Day 4: Aquarion Evol and Fudo Zen

He needs you to dodge

So rip off your clothes

His logic’s hodgepodge

These donuts have holes

Fudo Zen is coming to town

He’s forbidding love

So no romantics

Just look at these ants and their antsy antics

Fudo Zen is coming to town

He gives you these bananas

For top secret missions

He hangs out with a loli girl

So is he a lolicon?

He needs you to dodge

So rip off your clothes

His logic’s hodgepodge

These donuts have holes

Fudo Zen is coming to town

Fudo Zen is coming to town

Any time Fudo Zen spoke, it was pure genius.

Day 3: Usny’s Top 5 Ending themes of 2012

Let me tell you all a story. A few weeks ago, it was discovered that a friend of mine had a paltry two gigabytes of music. I was taught that maintaining a healthy metabolism with such a small library of music is impossible past three years of age. Thus, and emergency music transfusion was arranged and several of us donated our libraries for the sake of our friend’s well being. Knowing that he would not care for some of my music, I pruned down the copy of my library I was giving him. That’s when I realized that I have a metric ass-ton of anime music.

I don’t consider this a bad thing, at least not until other people get into the elevator and I feel a compulsion to turn Super Affection down to near inaudible volumes. On the contrary, I love it when a series has a good opening and/or ending, as they make each episode all the more enjoyable. In these cases, I can’t wait for the singles to be released, even if the show’s OP or ED are the only enjoyable things about the show *cough*Moyashimon Returns*cough*. 2012 has definitely been a great year in terms of anime music and I’ve compiled my top five favorite ending themes after hours and hours of listening.

#5: DAYS of DASH - Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

Aside from being one of the most underrated shows of the fall season, Sakurasou also has a great ending theme. I love DAYS of DASH, even despite its embarrassingly Engrish name. The rock elements and vocals give is this inspirational feel that always puts a spring in my step when I listen to it. It fits the series as a whole too because it reflects Sorata’s perseverance as he continues to push to become a game designer and not be crushed under the talent of his fellow housemates. That maid/waitress outfit that Nanami appears in also works wonders.

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Rank	Anime (First Place Votes)	Studio	Episode	Change
1	Tsuritama (11)	Studio Pierrot	13	1
2	Sakamichi no Apollon (1)	Production I.G.	12	1
3	Aquarion EVOL (6)	Satelight	9	6
4	Jormungand (1)	Studio Deen	13	–
5	Lupin the Third: Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna (4)	Production I.G.	12	6

On The Cusp: Nazo no Kanojo X, Saki: Achiga-hen, Uchuu Kyoudai, Sengoku Collection, Haiyore! Nyaruko-san

Last week’s results, about the Anime Power Rankings

Thus, we witness the end of the Spring 2012 season. It is no surprise that Tsuritama and Sakamichi no Apollon take the top two spots for this week’s rankings. However while these are great shows, I found their finales quite lacking in excitement. Tsuritama spent most of time having characters yelling at each other and running around in circles. The series climax was established in the last episode, so it felt needlessly drawn out. The actual fishing scene didn’t occur until the last five minutes. Given how colorful the show has been, the actual conclusion was bland and predictable. However, this was still one of the better shows of the season.

This was an incredibly weak end to the season. I included Queen’s Blade Rebellion because it at least had an honest ending. Plus, it had the best healing spell ever seen.

Emperor J (Lower Mid Table)

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Aquarion Evol is a mindless mash of stunningly entertaining characters. However, one memorable cast member that takes it to the next level is Fudou Zen, the high commander of Neo-DEAVA. Fudou is the embodiment of Aquarion Evol as an anime — he’s enigmatic, overly dramatic, and spews the most wonderful monologues of utter bullshit philosophy that could only be topped if Carl Sagan lived to be a senile old man. He is hard evidence that the writers of Aquarion Evol know exactly what they are doing and that the entire anime is one big joke, with mecha. Take the most recent episode, for example. Here’s this huge character conflict and serious drama going on — Mix has been kidnapped, Andy is furious, and every single character has a pensive, depressed look on their face. All of the sudden, we smash cut to Fudou all alone in the wilderness with this great line…

Aquarion Evol would not be the same anime without this master of wordsmanship.

THAT'S NOT EVEN TRUE

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Aquarion Evol might be the most incredible and mind-blowing show this year. The anime may have been waning in attention as of late, partially forgotten beneath the whirlwind of shows in the promising current season. I, however, would never abandon my beloved. That’s because Aquarion Evol is testament that you can create a marginally entertaining anime with a completely uninspired staff.

