Desu ex Machina

¹/₂ (out of 4)

Review: Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

In Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, SHAFT shows us how to make a pretty enjoyable show with minimal effort on their part. If nothing else, Zan is an enjoyable, funny, and clever show that fans of the franchise will enjoy like previous seasons. However, the distinct lack of original material from the manga and noticeable drop in art detail may will leave many fans seeking more, which the show does not deliver.

Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is the third season of the wildly popular Zetsubou Sensei franchise, based on the manga by Kumeta Kouji. Like previous seasons, it follows the ever-in-despair Itoshiki Nozomu and his crazy class. Veterans will notice a change in art style, with slightly more saturated colors and cleaner lines. The show still feels much like Zetsubou Sensei with gags, satire, and politics jokes abound. The structure of this season’s episodes, however, will be the biggest difference viewers will notice. Each episode is divided into three segments, with each segment dedicated to a specific adaptation to a chapter of the manga. While some form of this structure has been used by SHAFT in a few episodes in past installments of Zetsubou Sensei, all 13 episodes this season are exclusively in this format.

While functional, I craved some kind of creativity from the animators or director like we have been used to the last two seasons, and got none. The chapter adaptations are so loyal to the manga that it’s too loyal of an adaptation. SHAFT has literally been accused of just tracing from the manga, which was even referred to in a specific episode. While it is true that many anime are manga adaptations, it’s expected out of directors and animators, as workers in a creative field, to interpret and enrich the media into anime. The script for Toradora! isn’t verbatim from the light novels, and Clannad isn’t just lines and scenes from the visual novel. I’ve read the Zetsubou Sensei manga (one of the few manga I read) and the similarity is just absolutely ridiculous. They do play with art style occasionally, like in episode 8 but overall someone expecting highly from SHAFT will be rather disappointed. Previous seasons do not have this problem. Chapters and gags from the manga were adapted flawlessly and weaved with SHAFT’s art style and Shinbo’s creativity into a product that augments the manga, not replacing it.

So keep in mind that when we praise Zan, we are in reality praising the manga, because the anime essentially perfectly identical, animated versions of the chapters. They introduce some new girls into the show, or at least attempt to. I found Shouko and Miko, a pair of girls who engage in multi-level marketing schemes, quite interesting and I hoped to see more of them. I didn’t. We don’t even get to figure out what Oora, the girl with the ponytail and sloppy uniform, is or anything about her. Zetsubou Sensei absolutely shines from its characters, but in Zan the lack of character development in its new characters cripples the series.

When each episode is basically three chapters, you really can’t complain about the pacing. Admittedly, they picked good chapters to adapt. Some of my favorite chapters, such as the one with the Winter Taisa and the one about sunglasses, were adapted so it was fun to see them turned into an anime.

To wrap up, in pure enjoyment and funny standards, Zan does well. The manga is great and hilarious, and there is so much similarity there is no reason Zan would be anything less. Fans of the series may be disappointed with the lack of original material and fans of director Akiyuki Shinbou will be disappointed with the absence of much of his stylization. How much of this “matters” is up to you, but if you liked the previous series, there is absolutely no reason not to check this one out.

Because of random stupid complications in my life, I am without internet in my apartment for a few days. I have been heading to my university’s library for internet and right now I am typing this is an empty board room in the business school building. Saturdays are fun because everything is abandoned.

At first I was in much despair, but after a day or two it wasn’t too bad. Late at night I would catch up on some older shows I need to finish but mainly I have been rewatching some anime. I’m on episode 18 of a rewatch of Toradora and I hope to finish tonight. I watched the show as it aired and it’s nice and refreshing to come back to it. I remember I picked up Toradora on around episode 5 or 6 after all the hype drew me over and while I enjoyed the show quite a lot, my critique senses were always active. Now I come back and the show has nothing to prove to me, and it’s just a boatload of fun. Toradora’s well balanced cast, voice talent, quality animation, disciplined directing, pacing, and well conveyed plot and dialogue all contribute to a near flawless product. It’s very difficult to make an anime like Toradora, because so much can go wrong. Anyways, enough fagging here. This post is about rewatching anime, and why we do it.

