This week, we are joined by Usny (Desu ex Machina) and Lerxst (Desu ex Machina)

Despite the lack of Girls und Panzer last week, we continue to marvel at this awesome Fall 2012 season. We talk about our one of our personal favorites Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo. We also debate about the shortcomings of Chuunibyou and [K]. In addition, we finally praise Noitamina shows: Robotics;Notes and Psycho-Pass.

(more…)

The anime version of myself

This marks the first time I’ve ever used a pop culture reference in one of my posts. Not something I’m very much used to doing.

Greetings fellow anime aficionados. My name is Lerxst and I’m your newest writer here at Desu Ex Machina. Some of you may recognize me from Twitter. A very, very, very, very small few of you might know me from my previous blog, Anime Afterlife Podcast. It wasn’t an easy decision to leave my former blog because I did enjoy my time there, but I think it was the right decision for me to make. After leaving, kevo’ was kind enough to offer me a spot here at Desu Ex Machina, to which I accepted, and was then put through the routine strip search, cavity search, background check, MAL stamp of approval and forced viewing of Boku no Pico that is required to become a writer here. Needless to say, I passed.  So let’s get down to why all of you are even reading this, learning about ME! For starters, let me just answer a few questions I’m sure most of you are wondering:

Yes, I do own a dakimakura.

Yes, I do collect figurines.

Yes, I do have a waifu.

Yes, I do own H doujins.

And yes, I am proud of every anime purchase I’ve ever made.

Now let’s move on to more pressing matters. I am a 22 year old computer science major hoping to graduate sometime soonish. When I’m not watching anime/reading manga/reading H doujins, I play a random assortment of video games such as Halo, Demon’s Souls, UMvC3, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Borderlands 2, and practically any other popular game title that’s out on the market. And when I’m not doing any of that nerdy shit, I’m watching sports. And when I say watching sports, I mean pelvic thrusting in the air as someone on my fantasy team earns me points, or cursing my favorite team and telling them how awful they are. This pretty much consists of everything I do outside of school and work.

My taste in anime are very diverse. I stand by that old saying, “If it’s good, I’ll watch it. If it’s bad, I’ll bash the hell out of it and tell everyone I know how terrible it is so that they will never have to watch it and it will never be seen by another person ever again. Unless you’re in SCCSAV Terribad.” You know, that saying. I watch anything from moe shows, to ecchi shows, to shounen, to romances, and everything else in between. Favorite genre you ask? Shoujo. I love all that girly romantic nonsense. I love it just as much as kevo’ loves traps.

As a writer here, I have a series of posts I had started earlier this year that I plan to bring over here to Desu Ex Machina. I also plan to do weekly blogging starting this Winter, and I have a few other ideas swimming around in my brain that I hope to incorporate here.

I think that pretty much covers everything. If you have any further questions, please submit them in writing to my congregation of catgirls that I own. They will evaluate your questions and then submit them to me at a later time when I’m not cuddling with them or stroking their ears and tails. So until then, I look forward to writing for all of you!

Hello everyone~

Some of you may remember me from a few months ago, when I wrote a guest post about Kokoro Connect (for some god awful reason). kevo has seen fit to recruit me to his Machinastic order, so I figured I should formally introduce myself. I’m Usny, an undergrad in my last year of pursuing a degree in computer science. You can find me on Twitter and My Anime List.

You might be wondering what my connection is to kevo and to Desu ex Machina. It is a beautiful tale of a chance encounter involving Super Smash Brothers Melee at our college a few years ago followed by many a discussion about anime. I have been following Desu ex Machina ever since and my in-person interactions with kevo have given me the privilege of knowing just how bad he is at Melee. Through him and a number of anime livewatches, I’ve met some of the other anibloggers and thus became more interested in writing about anime. So, thank you to kevo for facilitating my entry into the colorful world of anime blogging.

I first started watching anime on Toonami when I was just a little boy. While other kids were watching Dragon Ball Z, I was watching Sailor Moon and Tenchi Muyo. At the time, I didn’t know the shows on Toonami were foreign, they just seemed like different-looking cartoons. My anime watching wasn’t substantial until 6 years ago, during my sophomore year of high school,  when I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ouran High School Host Club, and (I shudder to remember) Naruto.

