dies harder than Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzeneger. And let’s not forget lucky as the devil himself. It makes you wonder why is he losing his time in that public school, with these skills he should have already been rich and famous at the age of 15 and making his first steps towards conquering the world.

Mitsuko, Takako, Shuuya, Sugimura, Mimura, Kiriyama, etc are simply too extraordinarily gifted in certain areas – it’s quite the coincidence that they have all ended up in one class, a class that’s also full of many other interesting people. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome that every character has a distinctive personality and is interesting in his own way but I think the manga goes too far, I would have expected to see more similar characters, even some characters who are so plain and unmemorable that they are utterly boring. We have so many nutjobs in this class – Mitsuko, Kiriyama, Yuko, the girl who was obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons (forgot her name), Kaori and some milder cases, too. Yes, the situation was insanely tough but most of these people seemed to have already been quite mentally unstable even prior to their arival on the island. Unfortunately, I have to describe the characters in detail in the spoiler-full part of this article due to the nature of the manga but I can say that the effort to create interesting cast has been largely successful and every reader should find at least a few characters to be partial to. And of course, it’s better to have too many extraordinary people in the cast than too bland cast full of walking cliches and boring people.

Let’s move on to the art – as far as I am concerned, there were no real flaws here. The backgrounds are detailed enough but what I loved was the character design. It’s realistic and it is also rather beautiful, something that I haven’t seen that often in manga. Also the faces do reflect the personality of the respective characters rather well – from the lizard eyes of of the psychopath Kiriyama to the wide-eyed hopeful expressions of Noriko which reveal her naivety. And with 42 people in this class, most of whom are in the spotlight at least for a chapter, being able to differentiate between them is crucial, especially for people like me who tend to have difficulties keeping track of Japanese names. With the realistic-looking faces this was easy to do, while I often have difficulties with anime or manga with characters who mainly differ only in their hairstyle or height because of the stylised facial features. The action scenes are good, not great but good. I usually find it hard to keep track of things in manga action scenes but this rarely happened while I was reading Battle Royale.

The realistic approach, combined with the rather graphic violence and sex will probably turn off a lot of people from Battle Royale which is totally understandable. But I have to say that I don’t like graphic violence either, yet I was only really disturbed once or twice while reading this manga (the eyeball scene was nauseating, indeed). I think the point of all this was to show us what the viewers of the Program were watching – bullets piercing skulls, broken bones, poisonings, stabbings, rape attempts and so on. And to paint an exact picture of the terrible plight of the participants in the game, not to make this some “sport” we watch and root for this or that character, detached and not caring about the ultimate price that was being paid so very often in the process of the game. The sex is also very graphic and it features child abuse, prostitution, murder of the one partner by the other while they were having sex, etc so if you are a puritan you’d better find something else to read. And of course, the characters having sex are some of the nine-graders and because of their age things are all the more disturbing and potentially scandalous, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

SPOILER ZONE! READ ON YOUR OWN RISK!!!

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YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!
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The ending could, no – it should have been better. There – I said it! Don’t get me wrong, even I don’t like the deaths of many characters that much as to demand that only one student survives in the end and not two as it is in the manga. But things just ended a tad too easily for Shuu and Noriko while Shogo was portrayed as pretty much a superhuman who was pathologically obsessed with revenge. So far so good but instead of trying to kill the dictator or some politicians or the organizors of The Program he deliberately transferred to the class he knew would be chosen for participation in it. Talk about masochism – the man who was so traumatised by his victory put himself in that hell again and yet kept his cool throughout all the tribulations of the devilish game. And let’s not forget that the manga followed one of the most common cliches – everything, even top secret stuff, can be found the Internet by hacking. What a disappointing plot device. Furthermore, Shuu not only somehow defeated several soldiers on that ship but he even did it in a Kira Yamato fashion – without killing them. Gimme a break, I am so tired of protagonists who are so gentle and loving that put Jesus Christ himself to shame. It was so unfair that Shogo who did 95% of the work had to die while Shuu, the idiot and Noriko, the damsel in constant distress, survived in the end. I think I would have liked an ending without the final twist in which Shogo kills those two and then turns against the Program people or the authorities or even one in which he is a cruel bastard who has simply used Noriko and Shuu as means to achieve his goal. Oh, well, at least it was not a reset ending, so I am not that unhappy with it.

I have started listing things I don’t like so I might as well continue with Kiriyama’s invincibility. It was bad enough that he was an incredible genius who didn’t really have a place in a realistic manga but the bastard was more or less invincible and immortal until the author decided he had had enough of him and killed him off. He survived a massive explosion, dozens of bullets in his bulletproof vest which should have in the very least caused bruises and injuries, stayed alive for a time after being shot in the head and hit by a metal blade in the eye and won a martial arts duel by learning something that had taken his opponents years to develop in a matter of minutes. And the icing of the cake was that his character development can be summarised in two words “brain injury” – that is to say he suffered from a condition that prevented him from having any feelings and emotions. Boooring…

Continuing with the villains, Mitsuko was a lot more interesting. What I loved about her was the way she used the romantic notions of her classmates to her advantage – even after knowing a lot about her, some of them still tried to believe she was innocent girl who had to be protected. In volume 8 she played the role of innocent girl, so typical for anime and manga to perfection which allowed her to get out of nearly impossible situation. The combination of childish antics and powerful sex appeal just proved to strong for the two boys which I think was a very good subversion on the Japanese obessession (at least in their popular culture) with girls who look young and innocent. Even after trying to kill them they were reluctant to see her as a psychopath or at least a murderer. And the contrast between her innocent words and ultra-cynical thoughts was simply superb. The problem with Mitsuko is that she is too cliched too – is it only me or something like 70% of female character with mental problems in popular culture have been sexually abused as kids, often by their fathers? Yes, sexual abuse of children is an appalling thing but surely there are myriads of reasons for a descent to insanity? Why use abuse so often? That said, the strugle of Mitsuko was portrayed well and I felt some pity for her which is a lot than what can be said for Kiriyama, the robot. And of course, Mitsuko is sexy as hell which is always a bonus, especially for psycho-bitches.

Shogo Kawada was one of my favourites. He shined especially in contrast with the idealistic fool Shuuya. OK, I am not as cynical as Kawada and in the flashbacks he often went over the line with his rational approach to everything but in a desperate situation like the one in Battle Royale, you need competent cynics, not naive do-gooders. If it wasn’t for him Shuuya and Noriko would have been one of the first victims. Shogo tried really hard to redeem himself for what he did in the previous edition of The Program and did it in the end, against all odds.