The first reason is quite intuitive. You miss it.

Much like Toradora, my rewatch of the entire Aria series (starting Origination tonight) is fueled by the feeling the series gives me. Of course, you will pick up one or two little new things along the way, but you seek to relive the magic a show enchants you with. The thing with the rewatch is that you are confident you will enjoy the show. Leave your critical analysis aside and just enjoy the show and relive why you loved it so much. I wouldn’t call an anime I finished this January “nostalgia” but there must be some word for the feeling that overcame me the first time I heard Undine again.

The second reason could be that you want to give it anther chance. Did you miss something? Did you not understand something? Perhaps you want to enjoy the show, but you didn’t when you first watched it. Why?

H2O ~Footprints in the Sand~ is rather niche but people who have seen it generally like it a lot. I didn’t mind it but I’m still in the dark as to why it has seen so much praise. You have to realize that sometimes you don’t like a show and it’s not the show’s fault. I found H2O to have an interesting plot and pacing, but some of the motifs are totally undercooked. I don’t want to feel “left out” of the H2O party, nor do I want to come off as closed minded. Perhaps I did miss something here.

And the third reason is that Kyoto Animation thinks it’s 1998 and aired Clannad After Story and K-ON! in 4:3. Now that widescreens (and even Blu-rays) are out, I’m doing a nice slow rewatch of them. As with other anime I am entertaining myself with, I’m planning on finally finishing Gundam 00, which I started almost two years ago, sometime this month. I missed the party with Macross Frontier and Detroit Metal City as well. Those will be complete in a week or two.

The first streaming episode of Bakemonogatari, perhaps the strongest title of a marquee of solid shows the past two seasons, was released recently. It is really great to see that after the TV airing concluded, Bakemonogatari doesn’t miss a single beat and continues its sublime, distinctive storytelling style at and at the high quality of art and animation that we have come to expect for 12 episodes previous. Arararagi (sorry, I stuttered) is also one of the coolest male leads in anime. His subtle character change and outward attitude both keep him honest and make watching the show fun. If Araragi were different, Bakemonogatari’s dialogue driven structure could easily have collapsed. Oh and he also molests Mayoi-chan at the start of the episode, which is also plus points.

Now remember, this episode was a STREAM. so excuse the 360p or whatever. DVD will be out in like 2010

After a near perfect episode 12, we pick up where we left off with Tsubasa Cat part 3. Horie Yui is one of my favorite voice actors and Bakemonogatari is hocchan at her best. The way she renders Tsubasa is both distinctive and compelling; combined with the masterfully written dialogue, it is hard for this episode to be anything but amazing. After a load of dialogue, they go see Oshino and that’s basically the episode. It’s hard to summarize episodes of this show because the show is about the dialogue, not the plot. It’s not about what happened, it’s about the process by which it was presented to have happened. It’s about the the characters say, the way they say it, the reactions. This is why a good seiyuu corps is needed. If you want to find out what happened, go watch the episode yourself.

I particularly enjoyed the scene where Araragi encounters Hitagi in the bike-lot. Araragi’s relationship with Hitagi is unconventional in an anime sense because there is almost no romantic tension. Hitagi is smart and very rarely misunderstands her boyfriend, which is a fresh breath of air compared to many other anime with romance. Also present is some fourth wall breakage, which never goes over too badly if used in moderation.

Oh Saito Chiwa, Aika-chan would have taken offense to all those hazukashii serifu in episode 12

The end of the episode, however, left me most excited. Well, besides this…

if you got gg’s release of the stream, they left in the commercials for the singles of the OPs. They are taking painfully long to come out, especially since they are so fucking good, but after the end credits we get a sneak peek of Horie Yui’s OP for Tsubasa Cat! The little clip I’ve heard sounds fucking amazing and I can’t wait until we get to see the OP, and ultimately (in like January) get the single. It’s called sugar sweet nightmare and sounds great. Definitely check out the commercial after the credits of gg’s release if you haven’t already.

