Merry Christmas
CCY’s Twelve Moments in Anime event have always been on my mind through out the Christmas vacation. Yet, because I knew that I was too busy this Christmas (as I went back to Hong Kong for various reasons), I wouldn’t have time to have the time to write a post everyday. So I decided to not join.
Yet, by coincidence, I was sitting in front of the family computer 30 minutes before the arrival of the new year in Hong Kong (FYI, it is 13 hours faster than Toronto). With nothing but to spam twitter before the new years, I decided to do what other bloggers did in days in 30 minutes before the new years, to talk about 12 things related to anime in 2009. In order to do that, I didn’t make posts, but just thought of topics right on site and just tweeted about them.
I have to say, it was a bit messy:
1: ARIA: an anime that I rewatched in 2009, gave me endless miracles and calmness. A good departure from the endless moeblob in recent anime
If I went with kevo style of trying to put everything into the 12 days of Christmas song, I would have placed ARIA in the third day, as the main focus of ARIA is Akari, Aika and Alice. ┐(‘～`；)┌ [Well, you can say that ARIA gave me one cute Akari-chan :3]
2: Saki: When MJ meets moe and over the top action. The results are exciting. Despite the yuri overtone, the anime was still excellent
Knowing how to play Hong Kong MJ even before Saki, it was actually the fact that Saki was a MJ related anime that got me interested in the first place (and also the fact that people on irc started playing MJ after watching Saki). While I did post (read: rant) about how that there is a huge yuri overtone in the anime (of how there are several almost official yuri couples just from the anime itself) and how it provides huge amount of fanservice (I say, Nodoka’s oppai is too annoying). It still doesn’t take away the fact that Saki is fun to watch, mostly is because how stylish they play MJ. It is also good such that more people are exposed to Mahjong [it is a fun and exciting game].
3. Kimi no Todoke: Haven’t even finished the anime, I found myself loving every part of the story. Good character development + Sawako 10/10
Just finished watching ep7, and is still liking this anime very much. The reason is that Sawako is someone that so touchable, not like the mass moeblob famous with K-ON and Lucky Star, but someone so realistic. Throughout the few episodes I watched it already touches on themes like friendship and love, and also hints of themes of jealousy. In the end, it is a 10/10 anime that is not all sweet and moe but really shows character development and character relationships, something that I view more importantly.
4. Umineko: From Maria to the decision to take away important parts made most of the characters forgettable: making the anime disappointing
Even before the anime Umineko started airing, I had already posted saying that Higurashi and Umineko would be vastly different and that lots of people looking for Higurashi in Umineko would be quite disappointed. Heck, I have a feeling that I was correct on that one. So it wasn’t as much of a surprise of how Umineko would end up if they took the Higurashi way to do Umineko: not fitting, yet, thats why Studio Deen did.
Studio Deen knew that the crazy face was useful in Higurashi because it would greatly contrast the characters from their normal state to their…”Spirited” state? So having that in mind, they used that face to Maria everytime Maria started blabbing out witch related issues.
The results was less than satisfactory. While other character might have that face from time to time, Maria was the main victim to this ugly rendering.
Added with the fact that even in the Sound Novels, each game was packed with information. Adapting it into an anime means that the games must be squeezed into a limited time, so parts of the game must be cut. This is but a sad side effect of the adaptation, that some of the information, and with a big chunk of the them relating to character background, it ended up making a lot of the cast without a solid background, rendering them plain and forgettable.
5. Toradora: The sudden speedup of plot after the snow trip and the absurd ending placed a dent on the once excellent anime. Taiga still moe
I checked Toradora, the series ended in 2009, so it is still considered to be part of 2009 anime. While no where near my top anime, I still found Toradora to be a solid anime. Most of the times, I would be annoyed of any loli-like tsundere voiced by Rie Kugimiya (yes, including Shana). Yet, with Toradora, not only it gave me a reason for Taiga to act like a tsundere, it also gave me a quite rounded character for someone with such stereotype. So by the middle of the series, I found myself supporting Taiga quite a bit.
So, even if the middle part of the series dragged on a bit, it wasn’t too much of a problem. Then the snow trip came up and passed, then like a blizzard, everything came rushing down, with a huge bang in the end.
For some people this came in shocking because….as you logically see it, it was just too out there, as it was in no way consistence with the theme of the series.