Yukie took part in just several chapters but really managed to make me like her. She was the one who had the guts to go back to the school and assemble a group of friends in order to find safety in numbers. And by had the guts, I mean she showed amazing bravery – she trusted her friends at a time no one knew who will pull the trigger, who will play the game and who won’t. Of course, the reason for going back was kind of silly – her infatuation with Shuuya of all people, but still I liked her from the start. Her saying “We could be dead tomorrow” and jumping on Shuuya to kiss him was so moving! And then the seeds of distrust, in other words Shhuya’s presence, disprupted the balance among the girls because of all the suspicion in the air, Yuko made a horrible mistake, the lighthouse massacre occured and Yukie died. She could not even live until “tomorrow”. I think it was the best example of the utter cruelty of The Program, along with Takako’s death.

Talking of Takako I was really rooting for her against the bastard who tried to rape her and then she died immediately after a hard won victory. This was an insane twist – I really wanted to scream “NOOOOOOOOO!! Don’t you dare kill her!” but I guess that would have been useless. She had the spirit and determination her friend Sugi missed so much and he got on my nerves so often for that very same reason. Don’t get me wrong, Takako’s death was not only a very sad moment for me but also the moment when i decided that this manga is awesome because anything could happen, and yet it would have been better if she had stayed alive for longer, a final duel between her and Mitsuko would have been a lot more interesting for me than the awfully protracted battle between Sugi and Kiriyama. Furthemore, Takako’s character design is just perfect – her utter determination is obvious in her sharp features and yet she is also very beautiful and can be caring and tender – but only for the right people.

Mimura was quite interesting, the rebel playboy, who suffered from somewhat excessive pride but was human enough to see his errors from time to time. I think I would have preferred the final climactic scene to have involved Mimura’s bomb, rather than Shhuya and Noriko capturing that ship, it would also have stretched my suspension of disbelief to the limit but not as much as the actual ending and Mimura was a lot better character than Shuuya. But sadly he was relegated to the role of ghost who helped the latter make up his mind in critical situations. What a tragic fate…

The same Shuuya who needed so much contemplation even to kill Kiriyama because “no one is born evil”. I am a coward who really values human life and is agaisnt the capital punishment but Shuuya’s indecisiveness was simply stupid – this same Kiriyama had killed many of his friends and was threatening to kill him and his last surviving friends. And the idiot still hesitated and when he finally pressed the trigger, he even tried to revive Kiriyama. I mean, how stupid can you get?

Most of the supporting cast does not disappoint either – even the rest of the lighthouse girls, who had a very short life after appearing for the first time had distinct personalities. The rich kid who hated his classmates, the girl who was forced into prostitution by Mitsuko, the homosexual who was stalking Kiriyama, etc – they all managed to keep me interested in their story, in seeing the world through their eyes. I love it when detailed plot and character development can coexist – sure there are some flashbacks which are stopping the flow of the story in the worst moments possible but they are not that many and most of the drama depends on knowing the characters better. If you know only the names, the deaths are mostly just stats. The different way the students reacted to the miserbale situation was one of the highlights of Battle Royale – we had all kinds of reactions – denial, madness, suicide, sticking with friends, going on a killing rampage, lurking, hiding and so on.

Last, but not least, the manga is full of scenes that are so memorable that are more or less haunting – Mimura’s final missed shot, the whole lighthouse sequence of events, Shogo killing his girlfriend by mistake, the boss of the program killing a girl simply for talking in class, Kiriyama crippling that martial arts instructor and so on.

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SPOILER END!

Yes, Battle Royale is a manga that is definitely not for everyone – it is often unbearably sad, not to mention full of violence and sex; the plot has few but rather annoying flaws, the art might be considered to be too realistic and boring by some. But it is also one of not so many mangas that have made me think, it is full of quality suspense and plot twists and it has many characters that managed to stir my emotions time and again. I value such moments, not least because they tend to get rarer and rarer. So if you can tolerate graphic, violence-full mangas and do not suffer a mental breakdown when your favourite character dies, you can try reading Battle Royale. I doubt it will succeed to impress you as much as it impressed me but even if the odds are low, I think it’s worth a try.

I don’t want to hide the fact that I don’t really have a clue why I have ended up enjoying this show quite a lot. Nothing really stands out (except Yuuma’s crazy mother) when I try to analyse Happiness! but I guess this is just another comfirmation that some things are more than the sum of their parts. When you look at the show you can easily classify it as yet another romantic comedy that takes place in a high school, a concept that is one of the main pretenders for the most beaten to death idea. Yet, this show does make me laugh out loud and no character has yet made it to my list of characters who should be put out of their misery, actually none has even managed to get on my nerves at all. And let’s face it – bright colours, light-hearted atmoshpere, beautiful girls and some comedy is a winning formula when done right. Alas, things seem to go wrong very often when the formula is tried, so I need to enjoy the successful attempts as much as I can.

The plot revolves about a high school student named Haruhi. Seems like this is quite a trendy name for the female lead characters these days. Anyway, Haruhi is most talented student in her school, which is not an ordinary one but one that teaches magic skills. We learn very early on that she has had a fateful childhood encounter with a boy who has saved her from some bullies using magic when she was a little girl. Did anyone say that this is such an annoying cliche? Well, yes it is, no doubt about it but I do hope for a miracle – i.e. her not ending up with that boy.

Anyway, Haruhi is almost a texbook example of moe-girl – often blushing and embarrassed, soft voice, nice to everyone almost to the point of stupidity, general cuteness, etc. That said, thus far she hasn’t managed to get on my nerves. I suspect this is because despite all the moe-ness she still behaves more as a high school girl than as an elementary school brat, unlike your average moe character. But maybe I am just deceiving myself and refrain from bashing Haruhi because her character design is much better than that of the Kanon girls? I accept such a possibility but I think her seiyuu is also an important factor. Haruhi’s voice somehow manages to emphasise the “cute and innocent” part of moe that I can tolerate, rather than the childish and silly part which I loathe.

Since I already started describing the characters let me continue with Haruhi’s sidekick – Anri. She is a really genki (lively) girl who always seems to bite more than she can chew and ends up making a fool of herself. Apparently her goal in life is to take the position of number one mage in the school away from Haruhi which funnily enough does not stop her from hanging out with the latter all the time and being her best friend. Although this character achetype is very far from original and is not exactly one of my favourites, thus far I like Anri the most. Her over the top antics often make me laugh. The moment when she arranged all the chairs with magic was an instant classic. Why? Because she arranged them very well…but on the ceiling, not on the floor, so they ended up falling down in one big heap in seconds.

Yuuma is the romantic interest of Haruhi. No, let me just say that he will be the romantic interest, for now she is trying to deceive herself that he is not but we have all seen such plots and know all too well that this means only one thing – they are so going to end together sooner or later. So far he has beeen thoroughly unremarkable which is more than common for anime guys who have girls falling in love for them for some inexplicable reason. But we know that Yuuma does not like magic which is an obvious hint for magic related traumatic experience. Haruhi is a mage so we will follow one of the oldest cliches in the book, I guess, the one notably made famous by Romeo and Juliet among so many other books, plays, moves, etc .