Since then, I have watched a sizable body of anime and have grown to love it as a medium. For those wondering, here are my five favorite shows:

1. Top wo Nerae 2! Diebuster
2. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
3. Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu
4. Bakemonogatari
5. Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica

As for my favorite this season, it is without a doubt, Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!, though it is followed closely by Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo and Psycho-Pass.

When I’m not using my free time to watch anime, I love playing video games and watching movies. Feel free to talk to me about Mass Effect, Uncharted, Metroid, Blazblue, UMvC3, and of course, Melee.

Well, that’s about it. I have several editorials that I plan to post over the next few months and I have a few posts planned for the 12 Days of Anime. I look forward to writing for you all!

On a whim this week, I decided to sign up for Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll is a subscription-based streaming service that specializes in anime. I’ve used it in the past — all the way back in 2009 — and I remember the grainy image quality and awful-looking yellow subtitles. Additionally, I just can’t imagine a subscription-based, non-copyright violating streaming service having a decent selection. The anime selection of Netflix (another service I pay for) comes to mind. Lo and behold, the first thing I’m greeted with when I go to the website is Bleach and Naruto info. Damn you mainstream fags, I’m here to watch YuruYuri. But alas, the temptation of a 15-day free trial was too much for me.

I was ready to be disappointed by whatever gimmick I could latch on to. I consider myself a rather picky anime fan; only the clearest 720p of airing anime could grace my eyes. Oh what’s this? They have 1080. The subtitles are typeset well, and the sound quality is good. The only downer is the video has to buffer a little if you seek around and it’s not as convenient to take screenshots. But that’s nitpicking, and these asks are mostly limited to blogging. I like the feeling of “ownership” from downloading a file, and I usually keep all my shows on my external hard drive collection. Still, streaming is definitely convenient, and the quality was pretty surprising.

I’ve always been super-critical of the anime industry stateside, and I consider this post to be somewhat of an appendix to that piece of writing I did two years ago. The structure of selling expensive, dubbed DVD’s at Best Buy simply doesn’t make any sense — that market is fickle and fragile. I hate to say this, but us purists want our girl-cartoons to be obscure and in Japanese. The answer to that is digital distribution. Crunchyroll is in no way perfect, but it’s a big step in the right direction. Near simultaneous releases, actual profit-sharing, instant gratification, and affordable. I’m not exactly going to uninstall uTorrent right now, but I’m definitely going to look into streaming as a good option if I don’t want to wait 45 seconds for a download.

“Why don’t you have a seat over there?”

• Each person is supposed to follow the rule of fives.You are allowed to ask 5 questions, after which you can tag up to 5 bloggers by hyper-linking to their blog; 5 questions because it’s not too many to flood another blogger and occupy too much of his/her time, but yet a large enough number to ask your most important questions, and 5 bloggers to avoid spamming. Hence, prioritize your questions, and who you wish to ask!

• Those tagged are obliged to answer the questions in a blog post, and after which, they are entitled to create their own 5 questions and tag 5 other bloggers, so on and so fourth. You should answer your own 5 questions as well. You are allowed to tag the person that tagged you in the first place. Also, copy and paste this section on your blog so others can understand how the game goes.

• In the case where a blogger strongly refuses to answer a question, he/she must instead post a nice anime image, wallpaper or cosplay picture, et cetera in response to that question.

• To make things interesting, a blogger can include wildcards in his/her 5 questions by placing an asterisk, (*), after which those tagged are obliged to reveal something interesting about themselves that others did not previously know. There is no limit to the number of asterisks one can place (which means there can be up to 5 wildcard questions).

• Anyone can feel free to start the game; you don’t necessarily need someone to tag you. Just create your 5 questions and tag your 5 people of choice. However, the catch is that you must answer your own 5 questions as well.

• To potentially prevent an endless game, this round of games will end on the 8th September 2012, 12pm JST (GMT +9). After which, no more bloggers can tag others to answer their questions.

Well, summer is here and as some people have time for vacationing as well as supplementary classes, I decided to use a good chunk of my time to more actively participate in anime related online. Greetings, Amoirsp (@Amoirsp) here speaking, nice to meet you.

My contributions tend to be added notations, as I prefer to merely complement Desu ex Machina instead of say, steal the show.

Q: Can you tell us about yourself?

I have been watching anime for perhaps the longest time, since the 90’s in fact. I also enjoy visual novels, but they have issues such as not really being considered games, not being popular with the general populace, having content issues, and being slow. In terms of anime, visual novels tend to be at best, mediocre. In terms of doing things on the internet I guess I edited a Clannad game wiki in 2007, that was certainly enjoyable interacting with people.