*ding dong*

Oh, hi there. Thanks for coming to Desu ex Machina in your annual costumed pagan inspired candy run. Dasaku is a decent neighborhood of trick-or-treating, but only if you know what the good houses are. The old man at Mega Megane Moe, the house down the street, never answers his doorbell. Cokematic gives out cans of soda, he’s that strange man in every neighborhood that thinks soda-pop constitutes as a treat, and that house around the corner is kinda scary. Definitely wanna hit up the house across the street, however. Xephfyre gives out extra candy to Fate/Stay night cosplayers and even copies of Together with House-Husband. Yes, books on Halloween. How many times have you seen that. The dude at the house all the way at the end of the street is psyched for Halloween, with decorations and everything. He’s handing out eroge, so I’m not sure parents want their kids heading over there.

Before I continue, excuse me. This is obligatory.

I am actually tempted to watch Umineko for Maria. Horie Yui voicing a crazed loli? Whom I happened to be 100% pedo for? Perhaps sometime down the road after the whole show has aired and after a night of drinking. Maybe.

What has kevo done for Halloween weekend so far? Well, given that it’s Saturday night Halloween and I’m at home blogging, I’m not exactly going crazy. I did get to go see Tiesto last night. It was intense. I live in Minneapolis, not somewhere cool like Malaysia where I can go to see Chihara Minori and steal her water bottle. Regardless, I like electronica and Tiesto is the best in the business. Imagine like 1000 people squeezed into a cramped nightclub jumping to the beat of Escape Me and I am still trying to figure out how my limbs are all in tact. My ears are still ringing, however.

Watched the new episode of Toaru Kagaku no Railgun today. Ever since K-ON, I’ve slowly begun to really like Toyosaki Aki’s voice work. She has that cute, sweet, airheaded vibe. Railgun is doing around 200 times better than Index so far. The episodic, scenario-based structure is working well to explore the wonderfully interesting characters in the Indexverse. The problem with Index was how it focused on characters no one cared about and threw it’s main cast almost to the curb. Plus, the pacing was terrible for a show that wanted to convey some kind of plot. Railgun will do well to just keep it up at this pace and it will be one of the most solid shows of the season.

Second Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann movie is gonna premiere in San Francisco in November. In English subtitles, no less! I like the movies as supplements to the series, as you can never get enough TTGL and the little changes they make are cool. It’s like a quick rewatch of the whole series. I’m excited to see what they changed in the second movie, as the second half of the series was fucking epicsauce. Oh right, no candy for you if you don’t like TTGL. I hope the DVD will be on sale soon. Unfortunately I won’t be able to get to San Fran because I have neither time or money for a pilgrimage. Regardless, Gurren Lagann the Movie 2: The Lights in the Sky are Stars, opening at Viz Cinema on November 17. If you’re in Cali, go for it. (sauce)

What? You want candy? Fine, here have some. Kids these days…

Art courtesy kohaku (pixiv)

Dammit, I had this marked on my calendar. Now I am in despair. I even had this post set aside to write about the new episode. Now it’s all ruined and the flow of my blog is all messed up. SHAFT, if my blog goes down in flames because of the lack of a post about how pumped  I am for Bakemonogatari and all five of my readers abandon me on the cold dark streets of the internet, I’m holding you guys responsible. Also, with an extra week episode 13 better make me cream rainbows or something. I’m also looking forward to Horie Yui singing an OP and the singles releases of the other openings.

Also, Nadeko with green hair is the best, yeah I said it. 3AM going to sleep.

Slice of Life Sign - Border Between Funny and Trying Too Hard

Our fourth episode of Seitokai no Ichizon was finally released earlier today. I had a midterm in a few hours, so what better way to get in the mood than some anime? Sankaku Complex’s article spoiled it for me that there would be epic Strike Witches parody, so you can imagine how upset I was when Eclipse released a day after they usually do.