At first glance Jun seems like Haruhi’s rival for Yuuma’s heart which makes Yuuma something of chick magnet. There is a catch though – Jun is actually a boy who likes to dress in feminine clothes and pretend to be a woman. Of course, if we weren’t told we wouldn’t have noticed this since Jun looks and behaves exactly like a girl. This I can accept – unlike in Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru his classmates know very well that Jun is not a girl, so the suspension of disbelief is much easier. It’s interesting that although Yuuma is not too happy that Jun claims to be his girlfriend, he does allow the latter to cling onto his arm possessively for a time in episode one, something most boys would not do, even if they happen to be very tolerant of crossdressers or gays. Jun is a funny character who unlike some others traps from this season actually can use his brain and his presence makes the story a bit more unpredictable. Of course, right now it seems inconceivable that he would beat Haruhi and end up as Yuuma’s sweetheart, mainly because the producers would not dare to offer the audience yaoi relationships (and also because childhood fateful encounters have a mystical power in love affairs) but I am curious what his role in the story will be.

I can’t be bothered to write about the rest of the characters but I simply have to mention Yuuma’s mother. She gave her son chocolate for Valentine’s and generally behaves as if her son is actually her lover or something. She also decided to redeem herself for her mistake in episode three by getting naked in front of everybody. She is just crazy in a very funny way.

The animation is memorable mostly due to its more than liberal usage of bright colours. The girls are good looking and unlike recent abominations like Lovedol, it’s very easy to distinguish the characters and remember who is who, even if you don’t rely only on remembering their hair colours. The voice acting is one of the most appealing features of Happiness!, at least for me. The voices suits the characters almost perfectly – the voice of Haruhi is full of shyness and the moe levels reach heights usually reserved for seiyuu godesses like Noto Mamiko, but it also shows determination if need be, Anri’s one is literally dripping with enthusiasm and Jun’s so girlish you start suspecting it’s trying to hide something with that which is exactly the case. If we trust ANN, the seiyuus for Jun and Haruhi are new to the world of anime which is given bonus of their voices not reminding me of their previous roles.

So I get to the end of this entry and I still can’t explain why I praise rather than bash Happiness!. Feel free to accuse me of hypocricy next time I criticise some anime for its large number of cliches. I think the problem is that a series needs almost perfect execution and great attention to be paid to the details, in order for me to get over the lack of originality. Plus, Jun is something of an original element. The bottom line is that this show makes me laugh, the characters are more than bearable and there is not an annoying amount of stupid fanservice. If this remains the case I think I will watch it to the end with pleasure and I will complain that it’s only 12 episodes long.

As they say in South Park – “I learned something today” . Namely that I shoudn’t get obsessed with delayed fansub releases, even if I have really enjoyed the series in question thus far. Checking so many times every day for episode 4 created monstrously big expectations which were more or less impossible to fullfil. Don’t get me wrong, the episode is not bad at all and my only major complaint would be the rather inconsistent animation quality. Kate and Claire continue to be notably easier to like than Rachel and Rose but regardless of the viewers personal preferences the character interaction remains heavily grounded in reality with all the pros and cons that are to be expected from such an approach. The girls got rid of yet another lunatic but the way things are presented makes me thing that the series will not go for the monster of the week approach and even if it does it might still maintain the quality, as long as the characte development does not suddenly cease.

This episode makes a point of showing clearly the displeasure of Jessica (one of the of the Grace members), caused by the leader Paula’s symphatetic, rather than stern treatment of Kate. The latter is late for class, yet receives no penalty in the form of a ticket. Seems to me that Jessica’s resentment, maybe jealousy of Kate will obviously lead to something bad for that latter, though I guess she is already in too bad situation to care that much about. But she and Rose do care enough to go to school, even after the chilling flashback that convinced them they are dead in the previous episode. Clearly they continued on autopilot and even though the setting is New York, we all know that in anime, as in Japan in reality, schools are vastly important.

Rachel, though, is a moody girl with not much patience and she has put two and two together and gotten to the conclusion that right now school is not important since she is dead. I for one totally understand her sentiments, even though the way she treated Kate and Rose who had come to visit her was anything but admirable. The important thing is that they all stayed in character – in most cases the easiest way for the scriptwriters to create some teamwork between the four would be to just force it. In other words to force the characters to behave more or less oddly for the sake of smoother plot development. For instance in Mai-HiME Nao and Natsuki agreed to Midori’s idea for HiME Rangers somewhat too easily and their resistance was mostly intended to make viewers laugh a bit and was bit something serious as one would expect from them. If this approach was used, Rachel would have fumed a bit because of the sudden visit but then would have probably broken down, cried and said something along the lines of “Thank you! I really needed someone to be there for me right now! We need to unite against the common enemy!”. OK, maybe not so cheesy as my version but I hope you got the idea. In fact Rachel announces that she has never been their friend and just kicks them out of her house.

Claire tries playing the detective in this series. Relying on her vague memories of the night when she died she manages to find the mansion of the evil blond huy. However, he is aware of this but for some reason is content to leave her be. Also, he can’t see the strange butterflies that are guided the girls to their fateful meeting in episode one and now seem to serve as messengers for Lulu or at least as an ominous reminder of the girls plight. I love the contrast between the outer appearace of the beautiful butterflies and the shock they cause in the hearts of Rose and Kate or the Claire’s angry reaction and attempts to catch some butterflies. And of course, these insects help to maintain the surrela atmoshpere. Anyway, it’s interesting that Claire lives in a rough and poor neighbourhood, yet she has clear priorities and instead of making every effort to graduate from that obviously prestigious school, she decided that her investigation was more important, so she skipped school that day.

In the end of the episode, our heroines swiftwy take care of the task given them by Lulu, which is of course, getting rid of yet another crazy bestial looking man. Rose panics yet again which begs the question how long will the others put up with her cowardness. Rachel though hesitates at first but then has something of an Oyashiro-sama moment – gripped by berserk rage she turns the head of the man into a pulp using a baseball bat. This murderous fit of anger by caused by her remembering her friend that was killed by such a man in the previous episode. The flashbacks and the short fight were executed pretty well, if that’s the show’s version of monster of the week I can live with it, provided the spotlight remains more on the characters and their reasons for continuing the desperate struggle, rather than on the fights themselves.

The most annoying thing in the scene was the clumsy animation work – from one angle the blood on Rachel’s face seems to have strangely disappeared, only to reappear seconds later when the camera angle changes, all this happening well after she had throw the bat away and no blood was flying around. The characters faces also looked even weirder than in the previous episodes. I am usually not observant enough to notice such changes in the animation quality but this time it was kind of hard to ignore them, though I am mostly nitpicking – as I said already the episode is very good, and my ability to enjoy it was harmed mostly by the burden of my expectations.

