Desu ex Machina

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.