Well, while it is quite shocking to see how it ended, it still doesn’t cover the fact that the anime was solid. At least this absurd end did not stop Taiga from winning 2009 Japanese Saimoe. Despite facing against 4 Saki contestents, she was able to defeat them and ironically, landing the first Japanese saimoe victory for character voiced by Rie Kugimiya.
6. Clannad AS: [Actually AS ep18] http://kevo.dasaku.net/?p=746 @kevo31415 Nuff said
Clannad After Story focused on the relationship between Tomoya and Nagisa, yet ironically I found the relationship between Tomoya and his dad even more pure and more tear jerking then any other ones. Kevo has a better coverage of it than me [aka, I'm stealing ideas].
7. OEG: Are you correct in your usage of the word otaku? Appeared and stirred up discussions throughout the anime blogosphere
No matter if you support the Otaku Elimination Game or not, the effect that they have on the anime blogosphere is something that cannot be overlooked. Even blogs that they have not included in their list (me included) have taken interest in the topic of ‘otaku’ and have started discussions about the semantics of it. For the good or worse, they did come and shook the anime blogosphere
8. Kyo-Ani trolls almost everyone with Endless Eight: No only are the fans annoyed by it, apparently the VA are also angry over them
A quite search about Aya Hirano and Endless Eight will show that even Aya Hirano didn’t liked how KyoAni executed Endless Eight
After knowing how Endless Eight repeated itself for 8 episodes, I avoided second season of Haruhi for all I can this year so I couldn’t comment much on the episodes itself, only relying of outer sources on how annoying it is.
Maybe Endless Eight have affected me also, as I would have happily watched Haruhi Second Season if it wasn’t for Endless Eight.
9. Evangelion: 2.0: While 1.0 stayed loyal to the TV series mostly, from what I heard, 2.0 is a whole different thing from the TV series
You see the trend? I didn’t watch Evangelion 2.0 yet, but it hearing interesting things about it. On how different it is from the TV anime. Which not really a big issue here, but with Evangelion 2.0 virtually different from TV anime, it has set the stage for an entirely different conclusion to Evangelion, maybe one that will put a end to the confusion of the TV ending and movie ending (And the “I feel sick” translation in the movie end ┐(‘～`；)┌ )
10. Kimi ga Shiranai Monogatari is quite famous. I’m not a fan of it yet, but having to buy 2 copies of the single for fd means something
You know that I’m running out of time when I start posting random stuff like this. This, added with the huge amounts of posts about Bakemonogatari, I’m VERY interested in the anime, will watch once Blue-Ray subs are fully released.
11. Marathon of Gundam: lesson learned: I shouldn’t marathon months long of anime, all on the same genre and all about GUNDAM
So, while Gundam is good stuff, I doubt watching only Gundam for 2-3 months was a good idea. In my opinion, it wasn’t. While marathoning several Gundam series (Z, ZZ, F91, Victory), I found a hidden gem, F91 [actually it is so hidden, that the creators decided to hide it even more by fitting the TV series plot into a movie, only showing some of the goodness], along with one of the most beautiful Gundam songs I ever heard: Eternal Wind.
Despite F91, which was a movie, I wasn’t too fond of the fact that rest of what I watched was over 40 episodes long, and watching them together made it seem that I was watching a long long series, making myself less able to enjoy each individual series as much.
12. I ran out of time
Ya, by the time I got to the twelve event, they started countdown already, so I was only able to write that before saying HAPPY NEW YEARS….
So to fill up, let just put: Nyoro~n Churuya-san: While for others, this is nothing special, as it is just short episodes of Churuya-san saying nyoro~n here and there, wanting to eat smoked cheese and Kyon-kun not letting her get some. Yet, what is interesting is that this series is aired through Youtube, and not any other medium (or even NicoNicoDouga). While I am not certain if this is the first time that anime studio have used online media as a major medium for transferring shows to its audience, but it is interesting to see KyoAni embracing Youtube and even it if just using it for simple and short anime like Churuya-san and Haruhi-chan.
For all that is still in 2009:
Happy Advance New Years
Some other bloggers that joined in the Twelve Moments in Anime:
kevo
CCY
_eternal
Eater-of-All
Nazarielle
Moritheil - Twelve Dramatists that defined 2009
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