Kate is again the one who tries hard to unite the group. I think her taking time to be with Rose is one of the last surviving links with sanity that keeps the latter from simply running away from it all or going mad, though I may be underestimating her. But Kate too must have a breaking point, I wonder when she will lose patience with some of her “teammates. Rachel, as befitting her impulsive character, switches from desperation to determination. The sudden loss of her ability to enjoy parties with her similarly outgoing friends, the endless questions from her boyfriend also don’t help her regain her composure. Claire needs to rely more on the rest but it seems her rough life leads her to try and do much on her own. All in all, the characters get developed little by little which makes me want to know more and more about them. About Lulu too but she will probably remain a mystery until at least the second half of the show.

Since the events seem to have an obviously supernatural cause I don’t think we can trust the cops to arrest some of the villains or do much to hamper their efforts to achieve whatever their goal happens to be. So my guess would be than one or more of the main characters will get in trouble with the police but that’s mostly a hunch. Talking of hunches, instead of noticing the obvious reaction of Kate when a possible Lis boyfriend was mentioned, the only thing the cops got after the talk with her was the feeling of the older cop that she was involved in the case somehow. Bunch of amateurs. I just picture inspector Runge from Monster talking to himself “I am Kate Ashley. I wear this stupid uniform. I get pissed at Lis for not having to wear it. I kill her and make it look like a suicide”.

The news Rachel was watching mentioned “no signs of physical injury” when referring to the new “suicide cases” but I don’t think many people bother to go and die in the woods after they have drunk poison or done something else in order to end their lives. If I were a policeman, I would never believe this was just a series of suicides. If after the autopsy the reason for the death is still unknown or looks like a death from sickness, why would the cops talk about suicides even when alone? Maybe I have read one too many mystery novels but I can’t say I understand their reasoning. But that’s a very minor issue. As long as the characters remain interesting and the plot more than adequate, I will keep watching and probably waiting impatiently for every new episode. However – when will have singing again?

You know what comes to my mind when I see Kyoto Animation mentioned? Two things – the first one is Full Metal Panic:Fumoffu which is one of the best anime comedies ever. But the second one is more relevant – the phrase that comes into my mind is “what a waste of great animation”. First, it was The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi and now Kanon. And while I found Suzumiya Haruhi to be merely a mediocre series that I might one day actually watch to the end, Kanon is mystifyingly bad. I say mystifyingly because apparently everyone but me loves it and all I see in it is a stupid harem show that needs this great animation quality as much as car stuck in a traffic jam needs a 500 horse power engine. It’s not fun at all, it is so moe-ish that I think I got a nearly deadly dose of moe after just two episodes. Most importantly – will I live to see the day when high school girls behaving like little kids all the time will be considered stupid and annoying by the majority of anime fandom rather than cute and endearing as it seems to be the case now?

I have watched only the first two episodes of Kanon (2006), so feel free to yell “It gets so much better, you blasphemer” but I can’t help but write my impressions which are anything but positive. So far the only thing that seems to happen is that Yuuichi, the main character who is an absolute clone of the already boring Kyon of Suzumiya Haruhi, bumps into random girls, most of whom he has known from before. But the poor soul suffers from amnesia. Oh, god, amnesia is so beaten to death but that’s hardly the main problem. The main problem is that the series bores me to tears – nothing interesting happens, if we don’t count the girls from Yuuichi’s future harem trying to look ever cuter dumber and more childish – but that’s hardly interesting, is it? All kinds of annoying antics, expressions and noises (I still can’t believe people are crazy about “uguu!”) are used to achieve this goal. Oh, well it was achieved too well in my case, I have rarely been wishing for the painful death of all the main characters after watching only two episodes. In the case of Nayuki, I demand not only slow death but also eternal damnation in the depths of Hell. If I can hear one more time her ubiqutious “Uhm!”( or however this sound expressing agreement is spelled, you know what I am talking about) I might just go mad. And the way she says “Yuuichi” is probably a joy for all the lolicons out there but I can’t stand it. Moral of the story – Haruhi from Happiness!, who is totally moe high school student as well, is a mature adult when compared to the Kanon girls we have seen thus far.

The million and one cliches (transfer student, amnesia, childhood promise, etc) and non-existent plot aside, there is another drawback – the character designs! What’s the fucking point of having such awesome backgrounds series when the girls (let’s face it, they are supposed to be the thing that sells such series to the fans) are not attractive at all? In fact, the beautful scenery just makes them look even more plain. Even if we assume that Kanon is a highly intellectual show with a moving story (who knows, it might well be but I don’t intend to watch it to find out) and not a silly harem comedy, the character designs still stick like a sore thumb among all the beatifully drawn buildings and lanscapes.

I am aware that this short rant will hardly convince anyone and that the KyoAni worship seems to be a dangerous infectious disease these days (just kidding, of course) but I just felt like writing this. But I can honestly say that I find Happiness! to be many, many times better than Kanon and the former is not even that special. It’s just a romantic comedy that is actually funny and enjoyable, despite being full of cliches. Anyway, I hope next time Kyoto Animation pick a watchable show which to remake. But who knows, maybe I just don’t like the way they do their job so even if they make a remake of Noir and change only the art, I might be disappointed once again.

This is certainly one of the overlooked gems of this season. Which in a sense is good because it makes my decision to blog it seem less futile, so I might just do it on some sort of regular basis. It’s a GONZO anime and it stands out for a number of reasons. The art is odd and especially the character designs are bound to turn off a lot of people but in general the art is at least memorable and does not scream in your face “just another anime ” or “we didn’t have a big budget so we decided that zero originality in the art was the formula for success”. It has a very gripping and somewhat heavy, gloomy atmoshpere and amazing sound – the effects, ambient sounds, seiyuu work and music are all essential parts of what makes Red Garden special, at least for me. Last but not least, the series seems to be a mystery with supernatural elements but with a heavy emphasis on the character’s development, something that was sorely lacking in some of the crucial chapters of Higurashi, for instance.

After last season’s fiasco (not even getting to episode 10 of Simoun with my reviews for instance), I have decided not to write detailed summaries often, I will leave that to the more enthusiastic bloggers out there and mostly to those who know Japanese since I myself read such summaries only when I watch raws and want to know what the characters have talked about.

So what’s Red Garden all about? Well, it tells the story of four girls from New York. They go to an elite private school but one day their lives turn upside down. No, they does not even turn upside down – it’s worse – they find out they are actually dead and live on “borrowed life”. At least that’s what some strange woman says. She charges them with fighting for their lives against some lunatic who tries to bite people, just minutes after shocking them with the revelation they are dead. And that’s just the start of their troubles…

So far the plot has provided quite a lot of answers to the different mysteries for such an early stage of the series, so I am not sure how much of a mystery this will turn out to be. But it seems the focal point is not the characters’ search of what isgonig on but the characters’ emotional struggle to cope with the desperate situation they were suddenly thrown into. This displayal of raw emotions will probably lead a lot of people to denounce the show as “emo-crap” or “tearjerker” but you can’t please everyone.