In my first post about this show, I said that I was impressed that there was decent pacing and room for this show to grow. As of episode 4, the latter has not really been taken advantage of. It seems that this show is just going to constantly just parody anime. If people are going to start complaining on episode 4, might want to sound some kind of alarm in the animation studio. Lucky Star worked because characters were constantly doing stuff like going to restaurants and the manga shop and stuff. Also the inane smalltalk in the show actually bore some surprising depth occasionally. Seitokai no Ichizon, while entertaining regardless, seems to pander to us, like some kind of ADD child who wants its mommy to pay attention to what they are doing. Parody this, parody that, talk fast this, talk fast there, hey look Kurimu is moe. While entertaining, I am starting to feel the occasional pangs of *groan* as I watch this show. The first half of each episode is always fun and enjoyable, but then I crave some kind of change in pace. I know I am not alone in this sentiment. I want this show to be good. You can’t have cake without sugar, but adding too much sugar makes it nasty. You can’t have fun slice of life without parody and jokes, and it works the same way. There needs to be some kind of reasoning behind the madness. The characters are overcooked and the dialogue is underdone. I’ve been making cooking metaphors for a while but note I still find the show rather enjoyable. I just think so much more can be done with Seitokai no Ichizon and DEEN is letting a potentially game-breaking show go to waste.

Oh by the way, I’ve started using my Twitter account again and I’m going to dedicate it to this blog instead of real life (I’ll have another account for that). So yeah links to it are abound if you feel like stalking your favorite anime blogger, me.

Image source: Fukanaga Kazuhiro (pixiv)

I had a discussion with a friend today about anime in Blu-ray. He argued that anime in Blu-ray is totally not worth it. I mean, it’s just color and lines right? There is only so much absolute detail in anime. No matter what, an animated image will never have the absolute detail of Matt Damon blowing things up. While this may be true, anime in Blu-ray provides quality in another field. TV stations compress and recode anime in various ways to put on air. As raws come out, fansubbing groups, what you guys usually watch, take the raws and encode them again. If the group is competent the loss is usually not noticeable, however Blu-ray discs offer anime in a quality and resolution that simply cannot be matched. (All images in this post can be clicked on for awesome 1920×1080 full size)

I recently checked out episode 7 from the new K-ON! Blu-ray release. Besides the quality and stuff, there is seiyuu commentary on the alternate audio track. I liked episode 7 (it’s the one where they have Christmas as Yui’s house) and to see it in eye candy 1080p was a great treat. From what I infer the seiyuu basically just say things like “awww…. Chibi Yui-chan is sew kawaiii” but I’m sure enthusiasts will find it really interesting. The rest is basically them having a conversation about random stuff.

Besides 1080p Blu-ray goodness, there is lossless sound, making the ED both eargasm and eyegasm. My laptop cost $1,000 and I bought it this autumn, but when I doubleclick to open this video the fan immediately goes off on max speed. Some parts of the ending theme, like when it zooms out from Mio and does that alpha motion blur effect, my video decoder just goes “nope, not today, kevo” and drops all those frames. Occasionally the video desyncs with the audio and subs because it’s just too much to handle. Technology evolving will make Blu-ray more accessible to everyone eventually. My old laptop (which would have been 2 years old) would not have been able to play this video correctly. For now it’s a luxury for most people to decode Blu-ray.

I pay attention to the soft glow and little tiny details about color and line quality. For people who are not enthusiasts like me, well maybe this is not worth your time. For me, however, this was a super fun watch. It’s just around 2,421,772,331.22 MB but I recommend checking out some Blu-ray releases if you have not already. It’s a fun, novel way to watch your anime.

Enjoy screencaps.

You guys know it’s true. The Pretty Girl Squad showing up was the only reason I kept watching this show. Episode 5 was awesome because of the cool fight scenes and the pretty girl squad being badass. It was followed up with episode six was one of the best fanservice episodes ever. Madhouse knows what its fans want.

All good things must come to the end so there is no Pretty Girl Squad in the new episode of Needless. Instead, we have an animated lecture on the Laws of Thermodynamics. We could all use a little physics in our action anime.