Aquarion Evol looks beautiful — the animation quality are top-notch and the character design is the only thing that keeps some people watching this anime. It’s quite obvious that Satelight has given directors Yamamoto Yuusuke and Kawamori Shoji all the money they need to make a really gripping blockbuster. The proceeded to hire a roster of impressive voice actors including Hanazawa Kana, Tanaka Rie, Nakajima Megumi, and Kaji Yuki. They hired back Kanno Yoko to do the music, with Akino to sing the songs. The animation is nice and I love how colorful and polished this anime looks. So unless they gave all the money to the animation department and sent the writers on vacation for a few months, this anime screams laziness on the directors’ part.

There is obviously enough money for this project, but the evidence is astounding that no one actually cares about the quality of this show. Can you guess which episode the above screenshot comes from? No? That’s because they have used that animation cut (during the UNION scene) about a dozen times now, including in both the openings. The plot is something about mecha being powered by teenage hormones and sex drive, which I admit is classier than Evangelion‘s robots being driven by teenage angst. A cascade of NTR, comically useless villains, gloriously cheesy dialogue, and general innuendo follows. Somehow, this is a step up from screenwriter Okada Mari’s previous work on Fractale, but not by much. (more…)

Rank	Anime	Studio	Episode	Change
1	Nisemonogatari	SHAFT	8	–
2	Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou	Sunrise	7	4
3	Chihayafuru	Madhouse	20	1
4	Ano Natsu de Matteru	J.C. Staff	7	–
5	Aquarion Evol	Satelight	8	4

On the cusp: Mouretsu Uchuu Kaizoku, Mirai Nikki, Another, Natsume Yuujin-chou Shi

Last week’s results, about the Anime Power Rankings

This has been quite the week for anime episodes, particularly ones named Nisemonogatari. This week’s surreal blend of dental hygiene and incest ecchi fanservice polarized its audience. Some viewers embracing the creativity and humor while others, already frustrated with the pacing of the anime, decried it as vapid filler.

You know, with only three episodes left of Nisemonogatari, one could wonder how the heck things will progress as Shaft wasted an enitre episode on awkward and off-putting incest tooth brushing. So far, Nisemonogatari has been far from bad, as expected from its creators. But it doesn’t live up to its predecessor, Bakemonogatari, due two simply two reasons, reasons all of you probably have heard already.

1. Nonsense talk and pacing
Yes, I know, Bakemonogatari was full of this nonsense talk too, I won’t deny it. But it never got in the way of telling a story, except maybe in the longest arc, Tsubasa Cat. It also shed some lights on the characters which made the already funny and witty dialogue even better. But best of all, since the arcs were so short and focused, it didn’t feel out of place. As I said, it never got in the way of telling a story. The pacing was great.

With Nisemonogatari, however, this nonsense talk becomes a problem. There are only two arcs, the first one lasted seven episodes, and the pacing quickly becomes an issue. The first two episodes are spent on nothing at all besides introducing the cast and even after that, nothing really happens storywise. It grew a bit stale and the feeling of a conflict never existed. Instead, it was talk talk talk talk that did nothing for me at least. Sure, it was a pleasure as always, but it just felt in the way. And when the first arc ended, there were only going to be four episodes left to the last arc. What happened? Nothing, except tooth brushing.

It really feels like the pacing is off and I wonder if not this last arc will feel very “choppy”. Speaking of which, I even felt the first arc was choppy. Tsubasa just appeared out of nowhere and whatnot. There wasn’t a proper explanation of anything, I thought. Maybe that was just me, maybe it is like that in the novels too or maybe it was bad pacing (and direction). And the reason I believe is nonsense talk that got in the way.

2. Fanservice
Once again, Bakemonogatari had this too. But this much? Far from it. I don’t even need to delve into this further I believe. Nisemonogatari is full of fanservice which is really disturbing sometimes and ruins the “cool” atmosphere Bakemonogatari mostly had (luckily, this was not the case with episode seven). This week’s episode, number eight, had the tooth brushing scene. Dangit.

But it is very well-presented and sometimes very tasteful in comparison to many other series. That is always a plus.

Marow (Anime Viking)

But on the other end, some viewers gave this week’s Nisemonogatari glowing reviews.