The portrayal of emotional struggles is simply brilliant and totally works as far stirring my own emotions is concerned. One of the main reason is that even though the situation might be supernatural, the girls behaviour comes out as very real – instead of being confused at first and then calmly dispose of the monster in their first battle, some of the girls get hysterical, they begin to quarrel among themselves and indeed are saved by their hunger for life and luck, rather than by someone exhibiting awesome fighting skills out of the blue as the cliche would have it. The atmosphere is so engrossing that it just seems one can actually smell the fear of the girls, the tension is very much palpable, the feeling that your life has just gone down the drain and you can’t do nothing but accept it is very much obvious on the faces of the characters after the first episode. I can’t help but feel compassion to them and cheer them in their uphill struggle to regain some semblance of normality in their life.

Talking of characters, three episodes have been enough to show us quite a lot of the personality traits of the main ones. Claire is the rebellious type who hardly seems to fit in such a school. I can’t help but thinking ofShinku from Rozen Maiden when I am listening to her, not only because of the same voice but because just like Shinku she has loads of determination and willpower. Kate is the typical “good girl” from a rich family, she takes part in the organization called Grace which is something of the school police. I guess the Japanese scriptwriters just could not help but include a few girls who wear uniforms, even though the majority of the student do not. Kate seems the most rational of the four and though more emotional than Claire, she is not as prone to rash decisions. These two have been my favourites thus far.

The other two girls so far have not been as interesting – Rachel is a party loving girl and Rose is clumsy and shy but the combination of their characters ensures thrilling group dynamics. This is not youravearage hero or heroine and his or her trusty sidekicks. These are just ordinary people trying to make sense of the terrible plight they are in. I really hope they stay like that and not suddenly pick up some random heroic traits like nerves of steel, blind luck which to save them every other episode or a brain that does not function well because there is no need for that due to all the “cool” superpowers.

I was a bit surprised how quickly some of the mysteries were revealed but if the emphasis continues to be on the characters coping with the new reality rather on random monster of the week that they get rid the world of, I won’t mind much the loss of the mystery element.

The art is something of a love it or hate it affair. It is a far cry from the cute moe faces anime girls usually have – with big eyes and almost no nose, the type that often gets so bland that the main way to distinguish between the characters’ is their hair colour. The approach is similar to the one used in Monster – the facial features are a lot more distinguishable and prominent, some characters are rather ugly, something that’s almost impossible to see in mainstream anime. In Red Garden we have some very thick lips, weird haircuts, sharp noses, etc. But this just adds to the gothic and dark feeling of the series, just like I cannot imagine Monster with ordinarily looking characters, I shudder to think of a hyphotetical Red Garden with its characters looking like those in Lovely Idol for instance. Not much to say about the backgrounds, they are neither horrible, nor jaw-droppingly great but I like the contrast between the brightly coloured characters and the dark, gloomy New York. Well, the city does not look foreboding and dark all the time, it seems to correspond to the mood of the characters in a way which is a bit of cheap trick but it works.

The sound however is sublime. So far the cast has done an absolutely brilliant job of putting feeling into the lines they pronounce and making their characters look more real. Even the screaming feels like something caused by horror and not just another scream of a dumb damsel in distress which. Among the seiyuus there are stars like Tanaka Rie and Kaoyasu Takehito but the lesser known voice actors that voice the main characters don’t let themselves to be outshined by them which is no small feat. I have seen people complaining about the singing but it really managed to move me – Kate crying and singing at the same time in episode made me somewhat sad. Bear in mind that I had no real reason to be saddened by the death of Liz, it’s not as if we had seen much of her. The singing was off-key – so what? That’s not a musical, ordinary people sing like that, the important thing is that the singing really painted a poignant picture of Kate’s mental state at the time.

The sound effects are also top notch. All the characters talking at the same time really managed to come across as a real heated argument, instead of something artificial and scripted. The sound of bodies being hit, stabbed and so on seem to have been recorded with pedantic attention to detail and while the camera tends to stay away from the more gruesome scenes, the sounds don’t leave much to the imagination and if anything make me picture things as even more gory than they probably are. The music is doing its job to enhance the atmosphere nicely but apart from the song the girls sing, no melody has stayed in my head for long or had made me wait impatiently for theOST.

Up to now I haven’t really included many spoilers, now it’s time for a bit of speculation and spoiler-full musings so if you haven’t watched the first episodes, I’d suggest to stop reading. Liz seems to be the key to it all. The four main characters were looking for her when they met their demise (the flashback of their deaths was absolutely brilliant, I loved the red and blue filters that were used to make it look like some horrible dream-like memory). After that her body was not recovered by Lula. Seems kind of obvious that Liz will have some role to play in the future, despite being considered to be dead. And I really want to know what’s this borrowed life Lula talks about, who are these beast-like people the girls are fighting for, why were they killed so ruthlessly and so on. But most of all I hope Red Garden does not turn into a monster of the week action type of show, with the heroines learning how to wield their new found powers. This would be a real waste of nice character development. I hope the emphasis stays on the changes in the characters’ life caused by their “deaths” and new duties. If it does and the emotional intensity remains as strong as in the first episode, this could even turn out to be a real masterpiece, although of course, it’s too early to make predictions for the direction in which the series will go.

I see I haven’t bashed anything in a really long time. I have just grumbled a bit about Strawberry Panic. True, it got so bad that I doubt I will actually finish it but compared to Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru it’s almost a masterpiece (at least if we compare only the first episodes of the two series). Imagine Strawberry Panic (Maria-sama ga Miteru, dumbed down for drooling fanboys, will do if you haven’t bothered with SP), only with a boy called Mizuho who pretends to be a girl as the main character, with more fanservice and even more annoying characters. It took about ten episodes for the SP cast to make me want to cut their collective tongue to make them shut up but just two in the case of Otome…something. It is such drivel that it makes me a bit ashamed to be anime fan. It’s not funny. There is no plot to speak of. It’s just as realistic as me having a harem full of supermodels and also being to create a new universe all by myself. It does not seem to be real yuri. It includes every cliche in the book and I mean it.

Here are some of the things one can see (and hopefully not enjoy) in this trainwreck:

– The transfer student cliche

– Crossdresser boy who is suddenly found to be very beautiful by the students of an all-girl school. I wish some of the stupid scriptwriters (whom I assume are men because the show is so full of fanservice) try this trick someday and see it’s not actually something likely to happen in real life, especially if you happen to be a total moron who makes all kinds of mistakes and is pratically begging to be recognized as a boy.

– All girl catholic school with possible yuri undertones (come on, I am not that fond of Catholicism but how about something new, let’s say a normal all-girl school?)

– Kouhai (underclassmen) serving the senpai and also obviously smitten by them romantically.

– The transfer student becomes a celebrity and is considered to be a good candidate for the position of Elder (a Rose or an Etoile, in other words). All that in just a few days, mind you. The previous Elder has a sad past (did anyone say Shizuma or Rosa Gigantea?). I wonder if that means that Shion (the previous elder) is also a dominant lesbian? Oh, well, I guess I will never know because I don’t think I will watch more of this crappy series.