They didn’t do a good job concealing the plot twist that Cruz’s sister is alive and one of the four strongest. I totally already saw this from like 6 episodes back, but then again maybe they didn’t really want to. This episode was essentially intro, OP, physics lesson, Cruz crying, another physics lesson, ED. By the way, I want the old OP and ED back. modern strange cowboy and the OP animation is one of the most gar things in existence. I don’t even need to say why the old ED was good.

Today I just feel like posting something so here are random thoughts about stuff.

kevo at work

Finished Sora no Manimani last night, and I liked it. Koharubi final released the last episode after a few years of waiting. I wanted to review it but I didn’t really feel that I had any opinions on the show that others didn’t already state. If you want to read a review on it, I recommend checking out Kholdstare’s review of the show. It’s well written and basically tells you everything you need to know. Definitely not for everyone, but a good anime none the less.

Somehow I have not been forced to watch Needless when it aired and I blame all of you for it. I started like last night and got up to 4 episodes and I loved it. The first two or three episodes were kinda slow but the show for me is getting good quick. From what I see it’s a great sublime blend of parody with good pacing. I’ll try my best to catch up with the show before it finishes airing.

I’m slow in picking up shows this season, but I might take a look at Yumeiro no Patissiere if I have time because it has cooking and the synopsis of the show contains “spirit of the sweets”. Taiga vs. Yui in Saimoe Japan finals; exactly what I wanted. I’ll be posting again once the winner is decided. But if you don’t want to wait, check out Lunatic Antics or Micchi’s blog for some more info about the match itself.

I’ve started watching Hajime no Ippo again recently. It’s great stuff, well paced despite being like ten million episodes. It’s fun to watch, but it’s such a marathon. I want to get to the 50th episode soon, however. Watched the first episode of GA Art Design Class the other day and it reminds me of Lucky Star x Sketchbook ~full color’S~. I’ll keep watching, but it had better excite me soon.

Bakemonogatari continues to make bank with DVD sales which it deserves. I can’t wait for the series to continue and I’m looking forward to the stream later this month. The show has done nothing but impress me, especially after a near perfect episode 12. God it sucks writing on writers block. These aren’t paragraphs! I better stop now before my blog post hurts someone. In conclusion here is another picture of Sumomo.

It took all of 30 seconds for me to start enjoying Seitokai no Ichizon. Studio DEEN, known for their previous works like the Higurashi franchise and Umineko, steps into new frontiers with a slice of life comedy parody anime. And it’s awesome.

Seitokai no Ichizon starts off with a broken fourth wall and immediately hurls torrents of anime references at its viewers. The first few minutes of the show have references, visual and explicit, one after another strung together with fast dialogue. While this kind of pacing is fine for a while, many a comedy die because they rely on it. Not Seitokai no Ichizon, as again and again, as they move on to another scene or discussion seemingly as soon as a joke starts to get old. In fact, the timing of the first episode was near perfect. They managed to get the maximum volume of pointless parody squeezed in without the gig going stale.

DEEN’s typical desaturated watercolor-esque color palate is quite visible, and the character designs clash slightly with the colors. I would imagine this anime would be a tad more pleasing to look at if they used some OxiClean to make the whites whiter and the brights brighter. Still, Sakurano Kurimu (cv. Honda Mariko) is cute and mine. Stay away.

The male and female leads are excellent. The rest of the cast needs a bit of developing, but that’s what the rest of the show is for. seitokai no Ichizon masterfully crafts Sugisaki Ken (cv. Kondo Takashi), an antithesis of generic male leads. Boisterous, assertive, and perverted, at the end of the episode we get to see another side of him. At the end of the first episode, Studio DEEN declares that it intends to cast caution into the wind and have touchy feeling romance into the series. The chemistry between Ken and Kurimu will hopefully be the crux of the show and keep its various structures together. I expect the emotional, romantic side of this show to augment the quality of the plot and humor, not become Jekyll and Hyde to it. Regardless, I have very high hopes for Seitokai no Ichizon. After a great pilot episode, the series has enormous potential. The structure of the the episodes have yet to be determined but with good pacing, disciplined writing, and smart production decisions, Seitokai no Ichizon will turn out very well. Plus, any show that makes fun off Kyoto Animation that much is bound to be good right?