Q: Have you written before?

Technically I’ve written before, but it was far too personal to really count since it was a Xanga back in the early 00s. My intention of writing again now is to further enhance my writing capabilities and share thoughts from a different perspective. I hope this works out for everyone.

Q: What is your role at Desu ex Machina?

Hopefully writing some editorial posts. I’m interested in delving into more mechanical systems and how the studios seems to approach things, or talking about how summer season has been on a surprising start, initially having low expectations but turning out splendid. This is far from perfect, but definitely a viable season to be watching. Specifically, I’ll be doing an editing or inputting role.

Q: Speaking of your long history with anime, what are some of your favorites?

Cardcaptor Sakura. The last time I was remotely in the anime fandom was somewhere near 2001, and this series took tops by miles. I had just learned about the existence of subs and subsequently bought the Chinese subtitled variants at local Taiwan stores. While this series is amusing in having a countless numbers of taboo, it had a good mix of seriousness, adventuring, romance, comedy, and things you typically want to see in a 70 episode series.

To Heart, season 1. 1999, oh the water color. I just like how primitive this series is, given that To Heart itself in a way triggered the initial surge of 18+ games. While this series is subject to being slow, I felt it had basic mechanics that had been lost in modern anime. So I tend to call this a prototype if you will. This probably wouldn’t pass on a modern anime watcher’s eye, but this is a particular favorite of mine. Also, season 2 is forbidden, I don’t know what that is. I personally had not watched the full season 2 and I don’t consider it in any relation to the first.

Final Approach. In some ways I miss the 12 episode 12 minute format because it was quick and concise. While it terribly suffers from little to no character development, it allows ease of access to literary shotgun adventures, much like a manga. It was cute, it was fun, it was simple, and it was effective. Although far from being a good series, I thought this had enough flavor to at least be a basis for what a visual novel adaptation should be like. Unlike 18+ games, this is actually an all-ages PS2 game. This is a personal favorite of mine and has my former all-time favorite female character in an anime/game.

Mizuiro. I like the OVA system, or at least what it used to be. It contributed to original animation, which is what its name stands for in the first place, and uses a directing formula that addresses a different nature. Although the all-ages version was merely two episodes long, it formulated a concise version of a mix of two stories and weaved it in a directional manner. It helps that the original writer of the base game was a good writer, but at the same time this was directed in a way suitable for anime viewing, yet still maintaining some of the base game’s flavor. It knew how to allocate characters, keep focus on the main point, and still have fun quirks during watching. It seriously is a nice base template for what to look at when adapting a visual novel I say. It also has my current all-time favorite female character, despite only showing for about 5 minutes of screen time max, the efficiency and impact level was absurd.

As you can tell I tend to put more emphasis on Visual Novel adaptations, much more so than Light Novels and even more so than manga adaptations. I feel it’s a bit sad to hardly see any anime original originals, as anime to me lately has looked like a flock of adapting other mediums. You either lose the flavor the original source has (which is its own set of discussions) or you don’t maximize the advantages of animating (which there are numerous numbers of them which haven’t fully been tapped to that often).

From what I’ve seen, visual novel adaptations suffer from a high level of adaptation decay. It gives a bad premise of being a harem, which the anime adaptions tends to run with. Still, I always hope for a visual novel adaptation that isn’t made by KEY that isn’t made by Kyoto Animation that actually can go beyond the level of mediocre. It tends not to happen and even some of the most popular visual novels of past times fall flat on anime.

So for the time being, expect me to share thoughts on the Koichoco anime this summer as it’s been having a few more pluses over the average adaptation, due to their directing staff. I hope it maintains well, as they’re not that common.

A note from kevo: Ok, that’s all the new writers I’m bringing on for now. We will resume regularly scheduled programming shortly. 

A new adventure begins!

Hello everyone!

Alright, I have one confession to make before things get out of hand: I’m bad with self-introductions, or at least I think I am. So please bear with me if this post ends up getting awkward to read or whatever. Oh well.