– Lolis with terribly high pitched voices screeching “Onee-sama” all the time, talking in a cute (read childish and stupid) way and generally having the intelligence of a brick. A dumb brick. The cuteness is running wild in this series, so wild that even Kagome’s stuffed bear from SP suddenly seem somewhat bearable.

– Tons of fanservice. It includes two girls groping the breasts of the crossdresser. What’s wrong with that? Well, by virtue of him not being a girl, the breasts are, you know, not part of his body, yet they seem to enjoy it a lot and he was behaving as if the breasts were real and he was being molested. That’s just beyond stupid.

– Annoying chibis, tons of static frames and less than mediocre art, bland character design, not that great voiceacting. Ok, I admit it, I don’t like ultra high pitched voices, so I guess I am biased here.

- Humour that is simply not funny. You can call it a toilet humour, not because it’s that rough but because a lot of it revolves about Mizuho’s reluctance to use the girl restroom. Ha-ha, oh so very funny.

- The main character seems to be an orphan (his mother is dead for sure). It’s not as if this cliche is not common even in great series but I just have to mention it back my words about using every cliche in the book.

- The reason for Mizuho’s enrolling in an all-girl school is the will of a relative of his. Some people it seems will everything for money. Of course, he seems way too feminine to begin with (few girls have such well kept long hair ) and of course, his mother has also studied in that school so I smell a secret which will show us the reason for that strange will. Will show some people, not me, I mean.

OK, I am pretty much done here. Let’s summarise – so far this series seems like a bad rip-off of Kashimashi and Strawberry Panic, both of which aren’t good enough to deserve to be ripped off in the first place. Now if you excuse me I will make a few copies of these two episodes of Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru so I can delete them slowly and painfully.

Iono the Fanatics, along with Strawberry Shake, is in my not so humble opinion the best manga I have read from the sadly not so popular genre of yuri comedy (not including some rather fun oneshots). It’s so hilarious that I suspect it even might just appeal to the poor souls who dislike yuri. And unlike the Strawberry Panic manga, so far it has not taken a nose dive in quality, nor does it have annoyingly childish characters. In fact, the only kid character is probably more mature than most of the SP characters…not that this is that big of an achievement.

The plot revolves about Iono, who is the young queen of some country whose location is not too clear. Her obsession is acquiring sobame. For those of you who are not masters of Japanese or have read the manga – sobame can be translated as lady in waiting but also as a concubine. This ambiguity is crucial so the translator has left it as “sobame”. Anyway, back to the adorable Iono. When I said obsession, I really meant it. In just a year she has apparently added more than a thousand sobame to her harem…I mean court.

Nevertheless, the queen wants more to the despair of her financial advisor. They strike a deal to go to Japan in search of “black haired cuties”, if I am to quote Iono. But the queen can only add five girls to her humongous court. Poor Iono…A myriad of funny situations ensue, including sobame audition, fits of jealousy from some of the sobame escorting the queen and so on. Iono even has the audacity to publicly announce her sobame recruiting audition. I can just picture the outrage if some sheikh in the real world decided to buy some ads in a major Western newspaper, asking for girls willing to enroll in his harem…

Not surprisingly, the driving force of the manga is Iono. You know those archetypical rich bitches that seem to be angry with the whole world and yell at everyone? Well, she is nothing like them. She can and does behave like a spoiled child from time to time but she can also be very smart when it comes to handling the various issues arising between her retainers. She also has the rather disturbing tendency of not accepting negative answers when it comes to convincing some beauty to join her harem but rest assured, this is not an S&M manga and Iono does not try to rape anyone. Just some good old-fashioned glomping. In short, Iono is like a force of nature and is one of the most easy-going and fun characters ever. She speaks in a rather odd way, with many exclamations, mostly “Why!” and it seems to me that if she existed in reality she would be able to convince many democracies to revert to monarchy just to have her as a ruler.

Now, I shall describe her retinue. Let’s start with Aida – she is the royal beautician. Not surprisingly she is very busy – the Queen has to look pretty and Aida is more than willing to do that. She loves her job because it gives her excuse to stay around her beloved Queen all day. Aida’s relaxed and calm approach to everything often stops the quarrels among the sobame. To balance things, there is Kass. She always worries about something and Iono’s antics drive her crazy very often. But of course like everyone else she is too smitten with the Queen to quite her job. The arguments between Kass and Aida are often highly amusing, the latter can really teas the former even better than Iono. The biggest worry for Kass is the fact that the Queen loves to shirk from her duties and go in search for new sobame. And much of her frustration comes from the fact that the Queen has been ignoring her romantically despite her hard work. Thankfully this is resolved without unnecessary amount of angst.

The first new sobame is introduced in the first chapter (although there is a bonus chapter which is chronologically before this one), so writing about her is not exactly a spoiler. Her name is Hachibe Eto, also known as Careless Eto or Careless Hachibe. She tends to act impulsively and also tends to forget thing like keys or to check whether the gas in her home is turned off. Of course, that only serves to attract Iono to her even more. Her first duty as a royal attendant is to hold Queen’s head in her lap while Iono takes a nap. Who says there are no romantic types these days? Eto is also quite beautiful, especially if you happen to like girls with glasses. A lot of the funny situations in the manga revolve around Iono trying to finally have sex with Eto but something always getting in her way, literally or not. Talking of sex, there is nothing explicit, even the kisses aren’t as much shown as implied (you see the characters faces getting near, ready to kiss and then in the next panels it shows something different) which is a bit annoying. Therefore it’s remotely possible for some yuri haters to enjoy this. Saying that, I am not sure I would read yaoi manga even if everyone assured me it was really hilarious, but I had to mention it.

Arge is the Queen’s bodyguard. She is just a kid but following the manga cliches in a rather twisted way, she can beat up grown men with ease. Arge knows the Queen pretty well – when she “innocently” offers Eto the task of reading her fairy tales at night, the girl remarks “Horny Queen”. Her Mother, Freshe is also in charge of security and Iono’s driver. Unfortunately so far she has not been in the spotlight too often which is too bad because she seems to be a rather interesting lady.

The art, while not spectacular in any way is nice – the characters are pretty and easy to distinguish and the expressions on their faces in a lot of situations are simply priceless. To make things funnier, often the characters are shown as chibies and Iono with a huge head, weird expression and a very small body is absolutely hilarious, at least for me. The only problem is that there are some action scenes (apparently the Queen has a lot of enemies) in which it’s very difficult to keep track of what’s going on. It must be noted that I often have this problem with action scenes in various mangas, so maybe the problem lies with me, not the manga.

The great thing about “Iono the Fanatics” is that it not only makes me laugh but it’s generally very much a feel good type of manga that I love to read after I have had a bad day or just finished some annoying task. There is jealousy among the characters but no stupid angst, no annoying characters, no dumb plotlines, not much stupid fanservice. It’s simply a must if you are into yuri or just comedy but you can tolerate some yuri.