Nisemonogatari has done something I never thought possible. It has taken teeth brushing, an activity that’s sole purpose is to clean, and turned it into the dirtiest thing I do every morning. Every time I brush my teeth from now on, I will only think of Koyomi straddling Karen with a toothbrush in her mouth. I don’t think I’ll even be able to go to the dentist anymore without the thought of my dentist trying to molest me as he tells me I need to floss better. Having said that, I still enjoyed every damn minute of this latest Nisemonogatari. How Shinbou and Shaft get away with stuff like this I will never know. Nor do I really care either. The main problem I saw with this latest episode is that this is the start of the Tsukihi arc, yet it was all about Karen with Tsukihi being in the episode for less than five minutes. Maybe next episode we’ll see Koyomi straddle Tsukihi as he tries to clean out her ears, like a better version of that weird scene from Hen Zemi.

Lerxst (Anime Afterlife Podcast)

Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou makes a return to the top 5, jumping to 2nd place this week. I think I speak for everyone when I say that the Literary Girl segment was pure hilarity. (more…)

This will be good.

I can’t really describe how amazing this week’s episode of Aquarion Evol is. The reason this awful anime is watchable is because of how honest it is; there’s no pretense that this show is being serious at all. Though there was some evidence in the previous episodes that the writers may not be a roomful of monkeys typing on keyboards, and this show might try to start building substance (at which point I will drop this like a hot potato), this episodes confirms that Satelight is just fucking with us. Because you see, my friends, this episode is about the pilots stripping down because their bare skin allows them to “feel” missiles aimed at them and evade them better. Awesome.

Makes sense to me!

Besides the flagrant fanservice, this episode of Aquarion Evol sums up every single reason why it’s “special” in its own little way. Besides the opening and ending songs, Kanno Yoko is totally mailing it in with the soundtrack. I know “high spirit” and “Go Tight!” when I hear it –I’ve listened to the Sousei no Aquarion Original Soundtrack a million times, bitches ain’t fooling me! Besides that, the animation reuse is amusing, too. How many times are they going to rehash this cut?

On second thought, what am I saying? Use this cut more!

I just find it amusing that I can pick out obvious stuff like this in a show with such good production quality. It means that the animators have a huge budget, but they are just lazy. I also love the fact that Mikono, who wears a skirt that hits like 2 feet above her knees, and MIX, who wears clothes so skintight I expect her to explode like a squeezed banana, are openly regarded in the anime as dressing “conservatively” because of Zessica’s luscious hips being thrust constantly into our vision. This show, my friends, is quality.

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Hello, everyone. Thank you for following our humble podcasting project at Desu ex Machina. For this week’s episode, we finally thought of a name! From now on, this is known as the Friday Anime Podcast, or FAP for short. After a lot of thinking, we decided that it would be more useful to actually post this on Fridays, so that the name makes sense and so the discussion is more up to date about weekend anime. Lessons learned. Anyway, enjoy this week’s episode, featuring Scamp from The Cart Driver as a special guest!

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Download

Index:

Turned out a little long, but enjoy! Again, if anyone has a question or a discussion topic that they want to hear about, just let me know. Person who identifies the theme music gets a cookie.

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Index:
0:39 - Nisemonogatari vs. Bakemonogatari
3:43 - Thermae Romae
5:55 - Has noitaminA Lost Its Direction?
10:03 - Sakamichi no Apollon Trailer
11:10 – Mouretsu Uchuu Kaizoku
13:52 - Why Can’t Persona 4 Make the Anime Power Rankings?
18:16 - Aeroblip on Ano Natsu de Matteru
 22:37 – kevo on Aquarion EVOL

One of the reasons I chose Aeroblip to join my staff was because he came to me with an initiative to start a podcast. I’ve played with the idea on Desu ex Machina, but I never had a good starting point. I’ve recorded something before, but I tossed it out and wrote a conventional post because I sound like a complete tool talking by myself. So, we got together earlier this week and went to work. It’s our first time doing something like this, so it’s not perfect in any way. I need to stop blowing in my mic, and I swear to God I will stop saying “you know” in the future. We’re still learning how to do this.

Without further ado, here are our thoughts on this season’s batch of new anime. Please leave some feedback if it’s not too much trouble!

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Index:
0:56 – Nisemonogatari
5:08 – Aquarion Evol
8:59 – Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou
11:57 – Kill Me Baby!
15:30 – Mouretsu Uchuu Kaizoku
19:35 – Ano Natsu de Matteru
21:30 – Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai!

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