I believe most of you don’t know who I am, so it’s better to start with general stuff first. I used to blab infrequently in some unknown blog I called Vanikawa Toppa before kevo stalked it and found what interested him enough to ask me to join his newly formed team in Desu ex Machina. So here I am, Vanikawa (@7van) at your service. You can either call me that or just Van, or even whatever silly name you might come up with for me. My real name is Moyad though, it’s an Arabic name which can be roughly translated as “the Supported”. Sounds like a suitable name for the guy who’s going to need all your support to achieve his goal as a well-established aniblogger, no? *implying that I was forever destined to blog about animu lol* Anyways, some of you must be already wondering about where I come from. Did you recently check any of the APR demographics posts and found yourself curious about who the heck was that lone guy voting from Saudi Arabia? Yup that’s me. There is a whole lot of misconceptions that countless people have when it comes to the place I know, but hey I’m not here to delve into details regarding such stuff. I’m pretty open minded though, so never hesitate to inquire about even the strangest little stuff if you’re interested. COME AT ME BROS!

Also in real life, I’m a new medical school graduate and I just started my internship this month. I’m already engaged when I’m still 23 years old, which I suspect will negatively affect my popularity because I lack “purity” lulz. Anyway, enough boring reality. I think I should be talking a bit about our common interest: anime.

Unlike many of whom I know, I find it a bit difficult for me to choose one favorite anime. Maybe I’m not totally attached to a certain genre to begin with, I dunno. But in general, I still prefer shows with focused emotional/psychological elements, that have likeable/relatable characters, and it helps when shows are more or less suspenseful. To give a better idea, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that my most admired shows (Natsume Yuujinchou, Cross Game, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and Death Note) accurately represent my personal taste. Even as a child, I’ve been watching anime for as long as I could remember. Future Boy Conan, Kabamaru Igano, and Tokimeki Tonight are some of the earliest stuff I can recall. Also, and I find this kind of amusing myself, the X/1999 movie had the privilege of being the first anime I watch in Japanese. Doesn’t that qualify for terribad these days? :p

So, that’s it for now. Let’s hope my recruitment to Desu ex Machina turns to be good news for us, especially you kawaiimoeuguu readers.

Yoroshiku onegai shimasu! :3

She forgot to submit her APR ballot.

Hello everyone! There are no Anime Power Rankings this week to allow shows time to air and fansubs time to get distributed. Though I’ve had a “tradition” of taking a one week break between seasons in the past, it will probably be on a case-by-case basis in the future. What I do have for you, however, are this season’s Anime Power Rankings demographics survey. Since the last time the APR voting roster was revealed, we’ve grown by almost 20 participants. 64 different anime blogs are represented this season, up from 50 last time.  So put on some goggles, because you’re about to get lots of stats blasted in your face. (more…)

Ok, it's not THAT kind of secret...

For as long as the Anime Power Rankings have been around, I have more or less kept the roster of voters as a carefully guarded secret. Sure, people would naturally figure out some specific people (like people who post their votes up, comment about their choices, or are quoted from their ballot), but the full scale of the operation was shrouded in mystery. I would like the reason for the secrecy to be creating an air of mystique around the “anime Illuminati”, but it was mainly because the roster was embarrassingly short in the early days. It’s been a few seasons now, and I figure people would like to explore some new anime blogs. I also gave all the bloggers a short demographic survey, whose results I’ll share in this post as well.

So prepare yourselves! For the first time in history: the identities of the people behind the Anime Power Rankings. (more…)

Last week, kevo decided to reveal a little about himself through his 50 Questions posts. I have no problem getting a little personal, so I suppose it’s my turn to answer these questions. It’s not like kevo forced me to do this or anything. To keep things original, I also avoided reading other similar posts. For all I know, this is just one giant troll post and I’m walking straight into a trap.

Questions About My Tastes

1. Who is your favorite male anime character?

I’m not so sure. There are a bunch of characters that I like, and there are some who have traits I admire. As far as one character, I guess I would go with Shinichi Kudo.

2. Who is your favorite female anime character?

Hitagi Senjougahara. Seriously, what’s not to love about her?

3. What is your favorite anime soundtrack?

While I haven’t finished the show, I really enjoy Cowboy Bebop‘s soundtrack. However, it’s worth mentioning that I generally enjoy anything from Yuki Kajiura or Satoru Kousaki.

4. What is your favorite anime opening + animation?

The opening for Cowboy Bebop is a timeless classic for a reason.

5. What is your favourite anime ending + animation?

The Un-Go ending is definitely a pleasure to watch. The slick visuals mixed with the smoothness of Fantasy by LAMA creates one memorable ending.

(more…)