Yes, I am still alive and yes, unlike me this blog is pretty much dead but I will try to revive it. The autumn anime season is upon us so I feel compelled to do what everyone does and post some first impression from the several shows I have seen thus. Since the fansubbers need time to start releasing episodes I have not watched much from the new season thus far (and let’s face it, I am too lazy write a long entry).

Let’s start with a series with the unbelievably dumb sounding name – Pumpkin Scissors. It’s produced by GONZO and the art resembles Last Exile quite a lot. Since I love Last Exile’s art this fact immediately put Pumpkin Scissors in my list of animes to follow this season, unless it happened to be mind-numbingly dull. Thankfully, so far it’s far from it. The setting seems similar to Europe between the two world wars, the Empire is ravaged by war and gangs of former soldiers harass their compatriots. The Pumpkin Scissors Platoon has the special mission of trying to alleviate the situation of the civilian population after the war. In the first episode some members of the platoon get rid of some special forces men turned highwaymen with the help of a mysterious ex-soldier with special powers. Nice start, the characters are not bad, the music is good, the action scenes promise good things for the future episodes. The cons include the humour that is very much not funny (I’d love it if this series becomes as dark and gritty as Speedgrapher but that doesn’t seem likely for now) and the main character, Alice seems to be of the suicidal do-gooder type of character which I am not that fond of. I hope she becomes cooler or funnier. Don’t get me wrong, she is not annoying or anything, it’s just that few people in real life would there to attack tank with a sword or whatever her close combat weapon was.

Next comes Kanon. It’s apparently a remake of an older series with the same name which I haven’t watched. It’s produced by Kyoto Animation, a studio regarded by everyone but me as the lair of the anime gods (if you have lived in a cave in the last year go find a random blog/review site and read about Suzumiya Haruhi). I admit the animation of Kanon is stunning but it seems such a wasted effort to me. I haven’t seen so much moe-feeling in one episode since…I don’t know, never? We have a main male character who seems destined to be surrounded by a harem of girls who cannot seem to decide whether they are kids or women. He also suffers from amnesia – I wonder if this will bring some thrillers elements into the equation or is just a cheap plot device to make him forget his childhood love which will be of course remembered soemhow in the end. Since the character designs are nothing special and fanboys enjoying the view of the many moe girls seem to be the point of the series I ask – what’s the big idea of spending so much money and effort on the animation? Make sci-fi or fantasy, or good old action – anything that really will use this awesome backgrounds and all the other visual goodies. But I will persevere, I watched five episodes of Haruhi, I will probably watch about the same number of Kanon before deciding whether it’s trash or beautiful looking trash, I mean gem. And no, I don’t hate KyoAni, I actually love FMP:Fumoffu to death. Some of my best friends work in Kyo…ah, forget it, I went too far. But Fumoffu rules.

We get to Asatte no Houkou. Now this is very promising. It’s atmospheric, it’s melancholic, the art while not spectacular is beautiful, the soft piano music creates a real feeling of summer and enhances the emotions the anime tries to convey and convey it does indeed. It seems to be character driven and the characters are intriguing, they don’t talk that much or spoon feed everything to the viewer but like in Simoun their facial expressions and the body language in general speak volumes. It’s about a girl, called Karada, who is about 12 years old I think and she likes to be treated like an adult, not a kid. Notice the difference with your average moe or loli or even anime schoolgirl. Most of them strive to be cute and tend to behave rather childishly because for some reason this is considered cute rather than annoying. The other main character – Shouko is bitter that Karada’s big brother has broken up with her years ago to take care of his sister. In the end of the epsiode a wishstone turns Shouko into a girl and Karada into a young woman. Be careful, what you are wishing for, huh?

So far from what I have watched and read on various blogs and forums, the only yuri series of the season seems to be Otome wa Boku ni Koi Shiteru. It does suffer from the massive problem of the main character being actually a boy who pretends he is a girl and enrolls in an al lgirl school. I really wonder why this idea seems to get ever more popular. It hardly appeals to many fans of yuri (unless something changes the boy into a girl as in Kashimashi) and I doubt it appeals much to the fans of normal romance series – I know that most harem leads are often classified as sissies or wimps but wearing female clothes is really stretching the limit of the audience patience with such archetypes, one would suspect. So this anime looks a lot like Strawberry Panic, the uniforms are similar and from what I gathered from the raw the setting is a catholic school. I managed to survive seventeen episodes of StoPani stupidity so if there are some real hints of girl-girl romance in this I will probably follow this one (and curse myself for being a dumb fanboy who has to die, if we are to follow the slogan of this blog. Oh, the hypocricy…). It’s just 12 episodes long, IIRC, so maybe I will survive this trial. Maybe.

Lovely Idol is about idols. Much of the first episode (whose raw I mostly skimmed rather than watched) consists of many pretty girls singing rather bland J-Pop. It does feature a lot of cute girls (I know I said but that’s the main ponit so I needed to emphasise it), the character designs while very much unoriginal are nice eye candy, so if the music improves and the plot is not too dumb it might have some chancee to be a guilty pleasure reserved for depressing times. It also has a lot of female suiyuu talent, so I guess the senses might be satisfied from watching this while the mind might rebel.

Yes, I know, I know – I lied. It turns out that it took me even more time to write this than the previous Simonu entry but I am inclined to blame the heat which had a very bad effect on me, epsecially combined with my general laziness. But this episode of Simoun is one of the best which spurred me to action once the heat had subsided despite my recent obsession with Higurashi no Naku Koro ni which made me lose quite a lot of tiem debating its mysteries. Anyway, if someone is still watching Simoun but wonders whether to continue depsite not liking it that much and does not like episode eight my advice woudl be to stop watching. I really doubt the series can get much better than this, although I would be ecstatic if it does.

After a brief recap of previous evens the episode begins with the start of the peace conference aboard the Arcus Prima. The Priestesses from the Highlands translate for their delegates and it’s also explained that they are there because such important events require their presence. It’s suggested that a few Sibyllae are summoned to attend the negotiations, too but the guests reject the proposal because of the military role of the Simoun flying girls. Oh, well, some of them would probably be bored if they had to just stay there for ceremonial purposes anyway.

Mamiina is still crying because her stupidity seems to have brought about the end of Tempus Spatium (after trying to Kill Aaeru this serves her just right, IMO) . Rodoreamon tries to calm her down by asking her what she has done before becoming a Sibylla but Mamiina is still in an uber-angsty mood and continues with “I have to keep flying Simouns” prompting Rimone to make a remark about the blue haired girl being the same as Aaeru.

The other new girl, Yun, is shocked by Aaeru’s claim of being a Sibylla just to avoid visiting the Spring. She says she is proud of being a priestess and that she has never seen someone with Aaeru’s motivation. The latter is reply is in her typical brash style – she makes a funny face and tells Yun to look well at it. Hilarious scene which contrasts well with what is to come in the episode.

Choir Rubor attacks the fortress of Choir Tempest and after a pitched battle the latter are forced to retreat. OK, I exaggerrated things a bit, the members of the two Choirs just quarrel over who gets to stay in a certain room. Anyway, moving to the more important parts of the episode – one of the three Highland priestess aboard the ship is kicked out of the conference but got a gift – a guided tour of the ship with none other than her fellow priestesses, also known as our main characters, acting as her guides.

The name of the guest is Anglas and she can speak the Simulacrian language. Apparently the population around the border is similar on both sides. Not only that but the god of the Highlanders is said to have derived from Tempus Spatium. Not that this should necessarily stop fierce religious hatred, at least judging from the religions in our world…

Floe introduces everyone to Anglas who repeats the names in a funny way which if I were sentimental to the point of idiocy I might also have called cute or endearing. Aaeru gets angry because her name isn’t repeated. Seems like her uncanny ability to guess future events was again shown here (as you will see later) or maybe she was just being petty.

Yun and Anglas discuss the Sybillae double role as priestess and warriors. Anglas’ rather stupid reply was that in her country many people freeze to death so she prays for them. Say what, Anglas? Rodoreamon and few others express their longing for the days when they have just been doing ceremonial ri-maajons but Mamiina’s opinion is quite different.

She says that if it hasn’t been a war she would have never become a Sibylla. In the flashback one of the Sibyllae mentions that “Tempus Spatium chooses the Sibyllae” and that with Mamiina’s family background she should forget about becoming one. Seems like someone is choosing instead of the deity and favours rich and influential people. The more I learn about the Simulacran government, the more I dislike them.

One day Mamiina’s town is attacked but the Sibyllae refuse to fight. Seems like that has been common in the early days of the war. Mamiina volunteers and with the help of other cadets drive off the invaders. She says she had only been tolerated because of being an outstanding pilot and that for her being Neville’s pair would have been the only way to stop being considered an upstart. Well, that certainly sheds new light upon her antics in the previous episodes. Nice to see characters who have reasons and motivations even for their most stupid deeds, unlike many an anime villain who seem to do all their evil deeds for no reason other than thwart the plans of the good guys or just move the plot forward. And the joy on Mamiina’s face when she first flew a Simoun was quite moving, knowing her current plight.

The second half of the episode begins with one of the priestess in the conference room sending signals to the Highland ship below. Hey, someone is thinking about treachery… Anglas goes to pray in the Tempus Spatium temple and is baffled by Aaeru not bothering to pray despite being a priestess.

Meanwhile Rimone is checking something in a Plumbian dictionary. She shows character again and tells Dominura to go away. More importantly, the main sequence events starts with Anglas puling out a gun and taking Kaimu as hostage, after seeing a signal flare from her ship below. Note to the Simulacrans in charge – next time check the visitors for hidden weapons, you utter idiots!

Naturally Anglas’s goal is the Simoun hangar. Neville, who surprisingly takes charge of things at that point tries to prevent the rest of the priestess of reaching it, too. But Anglas is not after stealing a Simoun, she takes out a bunch of explosives and activates them, dying in the explosion. Well, I can’t say I expected to see suicide bombers in this series but this scene was really emotional. And at least she blew up machines, not people unlike your average suicide bomber. Moral of the story – do not negotiate with crazy fanatics.

Meanwhile, the other two priestess kill the rest of the delegation and then shoot themselves. Maybe the goal is to pretend that the Simulacrans were the one who commited a treachery and the explosion was some twisted form of self-defence. Anyway, their suicidal determination is quite unsettling,

Arcus Prima is engulfed in flames as only the Simouns of Choir Tempest have survived the blast. Aaeru is quite simply shell shocked – maybe I should have mentioned that Anglas’ last words were “Aaeru”, no actually more like “AAAAEEERUU!”. Rimone’s time spent with the dictionary proves fruitful and she explains that Aaeru means “the love of God” in the Plumbian language and it is apparently the highest form of love they know. The emotion in her voice is, how should I describe it – raw. Awesome performance by Noto Mamiko again.

This whole scene is set against the somewhat surreal background of the burning Arcus Prima. I have to say that in “Simoun” evwen ugly events like fires can be beautiful in a lyrical way. After Rimone’s revelation Aaeru is even more shocked, tears start rolling down her cheeks. The treacherous Highlanders choose this exact moment to start firing at the Arcus Prima. Neville is so regal in that moment, she stands there like some force of nature that cannot be defeated by mere flames. Mamiina chooses this very moment to ask her to be her partner again.

But Neville turns to Aaeru. The latter just doesn’t know what to do which just reveals how shocking the events of this episode have been, after all Aaeru usually has enough confidence for dozen people. The feeling of despair and resignation in her voice shows that Rimone’s seyuu is not the only one who has put an extra effort for this episode. The quiet piano music just gives us the feeling that the tiem has stopped in a sense and that although the battle rages, the real battle is in the characters hearts and soul, they have to somehow keep their sanity and motvation to fight.

Neville says she is not sure of her role, either. She claims she and Aaeru are different in every respect apart from this. Then comes the moment of truth – Neville proclaims Aaerus as her pair which finally causes the latter to stand up. In the end Choir Tempest flies out to defend the ship from the enemy barrage of fire.

Hands down the best episode of Simoun thus far. The pacing was nice, we learned a few things about the Plubum Highlands, we learned a lot about Mamiina, Neville came out of her isolation and of course, last but not least we had emotional intensity that was off the chart. First time I watched this episode I really, really wanted to see the next one right now just to see whether these treacherous Highland bastards would get their ass kicked as they deserved. Mamiina’s story was touching, Aaeru’s shock was so natural and well shown that whoever is not moved probably has a heart of stone. Even Anglas’ last words were moving, as much as suicide bombers can really move someone, that is.

As far as plot and details about the world go we learned a few things, too. First, the Simulcrans are too naive and incompetent to wage a successful war. They didn’t check the priestess for weapons and explosive and they allowed the meeting to take place on a ship full of their most coveted secret – the Simouns. The Highanders are an enigma (apart from being damned fanatics) but their god being similar to Tempus Spatium is a very interesting detail. It’s weird that Anglas found it normal to pray in the enemy’s temple, yet also found the resolve to sacrifice herself and blowing a lot of the sacred Simouns in the process. Aaeru having the same name as such an important concept in the Plumbian language proved well how different these peoples are despite the similarities between the deities. It seemed that having such a name would be considered blashpemy in thr Highlands.

I doubt anyone has expected Choir Tempest to be disbanded just like this and now it seems that will either not happen at all or they will say goodbye after a battle rather so their last battle won’t be Maiina trying to kill Aaeru is the maajon pool. Great series, I am enjoying every minute of it, although watching this right after episode 19 can be quite bittersweet. Watch and you will see what I mean.